[00:00.000 --> 00:01.940] [SPEAKER_06]: The WBAI Evening News.
[00:02.120 --> 00:09.460] [SPEAKER_06]: The time is almost 7 p.m., which means it's time, once again, for Off The Hook.
[00:09.700 --> 00:11.060] [SPEAKER_06]: And that's coming up.
[00:11.440 --> 00:12.380] [SPEAKER_06]: Stay tuned.
[00:28.960 --> 00:31.600] [SPEAKER_07]: And the time is just about 7 p.m.
[00:31.860 --> 00:35.820] [SPEAKER_07]: You're listening to WBAI 99.5 FM, New York.
[00:36.100 --> 00:39.080] [SPEAKER_07]: And it's time for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
[00:56.280 --> 00:58.460] [SPEAKER_02]: So I ripped it off the wall.
[00:59.480 --> 01:01.440] [SPEAKER_02]: I cut myself while shaving.
[01:02.020 --> 01:03.940] [SPEAKER_02]: Now I can't make a call.
[01:04.680 --> 01:06.740] [SPEAKER_02]: We couldn't get much worse.
[01:07.460 --> 01:09.320] [SPEAKER_01]: But if they could, they would.
[01:09.580 --> 01:12.200] [SPEAKER_01]: Bum-diddly-bom, but the best is back for worse.
[01:12.880 --> 01:14.720] [SPEAKER_01]: I hope that's understood.
[01:15.040 --> 01:15.780] [SPEAKER_01]: Bum-diddly-bom!
[01:36.200 --> 01:38.660] [SPEAKER_07]: A very, very good evening to you.
[01:38.920 --> 01:40.920] [SPEAKER_07]: The program is Off The Hook.
[01:41.200 --> 01:41.840] [SPEAKER_07]: Rob T.
[01:41.960 --> 01:44.320] [SPEAKER_07]: Firefly here with you, and I am joined by Gila.
[01:44.320 --> 01:44.760] [SPEAKER_07]: Hello!
[01:45.580 --> 01:48.580] [SPEAKER_07]: And over in Skype-land, we have Alex.
[01:49.900 --> 01:50.580] [SPEAKER_05]: Good evening.
[01:51.900 --> 01:54.900] [SPEAKER_07]: And also over in Skype-land, we have Emmanuel and Kyle.
[01:57.100 --> 01:57.800] [SPEAKER_04]: Hey there!
[01:58.100 --> 01:58.540] [SPEAKER_06]: Howdy!
[01:59.460 --> 02:01.860] [SPEAKER_07]: Still in Parts Unknown, out on assignment.
[02:01.860 --> 02:03.000] [SPEAKER_07]: How are you guys holding up?
[02:04.520 --> 02:05.720] [SPEAKER_06]: We know where we are.
[02:06.060 --> 02:07.460] [SPEAKER_06]: We always know where we are.
[02:07.640 --> 02:09.340] [SPEAKER_06]: In fact, you can know where we are, too.
[02:09.500 --> 02:10.320] [SPEAKER_06]: You have but to ask.
[02:11.360 --> 02:12.280] [SPEAKER_07]: Guys, where are you?
[02:14.320 --> 02:15.180] [SPEAKER_06]: I'm glad you asked.
[02:15.660 --> 02:19.180] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, last week, actually, interesting story.
[02:19.380 --> 02:27.520] [SPEAKER_06]: We thought we were doing a show last week up until, what was it, six minutes to the hour, and then we suddenly realized this was the week that we were preempted.
[02:27.520 --> 02:33.700] [SPEAKER_06]: Last week, we were literally on the banks of the Mississippi River, watching barges go by.
[02:33.940 --> 02:35.000] [SPEAKER_06]: It was pretty incredible.
[02:36.000 --> 02:36.860] [SPEAKER_06]: But you know what?
[02:36.860 --> 02:37.620] [SPEAKER_06]: It worked out.
[02:37.840 --> 02:41.260] [SPEAKER_06]: It was kind of an inconvenient place to do a radio show from for us.
[02:42.080 --> 02:44.560] [SPEAKER_06]: This week, we've made it further west.
[02:44.560 --> 02:53.860] [SPEAKER_06]: We're in the wonderful but mysterious city of Seattle, which is located in the state of Washington, here in the United States.
[02:54.880 --> 02:56.060] [SPEAKER_07]: We know about Seattle.
[02:56.160 --> 02:57.500] [SPEAKER_06]: Yes, it's also known as the Pacific Northwest.
[02:59.460 --> 03:00.020] [SPEAKER_07]: Absolutely.
[03:00.320 --> 03:07.840] [SPEAKER_07]: And in your travels, talking of time gone by, you guys actually had an appearance at an event a couple of weeks ago.
[03:10.120 --> 03:18.060] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, yes, I gave a keynote address at a hacker conference known as SOPCON, T-H-O-T-CON, in Chicago.
[03:18.400 --> 03:19.560] [SPEAKER_06]: Amazing conference.
[03:19.840 --> 03:21.780] [SPEAKER_06]: My God, I'd never been to one before.
[03:22.380 --> 03:24.460] [SPEAKER_06]: It's been going on for some time.
[03:24.860 --> 03:30.000] [SPEAKER_06]: And I've been trying to attend for the past number of years.
[03:30.960 --> 03:41.080] [SPEAKER_06]: Unfortunately, they always were scheduled for the first weekend of May, and that coincided with the five-year-old bike ride, which I enjoy being a part of.
[03:42.040 --> 03:49.360] [SPEAKER_06]: So finally, finally, they worked it out so that it was the second weekend of May, and that was in the year 2020.
[03:49.860 --> 03:52.600] [SPEAKER_06]: And we all know what happened in the spring of 2020.
[03:52.600 --> 03:55.540] [SPEAKER_06]: So it got rescheduled a whole bunch of times.
[03:55.720 --> 04:00.380] [SPEAKER_06]: Finally, it was rescheduled for October of 2021.
[04:01.040 --> 04:07.160] [SPEAKER_06]: And a group of people, it was just... it's weird talking to a crowd where everyone is wearing masks.
[04:07.400 --> 04:10.000] [SPEAKER_06]: You know, I said it looked like I was talking to a bunch of surgeons.
[04:10.460 --> 04:13.600] [SPEAKER_06]: You don't really realize how strange it is until you do it.
[04:14.660 --> 04:24.600] [SPEAKER_06]: But just talking to people who understand the importance of taking precautions, embracing science.
[04:24.760 --> 04:26.480] [SPEAKER_06]: You know, when I mention science, people applaud.
[04:26.620 --> 04:33.480] [SPEAKER_06]: And that's the kind of thing that really gives you some energy to keep going.
[04:34.780 --> 04:42.560] [SPEAKER_06]: All throughout this trip that we've been taking, we've noticed the different ways that people respond.
[04:42.560 --> 04:45.480] [SPEAKER_06]: New York people are very conscientious about it.
[04:46.160 --> 04:52.840] [SPEAKER_06]: The Midwest, Midwest is... you know, I love the people there, but they kind of act like there is no virus.
[04:53.040 --> 04:55.460] [SPEAKER_06]: Everyone walks around with that mask inside and out.
[04:55.740 --> 04:57.980] [SPEAKER_06]: And by everyone, I'm grossly exaggerating.
[04:58.240 --> 05:01.300] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the exception being at this particular conference.
[05:01.400 --> 05:14.340] [SPEAKER_04]: And I know... I felt this, and many of the other people attending, I think, spoke to this, this feeling of, yeah, we're doing this because, well, we remember that we used to gather like this.
[05:14.480 --> 05:24.060] [SPEAKER_04]: And if we do the right thing, we can have a bit of fun and socialize and be with one another, which so many people had not been doing.
[05:24.220 --> 05:27.080] [SPEAKER_04]: And this was like sort of a first outing since.
[05:27.500 --> 05:32.100] [SPEAKER_04]: And in that way, it helps it be a success.
[05:32.100 --> 05:33.820] [SPEAKER_04]: And there was a really good turnout.
[05:33.820 --> 05:35.520] [SPEAKER_04]: A lot of people showed up.
[05:35.660 --> 05:40.880] [SPEAKER_06]: But everyone had to show that they were vaccinated, and everyone had to wear a mask throughout.
[05:41.220 --> 05:45.120] [SPEAKER_06]: The exception being people who were on stage giving talks.
[05:46.140 --> 05:56.120] [SPEAKER_06]: After that, we took the train out to Seattle, which was, as always, an amazing thing to do.
[05:56.120 --> 06:04.200] [SPEAKER_06]: The people of Amtrak, very good as far as keeping everyone safe, making sure masks are worn on the train.
[06:04.200 --> 06:11.800] [SPEAKER_06]: If you book a room, my God, their room mats are so tiny, especially west of the Mississippi, where there are double-decker trains.
[06:12.520 --> 06:24.260] [SPEAKER_06]: But if you can look past that, it's a very safe environment to be in because you're enclosed, and you're able to just kind of live your life there and walk around the train with a mask on.
[06:24.800 --> 06:32.000] [SPEAKER_06]: Seattle, when we got to Seattle, I noticed people were taking it even more seriously than in New York.
[06:32.220 --> 06:35.620] [SPEAKER_06]: People wearing masks outside of the street and everywhere they go.
[06:36.440 --> 06:37.740] [SPEAKER_06]: So there's that.
[06:37.900 --> 06:43.840] [SPEAKER_06]: But also, if you look at the statistics, Washington State has one of the best records.
[06:43.840 --> 06:47.200] [SPEAKER_06]: So, whatever they're doing, it's working.
[06:47.800 --> 06:52.520] [SPEAKER_06]: But being out here in Seattle is always an amazing experience.
[06:53.000 --> 06:56.600] [SPEAKER_06]: But, you know, we've noticed a couple of things that, wow.
[06:57.760 --> 07:00.360] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, Seattle, first of all, is full of activists.
[07:00.600 --> 07:03.820] [SPEAKER_06]: It's full of Black Lives Matter signs everywhere.
[07:03.820 --> 07:14.540] [SPEAKER_06]: Just kind of this feeling that something's in the air, that change is afoot, and that people are busy doing things.
