us

You are currently browsing articles tagged us.

The 9pm Bus Ride

23 March 2013 in The 9pm Edict by Stilgherrian | No comments

Is Android the reason we can’t have nice things any more? Astronaut Neil Armstrong: what a liar! And buttcrack, can you ever have too much?

In this episode we talk to a man somehow connected to Weird Coast T-Shirts, and we hear about an orphan bear in Idaho.

You can listen to the podcast below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:32 — 16.9MB)

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733. Not that anyone ever does.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

So China hacked some US newspapers…

04 February 2013 in Internet, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

On 31 January The New York Times reported that it had been hacked by China, their networks penetrated for some four months. The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post too. So naturally I ended up writing about it.

For Crikey I wrote China not the only ones taking part in cyber spookery, which puts these attacks in the context of the online espionage and sabotage operations of recent years.

“Countless organisations have experienced the same scenario in recent years,” I wrote. “But it’s big news this time because journalists were the targets.” Cynical, perhaps, but I gather security über-expert Bruce Schneier said much the same thing, so I’m kinda chuffed.

And for CSO Online I wrote Chinese attacks show up useless infosec, again.

“Recent attacks on US newspapers are further proof that, despite making billions, the information security industry is pretty much screwed,” it begins. That one won’t make me any friends. So nothing new there.

I must admit, I found both stories fairly straightforward to write. I guess I’ve been writing about this stuff long enough to feel confident about it.

China has denied the accusations, of course.

As it happens, this week’s On the Media podcast from WNYC begins with a six-minute backgrounder on the hacks which is well worth the listen.

Visiting San Francisco for VMworld 2012

30 July 2012 in Internet, Personal by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

I’m heading to San Francisco for VMware’s VMworld 2012 event starting on Sunday 26 August and staying on for the rest of the week.

I see that the logo features the words “Right here right now”. If they play that effing Fat Boy Slim song, I will truly go postal!

This will be my fifth visit to San Francisco in the last two years, and I must admit the place really is growing on me. Apart from the fact that it’s in that collapsing empire called the US. It does depress me to see the disabled veterans begging on the streets.

I mentioned this trip on Twitter about half an hour ago and already I’ve been told to visit a “beer mecca” called Toronado. What else, do you think?

And yes, I’m travelling as VMware Inc’s guest.

Talking Stuxnet and Flame worms on ABC Local Radio

01 June 2012 in Conversations, Defence, Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

The Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran’s uranium enrichment program was indeed launched by the US, according to a major investigative report published by the New York Times shortly before I was due to appear on ABC Local Radio this evening.

So guess what we talked about.

Yes, the Stuxnet worm, as well as the newly-discovered Flame worm that’s been in the news this week — including my Day 1 piece for Crikey and Day 2 for CSO Online.

The host was Dom Knight, and here’s a recording of the whole conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:45 — 6.3MB)

Talking SOPA on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa

26 January 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Music, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

This is being posted a bit late. It’s a conversation about the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Wikipedia blackout originally broadcast on 18 January. So it’s been overtaken by more recent events.
`
The presenters, as usual, are Keith Conlon and John Kenneally at 1395 FIVEaa, two chaps I used to work with back at ABC 891 Adelaide some… um, some years ago.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:24 — 5.4MB)

The 9pm Edict #15

14 December 2011 in The 9pm Edict by Stilgherrian | No comments

World’s most impatient meth cook found in Oklahoma. She couldn’t even wait to get home. Australians are self-obsessed entitled wankers. And won’t someone think of the children? Senator Conroy dropped the f-bomb on national television!

I think he did it deliberately. Watch the video and see for yourself.

Also, Australians are a bunch of wankers with an inflated sense of entitlement.

We are the richest people in the world. And, as Possum of Possum’s Pollytics explained in Crikey last Thursday, we lead the world in everything from decent minimum wages to economic growth over the past decade. Read that article. Please. And while you’re at it, see where you sit on the Global Rich List.

We also hear about the world’s most impatient meth dealer.

