podcast – Page 13 – Stilgherrian

13 October 2013

Talking many things on the Reckoner podcast, again

At very short notice today, I ended up being a guest on another episode of the Reckoner podcast.

Along with hosts Peter Wells and James Croft, the conversation included Jason Murray.

We talked about Chromebooks and the Move Concept Store and Leap Motion and whether Nintendo was dead yet and the Pokemon X Y Launch and the Omny radio app for smartphones and more. Including dicks.

There’s links to all those things on the episode page. That’s three links to that page now, so you should click on one of them. Go on.

That said, here’s the audio right here, embedded in this page so it’ll also appear in my Conversation podcast feed.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:04 — 26.1MB)

13 October 2013

Sixth “Corrupted Nerds” posted, on SoundCloud too

Yes, I’m working through the backlog. Another Corrupted Nerds podcast has just been posted.

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are cheap and easy to do. It’s just a matter of overwhelming the target site with a flood of internet traffic. According to Michael Smith, head of Akamai Technologies’ computer security incident response team (CSIRT), such attacks will only get worse as we roll out faster broadband infrastructure.

“That increases the amount of bandwidth available to the home, but that also increases that amount of bandwidth that a bunch of computers at the home can throw at a target site,” Smith says.

That’s not the only reason that DDoS is becoming more challenging to defend against — but you’ll need to click through to the podcast to hear why.

Corrupted Nerds is also available via iTunes, and now also on SoundCloud. So you’ve really got no excuse not to listen. Well, unless you’re deaf. But that’s different.

29 September 2013

Fifth “Corrupted Nerds” podcast posted

After a gap that was altogether far too long, a new episode of the Corrupted Nerds podcast has just been posted.

“Networks are living and breathing things. They don’t sit still. Your vulnerabilities will change on a daily basis, for sure, and you need to be on top of that,” says Dick Bussiere, principal architect for Tenable Network Security in the Asia Pacific region.

That’s why Tenable is advocating what they see as a revolution in maintaining a data network’s security posture.

“We’re kind of advocating that people perform vulnerability assessment, and remediation of vulnerabilities, as a constant and continuous process, rather than something that you do on a periodic basis,” Bussiere says.

So that worldview, plus a few comments about advanced persistent threats (APTs), the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) and the revelations of Edward Snowden, are all part of Corrupted Nerds: Conversations episode 5. Enjoy.

06 August 2013

“Corrupted Nerds” podcast goes cloud and big data

I’ve finally posted a new episode of my Corrupted Nerds podcast, a wide-ranging conversation with Peter Coffee, vice-president and head of platform research at Salesforce.com.

Cloud computing is inevitable, says Coffee. “Processing power has grown at about 25% per year, and compounded over a period of 30-some years that’s a lot. But bandwidth has grown at about 45% per year over that same period of time.”

So whatever the application, no matter how complex, eventually it’ll be cheaper to process the data somewhere else, and your device — desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone — only has to manage presentation and interaction.

I’d been wanting to catch up with Coffee for two or three years, and we finally managed to arrange being in the same room at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and I think you’ll enjoy it too.

04 August 201305 August 2013

Weekly Wrap 165: Distractions and decisions, of a sort

If there was a unifying theme for my week Monday 29 July to Sunday 4 August 2013, it was Distraction.

I distracted myself with the Nokia Lumia 925 / Windows Phone 8 trial. While I’m getting some useful real-world experience of the two products, it’s probably not going to generate any revenue, and it soaked up a lot of my time. I distracted myself even further by fiddling around with video editing.

I was distracted by delayed trains on Thursday night, sadly due to a death on the railway line at Mt Druitt, which meant I didn’t get back to Wentworth Falls until 0100 the following day.

I was distracted by Telstra’s changes to mobile broadband allowances — apparently they’ve now dropped the maximum data allowance they’ll provision to a mobile phone to a mere 9GB a month, so I was living the scenario I wrote about recently — and I had to trek to Penrith on Saturday to buy another device or risk being sodomised by their 10c/megabyte over-run charges.

And finally, today I was distracted by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd finally deciding to call the election for 7 September — which means I’m distracting myself even more.

Articles

So you call yourself a geek?, ZDNet Australia, 29 July 2013. There was quite a bit of reaction to this column, possibly for the wrong reasons.

Podcasts

I produced a brief announcement for The 9pm Election.

Media Appearances

On Thursday, Channel TEN’s The Project recorded some of my comments about geoblocking, but they have not been aired yet.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

[Update Monday 5 August 2013, 2155 AEST: This section has been changed to reflect the unfolding reality.]

On Monday I’ll write a ZDNet Australia column, making up for the one I’d intended to write on Friday, and then rum some errands to Katoomba.

On Tuesday I’ll write for Technology Spectator, work on revenue-generation for The 9pm Election, and complete episode 3 of the Corrupted Nerds: Conversations podcast, amongst other things.

On Wednesday I’ll head to Sydney for some of the Check Point Experience, an event hosted by security vendor Check Point. Thursday will be another Sydney trip for a medical appointment and a few other bits and pieces. And Friday will be a day of podcast production,I hope.

The weekend is currently unplanned.

[Photo: Attack-class patrol boat HMAS Advance (P83) (click to embiggen photo), formerly of the Royal Australian Navy, now with the Australian National Maritime Museum, photographed on Sydney Harbour on 1 August 2013.]

04 August 201311 August 2014

Announcing “The 9pm Election”

Photograph of TV showing Kevin Rudd announcing the election date

Today Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that the federal election will be on 7 September 2013. Tonight I announce that I intend to produce five episodes of The 9pm Election.

They’ll bear some passing resemblance to previous episodes of The 9pm Edict, such the episode from when the last election was called.

It is my intention to post a new episode each Friday night at 9pm AEST. Provided you cough up some money, that is, and I’ll be telling you more about that over the next 72 hours.

[Update 8 August 2013: I’ve had a busy week. The first episode will appear this weekend, probably Saturday night but maybe only Sunday. Like you care. Meanwhile, listen to Corrupted Nerds.]

I’ve recorded an announcement, which you can listen to below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:26 — )

If you’d like to comment on this (non-)episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Credits: News excerpt from ABC TV. The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]