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The time is almost 7 p.m. which means, once again, it's time for Off The Hook, coming up.
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Hello. It's 7 o'clock on Wednesday.
This is WBAI New York and it must be time for Off The Hook.
And, good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
Over here.
Over there. I'm very distorted for some reason.
I'm not sure why.
Okay, I'll turn that down.
Somebody messes with our knobs every week.
Over in Skype land, do we have Rob T. Firefly?
Good evening.
Oh, you sound good this week.
Okay, and Gila?
Good evening.
And I believe we have Alex.
You do indeed.
Okay.
Well, welcome back everybody.
We were not on last week and we're back.
We're back this week.
And we have all sorts of interesting things to talk about.
Something that's been bugging me is the definition of a word.
And you know how I get when I have issues with definitions.
But this is a word that's been around for a while.
You know, people have talked about it.
It was in all kinds of novels and in science fiction.
The word metaverse.
You know, it's a good word.
I'm looking it up now.
A set of all universes is the definition.
A fictional universe with multiple alternate timelines.
Prime Earth and the DC universe.
The metaverse was a supernatural dimension derived from the collective unconscious in Persona 5.
There's all kinds of definitions.
You can find a million of them.
But for some reason, this word is being used an awful lot recently to refer to Facebook.
And the reason this is happening is because Facebook decided to rename their parent company to be meta.
And we all laughed and pointed when that happened.
Saying, boy, what a bunch of idiots.
But you know what?
They were really smart because now everybody is talking about the metaverse and they mean Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.
And I'm getting kind of annoyed by us just giving them this word.
It's literally the metaverse.
It encompasses so much.
And they just come and they take it.
And pretty soon, they're going to copyright it and make it so that we can't say metaverse and refer to something other than Facebook.
So, you know, this is my cautionary advisement right now to tread carefully as far as using this word and referring to Facebook.
I don't know.
Am I being paranoid, guys?
I don't know.
I mean, it seems like there's a lot of prior art which would prevent them from trying to enforce any intellectual ownership of the word, trademarks, copyrights, things like that.
But at the same time, I wouldn't put it past them because they are a big company.
And as has been making the news this past week, they are a company in trouble.
They're seeing their numbers dwindle and they're seeing their value dwindle.
And they might be desperate and threatened and cornered and inspired to do any number of evil things.
Well, you know, separately, building on that too, you have to think about the wisdom of changing a name of a massive company to something that is also a generic term and a very historical term.
You know, this was a strategic decision that they made.
But what was really fascinating to see is that this happened, I think it was right at the end of October or early November when they changed their name and rebranded themselves.
When Facebook changed their name and rebranded itself as Meta.
Within those first few days in watching the DNS or the global domain name system, I saw within two days over 48,000 new domain names that incorporated the term Meta in them.
And it had Meta for various products, Meta for this company, Meta for this place.
So I think there is this massive effort, not only by domain speculators, but by others who may hold intellectual property rights and trademarks in particular to incorporate the term Meta with respect to their pre-existing intellectual property.
And in so doing, that would prevent Facebook from establishing a monopoly over this arguably generic term.
Separately though, I think this shift of focus and effort towards Meta and the Metaverse definitely signals that Facebook is changing its strategic priorities.
You know, that's pretty obvious from the name change and the fact that they're pushing things towards the Metaverse.
But if you look at their earnings statements from the last couple of weeks, I think this is the first time ever that the user base of Facebook did not grow.
And I find that really, really fascinating, especially in light of the fact that so many people over the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays received Oculus Rift, like myself.
But tying the Oculus Rift to a Facebook account and requiring the use of a Facebook account is a way to keep people plugged in.
And it's a new source of data. It's like a new source of oil, frankly, because we're talking about data that's going to be generated from this virtual universe.
We don't have to even call it the Metaverse, but a virtual universe that could involve watching your eye movements.
It could involve your head movements. It could involve your interactions with other people physically as well as digitally.
And none of this type of data or these data types have been the subject or rather the object of legislation, either at the state, federal or international level.
So Facebook, in changing its name and marching towards this metaverse or this VR world, is now opening up this brave new world of data that has not been available to them since.
And it's a completely unregulated universe at this point.
I mean, I think there are certain state laws that deal with biometrics data, like in Illinois in particular.
But regulating the metaverse or the VR world, whatever we want to call it, those laws don't exist yet.
And a company like Facebook or Meta may be the entity that establishes what those precedents are.
