Some drones have the capability to deliver packages to someone’s front door. But the technology has limitations, so it’s mostly used outdoors.
Now a team of scientists is working on a first-of-a-kind solution that would bring healthcare delivery closer than ever before.
You might have heard them buzz or seen them overhead. But imagine these robots on a special medical mission.
“We are building a telehealth drone that will have the ability to go inside people’s homes,” said Manish Kumar, Ph.D., professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. “That’s very, very challenging from technology point of view, because once you go inside people’s homes, you lose connection with the GPS.”
University of Cincinnati engineers are designing and testing special sensors that would allow the drones to maneuver through a front door, into a patient’s living room carrying a tablet or smart phone. Patients would connect with a doctor for a telehealth appointment and access a special medical kit attached to the drone so they can measure and transmit health information.
Continue reading: https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/12/07/special-delivery-drones-bringing-the-doctor-inside-your-home/

Construction companies today grapple with a number of factors that can potentially impede productivity and make it more difficult to compete for business. Managing labour shortages, cost pressures and environmental regulations make it hard to remain competitive in an ever-evolving industry. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry was starting to experience a shift towards technology as a way to drive greater productivity. As we begin to move past COVID, technology is playing an even more important role in addressing the challenges of improved efficiencies on jobsites and across the business.
Drone technology is changing the industry. A decade ago, the average construction company could not afford to purchase or operate a drone; the cost of gathering aerial data and imagery was too high compared to traditional methods, and there was the technical expertise and time required to understand and analyze the data. Today, ease of use and affordability has made drones far more accessible.
Drone technology is advancing very quickly across multiple industries, helping companies monitor and track progress in a way never before possible. From site surveying to tracking equipment and data, drones are mapping areas and gleaning information in less time and at a lower cost than manual mechanisms.
Driving innovation across industries
 Drones offer a range of possibilities for the future of mapping, surveying, inspection and data gathering. From agriculture to environmental monitoring and conservation, drones are a multipurpose tool with the potential to revamp the way some industries operate.
Forestry companies are using drones to do inventory on logs and surveying vast, hard-to-reach areas at a fraction of the cost of a plane. Farms are deploying sophisticated drones with near-infrared and thermal sensors to monitor growth, pests and stressors in a field. They are being used to create aerial surveys of buildings, bridges, roads and highways – saving projects time and cost in the process.
Drones can enhance and, in some situations, replace manual inspections and maintenance inspections of high structures, even tightening a bolt on a bridge. The data collected can help plan maintenance of a structure and with thermal imaging, can also detect leaks and even identify compromised areas, giving companies the ability to proactively maintain facilities or structures.
Collecting valuable data and insights
Greater competition and increased accessibility in the drone manufacturing space has driven costs down to where they are more readily available and affordable to all businesses. And the benefits are numerous. To start, they can survey large areas quickly and easily and generate detailed 3D imagery of the project and surrounding area. This not only reduces cost, but the data can be used to navigate the site in 3D before construction starts. Access to greater data and insights can also create sophisticated maps, allowing for highly accurate measurements of distances/depths, surface anomalies, elevations and volumes.
Continue reading: https://www.reminetwork.com/articles/constructing-the-future-with-drones/

A future where drones complete everyday tasks is fast becoming reality.
A Newcastle aviation company is helping push the boundaries of the technology, which promises to change the way we work forever.
Watch the story: https://www.nbnnews.com.au/2021/12/07/the-drones-making-life-easier-for-business-owners/

In the IoT world, a common headache for customers is supporting their product after it’s released. To provide support with excellence, it’s important to rely on the intelligent use of meta-support tools to amplify the support team’s work. In this post, we’ll highlight some of these tools.
The Tools of the Support Trade
Datadog is an excellent monitoring service that can be extended and hooked into in some incredible ways. This system keeps 24/7 surveillance on our cloud infrastructure, dedicated hosts, websites, and databases. 
The features we use the most are the monitors. Monitors can be simple smoke-test-style checks where a tool goes to a URL and makes sure it returns the expected HTTP code. Monitors can also be complex, carefully designed checks that pass input to the tool or a query to a database. For example, we have one check that queries a Redshift database’s rows by time, averages the number of entries made in the past hour, and returns a warning if the value is below a specified value.
Datadog has excellent first-class support for all major cloud vendors, and if there isn’t a pre-made tool, the platform is customizable enough to let you build it yourself!
In theory, this could be replicated by a master server pinging other servers or a free tool (like the excellent Cockpit Project). However, Datadog includes some unique sauce additions: its visualization of monitors and metrics is fantastic out of the box and has incredibly granular tools to, say, individually mute monitors once they have been triaged. When it is necessary to alert a support team member, Datadog hooks into our slack channel to communicate to the respective support role.
Certain critical level events also send an automated text to the on-call team member using Twilio (more on that later).
Continue reading: https://www.iotforall.com/meta-support-tools-for-supporting-iot

