Crossed Wires

In this ‘bumper’ edition of the show, I sat down with Andrew and Paul from the Addict magazines, which are wonderful publications focussing on the Amiga and retro culture and technology in general.

As well as talking shop, getting some genuinely interesting behind the scenes views into what making a physical (and digital) magazine in 2022 is all about, we go for a bit of a nostalgia trip on the subject of our memories of magazines and computer and video game shops of the 90s.

I really hope you enjoy this episode, apologies for any audio issues sometimes these can’t be helped when recording remotely. Do you have memories of newsagent experiences, or a favourite tech magazine, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

• Paul on Twitter
• The Addict Magazines

1. 00:00:05: Introductions
2. 00:13:57: Magazine & Retail Memories
3. 00:36:08: Pixel Addict
4. 00:41:46: Pitching Ideas
5. 00:46:35: The Personal Element
6. 00:50:21: Past, Present, and Future
7. 00:57:21: The Journey To WHSmith
8. 01:11:50: Deadlines & Proofreading
9. 01:19:29: Wrapping Up

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

There’s a very common saying within the IT support space, that there are two types of users; those who have lost data and those who are going to. The only way to stop data loss is to make sure you have a robust backup strategy. Because backup is so important, with both Jae and James having personal experience with losing valuable data and now being Backblaze users ourselves, we go on a fanatically deep dive into both backup and cloud storage with our guest Pat Patterson, Backblaze’s Chief Technical Evangelist.

We look at why backup is so important, the difference between syncing your data to a cloud service like iCloud, Dropbox, or OneDrive and actual cloud backups, as well as exploring more about cloud object storage in the form of Backblaze B2. As well as talking actual storage, we also take an important look at how our increasing need for storage can have a real environmental impact and what Backblaze are doing to try to tackle this by means of their partnership with Nautilus.

Do you have data loss horror stories, or want to share your backup strategy with us? we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

As a little bit of an aside, this is our first episode to be released first on our new site and hosted by Castos. We made the move sooner than planned because we found out that our previous host, Substack, had been stripping the MP3 chapters from our episodes – so sincere apologies about that.

For full disclosure, we do have an affiliate link with Backblaze (thanks to Pat for pointing us towards their affiliate program in our post-show chat). This doesn’t give you any discount, but if you are considering getting setup with their cloud backup plans, using our affiliate link may just help us pay the bills around here, and that’s hugely appreciated.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

• Backblaze
• Pat Patterson (MetaDaddy) on Mastodon / Twitter
• Backblaze Cloud Backup (Affiliate link)
• Backblaze B2
• Backblaze Drive Stats – Q3 2022
• Querying a Decade of Drive Stats Data
• Mat Honan Hack (WIRED)
• Backblaze Rides the Nautilus Data Center Wave
• CyberDuck
• Forklift
• Iconik

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:05: Introductions
2. 00:10:29: The Importance Of Transparency
3. 00:19:30: Spinning Rust Vs SSDs
4. 00:21:20: The Importance Of Backups
5. 00:24:17: How Backblaze Works
6. 00:27:09: Local Backups Are Still Good
7. 00:27:43: Value For Money?
8. 00:29:56: How Long Deleted Files Are Retained
9. 00:31:56: Cloud Storage Vs Local Filesystem
10. 00:37:00: Extended Version History Clarification
11. 00:38:18: The Real Cost Of Losing Data
12. 00:40:54: Cloud Object Storage
13. 00:49:09: Backblaze B2
14. 01:03:24: Simplicity Vs Proper Backup Strategies
15. 01:05:06: The Environmental Impact Of Storage
16. 01:14:26: B2 For Free?
17. 01:18:34: Implementing B2
18. 01:22:34: Personal Backup And Linux?
19. 01:26:00: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

Over the last ten years or so, we’ve seen a huge growth in the number of messaging platforms. With Google recently putting massive pressure on Apple to adopt the RCS standard, I wanted to have a discussion about the security and privacy of the various platforms, especially when we compare them to plain-old SMS.

This episode came about in part due to a Twitter exchange with The Mac Observer, on the back of an article about Google’s RCS push, in which the TMO team mentioned WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as alternative messaging options. You can imagine that got me somewhat riled up, due to my very public aversion to Meta, so after a nice back and forth with Jeff we agreed to put together this episode to really explore what the various platforms have to offer and why a secure chat app may not always be a private one due to worrying metadata collection practices.

You’ll notice that we focussed mostly on messaging apps, rather than chat apps like Discord or Slack, and that’s really down to the nature of the discussion, as we’re really focussing in on ‘mobile messaging’ with your contacts rather than larger community apps.

Since recording, Sunbird has come along as a way to get iMessage up and running on Android devices. We

We’d absolutely love you to chime in on this one, as I’m sure many of you have differing views on this topic. As long as those views are civil and respectful, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

• Jeff Butts on Mastodon / Twitter
• The Mac Observer: Website / Twitter
• Tim Cook Makes Apple’s Stance on RCS Clear – The Mac Observer
• RCS End to End Encryption: Google Messages Only
• Signal
• What Data Do Signal Have?
• How Signal Handles Contacts
• Is Telegram Secure – Heimdall Security
• WhatsApp Security – They label this as privacy, but as you’ll hear it’s actually how they secure your chats, privacy is a whole different thing.
• WhatsApp Rebuked Over Contacts Storage (BBC News – 2013)
• Viber
• I Refuse to Sign Up to Viber, Here’s Why – Hayden James

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:04: Introductions
2. 00:02:51: What’s Wrong With SMS?
3. 00:06:42: Google’s Push For RCS
4. 00:11:21: Messaging App Usage Around The World
5. 00:15:20: Undesirables
6. 00:17:16: Chatting In The USA
7. 00:18:33: End To End Encryption?
8. 00:24:32: Meta’s Products
9. 00:25:36: The Contact Discovery Issue
10. 00:28:23: What Do We Mean By Privacy?
11. 00:33:04: Beware Of Metadata
12. 00:34:26: Facebook Messenger
13. 00:36:51: Telegram
14. 00:38:48: Hateful Speech Online
15. 00:40:23: The Importance Of Accountability
16. 00:42:46: Signal Benefits
17. 00:44:07: Privacy Nutrition Labels
18. 00:45:02: Cross Platform Experiences
19. 00:46:50: A Quick Viber Check
20. 00:47:00: WeChat
21. 00:48:28: Sensitive Content Needs E2EE
22. 00:52:23: iMessage, Green Bubbles, Android
23. 01:04:38: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already hit our 50th episode, but it’s here and a lot of that is thanks to you, our amazing community who keep listening, subscribing, and intereacting with us across social media, email, and our Discord.

For this milestone episode, we thought you may like a bit of an insight into how each episode of the show reaches you after we record and edit it.

We reached out to Craig Hewitt the founder of Castos, our hosting provider for the podcast, and he kindly agreed to come and chat to us about what podcast hosting is, why good quality hosting is important, as well as looking at some of the challenges of distributing podcasts across so many platforms.

Are you a podcaster yourself, or maybe you’d like to learn more about Castos, or maybe you’ve had some fun stories with podcast hosting over the years. Whatever your experience, we’d love to hear from you, so please send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or join the discussion over on our Discord server

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Affiliate Promotion

As you’ll hear in the episode, we’ve had our own data loss incident here at Crossed Wires and if we didn’t have Backblaze powering our backups we’d have had to spend hours re-exporting every MP3 we’d ever created for the podcast. They provide simple and elegant backups for just $7 a month, and because it’s running in the background, you never have to worry about if your files are being safely backed up to the cloud. Sign up for your 15-day free trial here and make sure you never lose those important files again.

Episode Links

• Sign up for Castos (Affiliate Link)
• Craig Hewitt on LinkedIn
• RSS (Wikipedia)
• Castos Blog
• Castos Academy
• Castos Pricing
• Audience – Castos Original Podcast
• Dynamo by Castos – Free podcast artwork generator

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:01: Podcast Recommendation: Art Heals All Wounds
2. 00:00:34: Introductions
3. 00:06:28: What Is Podcast Hosting?
4. 00:11:21: Self-Hosted vs Paid Hosting
5. 00:16:51: Seriously Simple Podcasting WordPress Plugin
6. 00:19:51: The Importance of Support
7. 00:22:09: The Unexpected RSS Feed Impact
8. 00:29:45: Analytics
9. 00:37:40: Pricing & What You Get
10. 00:43:57: Automatic Transscription
11. 00:46:08: Democratisation of Podcasts
12. 00:48:43: AFFILIATE PROMO: Backblaze
13. 00:50:46: Importing a Podcast
14. 00:53:25: Free Tools for Podcasters
15. 00:54:58: Private Podcasting
16. 01:01:09: Wrapping Up
17. 01:09:14: PODCAST TRAILER: Art Heals All Wounds

Credits

• Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW
• Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
  https://uppbeat.io/t/danijel-zambo/stardust
  License code: VBAWDT54LJT6XLFW

With such a diverse range of stories being told online through platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and more, it’s crucial that we look at the journey to make the ability to share those stories more accessible.

It was great to chat with Pam about how things have changed so much in filmmaking over the years and get her valuable insights into why art and storytelling are so important in our digital age.

Please do make sure you check out her podcast, and of course if you have experience with digital storytelling, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

• Art Heals All Wounds Podcast: Website | Twitter
• Final Cut Pro
• LumaFusion
• DaVinci Resolve
• DJI Osmo Mobile
• The Theatre Lab
• Hector Armienta

1. 00:00:04: Introductions
2. 00:03:05: Accessibility In Filmmaking
3. 00:19:13: The Importance of A Complete Story
4. 00:22:17: The Impact of Art
5. 00:41:05: Get Your Story Out There
6. 00:45:12: Wrapping Up

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW