blues women of yesteryear and today so mark that date on your calendar friday september 20th from
12 midnight to 2 a.m tangled up in blues only on wbai in new york 99.5 fm you know it'll be raver
dynamic the midnight ravers where every show is a special
and this is radio station wbai new york time is eight o'clock time once again for off the hook
i cut myself while shaving now i can't make a call we couldn't get much worse
but if they could they would for the best expect the worst i hope that's understood
And a very good evening to everybody's program is off the hook Emmanuel Goldstein here with
you joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly, good evening, Alex, good evening, and Kyle, MasterCard.
What?
Excuse me.
I didn't sound like you.
I'm sorry.
What you got there?
Oh, nothing.
Um, I think it's someone impersonating my credit card.
Really?
Yeah.
Next and discover card.
We would like to reward you if you have been making your payments on time for the past
six months or more.
We are excited to inform you that you may qualify for zero to 6% interest on your credit
card debt.
If you still owe more than $3,000 in your combined credit card, press one now to avail
this offer.
Don't avail the offer.
Kyle.
It's it's not worth availing.
I know when my credit card calls me and that is not my credit card.
You don't have a discover card too.
I can attest to that.
I think they name all the credit cards.
Everything.
Does anyone still have a discover?
Does anyone in this room have a discover card?
Negative.
All right.
I didn't take so long to answer that.
But no, no, nobody.
Not that I know of.
Yeah.
That's the point.
Always been the case.
So yeah, we we're back.
We're back on the air.
Some people might be surprised by that.
But you know what?
We we we stated our feelings last week on how we feel about freedom of speech on the
airwaves and things like that.
And happy to say not a debate, not something that is is debated amongst the people here.
So good to know.
Good to know that we will continue doing what we have done for decades.
And that's basically just telling you about high technology, telling you about the world
out there and not representing anybody except ourselves.
And I don't think you'd expect any less.
Absolutely.
I couldn't be here last week, but I listened and everything you guys said.
Yeah.
Co-signed.
I wasn't confused about it.
I'm glad we're all on the same page.
Yeah.
You know, who's not on the same page is Equifax.
Do you remember Equifax, their data breach and how how nasty that was for so many people?
Oh, yeah.
And like there was a huge settlement for everyone that was a victim that fell victim to this.
Yeah.
You know, we all got emails saying that we were going to get one hundred twenty five
dollars simply by by signing on to a class action lawsuit.
Turns out nobody's getting one hundred twenty five dollars.
In fact, most of us aren't going to get anything.
What happened was they they sent out well, there was a website actually that you could
go to and basically give them all your information and they would send you one hundred twenty
five dollars.
And that just changed.
Turned out to be a complete lie.
What they say now is that you can only get one hundred twenty five dollars if you can
prove that you had signed up with their service or an equivalent service at the time.
Otherwise you won't get the one hundred twenty five dollars.
Not that you would even get that amount anyway.
You'll probably get something like a dollar seventy five.
But what you can also do is sign up for their service for free for a number of years and
they promise that they won't harangue you for upgrades and extensions when that period
is over.
Just another scam, just another way that they get away with storing information on us, having
it become insecure, having it become compromised.
And they just wind up continuing to exist.
I don't see how this company is allowed to continue to exist after what they did.
I mean, and think about, remember in the aftermath of the breach, if I recall correctly, there
was a massive cyber squatting campaign on their breach notification website that was
sending out misinformation.
I mean, the whole thing appeared to have been mishandled pretty massively from the outset.
And then the fact that they're asking for more of your information in order to sign
up for business.
That's what they do.
I know they want to continue their business.
And 147 million Americans, that's about half of us had our data breach thanks to them.
Well, it's quite a bit.
I mean, this is obviously a massive issue and it's part of the reason why state legislatures
are jumping into action and trying to pass their own privacy laws because their citizens
continually are compromised by this.
And state legislatures, I think, are really beginning to lead the charge here.
And hopefully there'll be some measure of accountability for these types of breaches.
Accountability is a funny thing.
I mean, imagine any of us in this room getting caught doing something bad, maybe something
criminal even.
Yeah.
What about it?
Yeah.
Then just imagine any of us telling the courts or the authorities or whoever, yeah, we'll
come and serve some jail time maybe in a few years.
No, no.
You don't do that.
I just had a conversation about that.
Don't do that.
But if we promise to, and then when the day comes, we just decide not to.
And instead offer them a chance to buy something from us.
Everything's even then, right?
You know, that's a pretty good deal, actually.
It's a pretty sweet deal.
Wow.
So, anyway, if you want to find out if you were impacted by the Equifax data breach,
we can save you a lot of time and tell you, yeah, you probably were.
You can go to this website, eligibility, and you have to know how to spell all the words
because I'm not going to spell them all out, eligibility.equifaxbreachsettlement.
And that is, consider that one word, all right?
No dots or dashes between that word, Equifax Breach Settlement, all right?
So eligibility.equifaxbreachsettlement.com slash EN for English slash eligibility.
And you've already spelled that word before.
I don't know why they do it twice, but that's what you do.
And you basically, you have to give them information, of course, which is kind of expected, I guess,
if you want to find out something.
Your last name, along with the last six digits of your social security number.
Most ask for four, but because this is really professional, they ask for six.
I don't know.
But what it'll do is it'll tell you if you were affected or not affected, and it doesn't
really matter either way if you were affected, yeah, okay, you're entitled, this is what
you're entitled to, supposedly, to either 10 years of free credit monitoring or up
to $125 if you decide not to enroll because you already have credit monitoring.
So you won't even be eligible for $125 if you don't already have credit monitoring.
I don't know why that's a requirement.
Doesn't make any sense to me.
They're a bit ambiguous regarding the cash payout.
In some cases, they refer to $125 specifically.
In other cases, they say up to $125.
Now, the free credit monitoring includes at least four years of free monitoring of your
credit report at all three credit bureaus, and, well, that's three of you, so each of
you name one, and obviously, we're already talking about one, so whoever says it first
will get a free pass.
TRW.
Okay, no, that's completely wrong because it used to be a name of a company, and I can't
believe you didn't name the one we're talking about.
How about you, Kyle?
Qualcomm.
Is anybody paying attention?
I don't know.
You're in the same room, for God's sake.
Equitrade.
Equi...
I don't know.
Alex, save me here.
I was going to say TRW as well.
Experian.
We're talking about it right now.
Experian.
The story we're talking about.
For God's sake.
There's Equifax.
Thank you.
That's all I wanted, the story we're talking about.
If I can't get the people in the same room as me to pay attention.
It's so obvious.
I was wondering.
It was very obvious, but now there's two others that you guys...
Well, you don't have to name it because you were smart enough to name the name that I've
been saying over and over again.
You get one guess each, then we have to move on.
I think...
And don't say TRW and don't say Qualcomm, for God's sake.
QVC.
All right.
That's it, Kyle.
You're out.
No.
Okay.
Can I just make a point?
I would like really more than hearing about any of this or going to any of their stupid
sites, and I'm going to...
You know how to achieve that?
By finishing the story, by humoring me and naming two other credit companies so that
we become educated and know the credit companies that are monitoring us.
Rob?
Well, Alex did say Experian.
All right.
And that is one of them.
That is one of them.
And the other one is TransUnion.
So Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
You were going to say that, right, Kyle?
I was going to say ValueJet, but that's fine.
Never mind.
All right.
So where was I going with that?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So you get four years of free monitoring of your credit report.
You basically find out if they screw up again.
Or you also find out if people are looking you in the eye.
So you get four years of free monitoring of your credit report.
You basically find out if they screw up again.
Or you also find out if people are looking you in the eye.
important to know if you're replying for a credit card.
Of course, you'd expect that.
Or a mortgage or something like that.
Or if somebody, you know, in Texas or something, because I'm not going to pick a foreign country,
I'll pick a state, is stealing your identity.
Yeah.
You might find out that way.
What steps have they taken to improve security around either of their companies?
They haven't done a damn thing, except get out of the question.
Because I know the answer.
But go ahead.
They're not even going to go out on a limb that they can't tell us because it's so secret
and so secure and they're doing such a good job and hiring so many contractors and consultants.
The fact that they are even in business is a miscarriage of justice.
But, you know, the interesting thing here, which would be somewhat ironical too, is if
as a result of the Equifax breach, people's personal information was compromised to the
extent that it then allowed them to sign up for the breach notification as these breached
parties through Equifax and then through these certain credit monitoring.
Forward the mail somehow so that they get the $125 checks themselves.
Well, even more to the point.
Alex, that's brilliant.
Yes.
Well, you know, you came up with it.
You are a brilliant legal mind or in this case, illegal mind.
But still, it's wow.
That's great.
So basically what you're saying is, no, we just need to know the last name.
Hang on.
The last name and the last six digits of their SSN, which, you know, I can probably find
some connections to that.
And then what we have to do is somehow divert the mailing address so that it goes to the
PLB, you know, the one that we use.
And we just collect the checks.
Isn't that fraud?
I mean, can't lawyers –
It technically might be considered fraud.
Well, this is all hypothetical here, I would think, you know.
And yeah, well, the – so yes, my point though was that you could use the personal information
of the people that were breached, right, and sign up for these credit reporting, credit
monitoring things.
Sometimes some of these services will allow you, if you have a certain amount of personal
information, if you've verified yourself, to identify the passwords that you've used
in the past that may have been breached as well.
And so you may be able to recycle those passwords.
So these breaches could lead to further breaches, which could lead to further breaches.
Well, I think you're referring to the Yahoo breach, which has over a billion passwords
in various places.
Yeah, it's massive.
You can look up.
Yeah.
No, no.
That was a compilation.
It was not just Yahoo, I think, if I think it's the same –
It is a compilation.
You're right.
Yeah.
It's a compilation up to or after that breach.
Yeah.
Yahoo played a big part in it.
They deserve a lot of credit for that.
And it's very handy.
It's very handy.
You can look up almost anybody and find out what passwords they've used.
And, you know, any one of you guys, if you want that information, it's kind of embarrassing
sometimes.
Oh, yeah.
Speaking of embarrassing, because obviously in the aftermath of the Equifax breach, they
had this sort of embarrassing issue with domain permutation.
So what did they do in response now?
They created this extraordinarily long domain name, EquifaxBreachSettlement.com.
While you were asking us obvious questions, I SSH'd into our server and did a little
digging in our office, and I ran a permutation scan on EquifaxBreachSettlement.com and have
identified a massive amount of sub-responses.
It's like having Mr. Robot right here in the studio.
I mean, you just – you tunneled into SSH and the lights even flickered for a second.
Well, you know, it's WBAI.
That's why we need to fundraise.
You know, SSHing can decrease the overall power surge.
Get the e-coin over.
Yeah.
I mean, massive.
What kind of encryption are you using?
It's very resource intensive.
I didn't use Telnet.
I'll put it that way.
But, no, I mean, it's kind of incredible that they're not enforcing and they're
not watching the same thing that caused them a massive amount of –
Right.
No, you raise a good point because EquifaxBreachSettlement.com is a stupid domain name to have when you want
people to believe that you're Equifax because you could, you know, you could spell settlement
with one T or something, and I'll bet you'll get half the traffic from people that, you
know, didn't type it properly, didn't spell it properly.
