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Talking the death of passwords on ABC 105.7 Darwin

20 March 2012 in Conversations, Internet by Stilgherrian | No comments

A story in the Fairfax outlets yesterday about work on cognitive fingerprinting for user authentication led to this conversation with Kate O’Toole on ABC 105.7 Darwin this morning.

I managed to include a mention of the voice biometric work by Australian company Auraya that’s based on technology used by Centrelink, and the concept of two-factor authentication.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:31 — 6.1MB)

Weekly Wrap 89: Storms and too many podcasts

19 February 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 13 to Sunday 19 February 2012.

I never did get around to writing that more reflective blog post, but you’ll cope. There’s enough here for you to be reading and listening to.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 125, “Blackhole: cybercrime toolkit of choice”. Jason Pearse, M86 Security Labs’ sales engineering director for the Asia-Pacific region, explains why Blackhole is so “good” and debunks some information security myths.
The 9pm Edict episode 18, which covers the NSW police lecturing parents and things.
The 9pm Edict episode 19, which covers idiot reportage of the Kevin Rudd swearing video and proposes a fix for the Canberra press gallery.

Articles

Blocking all .info domains is “censorship”: The Greens, CSO Online, 14 February 2012.
Mobile security a “game-changer” for Aussie telcos: Analyst, CSO Online, 17 February 2012.

Media Appearances

On Tuesday I was quoted in Harrison Polites’ Technology Spectator piece Five critical hacking myths.
On Wednesday night I spoke about copyright vs the internet on ABC Local Radio nationally.
On Saturday afternoon I spoke about Apple’s iMessage and Path’s privacy outrage on Sydney radio 2UE.

Corporate Largesse

On Thursday I attended analyst firm Frost & Sullivan’s “ICT Outlook Press Lunch” at the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney. Sandwiches and salads and cheese and cake were served. However the waiter never did bring the proffered coffee and had to get my own at the end of the event.

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: Fleeting mists. I know I linked to the picture last week, but I do love it. Such magnificent sights make up for the hassle of the storms.]

[Update 26 February 2012: Added an entry for the Harrison Polites story to Media Appearances section.]

Talking iMessage and Path privacy fail on radio 2UE

18 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media, Privacy by Stilgherrian | No comments

So I ended up going quick chat just now on Radio 2UE just now about Apple’s newly-announced iMessage plans and Path’s privacy outrage.

While Apple’s iMessage isn’t new, extending the application to the Mac’s OS X desktop is, as are some of the iCloud-linked services. In part that’s shoring up Apple’s cloud services. And it’s certainly part of the threat to mobile telcos’ revenue that I wrote about for CSO Online yesterday.

The Path thing is just arsehattery of the first water.

Anyway, here’s the audio. The presenter is Tim Webster and you’ll also hear his regular guest Trevor Long.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:36 — 3.6MB)

Talking copyright vs the internet on ABC Local Radio

16 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Last night I took part in a nice long chat about copyright and the internet on ABC Local Radio across Australia — the program being Tony Delroy’s Nightlife.

Also on the program was Fiona Phillips, acting CEO of the Australian Copyright Council, so we had me as the technologist and her as the lawyer.

I think Mr Delroy was surprised to find that we were in broad agreement on most issues. We covered quite a bit of territory, including SOPA, Optus versus sport, new business models and the inevitable mention of Nine Inch Nails.

Here’s the recording of the whole thing, including the talkback calls.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:05 — 29.1MB)

I’d also like to thank everyone on Twitter who suggested other creatives who were successfully bypassing the middlemen and publishing straight to their audiences: musicians Radiohead, Amanda Hocking, Amanda Palmer, Jonathan Coulton and OK Go; writers Stephen King and Cory Doctorow; comedian Louis CK; and even the movie Red State by Kevin Smith. Have I missed any?

Talking Optus versus sports on 1395 FIVEaa

12 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

The Optus TV Now decision continued to be “important” news throughout the week, with sports heavies trying to talk the government into a quick fix despite the Australian Law Reform Commission review already scheduled.

If you’re new to the story, well, there’s a summary and links in my post from Tuesday and my opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Last night I ended up talking about it on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa. I held the slight fear that I’d be on a sports program as token representative of The Evil Internets. But as it happens, presenter Will Goodings took us through a rather balanced discussion.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:26 — 7.6MB)

As an aside, I was amused to see how an editorial in The Australian described the federal court decision.

