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Australia is planning to ban children from using social media amid concerns that platforms like Instagram and TikTok are negatively affecting young people’s physical and mental health.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday that the government will launch an age verification trial in the coming months ahead of the introduction of legislation to enforce a ban.

From: Australia says it will ban minors from using social media | Social Media News | Al Jazeera.

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I feel that it could have worked better, and there is still time to make some improvements, but it hasn’t resulted in anything negative. On the contrary, it gave us branding, it brought us investments, it brought us tourism.

From: Read the Transcript of President Bukele’s Interview With TIME | TIME.

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Brazil’s instant payment system Pix is seen surpassing credit cards as the leader in the local online purchase market as soon as next year, earlier than initially expected, a new study from Brazilian payments firm Ebanx showed on Monday.

From: Brazil’s Pix to overtake credit cards in e-commerce as soon as 2025, study shows | Reuters.

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New algorithms are therefore needed. And because switching over to them will take years, the transition to post-quantum cryptography (pqc) needs to begin as soon as possible. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (nist), America’s standards agency, has now fired the starting gun for this transition. On August 13th nist announced that three algorithms had been approved as official standards for pqc. Two are based on lattice problems, a type of mathematical puzzle challenging for quantum and classical computers alike. The third, which is based on the hash functions used in data analysis, avoids having too many eggs in a single basket.

From: The world needs codes quantum computers can’t break.

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Skyfire created a payment network specifically for AI agents to make autonomous transactions. Now, obviously, AI agents are hard to control today, so the idea of one tied to your bank account is terrifying. However, Skyfire uses a number of safeguards to prevent AI agents from overspending, making the whole thing a little less scary.
Skyfire assigns each AI agent a digital wallet with a unique identifier, where businesses can deposit a set amount of funds they want the agent to spend, so they don’t get unlimited access to a bank account. Skyfire also allows customers to set limits on how much an AI agent can spend in one transaction and over time. If an AI agent tries to overspend, it will ping a human to review it. Skyfire also offers a dashboard to view exactly how much, and where, their agent is spending.

From: Skyfire lets AI agents spend your money | TechCrunch.

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$8.5 million in seed funding raised from Neuberger Berman, Inception Capital, Arrington Capital, and other investors

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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