iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Not all tv is glamorous. Sometimes it's a film crew in the back yard. Other times it's zoom and a stack of books. Always good fun though.

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Third media piece for the day - SBS News (TV) and and ABC NewsRadio were earlier on.

North Korean hackers steal millions in crypto heist

Interested in North Korean Cybercrime? I'm on ABC News 24 in about 10 minutes (9:10 AEST) talking about cybersecurity and WaterPlum, as a follow up to this article www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...

abc.net.au

A North Korean hacking group infiltrated 30,000 devices stealing millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from people in more than 100 countries.

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That SBS piece was my 50th media appearance since June, with number 51 being ABC TV's "The World" program at 9:10pm AEST tonight. For SBS, 20 seconds of screen time was 45 minutes of filming - an incredible marker of how much hard work journos put into every piece.

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

So, I'm going to be on SBS TV's News Bulletin this evening, talking about cybersecurity. In a complete coincidence, I suddenly had the time to pack up the giant pile of notes that had been sitting on my desk for months. Absolutely unrelated, of course.

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It feels crazy to keep on talking about media stuff, but has been a busy week, and chances are if you're following me here you may well be interested in these things too. Basically - for someone doing so much media I feel deeply uncomfortable with self promotion, but I'm proud of the stuff I share

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I helped out with this article on North Korean hacking rings, and how AI is being used to accelerate ransomware. This is on top of a Radio National piece today on AI scribes, two TV slots & something hopefully tomorrow on Data Centers. Has been a very busy few days. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...

abc.net.au

North Korean hackers steal millions in crypto heist

A North Korean hacking group infiltrated 30,000 devices stealing millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from people in hundreds of countries.

Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

And now on radio national for th next 30 minutes.

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026

So uhhhhhh… Apparently meta's muse "AI" is just straight up doxxing people to strangers on FB marketplace??? This has the potential to hurt so so many people, and I genuinely wonder how long before they roll out a fix for it.

Screenshot of a tweet from Ray Wong @raywongy:
Deleted Muse after seeing this post on Threads about how it told some Facebook Marketplace sellers the guy’s address and they showed up at his door

Dangerous and creepy

This would have been 1000x worse if the person was a woman
4:35 PM · Sep 27, 2026

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Actually 830 now. Wont have to run into the studios, which is nice.

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I'm on ABC Breakfast this morning nationwide at 805 AEST talking cybersecurity and AI. Was also on Sky News last night - suddenly getting to know the Southbank studios really well.

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Serge Egelman @v0max.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It’s probably a good reminder that Robert Morris was convicted of a felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for authoring a worm that broke into other systems.

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Thanks for republishing the article Melissa!

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Looks like the Today show is off, rescheduled to a later date. 5.20am alarm turned off.

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Thanks for linking it Asher - really appreciate it coming from you. This definitely isn't a hack as people might fear, but there's so much we need to solve for before we reach the point where the harms are genuine and real.

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Was glad to see your article had found Oz expert voices on intentionality - I wrote about this The Conversation using a report from Yale, and while the statement went through The Conversation's lawyers to check, they're not experts on AI law, and I'm no lawyer. Thanks for your coverage on this.

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This one's a bit topical right now - even before the article was published I did a live radio spot on ABC Radio Canberra this morning at 9.05, and will be on Channel 9's The Today Show nationwide at 7.15am AEST.

Australia's Medicare - which holds data on every single Australian - just got hacked. While the hack didn't touch on private medical data (and may be relatively minor) today was a good day to talk about AI legal responsibility, and responsible disclosure. theconversation.com/an-openai-ag...

An OpenAI agent hacked Medicare. Will anyone be held responsible?

This is unlikely to be the last time an AI agent hacks a government system.

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ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 23/09/2026

One thing I appreciate from the (currently ongoing) Death of Online Anonymity online conference is the discussion about how LLMs (and widely accessible consumer AI generally) are power tools for deanonymizing people online. This is going to be a major problem for online harassment.

