bing bing bing at the customer's request the line you were using has been toll restricted only local calls will be completed thank you for listening to off the hook the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off i cut myself while shaving now i can't make a cough we couldn't get much worse but if they could they would i hope that's understood  and a very good evening to everybody the program is off the hook emmanuel goldstein here with you on this delightful wednesday evening joined tonight by kyle over here and uh... 
over in skype land we have rob t firefly good evening we have gila good evening and we have alex uh... 
alex you're very low every week alex every uh... 
it's a little low still can you turn up your volume is this any better no it's it's it sounds like you're very far away really far what okay that's that that that seems a little better now yeah okay is it a new setup every week alex is new microphones and pretty much actually uh... 
this is a slightly new setup today so well um uh... 
you know the old setups are fine a programming note um... 
we will be off the air next week and the week after so this is our last show for the next three weeks so enjoy it while you can because um... 
we're going to be uh... 
uh... 
doing other things uh... 
as you may well know um... 
but uh... 
there's plenty going on right now um... 
gosh i don't know where to begin uh... 
things are well i mean it's the eve of july 4th maybe it's the last july 4th i don't know well it won't be the last july 4th it might be the last independence day i don't know uh... 
any any uh... 
thoughts alex on uh... 
latest um uh... 
rulings from on high that uh... 
have have changed have pretty much changed that the um... 
the way this this country is governed forever yeah i mean there's there's so much disappointment i think and is this any better are my levels any better by the way well you're leaning way up close to the screen there and i see that you're very close so i think if it gets a little bit higher it might be good but um... 
this is sufficient yeah yeah i don't know what's going on here but um... 
and i guess the same could be said for the supreme court i mean the the late the trump immunity ruling was was really uh... 
interesting and and disappointing in in many many ways obviously the the dc circuit seemed to have thought this was a a nothing issue issued its per curium opinion essentially meaning for the court and it was pretty tight but yet the supreme court decided to grant certiori to that particular case and issue this opinion from a few days ago and what they did was was bifurcate the official and unofficial acts of trump during that time and had then claimed that well we don't necessarily know what is an official act and what's an unofficial act can i just break in bifurcate is not a word that most of our listeners use in everyday conversation certainly isn't one i use i have no idea what it means so please um... 
you know talk talk down to us regular people okay sure yeah i can i can use fewer syllables if you'd like but that means it it split it into two right so um... 
you know the the trick is in the the the by the two is in the that one but i i you know i i think wbai listeners are very smart as a matter of fact i i would imagine that most of them have a better vocabulary than i do but uh... 
well it's not about smartness it's about lingo it's about you know jargon it's about using particular uh... 
words in your particular field in your case you're you're a leading attorney in this nation uh... 
perhaps beyond and um... 
you're the one that's going to explain just what the hell's going on uh... 
in in this in this country of ours well so so really what they did was they they split this into two issues right well you know for official acts the president is going to be immune from both uh... 
criminal and civil liability up and up until this point we'd only really talked about uh... 
civil liability and in many of these cases and so this was a totally new issue for the court to to talk about and to to opine on and and if you're going to have any kind of criminal liability for the sovereign here for the executive branch the president of the united states uh... 
what the supreme court said was well we have to figure out which of his acts on january 6th were official acts and which were unofficial acts where what was it an official act when he was exhorting masses of people to go down to the capital and and smash it up and break in to try to quote unquote stop the steal uh... 
or was it an official act or an unofficial act when he was speaking with the attorney general about various things so all of these are issues i think quite frankly they're mixed questions of law and fact and those are the most difficult questions that a court has to answer because if it was just a question of a fact well then you could have a judge or a jury decide the fact remember juries decide factual issues in the united states they don't touch legal issues so uh... 
if this was purely an issue of law a judge could decide it and the supreme court itself could have decided it so they must be seeing this as a as something that requires the the record to be developed below and and by making it something that requires the factual development of a record to determine whether or not something is an official or unofficial act what they have done with that ruling is kick the can far down the road such that trump really has no chance whatsoever of facing any kind of criminal trial before november for for what happened on january 6th now if we operate under the assumption that if he doesn't face any kind of criminal consequences before november or let's say january of 2025 when he may very well again scarily become the president of the united states well then at that point he can probably exert some kind of undue influence on the justice department to drop those charges against himself so we're in this really bizarre horrible situation where what used to be considered the bulwark of our republic the supreme court and the federal courts of the united states are now playing partisan politics helping a political candidate kick a criminal trial down the road so that he can then exert influence on the department of justice potentially to drop criminal charges against him i mean this is what i think it feels like to be part of an empire in decline well much of the analysis that i've been hearing over the past couple of days points to you know at first it didn't sound so bad official acts unofficial acts okay you know it's easy enough to define that but apparently simply defining something as an unofficial act say no mr president that's not an official act you committed a crime therefore you'll be held liable for that from what i'm hearing that won't be possible it won't be possible to define something as unofficial if that person in power says it's official because part i mean maybe i'm getting this wrong but part of his privilege as president is to be able to define what is official and what is not is that would you say that's accurate i think so i think he can i think the executive can characterize whatever the executive wants as official or unofficial but it would be up to some kind of fact finder to make sure that that would be a reasonable characterization right i mean um you know is jaywalking an official act or an unofficial act i mean we we don't necessarily know right i mean it depends on where you're going right were you running to rush into a fire to save somebody in in a burning building while you are acting in the capacity of a firefighter or were you just crossing the street uh against the crosswalk i mean it's like all these things i think are very factual uh factually dependent but this fact finder would be appointed by the king and i'm sorry i'm doing it already uh by uh uh the um uh president and um uh he would basically have the final say i'm just the the way i mean i'm looking at uh justice on sort of my ears words and they are chilling if you have not read those words please do uh because she is saying and she is a justice on the supreme court who has been there for quite some time um that um the president now has the power or or you know under this will have the power uh to um um use seal team six to kill his political opponents and get away with it and that's that's that's not some pundit saying that that's a justice of the supreme court there was a headline in the nation the other day saying that the president now can officially assassinate you you know and uh we should keep in mind you know people on the left people on the right people for trump people for biden people whoever everybody should be concerned by something like this because um trump's not in power now biden's in power now so does that mean that uh he can take out trump and get away with it he certainly shouldn't be able to do that but according to what i'm hearing from the supreme court yeah you know official act now that is something that he is able to um to get away with i i what do you do in the supreme court has lost its mind collectively we don't seem to have any system in place to uh to deal with this well i i think we do i think we do have a system in in place to deal with this and and it was designed in the 18th century it's called the constitution and the separation of powers the problem is it's it's failing us now and it's failing us because of the the tribal nature of this type of politics i mean you you mentioned earlier emmanuel and i think it was an erroneous assumption that you know well the the king who's going to appoint uh the the this this this king appointed person is going to become the fact finder to determine whether or not uh you know something is an official or unofficial act but if these are issues of fact it could be done by a jury right that could be you know up to a jury to find that fact or it could be a judge it could be a mixed question of law and fact like i had mentioned but the whole system the whole system of federal courts were designed to prevent and protect against this very level of political partiality by virtue of federal judges being insulated from the political process because they have lifetime appointments and that doesn't seem to matter anymore because judges seem to be just as as influenced by partisan politics these days as anything else and it's a very very scary situation i think we find ourselves in because during the first term of the trump of trump so scary even to mention this but he packed the federal courts the federal district courts the trial level courts with a massive number of his appointees he also packed the supreme court and we see how that's working out and none of this is supposed to happen uh by the design of the founders of of this nation we're talking about you know this this i think really critical issue of how a system works and people may be wondering well how does this relate to hacking right well because the the framers the founding fathers were trying to design a system that could not be vulnerable to this type of attack yet here we are in the 21st century and it is the whole reason why federal judges are appointed for a lifetime appointment appointment is to make sure that they are not influenced by some by the republicans by the democrats by the whigs by whoever it was or whoever it will be uh coming into power you know it's it's an apt comparison because um you know this is a system that has been ignoring updates now for 200 years and it is woefully in need of some upgrades some some hardware replacement a lot and if you if you leave a computer system uh running you know without doing anything to maintain it without um uh saying is this still relevant today can i do better think of the kind of system you're going to have you have something that's awfully slow clunky and does not serve your interests at all i i think it it's hilarious when we think about yeah the constitution not having received some kind of update and for for so long but i think part of the reason why the system that was designed so well in the 18th century is beginning to fail is because of technology and it's because of the very fact that that social media propels a judge's decisions way beyond the borders of the jurisdictional limitations of whatever that federal district court is uh at the moment a decision issues and and a and a federal judge and his clerks nowadays are very often the subject of derision and mocking and harassment and intimidation uh and there's no escaping any of that now because of the proliferation of social media so a judge i think is going to feel more beholden to the will of the people to the will of the majority uh and and to the will of the political party that put him or her into office in the first place than they ever could have imagined in the 18th century and so i i think we lose that type that was that insularity of the federal judiciary that made it the bulwark of this particular type of of the republic but now there's these new attacks on the judiciary that that i think are making them feel more vulnerable and i think what we need to do in terms of updating the system here would be to try to protect the judiciary and the judges in ways that would make it i think wrong to harass and intimidate them for the very decisions that they're issuing impartially yeah but um you can't just accept the things that are going on right now in silence you know we we are seeing our democracy attacked and and dismantled in front of our eyes and if you can't lead a demonstration you know in front of somebody's home for destroying your country i don't know what hope is left you know we we have to be able to speak out and be heard and uh yeah maybe feared as well because there there are no leaders anywhere that did not fear the public and i think the public needs to speak in a louder tone of voice we are we are seeing rights taken away uh we're seeing um uh fear and and and racism and and uh sexism homophobia you name it it's all out there and it's it's it's um being ready to be used in round two of this nightmare so yeah you know people need to um uh voice their opinions and know that their opinions matter and not be fooled by what you see on social media because social media may seem like an overwhelming force of opinion but uh it could be artificial intelligence it could be people who are nowhere near this country even uh it could be somebody uh saying the same thing 40,000 times with different names uh it is not the same thing as actual people speaking out in person and making their voices heard making their voices loud because i don't know i maybe i'm just losing patience in my age but i just feel like we've been we've been way too quiet way too patient and it's it's time that um uh you know we we hear a different point of view well don't don't get me wrong i i'm not suggesting that we curtail the first amendment or the freedom of assembly or speech in any way no no certainly certainly not but i but i i do think that there is uh basically starting from on high here starting with with trump you have this example of deriding judges and their staff and and and in particular their law clerks uh in such a public and and shameful manner that it become they become the the subject of intense harassment it's that type of activity that i think is is absolutely wrong and we we need to protect the judiciary from uh in many ways because they're the ones that are ultimately protecting us and our rights if they cannot issue unpopular decisions without fear of being harassed or stalked or or hurt physically in some way we we've got problems here well i think we we have problems on on many sides of this um and something that as you say is is quite relevant to our community any community