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New York Post
07-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Kathy Hochul's highway-robbery bragging puts Willie Sutton to shame
At least Willie Sutton was being humble when he declared, 'I rob banks because that's where the money is'; Gov. Kathy Hochul is now boasting about her version of the same insight. That is, the gov's congratulating herself for raking in big bucks from her 'congestion' tolls — hundreds of millions as the scheme hits the six-month mark, on track to hit $500 million by year's end. Hochul's PR blast over the weekend called this a 'huge success'; Willie could've claimed the same about most of his capers, smirking much as she does in the social-media-campaign part of her 'victory tour.' Advertisement Sorry: Forcing middle- and working-class New Yorkers to pay an exorbitant amount of their income just to get to work — to drive on roads their taxes already funded — is neither a genius nor a heroic one. And the bragging only adds insult to the injury. The tolls help 'businesses make deliveries and save costs,' claims Hochul's office. Advertisement Huh? Food distributors are looking at six-figure added costs, while the likes of FreshDirect are slipping in added fees for congestion-zone customers. Small restaurants are also reeling. This move remains a cruel money grab wrapped up in a green pseudo-justification, one the gov knows people hate — that's why she postponed it until after last November's elections. We guess she hopes voters will simply have forgotten, or grown resigned to the hit, by the time she faces them in November 2026. Beware: If she actually wins re-election this way, the plans are already drawn up to move toward doubling the tolls soon after.
Tom's Guide
07-07-2025
- Business
- Tom's Guide
I tried 3 AI-powered scam detectors to help keep me safe online — and there's a clear winner
Regardless of whether it's some fine Russian women dying to meet me or a rogue document for me to read from a mysterious online bank, it seems that every day I'm inundated with scam emails, texts and phone calls. The bad news is that by using the fruits of artificial intelligence, the scams are getting increasingly sophisticated and believable with accurate design elements (rather than fuzzy images), realistic sounding English (not grammatically incorrect wording) and an overall look that is at a glance, credible. Gone are the easy to see-through Nigerian Prince scams, fake lottery winnings and offers to cash a six figure check, replaced by calls purporting to be from the IRS, texts about unpaid tolls as well as no shortage of tech support and crypto currency come-ons. Scammers are becoming a little too convincing and people worldwide are falling for them – hook, line and online sinker – according to the Netherlands-based Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA). The organization's latest 'Global State of Scams Report,' revealed that 2 billion scam victims worldwide lost over $1 trillion dollars to an ever-increasing variety of scams – a little less than 1 percent of the World Bank's global $106 trillion economic output. One of the biggest online growth industries, only those living in a cave without Internet are immune to modern day scammers, regardless of whether it's a scam farm in Myanmar, a Romanian job that doesn't exist or a Chinese pig butchering operation. Call it wishful thinking or online self-delusion, but two-thirds of the nearly 60,000 people GASA surveyed in 2024 thought they could recognize scams. Still, 74% concluded that they were the victim of an online crime; the average loss was $3,520. No surprise, bank, electronic money transfers and e-wallet transactions top the list of successful scams, because – as bank robber Willie Sutton said – 'that's where the money is.' With AI's help, scams today can feel like they're coming from all angles, including realistic looking but fake sites for banks, online payment companies and major web firms, like Amazon and PayPal. In fact, scams today seem limited only by criminal creativity, but the best defense is a good offence by using the fruits of artificial intelligence to stop them. The scam detectors I looked at come from the makers of the best antivirus software and use close to a million scams to train their models to analyze suspect imagery, text, video and overall design. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. I tried them out with three typical scams, including emails purporting to be from the FBI and PayPal as well as a rogue text about unpaid tolls. They show the range of efforts to get me to go to a malicious site, open a dangerous link or supply my login credentials. The good news in the AI arms race is that these detectors use scammers' favorite tool to defeat them and create a virtuous circle. Based on machine learning techniques, the detectors use verified scams they pick up to further train, refine and speed up the detection model that looks for patterns of fraud, deception and rip-offs. In other words, the more scams found, the better the detection can become. They can't perform magic. Although the AI scam detectors I used were generally effective at separating the online wheat from the chaff, some were frustratingly slow. The best part is that with greater input data, the AI models can be made more effective. And it looks like there'll be no shortage of scams to feed into the AI detection machine. Bitdefender has a two barreled approach that starts with its free Scamio detection site and mini apps for Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Discord. Just drop a dodgy image, email or text string into Scamio, and a moment later it pronounces the item safe or dangerous. Its chatbot provides the rationale in a chat window that can be interrogated. However, this leaves the onus on you to be skeptical and paranoid about your online life. Bitdefender's Scam Copilot (no relation to Microsoft Copilot) automates scam detection by incorporating an AI chatbot that's similar