All posts tagged: spent

Mastercard spent decades training its fraud system to see bots as thieves. Now bots are the ones doing the buying.

Mastercard spent decades training its fraud system to see bots as thieves. Now bots are the ones doing the buying.

Published by skeptic

Every time a Mastercard gets tapped, the network has less than a tenth of a second to judge how likely the purchase is to be fraudulent. It made that call across 175 billion transactions last year. Now the buyer on the other side of that judgment is starting to change, and Greg Ulrich, the company’s chief AI and data officer, spelled out the consequence for the VB Transform 2026 audience in Menlo Park on July 14. “We’ve built a bunch of risk rules over time that were intended to stop a bot from transacting,” Ulrich said. “Now we need to enable the bot to transact, so that requires a change to our risk framework and our risk rules.” Ulrich joined Mastercard eleven years ago when an analytics company he worked at was acquired, and said trust struck him from day one on the job. “It’s what enables a merchant that’s never met you to accept payment and ensure that they’re going to get paid. It’s what enables you as a consumer to transact and ensure …

Mail spent £35m fighting Harry’s ‘campaign for Leveson 2’ privacy claim

Mail spent £35m fighting Harry’s ‘campaign for Leveson 2’ privacy claim

Published by Sam Flores

Lord Justice Brian Leveson unveils his report following an inquiry into media practices on November 29, 2012. Picture: Reuters/Dan Kitwood The publisher of the Daily Mail racked up £34.5m in costs fighting unproven allegations of unlawful newsgathering and is seeking an initial payment from Prince Harry and his co-claimants of £10m. Associated Newspapers is also arguing it should receive indemnity costs, meaning more than the usual proportion of costs from the losing parties, in part because they believe the trial was used by the claimants to pursue a political campaign. Prince Harry, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, Sadie Frost, Liz Hurley and former Lib Dem MP Sir Simon Hughes failed to prove any of their 97 allegations of unlawful information gathering, including phone-hacking, in an 11-week trial held this year. Any application for a potential appeal will only be dealt with after the question of costs has been finalised. It has now been revealed that the Mail publisher spent £34,481,622.54 fighting the case. Six of the seven claimants had …

Politics Home Article | Government Spent £15m On Digital ID Before Policy Was Scrapped

Politics Home Article | Government Spent £15m On Digital ID Before Policy Was Scrapped

Published by Sam Flores

3 min read1 hr The government spent around £15m on developing digital ID before the scheme was scrapped by the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Of that £15m, £800,000 was spent on the “People’s Panel”, which randomly selected 100 people from across the country to contribute to the government’s consultation on the policy. The rest was spent on staff, consultants, design, research and legal advice, internal data seen by PoliticsHome shows. Burnham announced this week that he was ditching the Keir Starmer policy and rediverting money that would have been spent on it to funding the removal of VAT from energy bills. The government declined to comment on the figures. The Starmer ministry had hoped that digital ID would help modernise the state and make public services more efficient.  However, the policy polled poorly when first announced in September, with the then-government’s communications strategy partly blamed for the rough landing. Ministers initially focused on how digital ID could help tackle illegal migration, before later pivoting to how it could make everyday tasks easier for the average person. It was hoped internally that the “People’s Panel” would …

I spent years trying to get smaller. Until I decided to get bigger | Well actually

I spent years trying to get smaller. Until I decided to get bigger | Well actually

Published by Sam Flores

I had been casually lifting weights for a few years when several things changed in quick succession. First, my boyfriend proposed. This wasn’t a surprise – he had already told me he wanted to get married, and I had told him exactly how I wanted him to propose: somewhere public but not crowded, not in a restaurant. Since I spend most of my waking hours hunched over my computer looking like an extra from The Walking Dead, I also wanted to be nicely dressed for the occasion. double quotation mark Over the years I had constructed an image of the bride I wanted to be, and that woman was skinny He gamely followed instructions and got down on one knee in a quiet gallery of my favorite museum. My cute outfit – an orange wrap dress coupled with dainty purple heels – was only slightly undermined by the fact I cried so hard that my eyes puffed up and snot dripped from my nose. Then came the unexpected part. Planning our wedding sent me into …

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs. Moto Razr Ultra: I’ve spent time with both, here’s what I prefer

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs. Moto Razr Ultra: I’ve spent time with both, here’s what I prefer

Published by skeptic

Moto Razr Ultra (left) vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 (right) Cesar Cadenas/Kerry Wan/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. If you’re the retro type, or you just want a small, pocketable device, a flip phone is the way to go. In the U.S., you can buy a flip phone from two smartphone makers: Motorola and Samsung. Samsung just launched the Galaxy Z Flip 8 at its Unpacked event, and Motorola recently launched the Razr Ultra (2026). Sure, there are other flip phones out there, but these are your two top choices.  Also: I turned my Moto Razr into a tiny workstation – and wrote this entire story on it Motorola also has two smaller devices: the Moto Razr and the Moto Razr Plus, but to level the playing field, we’ll focusing on the flagships. Wondering whether to go with Samung’s new offering or Motorola’s? Let’s break it down.  Specifications Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 Moto Razr Ultra (2026) Cover display 4.1-inch AMOLED, 120Hz, 2,600 nits  4-inch AMOLED, 165Hz, 3,000 nits  Inner display 6.9-inch …

