My week from Monday 21 to Sunday 27 May 2012 saw me return to my usual writing levels — despite continuing pain from my shoulder and a lingering cold which, as I write this, threatens to turn into bronchitis. It’s been rather cold and windy here at Wentworth Falls.
Sadly that meant I didn’t make it to the planned paintball session with Eugene Kaspersky on Wednesday night. It seems that I’m fated not to spend any quality time with Mr K on this Australian trip. I daresay I’ll catch up with him another time. Is that a hint? Der. Of course.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 139, “War talk dominates AusCERT 2012”, the first of two episodes based on material recorded at the information security conference. The overall theme is that infosec is becoming militarised. We no longer talk about “information assurance” but “defensive cyber operations”. Click through for the full list of speakers.
Articles
- AusCERT 2012: NSA, FBI split on comms intercepts, ZDNet Australia, 21 May 2012.
- Twitter mapping and how we choose our own adventure, Crikey, 23 May 2012. I thoroughly recommend that you watch and listen to the full 38-minute presentation by Prof Axel Bruns.
- Kaspersky’s right: Apple, lift your security game, CSO Online, 24 May 2012. I seems that Mr Kaspersky appreciates my description of him as “glorious global megatroll”. Yes, I do think it’s a compliment. I genuinely admire his ability to grab the headlines.
- Optus’ innovation directive, Technology Spectator, 25 May 2012. These are my first written observations from Optus’ Future of Business Report, another thing I suggest you might read.
There’s one more long story emerging from ideas presented at AusCERT 2012 that was filed late Friday. It will appear tomorrow morning at ZDNet Australia.
Media Appearances
None. Which makes up for last week’s heavy media load.
Corporate Largesse
- On Thursday I went to a media briefing by Optus Business at Australian Technology Park. They provided lunch, and afterwards a couple of coffees. They also gave me an autographed copy of Peter Hinssen’s book The New Normal: Explore the limits of the digital world. No, me neither.
The Week Ahead
It looks like the coming week will be significantly less intense for me, with a more gentle workload and, with luck, better health.
The only fixed-schedule items will take place during an overnight trip to Sydney on Wednesday. That evening there’s a Sydney Talks seminar entitled It Won’t Happen to Me: Cybercrime Myths and Concepts at the University of New South Wales. (Does anyone want to join me?) Then on Thursday morning Samsung is launching… well, they won’t tell me what, but I suspect it’s their new Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone.
I may well be in Sydney on the weekend too, because Bunjaree Cottages is full up both for that weekend and the following Queen’s Birthday long weekend. Stand by.
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 (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up) and via Instagram. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags. Yes, I should probably update this stock paragraph to match the current reality.
[Photo: A young Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus) swoops low overhead at Bunjaree Cottages near Wentworth Falls.]
I was in Sydney for most of my week Monday 23 to Sunday 29 July 2012, and despite some minor annoyances I’m reasonably pleased with the results.
I was surprised at all the media attention given to the DNSChanger thing last week. I even did a radio spot about it — even though the DNS turnoff affected just 0.015% of computers on the internet.