The number you have reached, 99.5 WBAI is now Off the Hook. 
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough. 
It couldn't get much worse, but if it could, it would. 
I'm really more for the best, it's made the worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
I'm really more. 
We'll be right back. 
And I'll be right back. 
Bye-bye. 
Bye. 
We'll be right back. 
I learned a lot about Mastodon in the last week. 
I learned how easy it is to simply switch to a different server if you need to do that. 
And I needed to do that because I got kicked off. 
And the reason they gave me, though, it was very disturbing. 
This is Chaos.Social. 
They're not really affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club, as far as I know, but they're members or there's some connection, but it's not – I don't think that this is CCC doing this. 
But basically, my offense was posting simply the line that 1,000 Palestinian kids have been killed in the last week or so. 
And they said I needed to filter that because it might upset some people. 
And I took exception with the fact that I had to be concerned about upsetting news, maybe being upsetting, and it just kind of spiraled downhill from there. 
But they basically said that I had to label that as politics, saying 1,000 Palestinian kids have been killed as politics. 
Yeah, it just – it wasn't going to work out. 
And, of course, this week, that number has doubled. 
But I haven't dared to say that anywhere yet. 
But my new Mastodon instance is Goldstein. 
Yeah, I decided to go a different way this time, not Emmanuel. 
I decided to go with Goldstein. 
Goldstein at Mastodon.Social. 
But it's not the Mastodon.Social where you spell out Mastodon. 
It's the one where you spell Mastodon without the vowels. 
And since the vowels are where everybody screws it up, I think that's advantageous. 
So Mastodon.Social. 
And you can find me there speaking my mind about various things and paying the price. 
Yeah, it's okay. 
It's fine. 
It's wonderful. 
It's a lesson. 
And, you know, I've talked to so many people about this over the course of – it's weird how word gets out to certain people. 
I've heard from people I haven't heard from in years. 
Hey, what's going on with this big blow-up you're having? 
And, you know, one of the things people said to me was Mastodon isn't the best at freedom of speech, which is something because I kind of thought it was better than Twitter, certainly. 
And I guess that's maybe a low bar. 
But, yeah, you can have situations where people running a local server in Mastodon decide they don't like the letter B or something like that. 
And they can say, you are not allowed to use that. 
You can't do that. 
And you have to abide by those rules. 
Now, the reason I kind of ran into trouble here was because I didn't know about the rules. 
In fact, on the mobile app, if I click on rules, I got an empty page. 
So I just kind of assumed, you know, common sense rules, did not know that it was completely different. 
It all worked out. 
It's just another adventure in the world of free speech that we talk about here on WBAI. 
Any adventures from any of you folks or comments? 
Well, I did find out something interesting pursuant to a story we covered a couple weeks ago, which is that I went on the Omni website a couple days ago to try to track my rides. 
And they disabled that feature. 
Omni being the Omni card website. 
I remember we were talking about privacy. 
And if you had somebody's credit card number, you could track their train trips. 
So they disabled that feature? 
They have disabled a lot of the features of the website until they are redesigned. 
And there's no news, no updates, no anything. 
So I don't know if we can take credit for it not being there. 
But I don't know that we can't. 
So I'm comfortable doing that, too. 
Well, if it ruined the fun for somebody, we'll take the credit for that because that's what we do. 
It's ruin the fun for everybody. 
All right. 
Well, you know, we have a bunch of letters I'd like to get to because they pile in sometimes. 
OTH at 2600.com. 
Right now, people are typing letters to us. 
We do encourage writing letters. 
We do. 
We encourage writing, period. 
Frequently. 
Yeah. 
We appeal to our listeners for that. 
So we're going to start with one we just got today, actually. 
We have been going back for quite some time. 
We only have a couple of minutes for this segment. 
This is from a fairly long-time listener, short-time magazine subscriber, who was listening to the first 20 minutes of last week's show. 
I would like to ask a question, as I see this happening almost all the time now. 
Are you ever going to talk about actual hacking? 
Lately, there's nothing but politics and complaining. 
Politics. 
Is that word again? 
It just seems like every time you bring up something that is not specifically a technical issue that has to do with the world, it becomes politics, especially if it's something someone doesn't agree with. 
I've heard that with regards to COVID, with regards to what's happening in the Middle East, with regards to the various elections in this country. 
Anything where it's a little bit controversial and people are tired of hearing about it. 
Well, we're not tired of talking about it or bringing up different aspects, such as the technological aspects, the hacker perspective, various things like that. 
But let me continue with the letter. 
Tonight, as I said, I was listening to the show. 
I downloaded. 
And it should have been called the Emmanuel Goldstein Complains Show, because that's all it was. 
Well, I believe I even prefaced the show or said at some point that, yes, I'm going to be complaining about something. 
But, you know, in fairness, what I complain about is, you know, the things like, for instance, Mastodon, something that we are all using or getting used to as part of a technological community. 
Or I was upset at Google the other week because they're labeling lots of legitimate mail as spam. 
You know, you'll find that while I do tend to complain, I tend to complain about the things that are pertinent to our daily lives. 
And many times that leads to other people complaining and sometimes complaining about me. 
And that's fine. 
Look, why do you think the complaints department is the most popular department of any company? 
Because people love to complain. 
Come on, you who wrote this letter, did you not feel good after writing it because you were complaining too? 
All right, we encourage people to complain. 
Complain all the time. 
It's so good for your blood pressure. 
It really is. 
Anyway, so yeah, Emmanuel Goldstein Complains Show. 
So now I realize I do not pay anything for this broadcast, but you could, of course, donate to WBAI. 
That's not paying for the broadcast. 
That's investing in the most awesome radio station around and a bastion of free speech. 
Whatever you make it, it's up to you. 
And you can do that by going to give to WBAI.org or I believe even calling 212-209-2950. 
Don't quote me on that. 
I think they're manning those phones, but regardless, the website give2wbai.org is there for your pledge. 
So yes, you can pay to keep voices like mine. 
You can do it on a recurring basis too if you ask about the WBAI Buddy program and how you can get involved with that. 
That's right. 
The WBAI Buddy program allows you to pay a small amount each month, and we add that up, and it turns into a bigger amount at the end of the year. 
And then we can count on you and those funds for our overhead, and it's a fantastic system. 
Anyway, I know the history of 2600, the famous hacker magazine, a place to go and learn new things, or the history about old hackers and hacking. 
And guess what? 
We get complaints there a lot about politics. 
Even though 95% of articles barely touch the subject at all and are mostly technical, people are still upset when they hear a viewpoint that they don't agree with. 
And that tends to be where the complaints come from. 
Please, I ask you to go back to your roots. 
Forget politics. 
Forget the hate. 
There are so many things you can talk about that are uplifting. 
Yeah, but you know what? 
We're not a Christian radio show. 
We're not going to be very uplifting at all. 
Consider us a dark radio show. 
You know, we do touch upon these subjects, you know, listing a bunch of hacker-related things, cybersecurity, Raspberry Pis, Capture the Flag. 
Yeah, okay, that's all fine and good, but we live in a world, and we're not closing our eyes to that world. 
And what we say is not said in other places, and it's important. 
And you have to also remember, we're part of a bigger community here with WBAI, where we're on 24-7 and talking about all kinds of relevant things. 
There are people right now driving in their cars who are listening to us by accident. 
They just stumbled upon this radio station. 
That's the magic of radio. 
So, for those people, we need to provide something more than a very narrow perspective of technology. 
Sure, we'll sneak that in. 
We'll definitely discuss that, but it can't be the only focus. 
Anyway, continuing here. 
Any of these subjects would be preferable to the constant hate and discontent I hear lately. 
Hate? 
Where does hate come from? 
Does anybody express hate here? 
I mean, you know, I hate being inconvenienced. 
I hate sometimes when, you know, my phone doesn't work properly, but such a strong word. 
You guys, are you picking up on any hate from any of us? 
No, I think generally we tend to be a rather optimistic bunch as these things go, kind of cheerful and positive most of the time. 
I hate corruption. 
Oh, be careful, Kyle. 
Well, when systems are wielded against people, I hate how things are going sometimes, but that's about as much as I can. 
Well, couldn't you filter that maybe and possibly use the word dislike instead of hate? 
And there's all kinds of things that we can do to improve that statement. 
All right. 
We'll work on it. 
I'll try. 
Okay, we're into the all caps section of the letter now. 
Enough with COVID vaccinations. 
I didn't know we were focusing on COVID vaccinations so much. 
No, okay, last week. 
Oh, my God. 
This is what upsets people. 
Last week we mentioned that we got our shots. 
Kyle and I got our shots. 
I got a COVID shot. 
I got a flu shot. 
And I got a shingle shot. 
It feels good to say that. 
I got a shingle shot. 
Yeah. 
People seem to only be upset at the COVID shot for some reason. 
I don't know why. 
I really don't get this. 
This speaks to the crazy, and I guess it is, political climate in our country where somehow it's fashionable to blame Democrats for everything. 
So apparently COVID is Democrats' fault because all I hear are people complaining about having to wear masks. 
It wasn't because of Democrats we had to wear masks. 
It was because of that virus that was visiting us for quite some time that we had to wear masks. 
So I don't understand how that history is being rewritten. 
Perhaps our guests later on can tell us how that kind of thing is set in people's minds, and it actually works. 
Let people be grownups, make their own decisions. 
And yes, I am vaccinated. 
I just do not need to hear it every week. 
I listen. 
Okay. 
Congratulations on being vaccinated. 
But a lot of people aren't being grownups. 
A lot of people do need a reminder. 
Only 3.5% of the people in this country have gotten vaccinated for the latest revision of COVID that's coming down the pike. 
So yeah, we need public service announcements. 
We need to remind people, you know? 
Anyway, I listen to many podcasts on my way to and from work, and yours is the only one that hardly ever talks about the field. 
Well, it could be a reason for that. 
We're not a podcast. 
We're a radio show that happens to be on the internet, which I guess makes us a podcast when you're listening to it on the internet, but we are a radio show. 
Not by choice. 
Not a podcast by choice, right? 
Uh-huh. 
Uh-huh. 
Please have a great day. 
Signed, Jay Chass. 
And Jay, thank you for your letter. 
Seriously, I do thank you for your letter. 
Critiques, notwithstanding valid critiques, and we will address them, and we will take them into account. 
And please continue to voice your opinion as well. 
It's what it's all about. 
Did somebody have something? 
Yes, Rob. 
Yeah. 
This comes up a lot. 
This has come up so many times over the years regarding this show, regarding the magazine, the conferences, all the different hacker things we do, and we and so many other people in our community. 
And what I've always said is, like, I am a hacker. 
I embrace that label. 
I'm also a political activist. 
And I didn't become a hacker because I was a political activist. 
I became a political activist because part of being a hacker is looking around and seeing things and wondering, how can these be improved? 
How could things be changed? 
How could things be tweaked? 
What can I do to enact the change I want to see in the world? 
And that comes from my hacker mindset, my hacker outlook. 
And so, yes, looking at what would be labeled politics with a critical eye and postulating various things we could be doing better is, I think, part of the hacker spirit that drives so many of us. 
You know, there is no part of our world that cannot be improved by the hacker perspective that we've had people who have gone into prison and written articles about what it's like there from a hacker perspective, who have called us on the phone and told us what they see that nobody else is noticing. 
These are very valuable insights. 
There is nothing that is off limits to the hacker mind. 
Alex, I believe you had something? 
Yeah, I was just going to suggest, I think we should focus the rest of the show on the new Republican Speaker of the House. 
I think that would really make our listeners happy. 
We're having trouble with your levels. 
His levels are too high. 
Can you patch that through to the feedback? 
Turn them down to zero. 
I think that's about, yeah, that's fine. 
Connect him, patch him to the feedback. 
You had something, Kyle? 
Oh, no, no. 
I hear this critique a lot as well. 
And I have a couple ways of thinking about it. 
I think everybody does the best they can. 
And I think for just a small reason, I think politics might be coming through a little bit is the tendency or the lessening of the divide and the influence of technology, both in the lobbying and political sphere, but in our daily lives in general. 
And much of what is going on in the political side, in legislation and judicial rulings, many of those things involve technology ever more now. 
So I think that inherently some of the topics that are hacking or that involve hacking or the specter of it or the weaponization of it, security concerns, communication in general, those are going to seep into that world because that world is far more, far better suited than it was maybe 20, 30 years ago in the 80s or something. 
People didn't really understand what technology, what the implication would be and how pervasive it would be every day. 
So that I think is an accelerant. 
But the other thing that I think is dogging the situation a little bit is, and I could go off on a tangent on all the different reasons, but my main culprit, I think, is that there is a lot more secretive-ness around knowledge. 
People aren't sharing as much because the curiosities aren't there. 
These systems aren't as new and unfamiliar and a mystery that people are playing around with. 
And I really think there's a whole area regarding software development and security techniques and proprietary information and so on. 
And then that is basically being heavily cloistered both by the government in many ways, but also the private sector and specialists in general. 
So we encourage as much as we can. 
And of course, the approachability factor with the radio show. 
We want people tuning in to not be in the middle of a section of code we're parsing on air or something. 
So those are my initial takeaways. 
I have some deeper personal feelings about this as well. 
And perhaps we can get into that in overtime, which follows this show over on YouTube. 
You can get the link at the 2600.com webpage or just go to channel 2600 on YouTube at 8 o'clock. 
We're still going through a couple of letters here. 
This is from our friend Santiago in Madrid, in Spain. 
Santiago has put together an archive without anyone asking him to do this. 
He just took it upon himself to put this together. 
And it's awesome. 
He basically has a transcript, a pretty good transcript of the show every single episode going back to 1988. 
He just fixed the issue that someone mentioned on last week's chat where links on some pages were failing with a 404. 
But if you go to offthehook.cc, you can see his work. 
You simply enter a show and you'll see pretty much all the words that were spoken in that show. 
And have you guys had a chance to play with this at all? 
It's really pretty awesome. 
We have. 
We've been playing with it. 
And it's really fun to just type in various things into the search box and find out when we were talking about them. 
And, yeah, the transcripts are AI generated. 
They're a little rough. 
They don't attribute the various people, the various voices. 
But it gives you a starting point. 
And you can then look at what episode that was, pull it out of our archive, and have a listen. 
And it's a lot of fun. 
And, yes, every show is archived, 2600.com slash off the hook, going all the way back to 1988. 
It's pretty interesting. 
Thank you, Santiago, for all your work putting that together. 
Just another example of how people just dive into projects and produce really interesting things that we didn't even think of. 
Those kind of efforts really stand out to us. 
And we do notice those kinds of contributions and that spirit. 
It's really, it's so magical when people get into stuff like that and share something so cool. 
And they're hard work, too. 
Something that a lot of people could potentially take and go in different directions with. 
And finally, a letter from PRD. 
I thought the conversation on last week's show about Mayor Adams using AI translations for outreach was very thought-provoking. 
I think I fall on the side of it being disingenuous, but this will probably become normalized very soon. 
So I'm not sure it's worth getting too worked up about. 
We're talking about Mayor Adams calling people and speaking Mandarin on the phone when he doesn't speak Mandarin. 
It's simply AI using his voice to do this. 
Scared the hell out of a lot of people. 
It also reminded me of another story I read recently. 
Spotify is rolling out a feature, initially for select podcasts, oh, God, using their platform, which will automatically translate their programs into various languages. 
The process uses open AI and can do the translations after training on a small sample set of podcast episodes. 
The underlying service will not be made available to the public for fear of abuse. 
How long that embargo lasts is anyone's guess. 
I'm curious to know how you all feel about this. 
How would you feel about off the hook being automatically translated using your voices? 
Well, thank you, PRD, for opening up that kettle of worms. 
Actually, you know, I'm kind of curious. 
I'd like to see what that sounds like. 
You know, having me speaking Serbo-Croatian or something and talking about hacking and not having any idea what I'm saying, but in my voice. 
I think it would really challenge us because the potential for communicating with people, all hearing different translations of it, I think to me implies that we would get a lot of feedback in different languages and possibly be overwhelmed, but maybe we're up for that challenge. 
Yes. 
Rob, did you have something? 
Yeah. 
I find it kind of unsettling just because I don't know what the translation version of me would be saying. 
And the fact that it would be my voice presenting that makes it seem like it would be me, but not me. 
And it's sort of like, I mean, computer translations are very clever these days, but they're still not perfect. 
And I don't want some, you know, robot version of me sounding like the other languages version of all your base are belong to us. 
This is, and especially in a show like ours, where we talk about a lot of technical things and things that might not be in the standard translation dictionaries, there's potential for all sorts of mess ups and things. 
Well, you know, we can trade voices. 
You can have my voice and read your parts. 
And then maybe, Gila, you can read from me. 
And we could even have celebrity voices come in and just use those voices. 
I could have George W. 
Bush read Alex's lines. 
How about that? 
No, I'm just kidding. 
Or am I? 
Okay, so that's pretty much all for letters. 
I just wanted to show you folks one more thing before we get to our special guest. 
I got this mailer the other day. 
I know, Alex, you're particularly sensitive to political outreach. 
This is when your kid is targeted on YouTube for various candidates and things like that. 
But this was just a general mailer from the New York State Democratic Committee. 
And it was basically this big postcard. 
It said in all caps, who you vote for is private. 
But whether you vote is public record. 
And then on the left side, it had three years, 2020, 2021, and 2022. 
Now, I was out of town in 2021. 
And it's reflected here because 2020, it says voted. 
2021, it says did not vote. 
And 2022, it says voted. 
Next to that, Election Day is November 7th. 
Polls will be open 6 a.m. 
to 9 p.m. 
We will update your voting record after Election Day after confirming whether you voted. 
I don't know who put this together, but it sounds so hostile and so invasive. 
I mean, yes, I know that this information is public record. 
But why are they advertising to anybody who can read this postcard going through the mail when I voted and when I didn't and kind of sounding threatening, like, you know, whether you vote is public record. 
Like, OK, so you can find out if I voted or not, then what? 
And then saying we will update your voting record. 
I don't think the Democratic committee updates the voting record. 
I think that's pretty much the election board that does that. 
But whatever. 
I don't know. 
This does not seem like the most well thought out idea here. 
They could have been promoting a candidate. 
That would have been nice instead of threatening voters. 
But I don't know. 
Anyone get something similar to that, Alex? 
I didn't receive anything like that. 
I would have been appalled if I did. 
I think it's a very poorly conceived idea to try to get out the vote. 
It's very Orwellian in nature. 
And I think we're using Orwellian in the right way this time, not like Albert Foxconn was using it in his article last week that we incited about the mayor using AI and that being Orwellian. 
And I think this is truly Orwellian, this is somebody looking over your shoulder and saying, I know if you've been naughty or nice, and we hope that you're going to continue to be nice. 
It's really weird. 
It would creep me out. 
Alex, you have sort of a Battlestar Galactica effect on your voice. 
I'm not exactly sure what that is, but maybe you could get a little closer to a microphone or something like that. 
So, yeah, we'll sort that out. 
But, yes, point taken. 
And now we move on to our special guest, our friend Welton Chang from Human Rights First, joining us. 
Welcome, Welton, to the show. 
Hey, Emmanuel. 
Hey, everyone. 
It's great to be on again. 
So, now, tell us something about Human Rights First. 
And, by the way, I should point out, Alex and Welton are both on the Tech Advisory Board for Human Rights First. 
Go ahead, Welton. 
Do you want to go? 
Yeah, no, you go ahead. 
Go ahead. 
We can make a clarification together. 
Sure. 
Well, I've now moved over. 
I'm the CEO, co-founder of a startup called Pure Technologies, and we work on, you know, hate speech detection, disinformation, and that sort of stuff. 
But previously, yes, I was at HRF. 
I was their first chief technology officer. 
And Alex and I are both on the Tech Advisory Board for the organization. 
And, obviously, you know, it's a historic human rights organization based in New York City. 
It does a lot of great work on the border, in Ukraine, Afghanistan, basically, you name it, hotspot for human rights stuff going on. 
They're there and very proud to be continuing to be affiliated with the organization. 
And, Welton, do you want to talk a second about, you know, Pira and your work at Human Rights First and how it led to Pira? 
And then about what Pira is, and then I want to sort of dive right into some difficult, substantive questions for you. 
Well, sure. 
I mean, the briefest way to put it is we were building some technology at HRF looking to detect concerning, noxious content across the Internet. 
In the lead-up to Jan 6, we saw a lot of activity on the platforms that we were monitoring. 
We tried to warn people that something might happen that day. 
And then, of course, you know, Jan 6 occurs on January the 7th. 
And a few months thereafter, Human Rights First asked me and asked us if we'd be interested in basically spinning out as a venture-backed startup. 
