Snippings

A property tycoon has been sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in Vietnam’s history, with an estimated $27bn (£21.5bn) in damages.

 

A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defence arguments by Truong My Lan, the chair of the major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade.xxx

Lan embezzled $12.5bn, but prosecutors said on Thursday the total damages now amounted to $27bn, a figure equivalent to 6% of the country’s GDP in 2023. Police identified around 42,000 victims of the scandal.

From: Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death in $27bn fraud case | Vietnam | The Guardian.

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The British media were recently reporting on an apparent flood of fake postage stamps coming in to the kingdom fro China. These a proving to be a huge problem and a great annoyance to the populace, since if you are sent a letter that has a bogus stamp on it, then you have to pay the princely sum of five British pounds to get the letter from the Post Office (only to discover it’s a marketing flyer about sheds, or something similar).

So what has brought about the sudden onset of what excitable observers are calling “‘economic warfare”. After all, Royal Mail stamps have only recently made their first technological leap in generations with the addition of bar codes, so why would counterfeiters now pile in? I tend to think that the additional security explains the problem! That is, I suspect that there has always been a goodly trade in fake stamps, but the addition of the bar codes now means that the fakes are being detected. There is not an increase in counterfeiting at all, there is an increase in counterfeit detection.

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Try it here, click on the right on the mention of making full, two-minute songs and use the Explore tab.  To me it is remarkable the resulting AI-generated music is as good as it is.  But it still isn’t anything I would listen to, other than out of curiosity.  It is best at edm, standardized genres such as routine heavy metal, and certain ethnic musics, especially if “the affect” can be created by methods of layering.  Its weakness is an ability to generate the simple, memorable melody, a’la Sir Paul or the other Paul namely Paul Simon.  For my taste there is “not enough music in the music.”  Suno cannot yet create the ineffable something, which is what I listen to music for.

That said, it is not worse than what most people listen to.  It remains to be seen at what pace progress will be made, or whether current approaches, extrapolated to allow for further improvement, can get us to real music, rather than stuff that sounds like music.

From: My review of Suno, AI-generated music – Marginal REVOLUTION.

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on a fundamental level, many financial firms don’t need such high profits to stay afloat in the first place, as much as their shareholders may demand them

From: Credit Card Companies Are About to Invent New Fees for Consumers.

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e) Payments and open banking regulation. For payments, Brazil has both bank licenses and “instituição de pagamentos” (P.I.s), which can initiate and process payments, issue cards, and serve as on and off-ramps for various services. There are some other licenses for forex-only banks and other services. Brazil also adopted an open banking regulation, which is similar to PSD2 in Europe but arguably more efficient and has more mandatory elements.

From: 🧠 Brazil: The country of Fintech’s Future.

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As regards the numbers to be used for the unique identifier or pseudonyms, this is also likely to differ from country to country. Italy could use people’s tax ID as a unique identifier while France or the Netherlands would likely prefer to have sector-based pseudonyms, such as social security numbers in France for health-related matters.

From: The EU Digital Identity Wallet and new eIDAS regulation | IDEMIA.

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Florida governor Ron de Santis has signed House Bill 3 (HB 3) to enact a law requiring social media platforms to implement age verification safeguards to prevent kids under 14 from creating accounts, and to delete existing accounts belonging to minors on request. The law also stipulates that 14- or 15-year old kids wanting accounts must provide parental consent.
For adult content sites requiring users to be over 18, the law also requires that apps and websites offer the option of “anonymous age verification,” which, according to a report in The Verge, “is defined as verification by a third party that cannot retain identifying information after the task is complete.” Although it applies broadly to any site on which more than one third of the content qualifies as “material harmful to minors,” certain sectors, such as porn and gambling, will be in the center of the regulatory target.
Penalties for breaking run up to a maximum of $50,000, for “knowing or reckless” violations.
In an interview with NPR, Carl Szabo of NetChoice, a tech industry association advocating on behalf of major social media platforms for “free enterprise and free expression,” argues that the law sets Floridians up for a major infringement on their privacy rights. “What we are actually going to see is a massive data collection on every single Floridian trying to use social media,” says Szabo. “We are talking about data collection of some of our most sensitive personal information – things like driver’s license numbers, social security numbers, passports and other things to prove that you are who you say you are and you are the age you claim to be.”

From: Florida law brings age verification for adult sites, bans social media for users under 14 | Biometric Update.

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Consumers may be annoyed by some potentially rather complex POS flows as merchants attempt to calculate differential surcharges by card type.

From: Business of Payments – April 2024 – by Geoffrey Barraclough.

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Zimbabwe has introduced a new gold-backed currency called ZiG – the name stands for “Zimbabwe Gold”.
It is the latest attempt to stabilise an economy that has lurched from crisis to crisis for the past 25 years.
Unveiling the new notes, central bank governor John Mushayavanhu said the ZiG would be structured, and set at a market-determined exchange rate.
The ZiG replaces a Zimbabwean dollar, the RTGS, that had lost three-quarters of its value so far this year.
Annual inflation in March reached 55% – a seven-month high.
Zimbabweans have 21 days to exchange old, inflation-hit notes for the new currency.
However, the US dollar, which accounts for 85% of transactions, will remain legal tender and most people are likely to continue to prefer this.
The new ZiG banknotes come in denominations of between 1 and 200.
Coins will also be introduced to overcome the shortage of US coins, which has seen people receive change in sweets, small chocolates and pens.

From: Zimbabwe launches new gold-backed currency – ZiG – BBC News.

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Sex workers are skeptical that crypto can answer all their financial problems.

From: The Truth About Crypto and Sex Work.

I’m sceptical that it can answer any of them

 

Performer Etherealzoey, a plus-size intellectual with ebony skin, has noticed the same reluctance among her clients and peers who were previously crypto-curious.

“Clients tend to be more hesitant when it comes to crypto as well as performers,” Etherealzoey told CoinDesk, noting how the industry changes during a bear market.

However, it’s important to note this shift is specific to crypto, not overall demand for sex workers’ services, which Etherealzoey calls “recession-proof.”