Do it, tell a friend, and if you have the ability to do that,
With that said, stay tuned for Off The Hook, coming up.
Now? Oh, okay. Here I am. It's 8 o'clock. I'm sorry, no, it's 7 o'clock. I'm ahead of myself. It's WBAI New York. It's time for Off The Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
The microphone is off again. You know, you put a switch on your mic, you turn it off every time. Try that again.
Hello?
No, stop it. You're going to break the switch.
Hello? Can you hear me? Come in.
We all hear you.
Come in.
We all hear you fine. And let's turn on the Skype people. And that always makes my voice sound different for some reason.
Look at this. We're in a coliseum. This is some kind of weird mode that we're in now on Skype where it looks like we're all sitting together.
Whose bright idea was that? When I introduce you, you can tell us. Rob T. Firefly, is it your idea?
Good evening. It was not my idea.
Gila, how about you?
It wasn't me.
Okay. A lot of innocent people here. Alex, sounds like something you would do.
Good evening from the Poconos, but no. Seems like you may have accidentally clicked on together mode.
Uh-huh, yeah. Blame me. Blame the end user. Voltaire, you're joining us tonight.
I can either confirm or deny it was me.
Okay, so it was you. Well, welcome, everybody. This is our last show of 2020.
And I'm sure we are all very happy to see this year go into the history bins.
But, you know, again, like I said on the show last night, COVID-19, it came from 2019, not 2020.
COVID-20 might be something to worry about in 2021.
Hopefully not, but I'm just saying there are a few more days left in this year.
Well, actually, one more day left in this year. It can still cause some damage.
Well, I think we've learned a lot about mitigating that particular kind of disaster.
So maybe if we get another challenge that's similar, we'll have learned some lessons.
How did we mitigate it? By holding an election? That's how we mitigated that disaster.
Right.
It's one way to do it, I suppose.
Public engagement. Yeah.
Wow. Hey, any of you guys make it to the Chaos Congress? It just ended.
It was called RC3, which confused the bejesus out of me because RC1 was the name of one of the rooms,
and then RC2 was another room, but the conference was RC3.
But it was really – it reminded me a lot of Hope because it was presented in a similar style.
But they had a whole lot of tracks from all over the world, I guess,
and they had a two-dimensional place you could wander around and converse with people
if you decided to turn on your camera and your microphone, which I didn't.
Any of you guys make it over there?
I did.
You did? What did you think, Voltaire?
I think the 2D game was the coolest part.
Like you mentioned, that basically whenever you were getting proximity liquids,
a certain amount of pixels from somebody else, if you had this enabled,
it would automatically turn on your webcam and your microphone.
So basically it would be kind of like real life in that if you had to close to somebody,
you can have a conversation with them.
Really?
Yeah, and they open source all this code, and you can make your own.
It's like a 16-bit type graphics.
It sounds like great fun.
I'm averse to turning on my camera and my microphone automatically,
but I can see where that could be a ton of fun for conversing and exploring.
I just walked around, and it was kind of cool because it looked like I was at Congress
in a two-dimensional style.
Actually, I went to heaven for a while, floating around the clouds,
and I guess that's where a lot of the volunteers hang out.
A lot of angels.
A lot of angels up there.
I might have even seen God.
They had a really interesting news program they mixed in called the Herald News Program or show.
In Between Talks.
Yeah, and that was really interesting and, as you said,
reminded me a lot of our efforts to keep people updated because that's a big part of it
is getting information so people know how to use the world
or visit a page to find different streams or assemblies.
But to a great degree, they had promos and things.
There was the Chaos Choir getting together and performing.
They really went out of their way to try to bring as many attributes of the physical event,
which these virtual programs are similar in a lot of ways as far as the information,
but it's not obviously going to replicate the physical experience.
It's just different.
It's a little different, and if you prepare yourself, it can be a lot of fun.
Yeah, between DEF CON, Hope, and the Chaos Congress,
I think the hacker world really showed some imagination and spirit this year,
and I'm happy that we were able to do something.
I sure hope that 2021 we'll be able to go back to actual in-person events
and appreciate them a whole lot more but also bring to the table some of what we've learned.
We'll talk about that a little bit later on.
I'd like to go back in time a little bit now as we've been doing the last few weeks,
and it's turned into a very popular segment of the program where we,
thanks to a couple of listeners, we have managed to restore our old 2600 hacker voice bulletin board system.
We had messages on there that were in some archaic format,
and we couldn't figure out how to translate them so that we could listen to them again,
and now thanks to that help that we received, we have been able to convert 4,000 plus,
and we've been just kind of going through and playing some of the highlights.
Mid-90s, I think, is what we're looking at here, and let's just dive in and play one.
Hi, this is Joe from Insurgent Networks.
We're a new system starting up in upstate New York.
We have a website that's going to be going up very soon, www.insurgent.com,
and a chat network, an RC network in the budding.
We are looking for people who are willing to write articles for the website
or help keep up the news information on the website,
current people who might have boxes on the web who want to link in,
or boxes on the net who want to link into the RC network,
and general volunteers all across the board for anything.
This is an open system.
It is trying to further the free flow of information.
Any questions can be sent to me at irs-admn at aleth.insurgent.com,
or pop by our IRC server.
Considering it's fairly new and it's not publicized, irc.insurgent.com.
Thanks. Bye.
Okay, well, I don't think the excuse of it being new is going to hold anymore.
If it's there at all, it's quite old.
I don't know if any email you send or any IRC connections you try to make will go through,
but it is interesting to hear that kind of enthusiasm, you know, starting off a new project.
Any of you guys remember this? No?
I don't remember this particular one, but I, with a heavy heart,
must report that apparently at some point this person lost the domain name insurgent.com.
Now it's some sort of food industry outfit.
Wow. Okay, well, that's kind of sad.
So maybe they will hear this and think fondly back.
And we're sorry it took us so long to help you publicize.
Although, for all intents and purposes, the system did what it was supposed to do.
Basically, you called into a particular telephone number, which I believe was 516-473-2626.
We had five lines.
People would call in, and they would have mailboxes on the system,
but just like a regular computer bulletin board system,
they could leave public messages that people could listen to and reply to.
We have another one. Let's listen to the next in the series.
Which, for some reason, is not coming up.
I'm not sure why that is.
Oh, you know why? Because I didn't turn the volume up on the computer here.
Okay, so, next one from the old 2600 hacker, BBS.
Yeah, this is Ias Tariq from 416 with a message for Drax.
Regarding the canned wires, the red, yellow, green, and black,
well, in most cases, the red and green are the ones that are going to be used with one another.
Red is what the phone company uses to alert your telephone.
In other words, get it to ring.
Green complements that. It's called a tip.
Red is called ring.
Yellow and black are rarely used, but in case you ever want to use them,
they're, in most cases, used for multiline purposes to get,
in case you want to add an extension to your house line off the existing line.
That's just about it. Ias Tariq, 416, out.
And, of course, 416 is Toronto.
This information, Alex, I see you're taking an interest in this.
This is something that's still pertinent today.
It is, and what he was probably describing there was how to create something that was called a beige box back in the day,
and still would be.
What was a beige box? What would that be?
A beige box is essentially a makeshift or homemade lineman's handset.
If you recall from the days gone by, you would drive past a telephone company truck on the side of the road.
You'd see the guy hooked into a big cross box using an orange phone, something like that,
a big telephone company phone that he's clipped into something and using that particular phone.
The beige box was just a replication of that lineman's handset,
and you did that by taking your regular RJ11 jack, your regular telephone jack,
cutting off the end of it.
You had four different wires in there that he was describing.
You had the yellow and the black and the red and the green.
The red and the green, as he mentioned, was the ring and the tip,
and what you would do was go to Radio Shack, remember when those existed,
buy yourself for usually less than a dollar or two a packet of alligator clips,
splice the red and the green wires so that you had the copper coming out,
run them into alligator clips, and you had essentially,
once you plug the other end of that phone into a handset,
the other end of the RJ11 jack into a handset, you had yourself a homemade lineman's handset,
the same thing that the telephone company guys would use,
and you could do all kinds of magic with that.
You could climb up a telephone pole, open up a cross box, and clip onto,
I think it was called a manual, the cable and pair, if I recall correctly,
and start using other people's phone lines.
Every telephone line had a connection, let's say, on the side of the house,
where the telephone lines would connect into the house.
It was usually a little gray box with a special hex type of screw that was difficult to unscrew
but could be kicked off, if I recall correctly, pretty easily,
and then you would just clip on to where the telephone line ran in,
and you were essentially using the phone in somebody's house but outside somebody's house.
We had lots of fun with lineman's handsets way, way back in the day, I have to say,
and it was very cool to hear him describe those very wires that were near and dear to my heart to this day.
And that is what you can do with old recordings that you discover after 25 years.
Wow, I can't believe it's been that long.
About 1995, I think, is what we estimated.
Okay, well, this last one is certainly going to spur some passion.
This is from somebody who is extremely passionate, I guess, about their craft, about hacking, about technology.
Let's have a listen.
Yo, the cable freaker out there, I will tell you the best way to be able to get cable for free.
You look at the bottom of your cable box, like it might say Gerald DPV7 or DPVBB, which stands for Baseband 7,
and there are several cable companies or cable pirating companies that you can buy stuff to the mail order.
You can either buy the box, which usually runs about $400, or you can buy what's called an activator chip,
which goes on the outside of the cable box that your cable company has.
And, you know, you can either use your cable company box or use a stolen box, whatever.
But what this chip does is it activates the cable box.
Usually on the Gerald boxes, you press F, then 1, and then you flip the chip on, and you have a little tuning tool,
and you tune it to where it goes from CE to C0, all right?
