Josh Taylor

@joshtaylor

Technology reporter at the Guardian, in Melbourne, Australia. Tech, infosec, FOI, politics, media 🌈 (he/him)

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Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· 27d

Oh they're trying it

The Independent
The former MP's murder has rekindled the debate over how to protect our politicians - and turned the Clacton by-election into a sombre affair
COMMENT
After the killing of Ann Widdecombe, Count Binface is suddenly a lot less funny

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· 27d

I'm much more mellow in my response now than I used to be. I say I'm glad it works for them but it's not for me.

From Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Tommy: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and saviour

Hedwig: No, but I... I love his work

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· 27d

Have been pointed to what seems to be the only picture online of the guns they're gifting (via FBI fb page) Seems to align with the PG22 Maverick model it is reported to be.

Kash Patel shaking hands with an NZ official, the replica gun is in front of his knee, half in view.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· 27d

I don't think they know how the ratings systems works. Unless there's a version of the podcast they're seeing that the rest of us aren't.

Sky News: Men support Albanese after X-rated podcast scandal as women sour on PM
Anthony Albanese’s standing has improved among men in the wake of his X-rated comments about Kylie Minogue and his wife, but women have turned on the PM.

Restricted rating for adult films
Classification marking - Restricted X18+ (Square)
Restricted (X 18+)
Films classified as X 18+ are legally restricted to adults 18 years and over. They contain sexually explicit activity including actual sexual intercourse or other sexual activity between consenting adults.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jul 12

I was reminded when I asked Vicki Brady about price hikes vs shareholder returns a couple of years ago. www.theguardian.com/business/art...

Asked about whether the company was pushing prices up to improve shareholder returns, Brady said 16m Australians benefit from dividends.
"They're either shareholders directly, more than 1.2 million direct shareholders in Telstra, and then through superannuation funds in the country," she said. "So we've got to balance all of those things."

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jul 10

Correct

JT's network
4.3
JT's services rely on an IP (Internet Protocol) network. JT operates a network composed of around 100 IP routers provided by Cisco and configured to a Cisco approved design.
4.4
These routers, which transport all of JT's fixed and mobile traffic, are connected to two clock sources, known as Network Time Protocol ("NTP") servers, through the IP network. 3 These NTP servers had been provided by two different vendors.
The 12 July outage
4.5 At 18:55 on 12 July 2020 there was a malfunction in one of the two NTP servers. This ultimately led to the Outage across the entire JT network.
4.6
JT began to restore its network from 21:44 on 12 July 2020. The network was restored in its entirety at 12 noon on 17 July 2020.14 The Notification therefore referred to the incident as being the period from 18:55 on 12 July 2020 to 12 noon on 17 July 2020, during which the effects of the Outage continued to persist (the "Incident").

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jul 10

Was tipped off today that Telstra isn't the first telco to have this issue it seems. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Telstra is not the first company to encounter this issue. A telco in Jersey suffered a similar outage in 2020 that lasted hours, took out emergency call functions for some customers on the Channel island, and took nearly five days to fully recover services.
According to the investigation from that outage, the telco's time server generated the wrong date - November 2000 - nearly 20 years earlier. The incorrect date was passed onto routers in the network that then isolated themselves from the network,
"Having lost around half of the network, inherent resilience was lost which ultimately led ultimately to the outage across the entire JT network," a report found.
The significance of the date was that the system used a week counter up to 1023 weeks, and the default date went back 19.6 years - as with the Telstra issue.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jul 9

John Howard was still the prime minister, the first iPhone was months away, and Facebook had only just become available to the world.
When Telstra's mobile network fell over on Wednesday morning, it was because a software defect was telling the network it was back in November 2006.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jul 8

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jul 3

yes actually

Happily, a neighbour, Hollie Jenkinson, revealed that she had held a gender-reveal party and used cornstarch with blue dye in it. Jenkin thinks Wilbur didn’t get it on her face because she likes to roll around on her back.

“And she does a weird thing with her head when she’s rolling so it must have missed her face. We have not stopped laughing since. It’s so funny.”

Removing the dye turned out to be a bit of a chore. “I had to keep washing and washing her. The blue wouldn’t come out. She’s still got a tiny stain but she’s OK.”

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jul 3

Lyle today

“Family First is proud of Moira’s courage and her advocacy for girls and women in the face of overwhelming opposition.