[07:15.400 --> 07:25.560] [SPEAKER_06]: But then you also have a really serious problem with people who either don't have homes or have serious drug problems.
[07:25.780 --> 07:28.680] [SPEAKER_06]: Not at all related to legalization of marijuana.
[07:28.840 --> 07:30.060] [SPEAKER_06]: This is serious stuff.
[07:30.340 --> 07:31.940] [SPEAKER_06]: And that needs to be dealt with.
[07:32.100 --> 07:40.320] [SPEAKER_06]: There needs to be more support, more funding for these kinds of programs, obviously, because you can't have this kind of situation.
[07:41.700 --> 07:50.200] [SPEAKER_04]: There are projects, you notice, I think there was one where people can get like a hot shower if they're on the streets and unhoused.
[07:50.560 --> 07:58.340] [SPEAKER_04]: And little signs and attempts, I think, to organize and help people who are really in need.
[07:58.460 --> 08:05.040] [SPEAKER_04]: But it is a far cry from the actual need when you really take a hard look at some of the areas.
[08:05.040 --> 08:14.820] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm talking like visibly, audibly disturbed individuals in almost every direction you look in some places.
[08:15.220 --> 08:23.820] [SPEAKER_04]: You will see someone who is in a very bad way and confrontational, aggravated, irritated.
[08:24.100 --> 08:26.060] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's really difficult.
[08:26.060 --> 08:28.780] [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's not a Democrat-Republican thing.
[08:28.880 --> 08:29.840] [SPEAKER_06]: This is a human thing.
[08:30.080 --> 08:32.500] [SPEAKER_06]: It's not, you know, pervasive in every part of the city.
[08:32.640 --> 08:35.620] [SPEAKER_06]: But it's in enough parts of the city for it to be an issue.
[08:35.840 --> 08:43.700] [SPEAKER_06]: And again, this is something that we as a society need to be addressing first and foremost everywhere, not just in Seattle.
[08:43.920 --> 08:49.120] [SPEAKER_06]: But the other thing that I think is unique to Seattle is super disturbing.
[08:49.120 --> 08:51.020] [SPEAKER_06]: And that is Amazon.
[08:51.500 --> 08:56.100] [SPEAKER_06]: Amazon is everywhere in ways that I had never imagined.
[08:56.680 --> 08:59.100] [SPEAKER_06]: To give you an example, we rode a streetcar.
[08:59.300 --> 09:03.680] [SPEAKER_06]: An amazing streetcar they have here in Seattle.
[09:04.320 --> 09:06.600] [SPEAKER_06]: And the streetcar is branded.
[09:06.880 --> 09:12.440] [SPEAKER_06]: At least one of the streetcars is branded with Amazon logos everywhere.
[09:12.660 --> 09:15.320] [SPEAKER_06]: The stops are sponsored by Amazon.
[09:15.320 --> 09:20.060] [SPEAKER_06]: I guess the whole streetcar line was created by Amazon.
[09:20.400 --> 09:22.020] [SPEAKER_06]: I don't understand that.
[09:22.320 --> 09:23.920] [SPEAKER_06]: It's just everywhere you see...
[09:23.920 --> 09:25.460] [SPEAKER_06]: And you're passing Amazon buildings.
[09:25.460 --> 09:27.660] [SPEAKER_06]: You're passing Amazon Dropboxes.
[09:28.140 --> 09:29.440] [SPEAKER_06]: But it gets worse.
[09:29.460 --> 09:33.480] [SPEAKER_06]: Because the propaganda is just unbelievable.
[09:34.160 --> 09:38.200] [SPEAKER_06]: Let's say you're streaming something on the Internet.
[09:38.500 --> 09:40.100] [SPEAKER_06]: A TV program, perhaps.
[09:40.400 --> 09:41.920] [SPEAKER_06]: And you know how you get the commercials.
[09:41.920 --> 09:43.240] [SPEAKER_06]: You can't really skip past them.
[09:43.240 --> 09:45.740] [SPEAKER_06]: But you get the commercials at the breaks.
[09:46.540 --> 09:50.360] [SPEAKER_06]: You cannot avoid all the Amazon propaganda commercials.
[09:50.580 --> 09:54.160] [SPEAKER_06]: The ones that say, we pay people $15 an hour.
[09:54.320 --> 09:56.540] [SPEAKER_06]: We pay more in places where it's more expensive.
[09:56.540 --> 09:57.680] [SPEAKER_06]: We are so great.
[09:57.820 --> 10:02.600] [SPEAKER_06]: And you see people telling their life stories about how their tuition was paid for.
[10:02.600 --> 10:13.220] [SPEAKER_06]: It's like being in the People's Republic of China and bowing down to the great leaders in North Korea.
[10:13.340 --> 10:13.940] [SPEAKER_06]: But you know what I mean.
[10:15.160 --> 10:19.140] [SPEAKER_06]: It's just something that maybe you don't see it when you live here.
[10:19.300 --> 10:20.800] [SPEAKER_06]: I think people do, though.
[10:21.360 --> 10:22.820] [SPEAKER_06]: It's kind of frightening.
[10:23.020 --> 10:25.100] [SPEAKER_06]: It's very offensive.
[10:26.020 --> 10:29.960] [SPEAKER_06]: And I think it's going to get worse because they...
[10:29.960 --> 10:31.640] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, I mean, Kyle, you grew up here.
[10:32.160 --> 10:35.420] [SPEAKER_06]: It just feels like they're taking over in so many ways.
[10:35.420 --> 10:41.540] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think the biggest example was that trolley system having sponsored stops.
[10:41.720 --> 10:54.100] [SPEAKER_04]: And in many ways, the construction of it was contested or at least criticized because the route itself catered specifically to Amazon in a lot of ways.
[10:54.100 --> 11:03.020] [SPEAKER_04]: But the irony is now Amazon has given workers the indefinite ability to work remotely.
[11:03.420 --> 11:11.040] [SPEAKER_04]: So all of the complexes and all of the office buildings that they wanted to fill up with employees are probably going to sit vacant.
[11:11.240 --> 11:20.580] [SPEAKER_04]: And it just goes to show you how much the city has bent over backwards and into all kinds of pretzel shapes to accommodate them.
[11:20.580 --> 11:29.840] [SPEAKER_04]: And just as quickly, they could just say, well, we don't care about this transportation anymore because everyone is remote.
[11:30.060 --> 11:46.600] [SPEAKER_04]: We're not interested in these buildings anymore because we don't need them and can much better afford to enjoy the productivity that they're realizing in virtual employment schemes.
[11:46.600 --> 11:59.500] [SPEAKER_04]: So then it only begs the question, what happens when these transportation projects and so forth aren't extended, aren't completed, are just sort of run empty?
[12:00.120 --> 12:01.100] [SPEAKER_04]: I'll tell you what happens.
[12:01.200 --> 12:04.380] [SPEAKER_06]: Detroit happens with the auto industry.
[12:04.520 --> 12:14.200] [SPEAKER_06]: When they abandoned that place and the roads fell into disrepair and there was no mass transit, Amazon has been given that same level of power.
[12:14.200 --> 12:20.460] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we sat on that trolley and rode it as we rode as many systems and lengths of it.
[12:20.560 --> 12:25.180] [SPEAKER_04]: We were looking into all of it at a, you know, every turn.
[12:25.900 --> 12:30.520] [SPEAKER_04]: But this particular line, as we explored, was empty.
[12:31.060 --> 12:34.860] [SPEAKER_04]: We were the only ones on it in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day.
[12:34.860 --> 12:40.840] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's pretty, pretty stark and telling.
[12:41.200 --> 12:51.000] [SPEAKER_04]: And those are the things that we were thinking as we're, you know, taking it in, seeing how much sprawl, like urban sprawl, still continues.
[12:51.220 --> 12:59.380] [SPEAKER_04]: And, of course, comparing and looking at the community between that and those who are unemployed and so forth.
[12:59.380 --> 13:04.020] [SPEAKER_04]: And we even were overhearing a parent.
[13:04.020 --> 13:04.760] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, boy.
[13:05.700 --> 13:08.180] [SPEAKER_04]: That had sort of an unruly child with her.
[13:08.360 --> 13:13.160] [SPEAKER_04]: And, well, we were on a bus heading past one of the fulfillment facilities.
[13:13.820 --> 13:23.000] [SPEAKER_04]: And as sort of a threat to get this child to behave, the mother, without skipping a beat, said, Hey, I'll drop you off at Amazon.
[13:23.000 --> 13:24.080] [SPEAKER_04]: Do you want to go work?
[13:26.120 --> 13:27.200] [SPEAKER_04]: It's true, I heard.
[13:27.460 --> 13:27.860] [SPEAKER_06]: Wow.
[13:28.020 --> 13:31.020] [SPEAKER_06]: This is, this is, it's like that Charles Dickens type of a thing.
[13:31.120 --> 13:33.300] [SPEAKER_06]: This is what you threaten your kids with.
[13:34.260 --> 13:36.940] [SPEAKER_06]: Sending you to Amazon, where you'll be slave labor.
[13:37.480 --> 13:39.820] [SPEAKER_06]: It's, you know, it's funny, but it really isn't.
[13:40.020 --> 13:55.820] [SPEAKER_06]: And the thing is, if I didn't love Seattle so much, maybe it wouldn't bother me so much to see how it's being treated by this corporation, by, you know, basically they're becoming so dependent on them that Amazon can do whatever it wants.
[13:56.240 --> 14:00.660] [SPEAKER_06]: And it's, it's, it's, it's very disturbing to see that happen.
[14:00.820 --> 14:10.040] [SPEAKER_06]: And I just hope that a lot of this activism and revolutionary spirit is focused upon that, because that is really a big threat.
[14:10.420 --> 14:15.140] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, less angst and more organization and, and meaningful action.
[14:15.840 --> 14:26.660] [SPEAKER_07]: This is, this feels like I'm, I'm kind of hearing of news from an alternate universe, because a couple of years ago, as we discussed on this program, there was a push by Amazon to set up shop not too far from where we are in Queens.
[14:27.220 --> 14:33.300] [SPEAKER_07]: And the city government was bending over backwards to give them all sorts of breaks so they could build their building and have their hub here.
