The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough. 
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
Bum Diddley Bum for the best, expect the worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
Bum Diddley Bum! 
Bum Diddley Bum! 
Bum Diddley Bum! 
Bum Diddley Bum! 
And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is Off the Hook. 
Emanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle. 
Hello. 
Out in Skypeland, we have Alex. 
Good evening, everybody. 
We have Rob T. 
Firefly. 
Good evening. 
And we have Gila. 
Good evening. 
Welcome back, everybody. 
It's been two weeks since we were last on the air talking about computers and technology and hackers and things like that. 
Any new exciting developments on anybody's front? 
Well, hello. 
But no. 
No, nothing personally that I've triumphed over. 
But a lot of things that I've been scrutinizing. 
Anyone else? 
Anyone else? 
I'm just glad UN Week is half over. 
Okay, yeah. 
I guess that's an issue for some people. 
But yeah, it's fun to have them in town, isn't it, for a little while? 
I want to sue Google, okay? 
No, I do. 
It's just been getting to me. 
They are pissing me off so much. 
We've been getting a couple of complaints from readers saying that they weren't getting their Hacker Digest. 
Hacker Digest is like a yearly compendium we put out. 
And it gets emailed to our readers. 
And it's weird because we sent it to them and they said they didn't get it. 
And we checked into it. 
And lo and behold, there it was in the Gmail spam folder. 
We tested this out on our own accounts. 
Yeah, we have a couple of test Gmail accounts that we use for purposes like this. 
And sending from our own account on 2600.com to the recovery address that's affiliated from the recovery address, that is, to the Gmail account, it wound up in spam. 
It just, we wound up in spam, even though there had been maybe a hundred different emails from that very email address. 
It just, for some reason, wound up in spam. 
You know, you click the box saying not spam and try it again, goes right back to spam. 
It's just insane to me and to almost everyone I've talked to how no accountability is put on Gmail whatsoever. 
If you look this up, how to prevent your email from winding up in Gmail's overly broad spam filters, you will get a lecture on what you are doing wrong. 
You will get absolutely nothing indicating what Gmail has to do. 
There is no person to contact. 
There is no office to email. 
There is nothing you can do except change your behavior. 
Literally, literally, we're told, yeah, change the words you use. 
We're putting out a hacker magazine. 
Maybe don't talk about hacking. 
Maybe use different words instead, and then Gmail will find you acceptable. 
That, to me, is not acceptable. 
And I just want to, Alex, you know, you have a good legal mind. 
Is this the kind of thing that, you know, poor individuals like us have a chance to get anybody to listen? 
Probably not, unfortunately. 
I mean, it would be very difficult, I think, to prove damages here that would be meaningful in some way. 
But, look, on the other hand, maybe there is some angle that if you put Google on notice that this is a big problem and they are continuing to have this problem. 
Let me stop you right there. 
How do you put Google on notice? 
How do you do that? 
How do you talk to them? 
How do you talk? 
It's a robot. 
You don't, there's nobody, whoever answers our phone, an email, nothing. 
It doesn't exist. 
And you're asking about damages. 
I can cite one case where somebody basically, it was known as a chargeback on a lifetime subscription because we never sent them the magazine. 
When we did send it to them, it went to their spam box. 
We tried to tell them that, but our email to them telling them that went to the spam box. 
There was no way for us to talk to them. 
So, they think we're defrauding them when actually the mail is sitting in a Gmail spam box because Gmail decided that it was spam for some reason. 
Their algorithm is broken, but nobody will dare say that. 
Well, the idea of putting them on notice would require you sending them some kind of letter or an email, something that tells them that there is this problem, it's an ongoing issue, and it's affecting our customer base. 
At which point, once they're on notice and they continue to do nothing, maybe you would have some kind of claim, something like tortuous interference with contract. 
I'll drive to the office, you know, whatever it takes. 
Give me the address. 
Give me a person, a phone number, you know, a telex number, whatever. 
I will buy a telex machine and send it to them. 
Whatever it takes, we are willing to do. 
But we just can't get a response from anyone. 
I mean, I think the main issue here is that it would require the reconfiguration of their anti-spam filter. 
Exactly. 
And that's a big deal because, you know, and we're using a lot of terms in our articles like hacking, coding. 
There may even be some actual code in many of the articles that come through and all this. 
I even heard 2600 is one of the words that they don't like, our name. 
That's where it comes from. 
I wouldn't be surprised. 
Can't change that. 
That's the main issue here, though, is that the subject matter is generally considered forbidden or off limits. 
Who the hell are they to decide what is off limits? 
What is acceptable? 
What is not? 
Deliver the damn mail. 
Imagine if the postman did that, you know, he basically said, you know, you shouldn't be seeing this. 
I'm going to throw that away. 
You'd be outraged. 
You'd be he'd go to jail. 
This is not right. 
Email should not be messed with on this level. 
And, you know, I challenge anybody who has a Gmail account. 
And boy, so many of you do go into your spam box. 
Look in there. 
Tell me how many things you found that shouldn't be in there. 
That's not a good spam filter. 
When it takes legitimate mail, puts it in the spam folder, I'd rather get a little bit of spam than have legitimate mail go nowhere or wind up in the trash. 
That is what's happening. 
And they are not accountable for it. 
And I want them to be. 
And that's that's end of my diatribe. 
Kyle, you had something? 
Well, I just think this idea of like policing language and the kind of the way we talk about our our topic of interest, namely telephones and computers, there are like safe hackers and safe terms to use. 
It's it's it's it's outrageous to to have to sanitize the kinds of things unless they talk about coding, unless other people are talking about it. 
But when we talk about it, all of a sudden, it's a hostile thing to the point where it is disintegrating our ability to publish and and and share ideas, which is really, really problematic because it is a important part of our business, especially now that we have gone completely digital with PDF and EPUB subscriptions, which is great. 
You know, we we are basically bypassing Amazon now and we have a lot of people who have signed up and they're about to get the next issue. 
And I want to make sure they get that issue because, you know, they've paid for it and, you know, they've signed up legitimately for it. 
I don't want Gmail stepping in and just decreeing that this is not acceptable. 
It's not their call. 
So, yes, Alex, let's say I feel like we've had this same conversation, but about a different context. 
And you were on the other side of the issue on this a couple of years ago. 
I was. 
I was on the other side of the. 
OK, tell me. 
For the life of me, what's the name of that moron that that was banging on about the school shootings being fake and he was banned from Twitter? 
The right wing person out the Republican Party. 
Yeah. 
What was that guy's name? 
That guy? 
You mean those people? 
Well, there are a couple of them. 
What does this have to do with the email? 
Well, no, I'm curious who this is. 
OK, so somebody was was was saying that there I mean, there are a lot of people like this, Alex, a lot of people like this. 
I'm not sure. 
A Steve Bannon type guy, that that moron that was on, you know, it was always going on, banging on on these right wing networks and things that I can't for the life of me. 
Again, there are so many of them. 
OK, what's the point? 
And in any event, years ago, we were having a conversation about whether it was right to ban him from Twitter. 
And I had suggested that I thought that our gray matter was what should be our own content filter, right? 
That we should not allow platforms and big tech companies to make decisions about content moderation for us, right? 
That that's a dangerous hope. 
It seems to me like you're taking the position that I took a couple of years ago now, but it's different for some reason because it's email. 
It's different because when when you're using Twitter, OK, you are using their platform, you're 100 percent immersed in their platform, you play by their rules, you're on their turf. 
The people that that are emailing to Gmail users, they're not part of Gmail. 
We're not part of Gmail, but we happen to be emailing some of our subscribers who are and we're being victimized as a result of that. 
So, you know, we're not Gmail users being being found guilty of some violation of policy or existence or whatever they decide. 
We are on the outside. 
You know, I saw another email from a friend of mine who who basically emailed that Gmail account with an attachment. 
And basically they put all these red banners saying this looks dangerous. 
This looks like phishing, basically insulting my friend because he didn't have a Gmail account saying this is not a verified account. 
What does that even mean? 
It's not verified. 
So therefore it's dangerous. 
So that means if you send somebody an attachment, a legitimate attachment to a Gmail account, you're likely to be labeled in that derogatory manner. 
And that's just going over the line. 
I respect trying to fight spam and keeping people safe and all that. 
But when you go too far, you wind up creating new victims. 
And that's what's happening here. 
And I think, you know, there isn't enough attention pointed at this. 
You criticize Google. 
It's the same as criticizing Apple. 
All these people are going to rise up in defense of the big corporate gods and say that you're the one that's in the wrong. 
You have to change your behavior. 
I don't subscribe to that. 
I'm sorry. 
I think we should be who we are and have technology bend its will to us, not the other way around. 
I mean, I tend to agree with that in most parts, Emmanuel. 
I think, though, what we're dealing with are essentially fundamental issues here about content moderation and who should be doing it. 
And I think if we abdicate the authority or the responsibility to police what comes into our own minds to tech companies, this is how we end up in this type of conundrum. 
What I do think could solve this would be more usability or configurability of the algorithms that we use to block spam. 
If we have content coming into our inboxes that deals with cybersecurity, that deals with hacking and news about hacking and things like that, we should be able to whitelist that type of content. 
But it seems like that's just not available for some ridiculous reason with respect to Gmail. 
The other gripe I have about Gmail is they want everybody to have a Gmail account. 
Gmail loves to send email to Gmail accounts, and supposedly they're not mining the content of these emails as much as they used to be many years ago. 
But this presents a really interesting opportunity, I think, for Google and Gmail to start encrypting the world's email. 
If you're constantly sending email from Gmail to Gmail, there's really no reason why they couldn't implement some kind of certificate-based encryption scheme that would allow Gmail users to email other Gmail users in a way that would allow it to be end-to-end encrypted and, therefore, much more secure. 
Which I think... 
And that's fine until you start excluding people who don't use Gmail and castigating them and making them the problem. 
Rob, go ahead. 
Yeah, this strongly illustrates one of the problems I've had with Gmail and things like it since the start, which is it's a free service. 
People sign up for it, and it is provided by Google as sort of a loss leader to tie you into their ecosystem of Google products and make you use their other things and put you in a situation where they can make money off of you, either passively through showing you ads or directly by selling you things. 
And when you are using Gmail, as I said, you are not the customer of Google. 
The ad companies are the customer of Google. 
You are the product that they're selling to the ad companies. 
And so Google is not providing you an email service on, like, a commercial level, so they have no responsibility, no liability to maintain the quality of that service to your satisfaction. 
You're getting a freebie. 
They're letting you use their toys in hopes that they can get more money out of you. 
But in this situation, which so many people are in, so many professional people still use Gmail, so many high-level people in places of power, politicians, celebrities, CEOs, all these people use Gmail. 
So many people in this room, on this program, use Gmail in one way or another. 
And it is a freebie. 
It is something – it is like the toy that you get in with your breakfast cereal. 
But, Rob, my point is, yes, it's a freebie, but we're not using it. 
We're not Gmail people at all. 
We're being hurt by it. 
That's what I'm complaining about is the fact that as non-Gmail users, their policies are hurting us. 
Absolutely. 
And that is a way in which they're hurting their users who we're trying to get things to. 
And their users have no recourse for that because there's no business relationship there. 
Kyle Van Gila. 
I just want to point out that there's a sense of irony here, and it's hilarious to me, I think, in that the entirety of this policy is predicated on a trust model, like a tiered level of trust, where these entities, in which, in this case, Google or Gmail, are the trusted entities and other corporate sort of hosts and so forth, and people running their own domains and domains that aren't a part of some larger entity that is somehow more valid and more trustworthy, is incredibly silly, mainly because a lot of people, I mean, how much could you say Gmail accounts are used to send spam and to run scams and all kinds of other things? 
We see that a lot with legitimate spam because the spoofed email, the email address that's used is often actually a Gmail or other free type email account. 
And that's even more fantastic with Alex's scheme because it's end-to-end encrypted with the spammers. 
Awesome. 
Wow. 
Yes. 
Encrypted spam. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
So the thing that I find fascinating as, you know, when Rob was talking earlier about how many people, I use Gmail. 
I will freely admit that. 
I use Gmail. 
And I was looking, there were some emails from a 2600.com address that had landed in my spam, which was weird because other emails from the same list did not. 
But I have no illusions about the information that Google scrapes from me. 
I have no illusions about them not knowing everything that's going on in my head, which amazes me because sometimes emails from Rob wind up in my spam box. 
Wow. 
Which you'd think if they know that much about me, they would know emails from Rob are not spam. 
Yeah, for the most part. 
I mean, that is, I mean, don't you find that upsetting? 
Because it could be something important. 
He could be trapped somewhere emailing you for help and you miss it because it went to spam. 
Even though you guys are partners, it doesn't matter. 
Google decided it was spam, so you don't get the message. 
And, again, and on what planet is email from my husband spam? 
And how does Google not know that this is my husband? 
Because, for God's sake, we wrote our wedding ceremony in Google Docs. 
They know. 
Now, you know, the answers that we'll never get is basically add him to a whitelist. 
Or, wait a minute, you've added him to the whitelist and he still goes to spam? 
It doesn't work? 
Oh, my God. 
No, apparently my whitelist resets every now and again. 
Oh, really? 
It's very strange. 
I didn't know that. 
But the point is, you'll be told all these things you can do. 
When do we tell Google what they need to do? 
Because they never answer. 
There's something wrong with the algorithm. 
Hey, we'll help you fix it. 
You know, we'll say this should not happen, so maybe do something to make that not happen again. 
And it's not hard, but there has to be interaction, and that's what we're lacking, and that's what I'm complaining about here. 
Hey, we've got to move on. 
I'd love to complain about Google all hour long. 
I mean, they've destroyed YouTube, for God's sake, with the advertising, with the spying on people. 
It's just, it's, I might wind up on the side of Republican congressmen with this issue. 
I really don't want to, but boy, it's so annoying. 
Twitter, though, talking about charging users. 
What do you guys think about that? 
And, Rob, you're talking about being the product. 
Should the product start paying for the service now? 
I mean, it's like asking a cow to pay to be slaughtered. 
I don't know. 
I've already kind of flounced off Twitter, and every time I look back at it and take a brief look just to see if it's gotten any better, it's just worse every time I look at it. 
In terms of quality, in terms of what's being shown to me, in terms of how well the site works, it's glitchy as hell now. 
And so are we going to be asked to pay for rampant, unchecked white supremacy and a whole lot of porn bots? 
Because there are probably better ways I could spend my money. 
But if the product isn't going to change and we're asked to pay for it, I fail to see the efficacy of this business model. 
Gila, would you ever pay for Twitter? 
Just imagine a really good Twitter. 
Would you pay for anything that basically had that business model? 
So if you had asked me two years ago if I would be willing to pay for Twitter, if I would be willing to pay for pre-Elon Twitter, no. 
No. 
I can't think of any circumstance, and I'm willing to pay for a lot of stuff. 
I pay for Spotify. 
I listen to podcasts on Spotify. 
There's still ads on the podcast, even though I pay for Spotify. 
But am I going to pay for Twitter? 
No. 
There's no way. 
It's not going to happen. 
Would you pay for Gmail? 
No. 
Would you pay for YouTube? 
No. 
No, despite how often they ask me to pay for YouTube. 
And isn't that something? 
Because what Google does, and for those who don't know, Google owns YouTube, they are putting so many ads on videos now. 
It's gotten so offensive. 
Not only do they have the pre-roll and the post-roll, they have the mid-roll. 
That means in the middle of videos, you get interrupted with ads constantly, especially annoying for live feeds. 
You're watching a hearing somewhere, and all of a sudden, here's a shampoo commercial. 
So it's disgusting. 
But they have this other ad, or this bar on the screen that says, you don't like ads? 
Pay us, and we'll stop the ads. 
It's basically a shakedown. 
But it's so offensive and annoying. 
And that's not what YouTube ever was. 
