All circuits at the location you are calling are busy now, 078-T. 
If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. 
If you need help, stay on the line, and a hacker will assist you shortly. 
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call. 
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
One minute, mom, but the best is back for worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
One minute, no! 
One minute, no! 
One minute, no! 
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 Kyle. 
Hi there. 
And way over in Skypeland, I see Rob T. 
Firefly. 
Rob, are you there? 
Okay, Rob's not there. 
Alex, are you there? 
I am. 
Okay. 
Well, it's good to have you with us on this, again, technical problem-filled show. 
Kyle, what's going on? 
We tested it before. 
Everything's going great. 
All right, so is Rob with us? 
He's with us. 
No, he's not with us. 
He was muted. 
Now he's with us. 
Oh, my God. 
Can we at least try to hit the right buttons? 
We're doing our best, yes. 
We've been testing before the show to make sure this doesn't happen again, and yet we somehow still managed to not come across. 
Okay, so everyone's here. 
I don't see Gila, though. 
Where's Gila? 
Gila is on her way. 
She will be here in about three minutes or so. 
Wow. 
So even the MTA is getting involved tonight. 
Okay, well, you know what? 
Oh, yes. 
We have an MTA story, so it kind of fits, but we'll get to that. 
All right, let's dive right into it. 
We're on the air first time in two weeks, and a lot to talk about. 
We have overtime at 8 o'clock on YouTube. 
You can follow the link, which is at 2600.com on the main page, or just go to channel 2600 on YouTube at 8 o'clock. 
But for now, you might have heard about the Missouri trans snitch form that was taken down. 
Emmanuel, I'm going to interrupt you for one second. 
I would like nothing more. 
Before, because what I have here in my hand, I just want to congratulate you. 
This is volume 40 of 2600 Magazine, which means that you have been at this as a magazine publisher for 40 years, which I think bears, you know, is justification for an interruption and a congratulation. 
So here's to 2600 for 40 years, volume 40. 
Now you can get on with the show. 
My God. 
Has it been 40 years? 
Yeah. 
40 years. 
Pretty amazing. 
I mean, to think about it, being 40 years doing anything is extraordinary. 
Yeah, that's true. 
You've created an institution. 
You've created a magazine that is read around the world. 
You've been, I think, a dutiful protector of the hacker subculture, and we all owe you a debt of gratitude and appreciation for everything you've done over the last 40 years. 
So here's to you. 
Well, not to bask in this too much, but I could not possibly have done it all on my own. 
There was simply so many people, such an amazing community, and it continues to this day. 
It's really an incredible group of people to work with, and they make it possible. 
They make it happen. 
So thank you to everybody who got us there. 
So, yeah, 40 years. 
It's amazing. 
Right. 
Well, sorry for the interruption. 
Yeah. 
Okay, so now we have, I know this phone is going to start ringing, Kyle, because I did not mute it beforehand, and the other line's going to forward to it, so please try and bury it or something before that happens. 
Okay, so the story I've been trying to read is about the Missouri Trans Snitch Forum, which you might have heard about as part of the crazy lives that we're living today. 
Today, the Missouri government has decided to put up a tip site to submit complaints and concerns about the trans community or gender-affirming care that they might be aware of, but that site has not been up. 
That site has been down because, well, because of hackers. 
At least hackers are getting the blame or credit for it. 
But, yeah, all kinds of TikTok, Twitter users have been spamming the site with gibberish. 
The tip line has been removed from the Missouri government site entirely. 
If you're looking for it, you're not going to find it. 
Instead of the online forum, the link to the tip line now says the page no longer exists. 
In fact, I have it right here. 
It says, 404 file or directory not found. 
The resource you're looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. 
There's a fourth option that they didn't include. 
How about permanently unavailable? 
Because this is a promise from many of us in cyberspace. 
In Missouri, listen up. 
Missouri government, that is. 
Listen up. 
Try it again. 
It'll go down again. 
It'll keep going down. 
It'll stay down. 
And the people who have worked together in doing this are quite unified and quite passionate about this. 
And you'll find that this emotion, this determination exists on a variety of fronts. 
So hit us with whatever you got, you know, and whatever state, whatever crazy laws you want to come up with, you're going to meet resistance. 
And it will win. 
It will win. 
Even if we don't know who we are, we don't know each other, we don't know one person who's helping in a different place, different country even. 
We will achieve the goal of maintaining freedom and not persecuting people because that's exactly what this particular snitch line was doing as so many other laws, restrictions, and just hate-filled diatribes have done. 
And yes, Rob? 
Well, Missouri is the show-me state. 
Missouri has been shown. 
Yeah, we showed them all right. 
Now, you know, you posted a story earlier about Pornhub. 
They have gone and blocked users in Utah because Utah now has some crazy age verification law that means Pornhub can be held liable if somebody from Utah connects to their website. 
Do you know more about it than that? 
Yeah, basically, they want Pornhub to go through the expense of verifying somehow that people who are looking at their website who happen to be in Utah are legal adults. 
This is new and strange and more than Pornhub is willing to deal with. 
So Pornhub has just blocked IP addresses originating in Utah wholesale. 
This is an interesting story in that it is a bit of a business judgment call, right, because they're removing potential customers. 
But the perils of this burden are just too much. 
And it's a calculation they've made and thus have blocked a certain segment of American Pornhub users. 
Well, what a spokesperson for Pornhub says is giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users. 
I can certainly see why that would be the case. 
According to the bill's description, SB 287 Online Pornography Viewing Age Requirements imposes obligations and liabilities for a commercial entity that provides pornography or other materials harmful to minors. 
Specifically, the bill requires a porn site to verify that a user in Utah is at least 18 years old. 
It also imposes liability for publishers and distributors of material harmful to minors who don't comply with the age verification requirements. 
Now, as the law is written, a website like Pornhub that does not verify a user's age shall be liable for damages resulting from minors accessing the material, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees, not crazy attorney, just reasonable attorney fees, as ordered by the court. 
Pornhub said a better solution is to identify users by their device. 
I'm not sure that's really a great idea either. 
It seems like another way of monitoring people and just over-restriction or welly and looking over your shoulder. 
Look, people are always going to be able to lie. 
They're always going to be able to input fake information. 
And to have this kind of a restriction imposed upon a company that's not even in your state, it seems like a really bad step to take. 
You know, we don't want that as the rule that we now have to follow. 
Absolutely. 
One funny thing about this is when somebody in Utah tries to go to Pornhub to access the service, instead, since they're blocked from the service, they get a video message from a spokesperson for Pornhub explaining this is why you can't see the porn because your government did this. 
And it's really – I'm wondering what the reaction is going to be like given enough time and enough people getting tired of seeing this message. 
Kila's here. 
Yes, Kila. 
Kila, welcome. 
Hi. 
Thank you. 
So this law went into effect today. 
Oh, it did today. 
I didn't know it was that recent. 
Okay. 
Signed into law on the 14th of March takes effect today. 
So I'm curious to see how things are going to go forward. 
And the thing I was thinking of, I was laughing while we were talking about this story, because in Utah, unless I'm very much mistaken, thinking about things that require age ID, places where alcohol is sold in Utah, like liquor stores, I believe are owned by the state, are controlled by the state. 
So it's this very interesting, like, state regulation of particular vices and age-restricted material. 
And I don't know, how can you claim that you want smaller government if you're controlling this kind of situation in that particular way? 
That's all I'm saying. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
It's also, we can speak to the purely technical end of this, which is they're using, I'm assuming, GOIP information to determine what IP addresses come from Utah. 
And many people who work in networking will tell you that GOIP information is good if you want sort of a vague area. 
It's not always exact. 
It's very often flawed. 
Often, you'll come up as being in the next town over or something. 
And so this now has the potential to affect people who are not subject to Utah's law, like people just over the state line, possibly. 
And I'm also curious about how VPN subscriptions in Utah, if we'll see a spike in those. 
Oh, I'm sure we already have. 
For those who don't know, a virtual private network allows you to disguise your IP, come from anywhere. 
So I guess, theoretically, we could come from Utah if we wanted to. 
Has anyone ever wanted to come from Utah on the internet? 
Well, okay. 
If a VPN service allows you to change your IP so it appears you're going somewhere from Utah, we could try to access Pornhub that way and see if we can figure out another way to get around that restriction. 
But for people who are in Utah, all you have to do is get onto a VPN. 
There are free ones and there are ones that you can subscribe to that are more professional and pick any place else and just go to Pornhub as I'm told we're not allowed to say. 
Okay, we have to make sure that if anyone is listening to us in Utah that they didn't hear what I just said because apparently what I said is a felony in the eyes of some people in Utah that seem to think they're in control. 
Yeah, it's that easy. 
This is a ridiculous restriction and we have to fight this just like everything else has been fought, just like the Missouri snitch line. 
You know, we're just seeing more and more crazy restrictions and attempts to control people's lives that we can't let become the norm. 
Yes, Gila. 
I suppose my other question is, if they're going to, I'm sorry, court costs and reasonable attorney fees and damages if someone who's underage accesses something that they're underage for, are there also similar repercussions when this trove of PII gets leaked? 
Because God knows it's going to get leaked. 
Yes. 
And I'm very curious what the repercussions for the site would be and are they less or more onerous than the damages that would be required for, oh no, a 17-year-old got onto our website. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
I mean, I think the answer to Gila is no, that only the laws that are already preexisting would apply to this. 
Any kind of state data breach law would apply to, I think, this information about whether or not somebody is a minor or not could be considered part of PII because it can partly identify somebody or PII being personally identifiable information, but I think the notion of creating this private right of action against a website for damages resulting from a minor's accessing material is really bizarre in so many ways. 
I mean, it's particularly peculiar, especially when there's just so much nonsense on the internet that can harm people and that is offensive in so many different ways. 
Pornography being something that is now subject to a private right of action where you can be called into court in Utah to answer for this and then have to pay attorney's fees is really, really damaging. 
So it doesn't surprise me whatsoever that Pornhub would be taking some kind of reasonable precautions to limit access to citizens of Utah. 
I mean, they're the ones that are going to suffer here. 
They're the ones that have to pay an extra couple of bucks for a VPN in order to access pornography now. 
It's really bizarre. 
But I want to also go back to something that, and I think it was you, Gila mentioned this, but the IP address block assignments, well, those come from something called IANA. 
IANA stands for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. 
It used to be part of ICAN. 
They've separated and kind of parted ways now, but they are still intimately connected. 
And IANA assigns IP blocks to something called ASNs or Autonomous System Numbers. 
And they generally stay static. 
They stay the same for most of the time. 
But then every once in a while, they get switched around. 
And you may not get notification when an IP block is switched around. 
So, you know, what IP address assignments belong to Utah right now, tomorrow might belong to California. 
And so you might have this kind of bizarre blocking of people that don't necessarily need to be blocked. 
So, once again, in response to some idiotic law, we're going to have overblocking of material that shouldn't be happening. 
And then one final point here is that, like I agree to, you know, we need to protect minors and all of that. 
But any kind of age verification system is creating more data for whoever is doing the age verification. 
That's information that can be bought, packaged, and sold. 
And it's interesting and valuable information because it means, you know, you can more accurately target your ads. 
But obviously, people are going to lie about this. 
If you're a 15-year-old and you are accessing pornography, you're not going to claim that you're 15 years old either. 
So, just from a logical perspective, it is idiotic. 
And then it just tends to undermine the concept of anonymity one level farther on the Internet, which is, you know, we've seen this just being chipped away at for decades now. 
Yeah, I can't even conceive of a 15-year-old lying, but apparently that happens. 
But my question to you, Alex, is as far as this law, as you understand it, let's forget about the minors for now. 
Let's just assume the minors will figure out a way to get pornography one way or another. 
What about adults? 
What about people who are older than 18 or 21 or 35, whatever age Utah decides is an adult? 
Do they have to verify their age? 
Do they have to identify themselves every time they visit a pornography site? 
I don't know if it's every time. 
There may be some kind of browsing track. 
Or ever? 
Do they ever have to identify themselves? 
Yeah, I think initially you would. 
I would imagine that if you're in Utah right now and you try to go to a porn home, you know, you're going to be blocked. 
But I think they're just not servicing Utah at all. 
But there are a million porn sites. 
So are all these porn sites supposed to be asking people for their real identification? 
Well, I think there's going to be some kind of affirmation or certification that you make, you know, basically stating that, you know, you're over 18 years old. 
You're saying it's just a button that says I'm over 18? 
That's it? 
I would presume so. 
I think it's more than that. 
I think it goes beyond that. 
You think it actually requires you to upload like a license or something? 
I don't think we'd be talking about it if it was a simple thing of just like, you know, the cannabis sites where you have to say you're over 21 before you can look at the prices. 
Well, if that's the case, then Gila's question about the information that's collected. 
If they're collecting IDs, who thinks, you know, well, then these pornography sites are certainly going to be subject to, you know, the panoply of data protection laws. 
And look, you know, and those laws apply wherever the affected parties are. 
All right. 
So if there's some kind of breach of this information and there's licenses that belong to the state of Maryland, New York, Maine, you're going to have to comply with those laws, not just the laws of Utah. 
Or else what? 
I mean, if somebody from Utah decides they don't like something that is on a website someplace and they try to prosecute somebody in a different state or a different country, do those people even have to acknowledge them? 