[14:33.540 --> 14:40.940] [SPEAKER_07]: And again, it was, it was mooted at the last minute and they pulled out of it when they realized that pretty much nobody wanted them here.
[14:40.940 --> 14:46.560] [SPEAKER_07]: And it's, it's kind of scary to think like how close we came to something like that right here in New York.
[14:47.980 --> 14:50.460] [SPEAKER_08]: I mean, I was a little bummed we didn't get the Queens helicopter pad.
[14:53.160 --> 14:55.220] [SPEAKER_06]: It's not just New York, it's everywhere.
[14:55.600 --> 14:59.000] [SPEAKER_06]: You know, you just, you see these centers opening everywhere.
[14:59.400 --> 15:05.760] [SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, and in a sane amount of space, perhaps it's okay.
[15:05.760 --> 15:15.360] [SPEAKER_06]: But when you see it on every block, when you see it on every bus, when you see it in every TV program, you realize this is not healthy.
[15:15.620 --> 15:19.080] [SPEAKER_06]: It's not, it's not something that is capitalism.
[15:19.260 --> 15:20.960] [SPEAKER_06]: It's not something that's democratic.
[15:21.340 --> 15:22.920] [SPEAKER_06]: It's just all pervasive.
[15:22.920 --> 15:26.720] [SPEAKER_06]: And it's really, um, uh, sad.
[15:27.020 --> 15:29.880] [SPEAKER_06]: And I, I just hope that we're able to do something about it.
[15:29.940 --> 15:39.740] [SPEAKER_06]: We, we, we talk week after week about how these major companies like, you know, Facebook and, uh, Google and Amazon, uh, my God, they're all here, aren't they?
[15:40.700 --> 15:41.200] [SPEAKER_06]: A lot of them.
[15:41.280 --> 15:59.720] [SPEAKER_06]: They're just getting bigger and bigger and they're affecting more and more, uh, whether it's presidential elections or the economy or it's, um, we, we need to make sure that people keep control and that they never give it up the way they, they seem to be doing now.
[16:00.180 --> 16:12.760] [SPEAKER_06]: Um, I was just reading this, this story, uh, that one of you posted it to the list, uh, about how Amazon has been copying products and, and rigging search results to promote some brands over in India.
[16:13.640 --> 16:15.320] [SPEAKER_06]: You guys have more info on that?
[16:15.320 --> 16:21.580] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, it was a big investigation by Reuters, um, which is a very fascinating story, very long, but, uh, worth a look.
[16:21.800 --> 16:30.620] [SPEAKER_07]: And yes, they, they are basically, um, if a product succeeds on Amazon, they will knock it off and, uh, promote their own version over yours.
[16:30.880 --> 16:43.720] [SPEAKER_07]: And if you're an independent seller who has to use Amazon because you can't not use Amazon because they're so monolithic and, uh, pervasive, then, uh, you find, you find your, your venue competing with you for your own sales.
[16:43.720 --> 16:45.960] [SPEAKER_07]: And that's not a healthy state of affairs.
[16:46.200 --> 16:56.280] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, but, uh, they, they, they've, uh, they've been able to do so mostly unchecked and are only starting to be slightly called out, um, due to, uh, based, uh, based on stories like this.
[16:56.840 --> 17:00.040] [SPEAKER_07]: But, uh, it's, it's something they have the power to do.
[17:00.160 --> 17:01.120] [SPEAKER_07]: They're the 900 pound gorilla.
[17:02.380 --> 17:09.460] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, they, this, this, this happened because of thousands of pages of, um, internal Amazon documents that Reuters got a hold of.
[17:09.720 --> 17:22.920] [SPEAKER_06]: I'm not sure exactly how, uh, this was released to them, but it shows that the, um, the company ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India.
[17:22.920 --> 17:29.120] [SPEAKER_06]: Um, I'm not exactly sure if we have specific examples of what a knockoff actually is.
[17:29.480 --> 17:34.640] [SPEAKER_06]: Um, and if it's a counterfeit or, or is it, uh, just something that's looks similar?
[17:34.640 --> 17:38.640] [SPEAKER_04]: You know what this reminds me a lot of is the, uh, publishing copies.
[17:38.940 --> 17:57.020] [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, I know we did a couple stories, uh, in the last year or so that, that had, um, basically publishers, um, uh, who had, um, an account or, uh, item that was being distributed by Amazon and they were printing and publishing copies of Pollock a number of years ago.
[17:57.080 --> 17:58.300] [SPEAKER_06]: But is that what this, that's counterfeit.
[17:58.440 --> 17:59.520] [SPEAKER_06]: Is that what we're talking about here?
[18:00.000 --> 18:00.400] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[18:00.680 --> 18:15.520] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, there, there are examples given in the Reuters story of, uh, there is a company called William Sonema, who is a furniture manufacturer who filed, uh, photos in, in a federal court of, of, uh, a chair of theirs with a very unusual looking design, a desk of theirs that unfolds in a particular,
[18:15.820 --> 18:20.920] [SPEAKER_07]: peculiar way, and, uh, examples right next to them of Amazon's own brand versions that came out afterward.
[18:21.200 --> 18:25.080] [SPEAKER_07]: And looking at these in the catalog, you could be forgiven for thinking they're the same product.
[18:25.500 --> 18:34.800] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, and it's, uh, it's basically like if you, if you innovate in some way and they notice, then, uh, they, they want to, they want to, uh, compete with you and put out their version.
[18:35.200 --> 18:43.680] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, which will, because they control the advertising on their product listings, um, they will advertise their own version over yours when, uh, people find it via searches.
[18:45.000 --> 18:55.200] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, Robert, when you said compete, I hope you did air quotes, because it's not competing if you can, uh, undercut because you run the store.
[18:55.880 --> 19:01.360] [SPEAKER_06]: You know, that's, that's basically stealing an idea, taking it over, and putting the originator out of business.
[19:02.080 --> 19:02.660] [SPEAKER_07]: Very, very true.
[19:03.840 --> 19:06.460] [SPEAKER_07]: I mean, we, we now live in a, in a generation which...
[19:06.460 --> 19:07.260] [SPEAKER_06]: Alex, have you anything to say about this, Alex?
[19:07.540 --> 19:07.740] [SPEAKER_07]: Sorry.
[19:08.660 --> 19:08.820] [SPEAKER_07]: Sorry.
[19:08.820 --> 19:09.360] [SPEAKER_07]: Go ahead, Alex.
[19:09.900 --> 19:10.240] [SPEAKER_05]: You sure.
[19:10.700 --> 19:15.580] [SPEAKER_05]: I've always got something to say about anything, really, you know, if, uh, if given the opportunity.
[19:16.480 --> 19:19.880] [SPEAKER_05]: But, um, I mean, real, what's all the big fuss about this?
[19:20.020 --> 19:21.260] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, really, come on, guys.
[19:21.460 --> 19:24.580] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, isn't imitation the, the supremest form of flattery?
[19:24.580 --> 19:28.080] [SPEAKER_05]: Isn't the, uh, that platform, isn't that what Amazon's doing?
[19:28.140 --> 19:30.640] [SPEAKER_05]: They like these products so much, they're going to make them themselves.
[19:31.540 --> 19:33.220] [SPEAKER_05]: What's so, what's so wrong about that?
[19:33.980 --> 19:36.400] [SPEAKER_05]: I hope, I hope you realize that you're sarcastic.
[19:37.080 --> 19:39.420] [SPEAKER_06]: You're going out on a ledge today, aren't you?
[19:41.860 --> 19:50.140] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, uh, obviously, there's, I was being sarcastic and facetious and, uh, and, and many other things, and disingenuous as well.
[19:50.140 --> 20:04.380] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh, but, you know, look, it's obviously, it's a very big problem for even, I think, major houses like Williams-Sonoma and others who have had their designs copied, you know, and they have rights to these designs, they can assert them, they're intellectual property,
[20:04.620 --> 20:06.140] [SPEAKER_05]: and, and, and frankly, they should.
[20:06.360 --> 20:19.780] [SPEAKER_05]: And the problem with IP rights, too, is that, you know, if you don't use them, you can tend to lose them, they're, you know, they're, if you sit on your hands, if you sit on your rights, then you don't have the right to assert them much later on.
[20:19.880 --> 20:21.420] [SPEAKER_05]: You can't delay with these types of things.
[20:21.560 --> 20:28.520] [SPEAKER_05]: So I imagine that there's going to be a, a good amount of, uh, litigation over this type of activity.
[20:29.060 --> 20:37.880] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh, but what I think could further complicate things is, if I understand it correctly, is this is happening outside of the United States.
[20:37.880 --> 20:38.460] [SPEAKER_05]: Is that correct?
[20:38.840 --> 20:39.320] [SPEAKER_07]: Mm-hmm.
[20:39.880 --> 20:41.440] [SPEAKER_07]: Yes, this is mostly India.
[20:41.580 --> 20:42.920] [SPEAKER_07]: This is, uh, talked about in this story.
[20:43.740 --> 20:44.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[20:44.480 --> 20:54.120] [SPEAKER_05]: So, I mean, that's an interesting wrinkle to me because, um, yeah, I've been involved in some IP litigation in India, and it's a bit of a mess, frankly.
[20:54.400 --> 21:11.200] [SPEAKER_05]: So, uh, this is going to be interesting to see how it shakes out, and perhaps they're strategically choosing jurisdictions within which it's, it may be difficult, or at least more difficult to, for, uh, designers and, and brand owners to assert their rights against Amazon.
[21:11.420 --> 21:12.200] [SPEAKER_05]: So, so we'll see.
[21:12.320 --> 21:13.320] [SPEAKER_05]: We'll see how this shakes out.
[21:13.480 --> 21:16.240] [SPEAKER_05]: But, um, I think it's going to be an interesting legal battle.
[21:18.200 --> 21:18.560] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[21:18.800 --> 21:24.560] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, as I, as I was saying, we, we live in a generation where most people know what the deal is when you sell something online.
[21:24.700 --> 21:37.320] [SPEAKER_07]: Now, it, it's no longer a novelty in, uh, the age of, uh, things like eBay and, uh, you know, Craigslist and all sorts of online marketplaces in which people can list things for sale, whether it's a one-off or whether it's something that you want to make your living selling.
[21:37.980 --> 21:50.020] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, these, the individual seller has very little power when it comes to competing with massive corporations that, uh, want to take what makes the small seller special and just, uh, knock it off.
[21:52.660 --> 21:59.820] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, I wish they would knock it off because it's, uh, it's just making things terrible on so many fronts.
[22:00.260 --> 22:13.140] [SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, I don't like, I don't like constantly demonizing one entity because there's so much room to go around to demonize so many, but boy, Amazon is really, um, uh, it's turning into a monster.
[22:13.560 --> 22:22.220] [SPEAKER_06]: I don't want to sound hysterical here, but, um, all these independent, uh, stores, we walked through, um, uh, where was that?
[22:22.360 --> 22:29.480] [SPEAKER_06]: Uh, Chicago where there was an Amazon bookstore and, you know, I walked into this Amazon bookstore.
[22:29.720 --> 22:33.420] [SPEAKER_06]: I felt so dirty because it wasn't a bookstore.
[22:33.600 --> 22:45.520] [SPEAKER_06]: It was what put the bookstores out of business because they're undercutting because they have more access and the bookstores they put out of business are the chains that put the independent bookstores out of business.
[22:45.800 --> 23:06.620] [SPEAKER_06]: So we're, we're several levels removed from where, you know, we should be with, with, uh, independent business people doing It's a really sickening situation, but I just hope that our individual spirit is able to be resurrected here, and that we can do something to fight this,
[23:06.700 --> 23:08.600] [SPEAKER_06]: because this is super unhelpful.
[23:08.980 --> 23:10.300] [SPEAKER_07]: It's funny you mention that.
[23:10.440 --> 23:11.520] [SPEAKER_07]: We got our mail today.
[23:11.640 --> 23:12.240] [SPEAKER_07]: Gila, what did we get?
[23:12.240 --> 23:30.680] [SPEAKER_08]: We actually got the Amazon Christmas Toy Catalog, the paper Amazon Christmas Toy Catalog, which is, I mean, addressed to current residents, so neither of us actually got it, but it's, you know, it's perfect bound.
[23:31.120 --> 23:32.500] [SPEAKER_08]: It's on heavy paper.
[23:34.320 --> 23:35.300] [SPEAKER_08]: That it is.
[23:35.300 --> 23:37.740] [SPEAKER_08]: It's a, it's fascinating.
[23:38.860 --> 23:43.240] [SPEAKER_08]: It, you know, it's like the Sears Catalog from when, a long time ago.
[23:43.380 --> 23:45.300] [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, and there's paper dolls in it, I think?
[23:45.440 --> 23:46.260] [SPEAKER_08]: There's a lot going on.
[23:47.560 --> 23:48.840] [SPEAKER_07]: Some activities in here.
[23:49.140 --> 23:49.940] [SPEAKER_07]: But the whole...
[23:49.940 --> 23:50.100] [SPEAKER_07]: Stickers.
[23:50.260 --> 23:50.520] [SPEAKER_08]: Stickers.
[23:50.700 --> 23:51.060] [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, cool.
[23:52.960 --> 23:58.640] [SPEAKER_08]: But it's interesting, because, Emmanuel, what I'm hearing you describe is like an old-school company town.
[23:59.600 --> 24:04.480] [SPEAKER_08]: And there's, you know, been a lot of businesses in Seattle over the years, I'm assuming.
[24:04.940 --> 24:08.940] [SPEAKER_08]: And no one's really taken it to that extent, again, I'm assuming.
[24:09.540 --> 24:11.160] [SPEAKER_08]: I mean, are there Amazon banks?
[24:13.300 --> 24:14.500] [SPEAKER_08]: I'm very serious.
[24:15.900 --> 24:20.600] [SPEAKER_07]: They do have Amazon Pay, which is a payment processor, so that's a thing.
[24:20.740 --> 24:20.740] Right.
[24:20.740 --> 24:26.840] [SPEAKER_08]: But, you know, I'm thinking about when mining companies used to pay in script, so you didn't have money, you had company money.
[24:27.040 --> 24:27.300] [SPEAKER_08]: Right.
[24:28.980 --> 24:32.040] [SPEAKER_06]: We keep seeing all these Amazon-branded things.
[24:32.180 --> 24:33.660] [SPEAKER_06]: Was it Amazon 2?
[24:34.120 --> 24:36.000] [SPEAKER_06]: Or was it Amazon 1?
[24:36.220 --> 24:37.380] [SPEAKER_06]: Or was it Amazon 10?
[24:37.600 --> 24:41.340] [SPEAKER_06]: Or was it Amazon Go, which is what I want to say to them?
[24:41.820 --> 24:44.520] [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know what these things are, but they're just everywhere.
[24:44.660 --> 24:46.900] [SPEAKER_06]: You just find another Amazon something.
[24:48.200 --> 24:50.280] [SPEAKER_06]: And it's spooky.
[24:50.280 --> 24:52.380] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you can't even tell what the product is.
[24:52.540 --> 25:00.420] [SPEAKER_04]: You're just like, okay, this does something tangentially related to whatever their core business is this week.
[25:00.540 --> 25:02.440] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it is truly bizarre.
[25:02.440 --> 25:14.740] [SPEAKER_04]: Unless you're in on this collective hallucination, you don't really understand what they're useful for.
[25:16.540 --> 25:24.300] [SPEAKER_07]: And they do that through opening a bookstore that's a parody of the bookstores they killed, and sending out catalogs that's a parody of the catalogs they killed.
[25:24.520 --> 25:28.800] [SPEAKER_07]: And they use this money to send famous blowhards into space, I guess.
[25:30.560 --> 25:39.060] [SPEAKER_06]: But what gets me is the space part I like, okay, because I like exploring, and I like pushing technology.
[25:39.380 --> 25:43.200] [SPEAKER_06]: And I'm actually one of the few people who thinks it was cool that William Shatner went up into space.
[25:43.700 --> 25:46.600] [SPEAKER_06]: But not this way.
[25:46.880 --> 25:56.060] [SPEAKER_06]: Not using this kind of just horrible method of taking over and putting others out of business.
[25:56.060 --> 25:57.800] [SPEAKER_06]: That's just so wrong.
[25:59.380 --> 26:00.640] [SPEAKER_06]: But let's move on.
[26:00.840 --> 26:05.380] [SPEAKER_06]: Because, you know, we can talk all day about Amazon and its emails.
[26:05.660 --> 26:09.300] [SPEAKER_06]: But boy, you have to come to Seattle to really see it in action.
[26:09.680 --> 26:11.920] [SPEAKER_06]: And just the propaganda commercials.
[26:12.240 --> 26:13.400] [SPEAKER_06]: And they're on TV, too.
[26:13.480 --> 26:19.700] [SPEAKER_06]: If you turn on a TV channel, you won't go a few minutes without an Amazon commercial popping up saying how great they are.
[26:19.940 --> 26:22.580] [SPEAKER_06]: And how everybody should work for them.
[26:22.580 --> 26:27.380] [SPEAKER_04]: And just remember, they're all cutthroat until their necks are on the line.
[26:28.420 --> 26:28.600] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[26:29.840 --> 26:31.400] [SPEAKER_06]: Let's move on to Facebook.
[26:32.180 --> 26:33.780] [SPEAKER_06]: Facebook, they're also here.
[26:34.800 --> 26:36.020] [SPEAKER_06]: But I understand.
[26:36.020 --> 26:37.480] [SPEAKER_06]: Maybe you guys know more about this.
[26:37.600 --> 26:40.880] [SPEAKER_06]: Because I can't get past the headline of this.
[26:40.960 --> 26:42.000] [SPEAKER_06]: I'm just laughing too hard.
[26:42.180 --> 26:46.480] [SPEAKER_06]: But Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name.
[26:47.060 --> 26:47.940] [SPEAKER_00]: A new name.
[26:49.440 --> 26:51.580] [SPEAKER_06]: Like Washington football team or something.
[26:52.140 --> 26:57.280] [SPEAKER_06]: But the sub-headline, Mark Zuckerberg wants to be known for building the metaverse.
[26:57.880 --> 27:05.600] [SPEAKER_06]: And I just, you know, I said to myself, wow, Silicon Valley is back on the air because this is so absurd, so crazy, so ridiculous.
[27:07.300 --> 27:09.680] [SPEAKER_06]: And I kind of want to see where it goes.
[27:09.680 --> 27:14.700] [SPEAKER_06]: But are they really going to call Facebook something else and think that's going to solve anything?
[27:15.520 --> 27:16.080] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[27:16.220 --> 27:17.920] [SPEAKER_07]: The artist formerly known as Facebook.
[27:18.980 --> 27:21.080] [SPEAKER_07]: There is a lot of chatter around this story.
[27:21.240 --> 27:26.660] [SPEAKER_07]: Some of it seems to believe that Facebook is going to rebrand itself metaverse using that term.
[27:26.860 --> 27:28.600] [SPEAKER_07]: Which would be hilarious if it happened.
[27:28.600 --> 27:34.380] [SPEAKER_07]: Because for those unfamiliar, the metaverse is a term coined in very dystopian science fiction.
[27:34.620 --> 27:36.200] [SPEAKER_07]: Snow Crash by Neil Stevenson.
[27:37.600 --> 27:42.080] [SPEAKER_07]: Somewhat similar to Ready Player One, which came out more recently and is not very good.
[27:42.220 --> 27:51.580] [SPEAKER_07]: But a metaverse is basically a VR shared reality type thing where the real world outside is very dystopian.
[27:51.680 --> 27:52.520] [SPEAKER_07]: Everything's broken down.
[27:52.660 --> 27:53.380] [SPEAKER_07]: Everything's terrible.
[27:53.380 --> 28:00.620] [SPEAKER_07]: And people go into the metaverse to escape and live some kind of enjoyable life because there's nothing for them in reality.
[28:00.940 --> 28:09.340] [SPEAKER_07]: And so if Facebook is actually deliberately taking on that name, that would be really funny on certain levels.
