We're sorry. 
Your call cannot be completed as dialed. 
Please check the area code and number, then dial again. 
Or dial zero, and a BCTEL operator will be happy to help you. 
6-0-4-1-3-6. 
If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. 
If you need help, stay on the line, and a hacker will assist you shortly. 
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call. 
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
One diddle-le-bomb for the best, expect the worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
One diddle-le-bomb! 
The What? 
Okay. 
Thank you. 
Yes, you do. 
Good evening. 
Well, it's been an eventful day. 
It's been an eventful week. 
Boy, so much is going on. 
Let's see if we can try and get through it. 
It's a lot to talk about. 
Dollar sign hacked on Solana. 
On each account we hack, we publish the token address, so we pump it and make profits together. 
I'm not going to give the token address. 
It's too long and it doesn't make any sense. 
Similar messages have been reported on other accounts across the platform from notable accounts like People and ABS-CBN News. 
Who is that? 
I have no idea who that is. 
There has been so far nobody who has reported who may have been behind this seemingly national hacking or for what purpose the accounts were all hacked. 
Santa Cruz County changed their password and are in contact with their internal security department. 
Well, Santa Cruz, I can tell you, you probably don't have to change your password because this was something, it happened to us as well. 
It happened to 2600. 
Actually happened to our Twitter account. 
People started reporting, hey, you guys have been hacked. 
It turns out we weren't really hacked. 
What was hacked was a third-party app that apparently, I don't know if they're even still around. 
It's called TwitTimer, Twitimer. 
It's one of those apps where you can say something and send it later. 
And I know Twitter got really upset by those because they want to be able to do that themselves. 
I don't know if they put them out of business. 
I haven't seen any updates from this company in over a year. 
But that is where the, if there was a compromise, that's where the compromise was. 
Simply removing that app solves the problem. 
We were never locked out of our account and we did not change our password because we wanted to see what was going on. 
We wanted to learn from it. 
If there was somebody who had access, we wanted to have a little chat with them and see just what they learned. 
No panic, you know, no freaking out, just another fun day at the office. 
Alex, do you have some insight on this? 
A bit. 
I also realized earlier today, I was contacted by some colleagues at Human Rights First who were also subject to this particular vulnerability. 
Somebody had reached out to me and mentioned that it was actually the same exact message, Emmanuel, I think that was posted on the 2600 account about some kind of Solana pump and dump scheme. 
And it was exactly what I said. 
I said, this sounds like some kind of third party that perhaps has access to scheduled tweets or something like that. 
That's usually some kind of third party provider that has some kind of legacy API access to Twitter. 
And in fact, I don't know if our listeners will recall, but something very similar happened just ahead of the Super Bowl in 2020. 
So just before the world started to shut down, when I was the acting CISO over at the NFL, we had a very similar problem, whereby a massive amount of sports teams and sports related Twitter accounts were compromised. 
And it was some kind of third party back end service provider that provided tweet scheduling services through Twitter. 
It was still called Twitter at the time, so we don't even have to refer to it as X back then. 
But so it was kind of old wine in a new bottle, so to speak, today. 
Yeah, I guess that's one way of looking at it. 
But it confused some people. 
It was a bit of fun trying to figure out what it was. 
It took us 10 minutes and we moved on. 
People are panicking, I know, and talking to their security people and changing passwords and all that. 
But it's important to understand why something happened, not just keep it from happening again, but also understand what the actual weak point was. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, absolutely. 
And in this case, the weak point is a very common weak point for this sort of social media, which is all the little apps and tools you might use and grant access to your account. 
Some of them, some of which you may not use anymore, may not work anymore. 
You may have forgotten about those little back doors you opened up into your own account until something like this happens. 
And to big accounts like People Magazine and ABS-CBN News, which you mentioned, I'll just point out, that's the biggest media outlet in the Philippines. 
Oh, OK. 
I feel stupid now. 
Well, now we're all a little smarter. 
And, yeah, so it does behoove, folks, if you're using a social media site or anything to which you grant access to, you know, every single different app and tool that you use, go through that list every so often. 
This is what could happen. 
Get rid of the access for the ones. 
This is what could happen when you allow third parties access. 
You know, I remember asking at the time, is there a security threat? 
Everyone is, nah, don't worry about it. 
It's going to be fine. 
Yeah, you know, there always is some kind of possibility. 
Now, they didn't get access to the account. 
They weren't able to read anything, all the juicy bits of Twitter, private messages that we have going on. 
But it was a little embarrassing to be sending a message like that. 
But I think people knew that that wasn't us. 
OK, moving on to something a bit more serious. 
You know, I don't know if you guys remember. 
It was I think it was called the Weekly World News. 
You guys remember a publication called the Weekly World News? 
You do. 
You're smiling broadly, Rob. 
OK, so I guess you read it quite a bit. 
They had a famous headline. 
I don't know how long ago this is because they didn't believe in putting dates on their articles. 
I'm going to assume it was sometime in the 90s, maybe even the 80s. 
But it basically, in big letters, said hackers can turn your home computer into a bomb and blow your family to smithereens. 
Yeah, right now, computer hackers have the ability to turn your home computer into a bomb and blow you to kingdom come. 
And they can do it anonymously from thousands of miles away. 
Experts say the recent break-ins that paralyzed Amazon.com, buy.com. 
OK, this will date it, if you can figure out when that was, buy.com. 
And eBay, websites are lame, or I'm sorry, tame. 
It's hard to read this, tiny print. 
Tamed compared to what will happen in the near future. 
Well, it wasn't really the near future, but it was the future, and it did happen. 
It took a little while, and it wasn't a computer either. 
The last couple of days, it's been pagers, and it's been walkie-talkies. 
And it's happening in Lebanon, courtesy of Israel. 
And it opens up a whole new ugly chapter of what desktop warfare can be like. 
Imagine a device that you have in your pocket suddenly exploding, because at some point in the supply chain, somebody was able to get access to it and put an amount of explosives in there. 
And it's just, you know, it's kind of unfathomable to even think of this. 
To think of, well, if we have potential enemies in the future, this could easily happen to us. 
And I guess, you know, the Weekly World News, maybe they weren't so far off in their fears. 
It was the execution, I think, that they were kind of inaccurate about. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, the Weekly World News was great. 
I actually subscribed for a while. 
And this particular article, which scans of it have been going around for ages, but I had the issue that this article was in, and I had clipped it out and framed it and put it on the wall above my computer in, I think, like the Windows 98 era. 
And it was a lot of fun to look at. 
But what's important to note about the current situation in Lebanon is this was not somebody exploding the device as it was off the shelf. 
This was a supply chain attack in which devices were modified after the fact with actual explosives added into them before they got in the hands of the people who would own them. 
And it's a terrible thing that happened. 
It's, you know, it's an atrocity. 
It's hard to see what has happened to people as a result of this attack. 
But it is also not a danger of your sort of standard device that you might get off the shelf. 
Well, it depends what shelf you get it off of. 
I mean, seriously, if this kind of thing is, I can't even imagine. 
I mean, some of the media coverage of this has really astounded me. 
And people pretty much mocking those in Lebanon for not knowing that there were explosives in their phone. 
Do you guys know if there were explosives in your phone or pager or whatever it is? 
Who inspects these? 
I mean, I guess you should. 
I guess that's something that we need to always do. 
I would dispute that we need to emphasize that pagers are safe more than what actually occurred here. 
But that is a great point. 
Yeah, well, the thing is, this could happen at any point in that supply chain. 
Depends, you know, do we know where our electronic devices come from? 
We can theorize. 
But how many steps are there along the way? 
And what is it that can actually trigger them? 
It's it just it makes the world a lot more scary. 
It really does. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Yeah, I think regardless of how one feels about the the casualties that at issue here in Lebanon, I do think you have to tip your hat to the to the Israelis here and to Mossad for implementing what was an absolutely brilliant and elegant scheme. 
Let me let me just stop you right there, Alex. 
Brilliant is not a word I would use for the kind of terror that's been inflicted on civilians here. 
It blew up in supermarkets, in streets with families. 
If your phone, Alex, if your phone blew up right now, how many other people would be hurt? 
You know, it doesn't it doesn't just go for the guilty people. 
It goes for the people that are around whoever it is you're targeting. 
It was it was abominable. 
There's nothing to tip the hat for. 
I'm sorry. 
I disagree. 
I disagree entirely. 
I think that's disgusting to to to basically compliment the terrorist act like that. 
I don't think it was a terrorist attack. 
Well, what do you call when when when the populace is is is frightened to even go near a radio? 
All right. 
Everybody is is freaking out now over there. 
I want to I want to I want to give you something that I just I just pulled up here about mourners who are gathered in the village of Sarain today for the funeral of a nine year old girl who was killed by one of these damn things that you think are brilliant. 
Give me a break. 
I think that was a brilliant scheme. 
I absolutely do. 
I think it was very well orchestrated. 
Extraordinary. 
Well, you know what? 
There are smart people who who are cold blooded killers. 
So I guess we can find a middle ground. 
I would disagree with that as well. 
I would. 
I would absolutely disagree. 
You know, I didn't want to talk about the issue. 
I didn't want to talk about civilians. 
I want to talk about the technical aspects of this, how it was done. 
But I'm not going to sit back and just allow them to be complimented for killing innocent people. 
I'm sorry. 
That's just that's my line. 
You can keep talking over me if you want. 
I will. 
I will talk over anybody who espouses nonsense like that. 
That's insane. 
I don't think it's nonsense. 
I don't think it's nonsense. 
And I think you have to weigh this operation based on the evidence that these were pagers that were put into the hands of Hezbollah operatives. 
Yeah. 
You know what? 
If you understand the intelligence that was at issue here, then it's more likely than not that this was a highly targeted attack. 
This wasn't an attack on a discriminant civilian population. 
Yeah, but it was because because guess what? 
People who work for Hezbollah are in the streets. 
They have families. 
You are not targeting somebody. 
I don't care at all about Hezbollah. 
OK, I do not like them at all. 
I wish they were not around. 
So let's get that clear. 
OK, but they are human beings that exist with other human beings. 
And you can't just blow one up and think there's not going to be some kind of ramification for innocent people. 
And yeah, they are innocent people. 
They are innocent people. 
You might want to categorize everybody as an enemy, everybody as evil. 
And I'm sorry, that makes it very easy to wipe them out. 
Emmanuel, I would totally disagree with this, because I think if we're talking about innocent people here, we need to have a very hard look in the mirror because civilian casualties as a result of drone attacks from the United States have been a massive problem for the last several decades that we've been fighting the quote unquote war on terror. 
This, I think, with two casualties that happen to be children, which are absolutely terrible. 
I think two out of out of 10. 
I mean, that is a really terrible return there. 
If you kill eight so-called terrorists and two, two more are children. 
Come on, that is not— Apparently there will be 2,500 Hezbollah activists, though. 
But the other aspect of this that you have to consider in terms of the targeting and whether or not it was a proportional attack or a terrorist attack is how—what's the amount of explosives that were put into these individual pagers? 
Was it a small amount to make this targeted? 
