Anyone who’s seen 1968’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” remembers the talking computer HAL (whose name was cleverly derived from subtracting one letter from IBM). We need more acronyms, right?! Here’s one I hadn’t heard: BNPL. The buy now, pay later industry is an increasingly important driver of retail sales, so has caught the attention of the mortgage industry’s pal the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. I’d never heard of Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, and Zip, notable players in the BNPL industry, but regulators are looking into their data collection policies. Those danged computers and their programmers! Are help desk jobs in jeopardy? Perhaps: Capacity just raised another chunk of change to automate helpdesks. Ever heard of Coadjute? Me neither (it’s a UK company) but its basic business purpose is something you and your real estate agent connections should know about: using blockchain to “bring together everyone involved in a transaction, improving communication and speeding up the process.” Speaking of real estate agents, this one in Georgia ran afoul of the Department of Justice in committing mortgage fraud. (Today’s audio version of the commentary is available here and this week’s is sponsored by TMS , a top 10 subservicer with a 98 percent customer satisfaction rate. TMS is on a mission to “Grow Happiness” and delivers next level service with their award-winning proprietary technology, SIME. Today’s episode includes an Interview with Chuck Dimiceli, EVP of Secondary Marketing, on what Capital Markets folks spend their days doing.)