“Memory was a literary genre
before writing was born.
Then it became chronicle and tradition
but it was already stinking like a corpse.
Living memory is immemorial,
it doesn’t arise from the mind,
nor sink into it. It clings
to whatever exists like a halo
of fog around the head.
It has already evaporated and it’s doubtful
if it will return. It doesn’t
always remember itself.”
~ Bathroom Quote
As Malcolm Turnbull prepares to embark on his first official visit to China as prime minister, some 60 Chinese community leaders in Australia gathered in Sydney urging him to watch his words when discussing the South China Sea in Beijing Communist Chinas patriots among us Beijing pulls new lever of influence in Australia
...Powerful communist China could turn back Australian products
As Malcolm Turnbull prepares to embark on his first official visit to China as prime minister, some 60 Chinese community leaders in Australia gathered in Sydney urging him to watch his words when discussing the South China Sea in Beijing Communist Chinas patriots among us Beijing pulls new lever of influence in Australia
...Powerful communist China could turn back Australian products
In Iowa corn fields, Chinese national’s seed theft exposes vulnerability Reuters. “Any threats to Monsanto profits clearly deserve to be covered in such ‘national security threat’ terms.”
China voices anger at G7 comments on disputed islands BBCThe Rise of Shadow Banking in China Federal Reserve of Atlanta blog
“Set in 2025, it depicts political gangs and persecution of local people for speaking Cantonese not Mandarin. It comes amid increasing nervousness in Hong Kong about perceived Communist Party interference in its affairs.”
The New
York Times
March 28, 2016
A well-known computer
hacker who goes by the name of “Weev” said he was behind a wave of
anti-Semitic, racist fliers that appeared on printers at more than a dozen
college campuses last week. Covered in swastikas, the fliers, which seemed to
appear spontaneously on printers, including those at Princeton University,
mentioned “the struggle for global white supremacy.” March 28, 2016
IR-2016-56, IRS Offers New Cash Payment Option (Apr. 6, 2016):
The Internal Revenue Service announced today a new payment option for individual taxpayers who need to pay their taxes with cash. In partnership with ACI Worldwide’s OfficialPayments.com and the PayNearMe Company, individuals can now make a payment without the need of a bank account or credit card at over 7,000 7-Eleven stores nationwide.
Ten days after rumours surfaced the pair had separated, Salim Mehajer threw an extravagant party for his wife Aysha to put rumours of matrimonial disharmony to bed. It started with a $10,000 Harbour cruise aboard the MV Seven Star, before a “club style” party was held at the couple’s Lidcombe home. Tyga made an appearance at 8pm, arriving in a hired Rolls-Royce. Sources believe he paid about $50,000 for the rapper to appear.
Australians
intend to work longer than ever before
ABS, 29/3/16. Australians aged 45 years and over are intending to work longer than ever before, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today.
ABS, 29/3/16. Australians aged 45 years and over are intending to work longer than ever before, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today.
A Whole Lot of Nitwits Will Plug a Random USB Into Their Computer, Study Finds
Vice
Motherboard
April 6, 2016
In what’s perhaps the
most enthralling episode of the hacker drama Mr. Robot, one of F-Society’s
hackers drops a bunch of USB sticks in the parking lot of a prison in the hopes
somebody will pick one up and plug it into their work computer, giving the
hackers a foothold in the network. Of course, eventually, one of the prison
employees takes the bait. Using booby-trapped USB flash drives is a classic
hacker technique. April 6, 2016
The
Christian Science Monitor
April 1, 2016
It’s no secret that
the Internet of Things is exploding: Already, things like medical devices,
cars, and electric meters connect to the Web. But before companies put billions
more devices online – thermostats, ovens, and refrigerators – experts speaking
at an Atlantic Council event Thursday that the cybersecurity industry needs to
do more to enhance public safety controls on connected machinesApril 1, 2016
Ars
Technica
March 30, 2016
More than ever,
websites are blocking users of the anonymizing Tor network or degrading the
services they receive. Data published today by Web security company CloudFlare
suggests why that is. In a company blog post entitled "The Trouble with
Tor," CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince says that 94 percent of the requests
the company sees coming across the Tor network are "per se
malicious." March 30, 2016
“I have seen the future and it works.”
Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936)
American “muckraking” journalist and social activist
Remark in a letter to Marie Howe,
dated April 3, 1919, about his visit to Soviet Russia. Russia had
recently become the first major Communist nation, adopting a political
system based (theoretically) on the doctrines of Karl Marx.
At the time, many liberal activists like Steffens believed that such a
Socialist system would be good for the majority of citizens and should be adopted by other countries.
Steffens used several versions of his famous controversial prediction
over the years. One of the most cited variations comes from his 1931 autobiography.
In that, Steffens wrote that American businessman Bernard Baruch once
said to him, “So you’ve been over into Russia?, and he replied: “I have been over into the future and it works.” Steffens also noted in his autobiography that, by the time he wrote it, he had become disillusioned with Communism.
Billing by Millionths of Pennies, Cloud Computing’s Giants Take In Billions by Quentin Hardy – “This economics of tiny things demonstrates the global power of the few companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and Google, that can make fortunes from the small..Amazon Web Services…Andrew R. Jassy, the senior vice president of Amazon Web Services. The per-millionth pricing began last November, in the A.W.S. product Lambda..”
They keep themselves quiet and their digital dreams: ABSIA is a Non-Profit Association created to be the collective voice of the Australian Business Software Industry.
Wired
March 30, 2016
Ransomware has been
an Internet scourge for more than a decade, but only recently has it made
mainstream media headlines. That’s primarily due to a new trend in ransomware
attacks: the targeting of hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The
malware works by locking your computer to prevent you from accessing data until
you pay a ransom, usually demanded in Bitcoin. March 30, 2016
The Wall
Street Journal
March 27,
2016
An Iranian charged
with hacking the computer system that controlled a New York dam used a readily
available Google search process to identify the vulnerable system, according to
people familiar with the federal investigation. The process, known as “Google dorking,”
isn’t as simple as an ordinary online search. Yet anyone with a computer and
Internet access can perform it with a few special techniques.
SC
Magazine
March 31,
2016
A survey of IT and
security professionals found that 16% of organizations do not use any
cybersecurity framework. The report, published by Dimensional Research and
Tenable Network Security, surveyed 338 IT and security professionals in the
U.S. Even among larger organizations, framework adoption varies. Among larger
organizations (companies with more than 10,000 employees), 10% do not use any
security framework. Many of the professionals surveyed said their companies
plan to adopt a new or additional framework in the next 12 months: 14% of
respondents said their company plans to implement the NIST Framework within
that period.
Nextgov
The Homeland Security
Department wants input on an idea for a broad cybersecurity incident database,
accessible by members of the public and private sectors. Businesses could use
the database to assess how their cyber practices stack up against competitors,
and the federal government could upload its own cyberthreat predictions, DHS
suggests in a new white paper fleshing out the concept.
March 28, 2016TaxGrrrl, IRS Encourages Taxpayers To Check Refund Status Online (Millions Already Have)
Following up on this morning's post, Treasury Department Issues Third Batch Of Anti-Inversion Rules, Updated Framework For Business Tax Reform: New York Times Deal Book, On Inversions, the Treasury Department Drops the Gloves, by Victor Fleischer (San Diego):
The
Guardian
April 4,
2016
A database posted
online allegedly contains the personal information of 49 million people on the
Turkish citizenship database, potentially making more than half of the
population of the country vulnerable to identity theft and massive privacy
violations. The database, which has not been verified as authentic, was posted
to a server apparently hosted in Romania on Monday with an introduction reading
“Who would have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising
religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable
technical infrastructure?” March 28, 2016TaxGrrrl, IRS Encourages Taxpayers To Check Refund Status Online (Millions Already Have)
Following up on this morning's post, Treasury Department Issues Third Batch Of Anti-Inversion Rules, Updated Framework For Business Tax Reform: New York Times Deal Book, On Inversions, the Treasury Department Drops the Gloves, by Victor Fleischer (San Diego):
Tax
lawyers at the Treasury Department have grappled in recent years with
the many corporations finding ways to merge with overseas “inversion”
partners and, as a result of the merger or acquisition, move their legal
residence offshore to reduce tax payments.
Each
of the last two years, the agency took sensible and mostly modest steps
to slow the trend of tax inversions. The efforts have only partly
succeeded. Some giant deals, including the proposed $150 billion merger
between Pfizer and Allergan, continue to dodge the Treasury’s new
guidance and demonstrate the continuing allure of expatriation.
