This is WBAI 99.5 FM in New York and this is Iggy Pop.
And you are listening to WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
Time is just about 7pm.
Time for a very special episode of Off The Hook.
This is WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
And you are listening to WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
And you are listening to WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
And you are listening to WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
Yes, that is the number 10.
We're a big fan of the number 10 today because there's something special going on involving the number 10.
And we've got a big crowd here in the studio to tell you all about it.
Let's see, who have we got in here?
This is Rob T. Firefly here with you and I'm joined in the studio by Mike.
There's a lot of people pointing at me right now. It's really weird.
And Mitch Altman is here.
Howdy.
Aesthetics is here.
Hello.
Night Owl is here.
Hi there.
And Neo is here.
Saludos and greetings.
There is a big crowd and on the phone I believe we have Bernie S.
Bernie, are you there?
Wow.
You know what we haven't learned to do in all these years is operate a telephone.
And I believe I've lost him again.
Well, he'll try us back and we'll do what we've got to do.
We'll do what we've got to do.
But until then, we've got a special episode in the works because this is the eve of the eve of the 10th Hope Conference,
Hope X as we call it in Roman.
And some of this crowd in here are folks that are helping us out with it in various ways.
So, yeah, what have we got going on, Mike?
We have so much going on that it's a bit overwhelming.
The conference starts on Friday.
But, of course, the setup for it starts tomorrow.
So I guess Mitch is here and he is coming to town.
When did you arrive in town?
I got here a couple of days ago.
And I know you're always working on a million things for all conferences and just in general.
But what are some of the things you've been working on for Hope?
Well, the main thing I've been working on is organizing the mezzanine,
which has a huge hardware hacking area with lots of workshops.
There's also lots of art.
What does that mean for hardware hacking for people who don't know?
So it can mean just about anything you like, which is convenient.
Mitch, you're not helping.
So I put out the call for people to give workshops on whatever they wanted to give workshops on.
So pretty much people who make anything.
So there is workshops.
Of course, I'm giving a workshop on Arduino for total newbies and how to solder.
Solder. I'm back in America.
How to solder so people can make cool things with electronics.
And there's people who have a workshop on how to set up your own GSM telephone system.
Wait, wait.
So I can come to Hope and I can learn how to set up a telephone system?
Yeah.
In midtown Manhattan?
In midtown Manhattan.
Midtown Manhattan.
And the incumbent telephone operators won't get mad at me?
No, it's not illegal to learn how to set up your own telephone system.
Are you sure?
Yeah.
All right.
So how do I do it?
Come to the workshop and find out.
All right.
I'm not an expert on that.
I'm pretty good at organizing people into giving workshops of things they're interested in.
And one of the people happens to be interested in an expert on this.
So they're totally happy and willing to share that with you.
So if you can find a few moments in your organizing of Hope, that would be a great thing to do.
Okay.
I believe we might have Bernie back.
Bernie, are you there?
You're not there, are you?
No.
What kind of phone is Bernie on this week?
Rob is shrugging near the microphone but silently.
So it's hard to say.
And Mitch is working.
I'm looking at your phone, which our audience can't see, but it's full of colored boxes.
Yeah.
So these colored boxes are all workshops because there's too many to memorize them.
One of them is someone I met in Urbana, Illinois, who created a musical instrument out of hard disk drives and other e-waste.
And he's giving a talk at Hope, and he's giving a workshop on how to make your own.
We have a pile of hard disk drives that anyone can use to turn into musical instruments.
There's someone else who I've known for a while who's giving a workshop on colored lights, red, green, blue.
You're going to have to narrow it down, Mitch, because if there's one thing I've learned from attending all these conferences,
it's that there's many, many varieties of colored lights.
And I was going to say hackers love them all, but really I think everyone loves just randomly blinking lights.
But what specifically are the lights going to do?
So these are strips of light, and they've become really popular in the last year or two.
So you mix red, green, and blue together in various intensities, and you can get just about any color.
That's the way color monitors get color.
And that's how you get color on your phone if you have one of those things.
So he's made it very, very easy to make your own very complex patterns of colored lights to light up rooms
or to maybe make Nyan Cat if you wave it back and forth.
So that's just one of the things.
There's someone else doing a music one using Dataglove, which is something that I helped create back in the 80s.
And now anyone can do it, not for a quarter million like back then dollars, but more for a few dollars.
And he uses that as a musical instrument.
Do we have Bernie on the phone yet?
There's always hope.
So, yeah, and speaking of Bernie, he helped set up kind of a workshop where people can take the FCC exam for amateur radio license.
And you can become a ham radio operator at Hope.
And there's also workshops on how you can use the Freedom of Information Act for total beginners and then an advanced one.
So that is not an electronic device, the Freedom of Information Act.
No, but it is a workshop on how to do something that might be worthwhile.
So I can learn how to get my...
I did this once, not from this workshop, but I got the records of everywhere I've traveled internationally.
I imagine it would require several rainforests worth of paper, Mitch, if you were to request that.
So other people can learn how to do that here and how to get more information probably than I got.
Yeah, you can ask for all sorts of information, not just where you've been, which you already know,
but what kind of information any kind of government agency has on you or something that you're interested in.
One thing I did learn, though, is that you can't actually FOIA yourself for the contents of an NSA program that is classified even though it's leaked.
I think it was PRISM around the time that PRISM came out.
A whole bunch of people, like somebody created an automated tool that you could just submit your name and,
oh, the NSA is surely going to give you all the information they have about you that they've collected.
