“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't
make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and
then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you.”
Maya Angelou
“I complete my tasks, one by one. I remove my masks, when I am done..”
Coronavirus has changed Australia's public service for the better, commissioner says
ABC New
When the country went into lockdown over the COVID-19 crisis, more than half of the Australian Public Service began working from home — and some believe it's a change that's here to stay
MPs raise new security fears as Chinese tech giant Huawei seals £5m deal with Imperial College to help build new tech campus in London.
Google and Twitter are right. Workers should stay home.
If a 90-minute restaurant meal, 120-minute choir practice or 180-minute birthday party is enough for one person to infect a roomful, how much more risk is in a 540-minute workday, even with precautions?
MPs raise new security fears as Chinese tech giant Huawei seals £5m deal with Imperial College to help build new tech campus in London.
We Can Prevent a Great Depression. It’ll Take $10 Trillion - Derek Thomson – The Atlantic – Don’t think of that number as “big” or “bold.” Just think of it as the appropriate dosage for a once-in-a-century economic affliction: “Last week, House Democrats unveiled their latest pandemic-relief package. The bill combines aid for families, a bailout for struggling cities and states, and additional funds for testing, tracing, and hospitals. The price tag is about $3 trillion—and it comes just weeks after the president signed an economic-relief package worth about $2 trillion. Republicans have assailed the bill as a profligate wish list.
Even Americans who are suffering from the health and economic ravages of the pandemic may feel a bit stunned by the dollar amount. Does the government really have to spend $5 trillion in three months? Can the United States afford to dump such unfathomable amounts of money into the economy? The answers to those questions are yes and absolutely yes. Small-business activity has plunged nationwide by nearly 50 percent. Hundreds of thousands of companies have already failed. Big retailers such as J.Crew and Neiman Marcus have filed for bankruptcy, while others, including Macy’s, are teetering. By some measures, scarcely one-third of Americans say they are working. Next month’s jobs report will likely show that, for the first time since World War II, a majority of Americans aren’t officially employed…”
CNN – Now 100 countries are pushing for an investigation: “Russia has joined about 100 countries in backing a resolution at the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA), calling for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic. The European Union-drafted resolution comes on the back of a push by Australia for an inquiry into China’s initial handling of the crisis. That was met with an angry response from Beijing, which accused Canberra of a “highly irresponsible” move that could “disrupt international cooperation in fighting the pandemic and goes against people’s shared aspiration.” While the resolution to be presented at the annual meeting of World Health Organization (WHO) members, which begins on Monday in Geneva, does not single out China or any other country, it calls for an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” of “the (WHO)-coordinated international health response to Covid-19.” The wording of the resolution is weak compared to Australia’s previous calls for a probe into China’s role and responsibility in the origin of the pandemic. This may have been necessary to get a majority of WHO member states to sign on — particularly those, such as Russia, with traditionally strong ties to Beijing. But that doesn’t mean China’s government should rest easy. The potential for an independent probe, even one not initially tasked with investigating an individual country’s response, to turn up damning or embarrassing information is great. Australian government sources told the ABC, the country’s public broadcaster, that the resolution’s language was sufficiently strong to “ensure that a proper and thorough investigation took place.”…
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A Towering Hide: Mirvac and property giants board JobKeeper gravy train
Appeal Demands Sweden Probe Misdeeds in Assange CaseConsortiumnews
President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department regularly surveilled retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn’s financial records and transactions beginning in December 2015 and well into 2017, before, during and after when he served at the White House as President Donald Trump’s National Security Director, a former senior Treasury Department official, and veteran of the intelligence community, told the Star Newspapers.“I started seeing things that were not correct, so I did my own little investigation, because I wanted to make sure what I was seeing was correct” she said. “You never want to draw attention to something if there is not anything there.”The whistleblower said she only saw metadata, that is names and dates when the general’s financial records were accessed. “I never saw what they saw.”By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury. . . . This ruse was to get around using classified resources to surveil Americans, she said. Once the Treasury personnel had enough information about someone they were targeting from the black box, they would go to the white box for faster and more informed search.It was routine for these searches that had no criminal nor national security predicate, merely a political predicate, she said.
Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues May 16, 2020 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Zoom bolsters policy and engineering teams as it courts government; The lack of women in cybersecurity leaves the online world at greater risk; How to Set Your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to Control Who Sees What; and UK accidentally leaves contact-tracing app plans on open Google Drive
The Financial Times – Free to Read – What went wrong in the president’s first real crisis — and what does it mean for the US?: “When the history is written of how America handled the global era’s first real pandemic, March 6 will leap out of the timeline. That was the day Donald Trump visited the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His foray to the world’s best disease research body was meant to showcase that America had everything under control. It came midway between the time he was still denying the coronavirus posed a threat and the moment he said he had always known it could ravage America. Shortly before the CDC visit, Trump said “within a couple of days, [infections are] going to be down to close to zero”. The US then had 15 cases. “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” A few days afterwards, he claimed: “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” That afternoon at the CDC provides an X-ray into Trump’s mind at the halfway point between denial and acceptance. We now know that Covid-19 had already passed the breakout point in the US. The contagion had been spreading for weeks in New York, Washington state and other clusters. The curve was pointing sharply upwards. Trump’s goal in Atlanta was to assert the opposite…”
The Financial Times – Free to Read – What went wrong in the president’s first real crisis — and what does it mean for the US?: “When the history is written of how America handled the global era’s first real pandemic, March 6 will leap out of the timeline. That was the day Donald Trump visited the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His foray to the world’s best disease research body was meant to showcase that America had everything under control. It came midway between the time he was still denying the coronavirus posed a threat and the moment he said he had always known it could ravage America. Shortly before the CDC visit, Trump said “within a couple of days, [infections are] going to be down to close to zero”. The US then had 15 cases. “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” A few days afterwards, he claimed: “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” That afternoon at the CDC provides an X-ray into Trump’s mind at the halfway point between denial and acceptance. We now know that Covid-19 had already passed the breakout point in the US. The contagion had been spreading for weeks in New York, Washington state and other clusters. The curve was pointing sharply upwards. Trump’s goal in Atlanta was to assert the opposite…”
A secret Department of Defence report a year before COVID-19 hit the globe warned of Australia’s weaknesses in the event of any of three international crises; climate change and
natural disasters; a global power conflict; and a global pandemic.
How a Photographer Recreated Outdoor Adventures With Household Stuff - Atlas Obscura
natural disasters; a global power conflict; and a global pandemic.
How a Photographer Recreated Outdoor Adventures With Household Stuff - Atlas Obscura