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The time is just about 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night.
That means it's time for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
And a very good evening to you.
This program is Off The Hook. Rob T. Firefly here with you.
And I'm joined in the studio by the rest of the folks.
The rest of the Off The Hook folks are not here.
They're all doing things.
We've got this little convention coming up in a couple of days.
And Emmanuel, Kyle, Alex, Voltaire,
they're all just running around trying to get things sorted out.
So, you know, I said I'd do this thing today by myself.
And I suppose I could really handle it.
I mean, I don't know if I want to do a whole hour by myself in here.
But fortunately, I did bring some friends along.
Hey, everyone.
Hey!
Excuse me.
Five dollars.
Yes, indeed.
This is the special Hope edition of Off The Hook.
And we are doing our conference starting this Friday called Hacker's Dozen.
And you can find all the information you want about it on xii.hope.net.
And there's some really interesting stuff going on.
So I've invited a lot of folks who are presenting at the conference and otherwise involved.
And so I think I'll just go around the room.
And maybe one by one, you can fight your way through this crowd.
Come up to a mic and introduce yourself and say what you're doing at Hope.
Richard Cheshire here, the Cheshire Catalyst.
I'll be there Friday at 11 a.m.
Talking about how you should set up a .mobi website for use on older mobile phones,
not just the smartphones of today.
My name is Mitch.
And I'm helping organize a bunch of things, but primarily the workshops at Hope.
There's going to be about 40 of them.
I'll be giving workshops myself on Arduino and soldering.
Other people will be doing lots of other interesting workshops that I hope you'll enjoy,
including how to get information from our very dear government through the Freedom of
Information Act, how to set up a VPN, virtual private network, on a Raspberry Pi,
how to set up Tor on a Raspberry Pi so you can surf the net anonymously.
And people will be learning how to take the amateur radio exam and taking the amateur
radio exam.
There'll probably be about 50 new amateur radio licensees after Hope.
And yeah, there's going to be a bunch of really interesting, very diverse workshops happening
at Hope.
I'm also giving a talk on one of my latest electronic kits, which is a music synthesizer
kit.
And it's for total beginners.
And my talk will show people who don't know anything how you make sound and noise and
music from a microcontroller, a computer chip.
So if you're interested in that, come on by.
I'll also be on a panel about the history of the maker movement.
There's a lot of disinformation going around on our planet now.
Have you noticed that?
There's a lot of disinformation going around.
So we're going to try to set the record, maybe not straight, but interesting.
Wow.
And you're sure that's all?
Or if you want to help bring tables in at 8 in the morning tomorrow on 32nd Street.
We'll get into that.
Mitch Altman, why did you look at me when you said disinformation on the internet?
That's because he was looking at me.
Hello, everybody.
Neo, I'll be also preparing at the information booth, also known as the disinformation desk.
A lot of volunteer coordination at the last minute.
I also haven't finished my slides.
So for your talk on?
On accessibility.
Of which we spoke when you were here last.
Just recently.
Yeah.
Felt like a month ago.
Just want to note, Neo is very accessible.
A lot.
Always.
Welcome here.
This is Side Pocket.
I'm one of the slave drivers.
I mean, content coordinators of a little tiny, but very important booth at Circle of Hope
called the Radio Stattler.
It's the 72, near 72 hour radio station where we bring on lots of content.
So if you are unable to make it to Hope, or you just want to engage in some shenanigans,
you can always tune into the radio.
We bring in on a lot of people who've been speaking, including a bunch of the people
that I hopefully in this room will come by and invite on.
And we also have a lot of exclusive content.
Too many to list here.
And speaking of content, I will pass this off to the person to my metaphorical left.
Hi, my name is Tamara or Corset Lore.
A lot of you may have known, may know me actually by that name.
I'm one of the concert organizers for the Hope Conference.
I'm here with my concert cohort, Jessen.
Jessen, you want to say hi?
Sure.
Hi.
Hi, this is Jessen.
Most people know me by that name because it is my name.
And I'm glad to be able to help you, Tamara, with the organization of the concert at Hope
this year.
Yes, I think is now a good time, Rob.
OK, yes.
I think it's going to be quite an excellent show this year.
We're doing one night this time of eight musicians and three visualists.
And it's going to be spectacular because as per our usual Chiptunes show, we're going
to have Game Boys, but we're also going to have Nintendo DS, which is kind of a new thing
to add over the last few years.
We're going to have radios, a couple of conceptual radio performers, XOADC, who also
has a workshop on Saturday morning demonstrating her Theremin interface, which is really
interesting.
Her Theremin will trigger, you know, contact mic recordings and images of Radio Canada
International shortwave towers that were demolished in 2014.
So that'll be really fascinating to see that live and then also for Hope attendees to
actually get to get a feel for that instrument because she's going to be showing it.
Then we also have our mainstay iconic culture jammer and remix artist, Radio Wonderland,
who will be closing out the show with his live FM radio feed that he's going to be,
you know, mashing and mixing and remixing for your entertainment.
Excellent.
And I am Night Owl.
I will be spending a lot of my time this year at Hope working with TOOL, the open
organization of lockpickers, where we will be, as usual, running the lockpick village
on the mezzanine of the conference, where we will be teaching all comers how locks
work and the basics of how to pick them.
We'll have our members there able to provide you with equipment and also to give you a
few tips if you already have learned the basics from our introductory lectures.
Friday night, we also have a special two hour live panel where we will be answering
questions from the audience.