And beyond that, I will also, because I pay for things, we cut the cord, dropped cable close to a year ago now, and we have YouTube TV. 
Would you think they'd throw in YouTube Pro or whatever on earth it's called because you have a YouTube TV subscription? 
No. 
Wait, what is YouTube TV? 
That's not the same thing? 
They have a different product? 
YouTube TV is like live streaming TV. 
It's cable. 
It's cable. 
But it's through YouTube. 
But it's not YouTube. 
It's not YouTube, but it's YouTube TV. 
It's a YouTube product. 
So now we have the YouTube TV app on our TV so we can watch TV, but we also have the YouTube app so we can watch videos of bears falling down or whatever. 
And, yeah, I would think, if it were me, that I would include, I would package YouTube, whatever it's called, YouTube Plus, YouTube Pro, I don't know, in with the YouTube TV package, despite the fact that they keep emailing me every week asking if I want to add NFL Sunday ticket for a mere $50 a month. 
I'm like, no, I'm good. 
Thank you. 
Oh, Gila, that's a good deal. 
I don't watch that much football. 
Yeah, that's because you don't have the deal. 
Get the deal, you'll start watching more football. 
Uh-huh, problem solved. 
Yes, Rob? 
They're true. 
And the thing with YouTube in particular is that the money situation behind it is so hopelessly broken anyway. 
For the longest time, you know, people who make their livings making YouTube videos can't do that through YouTube, through the system and the monetization they have there. 
People are using other platforms, basically. 
The people who make a living making YouTube videos now, you know, tell you in those videos to go to my Patreon or go to my Ko-fi or go to another thing and, you know, subscribe to me that way so I can keep making YouTubes, which I don't make money on. 
And it's kind of hilarious watching them try and figure this out over the past decades, but it's also really sad for how it treats the actual creative people whose work this is they're exploiting. 
It really is. 
It really is sad. 
But, you know, getting back to the Twitter issue for a moment, what you guys were saying about leaving Twitter because of all the white supremacy and nonsense and things like that, while I feel that and certainly sympathize, there's a part of me that says we can't just walk away. 
Because, you know, when there are Nazis in the room, you don't leave the room, you stay, and you get them to leave, and you fight them, and you make sure that their presence does not spread. 
And I feel that everybody just doing a mass exodus on Twitter, well, we're seeing it now. 
We're seeing white supremacy flourish over there, and I'm afraid we'll not see more of that. 
And if we're not around to fight it, what does the future look like? 
Yeah, I heard this recounted by a bartender once. 
Like, if you let someone in that wears, like, an insignia or some kind of hate thing, and you just let that slide, and you don't remove it immediately, it becomes a thing where their friends start hanging out. 
And then all of a sudden, before you know it, the only people there are the hate groups, and you become that kind of establishment. 
What a great bartender. 
Yeah, so they had, like, a zero-tolerance policy for symbols, anything, remotely identifying with that, because it only attracts more of it. 
Absolutely. 
Unless you remove it from the context and call it out immediately. 
And, you know, you could say, well, Elon didn't do that. 
Yeah, but, you know, we need to do that, too. 
Not just, you know, the guy that's messing it all up, but if we just give up. 
You know, I feel this way about a lot of things, where the answer is simply, okay, we're not going to participate anymore, but it's still there. 
And other people are using it, and it becomes more powerful without us. 
I just feel, you know, stay and fight at least for a while, you know, and try and make it better. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
My take on this is, you know, you talk about the establishment becoming that kind of establishment, and I feel that's already what's happened with Twitter. 
And continuing to be on Twitter, for me, and I'm not judging anyone else, because a lot of really, you know, good people still have to use it for their work or, you know, to get their own creative stuff out there or what have you. 
And because, or even just find their community, because it's still the only thing out there that's accessible. 
But if continuing to be on the platform to stay and try and make some stand against the Nazis and the nutjobs and the terrible people also increases the value of a person who is embracing the Nazis and the right wing and the terrible people, like, I don't want to give Elon more money. 
And, you know, if me sitting on Twitter gives him that additional fraction of a cent or whatever, I would rather my attention and my energy and my electrons and my bandwidth go elsewhere. 
And so, like, I just, I feel like Twitter has already become the Nazi bar at this point, and I don't enjoy it anymore. 
But look at it this way. 
Can you annoy Elon more on his platform or away from his platform? 
I think you can annoy him more by being on his platform. 
That's my opinion at this point. 
Anyway, go ahead, Alex. 
I tend to agree with Rob on this nearly entirely here, because I think, and I also think, by the way, that it's great that they're anticipating charging users to use Twitter, because that will get people to flee this platform. 
That'll be the end. 
That'll be the end. 
And Nazis aren't going to pay. 
They don't pay. 
No, no, they're very cheap. 
We all know that. 
The other thing, by the way, the name of the person, the right-wing conspiracy theorist, nutjob, Sandy Hook denier, whose name I couldn't remember earlier, that was banned from Twitter. 
That was Alex Jones. 
Oh, Alex Jones. 
Okay. 
Of course, yeah. 
I mean, we haven't said his name in a really long time. 
I think it was four or five years ago that he was banned from Twitter. 
But, you know, once you start, once you rather stop banning people from Twitter like that, much to the point that Kyle had made, I think now we see, with this mass exodus, the transformation of a mainstream social media platform into an alt social media platform that is really just a hangout for extremists. 
You know, much like 4chan and 8chan was, you know, years ago, now we're seeing that type of thing happening to Twitter. 
You know, we all know what Cory Doctorow would call this. 
We can't say it on the air, but it's the end. 
And poopification, I guess, is what we can call this, of a platform, according to the FCC rules that are in place for us today. 
But I think the more we leave social media platforms, the more connected to each other we are actually going to be. 
They have totally failed in their mission to create communities and connect us. 
They've done nothing but have been divisive platforms for misinformation, election interference, and the spillover from digital to physical violence. 
You know, we've seen this time and time again. 
I don't see, I see very, very few redeeming qualities of social media, the destruction of which I wholeheartedly will. 
So you're for the destruction of social media in general, not just Twitter? 
Pretty much. 
I think it's all horrible. 
I can see that. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, I mean, talking of the economic situation of the site going totally Nazi, I mean, we're seeing that happen with other sites today. 
There are things out there, including Truth Social. 
And there are articles in the paper over the past weeks and months about how crappy the financial situation is behind that site. 
And so, like, yeah, you can't run a site just on, you know, fueling the cyclical outrage of Nazis. 
And I think watching Twitter descend into that and then fail, that's how I want to annoy Elon, just by, like, watching it burn. 
But here's the thing. 
You know, Elon took this over over a year ago. 
Is it not possible he could lose it and someone else could take over, somebody with a more enlightened approach? 
And what do we do at that point? 
If it becomes cool again, if it becomes fun again, then I would maybe consider going back, but not as it is now. 
Go ahead, Kyle. 
I just wanted to say I dipped a toe into the Fediverse. 
Ah, yes. 
Yeah. 
So I have steadily backed away from Twitter, although I'm still there, as you pointed out. 
And as far as the pay-for thing, I'm kind of where Rob is and just saying, like, I don't have X money. 
No, Twitter money to clean it up or, like, respond or, like, you know, defend whatever's going on there or be a rebuttal to it. 
That's not exactly why I want to be there. 
And I would say, as Alex pointed out, the quality of content. 
A lot of people that used to be prolific there are not there anymore, and I miss that. 
And I think the content, the stuff that I, when I really think about it, that I'm actually seeing and looking at there amidst ads, isn't, like, the value isn't really, isn't quite the same, especially given how many people are anticipating sort of a disintegration of the thing. 
So going forward on the announcement about paying, I took as a sign to remove that from mobile devices. 
So I'm still able to access the platform if I need to go fight Nazis, I guess, but I'm going to toot otherwise. 
Yeah, you know, about tooting. 
That's the Mastodon term. 
I'm all for that, but, you know, so far I have not noticed the engagement. 
I'm just not seeing the engagement back. 
You know, you say things and there's nothing. 
I saw that right away. 
It's very cold and not algorithmic, and that is jarring if you've been on a lot of this. 
Well, I'm not in favor of algorithms building up, but, you know, I would like to see conversation, and I want to see more of that. 
Maybe that's on me. 
Maybe I have to somehow engage more. 
But the thing that I noticed, you know, I was complaining about this, and other people have said they agree with me, basically it's the ability to comment about something. 
Say you see a picture or somebody else's toot, I guess, and you don't just want to boost it. 
You don't want to just, you know, add your checkmark to it or whatever. 
You want to say something about it as well, but you can't because that has been decided is a negative thing to do, and I don't agree with that. 
I think you can do very positive things by commenting on what somebody else has said or done, and that kind of, you know, uniform decision across the board kind of bugs me. 
Anybody else? 
Well, there are ways to do that on Mastodon. 
You can just take the URL of a post that you want to comment on, write your comment, and include that URL. 
And in some Mastodon clients, that'll look like a quote tweet. 
In others, it'll just people have to click on the URL to see what you're talking about. 
But it reminds me a lot of old, old Twitter. 
Back in the early days of Twitter, when all there was to Twitter was you write something, you type it in the box, you send it out there, and that was it. 
There weren't retweets. 
There weren't quote tweets. 
There weren't really replies. 
But Twitter users figured out on their own things like hashtagging, things like, you know, using the at sign for replies, things of that sort. 
And Twitter eventually saw these developments by its own community and adopted them on a technical level, so then they worked as they do now. 
And I think the Fediverse is going through kind of those same growing pains, but also finding itself adaptable to what people want to do. 
For the longest time, people said, no, you can't do quote toots. 
And now it's being considered again. 
And there are ways to kind of do loopy versions of it. 
Yeah, quote toots. 
If I can use a word like quote toots, I'll be happy. 
Can we just call them quotes? 
Why not? 
Yeah, let's grow up and call them quotes. 
I think Tuteket is going to be something that people really establish and familiarize themselves with going forward. 
But it is fascinating to try out such a thing. 
I didn't know some of the things that you mentioned, that that wasn't a possibility. 
But, yeah, maybe taking a photo of it or something, a screenshot. 
Hey, so here's a story. 
September 9th of this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, did I say his name right? 
That's as close as I'm going to get. 
Close. 
Yeah, he became a victim of a Twitter hack. 
His Twitter account was compromised. 
A malicious tweet was posted before being deleted. 
And that tweet claimed that ConsenSys, a blockchain software company, would launch a commemorative NFT to celebrate the arrival of the proto-dank sharding feature on Ethereum. 
I think you see where this is going. 
The tweet was used to deceive users into clicking on a link that promised a free NFT. 
Of course, we all know there's no such thing as a free NFT. 
The hacker took advantage of Buterin's compromised account to share a link that enticed users with the promise of that free NFT. 
And once victims connected their wallets, their funds were stolen. 
I'm sorry, it's not funny, but please, I mean, don't do that. 
It's estimated over $691,000 in financial losses were collectively suffered by individuals who fell prey to this scam. 
Don't ever say Twitter didn't hurt anybody. 
One of the most valuable NFTs stolen was CryptoPunk number 3983. 
We're all familiar. 
Which was valued at approximately $250,543. 
If you believe such things. 
The victims of this Twitter hack experienced significant financial losses. 
Many users reported losing valuable NFTs. 
Yeah, maybe that is a contradiction in terms. 
Funds from their wallets after clicking on their malicious link shared by Buterin's compromised account. 
The total amount lost from this scam highlights the importance of being cautious while interacting with shared links on social media platforms. 
Now, some users have expressed their concerns regarding Buterin's security measures and called for him to take responsibility for the incident. 
They argue that as a high-profile figure in the crypto community, he should have taken more precautions to prevent his account from being hacked. 
However, it is important to note that individuals with significant online presence are often targeted by hackers due to their visibility and access to valuable assets. 
This is from CryptoCoin News. 
And it brings us to another story that happened just today. 
You guys might have heard about this. 
A hacker appears to have briefly gained access to Donald Trump Jr.'s account on Twitter and falsely claimed that his father, Donald, had died. 
The bogus post, which was retweeted around 400 times, which seems awfully low to me, claimed Trump Jr. 
would run for president in his father's stead. 
I'm sad to announce, my father, Donald Trump, has passed away, the alleged hacker wrote. 
I will be running for president in 2024. 
It's kind of exactly the way he would say it, I guess. 
But yeah, that's something. 
Another since-deleted post said, North Korea is about to get smoked. 
That tweet was followed by several more, including one that tagged the current president and said, Ooh, I can't say that on the air, Joe Biden. 
And well, you know, you get the idea. 
It's just basically a lot of immaturity. 
And silliness. 
But yeah, you know, Twitter accounts get hacked. 
It happens. 
You guys think there should be any kind of a penalty for somebody? 
I think there should be a penalty for people stealing money, you know, but hacking a Twitter account? 
I mean, don't forget, the Twitter account owned by the Donald Trump basically had a password called MAGA2020! 
With an exclamation point. 
That was their password. 
Not hard to guess. 
Gila? 
Also, I would guess my question is, is this, did someone actually compromise his account? 
Or is this a case of someone did something bad, got caught, and then said, oh, I was hacked? 
Well, I don't think that the founder of Ethereum was leading people to a scam. 
No, no, no, no. 
I meant Donald Trump Jr. 
Oh, whoa. 
You think Donald Trump Jr. 
falsely reported his dad had died? 
I mean, I guess. 
I do think that he, what's, I don't want to libel anyone on the air, but, you know, sometimes when we're experimenting with mind-altering whatevers, you know, you tweet crazy things. 
And then a few hours later, when you're back in your right mind and you're like, oh, no, I got hacked. 
I didn't do that. 
That's what I'm saying. 
The Ethereum guy, though, no, that's 100%. 
Okay. 
But if you're dumb enough to click on a thing like that, you kind of deserve to lose your Bitcoin. 
I'm just saying. 
Yeah, that's, you know, it's a cold fact, but I think I do agree with that. 
Yes, Alex. 
I'll tell you, I see a lot of these types of cryptocurrency scams happening constantly on Twitter. 
And it's the same type of MO. 
I mean, what the criminals will do is they'll look for an account that has a large following, compromise that account, and then they will retweet things or they'll do it in a repetitious manner in the sense of they will reply to somebody else's tweet that was very popular with some kind of notification of an airdrop or a free NFT that then leads to a link where people open up their wallets and they get fleets. 
Now, what's also fascinating, though, is that these scams also seem to have a huge number of bots associated with them that amplify these posts. 
So the criminal enterprises behind these are already operating networks of hundreds, if not thousands, or even tens of thousands of these bots, so that when they have a compromised account that has a huge following, they make this reply that has a malicious link associated with it. 
All of a sudden, it is amplified massively by this bot network, which then allows the Twitter algorithm or the X algorithm, whatever the hell we're calling it now, that it allows that algorithm to recognize, oh, this is a very popular post. 
Why don't we amplify it further and spread it farther afield so that it then uses the algorithmic decision-making processes inherent to Twitter to further propel this particular type of fraud? 
So I see this constantly, and it's really dangerous. 
It's another indication that social media is, by and large, a massive cesspool. 
Now, to go back to the issue with Vitalik, I think it's very difficult, and I want to be clear about this, to pinpoint blame on any account holder without knowing how the breach actually occurred. 
Vitalik might have had two-factor authentication implemented. 
He might have had a long password. 
He might not have had any other devices that were logged in on a session. 
And still, you could have a compromised social media account by something like a SIM swap attack, by somebody attacking his carrier, swapping the SIM, resetting his passwords, using essentially a stolen telephone number. 
That's extraordinarily difficult to defend against. 
So I think we have to really think about the methodologies here. 
I think the onus is on all of us to never believe something you see on Twitter. 
And that's why I've always been against world leaders making major announcements on Twitter. 
It just seemed ridiculous. 
When you say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous. 
I've declared war via Twitter. 
And saying it via X doesn't make it any better. 
So don't kid yourself there. 