So, for the last two years or so, we've been plugging away, building tech, serving our clients. 
We have close to 30 clients now. 
And, you know, it's just an enormously consequential time, I think, when you look across what's happening on smaller social media platforms. 
You know, I hear Emmanuel has some problems with Macedon. 
You know, these are the places where the start of small fires, you know, get their start. 
And then as these issues take off, they kind of migrate over into bigger platforms like Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. 
And, you know, I think disinformation, specifically what's going on between Israel and Hamas and the broader Middle East, that's something that we're seeing explode across these platforms. 
And we hear day in, day out, that this is the most amount of, you know, by volume, disinformation, misinformation, whatever label you want to put on it, that people have encountered in quite some time. 
You know, and, you know, yeah. 
We're going to get into that in detail in a moment. 
But maybe you could explain to us the difference between misinformation and disinformation, because we hear those terms a lot. 
Yeah, misinformation generally is somebody just being mistaken about what they're putting up. 
It's not intended to deceive the recipient, the reader, but disinformation is intended to deceive people. 
There's another category that the U.S. 
government likes to use called malinformation. 
That's really kind of factual information being taken out of context. 
And, you know, somebody slapping a new caption or title on a video that actually occurred but may not be, you know, in the place where the sender says it is. 
Malinformation. 
I've never heard that before. 
Malinformation. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
Yeah. 
You know, the government, they love their acronyms. 
MDM. 
You know, they kind of sweep it all up into a single term. 
I think MDM may actually be more of a mouthful than saying disinformation, but probably one of the reasons why they've done that is because it captures the range of content that could potentially influence these conversations that are happening online. 
Well, now let's look at what everyone is focusing on these days, the situation, horrible situation in the Middle East. 
What have you noticed? 
What's different about this? 
Yeah, I think the biggest difference that we've observed is the ways in which the volume of content and the amount of repurposed video, right? 
For one thing, there's just so much of – there's just so much war footage out there now as a result of Ukraine. 
And prior to that, the previous conflicts in the Middle East, specifically Syria, have generated just a plethora of, you know, video evidence that people are now repurposing, reusing in different contexts, specifically on X Twitter. 
And I think part of – and I think part of what we're observing is the result of platforms deciding not to moderate the content as much and also, you know, maybe change the way in which they're amplifying content. 
There was a report that was put out recently from the Center for an Informed Public. 
They're based in the University of Washington, and, you know, it was extremely well done, I thought. 
And one of the things that they pointed out was that the top 10 or so Twitter accounts, X accounts, that were putting content related to Israel Hamas on the platform, they were able to reach, I think, more people than the top 10 media organizations were able to on X. 
Despite those accounts not having as many followers as, you know, the BBC or the New York Times, who have journalistic standards, who do fact-checking, who do verification, who try not to report things before they are able to do multi-source, you know, verification. 
And these are accounts, I think, most notably have been amplified by Elon Musk as well. 
People have pointed out that, hey, these, you know, these two specific OSIN accounts that Musk has directed people to have a checkered history of posting content that's actually turned out not to be true. 
Yeah, you know, one of the main problems on X Twitter, that's a good name for it, isn't it, X Twitter, one of the problems is that anyone can get a blue check now and get that kind of, I guess, confirmation that what they're saying must be true because they have a blue check, but anyone could just pay a certain amount of money and get that. 
It used to mean something, used to actually mean that some kind of verification was enacted to prove that the person or entity was who they said they were. 
But now it could be anybody. 
So when you read something on X Twitter, it's really up to chance whether or not you're reading the truth. 
I just wonder how much of this has has made its way into the mainstream media itself, where you see things being broadcast that are fake, that are based on misinformation or or disinformation. 
Yeah, I mean, to the point about blue checks for it, it takes a little bit of a cognitive takes cognitive energy for people to realize that it no longer means the thing that it used to mean, because we've got we had gotten so used to the blue check being meaningful, and now it doesn't have the same meaning as it did before. 
And it also requires people to kind of be aware that this is what's happening with with that, that symbol of credibility. 
And, you know, I think part of the issue is there's such a rush to be the first to say something. 
And if you're if you're if you're in the mainstream media and you're trying to break news, it actually kind of harms the enterprise a bit, because in this rush, you may be reporting information that turns out not to be true. 
And then the critics will point back to that and say, well, look, you're not reliable either. 
You're just as unreliable as rando on Twitter X, which, again, journalistic standards. 
Right. 
And how much effort the news organizations go through to put out the information they do put out, well, you know, as opposed to, again, rando on Twitter with, you know, 100000 followers going out to Telegram, downloading a video off of the Hamas account on Telegram, putting it on Twitter and saying breaking news. 
Oh, boy. 
Yeah. 
That's it's it's it doesn't compare. 
It doesn't compare. 
And it's really disconcerting that that's what passes as credible information consumption these days. 
You know, one of the one of the examples in the past week was the the blast at the hospital in Gaza, which was initially reported as an Israeli strike through much of the media. 
And when it became clear that perhaps this wasn't the case, that it was an errant rocket from Islamic Jihad instead, most media tended to say, OK, this is being claimed by the by the Israeli authorities and this is being claimed by the Palestinian authorities. 
So basically, that, I think, was the right way to do it. 
And unfortunately, what Al Jazeera did instead was double down and keep saying that this was the result of an Israeli strike when it was, you know, the evidence was showing that it was not. 
And to me, that was a rare glimpse of how they completely dropped the ball on that particular story. 
However, today, we learn that the main bit of evidence that was being presented by everybody to prove the Israeli military side wasn't what it said it was. 
In fact, it was it was something that exploded in the air and had no effect on the actual hospital. 
So now it's it's it's basically still being determined who was responsible for that. 
But it's interesting to see how different media outlets dealt with that, some admitting they were wrong, some refusing to admit another possibility, others saying they simply don't know. 
And I think that might be the most responsible thing to do is say you simply don't know when when you don't. 
Yeah, I mean, there's a term, the fog of war. 
You know, it's been popularized over the years and that's what's happening. 
It's hard to get information. 
It's hard to get factual information. 
It's hard to know what exactly it is you're looking at some grainy surveillance footage. 
I think in this case, I had I had many people texting me asking me who did this. 
And the best response I could give was we don't know yet. 
You have to you have to let the facts come out. 
You have to evaluate the facts. 
You have to evaluate who's sending facts. 
And again, I think the rush to judgment and and I'll say in this case, some of the mainstream media outlets who who then went back and said, no, no, no. 
We're just reporting what Hamas said. 
That's a cop out. 
Yeah, because because you put a giant headline. 
That that that, you know, broadcast that and for you to then go back and say, well, no, in actuality, we're just relaying something that's newsworthy. 
It's kind of the same reasoning that people gave, you know, five, four or five years ago to say, why are you covering Trump so much? 
Well, it's because it's newsworthy. 
Right. 
You know, we're in the business of truth. 
We're in the business of finding the truth. 
There should be a first cut at it. 
And that, I think, requires being circumspect in situations where you just don't know what happened. 
Yeah. 
Well, that's such a fascinating distinction to think that we live in this world where we have to separate news from the truth. 
That's really a scary kind of concept. 
I hadn't thought of it that way. 
But you and you guys literally peer into a whole spectrum of these unmoderated extremist social media channels. 
So I'm wondering, since the Israeli Hamas conflict has kicked off, what have you been seeing in terms of anti-Semitism, in terms of conspiracy theories? 
Give us give us a taste of what it's like to to live in that world for a day or several weeks. 
Yeah, I mean, we we started noticing right away a significant increase in anti-Semitic imagery being posted. 
Also, the Islamophobic anti-Muslim imagery being posted. 
This came in the form of memes. 
It came in the form of repurposed, you know, pictures that have been promulgated over the years. 
And it was to the point where it was like, you know, 10 times what we normally saw. 
And it's not like these places weren't rife with anti-Semitism to begin with. 
There's plenty of that content on these platforms already. 
But you take that elevated level and then you amp it up by by tenfold. 
And, you know, we were basically awash in all of this hate speech. 
And, you know, I think part of part of what's happening is there's a confluence of multiple conspiracy theories all coming together as a result of this conflict. 
For one thing, many people on the platforms that, you know, we gather data from are anti-Semitic, also Islamophobic. 
So there's kind of this inner turmoil happening where you're trying to decide whether it's you're going to come out, you know, hating the Jews more or hating the Muslims more. 
Right. 
Which is really sad. 
But that's part of what's happening. 
And I think the other thing is the events really played into some of the existing conspiracy theories that have been around for, you know, hundreds of years, if not thousands of years about the Jewish people. 
And, you know, this is again, this kind of content is on these platforms all the time. 
It's just been amplified much more. 
And that may be the reason why we're seeing so many more kind of real world acts of hate, of people going and attacking synagogues and places of worship. 
And, you know, there was that young boy that was murdered, I think, in Chicago, the young Muslim boy. 
And, you know, that's the things that happen online. 
Do certainly impact the real world in a lot of ways and changes attitudes, it changes people's beliefs, it hardens them to an extent and can also motivate people to commit heinous acts. 
And that's one of the things that we are growing, you know, kind of increasingly worried about is just how much of this stuff is out there now. 
And it's been elevated for some time and has not come down. 
I know in London, we've seen a rise of, I think, 1300 percent in anti-Semitic incidents this year. 
That's not insignificant. 
And a spike in New York as well since October 7th, which is very disturbing. 
But I want to ask you, Weldon, is there a way to distinguish between people who are exhibiting this anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim feeling between people who are legitimately criticizing policy in that region, whether it be from the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Palestinian cause in general, or the Israeli government? 
I think you can certainly criticize governments without resorting to speech that crosses the line in terms of the First Amendment. 
So I don't think criticizing a government requires you to say things like death to or kill or this person should hang. 
You know, those are not phrases I think typically associated with, you know, proper political discourse. 
And, you know, yes, there are ways to distinguish between those, right? 
The speech is a matter of degree and probabilistic scoring that occurs with the AI that we built. 
You know, there's always a human in the loop in terms of who passes judgment on this stuff, right? 
And we don't do that as a company. 
We help our clients, you know, basically look through all this data. 
They're the ones that are doing things like making law enforcement referrals if they see a credible threat pop up or I'm starting to deep dive into a specific user because this user has said that they're, you know, I'm making plans to go and attack a synagogue, right? 
Things like that. 