And I think that was absolutely the case, because if it was a large amount of explosives, you would have seen a huge number of Hezbollah casualties, not just 10 or 2. 
And I think two children dying as a result of this is terrible. 
But relative to what— No, but— No, but— No, but— No, but— Look, is it worth killing eight so-called terrorists to kill two innocent children? 
I don't think so. 
I don't think so at all. 
But that's not the calculus. 
Well, it is for me, all right? 
And seeing the kind of terror that people— First of all, this isn't World War II, okay? 
So people keep comparing it to, well, what would the Nazis have done? 
You know, it's not the same thing. 
These are countries that aren't even—you know, they're firing missiles at each other, and it's really—it's stupid. 
It needs to stop. 
And a lot of innocent people are still dying. 
But in this particular case, I don't understand the logic, because what have you done? 
You've eliminated a small number of people. 
You've wounded a whole lot of other people that supposedly were standing nearby. 
You've created so many new enemies. 
I mean, you're trying to win something here? 
What you're basically doing is writing a very dark future that's not going to stop anytime soon. 
You know, I do not understand the mentality, and I think lunatics like Netanyahu are the true threat here. 
I really do. 
If you want to label anybody as a terrorist. 
Well, I think that this also sends a very clear message to the enemies of Israel that they're dealing with an adversary that has extraordinary operational capabilities here. 
And you have to think about how this happened. 
And I think we can talk about the technical aspects. 
Well, that's what I wanted to talk about. 
Well, let's talk about that. 
I can't just listen to somebody praising something like this. 
I'm sorry. 
That's one of my buttons. 
So maybe let's step around that, and we can have a conversation about the technical aspects. 
I think this was an attack that was proportional to the targeting. 
I think it was very, very, very well executed. 
Okay, would you say that if the shoe were on the other foot? 
If the shoe were on the other foot and all these Israeli soldiers were blown up, along with their families, too, or children that they were holding in their arms at the time, you would call that brilliant? 
Because I would not. 
I would call that disgusting. 
You would have to commend the technical capabilities of any adversary that's able to pull this off. 
Well, maybe in a few decades when we're all reminiscing over lemonade. 
But right now, when people are still suffering, you know, let's try and calm the situation down. 
Gila, I'm sorry. 
Go ahead. 
Ultimately, I think you're both right. 
Alex, I agree with you 100%. 
I think the technical pieces of this were, it was a brilliant operation. 
With that said, I think it was an incredibly stupidly timed decision. 
I think that now there are going to be forever wars running in a lot of different places, and a lot of people who are really angry because their penises got blown off. 
But, Emmanuel, I do take exception, and it's one of my buttons to refer to the inner circle of Hezbollah as alleged terrorists. 
I say alleged terrorists because you don't know who you blew up, you know? 
But, Hezbollah bought a ton of pagers to give to their people. 
These are their Hezbollah pagers, not their personal pagers. 
And maybe they didn't have a Hezbollah pager if they're not in Hezbollah. 
Okay, I don't know how Hezbollah pagers work. 
I honestly don't. 
But I do know that when I had a pager, it wasn't always on me. 
Sometimes I left it at home. 
You know, someone's kid could be playing with it. 
You don't know what's actually happening. 
There's no guarantee you're getting the right person. 
And that's why I have to agree that it's an incredibly stupid operation. 
I don't understand the logic behind this, except to spread terror and fear. 
Hence, my labeling of this as a terror act. 
Go ahead, Kyle. 
I just think that, like, if it's going to be this kind of party, you then have a lot of this going on in the supply chains. 
And then you do actually run the risk of thousands of something being ordered going to people who are completely unaffiliated through some shipping receiving error. 
I mean, that's the playing field. 
If we're going to do off-the-shelf lookalike, like, looking like one thing, you know, but actually just planting bombs, like, this is a different party. 
A different kind of party. 
Yeah, the rules have changed. 
Now this is our reality. 
And, you know, I don't know if I'll feel safe buying a new phone anymore, you know, unless I know everything about it, you know, or any kind of electronic device. 
And, you know, what happens? 
Cars can be blowing up. 
I mean, that's nothing new, obviously. 
But, you know, if you inject yourself into the supply chain, it really changes the landscape quite a bit. 
And I just don't, I don't think it was a good idea. 
I don't think it was a good idea to take that step. 
Yes, Alex. 
But let's talk about how it went down, though. 
I mean, there's some telecommunications aspects of this that are a bit of a mystery to me that I think would be really interesting to explore and also to explore with our listeners on overtime, too. 
Because my understanding of how this all came to happen simultaneously yesterday was at 3.30 p.m. 
local time in Lebanon, a page was sent to all of these pagers. 
And it appeared to come from Hezbollah leadership. 
So there's an issue right there that I think a lot of the media has not really been exploring, which is, number one, how did the Mossad or IDF know what all of these telephone numbers were to which they needed to send some kind of individual message? 
That's number one. 
Number two is how did they spoof a message coming from Hezbollah leadership? 
You know, were they embedded somehow? 
A couple of things. 
First of all, Israel seems to know an awful lot about people that they're about to bomb because they call them first. 
Many times they call people and say, hey, your apartment building is about to be blown up. 
You might want to leave. 
So they have phone. 
I don't know how this works. 
I don't know how they get the phone numbers. 
I don't know if they if they know people's names they're talking to. 
There's some kind of level of communication there that I don't quite get. 
So maybe it's something similar here where they have a roster of people. 
I don't know. 
And the other point was was was forging a source, the source of the message. 
My recollection of pages, and I don't know if pages have changed much over the years. 
I haven't used one in decades. 
You didn't know who was calling. 
They would be inputting their number to tell you who who to call back. 
I know alphanumeric pagers added the ability to send text messages, but I'm not sure if a number was was. 
I think you might have keyed in the number yourself because a lot of that was pre caller ID days. 
Yeah, that's a really good point. 
I hadn't thought about that because you're you have to self-identify the number. 
Right. 
And so or maybe there was some kind of code that made it seem like the message was coming from Hezbollah leadership. 
And that code was compromised and they use that. 
But it still raises the issue of how were they able to simultaneously ring so many pages at the same time? 
Well, going back to my days of phone freaking and pranking and things like that, it wasn't hard inside a particular system. 
You make one phone call, you enter a number, hit star, enter another number, hit star, each one of those numbers. 
And they usually abbreviate it three or four digits. 
That's another person. 
So you can page 100 people pretty quickly to the same number if you really want to annoy the person that you're pranking. 
But that's that might be one way. 
I don't know what their system is. 
I imagine that's trivial. 
You can write a script to do something like that. 
The real. 
Go ahead, Kyle. 
Well, it's like it's sort of inconsequential exactly how because it's, again, in the design and building phase of the device or otherwise rebuilt into something in transit. 
So like, yeah, how those mechanisms, there's when you have physical access, a whole lot more level, a greater level of control in that. 
Right. 
So, I mean, you can design anything if it's right in front of you. 
Yeah. 
I mean, I don't know. 
I don't know. 
I mean, it just speaks to how high a level it takes to like when you're designing something that's a bomb as well as like looks like a pager. 
You can do it. 
You can make it work whatever way is convenient for you. 
It's not some like trick. 
That's true. 
I mean, they had physical access to these devices, so they could program them to do all sorts of other additional features, I suppose. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Yeah, I think that that's a good point. 
This physical access to the device itself would enable them to potentially just copy down a number that might have been associated with them or some kind of ID and then look for that ID within the telecommunications network and then essentially and then paying it that way. 
But, Al, it's also broadcast frequency, right? 
Like the frequencies, the channels, like all that is like under their control. 
So they may not even have used a telephone network in the same way as you would paging someone who's just using a regular page. 
I'm pretty sure these are passive because today it was walkie-talkies. 
Who knows what it's going to be tomorrow? 
And, you know, something sent to that, whether it's a radio signal or a particular string of text, I think that's what triggered it. 
So it doesn't really matter what the number it was coming from was. 
What matters is that this particular series of letters or numbers was received and somehow the pager was programmed to blow up when that was received, which is an incredibly scary thing to think about because anybody could send anything to, you know, a phone number or a pager or a walkie-talkie. 
And just, you know, thinking of someone accidentally sending the wrong word and blowing somebody up, it's just, it's a nightmare. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, talking of walkie-talkies, there's breaking news coming down the pike now that another wave of attacks has happened. 
And this time they are walkie-talkies that they were carrying around, including at a funeral for victims of the pagers. 
Yeah, I was reading that in the Times actually early today. 
It was a panic at a funeral, you know, stampedes and things blowing up. 
It's hell. 
It's hell. 
I feel for those people. 
So from a technical standpoint, this is not just sending things to pagers now. 
This is, I guess, a similar sort of setup, but, you know, across different devices, different networks, different media. 
Well, and the worst part, actually, is not what blows up next. 
It's what you think might blow up next. 
It's the fear of not being able to do anything. 
And these aren't, you know, I don't want to get into it again, but these aren't fighters. 
These are people. 
These are, you know, everyday civilians. 
They're feeling this fear, and I just can't imagine what it is. 
What I want to talk about, though, is the supply chain. 
How? 
How do you get injected into that supply chain and not be detected or not have one of the manufacturers or shippers in collusion with you? 
And that's something I haven't seen very much coverage of. 
Alex, do you have a theory? 
Well, I do. 
I have a couple of theories about this. 
What we know from the media reporting on this was that there was a Taiwanese company located in Taipei called Gold Apollo that was supposedly designed and manufactured most of the pagers that had exploded in the hands of Hezbollah or pockets of Hezbollah yesterday. 
And that apparently Gold Apollo had then said, well, for all of those orders that went over to Lebanon, we didn't actually manufacture them. 
In fact, we sub-licensed to a separate company called BAC Consulting that was located in Budapest. 
And it was BAC Consulting that supposedly had shipped these pagers directly over to the Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon. 
So it seems like if Gold Apollo had nothing to do – pardon me there – if Gold Apollo had nothing to do with the – I'm so sorry. 
Careful. 
It might be Israel. 
That's one way of putting it, yes. 
So if Gold Apollo had nothing to do with the manufacture of these particular devices and was all up to BAC, then you know that the compromise of the devices happened at that point. 
So then there's two alternatives there. 
Did – was BAC Consulting in Hungary an ordinary, you know, innocent actor here, or were they in collusion with Israel in the Mossad? 
And if they were an innocent, ordinary actor, then perhaps somebody had then gained illegal entry to wherever their factories were or wherever they stored or warehoused these particular items. 
But that would be really hard. 
I think that it would take a lot of either signals or human intelligence to know that in order for pagers that were going to Hezbollah operatives were to be manufactured and made over in Hungary, and then to figure out where they were and then to get some kind of covert or illegal access that gave you – that allowed you to put these devices into your own hands, modify them, play with them for a little while, test them, and make sure that you could remotely detonate these devices in the hands of Hezbollah. 
I think that would take a lot. 
So I think a more reasonable theory about what happened is that BAC Consulting may have been some kind of proprietary or fictitious corporation that had sub-licensed for the manufacturing of these particular pagers directly from Gold Apollo and were operating basically through or at the direction of the Mossad. 
