Life

You probably already know that blockchain can be used to optimize banking and legal compliance, but did you know it can be applied across multiple industries like energy and consulting? This week we’re checking out the blockchain companies that were pre-selected by the Blockchers project as the most promising in their areas, hailing from Germany, Slovenia, Spain and Estonia.

Meet Blockchers

Blockchers is a new project, founded in 2019, that supports the growth of future and emerging DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) technologies, specifically Blockchain. They select the most promising startups in this area, give them support, up to €50K direct equity-free funding, and connect them with traditional SMEs, to carry the benefits and opportunities of these new technologies further.The unique EU-funded Horizon2020 aid program is coordinated by 4 key partners, each bringing their own expertise to the table: Innomine Group (Hungary), Zabala Innovation Consulting (Spain), Frankfurt School of Blockchain Center (FSBC) (Germany) and ALASTRIA (Spain). In particular, Innomine, facilitates mentorship workshops and events for the SMEs, providing guidance and knowledge that helps them successfully develop and finally land the programme funding.

Bettergy – Spanish team Bettergy is a cleantech B2B startup turning data consumption information into actionable energy savings and lower carbon emissions. The platform EnergySequence provides a full set of automated energy conservation measures, operational, retrofit, and investment opportunities leveraging consumption data, aggregating private and public data sources such as weather data, and geolocalization data. Their industry profile spans across: Software development, Consulting, Data & Analytics, Energy & Cleantech, Consulting. 

Recent use cases include offering investors and SMEs a digital approach for photovoltaic Power Purchase Agreements, namely a BC Smart Contract that provides a trusted independent verification and lowers overhead costs. Together, Bettergy & Fundeen have pioneered the 1st crowdfunded Photovoltaic PPA contract in Spain, Calanova Golf, with 40kwp where the solution can be deployed. 

DEIP – Estonian company DEIP offers smart-contracts for grant distribution automation. The DEIP Open Innovation Network is a digital ecosystem specifically designed to foster international and inter-disciplinary collaboration among innovators, by encouraging the sharing of expertise and resources. Overall, DEIP provides a new crypto economy for innovation, which provides reputational and financial incentivization.  Their industry profile spans across: Consulting, Blockchain, Open Innovation, Product Innovation, Science, Consulting, Smart-contracts for grants distribution automation. 

Recent use cases include offering a smart-contract for the end-user SME to automate decision-making for grant distribution, based on the results of peer-review. This significantly cuts time/effort and increases efficiency, to fund the most promising and impactful projects and technology. Leveraging distributed ledger technology (DLT), this also allows decentralized assessment and ensures transparency of the peer-review process and decision-making. The private beta version will be deployed as a private network for SME and partners.

Datarella GmbH – This German startup provides Enterprise Blockchain Solutions. The Munich-based company has a proven capacity for building both innovative products, as well as highly scalable industrial DLT systems. Datarella offers a full range of consulting, development and implementation services for complex blockchain solutions, including associated long-term maintenance and scaling-up, and the integration with existing legacy systems. Datarella’s solutions are used across several industries, e.g. Finance, Logistics & Supply Chain, Real Estate, Identity and Mobility. 

Recent use cases include their offering of SmartAid the next-generation marketing, funding, and reporting tool for non-profit organizations. SmartAid seamlessly connects donors with charitable projects. Blockchain technology allows SmartAid to introduce a new era of transparency within the aid industry. Each donation is documented as a unique, identifiable, token contract on the SmartAid blockchain. This allows donors to reconstruct the usage of their donation tokens the moment they are minted, transferred to, and burned from an NGO for a project-specific cost center.

Datafund – This Slovenian company is providing technical solutions and integrations to enable a fair data economy that extends into the emerging European data spaces. This involves the private, encrypted, trust-less and decentralised storage of data and server-less file transfers. The technology stack is about decentralization and self-sovereignty, leveraging the unique expertise of development on top of Swarm peer-to-peer cloud storage. Their industry profile spans across Data & Analytics, Data Collection, Data Management, IT Solutions.