You can listen below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

[Update 16 December 2011: My comments about Senator Conroy's f-bomb have sparked some interest. If you're after that bit, it starts exactly 11 minutes into the program.]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:19 — 17.5MB)

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

Weekly Wrap 17

01 October 2010 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, for those who haven’t been paying attention properly.

It’s a bit thin this week. After doing 30+ hours and a couple of all-nighters last weekend for that server migration I mentioned last time, I’ve been taking it slowly during this week. And I’m getting this post done on Friday night because I’m heading to Newcastle first thing tomorrow.

Articles

How America could censor the internet… or not, for Crikey. The US is currently considering the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which my Crikey colleague Harley Dennett also wrote about today in The internet filter coming to the US — with barely any dissent. It’s about cutting off internet domains that are alleged to be involved with copyright infringement.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 59, “Opening up the cloud”. My guest is open-source software developer and advocate Jeff Waugh. In a wide-ranging conversation they cover Linode and OpenStack; as well as DevOps, a new software development paradigm that involves operational staff in the entire development process; a DevOps tool called Cucumber, and its plug-in cucumber-nagios, written by Australian developer Lindsay Holmwood; and the social source code management system Github. And Richard Chirgwin debunks the myth that optical fibre only lasts 15 or 20 years.

Geekery

I’ll tell you more about what I’ve been doing next week.

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: Making TV at Aria: Lisa Creffield of Sky News Business interviews Peter Baxter from AVG at Aria Restaurant, Circular Quay, Sydney, following a lunchtime media briefing.]

Links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009

18 November 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 1 comment

Stilgherrian’s links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009:

See what happens when you don’t curate your links for ten days, during which time there’s a conference which generates a bazillion things to link to? Sigh.

This is such a huge batch of links that I’ll start them over the fold. They’re not all about Media140 Sydney, trust me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Links for 22 October 2009 through 27 October 2009

01 November 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 2 comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 22 October 2009 through 27 October 2009, published after far too long a break. I really, really do need to work out a better way of doing this…

