Category: Domain Related

August 16, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

No getting around the fact that as so much of the workings of everyday life becomes more digital for all of us, there is an ever-increasing need for data storage. And try as they might those who make more storage available simply can’t keep pace with the growing demand. Innovation is always the requirement in any situation like this, and it appears that is exactly what’s happened. Everybody will know what DNA is, and how it is the genetic sequence that allows us to become who we are right from the moment we’re conceived. So most people would struggle to connect the dots in as far as how DNA could be implemented as a means of better data storage, but it appears that’s exactly what’s happening. And it is definitely meeting a need as for many in the space the option of doing away with old data to make space for new data isn’t something they are willing or able to do based on the nature of what they’re making / offering. Estimates are that in just 7+ years from now there will be 7.8 million petabyte deficit between the supply of data storage available and the then-current demand that will be expected for it. Here at 4GoodHosting we are like any other reliable Canadian web hosting service provider in that we find this stuff very interesting as data storage is very much front and center for all of us too and we can absolutely get how integral it is for some organizations and their operations. We wouldn’t be able to make the connection between genome sequencing and the strands of DNA with data storage, but we have now and that’s what we’ll share with you today with this entry. Microsoft Leading the Way The key in all of this is going to be reading and writing data faster, and Microsoft has been leading the way in developing a new method for writing synthetic DNA with a chip that is 1000 times faster so that the higher write throughput works out to lower costs. Which in turn will allow companies to be able to afford to buy / build the...

August 1, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Seems to be no coincidence that the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning has occurred at exactly the time that humankind needs it most, as the entire world struggles to keep pace with a global population that continues to explode and that explosion bringing a whole whack of major challenges along with it. Especially when it comes to continuing to provide everyone with what they’ve come to expect in regards to essential services and the like. The need is pressing, but fortunately there are very talented engineers and equally dedicated directors above them who are applying themselves to the best of their ability. While in the simplest sense this won’t have anything directly to do with providing web hosting, our industry is one that is already in the process of being touched by this trend too as there are definitely applications for better and more efficient data management and data streamlining that can be made possible by machine learning. One of those secondary affects from it could be in better proactivity for managing data overloads that can be caused by unexpected external influences. The major heatwave in the UK 2 weeks ago caused some data centers to have to shut down. Machine learning may provide systems with the means of getting ahead of the curve with dealing with that so a complete shutdown isn’t needed. What would occur isn’t exactly what i known as load shedding, but the process would be similar; being able to foresee what’s coming and knowing where to best make cuts temporarily so that the cumulative affect of it all isn’t so catastrophic. As a Canadian web hosting provider, those of us here at 4GoodHosting can see all sorts of promise in this. 2x Speed There are now a set of benchmarks - MLPerf - for machine-learning systems that are determine that they can be trained nearly 2x as quickly as they could last year. The bulk of these training speed gains are thanks to software and systems innovations, but new processors from Graphcore and Intel subsidiary Habana Labs plus others are contributing nicely too. Previously there was no getting around the fact it took...

July 25, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Much has been made of the fact that the worldwide shortage of semiconductor chips has been a big blow to production across all sorts of industries, and caused major supply chain issues. Apparently the number of people who are waiting to be able to buy new vehicles is staggering, and there are plenty of high-tech devices that aren’t available to consumers in the volume they need to be because the manufacturers simply can’t get the chips they need. Currently the majority of the world’s semiconductor chips are made in Taiwan, and there geopolitical concerns about the stability of that industry there long term. Speaking of long term, one of the biggest concerns about any type of long-term shortage while there is a lack of domestic in-country production in the USA is related IoT (Internet of Things) ready-devices. The way this technology was earmarked for big-time advances in healthcare and other type of societal needs was very considerable, and the risk is that those changes might not roll out as quickly as needed along with the widespread adoption of 5G network usage. Of course there are other interests too, but long story short there are simply not enough semiconductor chips being produced. This is something beyond the immediate scope for any web hosting provider in Canada, but like most those of us here at 4GoodHosting we are attuned to major advances in the digital world, so this type of news story where semiconductor chip production here in North America is about to potentially get a big boost is newsworthy. So let’s use this week’s entry to look much deeper into this development with our US neighbours. 1 Step Closer The CHIPS Act looks like it has the number of votes needed to pass the Senate and move on to the House of Representatives, and if it gets approval a massive investment into building a strong domestic industry for semiconductor chip production is about to get started. By encouraging US-based production it is thought that there will be all of the collective expertise needed already in the country and that becoming a leader in world semiconductor chip production shouldn’t take long. Further,...

July 18, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Improving energy storage technology is very much a part of what is going to required of humanity if we are to adhere to the eco-protection goals that are important to all countries, or at least that’s what they’re claiming. Solar has always had the potential to be a part of that, but until recently there hasn’t been the level of focus there needs to be on integrating it to the extent it needs to be. That is changing, and the best example of that will be how many people you see with solar panels on their homes recharging the Tesla or other electric vehicle in their home. But solar cell technology has had its limitations. Until now that is, or at least possibly. If you think Perovskite is the name of a Slavic rare-earth mineral you’re excused, but what we’re talking about here are 30-year Perovskite solar cells. They’re the key to an emerging class of solar energy technology, and by proving they’re capable of a 30-year working lifetime they are set to change the parameters of what solar technology is capable of. Plus meaning a lot more in the way of environmental friendliness and way less in the way of harmful practices to get the components required to build solar batteries. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other good Canadian web hosting provider in that we can see the wide-reaching benefits this may foster, and we can relate in a sense in that any way you can make powering data centres more efficient is going to be music to our ears. And likewise for a lot of people who have their work and livelihood in the digital space. So let’s have a look at these new solar cells with our entry this week. Serious Lasting Power We have engineers at Princeton University to thank for this offering, and the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime now marks a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology. Twenty years was the previous viability threshold for solar cells, but now they’ve added a decade on top of that potentially. They are set to rival the performance...

July 11, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Everyone has their own areas of expertise, and there will always be others who are savvier than you when it comes to a certain subject. There are plenty of people who possess a lot of business savvy, but when it comes positioning their business in the digital space, they are quick to admit that’s not their forte. They delegate that part of their operations to someone who does have the needed know how, and they’re much better off for it. Making the right decisions in that sphere is more important than ever these days though, as so many businesses have a lot riding on their online presence. Choosing a domain is part of that, but it’s not as difficult a choice as choosing whether or not you’ll have more than one of them. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any Canadian web hosting provider in that domains are very much our specialty, and one thing we know is that business owners often come to a point where they need to decide if they’ll be using multiple domains for more than one website for their business. There are advantages to that, and disadvantages too so what we’ll do with our entry this week is compare them and hopefully put your more in the know if you need to make a similar decision for yourself. Securing & Supplementation Many times, this is done because there is a need to pointing or redirecting multiple domain names to one or two websites only. In this situation the additional domains are serving to secure business name or supplementing type-in traffic. Additional domains here may be good if you have a product or service that appeals to different audiences. Having one for each target audience makes it possible to customize the messaging, sales materials, and other marketing strategies that will be more conducive to obtaining certain type of potential customers. On the other side of that, multiple domains can be detrimental to page rankings. Many still park multiple domains as aliases for their main website, but that is less and less common these days and for good reason. One thing we can tell you with authority is...

July 4, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Some of you may not remember it, but there was once a time when you could create any password you liked and it did not have to include any capped letters or numbers at all. You could add them if you like, but they certainly weren’t necessary. Most of you will be able to tell us why it became necessary to add them, but for those who don’t it’s entirely because passwords are much more easily hacked than they used to be. That of course goes step in step with the growth of cyber security threats of all sorts, and all of this complexity goes along with the fact that we all have more passwords than we’ve ever had before. You’ll be able to say the exact same thing at this time next year, and the year after that. Some people aren’t trusting enough and will use a password manager app like RoboForm or something similar. But the majority of us are trusting enough to let Google Password Manager handle the task the majority of the time. There may be a few entryways that are more sensitive than others, and they do always give you the option of whether you want Google to do the managing (and remembering) of that password. Now if there’s any who keep all of their passwords scribbled onto a piece of paper and tucked into their wallet we’d love to hear of it, but here at 4GoodHosting we are like any good Canadian web hosting provider in that we and everyone we know are perfectly happy to let CPUs handle that. And that leads to today’s entry topic, where we’ll talk about how the new Google Password Manager is improved to the extent that even the most distrusting of us should give it a try. Superior Management The overhaul to the Google Passwords platform we are discussing here is part of Google Chrome, and it was announced less than a week ago. What the overhaul is promising to do is allow Android and the Chrome browser password management to communicate within each other, detect passwords that have been security breached, plus better and more intuitive...

