A library of snippets
xxx
“Major international events put payment experiences in the spotlight,” Peter Galvin, chief marketing officer at NMI, told American Banker, noting NMI research found that nearly half of U.S. consumers who have traveled internationally in the past year say payments are faster or easier abroad, reflecting how accustomed travelers have become to contactless, mobile-first and tap-to-pay experiences in other markets.
From: How the World Cup showcases payment tech | American Banker.
xxx
xxx
A thing (including a thing that is digital or electronic in nature) is not prevented from being the object of personal property rights merely because it is neither—
(a)a thing in possession, nor(b)a thing in action.
xxx
xxx
Know-your-agent
AI agents make detection problems harder. When the party making a payment is software using the customer’s phone, internet address and login, it looks to the bank like the customer.Chris Ward (at center), head of enterprise payments at Truist, said he had recently built working agents in about ten minutes and that he doubted his own bank’s systems would flag the activity as anything but him.
Athinathan invoked the idea of “know-your-agent” identity checks, a counterpart to know-your-customer due diligence.
Banks need to confirm four things, she said: That it is the right human, that the right agent is acting on that human’s behalf, that the agent has permission to act, and that the customer actually meant for the agent to do what it did.
From: Banks aren’t ready for AI agents moving money, experts warn | American Banker.
xxx
Kalshi is planning to require that participants in some prediction markets disclose the identity of their employers… In most cases, Kalshi won’t verify the employment information provided by users unless the company learns of suspicious activity, a Kalshi spokeswoman said.
xxx
Chinese leaders are obsessed with strategic vulnerabilities, and have diversified their imports of virtually everything, as well as stockpiling the way America used to – they even have a strategic pork reserve.
xxx
xxx
Bill Clinton sold off our helium reserves
xxx
xxx
The introduction of safety measures corresponded with a drop in daily active users, from around 152 million in Q3 2025 to 132 million in the first quarter of 2026 – prompting a one-day stock drop of 18 percent.
From: Roblox shows off Persona age estimation as it launches age-based accounts | Biometric Update.
xxx
xxx
Saturday 13 May 1665: ‘To the ’Change after office, and received my watch from the watchmaker, and a very fine [one] it is, given me by Briggs, the Scrivener. […] But, Lord! to see how much of my old folly and childishnesse hangs upon me still that I cannot forbear carrying my watch in my hand in the coach all this afternoon, and seeing what o’clock it is one hundred times; and am apt to think with myself, how could I be so long without one; though I remember since, I had one, and found it a trouble, and resolved to carry one no more about me while I lived.’
From: The watches of Samuel Pepys – Antiquarian Horological Society | The story of time.
xxx
xxx
In Congress, a series of bills have been proposed to ban chatbots from posing as lawyers, doctors, and other licensed professionals. The bills have yet to gain traction.
From: How courts are coping with a flood of AI-generated lawsuits | MIT Technology Review.
xxx
xxx
To test whether AI was driving the increase in lawsuits filed by people without a lawyer, the authors of the study, Anand Shah at MIT and Joshua Levy at the University of Southern California, ran 1,600 randomly sampled court documents through Pangram, a commercial AI-text detector. The share flagged as containing AI-generated writing rose from 1% in 2023 to 18% in 2026.
To Judge Braswell, that’s not necessarily a cause for concern. While the surge of AI-assisted filings might be adding to their workloads, she and many other judges find the cases easier to rule on because AI is helping people without legal training better articulate their arguments.
From: How courts are coping with a flood of AI-generated lawsuits | MIT Technology Review.
xxx
Snippings