Hi, this is Jerry Stiller. You are listening to WBAI New York 99.5 FM and WBAI.org on the web.
Where are my keys? Anybody see my keys? Who took my keys?
Yo, check this out. This is Chuck, your public enemy number one, the rapper without a pause, bringing the noise and fighting the power right here to the Sites and Sound. That's right, Sites 99.5 WBAI.
And I don't have to say it, do I? I don't have to say it's WBAI New York because so many people already preceded me saying this, but it is WBAI New York. It's the top of the hour, 7 p.m., 1900 hours, New York City. Time once again for Off The Hook.
I cut myself while shaving. Now I can't make a cough. We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would. Bum diddly bum for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bum diddly bum.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emanuel Goldstein here with you this evening, joined by Mike.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Hello.
And down in Pennsylvania someplace, Bernie S.
I'm holed up in a Cuban embassy in Philadelphia.
All right, we'll get to that. And that's it. Wow, it's kind of sparse. It's so quiet without Redhack, isn't it? Redhack has moved to California. He's no longer with us. We might be hearing from him later on, though. It's possible. Anything's possible.
Wow, you know, this is crazy. I'm doing a psychedelic show here because my headphones are cutting in and out. So I'm hearing every other word that I'm saying that you people are saying. So it's going to be it's going to be kind of difficult for me and no one's going to understand why. I guess that's just what you have to cover up sometimes in the radio world.
All right. We have all kinds of updates to get into tonight. All sorts of fun things going on. One of the more fun things, actually, is a piece of spam I got today. Sometimes spam is just fun that way. This is priceless, though.
It comes from one Michelle Thompson, and she writes in saying, Who hasn't ignored their doctor's orders and enjoyed a glass of wine on medication or drove after a surgical procedure? Come on, we've all done it, right? A fed up physician. Yeah, they're the best kind of fed up physician whose partner was sued by a family after a patient ignored medical advice, took matters into his own hands.
He created a new app, and it's basically acting like Big Brother. And in a good way, this is considered a good thing. His new app is acting like Big Brother to protect doctors from lawsuits and malpractice issues by recording all cell phone conversations between a doctor and patient.
A recent survey showed that 85% of doctors are using smartphones. That's one hell of a survey there. If you talk to your doctor on your cell phone, which all of us do. I've never done that in my life. In fact, I never even get to the doctor on the phone at all. You only get to the receptionist, and maybe you'll see the doctor during your appointment. Maybe.
MedXcom is the name of the company. They're making a recording of that call that can immediately be printed and put in your file for office slash record use. As the only app, hold on, I know you're excited about this, but hold on. As the only app with this capability, the company is finding doctors are signing up in droves to protect themselves. You ever see a drove of doctors? It's really a sight to behold.
Now, below is a quote from Dr. Nussbaum. We all know Dr. Nussbaum. This is what he says. Every day, thousands of calls are being made between physicians and patients. Everyone is in a rush these days, and not everyone is paying close attention to what is being said. A recent Colorado legal case is a prime example of a very tragic result. A family of five was killed. That's all we know.
Someone didn't follow doctor's orders, and that's what happens when you don't follow a doctor. The next time you don't listen to your doctor, a family of five might get killed, so let's think about that. It also highlights why it's critical to have a recording of all telephone conversations, as it makes both the doctor and the patient much more accountable. MedXcom solves this problem in that the conversation is not only recorded and transcribed, but is available for review and can be pushed to the patient to reinforce the instructions given. Pushed to the patient.
Well, okay. Now, Mike, I imagine you're interested in obtaining this app somehow.
I just want to know how they print out telephone calls.
They can do amazing things these days, but it's just—Bernie, have you heard of anything like this ever?
And at the end of the day, his office sends it off to India, where it's transcribed as to all his murmurings and so forth, and that's pretty impressive, but it makes me wonder about patient privacy.
What about legalities here?
You've got to let—in certain states, there's about 12 states, every state has its own wiretap laws, and this is covered under wiretap stuff.
In 12 states, you can't record a telephone conversation with somebody unless you tell them you're recording it.
Now, the doctor may say that, and then it's completely legal, and you can always just say, no, I don't want to be recorded, and then I guess the doctor could say, well, I'm not going to talk to you while you die on the other end of the phone.
Well, it's really kind of insane because it's making it seem like recording everything and keeping records of every word that's spoken is a good thing, something that we need.
And I don't know, by making that something palatable to the average person, I think it's quite dangerous.
I also want to know more about this family of five who was killed.
Was one of them the one who ignored the doctor's orders, or was it just like some random sacrifice, or how does this work?
Yeah, we may never know, actually.
There's no indication as to what exactly happened in that particular case.
Jim, what, do you have something?
I can't.
Yeah.
The doctor.
Yeah.
You say.
Oh, that's right.
You can't communicate with the doctor.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
I understand, Jim.
All right.
Okay, sit down.
Yeah.
It's true.
Someone like you who has suffered a stroke would have trouble on the telephone being understood in the first place, so those records wouldn't really do anybody any good.
Right.
I don't know where we're heading with this.
It is something they're trying to sell.
It was a piece of spam, so keep that in mind.
Now, Bernie, you mentioned wiretap rules, and I know that your state is in the process of actually perhaps changing those rules.
I have an interesting story here.
Public safety has trumped concerns about personal privacy.