this is relevant to because the very future of uh our freedom is is at stake here and as hackers we we know how um how easily that can all vanish yeah i think the the uh import of technology as an accelerant uh combined with how um broken uh our system is for so many people across so many cross across the myriad cross sections of our country is um i think uh pushes people in a into a position where they're um where they're out of time there's it's too late for a system we tend to um slow cook you know we like to let things go very slowly and go through all of this this this um really uh wonderful process of deliberation and and um uh legal process fascinating it's quaint but unfortunately i'm curious uh will it will it be able to um satiate people that are on um across all of that just sort of out of time and out of patience right you know if it is so broken and it takes you know it takes just all of this sort of self-involvement and uh and endless process you you get people at at sort of they're they're um sort of at wit's end right with the process and uh when uh that takes takes hold for uh something that is the actual place where this stuff is sorted uh it it i think becomes uh a lot more of a untenable situation right you get people um uh acting out you know like uh uh really voicing and and um trying to work around that system because it it is like alex sort of suggested protecting itself you know perpetually for just more process go ahead alex no another point here too and i think it it dovetails with what carl is saying is uh when we're talking about judges here right you know the the big difference in the system that was that the founding fathers had designed here to be insulated from the political process namely the federal judiciary and these lifetime appointments is totally different than what happens at the state level and for a lot of our our listeners that may be overseas it should come hopefully as some surprise to learn that at the state level a lot of the judges that preside over cases over trials in fact are elected uh you know they're on political ballots you know they run with a party and you select them in local elections and so you would expect them to be a bit more beholden to certain policies and procedures you would expect maybe you know republican candidates to be tougher on crime and various things and and democrats to be a little bit more lenient etc uh but every judge is supposed to be impartial but the reason why the federal judiciary has these lifetime appointments is to is to be in very stark contrast to what happens at the state level where the judges are political animals by their very nature and uh it's it's a crazy system that we have now where very often it seems like it's the state court judges the ones that are beholden to political wills of people that tend to be more impartial than than even the supreme court of the united states that's a really really sad state of affairs what a time what a time to be around um well okay i'm gonna i have something that um might even top some of what we're talking about uh a bizarre data point uh for this growing movement i don't know if you know about this movement but there's a movement to keep rap lyrics out of the courtroom um yeah uh hot boys rapper christopher bg dorsey was recently ordered to provide the government with a copy of any song he writes moving forward ahead of its release or promotion he's currently on supervised release uh from prison for a 14-year gun-related sentence he received back in 2012 and now according to a federal judge the government has the right to determine if his future work is inconsistent with his goals of rehabilitation and if so move to toughen the terms of his release uh the the judge uh obama appointed by the way as suzy morgan uh refused prosecutors request to prohibit bg from promoting and glorifying future gun violence slash murder in his songs and concerts entirely saying that restriction could violate its constitutional right to free speech um but um but this particular condition that um he has to submit his writings uh to to the government for approval before they can be released based on his history that just strikes me as as so orwellian and scary um and i think it's it's it's not getting the attention that it deserves this is something that everybody should see the um the threat of we're talking about you know people writing fiction writing something of that that comes from their imagination and to say that well because you have a history in this particular field you're not allowed to talk about that you're not allowed to fantasize about that now you know there are instances where uh lyrics in a song are are uh confessions of a sort and that's a totally different matter if somebody's stupid enough to confess to an actual crime in a song of theirs and you have the evidence you need right there but to tell somebody they're not allowed to express themselves artistically and creatively um that should really bother everybody am i am i wrong on this go ahead rob yeah no as as someone who does uh creative work and puts it out there you know the the fact you know i know nothing about this artist or or his work but i know that uh any sort of oversight of the things i were allowed to create would be devastating i mean i can you know i i i don't necessarily want to go out and write a story about uh you know murder or or or uh whatever but i should be allowed to and you know the the fact that you're creating some work of fiction should not uh you know figure in any way to toward uh whether or not you're considered rehabilitated of doing bad things in real life true true uh and uh by the way you might know his his work uh the the hit bling bling from 1999 no okay oh that bg part of a new orleans-based hot boys group uh which also includes lou wayne juvenile and turk uh they have not been active since bg's arrest uh but a reunion is in the works i hear um so uh there's also the concern of um convicted felons performing on stage together uh which violates probation in some cases that i'm not going to speak to i don't know what the rules and regulations are there but if you're sharing a stage with somebody not exactly sure you're um you're hanging out with them but i i guess it's kind of hard to you know join forces in a song without having a conversation uh go ahead alex i mean this is really crazy and in many ways i i didn't know about this at all until you brought it up but i it it sounds a lot to me like this is a well it doesn't sound like this is this is a prior restraint on on the freedom of speech this is something that the government is saying you need to be uh you need to be uh you need to submit this ahead of time and get our approval before it's published in some way or another uh and anybody can see it and this is directly affecting his freedom of speech and anytime you're implicating a fundamental right like this you have to think the government has to make sure that it's narrowly tailored right that you are affecting a right and or or curtailing a right in the least restrictive way possible so um i i don't think that this would survive that type of scrutiny is it called strict scrutiny oh i don't know i mean you know especially these days look if if if um you have parents think about them for a second think about how they would react to uh this kind of a story where some some guy who sings rap music uh was in prison and is singing about murder and violence and all that kind of don't you think you have to control that somehow don't you think it's gone far enough it's not hard to make that argument to people and to get them to agree to something that on the face of it they would say oh this goes against everything that this country stands for but when you inject a little fear and misunderstanding and uh and generalizations you can easily get people to believe this is right well it's also in the context of his supervised release so i think that that must play a very very large role in the legal analysis here because the the assumption there is that he's not necessarily in full possession of his liberty at this particular point he's on quote unquote supervised release so the government still has some level of control or an interest in exercising control over this particular person whether that level of control extends to the ability to control this person's first amendment rights and curtail and then approve what this person has has written and intends to speak about i think that's an entirely different story and i think you perhaps you're right emmanuel on that you could convince your grandpas and grandmas that this may be a good idea but again it goes back to the nature of the federal judiciary here we're talking about federal judges who are supposed to uphold the constitutional principles embodied in the first amendment and i think these this this restriction is really offensive to it well you know uh we know many people who have been subject to supervised release and we've seen all kinds of restrictions some of which you know were unheard of at the time such as not being allowed to use the internet not being allowed to use a cell phone things like that uh at the time i know we argued this interferes with someone's right to free speech and now that kind of thing it can happen and it's almost considered normal i'm not saying it happens a lot but it does happen uh so i just think you know the more you chisel away at it the easier it gets to do this kind of thing in the future that's why i think people need to pay attention to the cases they may not quite identify with but which represent incursions into the freedom we all take for granted um okay uh some more news the virginia department of elections database may have been hacked according to rhc dark lab which apparently is a news source and on google news now uh a serious security incident appears to have hit the virginia department of elections causing the unauthorized dissemination of a large election database the attack claimed by a user uh known as intel broker was made public through an online forum dedicated to data breaches um the virginia department of elections is the body responsible for administering elections in the state of virginia i don't think we needed that sentence uh this department ensures that all elections are conducted fairly transparently and in compliance with state and federal laws uh it oversees voter registration supervises local and state elections and maintains the integrity of the electoral process through secure data management uh i don't know about that part maybe not um currently um uh this um uh organization rc dark lab uh cannot precisely confirm the accuracy of the reported breach uh as they have not yet um uh the organization virginia department of elections has not issued an official press release um therefore uh this news uh should be considered as an intelligence source uh and according to reports this compromised database contained detailed information about electoral candidates uh intel broker the user who claimed responsibility for the attack stated that the database had previously been sold on the forum uh however they decided to make it public to prevent further fraud by new accounts that could have taken advantage of this information um okay well you know enough said about all that but basically what we're looking at here they they print the fields um they call 65 000 rows of data details such as um um candidate um uh candidate name uh total votes party affiliation write-in vote locality code locality name precinct id precinct name district id district type district name office id office title election id election type election date election name and number of seats there is nothing in here that is not public information that i can see unless something is missing from here when i when i when i first saw this story i assumed it was the um the database of voters that was leaked it doesn't even seem to have been that it just seems to have been a listing of candidates how many votes they got from what precincts and what localities all of this information is something that is reported after every election and is accessible so i'm not really sure you know maybe maybe this isn't a complete story but even if it were the um uh the database of voters in the state of virginia even that is public actually i have to confess i'm not sure what the laws of virginia are i know here in new york it's it's it's simple to get the voter registration list you find out everybody's name everybody's address everybody's party affiliation their date of birth a lot of information but it's all open to the public now some states have different rules some states don't make it accessible some states charge a fortune for it but most states it's not hard and many states it's completely free and some even have it posted online so um it's easy to get some concern with a story like this it's easy to make people panic but you know this doesn't even appear to be the voter database appears to be a list of candidates in virginia i don't know no big deal to me go ahead this is such a ridiculous story uh if if it's really just those fields and we're talking about public i know you're not calling google news ridiculous because they they forwarded this to the very front of their news feed oh and i know they're not people i know they're just you know machines doing this but still these machines know what they're doing well some somebody gave those machines instructions at some point and um and and that they must be ridiculous themselves but but it goes to my point here which is that this is such a non-story but if such a non-story can make it to the front of google news like this most people are not going to investigate the story like we're doing right now and look at the actual fields that are part of this breach and come to the reasonable conclusion that this is absurd and is is really nothing and because of that it's this what i find most dreadful about this whole idea is that it's the story itself that can damage the electoral process it's the story itself this non-story about a breach that should not have been a story in the first place that can cause distrust in the electoral system and can eradicate uh you know essentially public confidence and our willingness to to even trust our data with local precincts bingo you got it that's exactly the point that's exactly it this kind of a story makes it seem as if uh everything is insecure everything can be compromised our votes mean absolutely nothing and it's really really scary to have something like that um spread around um go ahead rob and then gila yeah this is uh i think the real hack here would be uh if you know assuming this story is uh accurate the real hack would be some outfit somewhere uh getting a bunch of publicly available data together packaging it up like a leaked database and then selling it on dark web forums for uh for money i mean that that would be uh kind of amazing it reminds me a bit of uh when uh a while back uh someone started a a parody sort of scaremongering campaign about a chemical that's in all your child's foods um called dihydrogen monoxide and uh you know talking about it's you know so many foods contain it and you're there's tons of it in your in your children's bodies and of course what they're talking about is just water but they package it up like something scary and put it in a scaremongering format and people like who don't know better would would uh would hear this and think there's something terribly wrong um speaking of things that are terribly wrong so we did find the original link to this article which is on one site and we can't find it anywhere else um literally it's in one place and it turns out that this is a bunch of