Hey, a cause and effect story here, maybe. 
International Criminal Court has said it will now investigate and prosecute cybercrimes that violate existing national law, those particularly involved in cyber war. 
In an article by prosecutor Karim Khan, technology will not exceed our humanity. 
He noted that the growth in cyberspace can be misused to facilitate war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. 
He added that even though cybercrimes were not outlined in the Rome Statute, they had the potential to fulfill the elements of many core international crimes as defined. 
For those who don't know, the Rome Statute is the treaty that defines the ICC's authority to prosecute illegal crimes, including the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. 
Unless you're American, of course, then you're immune from that. 
Now, Khan called, I'm not kidding, that's true. 
Khan called for the court to adapt to prosecuting the crimes. 
International criminal justice can and must adapt to this new landscape. 
Khan reiterated that the ICC was set on delivering justice to all and showing that the law is able to deliver for those who find themselves on the front lines. 
And those front lines are no longer just physical. 
The digital front lines can give rise to damage and suffering comparable to what the founders of the ICC sought to prevent. 
That was dated on the 11th of the month. 
Yesterday, the 19th of the month, the headline read, International criminal court says hackers accessed its systems. 
Yeah, it didn't take long, did it? 
They experienced a cyber attack after hackers access its internal systems. 
The organization yesterday confirmed it had detected anomalous activity affecting its information systems. 
Is it a cyber war? 
We don't know yet, but it's going to get interesting. 
It's international criminal court versus hackers. 
Now, of course, you know, I'm not talking about your 14-year-old kids hacking into various systems and things like that. 
At least I hope not. 
I don't want the International Criminal Court getting involved in those kind of cases. 
What we're seeing are international, on behalf of nation states and facilitating war crimes of various sorts, using technology. 
It's not the same hacker world that we talk about. 
That's basically, you know, a bunch of evil people using that technology. 
And they should be stopped by whatever means necessary. 
Those people stealing things, those people causing all kinds of mayhem and suffering. 
Absolutely. 
So it'll be interesting to see how the ICC proceeds on this. 
Any thoughts in the minute we have left? 
Let's play global thermonuclear war. 
Okay, yes. 
All right, we have to head out now. 
Rob, you have some sad news to share with us yet again. 
I do. 
This week, our community has had the sad task of saying goodbye to one of our brightest souls, a brilliant hacker, musician, and a longtime friend of mine called Kurt, known as Kurt underscore, succumbed to a long illness earlier this week. 
When she came to the city long ago, she sought out the local hacker scene, finding the 2600 meetings, the Hope Conference, and more, and quickly became a beloved part of it all with her sharp wit, endless energy, amazing technical and creative talents, and a real knack for bringing folks together. 
Throughout the hacker scene, she found home, she found vocation, and she found family. 
And I'm proud to call her one of my dearest friends. 
We have a clip I recorded with Kurt just before Hope in 2016, in which she chats about her first Hope Conference. 
And we'll play that clip, and then we'll close with a piece of her music called Good Vibes, which you can find on her SoundCloud at username KurtNextDoor. 
I will miss Kurt terribly, as so, so many people will, but I'll forever hold the blessing of having known her. 
Go ahead and roll the clip. 
You've been around in the scene for a while now. 
What was the first Hope you went to? 
The first Hope I went to, I think, was in 2010. 
I think that was the one with, what is that called? 
That video was shown there, Collateral Murderer, and that's where I, the first time I learned about WikiLeaks. 
What was it like going to your first Hope? 
It was fun. 
I met you. 
I met everyone. 
It was my first Hope, and I'm like, oh, s***. 
They do this stuff over here? 
That's awesome. 
Like, I belong here. 
It's awesome. 
So that's how I felt about it. 
I mean, I also went to the PLA talk over there. 
I think you guys have a panel over there. 
Yeah. 
We did the Fun Looses of America. 
I was there. 
I was there. 
So anyway, yeah, I went there too. 
And I'm also, I was happy because I also met Ada Fruit, like Lady Ada over there. 
I've met the tool people over there. 
Like, it was a fun home. 
I think, like, all of the people I wanted to meet my whole life were all there. 
And, yeah, it's just like, like, friends, like, right away, here, you know, just... 
Have you had a chance to look at the schedules and stuff for the Hope that's coming up? 
Yeah, my boyfriend's not there right now. 
No, it's the only one I cared about. 
No, I'm just kidding. 
No, actually, I haven't been, but, like, he just, yeah, X-Logic Extra told me that my talk wasn't accepted. 
Like, okay, and then I was just gonna jump in to look at the talks. 
And I think, like, one of my friends, Nina over here, she's gonna have a talk over there. 
I haven't checked the whole schedule, but I am planning to bring a special guest. 
A special guest? 
Mm-hmm. 
A surprise special guest. 
I'm not saying it right now until he comes there, but I'm bringing a special guest. 
Okay, well, we look forward to the possibility. 
Thank you very much, Kurt. 
All right, thank you for recording. 
And that special guest she mentioned was Renoli Santiago, who she brought to Hope to hang out for a bit. 
And, Emmanuel, you got a chance to speak with him, which was a lot of fun. 
I was there for that. 
That was 2016. 
Wow. 
And so incredibly young, so vibrant. 
It's such a tragedy. 
I can never get used to this. 
We've lost so many people in just the last year alone, and it's not something that ever gets easier, nor should it. 
Yeah, it's been weighing, I think, on me, definitely, in the background. 
Wow. 
So, go ahead, Rob. 
It was weighing on her as well. 
She was kind of cognizant of the long string of sad announcements like this we've had to make on this program. 
And I don't think she relished being another one, but I think she would relish knowing how much she was appreciated. 
Tell us something about the piece we're going to go out with. 
This piece is called Good Vibes. 
And, yeah, you can find it on her SoundCloud. 
The username is Kurtnextdoor. 
That's K-U-R-T-nextdoor. 
And it's a bit of music concrete that she made and that I really enjoy. 
All right. 
Please write to us, O-T-H, at 2600.com, with your comments and suggestions. 
You can join us, 8 p.m., over on YouTube. 
Yes, the very YouTube that we were castigating earlier. 
Find the link up on top of the 2600.com webpage, or just go to Channel 2600 on YouTube. 
We'll see you there at 8 o'clock. 
We'll see you on WBAI next week at 7 p.m. 
Please continue to pledge to WBAI. 
Give to WBAI.org. 
And thank you to everybody who pledged last week, or actually two weeks ago, when we were asking for BAI Buddies. 
And let's go out with this piece by Kurt. 
Good night. 
We'll see you there at 8 o'clock. 
Thank you. 
  And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is off the hook overtime. 
Yes. 
Welcome everybody to YouTube Kyle do you make it? 
Okay. 
Yes. 
I made it. 
Okay. 
All right and out there in Skype land Just all chime in at once present and accounted for Yes, I like to hear what we're gonna do because we've had some issues with the volume we're gonna try and turn you guys down a little bit because people were saying you were too loud and We were too low over here. 
So everyone was just under zero Then I'm watching over there. 
That's why I sounded like a robot. 
Yeah, I'm looking at the levels And they're good yes, no one has piercing ringing in their ears yet not yet No, I was supposed to get that. 
Well, I know the other week we were playing around with that But things look mostly okay here. 
All right Um If you're gonna complain make it a good one, you know, but I think we're all right How do we sound to you guys out there in Skype land? 
We we sound good. 
And we also seem to sound fine on the YouTube. 
Okay, and my estimate, okay and I would ask that if If we don't sound good on YouTube if any of the 17 people who 21 people who are in the YouTube who were live with us on YouTube would let us know Tim in Connecticut to just chime in and tell us that the level sound good on YouTube for him. 
So People are starting to chime in and tell us we're in good shape. 
So until and unless we hear differently, I think we are Go for launch so to speak We also have a phone Yes, that's where things really get messed up when the phone calls start coming in. 
I hate to add that to the equation But we don't just bring a dial tone in I mean we can just test it that way I go ahead You know, we're gonna have to at some point just peel the band-aid off. 
Okay, here we go There you got a nice dial tone there. 
You don't hear this every day So be gentle. 
All right Yeah, it's literally a tone oh Yeah, that's a little hot They make that they make that high so that it gets your attention that that tone is supposed to get your attention from across the House because some idiot left the phone off the hook and they want you to hang it up again Wait, we don't ever play the theme on overtime. 
No, we don't that sounded like we were gonna play the theme on overtime And I got super excited for a second. 
Yeah, well, that's life, you know a lot of disappointments, but yeah You want to hear the theme tune in again next week at 7 p.m. 
And you'll hear it then All right Overtime our phone number for those who'd like to participate is 8 0 2 3 2 1 4 2 2 5 8 0 2 3 2 1 hack Yes, we're off the hook gets real. 
Let's try and Keep it peppy and see if we can get through a few calls Today, and if not, then we won't It's as simple as that But we like to hear from variety of people in a variety of places going through a variety of things Because variety is a spice of life is so I'm told Comment on anything we spoke about earlier on the show or something new or interesting that you thought we might want to hear about or look into And I've talked way too much. 
So guys while we're waiting for a phone call and speak up anything you want to You know spout off about I'll just invite folks to if if you're eligible Take a you know, do what Reggie said at the beginning of off the hook on the air and vote in the WBA I elections that would be very cool of you And also keep supporting what we do at give to WBA org become a BAI buddy. 
We love our BAI buddies. 
We love all our supporters and You know you keep us you keep us going and we can say that here on YouTube where no money is changing hands for what? 
we're doing and YouTube is so far letting us say that without censorship Yes all hail to YouTube and their corporate masters Google and their corporate masters alphabet and their corporate masters Whatever planet they're all from. 
Yeah, you're pretentious Alphabet. 
Yeah making up words Sanctioning the letters we're gonna wind up in an all-out all-out war with how to arrange them. 
Yes, it's gonna happen How can we worship thee? 
Yes, we have a phone. 
We have a phone call phone call Okay, let's take this phone call and hope the levels stay somewhat same And good evening you're on off the hook overtime go ahead Yeah, you're gonna have to turn down whatever you're listening to us on These are good levels Okay. 
Anyway, hi, how you doing? 
Oh a Little a little frazzled today. 
Thank you for asking. 
How are you? 
We're good. 
Maybe we ask where you're calling from Pennsylvania, okay, Pennsylvania University town in Pennsylvania. 
Well, that's that's good that you're in a university town because that adds sanity and craziness What a little bit of both. 
Yes, indeed. 
That is true During the show earlier You Some of you had been discussing the Google or the Gmail the Gmail thing and I just wanted to kind of go Yeah, actually if people are sending between Gmail stuff it pretty much stays on their own Undersea cables even if they're sending it to different continents Google kind of has their own separate Physical network in addition to You know their IP space or whatever so That is actually kind of how it is makes sense for a while they have They have some undersea data structures For parts of their trunk lines. 
It's partially how they have some of their data storage for cooling Wow, anyway, that's just kind of Some of the weird stuff I've picked up over the last few years. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah, you don't work for Google Dean No, okay. 
I I know no, I I may have Google Phi for service So ostensibly I suppose financially I am supporting Google in a horrible way and You know nothing to apologize for No, I don't work for Google I have not worked for Google I've known some people who have at various points in time but Yeah, I know some people who do and they tell me the same thing it's you can't get a hold of people You can't get a hold of you know, any kind of support or you know, expect them to change how they do things Yeah, Google Phi is So the only reason the main reason I picked up Google Phi if it matters was because it was an MVNO I had mentioned we Know that was something else. 
Never mind. 
Um Sorry Google Phi started out as an MVNO for their self-service and In a college town, it's really helpful because Because different cell towers get slammed when the students are in right like saturation Yeah having the ability to switch service providers relatively quickly on the fly Was really handy because for instance like the Verizon signals with if I was Deprioritized because I was on a different plan and wasn't paying the more money. 
Whatever My my my text messages would be just like nope can't send sorry like this is SMS, right? 
but no, I'm so So the idea appeal for me was the fact that well, okay Verizon whatever switch over to T-Mobile or AT&T whatever or whatever local one might be around But over the years they've dropped their contracts for the other towers, so it's kind of Janky these days like Google's definitely gone downhill Like weirdly Yeah. 
Yeah someone check on the search engine go to the search engine room and just make sure everything's still running Yeah, that search engine really doesn't return results anymore the way it used to you get just a bunch of ads now And way at the bottom maybe something but even if you put it in quotes, you don't get exactly what you're looking for I don't know how you could make something like that get so unuseful I Don't yeah, it's People have noticed Google seems to go through phases with their searches Like do you remember when it would show all the Cialis ads with their news? 
I don't remember that specifically, but I believe it It was like 2015 or 16ers. 
I think there's like 15. 
I'd have to I'd have to go look at whatever but Yeah, I was there was a point where At least however, whatever happened with my news results at that point in time It was throwing in actual like they looked like news articles that was for Cialis or random other Medications and things like that. 
It was it was kind of their Service was broke for a little while Wow Alex, did you did you have something to add? 
Yeah, I just generally Agree, I think It almost feels like when you're using Google It's this outdated technology now It feels very anachronistic in the sense because it is all the results are so littered with just crap now I mean those promoted content is almost all you see and then sometimes I get this ridiculous thing I'll search for whatever and it's you know, it sends me on some Google journey nonsense, you know I don't even understand what the hell that is But but the whole thing really feels like it's becoming more and more broken and it's just it also seems like the the business model of Google and promoting and selling all of these ads is is Really outdated in 2023 at this point as well that we have this proliferation of generative AI tools that are going to be replacing I think the manual type of Reading and scanning that we are have become accustomed to doing anytime we search for something on Google and you know the color I think brings brings up some interesting points to and you know, the the search results are very often skewed or askew and there's a lot of Stuff going on called SEO poisoning now as well or search engine optimization poisoning where people will Take these malicious domains things that will have nasty links on them Perhaps things that will open up your cryptocurrency waltz and allow people to steal your NFTs that type of stuff You know work credentials harvesters, etc so that when people are searching for ordinary terms or companies these websites will pop up and direct users to malicious sites and and that's that's been running fairly rampant through lots of different Quote-unquote journeys or search terms that are being returned on Google these days. 
So it's it's not only less useful, but also more dangerous Yeah, a lot of money being thrown around for these that they can that to exploit these kinds of ad networks and stuff It's kind of an old trick, but it's still super popular because the payoffs can be really big to to just Use things in way. 
It's a hacker mindset, but it can be really predatory Just using things in ways that they're just they were never really designed to be used unmasked by well healed Entities that want to do some, you know, do some campaigns that yield some some info or money or some kind of payoff It's it's not anything to spend it on an ad SEO like that or whatever kind of technique Alex. 
We had something else Yeah, very much to Kyle's point I can tell you I can share an anecdote with you about a particular case that I had and this this there's was a citizen sharing anything that's in confidence because they were public filings about this particular case that described the facts of it in the federal court in the Southern District of California, but in any event, I shouldn't reveal do the company's but this was Essentially an investment related company over in California a couple of years ago about two years ago CEO of the company was transferring money from Celsius to coinbase cryptocurrency at the time it was close to about 11 million dollars and This was also when Celsius was still in business obviously But he transferred the money over to coinbase was something like 206 Bitcoin at the time Lonely still is a lot of money and At the conclusion of the transfer he had logged into this coinbase account For the company to make sure that the money was there and in so doing he received this notification that there had been unusual activity on the account and He needed to in order to unlock the account go through some KYC or know your customer procedure Which was you know something that's very reasonable considering you just transferred 11 million dollars into an account and that doesn't happen every day It's certainly anomalous activity so he called the phone number that was provided got the coinbase people on the phone and they Went through the KYC procedure with him validated who he was and explained to them that yes This was a transaction that he authorized it wasn't theft or anything It's just moving in from one exchange to another and so they said to him. 
Well, you know, why are you using this? 