And no, they gave me a form letter saying that they couldn't.
So there are limits to what this can do.
Better than having the rainforest paper with a big black splotch on it saying redacted, redacted, redacted, redacted.
Yeah. And I mean, I don't I don't want to make you read this whole schedule, but this is just we've just heard a part of it so far.
And that this whole schedule of colored boxes is just one part of the larger conference.
We're going to have a bunch of talks as well in aesthetics. You're giving a talk.
I am. Yeah. Basically about online names and online identity stuff.
And so, by the way, the way that I got into all this stuff was a couple of years ago,
Google Plus rolled out and they had this policy called the real names policy.
And they were just kind of haphazardly suspending all kinds of people.
My favorite example, they actually suspended William Shatner.
Like Captain Kirk got suspended from Google Plus because they didn't believe it was really him.
Now, so you are, as far as I'm concerned, really aesthetics. But Google, I guess, disagreed.
Google thought it like the name did not look like what became called as a name shaped name.
So, like, if your name is John Smith or I guess John Smallberries, you're fine.
Thanks, Buckaroo Bonsai. Or the word freed isn't good enough either.
Oh, right, right, right. Or anything in Unicode.
Heaven forbid you should have a name that's in a different language. It doesn't pass the filters.
Yeah. So something had changed along those lines just yesterday, I believe.
I think it was yesterday. Yeah. And I mean, there's any number of circumstances which may have led to this.
But Google went ahead and came out with, I guess it was a blog or Google Plus post in or something under the Google account,
saying that they are the terms of are basically they're no longer enforcing what was called the real names policy
and that they're allowing people to use any name they choose on Google service.
And I mean, I assume this is within reason. For example, you can't do identity fraud or anything like that.
But this was a monumental shift and got all over the blogosphere. It was on various news sites and whatnot.
Do you have a handle on how even this more limited policy will be enforced?
What's that?
Mitch is pointing out that handle is a good choice of words here.
But do you have a handle on how this more limited policy might be enforced or is it still too early to say?
I think it's still too early to say. I mean, one of the questions I have, this is actually I'd have to look at the exact dates,
but I think this is the three year anniversary of what was called Nim Wars, where Google was suspended everyone.
So, I mean, it's a great anniversary present. I just wish I was I'm not in a relationship with Google anymore.
But if I were, I'd be really happy to have this. So, you know, it's all kind of up in the air.
OK, I'm going to try this once again. Are you there, Bernie?
I'm here. Oh, my God. Excellent. And we've just been joined by another friend of ours.
Cheshire Catalyst is here. Hi there. Hello. OK, everything's coming up. Hope staff.
Wow. So, Bernie, what while we have you, why don't you tell us about some of the many things you've been working on?
Oh, well, I've had my fingers in too many pies. This is Hope X. Everything from movie coordinator.
We have several really interesting films playing at Hope this year.
And we have been working with Mitch on projects and workshops.
We have an amateur radio station set up on the 18th floor or will very shortly to reach numerous countries around the world without infrastructure.
I've been involved in a speaker committee with vetting about 100 speakers.
Actually, we vetted a lot more than that. We had to distill it down to about 100 speakers.
It would be so cruel, but I'm really tempted to ask you about some of the ones that were rejected.
But maybe you can tell us about some that we accepted instead.
Well, you know what? Some of the ones that were rejected can still get in on speaking at Hope.
There is a fourth room called the U-Room where you can sign up.
Anybody can, even you, Mike, can sign up for either a one-hour slot or for a five-minute lightning talk slot in a U-Room.
Hey, Bernie, did we get a talk submission from the director of the NSA?
Actually, we did get an offer from the NRA. No, the NSA. It's like the HAL thing with IBM.
The letters are just off a little bit.
No, but we just couldn't fit the NSA into our schedule this year.
We had more important speakers this year, so that's how that goes.
I mean, among the many speakers, I mean, any of our speakers is more important than the NSA.
But among the entities more important than the NSA, as we discussed last week, we'll have Edward Snowden speaking, will we not?
We will, and he will be having a public conversation with an earlier whistleblower from an earlier generation, Daniel Ellsberg.
This is really a historic event where these two renowned whistleblowers who have made a huge impact on American conversation
and, I'm hopeful, on government policy with regards to our lives and how our lives are affected.
We're going to hear their live insights on these things.
We'll hear him and Daniel Ellsberg will be there in person.
So this is really exciting. I can't recall anything like this in my lifetime ever happening before.
Certainly not at an event I've ever been involved with, but this year it's happening.
That is at 1 o'clock on Saturday in the Manning Room, named after Chelsea Manning, another whistleblower who, unfortunately, is in prison for about 35 years.
Thomas Drake, another NSA whistleblower, will be there.
He'll be speaking with film director Vivian Weissman on a talk called War on Whistleblowers.
That, I believe, is Friday afternoon.
There's just so much going on.
If you go to x.hope.net and click on the button that says Schedule, you'll see about 100 speakers on some really fascinating topics.
Not all of it is political.
A lot of it is just about technical stuff, but really interesting technical stuff with regards to privacy, anonymity, building something electronic.
Just the whole gamut of things that are of interest to folks in the hacker community will be on full display at x.hope.
That's excellent.
You mentioned the film, and of course we've got a full film program going on with some awesome things curated into it, which is fun.
