There we go. So we're up and running there. And then before I introduce the session, I want to give you a little bit of background on Hyperledger and Linux Foundation. So Hyperledger is a project as part of Linux Foundation. And a couple of things. We have people today who are attending from the Hyperledger virtual meetup community. We have cut a few of those that had promoted this session. And I think many people are coming in from there. We also had this listed as a Hyperledger public sector session as well. So you might have come in that door as well. So as a session as part of Linux Foundation, I want to welcome everyone today. We have two things to talk about. First is the antitrust policy. We recognize that in these Hyperledger meetings, we often have people who are representing different industry competitors. And it's the intention of the Linux Foundation that we want to conduct all of our activities and accordance to, in a sense, comply with any antitrust and competition laws that exist. So please be sure that from your attendance here, it doesn't violate any of those. And your participation won't either. That's an important thing. If you want to see more in the antitrust policy, that's at the Linux Foundation.org. And we also have a code of conduct for Hyperledger, which says we're committed to creating a self-safe and welcoming environment for everyone. And what does that mean? It means we treat each other with respect, professionalism, fairness, and sensitivity for our differences and strengths at all times. So that's fairly basic. And I think 99.9% of the time, that's exactly how our membership does operate, which is a wonderful group to be part of, from my perspective. With that, let me check chat. I've got a couple of people here from different locations. That's great. So now that I've talked about, in a sense, Hyperledger a little bit as an organization, let's shift over to today's session. We're going to talk about ESG and blockchain. And I have Mohan van Kadererman, who is the CTO of ChainYard and has, I'll call it, more experience. And I think I'm reasonably experienced in blockchain. But he definitely has more than I have. He's been in this space longer. And his company has. And they've done quite a lot with Hyperledger over the years. But on top of that, Mohan has had the opportunity to become more involved in ESG, both through his company and independently, and really wrote a great article that caught my eye and is the reason I asked him to do the session here. So with that, Mohan, I want to turn it over to you and let you take control. I'm going to stop the share. And you can tell us a little bit more about your background and the topic today. Thank you, Jim. Let me share my screen now first. And we shall proceed from there. OK, your screen is coming through. All right. So I think you all can see the screen now. And you can hear me too, right? Yeah. So I want to begin by thanking you because I was not planning the session. I was not even thinking about it. But I do want to thank both Hyperledger Foundation, David Boswell and Jim, you specifically for requesting the session and presenting it today. So really thank you very much because I was not thinking about it. They also want to include certain others. Like Truster Supplier is our own platform. It's a joint venture between Cheneard, whom I work for. And it started off with IBM. But today it is an independent Hyperledger fabric-based platform that runs. And it is one of the most production-grade networks that is operational and built over the last few years. And in production, two years with big names like IBM, Lenovo, Vodafone, and so on. And it focuses on supply and risk. And the second I want to thank Cheneard because the whole brand of Cheneard came about because our parent company, IT People, was originally focused on managed services and staff augmentation type work. But Cheneard, after we started working behind the scenes at IBM on the Hyperledger fabric testing, we had to rebrand ourselves as Cheneard to denote more the work we do in the blockchain space. So thank you so much. And with that, let me just say a brief about Cheneard. He is a brand name under which we do work in both blockchain and Web3 consulting and advisory services. It is based in North Carolina. We have offices right now, very close to the airport. And we have global offices in India, Philippines, Vietnam, and activities in Europe. We have Europe, Ireland, as well as Middle East. So we do a number of projects globally distributed. I've been personally engaged with more than 50 projects, 50 engagements, I would not say project, but 50 engagements. Many of them are POCs in the blockchain space, whether it's public ethereum, private ethereum, Hyperledger-Base Zoo, Binance Blockchain Services, Hyperledger Fabric. And few of them are in production, which we have supported on the services side. And our own trustier supplier is in production for the last few years. And finally, we do support big customers, Lenovo, IBM, the government of Dubai, the government of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco, government of Bahrain, the US federal government, we have done a number of projects and we operate and we conceived and we run trustier supplier network. So www.trustiersupplier.com. That is our claim to fame. But even before that, we used to be, for everyone who has used Hyperledger Fabric, behind the scene, we had a team that worked in IBM Blockchain Labs that was actually responsible for testing and building those images before it went into open source. Of course, today it is all entirely managed by the Hyperledger Foundation, but until two years ago, we were doing it on behalf of IBM. So I want to just start off by saying that, see, this presentation is based on amount of information that I have gone through, as well as acquired. The reason for that is being, I was on a panel on ESG and Blockchain at Big Forest University. I did present some of our views during the consensus in the Hyperledger booth. And more importantly, trustier supplier or own platform is engaged in ESG. And this space is like very nebulous. So I said, let me understand what it means. And that is this presentation about, I'm by no means an expert, but I have enough knowledge to be either dangerous or to sound ignorant, right? I mean, like, so you can make that judgment call. So that's the gist of this. So you can absorb a lot of things and then you can go and do your own research, but it is a very big space. But fundamentally, the whole ESG space came aboard because we want to save this planet.  And that is the, that in short, that's what it really is about. But then it has expanded into this ESG framework, which is dealing with environment, social, and governance. So let's, you know, so I started to look at what is ESG. And if you really look at what is ESG, the environment portion focuses on how to what degree a company is adhering to sustainable practices. So when I say sustainable practices, that is, for example, if they are using forest wood and as part of their manufacturing process, are they going back and ensuring that the areas where they have utilized the forest have been reforested or maintained appropriately or whatever, right? So to what degree are they following sustainable practices? The second is like, it also measures, the environment measures the impact of human activity, the business activity on the planet, such as the use of water, the use of the utilization of forest and wood or minerals. How much emissions are emissions of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere like CO2? Or what kind of damages do they cause to the environment? So it deals with all these things. It is not just about carbon emission, but it is about how much does it impact the environment? The second aspect is like social. Social is, to what degree does a business have relationship with its people, both internal and external. Internal meaning employees, employees and their children and their families and externalist customers and all their supply chain partners. Are they giving fair wages?  Are they giving back to the community? So if a plant is opened in a neighborhood and they are using all the resources, are they also giving back to the community? So it measures the social impact of a business's activity within the environment. And the last is like governance. Every company has got governance practices and governance establishes the procedures, policies, guidelines and other measurement frameworks to see KPIs, for example, to see how well their company is adhering to the needs of the environment, their social goals and also internally, how are they managing the reputation of the company? Are they, how are they complying with reporting requirements? Are they complying with environmental regulations and so on? Now, Moody has led to a survey last year with all their customers and the number one issue that customers want to address was ESG, you know, it's part of their annual survey. ESG has taken a lot more importance in recent years. So let's try to look at what does ESG mean and how do you address it? And if one looks at that is, it is not just about carbon emission, but there are a number of areas. I try to classify that into these five. One is it deals with compliance reporting because EPA, for example, now requires companies to report on their emissions. So there is compliance reporting requirements and different countries have different requirements. And of course, there is emission reduction and the emission reduction that are various ways by which emission reduction projects can be initiated, some dealing with, you know, carbon farming and sequestering, some dealing with migration towards electrical energy from some are dealing with, you know, moving from fossil fuels to renewable sources. So there are many projects within each one of these categories, emission, plastics management. The number one pollutant of the oceans is plastic and there are a lot of initiatives on how do you collect the plastic waste? How is it sorted? How is it recycled? And whatever excesses there, how is it disposed? Plastic pollution is not just in oceans because micro plastics is polluting a lot of areas which are where there are no plastics at all. For example, micro particles or plastics have been found in mountainous areas and in areas where there is no plastic usage. So there are initiatives to see how to measure the impact of these and how to control them. Then land and water management, number of companies utilize water and forests. So this deals with projects in the forest management space, in the restoration of marine life, you know, there's a lot of coastal wetlands. How do you restore and have projects that maintain our coastal wetlands and carbon friendly agriculture? A carbon friendly agriculture means how do you use natural fertilizers versus artificial fertilizers? How do you ensure the waste of agriculture does not release back carbon or methane back into the atmosphere? And lastly, waste management. We all recycle our waste, right? And so there are a number of projects that deal with waste management, waste management from household waste. How is it collected and how do you recycle or process the