Josh Taylor
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joshtaylor.bsky.social
Josh Taylor
@joshtaylor.bsky.social
11K followers 730 following 2.9K posts
Technology reporter at the Guardian, in Melbourne, Australia. Tech, infosec, FOI, politics, media 🌈 (he/him) https://linktr.ee/joshtayl0r
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joshtaylor.bsky.social
losing it that these were the best pics of John Howard that AAP could get today
John Howard pointing, John Howard looking
November 11, 2025 at 6:57 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Regulators coming for Big Wiggle (button batteries) www.accc.gov.au/media-releas...
ACCC The Wiggles admit Emma Bow headband likely breached consumer law and commit to raise awareness
November 10, 2025 at 9:53 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Says a lot of The Australian's world view that "celebrating trans experience" is "extreme" and needs a counterpoint apparently.
BBC reporting on transsexual issues had been captured by an interventionist specialist LGBTQ desk with extreme views that had led to a "constant drip-feed" of features "celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity".
November 10, 2025 at 7:56 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
"why don't Australians care about local council as much as a NYC mayoral election?"

Australian local government: jade.io/article/1162...
24. The Council then moved on to the motion in relation to community education about SMART technology. Ms Burner was given the opportunity to speak against the motion for over 30 minutes, on the invitation of other Council members (the normal time limit was five minutes). In the course of which she said, amongst other things: ... Elon Musk has worked on a brainchip. He has one. He has put it in his robots. There are robots - four bots that that went a bit funny and they, as the people tried, the workers tried to disassemble two of them. They did that successfully, and while they were disassembling the third one, the 4th one used its Al technology, which is what you're installing to get on the net and find out how to repair itself. And then it killed 9 employees....
November 6, 2025 at 7:33 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Enjoying record levels of cope
Sharri Markson on Sky News. The Chryron says "prepare for left wing madness NYC"
November 5, 2025 at 8:01 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
I think a gallery reporter confused Kik the messenger app (not in the ban) with Kick the video streaming service (in the ban) in the Wells press conference today.
JOURNALIST: So obviously parents know about Instagram, Facebook and all that. But they might not know about Kick messenger. Would you be able to explain to parents what that is? Because I know in the US they're facing a lawsuit. It's also been described as a safe haven for child predators. Can you maybe, for parents watching, why is this platform, I guess, sort of dangerous for kids and teenagers?
November 5, 2025 at 6:24 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Secondly, the main cause of the outage was Nokia personnel who were doing the upgrade were relying on an old procedure document during the upgrade that didn't outline that traffic needed to be handed off elsewhere to avoid phones not being able to connect.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Nokia engineers relied on old manual in upgrade that caused Optus outage The 55-page Optus submission to the parliamentary inquiry goes into deep detail on what caused the triple zero outage – and why the company did not realise it sooner. Optus’s network provider, Nokia, was upgrading its firewall in Regency Park, South Australia. Optus sent Nokia instructions on how to do the upgrade by off-loading phone traffic elsewhere while the upgrade was taking place. Nokia personnel instead relied on an “outdated method of procedure” document that did not include this step, and when the upgrade was commenced, calls could not connect. Automated email alerts just after the outage commenced were also just dismissed as normal activity during an upgrade. The submission reveals of the 605 unique numbers that attempted to call triple zero during the outage, 150 had successful calls, 65 connected through another Optus exchange, 19 were ultimately successful in connecting after a delay, and 66 connected via emergency camp-on to other mobile networks. Optus said 455 did not connect to triple zero.
November 3, 2025 at 6:57 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Amid all the sound and fury of the senate inquiry, the submission from Optus on the triple zero outage reveals a bit more.

Firstly, a customer who called to report the outage to Optus was sent into a store, where they bought a new phone.
Optus customer who reported triple zero outage directed to visit retail store instead An Optus customer who reported September’s triple zero outage was advised to go into a store where they bought a new phone, the company has revealed. On Monday, Optus executives faced a parliamentary inquiry on the 14-hour outage, during which four people died while 455 calls to triple zero went unanswered. The telco’s submission to the inquiry revealed during the outage, five calls were received from Optus customers to its contact centres reporting difficulty reaching triple zero. None of these were callers in imminent danger, Optus said, but they were not appropriately escalated internally. One customer was given the details for the Norwood, South Australia store and told to go in person due to the urgency. The customer then went into the store just before 1.30pm on 18 September to purchase a new phone, telling Optus their phone was old and “not functioning properly”. The South Australian ambulance service called Optus three times in an hour to inform the company there was a triple zero issue, and the South Australian police also contacted Optus about the issue.