Here at the show, we actually got an email recently from one of our regular listeners, Sanda, who asked us if anyone has seen The Internet's Own Boy, the story of Aaron Schwartz, the documentary by Brian Knappenberger.
I'd love to hear your opinion, says Sanda.
Of course, I have not seen the film yet.
I don't know if anyone in the room has.
I'm getting various—
I'm not ruining it for anyone else.
No spoilers.
There is a place where we can see it very soon, isn't there, Bernie?
Saturday night at 10 o'clock at x.hope in the Manning Room, you will be able to see The Internet's Own Boy, the story of Aaron Schwartz, introduced live by director Brian Knappenberger, who will then be doing a Q&A after the film.
That will be followed by another film that's just out, not in theaters yet, called Algorithm.
It's actually a science fiction film.
Well, not really science fiction, but a fictional thriller kind of film dubbed by the director, who we really seem to know what he's talking about, is being very realistic.
I've seen some trailers of it.
It's worth catching.
And there will be free vegan popcorn at that midnight screening.
Bernie, isn't popcorn usually vegan?
Well, you never know what they're going to put on it that might not be vegan.
I think it's kosher.
It depends on how they kill the corn.
Now that I've killed the room.
But, yeah, we've got those.
We've got some other really cool movies.
There's another movie from Monochrome that's going to be showing, and I'm going to try to pronounce this on the radio.
Oh, good.
It should be entertaining in and of itself.
Die Gichtensaga?
The Rise of Exenfriedl?
Maybe.
But it's by our friends at Monochrome, Johannes Grenzfurthner and others.
And Johannes will be there, I believe, with the film.
And, of course, they never disappoint.
They're always completely out of their minds.
Another movie, War on Whistleblowers, free press in the national security state.
And, you know, there are other reasons to come to Hope, too.
It's not just to watch the movies.
There's going to be a concert, electronic music, if you're into that sort of thing.
Do not miss it.
There's all kinds of other cool things going on.
Some great talks.
And, yeah, I'm excited.
How about you guys?
Like 150 talks, is it?
Oh, is that all?
And probably some art, too, right?
Yep.
There's an art area that's been curated.
Some really interesting stuff is going to show up in there.
I've had an early look at some of it, thanks to my sources.
And, yeah, it's worth looking at.
It's going to be worth it.
And it's going to be just another interesting thing you could do at the conference.
I'm just looking through this talks list in addition to the ones we mentioned.
There's so many others that are interesting,
one of which is going to be given by Cheshire, who's in the room with us.
And so maybe you can tell us a bit about that.
Excellent.
Well, I'm rather proud and honored to be the first session that kicks off the event,
even though it's on the secondary track.
The talk is called Are You Ready to Sip the Kool-Aid?
SIP, of course, is the acronym for Session Initiation Protocol,
which I consider the gateway drug into voiceover IP, voiceover Internet protocol.
And the talk will be about Asterisk, which is open source PBX.
If you've got a dusty old IBM PC-compatible computer lying around with a few open slots,
you can pick up a line card and a station card,
plug them into your computer, and turn it into a PBX, a private branch exchange.
You do have to go find yourself a carrier that will accept the voiceover Internet protocol.
But basically you'll have your own IVR system, your interactive voice response.
And the reason I'm proud to be the kickoff session is because of the roots of 2600 Magazine,
being Phone Freak Roots.
And, of course, I'm from the old TAP newsletter from the 1970s and 80s.
So that's why I'm honored to help kick off the sessions for the entire HOPE conference.
Hey, Cheshire?
I'm not sure that Cheshire can hear you.
We're going to pass him some headphones.
I just wanted to ask, I don't know if Cheshire can hear me or not.
Yes, I can.
Can you hear me, Cheshire?
Yes, I can. Go ahead, Bernie.
All right. You know, there'll be a lot of phone freaks.
So one of the most surprising ones who's coming is NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake.
He's an old phone freak.
He's a reformed, he says, blue-boxing phone freak and former reader of 2600 Magazine.
Can you believe that?
Oh, that's great. Oh, I can believe it, certainly.
We have Bill Horne, who is the editor of Telecom Digest, which I think you probably read over the years.
Oh, yes.
It's the oldest Internet newsletter still in existence.
He will be going over the history of the 30-some year history of Telecom Digest
and all the interesting things that have happened in the telecom field since the beginning of that newsletter.
Bill Horne, that's a late Sunday in the main room.
That's very good.
Yeah, I especially wanted to bring in some of the voice over IP technology into the conference
because blue boxes just don't work anymore.
Now, there is a telephone number set up where if you have a blue box
or have downloaded the blue box app for your Android device,
you can call it up and play blue boxing on that particular VOIP system.
But to actually crawl through the network, that stuff just doesn't work anymore.
And so the asterisk system allows people to go explore the telephone network again,
the public switch telephone network, which is now accessible through voice over IP.
Excellent, excellent.
One of the main events that's going on, we've got another speaker who's doing our keynote.
His name slips my mind.
Any of you guys know who that might be?
No idea.
Which one?
One that we haven't mentioned already?
I don't know if we can mention the one that we haven't mentioned already.
That's very confusing.
Okay, go ahead and mention him.
I really don't know which one we haven't mentioned.
We'll have to mention both of them.
This is really confusing, Rob.
Why don't you just tell us?
And this is why I'm the backup guy.
Okay, so we have a conversation with Edward Snowden happening.
We did mention that while you were, I think, dialing the phone.
Well, no wonder I missed it.
But we can talk about it some more if you have new information.
I don't have new information.
