Feeling hopeless and fearful for the state of the country?
Join the resistance with WBAI.
Again, for a list of upcoming actions and demonstrations, visit wbai.org backslash calendar dot php.
You are listening to radio station WBAI 99.5 FM WBAI.org on the web.
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution.
It is in your spirit or it is nowhere.
From The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Time is just about 8 p.m. on a Wednesday evening, which means it's time for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
I hope that's understood. One, two, three, go!
Off The Hook
Off The Hook
And a very good evening to you. The program is Off The Hook.
Rob T. Firefly here with you, and I'm joined in the studio by Alex.
Good evening.
And by Voltaire.
Good evening.
So, all kinds of things are going on. Alex, you're looking a little jet-lagged. What's up?
Well, thank you. Thanks for that. I appreciate it.
I am, in fact, a little bit jet-lagged. I think everybody's been doing a little bit of traveling these days.
I know Emmanuel and Kyle are still on their own adventure somewhere.
And yesterday, I got back from Dubai for a business trip, which was quite interesting.
Have you ever been, Voltaire?
No. They're telling me about it.
It was quite an interesting trip. It was a city to which I'd never been either.
And it was such a long flight back that I went through London, landed at JFK, was so exhausted because my flight left at 2.25 in the morning from Dubai,
that I got here and immediately called my wife and said, you know, I'm so tired. I think I'm not going to go to the office.
I'm just going to go home, but I don't know what I'm going to do. I have to do the radio show tonight.
I really had no idea that yesterday was Tuesday until she reminded me that the radio show was Wednesday and that was today, which yesterday was tomorrow.
So, I am a bit out of sorts. So, I apologize if my comments are even more incoherent than they usually are.
But Dubai is a very interesting city and I have to say I didn't dislike it as much as I thought I was going to.
Everything you hear about Dubai is that it's sort of pre-planned. It's sort of like an Arab version of Reston, Virginia or something.
Or Vegas. Dry Vegas.
Yeah, exactly. It does have very much like a Vegas feel to it because there is a strip.
There's kind of a gigantic highway running through the city.
And you see all these brand new high-rises popping up everywhere. There's construction.
It seems quite literally at every single corner.
But these buildings are gigantic and they just seem to be cropping up everywhere and really, really quickly.
I mean, if you think about New York, we've been trying to get the Second Avenue subway finished since World War II.
You know, with the rate they do things in Dubai and the UAE, they'd have that done in like three months.
The subway is below ground. They're building stuff above ground.
That's true.
We have stuff being built above ground everywhere, too.
Yeah, well, I'm just talking about kind of the general speed at which things move over there.
And, of course, they have the tallest building on the planet at the moment, the Burj Khalifa, which just kind of towers over everything in the city.
But there are so many high-rises that it's actually hard to see the tallest building on Earth unless you're standing at the right vantage point.
And when you're at the top of the Burj Khalifa, you realize really how tall that thing is.
I mean, it is gigantic.
Did you go to the top?
I did go to the top.
Wow.
I had a couple of hours to spare.
Did you walk?
No, we did not.
That's like half the reason I want to go, just to say I've walked up it.
You'll be walking for a really, really long time.
I could do it.
The elevator, though, it only takes about a minute to get to the top.
I mean, your ears are popping. It's going really, really quickly.
You only have to make one change.
That's why I think on the 125th floor, you make one quick change, and then you go up to the 148th floor.
And then, I mean, you can see basically forever.
It would be really neat to be up there and watch one of these dust storms roll in.
Oh, yeah.
Which would be kind of neat.
But the other thing that's odd about Dubai is that you have all these buildings popping up, and they're everywhere.
So the skyline of it would sort of look a lot like New York because you have all these gigantic buildings.
But unlike New York, the buildings aren't right on top of each other.
There's a lot of space at the bottoms.
And every building sort of has its own kind of gallery of shops and whatnot at the bottom.
But there's a lot of space in between the buildings, which, frankly, I think is a bit of a mistake in terms of the planning
because it makes it more difficult to walk around.
You have to have a car.
You have to be driven everywhere.
There is some public transportation, and it seems to be very efficient,
but you still have a lot of space in between these buildings.
And it makes it a little bit tricky, I think, to really understand the city
because these buildings, a lot of them look very similar to each other.
You know, there's never anything that's real square.
They always have these kind of strange shapes around them.
And in any one building, there could be, you know, any number of restaurants, clubs, cigar bars, offices.
So to really understand that city, it's hard to get to know, I think.
But if you're there with people who are in the know, it actually can be quite a fun place.
You just have to, I think, have the right attitude to explore it properly.
The other thing that I thought was quite interesting about it, and to me somewhat annoying,
is that oftentimes at the bottoms of these buildings, you have these gigantic squares,
and they're kind of pretty, and they're full of grass and whatnot.
And Dubai is kind of an expat town.
There's lots of expats from all over the place.
So in addition to the regular citizens of the UAE, the Emiratis,
you have lots and lots of people from all over the place,
and everybody seems to be so interested in exercise.
You know, there's just tons of people, you know, doing exercise in the early evening hours on these lawns.
Isn't it unbearably hot, though?
It wasn't when we were there.
It was about 75 degrees.
It was perfect.
But, you know, in July and August, I hear quite literally it's like opening an oven door when you go outside.
But, you know, there's so many people exercising, and I find it just, you know, really annoying.
One of the things I hate most about New York is joggers.
And to see all these people just exercising as if the world is their own gym just kind of, you know, annoys me.
You know, go inside and work out.
I don't need to see this.
You know, people doing push-ups and chin-ups and, you know, public squares and things like that.
It's very distracting.
I just want to walk around and think and not be distracted by, you know, people doing pull-ups around me.
