[00:01.490 --> 00:09.690]  Brooklyn for Peace and World Can't Wait present Whistleblowers and Surveillance, a panel event Monday, April 21st, 7 to 9 p.m.
[00:09.790 --> 00:12.610]  at The Commons, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn.
[00:12.890 --> 00:22.850]  Join panelists from World Can't Wait, Stop Mass Incarceration Network and Arab American Association of New York to explore questions of surveillance from Edward Snowden to our own communities.
[00:22.850 --> 00:25.310]  That's Monday, April 21st, 7 to 9 p.m.
[00:25.590 --> 00:28.550]  at The Commons, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn.
[00:28.870 --> 00:31.350]  For more information, check brooklynpeace.org.
[00:32.490 --> 00:36.190]  And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
[00:36.370 --> 00:37.430]  The time is 7 o'clock.
[00:37.650 --> 00:40.750]  Time, once again, for Off the Hook.
[00:59.060 --> 01:01.100]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:01.880 --> 01:03.680]  But if they could, they would.
[01:44.110 --> 01:45.790]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[01:45.910 --> 01:46.910]  The program is Off the Hook.
[01:47.010 --> 01:50.910]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
[01:51.190 --> 01:51.810]  Hi, how's it going?
[01:52.070 --> 01:52.670]  Bernie S.
[01:53.130 --> 01:54.210]  Greetings from Pennsylvania.
[01:54.490 --> 01:56.030]  And our good friend Jason Scott.
[01:56.250 --> 01:57.310]  Oh, wonderful to be here.
[01:57.310 --> 02:00.490]  You may know Jason from such organizations as Archive.org.
[02:00.650 --> 02:07.750]  And, well, just somebody who has made a number of documentaries about the hacker world and computers in the past.
[02:07.750 --> 02:10.050]  Get Lamp and the BBS documentary.
[02:10.330 --> 02:12.970]  And you've always... you're always working on something.
[02:13.110 --> 02:14.270]  I'm always working on something.
[02:14.390 --> 02:17.690]  Because we only get so much time on this earth, we might as well fill it with fun.
[02:17.850 --> 02:18.790]  Absolutely, absolutely.
[02:18.790 --> 02:27.850]  And, uh, speaking of fun, I understand both you and Bernie participated in the same fun this past weekend at the, um, at the Vintage Computer Festival.
[02:28.010 --> 02:28.330]  Is that correct?
[02:28.530 --> 02:28.870]  Yep.
[02:29.090 --> 02:34.830]  We had a really... we went to the Vintage Computer Festival in, uh, I guess you would call it Wall Township, New Jersey.
[02:35.450 --> 02:38.090]  And, uh, it's a two-day... actually, it's now a three-day event.
[02:38.230 --> 02:41.430]  They have a day of workshops and then two days of exhibits and talks.
[02:41.570 --> 02:43.070]  Well, there's more vintage computers than ever now.
[02:43.210 --> 02:45.770]  It is crazy how they go about it.
[02:45.770 --> 02:47.890]  Um, they really put their all into it.
[02:48.010 --> 02:57.590]  It's at this Marconi Wireless Museum that has room upon room of, of, of some mainframes, some minis, some micros, even electronic games.
[02:58.090 --> 03:01.850]  Um, lots of people, dozens and dozens and dozens of people were there.
[03:02.030 --> 03:04.910]  And I, I swam around mostly on Saturday and saw Bernie.
[03:05.130 --> 03:07.850]  We bumped into each other, hung out in front of some great stuff.
[03:08.250 --> 03:16.230]  And, uh, no, I, I can't really, I can't, I can't say enough good things about the retrocomputing people who really put their heart into it.
[03:16.290 --> 03:20.730]  I mean, you got people coming from other countries or from across the country with stuff to show.
[03:21.290 --> 03:24.690]  Um, in fact, I, I should say that there's another one coming up.
[03:24.790 --> 03:32.250]  If you live in the, uh, Georgia area, the Vintage Computer Southeast is going to be held on March 4th and 5th, I believe, in Atlanta, Georgia.
[03:32.770 --> 03:35.490]  Um, so these things are put together by volunteers.
[03:35.530 --> 03:37.390]  There's no umbrella organization.
[03:37.390 --> 03:43.350]  They are just assembling some amazing exhibits and talks, and, uh, it's well worth going to.
[03:43.850 --> 03:51.650]  And there were some, uh, there were some good talks, uh, at, uh, ECF 9.1, uh, in, well, New Jersey last weekend.
[03:52.190 --> 03:55.910]  One of the, uh, one of the more interesting speakers was Jason Scott.
[03:57.010 --> 03:58.190]  I, I heard about this.
[03:58.190 --> 04:01.930]  I heard that, uh, there was, uh, there was some, uh, issue with the wind or something.
[04:02.050 --> 04:05.130]  You want to explain that to, uh, to anybody who might have been there, uh, Jason?
[04:05.390 --> 04:09.210]  So, so they've had it, they've had me speak in a couple rooms, and I'm a loud person.
[04:09.210 --> 04:13.310]  And, uh, uh, the idea was they wanted to expand out their space.
[04:13.470 --> 04:18.430]  So what they did was they, they rented a tent, and they put it out in the yard near the building.
[04:18.790 --> 04:21.850]  And in theory, this should mean that you have much more control.
[04:22.070 --> 04:26.010]  But it was a windy day, and so the tent was blowing flaps.
[04:26.290 --> 04:29.190]  And so there was a revival sense about it.
[04:29.250 --> 04:32.410]  It was a windy day, and I was loud as anything.
[04:32.410 --> 04:36.550]  And I've listened to the recording of myself, and I sound absolutely high.
[04:36.710 --> 04:42.030]  And I, I didn't mean to, but I, man, I'm, I'm like, I love this stuff so much!
[04:42.030 --> 04:46.350]  And I'm just very excited, and they're clapping and cheering, and it's, it was crazy.
[04:46.470 --> 04:53.570]  This brings back memories of Ulm Roop Radio in, um, in the Netherlands, uh, at, uh, at Ulm last year, where we were doing radio.
[04:53.670 --> 05:02.990]  In fact, we did an edition of Off the Hook that has not ever aired in this country, but we'll air, uh, on a, on our website in a few weeks, uh, more details on that later.
[05:03.030 --> 05:09.350]  But we were inside a tent, too, and it started, the wind started howling and blowing, and the tents were flapping in just the exact same way.
[05:09.470 --> 05:12.810]  So we can, we can certainly, uh, um, identify with that.
[05:12.910 --> 05:25.930]  So they had that, and they had, um, and I was followed up by, uh, one of the, uh, the, the guys behind the, the Franklin, which was an Apple clone that got, that got punched around by Apple, uh, got into a lawsuit over whether or not they could have the equipment be that way.
[05:25.930 --> 05:27.750]  And he was a really nice guy as well.
[05:27.890 --> 05:42.730]  And there's, like, all sorts of people who were there, and you might not even, you know, like, co-designer or designer of the Commodore 128, or, you know, there's a whole range of people where, unless you're introduced and told who they are, you have no idea of some of the giants of this organization.
[05:43.030 --> 05:49.330]  So, so, so, um, you know, like, it's, it's, it's weird, because they're tech celebrities, but they're still celebrities to me.
[05:50.210 --> 05:50.550]  Absolutely.
[05:50.770 --> 05:56.470]  Hey, Jason, do you have, do you have a minute to, uh, talk a little bit about, uh, about what you talked about, uh, at BCF?
[05:56.830 --> 05:57.330]  Uh-huh.
[05:57.730 --> 05:58.650]  I'm happy to do that.
[05:58.850 --> 05:59.270]  Am I clear?
[05:59.370 --> 06:00.130]  Is my microphone working?
[06:00.250 --> 06:00.750]  Is everything good?
[06:00.930 --> 06:01.090]  All right, excellent.
[06:01.090 --> 06:01.930]  I think we're clear, yes.
[06:02.070 --> 06:02.450]  All right.
[06:02.610 --> 06:09.590]  So, in summary, in summary, um, I work at the Intranet Archive, which is at archive.org.
[06:09.850 --> 06:12.670]  A lot of people know about it because it's got the Wayback Machine.
[06:12.670 --> 06:17.410]  That's the place you go to when you discover your website is gone, or a website you cared about was gone.
[06:17.970 --> 06:26.450]  And, and it's the, um, dream of a guy named Brewster Kale, who took the, uh, millions he made in the dot-com era and set up a library for the people.
[06:26.610 --> 06:30.310]  No banner ads, no interstitials, no special client to download.
[06:30.550 --> 06:37.210]  You can go there, and, uh, he's put up millions of books and tens of thousands of movies.
[06:37.470 --> 06:47.370]  And, and, and, and, and some time ago when he hired me, he said, you know, we've done really good with our, our web crawling and our books and our movies and stuff, but, but we haven't done well with software.
[06:47.590 --> 06:48.910]  Could you do something about it?
[06:48.970 --> 06:49.990]  And that was three years ago.
[06:50.210 --> 06:59.770]  And I have put up a lot of software, uh, thousands and thousands of, of CD-ROMs and computer manuals and magazines and, and documentation.
[07:00.750 --> 07:05.230]  And we wanted to take it further, which is, I think, what you're referring to here.
[07:05.490 --> 07:12.070]  And we've actually, um, two years of work have revealed something called the JS Mess Emulator.
[07:12.210 --> 07:21.250]  And if your, your audience is aware of the MAME emulator, which is the arcade emulator, they might not know that there's a second emulator that goes with it called Mess.
[07:21.410 --> 07:23.490]  And it stands for Multi-Emulator Super System.
[07:23.810 --> 07:28.690]  It can emulate, to varying degrees, 1,600 computer platforms.
[07:28.930 --> 07:33.310]  Everything from a PDP-1 to an Atari 800 to all sorts of consoles.
[07:33.630 --> 07:34.950]  Really powerful thing.
[07:35.170 --> 07:44.770]  And I had this idea for, you should be able to run it without going out and downloading the program and finding ROMs and making things work.
[07:45.090 --> 07:56.310]  So with the help of a set of really great volunteers, um, we have ported it to JavaScript, which sounds horrifying, but it actually works.
[07:56.310 --> 08:09.450]  And so it is possible at the Internet Archive to see a historical piece of software, uh, let's say Azalkabeth, which was the, uh, one of the first role-playing games for microcomputers made by, um, the creator Vultima.
[08:09.790 --> 08:14.270]  Click on a button and suddenly you're playing it just in your browser at full speed.
[08:14.450 --> 08:16.090]  And it's a full working Apple II.
[08:16.430 --> 08:26.950]  And so we've tried to do for, you know, for software, the experience of software, what we've done with movies and music, which is there's a button, you press it, you're watching a movie or listening to music.