waste? How are electronic waste dealt with? So there are projects in a number of areas and there are other projects too beyond what I have listed here, but these are all major categories of projects to deal with our environmental goals. If you look at the whole, all this carbon offset or whether it is any of these initiatives that are going on, you know, the process is very simple. I mean, I've summarized this process the way I understand and it is almost close to that is organizations make commitments. So for example, you know, Lenovo could make a commitment of saying we want to become carbon neutral by let us say, 2070 or ACME Corporation by 2050 and then they set up certain goals. And once they set up goals, then they have plans as to how to achieve those goals. And that results in initiating projects. So companies can initiate projects internally while companies could invest in carbon-friendly projects or sequestering projects that are by third parties. For example, here, Vera and Moss. Vera is one of the standards, the most adopted standards. There are a lot of issues with Vera, but Vera standards, Vera publishes registries and so on. Moss is a project that is about Amazon forests. You know, how do you reforest the Amazon forests in South America? They have tokenized the offsets as well as they allow people to purchase areas where reforestation will occur. The second step in this process is once the projects are initiated, then how does one measure it? You know, measurement is one of the biggest issues and you know, and once the measurement is complete then it has to be reported. So companies reported in their annual reports are periodically. Now the GHG protocol is one of the most widely used, they publish how to measure, how to account for carbon and all the categories under which accounting happens. What are the elements you should use in terms of it accounting? If it is reported now, somebody has to validate and verify that. So verification is done by a number of agencies. You know, companies like Ecovartis, PWC, in the case of the BC Digital Minds Trust, they all go and verify data that is provided by corporations. If that verification, based on the verification, companies take account into their carbon programs as to how much have they sequestered or how much have they met their goals. Then of course the cycle continues, then companies go back and look at all their projects, monitor them and if there are any corrective actions that need to be taken, then they start controlling those projects. They may shut down certain projects and initiate new ones, it could be anything else. I have always, sorry. So that is a typical cycle in this model and there are variations operate if you go and read, there'll be finer points and details. Now there are a variety of ways by which carbon emissions have been reduced. So one model is the carbon offset. You know, tokenization and lifecycle, carbon offsets, everybody hears about it. What are carbon offsets? Essentially, you know, as the company, let us say I work for Chain Yard and we emit, we pollute carbon into the atmosphere. But then for a company like Chain Yard, it is going to be very expensive to invest in new technology and invest in measurement techniques in order to reduce our own emissions. So what would Chain Yard do? It would go into the market and then invest in a project that is actually sequestering carbon or reducing emissions. These projects could be third-party projects like the MOS project. So when Chain Yard in order to meet its own commitments for carbon emissions goes and invests in a third-party project. So suppose we made a commitment of sequestering, let us say a hundred metric tons this year. We could go and invest in a project in the MOS project where we could fund some of the portions of the project and buy carbon offsets. And those would be treated as we have actually reduced our emissions by that amount, even though we have internally not done anything to reduce our own emissions. Typically carbon offsets are traded in the markets and one carbon offset token is usually one metric ton.  Now you imagine that a car can pollute, in fact, three months for a car to pollute one metric ton, but it takes 40 years for a tree to sequester one metric ton of carbon. So that's the kind of difference, right? It's easy to emit carbon, but to sequester it, a simple example of a tree would be like 40 years. I mean, this is an average, this is not a written install. So there are many offset projects in the world. Some of them are wind farms, some of them are reef forestry ration. So others deal with landfill gas, captain and management, waste management, blue carbon products, essentially marine, utilizing marine ecosystems, you know, and then farming, methane, farm power, methane. There are so many different projects that are happening in the world. And those are all carbon offset projects. They have projects and those offsets are then funded by companies that want to control their own emissions or at least prove they are controlling emissions. The second type is in-setting. And this was very well said by Liam, who is the founder of Everledger, essentially when a company does initiatives to control its own emissions. Now, usually a company would invest in internal projects, they may change the way they do, they may improve their processes, they may adopt new technology like moving from a standard fuel to solar panels, they may have better practices. And other ways by which they improve their own operations.  So this is in-setting where a company really puts its efforts in terms of, I mean, I've just written the process here. So on the right side, but companies do their own initiative and in order to reduce their emissions. So this is a very responsible way of doing things because the company is really making its own effort. Now, I did not mention in the previous case as well, there is a little flow chart I drew. And what this flow chart really says is when a project is initiated in the carbon offset world or whether in the regular world, it is initiated and then it is registered as a project with a public registry, that is what the blue box says. And once the project is registered, it is then verified, the project documentation is prepared and then third party organizations verify and validate these projects. Once the projects are validated, then there is funding that these projects can ask for. And once funding is cleared, the project can now be evaluated in terms of credits. These credits are then available in the marketplace for the red portion represents chain yard, let us say. So these tokens are available for businesses. So chain yard as a company would look at how much their goals are and then they could go and buy some of these stock offsets. And if their offsets actually increase in price, they may either trade it or they may account for it as the project becomes successful and take credit for it. So this is the little cycle here. And that same cycle is seen even in the insetting. Internally within a company, there is nothing external here. So all the orange represents what we do inside our company, initiate a project, get funding for it. And then once the project is funded, it goes into initiation or rather it goes, it is actually executed. And then measurements happen, the whole feedback cycle validates and then we control the project in terms of do we need to shut this project down or do we need to invest in new projects? That is in setting. And of course, we also hear about the regulated carbon market, right? So cap and trade, a lot of people make money in this. Usually, the carbon market is seen as a money-making scheme rather than saving the planet. But if you really see the government, but what this cap and trade means is that a government or a regulatory body can typically set goals. For example, they would say, if you want to reduce emissions across the energy industry by XYZ, or they could have set it for a group of states, so they could set some goals. Now, once the goals are set, then they are translated into emission limits that are allocated to each one of these groups. And from there, they are further broken down into allowances. Now, usually allowances are metric tons of carbon in terms of metric tons of carbon. Those allowances are then allocated as carbon credits. So Duke Energy may be allowed a certain allowance. Suppose, as part, let us say, so they could look at their allowance and then see how many credits to buy, how much of emissions are allowed by them and they could buy credits to meet that allowance. Now, at the end of the year, if Duke Energy does an analysis and sees that it has actually emitted less than its allowance, then it could sell those credits in the market. If it has emitted more than the allowance, it will go and buy offsets because they have to stay within this allowance limit that has been set for their industry. So looking at all the patterns, and in all these cases, none of them use blockchain, but somehow I have put a blockchain here from a perspective of saying that a blockchain can bring more trust and accountability into whether it is in-setting, offsetting or even cap-and-trade. So a blockchain will bring a lot of value. Now, three different patterns emerge. If you look at overall landscape of the things that are happening in the ESG space, one is like the track and trace of projects. So if the MOS project is on, then there could be a track and trace of how well the MOS project is doing from initiation, from origination to how it is progressing until the project meets its goals. There are various track and trace projects. Trinium, for example, wants to track hazardous material. And for example, IBM tracks in its food trust platform from FOM to the table. The other type of projects are related to trading and trusted record keeping of carbon offsets and credits. There's a lot of what do you call issue in the marketplace where there are issues around double-counting, double-spend and actually who is actually taking the credit for this particular offset? Which company is taking credit for these offsets? Because once you start trading, the tokens are changing hands. So suppose Cheney had bought these tokens and sold it to another company via this marketplace, then who is actually finally getting the credit for that carbon offset? And in some cases, there has been examples of double-counting. One of the issues that we have faced is they moved away from the exchange markets because they could not actually trace who is actually getting the credit. So a blockchain could help track the movement of these tokens and the companies that are actually holding those tokens and where did these tokens originate and how to take credits for them. And the last one is like supporting risk audit and compliance reporting. Essentially, there is a lot of requirements in terms of compliance reporting. You all have heard of scope one, two and three reporting. And then obviously the federal government has mandated 401K funds to be more ESG focused. So there has to be a lot of reporting. So these are the three patterns and these cut across all kinds of industries, whether it is supply chain, healthcare, real estate, energy, you would see the same