[00:00.000 --> 00:08.920]  ...impact Curtis had on the popular music of Jamaica, including artists as Bob Marley and the Wailers, Slim Smith and the Heptones.
[00:09.460 --> 00:10.380]  So join us.
[00:10.540 --> 00:22.320]  That's Friday, April 5th, 12 midnight to 5am for Curtis Mayfield, Impressions of a Genius, right here on WBAI in New York, 99.5 FM.
[00:22.720 --> 00:24.720]  It'll be raver-licious.
[00:25.080 --> 00:29.660]  The Midnight Ravers, where every show is a special.
[00:31.640 --> 00:33.180]  Yeah, but that sounds extra special.
[00:33.220 --> 00:33.620]  I'll be there.
[00:34.120 --> 00:35.060]  It's 7 o'clock.
[00:35.180 --> 00:36.960]  You're listening to WBAI New York.
[00:37.100 --> 00:38.680]  It's time once again for Off the Hook.
[01:02.740 --> 01:04.540]  I hope that's understood.
[02:23.530 --> 02:25.110]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:25.270 --> 02:26.190]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:26.270 --> 02:29.830]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Rob T.
[02:30.130 --> 02:30.570]  Firefly.
[02:30.790 --> 02:31.410]  Good evening.
[02:31.690 --> 02:32.210]  And Kyle.
[02:32.590 --> 02:33.830]  Yes, I am Kyle.
[02:34.050 --> 02:34.910]  Hello to all of you.
[02:35.270 --> 02:37.150]  And a very warm welcome to our listeners.
[02:37.530 --> 02:42.210]  It's another hour of high technology and antics in the hacker world and things like that.
[02:42.690 --> 02:45.410]  But we're going to start off with something rather interesting.
[02:45.410 --> 02:48.030]  When's the last time you guys used Google Plus?
[02:48.890 --> 02:49.690]  Google Plus.
[02:50.330 --> 02:51.230]  Google Plus, remember?
[02:51.570 --> 02:52.490]  Define used.
[02:54.090 --> 02:58.290]  I don't know if I can do that, but I guess it's been a while.
[02:58.490 --> 03:02.970]  Something tells me you haven't really logged on to that web page in a while.
[03:03.150 --> 03:07.410]  I think I was hoarding some invites because, you know, it's still very exclusive and invite only.
[03:07.550 --> 03:09.050]  So I think I was looking to sell those.
[03:09.230 --> 03:10.390]  I got to get around to doing that.
[03:10.390 --> 03:14.030]  Well, you know, if you watched Vice News last night, you might have seen our friend Jason Scott on there.
[03:14.050 --> 03:18.810]  Because he's involved, as always, in trying to save things that are being deleted.
[03:19.090 --> 03:22.830]  And apparently Google Plus is going the way of the dinosaur.
[03:24.750 --> 03:26.470]  It's being discontinued.
[03:26.850 --> 03:28.830]  Jason joins us on the telephone right now.
[03:28.910 --> 03:29.490]  Jason, are you there?
[03:30.070 --> 03:31.050]  I am here.
[03:31.050 --> 03:31.390]  Hi.
[03:31.610 --> 03:34.950]  So what is this latest project now?
[03:35.050 --> 03:39.270]  You're trying to preserve all the Google Plus pages that are slowly being deleted?
[03:39.970 --> 03:42.210]  Yeah, now things are getting ridiculous.
[03:42.750 --> 03:52.910]  So, to be clear, Google Plus is sticking around for business customers because they pushed so much of their infrastructure into their Google Plus social network.
[03:52.990 --> 04:08.870]  But what they've done is, as of today, with what was supposed to be a year worth of warning and then turned into six months worth of warning, they've removed the, you know, consumer user for free facing version of Google Plus.
[04:08.870 --> 04:17.050]  So the thing that most people would think of as a social network, all those pages are gone, all those photos are gone, all those discussions are gone.
[04:17.150 --> 04:17.990]  What about my circles?
[04:18.050 --> 04:18.850]  My circles are gone?
[04:19.330 --> 04:20.970]  Your circles are gone.
[04:21.110 --> 04:22.030]  They are just a memory.
[04:22.270 --> 04:22.630]  Wow.
[04:22.730 --> 04:26.810]  I'm trying to remember them because it was kind of hard to grasp in the first one.
[04:26.810 --> 04:29.690]  But you said it was a year warning and it turned into six months.
[04:29.810 --> 04:32.290]  You mean time went by or they changed the terms?
[04:32.750 --> 04:36.530]  They changed the terms because they just kept having data breaches.
[04:36.830 --> 04:37.110]  Wow.
[04:37.370 --> 04:42.590]  So, after a while they said, okay, we just can't, you know, we're not going to keep this up.
[04:42.670 --> 04:46.410]  We're not going to fix the thing to the level for all that.
[04:46.410 --> 04:48.390]  We're just going to shut things down quicker.
[04:48.730 --> 04:49.230]  I'll admit...
[04:49.230 --> 04:53.770]  Although, to be honest, I want to think that it was just an excuse to push the deadline up.
[04:53.770 --> 05:06.730]  I'll admit, the last time I looked, now that I think about it, to answer your question, Emmanuel, I think it was just to make sure that it was... there was nothing there that I cared about.
[05:07.030 --> 05:07.510]  Uh-huh.
[05:07.610 --> 05:13.150]  And I think it was this early rumor that it was going away.
[05:13.150 --> 05:18.510]  And then I think the deadline approached and they started sending...
[05:18.510 --> 05:26.030]  I think they warned people that had the free accounts and sent inquiries or a notice to people.
[05:26.190 --> 05:27.910]  And that's when I personally checked.
[05:28.050 --> 05:32.910]  It just... there wasn't really anything there I was really attached to.
[05:32.930 --> 05:34.930]  So, I didn't go back.
[05:35.110 --> 05:36.730]  And now I guess I can't, right?
[05:36.730 --> 05:40.350]  As an average, I'm one of... I would be, like many of us, the...
[05:40.350 --> 05:41.290]  I guess that's up to Jason.
[05:41.290 --> 05:43.790]  Jason, are you preserving pages somehow?
[05:44.050 --> 05:44.130]  Yeah.
[05:44.190 --> 05:44.850]  How far did you get?
[05:44.970 --> 05:46.190]  Well, okay.
[05:46.430 --> 05:50.270]  So, the archive... this was by far, you know...
[05:50.270 --> 05:50.690]  All right.
[05:50.690 --> 05:52.590]  So, obviously, what happens...
[05:52.590 --> 05:56.090]  And anyone who's heard your show knows that there's these waves, these echoes.
[05:56.370 --> 05:59.750]  You see them happen and happen over and over again, right?
[05:59.750 --> 06:08.430]  The demonization of hackers, the clampdown of culture, the shifting of data store, you know, like these stories pop up and up and up again.
[06:08.650 --> 06:19.110]  And what we have here is a social network that starts up, some company creates it, says either it's free or it comes with something.
[06:19.430 --> 06:30.910]  And then either they persist as long as we know, like Facebook, or they say at some random point, you know, we're out of this business.
[06:30.910 --> 06:32.230]  We're not going to do this.
[06:32.590 --> 06:48.550]  And the only part that makes this special is that Google holds such a monopoly on so many different types of information, like searches and, you know, email and things like that, that everything that was wrapped into Google Plus was there, too.
[06:49.610 --> 07:07.870]  Now, there are people for whom that social network, whichever one it is, it's either their first one, or it's their prominent one, each one gets, you know, adherence, whether it's the bulletin board system eras, or it's got GeoCities, Fortune City, and whatever,
[07:08.030 --> 07:09.910]  like each of those has adherence.
[07:10.290 --> 07:25.270]  And what we see is that at some point, the company in charge says we're out of this business, the people for whom it was an unquestionable, you know, center of their network and their work, they're left in the cold.
[07:25.470 --> 07:32.350]  And for anyone who either used it and didn't like it or never used it, it's just another thing to laugh at, because it just happens.
[07:32.550 --> 07:33.790]  So it's just happening again.
[07:34.130 --> 07:38.730]  What makes this one really a bother is it was so huge.
[07:39.350 --> 07:44.190]  So when we grabbed GeoCities, it was about a terabyte of data.
[07:44.210 --> 07:49.890]  We think in total there were like five or four active terabytes of GeoCities.
[07:50.010 --> 07:51.750]  That's back in 2010.
[07:52.190 --> 07:57.050]  This was 1.5 petabytes that we could track down.
[07:57.470 --> 08:00.430]  So that's 1,500 terabytes.
[08:00.990 --> 08:02.390]  Pull your car over.
[08:02.730 --> 08:08.450]  And it's a, you know, it's the largest thing the archive team ever attempted.
