The goal is only, I'm not even going to say $1,300, it's a little over than $1,300.
So go to WBAI.org and if you haven't given to that GoFundMe campaign, consider doing
that as well as giving to this radio station proper, okay?
So with that said, it is now 1 minute past 7 p.m., stay tuned for Off The Hook coming
up here on WBAI New York.
Thank you for listening to Off The Hook.
This has been a production of WBAI-TV.
Good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Yeah, indeed.
Right here.
And out there in Skype land we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
We have Alex.
Good evening.
And we have exciting news.
Yes, exciting news.
Come join us.
We are going to do something new tonight.
We're going to experiment with something new tonight.
Not on the radio because we've done everything we can do on the radio.
We can't experiment anymore there.
But online we're going to be experimenting with something new, an online chat.
Yeah, I know.
It's something alien and unknown to most of us.
But we are actually going to try and implement that tonight as part of the overtime broadcast.
We've been shying away from it because we thought maybe it would be distracting.
But you know what?
We're going to try it, see what happens.
So that means that while we're doing various things, taking phone calls and just embarking in whatever we do after Off The Hook is off the air,
you can type things and I don't know what happens then.
People will see them, I guess, if they go to the YouTube channel.
Well, especially for people that may be a little self-conscious or not want to physically say something or they have something that they've prepared they'd like to say.
No, I mean we'd rather it be spontaneous.
But it's a form of interaction that some people who ordinarily wouldn't call, maybe they don't have access to a phone.
They're tied up with their workstation.
But somehow they have access to a computer.
It's all a matter of preference.
We're going to take the plunge, as it were.
Gila.
Also, we're going to have an interesting opportunity this evening to have people in conversation with each other.
So for example, if Bobson calls and you have a question about Bulgaria, you can type your question for Bobson into the chat
and our friendly team of mods will relay it to the Off The Hook studio.
Or at least that's the plan.
Okay.
We don't know what's going to happen.
As I said, we've been shying away from this for a long time.
And I've been talked into it just as an experiment to see what happens.
We're not on next week, so we have a full week to recover from this.
And yeah, we'll see.
We'll see what happens.
Maybe nobody will say anything.
That's certainly possible.
It's happened.
We are prepared for any eventuality.
Absolutely.
That's what being a hacker is.
Okay.
Okay.
So moving on, we have some exciting news from, of all people, the IRS.
Have you guys heard about this?
The Internal Revenue Service is working on a plan that would allow taxpayers to file directly with the government online.
Now, that might not sound like anything at all, but actually it's something pretty big.
You ever wonder, you know, when you're filling out all these numbers and forms and hiring accountants and all sorts of other people to do your taxes every year,
why do you need to do that when you're basically giving in government forms to the government who already generated the forms?
So now I guess everyone's finally figured out that, yeah, hey, the IRS already has all this information.
If you want, they could just either bill you or send you a refund check and do the work for you.
It works if you trust them, I guess, and if you don't have any shenanigans that you have to engage in to make the numbers a little bit different.
I think for most people this is probably a fairly good deal.
I don't know.
What do you folks think?
I think it's quite a good deal.
I mean, it's something, this is something that I think the IRS has had the technical capacity for a long time,
but that the tax preparers have been fighting so hard against because it is very difficult for them to justify being the middleman in this transaction
where you give the government forms to them so they can give them to the government and pay a large amount for the privilege.
Yeah, I can see why that might be an inconvenience to them when you don't need them anymore.
But, you know, I still think they'll have plenty of work for people that want to maybe not believe what the IRS tells them or who might have extenuating circumstances.
But, again, literally, they have the information already.
So other countries do this.
As usual, we don't.
But it seems like a no-brainer.
It really does.
Alex?
Yeah, I mean, having lived in the U.K., this is the way things were generally done over there.
People would automatically file.
You would get some form from the government every year, and it was usually correct.
You didn't have to do much.
There wasn't any kind of affirmative action that you needed to take on your part, really.
I think it's a really good thing.
Most people who just take the standard deduction and don't have lots of expenses and whatnot are going to, I think, benefit from this tremendously.
And I think the IRS will benefit, too, because it will have fewer people not filing as well.
So their records are going to be better.
I think when it comes to the tax preparers and the accountants and whatnot, you're still going to need them.
All the people that have more complicated taxes, have lots of different assets, are running things for LLCs, they're still going to need those tax preparers,
those accountants, those CPAs, and all the corporations and things, and all those LLCs out there are still going to need them as well.
So I don't see this as undermining the ecosystem for accountants in any appreciable way here.
It's something that, frankly, I feel like we should have been doing for many, many years.
Yeah, it seems like a baseline of coverage, if you're going to make a healthcare analogy, or some kind of foundation to do simple filings and so forth
that are reasonably straightforward, that most people would be doing and have had pretty much everything mailed to them and at their fingertips
and was generated and submitted in other ways.
And so it's sort of duplicating efforts.
This consolidates a little bit, and I'm just for as many options as possible.
And instead of certain individual companies or whatever private preparer you can hire, which would have maybe a wide variation,
that whole ecosystem should be as healthy as possible, not just one entity or two dominating.
You know, we seem to have a tradition in this country, a fairly new tradition of arguing over everything, no matter how obviously sensible it may be.
This particular case, yeah, it makes sense to a lot of people, but Rick Heinemann is a spokesman for Intuit, and they're the company behind TurboTax.
They don't like this at all.
A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem, which is a great soundbite.
That solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars and especially harm the most vulnerable Americans.
Okay, let's just look at that for a second.
How does it cost billions of dollars to not pay something to your company?
How does that work exactly?
And exactly how are the most vulnerable Americans the ones being targeted here,
when it seems like the most vulnerable people are the ones with the least amount of money who can ill afford to pay somebody else to fill out forms for them,
and here it's being offered to be done for free?
So, again, it's a great soundbite, but it doesn't really add up, to coin an accountant phrase.
Yeah, I would say they're not into it.
Oh, nice. That's nice.
I'm trying. I'm just trying to carry some.
Well, they knew when they made their name, someone was going to make that joke at some point.
Yeah, Alex, it looks like you have something to say.
Oh, that was just a great pun on Kyle. Very, very good.
But I don't really understand Intuit's position here.
It's not really intuitive in a lot of ways.
Were you trying to make a joke just now?
No, no.
Okay, because it didn't land if you were trying.
I think it's the power of suggestion right there, but it doesn't make any sense.
It really absolutely does not make any sense, their position.
I mean, maybe I'm missing something entirely.
That makes perfect sense, Alex. They're not going to make as much money as they did before.
That's why they have this position.
I'm saying the Intuit argument is not intuitive in that how do vulnerable Americans not benefit from it?
Yeah, exactly. I think they're basically throwing things at walls and seeing what sticks.
They haven't made their argument yet.
They've come up with a phrase, but they haven't come up with a logic to back it up.
Well, it also seems to assume that somehow Intuit was helping vulnerable Americans in some way,
and they're not going to be able to.
I'd love to see them expand on that.
Yeah, me too. I'd like to see them expand on helping vulnerable Americans.
That would be nice.
It's like when health care, the idea of health care was introduced during the Obama administration
or reintroduced during that administration, and Republicans were saying that health care is going to kill us.
There'll be death squads, all sorts of nonsense.
They come up with the fear-mongering first before they actually have put together a story,
so it really sounds kind of silly.
Gila, did you have something?
I was just – sorry, I'm a little sidetracked.
We were hoping this wouldn't happen because people are already starting to live chat in the live chat,
so I'm half keeping an eye on that.
Wait, wait, hold on a second.
You mean people can live chat before the channel even becomes active?
Yes, they can.
I didn't know that.
Well, that's not right.
So I'm just trying to keep an eye on it.
The answer for the person who just asked is we're not pushing questions from the live chat to the show right now.
This is interactive for overtime, so I'm just making sure that nobody is like spamming the chat.
Do you need me to go in there and disable some features?
Because I can do that.
I can do that.
Oh, no, you can't.
Yeah.
So the answer is not really, and we'll push your questions during overtime.
Thank you for the first question.
We already have, but hold that thought for the next –
Yeah, you see, this is exactly what we were trying to avoid is being distracted by –
It got pushed, though.
It got pushed.
What got pushed?
The question got pushed to the show.
The question got pushed up to the –
Overtime just came into the regular show.
Explain something to me with YouTube.
Okay, so the channel becomes active at a particular – it's not a channel.
What is it?
It's a program?
The video link.
The video link.
The live stream.
Live stream.
Okay, that's a company, isn't it?
Whatever.
I don't want to use the wrong phrase.
But the live stream becomes active at 8 o'clock, so you would assume that the chat wouldn't become active until then as well.
How about we just not look at it until – but then it's going to be on our permanent record.
This is like the line outside the venue.