I think BAC Consulting may have been itself a proprietary corporation owned and operated by Israeli intelligence. 
That seems to be more likely the case. 
Now, I did a little bit of digging on this, too, if you want to hear about it. 
I looked at some of the domains associated with BAC Consulting today, and there aren't very many domains throughout the domain name system. 
There's really only about eight or so domains that have anything to do with BAC and then consulting associated with them. 
Some of them are kind of old, but some of them are really quite new, registered within the last year or so. 
So there's one, BACconsult.com, that was registered on 20th of January, 2024. 
There is BACconsultants.com, registered on the 28th of January, 2023. 
So pretty new stuff. 
But the domain that belonged to what I believe is the Hungarian corporation, BACconsulting, is BACconsulting.org. 
And if you look at how the DNS configuration of that domain is currently set up, the host country does appear to be Hungary, and there are mail servers that point to domdom.hu, which H-U is, of course, the country code top-level domain for Hungary. 
So this seems to be like this is the actual domain associated with the company that had created the pagers that ended up in Lebanon. 
Now, this domain doesn't resolve anymore. 
Apparently, yesterday, it resolved to some kind of login screen, and then that had been removed. 
But what's kind of fascinating about this is that BACconsulting.org itself as a domain seems like it was – if you look at the certificate transparency records for that domain name, meaning the issuance of things like SSL certificates or secure socket layer certificates that allow for an encrypted connection between the browser and the server, it looks like this domain actually had existed in around 2016 or so and then expired. 
And it was re-registered by somebody on October 4th of 2020. 
So that, to me, I think is quite consistent with the theory that this may be a proprietary corporation that somebody picked up the domain name for what used to be a real corporation in Hungary and it was operating it as if it was a continuation of that same corporation. 
I think that's a theory. 
That's a theory, but it means that there are people who used to be associated with that company that are certainly going to say something about how their name was used without their permission. 
But the other question I have is, how do you assure that a particular company that you might have taken over is going to be part of the transaction? 
I mean, if you're part of Hezbollah and you need to order 1,000 pagers, is there only one place that you can go to? 
And how does Israel inject itself into that particular supply chain so that it's guaranteed it's going to somehow go to their operatives? 
It remains to be seen. 
I don't know. 
I mean, maybe this is just something that intelligence agencies are really good at doing now, is kind of injecting themselves into supply chains like this and becoming what are essentially licensees of other people's technologies so that when the opportunity arises, you can do something like this, or you may be able to modify tech, not necessarily to explode, but perhaps to have some kind of inherent vulnerability that would allow you to have some sort of signals intelligence collection capability. 
I think that's much more likely here. 
I'm missing what is so astonishing about any of this. 
I mean, these are state-level security agencies. 
They're really well-heeled. 
They have plenty of resources for all of this. 
They do this for a lot of other industries and securing materials for armaments. 
What are we astounded by here? 
What I'm curious about is how you have a warring faction, all right? 
You have enemies. 
They need to order something from another country. 
How do you inject yourself into these places where you don't necessarily have good relations in the first place and succeed in... 
Well, through proxies or shells, as Alex laid out and was pontificating about. 
But, I mean, the way you build and procure things in a highly developed economy is you place orders as a company. 
You manufacture the items. 
You know, money. 
You know, that's how it works. 
You create your legal entity. 
You do it like any other business, although, you know, at an arm's length, as Alex pointed out. 
Right. 
So what we're trying to... 
So what's astonishing about this? 
They do this all the time. 
Nothing's astonishing. 
We're trying to figure out how it actually happened. 
Where is the fake company? 
Is there a fake company? 
Is, you know, who's in whose pocket, et cetera? 
Because it's, you know, it's interesting. 
And like you said, it's something that state actors are able to do easily. 
And you've got to realize that it's not just explosives. 
It's all kinds of spyware and all sorts of other things that are used to victimize people all over the world every day. 
So knowing how it works, knowing how it operates, knowing how these so-called trusted sources can be compromised, it's something I think we all need to know. 
Alex, did you have something else? 
Yeah, this is actually really fascinating. 
It's something I literally just learned a couple of seconds ago. 
So I was right about BACconsulting.org having been previously registered, and then it seems to have expired around in 2020 is what I think it was. 
Yeah, it looks like it might have changed registrars then. 
And here's something fascinating, though, is that prior to that, I won't list this person's name. 
Is it expired or has changed registrars? 
Those are two different things. 
No, I believe it expired because the current domain says that it was created on October 4th of 2020. 
Now, the domain had existed since 20—you know, the earliest historical Whois record that I can find relates to May 11th of 2010. 
So it expired right around 2020, and it seems like almost at the exact time that the domain expired, somebody else picked it up. 
But prior to it expiring, it was associated with a BAC consulting company that was actually located in the United States. 
It was located in Chicago. 
Well, that's interesting. 
Okay, because now you have a country that is very friendly with Israel that could have maybe helped out a bit. 
I think you need to take a trip to the Wayback Machine and check out the site in years past. 
Yeah, I haven't done that yet. 
I'm just doing a little digging in the DNS right now. 
But this is pretty fascinating. 
I mean, there's even phone numbers associated with the older Whois records because it was pre-GDPR when all of this stuff was just out there and not masked because of European privacy regulations. 
All right. 
Well, you know what? 
We have a lot to think about, a lot to talk about, a lot to argue about. 
Yeah, I love the implication that the U.S. 
is at fault. 
So let me get this straight, Alex. 
We're to blame ourselves and rally our representatives to maybe stop some of this? 
Yeah, I'm sure that'll play. 
Well, I don't know. 
I don't know. 
All I'm looking at is Whois record here. 
I'm not making any kind of implications or anything here, but it is weird. 
It is weird. 
Yeah. 
I'd like to move on to a different story if that's possible. 
I'm sure we'll have much more to talk about on this. 
And again, over time following on YouTube, go to our channel 2600 at 8 o'clock and you can call us and yell at us and do whatever else. 
Well, write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
But I just saw this today, actually. 
The Tor Network, we're all familiar with the Tor Network, it's considered the most important tool for moving anonymously on the Internet. 
Authorities have begun to infiltrate it in order to unmask criminals in at least one case. 
They have been successful. 
This is according to a website called Tagesschau.de. 
It's German. 
And this was translated from German, so it might be a little rough here. 
But law enforcement agencies in Germany have servers in the Tor Network monitored for months at a time in order to de-anonymize Tor users. 
Sites in the so-called darknet are particularly affected. 
This is shown by research by the ARD political magazine Panorama. 
And a word I can't pronounce at all. 
The data obtained during surveillance is processed using statistical methods in such a way that for anonymity—I'm sorry, this is how it—oh, Tor anonymity—is completely eliminated. 
Reporters from these two publications were able to view documents that show four successful measures in just one investigation. 
These are the first documented cases of these so-called timing analyses worldwide. 
Until now, this was considered virtually impossible. 
Has anyone else heard about this, by the way? 
But they can't hear you nodding or shaking your heads, folks. 
Yes or no? 
I had not, no. 
Nor have I. 
All right. 
Well, again, this is just something I stumbled upon today. 
But the story concludes by saying this is a heavy blow for the Tor Project. 
The revelations are a serious blow for the Tor Project. 
The nonprofit organization based in the USA, which aims to ensure the maintenance of the anonymization network, stated in response to a request that it had not been aware of any documented case of timing analysis. 
However, so far, there is nothing to indicate that the Tor browser has been attacked. 
Tor users can continue to use the Tor browser to surf the Internet safely and anonymously. 
Matthias Marx from the Chaos Communications Club warns—or Chaos Computer Club, is it?—warns of the consequences of the measure. 
This technical possibility exists not only for German law enforcement authorities to prosecute serious crimes, but equally for unjust regimes in the persecution of opposition members and whistleblowers. 
The Tor Project is therefore now under pressure to improve anonymity protection. 
And now I have to say, yeah, this could be considered a serious blow for the Tor Project, but I know they love a challenge, and this is a challenge, to make it better, to make it more impenetrable and more safe for people to mask their identities. 
Of course, you know, the article goes into how this draws some unsavory types, and that's always going to be the case. 
But you cannot give up anonymity or privacy just because there are some bad actors out there. 
I think that's very foolish, very naive to believe that. 
No thoughts? 
Yeah, we've got some thoughts there. 
I mean, I think you have to be really careful about, you know, assuming any type of activity like that is going to be private, because it's always possible for some kind of rogue actor to insert a nefarious node. 
And I think a colleague of mine was sharing some information with me yesterday about a similar attack vector on the cryptocurrency known as Monero that is known for, you know, not having its own form of public ledger and actually being a truly anonymized form of cryptocurrency, and that very similar attacks using rogue nodes to identify transaction-related data and sources was utilized. 
So, you know, if you don't control the entirety of the network, you know, you have to really be careful about the security of your data. 
And this is why cryptography and encryption is so important. 
Yeah, and use the network more. 
More traffic has always been good for them. 
And I'm sure there will be guidelines and advisory about, you know, if you want to use it and what you can reasonably expect. 
But, yeah, if you're going to do your real crime in, you know, beware. 
It's probably a bad idea to put all of your faith in one particular network. 
Yeah, but, I mean, again, it's not about crime. 
It's about being able to communicate. 
You know, whistleblowers are certainly number one on our concern list. 
But I think the answer here is to collaborate more, to make organizations like Tor Project stronger. 
And, yeah, I encourage people to visit torproject.org. 
Contribute if you can. 
Help out if you can. 
And fight for privacy. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Can we take one detour back to the BAC consulting issue again? 
Because I just want to clear something up. 
You have 30 seconds. 
Yeah, 30 seconds. 
So I did that U.S. 
company that was associated with the domain in the past doesn't seem to have anything to do whatsoever with electronics. 
It seems like it was a social worker that owned this. 
The domain expired in May of 2020, and then somebody had re-registered the domain in October of 2020. 
And that's the current registrant, whoever did that. 
A quote-unquote social worker. 
I got it. 
Yeah, I see what you're saying. 
Yeah, it was a consulting group that had to do with parenting and adolescence and human issues and taking a rosarian and humanistic approach to social, you know. 
No, no, no. 
You don't have to speak in code. 
I know exactly what you're saying. 
So, okay. 
They're good. 
They're really good. 
They are something else. 
Definitely nothing to do with this. 
All right. 
So, you know, other news to update something we were talking about a couple of weeks ago. 
The Brazil Supreme Court has unfrozen the assets of Elon Musk's Starlink and Twitter in a victory for him. 
No, not really, because first they took a whole lot of money out of it because that's what he owed for all the fines for refusing to follow the law. 
So, now it's unfrozen, but Twitter still doesn't work in Brazil, and it won't until he starts following the law. 
Isn't that unfair? 
All right. 
We have a couple of letters, and you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com if you have something to say. 
I wish I had realized the show was on 9-11 last week, so I could have sent this in advance. 
The lasting changes in security and politics were not that severe outside the U.S., but the day itself was a major event. 
I was in my early 20s working at an advertising agency in Finland when the attack happened. 
The first crash was about 3 p.m. 
our time, and the whole company stopped. 
I, being a turbo nerd, was always on IRC back then. 
In fact, I was on IRC that very day. 
I used a terminal-based IRC client that was the only real-time source for info before Twitter, and similar to Twitter, it was full of misinformation. 
There were reports of many things that didn't happen, but also lots of actual news before it made the real news. 
People gathered behind my desk, and one colleague said in jest, Everything is more reputable when it's green text on black background. 
I think that's true. 
For a while, it seemed like the attacks would keep coming around the U.S. 
Fortunately, it was only the handful that were realized, but still a horrible day. 
It is a day I always remember, even though I was halfway around the globe. 
I can only imagine how it felt for people in the U.S., and especially New York City. 
Thank you, Lobb, for that letter, and if you want to hear what it was like for people in New York City, you can listen to last week's show on the archive, or you can even go back to 2001, listen to the shows back then. 
Dear Emanuel and friends, I discovered off the hook on WBAI with a small FM shortwave radio while living in a tiny log cabin, no water or electricity, up in the Catskills in the mid to late 80s. 
You know, that's how you do it. 
That's what makes radio magical, that you can go into a log cabin in the middle of the Catskills with no power and hear something. 
I don't know how you heard us, but, you know, maybe we bounced off something. 
I appreciate all those decades of programming. 
I'm at a very rudimentary level of technical proficiency personally, and that doesn't matter at all. 
The reason I'm writing is for some pretty basic telephone advice. 
I have a Samsung Galaxy A54 5G phone bought in February 2023. 
I don't know why we need to know that. 
With service through Consumer Cellular, I'm traveling to France in three weeks. 
I'll need to access the Internet and make and receive lots of calls while there for 16 days. 
If it's not too big of an imposition, can you please explain to me what I would need? 
What SIM card will work for France? 
What's possible? 
What would you recommend? 
Mary James. 
Thank you for writing to us, Mary James. 
Gosh, you know what? 
It's been a long time since I've gotten a phone specifically for travel. 
It used to be you would swap out your SIM card and put it in a different phone that maybe you bought over there or maybe you just would use in Europe because they use different frequencies. 
But now it's pretty much every phone works pretty much most places. 
And depending on the plan you have, you might be able to get away with not doing anything. 
Kyle? 
There's also a move, I think, on some of the more modern devices towards electronic SIMs that do not require any kind of small chip. 
And you can store multiple versions of that in certain devices. 
I don't know all of this. 
I know that it has appeared in some publications. 
People have talked about it. 
And so word of that technology and its use is sort of spreading maybe a little slower than USB-C. 
But it's out there, you know. 
So there's different ways you can manage multiple types of prepaid and international SIMs on the new device. 
Alex, we travel a lot. 
Any suggestions? 
Yeah. 
I was thinking about this when the letter came in, and I'm one of these people that never really changes the SIM card when I'm overseas. 
I know I should for multiple reasons. 
Are your phone bills astronomical when you get back? 
No, not necessarily because most of the time there's some kind of agreement with the country in which I'm traveling whereby the calls aren't extraordinarily expensive. 
There's a certain amount of data that you get at the local high-speed rate. 
And then it drops you down to like a 3G type of situation where you might get something like 256K. 
You know, use Wi-Fi. 
Wherever you can use Wi-Fi. 
It's free. 
It's in most places, cafes, hotels. 
So definitely do that. 
Don't use your data. 
And I don't know Consumer Cellular, but check with your company. 
See if there are plans that could work for you overseas. 
Receiving calls, I think, you don't have to worry about that. 
But I could be wrong again because I haven't thought about this in a while. 
Just wait for the implant that connects to satellites. 
You'll be fine. 
Yeah, there you go. 
Out of time, OTH at 2600.com. 
Join us over on YouTube, channel 2600 for overtime. 
We'll see you next week. 
Good night. 
  And here we are on YouTube. 
Let's see, I think I'm okay here. 
Kyle, you make it okay? 
Okay. 
You're there? 
Okay. 
And Rob, are you there in Skypeland? 
I am there in Skypeland. 
Gila, you're here as well? 
I am indeed. 
And did we make it onto YouTube? 
We did make it to YouTube, and I think we're sounding good. 
And Alex, you're there as well. 
I'm here as an afterthought. 
You got it. 
Okay, great. 
Well, tough subject matter, but hey, we're all still talking to each other, so that's the important thing. 
And this is what life is all about, is occasional back and forth. 
We can take phone calls anytime, I guess, 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK. 
If anyone had any further things to say, whether it's about any of the stories we covered or advice to listeners or adventures that happened to them, please feel free to step forward. 
You know, I didn't even mention there was another quote-unquote assassination attempt. 
And the reason I air-quoted that was because there wasn't, I think the phone's ringing, there wasn't much of an attempt, really. 
You know, correct me if I'm wrong here, but you had a guy sitting in a golf course for 12 hours, and he didn't even fire a shot. 
He was spotted on the golf course or, you know, in the woods behind the golf course. 
And Secret Service, it's weird, Secret Service opened fire on him. 
That's what they say they did. 
I don't know, is that standard? 
If they see what looks like a gun somewhere, they just open fire, they don't investigate, they just... 
I mean, what if it's one of their guys? 
What if it's one of the local cops? 
I don't know. 
That's just one of the questions no one can seem to answer. 
Yeah, I have no theories about how the Secret Service does or doesn't make their decisions. 
Yeah, the whole thing was just kind of strange. 
I mean, supposedly, they didn't even know Trump was going to be there until a few hours beforehand. 
So this guy was there 12 hours beforehand. 
What was he doing? 
It was just weird. 
A lot of weirdness going on. 
No, nobody wants to talk about this. 
Okay. 
I don't know. 
If he'd been observing the patterns for a long time, maybe there was some kind of premeditation for many months. 
And that by his estimate or something, this was a good idea to just wait it out. 
And eventually, he might get an opportunity. 
It sure looked like he was staking out the former president. 
We assume that because he always thinks he's the most important person. 
But maybe it was somebody else he was after. 
Maybe it was after one of the Secret Service agents. 
I don't know. 
I'm just trying to think outside the box here. 
Yeah, there could be some waterfowl problem they're having at the golf course. 
Maybe it's that. 
Who knows? 
It's just an awful lot of weirdness going on here. 
But no, it's a serious issue. 
What's particularly serious, though, is the Orwellian way that it's being portrayed by the Republican Party as the Democrats are behind this, which is just so, so weird and crazy. 
Talking about rhetoric and all that. 
I don't want to get into it. 
It's not really the topic of the show. 
But it's happening. 
And we have a neo-Nazi rally going on in Nassau County right now. 
So I just saw that on TV. 
So I was just kind of distracted, I suppose. 
Yes, Rob, go ahead. 
We have a happier news story that was passed to us over Mastodon. 
And this was given to us by someone called Artificial with the comment, Emmanuel, where we choice. 
Oh, tell me. 
The power went out at Nassau Coliseum and the neo-Nazi rally is canceled. 
Not quite. 
But we had spoken on the main radio hour about AM radios disappearing from cars, new cars being made without AM radios. 
And today a House committee approved a bill requiring new cars to have AM radio. 
So it passed the committee on a roll call vote, now heads to the House for final approval, and things look good for it. 
What else are congresspeople going to yell at in their car as they're listening to some, you know, right-wing guy on the radio? 
Yeah. 
Absolutely. 
But story on the verge notes. 
They're pushing the bill out of a concern that the slow demise of AM radio could make it more difficult to broadcast emergency information during a natural disaster or other related events. 
And conservatives are also worrying about losing a lucrative platform for right-wing news and media. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
All right. 
Yeah. 
I mean, you know, most of the stuff I hear on AM radio, I can't stand, but I support AM radio continuing to exist because, you know, it's not the wave's fault. 
It's not the amplitude modulation. 
It's, you know, that deserves to exist. 
We'll find stations to put on the air for sure. 
Okay. 
We have a phone call, right? 
Yeah. 
All right. 
Good evening. 
You're on all for the cover time. 
Go ahead. 
Hi, Emmanuel. 
Calling from my cell phone hooked up by Bluetooth to a vehicle, to the truck, to the vehicle, to the cars. 
Okay. 
Was it tied to the outside or something? 
No, I have my cell phone, the usual cell phone that I call in on, but I have it Bluetooth, connected by Bluetooth to the car's radio. 
So, now I'm talking on the Bluetooth on the car's radio. 
Do you hear yourself through the speakers? 
I hear you through the speakers. 
I don't hear me. 
Okay. 
I hear you through the speakers. 
And there's no delay or anything? 
You're actually able to, and you can tell when I'm talking, so you don't continue to talk while I'm talking like you always do. 
Okay. 
No. 
All right. 
I'm on YouTube. 
I have my phone. 
Never know if he hears me. 
No, no, no. 
I know. 
I know. 
I'm not. 
No, because I'm not listening on YouTube. 
I'm just listening to you on the phone now. 
Okay. 
All right. 
You're listening to him on the phone. 
So, you don't even know if you're going out over YouTube. 
I don't, because I'm not on YouTube, because I'm on my phone. 
Wait a minute. 
I'm being on the phone at the same time. 
But you're able to hear the other people. 
Yeah, because that goes over the phone, right? 
So, you're able to hear if someone else says something, right? 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
Yeah. 
I mean, if Alex says something, or? 
He's not going to say anything. 
He's scared of you, I think. 
Okay. 
Let's see. 
What else? 
It's just you know too much, you know? 
And what you do with that knowledge is a concern to everybody. 
When I was in Long Island today, I went to the Smithhaven Mall. 
I've never been to the Smithhaven Mall. 
My goodness. 
Wow. 
Your life has not been complete until you've been to the Smithhaven Mall. 
My God. 
I don't think we ever talked about that before. 
I was getting a new all-in-one. 
But when I was at the Smithhaven Mall, you know what? 
I ordered some food there, like teriyaki food or whatever. 
They give me a fork to eat it, but it's like the size of a child's fork. 
It's like the size like a seven-year-old would use. 
Maybe they're trying to tell you something. 
Maybe you were acting like a child. 
Did you ever think of that? 
I said, can I have a bigger fork? 
They said, no, that's all we have. 
That's all we have. 
But then I went to the pizzeria next door. 
They gave me a regular-sized fork. 
Wait, for a pizza? 
That doesn't make any sense. 
Why would they give you a fork at all? 
No, no, no. 
Because they have a regular-sized plastic fork because they sell salads and stuff. 
So they gave me a fork at all. 
This is quite a story you're telling us. 
It just keeps getting better and better. 
But is there anything else that might have happened to you in the last week? 
Well, let's see. 
The side of silverware, well, plasticware, is getting small. 
Like, you ask for a spoon or a fork. 
It's like a spoon. 
Like, it's a child-sized spoon. 
I can understand them giving you less food. 
Why would they give you a smaller fork? 
What's enough for them? 
No, I know. 
But that's what they do. 
They give you less food. 
It's called shrinkflation. 
But I don't think that applies to actual utensils. 
Well, they give you, like, one place will give you a regular-sized plastic fork, plastic spoon, or whatever. 
