Latest news with #3DS
Mint
3 days ago
- Climate
- Mint
Forewarned is fore-armed: Adopt AI for better climate forecasting
For much of modern history, weather forecasting has battled public scepticism. In 19th century England, Admiral Robert FitzRoy's early forecasts were mocked as 'guesses dressed up as science" and umbrellas would come out only when sunshine was predicted. Until recently, India's own meteorological service faced similar mistrust, with people joking that IMD stood for 'It Might Drizzle.' However, this is beginning to change. India now boasts of satellite infrastructure for climate and weather monitoring that ranks among the world's most advanced. INSAT-3D, 3DR and newly launched 3DS satellites monitor the atmosphere, land and oceans. These will be complemented by NISAR, an upcoming Nasa-Isro mission, which will track ecosystem shifts, ice melt, sea levels, groundwater and natural hazards. India also has 17 earth observation (EO) satellites, including Resourcesat, Oceansat, Cartosat and Scatsat, which track land use, agriculture, forest cover, water resources and ocean conditions. Megha-Tropiques and SARAL, part of a collaborative mission with France, aim to keep tropical weather systems, sea levels and ocean circulation under watch. The National Information System for Climate and Environment Studies (NICES) is responsible for integrating satellite data to create long-term climate records and generate variables like snow cover, vegetation indices and glacial lake characteristics. These efforts support the forecasting and tracking of critical climate events. Despite such capabilities, India is at the front line of the global climate crisis, grappling with flash floods, droughts, cyclones and heatwaves. Also Read: Time for the Global South to leverage DPI for climate action With a fragile Himalayas range and a long coastline, India's geography amplifies its exposure to climate risks. A 2021 study by Council on Energy, Environment and Water revealed that over 80% of our population resides in districts acutely vulnerable to climate shocks, while much of the country lacks the adaptive capacity to withstand them. India has seen average temperatures rise, with longer and more intense heatwaves. By 2065, these could last up to 25 times longer, posing severe health and agricultural threats. Meanwhile, erratic rainfall and a surge in dry spells have pushed nearly 600 million Indians into water stress. These challenges demand that we re-assess our climate preparedness and explore technologies such as artificial intelligence to prepare better. To achieve our net-zero target for emissions by 2070, climate risks must be assessed across a range of future economic scenarios and their associated carbon footprints. Traditional climate models offer limited simulations but machine learning can vastly enrich our modelling. Also Read: How ISRO's partnership with NASA will boost India's space industry Traditional climate models rely on complex equations to simulate the planet's systems. Globally, AI is now being used in three key ways to enhance climate modelling. First, AI-based emulators like QuickClim and ACE can mimic traditional models by learning patterns of emissions, climate outcomes and their links, enabling faster and cheaper simulations. QuickClim, developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, used 15 emulators trained in 30 minutes each to make accurate temperature projections. ACE, developed by Allen Institute for AI, outperformed conventional atmospheric models on speed and precision. Second, foundation models like ClimaX go beyond replication to uncover new patterns in climate data, offering deeper insights into global climate dynamics using observations that go back more than a century. Also Read: Space mission Axiom 4: The universe can be a family one day Third, hybrid models blend machine learning with physics-based approaches to improve accuracy in complex areas such as cloud and snow formation. Projects like CLiMA (under Caltech, MIT and Nasa JPL), Nasa and the European Space Agency's Earth system 'digital twins' and the EU's DestinE initiative aim to create simulations to better predict climate events and minimize uncertainty. Similarly, AI is transforming weather forecasting by producing accurate predictions up to 10,000 times faster than traditional models, while reducing energy and computing costs. Trained on decades of weather data, AI models can quickly analyse complex atmospheric patterns and deliver near-real-time forecasts. Notable innovations include Google DeepMind's GraphCast, which uses historical and current data for six-hourly weather forecasts. Huawei's Pangu-Weather delivers accurate weekly forecasts within seconds by processing all weather variables. Nvidia's Earth-2 combines AI and simulation tools, such as FourCastNet, to model extreme weather events such as hurricanes. While these are encouraging developments, a key challenge in AI-based prediction remains AI's 'black box' problem, which makes it difficult to trust or fix AI tools. This has drawn the scepticism of climate scientists, who still lean towards traditional models because of the complexity of Earth's systems and uncertainty over future scenarios. Although AI-based models show promise, their ability to forecast an evolving climate scenario remains uncertain. Also Read: Space race: Is competition among Indian startups ready for lift-off? India has made significant strides in satellite technology and climate data collection, but the threats of climate change demand a more forward-looking approach. Indian research organizations and leading tech companies must step up to the task of improving the speed and accuracy of climate and weather forecasting. This is vital to our long-term climate resilience. The authors are, respectively, associate director at The Convergence Foundation, and an economist.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Friendly fraud: The broken system fuelling a silent crisis for merchants