As linked business devices and smart home and workplace gadgets take over the market, the Internet of Things (IoT) has gained even more momentum.
There’s an interesting academic sidelight to this. It’s called the Internet of Strings. Or IoSt. It was created in Berkeley a few years ago by mathematicians. They saw the coming Internet of Things as too corruptible by business and political factions.
String Theory protects free speech and unfiltered thought. Berkeley went to String Theory. This theory is pretty complicated. It’s not comprehensible to most laypersons.
In cyberspace, String Theory creates strings of communication avenues. These avenues can then be utilized. Avenues exchange information. For automation. Or even to make payments using cyber currency. It’s an amazing tool. This tool is just now coming into its own.
It’s not being publicized much outside of academic circles as yet. But the Internet of Strings is something to keep your eye on. Do you feel doubtful about the Internet of Things? Keep your options open, and your powder dry. This is the keen advice of most successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, and techies.
With higher income comes new opportunities for businesses to use IoT. Watch out for these emerging B2B IoT trends.
1. Voice-Activated Business Tech
With the rising popularity of IoT devices, business-to-customer interactions are evolving. Consider using modern speech technologies.  Siri, Alexa, and Cortana search for items. The consumer orders. This one area of IoT will explode in the future. Tech-savvy businesses may seize this chance. Voice technologies will replace customer service professionals and virtual assistants. They may improve customer service, offer a seamless experience, and increase efficiency.
2. Retail Data Analysis
Recent technical advances enabled IoT. Smartwatches, digital thermostats, and smart speakers are all linked and collect data. These devices are common. They may easily supply data from the retail industry. Tracking client activity in physical stores may be quite beneficial to business owners. Data from the cash register, shop cameras, and mobile customer applications may be linked to developing customer care solutions. The data may be used to optimize labor or inventory demands based on peak customer activity periods of the day or week.
Continue reading: https://readwrite.com/2021/12/05/emerging-iot-business-opportunities/

Internet of Things (IoT) edge computing trends reflect the recent increase in the adoption of both edge computing and IoT among enterprises and individual consumers. 
Gartner predicts that 75% of enterprise-generated data will be processed outside a traditional data center or cloud by 2025, and IDC reports that more than half of new enterprise IT infrastructure will be found “at the edge” by 2023. 
In its report, Internet of Things (IoT) Market, 2021–2028, Fortune Business Insights estimates that the global IoT software market size was $309 billion in 2020. The research firm expects the market to grow to more than $1.8 billion by the end of 2028 — a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.4%. Fortune Business Insights attributes much of this growth to increased consumption of video and virtual reality content and the growth of IoT sensors. 
IBM defines edge computing as “a distributed computing framework that brings enterprise applications closer to data sources, such as IoT devices or local edge servers.” 
Closing the gap between applications and data sources allows for faster data processing, less latency, and better bandwidth. In an edge computing setup, data is delivered to users through a decentralized network of servers and data repositories located closer to the end user’s current geographic location. 
This article will examine five current IoT edge computing trends driving growth in this sector.
Trends In Internet Of Things (IoT) Edge Computing
1. Wearable IoT Popularity
Use cases such as medically issued health monitoring devices are driving much of the growth in the IoT edge computing sector. The so-called “wearables” IoT category also includes a wide range of consumer applications, including smart clothing, wearable cameras, smart glasses and watches, and activity trackers. 
One prominent example of a successful wearable IoT endeavor is a partnership between Google and health tracker and wearables company Fitbit. Since 2018, Fitbit has used Google’s Cloud Healthcare API, and more recently, Google Distributed Cloud Edge, to integrate its data into health care applications. 
Data from Fitbit wearables can be connected to electronic medical records (EMRs) to provide insights into overall health for end-users and their medical providers. Ideally, the data can be used to personalize care and spot potential health risks. Google VP of Healthcare for Google Cloud Dr. Gregory Moore said the partnership is part of the company’s vision to “transform the way health information is organized and made useful.”  
Continue reading: https://www.datamation.com/networks/internet-of-things-iot-edge-computing-trends/

