I want to get out of here. Don't you?
Not that much.
So you like it here?
It's not that bad.
You're in a foxhole, with a war raging outside.
I know. That's why I'm sure glad I've got my WBAI.
Be glad you've got your WBAI. Become a member online at wbai.org. Now! Do it now!
And if you don't do it now, you can do it next week when our autumn fundraiser begins
here on WBAI New York at 7 o'clock. Time once again for Off The Hook.
But if they could, they would. Bum diddley bum for the best, it's back for worst.
I hope that's understood. Bum diddley bum!
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike.
Hello, happy solstice. Equinox. Equinox.
Yes.
Sorry.
That's okay. And Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Kyle.
Hey, how's it going?
And Bernie S.
Greetings from Pennsylvania.
Well, we're back on our last, I believe our last non-fundraising program. I'm not sure where we're on next week.
I haven't quite gotten the memo yet. I think fundraising begins next week. We have a couple of specials lined up.
And that'll be fun. But this week, we're in non-fundraising mode, which is also special.
And we have a bunch of things to talk about, including, well, we got back from Maker Faire.
Rob T. Firefly, Kyle, myself, we're all there.
Yes, indeed.
Along with a whole bunch of listeners.
Yeah, it was great seeing people.
A lot of the people I spoke to when I took their phone calls when they won tickets from us last week,
they came up to say thank you and hi and everything.
And it was great talking to them.
And also other people. People were attracted by the distinctive vehicle that you drive.
The phone company van.
The phone company van.
And, you know, it was a lot of fun.
Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
I wanted to thank a lot of the organization at Maker Faire for basically putting on the event and treating us so nicely.
We really, really got a great spot.
It's a little different.
Same general area as we were the time that I was there, I think, one Maker Faire ago.
And it was just a blast.
We had the van.
We had a lot of magazines and materials.
And we're right kind of in the epicenter of all this activity that's going on during the event.
And basically it was really, really also quite flattering to have people from, like, listener land come and approach us, check out the van,
check out what were kind of merchandise and things that we had to say, and just discuss with us, like, what's going on.
A lot of young people came up, but just all kinds of listeners from off the hook showed up.
Well, it's great to see the diversity in our listenership because we had kids, as you mentioned,
but we also had senior citizens coming up to us who were regular listeners, some of whom got tickets from us, some of whom just came on their own.
And it's so important to do that.
We're on the radio week after week, but to actually go out there and meet people, listen to the show.
And I was amazed how many people listened to the show, not just this show, but off the wall as well.
It's staggering.
It really is.
And they follow the things we do and the things we talk about.
They corrected us on a couple of things we got wrong, which I expect.
And it's just great to know that.
People really need to know that.
It makes a big difference to us.
I mean, we get some letters and stuff a lot, but it's that interaction when we get that chance to meet people and talk to people.
It's really rejuvenating and inspiring.
And we know you're out there.
We know some people are listening, whether it's on the stream or whether it's over the air at WBAI at 99.5 or any of those channels in between.
But it's certainly pretty amazing for us to hear what people think, to have the little back and forth, a quick conversation, and just enjoy the fair in general.
So thanks a lot for all the people that did come up to us.
And Bernie, you were not one of them.
No, I could not make it, but I also recognize that in-person listener feedback is invaluable.
People were asking about you, Bernie.
Yeah, I think you owe somebody money or something because a lot of people were looking for you.
They expected you were going to be there.
No, it was amazing.
I unfortunately had a family obligation, but I wanted to be there, and I'm sorry I wasn't for all the listeners who missed me.
Thanks for asking about me, and maybe I'll see you next year.
There were some guys from Dayton there as well, a lot of people that were interested and asked about you and what we're up to and the kinds of things that we talk about.
So you were missed, but we let people know that you would be at important events down the road.
The next Maker Faire, I think, is in Rome.
So if you want to make the next one, Bernie, that's the way you should reserve your tickets.
Hey, that sounds wonderful.
When in Rome, you know?
Actually, I don't have the date.
Oh, I see what you were doing.
Okay.
No, they're all over the place, so hopefully lots of fun in other places as well.
I've only been to the one here.
And the other question that everybody was asking, anybody want to guess what the question was?
Well, you two should know the question because you heard the question more times than any other question.
You want to give a stab at it?
Why are you here?
Well, one person did ask us that.
Actually, yeah, this kid asked us, you know, how come you're here because of the DARPA funding?
Really informed.
I was amazed by that.
You had the best response, though.
What was my response?
Why are you here as a result of that?
Yeah, if it's so bad, why are you?
But the thing is, Bernie, you brought up the topic last week on the show, and we discussed it.
I always think it's good to discuss these things in an open environment and to have a dialogue about it rather than just not talk about it or, you know, just fold your arms and face the other way.
That's U.S. foreign policy, basically, is to fold your arms and look the other way when you disagree with somebody.
U.S. foreign policy usually involves more bombs than that.
Well, yeah, sometimes the bombs get involved, sometimes, yeah.
But, no, the one question that everybody asked.
Rob, you want to take a stab at it?
You guys still publish?
Well, okay, there's that.
Let's address that for a moment.
A lot of people don't realize that we still publish.
And the reason that I heard, more than any other reason, was because they used to have a bookstore and they don't anymore.
That's not us.
No, it's not us.
It really isn't.
It's so frustrating.
And that sort of ties into the other story we'll get to, we'll follow up on about the military bases.
But, yeah, we still publish.
We've been around the whole time.
People were amazed coming by, looking at issues that we put out since they heard of us last.
But, no, that's not the question that more people were asking.
I'll give you a hint.
The question is when followed by something.
Hope.
Yes.
Thank you, Bernie.
Everybody wants to know when the next hope is.
Not the next hope from, oh, boy, here we go, from 2010.
That was the name of our conference then.
