The call you are attempting to place is not allowed from this line.
Please dial 611 for customer service.
Message 10-PA-01-GN.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
One diddley-bomb for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
Next 700-PA-01-GN.
Actually 100-PA-01-GN.
I dodley-bomb!
Last 700-PA-01-GN.
Last 700-PA-01-GN.
Next 700-PA-01-GN.
Cost 600-PA-01-GN.
That across.
Primary 100-PA-01-GN.
That is essentially $20.
For more than Freddy Hale- Mangim known for the best.
For more than ever 8 while not expect country-
Next 700-PA-01-GN.
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.
Hi, everyone.
Out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Hello there.
And we have Alex.
You do.
Hello.
Well, you all survived the storm, the blizzard catastrophe that we just went through this weekend?
I appreciate the fact that being allowed to sit in my apartment and not do anything is me being a good citizen of my city.
Well, yeah.
You don't want to walk out into a raging blizzard now, do you?
You know, it's, you know, nothing's running, there's wind, it's hostile, best off that, you know, people stay safe.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I mean, people are critiquing that little advice of, you know, staying alive.
It's like, I have the right to go outside and drive if I want to say, well, you know, there's two feet of snow on the actual road.
So how exactly do you plan on doing that without causing a major pain to everybody else around you?
But I don't know.
I guess we debate everything these days.
Rob?
You know, not to get all life of Brian about it, but we can have the right to do something very stupid without having to go out and do it.
I suppose so.
Yeah, that's a good way of saying it.
All right.
Well, tonight is our call-in show here on WBAI.
We won't be doing overtime, so we will be opening up the phone lines fairly soon.
They're not open yet, so if you know the number, don't call it because it's not going to go anywhere, or it'll go somewhere that you don't want to go.
But in a few minutes, we will be opening it up, and we'd like to hear from especially the people who have not called recently on either overtime or the WBAI call-in portion of this program.
We have - okay, the storm was one thing, and I don't know if there's any kinds of technical things we want to point out that we've noticed, if there's any EAS activation.
I didn't hear any, but I imagine there might have been some.
We did.
You heard it?
I didn't have one.
Yeah?
Are you talking about on phones or on radio?
On the phone.
Okay.
On a mobile phone.
Okay.
I'm talking about a phone.
I think I heard one over the radio that was maybe a television signal.
I heard one on TV, but it was some guy's phone who was on TV, so I don't know what that counts as, but it's probably illegal, too, because you're not supposed to broadcast those signals over broadcast media.
So unless it's coming from your station.
So somebody might be in a lot of trouble.
I don't know.
But, you know, things seem to work pretty smoothly.
I noticed the trains got kind of mired and didn't actually resume until today.
And that's understandable.
You know, something like this.
And, you know, it's what I've been hoping for for a long time is this kind of a winter.
And, boy, we have it now.
So, okay, this is where we shine.
This is where New Yorkers come out and do their thing, help each other out.
And I've seen a lot of that.
We have.
And another technological, I think, component to all of this is, I think, since the era of COVID and everyone kind of accepting that working from home and going to school from home is a thing that it's possible to do,
I think attitudes have been a lot more relaxed around letting people do so in conditions like we've had.
And one very interesting thing, talking of schools, was that with this past storm, it was the first time, and I think something like since, like, 2019,
that New York City schools actually had a proper snow day where it wasn't learned from home.
It wasn't, you know, you still have to do anything.
It was a proper school is closed, stay, you know, home and just have fun in the snow type of day.
Go ahead, Alex.
Well, I have to say, I don't think we talked about this during the last snowstorm,
but this issue of being at home and having remote learning days that the mayor had instituted this last time,
like trying to be tough on kids or something like that, you know, or show that he was a tough guy, was such an idiotic decision.
I'm really glad that he learned from it because it was a nightmare.
And it operated under certain assumptions, too, right?
Like, we don't all live in Gracie Mansion, number one, right?
Like, if you have multiple kids home in New York, they all need their own room in order to be remote learning effectively.
You can't have two kids doing remote learning in the same room.
And also, remote learning presupposes that every family that has to do remote learning has enough machines,
enough computers in the house or devices in order to remotely learn simultaneously.
That was also a nightmare because...
Alex, Alex, your problem is not with remote learning or kids staying home.
Your problem is with the mayor.
No matter what, you're going to find a way to criticize him for snow.
My problem was with that decision.
I've seen this with the Staten Island Republicans, and now I'm seeing it with you, and I'm tired of it.
Emmanuel, I just said I'm glad that he learned from the decision.
My problem is not with the mayor.
I hope he does well.
But he made a truly idiotic decision to do remote learning the last time.
Well, what was the alternative to send kids out into bad weather just to try and get to school?
Just have a slow day.
Have a slow day.
Okay, the kids are still home.
All you're doing is not learning, is not having a school day.
