You have successfully completed your test call to area code 540-829-9910. 
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. 
Bon Dillibon for the best, respect the worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
Bon Dillibon! 
Bon Dillibon! 
Bon Dillibon! 
Bon Dillibon! 
Thank you. 
Thank you. 
And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is Off the Hook. 
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening. 
Joined tonight by Kyle. 
Yeah, right here. 
How are you doing? 
Um, hi. 
Uh, okay. 
Okay? 
Well, that's good to know. 
Um, and, um, out in Skypeland, we have Rob T. Firefly. 
Good evening. 
We have Gila. 
Good evening. 
And we have Alex. 
You too. 
Good evening. 
Well, um, so, uh, you're back from Thailand, I take it? 
I am back and extraordinarily jet lagged. 
Really, really tired. 
You know, it's a 12-hour time chain, but, uh, but here I am. 
Well, it's just, 12 hours is easy because, you know, it could be like morning right now. 
Uh, but it's not. 
It's the opposite. 
It's not like a two- or three-hour thing where, you know, it's hard to adjust. 
It's simple. 
It's half a day. 
So you're just half a day off. 
And you don't even really have to set your watch back or forwards, given the 12-hour time change. 
It's exactly 12 hours. 
Yeah, very convenient. 
But it was a long journey home. 
Long journey home. 
I had to stop over in, uh, Doha for about seven hours in the Doha airport, uh, with Qatar Airways. 
But it was very nice. 
Not too bad. 
And then a 13-hour flight back to New York. 
Um, and then it only took two hours from JFK to get into Manhattan. 
So, there you have it. 
Yeah, I like how, uh, ground transportation is, is, uh, comparable to air travel as far as, uh, time it takes to get places. 
Um, but welcome back. 
Welcome back. 
Hope you had fun over there in, in, in Thailand. 
And, and, and first time over there, I take it. 
It, it was. 
And I have to say, I, that city really grew on me. 
It was really fantastic. 
You know, a good friend of mine had mentioned that there are these scenes on the tops of roofs that remind you of scenes from Blade Runner. 
And, and it absolutely was the case. 
You know, being on these rooftops and seeing just how massive and expansive Thailand, um, sorry, Bangkok was. 
It was, it was just, uh, it really extraordinary city. 
Great people, really good vibes, uh, insane traffic. 
I took pretty much every mode of transportation, boats on the back of motorbikes, subways, skyways. 
It was, uh, it was really, it was, it was quite, quite an experience. 
Well, if you want expansive, I would suggest Beijing, uh, because, or Tokyo. 
You know, uh, they, they both seem to never end, uh, and it's, um, it's really quite a sight to, uh, to behold. 
Yeah, I haven't traveled that much in Asia, but, um, I'm hoping this is the start of, um, you know, a new leg of, uh, of my travels here. 
I've, um, I've, it's definitely very, very interesting. 
And, uh, but I'll tell you that the most terrifying way that I've traveled in Bangkok was being on the back of a motorbike. 
That was, you know, that was something that took some guts. 
First of all, why was that necessary? 
Why did you have to get on the back of a motorbike to get someplace? 
Oh, because the traffic was so insane. 
You'd just be snarled up in traffic for 45 minutes, 50 minutes trying to get, you know, somewhere. 
But these motorbikes would zip in and out of traffic and they were extraordinarily inexpensive as well. 
And everybody seemed to take them. 
And you would see, you know, like young Thai women or something sitting on the back of a motorcycle or motorbike, just with their legs hanging off, playing on their phones, not even holding on. 
You'd think, well, I could do that. 
And then you'd get on the back of this bike, you're holding on for dear life, hoping it doesn't hit a pothole. 
It was very, very much a big cultural differences there between, um, the locals and me riding on the back of these bikes, especially having just gotten over a broken leg, I definitely did not want to break any additional bones in 2024, especially not in Thailand. 
And, uh, but I did it and it was really extraordinary. 
At one point, my hat even flew off. 
I think it was coming back two or three o'clock in the morning on this busy street. 
Motorbike was flying down the road. 
My hat flew off. 
I said that to the bike driver. 
My hat flew off. 
So he just kind of skidded out, turned around, went on the other side of traffic, got back on the road. 
My hat was, was run over by about probably 20 or 30 cars, but he managed to grab it and get it. 
And I still have it. 
And it's, uh, it's still my favorite hat. 
So why did he get it? 
Why didn't you get it? 
I tried. 
I, I tried to jump off the bike and get it, but he said it was dangerous to run into the traffic and he would do it. 
Wow. 
So that's, that's, that's dedication. 
I got, I got to say. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Extraordinary city. 
I have to say, I recommend traveling there to, uh, to all of our listeners. 
All right. 
Well, I'll keep that in mind. 
I haven't, I've been in that part of the world in quite a while. 
Um, but, um, you know, did you make use of any ride share type things? 
Did they have that over there? 
They didn't really have ride share type things. 
Um, I mean, you could, you could schedule a, you know, truck or something like that. 
Um, but I did use the, uh, the tuck tucks that, that were, or kind of, you know, almost like flatbed. 
And little go-kart trucks or something that you would sit on the back of, uh, and you can get around pretty quickly. 
And those as well, and really economical, uh, but, you know, cars were probably the worst way to get around Bangkok. 
Um, there were boats that would go up and down these, what, what were man-made canals. 
There was a subway. 
There was also a skyway. 
And of course, the subway and the skyway take different tokens. 
They're not interchangeable because that's, you know, just how the world works. 
But, uh, but it was very interesting. 
It was, it was neat to, to figure out the public transport. 
I even had one night where I was so jet lagged that I went into the Japanese area of Bangkok, had some ramen, and then just decided I was just going to walk around. 
And it wasn't until 7, 7.30 in the morning that I made it back to the hotel. 
Just kind of wandered around the streets of Bangkok. 
And that was the other thing, too. 
It felt very safe. 
There were areas that were very impoverished, but yet still very safe. 
Interesting. 
Okay. 
Well, and, um, uh, you basically made use of mass transit. 
You made use of, of the back of motorbikes and, and other things like that. 
But, um, not so much cars, if I understand correctly. 
Cars were kind of the worst way to get around. 
They were. 
I mean, I, I did a lot of car driving at first and then realized that that, that really was the worst way to get around. 
It took forever. 
It was, uh, it was pretty horrible to take cars everywhere back and forth in, in Bangkok. 
Uh, and the motorbikes were, were really the way to do it. 
And you would take a, a 20 or 30 minute ride on a motorbike. 
Right. 
And it would come out to maybe $2.50 or $3 in terms of, you know, U.S. 
dollars. 
It was pretty extraordinarily, uh, inexpensive. 
Well, and also, of course, you know, the cars add to the congestion and traffic and pollution and all that. 
Um, it would be a good idea, I think, if they charge those people who drove the cars an extra fee and the money for that fee went into their mass transit. 
You know, that would be a bright move, I think. 
Don't you? 
You think so? 
Yeah, I do. 
I do. 
We should try something like that. 
I, I, I've heard some contentious ideas, uh, that, that were floated here in, in New York for the same thing. 
Yeah. 
Uh-huh. 
Very funny. 
Oh, it's not funny. 
It's serious. 
It's, it's, it's as serious as a migraine, believe me. 
Uh, and it's coming. 
It's coming, uh, in, in two months. 
I would like to be in the first car to pay the toll, to be honest. 
That's how strongly I feel the congestion pricing is, is, uh, is something that cities should have because too many damn cars on the street, as you said, you know, congested, polluted, slow. 
Let's have something that benefits people more. 
And by, by, uh, having those folks help pay for mass transit, they might convince themselves to start using that instead. 
And you get less cars on, on the streets. 
You have a more walkable city. 
You have better air quality. 
I think it's a, it's a win-win. 
So that's a lesson that I get from, from your trip over to Bangkok. 
I mean, maybe I will, I will say though, in comparison, coming back to New York and, and being here for the last couple of days after being in Bangkok for nine to 10 days. 
Um, New York feels positively calm when, in terms of the traffic and the people, it's, it's really kind of funny to me that, you know, it, it almost feels like, uh, like I'm in some, some rural area now or some, some part of, uh, a city that's, that's not very populated or polluted or, you know, this, this feels like a, you know, like a small town to me now. 
So, well, uh, here's what I suggest tomorrow at four o'clock, uh, go down to the Holland tunnel, the entrance of the Holland tunnel and just sort of hang out there in the street and tell me how calm it is. 
Yeah. 
I've, I've been in that traffic. 
It's terrible. 
I've been sometimes leaving this city at around that time. 
It'll take you an hour and a half just to get down to the Holland tunnel down, down seventh Avenue. 
So yeah, I, I get it. 
I, I hear where you're going there, Emmanuel. 
Oh, no, I've gone there. 
I've gone now. 
I'm coming back now because in the time it takes you sitting in traffic, I've already made a round trip. 
Um, now, anyway, we have to, uh, this is not the traffic show. 
We do talk about traffic quite a bit, but, um, uh, it's not really the traffic show. 
It's, it's the hacker show. 
It's a technology show. 
And of course, technology plays a part in all of this. 
Uh, and, uh, we're always looking for the, um, uh, the, the security vulnerabilities, things that people forget about the ways to take advantage of the way that you can be taken advantage of, especially, uh, considering privacy and all that and ways you can protect yourself. 
Now, one of the, um, stories that I've been seeing a lot of over the past couple of weeks, this, it's, it might be a good story or it might be a silly story. 
And I guess that's what we're here to decide tonight. 
Um, this headline comes from the daily mail over in the UK. 
The headline reads, urgent warning, don't type these six words or your computer could be hacked and hacked is in all caps, by the way. 
So that underlines the seriousness of this story. 
All right. 
I'm going to read a little bit and maybe one of you who is daring can have a keyboard ready to type these words. 
Um, cyber security experts warn that a new hacking campaign. 
Don't you just love our hacking campaigns? 
You know, we, we're always starting hacking campaigns. 
It's just, it never ends. 
Uh, a new hacking campaign is targeting people who share an extremely specific set of interests. 
Uh, according to cyber security firm Sophos, and I'm sorry if I'm not pronouncing that correctly. 
It's spelled S O P H O S and it's all caps. 
Um, hackers have used a sophisticated set of tools to hijack the results of one particular Google search, one particular Google search, and the experts warn that searching for this specific six word phrase could put you at serious risk of being hacked. 
In fact, I'm told that even hearing these six words can put you in danger of being hacked. 
So if you're driving an electric car right now that has all kinds of computer gizmos hooked up to it, and you're playing this radio show over your speakers, you would be warned to, um, uh, to pull over and not be in motion when I say the six words, because it could very well jump into your car's, um, uh, computer systems and, and hack the car. 
And, and you could be in, in jeopardy then this is a serious story, Kyle. 
Do you think they should, uh, go so far as to like remove the battery and I wouldn't say that. 
I wouldn't say that, but just, you know, pull over for, uh, for, uh, for, for caution sake. 
Um, anyway, uh, to, to calm people down a little bit, you're probably not in much danger unless, unless you happen to live in Australia and you have an interest in exotic cats. 
And that's a fair size of the population, I think. 
Now, uh, Safos, that's what I'm calling them now, the Safos, they warn that hackers are targeting anyone who searches. 
You guys ready? 
Okay. 
These are the words. 
Are Bengal cats legal in Australia? 
Don't, don't, don't type that into Google because searching for this phrase leads unsuspecting cat enthusiasts to malicious links loaded with malware. 
Now, you might not know that you're an unsuspecting cat enthusiast. 
That's how they get you. 
Now, and once your computer is infected, hackers can steal your information, take control of your computer and hold your data for ransom because that's what hackers do. 