That was actually a week ago as the State House of Representatives cast a lopsided vote in favor of the first overhaul of Pennsylvania's wiretapping law in 14 years.
Now, as you mentioned, Pennsylvania is one of the states that basically you have to inform the person that you're recording their conversation.
New York is not.
So you can record a phone conversation in New York.
You cannot record a phone conversation in Pennsylvania without letting the other person know, which is kind of hard to do if you're trying to get them saying something that will come back to haunt them.
The bill in Pennsylvania was sent to the Senate, and it passed before that by the House of Representatives by a 145 to 52 vote.
What that would do is ease restrictions on civilians secretly recording other citizens and expand the government's ability to tap cell phone technology that law enforcement groups say will help them apprehend drug dealers and other criminals.
According to Representative Ron Marcico, who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the bill's chief sponsor, our statute is stuck in the day of princess rotary phones.
He says if the bill becomes law, Pennsylvania would still have more privacy protections than 38 states and the federal government.
Now, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has expressed disappointment over the vote and charged that proponents were trying to rush the bill into law without a public hearing and less than three weeks after it was introduced.
It's not how government is supposed to work, they say.
One provision, which has been quite controversial, would permit audio recordings of conversations anywhere and at any time as long as notice of possible recording is posted somewhere, such as on a wall or in a student or employee handbook.
This is supported by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, which said recordings on buses and other school property could help protect students and staff members from harassment and abuse.
The ACLU said the provision would eliminate the expectation of privacy that present law ensures for conversations that take place out of earshot of other people, such as empty rooms or even in an elevator.
Basically, Representative Daryl Metcalf, Republican of Butler, says this is very alarming.
You're going to change our society in a way that students will never know what a reasonable expectation of privacy is.
Another provision would allow conversations to be recorded without the consent of other parties if the person doing the recording believes it may provide evidence of a first-degree felony or crime of violence.
And, of course, as we mentioned, current law bars all recordings unless all parties consent.
But even if a civilian makes an illegal recording, this bill would allow the government to use it as evidence in a criminal investigation and prosecution.
So, Bernie, it sounds like, yeah, you know, the state is moving in a direction where you no longer have to tell everybody that you're recording a phone conversation.
But it seems like they're giving away a whole lot more than just that.
Way more.
I think the law enforcement lobby in Pennsylvania would like to be able to use its snitches and cooperative informants and people that they have other dirt on and who want to try to work off their risk to just act as an agent for the police and record conversations with someone secretly.
And, as you just said, the government could use it as evidence in a criminal investigation and prosecution anyway, whereas now they'd need a warrant.
I think the best quote was this representative Mark Cohen here from Philadelphia.
He's a Democrat.
He said this would represent a fundamental change in the way that people relate to one another and a fundamental change of privacy as we know it.
Right now you have what you think is a reasonable expectation of privacy, at least in this state, and now you won't know what that is because there could be a hidden note back behind a chair somewhere that says, oh, everything in here is being recorded.
So I don't like it, and I don't like how our Republican administration is pushing this through here in Pennsylvania.
Yeah, it's kind of shocking that they would try and do this.
I'm particularly worried about the school bus thing.
They're just going to put a note.
They're going to put a note in legalese that elementary school kids can't even parse, and it's going to say we're going to record you all the time.
I don't know what elementary school kids you're hanging out with, but the ones I know are able to parse the legalese quite easily because it's everywhere.
People have to look out for these things, but I think what they'll put on the wall is not something all that complicated.
It'll just say basically that your words and images will be recorded, and people will get used to that.
I think that's worse because people will just assume they're always being recorded, and I don't know.
It's going to make people different.
And you get young kids used to being recorded all the time.
They grow up into adults that are used to being recorded all the time.
Absolutely.
I kind of feel like I'm being recorded right now.
Yeah, well, get used to that.
Canada is doing something, well, kind of similar, I guess.
The Canadian Border Services Agency is basically installing cameras and microphones that can eavesdrop on travelers' conversations.
The new initiative will be an extension of audio-video monitoring that takes place at border points of entry across the country.
Now it's happening inside airports as well.
Now apparently what's striking most people is that it's very politely done.
Ottawa's airport, for instance, according to the Ottawa Citizen, signs will be posted referring passersby to a privacy notice, which will in turn be available on their website.
You can load up the site and learn exactly how and why the government is watching you.
They'll also provide a helpline explaining how the recordings will be used, stored, disclosed, and retained.
So I guess they're polite, but they're still recording everything you say.
What's the number for the helpline? Can we call them?
They don't give it in this news story here, and you might have to be a Canadian to call them.
Well, what if I was going to Canada and I'm concerned about this?
I think you have to be recorded before you go.
They probably won't let me in if I call the helpline in advance and tell them I'm concerned.
Maybe that's what it's for.
Julian Assange is in the news again.
Yes, we all saw this coming because we knew that he had lost his case in England and something was going to hit something by July, certainly, as an extradition to Sweden was being pursued.
So what has happened recently is that he has taken up residence inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
You might ask, why in God's name is he in the Ecuadorian embassy in London?
Well, Ecuador – well, somebody from Ecuador.
I'm not sure what minister it was.
The president.
It wasn't the president.
The president actually said it wasn't official.
It was some other minister, I believe, that said that he'd be welcome in Ecuador.
And then a couple of days later, the president said, oh, he's not speaking officially.
He didn't rescind it, but he didn't extend it either.
That's my understanding.
That's why he picked Ecuador because they had said something friendly at one point.
So he is now in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Now, what's interesting is that by going inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, he has violated his bail conditions and basically he's now a fugitive inside London.
If he steps foot outside that embassy, he can be arrested for violating bail.
Now, what strikes me is that, yeah, people violate bail all the time, but they don't get buildings surrounded by cops, and that's kind of what's happening here.
Basically, according to the British Foreign Office, he is now on diplomatic territory beyond the reach of the police as long as he remains in the embassy.
But if Ecuador declines his application for asylum, he'll have to leave the embassy to face arrest and probable imprisonment.
Now, this is the interesting part.
If it accepts his application, he's going to have to somehow make a literal sprint for South America evading the hands of the British police in the vast tract of city between Knightsbridge and any international flight.
So, yeah, that'll be interesting.
I'm not quite sure how diplomatic circles work, how they would possibly get him out of the country.
And to be honest, I don't see it happening.
If it was Venezuela, that would be one thing.
But this is Ecuador.
I think they'll probably say, yeah, you know what?
We don't want the controversy.
So you take him back, and then they'll ferry him off to Sweden or perhaps here.
Who knows?
Well, let's be clear.
He's going to Sweden.
That's the people that want him right now.
But after he gets to Sweden, what happens then?
That's the real question.
We won't find out unless he goes to Sweden, I guess.
Yeah.
So basically, I mean, we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that there's something secret going on inside the halls of prosecutors here in the United States.
Obviously, they want to bring him into the United States to face prosecution for all that he's done in the WikiLeaks.
I mean, it makes perfect sense that that is in there someplace.
Whether or not they exercise it there or whether they do it at some other point when people least expect it, that's open to speculation.
But to think that that doesn't exist somewhere, I think, is rather naive.
Rob?
Yeah.
But Assange has not ever struck me as a person who does things without sort of considering and planning and figuring out all the ins and outs of the situation.
So this move surprised a lot of people, him doing this.
But you really got to think there's something in the works, basically, that he knew what was going to happen.
I think he was thinking about this for quite some time.
And it makes a lot of sense now.
And we kind of should have seen it coming, actually.
I think it makes a bit of sense from his perspective.
What kind of sucks, though, is that the people who donated money for his bail, they're going to lose that money probably because he violated the bail.
So I think it was 380,000 something euros.
It was 200,000 pounds.
So maybe that number was in dollars or something.
Maybe it was dollars.
380,000 in bail money.
So yeah, they could lose that.
But I can't be that surprised that it's taken this turn.
Yeah, you know, part of me says just go to Sweden already and see what happens.
But again, you know, I'm in the dark as anybody as to what actually will happen once that occurs.
And I think that will occur.
I think it's inevitable at this point.
Okay.
Go ahead, Bernie.
The intelligence community term of art for what Julian Assange wants is an exfiltration, the opposite of infiltration.
He needs to be ferreted out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London through their equivalent of transportation security administration and onto an international flight or boat to Ecuador.
And I think that's unlikely.
And Ecuador has a big trade contract with the U.S. that's up for renewal next year.
I don't think they want to mess that up.
So maybe you should go to Cuba like one of our listeners keeps telling us to do.
Well, does Cuba have an embassy in London?
I guess they do.
Yeah, they must.
Maybe he should have gone.
Venezuela, man, that's where I would have gone.
But I'll tell you this.
He could pull it off.
He could pull it off if it was granted.
He's not easy to recognize, if you can believe that.
No, he's not.
You know what he looks like.
He kind of doesn't look like that anymore.
That's all I'm going to say on that.
So he might be able to pull it off.
But I kind of doubt Ecuador is going to go for this.
Okay, we have on the phone with us Mitch Altman from California.
Mitch, are you there?
Yeah, hi.
How are you doing?
Now, Mitch, we have you on because we obviously have to talk about the HOPE conference, which is coming up.
We've talked about it in the last few episodes of the show.
Last week we talked about having the former NSA analyst, William Binney, as one of our keynotes in addition to the yes men.
So that's quite a good amount of variety as well.
We are currently in the process of scheduling over 100 different talks, speakers of all sorts from all around the world.
And that's really going to be amazing.
Look for that on the website as far as the actual schedule in the next couple of days.
And, well, a couple of the panels are things that you have organized.
And I think they're worthy of entire programs in and of themselves.
So we can only give them a few minutes each.
So let's devote a little bit of attention to each one of these.
Now, last time at The Next HOPE in 2010, the elephant in the room was, of course, what was going on with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
And how that extended into the Bradley Manning story and how Bradley Manning had been turned in by somebody in the hacker community known as Adrian Lamo.
And we had Adrian Lamo in the audience of the conference.
And he came up on stage and defended his actions and was basically interrogated by a bunch of people from the hacker community for an hour and a half.
And it was fascinating. It was interesting.
A lot of different thoughts and perspectives and proclamations took place in that 90 minutes.
Well, this year, I think the elephant in the room is a bit different and very much a serious one as well.
This is something that affects people in many communities.
And the hacker community is certainly no exception.
When you have young people growing up in difficult times, facing all kinds of ostracizing from society, from their peers, very often it's too much for them to handle.
And the pressures of a career, of building something, even if it looks like something that's amazingly positive and energetic, sometimes it's just too much for mere mortals to handle.