Last week’s landmark Federal Court ruling that Optus can record and re-broadcast sporting events “near live” without breaching copyright…

The court decided no such thing. It decided that individuals could make their “private and domestic” recordings using Optus’ service rather than their own equipment. It certainly didn’t give Optus permission to “re-broadcast” anything, at least within any meaning of the word “broadcast” used by people on this planet.

Still, hats off to The Australian for a lovely bit of propaganda in support of their sporting interests. Remember who owns the National Rugby League…

Talking major sports’ future on ABC 702 Sydney

07 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

If you’d asked me last week what I thought I’d be doing this week, the answer would not have included “writing and talking about the future of the major sporting codes as televisions events”. But I wrote this thing in the newspaper…

Last week federal court judge Justice Steven Rares ruled that Optus’ TV Now service, which allows customers to record free-to-air TV and have it streamed back to their smartphone, tablet or computer at a more convenient time, was a legal form of time-shifting under section 111 of the Copyright Act 1968.

Even if competing telco Telstra had a supposedly-exclusive deal with the Australian Football League (AFL) to stream live video coverage of matches to smartphones. Even if the delay between an Optus customer starting to record a game and playing it back was just two minutes.

Telstra is paying the AFL $153 million over five years for this now-not-so-exclusive streaming right. Optus pays the AFL nothing, because they’re just providing a technical service through which individual customers make their own “solely for private and domestic use” recordings.

Josh Taylor covered it for ZDNet Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald commissioned me to write an opinion piece that was published this morning, Sport has to think outside the box. Do please read it. It seem to have struck a chord, because I’ve received a lot of compliments.

Then the ABC’s Linda Mottram asked me to chat about the issues on 702 Sydney. And here’s the audio, along with her subsequent chat with a talkback caller on the same topic.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:06 — 11.1MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is. And I will of course suggest that you listen to Linda Mottram’s morning program regularly.

I’m thinking of writing up some of my thoughts on how future sporting coverage could be done technically. Meanwhile, do you feel as I do that the days of cashed-up major sporting codes are about to end?

[Update 8 February 2012, 1015: The Sydney Morning Herald has published a follow-up piece this morning by rugby legend Roy Masters. Court has gambled with codes' futures. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to draw me a diagram of what the fuck he's talking about.]

Talking “The Global Mail” on Radio 2SER

06 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

I thought I’d be too busy today to pay much attention to the new quality Australian news outlet The Global Mail. But then around 2pm I got a call from Radio 2SER in Sydney asking for a comment.

And so it was that at 2.30pm I was interviewed for the station’s current affairs program The Wire by Calliste Weitenberg, along with The Global Mail’s managing editor Monica Attard.

If you haven’t caught up with this yet, The Global Mail has no advertising and no subscription fees. It’s funded entirely by philanthropy — in this case $15 million over five years from Wotif founder Graeme Wood, a man I previously called an arsehat over another matter.

The radio story includes my approval of the new masthead’s long-form journalism and the experience of the editorial team, and notes that it’s easy to differentiate between Wood’s open philanthropy or the similar position held by Al Jazeera and the more power-hungry approach of Rupert Murdoch or would-be media magnate Gina Rinehart.

What it omits is my observation that despite Attard’s claim that everyone is their audience the staff seem almost entirely white middle-aged middle-class types, that you can’t possibly be everything to all people, and that I’m hanging out for things like database journalism and innovative storytelling techniques.

And don’t get me started on the custom sideways scrolling that simple doesn’t respond to trackpad gestures on my MacBook Pro.

But all that said, it’s only Day One for The Global Mail. I wish them well.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:38 — 4.4MB)

Talking Twitter and censorship on ABC Local Radio

30 January 2012 in Conversations, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:59 — 10.9MB)

Talking digital downtime on Sydney radio 2UE

28 January 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:52 — 2.2MB)

Weeky Wrap 84: Rosellas, cyberwar and lots of radio

26 January 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

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

The snake oil that is domain registries’ big fat new revenue stream, Crikey, 11 January 2012.

Media Appearances

On Monday I was on ABC NewsRadio talking about generic cyberthreats as sold by the Australian Federal Police, or something.
On Thursday morning ABC Radio National Breakfast had an expert panel on cybersecurity, and I was one of the experts. I suggest you read the daft troll’s comment on this post. It’s a hoot.
On Saturday afternoon I was talking about various online scams on Sydney radio 2UE. They were so happy with this week’s post that I’m now booked in for this Saturday 28 January at 1530 AEDT to talk about trolling.