People are talking.
They're in anticipation.
It's fine.
It's fine.
But it's not being logged.
When you're standing online, nobody remembers that conversation later.
Okay, this is my question.
We have it set up so that the chat will replay when people re-listen to the stream or re-watch the stream.
How does that work if they're chatting before the stream begins?
That's what I don't understand.
I guess we'll find out.
We will certainly find out after overtime ends.
But if I could encourage our panelists to stay out of the live chat right now.
Alex, really?
I don't know what you're talking about.
Let's focus, people.
It could be somebody impersonating.
Yeah, yeah.
It's getting out of hand.
Who would do that, Alex?
Who would impersonate you?
Exactly.
Okay, let's move on.
We have a lot to talk about.
Now, Apple has a great idea.
They have previewed a suite of accessibility features that will be coming later this year,
and there's nothing we can do to stop it, apparently.
The new personal voice feature is expected as part of iOS 17.
Is that what they're up to?
My, my.
iPhones and iPads generate digital reproductions of a user's voice for in-person conversations
and on phone, FaceTime, and audio calls.
In what universe is this a good idea to be able to have somebody's voice mimicked
and just bandied about?
I cannot think of, I mean, except for, I can think of plenty of uses, you know, nefarious uses for this.
I cannot think of a single good use.
Kayla, did you have an idea?
Well, I had a thought, and my first thought was, my voice is my identity verifying me.
That's nefarious.
That's one of the nefarious ideas I had.
No question.
But this is something that I have dealt with on a regular basis throughout my entire life
because I inherited a lot of things directly from my mom, and one of them is her voice.
We sound exactly identical.
It's true.
And trying to convince people that I'm not, in fact, her has been very complex throughout my life.
How in the world would this help?
It wouldn't.
This is what I'm saying.
There'll be three of you.
There'll be three of you now.
Or more.
There could be four of us because we each have, I think my mom has an iPad, too.
There could be five of us.
I am hamstrung to think how this could be anything other than an utter disaster.
Maybe that's what they're going for.
Is that possible?
I mean, Apple does have a list of disasters.
Maybe they need to update that.
It also does not update to iOS 17.
What is the selling point?
I mean, it seems like it would drive families nuts, like parents getting impersonated for field trips or something.
You know, that kind of stuff.
Let me read how it sounds in the press release.
I mean, CNBC story.
Apple said personal voice, that's what it's called, will create a synthesized voice that sounds like a user
and can be used to connect with family and friends.
How about deceive family and friends?
The feature is aimed at users who have conditions that can affect their speaking ability over time.
That's who it's for.
It's for that particular use, and any other use is a misuse.
Right?
You know, I use accessibility features.
Make a point to.
This is what you need.
You need 15 minutes of audio so that the technology can draw upon it.
The feature will use local machine learning technology to maximize privacy.
I'm glad they're maximizing privacy.
But, you know, we're all on the radio, okay?
Need I remind you that our voices are what go out over the air.
Anybody, anybody out there can get 15 minutes of any of us and do whatever they feel like with this technology.
And you know what?
You have my permission.
Whoever is going to play with this, because it's not going to be me.
Not going to be me, at least not immediately.
But if you can do something funny or interesting or constructive, let us know.
OTH at 2600.com.
We'd love to hear what you come up with with personal voice.
And it's all part of a larger suite of accessibility improvements for iOS devices,
including a new assistive access feature that helps users with cognitive disabilities
and their caretakers more easily take advantage of iOS devices.
You know, it's all really nice, fun, and good.
There's no criticism at all whatsoever in this news story here.
But, you know, that's what we do here on this show is we look at the flip sides of these things.
Go ahead, Alex.
This could be an absolute disaster.
I mean, I don't really understand why they would roll something out like this.
I mean, I guess, you know, in certain circumstances, you know, people like Stephen Hawking come to mind who would,
you know, this would have been really helpful to him, presumably.
Well, he was alive.
You know, instead of, I guess you would still have to tap out everything character by character from his chair in order for it to have been said.
But it just would have been said in a voice more similar to his, whatever that would have been.
But in any event, what I've always thought is if you could combine some kind of business email compromise scam,
you know, where you're impersonating, let's say, a high-ranking member of your company,
together with some kind of, like, voicemail hacking and voice impersonation,
that would be such an incredibly effective way to steal money from a company, right?
And this has already happened in the past.
There are actually some cases, I think, that were litigated because they were claims to a cyber liability insurer that involved the impersonation
or the use of a deepfake voice recording of the CEO of a subsidiary of another company
that was then used to essentially shift over some banking arrangements and some nascent payments that had to be made.
And the victim company lost a lot of money because of the impersonation of this CEO's voice.
If you think about people like us, we're on the radio very often, but lots of people go and talk at conferences.
Lots of people go and speak on panels or presentations.
And so it wouldn't be very difficult at all to piece together 15 minutes of audio of any CFO or CEO or even people that work in accounts payable, perhaps.
You could find enough video or audio of them in order to train this thing and then allow you to use it maliciously in some kind of attack.
So I think this is, if it's rolled out in the way in which the CNBC story seems to imply that it's going to be rolled out and so accessible,
I feel like this could very easily facilitate massive amounts of fraud.
And and that's not something that is really difficult to foresee.
I mean, this is these are issues that have been out there percolating for a while.
So I think malicious actors, you know, the bad guys, the threat actors are going to see this as a great complement to their preexisting tool set.
I mean, they often do. And the thing that I was thinking of was, you know, Emmanuel, when you were working with some of the AI voices, right,
you were feeding chat GPT stuff into the AI voices to give chat GPT voice.
Oh, well, no, actually, that was not chat GPT. That was simply that was a text to speech converter.
My apologies. OK, so the text to speech converter and what we learned eventually was that the text to speech converter cannot pronounce my name correctly.
That's right. That's right. It would say Hila, I believe.
So unless we fed it carefully. So if you have, you know, something that is a little more complicated to pronounce.
Right. I think that could feed its own set of problems into it.
And, you know, as much as they can try to make it sound like me, for example, if I can't say my name right, that's a problem right there.
But that was just my first thought, which is, yes.
Go ahead, Rob. There was a very interesting experiment done with this a few days ago by a site called U7 Radio.
And I think a lot of people here remember the now long departed radio host Art Bell, who used to host the show Coast to Coast AM.
And U7 Radio is a site full of Art Bell enthusiasts.
And what they did was they took transcripts of a bunch of Art Bell's old shows, trained a chat GPT instance on them,
and then used AI based voice imitators to take that transcript of what the chat GPT generated into audio and basically made a new episode of Coast to Coast AM that's entirely generated and performed by AI.
Oh, wow.
And it's a hell of an interesting thing, and it's about two hours long.
You can get this at u7radio.org, or it's also on archive.org.
And it's uncanny, and you have to really pay attention to notice the weak spots in the AI's presentation.
Someone who didn't know any better could listen to this and think it was a genuine episode of the show.
It's got a fake art.
It's got fake callers.
The subject matter seems to make sense until you really start paying attention to it and realize they're kind of talking nonsense.
You know, this isn't the first I've heard something like this in the rap world.
I heard somebody was able to program Tupac to sing a Biggie song, which would have caused a war normally.
But it's really believable.
But it's all done artificially.
I don't know where I fall on that one because it might sound really good, but it's not real.
It didn't really happen.
What is reality?
We're really getting philosophical here.
But in just a few months since this hit the public, we're being hit with an awful lot to handle.
Yeah, I think because there's so much audio and that example specifically for us would be a problem that I don't even really like talking about it because I'm imaginative and creative enough.
You know, why feed ideas?
I don't want to be bothered.
You know, most people don't want to be bothered by people abusing technology.
So I think there's real risk.
And if you take steps to kind of protect yourself, that's the kind of stuff that's going to protect you.
So I don't know.
I mean, sitting around talking about how voice could be used to upend your life.
I mean, that's just something I'm just not going to bargain with.
Well, I mean, that's what we do.
We always figure out ways to abuse technology and ways to make it stronger, ways to make it better.
And ways to not just believe whatever it is that we are confronted with, because, you know, a large amount of the time it's fake or it's got ulterior motives.
Speaking of impersonating people, this story from a site called Hack Read, Facebook, the popular social media platform owned by Meta, recently.
Was that necessary?
Did you need to explain what Facebook was?
Who hasn't heard about Facebook?
Yeah, we know it's the popular social media.
It's like saying, you know, the sun, the big bright object that you see in the sky in the daytime.
You don't need it.
You don't need to say that.
Sorry.
Don't mean to edit on the air.
Anyway, Facebook recently encountered a glitch that resulted in unintended friend requests being sent to users.
The horror.
When they when they visited certain profiles, this technical oversight generated a mix of amusement and confusion among users.
It's a fine line between those two realms.
It temporarily disrupted the practice of Facebook stalking.
That sounds like a good thing.
The bug not only impacted user privacy, but also raised concerns about the company's ongoing workforce reduction plans.
Meta swiftly acknowledged the Facebook glitch, issued an apology, citing it as a consequence of a recent app update.
The company stated the bug, as I said, had been fixed, ensuring the intended friend request would no longer occur.
Users who were affected received an apology for any inconvenience caused.
Yeah.
They said, we fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly.
We stopped this from happening.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
And apparently, people are worrying about the breach of privacy.
In certain cases, the glitch led to friend requests being sent to individual users we're trying to block.
In other words, people that were supposedly being blocked were sending friend requests, which is very upsetting to people who are blocking them, obviously.
That glitch served as a reminder of the potential risks associated with online platforms and the need for stringent privacy settings.
And, yeah, you know, we see these stories about Facebook all the time and about how people's accounts are taken over and compromised.
I guess this is just a version of that.
I'm looking at another story here from one of the ABC channels about this poor person who lost 15 years of memories.
Yeah, it all started when she received a private message from what she thought was one of her friends, but the friend had been hacked.
And when she clicked on a link, her account was hacked as well.
Never click on the links.
They immediately changed the recovery phone number, email, so that whoever's account, they can't recover their account, according to a security expert.
She said the hackers then sent out this message to her friends, claimed she made money using Bitcoin, urging them to invest.
And they clicked on it, and they were compromised as well.
And here's the thing.
This is what drew me to this particular story, is that the person who was victimized here, her main complaint is that Facebook has absolutely no way to reach them.
There's no customer support to talk to a person to resolve this.
They automate so many processes, so many of the things that you're able to change with your account.
And oftentimes, these are critical things that become difficult to undo.
You reach out to the company, you try to get that personalized customer service, and you wait months and months before you're at the head of the queue.
And that makes it almost impossible to correct these kinds of intrusions.
And then you have people who literally have lost 15 years of memories.
That should never happen.
First of all, you can always revert.
You can always go back to months ago, years ago even.
So there's no reason for somebody to lose everything.
And the other thing is that people should not put their entire lives onto social media.
Social media should always have something local that you control, because Facebook could disappear tomorrow for one reason or another.
But this whole lack of customer service, I've noticed this in many, many places.
Many of the big tech companies these days try calling somebody at Google, try calling somebody at Facebook, Twitter.
Hey, we've been having issues with Twitter because we're trying to get that Hope username.
There's no humans to speak to.
And we finally tricked somebody into answering us because the Hope username has been unused for years.
We never had it, but somebody did, and they stopped using it.
And we figured we run the Hope conferences.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a Twitter username that said Hope?
So Elon Musk said, yeah, we're getting rid of all the accounts that aren't being used.
Sounded like a made-in-heaven type of a thing.
So we got through to somebody and asked them, well, how do we get to the head of the line for this particular account?
And we just were met with the same, I'm sorry, we cannot help with inactive accounts.
We cannot assign inactive accounts.
And the point is, it's an inactive account.
That's what you're saying you're doing is deleting inactive accounts.
And all we're asking is, how do we get that inactive account for the organization that has the same name as the account?
Before some mega corporation does and squats on it.
So I hear this.
I hear this in many, many places that people are trying to get customer service.
You know, it's not a question of a company being too small, not having the funds to run some kind of customer support.
These companies are making billions.
They're doing quite well.
And we're the product.
We're the ones that are making that possible.
So I think a little customer service is in order on many, many fronts.
Yes, Alex.
This is a problem, not just for customers.
But, you know, think about these these platforms.
I mean, they we've known since 2016 that, you know, sophisticated cyber adversaries have used the social media platforms to do really bad things like interfere with our democratic processes and elections.
That they are used to propel massive fraud that's inflicted on people when it comes to things like cryptocurrency scams.
That, like you said, Emmanuel, people lose 15 years of their memories and photos.
Their life savings essentially can be wiped out as part of a scam.
And when you're even when you're trying to report malicious activity or criminal activity on these platforms, there's nobody there often at the other end of the line.
Or use their their abuse reporting line.
It goes into some ticketing system.
And who knows when you're going to get some kind of response?
It can it can be days.
It can be weeks.
But it's frankly unacceptable when we know that these platforms are used for so many, so many bad things.
Maybe it's time, given the profit margins that we're seeing at the moment, to take a page from how insurance companies are regulated.
I think about this in the sense, you know, insurance companies are required to have some minimum amount of reserves on hand.
So that if somebody makes a claim, you know, there's money out, you know, that's on hand in order to pay out those claims.
And those reserves are very, very heavily regulated from state to state.
And I know that there are some insurance colleagues of ours that are probably listening to the show.
We'd love to hear from them at overtime, if possible, on this issue.
But what if the same type of resource reserve regulation applied to social media platforms where you had to have a certain number of people on hand to answer your customers' questions?
Because, you know, that digital digital threats can spill over into physical violence.
It can cause things like insurrections at the Capitol, election interference.
We've seen, you know, pretty clearly how things can go wildly out of hand in places like Burma and Myanmar as well.
So, you know, maybe it's high time that we force them to have these types of employees on hand.
Because there's really no excuse for them not to, given the profit margins that you mentioned.
Absolutely. It's called responsibility, and I think it's time we hold them to that.
Speaking of accounts that are being deleted after a period of inactivity, now Google is saying they're going to be deleting accounts that are inactive for two years or more.
This, of course, is raising some concern about if that applies to YouTube videos, because YouTube is owned by Google.
But for now, I think we're talking about Gmail accounts.
Now, they're saying that they're doing this as a way to prevent spam.
I get more spam from Gmail than I think anywhere else.
But their blog post says that abandoned accounts are at least 10 times less likely than active accounts to have two-step verification set up.
And once they get compromised, they become vectors for spam and identity theft.
Deleting old accounts and freeing up storage is also probably a good way to cut costs, which has been a thing at Google lately.
That's according to this Ars Technica article.
Anyone else see a problem with this?
They're basically saying that if an account is set up and is sending spam, it's okay.
It's fine. No problem at all.
The accounts that aren't doing anything, those are the ones that must be deleted because they might be turned into an account down the road.
But they're not doing anything to actually deal with the spam problem that exists currently.
They're trying to simply delete accounts that don't have two-factor authentication, haven't done anything in two years,
on the notion that one day it will be taken over and there will be even more spam generated.
But I don't think it does anything to deal with all the accounts that are currently sending spam right now.
Anyone else have a problem with that?
The long and the short of it is that if you were okay not using it for two years, is there really anything in that account that you truly need?
But I can see where this is going to hurt people who weren't prepared, like things left in a Google Drive,
who people might think, oh, I have that somewhere, old photos, old whatever, and that's going to disappear.
Old emails, things like that.
We've long talked about on this program the issue of when somebody passes away, what happens to their digital self,
and how we really need to be aware that for those of us who remain after a loved one passes,
we need to not only go through their physical items, but go through their digital items as well
and make sure we have backups of anything that's there that we want to keep.
Apart from that, I remember just out of curiosity signing into an old Yahoo account
and seeing nothing in the inbox but spam bots talking to each other.
Would that be a loss? I don't think it really would, but we have to be aware of what that means.
I can just imagine people panicking over this.
People have been locked out of their accounts for one reason or another, realizing that's going to be deleted.
And, of course, they can't reach anybody in customer service to help them regain control.
The Great Google Account Purge is officially scheduled for December of 2023.
And, of course, people will get plenty of emails telling them this.
But, of course, that doesn't do you any good if you can't get into your account.
So there should be some drama in the months ahead as this date approaches.
Yes, Alex, go ahead.
The other issue that comes to mind for me is how are they going to determine whether or not an account is inactive?
What constitutes inactive here?
A lot of people have Gmail accounts that they're just forwarding the mail somewhere else.
That's true.
Well, okay, this is how you can tell Google that you are still there.
Reading or sending an email.
And, again, I don't know what that means if you have your email forwarded someplace else.
I guess if you send an email and it goes through their servers, maybe that counts.
Also using Google Drive.
Watching a YouTube video.
And what they mean by that is watching a YouTube video as logged in from your Google account.
If you're logged in to your Google account, then I think that should count as activity on its own.
Downloading an app on the Google Play Store.
Using Google Search.
Again, logged in.
Using Sign In with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service.
It's relatively easy to do any of these things.
But I think, you know, all they have to say is just log in.
Log in to your Google account, which is part of your Gmail account, and we know you're still there.
Go ahead, Alex.
I think the obvious import of all of this is that they want you to be logged in to your Google account
so that they can amass data about your activities across all of your devices, across your browsers, across everything you're doing.
I mean they're just basically giving people some kind of reason to re-log in so they can collect more data.