And unfortunately, what we've seen in the last few years are a number of people who have basically chosen the alternative to living.
And that's kind of what your panel on geeks and depression is going to focus on.
Do you want to tell us something more about it?
Yeah. So geeks and depression is not only about suicide, people killing themselves, which is one of the tragic realities of our geek world and the world around us, but also just depression in general.
After my friend Ilya killed himself last November, and I really didn't even know that he was suffering from serious depression, he hid it so well.
I realized, having gone through half of my life with serious depression myself, I was in a position to try to encourage people to talk more openly about what they're going through.
There's a lot of us who are really depressed now, a lot of us who have gone through serious depression, and if people are afraid or ashamed to talk about their experience, then probably more people like Ilya will be afraid to reach out for help rather than off themselves.
The thing is, a lot of us have gone through this. We really are not alone in all of this.
Even if we feel totally alone, we have a community here, and it's not easy, it's incredibly not easy, but there are people who can help.
Even if you're not thinking suicidally, it's really important just to feel good and to be able to learn to thrive in your life, to be able to express all of who you are to other people.
That's what real community is all about, is people supporting each other for all of who we are, and we can all learn and grow through all of that.
This panel, I hope, will explore these topics. I'll be on it, and so will some other people who've been through depression, Jimmy and Meredith, and will be moderated by a hacker who's also a therapist from Jigsaw Renaissance Hacker Space in Seattle, who's been through a lot of this herself.
I think it'll be a really fascinating time for everyone. We'll all be telling parts of our stories. Hopefully, there'll be time for people to share a little bit about their stories.
We'll also have a workshop afterwards in a smaller workshop room where people can explore some of this, and also another workshop for people who want to learn more about how to support people who are going through depression or suicidal thoughts.
It's interesting. I mean, I'm running a very successful corporation, but it's not always black and white like that. You can't always look at what somebody is doing and say, yeah, this person is a success, so therefore, they must be happy. They don't have any problems.
On the same token, people who aren't succeeding, quote-unquote, in the day-to-day world don't necessarily have to be miserable. They can be extremely happy and fulfilled. I've been there myself. Can you tell us something more about what he was up to? I think it might surprise some people to realize that he was going through some really heavy things.
Yeah. This is Ilya, who is one of the co-founders of Diaspora, an open-source version alternative to Facebook where people can actually have control over their data. He was one of the most positive people I've ever met. He was a total powerhouse.
We totally jived and talked for hours on end about how to make the world a better place as we see it and helping other people do the same. He was doing all sorts of amazing things. He did not fit the profile of my experience of depressed people. In general, depression, people are not motivated. They might have ideas, but they can't really motivate themselves to even get out of bed sometimes.
He was doing all sorts of amazingly cool things. Of course, there were a lot of pressures from people in the community as well as VCs who were courting them and the whole business world who has these high hopes for this story of the Facebook killer. There's a lot of stress in running your own business, even with a few other people.
He talked about that some, but I had no idea that he was dealing with suicidal thoughts. He never talked about that, even though I talked about in my past having plenty of experiences like that myself.
It's just in our world and also in the geek community, you're weak, you're horrible, there's something wrong with you if you're depressed, if you have a suicidal thought. It's shameful to have these kinds of thoughts and feelings in general. It doesn't have to be that way only.
We all share these. I don't think there's many people at all in our planet, let alone the geek community, who haven't at least thought sometime about killing themselves.
That's why it's so vital to reach out and have people to talk to and also to always be there for other people, to be able to listen and know when somebody who you might think has got it all together, when they might be cracking. That's why it's so important for us in this particular community to be there for each other regardless of all the drama and nonsense that we're going through at the moment.
Yeah, because you really don't know how much pain someone's going through. Suicide really is about having so much pain and seeing no other alternative to make it stop. If people know that there is someone they can reach out to, maybe they'll live another night and get through the crisis point. That's really what it's all about, living another day.
For people who are quite young especially, they haven't had the opportunity to go through experiences where they can see they do get through these crisis points, these crisis periods. It's something to get through, something you will get through, and there is another side, which doesn't mean it'll never happen again.
Because every time you go through a period of depression, if you suffer from serious depression, it feels unique. So having people to talk to, people to reach out to can be really important to help get through those periods.
What I find amazing is that—or just enlightening, I guess, in my own personal experience—is that if I feel that the world's a horrible place and that there's no hope and everything, you can look at a landscape and it can depress you. You can look at people. You can look at society and just be turned off by all of it.
But the one thing that gets me through, if nothing else, is knowing that in maybe two or three days, that perspective is going to change for no reason. It's just going to change. I'm going to look at things and see humor, see hope, see something positive where I was seeing nothing but misery and negativity before.
So maybe nothing will change in my life, but something will change to make me feel different. And many times it's just that simple acknowledgement that this is going to happen, and I don't understand why, but that's enough to get me through the hard times. And I don't really understand it. I just know that that's something that happens.
Yeah, it's just the way it works. And if you've gone through it a few times, then you can see that that's really the way it does work. If you haven't and there's a lot of pressures, then that's when you really can use other people to either just say, hey, I know what you're going through, or just to listen and not judge, or get a hug if that's appropriate.