And we also are encouraging people to submit their questions for the panel over Twitter
using the hashtag lettersfromlocksport.
Saturday evening, I will also be running a workshop, thanks very much to Mitch for the
help getting that set up, teaching people who are already involved in lock sport and
who have some skills how to rebuild and modify their locks to make them even more challenging
and more fun for themselves and other people in the community.
Excellent.
And maybe you in the back row, if you could fight your way through.
Okay, all right.
I'm on my way, guys.
She got through.
Hey, I got through.
Also, be careful moving the mics around with your hand.
They thump around a lot on the...
Are we clear?
Okay, yes.
Hi, I'm R.N.A., I'm a neuroscientist hacker, and I'm going to be giving a talk on Sunday
at noon on brain machine interfaces.
The name of the talk is a wizard hat for your brain, and I'm looking forward to telling
everyone about how these devices work and a little bit about the ethical implications
of them, which can be quite large.
Excellent.
Well, that's all I've got.
I think for the rest of the show, we'll just stare at each other.
No.
Well, what are you going to be talking about?
Way ahead of you, Rob.
I'll be talking about a lot of things, because during the conference, I'll be emceeing.
So I'll be talking about a bunch of you and other folks who are...
People can meet you in person?
Can they get autographs?
Only if I can have theirs as well.
But no, this is just scratching the surface.
And of course, those interested can go to xii.hope.net or just hope.net for the site
about the Circle of Hope.
You can see all these talks.
You can see all the other ones that are going on.
And we will be streaming the entire event.
For those of you who cannot be there, we'll be streaming all the presentations.
And that's on hope.net.
So check it out.
I've set up a website called h12.mobi.
That's h12.mobi.
So your mobile phone web browser can access the schedule of the conference and look over
the whole conference, see what talks are on.
Each day, there's a list of hours at the top.
Tap on the hour, and it jumps you down to where those talks actually are.
And hopefully, it'll make the whole conference more phone-friendly.
Excellent.
And this has been a particular area of interest to you.
You've been doing this for a number of hopes and really doing the whole mobile accessibility
thing.
What led you to start pursuing that?
Well, just the fact that a lot of websites were not very accessible on mobile phone web
browsers, very small screens.
And in the old days, you actually had a telephone dial on the front of the phone.
Well, there's something called access key as a component of a tag that will let you
jump to web addresses.
So by tapping the number on the touch-tone pad, the web browser reads that and jumps
you to the linked expression, the linked page.
And when it comes to things like the hours, well, if you tap number one, that takes you
to Friday.
Tap number two takes you to Saturday.
Tap number three takes you to Sunday.
And so that's on all the three scheduled pages.
Makes it very easy to jump around.
If you have an old five-way navigator on your older phone, you get to maneuver left,
right, up and down.
And so that can take you to the different hours within the day.
Then press the center button.
Boom.
You're right there at the talk that you want to listen to or find out what's going on at
that time in those rooms.
That's the whole idea of making it phone friendly.
Excellent.
So Mitch, I know like folks have said, you've been doing a lot, not just on your own work
and the stuff, but wrangling the workshops.
Can you tell us a little bit about those for those who may not be familiar that things
happen at this conference besides the onstage presentations?
Yeah, there's a lot happening at HOPE, all the HOPEs, including the circle of HOPE.
So the most exciting thing about going to HOPE is not all of the over 100 talks there,
which are really interesting, diverse set of people and topics, but what people do in
the hallways and on the mezzanine and at workshops and in-betweens, people are getting together
and coming up with all sorts of new ideas that who knows might even change their lives.
So that's what I hope to inspire in people by having them do this hands-on kind of things
with the workshops and getting together all the different people who make changes at the
last minute that drive me crazy has been way worth it.
I'm glad it's worth it for someone.
There are a great many of us who are just a little ragged this week leading up to the
conference, trying to get everything just swinging in time, but we always manage to
somehow pull it off and it's really, I mean, that could be considered, I mean,
the fact that we do this, we've been doing, HOPE has been going on since 1994, was the first one?
1996.
No, no, I'm sorry, you're right.
94.
Yeah, 94, then 97, yeah.
So the first HOPE was in 94 and we're still doing this now, how many years later?
What's the?
22.
22 years later.
We've been hacking this way too long and way too well.
Yeah, and we've been-
24, excuse me.
24.
Yeah, we can mess with computers, but we can't count here.
Math is what I have a computer for.
It's easier if I did it in base 8.
Absolutely.
I'm ready to just declare that this whole thing, the fact that we managed to do this,
I'm going to go ahead and declare this this week's Hack of the Week.
So, yep, that's our Hack of the Week is the fact that we are still at this and still doing this.
And I know a lot of you have been basically fixtures at HOPE since very early on.
Cheshire, you're here.
Mitch, you're like, everyone knows you.
My first HOPE was 2006.
HOPE number, or is it HOPE number six?
Was that?
HOPE number six was in 2006.
The fifth HOPE was 04.
What was that?
I believe that's how it works.
Yes.
And when I walked into the very first HOPE, registration was a mess.
They had this photographic imaging system for the ID cards.
I walked in and everything was in a mess.
And having worked registration at science fiction conventions, I just stepped in,
ripped up pieces of paper as chits, sent everybody into the conferences and said,
come on back later.
We'll deal with all the registration once the talks have begun, once the conference has started.
And I've been a friend of the firm ever since.
Absolutely.
If I may jump in on that, Cheshire, that's one of the most beautiful things that I love
about attending HOPE is very similar how you got involved is the same way I got involved.