And it'll be nice. 
But another place will just give you, like, spoons that are, like, half the size. 
And that don't, like, if you'd use a spoon for, like, ice cream, it wouldn't work. 
It would, like, break. 
Think of it as portion control. 
Yeah, maybe you're getting a little chunky there, you know, and they're just trying to send you a message. 
Well, when I went to get a straw for my drink, well, first of all, they don't give you water. 
They said, well, we have bottled water. 
So I went to the pizzeria and got a cup of water there. 
And I got a straw from, and it's a small straw. 
And it's paper. 
It's paper. 
It's not plastic. 
Are we going to hear about that? 
No, it's the plastic straw, but it's the straw that, like, breaks in the middle, like, sometimes when you, like, squeeze it. 
Do you realize, do you realize ever since you've walked into Smithhaven Mall, there is nothing you have not complained about? 
And that is the true spirit of any mall. 
I realize that. 
But, boy, why are we hearing about this? 
I just, wow. 
Let's see. 
I got an all-in-one computer. 
Because, you know, even though my computer is, like, four years old, I wanted to get an all-in-one. 
Because it looks like a computer terminal, you know, like. 
Okay. 
And what kind of computer did you get? 
HP. 
By the way, maybe you would know. 
What is the difference between an AMD 7, a Ryzen 7, and, like, you know, like a regular, like, Intel 7? 
Now, that sounds like a Skype question. 
The semiconductor? 
Oh, you're not on Skype. 
Okay, but answer the question anyway. 
Sure, go ahead. 
Why not? 
No, the rapid chip. 
Like, the processor chip? 
Yeah. 
That's the difference. 
Okay, but is one better? 
I mean, if I had to get... 
No, they're, like, comparable. 
They're competing. 
You know, they're, like, similar products from different manufacturers. 
Probably there's a couple numbers on certain key features that you might say one has more of this or less of that. 
That's something you've got to determine for whatever you're building or whatever your need is. 
But for the average user, it might not be a big deal. 
It's mostly just a price thing. 
Okay, so, because I got the AMD chip, because the computer I wanted had the AMD chip and not the Intel chip. 
I thought the Intel was better, but what about the i5? 
AMD's good at making chips, too. 
Okay, what about the i5 versus the i7? 
The i5 rather than the i7? 
Most consumers look at the costs, but if there are specific attributes that you're looking for performance-wise, that'd be up to you. 
And that's, like, you have to determine, like, hey, do I need more ability to do this or RAM or this or the other thing? 
But I hope you made the right choice, and it sounds like you got the right thing. 
Boy, Kyle, you're really good at this. 
I am. 
You could do a helpline for the show. 
I have a lot of skills. 
I know that's not what we focus on here. 
No, but this could be a whole other feature. 
This could be a whole other side to the show that we never did before. 
Kind of like what Personal Computer Show used to do, except, you know, not as grumpy. 
Get something that works for you, and the most important part is all the things you do with it. 
Wow. 
Write that down, people. 
I'm not going to use it for gaming or anything. 
I just want to use it for, like, watch YouTube videos, go online, use it for, like, WhatsApp calls. 
Like, I said, you have a WhatsApp computer app, you know, the desktop app for Windows. 
So I can, because the computer has a thing, a window, a camera, and a microphone, so I could go to WhatsApp calls or whatever. 
Sounds perfect. 
Sounds like you're getting, like, a dedicated terminal for all your, sort of, administrative tasks around the house or around your space. 
Right. 
And I didn't want to get the 32 gig RAM. 
I don't need that. 
I mean, 16 gig is fine. 
DDR4 it is. 
I don't know why it's not DDR5. 
Probably because it was chosen at the time of the design for this particular product, and that was available off the shelf as a component that the manufacturer could include in that design. 
And then by the time it got to you, it's sort of been succeeded by the DDR5 you mentioned. 
But it's still really capable memory or storage you have there. 
I hope that answers your question. 
You should be off to the races. 
It does. 
Yes. 
Okay. 
He said it does. 
And that legally gets us out of any further questions. 
I think we'll have a good night, and enjoy the Smithhaven Mall if you're still there, and enjoy the computer or Bluetooth and all the other technological advances you've made over the past week. 
Our phone number, 802-321-4225. 
Please call in with anything. 
Good advice, though, Kyle. 
Good advice. 
And, you know, it's always fun having a new computer, but it's always fun also having an old computer come back to life. 
I've been doing a bit of that, too. 
And it's a good thing to mess around with. 
Maintain your equipment, and it'll mostly be there for you. 
Mostly, yeah. 
We don't throw things out. 
I mean, we're not, you know, piling up all this garbage, but, you know, actually putting it to use. 
Well, I think e-waste is a problem that everyone deals with, but the waste streams are becoming less heavy, I would notice, I would observe, over the years. 
They don't weigh as much. 
There's not as much. 
So, in turn, that's, like, a lot less, like, things like what we used to have in screens, like mercury and heavy metals and stuff. 
But, yeah, like, the longer you can repurpose or just get some use out of a part of something, like, and if it's worth it for you to do whatever it takes, then you're keeping it out of the waste stream a little bit longer than maybe it was designed. 
Yeah. 
Well, you brought back to life a computer that we were using to encode videotapes, and we're doing that right now. 
In fact, it's on the background. 
It's been a couple of weeks now. 
The disk array is in the background. 
I was watching an interview with Ralph Nader by Larry King, I think the year 2000. 
So, we're encoding that in the background, and it's just intriguing to walk past and say, oh, wow, I remember that. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, and I want to get good at using some of the stuff the Internet Archive has been developing. 
And we've just been waiting to do this, and all the pieces were in place, and the machine kind of, I don't know, needed, like, a little bit of a sabbatical. 
It needed to collect enough dust to work better. 
Well, that's a healthy attitude, I think. 
We have another phone call, I believe, right? 
There is someone on the line. 
Okay, well, let's go to them. 
Good evening. 
You're on off-look over time. 
Go ahead. 
Good evening, gang. 
Tim in Connecticut. 
Hey. 
Oh, God damn. 
I had to call in once I heard something about resurrecting old machines. 
Hang on a second. 
We're trying to figure out this ear-pitching noise that just happened. 
Did I turn out too loud? 
Is that what I did? 
Well, you have a tendency to turn your head when you're talking, so you put your headphones right up. 
Oh, my God. 
That's the ultimate sin. 
All right. 
Well, I mean, it might be affecting it depending on how loud you're bringing something up. 
And then if you're monitoring it, trying to hear them better, it turns into this loop. 
All right. 
I won't turn my head. 
Try not to put your headphones up to the mic. 
I'll sit like a statue, all right? 
Good evening. 
Tim from Connecticut. 
How are you today? 
I'm doing well, and I hope everybody's doing well there. 
Well, I'm feeling kind of like a rock right now, but otherwise, no complaints. 
When you made mention of having spare and old equipment and repurposing it, I have a closet full of computers that are just simply old. 
They still work. 
They just got slow, or the hard drives were not as big. 
You know, tons of electronic stuff that, even though I try to repurpose them and gift them off to, like, a library or something like that, they're like, oh, this is too old. 
No, we'll just throw it out. 
You know. 
I'm sorry? 
You're repurposing old equipment? 
Say it again. 
I was trying to repurpose old equipment, and one of the things that I always stop on is the fact that, well, my personal information is on this hard drive. 
You know, even formatting it and trying to clear it out, then you try to keep it in a... 
You destroy it. 
You, like, drill holes in it or destroy it, shred it, whatever you have to do. 
Nobody wants it. 
That's a risk you have to take. 
Like, you can run different software to wipe it. 
You can degauze it if you have a very large magnet. 
But it's all about your sort of, like, comfort level. 
And, I mean, if you repurpose a drive and you're going to use it yourself, then you don't really need to worry about that as much. 
But it's a case-by-case situation. 
What was going on with this drive? 
Like, what was on it ever? 
And then where is it headed? 
And in some cases, yeah, you have to, like, shred it or destroy it because people just really don't want to have to deal with the liability. 
Yeah, the local transfer stations where you can dump off a lot of your equipment, e-waste, batteries, et cetera, should have something that can shred a laptop. 
Yeah, I don't know how many. 
I haven't seen hard drive shredders and that kind of, like, that ingenuity. 
But maybe they have it in some municipalities. 
It would be great if somebody told us they'd seen one. 
But e-waste and the way they sort it is actually getting a lot more sophisticated because there's so many different things and variety and categories of stuff. 
But do get things to the right places. 
It's worth it in every case. 
Like I said, we've made a couple trips. 
It's always really inconvenient in some places, you know, the lines and the hassle. 
But getting it to a place that's actually going to dispose of it, whether it's a chemical or whether it contains chemicals, just do it for your own peace of mind and your own best effort. 
I know there's a lot of, like, variation in the results with how stuff is actually recycled. 
But by doing that, you're sort of clearing your space out and also moving on to better technologies and then allowing them to get some use somewhere as some sort of material. 
Alex? 
You would think that somebody would want a working computer for free. 
You know, but most of my stuff, I think the best that I have on my older machines is Windows 7. 
And that's ancient compared to today. 
Tim, Rebel would like to know if you want his old computer. 
No, thank you. 
I have many. 
Alex? 
But I appreciate the offer. 
Is it safe to ask about the pagers? 
Alex, first of all, you're muted again. 
So, or are you moving your mouth without making noise? 
Well, it doesn't appear that way. 
So, I think something happened with his configuration. 
Why are you troubleshooting it from here? 
Go ahead and ask your question, caller. 
Well, I was asking if it's okay to speak about the pagers that went off. 
Well, let's let Alex say something first, if he can do that. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
You can hear me all right now, presumably, right? 
Now we can, yes. 
Okay, good. 
Yeah, I just swear the setting changed on me. 
In any event, what I would suggest to Tim is, I don't know if he's checked it out, but depending upon the age of these particular machines at issue, I mean, and they're getting older and older every day. 
Have you looked into the Vintage Computer Federation and whether they would accept something like this? 
I mean, I know you're concerned about your personal data being on there, but if you've got, you know, a 30 megabyte hard drive or something, or, you know, in all likelihood, they maybe have something there that they could swap in. 
But, you know, you could take your hard drive out and just hand over the desktop together with the motherboard and, you know, VGA card and whatever. 
And these things, I think, are going to become, you know, really important for the next generation to just see and feel and hold because they are becoming rarer and rarer. 
Interesting, and I'm sorry, that's Vintage Computer. 
Yeah, there's something called the Vintage Computer Federation, and I think it used to be called something else, like the, you know, Retro Computing Museum or something. 
But they are over in Wall Township in New Jersey on Marconi Road, right? 
And I think they're part of the InfoAge Science and History Museum, which is a really cool museum. 
Yeah, Vintage Computer Federation comes up very well in Google. 
Yeah, there you go. 
It's vcfed.org. 
Oh, very cool. 
I went there for some retro computing festival thing that they had a couple of years ago with Bernie S., of all people. 
And I think, actually, it was the last time I saw him. 
But we had a really good time there, and my son was, I don't know, five or six years old at the time. 