Well, yeah, they might, because if they let's say it's a parent who has a child who accesses a pornography site that was available in Utah without some kind of affirmation or certification, verification, whatever, whatever process they're utilizing. 
They would have to answer to that site or they would have to answer to that to that to that court case that was filed in Utah, or they would face some kind of default judgment. 
Gila, it looks like you just found something out. 
I just found the text of the bill, and it is utterly fascinating. 
So, okay, this bill provides definitions, requires a commercial entity that provides pornography and other materials defined as being harmful to minors as a substantial portion of the entity's content to verify the age of individuals accessing the material, establishes requirements and liability for retention of data, imposes liability for publishers and distributors of material harmful to minors who fail to comply with verification requirements, and provides that an internet service provider or hosting entity is not liable for hosting or transmitting material harmful to minors to the extent that it is not the creator of the material. 
Now. 
Yeah, if you can interpret that. 
That was just the introduction. 
So the thing I found very interesting was digitized identification card means a data file available on any mobile device which has connectivity to the internet through a state-approved application that allows the mobile device to download the data file from a state agency or authorized agent of a state agency that contains all of the data elements visible on the face and back of a license or identification card and displays the current status of the license or identification card. 
So basically it looks like you have to download like a file of your state identification to be able to blip it to any site you may wish to visit. 
It also defines what they're talking about in terms of what would be harmful to minors if they happened into it. 
So it's a hell of a lot more than a simple button to say you're over 21 or 18. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
I think by choosing this tact, they're actually making it much worse as far as a precedent and then, of course, immediately in their state because the burden and this mechanism maybe could have been worked out so that it wasn't as onerous or there were other novel ways of having a pass-through or some kind of gateway through to their private, corporate, you know, site, you know, site. 
But the more, and now it's like basically blown up in their face, it's being reframed because they're just saying, well, no, you're giving us homework for something that is ostensibly not really our responsibility. 
And I actually, I think that that's, it's a missed opportunity for, for the state to actually get what they want because the actual material isn't going anywhere. 
It's not going to get any better regulated. 
If anything, it's going to be in, you know, seedier far corners still getting through. 
My, my point though, is that this, this in general, um, it's, it's not going to, to gain them the effect. 
And they've instead, um, basically tried once again, and, and, and this is a bigger subject, but I think it's the overarching, um, structure of this is that they're, they're trying to claim that the internet itself is a, um, a place for children. 
And I think it is, in fact, there's a stronger argument for quite the opposite, that it is much more of an adult environment than it is a kid space. 
I really, truly think that is what we're looking at as we've covered this stuff. 
And just one more, one more thing I want to impart in saying that, um, there are multiple layers before a child gets to this particular private company site and this, uh, idealized gateway where we're devising in these, uh, very rough deliberations. 
But let's be absolutely honest. 
There's the physical access to a means of getting onto this adult space. 
I'm arguing it is very much an adult space. 
This was never designed for children and to fool everyone who is an adult into thinking it's for kids is bizarre. 
And I think really backwards in this day and age, we need to be, we need to confront that. 
And, and, and basically the physical access, the operating system access, there are sufficient controls in browsers. 
There are many settings that you would have to recklessly not employ as a parent. 
And I don't know, Alex way in. 
Cause is, am I crazy here or was this always supposed to be as burdensome? 
You're a parent. 
You, you understand this. 
Like you wouldn't just set your kids free with, you know, power tools or something, right? 
Like adult equipment or an adult in an adult environment. 
Yeah. 
I think, I don't know if I entirely agree with you because I, I think that, you know, kids and young people definitely form a critical mass and a pivotal part of the internet and are going to be crucial to how, how it evolves. 
But I, but I, but I do tend to agree with you in that, you know, not everything needs to be made a safe space for kids. 
And, and the internet certainly is, you know, on a whole, you know, not a great place to be hanging out. 
If you're a child in an unsupervised man, you know, I think a lot of this is frankly paternalism, you know, and, and the type of paternalism that should get the libertarian types that live in Utah really angry, right? 
Because this is government coming in and telling you how to mind your children, how to raise them, what you can see, what you can't see, and asking you to verify your, yourself with some kind of actual piece of identification every time you want to look at porn. 
I mean, that's totally insane and paternalistic. 
I mean, you know, we, we talk about, you know, gun ownership and regulation, things like that. 
I mean, the, the idea that the government wants websites to track you together with your browsing habits of pornography is beyond the pale crazy. 
Um, and, and this should get people really, really angry, I think on, on a number of levels and it's, it's paternalistic in, I think the most insulting way. 
So I think that, you know, that's really my takeaway from this, Kyle, is that I think, you know, the, the farther we stray into this over-regulation of content and, and the internet, the more of these libertarian types should be really getting angry about this, but, uh, we, we don't necessarily see that. 
Well, you know, what I think we really should, um, uh, focus on here is the fact that, uh, Utah's, uh, sense of responsibility is being foisted onto, uh, external parties, such as Pornhub. 
Utah apparently thinks it has a problem with, uh, its, um, uh, underage kids obsessed with pornography and disobeying rules and lying online. 
Okay, Utah, you think that's a problem? 
It's your problem. 
It's not Pornhub's problem. 
So maybe we should, um, uh, transfer the responsibility back home so that every time somebody turns on a computer, they have to identify themselves. 
Okay. 
And, oh yeah, that's a pain in the ass. 
That's a government overreach. 
Now you get it. 
Now you see it because you, you, you, you're confronted with it every time you do anything involving technology rather than simply saying, okay, porn people, it's your responsibility. 
No, it's not, it's not their responsibility. 
They're running a website. 
But you're the ones with the kids that you're worried about that are doing all kinds of horrible things on the internet. 
So control your kids. 
See how that works out. 
Go ahead. 
And I think we need to insist that they do that. 
I don't know how to do it legally, Alex, but I'm sure, you know, uh, um, a courageous stance of defiance is what we need in this case rather than compliance. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Um, this also, uh, looking at how this bill defines pornography, it's falling, uh, into the same pits that every time someone tries to censor pornography, regulate against pornography, where it, it defines it completely, um, vaguely in terms that, uh, this is going to cut off, say, uh, uh, uh, you know, material on breastfeeding, material on sex education, um, probably, uh, queer studies. 
Uh, you know, things that, uh, teenagers would need to know about themselves in adolescence as they grow up, uh, things that queer teenagers, uh, specifically would need to, um, educate themselves about and, uh, things like that. 
So this is, uh, this is, I think, coming up against a lot more than, um, than, than just, oh, you know, grownups want to look at porn and they should be able to. 
So this is, um, really censorship in a bad way. 
Yeah. 
I mean, I'm still looking at all of the definitions. 
This is fascinating. 
Um, material harmful to minors is defined as all of the following, lots of different pieces, but very important. 
The material taken as a whole lacks seriously, serious, excuse me, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors. 
And Utah is going to define that for us. 
The government of Utah is going to tell us what's scientific and what's, what's got value. 
Better, better, because this is also, I think, probably getting us close to the snitch line a little bit because any material that the average person applying contemporary community standards would find taking the material as a whole. 
And with respect to minors is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to the prurient interest. 
That word prurient, again, that just reminds me of the FCC regulations involving obscenity and indecency and, and, and the nonsense that that has, has fostered over the years. 
I truly think a lot of the framing in this by talking about, Oh, what, what is so, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, specific to minors in this, again, it frames it as though there's anything that, that they need to qualify. 
Like this is a big issue that they're taking on and no one is making that argument necessarily. 
Um, but there are adults that do want to have the freedom to have any kind of information they want. 
And that's partly, uh, uh, the purpose of, of the internet itself as a resource. 
So, um, I don't know. 
I just think the language in, in what Gila has been recounting is, is it's great, but that a lot of that can be handled at the multiple layers I kind of pointed out along the way before you even get to this private site. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Also, and maybe, maybe Utah is looking for an opportunity to sue other states of this particular country, but the internet is outside this country as well. 
Um, you know, someone in Sweden posted a picture of their butt online, you know, what's, what's Utah going to do about it in this case? 
Well, that's my question. 
You know, do they have authority to go after people, not only in other states, but in other countries as well? 
And, you know, using, using their logic, well, how about we make some crazy laws in New York and start suing entities in Utah for not being pornographic? 
Enough. 
I don't know. 
You gotta, you gotta fight fire with fire. 
Well, you can, you can also extend the logic out. 
We've already seen the criminalization of, of data in the context of, uh, uh, abortion access and data and apps and so forth there. 
What if, um, anyone who's ever consumed traffic from Pornhub who enters the state of Utah is all of a sudden, you know, ticketed or something like a easy pass, uh, for, for your, your private traffic somehow. 
Or maybe you're a performer. 
You were, uh, identified with some kind of recognition technology or worse yet, someone faked you in, in some act that's publicly available. 
And now you're targeted by the state just because, uh, you wanted to watch the last of the Salt Lake dry up. 
You know, I mean, it's, it's insane. 
We're, we're getting into a place where it's, uh, it's becoming illegal for trans people to walk down certain streets in certain states, Tennessee being one of them. 
It's illegal for doctors to perform medical procedures or even to advise about medical procedures. 
It's illegal for, for people to visit certain websites. 
It's illegal for people to talk about history that paints the country in an unflattering light. 
If we accept all of this and we don't fight back and refuse to obey this nonsense that's being shoved down our throats, it's going to become normal. 
And we're going to have to live with it and, and, and realize that we let it happen. 
So yeah, people are going to have to go to jail. 
People are going to have to shout at each other and it's going to get ugly. 
But, um, the, um, the alternative to that is far, far worse. 
Alex, go ahead. 
Yeah. 
I just think that this whole situation really underscores why it's so important to, to vote in off years and for your, your state officials as well, because this is a state law. 
This is either your local state legislature, your assembly, your state assembly, your state senators that came up with this crazy cockamamie nonsense in, in Utah right now. 
Um, but they did it in a really crafty way. 
Because Gil, I want to ask you that, that definition that you read with that reference, purian interest and whatnot, that was directly from the law, wasn't it? 
Correct. 
So what they did was, was pretty crafty here because pornography to a certain extent actually does, um, you know, encompass sexuality and literature and, and, and a lot of pornography is actually protected by the first amendment. 
Um, there are, however, two types of pornography or that are not protected by the first amendment. 
Uh, one of them is child pornography. 
Um, and the other one is obscenity and the definition of obscenity, um, that's not protected by the first amendment. 
It is a sort of narrow category of, of unprotected speech is exactly what Gila read. 
Um, and so they're, they're taking this definition of obscenity and trying to read that into pornography in general, because, you know, they're trying to make this like, if you have a Venn diagram of obscenity and pornography, they think that they exactly overlap, right? 
But they don't, not all pornography is obscenity, right? 
There's a small subset of pornography. 
I would argue that's obscenity that would not be protected by the first amendment. 
And so with that understanding, I could see there being challenges raised pretty quickly, hopefully by people like the EFF and the ACLU, uh, on first amendment grounds, perhaps to, to, to try to, to destroy the statute. 
Um, but I think more importantly for the people of Utah, if you don't want to be dealing with this, not everything requires a litigation focused solution. 
The best way to change this law is to vote out the people who created it. 
And it's all fine and good to say that. 
And I would never tell people that voting doesn't do any good, but surely, Alex, you're aware of the many, many, as, as you say, crafty ways that Republicans have set things up. 
So that even if you do vote in a majority, they somehow don't get the power through gerrymandering, through all kinds of, of, of, of, of, of tricks that the Republicans have used, uh, to their advantage that Democrats don't seem to quite have a handle on. 
Um, it's not that easy. 
Uh, I would argue a contrary point there, Emmanuel. 
I would suggest to you that viewing certain types of pornography and pornography that borders on obscenity would very likely be far more important to Republicans than Democrats. 
That's probably true, but I don't know if it's important enough to get them to vote, vote for the evil Democrats. 
I think, you know, they, uh, this should be a truly bipartisan issue. 
All right. 
To be continued. 
Uh, we said we had an MTA story for you and we do, uh, you might already know about this, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who, um, are responsible for getting Gila here on time, uh, will no longer be posting service alerts for the LIRR, Long Island Railroad, and other agencies such as the subways, buses, uh, they will not be posting that on Twitter anymore. 
Their statement says the MTA does not pay tech platforms to publish service information, and, um, it has additional tools that can provide alerts in real time. 
They had been, um, using an API to, uh, get this information out to people via Twitter, and now, thanks to Elon Musk, Twitter is demanding $50,000 a month for that service, a service that was free. 
So I can certainly understand why the MTA does not want to play ball as far as that goes. 
Uh, it's just another example of how Twitter is completely falling apart. 
You know, I lost my verification. 
Yeah, my blue check is gone. 
And, uh, I gotta tell you, man, it's, um, it's been hard to adjust to it, you know? 
I mean, I'm seeing people I haven't seen in a couple of years, you know, that I haven't talked to because, you know, uh, but it's, I, you know, I'm, I'm humbled. 
I'm humbled. 
I realized that life goes on in the unchecked world, and, um, and now I'm one of them again. 
And that's fine. 
That's fine. 
That's okay. 
You know, I, I, apparently I just, you know, I'm not paying $8 a month for a blue check because all it, all it does is, is identify me as somebody. 
