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[00:41.000 --> 00:41.500] [SPEAKER_05]: Hello.
[00:42.530 --> 00:44.570] [SPEAKER_05]: You're listening to WBAI New York.
[00:44.800 --> 00:47.760] [SPEAKER_05]: It's Wednesday and it's 7 p.m.
[00:47.960 --> 00:51.760] [SPEAKER_05]: And that usually means it's time for another edition of Off The Hook.
[01:08.010 --> 01:09.930] [SPEAKER_04]: We couldn't get much worse.
[01:10.710 --> 01:12.490] [SPEAKER_04]: But if they could, they would.
[01:12.750 --> 01:15.390] [SPEAKER_04]: WBAI New York, but the best is back the worst.
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[02:15.930 --> 02:17.330] [SPEAKER_05]: And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:17.450 --> 02:19.630] [SPEAKER_05]: The program is Off The Hook.
[02:19.850 --> 02:24.350] [SPEAKER_05]: Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
[02:24.630 --> 02:25.590] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I'm over here.
[02:26.130 --> 02:26.790] [SPEAKER_05]: Are you over there?
[02:27.310 --> 02:28.670] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm all the way over here.
[02:28.670 --> 02:31.610] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, we did a lot of testing on these levels, so I think everything is working.
[02:32.130 --> 02:33.070] [SPEAKER_05]: We have Rob T.
[02:33.210 --> 02:33.590] [SPEAKER_05]: Firefly.
[02:34.190 --> 02:35.010] [SPEAKER_01]: Good evening.
[02:35.370 --> 02:36.130] [SPEAKER_05]: We have Gila.
[02:36.730 --> 02:37.170] [SPEAKER_11]: Hello.
[02:37.810 --> 02:38.890] [SPEAKER_05]: And we have Alex.
[02:39.910 --> 02:40.610] [SPEAKER_11]: Good evening.
[02:41.170 --> 02:44.170] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's so sophisticated tonight, you can't even tell who's in Skype and who's not in Skype.
[02:44.170 --> 02:45.930] [SPEAKER_05]: So we finally arrived after two years.
[02:46.270 --> 02:46.630] [SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[02:47.870 --> 02:51.450] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, this is our last show for 2021.
[02:51.650 --> 02:52.610] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, you know what?
[02:53.030 --> 02:56.870] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm getting all the looks and all the pointed fingers and things like that.
[02:56.990 --> 02:58.910] [SPEAKER_05]: You want me to explain why I look the way I look?
[02:59.050 --> 03:00.610] [SPEAKER_05]: I know it doesn't work on radio.
[03:00.610 --> 03:08.410] [SPEAKER_05]: So I'm wearing what is known, in the medical terminology, it's an ambulatory EEG.
[03:09.090 --> 03:11.990] [SPEAKER_05]: And what that is, it's something that measures your brainwaves.
[03:12.090 --> 03:16.050] [SPEAKER_05]: Now, I'm not doing this for recreation, although I could do it for recreation, I suppose.
[03:16.470 --> 03:27.630] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm doing it because I went to a neurologist who suggested I do this based on something I described to my doctor, which I'm pretty sure is nothing at all.
[03:27.770 --> 03:34.750] [SPEAKER_05]: It's just occasional light flashing, like every eight months or so, and a little bit of confusion.
[03:34.750 --> 03:38.770] [SPEAKER_05]: It's called a painless migraine, I believe, is the official word for it.
[03:38.770 --> 03:41.450] [SPEAKER_05]: But they said, just to be safe, why don't you do a couple of tests?
[03:41.950 --> 03:46.190] [SPEAKER_05]: And I figure, you know, it's the end of the year, my deductible is at its...
[03:46.550 --> 03:50.390] [SPEAKER_05]: I met my deductible this year, so why not have a whole bunch of tests?
[03:50.470 --> 03:54.830] [SPEAKER_05]: And one of them involves walking around for three days with this electronic device.
[03:54.830 --> 04:01.850] [SPEAKER_05]: It's... your head is basically wrapped up in this... how would you describe it, Kyle?
[04:03.110 --> 04:03.550] [SPEAKER_08]: Bandage?
[04:03.730 --> 04:03.990] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[04:04.470 --> 04:05.650] [SPEAKER_05]: I look like a mummy.
[04:05.850 --> 04:08.170] [SPEAKER_05]: So I've got that on my head, all right?
[04:08.270 --> 04:11.090] [SPEAKER_05]: And I have this electronic device.
[04:13.390 --> 04:15.630] [SPEAKER_09]: What else can it do?
[04:16.470 --> 04:17.150] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[04:17.270 --> 04:18.650] [SPEAKER_05]: I haven't really hacked it yet.
[04:19.090 --> 04:23.150] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, actually, this is my last day, so I'm not going to really try and mess around with it.
[04:23.150 --> 04:24.150] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, you seem fairly comfortable.
[04:24.150 --> 04:25.230] [SPEAKER_05]: No, I'm not comfortable.
[04:25.450 --> 04:26.550] [SPEAKER_05]: Believe me, this is not comfortable.
[04:26.690 --> 04:30.090] [SPEAKER_05]: Because I'm walking around with this, you know, first of all, I've got this bandage on my head.
[04:30.210 --> 04:33.190] [SPEAKER_05]: I look crazy as it is, walking around with a bandage on my head.
[04:33.890 --> 04:36.970] [SPEAKER_05]: And I have this device strapped to me.
[04:37.430 --> 04:38.750] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's got a button, too.
[04:38.830 --> 04:41.950] [SPEAKER_05]: It's got a red button on it, which I'm supposed to press if I have an episode.
[04:41.950 --> 04:46.390] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not having any episodes, so there's nothing I have to really worry about as far as that goes.
[04:46.470 --> 04:49.770] [SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, it's not the kind of thing you walk around in public with.
[04:50.390 --> 04:52.810] [SPEAKER_05]: So I've been kind of keeping to myself.
[04:54.250 --> 05:00.650] [SPEAKER_05]: But that records information is a camera that's supposed to be on me at all times, which, you know, it's not.
[05:00.650 --> 05:02.750] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not filming myself 24 hours.
[05:03.030 --> 05:05.210] [SPEAKER_05]: But that's why I look the way I look.
[05:05.670 --> 05:07.310] [SPEAKER_05]: Does that answer everybody's questions?
[05:09.170 --> 05:12.070] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it does, because I wasn't going to say anything.
[05:12.230 --> 05:13.430] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I was totally going to say something.
[05:13.730 --> 05:16.930] [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I just happen to have something that might be useful here.
[05:16.990 --> 05:17.670] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a deck of cards.
[05:17.750 --> 05:20.430] [SPEAKER_01]: You can see this one is a circle and a star.
[05:20.650 --> 05:21.450] [SPEAKER_01]: Are you trying to confuse me?
[05:21.810 --> 05:22.690] [SPEAKER_01]: A couple of lines and so forth.
[05:22.870 --> 05:28.430] [SPEAKER_01]: And if you'd like to do some tests with me later involving this deck of Zener cards, we'll talk after the show.
[05:28.430 --> 05:30.690] [SPEAKER_05]: Wow, you were right there with that.
[05:32.550 --> 05:39.890] [SPEAKER_05]: But no, it's not something that I'm concerned about, because this is something that I've been experiencing since 2005.
[05:40.270 --> 05:42.410] [SPEAKER_05]: Occasionally, I just would...
[05:42.410 --> 05:49.410] [SPEAKER_05]: After straining my eyes, I'd find it difficult to read, and I'd have trouble remembering things for about maybe 15 minutes.
[05:49.410 --> 05:51.770] [SPEAKER_05]: If I close my eyes and sit in a dark room, it goes away.
[05:52.310 --> 05:56.330] [SPEAKER_05]: I, you know, basically just described that this year when I got a checkup.
[05:56.470 --> 05:57.770] [SPEAKER_05]: I've described it every year.
[05:57.790 --> 05:59.150] [SPEAKER_05]: And my doctor said, you know what?
[05:59.190 --> 06:03.450] [SPEAKER_05]: Just to be safe, why don't you have, you know, a neurologist give you some tests?
[06:03.590 --> 06:04.630] [SPEAKER_05]: So that's what I'm doing.
[06:04.810 --> 06:10.930] [SPEAKER_05]: It's the end of the year of trying to, you know, get as much advantage as possible from the fact that I met my deductible.
[06:11.090 --> 06:15.290] [SPEAKER_05]: So next year, though, it's going to go right back down to zero.
[06:15.290 --> 06:17.110] [SPEAKER_05]: So I'll have to be extra careful.
[06:19.010 --> 06:20.130] [SPEAKER_05]: So, yeah, that's...
[06:20.130 --> 06:21.390] [SPEAKER_09]: Surely you're not the only one.
[06:21.770 --> 06:27.150] [SPEAKER_09]: I bet others are getting as many things taken care of at the end of the year.
[06:27.630 --> 06:29.450] [SPEAKER_09]: So that seems practical.
[06:30.750 --> 06:35.590] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, some of the staff in the neurologist's office, in fact, they're getting things done.
[06:35.590 --> 06:42.650] [SPEAKER_05]: Because when I went in earlier this week, basically 80% of the office wasn't there because they all got COVID over the holidays.
[06:43.190 --> 06:46.450] [SPEAKER_05]: So, yeah, very quickly from their relatives, apparently.
[06:46.450 --> 06:48.430] [SPEAKER_05]: So there's a lot going on.
[06:49.990 --> 06:52.750] [SPEAKER_05]: And we're all experiencing it in one way or another.
[06:53.870 --> 06:56.750] [SPEAKER_05]: So, yeah, that's where I stand right now.
[06:59.370 --> 07:01.590] [SPEAKER_05]: Anyone else have any interesting stories?
[07:05.300 --> 07:07.160] [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing that I can follow that with.
[07:07.160 --> 07:07.580] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[07:07.780 --> 07:09.260] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, then let's continue.
[07:09.480 --> 07:11.780] [SPEAKER_05]: This is the last show of the year.
[07:12.140 --> 07:21.020] [SPEAKER_05]: And as is sometimes our tradition, we like to reminisce about the year that has just passed and think about things for the year that is to come.
[07:21.020 --> 07:23.820] [SPEAKER_05]: So, I'll start.
[07:24.260 --> 07:28.080] [SPEAKER_05]: Basically, it's going to be pretty simple for me.
[07:28.280 --> 07:42.060] [SPEAKER_05]: I think the thing that, in the world of technology or hacking, the thing that stood out the most to me over this past year was the concept of NFTs.
[07:42.860 --> 07:57.620] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, it's these ridiculous images or anything, really, just images of art that people buy, and yet they somehow don't actually own the art.
[07:58.440 --> 08:00.860] [SPEAKER_05]: And they're paying huge amounts of money for this.
[08:01.000 --> 08:05.380] [SPEAKER_05]: If anyone can explain it to me, people have tried to explain this to me, and it never works.
[08:05.920 --> 08:08.200] [SPEAKER_05]: Non-fungible token, I believe, is what it stands for.
[08:08.740 --> 08:14.800] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and the concept has, you know, people have tried.
[08:15.460 --> 08:21.100] [SPEAKER_05]: And I get what they're saying, but I just don't understand how anybody can spend a penny on something like this.
[08:21.320 --> 08:31.420] [SPEAKER_05]: So, that, I think, is what was the most, I guess, interesting development in the technology world over the last year.
[08:31.440 --> 08:33.680] [SPEAKER_05]: I know they've been around probably a little bit longer than that.
[08:33.680 --> 08:39.120] [SPEAKER_05]: But my prediction for the future is that it's all going to come crashing down, all right?
[08:39.260 --> 08:47.760] [SPEAKER_05]: And people are going to realize that this is nonsense, and they're going to stop, or they're basically just going to not do it as much.
[08:48.000 --> 08:58.160] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I saw something online a few days ago that basically was someone talking about how, back when he was a kid, somebody named a star after him.
[08:59.520 --> 09:04.060] [SPEAKER_05]: And somewhere up there in the sky is a star with his name.
[09:05.040 --> 09:14.120] [SPEAKER_05]: Now, the company that keeps the records for that star that bears his name, it's not around, hasn't been around for a long time.
[09:14.120 --> 09:15.920] [SPEAKER_05]: Those records are nowhere to be found.
[09:17.000 --> 09:20.660] [SPEAKER_05]: It's a whole damn star, and they can't find it.
[09:20.760 --> 09:21.820] [SPEAKER_05]: They can't find any records.
[09:22.080 --> 09:23.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Somebody paid money for that.
[09:23.540 --> 09:24.380] [SPEAKER_05]: It's all gone.
[09:25.120 --> 09:29.720] [SPEAKER_05]: So, good luck with your NFTs, because I guarantee you the same thing is going to happen.
[09:31.160 --> 09:33.540] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, anyone else have a...
[09:33.540 --> 09:34.580] [SPEAKER_05]: Kyle, go ahead.
[09:35.140 --> 10:09.580] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, I think mine was maybe a little less interesting, but the concept of supply chains and logistics, specifically with software, I know there were a lot of breakdowns, the solar winds, and other basically software maintenance programs, and the dependency on a lot of really important systems on things that are contracted out and not always paid attention to with the same sort of vigilance.
[10:09.580 --> 10:13.500] [SPEAKER_09]: So, I think that theme, people learned a lot about that.
[10:13.600 --> 10:21.660] [SPEAKER_09]: And then it ended up being something that was topical in relation to the health crisis and overall economic woes.
[10:21.760 --> 10:29.900] [SPEAKER_09]: We had a canal get blocked, and everyone was freaking out about getting their goods and stuff on time.
[10:30.000 --> 10:32.340] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, that boat went back into the canal a couple of weeks ago.
[10:32.500 --> 10:32.860] [SPEAKER_05]: It did.
[10:32.920 --> 10:33.880] [SPEAKER_05]: It was the second time, actually.
[10:34.020 --> 10:34.640] [SPEAKER_05]: It went once before.
[10:34.800 --> 10:37.200] [SPEAKER_05]: But, yeah, it's always fun to see that boat come back.
[10:37.200 --> 11:00.840] [SPEAKER_09]: So, yeah, I think we learned so much about what globalization means on a day-to-day level, like the really boring stuff, and maybe we, I'm thinking, are paying more attention to it and having an appreciation for what it takes to live and operate in the world as we thought we knew.
[11:00.840 --> 11:23.180] [SPEAKER_09]: For the coming year, I think that it's mostly this concept of one foot, this paradox of being both in the future, but also being in, like, the deep, I want to say prehistoric past.
[11:23.180 --> 11:45.200] [SPEAKER_09]: Like, this idea of analog and digital, there's a lot of talking, like, moving from different energy sources, moving from different, like, levels of reality, like depth in media, having different types of trusts, networks.
[11:45.200 --> 11:55.300] [SPEAKER_09]: And I think that has made both the virtual and real life sort of blend back and forth.
[11:55.480 --> 12:06.920] [SPEAKER_09]: So I think this joining of stuff that is very old school, but also the combination of that with sort of the newer themes, I think we'll enter into all kinds of things.
[12:07.040 --> 12:22.000] [SPEAKER_09]: But I also think that new and shiny, great virtual things, like, is being discussed, like people, like escapism, that kind of stuff, where it's going to, there's going to be fits and starts to that, people trying it out.
[12:22.180 --> 12:24.300] [SPEAKER_09]: And I think mayhem will ensue, you know.
[12:24.340 --> 12:31.280] [SPEAKER_09]: We'll realize that virtual places can be just as ugly and nasty as we've come to see the web 2.0 and any further...
[12:31.280 --> 12:32.400] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh, I think we've realized that.
[12:32.400 --> 12:34.200] [SPEAKER_09]: We'll have the same moderation issues.
[12:34.440 --> 12:40.100] [SPEAKER_09]: We'll continue to face questions until we actually face them collectively.
[12:40.340 --> 12:40.940] [SPEAKER_09]: Does that make sense?
[12:41.060 --> 12:41.620] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah, totally.
[12:41.800 --> 12:45.320] [SPEAKER_05]: And I like the idea of bringing in the old as well.
[12:45.440 --> 12:49.940] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, we're constantly talking about how there's older and newer, and we do live in that society.
[12:50.120 --> 12:53.580] [SPEAKER_09]: America is very future forward.
[12:54.080 --> 13:15.920] [SPEAKER_09]: There's a lot of innovation and very extreme high tech, but there's so much that is like two, three centuries ago, and even further, that we still rely on, and attitudes even, sensibilities, I think, in the cultural realm, but also in people's day-to-day lives.
[13:16.060 --> 13:37.100] [SPEAKER_09]: Like, where people actually live in this country, they're not at the extreme edge of technology, but I think there are growing exceptions where people might be in far-flung places, but they're bringing in elements of the future and tools and sensors, all the kinds of things we know and think of as a growing futurism.
[13:37.100 --> 13:45.420] [SPEAKER_09]: I think those are going to be in the most lo-fi places first, if that makes sense.
[13:45.420 --> 13:50.760] [SPEAKER_09]: The frontier, the digital frontier, I think, is going to become further out in the frontier.
[13:52.140 --> 13:52.600] [SPEAKER_05]: Interesting.
[13:53.180 --> 13:54.620] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I look forward to that world.
[13:54.760 --> 13:57.020] [SPEAKER_05]: I think that's quite realistic.
[13:58.060 --> 13:59.220] [SPEAKER_05]: Who wants to go next?
[13:59.800 --> 13:59.980] [SPEAKER_05]: Hans?
[14:00.200 --> 14:01.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Rob, go ahead.
[14:01.840 --> 14:02.980] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll go next.
[14:03.300 --> 14:22.440] [SPEAKER_01]: The big thing that strikes me, and this is kind of a continuation from 2020, but something that really struck me in 2021 is how after lockdown, of course, and this was back in 2020, we all had to, like, so many people had to learn to work from home, to go to school from home,
[14:22.680 --> 14:25.100] [SPEAKER_01]: to telecommute rather than physically commute.
[14:25.420 --> 14:32.020] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think what we found this past year is that so many people have accepted that as more of a normal thing.
[14:32.040 --> 14:33.320] [SPEAKER_01]: It's no longer weird.
[14:35.000 --> 14:39.180] [SPEAKER_01]: In job ads now, it's a normal thing to see, you know, remote okay.
[14:39.520 --> 14:44.400] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can apply for jobs in states all over the country or even outside the country.
[14:44.780 --> 14:55.480] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that is really striking, how it's become something that the average person has access to, can use, understands now through being forced to use it for this long.
[14:55.480 --> 15:14.200] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think as we go forward, I have to say, if there is ever an end to this pandemic situation, I still think this will become a new normal for a lot of people who prefer it or work better from home or, you know, work, learn better going to school from home.
[15:14.200 --> 15:21.000] [SPEAKER_01]: And it will become sort of a fact of day-to-day life rather than something unusual or strange.
[15:21.800 --> 15:24.360] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the whole paradigm has sort of shifted.
[15:24.360 --> 15:27.260] [SPEAKER_01]: You have entire businesses now that don't have a physical office.
[15:27.440 --> 15:34.040] [SPEAKER_01]: You have bands that collaborate from all different places and put out albums now where they're never in the same place, but they can get it all done.
[15:34.500 --> 15:48.700] [SPEAKER_01]: And just this is a fascinating new dimension to how things used to be done and has also led people to, I think, reconsider that traditional go-to-the-office-for-40-hours-a-week model that everyone had just been doing for generations.
[15:48.740 --> 15:50.780] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I find that really interesting.
[15:51.120 --> 15:51.120] Wow.
[15:51.220 --> 16:00.440] [SPEAKER_05]: Rob, before you get into your future, I'm a question about that new world that now exists of remote working.
[16:00.680 --> 16:11.440] [SPEAKER_05]: Has this happened yet where somebody is working for a company completely remotely, but they're also working for another company completely remotely, maybe even in the same field, maybe even a competitor?
[16:11.860 --> 16:14.220] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, somebody has had to have come up with that scam by now.
[16:15.260 --> 16:31.360] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in the sort of gig economy, that sort of thing has existed with freelancers, like kind of having multiple clients for the same kind of work and sometimes, yeah, working on them at the same time, which, you know, check the terms of your contracts to make sure that's cool before you go start doing that sort of thing.
[16:31.520 --> 16:32.680] [SPEAKER_01]: But the...
[16:32.680 --> 16:39.760] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think my prediction for the future is just that this will continue to be more and more of a normal thing, more and more of an acceptable thing.
[16:40.360 --> 16:47.260] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, for people who work better this way, I think it opens up new dimensions for them.
[16:47.260 --> 16:50.980] [SPEAKER_05]: You got to predict something new, though, because you're predicting more of the same.
[16:51.460 --> 16:53.480] [SPEAKER_05]: And that's not new, you know?
[16:53.620 --> 16:57.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Do you think something crazy might happen with...
[16:57.180 --> 17:09.980] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, what I just came up with, where people are working for their competitors at the same time, that's a prediction for something different that this gig economy or remote learning, remote working might bring forth.
[17:11.000 --> 17:14.620] [SPEAKER_05]: If you need a few minutes to think about something, possibly, do you have something off the top of your head?
[17:15.060 --> 17:17.080] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, off the top of my head, there is...
[17:17.080 --> 17:20.640] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, right now, there are fields of work in which you can easily work from home.
[17:20.800 --> 17:24.080] [SPEAKER_01]: You can sign into your computer remotely and go from there.
[17:24.280 --> 17:34.120] [SPEAKER_01]: I think something that will be added to all this is maybe the ability to do more kinds of work remotely through things like robotic telepresence.
[17:34.820 --> 17:44.880] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, like, for a while, I was working in manufacturing where I had to physically be there to operate machinery and, you know, work with components and things.
[17:45.120 --> 17:52.360] [SPEAKER_01]: And something like that could conceivably be done from home if you build the right equipment and set it loose in a factory floor.
[17:52.420 --> 17:58.880] [SPEAKER_01]: And that opens up all kinds of further interesting questions about what it means to have a job.
[17:59.320 --> 17:59.580] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[17:59.860 --> 18:04.400] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm disappointed no one's come up with anything involving drones yet or robots, but I'm sure...
[18:04.400 --> 18:06.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex, it looks like you have something on your mind.
[18:06.580 --> 18:06.800] [SPEAKER_05]: Go ahead.
[18:06.800 --> 18:11.600] [SPEAKER_07]: Oh, I've always got a lot on my mind these days, Emmanuel, as you know.
[18:11.960 --> 18:19.540] [SPEAKER_07]: In terms of milestones, though, for 2021, I'm going to build on something that we talked about over the last couple of weeks.
[18:19.540 --> 18:22.280] [SPEAKER_07]: I think Log4j is really, really significant.
[18:22.280 --> 18:44.820] [SPEAKER_07]: I think this Log4j Java library vulnerability has really been a revelation about the weakness and the fragility of the systems on which we rely on a daily basis and how they, too, like us humans, are connected in ways that are deeper and more fundamental than our outward appearances would have you believe.
[18:45.900 --> 18:52.540] [SPEAKER_07]: Separately, I think a big milestone this year, too, I think has been advances in VR technology, virtual reality.
[18:52.680 --> 18:53.480] [SPEAKER_07]: It's really been amazing.
[18:53.740 --> 18:59.160] [SPEAKER_07]: The immersive qualities of this technology are, in my mind, really, really astounding.
[18:59.160 --> 19:00.500] [SPEAKER_07]: The games are...
[19:01.100 --> 19:05.980] [SPEAKER_07]: They have an intensity about them that I've never felt or seen before.
[19:06.760 --> 19:08.280] [SPEAKER_07]: You can watch Netflix.
[19:08.420 --> 19:18.060] [SPEAKER_07]: He stays in a virtual theater right now, which is pretty cool, and I'd venture to bet that you could probably even attend an Enya concert in the near future.
[19:18.160 --> 19:18.600] [SPEAKER_07]: Wait, wait, wait.
[19:18.720 --> 19:21.260] [SPEAKER_05]: What do you mean you can watch Netflix in a theater?
[19:21.740 --> 19:22.680] [SPEAKER_05]: How does that work?
[19:23.080 --> 19:23.480] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[19:23.480 --> 19:39.440] [SPEAKER_07]: On this new Oculus Quest thing, which I hate to say, you know, is developed by Facebook, not our favorite company, or Meta now, whatever the name of the day is, but, sure, you can install this Netflix application on your headset and log into your Netflix account,
[19:39.460 --> 19:45.260] [SPEAKER_07]: and then all of a sudden, it feels like you're in this virtual theater watching a movie, fully immersed.
[19:45.500 --> 19:47.640] [SPEAKER_05]: Wait, are there other people in this theater?
[19:48.540 --> 19:49.740] [SPEAKER_07]: No, there's nobody else.
[19:49.920 --> 19:50.040] [SPEAKER_05]: Good.