I started these Geeks in Depression meetups after Ilya killed himself. I wrote a very personal, heartfelt blog post about it, and I got so many comments from people saying they're so grateful that I wrote that because they suffer from serious depression, or they've had suicidal thoughts, or they know people who have.
And so I realized this is really big, and anything I go through myself, whether it feels good or bad, I try to use that as an opportunity of how I can help myself and others around me.
I mean, it totally sucks. If someone you know kills themselves, there's nothing like it. It sucks beyond compare. And what I could do is create these Geeks in Depression meetups, encourage other people to do the same, and so they've been catching on around.
It's been a topic of discussion at conferences around the world, which I think is a really good thing. If we can talk more openly about these things, then it becomes less important than it was if it's all pent up inside of us and we're afraid to even talk about it.
It's really vital to talk about it, too, and community is vital because part of the terrible nature of dealing with something like depression, I've dealt with it myself, and by its very nature, it makes you feel you're alone.
There's nobody else who's going through this. You're just so incredibly alone, and it's so vital to get out there and see that there are other people dealing with the exact same thing, and other people have come out of it okay, and other people are dealing with it and coming out of it okay.
But there is such a stigma in this culture that we find ourselves in against even talking about things like this. You're perceived as weak or you're perceived as having things wrong with you, and this is something that many, many people deal with, and you're not alone if you are, so it's really important that you get out there and at least check out what other people are saying and how other people are dealing with it.
But, you know, when I'm depressed, I don't care that there are other people out there. I mean, people say, yeah, there's other people out there going through it. I couldn't care less, you know, because I'm alone in my isolated world, and I don't want to communicate with anybody, and, you know, people are going to say the same old things to cheer you up, and it's going to just completely miss the mark.
It's important about knowing how to be of support. Giving advice is one of the worst things that you can possibly do because that proves to the person you're giving advice to that you're not even listening to them or trying to understand. So it's not about giving advice. It's just being able to listen nonjudgmentally and empathize.
And so I've done this a great deal in my life, and, you know, I'll just say it on the air, too. If anyone ever wants to contact me any time, please feel free. My email is mitch at cornfieldelectronics.com, and I'm totally willing to go out of my way to help you any way I can.
And so just knowing that that's there might make you feel better, but please make use of it if you ever want to as well. And if more people can offer whatever they can in their own way, that means that some people will be able to feel better about living their lives even as they're going through these horrible periods that seem like you can't get through it.
Now, that's going to be one very interesting panel discussion that you'll be leading at Hope No. 9. Do you have the actual time and date that that's taking place? Do you know?
Yeah, that's on Saturday the 14th at 3 p.m.
Okay. And do you know which room that is at the – do you have the room name? We've actually named rooms after various people, too.
Yeah, I don't have the name at the top of my head. I'm sorry. Was it Davidson?
Okay, it might have been. I'm not sure. We have – yeah, we can go over all the people that we've named rooms for, the first telephone operator. Actually, interesting, one of the names of the people that we named rooms after is, in fact, someone who took their life in the last year. I think it was last year, Len Sassaman. Did you know him?
I didn't know Len. Well, I've met Len. I know Meredith well, who will be on the Geeks in Depression panel, and they were partnered, and so Meredith has a lot to share about that.
Okay, yeah, so it's definitely going to be something that we'll confront head on, and it's something – maybe you'll have something to say about the subjects that are raised in this panel, and maybe you'll just want to come to listen and to hear perspectives, but I think it's really going to be very enlightening and very necessary as well, because this community is certainly not immune to this kind of thing.
In fact, in many ways, we might be more vulnerable to it. Now, as a transition to another topic entirely, this community is vulnerable to something else that you'll be addressing, I believe, on Sunday. You want to tell us something about that particular panel?
Yeah. So all my life, I've worked in geek realms in electronics and computers, and every single job without exception, the military has come in in some way and tried to use what me and my coworkers have been using for military purposes.
And almost every time, the people who run the companies think this is a great opportunity, they can make money, and they go for it. Personally, I don't want to help the military. That's where I come from, and so I've had to quit a lot of jobs when they started becoming more active in helping the military.
More recently, in the last many years of my life, one of the things that I've found great enjoyment, one of the best things in my life, was helping out at maker fairs, starting with a few soldering irons at a table and being mobbed and teaching people how to solder and then doubling it every year until it maxed out into this huge hardware hacking area, which I also have at Hope as well.
But having a huge hardware hacking area where thousands of people in two days with an army, so to speak, of volunteers teaching people to solder, little kids, big kids, all ages, all skill levels, and making cool things.
I've totally loved doing that, and Make even created an award in my name, the Mitch Altman Maker Hero Award, and gave me that award at the New York Maker Fair in September, just not quite a year ago.
It was one of the happiest times of my life, getting this incredible honor from my peers. It felt great. I was crying on live video on the internet. It was amazing.
And then the thank you dinner, which always happens after Maker Fair for people involved, there was this bombshell that totally took me out of left field.
They announced that they got a $10 million grant to help teach through hands-on learning, which I think is a fantastic thing, but then they said it's given to them by DARPA.
DARPA, for people who don't know, is an arm of the military which does research on their own website and Wikipedia. It says that they exist to create new technologies for the U.S. military, and that their budget is currently $3.2 billion a year.
This is not necessarily a black-and-white thing. It hit me really hard, like a kick in the gut, because I had no clue that I would have to start making decisions about how I want to help Maker Fair and Make Magazine that does so many incredible things and will continue to do incredible things for so many people.