I think most of us, you know, I'm always impressed of the amount of pre-planning that's attempted
for everyone to get HOPE set up.
But what's so brilliant is that if you see a problem or if you see something where you'd
want to add something from your background or to add a bit of flavor or just your expertise,
you can come in.
OK.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know how microphones work now.
That you can volunteer on the spot.
You can hop in.
You can jump in and just add to the beautiful melting pot of people and expertise that's
already there.
And that's one of the things that I particularly I see that multiple conventions, but where
HOPE is, that's where that aspect of the community really shines.
It's always been about share the knowledge.
That's what we're all about on this program, at this conference, at this station.
And Nidal, I'd like to talk to you a little bit, because it's something that people wouldn't
generally have thought, I think, was a logical progression many, many years ago.
But when lockpicking started showing up at hacker conferences, that was kind of a big
deal.
How did that all really get rolling?
So about 12 years ago now, I believe it was, at HOPE, a group of lockpickers, hobbyists
from the Netherlands, had come over to give a talk at HOPE that year.
And they ran into, and after their talks, they ran into a group of people from the U.S.
who also really enjoyed picking locks, but there weren't really any organizations.
There weren't a lot of great resources available at the time.
And these guys from the Netherlands told them, well, you know, why don't you just create
one?
If there isn't a group or an organization already doing this, why don't you just do it
yourself?
That led to the formation of the U.S. branch of TOOL, which is now going very strong.
It's now a federally registered nonprofit organization where we—and we now do events
all across the country.
We have chapters in—I'm not even going to try to count how many states, but we have
a nice little map on our website.
It's mostly up to date.
We even have affiliates—
Which website is that?
Oh, it's TOOL, T-O-O-O-L, dot U.S., is our website.
I really should remember to mention that.
And we now even have affiliates in Canada for some of the cities particularly closer
to the border.
We're working on the rest, but, you know, it takes time.
Yeah, I'd just interject that the first time I went to a hacker conference was Hope 6,
and TOOL was there, and I learned how to pick a lock.
And it's not just about learning to open a lock that you don't have access to, which
one could do, but you can just use a brick, you know?
So it's not as elegant.
But it's just amazing that we use these devices, keys and locks, in our daily lives, and hardly
anyone knows how it works.
And being able to pick a lock makes it—you have to visualize it, and now you know exactly
how these things work.
And it's just so amazing to have that ability and to know how these things work in our daily
lives.
Absolutely.
It's really all about the knowledge, which is what we focus on.
It's all about sharing the knowledge and developing the knowledge yourself.
When you can't find a reference for something, you have to find a sample of the thing and
figure out how it works yourself.
And then you're the expert on that, and you get to be the one that tells everyone
else how to do it.
So now, actually, I professionally spend a lot of my time reverse engineering lock designs,
particularly older ones that were not particularly well-documented, and a lot of them are no
longer officially made or supported by their manufacturers, but they're still out there
in the world.
And so I now reverse engineer these lock designs and publish their specifications so that
locksmiths across the country and around the world can continue to keep those locks
functioning and running.
Excellent.
And the whole lock-picking thing, it's like the whole hacker mindset, like those who
may not be familiar would think, oh, hackers, okay, that's computers, that's it.
But the whole, yes, we know better than that around here, but just the sheer range of the
topics that are explored at HOPE and at other events like HOPE and at our 2600 meetings
and just in our community, just you could take the whole hacker outlook and apply it
to the locks that everyone's got on their doors, and then what do you know, you're a
lock picker.
Absolutely.
It really opens up all sorts of worlds.
It's like, Tamara, if I can pull you out of the back row there a bit, too.
It's like the whole hacker outlook is really huge in the chiptune scene.
And can you explain to those unfamiliar what a chiptune is and what this all means for
those not familiar?
Okay, sure.
Well, in a very basic way, a chiptune, I guess, is usually associated, because there are many
different consoles you can do this with, but with a Game Boy.
And a Game Boy, basically, there were a couple of designers of software in the late 90s that
made these two tracker softwares, one called LSDJ, which is called Little Sound DJ, and
one that's called Nano Loop.
And what those trackers do are, LSDJ, for example, is a four-channel sequencer, and
it uses the sound chip in the Game Boy so that you can program your own music and use,
you know, the nostalgic sounds of, like, you know, games, Tetris and Mario and all
of those things you grew up with, and express your own ideas.
So, but I would say that there's actually, yeah, that's a chiptune.
It's like live performance, right?
Yes.
And that's, well, you write it in, you write it in with hex code, and then you can play
it back, but you can use live mode to play back certain patterns.
We call them chains, and within those chains are phrases.
Right.
And in addition to the Game Boys and things of that nature that are being used, there's
also this sort of greater electronic music scene where people are actually tinkering
with, say, like, older toys or pieces of equipment, and making them do things they were never
intended to do, and making, creating art out of the result.
Or like you mentioned, Radio Wonderland has done with, it's kind of difficult to explain,
so I'm going to ask you, can you explain Radio Wonderland?
Yeah, well, basically, he's got, so he has this setup on stage where he has, okay, he
has a boombox.
I believe it's an old Sanyo.
I forget the model.
I actually have six of them at home, but, and they do belong to him, actually.
We've had a fun relationship.
I used to do some radio improvisation as well, spatially.
But so he has like a Sanyo boombox from the 80s that he basically feeds into his computer
and uses his shoes, his steering wheel, the iconic steering wheel, to control how he remixes
the live feed.