[08:08.450 --> 08:10.950]  And it was people working 24 hours.
[08:11.130 --> 08:22.070]  And we think we've gotten something like 98 or 99% of the public facing parts of Google Plus that are out there.
[08:23.110 --> 08:25.050]  Well, that's what I want to ask you about.
[08:25.050 --> 08:30.710]  I want to ask you about that because I'm looking at a news story now from CNET that is talking about this.
[08:30.830 --> 08:32.290]  They're saying Google Plus is being torn down.
[08:32.450 --> 08:35.870]  And some of the first pages to go are those of key executives.
[08:35.990 --> 08:45.050]  They're saying the profiles of current CEO Sundar Pichai, former CEO Eric Schmidt, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were all deleted from the platform.
[08:45.270 --> 08:57.190]  And some Google Plus posts, including one by Page explaining Google's take on the NSA's controversial PRISM program from 2013, were archived at the time in Google's blog.
[08:57.590 --> 09:04.130]  The removal of these executive pages means several other posts significant to the company's history have been lost to the internet ether.
[09:04.270 --> 09:07.810]  So what I want to ask you, Jason, is were you able to retrieve those?
[09:08.430 --> 09:10.490]  So I am absolutely unsure.
[09:10.490 --> 09:15.570]  At this point, we grabbed 3.8 billion pages, something like that.
[09:15.870 --> 09:26.450]  So what happens now is people will look through these collections and start to find missing jewels or ways to make them playback better.
[09:27.090 --> 09:31.990]  You know, now we can at least take a breath and say, okay, what is in all this that we grabbed?
[09:32.210 --> 09:33.610]  Because there was no time.
[09:34.010 --> 09:37.150]  And then say, okay, here are posts that were disappeared.
[09:37.410 --> 09:42.470]  And it's weird that you would get rid of CEOs.
[09:42.750 --> 09:44.590]  I mean, that's technically... Anyway, all right.
[09:44.590 --> 09:45.330]  Yes, I agree.
[09:46.250 --> 09:48.330]  They just had that with Zuckerberg, right?
[09:48.470 --> 09:52.630]  That a bunch of Zuckerberg's early posts were quote-unquote deleted accidentally.
[09:52.630 --> 09:53.430]  Accidentally, yes.
[09:55.550 --> 09:56.570]  Something's going around.
[09:56.910 --> 10:02.150]  He's working at the temp in Silicon Valley, and that guy is messing everything up.
[10:02.150 --> 10:04.210]  He's deleting MySpace.
[10:04.250 --> 10:06.170]  He's deleting Zuckerberg's files.
[10:06.450 --> 10:08.050]  They just keep pushing him around.
[10:09.030 --> 10:10.090]  Nobody wants to...
[10:10.090 --> 10:11.550]  Jason, are you surprised by this?
[10:11.670 --> 10:19.410]  Because it's, you know, it seems like when you keep a lot of information in the cloud on someone else's servers, you're at their mercy.
[10:19.410 --> 10:28.370]  And when they decide they want to change their business model, or when they're driven out of business, or they just lose interest, then you have no control over your own material.
[10:29.310 --> 10:36.350]  Yeah, and I think... I've tried to speculate with this at various press that I've talked to, and of course, none of them go this deep.
[10:36.490 --> 10:39.430]  They're just more concentrating at the top level of this.
[10:39.590 --> 10:57.810]  But what it really is, right, is that in the 90s and the early 2000s, trying to drive adoption, this very successful, but ultimately kind of empty approach was to say to everybody, come try our service.
[10:57.830 --> 11:00.230]  It's 100% free.
[11:00.430 --> 11:02.470]  We won't charge you.
[11:02.710 --> 11:03.890]  Come with us.
[11:04.250 --> 11:06.330]  Just hand out free tickets.
[11:06.550 --> 11:07.130]  Come on in.
[11:07.410 --> 11:15.150]  And with that, of course, comes no guarantees, no promises, no long-term plan.
[11:15.370 --> 11:16.030]  Just come in.
[11:16.170 --> 11:22.030]  And people, being people, use the most frictionless thing, right?
[11:22.210 --> 11:30.790]  There are people in your listening crowd who are quite happy with ham radio and are pretty unpleased that they took away the Morse code requirement.
[11:31.210 --> 11:32.930]  And then there's people who are pleased.
[11:33.270 --> 11:35.930]  And then there are people for whom they don't even want to think that far.
[11:36.050 --> 11:42.050]  They want to press a button on a little box with no controls, and it bursts out into ham radio, whatever that is, right?
[11:42.690 --> 11:48.090]  And Facebook, Google+, they remove all that friction.
[11:48.450 --> 11:49.710]  Come take us.
[11:49.890 --> 11:52.490]  We'll pull the photos right from your phone.
[11:52.570 --> 11:55.770]  We'll pull whatever you say right into our servers.
[11:55.770 --> 11:57.470]  You won't have to think about a thing.
[11:57.550 --> 12:00.010]  And you don't until you do.
[12:00.110 --> 12:01.130]  Until now, yes.
[12:01.430 --> 12:02.090]  Until you do.
[12:02.230 --> 12:08.830]  What would you suggest for people that are maybe hearing about this for the first time or panicking, want to get something back?
[12:09.150 --> 12:10.190]  Is all hope lost?
[12:11.710 --> 12:15.910]  So there's a chance it can probably come to the Wayback Machine.
[12:16.170 --> 12:23.010]  Literally, this is so much data that it's going to take at least a few weeks for all the data to come through.
[12:23.230 --> 12:32.070]  And one of the things I always do for people, and I'm happy to be in this role, is my Twitter handle is textfiles, T-E-X-T-F-I-L-E-S.
[12:32.250 --> 12:35.130]  If there's something you're looking for, just ping me.
[12:35.130 --> 12:37.250]  I'll see if I can... I'll see what I can do.
[12:37.430 --> 12:42.090]  It's not that many people who usually come running that way, so I'm more than happy to take that load.
[12:42.430 --> 12:47.450]  But in the long term, it's going to be in the Wayback Machine at web.archive.org.
[12:47.650 --> 12:50.210]  It's going to be pretty dependent on URLs.
[12:51.250 --> 13:01.370]  And hopefully, over time, depending, people will help make indexes of these and refine stuff that turns out to have had meaning.
[13:01.790 --> 13:04.950]  But we won't know immediately what has the most meaning.
[13:05.130 --> 13:10.790]  Like, there might be a group, you know, when they turned off PhotoBucket, it was PhotoBucket, the one with the frog image.
[13:12.190 --> 13:17.470]  They turned it off that if you didn't have a certain kind of account, you couldn't hit it publicly.
[13:18.490 --> 13:20.290]  It was like they didn't delete your stuff.
[13:20.410 --> 13:24.090]  It was just you had to pay a little extra for it to be seen from the public.
[13:24.870 --> 13:37.670]  And all of these sites, for some reason, it was technical sites, like people posting on forums and linking, used it for all of this documentation and imagery for electronics and stuff.
[13:37.810 --> 13:39.790]  And it all just disappeared one day.
[13:40.210 --> 13:53.750]  I mean, the bigger lesson, beyond the people who are panicking right now about this latest automated forest fire, which is what I call it, it's to really reassess your relationship to data that means something to you.
[13:54.090 --> 13:57.950]  There will always be people for whom they don't care, right?
[13:58.130 --> 13:59.450]  You take photos with your phone.
[13:59.770 --> 14:00.850]  That's for today.
[14:01.450 --> 14:02.610]  Drop it off in the world.
[14:02.830 --> 14:04.570]  If it all disappears, who cares?
[14:04.910 --> 14:06.830]  Although I will tell you, you probably will.
[14:07.530 --> 14:11.270]  But there's a bunch of data that does mean something to you.
[14:11.430 --> 14:16.290]  And to please do your best to keep a local copy that's under your control.
[14:16.350 --> 14:19.850]  That's the stuff you write, the people that matter to you.
[14:20.070 --> 14:26.130]  I had a very tearful person tell me about how her friend died years ago.
[14:26.470 --> 14:31.650]  And their only main conversations of a certain type were on Google Plus.
[14:31.870 --> 14:37.710]  And she's just sitting there screenshotting him as fast as possible, because that's her last connection to him.
[14:37.870 --> 14:43.650]  And this is going to happen to a lot of people, things that they didn't know were the only location.
[14:43.990 --> 14:50.350]  And it's just going to require a little bit of mental exercise to go, I just posted this.
[14:50.950 --> 14:56.810]  Do I care if it never... Was this the... Like, look at this letter from my relative on Facebook.
[14:57.150 --> 14:58.930]  You know, here's my elderly aunt.
[14:59.190 --> 15:04.010]  She, out of nowhere, wrote a huge memory of my father that I never knew before.
