Business of Media
The global outage just adds to Facebook’s many recent woes
An almost six-hour outage saw Facebook vanish from the internet, reports Guardian Australia’s Josh Taylor.
The error was one of its own making. At around 5pm UTC that day, Facebook made a configuration change to the backbone routers, which coordinate network traffic between the company’s datacentres.
The change had the effect of telling the Border Gateway Protocol – effectively the post office of the internet – there were no directions to find Facebook’s servers when people tried to access the site or any of its other services.
“Today, the directions for how to get to Facebook’s DNS server’s addresses weren’t available,” Cloudflare’s senior vice-president of engineering, Usman Muzaffar, said. “Without being able to contact the DNS servers, visitors trying to reach a Facebook property, like facebook.com, will not get an answer and so the page won’t load.”
“In our experience, these usually are mistakes, not attacks.”
Through Facebook’s assimilation of the competition over the years, the error also brought down Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
News Corp Australia acquires stake in video business Visual Domain
News Corp has bolstered its commercial content business by taking a majority stake in the nation’s largest full service video production company, Visual Domain, reports News Corp’s Sophie Elsworth.
The announcement on Tuesday to acquire a significant stake in the business, founded by Renece Brewster and Daniel Goldstein in 2008, will help grow News Corp’s video production content.
News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller said the move would help deliver great offerings to the company’s growing content production.
SBS seeks community feedback as part of its Language Services Review
SBS has commenced the regular review of its language services provided through SBS Radio, opening public consultation to invite feedback on the draft selection criteria.
The SBS Language Services Review is a process undertaken every five years in line with the national Census, to ensure SBS Radio services reflect Australia’s rapidly changing and increasingly diverse society. The selection criteria will be used in conjunction with the 2021 Census data to determine the languages to be serviced. and help inform the way those services are delivered, for the next five years.
The Language Services Review encompasses SBS’s audio and language offering including radio, SBS On Demand, podcasting, and other digital platforms.
The six-week public consultation, which begins 5 October and concludes on 12 November 2021, is an important opportunity for communities to contribute to the future of SBS Radio services and the network’s broader audio and language offering, with all feedback considered in establishing the final selection criteria that will be used.
Radio
2GB host Deborah Knight blasts cruel trolls after family Covid tragedy
Grieving broadcaster Deborah Knight has blasted “cruel” and “heartless” trolls who raised doubts about her mother-in-law Connie Dunbar’s death on Sunday, reports News Corp’s Mibengé Nsenduluka.
Dunbar, who was fully vaccinated, tragically passed away at age 88 after contracting Covid-19 from a nurse at The Calvary Haydon retirement community in Canberra but online trolls claimed her death was a “hoax”.
“My husband has lost his dear Mum to Covid and some cruel heartless people are questioning if it’s a hoax or if she even had the virus as she was double vaccinated. Appalling,” Knight tweeted on Monday.
Television
SAS Australia stars’ secret off-screen deal revealed
SAS Australia star Dan Ewing has opened up about the secret deal he struck away from the cameras with fellow recruit Koby Abberton, reports News Corp’s Bronte Coy.
The two were partnered up early in the series for a boxing match – a challenge the inaugural 2020 cast were also infamously tasked with.
Knowing what was likely to be ahead, Ewing told news.com.au that he and the Bra Boy had had a private conversation before they arrived at the base camp ahead of filming.
“We knew they were going to do the boxing thing, right – so I said, ‘You know what’s going to happen here, our boys are the same age … I don’t want them to see their dads knocking each other’s heads off,” the former Home And Away actor said.
Ewing, 36, explained that they agreed to not necessarily “just step through the motions” – but to not “try to kill each other”.
However, their off-screen agreement seemingly evaporated once Ewing was paired with Abberton for the boxing match during the course.
“When we stepped out, I saw (Abberton’s) eyes and they were just red,” he said.
“I was just like, ‘I’ve made a mistake here’. He’s smaller but he’s a trained fighter, so I was just like … protect the face!”
SAS injury shock for NRL great Willie Mason
NRL great Willie Mason will undergo surgery on Wednesday after being forced to pull out of the next season of SAS Australia before production got underway, reports News Corp’s Jonathon Moran.
The 41-year-old former footy wrecking ball vowed not to “freak out” after he ruptured his left pectoral muscle in pre-training for series three of the reality show on Friday but has vowed to compete on the next season after he gets through rehab to get himself fit again to compete.
“I can deal with pain all right. I don’t freak out and start crying and all of that stuff. Injuries are a part of life. It is like a sunken hole on my bicep and chest,” he said.
Bondi Vet cast member hospitalised
A Bondi Vet cast member was hospitalised with a suspected neurological illness, reports TV Tonight.
Queenslander Dr Gerard Poli who is part of the Bondi Vet: Coast to Coast family, was admitted to Mater Hospital’s neurology ward on September 30.
His partner and fellow senior veterinarian, Alex Hynes, said on social media he started behaving strangely, noting, ” …. his speech was slow and he would jumble up words. He repeatedly dropped his phone on the ground, tripped over his own feet and bumped into the edge of doorways. The scariest part of all was that he had no awareness that anything was wrong.”
“At this stage all we know is he has a form of encephalitis-inflammation of the brain – probably auto-immune in nature but likely triggered by a recent respiratory virus he had been battling.”
Entertainment
INXS songwriters Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss get billion streams payday thanks to pop star Dua Lipa
Enduring rockers INXS have joined the illustrious club of Australian artists to achieve one billion streams for a song, thanks to English pop superstar Dua Lipa, reports News Corp’s Kathy McCabe.
The band’s chief songwriting duo of the late Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss were given a songwriting credit on Lipa’s global top 10 smash Break My Heart because its guitar riff bore a striking similarity to the funky signature hook of the INXS hit Need You Tonight.
Hutchence and Farriss are the first heritage artists to land on The 1,000,000,000 List, determined by the Australian songwriter’s body APRA, since it was launched in 2019.
Sport Media
Michael Slater dumped from Channel 7 commentary team after attack on Scott Morrison
Former Australian cricketer Michael Slater has been dumped by the Seven Network just months after he accused Scott Morrison of having “blood on his hands” in a social media tirade, reports News Corp’s Sophie Elsworth.
The 51-year-old, a commentator for Seven since 2018, posted those remarks after the commonwealth closed international borders to travellers from India in May. Slater – in the Maldives at the time – demanded the Prime Minister “come and witness dead bodies on the street”.
Seven Melbourne managing director Lewis Martin said he had made the “hard executive decision” to not renew Slater’s contract. Slater was told the news several weeks ago.