November 3, 2025 at 6:51 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
One month out from the under-16s ban and almost all of the users caught up in the Discord data breach caused by age assurance appeals were based in Australia, OAIC has finally confirmed. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Discord age-assurance data breach includes 68,000 Australian users Almost all of the users of video game chat platform Discord who were caught up in October’s data breach are located in Australia, making up 68,122 of the disclosed 70,000 users, Guardian Australia has confirmed. Discord informed in October that a third-party customer service provider that the company was using for age verification had been compromised, with approximately 70,000 users affected, and usernames, email, billing information, IP addresses, and a small number of government ID images. Discord began using facial age assurance to check the age for users in the UK and Australia earlier this year. The company said facial images and ID images “are deleted directly after” ages are confirmed, but Discord’s website noted that if verification fails, users can contact the trust and safety team for a manual review. Ahead of the introduction of age assurance measures on social media in Australia as part of the under-16s social media ban, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner confirmed 68,122 Australians were affected by the breach. Discord had previously refused to break down the number of Australians caught up in the breach, when asked by Guardian Australia.
November 3, 2025 at 6:33 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
There's two email groups set up for parliamentarians and their offices and apparently one office replied all to an email from Zali Steggall with gifs. (via Senator Payman's estimates question)
Question: 1. How many accounts are members of the REPS-Memstaff@aph.gov.au and SENSenstaff@aph.gov.au email groups? I ask because in June, there was an email sent out to all parliamentarians and their staff by Zali Steggall, inviting members and Senators to join the Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action. A short while later, an email came in reply from a member of another parliamentarian’s staff, which contained two GIF files which depicted short segments from the TV series ‘The Inbetweeners’. It seems this was a case of accidentally hitting ‘reply all’ rather than ‘forward’. My office has seen this happen a few times with various offices accidentally clicking ‘reply all’ rather than replying to the original sender. While the embarrassment of having told a joke to the entire parliament rather than one of your mates in the office is harmless, it does leave a carbon footprint. Data from the Carbon Literacy Project suggests that the carbon footprint of a short email is 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide. If we estimate that there are around 2000 people on those mailing lists, a single reply-all email would have a carbon footprint of just over half a kilogram, which starts to add up quickly. It wouldn’t be feasible to restrict access to the parliamentarian and staff email groups, but: 2. Could some sort of warning be implemented, or is there already one in place, for people who may be inadvertently replying to all recipients of such an email? 3. Alternatively, could the parliamentary email system catch such an email before it goes out and confirm with the sender that they had meant to reply all to the email? 4. Does the department have any data on the carbon footprint of the parliament’s information systems? Answer: 1. The two distribution groups contain the following number of recipients: Reps-memstaff@aph.gov.au: 1,789 Sen-senstaff@aph.gov.au: 708
November 3, 2025 at 4:09 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Even more AI slop ads coming to Meta platforms, according to Zuckerberg (from the results call today)
I mean, there’s -- the one opportunity that we just usually talk about on these calls, but hasn’t come up as much here is just the ability to make it so that advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective 16 and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else that’s necessary, including generating video or different types of creative that might resonate with different people that are personalized in different ways, finding who the right customers are. All of the capabilities that we’re building, I think, go towards improving all of these different things. So I’m quite optimistic about that.
October 30, 2025 at 3:51 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Reject modernity, embrace tradition web.archive.org/web/19970501...
The BoM website from 1997. Featuring links in blue and "METeorology on the NET" with a picture of Australia in the world.
October 29, 2025 at 2:58 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Kind of an interesting story of the AFP cracking into a crypto wallet from the new commissioner today, after discovering random numbers in the notes app www.afp.gov.au/news-centre/...