Forget phishing attempts and AI deepfakes - one of the biggest challenges for merchants today is misuse and confusion over how we define fraud. Fraud in financial services is specifically defined as the intentional act of deception for personal or financial gain, typically involving misrepresentation, concealment of information, or unauthorised actions. Regulators such as the FCA (UK), MFSA (Malta), and the Bank of Lithuania adhere to international standards from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), EU Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Directives, and other frameworks. They emphasise that fraud must involve criminal intent and cause actual harm. It is a serious offence with legal consequences, not simply a transactional dispute or an administrative issue. Yet despite this, under the card scheme's chargeback frameworks, such cases are routinely processed as fraud. According to the card schemes, friendly fraud represents 50–75% of all fraud-related chargebacks in certain sectors. It's a staggering figure that reveals how often cardholders exploit dispute mechanisms not because of criminal fraud, but because of convenience or regret. The card schemes' policies force cardholders to falsely label legitimate transactions as fraudulent. For example, when a cardholder forgets to cancel a subscription and wants a refund, but the transaction was protected by 3D Secure (3DS), the only way to initiate a chargeback is by declaring it as fraud. This manipulative structure invites dishonesty into the system and misrepresents what fraud actually means. Even worse, merchants have no opportunity to dispute or contest these fraudulent claims. The cardholder's assertion is treated as the absolute truth, regardless of the merchant's evidence, the contract, or the service terms. There is no requirement for the issuer to collect any substantive proof, nor is there a legal requirement to report the alleged fraud to law enforcement. A criminal offence can be registered simply by pressing a button, and no one, not even the supposed fraudster, is investigated or held accountable. If these fraud cases were actual criminal offences, why are the supposed fraudsters not investigated or prosecuted? Both card issuers and acquirers conduct rigorous Know Your Customer (KYC) due diligence. The full identity of every cardholder and merchant is known - verified through passports, utility bills, residency documents, and company ownership records. If card payment fraud were truly a crime, arresting and prosecuting these individuals would be a straightforward matter. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of these so-called frauds are not fraud at all. And ironically, the true fraudulent activity is increasingly committed by the cardholders who initiate false claims, enabled by a system that not only tolerates friendly fraud but actively encourages it. In such cases, the card schemes and issuers are complicit, facilitating and legitimising false claims for the sake of user convenience or to shift liability away from themselves. Take, for example, Visa's Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP), which is now penalising acquirers and merchants for excessive fraud levels - fraud that is often just mislabelled as friendly fraud. VAMP's design is actually a form of competitive discrimination, as it measures an acquirer's fraud ratio as a percentage of total volume. Large acquirers with massive volumes can absorb fraud without surpassing thresholds. Smaller acquirers, however, are disproportionately affected and far more likely to be non-compliant, leading to assessment fees, reputational damage, or restrictions on their operations. Acquirers serving subscription-based merchants are especially vulnerable. These merchants naturally experience higher chargeback rates due to recurring billing, trial periods, and consumer forgetfulness. Yet, regulators often fail to understand that these so-called frauds are not crimes. Instead, they may wrongly view the acquirers as risky or non-compliant, potentially restricting or revoking their financial services licenses. This is a systemic misrepresentation of risk and fraud, driven by flawed definitions and enforced through punitive programs like VAMP. It damages honest businesses while failing to address the root cause of the issue. While there's a lot of good that Visa is doing right now for both small and large acquirers, it needs to rectify this problem as soon as possible. Rather than penalising merchants and acquirers, the industry must rethink how it handles consumer disputes and defines fraud, for example, with any of the following: Enable cancellation of subscriptions directly in banking apps or