June 27, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

None of us were alive when Greek Mythology was in its heyday, but if you were you’d certainly now that Cerberus was the 3-headed dog that guarded the gates to Hades. Sure, there will be a few history buffs alive today that know of this mythological creature, but it really is a shame that generally speaking humans don’t read books like they used to. But enough about that, this blog is about anything and everything related to web hosting and / or computer development so fair to ask where we’re going with this. No one at Cerebras Systems has more than one head and will never have been anywhere near any entrance to the Underworld. But Cerebras does have the distinction of being the maker of the world’s largest processor. And if you’re an engineer who works with development in AI then you may well think they’ve outdone themselves with their newest offering to the development world. Do a little research into AI and you’ll learn that the capacity it has is entirely based on being able to add more parameters to it. 20 billion is a big number, and so the reason this news around the CS-2 system and WSE-2 chip is so big is because that the newest offering from Cerebras is able to train AI models with up to 20 billion parameters. This is the ultimate in optimization at the software level, and that’s why it is something that a top Canadian web hosting provider like those of us here at 4GoodHosting are going to take an interest in. Like most, we have a nice front row seat for everything that major advances in computing technology have promise for doing for us. So let’s use this week’s entry to have a much deeper look into these CS-2 devices. Long before AI technology becomes commonplace in darn near everything of course, but it’s good to be early rather than late. No More Mass Partitioning What this all promises to do is resolve one of the most frustrating problems for AI engineers. That being the need to partition large-scale models across thousands of GPUs in order to facilitate full...

June 20, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

If you’re from these parts of North America you won’t soon forget how the weather was about exactly a year ago from now. Late June of 2021 saw the West Coast hit with a heatwave that put every other one EVER before it to shame with just how incredibly hot it got. The mercury soared to well over 40 degrees in most places and one location not too far from here recorded the hottest temperature in Canadian history. To say it was sweltering hot would be an understatement, and unfortunately it seems that we’re all living in a much, much warmer world than we used to. We are not going to segue into discussing climate change and / or global warming here, but what we will do is say that it is not just us humans and the animals around us that stand to be worse for wear because of extreme temperatures. Turns out they can be plenty harmful for the digital devices a lot of us rely on for work, and the same ones that nearly all of us will use for entertainment even if we don’t spend our workday in front of monitors and a keyboard. There a reason most GPUs come with the own radiator and cooling fan, and we’ve all heard our CPU or notebook whirring when it needs to cool itself down. This is a topic of interest for us here at 4GoodHosting, and we are like any reliable Canadian web hosting provider in that just like many of you we are mix of both those scenarios and if it’s not the desktop or notebook that is being put through its paces it is the mobile. Such is the way with modern life for a lot of us, and anything that puts the operations of that in jeopardy is going to have a target on its back. There’s all sorts of buzz around malware and DDoS attacks and the likes these days, but what about temperature extremes? Components Kept Cool Processors and graphics cards are very sensitive to heat, which is why ensuring they have the ability to stay cool when the temperature around them...

June 13, 2022

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

\ It’s pretty rare to be entirely satisfied with something, and there’s usually always little things that irk you when it comes to whatever it is. And all that despite being overall fairly satisfied with the experience of it. When it comes to web browsing, it is likely that most people will say it’s the pop ups that annoy them most, and for people who have health concerns that have connections to optic nerve overstimulation they can be more than just a nuisance. There’s no getting around the need for revenue, so unfortunately pop ups and the like aren’t going anywhere. But the web development giants of the world have made the efforts to improve the experience when using their web browsers over the years. Real improvements haven’t been fast to arrive, and in many ways that’s because the imperfections of browsers like Edge, Firefox, and Chrome are tolerable in the big picture of everything. So with that understood we can assume that anything that does make news when it comes to an improved web browsing experience has to be something rather big and significant. And it is here with Google making it clear that they are now making real strides implanting machine learning into the function of their flagship Chrome browser. A browser that – as many of you will know – is far and away the one of-choice for most people around the world. And here at 4GoodHosting we’re like most good Canadian web hosting providers in that we feel similarly, and we’re like anyone anywhere for whom a more enjoyable and tailored web browsing experience is going to sound plenty good. So let’s dig into this here today as it’s something that likely all of us are going to benefit from in the more long-term picture around this. Specific Task Focuses It was in a recent blog post that Google announced the rolling out of new features to Chrome via ‘on device’ machine learning. Improving a person’s browsing experience is the goal, by adding several new ML (machine learning) models that will focus on different tasks this will be made possible. For starters, ‘web notifications’ will be...