Shell signs MoU to help decarbonise businesses in China

Shell has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sinopec, Baowu and BASF to find out the possibility of developing an open source carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) project in the East China region.

“The four parties intend to conduct a joint study to assess the technical solutions and develop a commercial model for the project. The study will also explore to establish high-integrity and verified low-carbon product supply chains and propose enabling policies. If successful, it will be China’s first large-scale open-source CCUS project with a potential capacity of tens of million tonnes of CO2 per year,” said a press release from Shell.

Shell has mooted that an open source project may give industrial firms situated near the middle and lower banks of the Yangtze River chances to capture and store their CO2 emissions. If this idea is effective, CO2 emissions from industrial businesses in the East China region may be captured too. These emissions may then be delivered to a receiving terminal via CO2 carrier ships, where they would subsequently be transported via brief pipelines to onshore and offshore storage facilities. According to Shell, this might present a flexible, effective, and integrated decarbonisation option for businesses in the area.

With an estimated 2,400 gigatonnes of storage capacity, China has significant geological potential for storing carbon, second only to the USA.

Gitpod raises US$ 25 million in funding

Gitpod GmbH, a startup open source developer platform, has raised US$ 25 million in fresh funding to establish ‘cloud development environments’.

The Series A investment was led by Tom Preston-Werner, the creator and former CEO of GitHub. Other notable individual investors include General Catalyst, Crane Venture Partners, Vertex Ventures US, Speedinvest, Pebblebed, GTMfund, and MongoDB Ventures. According to information from Crunchbase, Gitpod has now raised US$ 14 million in total, including the fresh capital.

Gitpod, a 2019 startup, provides an online integrated development environment that can be opened from any GitHub page in a web browser. It offers a fully functional programming environment with support for desktop or browser-based VS

Code or any JetBrains integrated development environment, enabling developers to start coding in only a few seconds. The exact project that is being updated is automatically configured in a separate cloud based Linux container.

Gitpod’s platform was being used by more than 350,000 developers as of its most recent investment round in April 2021. This figure has gone up to 750,000 people. Gitpod is used by developer teams at notable organisations like Google LLC, GitLab Inc., DataStax Inc., and Amazon Web Services Inc.

The organisation guarantees instantaneous accessibility and offers secure development settings. A workspace plugin system, application programming interfaces, and enhanced extensibility are on the development agenda.

Dyndrite is now compatible with the new open vector format

Dyndrite has announced compatibility of its Dyndrite Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) software with the open vector format (OVF) created by the RWTH

Aachen University Chair Digital Additive Production DAP. Scientists at RWTH Aachen University created the open source OVF data format to offer a simplified, information-rich data interface between digital and physical processes. This enables a solid and effective manufacturing process, and also has “a number of advantages over existing formats like CLI and 3MF.”

With the help of a wide range of tools that cover file conversion to OVF files, integrity check routines, and contour, parameter, and layer checks, LPBF processrelevant metadata about manufacturing parameters, laser powder, and scanning speed can be efficiently transported along the process chain with OVF. These tools are available on the OVF GitHub.

The lack of a standardised format for the output data of LPBF processes, according to Dyndrite, is a challenge that has been solved by RWTH Aachen University’s creation of OVF. Dyndrite has integrated OVF export functionality directly into its Application Development Kit (ADK) and LPBF products through a partnership with RWTH Aachen University.

“We developed OVF because there was no satisfactory format for 2.5-dimensional data that was both open-readable and contained additional information besides the actual toolpath,” said Moritz Kolter, group manager digital production, RWTH Aachen University Chair Digital Additive Production DAP. “OVF, however, is able to process data after slicing in a performant, readable

manner and is also able to link other information such as 3D part data or metadata. This is especially important in order to have a fully linked end-to-end data chain that will drive the industrialisation of AM. For example, we use it for advanced production planning or part orientation algorithms to further promote the sustainable and efficient use of technologies such as LPBF.”

KGS releases GIRYPTO, a new open source IP for Web5

With the beginning of its multi-phase GIRYPTO NFT project, Malaysian comic book publisher Kadokawa Gempak Starz (KGS) is launching a brand new open source intellectual property (IP) for Web5 (Web3 + Web2) named GIRYPTO. KGS is bringing value to the metaverse with the launch of this IP as it forays into the blockchain industry.