Edge computing refers to the concept of bringing computing services closer to service consumers or data sources. Fueled by emerging use cases like IoT, AR/VR, robotics, machine learning, and telco network functions that require service provisioning closer to users, edge computing helps solve the key challenges of bandwidth, latency, resiliency, and data sovereignty. Edge computing moves some portion of the storage and computes resources out of the central data centre and closer to the source of the data itself. Rather than transmitting raw data to a central data centre for processing and analysis, that work is instead performed where the data is generated — whether that’s a retail store, a factory floor, a sprawling utility or across a smart city.
Edge computing is all a matter of location. In traditional enterprise computing, data is produced at a client endpoint, such as a user’s computer. That data is moved across a WAN such as the internet, through the corporate LAN, where the data is stored and worked upon by an enterprise application. Results of that work are then conveyed back to the client endpoint. This remains a proven and time-tested approach to client-server computing for most typical business applications.
Latest trends of Edge computing

• Edge computing, joined with machine learning, enables faster decision-making processes
• Edge computing can optimize IoT applications, in particular ones that require real-time actions

Continue reading: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/must-know-top-trends-of-edge-computing-in-industry-4-0-for-iot-applications/

Giving women with a mix of backgrounds and experiences a seat at the corporate table makes good business sense all around. A 2020 McKinsey & Co. study showed that companies in the top quartile for gender and ethnic diversity were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability compared with those in the bottom quartile. 
These corporate trailblazers have boldly pushed for inclusion, and taken chances in their careers — switching industries, helming startups and encouraging their businesses to embrace new markets — to create opportunities for themselves, their companies and future leaders:
Bridging the Gap
It’s difficult to find a company that’s pledged to double the representation of Black and Latino workers at all levels by 2025, or to increase the representation of Black employees in store leadership roles by 2025, but Gap Inc. has done both.
“We take this issue very seriously,” says Sonia Syngal, the company’s CEO. “We were also the first Fortune 500 company to announce equal pay for men and women.” 
Out of more than 7,000 companies across the world, Gap was named one of the top five most diverse companies by the Thomson Reuters Global Diversity and Inclusion Index for two consecutive years. “Our north star is that we are inclusive by design,” says Syngal, who is now considered the highest-ranked Indian American female CEO of a Fortune 500 company since Indra Nooyi stepped down from her post at PepsiCo in 2018.
Even when she was at the helm of sister brand Old Navy, where she led the company to record-breaking growth between 2016 and 2020, Syngal relied on the same principles to guide her, often referring to the company’s goal of offering “affordable fashion to anyone regardless of gender, income and body shape.” 

Last year, Gap became the first retailer to require all suppliers to pay garment workers electronically, which Syngal says is “a critical path to financial freedom.” She’s also the head of one of the only retailers to claim a workforce that is 55 percent Black, Latino, Asian American or something other than white.                     
This year, Gap announced it was regularly hosting diversity and inclusion workshops and includes mandatory racial equity training in its employee onboarding. “We started out as an inclusive company,” Syngal says. “Creating opportunities for the people and communities connected to our business inspires us to this day.” 
Making a Difference
Rosalind Brewer may have grown up the daughter of assembly-line workers, but she is no stranger to the C-suite. In fact, she’s helped lead retail giants twice before her current position as CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, the company that owns Walgreens drugstores, having served as chief operating officer at Starbucks and president and CEO at Sam’s Club. 
But her current position comes with one giant distinction: It makes Brewer the only Black woman at the helm of an S&P 500 company. “I take my role as one of the very few Black female CEOs very seriously,” Brewer says. “However, I look forward to the day when I’m no longer the first.”
Continue reading: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2021/12/05/female-leadership-power-brokers/8739192002/

Do you feel you’re getting what you’re worth? Do you feel you’re paid what you’re worth? Do you feel you’re being offered opportunities that reflect what you are worth? Do you feel like you’re being evaluated fairly for what you are worth?
You probably answered “no” to at least one of those questions, but that doesn’t mean the issues can’t be fixed. 
In fact, the opposite is true. Importantly, there are things that women in IT can do themselves to implement change and create a more inclusive work environment. The key is to fight for your worth – whether that is demanding pay equity, career opportunities or more inclusive and productive day-to-day interactions. And in an industry where women comprise just 28% of the workforce – and women of colour account for only 2% – this is extremely important. 
Here are four ways that women can drive a more inclusive workplace.