It's a very easy way to fool people.
Well, I mean, here's one, EquifaxBreachSettlement.com, B-R-E-W-C-H-S-E-T-T-L-E-M-E-N-T.com.
And you know, this is such a tricky domain name to spell that it would be obvious – well,
you could have even one or two permutations of that domain, possibly even three, and it
might still be visually confusing to a user, and a really good way to fish for credentials,
harvest credentials.
Wow.
Definitely.
And that's just for trying to find out if you were breached in the first place.
See, how difficult would it have been on the organizational end to just make this Equifax.com
slash something?
Yeah.
Or like they started, Equifax dot – or eligibility dot Equifax.com.
That would have done it.
Well, eligibility is a confusing word for a lot of people, especially if you're not
a non-native speaker.
You know, eligibility with the G sounding like a J and all – you know, it's tricky.
And then to have an eligibility subdomain and then slash EN slash eligibility again?
Well, no, I didn't – I wasn't saying we should have the second eligibility, only
the first one.
No, I understand that, but I don't understand why they need the redundancy of an eligibility
subdomain and then an eligibility directory, presumably.
If we can't get past this part, the domain name, imagine the problems we're going to
have with the way they run their whole operation.
But anyway, if I could just finish what you're entitled to because we've yet to get that
out.
Four years of free monitoring of your credit report at all three credit bureaus, Equifax,
Experian, and TransUnion, and $1 million of identity theft insurance, whatever that is.
Up to six more years of free monitoring of your Equifax credit report.
I'm not sure when they throw that in.
Now, you're also entitled to cash payments of up to $20,000 per person, now we're talking,
resulting from the breach, including losses from unauthorized charges to your accounts,
the cost of freezing or unfreezing your credit report, the cost of credit monitoring, fees
you paid to professionals like an accountant or attorney, loan shark, whatever, other expenses
like notary fees or document shipping fees and postage, mileage and phone charges, and
additional cash payments for time you spent on the breach.
Like if you submitted a claim for 10 hours or less of time you spent, you have to describe
the actions you took and the time you spent doing those things.
But if you claim more than 10 hours, you have to describe the actions you took and provide
documents that show identity theft, fraud, or other misuse of your information.
It's a lot of work to go through to get a measly amount of money they're going to give
you, which probably isn't going to be much at all.
And I'm sure that if you read some of the fine print, and I haven't read the fine print
on this, so I'm making an assumption here, but all of these awards that they're claiming
they're going to give you, this $20,000, if there's losses in your bank account, et cetera,
I would presume, and I'm probably right, that all of this has to be tied causally to the
Equifax breach.
And that's a very difficult thing for any individual to do, is to prove that I lost
money directly as a result of Equifax's negligence.
And then signing up for these services, too, you have to be extraordinarily careful because
it may limit your ability.
Once you sign up for this, it could be what's known in the legal world as an accord in satisfaction.
So you may be waiving your right to sue them in court, to bring them into an arbitration,
and waiving your private right of action to any kind of lawsuit that would otherwise
arise from or as a result of the Equifax breach, which could, quite frankly, be much more substantial
than a $20,000 payout ceiling that they're offering right now.
But what would you recommend people do who feel like they were victimized by this?
Should they hold out and sue Equifax on their own, or should they just swallow their pride
and get the six years of credit monitoring?
I mean, frankly, it's not a bad idea to get this kind of thing.
In the wake of the OPM breach, when I received two data breach notifications.
OPM breach?
OPM, our Office of Personnel Management.
Oh.
I've misunderstood that story for a while.
Right.
Yes.
I can imagine.
We're here to clear things up for you.
No, I learn a lot from every show.
Part of the show.
Absolutely.
I mean, as part of that, I got several years of credit monitoring, and some of it was actually
quite good.
In one of these services that they offered us, we were allowed to see all the sex offenders
in our areas.
And it would alert you if a sex offender moved into your area.
And what does that have to do with your credit report?
It was just general monitoring.
It was something that was tacked onto it.
It was really kind of bizarre.
But that's not monitoring your credit report.
That's spying on other people.
Yeah.
Yeah, well.
So because you have your credit report monitored, you get to find out where all the sex offenders
are?
Well, you can find that out anyway through the National Sex Offender Registry.
I think it was just taking data from that and making it more accessible to you and pushing
it out to you in an email if a sex offender moved into your area.
So you may get some interesting goods and services like that from this.
To bring a private right of action and find an attorney that would be able to do that
for you would be very time consuming.
And most lawyers are not going to take these kinds of cases unless they're class actions.
So coming together and bringing a class action could be something very valuable.
But again, it's the lawyers that make the money off this, not necessarily the class
members.
Well, the one thing available to you is you can freeze your credit reports at all three
major bureaus.
And that is something that you can do for free, I think, post the breach.
You can also unfreeze it yourself.
And it's all an automatic process.
It takes like 10 minutes.
And you can even freeze everything up.
And then if you actually want to apply for something, unfreeze it for long enough for
that to go through.
Then freeze it again.
And this is something that's already available to you at no charge.
So wait, when you want to apply for a credit card, you have to unfreeze your credit report
so that they can access it to look you up.
But when you're not applying for something, it's all just frozen and nobody can see it?
It's not that nobody can see it.
It's that it's marked frozen in the system so that people can't use it to start something
up.
Like say somebody's stolen your information, it won't do them any good in terms of getting
a credit card in your name because if your report's frozen, then you can't apply for
that card.
What if they call you and say, hey, I've got a great credit card for you to apply for.
You just have to unfreeze your account and then they go ballistic and steal your identity
after all.
Then that's on you.
But, you know, be discriminating when it comes to people calling you, offering you credit
stuff.
