A library of snippets
xxx
EMVCo, which is collectively owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, Mastercard, UnionPay and Visa, has formed the Electric Vehicle Open Payments Task Force. The task force will engage with EV industry participants to look for ways to apply EMV payment technology or standardized transaction processing to EV charging.
From: Electric vehicles may spark a new EMV standard | PaymentsSource | American Banker.
xxx
xxx
A select number of US customers will be eligible for the pilot programme after completing a security validation during the SafeKey checkout process and using a device and browser that support facial and fingerprint recognition. These features will be rolled out to all US cardholders in early 2024.
From: American Express to pilot biometrics at the online checkout.
xxx
xxx
Built using AI technology, Eternity is one of the latest South Korean acts pushing the boundary between real and virtual entertainment. And the group’s creator and management company, Pulse9, believes that computer-generated stars have a significant edge over their real-life counterparts.
From: Virtual K-pop bands powered by AI are on the rise in South Korea | CNN.
xxx
xxx
ritain’s passport database of 45 million people will be used to help catch shoplifters, burglars and car and bike thieves under plans to tackle crime.
Video of suspected crime from CCTV, doorbell and dashcam technology would be compared against facial images from a range of government databases to find a match under the plans.
The immigration and asylum biometrics system would also be available in order to search for foreign nationals who are not on the passports database.
Chris Philp, the policing minister, urged members of the public to make citizen’s arrests if they spot shoplifters
THOMAS KRYCH/ALAMY
Chris Philp, the crime and policing minister, said he is planning to integrate data from the police national database (PND), HM Passport Office and other national databases in order to enable police to find a match with the “click of one button”. He said he is aiming to have the amalgamated system up and running within two years and predicted it would be a gamechanger for catching thieves. He also called on members of the public to make citizen’s arrests in supermarkets if they see shoplifters.From: Passport database ‘will be used to catch shoplifters and burglars’.
xxx
xxx
The new CEO of Hong Kong’s Octopus Group plans to gradually shift the stored-value payment service “from plastic to phone”, while also renewing efforts to better penetrate local markets where physical cash is still king.
xxx
xxx
The project is inspired by the New Babylon project of artist Constant Nieuwenhuys, who co-founded the avant-garde COBRA art movement in the 1950s.
xxx
xxx
Confirmation of Payee (CoP) was introduced at the end of March 2020. With CoP, the name associated with a new payee’s account can be checked against the sort code and account number. The service has been identified by the industry as a tool that can help consumers better protect themselves and make sure they are paying in to the correct account.
From Has Confirmation of Payee been successful in combating APP fraud? | Insights | UK Finance.
xxx
xxx
Supporting this, our recent poll found that 43 per cent of those surveyed felt that the value of using CoP to help tackle APP fraud had been neutral at best if not useless.
From Has Confirmation of Payee been successful in combating APP fraud? | Insights | UK Finance.
xxx
PSR Indeed, we estimate that around 130 million accounts now have access to CoP and there are more than a million CoP checks occurring every day.
xxx
With total operating income for the quarter of $1.5 billion, we can assume SkyMiles represents about half of Delta’s profits, despite being just 11% of revenu
xxx
Almost 32 per cent of Japanese men and 24 per cent of women have never been married. Ever fewer young Japanese are tying the knot and the annual number of marriages — still overwhelmingly a Japanese social prerequisite for producing children — is half what it was in the 1970s. Last year, fewer than 800,000 babies were born in Japan and the indigenous population shrank by over half a million.
xxx
The small rice paddies and vegetable farms on which the village lives are productive but raggedy. Electric fences surround many of the plots because Ichinono’s shrinking population no longer produces the sort of bustle and activity that once convinced bears, deer, monkeys and boars to confine themselves to the nearby hills.
From Japan’s toddler superstar: the baby bringing hope to a ghost village | Financial Times.
Wait? What? Bears? Yep. The number of bear attacks in Japan has been rising at an “alarming rate“, authorities say, mostly because young people, are leaving rural farming villages. Many of them have migrated to big cities, emptying villages or towns that have already been shrinking due to an ageing population. Faced with the problem of bears attacking depopulated rural areas, the Japanese have naturally responded with robots. They are deploying solar-powered “Monster Wolves” with “gleaming red eyes, bone-chilling howls and bared fangs” to drive away all kinds of animals in the countryside and to stop bears from entering urban areas and attacking people.
xxx
Hands-free livestreaming: You can now livestream from the glasses to Facebook or Instagram. And you can see the comments in your preview, or tap and hold on the side of your glasses to hear them out loud to engage with your community as you’re living in the moment.
Meta AI: We’ve integrated Meta AI, our advanced conversational assistant, on Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and optimized it for a hands-free, on-the-go experience. By saying “Hey Meta,” you can engage with Meta AI to spark creativity, get information, and control features — just by using your voice. Meta AI features will be available in the US in beta only at launch.
From Introducing the New Ray-Ban | Meta Smart Glasses | Meta.
xxx
Snippings