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Monday, February 24, 2020

Grounds: A spotter’s guide to the groups that are out to get you

“Lean,” “agile, “disruptive.”Corporatespeak has two goals: wasting time and creating the illusion that our work is more interesting than it really is  CorporateSpeak  

Sweden is now testing its digital version of cash, the e-krona MIT Technology

 ATO and global tax fraud investigators target offshore accountants and lawyers

 Why the IRS may be knocking on your door during tax season this year.

If Australia's resources were taxed the way Norway's are we could secure the future of our schools
Australians should demand fair recompense for the extraction and export of our non-renewable natural resources
 


EITC CA 2The Earned Income Tax Credit supplements incomes through the tax code, awarding thousands of dollars each year primarily to low-wage workers with kids. But there's a problem: a huge population of eligible workers fails to file their taxes and get the money each year.





A DRUG dealer has explained the hierarchy governing Sydney's booming narcotics market and the staggering profits at stake within it.
A new video, available at dailytelegraph.com.au, details the incredible confessions of dealer known as Mr X.
THE DRUG DEALING SNITCH WHO TURNED ON CAFE OWNER
The Grounds in the hands of liquidators with $1.6m tax debt

Crown casino hosted organised crime target as he built a gambling empire


The co-owner of Macau-based junket Suncity - which had a permanent presence in Crown - was among the "top tier" of groups involved in serious organised crime.
Crown Resorts executive authorises transfer to drug trafficker


If we’re NOT going to get heads on pikes, can we at the very least see deportations for immigration fraud?


Golden age for gossip. While newspapers struggle, one journalistic institution in print has stood the test of time:  Page Six 


Poverty Is All About Personal Stress, Not Laziness Noah Smith, Bloomberg. JLP: “One step in the right direction, next time they will hypothesize that maybe poverty has to do with wages.”


Workers of the Target-owned delivery app Shipt say that if they don't buy gifts for rich customers with their own money, an assignment algorithm will downrank them out of lucrative shopping jobshttps://t.co/CT0Uz4TIgspic.twitter.com/c3IDjjLEYT

 ZDNet – A new report suggests that vulnerabilities in medical devices could put hospital patients at risk from hackers – but there are some simple ways to protect against these attacks ...


ZDNet- From disorganised crime to state-backed hackers these groups can make the internet a dangerous place. Here’s a guide to the major menaces to avoid. “Criminals are drawn to the internet for as many different reasons as the rest of us. Some of them just want to break things, many want to get rich, and some want to change the world. Some are lone wolves, some are part of sophisticated criminal gangs and some even work with the tacit approval and support of their governments. But thanks to the borderless nature of the internet you could be unlucky enough to find that some — or all — of these groups could be targeting you. Just as the rise of the web created new business models and allowed existing firms to sell and communicate globally, so it has also created new types of crime that didn’t exist before, as well as giving existing crimes a turbo boost by allowing crooks to perpetrate them from anywhere in the world…”
Here is a new paper from Joy Buchanan, Emergent Ventures winner:

Having a larger high-skill workforce is good for economic productivity, so it is useful to understand how workers self-select into high-paying technology jobs. This study examines how workers on the margin decide whether to pursue tech jobs, including a precise control for the opportunity cost of time. The most important determinant of the reservation wage for college students to do computer programming is whether they enjoy it or not. Another subjective influence, whether subjects like math or not, predicts self-confidence. Most students, including females and minorities, are willing to learn a new computer programming language, for a sufficiently high wage. Neither randomly assigned encouragement nor extra information on the programming task increases willingness to participate or increases confidence.

I often say that economics is too often solely the study of incentives, whereas real world problems end up solved because entrepreneurs opt for a potent mix of selection and incentives.  Selection is often the more important part of that brew.  Get people doing what they like, and you cannot boil a stone into a turnip.  It is also noteworthy from the paper that a lot of people really do not seem to like programming.

 Washington, D.C., Stanford, Calif., and New York, February 18, 2020 — The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), Stanford Law School, and New York University School of Law are pleased to announce the release of a major report exploring federal agencies’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) to carry out administrative law functions. This is the most comprehensive study of the subject ever conducted in the United States. The report, entitled Government by Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence in Federal Administrative Agencies, examines the growing role that machine learning and other AI technologies are playing in federal agency adjudication, enforcement, and other regulatory activities. 

 Fast Company – iOS offers more tools than ever to defend yourself against hackers, nosy sites, and other intruders. Here’s why they matter and how to benefit from them. “If one object you own encapsulates who you are, how you think, and what you do, it’s your smartphone. 
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