But when you accept money from an organization or from people who don't align with your goals and your values, then that money can be used for something really good, your purposes, but they wouldn't be giving it to you if it wasn't also helping them and their goals and their purposes.
So how do you balance these things out? There's pluses and minuses for any choice we have to make. The pluses and the minuses in this case are both really absolute value. They're both pretty big. How do you balance that out?
I struggled with this for months before finally coming to the choice that I really can't feel good about doing everything I've been doing and helping out with Maker Fair, knowing I would be associated with DARPA money and helping DARPA and the U.S. military. That's just what I came out to.
So you no longer take part in Maker Fair at all?
For the time being. I made my choice public. I said it saddens me greatly that I can no longer help with U.S. Maker Fairs as long as they're receiving DARPA funding. That was everything I said.
I said I would also, in addition, I would work with them again in a second if they stopped taking DARPA money. That was the extent of my post, and it caused a flurry of Internet activity, including the usual Internet hate, which is unfortunate.
I was expressing basically where I'm at. Other people can come up to different choices. But I thought it would be really good to not only talk to lots of people, as I have been since then, but to put it out there in a way with a lot of people of differing viewpoints in a panel at HOPE so that we can explore together what are the pluses and minuses and how can we balance this out for ourselves.
I don't want to tell anyone what to do and not to do. Well, sometimes I do. But it doesn't disservice if I do that. I really want people to come up with their own conscious choices of what this means.
The whole hacker movement has become huge in just a few years. It's become big enough that we are now a market. That's when you know you've made it, when there are corporations marketing to you.
Some of the brightest, most intelligent, creative people on the planet are hired by the U.S. military to look around and see what exists so that what they see can be used for military purposes. They're paid for that. They think that's a good thing to do.
Or whatever, that's their job anyways. And so giving grants to hackers, to hackerspaces, to maker fairs so that the U.S. military can have higher quality engineers for their purposes, that was the grant that maker fair people went for and received. Renewable every year.
And there are other grants available for hackers and hackerspaces. And this is real money. It's real money. It's available. You can go for it. Do you want to? Well, I hope that you'll think about the consequences of accepting that money if you go for it because there are consequences, positive and negative.
Please check it out and weigh it out for yourself before just going for it merely because it's there. Because you will change your behavior based on that amount of money being available and renewable year to year.
Well, it's an interesting discussion that we're having with this panel, the talk that you'll be giving on Sunday. And I think, Mitch, obviously you speak for yourself. You speak as an individual. I speak as an individual many times with my own ideology.
But I don't fool myself into thinking that the entire hacker community agrees with every conclusion I reach. And we do have people from the military coming to the conference, giving presentations and things like that. And I want to hear what they have to say. I want to be able to weigh it in my mind. And I think that's something that you're going to have some representation of on your panel, at least perspective from the other side.
Oh, yeah, yeah. So I have all sorts of – there are going to be five of us. I'll be moderating this one. And I want to ask questions that are open-ended and just let people have a discussion mainly. I'll ask them questions that are hopefully a bit provocative but where there's no right and wrong answers.
And so there are people on the panel – like one person has accepted a large amount of money for the Hackerspace space program. Another person has worked for NASA and is a proponent of people receiving DARPA money. And then there's someone who is no longer helping with Maker Faire as well because he doesn't, similar to me, think that if he's helping – even if the money's going to something he likes, it's not a big deal.
It's not a good thing because it's helping the military. And then there's someone who says he's more neutral. He's willing to take money. But he can see the pluses and minuses. So there should be a really good variation on viewpoints in the discussion. And I think we can all learn a lot from what we all collectively expressed during the panel.
Now, do you have the scheduling information for that panel?
I don't. I think it's 4 o'clock. But it's definitely on Sunday.
It's on Sunday afternoon at some point.
Sunday afternoon, yeah.
Okay. Basically just plan on getting to the conference early in the morning on Friday the 13th of July and not leaving until nighttime on Sunday the 15th. And more information on the conference is at www.hope.net.
Hey Mitch, I wanted to ask you – I saw you have a Kickstarter.
Oh, yeah. Thanks for asking about that. I've been working on this project that I've been really loving for the last seven years. And it's finally ready for production. It's called NeuroDreamer Sleep Mask.
And it is what I simplified the brain machine from and trip glasses, which a lot of listeners here are aware of.
So the brain machine and trip glasses are glasses that you wear that blink lights and make sound at a sequence of meditation brainwave frequencies.
And you hallucinate patterns and colors along the way, which makes it really fun because people seem to like hallucinating.
NeuroDreamer is a memory foam mask that's very comfortable.
And rather than meditation, it has the brainwave sequence for sleeping because a lot of people really have trouble getting the rest they want.
So this is – I've made this so that people can get help with that.
And I do have a Kickstarter. If anyone wants to help spread the word, I would totally be thankful because then we can make a bunch of these and help people in many ways.
This is an open source project. All the plans will be online like all of my projects.
And if anyone wants to help with the project, I'd be totally thankful for that too.
I love the quote, people seem to like hallucinating. I've noticed that throughout the years.
Mitch, it's been great. And boy, you're doing a lot of work for this conference.
And I'm really looking forward to it because of all the magic you're going to be putting into it.
And that alone is worth the price of admission. But it's going to be a lot of fun as it always is.
