[00:00.000 --> 00:01.020]  ...entire nation.
[00:01.300 --> 00:18.180]  That will be answered at the Apollo Theater this Sunday, February 4th, during their free open house weekend, Day 2, featuring the documentary, Tell Them We Are Rising, and a panel discussion with Jelani Cobb, Raphael P. Roman, Stanley Nelson, and Simone Missick.
[00:18.340 --> 00:24.000]  For more information and tickets for this free event are available at apollotheater.org.
[00:24.300 --> 00:25.720]  Doors open at 1 p.m.
[00:26.000 --> 00:26.780]  this Sunday.
[00:35.690 --> 00:39.930]  And you are listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
[00:40.130 --> 00:41.690]  The time is just about 8 o'clock.
[00:42.190 --> 00:44.790]  Time once again for Off the Hook.
[02:34.190 --> 02:36.030]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:36.150 --> 02:37.350]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:37.570 --> 02:40.350]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Rob T.
[02:40.490 --> 02:40.910]  Firefly.
[02:41.110 --> 02:41.730]  Good evening.
[02:42.030 --> 02:42.390]  Alex.
[02:42.790 --> 02:43.390]  Good evening.
[02:43.610 --> 02:44.050]  Voltaire.
[02:44.530 --> 02:45.010]  Good evening.
[02:45.150 --> 02:45.510]  And Kyle.
[02:45.790 --> 02:46.270]  Hey, everyone.
[02:46.950 --> 02:52.890]  And Kyle and I are back after traveling around various parts of Europe and having an interesting time.
[02:52.990 --> 02:53.810]  Learning a lot.
[02:53.930 --> 02:54.670]  Learning an awful lot.
[02:55.070 --> 02:56.830]  Thank you guys for holding down the fort.
[02:57.570 --> 02:58.150]  Thank you.
[02:58.310 --> 02:58.850]  It's always a pleasure.
[02:59.210 --> 02:59.870]  Thank me for what?
[02:59.950 --> 03:00.250]  For leaving?
[03:00.770 --> 03:01.190]  Well, yes.
[03:01.410 --> 03:01.730]  No, you're welcome.
[03:01.990 --> 03:03.790]  No, thank you for coming back, too, because that's also a pleasure.
[03:03.890 --> 03:04.690]  Okay, well, fine.
[03:05.730 --> 03:06.850]  A lot has happened.
[03:07.110 --> 03:08.350]  A lot continues to happen.
[03:09.110 --> 03:21.770]  And, you know, we like to share some of the things we've learned while traveling, but also open up the discussion to things that are happening around here as well, of which, of course, there are many things in the hacker world, in the technology world.
[03:22.470 --> 03:25.390]  It just never seems to end.
[03:25.910 --> 03:28.230]  Anyone have anything they want to start with?
[03:28.450 --> 03:31.090]  Well, it seems you learned that the Northern Lights are a hoax.
[03:31.290 --> 03:32.430]  Northern Lights are a hoax.
[03:32.510 --> 03:35.450]  I can confirm that, because we never seem to see them, no matter where we go.
[03:35.690 --> 03:39.790]  And we go pretty far north, and, yeah, you know what?
[03:40.290 --> 03:40.970]  We tried.
[03:41.070 --> 03:41.810]  We tried really hard.
[03:42.710 --> 03:46.630]  Yeah, we had all the tools and advantages that we thought it would take.
[03:46.630 --> 03:48.990]  We had an app on our phones, and it didn't work.
[03:49.110 --> 03:50.130]  It did not pan out.
[03:51.210 --> 03:52.170]  So, there's that.
[03:52.310 --> 03:53.310]  Well, I should own up to it.
[03:53.390 --> 03:59.370]  I actually decided to, while you were over there, I was keeping the Northern Lights in my kitchen, right next to where I see my hands.
[03:59.370 --> 03:59.570]  Make jokes, yeah.
[03:59.830 --> 04:01.090]  Make light of it, but...
[04:01.090 --> 04:06.530]  I was wondering if somebody was going to bring, you know, a piece of the Northern Lights just to make us feel a little better.
[04:06.630 --> 04:07.570]  I will say this, though.
[04:08.050 --> 04:09.810]  Iceland is amazing in the winter.
[04:10.030 --> 04:11.670]  People think it's dark and cold.
[04:11.850 --> 04:14.730]  Yeah, it's cold, and it can be dark, but it's not dark all the time.
[04:16.630 --> 04:21.570]  For quite a few hours in the day, and it's not as crowded with tourists, and it's really amazing.
[04:21.690 --> 04:23.050]  It's super expensive, though.
[04:23.470 --> 04:28.670]  Everything you do is going to cost about three times what you expect it to, except maybe the airfare to get there.
[04:28.670 --> 04:29.850]  For some reason, that's cheap.
[04:30.470 --> 04:32.670]  But it's, I guess, to lure you in.
[04:32.830 --> 04:32.970]  Yeah.
[04:32.970 --> 04:34.110]  It really is an amazing country, though.
[04:34.630 --> 04:38.710]  Yeah, those are some of the reasons that's so popular right now.
[04:38.710 --> 04:44.390]  It's just stop-offs and the things that we were able to take advantage of traveling-wise.
[04:45.050 --> 04:47.430]  And, yeah, you adjust.
[04:47.710 --> 04:53.110]  And it's really, I think, mostly just typical tourist stuff that is expensive.
[04:53.210 --> 04:53.370]  Yeah.
[04:53.530 --> 04:54.790]  Well, and food.
[04:55.070 --> 04:55.250]  Right.
[04:55.490 --> 04:57.210]  Which is typical human stuff.
[04:57.410 --> 04:57.750]  Food and accommodations, yeah.
[04:57.850 --> 05:01.230]  But, I mean, services and other things are plentiful.
[05:01.230 --> 05:01.690]  Mm-hmm.
[05:01.810 --> 05:02.330]  Yes, absolutely.
[05:02.350 --> 05:03.790]  And also, infrastructure.
[05:03.810 --> 05:05.350]  They don't have high-speed rail.
[05:05.570 --> 05:05.790]  Okay.
[05:05.790 --> 05:06.590]  We know that.
[05:06.970 --> 05:09.410]  But they have communications everywhere.
[05:09.690 --> 05:14.190]  When you're driving around, we drove the entire country on the Ring Road, Route 1.
[05:14.670 --> 05:20.190]  And you see cell towers every few hundred meters, it seems.
[05:20.710 --> 05:21.110]  Yeah.
[05:21.110 --> 05:23.350]  I think there's three or four providers.
[05:23.490 --> 05:24.450]  There's going to be four.
[05:25.430 --> 05:26.970]  But there are three currently.
[05:28.850 --> 05:30.430]  Simen, Vodafone, and I can't remember.
[05:30.710 --> 05:32.150]  Nova, I think, is the other one.
[05:33.110 --> 05:33.470]  Novotel.
[05:34.850 --> 05:37.850]  Speaking of telephones in Iceland, did you bring the phone book with you?
[05:38.130 --> 05:39.610]  You know, I was going to bring the phone book in.
[05:39.670 --> 05:40.070]  I forgot.
[05:40.330 --> 05:40.730]  Damn it.
[05:40.910 --> 05:42.090]  Unless it's still in my bag.
[05:42.330 --> 05:43.010]  No, I don't think it is.
[05:43.670 --> 05:45.050]  We have two phone books, actually.
[05:45.210 --> 05:46.610]  Prank phone call the prime minister.
[05:46.770 --> 05:49.050]  I want to thank Johan in Iceland for getting us one.
[05:49.070 --> 05:50.790]  He actually got it on eBay from an old lady.
[05:51.890 --> 05:53.130]  Well, they stopped printing them.
[05:53.130 --> 05:56.550]  So, you know, we had to kind of look all over the place for them.
[05:56.630 --> 06:00.390]  And actually, before he got us that one, we stopped in a bookstore.
[06:00.590 --> 06:00.930]  Where was that?
[06:01.010 --> 06:02.990]  In Vic or some other?
[06:03.450 --> 06:03.890]  Sulfos.
[06:04.350 --> 06:04.790]  Sulfos.
[06:04.950 --> 06:05.130]  Yeah.
[06:05.250 --> 06:10.430]  There's an amazing bookstore slash coffee house slash vinyl record store.
[06:10.590 --> 06:17.930]  Which, by the way, I think is a great idea if every single coffee shop was also a bookstore and also sold vinyl records.
[06:17.990 --> 06:19.470]  Imagine all those worlds coming together.
[06:19.490 --> 06:20.770]  You always buy a book.
[06:20.770 --> 06:22.330]  You look at all the records.
[06:22.610 --> 06:24.330]  There's something playing that's really cool.
[06:24.710 --> 06:26.410]  And it keeps all those things going.
[06:26.670 --> 06:27.350]  So, just...
[06:27.350 --> 06:30.090]  If you own a coffee shop, consider making it also a bookstore.
[06:30.570 --> 06:33.570]  You're just flouting the zoning laws, you know, left and right.
[06:33.750 --> 06:35.050]  Is that really what it comes down to?
[06:35.150 --> 06:35.710]  Zoning laws?
[06:35.830 --> 06:36.850]  That's why we can't do these things?
[06:36.990 --> 06:38.170]  No respect for the rule of law.
[06:38.310 --> 06:40.710]  Well, you know, in Iceland, they seem to get it.
[06:40.810 --> 06:41.410]  They really do.
[06:41.790 --> 06:42.830]  There's so many cool places.
[06:42.930 --> 06:43.790]  Bookstores everywhere.
[06:44.070 --> 06:47.110]  People are reading books and hanging out in these places.
[06:47.710 --> 06:49.810]  It's just, you know, you feel healthier having done it.
[06:49.930 --> 06:51.590]  But we went to a bookstore in Selfoss.
[06:52.810 --> 06:53.150]  And...
[06:53.150 --> 06:55.930]  There was an inordinate amount of publishing going on in Iceland.
[06:56.090 --> 06:58.170]  I guess making music and publishing, that's what you do.
[06:58.550 --> 07:00.310]  The guy who ran the bookstore also was a publisher.
[07:00.490 --> 07:01.470]  He told us that.
[07:01.530 --> 07:03.950]  He said, this is really how I make my money, which is great.
[07:04.630 --> 07:09.110]  I found a copy of 1984, which I got for Kyle.
[07:09.410 --> 07:10.630]  It was an original...
[07:10.630 --> 07:11.550]  Well, a semi-original.
[07:11.710 --> 07:12.770]  It was from the 60s, actually.
[07:12.950 --> 07:17.370]  But it's the same paperback, that kind of colorful paperback edition that you might have seen.
[07:18.150 --> 07:19.230]  So I found that.
[07:19.550 --> 07:23.110]  I found a book on Icelandic horses and various other things.
[07:23.890 --> 07:25.010]  But also a phone book.