[08:27.410 --> 08:31.010]  And we're just on the opening salvo of this.
[08:31.190 --> 08:32.070]  You know, it's not perfect.
[08:32.290 --> 08:33.170]  It's pretty interesting.
[08:33.450 --> 08:42.070]  But I think over time, that is how the vast majority of people will experience software is as an embeddable object to say, and here's this thing running.
[08:42.770 --> 08:45.790]  And, uh, it's been, it's been quite an adventure.
[08:46.010 --> 08:56.150]  So, so, you know, I'm still working with a lot of different groups to preserve software, to pull it off of aging and dying magnetic media and make it available on the Internet Archive.
[08:56.490 --> 09:04.290]  And again, this is, this is, this is, uh, people who've known me for the years, I've done all sorts of things, but this is my full-time job and it's a fantastic one.
[09:04.290 --> 09:14.510]  I was going to mention, Jason, uh, over the years, you have probably saved so many relics of, uh, of our history, uh, geo cities, for instance, just that alone is a monumental achievement.
[09:14.790 --> 09:19.070]  But what are some of the other things that, that you've stood up and said, this cannot be allowed to die?
[09:19.230 --> 09:26.310]  So, so it's interesting because what really happened for me was that at the time of the bulletin board system era, so I was born in 1970.
[09:26.390 --> 09:28.030]  So 81, 82, 83.
[09:28.970 --> 09:32.690]  Um, you know, I've, I've tried to spend some time trying to figure out what happened here.
[09:32.830 --> 09:35.950]  And I think it was that my parents divorced when I was still in single digits.
[09:36.210 --> 09:39.410]  And so I had a real sense of not everything's going to stick around.
[09:39.590 --> 09:44.690]  Like a lot of people, they don't get that lesson until, you know, their twenties, their thirties, they lose something close to them.
[09:44.810 --> 09:46.150]  I learned it very young.
[09:46.150 --> 09:56.050]  And so when I experienced bulletin board systems, these dial up bulletin board systems, I saved copies of everything I found because I knew it might not be there and I was right.
[09:56.470 --> 10:01.990]  Um, and so when the web started, I thought people need to see this.
[10:02.090 --> 10:07.250]  So I took all of this stuff that I had saved in the eighties and put it up in the nineties.
[10:07.770 --> 10:14.410]  And, uh, whether I wanted it to or not, that site, which is text files.com has gone on to be this institution.
[10:14.410 --> 10:23.250]  I have people who go to college who have always known, you know, that there was this site they could go to, to get all these hundreds and hundreds of files and stuff you've done, right?
[10:23.370 --> 10:34.330]  I mean, stuff you've done 30 years ago, although I don't know how you do it being 39, but the, uh, you know, the site, uh, is all of this hacker and technical history.
[10:34.670 --> 10:38.670]  And I think it brought value to something that was otherwise thought disposable.
[10:38.990 --> 10:44.970]  And I've just, once I got hired by internet archive, I've just ramped that up by a thousand.
[10:45.010 --> 10:57.410]  So grabbing old manuals and grabbing old books and grabbing old materials that might be transient or thought of as ephemera or otherwise irrelevant, get up there and become accessible.
[10:57.610 --> 11:00.370]  And people can make the choice over whether or not it's useful.
[11:00.490 --> 11:03.470]  I, I think it's very important to, to, to, to bridge that air gap.
[11:03.610 --> 11:08.010]  Once it's online, we can decide it's good as opposed to deciding before we ever try.
[11:08.130 --> 11:08.990]  What would you recommend?
[11:09.210 --> 11:16.730]  Actually, Kyle and I had just, uh, gone through the warehouse and we were looking at some of this, uh, we found a, a, a milk crate filled with, uh, five and a quarter inch floppy disks.
[11:16.890 --> 11:17.610]  We don't know what's on it.
[11:17.770 --> 11:23.750]  We don't even know how to read it because, uh, computers these days don't have floppy, the three, three inch or five and a quarter inch, not eight inch.
[11:24.170 --> 11:27.750]  Uh, what would you recommend for somebody who might find a pile of these someplace?
[11:28.070 --> 11:31.570]  So there's, so there's, uh, so let's go with just floppy disks, right?
[11:31.650 --> 11:33.890]  With cassette tapes, you can turn them into a wave file.
[11:34.030 --> 11:37.370]  You can digitize them right off with a microphone and you'll probably get the data.
[11:37.810 --> 11:47.690]  Um, and I also apologize to some archivist out there who just snapped their pencil in their hands, hearing me come up with a, you know, easy bake version of archiving.
[11:47.690 --> 11:56.270]  It's a very big professional process, but, um, I can assure you that there's a couple products out there, FC 5025, the disk ferret.
[11:56.770 --> 12:01.530]  Um, the, uh, the, there's a, there's a couple others whose names are escaping me this exact moment.
[12:01.710 --> 12:02.130]  I'm sorry.
[12:02.450 --> 12:17.610]  And the, um, the, these products basically allow you to connect an old floppy disk to your modern machine through USB and suck all of the data off of it, like a magnetic recording.
[12:17.830 --> 12:27.210]  And we can actually use those in emulators or even to blow out new copies to, um, uh, new old stock floppy disks if you want to.
[12:27.410 --> 12:33.010]  Um, I'm actually surprised by the number of vintage people who I talked to, who their first question is, can I write it back out again?
[12:33.210 --> 12:34.550]  And I'm like, what?
[12:34.950 --> 12:35.810]  We're saving it.
[12:36.070 --> 12:37.170]  We're the, the building.
[12:37.310 --> 12:39.970]  It's like having a building on fire and being told, so when can I move back in?
[12:40.290 --> 12:41.970]  It's like, wait, wait, dude, buildings on fire.
[12:41.970 --> 12:45.010]  Um, but, but it's actually not that hard.
[12:45.170 --> 12:58.450]  There's actually a couple of products that if you have the old system will enable you, there's a beautiful one for Apple twos called ADT, uh, Apple disc transfer that I, I swear to God, this is the most hackery thing I've ever heard.
[12:58.570 --> 13:04.550]  You hook it in through the audio in the cassette import of an Apple two, you play this wave file.
[13:04.750 --> 13:06.250]  It reads it like a program.
[13:06.370 --> 13:11.790]  It turns the Apple into a disc reading client that then can push through the serial port.
[13:11.790 --> 13:14.450]  out the data to a client on your machine.
[13:15.090 --> 13:20.930]  I, I, you, you, you start with a wave file and you end up getting floppies off of your old machine.
[13:20.930 --> 13:23.070]  So there's some amazing work out there.
[13:23.190 --> 13:28.890]  People I think have come around to recognizing this has value, but we're really on the cusp.
[13:29.070 --> 13:32.970]  Well, it's also just history, whether it has value or not is something that should be preserved.
[13:33.150 --> 13:33.270]  Right.
[13:33.390 --> 13:42.690]  We save our written material over the millennia, something that pictures or audio or video or, or just words should at least make it a couple of decades.
[13:42.870 --> 13:50.690]  Oh, I call it the sideways value proposition, which is, you know, if you take a civil war letter and it's a guy to, it's a guy writing back to his wife, just saying, hey, how you doing?
[13:50.690 --> 13:51.650]  Hope the cows are okay.
[13:51.990 --> 13:52.570]  That's fine.
[13:52.710 --> 13:54.090]  I mean, a person might go, well, who cares?
[13:54.210 --> 13:55.030]  It was a guy and his cows.
[13:55.430 --> 14:09.770]  But that paper that it was written on may be from a company that claimed it never gave paper or supplies to that side in the war, or he might be writing it using a pen that has ink that we might not even recognize as being used at that time.
[14:09.950 --> 14:11.250]  Or there could be a secret message in there.
[14:11.370 --> 14:17.590]  Or a secret message, or it could turn out that that person was actually somebody really huge writing under a pseudonym.
[14:17.750 --> 14:24.310]  I mean, that's why I'm such a big fan of you preserve it first, let the next generation find if there's value.
[14:24.650 --> 14:27.450]  And so, you know, we're not really...
[14:27.450 --> 14:27.590]  Yeah.
[14:27.870 --> 14:28.510]  Go ahead, Bernie.
[14:28.890 --> 14:30.070]  I just want to... I'm sorry to interrupt.
[14:30.170 --> 14:38.330]  I just want to say that all those five and a quarter inch floppies you found there in the 2600 warehouse, they may be left over from your old Heath Zenith Z100 computer.
[14:38.350 --> 14:40.150]  Well, as long as you've brought that up, yes.
[14:40.330 --> 14:44.230]  The Zenith Z100 computer that we've also been trying to restore.
[14:44.350 --> 14:53.370]  You know, that computer predated a mouse, but it turns out it was stored in the garage for a few years, at least.
[14:53.690 --> 14:56.110]  There was a mouse actually living inside it when we opened it up.
[14:56.250 --> 14:56.410]  Oh, yeah.
[14:56.490 --> 14:56.750]  Excellent.
[14:56.870 --> 14:57.070]  Yeah.
[14:57.190 --> 14:58.110]  The mouse came to it.
[14:58.250 --> 14:58.350]  Yep.
[14:58.910 --> 15:01.270]  So that's... I don't know if we're going to get that computer running again.
[15:01.350 --> 15:02.070]  It would be nice if we did.
[15:02.250 --> 15:03.570]  You think, Kyle, we can do that?
[15:03.770 --> 15:04.070]  Yeah.
[15:04.850 --> 15:05.890]  We salvaged it.
[15:05.970 --> 15:07.870]  And I mean, it's in good shape.
[15:07.870 --> 15:09.470]  I opened it up and looked at it.
[15:09.610 --> 15:18.390]  And we're probably going to try to get some gentle compressed air to blow the mouse habitat out and then very carefully power things.
[15:18.650 --> 15:20.270]  But it's in pretty bad shape.
[15:20.450 --> 15:21.550]  But it's still around.
[15:21.890 --> 15:24.770]  And most of the components look pretty good.
[15:24.950 --> 15:26.170]  They're just covered in stuff.
[15:26.170 --> 15:27.170]  You think that's good?
[15:27.270 --> 15:27.410]  Really?
[15:27.690 --> 15:28.230]  That's... Wow.
[15:29.030 --> 15:29.910]  They've been through a lot.
[15:30.270 --> 15:30.630]  I'm sorry?
[15:31.190 --> 15:36.110]  Worst case, you can emulate it through the mess that Jason was just describing.
[15:36.310 --> 15:47.850]  If you get the data off those disks using one of those hacker devices you can buy, you can actually read that data and run these programs virtually online using the mess.
[15:47.890 --> 15:50.690]  Well, firstly, I get into the 40 meg hard drive that's in there.