[19:50.080 --> 19:51.580] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't want other people in this theater.
[19:51.700 --> 19:54.100] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't want people making noise or getting in the way.
[19:54.720 --> 19:55.140] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[19:55.500 --> 19:56.560] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, absolutely.
[19:56.900 --> 19:59.660] [SPEAKER_07]: I mean, you can do whatever you want in this virtual world.
[19:59.820 --> 20:00.300] [SPEAKER_07]: It's really...
[20:00.300 --> 20:00.620] [SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.
[20:01.500 --> 20:12.400] [SPEAKER_07]: It's incredible, and I think it really dovetails with what you were talking about as well, Emmanuel, and your confusion about the NFTs, which you are by far not alone in having this type of confusion.
[20:13.200 --> 20:14.660] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I don't think it's confusion.
[20:14.660 --> 20:17.880] [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's common sense, but go ahead, if you believe otherwise.
[20:18.460 --> 20:42.140] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, I think that the whole concept of NFTs dovetails really well with the concept of this virtual world or the metaverse in which we're going to be living in, where there may be one digitally signed copy of something that belongs to you, and I believe that NFTs are essentially a proof of concept for how we're going to own real estate in the quote-unquote metaverse in the future,
[20:42.400 --> 21:00.760] [SPEAKER_07]: that all of this is going to come around full circle, and what really terrifies me about that is if we are going to buy things, in this virtual world, then the rules and the space and everything about that particular universe is going to be created by another company,
[21:01.440 --> 21:13.020] [SPEAKER_07]: a company perhaps like Meta slash Facebook, and their ability to set those rules and create value out of essentially nothing, which is really what an NFT is.
[21:13.280 --> 21:14.460] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, yeah, we agree on that.
[21:14.640 --> 21:16.020] [SPEAKER_05]: We definitely agree on that.
[21:16.160 --> 21:21.520] [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, the fact that you're referring to it as real estate, don't forget real estate is called real estate because it's real.
[21:21.540 --> 21:22.260] [SPEAKER_08]: Because it's real.
[21:22.260 --> 21:22.620] [SPEAKER_05]: It's real.
[21:22.860 --> 21:25.360] [SPEAKER_05]: I have no idea if that has anything to do with it.
[21:25.440 --> 21:29.440] [SPEAKER_05]: But the fact is, NFTs, they really aren't real.
[21:29.740 --> 21:31.540] [SPEAKER_05]: And Farmville is not real.
[21:31.540 --> 21:36.400] [SPEAKER_05]: But people think it is and they throw real money at various things.
[21:36.760 --> 21:37.660] [SPEAKER_05]: And I don't know.
[21:38.240 --> 21:43.020] [SPEAKER_05]: Seeing more of that is just scary because it's like a drug addiction.
[21:43.220 --> 21:45.420] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, money goes down the drain.
[21:46.140 --> 21:46.300] [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[21:46.620 --> 21:47.080] [SPEAKER_06]: I think if...
[21:47.080 --> 21:48.040] [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, go ahead, Carl.
[21:48.040 --> 21:48.900] [SPEAKER_09]: No, I just...
[21:48.900 --> 22:01.980] [SPEAKER_09]: It's amazing that we're talking about the same company that we were just talking about having failed a lot of people in the realms of social media and been brought to task...
[22:01.980 --> 22:08.980] [SPEAKER_09]: taken to task over how they've handled it and addressed people's concerns and moderated, etc., etc.
[22:09.000 --> 22:10.280] [SPEAKER_09]: We're still having those conversations.
[22:10.460 --> 22:28.960] [SPEAKER_09]: There hasn't been a resolution to it yet that they're the types of entities that are going to be building a world that people will escape to from their lives like that is a way of coping with reality, which...
[22:28.960 --> 22:29.540] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't know.
[22:29.660 --> 22:35.540] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean, that's probably been an argument made in video gaming for a long time, but this is a different level.
[22:36.640 --> 22:52.280] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I think, though, this whole concept of NFTs akin to real estate will become more accessible and real if that NFT represents something that is more akin to a physical space in a digital realm.
[22:52.320 --> 23:09.920] [SPEAKER_07]: If you can look to that NFT as essentially a property deed of a certain space in the quote-unquote metaverse, then I think things will fall into place more quickly, but it's terrifying to me to think that all of this property, real, digital, or otherwise,
[23:10.280 --> 23:14.260] [SPEAKER_07]: virtual, whatever you want to call it, can be created essentially out of nothing.
[23:14.620 --> 23:15.060] [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[23:15.180 --> 23:19.700] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, imagine food as an example, you know, an NFT of food.
[23:20.180 --> 23:23.300] [SPEAKER_05]: You're still going to starve to death no matter how much of it you own.
[23:23.800 --> 23:24.180] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[23:24.300 --> 23:25.920] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, work that out.
[23:26.120 --> 23:32.260] [SPEAKER_05]: Get back to me and maybe I'll believe in the concept, but until then, it's just, you know, a rich man's game.
[23:32.780 --> 23:35.820] [SPEAKER_05]: Now, was that your future prediction?
[23:36.460 --> 23:43.260] [SPEAKER_07]: Future, I want to, you know, I think more Log4j vulnerabilities are my prediction for 2021.
[23:43.260 --> 23:43.980] [SPEAKER_07]: More of the same, though.
[23:44.180 --> 23:45.360] [SPEAKER_05]: You can't do more of the same.
[23:46.740 --> 24:00.620] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, as a result of those variant vulnerabilities that are going to be identified, I believe, in this Log4j library, I'm predicting more and more ransomware events that are going to be affected as a result of that vulnerability.
[24:00.620 --> 24:16.620] [SPEAKER_07]: But separately, and going back to the issue of social media platforms and things, I think there's going to be more accountability for the foreseeable consequences of algorithms, especially with regard to the psychological harm and the amplification of misinformation.
[24:17.060 --> 24:35.960] [SPEAKER_07]: I think this is going to be a direct result of the whistleblower, Frances Huygens, I think was her name, from Facebook, as well as pressure from lawmakers, academics, independent researchers, and everybody who's been clamoring for more of this data in the wake of what happened almost a year ago on January 6th.
[24:36.260 --> 24:43.560] [SPEAKER_07]: But separately, my prediction, I think there's going to be some developments with respect to the world at large here, too.
[24:43.640 --> 24:48.940] [SPEAKER_07]: And I'm going to crib a little bit from the last article that I wrote for 2600, the last column.
[24:49.120 --> 24:49.500] [SPEAKER_07]: And I think that...
[24:49.500 --> 24:50.580] [SPEAKER_05]: As long as the author doesn't mind.
[24:51.220 --> 24:52.600] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, well, that's fine.
[24:52.760 --> 24:53.300] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, exactly.
[24:53.880 --> 24:55.260] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, no copyright violation here.
[24:55.360 --> 25:05.880] [SPEAKER_07]: But with respect to the world at large, I think because of the coronavirus and its lethality, we're going to have no choice but to acknowledge the interconnectedness of human beings.
[25:06.140 --> 25:16.120] [SPEAKER_07]: And this will bring to the forefront the duty of care that we owe to each other and the need for empathy to triumph right now over apathy.
[25:16.480 --> 25:26.520] [SPEAKER_07]: Because if we turn a blind eye to each other, we will be perpetually disrupted by these various variants one after another after another as we are right now.
[25:27.260 --> 25:34.780] [SPEAKER_05]: And you can see words like that in every issue of 2600 Magazine penned by Alex himself in his artificial interruption column.
[25:35.360 --> 25:36.000] [SPEAKER_05]: That's right.
[25:36.060 --> 25:37.000] [SPEAKER_07]: Which has been a lot of fun.
[25:37.080 --> 25:39.380] [SPEAKER_07]: I can't believe it's been over a year that I've been doing that.
[25:39.520 --> 25:40.060] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, it's amazing.
[25:40.160 --> 25:48.320] [SPEAKER_07]: It starts during the pandemic and it's almost a serialized column in the sense that it builds off each one.
[25:48.320 --> 25:51.920] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, it started with a problem you were having activating a phone or something, right?
[25:52.300 --> 25:52.920] [SPEAKER_07]: That's true.
[25:53.060 --> 26:01.020] [SPEAKER_07]: During the Hope Conference when my iPhone broke and I had to go replace the iPhone in the middle of the I think the worst bit of the pandemic at that point.
[26:01.180 --> 26:02.220] [SPEAKER_07]: So that was fun.
[26:02.740 --> 26:02.860] [SPEAKER_06]: Wow.
[26:03.060 --> 26:03.760] [SPEAKER_07]: Definitely an article.
[26:03.920 --> 26:06.300] [SPEAKER_07]: Definitely the first article was definitely worth reading for sure.
[26:06.580 --> 26:07.920] [SPEAKER_07]: The others are okay too.
[26:08.780 --> 26:09.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, Gila.
[26:09.560 --> 26:10.560] [SPEAKER_05]: It all comes down to you now.
[26:11.140 --> 26:12.020] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, very exciting.
[26:12.020 --> 26:36.660] [SPEAKER_03]: So before I get into either my most significant moment of the year or my prediction I just want to talk about NFTs for a quick second because something that's been percolating in my mind as we've talked about it and we've learned more about it is that the hacker mindset as we understand it as we have explained it on this program especially to our young caller on overtime a couple of weeks ago
[26:36.660 --> 26:39.560] [SPEAKER_03]: which was one of the greatest moments of the year as far as I'm concerned.
[26:41.300 --> 26:46.320] [SPEAKER_03]: The hacker mindset is, I understand this, I'm going to share it.
[26:46.440 --> 26:50.160] [SPEAKER_03]: We want to make things clearer to people, better for people.
[26:50.360 --> 26:54.180] [SPEAKER_03]: And the NFT mindset is, I own this and you can't have it.
[26:54.580 --> 27:01.960] [SPEAKER_03]: And the worst thing an NFT believer can call you is a right clicker, or say you have a right clicker mindset.
[27:01.960 --> 27:02.700] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, what is that?
[27:02.840 --> 27:05.740] [SPEAKER_05]: I've been seeing that insult thrown around lately.
[27:05.860 --> 27:06.580] [SPEAKER_05]: What does that mean?
[27:06.720 --> 27:10.440] [SPEAKER_03]: So what it means is that this is the picture that I paid for.
[27:10.800 --> 27:11.860] [SPEAKER_03]: I own it.
[27:11.960 --> 27:18.020] [SPEAKER_03]: And you, you miserable peon, you're going to right click on this image and save it to your computer for free.
[27:18.280 --> 27:21.420] [SPEAKER_03]: You are stealing from me, you right clicker.
[27:22.680 --> 27:30.980] [SPEAKER_05]: It sounds to me like they're realizing just how easy it is to bypass what they have done, all the money they've spent on something that's worthless.
[27:30.980 --> 27:33.660] [SPEAKER_03]: how stupid this whole, this whole venture is.
[27:33.960 --> 27:51.160] [SPEAKER_03]: Because if you spend however much real money, and it's a lot of money in some cases, on a picture of, I don't know, a monkey in a hat, and I can right click on the picture of that monkey in the hat, and I can have it for free, it kind of shows that you did something real stupid.
[27:52.060 --> 27:53.180] [SPEAKER_03]: But they get up, yeah.
[27:53.400 --> 27:54.520] [SPEAKER_03]: I could take a picture of that.
[27:54.680 --> 27:55.520] [SPEAKER_03]: It's a slur in the NFT world.
[27:55.620 --> 27:59.120] [SPEAKER_05]: I could take a picture of the image that you save and then sell it to somebody else, too.
[27:59.300 --> 28:00.040] [SPEAKER_05]: What does that make me?
[28:01.040 --> 28:02.440] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it makes you clever.
[28:04.120 --> 28:04.560] [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[28:05.320 --> 28:06.600] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not an NFT head.
[28:09.740 --> 28:18.940] [SPEAKER_03]: So, speaking, Alex, what you were saying about the interconnectedness of human beings kind of brings me to my moment of the year, which is a couple of moments.
[28:18.940 --> 28:25.640] [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm thinking about the day that the meta servers went down and took, like, half the Internet with them.
[28:26.140 --> 28:33.460] [SPEAKER_03]: And there have been a couple of times when Amazon Web Services went down and took, like, half the Internet with them.
[28:33.460 --> 28:48.520] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think the fact that we are consolidating so much of what the Internet is, what the world is in the hands of a very small group of organizations is problematic at best.
[28:48.520 --> 29:08.300] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think when we're saying, okay, everybody can have all of this stuff, and everybody's going to use it, but then if it's not there anymore, you know, I know that there were hotlines, there were ambulance services that rely on WhatsApp for whatever reason.
[29:08.300 --> 29:14.480] [SPEAKER_03]: And when all the meta servers went down, there were people who couldn't get medical help because meta went down.
[29:17.920 --> 29:20.300] [SPEAKER_03]: So, I don't know what the solution is.
[29:20.400 --> 29:21.900] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know how we solve it.
[29:22.060 --> 29:27.780] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if there's a possibility of, like, a re-Balkanization of all these services.
[29:28.500 --> 29:29.940] [SPEAKER_03]: I'd like to see that happen.
[29:29.940 --> 29:36.760] [SPEAKER_03]: That is not my prediction for the year, though, because, well, when you hear my prediction, you're not going to think I'm that much of a realist either.
[29:36.760 --> 29:47.760] [SPEAKER_03]: But thinking about how we can spread things out a little bit more, because AWS keeps dropping, and so many things go with it.
[29:48.040 --> 29:51.620] [SPEAKER_03]: That, I think, that was my technology issue of the year.
[29:52.020 --> 29:52.320] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh-huh.
[29:52.900 --> 30:00.360] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, just to address that for a moment, you know, I think if you look at almost any industry, we see the same problem of consolidation.
[30:00.360 --> 30:04.640] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, it's communications, networks, television.
[30:05.360 --> 30:11.860] [SPEAKER_05]: Everything is being bought by a relatively few amount of corporations, organizations.
[30:12.140 --> 30:13.680] [SPEAKER_05]: What is the solution?
[30:13.940 --> 30:23.260] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think the solution is always, you know, diversify as much as possible, have independent people come and start, become their own media.
[30:23.260 --> 30:30.740] [SPEAKER_05]: But then, you know, you kind of have the side effect of, oh, everyone's the media now, and that includes every crackpot under the earth.
[30:31.160 --> 30:38.840] [SPEAKER_05]: And then all of a sudden, there's no legitimacy, and you don't know who to believe, and everyone just believes the people that they follow and nobody else.
[30:38.840 --> 30:55.540] [SPEAKER_09]: It's like the extreme consolidation versus extreme democratization, which a lot of the newer technologies have allowed for that democratization, but there should still be a consolidated effort, especially in things like news.
[30:55.600 --> 30:57.460] [SPEAKER_09]: We've talked a lot about radio, too.
[30:57.840 --> 31:00.280] [SPEAKER_09]: Talk radio is incredibly consolidated with owners.
[31:00.640 --> 31:03.460] [SPEAKER_09]: Newspapers have suffered from this as well.
[31:03.640 --> 31:05.020] [SPEAKER_09]: All aspects of media.
[31:05.320 --> 31:07.160] [SPEAKER_09]: And so that is an incredible observation.
[31:07.560 --> 31:07.740] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[31:09.720 --> 31:13.360] [SPEAKER_03]: My prediction for the year is not a prediction.
[31:13.740 --> 31:16.340] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it's going to happen, but it's my hope.
[31:16.480 --> 31:17.280] [SPEAKER_03]: Can we go with that?
[31:17.600 --> 31:17.840] [SPEAKER_05]: Sure.
[31:18.960 --> 31:41.000] [SPEAKER_03]: What I would like to see is a valorization of rest, because one of the things that we have seen, as Rob said, that more people can work from home, and more people are realizing that working remotely and working from home is more of a possibility, is that more people are working more hours than ever.
[31:41.300 --> 31:51.820] [SPEAKER_03]: I would like to see us as a country and as a culture stop valorizing the grind quite as much.
[31:52.500 --> 31:55.380] [SPEAKER_03]: That, you know, people are saying, oh, what did you do during the pandemic?
[31:55.580 --> 32:02.920] [SPEAKER_03]: And if you didn't learn a language, monetize your hobbies, and lose 50 pounds, you were wasting your time during the pandemic.
[32:02.920 --> 32:06.980] [SPEAKER_03]: And, like, we stayed alive, a lot of us.
[32:08.140 --> 32:13.340] [SPEAKER_03]: We learned things, and just because we didn't earn money for them doesn't mean that it wasn't worth it.
[32:13.340 --> 32:29.320] [SPEAKER_03]: But I think that to valorize, rest, relaxation, recharge, a minute to breathe, and that the idea that if you can't monetize it, it's not worth it, I'd like to see a step away from that in 2022.
[32:29.720 --> 32:33.260] [SPEAKER_03]: Again, it's not a real prediction, but it's a deeply felt hope.
[32:33.520 --> 32:34.640] [SPEAKER_05]: That is excellent.
[32:34.640 --> 32:41.040] [SPEAKER_05]: That says so much, because throughout the world, people work themselves to death, literally, sometimes.
[32:41.760 --> 32:48.820] [SPEAKER_05]: And I remember back when we did the first Hope Conference, we were making fun of those AT&T commercials, remember those?
[32:49.000 --> 32:56.760] [SPEAKER_05]: Where, basically, they just made up some technology that didn't exist, and, you know, basically, did you ever send a fax from the beach?
[32:56.760 --> 32:57.480] [SPEAKER_05]: You will.
[32:57.720 --> 33:00.340] [SPEAKER_05]: And the company that will bring it to you is AT&T.
[33:00.860 --> 33:01.980] [SPEAKER_05]: I think I have that right.
[33:01.980 --> 33:01.980] Right.
[33:02.180 --> 33:06.120] [SPEAKER_05]: And, first of all, they're claiming credit for things that didn't exist at the time.
[33:06.140 --> 33:07.980] [SPEAKER_05]: But why would you want to send a fax from the beach?
[33:08.080 --> 33:09.320] [SPEAKER_05]: You're on the damn beach.
[33:09.580 --> 33:10.100] [SPEAKER_05]: Enjoy it.
[33:10.840 --> 33:14.340] [SPEAKER_05]: And that world has come to be where people don't know how to enjoy themselves.
[33:14.520 --> 33:16.020] [SPEAKER_05]: They have to work all the time.
[33:16.480 --> 33:24.680] [SPEAKER_05]: My idea for this, which I just came up with, by the way, you know how in China, everyone is freaking out because kids are being limited in how much they can play video games.
[33:24.860 --> 33:27.540] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think you get two hours a week or something crazy like that.
[33:28.040 --> 33:30.300] [SPEAKER_05]: And then, I don't know how it turns off, but it does.
[33:30.300 --> 33:32.800] [SPEAKER_05]: What if we did the same thing for work, okay?
[33:33.020 --> 33:38.040] [SPEAKER_05]: Where you basically, you know, you're on your work connection or you're doing work-related things on your computer.
[33:38.220 --> 33:42.040] [SPEAKER_05]: And then, all of a sudden, a message comes across saying, you've worked enough.
[33:42.460 --> 33:43.620] [SPEAKER_05]: Now, go relax.
[33:44.340 --> 33:45.600] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's enforced.
[33:45.880 --> 33:46.660] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[33:46.820 --> 33:47.880] [SPEAKER_05]: That's probably not the answer.
[33:48.040 --> 33:49.040] [SPEAKER_05]: But I think something...
[33:49.040 --> 33:50.820] [SPEAKER_05]: That's the mentality we need to get into.
[33:51.080 --> 33:55.980] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, if you haven't relaxed enough, if you haven't done something for yourself today, it's time to do that.
[33:57.020 --> 34:01.660] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, there's that AT&T ad campaign you were talking about still lives.
[34:01.940 --> 34:06.100] [SPEAKER_03]: And there's a current ad campaign for Google that does the same thing.
[34:06.100 --> 34:08.800] [SPEAKER_03]: And I saw it on the subway, unfortunately, when I was on the way to work.
[34:08.880 --> 34:12.200] [SPEAKER_03]: And it was a list of places you can work from with your Google connection.
[34:12.440 --> 34:13.660] [SPEAKER_03]: Work from the beach.
[34:13.800 --> 34:15.000] [SPEAKER_03]: Work from your bed.
[34:15.200 --> 34:16.620] [SPEAKER_03]: Work from their bed.
[34:16.820 --> 34:18.060] [SPEAKER_03]: Work from the train.
[34:19.080 --> 34:20.140] [SPEAKER_03]: Whatever it is.
[34:20.140 --> 34:21.280] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, no!
[34:21.860 --> 34:23.400] [SPEAKER_03]: Just take a breath.
[34:24.700 --> 34:27.800] [SPEAKER_03]: Draw a line.
[34:28.480 --> 34:31.760] [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, if we get back to that ideal of 8, 8, and 8.
[34:33.020 --> 34:41.900] [SPEAKER_03]: For what it's worth, the VPN my company has me using when I'm working remotely does disconnect after 8 hours of connection.
[34:42.080 --> 34:42.440] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, really?
[34:42.720 --> 34:44.440] [SPEAKER_03]: You can sign right back in.
[34:45.180 --> 34:47.120] [SPEAKER_03]: But, yeah, it boots you after 8 hours.
[34:47.320 --> 34:47.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Interesting.
[34:48.800 --> 34:50.000] [SPEAKER_05]: It's kind of like my idea.
[34:50.600 --> 34:50.900] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[34:51.300 --> 34:57.380] [SPEAKER_09]: I really like that, too, because it's also a real reevaluation of how to spend your energy.
[34:57.740 --> 35:04.400] [SPEAKER_09]: And that the reward for things that you work on isn't necessarily compensation all the time.
[35:04.680 --> 35:15.360] [SPEAKER_09]: And we have a really hard time getting people inspired if it isn't something monetary, where there's some financial benefit.
[35:15.360 --> 35:25.680] [SPEAKER_09]: Other than that, our society largely looks at everything else as free time, if people even get to that.
[35:25.880 --> 35:30.700] [SPEAKER_09]: So I just think there's a lot in what you're saying on even deeper levels.
[35:30.700 --> 35:37.100] [SPEAKER_09]: There's many layers to that, and I think there's so many worthwhile things people can invest in as far as working on.
[35:37.960 --> 35:41.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I saw this thing today on Twitter that's being passed around.
[35:41.640 --> 35:42.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Have you seen this?
[35:42.180 --> 35:55.320] [SPEAKER_05]: It's basically geared towards musicians, and it's a calculation of the number of streams that musicians have to achieve in order to make one dollar from their music.
[35:55.320 --> 35:55.940] [SPEAKER_05]: One dollar.
[35:56.840 --> 36:00.380] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to read off a list of what they have to accomplish.
[36:00.660 --> 36:11.860] [SPEAKER_05]: And just try to remember how it used to work, you know, where musicians would sell records and get a cut from that and have recording contracts and things.
[36:12.100 --> 36:16.080] [SPEAKER_05]: From Amazon Music, they need 249 streams.
[36:16.720 --> 36:20.740] [SPEAKER_05]: 249 people listening to their songs in order to make one dollar.
[36:20.740 --> 36:22.220] [SPEAKER_05]: Apple Music, 128.
[36:23.520 --> 36:25.460] [SPEAKER_05]: Tidal Music, whatever that is, 78.
[36:25.940 --> 36:27.500] [SPEAKER_05]: Napster, 53.
[36:28.120 --> 36:29.620] [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, Napster is the best deal.
[36:30.300 --> 36:31.220] [SPEAKER_05]: Interesting, isn't it?
[36:31.820 --> 36:40.160] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, think about when Napster came out back in, what was it, 2000, where that was seen as somehow ripping off artists.
[36:40.420 --> 36:44.420] [SPEAKER_05]: And in fact, they're giving them the best deal in the digital world.
[36:45.820 --> 36:48.140] [SPEAKER_05]: Deezer, 156 streams to make one dollar.
[36:48.360 --> 36:50.300] [SPEAKER_05]: Pandora, 752.
[36:52.520 --> 36:53.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Spotify, 315.
[36:53.740 --> 36:55.320] [SPEAKER_05]: But you know what the worst offender is?
[36:56.060 --> 36:57.240] [SPEAKER_05]: You guessed it, Google.
[36:57.800 --> 36:58.620] [SPEAKER_05]: YouTube Music.
[36:58.880 --> 37:05.220] [SPEAKER_05]: You need 1,250 streams to make one lousy dollar if you're a musician.
[37:06.700 --> 37:08.940] [SPEAKER_05]: Now, I can't speak to the accuracy of these numbers.
[37:08.940 --> 37:11.460] [SPEAKER_05]: That's being passed all over the place on Twitter, so it must be true.