During a protracted investigation, the AFP identified a well-connected alleged criminal, who we suspected had stockpiled cryptocurrency from selling a tech-type product to alleged criminals around the world. The accused criminal is incredibly bright, in his early 30s, but he was certainly no alleged Gucci gangster given he lived a frugal life while living with his mum and dad. During a search warrant at the alleged offender’s home, our digital forensic team identified password protected notes on his mobile phone. Our members accessed the notes on his phone and found an image on his device displaying random numbers and words. The numbers were divided into groups of six and there were more than 50 variations of the number groups. Our digital forensics team determined it could be related to a crypto wallet – but the accused allegedly refused to hand over his passwords for his crypto wallet, which is a Commonwealth offence that carries a penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. We knew if we couldn’t open the crypto wallet, and if the alleged offender was sentenced, upon release he would leave prison a multi-millionaire – all from the profits of organised crime. For our members, that was not an acceptable outcome. So, the task was assigned to one of our unassuming yet incredibly talented data scientists, who kept looking and looking at the number sequences. He knew something was not right. And then he had one of those scientific epiphanies. He realised the alleged offender had tried to create a crypto booby prize in how the numbers were presented. Our data scientist then removed the first number of each number sequence and then was able to decode the right sequence of numbers into a 24-word recovery seed phrase. That opened the wallet, which had a whopping $9 million. “What made you think to remove the first number of each number sequence?” His supervisor asked. He replied that some of the number strings felt wrong and they looked like they were not computer generated. He said they looked like a human had modified the sequence by adding numbers to the front of some sequences. How amazing is that? And it was not a one-off for this member. He recently did it again with another wallet, using different methodology, recovering more than $3 million in crypto.
October 29, 2025 at 2:18 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
lmao, Bolt lives in Victoria but I feel like he's never seen people here?
In fact, even its people now look drab. Driving through the city centre this month, I saw about seven in every 10 pedestrians dressed in shabby black, dark grey or darker blue, as if shunning joy. Sour and sad. Crumbling and broke.
October 28, 2025 at 9:55 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Wow, Services Australia spent three quarters of a million in legal fees fighting a losing FOI fight against @daedalus.eigenmagic.com
Topic: Robodebt Case Legal Fees Question reference number: IQ25-000016 Asked By: Senator Jacqui Lambie Type of question: Spoken. Hansard Page/s: 9 Date set by the committee for the return of answer: 24 October 2025 Question: Senator Lambie: Services Australia, you lost a Robodebt case against Mr Warren before the full court. I'm just wondering what your legal costs for both Administrative Review Tribunal and the Federal Court were? I’m gathering it's about half a million and I’m being conservative. Do you know what the costs were? Mr Higgins: I'd have to take that on notice, Senator. I don’t have that detail with me. Answer: $776,739.02 including GST (where applicable) in relation to AAT, Federal Court and ART.
October 28, 2025 at 3:55 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Snapchat says it will comply with the under-16s ban, but notes that the ban is unevenly applied, and will push teens to less safe platforms. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Snapchat will comply with ‘unevenly applied’ under-16s social media ban Snapchat users under the age of 16 will be kicked off the platform from 10 December, with the company telling the parliament that although it disagrees that the ban should apply to Snapchat, it will comply with the law. Jennifer Stout, Snap’s SVP of global policy and platform operations, said in her written opening statement to a parliamentary inquiry on age assurance measures that Snapchat should be excluded as it would meet the definition of a messaging service that is supposed to be excluded under the ban, but the company will accept the ruling of the eSafety commissioner. She said: We will comply with the law, even though we believe it has been unevenly applied and risks undermining community confidence in the law. Beginning 10 December, we will disable accounts for Australian Snapchatters under 16. We know this will be difficult for young people who use Snapchat to communicate with their closest friends and family. Stout said the ban could see teens pushed onto platforms that are not included in the ban, and that are less safe as a result. Meta and TikTok are also appearing before the inquiry this morning.
October 27, 2025 at 9:06 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Lol Roy Morgan awarded YouTube the most trusted social media brand for Australians. It's the first time it's been awarded because it's the first time a social media brand has had a positive net trust score.