[15:50.790 --> 15:53.270]  And I think there might be a password attached to that, but I'm sure we can get past that.
[15:53.490 --> 15:55.670]  40 megs is a Miley Cyrus single now.
[15:55.830 --> 15:56.430]  I know.
[15:57.150 --> 16:01.070]  Back then, the biggest hard drive before that was 10 megs for me.
[16:01.230 --> 16:02.010]  And it was much bigger.
[16:02.350 --> 16:02.950]  And it's a funny thing.
[16:03.310 --> 16:05.970]  That Z100 ran on two floppies at first.
[16:06.090 --> 16:08.390]  We took out one of the floppies and put a hard disk in.
[16:08.510 --> 16:12.190]  And then the faceplate didn't have a hole where the little red light was.
[16:12.250 --> 16:16.870]  We actually drilled a hole so we could see the hard drive flashing because that's half the fun of having a hard drive.
[16:16.970 --> 16:17.250]  Exactly.
[16:17.770 --> 16:21.610]  To know when it's writing and to be blown away by the space and everything else.
[16:21.850 --> 16:31.570]  I mean, you know, and this actually brings up something which is of relevance to me, which is I'm a really big fan of getting a tape recorder or Audacity and recording the stories.
[16:31.770 --> 16:38.390]  Because, you know, let's say you have an unfortunate episode in the next week or something.
[16:38.530 --> 16:42.170]  If we were to pull that machine out, we'd have the machine, but we wouldn't have the story.
[16:42.170 --> 16:42.870]  Right.
[16:42.870 --> 16:48.250]  We wouldn't have the story of why you use that, drilling holes in it, what it felt like to get it.
[16:48.470 --> 16:51.050]  That's why I like to get down the stories of the people.
[16:51.170 --> 16:54.150]  That's why I do the documentaries is because, yeah, great.
[16:54.290 --> 17:02.090]  You have a, you know, you have a stick, but you don't know anything about the man who walked with that stick through the woods and what he saw and what he believed in.
[17:02.190 --> 17:04.230]  All you know is, yeah, he wore the stick down a little bit.
[17:04.370 --> 17:05.470]  Looks like he was left-handed.
[17:06.330 --> 17:08.250]  Looks like he got a little paint on it.
[17:08.690 --> 17:14.210]  And I'm so huge on the human side, the stories more than the artifacts.
[17:14.370 --> 17:15.310]  I mean, the artifacts are important.
[17:15.850 --> 17:16.770]  Stories are huge.
[17:16.930 --> 17:17.250]  Absolutely.
[17:18.150 --> 17:21.610]  One thing, pet peeve, actually, since we're on this subject, but we won't stay on it for much longer.
[17:21.730 --> 17:28.530]  But with those old computers that had two floppy drives, it was always A drive and B drive.
[17:28.530 --> 17:28.930]  Yes.
[17:29.150 --> 17:33.690]  To this day, PCs, that is, have C drive as the default.
[17:34.010 --> 17:35.230]  No floppy attached.
[17:35.410 --> 17:37.130]  A and B are still reserved for a floppy.
[17:37.250 --> 17:38.110]  That will never exist.
[17:38.510 --> 17:39.670]  Doesn't that bug you?
[17:39.910 --> 17:46.870]  It doesn't bug me in the same way that we still use the phrase carriage return or return for a key.
[17:47.090 --> 17:47.570]  Oh.
[17:47.590 --> 17:57.710]  Because that tells you that the paper is going to be put up one line and that the printer head is going to move to the left again for you to start writing again.
[17:58.030 --> 18:02.290]  And it is just a part of our, part of our world.
[18:02.290 --> 18:05.230]  And we're getting up on 40, 50 years now it's been around.
[18:05.410 --> 18:07.150]  It's referring to a piece of equipment.
[18:07.370 --> 18:18.370]  I mean, there's literally, it's like when, you know, mind your P's and Q's just is, as well, you know, just stuck around and people don't even know it's about fonts or typefaces or anything.
[18:18.510 --> 18:20.130]  It's, it's just a word.
[18:20.130 --> 18:28.210]  And so, you know, it's buried down there and we still use it return to, to, to, to, to, uh, to, to, uh, move the cursor.
[18:28.550 --> 18:28.790]  Uh huh.
[18:28.990 --> 18:29.110]  Yeah.
[18:29.170 --> 18:33.610]  Well, one of the very first, um, uh, terminals I use was a deck writer, uh, an actual hard copy terminal.
[18:33.810 --> 18:41.830]  And it would beep as you got to the end of the line, just like a typewriter will ring a bell to say hit carriage return stupid because otherwise you're going to type over your, your own letters.
[18:42.010 --> 18:42.190]  Right.
[18:42.390 --> 18:49.070]  And when they printed out, when they printed out programs, they'd be beeping all the time because they'd be getting to the end of the column and returning on their own.
[18:49.630 --> 18:52.490]  Uh, so that's a memory that I, I, I hadn't thought of in quite a while.
[18:52.590 --> 18:53.210]  That's what I do.
[18:53.390 --> 18:57.710]  I, I, I, I swim through a fog of nostalgia and memories for people.
[18:57.710 --> 18:58.870]  And it's, it's a nice fog.
[18:59.010 --> 18:59.610]  It's very friendly.
[18:59.890 --> 19:00.110]  Yes.
[19:00.230 --> 19:04.770]  You know, people could have, uh, you could have had your hands on some deck writers at the vintage computer festival.
[19:04.910 --> 19:08.510]  There were, there were some models of deck writers I'd never even touched before that were there.
[19:08.650 --> 19:10.690]  And it was, uh, it was really cool.
[19:10.830 --> 19:11.710]  So next year you got to come.
[19:11.830 --> 19:13.870]  Well, you know, you're assuming I want deck writers.
[19:14.030 --> 19:14.790]  I've had deck writers.
[19:14.970 --> 19:20.010]  I've, I've been on deck writers a lot and, uh, and, uh, I'm past that phase, I think, but I do want to preserve them.
[19:20.290 --> 19:22.170]  I just don't want to be the one that has them.
[19:22.550 --> 19:23.750]  Well, that's the point.
[19:23.870 --> 19:24.850]  That's, that's the point, Emmanuel.
[19:25.030 --> 19:27.410]  You walk in, you go, I used to have those.
[19:27.570 --> 19:28.830]  And then you get to leave.
[19:29.290 --> 19:29.610]  Yeah.
[19:30.030 --> 19:31.210]  You get to walk away.
[19:31.370 --> 19:31.870]  I like that.
[19:31.890 --> 19:32.130]  Yeah.
[19:32.150 --> 19:32.690]  That's good.
[19:33.150 --> 19:34.090]  Hey, Mike joins us.
[19:34.710 --> 19:35.030]  Welcome.
[19:35.390 --> 19:35.950]  It's true.
[19:36.730 --> 19:40.170]  I can't, uh, listen and talk at the same time today.
[19:40.350 --> 19:43.550]  Well, you have seen have headphones that are plugged in over here, but the microphone's all the way over there.
[19:43.750 --> 19:44.910]  How did you work that out?
[19:45.070 --> 19:45.610]  I don't know.
[19:45.710 --> 19:47.410]  Can you plug them, the headphones in over there?
[19:47.530 --> 19:47.690]  Maybe?
[19:47.870 --> 19:49.790]  I don't believe there's any jacks over here.
[19:50.070 --> 19:50.350]  Okay.
[19:50.630 --> 19:59.390]  It's, uh, we, we, we really want to thank the kind folks at WHCR for this studio, which we've maybe overstayed our welcome at already, but it's a bit of an odd setup.
[19:59.670 --> 20:00.790]  I do like it though.
[20:00.910 --> 20:01.510]  It's very nice.
[20:01.670 --> 20:02.430]  How'd you do it last week?
[20:02.550 --> 20:05.410]  You weren't doing the, you weren't spread across two tables like you are now.
[20:05.570 --> 20:07.910]  I was, but I was using a different microphone.
[20:08.550 --> 20:08.930]  Okay.
[20:09.570 --> 20:10.670]  Um, well, all right.
[20:10.810 --> 20:20.150]  Um, so anyway, um, in addition to the things that we're talking to Jason about, as far as archives and things like that, there is some, uh, some breaking news that you probably might've heard about.
[20:20.270 --> 20:22.990]  And that is this heart bleed security flaw.
[20:23.270 --> 20:25.450]  Uh, we've all gotten memos about this.
[20:25.550 --> 20:31.750]  Apparently it's a, it's a massive, um, um, security hole infecting, um, open source encryption technology.
[20:32.230 --> 20:35.690]  I guess if you don't use encryption, you don't have anything to worry about.
[20:35.810 --> 20:38.950]  If you do, then this is something to be a little worried.
[20:39.910 --> 20:40.610]  Go ahead, Mike.
[20:40.610 --> 20:42.370]  I mean, that's something I want to be careful about.
[20:42.650 --> 20:45.830]  I think the takeaway here is not, uh, don't use encryption.
[20:45.830 --> 20:47.750]  If you don't use encryption, you're worse off.
[20:48.170 --> 20:51.030]  Uh, this is a, an attack on encryption.
[20:51.310 --> 20:53.150]  It, it degrades the value of the encryption.
[20:53.550 --> 21:03.390]  The people might be able to get data out of servers you use, but the solution is not to transmit everything in the clear and just like give the NSA or whoever else direct access.
[21:03.730 --> 21:17.810]  Well, obviously, um, this affects sites that, um, well, if you use HTTPS in the, uh, in the URL bar, uh, and you enter a password after that point, then you might have something to be concerned about.
[21:18.050 --> 21:19.110]  Is that, is that the takeaway here?
[21:20.430 --> 21:27.490]  If you transmit any data over HTTPS or, or if you connect to a server over HTTPS that has data.
[21:27.490 --> 21:41.110]  So one thing that, this is a, a really, um, strange bug, but basically it allows the, uh, the person who's, who's trying to get data out of the server to just like basically get a random chunk of the, the server's memory.
[21:41.330 --> 21:44.890]  So it might be, uh, the password of the last person to connect.
[21:45.050 --> 21:50.810]  It might be the encryption key itself so that you can get, uh, sort of all the data coming through the server.
[21:50.990 --> 21:53.830]  It might be, uh, it could be anything.
[21:53.830 --> 21:55.990]  And that's what's so, so strange about this.
[21:55.990 --> 21:56.990]  So frightening about it.
[21:57.130 --> 22:06.170]  Anything that's gone through the web server, if you're connecting on the web, anything that's gone through the email server, if you're connecting over the email, it's a really quite bad.
[22:06.350 --> 22:08.390]  I think it's 64 kilobytes.
