It was the quiet week before the storm of the federal Budget. Still, we have a new quantum strategy, and will soon have a new privacy commissioner. Also in the news, former NSW services minister Victor Dominello.
Continue reading “Digital developments from Canberra 34”Digital developments from Canberra 13
The House of Representatives was sitting this week, but it was mostly routine stuff. Some telco data legislation, some ACCC recommendations, and yeah more data breaches.
Continue reading “Digital developments from Canberra 13”Digital developments from Canberra 10
There weren’t any big-ticket items this week. It’s the calm before next week’s storm of a Budget session of Parliament. That’s why there’s so many reports to read. Next week will also see reforms to the Privacy Act.
Continue reading “Digital developments from Canberra 10”The 9pm Double-Length Rights and Freedoms Philosophical Dreamscape with Justin Warren
In the first episode of the Edict’s Spring Series 2021, we meet Justin Warren, “consultant, freedom of information tragic, hexagon enthusiast, and creator of the CyberRatingâ„¢ labelling scheme”.
Continue reading “The 9pm Double-Length Rights and Freedoms Philosophical Dreamscape with Justin Warren”Weekly Wrap 152: LulzSec, Optus, radio and thinking stuff
My week Monday 29 April to Sunday 5 May 2013 began gently, with planning and washing and other chores, and just two articles to write. But by Wednesday night I’d also done four radio spots, washed an infinite number of towels, and eaten most of a sheep.
Or so it felt.
Then Thursday was full of the Optus Vision 2013 conference, followed by a late train journey back to the Blue Mountains. It was tough to get into work mode on Friday, but I did, and wrote my second article. And washed more towels. And then on Saturday I did the full sloth.
But the most important part of the week, at least in the long term, was all the time I spent from Friday onwards thinking about the unexpected good news I mentioned last week. It means that I’ll soon be able to work on some projects that have been sitting on the back burner, and you’ll start to see them emerging over the next few weeks.
Articles
Both of these articles resulted from this week’s Privacy Awareness Week activities.
- Australia’s Privacy Commissioner gets serious about infosec, CSO Online, 30 April 2013.
- The fuzzy logic of Australia’s data breach draft, ZDNet Australia, 3 May 2013.
Media Appearances
- On Monday I spoke about Facebook’s possible decline, maybe, on ABC 774 Melbourne.
- On Tuesday I spoke about LulzSec and hacktivism generally in an interview for Triple J’s Hack, and I was frustrated by the result.
- On Wednesday morning I spoke about the dark web (ugh!) and the attacks on Silk Road on ABC Gold Coast.
- On Wednesday I spoke about LulzSec and more on ABC Radio National’s Download This Show.
Corporate Largesse
- On Thursday I attended Optus Vision 2013, which meant I was fed food and drink through the day at their expense.
The Week Ahead
I plan to write a story each for Technology Spectator, CSO Online and ZDNet, at the very least, as well as kick off one or more of these new projects. Stay tuned.
It’s my birthday on Thursday, but I’ll just have a quiet drink that night. I’ll head to Sydney on Friday instead and have a proper birthday dinner then, thanks to the Snarky Platypus. I’ll then stay overnight before catching United Airlines flight UA870 to San Francisco on Saturday afternoon, arriving there on Saturday morning.
Saturday night and Sunday day should be free time in San Francisco before, I’m guessing, a social function on Sunday evening serves as prelude to NetSuite’s SuiteWorld. The event proper starts on Monday in San Jose.
[Photo: Changing alphabets, a photograph taken at Optus Vision 2013 once the staffing level of the registration desk had been reduced during the afternoon, and then the desks themselves removed.]
Weekly Wrap 23
A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth.
Articles
- Fairfax’s hypocritical web ‘spying devices’ beat-up, for Crikey. The “spying devices” in question are tracking cookies. Nothing new there. But the story was on the front page of the dead-tree slices. Why? Apparently politicians’ websites use tracking cookies. Shock! Horror! And Fairfax uses even more of them. Hypocrites.
- Senate to re-open bloggers versus journalists, for Crikey. A lightly-edited version of my blog post on the same topic.
- Indonesian e-commerce held back by uncertain laws, for Crikey. Based on material presented by leading Indonesian legal academic Dr Sinta Dewi.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 64, “The info commissioner’s fight: Govt 2.0”. My interview with the new Australian Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan. The new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner came into being on 1 November and represents a significant change to the way the Australian Government will be handing its information — especially given the Declaration of Open Government earlier this year.
Media Appearances
- On Monday I spoke with Fiona Wyllie on ABC Radio’s Statewide Afternoons and the Fairfax tracking cookie beat-up and a father who installed a radio jammer to kill the internet so his kids wouldn’t spend so much time online. Alas, there is no recording. That’s a shame. It’s not often you’ll hear me giving parenting advice on the radio.
Geekery
- I learned how to use Google Site Search by plugging it into the Fender Australia website. It’s fairly straightforward, but it quickly shows you the problems with how your site is constructed. As an aside, if you’re a web developer visiting that site for the first time you’ll be horrified to see that in many places it uses tables for layout. That’s because the site was originally built in 2001 and has just been re-skinned a couple of times since. It’s also maintained manually, all 950 pages of it. There’s little business case for a major overhaul — the numbers are not compelling — but we’re planning to build a proper modern database-driven site early in 2011.
Corporate Largesse
None.
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. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.
[Photo: Old bar sign at the Town Hall Hotel, Newtown. Gender roles were a little different back then.]