An anonymous reader quotes a report from Dexerto: It's been ten years since YouTube first introduced its trending page in 2015, and the platform is finally sunsetting the program in favor of a new system. [...] As announced by YouTube in a support thread on July 10, 2025, the site is now set on introducing Charts, a new system for ranking popular content on its platform. "Back when we first launched the Trending page in 2015, the answer to 'What's trending?' was a lot simpler to capture with a singular list of viral videos that everyone was talking about," the post reads. "But today, trends consist of many videos created by many fandoms, and there are more micro-trends enjoyed by diverse communities than ever before."

As a result, YouTube says that its Trending page has seen "significantly" less traffic in the last five years, prompting them to make a change. Now, YouTube Charts will break up trends from one, all-encompassing page into separate, category-specific lists. The current Trending page will be moved to a Trending Now section, where the site's most popular content overall will be shown. However, viewers can now look for specific trends in certain categories on YouTube Charts for things like music videos, top podcasts, movie trailers and more. In the meantime, YouTube says that its Gaming Explore page will be home to trending gaming videos, and it will continue to serve personalized content to users via recommendations on their home feeds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Automated surgery could be trialled on humans within a decade, say researchers, after an AI-trained robot armed with tools to cut, clip and grab soft tissue successfully removed pig gall bladders without human help. The robot surgeons were schooled on video footage of human medics conducting operations using organs taken from dead pigs. In an apparent research breakthrough, eight operations were conducted on pig organs with a 100% success rate by a team led by experts at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the US. [...]

The technology allowing robots to handle complex soft tissues such as gallbladders, which release bile to aid digestion, is rooted in the same type of computerized neural networks that underpin widely used artificial intelligence tools such as Chat GPT or Google Gemini. The surgical robots were slightly slower than human doctors but they were less jerky and plotted shorter trajectories between tasks. The robots were also able to repeatedly correct mistakes as they went along, asked for different tools and adapted to anatomical variation, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Science Robotics. The authors from Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Columbia universities called it "a milestone toward clinical deployment of autonomous surgical systems." [...]

In the Johns Hopkins trial, the robots took just over five minutes to carry out the operation, which required 17 steps including cutting the gallbladder away from its connection to the liver, applying six clips in a specific order and removing the organ. The robots on average corrected course without any human help six times in each operation. "We were able to perform a surgical procedure with a really high level of autonomy," said Axel Krieger, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins. "In prior work, we were able to do some surgical tasks like suturing. What we've done here is really a full procedure. We have done this on eight gallbladders, where the robot was able to perform precisely the clipping and cutting step of gallbladder removal without any human intervention. "So I think it's a really big landmark study that such a difficult soft tissue surgery is possible to do autonomously." Currently, nearly all of the NHS's 70,000 annual robotic surgeries are human-controlled, but the UK plans to expand robot-assisted procedures to 90% within the next decade.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Android is changing how it gives developers access to early features. The company is replacing its old Developer Preview model with a new Canary channel that provides rolling updates all year long. This new approach is meant to give developers earlier and more consistent access to experimental tools and APIs.

Previously, Developer Previews had to be manually flashed onto devices. They only ran during the earliest stages of each release cycle and stopped once Android entered the beta phase. That meant promising features that were not quite ready for beta had nowhere to go and no way to collect feedback. The Canary channel solves that by running in parallel with the existing beta program and delivering over the air updates automatically.

Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from Gizmodo: YouTube is inundated with AI-generated slop, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Instead of cutting down on the total number of slop channels, the platform is planning to update its policies to cut out some of the worst offenders making money off "spam." At the same time, it's still full steam ahead adding tools to make sure your feeds are full of mass-produced brainrot.

In an update to its support page posted last week, YouTube said it will modify guidelines for its Partner Program, which lets some creators with enough views make money off their videos. The video platform said it requires YouTubers to create "original" and "authentic" content, but now it will "better identify mass-produced and repetitious content." The changes will take place on July 15. The company didn't advertise whether this change is related to AI, but the timing can't be overlooked considering how more people are noticing the rampant proliferation of slop content flowing onto the platform every day.

The AI "revolution" has resulted in a landslide of trash content that has mired most creative platforms. Alphabet-owned YouTube has been especially bad recently, with multiple channels dedicated exclusively to pumping out legions of fake and often misleading videos into the sludge-filled sewer that has become users' YouTube feeds. AI slop has become so prolific it has infected most social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Last month, John Oliver on "Last Week Tonight" specifically highlighted several YouTube channels that crafted obviously fake stories made to show White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in a good light. These channels and similar accounts across social media pump out these quick AI-generated videos to make a quick buck off YouTube's Partner Program.

Google is rolling out photo-to-video generation in its Gemini app today, allowing paid subscribers to upload images and transform them into short AI videos using the company's Veo 3 model. The feature requires a subscription to Google's AI Pro plan at $20 per month for three daily video generations, or the $250 AI Ultra plan for five daily videos.

Videos are limited to 720p resolution and eight seconds in length, taking several minutes to generate due to computational requirements.

Mazda is redesigning the steering wheel controls in its new CX-5 to address potential safety concerns from its shift to touchscreen-based infotainment systems. The Japanese automaker developed what it calls "an all new steering wheel layout with physical buttons" that allow drivers to control critical vehicle functions without taking their hands off the wheel. Stefan Meisterfeld, Mazda's U.S. VP of operations, said the new steering wheel design goes beyond simple redundant shortcuts.

The company is pairing the enhanced steering wheel controls with Google Assistant voice commands and a 15.6-inch central touchscreen that now houses audio and climate controls previously operated by physical dashboard buttons. Mazda had been the sole mainstream holdout against touchscreen infotainment systems, relying instead on a console-mounted dial. The steering wheel redesign represents the company's attempt to maintain its "hands on the wheel, eyes on the road" safety philosophy while adopting touchscreen technology that customer research indicated buyers wanted.

European Union officials unveiled new AI regulations on Thursday that require makers of the most powerful AI systems to improve transparency, limit copyright violations and protect public safety.

The rules apply to companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google that develop general-purpose AI systems underpinning services like ChatGPT, which can analyze enormous amounts of data and perform human tasks. The code of practice provides concrete details about enforcing the AI Act passed last year, with rules taking effect August 2.

EU regulators cannot impose penalties for noncompliance until August 2026. Companies must provide detailed breakdowns of content used for training algorithms and conduct risk assessments to prevent misuse for creating biological weapons. CCIA Europe, representing Amazon, Google and Meta, told New York Times the code imposes a disproportionate burden on AI providers.

Over 240 browser extensions with nearly a million total installs have been covertly turning users' browsers into web-scraping bots. "The extensions serve a wide range of purposes, including managing bookmarks and clipboards, boosting speaker volumes, and generating random numbers," reports Ars Technica. "The common thread among all of them: They incorporate MellowTel-js, an open source JavaScript library that allows developers to monetize their extensions." Ars Technica reports: Some of the data swept up in the collection free-for-all included surveillance videos hosted on Nest, tax returns, billing invoices, business documents, and presentation slides posted to, or hosted on, Microsoft OneDrive and Intuit.com, vehicle identification numbers of recently bought automobiles along with the names and addresses of the buyers, patient names and the doctors they saw, travel itineraries hosted on Priceline, Booking.com, and airline websites, Facebook Messenger attachments and Facebook photos, even when the photos were set to be private. The dragnet also collected proprietary information belonging to Tesla, Blue Origin, Amgen, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and dozens of other companies.

Tuckner said in an email Wednesday that the most recent status of the affected extensions is:

- Of 45 known Chrome extensions, 12 are now inactive. Some of the extensions were removed for malware explicitly. Others have removed the library.
- Of 129 Edge extensions incorporating the library, eight are now inactive.
- Of 71 affected Firefox extensions, two are now inactive.

Some of the inactive extensions were removed for malware explicitly. Others have removed the library in more recent updates. A complete list of extensions found by Tuckner is here.

IKEA is relaunching its smart home line with over 20 new Matter-over-Thread devices that will work across ecosystems such as Apple Home and Amazon Alexa, with or without IKEA's own hub. This marks a major shift toward openness, affordability, and interoperability, and positions IKEA as one of the first major retailers to bring Matter to the mainstream while maintaining backward compatibility with Zigbee products. The Verge reports: We don't have a lot of details on the over 20 new devices coming next year, but [David Granath of IKEA of Sweden] confirmed that they are replacing existing functions. So, new smart bulbs, plugs, sensors, remotes, buttons, and air-quality devices, including temperature and humidity monitors. They will also come with a new design. Although "not necessarily what's been leaked," says Granath, referring to images of the Bilresa Dual Button that appeared earlier this year. He did confirm that some new product categories will arrive in January, with more to follow in April and beyond, including potentially Matter-over-Wi-Fi products. Pricing will be comparable to or lower than that of previous products, which start under $10. "Affordability remains a key priority for us."
"The premium to make a product smart is not that high anymore, so you can expect new product types and form factors coming," he says. "Matter unlocks interoperability, ease of use, and affordability for us. The standardization process means more companies are sharing the workload of developing for this." Despite the move away from Zigbee, IKEA is keeping Zigbee's Touchlink functionality. This point-to-point protocol allows devices to be paired directly to each other and work together out of the box, without an app or hub -- such as the bulb and remote bundles IKEA sells. This means older Zigbee remotes can control the newer Thread bulbs and vice versa, retaining backward compatibility with its Tradfri line. "Touchlink and Matter will coexist in new products," says Granath. "It's still very important for IKEA -- not everyone wants an app or hub."

Interestingly, IKEA's new Matter-over-Thread products will also work without the IKEA hub or app, as they can be set up directly in any compatible Matter smart home ecosystem, such as Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, Home Assistant, and others.

OpenAI is close to releasing an AI-powered web browser that will challenge market-dominating Google Chrome, Reuters reported Wednesday. From the report: The browser is slated to launch in the coming weeks, three of the people said, and aims to use artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how consumers browse the web. It will give OpenAI more direct access to a cornerstone of Google's success: user data.

Microsoft has pledged more than $4 billion in cash and technology services to train millions of people in AI use, targeting schools, community colleges, technical colleges and nonprofits. The company said it will launch Microsoft Elevate Academy to help 20 million people earn AI certificates.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company would "serve as an advocate to ensure that students in every school across the country have access to A.I. education." The announcement follows Tuesday's news that the American Federation of Teachers received $23 million from Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic for a national AI training center. Last week, dozens of companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI signed a White House pledge promising schools funding, technology and training materials for AI education.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google announced on Tuesday that it's launching a new Gmail feature that is designed to help users easily manage their subscriptions and declutter their inboxes. The new "Manage subscriptions" tool is rolling out on the web, Android, and iOS in select countries. With the new feature, users can view and manage their subscription emails in one place and quickly unsubscribe from the ones they no longer want to receive.

Users can view their active subscriptions, organized by the most frequent senders, alongside the number of emails they've sent in the past few weeks. Clicking on a sender provides a direct view of all emails from them. If a user decides to unsubscribe, Gmail will send an unsubscribe request to the sender on their behalf. "It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of subscription emails clogging your inbox: Daily deal alerts that are basically spam, weekly newsletters from blogs you no longer read, promotional emails from retailers you haven't shopped in years can quickly pile up," Chris Doan, Gmail's Director of Product, wrote in a blog post.

Users can access the new feature by clicking the navigation bar in the top-left corner of their Gmail inbox and then selecting "Manage subscriptions." [...] Google says the new feature will begin rolling out on the web starting Tuesday, with Android and iOS users starting to receive it on July 14 and July 21, respectively. It may take up to 15 days from the start of the rollout for the feature to reach every user, the company says. The Manage subscriptions feature is available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Linux Foundation announced at the Open Source Summit in Denver that it will now host the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol. Initially developed by Google and now supported by more than 100 leading technology companies, A2A is a crucial new open standard for secure and interoperable communication between AI agents. In his keynote presentation, Mike Smith, a Google staff software engineer, told the conference that the A2A protocol has evolved to make it easier to add custom extensions to the core specification. Additionally, the A2A community is working on making it easier to assign unique identities to AI agents, thereby improving governance and security.

The A2A protocol is designed to solve one of AI's most pressing challenges: enabling autonomous agents -- software entities capable of independent action and decision-making -- to discover each other, securely exchange information, and collaborate across disparate platforms, vendors, and frameworks. Under the hood, A2A does this work by creating an AgentCard. An AgentCard is a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) metadata document that describes its purpose and provides instructions on how to access it via a web URL. A2A also leverages widely adopted web standards, such as HTTP, JSON-RPC, and Server-Sent Events (SSE), to ensure broad compatibility and ease of integration. By providing a standardized, vendor-neutral communication layer, A2A breaks down the silos that have historically limited the potential of multi-agent systems.

For security, A2A comes with enterprise-grade authentication and authorization built in, including support for JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), OpenID Connect (OIDC), and Transport Layer Security (TLS). This approach ensures that only authorized agents can participate in workflows, protecting sensitive data and agent identities. While the security foundations are in place, developers at the conference acknowledged that integrating them, particularly authenticating agents, will be a hard slog. Antje Barth, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) principal developer advocate for generative AI, explained what the adoption of A2A will mean for IT professionals: "Say you want to book a train ride to Copenhagen, then a hotel there, and look maybe for a fancy restaurant, right? You have inputs and individual tasks, and A2A adds more agents to this conversation, with one agent specializing in hotel bookings, another in restaurants, and so on. A2A enables agents to communicate with each other, hand off tasks, and finally brings the feedback to the end user."

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said: "By joining the Linux Foundation, A2A is ensuring the long-term neutrality, collaboration, and governance that will unlock the next era of agent-to-agent powered productivity." Zemlin expects A2A to become a cornerstone for building interoperable, multi-agent AI systems.

Google is implementing a change that will enable its Gemini AI engine to interact with third-party apps, such as WhatsApp, even when users previously configured their devices to block such interactions. ArsTechnica: Users who don't want their previous settings to be overridden may have to take action. An email Google sent recently informing users of the change linked to a notification page that said that "human reviewers (including service providers) read, annotate, and process" the data Gemini accesses.

The email provides no useful guidance for preventing the changes from taking effect. The email said users can block the apps that Gemini interacts with, but even in those cases, data is stored for 72 hours. The email never explains how users can fully extricate Gemini from their Android devices and seems to contradict itself on how or whether this is even possible.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Epic Games, buoyed by the massive success of Fortnite, has spent the last few years throwing elbows in the mobile industry to get its app store on more phones. It scored an antitrust win against Google in late 2023, and the following year it went after Samsung for deploying "Auto Blocker" on its Android phones, which would make it harder for users to install the Epic Games Store. Now, the parties have settled the case just days before Samsung will unveil its latest phones.

The Epic Store drama began several years ago when the company defied Google and Apple rules about accepting outside payments in the mega-popular Fortnite. Both stores pulled the app, and Epic sued. Apple emerged victorious, with Fortnite only returning to the iPhone recently. Google, however, lost the case after Epic showed it worked behind the scenes to stymie the development of app stores like Epic's. Google is still working to avoid penalties in that long-running case, but Epic thought it smelled a conspiracy last year. It filed a similar lawsuit against Samsung, accusing it of implementing a feature to block third-party app stores. The issue comes down to the addition of a feature to Samsung phones called Auto Blocker, which is similar to Google's new Advanced Protection in Android 16. It protects against attacks over USB, disables link previews, and scans apps more often for malicious activity. Most importantly, it blocks app sideloading. Without sideloading, there's no way to install the Epic Games Store or any of the content inside it.

Auto Blocker is enabled by default on Samsung phones, but users can opt out during setup. Epic claimed in its suit that the sudden inclusion of this feature was a sign that Google was working with Samsung to stand in the way of alternative app stores again. Epic has apparently gotten what it wanted from Samsung -- CEO Tim Sweeney has announced that Epic is dropping the case in light of a new settlement. Sweeney said Samsung "will address Epic's concerns," without elaborating on the details. Samsung may stop making Auto Blocker the default or create a whitelist of apps, like the Epic Games Store, that can bypass Auto Blocker. Another possibility is that Epic and select third-party stores are granted special access while Auto Blocker remains on for others, balancing security and openness.

A "more interesting outcome," according to Ars, would be for Samsung to pre-install the Epic Games Store on its new phones.

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI said it has no active plans to use Google's in-house chip to power its products, two days after Reuters and other news outlets reported on the AI lab's move to turn to its competitor's artificial intelligence chips to meet growing demand.

A spokesperson for OpenAI said on Sunday that while the AI lab is in early testing with some of Google's tensor processing units (TPUs), it has no plans to deploy them at scale right now.

Google DeepMind's chief business officer says Alphabet's drug-discovery company Isomorphic Labs "is preparing to launch human trials of AI-designed drugs," according to a report in Fortune, "pairing cutting-edge AI with pharma veterans to design medicines faster, cheaper, and more accurately." "There are people sitting in our office in King's Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer," said Colin Murdoch [DeepMind's chief business officer and president of Isomorphic Labs]. "That's happening right now."

After years in development, Murdoch says human clinical trials for Isomorphic's AI-assisted drugs are finally in sight. "The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials, starting to put these things into human beings," he said. "We're staffing up now. We're getting very close."

The company, which was spun out of DeepMind in 2021, was born from one of DeepMind's most celebrated breakthroughs, AlphaFold, an AI system capable of predicting protein structures with a high level of accuracy. Interactions of AlphaFold progressed from being able to accurately predict individual protein structures to modeling how proteins interact with other molecules like DNA and drugs. These leaps made it far more useful for drug discovery, helping researchers design medicines faster and more precisely, turning the tool into a launchpad for a much larger ambition... In 2024, the same year it released AlphaFold 3, Isomorphic signed major research collaborations with pharma companies Novartis and Eli Lilly. A year later, in April 2025, Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million in its first-ever external funding round, led by Thrive Capital. The deals are part of Isomorphic's plan to build a "world-class drug design engine..."

Today, pharma companies often spend millions attempting to bring a single drug to market, sometimes with just a 10% chance of success once trials begin. Murdoch believes Isomorphic's tech could radically improve those odds. "We're trying to do all these things: speed them up, reduce the cost, but also really improve the chance that we can be successful," he says. He wants to harness AlphaFold's technology to get to a point where researchers have 100% conviction that the drugs they are developing are going to work in human trials. "One day we hope to be able to say — well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease," Murdoch said. "All powered by these amazing AI tools."

China "is pouring money into building an AI supply chain with as little reliance on the U.S. as possible," reports the Wall Street Journal.

And now Chinese AI companies "are loosening the U.S.'s global stranglehold on AI," reports the Wall Street Journal, "challenging American superiority and setting the stage for a global arms race in the technology." In Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, users ranging from multinational banks to public universities are turning to large language models from Chinese companies such as startup DeepSeek and e-commerce giant Alibaba as alternatives to American offerings such as ChatGPT... Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company, recently installed DeepSeek in its main data center. Even major American cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google offer DeepSeek to customers, despite the White House banning use of the company's app on some government devices over data-security concerns.

OpenAI's ChatGPT remains the world's predominant AI consumer chatbot, with 910 million global downloads compared with DeepSeek's 125 million, figures from researcher Sensor Tower show. American AI is widely seen as the industry's gold standard, thanks to advantages in computing semiconductors, cutting-edge research and access to financial capital. But as in many other industries, Chinese companies have started to snatch customers by offering performance that is nearly as good at vastly lower prices. A study of global competitiveness in critical technologies released in early June by researchers at Harvard University found China has advantages in two key building blocks of AI, data and human capital, that are helping it keep pace...

Leading Chinese AI companies — which include Tencent and Baidu — further benefit from releasing their AI models open-source, meaning users are free to tweak them for their own purposes. That encourages developers and companies globally to adopt them. Analysts say it could also pressure U.S. rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic to justify keeping their models private and the premiums they charge for their service... On Latenode, a Cyprus-based platform that helps global businesses build custom AI tools for tasks including creating social-media and marketing content, as many as one in five users globally now opt for DeepSeek's model, according to co-founder Oleg Zankov. "DeepSeek is overall the same quality but 17 times cheaper," Zankov said, which makes it particularly appealing for clients in places such as Chile and Brazil, where money and computing power aren't as plentiful...

The less dominant American AI companies are, the less power the U.S. will have to set global standards for how the technology should be used, industry analysts say. That opens the door for Beijing to use Chinese models as a Trojan horse for disseminating information that reflects its preferred view of the world, some warn.... The U.S. also risks losing insight into China's ambitions and AI innovations, according to Ritwik Gupta, AI policy fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. "If they are dependent on the global ecosystem, then we can govern it," said Gupta. "If not, China is going to do what it is going to do, and we won't have visibility."
The article also warns of other potential issues:

• "Further down the line, a breakdown in U.S.-China cooperation on safety and security could cripple the world's capacity to fight future military and societal threats from unrestrained AI."

• "The fracturing of global AI is already costing Western makers of computer chips and other hardware billions in lost sales... Adoption of Chinese models globally could also mean lost market share and earnings for AI-related U.S. firms such as Google and Meta."

Reuters: The European Union's landmark rules on AI will be rolled out according to the legal timeline in the legislation, the European Commission said on Friday, dismissing calls from some companies and countries for a pause.

Google owner Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta and other U.S. companies as well as European businesses such as Mistral and ASML have in recent days urged the Commission to delay the AI Act by years. Financial Times adds: In an open letter, seen by the Financial Times, the heads of 44 major firms on the continent called on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to introduce a two-year pause, warning that unclear and overlapping regulations are threatening the bloc's competitiveness in the global AI race.

[...] The current debate surrounds the drafting of a "code of practice," which will provide guidance to AI companies on how to implement the act that applies to powerful AI models such as Google's Gemini, Meta's Llama and OpenAI's GPT-4. Brussels has already delayed publishing the code, which was due in May, and is now expected to water down the rules.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: A new academic study has found that the 2016 Wells Fargo scandal pushed many consumers toward fintech lenders instead of traditional banks. The research, published in the Journal of Financial Economics, suggests that it was a lack of trust rather than interest rates or fees that drove this behavioral shift. Conducted by Keer Yang, an assistant professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, the study looked closely at what happened after the Wells Fargo fraud erupted into national headlines. Bank employees were caught creating millions of unauthorized accounts to meet unrealistic sales goals. The company faced $3 billion in penalties and a massive public backlash.

Yang analyzed Google Trends data, Gallup polls, media coverage, and financial transaction datasets to draw a clear conclusion. In geographic areas with a strong Wells Fargo presence, consumers became measurably more likely to take out mortgages through fintech lenders. This change occurred even though loan costs were nearly identical between traditional banks and digital lenders. In other words, it was not about money. It was about trust. That simple fact hits hard. When big institutions lose public confidence, people do not just complain. They start moving their money elsewhere.

According to the study, fintech mortgage use increased from just 2 percent of the market in 2010 to 8 percent in 2016. In regions more heavily exposed to the Wells Fargo brand, fintech adoption rose an additional 4 percent compared to areas with less exposure. Yang writes, "Therefore it is trust, not the interest rate, that affects the borrower's probability of choosing a fintech lender." [...] Notably, while customers may have been more willing to switch mortgage providers, they were less likely to move their deposits. Yang attributes that to FDIC insurance, which gives consumers a sense of security regardless of the bank's reputation. This study also gives weight to something many of us already suspected. People are not necessarily drawn to fintech because it is cheaper. They are drawn to it because they feel burned by the traditional system and want a fresh start with something that seems more modern and less manipulative.