A library of snippets
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As participants became more cognitively fatigued, they were much less likely to choose the more demanding option, even though it could pay more. This decision let us understand how cognitive fatigue can make people value possible rewards versus greater effort.
From: How mental exhaustion changes the choices you make | Scientific American.
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I had an interesting back-to-the-future moment while leafing through The Economist recently. This concerns location services in the absence of GPS (because GPS can be, and in fact is, jammed).
The idea is to take advantage of the Doppler shift in signals being bounced off of satellites, which currently works with errors of 100m up to more than 1km. One way to obtain greater accuracy is to place a master receiver at a known location to compare the Doppler shifts expected from a satellite’s forecast trajectory with those it actually observes, and broadcast corrections to receivers at unknown locations.
Many, many years ago I worked on a similar system that was used to obtain greater accuracy on GPS location services in the days when the signal used to be degraded for non-military users. In those days, a satellite channel was used to broadcast corrections from a GPS receiver in a known location (I think it was in Aberdeen, if memory serves) out to ships and oil rigs in the North Sea.
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A fiat-backed stablecoin is, in monetary terms, a claim on a segregated pool of reserve assets, issued one for one against funds delivered to the issuer. To mint a stablecoin, someone must first hand over a dollar. The issuer parks that dollar in Treasury bills, reverse repos, or bank deposits, and the token circulates as a bearer-style representation of the claim.
This is 100 percent reserve banking in modern dress. The issuer performs no maturity transformation worth the name and, crucially, no credit creation. The supply of stablecoins responds to demand for the token itself: for dollar exposure offshore, for settlement in crypto markets, for cross-border payments.From: The Elasticity Question: Why Stablecoins and Tokenized Deposits Are Different Money | Kenneth Bok.
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On 13 September 2026 the Guardian reported that unlicensed casinos had used the branding of several household names, including Barclays, Monzo and Tesco, in ads on Facebook and Instagram that gave the false impression the businesses had launched their own casinos. One Facebook ad for “Barclays Slots”, since taken down, showed “an apparently AI-generated woman” who turned round to reveal she was playing a Barclays casino game on her phone. Other ads promoted “Monzo slots” using the bank’s imagery.
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SINGAPORE – Authorities here are exploring whether the internet’s existing website verification systems can be repurposed to track autonomous artificial intelligence agents, as part of a broader assessment of whether a dedicated national registry is needed.
Specifically, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) is working with technology firms to explore adapting the domain name system (DNS), often called the internet’s address book, to identify and verify AI agents across different platforms and organisations.From: Singapore explores adapting DNS for AI agent tracking | The Straits Times.
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Barclays and Monzo continue to battle with unlicensed casinos illegally using their brands to promote online gambling.
The two banks have reported the fake advertisements, which give the false impression that the lenders have launched their own casinos, to the Advertising Standards Authority. The ads have also been reported to the social media platforms where they were posted.
From: Barclays and Monzo grapple with fake casino ads – The Banker.
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Nearly half of respondents (48.4%) said they asked an AI chatbot about their money in the past year. Among those who did, 77.8% said they acted on the answer, and 28.7% acted on it without checking it against another source or a financial professional.
From: Nearly Half of Americans Surveyed Asked AI About Their Money, and Most Acted on Its Answers.
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“If they can go and ask the chatbot the question, that wall or veil of anxiety may be taken down. Now they’re coming to me armed with more information about that.” — Billy Spencer, director and wealth manager at Boston-based Crestwood Advisors
From: The ‘advisor paradox’ of clients who trust AI for financial advice | American Banker.
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SMX (Security Matters) PLC (NASDAQ:SMX) develops molecular traceability and material authentication technologies designed to strengthen supply-chain transparency and integrity across global industries. Its platform embeds invisible molecular markers directly into physical materials, including solids, liquids and gases, allowing them to carry a persistent identity that can be detected and verified throughout their lifecycle.
From: SMX Technology Helping Prove “Made in America” is Great Again.
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Simon Taylor
the merchants supporting agents are showing high ROI, the average Stripe Link instinct user spends $1300 per month
From: Home / X.
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