[22:09.430 --> 22:30.310]  I mean, as a historian, I'm kind of fascinated just on the way that we've like, this is like finding out that like probably all meat products are, are infected with something like it's, and people were just in this weird fog here, these, these 48 hours and afterwards where people were like,
[22:31.110 --> 22:32.490]  yeah, I heard it's bad.
[22:32.670 --> 22:37.970]  And people were up really late last night working on stuff and is everything okay?
[22:37.970 --> 22:39.990]  And it's like, yeah, there's not much you can do.
[22:40.210 --> 22:52.890]  Like, like as a, as a, as a, as a lay person, you can't, this isn't like, you know, oh, you know, double check your right protect tab or, or, or be sure that your phone is covered or, or try to turn off your phone when you're near a washing machine.
[22:53.010 --> 22:55.650]  I mean, this is, you know, it's a pretty fundamental flaw.
[22:55.650 --> 23:07.410]  And we have people whose job all day is to make sure that if a problem arises like this to fix it, and it just has to kind of filter through the infrastructure.
[23:08.090 --> 23:11.870]  And we're just discovering how big the infrastructure is.
[23:12.430 --> 23:17.910]  And, and it's just, but like I said, for a lot of people, it's just, they don't know what it, you know, it's like getting into a plane.
[23:18.170 --> 23:19.570]  I don't know how this thing works.
[23:19.570 --> 23:21.030]  It's probably going to be fine.
[23:21.490 --> 23:25.310]  Well, the thing is, if you're, if you're a user of a site, there really isn't anything you can do.
[23:25.490 --> 23:25.710]  Right.
[23:25.810 --> 23:31.110]  If you run a site, if you run a server, then you need to upgrade to the, the patch version of OpenSSL.
[23:31.230 --> 23:32.090]  That's, that's my understanding.
[23:32.310 --> 23:32.430]  Yeah.
[23:32.510 --> 23:37.630]  If you change your password on a site that has not yet done that, you're not really accomplishing anything.
[23:37.830 --> 23:38.130]  Right.
[23:38.330 --> 23:43.630]  So it's, it's up, I guess it's up to you to make sure that whatever site you are using has done this.
[23:43.830 --> 23:45.650]  And of course they should be notifying their users.
[23:45.850 --> 23:46.030]  Right.
[23:46.230 --> 23:51.950]  And, and, and so it's, but the problem is, is now you get to see how nimble certain organizations are with this.
[23:52.190 --> 23:54.750]  Some of them are like, they're, they're going to have to issue a statement.
[23:54.910 --> 23:58.550]  We're going to see a lot of really boring, oh, look, we love you.
[23:58.690 --> 24:01.430]  We want you to know this is a problem, but we're working on it.
[24:01.510 --> 24:05.790]  And it's going to be very, you know, handholdy in some cases and weird in others.
[24:06.030 --> 24:08.710]  And, and I think people are going to have fun with this for the next six months.
[24:08.710 --> 24:11.310]  Uh, but it's what happens.
[24:11.450 --> 24:12.890]  You have a homogenous system.
[24:13.310 --> 24:14.010]  I mean, that's the thing.
[24:14.110 --> 24:29.710]  I mean, if you, a lot of things are fundamental to the internet and it's rare to have something this bad happen and watching the internet deal with it, like an infection, it's lying in bed with the thermometer going like, yeah, this one's a bad one.
[24:29.890 --> 24:33.550]  This was bad, you know, it's been a bad year though.
[24:33.930 --> 24:39.930]  Uh, we would like to say it's really rare for something this bad to happen, but there's been a lot of them this year.
[24:40.050 --> 24:44.750]  There was a flaw in, uh, GNU TLS, which is the one you use if you don't use open SSL.
[24:44.990 --> 24:49.910]  There has been a flaw, uh, in Apple and this and that and the other, I can't even keep track of them all.
[24:50.410 --> 25:05.630]  Um, I don't know what we can do about it, but, but to say this is exceptional, this is exceptionally bad even amongst the other ones I mentioned, but to say that this is somehow, uh, you know, the only one of its kind ever is not true.
[25:05.630 --> 25:11.290]  I think what it is, is if I had to define why it strikes me, it's like a fire truck on fire.
[25:12.050 --> 25:18.070]  You know, it's like, it's like a compromised security protocol.
[25:18.250 --> 25:29.490]  Like it's like a flawed, it's like you're using it because you think this is the more protective one, but it's got a problem that, that, that, you know, I mean, welcome to the new reality.
[25:29.770 --> 25:35.590]  I mean, we depend on these networks and we do our best to make them as good as we can and we will continue to do that.
[25:35.850 --> 25:46.290]  And this, uh, this also gets kind of thrown into the mix with a lot of the leaks and things we found out about, uh, what the U S government is doing, uh, via the NSA and stuff like that.
[25:46.510 --> 25:58.190]  There were rumors about some of these things have already being understood or the NSA deliberately, um, uh, uh, uh, weakening the protocols as they're at inception, stuff like that.
[25:58.190 --> 26:02.930]  Um, yeah, no, we gotta, we gotta, people gotta spend the summer.
[26:03.090 --> 26:09.790]  Now they got to come up with better overarching conspiracies because we've already, we've already proven out a couple now.
[26:10.050 --> 26:16.310]  Now we actually do have a national government doing all these crazy things and now we got to come up with something even better.
[26:16.530 --> 26:30.470]  Well, most people who see, uh, encryption as the enemy who don't want people to be protecting themselves, uh, IE NSA and other government agencies, they must be kind of happy right now because of all the confusion and people may be suspecting that, uh,
[26:30.650 --> 26:32.070]  well, encryption really isn't all that.
[26:32.250 --> 26:35.030]  And, uh, and, and maybe I just won't bother anymore.
[26:35.230 --> 26:35.590]  Right.
[26:35.810 --> 26:45.290]  I mean, certainly you can start to come up with nightmare scenarios on a security basis of like if someone's captured a bunch of your packets and they run this and by luck, they happen to get private keys.
[26:45.650 --> 26:52.830]  Maybe they can start to go through those old things, but that's, that's kind of what, um, places like the NSA do anyway, which is they capture a bunch of traffic.
[26:52.830 --> 26:56.650]  And then over time they attack it, even if they have to go back a bunch of years.
[26:56.850 --> 27:10.870]  So, I mean, that isn't new to me, but, but the, uh, you know, just the idea that, you know, it, it brings up to the, you know, it's like when, it's like when the power goes out and we discover that, oh, they've been overloading the circuits for three years and nobody's been discussing it because nobody,
[27:10.870 --> 27:12.470]  it's not sexy enough to get attention.
[27:12.990 --> 27:13.650]  Well, interesting.
[27:13.870 --> 27:23.590]  Uh, as far as the time factor, uh, they say researchers discovered it last week and they published their findings Monday, but the problem has been around for more than two years.
[27:23.930 --> 27:24.230]  Right.
[27:24.510 --> 27:27.830]  So, uh, it's, it's been a good, it's been a good run for somebody.
[27:28.250 --> 27:41.090]  I mean, every time one of these things would get announced, I just try to imagine some guy in some gray office, you know, in some cubicle going, uh, uh, project bluebird is, uh, that was a good one.
[27:41.410 --> 27:42.490]  They know about it now.
[27:42.730 --> 27:42.910]  Yeah.
[27:43.190 --> 27:48.410]  They say any communications that took place over SSL in the past two years could have been subject to malicious eavesdropping.
[27:48.710 --> 27:48.890]  Yeah.
[27:49.170 --> 27:49.430]  Wow.
[27:49.650 --> 27:49.790]  Yep.
[27:50.610 --> 27:57.310]  Well, I wonder, uh, if we'll see any, uh, any, any, um, fallout from that in the years ahead.
[27:57.550 --> 27:57.730]  Yeah.
[27:59.450 --> 28:00.070]  Anything else?
[28:00.230 --> 28:02.950]  Any, uh, Jason, how about some of the films you've been working on?
[28:03.130 --> 28:12.230]  So, um, I finished a film last year on the DEF CON hacking conference called DEF CON, the documentary, uh, some of which we shot at hope actually, ironically.
[28:12.890 --> 28:23.670]  Um, and it was a one year project where I had a crew of six and we filmed every thing we could at the 20th DEF CON hacking conference.
[28:23.910 --> 28:30.810]  Uh, they paid for it and, um, I, uh, put it out and they immediately put it up on a torrent for free.
[28:30.910 --> 28:31.650]  So it's out there.
[28:31.830 --> 28:37.590]  If you look for DEF CON, the documentary, it's just an overview of what that thing is like after 20 years.
[28:37.770 --> 28:48.090]  So it's, it was a fun side project to work on for a year, but now I'm back to my main three, which are, uh, the 6502 documentary about the chip.
[28:48.290 --> 28:49.190]  Oh, tell us about that.
[28:49.510 --> 28:51.450]  Um, well, that's in progress.
[28:51.650 --> 28:52.470]  That is in progress.
[28:52.630 --> 28:56.590]  There's three, uh, 6502, arcade and tape.
[28:56.890 --> 28:57.010]  Okay.
[28:57.090 --> 28:57.510]  Hang on a second.
[28:57.610 --> 29:02.810]  I, I, I was going to talk about the ones you've done, but you're working on three separate films right now.
[29:03.090 --> 29:03.490]  Right.
[29:03.770 --> 29:04.930]  Let's start with the ones you've done.
[29:05.050 --> 29:06.310]  You've done the BBS documentary.
[29:06.750 --> 29:08.490]  BBS, the documentary came out in 2005.
[29:08.490 --> 29:14.050]  That's a eight episode, five and a half hour series on the dial up bulletin board system.
[29:14.250 --> 29:21.390]  And the reason I did it was because in 2002, I realized we hadn't gotten any documentaries on bulletin boards.
[29:21.590 --> 29:23.590]  So I thought I should make the last one.
[29:23.930 --> 29:31.750]  And so I shot this thing over four years, um, and put it out and it's, it's for what it is.
[29:31.830 --> 29:32.630]  It's done very well.
[29:32.770 --> 29:33.670]  People tend to like it.
[29:33.770 --> 29:35.590]  It's got a lot of interesting people in it.
[29:36.250 --> 29:39.730]  Um, I finished that and I thought, well, well, that was obscure, but not obscure enough.
[29:39.830 --> 29:40.330]  What can I do?
[29:40.430 --> 29:51.870]  So I, I made a movie about text adventures, the, uh, games that were really popular in the late seventies and early eighties, where you were given a line of text and asked, you know, what do you want to do next?
[29:52.050 --> 29:58.070]  And that was just such an eye opener for people with computers back then that your computer could take the story and work with you.
[29:58.310 --> 30:03.670]  That's one of my first memories of a computer playing adventure, go East, you're in a forest, you know, various things like that.