But you can freeze and unfreeze your credit report at the three big bureaus.
I'm very curious.
For those people currently gaining access to the credit reporting agencies, does it
flag the people whose accounts are frozen?
Because wouldn't that be something to get a list of all the people who froze their accounts?
Then you'd be able to send them mail saying, hey, we know that you're somebody who values
their privacy and is rather smart about that and we have a special offer for you.
I think that's a scam that could work.
You always come up with the good ideas.
Well, you've got to think that way.
But the thing is, to get back to the Yahoo and the other major breach that spanned over
a billion accounts, which is unbelievable, you may have gotten emails, these threatening
emails, the Bitcoin ones that say, hey, I caught you pleasuring yourself in front of
your computer somehow and somehow I can prove what you were looking at when you were doing
that.
And, you know, I'm going to release this unless you transfer this amount of Bitcoin to my
Bitcoin wallet.
And if you don't know how to use Bitcoin, here's a handy guide on how to do that.
And they really walk you through it.
And sometimes what they do is they tell you your password and it might freak you out a
lot.
How do they know my password?
That is how they know your password, through that massive database of over a billion users.
And if you've ever used a particular password, say to sign up for, I don't know, a AAA account,
something kind of useless that you're not going to use for major things, but just kind
of handy to sign in and maybe get a map or something like that.
But you use a throwaway password, hopefully use a throwaway password, but you might use
the same password for everything.
And in those cases, you'll see that password in that email and you'll wonder how they got
that.
They got it through that massive breach and you better change your passwords.
That's the biggest warning we can give you.
I feel victimized by all the things they're putting people through just to reclaim something
that ostensibly they're responsible for.
And I'm insulted at the amount of, I guess what looks like legal aid work they force
you to do and to engage in as a part of basically their process, especially if any of the settlement
is actually going to their coffers instead of the actual victims of that.
And I can't wait till we have social credit monitoring.
Social credit monitoring.
That's coming.
They have it in China.
It'll be a thrill.
Wow.
All right.
We've got an interesting...
No, no.
I just wanted to bring this up.
I think it's kind of interesting.
It might make for some conversation.
There's an article in The Times on the iPhone.
It's a review.
This is pretty common now because, well, the subtitle is Thinking Differently in the Golden
Age of Smartphones by Brian Chen.
And basically he's saying instead of every two years, if you have an iPhone of basically
around 2015 or 16, it would basically be sufficient.
These upgrades aren't really as necessary given the speeds that phones of that generation,
particularly 6s and 7 and later.
Earlier than that, it might be worthwhile.
But I think this is kind of interesting because as we're talking about rare earth materials,
and gold and sustainable or fair sourcing and all of the things that go into these devices,
we are kind of living in a golden age.
I was wondering what you guys think.
It is this world where we're using all this software, but even a phone that's three years
old can do pretty much everything and still astounding things with all the sensors and
things that come with smartphones.
And I was just wondering, do you guys agree?
Are we in the golden age?
I just had a question because you mentioned upgrading phones.
When you say upgrade, do you mean upgrade or do you mean replace?
Is it a replacement?
You raise a good point.
This is a really good point.
It's actually, it is a replacement.
So you're basically paying a thousand bucks for a phone again.
You have to buy it anew.
And that is an excellent point.
We talk about, oh, you're upgrading.
Well, you're getting hardware that can be upgraded when the closed software platform
decides it will push an upgrade to that device.
But if it's so old and it doesn't work with the current version, in this case, iOS, then
you actually, you're physically prevented from upgrading because they stop supporting
older models.
This is the problem I've had with Apple since the mid 80s.
You buy something from them, you buy hardware, works great.
Then it starts getting a little slower.
Then the software starts changing so that you have to get a new device for the software
to work.
And you just keep playing that game until you're constantly buying new hardware and
new software.
It's either hardware features or it's software versions that you depend on, stuff that you
would like feature wise or stuff you rely on software wise.
And all of a sudden, the very important business software or graphic software that you need
is not supported unless you spend $5,000 or whatever.
I know this is a part of technology growing and becoming more advanced and faster and
things like that.
It just seems like with Apple, they really ram it down your throat and they really push
you to keep buying basically the same thing over and over again with a little bit of an
increase in speed.
And people willingly do this.
You go to the Mac stores and you just watch the Apple, whatever they call those places.
I'm afraid of them.
And people just willingly handing over the cash and just buying the same things over
and over again.
I don't know.
Not my scene.
Yeah.
I mean, Apple are pioneers in this field.
I think they were the first ones to really sell to people devices that they can't readily
change their own batteries in.
It was in the old iPods and the first iPhones.
And now everyone's doing that where the battery is a sealed item in the device, leaving aside
the fact that the battery itself is a consumable item.
Batteries degrade over time.
He actually addresses that in the article.
He says, for those the younger iPhones, there are ways to get more mileage out of your current
device.
While the newest iPhones have superb battery life several hours longer than the last generation,
a fresh battery in your existing gadget costs only 50 to 70 dollars.
That's because there are there are kind of cottage industries for battery replacement,
screen repair, stuff like that, which kind of goes into stuff we've talked about with
right to repair.
They fought that tooth and nail.
Exactly.
Right.
For people to repair their own machine.
They actually started really like, as you said, kicking and screaming, started distributing
machines that could replace the screens.
And they were built by Apple and proprietary.
And then slowly they were were cajoled into actually providing repair shops, independent
shops, not well, somewhat authorized shops, let's say, other than the Apple store to repair
and and compete in that way.
And Apple's not alone in this.
Android does it, too.
I think every every manufacturer does this to an extent.
It just seems like Apple really pushes it as much as they possibly can.
You know, an answer to your question as far as, quote unquote, upgrading or replacing
your phone.