Then you hit the F key again, then you flip the chip off, then back on again after pressing F1 again on your Gerald box.
Some Gerald boxes, it's F4.
And within three minutes, it'll flip the channel 2, and you'll be able to get everything.
Now, the channels after 54 are going to be 8 channels higher,
and there are several companies that sell these activator chips,
and all you do is look around and see what you can come up with.
Also, the DSS dish, there is a card that's out that allows the DSS to get everything.
There's several electronic companies that sell those as well.
So that stuff is out there.
If you know what you're doing, you can do it.
Now, another thing to do is to get what's called a stand-alone descrambler.
If you have a cable converter that's not addressable that transmits channel 3,
if your system is a Gerald system and not using BB, you can buy a Gerald stand-alone descrambler for about $130.
The Pioneer descramblers, which is like the Pioneer Green,
which covers all those Pioneer boxes with the Authorize button on them,
basically sends a signal to the cable company telling the cable company that it's okay to go ahead and start billing you.
What you do is you hook that sucker up and with your…
Oh, what happened to him?
I wonder if we cut him off.
Maybe there's a maximum time.
That guy was so into what he was talking about.
Of course, virtually none of what he was talking about is still applicable today,
but you guys remember the old Gerald boxes and the things he was talking about?
Nobody?
No, but I have a question.
Because I was thinking that was a whole lot of information really, really quickly.
Was there a way to access specific messages in the system?
Could you go back to that and take notes or could you hear it once and try to remember?
Yeah.
Well, we haven't gotten into that stage yet.
With 4,000 messages, it's going to take time.
No, I mean back then.
Oh, back then.
Could you dial into a specific message if you wanted to get that information?
Because you can't print that out like an e-mail.
It's really bad for the guy because he was downloading a lot,
but if you couldn't write it all down immediately, there was nothing to do.
That's true.
Alex, I know you ran the system for a while.
Do you remember how it was set up?
Yeah, you could replay that over and over and over again if you wanted to.
And just re-listen to it.
And a lot of people would have this type of information as well
as their outgoing message on their voicemail box.
That's where a lot of people had distributed information was through their outgoing message.
Essentially, the message that you would hear if somebody didn't pick up the phone
and it was an answering machine.
Your outgoing message is going to contain a lot of information.
And for the voicemail box hackers and people that would exchange codes
and credit cards that were not on, that did not happen on the 2600 Voice Bulletin Board system.
But that was the technique.
You would call up and they would read out phone numbers, calling cards,
credit card numbers, et cetera.
You might not catch it all the first time, so you would call back.
Hang on, Alex.
Alex, hold on a second.
We didn't do that.
We didn't have credit card numbers or codes or any of that kind of thing.
We were very strict about that.
That was not happening on the 2600 Voice BBS.
But on other hacker voicemail systems that were hacked and that did distribute these things,
that's what would happen.
They would distribute these through the outgoing message.
If you missed information, you would just call back and re-listen.
Anyway, as I was saying before this thing rudely cut me off,
with the Pioneer boxes that send that cable signal to the company, back to the company,
there is a chip for those.
However, you have to read the little six-digit converter ID number,
which is just below the barcode.
And the only box that that will work on is that present box.
So buying the chip for the Pioneer box really isn't the way to go
because you either have to, A, steal the box because, I mean, if you move,
obviously you're going to have a different box and then you have a $149 chip
that isn't worth jacking.
So the best thing to do is to get the non-addressable converter,
which you can usually get, like the Century converter or the Panasonic,
which is like $100, and then get yourself the standalone descrambler.
Now I understand that SA boxes, Scientific Atlanta's, like the 8500 and the 8600,
all of those and the Hamlin CR6600s are being obsoleted.
Okay, they're no longer going to be making those,
and TCI Cablevision has been switching over to Gerald's all over the place.
So you need to find out if you're a BB or not,
and the best thing to do with the Gerald system is to get the chip
because the chip will work on the DPV5s, the DPV7s, the DPVBB7s, and the DPVBB2014s.
So the Gerald chip basically is the best way to go.
So there you have it.
And I have been a cable freaker for quite some time.
That's it. Have a good one, people.
Oh, my God. It's just so incredible hearing that.
None of it is applicable anymore, but, boy, the passion certainly is.
And, you know, do people collect old cable boxes?
I'm sure there's a group of people that do that.
Probably none of us.
There must be somewhere.
It was a fascinating hobby at the time, and as this person knew full well,
because analog cable back in the old days before everything was digital,
basically when you get down to it,
the company was broadcasting everything to every customer
and everyone that was hooked up,
and it was just in your box where the smarts were to decide
what you were allowed to watch and what you weren't.
So it was very popular to have, say, add-on hardware
or other sorts of hacks to get around the limitations
that your box was setting for itself.
Nowadays, everything is like two-way communication,
and the cable company knows full well what's going on in your individual box.
But, yes, I do remember the Gerald boxes, J-E-R-R-O-L-D.
They were a very popular brand for these things
and a lot of fun to play with, as I remember.
And to go back to what Kayla was asking about,
when you were listening to this,
the voice messages were basically in threads,
and you would control this with your touch tones.
And you would have basically, like any other forum,
you would have a couple of different forums you could go in and listen to.
And then when you selected that forum,
you would hear, say, the newest messages first,
and then it would go back through the older ones.
And you could go back to the previous message,
go to the next one, replay the one you're on.
So it was easy if you had a pen and paper while you were listening to this
to write everything down in an info dump like this.
And there was a lot of good info on it.
I've seen it repurposed for closed-circuit systems, old cable boxes.
Oh, really?
Yeah, like you're basically kind of emulating a cable channel in your on-site,
and then you can have that coax distributed throughout the site,
and then a cable box then decodes each surveillance camera as a channel.
Yeah, I just want to remember how they used to work.
I remember one of the first boxes I had, you had 2 through 13 on the top,
and then I think it was A through J on the second row,
and then there was a third row, I think, also letters.
Does anybody still have those boxes?
Because the channels used to be lettered channels.
I guess they didn't figure out how to go above a certain number.
So I remember in Manhattan there was, I think, channel I.
Was that the naked channel?
One of the public access channels was lettered.
The whole culture has changed,
but it's really important to go back and look at that.
And I'm just curious if there are any technology groups that focus on this.
Like a collection of sorts specifically for broadcast satellites and cable.
That would be fascinating.
I'm sure somebody's tried or pitched it as a cool spectacle.
Do you remember there were some channels that would print out announcements?
It was just announcement channels,
but they would print it at like 1,200 baud line by line,
and there'd be a scroll at the bottom.
There might be some kind of title at the top,
but basically it would print out and you could read it as it was printing out,
and that was just the announcement channel.
I actually saw a channel like that on Canadian TV not too long ago.
That still exists.
So they do still have the technology, but I found it fascinating.
It brings back such memories.
You remember last week we were talking about,
we just mentioned channel 11,
and we got all this mail from people that also remembered the old-time WPIX programming.
We were talking about the cop that used to host the kids show.
Here's one of the letters.
I've been a long-time listener to your program, Off the Hook.
Appreciate the information you and your partners routinely impart to the listeners.
In response to your question posed during the 1223 show about the police officer,
the police officer hosted kids show, which sounds awfully weird today,
that aired locally in New York City during the late 50s and early 60s.
He attached a link to a site called tvparty.com detailing the history of the show.
It aired on channel 11, featured officer Joe Bolton.
Joe Bolton was his name.
I have pleasant memories of those innocent years,
and immediately recalled the show when you mentioned it on the air.
So thanks, Rob, for sending in that clarification.
A bunch of people sent in the same clarification, too.
So there are people out there that remember these things.
And you probably remember every TV channel had its own personality.
Channel 11, they were known for late-night, odd-coupled, honeymooners,
Twilight Zone and Black and White.
And, of course, New York Yankee games.
That was what they were known for.
But I'm curious.
I'm going to ask you guys just a couple of trivia questions,
see if anybody is as fixated on this as me.
Do you remember channel 11?
I'm going to focus just on channel 11.
Like I said, every TV channel had its own personality,
unlike today where you get crappy channels that don't do anything
except play infomercials, and they don't have any local presence whatsoever,
like channel 31.
Remember WNYC before?
Another thing, Rudolph Giuliani messed up.
He sold that TV station to a commercial bunch, and it was never the same.
Or channel 55 on Long Island that doesn't have any local presence whatsoever.
It's sad.
But channel 11, okay.
What New York icon did they incorporate into their logo?
Anyone want to guess?
Rob, go ahead.
I remember it well.
I remember it well.
They were the Twin Towers, which themselves looked like an 11.
That's right.
You had this guy.
I don't know who he was.
He was a guy with glasses.
I don't know how I remember all this,
but a guy with glasses who was looking for the perfect way to spread the word
about channel 11, and he's in the street, and in the background,
you see the Twin Towers forming a perfect 11, and he's like,
I know I'm this close to finding out how to say 11 to everybody.
So, yes, very good, Rob.
There was another – actually, two questions here.
There was another slogan that they used.
I don't know how to describe it without giving it away.
Does anybody want to guess a different slogan that they used?
No?
All right.
It was 11 Alive.
They were called 11 Alive for a long time.
Okay.
Finally, what newspaper was affiliated with WPIX?
No?
We all should know this.
It's Media Conglomeration.
WPIX was owned by the Daily News.
Yeah?
The Daily News.
It was the picture paper, and that's why it was WPIX.
Then how come you didn't say that?
I raised my hand, and you didn't call on me.
You're not in the video.
You know what?
Rob is in the video, but you are not.
There you are.
Okay.
Oh, I didn't realize I wasn't in a frame.
No, you're not in the – yeah, we're in a coliseum.
Disaster.
I'm not in the coliseum.