[15:04.550 --> 15:07.730]  Should I just print it out just to put it in the scrapbook?
[15:07.810 --> 15:08.730]  The real scrapbook?
[15:09.050 --> 15:10.630]  Because I never want to lose it?
[15:11.410 --> 15:12.990]  That's the question you want to ask.
[15:13.150 --> 15:15.710]  And they have a lot of friction there.
[15:15.990 --> 15:17.050]  A lot of effort.
[15:17.470 --> 15:19.510]  But memories is art.
[15:19.670 --> 15:27.490]  I just wanted to ask, do you think that a company like Google would continue to actually have all of the data the same amount?
[15:27.730 --> 15:30.810]  But, you know, they're closing, and we're talking about, yeah, it's going away.
[15:30.950 --> 15:31.970]  But is it really going away?
[15:32.110 --> 15:35.950]  Like, is it still in a GFS file system, backed up somewhere?
[15:35.950 --> 15:39.810]  Are they still perhaps able to use it internally?
[15:40.110 --> 15:47.430]  Because when we say going away from their hosting and their platform, to some of us, yeah, maybe it didn't mean anything.
[15:47.610 --> 15:59.410]  Maybe I came to this service because I was... Maybe it was a fear of missing out, or I just wanted to see what this little new virtual trinket that they were, you know, waving in front of anybody, everybody for free.
[15:59.770 --> 16:07.590]  You know, we, you know, maybe make an account or just, you know, gravitate because that, in the moment is a new curiosity.
[16:07.910 --> 16:16.650]  But then, and as I said, yeah, okay, I just wanted to check, make sure it wasn't really anything there that I hadn't put anywhere else, like you're describing.
[16:16.910 --> 16:25.750]  But one thing we know is that the attribute of it being free is that it has a certain currency in the concept of data.
[16:26.070 --> 16:28.330]  And I'm just curious, have you heard anything?
[16:28.450 --> 16:34.890]  Or do you know, for sure that they're completely, you know, destroying everything they have?
[16:35.010 --> 16:42.470]  Or would the chance be that it still exists in Google internally, but they're not using it public or not hosting it publicly anymore?
[16:44.050 --> 16:57.930]  So, I'll phrase this super carefully to say that, uh, I, I would never betray the trust of somebody who has told me they've never deleted anything.
[16:58.310 --> 16:59.230]  How about that?
[17:01.210 --> 17:02.490]  Okay, let's put it that way.
[17:02.990 --> 17:04.430]  Piece that one together later.
[17:04.810 --> 17:05.430]  That's cool.
[17:05.690 --> 17:17.870]  Um, the, the, uh, the fun thing about Google, though, I mean, uh, a lot of us, uh, especially people who've used maybe, uh, the previous generation or two of, uh, social media, maybe in its earlier days, but we've all had accounts on things that have shut down,
[17:17.990 --> 17:20.110]  you know, some little site here or some little service there.
[17:20.330 --> 17:22.110]  Uh, my Neo pets are long dead.
[17:22.330 --> 17:28.270]  Uh, my second life is an afterlife now, I think, but, but, uh, Google really shoved Google plus down everyone's throats in the beginning.
[17:28.530 --> 17:31.770]  They, uh, made it mandatory at one point for you to have a Google plus.
[17:31.930 --> 17:38.090]  If you used YouTube, your YouTube account was then a Google plus account, which caused a lot of consternation at the time for people who didn't care.
[17:38.210 --> 17:52.910]  But, uh, but the thing is like, um, people, and, uh, given how much of the mobile phone, uh, ecosystem Google owns and things like that, I don't think people expected, uh, Google plus to be one of the ones that vanishes because Google, it's one of the 900 pound gorillas of the internet.
[17:53.030 --> 17:53.830]  It's always going to be there.
[17:53.990 --> 17:54.770]  They've always been there.
[17:54.930 --> 17:57.270]  You know, Google wave, Google wave.
[17:57.390 --> 17:57.570]  Yes.
[17:58.030 --> 18:03.850]  But, um, and, and that's, uh, that was its own, uh, that's a complete other story, which, uh, which is fascinating.
[18:03.990 --> 18:10.010]  But the, but the thing about Google plus is like, I don't think the average user would have expected that to be one of the things that vaporizes.
[18:10.810 --> 18:16.190]  And given that people in general are expecting half the shutdowns that are going to come, right?
[18:16.390 --> 18:24.690]  I mean, people at this point can't imagine a world without Facebook, cannot world, cannot imagine a world without YouTube.
[18:24.990 --> 18:28.150]  Like they can't, it's not a thing that's real.
[18:28.950 --> 18:42.990]  And I, I have said, you know, don't be surprised about something when my space accidentally in parentheses deleted, um, you know, 12 years of, of audio and video.
[18:43.350 --> 18:45.030]  I said, don't be surprised with Google.
[18:45.170 --> 18:49.510]  And I had all these Google, um, alumni who were like, they would never do that.
[18:49.530 --> 18:52.230]  And they're talking about the engineering of losing data.
[18:52.230 --> 18:53.970]  Oh, the Google fanboys are the worst.
[18:54.450 --> 18:56.190]  And so annoying.
[18:56.630 --> 18:58.430]  Well, because they're right.
[18:58.650 --> 19:14.650]  I'm like, is there really, but what I said was, is there any functional difference between somebody quote unquote screwed up and fully competent, highly paid engineers had nine meetings across 10 weeks on how to properly remove access to all your stuff?
[19:15.130 --> 19:17.430]  Like, where's the fundamental difference?
[19:17.430 --> 19:34.510]  They'll competently, you know, I'm sure the Google plus shutdown being done today is being done according to repeatable, perfect spec, and it's being done just so, so they properly remove everything, but you still don't get to have it.
[19:34.670 --> 19:35.450]  And you're right.
[19:35.590 --> 19:41.430]  Google plus was weird because it's so, well, first of all, did you know, I mean, I think I've mentioned this before.
[19:41.590 --> 19:55.110]  You can still browse GeoCities pages because parts of Yahoo can't remove the GeoCities link, but it's like a tiny percentage of the accounts.
[19:55.110 --> 19:57.090]  It was the ones who bought certain products.
[19:57.490 --> 20:01.130]  And so they can't separate the two.
[20:02.030 --> 20:02.130]  Wow.
[20:02.910 --> 20:11.850]  So there's still these GeoCities URLs floating around that work simply because of that, you know, like the ugliness of, you know, the nest that's down there.
[20:11.850 --> 20:13.930]  They could just let the domain expire though.
[20:14.090 --> 20:14.610]  Wouldn't that work?
[20:15.570 --> 20:24.050]  That would work, but I don't think this is the kind of company that would think that way to expire it until somebody forgets in like 2032.
[20:24.190 --> 20:28.990]  And then yeah, it'll expire and it'll surprise a lot of people.
[20:29.350 --> 20:29.730]  Yeah.
[20:29.790 --> 20:33.770]  Maybe they're anticipating it, but it's, it's a long-term registration.
[20:33.770 --> 20:38.770]  So they just really can't because it's, it's already been paid for until then.
[20:38.770 --> 20:56.670]  And I think that there's, you know, um, uh, this is, this is like, if it, if it sounds like we're just like you, we're all like a bunch of guys sitting up on that Lion King ledge, watching these elephants lumber along going, I think that one's going to crush something.
[20:56.670 --> 20:57.210]  I don't know.
[20:57.510 --> 20:58.870]  That's exactly what it is.
[20:59.010 --> 21:05.290]  It's these large, slow moving monolithic airships that are just floating.
[21:05.630 --> 21:13.470]  And we have some idea of what they're doing from the outside, but it comes down to, they're going to provide these free services.
[21:13.470 --> 21:22.650]  They're going to be really, um, alluring to somebody who doesn't want to spend $15 a month on something.
[21:23.630 --> 21:34.470]  And as a result, they're going to be totally at the whim of the, a change in policy, a change in storage, a change in direction.
[21:35.370 --> 21:41.370]  And it's going to come in the form of an announcement that's going to be a pretty light one and it's going to have consequences.
[21:41.570 --> 21:54.210]  So this archive team thing, this grabbing it, it's nice, but I would never pretend that what we're doing is the natural process, right?
[21:54.310 --> 22:07.990]  It's not, it's not good to throw hundreds of volunteers to bucket brigade, a multi multi-billion dollar companies off, you know, leavings, trying to make them rescuable later.
[22:08.630 --> 22:12.890]  That's not a natural or good or humane situation.
[22:12.890 --> 22:16.750]  That, that, that throws so much on so many places it shouldn't.
[22:16.870 --> 22:21.330]  And I really wish, I really wish things change.