In a blog post revealing the attack, Safos engineers wrote, victims are often enticed into clicking on malicious adware or links disguised as legitimate marketing, or in this case, a legitimate Google search. 
Um, yeah, the, the, the security researchers hadn't specifically set out to protect the interest of cat loving Aussies. 
Rather, they were investigating the use of a particularly powerful and common piece of malware called Gootloader. 
Anyone ever hear of Gootloader? 
No? 
Um, this software has been around for about a decade. 
It was previously the signature tool of the Russian Revel ransomware gang. 
Am I, am I saying that correctly? 
R-E-V-I-L? 
Revel? 
You're nodding, Alex? 
It, well, R-E-V-I-L, Revel, you know, I think people pronounce it different ways. 
Yeah. 
I just want to, I want to get it right. 
I want to get it right. 
It's important to be accurate. 
Uh, hackers infect their target's computers with Gootloader, uh, in order to stealthily install more powerful tools capable of stealing information like bank details or locking users out of their own data. 
Uh, typically this is done using a technique called Search Engine Optimization Poisoning. 
And, uh, Search Engine Optimization, uh, is abbreviated S-E-O. 
And S-E-O Poisoning, uh, is an insidious technique in which criminals manipulate search engine results to push websites they control to the top of the page. 
This lures victims into clicking on innocent-looking pages which secretly install Gootloader onto their device. 
Now, normally, a hacker would want to poison a really common search term so that as many people as possible follow their malicious links. 
Uh, has anyone typed the words in to see what the top link is? 
Rob, do you dare? 
We, we did. 
We did. 
Uh, we, we took the leap of faith. 
And, uh, first we, we searched it on my default search engine, which is DuckDuckGo. 
We searched it on Google.com. 
Um, and because this is Australian, we searched it on Google.com.au, the Australian version of Google. 
And, uh, all the top links now appear to be news stories about this. 
Damn it. 
So, like, like the snake eating its own tail. 
So, the news poisoned the S-E-O Poisoning. 
Yes. 
Who poisons the poisoners? 
Apparently, it's the Daily Mail. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
Well, uh, that makes it harder for us to track down the actual site. 
Um, it's called, uh, malvertising, if you can believe that. 
That's the word that S-E-O, uh, poisoning is, is, is known as malvertising. 
It's a technique by which hackers use search engines to make malicious sites appear legitimate. 
Um, and, uh, since consumers assume that the top hits on search engines are trustworthy, many people follow these links without thinking. 
And, uh, not me, though. 
I always go to number 23 on a search result. 
And that's almost always something that's innocent, if not completely unrelated. 
So, uh, I'm safe. 
But, um, what are the things, I, I, I, I've never had experience with this. 
But, if someone clicks on a malicious link, are there warnings? 
Or is it just done without any sign that anything bad has happened? 
And if that's the case, are we ever safe? 
Alex? 
Well, it, it depends. 
This has been, I, I think, a vector of attack for, for threat actors for a number of years now. 
And, and it can take a, a number of different forms as well. 
So, one, one way of doing it is, like, how Sophos had, um, had identified through reverse SEO or reverse search engine optimization by essentially promoting things that are bad in such a way that when people search for these things, they're going to get the, the bad links, right? 
You know, and they might do that by having lots of content that relates to Bengal cats or Bengal tigers in Australia all over pages in random ways so that Google will, will index that site and put it at the top of, of the heap as opposed to at the bottom. 
But the, the other way of doing it, which I find is more malicious and, and also involves the third party, namely Google, in profiting from this, is for threat actors to purchase Google AdWords so that the sponsored results that appear for a certain set of search terms winds up directing people to actually malicious sites. 
And, uh, I can tell you, I, I had a case that was, my God, it was almost four years ago now, but this exact type of thing happened. 
I will, you know, uh, I, I won't go into the, the names of, of the parties and things, but I'll tell you, this is the exact type of thing that happened. 
And so I had, uh, a client that was, uh, an investment firm on the West coast and they had at the time transferred from Celsius, the, uh, cryptocurrency exchange over to Coinbase, uh, the amount of 50 something Bitcoins at the time in Bitcoin, I think was around the, the total value was around $12 million that was transferred from Celsius over to Coinbase. 
So this person who was running the investment firm and made the transfer himself goes to obviously log into his Coinbase account after he transferred over this $12 million to make sure that it got there, which I think anybody would do. 
So he goes to log into his Coinbase account and it turns out that, um, he got this KYC notification. 
It's know your customer notification telling him that there's been unusual and abnormal activity in his account. 
And he has to go through several steps in order to get access to his account again. 
So that was a normal thing to see when you've just transferred over $12 million. 
So he calls up Coinbase, goes through the song and dance, shows them his wallet. 
Uh, you know, his, uh, it proves that the wallet address belongs to him, shows them his identification, his license, et cetera. 
And then they mentioned to him, well, you know, that that's all well and good, but if you're using this commercially, why are you, why are you, uh, why do you have this in a prime account when you should be using a pro account? 
I might have that reversed, but in whatever it was, they, they said, look, you can save all these fees. 
We'll help you do this. 
So they put the money into a different prime account, shown how to log into that. 
Two hours later, he logs into that account. 
You say he called them? 
Yes. 
He called them. 
Yeah. 
In order to go through this KYC process. 
Yeah. 
So two hours later, he logs into the Coinbase account and, um, everything is gone. 
$12 million. 
Gone. 
That's a really bad day when you lose $12 million in the course of a couple of hours. 
Right. 
So, yeah, I guess that could be seen as a bad thing. 
It, so what happened is it turns out, so that this, this case kind of didn't have a happy ending, but we were able to actually track and trace and freeze about $10 million of it. 
And it took quite a long time to even, um, to, to get, to get that, uh, to get even a portion of that back. 
But, um, but so this wasn't a terrible ending for him, but when we did a forensic analysis of his computer, uh, this person kept saying, well, there were, there was an email. 
I got an email about this. 
We never found an email about this, but what we found out happened was that this person did not navigate to Coinbase.com in the browser. 
What this person did was search for Coinbase login in Google. 
And then the ad results that showed up, the first one was a malicious site that was run by some scammers over in India. 
And it was, uh, com-session-login.xyz or something like that. 
But what was interesting is that the, the domain began with com. 
They created a sub domain, Coinbase, so that when you looked at the URL itself, it said coinbase.com. 
So when anybody clicked on that particular sponsored link, a banner came up, a pop-up showed up that said, there's been unusual activity in your account. 
You have to call us to unfreeze your account. 
And they happened to get a well, somebody who just transferred over $12 million. 
And they used that as an opportunity to, uh, access account, access his account and, uh, basically steal all $12 million in the course of a few hours. 
Now, Rob, I assume you've already typed coinbase.com login into Google to see what comes up first, because, uh, that, that one might still be there and that might be a lot of people fall for. 
Um, so, okay. 
What, what should this person have done, Alex, to avoid this kind of thing? 
Yeah, I think for, for anybody to avoid being, um, hit by these reverse SEO scams or malvertising, uh, scams that, that you correctly identified, Emmanuel, um, I think you need to navigate directly to the website itself. 
We've gotten to the point now where there are so many bad things that are indexed on Google and Google has an interest in taking money through these, these, uh, AdWords and does not necessarily check all the URLs that are associated with those AdWords that you can't trust them. 
You can't necessarily trust those links. 
So, uh, navigating directly to coinbase.com would have avoided this entire incident. 
But if you don't know the website for Coinbase, you have to search for it, right? 
So how do you get out of it? 
If you, if you have to search for it in the first place, you just see what it says and then type that manually or, uh, you just never follow links. 
Well, that's a tricky thing. 
If you don't necessarily know the address, uh, of it, I think you would have to, you would want to examine the URL pretty closely. 
If you're getting a, a, a link from Google itself, you definitely want to examine that URL. 
Um, look at the entire thing in the browser bar, make sure you're not looking at a sub domain on top of another domain. 
Look at how the domain ends. 
Does it end in.com? 
Does it end in.info and does the structure of it look weird? 
Now that's one way of identifying that these things are scams. 
I mean, in short of looking up the actual age of the domain itself, which would be, you know, going quite a step, uh, it's like a big step, I think, in terms of looking at these things, which is a really effective way of looking at it. 
If you look at the age of a domain, if it's newly registered, it's very likely not associated with Coinbase, but that would require, you know, looking at the who is data or going into the terminal or something. 
But I think in the first instance, try to navigate directly to, uh, the website to which you're trying to, to, to navigate, whether it's Coinbase, whether it's Google, Gmail, et cetera. 
Um, and be really, really careful of those sponsored links because those sponsored links, uh, tend to have bad things associated with them. 
They don't take you to the, to the places where you think you're being taken. 
Now, isn't that kind of the opposite idea of what Google is trying to push? 
Sponsored links are the links that you can trust, but you're saying sponsored links are the very ones that will take you into the malware. 
Yeah, uh, I, I am saying that that's exactly what I'm saying. 
And I also think that the sponsored links have actually diluted the search results to such an extent that the sponsored links, you might as well just scroll right through them anyway. 
You know, let's say you're, you're searching for, I don't know, that random example, it comes into my head because one of my children keeps bugging me about going camping. 
But let's say you're searching for Coleman tents, something like that. 
Um, you, you're not, the sponsored links that are going to show up often rely on the trademarks and trade names and product names of competitors in order to, um, promote their own sponsored links. 
So you may be searching for a Coleman tent, but you're getting some other kind of third party tent, or you might get redirected to Timu or, you know, some other, you know, schlocky site that will sell you some substandard tent, something like that. 
So you can't necessarily trust them, just those sponsored links to get you where you think you're going. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
Well, this is a, you know, a bit of a eye opener for a lot of people. 
I mean, the story started off kind of silly, uh, with the six words that are guaranteed to get your computer hacked, which is not necessarily true, but there is some element of truth to it in that it gets you to sites that aren't real, uh, that are loaded with malware and, um, uh, disguise JavaScript files. 
That's something you should look out for that, uh, uh, contain malware that you wind up having on your system. 
Yeah. 
And, and another way that these threat actors will, will use these either sponsored links or reverse SEO poisoning is that you'll click on something, you know, the page, the title of the page will look like it's a direct hit. 
It's exactly the information that you're looking for, but then you get redirected to another site that tells you that you're, um, there's malware on your computer that, you know, you can't go any further until you remove this malware that has been identified on your machine. 
And at that point, um, you need to download some kind of software that will allow you to clean the infected malware from your machine. 
Anytime you see a website that tells you that you have malware on your machine, that's generally some kind of scam and it's usually an attack vector by which a threat actor is trying to get you to download and run something that is actually malware itself. 
And if you ever are in a situation where you need to download something, um, a program that you want, be sure to check the website, uh, look for reviews. 
Uh, many times there are discussions. 
Is this particular site legitimate and there will be people who will warn you if it's not. 
And, uh, there will be reviews in, in all kinds of places of how trustworthy they actually are. 
You have to look for, um, um, basically what people have, are, are saying because a lot of people comment on the experiences they have. 
And, and this is, this is the warning that you could be, um, uh, receiving. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
This is also one of those things that I think a lot of folks, uh, maybe listening to this program are like, well, I'm already technical. 
I know this stuff. 
I'm hip to this stuff, but this is one of those things that's very deceptive to people who perhaps aren't so technical. 
And I think most of us have people in our lives that we end up, you know, helping with computer stuff, um, you know, regularly. 
And this is something to take those people in your life through the importance of actually typing in the site you want, maybe using the bookmark for the site you want. 
So, you know, it's a, it's the legit site, maybe helping them set that sort of thing up. 
I, I knew someone who for years and years and years have been logging into a particular site, um, just by clicking the link in one email that they happened to have from, you know, years past. 