to Scamio and leverages the latest advances in Large Language Models (LLM). It proactively looks for hidden scams in the background of the company's Ultimate Security Plus and Premium Security plans. Scam Copilot spots rip offs that are endemic in your area as well as those hiding in Gmail, Outlook and text messages, calendar invites in iOS and chat apps, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Discord. To work, some of these apps require specific permission, such as access to notifications or the ability to read messages. To train its AI app, Bitdefender went through hundreds of thousands of online frauds and swindles using several machine learning techniques. The resulting layered model can identify malicious patterns, such as unauthorized remote access as well as dangerous online transactions, and blocks them before they show up on your screen. It runs on a balance between cloud and local processing. Its interface is similar to the rest of Bitdefender's products with a Scam Copilot box up front in the dashboard that replaces the Quick Scan option. It includes details about scams it encountered via email, links and messaging, along with a way to go right to an on-demand chat window with provisions for analyzing text, images and links. Overall, it did well catching all three scams I assembled. However, the Scam Copilot was slow at nearly 30 seconds to recognize each. In other words, it's thorough but can be time-consuming. Like Bitdefender's Scamio, Norton's Genie started as a stand-alone product for getting a thumbs up or down verdict on suspicious items. Using the latest AI techniques, Genie has expanded its usefulness as an automated scam detector that's a fully-fledged part of Norton's phalanx of protective services. Available with AntiVirus Plus, Norton Mobile Security, and Norton 360 plans, Genie Scam Protection combines traditional defenses like URL detection and behavioral analysis with natural language processing that can root out the telltale signs of potential scams from emails and texts and images. The Genie Scam Protection's model is the result of processing hundreds of thousands of real-world scams fed through its machine learning infrastructure. The resulting detection model runs on cloud processing to react to quick changes in criminal techniques. It starts with the Safe SMS feature's ability to stop text-based scams. Norton adds the SafeWeb protection to steer you away from those sites with a bad reputation for malware distribution and scamming visitors. It looks deeply into shopping sites to verify that they are genuine, don't have dangerous links or embedded malware. The company's Genie Scam Protection Pro takes this to a new level and is included with the top Norton 360 plans and LifeLock ID protection services, which adds $10,000 of insurance per event should something dangerous slip through. The Pro version has an extra focus on tech support scams and includes Safe Call to block scam calls that seem to outnumber legitimate calls these days. Meanwhile, Safe Email proactively scans existing emails looking for extra patterns that might indicate dangers. Regardless of which version you get, the scam protection fits into Norton's security dashboard and operates in the background – day and night. It shows the number of questionable files scanned and the latest information on current scams. There's also the Ask Genie box that provides direct access to try out presumed scams in the chat window. The Genie Scam Protection passed my three-part scam test and offers to provide details as to its decision. On the other hand, the FBI warning scam took 29.8 seconds to process, while others took half as long. Still, that's too long for many impatient web hounds. The newest of the three, McAfee Scam Detector, is not something the company will charge extra for or only include with its high-end security suites. Call it the democratization of scam protection, McAfee's scam protection will be part of all of the company's security products because it's considered fundamental protection. As an opening blow in the AI cold war, McAfee's technological emphasis was on stopping phishing scams that are after your login credentials or personal data. Today, Scam Detector goes a lot further by fighting fire with fire with AI techniques to recognize and stop a wide variety of computer-generated criminal scams. McAfee machine learning experts used thousands of known online scams to train its AI model and develop its detection algorithms to counter more personal and directed scams with a flexible technique that's able to spot all kinds of scams and frauds in a crowd. Fully automatic, the predictive model runs 24/7 in the background looking for the telltale signs of AI scams. It doesn't need a chat window for instant (or nearly so) analysis of suspect items and the good news for the impatient among us, including me, is that it all works quickly because the AI processing is done locally and not online. This works especially well on one of the best AI laptops with an NPU. The responses are generally completed in near real time but analyzing a video for AI scams might take as much as four seconds, not half a minute as is the case with some of the others. Whether it's text, an email or video, whenever something enters the computer with a recognizable scam component or pattern, the security software detects it, flags it and blocks its execution before it can unleash its dangers. McAfee's Scam Detector was still being finished back when I ran my scam tests with the others but after seeing it in action myself, I was very impressed with how quick and thorough it was. The bottom line for scams today is that they are the inevitable result of a free, open and inherently uncontrollable online world. There's no avoiding them, but you can fight back and turn the tables by aiming AI right back at them. The best scam detectors can put up a fight against all sorts of online rip offs, although for the time being you might have to be a little patient for a verdict.
