Category: Media

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Talking Apple vs FBI and more on ABC 774 Melbourne

ABC logoI seem to have settled into semi-regular radio spots on ABC 774 Melbourne, talking about technology news roughly once a month. I did one of these on Thursday.

The main item was the legal battle between Apple and the FBI over an iPhone that belonged to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino shootings of December 2015. While there’s plenty of coverage of this case, I will mention that the FBI’s hack may never reach Apple, and the only winners are the shareholders of cybersecurity companies, because more people will see security as important.

The other item was the announcement on Thursday of the IOT Group’s new product, the ROAM-e drone for taking flying selfies. Yes, that’s what I said.

Heres the full 22-minute conversation with presenter Casey Bennetto, who was filling in for Lindy Burns.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (14.3MB)

This audio is ©2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Talking Microsoft Tay on ABC 702 Sydney

ABC logoJust before before Easter, Microsoft let their youth-targeted chatbot named Tay loose on Twitter and other social networks — and it was a disaster.

Tay was meant to hold conversations with Americans aged 18 to 24, which is why it’s named after Taylor Swift. But the project was terminated after just 16 hours, because the bot started tweeting abuse at people, and even went full neo-Nazi, declaring that “Hitler was right I hate the jews.”

Art Technica reported some analysis of what went wrong. Davi Ottenheimer summarised the problem as “weak intelligence weakened by weakness”, and pointed me to more detailed research by Russell Cameron Thomas.

I spoke about this disaster with Robbie Buck on ABC 702 Sydney, debunking some aspects of the mainstream news stories along the way.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.2MB)

This audio is ©2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Talking smartphone data and battery life on ABC Kimberley

ABC logoLast Sunday, Telstra gave free data to all its mobile customers in an attempt to make up for a major screw-up in the previous week. That triggered a conversation…

As a variety of news outlets reported, one guy managed to download more than 420GB of stuff. Telstra’s mobile network was reported to be pretty slow as many other selfish pigs pigged out.

On Wednesday, I told Vanessa Mills on ABC Kimberley in Western Australia how people could reduce their mobile data usage and increase their battery like. This is the resulting nine-minute conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.5MB)

This audio is ©2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The ABC also turned this into a news story, Simple tricks to double your phone’s battery life and halve your data usage, posted Thursday morning.

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Talking surveillance and privacy on ABC 774 Melbourne

ABC logoEarlier this month I was in Melbourne to speak at Pause Fest, as well as talk to the media about some of the issues surrounding digital surveillance and privacy.

Here’s the 19-minute conversation I had with Lindy Burns on ABC 774 Melbourne on Wednesday 10 February. As usual, we rambled all over the landscape of the topic, but I think you’ll find it interesting.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.2MB)

This audio is ©2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

[Note: Yes, I’m catching up on my blog posts, I should have them all caught up within the next 24 hours.]

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Talking iPhone-crashing malware on ABC Statewide NSW

ABC logoEven though it’s a year old, the website that crashes an iPhone is back in the news this week — presumably because knowledge of the trick “went viral”, as they say.

This story piqued the interest of Fiona Willey, presenter of ABC Radio’s Statewide Drive in NSW, and we spoke on-air earlier this evening.

This is the full nine-minute interview, including a bit about the story from September 2015 when malware-infected apps made their way into the offical Apple App Store in China.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.5MB)

The audio is ©2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Talking the “dark web” on ABC 891 Adelaide

ABC logoIt was a week for extended radio conversations about the darker side of the internet, it seems.

Not only did I speak about Anonymous on ABC 774 Melbourne, on Friday night I spoke about that ill-defined phenomenon known as the “dark web” on ABC 891 Adelaide with evening presenter Deb Tribe. And here is that conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (12.5MB)

This audio is ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.