In fact, what I will do instead is we got a couple more listener e-mails.
I'll just touch on them really quick.
They're all on topic.
They have to do with Hope.
Matt writes, very excited about upcoming Hope.
Hopefully, the hotel pen has resolved the air conditioner issues that I seem to remember from last Hope have been resolved.
And, of course, we think the hotel is a cool place.
And, of course,
That might have to do.
One of the reasons.
So, I mean, we haven't mentioned it.
It's basically impossible, right, to have a hacker conference in midtown Manhattan, the most expensive real estate in the country, if not the world.
And we get to take it over, you know, nonstop all through the night for three days straight.
And one of the ways we can do that is to choose a place where maybe the air conditioning works but not quite as well as we would like.
And, of course, the.
I should just remind some of the folks in the room who are not here every week that the microphones are directional and we don't all have headphones.
So, you can't know if you can hear yourself as a test.
But if you're nowhere near the microphone, then it probably won't work.
Right.
But, yeah, the hotel has been renovating itself since time immemorial.
And we think they've been doing a decent job and hopefully all will be well.
Sean writes us.
Hey, there, guys.
Hope you're well despite the crap going on with your ex-distributors.
For those not familiar with that saga, go to 2600.com and prepare to weep.
I went to hope number nine, which was my first hope conference.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend this one, but I thought I'd share this observation.
I noticed that many of your between talk speakers would remind people that they need to eat and sleep.
I forgot what that snappy little formula was.
Okay, Sean, I will remind you what that snappy little formula was, as well as anyone listening who's coming to the conference.
It's a little something called the 5-2-1 rule, where every day of a conference, make sure to get yourself five hours of sleep, two square meals, and one shower or bath.
These are the minimums in order to take the best possible care of not only yourself but those around you.
And, of course, we appreciate that.
Is this not obvious to anyone?
Sometimes we forget.
Sometimes we forget.
And, at times, logistics do get in the way.
Indeed.
So, we all do our best.
Sean goes on to write, hope was a very nice experience.
I learned how to solder.
I picked locks for the first time.
I dragged my copy of Dear Hacker all the way from Chicago just for a manual signature, which is no mean feat because that book is huge.
And I just couldn't help but notice how freaking happy Bernie S. looked all weekend.
I've got to say, there are a few things that bring me as much joy as being part of an event that brings so much fascinating information to so many people who are voraciously drinking it up.
It's all about information sharing of stuff that you just never knew about and wanted to know about, and it's all there at HOPEx.
Absolutely.
And, of course, it always is very nice and comforting for all of us to see a big smile on your face, Bernie.
And I was pleasantly surprised, Sean goes on, to see that the Hotel Pennsylvania looked a thousand percent better than I remembered it when I had to go there for work in 1999.
Hopefully, I'll be able to make it in 2016, and we hope that you'll make it as well.
You can all send us an email, oth at 2600.com, and we'd love to hear from you.
I think one of the things that's really magical about the conference, like, of course, anything looks a thousand percent better when it's filled with hackers and not some boring event that you're required to go to for work.
Absolutely.
I mean, this studio looks so much better just having the bunch of us in here because we're usually not this full.
But all your smiling faces just really brings joy to my heart.
One thing I want to remind people, I've seen rumors about this on Twitter.
We will be selling tickets at the door for as long as supplies last.
There are rumors going around that Hope has sold out.
That is not true.
You can still come and get a ticket at the door.
Excellent.
Okay, I'm going to try and get another guest on the phone.
So while I'm doing that, if you guys can take this.
Bernie, I apologize in advance if you get dropped because of this system.
If that happens, I'll just bow out.
Telephone technology is really an amazing thing, especially WBAI's implementation thereof.
But Mitch, you're just involved in so many things.
I know you told us about some already, but I'm sure you have some more.
Well, I wanted to say something, too, just about Hope in general.
It really is a magical event.
The first Hacker Conference I went to was Hope 6.
That was in 2006.
And it changed my life forever, totally.
I was living a life I really loved living.
But going to Hope 6 opened me up to a whole new world with so many amazing people.
And at that point, there were hardly any hacker spaces in the entire planet.
And I didn't know I was about to start one.
But life is kind of strange when you meet people.
One of the great things with Hope and other hacker conferences is it's a huge event with all these people who love what they do.
And unfortunately, that's not the case of the world at large.
But a vast majority of people at Hope love what they do.
And it's totally amazing when you're surrounded by people loving what they do.
It's very inspiring.
So I was inspired by Hope.
And then the next Hacker Conference I went to, which was in Germany, to start a hacker space, which led me to giving workshops,
which led me to giving workshops all over the world and getting more involved with hacker conferences and then helping organize them.
And one thing leads to another.
And I love my life even more now than I did.
And if I can help inspire that in others, that makes me happy.
You're giving a gift to everybody at Hope, aren't you, Mitch?
I don't know if you heard you.
The question was that, Mitch, you're giving a gift to everyone who attends the conference.
Yeah, yeah.
So this Hope, I'm going to give a pair of trip glasses for free to every attendee who comes to Hope.
What is a trip glass or a pair of trip glasses, I guess?
Trip glasses.
Yeah.
What's a half of a pair?
Anyways, they've been demonstrated on the radio, which doesn't work as well as it might because it's sort of a visual experience.
But they're glasses that have a 14-minute meditation sequence that plays through light and sound.
And if you wear them with your eyes gently closed, you follow along and you meditate.
And what makes it even more fun and wonderful is that you see beautiful colors and patterns from your imagination.
And it's really wonderful.
So anyways, I've made lots of these things and I've made all my money from them.
So now I just want people to get them if they want them.
So I'm bringing more than one for every person who's going to show up at Hope and we'll give them out at registrations.
So all you have to do is show up and you can get them.
And everyone sees something different when they wear them and use them.
So you'll be able to see what you see.
So this is a relative, I guess, of the Brain Machine, which we've discussed on this program a number of times before.
Yeah, the Brain Machine was an article I wrote up, a project article I wrote up for Make Magazine.
And it was one of their more popular projects, I guess, because people like imagining colors and patterns from their imagination.
That's sort of called hallucinating and people seem to like hallucinating.
So I like encouraging people to explore their creativity this way.
And since that was so popular, that was a kit that I made and it was popular.
Then I decided I'd manufacture trip glasses.
I couldn't call it Brain Machine because BrainMachine.com was taken.
So trip glasses seemed cool.
And I guess you won't be giving them away.
But for anyone in the world who doesn't yet have a TV-B-Gone, I guess people will be able to make one?
Yeah, I'll have at my Learn to Solder workshops, which I keep saying that.
I'm in USC. Learn to Solder workshops.
Anyone can learn to solder.
I've taught lots of 3, 4, 5, 6-year-olds and even people who are ancient like me how to solder.
We can all learn. It's very easy.
And I have a lot of kits, including TV-B-Gone kits that are all designed for total beginners to complete successfully.
And lots of blinky light ones and noise makers.
And other people who have kits for beginners to learn to solder will be there helping teaching as well.
And, yeah, it's a lot of fun when people get together and do any kind of activity that's enjoyable like this.
And I guess we should give out – we've been so caught up in the excitement.
I don't know if we've given out the basic information about the conference.
It's called Hope X.
And it's this Friday through Sunday at the Hotel Pennsylvania in Midtown Manhattan.
The website is x.hope.net.
And when does it start on Friday? Some ungodly hour?
The opening session is at 10 a.m.
That's moderately godly, I guess, if you have a god.
So it starts at 10.
People, you can get there before to help set up and see what's going on.
If you're bored tomorrow, come by and help set up.
There's always things to carry.
Oh, yeah, that's one of the things that makes Hope work is lots and lots of volunteers.
And it's a lot of fun to volunteer.
You'll meet a lot of incredibly interesting people that are really fun to work with.
Yeah, I mean, we won't say the exact price of the conference,
but compared to some of these corporate conferences that cost literally thousands of dollars,
Hope is an incredible bargain for all the things we've mentioned this half hour
and so many things that we won't have the time to mention.
But the way that that is possible is that so much of it is driven by volunteers.
All of us here in the studio are volunteers.
Most of the people who attend do volunteer at least a bit.
And in addition to helping, the very real fact that the conference could not happen without the volunteers,
it's an excellent way to meet people, to get involved with something you wouldn't otherwise be involved in.
Mitch, as you said, you showed up at Hope once and started volunteering,
and now I have your hands in every pie.
It's just too much fun.
I do want to mention also that Hope is absolutely open to anyone.
All you have to do is show up, and you can come in and hopefully have the time of your life.
Absolutely. I think a lot of us in this room started just volunteering and sort of got pulled into the whole vortex
and ended up...
So watch out.
Yeah, watch out. You might end up in this studio one day.
But yeah, my efforts to get our guests on the phone have not been fruitful.
So we'll just go on with how we are.
Bernie, are you still there?
Hello.
Hi there.
I happen to have Matt Blaze standing next to me, one of our renowned speakers.
Excellent.
Matt, do you want to say hi to the audience?
Hi. See you all at Hope.
Hello, Matt. See you at Hope.
Matt is giving a fascinating talk.
Matt, what's the title of your talk you're giving?
Location, Location, Location.
And what does that mean?
It's how you are tracked through your mobile devices and what, if anything, you can do about it.
And Matt, you're qualified to talk about this. Why?
Because I'm an incredibly smart guy.
And what do you do for a living?
I'm a professor here at the University of Pennsylvania.
And he is one of the most knowledgeable people about telecommunications I've ever met.
So that's one of the hundred or so speakers you want to hear at HopeX.
That was a pretty weak promotion for what I'm sure will be an excellent talk.
I'm very shy about being on the radio.
But, yeah, I'm just paging through this thing again.
Let me mention there's going to be lightning talks at Hope.
Lightning talks. What are lightning talks?
So lightning talks were created, I think, by the Chaos Computer Club in Germany.
But they're five-minute talks on any subject you want.
And you can get up and present about a project, something that interests you,
something that you just think is kind of cool that other people should get to know about,
a project that you need help with, anything, any subject whatsoever you can talk about.
And these are going to be going on Friday afternoon, 4 to 6 p.m.,
and Saturday, 4 to 5 p.m., unless there's more, and then it will continue until 6.
It's a really excellent way.
Maybe you don't have a full hour's worth of things to say,
but you have something that the audience should know about, and you get five minutes.
And usually people do show up to listen to these talks.
Oh, they're really popular.
So it's always, and if you're in the audience, and, you know, it rarely happens that someone's boring,
but if someone's boring, there will be someone else in five minutes.
It's great for those modern attention spans that the media is always trying to tell us young folks have these days.
But also a lot of full-length talks started as a lightning talk somewhere,
and it is a way, and as well as a lot of our scheduled talks started in the unscheduled track,
which we have gone over, haven't we?
