How Non-Payments Became Big Business at Visa and Mastercard
Visa and Mastercard are rapidly expanding value‑added services to offset slowing card‑payment growth and mounting regulatory pressure. Mastercard posted $3.4 billion in VAS net revenue, a 25% year‑over‑year rise, while Visa’s VAS reached $17.5 billion, up 9% YoY. Both networks are forging partnerships with fintechs, big‑tech, and traditional banks to embed fraud‑prevention, AI‑driven risk tools, and unified checkout across mobile wallets. Analysts project VAS growth in the high‑teens to low‑20s percent range for 2026, outpacing overall revenue growth.
Optimism for AI-Powered Productivity: Deloitte
Deloitte’s UK CFO Survey shows 96% of finance chiefs plan to boost technology spending over the next five years, with AI at the forefront of productivity strategies. Optimism for AI has jumped to 59% of CFOs, up from 39% a...
Registration Is Open for the March 2026 MarTech Conference
Registration is now open for the free, virtual MarTech Conference on March 4, 2026. The day‑long event will feature six live panel discussions covering data silos, cookieless identity, funnel collapse, context‑aware experiences, workflow redesign, and AI‑driven online visibility. A new...
Fragmentation and Consolidation (Part 2) – Getting Ahead of the Curve
The space sector is transitioning from a fragmented, novelty‑driven phase to a consolidation era where reliability and risk mitigation dominate. Customers no longer ask which component performs best; they demand proven delivery, stable interfaces, and support. Suppliers must shift their...
RFK Decimates Vaccine Schedule
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as HHS secretary, has reduced the U.S. routine vaccine schedule from covering 17 illnesses to just 11, moving hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, meningococcal, influenza and COVID‑19 into a “shared clinical decision‑making” category. The change bypasses...
The Loudest Voices in Security Often Have the Least to Lose
The article argues that the most vocal cybersecurity commentators often lack accountability, leading to hype over substance. It illustrates five harmful personas—panic inducer, hype rider, Chicken Little, pessimist, and dismisser—who prioritize fear, trends, or dismissal instead of evidence‑based solutions. By...
Terran Orbital Appoints Michael Vishion as Vice President of Program Management
Terran Orbital, a Lockheed Martin company, announced Michael Vishion as vice president of program management. Vishion brings more than 25 years of aerospace and defense experience, including leadership of multi‑site portfolios worth $200‑$350 million. He will report to CEO Peter...
Growth Starts With Human Insights, Not GTM Plans
Most companies build upside down... They start with: - product ideas - GTM plans - launch calendars …and hope the market catches up. But strong growth doesn’t start at the top. It starts here 👇 Human insights. Why? Bc value...
AI Accelerates Decisions; Clear Leadership Prevents Costly Ambiguity
AI compresses decision timelines. Ambiguity around ownership, priorities, and tradeoffs becomes expensive quickly once AI touches core processes. Strong leadership shows up through clear calls, visible accountability, and sustained focus. Those signals shape how teams engage and how fast progress...
How Agentic AI Will Lure Shoppers
Nick Campbell, chief product officer at Xplor Pay, discussed the rise of agentic commerce – AI‑driven buying agents that can search, select and pay for goods. The market is forecast to reach $1.7 trillion in sales by 2030, with major players...
Microsoft Scraps Exchange Online Spam Clamp After Customers Cry Foul
Microsoft has abandoned its planned 2,000‑per‑day external recipient limit for Exchange Online after strong customer pushback. The original 2024 policy aimed to curb spam and compromised accounts by capping outbound emails for new tenants, with a phased rollout to existing...
A Red Moon, a Blue Moon, a Supermoon and More: Your Guide to the Southern Sky in 2026
The 2026 southern‑hemisphere sky will feature a total lunar eclipse on 3 March, a rare blue moon on 31 May, and a supermoon on 24 December. Planetary highlights include a tight Mercury‑Mars‑Saturn grouping in April, a Venus‑Jupiter close approach in June, and a...
Elon Musk Proves Society Now Embraces Higher Tech Risk
Yeah I agree -- I think @elonmusk has shown in the last 10 years that you can take more risk than people thought in the world of atoms. (that's in part why the vibe is it like it is in...
Hands‑On AI Workshop Drives Sticky GTM Adoption
The most valuable use of time with your team, in person, at your upcoming SKO/RKO is a hands-on AI workshop. Not an "art of the possible" presentation, not a theoretical or even "here's what others have done" discussion. Think of...
A New Approach to Drugging MYC: The Application of Translation-Inhibiting Interdictors To MYC-Driven Malignancies
Researchers have unveiled a novel class of translation‑inhibiting interdictors that selectively suppress MYC protein production, offering a viable strategy to target MYC‑driven malignancies. These small‑molecule agents disrupt the initiation of mRNA translation, leading to rapid depletion of MYC levels in...
Fiserv’s Clover Adopts Biometrics
Fiserv announced that its Clover point‑of‑sale platform will soon support biometric payments, allowing customers to authorize purchases with facial or palm scans. The feature, built in partnership with fintech firm Wink, will debut at the National Retail Federation conference and...
Delay January Emails for 30‑40% Higher Open Rates
Before you hit send on that new email campaign, consider this: The first 2 weeks of January are awful for email response. According to Jay Schwedelson , your open rates will be DOWN. But if you wait til mid to...
Restricting Industrial Loan Charters Would Be Bad for the Economy
Industrial banks, regulated and FDIC‑insured, provide crucial credit to small businesses, gig workers, and underserved Main Street enterprises. Since their creation in 1987, only one has failed, and capital ratios are roughly 50 % above industry averages, indicating strong safety. Proponents...
222 - GNSS Resilience, Interoperability and Trust
In this episode, Lisa Dyer, Executive Director of the GPS Alliance, explains how growing geopolitical tensions and reliance on precise timing are driving the need for GNSS resilience, interoperability, and innovation across multiple satellite constellations. She highlights that robust, cross‑compatible...
'It's a Good Idea': Jensen Huang Hints that Nvidia Could Consider Bringing Back Older Graphics Cards to Solve GPU Pricing...
At CES 2026 Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hinted that the company could resurrect older GeForce GPUs or retrofit them with the latest AI‑driven DLSS technology to alleviate current supply constraints and soaring prices. He described the idea as "good" but warned...
Space Force Moves to Standardize Satellites with ‘Handle 2.0’ Contract
The U.S. Space Force has awarded Falcon ExoDynamics a $3.3 million contract to develop Handle 2.0, an upgraded modular interface that links satellite buses and payloads. The effort builds on the original Handle prototype demonstrated on the 2022 Slingshot 1 mission and aims...
How to Eliminate IT Blind Spots in the Modern, AI-Driven Enterprise
Enterprises that rely heavily on AI and multi‑cloud environments are confronting new security blind spots that stem from dynamic agent behavior, data‑poisoning, and mis‑configurations. Experts advise CSOs to shift from reactive defenses to unified visibility that normalizes telemetry across AI...
Oral MRT‑8102 Shows Rapid Biomarker Drop, Upside Remains
$GLUE +45% MRT-8102 delivers eye-catching 4-week biomarker win with clean early safety and the convenience of an oral approach. MRT-8102 degrades NEK7, a scaffolding protein essential for NLRP3 inflammasome assembly, shutting down upstream activation of IL-1β/IL-18 and downstream IL-6/hsCRP, which...
Mundial Media Inks Exclusive U.S. Publisher Partnership with Grupo Reforma
Mundial Media has secured an exclusive U.S. digital advertising partnership with Grupo Reforma, bringing the Mexican publisher’s premium titles—Reforma, El Norte and Mural—into its AI‑driven, privacy‑first platform. The deal gives U.S. brands access to high‑engagement Spanish‑language and bicultural audiences through...
Elon Musk’s 10,000 Starship Annual Production Target: Demand Drivers and Infrastructure Imperatives
Elon Musk has set a target of producing 10,000 Starships per year, a rate that translates to roughly 27 launches each day. The ambition hinges on three primary demand drivers: massive cargo shipments for Mars colonization, ultra‑fast point‑to‑point Earth transport,...
HawkSoft and Sonant Announce Voice AI Integration for Independent Insurance Agencies
Insurance agency management platform HawkSoft has partnered with Sonant to embed its voice AI directly into the HawkSoft system. The integration enables 24/7 call logging, automatic task creation, and note transcription without leaving the AMS. Sonant’s insurance‑specific AI understands P&C...
StackAdapt’s 2026 Programmatic Advertising Report Finds Top Marketers Are 4X More Likely to Consolidate Tech and Use AI to Drive...
StackAdapt’s 2026 State of Programmatic Advertising report shows marketers who consolidate tech and adopt AI outperform peers. Survey of 484 senior marketers and data from over 6,000 advertisers reveals top performers are four times more likely to unify platforms. While...
B2B Buyers Are Non‑Linear—Adopt a Customer‑Centric Flywheel
B2B buyers don't move in a straight line. But your funnel assumes they do. That's the problem. The traditional marketing funnel says buyers move through: Awareness → Consideration → Decision → Purchase Clean. Linear. Predictable. Except that's not how anyone...
AI Platforms to Grow 10× by 2030, Inference Leads
AI Platforms market will surge more than 10x by 2030, driven by the enterprise adoption of model training, inference, and AI agents. It highlights the power shift from hyperscalers to emerging independents and the rise of inference as the dominant...
5 FDA Decisions to Watch in the First Quarter of 2026
Eli Lilly’s oral GLP‑1 candidate orforglipron received a national‑priority voucher, accelerating its FDA review and threatening Novo Nordisk’s recent oral Wegovy launch. Disc Medicine’s repurposed schizophrenia drug bitopertin is on the brink of approval for the rare disease erythropoietic protoporphyria,...
Secure On‑Device AI Becomes Edge Standard, Says Qualcomm
Qualcomm is doubling down on secure on-device AI for IoT robotics and industrial systems. Edge intelligence is becoming the default. #AI #CES2026 #IoT https://t.co/8nZDZY1spN
Top Reps Handle the Heavy Lifting; Is Your Team?
A great sales rep does most of the work for the prospect: Does the scheduling Does the demos Solves the problem Helps sell other stakeholders Follows up Simplifies deployment AI can do some of this now. But how much of it does your team really do?
Cloudfy Launches Enterprise V5: Modular, API-First, and Ready for the AI-Driven Future of B2B Commerce
Cloudfy has unveiled Enterprise v5, a next‑generation B2B eCommerce platform built on a modular, API‑first architecture. The solution offers pre‑built functional modules and a headless API layer for rapid integration with ERP, CMS and custom front‑ends. It introduces an open...
Atrial Fibrillation Drives Cognitive Decline, Not Prevented by Blood Thinners
Atrial fibrillation and cognitive decline. Blood thinners don't help. Possible explanations not mentioned here include less brain clearance of metabolic waste products with this heart rhythm, recently documented https://t.co/IWzR05JaBN https://t.co/5UA4vcW3GO
Perturb-Seq Maps T Cell Regulators and Immune Traits
Genome-scale perturb-seq in primary human CD4+ T cells maps context-specific regulators of T cell programs and human immune traits https://t.co/tMc4efSMxe https://t.co/XUdax0qxn1
Universal Robots and Robotiq Showcase Next-Generation Palletizing Solution at CES 2026 in Collaboration with Siemens
Universal Robots, Robotiq and Siemens unveiled a next‑generation palletizing solution at CES 2026, pairing the UR20 collaborative robot with Robotiq's PAL Ready cell and Siemens' new Digital Twin Composer software. The system demonstrates real‑time photorealistic digital‑twin visualization alongside live hardware, using...
AI Offloads Cognitive Load, Defying Age‑Related Brain Decline
One positive outcome of AI is that it will make the aging-related decline of your brain power less relevant. You can keep doing the same things just as nimbly at any age by offloading more.
Great Ads Fail without a Leak‑free Conversion Funnel
Most brands die in the gap between attention and action. Great ads don’t equal great business. Creative gets clicks, but systems close sales. Make sure your funnel isn’t leaking where it matters most: • Checkout UX • First-touch emails • Product onboarding Most "ad issues" are ops...
Inside the Agentic Operating System Code and Theory Is Teasing at CES
Marketers are rapidly adopting AI, yet most have not re‑engineered workflows to capture its full value. At CES, Code and Theory unveiled The Machine, an agentic AI operating system that embeds automation and intelligence into existing marketing stacks instead of...
Small P-Values Aren't Always Biologically Meaningful in Bioinformatics
1/ Bioinformatics is NOT just statistics. The p-value is small, but is it biologically meaningful? Let’s talk. 🧵 https://t.co/iRgiOXPR8v
Timmerman Traverse Reaches $1M Milestone, Kilimanjaro Countdown
Timmerman Traverse for Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has hit its $1M goal. One month to go before Kilimanjaro. https://t.co/xb01xFyZoG
MagicLab Made Its Debut at CES, Accelerating Global Development
MagicLab made its first appearance at CES, unveiling three flagship robots: the full‑size humanoid Gen1, the high‑dynamic biped Z1, and the head‑tail coordinated quadruped MagicDog. Gen1 demonstrated multi‑unit collaboration in a home‑appliance plant, featuring 42 active degrees of freedom and...
Sequencing Depth Introduces Predictable Artifacts Affecting DE Analysis
1/ Different sequencing depths don't just change detection. They create specific, predictable artifacts that propagate into your DE calls and any downstream modeling. https://t.co/u0U7E5yq6J
PI at Photonics West: See the Latest Advancements in Nanopositioning Automation and Precision Motion Control
At Photonics West in San Francisco, PI showcased its latest nanopositioning, automation and precision‑motion‑control technologies aimed at scaling high‑tech manufacturing by 2026. The company highlighted solutions for silicon‑photonic chip production, wafer testing, laser micro‑machining, high‑resolution 3D printing, satellite communications, super‑resolution microscopy...
Banks Are Banks, Non Banks Are Non Banks, Clarifies the American Fintech Council
The American Fintech Council (AFC) sent a joint letter to the FDIC, CFPB, FTC, OCC and the Federal Reserve asserting that banks and non‑banks must be regulated distinctly. The council emphasized that “banks are banks, and non‑banks are non‑banks” to...
DexRobot Shines at CES 2026, Showcasing Its Flagship DexHand021 Pro and Closed-Loop Dexterous Solution
DexRobot debuted its DexHand021 Pro at CES 2026, presenting a 22‑DOF, 50 N payload robotic hand with millisecond tactile feedback and edge‑AI compute. The system includes the DexCap exoskeleton, capturing 65 DOF motion at 1000 Hz for closed‑loop skill learning. Priced between $14,000 and $28,000,...
Long March 8A Fairing Likely Launched on Christmas
Possibly the payload fairing from the Long March 8A launched from Wenchang on Christmas Day (UTC).
New Solution Gives Real-Time Insight Into Bot Traffic
Hydrolix has launched Bot Insights, a real‑time platform that detects, classifies, and alerts on every bot, crawler, and AI agent accessing a website. The solution ingests massive bot traffic data in seconds, offering full‑fidelity analytics without sampling and supporting long‑term...
Why Legitimate Bot Traffic Is a Growing Security Blind Spot
Security teams have long focused on blocking malicious bots, but legitimate bots now account for a sizable portion of web traffic, exceeding 50%. Search‑engine crawlers, AI scrapers, and emerging agentic AI interact with applications at scale, creating hidden security, performance,...