[37:14.400 --> 37:26.460] [SPEAKER_05]: But if it is true, if this is anywhere based in reality, this right here illustrates one of the major problems that we have, where the people, the artists, the people who are creating things, they're the ones in last place.
[37:26.460 --> 37:31.460] [SPEAKER_05]: And you better believe these companies are making a killing from those people.
[37:32.680 --> 37:35.200] [SPEAKER_05]: And that's a huge issue.
[37:35.440 --> 37:37.560] [SPEAKER_09]: And at least then they could go in.
[37:37.620 --> 37:42.020] [SPEAKER_09]: There was like a recording label they could go in and confront.
[37:42.280 --> 37:53.080] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean, these are basically just webpages they're visiting to see how their distribution and audience is growing.
[37:53.080 --> 37:58.500] [SPEAKER_09]: They're not actually able to advocate in a large way, especially if you're a new artist.
[37:58.800 --> 37:58.980] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[37:59.080 --> 37:59.260] [SPEAKER_00]: Kayla?
[37:59.660 --> 38:07.860] [SPEAKER_03]: A quick research check-in is that Napster, and talking about consolidation, Napster is now what used to be Rhapsody.
[38:09.420 --> 38:13.120] [SPEAKER_03]: The Rhapsody service became Napster in 2016.
[38:13.580 --> 38:14.560] [SPEAKER_08]: Was that real?
[38:14.940 --> 38:15.960] [SPEAKER_08]: Made by real?
[38:17.340 --> 38:17.980] [SPEAKER_03]: Possibly.
[38:18.220 --> 38:18.900] [SPEAKER_08]: Real networks?
[38:19.220 --> 38:19.700] [SPEAKER_08]: The Rhapsody?
[38:19.880 --> 38:21.000] [SPEAKER_08]: It's very, very possible.
[38:21.000 --> 38:26.760] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, because things just keep getting eaten by other things.
[38:26.760 --> 38:34.700] [SPEAKER_03]: And I will be interested to see if this sort of chart will exist in another year and how many platforms will be on it.
[38:35.000 --> 38:54.060] [SPEAKER_05]: See, I keep going back to, not to fixate on the way things used to be, but the value of owning a record or a CD and showing your support in that way, knowing that when you buy something, that a good percentage of what you are paying is going towards that artist,
[38:54.300 --> 38:55.620] [SPEAKER_05]: at least in theory.
[38:55.780 --> 39:10.160] [SPEAKER_05]: I know record companies do all kinds of shenanigans, have done that in the past, but at least you felt like you were voting in some way with either your concert ticket or your record purchase.
[39:11.660 --> 39:22.260] [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, we can say that digitizing everything has made it a lot more palatable for some people, but I don't think the artists are the ones benefiting from this.
[39:22.420 --> 39:23.500] [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't seem that way.
[39:23.620 --> 39:23.840] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex?
[39:26.320 --> 39:27.340] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex, I think you're muted.
[39:27.960 --> 39:28.500] [SPEAKER_07]: Alex, I think you're muted.
[39:28.500 --> 39:28.520] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[39:28.800 --> 39:31.200] [SPEAKER_07]: Now, sorry, I'm having a little technical issues here today.
[39:31.320 --> 39:44.380] [SPEAKER_07]: It's a bit of lag, but this whole notion of music and streaming and services and profit, it really only works out for the artists when they can stream at a much larger scale.
[39:44.380 --> 39:58.620] [SPEAKER_07]: So, for instance, if you have, hypothetically, 40 million streams on a song per month, that would equate to about $160,000 at $1 per every 250 streams.
[39:58.880 --> 40:07.560] [SPEAKER_07]: That's a lot of money per song per month, but you can only ever get to that rate if you have some kind of boost from popular culture.
[40:07.560 --> 40:23.840] [SPEAKER_07]: And usually that means some kind of massive marketing campaign by way of a music label or some kind of corporation behind you or some kind of corporate promotion of your music throughout the airwaves, throughout streaming, and through all the streaming services,
[40:23.920 --> 40:24.120] [SPEAKER_07]: rather.
[40:24.640 --> 40:32.100] [SPEAKER_07]: And so for independent artists, it becomes very, very difficult for them to break through and make a meaningful wage from this.
[40:32.100 --> 40:39.580] [SPEAKER_07]: And it almost forces them out of the market itself, which I think is very, very unfortunate.
[40:39.920 --> 40:55.460] [SPEAKER_07]: And the scale of this has to change in one way or another, or we're just going to be stuck with this homogenized view of popular music, which is what we had on the radio 20 years ago, and it annoyed the hell out of me then.
[40:55.820 --> 41:00.680] [SPEAKER_09]: I like where you're going with that, Alex, too, because I think it wraps people up.
[41:00.680 --> 41:11.080] [SPEAKER_09]: It's really management, too, wraps the artist up in this sort of branding machine, and they become something they didn't really intend to be as a recording artist.
[41:11.360 --> 41:26.080] [SPEAKER_09]: They're out doing, like, endorsements and things and getting really far afield from, like, having their music be performed or sold widely.
[41:26.560 --> 41:41.700] [SPEAKER_09]: Like, they're sort of forced to say, like, okay, well, this is success, and that means you have to be in all of these different ads and all these different platforms and modes, and you have to do a collaboration or some kind of crossover appeal on this program or series.
[41:41.700 --> 42:01.900] [SPEAKER_09]: And that keeps you relevant, and therefore gives you more endorsements, and before you know it, you're just basically, like, in this ad cycle that you only got exposed to through your wish or desire to perform music, which is crazy to think about.
[42:01.900 --> 42:10.920] [SPEAKER_09]: That, like, we laud the success of an artist on things that really are all externalities to the craft itself, which is music.
[42:11.380 --> 42:11.940] [SPEAKER_05]: Absolutely.
[42:12.060 --> 42:12.340] [SPEAKER_05]: Rob?
[42:13.180 --> 42:30.520] [SPEAKER_01]: The thing is, the traditional, entrenched, big-label music industry has always been very, very good at underpaying their talent and at taking things that challenge their sort of rule of the entire system and market and everything and just absorbing them or taking them down.
[42:30.520 --> 42:32.900] [SPEAKER_01]: I have, right here on my desk, I have a CD that I bought.
[42:33.320 --> 42:34.460] [SPEAKER_01]: I got it a few weeks ago.
[42:34.520 --> 42:35.020] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, good for you.
[42:35.120 --> 42:38.960] [SPEAKER_01]: It's from one of my favorite bands, and it's a hard piece of media.
[42:39.600 --> 42:48.720] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, the first thing I did when I received it is I ripped it to digital files that I put on my devices and stuff, and the CD will go up on a shelf whenever I get around to cleaning my desk.
[42:49.880 --> 43:06.380] [SPEAKER_01]: But if I spend, you know, 15 bucks on this independently produced CD, you know, they probably saw the vast majority of that money, because they're the ones getting the things printed up and putting them out and doing it as an independent act without the help of the major labels who,
[43:06.380 --> 43:16.420] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, who are very good at just making numbers like these Amazon Music, you know, 249 plays to make a dollar sort of things look good.
[43:16.540 --> 43:25.860] [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to say if you have music that you enjoy, track down the band's official sites, official stores, buy things from them, get a T-shirt, get an album.
[43:25.860 --> 43:34.960] [SPEAKER_01]: I know a lot of people like vinyl records again, get some of those, because that is how you're going to keep your favorite artists, your favorite creative people able to do their work.
[43:35.300 --> 43:38.440] [SPEAKER_01]: The big music industry is still not the way to go.
[43:38.600 --> 43:39.560] [SPEAKER_01]: It's still screwing people.
[43:39.580 --> 43:41.240] [SPEAKER_01]: And we can see that clearly on this.
[43:41.320 --> 43:56.900] [SPEAKER_05]: If you're one of those artists or bands, I think the best thing for you to do is to have your own website, where you have an account on an online store that doesn't take the majority of your profits and you sell this thing and you send it out yourself.
[43:56.900 --> 44:07.260] [SPEAKER_05]: You send out the CDs, you send out the shirts and you don't farm it out to Amazon or anybody like that because they will take a huge cut and you won't make anything.
[44:07.520 --> 44:12.080] [SPEAKER_05]: And this way, people who are fans of your music will say, I want to support them.
[44:12.080 --> 44:12.940] [SPEAKER_05]: I want to buy a CD.
[44:13.120 --> 44:20.020] [SPEAKER_05]: And like what you did, Rob, you'll have the CD on your shelf and you'll digitize it for your various devices.
[44:20.260 --> 44:27.620] [SPEAKER_05]: And then when Log4J comes calling one day and you lose everything, you have that CD to go back to so you can encode it again and start over.
[44:28.400 --> 44:30.600] [SPEAKER_05]: See, that's an optimistic view of the future, Kyle.
[44:30.600 --> 44:52.340] [SPEAKER_09]: I like that too because the people landing on your site, if you're hosting it, they won't be as susceptible as they would to having their demographics and so on fed into advertising, which would take away their disposable income that they would otherwise maybe spend buying your merchandise and your CDs.
[44:52.340 --> 45:05.580] [SPEAKER_09]: So if, like, they're being, just to get to your site, they have to go through all these storms of ads, the risk of them buying with money they would otherwise spend at your web store is a lot higher.
[45:05.800 --> 45:06.160] [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[45:06.300 --> 45:16.340] [SPEAKER_05]: And the thing is, if and when you become major successful superstars, that's the time you put it all on Amazon and let them deal with it because you can't be bothered.
[45:16.340 --> 45:27.380] [SPEAKER_05]: If somebody needs to get your music delivered to them by drone in the same day, you know, that's a better solution than you running it yourself and going crazy trying to deliver merchandise.
[45:27.760 --> 45:43.240] [SPEAKER_05]: But when you're beginning, when you're small, when you're not making a whole lot of money at this, doing this yourself, basically having a website, having an online presence of one sort or another, that is by far the better way to...
[45:43.240 --> 45:48.820] [SPEAKER_05]: And it goes for, you know, for writers as well, people who publish books, artists of all sorts.
[45:49.420 --> 45:59.300] [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, I think we would see so much more in the way of new artists prospering and having a path to becoming more successful.
[45:59.420 --> 46:07.860] [SPEAKER_05]: Because I guarantee you see small artists on Amazon, half the time it's counterfeit work that is basically using their name.
[46:07.860 --> 46:15.160] [SPEAKER_05]: I know at least one musician, when I mentioned, hey, your CDs on Amazon, they never put it on Amazon.
[46:15.340 --> 46:16.700] [SPEAKER_05]: Somebody else put it on Amazon.
[46:16.960 --> 46:19.120] [SPEAKER_05]: Amazon doesn't do anything to prevent that.
[46:19.500 --> 46:22.320] [SPEAKER_05]: And they're not making a penny off of those sales.
[46:22.620 --> 46:23.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Amazon is.
[46:23.540 --> 46:24.680] [SPEAKER_05]: Amazon's making money from that.
[46:24.800 --> 46:26.740] [SPEAKER_05]: And of course, the counterfeiters are making money.
[46:27.200 --> 46:28.420] [SPEAKER_05]: So that is what happens.
[46:28.520 --> 46:30.100] [SPEAKER_05]: That can't happen if you're running your own site.
[46:30.100 --> 46:40.040] [SPEAKER_05]: And if you see it show up on Amazon, when you didn't put it there, you can draw attention to that and hopefully take some kind of action.
[46:40.440 --> 46:41.420] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, it's not your own doing.
[46:41.720 --> 46:42.380] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, exactly.
[46:42.480 --> 46:42.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex?
[46:43.240 --> 46:49.420] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, and speaking of which, I just took a quick look at the monthly listeners that Enya has on Spotify.
[46:49.420 --> 46:52.220] [SPEAKER_07]: Since I know that's one of your favorites, Emmanuel.
[46:53.180 --> 46:56.360] [SPEAKER_07]: And 3.6 million monthly listeners.
[46:56.540 --> 46:59.580] [SPEAKER_07]: So at scale, this is really going to work out for Enya.
[47:00.100 --> 47:04.600] [SPEAKER_07]: However, I know one of your other favorite bands, the Scottalites, right?
[47:04.900 --> 47:07.280] [SPEAKER_07]: How many would you venture to guess that they would have?
[47:07.380 --> 47:13.700] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, if you asked me this question 20 years ago, I would ask you what you're talking about because Amazon didn't exist.
[47:14.560 --> 47:21.160] [SPEAKER_05]: But I would basically guess now, today, a mere fraction of what Enya gets.
[47:22.780 --> 47:24.700] [SPEAKER_05]: I'll say maybe 250,000.
[47:25.220 --> 47:26.940] [SPEAKER_07]: That's a pretty good guess.
[47:27.060 --> 47:30.080] [SPEAKER_07]: They actually have about 489,000 monthly listeners.
[47:30.100 --> 47:31.300] [SPEAKER_07]: Which is not bad.
[47:31.360 --> 47:32.340] [SPEAKER_07]: But there's a lot of them.
[47:32.420 --> 47:33.760] [SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of them, though, Alex.
[47:34.120 --> 47:36.100] [SPEAKER_05]: There's more than one in the Scottalites.
[47:36.680 --> 47:38.240] [SPEAKER_07]: Oh, well, that's true.
[47:38.440 --> 47:39.160] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, absolutely.
[47:39.320 --> 47:41.160] [SPEAKER_07]: In fact, it's quite a large band.
[47:41.160 --> 47:42.220] [SPEAKER_07]: Like 50 people on that band.
[47:42.260 --> 47:42.680] [SPEAKER_07]: The horn section.
[47:43.300 --> 47:43.700] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[47:44.120 --> 47:48.500] [SPEAKER_07]: But let's say that equates to 1 million streams per month.
[47:48.620 --> 47:48.820] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[47:49.500 --> 47:50.840] [SPEAKER_07]: That would be $4,000.
[47:52.060 --> 47:54.000] [SPEAKER_05]: That's not enough for the horn section, even.
[47:54.000 --> 47:54.260] [SPEAKER_05]: No.
[47:54.360 --> 47:55.160] [SPEAKER_07]: Feed that family.
[47:55.380 --> 48:02.340] [SPEAKER_07]: You know, and if you multiply that times 10, it's still arguably not enough to feed the Scottalites, given the size of that band.
[48:02.520 --> 48:07.120] [SPEAKER_07]: So, you know, these economics just don't really seem to work out at scale.
[48:07.120 --> 48:09.160] [SPEAKER_05]: No, but the convenience does.
[48:09.500 --> 48:14.780] [SPEAKER_05]: It's way convenient to be able to click a button and hear the music you want to hear and think that you're contributing.
[48:15.080 --> 48:16.920] [SPEAKER_05]: And you're really not.
[48:17.260 --> 48:23.100] [SPEAKER_05]: You're contributing to Amazon and to the large companies that are doing these streams.
[48:23.260 --> 48:24.160] [SPEAKER_05]: But that's it.
[48:24.360 --> 48:25.120] [SPEAKER_05]: That's really it.
[48:26.560 --> 48:31.240] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, you keep them in center spotlight as far as the dominant player.
[48:32.640 --> 48:38.160] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, we have a lot more to cover as far as 2021, but we're going to have to continue that on Overtime.
[48:38.660 --> 48:42.200] [SPEAKER_05]: And the way you get to Overtime, and by the way, we are not on next week.
[48:42.540 --> 48:45.860] [SPEAKER_05]: We're preempted, and we'll be on again in two weeks.
[48:46.240 --> 48:50.680] [SPEAKER_05]: But the way to get to our Overtime show is go to YouTube.com/Channel2600.
[48:50.800 --> 48:51.700] [SPEAKER_05]: You should see it there.
[48:51.920 --> 48:53.580] [SPEAKER_05]: It goes live at 8 o'clock.
[48:53.680 --> 49:00.200] [SPEAKER_05]: Or you can go to www.2600.com and click on the link at the top of the page that goes to Overtime.
[49:00.200 --> 49:01.820] [SPEAKER_05]: And you can make phone calls then.
[49:01.960 --> 49:05.920] [SPEAKER_05]: You can ask us questions, share experiences, various things like that.
[49:06.100 --> 49:10.680] [SPEAKER_05]: I also want to remind people to support WBAI in these closing days of 2021.
[49:11.360 --> 49:18.620] [SPEAKER_05]: We are basically trying to pay our transmitter bill for the whole of 2022, something we've never done before.
[49:18.800 --> 49:19.380] [SPEAKER_05]: Pay in advance.
[49:19.480 --> 49:19.980] [SPEAKER_05]: Imagine that.
[49:20.140 --> 49:21.780] [SPEAKER_05]: We can do that with your support.
[49:21.780 --> 49:28.260] [SPEAKER_05]: If you call 212-209-2950 or go to the website, give2wbai.org.
[49:28.380 --> 49:30.560] [SPEAKER_05]: Give, the number 2, wbai.org.
[49:31.060 --> 49:37.780] [SPEAKER_05]: Pledge whatever you can afford to the transmitter project, I guess is what it's called, right?
[49:38.100 --> 49:38.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[49:38.560 --> 49:39.900] [SPEAKER_08]: I think fund or project.
[49:40.080 --> 49:40.340] [SPEAKER_05]: Fund.
[49:40.840 --> 49:41.280] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[49:41.660 --> 49:42.960] [SPEAKER_09]: It's hard to say quickly.
[49:43.320 --> 49:43.580] [SPEAKER_09]: It is.
[49:43.640 --> 49:44.700] [SPEAKER_09]: Transmitter fund fund.
[49:44.700 --> 49:47.300] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, but you can pledge one amount.
[49:47.400 --> 49:48.720] [SPEAKER_05]: You can pledge something every month.
[49:49.380 --> 49:52.240] [SPEAKER_05]: It all goes to the same place for the same purpose.
[49:52.500 --> 49:54.060] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's amazing.
[49:54.140 --> 50:03.080] [SPEAKER_05]: When you think two years ago, we were out on the street, or actually a little bit more than two years ago, we were out on the street because of a coup attempt from various factions.
[50:03.740 --> 50:07.840] [SPEAKER_05]: And the history of the station was very much in doubt and very glum.
[50:07.840 --> 50:24.180] [SPEAKER_05]: And now, not only are we back on the air, we've moved to a new transmitter site, we've cut expenses, we're in the black instead of deep in the red, and we are basically ready, ready to take the next step.
[50:24.280 --> 50:25.200] [SPEAKER_05]: And you can help us do that.
[50:25.300 --> 50:26.980] [SPEAKER_05]: 212-209-2950.
[50:27.500 --> 50:29.640] [SPEAKER_05]: give2wbai.org.
[50:30.580 --> 50:34.620] [SPEAKER_05]: 2021 has been an interesting year and better than 2020, I'll say that.
[50:34.620 --> 50:38.920] [SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, I'm hoping 2022 will be much better than 2021.
[50:39.260 --> 50:40.200] [SPEAKER_05]: And my fingers are crossed.
[50:42.060 --> 50:43.120] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm looking forward to it.
[50:45.920 --> 50:47.060] [SPEAKER_05]: Is anybody else?
[50:47.340 --> 50:48.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Am I the only one?
[50:49.600 --> 50:50.000] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[50:50.180 --> 50:50.400] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[50:50.400 --> 50:52.100] [SPEAKER_01]: We are very much looking forward to it.
[50:52.220 --> 50:54.140] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I have hopes.
[50:54.180 --> 50:54.980] [SPEAKER_01]: I have hopes.
[50:55.120 --> 50:57.500] [SPEAKER_01]: And let's see how they do.
[50:57.640 --> 50:58.700] [SPEAKER_01]: I have hopes about my hopes.
[50:58.980 --> 51:00.360] [SPEAKER_03]: I also have hopes about my hopes.
[51:00.560 --> 51:07.660] [SPEAKER_03]: One hope that is going to get us to hope is that if you have plans, for Friday night, please stay home.
[51:08.000 --> 51:08.840] [SPEAKER_03]: Just stay home.
[51:08.960 --> 51:09.100] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[51:09.580 --> 51:10.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Why not?
[51:10.640 --> 51:11.240] [SPEAKER_03]: Stay home.
[51:12.420 --> 51:13.280] [SPEAKER_05]: Makes sense to me.
[51:13.800 --> 51:15.620] [SPEAKER_05]: There will be crowds of people everywhere.
[51:16.200 --> 51:17.120] [SPEAKER_05]: We don't need that.
[51:17.160 --> 51:17.360] [SPEAKER_04]: That idea.
[51:17.600 --> 51:17.740] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[51:18.760 --> 51:19.320] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[51:19.500 --> 51:20.560] [SPEAKER_05]: Join us over on YouTube.
[51:20.560 --> 51:22.580] [SPEAKER_05]: We'll see you in two weeks here on WBAI.
[51:22.780 --> 51:28.300] [SPEAKER_05]: Stay tuned to 99.5 FM, because we have all kinds of great programming throughout the week.
[51:29.460 --> 51:30.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Write to us.
[51:30.420 --> 51:32.040] [SPEAKER_05]: oth@2600.com.
[51:32.660 --> 51:34.800] [SPEAKER_05]: For Alex, Rob, Gila, and Kyle, this is Manuel.
[51:34.800 --> 51:36.300] [SPEAKER_05]: Happy New Year.
[51:36.920 --> 51:37.660] Happy
[51:50.860 --> 51:50.860] New Year.
[51:50.860 --> 51:50.960] Happy New Year.
[53:40.060 --> 53:41.690] [SPEAKER_04]: Happy New Year.
[55:04.470 --> 55:06.250] [SPEAKER_05]: And welcome, everybody.
[55:06.250 --> 55:10.470] [SPEAKER_05]: Everybody over on YouTube, this is Off The Hook Overtime.
[55:10.930 --> 55:12.250] [SPEAKER_05]: I think we all made it.
[55:12.430 --> 55:18.610] [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, people tell us that we're low on YouTube every week.
[55:19.170 --> 55:22.850] [SPEAKER_05]: I think the answer, Kyle, is just to raise this master volume, right?
[55:22.950 --> 55:23.930] [SPEAKER_05]: Wouldn't that just raise everything?
[55:24.190 --> 55:24.750] [SPEAKER_05]: Should I do that?
[55:25.110 --> 55:25.650] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, you can try.
[55:25.650 --> 55:26.770] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, should I wait for the first complaint?
[55:27.230 --> 55:27.590] [SPEAKER_08]: Whatever.
[55:27.790 --> 55:28.550] [SPEAKER_08]: Do whatever you want.
[55:28.730 --> 55:29.970] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I always do.
[55:30.830 --> 55:32.430] [SPEAKER_05]: But, okay, I'm going to raise it a little bit.
[55:32.670 --> 55:33.670] [SPEAKER_05]: You tell me if it's too much.
[55:35.290 --> 55:36.870] [SPEAKER_05]: And we're a little bit louder now.
[55:37.090 --> 55:38.670] [SPEAKER_05]: So hopefully that will satisfy people.
[55:38.930 --> 55:39.970] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I just discovered something.
[55:42.510 --> 55:53.250] [SPEAKER_05]: Basically, my cell phone, which I'm holding right here, we programmed into the local receiving phone number here to get a distinctive ring, which is basically two rings.
[55:53.490 --> 56:02.950] [SPEAKER_05]: What I'm doing now is I'm dialing star six, seven in front of that number and calling the Google Voice number that forwards to that local number and listen to what happens.
[56:05.290 --> 56:06.110] [SPEAKER_05]: Do you hear that?
[56:06.230 --> 56:06.750] [SPEAKER_05]: Two rings.
[56:07.130 --> 56:07.810] [SPEAKER_05]: Two quick rings.
[56:11.660 --> 56:13.140] [SPEAKER_05]: How does it know it's me?
[56:13.380 --> 56:14.780] [SPEAKER_05]: I dialed star six, seven.
[56:15.560 --> 56:16.980] [SPEAKER_05]: I dialed star six, seven.
[56:17.120 --> 56:19.820] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's not even a local Verizon thing.
[56:20.020 --> 56:28.540] [SPEAKER_05]: I dialed star six, seven, dialed the Google Voice number that then forwards to the Verizon local number, which knows my cell phone number.
[56:29.160 --> 56:31.180] [SPEAKER_05]: But again, I dialed star six, seven.
[56:31.440 --> 56:33.440] [SPEAKER_05]: It shouldn't recognize me, but it does.
[56:34.460 --> 56:35.480] [SPEAKER_05]: How do you like that, guys?
[56:36.840 --> 56:37.900] [SPEAKER_03]: Wait a second, though.
[56:38.120 --> 56:45.620] [SPEAKER_03]: Because of the way that your setup is set up, I could see the caller ID on the screen behind you, and it said private caller.
[56:45.840 --> 56:47.800] [SPEAKER_05]: I can't believe you can read the caller ID from there.
[56:47.880 --> 56:48.560] [SPEAKER_05]: But yes, you're right.
[56:48.640 --> 56:49.240] [SPEAKER_05]: It said private.
[56:49.420 --> 56:58.080] [SPEAKER_05]: So it's not being passed along as far as the number or the name, but the ring tells us that it is, in fact, recognizing my number somehow.
[56:59.400 --> 57:00.000] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[57:00.600 --> 57:06.040] [SPEAKER_09]: That's like a display, but the point is the data still ends up...
[57:06.040 --> 57:10.940] [SPEAKER_09]: it still ends up identifying it in the call setup.
[57:11.080 --> 57:20.100] [SPEAKER_09]: It's not removed in the actual technical call exchange and the back and forth to complete that call.
[57:20.180 --> 57:27.040] [SPEAKER_05]: If there's a telephone engineer out there or a phone phreak extraordinaire who can explain what is happening here, we'd love to hear it, because that's something.
[57:27.360 --> 57:33.580] [SPEAKER_05]: That's, you know, it makes you think twice before dialing star 6.7 and assuming that your information is not being passed along.
[57:34.000 --> 57:34.560] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[57:34.620 --> 57:46.960] [SPEAKER_09]: If someone's running the phone system, they may be able to glean that information because maybe they have a deeper level of configuration.
[57:46.960 --> 57:49.620] [SPEAKER_09]: They're able to pull that data out of any...
[57:49.620 --> 57:56.900] [SPEAKER_09]: some kind of log or data that comes back, like information in the setup.
[57:57.580 --> 57:58.300] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, definitely.
[58:00.220 --> 58:01.260] [SPEAKER_05]: I hear fire engines.
[58:01.400 --> 58:02.720] [SPEAKER_05]: That must be Rob and Gila.
[58:03.240 --> 58:04.300] [SPEAKER_03]: It indeed is us.
[58:04.320 --> 58:08.460] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I did nothing, but I did want to confirm really quick that you do sound a lot better on YouTube.
[58:08.460 --> 58:09.020] [SPEAKER_01]: We all do.
[58:09.340 --> 58:11.300] [SPEAKER_01]: The volume sounds good from where I'm sitting.
[58:12.220 --> 58:12.620] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[58:12.700 --> 58:15.900] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, with all the criticism of Google, I guess we have something nice to say for a change.
[58:17.500 --> 58:23.000] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, did you see this Worst Hacks of 2021 on Wired or on Wired.com?
[58:24.360 --> 58:24.800] [SPEAKER_05]: Interesting.
[58:24.880 --> 58:31.060] [SPEAKER_05]: When you say Worst Hacks, do you mean Worst Hacks like they really messed it up or Best Hacks in that they pulled it off?
[58:31.600 --> 58:35.320] [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's the latter, in which case the article title is just...
[58:35.320 --> 58:35.920] [SPEAKER_05]: it's wrong.
[58:36.300 --> 58:38.520] [SPEAKER_05]: But number one on the list is Colonial Pipeline.
[58:38.580 --> 58:38.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Remember that?
[58:39.100 --> 58:39.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Early May.
[58:40.200 --> 58:50.980] [SPEAKER_05]: Ransomware hit Colonial Pipeline, which operates a 5,500-mile pipeline that carries nearly half of the East Coast fuel, gasoline, diesel, natural gas, from Texas all the way to New Jersey.
[58:51.160 --> 59:00.760] [SPEAKER_05]: And as a result of that attack, the company shut down portions of the pipeline both to contain the malware and because the attack knocked out its billing systems and they couldn't charge anybody.
[59:00.760 --> 59:01.900] [SPEAKER_05]: That was the most important thing.
[59:02.160 --> 59:05.640] [SPEAKER_05]: And as lines grew at gas stations throughout the southeastern U.S.
[59:05.660 --> 59:15.600] [SPEAKER_05]: and people started pouring gas into plastic bags and various crazy things like that, the Department of Transportation released an emergency order to allow expanded fuel distribution by truck.
[59:16.040 --> 59:23.560] [SPEAKER_05]: And the FBI named the notorious Russia-linked ransomware gang Darkseid as the perpetrator of the attack.
[59:23.700 --> 59:28.560] [SPEAKER_05]: And if you're going to be a perpetrator of an attack, you should have a name like Darkseid, I think.
[59:28.900 --> 59:32.420] [SPEAKER_05]: Not, you know, skipping bunny or whatever people are coming up with.
[59:33.360 --> 59:35.320] [SPEAKER_09]: I think it goes both ways with that.
[59:35.600 --> 59:40.800] [SPEAKER_09]: But, yeah, the more menacing one maybe strikes fear initially.
[59:41.160 --> 59:45.860] [SPEAKER_09]: But, I don't know, that bunny one, it could surprise you.
[59:47.260 --> 59:48.200] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, Alex.
[59:48.940 --> 01:00:11.600] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, well, also in the wake of that, the TSA had issued its own directive to the liquefied natural gas providers as well as oil companies, gas companies, and pipelines to implement certain basic information security controls, many of which a lot of these companies already had implemented.
[01:00:11.600 --> 01:00:17.660] [SPEAKER_07]: But, you know, this now got TSA involved in what we consider to be cyber security these days.
[01:00:18.840 --> 01:00:33.160] [SPEAKER_07]: And it got me invited to two different conferences to talk to a bunch of oil and gas and liquefied natural gas providers down in Charlotte, and then Charlotte, North Carolina, and then Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina.
[01:00:33.320 --> 01:00:34.320] [SPEAKER_07]: That sounds like a blast.
[01:00:34.400 --> 01:00:34.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[01:00:35.720 --> 01:00:38.920] [SPEAKER_05]: You got to talk to all these fossil fuel people.
[01:00:39.160 --> 01:00:39.900] [SPEAKER_07]: I did.
[01:00:40.060 --> 01:00:50.660] [SPEAKER_07]: I've met literally hundreds and hundreds of them at these two conferences talking about ransomware, how data breaches operate, what they can do to mitigate and avoid these types of blind spots.
[01:00:50.980 --> 01:00:53.440] [SPEAKER_07]: And so, yeah, really interesting stuff.
[01:00:53.700 --> 01:01:12.500] [SPEAKER_07]: And don't forget, I mean, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, once it had an impact on the supply chain for gas at gas stations, that was when we saw these idiotic instances of people going and filling up gas with plastic bags.
[01:01:12.660 --> 01:01:17.760] [SPEAKER_07]: And they thought, people around the country thought that there was just going to be this run on gasoline.
[01:01:17.980 --> 01:01:21.640] [SPEAKER_07]: We're going to end up in some post-apocalyptic Mad Max-like world.
[01:01:22.340 --> 01:01:29.380] [SPEAKER_07]: And a lot of people wound up getting hurt from trying to transport gasoline and things that weren't designed to transport gasoline.
[01:01:29.860 --> 01:01:32.100] [SPEAKER_07]: It was a really crazy time back in May.
[01:01:32.260 --> 01:01:33.600] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it doesn't take much.
[01:01:33.760 --> 01:01:37.100] [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't take much to get people going nuts for one thing or another.
[01:01:37.300 --> 01:01:49.900] [SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, I just realized now, talking about this colonial pipeline, if you're going to have something as archaic as fossil fuels being transported in a pipeline, good to have a name like Colonial, which is also an outdated name.
[01:01:50.920 --> 01:01:51.660] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[01:01:51.820 --> 01:01:53.220] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, here's another one.
[01:01:54.300 --> 01:01:56.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Kaseya, am I pronouncing it correctly?
[01:01:57.000 --> 01:01:58.540] [SPEAKER_05]: Management software company.
[01:01:58.900 --> 01:02:02.640] [SPEAKER_05]: They were targeted in 2021.
[01:02:03.680 --> 01:02:07.820] [SPEAKER_05]: And it basically affected supply chain in various ways.
[01:02:07.920 --> 01:02:19.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Beginning of July, hackers associated with the Russia-based ransomware gang Revil, that's R-E-V-I-L, exploited a flaw in Kaseya's virtual system administrator tool.
[01:02:19.920 --> 01:02:27.280] [SPEAKER_05]: VSA is popular among managed service providers, companies that run IT infrastructure for organizations that don't want to do it themselves.
[01:02:27.680 --> 01:02:29.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, maybe now they do.
[01:02:29.180 --> 01:02:41.980] [SPEAKER_05]: As a result of this interdependent ecosystem, attackers were able to exploit the flaw in VSA to infect as many as 1,500 organizations around the world with ransomware.
[01:02:44.440 --> 01:02:45.860] [SPEAKER_05]: And hilarity ensued.
[01:02:46.000 --> 01:02:46.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Let's just put it that way.
[01:02:49.540 --> 01:03:07.440] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, that was another crazy one too, in that the threat actors, the bad actors here, had piggybacked on a piece of what was very common network management and remote access type of software that Kaseya had developed.
[01:03:07.860 --> 01:03:18.400] [SPEAKER_07]: And much like the SolarWinds attack that preceded it, that type of software was used really to remotely manage large IT infrastructure.
[01:03:18.820 --> 01:03:27.380] [SPEAKER_07]: And also, a lot of the infrastructure that was outsourced to third parties relied on Kaseya to manage this type of infrastructure.
[01:03:27.380 --> 01:03:38.920] [SPEAKER_07]: And so, that allowed these threat actors to deploy their ransomware and affect ransomware events on a very large number of businesses and victim organizations really, really quickly.
[01:03:39.400 --> 01:03:51.600] [SPEAKER_07]: So, you know, this is, you know, thinking back in it, that's definitely something that would be worth a milestone acknowledgement during the actual Off The Hook program as well.
[01:03:51.680 --> 01:04:06.600] [SPEAKER_07]: Because this was a, like the SolarWinds, another proof of concept that if you can exploit a piece of software that is found within a large number of organizations, you've given yourself access to a large number of organizations.
[01:04:06.760 --> 01:04:11.760] [SPEAKER_07]: And I think this dovetails with what we're seeing with the Log4j vulnerability as well.
[01:04:11.760 --> 01:04:14.140] [SPEAKER_05]: which threatens to be even bigger.
[01:04:14.320 --> 01:04:16.380] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's amazing how it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
[01:04:16.540 --> 01:04:19.260] [SPEAKER_05]: And of course, also in 2021, who can forget Twitch?
[01:04:19.700 --> 01:04:34.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the live streaming service Twitch, which, by the way, is owned by Amazon, they confirmed they had been breached in October after an unknown entity released 128 gigabytes of proprietary data stolen from the company.
[01:04:34.520 --> 01:04:37.600] [SPEAKER_05]: Now, that breach included Twitch's complete source code.
[01:04:37.860 --> 01:04:39.760] [SPEAKER_05]: The company, you could start another Twitch.
[01:04:39.760 --> 01:04:49.340] [SPEAKER_05]: the company said at the time that the incident was the result of a server configuration change that allowed improper access by an unauthorized third-party.
[01:04:49.960 --> 01:04:52.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the exact wrong unauthorized third-party.
[01:04:53.440 --> 01:05:00.340] [SPEAKER_05]: Twitch denied that passwords were exposed in the breach but acknowledged that information about individual streamers' revenue was stolen.
[01:05:00.740 --> 01:05:13.600] [SPEAKER_05]: In addition to the source code itself and streamer payout data from as far back as 2019, the trove also contained information about internal Twitch, Amazon web services systems and proprietary SDKs.
[01:05:14.060 --> 01:05:15.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Not a good year for Twitch.
[01:05:15.360 --> 01:05:18.040] [SPEAKER_05]: In fact, at the time, I know we were saying that's it for Twitch.
[01:05:18.120 --> 01:05:19.300] [SPEAKER_05]: How can they possibly survive this?
[01:05:19.420 --> 01:05:20.780] [SPEAKER_05]: But apparently, they're still around.
[01:05:25.740 --> 01:05:34.000] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, they seem to have recovered and it was a bad breach but it also shows you that it's not always the be-all, end-all.
[01:05:34.200 --> 01:05:37.660] [SPEAKER_07]: It's not always the existential threat that organizations think it is.
[01:05:37.660 --> 01:05:43.600] [SPEAKER_07]: If you handle and remediate an information security incident properly, you can recover.
[01:05:45.060 --> 01:05:45.600] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[01:05:45.660 --> 01:05:47.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, I'm kind of rooting for them there.
[01:05:47.620 --> 01:05:51.080] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, somebody gets punched in the stomach that hard.
[01:05:51.280 --> 01:05:53.300] [SPEAKER_05]: You really kind of want to see them get up again.
[01:05:53.940 --> 01:05:54.840] [SPEAKER_05]: Take another one.
[01:05:55.420 --> 01:05:56.260] [SPEAKER_05]: No, no, no.
[01:05:56.420 --> 01:05:58.920] [SPEAKER_05]: Recover and live to see another day.
[01:05:59.940 --> 01:06:02.960] [SPEAKER_05]: 802-321-4225 is our telephone number.
[01:06:03.040 --> 01:06:04.560] [SPEAKER_05]: 802-321-HACK.
[01:06:06.240 --> 01:06:16.140] [SPEAKER_05]: And when someone else calls in, you'll hear that it's one long ring, not two short rings because their number won't be recognized whether it's private or not private.
[01:06:16.280 --> 01:06:34.140] [SPEAKER_05]: If you have something to say to us, something to reflect on for 2021, something to predict in 2022, or if you just want to make fun of the crazy device I'm wearing on me right now, which you can't see, but I think we described it well enough for you to imagine it.
[01:06:34.500 --> 01:06:35.680] [SPEAKER_05]: This is your chance.
[01:06:35.820 --> 01:06:37.200] [SPEAKER_05]: 802-321-4225.
[01:06:38.680 --> 01:06:50.580] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I'm particularly interested in hearing from callers tonight that would like to discuss what they thought was a milestone event or happening or occurrence within 2021.
[01:06:50.580 --> 01:06:57.420] [SPEAKER_07]: I think a diversity of viewpoints on this, especially from our friends overseas, would be really interesting.
[01:06:59.060 --> 01:07:04.500] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, in recent weeks, we've heard people from Eastern Europe from...
[01:07:05.320 --> 01:07:05.980] [SPEAKER_05]: hear that?
[01:07:06.080 --> 01:07:06.680] [SPEAKER_05]: One long ring.
[01:07:07.120 --> 01:07:07.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:07:08.120 --> 01:07:15.740] [SPEAKER_05]: People from Eastern Europe, South Africa, we've had people from Asia, we've had people from Labrador calling us all over the world.
[01:07:15.840 --> 01:07:17.180] [SPEAKER_05]: It's really amazing.
[01:07:17.340 --> 01:07:18.400] [SPEAKER_05]: And we want to hear from you.
[01:07:18.500 --> 01:07:20.040] [SPEAKER_05]: 802-321-4225.
[01:07:20.240 --> 01:07:21.440] [SPEAKER_05]: And we have a caller on the line.
[01:07:21.440 --> 01:07:22.800] [SPEAKER_05]: Good evening.
[01:07:22.800 --> 01:07:24.760] [SPEAKER_05]: You are on Off The Hook Overtime.
[01:07:26.140 --> 01:07:26.740] [SPEAKER_02]: Hello.
[01:07:27.260 --> 01:07:28.000] [SPEAKER_05]: How you doing?
[01:07:28.100 --> 01:07:28.640] [SPEAKER_02]: It's me.
[01:07:28.940 --> 01:07:31.060] [SPEAKER_02]: I have been forced to capitulate.
[01:07:31.540 --> 01:07:32.020] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, no.
[01:07:32.180 --> 01:07:34.320] [SPEAKER_05]: You've lost your landline, your copper line?
[01:07:35.960 --> 01:07:36.560] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[01:07:37.480 --> 01:07:42.400] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm scheduled to be converted to Fios on January 3rd.
[01:07:42.480 --> 01:07:44.540] [SPEAKER_02]: You can still hear the hum at the moment.
[01:07:44.960 --> 01:07:46.220] [SPEAKER_05]: I'll miss the hum.
[01:07:46.420 --> 01:07:47.300] [SPEAKER_05]: I really will.
[01:07:48.220 --> 01:07:51.520] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's not what I'll miss.
[01:07:52.360 --> 01:07:53.320] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you're right.
[01:07:54.780 --> 01:07:56.740] [SPEAKER_05]: What was the final blow?
[01:08:00.800 --> 01:08:02.380] [SPEAKER_02]: They would not give in.
[01:08:03.280 --> 01:08:03.900] [SPEAKER_05]: Verizon.
[01:08:04.640 --> 01:08:05.260] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[01:08:06.660 --> 01:08:07.900] [SPEAKER_05]: For callers...
[01:08:07.900 --> 01:08:09.060] [SPEAKER_02]: That's the long in the shirt of it.
[01:08:09.160 --> 01:08:11.180] [SPEAKER_02]: For listeners who are familiar with this...
[01:08:11.180 --> 01:08:13.740] [SPEAKER_02]: They're taking out support for copper.
[01:08:13.740 --> 01:08:16.280] [SPEAKER_02]: They're going to rip it up and destroy it.
[01:08:17.300 --> 01:08:19.220] [SPEAKER_02]: I said, you're not even recycling it?
[01:08:21.280 --> 01:08:25.540] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe the person I spoke to doesn't really know all those details.
[01:08:25.800 --> 01:08:27.800] [SPEAKER_02]: But he said they're just destroying it.
[01:08:27.860 --> 01:08:30.140] [SPEAKER_02]: And I said, well, what are you going to do with it?
[01:08:30.220 --> 01:08:32.600] [SPEAKER_02]: Matter can be neither created nor destroyed.
[01:08:33.380 --> 01:08:34.340] [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't know.
[01:08:35.060 --> 01:08:39.800] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, for those listeners who may not be familiar with this story, we've been following this for a while.
[01:08:39.940 --> 01:08:47.980] [SPEAKER_05]: It parallels many stories that are going on throughout the world where basically this listener wanted to preserve her landline, her copper line.
[01:08:48.380 --> 01:08:51.660] [SPEAKER_05]: And Verizon is going around saying, no, you can't have it anymore.
[01:08:51.660 --> 01:08:56.960] [SPEAKER_05]: You have to have Fios, and we're just not going to support copper anymore.
[01:08:57.160 --> 01:08:57.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Big mistake.
[01:08:58.160 --> 01:09:01.060] [SPEAKER_05]: Big mistake because copper lines are more dependable.
[01:09:01.060 --> 01:09:24.360] [SPEAKER_02]: The problem is that water gets into the copper and eats it away, and they can't get into repair and a lot of historical housing, you're not allowed to, and other places they don't have permission, and the copper is always getting eaten away by water, and they just can't do it anymore.
[01:09:24.920 --> 01:09:26.940] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, they were able to do it for a hundred years.
[01:09:26.940 --> 01:09:32.960] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not sure why it's so difficult now, and there's less lines to maintain, less work overall.
[01:09:33.720 --> 01:09:41.580] [SPEAKER_05]: People should have the right to use the technology they want to use, but I know it's, you know, it's hard to convince others of this.
[01:09:42.620 --> 01:09:48.780] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, they have the federal permission, and they're going with it.
[01:09:50.160 --> 01:09:50.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[01:09:52.060 --> 01:09:52.900] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm sorry.
[01:09:52.900 --> 01:09:55.040] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know what else to say.
[01:09:55.440 --> 01:09:59.640] [SPEAKER_05]: I guess the elected official you contacted, is of no use at this point.
[01:10:01.720 --> 01:10:04.820] [SPEAKER_02]: Let him know that nothing has worked.
[01:10:05.240 --> 01:10:05.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, let him know, yeah.
[01:10:06.040 --> 01:10:13.100] [SPEAKER_05]: If he doesn't know that they've done this, maybe he can still do something, but at least let everybody know that this is what's happening.
[01:10:14.600 --> 01:10:15.120] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[01:10:17.920 --> 01:10:23.640] [SPEAKER_05]: Must be difficult in this holiday season to be losing something as precious as a landline.
[01:10:24.960 --> 01:10:27.140] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, this isn't the only thing.
[01:10:27.400 --> 01:10:38.120] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this is my phone line, which is certainly important to me, isolated as I am, alone in my apartment, but I'm going through other things.
[01:10:38.120 --> 01:10:56.140] [SPEAKER_02]: because my mother, my extremely elderly mother, was in the hospital, rehab, and hospital again, and now we're trying to arrange for her to come home for hospice care at home.
[01:10:57.500 --> 01:11:00.060] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's very grim.
[01:11:00.460 --> 01:11:01.060] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[01:11:01.160 --> 01:11:10.240] [SPEAKER_02]: And I can't help wondering, you know, she's going to need 24-hour care, which means, you know, two 12-hour aides.
[01:11:11.180 --> 01:11:21.600] [SPEAKER_02]: And with COVID, how can, you know, any aid service guarantee that their aides will be there?
[01:11:21.600 --> 01:11:27.140] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, nursing homes are shutting down because they don't have the staffing.
[01:11:27.140 --> 01:11:32.700] [SPEAKER_02]: and she needs two people just for her lonesome.
[01:11:34.460 --> 01:11:47.000] [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I'm, and I'm discouraged that she's not trying hard enough to recover, that she's instead decided she's tired and had enough.
[01:11:47.920 --> 01:11:51.260] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, that tends to happen the older you get.
[01:11:52.480 --> 01:11:55.740] [SPEAKER_05]: But, unfortunately, that's one of the realities.
[01:11:55.740 --> 01:12:08.520] [SPEAKER_05]: But there are, there are advocates in various places, whether it's in hospitals or healthcare facilities or health insurance companies even, that will try and arrange things.
[01:12:08.580 --> 01:12:16.300] [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't always happen, doesn't always work out, but, you know, at least exploring all those options might make it easier on you.
[01:12:17.380 --> 01:12:24.000] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the thing is, my brother has power of attorney, so I have no say about anything.
[01:12:26.320 --> 01:12:32.320] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's another, another thing that's discouraging.
[01:12:32.580 --> 01:12:34.080] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah, I'm not sure.
[01:12:34.420 --> 01:12:46.520] [SPEAKER_02]: And the, her insurance, assuming that a doctor authorizes hospice care, you know, they have to certify she's not expected to live more than six months.
[01:12:46.520 --> 01:13:13.080] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know whether that particular hoop has been jumped through, but the hospice care doesn't cover two 12-hour aides, and so I'm wondering will this eat up all that she would otherwise pass on?
[01:13:14.000 --> 01:13:26.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, not to sound too callous, but that that is the intent of the industry is to eat that up and to use every bit that's left of someone's savings, someone's life.
[01:13:26.400 --> 01:13:28.220] [SPEAKER_05]: it's how they work.
[01:13:28.660 --> 01:13:29.760] [SPEAKER_05]: They're bread and butter.
[01:13:30.440 --> 01:13:31.340] [SPEAKER_09]: For profit.
[01:13:31.580 --> 01:13:32.320] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, they're for profit.
[01:13:34.500 --> 01:13:39.620] [SPEAKER_05]: Sorry to be so bitter about that, but I've seen it happen, and it's not pretty.
[01:13:39.720 --> 01:13:43.120] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I don't blame you for saying what's true.
[01:13:43.380 --> 01:13:43.560] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[01:13:44.300 --> 01:14:02.880] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, we're always and often advocating for perhaps changing attitudes and less emphasis on that in particular and more empathy in all realms, whether it is ethics and technology or real life, it applies.
[01:14:03.100 --> 01:14:07.920] [SPEAKER_05]: The thing that it comes down to in the end, these are stressful times for somebody to go through.
[01:14:08.180 --> 01:14:19.720] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, dealing with an elderly relative nearing the end of their lives, that is not the time to be stressing them out with either bills or obligations or difficulties coordinating things.
[01:14:19.800 --> 01:14:25.800] [SPEAKER_05]: There should be a system there that exists to get them through that and to make things easier, not harder.
[01:14:25.820 --> 01:14:30.560] [SPEAKER_05]: And I know saying that isn't going to do a damn bit of good, but that's how I feel about that.
[01:14:30.660 --> 01:14:36.180] [SPEAKER_05]: And if anyone knows of a system where it works well, please let us know and we'll pass that on.
[01:14:37.600 --> 01:14:45.540] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, by the way, when you turned up the pot, your sound did go up and it was much nicer.
[01:14:45.820 --> 01:14:46.540] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, that's good to know.
[01:14:46.720 --> 01:14:47.700] [SPEAKER_05]: You're talking about it on YouTube?
[01:14:50.060 --> 01:14:50.420] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[01:14:50.740 --> 01:14:50.980] [SPEAKER_05]: Great.
[01:14:51.140 --> 01:14:52.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, thanks for the feedback.
[01:14:53.740 --> 01:14:54.320] [SPEAKER_05]: You're welcome.
[01:14:54.480 --> 01:15:01.320] [SPEAKER_05]: Sorry for the negativity this week, but fingers crossed that next year will be a better year for all of us.
[01:15:02.860 --> 01:15:11.000] [SPEAKER_02]: I wish that people would get over their fears and get vaccinated, you know.
[01:15:12.300 --> 01:15:21.420] [SPEAKER_02]: Mandates, you know, if you have enough mandates then you don't have to reason with people who are irrational.
[01:15:21.700 --> 01:15:23.220] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, we wouldn't need the mandates.
[01:15:23.380 --> 01:15:28.380] [SPEAKER_05]: We would not need mandates if people were acting with a little bit of rationality.
[01:15:28.480 --> 01:15:29.840] [SPEAKER_05]: And I don't think it's fear.
[01:15:29.940 --> 01:15:31.060] [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's just stubbornness.
[01:15:31.700 --> 01:15:34.380] [SPEAKER_05]: That is keeping people from doing the right thing.
[01:15:34.560 --> 01:15:36.100] [SPEAKER_05]: They want to be proven right.
[01:15:36.300 --> 01:15:39.700] [SPEAKER_09]: I think it's people having a hard time accepting reality.
[01:15:40.120 --> 01:15:50.380] [SPEAKER_09]: Even confronting that this is actually the occurring and we're all collectively experiencing this in the vast myriad ways along with the many other things in our lives.
[01:15:50.540 --> 01:15:53.420] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's gotten to the stage where even Trump can't convince them.
[01:15:53.540 --> 01:15:57.240] [SPEAKER_05]: He's saying he got the booster the vaccine is good they're booing him now.
[01:15:57.740 --> 01:16:02.700] [SPEAKER_05]: It's you know he helped create this and now he can't contain it and God help all of
[01:16:28.280 --> 01:16:33.280] [SPEAKER_09]: People dispute it occurring at all, which is a terrible, terrible place to be.
[01:16:33.780 --> 01:16:38.480] [SPEAKER_09]: So I have the same despair in various moments.
[01:16:38.680 --> 01:16:43.980] [SPEAKER_09]: I definitely have felt better in other parts of my life.
[01:16:44.080 --> 01:16:46.960] [SPEAKER_05]: It's like living with a young sibling where you're constantly arguing.
[01:16:47.260 --> 01:16:50.980] [SPEAKER_05]: And even when you're right, they will never admit that you're right.
[01:16:51.080 --> 01:16:53.360] [SPEAKER_05]: And they'll keep making things up to make you wrong.
[01:16:53.700 --> 01:16:55.540] [SPEAKER_05]: And you think that you'll win.
[01:16:55.540 --> 01:16:59.280] [SPEAKER_05]: And then even when you do win, you still lose because the fighting never stops.
[01:16:59.420 --> 01:17:00.420] [SPEAKER_05]: That's where we are now.
[01:17:00.560 --> 01:17:01.700] [SPEAKER_05]: That's where this country is.
[01:17:01.820 --> 01:17:03.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe even the world at this point.
[01:17:03.660 --> 01:17:09.160] [SPEAKER_09]: And the world's looking to try to maybe get some leadership or wants to know what we think.
[01:17:09.160 --> 01:17:13.960] [SPEAKER_09]: You know, us humble, even American hackers, you know.
[01:17:14.140 --> 01:17:15.800] [SPEAKER_09]: And, you know, we need a lot of help.
[01:17:15.900 --> 01:17:17.080] [SPEAKER_09]: We've needed a lot of help.
[01:17:17.240 --> 01:17:19.700] [SPEAKER_09]: And things are different here.
[01:17:19.840 --> 01:17:23.220] [SPEAKER_09]: We have different dynamics.
[01:17:24.320 --> 01:17:25.900] [SPEAKER_09]: And it's a lot.
[01:17:25.900 --> 01:17:28.200] [SPEAKER_09]: It's a lot to take on.
[01:17:28.580 --> 01:17:40.080] [SPEAKER_09]: And we've just been trying to galvanize people around communicating and sharing and trying to make a difference as best you can, however big or small.
[01:17:40.540 --> 01:17:43.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Anyway, with that in mind, caller, have a happy new year.
[01:17:44.040 --> 01:17:45.520] [SPEAKER_05]: And we hope to hear from you next year.
[01:17:46.900 --> 01:17:48.120] [SPEAKER_02]: See you next year.
[01:17:48.300 --> 01:17:48.560] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[01:17:48.660 --> 01:17:48.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Take care.
[01:17:50.800 --> 01:17:53.680] [SPEAKER_05]: Our phone number, 802-321-4225.
[01:17:54.320 --> 01:17:56.420] [SPEAKER_05]: Here's a letter that we got from a listener.
[01:17:57.440 --> 01:17:58.140] [SPEAKER_05]: Look at that.
[01:17:58.220 --> 01:17:59.100] [SPEAKER_05]: We got another call right away.
[01:18:00.700 --> 01:18:01.420] [SPEAKER_05]: Let's see.
[01:18:01.660 --> 01:18:06.320] [SPEAKER_05]: I was just listening to your program.
[01:18:08.480 --> 01:18:12.020] [SPEAKER_05]: I came across a truly independent phone company.
[01:18:12.600 --> 01:18:15.340] [SPEAKER_05]: This one serves an Indian reservation.
[01:18:15.960 --> 01:18:20.500] [SPEAKER_05]: It's called the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority.
[01:18:21.060 --> 01:18:21.580] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:18:21.580 --> 01:18:27.140] [SPEAKER_05]: And best part, their main phone number ends in 2600.
[01:18:27.980 --> 01:18:28.780] [SPEAKER_05]: Imagine that.
[01:18:29.140 --> 01:18:30.720] [SPEAKER_05]: The last four numbers.
[01:18:31.140 --> 01:18:31.620] [SPEAKER_05]: 2600.
[01:18:31.780 --> 01:18:36.920] [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, Brian, for sending that in and for basically finding what we were talking about last week.
[01:18:37.180 --> 01:18:38.060] [SPEAKER_05]: An independent phone company.
[01:18:38.200 --> 01:18:38.880] [SPEAKER_05]: They're still out there.
[01:18:38.880 --> 01:18:53.400] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think the future will be independent phone companies everywhere that are basically run by the community or by an organization or by somebody that actually cares.
[01:18:55.380 --> 01:18:56.860] [SPEAKER_05]: I think we lost that call.
[01:18:57.060 --> 01:18:59.400] [SPEAKER_05]: So the phone lines are open, 802-321-4225.
[01:19:00.560 --> 01:19:01.220] [SPEAKER_05]: Go ahead, Rob.
[01:19:02.240 --> 01:19:05.540] [SPEAKER_01]: While we're waiting for a call, I just want to quickly impart some sad news.
[01:19:06.000 --> 01:19:19.440] [SPEAKER_01]: The New York City hacker community lost one of our own last week when Joel DeOrt, who was known under his handle, Dernan, was killed in a traffic accident while on a trip to Hawaii.
[01:19:20.100 --> 01:19:26.940] [SPEAKER_01]: He was a great friend to a great many of us and a regular attendee of the New York City 2600 meetings.
[01:19:26.940 --> 01:19:28.880] [SPEAKER_01]: He was a regular HOPE attendee.
[01:19:29.000 --> 01:19:30.360] [SPEAKER_01]: He spoke at HOPE a couple of times.
[01:19:30.920 --> 01:19:34.040] [SPEAKER_01]: And he is a deeply felt loss.
[01:19:34.180 --> 01:19:42.080] [SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to learn more about him, go to nyc2600.net where there's a little bit about him on the front page there.
[01:19:42.260 --> 01:19:45.380] [SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to say rest in peace.
[01:19:45.940 --> 01:19:47.780] [SPEAKER_01]: A great many of us are going to miss you terribly.
[01:19:48.280 --> 01:19:50.520] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, terribly sad to hear that.
[01:19:50.840 --> 01:19:58.620] [SPEAKER_05]: And just seeing the community respond is moving.
[01:19:59.340 --> 01:20:06.480] [SPEAKER_05]: But, boy, it's something that I don't think any of us really know how to handle right now.
[01:20:07.780 --> 01:20:08.540] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex, go ahead.
[01:20:08.780 --> 01:20:09.600] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, go ahead, Rob.
[01:20:09.600 --> 01:20:12.600] [SPEAKER_01]: There was actually a great response to...
[01:20:13.300 --> 01:20:23.800] [SPEAKER_01]: The notice was posted and his family had to put up a fundraiser to transport his remains from Hawaii back home to New York and cover his final expenses.
[01:20:24.280 --> 01:20:27.420] [SPEAKER_01]: And that fundraiser has been very successful.
[01:20:27.420 --> 01:20:32.540] [SPEAKER_01]: So, like, the community has pitched in and been a great help.
[01:20:32.640 --> 01:20:35.220] [SPEAKER_01]: You can see that as well on nyc2600.net.
[01:20:35.740 --> 01:20:37.100] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's...
[01:20:37.520 --> 01:20:39.240] [SPEAKER_01]: He was very young.
[01:20:39.460 --> 01:20:40.900] [SPEAKER_01]: He was lost far too soon.
[01:20:41.100 --> 01:20:43.260] [SPEAKER_01]: And, yeah, it's heartbreaking.
[01:20:43.640 --> 01:20:44.100] [SPEAKER_01]: It's disastrous.
[01:20:45.720 --> 01:20:46.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it really is.
[01:20:46.840 --> 01:20:47.440] [SPEAKER_05]: Go ahead, Alex.
[01:20:49.200 --> 01:20:51.140] [SPEAKER_07]: Anytime you lose a friend, it's...
[01:20:51.140 --> 01:20:58.700] [SPEAKER_07]: You know, it leaves a hole in your heart, Rob, I think, that never really heals.
[01:21:00.880 --> 01:21:02.580] [SPEAKER_07]: And I didn't know him.
[01:21:02.760 --> 01:21:07.740] [SPEAKER_07]: I think I'm sure I came across him, I'm sure, at Hope or maybe a 2600 meeting or something like that.
[01:21:07.740 --> 01:21:19.980] [SPEAKER_07]: But the way you had described him, the tribute that you put together, I would encourage all of our listeners to read because it really was a fitting tribute from somebody who was obviously a dear friend.
[01:21:20.940 --> 01:21:22.760] [SPEAKER_07]: And all of it rang true.
[01:21:23.140 --> 01:21:24.740] [SPEAKER_07]: It really moved me.
[01:21:24.760 --> 01:21:27.280] [SPEAKER_07]: So I would encourage everybody to go and read that tribute.
[01:21:28.420 --> 01:21:40.340] [SPEAKER_07]: And just from my experience in having lost friends, I can say that, you know, that hurt never really goes away, but you come to peace with it in some strange way.
[01:21:41.460 --> 01:21:43.100] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, time heals all wounds.
[01:21:43.240 --> 01:21:44.640] [SPEAKER_07]: That's the platitude that we have.
[01:21:44.720 --> 01:21:46.320] [SPEAKER_07]: I don't think that that's accurate.
[01:21:46.420 --> 01:21:48.260] [SPEAKER_07]: I think that the wounds are always going to be there.
[01:21:48.540 --> 01:21:51.160] [SPEAKER_07]: It's just somehow we come to peace with them.
[01:21:51.240 --> 01:21:55.640] [SPEAKER_07]: We come to respect and almost cherish those types of wounds and scars that we carry with us.
[01:21:55.640 --> 01:21:57.540] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, they're a sign of caring.
[01:21:57.900 --> 01:22:10.300] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I learn that every time I lose somebody close to me, whether it's human, whether it's, you know, a pet, that it's always a blessing in a way that you feel something.
[01:22:10.680 --> 01:22:12.000] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I get that.
[01:22:12.120 --> 01:22:20.840] [SPEAKER_05]: But at the same time, we need to do everything possible to keep that from happening prematurely or in ways that are preventable.
[01:22:20.840 --> 01:22:35.340] [SPEAKER_05]: Whether it's an accident like this particular case, whether it's a pandemic, which is avoidable if people do the right thing, whether it's people who are at wit's end and have nobody to talk to.
[01:22:36.040 --> 01:22:38.000] [SPEAKER_05]: We can we can we can do more.
[01:22:38.160 --> 01:22:39.020] [SPEAKER_05]: We can be out there.
[01:22:39.140 --> 01:22:42.200] [SPEAKER_05]: We can we can exist to help those around us.
[01:22:42.280 --> 01:22:49.560] [SPEAKER_05]: And we can basically check in on those around us and people we haven't talked to in a while because everyone's fragile.
[01:22:49.900 --> 01:22:50.740] [SPEAKER_05]: Everyone's human.
[01:22:52.440 --> 01:22:54.600] [SPEAKER_05]: Everyone is looking for something more.
[01:22:56.020 --> 01:22:58.100] [SPEAKER_05]: And none of us are an exception to that.
[01:22:58.580 --> 01:23:01.500] [SPEAKER_05]: OK, we have a phone call and good evening.
[01:23:01.500 --> 01:23:03.260] [SPEAKER_05]: You are on Off The Hook Overtime.
[01:23:03.840 --> 01:23:04.080] [SPEAKER_05]: Go ahead.
[01:23:04.400 --> 01:23:05.600] [SPEAKER_11]: Good evening, over time.
[01:23:05.800 --> 01:23:07.540] [SPEAKER_05]: It's Bobson from Bulgaria.
[01:23:07.880 --> 01:23:08.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Do I have that right?
[01:23:09.460 --> 01:23:10.200] [SPEAKER_11]: Yes, sir.
[01:23:10.720 --> 01:23:10.960] [SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[01:23:11.840 --> 01:23:13.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Wanted to make sure you didn't go to a different country.
[01:23:13.820 --> 01:23:17.480] [SPEAKER_05]: So how are you with this this fine Thursday morning for you?
[01:23:18.840 --> 01:23:20.020] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, nearly.
[01:23:23.680 --> 01:23:31.740] [SPEAKER_11]: It's the morning of the last day of the German event that's being here.
[01:23:31.920 --> 01:23:36.580] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, the chaos communication congress is happening right now.
[01:23:36.680 --> 01:23:37.680] [SPEAKER_05]: It's not happening in real life.
[01:23:37.820 --> 01:23:38.780] [SPEAKER_05]: It's happening online.
[01:23:39.100 --> 01:23:41.460] [SPEAKER_08]: Yes, it's the remote chaos experience.
[01:23:41.980 --> 01:23:43.100] [SPEAKER_05]: The remote chaos experience.
[01:23:43.100 --> 01:23:45.280] [SPEAKER_05]: And that's why it's called what now?
[01:23:46.000 --> 01:23:46.620] [SPEAKER_08]: RC3.
[01:23:46.840 --> 01:23:47.440] [SPEAKER_05]: RC3.
[01:23:47.760 --> 01:23:47.940] [SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[01:23:47.940 --> 01:23:49.280] [SPEAKER_05]: And you can...
[01:23:49.280 --> 01:23:51.160] [SPEAKER_05]: What's the website to watch talks?
[01:23:51.560 --> 01:23:54.440] [SPEAKER_09]: Streaming.media.ccc.de.
[01:23:54.600 --> 01:23:55.440] [SPEAKER_05]: A lot of dots there.
[01:23:55.560 --> 01:23:57.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Streaming.media.ccc.de.
[01:23:58.260 --> 01:24:01.260] [SPEAKER_05]: And I imagine somewhere in there is a schedule that you can see.
[01:24:02.660 --> 01:24:05.140] [SPEAKER_05]: And you can just listen to all kinds of different talks.
[01:24:06.400 --> 01:24:08.460] [SPEAKER_05]: And watch ones that have been given already.
[01:24:10.360 --> 01:24:14.740] [SPEAKER_11]: I have to catch up with the first three days of it.
[01:24:14.740 --> 01:24:16.740] [SPEAKER_11]: Because I couldn't...
[01:24:20.640 --> 01:24:32.560] [SPEAKER_11]: Sitting in front of a TV screen and watching them remotely is not quite what I expect from these days towards the end of December.
[01:24:33.520 --> 01:24:34.080] Because...
[01:24:34.080 --> 01:24:34.700] [SPEAKER_11]: Oh, well.
[01:24:35.240 --> 01:24:37.160] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, it's all they have right now.
[01:24:37.360 --> 01:24:38.180] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't know.
[01:24:38.180 --> 01:24:45.300] [SPEAKER_09]: I find it's quite soothing to drink coffee and roll joints and just listen to interesting conversations.
[01:24:45.300 --> 01:24:50.780] [SPEAKER_09]: I listened to one about why we're addicted to lithium and batteries.
[01:24:51.260 --> 01:24:58.800] [SPEAKER_09]: And today there was one about FPV drones, which is a first-person view, which I think is fascinating.
[01:24:58.800 --> 01:25:03.900] [SPEAKER_09]: I think that's going to be something I continue to follow.
[01:25:04.600 --> 01:25:08.580] [SPEAKER_09]: And there was just other really intriguing ones.
[01:25:08.720 --> 01:25:10.080] [SPEAKER_09]: There's one on union busting.
[01:25:10.660 --> 01:25:12.600] [SPEAKER_09]: I'm trying to think of the other couple days.
[01:25:12.880 --> 01:25:14.060] [SPEAKER_09]: Just trying to get connected.
[01:25:14.140 --> 01:25:15.020] [SPEAKER_09]: It's a little bit difficult.
[01:25:15.020 --> 01:25:15.960] [SPEAKER_09]: I understand that.
[01:25:16.080 --> 01:25:17.380] [SPEAKER_09]: Definitely watching TV.
[01:25:17.640 --> 01:25:20.720] [SPEAKER_09]: But if you have other things going on, it's just cool that...
[01:25:20.720 --> 01:25:34.100] [SPEAKER_11]: And you're about six hours in the past from Hamburg or Germany time zone, so it's a bit different.
[01:25:34.540 --> 01:25:35.900] [SPEAKER_09]: It's easier to coordinate.
[01:25:36.240 --> 01:25:36.500] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[01:25:36.880 --> 01:25:42.760] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, like I can get midday, like basically right in the middle of the day in the East Coast.
[01:25:42.920 --> 01:25:45.300] [SPEAKER_05]: It somehow sinks, so it makes it easier for us.
[01:25:45.540 --> 01:25:45.940] [SPEAKER_05]: Yep.
[01:25:47.160 --> 01:25:50.240] [SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, like right now, I think there are things still going on.
[01:25:50.240 --> 01:25:53.440] [SPEAKER_05]: And there's a lounge where people are playing music.
[01:25:53.480 --> 01:25:54.180] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's weird.
[01:25:54.220 --> 01:25:56.260] [SPEAKER_05]: You think it's a place, but it's really not a place.
[01:25:56.360 --> 01:25:57.380] [SPEAKER_05]: It's a stream.
[01:25:57.540 --> 01:25:59.220] [SPEAKER_05]: And there's multiple streams going.
[01:25:59.360 --> 01:26:00.820] [SPEAKER_05]: And that's what we did in 2020.
[01:26:00.820 --> 01:26:02.880] [SPEAKER_05]: That's what a lot of conferences have done.
[01:26:03.040 --> 01:26:13.380] [SPEAKER_09]: Going talk to talk, you felt like you're actually changing channels, which is kind of what they're saying about the experience, their perspective as a virtual thing.
[01:26:13.460 --> 01:26:16.040] [SPEAKER_09]: And we felt the same way when we were running Hope virtually.
[01:26:16.240 --> 01:26:17.700] [SPEAKER_05]: But we know it's not the same thing.
[01:26:17.840 --> 01:26:19.540] [SPEAKER_05]: We know being in person is much better.
[01:26:19.540 --> 01:26:22.300] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, we do little things to make it authentic.
[01:26:22.320 --> 01:26:24.240] [SPEAKER_05]: We've got bratwurst cooking in the backyard.
[01:26:24.240 --> 01:26:27.620] [SPEAKER_05]: And occasionally, we just knock over a Club-Mate bottle to make that noise.
[01:26:28.160 --> 01:26:28.940] [SPEAKER_05]: Do we have one?
[01:26:29.140 --> 01:26:29.880] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, there you go.
[01:26:30.420 --> 01:26:31.760] [SPEAKER_05]: I didn't know we had one right here.
[01:26:31.940 --> 01:26:33.260] [SPEAKER_05]: We save old bottles.
[01:26:33.820 --> 01:26:34.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:26:34.880 --> 01:26:36.080] [SPEAKER_05]: Whenever you go to a talk...
[01:26:36.080 --> 01:26:37.740] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, they're refundable, aren't they?
[01:26:38.040 --> 01:26:38.320] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:26:38.580 --> 01:26:38.780] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:26:39.480 --> 01:26:40.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, Kyle.
[01:26:40.500 --> 01:26:41.660] [SPEAKER_05]: You're knocking other things over now.
[01:26:41.900 --> 01:26:43.420] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, sorry that I hit something.
[01:26:43.640 --> 01:26:43.840] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[01:26:44.360 --> 01:26:46.020] [SPEAKER_11]: I have a question for you.
[01:26:46.020 --> 01:26:46.460] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, please.
[01:26:47.120 --> 01:26:58.740] [SPEAKER_11]: You changed the introduction picture for the overtime in recent weeks with the child spitting out stuff or something like that.
[01:26:58.740 --> 01:26:59.380] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm not sure.
[01:26:59.560 --> 01:27:02.800] [SPEAKER_05]: It's the will-be-removed picture now, I see.
[01:27:03.140 --> 01:27:04.400] [SPEAKER_05]: How did it get changed back?
[01:27:04.420 --> 01:27:05.260] [SPEAKER_05]: I didn't change it back.
[01:27:05.260 --> 01:27:25.620] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, the will-be-removed picture is during the overtime time, but before it, it starts with the child spitting out a bunch of droplets of some sort.
[01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:26.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:27:26.580 --> 01:27:28.640] [SPEAKER_05]: The old Norman Rockwell classic.
[01:27:28.980 --> 01:27:30.280] [SPEAKER_05]: It's a beautiful painting.
[01:27:31.160 --> 01:27:32.160] [SPEAKER_11]: Is it?
[01:27:32.400 --> 01:27:33.260] [SPEAKER_05]: I think so.
[01:27:33.260 --> 01:27:35.060] [SPEAKER_05]: Everyone here in America thinks so.
[01:27:36.260 --> 01:27:38.200] [SPEAKER_05]: But I didn't know there were two different ones.
[01:27:38.340 --> 01:27:40.820] [SPEAKER_05]: I didn't know it reverted back to the will-be-removed thing.
[01:27:41.000 --> 01:27:44.080] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't watch the stream as we're doing the show.
[01:27:44.080 --> 01:27:51.280] [SPEAKER_11]: I think the will-be-removed thing says here the word blocked out, which is bags or dogs or stuff like that.
[01:27:51.300 --> 01:27:52.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Something will be removed.
[01:27:52.280 --> 01:27:56.220] [SPEAKER_05]: We don't know what will be removed because they removed that from the sign.
[01:27:57.700 --> 01:28:00.540] [SPEAKER_05]: And if you're watching us on YouTube now, you'll know what we're talking about.
[01:28:00.800 --> 01:28:04.400] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I haven't looked at what it may have changed to you.
[01:28:04.400 --> 01:28:08.240] [SPEAKER_11]: My guesses are dogs or bags, one of the two.
[01:28:08.540 --> 01:28:10.040] [SPEAKER_05]: You can't just remove a dog.
[01:28:10.200 --> 01:28:11.640] [SPEAKER_05]: The dog has to agree to be removed.
[01:28:12.280 --> 01:28:14.260] [SPEAKER_05]: With bags, though, you can remove bags.
[01:28:14.560 --> 01:28:16.560] [SPEAKER_05]: You can, you know, yeah.
[01:28:16.920 --> 01:28:18.880] [SPEAKER_11]: And if there are dogs in the bag...
[01:28:18.880 --> 01:28:22.160] [SPEAKER_05]: But I don't know, why would you make a permanent sign that says bags will be removed?
[01:28:22.400 --> 01:28:25.120] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, is there a problem people make bags right there?
[01:28:25.120 --> 01:28:33.340] [SPEAKER_11]: Maybe bags were left there with bad intent, such as...
[01:28:34.280 --> 01:28:36.320] [SPEAKER_08]: On January 4th.
[01:28:36.360 --> 01:28:38.340] [SPEAKER_11]: Explosives or some such...
[01:28:40.420 --> 01:28:41.060] [SPEAKER_11]: Maybe.
[01:28:42.640 --> 01:28:43.700] [SPEAKER_11]: I don't know.
[01:28:44.540 --> 01:28:47.320] [SPEAKER_05]: Yet another mystery, Bobson, that you bring us.
[01:28:47.640 --> 01:28:48.740] [SPEAKER_05]: And we have to...