We haven't gone over the unscheduled track.
What's in the U room?
Bernie did talk about it a bit, but maybe what's in the U room, Bernie?
Any additional information?
There are three main speaker tracks at HOPE.
There's the Manning Room, the Serpico Room, and the Olson Room.
But there's a fourth room.
They're all named after really renowned whistleblowers,
and some of them aren't as renowned, but you'll find out more when you come.
But there's the U Room, which could imply that you could be a whistleblower too.
It's a room that holds about 100 people, and it's right on the 18th floor next to the other conference rooms,
and anybody can sign up for a one-hour speaking slot or for a five-minute lightning talk.
Lightning talks are really interesting.
You can squeeze out a really good talk in five minutes about something,
and that will all be happening in the U Room on the 18th floor.
That's, of course, U-Y-O-U, not E-W-E, so don't go in there looking for a female sheep.
Although if you have a talk about sheep, maybe that could be the place to give it.
I don't think we have any talk about sheep on the schedule, but we do have a talk about travel, about visualization.
I'm just scrolling through the list.
Confidentiality and privacy conflict by our friend DKG, who is now from the ACLU.
So many talks about whistleblowing and the NSA and this,
which is something that we at Hope have been talking about for decades at this point,
but it's just exploded, and we are not missing that boat.
Aesthetics, have we talked about what your talk is?
A little bit. I guess I could revisit.
Just a summary for people who may have missed it earlier.
It's Internet names, online identity, and issues that people have run into.
This is something I didn't mention before, but I want to really focus on the talk on the notion of trust
and what trust really means and some of the issues that we're running into with websites
and how they do verification and so on and so forth.
I think it's at 11 p.m. on Saturday. I think that's right.
I don't have the phone gizmo thing in front of me, but check x.hope.net and find out.
I just know how to scroll through it, not how to look for things,
but it's really entertaining to scroll through it because there's just so much going on.
Aesthetics, in addition to your talk, you always have your, again,
another person with his hands in many of the pies at Hope.
Anything that the audience should know about?
I've been doing a lot of stuff with press this time around, and here's what I can say.
I think go back to another years of 2008, 2006 and so on.
We had all kinds of trouble getting any kind of press.
I think it was in 2008. Was that The Last Hope? I can't remember the name.
That was The Last Hope where we were super excited because we got onto Boing Boing,
and that was a huge deal.
I mean it was, and we're very grateful to Cory Doctorow for all the things that he's helped us with.
Yeah, Cory rocks.
Then we got a little bit more, I guess then Occupy happened and more people became aware of this stuff.
But my God, I guess it's because of Snowden.
That's the only thing I can think of is we've been just, what's it?
Yeah, Snowden and Ellsberg.
Even just Snowden doing the revelations and making it so that I have family
who are totally non-technical, not aware of any of this stuff.
I remember going to this wedding last summer and all of them were asking me,
what the hell is going on with the NSA?
I'm just like, you even know about this stuff?
It seems that the word of paranoia or just people being more wise about how they use things on the Internet
is starting to get out there and maybe more people are interested.
That is truly demonstrated by, I'm going to just a wild ratio here.
I think we've gotten at least double the press attention that we had in 2012.
One of the things sitting at registration that's really fun for me is I get to tell press
who just show up unannounced to go away.
These are the registered press who we will not tell to go away
and we'll write some great stories, I hope.
People who come up and say that their press are more than welcome to enjoy the conference
as long as they pay for admission like the rest of us.
That so rarely works out, but of course, it's always an option.
Another thing we have going on is we have our own radio station at Hope.
We call it Radio Statler after the original name of the Hotel Pennsylvania.
A couple of you guys are involved with all that.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?
Sure. It's a streaming Internet radio station.
It's going basically, I believe, 24 hours a day for the entire length of the conference.
Neo and I both co-host a late night talk program.
One of the things that's great about Hope is that even though it's only every two years
for just three days each time, there are definitely like continuing things
that can be said to happen like this at every conference like your program,
and it's really exciting to see.
Well, once you've established a certain rapport with people
and get into the habit and fall into the vortex that Rob talks about,
it's very hard to get out. It's very addictive.
Returning to every conference, there's a sense of camaraderie that has developed over the years.
I really felt that last time in 2012 where people would come back
and they would come back with their kids.
They would come back with family members.
They would say, you know, this is the deep dark secret I was hiding from you all these years.
Suddenly their eyes would open up and say, oh, well, this is a blinking light
or this is how you put something together.
This is how my remote control worked.
This sense of camaraderie is really taking force and it's brought us back
and we keep getting asked to do the same level and quality and tenor of programming on Radio Statler.
So it's a pleasure. It's an honor. It's a homecoming. It's everything.
I wanted to add something about Radio Statler that we just found out today.
And what's that, Bernie?
That is a real live FM radio station on the Hudson River Valley.
WGXR has kindly offered to simulcast some of the Radio Statler audio.
Well.
This is fantastic.
Yeah, that is fantastic news.
I mean, we'll, for the first time, I think, be an actual radio station
as well as an online Internet station.
Broadcasting on the Internet and on the air, live from Hope X.
And, of course, you can listen to that if you can't make it to the conference.
Or if you're at the conference, go to radio.hope.net and you can stream it
or apparently you'll be able to listen to it on some airwaves.
Rob, I'm going to bow out.
I've got to finish packing the truck here, but I will see you at Hope.