That's truly scary to me.
Well, there's a whole lot here that scares me.
Again, the simplicity of just using a common word and taking it for yourself.
It kind of reminds me of the last president. Do you remember him, Trump?
Trump is a common word in card games, correct?
And yet he uses that particular word from the card game to his advantage.
And he will sue other people who use the name or word Trump in other uses.
So there's a whole lot of hypocrisy and abuse of names when they're taken.
And I'm just worried about this because it just seems like I'm hearing about the metaverse everywhere now.
And I never really heard about it as much.
I mean, I heard about it, knew the word, but it wasn't in everyday conversation like it is now.
So I think it was a shrewd move on their part.
And we have to be very, very careful.
But that's not all we want to talk about tonight.
There are all sorts of other things going on.
That crazy demonstration going on up north in Ottawa.
Actually, it's going on in Ottawa.
It's going on in Windsor by the famous bridge there that basically is the largest transport hub, I believe,
of commercial goods between the countries, between Canada and the United States.
And this is not being really emphasized very much in the media.
It's a relatively small group of people that are doing this.
You might think every single trucker in Canada is part of this movement.
No, they're not.
The vast majority of truckers don't like this.
They're vaccinated.
They believe in the various mandates to keep people safe that have been implemented in various places in various ways.
But what's going on up there now is basically grinding everything to a halt.
And it's interesting, too.
You know, there are lessons we can learn from this, that it doesn't take very many people to have a dramatic effect.
It would be nice if people on our side sometimes remembered that
and maybe clogged up the machine occasionally when it deserves to be clogged up.
But in this particular case, it's getting quite a bit of criticism,
mostly from people who live around there and don't want to deal with blasting horns 24 hours a day
and just the racism and the white nationalism and the Confederate flags and Nazi emblems.
I don't know how all this suddenly came about, but it's a celebration of fascism, apparently,
that is breaking out everywhere.
Who knew? Canada. Wow.
But get this, and this shouldn't surprise anybody.
The donation site that they were using, first of all, they were using GoFundMe,
and I believe GoFundMe said, uh-uh, not an hour watch, and basically refunded all the money.
But a lot of the money is coming from the United States.
A lot of the money, in fact, it's coming from politicians in the United States.
I saw a headline the other day that said the Republican Party is investigating
why the truckers in Canada aren't getting their money,
which, when you think about it, is the most bizarre headline that you could possibly imagine.
How is the United States or members of the United States government involved in this uprising?
And it's not just about vaccines and masks.
It's about overthrowing the duly elected Canadian government.
That is one of their conditions, that they dump Trudeau and replace him with an unelected group of people.
This is really happening up there, and it's, you know, I laugh, but it's really crazy and serious.
But anyway, they have a new donation site now.
Actually, it's called GiveSendGo.
Talk about a name just lying around ready to be used.
GiveSendGo.
They're based in Boston, and they became the primary donation service for this so-called Freedom Convoy
after GoFundMe froze millions of dollars in donations.
Millions of dollars in donations. Amazing.
The donation site, this new donation site, GiveSendGo, basically they had a security lapse.
They've since fixed it, I understand, but they had a security lapse that, ready,
exposed passports and driver's licenses of donors.
So if you donated to these people, all of your private information was exposed.
I mean, it's almost like you can predict this is going to happen when people like this organize something.
It almost always does.
And here it happened yet again.
I believe, Gila, you discovered this story.
Go ahead.
GiveSendGo, I have a lot of feelings about GiveSendGo.
This is not the first time that this has happened to them.
GiveSendGo was also raising money for, I'm sorry,
it was the platform of people raising money for Kyle Rittenhouse last year.
Can I just ask you a quick question?
It's not the first time they've exposed people's passports and licenses.
How does that happen more than once to the same company?
How do they make the same mistake twice or more?
That much I can't tell you.
I think they're one of the current tech companies who's kind of riding the
we're going to do what nobody else will do kind of bandwagon
and hoping that that notoriety will carry them through these kind of really horrific security lapses.
Because, again, it happened last year,
and people who donated were losing their jobs behind donating through this site.
They do refer to themselves as the number one Christian crowdfunding site in the United States.
Do with that as you will.
Yeah, that's what I got for the moment.
Wow, okay.
I don't know what's Christian about this exactly, but it's definitely stupid.
I'll say that.
But, yeah, I understand it was fixed.
But that doesn't mean it's not going to happen again because it's happened before.
So, wow, that is something.
Okay, we have some stories of crypto mischief.
Ready for the crypto mischief segment of the show?
Yeah, there's an arrest warrant that's been issued for a University of Waterloo.
I believe that's in Canada.
Pretty sure that's in Canada.
Nineteen-year-old math grad, $15 million crypto computer attack.
Yeah, he has a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo.
And he's apparently gone into hiding after a judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
Indian Medjadovich is the defendant in a civil case launched after the alleged theft of $15 million in cryptocurrency tokens.
Yeah, I guess I'd go into hiding, too, if I had $15 million in cryptocurrency tokens.
Of course, it could be worth $20 tomorrow.
You don't know.
Mr. Medjadovich used his formidable mathematical prowess to devise and unleash a complex computer attack against Index Finance.
That's according to Superior Court Justice Fred Myers, who said this at a recent court hearing,
essentially induced it to send him $15 million in others cryptocurrency tokens.
The attack happened back in October, and Medjadovich was named online as the attacker and apparently received threats.
Index Finance is described as a decentralized financial platform for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
Users allege that Medjadovich misappropriated the tokens, and the case is scheduled to be heard in Toronto.
Medjadovich, who I'm getting the hang of pronouncing the name, so hopefully I'm pronouncing it right.
It sounds really good.
It gets easier the more times you say it. Medjadovich. It feels right.
Apparently lived in the Hamilton area before attending the University of Waterloo, known as UW.
Everything is known as UW. University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, University of Waterloo.
The UW, I guess they call it.
Medjadovich took part in a virtual court hearing on December 17th.
He was given four days to put the crypto tokens in the hands of a neutral custodian.
Well, how literally he took that.
He could have just gone to the local high school and found the custodian and asked if he had an opinion and given it to him.
But I don't know. That's probably not what happened.
The judge told him if he failed to do so, he could be ordered to show why he should not be held in contempt of court.
I don't know what it is, Alex, but when something serious happens in Canada, it never sounds as serious as it does here.
If you fail to show up, you could be ordered to show why you should not be held in contempt of court.
In the United States, if you don't show up, we're going to kill you or something like that.
It's a lot more serious and a lot more direct.
We're going to maybe threaten you to do something unless you come up with a good reason why not.
It seems like they've got an additional layer of process there where if you don't show up, you have an opportunity perhaps to explain why you didn't show up.
If you don't show up in U.S. courts, generally what will happen is the judge will issue a bench warrant for your arrest.
That will be promulgated to the authorities.
You get pulled over in your car.
They run your license.
They realize there's a warrant out for your arrest, and then you're taken into custody.
I would imagine that the Canadian authorities or the Canadian judiciary would probably do the same thing,
but given the person who did not show up, the opportunity to explain why they didn't show up in the first place.
A hearing was set for December 21st, and when Medvedevich didn't appear, the judge issued an arrest warrant.
He has not been found.
Apparently they listened to you.
He has not been found.
The UW grad had lived with his parents, but they said he moved out and took his computers, and they don't know where he is.
My God, the horror, the fear.
Medvedevich's last tweets were apparently made in October, a week after the attack.
Basically, a tweet identified online that's coming from his account said,
I am looking for the most elite crypto lawyers, Alex.
I will need an entire team.
Alex, you have an entire team, I believe.
If Indexed, the name of the company, wants to insinuate that I did something wrong and resort to name-calling, LOL.
Yeah.
He tweeted that if Indexed Finance wants to steal his tokens, and listen carefully to this,
then we must have a duel. Please choose, swords or pistols, at noon or at dusk.
I will win. It will not be close.
He added, I doubt they have it in them for an actual fight to the death.
You get the feeling that there's two different worlds here.
There's the world of the serious legal people, and then there's the world of a kid who's having fun.
Yeah, sure, he has $15 million in crypto tokens, but the whole thing is nonsense and silly in the first place,
and to him it's just a big game.
I know to other people it's not a game, but there's a disconnect here.
We're not speaking the same language.
This is obviously a smart person that has a sense of humor,
and I just hope that lives aren't destroyed as a result of this.
I keep thinking of what's happening to Virgil right now in federal prison,
and just the insanity with which mischief is dealt with.
And yeah, you might say it's $15 million.
Okay, but you know what? It really shouldn't be that easy.
It's insane the amount of currency that is being moved around in the crypto world with the touch of a button,
and not very much security.
You hear about it every day.