[01:28:48.740 --> 01:28:51.300] [SPEAKER_11]: Hey, you brought it on yourself.
[01:28:51.440 --> 01:28:54.580] [SPEAKER_05]: We just posted a damn picture that one of us took years ago.
[01:28:54.580 --> 01:28:55.920] [SPEAKER_05]: And we don't even know where it's from.
[01:28:56.720 --> 01:28:59.180] [SPEAKER_05]: But that's just more mysteries for us to add.
[01:28:59.480 --> 01:29:01.140] [SPEAKER_09]: Do you have any predictions, Bobson?
[01:29:02.220 --> 01:29:02.900] [SPEAKER_09]: For the coming year?
[01:29:02.900 --> 01:29:04.600] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, I have...
[01:29:04.600 --> 01:29:09.280] [SPEAKER_11]: For the coming year, it's...
[01:29:09.280 --> 01:29:11.240] [SPEAKER_11]: Going to be here next week.
[01:29:11.580 --> 01:29:12.740] [SPEAKER_05]: That's not a prediction.
[01:29:12.740 --> 01:29:25.000] [SPEAKER_11]: I hope people who got vaccinated in the first half of the current year have been boosted by now.
[01:29:25.880 --> 01:29:27.100] [SPEAKER_05]: That's also not a prediction.
[01:29:27.100 --> 01:29:27.780] [SPEAKER_05]: That's a hope.
[01:29:28.160 --> 01:29:28.700] [SPEAKER_09]: Boostered.
[01:29:28.820 --> 01:29:29.280] [SPEAKER_09]: I like that.
[01:29:29.760 --> 01:29:30.140] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[01:29:30.320 --> 01:29:30.500] [SPEAKER_09]: Okay.
[01:29:31.040 --> 01:29:31.840] [SPEAKER_09]: That's...
[01:29:31.840 --> 01:29:32.340] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[01:29:32.520 --> 01:29:39.400] [SPEAKER_11]: I had my third needle for the year a couple weeks back.
[01:29:39.400 --> 01:29:52.760] [SPEAKER_11]: And I think it's advisable for people who have had, like, two doses for the vaccine to get the third one.
[01:29:53.040 --> 01:29:54.140] [SPEAKER_05]: Again, not a prediction.
[01:29:54.320 --> 01:29:55.520] [SPEAKER_05]: That's a memory and advice.
[01:29:55.800 --> 01:29:57.120] [SPEAKER_05]: We're looking for a prediction.
[01:29:57.340 --> 01:29:58.920] [SPEAKER_05]: Do you have anything to predict for 2022?
[01:30:01.500 --> 01:30:04.060] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, I don't...
[01:30:04.060 --> 01:30:07.820] [SPEAKER_11]: I don't expect any...
[01:30:07.820 --> 01:30:11.160] [SPEAKER_11]: I think there's going to be hope.
[01:30:11.660 --> 01:30:12.160] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh!
[01:30:12.520 --> 01:30:18.300] [SPEAKER_11]: It's happening at the same time as the Dutch meeting in the Netherlands.
[01:30:18.340 --> 01:30:19.880] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, it's a Dutch hacker camp.
[01:30:20.080 --> 01:30:26.060] [SPEAKER_05]: And, yes, we're planning dual conferences that weekend, July 22nd to 24th, in person.
[01:30:26.060 --> 01:30:30.260] [SPEAKER_05]: In person, in New York, at the St. John's campus.
[01:30:30.720 --> 01:30:31.620] [SPEAKER_05]: It's going to be awesome.
[01:30:32.040 --> 01:30:33.700] [SPEAKER_05]: We're planning it right now.
[01:30:34.160 --> 01:30:37.660] [SPEAKER_05]: And that's not really a prediction, though.
[01:30:37.720 --> 01:30:39.000] [SPEAKER_05]: That's more like a scheduled event.
[01:30:41.000 --> 01:30:42.060] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, yes.
[01:30:42.340 --> 01:30:44.780] [SPEAKER_11]: That's something I can predict for next year.
[01:30:46.560 --> 01:31:01.730] [SPEAKER_11]: I don't think there's going to be another container ship blocking the Suez Canal next year or some such stupid...
[01:31:01.730 --> 01:31:01.950] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[01:31:02.030 --> 01:31:06.910] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, then, that's Bobson's prediction, is that there will not be a container ship blocking the Suez Canal in 2022.
[01:31:06.910 --> 01:31:07.830] [SPEAKER_05]: Good prediction.
[01:31:08.250 --> 01:31:09.890] [SPEAKER_05]: And we'll see if that comes true.
[01:31:12.130 --> 01:31:12.570] [SPEAKER_11]: Okay.
[01:31:12.830 --> 01:31:15.210] [SPEAKER_11]: I'm not putting any money on it, but...
[01:31:15.210 --> 01:31:15.350] [SPEAKER_11]: Oh, well.
[01:31:16.190 --> 01:31:16.630] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[01:31:16.710 --> 01:31:19.010] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, we'll see what we want to wager here.
[01:31:19.370 --> 01:31:21.730] [SPEAKER_05]: Anything else, Bobson, before we move on?
[01:31:21.970 --> 01:31:24.930] [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, Alex, I think, wants to interrogate you more about something.
[01:31:26.610 --> 01:31:28.750] [SPEAKER_07]: Bobson, I'm so glad that you called this evening.
[01:31:28.750 --> 01:31:44.110] [SPEAKER_07]: I was really, really hoping you would, because coincidentally, just before Christmas, I was able to make a run to my local Bulgarian grocery store here in Pennsylvania and pick up an assortment of fantastic Bulgarian cookies.
[01:31:44.450 --> 01:31:44.870] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, boy.
[01:31:45.430 --> 01:31:52.790] [SPEAKER_07]: And I wanted to ask your opinion about the, in particular, these circular cookies called the Trajana.
[01:31:52.990 --> 01:31:53.670] [SPEAKER_07]: Have you had these?
[01:31:55.510 --> 01:31:56.150] [SPEAKER_11]: No.
[01:31:56.150 --> 01:32:02.070] [SPEAKER_11]: So, I may have seen them in a store, but I haven't...
[01:32:03.630 --> 01:32:07.310] [SPEAKER_05]: You were able to resist, whereas Alex was not.
[01:32:07.550 --> 01:32:08.890] [SPEAKER_07]: I certainly was not.
[01:32:09.090 --> 01:32:15.450] [SPEAKER_07]: They were very appealing to me, both visually and when you tasted them, they were really quite good as well.
[01:32:15.550 --> 01:32:16.790] [SPEAKER_07]: I mean, a little bit dry.
[01:32:16.790 --> 01:32:20.870] [SPEAKER_07]: I feel like a lot of these Bulgarian cookies might be a little bit dry.
[01:32:20.870 --> 01:32:24.650] [SPEAKER_07]: Would that be a fair characterization of your cookies?
[01:32:25.450 --> 01:32:39.990] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, I think it may have to do with the distance traveled, and if you come over and get them here where they're closer to where they're manufactured, it may be less so.
[01:32:41.270 --> 01:32:47.450] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, Alex, if I can ask, you have a child on your lap right now, and children like cookies.
[01:32:47.450 --> 01:32:51.970] [SPEAKER_05]: Did this child like that cookie, or did you even share that cookie with that child?
[01:32:52.630 --> 01:32:53.470] [SPEAKER_07]: With this child?
[01:32:53.570 --> 01:32:54.090] [SPEAKER_07]: That one, yes.
[01:32:54.090 --> 01:32:54.410] [SPEAKER_07]: On my lap?
[01:32:54.650 --> 01:32:54.790] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[01:32:55.130 --> 01:32:55.150] [SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[01:32:55.250 --> 01:32:56.730] [SPEAKER_07]: You mean my firstborn son.
[01:32:56.730 --> 01:32:58.290] [SPEAKER_04]: I didn't share with him.
[01:32:58.310 --> 01:32:59.250] [SPEAKER_04]: I snucked him.
[01:32:59.570 --> 01:33:00.490] [SPEAKER_04]: You snucked him?
[01:33:03.090 --> 01:33:03.530] [SPEAKER_01]: Excellent.
[01:33:03.970 --> 01:33:04.190] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh-huh.
[01:33:04.350 --> 01:33:05.170] [SPEAKER_09]: Well played.
[01:33:05.390 --> 01:33:05.790] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[01:33:07.330 --> 01:33:08.190] [SPEAKER_05]: Good for you.
[01:33:08.190 --> 01:33:09.150] [SPEAKER_05]: Not sharing.
[01:33:09.430 --> 01:33:11.370] [SPEAKER_05]: That's what we want.
[01:33:12.310 --> 01:33:19.910] [SPEAKER_07]: This firstborn son that carries my name did, in fact, have a favorite Bulgarian cookie, the name of which we can't recall it.
[01:33:20.010 --> 01:33:21.190] [SPEAKER_07]: But what was it?
[01:33:21.390 --> 01:33:22.210] [SPEAKER_07]: What is the name?
[01:33:22.470 --> 01:33:24.050] [SPEAKER_07]: How would you describe that cookie, Sasha?
[01:33:25.630 --> 01:33:26.410] [SPEAKER_09]: Nice and pure.
[01:33:27.170 --> 01:33:27.430] [SPEAKER_07]: What?
[01:33:27.650 --> 01:33:28.450] [SPEAKER_09]: Nice and pure.
[01:33:29.050 --> 01:33:29.750] [SPEAKER_07]: Nice and pure.
[01:33:29.870 --> 01:33:31.090] [SPEAKER_07]: But what did it have in the middle?
[01:33:32.290 --> 01:33:32.990] [SPEAKER_07]: A jelly.
[01:33:33.170 --> 01:33:43.590] [SPEAKER_07]: It had a jelly in the middle, and it was a hard cookie on the top and the bottom, obviously, with a chocolate coating on the outside.
[01:33:43.790 --> 01:33:45.050] [SPEAKER_05]: I want this now.
[01:33:45.170 --> 01:33:46.010] [SPEAKER_05]: I want this.
[01:33:46.430 --> 01:33:46.770] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[01:33:46.990 --> 01:33:47.770] [SPEAKER_07]: It's delectable.
[01:33:48.090 --> 01:33:49.050] [SPEAKER_05]: Get more.
[01:33:49.270 --> 01:33:50.590] [SPEAKER_05]: Get more and send them to me, please.
[01:33:50.790 --> 01:33:52.630] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, you've got to take a picture of the wrapper or something.
[01:33:52.830 --> 01:33:53.730] [SPEAKER_11]: Absolutely good.
[01:33:53.950 --> 01:33:55.410] [SPEAKER_11]: In fact, you know, I have a picture of...
[01:33:55.410 --> 01:33:58.470] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, I could probably help with the reading of the wrapper.
[01:33:58.830 --> 01:33:59.810] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, hang on.
[01:33:59.810 --> 01:34:00.670] [SPEAKER_05]: I want to see the picture somehow.
[01:34:00.910 --> 01:34:04.410] [SPEAKER_05]: Bobson, it sounds like Alex might have some remnants of this cookie.
[01:34:04.550 --> 01:34:06.410] [SPEAKER_05]: Not of the cookie itself, but of the package.
[01:34:06.830 --> 01:34:09.290] [SPEAKER_07]: I think I do have a picture of the package.
[01:34:09.350 --> 01:34:10.310] [SPEAKER_07]: You took a picture of the package.
[01:34:11.450 --> 01:34:13.710] [SPEAKER_07]: I think it's lowercase Cyrillic.
[01:34:14.290 --> 01:34:14.630] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[01:34:14.930 --> 01:34:15.530] [SPEAKER_05]: Wait a minute.
[01:34:15.570 --> 01:34:16.430] [SPEAKER_05]: Bobson can't see us.
[01:34:16.510 --> 01:34:17.830] [SPEAKER_05]: So how's this going to work?
[01:34:18.210 --> 01:34:18.570] [SPEAKER_07]: I know.
[01:34:18.650 --> 01:34:19.070] [SPEAKER_07]: That's what I'm saying.
[01:34:19.130 --> 01:34:20.230] [SPEAKER_07]: I would have to sound it out.
[01:34:20.690 --> 01:34:21.090] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[01:34:21.630 --> 01:34:25.850] [SPEAKER_07]: And it could be very difficult for me to do that, I think.
[01:34:26.050 --> 01:34:28.610] [SPEAKER_11]: Letter by letter might be the best way to go about it.
[01:34:28.610 --> 01:34:30.470] [SPEAKER_08]: We got to up our Cyrillic.
[01:34:30.610 --> 01:34:31.030] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:34:31.150 --> 01:34:31.510] [SPEAKER_05]: Can you...
[01:34:31.510 --> 01:34:33.010] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, your child might be able to do that.
[01:34:33.390 --> 01:34:34.350] [SPEAKER_08]: Pronunciations and...
[01:34:34.350 --> 01:34:35.010] [SPEAKER_08]: Well, my...
[01:34:35.010 --> 01:34:37.910] [SPEAKER_05]: See if he has Cyrillic installed in his operating system.
[01:34:39.050 --> 01:34:39.270] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[01:34:39.790 --> 01:34:40.170] [SPEAKER_07]: That's...
[01:34:40.170 --> 01:34:41.090] [SPEAKER_07]: He might, actually.
[01:34:41.190 --> 01:34:41.570] [SPEAKER_07]: That's true.
[01:34:41.870 --> 01:34:43.550] [SPEAKER_05]: A lot of kids these days come with that.
[01:34:44.250 --> 01:34:45.010] [SPEAKER_07]: That is...
[01:34:45.010 --> 01:34:45.390] [SPEAKER_07]: That is true.
[01:34:45.810 --> 01:34:46.190] [SPEAKER_07]: I'm...
[01:34:46.190 --> 01:34:46.910] [SPEAKER_07]: Oh, here we go.
[01:34:46.990 --> 01:34:47.550] [SPEAKER_07]: Here's the...
[01:34:47.550 --> 01:34:48.870] [SPEAKER_07]: The box of the cookies.
[01:34:49.110 --> 01:34:49.410] [SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[01:34:51.130 --> 01:34:55.510] [SPEAKER_07]: So, one of them is the Trajana, which was really fantastic.
[01:34:56.110 --> 01:34:59.850] [SPEAKER_07]: And then the other one...
[01:35:00.990 --> 01:35:04.050] [SPEAKER_07]: This is the one, actually, that Sasha really liked here.
[01:35:04.610 --> 01:35:08.070] [SPEAKER_07]: It looks like...
[01:35:10.130 --> 01:35:10.810] [SPEAKER_07]: Varavu?
[01:35:10.990 --> 01:35:11.630] [SPEAKER_07]: Varavu?
[01:35:11.770 --> 01:35:12.650] [SPEAKER_07]: Or something like that?
[01:35:13.450 --> 01:35:18.790] [SPEAKER_07]: It's like a B-A-P-A-B-E-Y.
[01:35:22.500 --> 01:35:30.360] [SPEAKER_07]: B-A-T-A-E-Y, actually.
[01:35:30.680 --> 01:35:35.680] [SPEAKER_07]: E, kind of like a U, but with the symbol of a Y underneath it.
[01:35:35.800 --> 01:35:36.800] [SPEAKER_07]: That sort of character.
[01:35:39.020 --> 01:35:40.300] [SPEAKER_11]: So, it's...
[01:35:40.300 --> 01:35:44.900] [SPEAKER_11]: That sounds like U when it's read, so...
[01:35:44.900 --> 01:35:45.420] [SPEAKER_11]: Yes.
[01:35:45.740 --> 01:35:46.200] [SPEAKER_11]: Okay.
[01:35:47.480 --> 01:35:52.120] [SPEAKER_11]: Can you repeat it slowly, so I can figure out how to read it?
[01:35:53.560 --> 01:35:55.900] [SPEAKER_06]: Varavu, Varavu, maybe, or something like that?
[01:35:56.520 --> 01:36:00.100] [SPEAKER_07]: Because it looks like a B with a horizontal line on top.
[01:36:02.320 --> 01:36:03.140] [SPEAKER_07]: And then a...
[01:36:03.140 --> 01:36:03.540] [SPEAKER_07]: That sounds...
[01:36:04.140 --> 01:36:06.960] [SPEAKER_11]: Why would there be a horizontal line on top, so...
[01:36:06.960 --> 01:36:07.800] [SPEAKER_05]: What are you asking us for?
[01:36:07.860 --> 01:36:08.480] [SPEAKER_05]: It's your language.
[01:36:08.480 --> 01:36:09.640] [SPEAKER_07]: Yes, exactly.
[01:36:09.860 --> 01:36:13.820] [SPEAKER_07]: It looks like a lowercase B with a horizontal line going across the...
[01:36:13.820 --> 01:36:14.480] [SPEAKER_07]: Oh, okay.
[01:36:14.640 --> 01:36:17.120] [SPEAKER_07]: So, that's a B sound.
[01:36:17.860 --> 01:36:18.060] [SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[01:36:18.540 --> 01:36:33.580] [SPEAKER_07]: B, and then what looks like an A, P-A, and then a lowercase B, E, and then the U symbol at the end.
[01:36:33.580 --> 01:36:34.840] [SPEAKER_07]: It's Bara something.
[01:36:35.860 --> 01:36:37.140] [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, Varavu.
[01:36:37.880 --> 01:36:38.260] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh.
[01:36:39.840 --> 01:36:41.240] [SPEAKER_11]: I think, right?
[01:36:43.760 --> 01:36:45.280] [SPEAKER_11]: It's Bara...
[01:36:46.440 --> 01:36:48.860] [SPEAKER_11]: What's the fifth letter?
[01:36:49.540 --> 01:36:51.700] [SPEAKER_06]: It looks like a cursive B.
[01:36:52.180 --> 01:36:53.540] [SPEAKER_06]: Like a script B.
[01:36:55.240 --> 01:36:56.000] [SPEAKER_06]: Baraba.
[01:36:57.100 --> 01:36:57.620] [SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[01:36:59.260 --> 01:37:00.520] [SPEAKER_11]: Something like that.
[01:37:00.900 --> 01:37:01.960] [SPEAKER_06]: I think that's just...
[01:37:01.960 --> 01:37:03.120] [SPEAKER_06]: Are you familiar with these cookies?
[01:37:06.140 --> 01:37:10.880] [SPEAKER_11]: I've seen them in a store at some point.
[01:37:11.620 --> 01:37:13.180] [SPEAKER_11]: I haven't tried them.
[01:37:14.560 --> 01:37:15.960] [SPEAKER_07]: You should try them.
[01:37:15.960 --> 01:37:19.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, apparently you have an assignment now from Alex that you must try these.
[01:37:20.040 --> 01:37:21.400] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, you gotta try these.
[01:37:21.520 --> 01:37:22.460] [SPEAKER_07]: You absolutely do.
[01:37:22.620 --> 01:37:27.320] [SPEAKER_07]: And then next week, I really want to hear your opinion of them, because these were definitely our favorites.
[01:37:27.360 --> 01:37:32.960] [SPEAKER_07]: And if they're tastier locally in Bulgaria, that's even hard for me to imagine.
[01:37:32.960 --> 01:37:35.300] [SPEAKER_05]: And you have two weeks, actually, because we're not on next week.
[01:37:35.440 --> 01:37:39.680] [SPEAKER_05]: But that also gives you an extra week, Alex, to somehow get us some packages.
[01:37:40.840 --> 01:37:47.820] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I think, Alex, you should send them to Gila and Rob and Kyle and myself, so that we can all talk about these cookies in two weeks.
[01:37:48.340 --> 01:37:49.020] [SPEAKER_07]: You know what?
[01:37:49.020 --> 01:37:50.280] [SPEAKER_07]: We've got plenty of time to do it.
[01:37:50.300 --> 01:37:56.200] [SPEAKER_07]: I'm happy to make a run back to the local Bulgarian grocery store and make that happen.
[01:37:56.200 --> 01:37:58.200] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, if you go now, you might get there before they close.
[01:37:59.300 --> 01:38:01.380] [SPEAKER_07]: You're getting your own trip organized.
[01:38:02.240 --> 01:38:02.680] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh-huh.
[01:38:02.760 --> 01:38:04.200] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, we've got to do something for fun, you know?
[01:38:04.380 --> 01:38:07.340] [SPEAKER_07]: It's maybe overestimating the demand for that store.
[01:38:08.560 --> 01:38:13.700] [SPEAKER_07]: But what's interesting, too, is there were a whole bunch of Bulgarian people in this store.
[01:38:13.980 --> 01:38:20.920] [SPEAKER_07]: And I had asked, you know, is there just like a hotbed of Bulgarians here?
[01:38:21.580 --> 01:38:25.440] [SPEAKER_07]: And they said, yes, there's a lot of Bulgarians over here in northeastern Pennsylvania.
[01:38:25.580 --> 01:38:29.340] [SPEAKER_07]: It's something I didn't know, but would explain the presence of that grocery store.
[01:38:29.520 --> 01:38:29.900] [SPEAKER_05]: It would.
[01:38:30.420 --> 01:38:30.800] [SPEAKER_05]: It would.
[01:38:40.280 --> 01:38:53.680] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, I still didn't figure out the child with the spitting child's picture that I asked about, but oh well.
[01:38:57.460 --> 01:38:58.220] [SPEAKER_11]: Okay.
[01:38:58.700 --> 01:39:02.140] [SPEAKER_05]: And if we can distract you with Bulgarian cookies instead, we'll do that.
[01:39:02.560 --> 01:39:04.060] [SPEAKER_05]: Other than admit it.
[01:39:04.080 --> 01:39:09.440] [SPEAKER_11]: Do I need to look into Rockwell's work, or are you making that up?
[01:39:09.480 --> 01:39:11.040] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it wasn't Norman Rockwell.
[01:39:11.140 --> 01:39:14.700] [SPEAKER_09]: If you can tell us which overtime and tell us what time in the video.
[01:39:15.080 --> 01:39:16.000] [SPEAKER_05]: No, it's there.
[01:39:16.180 --> 01:39:16.840] [SPEAKER_05]: I can show it to you.
[01:39:17.080 --> 01:39:20.100] [SPEAKER_11]: It's on the recorded overtimes of December.
[01:39:20.340 --> 01:39:21.040] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh, okay, okay.
[01:39:21.040 --> 01:39:21.400] [SPEAKER_09]: I'm sorry.
[01:39:28.540 --> 01:39:37.460] [SPEAKER_11]: Pre-over-time recordings, part of the recordings has the child with the...
[01:39:38.000 --> 01:39:39.760] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, if you look at the archive, you'll see it.
[01:39:40.980 --> 01:39:41.380] [SPEAKER_11]: Yep.
[01:39:41.620 --> 01:39:42.600] [SPEAKER_05]: But we just never do that.
[01:39:44.540 --> 01:39:45.140] [SPEAKER_11]: Oh, well.
[01:39:45.680 --> 01:39:46.780] [SPEAKER_05]: Bob, some great hearing from you.
[01:39:46.840 --> 01:39:47.760] [SPEAKER_05]: Have a happy new year.
[01:39:48.520 --> 01:39:51.340] [SPEAKER_05]: How do you say happy new year in Bulgarian?
[01:39:55.300 --> 01:39:57.380] [SPEAKER_05]: All right, well, same to you.
[01:39:59.580 --> 01:40:00.940] [SPEAKER_11]: Just another good year.
[01:40:01.480 --> 01:40:01.600] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[01:40:02.560 --> 01:40:03.460] [SPEAKER_05]: All right, good hearing from you.
[01:40:03.580 --> 01:40:03.920] [SPEAKER_05]: Take care.
[01:40:05.280 --> 01:40:07.980] [SPEAKER_11]: Have a wonderful 2022, people.
[01:40:09.180 --> 01:40:09.660] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[01:40:11.480 --> 01:40:14.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Let's have a wonderful remaining 2021.
[01:40:14.600 --> 01:40:17.100] [SPEAKER_05]: However, however many days are left.
[01:40:17.680 --> 01:40:18.260] [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[01:40:21.380 --> 01:40:24.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex, that's an incredible story of the Bulgarian cookie.
[01:40:24.460 --> 01:40:28.260] [SPEAKER_05]: And we're learning so much about Bulgarian food for some reason on this show.
[01:40:29.060 --> 01:40:33.180] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, you know, you got to take the crunchy with the smooth, I guess.
[01:40:35.080 --> 01:40:37.660] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, we're shopping vicariously.
[01:40:38.140 --> 01:40:39.180] [SPEAKER_09]: It's incredible.
[01:40:39.360 --> 01:40:40.200] [SPEAKER_09]: How worldly.
[01:40:40.660 --> 01:40:45.840] [SPEAKER_09]: And it just goes to show you, that's the depths of Hacker Radio Show.
[01:40:45.840 --> 01:40:46.920] [SPEAKER_09]: It goes all over.