Most Trusted Brand for Video Sharing Services & Social Media: YouTube For the first time Roy Morgan has awarded 'The Most Trusted Brand for Video Sharing Services and Social Media' in 2025 to the ubiquitous worldwide video sharing service YouTube - bought by Google (Alphabet) almost two decades ago in November 2006. The reason this is the first time the category has been awarded is because it's the first time one of the brands in the category has had a positive Net Trust Score in an often highly contentious and criticised category that includes brands such as Facebook (Meta), Instagram, TikTok and Twitter (X).
October 24, 2025 at 5:44 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
The NZ social media ban bill is in the parliament there. Not clear it'll pass - Labour leader's comments suggest concerns with it. www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360...
"We've always been a bit concerned about the practicality of the bill, and some of the measures in it. How you define social media? We're not wanting to exclude kids from, you know, communication channels that are actually really useful for young people."
October 23, 2025 at 8:03 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
First time I've had one of these
UNKNOWN Warning: Suspicious Calling Pattern
October 23, 2025 at 12:54 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
One of those broken clock times. www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion...
Albanese handed over another $1bn to help the US build more nuclear submarines (including, we hope, our own), ordered nearly $6bn of US weaponry, promised to spend an initial $12bn on a submarine base in Western Australia which US submarines could also use, said our superannuation funds would invest another $1 trillion in the US over the next decade, and promised the US access to our rare earths, critical for US defence.
October 22, 2025 at 8:26 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Someone FOI'ed the Ye visa cancellation www.righttoknow.org.au/request/1336...
OFFICIAL: Sensitive Personal privacy MB25-000371 OFFICIAL: Sensitive Personal privacy To: Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Minister for Cyber Security CLIENT BRIEF Client name: Date of birth: Alias: Nationality: Client ID: Location: Kanye Omari WEST Yeezy, Ye Nature of Conduct: On 8 May 2025, Mr WEST released a song titled ‘Heil Hitler’ and associated music video, which has generated widespread media attention with the song widely being deemed anti-Semitic in nature.
October 21, 2025 at 3:34 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
14 hours of Tone would be a lot.
Australia A History: How an Ancient Land Became a Great Democracy By: Tony Abbott Narrated by: Tony Abbott Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins Release date: 16-10-2025 Language: English Not rated yet
October 21, 2025 at 1:02 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Poor eSafety IT person
Esafety staff message: FSU have created a new tool which has been facilitating applicants sending in a new FOl request every 5 minutes or so (50 FOls since 1pm) s 22 As you know, it is critical that we comply with the FOl Act and assist all applicants to make valid requests. However, I am concerned that emails flowing in every few minutes may jam something and prevent work. On back of the envelope calculations, if the current pace continues we might be at, say, 450 by Monday morning. I suppose our mailboxes are built to sustain that quantum, but I wanted to check and make sure nothing needed to be done, just in case. Reply: Thanks for letting me know. If it's one email every 5 mins that isn't a concern at all from an IT
October 16, 2025 at 8:45 PM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Funny seeing this in a document released under FOI.
It is very likely that eSafety's internal assessment and related correspondence will be subject to FOI requests. We have sought to provide considered and consistent assessment capable of withstanding public scrutiny.
October 14, 2025 at 2:28 AM
joshtaylor.bsky.social
Here's what she told them fwiw www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Social media ban will create a ‘social gap’ for young people, youth advocate says The Senate committee looking at the under 16s social media ban and other age checks coming online has heard from youth advocacy organisation Project Rockit on what the ban will mean for young people when they’re kicked off social media from 10 December. Caitlin Blanch, a member of Project Rockit’s national youth collective and a young disabled person from Tamworth, NSW, said for her social media was a “pivotal way” to make connections with other people with living experience that she could relate to, to find health information, and share her story. She said: I think that it’s been pivotal for my friend groups in finding representation of queer people that’s not stereotypical of finding cultural content that is not stigmatised. It’s had an incredibly impactful role on connecting otherwise isolated communities to places that they would not have access to, and for young people in regional Australia who perhaps have that physical isolation. When the ban comes into effect, she said it will change how young people interact with the world: It creates a social gap, but it also sends a narrative that young people don’t have the power to articulate their own narratives, that they can’t be in control of their agency online, and that they are responsible for the harmful content that they’re exposed to. And I don’t think that’s fair. I think there should be greater emphasis on the corporations that are in control of the algorithms.
October 13, 2025 at 1:01 AM