[30:03.950 --> 30:07.230]  Things that, um, still to this day, captivate the imagination.
[30:07.510 --> 30:07.650]  Right.
[30:07.970 --> 30:19.030]  And so I wanted to capture both the, the interesting approach to writing at that time, but also how important they were to, uh, the games industry and the beginnings of what we think of as computer games.
[30:19.230 --> 30:24.310]  So I worked on that for about three years, three, four years, put it out.
[30:24.570 --> 30:31.530]  Um, it came with a gold coin for a few years, which, uh, I still get people who show me their coins, they keep it in their wallets.
[30:31.910 --> 30:35.030]  And, um, the, uh, so that went very well.
[30:35.030 --> 30:42.990]  And then I finished that and I thought, okay, I like making these, but I don't want to be in my sixties making films about things I did when I was a teenager.
[30:43.170 --> 30:44.470]  Just, just, I don't want to.
[30:44.750 --> 30:51.130]  So I did a Kickstarter and said, Hey, if you guys fund me, I will work on three.
[30:51.450 --> 30:59.790]  So I put up the names of the three, got funded, and I've been shooting for the last few years with this small break for DEF CON.
[31:00.470 --> 31:01.910]  Um, and it's been going well.
[31:01.910 --> 31:03.410]  You took a break to make another film.
[31:03.550 --> 31:03.890]  I know.
[31:04.010 --> 31:04.950]  It sounds terrible.
[31:05.050 --> 31:05.310]  Wow.
[31:05.430 --> 31:09.510]  While also running all the stuff for the internet archive, while also doing a bunch of other things.
[31:09.730 --> 31:10.050]  Okay.
[31:10.070 --> 31:11.170]  How many of you are there really?
[31:11.430 --> 31:11.650]  Yeah.
[31:11.710 --> 31:12.310]  Well, that's the thing.
[31:12.450 --> 31:23.170]  I'm very, you know, since I used to have a job in IT and, and those, those wonderful people, my coworkers who had to deal with Jason's disappearing for a week and a half to go work on something.
[31:23.510 --> 31:28.250]  Um, I left that and went to work for the internet archive.
[31:28.250 --> 31:32.870]  And now every single waking moment, I'm doing something I want to do.
[31:32.990 --> 31:34.570]  And it's a wonderful life to have.
[31:34.690 --> 31:44.030]  And, and a lot of it is aimed at history, getting these stories down, getting artifacts, being that bridge where a person goes, wow, this history has value.
[31:44.730 --> 31:47.250]  I should bring these magazines here.
[31:47.370 --> 31:49.450]  I should get this old film.
[31:49.590 --> 31:55.930]  And I get letters every day from someone who's like, I got like 25 things I had when I worked somewhere 30 years ago.
[31:56.090 --> 31:56.750]  Do you want them?
[31:56.950 --> 31:57.850]  And I'm like, yes.
[31:58.250 --> 31:59.450]  I always answer yes.
[31:59.610 --> 32:02.890]  And as a result, I have a shipping container in my backyard full of yes.
[32:03.690 --> 32:07.950]  And, um, I've been sorting through them and scan, scanning them and just doing all the work you do.
[32:08.070 --> 32:09.230]  And it's been wonderful.
[32:09.350 --> 32:11.510]  I mean, and it's a wonderful life.
[32:11.670 --> 32:17.770]  And, and so, you know, sometimes people will buttonhole me and talk to me for like 30 minutes about their Apple II.
[32:18.210 --> 32:25.270]  But I love it because it means that they feel that connection too, with this machinery and the people they knew.
[32:25.470 --> 32:34.810]  And, and the fact that they found somebody who will understand what they mean when they say, oh, and the quarter track cracking was so intense and I couldn't, I'm like, yeah, I'm glad to be that person.
[32:34.970 --> 32:36.650]  So it's, it's a great life.
[32:36.770 --> 32:37.950]  I'm, I'm a very happy person.
[32:38.110 --> 32:39.150]  So tell us about the films.
[32:39.150 --> 32:39.670]  Sure.
[32:40.250 --> 32:45.530]  Um, so, um, let's start with 6502.
[32:45.750 --> 32:49.330]  So the 6502 chip is the one that was in the Apple II.
[32:49.610 --> 32:51.310]  It was in the Atari 800 and 400.
[32:51.510 --> 32:53.830]  A version of it, it was in the 2600.
[32:54.210 --> 33:02.190]  There was, um, uh, one of the Nintendos had it, cars had it, um, some pacemakers have it.
[33:02.390 --> 33:05.950]  Um, it's a, it's a relatively simple programmable chip.
[33:06.310 --> 33:11.710]  Uh, you programming it in machine language and, um, it's been a ubiquitous part of our culture and life.
[33:11.890 --> 33:13.870]  And many of us don't even know it existed.
[33:14.070 --> 33:19.270]  And it included the skill of machine language programming, which is becoming a lost art to some extent.
[33:19.470 --> 33:36.910]  And I want to do a film on the people who made it a film on, um, you know, how it shows itself now on what programming is and everything else, you know, the human side of this chip and using the chip as the, uh, as the basis of it.
[33:37.030 --> 33:41.290]  And believe it or not, I have gotten some static from people who are like, why are you shutting out the Z80?
[33:42.270 --> 33:44.190]  And I'm like, I, I don't know what to tell you.
[33:44.390 --> 33:44.970]  I'm sorry.
[33:45.130 --> 33:45.710]  I got to choose.
[33:45.870 --> 33:47.370]  I went with the 6502.
[33:48.010 --> 33:50.850]  Z80, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta do the rebuttal, but...
[33:50.850 --> 33:52.990]  I was gonna ask about the 8088, but we can get...
[33:52.990 --> 33:53.470]  Exactly.
[33:53.470 --> 33:54.030]  There you go.
[33:54.170 --> 33:55.370]  Everyone's got their favorite chip.
[33:55.370 --> 33:55.550]  Yeah.
[33:55.990 --> 33:58.270]  Um, so, so, uh...
[33:58.270 --> 34:01.350]  But Jason, I just want to say that you bring up an interesting point.
[34:01.730 --> 34:19.210]  Back in the, back in the late 70s, when a lot of this got involved with, or maybe early 80s, uh, involved with, uh, early microcomputers, there were these different camps who were all fans of this one microprocessor, whether it was the 6502 or the 6800 or the 8080 or the Z80 or the 8085.
[34:19.730 --> 34:20.170]  8088.
[34:20.290 --> 34:24.530]  And the 1802, it was a CMOS microprocessor by, by, by, by RCA.
[34:24.790 --> 34:29.190]  And we all had these, like, cultures around this one chip.
[34:29.290 --> 34:30.730]  Some of us got tattoos, too.
[34:31.710 --> 34:32.590]  Well, I don't know.
[34:32.650 --> 34:33.210]  I didn't have a...
[34:33.210 --> 34:33.830]  Just saying.
[34:33.950 --> 34:34.230]  Yeah, okay.
[34:34.310 --> 34:35.730]  I didn't have a Cosmic tattoo.
[34:35.970 --> 34:40.730]  But anyway, it was, it was, it was an interesting time because they were all the, and they were not compatible with each other.
[34:41.050 --> 34:48.630]  So you, it was, it was just an interesting era where everybody, with all these subcultures surrounded by, around a particular microprocessor.
[34:48.830 --> 34:51.730]  But you had to pick one, and that was a good one to pick, the 6502.
[34:51.890 --> 34:52.170]  Right.
[34:52.650 --> 35:10.730]  So, so for me, it was, you know, like the 65, 502 in many ways was like the most, like, it just, it just has the softest edges because it got pulled into so many consumer grade hardware things that were also huge promoters of the idea of computing.
[35:10.950 --> 35:13.610]  Obviously, Z80s did it as well, especially in Europe.
[35:13.870 --> 35:16.990]  I mean, everyone's got a piece of this, this history.
[35:17.150 --> 35:24.870]  So the movie is kind of about that, but it's also secretly about like, you know, the, the idea of what these chips are and everything else.
[35:25.010 --> 35:26.510]  So that's the 6502.
[35:26.950 --> 35:29.330]  I'm doing a documentary on the medium of tape.
[35:29.470 --> 35:37.350]  That means audio video and, and, and, and data tape and everything from video stores up through to mixed culture and so on.
[35:37.610 --> 35:53.510]  Um, you know, just trying to capture this medium because the medium is, if not on its way out, it's becoming heavily specialized, it's becoming, you know, uh, certain groups use it, but it's almost nowhere in terms of where it used to be in terms of ubiquity.
[35:53.670 --> 36:01.350]  So I wanted to capture that, especially because in some ways it's a lossy format and older magnetic tape is starting to go bad.
[36:01.410 --> 36:02.550]  And I wanted to capture that.
[36:02.670 --> 36:05.290]  So, so the tape documentary is ongoing.
[36:05.290 --> 36:07.170]  And the other big one is arcades.
[36:08.050 --> 36:12.170]  And that's a weird one because people go, you know, Jason, there's been arcade documentaries.
[36:12.510 --> 36:13.430]  Um, why are you doing it?
[36:13.490 --> 36:17.390]  And I'm, and I'm like, well, we've done it on arcade games.
[36:17.390 --> 36:21.930]  We've done players, but we've very rarely done it on the space of the arcade.
[36:22.190 --> 36:25.410]  The idea of here's this black box.
[36:25.590 --> 36:28.810]  We put machines in and people pay money to have fun with them.
[36:28.970 --> 36:31.150]  And we go all the way back to the mechanical Turk.
[36:31.390 --> 36:34.890]  And I go all the way up to people who have built arcades in their homes.
[36:35.090 --> 36:37.870]  And why do you think this is a place you need in your home?
[36:37.890 --> 36:38.690]  And what does that mean?
[36:39.170 --> 36:41.950]  And so that one's almost filming itself.
[36:42.110 --> 36:44.530]  It turns out arcade culture is pretty easy to track down.
[36:44.650 --> 36:49.850]  And I've been in some pretty crazy arcades and, uh, talked to some really amazing people.
[36:49.950 --> 36:52.230]  So you're going to ask about a release date.
[36:52.330 --> 36:52.830]  I know you are.
[36:52.970 --> 36:53.530]  I don't know.
[36:53.690 --> 36:58.230]  Uh, I really want the first of them to come out next year, but I want a lot of things in life.
[36:59.030 --> 37:03.490]  Do you find you're filming all three at the same time, talking to people about these three different subjects?
[37:03.490 --> 37:03.910]  Yeah.
[37:04.030 --> 37:06.470]  They lend themselves to certain kinds of people.
[37:06.810 --> 37:10.590]  It's rare that I get overlap, but sometimes I'll get an arcade and a tape person.
