Thursday, October 25, 2018

Twitter releases large data archive of potentially state-backed information operations

There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”
 –Rumi

“Even the very worst memories are forgotten in the end, if you pile other ones on top of them, lots of other memories. Even the ones that have been etched on your heart, the ones that have left scars on your brain, even the most private ones. Particularly the most private ones. Because no one else cares about those.” – a policeman to Clotilde after the accident.

Election in NSW is coming and The Bear Pit is peppered with rumours, gossip, mud throwing inside the sand pit ... The political correctness is reaching Yes Minister levels with or without formal complaints ... Neville Wran's observations and anger echo MEdia Dragon ears " Are You From the ABC....'

Luke Foley in firestorm over harassment allegation
Labor MPs say they are "cautiously watching" as an investigation begins into a
harassment allegation made against Opposition Leader Luke Foley, just five months out from the state ...

Luke Foley threatens to blow lid on other state politicians - 9News



Without fail Podcast like no other ... BC and JI should be running it 

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will seek to ensure future correspondence automatically generated by a computer can be relied on, following a recent Federal Court ruling a taxpayer was liable for interest charges on a tax debt, even though he received a letter from the deputy commissioner suggesting he was not. Senate Hearings

The New American Songbook: The 30 Hits Of The Past 25 Years That We’ll Be Hearing For The Next 100


"Separating the most durable tunes from the millions of other would-be classics is no easy task. So we asked critics, musicians, and industry professionals to predict which [ones will last].Some of these songs our children will belt in sports arenas. Others our grandchildren will dance to at their weddings." … [Read More]


Twitter news release on Election Integrity: “Data archive In line with our principles of transparency and to improve public understanding of alleged foreign influence campaigns, Twitter is making publicly available archives of Tweets and media that we believe resulted from potentially state-backed information operations on our service…While this dataset is of a size that a degree of capability for large dataset analysis is required, we hope to support broad analysis by making a public version of these datasets (with some account-specific information hashed) available. You can download the datasets below. No content has been redacted. Specialist researchers can request access to an unhashed version of these datasets, which will be governed by a data use agreement that will include provisions to ensure the data is used within appropriate legal and ethical parameters.
What’s included?Our initial disclosures cover two previously disclosed campaigns, and include information from 3,841 accounts believed to be connected to the Russian Internet Research Agency, and 770 accounts believed to originate in Iran. For additional information about this disclosure, see our announcement. These datasets include all public, nondeleted Tweets and media (e.g., images and videos) from accounts we believe are connected to state-backed information operations. Tweets deleted by these users prior to their suspension (which are not included in these datasets) comprise less than 1% of their overall activity. Note that not all of the accounts we identified as connected to these campaigns actively Tweeted, so the number of accounts represented in the datasets may be less than the total number of accounts listed here…”





'Confused' public servant uses customer's credit card to purchase flights
"An ACT public servant's use of a customer's credit card details to book her own flights was likely accidental, an investigation reveals." (ABC


Michael Keating: the future demands for government revenue
"It seems highly likely that over the next decade, the increase in outlays will exceed the increase in revenue, unless policies are changed." (John Menadue)


DTA dunks on blockchain hype
"Hype driven by technology vendors looking to boost revenue, and not service providers that have found it useful, DTA says." (ZDNet)


America’s worsening geographic inequality
"The economic gap between have and have-not places continues to widen." (CityLab)