Internet – Page 16 – Stilgherrian

05 October 2014

Talking Ello and ASIO on ABC Download This Show

On this week’s Download This Show on ABC Radio National, CNet news editor Claire Reilly and I joined Marc Fennell to discuss the new social network Ello and Australia’s latest national security laws.

The rise and rise of Call of Duty: It’s bigger than Harry Potter, bigger than James Bond: It’s the warfare video game Call of Duty. We step inside one of the studios responsible for building the biggest game on the planet to take the temperature of where blockbuster gaming is headed. And could the rising social network Ello be a viable alternative for the Facebook-weary? The four-thousand people signing up every hour apparently believe so. But are they being swindled? Plus #HeyASIO is perhaps the most popular Twitter hashtag in Australia. So just what do our new counter-terrorism laws really mean? We separate hyperbole from fact.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:30 — 12.6MB)

As usual, one of the segments was also made into a video, and that’s over the fold, immediately below.

Continue reading “Talking Ello and ASIO on ABC Download This Show”

19 September 2014

Talking the cult of Apple on ABC Gold Coast

ABC logo Today the iPhone 6 went on sale, and of course the Apple fanchildren went into their usual semi-crazed state waiting for the Apple Stores to open — even on the Gold Coast.

ABC Gold Coast morning presenter Nicole Dyer decided to give me a call to explain the phenomenon, and here’s the recording.

She asked me about Stephen Fry’s review of the iPhone 6 for The Guardian. I was not complimentary. I referred to it as “one of the most embarrassing pieces of technology writing in the history of electricity”.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.2MB)

04 September 201419 September 2014

Talking geoblocking and copyright on ABC Gold Coast

ABC logo The government’s discussion paper on online copyright infringement came out just over a month ago, the submissions period closed on Monday, and now the debate is really kicking off — including on the complicated legal issue of geoblocking.

Now I’ve already given my opinion on the political spin in the discussion paper itself. But the specific issue of geoblocking came up on ABC Gold Coast, and this morning I spoke with breakfast presenter Bern Young.

Legally it’s a grey area. By signing up for a Netflix account from Australia, for example, you may be breaking the terms and conditions of their service. But you’re still paying for the content, and money is passed on the the actual producers.

The only people missing out are the local Australian distributors who’ve inserted themselves between the content producers and the audience. What value are they adding, exactly? The whole point of the internet is to enable people to connect globally.

CHOICE sees it as a consumer issue. Doesn’t geoblocking, the restriction of content availability by location, restrict competition? They’ve just launched a TV campaign making that point. Even the government’s own inquiry into IT pricing recommended that geoblocking be outlawed.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.6MB)

02 September 201403 September 2014

Talking the alleged Apple iCloud hack on 1395 FIVEaa

The third and final of today’s radio spots about the alleged hack of Apple’s iCloud service was at lunchtime, so I’d had time to wake up and gather my thoughts — as well as see how the infosec community was reacting.

The afternoon presenter on 1395 FIVEaa in Adelaide, Will Goodings, gave it plenty of time too, some 14 minutes, so we covered quite a few issues — including the privacy implications of cloud technology generally.

I sound a bit tired or something, though. Possibly because I was tired.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (6.6MB)

Today’s previous two radio spots were for Nova 100 Melbourne and ABC Radio’s AM.

02 September 201402 September 2014

Talking the alleged Apple iCloud hack on ABC Radio AM

ABC logo A few minutes after doing the live spot on Nova 100, I recorded an interview on the alleged Apple iCloud hack for ABC Radio’s national current affairs program AM.

Reporter Emily Bourke would have gone away with a disjointed mess of soundbites, but the disjointedness isn’t so important when it’ll be edited into a multi-voice report.

I think this one quote best summarises my view of the compromise we enter into when using cloud services:

The big problem with creating massive online cloud storage systems — which is now the way we do things on the internet, whether it’s Apple or Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whoever — is that you create a vast honey pot of a target for the attackers.

Once you find one way to get in, you can potentially get access to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people’s data.

The plus side is such concentrated services means they can hire some of the best security people they can find, putting brains onto the problem is obviously important. So at one level the cloud providers can, if they do it right, protect things far better than you or I could on computer systems under our own control.

The failures are therefore going to be far less frequent. It’s just that when the failures do happen they can be catastrophic.

Here’s the full story, served directly from the ABC website, where you can also read the transcript.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.7MB)

A few sentences of my comments were also used in a later report on The World Today at lunchtime, which featured security researcher Troy Hunt.

02 September 201405 September 2014

Talking the alleged Apple iCloud hack on Nova 100

It’s starting to look like an alleged hack of Apple’s iCloud service was the source of a series of nude photos of female celebrities that has appeared online. That news led to a series of radio appearances for me today. Starting with this one.

The story itself has already been widely reported, and I won’t go into any detail about the victims of this invasion of privacy. One good place to start is this summary at The Guardian, and there’s more technical details at TUAW. These blog posts will simply present the media spots that I did.

First up was Nova 100 in Melbourne. This was done live with breakfast presenters Meshel and Tommy at 0720, and my coffee hadn’t kicked in yet. That’s why I screwed up my first, embarrassingly-wrong go at the explanation — at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.2MB)

It seems Meshel was quite taken with my name. That’s so sweet.