Good morning, and a happy hump day to you. Let’s get into the tech news.
1. CSIRO launches AI sprint
Australia’s national science body has launched an AI sprint, encouraging startups to quickly develop solutions for pressing matters like the cost of living, governance, supply chain resilience, human and environmental well-being, and workforce transformation. A prize of $300,000 in development support money is being awarded to the best solution developed, with $100,000 to second and third placers. “Australia’s AI Sprint offers our innovators the technological expertise and commercial savvy to create AI solutions with real impact for Australia. The initiative provides start-ups and entrepreneurs with the end-to-end support needed to refine their innovations, gain visibility, and bring their AI solutions to market. This is the springboard opportunity to transform AI concepts into real-world impact,” National AI Centre director Stela Solar said. The sprint will last three months.
2. Telstra developing support for critical services in outages
iTnews reports that Telstra is developing a way of keeping critical services, such as emergency calls and EFTPOS services, operational during outages. The method involves hosting critical services in a virtualised cloud environment. “This is a backup network for a catastrophic outage,” Telstra network applications and cloud executive Shailin Sehgal said. “It’s basically an insurance that we [would be] paying for.”
3. Japan bets big on chip boom
Bloomberg reports that Japan is investing the equivalent of $AU102 billion into its chip-making business, hoping to revive the onshore industry. “To survive as a nation, Japan needs to be a global player with technology. And we can clearly demonstrate that with semiconductors,” Rapidus executive Atsuo Shimizu said to Bloomberg (he’s in charge of developing a new chip foundry in the country).
4. Nvidia becomes Wall Street’s most-traded stock
Reuters reports that Nvidia has dethroned Tesla as Wall Street’s most traded stock, with the company’s value booming off the back of generative AI (Nvidia provides a lot of the hardware that makes AI work). Nvidia stock has soared more than 40 per cent so far this year, and when put beside components company Super Micro Computer, these two companies comprise of 46 per cent of all turnover of the 10 most traded Wall Street stocks. Just a bit of tech-related finance for the morning.
5. Twitch raises prices
Twitch is updating its subscription prices on March 28, starting in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Twitch is a streaming platform focused on streaming video games live to thousands of people in a chatroom, with users able to subscribe to individual streamers for a month-to-month fee that costs $7.99. That price is going up next month to $8.99. Twitch has confirmed that the cash percentage split between the platform and the streamer will remain the same.
BONUS ITEM: This is such a cool concept, it’s a shame it didn’t get made.
Concept art from a pitched ‘BATMAN BEYOND’ animated film — by director Patrick Harpin and PD Yuhki Demers (‘Across the Spider-Verse’).
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) February 20, 2024
“Before we pitched, they warned us ‘there is absolutely no way we can do a Beyond movie’, but they loved our enthusiasm. We pitched the outline… pic.twitter.com/39ma1Z4oZp
Have a lovely day.
Image: iStock