Oh, I'm way looking forward to it. There's going to be so many cool people there doing so many cool things.
And yeah, so I hope to meet lots of people listening there. Feel free to come. It's going to be wonderful.
How do people find this NeuroDreamer?
Oh, probably the easiest way is to look for neurodreamer.com and you can spell it just about any way you like.
I have all those domains. There's a link on there. So yeah, lots of cool info there.
All right, Mitch Altman, thanks so much for joining us tonight,
speaking about what's going to be happening at the whole conference this year.
And we look forward to seeing you there.
Yeah, thanks for having me on again. It's been great.
All right, we're going to have somebody else joining us in just a moment.
But first, I wanted to devote a little bit of time,
maybe to sort of lift up the mood a little bit after some of the serious talk that we've been having here.
Now, people noticed last week how easily the media bought into the story of the fake exploding yacht
without checking the facts and basically reporting to this day that it actually happened when it didn't.
Well, you might have heard about this story. Maybe you didn't.
You have to go to a particular website called jest.com to find out about this.
There was a reporter walking around New York City with a microphone that basically said NY2.
NY1, of course, is a channel. There is no NY2.
But this looked like the NY1 microphone.
But apparently what this proves is that people will believe anything you say
if you look like a newsman and you're holding a microphone.
Hi, we're here in New York City today to prove that people will believe anything you say
if you look like a newsman and are holding a microphone.
Kim Kardashian has announced her candidacy for the California State Senate.
What do you think about that?
I'd vote for her if I was a Californian.
One of her sisters is going to be her campaign manager.
And they're saying it's either going to be Kourtney or Khloe.
Which one would you think would make the better campaign manager?
Um, Khloe.
Khloe.
Khloe.
Whoever the taller one was.
Earlier this week, President Obama fired the U.S. Senate.
What do you think about that?
I actually hadn't even heard that.
No?
Germany invaded Poland earlier today.
Do you think America should get involved?
I almost want to say no.
It's so early on.
Those are two very powerful countries.
I guess it was okay with Libya.
But, I mean, I don't know.
The Germany and Poland thing is still pretty fresh.
So I guess we're just going to have to see how it rides out.
Regarding Thiebaud, what do you think about the Vatican starting the process
of granting him sainthood?
I mean, he seems like a good guy and all.
But I think it's just like a publicity stunt.
And even the church isn't above a little publicity.
I mean, it must have been that Steelers game.
Perhaps. Or the Jets game.
If we didn't worship, you know, media and sports idols enough,
we might as well do it a little more and make it official.
England has announced that they will absolve part of the U.S.'s national debt
if we allow them to recolonize certain states.
What do you think about that?
What states?
It's either South Carolina or New Hampshire.
I mean, who cares about South Carolina?
Give them New Hampshire.
I would say New Hampshire.
The Brits would be more at home in New Hampshire.
Experts predict that Chinese Internet usage,
if it continues to grow at its current rate,
the world will experience a worldwide shortage of Internet by the year 2025.
What do you think about that?
That's a big problem.
I think we definitely...
America especially is really behind in terms of Internet speed,
and we need to make that a priority,
especially if China is going to start slowing down the bandwidth for everyone.
We need to work on our own infrastructure.
So you think we could be doing more?
I think we need to be doing more.
What do you think about the reality television version of the Hunger Games that's coming up?
Do you think people will watch other people die on television?
I kind of liked the goriness and morbidness.
Yeah, of course people will watch it.
I think it'll be interesting because seeing it in a reality show
might bring some things that we don't want to see up to the forefront.
Would you watch someone in that competition die?
Probably, just for entertainment.
All right.
And you can find that and a whole bunch of other things on jest.com.
I just found out about that today.
It's pretty awesome.
But that reminds me of this Canadian feature called Talking to Americans
where Canadian reporters walk around the streets.
They would talk about invasions of fictitious countries
to history professors at Columbia University and get answers,
which just proved that nobody really knows what's going on
and no one's paying attention,
especially if you have a microphone, if you have a camera.
Yeah, people will believe all sorts of things.
That's some genius right there.
Okay, joining us on the telephone right now,
our former guest here at Off the Hook
and now living out in California, Red Hacked.
Red Hacked, how is California so far?
Nice, weather's nice.
By the way, that was really confusing
because I had no context coming into that.
I didn't know what I was listening to.
So you believed it, didn't you?
Well, I just thought you'd somehow patch me through to the radio
and then I heard them talking about a reality show
like the Hunger Games and then I realized what was up.
Did you hear that China's going to slow down the Internet by 2025?
Going to be basically communicating on 300 baud.
Yeah, it sounded like a news program to me.
So at first I was really confused.
Well, okay, let's get rid of the confusion now
because you actually have knowledge
that we can use to spread to our listeners.
You're in charge of the Hope tickets, is that correct?
Right.
Okay, and how has that been going?
You've basically injected high technology
into the whole thing, haven't you?
Yeah, so the way the tickets have been working
is that we've been receiving the orders and sending them out.
They are being sent out as documents attached to email
that have QR codes in them that identify the tickets.
And when you show up to the conference, bring the code.
You can bring it either on paper or on your phone,
however you want, and we'll scan it
and we'll check you into the conference.
Now, our listeners aren't necessarily scientists, Dreadhack.
You're talking about all this QR codes and documents
and email and smartphones.