Nature Child | San Juan Islander: “According to family studies professor, Sandra Hofferth of the University of Maryland, there was a 50% decline between 1997 to 2003 in the proportion of children 9 to 12 who spent time in outdoor activities (hiking, walking, fishing, beach play and gardening).”
FreeRangeKids: “At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail.”
How far did you roam as a child? | Watershed: Educator John Larkin continues the thoughts about wrapping our kids in cotton wool.
How children lost the right to roam in four generations | Mail Online: In 1919, an 8yo was allowed to walk six miles to go fishing. Today, an 8yo isn’t allowed past the end of the street without parental escort. This article from 2007 triggered many thoughts, and I’ve glad I found it again.
Forget the young pretenders, Humans 1.0 can lead the way | The Observer: John Naughton riffs off the idea that teenagers don’t know everything and some parts of cyberspace (ugh!) are teenager-free. Although the article then says that “only” 11% of Twitter’s users are under 17 years old. And what proportion of the literate population is under 17yo? 11%? More? Less?
Podcasting Equipment Guide (2009) | Hivelogic: A nice guide to the tools needed to podcast on a budget. Yes, there’s a reason I’m looking at this. Stay tuned, as they say.
Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network | Parliament of Australia: Full transcripts of the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network public hearings, which I’m tagging for my own reference later.
What Information is “Personally Identifiable”? | Electronic Frontier Foundation: Gender, ZIP code and birth date are enough to uniquely identify about 87% of the US population. This has massive implications for publishing data sets, and for privacy policies that claim not to collect “personally identifiable” information.
Nine News twittered by seagull | TV Tonight: It’s nothing to do with Twitter, but there is a seagull. A very big seagull.
Apology for singing shop worker | BBC News: Shop assistant Sandra Burt, 56, from Clackmannanshire, was threatened with a fine for singing without a license by the Performing Right Society. However they’ve now apologised and sent flowers.
Online Ads Not Working for You? Blame the Creative | Advertising Age: A study by Dynamic Logic says that obsession about optimisation and placement is less important.
We can’t turn back the tide of internet piracy, says TV boss | Herald Scotland: “Internet piracy is merely demand where appropriate supply does not exist,” says the commissioning editor for education at the UK’s Channel 4.
Court tweets sustained but paper still lurks | ZDNet Australia: Liam Tung, who tweeted from the AFACT v iiNet trial in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney, reflects on the gaps in courtroom IT.
Beats and Tweets: Journalistic Guidelines for the Facebook Era | NPR: Yet another exploration of ethics an journalism. One point in here I really do not like, though: “You must not advocate for political or other polarizing issues online. This extends to joining online groups or using social media in any form (including your Facebook page or a personal blog) to express personal views on a political or other controversial issue that you could not write for the air or post on NPR.org.” Sorry? Work for NPR and you lose your right to participate in democracy?
Poles, Politeness and Politics in the age of Twitter | The New Adventures of Stephen Fry: Another fine if perhaps rambling essay from Mr Fry about the meaning of “influence” and accidentally gaining same. Worth a leisurely read.
Why journalism's all a-Twitter | The Walkley Foundation: The editorial chief of Sydney’s forthcoming Media140 conference goes beyond the obvious “Is Twitter journalism?” and mechanical how-to issues and explores the ethical issues of journalists using Twitter.
Twitter in the court: Federal judge gets it | CNET News: Another article about using Twitter in courtrooms, from the US an from March 2009.
Call For Opinions | Blackbeard Blog: Tom Ewing’s collection of opinions on market research and social media, “quite unsupported by anything other than grumpiness and prejudice”. The first is that “insights” aren’t Zen koans. “If you can express something that briefly, it’s probably banal.”
The internet doesn’t exist | Business Spectator: Ah, Alan Kohler! I do so love your commentaries! Here’s more of his sensible thoughts on the matter of paying for “content” on the Internet.
How Safe is the HPV vaccine? | Information Is Beautiful: A brilliantly simple infographic showing the incredibly low risk of associated with the Human Papillomavirus compared with various everyday activities.
Ultimate Goat Fansite: Do I need to explain? I thought not.

Links for 15 October 2009

15 October 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Here are the web links I’ve found for 15 October 2009, posted almost automatically. Almost

Shouts & Murmurs: Subject: Our Marketing Plan | The New Yorker: A glorious satire on what’s happening in the publishing industry. The geeky language baffles the authors, who then have to do all the work. Much laughter was had. I hope you have it too.
Twitter in the courtroom: a fad, or here to stay? | The Lawyer’s Weekly: This article from a Canadian law magazine reckons Twitter and its successors are here to stay — including courtrooms.
Courtroom Tweeting | ReadWriteWeb: “The cat is decidedly out of the bag, and Twitter will probably carry blow-by-blow accounts of many future trials.”
28th April 1999 Net censorship! | YouTube: A podcast, as it would now be called, which includes a dig at the Australian Computer Society for supporting then communications minister Senator Richard Alston’s introduction of the Internet censorship blacklist.
The Oz halts courtroom tweeting | Tech Marketing: The Australian has stopped its journalist Andrew Colley from providing the live courtroom Twitter stream. I reckon it’s an own goal. His constant tweets reminded me that he was there, prompting me to read his “proper” stories when they eventually emerged. Now The Australian just looks old-fashioned.
Court reporting in 140 character tweets | Crikey: Metajournalist Margaret Simons’ take on the live Twitter stream coming from the Federal Court during the current AFACT v iiNet case.
No oral sex, says ute crash waitress | Northern Territory News: The headline is just the beginning of a great story. True human drama.
Even Cops Think It’s A Bad Idea | newmatilda.com: An interview with a former US police chief who reckons the War on (Some) Drugs has been a complete waste of time. He’s not alone.
Peer-to-Peer Passé, Report Finds | Wired.com: P2P file sharing as a percentage of global traffic is declining as legitimate live video streaming is becoming more available.