Exactly, yes.
And if you use Google without logging in, which you can do and which I encourage people to do, they don't like that.
Because they're not really gathering – they can still get your IP, but they can't get your username.
They don't know exactly who you are.
And so many people – you read about the people whose histories have been searched by the authorities
because they committed some kind of a crime or are suspected of something.
Those are people who were signed in searching on Google.
If you're not signed in, it becomes a lot harder for any authority to figure out what it is you're interested in
or looking up or collaborating on.
And you might say, okay, it's criminal behavior.
They get what's coming to them.
But in many cases, it's activism.
It's people fighting for democracy in some country, some place.
And they have the same risks to face for other reasons.
Yes, Rob?
The other population I just thought of that this could affect is people who are arrested and have to serve a jail sentence,
maybe spend a couple of years away from connectivity.
And so if someone in that situation leaves behind a Google account and is gone for more than two years,
when they come back, it'll be gone.
That's true. That's a good point. I never even thought of that. Wow.
Okay.
A story about ChatGPT that was posted on Forbes.
This was apparently going viral over Reddit the past weekend.
This particular post said,
My professor revealed to us that a student in his class used ChatGPT to write their essay,
got a zero, and was promptly suspended.
And all he had to do, all the professor had to do was ask ChatGPT if it wrote the essay.
Yeah, and so that is putting people into a panic.
But I think we can all say with some degree of authority that it's nonsense,
that you can't just ask artificial intelligence,
is this artificial intelligence, and get a truthful answer.
What you can count on is some professor thinking,
Hey, you know, this is the way to put the fear of the Lord into my students
that they don't ever use ChatGPT to write an essay by telling them that this happened to somebody,
and they'll start wondering if they're next.
You can do that, but try it.
Have something written by ChatGPT, feed it right back into it, and say,
Did you write this?
They're not going to own up to it.
They won't.
And there are supposedly apps out there that will detect this.
I fed one of my own pieces into it,
and it told me it was written by ChatGPT.
It lied.
And artificial intelligence got credit for writing something that I wrote,
unless I'm actually part of some experiment that I haven't yet realized.
These are the questions we're all going to be facing in months and years, decades ahead.
And I think you're seeing a degree of panic everywhere,
in newsrooms, in college professor lounges.
People are worried that there's going to be a lot of cheating.
But I think if you're awake, if you're paying attention,
you'll be able to figure it out.
You'll be able to see.
You'll find the signs in one way or another.
Kyle?
Yeah, in that instance, I think that might be just a bit of subterfuge,
so that they think that this is so simple,
but maybe in actuality it's to hide the tools that they might have access to in academia.
Because they've been doing software-based recognition for plagiarism and so forth
in higher education for quite some time.
So I would not put it past the kinds of developers that provide these tools for university
and educational environments that they're trying to add on or make modules
or ways of incorporating some of the new tools that use this stuff.
But I don't think it is as drag and drop as that teacher may have said.
Yeah, plagiarism is easy.
It's easy to detect that because you're looking for the same words.
You're looking for a similar sentence structure.
And here it's a bit more creative.
But there's other ways to tell, too.
Even if you can't tell for sure if your student has used ChatGPT to put something together,
you'll know if they can't actually explain what they're talking about.
Apart from just being nervous, if they actually don't have a grasp of the subject, you'll know.
There's other ways besides what is being written on a piece of paper or on a disk
to determine if somebody is actually cheating or not.
Absolutely.
There was a reply to the Reddit post about this that blew up on the ChatGPT subreddit.
And a reply by someone called MyRedShoelaces says,
I've put decade-old college essays into ChatGPT 4 and asked who wrote it.
GPT 4 claims it wrote them.
Even after I tell it to correct itself because I wrote them, it will initially apologize.
But when asking it again in the same conversation, it will claim it wrote them again.
AI detection is a load of utter BS.
So it goes on to discuss that ChatGPT is a large language model, and it's not in itself an AI detector.
Its job is to answer your questions with text that's somewhat shaped like a reasonable answer.
It doesn't fact-check those, as we've explored very much on this program over the past months.
It doesn't make sure that it's correct.
It just constructs something that the algorithm thinks would be an answer to that question.
Now, ChatGPT, it's a big, fat phony. That's what it is.
Absolutely.
It's a big, fat phony.
But it wants you to think that it did it, right?
Uh-huh.
If it's a language-learning model, anything it grabs, it's like the Borg, basically.
It assimilates everything.
So if you give ChatGPT something, it's going to think it wrote it.
It's going to think it's part of itself, right?
Isn't that how it works?
I don't know.
I feel like if you made a limited mode of this, and there are other types of these language models out there.
There's a lot being made of some of the open-source versions of this that are emerging.
I don't know if we have any stories about that, but we can cover it in detail later.
But if you made a sample that was only trained on a class of 33 people that only write and have written their samples,
and that's all it's based on, and maybe some other dictionaries or something really, really pared down.
And then one of those 33 comes through with something that it's not recognizing.
I guess that's something that they would use as a tool for plagiarism, but I feel like if you limited it enough,
it would notice an aberration in one of those 33 that it had a very limited sample of,
instead of having something like GPT-4 or Infinity or whatever they're on now.
Instead of that being so comprehensive, if you made it narrow, I feel like it would maybe be able to see that,
like, hey, this is not the way this person has used language before.
And I predict certainty that it's wrong or fake in some way.
Well, we're going to have to leave it there as far as this particular conversation.
We can pick this up in overtime at Channel 2600 on YouTube at 8 o'clock.
Please join us there.
I wanted to spend the last couple of minutes of the program discussing what's on all of our minds,
especially you guys out on Skype land.
Eurovision.
What was your favorite Eurovision piece this weekend?
Really?
Nobody?
Nothing?
I didn't watch it.
Are we that American that we have no interest in what's going on in foreign lands?
Well, you know, I read the FT and things, but, you know, Eurovision doesn't.
You're trying to compare reading Financial Times.
Okay, fine.
Yeah, okay.
Tell us, Emanuel.
Well, I was giving you the opportunity to basically say if there were any pieces.
Because, okay, what Eurovision is is this international competition, mostly in Europe,
but they also include Israel and Australia.
It's basically each country has a song.
It's about 40 countries, and they have a competition over an entire weekend.
Every song has a video attached to it.
No song is more than three minutes long.
You can look at all the videos on YouTube.
And inside of a week, I got to memorize all of these songs.
They're that catchy.
They're a throwback to your childhood where every song was something that you remembered.
And the thing is, what I found amazing is the activism that you see basically raising its head in all the expression.
For instance, Ukraine won last year, and as a winner, they got to host it this year.
But, of course, they couldn't host it because of the war, so it was hosted in Liverpool.
And Liverpool just pulled out all the stops for Ukraine, putting Ukrainian flags everywhere
and just showing all kinds of support.
It's a really beautiful show of just, you know, art and music and activism, like I said.
Anyway, one of my favorites was Croatia.
And I really thought these guys did an incredible job with an anti-war song.
The band is called Let Three.
Now, they caused a bit of a stir online with a drag meets military pomp extravaganza.
And you just have to watch the video to see for yourself just what these guys got up to.
Basically, they said we're a bit surprised at people's reaction, but when it pays off, it's so exciting.
The inspiration behind the song, which we're going to close out the show with,
they revealed it came about through members of the band putting on an adaption of an anti-war play.
And through that, the idea of making a small and condensed anti-war rock opera came.
Mama S.C. is the name of the song, and it's the result of that process.
They said we're presenting an army of love.
It's military, but it's positively military.
You know, looking at this video, I'm reminded of Johannes more than anything.
And you guys, you know, anyone who's been to Hope, you need to watch this,
because I think you'll definitely feel the same thing.
It is the right time to send a message like this without any further explanation.
And bandmate Damir Maltinovich added, it is the army of my ass,
and you can just interpret that however you wish.
But just a couple of things about the band Leth3,
so that people can appreciate how they basically stand up to authority and just do what they please.
And I hope that's what our listeners always do.
Leth3 was formed in the city of Rijeka in the late 1980s.
Yes, they've been around for quite some time.
The band soon gained a reputation for their unprecedented, controversial,
and sometimes obscene performances, exemplifying the eclectic nature of Rijeka's music scene.
And now I want to see that place more than anything.
The band's members have voiced support for liberal causes such as women's and LGBT rights,
and have taken a vocal stance against conservative politics and the Catholic Church.
In 1997, the band released their fifth album titled Outrageous or Unheard of in English.
It was distributed as a CD, but it had nothing recorded on it.
Nothing at all.
Nonetheless, 350 copies of the album were sold.
Just one copy of their follow-up, Jedina, the only one, was initially made.
The band refused to sell or distribute it.
One copy.
The record company eventually released the album in slightly different versions.