[07:25.110 --> 07:25.470]  I asked.
[07:25.630 --> 07:34.190]  You know, this might seem like an odd question, but I'm looking for, you know, an Icelandic phone book because they're unique, because people are listed by their first name instead of their last name.
[07:34.590 --> 07:39.590]  And this was the one guy, actually, who had hoarded a bunch of phone books when they stopped printing them.
[07:39.690 --> 07:41.910]  So he was very happy that I actually asked for that.
[07:42.110 --> 07:47.910]  Another idea we had was making recordings of phone calls while you're in the country.
[07:47.910 --> 07:58.150]  Because there's certain things you try, but you can't necessarily capture from a phone that may be roaming or working there with an international package of some kind.
[07:58.150 --> 08:02.170]  But you don't get that, like, authentic, direct dialing.
[08:02.350 --> 08:05.710]  So, for instance, there's a, I think, a four-digit number.
[08:05.990 --> 08:07.530]  I can't remember exactly what it was.
[08:08.170 --> 08:13.130]  1-1-5 or 1-5-1 or something like that that gives you the time.
[08:13.350 --> 08:20.430]  So I wanted to hear that, but it didn't work from, like, a cell phone or, like, a prepaid roaming number.
[08:20.430 --> 08:24.750]  So we wanted to make recordings, maybe, but we just didn't get our gear configured.
[08:24.750 --> 08:30.930]  And perhaps maybe on a subsequent trip or on other trips around the world, we'll capture this stuff.
[08:32.370 --> 08:39.670]  One thing we did do, we did do a lot of DXing, which is basically listening to radio, listening for distant signals.
[08:40.530 --> 08:41.910]  And you can do that.
[08:42.270 --> 08:47.110]  We noticed that right away in Iceland, actually, the sun was still up, but it was almost setting.
[08:47.550 --> 08:49.770]  And we were hearing radio stations from Scotland.
[08:50.090 --> 08:56.930]  And I was blown away, but I didn't think it was possible to hear Scotland in Iceland to start with, let alone before nighttime hit.
[08:56.990 --> 09:01.030]  Because at night, you tend to get radio stations from far away.
[09:01.170 --> 09:02.510]  I think we talked about this already.
[09:02.510 --> 09:08.030]  And we heard stations from all parts of the British Isles.
[09:08.210 --> 09:13.710]  There's one station in Iceland that's kind of mysterious at 666 kilohertz.
[09:14.210 --> 09:15.390]  They never talk.
[09:15.550 --> 09:17.490]  They play kind of like old-time music.
[09:17.750 --> 09:19.030]  Everybody seems to know about them.
[09:19.150 --> 09:20.070]  They're somewhere in Iceland.
[09:20.070 --> 09:22.310]  You can only get them on the western half of the country.
[09:23.550 --> 09:26.430]  And I'm not really sure anything else other than that.
[09:26.750 --> 09:32.030]  But one thing we heard while driving around at 1575 kilohertz was this sound.
[09:49.100 --> 09:49.900]  Oh, you had enough?
[09:52.480 --> 09:53.560]  You can't turn it off.
[09:53.700 --> 09:55.900]  It's on 1575 all the time.
[09:59.390 --> 10:01.030]  Actually, I don't know how to turn it off on my phone.
[10:02.270 --> 10:02.830]  I'm trying.
[10:03.270 --> 10:04.690]  You know, I'm just going to put it in my pocket.
[10:06.170 --> 10:10.090]  So, yeah, that's what you get on 1575.
[10:10.590 --> 10:11.990]  We recorded it for like an hour.
[10:13.130 --> 10:14.010]  No, we didn't.
[10:14.070 --> 10:15.490]  It's going to stop at some point, I hope.
[10:16.650 --> 10:16.970]  Wow.
[10:18.130 --> 10:19.030]  It feels awfully weird.
[10:19.430 --> 10:21.250]  That is the sound of jamming.
[10:21.970 --> 10:24.910]  We looked it up because we were wondering, what is this noise?
[10:24.910 --> 10:26.710]  Why is this on the radio?
[10:26.810 --> 10:28.030]  It doesn't really seem to make sense.
[10:28.570 --> 10:31.630]  And that's the joy of driving and having internet access at the same time.
[10:31.630 --> 10:32.450]  You can look these things up.
[10:32.530 --> 10:34.090]  So we looked up 1575.
[10:34.090 --> 10:39.290]  And apparently it's Iranian jamming of an American signal.
[10:39.850 --> 10:40.750]  Based out of Prague.
[10:40.910 --> 10:41.450]  Based out of Prague.
[10:41.570 --> 10:43.410]  But I'm not sure where the jamming is coming from.
[10:43.410 --> 10:45.070]  Because the jamming isn't coming from Prague.
[10:45.070 --> 10:45.710]  Oh, no, yeah.
[10:45.810 --> 10:50.710]  That wouldn't be necessarily where the originating transmitter is.
[10:50.970 --> 10:56.310]  It would probably be some territory the regime actually controls.
[10:56.550 --> 10:57.110]  Like where?
[10:57.330 --> 10:58.390]  That would be that near.
[10:58.610 --> 11:00.850]  You know, I'm trying to figure out where they would be able to do that.
[11:00.910 --> 11:01.970]  Maybe a listener can help us.
[11:01.970 --> 11:03.450]  Yeah, that would be really interesting to know.
[11:03.550 --> 11:06.630]  Maybe somewhere in between the path from Prague to Iran.
[11:06.630 --> 11:08.690]  Wow, we recorded this for a long time, didn't we?
[11:09.570 --> 11:09.930]  Yeah.
[11:10.210 --> 11:10.750]  It's still...
[11:10.750 --> 11:12.490]  It's kind of heating up in my pocket, it seems.
[11:13.750 --> 11:14.850]  But yeah, that's what...
[11:14.850 --> 11:17.610]  If you listen to radio and just, you know...
[11:17.610 --> 11:20.410]  It might seem like a waste of time to hear a noise like that.
[11:20.550 --> 11:21.570]  And to keep listening to it.
[11:21.590 --> 11:23.390]  If you do your research, there's a lot out there.
[11:23.490 --> 11:25.250]  There are so many little secrets.
[11:25.570 --> 11:28.450]  That's how we got to listen to the Faroe Islands in the daytime.
[11:28.850 --> 11:31.290]  I think we mentioned this last week.
[11:31.310 --> 11:32.070]  I think we talked about it.
[11:32.570 --> 11:36.030]  On the eastern part of the country, in the daytime, we were hearing another radio station.
[11:36.250 --> 11:38.490]  And we knew there wasn't a station in Iceland.
[11:38.610 --> 11:39.910]  We knew it wasn't Icelandic.
[11:40.330 --> 11:42.910]  And we were able to look it up and find out that it was...
[11:42.910 --> 11:43.410]  What was the language?
[11:43.510 --> 11:43.910]  Faroese.
[11:43.950 --> 11:44.330]  Faroese.
[11:44.590 --> 11:45.730]  Danish and Faroese.
[11:45.910 --> 11:47.830]  About 20,000 people in the world speak it.
[11:48.790 --> 11:51.230]  25, yeah, outside of the country.
[11:51.350 --> 11:52.790]  50,000, I think, total.
[11:53.190 --> 11:53.450]  Wow.
[11:54.770 --> 11:57.270]  So that's what DXing is all about.
[11:57.530 --> 11:59.590]  And of course, listen to FM radio as well.
[11:59.970 --> 12:01.590]  Heard the national radio there.
[12:01.790 --> 12:03.390]  And we do this in every country we go to.
[12:03.390 --> 12:09.330]  We try and listen to different radio and hear distant signals if possible.
[12:09.790 --> 12:12.010]  So you're listening, this is mostly on AM.
[12:12.270 --> 12:14.630]  FM obviously wouldn't have this kind of range.
[12:14.790 --> 12:15.270]  Oh, thank God.
[12:15.530 --> 12:15.870]  Wow.
[12:16.350 --> 12:18.370]  Sounds like an Icelandic lawnmower or something.
[12:18.570 --> 12:19.670]  It's got nothing to do with Iceland.
[12:19.670 --> 12:20.210]  That's the thing.
[12:20.290 --> 12:21.450]  We just happen to hear it in Iceland.
[12:21.590 --> 12:22.370]  Yeah, and you know what?
[12:22.370 --> 12:22.870]  I have a theory.
[12:23.030 --> 12:31.390]  Maybe that, and this is sort of a little foreshadowing, perhaps what we're going to talk about, but maybe the jamming is coming from the person who sold you the phone book.
[12:31.390 --> 12:34.210]  Maybe she's not really an elderly woman with a bunch of phone books.
[12:34.390 --> 12:35.910]  Well, that's a theory too.
[12:36.150 --> 12:38.530]  Maybe she's operative of some sort.
[12:39.130 --> 12:42.630]  So people are tweeting, how can we have that signal put over Fox News?
[12:42.730 --> 12:51.150]  Well, we don't know how to transmit it, actually, but I'm sure there are technological solutions to every problem.
[12:51.150 --> 12:54.550]  Yeah, that's what's known as overt jamming, I believe.
[12:54.950 --> 13:08.670]  And there was a couple of speculative kind of remarks in the sites I searched about the type of jamming, like bubble or some other...
[13:08.670 --> 13:08.870]  I don't know.
[13:08.990 --> 13:15.070]  People had all kinds of different descriptors, and I'm not familiar with this stuff as much, but sometimes it can be quiet.
[13:15.310 --> 13:17.650]  It can be just basically no signal.
[13:18.470 --> 13:23.050]  But this is an example of one that's very noisy.
[13:23.330 --> 13:24.450]  Yes, definitely very noisy.
[13:24.710 --> 13:28.650]  Obnoxious, meant to be very direct.
[13:28.990 --> 13:30.650]  Meant to have you not keep listening.
[13:30.850 --> 13:32.190]  So, of course, we kept listening.
[13:33.170 --> 13:34.230]  That's what we do.
[13:34.410 --> 13:44.770]  And also, if you have the option to jam something with that noise or jam it with silence, and you're jamming it with that noise, is that you then know as a listener that something's there that you're not being allowed to hear.
[13:45.150 --> 13:50.650]  So it's sort of a big no sign rather than just silence that you would maybe skip over and think, oh, well, there's nothing there.
[13:50.970 --> 13:54.170]  Yeah, but the thing is, you know, if they do get past the jamming, they're just going to hear U.S.
[13:54.410 --> 13:54.730]  propaganda.
[13:54.730 --> 13:56.310]  So it's going to be a big letdown.
[13:56.750 --> 13:59.910]  It also sounds a lot like my grandfather's electric razor, but...
[13:59.910 --> 14:01.550]  You know, I mean, how do they make the sound?
[14:01.590 --> 14:01.890]  Who knows?
[14:01.990 --> 14:03.530]  Maybe they just held a razor up to a microphone.