You know, for me, I like to hold on to a phone for a while.
There are people who replace them every six months or every year.
And I mean, is it is it crazy to hold on to a phone for five years?
It probably is.
But, you know, I like my phone.
I kind of like my phone.
Actually, today it was driving me crazy because we were using ways to get in here and all
of a sudden didn't know where we were is putting us on side roads and driving through people's
lawns and things.
So I thought it was fun.
And if I just restarted the program, it worked fine.
But wow, you know, some people would replace their phones over something like that.
Yeah, I I can't explain it.
So I'm going to say it's it's solar flares and gamma radiation or something.
I know I can get 18 cameras in the next model or whatever.
I'm happy with what I have.
You know, I would like better voice quality.
I'd like to be able to hear the person on the other end of the phone because it is a
phone after all.
But I'm just amazed that I can I can use the Internet and, you know, basically tie
my computer into it and get all kinds of neat features and apps and things like that.
And I think people should be encouraged to use these as much as possible, but not constantly
be replacing them.
I think so, too.
And as someone who kind of has been around for the entirety of like the epoch of GSM,
I I really am sort of used and previous protocols and platforms.
I think I think of it as like, well, when we change the systems, you know, from one
type of one protocol or another from like GSM or CDMA or other technologies, then maybe,
yeah, you sort of you kind of have to.
And that actually kind of brings me to why right now it might be a good idea to wait.
And that's because of something I mentioned at the New Year, which is the rollout of 5G.
So no sooner do you spend a grand or a lot, shall we say, you know, for you get your three
cameras for a couple of months and then all of a sudden everyone's moving.
And so that, I think, is something to consider as well.
Like when the technology itself, the newer antenna and cellular technology, as those
generations evolve, it's something to consider because though there is some backwards
compatibility, they'll keep existing LTE antenna and so on as a part of the network
because not everyone's going to change immediately.
You may be enticed by the features and promise of such a change.
And that that has reigned true throughout.
I know there were no color phones before.
There were not a lot of color phones, in other words, color screens.
Until early GSM phones and so on and so forth.
So anyway, it's kind of interesting.
And I think also that I've not used iPhones.
I think it's actually kind of amazing.
I've been able to kind of avoid it for so long.
As I say, I probably I could figure it out in not too many minutes.
But I think the two year thing is excessive, especially outside of these cell network
generational changes, because at that point it is really just fashion.
And with everything being so fast and as you said, the basics of call quality not really
having changed as much, although video chats improved a lot and those kinds of things are
kind of neat evolutions.
It is it is kind of more vanity and fashion than anything.
I mean, you bring up a good point, but on the fashion bit, I think it's actually, you
know, almost like a status symbol or, you know, cooler to have an older iPhone that
you're still using. I mean, I see somebody still using an iPhone 5 or an iPhone 6.
It's like a conversation piece.
That's amazing. You're still using that thing.
You know, it's incredible. You know, the issues that I have with my iPhone and I agree
with you, I don't think we should continually replace these things are extraordinarily
expensive. But the actual hardware seems to be getting cheaper as well.
The last two iPhones I've had, I've had major issues with the speakers, you know, the
speakerphone. And then actually when you say cheaper, you don't mean cheaper in price.
You mean cheaper and cheaper in quality.
That's correct. Yes.
Let me qualify that.
Indeed. Yeah. But it's you know, we forget that.
They're phones, too.
I mean, the phone function of the iPhone seems to be severely degrading over time.
It becomes harder and harder to actually use it as a phone and easier and easier to
snap pictures, consume content, et cetera, et cetera.
But I still want to use it primarily as a phone.
I honestly think they get away with that because most people are not most of you.
I don't want to make any kind of absolute, but a lot of people use Bluetooth and stuff.
So so they're not going to like they're using their their earpiece or they're syncing
it with a car. So when they're actually making a call, they're not even relying on
it. I mean, I know what you're saying, like speakerphone and so on and so forth, but
they can get away with it because a lot of people aren't using those aspects of the
phone even to make phone calls.
That's just one thing I thought as you were saying that.
I'm so sick of the whole thing.
It's a rat race.
I think we are we are due to jump off.
Yeah, I just it is fashion.
And personally, I have never been into leaving the house with something in my pocket
so easy to get lost or stolen that costs that much.
I mean, I'm I have a I have a great tradition of buying older phones or, you know,
just slipped out of fashion phones that I can get for comparatively cheap, but that
still do the job that I want it to.
But yet somehow we've all been convinced to get these massively expensive devices and
almost everybody has one in their pockets.
And I just wonder how how they managed to do that, how they I guess because everybody
else's is doing it.
Everybody else has one.
And in order to to be able to communicate and survive and be accepted, you absolutely
have to have one of these things or all kinds of of conditions where you have to have a
cell phone or you simply can't participate in the in various activities.
But really, you know, do people really need these devices?
I think also people make a lot of sacrifices so that they can make that purchase and
other not just like selling kidneys and stuff.
I'm sure there's a lot of that and plasma and all those values as people doing that.
I'm not I'm not really joking, but I think that people have they make calculations
like, well, I'll use this as my computer or I'll use this as my broadband.
And there are real arguments with the features and ability to do things like make
hotspots and so on. You could use it as your connection to Internet and rationalize
maybe the expense.
That's great. But to be to be convinced you have to do it again in two years.
Oh, yeah. And I think you're you're absolutely that upgrading word is is so misleading.
It's not an upgrade. I mean, you you you are absolutely replacing it.
So that that's something that I think should change or at least be more less
disingenuous. I think if you have one, you should be able to trade it in for like maybe
60 percent of the price, if not more.
And, you know, then they get recycled and you're not just cash.
What do you guys do with your old phones?