And he explained many times why he decided to do that.
It's because of the number of school days that New York State pays for.
I mean, I'm not the mayor, so I don't know the exact technicalities, but I do know there was logic behind it.
It wasn't just a stupid decision.
He also explained why he didn't do it this time and why school was in session on Tuesday.
Watch the city hall briefings.
He goes into great detail.
It's just people are criticizing him for garbage being out because the sanitation people are clearing the streets.
They're criticizing him for clearing the streets wrong or doing it differently.
Mayor Adams says this never happened under me because he never had a damn snowstorm under you.
And it's just ridiculous to see this because this guy is a socialist.
He's going to get all this crap from all these people.
And, you know, it's...
You're the mayor.
It comes with the job.
If you want the job, you have to take the criticism that goes along with the job.
But oddly enough, that criticism is not given to others in the same way.
Are you kidding?
Rob, go ahead.
You know, I grew up on Long Island about 100 years ago and actually in the 80s and 90s and in a district which was notoriously stingy with the snow days.
But Long Island gets hit by winter weather and nor'easters and all sorts of goodness.
And so what ended up happening was we would have a big snowstorm.
The schools would say, no, we're still open.
Send your kids to school.
And a lot of parents, including my own, would take the executive decision to just tell the kids, stay home.
You know, I'm not sending you out in this.
I'm not sending you to walk to school in this.
And I'll just write you a note.
So the kids would end up just having an absence and one fewer school day.
When a snow day happens, that day is taken off the school calendar, but it's added back on to another part of the school calendar, usually part of a vacation or on the end of the year in June, to keep the total number of school days in session at 180.
So remote learning has meant that you could still keep that running total without losing the day.
But when you have a snow day, you have to move the day around to give it back at some point.
And, you know, remote learning can be a good tool for this.
But, yeah, as Alex says, you need to have the accessibility.
You need to have enough machines for kids.
You need to have enough space for kids.
And you need to have a home environment and, you know, the requisite stuff and peace and quiet.
And not everyone is going to have that.
And connectivity and all kinds of moving pieces.
But, yeah, I think there was, like, a special dispensation from the state to clear the calendar because I think at a certain - at this point, I think, to keep the number of instructional days, they'd have to take away some of the holidays that have been added.
And I wouldn't want to be in the position of deciding whose holiday gets canceled.
Right.
And all kinds - more critique and everything.
Look, everything that happened in New York City also happened on Long Island.
Schools were closed the same amount of time.
And I didn't hear any critique about that because it's run by Republicans, you know.
Nobody ever criticizes when they do these things.
But as soon as you have somebody left of center doing something, oh, my God, he has no experience.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
Give me a break.
That's enough.
No.
Emmanuel, I think that's totally wrong.
It has nothing to do with him being left of center.
If he was right of center, I would say the same exact thing.
If he was center of center, I'd say the same exact thing.
It has literally nothing to do with his politics.
It's everything to do with the decision.
As somebody who had two kids doing remote learning in a small apartment in the West Village during the last snowstorm, I have to say, this was a verifiable disaster.
He's not responsible for getting you a bigger apartment with less kids.
I mean, that's - those are the choices you made.
It's not a city thing.
He's responsible for making this as a remote learning day when he knows in New York there is a housing crisis.
Why are we talking about this here?
This is ridiculous.
Well, you brought it up.
No, you brought it up.
I didn't bring - all I mentioned was the snowstorm.
Well, it's a snowstorm.
Yeah, we got a technological bent to the discussion here.
That's a way of framing this under technological movement.
Guys, we only have an hour.
So let's try to get through that.
I'm trying to get through some stories here and open up the phone lines.
We have a RAM shortage that's on the way.
It's going to make this blizzard look like, you know, nothing.
It's - yeah, basically it's going to affect every bit of technology around us, gadgets, games, toys.
This article from The Verb says, maybe you've heard, memory is expensive now.
The price of RAM has tripled, quadrupled, even sextupled, depending on the type of chip, all because AI companies are gobbling it up.
Yes, AI, once again.
But maybe you thought, I don't buy memory sticks.
I don't buy my own PCs.
It won't affect me, right?
I'm here to tell you RAM is coming for your wallet anyway, says this columnist.
Do you have a phone in your pocket you'd like to upgrade in the next few years?
Not really.
Fancy a game console or handheld?
Not at all.
A laptop, perhaps.
Nope, got one of those.
Will you need a new router, whether you're purchasing outright or renting from your ISP?
Hopefully not.
Each of these devices is expected to have shortages, price hikes, or both in 2026.
So stay away from it and get good stuff that'll last.
And yeah, maybe put some reins on AI so it doesn't take everything.
I do know a lot of people are looking at this.
It's hard to forecast.
It's hard to plan if you're designing things or making products.
