Weekly Wrap 420: Cold, Canberra, and Space

Canberra BungalowWithout going into too many details, here is my week of Monday 11 to Sunday 17 June 2018. Much of it was spent in Canberra, where it was cold and windy.

Articles

I’ve also part-written an analysis of this week’s conference “Building Australia’s Strategy for Space” put on by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). That should be up at ZDNet late on Tuesday afternoon.

Podcasts

None, but there will be two podcasts quite soon. Promise.

Media Appearances

  • Anthony Caruana reviewed my performance in AusCERT 2018 — The (not so) great debate. As far as I can tell, the video of the debate has not been posted. That’s probably for the best.
  • On Wednesday, I spoke about net neutrality on ABC Hobart. As you may have noticed, I’ve almost completely dropped my habit of posting the audio recordings.

Corporate Largesse

  • There was much good food and drink at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) conference “Building Australia’s Strategy for Space”. The dinner at the National Gallery of Australia was sponsored by Northrop Grumman. We were all given Northrop Grumman fidget spinners too. They must have tons of those stupid things to get rid of.

The Week Ahead

The week will be spent in Sydney, at least until the weekend. It’ll be all about writing for ZDNet and Crikey, but I’m also hoping to sneak in one of the two podcasts I owe you. Plus I hope to finally kick this goddam cold. I won’t set specific dates for any of these things, though, because that causes a bit too much stress.

Further Ahead

Things I’ve pencilled in, none of which have been confirmed yet:

[Photo: Canberra Bungalow. Canberra was established in 1913, and the now-Old Parliament House was opened in 1927, so the city is quite new. The inner suburbs have lots of these inter-War bungalows. This one is in Braddon. Photographed on 18 June 2018.]

Weekly Wrap 391: Figs, cheese, and crowdfunding

Dried figs with blue cheeseAs with last week, I won’t say much about the week of Monday 20 to Sunday 26 November 2017 either, except to say that things are, more or less, wonderful. At least by comparison, etc.

In The 9pm Edict Summer Series we reached Target One. Thank you everyone. So now there’ll be two extra episodes of The 9pm Edict podcast over summer:

But, to what happened this week…

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

Monday through Wednesday I’m concentrating on DirectorTech. Also on Wednesday I’m heading down to Sydney for medical appointments, the ones I’d originally planned to do last Friday, as well as recording a spot for ABC Melbourne. I’ll be answering the question “What is the cloud?” some time after 1900 AEDT.

The rest of the week is unplanned, but I’m sure it’ll include some writing for ZDNet.

[Photo: Dried figs with blue cheese, part of the lovely cheese platter at the West Ryde Hotel. Photographed on 25 November 2017.]

Talking end-to-end encryption on ABC RN Breakfast

ABC logoAustralia is opening a new campaign in the seemingly never-ending Cyptowars. This time, the target is end-to-end encryption.

Our favourite attorney-general, Senator George Brandis QC, wants “the cooperation of companies like Apple and Facebook and Google and so on” to help the government break into encrypted communications. That cooperation would presumably extend to messaging apps that use end-to-end encryption, such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and so on.

And cooperation would be ensured, thanks to new legal sanctions.

Brandis says he’s not interested in putting mandatory “back door” access into the encryption used by messaging platforms. But how can that be true when he’s asking for the tech companies to be able to provide access to customers’ encrypted messages? That’s exactly what a back door is.

Anyway, this morning I was interviewed on this topic by Fran Kelly on the ABC’s RN Breakfast. We spoke for more than seven minutes.

The audio is ©2017 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is being served directly from the ABC website.

For more analysis, try George Brandis’s salvo in cryptowars could blow a hole in architecture of the internet, by the Guardian’s Paul Farrell.

Weekly Wrap 364: Cruising through May, striking few rocks

Circles and SpikesIt’s another multi-week Weekly Wrap, covering the three weeks from Monday 1 to Sunday 21 May 2017. The throat infection is finally gone — touch wood — but the sleep patterns are still rubbish, and the care factor low.

I don’t want to whinge any more, through, so here are the things.

Articles

Podcasts

None, but see below for my podcast plans.

Media Appearances

I’ve just finished reading Mark Colvin’s book, Light and Shadow: Memoirs of a Spy’s Son, and it’s wonderful. If you’re in Australia, it’s currently AUD 8.60 on Kindle.

Corporate Largesse

The Week Ahead

I’ve dropped my plans to cover the AusCERT Information Security Conference on the Gold Coast later this coming week, in part because I’ve got plenty of other things to do.

This week I plan to do a solid amount of work on the SEKRIT editorial project; write a thing or two for ZDNet, including a 1500-word feature; plus, I guess, a bunch of other things. But I won’t assign specific tasks to specific days, because that tends to jinx things, especially with my sleep patterns still being so dodgy.

Further Ahead

The next episode of The 9pm Edict podcast will be recorded and streamed live on Tuesday 30 May from stilgherrian.com/edict/live/, starting at 2100 AEST. You still have time to support this podcast with a one-off contribution.

(For those of you who’ve been asking about ongoing contributions, yes, I still intend to set up a better system for that. That won’t be finalised for a while, though, so one-off contributions are very welcome.)

Beyond that, I’m covering 5th International Conference on Cybercrime and Computer Forensics (ICCCF) on the Gold Coast from 16 to 18 July, I hope; and the national conference of the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) in Sydney on 10 to 12 October.

If there’s anything I should add in there, please let me know.

[Photo: Circles and Spikes. The side of the cruise liner Carnival Spirit docked at the Overseas Passenger Terminal, Circular Quay, Sydney, on 17 May 2017.]