[22:21.930 --> 22:37.810]  And one of the, uh, one of the, uh, real, I think, uh, blatant aspects behind this is we've, uh, we've evolved to this point in the sort of informational sphere where people have grown to depend on, uh, things that they're not paying for to hold mission critical stuff or very important stuff.
[22:38.030 --> 22:43.290]  Um, there are people who don't have copies of their personal digital photos beyond what's in the cloud.
[22:43.490 --> 22:50.190]  Uh, you know, all their important things are on computers that they have no actual control over and, uh, are not paying anything for.
[22:50.370 --> 22:52.870]  And like people in general are okay with this.
[22:52.970 --> 23:07.230]  I still get funny looks when I, when I like question this and, uh, you know, what, what do you, what do you, do you think anything can be done to sort of, um, I don't know, educate the, uh, masses or, or, or, or, or at least, uh, kind of prod people in a direction of,
[23:07.350 --> 23:12.150]  uh, maintaining their own separate copies of things and not depend on like something like that?
[23:13.470 --> 23:21.630]  I, I am starting to despair that I think that's too big a leap in the face of these things.
[23:22.030 --> 23:39.070]  And where I've mostly said it in terms of this, when I'm quoted when I'm this, this last press cycle was it just comes down to laws, to acting like those people who you're hosting on your servers are like tenants and you are a landlord.
[23:39.370 --> 23:48.950]  And there is a process in place that if you shut down, you have to put their data where they can retrieve it at their leisure for X number of years.
[23:49.290 --> 23:52.710]  And you are responsible for the following things.
[23:52.830 --> 24:01.770]  Because right now, every time a company, well, not many of them do, but you know, you, you look at what, how Flickr did things.
[24:02.030 --> 24:05.650]  I, I, I ran out of ways to complain with Flickr.
[24:05.870 --> 24:06.890]  They did it right.
[24:07.110 --> 24:19.510]  And the, the brothers who bought Flickr, they announced, we're going to shut down, we're going to shut down every account that has more than 1,000 photos down to 1,000 photos in about four months.
[24:19.870 --> 24:23.070]  And then everybody complained, they listened.
[24:23.090 --> 24:23.290]  They listened.
[24:23.850 --> 24:28.950]  They said, look, if anything was set creative commons, we won't delete it.
[24:29.610 --> 24:36.810]  Then they modified it to say, look, if you set everything, like creative commons came in, they took a meeting with them.
[24:36.970 --> 24:46.470]  And the result was Flickr said, um, uh, if everybody sets their photos, creative commons, we won't delete those.
[24:47.410 --> 24:49.590]  And then people said, what about the dead people?
[24:49.730 --> 24:52.150]  And then they said, we won't delete the dead people.
[24:53.270 --> 24:55.230]  Like they listened.
[24:55.230 --> 25:02.090]  And it's weird to have the phrase Flickr and they listened in the same sentence, but that is exactly what happened.
[25:02.810 --> 25:15.470]  But the greater, the greater situation there is this is all being done due to the relatively unique character of the McCaskill brothers who own Smug Mug and now Flickr.
[25:15.730 --> 25:17.330]  It's not because of laws.
[25:17.510 --> 25:19.570]  It's not because there's any expectations.
[25:19.890 --> 25:26.770]  It's because, you know, two people decided to be a mensch, not because they had to be a mensch or they had to do basic things.
[25:27.190 --> 25:40.870]  And if we're going to keep dumping everything online, and it really is looking like we are, we have to start treating it like it's not just an AOL CD that showed up that we're experimenting with.
[25:40.870 --> 25:43.630]  Jason, that leads me to my next question.
[25:43.750 --> 25:48.090]  Was there any interaction between Archive.org and Google in any way on this?
[25:48.150 --> 25:49.750]  I know that might be humorous.
[25:50.110 --> 25:53.010]  But were they like, hey, you're doing this?
[25:53.090 --> 25:54.530]  Or hey, how can we help?
[25:54.830 --> 25:56.250]  Or hey, or stop it?
[25:56.390 --> 25:59.030]  Yeah, anything, nothing, I would guess.
[25:59.210 --> 26:00.830]  But what has that been like?
[26:00.990 --> 26:08.350]  I mean, in this particular case, at one point, we triggered off Google's rate limiter, but we figured out how to get around that.
[26:08.530 --> 26:11.830]  But that was just a bot, like trying to figure out what was going on.
[26:13.350 --> 26:18.990]  Nobody, when we went after Tumblr, Tumblr people came.
[26:19.670 --> 26:22.390]  And when we went after Flickr, Flickr people came.
[26:22.610 --> 26:24.650]  But nobody has done anything from Google.
[26:25.090 --> 26:37.350]  So yeah, I mean, Google's not continuing to just do what they do, and then not waste time doing any outreach with even the activist groups.
[26:37.590 --> 26:40.130]  And I don't think that's a big surprise.
[26:40.770 --> 26:48.830]  They don't know how... like Google doesn't... I think when we look back, it's gonna be like, Google really didn't understand people.
[26:49.430 --> 26:52.210]  They understood algorithms.
[26:52.850 --> 27:19.830]  They, like, I think there was like a... I forget which ex-prominent ex-Google employee said this, where they said, Google will spend an enormous amount of money figuring out which of 200 shades of blue this particular button should be, but they won't spend any time on whether or not people are happy clicking on a button and whether they can improve their lives.
[27:20.070 --> 27:22.030]  Like, that's not where their thinking is.
[27:22.810 --> 27:34.230]  So they don't think... they just think of data as data being generated and how to play with it, but they don't... like, they don't have people, like, doing people things, reaching out.
[27:34.610 --> 27:36.130]  And I mean, yeah, you're right.
[27:36.210 --> 27:37.910]  And it's a company character thing.
[27:38.250 --> 27:40.370]  So yeah, no, we've never had that, actually.
[27:40.370 --> 28:09.770]  That kind of goes to what you had said about the nine meetings over 10 months and this sort of antiseptic technical to spec removal, which is now occurred, but not necessarily a policy or a stance or a process long term for these types of situations that actually involves the questions you raised,
[28:09.770 --> 28:11.290]  like in the Flickr example.
[28:11.490 --> 28:12.450]  What about the dead people?
[28:12.570 --> 28:16.670]  What about, you know, and approaching each one of those things along the way.
[28:16.770 --> 28:19.670]  In other words, involving the community that their actions affect.
[28:19.910 --> 28:23.290]  There are so many of these examples, Jason, that you're bringing up.
[28:24.090 --> 28:26.490]  Flickr, Tumblr, GeoCities.
[28:26.850 --> 28:35.870]  It just seems like every company at some point has... hasn't seen the light as far as preserving the data of their users.
[28:35.990 --> 28:42.610]  And I'm wondering, is this something maybe that people should be taking on before it gets to this point?
[28:42.650 --> 28:52.590]  In other words, people preserving the equivalent of Google Plus pages well before they announce anything about shutting down.
[28:54.110 --> 29:00.850]  Well, I think here's, okay, so, like, ideally, right?
[29:01.110 --> 29:03.130]  And I mean, I'll give you an example.
[29:03.510 --> 29:10.310]  GitHub slash Microsoft has always been very open about export.
[29:10.570 --> 29:17.450]  Like, click on this and here, you know, like, every project on GitHub has an export function built into it.
[29:17.510 --> 29:24.330]  You can use their easy to use system, or you can export it in whole and be able to recreate most of what's there.
[29:24.550 --> 29:27.810]  Like, that's baked into the company.
[29:28.090 --> 29:32.730]  But these social network companies, it's just anathema to them.
[29:33.190 --> 29:40.690]  Like, the Google Plus export depends heavily on the existence of a Google Plus.
[29:40.890 --> 29:42.570]  Like, it still calls back.
[29:42.750 --> 29:47.510]  It's obviously not been given anything other than a fig leaf worth of work.
[29:47.870 --> 30:02.550]  Google Takeout generally worked except for where it doesn't, which is the Google export program started by a couple employees in Chicago who were like, this needs to be done, and who fought for years to make it happen.
[30:02.770 --> 30:07.170]  It has generally worked, except for where it generally hasn't.
[30:07.670 --> 30:19.270]  And of course, Facebook created an export function just before Zuckerberg testified before Congress to make them look a little less monopoly.
[30:20.850 --> 30:22.050]  But it's awful.
[30:22.270 --> 30:24.110]  Like, it's an awful export function.
[30:24.130 --> 30:27.710]  It's obviously not done to really be an export function.
[30:28.250 --> 30:29.950]  You know, it's like the complaint department.
[30:30.110 --> 30:35.690]  You just go there and there's like a sign and there's a little pad of paper saying, type in your complaint and push it through the window.
[30:35.850 --> 30:39.370]  And you can grab all of your tweets and you can grab other people's tweets as well.