Personal account if this is actually for company You could save a lot of fees and things if you use a pro account I think was a pro account or a private account I can't remember which was which but anyway So they helped him set up this new account and set up and save all these fees and put the the currency into that account two hours later starts getting some notifications about you know his account and Then goes and checks it and all the money is gone 11 million dollars just poof gone. 
All right has yeah, absolutely incredible because he was never actually on the phone with coinbase. 
Oh What happened was and here's a cautionary tale? 
Was that a forensic analysis? 
What was going on in his machine Indicated that instead of navigating to coinbase calm What he did was search for coinbase login in the browser bar That then returned a malicious site the site that it returned was calm dash I think session dash something whatever dot XYZ Right what the bad guys did was they created an a record or a subdomain to the left of that registered domain? 
That was named coinbase So the URL when you clicked on it and looked at it looked like coinbase Calm because it was an a record or a subdomain on top of a domain name that was registered that began with calm So the actual URL looks something like coinbase calm dash session dash login dot XYZ now What the bad guys very likely did here was they purchased Google AdWords? 
So that anybody who was searching for coinbase login they would pay a fee to get their link their domain up at the top of the heap there and Anybody who clicked on that link was received a banner Notification that there's been unusual activity in their account and they had to go through this KYC procedure It just so happened that they got this poor guy who had transferred 11 million dollars over to his coinbase account And they were able to steal it Does it make well doesn't Google have some responsibility for that? 
Well, that's you you could argue that You know, they should be policing their AdWords a bit more and making sure that malicious sites don't don't You know don't pop up and they're not promoting or amplifying this type of malicious behavior or criminal behavior So yeah, I mean that's certainly a legal theory that one could take I was just thinking what about that and know your customer Yeah, well, that's a funny point I will say, you know through very very fast action and working with Some some trusted parties that help with this type of thing We were able to actually recover a very significant amount of the stolen currency It took a long time, but we were able to find it and freeze it and and use the legal system in order to recover Very significant portion of it. 
So it wasn't a total loss, but what a bad day Yeah, really Carla. 
Did you have anything else to add? 
Um, no, I'm listening and and going through some other stuff and I'm going oh no Some of the stuff from Google's tag group Yeah, I'm stuck on a contract for another year and a half and then I got to figure out where else to go afterwards because Google's changed a lot and I'm not sure I fit there anymore. 
If that makes any sense Well, there's always alternatives Yeah, it's uh After so many decades, it becomes difficult to extract like, um I have If anybody's done their Google takeout where you can Basically download your entire Google Biome, I don't know what else to call it if you have that turned on. 
Yes compendium. 
Yeah Yeah, right like Mine ended up being like 87 components big and I'm like, oh this is just ridiculous the amount of data from that long is just Insane Yeah, it's amazing too to think about how long have you been searching on Google and then How long have you had an account on Google and when did that become requisite and how much data? 
were you Producing as a user prior to that and then thereafter when it can be Broken down or compartmentalized into an account as you said 87 packages. 
That's a lot Am I the only person who uses google without having an account? 
I mean, I just I just type google and search for things, but I never have an account logged in at the same time Right, and I think a lot of people don't log in when they search but I think a lot of people do log in and that's how they You know their their searches are so easily traceable and their their lives can be pieced together so easily Right. 
So like the big joke for me for like way back in like 97 or whatever, right? 
It was oh, I was the second search result for cheese dip Like it was a thing like at that point in time google was so young It was kind of a joke right like oh cheese dip. 
Hey, I made it to the first page silly stuff It was it was a long time ago. 
It was fun. 
Those were the good old days, I guess Um for a value of good old days Yeah Sure, we'll we'll run with that for now. 
So we type cheese dip into google. 
We won't find you right today No, not anymore, no, no, no, no, no, um Right, uh, so the point being, uh, it was 2003 When they opened up google to gmail for accounts, but it was by invitation only right at that point. 
Yeah Yeah, that's how they do things um I Working at a university I knew some people So i've had my account for quite a while Um So that's I think how I managed to amass Uh quite so much data and it becomes this It's become this thing where it's like i'm not even sure like do I want to delete all of it? 
Do I not want to delete all of it? 
Like it yeah, it's gotten weird even can you delete Just deleting it will actually get deleted. 
You don't know well and also Just organizing it to take it out itself makes it portable and are you opening yourself up to Some kind of vulnerability by just having it in a in a container on a system That it could then be copied and so forth. 
So on and so forth. 
I've had that dilemma myself thinking about Exfiltrating or getting you know deleting or removing yourself from a system even if you want a copy What is what? 
Can of worms does that open? 
You know, you have to consider all of that but With that much data I don't even To store it off Off of live disk or live memory, right? 
Just yeah cold site backup exactly Like I don't even It would be like an entire spindle of cds or dvds Like it would be the only way to do it reasonably would probably be to another disk and then just unplug the disk Store it but yeah, the do I even want to do that is this a good idea or not and Like I don't even know where the lines are anymore for some of this. 
Yeah, I think that's what we're all experiencing Yikes um, thanks Thanks for calling. 
Thanks for letting me rent. 
Of course anytime and please let us know how it goes with your your archived life according to google Yeah, thanks for sharing that's the thing like we don't have to be like this do we no we don't we we have the and that's The point we always have the final say and we always should have the final say. 
Yeah, like your original point you were talking about uh, gmail to gmail Messages staying on their infrastructure and that is just remember that extends to you running your own Infrastructure if you run your own mail server not for the faint-hearted, but it would be the same thing It would it would exist on that single system And I think people just forget that and you know, it's it's hard to get back to that and talk about Doing things um in in a kind of diy way, but We still have that ability and even that alone. 
I think just knowing that is is powerful Thanks for the call gail Yeah, thanks. 
All right. 
Take care. 
Bye Good call and we're open for another good call 802-321-4225 4-2-2-5 Really, uh interesting thoughts. 
Yes. 
Kayla. 
Yes. 
So we have had a couple of interesting Comments come through someone did mention alex that it was entertaining that you couldn't remember alex jones because alex um Oh, it's the same name. 
That's right. 
I didn't even think of that. 
That's your name alex. 
You couldn't remember that Just shows you what happens when somebody gets banned on twitter Um Another listener points out that um The discussion earlier about 2600 emails getting classed as spam because of keywords Leads back to what I think were the origins of leet speak to evade restrictions based on text content Oh, so we have to speak in leet speak now to get past google. 
Is that we have to do? 
Didn't they make leet speak a language that they translate to on their own system? 
I think they did At one point anyway, but um, it's very possible and um needs to be protected. 
Yeah A question that i'm going to kick into the show because i'm assuming it's a good faith question Uh is why doesn't wbai run some commercials instead of fundraising? 
Well, because uh, I guess the easiest answer is we're a non-commercial radio station Uh, and in fact the radio station is owned by the pacifica network which owns five radio stations throughout the country new york Washington dc houston los angeles and san francisco or berkeley actually Uh, and um, it would be a violation of that charter, uh to do that I believe the license we have the fcc also stipulates. 
We can't run commercials But you know that those are the legal reasons the the reasons we don't want to run commercials Is because once you do that you're beholden to your advertisers for instance Let's say microsoft or dare I say google decided that they wanted to sponsor Um, uh the radio station in some in some way uh, the show that we just did on wbai would cause some problems because They wouldn't want that to happen over the airwaves. 
I mean, maybe google would allow it. 
I don't know but they would have A say and this is how commercial radio works And if you piss off your sponsors, they'll stop being your sponsors and then you have to raise money some other way And your programming starts to be reflected in in in not pissing off certain people that support the radio station At w excuse me at wbai. 
We don't want to piss off our listeners uh, but that doesn't mean we're not going to talk about controversial things because that's what our listeners want and We all know we're not going to agree with 100 of what we hear on the radio station Maybe you'll only agree with 50 or less But what you do agree with you'll value and you'll believe that's enough to um, uh to support the place that's how it's existed since 1960 and Dare I say it works compared to all the commercial stations that have changed their formats over the decades Wbai remains as a non-commercial station rob And this also goes back to what I was saying about being the product or you know being the customer Because when you watch commercial television or listen to commercial radio you you as the listener are not the product I mean you as the listener are not the customer. 
You are the product that the station is selling to its advertisers Uh the companies that buy that, you know buy airtime Are buying your ears so they could sell you beer or dog food or whatever? 
and uh You know when we do radio on wbai the radio is the product because the listeners are supporting that with The donations that they that they give the station so the shows can keep happening The listeners, you know, it's not it's not a commercial transaction in the sense that you know This thing costs x much dollars and you know pay that and you get it But if the listenership in general keeps enough money coming into the station the station can keep making the shows And that's what keeps the shows pure That's what keeps the shows the product of the people who make it the product of the station who makes it Not the product of a company that makes soda pop There you go I hope that answers the question All right, 802-321-4225 is our telephone number Uh, we have a call we have a call at present. 
Okay. 
Yeah, it's so transparent I don't even know when we have a call maybe from overseas too. 
Oh, yeah, how about that? 
And good evening. 
You're on off the cover time. 
Go ahead Hello hello, yes, so yeah i'm coming from madrid in santiago Wait, where are you calling from madrid on this call for? 
Hang on. 
Wait, where are you calling from? 
Yes madrid spain madrid Madrid spain. 
Yes. 
Okay. 
Wow. 
Awesome So i've been a listener of the hook for many years but today was the first time I listened live And yeah, it was very good. 
I want to Add some something to uh to something that emmanuel was talking about in the beginning of the show Okay, he said that he will do whatever it takes to get a response And yeah, that's what That that's what i'm doing now because I sent you guys an email like three weeks ago and I didn't get a response and I'm afraid it can get Maybe Get caught on the spam filters or something. 
So yeah, that's why i'm coming now well, um Hopefully it didn't because we don't use gmail at least. 
Uh, uh at 2600 we don't some of our participants do Uh, but it shouldn't have gotten caught in spam It's probably that we just very busy and don't answer all the email But tell us tell us what's in the email. 
We can answer you right here Yeah, sure, so I've been using the an open source software called whisper from open ai to add subtitles to my Family videos because i've been digitalizing all my old family videos And my parents are at best so they cannot hear so I have the subtitles automatically with the graphic card This this software and I was wondering because I finish now. 
Um, I'm wondering if if you would like to have all the Of the hook programs transcribed for free so I could provide you the Several formats txt srt or whatever and maybe that that could be useful to Be able to set you know, I um, I remember seeing this email In fact, we were having a discussion about this It's still ongoing as to whether or not this is something that we want to pursue. 
Um, Now what what was some of the problem rob? 
I think uh, you remember some of the some of the potential issues Um, yeah, the the potential issues were um, just an ai-based transcription Um, and this is something i'm facing for other projects. 
I work on that that use um that need audio transcribed Ai-based um audio transcription is a good starting point, but it's not a finished transcript You still need a human to go over it and make corrections make changes and uh so like having If if you as a listener wanted to start like a website somewhere where you put up transcripts of the show Like I think we would all be fine with that You know, we would we would uh think that's that's a very kind thing for you to do But it also like it would not be A final product in the way that we would need if it were something that we were going to put on like You know the radio station's website or something like that um, so like You know, we we we very much encourage like people have done things with this program. 
Um, or off the hook our radio program um to be specific Uh, like, uh, you know rebroadcast it or you know hosted in different places and ultimately we are totally Fine with that because we do this show so people can experience it so people can listen to it It's just nothing that we can take an active role in at this point Okay, yeah that makes sense so yeah, I think I will do it anyways, um, maybe put it on some website and we'll do again I'd like to see how I think that i'd like to see how the output looks for for a single episode so we can maybe You know see how good it is Yeah, just just knowing uh, how much curation it takes after you run it through the program We were really interested in this as well and we've used some programs like it I believe the site otter was one we used but this has come up for um transcribing um hope talks and we've had uh, Subtitles and in various forms and this has been popular at other events And I know joely from from isoc has helped us a lot with this and he is very familiar with it and has used it But it's evolving so we we are keenly interested in getting good at this because of the accessibility as you point out it is Incredibly helpful to share and spread especially a rich content like video across languages As soon as you have a transcript you can you can start thinking about translations and all kinds of stuff opens up Yeah, so getting really good at this and honing the state-of-the-art that what's worked for people like you're doing with a home video project Is is a fantastic project and how much curation might might make it easier for us to help at least think about making A team or people that can say okay this batch is good This is the definitive subtitle because we don't want to just trust the ai i'm sure you know that right right Can you tell us something about the video project that you did? 
How how difficult was that? 
Well, it worked very well except on maybe A family reunion where there are more than 20 people talking at the same time Then it fails but spanish is the I think the language that it works better the best language possible Then it's italian and third is english. 
So I think the results will be Affectable well pretty good. 
I will say so Well pretty good I will say so You will be able to search great. 
Maybe at least I want to to listen Histories about payphones for example or something like that. 
That will work Wow, yeah as kyle said we want to do it Uh, well, you know if if people want a good example of how it's done well and how it's done badly I think uh, if you if you turn on your your uh cable tv And you look at the cnn feed They have a human I think that makes sure the words are correct now turn to if you're in the new york area Uh something like news 12 They don't care And you just see random words that make absolutely no sense because that's that's what the computer is telling them And uh, there is no human overseeing it. 
So we want something that obviously looks like um a human uh is is in charge curating and And um assisting guiding the uh, the automation how long how long does it take to do uh, say an hour So I think it's like 17 times the The real time so to do the 1700 hours, it will take around 30 days or 35 days I see something like that. 
Wow So what I can do if you want is I can just do a one month For example in 1990 or something like that and then one month, uh last month for example Okay, so eight cells just just as a test and send you the result via email so you can check It's it's a great idea it's good enough to It's a great idea and we really appreciate you doing this Um, and and I look forward to uh to seeing where it goes rob. 
Did you have something else? 
Yeah, i'm also wondering and this is just a suggestion caller Um, but i'm wondering if something like this could be a good starting point for say like maybe a collaborative project where multiple people could be Uh going through episodes when they have time all contributing A bit of the editing, you know, maybe get together on something like a wiki or something that people could collaborate on internally And then then have something fit for uh, you know fit for calling our final product I think there's a lot of potential in this And yeah, we would we would love to see how it turns out Uh, please keep us updated with if you put this up on a website if you put it up somewhere Um, we would love to keep uh, keep tabs on this Um, we also have a question for the caller A question from youtube asking if you go to the madrid 2600 meetings Yeah, good question no, I I don't go All right, just wanted to check I don't I don't even know if there is there is uh, 2600 meeting in madrid is somebody able to access the website so we can tell the caller where it is I'll ask the caller if they're more loyal to atletico madrid or real madrid No, you don't have to answer that but they both play in the last two days Well, I don't know I don't care about the football sorry, that's the correct answer. 
Thank you. 
All right. 
Uh, do you have uh, In the hack meeting community, uh for many years in spain So yeah, that's all from my side do they still um, uh, you're familiar with the train station in madrid, correct? 
Sorry, yeah the the main train station you're familiar with it Yeah, we have too many train stations. 
Well, uh There's a huge one and it had a big display of turtles in the middle of it. 
I'm wondering if that still exists Oh, yeah. 
Okay good The turtles are not not there anymore. 
Oh, they're not they were taken. 
Okay. 
No, they're not the gardens but the Okay, all right, they get removed some some years ago. 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
Did they escape or did they cause problems? 
Some of them are pretty big It isn't a martial arts training center Aguila you have some info. 
Yes, the 2600 meeting in madrid is held at a place called maldita querer Uh, which is that five calle de argumosa? 
uh in madrid so If you want to head over there in a couple weeks and check it out That might be fun begins at 5 p.m. 
On the first friday or a different time. 
Uh, I believe it begins at 7 7 p.m Okay, 7 p.m Okay Okay, I just took note cool and you may see some of us in madrid someday because we we do like that city a lot That would be very nice cool. 
Oh, thanks for your effort to keep us updated. 
