Surprise – roundabouts are proving their safety in Minnesota. CC-licensed photo by Salim Virji on Flickr.

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It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.

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A selection of 9 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

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The $11bn marketplace enabling the crypto scam economy • WIRED

Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman:

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As the crypto scam commonly known as “pig butchering” has exploded into a full-blown criminal industry that steals tens of billions of dollars a year, an entire ecosystem has formed around it. That sub-industry offers tools and data for finding and tricking targets, money laundering services to help liquidate stolen funds—even detention tools to imprison and coerce the human trafficking victims enslaved to work in scam operations.

New research now shows how all of those secondary services enabling the global scourge of pig butchering can be found on a single Cambodian online platform—part of a company linked to the Cambodian ruling family—known as Huione Guarantee.

On Wednesday, crypto-tracing firm Elliptic published a report that delves into crypto scammers’ extensive use of Huione Guarantee, a deposit and escrow service for peer-to-peer transactions that lets users buy and sell over the Telegram messaging service with the cryptocurrency Tether while preventing them from defrauding each other. By analyzing listings on the platform, engaging with sellers—sometimes undercover—and following funds across Tether’s blockchain sent to those sellers’ addresses, Elliptic was able to trace $11bn in total transactions in just the three years since Huione Guarantee launched, including $3.4bn so far this year.

Elliptic estimates, based largely on public Chinese-language advertisements for the products and services available on Huione Guarantee, that the majority of those transactions were in service of pig butchering. “I’m not sure whether Huione Guarantee was originally established with this in mind, but it’s certainly become primarily a marketplace for online scammers,” says Tom Robinson, Elliptic’s cofounder and chief scientist.

Robinson says Elliptic knows of around 10 platforms like Huione Guarantee that are used by crypto scammers, but none that are nearly so big. “This is the largest public guarantee platform for illicit crypto transactions that we’re aware of,” he says.

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Apple’s payments offer ends EU antitrust probe • POLITICO

Aoife White and Edith Hancock:

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Apple settled a European Union investigation into its Apple Pay service, ending one antitrust case as it battles EU regulators on other fronts.

“I do not consider it a peace deal,” Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager told a press conference. “I considered it a solution on a very specific problem that you do not have choice when it comes to what wallet you want to use” on Apple devices.

Apple will allow payment rivals to access the technology that Apple uses for its own “tap and go” payments. Banks and other payment providers have long complained that the tech giant hampered them from using the iPhone’s near-field (NFC) communication chip.

In return, the European Commission will end a four-year investigation without imposing a fine. Apple can be fined if it breaches any of the commitments it made as part of the settlement.

Vestager told reporters that “we have not seen a change in behaviour on Apple’s side” and it remains to be seen how other cases into Apple’s potential non-compliance with digital rules will go.

Today’s settlement prevents Apple from excluding other mobile wallets from the iPhone’s ecosystem, the Commission said in an email statement. That should allow payment providers to compete with Apple Pay for mobile payments made via Apple’s iPhone. It won’t cover Apple Watch which only “a rather small number of people” use for payments, Vestager said.

Apple’s pledge will for 10 years allow payment providers access to NFC on Apple devices free of charge without having to use Apple Pay or Apple Wallet. This will be done via host card emulation mode that can secure payment credentials. Payment rivals can also authenticate transactions via FaceID facial recognition service, the double click, touch ID or a passcode.

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What this seems to mean is that other providers will be able to use the NFC chip for vehicle keys, hotel keys, work access badges, concert tickets and so on. Nokia used to use NFC to connect to wireless speakers but maybe that’s an outdated use now.
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86% of Americans now work from home because roundabouts are replacing traffic signals • Urbanism Speakeasy

Andy Boenau:

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Minnesota has about 200 roundabouts, and like any other group of skeptics, they’ve been documenting the results.

[Screenshot from the report shows
• an 86% reduction in fatal crash rate at intersections where roundabouts have been installed, for all roundabout types;
• 83% reduction in serious injury rate;
• 69% reduction in right-angle crash rate;
• 83% reduction in left-turning crash rate;
• 61% reduction in injury crash rate for single-lane roundabouts;
• 42% reduction in injury crash rate for all roundabouts..]

Another gripe about roundabouts is how pedestrians and bicyclists are treated. A quick internet search will point you to a ton of local, state, and federal research on this. Bottom line, roundabouts (when designed properly!) are safer for all road users because they (1) reduce the number of conflict points, and (2) slow down the cars. 

Sticking with the Minnesota example, here’s the result of their before-and-after analysis of roundabouts:

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roundabouts are not presenting an overall greater risk to pedestrians and bicyclists in regards to collisions with motor vehicles.

…roundabouts may be offering an overall higher performance of pedestrian safety.

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One of the roundabout’s virtues is short crossing distances for people walking combined with the slow vehicles at those conflict points. There are fewer places for cars hitting people, and in those instances that it does happen, it’s a much faster path to recovery.