Who's stupid enough to pay $8 a month for a blue check. 
Yeah. 
There's consensus around that. 
I think a lot of people have decided not to, but then they started giving blue checks back to certain people, but then saying that they paid for it, even though they didn't. 
So that to me is even worse. 
That's astroturfing. 
I guess that's astroturfing. 
Yeah. 
Um, and now, uh, Elon Musk is, um, this gets me, man. 
You can't even take a, what can't even take a break. 
Like the, the, the, the inactivity and act. 
I don't know what you mean. 
Uh, apparently you can't, uh, be inactive or your accounts are, uh, okay. 
Oh yeah. 
Uh, yeah, this is, uh, part of the NPR story. 
I think it was in that story. 
Well, first of all, okay. 
He, um, he, NPR stopped using Twitter as well. 
Uh, because, um, uh, they were being defined as a state affiliated media outlet. 
Uh, and, um, you know, that, that's what, um, uh, like Chinese news agencies and, and our team in Russia are defined as, uh, so it was kind of inaccurate. 
NPR is listener supported. 
And I believe we, we, we discussed this before. 
So, uh, now, uh, Elon Musk has taken to, uh, emailing people at NPR because he has nothing better to do the same things like, so is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again? 
Or should we reassign NPR to another company? 
This is mere days after they, they, they stopped, uh, using Twitter, uh, and PBS as well. 
Um, when asked who would be taking over the NPR account on Twitter, he replied National Pumpkin Radio. 
Yeah, the guy's just a barrel of laughs. 
Um, and, um, this, um, uh, news outlet Engadget reached out to Twitter for a statement on this, but the company doesn't have a communications team anymore, so they weren't able to get a response. 
Um, under Twitter's policy, the company said that users can simply log in once every 30 days to keep their account active. 
I do believe that's... 
I think that's what I was reading. 
Yeah, okay, that's what you're referring to. 
It sounds like homework. 
Uh, well, it's, it's, it's definitely different than it was because it was a lot longer than that. 
And I can tell you why. 
Um, uh, we have been trying for years to get the, um, the Twitter account hope for our Hackers on Planet Earth conferences. 
It's available. 
It's right there. 
H-O-P-E hasn't been used in years, goes to a website and no longer exists. 
And, um, we run the HOPE conference, so it'd be great to have the HOPE Twitter account and nothing, crickets. 
So if this were the case, we should be, uh, able to get that account without any problem. 
But we can't. 
We can't. 
And here, here, Elon Musk is saying, yeah, every 30 days, if you don't log in, you can lose your account. 
Um, accounts may be permanently removed due to inactivity. 
Uh, and, um, that's policy. 
So policy seems to be whatever he wants it to be at the moment. 
Yeah. 
They can also be permanently removed by you. 
Well, that's true too. 
From disinterest. 
But hey, prove me wrong, Elon. 
Give us hope. 
And maybe, maybe there will be hope then. 
Yes. 
Eva. 
So, speaking of things that seem to be changing on a whim, um, 23 hours ago, the Associated Press reported that Twitter basically said, oh, psych, if you're a government organization or providing a public good, you can still have the API for free. 
Ha ha. 
So, nothing about this makes any sense at all. 
Well, it does. 
If, if you know some medical terms and, uh, aware of, of people who just feel the need to be accepted and, and think they're funny, uh, and actually aren't ever telling the truth. 
But that's just. 
Well, it's testing for a reaction, right? 
I guess so. 
It's just like low, low, low, low-fi, like, market research. 
As someone who's launching rockets to Mars, do they need a reaction from people on Twitter? 
I don't get it. 
I don't get that need for attention. 
I don't know. 
Wow. 
Uh, okay. 
Uh, here is an interesting story that, uh, is probably more controversial than anything we've, uh, discussed so far. 
Uh, involves the, uh, Fort Wayne Children's Zoo. 
Uh, over there in Indiana. 
Uh, they released a statement, um, concerning, um, a website hack that gave away false free tickets. 
Yeah, that's, uh, that was the news story. 
False free tickets because of a website hack. 
Um, their statement says officials with the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo said on, um, uh, a week ago Tuesday, it was a faulty promotional code that caused the free tickets to be distributed. 
After a thorough review, officials said there was no security breach on the website, and any personal information shared through the zoo's website is secure. 
Um, yeah. 
And, and, uh, now the post on Monday night said, earlier tonight, the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo's website was hacked, resulting in the false sale of free tickets. 
As one of only a handful of non-profit zoos in the United States that does not receive government funding, we rely heavily on admission sales to provide for the 1,600 animals in our care. 
All tickets given away for free tonight are not valid and cannot be used to visit the zoo. 
We are disappointed that this happened, and we apologize for the inconvenience. 
Thank you for your understanding and continued support of the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo. 
Um, Tuesday, they said we are still working through the details of how this incident transpired, and we're putting processes in place to avoid future issues. 
Um, so, which is it, Fort Wayne Children's Zoo? 
You say you've been hacked, you're blaming hackers, and then you say it's a result of a faulty promotional code that, um, resulted in this. 
Um, you know, it's, I hope you treat the animals better than you treat hackers, because apparently nobody hacked the site, it was just bad programming, and, uh, and now it's a bunch of people with free tickets that can't go to the zoo. 
You know, there's a lot of lessons to be learned here, but, um, uh, a truth in, in, in your claims is, is what I hope you get out of this. 
Hila? 
I mean, truth in claims is important, but with a name like the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, do we know that it's animals on display? 
Oh, I, yeah. 
Well, I'm just saying, they do not define their terms well to begin with, so I am skeptical of pretty much anything they have to say. 
Wow. 
Um, yeah, uh, again, they're still working through the details of how the incident transpired, and we're putting processes in place to avoid future issues. 
No apology, no, um, retraction of blaming hackers for something. 
And no puns about monkeying around with things, and, you know, animal puns, they gotta... 
Yeah, we could have helped with that as well. 
Uh, okay, you know, we only have, uh, five minutes left, but, um, you guys heard about this latest thing from Google where they're trying to eliminate passwords? 
They, they want to have something called pass keys. 
Uh, they say they're a safer and easier replacement for passwords. 
With pass keys, users can sign into apps and websites with a biometric sensor, like a fingerprint or facial recognition pin or pattern. 
Isn't a pin a password? 
Well, it's kind of like a password, uh, which frees them from having to remember and manage passwords. 
A pass key can replace a password and a second factor in a single step. 
The user experience can be as simple as auto-filling a password form. 
Pass keys provide robust protection against phishing attacks, unlike SMS or an app-based one-time passwords. 
Um, since pass keys are standardized, a single implementation enables a password-less experience across different browsers and operating systems. 
Uh, yeah, uh, it sounds great. 
You know, it sounds like something that, um, uh, could be really handy, uh, until you lose your device and, um, um, then somebody is able to get in, uh, with, uh, with, with, well, if they can get into your device and they can hijack that, I don't know. 
I, I, I have doubts about this. 
Do you guys have any thoughts? 
Yeah, I mean, biometric, uh, biometric ways of getting into things are routinely, uh, shown to be kind of garbage, um, in the sense that, like, facial recognition is, uh, still, um, bypassable sometimes with a picture of the person or a video of the person. 
Um, and that's if it works on you to begin with because, uh, a lot of facial recognition algorithms still have trouble with people who aren't white. 
Um, and, uh, fingerprints, uh, you know, somebody could always take your finger and make, you know, put it on something, um, that the rest of this, it's, it's just, uh, you know, the power of two factor authentication was that it was a combination of two things, something you have and something, you know, and when you boil it down to just one or the other, you're losing the protection. 
Yeah. 
I mean, everyone has to come up with their own security system that they're comfortable with. 
I'm just not really thrilled with, um, uh, sharing biometric information with Google or having that be the, um, uh, the only method of unlocking something, uh, it just seems like you're giving out too much. 
I'd have to look into it some more, but I'm always wary when Google decides to change the rules and call something legacy and phase it out because they do that an awful lot. 
And oftentimes something good is, is, um, is left behind as a result. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
I mean, I think two, two points here. 
I mean, the past keys are all well and good. 
I think right when they're, when they're device based or, you know, and they work, but there's got to be, you know, some system for setting up a new pass key on a new device that can be exploited or recovery of some kind of pass key that undoubtedly will be exploited in some other way that, you know, we thought two factor authentication or multi-factor authentication was the be all end all. 
Now there's, you know, a number of ways and kits to get around two factor authentication. 
So, you know, I'm, I'm always skeptical of there being some universal panacea, but I think more generally though, this whole issue is about identity and who controls identity on the internet. 
Google wants you hooked. 
Google wants your identity to be part of Google. 
They want you to use Gmail. 
They want you to use Google docs, Google drive, Google this, Google that. 
Facebook wants you to use meta. 
They want you to use meta to sign in for this, that, and the other thing. 
And your identity, as we've discussed on, on this program numerous times in the last few weeks, in fact, does not necessarily belong to you. 
That service can go away. 
That service can be terminated. 
Your identity belongs to you only if it's in some kind of, you know, self-custodial sense. 
And that's why I think services like ENS or the Ethereum name service are really, really important. 
They're going to be critical to how the internet evolves because that puts your identity and, and everything associated with your identity in your own hands and not the hands of a company like Google. 
We're going to have to leave it there and continue the conversation over on YouTube on Overtime, channel 2600 at 8 p.m. 
Go to the link on the 2600.com webpage. 
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com with your feedback. 
Rob, I believe you have a reminder for us for this coming Friday. 
Yes, Friday is the 2600 meetings. 
Go to 2600.com slash meetings and find our start one near you. 
Uh, go to myc2600.net for info on the local one here in New York, where we'll be celebrating volume 40. 
And we will see you here next week. 
Good night. 
The autonomous commie Republic, which is part of the Russian Federation, is situated in the far northwest of Europe and spreads up to the Arctic part of the Ural Mountains. 
It's crossed by nine northern parallels. 
Ten fair-sized European states could be placed on its territory. 
Besides indigenous residents, that is, the commie people, there are also Russians, Ukrainians, Nenetses, Chuvashis, and Tartars. 
And now, let's go back into history a little bit. 
A boy lying on skims behind our backs was turning the knobs of a small transistor radio. 
And the tent was suddenly filled with an announcer's voice speaking commie. 
Then, with music from Moscow, followed by English and French speech. 
The recording was made at the Moscow Theater of Musical Miniatures. 
Now, back to modern times. 
Your attention, please. 
At the recommendation of the International Time Bureau, commencing at 23 hours, 59 minutes, 60 seconds, UTC, an extra second will be inserted into the NBS timescale. 
This adjustment is required to maintain internationally coordinated universal time as broadcast from these stations in close agreement with UT-1, or astronomical time. 
W-A-6-O-D-B with a question. 
And, uh... 
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union? 
And about power. 
You meant... 
We got so much power now. 
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union? 
We got so much power now. 
That's ridiculous. 
Do you mean... 
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union? 
Power and all that. 
That's power. 
We got so much power. 
That's ridiculous. 
We have... 
Power. 
Power and power and power. 
Power and power now. 
It's ridiculous. 
We got so much power now. 
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union? 
It's not even funny. 
You meant... 
That's ridiculous. 
Do you know how many... 
It's not even funny. 
You meant... 
That's ridiculous. 
Do you know how many... 
That's ridiculous. 
Do you know how many times... 
That's ridiculous. 
It's not even funny. 
You meant... 
It's not even funny. 
It's not even funny. 
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union? 
It's not even funny. 
How many time zones? 
Yeah. 
We have four in this country, right? 
How many time zones? 
Yeah. 
One, two, three. 
Four in this country, right? 
Yes, sir. 
Four. 
One, two, three. 
Yes, sir. 
Right? 
One, two, three. 
Yes, sir. 
Four time zones? 
Yeah. 
We have four in this country, right? 
No, sir. 
We have four. 
Yes, sir. 
Do you know how many time zones they have? 
Yes, sir. 
Four. 
No, sir. 
I never really studied that up. 
Eleven. 
Eleven. 
It's not even funny. 
Eleven. 
Eleven. 
That's ridiculous. 
Eleven. 
Eleven. 
That's what we can do. 
We can go anywhere because we live here. 
We can go anywhere else. 
Yeah, but not only the right of free travel, I'm saying the eleven. 
Eleven. 
One, two, three. 
Yes, sir. 
The eleven. 
Eleven. 
That's how big they are. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Eleven. 
That's how big they are. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
I can believe that. 
I'm a firm believer in that. 
All right. 
One, two, three. 
Three, four. 
Yes, sir. 
One, two, three. 
Yes, sir. 
Yes, sir. 
The Soviet Union, the whole half side of the world. 
Yeah. 
And we're just on a little, one little tent of the globe. 
Yeah. 
They, uh, when you talk about fighting, we're a country that, uh, we're a firm believer on Christ. 
And it's called help thy neighbor. 
Do not kill, do not, you know, steal, cheat, lie from everybody. 
That's why we have to have computers, because man, nobody is perfect, you know. 
It's not even funny. 
You meant... 
And about power, man, nobody is perfect, you know. 
So what is your point? 
Nobody is perfect, you know. 
So what is your point, Glenn? 
There is, there's, there's two things you don't talk about. 
One's politics, the other one's religion. 
You, you meant... 