It's it sounds awesome. 
It's a great hacker project Thank you, all right, take care That's two great calls we got tonight so far we did yes i'll try for a third 802-321-4225 802 321 hack. 
Hey, uh that reminds me. 
Um, we discovered something rather interesting and it's right here on channel 2600 We found video from 1986 Involving our good friend cheshire catalyst rest in peace um hosting a I guess one of the first ever hacker gatherings Uh called telepub 86 It took place in a hotel in upper manhattan Uh, and it was basically, uh, we talked about it when he passed away. 
Uh, we talked about um, uh How many of us met him for the first time at that particular? 
event Uh, he was the last editor of tap magazine, which was the predecessor to 2600 magazine Uh, they stopped publishing in 1983 And uh this this particular gathering Uh took place in 1986 in in I believe, uh april And um, it was basically meant to address issues of that magazine coming back And what happened to all the money that was sent in for people who wanted to renew their subscriptions and never got anything And he addressed all of that and to his credit. 
He basically said yep. 
I used the money to pay my bills But he addressed it quite directly. 
That's how he was uh, and um, and also it was supposed to be a a gathering where these um, uh, Two people known as the wacko cracko brothers might think st Louis were supposed to show up and announce the future of tap magazine And they never did and it never had a future and that was it But it's and the sound is atrocious at least at the beginning um until he gets into those particular, um, uh subjects before that it was basically uh a phone freak type of uh, uh free-for-all where people were talking about switches and phones and and and various other things um, but uh It's just seeing the people there Some of them we still know some of them have become very important parts of of the hacker community Um, but everybody was just so young It was just incredible to see this Uh, and and this bit of history that uh, we did not know even existed Well, here it is and you can find it Uh, just go to uh channel 2600. 
We're redesigning the um, the the youtube channel Uh, so it should show up right on top of youtube The youtube channel channel 2600 Uh, and we're going to be adding all kinds of other historical relics that are popping up. 
So, uh, look forward to that go ahead and just as a Friendly and helpful reminder if you are not subscribed to channel 2600 on youtube Go ahead and click that subscribe button. 
No, no, don't say that I hate I hate every video on youtube where they all sell like and subscribe I don't care if you like dislike if you want unsubscribe. 
It doesn't matter to us. 
I mean why why what what do people? 
If you subscribe you'll find this content in your home feed Rather than having to go look for it So it was a nice surprise when one day I opened up youtube and there was cheshire's face just saying hello so that was a nice moment and if you subscribe to Channel 2600 you will also have the opportunity to be greeted with that kind of stuff and you don't have I will not say smash you know I hear you, but you know if somebody wants to subscribe to something Why do you have to tell them to subscribe to it? 
You know, it's like you're there You know if you like this then you don't have to tell somebody to like it. 
They'll like it and they'll subscribe maybe Uh, or maybe not, you know, it's it's it's their decision. 
I just Every single youtube video I see it's always the same thing before I say anything like and subscribe and I don't You know, most of the time. 
I just want to read a tutorial on something. 
I don't want to see a video I don't want to see some guy in his garage like telling me how something works No, I just want to read it like, you know, we used to have these things called manuals That's how I want to learn about these things. 
But okay fine if I have to sit through that now I got to sit through a google ad. 
All right There's that in the middle of a sentence They're gonna interrupt with another one This guy keeps reminding me to like and subscribe and hit the bell or something Which is gonna ring all the bells in my house. 
Apparently if if something new gets posted It's just turned into a real thing, you know However, I would like to point out that we've been doing overtime for what two years now and I think this is the first time we have said subscribe and We're not video. 
So there's that you don't see us moving around at all So we're breaking that rule and we didn't say it at the beginning like everybody else does we said it right in the middle You'll never find it We might say it at the end again, though. 
We might we might but we'll probably forget Because we do we do 802-321-4225 is our phone. 
Oh, we haven't every time I give the phone number. 
We already have a call Okay, so we have another call by the way levels are good. 
Everyone's happy with the levels. 
I haven't heard of any complaints yet We are hearing that the phone calls are a little low still on youtube Really danger is though We'll get feedback or something weird because that's just that's like all kinds of crazy. 
I did turn them up about uh, 20 minutes ago So was it since then that we got a report that they were low? 
We were hearing different things from different people We did hear that. 
Um, our first caller was having a bluetooth earpiece issue and that was why her volume was low. 
Oh, um So dory, thank you for clarifying on that Um, and actually before we go to the caller, can I just jump in here for a second go ahead and jump For those of you who are coming into the chat and asking about the origin stories of the panelists on the show We're not going to give you our biography. 
Is that what's going on? 
Wow. 
I don't look at the chat I don't look at it because I know this is why i'm here and what i'm going to say is No We're not going to answer those kinds of questions. 
Yeah, because we could get in legal trouble Well among other things that and it's just sort of the antithesis, I mean we go to great lengths discussing people's uh information in the information age their privacy um and sort of boundaries and how uh how it is to operate in in a world so connected and I think that it's um, not as important to to um Go completely against that and and start. 
Um forcing people to share some kind of uh detail that Is itself the kind of thing we don't really encourage other people to share online like we are living in an age where you need to be very considerate about your friends and your family and and how you talk about things and how you um describe details and stuff because There's a lot of malicious people and and And uh hateful people out there that want to exploit information like that frankly And it's just it's really unfair to our callers. 
It's unfair to people that um that write articles or participate in the hacker community to go outside of like what we've understood as hacker handles or pseudo-anonymous identities where people get to say and be An act in these these different spaces unmediated and without fear that their personal life or some aspect of their privacy will be violated as a Repercussion or google will come find you because you you said something bad about it But you could say you're from detroit or something, right? 
I mean, that's not really Uh, I don't know what people mean by origin story. 
What is that exactly? 
Yeah, it sounds like superheroes or something Because we've all shared various pieces of our biographical information on the show And in fact, if you want to know about how most of us came to be on this particular program Listen to the radio show which you can find on 2600.com slash oth Find the episode from two weeks ago where we spent the entire episode talking about What this show is how we came to it. 
Alex was not with us two weeks ago So we missed out on that But the rest of us talked about how we found the show and where we came from if you listen you'll pick it up I promise but It's not something we're specifically going to go into All right Shall I go to the phone call now? 
Uh, yeah, we still have a phone and someone please tell me if the levels are too loud or too low or uh, Or or whatnot be gentle with the call No, I won't see the chat, but one of you can just this all jump in and tell me I might add is Potentially an overseas call Oh, well, then they're spending a lot of money, aren't they? 
A phone call for a phone booth or something. 
All right, let's get to it. 
Hey, good evening. 
You're on off the cover time. 
Go ahead Hello everybody, oh that sounds like zap from london. 
Is that zap from london? 
Yes, it is. 
All right Spanish calls from madrid because they're like two o'clock in the morning And it's one o'clock in the morning for you Yeah, but i'm a regular caller more or less so It's just good to hear if somebody's fine, especially when they've got a meeting in madrid And the guy didn't know about it Uh-huh. 
Yeah, that was fantastic, wasn't it? 
Yeah, I dare say a lot of new yorkers don't know about the new york meeting and it's our job to inform them Yeah, we gotta turn people on to these things. 
Let them know. 
Yep. 
They can mix it up locally So how how we use app? 
Yep Um, i've got some bad news, that's the reason why i'm calling we've lost another hacker You know, it seems like every week. 
Uh, okay. 
Uh, give us give us the info on this one All right, it's a guy called pascal rascal or known as the rebel, uh from the uk, uh rebel Uh, he died sort of the beginning of the month Uh, we don't exactly have details at the moment. 
And the reason i'm phoning is Uh, the funeral is going to be next monday Okay Um, it's going to be at a lawnswood crematorium in leeds And uh, actually emmanuel you've actually met this guy Okay Uh, I don't recall but I believe you Well, i'll tell you the story. 
Uh, I don't remember if you When you came to england, I think it was in 1996. 
This is how far back we're going. 
So about 27 years Okay, um, we drove up to manchester to go to the manchester christmas party And tom convinced you to go to leeds to pick up this guy And we did a little excursion going via leeds to manchester And unfortunately, he wasn't allowed to go because his mom wouldn't let him go Uh, but yeah, wow. 
And of course we lost tom as well. 
So boy, that's uh, that's something Yeah Well, there's the last time I saw pascal was actually roughly about five years ago at tom's funeral um he used to come to the to the london 2600 meetings because uh He used to date tom's sister at the time And funny enough tom dated pascal's sister. 
So, you know, it was something that happened at that time. 
I think I remember Yeah, and um I'm trying to think uh, yeah, he came down for the funeral for tom And he was that was in may and then he was planning to come down in july to the london 2600 meeting Unfortunately, he didn't because he got mugged Uh in london, uh, and there was a police officer right there and they took his laptop And um when he turned to the police to say are you going to stop this? 
Uh, the mugger sort of dropped his laptop and smashed the screen so I felt guilty about that And I really didn't stay in touch And um found out through social media, this is always the way how we find out nowadays that the the guy passed away So some of london are planning to go to leeds about four or five Because there's not many old school 2600 people left going to the meetings Um, there's only a few but there's a handful planning to go to the funeral with any luck Wow our deepest condolences on on yet another loss in the community. 
It's it's it's so sad Yeah, we're not trying to beat america I heard that the person passed in in the states, um But it's just one of those things and unfortunately the guy's only about 40 So that's fairly young Yeah, absolutely It always is it always feels that way. 
I mean even you know Uh, even when when somebody much older than that, you know, daniel ellsberg, for instance somebody who we met just, you know one time at a hack conference gave a keynote and Uh, you know, he was so young at heart It felt every bit as painful Yeah But the only other news i've got really is uh, the three english 2600 meetings are going fairly strong uh There's a manchester meeting starting up In november, okay, but currently there's manchester meeting listed on your meetings page I don't know what's going on with that meeting Um, there may be some old school 2600s that have just posted saying this sort of continued But I don't know if anyone's going to the manchester meeting. 
So there's a bit confusion about the manchester meet That we need to sort out. 
Okay well, um It won't get sorted out on the issue that that is at the printer now But it will be sorted out for the uh for the winter issue. 
So, um, that's that's a project we can we can work on Yeah, otherwise you're going to have two meetings from manchester, which isn't going to be very good no Um, I know it's a couple of ladies that are trying to sort out the manchester meet so that's going to be different Good. 
Okay Um, but yeah, that's all the news i've got, um with me i'm not doing too good, uh as usual Uh, and it's looking a bit hairy for my future, but you know, I don't really want to discuss that Uh, and on that sad note, I think i'm going to leave it I hope you can get another cheerful call because this one's been a bit of a downer. 
Well, sorry about that Please accept our best wishes and uh, uh sending you uh, alex has something to add. 
Go ahead Yeah, zap something look forward to i'll be heading back and forth to london more regularly again starting, uh next term When I start teaching at uh, king's college again, so hopefully you and I can get together. 
I think it would be great to uh, see your face again, I know we didn't have a chance to make it happen, but Given what you just said something to look forward to bring zap into that chelsea arts club. 
I think that would that would cause a stir Oh, they deserve that. 
Yeah I don't have problems trying to find clothes to go to a funeral Yeah, because I don't really have funeral clothes anymore The last couple of funerals i've had to go to i've been very casual because it's been allowed um, but like I said, I haven't seen The parents of pascal for about 20 years So I want to be respectful, but it makes him very difficult when you're going to a funeral, you know You really should just turn up as you want And just be grateful that you turned up at somebody's funeral But we're trying to do the best because we are respectful people. 
No, I I I hear that and what you say makes a lot of sense Yeah, and I will look forward to looking to see you alex But if you're in town for a while, you can always come to the meetings. 
I'm guaranteed to be there Yep. 
Yeah, I would absolutely love that It's been a long time since i've been to a london 2600 meeting and if not Then we'll we'll get together at the chelsea arts club as uh, emmanuel suggested. 
There's no dress code there whatsoever Okay, well it is difficult for me to get out of the house nowadays, uh, But I will try and I really would like to see you alex because it would be good. 
It's been a while Well, I can always make it over uh across town And see you as well. 
So, uh, we'll make it happen my man All right. 
Good hearing from you. 
Okay. 
I appreciate it. 
It's always good to hear your voice. 
All right Thanks for calling take care, okay. 
Bye. 
Bye It's that from london so we've had pennsylvania we've had madrid we've had london So, um, maybe one more 802-321-4225. 
I'll be a quick one though Because um, we're almost out of here Gila looks like you have something to say I do. 
I'm, sorry So in re the origin stories discussions, uh, someone did posit kyle's. 
Oh boy All right, you ready? 
40 years ago a spaceship crashed into a field it opens to reveal Kyle, wait, that's a superhero Yeah, and and we already told us we already told this story. 
So they're just reading from the comic adaptation adaptation Fine it works I'm sure there's plenty of other people that arrive that way too. 
Uh-huh Isn't that how we all arrived really for all intents and purposes is accurate. 
It makes sense answers So what else you need to know? 
But yeah hackers arrive on the scene all the time and these meetings are a great way to do it. 
So if um There's so many origin stories out there. 
Did they say it was a crash landing? 
Is that what they said? 
Yes, oh no, no crash into a field. 
No, it wasn't it was a landing. 
It wasn't it wasn't Like bad piloting. 
Why do they always have spaceships crashing burns? 
Maybe they want to land in a particular way. 
Maybe what you see as a crash is actually how they land think about that I think the the space the spacecraft pilots that have some sense know better than to land on this particular planet Um until we get our crap together a little more fully steer clear. 
Yeah, that's why they're not around All right, 802-321-4225 only a couple of minutes left so, um off the hook over time anything else we want to um, um share with people we we taught the talked about the um, Telepub 86 video posting which was exciting. 
I'm glad we found that. 
Yeah I really liked how like cheshire was ageless because you pull you pull up that video and it's Basically the cheshire we know from maybe a year or two ago just with uh, you know darker hair But he's still the same lanky guy same face same hairstyle um, but He he's kind of he's kind of timeless and eternal. 
Oh that that hurt. 
I I I echo that and That loss was is really it was tough, but he was always there um as a constant and like you said just ready to help out or just in my mind ready to help out and and just uh, uh someone you could count on and and so enthusiastic for This crazy thing that the hacking is about we have a phone call we have a phone call Okay, this will be the last call They're already talking so they're gonna have to stop talking if we're going to introduce him properly Uh, this is uh over time a good evening caller Yes, hi, I just got a general question, um Is there a reason why you don't take any calls on the radio show anymore? 
Yes, there is a reason because we're not at the radio station We have no way of controlling the board and the engineers if somebody were to say a swear Which is illegal on fcc land We wouldn't be able to hit the dump button because we're not in the studio and that would cause a major problem. 
That's the reason Oh, okay. 
Okay. 
I was wondering now if we go back to this if we go back to the station, which we do want to do Uh, and if they open it up to more than just a couple of people at a time Uh, then we can take calls right there at the station, but then we wouldn't be doing overtime because there'd be no purpose Why isn't the show open why isn't the radio station open for more than a couple people at a time, you know I'm, not sure. 
It's a good question. 
Uh, we can ask we haven't really pursued that because this is just so damn convenient We're doing it all from our from our homes. 
So, um, yeah, I guess we could push the issue and see if okay Maybe we should commute two hours each way Uh to do a one hour show. 
Yeah, that's always fun. 
It was always fun. 
I'm not i'm not, you know, putting it down Bring it back Maybe a once a monthly event. 
We've talked about it actively and um, it is nice to be able to take calls there to interact with the Engineers and so forth just being in brooklyn. 
Remember brooklyn. 
That was so cool. 
That is Yeah, it's the spot So we'll take the um the comment under consideration. 
Yes, absolutely. 
Was there any anything else? 
Oh, oh, no, that's about it. 
Thank you. 
Have a great night. 
Thank you. 
Thanks for calling Thanks for listening. 