And as a protest to that, the band staged a fake suicide-by-firing squad in the middle of the square in Zagreb.
As you can see, record companies probably have all kinds of nightmares working with them.
In late 2000, the band unveiled a four-meter tall statue titled Grandma's Penis,
depicting a woman with a horseshoe mustache and a one-meter long phallus.
It was exhibited in various cities through Croatia.
Yeah, Eurovision is not exactly what you thought it was, is it?
No, it's really interesting and really a whole lot of fun to just witness.
In December 2006, the band was sanctioned by police after performing naked at an open-air concert in Varazdin.
The band's defense, that they had not been naked because they had corks in their anuses, did not convince the judge.
The court found them guilty and fined each member approximately 50 euro.
On December 14th, 2008, the live afternoon talk show Nedjelom i Djeva was cut short by the host
after two of the band members simulated the ejection of a cork from their rectums.
Yeah, and it's all kinds of other things as well.
December 9th last year, Let Three was announced as one of 18 participants in the regional competition
to come up with a song for Eurovision, the Croatian national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest of 2023.
And their song Mama SC, which we're about to hear, was selected overwhelmingly by the crowd in Croatia.
And this is what we have times 40. That's what Eurovision is.
So next year, folks, I hope people in America, it's hard to find, but you can watch it in various streaming platforms.
It's so worth it, and you feel like you're a part of something even bigger.
So that's why I get into things like this. It's a different, unique system.
So we're going out with the Croatian song from Eurovision.
We're going to join you again at 8 o'clock on YouTube, channel 2600, or just click on the link on the 2600.com web page
and write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
And don't forget to support WBAI.org, WBAI 99.5 FM, and call 212-209-2950 to make a pledge.
And we will see you next, in two weeks. We are off next week.
Here's let three.
Try nine.
You'll be a moron.
You'll be a moron.
You'll be a moron.
Try nine.
You'll be a moron.
You'll be a moron.
Try ten.
You'll be moron.
Try 12.
You'll be a moron.
You'll be a moron.
Try 11.
I'm a little psychopath, I'm a little psychopath, 
I love you, I love you, I love you I love you, I love you, I love you
And welcome everybody to off-the-hook overtime here on YouTube you've made it to channel 2600 and
Let's see if other people have made it as well. Kyle. Did you make it over? Yeah, I'm here. Okay, good good
Who else I forgot who we oh, yeah Rob. Did you make it?
Yes, indeed. I did and looks like Gila made it as well. I did indeed and Alex
I'm present. Okay, and again for the first time ever we have
Live chat enabled on the channel something that we have resisted saying it's probably a bad idea
But I cannot see what the hell bet an idea actually is
Gila, can you report on your responsibility so far as moderator? Have you met any challenges?
I would like to
thank everyone in the chat for their forbearance and
For in fact listening and stopping like the good little hackers you all are
And oh, yeah, that's that's going to ensure compliance. I
Actually just read that right off the chat
I do however have a question as
Promised I will push it to you off to overtime now. Oh, we have now we have another source of question
So that's the purpose of chat. That's that's why we have chat. So exactly
So the question was do you make more money from a lifetime subscription or a lifetime of subscriptions? Oh
Does the magazine benefit more from people subscribing every year or a lifetime? It's you know, it's hard to say. It really depends on
How you look at it what kind of shape you're in well, I mean 10 well, I'm as far as they go
It's this if every person
Who's spending the money?
But as far as the magazine obviously
It's more of an initial benefit to have a lifetime subscription because you know, you're paying for however long we're around for in the future
Whereas, you know ten years down the road
Nothing is coming in but yet we're still sending you things so, you know in the future
Hopefully we have more people that are doing similar things or we have other income sources
but in the
initial period right now, obviously we benefit
Mostly from lifetime subscriptions and and that goes digitally and
Physically as well. So that's that's the answer to that question. Yes, Rob
Yeah, I mean another important factor in this question is
How long you choose to survive because a lifetime subscription is until the magazine or the subscriber?
expires
so, you know try and try and live long live clean live well and
You'll be more likely to get your money's worth out of a lifetime subscription. That's true. That's true
Yeah, lifetime is you know, it's hard to define whose lifetime when does the lifetime end?
It's yeah
We're getting into these metaphysical discussions again. Take your subscriptions. Seriously. Come on. It's like we have had people
Donate their lifetime subscriptions back
Well, actually I should say we've had people on behalf of those who have passed on
Donate it back and ask if we can give it to somebody else and we have so
Lifetime continues even after a lifetime sometimes a
Life well planned. Yes. Yeah, we will accommodate. All right. Good question. Good question
I should also point out we have a phone number
More traditionally if you want to call us our phone number is eight zero two three two one four two two five eight
Oh two three two one hack and then we can hear your voice as well
And you can ask us even more questions there or tell us things that are going on with you
But of course, you know, feel free to use the chat. However, you feel it should be used
We want to see if it's something that's compatible what we want to do
Exactly
It is so I'm sorry. We did have a question in the chat
Which is what is slow mode?
Another another question, huh? Wow, the questions are just coming in. I think I don't resent this at all
I think it puts it on delay. I saw that as well. I don't know what it means
I know what it means because I set it up slow slow mode means that
You have to wait a certain amount of time between posts
So in other words, you can't come up with a thought a second after another thought
You have to wait a certain amount of time and I don't know what the time is
I think it's 30 seconds, but it's 30 seconds. It's it's a way to throttle
the flood of posts so we were kind of you know, trying to get ahead of
Certain situations it's a failsafe for exuberance
Yeah
Those people who post questions one word at a time and hit return after each word
You won't be able to do that
You'll have to wait 30 seconds between each each attempt because it'll drive the moderators crazy. Otherwise
You want to take this phone call? We have a we have a phone call. Good evening. You're on off the hook over time
Go ahead. Yes. Okay. Here we are. Wow. It sounds like rebel rebel. Where are you now?
Home
Okay, I'm leaving Russia until June 1st, oh we thought maybe you were there now
No, I'm leaving June 1st. I'm sorry for sounding disappointed. I didn't mean it that way
So June 7th, I'll try and call and if I'm not tired, I mean last year
I was tired and was 4 o'clock in the morning. So I didn't call him. That's fine. It's a poor excuse
I mean, how often do we get a call from Russia? I know you did that when when you were overseas
Yeah, I didn't use that excuse. I stayed up
Right. Yes it up. I'll try and step
Let's see. I'll say let's see. Oh, I'm gonna do not all this guys are many US and
Yeah, you're on you're on many do not call list of my understanding
But you you know what they do now, you know
You they have fines for people who call if you're on the do not call us and you uh, you want your calls?
Consumers they you know, they have the right to report the the the entity and find you
No
I'm reading the chat. All right. See this is what happens. He's reading the chat while he's talking to us. He's distracted
We're not we're not getting 100% rebel here. We need we need all of rebel not just, you know, 60% of them and you can
You could you could
AI calling and doing telemarketing
You've noticed
Artificial intelligence doing the telemarketing they have like recording thing, you know, would you like you know?
This is I see that you're on many or whatever
I mentioned this before and then you'll they'll wait for you to say yes
You know, whatever or if you do go to a person like, you know, like if you say yes
I'd like to see somebody about the thing and it'll be the person will be like in the Far East or Asia or something
So you can't tell him I want to do not call it. Please. Don't call me
You just you know, because they're in Asia or the Far East rebel
Damn it rebel. We have the same conversation
Every time you call us, I'm wondering if you're artificial intelligence because you keep telling us the same things
Okay, but maybe some new people don't have now
Let's say some listen some telemarketers have numbers that don't allow duplicate calls
Like when I I've been getting a lot of telemarketing calls on my cell phone
So I would call the I like to like call the telemarketer
I like to like we know the call and then put it on three way
But I on my cell phone I could do like five way
I could put that call on hold and then you know conference another one in and you know
I mean I could do that like a five party line type thing, but it doesn't it says
Multiple calls are not allowed on this line or this whatever
Was that a question
Well, no, it's a mention, okay, it's a mention it's a good mention let's move on to the next mention
I like mention as a noun one one drinkable. I'll be drinking vodka when I go to Russia. I'm drinking vodka right now
Let's see, um
Okay, what else can I say? Let's add does anybody want to ask me a question on the chat? Okay, let's look
No, you can't you can't cross the two, okay, that's against the rules you can't cross the chat into the into the phone. No
If someone asks a question here, here's how it works. Somebody asked a question on the chat
Then Gila will mention it and bring it up to you
All right, you can't talk directly to the chat that I'll let the first one go but in the future that's a violation
Okay, let's see. What else?