random people from italy who like a blog this is a blog of random people from italy and um nothing about this is good um the whole idea that you know the person who claimed responsibility is like i'm putting this out so that nobody else there's nothing like i'm not saying that anything and i'm not saying anything that everybody else hasn't already said but just the and the fact that google news pushed this up seo and google translate could be very very dangerous tools yes and i think as we get closer to november it behooves all of us as an informed voter populace to be really really careful what we're reading what we're believing what we're trusting yes exactly rob what was that ingredient you said was in our children's food i'm very concerned about that dihydrogen monoxide it's scary stuff if you look into it really you know it reminds me of when i was in grade school and people would come up to you and say hey your epidermis is showing uh you know which you know kudos to kids for knowing what that was or not knowing what that was but that simply means skin uh yeah um okay well this story let's let's focus on corporate america and um how they're constantly making the world a worse place uh paramount you can be hearing a lot about them in the future um they um basically just erased 20 plus years of news archives all that's left is a placeholder site for reality shows uh mtv mtv news was um um online it's not online anymore uh it's um basically just discarded because they're moving on they're forming new alliances new companies new programming um and just uh some of these comments are really heartbreaking um http colon slash slash mtv news.com no longer exists said one of the writers patrick hoskin eight years of my life are gone without a trace all because it didn't fit some executives bottom lines infuriating is too small a word metro clark wrote i don't even have the words i was just a freelancer but i put so much blood sweat and tears into telling stories that i cared about the right way on that platform what a gut punch uh as uh paramount destroyed the library of articles some writers managed to save a few for the wayback machine.com archive.org which was just profiled for trying to hold on to evaporating information on the internet but um a lot is lost and a lot of people won't find it there a lot of people won't know where to look we have to help them find that we also have to come up with a better way of preserving the data that's out there and never trust it to these large corporations because they don't care we've seen it so many times where you pour your life into some particular application or or system that you believe in and they decide they're just going to sunset it in their words and um doesn't matter it doesn't matter what you put into it it all gets erased it all gets wiped away geo cities uh google wave what there's so many we could list we could go on for an hour about this and um if you don't save something yourself if you don't have um a duplicate of what it is you're contributing to then you don't really own it it's not really yours and it's subject to the whims of these people who just care about profit uh um yeah i i just want to say like uh it is great that there are organizations out there that are willing to do this and i think parts of what was taken down are already uh being being uh processed and i think it's there's some of it is is now searchable from the mtv news archives through the way back and other uh libraries but it's it's it should not be i mean it's an indication or it's like a symptom of how broken this is like this idea that um you could be sort of uh lulled into thinking that this stuff will last just because of a the stalwart brand um existing that's not the case and it it is uh something that we talk about in parallel when we're talking about cloud computing because a lot of people push for that but this could just as easily be a part of their infrastructure that's lost or breached or you know falls by the wayside there are plenty of of drawbacks to storing things and archiving things yourself it takes work it takes planning it takes power right but you do you do get the upset upshot which is your the the ultimate uh say as far as what the the final um end of life for some of this is and you can make sure that it's sort of shepherded on in ways that make sense not this sort of crass just destructive um uh ending of of sites no we've seen this many times before i know bbc destroyed a whole lot of programming back in the 60s and uh uh so much was lost just because they they needed more tape or film or something and the reasons are always something that turned out to be ridiculous in the end and what's lost is is irreplaceable so you know when when when um people like us who like to save everything and archive everything see a story like this we feel a little bit of um vindication about um maybe we're not wasting our entire lives by doing this um but also anger because so many people are just creative people who don't think about okay how do i preserve this and uh you know they trust the system and this is to let you know that that system cannot be trusted we need a better system of uh snapshotting uh internet sites so that when somebody decides to pull the plug they're still there someplace and your work is not forgotten or disappeared go ahead rob yeah we're we're now generations into this media environment of the web in which a lot of people make uh you know their livings full in fuller in part by creating content uh writing articles uh you know putting up art whatever and they put it up somewhere else and just expect it to be okay and you know we have seen so many times uh you know within recent memory of say a news site or something just getting bought by the wrong person or just falling off the web because it ran out of money or something and people lose their entire portfolios because they were just trusting that material to just remain available and especially on something like the web where you know you have a juggernaut like paramount and they run all these sites and it wasn't just mtv there was um scads of material from comedy central old daily show episodes historical material there and uh things like that that were just lost and you know hard drive space is not that expensive in the technical scheme of things um you know they could always the bbc has sections of its site where if you um look up old articles from say the early 2000s um the material will still be there there'll just be a little banner on top saying this is this is uh you know very old material don't mistake it for something new things to that effect and it serves the historical purpose of keeping the article up there but also lets you know that you know you're not looking at the current uh stuff and i think that's that's a great solution for this sort of thing yeah and also you know to not go hyperlink crazy and uh have have links uh in all your content because guaranteed those links are not going to work after five or ten years i see that all the time when when researching things uh we need a better way of archiving the information that we reference as well otherwise it's completely useless we just have a bunch of outdated links go ahead alex this this is just so sad and in so many ways i think another layer of this too that i think uh is missing from most of the reporting that i've read on it is that we we don't think about this in the context of the future we only think about it in the context of the past and i think that the future of reporting is going to be a lot different than the past reporting we've seen because all future reporting and all types of articles and content is going to be done with the assistance of artificial intelligence all of these new stories from mtv content from tv this is all stuff that human beings created in the 80s and the 90s and is a historical record of what life was like what music was like and all coming straight out of the brain of a human being this is a really interesting data set about really critical and pivotal times in the united states and elsewhere so i think that we're all missing out on what could be i think a really interesting historical archive uh and and a great data set from which a lot of insight could be drawn if it were available to to researchers and others but the the reason for pulling this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me either perhaps what what paramount is doing is some kind of play they seem to be saying well if we can't make money by making it by we if we can't be profitable by making this available then it's not going to be available to anyone yeah they don't see the value in it they don't see that it it it does anything for anybody and no doubt they have copies themselves they probably have the entire site preserved offline so you know my my ask to them is to give that to somebody who will maintain it so that it can be preserved it costs you nothing to do that apparently the internet archive has made some kind of massive database of searchable articles that from of mtv that go back i don't think it's the entirety of it but every time this happens you can expect the internet archive i have to come to the rescue and store and warehouse and identify and find all of this data and keep it for historical records for mankind that's just that's not tenable okay a couple of uh letters oth at 2600.com is our email address we love to hear from our listeners here's uh one letter uh honestly you of all people oh boy letters that start this way you of all people know better than to store a lot of data on your phone because if you're arrested when you cross the border a lot of it can be held against you i believe this is in reference to our conversation about uh cell phones filling up and having to be copied over to uh other sites and things like that first of all there's some assumptions here that uh i'm not sure hold um the uh the writers assuming that uh sensitive information is part of that uh phones are phones uh we use them as we see fit and if we want to fill them up with videos and pictures that's all right or music um and to assume that um uh we're we're somehow falling down on the job because we have a phone that got full uh the issue the story is that um these phones are being sold with limited amounts of space and customers aren't necessarily being informed of that when they get the phones because apparently um um sim cards and um expandable um uh drives and cards are not a thing anymore and when you have a phone you have a certain amount of storage space and you're supposed to use the cloud after that and of course we resist that now this letter continues set up your own private cloud or sfdp service so you can access your own data privately across the internet on demand and not keep it on your mobile phone okay so i love being told what to do in simple form when it's not a simple thing at all um i would like to know you know show us some um some services that provide this that are trustworthy that you control yourself because it's a great idea it's but you just can't bark out an order to somebody and tell them to do something a certain way without telling them what that way is and yeah this this is the solution for people to have their own private clouds that they control but um i don't know are any of us aware of such uh systems that exist uh you're you're raising your your hand out let's go ahead yeah i in defense of the the letter writer here i i think i think he's right i think it's a great idea uh it's not for everybody but there are these private clouds that exist there's things like next cloud i used to use that quite a bit but you know for normal everyday people yeah it might be a little over the top but for instance if you are going to a country that might be interested in trade secrets that your company is holding and you don't necessarily want to have them on your phone or you think you might be stopped at a border for some particular reason i i think the writer is absolutely right to try to create some kind of gateway or barrier between you as a physical person and your data i think that that point is is really well we make the same point that's not what i'm disputing here it's just the assumptions that uh we're being careless or that uh the the solution is simple and we should all take advantage of it i i want the solution to be simple i want to have this system where we can tell people use this no corporation is going to have any control you're not going to have to pay them to maintain your your data that's what i want and and if you give me more information about this we'll talk about in weeks ahead all right i guess that's about it for uh for us for now uh we will continue this conversation on overtime uh in um in just uh a couple of minutes eight o'clock on youtube just go to channel 2600 i believe rob there are 2600 meetings this friday coming up there are indeed uh 2600 meetings happening all over the world you can find one near you you can start one near you uh the local one uh has information at a site called nyc2600.net okay and these are hacker gatherings where people just gather in a food court somewhere trade information get to know each other and have a great deal of fun that's what it's all about we will see you in three weeks here on wbai and please support wbai give to wbai.org see you in three good night   And very good evening, everybody. 
The program is off the hook overtime. 
Emmanuel here, Kyle, over there. 
Yo, yo. 
And we have Rob and Gila out there on Skypeland. 
We are indeed here. 
We have Alex also on Skypeland, different part of it. 
As Kyle would say, yo. 
All right. 
Cool. 
Well, great conversation. 
We've been tearing our hair out, going crazy for the conference next week. 
Next week. 
Oh, my God. 
That's why we're not on until, I guess, the 27th, right? 
Today's what? 
What is today? 
Today's the 3rd? 
Today's the 3rd. 
Yeah. 
So, 24th is when we're on next, I believe. 
Correct. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
So, yeah. 
A lot going on. 
All the info is at hope.net. 
And, of course, you can still get tickets, I think, up until Monday. 
People can do that. 
And it's really turning into something bigger than we expected and super exciting. 
And we just got the printed programs today. 
Look at that. 
Kyle's got one. 
Yeah, we still have printed programs. 
That's how old school we are. 
It's a lovely thing. 
I'm sorry the listeners can't see it. 
Well, they can see it if they come to the conference, which is taking place Friday, July 12th through Sunday, July 14th, St. 
John's University in Queens, which is the most awesome of all the boroughs of New York City. 
We certainly think so. 
Well, you live there, yeah. 
Tell us a little bit about Queens for the people who might be uninitiated. 
Queens is – so, for those of our listeners who may not know, each of the five boroughs of Queens is its own county. 
Queens County is the most diverse county in the country. 
If you want it, we have it here in Queens. 
There is representation of literally every ethnic group you could possibly think of. 
And when there's representation, there are restaurants. 
You could take a global gastronomic tour, never leaving the county line. 
There is so much to see, so much to do. 
We have trains that go underground. 
We have trains that go above ground. 
We have long-distance commuter trains. 
You can get around here very easily. 
It's a very exciting, vibrant, fun place to live. 
I have lived in Queens my entire time in New York. 
That's 15 years now. 
And there's still so much more to explore. 
And I absolutely love it here. 
Queens is – Queens is everything. 
And I'm really excited for people to get to experience it. 
I got my start in Queens. 