And that is our last call for the night as we hit the nine o'clock hour um Well, it's been fun as always it was really fun. 
I needed this great great seeing you all really happy to have talked to everybody Absolutely. 
Yeah, good calls tonight. 
Good calls tonight. 
Good, uh company good discussion And good levels I think from what I hear Company is questionable Right. 
Yeah Thank you to our 2930-ish Uh folks who have been hanging in with us on youtube many of whom have jumped in the live chat And we are grateful for all of you. 
Thank you um You know join us in the future on the youtube live chat it is Buckets of fun. 
Yeah spread the word to let more people know Uh, write to us oth at 2600.com again, listen next week at 7 p.m on wbai uh, which is findable either at 99.5 fm in new york city or Wbai.org where you can live stream us and of course at eight o'clock overtime on youtube channel 2600 where you can find every hope video as well as An increasing number of other fun things. 
So keep checking in alex. 
I believe you had a comment Yeah, I just wanted to say rob i'm just so incredibly sorry to hear about your friend kurt Yes, I think I think you did a wonderful job eulogizing her And uh, it sounds like she will be missed Indeed she will. 
Thank you All right with that somber note. 
We're going to say good night for now Thanks everybody for listening and participating and we will see you next week. 
Good night. 
Bye 


And a very good evening to everybody. The program is off the hook, overtime.
Yes, welcome everybody to YouTube.
Kyle, did you make it okay?
Yes, I made it okay.
All right, and out there in Skypeland, just all chime in at once.
Present and accounted for.
Indeed, we're here.
Good, good, that's what I like to hear.
What we're going to do, because we've had some issues with the volume,
we're going to try and turn you guys down a little bit,
because people were saying you were too loud, and we were too low over here, so...
Everyone was just under zero then.
You're watching over there.
That's why I sounded like a robot, yeah.
I'm looking at the levels.
And they're good?
Yes, no one has piercing ringing in their ears yet?
Not yet.
Are we supposed to get that?
Well, I know the other week we were playing around with that,
but things look mostly okay here.
All right.
If you're going to complain, make it a good one, you know?
But I think we're all right.
How do we sound to you guys out there in Skypeland?
We sound good, and we also seem to sound fine on the YouTube, in my estimation.
And I would ask that if we don't sound good on YouTube,
if any of the 17 people, 21 people, who are in the YouTube, who are live with us on YouTube,
would let us know.
Tim in Connecticut to just chime in and tell us that the levels sound good on YouTube for him.
So, people are starting to chime in and tell us we're in good shape.
So, until and unless we hear differently, I think we are go for launch, so to speak.
We also have a phone.
Yes, that's where things really get messed up when the phone calls start coming in.
I hate to add that to the equation, but...
You want to just bring a dial tone in?
I mean, we can just test it that way.
Go ahead.
You know, we're going to have to at some point.
Yeah, why not?
We just peel the Band-Aid off.
Okay, here we go.
There you go.
Nice dial tone there.
You don't hear this every day.
Be gentle.
All right.
Be gentle.
Is this a good level?
Yeah, maybe a little...
Yeah.
It's literally a tone.
Oh, yes.
Okay, that's a little hot.
We like that.
Well, they make that high so that it gets your attention.
That tone is supposed to get your attention from across the house because some idiot left
the phone off the hook and they want you to hang it up again?
Wait, we don't ever play the theme on Overtime.
No, we don't.
That sounded like we were going to play the theme on Overtime and I got super excited for
a second.
Yeah, well, that's life, you know.
A lot of disappointments, but yeah.
You want to hear the theme?
Tune in again next week at 7 p.m.
And you'll hear it then.
All right.
Overtime.
Our phone number, for those who'd like to participate, is 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK.
Yes, where off the hook gets real.
Let's try and keep it peppy and see if we can get through a few calls today.
And if not, then we won't.
It's as simple as that.
But we like to hear from a variety of people in a variety of places going through a variety
of things.
Because variety is a spice of life, is so I'm told.
Comment on anything we spoke about earlier on the show or something new or interesting
that you thought we might want to hear about or look into.
And I've talked way too much.
So, guys, while we're waiting for a phone call, speak up.
Anything you want to, you know, spout off about.
I'll just invite folks to, if you're eligible, take a, you know, do what Reggie said at the
beginning of off the hook on the air and vote in the WBAI elections.
That would be very cool of you.
And also keep supporting what we do at give to WBAI.org.
Become a BAI buddy.
We love our BAI buddies.
We love all our supporters.
And, you know, you keep us going.
And we can say that here on YouTube where no money is changing hands for what we're doing.
And YouTube is so far letting us say that without censorship.
Yes.
All hail to YouTube and their corporate masters, Google, and their corporate masters, Alphabet,
and their corporate masters, whatever planet they're all from.
Yeah.
Your pretentious Alphabet.
Yeah.
Making up words.
Sanctioning the letters.
We're going to wind up in an all-out war with them.
How to arrange them.
Yes.
It's going to happen.
How can we worship thee?
Yes.
We have a phone call.
We have a phone call.
Phone call.
Okay.
Let's take this phone call and hope the levels stay somewhat same.
And good evening.
Hi.
You're on off-the-hook overtime.
Go ahead.
Oh, this is weird.
Okay.
Yeah.
You're going to have to turn down whatever you're listening to us on.
I'm sorry.
I, yeah, there's a.
These are good levels.
Pulled up on my.
Okay.
Anyway.
Hi.
How you doing?
A little frazzled today.
Thank you for asking.
How are you?
We're good.
Maybe we ask where you're calling from.
Pennsylvania.
Okay.
Pennsylvania.
University town in Pennsylvania.
Well, that's, that's good that you're in a university town because that adds sanity
and craziness.
A little bit of both.
Yes, indeed.
That is true.
During the show earlier, you, some of you had been discussing the Google or the Gmail,
the Gmail thing.
And I just wanted to kind of go, yeah, actually, if people are sending between Gmail stuff,
it pretty much stays on their own undersea cables, even if they're sending it to different
continents.
Google kind of has their own separate physical network in addition to, you know, their IP space
or whatever.
So that is actually kind of how it is.
Makes sense.
For a while.
They have, they have some undersea data structures for parts of their trunk lines.
Because it's partially how they have some of their data storage for cooling.
Wow.
Anyway, that's just kind of some of the weird stuff I've picked up over the last few years.
Uh-huh.
You don't work for Google, do you?
No.
Okay.
I, I, I, no, no, I, I may have a Google Fi for service.
Uh-huh.
Um, so, uh, ostensibly, I suppose, financially, I am supporting Google in a horrible way and
whatever, but, you know.
Nothing to apologize for.
Uh, no, I don't work for Google.
I have not worked for Google.
I've known some people who have at various points in time, but, anyway.
Yeah, I know some people who do, and they tell me the same thing.
It's, you can't really get a hold of people.
You can't get a hold of, of, you know, any kind of support or, you know, expect them to
change how they do things.
Yeah.
Google Fi is, so, the only reason, the main reason I picked up Google Fi, if it matters,
was because it was an MVNO.
I had mentioned, we, you know, that was something else.
Never mind.
Um, sorry.
Uh, Google Fi started out as an MVNO for their self-service, and in a college town, it's
really helpful because different cell towers get slammed when the students are in, right?
Like, saturation.
Yeah.
So, having the ability to switch service providers relatively quickly on the fly was really handy
because, for instance, like, the Verizon signals was, if I was deprioritized because I was on
a different plan and wasn't paying more money, whatever, my, my, my text messages would be
just like, nope, can't send, sorry, like, this is SMS, right?
Mm-hmm.
But, no, I'm, so, so the, the appeal for me was the fact that, well, okay, Verizon, whatever,
switch over to T-Mobile or AT&T, whatever, or whatever local one might be around.
Um, but over the years, they've dropped their contracts for the other towers, so it's kind of
janky these days.
Like, Google's definitely gone downhill.
Like, weirdly.
Yeah, yeah, someone check on the search engine.
Go to the search engine room and just make sure everything's still running.
Yeah, that search engine really doesn't return results anymore the way it used to.
You get just a bunch of ads now, and way at the bottom, maybe something, but even if you
put it in quotes, you don't get exactly what you're looking for.
I don't know how you could make something like that get so unuseful.
I don't, yeah.
It's.
Other people have noticed Google seems to go through phases with their searches?
Like, do you remember when it would show all the Cialis ads with their news aggregate?
I don't remember that specifically, but I believe it.
It was like 2015 or 16 or, I think it was like 15.
I'd have to, I'd have to go look at whatever.
But, yeah, it was, there was a point in time where, at least, however, whatever happened
with my news results at that point in time, it was throwing in actual, like, they looked
like news articles, but it was for Cialis or random other medications and things like
that.
It was, it was kind of, their service was broke for a little while.
Wow.
Alex, did you, did you have something to add?
Yeah, I, I just generally, uh, agree.
I think it almost feels like when you're using Google, it's this outdated technology now.
It feels very anachronistic in a sense, because it is, all the results are so littered with
just crap now.
I mean, all these, this promoted content is almost all you see.
And, and sometimes I get this ridiculous thing, I'll search for whatever, and it's, you know,
it sends me on some Google journey nonsense, you know, or I don't even understand what
the hell that is.
Uh, but, but the whole thing really feels like it's becoming more and more broken.
And it's just, it also seems like the, the business model of Google and promoting and
selling all of these ads is, is really outdated in 2023 at this point as well, that we have
this proliferation of generative AI tools that are going to be replacing, I think, the manual
type of reading and scanning that we are, have become accustomed to doing anytime we search
for something on Google.
Um, and, you know, the color, I think brings, brings up some interesting points too.
And, and, you know, the, the search results are, are very often skewed or askew.
Uh, and there's a lot of, of, of stuff going on called SEO poisoning now as well, or search
engine optimization poisoning, where people will take these malicious domains, things that
will have nasty links on them, perhaps things that will open up your cryptocurrency walls
and allow people to steal your NFTs, that type of stuff, you know, or credentials, harvesters,
et cetera, so that when people are searching for ordinary terms or companies, these websites
will pop up and direct users to malicious sites.
And, and that's, that's been running fairly rampant through, uh, lots of different quote
unquote journeys or search terms that are being returned on Google these days.
So it's, it's not only less useful, but also more dangerous.
Yeah.
A lot of money being thrown around for these that, that can, that to exploit these kinds of
ad networks and stuff.
It's kind of an old trick, but it's still super popular because the payoffs can be really
big to, to just use things in way it's a hacker mindset, but it can be really predatory.
Um, just using things in ways that they're just, they were never really designed to be
used unmasked by well, um, healed, uh, entities that want to do some, you know, do some campaigns
that, that, that yield some, some info or, or money or some kind of payoff.
It's, it's not anything to spend it on ad, uh, SEO like that or whatever kind of, uh, technique.
Alex, you had something else?
Yeah.
You know, very much to Kyle's point, I, I can tell you, I can share an anecdote with you
about a particular case that I had.
And this, this, this was, uh, this isn't sharing anything that's in confidence because
there were public filings about this particular case that described the facts of it in a federal
court in the Southern district of California.
But in any event, uh, I, I shouldn't reveal who the company is, but this was, um, uh, essentially
an investment related company over in California a couple of years ago, but about two years ago,
uh, CEO of the company was transferring money, uh, from Celsius to Coinbase, cryptocurrency.
Uh, at the time it was, it was close to about $11 million.
And, uh, this was also when Celsius was still in business, obviously, but he had transferred
the money over to Coinbase.
It was something like 206 Bitcoin at the time.
This was a lot of money, still is a lot of money.
And at the conclusion of the transfer, he had logged into his Coinbase account for the
company to make sure that the money was there.
And in so doing, he received this notification that there had been unusual activity on the
account and he needed to, in order to unlock the account, go through some KYC or know your
customer procedure, which was, you know, something that's very reasonable considering you just
transferred $11 million into an account and that doesn't happen every day.
It's certainly anomalous activity.
So he called the phone number that was provided, got the Coinbase people on the phone, and they
went through the KYC procedure with him, validated who he was, and explained to them that, yes,
this was a transaction that he authorized.
It wasn't theft or anything.
It's just moving it from one exchange to another.
And so they said to him, well, you know, why are you using this, um, personal account if this is
actually for a company?
You could save a lot of fees and things if you use a pro account.
I think it was a pro account or a prime account.
I can't remember which was which.
But anyway, so they helped him set up this new account and set up and save all these fees and
put the currency into that account.
Two hours later, he starts getting some notifications about, you know, his account and, um, then goes
and checks it and all the money is gone.
$11 million, just poof, gone, right?
It's, you know, absolutely incredible because he was never actually on the phone with Coinbase.
Oh.
What happened was, and here's a cautionary tale, was that a forensic analysis of what was
going on in his machine indicated that instead of navigating to Coinbase.com, what he did was
search for Coinbase login in the browser bar.
That then returned a malicious site.
The site that it returned was com-I think session-something-whatever.xyz, right?
What the bad guys did was they created an A record or a subdomain to the left of that
registered domain that was named Coinbase.
So the URL, when you clicked on it and looked at it, looked like Coinbase.com because it was
an A record or a subdomain on top of a domain name that was registered that began with com.
So the actual URL looked something like coinbase.com-session-login.xyz.
Now, what the bad guys very likely did here was they purchased Google AdWords so that anybody
who was searching for Coinbase login, they would pay a fee to get their link, their domain,
up at the top of the heap there.
And anybody who clicked on that link received a banner notification that there had been unusual
activity in their account, and they had to go through this KYC procedure.
It just so happened that they got this poor guy who had transferred $11 million over to
his Coinbase account, and they were able to steal it.
Doesn't Google have some responsibility for that?
Well, you could argue that they should be policing their AdWords a bit more and making sure that
malicious sites don't pop up and they're not promoting or amplifying this type of malicious
behavior or criminal behavior.
So yeah, I mean, that's certainly a legal theory that one could take.
I was just thinking, well, what about that and know your customer?
Yeah, well, that's a funny point.
I will say, you know, through very, very fast action and working with some trusted parties
that help with this type of thing, we were able to actually recover a very significant amount
of the stolen currency.
It took a long time, but we were able to find it and freeze it and use the legal system in
order to recover a very significant portion of it.
So it wasn't a total loss, but what a bad day for somebody.
Yeah, really.
Carla, did you have anything else to add?
No, I'm listening and going through some other stuff and I'm going, oh, no.
Some of the stuff from Google's tag group.
Yeah, I'm stuck on a contract for another year and a half and then I got to figure out
where else to go afterwards because Google's changed a lot and I'm not sure I fit there
anymore, if that makes any sense.
Well, there's always alternatives.
Yeah, it's, uh, after so many decades, it becomes difficult to extract.
Like, um, have, if anybody's done their Google takeout where you can basically download your
entire Google biome, I don't know what else to call it.
If, if you have that turned on, yes.
Compendium.
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
Like, um, mine ended up being like 87 components big and I'm like, oh, this is just ridiculous.
The amount of data for that long is just insane.
It's amazing too, to think about how long have you been searching on Google and then how long
have you had an account on Google and when did that become requisite and how much data
were you producing as a user prior to that and then thereafter when it can be broken down
or compartmentalized into an account?
As you said, 87 packages.
That's a lot.
Am I the only person who uses Google without having an account?
I mean, I just, I just type Google and search for things, but I never have an account logged
in at the same time.
Well, right.
And I think a lot of people don't log in when they search.
But I think a lot of people do log in and that's how they, you know, their, their searches
are so easily traceable and their, their lives can be pieced together so easily.
Right.
So like the big joke for me for like way back in like 97 or whatever, right.
It was, Ooh, I was the second search result for cheese dip.
Like it was a thing like at that point in time, Google was so young.
It was kind of a joke, right?
Like, Oh, cheese dip.
Hey, I made it to the first page.
Silly stuff.
It was, it was a long time ago.
We were young.
Those were the good old days, I guess.