patterns apply. I could, I put a missed a few and it would be nice for the team here to go and look and see if there are other patterns in the ESG space. Once a pattern is identified, we can have standardized solutions that can enable that pattern. There are a number of projects that are actually on track in the ESG space. This is very few list, things that I felt was good. You know, obviously you'll see projects related to the ratings, audit and reporting. I put trustier supplier on the top, which is our own project initiated platform that is ditch carbon. Ditch carbon has been doing scraping annual reports of many different companies that publicly report their ESG and then converting it into metrics. Had a chance to meet the ditch carbon CEO a couple of last week in a meeting. Then of course, you know the digital credentials for carbon accounting, energy and mine trust. If anyone is a member of the digital identity, special interest group, the BC government and energy and mines trust are working to account for sustainability reports from mines in the BC area. And they are using digital identity as one of the approaches to manage and monitor those projects. And of course there are non blockchain projects like Resilink, EcoVartis, Greenlee. All these are only looking at ESG companies and their ESG initiatives. Moody's of course provides analytics, separate scores for environment, social and governance. They also give you a DEI score. It is up to each individual company to interpret what that score means. I've had a lot of debates with my team here in the office as to how do you interpret a score? Suppose I told you my GPA was four out of 10 seven out of 10, what does that mean? So these ratings are interesting but one has to really go in and see what those ratings mean and how do you take actions? So these are all ratings projects. There are other projects like Integrity Next, IBM Supply Chain, Intelligence Suite and Tinium. Both those in the yellow color is track and trace are in blockchain, whereas the other is not. Integrity Next does not use a blockchain but these are track and trace projects. Then of course, Moss Project, Toucan, which is essentially taking all the projects in the carbon space and then tokenizing them uniformly and making them available and on marketplace. Then if you have Plastic Bank which funds a lot of projects in the plastic space for management of plastic waste, save the planet and Klimdahl. Klimdahl functions more like essentially token trading. They also support what do you call yield farming as you have seen in the decentralized exchange space. So they do support all those. So Klimdahl is another project. It is a DAO, essentially it is the smart contracts manage all the interactions and the trading and the earnings and stuff on this platform. They even have a token called Clem. So these are all projects in the space and there are many other projects. I will share this deck at the end and I click on it and put the links to which take you directly to the websites. A little bit about trust your supplier. Now trust your supplier, we started this in 2017 as an initiative between IBM and us. It was blessed by Bob Murphy, IBM CPU at that time as a very good initiative. And what it really does is it is a supplier. It is a buyer network, a network of buyers who essentially assess the risk of a supplier from various angles. They assess their financial risk, diversity risk, child labor practices, conflict minerals and now ESC risk and various other things. That's what this platform does but it is not doing it automatically. It is relying on a marketplace of participants. So validators, you can say or enrichers. So IBM, Nokia, these are all buyers. They're all members of this network. We've been working on this since 2017 went into production in 21, 22 because of COVID. And so there are many other buyers on the network. These are all the validators. EcoValus, for example, does environmental risk assessment. And then there is supplier.io, Dun and Brad Street. You don't see them here. Oh, there they are Moody's, Rizzling. All of them are validators. And of course the suppliers are validated on this platform. Trust your supplier essentially presents. So a buyer comes in and the buyer wants to onboard a particular supplier. Let us say Chaniart for doing business in the IT services space. We go in and fill a number of questionnaires inside the system. IBM would invite Chaniart, share their TWS would present Chaniart with a series of questionnaire that are very relevant to that industry and relevant to IBM. Chaniart will complete those questionnaires. Automatically smart, smart attributes inside these questionnaires are triggered by the blockchain smart contracts. And the trigger will initiate EcoValus or any of these third parties to review data and enrich it. And once it is enriched, the buyer can then look at it and then take a decision whether to onboard them as their supplier or to request more information. There's a lot of benefits we have seen. Reductions in cycle time, reductions in risk and compliance and reduction in our improvement and quality of the assessment's quality of data. So trust your supplier is a network on hyperlegia fabric runs on IBM cloud. And I do have a little more details there, but how does blockchain complement TWS and ESG? Because one is we have an immutable record of the data. So it is not easy to change. It's a network. There are multiple copies of the ledger. It is protected cryptographically. There are smart contract driven. So smart contracts determine what validations are needed. They also trigger automatic monitoring. So from the environment, events come in such as somebody's reputation has changed. And so it does automatic monitoring and revaluation. That is digital identity. So each supplier gets a digital decentralized, I should change it to decentralized identity. It essentially follows the DIT pattern. And so any supplier can be globally resolved and validated to get information about them. That is being worked on right now. It's not in production. Proof of existence, proof of verification. So a Moody's badge or an IBM badge that they have already onboarded the supplier is all adding to the quality of the supplier and the trust in that supplier. Then we do cryptographic verification. There is consensus. There is transparency, meaning like all the suppliers can be seen, but if one is not a member of the network and they do not have access granted, only basic information will be visible. All transactions are private and anonymous. Tokenization and incentivization is in the works. So essentially a blockchain can drive this. So if a supplier provides a report, it can be securely shared with digital keys with a regulator. Now, TYS is based on Hyperledger Fabric. It is based on Node.js. And I'd use it Node.js and Fabric SDK, MongoDB as its off-chain database in addition to other databases. It utilizes key management services and an ECDSA based encryptions. It is non-invasive, meaning like one doesn't have to install a component within their environments to use TYS. And it has got a very rich UI that shows all kinds of dashboards that are customizable built with React.js. And lastly, it's currently supports analytics. So this is the current architecture, currently supports Power BI integration for dashboard and analytics, AI and other machine learning is in the works. Now, if you see that the main elements of, you know, from a ledger perspective, TYS works on different channels. There is a TYS ledger for the supplier data that's a digital identity ledger and then the Oracle ledger which maintains all the request responses between TYS and third parties outside.  But this was built even before that it uses an agent, you know, manager framework. Essentially, this agent is available as code to the supply, to the Google wants to install it on their premise as code, as executable or, you know, in whatever form they want. And there is a marketplace that also exists in the TYS environment. This marketplace is any third party can come in and drop in an app like on your mobile phone. The app could be an EcoVolus app, a Moody's app and these apps automatically enrich data based on subscriptions. That's the platform. And it is now supporting ESG and it is supporting a lot of other kinds of requirements in the market from a risk perspective. Now, let us see how it does, right? So this is focused on TYS, ESG and blockchain. TYS, you know, the supplier is requested to complete questionnaires on ESG. So basically the supplier would go into TYS and complete their questions. If it is already existing, they will simply pass on as already done. Once it enters TYS, it triggers events and validators come in and verify answers in their questions. So validators can essentially validate the information and once the validator is set, you know, and additionally third parties can come in and enrich the data associated with the supplier. So each one holds the piece of information that they have contributed. When a buyer comes in and accesses that report or view, they automatically see the enriched information because it opens up in panels based on licensed subscriptions. So that's kind of the general model. So there are different kinds of questionnaires here. And from an ESG perspective, there is environment, social and governance practices. It essentially captures information on the space. It also requests buyers to upload their reports or anything else that they want to upload. It also enables ratings from third party companies like Ecovartis, Moody, Dunn and Bradstreet, you know, Russell 2000 and so on. The current framework is ready to support Scope 1 and 2 reporting. Now Scope 1 and 2 reporting is that Scope 1, 2 and 3 reporting as requested by SCC and EPA. Still in the works, but it is well positioned.  So this is a hypothetical, I think it is real Google example. And this is a B and B, Ecovartis rating of ESG. So Ecovartis has rated this company here from an environment, labor practices, and you can also see its ethical cost. So T-V-I-S pulls in that information as part of the supplier views. So there would be many other views. If there is subscription for Moody's, there would be a panel that shows the Moody's ratings. If there is a subscription for D&B, there would be a panel that shows. My earlier point was that these ratings are excellent. What do you do with it? T-V-I-S is working on what do you do with it right now? But a lot of third parties that my point here really is that third parties, a number of companies are saying we will rate your ESG and all, but we do not give you enough recommendations as to how they came up with that rating and how to improve that.  