Snippings

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Digital identity is the missing layer of the internet. Without it, everything we build rests on sand.

From: Digital identity is the infrastructure crisis no one admits.

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Under the plans, customers of AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB will be able to send, request and split payments instantaneously with the new Zip Pay service by using the mobile numbers of their contacts who are also using the service.

From: Irish banks unite to take on Revolut with P2P payments app.

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The first law of financial bubbles is this: it is easy to know when you are in one, but difficult to know when it will pop. Still, those who study the issue have identified three signals that tend to mark the beginning of the end. The first is when the demand curve inverts, meaning that demand increases as prices rise. Two highly respected financial economists, José Scheinkman of Columbia University and Hyun Song Shin of the Bank for International Settlements, called attention to the occurrence of this phenomenon during the internet/dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and in the run up to the 2008 global financial crisis.
The second signal is when the exponential increase in price calls forth new supplies as many others try to get in on the action. Even in the digital world, it takes longer to generate a new asset than it does for the price to move. In the case of crypto, price moves are instantaneous; similarly, private equity markets move much faster than anyone hoping to build a new large language model (LLM) can. Finally, in the terminal stages of a bubble, demand is increasingly fed by uninformed, amateur investors. 
DIVERGING PATHS
All three signals appear to be flashing red in the crypto and AI markets.

From: What Will Remain After the AI and Crypto Bubbles? by William H. Janeway – Project Syndicate.

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2021

I have long held the view that while cryptocurrencies themselves may or may not have a future as money, the evolution of digital assets that are secured by the underlying networks (“tokens”) points towards new services, markets and institutions that may well lead to a better financial sector.

From: Tulips, steam and decentralised finance.

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Multiple cables cut off Saudi Arabia
Microsoft announced via a status website that the Mideast “may experience increased latency due to undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea.” The Redmond, Washington-based firm did not immediately elaborate, though it said that internet traffic not moving through the Middle East “is not impacted.”

NetBlocks, which monitors internet access, said “a series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries,” which it said included India and Pakistan. It blamed “failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”

From: Red Sea cables are cut, disrupting internet in Asia and the Mideast | AP News.

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A compact, deep-sea, cable-cutting device, capable of severing the world’s most fortified underwater communication or power lines, has been unveiled by China – and it could shake up global maritime power dynamics.
The revelation marks the first time any country has officially disclosed that it has such an asset, capable of disrupting critical undersea networks.
The tool, which is able to cut lines at depths of up to 4,000 metres (13,123 feet) – twice the maximum operational range of existing subsea communication infrastructure – has been designed specifically for integration with China’s advanced crewed and uncrewed submersibles like the Fendouzhe, or Striver, and the Haidou series.

From: China unveils a powerful deep-sea cable cutter that could reset the world order | South China Morning Post.

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2021

I have long held the view that while cryptocurrencies themselves may or may not have a future as money, the evolution of digital assets that are secured by the underlying networks (“tokens”) points towards new services, markets and institutions that may well lead to a better financial sector.

From: Tulips, steam and decentralised finance.

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He avoided detection by waking up early and creeping into the branch to switch the money back into the bank registers, which were checked daily. He also forged his colleagues’ signatures when he needed to balance the books for the ATMs.

From: NatWest branch manager who stole £344,000 from ATMs given suspended sentence.

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It took eight years for the bank to notice this.

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Agentic commerce

Facilitate low-cost, instant payments for agents to autonomously execute transactions.

From: Tempo: The Blockchain Designed for Payments.

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As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, coauthors Petter Törnberg, AI and social media assistant professor, and research assistant Maik Larooij simulated a social media platform that was populated entirely by AI chatbots, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o large language model, to see if there was anything we could do to stop social media from turning into echo chambers.
They tested out six specific intervention strategies — including switching to chronological news feeds, boosting diverse viewpoints, hiding social statistics like follower counts, and removing account bios — to stop the platform from turning into a polarized hellscape.
To their dismay, none of the interventions worked to a satisfactory degree, and only some showed modest effects. Worse yet, as Ars Technica reports, some of them made the situation even worse.

From: Scientists Created an Entire Social Network Where Every User Is a Bot, and Something Wild Happened.

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