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.

This audio is ©2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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.

This audio is ©2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Weekly Wrap 298: Loving* the fatigue, and an observation

Federation Reflections: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 15 to Sunday 21 February 2016 was full of fatigue as I began the multi-month process of changing management plans to deal with a different dog.

A certain new medication is great fun (not). It even comes with such a lovely (not) list of potential side effects, some of which cause what might accurately be called occasional death, that the transition process lasts two or three months.

The fatigue and disrupted sleep patterns that made this week almost completely non-productive were within the expected range of problems, however. The coming week is likely to be much the same, which is one reason why the plan listed below is just an unscheduled list.

One brief observation from recent weeks: I’ve had so much experience in the broadcast media, and I’m so comfortable with it, that doing radio and TV spots don’t feel like work. Neither do podcasts, of course. I should perhaps shift my focus to doing more of that. Assuming people would pay for it occasionally.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

I’m keeping the coming week flexible, not just for the medical reasons listed above, but also because I’ll only be able to make some of the finer-grained arrangements on Monday.

However the week is likely to include writing for ZDNet, work on several geek-for-hire projects, more bookkeeping related to my outstanding income tax returns, and the production of an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast.

There will also be a trip down to Sydney at some point, because I have to collect a package, but I’ll schedule that around any work appointments which might arise.

Further Ahead

Subsequent weeks will have more structure.

I’ll be returning to Melbourne on Monday 29 February to cover the APIdays conference on 1-2 March, returning to Sydney on Thursday 3 March.

I’ll be in Canberra on Tuesday 8 March for the Australian Internet Industry Association (AIIA) Navigating Privacy and Security Summit. Then if all goes to plan, the rest of the week will be spent in Melbourne at Cisco LIVE!. Then on Sunday I’ll be back in the Blue Mountains for Tech Leaders.

[Photo: Federation Reflections. The eastern side of Deakin Edge at Melbourne’s Federation Square, photographed on 11 February 2016. Which was last week.]

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

The audio is ©2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.