1. Build a community 
Embrace neurodiversity and build a supportive community that includes many different people. 
There is a lot of confusion around the term “neurodiversity”. It is effectively a concept that refers to the neurological differences that are recognised and respected as any other human variation. These differences include labels such as bipolar disorder, dyspraxia, dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Tourette’s syndrome.
Neurodiversity itself is not a trait that an individual possesses. When we talk about diversity, we should not say that an individual is diverse. It is typically a group, team or organisation that is diverse. Individuals can be divergent, or neurodivergent if they fall under these labels – the opposite of which is neurotypical.
When looking at your own workplace, neurodiversity can represent itself in four key roles. A coach helps group members develop specific skills or competencies, such as reading data or presenting information. A mentor helps navigate career options and decisions. Consider tapping mentors from outside the organisation. An ally provides support in challenging situations. For example, in a hiring situation, someone might say: “I’ve noticed we don’t have any female candidates. Is that something we can look into?” And a sponsor is there to advocate for others – expending their own political capital to further the careers of others.
Continue reading: https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Gartner-Four-ways-women-can-drive-a-more-inclusive-workplace

A reckoning for tech’s bro culture is long overdue, many believe.
In November, Tesla, headed by the world’s richest man Elon Musk—who himself is often all sorts of inappropriate—was hit with a lawsuit over “nightmarish” sexual harassment on its Fremont factory floor. The company is silent on the allegations, but Musk has been busy making jokes about gimmicks that “blow the whistle on Tesla.”
Meanwhile, calls for game developer Activision Blizzard’s CEO Bobby Kotick to step down have intensified in the last month as evidence of years of sexual misconduct at the company comes to light.
On Nov. 18, educational non-profit organization Girls Who Code severed ties with Activision, a partner for its two-week summer coding programs for schoolgirls: “The news about Activision proves that our priorities are fundamentally misaligned. We cannot in good conscience continue to work with a company that is so antithetical to our own values.”
While it’s a bold stance, Girls Who Code continues to work with Tesla for the same program. Its long list of partners includes several other big tech firms who’ve faced allegations of gender discrimination and harassment, including Apple, Rockstar Games, Amazon, and WeWork.
Girls Who Code concluded that Activision crossed the line, but it also believes disengaging is not an ideal solution. Especially when it comes to trillion-dollar companies like Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, which collectively employ millions of people. Instead, the non-profit believes in having the tough conversations.
“We try to encourage companies to look deeply at their own practices and interrogate what they might be doing to alienate young people, and especially young women and people of color, or what they are doing to prevent them from being hired in the first place,” Tarika Barrett, CEO of Girls Who Code, told Quartz. “Every company is different and so there’s no blueprint for this type of process. But at the very least, we hope companies have discussions about work culture.”
Continue reading: https://qz.com/2097941/girls-who-code-ceo-tarika-barrett-on-techs-gender-gap/

We apply new technologies and capabilities in our workplace every day. Only a couple of years ago, remote and hybrid work arrangements, doing business by Zoom, and widespread application of artificial intelligence were not standard practices. The next five years promise to bring another period of exponential change. Keeping up with technology requires us to learn, grow, and evolve.
Imagine what the workplace will be like for your great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. The technologies she will use are unimaginable to us. She may be working on another planet. And when she joins the workforce in the year 2191, she may be the first in your line to experience gender pay equality at work. In their Global Gender Gap Report from 2016, the World Economic Forum estimated that, at the current rate of change, it will take 170 years to close the gender pay gap.
Technologically, we are moving at a lightning pace. We embrace this change. Societally though, we remain mired in outdated norms and archaic thinking about women at work, especially in leadership roles. It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t that long ago when, in 1974, women were first permitted to have credit cards in their names. So change is occurring. But while we are quickly keeping up with technology, we are failing to learn, grow, and evolve our cultural thinking when it comes to women in the workplace.
Why Gender Inclusivity is Vital at this Moment
Taking a broad view, we face incredible global challenges with growing economic, educational, and health inequalities, planetary pillage for the profit of a few, and severe food instability in many regions. All of these issues are exacerbated by a lack of global cooperation to address them.
The bottom line is that the political, economic, and social hierarchies that have been in place for countless years are not working.
We must place a higher value on inclusivity of all ideas, capabilities, and talents. It’s a matter of survival.
Why Women Are Decelerating Their Careers or Leaving the Workforce
Women are suffering burnout at a rate higher than men, and many are considering a significant change in their professional lives. Some are opting out of the workforce entirely.
In McKinsey’s 2021 Women in the Workplace study encompassing 65,000 respondents from more than 400 organizations, one in three women said they “have considered downshifting their career or leaving the workforce this year,” up considerably from one in four in early 2020. This exodus could wipe out recent gains towards workplace gender equality.
We become frustrated and angry when our contributions are undervalued and minimized at work. We try harder to please, we disengage, or we leave. At home, even if with a supportive spouse or partner, we wrestle with the longstanding cultural norms that have compelled us to bear the weight of planning and managing the daily demands of a household and family.
Continue reading: https://ceoworld.biz/2021/12/04/women-in-the-workplace-how-to-speed-up-the-snails-pace-of-creating-gender-equality-at-work/