I grew up in Jamaica as a small child. 
And, yeah, it was, you know, it was all I knew back then, obviously. 
But it was bustling and thriving. 
And I couldn't really imagine any other type of life, you know, than living in Queens. 
And it still fascinates me to this day. 
There's still so many parts of it that are unexplored. 
But even around where we're having the conference, there is so much that you could explore that for quite some time. 
And never quite see at all. 
And, of course, you have the biggest Chinatown in America only a few minutes away in Flushing. 
Main Street, Flushing. 
Just so many amazing places to hang out there. 
Alex, go ahead. 
I already made my comment in the chat. 
But, yeah, as Gilla was mentioning, if you want anything you want, you can find in Queens, you know, if you're interested in it. 
But the flip side of that, of course, is that even if you don't want to see it, you can also find that in Queens, too. 
All the things that you don't want. 
Take the crunchy with the smooth there. 
Okay. 
Well, yeah, I guess that's one way of putting it. 
Profound. 
So, yeah, that's happening. 
That's why we're going nuts and won't have much time for radio over the next couple of weeks. 
Let's see. 
We have some more listener mail. 
Should we read more listener mail? 
Yes, I'll secure the phone. 
Okay, well, we haven't mentioned the phone yet because as soon as you mention the phone, it's going to ring, even though we don't give out the phone number. 
Oh, you know what I noticed? 
Yeah. 
Sorry, I was perusing the new issue of 2600 that arrived in our house within the last couple of days. 
Yeah, that happened, too. 
Boy, it's just been nonstop activity. 
And you know what I discovered in the announcement section of the new issue of 2600 magazine? 
First of all, we didn't know we had an announcement section. 
Where is the announcement? 
I'm sorry, announcements, ads? 
What's the? 
The house ad in the back? 
Yes, the marketplace section. 
Oh, the marketplace. 
Okay, yes. 
The marketplace. 
Hey, I forgot the nomenclature, my apologies. 
No, I'm wrong. 
There is an announcement section within the marketplace, so that's why I got confused. 
See, I'm not wrong. 
No, you're not wrong. 
But do you know what's in there in the announcement about Off the Hook? 
Not a clue. 
In the announcement section of the marketplace? 
The phone number. 
Well, okay, now, but you went from being correct to being wrong because I don't think Off the Hook is in the announcement part of the marketplace. 
I think it's under – no, I think you're right, actually. 
I'm confused with happenings. 
I confused happenings with announcement. 
You're right. 
You're right. 
I'm wrong. 
I'm even more wrong now. 
I don't know what's in this magazine. 
I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. 
But, okay, so we don't give out the phone. 
But it's not – the phone number could change. 
And, plus, you know, we want people who listen to be the ones calling us, not people who just are, you know, stumbling through a bookstore, find a magazine, say, hey, look, there's a phone number. 
I'm going to call it during this time, and I'm going to fool them by not even listening. 
You know, we don't want that to happen. 
Because, of course, everyone who calls in has paid very significant attention to everything we talked about during the radio hour, which is why they always key it. 
We expect no less. 
Yeah, we absolutely expect that. 
So do your homework. 
Yes, go ahead, Alex. 
Speaking of phone numbers, I want to bring something up, and we can decide whether or not we want to do this. 
Perhaps we can take a poll from the chat on YouTube. 
But I thought it would be funny. 
Today, earlier in the day, I got an invoice from what appeared to be Norton for $499. 
That's so old. 
I've been seeing that for months. 
The fake Norton invoices and the McAfee virus protection and all that. 
Look, you pay it once, and that's enough. 
They leave you alone after that. 
That's right. 
Yeah. 
But obviously, you know, it's a scam. 
It's probably some kind of remote access scam. 
But there's a phone number that's associated with it. 
You're supposed to call it, and then that's when they initiate the scam. 
It might be fun to just give them a ring this evening to see how they're doing. 
Well, that's all you, if you want to do that. 
It's not going to go on our records here, that's for sure. 
Once they have your phone number, they never let you alone if they have your phone number. 
No, I'll call them. 
That's fine with me. 
Totally fine. 
Yeah. 
Okay, but, you know, it can't be a rebel thing where, you know, we're on hold for, like, five minutes of silence or just, you know, going in some kind of a loop or something like that. 
Oh, certainly not. 
No. 
I mean, if it becomes rebel-like, that's when we hang up. 
Nobody can suffer through that. 
Well, if things slow down, which I'm sure they will, we can do this. 
Let me read one of the letters that we got. 
We don't have time to read all the letters on the air, unfortunately. 
Wish we had more time to do that. 
Hey, Emmanuel, just dropping an email to say, hi, I'm the guy who met with you some 12 years ago in Ljubljana. 
Do you remember? 
In Slovenia? 
Yes. 
Yeah. 
I'm sorry. 
I'm sorry about what happened in Euro. 
It wasn't fair. 
It wasn't fair. 
Slovenia deserved better. 
Okay, sorry about that. 
Yeah. 
And, yeah, met us 12 years ago. 
Kyle and myself drove you to Zagreb train stations. 
Zagreb, by the way, is in different countries in Croatia. 
So that's the level of commitment this guy had. 
And we were touring the countries of the ex-Yugoslavia. 
Was that back in 2010, I think? 
Wow. 
That was 14 years ago. 
I'm still a regular off-the-hook and off-the-wall listener. 
I've since moved from Slovenia to Malta. 
That's a place I've never been. 
Learned about Flipper Zero from your show. 
Ordered it online and never received it due to a restriction in lithium battery shipping. 
Had to order it to Slovenia so it would arrive by land and then bring it over to Malta in my carry-on luggage. 
Undeterred. 
I work now full-time as a security specialist in an industry called iGaming, online gambling, an industry which is currently picking up in the States with rapid speed. 
It's been around 12 years since you toured this part of the world. 
Actually, 14 years. 
I think 14 years is what we estimate. 
I planned on visiting New York just before COVID ruined it off for all of us. 
Hope to bump into you and Kyle again one day. 
Best regards, Mr. 
G. 
Mr. 
G, thank you so much for writing to us. 
And yes, we remember it well. 
And you made Slovenia very enjoyable. 
I remember that car ride to Zagreb and that whole voyage was really fascinating and exciting and just very inspirational. 
All the different countries of former Yugoslavia and Albania. 
Yeah, I love that we got an update from someone that was on that trip. 
I've been going through a lot of the film. 
I took several analog cameras as well as digital. 
Phone cameras weren't quite what they are now at the time. 
But I had all of this 35 and 120 millimeter. 
And so it was really fun to do that. 
But a lot of it ended up being kind of a time capsule. 
So I've been going back and digitizing it and organizing it so that I can go back and find them for one thing if I want to reprint or re-scan. 
So it conjured a lot of memories. 
I thought you stored it all in MySpace and it disappeared. 
No, that's somebody else that did that. 
No, we don't do that, do we? 
We keep things local, right? 
That's how you do it. 
You save things. 
What's your system? 
How do you generally do things like that? 
Oh, my system's terrible. 
It's always being rebuilt and redone. 
Your terrible system is so much better than the way we do it by default. 
Yeah. 
I've re-examined it. 
I get so far sometimes and then reassess it and go back and try to perfect it. 
I've managed to hold on to things, I think, mostly by making too many copies. 
But since stuff gets larger as far as space, if you're maintaining your own storage, you can kind of just keep pulling it into larger and larger backups and move it around that way. 
Back when, I guess, disks were plentiful, that was an alternative. 
Wait, disks aren't plentiful anymore? 
Like optical, I mean. 
Publishing those made sense when files were much smaller. 
But again, the digital cameras are much larger now, like you're talking about, exfiltrating them from phones into different formats. 
Generally, it's a solid state or some kind of spinning disk drive. 
And yeah, you just have to keep them, at least if you're in disarray and still kind of on that organizational journey. 
As long as you have a decent mental picture of it and you try to stick with it, I think that's the best solution. 
And always, I think, get what is attainable done first. 
And in a sense, like if you have physical media, I like to treat going through it as sort of an indexing process. 
Because you have to understand you're making it portable by taking it out of the physical form and putting it into a machine format. 
And perhaps you may not be using, you may not have the time to use the biggest, baddest machine or resolution. 
So I like to just give myself a break and get through it sort of in something that is good enough to use if you want to use it in the digital, in like digital art or in some kind of print format. 
But also think of it, think of the advantage of being able to, say, share it quickly on a tablet or on a phone or send it to some kind of on-demand publishing. 
You can do a lot with it as soon as it's out of that analog state. 
And I've been inspired by a lot of the archiving we talk about and that other people do. 
And just, I don't know, extending the ability of having so much in celluloid, in film. 
You know, a lot of people don't have memories or they don't have stories that are captured in that way. 
They are just in some cloud drive somewhere. 
Yeah, I'm worried about people not having the same access to memories as we're used to growing up. 
You know, we had the photo album and you'd pour through it with your grandparents or relatives of other sorts every now and then. 
And it was just, you know, a nice memory. 
Not only what's in the pictures, but just going through the pictures. 
And now, you know, it's all on phones and subject to deletion or becoming part of some system that goes away. 
And we don't have that physical, tangible thing that means so much to us. 
I mean, it's the look. 
It's the feel. 
You know, it's the smell sometimes, the mustiness of, you know, a book. 
And those are, you know, that's what precious memories come from. 
And I don't think we should be so quick to just cast those aside and in favor of something that seems to be more convenient. 
But in many, many ways, doesn't do the job nearly as well. 
I mean, good luck finding what was on your first iPhone as opposed to, you know, something that your grandfather passed down to you. 
That's, you know, a physical book or something like that. 
But it's just something, you know, we can benefit from new technology and the latest and best and all that. 
But if we discard what came before it, we run a tremendous risk of just losing so much that can't be recovered. 
And we see examples of that all the time. 
Gila, please. 
We have a listener who said, been going through crates and crates of good old physical media today. 
Trying to organize it a bit. 
It was fun. 
Found the entire story of my life in books and comics from days forgotten. 
Wow. 
See, that's great. 
Yeah. 
I think of it as like an ongoing thing as not as I guess that's an artistic way to look at it, that it's never done. 
It's incomplete. 
I think you have to do the best you can if you're a working artist or you're doing commercial stuff. 
You're sort of really busy getting through an entire workflow and you can maybe not have as much time for your own personal stuff and family stuff that also falls by the wayside. 
But getting comfortable with that process, you can approach it at any stage and just revisit it. 
And if you do that sort of habitually or even as a way to sort of think about your day or like process other stuff or maybe as a way of connecting with your family, I think that can be really fun. 
Sadly, oftentimes you go through a lot of this stuff when it's a really heavy time, when you're trying to put together memorials, when you're trying to go through and that can be profoundly meaningful in the moment for families and stuff. 
But you've got to realize you can do that anytime with people while they're around and actually maybe do another thing, like augment it with audio recordings or video recordings of people sharing a story about a photo that conjures a memory. 
