My week of Monday 15 to Sunday 21 July 2024 was both busy and not busy. I recorded three of the five special-guest episodes for The 9pm Edict winter series, but during the cold and windy winter weather I was fighting some sort of infection and needed so much sleep.
Articles
- The Weekly Cybers #27. MediSecure hack affects 12.9 million Australians but now the money has run out, and a range of smaller stories fill out a relatively quiet week.
You can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to an email compilation of any new stories each Sunday morning.
Podcasts, Media Appearances, Photos, Videos, Corporate Largesse
None of these. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear and when livestreams are scheduled. New podcasts will be appearing in the coming weeks.
Recommendations
New batch of ketamine must’ve arrived, because all this is deranged even by Elon Musk’s standards.
- Elon Musk had previously set 8 August as the date for unveiling his self-driving robotaxi. He seems to be confirming a delay to make a design change. Which is weird, because announcing things long before they’re ready has never bothered him before.
- For example, Elon Musk mulls building an Iron Man ‘flying metal suit of armor’ after Trump assassination attempt.
- Musk says he’s donating $45 million a month to support Donald Trump, but then he says a lot of things. A decent number of Silicon Valley types are joining him, it seems.
- Meanwhile on X, “#MAGA and #Trump2024 now appear with small images of Trump with his fist in the air and an American flag, respectively, as #MAGA has become the No. 1 trending hashtag on X as of Thursday evening. Searching #Trump2024 on X now also includes a flurry of American flags that rain down from the top of the search page.”
- Elon Musk to relocate companies over gender identity law in California schools. If you recall, he has this whole thing about one of his kids being trans and legally cutting ties.
- Elon Musk is already blaming diversity initiatives for the massive CrowdStrike global tech outage.
- And one for the conspiracy theories, apparently X Is resisting a subpoena in case related to “dead financier and sex trafficker” Jeffrey Epstein. And it’s not the only case connected to both Musk and Epstein. All very curious.
In other news:
- Hurrah! Friend of the pod David F Porteous and the other David have finally done a new episode of their Cheerful Despair podcast. After a four-year gap. Look in your podcast apps.
- Australian brush turkey’s dramatic fall and rapid rise in cities mapped by researchers.
- From Guardian Australia, We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny.
- Want to use face biometrics for verification? Well as 404 Media reports, “An underground site is selling videos and photos of real people to bypass selfie checks for online services. In essence, these individuals have been turned into stock models for services specifically designed for fraud.”
- There was a news story in the cycle this week about how the melting of the ice caps is slowing the Earth’s rotation, and what that means for Leap Seconds, but there’s this solid explainer from the ABC from back in March. I hate leap seconds. Anyway I know why this happened. The other day there was an update from the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. No leap second this year.
The Week Ahead
Given that I was still sleeping for much of today, I won’t be too bold about scheduling the coming week. There’s podcasts to be edited and client work to be done, but I’ll get to it as the mood takes me. All the deadlines in the system are ones I’ve set myself.
The first podcast to appear will be the one with Scottish author and social researcher David F Porteous.
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On Thursday I’ll try to catch the webinar Is Australia prepared to defeat information warfare? from the Social Cyber Institute. I wrote a little about the background to this idea in last week’s The Weekly Cybers.
And on Sunday Saturday I’m heading down to Sydney, probably Penrith, for various purposes. Let’s see how I go.
Further Ahead
- Opening of Sydney Metro Chatswood-Central-Sydenham, 4 August 2024. I was originally going to leave exploring the new Metro line to another day but I have been persuaded to join friends on a Metro-based pub crawl on its very first day of operation.
- TechLeaders 2024, Hunter Valley, 10–12 August 2024.
- The Sydney Dialogue, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Sydney and online, 2–3 September 2024 (TBC).
- Queensland expedition, flying to Cairns on 13 October 2024, taking the Spirit of Queensland train down to Brisbane on 16 October and overnight, then visiting the Gold Coast on 20 October before flying back to Sydney on 21 October. I’m still fleshing out the details but there’s bound to be opportunities to catch up for drinks and such.
- Australian Internet Governance Forum (auIGF) 2024, formerly known as NetThing, Melbourne and online, 28–29 October 2024 (TBC).
[Photo: A male grey butcherbird (Cracticus torquatus) sitting in an old man banksia (Banksia serrata) just outside my front door, waiting for some food to arrive. Photographed on 6 July 2024. This particular bird has known me for a few years now and often flies close to my face to attract my attention.]