[28:09.780 --> 28:10.840] [SPEAKER_07]: Alex, you're kind of chuckling.
[28:10.940 --> 28:11.400] [SPEAKER_06]: Hang on.
[28:14.060 --> 28:15.040] [SPEAKER_06]: Go ahead, Alex.
[28:15.800 --> 28:16.740] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, sure.
[28:17.040 --> 28:18.820] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, look, I think this is...
[28:18.820 --> 28:19.700] [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's real.
[28:19.700 --> 28:20.940] [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's a real thing.
[28:20.940 --> 28:26.020] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, it sounds silly, but, you know, the way Rob had described it, I think, is accurate.
[28:26.140 --> 28:28.840] [SPEAKER_05]: I think that there is going to be valuable properties here.
[28:28.960 --> 28:42.680] [SPEAKER_05]: If you combine, you know, all of the craziness that we've been exposed to with respect to NFTs, these non-fungible tokens, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, pandemics, mask wearing.
[28:43.940 --> 28:57.900] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, the political climate, riots, all of these things are conspiring, I feel like, to make the online world seem a little bit more attractive than our physical lives.
[28:57.900 --> 29:14.320] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think that what Facebook is doing is, you know, I wouldn't call it prescient, because I just think it's really a sign of the times, it's a zeitgeist, but it's a natural progression to this other world that is going to have valuable properties.
[29:14.320 --> 29:19.320] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think a lot of value in interacting with each other.
[29:19.460 --> 29:35.340] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, also, you think about, you know, how horrendous it's been to constantly be in Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting, or, you know, maybe every once in a while you change it up and you have a WebEx or a Microsoft Teams or a Google Meetup.
[29:35.340 --> 29:37.340] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's just been exhausting.
[29:37.720 --> 29:51.620] [SPEAKER_05]: And so to have an alternative space where you can meet people, something that's centralized, something that's, I guess, to a certain extent, regulated and moderated, is going to be valuable.
[29:52.000 --> 29:56.000] [SPEAKER_05]: And so it doesn't shock me at all that this is where they're going.
[29:56.000 --> 29:57.200] [SPEAKER_06]: It's the same thing, though.
[29:57.660 --> 29:58.760] [SPEAKER_06]: It's the same thing.
[29:58.760 --> 30:15.740] [SPEAKER_06]: You're just looking at a screen, communicating with icons or avatars, and I think real life has been screwed up a lot by social media, but I think real life still holds a significant edge, mask or no mask.
[30:17.360 --> 30:32.740] [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe, but, I mean, look, it feels similar now, but I think as technology is going to evolve and we're going to be part of this metaverse, you know, we may be utilizing certain VR types of technology to fully immerse ourselves in this metaverse.
[30:32.860 --> 30:45.000] [SPEAKER_05]: And where the meat space becomes completely untenable or, you know, perhaps because of climate change and other horrendous things, you know, our online lives just become, you know, much better and much more enjoyable.
[30:45.520 --> 30:49.580] [SPEAKER_05]: And we may have more freedom to do things online than otherwise.
[30:49.580 --> 30:59.160] [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, I don't think we're going to be living our entire lives like this in some matrix-focused dystopia.
[30:59.580 --> 31:01.000] [SPEAKER_05]: I certainly hope not.
[31:01.000 --> 31:06.240] [SPEAKER_05]: But I see there being a lot of value in where Facebook is heading.
[31:06.420 --> 31:28.480] [SPEAKER_05]: I think it is, to a certain extent, laughable because, you know, the idea of rebranding may help them escape some of their residual brand dilution, you know, from things like Cambridge Analytica, the last round of whistleblowers coming out, all of this that's been happening to the company,
[31:28.600 --> 31:32.360] [SPEAKER_05]: really, for the last, you know, four or five years, since the 2016 election.
[31:33.820 --> 31:38.720] [SPEAKER_05]: But there is, I think, a lot of validity to this type of move.
[31:38.720 --> 31:43.520] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think we're going to see other online platforms making this migration.
[31:43.520 --> 31:46.480] [SPEAKER_05]: And Facebook will be the bellwether for that.
[31:46.700 --> 31:50.440] [SPEAKER_08]: But I think there's also a significant difference in what they're trying to accomplish here.
[31:50.660 --> 32:05.340] [SPEAKER_08]: Because if we're looking at the article from The Verge, which Rob very helpfully has up here, the rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more.
[32:05.340 --> 32:09.380] [SPEAKER_08]: So this is not Facebook trying to become a slightly different entity.
[32:09.580 --> 32:18.000] [SPEAKER_08]: I think it's trying to spin it out differently in the same way that AOL Time Warner, you know, had AOL and Time Warner Cable and CNN.
[32:18.120 --> 32:19.180] [SPEAKER_08]: And look how all that ended up.
[32:20.980 --> 32:22.700] [SPEAKER_08]: I think... but we were talking this morning.
[32:23.360 --> 32:25.300] [SPEAKER_08]: Did you know today is a Facebook holiday?
[32:27.000 --> 32:27.760] [SPEAKER_08]: I'm very serious.
[32:28.060 --> 32:29.940] [SPEAKER_06]: What in the world is a Facebook holiday?
[32:30.080 --> 32:30.920] [SPEAKER_08]: Thank you for asking, Emmanuel.
[32:30.920 --> 32:31.520] [SPEAKER_08]: I'll tell you.
[32:31.980 --> 32:35.100] [SPEAKER_08]: Today is International Pronoun Day.
[32:38.060 --> 32:39.140] [SPEAKER_08]: And I...
[32:39.140 --> 32:39.900] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, yeah.
[32:40.060 --> 32:43.960] [SPEAKER_08]: So this morning I said to Rob, what do you think is more insidious?
[32:44.340 --> 32:52.900] [SPEAKER_08]: A Hallmark holiday, which is designed to part people with their money, or a Facebook holiday, which is designed to part people with their PII?
[32:53.880 --> 33:06.000] [SPEAKER_08]: Because when they have International Sons Day, and everyone's posting pictures of themselves with their kids, or International Daughters Day, or International Siblings Day, and today's International Pronoun Day, and people are just like, oh, I'm going to share this cute picture.
[33:07.040 --> 33:09.840] [SPEAKER_08]: And, you know, the way that this Facebook...
[33:09.840 --> 33:27.200] [SPEAKER_08]: the tentacles of Facebook, or whatever Metaverse Horizon, whatever this company is going to become, the way that it allows its tentacles, or we allow its tentacles, into every area of life, I think that is really the insidious part of what this is all going to do.
[33:27.200 --> 33:30.680] [SPEAKER_08]: And when everything is tied...
[33:30.680 --> 33:37.520] [SPEAKER_08]: You know those, like, the maps of what companies own what food brands, and everything goes back to, like, four center circles?
[33:38.620 --> 33:40.040] [SPEAKER_08]: Ultimately, I think that's where we're headed.
[33:40.640 --> 33:41.000] [SPEAKER_08]: Right?
[33:41.160 --> 33:41.580] [SPEAKER_08]: In this...
[33:41.580 --> 33:47.960] [SPEAKER_08]: So there's going to be the Amazon octopus, the Facebook octopus, the Twitter octopus, and everything's going to belong to one of the...
[33:47.960 --> 33:49.400] [SPEAKER_08]: well, more than octopus, but you know what I mean.
[33:49.720 --> 33:49.980] [SPEAKER_07]: Mm-hmm.
[33:51.080 --> 33:51.380] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[33:51.600 --> 33:52.040] [SPEAKER_06]: And, uh...
[33:52.040 --> 33:53.900] [SPEAKER_06]: You know, I kind of hope...
[33:54.260 --> 33:54.880] [SPEAKER_06]: Go ahead, Rob.
[33:55.180 --> 33:55.780] [SPEAKER_07]: Sorry, go ahead.
[33:57.680 --> 34:00.140] [SPEAKER_06]: I kind of hope they, um...
[34:00.140 --> 34:03.300] [SPEAKER_06]: They do call themselves Metaverse, because, um...
[34:03.300 --> 34:08.220] [SPEAKER_06]: Imagine your grandparents, I guess, saying, hey, do you see, uh...
[34:08.220 --> 34:10.680] [SPEAKER_06]: the newest pictures of our cruise on Metaverse?
[34:11.300 --> 34:12.080] [SPEAKER_06]: It's just...
[34:12.080 --> 34:13.880] [SPEAKER_06]: I want to hear them say that.
[34:13.960 --> 34:25.940] [SPEAKER_06]: I want to hear, you know, everybody in, in, you know, the entire world that uses these, uh, these services start referring to it in such a cyberpunk type of way.
[34:26.160 --> 34:27.220] [SPEAKER_04]: This, uh...
[34:27.220 --> 34:29.520] [SPEAKER_04]: announcement, to me, isn't too surprising.
[34:29.700 --> 34:31.340] [SPEAKER_04]: I have a lot of different takes on it.
[34:31.800 --> 34:32.400] [SPEAKER_04]: But, uh...
[34:32.400 --> 34:35.500] [SPEAKER_04]: couple things that strike me just in our conversation here.
[34:35.880 --> 34:36.220] [SPEAKER_04]: Uh...
[34:36.220 --> 34:38.640] [SPEAKER_04]: First, I think the reorganization, uh...
[34:38.640 --> 34:52.380] [SPEAKER_04]: is an active defense move to shield the board and the primary actors in Facebook from what they know is coming and generally protect them in, um...
[34:52.380 --> 34:59.460] [SPEAKER_04]: the liability that they may be responsible for or be found to be responsible for, uh...
[34:59.460 --> 35:00.540] [SPEAKER_04]: in...
[35:00.540 --> 35:02.160] [SPEAKER_04]: in the future if, um...
[35:02.160 --> 35:04.540] [SPEAKER_04]: if they're broken up in any way or there's, uh...
[35:04.540 --> 35:05.500] [SPEAKER_04]: hearings and so forth.
[35:05.500 --> 35:09.540] [SPEAKER_04]: They've been to enough hearings that they would, um...
[35:09.540 --> 35:10.980] [SPEAKER_04]: not be, I...
[35:10.980 --> 35:12.260] [SPEAKER_04]: I think, um...
[35:12.260 --> 35:13.760] [SPEAKER_04]: given as much, uh...
[35:13.760 --> 35:16.080] [SPEAKER_04]: leeway because there's so much on the record.
[35:16.080 --> 35:17.440] [SPEAKER_04]: So I think this is a...
[35:17.440 --> 35:31.540] [SPEAKER_04]: a purely a strategy to distance the parent actors and board from Facebook as an entity spin on all these other little things in much the same way other conglomerates do to, um...
[35:31.540 --> 35:32.340] [SPEAKER_04]: you know, uh...
[35:32.340 --> 35:36.660] [SPEAKER_04]: try different ventures and if they fail they don't actually, um...
[35:36.660 --> 35:39.000] [SPEAKER_04]: they don't actually affect the principle of...
[35:39.000 --> 35:39.900] [SPEAKER_04]: of the corporation.
[35:40.680 --> 35:42.940] [SPEAKER_04]: But that aside, I think this, um...
[35:42.940 --> 35:47.460] [SPEAKER_04]: platform is itself probably going to become the new opioid.
[35:48.080 --> 35:48.300] [SPEAKER_04]: Uh...
[35:48.300 --> 35:49.700] [SPEAKER_04]: you'll, you know, you, you...
[35:49.700 --> 35:52.720] [SPEAKER_04]: seen what they have done to, uh...
[35:52.720 --> 35:54.640] [SPEAKER_04]: get people's eyes and attention.
[35:54.840 --> 35:59.160] [SPEAKER_04]: Now they actually want to be on top of your face and, um...
[35:59.160 --> 36:04.260] [SPEAKER_04]: get you addicted to being in this verse versus real life.
[36:04.400 --> 36:06.440] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think you're going to have profound effects.
[36:06.720 --> 36:10.000] [SPEAKER_04]: People who are even less functional in...
[36:10.000 --> 36:11.680] [SPEAKER_04]: in normal, um...
[36:11.680 --> 36:16.680] [SPEAKER_04]: real life situations because they're conditioned not to be a part of that anymore.
[36:17.400 --> 36:18.120] [SPEAKER_04]: And, um...
[36:18.120 --> 36:24.100] [SPEAKER_04]: unless people are using this technology to actively affect the real world in positive ways, I really...
[36:24.100 --> 36:29.820] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't see it as much more than, like, gambling, you know, and, uh...
[36:29.820 --> 36:30.780] [SPEAKER_04]: those sorts of vices.
[36:31.300 --> 36:32.820] [SPEAKER_04]: And, um...
[36:32.820 --> 36:34.360] [SPEAKER_04]: on top of that, uh...
[36:34.360 --> 36:34.780] [SPEAKER_04]: I...
[36:34.780 --> 36:37.140] [SPEAKER_04]: I just feel like, um...
[36:37.140 --> 36:38.620] [SPEAKER_04]: yeah, it is...
[36:38.620 --> 36:40.780] [SPEAKER_04]: it is itself, um...
[36:40.780 --> 36:41.640] [SPEAKER_04]: you know, uh...
[36:41.640 --> 36:45.300] [SPEAKER_04]: it's a nice, um...
[36:45.300 --> 36:46.420] [SPEAKER_04]: distraction, uh...
[36:46.420 --> 36:49.020] [SPEAKER_04]: in most regards, but it...
[36:49.020 --> 36:49.300] [SPEAKER_04]: uh...
[36:49.300 --> 36:52.700] [SPEAKER_04]: we'll have to see how it plays out.
[36:53.060 --> 36:55.060] [SPEAKER_04]: And, and, um...
[36:55.060 --> 37:06.460] [SPEAKER_04]: the prediction I would finally make is that they're going to pay people to be there because it will not be a network, it will not be desirable unless people are there.
[37:06.660 --> 37:14.680] [SPEAKER_04]: So expect celebrities and people to start appearing there and, like, sort of weird collaborations and, uh...
[37:14.680 --> 37:23.860] [SPEAKER_04]: oh, isn't this kind of new and different and they're also selling me some kind of headgear hardware or something that works with my phone and, and then, um...
[37:23.860 --> 37:38.240] [SPEAKER_04]: maybe they'll phase out or, or send invites via Facebook to get people onto this thing to seed it and continue to seed it with more and more people and basically astroturf it into existence.
[37:38.880 --> 37:46.060] [SPEAKER_07]: The, the, the interesting part of this for me, though, is that it's not really about VR so much as it seems because, yes, Facebook's in the VR business.
[37:46.220 --> 37:49.780] [SPEAKER_07]: They own Oculus, which is a popular VR program, uh, program, uh, platform.
[37:50.200 --> 37:58.040] [SPEAKER_07]: But, um, the, the, the, uh, the tentacles as, uh, as was being described are kind of already out there.
[37:58.280 --> 38:06.580] [SPEAKER_07]: Facebook has already been, um, experts in getting people to use crappy interfaces to access crappy services.
[38:06.580 --> 38:10.040] [SPEAKER_07]: uh, they have Facebook and how many people are Facebook famous?
[38:10.040 --> 38:10.920] [SPEAKER_07]: They have Instagram.
[38:10.920 --> 38:12.900] [SPEAKER_07]: How many people are Instagram famous?
[38:13.100 --> 38:17.180] [SPEAKER_07]: And draw other people into Instagram to follow their, uh, you know, celebrity feeds of things.
[38:17.520 --> 38:21.800] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, people have been signing up to do these without getting paid.
[38:22.040 --> 38:32.280] [SPEAKER_07]: They have been signing up to, uh, join the service, put their personally identifying information in there, feed the, uh, PII machine that actually powers where all the money comes from for Facebook.
[38:32.880 --> 38:36.220] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, they've been doing this willingly because they like the things it connects them to.
[38:36.460 --> 38:44.580] [SPEAKER_07]: And one of our biggest criticisms of Facebook on this program for years and years has always been how they want to centralize things and have everything go through them.
[38:44.800 --> 38:47.240] [SPEAKER_07]: Like, why would people use email when there's Facebook messages?
[38:47.400 --> 38:53.260] [SPEAKER_07]: Why would people use, um, you know, uh, third-party or distributed chat platforms when there's Facebook chat?
[38:53.480 --> 38:56.600] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, why people keep their own pictures if you can upload them to Facebook?
[38:56.780 --> 38:57.200] [SPEAKER_07]: Exactly.
[38:57.420 --> 39:00.680] [SPEAKER_07]: And Google does the same thing and, uh, you know, other services do the same thing.
[39:01.280 --> 39:15.240] [SPEAKER_07]: And we have an entire, like, a large percentage of the population of, uh, Internet users, people who use social media type things, are already well-versed in, uh, oh, I'll sign up for this thing, I'll get to use it for free, it will feed me ads, it will,
[39:15.300 --> 39:23.760] [SPEAKER_07]: uh, collect my, my, uh, my data, but, uh, that all seems to be a good trade-off for people so far, and if you add, uh, you know, Ginchy VR to it, it's just going to keep going.
[39:25.360 --> 39:28.860] [SPEAKER_06]: You have no right to complain because you're not paying anything for this.
[39:29.220 --> 39:29.540] [SPEAKER_07]: Absolutely.
[39:29.680 --> 39:30.460] [SPEAKER_07]: You're not the customer.
[39:30.460 --> 39:38.920] [SPEAKER_07]: You're the, you're the product that's being sold to the customers who are the advertisers and, uh, you know, the, the personal information, uh, banks like Cambridge Analytica and all the rest of them.
[39:39.360 --> 39:44.560] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, so this is a thing that they have been doing that they're very good at and, uh, they will only keep getting better at.
[39:45.860 --> 39:46.540] [SPEAKER_07]: Go ahead, Alex.
[39:47.300 --> 39:51.380] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, anybody, anybody have any more things to get in for Facebook?
[39:51.700 --> 39:54.300] [SPEAKER_06]: Uh, because we're, we're, we're kind of running out of time.
[39:56.280 --> 40:01.560] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, one, one insight that I'd, I'd like to share too, and it's, it's not necessarily a dig at Facebook.
[40:01.840 --> 40:12.860] [SPEAKER_05]: There's more of an observation on the, this type of, uh, I guess innovation is one way to phrase it, but it's a, it's an evolution, uh, in a lot of respects.
[40:13.180 --> 40:35.460] [SPEAKER_05]: And, and what remains to be seen and what's unknown right now is what kind of data this type of system will generate about us because it's not necessarily going to be the same type of data that you would ordinarily be, uh, sharing with a social media platform just on the Internet or from a mobile device.
[40:35.600 --> 40:42.800] [SPEAKER_05]: This is going to be data about our movements, perhaps data maybe even about our health or about spatial relationships.
[40:43.000 --> 40:54.080] [SPEAKER_05]: And there's going to be an entirely new classification of data that is going to be shared with all of these platforms that right now is completely unregulated.
[40:54.080 --> 41:11.100] [SPEAKER_05]: so the more they venture and I say they in, in the sense of Facebook, Twitter, Google, whoever the platform is that is venturing into this territory, the more they are going into uncharted waters with respect to what they can do with the data that they are collecting.
[41:11.880 --> 41:19.440] [SPEAKER_05]: And that can be extremely powerful especially at the, uh, the early onset of, uh, this type of venture.
[41:19.440 --> 41:31.780] [SPEAKER_05]: you know, before it kept before, uh, legislatures catch up with this type of thing before we even really know what type of data they're collecting or whether there's any harms that can result from this type of data collection.
[41:32.220 --> 41:40.340] [SPEAKER_05]: So, uh, without some kind of overarching framework or even knowledge about what's going to be collected, this is completely uncharted.
[41:40.560 --> 41:45.520] [SPEAKER_05]: It has a tremendous amount of potential for profit, uh, and also for abuse.
[41:45.700 --> 41:49.920] [SPEAKER_05]: So I think it's something that, uh, we and a lot of others should be watching carefully.
[41:50.520 --> 41:57.860] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I want to read an email that we got, uh, and I encourage everyone out there to send us your thoughts via email oth@2600.com.
[41:58.000 --> 42:00.020] [SPEAKER_07]: We're still not able to take your phone calls.