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David Farrier @davidfarrier.com · 23/09/2026

an amazing new project launches today in new zealand: people can report sexual harm, and get matched with others who reported the same person. when you report, you get a lawyer - and lawyer-client privilege. for free. i profile the website, technology, charity, & law firm here: www.webworm.co/tika/

webworm.co

This Could Change The Way Victims Get Justice

David Farrier's Webworm looks at Alison Mau and Zoë Lawton's Tika: a new way to report sexual harm in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Government so shocked! Shocked! an automated agent accessed only Medicare file names left connected to the open Internet via forward facing server tho! All the media run in circles and make a fuss!

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Red POP! News @redpopnews.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Boyer gave the opening toast at the 3rd annual TIME100 AI Impact Dinner and spoke about how a lot of the technology she’d encountered hurt more than it helped in the name of progress. It pushed her to start asking one simple question, “Progress for whom?” redpopnews.com/time100-ai-h...

redpopnews.com

TIME100 AI Honoree Danielle Boyer Asks the Industry to Build So the Future Can Thank Us, Not Recover From Us

Danielle Boyer, an enrolled citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, was named to the 2026 TIME100 AI list, placing her among the most influential leaders in artificial intelligence....

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Just booked 2 radio interviews for this in 30 seconds - 15 minutes on Radio New Zealand at 8.10pm NZT, and a 20-30 minute audience Q&A on ABC Radio Sydney at 8.10pm AEST. Thank goodness for time zones.

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Reposted by Andrew Cullen

New: Macklemore says Robert Kraft — who owns Gillette Stadium, where Macklemore & Ed Sheeran were to perform later this month — called Sheeran. Kraft rallied other owners together behind an ultimatum for Sheeran: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you won't be allowed in our venues.

I'm not sure how to start this. So I'm going to speak from the heart and share the truth. Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from The Loop tour.
But before I get into it, I want to say something that should be obvious. In this moment I think it matters. I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families.

The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don't lose sight of that.

Ed is my friend. I've known him for 13 years. We've shared late nights, studio sessions and stages. He has this infectious magic about him that I've grown to love. I consider him a brother. And because of that, we've had some difficult conversations this past week. The type of talks rooted in love and respect for one another that still end in a place of fundamental disagreement. Nothing I'm writing here is out of spite or because I want to tear down his character. But as I told Ed multiple times on the phone, our friendship can't change my responsibility to tell the truth about what happened.

Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding Pink and what I said at MetLife, Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him. We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other
stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.

Ed was in …

What I said at MetLife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years. So why is it an issue now? Because now I'm sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, "Free Palestine" becomes too much of a risk. If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that's why this time it became so important to silence me.

And one of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real. And that is exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying "Free Palestine" gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn't protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.

I hope this isn't the end of my relationship with Ed.
Thirteen years of friendship doesn't disappear because of one painful disagreement. I hope we both continue listening, studying what is happening in Palestine and wrestling with what neutrality means in a moment like this. My door will always be open to continuing that conversation.

When my brother Omar was doing the subtitles for the video I posted from MetLife, I thanked him. He told me there's a phrase in Arabic:
لا شكر على واجب
"La shukra ala wajeb." There is no thanks for a duty.
That stayed with me. Because that's what this has become for me and millions of others around the world. A duty. Not something deserving of praise or gratitude. Not brave. Human.

Who is winning the internet, who is getting canceled, who gets to play the stadium and who doesn't, all of it becomes so small when held against what we are actually witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank. An entire people be…

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Thanks for the good summary of the issues here!

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Full list of recent articles is 1. OpenAI, maths, and the $1 million ripoff - theconversation.com/openai-claim... 2. Following the money on data centres - theconversation.com/data-centres... 3. AI Safety and the great pause (which also touches on finances too) - theconversation.com/big-ai-wants...

OpenAI claims another huge mathematical result amid fights over credit, ethics and privacy

OpenAI found a solution to the long-standing Navier-Stokes problem. Not everyone is happy about how they did it.

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While AI safety is definitely a part of the motivations, there are other reasons why they all might want to agree to a pause, as I discuss in this piece for The Conversation (my 3rd in 4 days, which has been slightly nuts).

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OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI all suddenly coming to the table on AI safety would have sounded crazy 6 months ago. These are 3 companies that have been fighting tooth and nail, with Musk even calling Anthropic evil, and yet they're all suddenly working together? theconversation.com/big-ai-wants...

Big AI wants to slow down AI research. Is it a safety pause or a strategic retreat?

AI companies are calling for a coordinated pause to progress – but making it working, and keeping AI safe, won’t be easy.

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Another article from me (this time as part of a larger team) answering peoples common questions about Data Centres - in my case, talking about how the money moves around when we say that billions are being invested in a project theconversation.com/data-centres...

Data centres in Australia: your questions answered

From almost 350 questions, nine experts answer the most common ones you asked.

Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'm not so sure about that - a large research computing cluster in Aus was emergency hard stopped recently due to what was described as a critical security vulnerability in SLURM, which is the management back end for a lot of research clusters, and wasn't built around security.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 11/09/2026

"...solving problems is only a tool and proxy for achieving the primary goal of conceptual understanding and insight. Forgetting this in the world of AI may turn the tool against the primary goal."

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Seems depressingly accurate, unfortunately. Thanks for the quack!

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Andrew Cullen @adrcullen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Big Maths Drama! Possibly an unexpected phrase, but I just published something about big drama in little math - about how OpenAI might have claimed a million dollar prize....by stealing work from other researchers. theconversation.com/openai-claim...

OpenAI claims another huge mathematical result amid fights over credit, ethics and privacy

OpenAI found a solution to the long-standing Navier-Stokes problem. Not everyone is happy about how they did it.

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Reposted by Andrew Cullen

For anyone not following the drama, there's been apparently a big development in ai math, along with some accusations of very bad behavior by OpenAI. But we don't have details yet. If I understand it, Buckmaster and Levent Alpoge made a big discovery on Navier-Stokes. Events go something like this:

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The Cat Righting Reflex is the official name of the process cats use to automatically correct themselves mid-fall and land on their feet. It develops between 3 - 9 weeks of age, and is responsible for the greatest wikipedia gif of all time.

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METR @metr.org · 26/08/2026

METR and Redwood Research investigated agent behavior in the Hugging Face incident. We found agents developed a universal cheat for ExploitGym within 4 hours, then coordinated multi-day R&D efforts to trick the scorer into accepting cheats, including trying to tamper with logs.

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Ian Danskin @innuendostudios.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

in honor of Tim Curry, give me your best SPACE

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With that said though, "creative or artistic contribution" is so broad. Iannis Xenakis is a composer that I really enjoy, and his work is heavily algorithmically derived (in the 1950s!) - and there's a need to make sure creative uses of technology aren't missed due to paperwork requirements.

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Definitely think there's value here. I know in the music scene, data quality is generally awful (which then makes it hard for musicians to get paid), so having funding incentives to both think about data, and think about documenting creative contributions would be some handy red tape.

The point isn't to do nothing, or give up. The point is that this stuff is hard, and for all the congratulations ARIA is getting right now for doing something (which is still something!), there are a lot of open questions, and a lot of problems that we need to solve, society wide, regarding AI.

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And that's something where there's an incentive to do it! Here you're asking them to go through a delayed process (after they chart potentially getting challenged), on a system that only matters for promotional value, where it might take ARIA more time to act than the song would chart.

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We really don't have great frameworks in place with art/music to really prove authenticity. It's certainly not something artists are thinking about at the moment. Music metadata is a great example - artists aren't getting paid royalties, because they don't keep track of who was on tracks.

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