Um, for a value of good old days.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
We'll, we'll run with that for now.
So we type cheese dip into Google.
We won't find you right today.
No, not anymore.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Um, right.
Uh, so the point being, uh, it was 2003 when they opened up Google to Gmail for accounts,
but it was by invitation only.
Right.
That's right.
At that point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's how they do things.
Um, I working at a university, I knew some people, so I've had my account for quite a
while.
Um, so that's, I think how I managed to amass, uh, quite so much data and it becomes this,
it's become this thing where it's like, I'm not even sure, like, do I want to delete all
of it?
Do I not want to delete all of it?
Like it, yeah, it's gotten weird.
Even can you delete all of it, you know, just deleting it will actually get deleted.
You don't know.
Well, and also just organizing it to take it out itself makes it portable.
And are you opening yourself up to some kind of vulnerability by just having it in a, in
a container on a system that it could then be copied and so forth.
So on and so forth.
I've had that dilemma myself thinking about exfiltrating or getting, you know, deleting
or removing yourself from a system, even if you want a copy, what is, what can of worms
does that open?
You know, you have to consider all of that.
But with that much data, I don't even, to store it off, off of live disc or live memory,
right?
Just offsite backup.
Exactly.
Like, I don't even, it would be like an entire spindle of CDs or DVDs.
Like, it would be, the only way to do it reasonably would probably be to another disc and then just
unplug the disc and store it.
But, yeah, the, do I even want to do that?
Is this a good idea or not?
And, like, I don't even know where the lines are anymore for some of it.
Yeah, I think that's what we're all experiencing.
Yikes.
Um, thanks.
Thanks for calling.
Thanks for letting me rent.
Of course, anytime.
And please let us know how it goes with your, your archived life, according to Google.
Yeah, thanks for sharing.
I mean, that's the thing.
Like, we don't have to be like this, do we?
No, we don't.
We, we have the, and that's the point.
We always have the final say, and we always should have the final say.
Yeah, like your original point, you were talking about, um, uh, uh, Gmail to Gmail, uh, messages
staying on their infrastructure.
And that is, just remember that extends to you running your own infrastructure.
If you run your own, uh, mail server, not for the faint hearted, but it would be the
same thing.
It would, it would exist on that single system.
And I think people just forget that.
And, you know, it's, it's hard to get back to that and talk about, uh, doing things,
um, in, in a kind of DIY way, but we still have that ability.
And even that alone, I think just knowing that is, is powerful.
Thanks for the call.
Yeah.
Thanks.
All right.
Good night.
Take care.
Good call.
And we're open for another good call.
802-321-4225.
Really interesting thoughts.
Yes, Gila.
Yes.
So we have had a couple of interesting comments come through.
Someone did mention Alex, that it was entertaining that you couldn't remember Alex Jones because
Alex, um, yeah.
Oh, it's the same name.
That's right.
I didn't even think of that.
That's your name, Alex.
You couldn't remember that.
That, I didn't know.
Just shows you what happens when somebody gets banned on Twitter.
Out of my mind.
Another listener points out that, um, the discussion earlier about 2,600 emails getting
classed as spam because of keywords leads back to what I think were the origins of
LeetSpeak to evade restrictions based on text content.
Oh, so we have to speak in LeetSpeak now to get past Google?
Is that what we have to do?
Didn't they make LeetSpeak a language that they translate to on their own system?
Um, I think they did at one point anyway, but, um, it's very possible and, um, needs
to be protected.
Yeah.
A question that I'm going to kick into the show because I'm assuming it's a good faith
question, uh, is why doesn't WBAI run some commercials instead of fundraising?
Well, because, uh, I guess the easiest answer is we're a non-commercial radio station.
Uh, and in fact, the radio station is owned by the Pacifica network, which owns five radio
stations throughout the country, New York, Washington, DC, Houston, Los Angeles, and
San Francisco or Berkeley actually.
Uh, and, um, uh, it would be a violation of that charter, uh, to do that.
I believe the license we have, the FCC also stipulates we can't run commercials, but you
know, that those are the legal reasons.
The, the reasons we don't want to run commercials is because once you do that, you're beholden to
your advertisers, for instance, let's say Microsoft, or dare I say, Google decided that they wanted
to sponsor, um, uh, the radio station in some, in some way, uh, the show that we just did
on WBAI would cause some problems because, um, uh, they wouldn't want that to happen over
the airwaves.
I mean, maybe Google would allow it.
I don't know, but they would have a say, and this is how commercial radio works.
And if you piss off your sponsors, they'll stop being your sponsors.
And then you have to raise money some other way.
And your programming starts to be reflected in, in, in, in not pissing off certain people
that support the radio station at W, excuse me, at WPAI, we don't want to piss off our
listeners.
Uh, but that doesn't mean we're not going to talk about controversial things because that's
what our listeners want.
And we all know we're not going to agree with 100% of what we hear on the radio station.
Maybe you'll only agree with 50% or less, but what you do agree with you'll value and
you'll believe that's enough to, um, uh, to support the place.
That's how it's existed since 1960.
And dare I say it works compared to all the commercial stations that have changed their
formats over the decades, WBAI remains as a non-commercial station.
Rob.
And this also goes back to what I was saying about being the product or, you know, being
the customer, because when you watch commercial television or listen to commercial
radio, you, you as the listener are not the product.
Uh, I mean, you as the listener are not the customer.
You are the product that the station is selling to its advertisers.
Uh, the companies that buy, that, you know, buy airtime are buying your ears so they could
sell you beer or dog food or whatever.
And, uh, you know, when we do radio on WBAI, the radio is the product because the listeners
are supporting that with the donations that they, that they give the station.
So the shows can keep happening.
The listeners, you know, it's not, it's not a commercial transaction in the sense that,
you know, this thing costs X much dollars and, you know, pay that and you get it.
But if the listenership in general keeps enough money coming into the station, the station can
keep making the shows.
And that's what keeps the shows pure.
That's what keeps the shows, the product of the people who make it, the product of the
station who makes it, not the product of a company that makes soda pop.
There you go.
I hope that answers the question.
All right.
802-321-4225 is our telephone number.
Uh, we have a call.
Oh, we have a call.
At present.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's so transparent.
I don't even know when we have a call.
It may be from overseas too.
Oh yeah.
How about that?
And good evening.
You're on off the overtime.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes.
So yeah, I'm calling from Madrid in Santiago.
Wait, where are you calling from?
Madrid or something?
On this call for, hang on, wait, where are you calling from?
Yes.
Madrid, Spain.
Madrid.
Madrid, Spain.
Yes.
Okay.
Wow.
Awesome.
So I've been a listener of the hook for many years, but today was the first time I listen
live.
And yeah, it was very good.
And I want to add something to something that Emmanuel was talking about in the beginning
of the show.
Okay.
He said that he will do whatever it takes to get a response.
And yeah, that's what I'm doing now.
Because I sent you guys an email like three weeks ago, and I didn't get a response.
And I'm afraid it can get, maybe get caught on the spam filters or something.
So yeah, that's why I'm calling now.
Well, hopefully it didn't, because we don't use Gmail, at least at 2600 we don't.
Some of our participants do.
But it shouldn't have gotten caught in spam.
It's probably that we're just very busy and don't answer all the email.
But tell us what's in the email.
We can answer you right here.
Yeah, sure.
So I've been using an open source software called Whisper from OpenAI to add subtitles
to my family videos, because I've been digitalizing all my old family videos.
And my parents are deaf, so they cannot hear.
So I have the subtitles automatically with a graphic card, this software.
And I was wondering, because I finished now, I'm wondering if you would like to have
all of the hook programs transcribed for free.
So I could provide you the several formats, TXT, SRT, or whatever.
And maybe that could be useful to be able to search.
You know, I remember seeing this email.
In fact, we were having a discussion about this.
It's still ongoing as to whether or not this is something that we want to pursue.
Now, what was some of the problems?
Rob, I think you remember some of the potential issues?
Yeah.
The potential issues were just an AI-based transcription.
And this is something I'm facing for other projects I work on that need audio transcribed.
AI-based audio transcription is a good starting point, but it's not a finished transcript.
You still need a human to go over it and make corrections, make changes.
And so if you, as a listener, wanted to start a website somewhere where you put up transcripts
of the show, I think we would all be fine with that.
We would think that's a very kind thing for you to do.
But it also would not be a final product in the way that we would need if it were something
that we were going to put on the radio station's website or something like that.
So, like, you know, we very much encourage, like, people have done things with this program
or Off the Hook, our radio program, to be specific, like, you know, rebroadcast it or,
you know, host it in different places.
And ultimately, we are totally fine with that because we do this show so people can experience
it, so people can listen to it.
It's just nothing that we can take an active role in at this point.
Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
So, yeah, I think I will do it anyways and maybe put it on some website and we'll do
it again.
Yeah.
I'd like to see how, I'd like to see how the output looks for a single episode so we
can maybe, you know, see how good it is.
Yeah, just knowing how much curation it takes after you run it through the program, we were
really interested in this as well.
And we've used some programs like it.
I believe the site Otter was one we used.
But this has come up for transcribing Hope Talks.
And we've had subtitles in various forms, and this has been popular at other events.
And I know Jolie from ISOC has helped us a lot with this, and he is very familiar with
it and has used it.
But it's evolving.
So, we are keenly interested in getting good at this because of the accessibility, as you
point out.
It is incredibly helpful to share and spread, especially a rich content like video, across
languages.
As soon as you have a transcript, you can start thinking about translations and all kinds of
stuff opens up.
So, getting really good at this and honing the state of the art that what's worked for
people like you're doing with a home video project is a fantastic project.
And how much curation might make it easier for us to help at least think about making a
team or people that can say, okay, this batch is good.
This is the definitive subtitle.
Because we don't want to just trust the AI.
I'm sure you know that, right?
Can you tell us something about the video project that you did?
How difficult was that?
Well, it worked very well, except maybe a family reunion where there are more than 20
people talking at the same time.
But Spanish is, I think, the language that works better, the best language possible.
Then it's Italian.
And third is English.
So, I think the results will be, well, pretty good, I would say.
So, you will be able to search, grab, maybe a listener want to listen to histories about
pay funds, for example, or something like that.
That will work.
Uh-huh.
Wow.
Yeah.
As Kyle said, we want to do it well.
You know, if people want a good example of how it's done well and how it's done badly,
I think if you turn on your cable TV and you look at the CNN feed, they have a human, I think,
that makes sure the words are correct.
Now, turn to, if you're in the New York area, something like News 12.
They don't care.
And you just see random words that make absolutely no sense because that's what the computer is
telling them.
And there is no human overseeing it.
So, we want something that obviously looks like a human is in charge.
Curating and assisting, guiding the automation.
How long does it take to do, say, an hour?
So, I think it's like 17 times the real time.
So, to do the 1,700 hours, it will take around 30 days or 35 days.
I see.
Something like that.
Wow.
So, what I can do, if you want, is I can just do one month, for example, in 1990 or something
like that, and then one month last month, for example.
Okay.
So, eight shows, just as a test, and send you the results via email, so you can check.
It's a great idea.
It's good enough to have.
It's a great idea, and we really appreciate you doing this.
And I look forward to seeing where it goes.
Rob, did you have something else?
Yeah.
I'm also wondering, and this is just a suggestion, caller, but I'm wondering if something like
this could be a good starting point for, say, like maybe a collaborative project where
multiple people could be going through episodes when they have time, all contributing a bit
of the editing, maybe get together on something like a wiki or something that people could
collaborate on internally, and then have something fit for calling our final product.
I think there's a lot of potential in this, and yeah, we would love to see how it turns
out.
Please keep us updated with if you put this up on a website, if you put it up somewhere.
We would love to keep tabs on this.
We also have a question for the caller.
A question from YouTube asking if you go to the Madrid 2,600 meetings.
Yeah, good question.
No, I don't go.
All right.
Just wanted to check.
I don't even know if there is 2,600 meeting in Madrid.
Is somebody able to access the website so that we can tell the caller where it is?
I'll ask the caller if they're more loyal to Atletico Madrid or Real Madrid.
No, you don't have to answer that.
But they both played in the last two days.
Well, I don't know.
I don't care about football.
Sorry.
That's the correct answer.
Thank you.
All right.
Do you have...
I've only participated in the hack meeting community for many years in Spain.
So yeah, that's all from my side.
Do they still...
You're familiar with the train station in Madrid, correct?
Sorry, about the train station in Madrid?
Yeah, the main train station.
You're familiar with it?
Yeah, we have two main train stations.
Well, there's a huge one and it had a big display of turtles in the middle of it.
I'm wondering if that still exists.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, good.
This is Atletico Madrid.
Yeah, the turtles are not there anymore.
Oh, they're not?
They were taken care of.
No, they're not.
The garden is still there, but the turtles, they aren't.
Okay, all right.
They get removed some years ago.
Did they escape or did they cause problems?
Some of them are pretty big.
The turtles were taken to a center, I think.
It isn't a martial arts training center of some of them.
Aguila, you have some info.
Yes, the 2600 meeting in Madrid is held at a place called Maldito Querer, which is at
5 Calle de Argumosa in Madrid.
So, if you want to head over there in a couple weeks and check it out, that might be fun.
Begins at 5 p.m. on the first Friday or a different time?
I believe it begins at 7.
7 p.m., okay.
7 p.m.
Okay, okay.
I just took note.
Cool.
And you may see some of us in Madrid someday, because we do like that city a lot.
That would be very nice.
Cool.
Thanks for your efforts.
Keep us updated.
It sounds awesome, and it's a great hacker project.
Thank you.
All right.
Take care.
That's two great calls we got tonight so far.
We did, yes.
Want to try for a third?
802-321-4225.
802-321-HACK.
Hey, that reminds me, we discovered something rather interesting, and it's right here on Channel 2600.
We found video from 1986 involving our good friend Cheshire Catalyst, rest in peace, hosting a, I guess, one of the first ever hacker gatherings called Telepub 86.
It took place in a hotel in upper Manhattan, and it was basically, we talked about it when he passed away.
We talked about how many of us met him for the first time at that particular event.
He was the last editor of TAP Magazine, which was the predecessor to 2600 Magazine.
They stopped publishing in 1983, and this particular gathering took place in 1986 in, I believe, April.
And it was basically meant to address issues of that magazine coming back and what happened to all the money that was sent in for people who wanted to renew their subscriptions and never got anything.
And he addressed all of that, and to his credit, he basically said, yep, I used the money to pay my bills.
But he addressed it quite directly, and that's how he was, and also, it was supposed to be a gathering where these two people known as the Wacko Cracko Brothers, from I think St. Louis, were supposed to show up and announce the future of TAP Magazine, and they never did, and it never had a future, and that was it.
But it's, and the sound is atrocious, at least at the beginning, until he gets into those particular subjects.
Before that, it was basically a phone freak type of free-for-all, where people were talking about switches and phones and various other things.
But it's just seeing the people there.
Some of them we still know.
Some of them have become very important parts of the hacker community.
But everybody was just so young.
It was just incredible to see this.
And this bit of history that we did not know even existed.
Well, here it is.
And you can find it.
Just go to Channel 2600.
We're redesigning the YouTube channel.
So it should show up right on top of the YouTube channel, Channel 2600.
And we're going to be adding all kinds of other historical relics that are popping up.
So look forward to that.
Go ahead, Gail.
And just as a friendly and helpful reminder, if you are not subscribed to Channel 2600 on YouTube, go ahead and click that subscribe button.
Oh, no, no.
Don't say that.
I hate every video on YouTube where they all say, oh, like and subscribe.
I don't care if you like.
Dislike if you want.
Unsubscribe.
It doesn't matter to us.
I mean, why?
But if you subscribe, you'll find this content in your home feed rather than having to go look for it.
So it was a nice surprise when one day I opened up YouTube and there was Cheshire's face just saying hello.
So that was a nice moment.