And, you know, look, I think there's the problem with how we conceptualize free speech on the Internet a lot of the time is we don't necessarily think about the ways in which speech has been constrained in a legally, in a legal way by, you know, Brandenburg, by Supreme Court cases in the past where, you know, incitement to violence is not protected. 
Right. 
And, you know, there's there's good reason for that. 
And there's even better reason for that online because you can reach such a wider audience. 
And if you're telling a million people to go and harm a specific, you know, race or class of people, that can be quite, you know, it could lead to quite dire consequences. 
It's it's it's insane that we have to say that, you know, in this day and age after all the history that we have been privy to. 
But we do. 
We absolutely do. 
And it's it's very sobering. 
One thing I'm rather curious about is what difference does it make when one side has an overwhelming technological advantage to to the other side? 
Does it does it become easier to spread this information when you have such an advantage? 
Or is it the disadvantage that lends itself to spreading complete lies, maybe out of frustration or do you just see abuses on either side, regardless of who has the tremendous advantage? 
Yeah, that's a great question. 
I mean, I think that in a lot of ways, these platforms equalize power. 
So even if you've been deplatformed from X, you're you're still able to get get your audience, you know, from Telegram and you're still pushing content on Telegram and that's reaching a wider audience. 
So in a lot of ways, in the way I think about it, the technology is a great leveler and you don't need, you know, giant broadcast antennas and a whole sophisticated apparatus to do things like fact checking and production and makeup and all that stuff. 
You really just need a smartphone and Internet connection and a few accounts on these platforms and you can have the same amount of of reach. 
So it's a it's a, you know, I guess you can call it David versus Goliath scenario where David is is equipped with enormous communication power and, you know, everyone has a content delivery network basically at their fingertips with, you know, a phone and a Dropbox account. 
Right. 
Or a phone and a Telegram account. 
So, yeah, I think that it doesn't require super sophisticated apparatus to do all those things. 
Well, it just seems like no matter what side you're you're a part of, you're you're very much vulnerable to being manipulated and having having fake information spread. 
You know, we've been saying this ever since we started publishing. 
Imagine today's technology in the 1930s. 
And I think that might, you know, scare the crap out of people when they think about that, like the potential that whatever the technology was, whether it was simply the ability to create databases back in the 1980s or now where you're able to to manipulate mobs of people into doing crazy things. 
It's I think that's an eye opener as to the potential danger that that exists now. 
Yeah. 
And building on that, well, I want to also make this point, you know, we've talked about this numerous times on this show and also in the magazine that what happens online, all of this digital hatred very often spills over into physical violence. 
And it doesn't take an ongoing war to to have that cause. 
But what what we've also been seeing, too, just in terms of this, this discrediting of information is also the discrediting of the people who are the fact checkers, the people who are doing the legitimate reporting as well. 
And it seems like that's something that that might be new in this particular conflict. 
But to get your thoughts on that. 
And I'll have to be quick because we only have two minutes left. 
Oh, yeah. 
Look at the time. 
Yeah, I mean, I'll just say that, you know, if you see some of the responses to some of the more forward leaning, credible journalists who are tackling things like this information, you know, online, specifically, you know, trying to get an audience on Twitter, X, right? 
Like a lot of the replies are quite extreme in terms of like going after these people on a personal basis. 
And the I think part of part of the issue is institutions across the board have been tarnished over the last, you know, couple of decades. 
And what's kind of happened, what's happened to those organizations is also now kind of infecting the folks who are working on disinformation as a as a field. 
And, you know, that's that's a tactic, right? 
It's a tactic typically employed by authoritarians and dictators where you try to discredit the critics, right, by saying that, oh, no, they're lying to you. 
And, you know, they have an agenda, et cetera. 
Or they apply some ideological lens to it. 
And we are not immune to that here in the U.S. 
Just because we still live in democracy to some extent. 
Welton Chang, I hope you're able to stay with us for overtime at eight o'clock on YouTube. 
Can you give out contact information for our listeners? 
Yeah, if you want to reach out, learn more about Pira. 
It's Welton, W-E-L-T-O-N, at Pira, P-Y-R-A, tech, T-U-C-H, dot com. 
Or you can go to our website, drop us a line there. 
We have a newsletter that we put out. 
It's free every week. 
And it covers basically what happened on the fringe Internet over the last week. 
So, yeah, sign up for the newsletter. 
And our email address is O-T-H at 2600 dot com. 
Please write to us with your thoughts and feelings. 
And we'll be back again next week, next Wednesday, 7 p.m. 
Stay tuned for Overtime, 8 p.m. 
on YouTube channel 2600. 
We'll see you soon. 
Good night. 


And welcome to Off the Hook Overtime here on YouTube.
Ms. Emanuel, Kyle, you make it okay?
Yeah, I'm here.
All right, and let's check in with our Skyplan people.
Rob T. Firefly.
Hello.
Gila.
Hi.
Alex.
Hey.
And Welton.
Hey.
Good to see you continuing the conversation.
Good discussion, too.
Hard topics, very stressful and horrible time of history, but I think going back and forth
and presenting the facts, as you do, is so important and really needs to be heard at this
particular time.
Let me just ask, Welton, what kind of response have you been getting in light of recent events?
Has there been an upswing in support?
Have you had to work harder?
The team's already working super hard.
But yeah, we've seen an upsurge in interest in the platform, in just media inquiries, people
asking us, hey, what are you seeing on Truth Social?
What are you seeing on Gab?
How are people responding across the different smaller social media sites that we monitor?
So yeah, it's been a busy three or so weeks, but that's nothing compared to what people
in the Middle East are actually experiencing right now.
Of course, yeah.
Is it fair to ask you, of all the social media outlets, which one tends to do the best or has
the most accurate news being spread around or is the least irresponsible, maybe?
I mean, if I see something from the BBC, I generally think that it can be relied on, but no one's
perfect, right?
I think this is the thing, and especially now, and goes to why institutions are having the
crisis of faith that they're having.
We're so, we see them all the time now, 24-7.
In the past, you know, when do you interact with the IRS?
It's like once a year, right?
But now if you want to interact with the IRS, you can go on Twitter and tweet at the IRS or
call them up.
And they respond, that's weird.
Yeah.
But I meant mostly with social media, though.
Do you have any, in particular, ranking as far as who is the most responsible, who basically
keeps misinformation from spreading like wildfire?
I mean, there's a new platform called CounterSocial that says that its primary goal is to, you know,
counter disinformation.
CounterSocial.
And keep the platform, yeah, keep the platform free of, you know, non-factual information.
But I don't generally think that's, like, what's happening there.
It's a lofty goal.
It's a lofty goal.
But can they actually pull it off?
Super, yeah.
It's not easy.
No, no.
And, you know, I think part of the issue is, I was going to say this before, how to win on
social media is not to play.
I mean, I try to confine my professional activities to LinkedIn, basically.
But I've stopped engaging on X, you know.
And increasingly, I find myself, if I turn on X, it's mostly to find out what's the latest
disinformation that people are spreading.
It's not to find factual information.
Interesting.
So, you know, we're in a topsy-turvy world now, I think.
That could be a good site in and of itself.
Like, misinformation, disinformation from social media, just collect it all together and have
at it, you know, and show where the lies are being spread the most.
It's really kind of hard to keep track of.
Go ahead, Rob.
The trouble with any sort of people who are out there working to dispel disinformation is
not only has it become very fashionable in the last decade or so for people to just dismiss
anything they don't like or that they don't vibe with as, oh, that's fake news.
But the idea of fake news itself is coinciding with this era now in which it's so easy to
generate fake anything you want.
You can magic up audio of anything you like in anybody's voice.
You can magic up video of anybody saying that audio.
And so, like, just as photography was thought to be, like, proof positive of something back
before everybody knew how easily you could fake it, we're now at that point with pretty
much every medium available to humanity.
And so, like, how do we tell the fakes from the legit stuff nowadays?
I think you have to go to the source.
I think you have to do investigations.
And this is part of the challenge is it takes time and effort to do that.
It takes comparatively little time and effort to create it.
And so you're always in this situation where, you know, you're running faster just to keep
up.
And at some point, you, you know, probably become overwhelmed.
And I just, I think back to 2003 when Colin Powell went in front of the UN and had, you
know, some audio, some audio from some Iraqi officers talking to each other and he had a
little file where he brought the file with him.
And that's so quaint now, if you think about that, because none of that would pass muster
with anybody here, right?
People would say, oh, like, that's some grainy satellite imagery that you're bringing to the
UN.
Like, you know, where's the high quality, you know, smartphone photo, right?
Or what's the file full of what's actually in there, right?
Um, but that's the problem now is in the past, we would say things like, I want video
proof, I want photographic proof, right?
And now you have mid journey, you want it, I can give it to you.
I can create whatever you want.
And it's just, you know, there's no coding required, just typing in a prompt, right?
So do you think that the sheer volume that you're noticing is in part, um, uh, a result
of there being more capture devices, eg cameras and so on?
Uh, and also just more of that sentiment or is it clearly so disproportionate and, and
as you said, so much running faster that it's a concerted effort.
It's not necessarily the winds of, of society and opinion, uh, just being in hyperdrive naturally.
I mean, are you sort of implying that this is like, uh, industrial scale or, um, I mean,
cause it, what it sounds like you're describing sounds like by design, you are unable to catch
up to it without employing equally powerful tools like fingerprinting it all, or using
some complex way of, of capturing and, and, uh, organizing where and how, and what kinds
of messaging it is.
Can you speak to that at all?
I mean, is it natural?
Is it natural?
It's a network.
Definitely.
Part of it is there's so many different motivations that users are bringing to, um, these platforms
for why they're pushing this content, right?
Some of it's ideologically driven.
Some of it is, um, they're getting paid to do it.
Um, I think a lot of the bigger OSINT quote, uh, OSINT and air quotes accounts on, on X are
trying to build up an audience or a brand so that they can get profit share from the platform.
So there's definitely financial incentive to do it.
Um, I think some people are just regular old trolls and trying to, you know, muddy the
waters and, you know, get some, get some lulls off of it.
Um, so there, there's definitely a lot of that, but I also, you know, if you look at
the most recent stuff that Microsoft's put out in terms of, um, China using generative
AI to, uh, you know, propagate some of their propaganda, um, certainly if you see the influence
of like Russian accounts, how much they've jumped into the Israel Hamas conversation, right?
There's definitely some kind of state sponsored aspects of this as well, right?
Um, and in the past state sponsored hackers have also been quite effective, right?