[30:39.550 --> 30:42.770]  So it's, it's pretty simple to get that information if you want it.
[30:43.370 --> 30:43.770]  Yeah.
[30:43.870 --> 30:48.550]  So there's a, there was a project and I'm sorry, I don't have the link to the project in my brain yet.
[30:48.790 --> 30:53.670]  And I don't know it because, and I actually don't even know if this is the one that will quote unquote win.
[30:54.310 --> 30:56.490]  And it's sponsored by some cloud company.
[30:56.610 --> 30:59.430]  So I'm not a hundred percent enamored, even though it's open source.
[30:59.750 --> 31:01.170]  But the idea is good.
[31:01.210 --> 31:21.510]  It's called, I think they use a phrase kind of like lifeline, which is, it's a program that would run, that would take all of your output to all the social media and puts it into an open standard document on your own website, your own hosting and mirrors it there.
[31:21.670 --> 31:25.590]  So sure you posted to Facebook, but it also posted to that.
[31:25.790 --> 31:27.710]  And sure, you posted to Twitter.
[31:27.930 --> 31:33.630]  And so you end up with this diary of all your output that you kind of tweak as to what's public or not.
[31:34.150 --> 31:39.470]  And the sad part about this is it is such a simple idea.
[31:40.910 --> 31:44.430]  It's like, where was this in 1998?
[31:45.490 --> 31:52.750]  Like the fact that that is so like a 2019, someone's like, here's a great idea.
[31:52.930 --> 31:54.430]  You can mirror your output.
[31:55.210 --> 31:57.150]  You know, Jason, this is something that I've found.
[31:57.330 --> 31:59.390]  I've been, I know you've been archiving things forever.
[31:59.390 --> 32:07.350]  I've been archiving things in one way or another, whether it's, you know, cassette tapes as a kid or radio shows or issues.
[32:08.070 --> 32:13.090]  But I've always noticed that people tend to forget to archive things.
[32:13.210 --> 32:15.330]  They tend to delete important things.
[32:15.450 --> 32:18.330]  They think nobody will be interested beyond the immediate.
[32:18.750 --> 32:28.570]  And what I've always found, and I found this out relatively early as a 10 year old, when I walked around with my microphone and cassette recorder, and people were telling me to stop recording things because it was getting annoying.
[32:28.770 --> 32:31.970]  But whenever I played things back, they were always interested.
[32:32.090 --> 32:41.110]  And that's what told me, keep recording, keep archiving, keep saving, because eventually you'll have the only copy of something and people will turn to you to find out what really happened.
[32:42.290 --> 32:46.410]  Yeah, I think it's a certain, I mean, I mean, in many ways, right?
[32:47.290 --> 32:51.450]  The first kid who asks a question, and the teacher says, don't ask that question.
[32:51.550 --> 32:52.550]  The kid asks it again.
[32:52.670 --> 32:57.570]  They send to the principal's office, and then he asks the principal, and the principal sort of answers it.
[32:57.730 --> 32:58.750]  That kid's a journalist.
[32:58.750 --> 33:01.590]  He just happens to be, he's, you know, nine.
[33:02.170 --> 33:10.330]  And the kid who, like, says, I should take a copy of all these things that my father took me to and put them in a little box and store them under my bed.
[33:10.410 --> 33:11.610]  Like, that kid's an archivist.
[33:12.430 --> 33:13.870]  Not everyone's an archivist.
[33:13.970 --> 33:15.650]  Not everyone's a journalist, you know?
[33:15.990 --> 33:17.770]  Not everyone's an activist.
[33:18.310 --> 33:19.470]  Everybody's a little different.
[33:19.650 --> 33:26.390]  And there will be people like myself and others who will archive some sliver of things.
[33:26.790 --> 33:28.350]  But we're going to have bias.
[33:28.410 --> 33:30.070]  We're going to have preferences.
[33:30.750 --> 33:34.290]  We're going to have methods, some of which work and some of which don't.
[33:34.950 --> 33:44.110]  And the more, to me, the more people who are journalists or have journalistic thoughts, the more people who have archivist thoughts, the better we are.
[33:44.530 --> 33:50.350]  I'd much rather say, here's 50 examples of something and like 30 of them aren't so good.
[33:50.910 --> 33:53.250]  Then here's one example of it.
[33:53.410 --> 33:54.530]  It's all we got.
[33:54.670 --> 33:56.490]  We can't even talk about quality.
[33:57.070 --> 34:05.690]  And I think that comes down to like your family history, especially like the stuff for what I call advocate list material.
[34:06.150 --> 34:12.130]  Like everyone's like, we are going to know everything Trump said ever.
[34:12.790 --> 34:14.050]  We got, it's okay.
[34:14.590 --> 34:15.250]  It's handled.
[34:15.730 --> 34:16.990]  Don't copy paste it.
[34:17.190 --> 34:18.190]  Don't print it out.
[34:18.510 --> 34:20.030]  Well, we don't have everything.
[34:20.410 --> 34:23.050]  There are a few things we'd like to get our hands on, but I hear what you're saying.
[34:23.390 --> 34:23.950]  No, no, no.
[34:24.050 --> 34:25.690]  Everything he said publicly, that's what I mean.
[34:25.810 --> 34:28.990]  Everything that you as an end user, you don't have to copy it.
[34:29.070 --> 34:29.870]  It's going to be handled.
[34:30.230 --> 34:37.690]  But the things your parents said, the things your grandparents said, the things your brother said before he got sick, you know, these things.
[34:37.870 --> 34:40.530]  The sounds of their voices, the way they look, everything.
[34:40.650 --> 34:40.870]  Yes.
[34:41.630 --> 34:46.550]  Those are the things that I want people to think about and go, you know, you're right.
[34:46.810 --> 34:47.730]  You know, you're right.
[34:47.830 --> 34:51.090]  Only my sister has all the family photo albums.
[34:51.290 --> 34:52.510]  I should talk to her.
[34:53.950 --> 35:02.370]  That kind of a linkage, that kind of history, or you figure out that your father worked for the town for 20 years.
[35:02.590 --> 35:06.430]  He's got these little mementos that he as a curator thought were important.
[35:06.450 --> 35:07.710]  And they're up in the attic.
[35:08.330 --> 35:14.690]  I just dealt with a guy whose father loved space, just loved space.
[35:15.050 --> 35:17.590]  And so he was at like all the launches.
[35:17.590 --> 35:19.230]  He took all the photos.
[35:19.450 --> 35:20.310]  They recognized them.
[35:20.390 --> 35:21.990]  They let him go in and take papers.
[35:22.370 --> 35:25.390]  And he died about five or six years ago.
[35:25.590 --> 35:31.030]  And this family had 300 boxes of space stuff.
[35:31.550 --> 35:44.410]  And it's now, with lots of help, going to museums and archives and collections, because this guy just thought, I love space.
[35:44.730 --> 35:49.090]  And his stuff is possibly, in some cases, going to be unique.
[35:49.250 --> 35:51.130]  He wasn't an astronaut.
[35:51.130 --> 35:52.430]  He wasn't in NASA.
[35:52.430 --> 35:54.230]  He was just somebody who cared.
[35:54.890 --> 35:59.670]  And so, if you're passionate about something, keep a record of it.
[35:59.790 --> 36:07.570]  Keep an honest record of what you saw, and make sure people know about it, and share it with them.
[36:08.130 --> 36:13.710]  It sounds basic to certain kinds of people, but there's others who, this may be the first time they're hearing this kind of thought.
[36:14.250 --> 36:14.750]  Absolutely.
[36:14.930 --> 36:16.310]  And if so, we'll get started.
[36:17.330 --> 36:19.850]  Jason Scott, I'm so glad you're an archivist.
[36:19.850 --> 36:23.850]  I can't even begin to fathom how much you have saved and preserved.
[36:25.110 --> 36:28.970]  As we're closing out, I'd just like to ask, how can people help?
[36:29.030 --> 36:32.910]  How can people get involved with archive.org and all the other projects that you're involved in?
[36:33.710 --> 36:35.850]  Well, archive.org is a nonprofit.
[36:36.150 --> 36:37.630]  Nonprofits do take donations.
[36:37.870 --> 36:39.710]  So that's archive.org slash donate.
[36:40.930 --> 36:43.230]  As an archive that's open, we take upload.
[36:43.470 --> 36:49.010]  So if you have something you think should be out there in the world, we have archive.org slash upload.
[36:49.010 --> 36:57.430]  And if you want a profanity-laced railing of the moon against the world of things being lost, my Twitter account is TextFiles.
[36:57.690 --> 37:00.190]  And I'm always up for talking with people.
[37:00.630 --> 37:01.110]  Great.
