Sneak was alarmed to learn this week that Yahoo chief executive Marissa Meyer has issued a ban on staff working from home, presumably over fears that workers are slacking off when away from the office.

According to the widely reported memo, staff were told “speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home”.

Given the number of trendy working practices that make their way across the pond, Sneak only hopes Meyer's latest initiative doesn't follow suit.

After all, Sneak regularly takes advantage of flexible working, and would never consider spending long sunny afternoons in the pub garden under the auspices of having a broadband engineer round to fix a troubling fault. Sneak's router really does play up more when the weather's good. 

So thank goodness for cable company boss and unabashed publicity seeker Sir Richard Branson.

Branson chided Meyer for her “perplexing” decision: “We like to give people the freedom to work where they want, safe in the knowledge that they have the drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether they're at their desk or in their kitchen,” he wrote on his Virgin blog.

“Yours truly has never worked out of an office, and never will,” he opined. 

Sneak's hoping that with Yahoo having promised “communication and collaboration will be important”, that Mayer takes on board Branson supportive message. Let's be honest, why wouldn't one of the most dynamic chief executives in Silicon Valley want business advice from an ageing hippy with a ridiculous beard? 

And perhaps in the spirit of collaboration and in return, Mayer could offer Branson some tips on how to carry off the blonde look.

Like many workers, Sneak struggles to manage his Facebook, eBay and Reddit commitments with the drudgery of his day-to-day job. But now Sneak has realised the secret to striking the perfect work-life balance. 

Verizon's latest security blog posting details a great story about a worker at an unnamed firm working in US critical infrastructure. It had installed a VPN service to allow some of its staff to work from home for a couple of days a week, and all was good. Or at least it was until they started checking the logs.

It appeared they had an open and active connection to Shenyang, China. Given the VPN needed two-factor authentication, this had all the hallmarks of a sophisticated malware attack on their infrastructure – and given the nature of their work, that set the alarms bell ringing.

Having drafted in Verizon Wireless to help out, the firm soon discovered that one of its developers had been compromised. Not by a group of nefarious Chinese hackers, but by an affliction Sneak knows only too well: lazyitis.

The developer in his mid-40s had been hiring a Chinese consulting firm to do his job for him. He'd simply FedEx his security token over, and sit back and enjoy his pay cheque – as we all know, offshore workers can be much cheaper. In fact, as the investigators discovered, it looked like he'd been running the same scam with a number of firms in the area.

Still, it's not all bad news. The developer in question had quarter after quarter been rated as the best in the firm, so at least the firm was getting good coding for its money.

It is fair to say Rupert Murdoch had a pretty hectic 2011, with his firm involved in the huge phone hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World and the ongoing Leveson enquiry.

This also saw Murdoch grilled relentlessly by MPs at a Commons Select Committee in which he proclaimed it was the "most humble day of my life", before being hit in the face by a foam pie - by "comedian" Jonnie Marbles, not the MPs.

Now, in a move even the most daring Hollywood scriptwriter wouldn't have tried to pull off, Murdoch has joined that most public of forums, Twitter, in order to share his thoughts and opinions with the world, which mainly involves him praising Fox.

One message reads:

Saw Fox film Descendants.Thank God, one to be proud of. Star Geo Clooney deserves Oscar, maybe film too.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) December 31, 2011

while another proclaims:

I LOVE the film "we bought a zoo", a great family movie. Very proud of fox team who made this great film.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 1, 2012

Sneak isn't sure where to begin really: the utterly appalling grammar (perhaps he needs an editor, is Andy Coulson available?), the brazen bias, the willingness of Rups to open himself up to an almighty online backlash, or his chutzpah in joining Twitter when you'd have thought he'd be keen to stay out of the headlines for once.

Then, as if things weren't bizarre enough, his wife Wendi Deng - her of Commons-pie-attacker-hitting-fame - apparently joined up too, and not only started defending Rups (obviously) but also flirting with Ricky Gervais.

However, it sadly became clear this was a hoax account, despite Twitter giving it the blue tick of verification for a short while.

Sneak would like to think it is all some form of April Fool's stunt, but sadly it is most definitely still early January and Rupert Murdoch really has joined Twitter. Happy New Year - 2012 is off to a flier.