card issuer portals. Create a new chargeback category for 'consumer disputes' that does not require labelling transactions as fraud. Require supporting evidence for fraud claims, including optional police reports or formal declarations under penalty of perjury. Allow merchants to respond to fraud claims and provide context, especially in cases involving digital goods, subscriptions, or recurring services. Encourage regulatory oversight of card schemes to ensure compliance with legal standards and fairness principles. The card schemes' fraud programmes are built on a distorted definition of fraud. It punishes acquirers for chargebacks that arise from cardholder behaviour, while providing no meaningful recourse to the affected merchants. It creates regulatory confusion, distorts competition, and undermines the trust between financial institutions and their customers. The financial authorities across Europe and the card schemes need to rethink how fraud in the payments world is handled and find ways to prevent the misuse of fraud classifications. A new framework must be established—one that distinguishes between criminal fraud and consumer disputes, respects the rights of all parties, and holds the real bad actors accountable. Without this, card schemes will continue to shift blame to the wrong side of the transaction. Regulators may continue to unknowingly support a system that incentivises fraud, punishes innovation and discriminates against smaller players Johannes Kolbeinsson is CEO and co-founder of PAYSTRAX "Friendly fraud: The broken system fuelling a silent crisis for merchants" was originally created and published by Electronic Payments International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. 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Finextra
27-06-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Spendbase launches digital banking and virtual cards
Spendbase, a spend management platform that helps businesses save on software and cloud costs, is launching a new suite of financial tools that take spend control to the next level: Digital Banking and Virtual Cards. 0 This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. With this release, Spendbase moves beyond expense optimization and into the core of business finance, growing into a central hub for financial management. The new features empower companies to manage money smarter, move faster, and save more. What's New? With Digital Banking, companies using Spendbase can now: Get their business up and running in no time with a modern digital banking solution Save time and instantly open corporate IBANs for the EU and UK Make fast bank transfers via SEPA and Faster Payments Gain more control with sub-accounts for specific teams, individuals, or projects. The new Virtual Cards functionality allows users to: Easily issue from one to 100 virtual cards per organization Stay in control by setting precise spend limits for each card Multiply your savings by earning up to 1.5% cashback Benefit from enhanced security with 3DS, ensuring every transaction is truly yours Spend Smarter The launch slogan, 'Stop Spending Around,' captures the essence of Spendbase's mission: to give businesses radical visibility and control over their corporate spending. With new functionality offering granular controls at the team, account, and individual levels, companies can now track and optimize every dollar even better. 'Saving money has always been in our DNA — it's not just what we do for our customers, it's how we operate internally. We're seriously cost-efficient, and now we're turning that mindset into products. These tools pay for themselves by helping you spend less — and this launch is a major step in that direction.' Andrew Alex, CEO, Spendbase From Optimization to Full Control Spendbase originally made waves by helping companies cut waste in their software and cloud spending. For some mid-sized clients, that meant saving up to $150K in under a year. The platform quickly onboarded high-profile clients including Preply, MacPaw, Provectus, Happy Monday, YouScan, and others. Today, Spendbase supports 800+ businesses worldwide. One of the platform's standout features is its performance-based pricing: Spendbase charges 25% from what it helped you save. That means the platform is fully aligned with its clients' success — clients typically save four times more than they pay. With the addition of banking and virtual cards, Spendbase now delivers end-to-end spend visibility — from procurement to payment. 'Spendbase isn't here to replace your bank or existing cards. Every card has its perks for different needs. Think of Spendbase as the card that comes with the biggest savings. It's a complementary tool in your finance stack, focused entirely on eliminating spend waste.' Max Bondarenko, CMO, Spendbase
Associated Press
27-06-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Tranzzo Explains the Role of 3D Secure in Enhancing Online Payment Security for Businesses