In fact, there's another story I want to get to that's really kind of fascinating.
But this, you can't read the story and not laugh.
It's something that I think is quite interesting.
Now, in the wild west of cryptocurrency, according to this article, were Medjadovich's actions unlawful?
That's the big question.
There is a theory, in some academic cryptocurrency thought,
that because blockchain technology is based on publicly available or open source programming code,
and is based on a laissez-faire contract theory, that the code is law.
That means if one is able to trade with a blockchain participant within the parameters of the programming code,
or the notional contract among the voluntary participants, the result is lawful, whatever it may be.
This theory holds that voluntary participants accept and are bound by the results of the use of the technology.
This is the judge saying this, by the way.
That means that if a clever person can devise a way to exploit a loophole or weakness in the code
to induce the holder to enter into an unexpected and unfavorable transaction, more power to him or her.
The code is public, and the users are deemed to take the risk of placing their cryptocurrency assets in a repository
with a program that functions as it does with whatever vulnerabilities it may have.
I don't know, Alex, how do you read that?
It sounds like the judge is seeing his perspective here.
I'm not getting the same hard-line attitude that I see here in the States.
No, I think it's an interesting exposition that the judge prepared here,
and I think it really gets into the philosophy of this laissez-faire attitude towards cryptocurrencies and smart contracts,
but I think what the judge is probably setting this up to do is compare it with an actual contract
and real-world consequences and contract law principles that have been part of the common law for literally hundreds of years
that are anathema to this notion of buyer beware or fraudulent inducement via some kind of contract without any consequences.
There are real-world laws and real-world consequences that come along with actions and engaging in certain types of activities,
and you cannot have contracts, smart or otherwise, that memorialize and grant legality to otherwise illegal acts.
I think that this philosophy is somewhat shallow and short-sighted and a bit black and white about the nature of smart contracts
and how they can impact the real world because there are real legal issues and real legal precedents that are directly and diametrically opposed to this.
That being said, I think there are some components of what can happen on a blockchain and what can happen via a smart contract
that can be binding and that can encourage or discourage certain types of activities or behaviors on the parts of the individuals that are parties to that contract.
That's part of what contracts do. They hold you to certain standards of performance and conduct and remuneration.
I think at certain times, albeit in a basic level, smart contracts can accomplish the same thing that an actual contract does.
This makes me think a lot about Gil and I just recently watched the movie Sneakers from 1992,
and there is a rant to the villain in that movie where he's talking about how it's all just electrons now.
It's not about who has the most guns or the most money. It's all just bits of data. It's all just electrons.
We've now reached the ridiculous extreme of that where we've decided that not only is information valuable,
but we've decided that a certain type of information, the proof that a computer did some math at some point, sitting on a hard drive is itself now money.
When money is basically totaled up on a file like points in a video game, it's no wonder that this whole thing has been gamified.
Attitudes toward it develop, like Medjadovich seems to have, treating it all as this weird, metaverse-y, video game-y bit of fun,
while people around it are having to deal with the results of the fact that lots of people feel like it's real money going on.
Precisely. That says it very well. In a world where NFTs are a thing, how can you take any of this seriously?
It is all just like a game. Go ahead, Kyle.
You can if you sort of feel this will make its way into a future where you can recoup or add some kind of value to it.
Sorry, I don't know what's wrong with your microphone, but it's acting up in one way or another.
I didn't pay my blockchain.
Maybe you've got to settle that. But just to give you a sense, the judge really seems to be reaching out here, and I think that's important.
That's something we don't have in this country. I keep thinking of Virgil's case and how he was dealt with so harshly through the most literal interpretations of law.
But in this particular case, listen to what the judge says about Medjadovich here.
He may raise an interesting, timely, and important issue about the relationship between the common law and blockchain technology, but he has to participate to advance his position.
I can assure Andian Medjadovich that litigation is not like a fine wine that improves with age.
Now is the best time to come forward to be heard, to assert any defenses, and if possible, to settle before further damage is done to anyone.
That tells me that at least they're saying something that sounds a bit reassuring.
I just think so many cases around us would be settled in a much more humane way with this kind of attitude, rather than,
well, this is what the law says, and my hands are tied, and there's no exceptions, and you're going away for the rest of your life.
There's something not healthy about that.
Well, I like what the judge did there, which was explain through his order or opinion, is what I guess that was,
that he understands the philosophy that the respondent adheres to.
