Snippings

Sheila Bair, a former chair of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, says that the big banks are “no doubt grumbling to Musk” about the CFPB, but notes that they have benefited from its efforts to oversight to the non-bank financial service providers (including, if Mr. Musk has his way of course, X) who compete with them.

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The new data comes as a new congressional report finds JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America customers reported losing $166 million to scams on Zelle in 2023, with the banks refusing to reimburse 62% of the time.

From: US Banks Witness 1,000% Surge in Digital Scams As JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America Customers Lose $166,000,000 on Zelle in One Year: Report – The Daily Hodl.

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The system was trained and tested with a dataset containing 102,399 images of 1,040 individuals across 41 primate species whose individual identity was known and 6,562 images of 91 individuals across four carnivore species. For primates, the system correctly identified individuals 94.1% of the time and could process 31 facial images per second.

From: Automatic Identification of Individual Primates with Deep Learning Techniques – ScienceDirect.

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This must happen to everyone, all the time. I was walking down the street and I a get text message from my bank. It says that there has been an unusual transaction on my debit card and they ask me to text back “yes” or “no”.

 

 

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Do you use text messages for multi-factor authentication? You should probably switch to a different method, especially with everything we’re learning about a recent hack that’s been dubbed the “worst in our nation’s history.” Even the federal government is putting out warnings now, including a call for government officials to only use encrypted apps for communication.

Hackers aligned with the Chinese government have infiltrated U.S. telecommunications infrastructure so deeply that it allowed the interception of unencrypted communications on a number of people, according to reports that first emerged in October. The operation, dubbed Salt Typhoon, apparently allowed hackers to listen to phone calls and nab text messages, and the penetration has been so extensive they haven’t even been booted from the telecom networks yet.

From: Feds Warn SMS Authentication Is Unsafe After ‘Worst Hack in Our Nation’s History’.

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On May 31st, 2019, the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, in the case of Karnail Singh and others v State of Haryana, recognized all animals in the animal kingdom, including avian and aquatic species, as legal entities. All citizens of the state of Haryana were declared persons in loco parentis (in place of a parent), which will enable them to act as guardians for all nonhuman animals within the state of Haryana. This decision is the latest in a trend where courts are adopting eco-centric rather than anthropocentric views on legal issues concerning the protection of animals and the environment. The court also reiterated the NhRP’s argument that legal personhood has not and should not be restricted to human beings.

From: Indian High Court Recognizes Nonhuman Animals As Legal Entities | Nonhuman Rights Project.

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The CFPB suit claims that the banks and Early Warning Services, have failed to protect users from “widespread fraud”. It accuses Early Warning Services and the banks of rushing out Zelle to compete with the likes of Venmo and CashApp without implementing effective safeguards for users.

From: CFPB sues JPMorgan, BofA and Wells Fargo over Zelle fraud.

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If Trump and Musk want to actually do something about the rhetoric they offered, well, they could start with the management consultants leaching off of all of us.

From: Cutting Government Is Easy… If You Go After McKinsey.

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“While the average BTC transaction value at BitPay is just over $1,000, USDC transactions average more than $5,000,” he said.

From: Stablecoin predictions for 2025: What’s next for the $200B market?.

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The numbers that came back are good. The Waymo vehicles had 88% fewer property damage claims and 92% injury claims than average human drivers. They did almost as good compared with human drivers in the newest cars with advance safety—86% fewer property claims and 90% fewer injury claims. These numbers are for average drivers, but other data suggest that the human drivers most commonly compared to robotaxis, namely Uber/Taxi drivers, are worse than average. As such, having the Waymos on the road is improving road safety. The fully detailed report is here.

From: Waymo And SwissRe Show Impressive New Safety Data.

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**Risk Assessment and Management**. AI enhances risk assessment by using predictive analytics to foresee potential financial threats. These insights can help in proactive planning, allowing financial regulators to better shield the system from unforeseen risks. With AI’s capability to analyse large datasets quickly, risk modelling becomes more precise and timely. The Atlanta Fed [published](https://www.atlantafed.org/-/media/documents/news/conferences/2017/1102-financial-regulation-fit-for-the-future/wall.pdf) an interesting perspective AI’s role in future risk evaluation and management and it seems to me that, rather as computers seem to be better at driving cars than people are, they may be better than people at minimising systemic risks.

Hornet shot sown friendly fire

Waymo