And he has Macs, of course, running on his computer that way.
Yeah, he takes things that are playing on the radio at that point, you know, tweaks
around, finds a station that's playing something, and then whatever comes in live, he'll start
remixing and looping and doing interesting things with, and it's really an experience
to see.
Yes, absolutely.
That's another example.
It's like, you've got the sort of circuit bending scene as well that take old, like
electronic devices and toys and speak and spells and, you know, things of that nature.
And again, just apply a real weird hacker outlook to it, which is, you know, what else
can I make this thing do other than what it says in the instruction manual and getting
these fascinating sounds out of them and making art with that?
Yes, absolutely.
There's a whole community.
Since we were talking about community, there's a whole community that's, you know, developed
around, you know, using these toys or repurposing toys and other devices to make sounds with.
And that's what I really love about it.
Justin, would you like to add anything?
Sure.
And, you know, we do have a lot of people packed into a small studio, which is a lot
of fun, but it also means people have to push past each other to get to the microphones.
Thanks, Tamara.
Sure.
Yes, I would like to add to what you said.
Not only, I think you mentioned this already, it's chiptune all about the music and about
repurposing old hardware.
It's also about the live component as well of playing music live before people, it could
be pre-programmed or it could be done on the fly.
And a big part of the live component is also the visual art, which is also something that
the chip community has kind of embraced and kind of taken when you go and see a chip
concert, you'll also see live visual art prepared by people who are also in, I suppose,
like to take things apart, to build things out of software, out of hardware.
You're going to see some artists, I don't have time to name them all now, but Energon,
for example, from Philadelphia, he takes old video cameras and he takes old equipment and
kind of takes them apart and remixes them in interesting ways and projects that on the
screen so that while you're listening to music, you also see some interesting trippy visuals
that are augmenting and kind of enhancing the music as well.
Tell us a little bit about what the visualizers actually do for those unfamiliar.
Sure, sure.
All of them have very unique ways of going about what they do.
They sometimes hack hardware and take it apart and kind of manipulate the video waveforms
so that they can project it on the screen behind the musician.
Some of them use it in time to the music as well, so they will, just like the musicians,
just hash out a beat and start playing along something that looks
kind of representative of what the musician is playing.
And some of them use a combination of hardware and software.
One of our visualists from this year, her name is Ms. Paint, and what she does is she
codes software and then she creates hardware devices that she can manipulate,
for example, moving them back and forth with accelerometers and
based on what she's doing with her hands and pressing buttons,
that's what you'll see on the screen.
Yeah, not a lot of people, like a lot of people, I think they would go to their
first sort of electronic music or chiptune concert and see the stuff going on in the
screens and not immediately realize that that's stuff that's being tweaked and played with
and sort of generated on the fly as things are going on live versus just like some sort
of filter or automatic thing.
And that's a whole other chunk of talent right there at work.
Could I add just one quick thing?
Yes, it is true that the live performance aspect is really important.
We also have another visualist who really, you know, focuses on trying to be an improviser.
And he's going to play, Vaporstack is his name, actually, he's going to be doing visuals
for Kurt Underscore and Animal Style, who's a Hope musician from the past, will also be there.
But Vaporstack has a very interesting one-bit aesthetic that he developed from, you know,
an emulated 68K Macintosh.
And he's going to, you know, he still uses that aesthetic in sort of a procedural way
with his own coding and software to generate real-time graphics so that, you know, the
visuals will change and, you know, undulate and move.
And he's actually added color to it, just a splash.
But that's kind of a new thing for him.
So it'll be very interesting, I think, to see that, see him perform that in action.
He discovered the chroma in the color signal.
Right.
Excellent.
And for those interested, is the concert, how do people get to that if they want to go?
Right.
The concert will be on the lower level in, I believe the Hope name for the ballroom is
Ritchie.
And it's at 9 o'clock.
Doors at 830.
Friday.
Yeah.
Oh, thank you.
Yes.
Friday night.
Excellent.
And it's a separate thing from Hope itself, like you can get in without the Hope registration?
Oh, yes, absolutely.
It is open to the public, but it is free to Hope attendees.
Yes.
Free to attendees and everyone else needs a ticket.
Yes, that's correct.
Which will be available at the door.
Yes.
Okay, great.
Just one of the many things that's going to be really special.
Yes.
Oh, okay.
I would actually just like to add in that while we're still working out details, once again,
Radio Statler, for those who can't make it to Hope or having trouble with scheduling,
we are going to attempt to, as usual, restream at least in part of that chip tune content on
our radio.
And also Radio Wonderland is going to have a preview of what they do and their music
earlier in that day on Friday on the radio.
So if you want to kind of get behind the scenes of how that works, definitely tune in.
Excellent.
Tell us a little bit more about Radio Statler.
I'm going to stand up for this so I can, there we go.
So Radio Statler has been going on way longer than I have, unfortunately.
It was started by a bunch of awesome, that I get to call awesome teammates now, such as
Tech Darko, Bunny, Johnny Xmas, just a whole talented team of people.
And we were just sort of sitting around thinking, like, there's so many people that we know that
live in other states, other countries who aren't able to make it.
And there's also so many great stories that has happened on the mezzanine and throughout
the convention that we would just love to see documented, whether they kind of want to or not.
At the conference.
In exchange to protect the guilty.
Yes.
The bribery check has been cleared.
Just a nice snapshot of the cons.
One of the ideas was let's just in pure audio form send all that content out there.
And it's been an interesting, trippy sort of thing.