New York Times
04-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Deitsch: Put the women's NCAA Tournament championship game on ABC in prime time
Start times matter in sports when it comes to championship game viewership. The World Series, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Final, the NCAA men's basketball title game and college football national championship game, just to name a few mega-events, all commence in a prime time (on the East Coast) television window. The Super Bowl airs slightly earlier (roughly 6:30 p.m. ET) but concludes in the middle of prime time. There is a reason television programmers have historically done this, and it follows the same adage that Willie Sutton used when someone asked him why he robbed banks. Advertisement Because that's where the viewers are. Prior to arriving at The Athletic, I covered women's college basketball for Sports Illustrated for more than a decade, including annually the women's Final Four. The role gave me a window into the sport, and I could see the potential for an economic rocket shot as the players got more skilled and athletic, and programs got deeper. The past three years have shown everything points arrow up: All three games tipped off at 3 p.m. ET, and there is a strong argument to be made that even with their increasingly huge TV ratings, they all left even more audience attention on the table by airing at 3 p.m. ET, rather than primetime, when more people would watch. During my years of writing about women's basketball, I've watched ESPN make a bigger commitment to its coverage, from airing more high-profile regular-season games in better programming windows to enhancing its studio coverage with dedicated women's basketball experts. The company made the decision in 2021 to air all 63 NCAA Tournament games nationally and placed both semifinal games on Big ESPN. Now, the title game airs on ABC. ESPN recognized it had a product with growing mass appeal and acted accordingly. The deal that ESPN signed with the NCAA last year — an eight-year, $920 million media rights agreement that featured 40 championships bundled together (including women's basketball) through 2032 — has contractual provisions that the title game will air on ABC. This is a great thing. But the time has come. Rather than the usual 3 p.m. ET start time — as with this Sunday's championship game — the title game should air on ABC in prime time starting next year, and ESPN executives and the NCAA should advocate hard for this. The ABC schedule this Sunday includes new episodes of 'America's Funniest Home Videos' (7 p.m. ET), 'American Idol' (8 p.m. ET) and 'The $100,000 Pyramid' (10 p.m. ET, and celebrity contestants include Rob Riggle, Luenell, Fortune Feimster and Rachel Dratch). That's not exactly NBC's Thursday night lineup in the 1990s. Advertisement The Walt Disney Co. would benefit far more in the long run from exposing one of its significant sports properties to a bigger audience because women's basketball is going to be played on ESPN/ABC far longer than 'Idol' and 'Pyramid' will run on that network. American Idol drew 4.66 million viewers last Sunday while Pyramid drew 2.29 million viewers. The women's title game would obliterate this in prime time. Everyone wants to protect their own fiefdom at Disney, and there are legitimate challenges. Idol may have built into its contract that it can't be pre-empted. As far as non-NFL programming, Idol also generates more than $100,000 for a 30-second spot, which is robust in 2025 for a broadcast show. So you would need a lot of executives from multiple sister partners to make this happen, but this is good long-term corporate business for the parent company. Willow Bay, the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and her spouse Bob Iger, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company, know well the power of women's sports. Last year, the couple purchased a controlling stake in Angel City FC of the National Women's Soccer League. Iger can make this happen very easily if he wants it. No doubt the afternoon window has produced great viewership for the title game over the last two years, and a 3 p.m. (ET) Sunday tip has benefits, given it is an accessible time for younger fans. (The prosecution has no objection here, your honor.) But prime time on ABC on Sunday or even Tuesday will do better. ESPN did not make a programming executive available upon an inquiry on this topic, most likely because it is trying to be a good corporate partners. But last year when I asked this of Nick Dawson, ESPN senior vice president of programming and acquisitions, he said: 'The conversations have happened with regard to the time slot of the championship game as well as network considerations for the national semifinals. It's an eight-year deal, so where we start may not be where we finish. As of right now, our intention is to continue with what we did — the championship game on ABC in that kind of late afternoon Sunday slot, which from a potential viewership perspective our research team has proven to us that there's not much difference in terms of potential upside between that window and in a prime-time window.' Advertisement Though the decision would have to happen at levels above her, I asked Meg Arnonwitz, an ESPN senior vice president of production and the point person for the women's tournament, what she thought of the idea. 'What I would certainly be in support of having conversations about how we continue to put this sport in the best light possible for it to grow and give it the exposure it deserves,' she said. 