Recent use cases include working with law firms, who have a lot of correspondence and documents that require a private transmission, yet allow for confirmation of receipts of the documents – implementing an analogue of a digital safe room. Datafund has applied its solution to this context as a ‘white label’  service for anyone needing a private, secure and sovereign document exchange solution.

NASA announced it’s teaming up with Nokia’s Bell Labs to install a 4G network on the moon, because no one likes getting a “Call Failed” notification when they’re 239,000 miles from home.The backstory: The goal of NASA’s Artemis program is to build lunar infrastructure capable of supporting human life. In other words, by 2028 NASA wants astronauts to be able to live on the moon.The agency is doling out various contracts to private companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, and now Nokia, as part of its “tipping point” investments focused on lunar exploration. These contracts are worth $370 million in total.Nokia’s handy work would give astronauts on the moon the ability to make voice and video calls, as well as transfer important data.

Francis Scialabba

On Saturday, President Trump gave his “blessing” to the marriage of TikTok and major U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart.  The details: Oracle and Walmart will reportedly take a combined 20% stake in the new company, TikTok Global. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner and the main character in this drama, is expected to keep 80%…but American interests control 40% of ByteDance, so the new company will have majority U.S. ownership, per the Trump administration. But Trump’s original demand for ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations over national security concerns isn’t happening, which leaves some critics asking…”what was the point of all this again?”  Oracle and Walmart are happy: Oracle will get a big boost to its cloud business, which has lagged rivals like Amazon. Walmart will flex its e-commerce muscles to TikTok’s 100 million monthly active U.S. users.   Looking ahead…the Commerce Department delayed its order to ban TikTok from U.S. app stores. The other Chinese app under fire, WeChat, was also saved from an app store ban by a judge yesterday.

Smartphone-based tests have been developed for detecting HIV, malaria, TB and various food contaminants. Work is now also underway to use smartphones to detect COVID-19 – though there are various questions about the practicality and usefulness of using technology in this manner.

We’ve been involved in developing ways of using smartphones to monitor food contamination as part of the EU project FoodSmartphone. Here, we weigh up the potential of using this exciting technology to fight the virus.

It may seem far-fetched, but it’s possible to use your smartphone to detect diseases. Mobile devices can be turned into tools to rapidly identify a variety of disease-causing agents, including bacteria, toxins and viruses.

How does it work?

A common way of testing with smartphones is to use them alongside specially made labels, which are designed to react to the presence of a specific substance, such as a particular virus or bacteria.

To test something, such as fluid from a throat swab or blood sample, you add it to a label that’s sensitive to what you’re looking for. If the sought-after substance is there, there’s a reaction. This reaction generates a light, colour or electrical signal, which the phone then detects and interprets via its camera or light sensors or through an electrochemical add-on device. Results can be displayed on an app on the phone and immediately communicated to the relevant authorities.

For COVID-19, existing labels could be adapted so that they could react to new materials, such as SARS-CoV-2 genetic material or human antibodies against the virus. This sort of piggybacking on existing technology is already being suggested.

But having such a test publicly available for coronavirus may be some time away. Most smartphone-based tests are currently only in the proof-of-concept stage. They still need to go through several rounds of testing with patients to prove that they work. This can take years.

For example, the mChip dongle – a smartphone-based test for detecting HIV and syphilis – has been around since 2015. However, the second phase of trials testing the at-home use of this device was only completed in April 2020. The results are pending – and even if they’re good, there’s still another phase of trials to go.

Yet, the immense pressure to get the pandemic under control may greatly speed up the development of a COVID-19 test. Vaccine development for infectious diseases generally takes more than a decade, but it’s been suggested that delivering a COVID-19 vaccine is possible within 12 to 18 months. Perhaps similar speedy development of smartphone-based testing is achievable.

What would we use these tests for?

For COVID-19, smartphone based-devices could be used in several ways.