I save all of mine.
I have the old Ericsson phones from from the Omnipoint days in the 1990s.
I want to turn one of those on and see if I can still get a signal.
I have Qualcomm's. I've got all kinds of whole box full of cell phone.
I can't throw them away. It's sentimental reasons.
I donate mine to the Trump campaign, hopefully at a high velocity.
Yeah. Again, as per WBI policy, that is my opinion and my opinion alone.
There are projects like Open BTS and basically very low power cellular.
I guess they're kind of like an antenna or you can basically set up.
It's a base station software package that I believe runs in Linux.
And you can essentially run that, although I'm not sure what the power ratings are
exactly and what what you're able to do.
But I think as far as in a lab or on a test bench, you would you might be able to
get one of those to maybe receive an SMS from one of these open source base station
projects. Just putting that out there, if anyone's interested in tinkering with old
phones there, there's still there's still antennas they can still receive.
So it might be a cool way to learn those older protocols.
There are also ways you can donate older phones to things like shelters, women's
shelters where they just need something that you can you can dial an emergency
number on and then don't necessarily need any other service hooked up.
So old phones are still useful for that.
Yeah. And if you have any more details on that places people can donate funds, please
write to us. OTH at 2600 dot com.
We at Off the Hook are fascinated in hearing about these things.
Also, we'll be taking some phone calls in a little bit if you want to join the
conversation. 212-209-2877.
But here's some news about another data breach since we're on the subject of data
breaches. The personal records of most of Ecuador's population, including children,
has been left exposed online due to a misconfigured database.
This story comes from ZDNet, the database and Elasticsearch server, whatever
that is. Elasticsearch is an Apache project to basically it's a search engine, an
open source search engine package that you can run for instead of using like Google or
another provider for your site.
I guess it didn't work out for them this time.
It was discovered a couple of weeks ago by VPN mentor security researchers, Noam
Rotem and Ran Lokar, who shared their findings with ZDNet.
And they all worked together to analyze the leaking data, verify its authenticity and
contact the server owner to tell them to turn it off or something.
20.8 million user records, number larger than the country's total population count.
I don't know how they managed that exactly, but OK, the bigger number comes from
duplicate records or older entries containing the data of deceased persons.
So even if you're dead, you're not safe from having your data stolen.
Oh, my God. So, yes, it's not limited to the United States, obviously.
Now, this is a particularly interesting data breach as well, because it raises the
question of who, who and why was this was responsible for this data?
It wasn't belonging to the government of Ecuador.
It was belonging to a private entity that seemed to be operating akin to something
like a like a credit reporting agency or something that was collecting a lot of
financial data and cross referencing it with other data like car ownership,
locations, children, real estate, et cetera.
And so it seems like this was some kind of database or some kind of massive amount of
data that was being correlated on the population of Ecuador, probably to be sold to
advertisers. So, I mean, this should be a cautionary tale, you know, just sort of like,
you know, the planet Venus is a cautionary tale when it comes to global warming and
and greenhouse gases and things like that.
Right. And it's just massive pressure cooker.
I mean, this is what could happen, you know, if we do not hold companies to account when
it comes to best practices for information security, being good stewards of our data and
allowing us access to know what it is the hell they're actually doing with this data.
So, I mean, having these opaque systems operated by these third parties, it's a big
problem. This demonstrates it very clearly.
All right. We're going to see who's on the telephone.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
All right. I had a question I thought you might know the answer to that's been on my
mind. It's possible about cell phones.
You were mentioning, in fact, that they use rare earths.
And people will buy one and then they'll buy another and then they'll buy another and
then maybe the screen gets cracked and they'll get by another.
Is this really something that's sustainable, especially when we consider that we're in a
trade war with China and China makes this sort of thing and we don't?
No, it's not.
There's a lot of noise from companies as far as corporate responsibility and their
sustainability policies, and they want to greenwash or pay a lot of lip service to
appearing that way.
But you're absolutely right.
These lifecycle issues, it may work for software in tech.
I mean, pixels and bits are recyclable to a certain degree.
But when you are talking about hardware, it often ends up in, let's say, countries in
Asia or places that take e-waste.
And the way that the minerals and things within the device are extracted can often lead
to toxic materials, solders and other elements in the phone and in the PCB and the
boards and stuff in it that are of the device and a part of all those rare earth stuff.
So if you're trying to get gold, you might have to get through a bunch of really toxic
stuff. And that can affect people that really don't have an alternative as far as
sifting through and trying to find value in that e-waste.
So absolutely, it's a really big problem.
So by not upgrading or paying to have a screen fixed, you can actually mitigate some of
that waste.
Do you think that cell phones won't stop being used because they're not sustainable in
the long run?
That's a really good question.
With the current mentality, I wouldn't bet on it.
We as a species are very bad at taking the long view when it comes to things that make
our lives a little easier, a little more convenient.
Yeah. I mean, look, Apple or the industry itself just dropped a billion or millions of
these cameras and transceivers and antennas and batteries and it's just all over the
world now. So we're still grappling, I think, to a degree with how to use them like
ethically or in polite company.
What is the etiquette of using such a device or what is the impact of having cameras?
And what is the appropriate age for someone to begin to use or learn about one of these
devices? And all of these implications are at hand.
And just the physical space that they're taking up and the scavenging the earth to just
continually build more and more of them.
No, it's a real problem.
And I think that we need to think about the manufacturers and this kind of age old term
planned obsolescence.
That's something that's been around for a long time.
And it is still a huge, huge problem, both in tech, but in all kinds of manufacturing and
in our sort of disposable lifestyle or culture, consumer culture.
So going forward, I think those companies will make strides as far as sourcing things
ethically and creating devices that are perhaps easier to recycle, but plans to create
things that are modular or that you can take apart and add something to upgrade it.
