THOUGHTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL FITNESS
CBA is putting 50 staff "from all over the bank" through a 12-week masters-level course at UNSW as part of a pilot program designed to train a new cohort of cyber security fitness professionals.
CBA staff mastering cyber security in UNSW pilot
‘They lied’: Archegos duped Wall Street’s biggest banks, prosecutor says
The FBI is breaking into corporate computers to remove malicious code – smart cyber defense or government overreach? – Cybersecurity scholar Scott J. Shackelforddiscusses how the FBI has the authority right now to access privately owned computers without their owners’ knowledge or consent, and to delete software. It’s part of a government effort to contain the continuing attacks on corporate networks running Microsoft Exchange software, and it’s an unprecedented intrusion that’s raising legal questions about just how far the government can go.
My excellent Conversation with Thomas Piketty
There is No Pink Tax
The so-called pink tax is an alleged tendency for products consumed by women to be more expensive than similar products consumed by men. In 2015 NYC put out a study under mayor Bill DeBlasio alleging a 7% pink tax across a range of goods. The pink tax is implausible. Products produced in competitive markets will be close to marginal cost. Even if firms have monopoly power it’s not obvious that women have systematically more inelastic demand curves–indeed, the stereotype tends to be that women are the more careful shoppers. Preferences differ systematically across genders leading to subtly different products even in categories which appear similar on the surface. To give just one example, the NYC study compared the price of a single 2-in-1 men’s shampoo+conditioner product to the combined price of a women’ shampoo plus a women’s conditioner (oz per oz). Give me a break. There are reasons why a one-and-done hair product appeals to men more than to women and why this will also be correlated with other characteristics which make the all in one product different and likely of lower quality.
In anycase, economists Sarah Moshary, Anna Tuchman and Natasha Bhatia have done a much more complete and careful study and they find that once you control for ingredients and compare like-to-like there is no pink tax. Indeed, sometimes men pay a bit more. Overall, there are no big savings from cross-buying. Women and men could save money by buying products primarily marketed to the opposite gender–like 2-in-1 shampoo+conditioner–but only by buying products that they prefer less than the products they choose to buy.
We find that the pink gap is often negative; men’s products command higher per-product prices in six of nine categories that we study and higher unit prices in three of nine categories. We then estimate the pink tax via a comparison of products manufactured by the same firm and comprising the same leading ingredients. Men’s products are more expensive in three of five categories when we control for ingredients. These findings do not support the existence of a systematic price premium for women’s products, but our results do reveal that gender segmentation in personal care is pervasive and operates through product differentiation. A back-of-the-envelope calculation implies that the average household would save 1% by switching to substantially similar products targeted to a different gender.
Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 23, 2022 – Privacy and cybersecurity 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 online security, often without our situational awareness.
Four highlights from this week: Report Finds Identity Fraud Up 167% In USPS Change Of Address Requests; Cell carriers can use your web history for ads; The FBI is breaking into corporate computers to remove malicious code – smart cyber defense or government overreach?; and Microsoft Teams Adds an Emergency Call Alert
An Albanese Labor Government will launch a user audit of the myGov government services digital portal.
The user audit will take a fresh look at how well myGov is performing for its most important stakeholders – the Australian public – when it comes to reliability and functionality for a user-friendly experience.
While MyGov has improved over the years there have been blindspots and disappointments.
There have, for instance, been too many crashes and outages. Notoriously when myGov crashed in March 2020 then-Minister Stuart Robert initially blamed hackers before conceding that was untrue and his Government had simply failed to foresee the lockdown-related surge in welfare needs.
The user audit will help identify what changes and improvements are needed and assist an Albanese Government in strengthening the portal.