Learn how 3D Secure verifies cardholders, reduces fraud and chargebacks, and builds customer trust in every online transaction your business processes. LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, June 27, 2025 / / -- For any business that accepts online payments, customer trust starts with payment security. And when card data is involved, there's no room for compromise. Tranzzo breaks down how 3D Secure helps protect online transactions — and why it's essential for both businesses and their customers. 3D Secure (3DS) is a security protocol that verifies the cardholder's identity during online payment. How it works: Customer enters card details Redirected to a secure bank page Confirms identity (SMS code, push notification, Face ID) Payment goes through only if verified 3DS is also known by branded names such as Visa Secure and Mastercard ID Check. Key benefits for business: Lower fraud risk Fewer chargebacks Increased customer trust Higher approval rates — when implemented right Want to protect your business from fraud and chargebacks? Contact Tranzzo Polina Toropova Tranzzo [email protected] Visit us on social media: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Other Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster (Switch 2) Review
Thirteen years ago, Square Enix released one of the best Final Fantasy spin-offs they'd made to-date but called it by a different name: Bravely Default. Standing on its own merits, it proved to be a cult classic for the 3DS by the time it arrived in the west in 2014, and still stands as one of the Nintendo 3DS' must-play RPGs (alongside its direct sequel, Bravely Second: End Layer). And yet, it still seems to lack the recognition it deserves as an upstanding modern take on classic JRPGs. Now, with as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2, this can finally be set right. Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster is a definitive take on the original game, which amalgamates its myriad re-releases and refreshes it for Nintendo's brand new console. Despite taking on the subtitle of the very first edition, Flying Fairy, it's based on the updated For The Sequel edition, which was the version we initially received in English—because what's a Square Enix JRPG franchise without some convoluted names? Naturally the game has been converted to suit the Switch 2's single screen, after originally utilizing the dual screen of the 3DS. This transition has been handled remarkably well, and will hopefully inspire more developers to bring their 3DS gems to Switch 2. Akitoshi Yoshida's character models and the game's beautiful storybook-like environments also translated nicely to both modern TVs and the Switch 2's screen. Though it was, admittedly, a little jarring to see the mouths moving on certain kookier character models, but that's testament to how much clearer the experience is now. While the 3DS' display was fine at the time, the HD, 16:9 presentation is vastly superior, breathing new life into Bravely Default's folksy world of Luxendarc. Most environments are enhanced by the clearer resolution, which shows off the paint-like texture of the landscapes. Even without the touch screen, this almost feels like the way it was meant to be seen. (Missing entirely is the original game's use of the 3DS' gyroscopic camera. This enabled a handful of AR cutscenes which sounded cool in theory, yet were gimmicky in practice, like the intro CG cutscene.) Beneath Bravely Default's fairy tale appearance (no pun intended) lies a well-crafted tale that combines the motifs of classic Final Fantasy, like crystals and warriors of light, with some plot elements from more modern FF, like the corrupt governments and natural resource wars of Final Fantasy VII. The party consists of Tiz, a young man who's the sole survivor of his simple village; Agnès, sheltered cleric of the Wind Crystal; Edea, a defector from Eternia, the enemy state that seeks to destroy the crystals' hold over society; and Ringabel, an amnesiac who hasn't forgotten his womanizing ways and carries a prophetic journal. Guided by the fairy Airy, they seek to restore the four crystals and thus, the balance of nature while thwarting the forces of Eternia along the way. Bravely Default's writing is still incredibly good by modern standards, even if the voice acting (and a late-game slog) will probably remain as divisive to audiences in 2025 as it did in the twenty-teens. The main characters are charming, as are the minor antagonists in their own way, and the world is easy to invest in. Allusions and homages to Final Fantasy are littered throughout, from the recurring names of spells (Fire-Fira-Firaga), to classes (White Mage, Black Mage), and items, to deeper thematic cuts (like the actions of the Water Crystal's Vestal). Squint just right and it could practically be a sequel to Final Fantasy III, but with profoundly more character and plot. Nowhere is that connection to classic 2D Final Fantasy more apparent than in battle. Players unlock up to 24 jobs (called Asterisks here) throughout Bravely Default, by defeating practitioners of that class. In this department, it harkens more to fellow underrated game Final Fantasy V: each job has distinct active and passive abilities, and as a character increases that job's level they unlock more permanent upgrades which can be equipped even after swapping to another class. Tiz might learn Black Magic, for example, then switch to the Time Mage class and keep the Black Magic command and the Pierce ability. This take on job classes is a tried and true system, and I'm glad to see Bravely Default still putting it to good use even if Final Fantasy isn't. It's kept fresh with some original inventions and unique interpretations