No, when the next conference in our series will be.
And everybody wants to come.
I told them that we'll be announcing it in the next issue.
And the next issue comes out a week from yesterday.
So if you have the Kindle and you subscribe by the Kindle, you'll know.
You'll find out next week because that's where it's announced.
And if you don't have a Kindle and you subscribe in other ways, you'll find out about the same time anyway.
That's all we can say.
Great.
All right.
But what else?
We shouldn't say it on the air, but I hope you've seen the issue so you know the answer.
Have I seen the issue?
Yeah.
Well, I get it through the mail, so, no, I have not yet.
Okay.
It should be arriving hopefully soon.
Before we finish up on Maker Faire, I want to address the – we won a prize, didn't we?
We did.
We did.
We won the Editor's – what was it again?
Editor's Choice Award.
Yeah.
It was really cool.
It was very cool.
They gave us a blue ribbon and everything.
They slapped the blue ribbon on the table.
And, you know, I don't normally like to brag.
Yes, I do.
But I think that was pretty cool.
from Make Magazine and also MakerBot and just so many interesting organizations and things
that have just really made a difference in one way or another.
And we're one of them apparently.
And it was in part due to the impact we have as well that they gave us that award and basically
acknowledged us for being there.
Yeah.
So, MakerFaire.com if you want more information on their future events.
Member Faire has an E at the end, so be careful.
Okay.
Going to that story that we sort of alluded to just now.
We got some mail back from people last week when we talked about this.
How it appeared in Harper's that 2600 was one of the magazines that was cut by military
newsstands throughout the country, the world.
I'm not sure if it's all throughout the world.
I think these trading things – what are they called again?
X something?
PX and the BX.
Yeah.
Base Exchange and Post Exchange.
Yeah.
I think they're everywhere and they sell magazines.
But we got the actual story from some military publication from one of our listeners.
And it reads like this.
In an allegory of the print industry at large, military exchanges are dropping close to 900
magazine titles from their newsstands to make room for products like consumer electronics.
The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, known as AAFES, a network of general merchandise
retailers for military personnel, has announced that it will reduce its physical newsstand
space by 33 percent, effective immediately, cutting ties with 891 titles in an effort
to align offerings with industry counterparts.
I don't know what that means.
900 titles is a pretty good magazine section, though.
Yeah.
And apparently this answers a question that I've actually been asking.
Are they just simply closing their magazine section or not?
According to this, they're only cutting it by a third, which means they had something
like 2,700 magazines in a single stand.
That seems awfully high.
It seems like a lot.
Like a really good newsstand, 2,700 titles.
Well, it may be that each exchange store management chooses from the demographics of that base
what magazines from that pool they want to sell.
Exactly.
From the offerings, each base gets to choose what locally might apply or be of interest.
Well, it looks like all bases chose, quote unquote, to cut 2,600, which I find, as I
mentioned last week, to be rather difficult to believe based on our subject matter and
also the interest level that we have received from people in the military.
Let me read on what else they say here.
Print magazine sales dipped 18.3% last year, officials say, while demand for items like
electronics has risen.
Not all electronics, though.
Some electronics have not risen, but regardless.
Yes, we have seen a decline worldwide, I think, in printed publications.
That's not deniable, really.
According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, digital magazines continue to expand their
presence in the industry, says Army Lieutenant Colonel Antoine C. Williams, who is the public
affairs chief for the AAFES.
Like their civilian counterparts, exchange shoppers' increased reliance on digital devices
to access content virtually has resulted in a sustained decrease in demand for printed
magazines.
Magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, Spongebob Comics, Home Buyer's Guide, Dwell,
Latham's Quarterly, and Defense Times are reportedly among the titles axed.
Defense Times also surprises me.
Notably, AAFES also will see sales of adult sophisticate titles.
Adult sophisticate titles.
What does that mean in English?
I think that's referring to the Spongebob comics.
No, it's referring to Playboy, Penthouse, American Curves, and Tattoo.
Yes, we talked about Tattoo magazines last week, and they're cutting those as well.
Now, this latter group was the subject of a recent review by the Pentagon called for
by the faith-based pornography opposition group Morality in Media, Inc.
Now, while the Pentagon found that magazines were not considered sexually explicit under
the law, and therefore were illegal to sell on military property, the AAFES effectively
moot.
Officials said that sales of adult sophisticate titles at AAFES exchanges have gone down 86%
since 1998.
That's pretty staggering.
An 86% sales decline, I guess, would be something worthy of discontinuing, but 18% I don't think
really is.
So, again, we're still looking into this.
It just seems a bit weird, and I'd like to know the titles that they decided to keep
as opposed to the ones that they decided to cut.
Just make a list of the 1800 most popular magazines in America.
Can't be right.
Well, we're number 10 on the Kindle.
I know that much, so that's got to count for something.
And we do well at newsstands where bookstores are still open.
I think they should keep intelligent magazines and ones with a lot of words, like more than
ads and pictures and stuff, or ones that deal with issues some military folks might be concerned
about, like foreign affairs or other magazines.
If you're in the military and you have any further information for us on this story,
we're certainly interested in knowing about it, because we do keep track of these things.
We like to know where people read Hacker News, and it's important to keep it out there in
a variety of places.
Please write to us, oth at 2600.com, and you can specify if you would like your letter
read on the air or not.
Either way, it will help.
Of course, if you are our listener or our reader and you'd like to get hold of 2600
in the military, you can still subscribe or get us through the Kindle.
Absolutely.
Actually, I don't know how it works with the military, if they're allowed to.
If they can just get whatever they want sent to them.
I think through APO boxes you can, but who knows what kinds of draconian restrictions
are being implemented now.
Okay, I want to talk about the iPhone hack.
Have we all heard about the iPhone hack, I take it?
This is the CCC's thing.
What, you want to ruin it now?