And he just had an absolute blast. 
And so I think supporting these types of places is so important, if you can do it, Tim. 
And let me move on to your question about the Vintage. 
You're doing nothing in my closet. 
You guys got to hear each other. 
Go ahead, Tim. 
You were talking. 
I said they're doing nothing in my closet, so giving them away is not a problem. 
Exactly. 
Yeah. 
So what was your question about the pagers? 
Just that not from a humanity point of view, but, I mean, as a military point of view, where you can take a set of pagers given to a particular organization for use later on, I just don't know of anybody that could pre-plan that. 
That was like, wow. 
I mean, granted, there were other people that were involved, but, I mean, even when there's indiscriminate bombing in some places, there's always innocence. 
But, I mean, pagers, you know, you took down so many of your enemies, if you didn't maim them or kill them, it was just a wow. 
And who could have seen that coming? 
I heard the same thing said on 9-11. 
You know. 
I think that's appreciably different, though. 
I mean, 9-11 wasn't a targeted attack of people holding electronic devices that related to a specific terror organization. 
I mean. 
Right. 
You know what I mean? 
No, it was the whole culture that they wanted to obliterate, and they did a lot more damage, too. 
Well, Hezbollah are not nice people. 
I never said they were. 
I never said they were. 
I mean, they're terrifyingly bad in many ways. 
Yeah, absolutely. 
I agree. 
Really, really bad. 
Yeah, bad people. 
Yeah. 
So, if you've got a Hezbollah pager on you and you're part of that organization, to a certain extent, I think you have to assume a little bit of risk that goes along with being an operative in a terrorist organization. 
Well, let me tell you about one of those people. 
Well, Fatima, I don't know her last name here. 
She was in the kitchen Tuesday when a pager on the table began to beep, and her aunt said she picked up the device to bring it to her father and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face, leaving the room covered in blood. 
She should have done better. 
They said that the way that the pager worked was to first beep, then vibrate, and then when you press the button to check the display, that's what set off the detonation. 
So, you're saying Fatima checked the display. 
Or at some point jostled it or bumped it against her leg. 
Yeah, kids, if your dad's involved in a shady organization, don't touch his stuff. 
Don't press buttons. 
For God's sake. 
What's wrong with you? 
This is something that the father brought into the house. 
Yeah, so that means his kid gets killed. 
I get it. 
I understand the logic. 
No, not necessarily that. 
If you are going to be a father in a household and a member of a foreign terrorist organization, you are bringing in a very large amount of risk to the rest of your family. 
It's not just about you at that particular point. 
If you choose to become part of Hezbollah and live at home with your kids, you are bringing a great deal of risk with respect to their safety. 
I'm sorry. 
That's how it works. 
Can you grasp that other people might not feel exactly the same way and might say that if you are a Zionist, you are evil, and therefore everyone around you must die? 
And that's a horrible thing to say. 
I don't agree with it. 
I don't agree with this either, though. 
I don't agree. 
Innocent people should ever be the victims here. 
That's all I'm saying. 
I don't know why that's controversial. 
I don't think it's controversial, but I don't see how it's realistic. 
Well, it's true. 
I didn't say it was realistic either. 
I can still condemn things that appear to be inevitable, and I think this is something that should be condemned. 
I agree. 
All right. 
Look, you know, whether you're dealing drugs and you happen to have the revolver in the house and your kid finds it. 
Okay, good example. 
So if a cop bursts in and mows everybody down in the room because you were a drug dealer, he's going to get docked in pay for killing a kid. 
That's just my impression. 
If he announces first. 
I don't know about the announcements first. 
I think that's not mandatory. 
No, you're probably right. 
They will do their investigation and find out that they did nothing wrong. 
I don't think the who could have thought thing that you mentioned, I think that a lot of this stuff has been imagined and thought of. 
But I'm not as wowed by that. 
I think that it's implemented that is the difference than this is some sort of novel thing no one's ever thought of doing or could pull off. 
So I think that that's a little murky for me. 
Right. 
Yeah. 
How could you grab 500 or 600 pagers and modify them all and allow them to work without a specific sequence to set them off? 
Yeah. 
I mean, you know, if you need the praise, yeah, that was ingenious that they were able to pull that off. 
But, you know, not everything ingenious is good. 
No, I agree. 
Yeah. 
Just because you can do it doesn't mean you ought to. 
Okay. 
So, I mean, yeah, you can say that, but it's, it's, you can build anything. 
Now that you have done it, now that you have done it, you can't undo it. 
And it's going to be the reality moving forward. 
I just wonder, was that worth it? 
You know, not to mention all the attempts to calm down the situation everywhere around that region. 
That's all blown to hell now. 
Was that worth it? 
That's all been shot away. 
So I think, you know, there, there, there are evil people on both sides that do not want peace and will do whatever they can to make sure that war is inevitable. 
And they're going to get their wish. 
They are going to get their wish. 
And it's a damn shame. 
And I, I, you know, my heart goes out to the, the people in all the countries there that are victims of this. 
And I hope they're able to do whatever they can to tear down the tyrants that happen to be leading their particular nation. 
Yeah. 
My condolences. 
I'll leave it at that. 
Right. 
All righty. 
I'll get off the lines. 
Let other people in. 
Okay. 
Thanks guys. 
Have a great time. 
Good talk. 
Good. 
Good hearing from you. 
Go team. 
I'm keeping my mic down because I seem to cause feedback whenever, like physical feedback and mental feedback. 
And I, I see Gila over there with her hand up. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
I'm going to turn myself down. 
I, I do have something to add that has nothing to do with pagers or geopolitics. 
Um, so our, our listener Lex, our, our good friend Lex, who writes, who is an active on the chat, uh, suggests that we have a new YouTube background image and that it counts the number of days since Alex has not been as a number of days since Alex was muted. 
Uh, so currently, obviously the count is at zero and it would be, you know, like days without an OSHA violation on a work site or something. 
We're not, we're not going to, we're not going to need more than one digit for that. 
That's what I'm saying. 
So, you know, instead of the van, we could maybe do like one of those flippy paper signs. 
That, that would be good. 
You know, what would be really good to have on the van though is the phone number that people can call. 
I think this was a suggestion from somebody. 
I'm not going to drive around town with a phone number that people are going to call and harass us. 
I mean, I'm talking about in the image of the van and the YouTube image of the van that we drive around on a regular basis. 
You want that to have a phone number on it. 
This is all to, to superimpose images on top of it. 
I would be lying. 
That would be wrong. 
I get what you're saying. 
This alt is like this pre-planning stuff. 
This is like talking about, we should have stapled the articles before the show started. 
Come on. 
I did staple the article before the show started. 
This is great. 
We'll, we'll write these ideas down, but we can do this. 
It takes time, you know. 
Thank you for recognizing that. 
Build the graphics and stuff. 
It's been noted. 
We'll, we'll take that under consideration. 
Staple my finger by accident. 
Yeah, Gila, go ahead. 
Also, one thing from the chat that happened 14 minutes ago and actually made me laugh out loud. 
Um, it was when you had the squealy feedback on your mic and a listener named Echo said, and I quote, cyber audio attack sounded like the brown note. 
I shat my pants. 
Thanks. 
E. 
Um, I was deeply entertained. 
I don't want to be the only one who knows about this. 
So there you go. 
Well, thanks for sharing that. 
And, uh, now we all know. 
Don't look at me. 
I'm sorry about your AirPods or whatever the heck you stick in your ears just to, to, to listen to this blather. 
We are doing the best we can. 
Just turn the volume down. 
Sometimes things, uh, they get a little wild over on the board. 
Turn the volume down. 
Lots of times I'm not loud enough. 
That's the problem. 
That's how loud you're going with? 
You told me to turn the volume down. 
This is down. 
Okay. 
That's too far. 
Is this close enough? 
Okay, but go easy. 
I don't know what you want. 
And don't put your headphones on the microphone. 
Oh my God. 
What am I supposed to do? 
And now I'm too high. 
Can you bring me down? 
I think, now this crazy board we have, I think if I bring the telephone up, we get better. 
Yeah, see, we change. 
Well, we, we get mixed into the telephone audio. 
But we sound better when the telephone is up a little bit, is what I'm saying. 
And that's, that's why I have trouble with it because I'm raising the phone and turning it down. 
Because if I don't turn it down, Rebel will talk all the time and we won't ever get a word in. 
What's the phone number? 
And I digress. 
This is all stuff we can talk about. 
Why don't you look at the van? 
Apparently the phone number's on the van now. 
And spray paint. 
Thank you very much, Alex. 
Uh, 802. 
What was that? 
A three? 
Three, two, one. 
Four, two, two, five. 
I'm going to go take a break. 
I'll be back then. 
Yeah, yeah. 
Get one for me too. 
802-321-HACK. 
801-3... 
802-321-4225. 
Oh my, I, I really, I got to get some air. 
Okay, Skype line, show's yours until we get a phone call. 
Yeah, very, very good. 
So, going back to the whole, the whole pager thing. 
You're just trying to get me to come back. 
Yeah, yeah. 
And one of the issues that, that Tim brought up, I think that when you assess this type of thing, like any kind of, um, operation, I think you have to think about some, a philosophical doctrine known as the, the doctrine of double effect. 
And the doctrine of double effect says that there is a difference between an intentional act and an intentional consequence and, and intentional act with an unintentional consequence. 
So, if we think back to, let's say, the firebombing, uh, the allied firebombing of the city of Dresden and World War II. 
Again, it's not World War II. 
People keep comparing this to World War II. 
Compare it to, uh, you know... 
It's three. 
I'm comparing nothing to, to World War II right now. 
You literally are comparing it to World War II. 
You just said World War II. 
Thank you. 
World War II. 
I'm just using World War II as an example. 
Compared to Grenada. 
Isn't that the exact same thing? 
You know what? 
Let him go. 
Just let him go. 
Because, because my, my ears are driving me crazy here. 
I'm using the firebombing of Dresden during World War II as an illustration of the doctrine of double effect here. 
Okay. 
So that it's, so not, not as a comparison point with, um, Lebanon. 
So the, the firebombing of Dresden now, how we can gauge this morally is to assess whether the, the consequence was intentional or unintentional, right? 
So if you have, if you decided you're going to firebomb Dresden and you want to do it because, um, there, you, you, uh, you want to punish the civilian population there, right? 
You want to attack the civilians. 
You want to show the Germans that, um, they can't screw with the allies and they're going to all suffer from what they did for all the other populations. 
And, you know, you know, it happens to also be an industrial base, but you also want to punish the civilian population there by inflicting a massive number of casualties on it. 
That's appreciably different from a moral culpability perspective of also bombing the same place because it's an industrial target that can knock out the manufacturing heart of the Nazis with, and with the full knowledge that there's going to be civilian casualties. 
So let's say, you know, there's going to be something like 25,000 civilian casualties and you do it, but it's an unintentional consequence of your action. 
The moral culpability for that particular choice is less. 
Now, if you apply that same doctrine to what happened in, uh, Lebanon yesterday and today, the, the, those two casualties of children, which were absolutely horrible, but they were certainly not intentional. 
