Tag: crikey

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Weekly Wrap 206: Two saints and a Caltrain, with wine

Caltrain locomotive 925 Jackie Spieir: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 12 to Sunday 18 May 2014 was spent in San Jose and San Francisco, covering NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference and more. And as I write this, I’m still in America.

Podcasts

I am very pleased to say that The 9pm Edict has, finally, returned with The 9pm Shire, an episode that includes a visit to Cronulla, shellfish, and a little Joe Hockey.

I am rather less pleased at the phenomenal amount of time it took to produce — at least 27 hours, once travel and the re-recording journey is taken into account, rather than the eight hours a “normal” episode would have taken. That was the cause of the delay. Once the podcast had overflowed its original spot in my schedule, it had to wait until a sufficiently large gap had opened up again. With travel booked, that was always going to be tricky.

In fact, the 11.5 hours I spent in writing and recording the links and post-production on Thursday really should have been spent on writing, or at least reflecting on SuiteWorld. Which is why in this next section…

Articles

… there are none. I did start doing some analysis of Australia’s Budget, because I may have had a piece to write for Crikey, but in the end that didn’t happen. Too many other, bigger Budget issues to be discussed.

Media Appearances

None. Thank the gods.

5at5

Only one this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Corporate Largesse

  • NetSuite paid for my trip to the US to cover their SuiteWorld conference. That included economy flights from Sydney to San Francisco and return; airport transfers; two nights accommodation at Hotel Vitali; a Sonoma Valley winery tour, with tastings at Cline and Gloria Ferrer wineries and a bottle of wine from each (a Cline 2011 Live Oak Zinfandel and a Gloria Ferrer 2005 Royal Cuvée Brut), pre-dinner drinks and antipasto at Tosca Cafe in North Beach, and dinner at the Americano Restaurant at the Hotel Vitale; coach transport to San Jose; four nights accommodation at the Marriott San Jose; dinner and drinks at ARCADIA by Michael Mina; breakfast and lunch in the press work room throughout the conference; dinner at Thomas Fogarty Winery (although I didn’t go, deciding to have an early night instead); and the conference party at the City National Civic Theatre. NetSuite also gave us all a goodie bag, which contained a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 tablet (Wi-Fi 8GB model); toiletries by Burt’s Bees; gourmet popcorn from Garret Popcorn; a chocolate sampler from TCHO; and a NetSuite branded hoodie from Alternative Earth, t-shirt and spiral-bound notebook. From the trade show floor: Jitterbit-branded earbuds. I could have taken advantage of much more alcohol and much more stuff from the other vendors, but I am not a bowerbird.

The Week Ahead

As I write this, it’s still Saturday in the US, and I’m spending the rest of the weekend here in San Francisco — wandering around and, in between drinks and occasional food, pondering all manner of things about the world and my life. I believe that’s called having a weekend. But that said, I’ll also be recording some bits and pieces for The 9pm Edict.

I fly out of San Francisco on Sunday night, which means I arrive back in Sydney early on Tuesday morning. I’ll be spending Tuesday and Wednesday in Sydney, taking care of various meetings, interviews and errands, before returning to Wentworth Falls on Wednesday night.

The rest of the week, including the weekend, is unplanned. Please feel free to make suggestions.

[Photo: Caltrain locomotive 925 Jackie Spieir , photographed at San Jose Diridon Station on Friday 16 May 2014, just before it was to power the 1310 to San Francisco..]

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Weekly Wrap 201: Heartbleed into my wallet, with cockatoo

Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 7 to Sunday 13 April 2014 was astoundingly busy and productive. Yes, Heartbleed is to blame. But so is completely ignoring medical advice — which is something I’ll write about next week.

While there’s a lot on my mind that I want to tell you about, I’ve been churning out so many blog posts today, and so many articles about Heartbleed in recent days, and drinking so much wine relaxing across the weekend, that I can’t be arsed saying anything more.

So here’s the list.

Articles

Every single thing that I wrote this week was about the Heartbleed security bug.

Media Appearances

5at5

I managed to pump out another five this week, although one of them was on the weekend. Why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday, some of the people at UTS bought me coffees and lunch. Does that count as largesse?

The Week Ahead

I have no idea. The only things that have been locked in are being in Sydney on Thursday morning so I can be a panellist on this week’s Download This Show for ABC Radio National, which is being recorded at 1100, and of course it’s Good Friday and then the Easter weekend, so in theory I shouldn’t be working.

The reality, however, is that Easter is a shitty time for freelancers, because public holidays mean a serious drop in revenue — and I’m already rather stressed about March having been a quieter month than planned.

But I’ll figure it out, just not tonight.

Oh, and there’s a lunar eclipse on Tuesday.

[Photo: Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo, photographed at dusk near Wentworth Falls on 8 April 2014.]

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Heartbleed kills my schedule

Heartbleed logoNothing has appeared here since Weekly Wrap 200 last Sunday — including the update to my guest lecture at UTS from Monday — because my work schedule has been dominated by the Heartbleed internet security bug.

There’s a lot that’ll appear here in the coming three days, and not just the UTS lecture. There’s radio spots that I did with ABC 720 Perth, ABC 783 Alice Springs, 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide, ABC Radio’s The World Today, and ABC 702 Sydney, for starters, plus links to the stories I’ve written on Heartbleed — one for Crikey and four for ZDNet Australia — although clever possums will know that they’re already listed on the media page.

In the background, I’ve also been sketching out ideas for a Pozible crowdfunding campaign or two, continuing from the one I did last year, to resurrect Corrupted Nerds and The 9pm Edict. Stay tuned.