You want to give all the details out before I even read the story?
There's more than one iPhone hack.
I don't know which one you're talking about.
More than one iPhone hack in one week?
Yeah.
Okay.
I don't know anything about this.
Well, good.
This is the kind of person that we're talking to right now.
I'm interested.
Who knows nothing about it.
I'm talking about the CCC, our friends at Chaos Computer Club, who have hacked the fingerprint
sensor on the iPhone 5S.
Now, who's got an iPhone here?
I think no one in this room.
Nobody has an iPhone in this room?
I don't.
This goes against the percentiles that I'm told exist where almost everyone has one.
I have a phone.
I have a phone too, but it's not an iPhone, that's for sure.
Okay, well Germany's Chaos Computer Club says it has cracked the protection around Apple's
fingerprint sensor on its new iPhone 5S just two days after the device went on sale worldwide.
In a post that they put on their site, CCC says their biometric hacking team, yes, they
have one, they took a fingerprint of a user.
They photographed that fingerprint from a glass surface and then created a fake fingerprint,
which could be put onto a thin film and used with a real finger to unlock the phone.
Now, that claim is backed up with a video that's currently circulating on YouTube, well
over a million views so far, and that will create concerns for businesses, which see
users intending to use the phone to access corporate accounts.
And while it requires physical access to the phone and a clean print of one finger, which
is one of those used to unlock the phone, it does raise the risk of a security breach.
Now, my concern here, are there people really who thought that this was a valid form of
security, simply your finger?
Is that really something that people thought was impenetrable?
Wasn't the fingerprint thing, isn't this pretty much the method they used in, I think it was
the movie Sneakers in 1996?
Yeah, I think so, I think so.
Before it was used on people's phones.
But what this guy known as Starbug with CCC says on a blog post, this demonstrates again
that fingerprint biometrics is unsuitable as access control method and should be avoided.
So basically, what they say is, in reality, Apple sensor has just a higher resolution
compared to the sensors so far, so we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake.
And as we have said now for more than an unspecified number of years, fingerprints should not be
used to secure anything.
You leave them everywhere and it is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints.
I just love the concept of making fake fingers, but that's a CCC for you.
I mean, I think it depends on your threat model.
If your goal is to keep your phone away from a nosy roommate or something, then the fingerprint
sensor is probably fine.
But if your goal is to keep it away from the government, then you're screwed.
There's nothing you can do.
A roommate is going to have access to your fingerprint a lot more than the government.
But they're not going to bother you.
The other thing to remember is that the alternate technology is usually a four-digit passcode.
And someone can look over your shoulder as you type it in.
But why is it only a four-digit passcode?
Why can't it be a 20-digit passcode?
Why can't it be a sentence?
Why can't it be anything you want it to be?
Well, I don't know.
Maybe you could choose it as a user how you want to do it.
Maybe you can.
I don't know on iPhone.
I know on Android you can choose.
But most people either do nothing or they do this silly thing with the pattern, which
is not very hard to guess.
Or they do the four-digit passcode.
And you can enter a whole sentence if you want.
It's totally supported.
But most people don't do it.
Well, people do that for their PGP keys, I understand.
They enter entire passphrases.
Of course, when you try it on your phone every single time, yeah, that can be a bit of a pain.
Kyle, I know you just got a new bank card.
And you were shocked by what they offered you.
Oh, yeah.
You can get longer pins now, apparently.
It's been so long since I've worked with these kinds of cards that I was amazed to find out
I could have a much longer pin.
So how long is your pin now?
I have no idea.
Good.
You shouldn't have answered that question.
Yeah, that's giving out information.
If I know your pin is 16 digits, then I know what to look for.
Emmanuel?
Yes, Bernie, go ahead.
I'm wondering, does anybody really believe that this Apple iPhone fingerprint security
mechanism will keep the NSA out of your phone from afar?
Well, I don't see how, because they have access in different ways.
They're not taking your handset and entering a pin.
Exactly.
They're going in through the back door that they already probably figured out for that
phone model.
I like to say upstream.
Right.
Yeah.
I think what CCC is emphasizing here is that we are increasingly relying on little gizmos.
And I'll bet the day is coming where we use a fingerprint as our home locks on our houses
and think that that's secure.
And the point to recognize is that it's not.
It's not secure at all.
Well, I mean, what do you mean it is not secure?
I mean, in some circumstances, it may be more secure than a key, which is pretty easy to
duplicate.
Well, closing a door is secure, then, without locking it.
Fine.
But this is not really something that, if somebody wants to get in and they know who
you are, getting a fingerprint is not hard to do.
You get it off the side of a glass.
And the methods that are demonstrated here in this YouTube video show how easy it is
to construct a fake finger based on that.
I think, again, you have to consider how much security you want and to what end.
And, you know, I know I sound like I'm defending Apple, which I so rarely do.
So you've done it before?
Probably at some point.
But, you know, you have to consider, like, it offers some level of security.
To say it offers no level of security at all is misleading.
To say it offers perfect security is also misleading.
And you have to evaluate the benefits and cons.
I'll revise my remarks to say minimal security.
I still think it's better than a four-digit PIN.
Wait, how does this actually work?
Can you use a PIN and your thumbprint?
I mean, does the article speak to that at all?
Well, I think people who have the iPhone know how it works.
I think you just basically put your finger on it and then it turns on.
I don't have one.
There's a button.
There's one button on the iPhone and that button, you press it and it looks at your finger.
I think someone with one of these new phones will have to email us and tell us if we're wrong or right.
But I think it is possible to combine that with the PIN, which gets you two mediocre securities.
Hi, Emmanuel.
Hi, Bernie.
What if on your finger there's a booger or part of a booger when you put it on it?
I'm going to stop you right there, Bernie, because this goes beyond security issues and into health issues and things like that.
I believe, Kyle, you had a point to make, which hopefully was a better one.
I was just saying as features go, it's not altogether terrible that they have this and that you can break it
if it's the only level of security they're using on your phone.
I guess it'd be nice as an adjunct to a PIN or something else to say like,
okay, yeah, I can do several modes of lower, as Mike said, lower-ish level of security.
And in combination, theoretically, they're better.
But it's not anything to write home about, I don't think.
Here's an idea.
Why not hold the phone up to your face and use facial recognition technology?
And if your phone says, yes, that's you, then your phone turns on.
Android has had that for a while.
Oh, I was going to say, that's as stupid as the fingerprint because you get to hold up a picture of your face pretty damn easily.
Yeah, it doesn't work.
The Android implementation in particular both fails to recognize your actual face and can be tricked in ways you described.
So it's even less secure probably than the fingerprint thing, but, you know, people.
How about a fingerprint plus a PIN code plus nervous tick slash twitchy eye?
Plus reading something in your voice and reciting poetry that you've written.
On one foot.
Yeah.
That's secure.
Oh, Emmanuel.
Yes.
There's a point I meant to bring up when I mentioned the NSA is that if your fingerprint is being stored in your iPhone,
then our federal government will have access to your fingerprint scan if they have access to your iPhone remotely.
The federal government already has access to my fingerprints.
Well, not everybody, and this is a way for them to harvest a whole lot more.
That's a good point, Bernie, because a lot of the fingerprint scanners have gotten cheaper and cheaper and smaller,
and they're more like USB peripherals.
I can't pronounce that word ever.
Peripherals.
Anyway, it's now on your phone, right?
And so if people like sign up or opt in, you know, to do that and it is stored locally or even with a provider,
then it's not very effective.
There's so much bad stuff going on that we know is going on.
Why do we have to make stuff up like this?
I don't get it.
Well, if someone has physical access to your phone, they've pretty much got your data anyway.
There's no amount of gimmicky gadgets that will prevent that.
And probably also your fingerprints if you've ever touched your phone.
Indeed.
All right.
Well, I think it all boils down to how Apple markets it.
If they say this is something really secure, then they need to be held accountable for that.
If they're saying, no, this is not secure and anybody can easily get around it,
or just maybe people with a little bit of skill can get around it,
then okay, they're not falsely representing it as secure.
It's just important to know the facts, and I think that's why CCC has done us a service here.
It was part of a contest too, by the way.
There were hackers all over the world trying this over the weekend.
I think you're right with marketing.
It's like a little unfair to have people lining up and having them jettisoning their phones right and left
just so they can get this latest model and branding it as secure.
That's like basically using fear.
It's as bad as anything else we've reported on.
Absolutely.
Hey, we have Alex joining us from Midtown Manhattan.
He's at the GTLD conference.
Is that right, Alex?
Well, actually, it's so much more important than a conference.
It is the GTLD World Congress.
I know it sounds very, very important.
And like all world congresses, they happen in hotels in Midtown.
Of course.
Yeah, like ours does.
Well, everyone, I mean, we can't hold it in the middle of a park, so I guess that makes sense.
GTLD stands for what now?
It stands for Generic Top-Level Domain.
We've talked about this, I think, very briefly before on the show,
but it's a really, really hot topic within the ICANN.
And ICANN, as I'm sure many of our listeners know, regulates the domain name system of the Internet.
It stands for the Internet Corporation for Signed Names and Numbers.
So basically, well, the GTLD program has been in the works for about eight years.
And sorry about the doors closing.
I kind of snuck into a conference room here.
But so the program has been in the works for about eight years.
And what it's about is expanding the domain name space at the top level.
And the top level is that which is to the right of the dot.
So the .com, the .net, the .org, that's all to the top level.
And to the left of the dot is called the second level.
The 2600 and the 2600.com is the second level.
And the .com is the top level.
So ICANN opened up the doors to applicants applying for whatever they wanted, .whatever.
You could have .pepsi, .coke.
You could have .hsbc, .google.
You could have .generics, too, like .cars, .dog, .baby, .vip.
Basically any word in the world you could have.
Any word in the world, absolutely.
So ICANN was anticipating maybe about 500 applications would be submitted
since they came at a very, very hefty price tag, namely $185,000 per application.
Let me just ask a question here, Alex.
$185,000 per application.
And if I understand correctly, if the application is denied, you don't get the $185,000 back?
That's exactly right.
So what kind of insane person would do that?
Coca-Cola.
Someone with lots of money, okay.
There were 1,906 applications, absolutely, 1,906 insane persons.
So there were about 1,406 individual strings that were applied for.
So it's big business, and there's a lot going on.
And for the most part, it's been kind of under the radar for a while.
The media hasn't really been covering it all too much.
We're in the last stages of the program now.
Applicants have been fighting it out amongst themselves, legal rights objections,
string confusion objections.
For instance, whether .cars is confusingly similar to .cars.
These were big issues that were captivating ICANN.
It's confusing to me because it sounds like you just said the same word twice.
Well, see, you've made the point.
What were those two words, .cars?
.car and .cars.
Oh, okay, one with an S and one without an S.
Exactly, yeah, plural and a singular.
This is what they're fighting over, words like that.
What about brand names?
Well, yeah, brand names are, you know, that's really, really a big business.
And this is where the security aspect of it comes in.
This is a lot of what was discussed at the World Congress today,
is that the brand owners are really capitalizing on the fact that, you know,
let's say, for instance, HSBC.
I have no connection to HSBC.
I'm just mentioning them.
So they applied for .hsbc.
So rebranding all of their websites to something .hsbc, you know, loans.hsbc.
When a visitor goes there, they're going to know when they see in their browser,
in their URL bar, the browser bar, that something is within .hsbc,
they're going to have some kind of reassurance,
some kind of psychological reassurance that, you know,
they're on a legitimate HSBC website.
