Weekly Wrap 443: A cat, a podcast, and words on healthcare

My week of Monday 19 to Sunday 25 November 2018 was dominated by a grumpy cat, but I won’t go into that.

Podcasts

  • “The 9pm Arch Window of the Baked Goods”, being The 9pm Edict episode 81. It’s also on Spreaker and SoundCloud. My guest co-host was Nicholas Fryer. Please let me know if you like this format. We’ll be doing a second one before Christmas, and I may do another episode or two in different formats before the end of the year.

Articles

I also wrote a piece about the Assistance and Access Bill, which will appear on Monday.

Media Appearances, Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

The week will be dominated by action in the Australian Parliament, namely debate over the controversial anti-encryption legislation, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018.

The powerful Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) is still conducting hearings as part of its inquiry, but home affair minister Peter Dutton is pressuring the committee to hurry up, and prime minister Scott Morrison has said he wants the legislation passed in the next two weeks.

Hearings are now scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, and Friday this week. I’m writing some analysis for ZDNet for Monday, and we’ll see what happens after that.

Meanwhile, I’ll be in Sydney on Tuesday for a lunchtime briefing on “Countering Advanced Threats” by Cybereason, and on Friday for a media lunch with executives from Symantec.

Further Ahead

There don’t seem to be any major commitments between now and Christmas, just some single-day or overnight trips to Sydney for media briefings, end-of-year events, and social activities.

There will be at least one episode of The 9pm Edict wth Nicholas Fryer, however, and perhaps one that’s more of a long-form interview.

[Photo: Freelancer Life. Watching the Australian Senate live while grabbing a late breakfast of noodle soup at the Sussex Centre food court in Sydney’s Chinatown, photographed on 14 November 2018. So not this week.]

Links for 03 July 2008 through 04 July 2008

Stilgherrian’s links for 03 July 2008 through 04 July 2008, gathered with joy and mutton:

  • Draft Report | Garnaut Climate Change Review: The Draft Report describes the methodology for evaluating the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation; to the application of the science of climate change to Australia; to the international context, and to Australian mitigation policy.
  • Turing Test | xkcd: On the other hand, maybe the test is to make the examiner think that HE'S the computer!
  • Turing test | Wikipedia: "The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to demonstrate intelligence." What I love about the REAL Turing test is the subtlety of it… It's not faking a human, it's faking a human faking.
  • Manned Cloud by Jean-Marie Massaud | Dezeen: This just has to be the most beautiful design for an airship I've ever seen. Guys, build it soon!
  • The BBC and the future of broadcasting | Stephen Fry: Stephen Fry's speech on the future of public service broadcasting, and the BBC in particular.