And if you subscribe to Channel 2600, you will also have the opportunity to be greeted with that kind of stuff.
And you don't have I will not say smash.
You know, I hear you.
But, you know, if somebody wants to subscribe to something, why do you have to tell them to subscribe to it?
You know, it's like you're there.
You know, if you like this, then you don't have to tell somebody to like it.
They'll like it and they'll subscribe maybe or maybe not.
You know, it's it's it's it's their decision.
I just every single YouTube video I see, it's always the same thing before I say anything like and subscribe.
And I know, you know, most of the time I just want to read a tutorial on something.
I don't want to see a video.
I don't want to see some guy in his garage like telling me how something works.
No, I just want to read it.
Like, you know, we used to have these things called manuals.
That's how I want to learn about these things.
But OK, fine.
If I have to sit through that now, I got to sit through a Google ad.
All right.
There's that in the middle of a sentence.
They're going to interrupt with another one.
This guy keeps reminding me to like and subscribe.
And hit the bell or something, which is going to ring all the bells in my house.
Apparently, if something new gets posted, it's just turned into a real thing, you know.
However, I would like to point out that we've been doing overtime for, what, two years now.
And I think this is the first time we have said subscribe.
And we're not video.
So there's that.
You don't see us moving around at all.
So we're breaking that rule.
And we didn't say it at the beginning like everybody else does.
We said it right in the middle.
You'll never find it.
We might say it at the end again, though.
We might.
We might.
But we'll probably forget.
Because we do.
We do.
802-321-4225 is our phone.
Oh, we haven't.
Every time I give the phone number, we already have a call.
OK, so we have another call.
By the way, levels are good.
Everyone's happy with the levels.
I haven't heard of any complaints yet.
We are hearing that the phone calls are a little low still on YouTube.
Really?
The danger is, though, we'll get feedback or something weird.
Because that's just, that's like all kinds of crazy.
I did turn them up about 20 minutes ago.
So was it since then that we got a report that they were low?
We were hearing different things from different people.
We did hear that our first caller was having a Bluetooth earpiece issue.
And that was why her volume was low.
Oh.
So, Dory, thank you for clarifying on that.
And actually, before we go to the caller, can I just jump in here for a second?
Go ahead and jump.
For those of you who are coming into the chat and asking about the origin stories of the panelists on the show, we're not going to give you our biography.
Is that what's going on?
Wow.
I don't look at the chat.
I don't look at the...
I know.
This is why I'm here.
And what I'm going to say is, no, we're not going to answer those kinds of questions.
Yeah, because we could get in legal trouble, among other things.
That and it's just sort of the antithesis.
I mean, we go to great lengths discussing people's information in the information age, their privacy and sort of boundaries and how it is to operate in a world so connected.
And I think that it's not as important to go completely against that and start forcing people to share some kind of detail that is itself the kind of thing we don't really encourage other people to share online.
Like, we're living in an age where you need to be very considerate about your friends and your family and how you talk about things and how you describe details and stuff.
Because there's a lot of malicious people and hateful people out there that want to exploit information like that, frankly.
And it's really unfair to our callers.
Privacy will be violated as a repercussion or Google will come find you because you said something bad about it.
But you could say you're from Detroit or something, right?
I mean, that's not really – I don't know what people mean by origin story.
What is that exactly?
Yeah, it sounds like superheroes or something.
We've all shared various pieces of our biographical information on the show.
And, in fact, if you want to know about how most of us came to be on this particular program, listen to the radio show, which you can find on 2600.com slash OTH.
Find the episode from two weeks ago where we spent the entire episode talking about what this show is, how we came to it.
Alex was not with us two weeks ago, so we missed out on that.
But the rest of us talked about how we found the show and where we came from.
If you listen, you'll pick it up, I promise.
But it's not something we're specifically going to go into.
All right.
Should I go to the phone call now?
Yeah, we still have a phone call.
And someone please tell me if the levels are too loud or too low or whatnot.
Be gentle with the call.
I won't see the chat, but one of you can just jump in and tell me.
This also, I might add, is potentially an overseas call.
Oh, well, then they're spending a lot of money, aren't they?
A pretty penny.
If they're taking a phone call from a phone booth or something.
All right.
Let's get to it.
Hey, good evening.
You're on Off Talk Overtime.
Go ahead.
Hello, everybody.
Oh, that sounds like Zap from London.
Is that Zap from London?
Yes, it is.
All right.
Awesome.
I was more in Spanish calls from Madrid because they're like 2 o'clock in the morning.
And it's 1 o'clock in the morning for you.
Yeah, but I'm a regular caller, more or less.
So it's just good to hear somebody from Spain, especially when they've got a meeting in Madrid
and the guy didn't know about it.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, that was fantastic, wasn't it?
Yeah, I dare say a lot of New Yorkers don't know about the New York meeting, and it's our
job to inform them.
Yeah, we've got to turn people on to these things, let them know.
Yep.
They can mix it up locally.
So how are you, Zap?
Yep.
Um, I've got some bad news.
That's the reason why I'm calling.
We've lost another hacker.
You know, it seems like every week.
Uh, okay, uh, give us, give us the info on this one.
All right.
It's a guy called Pascal Rascal, or known as the rebel, uh, from the UK, uh, rebel.
Uh, he died sort of the beginning of the month.
Uh, we don't exactly have details at the moment, and the reason I'm phoning is, uh, the funeral
is going to be next Monday.
Okay.
Um, it's going to be at, uh, Lawnswood Crematorium in Leeds, and, uh, actually, Emmanuel, you've
actually met this guy.
Okay.
Uh, I don't recall, but, uh, I believe you.
Well, I'll tell you the story.
Uh, I don't remember if you, when you came to England, I think it was in 1996, this is
how far back we're going, so about 27 years.
Okay.
Um, we drove up to Manchester to go to the, the Manchester Christmas party, and Tom convinced
you to go to Leeds to pick up this guy, and we did a little excursion going via Leeds to
Manchester, and unfortunately he wasn't allowed to go because his mum wouldn't let him go.
Uh, but yeah.
Wow, and of course we lost Tom as well, so boy, that's, uh, that's something.
Yeah, well, the last time I saw Pascal was actually roughly about five years ago at Tom's
funeral.
Um, he used to come to the, to the London 2600 meetings because, uh, he used to date Tom's
sister at the time, and funny enough, Tom dated Pascal's sister, so, you know, it was,
uh, something that happened at that time.
I think I remember that.
Um, yeah, and, um, I'm trying to think, uh, yeah, he came down for the funeral for Tom,
and he was, that was in May, and then he was planning to come down in July to the London
2600 meeting.
Unfortunately, he didn't because he got mugged, uh, in London, uh, and there was a police officer
right there, and they took his laptop, and, um, when he turned to the police and said, are
you going to stop this?
Uh, the mugger sort of dropped his, uh, laptop and smashed the screen, so I felt guilty about
that, and I really didn't stay in touch, and, um, found out through, uh, social media, and
this is always the way how we find out nowadays, that the, uh, the guy passed away.
So, some of London are planning to go to Leeds, about four or five, because there's not many
old-school 2,600 people left going to the meetings.
Um, there's only a few, but there's, there's a handful planning to go to the funeral with
any luck.
Wow, our deepest condolences on, on yet another loss in the community.
It's, it's, it's so sad.
Yeah, we're not trying to beat America.
I heard that the person passed in, in the States, um, but it's just one of those things,
and unfortunately, the guy's only about 40, so that's fairly young.
Yeah, absolutely.
It always is.
It always feels that way.
I mean, even, you know, uh, even when, when somebody much older than that, you know, Daniel
Ellsberg, for instance, somebody who we met just, you know, one time at a hacker conference,
gave a keynote, and, uh, you know, he was so young at heart, it, it, it felt every bit
as painful.
Yeah.
But, the only other news I've got, really, is, uh, the three English 2,600 meetings are
going fairly strong.
Uh, there's a Manchester meeting starting up in November.
Okay.
But, currently, there's a Manchester meeting listed on your meetings page.
I don't know what's going on with that meeting.
Um, there may be some old school 2,600s that have just posted saying they said they've continued,
but I don't know if anyone's going to the Manchester meeting, so there's a bit of confusion about
the Manchester meet that we need to sort out.
Okay.
Well, um, uh, it won't get sorted out on the issue that, that is at the printer now, but
it will be sorted out for the, uh, for the winter issue.
So, um, that's, that's a project we can, we can work on.
Yeah, otherwise, you're going to have two meetings for Manchester, which isn't going to be very
good.
No.
Um, I know it's a couple of ladies that are trying to sort out the Manchester meet, so
that's going to be different.
Good.
Okay.
Um, but yeah, that's all the news I've got.
Um, with me, I'm not doing too good, uh, as usual, uh, and it's looking a bit hairy
for my future, but, you know, I don't really want to discuss that.
Uh, and on that side, no, I think I'm going to leave it.
I hope we can get another cheerful call because this one's been a bit of a downer.
Well, uh, sorry about that.
Please accept our best wishes and, uh, uh, sending you, uh, Alex has something to add.
Go ahead.
Yeah, Zapp, something to look forward to.
I'll be heading back and forth to London more regularly again, starting, uh, next term
when I start teaching at, uh, King's College again.
So hopefully you and I can get together.
I think it would be great to, uh, see your face again.
I know we didn't have a chance to make it happen, but given what you just said, something
to look forward to.
Bring Zapp into that Chelsea Arts Club.
I think that would cause a stir.
Oh, they deserve that.
Yeah.
Oh, he doesn't want to go.
He doesn't want to go.
I've got problems trying to find clothes to go to a funeral because I don't really have
funeral clothes anymore.
The last couple of funerals I've had to go to, I've been very casual because it's been
allowed.
Um, but like I said, I haven't seen the parents of Pascal for about 20 years.
So I want to be respectful, but it makes it very difficult when you're going to a funeral.
You know, you really should just turn up as you want and just be grateful that you turned
up at somebody's funeral.
But we're trying to do the best because we are respectful people.
No, I, I, I, I hear that.
And what you say makes a lot of sense.
Yeah.
And I will look forward to looking to see you, Alex.
But if you're in town for a while, you can always come to the meetings.
I'm guaranteed to be there.
Yep.
Yeah.
I would absolutely love that.
It's been a long time since I've been to a London 2600 meeting.
And if not, then we'll, we'll get together at the Chelsea Arts Club, as, uh, Emmanuel suggested.
There's no dress code there whatsoever.
Okay.
Well, it is difficult for me to get out of the house nowadays.
Uh, but I will try and I really would like to see you, Alex, because it would be good.
It's been a while.
Well, I can always make it over, uh, across town and see you as well.
So, uh, we'll make it happen, my man.
All right.
Good hearing from you.
Okay.
I appreciate it.
It's always good to hear your voice.
All right.
Yeah, everybody.
Thanks for calling.
Take care.
Okay.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Zapp from London.
So we've had Pennsylvania, we've had Madrid, and we've had London.
So, um, maybe one more.
802-321-4225.
That'll be a quick one, though, because, um, we're almost out of here.
Gila, it looks like you have something to say.
I do.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
So, in re-the Origin Stories Discussions, uh, someone did posit Kyle's.
Oh, boy.
Uh-huh.
All right.
You ready?
40 years ago, a spaceship crashed into a field.
It opens to reveal Kyle.
Wait, that's a superhero.
Yeah.
And we already told this.
We already told this story, so they're just reading from the comic adaptation.
Fine.
It works.
I'm sure there's plenty of other people that arrive that way, too.
Uh-huh.
Isn't that how we all arrived, really?
It's, for all intents and purposes, accurate.
It makes sense.
The answer is, well, so what else do you need to know?
But, yeah, hackers arrive on the scene all the time, and these meetings are a great way
to do it.
So, if, um, there's so many Origin stories out there.
Did they say it was a crash landing?
Is that what they said?
Yes.
Oh, no, no.
A spaceship crashed into a field.
No, it wasn't.
It was a landing.
It wasn't a crash.
It implies, like, bad piloting.
Why do they always have spaceships crashing?
Burns.
Maybe they want to land in a particular way.
And maybe what you see as a crash is actually how they land.
Think about that.
I think the spacecraft pilots that have some sense know better than to land on this particular
planet until we get our crap together a little more fully.
Steer clear.
Yeah, that's why they're not around.
All right.
802-321-4225.
Only a couple of minutes left, so off the hook, overtime.
Anything else we want to share with people?
We talked about the Telepub 86 video posting, which was exciting.
I'm glad we found that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I really liked how, like, Cheshire was ageless because you pull up that video and it's basically
the Cheshire we know from maybe a year or two ago just with, you know, darker hair.
But he's still the same lanky guy, same face, same hairstyle.
But he's kind of timeless and eternal.
Oh, that hurt.
I echo that.
And that loss was really, it was tough.
But he was always there as a constant.
And like you said, just ready to help out or just, in my mind, ready to help out and
just someone you could count on and so enthusiastic for this crazy thing that hacking is about.
We have a phone call.
We have a phone call.
Okay.
This will be the last call.
Now we're already talking, so they're going to have to stop talking if we're going to
introduce them properly.
This is Overtime.
Good evening, caller.
Yes, hi.
I just had a general question.
Is there a reason why you don't take any calls on the radio show anymore?
Yes, there is a reason because we're not at the radio station and we have no way of
controlling the board.
And the engineers can't.
If somebody were to say a swear, which is illegal on FCC land, we wouldn't be able to hit the
dump button because we're not in the studio and that would cause a major problem.
That's the reason.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
I was wondering.
Now, if we go back to the station, which we do want to do, and if they open it up to
more than just a couple of people at a time, then we can take calls right there at the station.
But then we wouldn't be doing Overtime because there'd be no purpose.
Why isn't the show open?
Why isn't the radio station open for more than a couple of people at a time?
You know, I'm not sure.
That's a good question.
We can ask.
We haven't really pursued that because this is just so damn convenient.
We're doing it all from our homes.
So, yeah, I guess we could push the issue and see if, okay, maybe we should commute two hours
each way to do a one-hour show.
Yeah, that's always fun.
It was always fun.
I'm not, you know, putting it down.
We'll bring it back.
We'll bring it back.
I miss it.
Maybe a once-a-monthly event.
We've talked about it actively, and it is nice to be able to take calls there, to interact
with the engineers and so forth.
Just being in Brooklyn.
Remember Brooklyn?
That was so cool.
That is.
Yeah.
It's the spot.
So we'll take the comment under consideration.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Was there anything else?
No, that's about it.
Thank you.
Have a great night.
Thank you.
Thanks for calling.
Thanks for listening.
And that is our last call for the night as we hit the nine o'clock hour.
Well, it's been fun, as always.
It was really fun.
I needed this.
Great seeing you all.
I'm really happy to have talked to everybody.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Good callers tonight.
Good callers tonight.
Good company.
Good discussion.
And good levels, I think, from what I hear.
Company is questionable, but discussion is great.
Yeah.
We'll talk about that.
Thank you to our 2930-ish folks who have been hanging in with us on YouTube, many of whom
have jumped in the live chat, and we are grateful for all of you.
Thank you.
You know, join us in the future on the YouTube live chat.
It is buckets of fun.
Yeah.
Spread the word, too.
Let more people know.
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
Again, listen next week at 7 p.m. on WBAI, which is findable either at 99.5 FM in New York
City or WBAI.org, where you can live stream us.
And, of course, at 8 o'clock overtime on YouTube, channel 2600, where you can find every Hope
video, as well as an increasing number of other fun things.
So keep checking in.
Alex, I believe you had a comment.
Yeah.
I just wanted to say, Rob, I'm just so incredibly sorry to hear about your friend, Kurt.
Yes.
I think you did a wonderful job eulogizing her, and it sounds like she will be missed.
Indeed, she will.
Thank you.
All right.
With that somber note, we're going to say good night for now.
Thanks, everybody, for listening and participating, and we will see you next week.
Good night.
Bye.