They can, the reason you don't talk about them is because they combine in each other. 
You know what I'm saying? 
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union? 
You know what I'm saying? 
Don't you kid yourself. 
Thanks, Glenn, for the, uh... 
Well, just thanks for the, the good thoughts. 
This concludes our transmission to Oceania. 
However, listeners in East Asia may continue listening on the following shortwave frequencies. 
6110, 7230, 9565, 9760, 15160, and 15425 kilohertz. 
Separate them. 
Here it comes. 
This one. 
  And welcome everybody on YouTube. 
Here we are. 
Kyle, do you make it over? 
Sure. 
And Rob T. 
Firefly, are you there? 
I am right here. 
And I don't see Gila, but I assume she's somewhere. 
She's step briefly away. 
She'll be right back. 
Okay, and Alex, are you there? 
I am here. 
Great, okay. 
Well, you know, a million people are going to ask us what that was. 
It was Negative Land. 
I know it's one of my favorite tracks of all time, Time Zones. 
I could listen to that all day. 
In fact, I have listened to that all day. 
That's why I played it tonight, because I couldn't stop listening to it. 
There's a whole thing with Radio Moscow calling an operator from the 1980s, and just all kinds of incredible things. 
Yeah, great audio soundscape and collage, so hope people enjoyed that. 
Phone line is open. 
Well, let's not open the phone line quite yet, because... 
Oh, we should close it? 
We want to... 
Well, let's have a little bit of a conversation, because we were talking about Google and, you know, rewriting the rules on passwords. 
There was this whole story about iPhones and how people are losing their lives because their iPhones get compromised. 
Has anyone heard about this? 
Alex, you have an iPhone, right? 
I do, yes. 
I haven't heard about this story, though. 
Is this a story you're going to enlighten us about? 
Well, I mean, I can. 
I would hope that iPhone users have heard about this, because apparently they're in great danger. 
And must be warned about this. 
I'll read you the opening paragraphs of this story that was on CNN. 
It's a complex but concerning method of gaining control over a user's iPhone and permanently locking them out of the device. 
Now, some iPhone thieves are exploiting a security setting called the recovery key. 
Do you have a recovery key, Alex? 
I do, indeed. 
All right. 
What is that recovery key? 
Hold on. 
Let me read it to you. 
Yeah, go ahead. 
Oh, right. 
Yeah. 
Rob, stop laughing. 
It's not funny. 
I'm not hearing anything, Alex. 
You muted. 
Oh, yeah. 
I'm sorry. 
Yeah, I don't have it handy at the moment. 
Maybe next week I'll read everybody my recovery key. 
All right. 
Well, I was testing you, and you sort of passed the test. 
Don't give out your recovery key. 
Don't give out your recovery key. 
Not when we're on the air. 
Give it to me later. 
That's good advice. 
Give it to me when we're off the air, and we'll take it from there. 
But the recovery key makes it nearly impossible for owners to access their photos, messages, data, and more. 
That's according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. 
Some victims also told the publication their bank accounts were drained after the thieves gained access to their financial apps. 
And, you know, I think the thing here is that it's all tied together. 
You put everything on your phone, give your phone access to everything that's important, and then you lose access to your phone. 
You lose access to everything that's important. 
Now, this type of takeover is rather hard to pull off. 
It requires a criminal. 
And thank you, CNN, for saying criminal, not a hacker, because it does require a criminal basically watching an iPhone user enter the device's passcode by looking over their shoulder either in a bar or at a sporting event or really anywhere where there's a shoulder and you can look over it. 
On camera. 
That too. 
Yeah, you could record people. 
Surveillance. 
That's how you get passwords at ATMs, you know. 
Well, yeah, but that's a different story. 
Manipulating the device's owner so they'll share their passcode, you know. 
Rob, you were telling me once about the passcode you had that was like so funny. 
Do you remember that one? 
Oh, yeah. 
That was a good one. 
What was that again? 
Oh, you know, I think I've forgotten it. 
Okay. 
You guys are good. 
I got to say, you've been trained well. 
So, yeah, get the passcode, and then you have to steal the device on top of that. 
So, obviously, you have to get the passcode, then get the phone, then enter the passcode, and then use it to change the device's Apple ID, turn off, find my iPhone so their location cannot be tracked, and then reset the recovery key, which Alex has still not given me. 
That's a complex 28-digit code intended to protect its owners from online hackers. 
Is yours 28 digits, Alex? 
I would presume it is. 
I haven't looked at this in a really long time, but, yeah, probably. 
Well, Apple requires this key to help reset or regain access to an Apple ID in an effort to bolster the user security. 
But if a thief changes it, and again, CNN, thank you for saying thief, the original owner will not have the new code and will be locked out of the account. 
And that could only be the beginning of your problems, because, you know, if they're in the account and you can't get into the account, they can do all kinds of things in your name and maybe lock you out of other accounts as well. 
An Apple spokesperson said in a statement to CNN, we sympathize with people who have had this experience, and we take all attacks on our users very seriously, no matter how rare. 
We work tirelessly every day to protect our users' accounts and data and are always investigating additional protections against emerging threats like this one. 
But on its website, Apple warns you're responsible for maintaining access to your trusted devices and your recovery key. 
If you lose both of these items, you could be locked out of your account permanently. 
So what you can do is you can protect your passcode or, as Apple is suggesting, and this might sound kind of familiar, you can use Face ID or Touch ID when unlocking your phone in public to avoid revealing your passcode to anyone who might be watching. 
So this is basically the same thing Google is saying. 
Stop using passwords. 
Use your face instead. 
Use your finger instead, because criminals, thieves can't get a hold of those things, at least not without you noticing. 
That's all nice and everything, but, you know, always, eventually, Apple or iPhones will require you to utilize your actual passcode to open up the phone, you know, after a certain number of logins, I think, using biometric methods, or if there's been some kind of unusual activity, you show, you know, they're still forcing you to do it. 
Or, you know, let's say you have a mask on, and you can't unlock your phone because you have a mask on your face. 
I mean, even though I know people will call in or write in and say, oh, well, Apple introduced some feature that now allows you to unlock your phone while you're having a mask on, but let everybody have set that up. 
And quite frankly, that was introduced so late into the pandemic that it, I think, really didn't have a lot of utility. 
But, so, they still, you still need a passcode anyhow. 
Do you think the day will overcome where people aren't using passwords or passcodes? 
Yeah, I do. 
I think that they'll be used in far fewer instances in the future, but I don't think that we have cracked that, not just yet, because of this notion of identity belonging not to the individuals, but to corporations who manage this system of identity and this process of authentication for us on the internet. 
I think when we control our own identities and authentication systems ourselves, then I think we will have more autonomy and less reliance on things like passcodes and recovery keys and things like that. 
Yeah, it's interesting. 
There's all these different phrases, passwords, passphrases, passcodes, and what Google is calling passkeys. 
I mean, it's all kind of confusing to, I think, the average user. 
Passkey, passcode, password, what's the difference? 
I have a theory. 
Go ahead. 
That passcode or passkey might be something they're trying to get into vogue to get people to stop using words like password. 
Uh-huh. 
You know, so to let people know it doesn't have to necessarily be a dictionary word. 
It could be anything. 
Like a sentence. 
Especially, like a sentence or the initial letters of a sentence. 
Well, that's a passphrase. 
That's a passphrase, a sentence. 
So I don't know what the difference between a passkey and a password is. 
It's just, well, I think a key is something that's generated, whereas a word is something you come up with. 
Right? 
And a phrase is longer. 
A phrase is like a sentence. 
Yeah, it's longer. 
I think those are good, simple ways to at least try to compartmentalize or categorize it or ways of thinking about it. 
But anyway, they suggest that you back up your iPhone regularly via iCloud or iTunes. 
Okay, fine, Apple. 
Of course, you're going to say back up your phone to us. 
But is there a way to back up an iPhone to something else? 
Let's say you don't want Apple having your data. 
Let's say you want it to be someplace maybe you control or maybe some other company controls. 
Is that possible? 
Alex, can you back up your phone to a non-Apple service? 
I think you can, well, it would be in a format, I think, that only Apple, well, if you use the Apple backup system, then you can back it up locally, but you're still backing it up in a format, I think, that's only readable to Apple itself. 
But there are ways that you can access the data on your phone and copy it to some local system and then copy it to some third-party system, you know, whereby you're not using Apple's backup procedures. 
That's quite possible. 
But to back up the entirety of the phone to a separate place whereby it could just be restored onto a new device, I think you have to use Apple for that. 
I could be wrong, but I don't think you can get around. 
But it's your phone. 
So shouldn't you have the ability to do what you wish with your data on your phone and back it up to whatever service you want? 
Well, I mean, I think that's an open question here because, you know, backing up is, well, is a process that they could consider to be proprietary in one way or another based on the file formats, the system, the way in which the operating system interacts with the device, that kind of thing. 
But you can get all the data off of your phone, but just not in a way that makes it incredibly easy to replace that data on a new device. 
Go ahead, Cal. 
Certainly the portability of their operating system and what you've agreed ostensibly to license or be a user of is going to work on other systems or in an outside way at your own peril. 
I mean, their obligation to make their backups as widely portable and exportable as possible is very minimal. 
I mean, they have the expectation that you might use more of their services to protect it, but to exfiltrate it, it's the more you think about it, it's the antithesis of protecting a device or locking it down, as it were, however you want to put it. 
The more exportable it is, the easier it is to exfiltrate people's data. 
And that's exactly what you're trying to avoid insofar as protecting users and providing a service or having the service providers trust the hardware is going to work on their service for their customers in a reliable, safe way. 
Well, the point that I think we're slowly arriving at is that we want to believe we own our devices. 
We want to believe we own our data, but that's conditional at best. 
And at worst, we don't own anything. 
We're just leasing time on a device and it could all go away on a whim. 
You know, it's something that we're seeing frequently. 
I think because of the capabilities of these devices, we really, and what I'm hearing here, barring some future development or something that has really easy uptake or that's just super invasive, like implanted or some sort of hardware, software key that's, you know, maybe somewhat biometric. 
I don't know, like based on, you know, your unique vibes, you know, whatever security crystals they issue people, you know, until then, we're going to be working in an environment where we need to treat these highly capable general computers that are running a very proprietary, limited user interface and operating system to work with baseband and communicate with the towers and the service provider. 
Yeah. 
I mean, you know, let's just treat it like it's a phone, like the less reliant you are on this convenience factor, which all of these things really are banking apps. 
Yeah. 
Convenient to have it, but is it less convenient than it ruining your life and draining your bank accounts? 
Exactly. 
Yeah. 
Your, your, your ex spouse or your, you know, domestic or other, you know, uh, exposures of your device being out there just add that much more trouble if that device is a point of failure in your overall personal security. 
So I just think like the, the, until that little, you know, magical idealized security scheme is, is realized in a way that's actually got uptake and people like, are like, yeah, this makes sense. 
You're going to get this wordy pitching and, and, uh, Oh, well, we'll at least back it up when, when it fails because they don't have a lot of high confidence or this idealized, uh, mechanism in place yet, or even in, in the pipe, so to speak. 
Like, so you, you should just behave as though this, this ought not be a single point of failure because they also make things like cloning, like having a backup phone very impossible because of the, the way they issue identity, identity on the network and, um, and, uh, and, and issue, you know, hardened security in the, in the handsets themselves and, and how they issue them to customers. 
So it gets increasing, the more complex they make it, it's just, um, creating a more enticing target because so many people will then trust Apple inherently because of their security prowess or, or Google, because again, they've hyped up all these other little, um, resilience features that are supposed to make you more comfortable being your true self on their platform or divulging or otherwise linking all these really, you know, crucial things like personal finance and so forth. 
I think people need to ask themselves the question, what would happen if I lost my phone? 
How much would my life be destroyed? 
Will you lose all your pictures? 
Will you lose all your communications? 
Will you lose access to, to, uh, uh, vital, um, uh, accounts or apps or things like that? 
Assume that you're going to lose your phone or that your phone will be stolen or might, maybe we'll just blow up, you know, anything is possible. 
Do you have a plan? 
Do you have a way of, of, um, copying your data, having it available someplace else that you control? 
Because yeah, it's, it's all fine and good to, um, um, to back up to these services, but Hey, these services go away too. 
We've seen it countless times where all of a sudden they're just, uh, um, they're, they're sun setting. 
That's a nice way of saying it. 
They're sunsetting a certain service and you're screwed. 
You know, you don't have access. 
And if, if you're not paying attention and you miss it, your data is gone. 
You need to have control over that. 
If it's something you really trust and you know that it's going to be around and by all means go for that. 
But ideally having your data locally, having your pictures on a device you can control, you know, physically, that is the best, uh, the best solution I think. 
And I don't think enough people do that. 
So I can say, you know, I could lose my phone tomorrow. 
It'd be a pain in the ass. 
I have to get another phone, but, uh, I'm not going to lose pictures. 
I'm not going to lose conversations. 
I'm not going to lose, you know, anything that is really going to be that much of a concern. 
I don't do banking from my phone. 
I think that would be crazy. 
Um, and, um, you know, it's, um, it's, it's a device. 
You just treat it as a convenience and not as your life. 
I would just add just creative ideas, you know, break up where you put different things. 