And at one point they lost that email and didn't have that link anymore and didn't know how to get to the site. 
This is the sort of thing that like, it's a basic, it's a basic, um, matter of, uh, digital literacy, but not everybody is that, uh, is that educated. 
And those are the people most vulnerable to this stuff. 
And, you know, Alex, uh, to speak to the case that you were involved in, I think there might actually be a cottage industry here, uh, for when you need to transfer $12 million from, from cryptocurrency. 
And you're not quite sure if you're doing it right, maybe there are professionals who can help with this, you know, accredited professionals, uh, who will basically, um, hold your hand through the process and make sure, uh, nothing, nothing, uh, bad happens along the way. 
I think it would be, it would be worth it for peace of mind for people who are doing things like that. 
Yeah, I, I tend to agree. 
And, you know, oftentimes, you know, you screw up one address and a wallet address and the money can be gone. 
You know, it can be, it can be lost irrevocably in, in many ways, you know, if you send it to the, to the wrong address. 
So yeah, I think even a tiny percentage of whatever the total transfer is could be, uh, could be worth, uh, utilizing some kind of professional. 
Also one, one way of, of doing this before what, one way of testing before you make a large transfer, if people are doing this with cryptocurrency, it's obviously to send a very small amount to the address to which you intend to send it, make sure that it gets there and then send a large amount later. 
That's, that's another trick that a lot of people use. 
Yeah. 
But if I was part of that scheme, I would make sure the small test results went through somehow and then just wait for the big one to come through. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
That's a, that's, that's a good point, but at least, you know, you, you had the right address and the money was, was actually reaching the other side. 
Or, uh, a man in the middle that was making sure, I don't know, there's all kinds of ways to be, there's, there's, there's a way to spoof that. 
Yeah. 
You're right. 
Yeah. 
Uh, anyway, the engineers, uh, concluded that users, uh, should still look out for search results and search advertisements that seem too good to be true on domains that are off the beaten path, uh, whether they're looking to get a Bengal cat or not. 
Um, and if, uh, you do end up on a suspicious site, don't follow any further links or download any files. 
Uh, as a general rule, you should only download files from sites you absolutely trust and never from unknown sources. 
Um, yeah, go ahead, uh, conclude this. 
Yeah. 
I think one other tip here for our listeners is some of these nasty sites will, will tell you to call a particular number and, and that is usually the precursor to some kind of remote access scam where they get you to download something like team viewer and then, um, click on a particular link that will then give that person remote access to your particular machine. 
And then they start monkeying around or, or downloading files or implanting malware on your system, something like that. 
But a good, a really dead giveaway for all of this is that number one, you're never really going to be asked to call a particular number to remove malware or to install a VPN or something like that. 
And number two, if you do have to call a number for any kind of tech company, the chances are that somebody is going to answer the phone immediately are really next to zero. 
And all these scammers are, are, you know, they, they have call centers where the phone is answered almost immediately. 
You're never put on hold. 
So when you're about, wait, if you get good service, you should be suspicious. 
Absolutely. 
That's exactly, that's exactly it. 
All right. 
All right. 
Noted. 
Okay. 
Moving on. 
Um, great article in today's times, uh, when I can spend much time on it, but I do want to point people to it. 
It's called how Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment. 
And it's written by this guy, David Streitfeld, uh, and, and, uh, basically the, um, uh, the line underneath his name says, uh, David Streitfeld has written about Google since it was a startup. 
So, uh, he knows a bit about the company, but basically it's talking about how, um, uh, Google has this, um, uh, environment of, um, of, of keeping things from getting on the record. 
Um, yeah, uh, to minimize the odds that a lawsuit could flush out comments that might be incriminating, uh, employees should refrain from speculation and sarcasm and think twice before writing one another about quote unquote hot topics. 
They said, don't comment before you have all the facts to their employees. 
Uh, the technology was also tweaked to setting for the company's instant messaging tool was changed to off the record, uh, an incautious phrase would be wiped the next day. 
And, and basically, uh, the memo they sent out, uh, urging people, uh, to, to exercise caution, uh, became the first salvo in a 15 year campaign by Google to make deletion the default in its internal communications. 
The irony is, is astounding as the internet giant stored the world's information. 
It created an office culture that tried to minimize its own. 
And it's just so much to learn from this, that, um, they're telling us to do one thing. 
They're doing something completely different because they recognize the danger of having too much information about your internal dealings, getting out to the public. 
Yes, Alex. 
Yeah. 
I don't think that this is peculiar to Google. 
I think most companies have things called data retention policies that sound like they're there to ensure that data is retained, but they're actually there to, to ensure that data is deleted on a timely basis. 
A lot of, um, a lot of email systems will have data retention policies that require emails to either be dragged into a separate folder or they're automatically deleted from your particular inbox. 
And the, and the problem is very much this, that in the United States and the United Kingdom, we have really wide ranging discovery obligations. 
If there's a lawsuit and all of these documents and records and communications, whether they're instant message communications or their email communications can be subject to discovery and, and found through some kind of subpoena or court order legal process in general, uh, that would make them, uh, available to your adversary. 
Yeah. 
And so I just want to point out anytime I hear about like content on these, on social media platforms and in any sense, uh, uh, non public, um, data to me, I, it, I, I hear evidence because that is how it's used from SMS to everything you're listing. 
Anyway, go on. 
Yeah, but that, that's exactly right. 
All of this, all of these communications are evidence. 
And it's, and, and I think that, you know, I'd say, but I think Google is right when they're cautioning their employees not to engage in speculation that could be misinterpreted if found in the hands of a, um, you know, a particularly adept plaintiff's lawyer, because all of this information can be spun in one way or another. 
So I, I actually tend to agree with Google in advising the employees not to engage in speculation of this nature. 
I mean, Alex, I think you're right. 
Any company would say the same thing, but the difference here is that Google has users that it does not give that advice to, that it does not encourage to, uh, uh, to, to white data as soon as you no longer need it. 
They encourage you to, to basically say everything, hold on to everything. 
I mean, how many times have we, have we, uh, seen, uh, in, in crime investigations, uh, what the perpetrator search for on, on Google? 
I'm not even sure if they logged into Google at the time, if it's, if they're using their IP instead, but it's, um, you know, I'm not saying, uh, criminals should, should, uh, not be caught, but everyone should be educated as to the dangers of doing certain things. 
And if it's good enough for Google employees, it's good enough for Google users. 
Yeah, I, I tend to agree there. 
There's, there's definitely a massive disconnect between what they want their, their customers and clients to do and what they do internally. 
Yeah, there's that, that's, that's a fair point. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, there's a quote in this article I really like, uh, from someone called Agnieszka McPeak, who is a law school professor. 
And, um, she says, uh, Google had a top-down corporate policy of don't save anything that could possibly make us look bad. 
And that makes Google look bad. 
If they've got nothing to hide, people think, why are they acting like they do? 
Well, yeah, I mean, you could say that about a lot of things, you know, if there's, if there's a report that's, um, uh, set to be released, uh, investigating somebody's behavior and you insist that that report not get released doesn't speak much to you being cleared of any suspicion. 
I don't know, I'm just, I'm just thinking out loud here. 
I don't know of a specific case where that applies, but you know, I, if somebody say we're up for, I don't know, a cabinet position, uh, in, in the new administration and they had some kind of a report on them that was set to come out and they somehow were able to make it so the report didn't come out. 
And I just, I wonder if it makes them look innocent or guilty, you know? 
Yeah. 
And, and for people, for individuals, there's the concept of, if you're, you know, not guilty, uh, if you don't have anything to hide, then, you know, why are you worried about your privacy and so on? 
And that's, that's very true for individuals that, uh, privacy is an important thing and it's a right and it's a human right that we should protect. 
But if you're a 900 pound gorilla on the level of Google and you're accountable to not only society, but shareholders and, uh, everything else, like there, there are certain, uh, there are certain things that make you look worse and, uh, you know, maybe you should be holding onto some data. 
And there's, there's a difference between privacy and results of an investigation. 
And in case you haven't figured it out by now, I am talking about Matt Gates, uh, who is basically, um, uh, in line to become the next attorney general after having an investigation into his behavior, uh, by the, uh, the, the house of representatives. 
And it's the, the, the report is being, is being, um, basically squashed. 
Uh, it's, it's the most corrupt thing I think I've ever seen, although I'm sure that will be exceeded, uh, by, by orders of magnitude in the months and years ahead. 
Uh, but here's some, some, uh, what I think is, is, is fairly, um, um, positive news and unidentified hacker has gained access to a computer file shared in a secure link among lawyers whose clients have given damaging testimony related to Matt Gates, the former Florida congressman who was president-elect Donald Trump's choice to be attorney general. 
The file of 24 exhibits is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. 
Gates in 2017 when she was underage, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter. 
The information was downloaded by a person using the name Altum Beasley. 
Altum. 
Do we know any Altums? 
A-L-T-A-M? 
Really? 
You don't? 
Huh? 
Interesting. 
Okay. 
Altum Beasley, uh, 1.23 PM on Monday. 
So I expect us all to account for our whereabouts, 1.23 PM on Monday. 
Um, a lawyer connected to the case sent an email to the address associated with Altum Beasley only to be informed in an automated reply that the recipient does not exist. 
Uh, the material does not appear to have been made public by the hacker yet. 
Uh, the documents include information that is under seal with the Justice Department, which investigated Mr. 
Gates, but did not file charges and the House Committee on Ethics, which has completed its own inquiry into the former congressman. 
Um, the ethics panel's members met today to decide whether to vote to release the material that's gathered. 
And guess what? 
It was blocked by Republicans. 
Yeah. 
And the reason they, they aren't releasing it by default is because he resigned as a congressman. 
So they no longer have any authority over him. 
Like I said, it's, it's one of the most corrupt things you'll ever hear about, but you know, in a situation like this, okay, so let's say we're talking directly to this hacker who we don't know. 
And if we did know, we would say, we don't know. 
And, um, is it a good thing to have this information? 
Is it a good thing to release this information? 
Is it maybe an obligation to release this information? 
Or do we all just play the game of letting the corruption flow and use every legal trick in the book to ensure that certain people stay in power? 
I don't know. 
Kind of, kind of mixed feelings here. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Well, I, I think if we're in this particular position, which I, I'm, I'm not sure that we are, others probably are, but, uh, I think first and foremost, we would have to be conscious of the fact that this person is really, who's in possession of the information is putting themselves in great danger and great jeopardy by releasing the information. 
And I think that we would have to, in the first instance, make sure that sources and methods are protected here. 
Um, and this is a great reason for people who are in the possession of this type of information to use something like secure drop, which, uh, uh, in, in order to share that information, which, which I think, um, may in fact be something that's set up with, uh, 2600. 
Oh yeah. 
No, uh, um, uh, many news organizations, um, journalists use secure drop and it works really well for getting information like this. 
But I think, you know, what, what we're seeing here, this story coming out, identifying the person by name, identifying by time, maybe in a way, and I kind of hope this is true. 
They're sending a notice to this person, warning them to be careful because this information already is out there. 
And if they intend on releasing this, this is what is known so far. 
So cover your, cover your, your, your tracks. 
And, uh, maybe we have something to work with Kyle. 
I was just going to maybe, uh, push Alex's argument a little bit further and say like, well, in addition to the grave risk of releasing, right. 
Um, and there, and my, where I'm going is this is a cost benefit analysis for that person, but there's also grave risk in, um, keeping it hidden because you're still going to be pursued, uh, presume, presumably. 
Am I, am I wrong? 
So, I mean, I think for them, it's, there's almost some insurance and we've seen this with leaks in the past in providing the information to some entity that can, um, though, as you point out, there is risk, uh, they can make it public because once it is then public, it is not really a secret anymore. 