Firstly, they could be used to detect viral genetic material from the respiratory tract – present for the first 2-3 weeks of infection – to test for whether someone has the virus currently.

Secondly, they could be used to detect antibodies developed against the virus in the blood, which shows if someone has had the virus in the past. Information from these tests may give us better information about asymptomatic cases and immunity.

Finally, we might use them for testing what’s on surfaces, such as food packaging.

This may work best using slightly different tests – genetic amplification tests – which would increase the strength of the signal created by any reaction and are generally more sensitive. This is due to there being lower virus concentrations and lots of other substances on surfaces.

Will the benefits outweigh any potential harm?

Smartphone-based diagnosis of COVID-19 could improve self-isolation measures, data collection and the tracking of infection “hot spots”. Moreover, we know the public is interested in using smartphone-based technologies for tracking and diagnosing other conditions – so it’s likely there would be uptake. At-home testing could free up resources and stop COVID-19 from lowering hospital access, which can increase mortality from other conditions.

But if popular, the huge number of tests that could potentially be performed means that the method would need to be highly accurate. These tests would also need to be clear and easy to use, to avoid them being performed incorrectly. If smartphone testing fails on either of these two fronts, then it could result in many, many people being falsely diagnosed or cleared. The consequences could range from lost income (from false positives) to the endangerment of others (from false negatives).

These risks are well known, though, and are shared with other self-testing methods. Potential solutions, such as multiple simultaneous tests to confirm findings, are already being discussed.

An additional question is whether it’s actually relevant to do surface testing. A report published in the New England Journal of Medicine and a recent preprint both argue that COVID-19 can survive on different surfaces for up to seven days. However, there are no studies showing that the virus remains infectious for that period. Widespread surface testing could cause unwarranted fear by detecting virus particles that pose a very low risk of infection.

Smartphone-based biosensors may prove extremely helpful for tracking and controlling COVID-19’s spread. However, a tool with such potential for widespread use must be of an extremely high quality in terms of performance. Additionally, its full capabilities and inevitable shortcomings must be openly communicated to the public to minimise confusion. This could be achieved by clearly conveying the test’s limitations in the smartphone app.

A botched implementation of the technology would lead to a further loss in public trust for scientists. Given some of the high-profile scandals already emerging during the COVID-19 era, this is not something we can afford.

It depends on how your habits are and if you do sports, it may be better for you to have breakfast at one time or another, we explain it to you.

One of the most frequent doubts about breakfast, a moment known by the hackneyed phrase of “the most important meal of the day” -although this is not so clear according to science-, is when is the most ideal time to eat it. Although many people make and eat breakfast right after getting up, many nutrition experts recommend waiting a bit.

Nutritionist Cynthia Sass – responsible for training Brooklyn celebrities and CEOs – recommends eating an hour after waking up. “This habit fuels physical and mental performance in the morning, which is usually the most productive time of day.” The expert emphasizes that this action can reduce nighttime intake and the relevant weight gain.

According to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Physiology, stressing that eating breakfast helps regulate insulin, reducing the risk of diabetes. The researchers looked at skipping breakfast compared to breakfast in obese and overweight people, and found that eating in the morning optimizes energy expenditure, burned insulin, and decreased overall insulin resistance. For the overweight group, eating breakfast activated a gene involved in burning fat.
Breakfast depends on if you do sports in the morning

If you plan to exercise in the morning, the “divided breakfast” is the main recommendation of the nutritionist. What does this concept mean? Before going to the gym or running, it is advisable to consume healthy carbohydrates -fruits, oats or sweet potatoes-, which will not cause digestive problems and will be a good source of energy to boost physical activity.

After the sports session, your muscles repair themselves and the system replenishes lost nutrients. The “second breakfast” should contain vegetables, lean protein, healthy fats, and a small serving of carbohydrates. It should be remembered that thanks to breakfast you can achieve better concentration, less appetite, lower risk of heart disease and, in general, more complete nutrition.

