September 2011

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Weekly Wrap 68: Bad shoulder, with inquisitive rosellas

26 September 2011 in Internet, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week was relatively unproductive thanks to continuing pain from my shoulder and continuing gut irritation from nasty anibiotics, about which I may write something later.

Once more I’m posting this on Monday rather than Sunday. Oops. I don’t suppose the world will end. Well, not because of this anyway.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 106, “Fighting malware at SophosLabs”. A conversation with Mark Harris, the head of SophosLabs globally, and Sean McDonald, who manages the lab in North Sydney.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Rosellas at Rosella Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains where I've been staying off and on this year.]

Talking Facebook on ABC 666 Canberra

26 September 2011 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

Today on I’m a Goddam Expert it’s Facebook, the recent round of changes, and what it means for users and the world of social networking generally. It began with Friday’s piece for Crikey, Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous, and so far I’ve been booked to do four radio spots. And counting.

I did two spots on Friday afternoon, one with Lindy Burns ABC 774 Melbourne the other with Melanie Tait on ABC 666 Canberra. Here’s the audio for the Canberra conversation.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:00 — 1.9MB)

The Melbourne conversation (2.1MB MP3) covered similar territory, but the recording dropped out near the end so I haven’t bothered posting it as a proper podcast.

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but they generally don’t put these interviews online — and hey, it’s a good plug for them. Well, a minor but useful plug.

I’m doing two more this morning, also for ABC local radio stations. The Gold Coast at 0940 AEST and North Coast NSW at 1010.

Adobe Flash and the very definition of irony

22 September 2011 in Internet by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

So, I’m reading Liam Tung’s article at CSO Online about the zero-day exploit in Adobe Flash just now, when…

Could you possibly imagine better timing?

A Twitter-related Sydney Morning Herald debut

19 September 2011 in Internet, Media, Personal by Stilgherrian | No comments

Today I returned to the print media with an opinion piece, Trends on Twitter brief but telling, just like in the real world, in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It’s an overview of Twitter’s “Trending Topics”, including the observation that marketers who try to game the trends are probably wasting their time. Research by Hewlett-Packard’s social computing lab [PDF] shows that there’s probably no point in focusing on the “influencers”.

Topics will trend or not based on whether people found it interesting to retweet at that moment. Just like Yahoo! Research’s Duncan Watts said a few years back.

Somehow I managed to refer to the fisting incident without using the word “fisting” itself.

I wouldn’t have thought about writing this piece myself, being too immersed in Twitter to realise that it needed explanations. Blame Joel Gibson, the SMH Opinion Editor. He commissioned it and did a decent job of improving my Sunday-written words.

I think it’s quite sweet that Fairfax decided to explain my name.

Weekly Wrap 67: Spring comes to Sydney

18 September 2011 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. A relatively quiet week, because I took a bit of time off in Kuala Lumpur and then in Sydney when I returned.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Sydney cityscape, photographed from Potts Point, photographed with my new Nikon Coolpix S8100 camera. I really did need a decent digital still camera for editorial work, and this will do the trick.]

Visiting Las Vegas for McAfee Focus 11 security conference

18 September 2011 in Internet, Personal by Stilgherrian | No comments

Four weeks from now I’m flying to Las Vegas for McAfee’s Focus 11 security conference, 18 to 20 October 2011. On their tab, obviously.

Vendor conferences must have a keynote speaker that has nothing to do with the industry. Focus 11 is no exception. We have… Richard Branson. WTF?

At this stage the plan is that I’m heading to San Francisco first, since McAfee want me to visit their corporate headquarters in Silicon Valley before heading to Vegas. Then once the conference is over I intend to spend a couple more days in Vegas and do the day trip to the Hoover Dam and perhaps the Grand Canyon, and then spend Saturday night in Los Angeles since the only part of that city I’ve seen is the airport.

Mind you, I’m told that Los Angeles is shit.

Any other suggestions for things to see and do near Las Vegas?

No Canberra for cyberwar after all

18 September 2011 in Defence, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

As it happens, I didn’t end up going to the 2nd National Cyber Warfare Conference in Canberra this week. The conference sessions weren’t open to the media, and I decided that it wasn’t worth the trip if we’d have to rely on second-hand information.

That said, we did manage to get a recording of the over-dinner speech by David Irvine, the director-general of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which Liam Tung turned into the story “Insidious” cyber chaos too fast for ASIO. It also served as part of the inspiration for my story Yet another free pass for Aussie spooks.

Who wants to go to Canberra anyway?

However SC Magazine did send Darren Pauli and John Hilvert, and their stories were:

Weekly Wrap 66: Kuala Lumpur: haze, hackers, food aplenty

12 September 2011 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Most of the week was spent in Kuala Lumpur, my first visit. I’ll write more about that anon.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 104, “Can security ever beat PEBKAC?”. A conversation with Paul Ducklin, head of technology for the Asia-Pacific region with Sophos, and Chris Gatford, proprietor of Hack Labs, a specialist in penetration testing.

Articles

Further material from the Kaspersky Lab event is appearing from today.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I had lunch at Ocean Restaurant, Cockle Bay Wharf, thanks to Check Point. There’s some material from the conversations there that will appear in the next few days.
  • On Tuesday night I travelled to Kuala Lumpur thanks to Kasperky Lab. Their largesse included flights and airport transfers; meals and accommodation at Le Meridien; an evening sightseeing trip to Putrajaya including dinner on a cruise boat; a Kaspersky-branded leather document case, rather nice actually; Kaspersky-branded USB-powered speakers; and a t-shirt. I declined the offer of an all-day sightseeing tour on Friday because I had work to do.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Kuala Lumpur skyline, shrouded in haze, photographed with my battered HTC Desire from the 14th floor of Le Meridien, KL Sentral. It's like this pretty much all day, what with the Indonesians burning down the rainforests and all. The photo doesn't do the scene justice. I have since obtained a decent camera.]

Weekly Wrap 65: Better late than never, perhaps

12 September 2011 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A supposedly-weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers Monday 29 August to Sunday 4 September 2011, a week during which I was so mentally exhausted I needed to take a bit of a break — hence the relatively low level of media output.

I also did about a day’s worth of geek-for-hire stuff for some long-standing clients. That was primarily web development, not the sort of thing I detail here unless there’s something interesting to show you.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 103, “Google’s real names a real disaster”. A conversation with Kirrily “Skud” Robert, about which I have already written stuff.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

Recording in the streets of Kuala Lumpur

11 September 2011 in Personal by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

I decided to record this week’s Patch Monday podcast in the streets of Kuala Lumpur, so I chose Jalan Alor in Bukit Bintang, a street lined with hawker food stalls.

This is a frame grab from a Flip TV video camera, so it’s a bit rough. But I hope it conveys some of the flavour of the moment.

I’m speaking into my Zoom H4n recorder and its Rode Dead Kitten windscreen, reading the script from my battered old MacBook Pro. The nearby family seems bemused.

The finished podcast will be posted on Monday is Crims come to the net: expert and patient.

[Update 12 September 2011: And here's a video.]

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