Like with most things at Hope, such as the Lockpick Village and the Hacker Village.
Yep.
It started off as a small team and it's kind of grown to be a kind of,
I wouldn't maybe say big part of the convention, but definitely an integral part of the whole
experience.
We have people who have, it's their first con have come down.
We've had veterans such as Shashir and Mitch in the past.
Neo and Night Owl, who in addition to their talks, do a regular show called 26 o'clock.
That happens at 2 a.m.
Every time when they remember to actually show up.
Hey, we were overloaded last time.
Then again.
They've always shown up.
Yes.
Then again, every Friday and Saturday night, we're often also just playing games and talking to
people.
There's usually a lot of drinking that goes on.
You don't have to drink to be at Radio Statler.
In fact, we'd love you if you didn't because you will be the coherent person in charge of the
booth that day.
But I digress.
It's a very fun experience that's evolved throughout the convention.
And we just had so much, because there's so much content at Hope this year.
We have so many interesting pieces that are happening on the radio, some that I'm involved
in, some that Beaches are involved in.
And the schedule is going to come up in the next day or two.
So stay tuned.
And the web address to reach it is statler.hope.net.
Thank you for that.
I also want to shout out Stapé, who usually chugs down a 40 and codes out the website in
what seems like 10 minutes.
So thank you, Stapé.
And Radio Statler, it is an actual radio station.
It's broadcasting on low power throughout the conference, and it also streams online.
And how is your schedule?
Like, are you still looking for people to fill that, or is it sort of nailed down now?
So the current state of this, first of all, you very much humor me with the concept of
things being nailed down.
But I actually like that flexibility for the radio.
What we've decided this year is there are people who have submitted in advance their
own content, and we've booked out hour and half an hour segments for them.
I will be doing segments.
You'll see them on the schedule regularly for guests and speakers at the convention,
particularly after their panels, to come in as sort of a potpourri free-for-all.
And you will see that on the schedule for the website.
I was just going to jump in.
Nailed down is probably the worst possible description of what we do.
It's more like duct tape together.
It allows us the flexibility because sometimes during conferences, there will be a big
demand for a particular talk, and we'll have overflowing.
Or breaking news.
Or breaking news.
So we will always break a pre-programmed segment to jump in and get information to continents
and different time zones, to overflowed rooms, and just get the word out and allow people
access to all this wonderful happening that's taking place.
Right.
First of all, I'm a little uncomfortable with mentioning duct tape because we have our own
tape if you want to stick things on the walls during the conference.
Get our Blue Painters tape.
Don't use duct tape because that will mess up the hotel's paint.
That's only for volunteers.
And if the volunteers will know, I will be at the info desk.
I believe Night Owl will be spending some time there.
I believe Sidepod will be there.
Unfortunately.
Yes.
So we will remind you, no duct tape.
No gaffers tape.
Blue Painters tape.
We'll give you some Blue Painters tape if you want to post some things on the walls
around the conference.
But I'll throw in one more just because individuals, like you've said, people jump in to fill voids
that they don't see.
If they see that they have a poster they want to put up, they want to put up with scotch
tape, please do not use Painters tape.
We will give it to you for free.
We won't even harass you this time.
Right.
As the one who's in charge of the signs and the signage and things like that.
Yeah.
I'm stocking up and also just trying very hard to remind folks of this little detail.
It's just a little.
What frequency is the low power radio station at?
What frequency is the low power radio station?
Thank you.
Fortunately, that's a kind of a closely kept secret for a specific reason that I'd like
to shout out, which is that to the knock shots fired.
OK, so that that that information will become available.
Well, the ham radio frequencies are published, actually, and they can be found at ham.hope.net.
So you don't have to write them down now.
Although simplex is 147.545.
And our repeater for the W2H special event station will be 447.875 megahertz.
So you can find us on those frequencies.
Please, even if you're just interested in ham radio, come by the 18th floor and visit
our ham radio station, which is special event station W2H.
We'll be on a few HF frequencies as well.
So hams around the country, perhaps even around the world, should be able to pick us up.
Excellent.
And I hate to call you out on this right now, but at radio.hope.net, it's the it's still
the site from last time, you guys.
Stop it.
Get working now.
So but people can follow you Radio Statler on Twitter at Radio Statler, all one word,
which I'm looking at right now.
And it looks like that's that's things have been done here in the past two years.
So that's good.
I do want to jump in for one minute and just circle back on the painter's tape situation.
A little birdie told me that it's not even painter's tape anymore.
Now we're being asked to use something called artist tape, which you can find at any art
supply store, Blick, one of these places.
Maybe I shouldn't, you know, that will be the that would be the white tape instead of
blue tape.
Right, right.
So it's not blue painter's tape.
It's artist tape is what it's called.
That's, you know, if you ask for that at an art supply store, they'll give you that.
And that is even better than painter's tape for not damaging walls.
But when people are coming to ask for it, as we've just been offered, they come to the
information desk to find it?
At the info desk, yes.
Very well.
With for a bribe.
Bring them a piece of candy or something.
Well, yeah, usually usually we need some food.
Food, food is food is good.
Yeah, we have the 3-2-1 rule, I believe is in effect.
Yeah, I heard of it as a 5-2-1 rule.
Yes, well, I made a 4-3-2-1 rule.
I don't know where the five came from.
Well, I think I first heard of it as a 5-2-1 rule, and that came from like the comic con
anime con sort of scene, which was which was side pocket.
Do you want to explain the 5-2-1 rule?
