RSA Cryptographers’ Panel Weighs Quantum Risk
Several deadlines kept me from attending the RSA Conference last month in San Francisco. But having registered, I’ve been able to listen to recorded sessions, including ‘The Cryptographers’ Panel.’ Moderated as usual by Whitfield Diffie, co-founder of the Diffie-Hellman asymmetric key exchange, this year’s panel spent a lot of time on the threat of quantum computing. AI, Cryptography, Quantum Scorecard Offering historical context, panelist Adi Shamir – a regular at these annual talks – recalled that three promising...
read moreTech, Healthcare, Me and You
One of my early encounters with technology and healthcare came at a cable industry event. It was the 2009 NCTA Cable Show in Washington, DC, if memory serves, in the early days of DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts. The demo was a live, two-way video with a doctor in Alaska. That iteration of DOCSIS could support some compelling new applications, including the remote delivery of medical service. A decade later we had more high-speed data, including DOCSIS 3.1, with its 10x increase in downstream and upstream throughputs. In the introduction to their book on...
read moreTravel Diary: Satellites, Optics and More
It’s been a while since I’ve travelled for business. Last month, three events aligned in one week. I hit two of them: Satellite 2023 in Washington, DC, and the NTT Upgrade 2023 event in San Francisco. The closest I came to Light Reading’s Cable Next-Gen was a layover at the Denver International Airport. Sorry to have missed it. After checking in at Satellite 2023, I did a quick tour of the exhibit floor. This show has several vibes. There’s an international flavor, no surprise, given what satellites do. The suits and ties and overall business...
read moreThe ARRIS Story: Taking Flight
Back in the fall of 2019, a friend from the cable industry approached me with a very big writing project. The mission? Helping two executives tell the story of their company. The friend was Lela Corcoros; the two execs were Bob Stanzione and Dave Potts; and the company was ARRIS. Fast forward to today. Finally, the book is out. Across 18 chapters, we recount the fascinating history of ARRIS, from its origin as a joint venture between Nortel and ANTEC in 1995 to its eventual sale to CommScope in 2019. Many years, but the story moves quickly,...
read moreHitting Targets at IBC
Trade journalists will tell you that covering an industry show can be a nightmare. Attending sessions, making booth appointments, writing a show daily – it’s all enough to drive you batty. Since launching this business in 2010, I have had no need to attend shows as a full-time journalist. On occasion, however, I have agreed to help friends who have that role. I did that in September 2019 at IBC with John Moulding, editor-in-chief of Videonet. My assignment: 11 IBC-related stories based on interviews with designated vendors at their booths....
read moreAchieve Low Latency with M-ABR and Chunked CMAF
In a paper I wrote earlier this year, I addressed a dilemma facing OTT video service providers. Namely: Demand for live streaming is growing, yet so is aversion to “live” video compromised by high latency. The sponsors of this paper were video delivery solutions provider Broadpeak and THEO Technologies, developer of a universal video player. The technologies they recommend can dramatically reduce streaming video delays from half a minute to under 4 seconds. The components include multicast adaptive bit rate (M-ABR) streaming;...
read moreWhat Makes Craft Beer and Tech a Good Fit?
Craft beer is on the agenda at the Richmond Technology Council (aka RVATech). This year the regional business association began billing its “Tech on Tap” events as a part of a “brewery tour.” The third of four separate events was held June 19 (Juneteenth!) at Väsen Brewing Company. The sponsor: Dynatrace, a global company specializing in application performance monitoring and enterprise cloud intelligence. Väsen – the Swedish word for essence – is an outdoor-inspired brew pub with an original lineup that leans toward ales, double...
read moreConference Panel Participants: Take Note
Not everyone in a given industry goes to trade shows or industry gatherings. Among those who do, only a subset attend sessions or panel discussions. Fewer still actually participate on those conference panels. If you are among those who serve as panelists or maybe offer PR advice to those who do, read on. Having been a trade journalist myself, I’ve attended many of these sessions. (And still do.) Most panelists perform well, and if that’s your case, the following should simply confirm what you’re already doing. If you’re new to being on...
read moreBlockchain: Beyond Hype and Toward Wider Use
Over the past year, blockchain began coming into its own. It remains the foundation of digital currencies, but is now more widely diffused, independent and less subject to inflated expectations than it was at the start of 2018. Many industries are now looking into the distributed ledger technologies once exclusively associated with cryptocurrency. In a lecture I heard last April sponsored by Virginia Commercial Finance on “The Business Case for Blockchain,” the list included the following: pharma/food/agribusiness, import/export, digital...
read moreA Tech Writer Can Really Help Out in this Situation
In my past few posts, I’ve written on network virtualization, CBRS and DOCSIS, topics I heard discussed at this year’s SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tech Expo. As a tech writer, that’s just part of what I do. For several years, I’ve also played another role upfront, helping companies that attend Expo convert their accepted abstracts into finished conference papers. The SCTE receives many more proposals than it can accept. Deciding which ones make it can be difficult, as I recall from serving on the program committee. What happens next is also a...
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