A majority of Scots believe that there needs to be more transparency from social media platforms about their use of artificial intelligence, according to a YouGov poll that reveals widespread mistrust of the technology.
As controversy grows over the use of smart machines that monitor online activity and bombard users with targeted adverts, the survey found that more than a third of respondents (37 per cent) do not trust how AI is being used and developed — and mistrust was particularly high among women. More than three quarters (77 per cent) said there needed to be transparency in how AI was used to make decisions.
AI is already part of everyday life, from Siri and Alexa to healthcare robots and driverless cars with a ten-year plan recently announced by the UK government to make Britain “a global AI superpower”.
The technology has potential to improve lives and help to tackle the climate crisis but it is not without risks.
The House of Lords communications and digital committee has been warned that without sufficient regulation, artificial intelligence could follow the path of social media platforms which are largely unregulated. In March, Scotland’s AI Strategy was launched to help ensure the technology is used as a force for good.
Continue reading: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/most-internet-users-scotland-want-greater-transparency-artificial-intelligence-t2pzht2vl

Pressured to do so largely after the death of George Floyd, a growing number of companies have applied multiple approaches to boost workplace diversity.
But a strategy by a tech company that includes using white actors to imitate people of color to boost its diversity efforts is causing some controversy.
A corporate education firm,  Mursion offers human resources training to some of the world’s largest corporations. The company is reportedly telling such clients it uses virtual reality simulations to help teach racial sensitivity. Mursion has supposedly produced virtual reality simulations for assorted clients where hypothetical scenarios are done between the participant and an animated human avatar played by live human actors. Those actors follow succinct plans while making up where they use voice modulators and remote controllers to switch between characters.
Based on simulations seen by and described to BuzzFeed News, Black avatars called out other characters’ acts of discrimination, asked participants to rally their companies support of Black Lives Matter, and practiced “supporting a traumatized employee through incidents of racial injustice.” Another plot had Child Protective Services remove a child from a Black family.
White actors played the roles of the Black characters in all the scenarios.
Mursion, which has some actors of color, defended its practice saying that “open casting” is needed to scale its business and to protect employees of color from having to just endlessly replay “the same cultural biases, microaggressions, and outright discrimination in our society that too many Americans suffer today.”
It added that its avatars are merely “hypothetical characters” that are not meant to stand in for “the entirety” of any culture, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
Continue reading: https://www.blackenterprise.com/tech-company-criticized-for-using-white-actors-to-depict-people-of-color/

In December 2020, we published a list of 10 predictions about the world of artificial intelligence in the year 2021.
With 2021 now coming to a close, let’s revisit these predictions to see how things actually played out. There is much to learn from these retrospectives about the state and trajectory of AI today.

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Prediction 1: Both Waymo and Cruise will debut on the public markets.
Outcome: Wrong
As of the beginning of this year, no autonomous vehicle company had ever gone public. 2021 is the year that that all changed.
TuSimple, Embark and Aurora have all debuted on public markets this year. Argo is deep in preparations to go public. Plus.ai and Pony.ai both announced SPAC deals this year (though Pony.ai has since shelved its plans). Credible rumors are swirling about upcoming public market debuts for other autonomous players.
But Waymo and Cruise are not included on that list.
Given that Waymo and Cruise are the most well-capitalized of all AV companies, it makes sense that they would not necessarily be the first ones to need to tap public markets for more capital.
Still, while our timing proved premature, we expect both of these companies to eventually be publicly traded.
Prediction 2: A political deepfake will go mainstream in the U.S., fueling widespread confusion and misinformation.
Outcome: Wrong
Deepfakes, which just a couple years ago were an oddity on the fringes of the Internet, have thrust themselves into mainstream public consciousness in 2021.
From an Anthony Bourdain documentary to viral Tom Cruise clips, from a widely condemned new pornography app to a bizarre story about a cheerleader’s vindictive mom in small-town America, deepfakes are rapidly becoming a part of our societal milieu.
But no deepfake has yet fooled large numbers of viewers and caused meaningful real-world damage in the realm of U.S. politics. Let’s hope it stays that way in 2022.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2021/12/05/2021-ai-predictions-what-we-got-right-and-wrong/?sh=f0a18ce1f8d8

