Category: Human Nature

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Talking #optuswrongtime on ABC 891 Adelaide

ABC logoApparently South Australia had an #optuswrongtime incident today, when some customers’ devices showed the wrong time, causing chaos for them.

The same sort of thing happened in Queensland in January — that’s when the hashtag was invented — and just like then, the official explanation was less than forthcoming.

An overnight maintenance upgrade of our 4G Plus mobile network caused some Optus customers’ devices in South Australia and the Northern Territory to switch to a different time zone earlier this morning. The Optus 3G network was unaffected.

Optus technicians resolved the issue with a fix that set clocks to the correct time zone.

Customers were also able to resolve the issue in a number of ways, including:

  • Turning flight mode on and off
  • Turning automatic clock settings off and on
  • Turning their device off and on.

We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience.

I spoke about the incident this afternoon on ABC 891 Adelaide with Sonya Feldhoff.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (8.4MB)

The audio is ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Talking the death of handwriting on ABC 891 Adelaide

ABC logo“How relevant is handwriting in 2015, when people are increasingly communicating via text messages, via email, via tweets, Facebook updates, those sort things?”, asked ABC 891 Adelaide presenter Michael Smyth on Monday afternoon.

There are schools in Finland and the US reportedly phasing out the teaching of handwriting.

Here’s what I think is an interesting 12-minute discussion that includes a vox pop of people in Adelaide, talkback calls, and Pam Kent, president of the South Australian Primary Principals Association, as well as myself.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.4MB)

The audio is ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Bonus link: By a happy coincidence, this week’s episode of ABC Radio’s Future Tense asks Does handwriting have a future?

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Talking metadata on ABC 105.7 Darwin

ABC logoAustralia’s mandatory data retention legislation is back in the news again, in part because ABC journalist Will Ockenden put a year’s worth of his so-called “metadata” online and invited people to trawl through it.

This morning I spoke a little about the concept on ABC 105.7 Darwin with breakfast presenter Alan Steer.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.6MB)

The audio is of course ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Given that there’s bound to be quite a bit about data surveillance in the news again soon, here’s three of my articles on the topic that’ll set the mood.

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Talking the Ashley Madison hack on ABC Gold Coast

ABC logoThe Ashley Madison hack returned to the news this week, because the 30-day deadline given by Impact Team, the hacker(s) who claimed responsibility, expired, and the site’s data started being dumped onto the internet.

While I’d spoken about this before on ABC 936 Hobart, this week I spoke about the then-latest developments on Friday with ABC Gold Coast. Here’s the full conversation with morning presenter Nicole Dyer.

The site I mentioned at the end, where you can check whether your email address appears in the Ashley Madison data dump, or in many of the larger data breaches of recent years, is haveibeenpwned.com, run by Australian security researcher Troy Hunt. Use it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.0MB)

The audio is of course ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Talking the Ashley Madison data breach on ABC 936 Hobart

ABC logoThe information security news story of the week was, of course, the data breach at “affairs” and “cheaters” website Ashley Madison, something first reported by journalist Brian Krebs.

I spoke about this data breach in a couple of radio spots — I’m reluctant to call it a
“hack” until we have some evidence that a hack was involved, as opposed to some internal problem — but I reckon the first was the best.

Here’s that conversation, a 13-minute chat from Tuesday morning with ABC 936 Hobart morning presenter Leon Compton. Enjoy.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (8.6MB)

The audio is of course ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Talking digital detox on ABC 891 Adelaide, again

ABC logoIt would be unfair to say that Randi Zuckerberg is only important because her brother is Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. She already had her own media career. Nevertheless…

Ms Zuckerberg spoke at the Asia Pacific Cities Summit in Brisbane on Wednesday, and if The Australian‘s report on Thursday is an accurate rendition, it must’ve been a disjointed jumble of ideas.

Chief amongst them was the idea of a “digital detox”, something which I’ve spoken about before. That topic caught the eye of the team at ABC 891 Adelaide, and I ended up speaking about it with Peter Goers. He normally presents the evening program, but this week he was filling in on mornings.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.7MB)

The audio is of course ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.