Total War Warhammer II

 The Creative Assembly
 2017 year

We continue with more Warhammer, but in a totally different genre. From the strategy of management and combat in real time with bases and heroes, we move on to the strategy that focuses on diplomacy and pure and hard combat on a large scale, with hundreds of units on screen.

The Total War saga is well known on PC, and one of the mythical ones within the strategy, and this game with Warhammer units, based on the Warhammer Fantasy Battle board game, is one of the best we can find in compatible games.

At first it can be overwhelming, since we have before us a title that is based on battalion control and in which the strategy goes through where to locate the units and how to move them across the pitch, seeking to corner the enemy.

Each race has its own units, all are different between them and it is necessary to adapt to the complex battle system, but once we have it under control, we feel like a true general.

Within the entire catalog of available video games, the strategy titles still seem to be exclusive to PCs because they are controlled with a keyboard and mouse. This is because the accuracy of the keyboard and mouse combination as well as the shortcuts to the buttons in the controls cannot be compared, although attempts have been made to adapt the control to the control; it is a genre that has helped define the PC as a gaming platform, and there are some hugely important strategy titles in electronic sports. In short, it’s a veteran and a very important genre, and then we’ll see the best strategy games on PC.

Before we review our selection, however, let’s first clarify what a strategy game is. And depending on who we ask, DOTA 2 or the League of Legends can be considered strategy games if they are really action-oriented, both through the approach of a single controllable character and through the skills of each one.

Let’s take a look at the 20 best strategy games on PC, including RTS, management strategy, combat, heroes or big strategy. Let’s start with a game that is not only very current, but also a true classic.

Starcraft II

blizzard
2010 year

StarCraft is one of the mythical sagas of PC strategy. In fact, if we ask about a mythical company in strategy, Blizzard would be one of them, since they have two exponents who helped define gender (and create others like MOBA) and also have a large presence in the Do sports electronically

StarCraft II was launched in 2010 and is the sequel to StarCraft, a strategy game based on three races, all of which are very differentiated but perfectly balanced and face each other on the battlefield.

The player has to collect resources, expand the base and fight, so we’re faced with a very classic approach to real-time strategy.

Visually, it’s spectacular, although it adapts wonderfully to all types of teams, and in addition to a very complete multiplayer mode, it offers a story mode (one for each race) that is very careful at a narrative level.

StarCraft II is without a doubt one of the best strategy games on the PC.

Civilization VI

Firaxis
2016 year

We’re going back to a game that’s up-to-date since a new expansion has just started for him, but it’s a completely different game than Blizzard. And we move from real-time strategy to turn-based strategy.

Within the PC, Civilization is another of these mythical sagas, since Sid Meier’s Gut is the architect (well, this saga and so many others). It is a saga that invites us to create cities and expand our empire, both on the map and in time.

It’s one of those games that takes a good number of hours because the progress is slow (despite the high speed that we can choose), but it’s also the most rewarding.

It’s complicated because we have to keep a lot of things in mind, such as negotiating with other cities, but we also know how to reward if we get right.

In addition, there is something very funny, namely the deities or guides, different characters who can configure our line of action … or not. Can you imagine Gandhi developing Bomb H? Well, in Civilization VI, a civilization with Gandhi can get them in trouble.

It’s one of the best strategy games for the PC, and if you’ve ever heard of another spin and exit, Civilization is to blame.

Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War III

Relic entertainment
2017 year

Warhammer’s Dawn of War saga is very dear to PC gamers. And it’s a saga that filled that void in the years when StarCraft had no games or right between expansions. And he didn’t do anything wrong, you have to add

The third installment of the saga, launched in 2017, is the culmination of the franchise. Everything indicates that there will be no Dawn of War IV, since the game did not meet sales expectations, and that is a fatal mistake in a large company like SEGA.

However, real-time strategy lovers will find a great game in all three installments of the saga. There is base building, resource management, heroes, very different units from each other and a lot of spectacular action.