You know, there are, um, a myriad of ways to, um, to save, like you said, periodically, um, files from the SD cards, like, uh, photos, things that are important that you want to backup of anyway, contact lists, maybe, you know, print that or copy it down somewhere or have a little address book that you keep in a, in a junk drawer, whatever works for you, but have, uh, um, other sources of that information and even, um, an additional device. 
They're really affordable. 
Even that you don't have full control over. 
I had a contact list on one of my previous phones. 
It was perfect. 
Right. 
People I knew, my friends. 
And then one day, um, I guess it was the phone manufacturer decided it was a good idea to, to simply, uh, assume everybody that I followed on Twitter was a contact and merged it with my contacts. 
And to this day, I can't get rid of all the people that I follow on Twitter and, and, and have, uh, uh, you know, a separate list of contacts. 
They can really screw things up if you're not careful. 
I've had the same experience. 
Yeah. 
So again, like you said, be very, um, uh, closely, uh, guarding your ability to control that stuff and be very deliberate about which and where and how you're, uh, accessing it. 
Because if you're, you know, thoughtful and you put something together, a system that works, you can actually make it a really tricky problem for someone to try to, uh, victimize you in any of these ways. 
The other thing, separate yourself from your phone, you know, don't have your phone by your bed, you know, don't let it wake you up in the middle of the night, turn your phone off or just put it someplace else or put it in silent mode and have hours to yourself. 
So many people don't do that. 
And, and that, that is the cause of stress. 
That is a cause of, you know, just so much people at work think they can just contact you anytime or somebody sends it. 
I've, I've pissed people off by sending a message while they were sleeping. 
And I don't think even email, I don't think I'm waking somebody up if I'm typing on a terminal and sending a message, but I am because people, every time there's an alert of any sort, a new message, they have to know immediately. 
That's not a healthy way to live. 
Uh, I just want to say, I think, you know, on that very subject, uh, if I recall correctly at page 52 of volume 40 of 2600, there is an excellent article about this very subject of disconnection. 
Would that be your article, Alex? 
I thought, I think you might be right about that. 
I think you might be right about that, Emmanuel. 
All right. 
Yeah. 
I would have bet everything I owned on that, but, but yeah, no, it is, it is a very good column that, uh, that you write on every, in every issue, but tell us, tell us what's in this one. 
Well, this one is about, um, I wrote it when I was in room five of the Chelsea Arts Club in London. 
Now they're never going to be able to rent that room again. 
It's going to be on, there's going to be a waiting list for people to get into the room you were in. 
Yeah. 
Well, it's hard to get into that room anyway, right? 
Because you have to be a member of the club in order to stay there. 
So it's, um, you know, it's a, it's a little bit tough, but so the Chelsea Arts Club is this really interesting, wonderful, bohemian shit kind of place in, in Chelsea and London. 
I've, I've done the show numerous times from there now. 
And it's a, uh, it's a, it's a private members club that consists mostly of artists and writers and sculptors and vigil artists. 
There are, uh, I'm proud to say there are almost no lawyers there. 
Be careful of sculptors, by the way. 
Sculptors are a nasty bunch. 
Yeah, they can be. 
They can be. 
You know, they often have chisels and things too. 
A poor sense of humor. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Oh, absolutely. 
Very funny. 
Say the wrong thing and, uh, well, nevermind. 
But anyway, one of the best things about the Chelsea Arts Club is that, uh, when you're inside, there, there's only one rule. 
Unlike a lot of the stuffy gentlemen's clubs of London, where there are these fancy dress codes and, you know, you need to, you have to wear a tie every time you, you know, take a piss or something. 
But, um, you know, the Chelsea Arts Club, there's no dress code whatsoever. 
And there's only one rule. 
And the rule is that you're not allowed to use a mobile device, a cell phone, any kind of electronic device while you're in the club. 
And you have already said that you've done the radio show from the club using an electronic device. 
So perhaps you could explain to our listeners how you bypass their rules. 
If you have a room inside. 
Room five. 
You're staying in the club. 
You know, you can be in your bedroom and you can be using a device, but not when you're amongst other people in the club. 
Presumably if somebody else is in your room with you, you can use your phone, of course. 
But if you're at the bar, if you're at the dining area, if you're in the back garden, anywhere else in the club, you are not allowed to use your phone. 
And it's, and it's kind of wonderful. 
Um, you know, the, the breakfast table there is this legendary place. 
You said this huge table in the, in the dining area and you sit down and there's all the newspapers that are laid out. 
People come into the dining area, sit down next to you and, and you just start talking. 
You know, you talk about, you know, what's going on in the world. 
What are you reading? 
What's, what do you have going on in your day to day? 
People just strike up conversation with each other and nobody is staring at their phone. 
It just never comes out of their pockets. 
Most people don't even have their phones on them. 
Can I ask, uh, not to be a wise guy or anything like that, but, um, does the bartender have a phone in case there's a delivery in the back or something? 
Uh, the bartender probably has a phone on him or her, um, you know, and if there is, you know, some urgent need to go and check your phone, you can go into the, the lobby area right where you come in, into the club, you're allowed to use your phone right there, you know, to call an Uber or something like that. 
But, uh, anywhere else, you're, well, the bartender doesn't have to go to the lobby to answer a call from a delivery driver, does he? 
And you can do that in the, because you can't just leave it unattended. 
Maybe, but I don't think the bartender would be getting calls from the delivery driver. 
You'd have the people at reception probably handling that anyway. 
Well, they got a shout to him. 
Oh, by the way, there's a delivery or are they going to call him on the internal system? 
Well, they would probably just walk through the one door that you need to get to, to get to the bar from reception. 
I'm actually collecting a lot of information from what you're telling me, but okay, that's, that's good to know. 
I'm sure you are. 
Now I know how to make a delivery to the place. 
Very good. 
So, um, yes, this, uh, this is part of, um, of, um, Alex's, uh, regular column that is in 2600. 
And by the way, Alex, uh, you, you, you mentioned, uh, to great disruption at the beginning of the show that it was our 40th anniversary, um, and, uh, 40 years. 
And I, I, I was doing some math, uh, throughout the hour and I realized it's not really true because, um, we put out our first issue in January of 1984. 
And this is now may of, of 2023 and 40 years would be 2024, not 2023. 
So the mistake you made was assuming that volume 40 meant 40 years. 
We're in the 40th. 
We're starting the 40th year, but we haven't done it for 40 years yet. 
You see the difference? 
Well, the, the other mistake I may have made then would be trusting the cover of the magazine that says 40 years of dedicated service, progress of a sort. 
But then yet, yet another mistake that you made was assuming that that was referring to the magazine 40 years of service could be the, you know, the local mechanic who I, you know, want to congratulate for doing what, what, what he's done for so long, but no, it is, it is our 40th anniversary all kidding aside. 
Um, but all year long, all year long, but then the real 40th anniversary would be next January. 
Yeah. 
I mean, uh, do you want to do anything next January for this real 40th anniversary as opposed to the 40th? 
I'd like to save it for the 50th, to be honest. 
You know, that's, that's the big one. 
Yeah. 
Well, they're not mutually exclusive. 
You can have a party at 40 and a party at 50. 
You say that now, but when the 50th comes up, you'll say, oh man, you know, I don't have the energy to, uh, you know, do this yet again. 
And you had a party 10 years ago, so maybe you should just, you know, be thankful for what you got. 
I've had this conversation so many times and, um, I don't know. 
The counterpoint to that though is, you know, and not to be too somber about it, but there are people that are here now that, and will be here next year that won't be here 10 years from now. 
And I, and I think of in particular of our, our friend, Jim, to whom we had to say goodbye this year. 
That's right. 
These things happen and, uh, you gotta, you gotta, you know, you get, life is a, is a series of, of happy memories and you gotta try to make those. 
Well, it's more likely I'll drive them away and that's why they won't be here. 
But, uh, but yes, you, you do have to embrace the, the, the time that you have. 
Absolutely. 
Well, we know rebel would come. 
Just tell us which CO they rented out. 
We don't need a party. 
We don't, we don't need. 
Okay. 
You know, I want to, I want to share one more article, uh, and then we can maybe open up the phones. 
Um, but in keeping with this whole, you don't own your technology, you don't own your data, um, I was reading, um, the gamer.com. 
I know we probably all read that at some point. 
Uh, and, um, the headline here is, uh, what Jedi survivor is doing with physical copies should be illegal. 
Yeah. 
I want you to hear what's going on here. 
Um, pretty soon we're going to have to stop using the term physical copy to refer to the boxes you buy at the store with pictures of video games on the front. 
When you pick up a plastic case with a PS5 logo and the title of a video game on the front, pay GameStop $70 and take it home. 
You may think that what you just did was buy a physical copy of a video game, but when you crack open the case and pop out the disc, and yes, there is a disc. 
You basically, uh, think you're holding a video game that you now own, tangible, permanent copy of a game pressed onto a Blu-ray disc that now belongs to you forever. 
Unfortunately, if the disc you're holding says Star Wars Jedi survivor on it, you'd be dead wrong. 
It turns out the physical version of Jedi survivor does not actually contain the game, at least not all of it. 
Early copies of the game hit store shelves in New Zealand last weekend, and fans on Reddit noticed some tiny, easy to miss fine print on the front of the box that says download required. 
Apparently, after you insert the disc and install it to your system, you can only play through the intro mission before you're prompted to download the rest of the game. 
If for whatever reason you're unable to do that, then the disc disguised as a video game you just bought is useless. 
And this is not the first game to play this, uh, to, uh, to pull this crap. 
Just another example and a worrying trend over the last few years. 
And I think it's something we're going to be seeing more and more of. 
Basically, uh, even when you buy a physical copy, you're not actually getting a physical copy. 
You're getting part of it and you have to go online to get the rest. 
And, you know, this particular article says you can download the rest of the game. 
I think it'll get more to the point where you can't download the game. 
You have to be connected at all times in order to play the game. 
And the disc just enables you to start that process. 
And the time will come when we simply can't have anything tangible. 
You just have to always be connected to something else. 
And I think that's a very worrying trend. 
And I, you know, I'd like to suggest people just not be connected at all. 
In fact, only get things that work when you're not connected to the internet. 
Assume that we are not connected to the internet. 
What about people that can't afford to be connected to the internet? 
Do they not get to play video games now? 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, absolutely. 
I mean, um, I've been into video games for as long as there have been such a thing. 
And, uh, you know, I have cartridges in storage for the old Atari systems and Nintendo systems that if I dust one off and plug it into the console, it'll work exactly as it worked the day it was bought. 
And, uh, that's not something that you can really do anymore because pretty much, pretty much every game, even physical games that you bought that work included on the disc, um, the first time you start them up, they'll download patches to start to fix all the bugs that, uh, they, they left on the game when it went into production. 
Because, uh, you know, you, you don't finish a game now anymore. 
You don't finish making a game before you, you sell it to people. 
But, uh, yeah, this is bad for players. 
It's bad for preservationists. 
Um, it's bad for outfits like the Internet Archive where they have, for preservationist purposes, old games for, you know, computers that you can't get anymore, systems that you can't get anymore. 
And, uh, you could start these up on an emulator and play them. 
Um, you're not going to be able to do that with this sort of thing. 
It's, uh, it's, it's, uh, hobbling the player's ability to make use of what they're buying. 
And it hobbles the future's ability to go back and, uh, and get this experience again. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Well, one counterpoint here, though, is that there does seem to be a very reasonable and logical explanation for why a download is required. 
And you don't have the entirety of the game on the disc is that I just looked this up and, and, and according to the, uh, you know, very highly accurate authority of Reddit, um, it does seem like, um, the discs themselves can only hold about 50 gigs. 
And a lot of games are, are a lot larger now than 50 gigs. 
And I presume that this Jedi game is one of them, and that's probably why a download is required. 
So I, I guess they're making a choice between having the game come with two discs, which I guess from a production standpoint would get tricky because you would have to have a different case. 
And, you know, that, that all gets expensive, uh, pretty quickly and just making people download things. 
Yeah. 
When, when CD-ROMs were new, I bought games on CD that, uh, came with two discs, three discs. 
I think, uh, the, the biggest one that I had was a game called Phantasmagoria, which came on seven CDs. 
And that was in the early days of CD-ROMs and they managed, and I can still take those seven CDs. 
And if I have a computer running a copy of Windows that will run it, um, I can, I can still access and play that game and it won't be, I won't be missing any features of it. 
Can I just point out that, uh, there's such a thing called Ultra, Ultra HD Blu-ray that's been out since, uh, what, 2017? 
And that can hold a hundred gigs. 
So I don't accept that excuse. 
I don't. 
There's always something else that can be developed that will hold more data. 
Well, that's true, but you would need the drive itself to be able to read that. 
And that's something else they can sell to the public, you know, yet another bit of hardware. 
Uh, yeah, but you know, that, that, you would have to have that with a brand new console. 
I think any, any time you have a new console coming out, when there's a PlayStation six, I would, I would hope that they would do that though. 
There is a PlayStation. 
Yeah, there's a PlayStation. 
2027. 
Try to keep up, Alex. 
Come on. 
Oh, all right. 
Ask your kid. 
He can update you. 
Yes, you're right. 
No doubt. 
Are we going to do some phone calls? 
Yes, let's open up the phone calls. 
Phone lines. 