You don’t get the standard red-light/green-light behavior of drivers between lights. As the Beastie Boys and I say, “Slow and low—that is the tempo.”

Roundabouts have a phenomenal life-saving track record. I’ll leave you with some helpful Federal Highway Administration resources. Maybe you’ll become a roundabout advocate or maybe you won’t. But if you’re on a mission to create happy, healthy communities, please take a serious look at their potential.

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Gradually, gradually, the US might get there. Instead of its terrifying four-way intersections at the meeting of straight intersecting roads. (The post title is a joke.)
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When scientific citations go rogue: Uncovering ‘sneaked references’ • The Conversation

Lonni Besançon, Guillaume Cabanac and Thierry Viéville:

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Reading and writing articles published in academic journals and presented at conferences is a central part of being a researcher. When researchers write a scholarly article, they must cite the work of peers to provide context, detail sources of inspiration and explain differences in approaches and results. A positive citation by other researchers is a key measure of visibility for a researcher’s own work.

But what happens when this citation system is manipulated? A recent Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology article by our team of academic sleuths—which includes information scientists, a computer scientist and a mathematician—has revealed an insidious method to artificially inflate citation counts through metadata manipulations: sneaked references.

People are becoming more aware of scientific publications and how they work, including their potential flaws. Just last year more than 10,000 scientific articles were retracted. The issues around citation gaming and the harm it causes the scientific community, including damaging its credibility, are well documented.

Citations of scientific work abide by a standardized referencing system: Each reference explicitly mentions at least the title, authors’ names, publication year, journal or conference name, and page numbers of the cited publication. These details are stored as metadata, not visible in the article’s text directly, but assigned to a digital object identifier, or DOI—a unique identifier for each scientific publication.

References in a scientific publication allow authors to justify methodological choices or present the results of past studies, highlighting the iterative and collaborative nature of science.

However, we found through a chance encounter that some unscrupulous actors have added extra references, invisible in the text but present in the articles’ metadata, when they submitted the articles to scientific databases. The result? Citation counts for certain researchers or journals have skyrocketed, even though these references were not cited by the authors in their articles.

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All the tricks you see to spam Google are used in citation systems, because they’re the same system. (Thanks Joe S for the link.)
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AI is effectively ‘useless’—and it’s created a ‘fake it till you make it’ bubble that could end in disaster, veteran market watcher warns • Fortune via Yahoo

Will Daniel:

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James Ferguson, founding partner of the UK-based macroeconomic research firm MacroStrategy Partnership, fears investors’ AI exuberance has created a concentrated market bubble that’s reminiscent of the dot-com era.

“These historically end badly,” Ferguson told Bloomberg’s Merryn Somerset Webb in the latest episode of the Merryn Talks Money podcast. “So anyone who’s sort of a bit long in the tooth and has seen this sort of thing before is tempted to believe it’ll end badly.”

The veteran analyst argued that hallucinations—large language models’ (LLMs) tendency to invent facts, sources, and more—may prove a more intractable problem than initially anticipated, leading AI to have far fewer viable applications.

“AI still remains, I would argue, completely unproven. And fake it till you make it may work in Silicon Valley, but for the rest of us, I think once bitten twice shy may be more appropriate for AI,” he said. “If AI cannot be trusted…then AI is effectively, in my mind, useless.”

Ferguson also noted AI may end up being too “energy hungry” to be a cost effective tool for many businesses. To his point, a recent study from the Amsterdam School of Business and Economics found that AI applications alone could use as much power as the Netherlands by 2027.

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Samsung launches Galaxy smart ring to track sleep and periods • BBC News

Liv McMahon & Imran Rahman-Jones:

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Samsung is hoping to lure fitness and health-tracking technology lovers with its newest wearable device – the Galaxy Ring.

It launched the device at its Galaxy Unpacked event on Wednesday as the latest addition to its ecosystem of devices it says it is “supercharging” with artificial intelligence (AI).

Smart rings, which use tiny sensors to monitor various health metrics, have up to now been a niche product – though their recent use by the England men’s football team made headlines.

It seems Samsung is attempting to change that, becoming the largest tech company yet to enter the smart ring market. Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight, says the product choice is an “interesting bet” for Samsung, with his company estimating that there will be a total global market of around four million smart rings in 2025.

“That is a rounding error when compared with 250 million smartwatches that are also expected to be sold,” he told the BBC.

But others suggest Samsung may help make smart rings more mainstream. “For most consumers, the smart ring from Samsung will be the first contact they will have in the smart ring, and that top of mind awareness makes a huge difference in the long term,” says Francisco Jeronimo, analyst for market research firm IDC.

James Kitto, vice president and head of Samsung’s mobile division in the UK & Ireland, heralded the ring’s launch as a “huge moment” for the company.

Smart rings can track health indicators such as your heart rate, sleep and menstrual cycle. The market is currently dominated by Finnish health tech firm, Oura. In recent years the rings have become a fitness tech fashion staple for celebrities such as Kim Kardashian.