Now you are because you've moved closer.
Well, Kyle, you're not in it either.
I'm in it, and you're not.
I am well out of it.
But we're on opposite sides of the room, so there's no way you can be in it at the same time.
All right.
So that's fun.
And all that because we're reminiscing about the past, about past technology.
And that's kind of amazing.
That's kind of amazing that we still do that.
Okay.
What's this story I'm hearing about GoDaddy?
What did they do this time?
They're facing backlash after their employees received an email saying they were getting a holiday bonus,
but it turned out to be a hoax set up by the company to test employees.
Testing them for what?
To see if they're going to burn the place down when they get pissed off enough?
This email was sent out on December 14th.
It came after employees had already been notified that they would not be getting any bonuses this year,
but the letter said this.
Happy holiday, GoDaddy.
2020 has been a record year for GoDaddy, thanks to you.
Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual holiday party,
we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time holiday bonus.
To ensure that you receive your one-time bonus in time for the holidays,
please select your location and fill in the details by Friday, December 18th.
And the email featured a large logo at the top that said GoDaddy Holiday Party.
The email was not an actual email.
It was an actual email.
It was a lie, basically.
It was sent out by the company on purpose to test employees to see if they would fall for a phishing scam.
Seriously?
First, you tell your employees that you're not going to give them a bonus,
which seems hard to imagine that an online company isn't going to do well in 2020.
Okay, so you already did that.
Now you're going to mock them further by sending them an email saying they will get a bonus,
but only if they do something that probably they shouldn't do, like click on a link.
And then you're going to tell everybody, hey, the whole thing was a big joke,
and we're not giving you anything.
How about something a little bit more positive reinforcement-ish,
like rewarding the people who didn't click on something, who didn't do something insecure,
and not holding a bonus over anyone's head, because that is just cruel.
I mean, that's so wrong.
Voltaire?
Can you speak up?
Is this better?
Not much.
Speak more into your microphone and turn your volume up a little bit.
I can't raise you anymore.
Go ahead.
Okay.
So one of the bad things about this is it lets management in IT feel like they're doing something about security
when they're really not.
Instead of putting in sensible security controls, they just use this to blame things onto non-technical employees
who always have to assume that they've got non-technical employees they're going to mess up,
or even technical employees as well.
But instead of putting on those controls, they just use this to shift the blame around,
and amazingly it's their fault when they don't invest in security.
Yeah, that itself too.
It's so nasty to do that to people.
First of all, what happened to the people who did click on the link?
Did they get some kind of scolding in addition to being told they weren't going to get a bonus?
And then the people who didn't click on it, I guess they chose not to get a bonus because they didn't click on it,
so you didn't have to tell them anything.
Alex, did you have something?
As a lawyer and somebody who's also been a CISO, Chief Information Security Officer,
you're always looking to test the efficacy of your internal controls and your security awareness programs
and always looking to try new things, to phish your employees,
find out who's clicking on these malicious links, and then give them some additional training
so that will be another form of risk mitigation for you.
But it is always really difficult to find a new hook, to find new bait for these types of phishing lures,
and I think this type of insensitive phishing scam that's used to test employees, I'm afraid,
is probably more common than we think.
And I think a lot of security teams, and a lot of IT teams in particular,
struggle with trying not to cross over certain boundaries
while also trying to test whether or not their security awareness training is actually working.
And some of this also, I think, maybe it can fall on the fault of GoDaddy,
but a lot of these types of phishing scams that test employees are run by third-party companies
specifically to test whether or not employees are susceptible to phishing scams.
And so the sensitivity or insensitivity of these types of lures and hooks is always changing
and something you really have to be mindful about.
It is particularly tone-deaf, in my opinion, to send out something when we know that employees are hurting,
we know that people are hurting, we know that everyone is suffering, and it's the holiday season,
anyone could use an extra $650, especially from GoDaddy,
whom we know has had quite likely a record year,
especially given all of the domains we've seen registered about the coronavirus, etc.
So, yeah, I think this is a problem, but it's definitely a push and pull between testing security
and maintaining a semblance of reasonableness in the phishing lures that you employ.
Go ahead, Gaila.
No, we had this, I'm echoing, this exact thing happened in September.
I remember talking about it when the Tribune Corporation did this to their employees.
Literally the exact same thing, and it happened right before we went on air,
and I remember reading it out from Twitter, basically.
But the insensitivity, Alex, I would say, would even border on cruelty at this point
when you say, we can't do this, and then the phishing lures at the third-party companies,
but also often it's the third-party companies coming in to say,
listen, let us test your employees to prove you need our services.
And I think the idea of teasing people in this way to make your company spend money
that they've just told their employees they don't have is cruel at this point in the game.
But also, there was so much pushback on the Tribune Company in September,
I can't understand how GoDaddy didn't pay attention to that
and think this might not be the right time for this sort of thing.
Absolutely. Voltaire?
I think especially what Alex says, and I've seen this in my own company,
these services are outsourced to companies that specialize in phishing,
hurting phishing things, so it's not like the company will be able to see the pushback
that the Tribune Company got.
I think one of the risks is company employees beginning to not take things seriously.
You're really burning them out at a certain point.
Maybe I'm not emphasizing the cruelty that was pointed out as much,
but it's more fatigue.
I think they won't be as alert because they'll think,
oh, it's just this other thing that's going to make me subject to some review
or have some negative repercussions, so they won't look at anything.
Or they'll be a lot less alert for the actual occurrences
if you're constantly being berated with this.
Okay, so they win the Cluelessness Award of the Week.
Here's another story, though, that is making the rounds,
that Delaware computer repairman who went public with the sordid contents
of Hunter Biden's hard drive, get this, he's now suing Twitter for defamation,
claiming its content moderation unfairly branded him a hacker.
Yeah, how do you like that?
He's suing Twitter.
And I understand as Twitter users, we are all going to be responsible.
We'll have to pony up some cash if he wins.
But he's suing Twitter because Twitter referred to him
or referred to the material as being hacked.
Now, if you recall, when this New York Post story came out,
the New York Post was the only newspaper to print this.
Nobody else wanted to print it.
In fact, their own reporters didn't want their names on the story.
So right away, there was a lot wrong with the story.
But Twitter would not allow anyone to link to the New York Post story.
I took great exception at that.
I thought that was stepping way over the line.
It's not up to Twitter to decide if a newspaper story came from a rightful source or not.
If they think it was hacked, okay, that's on the New York Post.
That's not on Twitter.
They saw the error of their ways.
They reversed themselves.
And I think now they understand a little bit more about what journalism is,
even though New York Post might not be the best place to learn that lesson.
But yeah, basically, John Paul MacIsaac's repair store was where allegedly
these damaging documents were found on a laptop that was left at the shop in April of 2019.
The emails alleged to have detailed Hunter Biden's shady overseas business dealings
and are part of a bigger investigation.
But this leads us to do something a little bit more in-depth as far as this whole story goes.
And, well, there's no other way to say it.
Yes, John Paul MacIsaac has been named Hacker of the Week by Off the Hook.
Yes.
There's nothing funny about this, Alex.
In fact, we've been doing this for a number of weeks now.
We're just having a time to mention it on the air.
In fairness, his name's been in the running for several months now.
It has.
Now, why is John Paul MacIsaac Hacker of the Week?
You have to ask.
Okay, first of all, he manipulated the media into talking about him
when he actually hasn't done a damn thing.
And that is what a lot of the hacker community is about,
getting some attention for yourself when you haven't done anything
and just getting the clueless media to follow whatever you do.
Or how about this?
Telling the world you're not a hacker when everyone's already forgotten about you
and really couldn't care less.
We have been hacked by him.
He hacked us.
Or getting the New York Post to print your story.
Actually, that's the easiest accomplishment.
But there's something special about getting them to print a story
that even their own reporters didn't want to be associated with.
But the real reason why John Paul MacIsaac is Hacker of the Week
is because he managed to get a lawsuit dismissed the same day it was filed.
And that, Alex, I'm sure you can tell me,
that's something that does not happen very often.
It doesn't happen very often.
And I think there's two interesting points about this particular story,
which really was crazy.
If we think back to 2016, and in the wake of the 2016 election,
because of the whole WikiLeaks dispersion of the hacked materials from the DCCC,
ostensibly coming from Russia, of course,
the social media platforms, Twitter included,
changed their policies to prevent hacked materials,
quote-unquote hacked materials, from being allowed onto their platforms
and being used to spread this type of information.
And so I don't think that it is reasonable to classify this person even as a hacker.
What really this type of prohibition on the story and the information itself was about
was that this guy was likely some kind of dope
who had unwittingly come into possession of materials that were hacked,
placed onto a laptop, put into his store,
and then he went and gave them to FBI, Rudy Giuliani, etc.
He was essentially used as a mule for these materials that were hacked.
And then they got their way into the public,
and that's the way that you would obviate or avoid the prohibition on hacked materials
that these platforms like Twitter had implemented in the wake of the 2016 election.
And more to the point, too, had the lawsuit not been dismissed, I think,
sua sponte by the court, but for any kind of defamation claim,
here's what's interesting.
A defense to defamation is the truth.
So what he would be asking for is an investigation into the source of those particular e-mails.
And if those particular e-mails were, in fact, found to have been hacked
and placed onto that particular laptop, then yes, absolutely, it makes the point.
But it also makes the point that not that he was a hacker,
which is completely misclassifying what Twitter did,
but it would have made the point, if that would have been proven,
that he was a dope who then was used to disperse this material to various news organizations
who then made their way onto social media platforms.
So the whole thing was really just crazy.
Just be careful about calling him a dope.
He is Hacker of the Week, and he can cause all kinds of—
Well, let me clarify that until he sues me for defamation.
Hey, he's already in a courtroom, so he just has to check another box for that.
That's true. Right.
All right. Well, listen, we're running out of time,
and I do want to focus on something since this is the last show of the year,
and we're not on next week. We're back in two weeks.
And also, we have overtime at 8 o'clock.
Go to our YouTube channel, Channel 2600, and you can call us.
Write down the phone number, 802-321-4225.
That's 802-321-4225. 4-2-2-5 spells hack.
Clever, huh?
And we will take calls starting at around 8 o'clock for the YouTube stream
that will be archived as well.
But we're asking a question.
We're asking of you folks here, since this is the last show of the year,
how do you think technology played a part in this global pandemic
and how, in turn, was technology affected by the pandemic?
Who would like to go first?
Raise your hand and wave it.
Okay, Gila, I see your hand.
Thank you. Very exciting. I'm glad.
So I think for me, I feel like I've been repeating myself all year,
but the fact that we have been able to connect
and the fact that technology has in so many ways managed to shrink the world
where we're all in our own spaces.
But, you know, even right now when we're all,
most of us are together in the Hacker Thunderdome,
this whole sense of virtual connection.
There were virtual conferences.
There were virtual schooling.
There was virtual religious services and virtual holiday observances.
And I think the fact that the pandemic caused us to really pivot
and reimagine what could be, but, you know, at the same time,
wondering then what will be going forward when we don't have to do it.
And in some cases, we won't do it.
You know, how are you going to keep them on the farm
once they've seen the Hacker Thunderdome?
Yeah. Alex, go ahead.
So I'm mute, you know, for your bingo cards today.
Yeah, I've got a couple of points here that I thought about.
You know, number one, going back to March of this year
when things were really kicking off with the hysteria.
And, again, just a few points.
The first thing that I really remember being really fascinating,
and this was a story that went all around the world,
was when using the DNS intelligence platform that I had created,
we found a state-sponsored and live attack on the World Health Organization
on the 13th of March that some people had then attributed over to North Korea.
And then this was the beginning of, I think, a massive wave of cyber security issues
that related to pharmaceutical companies, to the vaccine,
to the World Health Organization in particular,
and, in fact, was what led to my relationship with the CISO
of the World Health Organization, Flavio Agio,
who was one of our keynote speakers later on that year at HOPE,
which I thought was really cool.
And right around that time, and actually shortly before that,
another thing that we saw that was really fascinating
was this massive amount of activity, talking about technology,
but activity specifically in the domain name system itself.
When we started monitoring for coronavirus-related domains,
just as hysteria was kicking off in February,
this started off first with we would see around 200 domain names per day.
Now, putting this into perspective, you think about something like the Super Bowl,
which is coming up shortly, actually.
We see maybe 5 to 10 to maybe 20 domains per day,
but to see 200 per day about the coronavirus was insane.
Then that kicked off to 400, then 600, then over 1,000.
At the height of this, we saw over 3,500 coronavirus domains being registered per day.
And now we're seeing the same thing with the vaccine,
not necessarily to that extent or that degree,
but we're seeing about 120 domain names per day about the virus.
And this relates to the companies, Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech,
all of the companies that are doing this.
But a lot of it has to do with news.
I'm sorry.
I've got to say, GoDaddy really can't afford to pay its employees a bonus,
all these new sites being registered constantly.
The business they've done this year, it's appalling.
Yeah.
That was a bit of foreshadowing that I made earlier.
Exactly.
But not all of these are GoDaddy.
I would say a good portion of them are.
But, yeah, again, about 120 vaccine-related domains per day.
And what we're seeing is kind of interesting,
because a lot of them are clustered together.
Domains that could be used for misinformation about the dangers of the vaccine
are being clustered together, registered by individuals,
and then sold off to the highest bidder.
So this is a really dangerous activity, I think, that's going to continue,
and it's going to shapeshift with the news
and really has the potential to be dangerous both in terms of cybersecurity issues
as well as from a public health perspective.
And the final point I want to make is really about what's happened to us as human beings.
I think this work-from-home mandate and the isolated nature of our lives
has really altered us perhaps irrevocably in the way in which we interact and we collaborate.
I mean, the unremitting series of Zoom meetings, WebEx conferences, FaceTime calls
has now normalized these screen-based, two-dimensional relationships
for both our personal and professional lives.
And I think, look, we've become fearful of hugging, shaking hands, touching in general,
and I don't think we quite understand how this year of distance and isolation
may affect our psyches and the very nature of human relationships over the long term.
And what we do know is that given this slow march of vaccinations around the world,
I mean, our operation Warp Speed is far slower than Warp Speed at this point.
We're not going to go simply snap back to normal, to the world of physical normalcy anymore.
This way of life, supported by what 20 years ago when we were talking about beige boxes earlier today,
this type of technology was science fiction-like 20 years ago.
It's now part of our culture, and I think it's here to stay for better and for worse.
Okay. I want to discuss this more, and with our listeners as well,
because you touched on some very interesting points.
We only have five minutes left, and I want to give others a chance to give their ideas.
Voltaire, go ahead.
You're muted, I think.
Yeah, definitely, we're not getting audio from you, so try again.
Okay, Carl, how about you?
Well, I think definitely electron microscopy and the gene sequencing,
stuff that has been around for a while was like an indispensable tool in working around the clock
to speak in a collaborative way and to share what the scientific community was learning
in a really, really rapid way.
I think that's mind-boggling, and I don't think we've really been able to look back and appreciate yet
how important that is and was, but will be in the future.
I think the ability to develop things quickly and respond will lead to a lot more important,
and we will realize how essential that kind of research and development is to humanity going forward.
And this is going to be the kind of protocol in the future, I don't doubt at all.
And so I think that's definitely one of the major ways we saw technology,
stuff that we've been using in different ways really take off.
And I think at the more sort of everyday level for most people, the normalization,
kind of speaks to what Gia was saying is video conferencing becoming something we commonly understand,
the divide, all the different types of platforms, the etiquette and behaviors around that,
I think they're not all the way there.
We're still learning how to make best use of this technology,
but the understanding of it as a tool I think is emerging,
and that's exciting in how it has been able to bridge what has been a really isolated time.
Okay, Voltaire, got the microphone figured out?
Yeah.
Okay, good. Go ahead.
Go ahead. Do you have something?
You're muted again.
Oh, my God.
All right, Rob, how about you?
Okay, the thing I've noticed is that we've all been trapped in our rooms, our houses, our households, whatever,
with reduced exposure to other people, if any at all.
And I'm a great believer in online community and the power of it,
but I'm also seeing kind of a darker edge to it because everyone is on such a shorter fuse these days.
We're all stressed.
We're all suffering mental health effects from what's going on.
And in the sphere of online forums, comment sections, things like that,
everyone just seems so much more prone to flying off the handle and going nuts
and maybe arguing about why they don't want to wear a mask or things like that.
I'm finding that some bits of the Internet have become a significantly darker place through the pandemic,
and I'm still a great believer in online community and its ability to bring people together in positive ways,
but we also all have to work extra hard to remember the person behind the keyboard on the other end
and kind of temper what we do.
Boy, you give me so much to think about and talk about.
I'm looking forward to overtime, 8 o'clock, YouTube, channel 2600.
Voltaire, one last chance.
Is your microphone working?
Yes.
Okay.
You have about a minute.
It has been the failure of things like contact tracing apps that policymakers have tried to promote them
as things that will make up for a lack of health care services, basically,
and actual employees that do contact tracing full time as their job.
But I think it also goes for remote learning when so many people don't even have Internet access,
especially in urban areas, powder chicken areas.
You can't use these technologies as a quick fix to make up for lack of basic social services.
Well said.
All right.
We are going to head out of here for now.
It is, as I said, our last show of 2020,
and we are reflecting on what has happened in this historic year.
We're also reflecting on what the future holds.
Join us on YouTube, channel 2600.
We'll see you there.
Good night.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I wonder what they meant
When they said
They said
Repent
Repent
Repent
Repent
I wonder what they meant
You don't know me from the way
You never will
You never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories
Heard them all
But love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here
He has been told
To say it clear
To say it cool
It's over
It ain't going any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future
It is murder
Things are gonna slide
Slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Won't be nothing
You can't measure anymore
The blizzard
The blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it's overturned
The order of the soul
When they said
They said
Repent
Repent
Repent
Repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said
They said
Repent
Repent
Repent
Repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said
They said
Repent
Repent
Repent
Repent
I wonder what they meant
There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
And a white man dancing
You'll see a woman hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets coming round
Trying to sound like Charlie Manson
And a white man dancing
Give me back Berlin Wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another, feed us now
We don't have children in our house
I've seen the future baby
It is murder
Welcome, everybody, as we launch into another exciting edition of Off the Hook Overtime,
that is.
Did we all make it through, Kyle, are you there?
I'm trying to be here, yes.
Okay, good.
Good.
Rob and Gila and Alex and Voltaire, are you all here?
Yep.
Okay.
We are here.
We are here.
But I don't know that we're online.
I'm not seeing us.
I'm not seeing us stream.
Yeah, I don't see anything.
Last week, we made the mistake of not being able to be heard, not knowing it.
I don't see any viewers.
And I don't know why that would be, unless we did something wrong.
Your stream is not, your live stream is not on your channel where it would normally be.
Really?
It's just not coming up.
We did everything the same way, Kyle, did we do anything differently?
We scheduled the stream, so I don't know what possibly could have gone wrong here.
It says we're broadcasting.
I have, I can't see it from my microphone.
Okay, I'll get up and you can take over my station.
Well, I don't know that I could be of better help.
But sure, yeah, since you've offered, I'll make my way over there.
And then how about, I'll let you know once I look at it.
Okay.