But just in general, a lot of people are thinking about these types of materials being scarce in the future as a result of these different industries going headlong in one way or the other over, say, artificial intelligence or crypto or whatever the popular thing is.
Because that's a priority.
They sort of seem to be buying up more and more of what people need access to and take for granted now.
Well, it's called Ramageddon.
Of course, you knew that.
It's only getting worse.
There's no immediate end in sight.
Everything that has a computer inside depends on Ram and almost everything has a computer in it now.
Farm tractors.
I don't know why that's the first example.
Hospital equipment.
Your TV.
It's going to be unpleasant, I guess.
And there's no end in sight because there's no end to AI in sight.
Nice world we're setting up for ourselves.
Yeah, Rob.
The real stupid thing about this is that this is Ram that hasn't been made yet, that the companies have planned to manufacture over the course of the coming year.
There are deals in place with these companies from companies that want to build AI data centers.
And they've put in advance orders for large amounts of memory and hard drive storage is also being hit with this.
And the data centers don't exist yet.
The memory and hard drives don't exist yet.
In many cases, the money don't exist yet because it hasn't been raised from VCs or whatever dark, mysterious ways these AI companies are raising their funds.
And so this is money that doesn't exist yet being spent on memory that doesn't exist yet for computers that don't exist yet and data centers that don't exist yet.
And the end loser is us who just want some sticks to put in our desktops and whatever.
Yeah, it'll become products that don't exist yet in the future because they are dual use.
They are capable of certain things that we would expect to be affordable in the future.
So if you can find something based on this, it will be wildly expensive because most of the memory and hardware was allocated.
The components were allocated to these enterprises and speculative projects that may or may not pan out.
But they're basically already purchased before anyone can can get access to them, which will lead to like the less ability for everyone else in the the systems and technology that they're using now.
It becomes stuck in it or like frozen in a certain period.
Yeah, I think I think you're right, Kyle.
It's going to it's going to be expensive, but I don't think it's going to be nearly as expensive as we remember RAM in the 90s.
Do you guys remember how much RAM cost in the 90s?
I mean, it was it was really expensive.
It was $40 a meg around 1994, 1995, not $40 a gig, $40 a meg.
But do you remember how many megs you had?
Exactly.
Yeah, you had four megs of RAM.
You couldn't count the number of megs you have now.
No, no, it's it's it's unbelievable.
I mean, so, you know, eight megs of RAM back in, let's say, 1994 probably cost you around $320.
You know, now we have 16 gigs as like standard.
I mean, it's unbelievable to me that we need that much memory.
I don't think that we're using computers so differently between 1995 and 2026 or 1996 and 2026 to justify going from eight megs to 16 gigs of RAM.
I think I think there's a lot of bloated code out there and a lot of unnecessary memory being used.
I completely agree with that.
You know, computers haven't really changed.
We're doing the same basic task.
We're just doing them with more with more bells and whistles and things like that.
Maybe things we don't want.
I think the real skill is if you can manage to program a computer with very little memory and figure out how to get it to work, how to do those things that you want to do.
Yeah, it won't be doing complex algorithmic things, I suppose.
But there is still quite a bit that you can do with some skill and, you know, a little bit of programming.
OK, I guess everyone agrees.
That will be a solution, yeah, a workaround.
If you're trying to use advanced technologies, you'll be kind of on the trailing edge of it for a while and doing doing more with that with what you have, I guess, will be the the name of the game.
We have another story concerning people who wear smart glasses, which really isn't so smart.
But our friend Joseph Cox over at 404 Media has this story.
Basically, there is a new product known as Nearby Glasses, and it's an app that was created after 404 Media put out a story about how people are using Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses to film people without their knowledge or consent.
Yeah, a new hobbyist-developed app has warned that if people nearby, or actually what it does is it warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as those Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent.
The app scans for smart glasses, distinctive Bluetooth signatures, and sends a push alert if it detects a potential pair of glasses in the local area.
The app comes as companies such as Meta continue to add AI-powered features to their glasses.
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Meta was working on adding facial recognition to its smart glasses.
Can anyone stop them?
I mean, they're doing such evil things.
Okay, so now you can walk around with glasses that look like regular glasses and get facial recognition.
I mean, this is something that the most scummiest people imaginable would run towards in droves because this gives them everything they want.
Well, imagine the situation that we had talked about with doorbell cameras.
The same kind of thing could be done with feeds from all these different people's vantage where a particular face is run and all of that is processed very quickly by some entity.
And it's just in any group or any geographic area.
That all becomes possible when we sort of adopt them.
And if you think about it, it'd be the perfect way to implement it.
It's like, okay, here's this like really fancy camera that, you know, it looks cool.
And, you know, it's very sneaky the way we adopt this kind of stuff.
And wouldn't you know that now it's like creeping into wearable stuff.