With their small size and sleeker appearance, analysts say they could become the successor to smart watches like the Apple Watch and Google Pixel Watch.

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Narrator’s voice: in fact they were not the successor to smart watches, for reasons that are obvious once you imagine trying to read a message written around your finger. In addition, I have yet to be given any reason why I should want to “track” my sleep.
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Angry and stunned Democrats blame Biden’s closest advisers for shielding public from full extent of president’s decline • CNN Politics

MJ Lee, Jeff Zeleny, Kayla Tausche and Jamie Gangel:

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At a star-studded fundraiser for President Joe Biden in Los Angeles last month, George Clooney wasn’t the only one who came away concerned about the president.

Even before Biden made remarks that night, whispers of concern rippled through the audience at the Peacock Theater about the president who had just arrived from a long flight from Italy. Some of the biggest donors at the $30m fundraising event, who had waited in line to take pictures with Biden, expressed unease at how the president looked and carried himself.

“He was less cogent than usual,” said one attendee, who was surprised that during a smaller meeting with donors before the main event, Biden barely spoke. Instead, this person said, he left virtually all of the talking to former President Barack Obama, which struck some guests as unusual for a loquacious politician like Biden.

Biden’s appearance in California struck attendees as starkly different from a fundraising gala he attended in March at Radio City Music Hall in New York, one Democrat guest told CNN, when Biden appeared on stage with Obama and former President Bill Clinton.

“There is a marked difference in the president from the spring to the summer,” a senior Democrat told CNN. “He’s just not the same.”

Back in Washington, there have been clear signs throughout his term of Biden being increasingly stage-managed, with lists of talking points, names of questioners and drawings of where he should walk presented to him by aides. Ahead of closed-door Cabinet meetings that Biden attends, it is customary for Cabinet officials to submit questions and key talking points that they plan to present in front of Biden ahead of time to White House aides, two sources with direct knowledge told CNN.

“The entire display is kind of an act,” one of those sources told CNN. “They would come and say, ‘Hey, the president is going to call on you about 25 minutes in, and ask this question. What are the bullet points you’ll respond with?’”

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After the debate, I thought Biden would be gone by now, but underestimated how he would cling on, and how scared people in his party would be to act. Perhaps I’m just too used to the UK, where dumping party leaders is a very well-practised process.

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Early Apple tech bloggers are shocked to find their name and work have been AI-zombified • The Verge

Jay PEters and Sean Hollister:

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An old Apple blog and the blog’s former authors have become the latest victims of AI-written sludge. TUAW (“The Unofficial Apple Weblog”) was shut down by AOL in 2015, but this past year, a new owner scooped up the domain and began posting articles under the bylines of former writers who haven’t worked there for over a decade. And that new owner, which also appears to run other AI sludge websites, seems to be trying to hide.

Christina Warren, who left a long career in tech journalism to join Microsoft and later GitHub as a developer advocate, shared screenshots of what was happening on Tuesday. In the images, you can see that Warren has apparently been writing new posts as of this July — even though she hasn’t worked at TUAW since 2009, she confirms to The Verge.

Another screenshot showed Warren’s name listed next to what appears to be an AI-generated photo and a generic bio, alongside a list of other former TUAW writers, including Brett Terpstra, Chris Rawson, and Chris Ullrich. All of the listed authors have had their photos replaced with AI-generated images, 404 Media reports, and many tell 404 that they have no involvement with the new website. AppleInsider confirmed that its author William Gallagher’s name was inappropriately attached to content by TUAW’s new owner as well.

What’s more, it appears the new TUAW is using generative AI to sloppily recreate the work of its former writers.

According to TUAW’s “About Us” page, TUAW is now apparently owned by Web Orange Limited, which bought the website “without its original content” from “Yahoo IP Holdings LLC” earlier this year.

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“If you want a picture of the future of the web, imagine sites being filled over with AI slop — for ever.”
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Why it was easier to be skinny in the 1980s • The Atlantic

Olga Khazan:

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There’s a meme aimed at Millennial catharsis called “Old Economy Steve.” It’s a series of pictures of a late-’70s teenager, who presumably is now a middle-aged man, that mocks some of the messages Millennials say they hear from older generations—and shows why they’re deeply janky. Old Economy Steve graduates and gets a job right away. Old Economy Steve “worked his way through college” because tuition was $400. And so forth.

We can now add another one to that list: Old Economy Steve ate at McDonald’s almost every day, and he still somehow had a 32-inch waist.

A study published recently in the journal Obesity Research & Clinical Practice found that it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago did, even at the same levels of food intake and exercise.

The authors examined the dietary data of 36,400 Americans from 1971 to 2008 and the physical-activity data of 14,419 people from 1988 to 2006. They grouped the data sets together by the amount of food and activity, age, and BMI.

They found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10% heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.

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The suggestions for what’s causing this are intriguing: chemical exposure, use of prescription drugs, and perhaps a change in Americans’ gut microbiomes.
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• Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more.

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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified