The Infiltrator

When people start telling you that you're crazy, you just might be on to the most important innovation in your life.

~ Larry Ellison

“These are moves of power, not of reason.” ANDREW MALCOLM: What’s really hidden deep within all this intel squabbling.

Here’s what really matters: During the waning days of the Obama administration U.S. intelligence was indeed monitoring the conversations of foreign persons of interest after the Nov. 8 election and before the Jan. 20 inauguration. That’s normal and actually encouraging given how many key things those agencies have missed in recent years.

A better way to handle those frustrations, per the study authors: Write your gripes down, then look for a fix. Actually solving your problem beats pointlessly venting about it.

QUIT YOUR BELLYACHING: This simple trick will help you hate your job less

The hopefulness of “WTF?”

Our old way of seeing the world has run out of steam. Our confidence in our institutions is at rock bottom. Our overarching stories looking tired and out of date. Trump, Brexit, global warming, and the imminent impact of automation and AI are all challenging some deeply held assumptions about life and work.

The worry is that our old world is falling apart faster than we are working out what to do in the new one. Our biggest enemies in this situation are complacency and lack of curiosity.

This is why every time we think WTF? we should seize the opportunity to wonder more. Digging deeper, talking to each other about what is happening and why, shaking our certainties, and doing it all faster. It is always a fine line between fear and excitement, we should choose which side of that line we fall on.

A libertine, but so much more. Casanova was an actor, an outcast, a priest, a gambler, and a common man passing as (and sleeping with) the aristocracy... Bohemian Nova [note to MD - The great strangeness still may come, even for latitude bohemians ]

Chuck Berry has died. Chuck Berry was a rock legend. Chuck Berry was also a villain

Trash daytime talk shows are a mirror for America's soul. Also, they're really messed up

Prominent UTS professor Chongyi Feng prevented from leaving China

Fears are growing for the welfare of a leading Sydney academic who has been blocked from taking a flight out of China for two days running

The Infiltrator: How Undercover Customs Agent 

Council bins are quietly being fitted with tracking technology revealing all your dirty secrets

YOUR rubbish could be spying on you. As well as guarding your grime it might be disclosing your dirty habits. Your wheelie could be revealing all

   

The evolution of cyber crime in West Africa could be leading toward a fully established underground market in the region, according to Trend Micro research published on Thursday. “Although best known for simple types of fraud at present, West African cyber criminals are clearly shifting to more elaborate crimes, complex operations, and business models,” the report said. “West African cyber criminals will eventually start creating online communities, not just small groups of close friends with whom they share technical skills and know-how. Some may start selling products and services that work for their crimes, leading to the formation of a West African underground market.”

Cyber Crime 

• Congratulations to Peter Reilly, whose 2014 post Pulling IRS Into Your Business Dispute Might Not Be Such A Good Idea was cited on brief by a by the winning side as a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel overturned a district court decision. Peter explains in Blog Cited In Appellate Brief In Form 1099 Case:

  So last week was my week for feeling vindicated.  First there was President Trump’s return, which showed the New York Times to the contrary notwithstanding, that then developer Donald Trump’s nearly billion dollar loss carryover was not an eighteen year “Get Out Of Tax Free” card.  And now we have the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Shiner V Turnoy overturning a District Court decision that I questioned back in 2014.

  
  Lin-Manuel Miranda talks to Morgan Stanley about wealth management and financial literacy Morgan Stanley
   

• The priest, the coder, the Bitcoin drug deals – and today's guilty verdicts

  
  

  Could hacker bring down the US President?

  IT IS the scandal set to plague the Trump administration for some time, and it's all thanks to an online hacker halfway across the world
  
  

• He told the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's (ASIC) annual conference in Sydney that financial regulators around the world needed to keep up with emerging technologies and share information to cope with new risks. "Cyber attacks are a growing threat to the financial ecosystem as more financial services are delivered over the internet," he said.
  'Runaway algorithms' and the cyber risks facing the global financial system
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• Corrupt' former NSW uni IT manager charged
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• ASIC to offer blockchain guidance to businesses
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• One of the first movies to predict the impact computers would have upon the world was “Sneakers.” The film was released in 1992 by MCA/Universal Pictures and revolves around a team of renegade hackers who test security systems. One of the characters, Cosmo (played by Ben Kingsley), prophetically said:
  “The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It’s run by ones and zeros—little bits of data—it’s all electrons.... There’s a war out there, a world war. It’s not about who has the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information—what we see and hear, how we work, what we think. It’s all about information.”
   
  
  
• Digital Forensic Insider: Cybercrime in Perspective 
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• Jim Maule, Commas and (Tax) Statutes. “Though the dispute between advocates of the Oxford comma and those who do not subscribe to it will continue, it is clear that using the comma can provide clarification that its absence cannot offer.”
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Jason Dinesen, Glossary: Revenue Procedure. “In tax terms, a revenue procedure is IRS guidance on how taxpayers should comply with certain laws and regulations.”

Lew Taishoff, “I SING THE SERVICE ELECTRONIC”. “Howbeit, practitioner, be aware that the judges, clerks, intakers and flailing date-stampers at the Glasshouse at 400 Second Street, NW adjure you to recollect Walt’s immortal words: ‘They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them.'”

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• Only 802 People Told the IRS About Bitcoin, Coinbase lawsuit shows

  
  <The Internal Revenue Service revealed new details about its investigation into tax evasion related to bitcoin, filing court documents that suggest only a tiny percentage of virtual currency owners are reporting profits or losses in their annual returns.

The new documents, filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court, come in the midst of a closely-watched legal fight between the IRS and Coinbase, a popular service for buying and selling bitcoins that hosts over a million customer accounts.
The dispute began last year when the IRS issued a sweeping summons for Coinbase to turn over a vast amount
Coinbase claimed the IRS demands are illegally broad and refused to comply, which in turn led the IRS to file a federal lawsuit last week to enforce the summons.