[37:01.190 --> 37:05.110]  Well, thank you for talking with us and for everything you've done and will continue to do.
[37:05.170 --> 37:06.890]  We've learned so much through this.
[37:07.510 --> 37:15.410]  And I imagine we'll be talking again about something that is deleting all its content in the future that nobody saw coming.
[37:16.070 --> 37:17.190]  Yeah, I'll keep an eye out.
[37:17.350 --> 37:17.810]  All right.
[37:17.910 --> 37:18.170]  All right.
[37:18.310 --> 37:18.830]  Have a good night.
[37:19.430 --> 37:20.430]  Bye-bye, all of you.
[37:20.550 --> 37:20.810]  Bye-bye.
[37:21.170 --> 37:21.330]  Bye.
[37:22.490 --> 37:27.550]  And that's Jason Scott from the Internet Archive, archive.org, textfiles.com.
[37:27.790 --> 37:28.450]  What a guy.
[37:28.870 --> 37:30.510]  The things he has done over the years.
[37:30.710 --> 37:36.530]  And you have a special, you know, part in my heart for preserving things.
[37:38.350 --> 37:50.310]  All the radio shows we've done preserved, all the magazines we've put out preserved, the conferences, the videos, and all kinds of other things that a lot of us collect that nobody sees the point of.
[37:50.430 --> 37:55.330]  But as time goes by, they become more and more interesting and time capsule-ish.
[37:55.330 --> 37:58.870]  Yeah, the formats and stuff that are unique.
[37:59.110 --> 38:09.350]  I mean, I know there's like master tapes and just things that are like, well, you know, we already have a copy of that, but let's keep that because that format's unique or whatever.
[38:09.350 --> 38:28.530]  But it just, it goes on and on and it feels hard to organize sometimes, but just taking a piece of it and breaking that up and doing some of that archival type work, even if, as Jason said, you're not, you know, really passionate and that's not something you're attuned to naturally,
[38:28.530 --> 38:30.270]  it's very worthwhile.
[38:30.850 --> 38:40.890]  Yeah, I, you know, coming up, you know, growing up without the internet and then having it show up, basically, as a thing, really drove me to become basically a digital pack rat.
[38:41.010 --> 38:46.270]  And every time, you know, since the old days, every time I found something I liked, I saved a copy and I, you know, stashed it somewhere.
[38:46.550 --> 38:49.510]  Every time I made something, I saved an extra copy, stashed it somewhere.
[38:49.970 --> 38:57.270]  And especially now that I do sort of artwork and creative stuff, and a lot of it is digital native, there are no physical bits of it whatsoever.
[38:57.270 --> 39:03.330]  Like, it's basically like a sketchbook full of junk that I may never look back on, but maybe someday someone will.
[39:03.570 --> 39:22.130]  And the fact that data, you know, bits of intangible ones and zeros has become such an important part of basically all our lives leads us to really have to consider where that data is, how safe it is, and how we can make sure it stays available to anyone who should have it.
[39:22.130 --> 39:35.130]  The most important thing that I think we can point out is that no matter what you have, whether it's something that's on your computer or if you have a relative that has a computer and you know they have things on there that they want to preserve, make a copy.
[39:35.290 --> 39:36.430]  Always make a copy.
[39:36.510 --> 39:47.990]  Whether it's a copy to an external hard drive that you just plug in on the USB port or something a bit more sophisticated like LTO tape backup or even sticking it in the cloud.
[39:47.990 --> 39:51.530]  I, you know, I'm not a big fan of that, but that is one way of backing up.
[39:51.650 --> 39:53.830]  It's not, it should never be the sole source though.
[39:54.110 --> 40:05.010]  As long as you have a couple of copies of the things that matter to you, when one of them fails and one of them will fail, you have something else and then you can think about, okay, what's my next backup?
[40:05.010 --> 40:06.870]  Yeah, and don't forget other formats.
[40:07.070 --> 40:18.070]  They all have their advantages and disadvantages, but maybe optical discs for a secondary backup, although those deteriorate too, as I said, disadvantages are abound.
[40:18.230 --> 40:25.970]  But the same goes for flash drives or spinning hard drives, whatever it may be, and cloud services as well.
[40:26.130 --> 40:31.690]  So all of those, you know, are available and pick and choose, come up with a system that works for you.
[40:31.690 --> 40:34.950]  And don't discount the interest level of something that you have.
[40:35.710 --> 40:38.870]  Why would anybody be interested in the phone call that I recorded?
[40:39.070 --> 40:49.270]  Well, you know, in addition to what you say personally, maybe there's references to things in history that could be relevant, that could actually shed light on something.
[40:49.450 --> 40:53.890]  Also, the technical sounds of the phone network, which have changed so much over the decades.
[40:54.330 --> 40:57.210]  All of this, preserving all of this tells us so much.
[40:57.210 --> 41:04.290]  So before erasing, before deleting, before throwing out, consider, could this possibly be of interest to somebody, someplace?
[41:04.570 --> 41:06.170]  And if so, think of a way to preserve it.
[41:06.670 --> 41:22.650]  And also, if you are using a free service or even something you pay for, but it's on a cloud service somewhere, it's not something you directly control, you know, treat that as a place where you put stuff, but never depend on it as the only place that you need to put something.
[41:22.650 --> 41:27.730]  Because there will always probably be a time where eventually that will become unavailable to you.
[41:27.930 --> 41:29.890]  And, you know, then where will you be?
[41:30.310 --> 41:30.690]  Exactly.
[41:30.830 --> 41:31.050]  Yes.
[41:31.230 --> 41:36.350]  I also, I'm not a big fan of editing after something has been put out.
[41:36.430 --> 41:40.290]  For instance, I know this is big on social media, Facebook, Twitter.
[41:40.970 --> 41:48.890]  If you say something that upsets somebody, or if you make a mistake, or even type something, you know, with a spelling error, you go back and you fix it.
[41:49.110 --> 41:51.130]  I think once you've said it, you've said it.
[41:51.210 --> 41:52.290]  And you can address it.
[41:52.310 --> 41:59.550]  You can say, okay, I didn't mean that, or here's a correction to that, or I spoke, you know, without the facts.
[41:59.850 --> 42:03.890]  But when you go back and you change it, it's, you know, newspapers.
[42:04.110 --> 42:05.410]  Old newspapers would not do that.
[42:05.530 --> 42:10.330]  You would have Dewey beats Truman forever live on as a big mistake.
[42:11.050 --> 42:17.150]  So, I think we need to own up to that, and not continually try and go back in history and fix things.
[42:18.270 --> 42:18.830]  All right.
[42:19.130 --> 42:21.890]  Let's look at some other bits of news, because there are other things that happened.
[42:22.250 --> 42:24.530]  This is actually something that I forgot about.
[42:24.710 --> 42:25.650]  I knew it was coming.
[42:25.850 --> 42:28.890]  I knew D-Day for Google Plus was imminent.
[42:29.790 --> 42:31.150]  But here's something else.
[42:31.310 --> 42:38.070]  There's a vast collection of data on Facebook users that was exposed to the public until recently on Amazon's cloud computing servers.
[42:38.890 --> 42:47.950]  UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm, said on Wednesday that there were more than 540 million records, including comments, likes, reactions, and account names exposed to the public.
[42:48.090 --> 42:51.210]  The number of users whose data was included is not yet clear.
[42:52.090 --> 43:01.110]  The director of cyber risk research at UpGuard says that the find highlights a problem that is intrinsic with mass data collection.
[43:01.590 --> 43:05.070]  It appeared to have been gathered through a Facebook integration.
[43:05.070 --> 43:13.030]  Now, Facebook allows third-party developers to integrate apps and websites with its platform to allow for functionality, like signing into a service using Facebook.
[43:13.450 --> 43:22.130]  And Facebook has no way of guaranteeing the safe storage of the data of their end users if Facebook allows app developers to harvest it en masse.
[43:22.170 --> 43:24.090]  And that's pretty much what happened here.
[43:24.230 --> 43:30.230]  Now, a Facebook spokesperson says their policies prohibit storing Facebook information in a public database.
[43:31.090 --> 43:34.930]  Once alerted to the issue, we worked with Amazon to take down the databases.
[43:34.930 --> 43:38.750]  We are committed to working with the developers on our platform to protect people's data.
[43:39.090 --> 43:41.850]  However, once it happens, it's happened.
[43:41.970 --> 43:43.010]  You can't really go back.
[43:43.210 --> 43:45.850]  So this is a risk that is inherent.
[43:46.030 --> 43:51.250]  And it's also something to consider whenever you put anything on one of these cloud services.
[43:51.250 --> 43:58.470]  Assume that it will be spread around by somebody who doesn't really have any right to have access to it.
[43:58.750 --> 44:00.370]  It's the nature of the beast.
[44:01.050 --> 44:01.890]  Yeah, absolutely.
[44:02.250 --> 44:07.730]  There's, you know, it's an old saying on the net, you know, that there's no real such thing as the cloud.
[44:07.870 --> 44:09.870]  There's just computers that belong to other people.
[44:10.770 --> 44:12.170]  That's pretty much what it is.
[44:12.850 --> 44:13.430]  Yeah, indeed.
[44:13.630 --> 44:13.730]  Yeah.
[44:13.730 --> 44:15.090]  Other people's computers.
[44:15.970 --> 44:24.710]  So, yeah, be on the lookout for these lumbering elephants, as Jason put it.
[44:24.810 --> 44:25.890]  I like that imagery.
[44:26.170 --> 44:33.910]  And let us know, please, if something is going away and you know, and it's not being spoken about, we'd love to publicize it.
[44:33.990 --> 44:37.750]  You can always write us at OTH at 2600.com.
[44:37.750 --> 44:43.490]  Yes, we do like to hear from our listeners, whether it's by phone calls or by emails.
[44:44.290 --> 44:47.010]  It's always good to read their words.
[44:47.650 --> 44:55.230]  Now, our friends over at APT35 slash Phosphorus, they're the cyber espionage group, I believe, based out of Iran.
[44:55.570 --> 44:55.890]  Yes.
[44:56.170 --> 45:00.530]  Well, they've had a bunch of domains taken away from them.
[45:00.970 --> 45:06.190]  They registered these domains to incorporate the names of well-known brands, like you might have heard of some of them, Microsoft, Yahoo.
[45:06.190 --> 45:12.890]  Who, they were then used to collect login credentials for users that the group had tricked into accessing their sites.
[45:12.890 --> 45:13.490]  All in good fun.
[45:14.070 --> 45:15.690]  The tactic is decades old.
[45:15.930 --> 45:20.550]  Do you remember when we had GuinnessRecords.com, spelled with one N instead of two?
[45:20.750 --> 45:24.950]  We got so much email from people who were submitting Guinness World Records.
[45:24.950 --> 45:25.890]  It was hilarious.
[45:26.090 --> 45:28.910]  We held on to it for a few years, and then we just gave it back to them.
[45:28.990 --> 45:29.870]  Well, we didn't give it back to them.
[45:29.910 --> 45:30.550]  They never had it.
[45:30.790 --> 45:32.110]  But we figured, you know what?
[45:32.110 --> 45:35.510]  This is too much for us to go through, and we've had our fun.
[45:35.510 --> 45:36.670]  And so, you guys might as well have it.
[45:37.210 --> 45:39.510]  But anyway, different story here.
[45:40.150 --> 45:44.150]  Microsoft has confiscated or been given a bunch of domains.
[45:44.430 --> 45:45.210]  And here are some of them.
[45:45.370 --> 45:47.130]  99 of them, I believe, in total.
[45:47.130 --> 45:54.010]  But here are a few highlights, because we obtained a list of the domains that they have seized.
[45:54.450 --> 45:57.050]  Yahoo-verification.org.
[45:57.050 --> 46:03.970]  Yeah, so if you, for some reason, went to yahoo-verification.org, it wasn't really Yahoo, and you weren't really being verified.
[46:03.970 --> 46:09.810]  You were giving your information to somebody that you probably didn't know who was using it for nefarious purposes.
[46:09.810 --> 46:11.510]  But now it's in Microsoft's hands.
[46:11.630 --> 46:12.890]  So I don't know if that's better.
[46:12.890 --> 46:19.550]  But some other ones, support-service.com.
[46:19.610 --> 46:23.350]  Now, you might think support-services, except it doesn't have the C.
[46:23.750 --> 46:34.370]  So if you ever left out the C and type support-services-servise.com, yeah, you might have had some trickery that was unleashed upon you.
[46:34.370 --> 46:37.370]  So, verification-live.com.
[46:37.370 --> 46:38.750]  These are really awful domains.
[46:38.950 --> 46:40.490]  I don't know why anybody would type them.
[46:40.550 --> 46:41.650]  They look kind of official.
[46:42.750 --> 46:47.930]  And I guess if you go to them and you see it on the screen, you might think that that was legitimate.
[46:48.290 --> 46:49.530]  But really, you shouldn't.
[46:49.590 --> 46:50.050]  You shouldn't.
[46:50.110 --> 46:54.190]  Even if you go to com-mailbox.com.
[46:54.830 --> 46:55.730]  You know, that's...
[46:55.730 --> 46:57.110]  What a stupid domain.
[46:57.270 --> 46:58.990]  Com-mailbox.com.
[46:59.070 --> 47:01.150]  Yeah, it's got all the right words, but no.
[47:01.450 --> 47:02.970]  No, that doesn't work.
[47:02.970 --> 47:03.970]  That doesn't add up.
[47:04.370 --> 47:06.430]  But it doesn't have to add up to everybody.
[47:06.430 --> 47:17.570]  But if enough people fall for, like, say, a spam email that has a link that looks like that, and it's somebody who maybe doesn't know all the ins and outs of how domain names work, and they just see this string of stuff, and com, that's in a lot of domains,
[47:17.710 --> 47:19.050]  and dashes, those are in a lot of domains.
[47:19.170 --> 47:26.070]  And so it could, to the untrained eye, look like a legitimate thing they should be clicking on when it isn't.
[47:28.010 --> 47:29.370]  Customer-certificate.com.
[47:29.430 --> 47:30.250]  I like that one.
[47:31.010 --> 47:32.190]  That looks somewhat nice.
[47:32.190 --> 47:38.130]  But, you know, when you think of how many words there are, and you put a hyphen in there, there's all kinds.
[47:38.310 --> 47:48.770]  The people who really win here are the registrars who force you to register all the possible names and combinations, and they make a mint out of this.
[47:50.050 --> 47:52.670]  Accounts-web-mail.com.
[47:52.910 --> 47:56.930]  Well, then you've got to get accounts-mail-web, and it just goes on forever and ever.
[47:57.950 --> 48:00.050]  Session-users-activities.com.
[48:00.150 --> 48:03.370]  So, verify-linkedin.net.
[48:03.890 --> 48:06.190]  Yeah, that one maybe a few people fell for.
[48:06.190 --> 48:16.810]  And then we have yahoo-verification.net, yahoo-verify.net, outlook-verify, just goes on and on, telegram.net.
[48:16.930 --> 48:17.550]  That was a good one.
[48:17.770 --> 48:19.270]  That one, I can't believe they got.
[48:19.890 --> 48:24.090]  But now if you go to telegram-net, you will get Microsoft.
[48:25.670 --> 48:28.770]  com-identifier-servicelog.name.
[48:29.050 --> 48:32.210]  That has got to be the worst domain I've ever heard in my life.
[48:32.390 --> 48:36.690]  Who would ever go to com-identifier-servicelog.name?
[48:36.830 --> 48:38.310]  How many people even know there was a .name?
[48:39.650 --> 48:43.470]  Yeah, that one defies logic.
[48:43.690 --> 48:45.830]  But apparently, it was successful.
[48:46.190 --> 48:49.750]  Yeah, it reminds me of our old pals, the Yes Men, when you go way back.
[48:49.750 --> 48:55.350]  And they had a spoof site that they had put up that was a spoof on the World Trade Organization site.
[48:55.910 --> 48:59.730]  And, you know, if you looked at it hard enough, you could realize that it was a spoof.
[48:59.850 --> 49:09.430]  But they, like with the Guinness thing, they ended up getting incoming email meant for that organization, which enabled them to do all sorts of fun stuff, which if you watch their first movie, The Yes Men, you learn all about.
[49:10.390 --> 49:14.730]  Did we get an explanation as to why Microsoft wanted all these domains?
[49:14.990 --> 49:18.190]  Are they going to be making use of them in any...
[49:18.190 --> 49:22.990]  Well, I imagine they wanted them so that they would stop being used against them.
[49:23.070 --> 49:25.990]  Whether they're going to be using them, I don't think they're going to be using them.
[49:26.090 --> 49:30.270]  They're probably just going to have them dead end or link to something more official.
[49:31.130 --> 49:39.290]  But, you know, whenever you click on an attachment or a link of any sort, you always have to look at the actual name.
[49:39.290 --> 49:43.450]  And you can figure out where it's coming from by doing a who is on it.
[49:44.310 --> 49:46.110]  And you might be surprised.
[49:46.310 --> 49:47.190]  You might be surprised.
[49:47.190 --> 49:59.230]  So many times, every bank that I've ever had any dealings with, and quite a few that I've never had any dealings with, emails me with links and important information that I have to be alerted to.
[49:59.550 --> 50:00.470]  There are a lot of clues.