People are trying to digest what ESG means and a lot of them are getting into this bandwagon because there is a lot of interest from governments, from markets and from revenue perspective. So what T-V-I-S does is it takes a number of questionnaires, right? Environment. From an environment perspective, we talked about goals, commitments, right? So T-V-I-S questionnaires collect information from suppliers such as what are your goals? What are your commitments for this year? What are your commitments for the next until you want to reach net zero or be carbon neutral? What are your actual data? What offsets have you purchased and which projects do these offsets belong to? It captures other information on their manufacturing practices, whether they are using renewable energy or what portion of it comes. How do they manage waste and raw materials? Are they recycling waste? Are they optimally using raw materials? Are they doing sustainability as part of their procurement? How do they reduce reuse or recycle waste matter? Emission of power. It also captures information on social. Like, you know, what are your labor practices? How are your relationships with the community? How do you treat an employee?  Treatment of partners. And T-V-I-S focuses on governance, you know, what are your policies? Now, many of these, this is the general framework of T-V-I-S questionnaires and we are constantly improving that in terms of making it more and more meaningful, qualitatively and quantitatively because verbose answers do not help. So there's a lot of effort inside T-V-I-S to make them qualitative and quantifiable. Now, we all, I talked about scope one, two and three reporting, right? I borrowed those directly from the D&G protocol because they are the ones who published how do you measure scope one, two and three? And obviously it is now embraced by the EPA and so many others. Now, what is scope one, scope two and scope three? Direct emissions. Scope one refers to all the emissions that a company is directly responsible for. So if we take hypothetically, let us take Lenovo. Lenovo, all the direct emissions cause because of its own activities directly and it has control over that, right? They have boilers, they may have, you know, molding machines, others. They have a direct control on these and the emissions that they have. So all that reporting is part of scope one and it is easy to do scope one is easy because you know what the company is doing, its activities and it can measure and report on scope one. Scope two is also easy to report because it's a direct emission. Typically, you know, a company utilizes energy and scope two measures how much of energy is used and where does it come from? What portion of it comes from? What do you call fossil fuels versus renewable sources? That is what it is. And usually they can get a report from, let us say Duke to say from my energy bill can you give me a breakdown? So there are like easier ways of doing this. And so scope one and two are very easy to do. When it comes to scope three, that is where all the issues are. And I know even in the special interest group of Hyperledger we always discuss how to measure scope three. The GAG protocol is provided enough guidelines how to measure it, but obviously in practicality it becomes very difficult. It is all about your upstream and downstream partners. You know, partners from the supplier side who provide you with raw materials or finished products that are loaded into trucks and moved to your warehouses, to your factories, downstream where you manufacture products that are shipped on, you know, you utilize distributors, logistics operators, transporters, all of them come into play ultimately until the product reaches the customer. So the total measurement that a company like, let us say Lenovo is emitting is the sum of its scope one, scope two and all its partners. So that roll up. That's what this is. And so there is a request and there is a mandate in many countries for scope one, scope two and scope three reports as part of their annual reporting. So for more information on this, if you are interested, you can go to the GAG protocol, GAG.org, it gives you a lot of information on all these things. In fact, they say, how do you measure scope three? So they give you all in the upstream case, you look at purchase goods and services, capital goods, employee computing, upstream, these assets. So they give you this breakdown of what all areas you have to look for. They also make sure that there is no overlap between scope one, scope two and scope three reporting. Now, see in the shape of scope three, you've got to look at processing of solid products, the use of full products, et cetera, et cetera. So franchise investments. And there is enough description there in the GAG protocol of what this means. What do these categories mean? Obviously, I've been going through this but it's a lot of material.  So the interesting thing is there are so many standards bodies and institutions and they're all focused on ESG. So I was trying to get a handle on what these are. So the ones that were most prominent were like the climate actions. Obviously, we all know the pad is apart, right? And we know the EPA is very much focused on climate change. And we have European commissions, many commissions, one of them is the circular economy meaning like how do you manage based? There's open earth foundation. I put hyper ledger foundation is also concerned about ESG. But you have the carbon registries, you have Vera with many different subgroups. All of them are focused. And there are many other organizations. If you go to IEEE there's an ESG group, right? So there are many different bodies and all of them are focused on how do you measure and how do you account and what do you report? Now Climate Action Reserve focuses on cap and trade. California essentially has a cap and trade program and most of the projects registered in the Climate Action Reserve are the programs within California. The GIG protocol we talked about, it provides you the methods and mechanisms for measurement of measurement and accounting of all the carbon emissions. How do you actually measure? The gold standard and where are our project registries? We talked about the voluntary carbon market, the offsets market where anybody can initiate a project. So the gold standard, that is the name of the organization and where are their organizations that actually go and validate these projects and then register it within their databases and then determine how much offset should be issued against that project. And that's the whole model that they follow. So they're all registries in the voluntary carbon market. If you go into Vera, I just pulled up one registry you can go and look at it. So there are many registries, the verifiable carbon standard, plastic waste, these are all categories and each one of them have their own registries within Vera. If you go to Vera and just look at one such thing like the verified carbon standard and pull up, you can pull up projects by categories and enlist out all the projects and you can see what projects are there, where do you want to invest or buy offsets from? There is a lot of dispute on the Vera and all these registries because how are they managing it? How are they monitoring it? How trustworthy it is? There is a lot of issues. But all of them are supposed to be standards bodies but there is no standardization of standards itself because each one is not interoperable. Some of them provide API, some of them you go and physically go in and log in. So that is one of the big issues. The GIG protocol, I'm talking about, I'm just doing a time check, are we on time? I'm just saying put it up here. Okay, 33. So the GIG protocol is widely used and they have a number of tools in various categories. They also established the reporting standards and they've been in there for a long time. It's not a body that came in overnight. They only have adopted themselves to the new requirements of environment and ESG. But they focus, they have separate initiatives on how to manage forest land and agriculture. Most of the GIG is about how do you manage forest and agricultural land? Because that's where you can sequester the most amount of carbon. A tree sequesters one metric ton. Let us say a forest can, how much metric tons it can sequester? Even blue carbon mining, blue carbon farming like mangroves, they sequester a lot and 10 times more than a standard forest in terms of carbon into the ground. So these guys established the standards for measurement and you can go in and see what tools they provide across industries, across country specific, et cetera. Now the role of blockchain. So not many projects use the blockchain effectively and the blockchain can really bring a lot of value in terms of consistency in the application of policies and regulations. It can bring environment management beyond CO2. Most of the focus has been on CO2 emissions, not on sulfur dioxide, not on methane, not on other gas pollutants that go into the atmosphere. So blockchain can actually bring unification of across beyond CO2, right? Then of course it can manage very effectively the double spend problem of credits and offsets. Then you have traceability of ownership and retirement of credits. Who actually owns the credit offset and taking credit for retiring that? Because credits, once the carbon is sequestered for that offset, you have to retire that offset. And that is where the issues come in, because the offsets are still floating even though the offset is no longer valid. Then proving voluntary in the voluntary carbon market, how do you prove a project is real and its benefits are real and how do you get it? One of the things that can be utilized effectively is the digital identity or the decentralized identity. If every project is given a decentralized identity, all the projects in the where our database, all the projects in carbon action reserve, then the DID can be used to resolve that project universally irrespective of where you are, which application is being used and get all the details about that project, all the verification about the project, the digital signatures associated with the project. I tried to talk to a couple of them, but they all are in a different world right now in terms of APIs. And then lastly, verifiable and trusted reporting. So a report provided by a company can be interpreted in different ways. Blockchain can secure the report at a point in time and then have digital signatures, verifications and validations associated with it to prove that the report is really valid. This is my last slide. I'll stop talking. So a TYS position to add value. So a TYS, if you look at it, if you expand TYS beyond what it was here, then what it needs is all the IoT gateways. So there are a number of IoT sensors all over the planet that are actually capturing data on emissions, water resources, air quality, et cetera, et cetera. And that can be brought into a blockchain. Doesn't mean that it could be a different blockchain operating here, feeding in just the summaries. The carbon registries, we just talked about digital identity could be a good resolver for each one of these projects running across varied systems, applications and registries that did and help essentially have a decentralized identity for these projects and bring them in. That's a very good improvement over what is happening now. If you're told a MOS project, you won't even know what identity it has got, how many projects are under MOS, et cetera, et cetera. But a DID could probably help. Offset and credit markets. So an exchange API could help go into the different offset markets and exchanges. So you have a unified experience of buying offsets, selling offsets, trading credits, et cetera. That