Talking Twitter and LulzSec on ABC Local Radio

ABC logoOn Wednesday night I ended up having a long, rambling chat on the radio about Twitter’s new advertising deal and the arrest of an alleged hacker who apparently claimed to be the leader of LulzSec.

This conversation was broadcast on ABC Local Radio around NSW, the presenter was the redoubtable Dom Knight. We begin with Twitter, and then move on to the alleged-hacker’s arrest at around 12 minutes 50 seconds in.

The audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it isn’t being archived anywhere else.

Talking YouTube’s eighth birthday on ABC 105.7 Darwin

ABC logoToday is YouTube’s eighth birthday, according to the internet. On 23 April 2005, co-founder Jawed Karim uloaded the 19-second masterpiece Me at the zoo, and the rest is history.

I ended up having a light-hearted chat about it this afternoon with Richard Margetson on ABC 105.7 Darwin, and here’s the full audio of our conversation.

The audio is ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it isn’t published anywhere else and I don’t get paid so here it is.

Talking downloading TV on ABC 105.7 Darwin

ABC logoThe new series of Game of Thrones was released in the US last week, and even though it was broadcast in Australia on pay TV network Foxtel just two hours later, it was still torrented to buggery. Just how entitled are we?

I ended up discussing this very issue with Kate O’Toole on ABC 105.7 Darwin, and here’s the full audio of our conversation from 4 April 2013. Since I’m way behind schedule, I’ll leave this stand without further comment.

The audio is ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it isn’t published anywhere else and I don’t get paid so here it is.

Talking about DDoS attacks on ABC TV’s “The Business”

Screenshot from ABC TV's The BusinessA strange thing happened yesterday. A distributed denial service (DDoS) attack, a big one, got reported in the mainstream media as having somehow all but crippled the internet — despite all the journalists presumably continuing to use the internet as usual.

“The internet around the world has been slowed down,” reported the BBC. Um, no.

Now I won’t go through all the details here, because eventually they were properly reported elsewhere and I’m writing it up for Technology Spectator in a piece to be published Tuesday morning. The short version is that a nuanced report on Kaspersky Lab’s Threatpost lost its nuance in the mainstream media, a process helped along by a data-plotting error in early reports. People like Gizmodo hosed down the bulldust.

However I was interviewed by ABC TV’s The Business yesterday, along with Patrick Gray of the Risky Business information security podcast and Ty Miller from penetration testing firm Pure Hacking.

If the embedded video doesn’t work, try the version at the ABC’s website. In both cases the video is ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

I’ll also be talking about this DDoS attack on ABC News24 tomorrow morning at 1010 AEDT — and after both of those I’ll ponder the way the media handled this whole thing.

Talking Yahoo!, Summly and more on ABC Local Radio

ABC logoThe $30 million purchase of internet startup Summly by Yahoo!, the fourth most-visited online service, certainly attracted media attention today — thanks to founder Nick D’Aloisio being just 17 years old. So yeah, I did some radio.

I’ve just finished talking about that — and a whole bunch of semi-related issues like robot journalists and data mining — on ABC Local Radio around NSW with Rosie Beaton, who’s filling in for regular presenter Dom Knight.

I thought we’d talk for maybe five minutes, but it ended up being a 20-minute chat. Here’s the entire audio.

The audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it isn’t being archived anywhere else.

Talking the ABC hack on “7.30”

Screengrab of Stilgherrian on "7.30": click for storyI was interviewed by ABC TV’s current affairs program 7.30 on Wednesday about the hack of an ABC website, in a story called Hacker attacks ABC, private information released.

The hack was apparently in revenge for the Lateline interview with controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The tweet claiming responsibility for the attack used the #OpWilders hashtag, the label for Anonymous’ ongoing protects against Wilders, but the operators of known Anonymous social media accounts are distancing themselves from this one.

Parts of the interview were also used in that night’s episide of Lateline, and a written story for ABC News Online.

It’s my third appearance on 7.30. I’ve previously spoken about the News of the World voicemail hacks and Anonymous’ hack of Stratfor.