It sounds a lot less distracting than cars.
Possibly.
Yeah, quite possibly.
But it is a very interesting city in a lot of respects,
and definitely someplace I think would be, you know, worthwhile to visit.
Technologically, it's very, very cool and has a lot to offer.
And I think that we may have our usual hosts on the line, too.
We do.
I've been doing some finagling over here, and I've pushed a big button that says Emmanuel and Kyle,
which should have made them happen.
Emmanuel and Kyle, are you with us?
Yeah, we're here.
This is just so typical of the things that happen when you're trying to communicate with people.
Even people who host a communications radio show have trouble making connections.
And you were calling me, and my phone was only ringing once, and then immediately hanging up.
And then I tried returning your call, but the plus one wasn't carried,
and I was getting something strange in this country.
And then you texted me the phone number, and it was the wrong phone number.
Yeah.
So, yeah, half the show is over now.
Well, we were saying a lot about you guys, but we figured we'd give you the honest chance
to rebut.
But, no, actually, what we've said about you so far is that you guys are traveling,
and you are now in Iceland, I believe.
Is that so?
That is correct.
We are.
Kyle is here, as well.
Hey, guys.
What's up?
It seems like I haven't talked to you in a while.
Well, you haven't.
What's going on?
I think the last time we talked to you, we were in Bucharest, Romania.
And since then, we've been to the country of Moldova, which I can't remember.
We've been to the country of Moldova, which I challenge any listener to write to OTH at
2600.com who has been to Moldova and tell us what you thought of that country.
We thought it was amazing.
It was just a very different type of place, a country that really, I think, is coming
into its own and is modernizing in ways that maybe you wouldn't expect.
And we've seen that as kind of a theme in the places that we've been to.
After Moldova, we made our way up through Ukraine.
And actually, we almost got stuck in Ukraine because we couldn't get a train, the route
that we wanted to go to get to Berlin, which was our stepping point to get to London.
So we had to basically use our hacker skills to route around the problem, the problem being
train agents in Kiev who wouldn't help us.
So we had to go to a city called Lviv in the southwestern part of Ukraine, and from there
get a local train across the border into Poland, and then from there go over to Wroclaw in
Poland, and then shoot up to Berlin.
At every step we met with people in train stations saying it was impossible to get a
train, at least on the day we wanted to get a train.
But with persistence and the handy train book that I have, I was able to make it happen.
And through our persistence, we finally were able to make it to Helsinki.
Was Lviv a separatist part of Ukraine?
No, it was pretty much part of Ukraine.
You know, I guess the other option is you probably could have taken a flight, but that
would have just been against ideology.
That's cheating.
No, we did, though, in many cases, understand the system better than they did.
And like he said, it was mostly about listening, communicating with gestures.
Obviously, you know, there's huge language barriers, but the point is we got through it.
And yeah, it's like we would just route around things kind of like any network, basically
finding our way, using the book that we have as a kind of a foundational reference.
But it's more fun to use the terrestrial stuff.
And we ended up seeing all these really cool high-speed trains in places like Ukraine and Poland,
which really you wouldn't know about otherwise.
Yeah, there are rules to this.
No buses and no airplanes.
You have to stick to trains.
And it's not hard to stick to trains in Europe because they're everywhere.
You can get to almost any town in almost any country.
And what I was amazed by was how much trains have improved in Ukraine and in Poland.
It's almost on a Western European part right now.
And it makes me really upset at how advanced they're getting
and how we're not advancing at all because we're not putting anything into our infrastructure.
We're not seeing these improvements.
It really does make a huge difference.
Train agents aside, it's almost like we're dealing with two different worlds.
The world of the train agent, which goes back into, it seems, the 1930s.
Long lines, hot rooms, angry people.
And then the efficient, fast train service that actually exists now.
So while you're in Iceland, I know this is something you were shooting for,
and I'm wondering if you've managed to achieve it.
Have you seen any Northern Lights?
No, dammit, we have not seen Northern Lights.
We have this app that occasionally wakes us up in the middle of the night and says
Northern Lights might be visible.
But so far, it hasn't happened.
And, you know, it's starting to lose patience for these things.
You know, around the entire country.
We drove the Ring Road, which is Route 1, goes all around Iceland.
And we did that in the winter.
Very lucky that we did it when we did, because had we tried it now,
I understand some roads are closed.
And we had some really dramatic weather.
So you were in the northernmost part of Iceland?
Sorry, say again?
You made it to the northernmost part of Iceland?
Not the northernmost part, but the northernmost part that that road goes to.
Yeah, we're in the capital of the north, a town called Akureyri.
It's actually a college town and really kind of cool.
Second largest city, I believe, municipality in Iceland.
Yeah, so we did.
We went to a lot of the major cities to stop off as we were driving so that, yeah,
so we could rest and be ready for the road the next day.
A lot of inclement weather, a lot of, yeah, like blinding snow.
You can imagine, you know, large trucks passing you and you getting,
getting like these blasts of snow that you just completely, you know,
and complete whiteout, completely invisible ahead of you for a second.
That kind of like, you know, heart-stopping moment is basically what we had
for a good part of it.
And a little bit more rain when we got further east and south.
Well, Iceland is not as cold as you might think it is.
It's actually rather temperate.
It gets cold in some parts, the northern parts, but the southern parts,
you actually see rain this time of year.
But it's also very slippery, very frozen in many parts.
And the weather changes very quickly, too.
You know, you'll see a foot of snow in one place and then just sweet and nice
and then a dry road all within a day.
And incredibly high winds.
And we had to actually learn some new conversions.
The wind is actually measured in meters per second out here,
which that might actually be something that's normal in many parts of the world.