Well, whilst you guys are shuffling around, for the sake of anyone that can hear us, I
will say that maybe it's a non-published link and the stream has not been made public
in some manner.
Maybe it's a non-published number.
What are you nodding your head for, Kyle?
Yeah, it's unlisted.
Hold on.
How did that happen?
You know why?
We were troubleshooting something else.
Oh my god, I know what happened.
Public?
We want to go public?
Yeah, make it public.
Are we thinking about being public?
Let's make it public.
Why not?
But when I get back to my station, I'll explain exactly what happened, because I know it now.
Sorry, folks.
We're going to move around the room again.
Okay.
Well, we are now public.
So for those of you who didn't hear the intro, this is Off the Hook Overtime, and we are
all here and ready to communicate with you live, and we are now streaming.
I can hear us on the air.
We still don't have any viewers.
Wait a minute.
If you can hear us, how come you don't show up as a viewer?
I see one, so maybe that's you.
I am now seeing...
Well, one of them is me.
I am now seeing two watching now, so there's one other person.
We're getting calls.
We got calls last week, even though we weren't on the air.
But let me explain what happened.
What happened was we...
Should I drop that?
No, don't drop it.
Okay.
The person went to the trouble of calling us.
They can just hold on for a second.
We put up something on our YouTube channel over the week.
It was an additional video that was attached to a talk for Hope, but it was unlisted.
The link was published in the talk so that people who saw the talk would see the link,
click on the link, and see the remaining material.
I guess it saved that as the last setting that we used, unlisted, and applied it to
this.
But we distinctly said, use the same settings from the one that we just copied, and it didn't
do that.
Thanks, Google.
That was the one we fixed, right?
Yeah.
No, no, no.
I'm talking about something else that happened between that.
Oh, well, I think the one we fixed was also unlisted for a period.
Oh, that was, but it's listed now.
Okay.
Anyway, enough about our trouble.
It works.
What sort of it works?
This is the show where we get worse at technology as we use it more.
All right, so I wanted to talk more about what you guys were mentioning with technology
and all that.
And I don't know, Alex, you had kind of a, well, Rob, I think maybe Alex, you're a bit
more pessimistic about the permanent effect this is going to have on us where this becomes
the norm.
We just use all these online services and don't actually meet in person.
We're afraid to hug each other.
I don't know.
When this ends, and it will end, I think people will be so happy to get back to the way things
used to be.
But I don't want to actually overdo it and just want to do everything in person from
now on.
I don't necessarily buy into us accepting this as the norm.
It's good.
It does the job.
We're doing radio because of that technology and so many other things as well, but it's
no substitute for doing things in real life.
I can't wait to get back into the streets of New York and cause some real mayhem and
just travel and see other places and other people in person.
Do you really think people are going to say, yeah, this is our life now.
We're not going to go back?
I mean, look, the point I was making there is that there's no toggle switch to going
back to normalcy here.
It's going to be a very slow roll to get back to where we were, being unafraid of physicality,
being unafraid of touching each other, touching the elevator button, leaving the bathroom
without washing your hands or sanitizing your hands.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on a second.
Is this really the battle you want to fight is leaving the bathroom without washing your
hands?
That's what it's about for you.
No, that's not the hill that I want to die on here.
But the point I'm making is that there's not going to be something where like today is
Monday or, you know, rather, you know, let's, let's use an accurate description.
Today is Wednesday.
Tomorrow's Thursday.
We're all back to normal.
We're back in the streets.
We're hugging each other.
This is going to go on for a very long time.
And with the anti-vaxxers out there and the fact that herd immunity is not going to occur
for at least six, seven, eight months and, and we don't, we still don't even know whether
or not the vaccine actually would prevent people from spreading the virus or whether
it just prevents the symptoms of the virus within the vaccinated person.
And so anybody who hasn't been vaccinated is going to be susceptible to this type of
thing.
And we're going to have to be very, very careful for a long period of time.
And it will probably be two years is my guess that, you know, of being extraordinarily cautious
about germs, about the virus, about services, about sanitization, about our hands, about
touching.
And that's going to have a major effect on our psyches.
I mean, if you think back a year or so ago, nobody had any qualms about touching the subway
pole, pushing buttons in an elevator, et cetera.
But now all of this is incredibly dangerous.
Now it is.
Yes.
Now it is.
But you're saying, you're saying, okay, it's going to take longer than we want it to take.
It'll take, you know, a couple of years maybe instead of a few more months.
But my point is when, whenever that period happens, when that ends, when we get to that
stage, I don't, I don't know if we're going to continue to be super cautious about everything.
You think we're going to be ultra paranoid about germs?
We'll all become germaphobes?
I don't think we're all going to become germaphobes, but I think it's, this is, has changed us.
The people who have lived through this will have been changed, I think irrevocably in
some material respects in their psyche and how they approach cleanliness, how they approach
germs, how they approach touching.
You know, we may be happy to, to touch and embrace each other again, but you know, at
the slightest drop of a hat or the slightest provocation of the news media, that something
like a Corona 22 might be coming down the pike.
Voltaire sneezed right when you said that.
The slightest, the slightest thing will set us off.
And yeah, sneezing is going to do it.
People are going to run for the hills.
Well, we're both placed.
Well, we'll time that.
I think we're going to be about this.
And I think it also has changed the nature of how we maintain our personal relationships
and the way we do business too.
We're not going to have that, that continuous business travel that we had in the past to,
you know, fly from one continent to another, just to have a couple of meetings, you know,
we've become so accustomed to doing things through Zoom.
Is that a bad thing though?
Is that not flying to Los Angeles to have a meeting and flying all the way back?
I mean, I could lose that, but you know, exploring the world, going to different countries, seeing
people in person, I don't think we're going to give that up.
I don't think people aren't going to be going to New York city or even going into the office
as opposed to staying at home all the, I mean, Alex, come on, you're a good example of this.
I'm sure you would love to get out of the house occasionally and just go to the office
and, and, and, you know, be away from the kids for a while.
You love them, but come on, you have to have different environments.
I don't think everyone's just going to stay put when, when the crisis ends.
Oh, I agree with that.
And I think, you know, there'll be a major period of revelry when we, we think that we're
through or through the thick of it or out of the woods, whatever your metaphor is that
you prefer, you know, for the end of this particular pandemic or what appears to be
the end of it.
And I think that that will be a great period.
Maybe it'll be some kind of, of Renaissance period.
And, and, and to a certain extent as well, I think you look at a city like New York in
particular, you mentioned getting away from it.
So many people have left the city.
So many of these people have, you know, have gone out and moved permanently out to the
suburbs.
And I feel like here's a new opportunity for the city of New York to get back a lot of
that edge that it had lost.
Exactly.
That had been pulled by gentrification.
Sometimes you need to be on the precipice of danger and craziness in a city in order
for it to have that edge that creates some kind of tension that leads to creativity and,
and really fascinating things.
I mean, you think about what, what came out of New York in the 1980s when, when it was
crime ridden and, and, you know, frankly, a bit of a, you know, insane city.
But, you know, you think back from 2010 onwards, I can't, I couldn't help but feeling like,
you know, New York and it's all, all of its neighborhoods.
And we've talked about this many, many times that they've become so homogenized to certain
extents, right.
But by the franchises, by the juxtaposition of a Helen Hardy next to a CVS, next to a
Dwayne Reed, next to a Bank of America, next to a Chase Bank, next to another Helen Hardy,
next to a subway, next to a, you know, a Pinkberry, right.
That's what every goddamn neighborhood in the city has become.
But those franchises have not made it through.
Those franchises have decided that it was better for them to shutter their doors and
not support their neighbors and be there for their neighborhoods than it was to, to stick
through this pandemic.
And what we're left with are pop shops that we wanted there in the first place that were
being threatened by these franchises and these chains.
And now they have an opportunity to resurge and to renew and perhaps give rise to another
renaissance of New York.
That's what I really hope.
That is truly optimistic.
And that is something that I really hope we see as well.
The thing is, the infrastructure, the city has to support these mom and pop operations,
not bury them with paperwork and regulations and make it hard for them to get through this.
They should be opening up doors, not closing them.
I've heard of cases where landlords are trying to charge tenants more to have outdoor
dining because they're using more space.
Ridiculous things like that.
Remember, the franchises, the ones that you're talking about, they stopped paying rent.
They just stopped.
And that's a lot of rent they didn't pay.
But they're still in business in other places or in suburbs or things like that.
This is a tremendous opportunity, not only for the mom and pop operations, but also
for residents of the city.
If the opportunity is open to them for affordable housing, well, we can start crossing those
gaps where nobody can afford to live in Manhattan anymore.
Maybe that can finally change.
Voltaire, I see your hand is up.
I don't think the situation is going to get better for mom and pop shops.
I don't think that the problem is a fundamental issue of the larger economy.
And I don't think they were priced out by the chain shops coming in.
I think that the chain shops coming in were the only people that could afford the real
estate prices getting so high.
And the real estate prices getting higher is also a more structural thing in the economy
of low interest rates and companies like BlackRock, investment firms, buying up real
estate and treating it as an investment, whereas even in the 80s, that wasn't so much the case.
But I think it's kind of a chicken and the egg thing, because when you say that only
the chains can afford the rent, well, they raise the rent because they know the chains.
On the corner of 8th and Avenue A, where the pizza place used to be, and now it's a Starbucks,
they jacked the rent up when they found out Starbucks was looking for a place there,
kicked the guy out, and Starbucks moved in.
Nobody else would pay that kind of rent except Starbucks.
So yeah, the rent went up, but it went up because they know the chains will come in.
When they realize the chains aren't going to come in anymore, and I think after seeing this,
the chains will be a lot less eager to come into the city, maybe the rents will get more
reasonable and affordable again.
