“The rapidly evolving need for verified computation is becoming critical in areas where risk exceeds the ability to trust, such as public APIs, regulated industries, and core financial controls. As demands on the enterprise to work more collaboratively with trading partners and customers increase, Web3 technology provides the transparent proof needed,” commented Dr. Jason Teutsch, founder of Truebit.

Truebit’s integration framework allows developers to read and write code to any API, deploy applications iteratively and quickly, optimize workflow, and improve security, data integrity, and process transparency.

Truebit Verify leverages decentralization to enable developers to create applications that interact with multiple data sources, including blockchains, and verifiably execute complex code.

By leveraging Truebit Verify, developers can secure the 99 percent of application logic that executes offchain. Developers can write code in familiar languages, deploy applications iteratively and quickly optimize their workflow.

Web3 Beyond Blockchains
While Web3 technology is often associated with cryptocurrencies and NFTs, it has the potential to revolutionize enterprise computing. A new generation of infrastructure is emerging which leverages consensus, verification, and transparency to address rapidly evolving challenges in computing. The factors driving a shift to hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructures are the same forces underlying Web3: security, reliability, risk mitigation, portability, interoperability, and cost control. According to IDC, within the next 5 years, 80 percent of enterprises will be part of industry ecosystems that rely on decentralized Web3 code.

“From creating a more secure and transparent digital environment to enhancing operational efficiency and user empowerment, Web3 offers vast potential in promoting transparency, trust, and data security. As more enterprise organizations keep critical data in private and protected places, stored in blockchain and other types of distributed ledgers, a rising share of applications will run using smart contracts that all stakeholders can transparently view, verify, and agree to”, said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst, Constellation Research.

Leading Innovation in Transparent Verification
Truebit has built the next generation of transparent verification to make Web3 development accessible, reliable, and possible for real world applications. The Truebit platform provides a secure way for developers to create interoperable Web3 applications that go beyond blockchains. Truebit Verify validates application data processed by external sources and provides portable certification. Features include:

• Web3 Microservices – Truebit secures critical offchain code. Truebit Tasks are always-on, accessible from a standard REST interface, and ready to support an applications’ event-driven architecture.
• Language Compatibility – Truebit Verify provides out-of-the box support for JavaScript, Rust, C++ and is extensible to any language supported by WebAssembly (Wasm).
• Secure, Fast Execution – Truebit Verify’s Wasm architecture provides a fully isolated sandbox for safe execution of off-ledger tasks. Wasm’s compact footprint provides immediate availability of code across any of Truebit’s Nodes, enabling instant response times.
  API Integration – Truebit Tasks can read and write data from public and private APIs while providing fully verified operations for any data transformations or calculations.
• Cross-Blockchain Operations – Copy data and transfer assets between ledgers with rules and validation specifically tailored to an application’s needs. Truebit Verify provides a safe, neutral environment for execution of cross-chain code.
• Continuous Verification – Multiple, independent Nodes automatically verify each task. Truebit verify ensures that the code written is the same as the code executed and that no one has altered the processing of task inputs.
• Audit Trail – Each portable transcript certifies permanent evidence of task execution. Transcripts can be easily linked to ledger transactions, or can be used entirely off ledger to provide transparent audit trails.

“With the re-architecting of cloud environments to accommodate the shift to hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure, Web3 naturally emerges as the next evolution of the compute we rely on today — from VMs to containers to serverless functions. The future of enterprise computing lies in harnessing the power of Web3 to build automated, distributed ecosystems beyond the confines of individual organizations”, said Blane Sims, head of product, Truebit.

Truebit in Action
Truebit’s mission is to provide a trustless solution for builders and data owners to certify truth so they can prove the integrity of data, systems and organizations to others. The company’s team of experts work together with customers and technologists to build innovative, real-world applications, including:

• The Quadrans Foundation provides blockchain technology to trace and digitally authenticate food and textile products, enabling a transparent, safe, and reliable supply chain ecosystem. As part of the TRICK Consortium, Quadrans leverages Truebit to achieve TRICK’s development goals by providing transparent and tamper-proof tracking to reduce fraud and enable interoperability across data systems, including multiple blockchains and accounting systems. Truebit creates a single source of transparent truth with an audit trail of transcripts certifying task execution.
• A financial services company needs to provide a full audit trail of KYC identity validation and AI-based fraud detection. Truebit provides a certified transcript of identity validation services provided by a third-party, verified integration with AI/ML-based algorithms that monitor transactions for suspicious activities, including independent verification to ensure smart contracts function as intended and trades settle accurately, and certifies data reported to investors and regulators (e.g. financial statements) are correct.
• A group of major recording artists are developing a platform that will transparently calculate and distribute royalties to downstream stakeholders that own a minority stake in songs, will use Truebit Verify to: source data from authentic origins (any streaming platform) for precise royalty calculations, calculate royalties based on verifiable metrics such as downloads, listens, and views, automatically pay royalties through payment services APIs and generate a certificate of correctness for every transaction.