'We should never shy away from having those conversations.' Added Rebecca Lobo, the lead analyst of the women's tournament: 'Moving the championship game from ESPN to ABC in 2023 proved to be a brilliant decision that took advantage of the newfound popularity of women's college basketball. I'm curious how ratings would be impacted if the game was moved to prime time. But I also trust the leadership at ESPN to know if and when the timing is right for that.' The women's college game is in a great place. The Elite Eight round averaged 2.9 million viewers, the second most-watched Elite Eight on record and up 34 percent from 2023. ESPN experienced a massive windfall with the nexus of Clark and a move of the title game to ABC. A prime time final is the next step. When you have momentum, ride it.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The difference between wealth and health
Photo illustration by Getty Images. It looks like the only way Congress can pay for tax cuts for billionaires is to cut spending on Medicaid and Medicare. Why? It's like the bank robber Willie Sutton said when someone asked him why he robbed banks, 'That's where the money is.' Just in case that's the plan, let me tell you a story. Sometime in 1990 a young man sat on a couch in my house and asked for help. He had a brain tumor. He was there because an older friend of his brought him and insisted that I was somebody who could help him. I wasn't so sure. I was in my first term as a state representative and was just feeling my way around. I didn't yet understand the power that having a title gave to a person. Louie, the older man, did. He knew not only that that title gave me the power to help, it also gave me the responsibility to help. The young man worked at a local lumber mill 'pulling chain'—removing and sorting boards coming off a chain conveyor at a very rapid rate. Sometimes, because of the tumor, he would black out, and the boards would come whizzing past him. His workmates covered for him during these spells and took on his share of the work until he snapped out of it and resumed working. He had no medical insurance. He couldn't afford it, and even if he could have afforded it, it wouldn't have paid for the operation to remove the tumor because it was a 'pre-existing condition' that no insurance company would then cover. At that time the only way a person who needed expensive medical care, but couldn't pay for it, was to get on a program called Social Security Disability Insurance. It usually took three years and required hiring a lawyer. He was in a hard place. The only good news was that the tumor wasn't cancerous and would be easy to remove. But it was still growing, and his blackouts would get worse. I decided to call a person I knew slightly who worked for Montana's Sen. Max Baucus and ask for her advice. Holly Luck answered and I explained the situation. She asked to talk with the young man, so I handed him the phone, but he didn't take it. He couldn't take it. He had blacked out. When he came to, I gave him Holly's number to call. He did, and the Senator's office quickly got him on Social Security Disability Insurance, he had the surgery and was able to go back to work as a productive part of the American workforce. That's the way it was before the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid Expansion. There were a lot of stories like that. Keeping people healthy keeps them working and contributing to a healthy economy. If we want that for America, the choice between subsidizing billionaires and keeping American workers working should be pretty clear.
Telegraph
18-02-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Champions Trophy is the ‘zombie tournament' refusing to die, plus our predictions
Willie Sutton, the notorious American criminal, was once asked about his fondness for robbing banks. He stole from them, he explained, 'because that's where the money is'. These words double as an explanation for why the Champions Trophy, cricket's zombie tournament, is returning. The tournament has been killed off on three prior occasions. Each time, it has been reinstated. And each time, the reason has been the same. However curiously it fits into a white-ball ecosystem dominated by franchise cricket and World Cups, the Champions Trophy is essential to the game's finances. It is worth several £100 million of the International Cricket Council's global broadcasting contract. Here lies the essential rationale for why the Champions Trophy is returning after an eight-year hiatus. Worldwide, the essential economic forces in the game are the same: the value of broadcasting rights for international cricket that does not involve Australia, England or India is stagnating at best, and often declining in real terms. To make up this shortfall, nations have resorted to two approaches: building their own domestic short-format tournaments; and increasingly relying on revenue from the ICC. The ICC generates its cash from selling the rights to global events. As such, it has reverted to staging one marquee men's tournament every year: the T20 World Cup every two years, the ODI World Cup every four, and the Champions Trophy every four, too. Of these three competitions, the Champions Trophy is by a distance the least-loved and least prestigious. Yet the significance of the ninth version of the tournament is elevated by the simple fact of where it is being staged. For the first time since 1996, Pakistan – the reigning