802-321-4225 is our phone number. 
802-321-HACK. 
All night about software as a subscription. 
Yeah, and video games. 
You know, the last time I played a video game, I don't even remember. 
I'm in the real video game. 
I like the, I like the video games where it's not all about shooting. 
You know, does anybody play those games? 
I would like, people might not think this is fun. 
I'd like a game where I got in a car and drove somewhere. 
I would like that game. 
You know, kind of like, you've been playing with Google Earth lately, Kyle. 
Oh, yeah. 
I've been kind of like that, except fun. 
Marking all the underground bunkers and like how they're like being built over time in Russia and China. 
It's hilarious. 
I'm surprised you can find them. 
I like the video games where you have like a timeline and you can put down your video and then you can, you can make edits and then you can do transitions and stuff. 
I'd like Blade Runner. 
That was a good game. 
I liked Road Rash. 
That was a good game. 
I liked Load Runner. 
I liked Adventure. 
That was a text game. 
Shall we take a call? 
Do we have a call? 
No. 
Oh, we do now. 
We do now. 
Yes, let's take a call then. 
All right. 
And we have a call. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook over time. 
Hello? 
Yes. 
You're on the air or on the net anyway. 
Oh, cool. 
I just want to ask a question. 
I rented a car a couple months ago and I like to play with the radio on it. 
I hook up my phone and but I, when I return the car, I delete my phone information. 
But what I did notice was that some people don't. 
Uh-huh. 
And at one day, I noticed that there were actually phone numbers left in the car's memory, in the phone's memory with the person's name. 
Oh, boy. 
And it's like, it was interesting. 
I mean, I'm just wondering, like, is that common? 
It's very common. 
Yeah. 
Very common. 
There's sync settings with Bluetooth associations. 
So people associate their phone maybe in a rental or something and then maybe hit a button where it's syncing contacts and stuff like that that they don't necessarily think through. 
They forget to wipe it at the end and then, yeah, people come along and they can see all their contacts. 
They can even see where they went on GPS. 
It's, you know, I think the rental company is obligated to wipe this information if the user doesn't because they're the ones giving it to somebody else afterwards. 
Right. 
Yeah. 
I mean, I, you know, I'm so curious. 
I took pictures of them. 
But the phone numbers are right there on the screen with, you know, it's some of the, you know, some of them had, like, username with, like, you know, the phone's name or something. 
But there were other person's name on it. 
It was just weird. 
Uh-huh. 
No, it's, you're very observant for finding that. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
You know, add to that this crazy notion that when people get the contract when they're renting a car, which also is essentially their registration, that they need to hand over to a cop in case they get pulled over. 
And so, you know, they do this nutty thing with it. 
They fold it up and they put it in the glove compartment. 
And then, lo and behold, they forget to take it out when they return the car. 
And then imagine this crazy idea that, you know, the people cleaning the car don't clean the glove compartment. 
And you can find those very pieces of paper that may also have their name on it, their address, some payment history information, as well as very often a photocopy of their license. 
Oh, boy. 
It goes together with, you know, with, so in addition to those contacts, you may be able to tie those contacts to a person and have a copy of their ID if they weren't careful. 
I literally have seen this happen in a rental that Volkswagen gave me while I was having my car repaired for something with the bumper. 
So I couldn't believe it when I saw that. 
This is a great law and order script, I think. 
Yeah, I really do. 
Because, you know, imagine that a crime was committed and the evidence is right there on the Bluetooth echo, whatever you want to call it, that's still in the car's system and somebody just has to track it down. 
Oh, wow. 
You know, another question I have related to that is that, you know, if you delete your phone, is it fully, like, is it completely deleted? 
Is the information gone completely? 
You can never really be sure. 
Sort of. 
You want to think it is, but it's a good question, is it? 
Yeah, overriding memory on solid state, like, integrated circuits is not necessarily, like, as thorough as it might seem. 
And to technically know or to verify a lot of that, it takes a little bit, I think, more than just, like, the average click. 
I think what you would do is err on the side of caution. 
And if you really do not, if you really want to know that there's no information on something, you kind of need to destroy it. 
There might be apps out there that claim to do this, but I don't know if they're trustable. 
How about disconnecting the battery? 
I mean, I don't know how much that would affect modern cars, but... 
There has been proof of concept, at least in computer system memory, like, in RAM, like, cold boot situations, that's old stuff, though. 
Like, with phones and SD, solid state memory, it's not as clear cut as just pulling a battery. 
As much as we would like to think, it's storing information before it loses power, and that information still resides. 
There's many different types of memory within the board that is a smartphone. 
That's my guess. 
It's very much of the battery, like, the car's battery. 
Like, if you just want to make sure that everything's erased. 
Oh, you're talking about the car. 
That could work. 
That might pull some of the information, but you've got to disconnect it and reconnect it. 
I thought you meant the phone, but that's a good idea. 
Try that. 
Yeah. 
I thought you meant the phone, too. 
The vehicle, yeah, totally. 
You could probably reset what numbers are stored by disconnecting the battery. 
That's a great idea. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Oh, cool. 
Yeah, I think the only way you can be completely sure that you haven't left a piece of information in the car's computer is not to let it get there in the first place. 
You know, if you want to pair up your Bluetooth just for audio, make sure you select the option on your phone when the notification pops up. 
You know, don't share your contact list. 
Don't share your GPS and all that. 
Yeah, watch those menus. 
Yeah, if you never tell the car's computer what, you know, Uncle Beppy and Aunt Myrtle's phone number is, then the car's computer will not know. 
Now, I'm wondering if, should I call these people and just let them, like, warn them for the next time? 
You know, I found when you do that, people generally aren't as appreciative as you might expect. 
They look on you with great suspicion and think that you're up to something. 
But, you know, if you have a chance to, what you're doing right now is very good. 
You're warning a lot of people and probably preventing this from happening in the future. 
Yeah. 
I maybe tell the car rental company, hey, you might have a problem here. 
People are leaving their private data around and they could be held responsible, maybe. 
Okay. 
Okay, cool. 
All right. 
Wait, where are you calling from? 
The Bronx. 
Cool. 
Well, thank you for listening. 
Oh, you're welcome. 
All right. 
Take care. 
Bye-bye. 
802-321-4225 is our phone. 
That was a good call. 
It's something that's definitely on my mind. 
I've noticed that in rental cars. 
It's happened to me. 
I've had that feeling you're all of a sudden trying to do something and then, like, you're not quite sure what you're agreeing to. 
And you have to either, like, give it a go and let it or refuse it and not have that feature work. 
It's just, you know, to do this, you have to answer a question on your phone and on the car saying, do you want to transfer this information from your phone to the car? 
Right there, that should fill you with trepidation, you know? 
Do you really want your private info or your contacts to be as convenient? 
But how hard is it to just use your phone, you know, or maybe not use your phone while you're driving? 
Great, great argument for a travel phone or a phone that's prepaid or something that is just not associated with you so that, yeah, you can avail yourself of these amenities but not be diving into it with something so tightly or closely associated with you. 
Yeah, go old school, you know, put your phone in speaker mode, dial a number, talk while you drive that way. 
Yeah, get the earpiece, the Bluetooth for your ear, yeah. 
You hear cars are bringing, or at least Volkswagen is bringing buttons back because touchscreens, who knew, they can be hazardous while you're driving to look at a screen and select options, whereas buttons you can feel and just press while you're looking straight ahead. 
Imagine, imagine, we're learning so much, nobody knew that before, so now some cars are bringing buttons back. 
I didn't know buttons were gone because I tend to drive cars that have buttons in them, and knobs too sometimes. 
I like knobs, you know? 
Nobs can be great, but the last time we rented a car, we rented a minivan in the Midwest, and the gear shift was a knob, and I'd never seen that before, but it was a knob on the dashboard right next to the volume for the radio. 
So you could, if you were just feeling your way and you wanted to turn the radio up and down, you could have accidentally shifted yourself into reverse or something. 
It did seem like an accident would have happened. 
Wow. 
So the shifting was actually a knob. 
That's kind of interesting. 
I didn't know they did that. 
It was a minivan from, I think, last year? 
It was a pretty new-ish model minivan. 
It was a tank. 
Uh-huh. 
It was seriously a tank. 
It's weird how every car manufacturer seems to have its own ideas as to where to put certain buttons and features and knobs and whatever else. 
And there are very few standards. 
Like the steering wheel, generally in the same place, same shape. 
Okay, we agree on that. 
For now. 
But windshield wiper, good luck. 
Could be on the right, could be on the left, could be a button, could be a knob, could be a dial, could be a selection on a screen somewhere. 
A lever? 
Even if you pick a favorite model, you know, they might move it around from year to year. 
Mm-hmm. 
It's true. 
So, yeah. 
Buttons might be coming back. 
That's good news. 
Any calls? 
I like that. 
No, not yet. 
Maybe give the number out. 
But, um... 
802-321-4225. 
Less screens in things moving at a high velocity. 
No call yet. 
Wow, we've run out of things to say. 
That line still open. 
How about this? 
I have something interesting we can do if you guys are into it. 
Um, I got one of these, um, fraudulent purchase orders from, uh, Geek Squad today. 
And, uh, I could call the fraudulent 800 number associated with it if, uh, if we're interested. 
See how the scam works. 
Yeah, go ahead. 
All right. 
Hold on a sec. 
Let's see if we can get this thing going. 
Hopefully, I haven't called this because they often blacklist your number. 
Okay. 
So, let's see if we can... 
Okay. 
Dial. 
All right. 
Can you hear that? 
Yes. 
Mm-hmm. 
The number you have dialed is not inserted. 
Oh, that is something, Alex. 
Wow, it's out already, huh? 
Damn. 
Wait, hold on. 
Let's try that one more time. 
You're going to hear the DTMS here? 
Yes, we do. 
We're going to hear the DTMS. 
We're trying not to decode them. 
I think Rebel already has decoded them, though. 
The number you have dialed is not inserted. 
Oh, okay. 
Oh, you found another one. 
How did you do that? 
Yeah. 
All right. 
Well, I guess, uh, that's not going to work, though. 
Yeah. 
So, and I saved it, you know, because I thought it would be fun to, uh, to dial. 
Mm-hmm. 
This is why we test things before the show. 
Well, I didn't want to test it because it could have realized that I wasn't a legitimate victim and then blacklisted my number. 
So. 
And yet it did that anyway. 
Yeah. 
Probably. 
Yeah. 
We're going to give it one more minute, 802-321-4225, if anyone out there would like to go. 
Did we only get one call tonight? 
Yeah. 
Wow. 
We have, we have a fair amount of listeners, so I don't understand that. 
And we are on YouTube, right? 
We've, we've verified that. 
Good. 
Good. 
Yeah. 
People are, people are watching. 
We sound good on YouTube. 
You know what it is? 
If, if we're preempted, that, um, sometimes people forget that we're on. 
But I just said we have, we have a usual number of listeners, so maybe there's just nothing to talk about. 
I disagree. 
Well, we're certainly proving that here. 
No, we're not. 
Maybe we're all talked out. 
I'm trying to find more Geek Squad. 
I'll just, uh, while we're waiting, remind people again that, uh, the 2600 meetings are happening all over the world, uh, this Friday. 
You can go to 2600.com slash meetings to, uh, find one near you or start one near you. 
Um, our local one is at, uh, the, uh, the building on 53rd and Lexington in their food court, which is called the Hue. 
Um, this used to be the city group building. 
Now it's, I think, called something else. 
Wait, it's not, it's not called the city group building anymore? 
I think they stopped calling it that at some point. 
I might be, I might be wrong about that. 
Um, but, uh, but the food court itself has a name and that name is Hue. 
Hue. 
Hue. 
Okay. 
And how do you spell Hue? 
H-U-G-H. 
It's actually the Hue. 
So the definite article, you might say. 
Okay. 
Um, okay. 
Well, we do have a call, so I'm going to say hello to the person on the air. 
Good evening. 
Oh, hi. 
Am I on? 
You are on. 
Go ahead. 
All right. 
Well, I thought the team that you had on the radio part of the show was very interesting. 
And I'm going to define it as, uh, uh, technology substituting and enforcing the laws of the state or making even new laws that is, it is enforcing on behalf of the state. 
How, how do you like that? 
Sounds good. 
Well, I'm going to tell you a personal experience I've had. 
Are you familiar with, uh, WePay, which is part of Chase Bank? 
Mm-hmm. 
Do you use it? 
Have you ever used it? 
I don't, I don't think I've used it. 
I know, I know about it. 
Okay. 
Well, I, uh, entertained this offer. 
I'm a client of Chase for a long time. 
I have a business account and they offered me the WePay. 
Well, it's not the WePay machine, but it turned out to be connected to WePay. 
Uh, with, uh, an enticement of $400 after a certain amount of, uh, transactions were processed. 
Um, and I decided to go for it. 
I had already had another one, another similar offer in years before with Chase. 
Uh, then, you know, with no problems. 
And, um, to make the story short, I, at the fourth transaction, my account was terminated and I was told that I was a high risk of chargebacks and disputes. 
Without any evidence of this, 20 years of relationship with the bank, not a bounce check, no nothing, the transaction sailed smoothly. 
And, um, suddenly I ran a fool of some artificial intelligence algorithm that decided that, um, I am not a worthy client. 