So I remember exactly how it goes, because I'm behind this myself is five hours of sleep.
Two meals a day.
And please shower.
Yes, one shower.
Take a bar of soap, put it on your body, rub it up and down.
We will love you for it.
Every day of a conference, 5-2-1, get at least five hours of solid sleep, two square meals and one
shower.
I'll also throw in a four into this mix.
Drink plenty of water.
It is hot.
It is New York.
It is summer.
It is humid.
You need it.
Think of your health, blah, blah, blah.
Seriously.
Right, Night Owl?
Excellent.
It is easy to forget these things when you're all wrapped up and time just goes away.
It's also very easy to get wrapped up in these things and forget those things when you are the
only person fulfilling a essential function and you are having difficulty flagging anyone down
long enough to point out that you really need someone to relieve you so that you can step away
for more than a minute and a half.
Relieve yourself.
Look, fresh air, yes.
A volunteer has one near-death experience at a conference and he's just bitter about it for
years and years after.
I don't know why he'd hold a grudge.
I do want to quickly interject that HOPE is run by an amazing volunteer squad that's put
together every year.
Also, as regulars of people throughout the mezzanine who have talks, if you are interested
in something or if you have a question or you possibly need help, please reach out to
HOPE staff, volunteers, or just friendly faces.
And especially in question, look out for the security team.
They're amazing.
They're some of the personal friends of ours.
Just if you need a helping hand, please don't be afraid to reach out.
Absolutely.
And we always need volunteers.
We need volunteers in a big way tomorrow.
Tomorrow is our setup day.
So if you're in town, if you'd like to stop by the conference a day early, you can square
away your registration and everything, pick up your ticket, but also you could volunteer
to help us set everything up and you will be pointed in a direction and passed along
to somebody who can tell you exactly how you can help.
Yes.
Tomorrow, starting at 8 a.m., I believe, at the loading bay on 32nd Street on the south
side of the hotel or in the entrance to the, what is it, the event pavilion, I believe
is that area of the hotel?
The Plaza Pavilion.
Yes.
And if you see Lindsay, she is our lovely volunteer coordinator who is driven mad every
two years.
She's a saint.
Wrangling all of these volunteers and never gets enough thanks for it.
So if you do see her, buy her a drink or a nice meal at a restaurant.
Make sure she gets plenty of her daily requirements of hugs and thanks.
And if you see any roller skates flying by, that'll be her because she is all over the
place.
With consent.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's a lot of fun to volunteer at HOVE.
Absolutely.
It's how I got started.
Long before I was on staff, I was one of the volunteers being pointed in directions and
just went from there.
And now here I am.
And getting suckered into volunteering, you meet everybody.
You have this time that you can spend with other hackers.
Not so much on the stage and in their personas, but you get to meet people and understand
them and really create and cement friendships that last very long, very strong.
There are people I haven't seen who are on the other side of the planet.
I'll be hugging them to bits in two years.
You know?
Absolutely.
This is the time to pay it off.
A lot of us have our HOPE family.
We catch up every two years.
And for a few days, we're just right there again and picking right up from where we left
off.
RNA, I'd like to pull you out of the crowd back there for a bit.
I want to know wizard hats.
Yes.
If you can crowd surf over here and just tell us a little bit more about what you're presenting,
because it's something I think a bit unusual, but also just really fascinating in its own
way around here.
It's kind of hard to compress what this is about.
Brain machine interfaces is a huge field of technology starting from noninvasive to invasive.
But basically, it's understanding what people are thinking by reading some aspect of the
function of their brain.
And it usually has a lot to do with the electrical potentials.
As the neurons are firing, it could have something to do with reading the oxygenation levels
or metabolic levels.
But to me, the basic question is, as you come to understand what somebody else is thinking,
it turns out, first of all, it's not as hard as you think.
It doesn't need as advanced electronics.
It needs some advanced mathematical techniques and deconvolutions.
But it's a lot easier.
And with the tools of deep learning and AI, it turns out to have a tremendous amount of
power.
So in addition to describing the technology in the talk, I also want to pose the question
to the hacker community.
We need to understand this.
We need to keep it open source.
And we need to sort of question the ethics of what's going on.
It's a technology that Facebook is taking a pretty deep dive into.
And there's a talk that I'm going to reference in my talk.
And they're saying how amazing this technology is going to be and how safe it's going to
be.
Because they're going to make sure that they only read your thoughts from your speech center
that you voluntarily send there.
And yeah, I hear the laughter.
I think we should all laugh.
Consent is everything.
Because how can you guarantee that when they're not even sure the spatiotemporal coordinates
of where the speech center is?
And they're just going to take the signals from that part of the brain that really, I
don't want to piss off Facebook because I'm on the air.
But it's a little questionable.
No, piss off Facebook.
I don't want them to come after me.
But because they'll read my brainwaves and they'll know exactly what I'm thinking about
them.
So in any case, we're the community that can help keep the ethics of this above board.
It's the hackers that can intervene, that can make sure this is open source, that can
keep the code on GitHub and other places, and can say, what is this bit of code doing?
What kind of parameters are they using in this machine learning interface?
I don't know that I trust this weighting scheme.
Or what's this neural network doing?
Why is there this whole section that is proprietary?
And what's it classifying in there?
And how do we know that it's doing it right or that it's not sending information to a
part of the brain that might be damaging to the individual?
You know, damaging in a way that it might change your thoughts in a slight way that
over time will change your behavior in a way that is desired.