To the point now where, um, I think the FBI came out and said that the Chinese had like
the biggest trove of personal information on basically everybody on the planet that's
ever been collected, right?
They like know everything about us, you know?
Um, so if you're listening out there, you got my 23andMe data.
Good for you.
Yeah, that happened.
Uh, 23andMe hacked.
Wow.
Um, just to, um, uh, continue with what, uh, Rob was talking about before though, um, uh,
deep fakes, that that's what we were supposed to be all concerned about, especially in the
upcoming campaign.
Um, has, has that proven to be the threat that everybody was, was dreading or is it still
to present itself in, in full?
Um, still haven't seen a deep fake that's confused a lot of people.
I think some, some folks have pointed to, um, there's been a video circulating of president
Biden supposedly, uh, instituting a draft for military age males.
Um, you know, it was an old deep fake video from like, I don't know, maybe a year or two
ago.
And it's just been recirculated as a result of Israel and us.
Um, so, you know, again, the technology is there.
It's not hard to do this.
It's got to, I think it has to be in the right context for that sort of, uh, um, you know,
piece of content to, to actually confuse people.
Right.
When it's out of context, when it's kind of like, this looks kind of fishy, people aren't
going to get, you know, fooled by it.
Right.
The thing is to make it, make it believable, make it just small enough, uh, you know, in
the absurdity department where people will say, yeah, that's, that's, that's likely because
that makes sense.
Why would they lie about this?
And that's a step.
That's, that's a step in the direction of completely changing the narrative.
Uh, so, um, fortunately, most of the people who do this aren't that good at it, but
they're going to get better.
They're going to get better.
And it's, um, you know, I, I, I just, I wonder what the next year is going to, um, uh, going
to hold for us on that note, uh, switching things over, uh, to domestic issues.
Um, have you seen anything of concern, uh, regarding the upcoming election and, and all
the, uh, all the craziness to come?
Yeah.
I mean, we, we've definitely been keeping a pulse on, on that and trying to, um, keep our,
our, our clients surprised, um, you know, I think the biggest thing of concern is just
the, the continued, um, echoing of 2020 stolen election conspiracies, um, and how that's
potentially going to impact, um, voting in 2024, um, you know, behavior at polls, right?
Because I think in some ways, if you, if you want to think of 2020, it's like a failed
attempt to subvert the election and with, with non-legal means, um, or kind of semi-legal
means in some ways, uh, the, these trials are just now starting, right?
To hold these folks accountable for what they did in 2020.
The informational trail has not caught up to that, right?
People are still significant portion of people, you know, out there still think that the election
was stolen.
You asked them like, genuinely, do you believe this?
Um, and, you know, I think that's, if you draw, want to draw a parallel to Israel Hamas,
like one of the interesting things that I've thought about is if, if we polled people today,
like, what do you think is happening in Israel Hamas?
How much of what people think is happening and what they, you know, believe and report actually
turns out to be disinformation that they, you know, say like, oh yeah, I saw this thing
about, um, you know, some incident, right?
And, and, you know, you kind of go back through it and go, that didn't happen.
This didn't happen.
Like you're just hallucinating these things, right?
And so we're, we're in a world now where we can have like a, you know, giant public hallucination
about a major global event because the information that they're seeing is not, not verified and
just come, come across, you know, uh, as a fire hose on Twitter.
Right.
So.
It's fairly easy just to manipulate public sentiment.
We see that all the time, uh, in, in domestic politics, where we're constantly talking about
Joe Biden's age, uh, and ignoring the things that, uh, you know, Trump gets wrong at his
age, uh, where we're basically talking about, uh, COVID-19 as if, you know, Democrats invented
that and it becomes the narrative becomes something that's, that's almost acceptable.
Uh, and, um, uh, that's without the help of, of deep fakes or, or high technology.
Uh, but, um, speaking to, um, uh, some, some, uh, election issues, this is, um, uh, a story
that's, uh, that's ongoing, uh, involving the cybersecurity and infrastructure security
agency, uh, that actually Trump set up to protect elections and, uh, key us infrastructure
from foreign hackers.
But now that organization is fighting off increasingly intense threats from hard right
Republicans who say it's gone too far and they're looking for ways to rein it in.
Um, Rand Paul, for instance, says, uh, CISA has, um, uh, blatantly violated the first amendment
and colluded with big tech to censor the speech of ordinary Americans.
Um, this, uh, Alex, I'm curious what, what, what your thoughts on this, uh, are because,
uh, this seems like it could really end badly if, uh, if they see the organization that's
meant to protect the integrity of elections as the threat.
Oh, it's already gone very badly.
In fact, uh, you know, we could spend another hour just talking about this particular case,
but I'm sure some of the listeners will remember or recall from news of recent weeks that there
was an injunction issued against the federal government in a case, it was known as Biden
v.
Louisiana.
It was a federal district court judge who issued an injunction against the federal government
on first amendment grounds, preventing the federal government, certain components of
it, CISA included, from working directly with social media companies to censor or address
any kind of content related issues on those platforms, which meant that FBI CISA, uh, you
know, the Biden administration itself individually named FBI agents in some cases, as well as a
really weird order were all prevented from working with social media companies, uh, until that
was appealed to the fifth circuit.
And in, in full disclosure, um, we, we had at my law firm, uh, represented the lawyers committee
for civil rights, a component of which was actually named in the order that was prevented from working
with social media companies and they weren't even part of the government.
So, uh, we had actually appealed that to the fifth circuit and we won.
And some of that injunction though, still stands.
Some of it was thrown away.
Some of it still stands.
And this very issue is right before the United States Supreme court right now.
And, uh, who knows how they're going to decide this issue.
We, we, we have seen that they have not been the greatest stewards of judicial ethics as
of, uh, the last couple of years.
And this is in fact, um, what I recently wrote, uh, an article about in the latest version of,
of 2600 latest edition of 2600.
That's going to presumably come out in a couple of months or next month.
I don't know.
Whatever it is.
It's out now, Alex, unless you wrote another article we don't know about.
Oh, is it the last one?
Oh, okay.
So it's, it's in that one.
Yeah.
It's in the autumn issue.
Boy.
Okay.
Get with the times here.
It hit the newsstands.
It almost knocked them over.
It did.
Yes.
If you go to page 52, right.
That's the, that's the page you've always assigned me over there.
And, um, this is the one that talks that starts out about the, with the messenger.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
For some reason, I thought that one hadn't come out yet.
Don't you get the magazine?
I thought.
I do.
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
But I don't read my own articles.
It'd be very narcissistic.
Yes.
Okay.
Well, uh, any, any other concluding thoughts on this?
Um, okay.
Good.
Can I just add, you know, to, to Alex's point, um, you know, part, part of what's going on
is that the government, in order for the government to reach an audience, it's got to do with over
private networks now.
Right.
Um, and it's, I mean, it's, I mean, it's, I mean, it's been the case for a long time.
This, this, this has been true.
Um, but because of the polarized, you know, society that we currently live in attempts by the government to reach, you know, the right people, right.
Whether that's with CDC's messaging around COVID or it's, um, you know, talking about how we have secure and free elections, right.
Um, that's going to be interpreted through this polarized lens, unfortunately.
Um, even if the ultimate goal is just that the government needs to work through, you know, um, entities that essentially are, have become quasi-governmental, right.
Like if you think of, you know, Twitter as a, as a, um, public, public sphere, right.
Uh, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's impossible for the government to reach an audience that big without going over private networks, right.
You have to.
Um, so there has to be some way for the government to interact with those organizations.
It can't be, um, you know, completely cut off.
Right.
So.
And it seems like the, the, the institution's, uh, aim was to interact with these private entities in order to do some sort of filtering or at least monitoring, especially during critical events.
I think, uh, is that sort of what CISA's goal was and what they were injuncted?
Is that, I don't even know if that's the right word from doing.
And then, then it seems like it was twisted into like, as we said, malinformation as a partisan issue or, or cudgel in this case.
Right.
Yeah.
I don't have all the, it was Missouri V Biden, right?
Right.
Alex.
Yeah.
It's, um, yeah, it's, maybe it is Missouri V Biden.
I can't actually remember.
Or it's Louisiana V Biden.
I think it might be Missouri V Biden, but the case was from a Louisiana judge.
I think that's what it is.
Weird.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pretty, I'm pretty sure that's what it is.
Hey, let's open up the phone lines.
802-321-4225.
You want to join this conversation?
If you have something else to say that's not related to the conversation, just hold off for a little bit.
But right now, uh, Welton is here.
We'd like to, uh, have any kind of interaction with listeners, 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK.
Uh, go ahead, Alex.
Or, or Welton.
Oh, I'm, I'm finished with my thoughts.
You know, they don't go very far these days.
Yeah.
Those phone lines are open.
And apparently we've run out of things to say.
Okay.
Well, the phone is, the phone is ringing.
So, uh, we're rescued, I guess.
Good evening.
You're on off-look over time.
Go ahead.
Hi.
Um, I'd like to mention something about what you're talking about.
Kind of what you're talking about.
Oh, Rebel, if you did, that would be a first.
So let's hear it.
Okay.
Well, you're talking about deep fakes.
You know how, like, uh, the, um, when you call a bank or, like, thing, they say, this call would be recorded.
Wait, how in God's name is this related to what we're talking about?
Because you're talking about deep fakes and people imitating, like, you know, uh, people, the way they sound.
All right.
I'll allow it.
Go ahead.
You get calls and then they don't say anything.
Like, you get calls from, like, uh, phone number that you can't call back.
But there's nothing, nobody on the line when you're saying, hello.
Hello.
You know, they're recording your voice saying hello and is anybody there and all that.
And then they're using that to make it.
Oh, training.
Interesting.
Okay, well, have any thoughts on, uh, on, on, uh, training such, uh, such scams?
They go out and they call people and they record their voices and they use their voices in some way against them.
Is that a thing?
Um, I, I don't know how targeted that stuff is, but it wouldn't be that hard for somebody to find audio of people online.
Um, I mean, probably go back and look at some of these archives, right?
You could train, you could train audio AI on, uh, on your voice manual.
Well, just based off the podcast, right?
Of course.
Yeah.
We're all doomed here on the show.
Absolutely.
Uh, but, uh, rebel, we have enough recordings of your voice where we can pretty much make you say anything we want.
No, they're, they're calling people and getting their voice out there, getting it offline, online from the internet.
That they call people and then they don't say anything and they record their voice and then, you know, like they'll call a bank, you know, how the bank will say, this call would be recorded for, you know, whatever.