It's not run by a cyber squad or a phisher or something like that.
So you'll be more trusting with that information.
Alex?
I think, yes.
Hello, Alex.
Bernie?
Yeah, I can barely hear you.
But I just wanted to ask for the listeners, what's the maximum field length?
How many characters can you have up to on these top-level domain names?
You know, that's a good question.
I don't know.
I don't know the limit of that.
But there has been, I think, the largest one that I've seen was possibly .insurance
and the German equivalent of insurance, which is,
and I'm probably going to butcher the term, .versicherung.
If you start bringing German words into this, you're going to have very long strings there.
So that's something to be aware of.
That's right.
But, Alex, let me ask you this.
And, by the way, Bernie, you mentioned you could barely hear him.
A lot of our listeners have told us that they can barely hear anyone on the phone,
on whatever system we have running here.
So we're aware of that.
We're doing the best we can.
But if we turn it all the way up, we get horrible feedback too.
So we have to be very careful not to let that happen.
But here's the thing.
If you have, say, the example you used, .hsbc, they can run any machine they want to the left of the dot.
What if they run no machine at all or they don't have the second level there?
Would it be possible just to type hsbc into your browser and it will go to their site?
In other words, lose the dot.
That's right.
Well, this actually was an issue that came up very recently.
And it's called dotless domains.
And I believe that ICANN has ruled against that.
I think the Security and Stability Advisory Committee of ICANN had some more to say about that.
I don't remember exactly what they were.
But, for instance, Google was interested.
Google applied for dot search.
And we're interested in running it in an open fashion, actually.
It would be available to other search engine applicants, not just TLD applicants,
but to just be able to type search in.
And, boom, go to dot search.
But, apparently, that's not going to be possible as far as I understand it.
And another thing, going back to the implications of this program,
there's so many of them that the new TLDs are going to start rolling out over the next couple of months.
A really important one for us, because we're located in New York, is going to be dot NYC.
And I'm sure as we get closer to the rollout date of that,
I think we'll probably be talking more and more about that on the air.
But the first ones that are going to go live are the internationalized domain names.
So you can have dot whatever you want.
But it doesn't have to be in a Latin script anymore.
You could have dot com in Arabic.
You could have dot coke in Arabic.
You could have, you know, dot yucos in Russian, if you wanted to.
So the domain name system is going to change drastically.
And part and parcel with that change is what's coming down the piper changes to the Whois system as well.
And we got a piece of listener mail after the show last week from somebody by the name of the letter N.
I know it sounds like Sesame Street, but that was the person who wrote us in was the letter N.
And it doesn't really make sense, I think, to read the letter because it looked like it was forwarded from a public forum,
an ICANN public forum.
But there's a lot of discussions about changes to the Whois system now.
And a major change is basically going to be aggregating all the Whois data over all of these new top-level domains.
But here's the very troubling aspect is that there's plans to restrict that data, to restrict who can access that data,
and also to restrict even more than that who can access what elements of that data.
So this is all very, very problematic for, I think, almost obvious reasons.
We want Whois probably to be public because journalists, researchers, academics, the public,
and just curious people want to know who's behind what.
Yeah, but, Alex, unfortunately, what seems to have happened over the last few years with the backing of various registrars
who like to sell other products, almost everyone is registering domains privately.
So you don't know who owns a particular domain anymore.
That's right, yeah. And this is a big problem as well.
So there are reasons, I think, where you would want to have a privacy proxy on a domain.
But let's say you're a commercial entity. Let's say you're Pepsi, and you are registering various domain names.
Well, you shouldn't be able to hide behind a privacy proxy if you're a commercial entity.
Hey, Alex, can I register like don't-drink.pepsi, or is it going to be closed off?
If Pepsi is running.pepsi, I doubt they'd let you, right? Because wouldn't they be in charge of the registration then, too?
That's absolutely right. So the .brands, the .brand TLDs are generally going to be run as what's known as a closed registry.
And so you would not be allowed to have don't-drink.pepsi. Absolutely not. No, I don't think that they would like that.
But, you know, we think about what happened a couple of weeks ago.
We talked about it on the air when the so-called Syrian Electronic Army hacked the New York Times website,
but they did it by hacking the registrar through Melbourne IT.
So here's another potential avenue for hackers to target large companies and embarrass them in their own TLDs, possibly.
If they let you have drink.pepsi, you could have don't.drink.pepsi.
That's true. You could have a third level, which would be don't.
Yeah, but Pepsi still would be controlling that, I would imagine.
Yeah, Alex, while you're there, if you could just put in a registration for me for .sucks,
because then what I could do is I could just put whatever corporate name or person I want to put before to the left of the dot,
and they couldn't do anything about that. Rob?
This is also opening. I'm particularly interested in the introduction of non-standard script letters,
characters from other languages into the domain name system,
because some people might remember years ago there was an issue with a phishing site that claimed to be PayPal,
but their domain name was actually PayPi, P-A-Y-P-A-I,
and they used a capital I when they gave you a link, which looks like an L in your browser bar,
and so they were fooling people that way.
Now, other languages have a lot of letters that resemble English letters, but aren't,
and so it would be a different character in Unicode or what have you.
So we're going to have to now, I think, more closely examine even the domain names that we click on if we think they're proper.
So international second-level domain names have been around for a little while,
and they did think about this because there's like a Cyrillic letter that looks an awful lot,
or in most fonts, exactly the same as the English letter A,
so you would register PayPal but with Cyrillic As and no one would be able to tell the difference.
So there are rules about which, like if you use some Russian characters,
you have to use a whole bunch of Russian characters and rules like that.
I don't know the details, but I would assume that these rules are going to apply to the top-level domains as well.
Interesting.
This is really interesting.
