Work From Home Is Here to Stay: Sometimes it takes a few bad ideas to come up with a good one

“I’m always interested in the way people edit the details of their lives, the way they compress all the years into sentences.”

The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them Erin Bromage. Must-read. 
Sometimes it takes a few bad ideas to come up with a good one.

Steven Johnson has a new book coming out tomorrow, Enemy of All Mankind, about "the emergence of the East India Company, the British Empire, and the modern global marketplace: a densely interconnected planet ruled by nations and corporations".

MakeUseOf: “How many times have you searched Google only to get a bunch of incorrect or unrelated search results that you wish you could filter out? Well, with a few search shortcuts, you can narrow down your search results and always get the exact results you’re looking for…”  via Deepblog.com

Web 100: Best law blogs

Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues May 10, 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: Contact-Tracing Apps in the United States; Employment-Related Identity Fraud: Improved Collaboration and Other Actions Would Help IRS and SSA Address Risks; How My Boss Monitors Me While I Work From Home; and Report: “We Chat, They Watch: and How International Users Unwittingly Build up WeChat’s Chinese Censorship Apparatus.“

'We back our Aussie mates': US Congress members slam China threats

The 27 senators and House of Representatives members said that China had made "deeply disturbing" threats to punish Australia.

The Age

‘This is payback’: China threatens to hit Australia with tariffs amid souring relations

The Chinese government has threatened to slap Australian barley producers with tariffs of up to 80 per cent as relations between Beijing and Canberra continue ...

NEWS.com

'A hell of a ride': The COVID-19 toll on the accounting profession

Vanity Fair – The future of jobs after the pandemic is a blurry mix of work, life, pajamas, and Zoom. “…. While working remotely confers some mental-health and other benefits, the “job” as we know it might never be the same. Conferences, in-person meetings, and even handshakes might be deemed not worth the risk of infection. What might emerge is a future in which results-oriented introverts prevail while those who thrive on face-to-face interactions and office politics fumble. In the post-pandemic workplace, nerds may get their revenge…”

Twitter announces employees will be allowed to work from home ‘forever’

The company said those who want to return to the office won’t likely do so until at least September and reopening will be ‘careful’

This is how COVID-19 could change the world of work for good

The Results Are In for the Sharing Economy. They Are Ugly New York Times

Uber Loses $2.9 Billion, Offloads Bike and Scooter Business TechXplore. Ha! We said bikes and scooters were silly.

Flynn and the Anatomy of a Political Narrative National Review

Pitchers duo dodge inspector general bullet
Water rights, unending ATO audits and internet scams – Pitchers Partners duo Andrew Yeo and Gess Rambaldi have had quite a time of it in respect of the bankruptcy of Victorian dairy farmer Peter Alan Sandals, and that’s without being heavied by the Inspector General in Bankruptcy.
The intriguing tale comes to us via Federal Circuit Court Judge Alastair McNab, who in delivering judgment in Yeo & Rambaldi as Trustees of the Bankrupt Estate of Sandles v Sandles [2020] FCCA 988 (29 April 2020) observed that the conduct of the Inspector General perhaps fell somewhat short of what we should expect from a model litigant.
“Given that the Inspector General was prepared to unnecessarily make this accusation in submissions, the Court understands why the trustees may be cautious in relation to its conduct so as to attempt to avoid opprobrium and criticism of their conduct,” the judge said. 
“That allegation was unwarranted and if that is the customary approach taken by the Inspector General in Bankruptcy then the applicant is warranted in being cautious and concerned that its approach may be the subject of criticism by the regulator.”
The allegation was that Yeo and Rambaldi had withheld information about the status of an ATO audit of the bankrupt.

Phoenix accused’s de factos a problem for Pitcher pair

WSJ.com: “Many office workers have become used to widespread security cameras and keycards that register entries and exits. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, buildings installed enhanced security measures, including logging in visitors and X-raying briefcases. But the arrival of Covid-19 is taking surveillance to a higher level, with some employers planning to track movements and gather personal information like never before in Western democracies. It marks a new chapter in the debate over privacy, and the trade-offs people are willing to make for safety…” [Note – this is the link to a more extensive article with the same title for online WSJ subscribers.]

ATO warns Aussies against JobKeeper phone scam

Yahoo Finance Australia (blog)

The Australian Taxation Office has warned Australians against scammers pretending to be from the ATO and requesting bank account details.

Govt acts to expose ATO scam callers