Cause when you, then, then they'll say, I like to transfer money or whatever.
And then when you call and when the real person says, I didn't do this transaction, then they say, well, I'm sorry, here's a recording of you saying that you would like.
Well, my, my, my advice rebel, can you imitate voices?
Can you, can you use a different voice other than yours?
Yeah.
I, I, I, so when, when that happens, just use a different voice.
You want to, you want to practice here?
Here's a, here's a phone call.
Ring, ring.
You pick up, you know, good.
That sounds like you rebel.
Good evening, sir.
You see, talk like that.
You'll be safe.
Simple.
But, um, also let's say, um, everything is the same now.
Like when you go to a mall yet, everything's a Simon mall.
Say what now?
Like when you go to a mall in like, uh, whether it's Indiana or Ohio or it's a Simon mall.
Every mall is a Simon mall.
A Simon mall?
What, what, what fresh hell is this?
Sounds like a holding company or a marriage.
Wait, how do you know what kind of mall it is?
Because it says.
Where does it say?
Is there fine print on a mall?
Real estate, I don't know, Simon real estate or whatever, like it's a Simon mall.
Well, that's who like owns them all or whatever.
All right.
Well, who cares?
And also when you listen to a radio show, like the rock stations and they all, every
one of them says cold beer and hot wings.
It's the cold beer and hot wings.
Oh, we forgot to say that.
Oh, they're going to be so angry at us.
We forgot to say it this time.
Thanks for reminding us too late rebel.
Um, two weeks in a row now for Gotham.
Cold beer and wings.
That was it?
Yeah.
Okay.
Um, yeah.
And also let's see.
So yeah, so you can get free money by just, well, I mean, if you know how to, you know,
use, um, you know, deep fakes and, and, you know, things like that.
No, tell us how we get free money.
Go ahead.
Well, you, you just, well, if you could use a deep fake and AI, you know, have the artificial
intelligence, you know, take the person's voice, like, uh, they'll, um,
you could even copy, you know, somebody, you know, their voice and then go to their bank
and say, you know, make it say, I, I forgot my account password or I forgot my login or
things like that.
And they'll, you know, they may give it to you or, you know, they may, they may reset
your password.
Maybe they're, you know, you go online into their, uh, online banking and, you know, in
their voice, you say that I forgot my login or whatever.
And I don't think it's that easy, but I mean, the point is taken, but it's not,
it's not that easy.
You have to be a little bit more clever than that.
Maybe call your house and, and, and tell somebody in your house, oh, by the way, uh, what's
my password in case they, they happen to know it and maybe they'll be full, but that's a
whole lot creepier.
Um, let's see what else.
Um, rebel, we're going to open up the phone lines for more people that want to talk about
issues.
Could you call one of your, one of you call the operator.
We like when you call the operator, operator, there's no operators anymore.
Uh, I don't, please, please hold the longest.
They've all been dismissed.
Would you like the rate of 424?
It's a message unit.
Yeah.
And you're not the operator either, but rebel is great hearing your voice again.
And please keep listening.
We'll, uh, we'll be in touch.
Eight zero two three two one four two two five.
Well, I'm sorry.
Uh, but, uh, that's a rite of passage here.
Um, so, um, we have some, some interesting things I think that we've, uh, we've covered
in the last hour and a half or so, uh, but surely there must be some positive developments
regarding high tech things that, you know, we didn't have 20 years ago that now we do
have that makes fighting these battles maybe a little bit easier.
Is there, is there perhaps such a thing?
Um, I mean, you know, we're constantly evolving our AI to, you know, pick up more nuanced forms
of, uh, of concerning content that's out there.
Um, you know, I think a big thing that we've been working on for the last year or so is the
ability to automatically detect, you know, images, video that contain, you know, say
like, uh, like an antisemitic trope or something like that.
Right.
And just be able to do that, um, at scale.
So, um, there are people working on this side of technology.
I just think that the, the ways in which companies have released generative AI technology
without really thinking about where the appropriate guardrails, um, you know,
just kind of letting people at it.
Um, and then after the fact, you know, some news report exposes, Hey, you can get XYZ, um,
technology to say all these, you know, crazy neo-Nazi things, for example.
Right.
Like, and then they go back and they go, okay, we're going to fix that.
We're going to make, we're going to make it so that you can't do that anymore.
Right.
It's like, let's think ahead a little bit because people are, this is just what happens,
right?
People are going to abuse the system.
You build a system, you let everybody into it.
People are going to abuse it.
People are going to find ways to abuse it.
This is like tales all this time.
Well, it's like as irresponsible commercially is like releasing autonomous vehicles and just
developing it based, just based on bumping into bodies.
And eventually you teach it not to bump into bodies, but just, yeah, who knew that would
happen?
Knock a couple people over, you know, you got to have a couple of concussions to, to make
an omelet.
I don't know.
It's, it's messed up.
Yeah.
It's irresponsible.
Very irresponsible.
I mean, they can't possibly be that naive.
You know, they must know what, what, what the risks are.
All right.
I'm sorry.
802-321-4225.
Having the phone lines open for a little while longer.
Go ahead, Weldon.
I was just going to say that, you know, it's one of the major points in the AI blueprint
that the administration sponsored and put out, you know, being, being, not being exposed
to AI that doesn't have kind of safety built into it.
Right.
And that's, I think, a major challenge is that a lot of these good thoughts about how AI
should behave and perform, it's all voluntary right now.
There's no legal weight behind any of the things that, that have been suggested.
And yeah, it's great.
You've been able to secure voluntary, you know, compliance with these things from, from the
tech companies.
But you have no way of, you know, ensuring what's going on at these companies, right?
Because it's, it's not like they're just opening up, you know, their books to you and saying,
hey, we did everything according to the rules that you put out.
Right.
Um, so we're, we're, we're again in a situation where the government is, um, in large part,
I think, uh, at a loss for how to control what these companies are doing.
Um, and a lot of, you know, like let legislators want to do something, but Congress is so just
dysfunctional at this stage that I don't think anybody has any hope that something's going
to actually get done on the legislative side.
And the executive branch doesn't have that much power to do anything about this.
Right.
So, although we should point out that today they finally decided on a speaker after three
weeks.
And I just found out that it looks like the, uh, the auto worker strike might be settled
on the same day.
Isn't that amazing?
Might be settled.
We're not sure yet.
We have a phone call.
Uh, yes, we do.
Okay.
However late in the legislative session.
Yes.
And good evening.
You're on off talk over time.
Go ahead.
Hey, good evening.
Thanks.
Thanks everybody for taking my call.
Um, yeah, I had like a half comment, half question.
I, I figure I bring this up now and if I'm wrong, you guys clarify this, but it's kind
of related to what we're talking about here.
And it's the, um, presidential alert that we got like three weeks ago.
Um, everybody remember what I'm talking about?
Was that a presidential alert or was just the EAS test?
What?
Yeah.
It was like a slightly different version of it, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And EA, the EAS test.
Right.
Okay.
So, so, so this test, right.
That goes out to everybody.
This, like the thing that I was, I was like, there's something about this that irks me.
And I feel like I got the idea, but maybe clarify this for like when they do like emergency
broadcasting system on the radio, I don't pay a subscription to the radio.
Like the waves are just out there and the, and my radio gets it.
My TV, same thing.
If you get cable, um, if you're paying a service, but you don't get the emergency broadcast
over cable.
So like the government talks to its people through these things that are government things,
right?
The, but my phone, um, subscription is, um, you know, the, uh, what is it?
5g that's being used to transmit that signal.
That's private, right?
Like that's cause I'm paying for that.
And, and then there's like a disconnect there for me.
Like, how come, um, my, like my government can't give me an emergency notification unless
I've got this thing that like this commercial product, basically, like I have to pay for
all of it in order to get that.
And it was a disconnect there.
Like, I'm kind of hearing something similar, like, you know, the government, our government
like can't talk to its people because like it doesn't own them, own these platforms
or like private companies.
And, um, you know, so I guess one, like, am I wrong?
Am I getting something wrong about it?
I guess in the number two, if I'm not, you know, I just want to kind of bring it up as
an idea of who owns, you know, the, um, uh, the, the medium, I guess, maybe is what I'm
saying.
And what does it mean to us?
Like as a society democracy, like how do you, you know, control, um, true information
if, uh, you don't even, you know, a private company is, is kind of owning the means of
communication.
Um, caller, uh, this is actually a very interesting point because.
Um, as, as the providers of, uh, mobile phone service, the companies that run the, uh, the
airwaves and the infrastructure to do that are basically making a public utility of themselves.
And, uh, as part of that, they, uh, grant access to emergency services.
Like your phone, even if you don't pay the bill, um, your phone connects to the network
and you can't make calls that you can't, that you aren't set up to pay for, but you
can call say 9-1-1, you can call emergency services with a, with a phone that doesn't
have service.
Um, you can still connect up to the, uh, to the emergency service that, uh, that you
need, as long as you can get a phone signal.
And I think, uh, the EAS, uh, test was also, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my
understanding was that the EAS test was also supposed to work on phones that didn't have
service, um, in the same way, just in the other direction.
So if you have a mobile phone, whether or not the bill is paid, say, um, the, the, uh,
service, uh, for emergencies should be, should be active on it just based on the, the company,
uh, providing that as part of their responsibility as a public utility.
Yeah.
And to, yeah, to, to add to that, Kohler, to, uh, and I think everything for that, the,
you know, the gentleman from Queens has said was correct over there, but, um, to think of
it more, if you pull back, you're thinking a little bit, think of it almost philosophically,
right?
Um, it may be a private company, but the, the airwaves themselves.
Those are public, right?
You know, anybody can use them and nobody in fact owns them.
The company, whether it's T-Mobile, AT&T, et cetera, they don't own those frequencies that
they are broadcasting on.
They have a license to use them in a particular manner that the federal government itself issues.
So, you know, the, the, really, if you think about it, it's the government that's giving
you that particular right or that license to use a bit of the spectrum, the radio spectrum
in a certain area and that license comes with conditions and they can yank it from you at
any time as well.
So if you think about, you know, who really owns the airwaves, probably the landlord that's
renting them out.
And I do believe that you can find out more information.
This is largely a part of the E911, uh, system or deployment, I guess, protocols.
And it's something that they want to guarantee as far as emergency services in the, in the,
the emergency alert test was specifically to test, um, mobile devices, uh, in this last
version of it.