“Australia needs more parliamentarians with her courage and resolve.”

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jul 2

JOURNALIST: The social media ban, originally there was only one day for people to put submissions to the original inquiry into those laws. Why is the government in such a rush? Why can’t they just look at it, given these are such significant changes? Why can’t the government just wait for a couple of weeks to make sure that things are effective?

WELLS: This is urgent. As you heard Emma Mason say on Channel 9 this morning, where there are parents who have lost their children to the harms online and have been, to this point, very generous with their own time and their own heart and suffering to get these reforms– 120,000 parents asked us to do this. Obviously, we have a big piece of work to do with Digital Duty of Care, and we should be thorough with that. And I'm working on the exposure draft to give to everybody in the second half of the year. But this isn't trying to solve the internet. This is the eSafety Commissioner needs to take big tech to court. We know they're taking the piss. We all agree that more under-16s should be off the internet, off social media than they are. She asked us- she asked the Parliament- for these additional powers. We are trying to give them to her. Delaying the bill is delaying accountability for big tech.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 30

🫠 www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Luca Ittimani
Datacentres could help overheat economy, RBA warns

The Reserve Bank board has warned rising investment in data centres and steady spending means the economy is still running pretty hot after its three interest rate rises.

The minutes from the RBA’s 16 June meeting show the board identifying two key risks to inflation which could force another interest rate hike, after it decided to leave rates on hold this month: unreliable world oil supply thanks to the US-Israel war on Iran and weak productivity growth.

Members disagreed over how hot the economy was running. The board noted household spending had not weakened much this year and mortgage payments were taking up a smaller portion of pay packets than the last time the cash rate was at 4.35%, as income had risen faster than borrowing over the last couple of years.

The board was surprised by the strength of business investment and warned the rush to build datacentres could worsen skills shortages and leave the economy running hotter. The minutes mentioned “datacentres” five times.

The housing market had been weaker than the RBA predicted and household spending could slow if the market fell further, the board noted.

Bond and currency markets have slipped since the minutes’ release, indicating analysts do not see in them much sign the board is keen to hike rates. Markets had cut bets on another hike after 16 June, with rates expected to stay on hold over the coming 12 months.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 30

Yesterday apparently One Nation tried (and failed) to remove from the tax reform legislation the exclusion of gambling and tobacco companies from the R&D tax incentive.. huh

Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering an Efficient
and Trusted Tax System) Bill 2026
(Amendments to be moved by Senator Whitten, on behalf of One Nation, in committee of the whole)
(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 3), omit “Schedules 3 and 4”, substitute “Schedule 3”.
[opposing exclusion of tobacco and gambling related activities from the
R&D Tax Incentive—consequential]
(2) Schedule 4, page 14 (line 1) to page 17 (line 20), to be opposed.
[opposing exclusion of tobacco and gambling related activities from the
R&D Tax Incentive]

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 29

Jeez these Victorian political party applications are just taking the piss now.

Application for registration by "I'm voting to avoid the fine"

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 26

Of all of Gerard Henderson's nitpicks, this certainly is the most recent.

By the way, conservative politicians do go on the ABC, when invited. However, left-of-centre politicians invariably decline to go on Sky News' opinion programs which
commence at 5 pm. Sky News' critics refer to this as "Sky News After Dark"- even at 5 pm
Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time in
late December when the sun remains high in the sky.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 24

I've been thinking it reminds me of how Bari left the NYT. Quitting after they didn't fire her. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The professionally cancelled pundit is a genre of primarily center-right contrarian who makes their living by deliberately provoking outrage online, and then claiming that the outrage directed at them is evidence of an intolerant left run amok. Usually but not exclusively white millennials or Gen X writers, the cancelled pundit has a sheen of faded patrician prestige, like a stack of unread New Yorkers in a basket beside a toilet. They believe themselves deserving of deference and they think themselves brave for complaining when they don't get it. They're beloved by white boomers, Romney Republicans and those who use the word "woke" derisively. Their work is meant to appeal to people uncomfortable with social forces that challenge the established hierarchy of power.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 16

Where are we, what the hell is going on

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 16

We are fortunate that for now these all continue to look terrible.

Snap Inc glasses. Big black dorky frames for the spyware.

