Beyond Infinity

Live-to-air radio interviews on RPPfm. Weekly covid reporting from Piers Cunningham with Brendon Telfer and Shivani Pillai.

11/9/20: The Covid Doctors Network open letter to Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. Bureaucracy not medical experts driving government response to pandemic. Devastation of business from prolonged lockdown. Government in crisis.

18/9/20: Vaccine espionage - all countries are spying on each other. Hacking and biotech companies targeted by hackers. Race for a vaccine. Fast testing options. Early vaccines in Russia and China.

Box Hill Hospital urologist Geoff Wells says Melbourne's prolonged hard lockdown is causing depression and elevated anxiety, especially among adolescents. Citing unjust discrimination against young people, he says schools should open and people should be allowed to play sport and exercise outdoors. Geoff is critical of the Victorian government's disproportionate approach to the pandemic; the virus does discriminate between young and the elderly with pre-existing illness. He calls for more open dialogue between the government, medical experts and the community and reckons Premier Daniel Andrews "is not prepared to learn from us (doctors), which is extremely worrying and extremely disappointing".

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Resident techie John Young recently took possession of a pair of Jabra Elite 75T in-ear buds and he's pretty impressed. He says they're comfy to wear all day, work well for phone calls, "hey google" commands and have particularly good sound reproduction of streaming music.

Jabra Elite 75t https://amzn.to/3juI1PQ #ad #CommissionsEarned

Like this story? Check out our searchable backlist of over 750 science and technology podcasts, complete with show notes and other resources, at beyondinfinity.com.au

Piers talks hacking with Dr. Ian Storey, lecturer in information systems at RMIT. Ian continues the discussion of a range of different hacking methods, including backdoors and trapdoors, logic bombs, man-in-the-middle attacks, trojans, malware and viruses.

Part 2 of a 2 part interview.

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Piers is joined by Dr. Ian Storey, lecturer in information systems at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Ian shares his in-depth knowledge from years of teaching data security and anti-hacking courses. Topics covered include information security for businesses, public key encryption, cryptography and various kinds of hack attack.

Part 1 of a 2 part interview.

**For our complete searchable backlist of over 750 science and technology podcasts, plus show notes and other resources, check out our program website beyondinfinity.com.au

A leaked database known as the Overseas Key Individual Database suggests China is collecting vast amounts of information on millions of prominent people around the world. The leak's source, Shenzhen's Zhenhua Data, stands accused of spreading disinformation and promoting conflict.

Piers talks with digital marketer Michael Simonetti about the Australian Competition and Consumer Commissions's campaign to introduce revenue sharing between local news originators and Facebook and Google. Michael thinks regulators are wasting their time trying to change the media landscape of the digital age.

Piers talks with Robert Millar, general surgeon and transplant specialist at Royal Melbourne Hospital and an original signatory of the Covid Doctors Network's open letter to the Victorian Government, which expressed serious concern with its handling of the covid pandemic. The speed and accuracy of covid testing is discussed, along with the possibility of a nano cellular microscopy test with reliable results in under a minute.

Robert thinks covid eradication in Victoria is an unrealistic goal and stresses we need better contact tracing to lockdown specific areas of outbreak, rather than an economically devastating blanket shutdown for everyone. He urges better communication from government and public debate free from fear.

Read the open letter to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews here: https://www.coviddoctorsnetwork.com

Piers talks with Michael Simonetti, the founder and CEO of digital agency Andmine, about what businesses can do to survive Melbourne's severe economic shutdown. Michael says the covid pandemic has accelerated the move to digital by five years and if you're not already doing it, you need to hurry up. He advises people to work out what events they can automate and make digital in their business and says the ones who succeed are the ones who figure this out. Irreversible trends which don't end when the pandemic is over.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is pressuring Google and Facebook to support locally produced news by agreeing to pay for material that appears on their platforms. The regulator believes there is a significant power imbalance between the American tech giants and news originators. But Google and Facebook disagree. Google is warning users its popular services will be diminished, while Facebook says it will remove all news from its Australian platform.

Piers and John examine the utterly disrupted media landscape of the digital age and what's at stake.