Amazon said it respected workers’ rights to express their views.

Before the protest began, organizers said about 2,000 people had pledged to take part.

“Our goal is to change Amazon’s cost/benefit analysis on making harmful, unilateral decisions that are having an outsized impact on people of colour, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable people,”

said the protesters.

Amazon is currently looking to cut costs, partly in response to economic uncertainty that has slowed sales in many parts of the company, including its e-commerce and cloud computing divisions.

Since January, the company has announced 27,000 layoffs and reduced investment in many areas.

The company ordered employees to work in the office at least three times a week starting in May, saying it would improve communication and the company’s culture.

They accused the company of not accounting well enough for its carbon footprint, pointing to a report that said Amazon only takes into account Amazon-branded products in its calculations.

Company spokesman Brad Glaser said the firm “has always listened and will continue to do so, but we’re pleased with the way the first month has gone, with more people back in the office”.

He also said Amazon continues to strive to meet its 2019 commitment to be carbon neutral by 2040 and is on track to rely entirely on renewables by 2025.

New powerful GeForce RTX GPUs, a new generation of hyper-efficient laptops, new Omniverse capabilities and automotive partnerships were the highlights of a news-filled address ahead of CES, where the company talked about its new projects. The event was held in Las Vegas last week.

“AI is going to define the future of computing, and that has influenced a lot of the things we’re looking at today.”

said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president for gaming products at NVIDIA, as the presentation began.

Fisher was joined by several leaders from NVIDIA to present products and partnerships in gaming and content creation, robotics and next-generation vehicles.

Showcasing GeForce RTX 40 series laptops, RTX 4070 Ti graphics cards and DLSS 3 games
Fisher said the performance and power efficiency of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 40 Series Laptop GPUs enable the biggest generational leap yet, including 14-inch laptops for gaming and power creation, which go on sale in February and will start at $999 .

The companies have used generative artificial intelligence technology to create connectors and extensions for the Omniverse. Move.AI’s Omniverse extension, for example, enables video-to-animation conversion. Lumirithmic generates 3D meshes for heads from scanning faces. And Elevate3D generates photorealistic 3D visualizations of products from 360-degree video footage.

Johnson also announced that NVIDIA RTX Remix, which is built on Omniverse and is “the easiest way to mod classic games,” will soon enter early access. “The modding community can’t wait to get their hands on Remix,” she said.

Mercedes-Benz to create digital twins; Foxconn builds electric cars on NVIDIA DRIVE; Geforce NOW streams into cars
The NVIDIA DRIVE platform is open and easy to program, said Ali Kani, vice president of automotive at NVIDIA.

Hundreds of partners from across the automotive ecosystem are already developing software on NVIDIA DRIVE, including 20 of the top 30 new energy vehicle manufacturers, many of the industry’s leading manufacturers and software makers, and eight of the top ten truck and robotic taxi companies.

According to Backstage Director and General Manager, Austin Lamon, the new suite of five plugins for the developer platform focuses on developer efficiency. The bundle includes Pulse, a productivity and satisfaction survey tool, role-based access control, a no-code access management plugin, and Insights for monitoring Backstage usage across the enterprise.

But those aren’t the only extensions. Skill Exchange also connects talent within the organization, and Soundcheck codifies engineering best practices. Backstage’s main advantage is that it is flexible, extensible and open source, allowing companies to avoid vendor lock-in.

Development teams can use Backstage to build self-service portals to manage assets and unify applications, documents, services and tools into a single UI. It includes a catalog for managing software, including microservices and libraries, templates to spin up new projects, and a catalog of open source plugins.

“Gone are the days when IDEs competed on core features like code creation speed, usability, build automation and more. Тhe competition has moved to adjacent areas — ultimately to foster higher developer velocity. Spotify Backstage shows this with its latest innovations.”

 

Said Holger Mueller, vice president and analyst at Constellation Research.

He also adds that premium plugins Skill Exchange and Soundcheck are key to developer success. The former reflects the ability to work on gigs, while the latter aims to create a productive environment for developers.

