Mysterious Individual In Spain Pays Off Back Taxes With Artworks By Goya
"Someone with a very powerful estate ... has settled a tax debt worth millions of euros, … partly by donating more than 200 engravings by Francisco de Goya as well as 87 other works of art — among them, Aurelio Arteta’s outstanding anti-war manifesto Triptych of War." - El País in English
Gabriel Zucman To G20: Coordinated Minimum Tax On World's 3,000 Billionaires Would Raise $250Billion/Year
Top economist pitches global billionaire tax to G20 finance leaders
BY CARMEN MOLINA ACOSTA
Panama’s new president labels Panama Papers a ‘hoax’ as experts voice concerns about money laundering acquittals
After a Panamanian judge cleared 28 defendants in a trial linked to ICIJ's 2016 investigation, experts call for more resources to prosecute corruption cases. Panama’s new president says it’s time to move on.
Hedge Fund Billionaire Ken Griffin And IRS Settle Lawsuit Over Tax Returns Leaked To ProPublica
Global tax truce frays over fears of US Senate deadlock Financial Times
Exclusive: The Government has incinerated or written off £1.4 BILLION worth of Covid PPE, provided by one supplier in the summer of 2020 - it is the single most wasteful public contract of the whole pandemic.
Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. A year later, nearly half of participants had housing. Business Insider
How Legos went from humble toy to criminal black market item fueled by L.A. heists Los Angeles Times
‘We’re like gears grinding until they break’: Chinese tech companies push staff to the limit FT
Iraq to NSA spying: The biggest revelations by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks Al Jazeera
The Happiest of Days Craig Murray
After 13 years, Julian Assange walks free Pearls and Irritations
The Wild Story Behind the Assange Plea DealSpytalk
Assange is Free, But Never Forget How the Press Turned on Him (excerpt) Matt Taibbi, Racket News
Israel’s high court orders the army to draft ultra-Orthodox men, rattling Netanyahu’s governmentAP
What rate of tariff needed to replace income tax revenues?
The Collapse of Zionism New Left Review
India exports rockets, explosives to Israel amid Gaza war, documents reveal Al Jazeera
Microsoft admits no guarantee of sovereignty for UK policing data Computer Weekly
Screenshots of Everything
The New York Times [unpaywalled]: “Should we trust them? What to Know About A.I. Phones and Computers Apple, Microsoft and Google need more access to our data as they promote new devices that are powered by A.I…In this new paradigm, your Windows computer will take a screenshot of everything you do every few seconds. An iPhone will stitch together information across many apps you use. And an Android phone can listen to a call in real time to alert you to a scam. Is this information you are willing to share? This change has significant implications for our privacy. To provide the new bespoke services, the companies and their devices need more persistent, intimate access to our data than before. In the past, the way we used apps and pulled up files and photos on phones and computers was relatively siloed. A.I. needs an overview to connect the dots between what we do across apps, websites and communications, security experts say. “Do I feel safe giving this information to this company?” Cliff Steinhauer, a director at the National Cybersecurity Alliance, a nonprofit focusing on cybersecurity, said about the companies’ A.I. strategies. All of this is happening because OpenAI’s ChatGPT upended the tech industry nearly two years ago. Apple, Google, Microsoft and others have since overhauled their product strategies, investing billions in new services under the umbrella term of A.I.
They are convinced this new type of computing interface — one that is constantly studying what you are doing to offer assistance — will become indispensable. The biggest potential security risk with this change stems from a subtle shift happening in the way our new devices work, experts say. Because A.I. can automate complex actions — like scrubbing unwanted objects from a photo — it sometimes requires more computational power than our phones can handle. That means more of our personal data may have to leave our phones to be dealt with elsewhere.
The information is being transmitted to the so-called cloud, a network of servers that are processing the requests. Once information reaches the cloud, it could be seen by others, including company employees, bad actors and government agencies. And while some of our data has always been stored in the cloud, our most deeply personal, intimate data that was once for our eyes only — photos, messages and emails — now may be connected and analyzed by a company on its servers…”