But for us, we had to figure that out fairly quickly.
You basically double it and it's miles per hour.
But it was interesting.
It started at 10 meters per second.
That's something you should start being concerned about.
Anything below that is not a big deal.
You know, it's interesting you say that because when I went to Iceland,
I guess it was maybe about 2003 or so, I was living in Vermont,
which incidentally is some place where I actually did see the northern lights
several times on account of a solar flare.
So maybe if there's a solar flare imminent,
you might be able to catch the northern lights while you're over in Iceland anyhow.
But having gone from Vermont to Iceland also in the winter,
right about this time, I found Iceland to be so much warmer than Vermont.
It was kind of incredible.
Another neat thing that I thought about Iceland, which is, you know,
the people are so incredibly nice and so incredibly welcoming.
And it didn't really square with me why in the kind of the pubs and bars in the evening,
why there were so many bouncers.
I found there to be, you know, lots of security.
And then I had realized when I was traveling with a buddy of mine
that we think that the bouncers were so numerous
because they were just there to make sure that these Icelandic people
themselves didn't hurt themselves.
In that, you know, they weren't afraid of anybody starting a fight
or, you know, gang violence or something like that.
It was just they knew that they were going to drink too much
and needed to be escorted out properly.
And that was, you know, one thing that I thought was, you know,
quite a stark contrast from New York and Iceland
was the kind of the general attitude of the people,
the attitude of the security personnel in particular at all these various places.
I'm not sure if you've run into that kind of component of Iceland.
Not as much this time of year, sort of the offseason.
I do know what you mean.
There were a lot of people at the door the last time you were here in June.
Of course, you have cruise ships and a lot of people.
And anytime you get masses of people,
you're going to have, you know, bad actors and people like overdoing it.
But I can definitely tell you, like,
just from what I learned on this trip,
there's a very low incidence of, I think, crime and definitely violence.
That violent crime, that kind of stuff,
is not nearly what we might, you know,
be accustomed to back in the States or in other parts of the world.
And, you know, Iceland in general is just kind of a peaceful place
from what I've experienced.
And the people are quite affable.
And, you know, they have an impression of us,
which kind of parallels what Kyle's saying here,
where, you know, if you say you're from New York or from America,
they kind of just are really curious,
like, what in God's name is going on over there?
And, you know, we live in a small town up north.
We get stopped for coffee in the middle of our drive.
And the restaurant's in place, very small.
And we just happened to mention, you know,
we get stopped for coffee in the middle of our drive.
And the restaurant's in place, very small.
And we just happened to mention we were from the United States.
And this woman just, without any prompting whatsoever,
said that she refused to go to our country
until we get rid of our president.
I just thought that was so incredible
that that, in the middle of literally nowhere in Iceland,
that is the prevailing sentiment among the people.
Well, you know, we here also would like to know
what the hell is going on over here,
but we're doing our best to figure it out.
Yeah, I don't blame her for that sentiment at all.
I can completely understand it.
And what do you guys think about the water?
I mean, everything is heated with this geothermal energy,
and then the hot water has this very sulfuric type of smell,
and the cold water comes directly from the glaciers, right?
What's your experience with the water over there?
Well, yeah, there's a couple of, like, things that people,
you have to kind of understand about it.
First of all, the sulfur smell, as far as, like, tap water,
is mainly on the hot side.
So anything that's, like, warmer from the tap
is possibly going to have that kind of odor.
But if you run it for about 10 seconds or 10 minutes
on the cold side, you really don't have any of that.
And it's really, it's quite good water.
As you said, often Icelandic people are quite proud of their water
and the fact that it comes from glacial flow
and other sorts of sources to the ground,
wells or wherever it's extracted.
And that mostly predates the Industrial Revolution
and other factors that have contaminated
a lot of our sources.
And also, I don't think it's processed quite the same way.
We use a lot of chemicals, especially in urban places,
like New York City.
And, well, you get the idea.
So, yeah, to that end, it's pretty cool to drink, actually.
I was just researching that.
So it's really funny you asked that.
As far as the geothermal and just how it's used,
so you are right, the geothermal activity
is used by this power company called ON.
And they have basically supplied all the power.
There's also, I believe, hydroelectric facilities
and other sources.
And a lot of smaller people, like you'd imagine,
like a farmer or somebody who basically might survey their land,
realize they have sort of a formation that is warm,
and they can basically produce their own steam
and thus have maybe a small generator.
So you will notice that these basically smaller versions
of exactly that very large system that supplies cities like Reykjavik.
And there's other really innovative ways.
We stayed in one place that basically had no radiators,
no heat vents, no nothing.
And we surmised that based on what they told us of the shower,
it was heated from natural sources.
We basically realized they probably also heat the entire building
through in-floor heating,
which is basically like coils of tubing
that is placed in the floor before it's finished,
and that radiates heat from the floor.
And actually, they had a part of town last time
that was under construction that they were doing the exact same thing,
and we walked back through that part of town this time
just to see that there was no ice or anything on it
because indeed a pedestrian walkway outside was heated in this way.
I mean, it really is incredible
because they're able to generate so much energy from the earth
and harness it in such innovative ways
that it makes life so much easier over there,
even when it's not nearly as cold as it is in some parts of the United States.
And to go back to the water,
have you guys had the chance to try the Viking beer yet,
which is brewed with this glacial water?
And I found it really kind of amazing.
And when I was there, the exchange rate
certainly did not favor Americans in Iceland.
Everything was extraordinarily expensive,
so I know that the currency is falling quite a bit.
That's the interesting thing because on this trip,
I mentioned we're in Moldova where things are incredibly cheap.
You can, you know, eat like a king and pay maybe $10,
and here, you know, if you get a slice of pizza,
expect to pay $20 for that.
