Snippings

xxx

Under the Technate, humans would no longer need names; they would have numbers. (One Technocrat called himself 1x1809x56.) They dressed in gray suits and drove gray cars. If this sounds familiar—tech bros and their gray hoodies and silver Teslas, cryptocurrency and the abolition of currency—it should. As a political movement, Technocracy fell out of favor in the nineteen-forties, but its logic stuck around. Elon Musk’s grandfather was a leader of the Technocracy movement in Canada; he was arrested for being a member, and then, soon after South Africa announced its new policy of apartheid, he moved to Pretoria, where Elon Musk was born, in 1971. One of Musk’s children is named x æ a-12. Welcome to the Technate.

From The Data Delusion | The New Yorker:

xxx

xxx

No, seriously: On March 20, DeSantis, speaking from a podium bearing a sign reading “Big Brother’s Digital Dollar,” announced that he plans to introduce legislation that would ban Floridians from making use of a digital currency issued by the federal government. Such a digital currency, he asserted, would be used to “impose an E.S.G. agenda” and would, for example, prevent people from spending too much on gas or from buying rifles.

From Opinion | Why Is DeSantis Against Central Bank Digital Currencies? – The New York Times:

xxx

xxx

Tinkoff — designated by the EU in its tenth round of sanctions at the end of February — has built a physical alternative to Apple Pay: a sticker with a near-field chip, which is connected to their accounts. Attached to the front of a phone, it turns it into a contactless device.

From Russians search for bootleg solutions to overcome payments sanctions | Financial Times:

xxx

xxx

The need for creative payments solutions, at home and abroad, is obvious. Not only have Visa and Mastercard cut services in Russia but Mir, which has helped keep domestic payments flowing, is also now accepted in just a handful of countries, such as Belarus and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

What is also obvious, say experts, is that one year since the invasion began Russia’s need to continuously innovate to keep payments flowing demonstrates just how hard it is to exist outside of the US financial system, let alone supplant it.

From Russians search for bootleg solutions to overcome payments sanctions | Financial Times:

xxx

xxx

To the extent that cryptocurrencies have been used for legitimate transactions — as opposed to, say, ransom payments — the currencies in question have often been “stablecoins,” whose issuers promise to redeem the coins on demand for ordinary dollars. The problem is that a stablecoin issuer is basically just a reinvented version of an ordinary bank, without the regulations and guarantees that make conventional banks mostly safe.

From Opinion | Why Is DeSantis Against Central Bank Digital Currencies? – The New York Times:

xxx

xxx

According to a blog post, WebGPU can let developers achieve the same level of graphics they can now with far less code and provides “more than three times improvements in machine learning model inferences.” That last one is a real kicker — improved machine learning performance was interesting in 2021, when the feature was added to Chrome on an experimental basis, but now that we’re in the age of generative AIs and large language models, it could be even more of a boon.

From Google is rolling out WebGPU tech for next-gen gaming in your browser – The Verge.

xxx

The European Savings and Retail Banking Group (ESBG) have published their views on the Digital Euro.

Therefore, although supportive of the Digital Euro, we are of the opinion that many legitimate and reasonable questions still need to be answered and a successful implementation needs to properly address the above concerns. In order to achieve this, we argue for significantly lower maximum caps on holdings. For the distributors of the Digital Euro, a long-term sustainable business model will be required. And if the Digital Euro will be positioned as a retail payments product, it should not use its privileged position as a public-money funded product by mandatory acceptance requirements that distort the competitive retail payments market.

From A Digital Euro: what does it mean for savings and retail banks? – WSBI ESBG.

xxx

xxx

What ChatGPT said was correct in every way, except for the facts

From (3) What ChatGPT said was correct in every way, except for the facts | LinkedIn.

xxx

Sam Altman sees GPT-4 going rogue in the hands of humans who use its power for evil.

‘I’m particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation,’ Altman told ABC NEWS.

‘Now that they’re getting better at writing computer code, [they] could be used for offensive cyberattacks.’

From ChatGPT CEO admits he is ‘scared’ the bot could be used for ‘large-scale disinformation’ | Daily Mail Online.

xxx

xxx

So what did this new study find? The chance of an incorrect match is now 1 in 6,000 — sizeably lower than the 1 in 1,000 seen in the first trials. It’s a significant improvement that means the Met is less likely to accidentally flag innocent people while using LFR.

From (1) More facial recognition is coming to London – London Spy.

xxx