Category: Wealth Tips

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We Got Hacked

We Got Hacked

US bank Morgan Stanley has posted letters to an unknown amount of customers, notifying them of potential data breaches involving sensitive personal information left on servers and storage sent to recyclers and on an encrypted drive lost at a branch office.

(Tom: In my personal opinion, having my info in the hands of banks and others with whom I do business is risky enough, as this story illustrates only too well, but storing personal or business data in the cloud takes the risk of loss to a whole new level. That is why I continue to use the accounting and business software I created myself hosted on an inhouse computer.

As an additional note, ransomware, phishing and hacking scams are costing businesses obscene amounts of money. Travel giant CWT pays $6.3m ransom to cyber criminals https://www.itnews.com.au/news/travel-giant-cwt-pays-63m-ransom-to-cyber-criminals-551133

Do some homework and formulate firm policy with which you (and any staff) deal with your emails and web sites you visit. For instance I:

Use strong malware protection, currently Emisoft Enterprise Security Suite.

Never click on links in an email from unknown senders.

Even from known senders I sometimes receive emails with just a link, no explanatory text. I do not click on those. I will sometimes email the sender to ask what it is about.

Never download from file transfer sites unless I expect a link from that person and

Always check the displayed and hidden URL match the expected domain as miscreants will sometimes use what is called a sub-domain or sub-folder to make it look more legitimate. For instance last week I got one allegedly from wetransfer.com but when I held my mouse over the link it was not the wetransfer.com domain, that was used as a folder name like this:
www.somethingelse.com/wetransfer/qweoxflkwefow
A valid name used as a sub-domain for a hacker site looks like this:
wetransfer.hackerdomain.com/as/dkfjswlk

So, just because it has a recognisable name somewhere in the URL, that is a trick to fool those not fully tech savvy. Now you are informed, don’t fall for it.)

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/morgan-stanley-customer-data-left-on-decommissioned-servers-551094

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Human Rights Video #29: Responsibility

The lack of peace in certain regions is proof positive that these principles are actually valid and needed, more than ever. Please promote the Youth for Human Rights videos so more people are aware of and insist upon their rights so that we can live in a peaceful society.

Watch the video and if you think so too, please share it!

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You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science – (Don’t Think For Yourself. Trust Me, I know Best.)

Dr Sherri Tenpenny says of the author of this article: Ethan Siegel is clearly deranged. This is one of the most alarming pieces of propaganda I’ve seen in a LONG time.

Tom: The most blatant promotion of authoritarian tyrrany I have ever read. Every example he uses of unchallengable certainties, from fluoride and vaccines being safe to global warming being anthropomorphic is a blatant lie and disprovable falsehood.

Albert Eistein said “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

I will go with Albert over Ethan any day of the week and twice on Sunday!

Here’s a list of 32 subjects where if you had trusted the scientific advice it could have been [and was for many] deadly: 

http://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=28773

In the Forbes article Ethan says we cannot form accurate opinions on areas outside our own fields of expertise, we must take the word of authority. Here is what the curators of the medical authority publications have to say about that:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)”

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness…”

“The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours.

“Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale… …Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…” (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”)

Here is the link to the article. WARNING: It could be severely assaulting to your sensibilities and your opinion of your thinking ability if you believe this claptrap.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/

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Superior Competence

My mind got to wandering a couple of days ago and I thought about what it takes to be really competent at something. Maybe because I am listening to some really good musical artists.
If you look over the areas of life in which you are the most competent you will probably see that the following holds true.
First you had to be willing to face or Confront the subject. You did not say, “Oh, I couldn’t confront doing THAT!”
You then had to Communicate with either the theory or the objects of the subject to Learn about them.
Once you gained a certainty on the theory/objects of the subject you acquirecd Knowledge.
To increase your competence you Drilled the doingnesses of the subject to acquire Competence.
As you continued to Apply the doingnesses you would Review your actions to see if they obtained the desired product and, if not, you would Revise your actions to imrove the quality or quantity of the final product.
And if you continue to Apply, Review and Revise you can get to a VERY high level of Competence.
Again, the steps are:
ConfrontCommunicateLearnUnderstandKnowDrill the ActionsCompetenceApplyReviewRevise
I know, CCLUKDCARR is not a great sounding acronym but the sequence wasn’t set to conform to a nice sounding acronym it was listed to help you teach someone what it takes to be as good as you are at what you do best.
Hope it helps!

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Backlinks

Had a request from someone wanting me to link to one of their articles. Thought you might like to read the exchange.
G’day Matthew,
Thanks for reaching out. That was a blog post I made over 10 years ago. I archive them and almost never update them. I have enough on my plate without doing so and if I did, it would not be an archive, would it?
Plus, the link you provided was to a month’s worth of articles, not the specific article you sighted. I am not going to wade through all of them to find the one to which you were meaning to refer.
Some free advice. If you want a better hit rate on your requests you need to minimise the amount of work you generate by your requests.
I took a look at your article. While OK as far as it goes, it only addresses ISP donations, not the elephants in the room of pHarmaceuticals, munitions and weapons let alone those from George Soros and his many tentacles.
Also it also does not go so far as recommending the optimal solution of banning corporate donations and only permitting donations from individuals living in the electorate.
So, no, I do not think your article goes anywhere near as far as the subject or my readers deserve.
All the best.
On 10/06/2020 2:06 am, Matthew Irons wrote:>> Hi Tom,>> I hope you’re keeping well. I wanted to reach out to you about this article: https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?m=201001.>> Lobbying is an important topic, one that hasn’t always received the coverage it should. Internet providers are some big spenders and I thought you might be interested in this piece we did: https://www.internetadvisor.com/how-much-does-your-internet-provider-spend-on-lobbying>> I saw that you mentioned ctia.org in your piece. How about linking to our article instead of ctia.org or as well? I’m sure your readers would appreciate the in-depth info we’ve collated on the topic.>> If it’s relevant to you, I do have budget for this project.>> Looking forward to hearing from you.>> Matthew>> Matthew Irons> internetadvisor.com