[50:00.790 --> 50:03.830]  You know, misspelling important words, that's a big clue right there.
[50:03.870 --> 50:05.150]  Your bank's not going to do that.
[50:05.450 --> 50:05.930]  All right?
[50:05.930 --> 50:13.890]  And if it goes to something that does not end in yourbanksname.com, that's probably not your bank then.
[50:13.990 --> 50:17.350]  They might say that they're linking to that.
[50:17.350 --> 50:18.970]  But what do you actually link to?
[50:19.050 --> 50:23.970]  And you can hover over the link and see what is on the bottom line of your browser.
[50:24.450 --> 50:25.870]  You can look at the source code.
[50:25.870 --> 50:27.770]  You can read the actual text of the email.
[50:28.050 --> 50:34.110]  There are all kinds of ways to find out what you're actually linking to before you make the plunge and link to something you don't want to.
[50:34.670 --> 50:47.430]  Or you could just open up a browser window, type in the actual website of your bank, log into that, however you use that, and then see if there's something that they need to tell you that will pop up versus depending on the email to be legit.
[50:47.430 --> 50:48.190]  Yeah.
[50:48.630 --> 50:56.010]  Often a sense of urgency and something sensational probably isn't as urgent or sensational.
[50:57.140 --> 51:01.750]  And yeah, checking with your actual bank if you're at all concerned.
[51:01.890 --> 51:05.230]  But most often they will not send you correspondence.
[51:05.690 --> 51:19.790]  And sometimes that's just gleaned from your traffic, your browsing, and other stuff that is more or less in the clear from the ISP and on the internet at large.
[51:21.070 --> 51:21.590]  Yeah.
[51:21.690 --> 51:34.890]  And you know, if you're ever suspicious about the text of an email or solicitation of some sort, you can just plug the text into Google, put it in quotes, put one sentence, and see if anybody else is talking about that very pitch.
[51:35.390 --> 51:40.850]  Oftentimes you'll find that somebody is warning others of a scam of one sort or another.
[51:41.530 --> 51:44.050]  Or you might find out that it's legitimate, but probably not.
[51:44.250 --> 51:44.790]  Okay.
[51:44.950 --> 51:46.810]  Moving on to some better news.
[51:46.970 --> 51:55.350]  Massachusetts Senator, Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has become the highest profile politician to support right to repair legislation in the United States.
[51:55.490 --> 52:02.890]  Last week, she outlined a sweeping plan to support family farms and diminish the power of corporate agriculture.
[52:02.930 --> 52:09.850]  At the top of the list, she supports a national right to repair law for tractors and other agricultural equipment.
[52:09.890 --> 52:18.870]  And that means she supports the simple idea that people who own a tractor should be able to repair it without permission from John Deere or any other manufacturer.
[52:19.430 --> 52:24.870]  Farmers should be able to repair their own equipment or choose between multiple repair shops, Warren said.
[52:25.070 --> 52:33.070]  That's why I strongly support a national right to repair law that empowers farmers to repair their equipment without going to an authorized agent.
[52:33.310 --> 52:39.050]  Now for now, her proposal would only apply to farm equipment, not consumer electronics, but it's a good first step.
[52:39.090 --> 52:39.570]  Don't you think, Carl?
[52:39.770 --> 52:40.410]  I agree.
[52:40.570 --> 52:40.650]  I know.
[52:40.850 --> 52:57.170]  I particularly think that this is a smart strategy, breaking it into industries, breaking it into a smaller segment of the companies that you'd be going up against, and building a case for an impacted community that is really directly affected.
[52:57.170 --> 53:10.850]  Also, as a byproduct affects a large segment of the economy, in this case, agriculture, and, and you could argue food and, and other things that are related.
[53:11.090 --> 53:26.770]  And that basically eliminates the amount of companies that might be, I guess, more, more resourced and in trying to dilute the policies that you come up with and really make them toothless.
[53:26.770 --> 53:48.590]  If you were to, um, go up against everyone, uh, and mix sort of, uh, the apples of the world with, um, you know, John Deere or whatever, uh, I think they would have a lot easier time, um, uh, lawyering up and, and coming at you with a lot of, um, silly arguments as to why you ought not to have that right.
[53:49.310 --> 54:09.250]  And, um, yeah, there's just a lot with just in tech that they, they could, um, throw at, um, uh, citizens who want to make a change and, and really own the, the kinds of things that they're purchasing instead of just licensing them and, and, um, participating in planned obsolescence and,
[54:09.390 --> 54:11.730]  uh, abject consumerism.
[54:11.890 --> 54:27.010]  And, you know, this is a great way to, um, keep things that are ostensibly not broken, uh, from becoming too costly to repair or too, um, too onerous and, and, and, you know, turning it into basically garbage.
[54:27.210 --> 54:32.270]  Um, and, and I think the other aspect of that is the farmers are really well suited.
[54:32.530 --> 54:37.090]  They're, um, industrious, they're hard workers, they, um, are out there every day.
[54:37.390 --> 54:51.530]  And, um, they're, they're very, very willing if they're only, uh, given the right support and the tools, if they're enabled, especially, uh, with, uh, from a legal perspective, um, they're certainly going to take advantage of that.
[54:51.650 --> 54:53.270]  So this, this is a good strategy.
[54:53.330 --> 54:53.730]  I like it.
[54:53.750 --> 54:54.490]  It's a good strategy.
[54:54.490 --> 54:55.950]  It's a good first step.
[54:56.090 --> 55:03.570]  And I, you know, I'm getting impatient because I want more than just first steps because right now 20 States have, have introduced right to repair legislation.
[55:03.810 --> 55:10.950]  Uh, and most of that, uh, has to do with, uh, farm equipment, consumer electronics, but no laws have been passed thus far.
[55:11.090 --> 55:17.330]  And there's nothing on the national, uh, spectrum, probably because it would be a lot more difficult to get something passed nationally.
[55:17.350 --> 55:31.330]  And if you, if you, if you pass laws in even a handful of States, it makes sense for the companies to voluntarily, uh, uh, abide by those laws nationwide, because otherwise you have to do things differently in different places.
[55:31.710 --> 55:35.850]  Uh, and it seems like that's the best strategy so far, but still no laws yet.
[55:35.990 --> 55:38.390]  Hopefully this is a big step towards getting there.
[55:39.030 --> 55:40.850]  Um, I, like I said, I'm getting impatient.
[55:41.030 --> 55:57.530]  Well, and the other aspect that competitive nature, because a lot of the companies might argue they're not well suited to take care of, uh, um, you know, keeping, uh, older and, and in their opinion, obsolete products, uh, off the, the, out of the realm of their,
[55:57.670 --> 55:58.930]  um, portfolio of stuff.
[55:59.130 --> 56:08.490]  So, uh, but the argument I think that is really compelling is that, yeah, there are other people there, there are independent mechanics, there are shops, there ought to be a healthy marketplace.
[56:08.790 --> 56:22.350]  And those people ought not to be, uh, prevented legally or technically from, um, creating a business around stuff that these manufacturers don't care about or, or won't refuse to, uh, to continue to support.
[56:22.610 --> 56:38.070]  And, and, um, when that opportunity is, is wasted, uh, when you create technical means or legal means that actually, um, removes the possibility of, of a repair business functioning, uh, for stuff that in the manufacturer's opinion is that end of life.
[56:38.590 --> 56:39.110]  All right.
[56:39.150 --> 56:40.370]  Well, that's going to do it for us here tonight.
[56:40.530 --> 56:43.210]  Another edition of off the hook is history.
[56:43.650 --> 56:45.550]  We'd love to hear from you as always.
[56:45.770 --> 56:47.930]  O th at 2600.com.
[56:48.090 --> 56:51.330]  You can tweet at us hacker radio show on Twitter.
[56:51.930 --> 56:56.530]  And, uh, there's, there's other places they can, uh, they can talk to us and get the show.
[56:56.670 --> 57:03.150]  We can hear all the, um, all the back episodes, www.2600.com slash off the hook.
[57:03.830 --> 57:10.510]  And, uh, also you can, uh, meet up with your local hacker community or tinkerer community, um, 2600.com slash meetings.
[57:10.830 --> 57:12.310]  Uh, it happens all over the place this Friday.
[57:12.510 --> 57:14.230]  If it doesn't happen near you, you can start it.
[57:14.670 --> 57:15.270]  That's right.
[57:15.390 --> 57:15.770]  That's right.
[57:16.170 --> 57:20.470]  Uh, we'll be back again next week with more developments and more surprises.
[57:20.750 --> 57:21.010]  Stay tuned.
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[01:00:08.200 --> 01:00:14.640]  No roads lead to Newark, where a national town hall meeting on gentrification, the Negro removal program of the 21st century.