Um
Good call. Let's see. Shall I um, let's demonstrate something
It's what we all wanted isn't it
That's my
Hold on. Yeah, we're gonna be put on hold
there's gonna be a long period of silence and then we're gonna be connected to something we can't disconnect from and
eventually
No, I'm not gonna call that
Let's call this torture, I don't give the phone number out. Okay. I'm not gonna get the phone number. We know it's in Washington DC now
That's not fair
The six to nine exchange. Oh my god, you have the exchange. You just have four more numbers to go
Okay, I'm dialing the phone number hold on
I
Manual
Yes, I'm still here. No
Okay, that's the we can help you find another business in the area. What's recording? What happened?
You're just telling us what it said
Yeah, because I can't three-way because it doesn't because it doesn't um, it doesn't it wouldn't let me it's okay rebel again
We've had this conversation before if it doesn't supervise you can three-way only three-way after it connects
So if you can't connect you can't three-way
Is it me is it me
It's just
You've been clear about it, I think you've made the case
Hold on
What do you think we're doing?
Why do people tell you to hold on when you don't have a choice?
You know would it work attempt to reach you your business will possibly receive up to twenty six thousand dollars
No, I completely maintained on payroll during the years 2020 and our 2001
You will not be required to pay it back and it is not alone. Okay, this is this is spam that we hear all the time
I don't know what you're your company what you're sharing
Go ahead Gila if you can all I was gonna say is that when rebel says
Hold on. It does sort of remind me of when you're on the subway and they're like we're not moving right now
Thank you for your patience, yeah, there's nowhere to go. Yeah, I'm in a tube
underground
I'm stuck here and I'm not patient when I'm there either. So I don't know what they're thanking me for
They're hoping for my patience. They're not thanking me for my patience
Yes rebel rebel you're back
We could always accept a
Go ahead Gila. Oh
It's gonna say we have another question from the chat. I don't know if it's rebel specific
Let me see if we can get a clarification on that
Well, so now we have to ask questions of the people asking questions before we can ask a question of rebel
This was gonna be new. It's always just you know, our time is valuable on YouTube. It takes a learning here
We're learning we're learning live radio
Hmm
So
Look Gary answer the question and then I'll ask
Go ahead Kyle if we had, you know, some numbers to check out of interest you could easily, you know, send us a list that you
were
Curious about and and we could arrange to you know rebel if you're on the chat
You can investigate you can post actual phone numbers on the chat and nobody's gonna stop you from doing that
People might actually be able to look them up leave us alone and we'll just go do our radio thing
That's even better. Yeah
Speaking of radio how much like WB I like one WB. I was on like a Wall Street and they haven't
how did they get from like broadcast from like the
Studio on 8th Avenue or walk you through the Empire State Building. It's wherever the transmitter is. Oh, I know this one
oh, they know yeah, they they use phone lines and
You know some radio stations use microwave links, but we use phone lines for a while
I think we use broadband even but it was it was part of that temporary site
Transition from from Empire State to the other transmitter, but for the most part, it's a dedicated circuit
Right. And now how did the microwave? Why would they use microwave?
It was people like in the country use microwave like in the you don't you don't have to pay for a phone line if you use
Microwave and you have a microwave dish and you have line of sight
So there's that oh, yeah, just pay for the energy
Would
Would have a micro how far does microwave reach like again line of sight? Yeah, you know, you might recall
Years ago when when microwave links were more popular with phone calls on highways
You would see antennas maybe every 10 miles with all kinds of dishes up on top and they were they were connecting to each other
Yeah, if you ever recall the giant horn the big huge
Antennas there there every so so many miles especially in the Midwest and very flat areas
You can see the relics like sort of the old equipment that's that's still in place
but that stuff would carry a huge a huge band of
calls and other information and it really is limited by just the the conditions and the the aim and
Energy used you remember the company MCI microwave communications Inc. That's what that stood for, right?
You know in Union 9th and 10th Avenue in Manhattan and like 50th Street or 50
Something and even 18th building with a with it on the roof. It's like microwaves. Yeah, they were heavily into that kind of stuff
Yeah, that was their gym
Sorry
Because I'm not working more do they just have that you'd have to go up to the roof and then find out there
They're retired in place
they're either
seldom used not used
or
Soon to not be used. I don't know but most most of the very very large ones the smaller microwave is used
and there are numerous types of
antenna, but
It's it's an aging technology because there's so many other
Competitive medium now Kayla. How is that? How's that question progressing?
I asked the asker if it was for rebel or for everybody have not gotten an answer
So I will push it to the show but rebel pick one dude. You're either on the phone with us or in the chat
Oh what he's on the chat. I'm not looking at the chat
So I'll be taking other this is this is why I sound so focused because I've got my eyes closed and I don't even see
Anybody I chose not to be in the chat. Yeah, so
You shouldn't be on the chat and on the phone at the same time with us rebel. I'm not on the chat
I'm now asking you a question women, you know the building supposed to ask you a question. Damn it. Let us do our job
Gila it's your it's your turn. Okay. So the question we have been asked is
What do we think about censorship in Ireland? Wait, that's a question for rebel. I
Don't know if it's a rebel specific. You know what you know what that is a question for rebel. Go ahead rebel. Take it
Ireland
I've never been to Ireland. Well, not yet. I'd like to go next year
I've never been to Mars, but I have feelings about censorship on Mars
Okay, um, you know those two big antennas on top of that. So you're just going to ignore the question. Is that it?
Because I don't know the answer. You don't know how you feel about censorship in Ireland
Interesting. I've never been to Ireland. So you have to be someplace to know how you feel about injustice in that place
Wow, that's convenient many dictators would welcome that kind of attitude
Thank you, thank you Gila for a question. Thank you. Whoever has the question
We can I think rebel wants to get out what he's saying now and then once we once we release him
We will address the question ourselves, but go ahead rebel talk about the dishes on the roof or whatever it is that you're talking about
The building that see I think it's an AT&T building or the Westinghouse Union building on like six
Six Avenue and like like Canal Street the big two with two antennas on top of the what is that?
Yeah, I'm gonna get it wrong I think that's an old AT&T building where it might be an old New York telephone building
It's definitely a phone company building. So I'm pretty sure it was on a cover of 20 secondary at one point
The the building to look at though is the Thomas Thomas Thomas Street Thompson Street Thomas
Yeah that building that was in mr. Robot and everything. It's it's the one without any windows
It's from another planet. It's a style of architecture that's used very
Widely in a lot of the telephone company plants and CEOs. So is that brutalist?
It is the brutalist style. Yeah, I love the name brutalist, but that is the one type of utility type of
Construction in every part of this country that exemplifies in a lot of ways that style and one of the only well
There's other you know universities campus and places that borrow that but it's sort of fascinating
That that was and you get strange buildings like that. They look so futuristic yet
They've you know been there for for some time and you have the actual address. I
Think it's 33 Thomas
No, you're giving a different address rebel really what are we talking about? Well, you know what we're talking about that
Maybe somebody can plug that into the Google Maps or something and mr
Robot make sure that we have the right building so we don't send somebody to someone's grandmother's home or something
Go ahead rebel floors yours. Oh the party was at the building without the window. That's on Thompson Street
That's like it is a Thompson's. That's what I was saying. That's awesome. Okay. I'm sure okay
And
That I don't know. I don't know anything about that one. I was wondering about the building on 6th Avenue and
I think it's really interesting like 32 6th Avenue or something. It was like the Western Union building of something or
AT&T long lines, but it has
They occupied the former Western Union building that sounds right, but I don't know that the exact details off top my head
Okay, that's too big antennas on the roof of the building I was just wondering what those were they're strange-looking antennas, but you know
So they're interested in like how radio works and antennas and things like that and you know
There's not a CB radio Cuba Bernie s isn't around anymore
So, I know there's a lot of antennas on top of the the building you're talking about but I don't have a picture
Okay, well, I think it rebel has run out of things to say, you know
It's actually rebel it's not Thompson Street Thomas Street has looked it up
We had it right and then you may just have it wrong and now it's it's 33 Thomas Street. Kyle had it exactly, right?
Yeah
Let this be an example
Let this be an example
Wait, you should be sent to 33 Thomas Street and and and serve time there because it looks like a prison
No, that's okay. It does look like a prison
Street
Alright, well rebel figures out streets
Yeah, it's Thompson Street the Thompson. So I'm talking about the tent the building with the two antennas
I'm not talking about that building. I'm talking about something. You're only talking about what you're talking about. I'm talking about something different
we already talked about the
Church Street. Okay. I don't know how Church Street can be mixed up with with with Thomas Street or turned into Thompson Street, but
33 Thomas Street is the coolest looking building
Right. All right final thought rebel and then we're gonna move on. Let's see
Well, this could take a while
Mm-hmm
Yeah, your laughter is really making me nervous
What else what I thought when I call a lot of the old 800 numbers from off the hook
So I'm like the 90s. It goes to the same thing like the same recording the same like
You know, thank you for calling just for calling today, you know that kind of thing
Yeah, it's called an error message and there are a lot of them. No, it's not an error message
It's one of those um, just for calling today. You can receive, you know, a gift card or whatever or something like that
It's one of those, you know, like it'll hold on. Let me
Yeah, you're saying that every single phone number that we've given out in the past now goes to the same company that's offering coupons I
Think so. Hold on. Let me try. It's not a world. I want to be part of
All right, I'm sorry folks
Carefully at their menu options may have changed because they're recorded for quality assurance. We're very
Big that's why I was listening to that. Oh
You want to hear it again?
