Electric Bills in US Set to Rise as Utility Requests for Rate Hikes Double
The rise is driven by the costs of replacing aging infrastructure and powering data centers for AI.
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Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Major bank's Australian-first move to crack down on costly $9.5m scourge: 'Screenshot the text'
Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has launched an Australian-first tool to help people check whether they're about to be scammed. It can be difficult sometimes to work out whether a text message that's landed in your phone is real or from a criminal trying to steal your information or money. But CBA's new AI-powered Scam Checker aims to crack down on this issue. Users will now be able to send a screenshot of the message to the Truyu app, which is owned by CBA, to check what they should do. "When you upload a suspicious text to Scam Checker, you're not just protecting yourself. You're also helping keep others safe by sharing valuable information that can be used to help protect them too," Melanie Hayden, Truyu's managing director, said. RELATED Duplicitous new scam targeting 'vulnerable' Aussies costs pensioner $45,000 Text message 'proves' common dinner bill foul play as woman left '$500 out-of-pocket Woolworths shopper saves $60 after discovering game-changing new trick How does CBA's Scam Checker work? Scammers have been able to impersonate banks big and small across Australia, as well as other trusted organisations like Centrelink, the ATO, telcos, internet service providers, and myGov. Some text messages can arrive in the same thread as previous legitimate conversations from that person or organisation, which can make it hard to know what to trust. But Scam Checker uses a "powerful combination" of generative AI and CBA's scams intelligence to dig into the nitty-gritty of any message you give it. While scammers might try their best to look and sound exactly like the group or person they're imitating, they're not always perfect. The tool will be able to scan the message and any links included within seconds to determine whether you should reply to avoid. In the first half of 2024, nearly 58,000 scam text messages were reported, but calls led to the highest reported losses. There have been more than 11,700 of these dodgy messages reported in 2025 so far, with $9.5 million in reported is Truyu? The Truyu app was launched last year between CBA and its digital business arm x15ventures as a way to prevent customers from being scammed. They can check the app to see whether their personal or banking information has been exposed in a data breach. Users will get alerted if their name, date of birth, passport or driver's licence details are being used by thousands of retailers and vendors across the country. If there's a company or business that doesn't ring a bell, customers can find out how the details are being used and shut it down if it's illegitimate. Scam Checker is another weapon in Truyu's arsenal, which has already saved thousands of Australians from being hacked. You can get three months of free access when you sign up, and then after that it costs $4.99 per month. CBA users will be asked to verify certain card purchases One-time passwords (OTPs) have been used by many banks across Australia to help verify a payment or money transfer. However, CBA customers will be asked to log in to the bank's app to approve certain card payments instead of receiving those OTPs. "We are able to give clearer guidance and warnings in the app than in a text message," James Roberts, CBA's general manager of Group Fraud, said. It's aimed at relying less on text messages for important communication between the bank and its customers, as these messages can be hijacked by scammers. 'Earlier this year CommBank introduced in-app authentication to help stop unauthorised access to a customer's online banking, even if a would-be intruder has obtained the customer's password," Roberts added. "We're now looking at progressively moving other sensitive notifications and actions into the app – such as transaction alerts and security prompts – to enhance customer protections."Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why Reddit Stock Skyrocketed This Week
Key Points Reddit reported its second-quarter results on July 31, and the stock has been on a tear since then. Reddit's sales and earnings are rising rapidly. Data licensing for artificial intelligence models has turned into a powerful growth driver for Reddit. 10 stocks we like better than Reddit › Reddit (NYSE: RDDT) stock continued to rocket higher in this week's trading thanks to strong quarterly results. The social media player's price rose 14.2% over the last week of trading. Reddit published its second-quarter report on July 31, and the results spurred a surge in bullish momentum that extended into this week's trading. The company's share price is now up roughly 308% over the last year of trading. Reddit stock roars higher on big Q2 beats Reddit's second-quarter report arrived with results that caused investors to adopt a far more bullish stance on the company's outlook. In Q2, Reddit reported a profit of $0.45 per share on sales of $500 million. The performance came in far better than the average analyst estimate, which had targeted earnings per share of $0.19 and revenue of $426 million. The company's sales increased 78% year over year in the period, and the strong performance beats caused a wide range of Wall Street analysts to significantly increase