is kind of like, so if you look at the overall and then finally AI and ML can do a lot of analysis on many of the things that are flowing into the system, you do one definitely needs a private blockchain for securing elements like projects and a public blockchain that supports trading. With that, I'm just gonna stop. This is my understanding so far and I wanted to just present my knowledge that has been acquired and a lot of our work on TYS and how TYS is trying to change a lot from a regulatory and reporting and audit and risk management perspective. Thank you all. Yeah, so Mohan, I wanna thank you. That was an awesome presentation. As I suspect that it would be very, very good. The mistake I made was the failure to schedule you for four hours, not one, because we easily could dive into everything you've shown here in deep detail. What I really like, I can see the value which is really what the session was about is show me how blockchain in a sense can add value to in a sense the whole problem of defining and measuring ESG across these communities. And so I think the presentation really does that well. You did identify also the process sort of with trust your supplier. How do I onboard somebody? One of the important things you mentioned is decentralized identities. So we have a more accurate identity system than traditional identity management for sure. So there are some good technologies that you're showing us why we use those in this system, which makes sense. And you did point out the challenge of it is a lot of these other organizations aren't using your technology, you know what I mean? So if I go to Vera and say, are you using trust your supplier for what you're doing? And the answer is maybe not, do you know what I mean? Or are you using a blockchain or decentralized identity? One of the questions that did come up during the session that was very good from Radhika was that she wanted to know when I'm onboarded trust your supplier and there's certain basic verifications you're gonna go against on the financial side against DNB and so on. But you're probably one of the things I have to fill out. I'm assuming is information about my ESG profile for my company. What are we doing? What have we done kind of thing? I'm gonna assume with the connections you have over here to the third parties, do you do an automated verification of my reporting of my own ESG performance? Is that something that you automate against the other sources you have? So that is our future of the device was what here, right? So what we do is in the TYS process, what happens is suppliers fill the questionnaire and the questionnaires are recorded on the blockchain. And it is basically an invitation process, but no TYS allows suppliers to request an invitation without a buyer inviting them. And then obviously basic questionnaires are completed if ESG is important for that industry, yes. And once they do that, it goes through an automatic verification process, which means like if they have full certain information, it is broadcast to our third parties like Dunlun, Bradstreet, Moody's, et cetera, et cetera. And then of course, third parties also do all their ratings on ESG and that is flashed in the TYS user panels and it's visible. Now as part of the question is, suppliers will upload documentation. Sometimes they upload their annual reports, they upload financial disclosures that are required, other information. Everything is owned by the supplier, it is secure and it is encrypted and only the requester gets over the supplier grants access to can see that information. So that is how it works. So there are third parties with Enriched. The supplier validator program is on right now. This is actually going on right now in the next versions or in the coming versions of TYS. So right now validations happen by our third party marketplace. And then the buyer or who are invited them can look at the data because it is subjective. There is nothing like one size fits all. So if you say it's more of seven, one gets there. So each buyer determines if they can live with that score. Just giving this example to Raj in my team, that if I had a $10,000 in my bank and you also had, it is not the same risk. I may have a higher risk because maybe I don't have anything else, but you are in a better position because that is your, because your risk is very low. So the rating score has to be interpreted by the buyer. So TYS is, TYS does a lot of work today. So, and it is, and there are about a number of buyers I think like 20, 30 buyers, major buyers like what a phone who have brought in their whole load of core suppliers and other suppliers into the system. Actually, so, all right, so there's a lot here. We could go on another session all about TYS, what it is and what in a sense the value that it may have, I'll say as it grows. It's obviously an ecosystem. So part of the value of something like this is show me what the architecture and the capability of the product itself is, if you will. But then the second thing is you say, well, what's the value of it? The value of it has everything to do with, in a sense, the size of the network and the quality of the information that's being produced in that network. And as you point out that one of the things like any great, I'll call it consortium that delivers value is you're integrating information from multiple sources. And as we talked about earlier, like you showed that you can cross validate that stuff automatically, which is huge. And so over time, in a sense, the quality of, and the breadth, I guess, of the information that you can provide is improved, which means that in a sense, as I said, especially on the quality side, this automated reconciliation is gonna add a lot over time as you make it deeper and deeper. And then the third thing on that, the scope three reporting piece, once all of the community grows, let's say I can pick a particular industry segment or something, and once a significant portion of those are in there, then the ability to go out and start doing measurements on the scope three thing you were talking about becomes feasible. And in a way that isn't cross prohibitive like it is today, does that make sense? Yes, so right now today, TUS asks the supplier to provide all that information and then we simply do verifications, right? In the future, it will become more and more real time. So there was a question, do we integrate with Vera? No, but our questionnaire will say, hey, you made a commitment for XYZ sequestrization of metric tons, how much effort is initiated? How are you gonna meet that goal? How many projects have you initiated internally and how many offsets are you buying and which offsets are you? And over time, we would now start to verify directly with the project owners, what you guys is all API driven. It does a number of verifications. So you only saw a few third parties that are more than 30 plus or 40 plus verifiers as part of the network who do anything from address verification to restricted countries verification, export control verification. It does a lot of things. Well, he has you think of me joining your network as a supplier. Right now, at your point, I'd probably go through a lot of work to answer all those questions. The reality is in the future, it could look more like a credit score where in effect what happens is you have to accurately identify me, but the third party credit agency, TransUnion Experian, whoever, is just gonna say, oh, Jim, now that you've authenticated who you are, we found all this credit information about you and they throw it back at me and it becomes easier because all I do is look at it and say, well, wait a second, that's not right and you missed that. But I don't have to, in a sense, go through the homework of building all that. It comes back at me because they have that network. And it sounds like your thing is moving in that direction nicely. Correct. One is sharing, right? So once you're verified and another buyer comes along, the same verification is already done, 90%. Only the incremental verification of 10% more by the second buyer. The second is continuous monitoring. So it's not like a one-time, so it's constantly monitoring and so the information from a real-time monitoring perspective will always be current. So if there's a repredational news, so take, and as a bush, it is interesting. I went and asked our people to show me what is the rating of, so the DEI scores of both these companies should have been way down. Surprisingly, focus more on the financial aspects. So on the top, you see the ESG score from Moody's, one on target and the lower one is like, the ratings have not changed, if you really see because their credit risk is very low. So these guys are looking at ESG ratings primarily from a credit risk perspective and not from how much of a mission are they controlling. So there's a lot of... So I would have expected their DEI score, their diversity, equity and inclusion score to drop down drastically, but I did not. So I think like companies are not yet, are dealing with these things in different ways. So the goal of TYS when I was was like to real-time monitor these events and to initiate recalculation of these scores with respect to our partners. Yep, yeah, excellent. Yeah, so it's very neat in a sense, like I say, the value of this thing over time goes up, which is pretty neat. So it's a good thing to participate in it for sure. There's another comment in the chat from Sergio. It says, countries were constrained from greenwashing if they were obliged to use tech like this, which is true. There's a Reuters article, he points to about climate change finance, which is true. And I've actually gone through a lot of, I don't have the, I'm not working on trust your supplier. So I can't say I'm benefiting from all of this, but I've been in this space and actually trying to solve the problems. The other hit you pointed out beautifully was having investigated a lot of the standards out there, there is no standard for standards. And so me setting up a quote, a carbon co-op for farming, carbon farming was trying to, in a sense, figure out what are the standards and how do I authenticate them? Cause to your point exactly, it's not a matter of saying, you know, I don't want to use Jim's standard. I want to find out why is this standard in a sense, verifiable and valuable. And so I sort of set up my own systems to figure out how to do that. But when I started comparing them to Vera and some of the other ones, I was like, well, wait a minute. As you say, there aren't standards on the standards and no way to measure that at this point, which is a bit frustrating in the marketplace for sure. So, but the marketplace is definitely growing and you can see that companies are spending money in this way and in a sense it looks to me and you may have more detail. At least things are moving in the right direction. So I can see in the carbon marketplaces what's getting traded and why I can see where companies are focused and, you know, where people are spending money on this stuff and governments are making investments as well. So it does look like everything is trending. I'll quote in the right direction. You can see the value of a carbon offsets going up. I think whatever is 400% in four years, something like that. So there's certainly more focus in this area. So anyway, we're way over time. I do apologize to everybody who called. I have only one point with QIS. I just want to make the last point on QIS. QIS is a supply chain product. It's not about ESG. It's about supply chain. Essentially, if there is a forest fire in Canada, can the timber supplies be restricted to a buyer who is manufacturing furniture? That's what QIS does, right? So it's basically a supply chain problem in which the supplier onboarding is the very first step in your procurement process. So I want to leave it there. It's not the ESG monitoring tool, or it's not going to solve the global climate crisis. Thank you. Right, awesome. I really appreciate this very much. So we are going to get the handouts. I'll also post the recording up. It'll go out to the virtual meetups and on the public sector site. And then we'll follow up on that as well. But I want to thank you once again. This has been an awesome presentation. And it was perfect as a foundation for everything we want to do going forward. So thank you very much, Mohan. Thank you so much. If you have any questions, please email me mohan at chainia.com. I'll always be happy to chat on this topic. Not necessarily sell something. Thank you. OK, well, thank you very much. And thank you, everyone, for attending today. I appreciate it very much. So with that, have a good day. Thank you. Bye.


