Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 12, 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: Researchers Devise Wi-Peep Drone That Can ‘See Through Walls’; Is Cybersecurity Awareness Month Anything More Than PR?; The Fallout From the First Trial of a Corporate Executive for ‘Covering Up’ a Data Breach; and What to Do When You’ve Been Hacked.
MARK JUDGE: Surrender: Or Why I Will Always Love Bono.
So yes, I will always love Bono, and love U2. As an addendum, it’s worth noting that Bono may have politically seen the light himself. In a recent interview he praised capitalism. “I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started,” he said. “I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism.”
Then this: “I didn’t grow up to like the idea that we’ve made heroes out of businesspeople, but if you’re bringing jobs to a community and treating people well, then you are a hero.”
You might say that our two hearts now beat as one.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: In 2006, U2 Abandoned Ireland in the Name of Taxes.
It is not too often that a business moves out of Ireland for tax reasons, but tax policy can move in mysterious ways as seen by U2 leader Bono’s decision that his band can leave behind Ireland. The Irish native has decided to move his business out of the Republic as a result of its changing tax treatment of royalty income, which is typically large for those in the entertainment business. Seeking a lower tax jurisdiction, Bono has found what he is looking for courtesy of the Netherlands[.]
As Conquest’s First Law of Politicsstates, “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.”
How Oil & Gas Funding Distorts Energy Research - Gizmodo: “Prominent energy centers at MIT, Stanford, and Columbia may be biased toward natural gas because of funding, a new study says Journalists like me often seek out academics for comment and insight on stories related to the energy transition, since these professors have often done in-depth research into various fuel sources and their impacts.
The hope is that these sources are relatively unbiased; their loyalty is to the data. But a study published Thursday in Nature Climate Change found that prominent energy policy centers at top-tier universities that are funded by the fossil fuel industry may produce content more favorable to dirty energy than other, similar centers. This is concerning, because it’s not just journalists who seek the council of these academics—it’s policymakers, too.
“Reports by fossil-funded [centers] are more favorable towards natural gas than towards renewable energy, while centers less dependent on fossil fuel industry funding show a pro-renewable energy preference,” Anna Papp, a PhD student in Sustainable Development at Columbia University and one of the authors of the paper, told Earther in an email. Academic centers focused on energy research have become an increasingly respected and important voice in energy policy conversations, as the U.S. and the world begin grinding the gears on the energy transition.
Representatives from places like Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy and MIT’s Energy Initiative have testified in Congress and are often featured on television as experts; some of their reports have even been the subject of their own Congressional hearings. But several of the most prominent academic think tanks working on energy issues also have significant funding from the fossil fuel industry. Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, for instance, lists its financial partnerships on its website, which include big fossil fuel names like BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Occidental Petroleum.
(Full disclosure: While I was employed at a PR firm between 2014 and 2016, Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy was a client; I worked on some of their press needs and materials.) What’s more, much of the research and whitepapers produced by these centers does not undergo the peer review process that a scientific paper may receive…”
