Facebook and Google Can’t Even Track Their Own Money

A man stole $122m from Facebook and Google by sending them random bills, which the companies dutifully paid

“Last week, Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania plead guilty to US wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering charges, admitting that he had stolen $99m from Facebook and $23m from Google between 2013 and 2015. Rimasauskas’s grift was pretty bold. He merely sent Google and Facebook invoices for items they hadn’t purchased and that he hadn’t provided, which the companies paid anyway. The invoices were accompanied by”forged invoices, contracts, and letters that falsely appeared to have been executed and signed by executives and agents of the Victim Companies, and which bore false corporate stamps embossed with the Victim Companies’ names, to be submitted to banks in support of the large volume of funds that were fraudulently transmitted via wire transfer.” He also spoofed emails that appeared to come from corporate execs. Apparently, no one checked.”

Cory Doctorow

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My Thoughts

Is it any wonder that they don’t care about people and privacy. They are swimming in so much cash that they loose 122 million simply by not having a process in place to know who they are working with. Remember, both these compnaies want to be trusted with different aspect of your business. Good luck.

IRA bomber names four men he says were responsible for the Birmingham pub bombings …

This is news from 2019 …

“Speaking at the inquest, Witness O named the IRA bomb plotters as Mick Murray, Seamus McLoughlin, James Gavin and Michael Hayes.”

BUT

Murray, Gavin, McLoughlin and Hayes were all named in 1990, in the Granada Television documentary drama Who Bombed Birmingham?.

AND

Witness 0 …

“was ‘given permission’ by the head of the IRA in Dublin to share the names

Bottom line:

Murray dies in 1999 Gavin dies in 2002

Re Hayes (who admitted to the bombing to the BBC in NI in 2017 ), Witness 0 ….

“There is nobody going to be charged with this atrocity.”
“The British Government have signed an agreement with the IRA.”

No Words. None.

Doc Searls On ‘Markets’ and ‘Content’.

Delighted to see Doc Searls wroting about two of my People First tenets.

“Most of what we call “markets” are pure abstractions. We see markets as targets for advertising messages, as creatures like bulls and bears, as battlefields and sports arenas where companies fight like gladiators for territories, spaces and shares of categories and slices of pies. We give the “market” label to geographies like New York and China, and to demographics like “Men 25-54.” We also give it to characterizations like “upscale suburban Volvo drivers.” Each of these abstractions actually expresses a metaphor that does our thinking and talking for us.”

Doc Searls

and

“Doc Searls: The word “content.” It used to be an catch-all noun for anything that occupied a package. Now we apply it to anything you can distribute over the Net. Why is that? What happened here? Why did “content” suddenly get so big? As a writer, I used to write stories. Back when I was in radio, we ran programs. Bands used to make records. Now all those things are “content,” and every artist is a “content provider.” Like our craft is nothing more than a manufacturing job, and our goods are nothing more than cargo you strap to a skid and load onto trucks. Where did that word come from? Why did we choose it instead of something else, like “goods?”“

Doc Searls

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On Truth

”All truth is comprised in music and mathematics.”

Margaret Fuller

People First Now Available On Apple News

AppleNews

I just wanted to let readers of this blog know that if you are an Apple News user, I have set up a channel on Apple News specifically focussed on People First.

You can find it here.

Right now there are some historical posts from a while back that I am flushing out, whilst making sure I retain anything relevant and pertaining to People First.

Going forward any and all posts to this blog will be routed to here - Aswell as other relevant writings that appear on other platforms such as BizCatalyst.

On Service

”People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”

Theodore Levitt

Apple deserves kudos for doing right by workers

“Honest question — is any other company, especially in tech, as transparent as Apple with regards to its Asian supply chain?”

Shawn King

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…. What do you think?

How to tell the difference between persuasion and manipulation

“This way of thinking about manipulation tells us something about how to recognise it. It is tempting to think that manipulation is a kind of influence. But as we have seen, kinds of influences that can be used to manipulate can also be used non-manipulatively. What matters in identifying manipulation is not what kind of influence is being used, but whether the influence is being used to put the other person into a better or a worse position to make a decision. So, if we are to recognise manipulation, we must look not at the form of influence, but at the intention of the person using it. For it is the intention to degrade another person’s decision-making situation that is both the essence and the essential immorality of manipulation.”

Aeon Ideas

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Interesting ‘Laws’

Goodhart’s law

Peter’s Principle

Friedman Number …

Named after Stetson University mathematician Erich Friedman, is a number that can be calculated using its own digits, such as 736 = 36 + 7 or 3281 = (38 + 1) / 2.

A “nice” Friedman number is one in which the digits are used in order, such as 3685 = (36 + 8) × 5 or 3972 = 3 + (9 × 7)2.

5 Calendar Problems That Eat Your Productivity

You know how I sometimes go on about the word content. Even writing;

Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, ‘anything will do’ kind of word. Which is why ’content’ has no value. It is in the best interests of buyers of our sweat, labour, thought and time to keep their prices down. So they pretend it is homogenous. It is not.

Yeah, well that block quote below … that is content. Seriously - the site is called ‘Killer Startups’ and it actually chose to republish this article from some site called ‘calendar.com’.

The 5 Calendar Problems that eat your productivity!! Seriously if you are reading ‘Killer Start Ups’ on a regular basis because you are in a start up and think this is useful added value to your life - you need to get out of startups!!!!

1. Forgetting to Figure in Travel Time

2. Not Blocking Time for Work Projects

3. Neglecting to Review Your Calendar

4. Avoiding the Use of Calendar Tools

5. Forgetting to Add Entries

John Rampton republishing Kayla Sloan

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