Um, and I had a couple phones that as Rob indicated, um, they didn't have a SIM or what
it weren't necessarily associated with anything.
And they did receive some of those alerts.
So you're right.
But I, I totally hear where you're coming from, where it's like, it's weird that you're
paying for a service.
And there is a fair critique there that like the private mobile carriers are a utility when
it suits them.
Um, but when it has anything to do with consumer rights, they will turn their backs and jump
ship on you immediately.
And, you know, you can set your watch to that.
It's, it is, they do not want to be considered a public utility, mobile, especially they are
wholly private.
And, uh, we can get into a lot of the, the history and the who and the why of that.
Does that answer your question?
Yes, so much.
Yeah.
You put a little kink in my argument that like, cause it was through the, even if you don't
have the subscription, um, yeah, but what was just said now is absolute.
That was part of my kind of, it's where I was coming from where, you know, you want
to be, you want to be a public utility, but not when, not when it's good for you.
Exactly.
Like they should, right.
They should be a public utility, but like they're, they're kind of not.
And, and this, this made, I don't know, just made me think about it a little bit differently
just about, um, yeah, who's private versus public and who's, who's in control and, and
therefore who can manipulate, um, um, or take advantage of or thank you.
I really raised this, uh, question to the right, to the right audience.
Well, thanks for your call.
Thanks for listening.
Thank you.
Keep thinking about it.
Great.
Take care.
Yeah.
You know, interesting, uh, also, uh, with regards to the EAS test, uh, for the first
time, cause I didn't see this, this concern raised before there have been a couple of
other EAS tests, but those people who, um, uh, had hidden phones that they wanted not
to be revealed, uh, let's say you're, you're in a, um, uh, an abusive relationship and, and
you have an emergency phone that your spouse does not know about, uh, hidden in a drawer
somewhere that's, that's to be used for, you know, uh, if you need to get out quickly
or you need to call somebody for, for emergency aid, um, even if that phone were in, um, uh,
vibrate mode or in silent mode, the EAS test would still make that phone, uh, sound the
alert.
And in that particular case, that could be fatal.
That could be something really, really horrible.
And, um, uh, the, these kinds of tests can be a real menace to people if, if, if they're
not aware of them, if they don't take precautions, the only way to keep your phone safe from being
discovered is to turn it off at that particular time or, uh, put it somewhere else far away.
So.
Yeah, I, I think that that's absolutely right.
And I think somebody in the, uh, chat brought that up as well as, uh, as an example.
So, um, it's, it's terrifying.
And if you think about that philosophically too, that's really a utilitarian choice.
They know that there's going to be some harm that's going to result from this particular
test, but really is the greatest good for the greatest number for us to have a, um, a
properly working emergency broadcast system.
That, that harm, uh, is justified by the end there.
So in a sense, uh, it's Machiavellian and utilitarian.
802-321-4225 is our phone number.
You might hear the phone ringing, but we're not picking it up because it's Rebel again.
And we told Rebel that was it for tonight.
Uh, I'm sorry.
Well, I don't want to be mean, but, uh, we can't, we can't, uh, tie up the phone lines,
which is literally what's happening right now, uh, with the same person.
So, uh, we want to open up to other people.
So if there are other people out there, please give us a call.
802-321-4225 before he strikes again.
Um, Welton, you want to give out your, your contact info again for the, for the online
listeners?
Sure.
That's, uh, Welton, W-E-L-T-O-N at puratech.com, P-Y-R-R-A tech.com.
If you want to just hit me by email.
So does puratech have a particular meaning to, to, to, to the word?
So pura comes from the Pyrenees breed of dog, which is a quite protective breed.
It's also one of the dog breeds that our chief technology officer, Eric has.
So that's why we decided to call it pura.
See, I knew there was a story.
I knew there was a good story behind that.
That's, that's awesome.
Wow.
Um, and now, uh, you and Alex are, are still involved with, uh, human rights first.
So, uh, perhaps tell us a bit about that organization, how it differs from, from this.
Uh, they, uh, I just saw Alex at the annual gala, uh, held in New York.
Uh, the organization, uh, brought, uh, a Ukrainian, uh, media organization called Guara Media to, uh,
to the States to, um, you know, basically give them an award for, uh, outstanding work in, in the field of human rights.
They did a lot of, have done a lot of work, uh, exposing Russian war crimes, documenting them, um, across Ukraine.
Uh, and it was, you know, the, the event was, uh, was quite good.
And the organization, you know, does a lot of work when it comes to fighting domestic extremism.
They work on combating authoritarianism.
Um, they do a lot of stuff on the border with asylum seekers, uh, and, you know, helping, helping link them up with pro bono legal assistance, uh, in the U.S.
Um, and then, you know, there's, there's just a lot of, uh, awesome things that I was, um, able to be a part of when I was with the organization, um, doing the Afghan evacuation, um, including, you know, helping some folks get out safely, um, you know, be able to get on, get on flights, uh, out of the country.
Alex, do you have anything to add?
Uh, I, I think it's, uh, Welton's given us, I think, a very excellent survey of, uh, of human rights first.
And, you know, the, the people within the organization from the board of directors down are, are just so talented, so dedicated, uh, and, and routinely put themselves in harm's way to promote the ideals.
And, and I think at root, what the ideals of human rights first promotes are traditional American values here.
You know, the, the best values that America has ever produced are what human rights first is carrying the torch of.
Um, and, um, uh, I'm, I'm intensely proud to be part of this organization and it was really through, uh, Wilton that, uh, you know, I came to, to work with them.
And the website is humanrightsfirst.org.
And it's quite a website to navigate.
It's really, uh, impressive.
A lot of fun to, uh, move around and, and, and see different, different parts of it.
Uh, I understand we have a phone call from a different phone number, Kyle?
Yes.
All right.
This isn't going to be him again, I hope.
No, no, no, no.
It's totally different.
All right.
Let's see.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Speak up.
There's no way there, Kyle.
It's, it's silent.
It's quiet.
I think I have all the buttons pressed.
Yeah.
I say we give it five seconds and if nobody says anything, we hang up and open up the phone line again.
Is this one of those things that's recording our voice?
Oh, stop talking.
Quiet, quiet.
We should have disguised our voices.
All right.
802-321-4225.
That was, yeah, that was definitely what that was.
Absolutely.
Oh my God.
Oh man, what are we going to do?
We can go back and erase it, but that doesn't help with the phone call.
No.
Um, go ahead, Rob.
I just, the whole recording your voice to, uh, to spoof your voice for automated systems or, or to fool other people into thinking they're you.
I mean, the movie Sneakers warned us about that in 1992 and it's 31 years later and we're not chopping up audio tape.
We're using, uh, computers and algorithms to do the same thing.
But it's still why putting anything important behind just purely, uh, sounding like somebody, uh, as a, as a form of verification has never been a good idea.
We have another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Over time.
Yes.
I forgot to mention that.
Kyle.
He slipped through.
So, you know, rebel, we do have a blocking feature on this phone.
We, we can easily get it started.
We're going to give you 30 seconds and that's it.
I mean, I mean, when you go and you travel around the guy, I mean hotel you go to, it's a Wyndham hotel.
Every hotel you go to with a Wyndham hotel, like a budget motel.
Not if you go to a Marriott.
Well, you could go to a Marriott.
That's true.
Or a Holiday Inn.
Or a Motel 6 or anywhere.
That's not a Wyndham hotel.
Actually, Motel 6 is our anchor hotels.
Motel 6 and Red Roof Inn and anchor hotels.
And if you go to Super 8.
Oh, we need to know this.
Boy, do we need to know this.
You got four seconds, Rebel.
Everything's consolidating.
All right.
Nice talking to you.
We'll, we'll talk to you again next week.
I don't think there's any way we can avoid that, but please do not call again because we want to open up the phone lines for other people.
Thank you.
This is not a recording.
I was afraid to ask.
Don't even, don't encourage him, please.
What's an anchor motel?
What is that?
Yeah.
What is an anchor?
You want, you want, you know, we can give you his number.
You can call him and have a nice discussion about hotel chains.
802-321-4225.
Please, people, as if your life depended on it, call quickly and get through to us.
802-321-4225.
What?
He used a different phone number?
Is that what happened?
He fooled us.
Yeah.
I think I was.
How does he have access to two phone lines?
I was hoodwinked.
Wow.
So as I understand it, your voice, your face, and your iris are not subject to Fourth Amendment protections.
Is that true?
Is that true, Alex?
Uh, I'd have to look that up.
I don't, I don't know off the top of my head if you're, your voice, your iris, and your what?
Face.
Your face?
These are organs that are about you.
Seems like kind of an important thing to know, you know?
Yeah, things that, uh, you just, you have no reasonable, uh, expectation of privacy around.
That's right.
It's because you, you're, put your face out in public all the time.
Yes.
Yeah.
And, uh, I mean, iris scanning technology is amazing, uh, at a distance and so forth.
You just walk by an embassy, uh, incredible technology out there.
And, uh, yeah, you should be aware of how and, uh, when your, your information is being, uh, being mapped, I guess.
Uh-huh.
Go ahead, Rob.
Well, Alex, isn't, isn't it like the issue where if you get arrested, the, uh, police can force you to use your fingerprint to unlock your phone, but if it's a password or a passcode, they can't force you to input your code.
Yeah, that's right, because it's, it's a speech act at that point.
Right, it's something you know versus something that's just part of you.
Yeah, and it's, it's essentially, it's really a Fifth Amendment issue, right?
That you would be doing something that would lead to your incrimination, and you're not supposed to do that.
Who is going to invent fingerprint scramblers, you know, some kind of device you wear that changes your fingerprints so that you either show it to somebody else or somebody they can't identify?
It's called years of manual labor.
Well, okay, there's that, but I just think there's probably a smoother, more high-tech way of doing this.
All right, do we have a call, Kyle?
Yes, there's a phone call.
We have a phone call.
Good evening, you're on Off Look Overtime.
Go ahead.
Hi, it's Rebel again.
No, it's not.
Or you've gotten really good at disguising your voice.
They've proven our whole conversation.
Now, I just wanted to ask a general question.
I was, I was, I was watching something on YouTube today, and it's a, basically it's a lot, it's like maybe three songs by Bob Marley.
Like three songs today, like three songs they just put out today, modern songs.
And they were just done through AI, and it sounds just like him, like it was just AI stuff.
Wow.
It was Bob Marley singing about modern stuff.
He was talking about politics, like stuff, you know, relatively recent stuff, Trump and all that kind of stuff.