That was the whole idea of capturing this stuff is preserving and being able to retell and recall that stuff. 
So doing it with other people can be like a weekend thing you do where it's like a part of your routine and in the process you're creating these lovely albums and at least more or less chaotic bins of things that you maybe made labels or at least got the dust off of. 
And you know where it is, like up high away from moisture and hazards. 
One of the best things I think you can do, and it's relatively easy to do, is create a new photo album for your friends or relatives and send it to them. 
You know, you can take an existing photo album and simply scan it, you know, at high resolution and submit it to one of these companies that makes books. 
And what you get back in return is basically a duplicate of the album that you scanned. 
You can change the page order, you can add comments, you can do all kinds of things like that. 
You can create new albums with, you know, digital pictures or old pictures as well. 
But it's the real special part is creating the physical book that you send to somebody, just sending them a download link. 
You know, I've done both. 
I've done both. 
And the one that resonates is the one where they have it in their hands. 
We send somebody a link, if they even go to it in the first place, it's something that gets lost with all the data, all the junk that piles up on our computers and our phones. 
But having that book there on the bookshelf in front of them is something that they will open every now and then. 
And you can share that experience. 
And that's something that has not gone away. 
I find it surprising, took me this long to find a way of doing that, because I believe in saving these things, but I wasn't so much sharing them. 
And being able to do that is just, it really feels amazing when you're able to pull that off. 
Yeah, that magic of reproducing, taking it out of, in a sense, out of the vault, sort of out of a format that is hard to share, and then making it sort of infinitely accessible and portable with different ways of distributing it, like a printed book or presentation, a video collage. 
Now probably there's a myriad of other tools, generative tools that can process all of this into sort of a wild hallucination of your life. 
That'll be the kind of thing, you know, you can give as a gift for the holidays. 
So I'm excited for all of it, but definitely, yeah, like get that awkward photo, like make a t-shirt out of it. 
Sure, yeah. 
Or that like favorite pet from like a screen grab in a family movie. 
I used to get the awkward family photo calendar every year. 
Oh, that's cool. 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
People have traditions like that already. 
Yeah, I saw my family in there and I didn't like it anymore. 
I don't know who gave them the picture either. 
And there was nothing wrong with my hair that day. 
It was just windy. 
So I want to move on. 
I think thinking about the old ways also, you have to think about the new ways. 
Like what with these phones that are capturing it when they're full? 
Like what is the state? 
Do we, panicking is, we've, I think, gone through that. 
It is disconcerting, but we have to kind of have a mode we go into where it's like, oh, this is the time to develop the role instead of developing some sort of physical media. 
You're actually just sort of adding it to the haystack of your, of what you've captured across devices. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
So two things. 
The first is we were talking about this and I was thinking about my brother. 
My brother has a son who is going to be six in October. 
And obviously as a parent now, there are so many pictures and some get shared with the wider family and some don't. 
And what he has begun doing is for Mother's Day each year, he makes my mom a calendar with good pictures from the year. 
So it's also this really fun way to get to see him, you know, growing up. 
And he puts like pictures of us on the days for our birthdays. 
It's very cute. 
I like it a lot. 
But the other thing I was going to say is that the listener who was commenting about looking at old media today did follow through with two more notes. 
He said there's something magical about finding a book in a shelf and then it has the markings from a grandparent or even further. 
Once found an old Norbert Wiener thing with my grandfather's liner notes. 
Low bandwidth, intergenerational information transmission, which may be most my new favorite phrase. 
That's what really irks me with Kindle. 
I wish I could transfer my underlinings from Kindle books to the next generation. 
Someone else, Tim in Connecticut, says one thing that my brother-in-law has done is, what is that? 
That is a big hit every Christmas is a printed calendar with family pictures that on opposite sides of days he changes each year. 
Is that static thing happening for everybody or is that a local thing here? 
I'm sorry, we're just setting up a few fireworks. 
Continue, don't worry. 
Don't worry about us. 
No, no, no. 
I'm done talking, but that was fireworks, huh? 
Yeah. 
We're showing our patriotism in the only way we know how. 
I thought it was my serotonin receptors. 
I thought something was wrong with our headphones. 
Oh, there probably is. 
The thing that gets me, the fireworks, they really haven't advanced that much. 
I mean, shouldn't we be getting better things in the sky than just the same old, you know, lights and okay, you know, that's red, that's white, that's a streak in the sky and they sound the same. 
You know what? 
I'm closing the window. 
But I don't know. 
Shouldn't that have evolved? 
Is that something that we're neglecting technology-wise? 
Potentially, but we did last night. 
We watched a video of my favorite fireworks show ever, which was San Diego, 4th of July in 2012, and the timers got messed up. 
So it was about to be a 30-minute-long fireworks show, and it all went off in 15 seconds. 
And it is the funniest thing you will ever see, because it's just like smoke, and then it's done, it's epic. 
And it's a lot of pissed-off people. 
Oh, yeah. 
And a few injuries. 
It's pretty crazy. 
All right, I'll look at that later. 
When you said a fireworks show, in my mind, I pictured a reality show having to do with fireworks, which, now that I say it out loud, is a really good idea. 
Here's what you do. 
You have a family whose business and tradition has been putting on the best fireworks show in the area, and you have like an eight-episode series where they're building up to the big display with all kinds of family conflict and intrigue and things like that, and suppliers, will they deliver it on time? 
What about, you know, do we want Chinese fireworks? 
Do we want all American? 
Things like that. 
And then you show the fireworks as part of the conclusion of the last episode, and everybody in the country is watching it, and we all make a ton of money. 
I think they've already done that. 
What do you mean they've already done that? 
I just came up with the idea now. 
God damn it. 
All right, let's give out our phone number. 
It sounds like some B, like, learning channel reality show. 
Yeah, exactly. 
Yeah, that's who I'd pitch it to. 
Do you remember when the learning channel actually was about learning? 
Yeah, you used to learn stuff. 
Every channel that's out there now has turned into the same channel. 
They're all stupid. 
They all show law and order repeats. 
You know, arts and entertainment is not about arts and entertainment. 
Bravo is no longer fine arts at all. 
Science fiction. 
They don't even show science fiction. 
It's all the same damn thing. 
Even BBC America doesn't show British programs. 
You know, it's... 
That's why they changed all the names. 
Well, they should just be channel ABC and D, you know, they don't... 
Basically, like, TLC doesn't stand for the learning channel anymore. 
It just stands for TLC. 
What does that even mean? 
Who gets to say that? 
I know what it stands for. 
MSNBC. 
MSNBC, Microsoft, and NBC pooled resources. 
I know Microsoft's not involved anymore, but that's still what it stands for. 
CNBC, they got away with something because at the time, they're affiliated with NBC, you know, obviously, but they were called the Cable News and Business Channel, I believe. 
And that's spelled CNBC. 
So that was kind of clever, but that's as far as I'm willing to allow rewriting history and initials and things like that. 
The other thing that really gets me, I'm sorry, I'm going off on a tangent here, but if you go through the schedule, almost every channel is binging on a particular program, like South Park or Young Sheldon or Law and Order or CSI. 
It's 12 hours of the same damn program. 
How is that a network? 
How is that a TV channel? 
There's no creativity. 
There's no imagination. 
It's somebody hitting play on a computer somewhere, and it's just going all day long with nobody watching over it. 
They're trying to sell ads. 
They're so... 
This is like... 
Don't get me started on ads, man. 
They're surviving. 
They need to sell these ads. 
Look, when I was a kid, I don't want to keep going to make this my refrain, but when I was a kid and you turn on the TV, there was an announcer. 
The announcer would say, this is channel two. 
Coming up next is this. 
It was cool. 
It was good. 
It was personality. 
And the programs changed. 
They were different. 
And you know what the best thing about that TV channel was? 
It signed off at night. 
Yeah, they turned the damn transmitter off, and they all went home at like two in the morning or something. 
This is your announcer letting you know that this is your favorite channel. 
You're tuned to channel 2600. 
Yeah, that's... 
I guess you could make a parallel there. 
Sure. 
Why not? 
But, you know, channel 11, I remember the policeman guy who did the afternoon kid shows. 
Channel 9 was the monster chiller horror theater or whatever they called that. 
They all were different. 
They all had their own... 
Channel 5 was not Fox. 
It was Metro Media, and they had their own unique take on things. 
They're the ones that coined the phrase, it's 10 p.m. 
Do you know where your children are? 
Channel 2 was the one that stayed on almost 24 hours. 
They signed off at about 5.30 at night and then signed on at 6 in the morning. 
And in between, they had a black and white test pattern, which was kind of cool. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
All I was going to say is that when I was a kid living in Nebraska, we, you know, channel 9 WWOR ran nationally, and I was obsessed with what was on channel 9, and I had a stuffed animal that was named channel 9 the dog. 
Did they call it channel 9 when it was a superstation? 
Yeah. 
Interesting. 
Because... 
This is channel 9 WOR. 
But we didn't have a channel 9. 
WGN in Chicago was also a superstation, but they called it WGN America, as opposed to their channel 9 WGN TV. 
And, you know, the Canadian system gets WGN, the TV channel, whereas the United States got WGN Superstation, which was just another channel that was like all the rest. 
And then they turned it into News Nation, so that's what became of that. 
Oof. 
Yeah. 
But do you know what WGN stood for? 
Oh, that's a good question. 
I wish I did. 
Any guesses? 
No? 
Nobody knows. 
Where are you going now? 
That's good. 
That's good. 
But I don't know if that's true. 
What's good, nerds? 
I know KTLA stands for Television in Los Angeles, I'm pretty sure. 
But go ahead. 
What? 
It started out, it was a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune Company. 
WGN stood for World's Greatest Newspaper. 
Oh, wow. 
That's it. 
And they're still owned by Tribune Broadcasting, I believe. 
They're owned by the same people, WPIX, KTLA, other stations, too. 
I'm not sure what the other ones are. 
Yeah, we know a lot about this, don't we? 
I mean, something similar is WTMJ in Milwaukee, which is named after the Milwaukee Journal, which then became the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 
It's the Journal of the Journal of the Journal of Milwaukee, WTMJ. 
And not named after the jaw problem. 
Not named after the painful jaw condition. 
The question I had, though, going back for a second, Romper Room. 
Did y'all watch Romper Room? 
Oh, hell yeah. 
Romper Room. 
Definitely. 
With, I believe the guy's name was Sandy Becker. 
Maybe somebody can look that up and see if Sandy Becker actually existed. 
But I just remember that name from my childhood. 
And, like, do you remember the Magic Mirror? 
Not offhand, but I probably would if I started watching it again. 
Okay. 
The Magic Mirror and the person who hosted Romper Room when I was a kid on WGN. 
I'm sorry, W-O-R, which was the one that I was watching. 
Her name was Miss Molly. 
And at the end, she would look in the mirror and, you know, see all the people. 
She never saw me. 
She never got close to seeing me. 
Now, you over here saw you all the time. 
Yes. 