There may be some after the fact consequence for the transgressions, but it'd be that as it may, the information itself, uh, doesn't, um, let's say succumb to process and, and stay, uh, uh, away if, um, there is some sort of, uh, uh, altruism in, in the, uh, in the act. 
Would you, do you hear where I'm going with that, Alex? 
Yeah, I, I do. 
And I, and I think that's a really astute observation here too, because, you know, you're, um, that the act has been completed one way or another, right? 
And it doesn't really, doesn't really make a difference in terms of the, the criminal liability here, whether or not the information is going to be released to the public or not. 
It may be an aggravating factor, perhaps, um, if the person was caught, uh, that, that, that they released it to journalists or something, didn't keep it to themselves. 
But I think that the, the, the grave danger that this person puts them in themselves in, which would, which would be, um, to have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the federal statute, which is known as the hacking statute, um, that was actually passed shortly after, um, war games came out. 
I mean, Congress literally created that statute in, uh, in, in direct, um, kind of, uh, response to war games, um, like 1983 or 1984. 
I can't remember exactly when it, when it came out, but, um, that's the, that's the danger there. 
Um, and, and so I think, you know, working with the right journalists, working with the right organizations to make sure that your anonymity is preserved, I think is really important. 
I would also say that working with, uh, whistleblower organizations could be really helpful, but I would probably shy away from the whistleblower organizations that are associated directly with the government for obvious purposes. 
Yeah, yeah. 
And I, I also think, um, your suggestions, um, are, would, um, bolster a case that an individual might be making, um, and, and, um, disassociate them from, uh, any kind of accusation that they might be attempt, their motive may be to broker this for, uh, uh, a financial windfall instead of some, as I suggested, an altruistic, uh, uh, public interest motive sort of thing. 
So, uh, yeah, if they just take it and run, uh, there, I think then it, I don't know, you would perhaps, uh, know what, what it would suggest legally, but, um, to my mind, it, you know, there are more unknowns than if there's, uh, a destination for, for what they're doing that, that has some, some sort of public interest angle versus brokering it and tried to, to make, to make money or extort people. 
Yeah. 
I think as soon as you, um, uh, put a price on it, you lose legitimacy in my eyes, because this is something that people deserve to know about. 
It's something that's being actively covered up and you could say, oh, but they're following the law. 
Okay. 
Well, the laws can be abused. 
It doesn't mean that people don't have the right to know the truth. 
And in a case like this, we certainly, uh, deserve that much. 
By the way, I, I, I scanned the country over the last couple of minutes, uh, uh, a surface scan was not able to find the name Altem anywhere, uh, except as a last name, uh, in the UK and in some places, uh, I did find though, that, uh, Altem stands for the advanced long-term, uh, actuarial mathematical, uh, uh, mathematical exam. 
So I don't know if there's a message in there somewhere, but that's, that's kind of, um, uh, where that stands. 
Um, Hey, um, uh, there, there's, there's been some tremendous gains. 
Uh, there was an article about this actually in the times, uh, the rights triumph over social media, uh, right wings taking over social media, everywhere you look, uh, parlor, true social Twitter, you name it. 
And, um, something named blue sky has, uh, has really come up in the last couple of weeks to the point where a million people are joining a day, it seems. 
Um, and, um, I just wonder if anyone out there is, um, is, is, is diving into that. 
Uh, personally, you know, I'm, I'm, um, um, devoting most of my time to both blue sky and Mastodon as those seem to be the two avenues available for people who still value free speech, uh, and, um, and anti-fascist type of atmosphere where right wing idiots aren't prevailing as they are in so many other places. 
Um, but I just wonder if, um, if, if all of us are, um, at least dipping our toe into it, Kyle, I have dipped my toe into the blue ski. 
Uh, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, but yeah, uh, it's, um, um, it's, it looks a lot like early Twitter. 
I'll say that. 
And it's, it's pretty simple. 
I don't really, I don't have the knack of it yet as far as, um, reaching out to as many people as, as, um, I know are out there. 
I know there are tricks. 
I know there's ways of, um, of, of being on lists and things like that, where you can speak to more people right now, you know, I only have a couple of hundred people following as opposed to Twitter where I had, you know, close to 10,000, but the engagement is much better with those 200 than it is with the 10,000. 
So think about that. 
Yeah. 
Having, uh, used Mastodon for, uh, quite a while now, I, I really feel at home there, but, um, I don't have the desire to try out blue sky because I, I think, I feel like Mastodon is already the good one. 
It's the decentralized one. 
It's the one that has no chance of being, uh, wrangled away from us by, um, people at the top, like, uh, you know, other social media that I, that I could name. 
It's also, uh, blue sky is also the one that, um, a few weeks ago, uh, raised a $15 million series of financing, um, led by an outfit called blockchain capital, which, uh, um, I have seen described as, uh, crypto grifters. 
And, uh, so, you know, it's, I think if we want to have nice things, we want to have nice things that are distributed and federated and that we could easily, uh, move from one chunk to another. 
If, uh, if the bit we were on went bad in some way, I just like to caution you not to prejudge or at least give it a shot and see, you know, if, if what you fear is true or becomes true with, with people aware of these concerns in a way that they weren't when Twitter began, maybe there's a way to keep that from happening while, while having another platform. 
I'm not saying, uh, abandoned Mastodon by any means. 
Uh, I've been, you know, um, uh, investing a lot of time in Mastodon as well. 
I just find the, the engagement seems at least for now seems to be better on blue sky, but I'd like to use them both. 
I really would. 
I'd like to use as many, um, uh, social media outlets as possible that don't drag you down into, uh, idiocy and, and, and hatred. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Uh, on, on that note, I tell our listeners to check out Farcaster. 
That's another decentralized social media network that is kind of part of the world of web three and where that's going. 
So check that out as well. 
Can you give us a URL that will not lead us into malware? 
Oh, that's a good question. 
I'd have to find that maybe we can do that on, uh, overtime for those people, uh, who are, um, wondering what overtime is. 
That is the show that follows this show on YouTube. 
So you'll have to go to YouTube to, uh, to hear us on channel 2600. 
You've been listening to off the hook here on WBAI, uh, right to us. 
O th at 2600.com. 
We love to hear from our listeners and please keep listening to and supporting WBAI. 
Go to WBAI.org or, uh, buddy.wbai.org to become a BAI buddy. 
And, uh, we'll be back next week with, uh, more insightful conversation about technology, privacy, threats to freedom, all that kind of thing. 
Uh, and again, uh, we will be on overtime on YouTube channel 2600, uh, in just a few minutes. 
You can call us, you can, um, listen to more of us, uh, talking about various other things. 
We'll see you next week. 
Good night. 
  And welcome, everybody, to Off the Hook Overtime here on YouTube. 
It's a manual. 
I seem to have made it into YouTube land safely, Kyle. 
So did I. 
Yep. 
All right. 
And on Skype land, Rob. 
Yes, indeed. 
And Gila. 
I'm here, too. 
And Alex. 
I'm here. 
Rough transition, but I made it. 
Okay. 
I'm glad to hear that. 
And, of course, we now have open phone lines. 
802-321-4225 is our telephone number. 
If you have anything to say, to comment on, to contribute, please, by all means, give us a call, and we can have a little chat. 
But the article I was alluding to at the end of the show was a guest essay in The Times today. 
The Rights Triumph Over Social Media by Julia Angwin. 
Basically, it opens up the red tide that swept across the nation in our recent election marked many things. 
One of them was a right-wing triumph over social media. 
Under heavy pressure from the right and with the help of Elon Musk, the leading tech platforms opened the floodgates for propaganda to spread unchecked. 
The result was a flood of lies and distortions flowing through our social media feeds. 
And that led to possibly the most misinformed electorate we've ever seen. 
Examples. 
Many voters headed to the polls convinced that border crossings are higher than ever before. 
They are not. 
Violent crime rates are rising. 
Untrue. 
And inflation is soaring. 
Ditto. 
We will never know how much this garbage may have swayed voters, but we do know it influenced one side significantly. 
Conservatives. 
The fact that all of these social media outlets have either turned right-wing or have decided not to touch certain things that are too controversial. 
You know, if you ask artificial intelligence run by Google if Donald Trump was convicted of any crimes, it will refuse to answer. 
It doesn't want to get involved. 
So you have that, and then you have the ultra-right-wing pushing its propaganda unanswered by something equivalent on the left. 
And people's perception of Silicon Valley, of high tech, is that it's leftist. 
Well, what happened to that? 
It doesn't seem very leftist right now. 
It seems like it's pushing the right-wing agenda far more than it ever has before, and to great effect as well. 
So that kind of thing scares me. 
And, you know, it's part of why I'd like to see people gathering in one, two, even three new places. 
But what I don't want to see is each of these new places tearing down other new places, because that's a parallel to what's been happening on the political scene as well. 
We need to basically support any place where people have a chance to express themselves, to meet up with other people, and to grow a community. 
And if something turns out not to be as good as we thought it was, we'll know that. 
And we'll have other places to go when that day comes, which hopefully it won't. 
So for now, I suggest everybody get on to Blue Sky. 
Get on to Mastodon. 
Get on to whatever the hell it was that Alex mentioned at the end of the show. 
What was that again? 
Alex, you're muted. 
You're completely muted, Alex. 
You just, your mouth is moving, but nothing's coming out. 
Really shouldn't be so hard. 
He's continuing to talk. 
Yeah, now it works. 
Imagine that. 
Okay. 
What's going on there? 
Yeah. 
Idiotic. 
That was Farcaster. 
So I think if you go to farcaster.xyz, you'll be safe. 
You actually have to install something called WarpCast. 
What do you mean you have to install something? 
This is what we warn people about. 
Yeah. 
So you need a particular client in order to access Farcaster called WarpCast. 
And you can download that for your iOS or Android device right from your Google Play or Apple Store, whatever the hell they call it, the App Store, I guess. 
And, yeah, it's interesting. 
I don't use it all that much. 
You know, I'm not a big social media person in general. 
Well, what is the advantage of this? 
Well, it's decentralized. 
It's kind of based off of Web3 technology. 
It doesn't have the kind of the noise and the clutter and the alt-right poisoning everything, the pornography, the violence, et cetera, that you're seeing all the time now on Twitter. 
You're not forced to read Elon Musk's posts. 
It's a kind of – it's a more genuine community. 
I think it's very tech-focused as well. 
But, you know, it's another – it's an alternative media platform that's fully decentralized and open source as well. 
So I think it very much fits in with the hacker and philosophical mindset that we all have and would be probably a better place to congregate than Twitter or Facebook. 
Well, decentralization seems to be the theme. 
Blue Sky claims to be decentralized. 
MasterDone claims to be decentralized. 
It seems like that's what people want is some control over what it is they see and control over their own feeds. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
So two questions. 
Number one, does the block function work on this thing, Alex? 
Because that's one thing that's gone away from Twitter recently is a functional block function. 
But also, does Blue Sky claim to be decentralized? 
I thought it was very – you know, it's all kind of one pot at this point. 
I know that Mastodon has – you know, you have your instances and you have to go – you find your instance, you find your home. 
And you can federate with other instances and you can also defederate other instances. 
And if it turns out to be like a Nazi bar at that particular instance, you can just – your instance can decide you were not talking to the Nazi bar. 
Well, let me answer that with an excerpt from a TechCrunch article that came out two days ago. 
So is Blue Sky decentralized? 
Yes. 
Blue Sky's team is developing the decentralized AT protocol, which Blue Sky was built atop. 
In its beta phase, users can only join the bsky.social network. 
But Blue Sky plans to be federated, meaning that endless individually operated communities can exist within the open source network. 
So if a developer outside of Blue Sky built their own new social app using the AT protocol, Blue Sky users could jump over to the new app and port over their existing followers, handle, and data. 