[14:03.730 --> 14:04.590]  It's entirely possible.
[14:04.650 --> 14:13.050]  I was reading stories, in some cases, generators and things, equipment around the transmitter site that's jamming has been used.
[14:13.330 --> 14:19.910]  The sounds from those machines powering the transmitter have been used to actually be the sound.
[14:20.230 --> 14:33.430]  Sometimes it's also like clips and loops of audio or distorted stuff that sounds like it's not very clear, even though it's intentionally made to sound that way.
[14:33.510 --> 14:35.770]  Why not just play, you know, a Rickroll constantly?
[14:35.770 --> 14:38.530]  You know, that could be the new jamming of the 21st century.
[14:39.130 --> 14:41.910]  Well, the first thing people have to do is be listening.
[14:42.570 --> 14:44.330]  Even we wouldn't stay tuned to that.
[14:44.590 --> 14:44.850]  No.
[14:45.330 --> 14:45.850]  It's not possible.
[14:46.310 --> 14:58.650]  You know, to bounce off what Mr. Firefly said here is, you know, the fact that the jamming exists means that there is some merit to what is being jammed, right?
[14:58.650 --> 15:04.730]  If the Iranians are actually doing this, it means that they're afraid of this propaganda, you know, for some particular reason.
[15:04.730 --> 15:15.110]  And they're afraid of the power of radio, which then sort of goes to our point that we're constantly making during fundraising drives, that radio matters, radio exists, and it's important.
[15:15.110 --> 15:16.810]  It's an important way to get a message out.
[15:17.190 --> 15:19.190]  People are obviously afraid of that message.
[15:19.310 --> 15:20.150]  That's why they jam.
[15:20.750 --> 15:23.990]  Or that's why they frame somebody else and jam themselves.
[15:24.730 --> 15:26.310]  How do you know who's jamming?
[15:26.410 --> 15:27.970]  How are you able to trace a jammer?
[15:28.090 --> 15:29.630]  That's something I've always been curious about.
[15:29.630 --> 15:30.770]  I don't know.
[15:30.930 --> 15:33.330]  Does normal triangulation work with something like this?
[15:33.430 --> 15:35.750]  I imagine the range is probably so broad.
[15:35.910 --> 15:42.630]  Well, if you're able to triangulate and find the actual signal, then you know where it is, and then you can maybe take action against it from that location.
[15:42.830 --> 15:44.610]  Again, we don't know where that location is.
[15:44.950 --> 15:45.890]  And what about shortwave?
[15:46.030 --> 15:47.250]  Did you guys check out shortwave?
[15:47.250 --> 15:48.710]  No, we didn't have a shortwave radio.
[15:48.850 --> 15:55.670]  There's only so much we can bring with us, and a shortwave radio is definitely not one of the things that we would have the space or the time to listen to.
[15:55.670 --> 15:56.890]  I think you can give small ones now.
[15:57.010 --> 15:57.950]  You can, yeah.
[15:58.070 --> 16:00.570]  But, you know, it's mostly religion and garbage now.
[16:00.810 --> 16:03.930]  The heyday of shortwave, I'm sorry, it's not here anymore.
[16:03.930 --> 16:08.110]  I wish it were, because I've had such amazing experiences listening to shortwave radio.
[16:08.350 --> 16:19.550]  Our friend in Iceland showed us a WebSDR site that is basically an antenna that has the full spectrum or a wide range of frequencies all being relayed on the web.
[16:19.550 --> 16:27.550]  And there's many tools with software-defined radio that are actually a lot less expensive to put together.
[16:27.550 --> 16:32.750]  And we were thinking about different ways you could have fun with that while on the road.
[16:33.050 --> 16:52.710]  Obviously, at Hope, we've had talks about listening in far-flung places, making impromptu antennas, you know, with found objects, and otherwise getting the stuff that's in the air in a portable format that you can share and discuss with other people.
[16:53.010 --> 17:04.170]  So that's exciting and definitely a way to include frequencies you wouldn't ordinarily have equipment to peruse with, like in a car.
[17:04.910 --> 17:10.030]  We're going to have talks on that, I think, at the next Hope as well, the one coming up in July.
[17:10.030 --> 17:12.310]  I haven't seen any of the submissions yet.
[17:12.310 --> 17:13.230]  I know they're pouring in.
[17:13.230 --> 17:15.570]  Okay, so that's ongoing now.
[17:15.790 --> 17:25.870]  Yeah, in fact, while we were away, the ticket sales opened up, and the speaker submissions opened up, and we're in the mode now of organizing this thing.
[17:25.970 --> 17:34.390]  If you have an idea for a talk, go to our webpage, www.hope.net, and check out the submission guidelines.
[17:34.790 --> 17:39.470]  We're open to all kinds of contributors, and we've had amazing talks in the past.
[17:39.470 --> 17:47.690]  You can go to our YouTube channel, channel 2600, and look at every single talk that we've presented in all 11 conferences up until now.
[17:49.070 --> 17:56.430]  So we also have tickets on sale now for the conference taking place July 20th through 22nd of 2018.
[17:56.690 --> 17:57.910]  All info at hope.net.
[17:58.030 --> 18:00.870]  But all that happened while we were away, so it's something to come back to.
[18:00.870 --> 18:12.410]  And I have to say, I think we won't have tickets at the door at this rate, because we're selling so many of them that, you know, we have more space, but we don't have that much more space.
[18:12.570 --> 18:18.290]  So if you know you want to go, I would definitely take care of that before it's too late.
[18:18.530 --> 18:18.810]  Voltaire.
[18:19.130 --> 18:21.150]  Do you know the website offhand for that, Kyle?
[18:21.450 --> 18:22.530]  The Web SDR project?
[18:22.770 --> 18:23.210]  Oh, wow.
[18:23.210 --> 18:26.970]  The specific one that we were looking at, I can't remember.
[18:27.150 --> 18:30.730]  I could probably find out, but there's a variety of them out there.
[18:32.170 --> 18:36.010]  And I think Radio.World was another one that we looked at that's very similar.
[18:36.950 --> 18:44.450]  But, yeah, I think you could search for, like, a Web SDR and see what comes up.
[18:44.570 --> 18:47.470]  Is Radio.World a top-level domain now?
[18:47.470 --> 18:54.930]  No, I think there was a site that you were able to look at different stations transmitting all around.
[18:54.930 --> 18:56.090]  And it was like a globe.
[18:56.250 --> 18:57.910]  We reported on that a little while ago.
[18:58.190 --> 19:17.010]  But, yeah, the specific one that I was looking at allowed, our friend showed us, allowed you to pick an antenna and then look at the spectrum analysis on the screen, which is basically a visualization of the whole frequency range and something that's become a little bit more popular in the last couple of years.
[19:17.390 --> 19:20.810]  And that's kind of the same sort of tools.
[19:21.130 --> 19:28.490]  I think you would use something that actually tests for power to locate a jammer of some kind.
[19:28.850 --> 19:33.690]  But that's not exactly my area of expertise, and I don't know.
[19:33.790 --> 19:35.830]  It depends a lot on the circumstance.
[19:36.150 --> 19:42.190]  Well, so listening to communications from around the world, also accessing things from around the world.
[19:42.190 --> 19:49.630]  For instance, when you travel and you want to watch your favorite TV programs back home, you can't.
[19:49.770 --> 19:54.150]  You're not allowed to because of licensing and nonsense like that.
[19:54.610 --> 20:02.190]  It doesn't matter if you enter your cable company's ID and prove that you're allowed to do this.
[20:02.230 --> 20:03.710]  You're not allowed to.
[20:03.850 --> 20:04.490]  It's ridiculous.
[20:04.690 --> 20:05.670]  So you have to get a service.
[20:05.670 --> 20:08.430]  We use something called ExpressVPN, which worked amazingly.
[20:08.910 --> 20:15.150]  And we're able to basically see things back home that we wouldn't be allowed to see ordinarily.
[20:15.310 --> 20:18.530]  And also, you can see things in other places that you're not allowed to see here.
[20:18.950 --> 20:20.570]  Which, again, is really silly.
[20:20.690 --> 20:22.330]  There was one thing before we even left.
[20:22.450 --> 20:24.670]  I want to talk about this, actually, because it really annoyed me.
[20:25.250 --> 20:30.390]  We saw the film Trainspotting 2, which, by the way, is a great sequel to the first Trainspotting.
[20:30.890 --> 20:32.050]  And they have a great soundtrack.
[20:32.050 --> 20:33.550]  And I wanted to get the soundtrack.
[20:33.550 --> 20:35.190]  I wanted to download it.
[20:36.350 --> 20:38.010]  And Amazon only had the CD.
[20:38.190 --> 20:38.770]  Didn't want the CD.
[20:38.910 --> 20:42.330]  I wanted to buy the digital copy of it.
[20:42.470 --> 20:44.570]  Well, it's on Amazon.co.uk.
[20:44.590 --> 20:45.350]  They have it.
[20:45.410 --> 20:49.390]  You can download it there, except not from America, because you need a UK credit card.
[20:49.390 --> 20:53.570]  But, I mean, one in God's name, who is being served by this?
[20:53.850 --> 21:01.770]  And I had to go to one of those other sites that sell it for, like, maybe a tenth the price, which, you know, I'm pretty sure are not all that legit.
[21:01.770 --> 21:10.110]  But there was no other way to get it, unless I waste resources and get a CD, and then a copy from the CD myself.
[21:10.610 --> 21:12.750]  These artificial controls are insane.
[21:12.930 --> 21:15.370]  And they annoy everybody worldwide.
[21:16.150 --> 21:19.450]  You know, thepiratebay.se does not care what country you come from.
[21:19.590 --> 21:20.710]  Well, that's true, yes.
[21:20.710 --> 21:23.770]  But then you're assured that the artists aren't getting anything from it.
[21:23.910 --> 21:30.890]  At least this way, you know, maybe if I go to this crazy site somewhere in China, or wherever it happens to be, maybe it's going to get to them.
[21:30.970 --> 21:31.330]  I don't know.
[21:31.390 --> 21:32.710]  I don't know if it's going to get to them from Amazon.
[21:32.830 --> 21:33.750]  There's no way to know.
[21:33.970 --> 21:37.710]  You never really know for sure who gets paid and who doesn't.
[21:38.590 --> 21:41.710]  But, you know, I am able to recognize when something makes no sense.
[21:41.710 --> 21:47.870]  And not allowing somebody to download a digital copy of something, because they're in a different country, makes no sense at all to me.
[21:48.350 --> 21:50.230]  So, I'm just trying to get that off my chest.
[21:50.470 --> 21:51.470]  Yeah, it's a real problem.
[21:51.590 --> 21:56.310]  There's so many different distribution methods available to consumers now.
[21:56.530 --> 22:04.630]  And the differing policies with copyright around the world, mainly U.S.
