ChiefOfficers.Net

How would you feel if your company was fined GBP200,000 and ordered to pay costs of more than GBP17,000 for health and safety issues even though no-one was hurt? Ask Renault.

Australia's Self-Managed Superannuation Fund schemes are great on paper. But in the real world, they are a constant source of problems.

Paddy Lowe, one of the most successful designers in Formula One's history, is to take indefinite "leave of absence" from the Williams F1 team as responsibility and blame collide one step from the top.

The European Union is very good at one thing: being excessively bureaucratic and prescriptive. There's a powerful reason for this: most countries in the EU have grown up with the Roman system of law which mutated into the civil legal system and that relies, heavily, on codification. It also means that laws are inflexible and cannot easily respond to changes in society and that fetters the ability of judges to maintain a living justice system. And yet, on the other hand, it uses vague, even sloppy, language to announce what it going to do. A marketing pitch that says "Whistleblower (sic) protection: Commission sets new, EU-wide rules" is misleading - the protection of whistle-blowers is only part of the proposal (no rules were actually set). The proposed Directive will mean big changes for all but the smallest businesses.

The two winter tests are done and dusted. The cars have been back to their factories, dismantled and evaluated. The data has been analysed. We, of course, know nothing at all except the colour of the cars, who will sit in them and what changes in various regulations have done to their look. We've had endless interviews and soundbites from teams and drivers and we've learned nothing of value except that Bottas has had enough of playing second fiddle and plans to shed his Mr Nice Guy image and he's got chiselled features and a bovva-boy haircut to prove it. Does that mean the season opener in Melbourne next weekend is just a prelude to the season proper? Or are the teams actually ready?

A report in Canadian media says that privately held Purdue Pharma LP, a pharmaceutical company registered in Connecticut, USA, is "exploring" the possibility of using what the USA calls "bankrupty" (a term it uses for both corporate and personal insolvency) to manage the risk of litigation arising from the drug OxyContin. But the company is not even a little bit insolvent. Using insolvency processes to manage risks in litigation is a strategy that isn't new.

The return, with increasing frequency, of internet domain name fraud, is usually at least accompanied by a form of what the fraudster hopes is a sufficient disclaimer to prevent prosecution. The latest iteration omits even that and resorts to blatant threats. Also, it seems that the criminals have obtained access to the domain sevenresortsnet.com to send mail and to present a landing page for those who click to respond to the demand.

The flood of sextortion e-mails demanding payment in bitcoin continues. However, while the body of the mails is increasingly standardised, the anti-avoidance methods used by the criminals is mutating, analysis of reports at GlobalKYC.com indicates.

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.