According to a Blue Sky post, you'll always have the freedom to choose and to exit instead of being held to the whims of private companies or black box algorithms. 
And wherever you go, your friends and relationships will be there too. 
So that sounds promising. 
It sounds promising. 
It does sound promising, but it's not there yet. 
Okay, but do we want to help it get there? 
You know, I mean, I think that's important. 
I also could win the lottery next week. 
Not if you don't play the game. 
Well, can I just mention one thing? 
The idea of a thriving ecosystem of a lot of different platforms, I think is actually quite sound. 
I mean, that's so useful. 
It doesn't all have to boil down to the one killer app or the one successful one or two. 
Anyway, that's all I wanted to point out. 
I'm for that. 
Right. 
I mean, I'm willing to trust intentions at this point and see where they go rather than say, hey, you're not good enough, so we're not going to include you. 
And, you know, if we have three strong social media platforms to work with, it's a damn good start. 
So let's build those. 
But it wouldn't be terrible if it was 15 that we're all in the same kind of... 
Well, the only thing that I worry about is that, you know, having so many would basically fracture the community so much that we'd never be able to communicate with each other. 
I mean, already there are people who don't use email. 
Yeah. 
And you have to figure out how to contact them. 
It's ridiculous. 
Okay. 
I don't want to go off on that anyway. 
Yeah. 
There's lots of apps anyway, so... 
All right. 
Do we have a phone call? 
Yes. 
Okay. 
Good evening. 
You're on off-look over time. 
Go ahead. 
Hey, this is Gibson. 
Hi, everybody. 
Hey, how you doing? 
I'm talking about federated social media. 
I have opinions. 
Surprise. 
All right. 
Yes. 
You run on MasterDone Instance, I believe. 
I do. 
But also, as part of the VALID project, one of my core contributions was monitoring other emergent platforms at the time to understand what their MO was and what they were trying to accomplish. 
And Blue Sky was one of those platforms. 
Now, what did you find? 
What I found was they changed their direction quite a bit in the early stages with what was popular in the moment. 
For example, they were largely going to be NFT and cryptocurrency related when that was super hot a few years ago, right? 
Over time, that changed. 
They kind of backed off. 
They got into this federated model that they started building. 
There's been a lot of contention in that developer community about whether or not to carry on with the federated model, although it sounds like it's back in style for them, which is good. 
I applaud them for that. 
The one thing that they do that they don't really talk about enough, in my opinion, is that even if you're federated, they have something called the big social graph that is a centralized social graph of all the federated nodes that talk to Blue Sky and all of the users on those. 
So there is still a data collection model that you will not have control over if you're using the AT protocol. 
Okay. 
Establishing that because that is kind of the violation of privacy that you would think you would get out of a federated, or the opposite of the privacy that you might think you might would get out of a federated model, right? 
Okay. 
So I don't, I'm not, I'm not here to like say they're all bad, right? 
But what I am here to say is that some of the things they're doing, to me, point toward further monetization of the platform and turning it into something that may be user hostile over time. 
We're getting different voices somehow. 
I'm not sure where they're coming from. 
Is that you, Alex? 
He's stabilizing. 
Alex, you're all grainy. 
What's going on there? 
Can you unmute when you're ready? 
You're in New York City. 
How do you have such a poor connection? 
I don't know. 
He's completely frozen now. 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
Am I back? 
Well, he's sort of back, but what was it you were trying to say? 
Oh, I was, I was, I thought there was a pause, so I jumped in. 
It just turned out that my internet connection had somehow cracked out. 
Let's stop talking about your internet connection and get to the words you want to say. 
Yeah. 
I was agreeing with Gibson in that you would think that the ability to control where your data is going would be part of this decentralized or federated model that Blue Sky was developing. 
But if that's mysteriously absent, then you're not getting the benefit of the bargain there. 
You know, it's a buzzword without any kind of distinction between it and Twitter, then. 
And I want to point out that I am hopeful, much like I mentioned a little while ago, I am very hopeful that we have an ecosystem of these sorts of environments. 
Right. 
I'm not someone that thinks there is one right way to do it. 
Lord knows I have enough ammo in my debate belt about Mastodon's mistakes they've made over the years. 
Right. 
And I'm still running that software. 
Like, there's mistakes made no matter who creates the platform. 
And, you know, I think the thing is we have to avoid it becoming another data silo that can fall to Cory Doctorow's, you know, encrapification. 
Wait, we're not on the air. 
Yeah, you can say it. 
Anyway, you know, it won't fall to mentionedification, right? 
So you're in a situation where you want to avoid that data siloing occurring because that's where the value comes from, and that's when the decisions to make changes to the platform that do not advantage the user comes in time and time again, right? 
We've seen it with Facebook. 
We've seen it with everything. 
If you have a true federated model where that data isn't necessarily being monetized in that fashion, you have a more free model, in my opinion, and one where communities and users are able to make choices that enable them to protect the communities they love, to protect themselves, and to still have a social media experience that works for them. 
Now, that said, Blue Sky may turn this around. 
They could surprise me, and I would love to see that, right? 
But I'm just saying that there's a lot of indicators here up front, and I do threat modeling for a living, basically. 
There are a lot of indicators up front that make me not feel comfortable with the direction and the decisions they make. 
Well, do you think there is time to have a dialogue and to get them to get on the right course, or do you think it's too late? 
You know, early on in that development period, there were some decisions made about who was really able to communicate and contribute to that effort that give me a little bit of pause. 
For example, the Fediverse, Mastodon in particular, I guess I could say activity pubs, or really talking down to the protocol level, they had representatives in the Blue Sky project as well. 
Originally, they were looking at the activity pub protocol. 
That's actually kind of a mouthful. 
They were looking at the activity pub protocol to back Blue Sky, which would have given interoperability and some very interesting opportunities there. 
But they decided against it because it was going to be difficult to be able to control that data flow back to their data silo they wanted to do with the big social graph, right? 
And so it was marked off the list. 
Now, to me, interoperability between these systems is key because, A, it reduces the number of protocols in play. 
You could use activity pub to do all of these, much like, much to my chagrin, and meta, or Facebook, is doing with threads, right? 
It's an activity pub protocol underneath that. 
And it's kind of federated, but not exactly. 
So kind of doing the same thing, but through that federated model, right? 
So there's just some indicators there that make me concerned. 
I do hope. 
I would love to see them thrive, right? 
Because it wouldn't change me running Hackers.Town, frankly, for example, or the Fediverse. 
But it would give us a valid multi-platform system where we could engage at different places. 
Right now, I'm not comfortable with the decisions they've made so far. 
That said, given a little time, I don't think they've gone too far yet. 
I do often point to the fact that one of the decisions made for the launch of the beta, which is when I joined Blue Sky, the content moderation is interesting. 
And it's expanded over time and gotten a little bit better. 
But one of the very first things they had was basically a slider button you could click that allowed hate speech to be in your feed. 
They didn't moderate based on hate speech. 
They allowed you to turn it on if you wanted. 
And because of that opt-in, opt-out nature of that, that seems like kind of not a great way to go about it, right? 
Is that still there? 
Yes, it is. 
As a matter of fact, I just opened up my account the first time of year before I joined this call. 
There is a section under your settings of the Blue Sky Moderation Service where you can set all the things you see in there. 
And if you scroll down just a little bit, you'll see extremists, radical views advocating violence, hate, or discrimination against individuals or groups. 
And you can choose to set it to off, warn, or hide. 
It has evolved. 
Before, it was just a slider button. 
Interesting. 
Okay. 
I'd like to see just what that involves. 
Yeah. 
So they are using, to my understanding, they are using an AI algorithm to classify posts, right? 
And then these categories are how you can control that, which I think is okay. 
However, there are certain categories I think that maybe we should consider taking moderator action on. 
And extremist views, particularly hate speech, is one that I don't think you should allow on your platform. 
I think it's bad for everybody involved. 
So, and that's my opinion. 
I recognize we all have different opinions on this. 
I'm not trying to say that's it. 
But the decision to make it a toggle button instead of actually take moderator action, to me, kind of has a bit of a dereliction of duty feel to it on a social media platform. 
Well, I think we definitely need to bring that up. 
And that needs to be part of the dialogue and see if they're learning from what their users are saying. 
You know, if I had to say one thing that was positive, it relates to the ease with which you can get a Blue Sky account going. 
And that's important for those people who aren't technical. 
Mastodone has always been more complicated than I think it should be. 
I want it to be easier. 
I want it to not be, you know, something where you need to have the slightest bit of technical knowledge. 
It should be simple. 
You should know this is what this does, not send private messages to everybody because the setting is set opposite than what you might think it would be. 
Little things like that. 
It can get better. 
And then you also have the fiefdoms that develop from people who run their own Mastodone servers who basically don't allow certain things that you might think are unfair. 
Yes, you can move to another one. 
It's a pain in the ass to do it. 
But you can, things like that. 
There are pros and cons for all of them. 
And I think we're at a very early stage right now. 
But I want to see them grow. 
I want to see them develop. 
And if it gets to the point where it's obvious that this particular platform is doing too many evil things, well, you know, then we're in a good position to say that's it. 
You know, we have another platform to go to. 
But I think it's too early to know which one is going to be the most successful or will best serve our purposes. 
There's still time to help in the shaping of that. 
And I think we should take that opportunity. 
Right. 
So I agree with you fully on that. 
I want to be clear. 
Mastodon, the Fed versus the whole, has an adoption issue with a bit of a technical barrier up front. 
A lot of people have talked about it and reported that a million times, right? 
And I know some people on Mastodon tend to say things along the lines of, well, I mean, it's not hard to use. 
I use it. 
That's great. 
Except just consider for a moment, take your hacker hat off, right? 
And consider for a moment how difficult it is for someone that has no idea what they're walking into to even do something that is seemingly simple to us as choosing which instance, which server they want to sign up to, right? 
It's kind of problematic right out of the gate for people that aren't really technical, right? 
There's tons of things about Mastodon like that. 
The interface itself, a lot of people deride. 
There is tons of improvement that can happen on that side of the house. 
And, you know, not to call the creator of Mastodon into question, but, you know, there's been a lot of proposed improvements over the years that fell on deaf ears when we try to get that done and don't make it into the platform. 
So, you know, there's a bit of a beneficial dictator for life situation going on with Mastodon, I think, which is kind of problematic as well, right? 
It's also kind of typical. 
It is. 
It is. 
It is. 
It's not great. 
There is room for improvement on both sides of this. 
I think my biggest concern with Mastodon, ultimately, is the fact that now they are starting to actively engage with groups like Meta and seeking their approval with the way they develop things, it seems like. 
So we're in a situation, because threads have shown up on the Fediverse, that I feel like there's a little bit of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish going on now, right? 
And it's getting called out occasionally about it. 
But it's one of those where there's this successful protocol and platform that's working pretty well. 
It does have its barriers, and it needs to get better. 
Accessibility can be way better. 
But even they are starting to be impacted. 
The development team for it is starting to be impacted by the traditional social media silos, the data collectors, right? 
Well, that's not good. 
Yeah, I mean, no, there's issues there, too, right? 
Yeah. 
Well, threads showing up on the Fediverse really kind of soured the vibe a little bit, you know? 
Okay, let's look to China. 
Are they doing it right? 
You've got social media sites over. 
I'm desperate at this point. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
I mean, I'm sticking to the Fediverse right now, mainly because it allows me to control the experience for my community, and allows my users to control their own experience a little bit better than everything else out there. 
But at the same time, it doesn't escape a lot of the same pitfalls. 
Well, tell us something about what it's like to run your own Mastodon server. 
What's involved? 
Most days, it's pretty easy, right? 
If, like, as you know, we keep a closed community, so you have to have an invite. 
