Snippings

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AmEx Mistakenly Issued Card to German With Ties to Nuclear-Weapons Black Market, Treasury Says
An American Express subsidiary mistakenly issued a prepaid card to a German engineer with alleged ties to a black market in nuclear-weapons technology, the Treasury said Thursday.

The subsidiary, American Express Travel Related Services Co., provided the card to Gerhard Wisser, whom U.S. authorities have accused of playing a role in a group run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, sometimes referred to as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program. AmEx wasn’t fined for the violation.

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I don’t think they’ll replace the idea of the credit card or the service of the credit card. But it will all be computerized. Everything will be computerized. So you won’t carry cash — you’ll carry your computer, a little computer.

From Matty Simmons: The Man Who Sold the World on Credit Cards – NerdWallet:

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[In his book, Simmons recounts that he “had to glamorize the creation of the credit card plan” to publicize the product, so he invented a story: McNamara was short on cash after taking a colleague out to dinner. While his wife was driving over with the money to cover the meal, he came up with the idea of a credit card, which would effectively allow a “responsible businessman” to open a restaurant tab anywhere. That apocryphal story has since been repeated countless times, and it even appears on the Diners Club website today.]

From Matty Simmons: The Man Who Sold the World on Credit Cards – NerdWallet:

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Fair access to small-business relief has been hindered by smaller banks’ lack of participation in the PPP. The result is that unserved customers have fewer options since almost all the banks participating in the program prioritized existing customers in order to meet the “know your customer” authentication guidelines required by anti-money-laundering regulations.

From Federal systems’ tech flaws laid bare by coronavirus crisis | American Banker:

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The U.S. is facing a 21st-century crisis with 20th-century technological infrastructure, which must be modernized for the financial services and regulatory systems.

From Federal systems’ tech flaws laid bare by coronavirus crisis | American Banker:

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Yet while Apple and Google are leading the development of the underlying technology necessary to make digital contact tracing tools — which they now refer to as “exposure notification” to distinguish from traditional methods — they have declined to develop actual contact tracing apps, fearful of losing public trust by overstepping privacy, according to sources at Apple. Instead, they’ve announced that they are delegating the development of the actual contact tracing apps to public health authorities and have been approaching local health departments about how to get apps up and running.

From Coronavirus Contact Tracing Efforts Underway At Google And Apple:

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More Americans are willing to install a coronavirus tracking app provided by a public health agency like the CDC or by their health insurance provider than one distributed by the federal government

From Will Americans Be Willing to Install COVID-19 Tracking Apps? – Scientific American Blog Network:

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A rarity in an increasingly partisan country, our survey found that Americans across the political aisle are unified in their willingness to install coronavirus tracking apps. The proportion of Republicans and Democrats who were willing to install such an app was statistically indistinguishable

From Will Americans Be Willing to Install COVID-19 Tracking Apps? – Scientific American Blog Network:

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Professor John Martinis, who used to be the top scientist in the Google quantum computing team says that Google’s plan in this field is to build a million-qubit system with sufficiently a low error rate that error correction will be effective. He says that at this point, about a decade away, then the system will have enough logical quits that the system will be able to execute powerful algorithms that attack problems that are beyond the capability of classical supercomputers.

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Regardless, Schofield said she also decided to weigh any hypothetical harm against the potential value of the information to the public. “In this case, the public interest in disclosure is great because the importance of the comment process to agency rulemaking is great,” she said, adding: “If genuine public comment is drowned out by a fraudulent facsimile, then the notice-and-comment process has failed.”

From Judge Orders FCC to Hand Over IP Addresses Linked to Fake Net Neutrality Comments:

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