[37:10.870 --> 37:18.650]  I had a guy who did a 6502 emulator in, I think it was 2K, uh, 2000 bytes.
[37:19.090 --> 37:23.310]  And he, um, also had worked with tape professionally.
[37:24.030 --> 37:26.490]  Um, so, so if I can, sure.
[37:26.730 --> 37:29.610]  But, uh, the overlap isn't really as much as I would like.
[37:29.650 --> 37:31.030]  Maybe you spent time in an arcade too.
[37:31.170 --> 37:32.250]  You could, you could ask.
[37:32.250 --> 37:40.590]  Well, like you guys mentioned, you're working on, I like where you're going because with, with documentaries, some people think of documentaries as like, oh, they film 10 or 15 interviews, they make a movie.
[37:40.770 --> 37:43.550]  And you guys say like, oh, we're just starting out worth 30 hours.
[37:44.050 --> 37:45.450]  And I'm somewhere like that.
[37:45.610 --> 37:50.810]  I'm, I'm like at 60 hours for the arcade one and like 30 hours for the, for the 6502 one.
[37:50.930 --> 37:59.550]  And, you know, just building up these, these large groups of, of, of, of shots and presentation and people talking and questions.
[37:59.830 --> 38:13.270]  And, and from that you make a real film that covers things comprehensively instead of something that you can literally scrub through with your, with your movie player and still get the gist because there's so little going on.
[38:13.470 --> 38:18.690]  You know, it's just been making a really good film and making one that's just a disposable product.
[38:18.890 --> 38:29.270]  You know, I think a lot of, I mean, aside from the fact we're gonna have to go through it all, a lot of it is because it's tabeless now and hard drives are really inexpensive and the space is cheap.
[38:29.270 --> 38:30.070]  I think it's a gift.
[38:30.090 --> 38:31.730]  I think it's a gift to be able to do that.
[38:31.890 --> 38:39.850]  I think, I think, um, you know, I've interviewed of, of the BBS documentary, um, eight of those people are dead, uh, who I've interviewed.
[38:40.030 --> 38:45.470]  I put up their full interviews because this may be the most anyone has any recording of them talking.
[38:46.050 --> 38:49.890]  Um, you know, I mean, and it's not just, oh, they're, they're an old guy.
[38:50.130 --> 38:51.790]  I mean, some of them were in their late twenties.
[38:51.790 --> 38:54.490]  They, they came down with something and they, they're gone.
[38:54.490 --> 38:56.590]  And so this is the record of them.
[38:56.750 --> 39:07.810]  So maybe it's not so bad that I took an hour and a half to talk to them instead of pulling out, you know, 12 minutes of 16 millimeter film and, and, and walking away after I get my one question answered, you know?
[39:07.950 --> 39:12.370]  We're speaking with Jason Scott, archive.org, archivist, uh, filmmaker.
[39:13.250 --> 39:19.530]  Jason, what is it do you think that, um, that got you started with your passion for, for archiving things, for saving things?
[39:19.530 --> 39:22.510]  Well, like I said, I think my parents' divorce actually helped me.
[39:22.630 --> 39:29.730]  They gave me a real, um, a real sense of, um, how transient life is and how things go away.
[39:30.070 --> 39:31.890]  And so I would save things.
[39:31.930 --> 39:47.410]  But I think what pushed me over from just ending up like another person with a pile of stuff and turning into a person who wanted others to see it was I've always taken a joy in instructing people and drawing conclusions and speaking.
[39:47.590 --> 39:49.010]  I've always enjoyed public speaking.
[39:49.210 --> 40:00.730]  I've always enjoyed entering into conversations and, you know, being able to say, you know, here's, here's something I found, but let me tell you the story of why I found it and why I kept it.
[40:01.090 --> 40:12.290]  And so, um, when websites came out, I looked at those as, oh my God, I get full color, you know, I can get a full color presentation that anyone in the world can look at.
[40:12.450 --> 40:13.990]  I want a piece of that.
[40:14.110 --> 40:15.970]  I've, you know, so I've had websites since 93.
[40:16.530 --> 40:26.170]  And, um, you know, I, I think that as each new medium comes up, people reward me by saying, I wanted to know about this.
[40:26.370 --> 40:27.530]  Thanks for doing it.
[40:27.690 --> 40:31.990]  And the more work I've done, the more people I've, it's been rewarding all the way down.
[40:32.170 --> 40:34.270]  There's never really been a downside to it.
[40:34.510 --> 40:44.910]  So documentary films or public speaking or websites or collections, it's always been a case of, wow, this really changes people for the, for the better.
[40:45.070 --> 40:46.370]  They, they get a better understanding.
[40:46.610 --> 40:48.070]  They, they share their stories.
[40:48.290 --> 40:50.050]  They, they feel they're part of the greater whole.
[40:50.250 --> 40:57.230]  Uh, they're sometimes inspired to save things we might've lost because they see the, the template of somebody presenting it.
[40:57.370 --> 41:00.410]  So, I mean, it's, it's been rewarding all the way down.
[41:00.550 --> 41:02.490]  I don't, I don't see it ever stopping for me.
[41:03.050 --> 41:08.810]  When, when, when, uh, you travel a lot, uh, next to Mitch Altman, I think you travel more than almost anybody I know.
[41:08.930 --> 41:09.790]  Almost as much as Mitch.
[41:09.930 --> 41:16.390]  Well, now when you're going overseas or throughout the country to do interviews, do you have a crew?
[41:16.590 --> 41:17.270]  Are you doing it all yourself?
[41:17.490 --> 41:18.530]  I do them all myself.
[41:19.050 --> 41:26.150]  Um, the DEF CON documentary had an actual crew, but that was because we only had four days of filming to capture.
[41:26.410 --> 41:33.270]  We ended up capturing like 230 hours in, in four days because once an event happened, it was gone.
[41:33.450 --> 41:41.650]  But on the whole, I tend to do, um, single person, uh, crews because that gives me an enormous amount of flexibility.
[41:41.910 --> 41:51.910]  I mean, I, I was out in California for work and I was able to go over, you know, a hundred miles in one direction and interview a family business that makes cabinets for arcade games.
[41:52.150 --> 41:53.830]  And I was able to then zoom back.
[41:54.010 --> 41:58.490]  I didn't have to call up Steve and say, Steve, I need you to meet me over down at the train station.
[41:58.630 --> 41:59.030]  We're going to go.
[41:59.250 --> 42:00.230]  I could just do it.
[42:00.410 --> 42:05.630]  The only downside to that is I have to be super triple, extra careful on every single thing.
[42:05.730 --> 42:08.010]  It's an enormous amount of responsibility as well as flexibility.
[42:08.250 --> 42:11.830]  You have to, you have to be the sound guy, you have to be the light guy, you gotta be the camera guy and the interviewer.
[42:11.850 --> 42:12.410]  How do you do all that?
[42:12.570 --> 42:13.170]  And the interviewer.
[42:13.330 --> 42:20.250]  And the answer is, is that I have among the 370 interviews I've done over the years, one or two lost ones.
[42:20.550 --> 42:22.150]  And you don't forget those.
[42:22.510 --> 42:23.790]  You don't forget those.
[42:23.930 --> 42:27.590]  And you remember that lesson and you cry a little bit and you move on.
[42:28.050 --> 42:32.510]  In one case, I, I went back, like I said, I need, I'm so sorry.
[42:32.670 --> 42:33.290]  I'm so sorry.
[42:33.390 --> 42:34.290]  I have to interview you again.
[42:34.310 --> 42:35.750]  He was like, oh, thank God.
[42:35.890 --> 42:36.550]  And I was like, what do you mean?
[42:36.610 --> 42:38.410]  He goes, oh, now I can do the answers right.
[42:38.610 --> 42:39.630]  My answers were terrible.
[42:39.730 --> 42:40.190]  I hated them.
[42:40.330 --> 42:42.270]  I never want, you know, I could do so much better.
[42:42.430 --> 42:45.570]  So they were like to them, it was like a second bite at the apple.
[42:45.710 --> 42:47.670]  But, but I take that very seriously.
[42:48.050 --> 42:49.810]  You know, I make sure the sound's running.
[42:50.150 --> 42:51.930]  And I tell people, I'm not going to look at you.
[42:52.010 --> 42:54.830]  I'm going to be answering, you know, you're going to be asking questions.
[42:55.170 --> 42:58.390]  I'm going to be answering, ugh, I'm going to be asking you the questions.
[42:58.550 --> 43:03.330]  But while you're answering it, I'm checking the sound levels and the focus and everything else.
[43:03.530 --> 43:03.770]  And...
[43:03.770 --> 43:04.390]  So don't take offense.
[43:04.590 --> 43:05.530]  I'm not ignoring you.
[43:05.650 --> 43:06.650]  Yeah, I'm not autistic.
[43:06.650 --> 43:07.830]  I'm not, I'm not weird.
[43:07.990 --> 43:10.290]  I'm just literally keeping track of 12 things.
[43:10.550 --> 43:14.210]  And it's worked out, you know, I've changed equipment over the years.
[43:14.370 --> 43:15.530]  I now shoot DSLR.
[43:15.930 --> 43:18.750]  I shoot with a, um, H4N zoom recorder.
[43:19.450 --> 43:21.930]  Um, these things work dependably.
[43:22.170 --> 43:22.830]  They work well.
[43:22.990 --> 43:24.150]  They run off batteries.
[43:24.150 --> 43:26.470]  So I'm not, I don't have cables everywhere.
[43:26.750 --> 43:28.350]  I'll have one cable for the light.
[43:28.510 --> 43:29.970]  Sometimes I don't even shoot with a light.
[43:30.090 --> 43:31.230]  I use natural light.
[43:31.230 --> 43:39.550]  So it's been very nice to have the compactness, the ability to dump things down as these massive hard drives and be able to work with them.
[43:39.890 --> 43:55.710]  Um, so, I mean, we're seeing a renaissance for the films because now you don't have to go begging to the local, uh, you know, public good fund, hoping that they'll give you $12,000 so you can film for two hours and, and get the story.
[43:55.730 --> 43:57.110]  You can go out and shoot it.
[43:57.190 --> 43:59.570]  I mean, will it result in some terrible documentaries?
[43:59.570 --> 44:00.150]  Probably.
[44:00.630 --> 44:08.590]  But I'd much rather have, you know, a hundred documentaries and have 80 of them be terrible than have 12 documentaries and have four of them be good.
[44:08.730 --> 44:12.090]  And we don't hear all these other news and stories and lives.
[44:12.450 --> 44:16.990]  So it's been, you know, I go to a lot, I'm going to the Tribeca Film Festival next week.
[44:17.630 --> 44:23.350]  And, uh, there's, there's all sorts of documentaries there that you're like, yeah, if it wasn't for this, we'd never see this story.
[44:23.510 --> 44:24.830]  We would never see this story.
[44:25.670 --> 44:31.330]  Well, hopefully a lot of, uh, young filmmakers out there and old filmmakers out there are being inspired by, uh, by what you've accomplished, right?
[44:31.390 --> 44:32.390]  What you continue to accomplish.
[44:32.850 --> 44:36.690]  Uh, and I never thought I'd see the day where you could basically do what you do.
[44:36.850 --> 44:41.250]  And, uh, without a crew, without having to, um, do all this set up in advance.
[44:41.570 --> 44:41.570]  Right.
[44:41.930 --> 44:45.830]  Oh, I can, I, I look at the nightmare of what it must have been for Freedom Downtime for you.
[44:46.270 --> 44:49.010]  Well, nightmare is kind of a strong word, but it was a lot of work.
[44:49.230 --> 44:49.870]  Horrifying nightmare.
[44:49.950 --> 44:50.490]  How about horrifying?
[44:50.490 --> 44:54.330]  We still managed to get everybody into a single little car and travel around the country.
[44:54.510 --> 44:57.190]  But, but wow, it's, um, it's really incredible.
[44:57.590 --> 44:58.770]  Sound must be a nightmare.
[44:58.890 --> 44:59.850]  Did you use a boom mic or?
[44:59.910 --> 45:00.650]  I use a boom mic.
[45:00.750 --> 45:01.670]  I just happened to, uh.
[45:01.670 --> 45:02.770]  So you hold a boom mic.
[45:02.910 --> 45:03.370]  No, no, no.
[45:03.430 --> 45:09.010]  I use a, I, I absolutely have a little, a little crane that little holds it over the person.
[45:09.450 --> 45:14.190]  Um, and you get a nice microphone, you aim it right at their mouth and you get a pretty good recording.
[45:14.490 --> 45:17.490]  Um, and, uh, the human ear is very forgiving.
[45:17.790 --> 45:25.190]  Um, if they understand what the person's saying, um, you can have some background noise or you can have, um, some buzzing or whatever.
[45:25.350 --> 45:27.650]  And there's also so, um, this is the thing.
[45:27.770 --> 45:30.150]  This has, this has changed just in the last two years.
[45:30.390 --> 45:32.470]  Um, two and a half years.
[45:32.810 --> 45:40.430]  There are programs now that will present the sound not as a single wave, but as a spectrum.
[45:40.810 --> 45:49.770]  And in the spectrum, you can make out cell phone rings or dropped pens or other clicking and you can paint it out.
[45:50.050 --> 45:51.730]  Dogs barking and things like that.
[45:51.770 --> 45:51.770]  Yeah.
[45:51.790 --> 45:57.850]  You can, you can actually paint it out now like it was just a, a blemish, like a Photoshop.
[45:58.290 --> 46:02.590]  And I mean, I've, you know, you can literally remove a cell phone from behind a person's voice.
[46:02.990 --> 46:05.450]  It's really amazing how much has changed.
[46:05.770 --> 46:08.930]  Um, you can do color correction on the fly automatically.
[46:09.370 --> 46:15.270]  You can choose something in the image and say, wipe this out and have it disappear.
[46:15.270 --> 46:18.150]  Even though the camera's moving, uh, you can steady the camera.
[46:18.790 --> 46:23.730]  Um, you can really, really, you know, to me, the important thing is the story.
[46:23.850 --> 46:26.850]  And the important thing is someone will go to me and go, well, I'm not so good.
[46:26.950 --> 46:28.730]  I'm like, people will watch.
[46:28.930 --> 46:37.690]  I mean, if you look at a couple of the memes that have spread in the past week, even I won't go into which ones they are, but you know, there've been some untoured things.
[46:37.850 --> 46:43.870]  Well, I noticed that they were shot off of security cameras, um, off of monitors.
[46:43.870 --> 46:52.390]  So we are looking at a cell phone recording of a monitor of a low bit security camera.
[46:52.530 --> 46:55.330]  And people are like, I can't believe that's happening.
[46:55.510 --> 46:56.730]  That's what they care about.
[46:56.890 --> 47:00.150]  They're not like, Oh, what's up with this low quality, low fi?
[47:00.450 --> 47:01.390]  I can't understand it.
[47:01.470 --> 47:02.110]  It's not in stereo.
[47:02.350 --> 47:15.990]  If the story is good, if the, if the person you're talking to is compelling, you can record it with a, you know, with a 35 millimeter camera from 1985 and people with a tape recording and people will listen.
[47:16.150 --> 47:19.610]  So that's the number one thing, you know, don't get hung up on the cameras.
[47:19.770 --> 47:24.610]  Don't be all, you know, Oh, well, what about the bandwidth or how about the wide angle lens?
[47:24.690 --> 47:28.430]  It's like, you know, do that first, get the story.
[47:29.330 --> 47:32.090]  I, a long time ago, I learned this lesson.
[47:32.190 --> 47:43.790]  There was somebody who did a documentary on the four men who did almost all the beats that we know of, like the, you know, the beats that were part of the sixties and the seventies and they were sampled and turned into the rap.
[47:44.450 --> 47:46.110]  Well, there were four of them.
[47:46.610 --> 47:50.650]  And in the beginning of the film, they show the three men holding a picture of the fourth.
[47:51.150 --> 47:55.490]  And it said, you know, the fourth man died while I was trying to get funding.
[47:56.190 --> 47:59.130]  And I was so wrecked.
[47:59.190 --> 48:02.730]  I was like, just record him, just tape, record him.
[48:02.930 --> 48:04.170]  How hard would that have been?
[48:04.410 --> 48:05.430]  And now he's gone.
[48:05.430 --> 48:09.350]  And that taught me, get, get the story, get out there.
[48:09.490 --> 48:11.270]  Don't be, don't make it precious.
[48:11.350 --> 48:16.370]  And we're gifted with this ability to make things look better, but don't get hung up on it.
[48:16.470 --> 48:17.690]  Hey, let's open up our phone line.
[48:17.810 --> 48:25.070]  Speaking with Jason Scott here from archive.org and a documentarian archivist, our phone number 212-209-2209-2209.
[48:26.450 --> 48:29.170]  If people have any comments, questions, things like that.
[48:29.270 --> 48:31.190]  Jason, I imagine you also do all your editing too.
[48:31.350 --> 48:31.790]  I do.
[48:32.130 --> 48:34.910]  And that is unbelievably hard.
[48:35.310 --> 48:37.730]  I think it was nine months of editing for Gitlamp.
[48:38.050 --> 48:40.450]  I don't even know how long it was for, for BBS.
[48:40.650 --> 48:41.110]  What do you use?
[48:41.530 --> 48:42.150]  I, okay.
[48:42.170 --> 48:49.550]  So I use something called Vegas video, which was unfortunately bought by Sony is now called Sony Vegas.
[48:49.950 --> 48:57.350]  It's a relatively easy video editing program that, um, it almost treats video.
[48:57.770 --> 49:04.530]  It was basically a music program called acid that was basically turned into a music program for video.
[49:04.530 --> 49:08.650]  So you mix the video like they are tracks of music.
[49:08.650 --> 49:18.550]  And somehow that really works well with my personality because I'll pull up something someone said and I'll place it over another person and I'll, and I'll say, okay, well let's, let's mix it.
[49:18.610 --> 49:26.970]  If anyone's seen my films, they are these weird, um, almost mosaics of people discussing things.
[49:27.050 --> 49:28.130]  I don't use a narrator.
[49:28.130 --> 49:31.370]  So a person will start a sentence and another person will continue it.
[49:31.470 --> 49:33.330]  And the third person will finish it.
[49:33.410 --> 49:38.870]  You know, like I, I really like that powerful sense of voices raised together to make a thing.
[49:39.330 --> 49:40.810]  The program works that way.
[49:40.930 --> 49:45.150]  And as you might imagine, that means I have to watch everything at least once.
[49:45.250 --> 49:49.510]  I have to classify everything and then I have to start pushing them together slowly.
[49:50.010 --> 49:51.950]  But I think the result is very nice.
[49:51.950 --> 49:55.950]  It's very polished and it's very enjoyable for me to, to see what comes out the other end.
[49:56.030 --> 49:56.870]  So the work is worth it.
[49:57.210 --> 49:58.750]  Well, the whole process is inspirational.
[49:59.290 --> 50:01.470]  Definitely to me, to many people out there, I'm sure.
[50:02.250 --> 50:03.450]  Let's talk to some of those people.
[50:03.570 --> 50:05.170]  212-209-2900.
[50:05.370 --> 50:06.030]  And good evening.
[50:06.190 --> 50:06.910]  You're on Off the Hook.
[50:07.690 --> 50:07.950]  Hello.
[50:08.310 --> 50:09.110]  Hi, what's on your mind?
[50:09.850 --> 50:11.230]  This is a Mr. Johnson.
[50:11.470 --> 50:12.770]  I'm listening to the WBAI.
[50:13.610 --> 50:15.810]  All right, Mr. Johnson, you are on the radio right now.
[50:15.810 --> 50:17.090]  Okay, then.
[50:17.250 --> 50:18.630]  I am happy to talk with you.
[50:18.930 --> 50:21.730]  I have been listening to you for years.
[50:22.150 --> 50:25.130]  I'm 84 within a week from now.
[50:25.630 --> 50:28.630]  The man that you're talking to has got me spellbound.
[50:28.930 --> 50:32.650]  This is a world that I was in, in the movie industry.
[50:33.250 --> 50:39.630]  And I was designing and building lighting equipment and audio gear for special projects.
[50:40.170 --> 50:49.250]  And here I am at 84, reliving my life through this chap, who sounds like me when I was in my 50s and 40s.
[50:49.410 --> 50:52.730]  I would love to end up making connection with him.
[50:52.910 --> 50:58.890]  I've got loads of gear I would give him, only because I just believe in what he's doing.
[50:59.490 --> 51:01.730]  The man is doing what's important.
[51:02.370 --> 51:03.370]  Well, that's very kind.
[51:03.450 --> 51:04.410]  That's very kind of you, sir.
[51:05.510 --> 51:08.070]  I'm sure we can figure out some way to do the connection.
[51:08.850 --> 51:24.110]  If people want to email me, I'm easily reachable at jason at textfiles.com, T-E-X-T-F-I-L-E-S dot com, or jscott, J-S-C-O-T-T at archive.org.
[51:24.270 --> 51:26.050]  I don't mind giving my email address out.
[51:26.130 --> 51:27.650]  I get more spam than you might imagine.
[51:28.630 --> 51:34.430]  And I love making connections with people and talking to them and, you know, everything.
[51:34.750 --> 51:35.250]  So...