Every number like like from like whether you called it in like 91 or 93 or 98
You know, they're like different, you know, like the 1-800-MA-I-N-I-N or
1-800-the-old-18-the-old-number-that-AT&T-used-to-have
You know telephone used to have it all goes to there. Look let it play through let it play through. Okay, so
That's when I hear it what it says
At least they say their menu may have changed as opposed to the ones that lie and say their menus
As our menu options may have changed, you know, they have to record it for quality assurance
Don't have a buddy excited to tell you about a special promotion for select colors
This will only take a moment by answering just a few questions. We will find out if this offer is right for you
All right. All right. Oh
Thank you for calling the Medical Alert Center. This is Jessica on a recorded line. Can you hear me? Okay?
How is this?
Who is this great I'm so confused promotion today you actually have the opportunity to receive a Jessica Jessica
You know, it's that Jessica. Damn it. Will you listen to me?
Let us talk for God's sake
Really important that I get through to you make it really simple for you
We pay for the entire unit itself and then ship it right to your house. I can turn them off. I just realized that
Okay rebel we're giving you one chance to say goodbye and if you don't say goodbye we're gonna say goodbye
rebel
She's proven really annoying
All right rebel that was entertaining thank you for that and we will talk to you next week maybe
Yeah, all right. Take care
Okay. Bye
Of course, we're not on next week, but he's welcome to call in
He'll probably stay in the chat to our phone number despite the temptation to change it remains 802
3 2 1 4 2 2 5 if anyone else out there would like to call us now censorship in Ireland
Censorship in Ireland. I don't like it. I'm not for it. Nah dead set against it
Alex you're strangely quiet on this on the subject. Oh, I think it's terrible. I've read a tiny bit about this and
It seems a lot
Like thought crime like something that would would
be straight out of 1984 or you know, any kind of dystopian type of novel because it
It's really strange. You know, it's about
it's like taking this notion of
Trying to stop people from being offended by anything to some
extreme
side or extreme example of it is really really really bizarre because
It allows essentially from from what I can tell
Somebody be convicted of like inciting hate or spreading hate
simply by
Possessing something like a note or a text message or some kind of writing on a phone or a device
Even if you don't send that to anybody else
So the simple possession of some kind of writing that is not even transmitted to another person
can actually be
Considered to be you can be in possession quote-unquote possession of some kind of hate speech
Well, what if what if we simply write up some some something offensive and distribute it to everybody in Ireland?
Then everybody has it and the whole country has to has to face the charges then
Well, that's interesting issue, right? I mean if you're in possession of it by virtue of having received it. Yes that
You know that you that would have to be some kind of exception I know be terrible
but I mean this whole idea of just simply putting something down and writing as
An idea or a thought even though you know
You might be in a poor in thought or it might be part of a novel or something
But the idea to criminalize putting something down, you know as a note on your phone is totally insane
And and contrary to
You the most basic fundamental principles of things like freedom of speech and association
Expression it's it's pretty hard. It's really really horrible. And as as I understand it
this has
passed with with really without almost any meaningful opposition the
Irish equivalent of the house and I think it has to go into the Senate and this law is expected to pass
And I think it's it's really worse than that too because there are there are things like, you know
Turning the presumption of innocence on its head and people who are in possession
I think of even of this unpublished speech are presumed to
to essentially be guilty and you have to rebut the presumption and
Essentially prove your innocence. So I really don't understand how something that is a
Not political well in the political philosophy sense a liberal democracy
Can't even countenance a law like this. It's nuts. Yeah, when when did Ireland become part of the Deep South? I
Said it's hitting me by surprise. This wouldn't this wouldn't fly anywhere
I think even in the Deep South like I think people would see this for what it is
Some have you been paying attention to the Deep South lately Alex a lot of things that shouldn't fly are flying
I think that I think that even the Deep South would recognize this as as
abhorrent and and contrary to
You know
they believe in the you know in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and you know when it suits them and if they want
To keep flying their Confederate flags. This would this this law would really
Become a big obstacle
So well, we could discuss this for quite some time, but we have another phone call. Good evening here on off the hook overtime. Go ahead
Hey
Yeah, I haven't looked at it myself, but I haven't heard any horror stories yet, so maybe it's okay
Oh, no. No, I think just like the you know, just like the hope conferences and stuff. We'll be respectful
I mean won't tear things up on the first day at least. Mm-hmm
Well, you know the one monitoring it right now, so we'll see if she loses her mind
As far as you know censorship and
I think it's basically about control and power either the people in power want to control the populace or
There they want to promote their beliefs
But it really in my humble opinion. It comes down to me
forcing my
beliefs on to other people
There's many names for it and it's been done all throughout history
I don't think it should continue, but it's very very hard to stop when you have an overwhelming majority
Yeah, well I can see everybody is fascinated by this nobody has anything to say
No
Well, he was the person handling all the other chatting wrong, oh, I'm watching the chat
It sounds like we're all watching the chat and you have something to say I've been talking more than I should
Wow I
Put also in the chat, you know, there's there's a lot of things about the Florida governor against Disney
against schools
You know, it's one of those things that you don't want to
Go off on on a lot of tangents, but it looks like a lot of people
Lately seem to be pushing all kinds of control over
everything from
How you feel to how you want to be to?
What you do with your personal life?
Mm-hmm
Yeah, I mean, you know
One of the stories that I've been looking at in horror over the last couple of days is the story of a teacher in
Florida who who
showed a film that happened to have a gay character in a Disney film and
She's she is facing all kinds of hell now from the state of Florida
for that for showing a film and
Violating a policy which apparently the policy is not to even acknowledge gay people as existing in any way
That is the crime. This is you know, we warn people that they started with one to two
first to third grade
And and this is I think a fifth grade class. So they've expanded already. It's not just about
Quote-unquote woke a speech in books. It's just about existence now. It is spreading like a cancer
So I don't think this is happening in Ireland, but maybe I'm wrong
This this is an evil that is happening right here in our backyard and
We better do something about it or it's going to be out of control before we know it. I
Agree. I mean this teacher was
actually, she had
Had tests for her class and some kids couldn't couldn't finish in time
So they had to go to another room everybody who finished came over to her room
So what she was doing was showing this Disney film as a as a break
They'd already completed their assignment and it was a PG film. There are already
Parent approval flips for the film
But it had a couple of characters that kissed and now she's in trouble Wow
That's the country we're living in right now. It's it's it's it's horrible. I do look good
This is actually me by the way, this is not a YouTube thing
When I was in middle school in the Great Midwest we had
We're supposed to show a movie permission slips about home
We were gonna watch dances with wolves because we'd been doing a whole unit on Native Americans and one kids parents said no
So we had to watch wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, why?
What is it? What is it about dances with wolves that anybody would find offensive?
Their child was only allowed to watch g-rated films. Oh, it was the rating that upset them. Yes
Okay, their their child. We were in eighth grade
I want to say and their child was only allowed to watch g-rated films
So the screening of dances with wolves was canceled and again
This had been like everything we've been studying was building up to watching this particular movie. This was the point
so we had to watch Beauty and the Beast as the capstone of our educational experience and
I shudder to think what would be happening now
Couldn't you just sent the kid on an errand or something while you showed the film to the rest of the kids?
you know or
And this is happening this is happening everywhere
in the Midwest and the Deep South
And guaranteed there are people plotting in New York to do the same thing
So I think what bothers me is
Corporal Max Klinger on mash dressed up as a woman
There's plenty of free stooges cross-dressing. There's plenty of cartoons cross-dressing
There's plenty of just in general in production shows that were cross-dressing and it was seemed. Okay, then
Now it's horrifying. Well, you know, that's what let's read it the Croatian dam
we just played did in their video they they
put on dresses in military outfits as dictators and have just to mess with everybody and
To show support for for cross-dressing the trans community everything and I think in every aspect
We have to do things like this. We have to speak up and never just
Accept it as well. That's the way things are now because it's just not acceptable and
You know, we're gonna have to be loud. We're gonna have to be rude
We're gonna have to you know, fight fire with fire, but you never listen
Well people will listen if you speak if you if you say something if you don't censor yourself
So that's the worst kind of censorship the kind where you impose it upon yourself because you assume
What's going to happen if you do open your mouth?