They don't always fit the economies of scale when you're trying to mass produce
something. And so a lot of manufacturers are averse to designing things to to be
upgradable or modular.
So you end up just sort of replacing, as we've been discussing.
Yeah, the term planned obsolescence brings to mind, I don't know if I've mentioned this
before, this classic New Yorker cartoon where someone's in line at a repair shop, I think
for a TV or radio or something like that.
And a repairman is saying to the consumer, you fix it by buying a new one.
And that's pretty much what the mentality is.
That's not to say that material science may push us to a place where these devices are
non-toxic and perhaps they can dissolve in water.
No, that would be bad.
Right. So there's these material science problems that like, OK, it's great.
It biodegrades. But if it biodegrades in your pocket while you're using it, that's not
going to work. Sounds like socialism.
Yeah. All right. Does that answer your questions, caller?
No, I'm sorry.
I'm wondering, I myself don't use cell phones and you were mentioning before that many
people think they're absolutely necessary.
But what happens when the materials needed to to make them run out or China won't give
us what we want to buy?
Well, we I think see quite clearly what will happen.
You know, you just have to watch any episode of Star Wars where you see people salvaging
and trying to recycle these types of things.
And I think it's important to remember that any kind of practice over time will become
unsustainable no matter what it is.
I think to answer quickly, though, we'll find other places to source those materials or
tech manufacturers will have an increasingly contentious role in sourcing these from
places that are maybe, let's say, not so ethical in the labor practices and other things
that are required to actually get those those materials into the manufacturing production
floor. Anyway, thanks for that phone call.
We're going to move on to another one.
Good evening. You are on off the hook.
Go ahead. Oh, good.
Good evening, gentlemen. Barry from the People's Republic of Siasat calling.
Wow. When I heard you guys talk about the iPhone five, respecting it.
I've got an iPhone four that I'm talking on right now.
Oh, you sound pretty good.
Thank you. I'm on 3G.
If you want to know.
Wow. All the way to three.
I remember three. You know, my phone occasionally just says G.
I think I'm on 1G before they started numbering them.
But that stands for gangster.
Yeah. But 3G.
Respect. Wow.
I know. I know. I'm definitely worthy of veneration.
But the problem is I do all my own maintenance and I used to go to the G club in
Gordon City. So I'm from the the ancient days.
But I'm going to be unsupported by, you know, who on my 3G network.
So is it time to put the iPhone four to sleep?
I'm on operating system seven point one point two.
It's the maximum I can do.
What do you think I should do as far as they're not going to support 3G?
I understand after 2020.
So am I up the creek without a paddle or something?
Yeah, you pretty much are, because unless unless you want to figure out something else
to do with that, like if you can still connect to the Wi-Fi, you can use it over VoIP
services, Skype or Google Talk or things like that.
But it will not be useful for connecting to the phone network anymore.
And that's that's just, you know, you could you could take a landline telephone that
was made 100 years ago and attach it to a working landline, you know, socket if you
can find one these days.
And it will still work because the voltages and everything, the protocols were the
same. Are they discontinuing 3G period?
Is everybody discontinuing that or just the these these new phones won't communicate
on 3G? From what I heard is the they're not supporting the 3G network
anymore. And they're, you know, they're doing the rolling out the 5G here.
But what if you're in a part of the world that only has three?
I've been in many parts of the world where, you know, like I said, G2G, 3G, it's the
only thing they have. I don't know what to do because nobody else seems to be on
3G except me here.
That's why you sound so good.
So I think it's it's the handset and the baseband chip in the device versus the
network. So if you have a device that's 4G or LTE or 5G and you're in a place that
only supports 3G, you will still have success on that network given its GSM and
maybe it goes to three and no further.
But your device will be able to compensate for that.
But if the network itself is now five and LTE and they're saying, hey, we're not
going to go so far back, that will kind of go right along with generational changes
from other protocols like TDMA and the 2G and earlier versions.
So that is the case that those baseband chips are going to be phased out and you
should be making some kind of plan, even though your device works this well.
And the only other way would be to create a base station, as I mentioned earlier,
and on the experimental level after that.
Like Rob was saying, you know, you buy or you have a landline, it still works.
When you buy a phone, it should work as long as you have that phone.
They can't just change the rules and say, oh, you have to get a new phone now.
Or, you know, if they're going to change those rules, replace the phone for nothing
because they're the ones that decided to change the technology.
And also consider they're saying one thing, but technically, is that is that
something they could really functionally get away with in a very, very large
metropolitan area that has a lot of different devices relying on this?
Whether, you know, and of course, it also comes down to frequency allocation and
the rollout of 5G.
If 5G doesn't really go so well, or it takes longer, or there's regulatory issues
or interference issues, and, you know, it's not well implemented and a smooth
process, they may kind of back off on that kind of language.
And you may find an environment that has a lot more support than what they're saying
now going into kind of a big marketing run up, if that makes sense.
Think of what we're talking about here.
We're talking about discontinuing 3G.
We're using 4G now.
That's the current one.
We're talking about discontinuing the one that's just the most recent before that.
Not 2G, not 1G, or whatever they call that one.
It's, you know, you should not be disconnecting things, changing things so soon.
It's exactly what we were talking about before.
Yeah, it's like when they changed over from analog to digital broadcast television.
And all of a sudden, when they flipped the switch, people's televisions weren't going
to work like they had since the advent of television.
So, they had to basically provide people with inexpensive or free converter boxes
to hook to their old television so they could keep watching TV for a while longer.
But, you know, when it comes to an infrastructure like this, eventually,
someone will throw the big Frankenstein switch that shuts it off, and then you're
devices that depend on that infrastructure are no longer any use.