Job automation, algorithmic bias, and technological development are the first thoughts that spring to mind when we think of Artificial Intelligence. But at the same time, AI can be used in many fun and interesting ways.
Here, we discuss ten fun AI tools that you must try out. Besides being a great way to kill boredom, they demonstrate how advanced AI has already become.
1. Semantris
 
Semantris is one of the many Google-powered AI experiments. This word association game uses a neural network to choose the words most related to the ones you type in. Semantris has two modes: Arcade and Blocks.
In Arcade mode, you're given a word, and you’ve to type a clue about it that the AI understands. If Semantris picks up your clue, the word gets eliminated. While you think and type, more words keep getting added. When the list of words hits the tops of your screen, you lose.
In Blocks mode, Semantris gives several blocks of different colors, each having a word. You’re asked to type a clue about any of these words. The AI guesses the word and removes that block and any linked blocks of the same color.
Semantris a really engaging game and helps you understand how the algorithms understand our languages.
2. Deepart.io
Deepart.io converts your images into beautiful artworks. To create your own artwork, upload a photo and decide which style you want to have applied to the image.
Though Deepart.io has numerous styles, you can upload the style image yourself as well. The images take some time to get converted, but the results are quite astonishing.
Continue reading: https://www.makeuseof.com/fun-ai-tools/

Croatia's wildfires often destroy forests that are hard to reach. Until now, replanting the trees on foot has been an issue. But a company has found a solution from up above. Abdulvehab Ejupi has the story #Wildfires #Croatia #Forests
Read more and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqxFnWI-5tA

Over the past few years, there has been much chatter about tokenizing everything from fiat currencies to real estate. One of the key areas ripe for tokenization is stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments.
Under a new European Union (EU) pilot program, which has been agreed upon and will likely be officially passed in Q1 or Q2 2022, some existing legal requirements are waived to allow for the issuance of certain financial instruments on blockchain and digital ledger technology.
“DLT can bring a number of potential benefits in the provision of financial services, including reduced complexity, improved end-to-end processing speed, strengthened network resilience, and reduced operational and financial risks,” lead MEP Johan Van Overtveldt said.
What is the pilot program, and why is the EU running it?

• The program will allow financial markets in the EU to use blockchain technology.
• It’s officially named the Pilot regime on distributed ledger technology market infrastructures.
• It applies to the tokenization of stocks, bonds, and the EU version of mutual funds called UCITS.
• Certain financial limits will apply. For stocks, it will be up to €500m, for bonds, it will be up to €1 billion; and for corporate bonds, it will be up to €200m.
• Newcomers are also allowed to participate in the program, but they’ll be subject to the same rules and regulations as established firms.
• The pilot program has been launched because some of the existing EU rules are so restrictive that the potential benefits of blockchain and DLT are lost.
• The program will also allow for settlement in different currencies. While central bank money is preferred, it will also allow tokenized commercial bank money, fiat-backed stablecoins, and e-money tokens.
• The program will likely last for three years and could be made permanent. Whether to extend it or not will be decided every three years.

The correct way to tokenize financial instruments
The EU’s pilot program demonstrates the correct way to approach the tokenization of financial instruments. First, it must become legal in the relevant jurisdiction, and then it needs to be approached in a carefully thought out, planned, and initially limited way that protects investors and wider financial markets.
Continue reading: https://coingeek.com/eu-green-lights-blockchain-pilot-for-financial-markets/

At the start of 2020, a Bitcoin was worth just over $7,000. Today, it’s trading at about $50,000, and the value of all cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is one among many, is some $2.3 trillion. This rise has led many to envision a radically different future for finance and to question long-held beliefs about value.
Bitcoin, the original established cryptocurrency, was devised as electronic money for direct exchange between people who need not trust each other, or anyone else, and instead put their faith in the blockchain — a public ledger maintained by decentralized, open-source networks of computers. There are now thousands of different blockchain-based tokens, circulating continuously on venues with varying degrees of regulation and oversight. This is what is known as “web3,” the name adopted for a decentralized internet run on crypto tokens. Supporters say it will democratize everything, reshaping art, commerce and technology; displacing intermediaries; and putting people more directly in control of their destinies.
If that sounds far-fetched, consider that venture capitalists have invested more than $27 billion in crypto and related projects this year, more than the previous 10 years combined, according to PitchBook. The biggest investors and industry players are also lobbying in Washington to influence rules that would favor their futuristic view of tokenomics, which can already be seen in some burgeoning communities where web3 is not some abstract concept but a feature of daily life.
Inside the NFT economy
Take nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, which are unique bits of code on a blockchain associated with an image, a video, audio or some other thing. In October, Cam Rackam, an artist, sold 10,000 NFTs linked to images based on memes from Reddit’s Wall Street Bets message board, making $2.5 million.
Continue reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/dealbook/what-is-web3.html