Today at Augmented World Expo 2026, we introduced SPECS, our new augmented reality glasses.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 11

I swear, every US tech guy and Tolkien. darioamodei.com/post/policy-...

Dario Amodei (of Anthropic):

Policy on the AI Exponential
June 2026
In one of the side plots to The Lord of the Rings, two of the Hobbits attempt to rouse Treebeard—a wise but ponderous sentient tree—to defend his forest from an army that is cutting it down. The problem is that Treebeard operates at a very different speed than the Hobbits. It takes him a full day simply to say hello to another tree, so getting him and his peers to act fast enough is nearly impossible.

The intersection of AI and our political institutions feels a bit like the Hobbits and Treebeard. AI is advancing at a lightning pace—in only four years, AI models have gone from barely being able to write a

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 11

because I don't go on X much anymore, the PM's press conferences are sometimes an insight into what right wing media is losing its mind about

JOURNALIST: Is it appropriate for a property manager to tell a tenant to remove the Australian flag? And since speaking out, that tenant has actually seen a rent increase. What’s your response to that?

PRIME MINISTER: I support the Australian flag.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 10

lol comms.vec.vic.gov.au/v/59119/1550...

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 9

Tim Cook called Albo, Albo says

Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT BY APPLE

Today Apple CEO Tim Cook called me to brief me on the major announcement Apple has made regarding their new online safety controls for children.

Mr Cook told me these changes are in part inspired by Australia’s world-leading social media age ban, as well as the continued research Apple is undertaking into the impact of social media on kids.

I welcome this announcement, and I am proud of the world leading work Australia is doing to fight for a safer online world for our children.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 5

I named my cat Rupert after him.

A tuxedo cat, Rupert sitting in judgement

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 4

😬 www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/fair-...

: THE AUSTRALIAN•
=
Ms Hunt said the counselling was over her use of the "f-word, and that was it". Asked why she made the comment about the former male politician, she said: "I don't know, his name came up and I just went,
"Oh, you know that he pretends to be straight. I reckon he's secretly a (faggot)."
"That's when they said 'Oh, you can't say that. When I was talking to the associate who was gay, I asked her "Are we allowed to use the word dyke?'

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· Jun 4

Lol getting PR pitching me telling me my story this week is wrong and we should be using more AI because opinion writing is just like marketing apparently.

I wanted to get in touch regarding your recent article referencing that the Sydney Morning Herald has_pulled an opinion piece from a Western Sydney University academic after it emerged Al was used in the writing process. Australia's leading copywriting trainer, Vikki Maver, believes we're completely missing the point and would love to add to the commentary if you're doing any follow-up coverage.
Vikki believes that the real issue isn't that people are using Al. It's that we're still treating Al use as something shameful rather than teaching people how to use it responsibly
Vikki owns Refresh Marketing, Australia's longest-running copywriting agency alongside Communication Skills Academy, and has spent the last four years training businesses and professionals on Al-assisted writing. Her view is that using Al to edit, refine or tighten your own ideas is no different to using Grammarly, spellcheck or Excel. The concern should be whether people are outsourcing their thinking, not whether they're using technology to improve their writing.
Interestingly, the most common question Vikki receives isn't whether people should use Al - it's how to use it without anyone knowing.

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· May 27

I put some of what Pocock said about "noted" recommendations in my story www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Pocock also criticised the government after it “noted” the 31 recommendations of the Murphy report, rather than agreeing or rejecting any specific recommendation.

“To me and most Canberrans that I speak to, noting is not a response. If you respond to something, you actually say: ‘yeah, we like that recommendation, we’re going to do it’, or ‘no, we’re not going to do it’,” he said.

“Noting is I think in most people’s minds like a bit of a pat on the head.”

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· May 27

Ugh my least favourite of all FOI decisions (after they went crying to OAIC to ask for an extension of time)

DECISION
3. In accordance section 25 of the Act, I refuse access in relation to your request, on the basis I
neither confirm nor deny the existence of documents relevant to the scope of your request are
held by the AFP.
4. The FOI Act allows agencies to refuse access to a request without confirming or denying the
existence of a document where a document, if it existed, would be exempt under section 33
(documents affecting national security, defence or international relations) or section 37(1)
(documents affecting enforcement of law and protection of public safety).

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· May 27

Peter Capaldi, who played two different characters in Doctor Who

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor· May 22

It was pointed out to me some right wing Insta influencer made this and I…