It's ridiculous.
Yeah, it is. It's terrible.
Things are incredibly expensive,
but, you know, if you're here in the wintertime like we are,
it only becomes an outrageous ripoff
rather than something unfathomable like it does in the summertime
where you can pay, you know, $500 for a hotel room.
It's insane.
But, you know, there are ways around that and stay in hostels.
For some reason, renting a car is extremely cheap
compared to other things.
So there's that.
You can figure out places to stay and food you can eat.
For instance, they have these amazing hot dogs in Reykjavik
that I don't know what the story is behind them,
but every time we come here, we're just drawn to them.
They're only $4.50, which I know is expensive for a hot dog,
but, you know, it fills you up.
It's really good.
They sell them in the street until really late at night,
and that's another thing.
This city is a very late-night city,
so people are pretty much all night,
so it's really cool.
And you know what else?
We have listeners in Iceland.
In fact, we met one.
We met Johan a couple of times in Iceland.
We met Johan a couple of times, actually,
and he was kind enough to bring me something
that I really wanted,
and I'm bringing this back to the States.
It's an Icelandic phone book.
Now, you know what's interesting about an Icelandic phone book?
I don't know.
Are you guys familiar with the naming convention in Iceland?
Yes, with all the various sons.
Yes, I'll use you as an example, Alex.
Oh, great.
Let's say you had a son named Bob,
and Bob's name would actually be Bob Alexan,
because Bob is your son, and your name is Alex.
It makes perfect sense.
Yes.
Now, a Bob's sister, Alice, would be...
Hang on. Do I have this right?
...would be named Alice's daughter?
Is that how it works?
I think that's right.
I think it's like a D-O-T-T-I-R daughter.
D-O-T-T-I-R. Right.
Yes.
I mean, it's very efficient, very fathomable,
and I'm very interested for you to bring back this Icelandic phone book,
because when I was there in 2003,
I was not able to verify this,
but at the time, I had heard that
in this country of only 300,000 or so people,
and I imagine it's probably still the same population,
that you could actually look up,
and I don't know if this was a rumor or not,
but that you could actually look up the phone number
in the phone book of the Prime Minister.
Of course.
That's kind of true.
In fact, we were walking around Parliament the other night,
and it was pretty much unguarded.
It was just, you know, another building.
You could walk right up to it,
and it's open to the public, as it should be.
But let me get back to the phone book for a second.
The thing that's really interesting about this
is that everybody is listed by first name.
So, right now, I'm coming through it.
There are 10 pages of Anna's.
So, basically, you know their first name,
and you just have to know their last name,
but they're all listed alphabetically by first name.
We looked up Kyle, and there's only one Kyle in Reykjavik,
but there's 10 pages of Anna's.
Do you have the phone book with you now?
Yeah, I do. You want to look something up?
Yeah, let's try calling the Prime Minister.
Well, first of all,
I'd like you to call the Prime Minister at, what is it,
1.20 in the morning?
And second of all,
I don't know the Prime Minister's name offhand.
And third, if they're not in Reykjavik,
they're in a different section of the book,
and there's a lot of thumbing through pages
that I'm not prepared to do right now.
But I do have the book.
In fact, I've got two of them.
We found another one.
This was awesome.
We were driving through this small city, or town,
and we just saw this bookstore.
We stopped in the bookstore, and it was a coffee shop,
and they sold vinyl records.
It was everything that was cool.
We just had this long conversation with the guy who ran it,
and it was actually the same town
that Bobby Fisher, the racist chess master, moved to,
where he buried it as well.
So we stopped out of curiosity, saw this bookstore,
and went to get coffee and talked to the guy
about vinyl records,
and he happened to have a phone book too,
and we bought it from him.
Were they selling phone books in the bookstore,
or did you just buy this person's individual phone book off of him?
Well, it turns out he actually grabbed a bunch of them.
Apparently there was a male model
who appeared on the cover in 2011,
and there was some kind of a scandal involving him,
so they pulled all the phone books out,
and this bookstore owner saw an opportunity,
and basically just collected a bunch of them,
and then I walked into the store
and asked for that very phone book,
well, not that particular one, but a phone book,
and he was very happy that somebody
actually was requesting something like that.
So yeah, he made out quite well.
But why male models?
Anyway, it's funny.
Phone books, are they actually still used?
Do people actually use them?
Because this would be a huge contrast
from places like New York,
where it just mystifies me
why phone books are still being delivered,
because you just see them pile up
in front of buildings,
and kind of in vestibules of apartment complexes,
because nobody wants them.
They're constantly printed.
It's like a full-fledged assault on the world's forests
to print these telephone books.
Well, okay, you can say that,
but there are people who do want them.
The people who are letting them pile up outside,
they don't deserve phone books.
They shouldn't have them,
but there are people who still want them,
and they are a good complement
to other services that we might have.
Now, in Iceland,
they did stop printing the phone book in 2013.
So yeah, that also makes them a little bit more rare.
One other thing with this is
the phone book itself is quite big.
It covers the whole country,
whereas a phone book the same size
would maybe do half of a part
of a small section of Manhattan.
So the scale is much different.
But increasingly,
I guess the publisher of this
is further away from the phone company
versus it having been sort of in-house
and a part of the phone company
in the distant past.
So the trend has kind of moved away
from printing these things,
but they're very useful.
I have a question for you, Alex,
regarding phone books,
because this is very interesting.
How do you look up somebody's phone number these days?
If you don't have their phone number
and you want their phone number,
how do you get it?
That's a very good question.
It's quite difficult, right?
It depends.
Are we talking about landlines?
Are we talking about cell phone?
It's very, very difficult.