To fully explain this for people who aren't familiar, she would look in the Magic Mirror and say hello to all the little boys and girls she saw. 
So, I see Emmanuel, and I see Kyle, and I see Alex. 
Oh, I remember that. 
I remember that. 
Yeah, that was the end of Romper Room, though, wasn't it? 
Mm-hmm. 
Okay. 
Oh, I do remember that. 
Absolutely. 
Magic Mirror, tell me today, did all of my friends have fun at play? 
She never saw me. 
I would get up close to the TV. 
She never saw a Gila. 
Well, you got to play the game. 
Did you send her a postcard? 
I don't remember. 
All right. 
Well, your parents should have done that, because that's how you... 
I mean, I'm assuming that, you know, like with the Starbucks name, even if I'd sent her a postcard, it wouldn't have made a difference, because she would have looked at it and said, I have no idea how to say this. 
Do you know what my Starbucks name is before I started using the app? 
It's Venti Iced Latte. 
That's a nice name. 
Because they don't know how to say Gila. 
Well, you know, if you went to Ellis Island and gave them that name, I'm sure you'd wind up with Gila, because they wouldn't want you to go around with a name like that. 
But when you said the Magic Mirror, I thought you meant the Magic Garden. 
Now, you guys watched the Magic Garden, right? 
That's... 
Carol and Paula, yes. 
Yeah, that's classic. 
That's something... 
Again, WPIX, Channel 11 here in New York. 
And WPIX, by the way, used to be owned by the Daily News. 
In fact, they were in the same offices on 42nd Street. 
So that's kind of interesting as well. 
That's why it was WPIX. 
Sorry, not to interrupt. 
But the Daily News was... 
Because the Daily News was the picture paper. 
Was it? 
Okay. 
It was. 
So WPIX. 
It was a tabloid, so yeah, that sort of makes sense. 
All right, trivia question. 
And Kyle, you're exempt from this, because I think you might know the answer. 
But what... 
We said Daily News on WPIX. 
What station... 
All right, I'll tell you right now. 
It's a radio station. 
It's not a TV station. 
What radio station did the New York Times own? 
You have 30 seconds. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
WQXR. 
That's correct. 
And I hope you didn't just look that up. 
No, I didn't. 
I just guessed, actually, because it seems like the type of station that they would own. 
Wow. 
You somehow made that seem condescending, and I'm not sure... 
I intended to be. 
Okay. 
All right. 
I just remember growing up... 
Oh, it wasn't that funny. 
Listening to that, because that was a station that was played in my house. 
WQXR. 
It used to be AM, 1560 AM, which, a tremendous loss, and we lost classical music on the AM dial because it really sounded cool. 
But it used to be WQXR and WQXR FM, the radio stations of the New York Times. 
I'll never forget the way they announced that. 
And yes, Kyle, we are taking calls, even though we didn't give out the phone number, but we will get to that at some point. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
I used to listen when I worked at... 
I remember a long time ago when I worked at TCBY, the country's best yogurt. 
You may not know this, but you're still on staff there. 
I dropped in. 
No, I dropped in the other day, and they have time sheets. 
What is frozen yogurt? 
No, yours is empty, but apparently they can't delete names, so you might want to pick up a shift or something. 
Those were good times. 
I had this funny thing. 
I used to listen to QXR sometimes over there when I could get it, but most of the time I would listen to a different classical station from WSHU, 91.1. 
What was that? 
A swine. 
I'm sorry. 
Well, I work with another radio station, and they keep interfering with us, so I have very good feelings about it. 
They're from Connecticut, but they have a better signal in New York than the station that is from New York. 
I know. 
It's really ridiculous, but that's exactly it. 
So I used to be able to get this old clock radio at WSHU, and it was all classical, just like WQXR. 
No, no, not just like. 
WQXR had personality. 
WSHU had a satellite dish. 
It's a big difference. 
Well, I think WSHU had some personality, and in particular, one show that was every Sunday, Sunday matinee with David Bouchier, was pretty good. 
And I learned a lot about classical music, just listening to that with nothing else to do in the winter at TCBY. 
And nobody's really coming in for frozen yogurt in a shopping center on Long Island in the dead of winter, so I would listen to this. 
And somehow, I think a lot of this just seeped into my head. 
I had this weird thing happen to me when I was in law school. 
I was waiting outside of a professor's office, and he was in with another student. 
I think I was talking to my—I wanted to talk to my civil procedure professor, and there was a constitutional law professor from a different section across the hall. 
And he had his door open, and he was listening to classical music, and I recognized it. 
And so I said to him, I said, oh, Professor Teachout, I said, couldn't help but over here, I said, is that Bach you have on? 
And he said, well, I don't know what it is. 
I'm just, you know, I've got kind of random things on here. 
He said, let me look. 
And I never really talked to this guy before. 
He didn't know me at all. 
I wasn't one of his students. 
And he said, well, it is Bach, as a matter of fact. 
And I said, is it one of the Brandenburg concertos? 
And he said, well, let me see. 
And he said, it is. 
Oh, you're wasting this guy's time. 
Okay, go ahead. 
And then I said, is it the third Brandenburg concerto by Bach? 
And he said, well, let me see. 
You had to make three trips to check? 
Why didn't you just bring the damn record out? 
I said, well, he was listening to something online. 
I think it was. 
It was either streaming it or whatever, but it was through a computer. 
So he was amazed, and he said, yeah, it is Bach's third Brandenburg concerto. 
And he said, that's incredible. 
Then you said, is it conducted by this particular person? 
I should, yeah, by the Academy of St. 
Martin's in the Fields or something. 
And so he said, well, that's amazing. 
He said, you must be a musician. 
And I said, no, I'm not. 
He said, well, you must have studied music in some way. 
And I said, no, no, I never did. 
I never studied music. 
And he said, well, how did you know that? 
And I just looked at him. 
I didn't really have an answer. 
And I said, I don't know. 
I said, he just paused, and he stared at me for a few seconds. 
And he said, OK, I'm going to close the door now. 
He just closed the door right in my face. 
I've heard this story before. 
I remember the door being closed in your face. 
And that door never opened again, did it? 
No, I don't think I've ever said anything to him ever again. 
Wow. 
Yeah, that is something. 
But yeah, you're talking about shows. 
I remember on WKXR, The Listening Room with Robert Sherman was one of the great programs that I would listen to. 
Metropolitan Opera, Saturday afternoons. 
Part of my upbringing was hearing that. 
So it's good to be able to go down memory lane and realize the importance of radio and all that. 
What's that? 
It explains a lot. 
You would think that somebody with that type of upbringing would understand what bifurcate meant. 
Well, that word didn't really come up much in my household. 
But now I do. 
Now I know. 
Now I will use it incessantly. 
We have a phone call, Kyle? 
Yes, yes. 
It came in quite a while ago, but... 
It's a real dichotomy. 
In our defense, we didn't ask anybody to call. 
They called on their own. 
So when you do that, before we ask for calls, you call at your own risk. 
And being put on hold for 10 minutes is part of that risk. 
So good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Is anyone there on the phone? 
Is this some kind of alien creature that speaks in high-pitched tones? 
Apparently it is. 
There's nobody there, Kyle. 
There's nobody there. 
Get a better call. 
Get a better call. 
Maybe ask you about the phone number. 
802-321-4225. 
That's 802-321-HACK. 
Call us and speak to the world. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
I do have a question. 
This is actually my question. 
Robert Sherman, you said, hosted the Listening Room. 
Is it the same one who wrote the music? 
I'm not sure. 
Maybe. 
I mean, it's possible. 
What music? 
Robert Sherman and his brother were like the go-to songwriters for the Disney Corporation for a long time. 
They wrote It's a Small World After All. 
They wrote all the music for Mary Poppins. 
Also, they won an Oscar for Mary Poppins. 
And did you know that they also wrote the music for Snoopy Come Home? 
I didn't know that. 
Now I do. 
And I'm better for that. 
But I'm taking a trip over to Wikipedia right now. 
Look up Robert Sherman. 
But first, let's take this phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the go-to time. 
Go ahead. 
Yes, it was afternoon he picked up. 
Oh, you got impatient with us? 
Is that what happened this week? 
All right. 
Alex was talking about the scam calls he got or the bills and stuff. 
I am on the do not call list. 
I mean, remember the do not call list? 
You're on everyone's do not call list. 
That's true. 
No, I wasn't. 
Now, people still call my cell phone. 
And they, you know, of course, because they're calling from India. 
They say, well, would you like, oh, this is from the car warranty or the auto service? 
You know, it's that scam. 
You know, of course, it's an Indian accent. 
And, of course, they, you know, do the one. 
This is Medicare. 
We should give you benefits. 
Hello, I'm not 65. 
Do go on. 
Go on. 
No, we're captivated. 
Oh, I'm running a basketball as I'm talking to you. 
Yeah. 
So, yeah, they do that. 
And Alex wanted to give out the phone number. 
Maybe we should do this at Hope. 
We should do this at Hope, where we call scam, you know, numbers and try and, like, I don't know, social engineer them or something. 
Well, that sounds like a ton of fun, especially with you leading the brigade. 
You got something to say to that, Alex? 
I mean, look, I can give out the phone number. 
I know you're dying to call them, Rebel, but I think we should hold back. 
We'll do this together as a group later on in the call. 
You're just going to have to be patient. 
Later on in the show? 
Later on. 
Well, there's not too much later on left, so it'll be in the next few minutes. 
All right. 
Yeah. 
Wow. 
We've been spending a lot of time yammering about our childhoods and stuff, but it's, you know, it's therapeutic. 
I remember when, you know, I remember when, let's see, I remember a lot of stuff, but never mind not. 
Okay. 
Well, they're just going to have to leave us hanging on that one. 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
What else did I want to say? 
I want to have links. 
I still want, I still need IT services. 
I still need IT services, but maybe somebody at HOPE can, I have the 2600 meetings on Friday. 
So I will take somebody to dinner who puts links on my computer, bringing my laptop. 
Somebody who puts Lynx, L-Y-N-X, that program on your laptop. 
You'll take them to dinner at a place, a place of their choosing with no price cap. 
All right. 
You heard it here. 
Okay. 
Yes, Alex, go ahead. 
Uh, apropos of both Rebels question last week and, uh, one of our colleagues in London, uh, as you know, I was in, in London last week during our, uh, our sessions and whatnot. 
Uh, I did go into the local boots on the King's Road and buy, uh, some cheap deodorant, which is also known as Lynx, L-Y-N-X. 
Same, same, same one. 
So there you have it. 
Are you trying to, uh, get a free dinner from Rebel by handing him a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a deodorant thing from, uh, from, from England? 
Yeah. 
Well, it was weird. 
I mean, so there's this just cheap deodorant you can buy called Lynx. 
No, I know that. 