Someone who just sent an email or ordered a ticket online,
what's the simplest thing for them to do?
Well, so if you order the ticket,
at this point it's been usually a week, maybe more,
before we've actually sent the tickets out.
So if you just placed an order,
you could expect it'll take maybe a week, week and a half,
before you get it.
We're actually going to be accelerating the rate
at which we send them out.
We've sent out tickets to anyone who placed an order
before and including the 12th of June.
So if you've placed an order since then, don't fret.
You'll get your ticket, and we're going to be sending them
more often as we approach the conference.
But basically, look in your mailbox for an email
from tickets at 2600.com,
and that will have the tickets attached to it.
Those are not tied to you specifically,
so if for some reason you can't make it,
you want to sell it to somebody else or give it to a friend,
that's on you.
But basically, there are tickets attached to the email
that you can print out and bring with you,
or if you don't want to print them out
and you want to bring them electronically on your phone,
that's fine too.
And those basically just have a unique code
that identify the ticket as valid,
and then we check them at the door.
Now, what if somebody ordered tickets before that date
and either they don't have them
or they didn't get them in email?
What can they do then?
If you haven't gotten them, well, first check your email
to see if you maybe just missed it.
Like I said, the email address it would have come from
is tickets at 2600.com.
If you didn't get them or you can't find them,
you can email that address
and let us know that and we'll resend the ticket to you
or the tickets.
Okay, we might have to do some verification
just to make sure you're who you say you are,
that kind of thing.
But basically, yeah, it's a pretty simple process.
I think just about everybody has gotten this successfully.
But I just want to make sure that nobody feels confused
or is left behind or anything like that.
It's amazingly streamlined and it's a very efficient system.
Sorry.
We put the email system in place last conference
and we didn't have any complaints about it then.
So everyone gets their tickets.
And if you haven't gotten them or they got lost somewhere
or maybe they got filtered by some spam filter
and you didn't realize it,
just email tickets at 2600.com
and we'll make sure you get them.
Okay, and if you lose that email
or lose the printout or something like that,
all is not lost because we can send it to you again.
It can only be used once.
So if you hand it to somebody else,
yeah, they can simply waltz in as you.
I wouldn't go making copies of the email
and distributing it to all your friends
because that basically means that the first one
that gets to the conference gets in as you.
Right. The tickets are all one-time use.
So don't give them to your friends.
Don't post a screenshot of it on the Internet.
Hey, look how cool these tickets are.
Yeah, why would someone do that?
You know, you never know.
But yeah, they're one-time use
and whoever gets there first, that's it.
You know, we're not going to be in the business
of kind of resolving complaints like that at the door.
So just be wary of that.
Okay, is there anything else that you,
as ticket master of hope,
wish to convey to potential attendees?
No, just make sure to remember to bring a copy
and all will be well.
Okay, yeah, that sounds good.
And basically, I don't know how long
we're going to keep the ticket thing open.
At some point we have to close it
because obviously we have to start preparing
for the actual conference.
And I can say, without giving out specific numbers,
that it will be more expensive at the door.
So all the information that you need
to attend the conference is at www.hope.net.
And while we have RedHack on the phone,
does anybody have any other questions or comments for him?
I would just like to let you know
that you're missed in the studio here,
but it's kind of cool because I'm all comfortable.
I've got my feet up on your seat.
Oh, great. I'm glad to hear that.
Yeah, we have a lot more space now,
a lot more space in the studios.
And the air conditioning works now.
I mean, I made sure that they fixed that when I left.
Yeah, I don't think the studio would still be here
in this weather if the air conditioning didn't work.
Bernie, do you have any questions for RedHack there?
Well, when are you coming back?
You're coming back for the Hope Conference, obviously.
I'll be back for the Hope Conference.
Other than that, it's open-ended.
Okay, well, we're looking forward to seeing you
July 13th, 14th, 15th.
Yep, I'll be there.
Okay, Jimmy, you had something for RedHack?
How much?
Well, we can't say how much on the radio.
Yeah, that's a rule.
But it's basically for the amount of speakers that we have,
it's incredible.
I mean, basically there are conferences
where people pay thousands and thousands of dollars
to see what it is that happened in this particular weekend.
So thanks, RedHack, for that information.
And also, those of you who submitted talks,
we have notified all the speakers at this point.
If you have not gotten notified, it doesn't mean we hate you,
it doesn't mean your talk was awful,
it means we don't have room for it.
That could change if there are cancellations.
We'll be sending out an email to everybody,
updating them on the situation
as far as scheduling of their talks.
Not everybody has gotten the time slot for their talks yet,
but if your talk has been accepted,
you should have received something by now.
If your talk hasn't been accepted,
consider coming to the conference anyway
and giving it in the unscheduled track.
That's right.
We provide an unscheduled track for people
to talk about all kinds of things.
So nobody is actually rejected.
It's just a question of what we can fit.
And that's pretty much it for this week.
If you want to write to us,
oth at 2600.com is our email address.
You know, a lot of people wrote to us last week
asking what that music was we played.
And yeah, it was overly commercial, wasn't it?
It was dubstep.
It was so good, we're going to play something else
by Skrillex.
That's who it was, Skrillex.
And this is going to also feature Damian Marley.
So until next week,
have yourselves a good weekend
and keep listening to WBAI,
home of the hits.