I guess I shouldn’t whinge about Heartbleed killing my schedule. Some people have to do the really hard programming and systems administration work to clean up the mess, not just write and talk about it, and the extra work is heartbleeding revenue straight into my pocket.

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Weekly Wrap 198: Secrets, security, Sydney and more wine

Sydney skyline, with frigate: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 17 to Sunday 23 March 2014 was a busy one, and moderately productive. I am happy with it.

Apart from the media objects listed here, I did quite a bit of background work on a SEKRIT project that I’ll announce on Tuesday. The only hint for now is that it’s something that quite a few people have been wanting for a while now.

Articles

Media Appearances

5at5

We’re back up to four out of five days being published. Excellent.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday I went to an event with a delightful name: Dell Australia’s Steak, Storage & Solutions Media & Analyst Lunch at Kingsley’s Steak & Crabhouse in Woolloomooloo. Obviously they paid for the food and wine.
  • On Tuesday I went to a media briefing by Imperva at Wolfies Restaurant, Circular Quay, where of course they paid for the food and wine. Imperva also gave us: A rather nice branded notebook; a branded pen; and a well-made carry bag to put them in. M.Tech, one of Imperva’s channel partners, gave us: A branded water bottle, carry bag, and business card holder.
  • On Tuesday I finally got around to checking my postbox, where I discovered that Sourcefire had sent me a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a branded bottle opened / key ring to open them with. Thanks for that.

The Week Ahead

It’ll be a busy week. Indeed, it’s the first week of a challenging three months ahead. I’ll tell you more about that later, but one key issue is that I need to decide how I’ll ramp up my revenue in the coming quarter. I have plenty of ideas, I just have to choose — and choose wisely.

On Monday I’ll be doing the final planning for the SEKRIT thing to be announced on Tuesday, as well as speaking with my editors about their needs for the next month or so.

On Wednesday I’m heading into Sydney for a few things, including the SANS Australia Community Night presentation Why Do Organisations Get Compromised? I’ll then stay in Sydney overnight, and on Thursday I’ll write my ZDNet Australia column before heading back up the hill.

Friday has been kept clear for work on my legacy business Prussia.Net, although that may change. The weekend is currently unplanned.

[Photo: Sydney skyline, with frigate, 17 March 2014, being a photograph taken from the steps leading from Potts Point down to Woolloomoloo. In the background is the Sydney CBD. In the foreground, mostly hidden behind trees, is a Royal Australian Navy frigate docked at Fleet Base East.]

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Talking Tor and related matters on ABC The World Today

ABC logoMid-morning today I received a phone call from ABC journalist David Mark, who was after a backgrounder on the Tor network the lunchtime current affairs program The World Today. His call brought me the news of what appears to be a significant win in the battle against online child exploitation.

Fourteen arrests were made as part of Operation Round Table, which according to the (American) ABC, was an investigation led by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), US Postal Inspection Service and federal authorities in Louisiana.

The roughly 250 victims were spread across 39 states and five other countries — Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Most were boys between 13 and 15. Two victims were 3 or younger, authorities said.

The pornographic images were shared on an underground website on the Tor network, an online anonymity network that masks the location of servers and conceals an Internet user’s location. The subscription-based website operated from about June 2012 until June 2013, had more than 27,000 members and shared more than 2,000 webcam-captured videos, mostly of young boys, authorities said.

There’s further material in the (Australian) ABC story, Australian victims among 251 identified in ‘members only’ child porn website.

The World Today ran Mark’s four-minute story, including comments from US secretary of homeland security Jeh Johnson, and federal attorney-general for Louisiana Kenneth Polite, as well as my own small contribution.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:32 — 2.1MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, served here directly from their website —– where you can also read a full transcript.

If you’d like some more information on how Tor works, and how users’ mistakes can lead to their anonymity being rather less effective than they’d hoped, my Crikey Clarifier: how the FBI hacked users of Tor, the ‘secret internet’ from August 2013 could be a useful starting-point.

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Weekly Wrap 193: Mid-month surge, then rain and planes

Sydney airport before dawn: click for original imageMy week of Monday 10 to Sunday 16 February 2014 isn’t quite finished, but today is effectively the start of a new working week so… well, here we are. Before breakfast at Sydney Airport. Or right next to it. Call it a wrap of Monday to Saturday.

It seems that I switched from early-month torpor to late-month productivity around mid-week. We’ll see how that pans out over the next few days. But I do think I’m starting to identity a clear pattern here.

Articles

Media Appearances

5at5

I suppose I should give better prominence to 5at5, the “email letter” that I started two weeks ago. I’ve actually managed to stick to the daily routine — albeit with some wobbliness in the “around 5pm Sydney time” part of the deal — and it seems like people are liking it. Enjoy.

Corporate Largesse

  • Today I’m heading to the Gold Coast for the three-day Tech Leaders Forum 2014, formerly known as Kickstart Forum, an event I’ve attended in previous years. The event organisers cover my airfares and accommodation, and there’s usually plenty of food and drink and various freebies from the vendors who pay for it all. I’ll list all of the largesse next week so it’s all in the one place.

The Week Ahead

I’ll be on the Gold Coast through until Tuesday evening, fully occupied with the aforementioned event. I’ll then return to the Blue Mountains for a solid week of writing. There’s nothing locked in for Sydney at this stage, but of course that may change.

[Photo: Sydney airport before dawn, taken shortly before the post was published.]