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Whatever...

A place to share stuff that isn't at all fintec related but is amusing, absurd or scary.

Retired Member

Retired Member 

A Blink Through My Futurist Goggles

I've always thought that Moore's Law was really just an early illusion like the flat earth theory was for early explorers and that computers would soon make the jump to something significantly beyond what we currently perceive. A group of Australian scientists have brought it that much closer with a wire a few atoms thick using similar techniques ...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Out comes the stick for the credit crunchers

Prosecutors in the US are hauling in the first of hundreds of participants in the US mortgage and credit fiasco. It remains to be seen who will pay the price but the government has plenty of people in it's sight. The who's who of money may suddenly become the who was. Is this a good sign ie. the worst is over and now it's time to pay up, or is it ...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Australia's economic boom runs out of gas.

A single gas facility explosion has brought Australia's economic boom to a halt and many thousands of businesses face bankruptcy in the next 6 months. Despite numerous national infrastructure, terrorism risk and other well funded studies, reports and committees the government has failed completeley to ensure integrity of the country's infrastructu...

/regulation

Retired Member

Retired Member 

1951 - the arrival of computer music

As you may know, when I'm not breaking Finextra I compose and release music to critical acclaim - or damning criticism - it varies. Anyway - it appears this sort of malarkey has been going on for longer than I was aware with the discovery of some old recordings from the University of Manchester on their Ferranti Mk 1. Fascinating stuff - more on...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Top 50 most hated business buzz words

There are some amusing items on the BBC site with Lucy Kellaway's campaign against nonsense officespeak. As she says "the problem with office-speak is that it cloaks the brutal modern workplace in such brainlessly upbeat language". Beeb readers have written in with their most loathed phrases - do read the list of shame and Lucy's attemp...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

What does a paltry 500 million pounds in fraud really cost?

I wonder if anyone has worked out the real cost of continuing fraud, even just in the U.K. I realise that in the great totality of transactions that around £500 million isn't thought of as being all that dramatic, but is there erosion of consumer trust and does it have a cost? If the primary reason people bank is to keep their money safe, then i...

/regulation /retail

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Is your mobile low emission or a cooker?

Recent discussions of the potential health risks of using a mobile phone left most of us without a point of reference. Some scientists are suggesting excessive exposure can be harmful to even the unborn. The wise move would be to minimise exposure and the obvious place to start is by seeing how our phones rate on the radioactivity scale. Cnet has...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Ebay may have failed to force Paypal monopoly

The Australian Competition watchdog has released a draft notice removing Ebay's immunity to consumer laws with regard to forcing Ebay sellers to use Paypal exclusively. The ACCC considers that: 1. eBay holds a substantial degree of power in the supply of online marketplaces in Australia 2. the notified conduct allows eBay to leverage that power ...

/payments

Retired Member

Retired Member 

The Dollar has been good - 5.75 percent over 214 yrs?

Investments in US dollars appear to be paying off for those who put away a dollar coin or even a cent or two from 1794. The HA Long Beach coin auctions this week showed a return of 5.75% per annum on a 1794 US$1 coin which sold for $161,000 (inc. buyer's premium). At $632,500 each, both the 1793 and 1794 large 1 cent did even better recently (50 ...

/regulation

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Imagine 9 out of 10 emails being spam?

In case you didn't notice the increase lately, we've had our heaviest month in over a year with MessageLabs reporting that the poor folks in Hong Kong are seeing 89 percent of all email as spam and in the U.S. it was a modest 74 percent. There must be a lot of bandwidth being wasted and internet users paying for at least 3 spammers emails for eve...

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