Snippings

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Anthropic used circuit tracing to watch its LLM Claude 3.5 Haiku carry out various tasks.

From: Anthropic can now track the bizarre inner workings of a large language model | MIT Technology Review.

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the migration of readers from the web to AI summaries will likely continue. The internet has always favored ease. And using generative AI to find the most valuable parts of the web’s evergreen content — like recipes, personal finance, and history content — can be a better experience than poking through sites one by one. Along the way, these systems will likely rewrite the economics of the web, and perhaps reshape the internet itself.

From: As AI Takes His Readers, A Leading History Publisher Wonders What’s Next.

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Meanwhile, constant demands from banks and mobile operators to comply with government-mandated “know your customer” regulations have been a boon for cyber fraudsters. Repeated requests for personal data to set up new ids are similarly conditioning Indians to hand over information to anyone who asks.

From: India is obsessed with giving its people “unique IDs”.

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The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying is allotting unique ids to every cow and buffalo in India.

From: India is obsessed with giving its people “unique IDs”.

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Amazon has unveiled an AI agent trained to independently perform actions, such as order and pay for things, within a web browser.

From: Amazon launches AI agent that can shop online.

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UK startup thankyü has unveiled an app that lets customers tip hospitality staffers with a tap of their phone against a wearable tipping band.

From: Wearable UK tipping app launches.

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The proportion of fraud originating on WhatsApp and Telegram rose steeply in the second half of 2024. Revolut notes that consumers are led to believe these platforms are secure, yet the number of cases stemming from Telegram jumped by a staggering 121% in H2, while Whatsapp cases rose by a similarly concerning 67%.

Despite this shift, Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) collectively accounted for 54% of all scams reported to Revolut globally, marking the third consecutive reporting period where Meta has held this position.

From: Fraudsters turning to encrypted messaging platforms to scam users Revolut warns.

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The proportion of fraud originating on WhatsApp and Telegram rose steeply in the second half of 2024. Despite this shift, Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) collectively accounted for 54% of all scams reported to Revolut globally, marking the third consecutive reporting period where Meta has held this position.

From: Fraudsters turning to encrypted messaging platforms to scam users Revolut warns.

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The UK’s reliance on US-dominated card networks is near-total, especially since the domestic Switch scheme was sold to an American company. This leaves open banking as the only viable alternative. But can open banking realistically replace established payment networks if geopolitical or economic tensions escalate?

From: Can open banking stand alone as the UK’s payment infrastructure?.

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This is not only a UK discussion, it is a discussion across Europe, where the Commission has for years been searching what I could not resist calling “Le Third Scheme”.

 

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No, the problem isn’t that Europe doesn’t have an alternative card scheme. The problem is that Europe doesn’t have an alternative to cards, which is why “Le Third Scheme” should be based on the things that Europe does have: Open banking, instant credit transfer, smartphones and payment institutions.

(With this in mind, I was pleased to see that the European Payment Initiative, the EPI, abandoned its plans for a card scheme — which I always thought sub-optimal — and decided to focus on an account-to-account instant payment solution (A2A) for all kinds of use cases, all through a wallet. There is an interesting synergy here with the European moves to develop a common digital identity service and euro-wallet infrastructure, but that’s a topic for another discussion.)

From: A Real Alternative To Cards In Europe.

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Parents who are worried about their children being on Roblox should not let them use it, the chief executive of the gigantic gaming platform has said.
The site, which is the most popular in the UK among young gamers aged eight to 12, has been dogged by claims of some children being exposed to explicit or harmful content through its games, alongside multiple reported allegations of bullying and grooming.

From: Keep kids off Roblox if worried, CEO Dave Baszucki tells parents.

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