Someone that's there already has to invite you sort of thing, right? 
And so, as long as, you know, 90%, 99% of the days, there's not really a whole lot that has to be done. 
And what we will see is we'll find reports of, you know, another instance somewhere that's hosting or saying things that fall under the hate speech category, things like that. 
And we'll have to go defederate from that or something along those lines. 
And it's just a few clicks of the button normally then. 
Upgrades are a huge pain in the butt for that server. 
Like, we are eight years into this, people. 
This should be an easier process than having to go back to the original documentation and work through an upgrade just to upgrade your server. 
And it's hit and miss many times on your results. 
Like, you'll run through the upgrade, and you might end up with a server that doesn't come back up pretty easily. 
And, you know, so backups are critical when you do them, things like that. 
So, the actual maintenance at the back end is kind of painful sometimes. 
Most of the time, 80% of the time, no problems. 
That last 20% can have you down for days in some cases, and it's very bad. 
So, that's, to me, from an admin perspective, the weakest part of it. 
You know, occasionally you'll have somebody that's having a bad day, and they've been a valuable community member or something, but they come in, and they just put somebody on full blast in a way that you can't ignore it, and then you have to take admin action against one of your own. 
That's not fun, right? 
That's a bad day. 
Probably the thing I hate about it the most, because I consider most people in our community friends. 
So, to me, having to deal with that on a day is really painful. 
Other than that, like, the actual experience of running it in just day-to-day operation is not bad. 
But, you know, you do have a bad day every once in a while, but I think you have that, those situations, regardless of the platform, you know, problematic users, things like that are always going to show up, and then you have to deal with it somehow. 
And that, you know, that goes all the way back to BBS era, right? 
Yeah, I was just going to say, this reminds me of running BBSs. 
It's very similar sounding. 
It is very similar, actually. 
Like, you're looking at that sort of hyper-distributed model, right? 
And in some ways, you could even say it's sort of store-and-forward on the way it communicates messages. 
It's not really store-and-forward, because it's more real-time than it was back then. 
But it's not dissimilar. 
Like, when you think of messages traversing the Mastodon network, if you, or actually activity pub, I should say, all of the Fediverse, not just Mastodon. 
But when you think about how those messages flow, if you look at the usernames, you'll notice they look a lot like email, right? 
So-and-so at server name. 
It actually works a lot like SMTP, the email protocol. 
Like, the way it exchanges messages, the way the data flows. 
Like, until you get down to, like, ports and stuff, it's actually really similar. 
Like, it's a very good, close analog to what we understand is how email works. 
So, you know, to me, that's kind of a good analog way to explain it, right? 
But it creates the fiefdom problem. 
I had several slides at the VALID talk we did at Hope this year that kind of went over how we got here. 
And it pointed out these weaknesses in the structure, but it shared it with BBSs almost directly. 
Like, capricious admins are a problem. 
You know, you've got the, really, you've got all the same problems you get from any distributed thing. 
Net splits happen, which are the community, you know, you talked about earlier, when sometimes you can't get to one server from the server you're on. 
Well, that's really kind of the same as a net split if it happens at size. 
And it has happened more than once in volume. 
So, you know, it really, it's kind of, the more things change, the more they stay the same at the end of it. 
You're using the web front end to serve everything. 
You're using TCP IP now, but it's really very similar to the experience of running a BBS. 
Gila, go ahead. 
So, first of all, hello to everybody in the chat. 
We have 55 people watching us right now, which is awesome. 
And a lot of really active conversation happening in the chat, which is always wonderful. 
I would like to share a comment from one of our listeners, which I think illustrates the fact that I'm not the techiest person on the planet, but I am succeeding at Mastodon. 
So here we go. 
Jason says, I was thinking to host Snack instead of Pleroma as a Fediverse server, but I don't know how good Snack is, but I have more federation issues with my own Pleroma instance compared to Fostadon. 
And I actually poked Rob in the arm and said, is that English? 
I mean, that alone is kind of the problem, right? 
I mean, right there, it becomes so complex because the network becomes so varied and so distributed and weird that all these decisions, how do you even talk about them to somebody that's not immersed in the culture? 
Well, do you have to talk about it to some, I mean, maybe, you know, this world can exist transparent to those who just want to use it to communicate. 
I think that's the problem that we haven't reached that stage. 
We have not. 
I agree. 
I agree. 
That's where we need to be headed. 
But I think it's going to take something based on ActivityPub that is not Mastodon to get us there. 
I've been saying for a long time, quoting the old Nine Inch Nails song, you know, this wasn't built to last. 
This is for right now. 
And so we are very much in a state of being where we've got this platform that does the job okay, but it's not mature. 
And it's got so many things that could be better about it, right? 
Like, to your point, the user experience could be a million times better than it is. 
The, you know, what I was talking about earlier with trying to get this to where it's more manageable and easier for people to run on their own. 
I would love to see a Fediverse where everybody kind of had their own server. 
As a matter of fact, that's kind of what we were trying to do with Vailid with the fully distributed model, right? 
It was get people, we still are trying. 
I don't want to say tried in the past sense, but this is still working. 
But trying to get people control over their own experience solely. 
It would be better for everybody if you can do that in a transparent manner that doesn't require what we see in Mastodon now. 
Any other thoughts, comments? 
Alex, go ahead. 
Alex, you're muted again, I think. 
Yeah, all right, there we go. 
Now we're back. 
So I think the Gibson is right. 
He's on to some really interesting things. 
I think he should keep plowing along with Vailid, and I think it's such a great, interesting project. 
And he's been spending a lot of cycles on that for a long time, and I think there's a there there. 
So I applaud his efforts. 
And I think it's always great to hear your insights, especially with respect to the ins and outs of social media, because as you mentioned, it's like you are very much like an old hand and a sys-op when it comes to Mastodon. 
It's always fascinating. 
I just feel I have the radical belief that the data construct you build yourself online is no more alien to you than your right hand. 
And that's all I want is people to have the freedom to own that data construct in the way that they can to ensure the best outcomes for them. 
And that's all we've got to work toward. 
And that means ease of use. 
Just as you said a minute ago, Emanuel, ease of use is key, and we're failing at that. 
We really are. 
Yes, go ahead, Rob. 
We do have a comment that came in over Mastodon about this, and it's an interesting question for our caller. 
Someone called Dracon Black Knight asks, any chance of a hard fork of the signal protocol implemented into Valid? 
That would make Valid very secure. 
What do you think about that, Gibbs? 
Well, it wouldn't be the first time signal's been forked, right? 
Well, that's called WhatsApp, last I checked. 
So, you know, we're friendly with the Signal Foundation, with the actual org that maintains signal. 
I don't think of them as problematic in any way, frankly. 
I think we're very much aligned spiritually on this mission. 
You know, I don't know that there's any plans or even reality that that would happen in the future, just because we're kind of doing this in different ways. 
Although, I think there would be, like, the one thing that concerns me about Signal, and I don't think they've done anything wrong here, right? 
I want to be clear on this, but it comes back to the incentivification discussion. 
The thing about Signal is that ultimately their infrastructure is very centralized, and that comes with cost, and that cost will drive them to make decisions to be able to continue to offer the service while mitigating the cost to them, because they have to, because as it grows, it continues to get bigger, it costs more to do, and they're, you know, right now they take donations, as you see in your Signal app, right? 
But that never quite gets there to cover it. 
So, to me, long term, they're going to have to look at ways to mitigate the cost of the platform to keep it alive and maintain the very punk rock spirit they have about how they're doing things, which I applaud. 
And so, that force of the incentivification we see everywhere else is going to come for them, too, at some point. 
Now, they've been very lucky and very good, frankly, so far, and Meredith does a great job over there maintaining this, but they've been very good at avoiding that problem so far. 
But I do think that the secret weapon, Meredith has, that no one really talks about, is that sort of people's cloud approach we took, where those resources are available, spread out across the entire distributed cloud that we build, which takes away that bad incentive of having to monetize to be able to pay for your infrastructure, right? 
If there was a place that it would make sense for that, that's where it is. 
I don't know that it'll ever get there. 
You know, like I said, we certainly have a lot of respect for that org, and if they ever came asking, we would help them out the best we could, right, to try to make that happen. 
But I think that if it does get to that point, because what they're doing right now is really good, they don't really need us for the privacy side of things. 
If it gets to that point, that would be the driving reason, because of the cloud costs and trying to mitigate them. 
Yeah, I have to agree, you know, I applaud Signal's motivation and what they do. 
I do have some issues, though, and I think it's important to, you know, to express those. 
I run a lot of different systems for different purposes. 
Don't judge. 
I run Windows systems and Mac OS and all kinds of different things, Linux and FreeBSD, you name it. 
There are situations sometimes where you want to run something old. 
I've got Windows XP machines. 
I've got Windows 7. 
I've got Windows 8. 
You know, all different machines running different software that works in that environment and doesn't work well in a newer environment or on a different operating system altogether. 
And Signal was one of the apps that worked really well until they said, we're not going to support this particular OS anymore. 
We're not going to support anything below Windows 10. 
And I don't know. 
I just don't see why something like that is essential. 
When you're talking about a signaling protocol, you know, that basically you're sending messages, encrypted messages back and forth. 
You should be able to get that to work on virtually any operating system. 
And you shouldn't be pressured to constantly upgrade if you don't want to. 
You should be allowed to have the environment that works best for you. 
And I just think that puts off a lot of people when you say, as of today, we're no longer going to support this operating system. 
And you have to either no longer use the service or get a different operating system. 
And sometimes that means you have to get a different machine if your machine is old and doesn't support a newer operating system. 
So there's that. 
And the other thing is maybe they fixed this. 
But I know when I first joined Signal, I was barraged with all these people say, hey, welcome to Signal. 
They tell you or they tell people when you've joined. 
And if they know who you are, they will reach out to you. 
And maybe you don't want that. 
Maybe you want to join Signal quietly and not advertise it to the world. 
They make this assumption on your behalf. 
And it's not a valid assumption. 
Other than that, no problems. 
Right. 
So we faced a similar decision early on in the planning of the VALIT project, right? 
And this is a decision that will plague any privacy-respecting project. 
You almost have to decide right out of the gate whether you're decoupling identity from authentication. 
In our case, we do. 
We don't care so much if you are who you say you are. 
We care that you can authenticate as the identity you're authenticating as, right? 
And the reason this matters is because we wanted to take phone numbers out of the mix. 
We wanted to take any personally identifying information out of the mix. 
And it's also why in the beta for VALIT chat, you'll see there's an invite system where you have to actually exchange either a QR code or a generated hash with whoever you want to put as a contact into your VALIT install, right? 
And the reason for that is strictly kind of old school, right? 
It's like, okay, you know this person. 
You know who they are. 
You've confirmed that. 
And that's why you're trading that information with them. 
Or you haven't, but that's your decision, right? 
Now, that said, Signal has gotten a little better, although I have a little bit of a concern about this, too, because they have gone to allowing you to use a handle instead of a phone number while registering for SignalNav. 
They'll have both, but you can use your identity as that handle instead, which mitigates that concern. 
But, you know, on the other side of that, somewhere there's a database that has people's handles and their actual personal phone number in the same database, right? 
So I have some concerns about that as well, because it could be an identifying mark that could be used against anybody. 
That said, Signal's been great about challenging that and stopping those sorts of abuses that are happening. 
And so I can't complain too much. 
It's kind of a threat model that may never materialize. 
But, you know, ultimately, yeah, it comes down to how privacy extremist do you want to go, right? 
I agree with you. 
I found the Signal habit of telling everybody, you know, you've ever talked to that you're on Signal now, that was not great. 
And that is the one complaint I always had about them. 
I don't know if they still do it or not. 
