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Tokolosh writes:Pix is a free instant payment system that the Brazilian Central Bank launched in 2020. It has obliterated expensive electronic funds transfers (EFTs) in Brazil, and is well on its way to replace payments that were traditionally made with credit cards issued by companies such as Visa, Mastercard and Amex.Everyone seems to rave about it, except Trump (and possibly his vocal Brazilian supporters, who bizarrely applaud Trump's sanctions and tariffs imposed on their own country). When on July 15 he announced his investigation of Brazil's "unfair trading practices" (which ultimately resulted in the 50% import duties on Brazilian exports to the US), one of the justifications for the investigation was stated as follows: "The investigation will seek to determine whether acts, policies and practices of the government of Brazil related to digital trade and electronic payment services ... are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict US commerce."Yet Brazil has not prohibited anyone from using American-branded credit cards. There are still some dinosaur businesses in Brazil that only accept credit cards, and all businesses that accept Pix payments still accept credit card payments.But credit card payments in Brazil are undoubtedly dwindling, as the convenience of Pix rapidly overtakes credit cards. That is not a policy aimed specifically at US credit card companies, but rather a reflection that outdated credit card payment systems have not kept up with the latest disruptive technology.For that America should rather ask why its own innovation has lagged behind that of countries such as Brazil that it traditionally regards as its backyard. Maybe it has something to do with the sizeable portion of the American population that believes humans and dinosaurs cohabited planet earth in the last 6,000 years.Read more at https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2025-09-19-emile-myburgh-brazils-payment-system-puts-credit-card-firms-to-the-test/Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

looorg writes:IG Nobel Prizes 2025https://www.popsci.com/science/ig-nobel-prizes-2025/

hubie writes:Experts find fake sources in Canadian government report that took 18 months to complete:

hubie writes:"When you turn off those spacecraft's radio receivers, there's no way to turn them back on."

upstart writes:Nobody Wanted This: Samsung Fridges Are Getting Ads:

upstart writes:L.A. Man Sentenced to 14 Days in Prison for Accidentally Crashing Drone Into Firefighting Plane:

upstart writes:Feds Launch Investigation Into Faulty Tesla Doors:

upstart writes:Ban social media for under 15s, says French report warning of TikTok dangers:

upstart writes:It's a bit hacky, but with some tweaking, older GPUs get a nice new upscaling option:

upstart writes:Has the Apple iPhone Air killed off the Sim card?:

upstart writes:New Bill Aims to Block Both Online Adult Content and VPNs:

upstart writes:The oldest known mummies have been found:

upstart writes:GNOME 49 arrives this week, and it's packed with features and polish you'll love:

upstart writes:China Bans Nvidia's AI Chips:

upstart writes:Modular nuclear reactors sound great, but won't be ready any time soon:

upstart writes:'Beyond EUV' chipmaking tech pushes Soft X-Ray lithography closer to challenging Hyper-NA EUV:

upstart writes:"We're excited that Northrop is ready to deliver this incredibly beneficial increase in capacity" :

China Rules That Nvidia Violated its Antitrust Lawsupstart writes:China rules that Nvidia violated its antitrust laws:

upstart writes:There's no such thing as free laundry:

upstart writes:A new stealthy radio device could help give people the edge, letting them fly drones without detection:

canopic jug writes:Famed developer Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) has posted an update on the status and future of the project currently known as Varnish Cache. And, after 20 years of being a go-to component in WWW infrastructure, it will change its name to The Vinyl Cache Project with version 8.0.0 being the last under the old name. The software project will be sheperded under the new name by a Danish association formed for that specific purpose.

upstart writes:FAA found factory violations, says Boeing sought approval for unairworthy planes:

upstart writes:When it comes to US AI rules, there's too many cooks:

upstart writes:Google cut managers by 35%: Inside Pichai's layoffs overhaul:

News is breaking that Robert Redford has died at his home age 89.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Real-Time Observation of Magnet Switching in a Single Atom:

upstart writes:Pentagon begins deploying new satellite network to link sensors with shooters:

upstart writes:Solar pacifiers: Influence of the planets may subdue solar activity:

upstart writes:New Apple-funded program teaches manufacturing to US firms:

upstart writes:The newly developed concept uses liquid uranium to heat rocket propellant:

upstart writes:The PowerShell script should work with any version of Windows 11:

upstart writes:Google Is Telling People DOGE Never Existed:

fliptop writes:Apparently, China's dominance of the supply chain means that it's also seen as the principal source of cybersecurity risk:

upstart writes:Newly released video at House UFO hearing appears to show U.S. missile striking and bouncing off orb:

upstart writes:Scientists Stunned as Tiny Algae Keep Moving Inside Arctic Ice:

upstart writes:Researchers investigated giant prehistoric trash piles to reveal where animal remains came from:

upstart writes:Arbitrarily inflated lock-in-tastic fees curbed as movement charges must be cost-linked:

upstart writes:Pluralistic: Fingerspitzengefuhl (08 Sep 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow:

upstart writes:Wyden says default use of RC4 cipher led to last year's breach of health giant Ascension:

upstart writes:Researchers created a strange quantum crystal from a material found in smartphones-the first of its kind visible to the naked eye:

upstart writes:The RTX 4090 48GB looks like a whole different card:

upstart writes:AI's free web scraping days may be over, thanks to this new licensing protocol:

upstart writes:Scientists urge EU governments to reject Chat Control rules:

quietus writes:ASML, Dutch multinational producer of EUV lithography machines, has announced an investment of 1.3bn in French AI startup Mistral, which positions itself as an European alternative to ChatGPT and similar.It is to become "a long-term collaboration agreement to explore the use of AI models across ASML's product portfolio as well as research, development and operations, to benefit ASML customers with faster time to market and higher performance holistic lithography systems ..." in a "first-of-its-kind partnership between a semiconductor equipment manufacturer and a leading AI company".The deal brings together Europe's top AI start-up and one of the continent's most valuable public companies, which supplies the equipment to make the advanced chips that are used to train and run AI models.Arthur Mensch, current CEO of Mistral, was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that "it's important for European companies not to have too much dependency on US technology", while his counterpart at ASML claimed that sovereignty was an additional benefit, but they didn't "pick Mistral because they were European", rather because AI will become "a strategic technology ... I think this will help the European ecosystem, but we do it because it's good for Mistral and it's good for ASML.".In the short term, he claimed, ASML would begin using Mistral's AI expertise to help develop new chipmaking tools, as well as offering customers new capabilities as they use its existing systems. "We started to look for a partner, because we thought that this is not something we should try to do ourselves ...the company's expertise is in chipmaking equipment and we are not AI experts".In case you're groaning now while reaching for that special bottle of whisky under your desk, labeled peak AI hype, there was an intriguing comment on the Interwebs about the true purpose of the deal.

upstart writes:Ten years after LIGO's historical detection of gravitational waves, the project is cracking black hole mysteries at an astounding pace:

upstart writes:Dead Internet Theory Lives: One Out of Three of You Is a Bot:

upstart writes:This Is the First Time Scientists Have Seen Decisionmaking in a Brain:

HeadlineEditor writes:Martian rock contains 'clearest sign' yet of ancient life on Mars, NASA says

Mojibake Tengu writes:New Unicode version 17.0.0 specification, datafiles and algorithms is now released:Unicode(R) 17.0.0

upstart writes:Advances in perovskite technology are moving sensors and everyday gadgets closer to operating without batteries: