Disruption feed 2021 #9 – Credit cards with fingerprint readers and the gulf stream weakening?
Credit cards with fingerprint readers?
Mastercard is together with Samsung working on a payment card with a biometric fingerprint reader built inside. The idea is that the user can perform and confirm a payment without having to touch anything else then the card. A good idea, however, the question is how long-lasting such a product would be, given that the same solution already exists within every new smartphone.
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The gulf stream weakening?
It’s a switch… said Dr. de Menocal when talking about a possible large scale change in the Gulf stream. Extensive melting of Greenland ice may shift the balance of hot and cold water in the Northern Atlantic, sparking changes in weather on four continents. So what kind of changes are we talking about?
The northern arm of the Gulf Stream is but one tentacle of a larger, ocean-spanning tangle of currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. Scientists have strong evidence from ice and sediment cores that the AMOC has weakened and shut down before in the past 13,000 years. As a result, mean temperatures in parts of Europe may have rapidly dropped to about 15 degrees Celsius below today’s averages, ushering in arctic like conditions. Parts of northern Africa and northern South America became much drier. Rainfall may even have declined as far away as what is now China. And some of these changes may have occurred in a matter of decades, maybe less.
Fantastic piece from NY Times, if you click one link this week this should be it.
RELATED ARTICLE: Atlantic Ocean climate change