That's my hope.
A lot of these firms, the value of their properties is based off the last rent that they paid.
And because they're so monopolized, these real estates owned by such few companies,
they would rather have the stores sit empty so that they don't have to re-appraise them
than have rent out at a lower rate.
That should be illegal.
That should be illegal for them to-
It needs to be fixed by regulation and get back to housing and stuff.
In order to have cheaper housing, we need better mass public housing properties.
Yeah, you need to do things like that.
Rent caps, like in Berlin.
All throughout the East Village, you see vacant shops.
And people keep sending us pictures because the realtor that owns those places,
their number ends in 2600.
For some reason, people think that that's of interest to us.
Yeah, they just have all these vacant places that they could easily rent out.
Hey, give a company, a small business, six months, no rent.
How is that worse than having it vacant?
They might find out from other people that, hey, this company rented for me for free.
If that's part of the deal, where they don't tell anybody,
maybe it'll generate more people coming in.
I don't know.
I'm naive at this.
But I just don't think having vacant shops is the answer ever.
These companies have all taken out loans.
They're so over-lethbridge that they've taken out loans to buy more and more property.
And then the loans are based on them having property,
which was the last sold renting price was a certain amount.
And if they rent out another lower rent, then their loan payments will go up dramatically.
Whereas if they don't rent out anything, if they leave it empty,
their loan prices won't go up.
This sounds like something Trump would do and has done.
All right.
We have some phone calls coming in.
Did you have something, Kyle?
I was just going to add that cool landlords are underrated.
I mean, there's so many cool landlords.
A lot of good things happen, especially when tenants have a working relationship or they
have cooperation.
I know WBAI would not be in the position it is without a good landlord.
That's true.
That's true.
And that'll work through difficult times, crazy politics.
That's important stuff.
Viselka, the 24-hour Ukrainian place on 9th Street and 2nd Avenue.
They're thriving.
Not just surviving, they're thriving.
They own their building.
Well, no, they don't own their building.
They have a good landlord.
They have a good landlord.
That's even better.
No, that's a great example.
I was probably subconsciously thinking of that story.
They're expanding.
It makes all the difference when you have a landlord who works with you
as opposed to looking for an advantage.
OK.
So let our listeners call in.
802-321-4225.
We already have a call.
I'm going to bring this up.
A warning.
I might make a horrible noise when I bring this up.
Let's see what happens.
Nothing so far.
It might be Google, too.
Good evening.
Yeah, it might be Google demanding we hit one.
OK, let's see if that...
All right, I think we have somebody.
Yes, hi.
I'd like to mention something about homage.
Is this Rebel?
Yes, it is.
Oh my God, Rebel, how have you been?
It's been like 10 years since I've heard your voice.
Yeah, I haven't been listening.
I listen to a couple of old shows.
And I call in because I've been listening online.
Yeah, you're on all the old shows, all the old shows.
But they haven't been on a new show.
So, and this is an overtime, so it's even better.
Right.
And, you know, I was talking about homogenization of companies.
If you remember, like, Ramada Hotels and Gays Inn Hotels and,
I don't know, Comfort Hotel, whatever.
They're all super, you know, they're all one company now.
Remember in the 80s and the 90s, it's all a Wyndham Hotel.
Yeah, that's just one example.
Maybe, I'm sure you remember when you used to call us,
incessantly, by the way, in our early days,
you would always be telling us about particular phones in a particular bank.
Do you remember what the bank was?
Right.
It was, it was Chemical Bank.
Chemical Bank.
And what did Chemical Bank turn into?
Chase.
But what did, do you remember Manufactured Hanover?
Manny Hanny.
Bank of America?
No, not Bank of America.
It was, what was the other bank?
Bank of New York.
It was Bank of New York.
That's right.
The Chemical Bank.
The Manufactured Hanover.
Dime?
I think it was, no, no, not Dime.
Dime didn't get collected by Chase.
Well, Dime turned into something because they're not around anymore.
Anyway, yeah, so we're reminiscing fondly about banks that have changed.
Yeah.
And also about the virus thing, about, you know, people not, you know,
using Zoom and conference.
Zoom doesn't even work good.
I've used it and it doesn't.
WhatsApp on your phone works better than Zoom on your phone.
And it takes a lot of batteries out of your phone.
Wow.
I mean, do you remember the person that, that Nashville thing that happened?
You know, someone tried to blow up AT&T.
We haven't had time to mention that yet.
We're going to, yeah, we're going to talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, but not tonight that I encouraged a terrorist act.
That's good to hear, Rebel.
That's, that's nice to know.
But, but, you know, he was afraid of 5G and all of what's going on,
probably what's been going on with the, you know, pandemic and everybody's, you know,
online.
Wait, why does everybody assume it's about 5G?
Why do you assume this guy blows himself and part of the AT&T building up because of 5G?
It's not even 5G.
I think 6G is scarier.
Okay, 6G.
Yeah.
He never said anything about 5G.
We're just assuming this and it's just, we're just making this.
But I mean, that's what the news says.
The news depends on that kind of crap.
You think he was like disturbed by a lot of the advancements and it just was too much
or he knew too much sort of thing?
No, he was an IT guy.
I mean, this is someone I could, and that he doesn't want 5G because it's going to create
autonomous cars and take people's jobs.
And, you know, I could see the point, but to do something like that, I don't think...
Are there reports of that though?
It doesn't really bolster his argument.
Yeah, not really.
I mean, it's...
Blowing up cars is a lot worse than autonomous cars, I think.
It's a heck of a way to start the conversation.
By the way, what are they going to do with all these new buildings they're building up
in Manhattan?
I mean, there's these big buildings and by Grand Central Station, it's probably going
to be halfway occupied.
Well, you know, new businesses or residences, they can do that.
Alex, are you trying to say something or are you just scratching yourself?
No, I wanted to ask Rebel a question.
It's been many years.
I mean, I think Rebel, you and I met a long time ago.
Yeah, we used to work at Wallbounce in Long Island and you used to be...
Wait, wait, wait.
You know where Alex used to work on Long Island?
You don't live on Long Island.
How do you know that?
But Alex invited me to his house back in the 90s.
You invited Rebel to your house, Alex?
Yeah, everybody makes mistakes.
Wow.
OK, no, I didn't know you guys were so close.
Well, I remember...
Never invited me to your house.
Well, yeah, you've been there many times.
I don't remember if you ever came out.
You must have come out at some point, I guess, Rebel.
What's the question you have for me, Alex?
Come out to Long Island to meet...
Who was the other kid's name that you were hanging out with?
Hold on a second.
He's trying to social engineer us.
So be very careful how you answer that, because this might be information that he is not privy to.
There are quite a few, quite a few...
Speaking of social engineering...
He's moving on to the next topic.
He's leaving you behind.
Go ahead.
But Rebel, I have a question for you, because back in the 90s...
I think Rebel has the floor.
Go ahead, Rebel.
Back in the 70s, I remember back in the old days, I used to do prank calls.
And I called this one person.
I don't know.
I don't remember why.
I look up in the phone book and see these phone numbers and call these people.
This is before...
This is the analog days in the 70s.
Analog prank calls, yes.
Yeah.
She'd keep me on the phone asking me questions.
Are you alone?
I hung up.
I had two lines in my house, two phone numbers.
One that my parents had used and one that we would use.
I called on the desk phone.
We'd call it the desk phone, one line.
And then I'd hang up with this person.
In sight of an hour, I got a call on the kitchen phone, which was the other line, from this lady.
Mind you, I was young at the time.
And she said, yes, this is the police station.
We're getting calls...
No, or something like that.
This is the telephone company.
We're getting calls from...
There was a prank call made to some Mrs. Whatever.
And I'd be on the phone and I wouldn't know who it was.
And I'd be all scared.
And she's like, are you ever going to call this person again?
And then I hung up.
You might...
Okay, well, interesting that that's before caller ID.
So that's not how she got your number.
You just called a regular phone number and they were able to...
A regular phone number.
And they knew my name too.
Well, you know, it's possible.
First of all, if anybody gets a call from Rebel, they know it's Rebel.
Maybe your reputation really preceded you.
And people recognized your voice way back then as well.
You've been at this a while, Rebel.
He was a kid.
He was just a kid.
He said he was a kid.
Yeah, but he was probably a precocious kid.
And probably everybody in the neighborhood knew him.
You know, all she had to do was make a couple of calls herself and ask.
And somebody would rat him out.
I don't know.
But it's...
Or you called the operator.
Did you prank the operator?
Because they could do that.
Well, yeah, I've watched a few TV shows where they're running through central offices and
saying it's 80% traced and 85% traced.
And then they hang out just the last moment.
And yeah, so I don't know if that's what happened to you.
But I'm glad you got away with it.
You know, I'm glad you could have ruined your life back then in the 1970s making that prank
call.
Well, it sounds to me, and it's just a theory, somebody had a friend in the phone company,
and it wasn't you.
That's what I think.
Alex, go ahead.
You had a question.
I did.
Do you remember what it was?
This has been a question I've had for several decades.
Every once in a while, it pops into my mind.
Our listeners go back to the 90s and listen to Off The Hook.
Whenever we took listener phone calls, the first voice anybody would hear on any show
was always Rebel.
And he would say, you know, Emanuel, right?
And we said, oh, hi, Rebel, are you again?
Rebel, how were you always the first caller?
You must have been calling on multiple lines into the old 212-279-3400 number for WBAI.
But you would have had to then, I guess, know which line was picked up.
Did you have some kind of switchboard?
How did you do that?
He was always first.
I remember I had two phones, so I'd call on both.
I mean, I never had one.
Really?
Because you seemed to be on every line, and we could never avoid you.