In November 2021, Grayscale published a report titled, “The Metaverse, Web 3.0 Virtual Cloud Economies.” Written by Grayscale’s research analyst Matt Maximo and head of research, David Grider, the report focused on metaverse education, explaining the possibilities presented by this rising phenomenon. Grider and Maximo described the Metaverse as having a USD $1 trillion annual revenue potential in the report.
Metaverse is a hypothesized futuristic alternate universe. It comprises a virtual world presented on a virtual reality network, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence on the internet. As of the present, no one knows precisely what the Metaverse would look like. Still, there is a consistent marketing hype wrapped around the concept of Metaverse. In its vision, Facebook projects a future where its users would have access to digital wardrobe to swipe through. Business-wise, this sounds like Facebook projects to make money by selling virtual clothes. But is this what Metaverse means?
Metaverse is not a reference to a particular technology but rather a reference to capture the totality of our experience as we interact with technology. The primary defining technology of the Metaverse will be virtual reality. A persistent characteristic virtual world that exists continuously even when users are not playing and augmented reality. This technology merges aspects of physical and digital worlds to create pseudo realities. Unlike VR and AR, the virtual worlds of the Metaverse will be accessible through smart devices like smartphones, PCs, and game consoles.
There is more. The Metaverse also represents a virtual economy where people can produce and trade goods across interoperable platforms. It interprets that users may be able to take virtual items across platforms owned by different organizations. The current use of avatars, virtual identities and inventories are tied to host platforms. In the Metaverse, there may exist a possibility to transcend this limitation and carry your virtual assets with you to any platform where they may be used. The applications of Metaverse are not limited and can be viewed as a digital extension of real life.
The Grayscale report stated that ‘our social lives and gaming are converging and creating large, fast-growing virtual goods consumer economy. It is estimated that revenue from virtual gaming worlds could grow from ~$180 billion in 2020 to ~$400 billion in 2025.‘ The report states that cryptocurrency and decentralized finance like lending and staking, decentralized governance, non-fungible tokens, and decentralized cloud storage will create a new online experience. It will rapidly attract new users such as Decentraland, a platform where people interact, govern, and earn tokens and real-life benefits for time spent online.
The role of blockchains in the Metaverse will be integral to creating users’ acceptance and reliability on the Metaverse. The argument for the energy consumption of any technology is always associative. Phaeton is already developing energy-efficient algorithms and is powered entirely on renewable energy. The fight for the energy consumption of the Metaverse may be non-existent as the carbon footprint of this technology becomes negligible with the shift to energy efficiency and renewable energy. Blockchains like Phaeton are already building the infrastructure that will host the future of the Metaverse.
Continue reading: https://cryptomode.com/into-the-metaverse-the-blockchain-that-will-host-the-future/

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In previous parts, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discussed some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve and outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption: upgradeability, scalability and governance. This series is focused on the consensus algorithm: Part 1 is about proof-of-work, Part 2 is about proof-of-stake and Part 3 is about proof-of-burn. 
In this article, I want to leverage my unique perspective to help the reader gain a deeper understanding of a popular concept in blockchain technology, but also one that is woefully misunderstood: the consensus algorithm.
In order to gain a deep understanding of this component of a blockchain, one of the things I always like to do in these articles is begun by taking a step back and looking at the big picture because the consensus algorithm is just one small part of a much larger system.
Blockchains are a game in which players compete to validate transactions by grouping them into blocks that match the blocks of transactions being created by other players. Cryptography is used to hide the data that would allow these people to cheat. A random process is used to distribute digital tokens to people who play by the rules and produce blocks that match the blocks submitted by other people. These blocks are then chained together to create a verifiable record of all the transactions that were ever performed on the network.
 