Basically, I think Russia has a top-level domain that is in Cyrillic,
and they also have a Latin version of that.
They're one exception at this point, but I do know there are countries that use Cyrillic
that are really excited and have applied and been denied in the past.
For instance, Ukraine, they're .ua, but I know for the longest time they've tried to get .ykp,
which is the Cyrillic Y and the Cyrillic K and possibly the P.
It could be all Cyrillic, as Mike was just saying.
They ought to have a lot of Cyrillic if they're going to be that at all.
So they've been denied in the past, and they've said,
and in fact, when we were there, we were traveling,
we talked to some people there that worked in the industry and tech and hosting,
and they were saying basically that they hoped very soon that this would come through,
and it sounds like it is.
That's an example of it.
So they'll be very thrilled in Ukraine.
Yeah, absolutely.
And the country code top-level domains, like .ru for Russia, .us for the U.S.,
they're another entity all to themselves as well.
And they're generally the two-letter character abbreviations that follow the,
I think it's the ISO 3166-1 standard for country code abbreviations.
And the .ykr, I think, which would kinetically sound out U-K-R,
Y-K-P, I believe, would sound out U-K-R in English.
I think there may have been an application for that.
I also believe, to go back to your point, Emanuel, that there is a .socks,
I think that there is, and there's also a .wtf and a .rip,
and these caused a lot of consternation to brand owners over the last year.
People are afraid that these are just going to be,
gripe sites are going to be popping up about them.
I personally think that it's wonderful to have a space like that,
but I think maybe that space should be restricted to gripe sites.
But I think we'll talk more about that some other time.
But to go back to the who is,
it I think would be of particular interest to our listeners.
Part of the proposals that have been circulating through ICANN
is actually to get rid of port 43 who is functionality.
This basically means, in my understanding,
the command line usage of who is.
So you would not be allowed to use,
or they would be doing away with the command line version of who is.
That's something I don't want to see go.
Me either.
Another question I wanted to ask you, Alex.
You mentioned this before, but could you tell me again
the number of applicants that went for this?
That's right.
So there were 1,906 applications total.
You're multiplying that by the registration fee?
Yes.
And what was the registration fee again?
By $185,000.
$185,000.
You're going to blow out your calculator there.
Thankfully I'm using a fairly powerful phone,
so that works out to $352,610,000.
And I'm suddenly realizing that I'm in completely the wrong line of work
because I would love to be in a business
where I could just create a market for something like that.
Couldn't they just, with that money,
build high-speed rail all throughout the U.S.?
Or send somebody to Mars?
They could build stops at all our houses, I think.
Wow.
You remember when work involved work?
Yeah, I do remember that.
I remember the stories anyway.
Alex, listen, we're going to take some listener phone calls,
and as you know, we only have two lines.
I appreciate it.
And I'm sure there's big wigs for you to hobnob with over there.
Oh, yeah.
There's no question, absolutely.
The $352,000,000 is going to be spent, I think, mostly on dinner tonight.
All right.
Well, just make sure that nobody registers either .WBAI or .2600,
or certainly not .Emmanuel.
I wouldn't want that to happen.
And we'll see you back in the studio, hopefully soon.
That sounds good.
That sounds good, gentlemen.
I wish you the best of luck with the rest of the show.
Talk to you guys soon.
All right.
Have a good night.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
And that's our correspondent Alex over at the GTLD Congress
in Midtown Manhattan at an undisclosed hotel.
That shall remain nameless.
We have some interesting news.
If you know, we've been upgrading our website over recent months.
And one of the things that we've done is basically opened up the floodgates
and allowed all of our radio shows, all the way back from the first one,
which, by the way, next week will be our 25th anniversary.
Do you know that?
Twenty-five years of this madness.
Yeah.
I think October 7th, October 8th, one of those.
It's not the exact date, but it's close enough.
In 1988, that was our first show.
But every single radio show that we have ever done,
and that includes other radio shows on other radio stations,
is now available at high fidelity, 128k.
Previously, it was available at 16k BBS.
And what that means is it's a lot better sounding.
It sounds, in most cases, as good as it does when it goes over the radio.
It's in stereo.
It's high fidelity.
But there is an unfortunate side effect to this that we only just learned about,
and that is that our bandwidth charges have gone way up
as a result of everybody downloading all these shows.
So, basically, what we've done is we've decided to be nice and generous
and give away all this material and basically add a lot of hard drive space.
But for that privilege, we are now being asked to cough up quite a bit of change
because so many people are doing that.
So what we are asking our dear listeners to do, our listeners on the Internet,
is to make use of something that you may have heard about in the media,
you may actually use.
It's castigated most times because it's said to be the tools of pirates,
only used for nefarious purposes and illegal downloading.
But we know that's not the case.
Talking about BitTorrent and what we are doing now,
how effective with this show is making it available on torrents.
And what does that mean, Kyle?
You've been sort of instrumental in setting this up.
Well, basically, starting with this show and on into the future,
every show will be available as a torrent file.
So you'd go to the regular page or otherwise,
find where you're going to get your show and click on the torrent link
instead of saving the entire file.
And then that torrent file is then basically a pointer
that you would put into a torrent client.
And you'd use that client to find the swarm of that file that's available
through other people that are seeding the file.
And we're just getting started with it.
Seeding swarms? It sounds scary. It sounds like a science fiction movie.
Actually, there's a happy way to put this,
which is that all our listeners who are getting hold of the file
then take over from us and share that file with their fellow listeners
who also want to get hold of it.
So you guys out there, you get to grab the file at first
and then share your copy of it with everyone else who wants it
and take some of the burden off of us, which we very much appreciate.
And basically as an adjunct to this, if this goes well,
down the road we will introduce other of the past shows
and make the entirety available such that it is online
and in the internet forever and in a huge peer-to-peer swarm.