I'm not even going to attempt his name, and is willing to meet him there halfway.
But I just think it's kind of funny.
I mean, the judge said exactly what I thought he was going to say, which is referencing the common law
and encouraging the respondent to show up in court, come here, let's settle this before it gets out of hand,
because things will get out of hand, and I hope this is settled in a way that doesn't destroy lives.
All right, and moving on to another story that I mentioned.
This came about yesterday.
U.S. Justice Department unraveled its biggest ever cryptocurrency theft,
seizing a record-shattering $3.6 billion in Bitcoin tied to the 2016 hack of digital currency exchange Bitfinex,
and arresting a husband and wife team on money laundering charges.
Yeah, this is like Ozark in real life.
Ilya, known as Dutch Lichtenstein, and his wife, Heather Morgan, are both New Yorkers who were arrested in Manhattan.
They spent the illegal proceeds on items ranging from gold and non-fungible tokens to a $500 Walmart gift card.
Wait a minute.
If you have that much money, I don't think a $500 Walmart gift card is really what you should be leading the story with.
Well, more than one would, and maybe they have a stockpile of those particular...
Well, then they should have used the perro. They really should have.
I think if I turn the Skype people off while you talk, you'll sound better.
Go ahead. Try now.
What do you mean? Like this?
Yeah. You sound much better if I turn the Skype people off.
They can't talk now, but you can, so say what you want to say.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's nice to be back.
All right, good, but now I'm turning the Skype people on. Try talking.
Why?
See? There's a big difference. We have to fix this.
Can you turn those down a little bit?
I can turn them down, but then we can't hear them, and we don't hear you much better.
You don't.
Actually, we do hear you a little bit better.
Oh, you do?
Yeah. Alex, can we hear you now? Can you say something?
The swift brown fox jumps over the lake.
You know, I can live with that. I can live with that.
Anyway, continuing with the story.
Well, now I sound crappy.
The couple had active public profiles with...
I'm turning them down because it does sound terrible when they're up.
The couple had active public profiles with Morgan, known as rap singer Rousecon.
A pseudonym she set on her website referred to Genghis Khan, but with more pizzazz.
Why am I reading that? I don't care.
It was the Justice Department's biggest financial seizure, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said,
adding in a statement that shows cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals.
It's also not a safe haven for people trying to save or make money.
So I'd be very careful about this.
Yeah, billions.
Now, interesting thing about this is that these folks were known in the area.
They were basically giving talks in at the Williamsburg Hotel in Brooklyn.
One of the talks was entitled, and this could have been a hope talk.
How does social engineer your way into anything?
Yeah, that was at a speaker series known as NYC Salon.
She defined social engineering as the act of manipulating someone into divulging information or taking a particular action.
Well, you know, everybody defines it that way.
She basically told the crowd at that particular talk that she had sent 10,000 cold e-mails over the previous decade
and had helped 720 companies improve e-mail campaigns.
The talk focused mostly on how to crash events,
suggesting that would-be crashers bring cash for tips, wear a black T-shirt to appear as if they were security,
and also bring layered outfits in case they need to change their look quickly.
Her presentation ended with another slide.
How can you social engineer yourself out of a bad situation?
And there was an image on the slide of two cuffed hands behind bars.
Well, now apparently that's something that these two can use because they're in a whole hell of a lot of trouble.
Wow, $3.6 billion in Bitcoin.
The thing is, though, I'm not sure, is this the value when it was stolen or the value now?
Because those are two very, very different numbers.
Neither.
Neither, meaning what?
Neither, meaning I'm looking at a story.
The total 119,754 Bitcoin that were stolen worth 71 million when Bitfinex was hacked in 2016
are now worth more than $4.5 billion.
So, yes, a little bit of both.
Can we go back to the Walmart gift cards for a second?
Because that bit stuck in my brain for a moment.
They live in New York City.
We don't have Walmart here.
Why did they buy that many Walmart gift cards if there's no place to go with them here?
I can't help but wonder if it's some sort of weird scammy thing that they're trying to-
Okay, now I'm just conspiracy theorizing.
But, no, that's weird.
There's no Walmart in New York City.
Hang on.
These folks stole $3.6 billion, allegedly, and you're accusing them of being scammers?
Well, I'm just curious why it was that they got Walmart gift cards when there's no Walmart in New York City.
For example, the fact that there's no Walmart in New York City comes up more than you'd think.
My health insurer a couple weeks ago was like, our preferred provider for COVID test kits is Walmart.