[01:40:48.880 --> 01:40:54.760] [SPEAKER_09]: And we like learning about new things and phrases and lettering, even.
[01:40:55.460 --> 01:41:02.000] [SPEAKER_07]: What if Bulgarian cookies is actually a code word that we're using for something incredibly nefarious?
[01:41:02.360 --> 01:41:03.700] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, don't say that out loud.
[01:41:04.320 --> 01:41:05.460] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex, for God's sake.
[01:41:06.360 --> 01:41:06.840] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:41:06.900 --> 01:41:10.580] [SPEAKER_01]: We have spoken on this program about accepting and rejecting cookies, haven't we?
[01:41:10.620 --> 01:41:12.700] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's the part we're not supposed to say out loud.
[01:41:12.800 --> 01:41:13.780] [SPEAKER_01]: We're doing so well.
[01:41:13.900 --> 01:41:14.060] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[01:41:14.060 --> 01:41:14.980] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, really.
[01:41:16.700 --> 01:41:17.300] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[01:41:17.640 --> 01:41:18.580] [SPEAKER_05]: Always one blabbermouth.
[01:41:18.900 --> 01:41:21.480] [SPEAKER_05]: So anyway, you might get this...
[01:41:21.480 --> 01:41:23.620] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know why the headline says this.
[01:41:23.720 --> 01:41:26.560] [SPEAKER_05]: This is from a newspaper over in England called The Sun.
[01:41:26.920 --> 01:41:33.840] [SPEAKER_05]: Basically, the headline is, Gmail and Outlook users warned to delete this threatening message pretending to be Amazon.
[01:41:34.340 --> 01:41:37.560] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not sure why they're targeting just Gmail and Outlook users.
[01:41:37.860 --> 01:41:40.260] [SPEAKER_05]: Anyone can get the email, not just them.
[01:41:40.260 --> 01:41:42.100] [SPEAKER_05]: So right away, the headline is stupid.
[01:41:42.540 --> 01:41:46.840] [SPEAKER_05]: But you might get an email that comes from Amazon.
[01:41:46.840 --> 01:41:48.080] [SPEAKER_05]: It's got the Amazon logo.
[01:41:48.100 --> 01:41:50.000] [SPEAKER_05]: So it's got to be them if it's got the logo.
[01:41:50.240 --> 01:41:52.160] [SPEAKER_05]: And it says, greetings from Amazon.
[01:41:52.560 --> 01:41:54.760] [SPEAKER_05]: We have locked your Amazon account.
[01:41:55.000 --> 01:41:56.100] [SPEAKER_05]: Don't you love those letters?
[01:41:56.100 --> 01:41:59.740] [SPEAKER_05]: They start off friendly, and then they tell you something bad.
[01:42:00.200 --> 01:42:00.500] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[01:42:00.620 --> 01:42:01.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Greetings from Amazon.
[01:42:01.600 --> 01:42:04.800] [SPEAKER_05]: We have locked your Amazon account and all pending orders.
[01:42:05.840 --> 01:42:12.040] [SPEAKER_05]: We have taken this action because the billing information you provided does not match the information on file with the card issuer.
[01:42:12.440 --> 01:42:19.020] [SPEAKER_05]: To resolve this issue, please verify now with the billing name, address, and phone number stored on your credit card.
[01:42:19.020 --> 01:42:22.780] [SPEAKER_05]: If you have recently moved, you may need to update this information with the card issuer.
[01:42:23.160 --> 01:42:31.100] [SPEAKER_05]: If we cannot complete the verification process within three days, all pending orders will be canceled.
[01:42:31.980 --> 01:42:34.880] [SPEAKER_05]: I said it that way because there's a period after the word orders.
[01:42:35.380 --> 01:42:39.200] [SPEAKER_05]: You will not be able to access your account until this process is complete.
[01:42:39.360 --> 01:42:43.840] [SPEAKER_05]: We ask that you do not open new account as any new order you place may be delayed.
[01:42:44.540 --> 01:42:45.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, a couple of things.
[01:42:45.720 --> 01:42:50.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Every time somebody fakes something like this, they make a mistake someplace.
[01:42:50.480 --> 01:42:53.560] [SPEAKER_05]: That misplaced period, for instance, shouldn't be there.
[01:42:53.660 --> 01:42:56.040] [SPEAKER_05]: You would never get that on official communication from Amazon.
[01:42:56.460 --> 01:43:00.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Also, you would not get a sentence like, we ask that you do not open new account.
[01:43:01.240 --> 01:43:05.480] [SPEAKER_05]: It would be a new account or something like that.
[01:43:05.660 --> 01:43:12.060] [SPEAKER_05]: All the fake notices that I've ever seen always have something that indicates that they're fake.
[01:43:12.060 --> 01:43:21.900] [SPEAKER_05]: But a lot of people are falling for this and what they do is they inadvertently click on things and they share information they're not supposed to be sharing.
[01:43:22.320 --> 01:43:37.420] [SPEAKER_05]: But really, the thing is, if you're billing information doesn't match, you won't get a letter this threatening from Amazon or from anybody else saying that everything is being canceled and your account is being destroyed and you must give us information right now.
[01:43:37.420 --> 01:43:39.480] [SPEAKER_05]: It will be much more polite than that.
[01:43:39.620 --> 01:43:47.940] [SPEAKER_05]: And you can look at the headers and they will basically show you where the email actually came from.
[01:43:48.200 --> 01:43:49.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Any of you guys have any experience with this?
[01:43:51.040 --> 01:43:57.680] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there is one main way you could defend yourself against any of these and you don't have to be technical to do it.
[01:43:57.680 --> 01:44:13.040] [SPEAKER_01]: If you get any kind of email that says your such and such account has been locked or has been deleted or anything like that, just go to that website, not by clicking on the links in the email, but go to like amazon.com and type in your account info, log in like you always do.
[01:44:13.360 --> 01:44:19.200] [SPEAKER_01]: And if there is actually a problem and it's legitimate and it's from Amazon, you'll get some kind of pop up when you log in there.
[01:44:19.360 --> 01:44:26.200] [SPEAKER_01]: If you get an email that says we've disabled your eBay account, go to ebay.com, type that into your browser, log in there as you always do.
[01:44:26.280 --> 01:44:30.040] [SPEAKER_01]: And if there's a problem, you'll get a pop up of some sort letting you know this.
[01:44:30.340 --> 01:44:34.140] [SPEAKER_01]: They will never just send you an email and leave it at that.
[01:44:34.380 --> 01:44:37.960] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's basically rule one with things like that.
[01:44:38.180 --> 01:44:39.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Some of them are quite good.
[01:44:39.140 --> 01:44:40.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Some of them are very convincing.
[01:44:41.280 --> 01:44:48.460] [SPEAKER_05]: But this is not one that I saw as being particularly authentic, but a lot of people are falling for it.
[01:44:48.520 --> 01:44:48.840] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, Gila.
[01:44:49.220 --> 01:44:55.540] [SPEAKER_03]: They're not often convincing, but even if they are, one way to do this works better on a desktop than on a phone.
[01:44:55.740 --> 01:45:15.560] [SPEAKER_03]: But still very important is if you hover your mouse over the name of the sender, it will show you what email address it came from and if it is actually from, you know, orders at amazon.com or if it's from 9YZZZZX16Q at Internet.fake.com.
[01:45:15.680 --> 01:45:16.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh-huh.
[01:45:16.240 --> 01:45:17.420] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, that's exactly it.
[01:45:17.540 --> 01:45:19.480] [SPEAKER_03]: It's also a really good way to spot a fake.
[01:45:19.720 --> 01:45:20.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[01:45:20.160 --> 01:45:22.020] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it's such a good advice.
[01:45:22.020 --> 01:45:31.260] [SPEAKER_09]: You make that part of your routine just going through, looking for basic things in deeper and deeper levels as if it's something you might be enticed to look into.
[01:45:31.740 --> 01:45:33.380] [SPEAKER_09]: Don't be trusting off the bat.
[01:45:33.880 --> 01:45:34.720] [SPEAKER_09]: Be skeptical.
[01:45:34.980 --> 01:45:36.040] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex, quickly, we have a call.
[01:45:36.680 --> 01:45:37.460] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, sure.
[01:45:37.620 --> 01:45:48.280] [SPEAKER_07]: What further to give this point is that sometimes it's possible to spoof an actual email address to make it seem as if it came from somebody else like a legitimate orders at amazon.com.
[01:45:48.280 --> 01:46:06.300] [SPEAKER_07]: But one way that you can very often determine whether or not the email address is spoofed is to try to reply to the email because the reply to address is going to very often show you the actual address from which it was sent rather than that you can spoof the sender address but the reply to address will show.
[01:46:06.300 --> 01:46:07.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, yeah, you know what?
[01:46:07.960 --> 01:46:16.200] [SPEAKER_05]: That's a simple setting that you can easily make the reply to go to the spoof or to a real address as well, what looks like a real address.
[01:46:16.500 --> 01:46:17.640] [SPEAKER_05]: Look at the full headers.
[01:46:17.900 --> 01:46:22.920] [SPEAKER_05]: And if you don't have an email service that gives you the full headers, then you don't have a real email service.
[01:46:23.280 --> 01:46:25.360] [SPEAKER_05]: Let's see if we have a call on the line.
[01:46:25.520 --> 01:46:25.800] [SPEAKER_05]: Good evening.
[01:46:25.960 --> 01:46:26.900] [SPEAKER_05]: You're on Off The Hook Overtime.
[01:46:28.480 --> 01:46:29.100] [SPEAKER_10]: Hey, E.
[01:46:29.420 --> 01:46:29.840] [SPEAKER_10]: Hey.
[01:46:29.840 --> 01:46:30.200] [SPEAKER_10]: How are you?
[01:46:30.500 --> 01:46:30.940] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[01:46:31.160 --> 01:46:31.760] [SPEAKER_10]: How's everyone doing?
[01:46:31.960 --> 01:46:32.820] [SPEAKER_05]: Where are you calling from?
[01:46:32.920 --> 01:46:33.220] [SPEAKER_05]: Who is this?
[01:46:33.900 --> 01:46:34.340] [SPEAKER_05]: Genevieve.
[01:46:34.640 --> 01:46:34.960] [SPEAKER_10]: Genevieve.
[01:46:35.380 --> 01:46:35.700] [SPEAKER_09]: Yep.
[01:46:35.980 --> 01:46:36.340] [SPEAKER_09]: Vancouver.
[01:46:36.920 --> 01:46:39.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Vancouver, British Columbia from Canada.
[01:46:39.440 --> 01:46:39.600] [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[01:46:40.040 --> 01:46:40.780] [SPEAKER_08]: It's a great province.
[01:46:41.000 --> 01:46:43.160] [SPEAKER_05]: You guys have gotten a lot of snow, haven't you?
[01:46:43.260 --> 01:46:44.160] [SPEAKER_05]: Or this bad weather.
[01:46:45.420 --> 01:46:50.300] [SPEAKER_10]: Oh, this year has been proof of global warming to most of the doubters.
[01:46:50.780 --> 01:46:51.100] [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.
[01:46:51.240 --> 01:46:51.560] [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.
[01:46:52.920 --> 01:46:59.380] [SPEAKER_10]: In terms of temperature, we've gone from minus 20 Celsius, to plus 50 Celsius this year.
[01:46:59.800 --> 01:47:03.040] [SPEAKER_10]: So, basically, it's five below to like 110 Fahrenheit.
[01:47:03.340 --> 01:47:05.140] [SPEAKER_05]: But not in the same week, right?
[01:47:05.560 --> 01:47:06.140] [SPEAKER_05]: Not in the same week, no.
[01:47:06.140 --> 01:47:07.360] [SPEAKER_05]: That was the summertime, okay.
[01:47:07.660 --> 01:47:08.280] [SPEAKER_05]: But the swing.
[01:47:08.580 --> 01:47:08.940] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[01:47:09.120 --> 01:47:10.300] [SPEAKER_09]: The 12-month, the swing.
[01:47:10.360 --> 01:47:10.600] [SPEAKER_09]: Right.
[01:47:10.740 --> 01:47:11.620] [SPEAKER_09]: Season to season.
[01:47:11.900 --> 01:47:12.460] [SPEAKER_05]: That's something.
[01:47:13.320 --> 01:47:14.080] [SPEAKER_05]: How is it...
[01:47:14.080 --> 01:47:15.020] [SPEAKER_09]: And then last...
[01:47:15.020 --> 01:47:16.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, how is it now?
[01:47:18.080 --> 01:47:22.940] [SPEAKER_10]: It's chilly, but it's unusually covered in snow, which is pretty nice.
[01:47:23.320 --> 01:47:24.820] [SPEAKER_05]: That is nice, you know.
[01:47:24.940 --> 01:47:27.820] [SPEAKER_05]: I've got my fingers crossed that snow will make it to New York at some point.
[01:47:28.060 --> 01:47:30.820] [SPEAKER_05]: But the climate change is really...
[01:47:30.820 --> 01:47:40.120] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I read today that a massive iceberg off Antarctica might break off and really cause some mayhem globally.
[01:47:41.400 --> 01:47:43.220] [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe irrecoverable mayhem.
[01:47:43.420 --> 01:47:45.040] [SPEAKER_05]: And it's serious.
[01:47:45.440 --> 01:47:46.520] [SPEAKER_05]: It really is serious.
[01:47:47.600 --> 01:47:48.600] [SPEAKER_10]: It is serious.
[01:47:48.880 --> 01:47:58.940] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, folks up here are trying to do their part, but, you know, action up here by itself doesn't help when other parts are not helping.
[01:47:59.380 --> 01:48:02.820] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, for example, if you contrast the grid...
[01:48:02.820 --> 01:48:10.920] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, in Canada, for example, if you excluded Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada would be the greenest country in the West.
[01:48:11.500 --> 01:48:11.940] [SPEAKER_05]: Interesting.
[01:48:12.280 --> 01:48:19.080] [SPEAKER_10]: Unfortunately, those two provinces by themselves, thanks to all the fossil fuel extraction and use, they just bring down the average.
[01:48:19.340 --> 01:48:22.980] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, the economic priorities are overshadowing.
[01:48:23.160 --> 01:48:31.420] [SPEAKER_09]: And I think what's been made plain, and I felt a strong message from the youth movements around climate change, is we need to stop blaming ourselves.
[01:48:31.740 --> 01:48:34.480] [SPEAKER_09]: I think generations before have been blaming themselves.
[01:48:34.480 --> 01:48:38.220] [SPEAKER_09]: They've been told that it's a consumer issue.
[01:48:38.220 --> 01:49:01.340] [SPEAKER_09]: And it really is the major players in energy and those economic priorities taking an outsized part of permissiveness, of allowing and repealing the kind of environmental strictures around their activities.
[01:49:01.360 --> 01:49:08.520] [SPEAKER_09]: That stuff has been made plain as a huge chunk of the actual things we need to look at to mitigate.
[01:49:08.740 --> 01:49:09.340] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I mean, look at this.
[01:49:09.340 --> 01:49:12.760] [SPEAKER_05]: As far as consumers, how many consumers are there in Alberta and Saskatchewan?
[01:49:12.860 --> 01:49:14.360] [SPEAKER_05]: Compare that to Ontario and Quebec.
[01:49:14.820 --> 01:49:21.720] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, if Alberta and Saskatchewan are the ones dragging the country down, it's not about the consumers, it's about the industry.
[01:49:21.940 --> 01:49:22.320] [SPEAKER_05]: Absolutely.
[01:49:23.880 --> 01:49:24.260] [SPEAKER_10]: Exactly.
[01:49:24.480 --> 01:49:27.220] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, just looking at something like as simple as energy production.
[01:49:27.660 --> 01:49:35.160] [SPEAKER_10]: For example, Quebec and British Columbia, the electricity grid is over 95% renewables, mostly in the form of hydro.
[01:49:35.460 --> 01:49:35.920] [SPEAKER_05]: That high?
[01:49:35.920 --> 01:49:37.900] [SPEAKER_10]: When you look at Alberta, yeah.
[01:49:38.120 --> 01:49:39.220] [SPEAKER_10]: And what else?
[01:49:39.380 --> 01:49:43.020] [SPEAKER_10]: They also are publicly owned, generally speaking.
[01:49:43.320 --> 01:49:46.460] [SPEAKER_10]: And as a result, you know, rates are cheap in both of those provinces.
[01:49:46.660 --> 01:49:52.260] [SPEAKER_10]: Then you go to Alberta, which is semi-privatized, and they burn tons of coal and gas.
[01:49:53.260 --> 01:49:54.740] [SPEAKER_10]: It's... and a lot more expensive.
[01:49:55.940 --> 01:49:59.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Are there also parts of British Columbia that are doing that as well?
[01:49:59.020 --> 01:50:06.780] [SPEAKER_05]: Because I seem to recall when we were driving down with the dogs, it looked like there was a lot of logging and it looked like strip mining or something.
[01:50:08.180 --> 01:50:18.080] [SPEAKER_10]: There is a lot of logging, though, in fairness, they do actually replant trees at a better rate than basically anywhere else.
[01:50:18.420 --> 01:50:25.600] [SPEAKER_10]: For every tree that's cut down, three are replanted, and it's multiple species to avoid the monoculture problem.
[01:50:27.020 --> 01:50:28.480] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it definitely got worse.
[01:50:28.620 --> 01:50:30.800] [SPEAKER_10]: Gas expansion is also a problem in the north, too.
[01:50:31.160 --> 01:50:34.240] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it just basically gets...
[01:50:34.240 --> 01:50:44.340] [SPEAKER_09]: you notice more and more of it as you head east, especially towards Alberta, the tar sands and various development out there.
[01:50:44.440 --> 01:50:45.340] [SPEAKER_09]: But it just reeks...
[01:50:45.340 --> 01:50:49.780] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean, it just gets so much emphasis so quickly.
[01:50:49.960 --> 01:50:54.040] [SPEAKER_09]: It truly harkens back to boom and bust culture.
[01:50:54.040 --> 01:51:00.460] [SPEAKER_09]: And we need to really pay attention to the bust of these choices.
[01:51:00.820 --> 01:51:03.600] [SPEAKER_09]: It's a short-term sugar rush.
[01:51:04.180 --> 01:51:11.260] [SPEAKER_09]: And we're all about booms for whatever is trendy in the moment.
[01:51:11.260 --> 01:51:23.100] [SPEAKER_09]: But we need to start really looking at the after effects because it's devastating when those choices beat out other things.
[01:51:23.100 --> 01:51:28.140] [SPEAKER_09]: And, you know, we're already seeing it with the permissiveness around nuclear.
[01:51:28.340 --> 01:51:31.820] [SPEAKER_09]: It's going to get all the money for metallurgy and pipe steam fitters.
[01:51:31.980 --> 01:51:36.100] [SPEAKER_09]: It's going to get all of that to build, like, tons of micro-nuclear plants.
[01:51:36.100 --> 01:51:39.640] [SPEAKER_09]: And they're going to call it green and, like, super efficient and great.
[01:51:39.800 --> 01:51:41.040] [SPEAKER_05]: Nuclear is not green.
[01:51:41.040 --> 01:51:42.120] [SPEAKER_05]: And I really...
[01:51:42.120 --> 01:51:46.920] [SPEAKER_05]: It annoys me that so many people, especially intelligent people, seem to think that it is.
[01:51:47.260 --> 01:51:54.400] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, when you have to dispose of nuclear waste and keep it safe for tens of thousands of years, that ain't green, okay?
[01:51:54.700 --> 01:52:07.060] [SPEAKER_09]: The only exception, in my opinion, is if you are decommissioning weapons-grade materials and using that for peaceful energy production or medical purposes, whatever it is.
[01:52:07.120 --> 01:52:08.900] [SPEAKER_09]: But you've got to actually be doing that.
[01:52:08.960 --> 01:52:10.620] [SPEAKER_09]: And that's not occurring in the U.S.
[01:52:10.740 --> 01:52:18.080] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't know about what Canada's situation is, but even that is incredibly high risk.
[01:52:19.080 --> 01:52:20.580] [SPEAKER_10]: And, you know, this is like...
[01:52:20.580 --> 01:52:21.220] [SPEAKER_10]: in Canada.
[01:52:21.440 --> 01:52:22.060] [SPEAKER_09]: No, there isn't.
[01:52:22.320 --> 01:52:23.440] [SPEAKER_09]: And it involves...
[01:52:23.440 --> 01:52:24.520] [SPEAKER_10]: Ontario really has it.
[01:52:25.320 --> 01:52:25.920] [SPEAKER_05]: Only Ontario?
[01:52:26.080 --> 01:52:26.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Is it Ontario?
[01:52:26.780 --> 01:52:27.980] [SPEAKER_10]: Nuclear may not be green.
[01:52:28.120 --> 01:52:28.500] [SPEAKER_10]: The only...
[01:52:28.500 --> 01:52:31.820] [SPEAKER_10]: The biggest advantage of it, though, is that it doesn't produce carbon.
[01:52:32.540 --> 01:52:32.780] [SPEAKER_10]: Right.
[01:52:32.780 --> 01:52:35.860] [SPEAKER_10]: And it is possible to reduce the amount of waste.
[01:52:36.040 --> 01:52:40.400] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, for example, the French recycle used fuel.
[01:52:40.500 --> 01:52:47.320] [SPEAKER_10]: So, in the end, the amount that they have in the end that's unused is an order of magnitude less than the U.S.
[01:52:47.380 --> 01:52:48.640] [SPEAKER_10]: where they don't allow reprocess.
[01:52:48.820 --> 01:52:49.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Right, right.
[01:52:49.300 --> 01:52:51.420] [SPEAKER_05]: But what do they do with whatever waste they have?
[01:52:51.520 --> 01:52:58.180] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, we just found a time capsule from the Civil War and we had no idea what was in it.
[01:52:58.480 --> 01:53:02.540] [SPEAKER_05]: And that's just, you know, 130 or so years ago.
[01:53:02.680 --> 01:53:03.720] [SPEAKER_09]: The time frames.
[01:53:04.020 --> 01:53:05.220] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean, it may be...
[01:53:05.220 --> 01:53:07.740] [SPEAKER_09]: Like, there's a lot of emphasis around it being, oh, this...
[01:53:07.740 --> 01:53:08.620] [SPEAKER_09]: Like, or...
[01:53:08.620 --> 01:53:09.780] [SPEAKER_09]: The thought is it's...
[01:53:09.780 --> 01:53:11.340] [SPEAKER_09]: This is helping with transitions.
[01:53:11.340 --> 01:53:24.680] [SPEAKER_09]: But a lot of the second and third generation renewable tech gets hamstrung or it gets no tax credits, no benefit the way fossil fuels have.
[01:53:25.000 --> 01:53:28.200] [SPEAKER_09]: And they don't actually get to scale.
[01:53:28.200 --> 01:53:33.920] [SPEAKER_09]: So, we just keep pushing the transitional fuels because we're in perpetual transition that never occurs.
[01:53:34.160 --> 01:53:40.480] [SPEAKER_09]: That's what gas has been doing in gasification and fracking.
[01:53:41.160 --> 01:53:44.500] [SPEAKER_09]: And I find it...
[01:53:44.500 --> 01:53:55.800] [SPEAKER_09]: It's a very similar thing because the time frames to build and commission and then have a nuclear power plant, however big, are very long planning times at this incredibly high cost.
[01:53:56.320 --> 01:53:58.120] [SPEAKER_09]: A town is...
[01:53:58.760 --> 01:54:03.220] [SPEAKER_09]: They're forced to kind of reckon with that for a very long period of time.
[01:54:03.220 --> 01:54:07.500] [SPEAKER_09]: And the fuel that we do have, it all kind of goes into one big pit.
[01:54:07.680 --> 01:54:13.320] [SPEAKER_09]: You know, all the stuff that's military, all the stuff that's for power, all the waste ends up...
[01:54:13.320 --> 01:54:14.220] [SPEAKER_09]: It has to go somewhere.
[01:54:14.340 --> 01:54:15.800] [SPEAKER_09]: We don't have places to put it.
[01:54:15.900 --> 01:54:18.440] [SPEAKER_09]: It ends up in a pit in eastern Washington.
[01:54:18.440 --> 01:54:20.140] [SPEAKER_09]: There's a pit in Texas.
[01:54:20.440 --> 01:54:24.000] [SPEAKER_09]: That's where all the reactors from the subs and the ships go.
[01:54:24.120 --> 01:54:24.840] [SPEAKER_09]: And that's it.
[01:54:24.900 --> 01:54:25.700] [SPEAKER_09]: That's all we have.
[01:54:25.740 --> 01:54:27.680] [SPEAKER_09]: We've talked about putting it in mountains in Nevada.
[01:54:28.000 --> 01:54:31.000] [SPEAKER_09]: We've talked about doing all kinds of crazy stuff with it.