I miss the old days of analog TV.
I don't want to sound like, you know, a Luddite or something, but I just miss being
able to what we call DXing, which is listening to long distance or watching long
distance TV stations.
You know, picking up, there would be days in summertime, maybe some listeners remember
this, but days where the VHF channels, 2 through 13, just went completely haywire,
and you weren't getting a very good signal at all from your local channels,
but you would get distant channels.
So, you would, something would come in on channel 3, something would come
in on channel 6, I'd pick up Philadelphia, I'd pick up Rhode Island or Boston.
Once I got as far away as Kansas, it was the most amazing thing though.
And UHF, you'd find all kinds of things there as well, and it's just great to explore.
These days, it's either there or it's not there, and you don't get long distance
signals like you did before, and it's just the magic, the magic somehow isn't there.
I once spent an entire day watching channel 8, because it happened to be coming in,
and I don't know where it was from, but it was like looking into an alternate universe.
Probably WTNH New Haven.
I remember the day I discovered that channel.
My conclusory advice to Barry, hold onto your phone as long as you can.
Let us know when it stops working, and try to call us back if you can.
Yeah, let us know, but don't call us on that phone.
I know, but do you think I should, I don't want to get another iPhone,
because I went to the Apple store and I bought them.
I really don't like what they're doing and forcing me to buy.
I don't like the inductive charging and all about it.
I would say don't go to the Apple store.
Go to a different store that sells different products.
Tell them what the Apple store told you, and have them tell you what they can do better.
And you might be surprised, or you might go back to the Apple store.
Either way, good luck to you.
Thanks for calling.
We're going to take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
Speak up.
Sounds like long distance.
Hello.
This is Ray from New Jersey.
I had a question.
Isn't there a certain amount of controversy with the radiation,
with the new 5G protocol that they're going to be pushing out?
Well, there is some talk of that, because it's using some very high frequency radio
waves.
5G stands for fifth generation.
It's not a different band, but they are using different frequencies.
Yeah, it's millimeter wave, I think, is in that part of the spectrum or near that.
The antennas are designed with a phased array antenna design, which allows...
I think that's both at the tower and on the device.
I'm not 100%, but that's exactly the issue or the contention, that the phased array antenna
design, though it allows more directional and more, I guess, features as far as getting
a lot of frequencies on there and isolating a lot of devices from one tower and at these
very high speeds.
There is some question about the very high power compared to 4G.
I think it's 20 milliwatts versus one or so.
There's some ratio.
I don't know.
If I had more time and more information about that, I would follow up and be a bit more
specific.
But that's the general contention, is that type of...
It definitely should be looked at more, as should all these radiating devices that we
hold up to our heads.
A lot of people say, oh, there's no danger.
We don't really know that, because we haven't been doing it long enough to know for sure.
I do know socially it's having an effect.
Hopefully it's not having an effect health-wise, but you're wise to question these things.
Have you seen...
Okay.
Thanks a lot, then.
Thanks for your call.
I was just thinking we should also review...
I've been seeing all the cable companies are starting mobile phone companies now.
I want to...
I'll follow up with that, too.
There's just interesting stuff going on with telephony now.
In any event, that was really interesting.
I'm glad for the calls we got there.
My cable company continues to annoy me, Altice, who runs Optimum, who runs Cablevision.
I told you about the emergency alerts.
Now the emergency alert tests also blank out all your channels.
If you're watching...
God forbid you're watching something live on TV, and you're on another side of the room
and your hands are full, all of a sudden it'll go blue and say a participant has issued
a monthly service test or something like that, and you can't turn it off.
Your screen goes blue, and the channel disappears.
And it's a test.
You don't need to have everything go out.
But that is their new way of doing things.
Doesn't matter what channel you're on.
The whole thing just gets completely wiped out for that period of time.
So that's my complaint.
Hopefully they get it down at some point, and they're not too distracted by this entrance
into telephones.
What dawned on them?
I just can't...
What...
In that meeting, they're like, okay, we're doing cable, but like, we just, we should
be on phones now.
Yeah.
We should be doing everything.
Yeah.
Well.
Okay.
Well, we're out of time.
And there's so much more we had to talk about, too.
But this happens.
This happens all the time.
Hey, you can talk to us, though, anytime by writing to us, oth at 2600.com.
That's our email address.
And of course, we are on every Wednesday evening from 8 to 9 p.m. here on WBAI.
We hear all kinds of amazing opinions and bits of information and perspectives and things
like that.
And you're always invited to be a part of that.
So thank you for calling.
Thank you for being a part of the show.
We will see you next week.
Oh, interesting news.
Negative Land has a new album coming out.
Our friends at Negative Land.
And they have a single that's out already that we're going to play.
We talked about it on the other radio show, on the other radio station.
Yes.
And this is called More Data.
Enjoy.
More data.
More truth.
All of the data.
All of the truth.
Right?
As more data becomes available, then we can start doing more with it.
And as we do more with it, that creates more data.
And, uh.
Someone's looking at me!
Someone's looking at me!
Help me! Please help me!
And that's why I'm saying...
Someone's looking at me! Someone's watching me!
Help me! Please help me!
Just don't give it up, Dada.
Help me!
Please!
Maybe just a little bit.
Help me!
I am...
Maybe just a little bit.
More, Dada. More, Dada.
More, Dada.
Somebody help me!
Maybe just a little bit.
Dada.
Maybe just a little bit.
Maybe just a little bit.
More, Dada.
Help me!
Please!
It doesn't get any better than this.
Someone's looking at me!
Looking at me! Looking at me!
Help me!
Help me!
Release the subject on the double.
But we all think we're unique.
And we're not.
Yeah.
Yeah.