Well, there's no Walmart in New York City.
Okay, Gila, you've now said there's no Walmart in New York City about five times.
You're really happy about this, aren't you?
I'm focused.
That's all I'm saying.
I'm just a dog with a bone here.
Go ahead, Rob.
Well, one thing about this that I think I'm theorizing that what they were trying to do was find a way to launder their money
because you can have $4.5 billion worth of mathematical space monies,
but the basic defining feature of most cryptocurrencies, if they're blockchain-based,
is that anybody can take a look and see what goes where and what transactions.
And so if you've got these stolen tokens and you try to move them somewhere else, people are going to be able to follow that trail.
And so I think if they were trying to find a way to somehow turn their bits and bytes into regular-ass dollars,
maybe the Walmart gift cards were a step on that path.
And then they were going to go on the run, and there's Walmart everywhere but New York City.
So you can use money-laundered Walmart gift cards to hide your tracks.
I think we're on to something here, you guys.
You know, we had Kmarts in New York City.
Did they all go out of business?
I know the one in Astor Place went out of business.
I know the one by Penn Station went out of business, too.
Does anybody know?
I think they're mostly gone, yeah.
Did you guys hear the Hotel Pennsylvania caught on fire the other day?
Yes.
It's true, it happened.
They're demolishing it inside, and something happened, and there was all this smoke pouring out.
It was kind of ironic because it literally was the same time that Hope tickets went on sale for our conference this summer.
They went on sale Monday, and right about the time they went on sale, our former home, the Hotel Pennsylvania, caught fire.
It knew.
I feel terrible.
I mean, I don't feel guilty, but I do feel sad because that was our home,
and we had decided to move to a better place before Hotel Pennsylvania got the death sentence.
But it's sad.
It makes me angry because what they're replacing it with, it's a nightmare.
It's just going to be an office tower with few people having access as opposed to a place where thousands of people came to see New York City for the first time.
It's just sad.
But, yeah, that happened on Monday.
Yes, Hope tickets are now on sale.
We basically opened that up for our conference taking place July 22nd through 24th.
Do I have the dates right?
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
July 22nd to 24th of this year at St. John's University, which is an awesome space.
We keep going back there.
We can't get enough of the place.
We're looking forward to this, our first conference in a new home and our first hopefully post-COVID conference where we can meet in person, or if not completely post-COVID, at least enough removed from it where it's not a safety hazard for anyone in attendance.
All the information is at hope.net.
We are also trying to get as many people as possible to participate in one way or another because that's what really is going to define what this conference turns out to be.
We have basically an almost unlimited amount of space, so we can do a lot.
We can do an awful lot of things, or we can do a little bit and then expand and keep getting bigger and bigger.
It's up to us what we want to do as far as attendance, as far as people presenting talks and panels, seminars and workshops.
We have space for all of it.
If you go to hope.net, there's information on all different ways you can participate, including volunteering and helping us to run the conference.
It's going to be amazing.
It's as historical as the first conference.
Let's put it that way.
In 1994, we did what no one else in this country had done before, and that's have a big conference, a big hacker conference.
Yeah, there were lots of little hacker conferences.
I'm talking about 75 people, but we had the first one that was 1,000 plus.
It was inspired by the hacker conferences that were taking place overseas, both in Germany and in the Netherlands.
That was a turning point.
I think I remember the date, August 13th and 14th, 1994.
I can remember that more than I can remember the current dates, but that just changed everything.
From that point on, it became possible to have these massive gatherings, and ever since then, we've been doing it every couple of years.
This is the first time that we are moving to a different place and changing the way we do things.
Having more space, a lot more outdoor space too, which is great.
The mood is going to be different.
It's going to be so inspirational.
Please be a part of it, whether it's just attending or whether it's presenting, whether it's building something or whatever you feel.
We're open to all kinds of ideas.
We have many email addresses.
You can contact us.
They're all listed at Hope.net.
We really want, in the spirit of the campus environment, to have more of a show-and-tell atmosphere and exhibits of all kinds.
If you're working on something really cool and you want to show and share with everyone, we'd love to host you in our vendor area
or help you set up and share or host a workshop or perform and be a part of an artistic presentation.
There's a lot of room.
If you're doing cool stuff with LEDs and lighting, we'd love to do more displays and stuff like we've done in our old space, but more of it.
A lot more.
Of course, we'll have sorts of lounges.