And this happened a month ago. 
They seized the money for my transaction. 
Once I went online, I didn't do my due diligence before because I had, I had this kind of thing happen before with Chase and everything was fine. 
And I found thousands of complaints. 
Apparently this, we pay, is a really bad actor. 
And I even contacted, um, class action law firm in California that is looking into the opportunity to basically sue the hell out of them. 
But meanwhile, I'm still in limbo. 
My money is not going to be, the original message they say they were holding on for a minimum of 30 days, now 120 days. 
I didn't get as much as a phone call. 
They didn't talk to the counterpart who was perfectly happy with the way the transactions had been processed. 
And here I am talking to you about it. 
Wow. 
That's, that's not, they actually have money of yours? 
Yes. 
Yes. 
Almost $500. 
It doesn't seem legal that they can just hold it like that. 
And you say it's been 120 days? 
No. 
They are, they say that they're going to hold it for, at first they say the minimum of 30 days. 
And in a later message, denying my appeal, I had to, I had to go through all kinds of hoops. 
I'm thinking of even just going in, sorry, in the latest message they said it was going to be a minimum of 120 days. 
So I'm even thinking of starting with small claims here before the class action happens, if it happens. 
Because, you know, my, my point of contention is that I walked into a branch, a local branch in New York City, in Manhattan, and I responded to this offer that had been made to me. 
And, um, so I think, you know, even the small claims in New York County may have something to say about this, and that's when I plan to start. 
But just to say, you know, uh, this is not Big Brother, this is Big Cyborg, uh, and it's, it's just unbelievable, you know. 
You can be a good citizen, dotting all the T's. 
Right. 
You know, you dot the I's, and you cross the T's. 
And, uh, suddenly you find yourself out in the cold for apparently no reason. 
There are a number of things you can do, and, and, and bad publicity is what they fear the most. 
So, um, uh, going to a local elected official of your choice and getting them on your side, that's one way to go. 
Going to a, a TV station that has a news program where they, you know, point the finger at, uh, corrupt businesses and things like that. 
Get something like that. 
That will respond quickly, but, um, there are a number of options. 
Thing is, though, a lot of people will have similar stories. 
Like you said, there are thousands of complaints, so. 
Yes. 
Definitely this will resonate. 
If you, if you go on Google and you, you Google, you know, we pay a class action suit, you'll find lots of, you know, better business bureau sites with literally thousands of complaints, uh, about this company acting in a similar manner. 
Wow. 
Well, yeah. 
Don't be quiet about this. 
Oh, no, no. 
Keep, uh, speaking out. 
You know, I plan, I plan to get some blood for real, uh, and I really hope that this firm is going to go for, uh, the class action suit, because that's, that's the only thing that might correct their behavior. 
You know, it's when they start losing millions of dollars, but then they say, oh, perhaps you should change something. 
Well, what, what do you think their motivation in behaving this way is, or is it something that they're not in control of? 
Well, um, you know, it's hard to make theories, but I have, of course, um, apparently Chase has bought this company for $400 million a few years back. 
Um, and, uh, I wonder, you know, as I say, there are plenty of complaints. 
I, I'm not the first one. 
Um, so I really don't know what their motivation is. 
But it may be, I had, um, I had read a check out on, on my Hotmail account. 
Uh, I didn't read the full article because often, you know, the, the things that appear are not reliable. 
But I had seen a few times that Chase was getting out of, uh, retail banking. 
And perhaps this is a way, a sneaky way they're, they're doing this. 
You know, they're pissing customers off. 
Um, that's one way to get out of retail banking money with. 
Wow. 
Yeah. 
They think, oh, we're not making enough money with this guy. 
You know, he always gets our $400 offer and we never get any fees from him. 
And, you know, he just keeps the minimum inside the account. 
Uh, so you're using their system to your advantage and they resent that. 
Yes, that's exactly. 
Yeah. 
That's what I think may be going on. 
Um, but of course I have no proof of that other than, you know, finding myself having the cold for apparently no reason. 
Definitely an interesting story. 
Uh, Skype folks, do you have any, any input on this? 
Um, I'm looking at some of the reviews online right now and a lot of people are saying this is happening to them. 
Um, that payments are being held. 
Um, and what's interesting is someone from WePay went through on the Better Business Bureau site and is responding to every complaint saying, we're so sorry to hear that you feel that way. 
Yeah, that's what they keep telling me. 
Yes. 
And meanwhile, they're saying, we're so sorry that we cannot reinstate your account. 
You know, that you're going to have to find different solutions, which of course, you know, it's crap. 
Well, I mean, the important thing is getting your money back. 
Uh, and I don't think you would want to work with them anymore anyway. 
And, you know, in, in my, in my demand for, uh, you know, I edited up, uh, it's the four 50 plus the cost of the machine plus, um, the, the offer that they, I say, you know, I want $1,201 and I also want you to erase and making accessible any information that would be damaging to my capability, to my reputation, to my credit rating, to my capability to conduct business. 
And that's what I want in court more than anything else, because it's not just the money. 
You know, you end up in obscured databases that companies that process credit cards exchange and you're suddenly a criminal. 
Well, it's just blacklisted in there. 
Nobody will ever give you, you know, the capability of processing payments again. 
Right. 
Now you're blacklisted in their database, like, like the landlord database, if you get in on somebody who's bad. 
Alex, any, any, uh, legal advice, uh, you can, you can offer? 
Can they just take them to small claims court? 
Do they have to answer? 
Well, yeah, you could. 
I mean, you could sue in small claims court. 
There's, there's any number of, uh, legal remedies available here. 
I think, um, you know, small claims court has a, uh, a damages limit though, you know, so I think if it's over 5,000, it depends on the county, right? 
I think, but I think it might be a five or $10,000 limit to go into a small claims court. 
But this does seem like the type of thing where, um, you know, a class action would be the mechanism that could, that could go forward. 
Because if, you know, it's one thing, if you wrong one person, it's just not worth, you know, pursuing for, you know, a hundred dollars or $200 or something like that. 
But if you wrong a massive amount of people for a small amount of money, that's, that's the mechanism that a class action is seeking to, uh, well, that's the, uh, uh, the legal situation, uh, for which the class action is an appropriate mechanism. 
So, uh. 
Well, Alex, would you be interested in taking on something like this? 
Well, probably not. 
I just think, um. 
Alex is in demand. 
He's booked. 
Yeah. 
I don't really do class action, uh, law, you know, and, and to be, to be honest, um, um, most of these, we would be, my firm is a pretty big firm. 
We'd probably be defending class action rather than. 
So you might see him in court after all. 
You, you, you, you never know, you never know. 
That's why I'm dancing on the issue because I really don't know if, if the parent company could be, um, client. 
So I don't want to make any, um, statements about, you know, the, the merits of it or not. 
I'll just talk about the legal remedy itself. 
You know, after my DCSS lawsuit, I saw my lawyer in a future case on the, on the side that I was not on. 
And I said, oh my God, how could you do that? 
But that's, you know, lawyers do that. 
They wind up on different sides sometimes. 
Oh yeah. 
You can't really, uh, count on it. 
Yeah. 
That's, uh, that's, that's the, you know, the long and the short of it. 
Um, yeah, you're, you had a great lawyer though for the DCSS case. 
You were talking, you must've been talking about, uh, Marty Garbus. 
I didn't want to drop names, but, uh, yes, yes. 
Yeah. 
But you know, that's, that's, that's the nature of the game that, uh, legal people wind up defending other people. 
Oh, no, it wasn't a suggestion for my case. 
Uh, no, but, um, there definitely is a case and, um, I, I think, uh, connecting with other people is definitely a good, a good step, but also the advice we offered as far as contacting media, uh, apart from us, uh, and, um, um, politicians, politicians would be very interested. 
The right politician could definitely open some doors here. 
Uh, again, the company does not want bad publicity. 
And if you can bring that to them, uh, they'll give you whatever you're asking for. 
Okay. 
That's a good advice. 
I'll keep you posted in future shows. 
Yes, please do. 
Hopefully, uh, I'll be able to thank for myself in this matter. 
All right. 
Good luck. 
Thank you so much. 
Thank you. 
Keep up the good work. 
Take care. 
All the best. 
You know, that reminds me, um, my judge was in the news. 
He was trending on Twitter, you know, the judge Kaplan. 
Well, what did he do recently? 
I mean, he's got so many interesting cases. 
It's just kind of weird because, you know, I, I see my judge, uh, from the DCSS case in 2000 trending on Twitter. 
I'm like, I feel this sense of pride. 
Like, Hey, that's my judge. 
Why do I feel the sense of pride for the guy who ruled against me? 
But, you know, I just, I felt like, you know, some sort of, uh, representation there. 
Yeah. 
Save that for when he's not ruling. 
Well, it was my judge. 
Okay. 
When your judge is tweeting, uh, trending on Twitter, you'll understand. 
Um, but yeah, Lewis Kaplan, uh, ruled against, uh, Trump this week for something. 
I don't know. 
There's so many rulings against Trump in one week. 
I don't know which one this was, but, um, the case that he's presiding over, he, he, he's, well, he also has the, uh, the FTX case with, uh, SPF. 
So it's a big one. 
Wow. 
All right. 
Um, my call tonight was it's, it's nine o'clock. 
I think we can take one more call. 
If there's a call, I say we take it. 
Then I say you get the call. 
Oh boy. 
Fetch it. 
You work. 
You work for this. 
If we don't have a call. 
Work for this, Alex, go ahead. 
Yeah, I'll try. 
But, you know, we need people to call. 
I know there's burning questions on people's minds. 
You might want to talk about AI, digital footprints, all kinds of, uh, issues and things. 
But, uh, if they don't call, they won't have their questions answered. 
Phone lines are still open. 
No calls yet. 
Keep going, Alex. 
802-325-4225. 
Get the phone number right, for God's sake. 
The phone's ringing, so, you know, you blew it anyway. 
There you go. 
It's 802. 
Now you got me saying it right. 
802-321-4225. 
It doesn't matter, though. 
It's going to be busy now. 
Good evening. 
You're on off-talk overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Uh, good evening. 
Can you hear me okay? 
Yes, we hear you fine. 
Where are you calling from? 
Uh, calling from Kansas. 
Okay, you're the Kansas guy. 
Yeah, yeah. 
I didn't want to be rude and call on two subsequent weeks, but since you were asking for calls, something was on my mind. 
No, that is, that is so considerate. 
If only everybody followed the same, uh, uh, decorum that you do, uh, and, and didn't call every week or every other call or whatever, sometimes, you know, people are a bit intense. 
Truth, truth be told, we don't have a rule. 
We don't have a rule, but we appreciate the consideration. 
True, true. 
But it's a consideration. 
Yes. 
You know, the precedent should be set. 
So, um, I just wanted to share with you guys, um, all the, I guess this is the fatigue that comes from Twitter, all the conversations around that. 
Oh yeah. 
Um, we're hackers. 
I feel like we should drive away from that space, right? 
Like I think you should put the call out or, or maybe it just hackers in general, right? 
Like let's take back IRC. 
Let's, let's go to the 2600.com website. 
Let's find other places and not reward, you know, sort of this circus and this media and this frenzy. 
It's, it's really just something to talk about and just sort of feeds into all of that craziness. 
And that was, you know, sort of something that we've been talking about a lot is again, just minimize the craziness, minimize all the nonsense in the world. 
And the most powerful thing we can do is, uh, our action. 
And so if we move away from those platforms, um, again, whether it's because we, you know, have a, a, uh, I don't know, uh, whatever, whatever the nature of our disagreement is and we'll, we'll frame it under the umbrella of Twitter. 
But, um, if we move away from those things and find alternate solutions, that's really the hacker spirit and the mentality of things. 
Like when something isn't working, let's take it back and put the call out to our friends and our colleagues and things and drive them to other platforms. 
Yeah. 
That makes sense. 
I agree with that. 
But, um, somebody winds up running it and whenever that happens, eventually they go down the wrong path and piss people off. 
And then you have the same thing happening all over again. 
Uh, you have, you know, who decides what the next thing will be, you know, and, and why do they get to decide that? 
Is it because of who they are, where they are, what they work for? 
There are going to be people who disagree with that. 
Then you have five different things people can go to. 
And, um, it's weird. 
You can't predict what's going to, it does fragment, right? 
The voices and things like that. 
It makes it harder to hear the signal of the noise. 
But even right now with this overrun as, as again, Twitter is, which is so much nonsense and you can't really follow the things that you're interested in. 
And it's broken up the sort of the communities and things like that. 
And I guess we'll open the door if you don't mind for a moment. 
What do you guys think about Mastodon? 
I mean, there are some things out there. 
It's, it's the idea of decentralized. 
Nobody can sort of take over and claim ownership of it. 
Um, have you guys, I was going to, I was going to, I was going to ask about Mastodon if you had an opinion about that, because, um, that is what many people have gravitated towards decentralized networked. 
I think it's gotten better in the last few months because the things that I post show up faster in different places. 
Um, but, um, I'm not seeing, uh, a lot of people embracing it. 
Like as many as I would hope for, I'd like to see more. 
Certainly not mainstream, right? 
And I think a lot of, a lot of the early adopters, right? 
Cause there's always the early adopters to the platform. 
They're going to be the ones that sort of get a, get it in the, get it in people's minds, right? 