Coming up on DTNS, Congress asks for lots of emails from Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. MIT engineers create the blackest material yet. And Nicole Lee has thoughts on the new HTC Vive Cosmos VR headset and the state of VR in general. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday the 13th of September 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. Here to draw tech from Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. As I mentioned, Nicole Lee, senior editor and gadget in joining us today. Welcome, Nicole. Happy to be here. Thanks for coming and sharing your VR insights with us. No problem. We were just talking about Kenny Rogers chicken a little bit. Also, quite a bit about lots of other things, including a three foot long sandwich that Sarah just ate on Good Day Internet. If you want to find out more and have some fun listening to us do that to become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Well, it wasn't a sandwich, but Google began rolling out automatic Android device backup to Google One storage subscribers. This includes text, contacts and apps as well as original quality photos, videos and MMS. All backups are managed through the Google One web console. Mozilla announced Firefox premium support. A $10 a month subscription that provides enterprise level support for the browser, including a dedicated enterprise customer portal, private bug submission options with guaranteed response times, proactive notification of critical events, and service level agreement management tools. All those enterprisey things that administrators like to have. The Firefox browser remains free if you're an individual, you don't have to pay to use the Firefox browser. In fact, if you're an enterprise, you don't have to pay to use it. But remember, the Firefox browser relies largely on community driven support. So this is a chance for an enterprise that's rolling it out to get a higher level of support than that. Apple's allowing developers of App Store apps to offer a grace period of six to 16 days for last subscriptions. This gives Apple more time to collect payments for auto renewing subscriptions that may have failed because of a change of address or credit card expiration dates. Developers need to opt in and build server side support to implement the grace period in their apps. Apple play a supported grace periods since 2018. If we're keeping track, Google's vice president of news Richard gingers announced that the search giant made a change to its algorithm to give an advantage to original reporting. The idea is to keep the source article of a story highly visible for a longer period of time in search results. Google also updated its search rater guidelines asking people who rate stuff to rate original in depth and investigative reporting as very high quality as well as to take the publisher's reputation for original reporting into account, including journalistic award one and stuff like that. This doesn't exactly address what I talked about in my editor's desk this week on Patreon, but it does hit a small portion of it. Interesting. All right, let's talk a little bit more about what's going on with that US house. I don't know if it's a subpoena, but it's a firm request. OK, lots going on here. The US house. Judiciary anti-trust subcommittee knew I was going to get that wrong has requested that Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet and Apple all hand over certain emails by October 14th. The requested information includes organization charts, financial reports, and any documents that they've produced for earlier anti-trust probes by the FTC or the Department of Justice. In particular, the letters ask the following. Alphabet is asked for executive emails discussing Google's acquisitions, the company's search algorithm and actual or post suspension of apps from the Play Store. Amazon is asked for emails about the retail book market, acquisitions and ranking products. Apple is asked for emails about a crackdown on parental control apps. It's deal with Amazon. It's practice of introducing software that replicates popular third party apps. And finally, Facebook is asked for emails about acquisitions, data collection app Onavo and how and why it cut off companies like Vine from its social graph back in the day. Representative Gerald Nadler said that the information would help the U.S. Congress determine, quote, whether they're using the market power in ways that have harmed consumers and competition. This is like a greatest hits of concerns, right? We have all of the things that everyone has ever seen in a click bait headline being requested at once. It's a journalist's dream. If any of this stuff is publicly released, just because the subcommittee gets it doesn't mean they'll make it public record. There are certain ways that they can keep stuff confidential. And I'm sure these companies will try to keep all of this as confidential as they are allowed to do so. But it is very thorough and very widespread. Nicole, I don't know how much you've been following a lot of this stuff, but it does it does seem through in the sense that each company has been asked to give specific things that that company, a government organization would want to know from that particular company. I think it's strange that it's all bundled in like this, the fact that all of these different companies, I mean, I know they're all tech, right? But they're kind of different parts of tech. Like Apple is a very different company from Facebook and so on and so forth. So yeah, it is like a it's like a greater it's like a greatest hits. But it's also like an all you can eat buffet where it's like all kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I don't know. I mean, these are four different investigations. You're absolutely right. And and there are different letters going to each company, but they are definitely bundling them together in one announcement to get the biggest bang for their buck, right? It's a way to get attention for sure. But also it's just I don't know, it's a strange strange thing to see all of these companies together in one thing. And, you know, and some of this stuff has already been proven to maybe not be as bad as people thought or litigated in the court of public opinion, so to speak. But at the same time, the US House, if it wants to do a thorough job, needs to look into all of these things, if it's going to get to the bottom of it. Just, you know, remember, accusation is not guilt. Just because they're asking for emails about the search algorithm doesn't mean they have already decided that the search algorithm is in violation of antitrust. It means they want to find out more to determine whether it is or not. This also isn't the be all and end all of this. The FTC and the Department of Justice have split these companies up in their own investigations. So in some ways, this is a little bit of theater because the real punishments and the real investigations are coming from those executive agencies, not from the subcommittee. This has a lot to do, I think, with the overall, like you say, theater and the on the ongoing slash oncoming battle between the government and the so-called big tech, right? And the responsibilities thereof. And it's going to be a big deal in this election coming up, all of those things. So a little bit of a preview of that, I think. Justin, Robert Young has been saying for a long time that beating up on big tech is going to bring you big points, no matter what party you're in. Goldman Sachs projects a 16 percent stock hit to Apple and they're part of their justification for that is the way Apple will account for free services on its hardware, because Goldman Sachs anticipates that Apple will continue the practice of accounting for service revenue as a deduction from average revenue per unit. So if you're in the finance industry, you're probably like Tom, that's not exactly right. But if you're not in the finance industry, you're probably like Tom, I have no idea what those words mean. So let me try to explain. Instead of accounting for, say, a thousand dollars of revenue from the sale of one iPhone, the way Apple previously has been accounting and the way Goldman Sachs expects them to account is to say nine hundred forty dollars of revenue was generated from the iPhone. But we gave away a free year of Apple TV plus, which is worth sixty dollars. So we're taking sixty dollars of that a thousand and reporting it as service revenue, not only reporting it as service revenue, but deferring that revenue monthly because that would have been a year subscription that we got five dollars every month for. Now that could lower Apple's reported profits in a single quarter from hardware, right, because now you're reporting nine hundred forty dollars instead of a thousand dollars, but it wouldn't raise service revenue by the same amount because that sixty dollars times however many they sell is divided over twelve months. However, in a statement to CNBC, Apple said, we do not expect the introduction of Apple TV plus, including the accounting treatment for the service to have a material impact on our financial results. That is a statement meant to calm people who buy their stock. It does not clear up how they're going to account for this, though. And if I I find this very interesting and something that's good to know in case that those earnings reports did look a little wonky, that could be why. It's I mean, I'm not a big I'm not I'm not like a financial guru or anything, but maybe part of this is that, you know, assuming that they're accounting for this free service, maybe the idea here is that the sales of the device will make up for the so-called, you know, revenue deferment and all that. Right. Well, yes, unless you're looking at margin, if you're looking at margin, that's broken down per unit, right? So so that's definitely going to go down. If they do it this way, Apple's not saying they're not going to do it this way. They also wouldn't have to do it this way unless they want to make their service revenue look better, especially look better over a long term. Apple's good at long term thinking. Maybe they're willing to weather a little bit of a reduced average revenue per unit for one quarter in order to by the end of the year say, look at our great big service revenue. So good to keep in mind in any case. Discord is phasing out game bundles that it launched last year for its $9.99 per month or $99 annually Nitro subscription service. Discord said in a statement, while we in some of you love these games, the truth is the vast majority of Nitro subscribers didn't play them. So after careful consideration, we won't be hitting. We won't be hitting continue when the contracts come up for renewal. The Nitro Games catalog will be removed on October 15th. We were we were speculating in our in our prep meeting about whether anyone we knew was upset about this and we couldn't think of anyone. But obviously, yeah, yeah. Someone at least some some of you that Discord mentioned. But yeah, I I. I had forgotten this was a feature. I didn't know this. Well, I keep seeing Nitro subscriptions and it's like, add cool things to your server, get get points, get get more server properties. And I'm like, OK, maybe I'll do a Nitro subscription for the DTNS server and Discord. I never once saw remember seeing them talking about the games part of this. So that maybe maybe just wasn't very popular. I think that's probably the end that part of this. But yeah, Nicole, I mean, you're paying engineers to keep something running that you're not paying for with enough subscriptions. Whenever I hear whenever I hear Discord mentioned in any podcast, in any portion of that, I was never here Nitro next to it. So that's probably part of it, too. I mean, I thought it was kind of clever for Discord to want to become a place where maybe you would keep your games, but also very good of them to be like, hey, guess what? It's not working. You're going to find another way to keep paying the bills. And they seem to be doing that. I don't feel like this is going to threaten Discord's existence or anything. Finance ministers from France and Germany said Friday that the Libra cryptocurrency poses risks to the financial sector and monetary sovereignty. A lot of headlines are saying and they're going to block it. Well, they said they might block it unless those risks can be explained. So kind of you want to water down that headline a little bit. They said the Libra project blueprints failed to convince them that the risks will be properly addressed. And if they aren't properly addressed, then they wouldn't be allowed. But that kind of makes sense. Doesn't make for a flashy headline. A spokeswoman for the European Commission told Reuters that with the publicly available information on Libra, it is currently not possible to say which exact EU rules would apply. So really, Libra saying, yeah, we want to meet with regulators and give them more details, we've got more details coming is really just that. Libra saying, yeah, no, wait, we'll tell you, they are going to get the strictest possible regulation. Europe's back is up about this. The United States back is up about this. So they're not going to let Libra slide by with light regulation. And the EU right now doesn't have specific regulations on cryptocurrency, so they can't just point to something that applies to other systems like this, because it's so new. Here's an interesting fact that may help you understand Europe's attitude here and why they're so hostile. The European Central Bank is working on a long term plan to launch its own public digital currency and real time payment system known as TIPS. That would let consumers use electronic cash without needing a bank account or other financial intermediaries, kind of like Libra. So I feel like this is lit a fire under the ECB to be like, you know what, we really need to get this project off the ground and get some support behind it. That definitely colors the response from the EU, if they're planning on their own digital currency. So, OK, besides besides sternly worded quotes like, you know, we just laid out how much does this mean Libra may not be able to launch in a huge market like the EU? Listen, if it were just about technocrats looking at rules, I would say Libra is going to find a way to meet the regulations. They are they are bending over backwards to say, yes, we will do what is needed to be done to meet regulations. We're not trying to get away with anything. But given the fact that Facebook is involved with Libra and every government hates Facebook, I would say they're going to do everything possible to roadblock this and make it very difficult, which makes the likelihood of Libra happening reduced. I'm not saying it's zero by any stretch, but it's definitely reduced. Well, zero now, anyway. When are we going to see this launch? I'm curious more than anything. Well, Libra wasn't going to launch till next year anyway. At the earliest. So, yeah, yeah, we're getting close. Well, this is a story that I think all going to be a little bit happier about MIT engineers have developed a material made of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes that absorb more than ninety nine point nine nine five percent of incoming light. And it all happened by accident. The engineers had been experimenting with ways to grow carbon nanotubes on electrically conductive materials like aluminum for increased electrical and thermal properties. But when experimenting with chlorine etched aluminum foil, they were surprised by the change in color. The discovery is being displayed at an art exhibit at the New York Stock Exchange for the new material wrapped around a two million dollar diamond. Practical uses include smarter blinders to reduce optical glare and telescopes. This course reminds me of the restaurant at the end of the universe by Douglas Adams, where a musician spending a year dead for tax reasons has the blackest possible paint job on his car. And the engadget story about this from Rachel England points out that this is an arms race. This isn't the end. There was a Vanta black from Surrey that was ninety nine point nine six percent. And they contacted engadget after the story came out and said, by the way, we have a new black that's going to surpass this. You just wait and see ten times less light and all other super black materials, including Vanta black. Yeah. So the blackest black.  Telescopes in space, obviously, get rid of atmospheric interference, but there can still be optical interference from the edges. And if you can put blinders around that are super black that don't allow anything in that that kind of precision is necessary and stuff like that. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com. And we're back to talk about tech crunch reporting that smart hard hat developer, Dacri, has closed its headquarters, laid off employees and plans to sell off its assets earlier this year, augmented reality headsets start up Metta sold off its assets. Osterhut Design Group is reportedly selling off its patents. Even Microsoft and Lenovo are focusing their augmented reality efforts on the enterprise these days. A sure way to make the tech press say your product is dead. See Google Glass. But in the midst of all that, as we mentioned yesterday, HTC released the updated HTC Vive Cosmos, which is shipping October 3rd for 699 bucks. And the big deal with the Cosmos is you don't need the external sensor boxes. It has six inside out sensors on the head. Nicole, you got a chance to play with the Cosmos. Let's start with your feelings about it. But I also want to talk about what you think the state of all this VR stuff is, but start with what you thought of the HTC Vive Cosmos. Sure. So the Vive Cosmos, the big difference between when there are so many differences between this and the original vibe, and this is supposed to be the replacement of the original vibe. This is like, I think the original vibe is coming to its end of life pretty soon. So this is supposed to be a replacement to that a successor to that, if you will. It's so much better. Like it's like night and day better. Like the feel of it is so much more comfortable. I wear glasses and with the original vibe, it was kind of a pain to put it with my glasses on and with the new one, it was like so much room around my eye area for my glasses was very comfortable. It fits in really well and the goggles, the eye area flips up so that you can sort of flip in and out of realities pretty quickly. There's also a pass-through camera, so you don't have to flip it out to sort of switch between the real world and the virtual world. The software is also kind of kind of big news, too, because instead of using Steam VR, it uses HTC's own software system. So it is HTC's own Vive reality software. They have a very good onboarding system where it's a tutorial system. So like, even if you don't know a thing about VR, if you wear it, it will walk you through the different steps or how to use the controllers. The controllers are really good, too. The big thing with the Vive Cosmos is that it doesn't use external sensors. Like you said, it has its own inside-out tracking. It has these like six cameras on the front of it. So it just sort of does the 300 plus 10 degree tracking all on its own. It does still near PC to tether. So that's kind of still there, but mostly for like power reasons and that kind of thing, which is understandable because you're in the state of VR, which we'll get into, I'm sure. And it was great. Like it was the other thing that was I think is the best thing about it is that it has the 2880. I'm going to look this up. 2880 by I think 1600 or something resolution, which is the highest resolution of any VR headset out there. So like that's like the difference between the two is like stunning. Like I could in the original Vive demo, you could kind of see the whale. It was pretty impressive. Like the blue whale sort of like flying past your swimming past you was pretty impressive. But with the new Vive Cosmos, the 2880 resolution, it was like you could see it's like wrinkles, you could see little warts around the whale's eye. So it was just like super detailed. The difference between you know, 720p and in 4K. Like that kind of like stark difference. 2880 by 1700, is that right? 2880, I'm going to look it up because I wouldn't want to get this wrong. But I believe it is. Sorry. 2880 by 1700 pixel resolution. That's an 88 percent increase over the original. That's huge. That's a big job. That's huge. 90 hertz refresh rate, 110 degree field of view. So it's like this is like the best VR display I've seen yet. And you know, being in that environment again, very, very comfortable, very lightweight. That was really good. I did like a VR dance game, which was kind of silly. But it was fun, you know, and it was very accurate in terms of tracking where my hands were. So all those kinds of things were, I think, very good. Yeah. So it sounds great, right? It sounds like it's something that is going to improve.  Even though it does have to be tethered, those cables have been managed down. I think everybody really wants cable less. And there's not as high a resolution options for that. But there are options for that. But as I said, it does seem like the augmented reality, virtual reality world is shaking out. We're seeing a lot of startups, as I mentioned, start to close up shop. We're seeing some consolidation already. That's something you usually see when an industry has matured. It doesn't feel like this industry has matured, does it? It's so to so just sort of look back on it. The first VR, the first consumer style VR headset debuted like three years ago, 2016 almost. So it's been three years. That's and to be fair, a lot, a lot has actually happened in three years. Moving, going from that really dark, heavy thing to the where we are now in terms of the lightness and portability of VR headsets. And let's remember like this is not the only VR headset. There are also standalone headsets like from Oculus, for example, like the I can't remember the name, but I think I'll call it Quest, I believe. Yeah, so that's that's that's like no wires at all. And again, not as high quality, not as high resolution as the Y Cosmos, but it's VR, right? It's something it's cheaper to more affordable. Because that's the other downside is the Y Cosmos is around like seven hundred dollars or so, so that's six hundred dollars or so. So it's pretty expensive, it's kind of high up there. The key really is to me, anyway, is content. Like the key to me is like getting content to be out there. And along with the price of the Cosmos is six months to 12 months subscription free of this Viveport Infinity, which is like unlimited, unlimited VR content. And that's a really kind of a big deal in terms of getting people sort of comfortable with VR in general. So that's kind of a key thing. You mentioned those enterprise, the Decree, for example. AR headsets is way too early. Like I don't think it's too enterprise heavy right now. Even the Magic Leap, which is like, you know, the hottest AR headset company out there, even that's kind of like not really in the public sort of. So I think AR is harder because they don't have to benefit. I feel like with VR headsets, you have the benefit of like, oh, VR games, you can play video games with it, right? OK, that sounds kind of cool. So that's that's that's an entry point. Whereas with AR, it's like, what do you use AR headsets for? Like, what is this? What what is this for? And I think they've never really solved that like, like sort of solution for AR headsets just yet, I think. Well, I think they have. They've solved it as it's an enterprise tool, if you're out in the field and, you know, doing something like that, right? So I, you know, I also think a lot of people look at VR and go, what is that for? You know, and it also has a lot of enterprise stuff. But there is more of a gaming base for it. My prediction, my feeling, not even a prediction, my feeling is VR and AR are going into that deep wilderness that PCs went through in the late 80s and early 90s, where they're mostly for business. They have some consumer uses, but they're still kind of niche. And at some point, something will emerge that give them massive popularity and break them out like happened with PCs. So we just have to wait and see what that is. Yeah. And, you know, with the Vive Cosmos, it was really interesting how the tutorial setup and the software setup was very much designed to bring in newbies, like new commerce VR. It was designed to be like, what is this? Or you do it, you press this to go there. And it was like designed to sort of like on board people to the concept of VR. And because of that, a lot of the experiences were like, you know, traveled through a virtual museum and like play a little car. Like it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't very like hardcore gaming, but content. It was like very like, you know, like visiting museums and things like that. Well, real quickly, before we move on, Sarah, there's some some news that news so rarely happens in the tech world while we're doing the show, but this did. Especially on a Friday, Friday the 13th of all, Friday's movie pass announced, yes, recently that it shutting down its service on September 14th. So that's tomorrow. Company said to subscribers in a notice that it was ending the service because efforts to capitalize movie pass were not successful to date. Parent company, Hellos and Matheson analytics has said that it has formed a review committee to see if there's a possible sale of all or at least some of the assets. We will try to contact both subscribers to find out how they feel about this.  Movie pass surprised me with how long it lasted. I was expecting this story six to nine months ago. So, you know, have to have to give them credit for that. Thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. You get full credit every day. Submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. If you're part of our Facebook group, but you get credit too. Facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech new show is where to join in on the fun. Let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Brian wrote in and said, it seems like Nintendo had anticipated Sarah's concerns. This was yesterday since Ring Fit Adventure includes a silent mode that doesn't require you to lift your feet off the floor, which would avoid that stomping complaint from neighbors that I had mentioned on yesterday's show. It was why I stopped playing dance. Yeah, I mean, real talk, that was an issue, right? Yeah, yeah, I was and they weren't even wrong. I was like, I'm so sorry, you're right. I've been jumping around on your head. I think you should have realized that a company headquartered in Kyoto, so close to Tokyo, where most people live in apartments with lots of neighbors. This this would be an obvious feature for them to include, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, so thanks, Brian. That is a good tip and thanks to everybody who contributes to our mailbag. Yeah. And by the way, you still move around when you're in silent mode. You just don't stomp your feet. All right, let's check in with Len Peralta, who has been illustrating the show. What have you drawn for us today, Len? Well, I'm still trying to work out the details of how to share on Skype. But this, you know, this is an image that I couldn't let pass, because I think this might be of all my Friday appearances, might be my first Friday, the 13th appearance. Oh, wow. And and this is showing that VR, you know, is not dead. It is a it's alive and well. As a matter of fact, the person I drew is so into it.  It's a Friday the 13th. I'm alive and well, enjoying some VR with my best friend. And his friend is over in the corner. I believe not doing well. It might be dead. And Jason is there kind of taken over. Jason with a hockey mask. Yes, Jason. Jason Voorhees. Jason Voorhees. Yeah, VR. I love it. I had a friend had to clarify that. Yeah, so this is available right now at patreon, patreon.com forward slash Len or you can get it at my online store at Len for Halloween Party now. Yes, or your Friday the 13th party. There you go. Len for all to store dot com dot com. Thank you, Len. Excellent art as always, Len. And also thanks to Nicole Lee for being with us on this spooky Friday, the 13th, Nicole. Hopefully you'll be staying safer than the hard work displayed later on today. Let folks never think you can keep up with your work. You can just go to Engadget.com or follow me on Twitter, twitter.com slash Nicole. And folks, please, please, please. If you have time today, Friday the 13th, go check out our proposal for a new Patreon tiers, we're going to be solidifying that today. And Monday, we'll post up what the new tiers will be. Our reward tiers will change starting October 1st. So all the rewards delivered at the end of September on October 1st. Will be the same as they are right now. But starting October 1st, new patrons will get new rewards. And of course, ongoing patrons will get change rewards as well. So if you want to know what those chain proposed changes are and have a chance to have your say about it, this is your last day to do it. We've been taking feedback for the past two weeks at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash Patreon. Our email addresses feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Keep that feedback coming. We're also live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC. And you can find out more at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash live. Back Monday with Dr. Kiki from This Week in Science. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com. The retirement club hopes you have enjoyed this program.


RSES is an international leader in its chosen research fields. Researchers at RSES work on a huge range of problems. Whether it's geophysics, the inside of the US core, all the way to space, to meteorites in the moon, or climate science, glaciers and oceans. And that diversity and richness of background is definitely one of the strengths and that's something that our students really benefit from. We don't do everything, but what we do do, we do extremely well and we focus on it, we give the resources to those areas to actually make world-leading developments. We're blessed with many resources, both in terms of the people and other researchers around us. There's just so many facilities, so if I have another question that I can't answer using the equipment here, then I know that, pretty much guaranteed, there'll be someone else in the building who can help me, who has the equipment and we can really start to answer questions that we didn't really expect we were even going to be asking. I think the greatest strength of the School of Earth Sciences here is definitely the people. On a day-to-day basis, you just get to work with a great variety of excellent researchers. It's a really good science and research community. It's a good student community that we have here as well. It's fun to discover new things. It's fun to design experiments and think about what might have happened on other planets or inside the Earth or in volcanoes and it's exciting every day. I just love science. I love working with other scientists, just the curiosity of being able to find out things that nobody's known before. The whole point of doing research is to enlighten the human race, more probably focused on enlightening our own students so we teach what we research and we try to give them the wonder of the natural universe through what we can actually deliver to them. From my experience going to other institutions around the world, I think it's as good as it gets anywhere here at RSCS. I think this is basically the place to be if you're interested in fundamental research and geochemistry and geophysics. We've consistently been ranked in the top 10 or 15 Earth Sciences departments worldwide. We want to sustain and enhance that position and to do that we are in a process of continual renewal so it's very important that we bring in high quality PhD students and early career post-doctoral researchers.