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A document that was written just a year after William the Conquer did his conquering has gone on display in the City of London. It’s dated from 1067, and is the oldest document owned by the City of London, as it confirms the rights of the City after the new King was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
From The City of London’s oldest document is currently on public display:
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Just as we see holograms of ABBA playing to packed crowds in London and a young Bruce Willis appearing in advertisements (Willis has sold his rights to be recreated by AI for future film projects as well) we surely soon see celebrities all around us enabling transactions in the metaverse. Pop into your bank branch and you’ll be served by the celebrity that AI determines
Bruce Willis may have retired from acting following a diagnosis of aphasia, but a version of him will live on in future projects. Last year, the actor’s “digital twin” appeared in an ad for a Russian telecom created by a company called Deepcake. Now, it’s being reported that he sold his rights for future film, advertising and other projects to Deepcake, according to the company’s website and The Telegraph.
Engineers created the digital double drawing from content in Die Hard and Fifth Element, when Willis was 32 and 42, respectively. With his likeness now on the company’s AI platform, it can graft his likeness onto another actor’s face in a relatively short amount of time.
From A Bruce Willis deepfake will appear in his stead for future film projects | Engadget:
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How many times every day are stories like this repeated around the world? A bungled software upgrade
A man had hundreds of pounds drained from his bank account after being charged over a hundred times for parking fines.
Andy Gynn, from Worcester, found himself in an unarranged overdraft after he was wrongly charged £610 in tickets.
Dozens of others in Worcester have reported being charged similar huge fees, with many being sent fines from car parks they never used or weeks after they parked.
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A report published last week on revamping the Government of Canada’s digital infrastructure states that the next step to making services more convenient is to introduce a federal “Digital Identity Program.”
Details of the program were scarce in the publication titled Canada’s Digital Ambition 2022 which was signed off by President of the Treasury Board Mona Fortier and the Chief Information Officer of Canada, Catherine Luelo.
Citing the pandemic, the report outlines how a federal framework would also be integrated with provincial digital identities.
“The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for government services to be accessible and flexible in the digital age. The next step in making services more convenient to access is a federal Digital Identity Program, integrated with pre-existing provincial platforms,” the report explained.
From Trudeau government to introduce national “Digital Identity Program” | True North:
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Think stated that 41% of people have been denied credit due to the inability to verify identity or legal status, and 35% have been denied due to the inability to access payment history. Furthermore, 33% of self-employed workers say their employment status has been an obstacle for them getting a mortgage, while 31% believe it has hampered their ability to obtain credit.
Tink stated that many people are being excluded from credit due to outdated and blinkered credit scoring models. It added that traditional credit checks means there is no robust way of protecting consumers if economic circumstances change and affordability becomes an issue.
Tink UK and IE Banking and lending director Tasha Chouhan said, “It’s clear many lenders still rely on traditional credit checks to determine eligibility for loans. There is no place for such models in our current economic climate, and the sooner this is recognised, the better the outcome will be for both lenders and consumers.
“New forward-looking models are drawing on open banking technology to provide a holistic picture of people’s finances. It’s vital to protect potentially at risk or vulnerable consumers from problem debt or default as the economic climate worsens. At the same time, it’s key to promoting financial inclusion, as people now more than ever need access to safe, affordable, and regulated borrowing options.”
From Traditional lending models not ‘fit for purpose’ – Tink claims.
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Regardless, this technology is improving quickly. It’s objectively cool. It’s also objectively scary. Imagine a world in which an AI can almost instantly produce realistic videos of, well, anything—from violent content to fake news.
From Google’s Stadia Flop and Zuckerberg’s Oh-So-Innocent AI — The Information.
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The NPP launched in 2018 and offers a 280-character description field that, in some cases, is being laced with serious abuse. The perpetrators of abuse were making low value transactions – often as little as one cent – as a means to reach their victims.
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One particular sticking point appears to be around offline use, in which transactions are validated on a peer-to-peer basis, as opposed to online checks conducted by individual banks. “The time to market for this solution is more uncertain” the ECB states. “The development of a third-party validated solution for online payments should not be delayed in case the timely delivery of a peer-to-peer validated solution for offline payments proves to be unfeasible.”
From Digital euro will not be available until 2026, at the earliest.
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Writing on the International Monetary Fund blog recently, John Kiff pointed out that as the world’s central banks rush to develop digital currencies, almost all the research and trials focus on internet-based technology. He then goes on to ask the obvious questions: What will happen when the web goes down in a war? What if there is a natural disaster? And what about the 75 percent of the world’s adult low-income population that doesn’t even have internet access? For a digital currency to be useful, it must work offline. And here, John says, the future of offline CBDCs may lie in the technological past. That’s where a little-noticed but long-running push to develop offline digital payment systems (eg, Mondex) comes in. Some of this work goes back a generation, to that long ago time before smartphones!
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Square’s Early Access Program for Tap to Pay on iPhone is officially over and the payment option is now available to all sellers in the U.S. using an iPhone and Square’s point of sale (POS) app.
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