Baskѕtаgе is a platform designed to enable companies to build customized “developer portals” that bring together all of their tools, plugins, dаnаgеs, services, APIs and dаnаgеs into a single interface. Through Vaskѕtаgе, users can monitor, for example, Kуberpetеѕ, pоvеpоvе the status of a Сl/CD, view the costs of an оblаgе or follow up on security incidents.

Crescent Cove Advisors, Henry Crown and Company and Luminar, a lidar company, also participated in the investment. Alberto Lacaze, CEO of Robotic Research told TechCrunch:

“Most people think robotics is some magic piece of software. The reality is that robotics is more like a stamp collection. You have to collect all these different edge cases where you need to be able to run on slippery roads and with dust and without being able to see the lines and so forth. We have collected lots and lots of stamps. To a certain degree, a common day for a military application is the edge case for a commercial application.”

This funding is specifically geared towards expanding and industrializing commercial applications, says Lacaze.

On the trucking side, RR.AI is working with sawmills in Canada to move logs, and says it will have a big U.S.-related announcement coming soon. The company will also be announcing an agriculture partnership in the coming months.

The company’s go-to-market strategy is to focus on the “low hanging fruits,” says Lacaze, or the areas where there are few regulations or easy regulations to work around.

The companies aim to transition all of their services into fully electric programmes by 2030. Mark Potter, Head of Building Services at Ocado Group said:

“Ocado is committed to being the UK’s most sustainable grocer. This starts at our head office where we encourage employees to swap their car for a sustainable alternative. The introduction of the electric bus service with Zeelo allows our employees to benefit from a net zero commuting option

The service, launched on 29th November, transports employees to and from Ocado Group and Ocado Retail’s head office locations in Hatfield, UK, from nearby towns including St Albans and Welwyn Garden City.

By providing an all-electric bus programme, Zeelo and Ocado hope to save 16 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. Meanwhile they are offering another valuable transportation link to the office for staff who are living in areas that may be underserved by public transport

That is the first time a COVID-19 health tool has been licensed by the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP).

The agreement was announced on Tuesday. It means that other manufacturers will be able to make the tests without buying a licence, lowering costs and making them easier to produce. CSIC’s Javier Maira said:

“The novelty of the agreement is that CSIC will not charge royalties for the exploitation of its technology as long as it is manufactured for or in countries included in the list of low and medium income countries.”

Companies that produce the tests will also have to adjust the price to make them affordable in each country where they are marketed, the CSIC added.

The tests are simple to use and suitable for areas with limited access to laboratory facilities, the MPP said in a statement.

Apollo Go, Baidu’s robotaxi service, aims to be in 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030.

Baidu has so far racked up over 16 million kilometers (10 million miles) of L4, self-driven distance, in terms of improving its driving tech.  That’s up from 6.2 million miles reported in its first-quarter results.

These enormous figures have limited substance unless we know how many of these rides actually happen on busy city roads rather than designated routes in enclosed areas.

Since November 9, 2020, the Facebook cofounder and CEO, who is worth $127 billion, has unloaded shares nearly every business day, according to filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Overall, he’s sold 9.4 million shares, worth $2.8 billion, over the past eight months through Wednesday. About 90% of the sales were made by his philanthropic and advocacy organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). A smaller portion—roughly $200 million after taxes, per Forbes’ estimates—went into his own pockets. Zuckerberg, who is the world’s fifth richest person, has now winnowed his stake in Facebook to about 14%, down from 28% at the time of the company’s IPO.

Since Facebook went public in May 2012, Zuckerberg and CZI have sold more than 132 million shares of the social media giant, worth nearly $15 billion in total. Of that, he has personally pocketed around $2.1 billion after taxes, Forbes estimates. Zuckerberg began consistently selling Facebook stock in 2016, the year after he and his wife Priscilla Chan established CZI. At the time, the couple penned a letter to their unborn daughter, pledging to give 99% of their Facebook shares over their lifetimes toward areas such as education and curing diseases; the shares were worth $45 billion then. Zuckerberg and CZI’s sales reached a peak in 2018, when they offloaded $5.3 billion worth of shares—the vast majority through CZI.

But Zuckerberg ceased selling in November 2019, only making a single donation through CZI of 204,700 shares worth $60 million last year to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF), a Mountain View, California-based nonprofit that among other things operates charitable donor-advised funds. As of 2018, Zuckerberg and Chan had donated nearly $2 billion worth of Facebook shares to SVCF.