Well, the hobbyist developer and sociologist who made the app, Yves Jean Renaud, and forgive me if I'm mispronouncing that,
he basically said, I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.
This is the kind of hero we need.
Somebody who will just make something that serves the public.
Now, is anybody objecting to this?
Does anybody have a problem with somebody's right to walk around with a smart glass, quote unquote,
and be detected by the people around them?
Is that something that's bothering?
I mean, I want to know what kind of person that bothers.
None of us? Good.
I think you should be detectable.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, if you are wearing them and people are looking for signatures that your device emits, yeah.
I mean, that seems like a fair trade.
You might be using it for some other purposes, but people need to know that, you know, you're filming.
Yeah.
I mean, there's been some issue of like a light that is on while it's recording that people have been blocking or there's ways of obscuring it, turning it off.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, there is an LED light that's supposed to be on in these glasses when they're recording to let people know that they're recording.
But it's an LED.
It's trivial to, you know, put a little piece of tape or some paint over it or even, you know, go in and just snip a contact and you have no more LED.
And so the idea that these things are out there and stealthy, I mean, we live in New York City.
We, you know, you can't go out onto the street expecting privacy when you're walking past however many cameras you do in your day-to-day life.
But there is a difference between that and between people sneaking up on you with these things.
You know, somebody walking around with their phone filming, it's obvious what they're doing.
Somebody walking around with a camera or an audio recorder or anything else, it's clear what they're doing.
You can remove yourself from the situation if you want to.
But, you know, when there's now a thing in phones that will alert you if an AirTag is following you.
I only saw this recently on my own phone.
But, you know, it's become accepted that these things are around there tracking people.
And maybe it's good that we be aware of this.
And I think the same applies to these glasses.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah.
I mean, people are using these ridiculous things to make somewhat interesting Instagram reels or, you know, get access to places where you wouldn't ordinarily be able to film.
But I think these mods are real.
And, you know, I've read about them.
And there's lots of different ways that you can do it.
But now that Meta is aware of the fact that there are these mods to the glasses, they always knew you could paint over it or something, right?
But now that they know that there's this easy and somewhat pretty cheap way to defeat the privacy LED and to enable this covert recording, now arguably they may have a duty to redesign this or to patch it or to police some kind of - police in some way these third-party modifications.
Because I guarantee you they're going to be facing claims for the misuse of biometric data.
They're going to be looking at regulatory scrutiny.
They're going to be facing negligence claims if they don't.
So, I mean, I think there are a lot of legal ramifications for their failure to correct this.
You remember when Google Glass came out a number of years ago?
That got a pretty bad reaction.
People heckled.
They ripped the glasses from people's faces.
It was looked upon - this was 10 years ago.
It was looked upon with such hostility.
And I guess, you know, it was easy because the glasses were pretty unique looking.
Now, Meta's come out with Ray-Ban glasses that are designed to look like any other pair of glasses, which makes it much, much harder to distinguish if somebody - you know, you don't want to knock the glasses off somebody who needs glasses.
That's - no, that's a horrible thing to do.
So, but, yeah, according to this story, a woman on the New York subway allegedly broke a man's pair of Meta Smart glasses while he was filming a piece of content.
You know, it's a contentious issue, filming people without their knowledge or, you know, even just sneaking around with one of these things.
I wonder, you know, where this is going to go.
But that app certainly seems like something a lot of people will be interested in.
Yeah, and it's a good response to this, I think.
It's good to have things like this happening thanks to clever members of the hacker community.
And it's called Newby Glasses.
You can find it on Google Play Store or on GitHub.
So that sounds like a lot of fun.
Yeah, explore.
This stuff is all around us and it should be that you can figure it out and be aware of it and have ways of interfacing and getting alerted to it.
That's a great way.
And we need more creative solutions to at least knowing that the problem is around or being aware that you might be in proximity to stuff of interest.
And all of these things as kind of really impossibly small and hard to defeat as it seems, they do have a presence and there's always a way.
And I think that's really inspiring.
You could give more people ideas in the process.
So I'm ready with the phone.
Yeah.
Okay, it's time.
I'm going to give out the phone number and the phone is not active until the last digit is said.
So if you know the number, don't start calling it yet because it still doesn't work.
The phone number to call to talk to us here at Off The Hook on WBAI is area code 802-321-4225.
That's the phone number.
And the phone is now connected and hopefully working.
802-321-4225.
Give us a call if you have something to say or a question or a suggestion or a story to tell.
All kinds of things.
Question though while we're waiting for a call.
We have a call, but go ahead, Gila.
Okay.
Can the smart glasses be fitted with a prescription?
Yes.
Yeah, in many cases.
The glasses frames you can get.
Okay, because that was, especially now that, you know, Meta's partnering with Luxottica, which I think has a stranglehold on most of the glasses making in the United States.
So that's very, you know, I was curious.