The story, as in StarCraft, is very, very important, so it is worth starting from the first. Without a doubt, it is one of the best real-time strategy games, and there is no need to have knowledge of Warhammer to enjoy.

There are different reasons that can push to change rooms in a hotel and receptionists know that it is not unusual: there are customers who request it and it is done without problem. If you have had the need to change your hotel room, we will give you some tips to achieve it.

The first thing you should keep in mind is that the change may depend on the person you are asking for, so be kind, do not hurry or show aggressiveness. In addition, it would be advisable to make the request at a time when there were not too many people at the reception.

Justify your change, you can report that you are working and need more peace of mind. Or, if you go as a couple, report that it is a romantic trip and some aspect of the room is uncomfortable (such as separate beds or too much noise).

It is important that you create a good impression and do not appear to be the classic face or someone who is just looking for a room change on a whim. You can even offer at first to pay a little more if necessary. Although most likely they do not try to charge you any extra.

Do not ask for a nearby or larger room. If you change rooms, it must be necessary, not to take advantage of the system. In addition, you have to request the change of room the same day or after the first night. It would be strange if you did it later.

Wanting to change rooms is not an unusual occurrence. Ask when the time comes or, if you really need it, file a formal complaint and ask for the claims book. Beyond preference, it is sometimes a necessity and hotels must give you the service for which you have paid.

Some of the leading technology companies are stopping manufacturing in China and take the production of their devices to other countries. We tell you why Made in China products have the days counted.

Look around for a few moments. If you look at the electronic devices that you have near you, most of them are either made in China, or have components that come from the Asian country.

This strong presence in everything around you has not been by chance, but the result of more than two decades of policies aimed at producing large quantities of products of all kinds, for export to any corner of the world.

This industrial muscle is what has led China to become one of the world’s great economic superpowers and, therefore, the enemy to beat by many and an unsustainable model for the Chinese labor force itself. Therefore, soon “Made in China” may have less presence in the products around us. We tell you all the keys.
Made in China has the days counted
Slow and progressive investment leak: China loses bellows

In recent times, leading technology brands have begun to take production and investments to other countries that are more convenient for them based on their interests.

Powerful economies, such as India or Vietnam, have monopolized much of the production that previously fell on China. An example of this can be seen in Apple, which has taken the production of some of its iPhone models from southern China to other factories located in southern India and Vietnam.
Made in China has the days counted

Samsung has not been oblivious to this trend either. In recent years, the South Korean giant has been gradually reducing the workload of its factory in the southern city of Huizhou until it becomes irrelevant. Only a few days ago, the company announced its final closure.

The South Korean giant, the world’s largest manufacturer of smartphones, has put land in between by investing in one of the largest factories dedicated to the production of smartphones in the world located in the vicinity of New Delhi and other smaller factories in Vietnam, thus sealing its output definitive of the Chinese territory.

Southeast Asian countries are the ones with the most ballots to host the new factories that the main suppliers of components for smartphones and electronic devices, such as Foxcomm or Pegatron, are opening at a frantic pace to get production out of China, but they also sound force countries in Central America, like Mexico.

This migration of investments to Latin America not only interests manufacturers at the economic level, but also at the logistics level. That would speed up the distribution of goods across the Americas and Europe in less time and cost, than if those products should be brought from Asia.
China is no longer as profitable as it used to be

But what is the problem? Why are leading technology manufacturers leaving China? Well, the short answer would be because manufacturing in China is no longer a significant savings as it was more than a decade ago.

The Chinese government has been giving a rudder for some years so that the economy of the country changes its course and goes from being a factory to a laboratory, changing the “Made in China” to the “Developed in China”.
Made in China has the days counted

This change of direction in the economic policy that the government applies to the large companies that manufacture its products is related to the improvement of the labor and economic conditions of its employees. That is, the Chinese workforce is no longer so cheap, and there are more fiscal obligations, so production costs are no longer as advantageous.