Not by you, but by maybe the people who are in charge of the programming of the brain
machine interface.
So those are all the kind of topics that I'll be talking about.
Excellent.
And you are, as may be evident to the listener, you are actually a scientist in real life.
I am a scientist in real life when I'm not here.
And even when I am here.
Excellent.
And, you know, just one of the diverse backgrounds of all the sorts of weird folks we get at
our events.
But how is sort of, because you've also been a long time friend of the local hacker community
and, you know, how did the sort of the hacker mindset and the scientific mindset sort of
inform one another?
I think that's a really good question.
So I see a lot of people, for example, getting into AI and machine learning.
And I don't think they're all hackers, even though I think it's a perfect place for
hackers to go, sort of from the beginning, because it's asking very complicated, very
layered and hierarchical questions.
But it turns out you're getting a lot of people who are just learning protocols.
They're just saying, OK, I'm going to I'm going to take this software and I'm going
to put in these parameters and I'm going to get an answer and I'm going to get a job
at Google or Facebook.
And this is really cool.
They're not looking at the big picture.
I think for me, my first of all, my interest in the hacker community and by being part
of it, I've learned to always take things apart, something I knew when I was a little
kid.
But it's encouraged by this community.
You want to understand it.
You want to make it you want to make technology do things that maybe it's not designed to
do, that maybe it's not obvious that it will do.
And you want to understand all the implications of what it's doing.
If a circuit does this, can it also do that?
If I have something that sets out a frequency of 3000 and I change a transistor, a resistor,
a capacitor, can I make it put out 2600 Hertz instead, even though it's not intended to?
You know, can I take out this jumper and change the channels that I can get on my box at home?
So that's the hacker mentality.
And it's so important because you can't do any of that if you don't have a full and
complete understanding of the system that you're trying to understand in the first place.
Excellent.
And what kind of stuff, what kinds of stuff besides your own work at Hope, what kinds
of stuff do you tend to check out at these events?
Because you've been going to Hope now for a very long time as well.
I've been to every Hope.
You've been to every Hope.
I think you have Hope seniority because I missed the first couple.
Yeah, I think in this room, you're the official.
All right.
The old timer.
You're the senior Hoper.
Yes.
I think, Cheshire, you might have been to every Hope as well.
Yes, you were at the first one as we did.
OK, so the two of you.
I've seen you at several Hopes.
Yes.
We've spoken.
The two of you are the official Hope grandmasters, I think.
Yeah.
So as you've been going to Hopes, what sort of stuff do you tend to check out?
Well, I love Steve Rambam's talks, his epic three-hour, very in-depth deep dives into
privacy and security.
And he has been saying things for a long time that I think are very important for people
to know.
I love Radio Statler.
I am a ham radio person myself.
And I just definitely love to hang out with those guys.
I actually knew them before I had my license.
And then I didn't get my tech license here, but I did get it in New York.
And now I'm general and just put up a 40-meter antenna at my home, which I'm very proud of.
Yeah.
So that has been a hobby that I always dig into when I'm here with like-minded people
and learn a lot.
So I enjoy exploring those areas.
Yeah, we should note that in the workshops end of things, we do have a lot of amateur
radio stuff, including your FCC license exams and review session for the FCC technician
class license.
Study hard, kids.
Study hard.
I want to mention, by the way, that for years, Hope has had workshops.
But particularly when I checked out the website, when it updated, I was floored by all the
talks.
And then when I went to workshops, I actually have like five or six workshops that I really
want to go to that I can't miss out on.
So I feel like sometimes a lot of people don't realize that there are workshops at Hope.
And especially if you're going to this year, this is one H of the year to go and check
these out and learn something new.
And it is different because if there's a talk that you miss, you can always catch it up
later.
We have the videos and everything else.
But the workshops, that's an experience that happens there at that moment with the folks
around you.
And you can't really duplicate that.
I understand that there's also going to be a table this year from some newcomers.
The Alcor people are going to be here, and they're going to be speaking about their unique
contributions and their sort of hacks, putting together and understanding in a deeper way
how to chronically preserve people.
So I think that'll also be a very interesting addition this year.
Well, that sounds cool.
I'm going to take a lot of notes.
Yes, I did that.
We're ashamed to know you.
Next time you're doing the show alone.
So I'll turn it over to our other senior member over here, Cheshire, and ask what's the sorts
of things that you tend to want to go see and check out at Hope besides your own stuff?
Well, I would like to get some people talking about Asterisk, which is a new form of telephone
hacking, people creating their own dial plans and setting things up.
There's a couple of websites I found on the internet where people share knowledge on that.
I don't have them on me right now, but we'll definitely have to look them up and get them
out to people because it's fun.
By adding two different circuit cards into your old IBM PC, you can have basically a
PBX, a private branch exchange, just like businesses have, with your own built-in performance.
You know, press one for this, press two for that.
You can make your own recordings for that or cop some off the internet.
There's some funny ones out there, too.
And this is how the old phone freaks have morphed into computer hackers and morphing
back into phones.
Absolutely.
That's where I started out.
I was phone freaking way back when you could do such a thing.
And it was a lot of fun, but it also was sort of my gateway into the greater world of tweaking
around with other devices besides the phone.
And especially in the very old days, those of us of a certain age remember when not everyone
had computers.
But everyone had a phone and you could pick it up and connect to basically the biggest
computer in the world and explore to your heart's content.
Sorry to interrupt, Mitch, but I did hear a rumor that this year we will be having an
actual PBX on the premises.
Just a rumor.
But if you happen to remember or still have the manuals for the old Merlin and Merlin
Legend series, AT&T PBXs, you might want to brush up.
Excellent.
Has this rumor been officially denied by anybody?
It absolutely is untrue.
In that case, it must be true.
Well, that all seems fairly straightforward.
And of course, if talking of vintage things, we'll have the vintage computer folks up there
with their whole table on the mezzanine.
And they'll be doing some other stuff.
And really, I'm sorry.
I'm pointing to Mitch because you were abruptly interrupted.
Things being pointed at, yeah.
I didn't want to interrupt the flow, but I was going to talk about things you could do
hands on.
We're going to have over 50 soldering stations at the hardware hacking village.
We're constantly at a shortage of those, aren't we?
So it's often quite hopping.
It's really fun.
We'll have a lot of people with kits for beginners that they make all open source.
And anyone can learn to solder.
It's a lot of fun.
And it's really useful.
And it's actually easy when shown by people who know what they're doing.
And soon, you will know what you're doing if you come by.
And anytime there's not another workshop happening at the hardware hacking village,
there's time for people to learn to solder and make something cool all with your own
little hands.
Excellent.
And already, if you think you already know how to solder, I can tell you this from experience.
Because when I first took your how to solder workshop, Mitch, at Hope, I had been soldering
for basically my entire life, including on a professional level at a hardware company.
And then I took your soldering workshop.
And I realized how much more easy it was than I thought it was.
And I learned a great deal.
And I'm so much better at it now.
So yeah, you're never too old to learn.
And you're never too old to brush up and improve.
So yeah, there's all kinds of stuff.
And you said you had workshops on your music synthesizer.
Could you talk a bit about that?
Yeah.
So the first kit that I made to teach soldering, well, you know, I came to Hope.
It was my first hacker event.
And that was in 2006.
And no one was making anything.
And so at the next Hope, well, it wasn't actually the next Hope.
The next Hope was like several Hopes later.
But it was actually the last Hope, which came before the next Hope.
And the last Hope was, of course, several Hopes ago.
Indeed.
It lasted all right.
Thank you, Emmanuel.
And at the last Hope, which wasn't the last Hope, but it was anyways, I started teaching
soldering.
And it was a big hit.
So I've been doing it more and more all over the place.
But I needed a kit in order to teach people how to solder and make it fun.
So I had a TV Be Gone kit there, which is a really fun way.
And it's still a popular kit.
And we'll have those available.
So you can go around the world turning TVs off and making the world a better place for
everybody with one that you make yourself.
And I've added many more kits through the years.
My most recent one is to make really interesting and beautiful sound and also nasty noises
with a simple little board that you can solder together yourself.
And if you want to, you can learn how to generate noise and sound and music with computer chips,
microcontrollers.
And that's what my talk will be about.
But just by making this kit, you can read the documentation and learn from it.
And if you have any questions at HOPE, just grab me live and in person.
So yeah, it's a fun way to do it.
And there are a lot and a lot of other kits as well.
So come on by and have fun.
And we can all solder together.
Please grab Mitch with consent.
Always ask first.
We do have a code of conduct at HOPE.
Mitch, when is that happening?
Excuse me.
Your workshop?
August 10th.
So yeah, that can happen any time.
There's not another workshop happening at HOPE, which is going on from 10 in the morning on Friday
all the way through 8 at night on Sunday.
And that's another time when we'll need volunteers to help us wrap things up at the end of the
conference.
So if you're in town and you got some free time and you'd like to earn some brownie points from
us, yes.
And maybe a t-shirt.
Not only brownie points, but that's when you get to see people when they've relaxed.
They've all had their fun.
And you meet people.
You get to know them.
You get to chat with them.
You make connections.
Hint, hint, hint.
So stick around afterwards for the breakdown.
Because last time we did it in about six hours.
And it was phenomenal.
Everybody had a blast.
Set up today.
Today, almost today.
Tomorrow.
About 11 hours from now.
About 11 hours from now.
We'll be setting up.
And, you know, friendships will be made.
Blasts will be had.
Hopefully not literal blasts.
But do show up.
Do volunteer.
You know, Lindsey, if you're out there, we're sending you all the best troops we got.
Love, love, love.
Absolutely.
Lots of love.
And with that, I think there's not much left to do.
Oh, I did want to mention our friend Voltaire of this program is working on QueerCon, which
is events that hope to bring together the LGBTQIA plus aspects of our community.
And you could go to QueerConNYC on Twitter or QueerCon.NYC on the web.
They'll be having social activities Friday at 5 p.m., meeting at the registration desk.
And Saturday and Sunday plans are TBD right now.
But they'll be announced in a day or so on the Twitter.
So that's QueerConNYC on Twitter or QueerCon.
That's Q-U-E-E-R-C-O-N.NYC on the web.
So be sure to check that out if you're interested.
And with that, I will just say, yes, come to Hope or watch the streams that will be
available, thanks to our friends at the Internet Society.
And, yeah, next week, you'll be hearing us all in recovery from this event that means
so much to us and so much to our community.
It's both therapy and a release at the same time.
So, yeah.
Absolutely.
So be sure to send us emails, oth at 2600.com.
Follow us on Twitter and message us, Hacker Radio Show.
And you are listening right now to one of Tamara's pieces, Corset Lore.
This is Waking in the Forest.
And you can find that on Corset Lore's Bandcamp page.
Thank you very much.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show.
For Off the Hook, this is Rob T. Firefly.
Good night.