[42:00.180 --> 42:02.700] [SPEAKER_07]: We'll, uh, that's still on hiatus, but we want to hear from you.
[42:02.780 --> 42:05.380] [SPEAKER_07]: Email us, tweet at us, everything else.
[42:05.500 --> 42:13.680] [SPEAKER_07]: So, Bob from Minneapolis, our frequent caller, uh, wrote to us after, after our show two weeks ago and, uh, wrote, uh, thank you for the show last week.
[42:13.780 --> 42:16.160] [SPEAKER_07]: I will, however, say that Facebook at the end of the day is a
[42:19.220 --> 42:20.040] [SPEAKER_07]: psychology of people.
[42:20.180 --> 42:20.880] [SPEAKER_07]: They care about money.
[42:21.040 --> 42:24.860] [SPEAKER_07]: They certainly do not care about doing the right thing morally, and they stretch the rule of law.
[42:25.020 --> 42:29.080] [SPEAKER_07]: If they care about anything, it's the entrepreneur culture that has taken over America and perhaps the world.
[42:29.300 --> 42:35.200] [SPEAKER_07]: In some ways, it is a logical conclusion to capitalism, so none of Facebook's antics should be a surprise.
[42:35.600 --> 42:37.440] [SPEAKER_07]: They are the penultimate next generation business.
[42:37.620 --> 42:43.520] [SPEAKER_07]: They buy other businesses and absorb them into the Facebook culture, in quotes, and that feeds into the mania as well.
[42:43.700 --> 42:48.380] [SPEAKER_07]: Develop something marginal and almost certainly unnecessary, and they sell it for big money to the sharks.
[42:49.220 --> 42:53.320] [SPEAKER_07]: I don't want to derail the importance of the discussion about mental health and the mental health crises.
[42:53.440 --> 42:56.660] [SPEAKER_07]: That has many causes, and social media plays a big role in that.
[42:56.960 --> 43:01.660] [SPEAKER_07]: Online social media platforms are one of the most useless things the rabid entrepreneur culture has given us.
[43:02.000 --> 43:03.360] [SPEAKER_07]: Look at Ring Doorbell, for example.
[43:03.640 --> 43:11.440] [SPEAKER_07]: Their marketing campaign is geared toward rich people of means that live in very safe neighborhoods that are convinced by Ring that their neighborhoods are safe, so they must have Ring doorbells.
[43:11.900 --> 43:20.620] [SPEAKER_07]: I digress, but I am not very optimistic about changes in corporate culture or extreme entrepreneur culture anytime soon, and I excluded Elon Musk in this discussion intentionally.
[43:21.160 --> 43:23.740] [SPEAKER_07]: So, thank you very much for your thoughts there, Bob.
[43:24.000 --> 43:30.520] [SPEAKER_07]: And everyone else, if you have any thoughts about things we're talking about, email us at oth@2600.com.
[43:32.400 --> 43:37.520] [SPEAKER_06]: I'd like to turn to another story, because we have to cover this.
[43:38.420 --> 43:40.120] [SPEAKER_06]: This story was meant for us.
[43:40.900 --> 43:46.520] [SPEAKER_06]: Mike Parson, the governor of Missouri, perhaps you've heard about him last week.
[43:47.140 --> 44:06.140] [SPEAKER_06]: This is the guy who basically responded to discovery that his state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education was leaking teachers' private information via the source code of a web page.
[44:06.240 --> 44:12.880] [SPEAKER_06]: Around 100,000 social security numbers were able to be exposed when the web app was loaded in a user's browser.
[44:13.440 --> 44:20.260] [SPEAKER_06]: The public-facing app was intended to be used by local schools to check teachers' professional registration status.
[44:20.920 --> 44:29.060] [SPEAKER_06]: So users could tell between different teachers of the same name, they would accept the last four digits of a teacher's social security number as a valid search string.
[44:29.460 --> 44:36.860] [SPEAKER_06]: But it appears in the background the app was retrieving the entire social security number and exposing it to the end user.
[44:37.800 --> 44:58.920] [SPEAKER_06]: So, basically, what happened is that a reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noticed this and basically told them about it, contacted the Missouri Department of Education, and held off doing a story about this so that officials could fix it.
[44:59.620 --> 45:04.200] [SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, that's above and beyond what you need to do.
[45:04.200 --> 45:13.600] [SPEAKER_06]: At 2600, oftentimes, we'll publish something that will embarrass the corporation without warning them first, without telling them, oh, this is how you fix it.
[45:13.840 --> 45:16.680] [SPEAKER_06]: Because, you know, you shouldn't have gotten into that situation in the first place.
[45:16.800 --> 45:19.840] [SPEAKER_06]: You were entrusted with data, and this is what happened.
[45:20.180 --> 45:21.620] [SPEAKER_06]: These guys, they went further.
[45:21.780 --> 45:25.100] [SPEAKER_06]: They went to the Board of Education and said, yeah, you have a problem here.
[45:25.360 --> 45:28.900] [SPEAKER_06]: And then, afterwards, they wrote a story about it.
[45:29.860 --> 45:44.920] [SPEAKER_06]: The governor of Missouri is demanding the prosecution of this reporter for, and I quote, decoding HTML source code when they reported the data breach.
[45:45.380 --> 45:46.280] [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, my God.
[45:46.420 --> 45:51.020] [SPEAKER_06]: It's clear he has no comprehension whatsoever as to how a web page works.
[45:51.520 --> 45:57.480] [SPEAKER_06]: But, basically, you can hit F12 on your computer and see source code.
[45:57.740 --> 45:58.620] [SPEAKER_06]: That's all you have to do.
[45:58.740 --> 46:01.640] [SPEAKER_06]: In fact, somebody tweeted this in response.
[46:02.260 --> 46:04.540] [SPEAKER_06]: F12, come and take it, all caps.
[46:04.760 --> 46:05.900] [SPEAKER_06]: You know, like NRA style.
[46:07.800 --> 46:08.740] [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
[46:08.820 --> 46:25.380] [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know where this story is going to go, but it just, it kind of illustrates, or it very well illustrates, the massive gap between people who understand and operate technology and the people who make our laws in this country.
[46:25.960 --> 46:27.460] [SPEAKER_06]: And it's scary sometimes.
[46:27.460 --> 46:32.500] [SPEAKER_06]: There are people who could literally be imprisoned by this kind of mentality.
[46:33.160 --> 46:35.820] [SPEAKER_06]: And I wonder how many have been.
[46:36.640 --> 46:44.000] [SPEAKER_07]: What's extraordinary about this, too, is that this hit social media and, of course, went instantly viral among people who know what it means.
[46:44.000 --> 46:50.500] [SPEAKER_07]: And people were trying to correct Governor Parson on his Twitter account, which is GovParsonMO.
[46:50.880 --> 46:53.120] [SPEAKER_07]: And he doubled down.
[46:53.340 --> 46:56.380] [SPEAKER_07]: He said, we want to be clear, this hack was more than a simple right click.
[46:56.660 --> 47:04.060] [SPEAKER_07]: And he goes, the facts, an individual access source code, and then went a step further to convert and decode that data in order to obtain Missouri teachers' personal information.
[47:04.240 --> 47:05.280] [SPEAKER_07]: That is wrong.
[47:05.420 --> 47:07.320] [SPEAKER_07]: He is completely wrong about what happened here.
[47:07.440 --> 47:17.380] [SPEAKER_07]: And he is just doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down, not accepting that he is completely incorrect about how this and the web and websites work.
[47:17.820 --> 47:33.140] [SPEAKER_07]: And the voices in response to these tweets are mostly from a lot of people in the hacker community, a lot of people in Infosec and things like that, and everyone is trying to correct him and he is just not hearing it.
[47:33.420 --> 47:39.640] [SPEAKER_07]: So this is the guy that's in control of the state of Missouri, the show-me state, and he is showing his whole ass on the net over this.
[47:41.060 --> 47:44.180] [SPEAKER_06]: let's stop trying to correct him and just let him talk.
[47:44.380 --> 47:46.120] [SPEAKER_06]: Let's keep on talking, Governor.
[47:46.260 --> 47:47.000] [SPEAKER_06]: We want to hear more.
[47:49.280 --> 47:50.100] [SPEAKER_02]: Go ahead, Alex.
[47:51.660 --> 48:14.320] [SPEAKER_05]: Chiming in on this rather interesting story here, I mean, I think a lot of this is just a fundamental misunderstanding, like you mentioned, Emmanuel, of HTML, the hypertext markup language, and I think a lot of this probably relates to the fact that HTML on a web page is called HTML source code,
[48:14.340 --> 48:27.900] [SPEAKER_05]: because the government is obviously conflating proprietary source code with public HTML source code that's available, like you mentioned, by pressing F12 from within your browser, and anybody can see the inner workings of any web page.
[48:28.060 --> 48:37.780] [SPEAKER_05]: In fact, that's the premise on which the web was built, right, is read access to all of this data on web servers all around the world.
[48:37.940 --> 48:41.680] [SPEAKER_05]: Without having read access to these types of things, we would have no web.
[48:41.920 --> 48:46.500] [SPEAKER_05]: So it's a fundamental misunderstanding, I think, of the technology at issue.
[48:46.720 --> 49:05.220] [SPEAKER_05]: But more to the point, and I think this is a really critical issue here, though, is that the reporter in the news outlet here had really followed, I think, all of the legal and ethical touch points that relate to the disclosure of some kind of vulnerability.
[49:05.780 --> 49:06.940] [SPEAKER_05]: They found the vulnerability.
[49:07.160 --> 49:08.420] [SPEAKER_05]: The reporter found the vulnerability.
[49:08.780 --> 49:25.740] [SPEAKER_05]: He then verified the vulnerability, not just by asking his colleagues, but going over and finding cybersecurity experts, web development experts, and they all validated and verified the fact that, yes, there were exposed social security numbers within the HTML source code of these websites.
[49:26.100 --> 49:48.440] [SPEAKER_05]: They then disclosed the vulnerability to the state and then waited for the state to remediate the vulnerability and not just remediate the vulnerability that the reporter had found, but to go and look for other problems of the same sort across the entire state of that state.