Taylor Farms Spent Big on MAGA and Anti-Regulatory Lobbying Before Diarrhea Outbreak

Taylor Farms Spent Big on MAGA and Anti-Regulatory Lobbying Before Diarrhea Outbreak

Published by skeptic

The lettuce supplier at the center of the turbo diarrhea outbreak has spent millions of dollars to sway sentiment around food regulation and elect Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans, according to public filings. Taylor Farms donated more than $2 million to conservative political groups in 2025, according to Federal Election Commission filings. That includes a $1 million donation to MAGA Inc., the Trump-centric super PAC, and $1.1 million to other super PACs dedicated to electing Republicans. From 2020 through the end of 2024, the company donated more than $1.6 million to conservative PACs, including a total of $850,000 to AFP Action, an anti-regulation super PAC with ties to the Koch network. Bruce Taylor, the chairman and CEO of Taylor Farms, is also a longtime donor to Republican causes. Since 2020, Taylor has personally donated more than $900,000 to Republican PACs and candidates, including contributions to Texas senator John Cornyn and Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn. Like many corporate giants, Taylor Farms has also spent big on lobbying related to industry regulation. In early 2025, it …

The harmony Carnie Wilson spent her whole life trying to find

The harmony Carnie Wilson spent her whole life trying to find

Published by Jenni Sidey

Carnie Wilson — best known as one-third of Wilson Phillips and daughter of Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson — revisits some of the most defining moments of her public and private life. From a childhood spent in the chaos of rock-and-roll royalty, to her rise as one of the best-selling artists of the early 90s, to her very public weight-loss journey and the road to sobriety and motherhood that followed, Carnie shares what she sees when she looks back,  and what it’s taken to finally feel like she belongs. We created this video for The Me I Used to Be, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often, that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series. This video The harmony Carnie Wilson spent her whole life trying to find is featured on Big Think. …

This CEO Spent the Equivalent of Million on an AI Agent to Run His Life

This CEO Spent the Equivalent of $4 Million on an AI Agent to Run His Life

Published by Sam Flores

The founder, who has mystified doctors by running on only about two hours of rest per night, built multiple companies, including messaging service onebox.com, which was acquired by phone.com for $850 million in 2000, and Lala, a music-streaming site bought by Apple for a reported $80 million in 2009. Over the last few years, as AI coding tools improved, Nguyen realized that anyone with a Claude Code account could’ve built “every single company I created in a weekend.” “What I did in Silicon Valley will not be special in 5, 10 years,” he said. “Everyone can do it.” Inspired to build his own AI company, he linked up, in 2025, with his son Jacob Nguyen, 22, who attended Georgia Tech with fellow founders McChesney and Drake Kelly. They also brought on Kuch, a longtime colleague of Nguyen’s who had run Lala’s communications. The team camped out in an Atlanta apartment, building an AI tool that they hoped would be more intuitive than a chatbot interface. The result was Olive, an AI model trained on transcripts …

Billionaire Ken Griffin Has Spent Million To Keep The Senate Red, But Snubs Trump’s Favorite Texan

Billionaire Ken Griffin Has Spent $40 Million To Keep The Senate Red, But Snubs Trump’s Favorite Texan

Published by Jenni Sidey

Ken Griffin has put roughly $40 million into Republican midterm efforts this year and could double that by November, according to the Wall Street Journal. The money runs through nearly every competitive Senate race in the country – except for one… Ken Paxton’s run for a seat in Texas, which won’t see a dime of it. According to the report, the Citadel founder has no plans to help the Texas Republican nominee – the candidate President Trump pushed onto the ballot by helping end John Cornyn’s Senate career. The Journal notes that donors rarely broadcast who they’re refusing to fund. When one does – a day before super PACs file their quarterly reports, and eight days before Senate Majority Leader John Thune headlines a Washington fundraiser for Paxton – it’s fair to assume other donors are meant to hear it. The refusal lands in the middle of an argument Republicans have been having since late May, sometimes privately and increasingly on the record: who pays for the candidates Trump forced on the party? The president’s own political action committee, …

My holiday from hell: I expected a glamorous week on a catamaran – but spent the whole time hoping not to die | Life and style

My holiday from hell: I expected a glamorous week on a catamaran – but spent the whole time hoping not to die | Life and style

Published by Sam Flores

It started so well. A catamaran full of loved ones floating into the azure, taking pics, feeling glam, anticipating the sun sinking over the yardarm. I’d been reunited with my sister and family, who live in Australia, for the first time in three years, after Covid. Her husband, a fearless Australian giant, had got into sailing and offered to take me and my then 77-year-old mum, along with their three teens, out in the south of France for my sister’s 50th birthday. I knew sailing could get rough – my dad capsized us at the mouth of the River Dart when I was little – but it’s not every day you get such a generous invitation. How could I resist? It was October. I was manifesting warm, gentle conditions, but instead the wind blew ferociously and stubbornly the wrong way. Before we knew it, we were charging up mountainous waves, then crashing into the void beyond. Our captain calmly steered while I sat below, feeling as if I was in a disaster movie, at which …