All right, we have our first phone call.
And good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Go ahead.
Good evening.
Thank you for taking my call.
I just wanted to offer great praise to the CEO of Claude.
Claude, I guess it's called Anthropic, who has refused to cooperate with the military and the general surveillance state in allowing them to use their software for mass surveillance or for weapons.
And I think that feeds, interestingly, into the whole question of how we are dealing with an arms race in AI in the military area, which seems like the most dangerous possible direction we could be going.
I'd love to hear you guys' take on it.
It really is scary.
There's no question about that.
And, you know, I believe that they were refusing to get rid of safeguards or something ridiculous sounding like that, that this company wanted to have safeguards for their product.
And the government said, no, we want no safeguards.
I don't know if it was as crazy as that.
But we certainly seem to be up against some very, very dangerous scenarios.
And it's parallel to Trump trying to prevent the states from regulating AI because the way to lose an arms race, of course, is to regulate.
You can't have regulations and still win.
Though if you win, what you wind up with might be incredibly dangerous.
I guess that's my main concern.
I hear that.
Any thoughts from the other people?
I think there's plenty of examples of technology, specifically military technology, that has been hard to maintain or become an entire endeavor to maintain once you have that capability.
So that must be well-known.
And, yeah, it really is that thing of dual use that I was talking about.
But as retail customers or just consumers, we're competing on that same playing field as far as purchasing power, we can't when it comes along and takes over an entire sector of the technology industry.
So it is a really, really fascinating question and issue that you raised.
All right.
Thanks for your call.
Okay, sure.
All right.
Take care.
Eight zero two, three, two, one, four, two, two, five.
We'd love to hear your thoughts and theories and news announcements.
And go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, to the caller's point, I think this is a real interesting moment here because this is like the first time you see a massive tech company saying no to a massively lucrative government contract.
I mean, that's wonderful in this world where every policy has some kind of clause in it that allows them to, you know, to engage in, quote, unquote, any lawful use of your data.
You know, they said no.
They actually asked, you know, but should we do this?
And they answered negatively.
They said, no, we're not going to play ball here.
And basically the Pentagon said to them, the functional equivalent of you, well, have you tried turning your morals on and off again?
And they did.
And they still said no.
So I think it's, you know, I think that really Anthropik should be applauded.
And I use Claude Code all the time, I have to say.
I think it's pretty awesome.
And, you know, who's working over at Anthropik now, who we've had on the show multiple times, is Welton Chang, Dr. Welton Chang.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, that's good to know.
We have another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
Hi.
It's Howard from Queens with the dogs.
Wow.
How you been?
It's been a while.
Pretty good.
Two things.
One, the lawyer, I forgot his name.
I agree with him on the mayor.
Of course he did.
But I really want to talk about the glasses.
You know, things can be used for good and bad.
A lot of blind people who can afford it are getting glasses now connected to their phone through AI, and the glasses can tell them all about the environment.
You can walk through an airport.
It will tell you to go left, right.
It will tell you things.
It will tell you someone who's standing nearby.
It will tell you if the people are laughing.
So there is so much technology out there that AI is doing it, but you can't fall down a track.
I've been playing with Grok.
And, man, that thing, you can go down a rabbit hole with that.
It's pretty cool.
But I would also say that, you know, if you put the glasses on, let's say you want to meet your sister.
She's in a crowd.
You can scan the crowd, and it will guide you towards the sister.
Do you remember in Star Trek there was a black actor that had these glasses around him?
He was blind?
Geordi Laforge?
Yeah, I remember him.
Yeah, he was blind, and that was technology way ahead of his time.
He would put these glasses on, and he could see.
Mm-hmm.
Look, there's no question that there are good uses for this.
I didn't mean to imply that there weren't.
But the bad uses can be used by the worst of us.
And we just need to know who's got these things, who's staring at us, who's, you know, recognizing our faces.
That is not even an authority figure of any sort.
It's, you know, it can be a bit scary.
And most important, who's recording us?
Just like a car.
Yeah.
Just like a car.
A car can be used for good and evil.
It can transport people, or you can go kill people with a car.
That's right, yes.
So you know what?
You can't make everything perfect.
But, okay, what about a person who may have some eyes that are staring at people because they're trying to focus?
So you have to, you know, look at these things.
It's a complicated situation.
Someone like me would use that technology to navigate a city or a block or look for a certain person.
If I walk into a building and I want to find, you know, the doorman, you know, I might be able to say, there's a guy in a uniform at the door.
Yeah, you're not following somebody to their house.
You know, that's very different from creepy behavior and non-creepy behavior.
So I don't think you have anything to worry about.
Aren't there laws to stop that?
I mean, the law is already on the book.
It's against the law to follow someone or to record them and then use that information for, you know, put on the Internet.