[49:49.400 --> 49:57.880] [SPEAKER_05]: because if this was a problem with respect to teachers, it could have been a problem, let's say, with respect to lawyers or some kind of other regulated profession.
[49:58.740 --> 50:08.080] [SPEAKER_05]: And only then, after all of this was done, did they run a story about this vulnerability after it was already corrected.
[50:08.440 --> 50:14.480] [SPEAKER_05]: So I don't see there having been much more for the reporter to have done here.
[50:15.400 --> 50:20.600] [SPEAKER_05]: They've really done everything right and yet the governor has come after them.
[50:21.420 --> 50:32.220] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think this is particularly problematic as well because the information ecosystem that we have right now is just so already fragile.
[50:32.660 --> 50:33.980] [SPEAKER_05]: It's so fragile.
[50:34.240 --> 50:35.880] [SPEAKER_05]: And this kind of...
[50:35.880 --> 50:54.300] [SPEAKER_05]: I think at this point when you have, as Rob, you mentioned this flood, this tidal wave really, of people on Twitter trying to correct and trying to educate the governor, this type of disingenuous recrimination against a journalist for journalistic activity is just absolutely reckless.
[50:54.580 --> 51:04.720] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, to the point where I think it can have a real negative and spillover effect on our press freedoms, on fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.
[51:05.080 --> 51:12.280] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's sad commentary that a governor of the state is the one that is causing this type of massive erosion
[51:17.320 --> 51:28.200] [SPEAKER_07]: concept of responsible disclosure that is well known to all in cyber security you know, any sort of digital space, this reporter did everything right, did it the way you're supposed to do it.
[51:28.380 --> 51:31.920] [SPEAKER_07]: And for that, they're being labeled a criminal by the governor of the state.
[51:32.100 --> 51:35.140] [SPEAKER_07]: And it is a ridiculous situation.
[51:35.540 --> 51:40.360] [SPEAKER_07]: And F12 is now a meme in pretty much the replies to anything he posts.
[51:40.700 --> 51:43.640] [SPEAKER_07]: So it's going to be interesting to see where this goes.
[51:43.640 --> 51:51.420] [SPEAKER_07]: And if the person who's in charge of advising this governor on cyber security has a job for much longer, or maybe gets a nap or something.
[51:55.770 --> 51:59.410] [SPEAKER_07]: But in any case, this will be interesting to look at.
[52:00.490 --> 52:04.390] [SPEAKER_07]: And we are going to have to, I think, wrap things up very soon.
[52:04.510 --> 52:05.230] [SPEAKER_07]: We're running out of time.
[52:05.330 --> 52:08.550] [SPEAKER_07]: But again, we will not be taking your phone calls Off The Hook Overtime.
[52:08.690 --> 52:12.110] [SPEAKER_07]: It's still on hiatus while our colleagues are running around the country.
[52:13.190 --> 52:26.430] [SPEAKER_07]: So email us oth@2600.com or send us tweets at HackerRadioShow or send us toots on HackerRadioShow at Mastodon.social and get in touch with us.
[52:26.490 --> 52:27.370] [SPEAKER_07]: Tell us what's on your mind.
[52:27.650 --> 52:29.270] [SPEAKER_07]: And we will be back next week.
[52:29.970 --> 52:30.730] [SPEAKER_07]: Yes, go ahead.
[52:31.290 --> 52:40.510] [SPEAKER_06]: Just to give you a closing from out here in Seattle, we just found out that we're about to get something known as a bomb cyclone, I think is what it's called, Kyle?
[52:40.850 --> 52:45.770] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's a bunch of rain coming for the West Coast and it's going to be relentless.
[52:46.170 --> 53:02.930] [SPEAKER_04]: So we're putting on galoshes and preparing ourselves for this bomb cyclone of water, which is sorely needed in many parts of the country and it may even lead to some snowfall and that's always exciting for us.
[53:03.070 --> 53:04.670] [SPEAKER_04]: We love the crazy weather.
[53:04.870 --> 53:08.290] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I just can't believe they have a phrase, bomb cyclone, but that's how it is out there.
[53:09.470 --> 53:10.670] [SPEAKER_07]: That is fascinating.
[53:10.930 --> 53:14.070] [SPEAKER_07]: And on that note, we will be back next week.
[53:14.470 --> 53:15.690] [SPEAKER_07]: Everyone, have a good week.
[53:16.050 --> 53:17.950] [SPEAKER_07]: oth@2600.com.
[53:17.950 --> 53:21.230] [SPEAKER_08]: Okay, look, you know how you always talk about how you can simulate all that stuff on your computer?
[53:21.530 --> 53:21.910] [SPEAKER_08]: You know?
[53:23.290 --> 53:24.190] [SPEAKER_03]: What's the difference?
[53:24.330 --> 53:25.530] [SPEAKER_03]: Why can't we simulate a girl?
[53:25.930 --> 53:30.790] [SPEAKER_03]: If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?
[53:31.150 --> 53:32.210] Weird fosters!
[53:33.190 --> 53:36.330] [SPEAKER_03]: If there's something weird, then it don't look good.
[53:38.750 --> 53:40.890] [SPEAKER_01]: All the things I've never seen before.
[53:41.190 --> 53:44.250] [SPEAKER_03]: Behind bolted doors, telling, and imagination.
[53:44.530 --> 53:45.370] [SPEAKER_03]: Weird fosters!
[53:46.490 --> 53:47.870] [SPEAKER_03]: I ain't afraid of science.
[53:48.450 --> 53:53.230] [SPEAKER_03]: If you see and things running through your head, who can you call?
[53:53.490 --> 53:54.750] [SPEAKER_03]: Weird fosters!
[53:55.790 --> 54:00.710] [SPEAKER_03]: An invisible man sleeping in your bed, oh, who's gonna call?
[54:00.970 --> 54:02.210] [SPEAKER_03]: Weird fosters!
[54:04.070 --> 54:06.750] [SPEAKER_03]: We came, we saw, we kicked it down!
[54:07.190 --> 54:13.610] [SPEAKER_03]: All alone, got the phone, and call Weird fosters!
[54:14.630 --> 54:15.350] [SPEAKER_03]: Sick weed!
[54:27.520 --> 54:30.620] [SPEAKER_03]: weird fosters!
[54:31.320 --> 54:37.260] [SPEAKER_03]: Weird Magic and technology, cool them cause and chance, electricity will make the science.
[54:37.260 --> 54:43.500] [SPEAKER_03]: You have dose of a freaky dose, baby, you better call, weird fosters!
[54:43.500 --> 54:45.320] [SPEAKER_03]: Dark Science.
[54:46.400 --> 54:48.320] [SPEAKER_03]: Pictures from a magazine.
[54:48.780 --> 54:49.880] [SPEAKER_03]: Diagrams and charts.
[54:50.160 --> 54:52.820] [SPEAKER_03]: Mending broken hearts and making... Dark Science.
[54:53.900 --> 54:55.860] [SPEAKER_03]: Something like a recipe.
[54:56.260 --> 54:57.080] [SPEAKER_03]: Let me tell you something.
[54:58.020 --> 54:59.480] [SPEAKER_03]: Rustin makes me feel good.
[54:59.520 --> 55:02.020] [SPEAKER_03]: My creation is real.
[55:02.960 --> 55:04.040] [SPEAKER_03]: It's my passion.
[55:16.390 --> 55:18.530] [SPEAKER_03]: Don't get caught alone, oh no.
[55:18.590 --> 55:19.190] [SPEAKER_03]: Back off me.
[55:19.490 --> 55:20.590] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a scientist.
[55:21.030 --> 55:21.550] [SPEAKER_03]: We're...
[55:21.550 --> 55:21.770] [SPEAKER_03]: Busters.
[55:22.670 --> 55:24.710] [SPEAKER_03]: When it comes through your door.
[55:25.090 --> 55:26.410] [SPEAKER_03]: Unless you just want some more.
[55:26.650 --> 55:27.990] [SPEAKER_03]: I think you better call.
[55:28.330 --> 55:29.410] [SPEAKER_03]: Weird Busters.
[55:30.410 --> 55:31.630] [SPEAKER_03]: Who you gonna call?
[55:32.090 --> 55:33.110] [SPEAKER_03]: Weird Busters.
[55:33.410 --> 55:34.330] [SPEAKER_03]: I've never seen before.
[55:34.570 --> 55:35.410] [SPEAKER_03]: Who you gonna call?
[55:35.970 --> 55:36.870] [SPEAKER_03]: Dark Science.
[55:37.730 --> 55:38.850] [SPEAKER_03]: Weird Busters.
[55:40.170 --> 55:41.890] [SPEAKER_03]: Not what teachers said to do.
[55:42.030 --> 55:42.890] [SPEAKER_03]: Bits and pieces.
[55:43.390 --> 55:44.250] [SPEAKER_03]: Bits and pieces.
[55:44.450 --> 55:44.910] [SPEAKER_03]: Bits and pieces.
[55:44.910 --> 55:45.390] [SPEAKER_03]: Bits and pieces.
[55:45.650 --> 55:46.130] [SPEAKER_03]: My creation.
[55:46.130 --> 55:48.050] [SPEAKER_00]: I never called them.
[55:48.270 --> 55:49.410] [SPEAKER_00]: You told me.
[55:49.530 --> 55:50.270] [SPEAKER_00]: You were told me.
[55:50.450 --> 55:50.970] [SPEAKER_00]: You're here.
[55:51.350 --> 55:51.350] You're here.
[55:52.250 --> 55:53.590] [SPEAKER_00]: The hesitation.
[55:54.610 --> 55:55.970] [SPEAKER_00]: The heart of gold.
[55:56.430 --> 55:58.110] [SPEAKER_00]: Dispensate life.
[56:00.450 --> 56:02.630] [SPEAKER_03]: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
[56:03.150 --> 56:03.790] [SPEAKER_03]: What?
[56:04.070 --> 56:05.310] [SPEAKER_05]: Don't cross the streams.
[56:05.650 --> 56:07.070] [SPEAKER_05]: Total protonic reversal.
[56:07.550 --> 56:07.710] [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[56:07.830 --> 56:08.270] [SPEAKER_05]: That's bad.