their one-year price targets on the stock. With excitement surrounding Reddit's future growing, strong post-earnings valuation gains continued over the last week of trading. What's next for Reddit? For the current quarter, Reddit expects its sales to come in between $535 million and $545 million. Hitting the midpoint of that guidance range would mean posting year-over-year sales growth of roughly 55% in the third quarter. Reddit is seeing strong sales and earnings momentum in conjunction with data generated from its platform being a go-to resource for the training of artificial intelligence (AI) models. While the platform's user base has historically monetized at relatively low levels compared to other social sites, data licensing for AI models seems to have changed the game. Should you invest $1,000 in Reddit right now? Before you buy stock in Reddit, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Reddit wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $653,427!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,119,863!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 4, 2025 Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why Reddit Stock Skyrocketed This Week was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Gizmodo
3 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
The Real Reason You Haven't Been Replaced by AI Yet
It's the ticking time bomb in the global economy, and every CEO knows it: AI is already powerful enough to replace millions of jobs. So why haven't the mass layoffs begun? The answer has little to do with technology and everything to do with fear. Corporate leaders are quietly waiting to see who will be the first to pull the trigger. My discussions about Generative AI reveal a stark generational divide. Most people under 35 are convinced that AI is a reality, not a gimmick, and that the displacement of human workers is an urgent, present-day issue. For many over 35, the assessment is more cautious; they believe the replacement will happen, but not for another five or ten years. The problem is that the second group is several steps behind. The AI revolution isn't being held back because the technology isn't ready. It's being held back for political reasons. CEOs are nervously looking at each other, waiting for someone else to make the first move and announce that they are eliminating a significant number of jobs because AI can do the work faster and cheaper. They are tiptoeing around what they already know. And they are telegraphing their intentions subliminally. Take Palantir's CEO, Alex Karp. During an interview with CNBC in August, he said: 'We're planning to grow our revenue … while decreasing our number of people.' Karp then continued: 'This is a crazy, efficient revolution. The goal is to get 10x revenue and have 3,600 people. We have now 4,100.' The subtext is clear: Palantir already considers 500 of its employees to be a surplus that AI could replace. It could increase its revenue by 10x while reducing its workforce by almost 12.2%. Look at Amazon. The company has more than one million robots (Hercules, Pegasus, and Proteus, its fully autonomous robot) in its facilities and believes that AI will help increase its robot mobility by 10%. The number of its robots is nearly equivalent to the 1.546 million people (full-time and part-time) that the company employs globally. CEO Andy Jassy has already warned his workforce of what's to come. 'We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,' Jassy told employees in a memo last June. 'It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce.' CEOs are waiting for political cover that isn't coming. None of them want to become the poster child for the revolution that killed human jobs in America. They don't want to become the target of politicians, knowing that on this issue, the attacks will come from both the populist left and the populist right. The problem is that politicians are just as unprepared as the over-35s. They seem to believe this is a problem for the next administration, a challenge for a few years down the road. They are wrong. The problem is here now. The questions are urgent: what will the displaced workers do? What safety nets need to be built? What happens to the healthcare of millions who are still a long way from retirement? These are questions politicians have not yet addressed, likely because they don't have the answers. So, for now, the CEOs are buying them time. Instead of mass firings, a quieter trend has emerged: hiring freezes. Increasingly, managers are being forced to justify why a human is needed for a role that an AI could potentially perform. This is already devastating the job market for young people. According to Handshake, a career platform for Gen Z employees, job listings for entry-level corporate roles have declined 15% over the past year. And for those who still think the great displacement is far away, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported a few days ago that AI is already one of the top five factors contributing to job losses this year. Companies have announced over 806,000 private-sector job cuts since January, the highest number for that period since 2020. The tech industry is leading the charge. The machine is in motion. It's not that AI can't replace us, especially in knowledge jobs. It's that your boss doesn't yet have the courage to tell you they're firing you for a robot. They don't want to be the villain. They're waiting for one of their peers to be crucified before they enter the stage. But for how long?