I think a lot of the spaces are going to mix and connect in weird ways.
Hopefully, like Hack Center sort of things will have good sound and lights as well.
But we want everyone to feel comfortable and really take advantage of all of that and show off and really be with one another in that crazy kind of way.
It's a much healthier environment because it's an academic environment as opposed to a commercial hotel in the middle of Midtown.
That had its charms, but it was very crowded.
It was very dirty.
We kind of got the feeling that we were in hostile territory as far as management always looking over our shoulders.
Here, we're in an environment where we're being encouraged to do creative experimental things.
They get the hacker mindset.
The fact that it's in Queens is actually a really good thing because you have the space now.
Gila, I know you spent a lot of time researching transit options.
Please don't be afraid of Queens, folks.
It's easy to get to whether you're coming from Manhattan and certainly if you're coming from other parts of the country or world.
It's so close to LaGuardia Airport and Kennedy Airport.
If you're driving, we actually can give you free parking.
It's New York City.
Imagine that.
There are so many more options available to us because we're in this different environment.
It's really easy to get to.
Would you say we've covered just about all the options on the website, Gila?
We've covered pretty much all the options.
The website, we take you to campus once you get to New York.
Any way you get to New York, we can get you to St. John's.
If you decide that you want to take Amtrak to New York City, we can get you here from Penn Station.
If you decide you want to fly here, we can get you here from the airports.
If you decide you want to cross the Atlantic on the QE2, we can help you get here.
If you want to teleport to New York City, if you've got that technology set up, we can give you the exact street address to get you to campus.
New York City is one of the easiest places to get to in the world.
It really is.
Once you get into New York City, getting to St. John's is also pretty simple.
Any way you want to travel, we can get you here.
That is true.
However, taking the QE2 would be one hell of a challenge as that is currently a floating hotel on the West Coast.
I think you mean the QM2.
That's the one I meant.
Okay.
If you take that, I'm not sure what their schedule is, but yes, it's easy to get to as well.
We are working on all sorts of accommodation options.
We have one hotel already, which is just about a mile away from the conference.
It's very easy to get back and forth.
They have a discount grade already, but that's only the first of a bunch that I believe we're going to be getting.
Yes.
We'll have much more information about housing for everybody.
Again, because it is so easy to get to St. John's, there are options we're providing, but don't let that stop you.
If you want to stay in Manhattan, it's easy enough to get back and forth.
If you want to stay on Staten Island and ride the ferry, you can do that too.
The choice is yours.
Who comes to New York and stays in Staten?
Okay.
Whatever options you have, that's fine.
Go ahead, Alex.
I think a really interesting option too is that if you don't feel like venturing around, you can stay at the conference itself for all three days.
You stay up all three days and you don't even have to change your moccasins or put on your boots and go out around Manhattan or Brooklyn.
You can just stay put and experience, what would it be, about 70 hours of hope?
Yes, but please change your damn moccasins.
For the people around you, it's courteous.
We don't want a lot of smelly, tired people.
There are going to be so many options, so many ways that you can benefit and enjoy yourself.
I hope people get the most out of it.
I heard the hammocks are coming back.
Hammocks are coming back?
Yes, we're setting up the turf.
Wow.
We got that.
That will be in effect.
Yes, there are all sorts of things, hope traditions and new traditions that we'll be making.
Anyway, that's the news there.
Hope.net, please help us make this the beginning of a brand new era in hope history.
Yes, I'm really enthused and terrified at the same time because, boy, it's different.
It's different, but different things in our world tend to be kind of awesome.
Okay, moving back to some of the news that's been going on, again, involving crypto.
A hired hacker helped Dan Reich recover millions worth of cryptocurrency.
It's not a story unless it's millions.
You realize that?
Yes, it's got to be millions of dollars or it's just not worth the time to read it.
Yes, millions worth of cryptocurrency from a hardware wallet that he lost the password for years ago.
Oh, my.
Can you imagine anything worse than that?
In a story titled Cracking a $2 Million Crypto Wallet,
The Verge reported that four years ago, Reich and a friend used $50,000 worth of Bitcoin
to purchase a new cryptocurrency called Theta Tokens worth 21 cents each
and later stored them in a Trezor hardware wallet.
Reich wanted to cash out after the token sunk to a fourth of its value,
but he and his friend forgot the PIN.
They made 12 guesses, then quit, not wanting to get too close to the 16th guess,
at which point, oh, my God, that wallet would automatically erase all of its data.