Not that we were trying to avoid you, but, you know, we played a little game where we
said, let's try and make it not Rebel be the first call, and we always lost.
You must have had more than two phone lines.
There's no way you could have done that with two phone lines.
No, I did.
There was always two phone lines, actually.
Because I remember when, I mean, they used to cut you off, when you got the new 5EFS.
They cut you off, and then, you know, you just redial quickly.
It's like you would switch from one to the other, right?
While you're waiting on one, you're dialing on the other.
So as soon as you get hung up on one, something like that.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, that's right.
And he dialed very fast, I would bet.
You had a touch-tone phone, I hope.
It wasn't rotary.
Yeah, of course, it was touch-tone, sure.
But the WBAI switchboard back then had, like, eight or nine lines, I remember, right?
Ten lines.
People were calling in, and you could choose ten lines.
Okay, sure.
New York City, come on.
So either you were really unlucky, or I think Rebel is not being entirely forthcoming with
the number of phone lines that he was utilizing back in the 90s.
I had extremely poor luck many times back then, so it's entirely possible that's what it was.
All right, Rebel, any other comments?
We want to open it up to some other callers, but it's great hearing your voice again.
Are you still in the area?
I'm still in New York City in Queens.
You don't have chat for the studio.
Is this the first time I'm listening online on the YouTube thing?
I think it's disabled.
I think it's disabled in the stream.
I'm not quite sure, though.
Well, we have the IRC channel, don't we?
We always have the IRC channel.
Yeah, that's a chat.
I mean, how many chats do you want?
Well, I look at the IRC.
Sorry, Rebel, we're having trouble hearing you.
IRC does not work.
IRC doesn't work?
What's the meaning of this?
How can IRC not work?
You go to irc.com, right?
No, it's irc.2600.net, irc.com.
You might get more chat than you bargained for, though.
Yeah, that's certainly true.
Be careful with that.
Rebel, again, good hearing you, and stay in touch.
Hopefully, we'll see you at a meeting when those start up again.
When those start up again?
Yes, they will start up again.
We promise.
Oh, by the way, speaking of starting meetings, what about the Zoom thing?
The meetings are all on Zoom.
Can I go on my laptop?
Rob, do you know something about that?
Yeah, a lot of local meetings, including our own, have been having virtual meetings,
while we can't have in-person 2600 meetings.
If you go to, here in New York, if you go to nyc2600.net, all the info is there on how to
get on our Zoom, which is going to be happening this Friday, New Year's Day.
You're free to join in via cam.
You don't have to have your camera on.
You can join in via regular telephone.
All the instructions are there.
I got the most recent issue of 2600.
I got my subscriber copy and the meetings page, which would normally list the meetings
all over the world.
Instead, this issue is a nice, thoughtful piece on the current state of the 2600 meetings as
an in-person concern.
I very much dig what you said there.
Also, the fact that it's hopeful.
We cannot do this in person now, but we can improve and adapt and take stock of what we're
doing for when we can do it in person again.
Right.
We're going to hit the reset button.
We're going to hit the reset button, and every meeting, we'll start again.
Then we'll have a lot more meetings as well.
Rob, that address you gave out, I didn't hear the first dot.
It's irc.2600.net, correct?
The address for the website is nyc2600.net.
On there, there's the information on getting onto the Zoom.
Go to nyc2600.net on the web, or you could go to nyc2600 on Twitter, or we're on Mastodon
as well, on mastodon.social.
The info is all linked to you from there.
I bet we could make nyc.2600.net go to nyc2600.net.
That's what I'm going to work on for 2021.
I'm going to figure out how to do that.
Rebel, I want to say goodnight to you.
Thank you for calling.
Yeah, hopefully by the time we are ready to do in-person meetings, the Citigroup thing
will be finished.
Well, I think we like the new location better than Citigroup.
It's just a half a block away, and they're nicer to us.
What's that place called again, Rob?
Do you remember?
The Atrium.
The Atrium.
The Atrium at 875.
There you go.
Right there on Second Avenue?
First Avenue?
What Avenue is that?
Third Avenue.
I knew it was one of those.
Third Avenue and 53rd Street.
All right, talk to you later, Rebel.
Goodnight.
Okay, bye, Emmanuel.
Wow, good hearing from Rebel.
I can't believe I heard from Rebel.
Isn't that amazing?
That's brilliant.
All right, I shouldn't hit that button when there's nobody there.
All right, good to know.
So yeah, somebody tried to blow up AT&T in Nashville.
That was something.
I know exactly what that was.
When we went to see the eclipse a few years ago, Kyle and I hung out right by there.
It's not the Batman building, which is a skyscraper, which I think used to be Bell South,
but affiliated with AT&T.
Yeah, and that building, its proximity, I mean, it's probably got some kind of
server or rack area for the business end that goes on in the taller building.
But the actual plant, the central office was adjacent or right on that street where this person
parked.
And so he parked pretty much, it looks like right over some vaults, and apparently some
generators were knocked out, so they ran out of battery power.
It was a whole mess.
Look, here's my theory as to what this was all about, because everybody's speculating
that he had a problem with Hooters, which was across the street, all sorts of things like that.
The recording that everyone is playing doesn't say what they say the recording was saying.
They say it was a countdown.
And the only recording I've heard so far says, it sounds like a police voice.
I was surprised to find out it wasn't.
Basically saying, if you can hear this, evacuate now.
Very professional sounding recording.
I didn't hear the recording that says 15 minutes, this thing is going to explode, 14 minutes.
And apparently the song Downtown by Petula Clark was playing.
So my theory, since Downtown by Petula Clark is the very first song I remember hearing
as a child, and I'm just a couple of years younger than this guy was.
I have a feeling it might, even though the lyrics are very apropos for being Downtown,
I suppose, it might have been a sentimental favorite of his.
Might be his first pleasant memory as a child.
And it might be just something that he was thinking of as he made this decision to end
his life, and that's why he played that song.
Maybe he was isolated, lonely, upset at something, maybe 5G, maybe not.
I don't think it's really anything more complicated than that.
Somebody who just felt no other way out and went to the heart of Nashville.
Anyone who comes from Nashville or has been to Nashville knows AT&T is right there and
knows that is the busy street right there.
That's why he chose that area.
So that's my theory.
The story that I see in USA Today, the headline, Nashville bombing, froze wireless communications,
exposed Achilles heel in regional network.
It's as if nobody knew that blowing up a truck outside a telecommunications facility
might screw up the telecommunications facility.
Yeah, that's what's going to happen.
There's really not much you can do about that unless you want to encase it in more steel
and concrete, that kind of thing.
Yeah, that's the effect it'll have.
The way to not have that be a big deal is to have lots of redundancy and lots of different
points of presence and things like that.
I was impressed how quickly they were able to find the truck.
I was looking at Google images from years earlier, seeing where he moved it.
This kind of thing, with detective work and with technology, you pretty much always are
able to figure out what happened in the end.
Yes, Alex.
One of the things I think is really fascinating about this is the massive amount of media
attention that the recording has attracted since last week.
As you mentioned, there were multiple accounts, certain recordings that showed really that
the intention behind this was not to destroy people, but to damage property, right?
It wasn't to take lives, in a sense.
But because everybody has become so familiar with the countdown recording here, what is
interesting to me is that now anybody, with a speaker, anybody can make a recording that
broadcasts out in some kind of loud volume that there is going to be an explosion and
a countdown.
Wait, this is a new discovery?
People are just figuring this out now that they can broadcast something on a megaphone?
Well, look, because this had such an effect, everyone else is going to be on high alert
for these types of activities, copycat type of situations, and you can cause a massive
amount of business interruption with a recording now, because this has gotten so much play.
In the past, people might not have taken this so seriously, but you could easily shut down
whole city blocks by placing a couple of loudspeakers broadcasting a recording, and then you could
broadcast a recording, you know, stating that there is going to be an explosion.
Yeah, but Alex, that's exactly what happened this time.
They did shut down a couple of city blocks because of that recording, and the recording
hadn't happened before.
So I think anytime you announce that something's about to blow up, whether it's now or 10 years
ago, people are going to take it seriously.
Look, I agree with that, but now it's more susceptible, and now people are aware of this
particular recording.
It's got such massive attention, worldwide attention, I think that there are going to
be copycats that are just going to be playing some kind of recording or some kind of ominous
countdown, and it can cause a really massive, it's a very low-cost, simple way to cause
a massive amount of business interruption in any area.
So are bomb threats, those have been around forever?
I think only in a situation where you need some misdirection.
I feel like the high cost of not actually blowing yourself up is that, yeah, you're
going to be hunted down a bit.
I mean, there's going to be some investigations, and people are going to have a problem with
what you caused, that chaos.
But if you need that misdirection to further some other aim, that cost may not be substantial
enough to think twice about it.
I'm more concerned that a few years ago, his girlfriend called the police saying that this
guy is building bombs, and they totally dismissed it.
They just said, well, we don't have any cause to search his place or to search the camper
that's parked in his backyard behind a fence.
How about the person saying he's building a bomb?
Isn't that some kind of just cause?
It's a fine line that you have to walk for personal privacy and things like that.
But if they had this kind of tip off, and they just ignored it, you have to wonder just
how good was the policing?
Alex, and then we're going to take a phone call.
Sure.
I mean, that would certainly rise to the level of probable cause in my book.
Maybe there were issues with the credibility of the woman reporting it, or the circumstances
under which it was reported might have been somewhat suspect.
But sure, certainly.
In search warrants, and even just a police officer going and knocking on somebody's door
without a search warrant and sort of peeking in and around, that's something that could
certainly happen as well.
And then that could lead to further evidence that could allow you to go to a judge and
get a warrant on the basis of probable cause to go and search this person's apartment.