Well, it's also interesting. I'm learning a lot about this myself
because I just don't have time to deal with this kind of thing.
But from what I've been able to tell so far,
it actually can increase the speed so that people can download the shows faster.
Yeah, it's really, really cool to see.
But it does involve another step.
You get a very small torrent file and then that is entered into your client,
which is another application in your web browser in most cases.
So that is making it a little bit more complex.
But the benefit is that everyone is sharing their bandwidth
and thus the burden.
It's a lot easier for us to implement this than to say,
does anybody have some bandwidth they want to give us?
Everybody has bandwidth they want to give you,
but they're not the ones, you know, they then have control.
But what this does is basically puts everybody in control
instead of us negotiating how we can get some kind of mirror set up
and doing all of that work ourselves.
It's just basically using a technology that we've talked about a lot
and exploiting it for everybody's gain.
And you see the true power of the community
and just how file sharing can make things much better for everybody.
Yeah, and what we've noticed and what this could do
is if people start using this a lot,
this could make these shows available at speeds faster
than we could ever pay for.
Yeah, and also available forever in many different sites.
If New York gets taken out by some kind of a hydrogen bomb
or something like that.
Wait, what?
Well, no, if it did.
Start over with the hydrogen bomb?
Well, any kind of bomb, really.
But the point is if we're all destroyed, right,
and there's nothing left but ashes,
well, our servers might be affected by it.
They certainly would be affected by that, I believe.
And it might be hard to get some shows.
You'd have to ask people,
did you download the show over there in, say, Botswana
or wherever you happen to be.
But this way it's already spread all over the place
so they can't take us out.
Another great thing about BitTorrent is it's a robust technology.
It's been around for ages, and it's very easy to use.
So if you're a part of the population
that has never used BitTorrent before,
just do some searches for whatever computer operating system you use
plus BitTorrent client, and you will find so much out there.
There's so many guides to help you set this up
and get you started in it.
It's my hope that this will, as you say,
introduce a lot of people to the Torrent world
so that they can see how they can help
by doing file sharing themselves, how file sharing works,
and not just believe what the mass media says
about it just being used to download movies and music
and things like that.
It's great for files of all sorts,
and this is a perfect example.
We want you to do this, and it will help us.
It will save us from having to pay a huge amount every month
to have something of high fidelity available.
So once this show is posted online,
you'll see a little Torrent link.
You click on that link, and you get a little tiny Torrent file.
Anybody want to explain what happens after that?
Assuming you don't have a Torrent client, what do you do then?
The thing to do, you should get a Torrent client first
because then you just click the link,
and your Torrent client magically opens,
and it'll be a lot easier.
Okay, so your Torrent client opens,
and what happens when it does that?
It starts to download the file not only from the central server
but from your peers as well,
and in addition, it will be sharing bits of the file with everyone.
Okay, and will you be arrested for this?
Probably not.
Okay, good, good, because it's not illegal.
It's great. It's amazing. It's what the Internet is all about.
Never stopped the police before.
All right, true, but what happens if you want to be
one of the people seeding the show?
How do you do that?
It just happens.
It just happens.
Yeah, it will automatically.
Because you downloaded it, in most clients,
it'll be in your quote download folder,
and that will be seeded to the rest of the Internet.
So as soon as it's there, or even parts of it, I think,
parts of it there will then begin to be offered in chunks
to other people that are looking for that file,
and they can move it from that folder and turn that off.
Well, does that mean that a hacker can get into my system
and steal my identity?
No.
Well, I mean, again, not related, but they might be able to.
Not because of that thing?
No, no, no, but, you know.
All right, yes, Bernie, go ahead.
I'm wondering, are there Internet service providers
that are blocking people's use of BitTorrent,
and would that prevent them from doing this?
That is a caveat.
You may have to look into some proxying
to find out what your provider is allowing or not allowing,
or if you have to change ports in some ways, some cases,
that could come up as an issue.
So do a little bit of research,
but we're hoping that the vast majority of people
will be able to use this technology,
and that in and of itself will offset the load
that we're currently seeing.
Even if a percentage of people did this,
it would probably be enough to scale it down
so that we wouldn't have to pay extra
to have the shows available.
It's simply because we put Off the Wall Up yesterday
in torrent version, and we didn't announce it.
We didn't tell anybody.
We just put a little link up, and within minutes,
it was already being seeded around the world,
which was pretty cool.
So now that we're talking about it
and we're going to announce it,
I think it should do quite well.
Rob?
And again, if you might have heard scary things about torrents
that they're illegal, that you'll get in trouble,
this is us telling you you won't
because you can't get in trouble for sharing things
that people want you to share.
We would love you to share our stuff.
Right.
If you start trading wares, though,
obviously you're putting yourself at risk doing that,
but simply downloading and seeding files
that people like us want you to share,
that's what it's all about.
That is the true purpose.
So please help us out with that and let us know how it goes.
Let's see if we can take some phone calls.
We only have a couple of minutes left.
212-650-5782 is our telephone number.
And again, I believe the fundraiser begins next week,
and this is a particularly key one
as WBAI is in a transitional stage.
And history will be written, I think,
with the results of this particular drive.
We are also working on getting people premiums
from the spring and summer drives.
If you have not received them yet,
then we're working on it.
Just believe us when we say that.
And any questions or problems,
you can always email us, oth at 2600.com.
We have a listener phone call.
212-650-5782.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up.
Go ahead.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Speak up.
Yeah, I'm Elliot.
I'm calling from Ghana.
You're calling from Ghana?
Yeah.
You're actually listening to us in Ghana?
Yeah.
Okay.
What city are you in?
Yeah, I'm in...
I'm in Goa, the Votar region.
Okay.
And do you listen to us every week from Ghana?
Yeah, every Wednesday.
Wow.
We charge about $1 to listen to the show.
Okay.
Yeah.