That's nasty.
Boy.
And who does that benefit exactly?
Where does the money go when that happens?
Reich wrote off the loss until 2020 when the token started surging.
So in a way, it's kind of good he forgot his password because, hey, it started surging again.
And that made the wallet worth millions.
So then, still not able to get in and only four guesses left, he started looking for hackers.
And in February of last year, when the wallet was worth $2.5 million,
he discovered Joe Grant.
Hey, we know Joe Grant, the kingpin from The Loft.
Yeah.
You know, if anyone can do this, he'd be at the top of the list, as well he should be.
An electrical engineer, hardware hacker who advises companies on how to protect their products.
Reich wrote about his story on a blog, and the two hired a film crew to document the hacking.
In the video description, Grant said he thought the hacking would be a slam dunk.
Little did I realize the project would turn into a rollercoaster ride with over three months of experimentation,
failures, successes, and heart-stopping moments.
In this case, the stakes were higher than normal.
I had only one chance to get it right.
And finally, in May, he was ready to deploy a computer program that would unlock the wallet.
Reich flew to Portland to give the wallet to Grant, and within several hours, he did it.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a great story.
I'd love to hear Joe Grant tell that story.
I'm sure we'll hear that at some point.
But, yeah, forget your password.
You could lose millions.
What do you guys think?
Yeah, look, I've got several matters where people have lost cryptocurrency,
and we're actively helping them to recover that cryptocurrency.
And sometimes it's technical means, sometimes it's legal means,
and sometimes it determines whether or not it's a hot wallet that's connected to the Internet or a cold wallet.
And going back to the Bitfinex hack that we had addressed before we digressed to the issue of hope,
that had to deal with segregated wallets back in 2016.
But there's lots of tracking and tracing going on.
If you've lost your cryptocurrency to some kind of theft,
it may make sense to try to recover it using legal and technical means together.
And if so, I would certainly encourage anybody to reach out to me.
I'm happy to discuss this.
It's one of my favorite things to talk about lately.
That's true.
We can't shut them up.
So how do people reach you, Alex?
Well, people can generally find me, I guess.
Just Google my name, Alex Urbelis, or A-Urbelis, U-R-B-E-L-I-S, at crowell, C-R-O-W-E-L-L, dot com.
You can reach me at my law firm address.
I'd be happy to discuss any of those issues with you.
You can also write to O-T-H at 2600.com, and that gets to all of us.
And don't lose this stuff because it's a tremendous waste.
It's incredibly wasteful to have created all of this value and this token
that would just be in a landfill or just disappear into the ether.
A tremendous amount of good could be done with it.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Hey, we're almost out of time, but we're going to be doing overtime.
You can find the link on the main 2600.com web page up on top,
or you can simply go to Channel 2600 on YouTube and join us at 8 o'clock,
and you can call us and be on the air yourself, except there's really no air to be on,
but you'll be on the net.
And what do you have there, a dial tone?
Yeah, I was just testing it.
All right, we have a phone, so we have a phone,
and hopefully our audio is even less screwed up than it is now.
I apologize.
Well, we'll see. We'll figure it out.
It's always some kind of fun.
I'll find some time to fix it.
We were talking about number stations last week,
and we had at least one listener write in to tell us.
We asked about the frequency of the number station called UVB-76.
The frequency is 4625 kilohertz, and it can be heard all over Europe,
mainly at night, which is what it is right now, European listeners.
So maybe you can turn to 4625 kilohertz and hear number stations.
You may hear it occasionally in the U.S. when conditions are right.
Alex is correct in saying that all that happened with the pirates
is that they just transmitted over the top of it, effectively jamming it,
but only locally.
That's fascinating, and thank you, Neil, for sending in that information.
We have to hook up our shortwave and listen for number stations
and hear spy messages and things like that.
Well, you have to get the ground set up just right, and it's a whole art.
There's a lot of opinions about how to do it, but I have some bits and pieces.
It's in the works.
All right.
Hey, we've got to go out.
Speaking of pirates and radio and things like that,
I've got vinyl here.
Hold on a second.
Let me put this down.
There we go.
Yeah, our outro tonight is on vinyl.
There's nothing wrong with that.
We will be back next week.
You can write to us, OTH at 2600.com,
and we'll be on Overtime in just a moment,
Channel 2600 on YouTube, and follow the link on the top of 2600.com.
All the way.
Absolutely.
Good night.