[01:54:31.020 --> 01:54:45.160] [SPEAKER_09]: But it ends up just sitting in remote deserts where it's a target, where it's, you know, not managed, or it's just sitting there and will be there for thousands and thousands of years for people invariably to forget about and mess up later on.
[01:54:45.260 --> 01:54:47.420] [SPEAKER_05]: And someone's going to come up with a bright idea to put it on the moon.
[01:54:47.780 --> 01:54:50.880] [SPEAKER_05]: All I'm saying is when you do that, you've got to worry about the launch.
[01:54:51.140 --> 01:54:51.500] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay?
[01:54:51.680 --> 01:54:54.320] [SPEAKER_05]: And of course, firing it into the sun, that solves a lot of problems too.
[01:54:54.480 --> 01:54:57.260] [SPEAKER_05]: But getting it off the ground, that's a challenge.
[01:54:58.240 --> 01:55:02.580] [SPEAKER_10]: Well, there's one thing about the energy mix that I was going to actually make.
[01:55:02.680 --> 01:55:08.540] [SPEAKER_10]: One of those predictions you were asking about, I don't know, maybe it may not pan out as much this year as in this decade.
[01:55:10.600 --> 01:55:13.300] [SPEAKER_10]: But there's low-hanging fruit in renewables.
[01:55:13.420 --> 01:55:17.120] [SPEAKER_10]: And one of the lowest-hanging fruit would be solarizing building roofs.
[01:55:18.080 --> 01:55:23.000] [SPEAKER_10]: The cost of solar has decreased by a factor of 50 since 2010.
[01:55:23.440 --> 01:55:23.640] [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[01:55:24.280 --> 01:55:33.920] [SPEAKER_10]: And as a result, I mean, solarization is, relatively speaking, dirt cheap, easy, and safe to at least supplement peak demand.
[01:55:34.400 --> 01:55:52.340] [SPEAKER_10]: Storage still becomes a problem, but at least that energy production, carbon-free production that's easy and distributed is a good idea that needs to be more widely used, especially if you remember the scam of the solar-freaking roadways.
[01:55:54.400 --> 01:56:02.540] [SPEAKER_10]: They were trying to get this idea and I think that the base of it is okay, but the implementation is impossible when you've got a much simpler answer.
[01:56:04.940 --> 01:56:27.400] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and I think that those pieces of technology in all kinds of different applications, all kinds of places, embedded in materials, like you're saying, it's a lot more possible now, I think, material science in electric or hybrid cars and building infrastructure in cities,
[01:56:27.680 --> 01:56:52.580] [SPEAKER_09]: factories, the kind of recapture and reusing of various parts of the production engineering process are really in vogue and popular because that lowers the cost of producing materials whatever that is and especially in energy and chemical production.
[01:56:52.900 --> 01:57:14.040] [SPEAKER_09]: So, co-locating those technologies that are safe and can help with the manufacturer and their operations, I think, are the real kind of direction things are going in data center technology with computing and telecommunications.
[01:57:14.040 --> 01:57:24.900] [SPEAKER_09]: People are looking at ways to run things cooler, ways to deal with heating and cooling, especially with all the wild temperatures that we have, a lot with geothermal.
[01:57:24.900 --> 01:57:38.300] [SPEAKER_09]: and so there's those things that can't be distinct and in islands and they can't be up against with fake green stuff, in my opinion, like trotted out as worthy of equal attention.
[01:57:38.300 --> 01:57:46.380] [SPEAKER_09]: We need to really double down on things that can complement and work in a sort of symbiotic way with traditional.
[01:57:46.560 --> 01:58:06.960] [SPEAKER_09]: That's kind of what I was talking about with my prediction, like the older stuff with new, like retrocomputing, adapting, making some of the older technologies function better in the newer climate, whether that's more sensors and technology to run it and operate better or adapting,
[01:58:07.220 --> 01:58:08.300] [SPEAKER_09]: like retrofitting.
[01:58:10.260 --> 01:58:10.980] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[01:58:11.720 --> 01:58:13.740] [SPEAKER_10]: Like new developments, for example.
[01:58:13.900 --> 01:58:17.480] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, I'm living in a new part of Vancouver.
[01:58:17.480 --> 01:58:18.700] [SPEAKER_10]: I'm in the city proper.
[01:58:19.560 --> 01:58:29.820] [SPEAKER_10]: And every building in this development is connected up to a district energy system instead of having individual furnaces or air conditioning.
[01:58:30.980 --> 01:58:31.640] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
[01:58:31.780 --> 01:58:44.960] [SPEAKER_10]: As a result, the energy cost is dirt cheap and the energy needed to heat up all these buildings is much lower than it would be with individual inefficient systems, plus less maintenance.
[01:58:45.700 --> 01:58:46.540] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh, yeah.
[01:58:46.800 --> 01:58:52.620] [SPEAKER_09]: And like places in the Northwest, I mean, just apartment complexes with like baseboard electric heaters.
[01:58:52.800 --> 01:58:57.700] [SPEAKER_09]: That's like the Northwest like comfort zone.
[01:58:57.880 --> 01:58:58.120] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't know.
[01:58:58.220 --> 01:59:09.540] [SPEAKER_09]: It's like their style is like really cheap buildings with a lot of electric heating and yeah, and no air conditioning because it never gets warm in the Northwest.
[01:59:09.880 --> 01:59:10.160] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh, right.
[01:59:10.400 --> 01:59:11.340] [SPEAKER_09]: That's all changing.
[01:59:12.720 --> 01:59:16.000] [SPEAKER_10]: So there is an interesting thing about those baseboard heaters that get too hot.
[01:59:16.160 --> 01:59:18.740] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, those are essentially an evolution of old radiators.
[01:59:19.180 --> 01:59:21.120] [SPEAKER_09]: Which were part of the modern...
[01:59:21.120 --> 01:59:21.480] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[01:59:22.840 --> 01:59:23.100] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[01:59:23.540 --> 01:59:25.260] [SPEAKER_10]: That those radi...
[01:59:25.940 --> 01:59:41.920] [SPEAKER_10]: The typical radiator design that you find from a building from, say, the 1920s to the 1970s, they were actually designed to run hot so that they would be overheating, at least in terms of a comfort level because it was supposed to force you to open a window.
[01:59:42.640 --> 01:59:46.620] [SPEAKER_10]: This was actually pandemic-related design connected with the Spanish flu.
[01:59:47.580 --> 01:59:48.460] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah.
[01:59:48.700 --> 01:59:49.100] [SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely.
[01:59:49.380 --> 01:59:57.220] [SPEAKER_09]: And those same systems, if it's run with like a water-based system instead of electric coils, it can be efficient.
[01:59:57.460 --> 01:59:58.900] [SPEAKER_09]: But you're absolutely right.
[01:59:59.020 --> 02:00:15.980] [SPEAKER_09]: There are these legacy technologies we've built over and over and maybe in certain areas we should look back and question a little bit or just recognize that something is completely forked off into a direction that's inefficient, it's just not serving us.
[02:00:15.980 --> 02:00:18.180] [SPEAKER_09]: It may have been once before.
[02:00:18.460 --> 02:00:35.420] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I wonder what else we can learn from reaction to the Spanish flu, which, you know, by the way, it's not from Spain, it came from America, but it's, you know, that right there tells me that people were going through the same struggles and maybe they had some solutions that we could learn something from.
[02:00:35.540 --> 02:00:36.180] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex, did you have something?
[02:00:36.840 --> 02:00:40.100] [SPEAKER_07]: No, I just thought didn't we mention this as well a couple of weeks ago?
[02:00:40.280 --> 02:00:53.780] [SPEAKER_07]: We talk about the design of the radiators coming from the Spanish flu days and how, you know, powerful they were and I think they were actually designed so that you could have them on and still have the windows open.
[02:00:53.820 --> 02:00:55.120] [SPEAKER_05]: You're saying we talked about this already?
[02:00:55.120 --> 02:00:55.880] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't remember that.
[02:00:56.520 --> 02:00:56.840] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, we did.
[02:00:56.960 --> 02:00:58.160] [SPEAKER_07]: We talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
[02:00:59.040 --> 02:01:00.200] [SPEAKER_05]: Who brought it up?
[02:01:00.660 --> 02:01:01.280] [SPEAKER_07]: I did.
[02:01:01.460 --> 02:01:02.380] [SPEAKER_07]: That's why I remember it.
[02:01:02.440 --> 02:01:02.700] [SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[02:01:03.520 --> 02:01:04.760] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't remember it at all.
[02:01:06.040 --> 02:01:06.400] [SPEAKER_07]: Wow.
[02:01:07.120 --> 02:01:07.480] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[02:01:08.600 --> 02:01:09.680] [SPEAKER_07]: I think it was this show.
[02:01:10.340 --> 02:01:11.920] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, how many other shows do you do?
[02:01:13.340 --> 02:01:14.240] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, this is it.
[02:01:14.360 --> 02:01:14.540] [SPEAKER_07]: Really?
[02:01:15.100 --> 02:01:16.820] [SPEAKER_09]: I thought this was in a times piece.
[02:01:17.060 --> 02:01:17.180] [SPEAKER_09]: Okay.
[02:01:17.280 --> 02:01:18.980] [SPEAKER_09]: No one knows where this came from.
[02:01:19.160 --> 02:01:23.900] [SPEAKER_05]: I think you're a time traveler, Alex, and you actually were remembering this conversation and he just came back from the future.
[02:01:24.740 --> 02:01:25.360] [SPEAKER_09]: Maybe it's a 20.
[02:01:25.820 --> 02:01:28.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Anyway, let's let Genevieve finish her thoughts here.
[02:01:28.140 --> 02:01:31.060] [SPEAKER_05]: Any other input here?
[02:01:32.780 --> 02:01:38.080] [SPEAKER_10]: Well, I do have one other prediction for the next year based on how pandemics normally go.
[02:01:38.960 --> 02:01:55.480] [SPEAKER_10]: God's willing, by the end of next year, we'll enter essentially a low pandemic period where instead of it being large general problems that come up, large-scale solutions that have to be implemented for safety to try and limit or at least control spread,
[02:01:56.400 --> 02:02:10.340] [SPEAKER_10]: by the end of next year we'll be into a low pandemic period where you'll see maybe some more localized targeted issues when hotspots come up but in general for most people most of the time it won't be a problem.
[02:02:11.500 --> 02:02:13.380] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, that sounds like an optimistic prediction.
[02:02:13.740 --> 02:02:17.360] [SPEAKER_05]: So hopefully we will see something like that happen.
[02:02:18.660 --> 02:02:19.100] [SPEAKER_10]: Yep.
[02:02:19.280 --> 02:02:19.900] [SPEAKER_10]: One can hope.
[02:02:20.220 --> 02:02:20.440] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[02:02:20.500 --> 02:02:25.380] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, great hearing from you and hope everything is going as well as it could out there in B.C.
[02:02:25.380 --> 02:02:26.440] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, have a good New Year.
[02:02:27.560 --> 02:02:28.000] [SPEAKER_10]: Yep.
[02:02:28.200 --> 02:02:30.300] [SPEAKER_10]: And hopefully next year in July.
[02:02:30.620 --> 02:02:30.940] [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[02:02:31.280 --> 02:02:32.000] [SPEAKER_05]: For hope.
[02:02:32.400 --> 02:02:33.240] [SPEAKER_05]: A new hope.
[02:02:34.020 --> 02:02:34.560] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[02:02:34.720 --> 02:02:35.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Talk to you later.
[02:02:36.820 --> 02:02:37.600] [SPEAKER_10]: Talk to you later.
[02:02:38.620 --> 02:02:39.280] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[02:02:39.900 --> 02:02:42.520] [SPEAKER_05]: Great hearing from Genevieve and from everybody tonight.
[02:02:42.900 --> 02:02:51.940] [SPEAKER_05]: And since it's now after nine o'clock I think we should maybe, you know, call it a night because that's late for us.
[02:02:52.180 --> 02:02:52.980] [SPEAKER_09]: I actually, yeah.
[02:02:53.140 --> 02:02:55.660] [SPEAKER_09]: There's some other things I was hoping to get to tonight.
[02:02:55.980 --> 02:02:57.680] [SPEAKER_09]: So if we could just kind of wrap it up.
[02:02:57.680 --> 02:02:58.440] [SPEAKER_05]: You can wrap it up.
[02:02:58.500 --> 02:02:58.740] [SPEAKER_05]: Go ahead.
[02:02:59.020 --> 02:03:00.920] [SPEAKER_09]: No, I mean, you just get a little...
[02:03:00.920 --> 02:03:03.580] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, you mean things not having to do with the show that you want to get to tonight?
[02:03:03.820 --> 02:03:04.380] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah.
[02:03:04.720 --> 02:03:06.280] [SPEAKER_09]: Maybe we could do something other than that.
[02:03:06.500 --> 02:03:06.940] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, maybe.
[02:03:07.160 --> 02:03:11.300] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean, it was not a huge priority but I mean, I'm just sort of sitting here.
[02:03:11.380 --> 02:03:13.400] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex, you seem to have something to say here.
[02:03:14.260 --> 02:03:18.480] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I would love to go back to our last show.
[02:03:18.880 --> 02:03:25.380] [SPEAKER_07]: Since you ask the same questions every year, go back to our last show in 2019 and hear what the hell we had to say.
[02:03:25.740 --> 02:03:26.160] [SPEAKER_05]: Not 2020.
[02:03:26.160 --> 02:03:27.160] [SPEAKER_05]: We didn't do it in 2020?
[02:03:27.960 --> 02:03:29.180] [SPEAKER_07]: We must have done it in 2020.
[02:03:29.180 --> 02:03:30.140] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, you said 2019.
[02:03:31.120 --> 02:03:32.280] [SPEAKER_07]: Our predictions for 2020.
[02:03:32.280 --> 02:03:33.580] [SPEAKER_07]: I would love to hear those.
[02:03:33.720 --> 02:03:35.120] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, how about our predictions for 2021?
[02:03:35.200 --> 02:03:36.780] [SPEAKER_05]: The year that we're in right now.
[02:03:37.240 --> 02:03:38.300] [SPEAKER_05]: If we did it last year.
[02:03:38.380 --> 02:03:39.640] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't think we did it last year, though.
[02:03:40.900 --> 02:03:41.640] [SPEAKER_07]: I thought we did it.
[02:03:41.880 --> 02:03:42.260] [SPEAKER_07]: We did it?
[02:03:43.020 --> 02:03:44.720] [SPEAKER_07]: Don't we do something like this every year?
[02:03:45.000 --> 02:03:49.440] [SPEAKER_05]: I thought we did but in the summations I didn't see any reference to it.
[02:03:49.540 --> 02:03:50.220] [SPEAKER_05]: So I don't know.
[02:03:50.400 --> 02:03:59.940] [SPEAKER_09]: It's been fairly consistent but there may have been so much going on last year between the election and the insurrection that we were a little bit flustered.
[02:04:00.140 --> 02:04:01.760] [SPEAKER_05]: But the insurrection was after the new year.
[02:04:01.920 --> 02:04:02.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[02:04:02.340 --> 02:04:05.880] [SPEAKER_09]: But remember in between there was a lot of like...
[02:04:05.880 --> 02:04:08.600] [SPEAKER_05]: You can say that word but don't say it because it demeans us.
[02:04:08.620 --> 02:04:10.580] [SPEAKER_09]: There was a lot of stuff being thrown around.
[02:04:10.760 --> 02:04:14.320] [SPEAKER_09]: It was kind of a frenzied time is I guess all I'm saying.
[02:04:14.320 --> 02:04:16.400] [SPEAKER_05]: I think we were just happy to have made it through 2020.
[02:04:16.820 --> 02:04:17.200] [SPEAKER_05]: Rob?
[02:04:18.660 --> 02:04:19.100] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[02:04:19.200 --> 02:04:23.900] [SPEAKER_01]: We did get an email from someone called TMG1 who was listening to our old shows.
[02:04:23.900 --> 02:04:30.920] [SPEAKER_01]: Listened to the July 22nd, 2015 show and apparently we were talking about such things on that episode.
[02:04:31.100 --> 02:04:37.940] [SPEAKER_01]: They write, as per that episode the quote of this decade being as predicted can't you just unplug it is holding up so far.
[02:04:39.260 --> 02:04:41.200] [SPEAKER_01]: And I appreciate that.
[02:04:41.500 --> 02:04:51.220] [SPEAKER_01]: I know a lot of you out there are listening to the occasional older show and we would love to hear your thoughts on things that we were saying long ago and see how they've held up and not held up.
[02:04:51.320 --> 02:04:55.920] [SPEAKER_01]: So do get in touch with us with your thoughts on those as well as what we're saying nowadays.
[02:04:56.120 --> 02:05:02.500] [SPEAKER_03]: I would also like to put out there that we were indeed on this particular streaming program.
[02:05:03.040 --> 02:05:10.720] [SPEAKER_03]: We have an overtime archived from December 2020 December 30th, 2020.
[02:05:11.180 --> 02:05:12.480] [SPEAKER_03]: So we may have done this there.
[02:05:12.820 --> 02:05:14.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, someone has to listen to that one.
[02:05:14.620 --> 02:05:16.760] [SPEAKER_05]: But it's great that people listen to the old shows.
[02:05:16.900 --> 02:05:17.680] [SPEAKER_05]: They're all online.
[02:05:17.860 --> 02:05:18.820] [SPEAKER_05]: We save everything.
[02:05:19.400 --> 02:05:27.200] [SPEAKER_05]: 2600.com/offthehook and we save all of our radio shows whether they're on this station and the other station or on YouTube.
[02:05:27.920 --> 02:05:33.740] [SPEAKER_05]: And yeah, we believe your voices should be preserved you being the listener.
[02:05:34.100 --> 02:05:38.320] [SPEAKER_05]: And also it's a time capsule of what's been going on over the years, over the decades.
[02:05:39.240 --> 02:05:41.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Any final thoughts over the year, guys?
[02:05:42.720 --> 02:05:44.140] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we got through it.
[02:05:45.040 --> 02:05:47.000] [SPEAKER_01]: We're still getting through it but we got through this one.
[02:05:47.260 --> 02:05:47.480] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh-huh.
[02:05:48.180 --> 02:05:48.780] [SPEAKER_05]: Gila, anything?
[02:05:49.060 --> 02:05:49.300] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[02:05:49.840 --> 02:05:51.020] [SPEAKER_03]: Just be careful.
[02:05:51.260 --> 02:05:51.940] [SPEAKER_03]: Be safe.
[02:05:53.420 --> 02:05:55.240] [SPEAKER_03]: We can do this if we do this together.
[02:05:55.680 --> 02:05:55.960] [SPEAKER_05]: Mm-hmm.
[02:05:56.860 --> 02:05:57.200] [SPEAKER_05]: Alex?
[02:05:57.620 --> 02:05:58.020] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[02:05:58.340 --> 02:06:08.740] [SPEAKER_07]: I think echoing what I said earlier, I think 2022 we have to have empathy over apathy and I wish you all the very best good fortune, health, and safety in 2022.
[02:06:09.100 --> 02:06:09.520] [SPEAKER_05]: Kyle?
[02:06:10.780 --> 02:06:15.660] [SPEAKER_09]: Sad to see BlackBerry 10 and 3G go away.
[02:06:16.120 --> 02:06:19.240] [SPEAKER_05]: Do you want to go into this?
[02:06:20.140 --> 02:06:23.240] [SPEAKER_05]: You're having one hell of a time with certain companies.
[02:06:23.700 --> 02:06:24.460] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:06:24.600 --> 02:06:26.340] [SPEAKER_09]: My carrier...
[02:06:27.080 --> 02:06:27.840] [SPEAKER_09]: Abandoned you.
[02:06:28.160 --> 02:06:28.620] [SPEAKER_09]: They abandoned you.
[02:06:28.620 --> 02:06:41.200] [SPEAKER_09]: There's a certain telephone and telegraph company that is not really too keen on letting me bring a particular device onto their network and they're shutting down everything else.
[02:06:41.460 --> 02:06:55.560] [SPEAKER_09]: So, it's made life quite interesting and I ended up trying to activate some things and do some stuff and I ended up in a store that basically got so frustrated they said, why don't you go to another store?
[02:06:57.380 --> 02:06:58.740] [SPEAKER_09]: And I basically...
[02:06:58.740 --> 02:06:59.140] [SPEAKER_09]: Wow.
[02:06:59.840 --> 02:07:07.860] [SPEAKER_09]: I honestly want to talk to someone at this telephone and telegraph company that has some power because clearly no one there does.
[02:07:08.880 --> 02:07:13.440] [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, well, we're going to give that a shot, I guess, before we make this public.
[02:07:13.580 --> 02:07:17.640] [SPEAKER_05]: I think we should make it public in the end anyway because what you're going through is inexcusable.
[02:07:18.000 --> 02:07:22.380] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, you buy a phone that's supposed to work and no one can figure out how to make it work.
[02:07:22.380 --> 02:07:23.160] [SPEAKER_05]: It's ridiculous.
[02:07:23.460 --> 02:07:25.420] [SPEAKER_05]: These people really don't understand their own technology.
[02:07:25.560 --> 02:07:39.120] [SPEAKER_09]: The retail store I went to had temporary hour changes too and it said like we're only allowing customers 65 and up to come in during these hours and the hours were like 8 a.m.
[02:07:39.220 --> 02:07:41.340] [SPEAKER_09]: to 10 or 10 to 8 p.m.
[02:07:41.400 --> 02:07:51.600] [SPEAKER_09]: So all day, every seven days a week the only people that can go to a physical store that can't even help me in my search situation are people over 65.
[02:07:52.120 --> 02:07:52.480] [SPEAKER_09]: So...
[02:07:52.480 --> 02:07:53.580] [SPEAKER_05]: That's why you needed that mask?
[02:07:54.840 --> 02:07:55.360] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[02:07:55.660 --> 02:07:57.060] [SPEAKER_09]: So you can't do it online.
[02:07:57.060 --> 02:08:12.460] [SPEAKER_09]: You can't activate on the phone because no one knows what they're doing on the phone and they just said, you know, the system isn't allowing you and the system hasn't let this handset work with this service.
[02:08:12.820 --> 02:08:15.340] [SPEAKER_05]: That's when you stand up and say, damn it, I am the system.
[02:08:15.480 --> 02:08:16.740] [SPEAKER_09]: I am the system.
[02:08:16.740 --> 02:08:20.500] [SPEAKER_09]: So I'm Gumby and I pay for this.
[02:08:20.660 --> 02:08:21.920] [SPEAKER_09]: That's the other exciting part.
[02:08:22.040 --> 02:08:23.940] [SPEAKER_05]: You do pay for this literally every month.
[02:08:23.940 --> 02:08:26.440] [SPEAKER_09]: I pay to be abused by these people.
[02:08:27.300 --> 02:08:28.820] [SPEAKER_05]: And you keep coming back for more.
[02:08:28.880 --> 02:08:29.560] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh, it's hilarious.
[02:08:30.060 --> 02:08:31.740] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh, they can't shake me.
[02:08:32.540 --> 02:08:33.120] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[02:08:33.280 --> 02:08:37.460] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, tune in in coming weeks to see how Kyle does with his phone company and his phone.
[02:08:37.840 --> 02:08:39.280] [SPEAKER_05]: Rob, did you have something you wanted to add?
[02:08:39.740 --> 02:08:48.020] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm just proud that we at Off The Hook are ending this year in a proper way for us in this program which is by complaining about a telephone company.
[02:08:48.380 --> 02:08:48.800] [SPEAKER_05]: Absolutely.
[02:08:49.160 --> 02:08:54.620] [SPEAKER_05]: And by saying that the old phone company should be preserved and the old phone lines and everything like that.
[02:08:54.760 --> 02:08:55.800] [SPEAKER_09]: Because we could run it better.
[02:08:56.000 --> 02:08:56.560] [SPEAKER_05]: We could.
[02:08:56.780 --> 02:08:57.120] [SPEAKER_05]: We could.
[02:08:57.340 --> 02:08:58.520] [SPEAKER_05]: We'd drive their trucks better.
[02:08:58.660 --> 02:08:59.260] [SPEAKER_09]: It'd be different.
[02:08:59.500 --> 02:08:59.960] [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[02:09:00.020 --> 02:09:00.940] [SPEAKER_05]: We're out of time.
[02:09:01.400 --> 02:09:02.360] [SPEAKER_05]: Thanks, everybody, for listening.
[02:09:02.660 --> 02:09:04.500] [SPEAKER_05]: Write to us, oth@2600.com.
[02:09:04.800 --> 02:09:05.440] [SPEAKER_05]: See you in two weeks.
[02:09:05.560 --> 02:09:05.740] [SPEAKER_05]: Good night.