Excellent. I will see you at Hope, Bernie.
Bye, everyone. See you.
This is Stux. I just had one quick question.
Does Hope ever go to sleep?
Well, we did mention the advice that each individual at Hope should go to sleep
at some point most nights, but the conference itself does not.
It starts on Friday morning and goes straight through until Sunday evening.
We are hackers.
We keep all sorts of schedules and they're all compatible with Hope
because there is always something going on no matter what.
You go to the mezzanine at stupid o'clock in the morning
and there will be people doing things that might interest you.
Yeah, it's just there is so much to do and I wish there were a way to do it all.
Being one of those people that the 5 in the 5-2-1 rule is really meant for
because I have literally been awake at Hope from the moment it opened
to the moment it closed at least a couple of times,
I can definitely say it does not ever sleep.
It does not ever stop until they finally kick us out of the building.
So it's the conference that never sleeps?
The conference never sleeps, the city never sleeps,
and, of course, the people who are still around at the end of the conference.
Very often they help us break things down and pack things away,
which is also very, very vital.
My first time I went to Hope, one of the first things I did to get further involved
was I helped break things down at the end.
It's important and we depend on your help.
So if you're attending and you're able to help us set up
or you're able to help us break down, come down and volunteer.
And if you need help staying awake, there's plenty of this drink called Club Mate.
Club Mate. It's got caffeine in it or something, doesn't it?
I believe it does.
And it has Mateen in it, which Yerba Mate is full of.
Which people like to pretend is somehow different than caffeine,
but I won't comment on that.
And you'll get used to the taste, I promise.
I think anyone who has been to the conference before and has had some,
usually if they come back for a second glass even, they've gotten used to the taste.
Okay. One thing I would like to do for maybe a few minutes
is possibly take some listener phone calls.
Those of you with headphones will be able to hear.
Do we have that technology?
We might have that technology, and I'm going to attempt to make it work.
So if you'd like to give us a call at Country Code 1-212-209-2900
and tell us what's on your mind, ask us about the conference,
or whatever else is going on, get in touch with us and let us know.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Hi. This is Professor Klystron.
I have a correction for Bernie S.
and three news items that could not really be sent in because they all happened this week.
Excellent. Well, what's going on?
Okay. First of all, Bernie S misquoted.
The station up in Acre, Catskill, and Hudson, New York that's rebroadcasting you
is not WGX-R, it's WGX-C, for this main studio in Acre.
Okay. I got three. I'll try to be quick.
Do you happen to know the frequency of that station?
90.7, 3300 watts, 28-acre wave farm.
Formerly the facilities of 3103.9 FM.
All right. Excellent. Well, thank you for that, Professor.
Okay. And I have a few items for you.
One is that Google has shut down on their groups.
Their groups is the first thing they're pulling down.
They've shut down.
Anybody running anything lower than Windows, i.e., 9, in other words, Windows 8 and below,
if you're running Vista, XP, you cannot use Google Groups anymore.
And they just cut it off two days ago.
And so I administer several groups, and all of a sudden our members are, like, getting plastered.
And, like, doubled over HTML, weird messages, and we cannot use the service.
All we can do is limp and send each other cryptic messages, and the parts of the screen are sliding.
Okay. Next item.
Of course, an antidote to that would be to use an alternative browser such as Firefox or Chrome or Chromium.
What else is going on?
No, I would say we can't be divided like that.
It's kind of like the evil empire strikes back on us.
It never ceases to amaze me, Rob, the dedication people have to using Microsoft products.
They won't be divided from Bill Gates.
Well, let me bring up the next subject because it kind of brushes that.
We've been getting upstate together, and it's not a big enough group,
but we're developing an operating system, an entire operating system.
We breadboarded that it's going to be about 360 megs on a disk,
and the code name for it of our own is called Fleet, F-L-E-E-T.
And you can't Google it, for one thing, because you get billions upon billions of things named Fleet.
But the address I'd like to give out for participation is the Radio Literacy Project.
That would be 164 Delaware Street, Number 3, Walton, W-A-L-T-O-N, New York, 13856.
If you could repeat that around the net and whatever.
And I'm kind of tugging on their shirt tails.
It's the Radio Literacy Project.
Okay. Well, that sounds worthwhile.
We're going to move on to another call, but thank you very much for your information, Professor.
Let's see who else is out there.
Good evening. You are on Off the Hook.
Hey, how's it going?
Actually coming to Hope this weekend, my first time.
That's exciting.
I have a couple questions about the network.
I don't know that we have anyone here who's an expert on the network,
but maybe we can make up an answer for you.
Just curious if you ended up getting the resources you were looking for.
Sorry, go ahead.
I believe we did.
I read very briefly that the network will be thousands of times or hundreds of times faster
than any network we've had in the past, and that's really exciting.
But I don't know if anyone here knows the details.
Is that a technical term?
We haven't got the details, but the details will be available on signs posted around the conference.
The word is that we're going to have more bandwidth than all the previous hopes put together.
Excellent. I think we upgraded from the 28.8k modem that we've been using.
Was it a win modem?
Indeed it was.
It was also a sound card.
Okay, let's see if anyone else is out there.
Thank you very much for your call, and we will hope to see you at Hope.
And nobody else is out there, so somebody else should be out there.
Give us a call, 212-209-2900, and let us know what's on your mind.
Next week, not only will we all be half dead from the conference, but it will be a fundraising episode.
So we won't get to do this for a while.
Give us a call.