A lot of these glasses for the blind, they do record for a few seconds so that AI can give you, you know, a description of your environment.
You can say, well, there's a blue wall in front of you.
You're coming up to a streetlight.
But the lights red, green, it talks in your ear, telling you, you know, bit by bit what's happening with your environment.
But as far as to, I just want to jump over to the mayor for a second.
Yeah, I agree.
Oh, boy, here we go.
I forgot.
I'm sorry.
Alex.
But what I agree with is that when I grew up as a kid, we had snow days and they didn't make it up.
Part of learning is having fun, going out there and playwriting.
How many kids do that anymore?
I remember growing up in the 60s.
I was born in 55.
Look at all the fun we had as a kid.
Today, we don't do that.
We sit at home.
Kids sit at home and play with their computer.
What about when we used to go out and explore and not worry?
One or two snow days.
I don't think one or two snow days is the reason why we believe kids aren't having fun today.
I do remember the same period, though.
I do remember, you know, snow days and they got a snow day.
But, you know, we're getting criticism for that, too.
You know, it's...
You know what we get?
By the way, we had more creativity back then.
I remember when I was a kid, I had an apple crate and I had a big nine-foot whip on it for CB and I had a CB radio and a battery on it when I was like 11 years old.
Wow.
Now, that sounds like fun.
And more kids should get involved in that kind of thing.
Rob has something to say.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, I mean, Kuala, you mentioned that, you know, you can use a car for good and bad things, and that's true.
But also, a car is one of the things that have the most amount of laws and regulations around it, around what you're allowed to do with it, how it's allowed to work, how they're allowed to build them, and so on.
Because the general public has come to the conclusion that it's a good idea to regulate certain things about these.
And when it comes to these glasses and the mods, you know, I'm normally very much in favor of people taking, you know, material that they own, a gadget that they own, and modding it to their heart's content.
But I also am very much in favor of people having the right to know when they're being recorded, when they're being spied upon.
And so there is a line to be found.
There's not an easy answer to it.
I wish I could think of one.
But, you know, this is something that we're all going to have to be aware of now.
Yeah, one more thing about cars.
You know, I just thought about something.
You know, the government at some point is going to want to regulate cars to the point where they can turn it on and off.
They're saying now they want to be able to kill a car.
Okay, now, now, hold on a second.
That is not happening.
We've been hearing this a million times.
That's not what it's for.
It's something that's contained within the car itself and is designed for impaired drivers to notice when they are doing things that are impaired and disabling the car.
Nobody has any remote access to it.
That's something that's being spread around.
You know what?
We have a creeping thing, okay?
Go back to 1984.
We'll get to a point in society where they'll put cameras in our homes,
and the government will say it's just for, you know, to make sure that we behave.
I'm not disagreeing with that.
I'm sure that's on the agenda.
Yeah, but that's not what's happening here is my point.
And look at the features.
They're making it so that people are doing it willingly,
and the technology is powerful enough to communicate with these models.
You know people have ring doorbells inside their house?
I didn't know that.
Yeah, I didn't know that either.
Why would you do that?
They have spy cameras inside their own homes.
Who does that?
Astonishing.
It really is.
Listen, Carla, we've got to move on because we have a bunch of calls.
We've got to have big large screen TV,
and every morning we've got to get up and sing and dance to the king.
Do your calisthenics, yes.
1984.
It's pretty close right now, but, yeah, I see that coming.
Listen, good hearing from you, and we will talk to you again soon, hopefully.
Thanks, guys.
Great shots.
Thank you.
Take care.
802-321-4225.
Phone lines are open.
We only have about 12 minutes left.
Boy, the time goes by really fast.
Yes, Alex.
To the Kohler's point about the laws that could be broken by the misuse of Meta's Ray-Ban specs over there,
there's lots of them.
I mean, there's unlawful surveillance laws.
There are consent laws about who can be recorded at any particular time that vary from state to state.
There's harassment laws.
There's doxing laws.
There's use about biometrics, and I think the use of biometrics when it's combined with facial recognition technology
and then potentially leading to doxing people, that's really, I think, important.
There's lots of laws about what can be recorded where, you know, in terms of the workplace and restricted areas.
Are you getting to a comma soon?
Because we have a call.
Oh, let's go.
Yeah.
No, we have all these laws.
Was there a but coming?
No.
I was saying he asked if there were laws about this, and yes, there are so many laws about this.
So, yeah, but let's take our call.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Hi, Emmanuel.
I had a question.
And I have a statement, Rebel.
You call every week on Overtime.
We're opening up this week for people listening to Off the Hook.
I'll give you 10 seconds.
Go ahead.
Okay.
In the 90s, how did W1, WBA, I was on like 505, 8th Avenue, how did they get from the
Oro when they were on 120 Wall Street?
How did they get from their station, like the audio gets from the station?
Okay.
