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And from this follows an underappreciated consequence of modern financial infrastructure: credit cards and debit transactions make the economy more efficient. One way you can measure that efficiency gain is that their users rarely go to jail. Partly that is because you can do a near real-time prediction of whether the transaction has good funds behind it at the point-of-sale. Partly it is because we more fully move credit risk from the grocery store to the bank.

From The Long Shadow of Checks.

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Next year’s artificial intelligence battle is coming into focus—and it’s all about glasses.

As they release more powerful AI that can understand images and language, Meta Platforms, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and others are racing to apply the technology to smart glasses and other wearable devices with forward-facing cameras. It’s a vision many of the companies have discussed or worked on for years, but they have a new reason to think they can pull it off: the sudden rise of multimodal AI that understands drawings, charts, objects and hand gestures in addition to text and audio.

From OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft Chase Wearable AI — The Information.

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Yearn Finance said a faulty script wiped out 63% of a position in its treasury, but user funds were not affected.
Yearn is asking users who profited from the bug to return a “reasonable” amount to the protocol’s multisig.

From: Yearn Finance says faulty script wiped out $1.4 million from treasury | The Block.

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The launch of digital currency will be a once-in-a-generation change in the way that money works, so it is very important that the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and everyone else take the time to work out exactly how it should work and make sure that it is implemented correctly. There is no burning platform, as they say: we do need digital currency but we don’t need it tomorrow and it’s much more important to get it right than to get it quickly.

From Digital sterling is coming, but it won’t be anytime soon – ThePaypers.

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Apple AAPL 1.67%increase; green up pointing triangle is rolling out a new security setting for iPhones following Wall Street Journal reporting about a vulnerability that allowed thieves to break into victims’ devices and upend their lives.

The Journal reported on a nationwide spate of thefts where criminals used iPhone owners’ passcodes to change their Apple accounts, access saved passwords, steal money and lock them out of their iCloud-stored photos and videos. Thieves in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis and other cities watch iPhone owners tap in their passcodes before stealing the targets’ devices.

These thefts resulted in losses far beyond phones, as the Journal’s reporting showed, because Apple’s security settings gave victims few ways of preventing harm once their passcodes fell into the wrong hands. We have heard from hundreds of people over the past year whose iPhones and digital lives were stolen.

The new Stolen Device Protection setting, designed to defend against such attacks, is being released to beta testers.

From: Apple’s iOS 17.3 Stolen Device Protection Update Aims to Stop iPhone Thieves – WSJ.

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The rest of the world holds a great deal of U.S. currency, i.e., cash. Although the amount can’t be precisely tracked, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors recently estimated that foreigners held $950 billion in U.S. banknotes at the end of the first quarter of 2021, or about 45% of all Federal Reserve notes outstanding, including two-thirds of all $100 bills. Overall holdings of U.S. currency have grown rapidly, however, and overseas holdings of Federal Reserve notes would now be worth closer to $1.1 trillion if such holdings are still half of all U.S. currency.

From: The Innocent Greenbacks Abroad: U.S. Currency Held Internationally.

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The Council of the European Union has introduced changes to a proposed package of legislation to establish a legal basis for issuing mobile driver’s licenses into European Digital Identity Wallets.

From: EU Council proposes launch of mobile driver’s licenses for digital wallets | Biometric Update.

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As a performer, Razzlekhan was both hypersexual and aggressively unappealing.

From Number Go Up – Marginal REVOLUTION.

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UK Finance’s report said “cash payments increased for the first time in a decade”, adding that the number of payments made using physical cash increased by 7% last year, compared with 2021, to 6.4 billion payments.

But, due to the higher total volume of payments made last year, the share of payments made using cash still fell slightly, from 15% to 14%.

Cash remains the second most frequently-used payment method, although a decade ago, more than half (54%) of all payments were made with cash.

By 2032, UK Finance expects cash use to halve, resulting in less than 7% of payments being made using cash.

From Number of cash payments rises for first time in a decade | The Independent.

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Nearly nine in 10 European consumers using a contactless payment ring say that it is their preferred method for making contactless payments (89%) compared with smartphone payments (49%) and payment cards (44%), according to a Mastercard survey.

The survey comes as Mastercard partners with Intesa Sanpaolo bank to roll out a contactless NFC payments ring in Italy, enabling users to connect the device to their bank-issued Mastercard payment card and use it to make contactless payments at the point of sale.

“Payment rings represent a further step towards the spread of the internet of things,” Mastercard says. It adds that the key drivers for consumer adoption are “the desire to make payments quickly (82%), to be at the forefront (69%) and to be fashionable (31%)”, with nearly one in three older users also citing safety reasons (32%).

From: Nine in 10 payment ring users say it’s their favourite way to pay • NFCW.

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