Yes. 
uk uh and and for some reason the uh the scent that i got i thought it was funny it's called africa like an entire continent you know under underneath your arm i don't know what it's about but it does it smells quite nice well um what i'm saying is say it quickly okay um the links is the browser that i want to put on my computer on my desktop preferably yes i think we know i'm i'm going to be bringing my laptop to hope i mean to um the 2600 meeting on friday it's like somebody at the 2600 meeting a while ago he explained how links is put on and he did he did it on his laptop and he but he did it so fast and he explained it so fast that i couldn't even like you know like and he did it and it's like oh well you got to go to this website on this website doesn't recognize this browser yes no people people talk very fast sometimes and we apologize for that uh might i ask what operating system your your laptop is running to help the person that will help you well i mean no on my desktop and laptop i use google chrome but i still want to use google chrome all right google chrome is a browser not an operating system no no i use windows 10 ah okay so you want links for windows 10 installed on your laptop will this happen on friday at the 2600 meeting you'll have to stay tuned and hear us in three weeks to find out and yeah i know that links is a browser that i also want to use i mean i'll still use google chrome but because you can you know you go on youtube videos and listen to talk on youtube you can't do that with links um but links to like um you know go uh search text space things like look at your uh cell phone bill or you know look at your online banking thing exactly yes not to look at pictures and videos no not to do that it's for for text space make my computer just like an old school like you know like text space like like just like like a vt300 terminal it's not an unreasonable request i don't think right it's just yeah it's not enough terminals go ahead alex why don't you just install linux on your machine and work out of the terminal here we go because i don't want to i want to keep windows i don't want to use linux but then i won't be able to watch videos and do all this i want to you can have both you know you can have windows and linux called dual booting dual booting or you can run you know it's hard for me to get used to a whole new operating system and you know what i mean well you know sometimes it's taking the dive is all you need right but i mean why can i mean i don't need linux i could just use the browser links and that's all i really want you do need linux you just don't know you need the linux yet i've heard this said so many times but come to hope and we will convince you well i of course we'll be at home and you'll be happy about it too you will be yeah i mean of course if anybody wants to know about queens we're talking about queens yeah you came from queens too didn't you yeah you grew up in jamaica i grew up in jackson heights close call but yes uh fairly fairly nearby yeah i will work at the information booth at hope where i can tell people like you know how to get to certain places and where the the places are at that you could buy the alternative clothing and where the uh you know where the the you know so people coming to hope have the chance of being directed by rebel to go certain places and that's an opportunity it does not come along every day all right rebel thank you so much for calling i look forward to uh to seeing you at hope and um all the best well you're gonna be on next week though no we're not gonna be on next week we said many times that we are not on for three weeks we are going to be on again on july the 24th we need time to put all this together and uh uh i know i know that the hell is that sorry i was laughing at something i apologize ah okay um i thought something blew up uh it's more fireworks yeah the wednesday before hope is always uh there have been a couple of years where i've forgotten that i'm on the air and i've just been running around so much and it's like oh my god it's 9 30 and i totally forgot to be on the air uh and other times it's just a big inconvenience and also you know afterwards we're still recovering sometimes you know sleeping for the for several days straight so uh it's best for us to just you know um we said all we can say and uh now we have to do this thing and we'll be back on on the 24th yeah right and you'll be at the meeting though this week i wasn't planning on it yeah okay but i'll be there and then yes rob will be there so he'll be able to uh be a helpful i'll be there and angela will be there so there yeah okay and and maybe alex will be there too who knows well maybe yeah maybe maybe because i'm yeah yeah maybe maybe who knows listen uh we gotta go thank you for calling okay we'll talk to you next time uh by the way i did visit wikipedia i did look up robert sherman uh he uh basically was a music critic and um um a radio broadcaster um died last year died a year ago and he had retired from wqxr one month before he died so that tells you something about how important radio is to people he was 90 years old and um yeah he's just one of the many voices that i remember from from back then so that was something special so i'm not the same robert sherman not the same one unless they really hid that part of uh what he did but robert sherman sounds like a pretty common name so i imagine there are many robert shermans out there wouldn't be surprised there was a robert sherman listening to us right now the songwriting one died in 2012 okay all right so uh yeah the music critic broadcaster got a few more years um we have another phone call good evening you're on off the overtime hi it's bobcat can you hear me fine we hear you just fine yes because you sound terrible let me fix a few things you said previously uh romper room was not sunny fox that was wonderama later bob mccallister was on wonderama that was the one i was trying to remember right romper room had the the girl who had uh or the woman excuse me who who uh got pregnant and was uh given thalidomide and she sued to get an abortion and she couldn't get an abortion if she finally found out she can get an abortion in colorado wait this is on romper room colorado all this happened on romper room i missed that episode yeah what the hell there's more i got i got more let's get through it and uh so finally uh uh colorado said no you can't come here and get an abortion she had to like go to sweden so eventually she did get an abortion um the the best way to sign off a tv station is with the a high flight video and and perhaps kyle can cue that up so you can use it as an outro uh tlc uh back when it was the learning channel had a hacker documentary with uh was kevin and captain crunch and kind of interesting documentary but on their website they had a question is it possible to be an ethical hacker and when i saw it it had 2 000 yes votes and 2 500 no votes and by the time we got through with it it was two and a half million yes votes by the time you got through with it okay wow what was we can write a script what was the name of the documentary uh hackers was kevin and crunch you'll find it um if you if you want to uh do some of your own personal backup uh keep an eye on uh linus tech tips and lewis rothman they're both working on open source uh things for uh sharing video and uh doing storage um here's i've got a here's a couple more oh i could help rebel with his uh his links thing but i'm i don't think i want to do that and uh as far as january 6th trump never said go trash the capitol just so you know if you can if you can show me the video of that i'll give you a million dollars now um immunity you covered earlier uh obama killed two u.s no three u.s citizens excuse me and the uh aclu sued it's uh alawaki v panetta you can look it up uh the dc district court uh decided that no apparently no one has standing it wasn't a bill of attainder for all these reasons so you don't really need immunity to kill american citizens and if you'll recall ron paul did a filibuster in the the senate just asking the white house do you have the right to kill americans with a drone on american soil and they didn't answer for the whole day they let him sit there holding his urine well i mean that's an easy question no i don't have a right to kill american citizens but obama had to kill list uh of of people to kill and there were american citizens on that right but there are american citizens overseas what i think people are talking about now is american citizens right here at home and uh that's never been overseas if you go overseas can i kill you no if if you committed a crime in the united states and i kill you without a trial that's a lynching if you go overseas and you are a political opponent of the united states which alulaki was uh can you kill him he's a political opponent now he's a terrorist uh he didn't commit any acts of terror he was just a part of the organization but they killed him they killed his 16 year old son yeah i don't think you're gonna you're gonna struggle to find instances where you know uh the united states has abused its power and and done horrible things but having the supreme court basically back you up for that that's kind of unique that's different it the same thing happened already three american citizens were killed by obama no i'm not disputing nothing i'm not disputing prosecuted does he want do you want him to be prosecuted should he be prosecuted if he did something illegal absolutely sure killing american citizens without a trial is that not illegal listen this is not something that's that's uh confined to one one president we're talking about you know specifically we were talking about assassinating political rivals i.e the person running against you and at least at least one member of the supreme court says that a president would be immune if he did that and that is what concerns me that a supreme court justice believes that it's okay and and in the eyes of what they put out to do this without any any repercussions one supreme court justice believes that okay and i have a question for alex because this is this is a and now remember i did not vote for trump twice but uh i'm going to save joe biden because it's probably too late to pull him off the ballot on on enough states that he would not be able to get a majority in the electoral college the 22nd amendment says no person shall be elected more than twice to the presidency joe biden could choose barack obama as his vice president presidential candidate running mate he can select him immediately as special advisor to the president so that the senility thing uh won't seem to be a problem joe biden then gets elected gets up to uh gets inaugurated immediately resigns hands the baton to obama who then gives his inaugural speech on the same podium alex is that possible that's such an interesting uh scenario i guess it is possible we could result in a challenge as to what the meaning of the word elected because he actually wasn't elected that's well you know i guarantee you that he was elected he was elected twice yes but but he's being he's a vice president now um uh doesn't that count as being elected when i know it doesn't because you can be a vice president and be elected president yeah no you you might actually have something but i guarantee you that would not fly amongst the populace and i'm a yeah i'm an obama supporter for the most part but i would i would not like that at all we're already trying to get biden not on the ticket this fall everybody is they're all working behind the scenes all the primary voters have voted for him to be the the candidate and we're gonna we're gonna overrule democracy with this no i think that's stupid i think a little play i think that's stupid i think it's uh people are panicking democrats panic all the time they always aren't sure of themselves and this is another example of that where they think oh you know because the guy uh stumbled and was tired and and and didn't express himself clearly even though he's done that he's not seen look senile people cannot do the things that he does all right he's traveled around the world he's met with all kinds of people he has given speeches and you know even you sound like joe biden he's senile i sound like somebody who is recognizing what's in front of me how how's somebody who's senile able able to read something practically flawlessly you know and with passion that's not a senile person it's it's he's old i'll give you that in he keeps reading the comments in between the stuff he's he's like pause for applause he'll stop and read that i i if that happened and maybe it happened once and maybe he was joking who knows i've seen joking it happens all the time okay what watch him watch i do watch him i've seen it and i'm i'm impressed by what i see sometimes and dismayed by what i see other times which is a pretty good track record for the most part whereas you know with the other guy i see what he says he says it clearly and it makes me sick so even even if if biden is barely stringing a sentence together is completely incomprehensible he still wins as far as i'm concerned if if jill biden brought out a joe an urn of joe's ashes you would vote for that i would listen i would i would i would vote for i would vote for roadkill over trump i mean anything seriously but here's the thing that people seem to be forgetting there is a perfectly capable vice president in this campaign and everybody hates her and that including democrats and i don't get that i think that's a real problem with us not with them you know she's she states her her to be elected and die so that kamala harris i didn't say that i just said that if people are worried about the ticket they have a strong look they're saying let's get new blood in there well you got new blood in there you got somebody who's younger you got somebody who's vibrant and who's able to express themselves clearly you just don't like her for some reason and i think that's the problem well so she's going to have to uh invoke the 25th amendment no and remove i don't think she has to do that you know she will uh unless biden dies but why would she do that in the first place you just watch biden for god's sake i do watch quite a bit you know i i just don't i just don't buy into the narrative i don't let's ignore what trump said during the debate biden said no american soldiers had died on his watch look he got he got some things wrong but but trump lied so many times you don't you don't get that wrong trump lied so many times they're wrong he got so many things wrong he meant in new conflicts and there is you know there is just no comparison let's let rob say something go ahead rob um bobcat i want to directly address something that uh that you had said um something very important and that is that the documentary from tlc you were talking about was called hackers computer outlaws which uh featured uh kevin mitnick uh john draper and steve wozniak and it was made in 2001 and you can still find it out there to watch awesome you can go to the way back machine and find the pole and see how we uh manipulated it that would be awesome all right listen we're going to move on to another phone call thanks for uh for all the points and uh making us think and all