In his Newbury and Hobbes series of novels, author George Mann writes fantastical stories about where the Victorians' obsession with developing new technologies might go. They provide a bleak and terrifying future where automatons are available to pretty much anyone with money to spare and a will to kill. There are no benevolent butlers, no automated beauties as Hollywood portrays - only clunky machines with the single purpose of destruction - some with a worrying tendency to act alone once given instructions. Set 100 years ago, they are a parable for what some now want to ban. But the tech is only part of the problem. What about the people?

A new report by ASIC into its supervision of registered liquidators between January 2017 to June 2018 reveals significant review of the regulation of the sector - and some pretty serious negative news about it.

In American's frozen north, authorities in Alaska have identified persons they say were behind a website offering Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS services. DDoS is where, by one of several means, internet servers are bombarded with vast numbers of requests to the intent (and often the effect) that the websites are overwhelmed with the result that access is denied to legitimate visitors and those servers are presented from accessing the internet. In Anchorage, Alaska's biggest town but not its capital, U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder has announced the seizure of an internet domain associated with DDoS-for-hire services as well as criminal charges against a Pennsylvania man who facilitated the computer attack platform.

Communications are the lifeblood of any commercial arrangement. So, when things go wrong and you need to fix them, an on-line chat is the quickest and best option: after all, while "your call may be recorded.." doesn't mean you get a record. So, on-line chats are a better solution. Or not.

(And there's more: an addendum to the original article makes things worse)

One of the pluckiest teams in F1 for many years has been the outfit created by Peter Sauber and which has, more or less continuously, carried his name since (there was a short period where it appeared to be known as BMW). But now it's been adopted by the Fiat group which has gone from sticking the Alfa Romeo logo on the fin in return for money to a rather more involved - and stable - relationship. The announcement that the team would be renamed "Alfa Romeo Racing" made much of the long term funding. So does that mean the Sauber name is gone for evermore?

The pent-up energy in the US government is being released apace. And, of course, the Inland Revenue Service is required to find the money the government needs and, as the shutdown demonstrated, it really doesn't hold much in reserve. And so, within hours of getting back to work, the IRS has issued a warning notice about something employers must do by.., oh, yes, today.

“The charges unsealed today are the result of years of investigative work conducted by the FBI and our law enforcement partners,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said announcing the charges "unsealed" by United States Attorneys Offices in the Eastern District of New York and the Western District of Washington. The list reads as if someone decided to find a copy Title 18 of the US Code and throw it at Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Sadly, Wray's language is political and intemperate and undermines the credibility of the action from the outset.