[22:04.690 --> 22:22.550]  versus, like, what's going on in Europe, but are leaving the consumers basically unable to actually make purchases or, you know, consume media that they might be turned on to while traveling.
[22:22.770 --> 22:35.590]  And there were, you know, instances where I was, like, maybe searching a song or trying to think of something, but couldn't do it because of those, the policies not being available to me in whatever local domain I was accessing.
[22:35.590 --> 22:36.190]  You're a lawyer.
[22:36.390 --> 22:37.650]  Can you justify any of this?
[22:37.970 --> 22:38.970]  Not really, no.
[22:39.150 --> 22:39.350]  Sorry.
[22:39.590 --> 22:41.690]  But you can explain the thinking behind it.
[22:41.770 --> 22:42.570]  A little bit.
[22:42.730 --> 22:47.210]  I mean, this goes back to, you know, the issues that we had with DVD players and region coding.
[22:47.210 --> 22:48.230]  It's exactly the same thing.
[22:48.310 --> 22:49.830]  The region coding, same thing.
[22:50.050 --> 22:56.610]  It's idiotic in so many ways, and it's so frustrating because it has nothing to do with the content, right?
[22:56.610 --> 23:03.810]  I mean, people in Iceland want to listen to music just the same way that people in London, people in New York, and people in Tulsa want to listen to music.
[23:03.810 --> 23:12.910]  And the fact that, excuse me, digital rights management platforms are designed so idiotically to prevent people from downloading this particular content.
[23:13.190 --> 23:14.990]  You know, it has to do with licensing.
[23:14.990 --> 23:18.870]  It has to do with most favored nation statuses and treaties and whatnot.
[23:19.430 --> 23:22.970]  And ultimately, it's about money at the end of the day.
[23:23.330 --> 23:27.250]  But people want to spend money to get it, and they're not being allowed to get it.
[23:27.250 --> 23:29.970]  So they wind up getting it for free someplace else.
[23:29.970 --> 23:30.990]  Who benefits from it?
[23:31.170 --> 23:31.330]  Perhaps.
[23:31.610 --> 23:37.050]  You know, and for people like us in our listener base, we know how to get around these types of mechanisms.
[23:37.250 --> 23:42.290]  You know, I keep saying this over and over and over again on the show, but I think it's a great time to be in the VPN business.
[23:42.950 --> 23:48.730]  And, you know, if you know how to pop out in certain jurisdictions with a new IP address, you can get around this.
[23:48.770 --> 23:50.150]  And you can even use it to your advantage.
[23:50.730 --> 24:04.110]  Because if you have a, let's say, IP address that is not blocked in the UK, and you connect to Netflix, then you get a completely different catalog of movies and TV shows that you can watch, hypothetically.
[24:04.610 --> 24:09.210]  And, but it's kind of bizarre that you can't watch these in New York.
[24:09.330 --> 24:10.010]  They're all there.
[24:10.150 --> 24:10.770]  It's all data.
[24:10.990 --> 24:12.390]  It's all ready to be streamed.
[24:12.470 --> 24:16.810]  But just because you live somewhere, it limits you from having access to certain things.
[24:17.290 --> 24:25.750]  You know, more nefarious reasons for this, or conspiracy theory type reasons would be, you know, it's about information and information control.
[24:25.930 --> 24:26.550]  Information, exactly.
[24:27.210 --> 24:31.590]  And if we accept this as normal, it's just like everything else we accept as normal.
[24:31.910 --> 24:35.110]  It becomes normal, and then it becomes something unhealthy.
[24:35.790 --> 24:37.150]  We need to challenge these things.
[24:37.230 --> 24:42.470]  It might seem trivial, you know, we're just talking about being able to download music from a different place.
[24:43.050 --> 24:45.570]  But like you say, it's a form of control.
[24:45.770 --> 24:49.930]  And of course, it's not serving the artists or the owners of the material at all.
[24:49.930 --> 25:00.170]  I mean, all of us in this room, you know, we publish, we create artwork, we create this show, we create the, you know, the rest of the stuff that's going on on the station WBAI creates.
[25:00.330 --> 25:04.550]  And none of us do any of this in order for just some of the people who want it to get it.
[25:04.930 --> 25:12.110]  You know, there are no geo-blocking measures in place on WBAI's site or on 2600's site or HOPES or anything else.
[25:12.970 --> 25:15.390]  We put the stuff out there because we want it to get out there.
[25:15.590 --> 25:22.030]  And the idea that anybody might think it's a good idea to try and limit that artificially is just bananas.
[25:22.070 --> 25:25.150]  Because when somebody wants something, they will get a copy.
[25:25.370 --> 25:30.890]  And it's down to the, like, just making it easy enough for them to get it legitimately maybe benefit you a little or what.
[25:31.090 --> 25:35.910]  And this is the whole net neutrality thing again because those are artificial constraints that will be implemented.
[25:36.990 --> 25:38.650]  You guys see the Burger King commercial?
[25:38.950 --> 25:39.850]  This was amazing.
[25:40.010 --> 25:41.130]  Burger King net neutrality.
[25:41.510 --> 25:42.530]  You just got to look this up.
[25:42.530 --> 25:53.490]  It's the funniest commercial, basically, that illustrates better than I think most of us have over the last couple of years the absurdity of getting rid of net neutrality.
[25:53.610 --> 25:59.710]  We're basically, yeah, you can have a whopper, but you're going to have to wait 10 minutes unless you pay us $26 or something crazy like that.
[25:59.910 --> 26:08.530]  You know, it sounds ridiculous, but it's really not so far from what is being sold to us now with the abolition of net neutrality.
[26:08.530 --> 26:10.490]  I completely agree.
[26:10.510 --> 26:31.350]  And if you think back to, you know, the early 90s or so and kind of the cyberpunk movement where everything was about information and the internet was designed to allow the free flow of information, this kind of filtering on the basis of location goes against the very principles upon which the internet was founded and upon which it grew.
[26:32.170 --> 26:35.990]  And again, yeah, it definitely goes back to the net neutrality issues as well.
[26:35.990 --> 26:38.650]  It's a form of jamming to an extent.
[26:38.850 --> 26:49.010]  It's like, you know, broadcasting, you know, an Icelandic lawnmower on 1575 to a larger extent, unfortunately, in such a large extent that we don't even notice it.
[26:49.310 --> 26:54.690]  It's like as if you were looking up at the sky and the whole thing was the northern lights and you just couldn't see it.
[26:54.910 --> 26:56.330]  All right, you're annoying me now on several levels.
[26:56.610 --> 26:59.750]  First of all, Iceland has nothing to do with jamming.
[26:59.870 --> 27:01.330]  All right, we just happen to hear it in Iceland.
[27:01.610 --> 27:03.370]  Second of all, the northern lights are a fraud.
[27:03.370 --> 27:04.110]  They don't exist.
[27:05.110 --> 27:06.930]  And that's all I can think of right now.
[27:07.370 --> 27:11.230]  And just, we're at a point where we're being schooled on net neutrality by a junk food company.
[27:11.350 --> 27:12.770]  And maybe that's the most American thing ever.
[27:12.970 --> 27:17.350]  Well, it goes to show you that hope springs eternal in the weirdest places, you know?
[27:17.510 --> 27:20.570]  And that is something that always kind of inspires me.
[27:20.850 --> 27:25.570]  Yeah, as entertaining as the Burger King video was, it kind of got it up back with the situation backwards.
[27:25.830 --> 27:29.490]  Net neutrality, a lot of net neutrality is actually worse than what was depicted.
[27:30.190 --> 27:33.010]  Like, they depicted that you could, like, spend extra to...
[27:33.010 --> 27:37.170]  that you, the end customer, could spend extra to get the lettuce of your preference.
[27:37.350 --> 27:40.070]  But without net neutrality, it's actually the opposite.
[27:40.230 --> 27:43.190]  Like, even if you, the customer, are willing to pay for...
[27:43.190 --> 27:48.130]  to get Netflix faster or something, that they... it's Netflix that has to pay more.
[27:48.270 --> 27:55.050]  Or it's like your video startup that has to pay more to get the access that's being charged by...
[27:55.050 --> 27:55.730]  Well, who's hurt in the end?
[27:55.970 --> 27:57.710]  Isn't it the consumer who's hurt in the end?
[27:57.710 --> 27:59.230]  I think that's what they were trying to say.
[27:59.650 --> 28:03.690]  It's the same point, but, like, technically, it's even worse than what they show.
[28:03.990 --> 28:04.650]  Yeah, true.
[28:04.710 --> 28:10.790]  But if they had tried to do that, they would have had to introduce all kinds of new cast members, distributors, and farmers, and all kinds of people like that.
[28:10.790 --> 28:13.950]  It would have been as confusing as our explanations of net neutrality.
[28:14.630 --> 28:19.430]  I think it's... it opened up some eyes, and we always should embrace that when it happens.
[28:19.650 --> 28:32.350]  And I forget which senator it was, but they had a great tweet that said that, like, if McDonald's had made this video, then Donald Trump would be all prone to net neutrality because that's what he subsists off of.
[28:32.510 --> 28:35.090]  And if it aired on Fox, certainly.
[28:35.390 --> 28:57.070]  Yeah, and it still gets passed on to the consumers and essentially adds to the murkiness of both copyright laws but also distribution, the sort of egalitarian, like, most equitable, viable ways to distribute content as fast as possible, with that being a priority,
[28:57.230 --> 29:01.810]  and quality being a priority, those are really, really key and important things.
[29:01.810 --> 29:07.830]  And with all of the different distribution methods, everybody is becoming a media distributor in this climate.
[29:08.410 --> 29:20.150]  They want to create their, like, their own content delivery and service app, all of it integrated as their own mechanism.
[29:21.150 --> 29:23.090]  And they need those subscribers.
[29:23.290 --> 29:29.990]  They need people to be a part of it, to sign on to their method over all the others.
[29:30.030 --> 29:33.390]  And there's just basically no uniformity for consumers.
[29:33.410 --> 29:46.650]  So you end up having all of these different accounts, all these different ways of viewing it, and you then run into functional roadblocks on, of all things, the internet that is connected, you know, and should allow you, but for all these other reasons,
[29:46.650 --> 29:47.710]  you're being prevented.
[29:48.890 --> 29:51.930]  Yeah, I think you bring up a good point, Kyle, too.
[29:52.070 --> 29:55.310]  And it actually, you know, raises another issue.
[29:55.450 --> 30:01.990]  And I think, to a very large extent, part of the problem here, really, is lawyers.
[30:02.910 --> 30:07.550]  Because each one of these entities is its own separate entity, and each one is a distribution channel.
[30:08.050 --> 30:14.330]  And they need to work out content distribution deals and contracts in every single jurisdiction.
[30:14.590 --> 30:23.810]  And then every single jurisdiction has its own set of rules and problems and compliance issues and its own prohibitions on content, on what you can say and what you can't say.
[30:23.810 --> 30:36.830]  And so to a very large extent, a lot of the jamming that happens is because it's just very difficult to work out deals around the entire world with every single local entity that you have.
[30:36.910 --> 30:40.050]  I mean, for instance, if you want to do business in China, you can't just be a U.S.
[30:40.130 --> 30:41.890]  company and do business in China.
[30:41.890 --> 30:45.970]  You need to have a local Chinese entity that is in subject to Chinese law and Chinese regulations.
[30:45.970 --> 30:50.570]  And so it becomes difficult for a Chinese entity then to send content over to the United States.
[30:50.690 --> 30:52.510]  United States entities send content over to China.
[30:52.530 --> 30:56.310]  You have to do business locally even though the Internet is a global phenomenon.
[30:56.690 --> 30:57.970]  It becomes glaring.
[30:58.270 --> 31:07.970]  Like, you realize, okay, you empathize for the local consumers because, okay, they aren't considered a market worth serving ads to.
[31:08.270 --> 31:23.070]  And so you're there where if you were in a different location or spoofing a system with, like you had mentioned, a VPN system of some kind, you're then in a market that in their world is worth serving ads to.
[31:23.270 --> 31:36.370]  So you're going to continue to see these glaring hierarchies around the world as there is or is not a relationship, as you said, with the laws as they differ around the world.
[31:36.450 --> 31:43.550]  You know, when we were traveling on an Icelandic airline, I was able to watch television programs from Iceland.
[31:43.870 --> 31:48.250]  In fact, there were two I got hooked on, one called Trapped and one called La Press, I believe.
[31:48.890 --> 31:51.770]  And, you know, I want to see how it ends and I can't.
[31:52.090 --> 31:52.910]  Legally, I can't.
[31:53.010 --> 31:53.570]  There's no way.
[31:53.810 --> 31:54.870]  It's not available here.
[31:55.290 --> 31:57.330]  So, you know, it hurts people overseas.
[31:57.330 --> 31:58.330]  It hurts people here.
[31:59.210 --> 32:03.130]  And good luck working out some kind of licensing agreement with an Icelandic TV show.
[32:03.170 --> 32:04.730]  I don't think anyone's even trying to do that.
[32:04.890 --> 32:10.670]  Yeah, that's kind of my point is that, like, ultimately, there's definitely, there are sales that are being missed in the process.
[32:10.930 --> 32:12.850]  There are people who pay for a service.
[32:13.070 --> 32:24.890]  Like, if we want to watch our networks or whatever methods we choose here elsewhere, we have to go through all of the hoops technically to create a VPN or set it up otherwise.
[32:25.210 --> 32:30.250]  And vice versa, we don't have the ability to do that here without it.
[32:30.370 --> 32:42.150]  And so, the chance thing of buying an album or whatever overseas, it's just, you get cut off from actually making those transactions where ordinarily, if you were at home, you wouldn't have been turned on to something and gone to purchase it.
[32:42.310 --> 32:53.770]  And I'll have to turn to piracy or buy a DVD, get a region-free DVD player, which I'm not supposed to have, and buy a DVD from Iceland, which will be like a hundred bucks.
[32:53.930 --> 32:56.550]  You know, it's bad alternatives here.
[32:56.690 --> 32:57.750]  It could be so simple.
[32:57.750 --> 33:07.330]  But one thing we noticed, though, traveling in various places, is that connectivity is fairly consistent in most countries.
[33:07.690 --> 33:13.210]  Even places as far-flung as Romania, Moldova, didn't have any problems connecting.
[33:13.210 --> 33:15.570]  It was actually pretty surprising.
[33:15.790 --> 33:20.470]  The first problems we actually had were in Germany and in England.
[33:20.570 --> 33:23.230]  For some reason, the connectivity was terrible.
[33:27.750 --> 33:38.430]  when we arrived in Berlin after traveling through Ukraine and Poland, I noticed my phone just wasn't locking onto a signal.
[33:38.630 --> 33:39.750]  It just kept saying searching.
[33:40.290 --> 33:42.050]  Really, really frustrating and annoying.
[33:42.250 --> 33:46.430]  Here I am in Berlin and I can't send texts.
[33:46.530 --> 33:47.610]  I'm trying to meet up with people.
[33:47.750 --> 33:49.070]  I can't make phone calls.
[33:49.590 --> 33:52.690]  It's like, you know, my phone just isn't connecting for some reason.
[33:52.850 --> 33:58.510]  Getting all these helpful hints on the internet, such as why are you using that particular phone?
[33:58.710 --> 34:00.170]  Turn it on, turn it off.
[34:01.330 --> 34:04.650]  They're using different frequencies, which I knew they were not using different frequencies.
[34:05.070 --> 34:06.990]  All kinds of things that did not address the problem.
[34:07.270 --> 34:12.170]  So, eventually, I just tweeted out of frustration something to the effect of T-Mobile sucks.
[34:12.550 --> 34:16.410]  And, of course, that always gets you a reply from the T-Mobile support people.
[34:16.510 --> 34:23.490]  And that got me into this really bizarre conversation on Twitter through direct messaging.
[34:23.670 --> 34:24.990]  That's what they do these days.
[34:24.990 --> 34:28.230]  When you have a complaint, you don't talk to people on the phone.
[34:28.490 --> 34:30.030]  You talk to them over Twitter.
[34:30.270 --> 34:31.430]  That's what they want you to do.
[34:31.570 --> 34:35.050]  So, this is what I got after complaining.
[34:35.410 --> 34:38.850]  Basically, I had to contact them through a direct message at their request.
[34:39.670 --> 34:41.350]  And they responded, Hi there, Emmanuel.
[34:41.530 --> 34:44.110]  Thank you for reaching out to us today and for your continued patience.
[34:44.390 --> 34:47.790]  Truly appreciate it as we seem a bit more popular than usual today.
[34:48.110 --> 34:49.810]  You know, right away complimenting themselves.
[34:50.510 --> 34:51.190]  Okay, great.
[34:51.770 --> 34:55.810]  We are having some roaming difficulty and our engineers are working on it presently.
[34:55.990 --> 34:58.490]  In the meantime, I will follow some steps to see if this helps.
[34:58.790 --> 35:01.310]  Please hit the link below to have your account verified for me.
[35:01.370 --> 35:01.930]  And I did that.
[35:02.250 --> 35:07.830]  And then it literally took a couple of hours after that before I got a response.
[35:07.950 --> 35:10.030]  In fact, I said, Oh, I did all that a while ago.
[35:10.030 --> 35:10.630]  What next?
[35:10.770 --> 35:13.370]  It would be nice to be able to use my phone while I'm here.
[35:13.910 --> 35:15.670]  And then a different representative.
[35:15.670 --> 35:16.750]  You see their faces.
[35:16.930 --> 35:19.070]  You see these people's faces right there.
[35:19.430 --> 35:20.330]  This is Chelsea.
[35:20.330 --> 35:26.030]  I had been talking to Shilofia from somewhere.
[35:26.550 --> 35:29.670]  But Chelsea said, Hey there, Emmanuel.
[35:29.950 --> 35:30.330]  Few.
[35:30.670 --> 35:31.930]  Yeah, she said Few to me.
[35:32.290 --> 35:33.690]  So sorry for the wait.
[35:34.150 --> 35:37.330]  Tried to get here as fast as I could with magenta haste.
[35:38.910 --> 35:41.070]  Okay, what the hell is magenta haste?
[35:41.210 --> 35:45.510]  That is a T-Mobile expression because they have the magenta T.
[35:45.910 --> 35:47.250]  This is how they talk.
[35:47.390 --> 35:49.230]  This is how they talk to you, the customer.
[35:49.550 --> 35:53.030]  I just want to get my phone working and I have to deal with this nonsense.
[35:53.670 --> 35:56.130]  So, okay, we have been increasingly popular again.
[35:56.490 --> 36:02.030]  Again, saying they're increasingly popular and have been actively working with as many family members as we can.
[36:02.210 --> 36:03.350]  What in God's name does that mean?
[36:03.390 --> 36:04.490]  Am I part of a cult now?
[36:04.650 --> 36:06.450]  Because I'm a customer I'm part of the family?
[36:06.970 --> 36:08.130]  That's what T-Mobile is.
[36:08.130 --> 36:09.490]  I don't want to be part of their family.
[36:09.490 --> 36:11.850]  I just want to pay the bill and get a phone service.
[36:12.030 --> 36:13.990]  Were you wearing the black sneakers while you made this?
[36:13.990 --> 36:14.550]  Oh my God.
[36:14.570 --> 36:17.730]  But it seems we are just high up there on the popularity scale.
[36:18.010 --> 36:20.030]  Again, patting themselves on the back.
[36:20.090 --> 36:21.450]  Your phones don't work.
[36:21.450 --> 36:23.050]  That's what I'm complaining about.
[36:23.330 --> 36:25.490]  And you keep telling me how popular you are.
[36:25.630 --> 36:29.230]  Maybe a lot of people are messaging you today because your phones aren't working.
[36:29.510 --> 36:31.610]  But at this point, you know, I thought it was just me.
[36:31.790 --> 36:33.670]  I thought I was the only one having a problem.
[36:33.850 --> 36:37.970]  I'm being, you know, ridiculed and scorned on Twitter for even mentioning that there is an issue.
[36:39.150 --> 36:40.830]  And this is what I have to deal with.
[36:41.330 --> 36:42.990]  Now, rest assured, I'm here for you.
[36:43.190 --> 36:44.810]  And then magenta fist bump.
[36:45.030 --> 36:48.170]  Yeah, there's emojis for that.
[36:48.310 --> 36:49.090]  Are you making this up?
[36:49.150 --> 36:50.090]  I'm not making this up.
[36:50.110 --> 36:50.690]  You can see it later.
[36:51.430 --> 36:52.230]  Anyway, continuing.
[36:52.450 --> 36:54.730]  I'm sorry to hear that your phone isn't showing any service.
[36:54.950 --> 36:57.410]  I know I depend on my phone for everything nowadays.
[36:57.650 --> 37:00.790]  Calls, text, emails, GPS, so I don't get lost.
[37:01.370 --> 37:02.350]  I don't care.
[37:02.490 --> 37:04.230]  Chelsea, I don't care about your life.
[37:04.370 --> 37:07.830]  I mean, I'm sure you're a nice person, but for God's sake, why are you burdening me with this?
[37:07.950 --> 37:08.790]  I don't want to hear it.
[37:08.830 --> 37:10.030]  I just want my phone to work.
[37:10.290 --> 37:17.550]  You know, on the phone, if I was talking to somebody, which I couldn't do because I couldn't use my phone, this would be dealt with fairly quickly.
[37:17.710 --> 37:21.710]  In fact, they started the conversation saying, we're having trouble with roaming.
[37:22.210 --> 37:24.430]  That's my point, that they're having trouble with roaming.
[37:24.810 --> 37:25.910]  When are you going to fix it?
[37:25.970 --> 37:26.790]  That's all I want to know.
[37:27.330 --> 37:28.750]  Anyway, it continues.
[37:29.330 --> 37:32.230]  I know I depend on it even more when I'm traveling overseas.
[37:32.230 --> 37:36.310]  I see you're a radio host and a magazine editor based off your Twitter profile.
[37:36.550 --> 37:37.150]  You see this?
[37:37.350 --> 37:38.850]  It gets more and more invasive.
[37:39.170 --> 37:43.170]  Now they're looking at my Twitter profile and talking to me about the things that I do.
[37:44.210 --> 37:46.490]  So I can imagine you depend on your phone as well.
[37:46.690 --> 37:49.110]  I want to make sure I'm able to keep you connected in Germany.
[37:49.350 --> 37:50.270]  Well, yeah, too late, Chelsea.
[37:50.290 --> 37:51.410]  I wasn't connected at all.
[37:51.470 --> 37:52.270]  That's the whole problem.
[37:52.690 --> 37:54.610]  I appreciate you completing the link for me.
[37:54.710 --> 37:57.210]  I'm pulling up your information now, so I'll get back to you shortly.
[37:57.790 --> 38:02.370]  Actually, it sounds like she already pulled up most of my information, so I don't know what else she had to do.
[38:03.050 --> 38:07.010]  Anyway, a couple hours later, or maybe it was just an hour later.
[38:07.010 --> 38:11.350]  First things first, I just accessed your account and I can see you've been a customer since 1997.
[38:12.130 --> 38:12.770]  It's true.
[38:13.390 --> 38:17.150]  That blows me away because you've had T-Mobile longer than we've even been a company.
[38:18.310 --> 38:21.790]  You must have had VoiceStream or something like that long before we existed.
[38:21.790 --> 38:22.430]  Very cool.
[38:22.610 --> 38:23.330]  Thanks for your loyalty.
[38:24.190 --> 38:24.770]  Yeah, okay, great.
[38:24.890 --> 38:25.030]  Wonderful.
[38:25.030 --> 38:27.230]  And actually, it was Omnipoint before VoiceStream.
[38:28.010 --> 38:28.530]  Let's see.
[38:28.590 --> 38:31.570]  To start things off, I'd like to reset you to see if that helps at all.
[38:31.630 --> 38:32.570]  Are you available right now?
[38:32.910 --> 38:33.850]  Obviously, I'm available.
[38:33.990 --> 38:34.570]  I'm talking to her.
[38:35.310 --> 38:39.230]  She had me reset the phone and did all that.
[38:39.450 --> 38:40.190]  Okay, perfect.
[38:40.270 --> 38:42.090]  We're super busy over here in the social world.
[38:42.670 --> 38:44.110]  I don't know what she's implying by that.
[38:44.230 --> 38:47.370]  So my response times will be a lot longer than normal.
[38:47.650 --> 38:55.250]  So I need to get used to hours between getting a response than a normal phone call would give me.
[38:55.630 --> 39:00.350]  I offered to reset you so I'm back here really quickly, faster than normal because I want to try this out for you.
[39:00.470 --> 39:01.590]  I don't even understand that sentence.
[39:01.850 --> 39:03.270]  I'm resetting your number now.
[39:03.430 --> 39:04.570]  Promise it doesn't delete anything.
[39:04.750 --> 39:04.930]  Thanks.
[39:05.030 --> 39:06.270]  Let me know how it goes after that.
[39:06.990 --> 39:12.530]  So I basically turned on the phone and she said, yes, that's so cool.
[39:12.770 --> 39:15.930]  I've worked here since 2007, which is 10 years after you started.
[39:16.150 --> 39:19.410]  I definitely have had a cell phone way longer than most people I talk to.
[39:20.470 --> 39:22.150]  It's just over-familiarity, you know?
[39:22.150 --> 39:24.990]  This is not the kind of thing you want from customer service.
[39:25.150 --> 39:27.230]  Again, no fault to Chelsea.
[39:27.430 --> 39:28.230]  Perfectly nice person.
[39:28.370 --> 39:32.450]  But this is the culture that we are embracing these days.
[39:33.030 --> 39:35.810]  Anyway, another few from her later on.
[39:35.890 --> 39:36.830]  So sorry about the delay.
[39:36.990 --> 39:38.030]  I really can't thank you enough.
[39:38.150 --> 39:40.190]  My next step was going to be a manual network selection.
[39:40.330 --> 39:41.910]  So you're right on my brainwave.
[39:41.990 --> 39:43.910]  I think I suggested something like that.
[39:44.310 --> 39:46.930]  I'm checking right now to make sure your account is provisioned correctly.
[39:47.110 --> 39:48.030]  I'll get back to you shortly.
[39:48.710 --> 39:50.570]  I'm doing anything fun in Germany.
[39:50.750 --> 39:52.430]  Now I have to be social with this person.
[39:52.690 --> 39:55.650]  You know, she's already implied that I'm not on the social network and they are.
[39:55.790 --> 39:58.270]  So now she's asking, you know, what am I doing in Germany?
[39:58.270 --> 40:00.110]  I have family over there, so I've always wanted to visit.
[40:00.250 --> 40:01.190]  Definitely on my bucket list.
[40:03.130 --> 40:04.710]  Then, thanks so much for your patience.
[40:04.710 --> 40:05.730]  I checked your account.
[40:06.130 --> 40:08.710]  Everything looks magenta fabulous as expected.
[40:08.890 --> 40:10.050]  Yeah, the magenta is back.
[40:10.470 --> 40:19.650]  I reported that you're having issues in your area and had my engineers really dig into this and they advised me that they're now aware of this issue and they're working quickly to resolve this as quickly as possible.
[40:19.910 --> 40:26.370]  This is literally hours after initially reporting the problem and them telling me there was a problem.
[40:26.530 --> 40:29.150]  Now their engineers are diligently working on it.
[40:30.250 --> 40:34.730]  If it weren't for amazing customers like you notifying us that something is up, we may not have known about this.
[40:35.310 --> 40:38.370]  Well, you know, Chelsea, that's a problem because this is your company.
[40:38.370 --> 40:41.070]  You're supposed to know about these things before your customers discover them.
[40:41.290 --> 40:45.170]  You know, if your roaming doesn't work anywhere, that's an issue.
[40:46.370 --> 40:56.810]  She continues, our network team takes these types of things seriously so you can rest assured knowing that we're working diligently to refresh your service as quickly as possible.
[40:56.870 --> 40:59.750]  In the meantime, I suggest turning your phone on and off throughout the day.
[41:00.150 --> 41:05.530]  Okay, you know, and then TJ took over after that and I'll be picking up here with you as your new magenta guide.
[41:05.890 --> 41:08.530]  Thanks so much for your patience during one of our busier times.
[41:08.830 --> 41:09.830]  Again, super popular.
[41:10.010 --> 41:10.490]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[41:10.710 --> 41:11.870]  That continues for a while.
[41:11.870 --> 41:17.950]  Well, eventually the next day my phone just started working again and I read a story on Reddit that they had a massive outage.
[41:18.250 --> 41:20.150]  They could have started the conversation with that.
[41:20.310 --> 41:23.150]  You know, saved a bunch of time, saved their own resources.
[41:25.090 --> 41:26.130]  And you know what?
[41:26.210 --> 41:27.490]  You know what the biggest irony is?
[41:28.450 --> 41:30.970]  Germany is basically the home of T-Mobile.
[41:31.330 --> 41:35.670]  You know, Deutsche Telekom, the magenta T, it's the same magenta T.
[41:35.990 --> 41:40.410]  And the place we were staying had a big Deutsche Telekom store downstairs.
[41:41.350 --> 41:45.650]  I walked into the store and said, hey, is there a problem with the T-Mobile network?
[41:46.050 --> 41:47.210]  Couldn't help me at all.
[41:47.430 --> 41:49.370]  No connection between the two companies.
[41:49.590 --> 41:51.090]  They use the same damn T.
[41:51.710 --> 41:56.910]  There's obviously ownership overlap, but they couldn't even answer my question as to whether or not there were any outages.
[41:57.590 --> 41:59.450]  So, big waste of time.
[41:59.690 --> 42:00.410]  Very disappointed.
[42:00.710 --> 42:03.170]  And, I learned an awful lot though.
[42:03.610 --> 42:06.630]  Well, I mean, did I think the issue was obvious here?
[42:07.070 --> 42:10.810]  I mean, they needed to know exactly where you are so they could reset the stingrays.
[42:11.150 --> 42:12.910]  You know, all around your area.
[42:12.910 --> 42:14.650]  If only there were a stingray, I could have used that.
[42:14.790 --> 42:15.510]  That would have been something.
[42:15.710 --> 42:16.490]  Probably could have.
[42:16.490 --> 42:21.850]  But you know how frustrating it is not to be able to communicate with anybody on a phone when, you know, that's...
[42:21.850 --> 42:27.090]  And to give T-Mobile credit, they have a great service where you have free international roaming.
[42:27.090 --> 42:29.170]  So, I know my bill is not going to be $1,000.
[42:29.470 --> 42:29.950]  That's great.
[42:30.330 --> 42:31.770]  But it's only great if it works.
[42:36.630 --> 42:37.870]  Pretty well, I have to say.
[42:38.250 --> 42:42.530]  Well, and they slowed the data speeds down to 2G, which is ridiculously slow.
[42:42.810 --> 42:42.910]  Yeah.
[42:43.030 --> 42:45.930]  So then you can't even tell if you're on a stingray system or not.
[42:46.030 --> 42:46.050]  Yeah.
[42:46.070 --> 42:48.350]  Because you'll often get rolled back to 2G or 3G.
[42:48.350 --> 42:51.610]  And then after all this, I got another message asking me to fill out a survey.
[42:51.610 --> 42:52.810]  It never ends.
[42:53.110 --> 42:53.330]  You know?
[42:53.670 --> 42:54.110]  I'm going to...
[42:54.110 --> 42:56.650]  This conversation is going to follow me around the rest of my life.
[42:56.850 --> 42:59.230]  And T-Mobile's not the only culprit here.
[42:59.350 --> 43:00.850]  You know, there's a registrar.
[43:00.970 --> 43:05.050]  Registrars are the people that you pay to have domain names for you, to reserve your domain names.
[43:05.470 --> 43:07.630]  And I have a whole bunch of different ones.
[43:07.630 --> 43:12.830]  And I've been getting emails from this one company saying it's only 6 months until your renewal.
[43:13.050 --> 43:14.450]  You know, it's only 4 months until your renewal.
[43:14.570 --> 43:18.350]  2 months, 1 month, 15 days, literally day-by-day countdown.
[43:18.350 --> 43:20.130]  Your domain name is coming up for renewal.
[43:20.130 --> 43:20.650]  Don't worry.
[43:20.650 --> 43:21.950]  It'll be taken care of automatically.
[43:22.250 --> 43:22.770]  Blah, blah, blah.
[43:23.290 --> 43:24.670]  Finally, the thing comes.
[43:24.810 --> 43:25.510]  The day comes.
[43:25.690 --> 43:27.530]  Tomorrow, your domain will be renewed.
[43:27.870 --> 43:28.930]  Today is the big day.
[43:29.230 --> 43:30.550]  Your domain was renewed yesterday.
[43:30.790 --> 43:31.890]  It's all over now.
[43:32.130 --> 43:33.450]  Will you please fill out a survey?
[43:33.730 --> 43:35.090]  A survey on what?
[43:35.270 --> 43:38.970]  On being annoyed by 100 email messages for what I don't have to do?
[43:39.130 --> 43:44.210]  The reason you sign up for auto-renew is so you don't have to deal with this nonsense.
[43:44.490 --> 43:47.750]  And yet, there's more emails and more wasting of time than ever.
[43:47.970 --> 43:53.250]  You know, it's interesting that you say that because it's not necessarily the registrar's fault.
[43:53.410 --> 43:59.830]  It's actually mandated by ICANN that they send you these annoying notifications even if you have auto-renew turned on.
[43:59.930 --> 44:14.190]  So I think there's a distinction between what the registrars do, which they're mandated to do by contract, which would be annoying, and what T-Mobile did, which was just maddening and crazy and just so frustrating in so many ways.
[44:14.190 --> 44:23.670]  I mean, the use of this obvious attempt at branding by using magenta over and over again, I mean, I thought that was an auto-correct problem with this Chelsea person.
[44:23.810 --> 44:24.890]  I thought for sure it had to be...
[44:24.890 --> 44:25.690]  That's corporate speak.
[44:25.930 --> 44:27.670]  All companies do this now.
[44:27.770 --> 44:31.230]  They want you to speak their lingo and be part of their little social network.
[44:31.550 --> 44:33.070]  Of course, and trying to make you feel good.
[44:33.190 --> 44:42.690]  I mean, all these psychological, you know, pressure points that they're hitting, thank you, this, the overuse of the adverb, quickly, and then the misuse of magenta, which is a color.
[44:42.850 --> 44:43.510]  It's not...
[44:43.510 --> 44:45.110]  Kyle, you were there when this was happening.
[44:45.230 --> 44:46.350]  You saw my reaction to it.
[44:46.470 --> 44:47.830]  I was not happy.
[44:47.830 --> 44:48.570]  I was not pleased.
[44:48.570 --> 44:50.910]  I was not being drawn into that social clique.
[44:51.170 --> 44:53.410]  I was using words I hadn't used in many years.
[44:54.110 --> 44:57.450]  And I almost threw my phone out the window, but I was worried I might hit somebody.
[44:58.170 --> 45:05.350]  Yeah, you were not at all amused by their over-helpfulness, but, like, also uselessness.
[45:05.390 --> 45:05.610]  Uh-huh.
[45:05.610 --> 45:14.870]  I saw the humor in the situation, and I really did, because I don't believe in being chained to technology, but, boy, this was humanity that I was more annoyed with.
[45:15.070 --> 45:18.970]  So does this mean that magenta won't be the color scheme for Circle of Hope?
[45:19.050 --> 45:21.650]  I don't think I ever want to see that color again, to be honest.
[45:21.950 --> 45:24.410]  It really was more than I could handle.
[45:25.090 --> 45:31.210]  Well, Emmanuel, I can see that you're a radio producer, and you're sitting at a producer's desk and wearing a white t-shirt and green hat.
[45:31.450 --> 45:32.670]  You learned that from my Twitter profile?
[45:32.810 --> 45:36.450]  And I learned it, yes, and how are things on the producer's desk?
[45:36.590 --> 45:38.350]  It's, you know, you're doing anything fun over there?
[45:39.870 --> 45:44.910]  I'd love to continue to contribute to the show, but I'm very popular right now, so, you know, Firefly fist bump.
[45:45.170 --> 45:45.750]  Uh-huh, uh-huh.
[45:46.730 --> 45:58.150]  I might miss the fist, but, yeah, there was no other way for me to communicate with them, because in Germany I couldn't get support from the same damn company downstairs, and I couldn't use the phone.
[45:58.190 --> 46:02.030]  I would have to have made some kind of, you know, pay phone call, and that would have been complicated.
[46:02.650 --> 46:04.250]  I wouldn't have been standing there for a while.
[46:04.810 --> 46:06.990]  So, it's, you know, they need to look at this.
[46:07.190 --> 46:09.050]  It's not the best way to deal with problems.
[46:09.510 --> 46:15.010]  There's a other variability, I think, that we noticed was the differing policies with wireless.
[46:15.810 --> 46:36.650]  Wi-Fi is kind of ubiquitous in a lot of places, but we noticed there's some places that sort of cling to these really arcane, you know, pay-as-you-go models or whatnot, and it's kind of a letdown, especially if you're in Germany, a place that has really good infrastructure for the most part.
[46:37.110 --> 47:00.550]  When you have some system where you have to pay like 10 pounds or wherever, whatever local currency it is, and then not get service that's good enough to then run all the overhead for the VPNs, for the cable services that you already pay for, you just keep layering on all these things that are sort of there and they sort of work on their own,
[47:00.710 --> 47:11.550]  but when they're like put together and actually supposed to function in some way, you kind of, all you are left to do is basically throw your phone at the wall or out the window or something.
[47:12.130 --> 47:23.850]  And that's sort of, it was ironic to us being in those sort of Western, very modern cities, but having the worst service and the most difficulty.
[47:24.450 --> 47:30.310]  Moldova and Romania and Ukraine all really good infrastructure.
[47:30.310 --> 47:32.090]  They've invested a lot into it.
[47:32.190 --> 47:47.570]  Yeah, we feel like they've sort of jumped past personal computing and a lot of that stuff and the technology has been very widely deployed and there's just a huge amount of uptake in like smartphones and all of these things.
[47:47.770 --> 47:56.830]  I remember distinctly going by like the typical Moldova telephone building and pointing it out and noticing it.
[47:57.630 --> 47:58.910]  But that's not what you...
[47:58.910 --> 48:00.370]  They call it Moldcom, right?
[48:00.410 --> 48:01.070]  No, Mold...
[48:01.070 --> 48:02.730]  No, this is the name of the company.
[48:02.890 --> 48:03.770]  I'm getting to that.
[48:03.910 --> 48:06.090]  It's called Mold Cell.
[48:06.230 --> 48:06.710]  Mold Cell.
[48:06.790 --> 48:09.170]  But I kept thinking, wouldn't that be like Mold Spore?
[48:09.730 --> 48:16.210]  But anyway, it was all quite fun and worked really quite reliably.
[48:16.570 --> 48:17.170]  It really did.
[48:17.170 --> 48:43.270]  And in a place you're really not familiar with using maps, that kind of simple ability to search for like a place to wash your clothes from weeks of traveling or whatever, those little things really make such a huge difference in your ability to be comfortable and actually look for other cool hacking things or technological stuff while you're on your trip.
[48:43.410 --> 48:45.050]  Did we mention the laundromat on this show?
[48:45.210 --> 48:47.850]  I know we mentioned on the other show, Romanian laundromat.
[48:48.130 --> 48:49.370]  There's this Romanian laundromat.
[48:49.390 --> 48:50.050]  They got locked out?
[48:50.510 --> 48:53.190]  Well, no, we were locked out because...
[48:53.190 --> 48:53.470]  By design.
[48:53.650 --> 48:56.890]  By design, you have to get a...
[48:56.890 --> 49:00.150]  You have to scan a code.
[49:00.310 --> 49:01.570]  This is, again, these like...
[49:01.570 --> 49:06.430]  Everybody's got their new system and they're integrating all these like, you know, social and other things.
[49:06.810 --> 49:09.730]  So to be a member of this wash club...
[49:09.730 --> 49:11.530]  You have to scan a QR code...
[49:11.530 --> 49:13.530]  On the door that takes you to a website.
[49:13.810 --> 49:15.250]  No, you have to download the app.
[49:15.510 --> 49:17.150]  Then, oh yeah, then you download...
[49:17.150 --> 49:22.570]  I'm sorry, you go to a website, you download the app, then you get the app and the app was taking forever to download.
[49:22.890 --> 49:27.210]  Because you had throttled bandwidth on your free I had throttled bandwidth on my free international...
[49:27.210 --> 49:28.430]  Yeah, 2G speeds.
[49:29.070 --> 49:31.490]  Everybody else in Romania is enjoying high speed, but whatever.
[49:31.770 --> 49:34.490]  So I finally download the thing and fill it out.
[49:34.710 --> 49:43.830]  I'm standing outside a laundromat with a bag of dirty laundry and then they say in order to complete access, we need you to give us your Facebook account.
[49:44.210 --> 49:47.970]  You know, I have to log in through Facebook to enter the damn laundromat.
[49:48.090 --> 49:50.690]  And at that point, I just said, no, this is enough.
[49:51.110 --> 49:52.430]  This is my line.
[49:52.430 --> 49:53.910]  I am not crossing this line.
[49:54.030 --> 49:56.030]  You were about to break your phone in half, I'm pretty sure.
[49:56.070 --> 49:57.070]  It wasn't my phone's fault either.
[49:57.090 --> 49:57.990]  That's the thing.
[49:58.390 --> 49:58.750]  But...
[49:58.750 --> 50:00.990]  Someone came out of the laundromat and held the door for us.
[50:01.150 --> 50:03.670]  A low-tech solution always wins in the end.
[50:03.810 --> 50:05.170]  Yep, we piggybacked.
[50:05.170 --> 50:06.370]  We couldn't leave the laundromat though.
[50:06.470 --> 50:08.730]  We had to stay in because if we had left, we couldn't get in again.
[50:08.730 --> 50:10.910]  We came up with a whole other plan after that.
[50:11.050 --> 50:14.210]  But yeah, these funny, oh, hey, let's start a business.
[50:14.410 --> 50:16.030]  We won't even have to be there.
[50:16.070 --> 50:17.390]  We'll just have an app.
[50:17.550 --> 50:18.650]  Oh, good idea, man.
[50:19.010 --> 50:33.290]  I mean, I'm sure these conversations were had and it was great, but functionally, it's quite difficult because you're relying on these various platforms to all serve you.
[50:33.390 --> 50:36.310]  And in some cases, it's not set up that way.
[50:38.730 --> 50:41.370]  which I know has come up on this show before.
[50:41.590 --> 50:44.130]  And that's the Hawaii false missile alert.
[50:44.210 --> 50:45.150]  Now, there's an update to this.
[50:45.590 --> 50:56.890]  Apparently, remember a couple of weeks ago, everybody in Hawaii was freaking out because they got text messages saying that missiles or a missile was coming and to take cover immediately.
[50:56.890 --> 50:57.870]  This is not a drill.
[50:58.190 --> 51:00.950]  Now, you know, when that happened, I didn't actually talk about this on the radio.
[51:01.130 --> 51:02.330]  I know you guys did.
[51:03.190 --> 51:16.050]  But there's something about it that just didn't add up because, you know, lately, we've been talking about North Korea and Trump has been basically painting this picture of how much of a threat they are.
[51:16.670 --> 51:20.030]  And, of course, North Korea has been playing along with that as well.
[51:20.270 --> 51:23.630]  And so, this very scenario is on everyone's mind.
[51:23.690 --> 51:30.350]  So, what are the odds of just by accident that very scenario being sent to everybody's phone?
[51:30.470 --> 51:36.150]  It just, it seemed really, really weird to me that that just happened by accident.
[51:36.150 --> 51:46.510]  Now, it turns out that the person who accidentally made that text go out actually thought that an attack was imminent.
[51:46.770 --> 51:48.330]  And that person has since been fired, I understand.
[51:49.070 --> 51:49.510]  Yes.
[51:49.750 --> 51:59.570]  Yeah, the previous explanation was that this person had accidentally clicked the wrong option on a menu, the menu that, you know, has one click between real missile coming in and just test.
[51:59.790 --> 52:01.690]  And they said it was an inadvertent thing like that.
[52:01.810 --> 52:05.930]  But now, now they're changing their story and saying somebody actually thought an attack was imminent and sent out the message.
[52:05.930 --> 52:10.970]  So how do you, how do you say one thing for weeks and then completely contradict the story?
[52:11.270 --> 52:19.550]  I mean, basically, the earlier explanations from the officials in Hawaii, they said the alert was sent when an employee accidentally hit the wrong button on a computer drop-down menu.
[52:19.710 --> 52:24.690]  It turns out that test and reel are in the same drop-down menu, which is brilliant.
[52:25.390 --> 52:37.070]  Now, a state investigation that was released on Tuesday found that the emergency Hawaii missile alert was followed by a lengthy period of confusion.
[52:37.250 --> 52:37.710]  Gee whiz.
[52:37.930 --> 52:44.810]  During which authorities didn't immediately know how to correct the alert, even though they knew it to be false.
[52:45.050 --> 52:49.410]  I think the governor couldn't even get into the Twitter account and all sorts of things were going on.
[52:49.990 --> 52:57.150]  Authorities were apologetic after what the governor had previously called a terrifying day when our worst nightmares appeared to become a reality.
[52:58.250 --> 53:01.390]  What happened on January 13th will never, ever be repeated again.
[53:01.570 --> 53:03.190]  Next time, it's going to be the real thing.
[53:03.350 --> 53:03.970]  Don't worry.
[53:05.230 --> 53:09.090]  The employee sent out the alert was fired last week and has not been publicly identified.
[53:10.470 --> 53:14.890]  State officials said his name will be released when any disciplinary appeals are complete.
[53:16.050 --> 53:18.310]  And the other weird thing about this, this happened yesterday.
[53:18.610 --> 53:19.830]  I don't know if people know about this.
[53:20.330 --> 53:30.950]  This story came out yesterday and CNN kept sending the text, the bulletin to people on their phones something like 20 times over and over and over again.
[53:31.690 --> 53:42.570]  So, they're reporting via text about a snafu of a text message and making a completely new screw-up and we have to find out who the person was responsible for that now.
[53:43.330 --> 53:55.490]  This whole story is very bizarre to me and I think perhaps it can be explained by the just kind of psychological makeup of the person who erroneously sent this message to begin with.
[53:55.630 --> 54:05.810]  To quote the Washington Post story from yesterday, the report made public on Tuesday said the employee quote, has been a source of concern to other staffers for over 10 years.
[54:05.970 --> 54:13.230]  The employee who has been fired has confused real-world events and drills on at least two separate occasions according to the report.
[54:13.390 --> 54:14.330]  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
[54:14.730 --> 54:17.210]  Read that sentence again, the last sentence.
[54:17.210 --> 54:26.230]  The employee comma, who has been fired comma, has confused real-world events and drills quote, on at least two separate occasions.
[54:26.330 --> 54:33.010]  So that's the person you want to be in charge of whether a real alert goes out or a test goes out.
[54:33.010 --> 54:35.290]  Exactly, I mean, why provide an employee who's known to have problems...
[54:35.290 --> 54:37.730]  That's like the one person you don't want in that situation.
[54:38.030 --> 54:43.170]  Right, distinguishing fact from fiction in charge of an early warning system for ballistic missiles.
[54:43.370 --> 54:44.590]  It just doesn't make sense.
[54:44.830 --> 54:48.790]  However, if you think back at this, perhaps it explains why the story has changed.
[54:49.030 --> 54:52.030]  Because he didn't really understand reality at the moment.
[54:52.030 --> 54:53.230]  He's changed his story.
[54:53.350 --> 54:54.970]  Maybe he thought that he clicked the wrong thing.
[54:55.170 --> 54:55.890]  That wasn't real.
[54:56.070 --> 54:57.450]  Now the drill was real.
[54:57.650 --> 55:03.830]  Or another reasonable explanation is that perhaps Hawaii needs to have a PA system installed in the bathroom.
[55:04.030 --> 55:07.830]  Because he's saying he didn't hear the exercise, exercise, exercise announcement.
[55:08.070 --> 55:10.210]  He only heard the missile warning.
[55:10.690 --> 55:11.430]  Wait, hold on.
[55:11.550 --> 55:13.950]  So there was an exercise going on?
[55:14.070 --> 55:15.670]  There was an exercise going on.
[55:15.670 --> 55:19.690]  And they announced this at the beginning saying exercise, exercise, exercise.
[55:20.110 --> 55:24.710]  But then they had an idiotic contradictory message saying this is not a drill.
[55:24.970 --> 55:29.030]  So perhaps the guy flushed the toilet walks out and heard this is not a drill.
[55:29.090 --> 55:30.110]  Hold on, stop, stop.
[55:30.570 --> 55:32.010]  What do you mean they said this is not...
[55:32.010 --> 55:33.410]  Why would they say that if it was a drill?
[55:33.690 --> 55:46.310]  Because it was preceded with exercise, exercise, exercise, meaning it's a drill, but then the actual announcement that's supposed to indicate a missile warning says this is not a drill.
[55:46.410 --> 55:48.350]  Yeah, but you don't say that if it's a drill.
[55:48.610 --> 55:49.230]  Totally agree.
[55:49.350 --> 55:51.290]  Am I the only one that understands that?
[55:51.330 --> 55:51.890]  That doesn't make
[55:56.910 --> 55:57.090]  seriously.
[55:57.310 --> 56:02.670]  I mean, does it take away from the drill if you say this is a drill instead of this is not a drill?
[56:03.090 --> 56:09.730]  You can still do everything you were going to do, just don't say this is not a drill because that is what you say when it's not a drill.
[56:10.890 --> 56:12.510]  I feel like I'm in the twilight zone.
[56:12.890 --> 56:13.470]  That's true.
[56:13.590 --> 56:16.790]  When I worked in the Grace building, we had fire drills all the time.
[56:17.170 --> 56:19.470]  And you don't run through the halls saying fire, fire.
[56:19.610 --> 56:20.130]  You don't do that.
[56:20.230 --> 56:21.390]  That's not looked upon kindly.
[56:21.390 --> 56:28.470]  It was preceded by some glockenspiel type tone that would indicate that it was a drill, and they sort of conditioned you like a Pavlovian dog.
[56:28.750 --> 56:28.950]  The tone, yes.
[56:28.990 --> 56:30.870]  You play the tone so people are familiar with that.
[56:31.010 --> 56:31.250]  Fine.
[56:31.410 --> 56:37.170]  But you basically, you know, if you look at EAS tests, they generally don't say, oh my god, there's a tornado coming.
[56:37.350 --> 56:42.270]  No, they say this is a test so that people get aware of the sound and act accordingly.
[56:42.550 --> 56:50.850]  Yeah, I think even though the headlines blame this individual and like in the most immediate sense it was their fault, but there's also tons of fail-safes that were in play.
[56:51.010 --> 56:57.790]  Like the day shift person that was supposed to be the fail-safe didn't even know it was the drill either.
[56:58.330 --> 57:02.650]  So I didn't know that the drill was going on and the drill was put on by the night shift supervisor.
[57:02.950 --> 57:05.770]  You know, it sounds like they really have the wrong people working in that department.
[57:06.030 --> 57:10.170]  They just need to sweep it out and reassign everybody, start over again.
[57:10.410 --> 57:12.830]  North Korea, you know, it's good to give them a nice laugh.
[57:12.950 --> 57:13.510]  They deserve it.
[57:14.150 --> 57:19.150]  But seriously, let's try and rethink this a little bit.
[57:19.250 --> 57:20.250]  It's, wow.
[57:20.590 --> 57:21.990]  Hey, guess what?
[57:22.130 --> 57:24.310]  The winter fundraiser begins next week.
[57:24.790 --> 57:25.190]  Yay!
[57:25.370 --> 57:25.890]  On schedule?
[57:26.050 --> 57:26.570]  Hey, we're still here.
[57:27.050 --> 57:28.290]  I'm thrilled that we're still here.
[57:28.950 --> 57:30.850]  And Rob, it looks like you have something you want to tell us.
[57:31.050 --> 57:34.190]  Yes, 2600 meetings take place all over the world this week.
[57:34.710 --> 57:37.710]  2600.com slash meetings to find your local one or start it.
[57:37.850 --> 57:39.510]  Because February is upon us.
[57:39.650 --> 57:40.570]  In fact, February is tomorrow.
[57:41.410 --> 57:43.390]  So, yes, good to be back.
[57:43.590 --> 57:45.730]  We'll be here next week asking for your funds.
[57:46.170 --> 57:48.490]  Write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com.
[57:48.550 --> 57:49.250]  Manual for our book.
[57:49.430 --> 57:49.610]  Good night.
[57:50.070 --> 57:50.470]  Bye.
[58:12.180 --> 58:12.580]  Bye.
[59:34.720 --> 59:36.680]  We'll be right back.
[59:37.720 --> 59:40.700]  We'll be right back.
[59:40.840 --> 59:42.580]  We'll be right back.
[59:42.880 --> 59:43.040]  We'll be right back.
[59:43.140 --> 59:43.540]  We'll be right back.
[01:00:03.520 --> 01:00:05.160]  We'll be right back.
[01:00:05.160 --> 01:00:05.180]  We'll be right back.
[01:00:12.680 --> 01:00:13.720]  We'll be right back.
[01:00:14.740 --> 01:00:15.820]  We'll be right back.
[01:00:57.340 --> 01:00:58.840]  We'll be right back.