[51:35.250 --> 51:36.310]  Let me ask our caller.
[51:36.510 --> 51:38.070]  Do you have an email connection?
[51:38.270 --> 51:39.310]  You could email him?
[51:40.990 --> 51:42.150]  No, I don't.
[51:42.290 --> 51:49.310]  But if he will, please take the phone number I've got and make the time to call me.
[51:49.490 --> 51:52.970]  Even if he's got control, if he's calling me to shut me down.
[51:53.490 --> 51:54.370]  But he's got...
[51:54.370 --> 51:58.950]  I'm the only solar energy house in all of New York, 1979.
[51:59.770 --> 52:04.990]  I put the shelves up at WBAI way back in the 50s or 60s.
[52:06.390 --> 52:10.150]  I was on WBAI different times.
[52:10.290 --> 52:11.390]  I'm a solar expert.
[52:11.930 --> 52:14.530]  You are a living museum, sir.
[52:14.650 --> 52:15.930]  I would love to meet you.
[52:16.410 --> 52:17.030]  So it sounds like...
[52:17.030 --> 52:21.910]  I've got a library that's 120 feet of nothing but solar energy.
[52:21.990 --> 52:23.490]  And I'm going to be dying.
[52:23.750 --> 52:24.510]  I'm 84.
[52:25.410 --> 52:27.570]  And I can't influence anybody.
[52:28.310 --> 52:29.950]  Well, I think you've interested me.
[52:30.170 --> 52:30.450]  Yes.
[52:30.870 --> 52:32.830]  We're going to put you on hold, sir.
[52:32.870 --> 52:34.650]  Put him on hold and we'll get your info, sir.
[52:34.730 --> 52:40.370]  Can you hold on for maybe eight or nine minutes and then we can take your phone number after we're off the air?
[52:41.610 --> 52:44.170]  Yes, if the phone don't go dead with the battery.
[52:44.170 --> 52:45.050]  Oh, okay.
[52:45.390 --> 52:46.130]  Well, you know what?
[52:46.230 --> 52:47.510]  We'll try and figure something out.
[52:47.550 --> 52:48.930]  We're going to start by putting you on hold.
[52:49.110 --> 52:52.910]  And I'm sure between all of us in this room, we can figure out how to get your phone number.
[52:53.430 --> 52:59.750]  Making my heart feel so good, though, that I found somebody that might appreciate me as a legend.
[53:01.550 --> 53:02.070]  You bet.
[53:02.270 --> 53:02.990]  Actually, you know what?
[53:03.330 --> 53:06.970]  I'm going to give the controls over to Jason, Kyle, and Mike.
[53:07.250 --> 53:08.630]  You can yammer on about something.
[53:08.690 --> 53:12.270]  What I'll do is I'll pick up the phone and I'll write down your phone number as soon as I find a pen.
[53:13.010 --> 53:14.090]  And then we'll do it that way.
[53:14.170 --> 53:14.510]  How's that?
[53:15.210 --> 53:15.870]  That's excellent.
[53:16.230 --> 53:17.930]  However, well, you guys are bright.
[53:18.410 --> 53:23.230]  I met you guys over at the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, not, was it Chase?
[53:23.530 --> 53:28.710]  We used to have the meetings every, was it every first Monday of the month?
[53:29.990 --> 53:30.590]  Mm-hmm.
[53:31.030 --> 53:33.030]  Yeah, you're talking about the, uh, 2600 meetings.
[53:33.190 --> 53:35.550]  We actually just had one, uh, last Friday.
[53:36.030 --> 53:40.890]  And they take place all around the world, uh, on the first Friday of every month.
[53:42.690 --> 53:50.070]  Yeah, well, when you were actively involved and one of you got put away by the fence for a while, I'm, I'm all part of that memory.
[53:51.450 --> 53:52.690]  And we need to hear your story.
[53:52.890 --> 53:53.610]  Yeah, it's so good.
[53:53.750 --> 53:54.250]  Good to you.
[53:54.410 --> 53:54.930]  So called in.
[53:55.010 --> 53:55.930]  I'm going to put you on hold right now.
[53:55.930 --> 53:56.650]  I'm going to put you on hold.
[53:56.770 --> 53:59.830]  Emmanuel's going to take your thing and I'm going to say something about you, sir, and you'll like it.
[53:59.910 --> 54:03.730]  If, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if we get, uh, disconnected, please call right back, but I think this hold button will work.
[54:03.950 --> 54:04.190]  All right.
[54:04.310 --> 54:04.790]  Of course.
[54:05.770 --> 54:06.130]  All right.
[54:06.210 --> 54:06.370]  Okay.
[54:06.410 --> 54:06.770]  It did work.
[54:06.850 --> 54:07.490]  So I'm going to get his number.
[54:07.550 --> 54:08.330]  You guys talk about something.
[54:08.410 --> 54:09.570]  I'm happy to talk about it.
[54:09.590 --> 54:11.170]  This is something I run into a lot, right?
[54:11.250 --> 54:13.530]  Where a gentleman comes up to me and says, I have a story.
[54:13.690 --> 54:24.010]  Now, the thing is, is that we all have interesting stories and there are people out there right now who have amazing stories and they don't have any outlet for them or they don't think anyone's actually interested.
[54:24.230 --> 54:28.870]  And the minute you talk to them, you realize, oh my goodness, this may be the only person who knows this.
[54:28.970 --> 54:33.250]  This may be the only person who has this, the only person who even remembers this ever happened.
[54:34.370 --> 54:42.070]  And it's maybe too easy for us to go, well, that's just someone telling stories before they realize that once they're gone, the stories go with them.
[54:42.650 --> 54:49.670]  So, um, I mean, I'll be meeting this guy if I can, uh, as soon as I can, because you got to move fast with history.
[54:49.850 --> 54:50.430]  You have to.
[54:50.670 --> 54:53.750]  And that's the difference I think between success and failure.
[54:53.930 --> 55:01.570]  Um, you end up with people who say, well, I'll get to it next week or I'll, I'll give that guy a call next month when I free up some time.
[55:01.790 --> 55:08.210]  I'm like, if you don't go out and get the stories of people, people fade, uh, they fade faster than the stories.
[55:08.370 --> 55:10.410]  And so we'll see what happens with it.
[55:10.450 --> 55:14.650]  I'm sure I'll give Emmanuel an update as to what happened after I met this gentleman.
[55:14.850 --> 55:22.790]  But, um, you know, the more people, the more people around you that get their stories down one way or another, the better we are.
[55:23.090 --> 55:25.770]  So Emmanuel has now gotten the critical information.
[55:25.770 --> 55:29.950]  You've successfully gotten phone number and, and all kinds of other, we'll be in touch.
[55:30.110 --> 55:30.990]  So that's great to hear.
[55:31.070 --> 55:31.830]  Let's take another phone call.
[55:32.550 --> 55:33.430]  Were you in the middle of something?
[55:33.630 --> 55:33.970]  No, no, no.
[55:34.030 --> 55:34.230]  Oh, okay.
[55:34.670 --> 55:35.230]  Uh, good evening.
[55:35.390 --> 55:35.990]  You're on Off the Hook.
[55:36.370 --> 55:37.090]  Hey, how you doing?
[55:37.230 --> 55:38.790]  Listen, this is just great stuff.
[55:38.950 --> 55:40.770]  I really admire the work this guy's doing.
[55:41.050 --> 55:42.050]  And I want to relate.
[55:42.310 --> 55:43.550]  Peter Beauchamp gets on.
[55:43.750 --> 55:46.510]  And this, I'm not going to turn this into a show about Peter Beauchamp.
[55:46.770 --> 55:48.370]  He's great, but he gets on.
[55:48.550 --> 55:54.830]  And years ago, I only had a couple of tape, cassette tape techs and two reel-to-reel.
[55:54.950 --> 56:01.630]  So I'd, uh, hack the cords back and forth from the front to the back to the da-da-da to the turntable and the radio.
[56:02.230 --> 56:05.370]  I made a tape for like 45 minutes.
[56:05.570 --> 56:06.870]  It took me 18 hours.
[56:07.030 --> 56:08.010]  People don't understand.
[56:08.430 --> 56:12.690]  I had to do more work than Peter does because he can flick a button and fade things.
[56:12.950 --> 56:24.690]  But, but along the lines of what this guy is saying and along the lines of what you guys are doing and along the lines that you got old equipment or something, you know, I thought of old equipment.
[56:24.930 --> 56:26.370]  I called one of you guys up.
[56:26.470 --> 56:28.210]  You came and you picked it up and it's great.
[56:28.470 --> 56:29.570]  I don't care what happened to it.
[56:29.590 --> 56:32.550]  I care that you did something with it and I didn't want any money.
[56:33.210 --> 56:34.130]  And you know what?
[56:34.430 --> 56:35.810]  Your work is great.
[56:35.970 --> 56:36.590]  It's current.
[56:36.930 --> 56:44.330]  It's, um, you fight legal battles like other BAI entities all the way to George Carlin and on and on.
[56:45.010 --> 56:48.130]  And, uh, I too have been listening for years.
[56:48.130 --> 56:57.750]  I'm just a little younger than the other guy, but, uh, I'm going to look at this guy's documentary and other stuff and I'm going to, uh, try.
[56:57.930 --> 57:00.350]  I'm under the impression he said Jason at, right?
[57:00.490 --> 57:02.310]  It's not Jason something on his emails.
[57:02.670 --> 57:06.970]  It's, it's Jason, Jason at J-A-S-O-N at text files.com.
[57:07.130 --> 57:15.870]  And, and yeah, the more people who, all that matters to me is if one person gets inspired to save something or reach out, then the work has been worth it.
[57:16.050 --> 57:24.570]  Well, I think more than that have been inspired, but if you, uh, want more information or just want to talk to us, O-T-H at 2600.com is our email address.
[57:24.750 --> 57:26.210]  Thanks so much, Jason, for everything you've done.
[57:26.310 --> 57:26.990]  Thanks for being here tonight.
[57:27.250 --> 57:30.530]  We look forward to seeing you at the HOPE conference this July in New York City.
[57:30.730 --> 57:31.850]  I know you'll be giving a presentation.
[57:32.010 --> 57:32.450]  I'll be happy.
[57:32.510 --> 57:33.410]  I'll be the guy in the hat.
[57:33.610 --> 57:35.430]  Yeah, well, the big hat.
[57:35.690 --> 57:36.050]  The big hat.
[57:36.050 --> 57:36.290]  Thanks.
[57:36.330 --> 57:36.850]  Thanks again.
[57:37.030 --> 57:38.050]  And, uh, thanks to all our listeners.
[57:38.190 --> 57:39.810]  Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show coming up next.
[57:39.870 --> 57:40.190]  Have a good night.