Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
The Australian government wants the online giants Facebook and Google to pay for links to news stories, and those companies are paying hardball. I spoke about the stoush this morning with David Penberton and Will Goodings on 1395 FIVEaa in Adelaide.
Continue reading “Talking Facebook vs news media on 1395 FIVEaa”The (relatively) new Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) released its first-ever unclassified threat report yesterday, but as I wrote at ZDNet, I was disappointed.
The report (PDF) has dropped, and indeed it contains few surprises. It tells the now-familiar story of serious and organised criminals, foreign state-sponsored actors, and other “cyber adversaries”, all of whom are getting better at what they do.
“The cyber threat to Australian organisations is undeniable, unrelenting and continues to grow. If an organisation is connected to the internet, it is vulnerable. The incidents in the public eye are just the tip of the iceberg,” begins the report’s foreword.
“Cyber adversaries are aggressive and persistent in their efforts to compromise Australian networks and information. They are constantly improving their tradecraft in an attempt to defeat our network defences and exploit new technologies,” it says later.
“Australia is an innovative country with a globally important resources sector. We are a regional leader with global interests and important partnerships. This makes Australia a target-rich environment for cyber adversaries.”
All of which is true, of course, but all of which has been said so many times before.
I spoke about the report today with Will Goodings on 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide — with somewhat less disappointment in my voice.
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The audio is ©2015 Nova Entertainment.
This week Apple launched its Apple Pay service in the UK, the second market after the US, which meant it and other new payment systems blipped up in the news.
On Thursday I spoke about Apple Pay with Will Goodings on 1395 FIVEaa in Adelaide. He was bouncing off a story in the Australian Financial Review, Why Australia’s banks are still well placed to fend off Apple Pay.
After speaking with me, he spoke with Chris Hamilton, CEO of the Australian Payments Clearing Association — and that’s in the recording too, because it’s interesting stuff.
I was also going to mention the forthcoming Samsung Pay, because ZDNet reviewed the beta rollout in South Korea, but we didn’t get to that.
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The audio is ©2015 Nova Entertainment.
Third time’s the charm, right? My third radio spot on The Great SIM Heist was for 1395 FIVEaa in Adelaide on Wednesday afternoon.
Again, I won’t repeat the background, because it’s all in my first post on the subject. But I will say that this is the most detailed conversation about it so far, because presenter Will Goodings and I spoke for 13 minutes.
That said, there’s not much more information than we had yesterday. Gemalto isn’t due to hold its press conference until late this evening Australian time, so we’ll know more tomorrow.
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The audio is ©2015 Nova Entertainment.
One of the technology stories that crossed over into the mainstream media last week was the news that Samsung’s Smart TV were listening out for conversations — part of its voice recognition features — and transmitting them to an un-named third party.
Now Samsung needs to do this because the TV itself doesn’t have enough grunt to do the voice recognition. It’s the same reason that Google Translate needs to send your words off to their servers, do the translation there, and send the translated words back.
And there’s a reasonable argument to be made that the TV needs to listen the whole time, so it knows when you’ve started talking to it.
The audio information is sent to a third party because they’re the ones providing the speech recognition technology.
But Samsung’s big mistake was to have this feature turned on by default, so that customers were unaware it was happening — unless they happened to read the lengthy privacy policy and understand its implications. And who does that?
I ended up doing two radio spots on this topic, and this is the first — a chat with Will Goodings on 1395 FIVEaa in Adelaide.
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The audio is ©2015 dmgRadio Australia.
Bonus link: My ZDNet Australia piece from late 2013, Smart TVs are dumb, and so are we.
Australian news outlets ran stories today about a Russian website that shows live video cameras that haven’t been properly protected, and I ended up talking about it with Will Goodings on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa.
I disagreed with the Fairfax story, which called the Russian site “Online IP net surveillance cameras of the world” the result of “hacking”. For me, hacking implies some sort of technical trick. But I did point out that unprotected devices on the internet are not new. The Shodan search engine shows all manner of exposed devices.
The audio includes a subsequent guest on the program, Con Kosmidis from Alpha Security Systems, who amplified some of my points, and a small rant from Mr Goodings.
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The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia.