It’s just one week until Australia’s controversial social media age restrictions come into force, so I decided to chat with Justin Warren, noted “consultant, freedom of information tragic, hexagon enthusiast, and creator of the CyberRating™ labelling scheme”.
It’s the first time he’s been on the pod this year!
In this episode we do indeed talk about the age restrictions which come into force on 10 December. But we also discuss robots, secretive intelligence organisations, the Bureau of Meteorology’s website budget overrun, and how Microsoft Windows has become unreliable at the same time as more of the company’s software is written by AI. Coincidence?
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CONVERSATION TOPICS: Two people who wish to remain anonymous.
THREE TRIGGER WORDS: Bernard Walsh, Esther Anatolitis, Garth Kidd, Joanna Forbes, Peter Viertel, Peter Wickins, and two people who choose to remain anonymous.
WE WILL, WE WILL JUDGE YOU, part of Another Untitled Music Podcast: Paul Williams, William Anthony.
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PERSONALISED VIDEO MESSAGE: One person who chooses to remain anonymous.
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Episode Links
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CyberRating™ pioneer, OopsRisk™ evangelist, hexagon and FOI enthusiast, cheese noticer, digital rights advocate. Probably not a vampire. He/him.
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[20 November 2025] It has been a troublesome week or two for Microsoft, for sure. Earlier today, the company fixed a Microsoft 365 outage that made files unusable; downtimes like this seem to happen on a fairly regular basis. Meanwhile on the Windows side, it has probably been worse. The tech giant got blamed by Nvidia today as the latest Patch Tuesday is leading to performance issues in games. The GPU maker has released an emergency hotfix driver to resolve the problems.
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[1 May 2025] Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that a big chunk of the tech giant's code is now written by AI.
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We specialise in marketing strategy, positioning, and messaging for technology companies, particularly startups. As a boutique firm, we offer custom consulting tailored to individual client needs, as well as a range of standard packages.
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[29 April 2025] During a fireside chat with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Meta’s LlamaCon conference on Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 20% to 30% of code inside the company’s repositories was “written by software” — meaning AI.
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[21 November 2025] Australian teenagers on Instagram, Facebook and Threads are being told their accounts will be shut down ahead of the country's social media ban for under-16s. Meta, which owns the three brands, said it had begun notifying users it believes to be between 13 and 15 years old that their accounts would start being deactivated from 4 December. It’s the world’s strictest law relating to social media and the way young people use it.
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[28 November 2025] Social media age restrictions: 12 days to go and there’s a High Court challenge: “Two teens and a digital rights group led by a New South Wales state politician are seeking an urgent high court injunction to block Australia’s under-16s social media ban,” wrote the Guardian. [Also includes a discussion of the difference between an "age-restricted social media platform" and a "social media service" and who decides.]
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[29 November 2024] The biggest story, or at least the one that’s scored all the global attention, is of course the rushed passing of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill.
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[20 October 2022] After days of online derision, Bureau of Meteorology says people are ‘welcome to refer to the Bureau in any way they wish’
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On June 2, 2016, the company announced that it would rebrand itself as tronc, short for "Tribune online content". The rebranding took place on June 20, 2016. Tronc began trading on NASDAQ under the symbol TRNC. In June 2018, the Tribune Company announced that it would no longer be referred to as Tronc and would instead henceforth be called "Tribune Publishing".
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[25 November 2025] "Not a blacklist". The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is proposing a “secure register” of technology providers deemed to have underperformed on government projects.
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This page lists a number of services that, in eSafety’s view, we consider will be age-restricted social media platforms and others that will not be age-restricted social media platforms, as of 21 November 2025.
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[27 November 2025] Noah Jones and Macy Neyland, both 15, are supported by a digital rights group led by NSW Libertarian MP John Ruddick.
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Within Australian law, there is no freedom of speech. Instead, the Australian Constitution implies a freedom of political communication through an interpretation of Sections 7 and 24 of the Constitution.
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[27 November 2025] Lots of laws restrict young people’s access to spaces and things that sometimes have political content, to protect their wellbeing... So far, none of these laws has been found to be unconstitutional. However, more than one teenager has managed to circumvent these laws on occasion (as likely will also happen with the ban on social media accounts).
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[5 November 2025] Communications minister Anika Wells: "I have been enjoying some of the social media content by recalcitrants in the run-up to 10 December, talking online about how they are under 16, they don’t like the laws, this is how they’re going to get around it, therefore identifying themselves as someone who is under 16 and their accounts are going to need to be deactivated."
