Donald Trump
As Trump Tightens Legal Immigration, Canada Woos Tech Firms: But Canada Is Not Silicon Valley
There Is More To High-Tech Immigration to Canada Than Meets The Eye My long-time business…
Espionage
Harvey Weinstein Hired Israeli ex-Mossad Agent to Intimidate Women Accusers And Journalists
In an extraordinary revelation today by Ronan Farrow, son of Woody Allen and the writer for The New Yorker who broke this story, it was revealed that Harvey Weinstein hired a female Israeli ex-Mossad agent via a private firm, Black Cube, and who used false identities and secret recording devices to intimidate Rose MacGowan and other female accusers of Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Farrow appeared tonight on PBS Newshour in an interview by Judy Woodruff to detail his investigative findings. This has also now been reported by the Washington Post and other journals.
Internet Security
Yesterday's Internet Outage In Parts of U.S. and Canada You Didn't Hear About
A year ago, a DDoS attack caused internet outages around the US by targeting the internet-infrastructure company Dyn, which provides Domain Name System services to look up web servers. Monday saw a nationwide series of outages as well, but with a more pedestrian cause: a misconfiguration at Level 3, an internet backbone company—and enterprise ISP—that underpins other big networks. Network analysts say that the misconfiguration was a routing issue that created a ripple effect, causing problems for companies like Comcast, Spectrum, Verizon, Cox, and RCN across the country.
International Relations
OECD Apparently Believes Global Tax Evasion Is A Legacy Issue: A Pigs Will Fly Moment
Amid another leak of documents revealing large-scale international tax avoidance, the secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said Monday that tax avoidance was fast becoming a thing of the past. “When we’re talking about the ‘Panama Papers’ or ‘Paradise Papers’we’re talking about a legacy that is fast disappearing,” Angel Gurria said. Speaking at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference in London, Gurria said governments were working hard to stop tax avoidance and evasion.
Silicon Valley Culture
WCW III: World Chip War III
After something of a long hiatus, we have an emerging epic World Chip War Three, which is being fought over “CODECS,” and related chips which power our smartphones. Not that the semiconductor industry hasn’t been innovating and evolving, but this is something much bigger. Today’s news about Broadcom’s bid for Qualcomm omits the other crucial player in this new War of Titans, Intel, which has risen from earlier ignominious failures to become the third player in WCW III.
Tax havens
Paradise Papers: KPMG Canadian Isle of Man Tax Evasion Scheme Back In the News
This week’s new offshore tax haven treasure trove from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), known as the Paradise Papers, has offered further evidence why KPMG Canada chose the Isle of Man for its Canadian tax evasion scheme. The ICIJ also released the now infamous Panama Papers in 2016. Both the UK Inland Revenue and the Canada Revenue Agency are investigating these new revelations. With so many offshore tax haven and tax evasion schemes afoot, it is difficult to keep track of them all, but it is not difficult to see the impact on the 99% of us who don’t have access to offshore tax havens.
Russia
Kaspersky Lab Security Software Implicated in Russian NSA Breach
Many know the name Kaspersky well. Others may only dimly recognize the brand name. Its anti-virus and Internet security software has been around for years in computer stores and OEM’d with computer systems. More than a year ago, I became concerned about what I was learning about Kaspersky Lab and its headquarters in Moscow, I began asking myself hypothetical rhetorical questions. What if Kaspersky was quietly working with the Russian FSB? What if Kaspersky had installed a sleeping Trojan Horse in millions of copies of its consumer computer security software? I was a user of Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity software myself. I knew that it was rated very highly by the tech journals. I liked its elegance and simplicity compared with other competitor products from U.S. based companies like Symantec and McAffee. Nevertheless, as the Russian hacking of the 2016 election became an ever-larger issue, I decided to pull the plug on Kaspersky because of my fears, though there was no direct evidence of collusion between Kaspersky and the Kremlin at that time, wiped my system clean, and installed another competitor product.
Silicon Valley Culture
Silicon Valley Is Suffering From A Lack of Humanity
The genius of Steve Jobs lies in his hippie period and with his time at Reed College, the pre-eminent Liberal Arts college in North America. To his understanding of technology, Jobs brought an immersion in popular culture. In his 20s, he dated Joan Baez; Ella Fitzgerald sang at his 30th birthday party. His worldview was shaped by the ’60s counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had grown up, the adopted son of a Silicon Valley machinist. When he graduated from high school in Cupertino in 1972, he said, “the very strong scent of the 1960s was still there. After dropping out of Reed College, a stronghold of liberal thought in Portland, Ore., in 1972, Mr. Jobs led a countercultural lifestyle himself. He told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand.
Investment
Trump's Policies Are Already Sending Entrepreneurs to Canada and France
Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security delayed the International Entrepreneur Rule to next March, and it is currently accepting comments on plans to rescind it altogether. The agency cited logistical challenges in vetting these new visas. The International Entrepreneur Rule was designed by the Obama Administration to support Silicon Valley and the high tech industry’s need for immigrant entrepreneurs and engineers. Immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S. account for 44% of all startups. The news has prompted a backlash from immigrant entrepreneurs like PayPal cofounder Max Levchin and leadership at the National Venture Capital Association, who argue that rolling back the rule will drive would-be job creators to other, more welcoming nations. This is already happening.
Vancouver
CMIG , new owner of Grouse Mtn. has ties to Anbang Insurance
From The Globe and Mail: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/grouse-mountain-acquisition-just-the-start-for-chinese-investment-firm-banker-says/article35699906/ Via The Globe and Mail’s Android app
