Snippings

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The European digital identity wallet

One of the main policy objectives of the proposal is to provide citizens and other residents, as defined by national law, with a harmonised European digital identity means based on the concept of a European digital identity wallet.

As an electronic identification means (‘eID means’) issued under national schemes at assurance level ‘high’, the Wallet would be an eID means in its own right based on the issuing of personal identification data and the wallet by member states. The text of the Council’s general approach therefore further develops the concept of the wallet and its interplay with national electronic identification means.

From European digital identity (eID): Council makes headway towards EU digital wallet, a paradigm shift for digital identity in Europe – Consilium.

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Ray Dalio, the multi-billionaire founder of asset management giants Bridgewater Associates, is as sceptical about Bitcoin as I am. He calls it “a tiny thing that gets disproportionate attention”. This a reasonable description, in my view, but it is at the same time worthwhile noting that its mere existence has triggered evolution across a number of sectors. I was convinced many years ago that Bitcoin is best understand as a protest movement rather than as money which Mr. Dalio says it is not very good at anyway. He says its not an effective money or store of wealth or medium of exchange.

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Fraud is a significant and growing problem. It currently accounts for around 41% of all crime against individuals.

From Progress combatting fraud – National Audit Office (NAO) report:

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Criminals can employ a wide variety of approaches to commit fraud but around 80% of fraud offences in the United Kingdom (UK) are enabled through computer technology. Tackling fraud therefore presents particular challenges because criminals can target thousands of victims remotely from anywhere in the world.

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Nordic payments operator Nets and Softpay equipped all 7-Eleven stores across Denmark with emergency tap-to-pay SoftPOS kit the day after the chain’s payments and checkout terminals were knocked out by a cyberattack.

7-Eleven Denmark was hit by a ransomware attack on all 176 stores in early August.

From Nets and SoftPay get 7-Eleven back on track after ransomware attack.

Why don’t all retailers have emergency SoftPOS kits in store anyway? Another word for an emergency SoftPOS kit is “a phone” and I’m pretty such the managers of most retailers, not to mention the staff, will have one of them.

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The video was produced in 2002 and it can be easy to forget that a world existed before the introduction of smartphones.

“At Accenture, our researchers developed a prototype called Real World Showroom. Using a wireless PDA equipped with an RFID reader, I can query everyday objects around me, such as a tie my friend is wearing,” Accenture’s Joe Tobolski says in the video.

From Video From 2002: RFID Chips Were Supposed to Turn Everyone Into a Salesperson — Paleofuture.

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ast March, a group of researchers made headlines by revealing that they had developed an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool that could invent potential new chemical weapons. What’s more, it could do so at an incredible speed: It took only 6 hours for the AI tool to suggest 40,000 of them.

The most worrying part of the story, however, was how easy it was to develop that AI tool. The researchers simply adapted a machine-learning model normally used to check for toxicity in new medical drugs. Rather than predicting whether the components of a new drug could be dangerous, they made it design new toxic molecules using a generative model and a toxicity data set.

The paper was not promoting an illegal use of AI (chemical weapons were banned in 1997). Instead, the authors wanted to show just how easily peaceful applications of AI can be misused by malicious actors—be they rogue states, nonstate armed groups, criminal organizations, or lone wolves. Exploitation of AI by malicious actors presents serious and insufficiently understood risks to international peace and security.

From Civilian AI Is Already Being Misused by the Bad Guys – IEEE Spectrum.

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How should companies think about IoT consent? Transparency is important—any company selling a connected device should be up-front about its capabilities and about what happens to the device data. Informing the user is the first step.

But the company should encourage the user to inform others as well. It could be as simple as a sticker alerting visitors that a house is under video surveillance.

From The Internet of Things Has a Consent Problem – IEEE Spectrum.

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The chief executive of the Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corporation has doubled down on using facial recognition at its venues to bar lawyers suing the group from attending events.

Speaking to Fox 5 on Thursday, MSG Executive Chairman and CEO James Dolan said Madison Square Garden is a private company and therefore entitled to determine who is allowed to enter its venues for events.

“At Madison Square Garden, if you’re suing us, we’re just asking of you – please don’t come until you’re done with your argument with us,” he said. “And yes, we’re using facial recognition to enforce that.”

From Madison Square Garden CEO doubles down on use of facial recognition tech | CNN Business.

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the quality of management in British companies is the worst in the G7

From How to fix the British economy | Financial Times.

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OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT, has ramped up its hiring around the world, bringing on roughly 1,000 remote contractors over the past six months in regions like Latin America and Eastern Europe, according to people familiar with the matter… 40% are computer programmers who are creating data for OpenAI’s models to learn software engineering tasks. OpenAI’s existing Codex product, launched in Aug. 2021, is designed to translate natural language into code.

From OpenAI has hired an army of contractors to make basic coding obsolete | Semafor.

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