Talking Twitter and censorship on ABC Local Radio

Twitter has announced that it now has the capability to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis, and naturally there’s been a global outcry about the threat to free speech.

I wrote a piece for Crikey today, explaining the positive spin the company was putting on it all, and pointing out that Twitter does still need to justify its valuation of $8.4 billion when its revenues are a mere $100 million.

But Crikey is suffering “technical issues” right now, and I can’t point to that article just yet.

Until then, here’s an interview I just did on ABC 702 Sydney and ABC Regional Radio around NSW with Dom Knight.

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is.

Weekly Wrap 86: Linux, paranoia and a few rants

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 23 to Sunday 29 January 2012.

This week included the last of my output from Linux.conf.au. I’ve just gathered all of my Linux.conf.au coverage plus selected other people’s in one place for your convenience.

Add this week’s media output to last week’s and you can see why I’ve been kind of exhausted. Thank the gods, we’re having a pseudo-long weekend.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 122, “War on the internet: it’s all about power”. The podcast covers the previous weekend’s War on the Internet forum Electronic Frontiers Australia and The Greens, and featured Suelette Dreyfus, co-author with Assange of Underground; Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam; Crikey’s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane; and headline speaker Jacob Appelbaum, internet security researcher, software hacker and activist.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • D-Link gave me a DCS-930L Wireless N Network Camera, which they sometimes describe as a “cloud camera”, the arsehats. I’ll be writing about that separately.
  • On Wednesday Chris Wood, regional director for Australia and New Zealand at security vendor Sourcefire, bought me a coffee.

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: Three sprigs at Threefold. Three sprigs of mint in three brown bottles grace the windowsill in the toilet at Melbourne’s Threefold Foodstore and Eatery. I think that’s just a wanked-up word for “cafe”. I had the spatchcock, thank you very much.]

Talking digital downtime on Sydney radio 2UE

So Radio 2UE must’ve been happy with the spot I did a fortnight ago, because they asked me back again today to talk about cyberbullying and trolling.

Well, that was the plan. But time constraints limited our conversation to just one topic: Rose Smith’s suggestion that children should be made to surrender their mobile phones at night in a bid to stop the “devastating effects” of bullying.

Smith has run a free anti-bullying camp on Sydney’s northern beaches for the past 15 years, and reckons children needed to learn to “disconnect”. She believes that parents should take their children’s phones when they went to bed and return them in the morning in order to give them some time off.

So presenter Tim Webster and regular guest Trevor Long got to hear my well-informed opinion.

The audio is ©2012 Radio 2UE Sydney Pty Ltd, of course, but as usual I’m posting it here in case they don’t post it at their own website.

Weekly Wrap 85: Trains, planes, Linux and podcasts

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 16 to Sunday 22 January 2012, i.e. last week. Yes, just like last week’s Weekly Wrap it’s being posted way late because I’ve been incredibly busy.

The main cause of that was covering Linux.conf.au 2012 (LCA) conference. Indeed, some of the conference coverage wasn’t posted until well into the following week — which is this week as I’m posting this post, except it shouldn’t be because this post is about last week. Confused? You should’ve been there!

Now there’s so much stuff here that I’m posting the main body of text over the fold. If you’re only seeing the preview, do click through ‘cos there’s a very important question about the photo.

Continue reading “Weekly Wrap 85: Trains, planes, Linux and podcasts”

Weeky Wrap 84: Rosellas, cyberwar and lots of radio

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 9 to Sunday 15 January 2012, posted way late because I’ve been incredibly busy.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 120, “Anonymous vs. Stratfor: the real issues”, being a nice long interview with Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst with IT-Harvest, a privately-held IT security research firm based in Detroit, Michigan. He also edits and publishes the newsletter Cyber Defence Weekly, and is author of the book Surviving Cyberwar.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. I thought things might start picking up this week, but apparently not.

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 neat Wentworth Falls, photographed near Railway Parade on 17 January 2012.]