I've been using it so long now, I haven't gotten one of those in a long time, so I'm not sure. 
Well, I think they do, because I occasionally see a notice that somebody I know is now on Signal. 
And, you know, I don't need to know that. 
You know, they'll tell me if they want to talk to me on Signal. 
But, you know, I'm sure it's better for the product to be able to migrate people over to the Signal app from your messages app or whatever. 
But, you know, get some permission to do that from the person who's signing in, because it could easily backfire, and they might be trying to do something more secure, and it's simply advertising to everybody, hey, this person now wants to be more secure. 
I wonder why. 
Yeah, I mean, maybe they don't want their abuse to a significant other to know, right? 
I mean, there's all sorts of reasons for this. 
True. 
Well, you know, I think we're going to move on to another phone call, as this one has lasted for most of the hours so far, but it's been great. 
No, it's awesome. 
Awesome. 
I'm so glad you called, and I hope you continue doing all the things you're doing and that we continue to hear from you. 
Yeah, absolutely. 
Thanks for having me. 
We'll talk next time. 
All right. 
Be well. 
802-321-4225. 
Any thoughts from Skyplant? 
Well, that was a lot of fun. 
Where are we in terms of commentary? 
Very, yes. 
Yeah, in response to the question that Gila pulled out of the chat with all the jargon that was arguably English, Alexius Pendragon said, I am pretty techie, and I got most of those words, but I still don't know all of them, and I don't need to. 
I'm still running a server with happy users that federates. 
Yeah, and that's good. 
That's good. 
But remember the problem I had with the Federation and running into some closed-minded people that didn't want me to mention the war in the Middle East, and as soon as I did, I got kicked off. 
You know, nonsense like that happens when you have little fiefdoms or, you know, BBS type of scenery. 
You just have to be prepared for it. 
Yeah, it's part of the package. 
But I was kind of surprised by that. 
You know, it was something that I wasn't expecting, that I wasn't really prepared for. 
And it was, you know, it was a pain to have to migrate somewhere else, but you can do it, and that's a good thing. 
Each of these platforms has its advantages and disadvantages. 
That's why I really would like people to run them into the ground, to, like, test them out, break whatever you can, figure out how to do it better, because that's how we build a community, you know, not by being victims of the established outlets that are abusing all of us in one way or another. 
802-321-4225. 
Kyle, any phone calls coming in? 
We don't seem to have the bell on, so I can't hear. 
We do. 
Okay, good evening. 
You're on off the hook over time. 
Go ahead. 
How are you doing? 
Good, how are you? 
I have a Verizon building. 
Yeah, nice to meet you. 
My name's Nick. 
I'm sorry, say that again? 
Nice to meet you. 
My name's Nick. 
Oh, Nick, how are you doing? 
Good. 
I've got a Verizon building near me, and they just got hydrogen generators installed outside of it. 
I wanted to hear if you ever heard of that. 
I haven't. 
Anyone else? 
Hydrogen generators, not familiar. 
Yeah, so on the side of it, it says Bloom Energy. 
Like, that's the company that makes them, and there's like eight or nine of them in a row. 
It, like, turns natural gas into, I guess, hydrogen, and it's like a fuel cell. 
It's like a chemical reaction. 
It just makes energy. 
That's interesting. 
Yeah, so it's cool. 
It's just like a local office of Verizon building, and it's just, yeah, it's like a whole dock of these installed near the building. 
Yeah, it's distinct from, I guess, what would have more particulate and other kinds of exhausts in the form of diesel generators that were used for backups, but they could be using it for other kinds of... 
Yeah, definitely. 
Go ahead. 
No, definitely. 
I agree with you with transitioning over from diesel. 
Yeah, they could be using it for other loads and, or projects that aren't necessarily backup. 
Yeah, it's like a solid state load almost. 
Right, right, right. 
Can we ask what part of the country you're in? 
I'm right here in New York in Long Island. 
I see. 
Okay, interesting. 
Well, I know Precious Little about this type of thing. 
Yeah, that was really cool. 
It just happened because, you know, I walked by it and I saw all the construction. 
Uh-huh. 
Well, you can always walk up to them and just ask them what they're doing, you know, and sometimes they'll just tell you. 
Yeah, no, that's true. 
They're like a retirement neighborhood next to it, and I walked on their path. 
Uh-huh. 
They're pretty close. 
Wow. 
Yeah, I think if they could have a nameplate, maybe, and see exactly what it is, but it's a cool, I guess, concept. 
Is it mobile or is it like a fixed installation? 
Like, does it look like it's temporary? 
It's cemented and it's solid. 
Oh, it's like? 
The yellow poles around it, maybe like a foot distance, like really keeping it controlled. 
Bowlers. 
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. 
So that's like a permanent upgrade or new generation method that they're deploying. 
So that's fascinating. 
Yeah, it's a large-scale deployment, so that's cool, yeah. 
So anyway, I was going to call that in and just, I guess, tell you, I thought it was like a nice technology transition almost. 
Yeah, absolutely. 
Take some pictures, too. 
Send us some pictures. 
We'd love to see it. 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
I got a picture. 
I can send it to you. 
What is it? 
O-T-H at 2600.com. 
You got it. 
Hold on. 
I wonder if that reduces the need for batteries in any case. 
That would be nice. 
Right? 
Like, so they have this, what the caller described as like a solid-state load that can accept basically constant demand and then in a backup, maybe it can power itself through its own storage, something like that. 
I don't know how big like a central office would be referred to as. 
Yeah, yeah. 
But it's like a nice building size, I guess, but it's always been there. 
You know, it used to be Bell beforehand. 
It had like the logo burnt on the side of the building. 
Uh-huh. 
So I don't know how deep they go, but whatever they got running there, it's always been, and it's nice. 
Interesting. 
Well, we'll keep an eye out for this. 
That definitely sounds like an interesting development. 
Yeah, I guess the energy transition, that was. 
Like, it takes natural gas, and the only byproduct is water. 
Absolutely, yeah. 
Yeah, and as they're using less inside, I think like some of the equipment is getting smaller and using less the... 
Energy-wise, yeah. 
The stuff that maybe was not viable in the past becomes a little bit more feasible for longer periods of like an outage scenario and stuff. 
So that's fascinating to see that there are changes being made to how that's done. 
Okay, well, thank you for the call. 
No problem. 
I'll send you the picture. 
All right, I look forward to seeing you. 
Have a good night. 
Great, you too. 
802-321-4225. 
If you've seen something interesting, let us know about it. 
Yes, Rob, go ahead. 
While we're waiting for a call, I just want to give a little shout-out. 
There's been obituaries and things going around for somebody who passed away back on the 12th. 
That is Thomas E. 
Kurtz, who was a legend in the computer world. 
He led the development of a computer language called BASIC, which I think most, if not all of us on this program are familiar with. 
And his whole idea was to get programming into the hands of students, of people who are new to things, who didn't have the ability to write in machine language at the time. 
And yeah, you can still use BASIC today. 
It was cross-platform. 
It was everywhere. 
It was very valuable. 
And I happened to grab off the shelf a book that I got in the mid-'80s with my first computer. 
And this book is the TRS-80 Color Computer Playground. 
And it was part of my introduction to BASIC, the other being the extra-fat BASIC manual that adults used. 
And through those two books, I became really connected with the fact that you could not only use computers to run things that other people had made, but, you know, tweak around with those things, hack around with them, and also make your own things. 
And I think, Gila, you shared this kind of experience. 
It's very true. 
I had a slightly different book. 
I didn't have the color computer playground. 
I had a book called Matilda the Computer Cat. 
Um, but that's where I learned how to program BASIC on my TI-99-4A at home. 
Um, and, you know, from Matilda the Computer Cat, I learned how to make BASIC play music. 
And that was super fun, actually. 
I was sitting there. 
I simultaneously, you know, I could play it by seeing, and then I was able to figure out what the keys were and how to program it, and it was super fun. 
And, yes, I had the Matilda the Computer Cat for the TI-99-4A, which was pretty darn spiffy. 
Yeah, and, uh, and Thomas Kurtz, uh, passed away on November 12th. 
He was 96 years old, so I think a life well lived. 
Wow. 
Yeah, BASIC was one of my first, uh, experiences with a computer ever, uh, walking into the computer room of, uh, my high school, uh, where I was not taking a computer class. 
In fact, I'd never taken a computer class. 
Um, and there were all these, uh, what were known as deck writers. 
When a 300 baud, they would just print out dot matrix onto the computer paper. 
Uh, those, those, um, deck writers were connected, uh, to a time-sharing computer many miles away, uh, that all the high schools on Long Island were connected to. 
It was called Lyrics Time-sharing, I, I believe. 
Uh, and, um, I just remember looking at this and seeing, um, uh, this, this, this, uh, what looked like a typewriter typing things without anybody typing it themselves. 
It was, it was, it was like it was talking, uh, back. 
And, um, I remember, you know, if you type something wrong in BASIC, it would just echo back what, with an, uh, with a, a question mark. 
It was, you know, very simple, but to me, it seemed like, wow, the computer is actually talking back. 
Uh, of course, that only happened within BASIC. 
Once you exited BASIC, then, uh, you had a period as a prompt and you could type all different other commands. 
But BASIC was, was the thing that made it accessible where you could, you could type a line number, you know, 10, print, hello, or whatever, 20, go to 10, et cetera, build, um, an endless loop. 
And of course, you know, we all went to Radio Shack and did that with their computers that were on display so that we could print out all kinds of messages that the staff at Radio Shack would have to figure out how to turn off. 
Um, BASIC was, was a lot of fun to play with and very simple. 
I never really got advanced knowledge of it, but I was able to do what I wanted to do with it and also able to run other people's programs that did all kinds of cool things, play various, uh, sports games on, on, uh, the, the, the screen or the printout, whatever it was that we happened to be using. 
What strikes me though, and, and tell me if I'm wrong about this, but the computers that we use now, do any of them have BASIC anywhere? 
Uh, how do you, how do you run BASIC today? 
Uh, yeah, I kind of like to do it for all time's sake, but it doesn't come with any OSs. 
And I, I think that's a shame because it's kind of, uh, the magic of computing is wrapped up in BASIC. 
And it would be nice to have that link to the past. 
And I don't know why you can't still use it. 
I mean, it's, it still does cool things. 
So, um, I don't know. 
Everyone's doing all kinds of, uh, Python programming and various other things like that. 
Uh, it's, it's not the same. 
Yes, Rob. 
Well, you can still use, uh, you could still, I think, uh, pretty easily use Visual BASIC, which is Microsoft's, uh, you know, I think great, great grandchild of the original BASIC. 
And, uh, it's, it's got a lot of the same, uh, philosophy behind it. 
Um, but, and, and it's a thing that, uh, I think does still exist in usable forms. 
It comes on Windows systems or do you have to track it down? 
No, I think, I think you, you have to, uh, get it deliberately. 
It doesn't just come with a thing anymore. 
All right. 
We have another phone call, Kyle? 
Yes, there is someone on the phone. 
Thank you. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Yes, I remember the BASIC. 
Rebel, you're slipping. 
You're call number three. 
You usually call number one. 
What happened? 
I thought that you've been taking so many phone calls. 
I, I didn't, uh, I wasn't. 
Well, we take the phone calls of the fastest dialers first, and that used to be you. 
Um, let's see. 
Well, we all get older. 
It's no shame. 
Yeah, I remember playing with BASIC in college. 
Not in college. 
And, um, no, you're a little older than me, so I remember playing BASIC in radio shack. 
That's where you went to school? 
Um, no. 
No. 
No, actually, I played with Digital Equipment Corporation's terminals in college. 
Ah, yes. 
I think we all did. 
Um, no, you, you, um, said you had a time-sharing thing. 