You're either actually given the phone number
or you search for it.
You only get it from information
or from the phone book.
That's exactly right.
Generally, you need to contact the person
in order to actually acquire
their telephone number these days.
Or you can search for it.
You use a search engine to find this.
Put their name in plus what area code you know it is,
and generally something will pop up.
But there's no really one centralized place to do this.
I tend to agree with you.
Phone books serve a purpose,
but I feel like in New York
they are serving less and less of a purpose
for the very reason that Kyle had mentioned.
New York is just so huge
and there's so many people
that to have a phone book
of every single person's number
when plain old telephone service
is going out the window,
the utility is dwindling.
But in places like Iceland
where the population is very limited,
the utility of a phone book
seems to be much more relevant.
Well, that's what I don't understand.
You say a book that has everyone's phone number,
a big city like New York,
why wouldn't that still be useful?
The fact that we don't have cell phone numbers
in phone books baffles me.
I assume that's still the case.
If we all have phones
and if we wanted our phones to be listed,
what a great way for people
to be able to contact us
assuming we're still a society
that wants people to occasionally contact us.
I think also number portability,
I'm not sure how,
but I think this factors into it.
And also just the fact that people,
I guess in general,
don't speak on the phone as much anymore.
And also, I mean you can argue I'm sure,
but it is a thing.
It just feels like there are a lot
less conversations outside of maybe formal settings
or conference calls or the sort of business setting.
And with regard to business,
I would also add it's very hard
to find contact info through websites for businesses.
But that is also sort of the last place
you'll find phone numbers as well.
It's a bit of a paradox,
but it's a very strange behavior.
And sort of I think a loss,
this idea of having the ability to contact someone.
You really do need their permission to contact them.
And even when you do have their number,
I mean how many contacts do you have in your phone
and how many of those do you actually speak with?
And businesses also are sort of the last bastion
of people needing to call up someone
they don't already know.
You can call a business and ask
what time they're open or do they do this service or whatever
and that's still accepted as something that people do.
Whereas people communicating with their friends,
their family or whoever,
that tends to go through other channels nowadays.
Yeah, and I think you hit it right on the head too, Kyle.
I mean this was almost a form of etiquette.
If you just look somebody's phone number up
and then call them without giving them
any kind of warning these days,
you're sort of like a pariah.
I mean it's almost like you have to text somebody first
and then tell them that you're going to call.
If you just call somebody and expect to talk to them
and have a conversation,
you don't know what they're doing,
they could be in the middle of something,
they're definitely not going to answer the phone
if they don't recognize your number.
You know, we just don't live in a society
where I think it's acceptable to use the phone
the way that we did 20 years ago.
And sure, there's something kind of sad about that.
Certainly.
And you know, just think about that.
You know, you said 20 years ago, 30 years ago,
you pick up the phone book,
look up somebody's phone number and call them,
there was no caller ID,
the phone rings, they have no idea who's calling,
and you pick up the phone and start a conversation
with an unknown person
that just found your number in a phone book.
Seems so alien and strange to us now,
but wow, you know,
it makes you realize how quickly things have changed.
Yeah, if you don't get screened into oblivion
and they do talk to you,
them knowing you're calling,
they may already have an attitude when you pick up,
which is fine, you know,
if you're good friends and you can take a joke
or you know one another,
but that sort of neutral answering
and I guess politeness of
I'll accept this call by talking to someone,
you don't have that nicety.
It's either, you know,
someone you really are on good terms with
or, you know,
they're already anticipating what you want
and thinking, you know, 20 steps
and doing all their five-dimensional chess with you.
And that could be if you make a wrong number,
you know, you can't do that anymore.
You can't call somebody by accident
and just say, sorry, wrong number
or just hang up.
They'll start 6-9 your ass
and then, you know, say, why did you call me?
And then that turns into a whole big thing.
It's just not the same as it used to be.
They're magic.
That's how we got out of making phone calls.
I really miss wrong numbers.
They were always my favorite thing
when we grew up with a phone in the house
because I loved all the conversations
that I could have with people
who had no idea who they were calling.
And nowadays it's very rare.
Every so often I'll get a wrong number text.
I was having a fun conversation
with somebody earlier today on a wrong number text,
but that's a whole other thing.
But yeah, there's just that sort of immediacy
that just email has not replaced
because, you know, you don't get the same
sort of subtle joys from email spam.
It doesn't have to be all negative, though.
Make a call.
Find a reason to talk to somebody.
There's definite work to be done on the phone
and it is not gone.
And yeah, we may not have a repository
for phone numbers in everybody's phone yet.
That sounds like a project for a fifth grader.
But yeah, make a phone call.
Yeah, it's not impossible.
And we all have unlimited everything,
I would imagine.
And if not, you can top up your prepaid
whatever the heck it is and, you know,
Vonage or whatever, figure out, you know,
whatever scam you're going to use
to talk to somebody and just, you know,
actually talk to them.
And I know who you can call.
You can call the folks at Off The Hook
because we're going to be leaving in a second.
But they're staying in the studio
and I'm sure they'd love to hear from listeners.
Would you not, guys?
We would indeed.
So, yeah, we'll let you get back
to some sort of normal human sleep cycle.
But one last question.
What's next for you guys on your journey?
Well, we might hit Greenland.
We don't know.
We're not getting answers to our calls to Greenland.
But we're very curious about that place.
If there are any listeners there,
please write to us.
LTH at 2600.com.
But I think we'll be back in the studio now.
I think we'll be back in the studio next week.
I'm pretty sure about that.
We might double back to the Faroe Islands.
Well, when you do get back to the studio,
bring one of those phone books
because all of us would really love to have a look at it.
Emmanuel and Kyle.
We can all read through it.
Excellent.
You guys have a good night.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you. Bye.
Good night.
Wow.
It's always good to catch up with those guys.
And, yeah, just so much cool stuff going on.
You never know what you're going to talk about with them.
I had no idea we were going to be speaking about phone books
at such length and detail this evening.
I would have prepared.
I think that was kind of a safe bet, actually,
because we've known these guys for a while.
That's true.
It's either trains or phone books or something like that.
And we had both tonight, actually.
There was something you had mentioned
about calling the Prime Minister,
which leads to a news story I wanted to get to tonight,
or sort of a news story.
The White House, our White House in this here country here,
in what we live,
they have a comment line set up at 202-456-1111,
where you could leave your comments and messages
for the President himself.
Now, this past weekend, we had a government shutdown,
which is always a lot of fun.
But this time it was especially interesting
because when you called this number,
there was nobody there to take your call.
But there was also,
the message that was on the outgoing voicemail
was pretty fascinating.
I'm going to play this for you guys.
Thank you for calling the White House comment line.
Thank you for calling the White House.
Unfortunately, we cannot answer your call today
because Congressional Democrats are holding government funding,
including funding for our troops
and other national security priorities,
hostage to an unrelated immigration debate.
Due to this obstruction, the government is shut down.
In the meantime,
you can leave a comment for the President
at www.whitehouse.gov forward slash contact.
We look forward to taking your calls
as soon as the government reopens.
Now, this fascinates me for so many reasons.
And one of them is just the tone of it was amazing.
I mean, what do you guys think?
I thought it was just incredible.
I mean, really, they managed to convey
a sort of condescension and accusations
that you just wouldn't ordinarily get
in regular outgoing messages.
I mean, it's so incredible.
It's, I think, a new low
to turn the outgoing message for a comment line
into a partisan political statement
about the responsibility for the shutdown of the government.
And just completely point the finger at the Democrats,
accuse them of sidelining troops and national security.
It's really just, I mean, you kind of have to laugh at it.
It's pitiful.
Yeah, this should go without saying,
it was not even factually accurate.
The shutdown did not affect military spending or anything.
Yeah, and what fascinates me,
I mean, this actually got some media attention,
some news attention.
And the recording, which you can't hear anymore
because the government is back open now, apparently,
and you just get their normal lines and services
when you call now.
But this recording is archived on the site
thisisarecording.com,
which is a site that collects
all sorts of telephone-related recordings.
I highly recommend checking it out.
It's a rabbit hole to go down.
But yeah, now it appears to be, I think,
the only copy of this message out there.
But yeah, just the sheer, like,
sort of petty schoolyard snottiness of it.
I mean, I'm not even,
I don't think I'm even mad.
That's kind of amazing.
Yeah, it really is incredible.
And, you know, we should probably give that number out again,
which I think you said was 202-456-1111.
Yes, indeed.
Because I'm sure lots of our listeners around the world,
and probably including Iceland,
maybe that woman in the north as well
that Emmanuel and Kyle had run into in a cafe or something,
would like to leave the President some comments.
202-456-1111,
which is different, I think, from the switchboard number,
which, of course, was 202-456-1414,
which was a longtime favorite of phone freaks and hackers
in the 90s for prank telephone calls
as a switchboard to the White House.
Absolutely.
That was always a lot of fun,
and also is a number that will work
on just about every single store's database
for a rewards program.
So if you're ever in Duane Reade, CVS, etc.,
I think we've mentioned this before,
and you don't have your rewards card,
or you just don't want them tracking your purchases
for everything that you make
according to your mobile number,
which maybe that's the ultimate goal here.
Maybe Duane Reade is going to come up with
a universal database of all of our cell phone numbers
and then put that out there in some kind of published packet
that's going to be left at our doorsteps in New York
and just become soggy through the rain.
Or maybe Duane Reade will just assume
we all work for the White House.
That's possible. It might be true.
But, yeah, that's 202-456-1414.
But, again, this outgoing message, I think,
was really hilarious.
It's sort of a new low and pettiness.
And I'm surprised that, frankly,
they were able to pull it off,
given the stories from a week or so ago
about the complete disaster that they had
when they were trying to have a conference call,
an international conference call,
where nobody could dial in,
people were hearing one side of the conversation.
So, you know, you do have to hand it to them.
They were able to pull off a condescending,
outgoing message in time for the government shutdown.
I mean, they didn't obviously bother
to schedule meetings to avert the shutdown,
but they had the outgoing message planned
probably well in advance.
I'm sure it took many takes
to get that level of condescension
and recrimination inherent
to every single word that was mentioned.
Absolutely.
Moving on, there is a slight update
to a story we talked about last week,
which is the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency
sending out a warning of an incoming missile
that, of course, was not actually there,
and the fallout from that.
A little bit more information came out,
this story from the Washington Post,
reporting that minutes after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency
mistakenly sent a missile alert at 8.07 a.m. on January 13th,
terrifying residents and visitors across the state.
Some officials rushed to Twitter
to reassure everyone it was a mistake,
but one Twitter account was deafeningly silent
for 17 minutes,
that of Hawaii Governor David Ige.
And though Ige was informed by the state's adjutant general
that the alert was false two minutes after it was sent,
he waited until 8.24 a.m. to tweet,
there is no missile threat.
Now guys, I'm going to just put this question out there.
Just knowing how governmental things and bureaucracies work,
what do you think was the holdup here?
That's a very good question.
17 minutes seems like a long time.
17 minutes is a long time.
Leaving constituents thinking that a missile is coming in.
Yeah, no question.
I mean, perhaps he didn't have a phone book or something.
He couldn't get the right intel.
I would gather it was something silly.
He was golfing.
Even better, he couldn't log into his Twitter.
Of course.
He didn't know his Twitter password.
A quote from him, David Ige, saying,
I have to confess that I don't know my Twitter account log-ons
and the password, so certainly that's one of the things that I've made.
That's one of the changes that I've made.
So, yeah, it's...
Well, look, on the one hand, I think this is kind of great.
Because it's reassuring in certain ways to know
that a politician of that stature, the governor of Hawaii,
is not using Twitter on a regular basis
for official communiques of the government.
I mean, that I think is something to be applauded, on the one hand.
On the other hand, he didn't know his password,
which is sort of ridiculous.
And thank God he didn't have 2FA set up,
two-factor authentication, of course,
and had changed his phone,
because then he would have had to scan his driver's license,
send it over to Twitter,
have a letter printed on official letterhead
of the governor's office of Hawaii,
and then fax that over to Twitter,
and then he'd have to make a determination.
And then it might have been several days
before he was able to inform the populace
that an intercontinental ballistic missile
was in fact not coming towards them imminently.
But it's kind of interesting.
Also, on the other hand,
it's something that you've talked about quite a bit, Voltaire,
which is, again, here's Twitter being used
for official government communications.
And this was a really obviously important
governmental communication.
Yeah, for sure.
I actually think that it...
I can take the other view that
just because Trump uses Twitter as a troll,
I don't think that we just throw the baby out with the bathwater
and say that politicians shouldn't use Twitter.
I think it's a very effective,
low-friction way of communicating with the public.
Just like FDR made effective use of the radio
to communicate his ideas,
I think that politicians should be able to use Twitter
and do so well.
I agree with that.
I think all things in moderation, right?
And this 17-minute lag is something to be,
I think, examined, too.
It's quite a long time, actually.
And if you don't know your Twitter password,
you click on the I-forgot-my-password link
and you reset your password
after you realize that their automated message
has gone into your spam filter,
and then you fish it out, and then you click on the link.
That doesn't necessarily take 17 minutes.
So what happened here,
in all likelihood, I think what happened
is that the governor went to reset his password
and then realized that the password
was sent probably to an account
whose password he didn't have,
so he reset his password and then got into that account
and then accessed his Twitter account.
That, I think, more accurately accounts for 17 minutes.
We've all been through that loop, I think.
And they're probably all down in very old blackberries
that they're probably still using.
Yeah, that's probably the case. That's right.
So, yeah, 17 minutes on account of this
is pretty poor form,
but I think I'm going to hold my guns.
I like the fact that he's not using Twitter,
that he doesn't rely on it all the time.
He's obviously not checking it.
So, yeah, kudos to him.
But I think it does take a certain level
of integrity to own up to that.
And I think we should applaud him for that.
And I think he's probably taken some measures
to make sure that that doesn't happen.
But at least we got what appears to be most of the story.
Yeah, it's just a shame he didn't have his password
written on a Post-it, like out in public view,
like the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency does.
But moving on, I think I'd like us
to take some phone calls, if we can.
Call us at 347-335-0818.
And tweet at us, at Hacker Radio Show.
Absolutely. We'd love to hear from you
in the time we've got left in tonight's episode.
347-335-0818.
While we're waiting for the light to blink,
I'll just read a listener email we've got.
A loyal listener writes.
That's how they signed it, a loyal listener.
Hi, guys. In just a few months,
my family and I will be heading down
to Disney. We have FastPass, and I know it has RFID.
What is the best way to protect it
from having any information get sent out?
And do you have any notes or suggestions
on people who have hacked it?
Disney FastPass.
You guys have any experience with this sort of action?
I haven't been to Disney since they started using RFID.
But you could probably get invested
in a RFID blocking bag or a wallet.
Yeah, that's true.
And lots of different variations on that theme
on Amazon as well.
And sometimes these things go for around $20,
but there's sort of these Faraday-type bags.
You put anything in there.
They're good for your cell phones as well,
things, your tablets.
Yeah, you get them for passports.
I think probably the same kind of technology
will work, depending on...
But Disney already knows who you are
and where you are anyway.
Meantime, we've got a phone call.
Yes, indeed. What's on your mind?
Yeah, about that Hawaii situation.
I'm not buying the whole story.
I mean, it just doesn't add up.
I think that this was some type of test
as to the public's reaction
in case there is an actual event.
I mean, the whole thing is just...
You know, it doesn't pass the smell test.
So you think the whole event,
the missile warning and everything,
was on purpose?
Yeah, exactly.
Why would they choose Hawaii?
Hawaii is like the most relaxed, chill state.
If any state...
You wouldn't be able to accurately judge
how a quote-unquote regular neurotic state
would react.
And also, it's been said
that it is a potential target for North Korea.
So, I mean, what better place
to stage a real-time drill?
Does anybody think that the story
that somebody pushed the wrong button...
Really?
Is that how the system works?
They showed pictures of what the interface is.
We had a guest last week talking about
how poorly designed the interface is.
Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner.
It's an interesting thing to think about.
I don't think anyone in the IT infosec world
has all that much doubt
that a system can be so badly designed
that someone pushes the wrong button
and activates a missile alert.
But on the other hand,
I can't really think of any occasion
in which Hawaii has been attacked
and that led to some sort of conflict.
What about Pearl Harbor?
Oh, yeah, there was that.
But I can't think of any other one.
Anyway, that's a point.
Really?
I think he was being sarcastic on that.
It's definitely something to think about.
You just dismissed Pearl Harbor out of hand.
Your attitude is...
I did, yeah.
And I'd like to thank everyone here for catching that.
But in any case, thank you very much for your call.
We'll see what else is going on.
Thanks for listening.
Well, that's an interesting theory.
It does have a point.
It is a state that would be under
a probable threat.
So if you were going to have some kind of test like that,
you'd want to do it in Guam or Hawaii.
Guam's not a state.
But I don't see why we would need
to necessarily measure the reaction of the populace.
No matter what or where it was,
if it was Oklahoma, Tulsa was under threat,
I think people would react the same exact way,
which is mass hysteria.
Yeah, I mean, if we're going to measure
the specific volume of pants-filling that was going on,
we can maybe do that.
But if you're out there, give us a call.
We'll see what's going on.
347-335-0818 in the few minutes we have left.
And I'd just like to point out that, yes,
I was aware of Pearl Harbor,
and that was kind of the point I was making.
Yeah, I thought that was the point.
Yeah, exactly.
It could have been missed,
because you do have a subtle way of being sarcastic.
Well, I was doing a lot of winking and gesticulating,
but then I realized that doesn't work on the radio so much.
That's right, yeah.
I want to have a Sean Spicer moment
with regard to U.S. history this time.
347-335-0818 tweeted us at Hacker Radio Show.
And let us know what else is going on.
So there was a lot going on this particular week,
I think, in these last couple of minutes.
Maybe we should have a sort of little update
on this net neutrality nonsense.
Yeah, there's a story on Ars Technica.
The FCC has all sorts of things going on there.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office
will investigate the use of impersonation
in public comments on the FCC's net neutrality repeal.
You might remember the FCC reported
all kinds of comments coming in
in support of taking down net neutrality.
And a researcher at Shmucon,
the recent hacker conference that happened in the D.C. area,
named Leah Figueroa,
had presented some interesting findings.
Apparently a large amount of,
like thousands upon thousands of the emails that came in,
were addresses at Pornhub.com,
which of course is a popular site for grown-up movies.
And the site themselves,
they don't give their email addresses out
to people on the larger Internet.
And they've only, at last count, had 55 employees.
So either each employee sent out
thousands of individual messages from their own work account
to the FCC, or there's something funny going on there.
For some reason I think that the 55 employees at Pornhub
are busy doing other things.
And likely not so concerned about net neutrality.
But I feel like they would be more concerned about it
than anybody because they use so much bandwidth.
Yeah, that's an interesting point. Absolutely.
But they'd be on the other side.
They'd be opposing the repeal.
Yes, that's exactly right.
Yeah, this would go against their interest.
This would sort of be very much a statement
against their own interest. You're absolutely right.
The other thing that came out of these couple of stories,
which I thought was quite neat, and seems to have been glossed over,
but the way in which this massive amount of comments
was posted to the FCC Net Neutrality Comment Board or system,
was that this system was designed, actually.
It was a feature that allowed massive amounts of comments
to be uploaded singly because they wanted to allow
the names and addresses and signatures of people
who had signed on to online petitions
to upload their comments into this particular FCC commenting system.
And it was that feature that was taken advantage of
by these bots and imposters of U.S. citizens
to make all of these anti-net neutrality comments.
So they took this thing that was designed to give a voice,
a very kind of egalitarian and democratic voice,
to massive amounts of people who had signed online petitions
and used that kind of democratic interaction against us.
And that, I think, is really quite an interesting wrinkle
to this particular story that, you know,
I think this is going to have to be redesigned
and that kind of interaction with the FCC
or any other governmental agency is going to be curtailed
because of these quite likely few bad apples
that had taken advantage of this system
that allowed comments to be so easily manipulated.
And, of course, it's academic anyway since the FCC later announced
that they really don't have to pay attention to comments
that come in when they make their decisions.
Oh, of course. Or hold public hearings on this. Why bother?
Why in representative government do we want people to have any kind of voice?
The story about this on theregister.co.uk
just ends American democracy.
American democracy, ain't it great?
I know. Well, there you have it.
Absolutely. And on that note,
we're just about out of time on this edition of Off the Hook.
Send us your emails, oth at 2600.com.
Tweet at us, at Hacker Radio Show.
And keep in touch. Let us know what's going on out there,
what piques your interest, what projects you're working on
in the hacker and tech worlds.
And, yeah, we would love to hear about them.
So, for Off the Hook, for Emmanuel and Kyle,
for everything that's going on in the world,
this is Rob T. Firefly saying goodnight.
Goodnight.
Gotta keep them separated.
Gotta keep them separated.
Gotta keep them separated.
Like the latest fashion.
Like the spreading disease.
The kids are strapped in all the way to the classroom.
Getting whipped is how to keep them separated.
The kids say, gotta roll, can't just look out.
If they catch us laughing, then it's all over the ground.
And one guy's got us and the other's told me
they're gonna bash it up, bash it up.
Gotta keep them separated.
Hey, man, you're talking back to me.
Take him out.
Gotta keep them separated.
Hey, man, you're disrespecting me.
Take him out.
Gotta keep them separated.
Hey, hey, you're the best of us.
We're under 18 and we'll be doing this.
Aya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya.
Gotta keep them separated.
Gotta keep them separated.
By the time you hear the siren,
it's already time.
Gotta keep them separated
One goes to the morgue and the other to jail
One guy's wasted and the other's a waste
And cops gotta save up a thousand people
No one cares what
Gotta keep them separated
Yeah, religion's free of death and violence
Death and violence, death and violence, death and violence
Death and violence, death and violence, death and violence
Hey!
Man, you're talking back to me
Drink your milk
Gotta keep them separated
Hey!
Man, you're talking back to me
Drink your milk
Gotta keep them separated
Hey!
Don't pay nobody
You're under 18, you won't be doing any time
Hey!
Come out and play
Gotta keep them separated
Gotta keep them separated