of classic jobs, each well-earned in battle with the sort of villains you love to hate. If jobs were 'something old' or 'something borrowed,' Bravely Default's 'something new' was the battle system its name stems from. Actions in a fight cost 1 BP, and characters earn 1 BP per turn normally. Outside of the usual conventions of turn-based RPG combat, each participant can 'default' on their turn to guard and store up their BP, or 'brave' to take 2-4 actions at once. This deceptively simple paradigm can have big strategic ramifications. In weaker random battles, characters can go all out with braves and quickly dispatch their foes in one turn—instead of stooping to a 4-turn slugfest. In harder fights, will your opponent default and tank through your biggest assault? Or can you successfully brave when their guard is down and tear them to shreds instead? It's a simple tweak on the usual turn-based format which lends the game a very unique feel. All of the gameplay holds up just as well today as it did at Bravely Default's western debut. Thankfully, the 3DS original's connectivity features remain intact as well. Friends with the game can be added into your file, allowing you to 'link' your character with theirs—so if your friend has a maxed out Monk Edea, you can use the Abililink system to give your Edea some of those advanced, level 9 abilities. As well, the ability to call upon other players has been salvaged from the 3DS. In a similar fashion, players can 'record' their best moves in battle and save them to their profile, so that other players can summon them. (The game also provides fake, computerized 'ally' profiles periodically to avoid leaving behind those with smaller friend lists.) Even the town restoration minigame, where players idly repair Tiz's hometown over time, has made the jump. Once delegated to the bottom screen, the Norende Village Restoration is easily summoned with a press of the Switch 2 D-pad, as is the in-game reference book and the encounter rate setting, among other bells and whistles. New to Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster are two minigames using the Joy-Con 2's mouse features. Much like the system's mouse function itself, I found these distractions to be better than expected, though still a little too cumbersome to be a main event. The first, Luxencheer Rhythm Catch, also invokes another Final Fantasy spin-off, Theatrhythm. Bravely Default's take injects a sliver of Beat Saber, turning the Joy-Con 2s into a pair of light-stick cursors on the screen. As notes pass by, players must position those cursors so that the notes are caught between them, or move the correct cursor over the notes and press a button in time. It's more elegant in practice than it sounds on paper, and was actually a pretty fun use of the mouse, though I'm in no rush for Theatrhythm to adopt this approach instead. The other, Ringabel's Panic Cruise, is an airship pilot simulator. Meant to show all the work Ringabel does when flying the party's airship, this minigame tasks players with not only steering the craft horizontally and vertically, but also manipulating various controls to fulfill other character's requests or defending the craft from attackers. Though a tonal shift from the rest of the game—the first level has you fending off ghost pirates, because Reasons—it's another fun little distraction. Neither minigame is worth the price of the remaster's admission alone, though there are a plethora of rewards to be earned from playing them periodically, like more background on the characters and unique costume or special move parts. Each minigame has three difficulty levels and more stages to unlock through main plot progression; higher difficulty means more medals, and faster rewards. Like the original game using the 3DS' camera for AR cutscenes, the new minigames in Bravely Default's remaster make a case for the potential of the Switch 2's mouse controls. Fortunately this makes a better case than the first, and I'm pleasantly surprised with the mouse's application, but I still need a little more in-depth proof of its worth. (Bring on Metroid Prime 4.) My only real nitpick with the experience here is the unreliability of the network connection. Bravely Default isn't exhaustive in its network features, only requiring a passive connection to send or receive friend data. In theory, it's 'set it and forget it.' Yet if the connection is disrupted—say, by taking the Switch 2 off the dock—it can be tedious to reconnect. A small quibble in the grand scheme of things, perhaps addressable through updates, though still a minor nuisance. All in all, I couldn't be happier to see Bravely Default get a second chance in the spotlight with a bigger audience. Over a decade ago it proved that classic JRPGs weren't dead or a taboo—a lesson that studios still need to be reminded of, evidently. The Switch 2 has revitalized that core experience, in some ways revealing a superior form, and any fan of original Nintendo-era Final Fantasy, or even classic PS1 RPGs, should give it a shot. With backward compatibility, fans of the genre can already feast well on Switch 2, and having a strong, classic launch title like Bravely Default helps show how Nintendo's partners like Square Enix can keep that feast going. (For a perfect dessert course, the sequel would be a great fit as well, just saying…)
