Snippings

Large language models will upend human rituals https://buff.ly/3Xkkc26

“Exactly because LLMs are mindless, they might enact organisational rituals more efficiently, and sometimes more compellingly, than curious and probing humans ever could.”

What an interesting point. This hadn’t occurred to me: but basically since so much of what goes on inside organisations is just bullshit, LLMs will be very good at it. This could be their greatest contribution to humanity, meaning that I will never have to fill out another TPS report as long as I live.

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Everyday life depends on ritual performances such as being polite, dressing appropriately, following proper procedure and observing the law. Organisations couldn’t work without rituals. When you write a reference letter for a former colleague or give or get a tchotchke on Employee Appreciation Day, you are enacting a ceremony, reinforcing the foundations of a world in which everyone knows the rules and expects them to be observed—even if you sometimes secretly roll your eyes. We have recently discovered much better engines for efficiently performing rituals: large language models (llms). Their main use is within organisations, where LLM are being applied to speed up the efficiency of internal processes. People already use them to produce boilerplate language, write mandatory statements and end-of-year reports, or craft routine emails. External uses directed at organisations—such as composing personal statements for college applications—are rising fast, too. Even if LLMs don’t improve further, they will transform these aspects of institutional life.

From: Large language models will upend human rituals.

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British Airways’ scheme, Avios, for example, operates at a 25% margin, compared with 10% reported by its parent. In addition, the business is more stable, less capital intensive, and not as seasonal as flying planes.

From: Banks in Disguise – by Marc Rubinstein – Net Interest.

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OnlyFans, the UK company that provides a subscription streaming platform for sex workers, sports stars and celebrities, has paid more than $630mn to its owner, Ukrainian-American entrepreneur Leonid Radvinsky, since the start of last year.

The company said it had paid $6.6bn to the content creators who use its platform as a means of reaching their “fans” in 2023, an increase of about $1bn from the previous year.

From: Porn streamer OnlyFans paid owner $630mn in dividends.

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The number of creator accounts grew to 4.1mn while the total number of fan accounts grew to 305mn, both an increase of almost a third on 2022.

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According to Visa, the new A2A framework will be based on an open system available for all eligible banks and other industry partners to join. It introduces standards, rules and a dispute management service to help protect consumers and further modernize open banking-based payments. It is being designed in partnership with leading FinTechs in the U.K., including Banked, Modulr, Moneyhub, Salt Edge, Vyne and Yaspa, and will be delivered by key U.K. industry players working with Visa.

From: Visa’s New A2A Offering ‘Opens’ Choice and Security in the UK.

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Noelle Acheson 

@noelleacheson

Tokenized deposits and stablecoins may sound like the same thing, given that they are both fiat-on-chain. But they are actually distinct concepts, and the difference matters for use cases, regulation and our broader appreciation of blockchain potential.

From: Friday, Sept 6, 2024 – by Noelle Acheson.

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To the degree that the Visa concept can replace digital wallets — the same day, the company announced enhancements to its “tap to pay” service — could trim some costs.

“It’s better than paying Apple,” says Erin McCune, referring to the fee assessed by Apple Pay for transactions going through that digital wallet.

From: What Payments Experts Say Visa’s Plan is for ‘Flexible Credential’.

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The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) is currently consulting the market on the issue of “big tech” and digital wallets, highlighting the importance of both in the future of retail payments. In particular, they are interested in looking at the barriers to digital wallets integrating account-to-account payments (as a means to bring more competition to the sector) and the wider issue of how wallets choose the payment system for transactions. Which, of course, raises the question of who choses and how conflicts are resolved.

The scenarios that 

So, I finish my shopping and walk out of the supermarket, at which point the supermarket

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The owner of a high street mobile phone shop has become the first person in the UK to be charged with operating an illegal cryptocurrency ATM, according to Kent Police.
Officers carried out a search warrant at the Gadcet shop in Chatham’s High Street on 28 April 2023, where they said they seized a number of crypto ATMs, including one on public display.
Habibur Rahman, 37, of Langdon Crescent in East Ham, London, was arrested on the same day and has now been charged with operating the machine without registration from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
He is also alleged to have laundered £300,000 of criminal cash by converting it into cryptocurrency.

From: Crypto: ‘First’ person in UK charged with operating illegal ATM – BBC News.

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The new reimbursement requirement will introduce, for the first time, consistent minimum standards to reimburse victims of APP fraud and essentially it will:

require sending PSPs to reimburse all-in scope customers who fall victim to APP fraud in most cases; 
involve the sharing of costs for reimbursing victims on a 50:50 ratio between sending and receiving PSPs; and 
provide additional protection for vulnerable customers.
The PSR have now published three legal instruments which give effect to the reimbursement requirement: (i) a specific requirement (SR1) imposed on Pay. UK to include the reimbursement requirement in the Faster Payments scheme rules; (ii) a specific direction (SD20) given to participants in Faster Payments, obliging them to comply with the reimbursement requirement and the reimbursement rules; and (iii) a specific direction (SD19) given to Pay.UK to create and implement an effective compliance monitoring regime for PSPs.

From: New UK APP fraud rules: what PSPs need to know – ThePaypers.

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