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[4 November 2025] Social media is taking a back seat this summer, following the social media age delay that has united Australian parents and both sides of Parliament, and social change movement, 36 Months, is calling on brands to help make these holidays unforgettable, as Australian teens reclaim summer with real experiences.
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[27 November 2025] The Albanese government is resisting a Senate inquiry’s recommendation to delay the teen social media ban by six months to iron out compliance issues and educate young people on the changes.
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[18 November 2025] The Australian government says it is moving ahead with imposing a ‘digital duty of care’ on Big Tech companies such as Google, Meta, TikTok, and X, opening public consultation on Friday after delaying the proposed legislation earlier this year.
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[2 December 2025] Social media apps Lemon8 and Yope have been advised by the eSafety Commission to self-assess in a sign they will likely be captured by the under 16s ban. The two have surged in the app store charts as young people flock to alternatives to known platforms captured by age restrictions taking effect on December 10.
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[3 December 2025] Anika Wells, the Federal Minister for Communications and Minister for Sport, addresses the National Press Club on the topic "Reform that meets the moment: Australia, big tech and the fight for Generation Alpha". [Video available until 2 January 2026.]
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[3 December 2025] In one week, Australia will become the first country in the world to ban under 16’s from having social media accounts. With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by predatory algorithms described by the man who created the feature as “behavioural cocaine.” Through one reform, more kids will have their time back to learn an instrument or a language, or walk their dog, master a torpedo punt or the perfect lob pass.
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The Checkout was an Australian consumer affairs television series. The show's first series of 10 episodes premiered on 21 March 2013 on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television station ABC TV. A second series consisting of 16 episodes commenced airing on 20 February 2014. On 9 April 2015, a third series consisting of 12 episodes began airing. The series was renewed for a fourth series, which began airing on 7 April 2016 consisting of 12 episodes. The series returned for a fifth series, airing twelve episodes between 6 April 2017 and 29 June 2017. The Checkout, with a new look, logo, opening theme and art, still retaining original cast and segments, returned for a sixth season on 30 January 2018.
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[8 April 2025] What’s 1X’s secret? It’s AGI — not Artificial General Intelligence, but A Guy Instead!
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[13 November 2025] "We'd sit there silently, take detailed notes, and send them 10 minutes later."
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[29 October 2025] For more complicated tasks, 1X Technologies' Neo home robot switches to 'expert mode,' which involves a company employee remotely 'supervising' a session while the robot works.
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[29 October 2025] WSJ’s Joanna Stern spent time with it—and its creator—to see what it can really do and how much it still requires a human operator’s help.
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The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is a cognitive bias describing the tendency of individuals to critically assess media reports in a domain they are knowledgeable about, yet continue to trust reporting in other areas despite recognizing similar potential inaccuracies.
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[24 November 2025] Huge cost blow-outs to the Bureau of Meteorology website have sent a political storm through Canberra as politicians return to the capital for the final week of Parliament for the year. A taxpayer-funded $4 million refresh has come in 20 times over budget.
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[24 November 2025] Environment minister Murray Watt ‘not happy’ with cost blowout and has shared concerns with new Bureau of Meteorology boss.
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[29 November 2025] Global IT consultancy Accenture has been accused of ‘strip mining’ the Bureau of Meteorology during its years-late delivery of a redesigned website not fit for purpose.
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[5 September 2024] The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has finally put a price tag on its seven-year technology transformation Robust, coming in at $866 million, below the speculated billion-dollar cost.
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We model the highly-dynamic and sparsely-observed ocean. From the ocean floor to the surface. From the global ocean circulation, to the coastal shelf, to the beach surf zone. Ever-changing ocean conditions create risk and uncertainty for industries and sectors that rely on the ocean. Accurate ocean forecasts are crucial for decision-making in marine industries and Defence applications.
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The Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) is an Australian government intelligence agency that is part of the Department of Defence responsible for the collection, analysis, and distribution of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of Australia's defence and national interests.
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Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959; several were confirmed to be former members of the Nazi Party, including the SS or the SA.
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[24 November 2025] For a second year running (and only the fourth time in history), the public have aligned with the Committee’s choice by selecting AI slop to be crowned People’s Choice Word of the Year 2025!
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[26 November 2025] Hey y'all, looking for some tips here. I like what I've made so far with Suno but now I'm kind of hitting a wall with ideas for prompts. Why doesn't Suno also have a feature to write prompts for you? Like just hit a button the says "new prompt" and then hit make song when it comes up with something that sounds interesting! Thoughts? [Post has since been removed bye the moderators.]
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[30 October 2025] If users can’t even come up with their own AI prompts, perhaps it’s a sign that things have gone too far…
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