The request for improvements in the working conditions of Chinese workers is not in vain. For years, Chinese universities have trained the generation of better-trained employees that the country has given, so they currently have the human capital and sufficient investment in R&D to contribute their own added value and position themselves as avant-garde with products of own development.

One of the best examples of this development is found in 5G and Huawei networks, which has become a key manufacturer for the deployment of 5G networks worldwide, no matter how much it weighs the United States.
Competition for the Chinese domestic market

With a potential of 1.3 billion customers, the Chinese domestic market is one of the main arguments for global manufacturers to choose

One of the main reasons is the reprisals, in the form of special tariffs, that the American government would take with the products of those companies that trade or import components from the Asian giant.

Therefore, China has become a kind of hot potato that, although technology brands would like to continue holding some more time, doing so can be counterproductive for their balances since maintaining production in that country can lead to a penalty in your export costs.
China’s controversial announcement with 5G … or is it a warning?
The arrival of 5G is not without controversy. For many it is one of the main reasons for the trade war between the United States and China, but its improvement over current connections is great. As always, whether this is positive or negative, controversial or reasonable, will depend on each one.

While it is true that both sides have made gestures to soften the relationship between the two countries, the damage is already done.

Manufacturers, who were no longer very satisfied with the new economic roadmap of the Chinese government, have seen the risk involved in maintaining their production in the Asian giant, so this trade war between the United States and China has put the last nail to “Made in China”, which has the days counted.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin penned the equivalent of your mom’s Facebook essay when you graduated college. The Google cofounders announced they’re stepping down as Alphabet CEO and president, respectively, and ready to “assume the role of proud parents—offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!” 

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, will also become the boss of parent company Alphabet. 

Some quick reminiscing

You can thank Page and Brin for glamorizing the idea of starting a business in a hot California garage and naming it something funny. 

• The pair built a technology empire worth nearly $900 billion. It’s expanded from just indexing information on the internet to building driverless vehicles, wi-fi balloons, and Android, the operating system powering about 85% of smartphones.

Page and Brin assumed their most recent roles in 2015 when Google reorganized and created Alphabet as its parent company. In “retirement,” Brin and Page will remain involved as board members and shareholders and continue to eat up Pichai’s data plan with twice-weekly nagging. 

On Pichai’s to-do list

Solve the workplace conflicts eating away at morale. 

Four Google employees who were fired last week for alleged data security violations are filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accusing Google of unfairly punishing them for their organizing efforts. 

Zoom out: During his tenure as CEO, Pichai’s dealt with increasingly vocal Googlers upset with their employer. 

• Those complaints include treatment of contract workers, failure to address sexual harassment, attempts to build a censored Chinese search engine, and treatment of LGBTQ workers, to name a few. 

In response, Google recently hired a consulting firm known for snuffing out unionization, and Pichai suspended the company’s famous weekly all-hands meetings in favor of monthly sit-downs focused on “product and business strategy.”

This could be the NLRB’s second run-in with Google this year. In September, the labor board addressed complaints that Google was stifling political chatter at work. 

Google closed out the let’s-have-a-big-hardware-event-for-no-reason season by unveiling the Pixel 4 smartphone. Even if you tried avoiding the hubbub, the words “computational photography” probably hit your feed. 

What that is: You can’t squeeze the hardware of a 600mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom lens into your phone. But you can add a potent stew of fancy sensors, algorithms, and artificial intelligence to make your pics look professional. 

The “software-defined camera” 

Computational photography’s been in your pocket for a while. Ever taken a panorama, used portrait mode, or enabled HDR (a feature that blends multiple photos into the perfect shot)?

• With the latest upgrades, phone cameras can take excellent pictures in the dark, zoom in farther, and color correct. You can photograph the night sky or count the hairs on your knuckle.

At their hardware events earlier this year, Apple and Samsung also rolled out serious software-based upgrades to their phone cameras and editing suites. The target market?

Budding influencers on their quest for Instagram royalty.