that all right end your show with high flight really it's amazing okay i don't know what that is but i'll ask kyle i'll defer to him and uh maybe we'll do something like that uh alex i think if if you're going to have a moment this is it so what tell us what you want to do and how you're going to do it okay should we give these guys a ring we can we can try see uh you got to explain what you're doing okay so i got a yeah what was obviously a nonsense bogus email that's usually the precursor to something called a remote access scam where an attacker will have you call a phone number thinking that you overpaid for an invoice for something was charged to you that was a high value item that you shouldn't have been charged for so you call up to try to get that charge removed they then say oh something like we'll have to actually well the the software is on your system so if we're going to refund you we're going to have to disable it and then they trick you into allowing them remote access to your machine something like that so um so it might be fun to just call these guys up see how they operate and um maybe string them along a little bit so let's let's give it a shot right go ahead uh okay hang on a second i just have to should i should i try calling them with uh star six seven first what do you think well what kind of number are you calling what's your area good uh 828 not a toll-free number no 828's not but not every number um uses uh caller id uh twice they might be using ani in which case doesn't matter if you dial star 67 so they might get your phone number that's that's the important thing to convey here okay well yeah i i understand that but i mean if there's a chance to block it might as well try it yeah try it it can't hurt let's call them up okay so this is why i didn't want to do it because of things like this let's try it that's not a fast busy what's fast about that that's a slow but it wasn't it was a slow it's a busy signal that for people who don't know busy signals were for when you called somebody and they were speaking to somebody else so you couldn't talk to them that's what it was let's try it with uh without caller id blocked oh interesting theory here let's see what happens uh still the same still don't want to talk to you yeah that's it yeah here's a a theory i'd like to posit um what if the number is always busy and you can never call them and that's not part of the scam well how would that how would that work well what if you went to a link instead or replied to their email or something like that i mean are you going to always call a number or most people these days they they they send texts if you were to text this person or these people then i think you would uh get some kind of response and withdrawal from your bank account to cancel the subscription call uh i'll i'll give out the number oh but then you'll never get through because everyone's going to be trying but that's fine i mean might as well right keep trying try a couple more times and then give out the number i just don't want you to get locked out because of our own listeners uh well let's keep going you know let's let's see that's still still busy there still busy yeah quite busy uh it could be a fake busy but you know it probably isn't no yeah i mean what would the the point be so uh it's yeah it's an 828 number which apparently relates to north carolina one of those new it doesn't have to be in north carolina as we all know area codes mean nothing anymore that's right yeah so are we going to take a call in the meantime no no this is all you yeah oh i i said i'd give you a moment to shine and now you must shine apparently i'm just very busy yep keep trying um but i i would imagine this would i imagine the number probably just burned at this point right it came in earlier in the day somebody probably reported it and whoever was providing the service to it probably terminated it and they're they're off to sending a new batch of emails with a new number so you want to wait for one of those emails to come in yeah let's give it a shot because you're a right target they always are sending you these emails all right yeah i'm uh i'm really gonna fall can you read us the text of the email just so people might recognize it if um in fact it happens to them those uh purchase details at the top dear user and in bold underneath it and it's got the the norton life lock uh yellow circle with the check and the gradient and the pixelation coming out of the middle of the of this invoice dear user we appreciate you selecting our offerings today is the last day of your individual norton life lock the subscription will automatically renew based on the plan that you have chosen please see the summary of your purchase below and then underneath that is the customer service number that's busy build to customer id 843 blah blah blah invoice number and then there's an order number underneath that product description personal pc product norton life lock chart 499 so you you uh you decided to do this you you you uh purchased this and now you're trying to get out of it that's that's what that's what okay well alex i mean we've we've talked about this before your impulsive spending habits simply have to be curbed and i think that's the lesson here so uh they did get the date right though you know so this email confirms that your subscription has been renewed for another one year with norton life lock for 499 on 3 july comma 2024 the subscription will auto renew every year and every is a capital e unless you turn it off all caps o f f no later than 24 hour of before end of subscription period yeah okay well then you need to turn it off in all caps um yeah yeah well to cancel the subscription and each the the first letter of each of those words is capitalized call okay but here's the thing uh i think you know um my instinct is telling me that the busy signal is part of the scam because okay now you're outraged first of all it doesn't say how it's getting the money from you it's just getting it from you uh but uh obviously you don't want this you have no idea this is a scam so what do you do you call and you keep calling and you call and call and call and it's always busy now what do you do uh so i guess you would email right i guess you have to email and if you email them then i think the scam begins well i mean i i think people wouldn't find the the email address so believable it starts off with tina bang uh and then it's a number at gmail.com so if you were gmail.com i mean you know we know gmail is is completely legitimate all right they're the ones that are always accusing everybody else of sending them spam and they are guilty of nothing so if somebody sends you an email from gmail.com you have to believe it and you have to act upon it that's the law alex you should know that that's exactly right yeah so you better call her or reply to her and uh and and uh you know do what she says that's interesting so in the email and in the bogus um pdf i guess it is i don't know i don't even think it's pdf it's just an embedded image they they they have consistent uh order numbers and things so they they paid some attention to detail here um but uh you know they should have ran the grammar check they never do but the thing is nobody ever does i mean i i find grammar problems in you know in press releases and in advertisements even traffic signs it's insane uh another reason why we really need to pay attention to things like this if we want to be believed but in this particular case you know i i do think enough people will respond and be outraged and desperate and then they will be more prone to do what they're told to do i also suggest taking that that uh exact email address plugging that into google see if anything comes back that mentions that email address it might be different for every person or it might be one they're using a lot in which case there's probably you know a reddit uh conversation going on somewhere yeah yeah oh yeah easy um yeah um i'm going to try to call them one more time here but you can't get a busy signal again you know you are no yeah let's see uh let's see how'd you do that that's a fast busy how'd you get that let me try that again that's weird see it's all these periods of silence that's what i wanted to avoid it's not actually ringing i was calling 802 uh 321-4225 let me see if you guys pick up but yeah um nothing yeah we're we're we're kind of out of luck here well give out the phone number now yeah let's do it yeah um it's uh 828-471-7490 that's 828-471-7490 apparently locates is looking somewhere in tellersville north carolina but no such luck i'm sure that these guys have moved on to a new number by now can you give the number one more time that is 828-471-7490 are you looking something up about them i guess it's yeah no i see um for some reason department of justice came up i don't know why um okay that's interesting so let's see uh that is curious do you see the same thing no i have i haven't i haven't googled the number yet let's see everyone can hear me type no doubt okay well um i think uh our listeners can have fun yeah investigating this and and seeing just uh just what this is all about but it's common it's very i i get emails like this all the time and i've never once felt compelled to call them or even do anything other than delete them yeah i mean it it's pretty bold how they how they will try to remote into your system it's it's interesting when you know it's going to come and then you see how they sneak it in that's that's what i was hoping we would be able to play around with a little bit tonight no you've already paid for it they're not going to try and do that you know what they're going to get from you if you call them or if you reach them in some manner uh is they will probably say okay uh um you know with the credit card we'll give you a credit just uh verify it for us that they don't want you know any kind of fraud to be taking place so obviously you want that 499 taken off your credit card give them the info and they'll take care of it but you have to prove that it's you all right and not some con artist yeah there's a there's a very strict kyc check that they um they'll put you through there they screw you but a lot of people do fall for this all the time otherwise they wouldn't be doing it it's um it's very very common and and unfortunate maybe we should have a scam of the week um feature where we can uh do something like this that would be a good idea yeah yeah i think there's enough scams to go around yeah it is fun to play with it well um i guess in a few weeks we can try again we'll we'll keep collecting these numbers and see see what see how they go and i guess people can always give us phone numbers but um you know would we really trust those guys in that chat well i think we should receive the emails ourselves but you know what we're just inviting inviting more spam to uh whatever you know there's enough spam for everybody there's enough uh con jobs for everybody go ahead gila um i did hear recently um about a a texting scam that's been picking up in the city um and the mayor is concerned that people are falling for it so if you get a text that says you have a two dollar and fifty cent parking ticket that's a scam and especially if you don't own a car don't fall for that that's a lot to keep track of but yeah it's it seems like good advice from the esteemed mayor many of us say it could never happen to me mayor eric adams said tuesday during his press conference at city hall you'd be surprised how we are looped into these various requests for personal information i can't with this man i just can't um don't hustle go slow yes the whole thing is that you'll be caught up in everything you know needing to be done quickly so slow down wait are we giving advice to the scammers now no people take your time don't because we could do that too we could tell people how to pull off a better scam you know uh we're creative thinkers yes i think the um yeah this this whole thing with the the city scam thing is really fascinating i had some uh friends working on that too and investigating how it was going down but uh i saw something weird the other day when i was walking around uh 28th street and like around fifth avenue and it was just a sticker on a pole yeah as there very often are stickers on poles and it was a red background with i believe it was white lettering of numbers on it and it just simply said text an interesting photo to the 646 number and that was it no other no other ad or anything was just text an interesting photo random number um uh and i i was curious about it but um not curious enough to to actually go back and record the um the number take a picture of it or something why can't it just be somebody who wants interesting pictures why does it have to be something evil but it it doesn't have to be something evil i imagine my guess though is that there's you get put on some kind of advertising list or some nonsense like that and then you're you know you have to opt out of this um we did have a suggestion for a suggestion box if people want to put in scam of the week suggestions we could have a box that help for people to pop those in that is a suggestion we have received in the chat thank you tim in connecticut and uh we just got read to filth um by our friend lex who asks what was the hack of the week that they did for two weeks on off the hook before they forgot about it again which ouch dude ouch well i don't remember that so yeah we had a theme song and everything yeah we did but it did fall off the wagon they're absolutely right there's only so much you can do that's true yeah we're we're always we're consistently inconsistent in that way so but i think if uh there is a cool enough hack out there that somebody sends us at oth at 2600.com um and lets us know about then i think uh i think we could see our way toward brushing the dust off of that old theme song and we're always happy to hear from our listeners and oh yeah um someone says i'll send some info at an email and maybe some more interesting ones so that would be great again oth at 2600.com let us hear from you we do love that um and maybe we can revitalize hack of the week when we're back on in three weeks or later scam of the week we do maybe not both in the same week but we can go one or the other and and vote on which ones people want we can also decide you know we can have an of the week of the week yeah this this quickly gets out of control as you can see all right that's going to do it for us tonight uh thanks everybody for holding on this long and uh we will see you again in three weeks and hopefully we will see you at hope all the info is at hope.net ticket sales until monday uh we'll have more announcements um coming out if you want to get the announcements uh be sure to join our mailing list the hope dash announce mailing list you can do that through the hope.net website and um this is going to be awesome it's going to be a lot of fun st john's university july 12th through 14th and yeah go ahead rob you had something else did i hear correctly from a little bird that if you uh bought your hope tickets you were going to start uh you're going to start getting those in your email uh this weekend yes by this weekend i'm told awesome yeah all right everybody see you next time good night