These were the unintentional consequences of, I think, extraordinarily well thought out and highly targeted operation. 
As somebody mentioned in the chat as well, at the outset of the chat today, uh, you know, this is a hell of a lot more targeted than dropping 500 pound bombs everywhere. 
And 500 pounds, I think it's probably a tiny bomb these days, right? 
I mean, they're, they're probably a hell of a lot, uh, greater than that. 
So I do think you have to look at the, the targeting of this as being solely with respect to people who are carrying pagers given to them from a terrorist organization, Hezbollah. 
You know, this is, this is highly targeted. 
And those, those two casualties of children were really horrible, but I think, um, I, I hate to say it, but you know, that's not a terrible casualty rate for this massive operation that had a really outsized impact. 
Okay. 
Well, let me just, um, say in all due respect, nice try. 
So, you know, I could, I could, I could look at, um, somebody who blows something up in a crowd and kills a whole bunch of people and have that person say, I didn't mean to kill any children. 
They're unintended. 
What the hell do you think is going to happen when you blow up something in someone's possession, who's in a house or in an office or in a mall or in a shopping center, you know, this kind of thing is inevitable. 
And you have to be some kind of moron not to realize you're going to hurt innocent people. 
So no, I don't accept that it is intentional. 
All right. 
And, and, and, and one other point, yeah, you know, um, uh, targeting the, uh, the pagers, you know, it's, uh, it's a tactic that gets the effect of, um, of cutting off their communications. 
But, you know, if you have that kind of ability, if you have those kinds of resources, where you can inject yourself into the, into the, um, uh, you know, the supply chain and all that, you could have just made them all stop working and had the same effect on their communications without killing anybody. 
But that's not what they're interested in, is it? 
They, they, they, they want the blood. 
They want the mayhem. 
They want the panic. 
They want the terror. 
They want these kids to grow up traumatized, but what they're going to get is enemies for life a lot more than they had yesterday. 
And that's just, it's stupid. 
It's stupid. 
It's bad military. 
I'm not a military person, but I know bad military tactics when I see it. 
And, um, this is either horrendously bad or it's people who don't care at all about who they hurt or who they kill. 
And I'm not going to say which one I think it is. 
I'm not sure which one it is, but evidence is piling up. 
Kyle, you had something? 
Well, I, I just think, um, I'm hearing in this, like the, I, the, um, idea like guilt by association and this sort of pre-crime too, because in the past it was like, okay, communications were intercepted and you're a group of people planning some action that will itself. 
And we're going to disrupt that. 
This is simply like, like is owning a pager that is of a organization like Hezbollah necessarily a crime worthy of death with these casualties. 
And I think that choice you, you kind of pointed out to, um, include the, uh, unintended consequences of this is, it is a part of the calculation. 
And it was not, it didn't waive. 
It was not weighted very highly. 
Clearly. 
The logic isn't that having a pager is a crime. 
The logic is that being part of Hezbollah is the crime. 
And that's, you know, it's well and good to say that they are a terrorist organization. 
They've been labeled as such. 
Um, but not everybody in Hezbollah is, is, uh, you know, a gun carrying militant. 
There are people who are in the political sphere of it. 
There are people who are, you know, building things, you know, and it's what, what choice do you have growing up in that environment? 
You're going to be pulled into, you know, in our country, it's gangs in other countries. 
It's, it's horrible organizations. 
And, you know, maybe there are factions within that are trying to topple what it's become. 
I don't know. 
We'll never know, but it's easy when you label everybody as being worthy of death because they have this affiliation and that is how you dehumanize and that is how you sleep at night and, and, and kill a whole lot of people. 
I don't know. 
You know, I don't have the list of people. 
I can't judge, you know, if it was right or wrong or, or, you know, how many innocent people there were. 
I just know this, this way of thinking, it, it, it bugs me. 
It really bothers me a lot. 
Uh, but there, I mean, they themselves are essentially a death cult here. 
I mean, I, I, I don't think that we can say, you know, there, there may be some willingness on the inside. 
I do think you have to paint Hezbollah with a really nasty brush. 
Uh, I absolutely do. 
But I, I also think there's a big difference between a consequence that's morally, that's merely foreseeable and then, uh, and another one that's actually intentional. 
And I think you're conflating the two of them right now that simply because something was foreseeable, you think it was intentional. 
Well, this was, it sort of serves the purpose of like, if you affiliate yourself with this group, like you were kind of, uh, alluded, uh, looking at and, and, and applying earlier, like that, you know, you're, you're going to have to look over your shoulder if you buy a pager or do anything, you know, even, and then, and that isn't itself like a terrorist act. 
You're just joining up or I don't know what their levels or what, who are these people that, why they had pagers, they clearly weren't doctors, right? 
Like, but, but still like, I can tell you why they had, because, um, it's, it's, it's a weird story. 
They basically, uh, assumed that they'd be spied on if they had phones. 
So they told everybody, get rid of your phones. 
We're going to use pagers instead. 
I mean, it's ironic as hell. 
No question about that. 
Um, but the pagers weren't part of a plot of 2,800 people doing some action, some particular thing, just their, uh, uh, their day to day was enough of a threat to warrant their death. 
It's who knows what the pagers are being used for, maybe to organize something, maybe just to gather for a meeting, but I don't know, but it was, it wasn't 2,800 people because many of those people were civilians that didn't have pagers, but sort of the, the warning, I think the message, I'm thinking, what is the message? 
I mean, think of it, it's not, that's been pointed out. 
It's been said only a couple of hundred and several hundred pagers were targeted and nearly 3000 people were injured and, uh, over 200 of those critically. 
So that's, yeah, I don't know. 
But the interest isn't like, like, like, I guess, preventing or, or, uh, inter, interceding and kind of disrupting certain actions. 
It's just basically besting each side, right? 
Well, it's disrupting communication, but like I said, you could do that in many ways. 
You don't have to do it in this bloody way. 
And now, now that it's been done, the, the, uh, the landscape has changed and we will never be in a world again where this kind of thing is not something that we have to worry about. 
I mean, you know, we're constantly at loggerheads now with China. 
We get most of our electronics from China. 
So what happens when we really pissed them off? 
Do we all have to worry about something blowing up in the future? 
And it could be anything from a washing machine to a car. 
You know, you don't know anymore. 
It's, it's just a step that I think we're really going to regret, you know, taking down this road. 
I don't know. 
Do we really want to keep talking about this? 
Cause I just want to take them out. 
There's no phone call. 
There is a phone call. 
I'm sorry. 
There is a phone call. 
802-321-4225. 
Is, is there a phone call? 
Yes. 
Oh, this one's been on hold this whole time. 
Sorry about that. 
We're so sorry. 
Caller, go ahead. 
You're on overtime. 
Is that me? 
Hi. 
It is. 
You guys, I'm from Suffolk County, but I'm wondering why we got all these guys from Suffolk County calling and I don't have a complaint with that because I'm from Suffolk County. 
Or we're talking Nassau and just a worldwide web energy. 
Your, your hope, your hope conference, your hope energies, your, your whole, um, entity of your off the hook, off the hook from day one. 
This is bigger. 
So we got a, something bigger. 
And, and I know you get calls and emails and dah, dah, dah, dah. 
I want to hook up with you guys. 
I can. 
I have your emails. 
I could just roll things by you that you take. 
I know. 
I see that. 
I know. 
I grew up with that across the harbor. 
I know that. 
I knew this. 
Cool. 
Uh, I know that property by the pool on Jericho. 
That's back to Suffolk, but let's go bigger. 
Um, years ago, I'm, I'm German and I, I don't, you know, have, I, if I believe in a God, it doesn't have anything to do with my nationality. 
But I saw a film one time when I was young called, um, Queens Bench Seven with Anthony Hopkins. 
So you can find it. 
It's about the Holocaust. 
And, and it reminded me, cause I wasn't on the right. 
It reminded me that this is a problem. 
This was a problem. 
The things that were done and, uh, this shouldn't be. 
So how do we not learn? 
We were supposed to all learn. 
I do not think we were all supposed to all follow exactly what some people from that were victims from one of the religions or nationalities, cause there were texts, there were gypsies, dah, dah, dah, dah. 
It's not all about them, but moving on, we need to be further. 
We need to, when a guy gets back in office, gets in office, um, we need to put him in check. 
This Bibi Netanyahu, I cannot accept that from my heart. 
And I have nothing against the nation and the Israel of God. 
I'm an Israelite because I was raised as a Christian and I realized it's all the above. 
It's not about me. 
It's not about them. 
It's not about the Muslim. 
It's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 
And the Muslim is a Christian because they believe in Jesus. 
Wake up. 
And this hatred and this, so what's the story? 
Well, I got some, a couple old tired machines and I make them work. 
Um, by the way, I do that, uh, duplicate. 
I, I downloaded the CCleaner from my past, downloaded CCleaner last night and got rid of a whole bunch of copies of crap I don't need on my laptop and it's freer. 
I'm just moving on. 
We, we can't, we can't do like this. 
We can move forward and have just great, great things going on. 
Um, it's not the, it's not your website. 
It's not you. 
I'm not getting down on you guys. 
Frankly, there's a lawyer on your team. 
I'd like to just to talk to, um, not to talk and use a canoe with. 
I'd like to talk to him about possibly hiring him for representation. 
It's tricky to find exactly who and where he is because he was several different, was with several different companies. 
I used to use my first name in my title with my town. 
I'm going to change it to my first initial B from Brentwood. 
If you want to verify who I am, ask a guy named Ed and here's a code. 
His mother drove a Subaru. 
He was driving his mother's Subaru. 
I know, you know who that is. 
I know he uses a different name online and I know he's a long time member of your show and crew and you pretty much grew up with him. 
I love that guy. 
But I don't see or hear him anymore. 
Can't we get to the next levels? 
You remember the tricycles we couldn't get on because they're so little so they put wooden blocks on the pedals? 
Is that where we are? 
We might be. 
We might be. 
Well, um, let me just tell you, um, write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
That's the best way to reach any of us and, uh, giving us a lot to think about and, uh, well said, I think. 
One more. 
My 411, I'm just not blocks away, but I'm somewhat near, let's say that telephone museum in Suffolk County. 
That's all you need to know. 
What about the telephone museum in Suffolk County? 
Um, um, a couple miles away from it. 
Okay. 
Okay. 
Well, thanks for calling. 
Ed has been to my address, so you can verify me and it's all good. 
And his energy that shared with my energy was positive. 
So there was nothing negative. 
So it's all good. 
All right, guys. 
Thanks. 
Thanks for the call. 
And thanks for the thoughts. 
For years, I had no clue you had anything to do with hockey, but oh my God, I've been playing hockey all my life. 
Yeah. 
The secret's out now. 
Um, okay. 
Thanks again for the call and we're going to open up the phone lines. 
Uh, 802-321-4225 is our telephone number there. 
Um, yeah. 
So, um, I guess we have time for maybe one more, maybe two more, maybe. 
Um, yeah, I'm ready. 
Just dialogue between ourselves. 
Skype plan people, you all there? 
