Talking Facebook on ABC 666 Canberra

Today on I’m a Goddam Expert it’s Facebook, the recent round of changes, and what it means for users and the world of social networking generally. It began with Friday’s piece for Crikey, Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous, and so far I’ve been booked to do four radio spots. And counting.

I did two spots on Friday afternoon, one with Lindy Burns ABC 774 Melbourne the other with Melanie Tait on ABC 666 Canberra. Here’s the audio for the Canberra conversation.

The Melbourne conversation (2.1MB MP3) covered similar territory, but the recording dropped out near the end so I haven’t bothered posting it as a proper podcast.

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but they generally don’t put these interviews online — and hey, it’s a good plug for them. Well, a minor but useful plug.

I’m doing two more this morning, also for ABC local radio stations. The Gold Coast at 0940 AEST and North Coast NSW at 1010.

Weekly Wrap 62: LinkedIn and Hacking edition

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, one day late and without a picture. I find it hard to get excited about creating these posts, but I suppose they’re useful.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 100, “Cybersecurity: past, present and future”. A conversation with Dr Paul Nielsen director and CEO of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, parent of CERT.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None. Again.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

Talking LulzSec/Anonymous vs PayPal on TripleJ’s Hack

On Wednesday afternoon, LulzSec and Anonymous joined forces to encourage people to boycott PayPal by withdrawing their money and closing their accounts.

The back story is that PayPal has cut off WikiLeaks’ account, meaning that people could no longer donate money to WikiLeaks via PayPal. Anonymous launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against PayPal. Last week the FBI and others arrested people alleged to have been responsible for those attacks. So this week, the boycott of PayPal.

The joint statement by LulzSec and Anonymous makes for interesting reading. It describes DDoS attacks as “ethical, modern cyber operations”. Such things are actually a criminal act, despite what Anonymous may imagine the law to be. “Law enforcement continues to push its ridiculous rules upon us,” they write, when it’s not law enforcement who makes the laws, but governments.

The call for the boycott was unfolding as Triple J’s current affairs program Hack was going to air, and I phoned in a report. Here’s the audio.

I found it interesting that presenter Tom Tilley responded to my comment that DDoS is a crime by saying “Yeah I imagine there’d be people with lots of different points of view about what they’re doing and whether it’s indeed lawful.”. Personally I reckon the law in this is pretty clear. Pandering to their audience?

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It has been extracted from the full program audio [MP3].

Weekly Wrap 59: Making paragraphs while the rain pours

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. While Sydney dealt with its wettest July since 1950, I was at the Bunjaree Cottages in Wentworth Falls, writing and writing and writing and writing. And talking on the radio.

“Make hay while the sun shines,” goes the old saying. But for a writer, it’s about making paragraphs while the rain pours. Being stuck indoors with a magnificent view really helps.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. But there’ll be plenty next week. I’ll tell you more about that later this morning.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Potholes on Frenchmans Road, Wentworth Falls, photographed on 20 July 2011. This is a slightly modified version, here’s the original.]

Talking Tasmanian goverment hack on ABC 936 Hobart

Yesterday the Tasmanian government was hit by a hacker.

Sp1d3r from the hacking crew S4t4n1c_s0uls got into a Debian Linux box and inserted his graphic into an email sent to state’s media.

I reported this for CSO Online.

S4t4n1c_s0uls has claimed responsibility for almost 100 website defacements this month, including sites in Brazil, Jamaica, China, India and the Philippines. Five Chinese government websites were hit, and one in the Philippines.

I spoke about the hack with Louise Saunders on ABC 936 Hobart, and here’s the audio.

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it hasn’t been posted on their website so here it is. In return, I reckon you might choose to listen to Louise Saunders’ drive program some time soon.