What I want to say is,
what I usually do is,
as I'm listening,
I'm recording onto my PC.
So, I don't have to download the CPi
to get it to the internet.
So, it goes...
If somebody can use that trick,
to download that,
to record us,
we are listening online.
Sure.
Then it can save some bandwidth.
Yeah, so what you're saying you're doing
is you're recording the show
as you listen to it online
so you don't have to download it again later,
which should work.
What software do you use for that?
No, I use Line Automate
and I just use a sound recorder.
So, actually what I did was
create a connection with my speaker
and then fix it into my PC's microphone port.
Okay.
That's pretty excellent.
Thank you for sharing this.
And I'm guessing that's also a great method
for people with limited bandwidth
who maybe don't want to download the big file again.
You just get it while you're getting it.
Yeah, secondly,
what I would like to talk about
is about the iPhone's new fingerprint.
What I want to say is
it's like giving more room for forensics.
Because people who,
like let's say,
when you've done something messy with your iPhone,
someone can easily,
or someone who is good at fingerprinting your iPhone,
because it's metallic,
get whatever your fingerprint
and then log on onto your phone.
So, I think it's a flaw.
It's a flaw in their new latest innovation.
Yeah, that's a bit about what we were saying earlier,
is that when somebody physically has your phone,
they have access to the data on there.
It might be difficult,
it might be easy,
but they have access to it
and there isn't really a way around that, I don't think.
I've actually long thought that
all these phones that use touchscreens
are just a great place to look for fingerprints
because people are touching them all the time.
Yeah, it's true.
What I'm trying to say is that
somebody using a phone with a touchscreen,
with your finger on the touchscreen,
okay, it's also possible.
Nothing is possible without technology.
True.
Yeah.
All right, listen,
we're going to move on to other phone calls,
but thanks so much for calling us
and please spread the word in Ghana
of Off The Hook and WBAI.
All right, all right.
You're welcome.
All right, take care.
Wow, that was amazing.
We got a phone call from Ghana.
That was really cool.
I don't think that's ever happened before.
I wonder how he was making the phone call.
Do you think that was VoIP or...
I hope so.
It may have been.
Yeah, I mean, I hope he wasn't paying a lot for that call.
The quality was a bit off, but...
I had trouble hearing...
You guys were able to understand better than I was,
but I was just blown away by the fact
that we got a call from Ghana.
It was especially like when he was speaking quickly,
like an entire sentence or two.
It was pretty tough to make it out.
All right, 212-650-5782.
We only have a couple of minutes left,
so if you're out there
and you have something to say to us,
now is the time to call in.
We probably won't be able to take phone calls for October
because of the fundraiser,
so this is as good a time as any.
212-650-5782.
And I know as soon as I turn Bernie's microphone on,
we'll hear the sound of the phone ringing.
Bernie, maybe you have to start saying...
I'm here.
If you start saying something,
then invariably someone calls.
I didn't know that was a prompt.
Okay.
Well, that was great.
We got a call from Ghana,
and I'm not surprised, frankly.
There you go.
There you go.
Good work, Bernie.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Hello, my name is...
Yes, what country are you calling from?
Oh, United States.
Okay, good, good.
Okay, we welcome our calls from there.
What's on your mind?
Oops, sorry.
I got to go.
Sorry.
Okay, nice talking to you.
212-650-5782.
Bernie, you were saying...
I was saying I'm not surprised
we had to call her from Ghana
because there's a lot of Ghanians in New York
and Philadelphia and other places,
and, you know,
they're tuned into American culture,
and I'm not surprised
they're listening to Off the Hook.
All right, thank you very much.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yes, good evening.
How are you doing?
Okay, how are you?
Okay.
You know,
a really unique means of identification,
of course,
and with all the microphone inputs,
would be voiceprint identification.
Why not just employ that?
Everybody's voice is unique,
just like their fingerprint.
Yes, but could you not record
an episode of Off the Hook
and then play my voice back,
and that way...
It wouldn't be the same
as the original voice
right into straight into the microphone.
Well, I'd like to think that
it's sensitive enough to tell the difference,
but based on the sound quality
that I hear from most of these phones,
I can't say for sure
that would be the case.
Mike?
I also have to say, like,
I know this is a thing people do.
I don't like to talk to my phone.
I will use the phone
to talk to another human being,
but I do not like to converse vocally
with my phone,
and I know I'm maybe even
in the minority on this.
You don't like to converse vocally with me?
I'm conversing vocally with you right now.
Well, now you are
because I brought it up,
but, yeah, no.
Even if you were to recite
just a predetermined phrase
into your phone,
such as a password
or something like that,
that you can change at random
as long as it matches the voiceprint.
I mean, this is not a huge, like,
argument either way,
but I personally would feel
very silly doing that.
You know, my phone,
it's not a smartphone,
but it has a special locking feature
where you have to press one key
and then press a second key,
and if you forget that,
it says on the screen,
press this key followed by the other key.
It's not really a security lock, I guess.
It's to keep me from making pocket calls,
but I guess if you just hold onto your phone,
maybe that's the best security yet.
Also, voice-based passwords
are another technology
that was cracked
by the 1996 movie Sneakers.
Yes.
Always look to Sneakers
to find the answers
to these security questions.
Hey, we're out of time.
If you want to write to us
here at Off The Hook,
oth at 2600.com,
that's our email address.
We look forward
to the October fundraiser
and hope that we do well
and hope the station does well
and hope for a new future
and all that.
If you see anything of interest
that you want us to know about,
by all means,
again, email us,
oth at 2600.com.
Stay tuned for
The Personal Computer Show
coming up next here on WBAI.
Have a good night.
Machines should work.
People should think.
Machines should work.
People should think,
What do you say, Fatboy Slim out there?
All right, okay, okay, okay, well, you know what that means, it's time for something special.