At college, we had a time, we had a mainframe, and we had a, you, you know, TIC, DEC, ET, I think, of 320 terminals. 
And we, you know, do programs like DCO, Digital Command Language, and we had WordPerfect and things like that. 
Mm-hmm. 
Yeah, my college had a mainframe, too. 
They had a UNIVAC. 
I think a 9,000. 
I'm not sure about that. 
Oh, well, that's how old you are. 
The most, well, no, it wasn't, look, this is something that predated me by at least a decade. 
It was just there while I was there. 
People would walk around campus with, uh, with punch cards and boxes, and it was just really, you know, silly, uh, very user-hostile. 
Uh, people would wait at the dispatch window for printouts of their program running. 
To me, it just seemed really boring and not, uh, not fun at all. 
Um, obviously, I got involved in the more fun aspects of computing. 
The Queensborough Public Library used to use, uh, back in, like, the 80s, they used to use, um, in former D304 terminals. 
You could look that up online. 
But it's like a computer, it's like, oh, I don't know. 
It was a computer company that went out of business. 
It was from California. 
They had the keyboard, and then on the left of the keyboard was a, like a, like a nick with a, with a monitor that you could, like, swivel, like a little, I guess it was like a 10-inch monitor that, you know, and it was like a white text screen. 
This is, I think we hooked up to, like, I remember calling the, uh, computer place at Jamaica, Queens, and they said it was a digital Equipment Corporation computer. 
Uh-huh. 
I think it was hooked up to, like, a PDP-11 or something. 
Yeah, PDP-11, PDP-10. 
They were, they were a lot of fun to play with. 
What do you have, what do you have a degree in? 
You got a degree in, uh, from Stony Brook, right? 
That's correct, yes. 
Good on you for doing your homework. 
And so you should know what I got my degree in, then, if you've done that much research. 
Well, computer science, I'm sure. 
Yeah, you are sure, but you're wrong. 
You're totally wrong. 
What is it? 
My God. 
Bachelor's degree in, uh, journalism? 
Well, there wasn't a journalism degree when I went to, uh, to, to Stony Brook, unfortunately. 
Otherwise, yes, I would have picked that. 
Well, keep guessing. 
It makes life interesting, you know. 
I got something technical, like, um, um, um, uh, electronics, or. 
Yeah, you, you would think that, wouldn't you? 
But, um, no, no. 
Not a technical person, believe it or not. 
I love technology. 
I like to play with technology. 
I'm very good at breaking technology, but I, I do not program. 
Well, I do. 
I mean, you know, as much as anybody else does to get through the day, but, you know, I'm not a coder. 
Oh, well, I, I know that, um, you know, you were talking about Facebook and, and, like, uh, permissions and all like it. 
That's, you know, there's a lot of, like, social media has lots of options and permissions and, and settings. 
You know, people don't even know how to, what settings to use and what options. 
That's why people get, you know, hacked and things like that. 
Because they don't know, you know, you know, what settings to use and what options to, you know, permissions to use. 
Right. 
Or they listen to the wrong people and, and, and set things in ways that are not advantageous to them. 
And I did not pass the high-of-ham radio test. 
It was very complicated. 
You didn't pass? 
Oh, my goodness. 
Wow. 
I didn't, I'm sorry. 
Wow. 
It was very complicated to, you know. 
Did you study? 
Um, yeah. 
I mean, kind of. 
That doesn't sound like you studied. 
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of complicated. 
I mean, because I don't really want to do things like set up an ad and then use it for emergency communications. 
I'm just, you know, interested in how things work and how radio works and how, you know, how frequencies work and how things are transmuting and how antennas are set up and things like that. 
Well, my understanding is, I, I, I've never taken the test myself, uh, only because I'm, I'm, I'm being, uh, uh, contrarian to peer pressure. 
Uh, but, uh, those people who did, um, they study and, um, the questions are pretty much almost identical each, each time from what I'm led to believe. 
So really, you know, if, as long as you pay attention to what you're reading and try to remember it, you should be okay. 
That's my understanding anyway. 
I don't know how a 10 year old just can be fast to test at the whole conference in like two hours or three hours. 
Three year olds can pass this. 
I mean, it depends on your, your, your, your commitment. 
It is becoming really useful because so many devices are using wireless protocols and many different forms of, uh, access control, all that. 
I mean, it's becoming, um, ubiquitous. 
The, the, um, ability is like, um, it can, it can be so tiny on, on the most unlikely device. 
I was looking at an air conditioner today that I guess has wireless capabilities or something. 
I don't use it. 
And I was like kind of taking it apart, looking at, well, not kind of, I was literally taking it apart. 
There's no kind of there I committed, but, um, it's funny because the, the wireless module actually has a USB a connection, like the, the very big one. 
So you could physically, uh, disconnect the, the sort of module and, uh, disable it. 
And I started thinking about it. 
I was like, wow. 
So now I have like a USB access to the, um, the unit, the, the, the device itself. 
So I could maybe, uh, hardwire some other controller or use some other antenna or frequency than wifi. 
And then I started thinking, well, what can I do with the wifi module? 
Could I like show up and like hook a computer up and appear to be an air conditioner, like logging onto people's networks? 
And that would be fun. 
I started having a lot of fun thinking about it, but, um, yeah, that's, that's a great spirit. 
So pursue it and maybe you'll pass. 
And then it's just something you have, but I've resisted as well. 
And then found like, oh, if I want to go like, learn about, uh, one discipline or the other, you know, uh, it invariably involves some sort of wireless connection at some point. 
So it's, it's, uh, a sort of necessary evil, I guess is what I'm saying. 
Rebel regards to your ham radio, uh, test. 
You got to take it again. 
Uh, did, do you know what your score was? 
Uh, I, all right. 
There was 35 questions. 
You had to get 25, right. 
So I got 21, right. 
Okay. 
You're close. 
You're, you're close. 
And if you take it again, guaranteed some of the questions are going to be the same. 
So you should remember those. 
Um, and, um, just go back, take it again. 
You'll, you'll, you'll, you'll pass next time. 
All right. 
Um, because we're going to ask you every week if, if you have your license yet, and this is, this is not going to go away. 
So, uh, we, we expect you to, uh, follow through. 
Right. 
But then I got to go all the way to Westchester and get it. 
And the women, all this stuff. 
Well, they don't have ham radio, uh, tests in Queens, right? 
Wait, why the hell wouldn't they? 
Yes, Rob, go ahead. 
Um, do they tell you which questions you got wrong? 
So, you know, where you need to study up? 
Uh, actually they do. 
I was close to it yesterday and they were going to, yeah. 
Wait, you have to go in to see what questions you got wrong? 
Yeah. 
You have to go. 
Uh, yeah, that's the, that's the thing. 
It's a pain. 
I got to go all the way to Valhalla, which is up in Westchester. 
And it's, it's, you know, I mean, it's had a car, you know. 
This is 1952. 
They, they can't communicate, you know, through other ways. 
No, they have Zoom classes, like, you know, like, I, you know, the classes all over, like, Zoom, I went up there once or twice, but I did the most of the classes on Zoom. 
Um, but doing a test, you have to obviously be in person, so. 
Right, but finding out what questions you got wrong, you shouldn't have to go all the way upstate to find that out. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, well. 
All right, well, that's, that's, that's something. 
I'm sure there are tests being given closer to you than, than, than Westchester. 
Um, I don't know. 
Let's leave this one. 
One number, sir? 
What, let's see? 
I don't see. 
Uh, Gila, go ahead. 
Um, there is an offer on the table. 
Uh, Lex, I don't know, is it Pendragon or Pendragon? 
I don't know. 
Lex, please throw that in the chat. 
But, uh, we do have an offer. 
Lex says he'll buy Rebel, um, Club Mate at the next Hope if he passes the ham test. 
He's got to wait till Hope to get a mate? 
That's a good deal. 
Yeah, well, you know, you can get mates at the 2600 meeting, which takes place every month on 53rd Street between 3rd Avenue and Lexington. 
Just saying. 
But, not to get overly doxy, Lex does not live in the area. 
Well, whose fault is that? 
Should we say where else you can get it? 
Uh, where else can you get it? 
Oh, never mind. 
No, say where else you can get it. 
Cost plus. 
Who, what? 
Cost plus World Market. 
Cost plus World Market. 
Okay, say it louder so people go understand. 
Cost plus World Market. 
Where is that? 
I don't know of any around here. 
I don't know. 
It's in more places than you, when you're looking for it, it's everywhere. 
But then, like, if you're not thinking about it, it's like camouflaged. 
So, if I start looking for it, I'm going to see, what, cost plus what now? 
Yeah, they're everywhere. 
They're everywhere. 
I'm going to hold you to that. 
I'm going to go out right now. 
They have some spiffy stuff. 
They have some spiffy, spiffy stuff. 
It's a world. 
Oh, wait. 
No, we got this on the West Coast. 
On the West Coast. 
You're absolutely right. 
Yeah, but that's a West Coast thing. 
Is it an East Coast thing? 
You're getting people's hopes up. 
I don't know. 
East Coast has to figure itself out. 
I'm not in charge of that. 
When you're traveling, look for it. 
We did find some Club Mate while we were traveling. 
That was fun. 
Both ham radio tests and Club Mate from time to time occurs in Queens. 
No one has ever failed a ham radio test while holding a bottle of Club Mate. 
A full bottle of Club Mate. 
That's a fact. 
Look it up. 
I think half the class failed. 
I think half the class failed. 
Well, maybe you would just drag down by them, you know? 
And now you're telling on them. 
They're saying if you're in a bad, you know, environment and people aren't taking, you know, their studies seriously, you can get pulled down, too. 
And I think that's what might have happened to Rebel because he normally passes every test. 
You know, this is... 
And I don't like Club Mate. 
Okay, don't say things like you can't take back Rebel. 
Be careful. 
Well, I don't know. 
I think I tried it at the whole conference. 
I don't like it. 
You know what? 
We can fix that. 
We can talk to you about that. 
Yeah, that's treatable. 
Okay, do I do? 
What do you think, sir? 
All right. 
This is the point where we disconnect because we are finished for the night. 
And you're the last call for a change. 
And it was good hearing from you. 
It's good saying goodbye, too. 
And we will see you next time. 
Thanks, everybody who called in. 
Thanks, everybody who listened. 
Thanks, everybody who's on the chat. 
Any words from the people out there in Skypeland to the crowd before we leave? 
Thanks to all the folks on Mastodon listening. 
You can find us on Mastodon if you haven't already. 
Off the hook at hackers.town. 
And thanks to everybody on the YouTube chat for hanging in with us tonight. 
It was a very lively discussion. 
And we've all just started talking about where we learned BASIC. 
So that's been great fun. 
Thanks, everybody, for being part of it. 
And next week, if folks want to bring back the conversation about Internet of Things enabled devices like my brother's dishwasher, that can certainly be a discussion for them. 
And, again, thank you for joining us. 
And we'll see you next week. 
Do you have anything, Alex? 
Not really too much to add. 
I just say I look forward to joining you all for our special Thanksgiving edition of Off the Hook next week. 
See you all then. 
And since you guys brought up Mastodon, I guess I have to bring up Blue Sky, where 2600 is on as well. 
I'm not sure how to say this yet. 
The ID is 2600.com, which is a cool feature that you can have a URL be the ID if you verify. 
And it's a good way also to know that people are who they say they are. 
Basically, I think if you type 2600.com anywhere on Blue Sky, you'll find us. 
But the full URL is bsky.app slash profile slash 2600.com. 
That'll get you there, and you can take it from there. 
And we all have personal accounts on various things as well, so you'll probably find us if you find anything. 
Be the rogue appliance you want to see hacking in the world. 
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 
And write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
We will see you next week. 
Good night, everyone.