We've answered this already, and we'll answer on the air, but open up the phone line now, Kyle.
We answered this before, but we either used a phone line or a microwave.
I would guess it was a phone line because it was so close, and it was in the middle of Midtown.
802-321-4225 is our phone number, and hopefully I don't have to say that again.
Not the phone number, but the rules about calling and not calling.
802-321-4225, and we have another call coming in.
And good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
Hi.
Good afternoon, or good evening.
I've got a Microsoft question.
Okay.
Hopefully we can do something with that.
Okay.
Let me first turn the radio down so that you're not getting your feedback.
Thank you.
Hold on a sec.
Appreciate that.
Okay.
I have an old Microsoft Hotmail account, which was caught up in a confusion regarding passwords.
The passwords were a cause for Microsoft to lock the account.
Subsequently, and that subsequently means three visits to the Microsoft office on Fifth Avenue.
They've been unable to open this account.
There was a time when the techs were able to, you know, flip a switch and make it work.
At this point, I'm being charged by Microsoft for storage, and I have no access to the account.
How can I get them to open the account?
Well, first thing, make sure you stop paying if they're not giving you what you're paying for.
This is a Hotmail account, or is this something else?
Yeah, Hotmail account.
Well, here's my strategy.
If I stop paying them, I lose the one tangible association to the account that I have.
Sure, I stop paying them, and they no longer have any obligation to, you know, to provide a service.
Well, you say you went there before, and they were able to access this account?
No, they're not.
They're saying that the techs no longer have the ability to access the accounts.
I don't know if you've ever gone to the Microsoft stores, but years back, the techs were pretty, I don't know if powerful is the word,
but they were able to do a lot of things, which their abilities have been deprecated at this point.
Okay.
Well, I mean, think of it from a different point of view.
If somebody else were trying to get into your account, you wouldn't want them to be able to do that, right?
But there must be a way that you can prove who you are.
Have they asked you for that?
Yes, but see, it seems as if the conversation is being held between myself and a machine, and what is it that they'll ask me?
They'll ask me questions that I answered 25 years ago when I answered, I don't know the answer to these questions.
I mean, you know, the account was open, you know, the turn of the century or whatever.
So, you know, the normal mechanisms by which they might automatically prove that you are who you say you are via the online communications may not be viable for me in terms of access.
I need to speak to a person, and God help us, I can't find one at Microsoft.
Well, okay, that's the immediate challenge.
And Alex, do you have a suggestion?
Go ahead.
Yeah, I have a question for the caller here.
For how long, you mentioned this was an old account.
For how long was this account dormant and inactive before you went to Microsoft and asked them to reset the password?
Um, not long.
I've had the account for, like, you know, hotmail, geez, 20 years.
I mean, but I've been at this now, you know, swinging at the, you know, to try and get this activated for at least two years.
And what changed?
You just, you didn't have the password anymore?
Is that what changed?
No, what happened was that, you know, I was operating on a little, um, on a, uh, on one of the laptops, and, you know, the keys get sticky, so, you know, the password may not go through as you type it.
Right.
And you only get so many chances to go through, and after a while, it just said, well, you know, that's it.
That's it forever?
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, I mean.
I didn't know that.
That's my point.
You're saying if you, if you guess a hotmail account wrong a certain number of times, it locks it permanently?
Yep.
So I could take anyone's hotmail account, guess the wrong password a bunch of times, and log them out?
Maybe.
That's where my mind goes.
Something happens to me.
Wow.
Um, okay, uh, Rob, you have a suggestion.
Um, I did find a form online that's, uh, on the Microsoft site.
It's a request for account reinstatement, and it is this digital form you fill in with, uh, all your account details and everything, and they will review your account.
Um, I don't know how effective this may or may not be, but it's something you might try if you haven't.
I've actually tried that, and, um, if you, again, they'll ask you a series of questions, which, you know, like I said, I answered 20 years ago,
and I don't know all of the answers to those questions anymore.
You know, that little trick, what did you, what, who's your favorite girlfriend?
You know, all this silly stuff, you know.
You gotta write it down.
You gotta write these questions.
Yeah, I keep it for 20 years.
Mm-hmm.
But I guess the real question is, is there a corporate office that you can go to, or, I mean, you know, because I'm, I know that I can't be the only person with this problem.
Send them to Washington, I guess.
Washington State is where, that's where Microsoft lives.
Uh, yeah.
Rob, do you have another idea?
Um, yeah.
I mean, I, I think the only thing I would have had left to suggest is go into the Microsoft store, but you've done that.
And if the people who are there and actually work for Microsoft, uh, don't have anywhere else that can send you, that, that is mind-blowing to me.
How about this?
And Gila, uh, you're next.
Um, if you, and I've done this, if you ask, um, AI of one sort or another, let's say Gemini, uh, for a number to reach a human being.