While we're waiting for someone to call in, just some of the people here thought it might be a good idea
to announce the ham radio frequencies that we will be operating at at Hope.
And according to the note that I've been handed here, it is 147.545 MHz
and 433.545 MHz transmitting in simplex.
So any ham radio operators within range of the Hotel Pennsylvania,
you can try listening on those bands, and you should be able to pick up some of our amateur radio operators.
Very, very cool.
Okay, we've got some calls coming in.
Let's see who is out there.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Oh, dear.
It's a telephone call from a wind tunnel.
Are you there, caller?
How are you doing?
Hello.
How are you?
What's on your mind?
Oh, nothing.
I'm just basically just got into computers.
I mean, I'm very late into the game.
I'm just looking for courses just to learn the basics and everything.
Any ideas of, you know, I'm currently on Roosevelt Island as a hospital patient,
but I'm eventually going to be leaving soon, but I want to get more literate into computers in general.
Well, we can say that a good way to get started with something like that is to whatever area you're in,
if you're in this caller's area or somewhere else,
just start putting out web searches for your local area plus computer courses.
Check your local libraries, things like that, and you're bound to find something.
Thank you very much for that call.
The folks who follow us on The Personal Computer Show also always have a lot of information on that topic,
and we should mention that Michael Horowitz from The Personal Computer Show will be giving a talk at HOPE
on securing a home wireless router, so that should be interesting as well.
Indeed it should.
Let's see who else is out there in the couple of minutes we've got left.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
Hello.
What's on your mind?
Oh, not much.
I just put the tail end of this.
What is this, a gathering just to get together and learn things about what, everything in general?
Yeah, that's pretty specifically what it is.
It's learning everything in general, and you can find out more at hope.net.
That's H-O-P-E dot net.
Or just show up.
Oh, yeah, show up.
Oh, that's interesting.
You're saying that don't say the price, and then you say you can show up for free.
The price is free.
The price is not free, actually.
This is a conference.
You do have to get a ticket.
I'll look into it.
Okay, I'll look into it.
I heard you say anybody can show up or something.
Well, anyone can show up, but then you do have to buy a ticket to actually get inside.
Try to make it as inexpensive as possible compared to any other conference for three days.
This is incredibly cheap.
Indeed it is.
You just want more cooperation between everybody.
Just get together and work together and learn together and play together nicely.
Is that kind of the idea?
Well, we do try to encourage that.
All right.
Thank you very much for that call.
Let's see if we can fit one more call in here in a minute or so.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Good evening.
You're not on off the hook.
We should clarify as well the price is not a secret.
It's just the station regulations won't allow us to say it on the air.
But if you go to x.hope.net, you can find out and you can see that it's really not that much money.
Indeed.
And as Mitch said, it's not expensive for this sort of thing.
If you work somewhere that wishes to send you there, you can do that as well.
Yeah.
It's going to be a hell of an event, and I'm looking forward to it.
Okay.
We have got maybe a minute left and one call on the line.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
I'm also new in the computer, and I want to know how to put the – I have an account, YouTube account.
Excellent.
I want to know how to put the YouTube from the website.
If I like something, say if I like mountains of speech, how do I transfer it to my YouTube?
And if I do –
I think what you're asking for is more along the lines of our friends at the Personal Computer Show, which is coming up very soon.
So keep listening and call them back very shortly.
So I think that's about all we have time for.
One last time, go to hope.net.
Go to x.hope.net specifically for more information on the conference.
Show up at the Hotel Pennsylvania right across the street from Penn Station in Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
And, yeah, some sort of history is going to happen.
I look forward to seeing you all there.
I look very forward to it, too.
And on that note, yep, send us an email, oth2600.com.
Many thanks to all our guests stuffing this studio with their presences.
And for Bernie, who's no longer with us on the phone, though otherwise doing fine.
It's been a few minutes.
We assume he's doing fine.
But, yeah, we miss him already.
But, yeah.
And we should mention that Emmanuel is also fine, just a bit too busy for us this evening.
But he will be at the conference, of course.
He is throwing things around on trucks in order to enable us to have this conference, which should be fun.
So for Off the Hook and for Hope, this is Rob T. Firefly.
Hope to see you there in a couple of days.
Something, something, something.
So listen up, if you can't say nothing
You shut me down with a push of your button
But you'll hop out and I'm gone
I tell you now, I keep it on and on
Cause what you see you might not get
And we keep it, so go take it, so get
Keep it on the thing that's number one
I'm telling to you now, it's sabotage
Hold on
Listen again, to sabotage
Listen again, to sabotage
Listen all ya'll to sabotage
Listen all ya'll to sabotage
Listen all ya'll to sabotage
Listen all ya'll to sabotage
Sabotage, listen all y'all, it's a sabotage
Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage
I can't stand it, I know you're playin' it
I'ma set it straight since war began
But I can't stand rockin' when I'm in this place
Because I feel distracted because you're all in my face
I make no mistakes and switch up my channel
I'm money rich when I blow off the handle
What could it be? It's a mirage
You're schemin' on a thing that's sabotage
What?
What could it be?
Brothers and sisters, well I'm so glad to be with you tonight
And on the way I'm gonna tell you a little bit of what I got in my mind
About what we gonna do
And in order to reach a high level of happiness
I want us to rejoice ourselves
And show relief what we got inside
Forget that night of fire
And let that body dry
That's all we gotta do and all night long
Till the break of dawn, man
And all this is meant to be together
Together