Yeah. 
Most of us are here. 
Oh yeah. 
Good. 
I adjusted some of the levels, so. 
All right. 
Is it any easier to work with? 
I think we're getting less, uh, that high pitch stuff as a result. 
Well, I've been keeping my, my volume down. 
People don't tend to want to hear me talk in the first place, which, you know, it's, everyone's happy. 
What was that a phone call? 
All right. 
Good evening. 
You're on off talk over time. 
Go ahead. 
Oh, wow. 
I'm on, I guess I'll mute the background. 
Um, I've been a reader of 2600 forever. 
It's, you guys used to be published in Borders and Barnes and Noble as a magazine. 
That's right. 
Rest in peace Borders. 
And we're still in Barnes and Noble. 
Yes. 
Yes. 
Um, and, and, and in comparison, um, to the, um, pagers, um, blowing up, um, I used to work with, um, a ghostwriter in New York. 
Um, they were Mossad, um, and there was that insurance company. 
Um, but anyway, long story short, um, did you hear about the pager link being sourced from a Hungarian firm? 
Uh, yes, that's what we were talking about on the show earlier. 
Uh, I think Alex did some, some investigation on that. 
Yeah. 
Sorry. 
I was just tuning in. 
I just saw it live on my YouTube here and I was excited to see it. 
I've just caught up with, I didn't know you guys had, I guess, two shows. 
Um, I wish I was in the Suffolk area. 
Um, well, actually I don't know why I was talking about Suffolk. 
First of all, uh, we didn't have any calls from Suffolk County. 
I think that guy was the first one, if he is in Suffolk County. 
And, uh, the show actually, the show actually comes, the show actually comes from, uh, from New York City. 
Uh, we transmit off of Times Square. 
So if you tune to 99.5 FM between seven and eight, you'll hear off the hook. 
After eight, you'll hear overtime on YouTube. 
Uh, but, um, yeah, so, uh, uh, some of us are spread out in different parts of, of, of the metro area. 
Did you say you were at, uh, B&L? 
B&L? 
No. 
Uh, yeah. 
Um, uh, what's, there's a, um, I can't, Stony Brook. 
Oh, Stony Brook. 
You're, you're calling from Stony Brook. 
I'm not. 
I'm, I'm calling from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. 
Oh, okay. 
I used to live up in, um, Long Island in Garden City, um, and, uh, Manhattan as well. 
Cool. 
Yeah. 
So anyway, um, really cool to see you guys, um, doing your show. 
Um, and where's the magazine nowadays? 
Well, no, it's definitely in print. 
Um, uh, the fact that people don't seem to know that is, is testament to what happened to bookstores. 
Um, we, we, uh, you can find us in Barnes and Noble. 
You can just go to 2600.com and that's all the information we publish digitally. 
We publish on paper. 
We publish for the Kindle. 
Uh, so we're very much still here. 
Yeah. 
Well, I don't want to get off too off topic since I just, I wasn't on the whole show and, um, but, um, feel free. 
I will be a future caller in. 
Oh, feel free. 
Okay. 
Um, good. 
Um, well, speaking of, um, 2600 and the phones and you guys just mentioned being able to buy your publication digitally. 
Um, do you guys follow the data, the data center realm at all? 
I love digital realty trust. 
Um, but can you imagine if something such as the pager attack happened inside of a data center? 
Whoa. 
Wow. 
I can't imagine about using a pager in a data center, but, um, uh, I can certainly imagine people using electronics. 
Yeah. 
And in terms of the pager set, I can see why the attack was valid in my mind. 
I'm assuming Mossad did it and, or whoever, anybody, NSA, like, I don't know the attack target vector type stuff over there, but if it's Israel doing it, Hey, um, I don't know. 
I have to say congratulations to Israel. 
I don't, I might go deeper than that, but whatever, um, Oh, where was I? 
I gave myself a panic attack there and forgot everything. 
Um, what was I saying? 
Um, the, um, Oh, the symbology of a pager. 
Nobody uses pagers, at least in the U S that isn't a criminal or a drug dealer or terrorist. 
Oh, and that's my husband's sale says, or a doctor. 
And you guys had mentioned that though, but, uh, do doctors still use pagers? 
I think some might actually, because I, I, I remember reading a story about this and, um, you know, if you could tune into the frequencies that they used to use and see if they still have data on them, that's one way to find out. 
Well, I know they're on encrypted data streams, which is why, um, I don't think of, um, very encouraged. 
Rob, do you have info on this? 
Um, yeah, I think, uh, the pagers were actually outdated even for the area. 
And, uh, from what I was reading, um, that's why Hezbollah was interested in them because they didn't want to use newer technology that in, uh, their estimation would be more prone to being monitored or hacked or, um, things of that sort. 
So they figured they were safer using technology that was, uh, that was more basic and outdated even. 
You know, I hate, I hate to keep coming back to the same old mantra, but landlines, what's wrong with landlines? 
They're there, they work, they don't blow up. 
Usually they don't. 
People have pulled fiber over them, mostly ripping the copper out where available, at least in this region. 
I don't know about Lebanon though. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, I know. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
I know. 
Landlines and, and just, yeah, landlines. 
I do miss landlines. 
I wish I was on a landline right now. 
Yeah. 
We all, we all prefer the sound, I think. 
Any, any other, any other points you want to bring up? 
Uh, no, no. 
Have a good night, guys. 
Okay. 
Well, thanks for calling and, uh, and best of luck out there in Pennsylvania. 
Thank you. 
All right. 
Take care. 
Uh, do we have time for one more? 
What do you guys think? 
Um, not exactly bouncing up and down here. 
Uh, yeah. 
802-321-4225. 
Uh, one more phone call and that's it. 
Yeah. 
Just, it's, it's been an intense, uh, day for, I think everyone here and an intense week. 
And, uh, I can only keep asking that folks out there just take care of one another and try and be kind and empathetic. 
Um, whatever, whatever your positions on these things. 
Uh, yes, I, uh, I, I agree with that. 
Yeah. 
Entirely. 
Um, me too. 
While we wait for this phone call to come in, 802-321-4225. 
You know, I had, um, I had planned on, um, finally calling one of these ridiculous scam phone numbers that relate to, you know, these fictitious invoices. 
And anyhow, there's the, uh, there we go. 
No, finish your, finish your thought. 
Oh, um, but I was going to use it tonight if we had some spare time, but having dialed it just a few minutes ago, it's already disconnected. 
So the scammers have already been reported. 
So, you know, one day soon we'll get it right. 
And good evening. 
You're on off the hook overtime. 
Yes. 
Hello, AT&T with a collect call from its, uh, manual. 
You accept the charging? 
Rebel, this means you can't call next week. 
You know that, right? 
So, you know what? 
You have a minute here, but you won't have time next week. 
Why are there only 42 people watching? 
I don't know. 
Maybe look in the mirror. 
Ask yourself that question. 
That's pretty funny. 
We're going to hurl accusations at each other. 
Um, yeah. 
So you have one minute, but you have no minutes next week. 
And please don't violate that. 
Oh, you'll have no minutes for the next two weeks after that. 
You know, it just, it gets bigger and bigger. 
So go ahead. 
Go ahead. 
You took the last call, the very last one. 
It's like taking the last cookie. 
Please call for long distance. 
Please call for long distance. 
Hello, ma'am? 
Ma'am? 
If you're calling me, ma'am, you're not going to get a response. 
And you have one minute left before we disconnect. 
One moment, sir. 
I'm dialing the AT&T operator in the Pittsburgh International Operator Center. 
Okay, sir. 
That area, that country code is three, three, and city code is one. 
Okay. 
You just gave me the country code and city code for Paris. 
I know that. 
I don't know why. 
And nobody asked. 
Nobody asked for that. 
Gila, do you have something to say? 
Go ahead, please. 
I do. 
Because we've now heard from two listeners who were trying to call in and couldn't get through because Rebel is. 
How do you feel now, Rebel? 
How do you feel now? 
Yeah. 
He doesn't. 
Yeah, that's it. 
He doesn't feel any kind of empathy or regret or anything like that. 
I wish I could say this was unusual. 
What can I do with my other computer? 
I have a suggestion, but you know what? 
It's before 10 o'clock and that's when you can talk the way I want to talk. 
Actually, I'm not on the radio. 
I can say what I want to say. 
It's not a good taste. 
Rebel, that's it. 
Goodbye. 
He's done. 
We're back. 
All right. 
We're all here? 
I think we should give somebody an opportunity to call. 
There are a couple people, as Gila noted, that one could call. 
Alex, we have rules. 
What good are rules if you don't follow the rules? 
Well, you know, there's always an exception. 
It's only nine o'clock. 
It's 10 o'clock in Nova Scotia. 
That's true. 
Yeah, it is. 
Yep. 
GMT minus four. 
10.30 in Newfoundland. 
You see what I'm getting at? 
Yeah. 
It's later than you think. 
It's a lot later than you think. 
And in the aforementioned Paris, it's three in the damn morning. 
It's only six o'clock in California. 
You're not doing yourself anything. 
It's fine. 
One more phone call. 
802-314-225. 
But, you know, I can't hold the last call. 
You took the last call over Rebel's head anymore. 
And we're going to give 55 seconds for that call to come in. 
If it doesn't come in, then that's it. 
All right. 
All right. 
That sounds good. 
And you have to talk until that call comes in. 
Yeah. 
Well, we can just fill dead air. 
I mean, I'm a lawyer, so I can loviate or abbreviate essentially on command. 
I mean, these are the things that we're taught to do to pontificate. 
I thought at least that I'd be very good at filibustering in one way or another. 
And it looks like Gila wants to tag team in here. 
I certainly do, because I'm sharing another message from the chat, which people are on your side here. 
What Emmanuel is getting at is he's tired. 
Let him go to bed. 
I don't want to go to bed. 
He just woke up like an hour, an hour and a half ago, maybe. 
Yeah. 
Five seconds, by the way. 
Echo, try it one more time. 
And that's it. 
Sorry, time is up. 
We're done with phone calls. 
Kyle, you have something you want to say? 
Nope. 
You're holding your hand up. 
I thought there was a message to me. 
Nope. 
All right. 
It was a signal. 
Oh, goodbye. 
Goodbye. 
Yeah. 
So long. 
You got it. 
You got to dial faster. 
Whoever's calling now. 
Don't pick that up, Kyle, because if you pick it up, then we have to talk. 
And we're tired. 
We want to go to bed. 
According to somebody. 
Show us the way to go home. 
All right. 
Any final words? 
You're tired. 
I am tired. 
Well, actually, you know what? 
I'm talking to the audience. 
We're in a hot room, too. 
You know, we turn the fan off because it's so loud. 
There's no ventilation in here. 
So, yeah, it's a little uncomfortable. 
Oh, some might say that the phone is blowing up tonight. 
With that, we'll say goodnight to Alex for now and maybe for a while. 
Gila, Rob, pleasure as always. 
And Kyle, good to see you again. 
We'll be back next week, 7 p.m. 
on Off the Oak, WBAI, 8 p.m. 
Overtime on YouTube. 
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
Goodnight.