I was able to do this at Amazon when they completely, they completely messed up in order.
I could not find a way to get in touch with a human.
And I asked Gemini, Gemini, can you tell me how I can speak to a human at Amazon?
It actually gave me a phone number.
So you might try that.
That might be a way to dig through all the, all the web crap and, and, and actually get an answer.
It won't solve your problem, but it'll get you to the next step.
And Gila, go ahead.
Oh, there was just one note that I had about the form about reinstating an account, which was that they are suggesting that you can, you know, submit your Skype username and get that reinstated.
And it does make me a little worried about how frequently they're checking things from this form.
Wow.
Okay.
Listen, caller, best of luck to you.
Thanks for calling.
Keep us updated on that.
But we do have to open up the phone lines for more calls.
But thanks.
Thanks once again.
Wow.
What a nightmare.
I mean, this must be happening more and more.
People's Facebook accounts, their, their Hotmail, Hotmail.
I didn't even know Hotmail was still around, to be honest.
I don't want to sound, you know, all cynical, but, uh, I haven't heard from them in a while.
So, really, 802-321-4225.
It's, you know, amazing.
Hotmail was the thing, uh, 20 years ago when he was using it.
And it was probably worth a lot of money.
And whoever owns it didn't sell it and make a lot of money.
And they must really be, well, it's probably, it's probably a bad year for them.
802-321-4225.
We only have a couple of minutes left.
So, if you're going to make that call, do it now or, um, forever hold your peace.
Um, 802-321-4225.
Floor is open.
And just to check out, uh, just to shout out the, uh, station we're on, WBAI, if you're
willing to, uh, jump in and support us in what we do here on this show and on this station,
you can go to buddy.wbai.org and, uh, be part of what goes on here.
Help us keep the lights switched on and, uh, all our computers and equipment humming.
Um, you can also call 833-WBAI-NYC and make your, uh, pledges over the phone.
That's right.
Pledges are what keep us going.
Listeners are what keep us going because we don't have commercials and we don't have government
grants.
We don't have dependency on those things that can, um, uh, order us to, uh, behave in a
certain way.
We don't take orders.
We don't, uh, listen to anybody except our listeners.
That's what, uh, that's what they're out there for is to give us feedback.
And we always like to hear from you.
You can write to us here at off the hook, OTH at 2600.com.
That's our phone number.
I mean, that's our, no, that's our email address.
Our phone number is, I'm sorry.
802-321-4225.
I'll get it right.
Don't worry.
We have a phone call.
We only have less than a minute.
So Kyle, pick that up, please.
And, uh, good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead quickly.
Yes.
Hello.
Hi.
You only have less than a minute.
Yes.
I just want to say I can agree with the previous caller.
I had a problem with Amazon and it kept telling me that I had incorrect username or incorrect
password.
But in fact, when I spoke to a human, she told me my account was dormant.
Wow.
Which meant that I needed to get a new account with a new email, but they don't tell you
that at first.
They lie to you and say you have the wrong username or password.
That's the easy thing to do to make you feel like you're wrong.
And congrats on, um, on, on, on finding a way to get back to your account, a dormant account.
That's something to, um, to be aware of.
Thank you for that call.
We are out of time.
Again, OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
And, uh, we will see you next week with another show and another edition of overtime, which
is not on this week.
Keep listening to WBAI.
Keep awake and, um, be happy.
Good night.
Standing there alone, the ship is waiting, our systems are gone.
I'm sure, control is not convinced, but the computer has the evidence.
No need to abort, the countdown starts.
Watching in a trance, the crew is certain, nothing left a chance.
All is working, trying to relax.
Up on the capsule, send me up a drink.
Jokes, Major Tom.
The count goes on.
Four, three, two, one.
Earth below us, drifting, falling.
Floating weightless, calling, calling home.
Second stage is cut.
We're now in orbit.
Stabilize us up.
Running perfect.
Starting to collect.
Requested daughter.
What will it affect?
When all is done.
Things made you talk.
Back at ground control.
There is a problem.
There is a problem.
Go to Rockets phone.
Not responding.
Hello, Major Tom.
Are you a scene?
Turn the thrusters on.
We're standing by.
There's no reply.
Four, three, two, one.
Earth below us, drifting, falling.
Floating weightless.
Floating weightless.
Calling, calling home.
Across the stratosphere, the final message.
Give my wife my love.
Then nothing more.
Then nothing more.
Far beneath the ship.
The world is born.
They don't realize.
He's alive.
No one understands.
At Major Tom's,
these are the life commands.
This is my home.
I'm coming home.
I'm coming home.
Earth below us, drifting, falling.
Floating weightless.
Calling, calling.
Earth below us, drifting, falling.
Floating weightless.
Floating weightless.
Calling, calling home.
Floating weightless.
Calling, calling home.
Oh, oh, oh, oh