GIRYPTO is the first open source IP in the comic book industry, which is what makes it so special. Anyone and everyone is free to copy and distribute GIRYPTO contents in any format or medium, as well as remix, adapt, and build upon them for any purpose, even commercially, under the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence agreement, as long as proper acknowledgment is given.

The GIRYPTO NFT project is the first of many GIRYPTO projects that will be introduced. The GIRYPTO Fables NFT series was made available to the public on November 11, 2022. Chibi (cute) illustrations of GIRYPTO characters are included in this NFT series. There are 3,000 pieces available of this free-tomint series. The Fables series also serves as a mint pass for the GIRYPTO Epics NFT series, scheduled to debut in December 2022.

The Epics series, on the other hand, only has 999 pieces and shows the characters in their true form. Fans are advised to keep up with the news as KGS is also working with renowned comic creators from Japan’s Kadokawa Corporation to develop crossovers that will be featured in some of its GIRYPTO NFTs.

S3crets Scanner searches for ‘secrets’ in AWS S3 buckets

Researchers and red-teamers can look for ‘secrets’ accidentally saved in publicly accessible or company-owned Amazon AWS S3 storage buckets using the new open source ‘S3crets Scanner’. Companies frequently utilise Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), a cloud storage service, to store software, services, and data in bucket-like containers.

The S3 buckets may also store ‘secrets’, which include authentication keys, access tokens, and API keys, in addition to application data. These files may be source code or configuration files. Threat actors may be given much wider access to other services or even the company’s corporate network if these secrets are unlawfully disclosed and made available to them.

Security researcher Eilon Harel learned that there are no tools for detecting unintentional data breaches during an exercise looking at SEGA’s recent asset exposure. As a result, he decided to build his own automated scanner and publish it as an open source application on GitHub. Harel developed the Python utility called ‘S3crets Scanner’ to aid in the quick identification of exposed secrets on public S3 buckets. It automatically completes the following tasks:

● Gets a list of public buckets using CSPM

● Uses API requests to display the bucket’s content

● Looks for any exposed text files

● Downloads the necessary text documents

● Looks for secrets in the content

● Sends outcomes to SIEM

Prior to downloading the text files for the ‘secrets scanning’ stage, the list is filtered to remove any buckets that were created with the intention of being made public. The Trufflehog3 tool, an enhanced Go-based variation of the secrets scanner that can check for credentials and private keys on GitHub, GitLab, file systems, and S3 buckets, will be used by the script while scanning a bucket to look at the text files’ contents.

Siren and ShadowDragon collaborate to enhance investigation solutions

A strategic partnership between Siren, a provider of investigative intelligence analytics, and ShadowDragon, a supplier of open source intelligence (OSINT) unique data sets and APIs, has been announced. This partnership will make it easier for modern investigations to find, gather, and sort open source data.

The Siren platform is used in search and discovery operations as well as investigation solutions all around the world. It conducts enterprise-wide search and offers sets of connections that make it possible to clearly visualise and explore relationships between records. The range of data types utilised in open source intelligence is supported by Siren.

Siren may now resell ShadowDragon data, making it possible to obtain the data through straightforward contracts. Both on-premises and cloud implementations of the offering are supported. Numerous customers in the United States, Europe, the

The Merkle Tree Proof of Reserves solution from the cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io is now open source, said Gate.io’s founder and CEO, Dr Lin Han. The exchange welcomes other exchanges to obtain consulting and advisory support. It believes that other platforms can adopt its open source solution to promote transparency and industry health.

In 2020, Gate.io was the first to do Proof of Reserves audits in this way in collaboration with the US company Armanino LLP. The two recently finished another audit. According to a report by Armanino LLP, Gate.io has excess reserves of BTC and ETH, with respective holdings of 108 per cent and

104 per cent.

Since releasing the new audit this year, Gate.io has made a point of emphasising its dedication to boosting market confidence and has expressed the hope that other exchanges will do the same. The audit solution from Gate.io integrates cryptographic Merkle Trees, one of the fundamental building blocks of blockchain technology, with thirdparty certifications.

It promotes the openness of users’ balances on exchanges by enabling them to openly and independently confirm their assets are included in the audit. It is now open source and freely usable by any exchange.