champions, after toppling India at the Oval in 2017 – are hosting a global event. Crowds will be vibrant, even for neutral games. Still, the build-up to the tournament has been marked by the chaos that has become a staple of recent ICC events. Extraordinarily, tickets were only released on general sale 22 days before the opening game. The delay reflected an overdue wait to release the fixture list, some questions over whether Pakistan's stadiums would all be ready on time and an altogether bigger question: whether India would agree to cross the Wagah border. The answer, long telegraphed, was no. All India's matches will be in Dubai instead. In a situation without precedent in any major sporting tournament, the venue for the final will not be known until under five days before the game. Should India qualify, Lahore will be stripped of hosting the denouement, which will be switched to Dubai. The affair is yet another encapsulation of where the power lies in international cricket today. Afghanistan controversy will not go away It is not only India's clash with Pakistan in Dubai that will have deeper political resonance. So will Afghanistan's tussles with Australia, England and South Africa, amid calls for a boycott of the side on account of the Taliban rule and the country's suppression of women's rights. Afghanistan narrowly missed out on a semi-final in the 2023 World Cup, when they defeated England in Delhi, and reached the last four in last year's T20 World Cup. Should Afghanistan match these showings, they might unwittingly spur more debate about their very presence in ICC events. India, as is now the default, will begin as favourites, even with the irrepressible Jasprit Bumrah injured. In the T20 World Cup, they finally ended their 11-year wait to win a global event, and will now expect to add a 50-over trophy to their collection. Yet there is an unusually open feel to the tournament. With just three group games per side, countries need to win only two games to progress to the semi-finals. Conversely, two defeats will send a team home: the antithesis of the 2023 World Cup, when England lost six times during the interminable group stage. The curious status of ODI cricket today lends the Champions Trophy an even more unpredictable feel. Since losing the 2023 World Cup final, India have played just nine ODIs. None of the eight competing sides in the Champions Trophy have played more than 14 games. Even these have generally been played at far from full strength, with ODIs used as a prime opportunity for players to rest – or, increasingly, enrich themselves by playing in franchise cricket instead. No ODI side will ever be as well-grooved as the England vintage from 2015-19, who enjoyed the luxury of 88 ODIs between World Cups, the vast majority with a full-strength side. But one axiom in ODI tournaments will remain: the sides who show the most adaptability will be best-placed to thrive. Pakistan are the highest-scoring country for ODIs since 2015, with teams frequently able to clear 100 in their final10 overs. ICC events tend to witness lower scores, partly because of pitches being reused. Staging the competition across Pakistan and Dubai, which tends to be more pace-friendly, creates greater uncertainty. The upshot is a tournament that, for all the off-field questions, should bring abundant on-field intrigue. In these days of bloated competitions, the very brevity of the Champions Trophy – just 15 matches, mirroring the format used in the inaugural World Cup 50 years ago – ensures that matches will be played for high stakes from the very onset. The next three weeks promise to provide a reminder of the best of the 50-over game – a format that, at its best, can combine the slow-burning tension of Test cricket with the razzmatazz of T20. They might even show that cricket's zombie tournament has greater merit than merely generating cash. Champions Trophy predictions Winner: New Zealand India, rightly, are strong favourites. But New Zealand are familiar with Pakistani conditions and have enjoyed excellent preparation, defeating the hosts to win last week's tri-series final. Matt Henry, Will O'Rourke, Lockie Ferguson and captain Mitchell Santner are a fine, contrasting attack. The top order combines Rachin Ravindra's elan with Kane Williamson's mastery before the power from Glenn Phillips and Michael Bracewell at the death. More than anything, New Zealand look well-primed to adapt – essential given the recent paucity of ODIs and the tournament being held in two different countries. Player of the tournament: Matt Henry One of the most skilful seamers in world cricket, and a particular menace with the new ball, Henry is relishing his new status as New Zealand attack leader after the retirements of Trent Boult and Tim Southee. Most runs: Shubman Gill Fresh from a sublime ODI series against England, Gill should relish batting conditions in Dubai. The tournament looms as his chance to dominate a world event, emulating Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. Most wickets: Kuldeep Yadav His beguiling spin will be an essential wicket-taking threat for India in the middle overs. Left-arm wrist spin is the game's rarest art; in white-ball cricket, Yadav might be the best practitioner yet. What I am most looking forward to… While the 10-team ODI World Cup can be a slog, with nine group games per team, the Champions Trophy contains high-stakes jeopardy from the very first ball. A team can only afford to lose one match if they are to progress to the semi-finals.