 
Continue reading: https://cointelegraph.com/news/inside-the-blockchain-developer-s-mind-blockchain-consensus-part-1

Skillsoft (NYSE: SKIL), has released new research exploring the current state of women in tech including the challenges and barriers to inclusion they face and how employers can better support them. Findings from Skillsoft’s 2021 Women in Tech Report claim that while female employees have gained hard-fought ground in the workplace, a large gap still exists when it comes to opportunities for professional development and career advancement.
According to the report, there is a misalignment between the workplace benefits women in tech are seeking and what is currently being provided. For example, while 86 percent of respondents cited opportunities for professional development and training as extremely or very important to them, just 42 percent said their employers currently offer this as a benefit. Additionally, when asked about the top challenges they have faced while pursuing a tech-related career, nearly a third of women surveyed (32 percent) pointed to a lack of training.
Continue reading: https://workplaceinsight.net/learning-and-development-disconnect-between-women-in-tech-and-employers/

With the October release of the Biden administration’s National Strategy on Gender Equality, the president pledged to invest in women’s entrepreneurship and, "more equitably include women-owned businesses in supply chains and contracting." We can start by using the government’s purchasing power to grow digital services contracting opportunities for women-owned businesses.
Goals are not being met
Federal “set-asides” were established to put small business owners from disadvantaged backgrounds on more equitable footing when pursuing government contracts. Women comprise 43 percent of the federal workforce and roughly 57 percent of the U.S. civilian workforce, but the Small Business Administration goal for women-owned businesses awards remains at a mere 5 percent. Even that modest goal is rarely met. According to the SBA’s small business procurement scorecard, we have achieved it only two times in the scorecard’s sixteen year history, in fiscal years 2015 and 2019.
The numbers are equally bleak when you look at the digital services space. From fiscal year 2018 through the present, USASpending.gov data shows a total of 25,745 awards set-aside for small businesses, about 37 percent of all digital services contract awards. However, only 569, or less than 1 percent, were set aside for Women Owned Small Businesses (WOSBs) or Economically Disadvantaged Women Owned Small Businesses (EDOWSBs).
Continue reading: https://fcw.com/articles/2021/12/02/comment-edwosb.aspx

Women in STEM are powerhouse leaders, responsible for some of the biggest developments in technology, science, engineering and mathematics. Women have made a monumental name for themselves in this (still) male-dominated field, regardless of whether they hail from work within photonics/optics, academia or are on the frontlines of medical research.
The Best Part
Although women are still disproportionate in the STEM workforce, growing women's representation and leveraging their voices as leaders have inevitably sparked a continuous rise in women choosing to study STEM degrees.
There are over 6.3 million women scientists and engineers in the EU as of 2019, and they make up 43% of the total STEM employment. Stensborg prides itself on supporting long-overdue equality and diversity.
Continue reading: https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=20849

Dive Brief:

• Pay inequities, lack of work-life balance and unequal opportunities in the workplace are the biggest challenges for women pursuing careers in tech, according to Skillsoft's 2021 Women in Tech report. The company surveyed 1,100 women tech professionals in the U.S., UK, Canada and France.
• The majority of respondents (55%) agreed companies could encourage more women to enter the IT field by offering professional development and training opportunities, followed closely by providing child care (47%).
• Professional development or training opportunities are very or extremely important to 86% of tech workers surveyed. 

Dive Insight:
Tech organizations have long grappled with cultural issues that hurt diversity and inclusion. When it comes to the key drivers of workplace satisfaction for women, companies have a lot of room for improvement.
Continue reading: https://www.ciodive.com/news/women-in-tech-skillsoft-report/610884/

In 2020, the adoption of blockchain technology and the use of cryptocurrencies by Africans has surged to unprecedented levels. Although many people attribute this to Covid-19, blockchain advocates believe that their work is part of the reason why many people are turning to digital currencies.
The importance of education
Starting from the first quarter of 2020, the adoption of blockchain-anchored digital currencies such as Bitcoin has accelerated in Africa and other regions, where the number of economically excluded adults is still high. In fact, it turns out that blockchain and cryptocurrencies are tailored to the “new normal” that has existed since the beginning of the pandemic.
Although blockchain and encryption advocates may see the increase in encryption use as a direct result of their efforts, some believe that this is an epidemic that forces many Africans to consider blockchain-related solutions. But as Kenyan blockchain advocate and educator Roselyne Wanjiru told Bitcoin.com News, the work she did is still necessary.
In a written response to a question sent to her via Whatsapp, Wanjiru also shared her experience as one of the few women involved in blockchain advocacy work. The following is Wanjilu’s answer.
Continue reading: https://quebecnewstribune.com/cryptocurrency/kenyan-blockchain-advocate-interview-with-bitcoin-news-45939/