I mean, it certainly is concerning that law enforcement didn't pick up on that tip.
But before we, I think, rush to judgment, we should know all of the facts surrounding
that particular tip off as well.
It doesn't sound right to me that law enforcement did absolutely nothing with a tip off about
a bomb.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'll phone number 802-321-4225.
This is going to be on for a few more minutes because we've been talking for quite a while.
We have to do other things with our lives too.
But we had a nice conversation with Rebel.
Do we have someone on the line now, Kyle?
Oh, I didn't know we had somebody.
Yeah, I already answered it.
Oh, okay.
Well, you've been waiting.
I'm so sorry.
Caller, are you there?
Yes, sir.
Good evening, folks.
Hi, how are you doing?
This is Bobson from Bulgaria.
Bobson, I wasn't sure it was you for a second.
You didn't sound quite as Bulgarian, but okay, now I recognize your voice.
How are you doing?
Sorry about that.
I didn't mean to.
Hey, happy New Year's Eve.
It's already New Year's Eve where you are.
No, it's the early hours of the 31st of December.
That's New Year's Eve, at least where we come from.
Oh, well, yeah.
The Eve is a bit later, I guess.
Uh-huh.
Whatever.
Did you make it to Congress, the virtual Congress?
RC3, you mean?
Yes, RC3.
It was so much fun.
Wasn't it fun?
It was.
Well, I didn't have anything to use.
All the bells and whistles with the 2G world and all that fancy stuff they did.
But I watched a lot of lectures, and I have about three times as many to catch up on in
the next few days.
Yeah, they're going to release them online, media.ccc.de.
Yeah, they've started doing that, but they have some catching up to do with this.
So it was fun, too.
I heard our friend Mitch Altman was saying how he did a soldering workshop with 160 people.
How in God's name did Mitch Altman do a soldering workshop virtually?
How did he do that?
Well, you have to talk to him about it because I don't have the details on that.
But he had 160 people in the workshop, which doesn't surprise me, knowing him, that he
would do such a thing.
He probably had fun doing it, which is what Congress is all about, right?
Yes, definitely true.
I'm just glad that hackers are figuring out ways to do things anyway, and I think we'll
be all the stronger for it.
Yeah, we don't know unless we try it.
True that.
But it was lots of fun.
I'm looking forward to their releasing the recordings because there's a lot to catch
up on.
Now, is it true that there was a limit on the number of virtual tickets that they had?
Oh, yeah.
The zero euro tickets.
I think so.
Well, I think it has to do with the new 2D world thing that they did, which is some sort
of modern, I don't know what, thing of bells and whistles that I had nowhere to run on.
So, I mean, I don't have a modern enough operating system with modern enough web browser to
take full advantage of the bells and whistles on it.
So, I haven't gone to it.
Hey, Bobson.
Yeah, I didn't get to check that out either.
It seems like it was a test, but they didn't want to overburden it because then it would
really be buggy, and they were working that out.
People were submitting suggestions.
We just discovered something really interesting, and, Bobson, you're part of the reason for
it.
We just found out we have a TV set that's tied into the telephone.
We see caller ID.
It shows up on the upper left-hand side.
You're on the phone.
We don't have call waiting on this phone line, and if you call the phone line now, well,
if you call the phone line direct, that is, the number we give out forward to this phone
number, if you call it direct, you get a busy signal if you call the number, but the caller
ID shows up of the person who got the busy signal.
Have you ever heard of anything like that?
This is unbelievable.
I just tried it for myself on, and my number showed up even though I got a busy signal.
There's no name.
It just shows zero, I think, for the name or an O.
Well, that's just because of the way this happens to be programmed, but that's not the
first weird thing I found out about this caller ID.
If you block your number and your number is listed as preferred ring for whatever reason,
you'll still get the preferred ring even though you blocked your number, so caller ID is still
being passed along even when you block it.
Wow.
Okay.
We have a lot to experiment with.
We just discovered that now because we saw a caller ID come over, and you were on the
phone, so that wasn't even possible.
There's another one coming over right now, in fact, which is weird.
Well, it's not a huge surprise technologically that caller IDs are passed along the phone
lines.
On busy signals?
I've never heard of that.
That's weird.
Yeah, we wouldn't know that there was another call coming in were it not for the fact that
there is a screen to monitor with this system.
It's kind of interesting.
Hey, Bobson, were there any other highlights from 2020, if you could have any?
Or are there, to put it a better way, are there things you're looking forward to in
the coming year, new year?
Well, what I'm looking forward to is the WHO press release saying that the pandemic is
over.
That's one thing I cannot wait for.
I would like to see a press release that says that.
And everybody go out and hug each other and do all kinds of fun things and lick the subway
railings and whatever, for one day at least.
Well, I could use it happening in 2021, that press release from the WHO, because it would
be a welcome change, I guess, with the way things are right now.
That's true.
That's true.
I think we got a preview of that, the daily election results were made official.
Yeah, yeah, somewhat of a preview of that.
And maybe on Inauguration Day we'll get another preview of that, if we make it that far.
I'm worried about what's going to happen on the 6th in D.C. with Trump and his ilk.
But we'll have to...
Well, you're not the only one worried about that.
Well, you're in Sofia, Bulgaria.
You're so far away, you don't have to worry about that.
Yeah, right.
The 45th has nukes at his disposal still.
That's true.
Does anybody realize Trump could launch nukes?
It's called ICBM.
It's not a good thing.
No, no, it's not.
All right, Bob, so we're going to keep our fingers crossed and hope that 2021 is going
to be a better year.
But good hearing your voice, as always.
Have a wonderful evening, folks.
All right.
You take care.
You too, Bobson.
And that is Bobson from Bulgaria joining us on the telephone.
And what do you think of what we just learned here?
It's very weird.
You get a busy signal.
I just tried it on my cell phone.
You get a busy signal when you call the phone, but caller ID still gets passed along on the
TV set.
I can tell you this is a cable phone.
It's tied into the cable company.
That's why it shows up on the TV set.
So I think basically that's what happens.
We're not writing down numbers.
No, we're not writing down numbers.
Numbers do show up.
We won't say anything descriptive about any of these numbers.
You can block your number and we won't see it.
But as I also mentioned, your phone number is passed along in some sense because we had
personalized ringing turned on on a particular phone number.
We blocked that phone number.
We still got the personalized ring.
So that means that information was passed along.
Oh, I'm going to turn that down a bit.
I thought you picked up.
Wow.
How am I supposed to know when you pick up?
You don't tell me you picked up.
I got a lot of responsibilities here.
You pick up the phone rings, pick it up.
That was the number.
A number is 802-321-4225.
802-321-HACK.
And we're not blaming Google for this.
That's the Google number because we tested it on the actual number and this is what happens.
So it's something involving the cable company.
That much I do know.
I'm going to look into this a little bit more.
Gosh, should we wait for one more phone call?
This is the longest one we've done yet, I think.
You guys look tired.
I'm sitting there in the Coliseum.
We always look tired.
Okay, there's the phone.
Let's hit one and we're going to pick up the phone now.
Good evening.
Wow, so that's Google telling us that.
Hello, you're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Yeah, hi.
I have a trivia question.
Did John Perry Barlow ever speak at Hope and was he ever a guest on Off the Hook?
John Perry Barlow was, in fact, a guest on Off the Hook.
In fact, well, actually, you know what?
Maybe it wasn't Off the Hook.
It might have been a different show I did on WBAI.
If you look at the Off the Hook archives, though, you'll see, I think it was 1990
where he did a late night show and I happen to know that he stayed on
and was also a guest on the show that followed us, which happened to be a Grateful Dead show.
And since he was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead,
I don't know if a recording of that exists, but the recording on our end exists.
He was not a speaker at Hope, though.
Oh.
I wish he had been.
Do you still have the tape?
Do you still have the tape of the show that of the interview that he did with your program?
Yes, that is online on 2600.com slash Off the Hook and just go to, I think it's 1990.
It's one of those late night shows.
It might have been called The Fifth Corner.
Oh, OK, well, that's great.
That's great because he's one of my one of my heroes.
He was an amazing person.
Yeah, he was.
He once described New York as the capital of experiences.
And I've been thinking about that a lot with the pandemic, because unfortunately,
a lot of great stores and not for profit and cultural institutions have had to shut down,
you know, because of the pandemic.
And I hope that some of them can reopen when life returns to normal, if it ever does.
Yeah, no, it will.
And I hope they do.
And if they are around, we can still support them if they're open.
You know, if your favorite restaurant, it doesn't let people go inside.
You can still do take out and support them that way.
There are many places that we've been in touch with that
are surviving because people care about them.
Rob, go ahead.
I just took a look.
And if you go to the Off the Hook, if you go to the Off the Hook archive on 2600.com
and look for the May 17th, 1990 episode.
It's an edition of The Fifth Corner.
And the guests are John Perry Barlow and Steve Jackson as well.
How about that?
That was right before the EFF was founded, because the Steve Jackson Games raid
was one of the things that inspired the Electronic Frontier Foundation to be formed.
Oh, wow.
It's a three part episode, a lot going on.
I'm really glad that you got to speak to him because he was a fascinating guy.
He really was.
He was a lot of fun to hang out with, too.
All right.
Thank you for that call.
Have a happy new year.
You, too.
See you next year.
We will see you next year.
Two weeks on Off the Hook.
All right.
That's going to do it for us tonight.
Any last words for 2020 and keep it clean, guys?
I'm going to kick you right in the zeros on the way out.
All right.
Well said.
All right.
As always, it's been a blast.
Look forward to seeing you all in person.
And that day will come.
It will.
It will.
Next year on a live stage.
And we wish the happiest new year possible to all of you out there.
And now I will click end stream.
And now I will click end to confirm.