Category: Weekly Wrap

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

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Weekly Wrap 9

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — and this week there’s been a lot of it!

Articles

  • Gay marriage an irrelevant sideshow, for ABC Unleashed. I reckon the way “the gay and lesbian community” abused Senator Penny Wong for simply re-stating Labor policy was disgusting. Did they really expect her to break ranks and criticise her party’s policy just because some random punter asked her a question on Q&A?
  • AFACT didn’t explain notices to iiNet for ZDNet.com.au. On Wednesday I covered day three of the Federal Court appeal by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft in their case against Australia’s third-largest ISP. This is straight reportage of the morning’s proceedings.
  • Will AFACT’s appeal solve anything? for ZDNet.com.au. On Thursday, I wrote this op-ed piece, picking up on one of the appeal judge’s comments about this appeal not necessarily solving anything long-term.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 51, “Data breaches: it’s criminals again” with guest Brad Arkin, who Mark Goudie, who heads up the forensics practice for Verizon Business Asia-Pacific in Melbourne. We discuss Verizon’s 2010 Data Breach Investigations Report [PDF].
  • A Series of Tubes episode 114. Host Richard Chirgwin talks with APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Houston about the impending exhaustion of IPv4 internet addresses, and me about the AFACT v iiNet appeal, the demise of Google Wave, and a few political things.

Media Appearances

[Photo: The view from Courtroom 1, Federal Court of Australia, Sydney, photographed on 4 August 2010. The brown smudges are not on your screen: the windows need cleaning from the outside.]

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Weekly Wrap 8

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 50, “Security lessons from Adobe Reader” with guest Brad Arkin, who heads up security and privacy at Adobe. The next version of Adobe Reader for Windows to be released later this year will include a “sandbox”, making it much more resistant to certain kinds of attacks.

Media Appearances

  • On Thursday afternoon I did a quick spot on ABC Radio Statewide NSW with Paul Turton, talking about, of all things, running out of IP addresses, DNSSEC and this mangled story about the seven secret people who can reboot the internet. Alas, this isn’t podcast anywhere.
  • On Friday I recorded an interview with ABC Radio National’s Future Tense which will be broadcast next Thursday.

[Photo: Circular Quay viewed from the railway station, photographed on 27 July 2010. We really do take this view for granted.]

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Weekly Wrap 7

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

  • ‘Open Government’ declared in Australia for Crikey. Buried in the news just before the Australian election was called last weekend, Lindsay Tanner, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, issued the Declaration of Open Government which had been called for by the Government 2.0 Taskforce. Someone ought to tell the Attorney-General’s Department.
  • Two other articles have been written but are still in the production pipeline, one for Crikey and one for ABC Unleashed. And I’ve been researching a 2000-word feature for ZDNet Australia. So I’ve been very busy, you just haven’t seen the output yet.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 49, “The software patent controversy explained” with guest Kimberlee Weatherall. She teaches intellectual property law at the University of Queensland.
  • A Series of Tubes episode 112, in which I chat with Richard Chirgwin about the Declaration of Open Government, the Privacy Commissioner’s findings on the Google Street View Wi-Fi incident, and how the Pirate Party fell at the first hurdle. Also, Internode’s John Lindsay explains the class action they and iiNet are involved with concerning Testra’s wholesale ADSL2+ pricing, and Steve Chung, consultant at Ruckus Wireless, talks about Wi-Fi privacy.

Media Appearances

[Photo: “Paddy Maguire’s Hotel“, at the corner of George and Hay Streets, Haymarket, Sydney, taken from a bus window on 23 July 2010.]

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Weekly Wrap 6

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 48 in which I chat about “Conroy’s filter masterstroke”. With an election due to be announced today, Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has I think succeeded in taking the toxic topic of ISP-level internet filtering off the table by announcing a comprehensive review of the Refused Classification category. I chat through the implications with Peter Black, who teaches internet law at the Queensland University of Technology.
  • The interview I recorded last week for A Series of Tubes will be scrapped, as events have moved on. There will be an episode next week, ‘cos we’ve booked a recording session for Tuesday morning.

[Photo: “Blurry at Museum station“, Sydney, taken on 14 July 2010.]

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Weekly Wrap 5

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. I didn’t intend for this to be my only post this week, but that’s how it turns out sometimes.

Articles

Podcasts

Media Appearances

[Photo: “Waiting for Conroy“, taken at Senator Stephen Conroy’s ministerial media conference at the offices of NBN Co Ltd, North Sydney, 8 July 2010.]

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Weekly Wrap 4

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, posted a day early because I’m about to go off-grid for the weekend.

Articles

  • Inside Microsoft’s Security War Room, my debut for iTnews, along with a photo gallery. During my Microsoft-funded trip to Redmond, Washington, I visited the War Room where they work on critical security patches for all Microsoft products.
  • The political naivety of the digital elites for ABC Unleashed, in which I bemoan the way some people seem to see all politics through the narrow, narrow prism of the Australian government’s mandatory internet censorship policies. The comments are fascinating, especially those who seem to think I’m in favour of Senator Conroy and the government’s internet censorship plans.

Podcasts

[Photo: A sign spotted outside the ZanziBar, Newtown, last night, offering free Snuggies for hire. “Snuggie”? If you haven’t heard of this device before, check their website or watch the infomercial.]