You've got to, you've got to sort of break through that barrier. 
And again, you know, you guys on the radio, um, with your presence, um, in the hacker community, I think you really could sort of encourage people or, or again, just open up the discourse. 
I'm certainly not lobbying for one thing over the other, but, um, you guys have, uh, the ability to reach a lot of people. 
And so again, let's drive people to solutions that aren't necessarily where we give up all of our, the control of our data to, or we give up all of our posts and we don't own them. 
Like, let's find a better solution. 
So consider, I would say, I mean, I'm with you on this and I think it's, it's a good idea, but consider there's been the outcry and the options. 
And we did early on discuss alternatives and, you know, put out there that there are places people are, are, um, uh, migrating to, uh, but consider that there's been this much activity, um, moving away and discuss and, and moving towards alternatives without any emphasis. 
Uh, we've merely just discussed what people are doing and what options are, there is no campaign. 
And, uh, as he explained, having the wisdom of, of seeing stuff like this happen in different organizations before, yeah, I mean, it, it, it, it isn't a campaign and there are, there are pitfalls in, in trying to coalesce around something like that, but, um, consider what, what, um, were people to, um, put emphasis on that? 
Uh, it's certainly an option in the future and were they to do that? 
I think that, um, yeah, even if it was a temporary, um, campaign, I think it could certainly have an impact. 
I think, I think the, um, the most important thing here is being able to network because, uh, when, when you isolate, that's when things get weaker. 
IRC is a perfect example of this, uh, back when it was Fnet, uh, and, and, and, and big networks like that, uh, almost everybody was on them. 
You could reach all these different people, but then we started having fragmentation. 
Uh, even within the 2600 IRC network, uh, people in a particular, uh, part of the country would say, okay, now we're going to run our own IRC network, but you couldn't reach it on the main network. 
You had to go to their server to be on their IRC network. 
And of course, there are only about eight people on there. 
And we've seen the same thing happen with instant messaging. 
And now even with, with email and various other ways of, of, of communicating. 
I like what Mastodon does as far as networking different, uh, um, servers and, and, and, and different parts of the world together. 
Um, but it's, it's, it's not centralized. 
And I think that is, you know, something like that is the solution, but it has to be easy to use. 
And we might be able to figure it out, but if, if, you know, um, I hate to keep bringing grandparents into this, but if your grandparents can't figure out how to use it, it's probably too difficult for the average person who's not technically inclined. 
And, you know, if you want something truly usable for communications, you do need to have it be somewhat easy to use or intuitive. 
Sure. 
I guess the only, the only counterpoint that I might add to that though, is do we, how much value do we get because Twitter is, is, is accessible as it is? 
I mean, outside of the tech community, I could see, we could make the argument for people that are, you know, skilled professionals sharing information. 
The, the challenge though is, is there's just so much of social media that's really just wasted hard drive space. 
I mean, I remember on a show in the past, you guys were talking about, like, you really wanted to have 2,600 on Instagram, for instance, right? 
I guess I would, I would sort of make a little bit of a judgmental call that not every picture on Instagram has merit, right? 
You know, there, there's a lot of sort of wasted bandwidth for those things. 
And if, if there were a bit more of a difficult barrier to entry, is there the possibility of reducing the noise, right? 
And so that's, that's a debatable thing, you know, the barrier judgment of other people. 
The barrier to our entry is just our, our name. 
They don't like our name. 
And I'm sorry, but we can't yield on, on our name. 
2,600, they say you can't use all numbers, but there are accounts that use all numbers. 
So that's, that's a load of crap. 
So we're not on Instagram because of that. 
Probably disingenuous. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
We've, we've run into that many, many times. 
I, we can't forget the, the noise of ads too. 
I mean, just the, the advantage of, of finding a way to move away from that, to get away from the commercial side of, of this form of spreading information in, in, in, uh, ads, that would be a huge benefit, but the will has to be there and, and the, the overarching structure has to facilitate it. 
Well, you raised a good point, which is we have to, I'm sorry, Rob. 
Yeah. 
Rob, your hand is off camera. 
I can't, you're raising your hand. 
It's off camera. 
So I don't see it. 
Sorry. 
He's raising it. 
It's on camera for, it's on camera for me, but I guess it's off the edge of the screen. 
You have me squashed. 
But anyway, um, the, yeah, to, to go back to what you were asking about Mastodon, like I personally love Mastodon so much. 
It's become my social media daily driver. 
And I know so many of the people who I know personally, and maybe this just speaks to my personal circles, but, uh, so many of the people I know who have, um, lessened or stopped using Twitter and, uh, moved to Mastodon are people in the hacker community. 
Um, the hacker community seems to be, seems to really be strongly embracing Mastodon in, in particular, but also in general, the federated social media, the, the decentralized stuff like Mastodon, the other activity pub stuff, because, uh, there, it's like how the internet itself works where it routes around damage. 
Um, no one entity controls it and everyone just, uh, collaboratively keeps it going. 
And, uh, yeah, nobody, nobody can buy Mastodon in the way that, uh, someone bought Twitter and, uh, took it on all sorts of directions. 
But Rob, can I ask you this? 
Uh, those people that, uh, you don't see eye to eye with those people that, you know, you disagree with on social issues, political issues, things like that. 
Are they on Mastodon? 
Can you, um, I'm sure, I'm sure they, I'm sure they are, and I could find them if they want it, if I wanted, or if they could find me, if I, if they wanted, um, but, uh, I feel like they're probably on truth social, if we're being honest. 
Yeah, probably on truth social, a different system. 
And that's just segregation then you're not, you know, I, I, I, I don't like idiots, but I recognize that idiots are a big part of the, of, of the world. 
Uh, and sometimes you want to engage. 
If somebody says something particularly egregious, you either want to bring it to the attention of others, or you, you want to shoot them down in one way or another. 
And if you take that away and you're only with people that you get along with, well, eventually you're going to stop getting along with them too. 
Uh, but you're missing out on the potential for actual dialogue and, and disruption. 
I will say there have been occasions on Mastodon where I have had discussions with people who've responded to something I said, or I responded to something they said. 
And, uh, there was a disagreement, there was a discussion, but that was it. 
It was a discussion. 
It wasn't like a flame war. 
It wasn't, uh, you know, calling people names and, uh, you know, saying terrible things about them. 
It was a discussion because I think the general vibe on Mastodon is, uh, one of, uh, sort of, um, more reasonable human interaction than I think Twitter has grown into. 
And, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm digging it on that. 
It feels like the volume got turned back down. 
It really sort of has reset a lot of things. 
There's a lot better engagement on the platform. 
And I also, I, I, I put my money where my mouth is. 
I abandoned Twitter. 
I deleted my account, went over to Mastodon as well to really sort of, you know, pitch in and really show that I was going to support an alternate choice in the, in the space. 
No, that's, that, that's great. 
And if, if, if the volume is turned down and the discussions are more intelligent, that's, that's amazing too. 
I'm just wary of that happening only within a certain, um, uh, perspective of people. 
Uh, and if, if, if, um, you know, it's only people that, uh, are fairly liberal that are, uh, um, treating each other with respect and people who are conservative just aren't around anymore. 
I don't think that's the solution. 
I'd like it to be everybody treating each other with more respect and disagreeing as much as ever, but doing it in a more, um, uh, civilized way. 
So hopefully we can achieve that. 
Uh, this also speaks to the point. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
I'm very sorry. 
Uh, no, this really speaks to just how the place of social media in all our lives has changed over the years since Twitter has been the big one. 
Um, because before that, like social media, you would find interest groups about things you were interested in. 
You would find sort of, uh, you know, forums around a single subject or things like that. 
And when Twitter became the thing everyone had, or Facebook's another one that became the thing everyone had, then you had to deal with everyone. 
And, um, this, this, uh, this whole situation has made me question sort of the place of social media in my own life. 
And like, do I want to react? 
What do I want to interact with this fire hose of everybody, including the assholes? 
Or do I want to go back to a more comfortable place of like, hey, here's people who are interested in what I have to say. 
I can follow people who are interested in who, who I find interesting. 
It's yeah. 
Scope of community, like how big and what kind of control and, and, uh, modulation you have over that control. 
Well, and I would say too, as the manual to your point about the barriers to entry and getting, getting additional voices in the space, the technology, I mean, I still feel it's early and you pointed out that we haven't really been talking about it extensively, so it's going to mature, it'll become easier. 
And so eventually there's going to, you know, there, there's going to be a segment of Twitter people that will be become, you know, exhausted from the circus and, and move as well. 
I mean, I think like that's, that's all the technologies that I guess that have legs, right, that have any sort of longevity in them, they'll continue maturing, they'll become easier to use. 
And eventually will we be having this discussion, a discussion again, that this is the new Twitter 2.0 debacle where everything, the volume's too loud and we can't hear each other. 
It's possible because everything humans do tends to be circular, but that's a discussion for another time. 
All right. 
It's ongoing for sure. 
And living through history, but thanks for your thoughts. 
I don't want to take too much time. 
I know it's late. 
So again, thank you everybody for the show and take care and have a good evening. 
Thank you for calling. 
Yep. 
Bye-bye now. 
Take care. 
Kansas, you got to have strength to, uh, to survive in Kansas and, you know, be, be, uh, a freedom loving person. 
Well, actually, you know, Kansas has done some good things recently with, uh, certain, certain votes, but, um, there's also, well, the whole country is going through crap right now. 
I just, I feel like a conversation. 
It's, uh, it's so familiar. 
It's like, um, you know, like, uh, uh, uh, part of that community that Rob was, uh, talking about creating. 
And, and I feel like we're just picking up where we left off from week to week and, uh, trying to push some of these ideas forward to get to a place where, um, people do have comfort, they have control and, um, they're empowered over and over again by these tools, uh, instead of the opposite. 
I think that's, uh, pretty much going to do it for us tonight. 
We're going to, uh, try to connect to Pornhub on Utah, on Utah's IPs, right? 
We have to, uh, figure out how to defeat their systems and, and, uh, strike a blow for freedom. 
Any closing thoughts from people out there? 
Uh, go to the 2600 meetings. 
That's right. 
Every, um, every first Friday of the month, and that's coming up this, this Friday, all around the world, 2600.com slash meetings to see if there's one near you and to start your own. 
Who's the first celebrity star that's going to show up on Mastodon? 
Is that what it's going to take? 
Like, Madonna, is she on Mastodon? 
Is Madonna on Mastodon? 
I don't know. 
You tell me. 
Why should I tell you? 
Why should I care? 
Who's the star? 
You know, like, uh, you know, in, in terms of celebrities, in terms of like mainstream celebrities, not just people dorks love. 
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. 
But like, um, went during, during the whole, uh, debacle last autumn with, uh, with Twitter and a lot of people emigrated to Mastodon. 
A lot of sort of big name accounts did, um, check it out. 
I know Kathy Griffin, the comedian is on Mastodon now. 
Um, you know, Neil Gaiman is on Mastodon. 
Are they still participating? 
Did they just get an account then and forget about it? 
That's a, that's a good question. 
And I'll, uh, if I can look this up, the only reason, the only reason I bring that up really is because the commercial social media sites, they often do this when there's a big buzz, when they're doing a publicity blitz, they try to get the right, you know, sports or some, some personality to attract the masses and they do it for commercial gain and so forth and getting that critical mass of people there. 
Do you need that? 
Does it have to be, uh, uh, something so, uh, transactional? 
Maybe there is a, uh, a willingness. 
It can be from hackers as we're stating, but all kinds of communities could be attracted to this for really altruistic reasons. 
There are good reasons to move away from commercials. 
I mean, Rob, if you can tell when the last time Kathy Griffin tweeted on, oh wait, I can't use that word on there. 
Can I? 
It's Mastodon. 
Mastodon. 
No, wait, they can't even be, that's an unfortunate prefix. 
Kathy Griffin tooted? 
Um. 
Kathy Griffin last tooted on March 31st. 
Oh, tooted is, I'm not accepting that. 
Or you could say posted. 
Um, but, uh, yeah, Kathy Griffin, uh, she, she put a thing about her, uh, latest show on there and she responded to something someone else said. 
Okay. 
All right. 
So there you go. 
It's, it's being used. 
We, we have a Mastodon account for the radio show. 
When's the last time we posted it? 
We, we posted today. 
Um, we, we post every week, uh, when we're on the air, when we're on off the hook over time. 
Um, I, I interacted with, uh, somebody via that, uh, somebody was trying to decide, um, what to listen to because apparently over the overtime is on at the same time as another program. 
And, uh, you know, they chose us and I thank them for this. 
Yeah, but there's a writer's strike now and, and, uh, that affects a lot of other programs. 
And not us. 
Yeah, but we are on at, at, at the moment we are on hacker radio show on mess it on dot social. 
If you use mess it on and you would like to follow us. 
Okay. 
We should be the first, first, uh, show to follow there when you, when you join. 
Yeah. 
I guess off the hook was taken, but, um, fine. 
Uh, right to us. 
oth at 2600.com. 
Um, we will be back next week on off the hook, uh, at, uh, seven o'clock on BAI and eight o'clock on overtime right here on YouTube. 
Again, oth at 2600.com meetings this Friday, stay awake, stay with it and fight back against all the crap that's out there. 
Cause there's an awful lot of it.