Oh, my God.
Wow.
That's.
Where do you, do you think, do you, I've never really heard your thoughts in general, you know, and maybe you have covered it, I don't know, but just AI in general.
I mean, what do you, is this, even in politics, I mean, I can see someone, you know, they can put out an ad or something and say, somebody said so-and-so, somebody said such-and-such.
Right.
You know, using computers and manipulating.
And what do you, do you have any thoughts on AI in general?
I mean, it's just, I mean, we, right now, we could put out Elvis Presley's record.
We could put out whoever's dead.
We could just put out anybody.
Yeah, tempting as that might be, I don't know, I feel we should try and restrain ourselves, but my thoughts on AI, you know, I think it's terrific.
I think it's a great invention.
It's a, it can be a wonderful resource.
It can also be a horrible tool and something that is abused in a very bad way.
You know, I find that when we see these things being used in ways that hurt us, the one thing, the one thing that people in control do not want is for you to have the same access.
So, you know, if someone is, is, is, is, is, um, abusing fingerprints or facial recognition, what if you had the same ability?
What if you had the same technology and you used it against them?
They really, really don't like that.
So, uh, once everybody has a lot of access to these tools, it'll be mayhem for sure.
But, um, I think you'll know not to trust a whole lot of things that you see.
The question is, what do you trust at that point?
Yeah.
Cause you can, you can hear the person saying these things in their own voice.
I mean, the way they speak.
But your own voice is no longer your own voice.
Apparently.
I guess.
I mean, Bob Marley really.
I mean, I, I, it's, it's funny, you know, I, I like the mischief part of it, but it's horrible insofar as, um, you know, this is an artist who deserves to be respected.
And what are you doing?
You're, you're going to be, uh, tarnishing his image by making him, uh, uh, say things he never said.
And the uninitiated will not be able to tell the difference.
I know.
If you go on, you did, done it with Michael Jackson.
They've done it with Tupac.
You know, it's just, and it's amazing.
It sounds exactly like them.
You could not tell.
And that doesn't get kicked off YouTube.
How is it that that's allowed to stay on YouTube?
And, you know, the slightest transgression in any other way gets somebody booted.
I know.
And it's strange.
I, you know, you know, it's just amazing.
It's just technology.
It's just, you know, I don't know.
I don't know.
I just think this is, I could see this getting misused like in the next election, 2024, whatever.
I just think stuff like this is just, you know, I can see somebody, you know, making a tape saying someone said whatever, you know.
Well, I'm surprised we haven't seen a lot of that.
I mean, I'm, I'm, you know, as Welton was saying earlier, it's, it hasn't really come forth as much as we were expecting.
But I think it's going, it's going to happen, right?
I mean, I kind of see the reaction going the opposite direction almost where it's easier for someone to claim that, that like, let's say there was a recording of a phone call that they had.
And then they'll say like, no, that's, it was generated by AI, right?
For them to basically throw it back and use AI as a defense against some factual piece of information rather than, you know, trying to invent something and point it back at them, right?
It's kind of like saying, oh, my account got hacked when you said something stupid, you know?
Right.
I think that's what we're going to see is like, no, that was AI.
That wasn't me.
Oh, let me ask one last question before I go.
When do you have that, that convention again?
Oh, we just announced that.
Actually, we haven't officially announced it.
It's in the magazine that just came out that Alex is still digging, looking for.
But it's, it's next July at St. John's.
It's going to be awesome.
Oh, do you skip a year?
Is that how it goes?
It's only, right now, it's only in even years.
July 12th through 14th is the actual date.
Hope XV is what it's called.
Okay, Hope, okay.
And it's in St. John's in Queens, right?
That's right.
Okay.
Okay, thanks.
That's all I need to know.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for your call.
Wow, that was, that was, that was nice.
Nice to hear from someone else.
And we might have time for one more phone call if people are quick.
802-321-4225.
Gila, I haven't heard from you in a while.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Rebel also kind of dominated the chat this evening, so we didn't get a lot of stuff to share.
But, um, we did have someone suggest that fingertip scramblers exist and they're called gloves.
Oh, that's clever.
That's clever.
I've been, I've been told.
So we'd like to thank the 32 people who have hung in with us this evening, um, on the live chat.
Um, so Rebel's been dominating the chat as well as the phone lines.
That's, he's in rare form tonight.
Yeah.
Um, also, he's wrong.
I did a little checking.
Um, Acor used to own Motel 6, but they sold it to the Blackstone Group.
Okay, you know, let's not get down this rabbit hole because there's no coming out, believe me.
Oh, my God.
Although, you know, someone did share the info about the Hotel Pennsylvania, how it's completely gone now and how sad that is.
But the important thing is they don't have to worry about housing migrants there.
Yeah, that was, um, that was the real concern.
All right.
Let's see who we have.
Good evening.
You're on Off Talk Overtime.
Good evening, sir.
Um, one point, I had called New York Hill.
Rebel, now you are banned.
You are banned.
Yeah, that's what happens.
Next week, you may not call us.
What do you think about that?
Good evening.
I think it doesn't, okay.
Can you disconnect that?
Pull it out of the wall if you have to.
All right.
I think I got it.
I don't know what to say.
Yeah, no.
The ban is in effect.
I know what to say.
I mean, I don't know.
Trust is earned.
Trust is earned.
Yeah.
Call the phone company and see if we can have one of those, like, banned things put on the phone.
I think it's already on there by default.
I don't know how to use it.
But, well, you know who would tell us?
Rebel knows how to use it.
Damn.
Should have gotten them to tell us that first before I banned them.
It's a one-week ban.
So, next week, you may not call.
If you do call during the ban, that adds two more weeks to the ban.
And if you call during those two weeks, that adds four more weeks.
See, it sort of increments.
So, eventually, you know, in relatively quick order, you'll be banned forever.
Or at least, you know, for our lifetime.
So, don't toy with us here.
All right.
802-321-4225.
Last chance for anyone else to call and say anything halfway intelligent.
And I'm opening up to you guys out in Skype land for any final thoughts.
We are also having people suggesting other ways to get around fingertip issues, including
Raynaud's phenomenon and burning off your fingerprints.
Thanks, everybody, for coming in clutch in the last few minutes.
Also, want to give a special note to a listener called The Mac Geek, who is listening to Overtime
live with the chat for the very first time.
Wow.
Welcome.
So, welcome.
We're glad you're here.
Thanks, everybody.
And, yeah.
You know, check back next week to see if we're going to ban Rebel from the chat, too.
Can we do that?
We can.
Wow.
Well, I mean.
That's why we have a moderator.
That's literally the reason why I'm here.
That's right.
You are the moderator.
So, yeah.
I am a moderator.
Don't piss Gila off, Rebel, if you're on the chat, you know.
Because, yeah, you could be double banned.
Mm-hmm.
Different rules, but the effect is the same.
So, yeah.
See, tomorrow I'll do alternating bands, but.
Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and putting up with this.
And also just sharing so much really pertinent information in these dire times.
It's always nice to be on here.
Really enjoy the conversation.
And, you know, just thanks for having me on.
I'd love to come back on, you know, in the future.
Don't let it be a whole year.
Well, I'm sure there's going to be a lot to talk about in the months ahead with elections
and trials and wars and whatnot that's ahead.
So there'll be plenty to analyze.
Alex, do you have some final words?
No, I just wanted to also thank, well, I can't believe it's been a whole year already since
we've been on.
Yeah.
We need to have you on more often.
Yeah.
All kinds of just crazy things going on these days.
So we're glad that you're out there sucking it all in and analyzing it all for us there,
Welton.
The one thing I will say to you.
Only the bad stuff, right?
Well, if you're interested in period, you should check out the newsletter because the newsletter
is really quite insightful and gives you a real peek over the fence about the craziness
that's happening in these unmoderated chats in which you may not be dwelling yourself.
So give it a check out.
It's pretty interesting.
And where is this?
This is the Pyrrha newsletter that Welton and his colleagues put out.
And how do we get this?
You can sign up for it at PyrrhaTech.com.
P-Y-R-R-R-A-T-E-C-H dot com.
And I believe it's free, right?
Welton.
It's absolutely free.
It's at the bottom.
Sign up's at the bottom of the page.
Yep.
And you get to see unmoderated chats.
I'm just trying to know what I'm getting myself into.
No, no, no.
It's just like a weekly snapshot of narratives that we see trending on smaller social media
platforms.
Okay.
Sounds awesome.
Yeah.
Race yourself.
All right.
Rob, looks like you have something to say.
Uh, just, you'd mentioned the, the hotel, uh, Pennsylvania before, and I don't know if
you guys have been down to the site recently, but, uh, I, I took a walk past it last week
for the first time in a long time.
And yeah, it is very sadly raised to the ground.
There is, there are a few support beams sticking up out of the ground, but, uh, nothing else really
left.
Um, it's a, it's a very, it's very sad site for those of us, uh, to whom the place meant
a great deal.
And, uh, we were only a very small part of that considering the hotel was standing since,
you know, the 19 teens, how many people were affected by it?
How many people's lives, you know, were, were majorly impacted?
Um, it's, it's sad.
It's short-sighted.
What was gained?
Who knows?
You had, um, a very popular place that was, uh, turning a profit and now you have nothing.
Now you have nothing.
So sad.
So, um, you know, in, in exchange, you know, that we, we have the Strand bookstore as a
landmark.
Um, so, you know, do we really need the Hotel Pennsylvania?
I mean, do you think the Landmark Preservation Commission could have done two?
You know, come on.
I, I, any opportunity, you know, you know what I'm digging out here.
The interesting thing though, uh, just, uh, so people know, regardless, even if the hotel
were still standing, we still would be at St. John's because, um, uh, it just worked
out that way.
It's unfortunate that, uh, we decided in 2020 that, uh, we were done with the hotel and that's
when COVID happened, but it's unfortunate that in addition to all that, that's when, uh,
the Hotel Penn's owners decided that they were just going to pull the plug and destroy
the place.
So regardless, there were a number of reasons why we weren't coming back.
Um, but it's just, you know, it's just sad for all the other people that will never get
to experience that.
And so many people came to New York and stayed there because it was literally the only affordable
hotel around and certainly one of the biggest.
So at least we were a part of it.
A lot of memories, a lot of history, a lot of, um, a lot of stuff captured on video.
So let's just try to remember that.
And with that somber note, we're going to sign off for tonight.
OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
If I'm not mistaken, we're back next week.
We will see you then.
Good night.