But you never know you never know who is going to be moved by what you say. I
I
Don't know I don't like the path that we're going towards but
I'm not about to try it get in the car and drive down to Florida to do something about it. Yeah
Well, I don't I don't feel safe in these states where I basically encourage everything everybody to you know
I have as little training as possible and carry as as you know as deadly a weapon as possible
I did this out of their damn minds. I don't know what's going on
They got to sort this out one way or another
But when it comes to freedom of speech, that is something that I I'm not going to shut up about I
Agree
Just but you would think that the people who are at the center of whatever the problem is would see that as well
Yeah, and that it's a problem that we don't want to go down this path
Yeah, no, I don't want to go down the path with these people either they're
hypocrisy and and so forth is as
It's it's beyond absurd and I think just pointing it out and and
Being being honest is is
Being honest about the communities that are being represented and now misrepresented
And just reminding the public that like this this whole like not
Acknowledging certain communities exists is something that has been tried
it is it has been done over the years of the ages of
denying this or
Not accommodating people who are underrepresented or vulnerable communities and it doesn't go well
It ends up it ends up with
Tearing families apart
people
Not finding finding community and and hurting themselves or or
Acting out and hurting others because they don't understand
Why they feel they do or way they do or they don't feel like they have a place in society. I mean, these are
very real consequences of this kind of
Reactionary sort of backlash throw the gays under the bus policy. I mean it was I think
Well ahead of now like win or lose. They were going to go this direction as soon as they
Secured a win a perceived win with
Roe v. Wade
and the Supreme Court that this this
The bathroom issue as it were and and and on from there was going to be a chief
Pill. Yeah that too, but that was going to be a chief mobilizing point because it's personal it's
Taboo in some ways for first for a lot of their base
And that's the thing if it's if you don't want to do it, that's fine you do you this is your right
But you shouldn't make it law
Yeah, and it's hypocritical too because uh, these are the same people that that's a cancelling
You know, they're they're complaining about cancelling when they're the main cancelers. They they say that
People should have the right to do what they want unless it's something that they don't like then all of a sudden
They want big government to come in and regulate
It's um, it's it's hypocrisy to the first degree rob. I think you had something
I did it's just uh, you know of particularly of particular interest to
Us here on this program and our community and our listeners. I think is the hacker communities
role in all of this which is to
Make sure that the lines of communication are kept open make sure the lines of information are kept open
Make sure you just keep educating people as to you know, what's going on
Keep educating people as to how to
how to uh find their way through the mess of nonsensical information out there to to what's real and true and
Um worth basing your your actions on so wherever you live, whatever threats you're under
um
there there is a community out there that uh that you can link up with and
say, uh, you know
be attached to and be part of and contribute to and organize, you know, because
Getting these idiots out of office on everything from the most local of all scales to to the national offices
Is paramount it is huge and I know you know, it takes patience
You got to wait for election day and you have to make sure that people are on the same page
can't afford to have any kind of infighting or
uh, just basically, uh,
fracturing of coalitions, it's um
The one goal the one goal should be get these idiots out of power because look at what they are doing
After that, there's all kinds of other things that we can do and argue about but this is an emergency
We have to get rid of them period alex. Yeah, I think you had your hand up
Yeah, I um, I I think you know this this whole
Laws, so it's really ridiculous in in so many ways, but it could it could be really
Uh detrimental in a lot of ways that we don't think about the knock-on effectiveness if these laws
pop up and then
Television shows and movies and things have to cater to the lowest common denominator of censorship like this
Well will actually affect production down the line if they know that they're these characters can't be shown in florida or something like that
and it's it's just so
uh, frankly horrible and disgusting to me to to try to
Essentially edit out crop out an entire subculture class of people simply because of their
uh their sexuality, it's just
Disgusting on on so many ways
Uh, but I I think you're right though. Emmanuel you're in that
You know like uh, like the parson and the canterbury tales, right?
These guys are guilty of the same vices that they're preaching against
Cancellation
and at the root of all of this though is I think something that
These people who are originalists who believe in the magic of the founding fathers matter there to be treated like some kind of
God-like figure whose knowledge has now somehow extended from the 18th into the 21st century. Their word is is uh,
You know is biblical in nature. Well, the country was founded on the principles of tolerance
Religious tolerance political tolerance
you know and
How they are acting is completely antithetical to those principles. They are being the most intolerant
of
Society and I think if they were to think about what our founding fathers would have said about
censorship based on sexuality well
I don't think that they would approve of it based on the same philosophical principles that they espoused in the bill of rights and
And the declaration of independence we want to be originalists about this we frankly shouldn't give a shit
What anybody else is doing right? You know, yeah, I mean weighing in on people's sexuality. They would not appreciate being uh,
You know treated the same way right into the light
Sorry, absolutely. I remember, you know, there was very much like being
Alex, I don't think you can hear our caller. Go ahead caller. Okay
Go ahead caller you go
I'm sorry. I was saying maybe they wouldn't like being brought out into the light of day
Yeah, yeah, no, no doubt no doubt but you know
Also remember that you know, there was this this notion of you know, state's rights to the states can decide certain
Fundamental things but the whole point of the bill of rights was to set out this territory where um,
You know the federal government could not uh legislate right and the bill of rights originally didn't even apply
To the states remember like the first amendment protections didn't apply the fourth amendment didn't apply to the states but through this
process of incorporation it did apply through the federal judiciary and
Um, and but even these state constitutions had the freedom of expression and things like that association built into it by design
So I think you know, even somebody who was a staunch states rights at activists would have to look at
The the state's constitutions and they all to a certain level
Reflected those same principles that were in the bill of rights
so, uh, I just see this this whole sense of intolerance as being something that
um, we should think of historically as being
completely
Uh anathema to what our founding fathers would have approved of
Okay, and any other any other thoughts from uh from the call?
No, no, no, my name's tim by the way tim in connecticut. Yes
Sorry, it's just you always say doug collard. Well, I do that for everybody. I tried to accept rebel. Okay. No, no, no
As usual keep up the good work and uh, appreciate you opening up the chat and you guys have a great evening
All right, you too. Take care
You have something good night to something to add
I have something to add which is just I think a really
I guess it's my life philosophy at this point about
Anything at this point? It's if someone is doing
something
You don't have to like it
And you don't have to understand it
And you don't have to do it yourself
Your only responsibility is not to be an asshole about it
And
I think that's just a pretty
Pretty
Just a good guideline for life and I I like it a lot. Why the hell couldn't thomas jefferson have said that?
You know, I would have made things so much easier
I would also think by the way, alex, you're talking about the founding fathers
And if they were here today
I feel like human sexuality would probably not even crack the top 50 of the things that they were thinking about right now like
cars and electricity or hygiene
There there would be any there would be a day of questions to think about there would be a whole day of questions
I think but after that massive learning curve and
They
No, also they were
Yeah, not sure where I was going with that but um
definitely
So many other things to worry about. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We have a call
All right, good evening you are on off the cover time go ahead
Hi guys and gila. It's uh, johnny fusion
Hi, johnny fusion. Sorry. I I just heard johnny in a cough johnny fusion. Okay, that's where it is
What is it is that is that particularly funny gila
Just the fact that he said hi guys in gila. I was entered. Oh, okay
I thought it was a chat joke, you know, because i'm not looking at the chat and apparently everybody else
He's having in jokes now and i'm not part of it. I think that was a safe salutation though. Hi johnny fusion. Yes. Hi
Well, I want I wanted to to continue a little bit on the theme of this last caller and more on
the hacker response
because um
Especially in florida, but other states as well and not just the south
Because uh, florida is basically a fascist state
Now under governor de santis, you know, and yeah, it's basically auditioning
You know, and he's basically auditioning
To be the second fascist president of the united states
Right. He hasn't um
He hasn't said he's running yet because as soon as he declares candidacy
He declares candidacy
He cannot be governor of florida because florida's constitution doesn't allow
Presidential candidates to be governor. So he's being coy about it, but he's clearly auditioning
To have a fascist government at the federal level
But um montana today
Has outlawed tiktok
Yeah, I did hear about that and and you are right because dakotas and montana and idaho
They're not in the south, but you know, they might as well be
Well, it's it's this conservative
Mine my minority role
States where they're gerrymandered
gerrymandered to hell
And um and just conservative
yeah, johnny, I I just want to interrupt and point out that a big aspect of this to me is
Is I think the naivete of of unity the message of unity and the sort of overall?
political
Like charitable like magnanimousness is a nice word. That's that's my word of the week
uh, I think we've been putting a lot more weight in that and really what's energizing and and
On display is spite
You know, this is
We didn't get our way
We're foul
We're gonna upend it all in every single possible way and and whine we we we we all the way home
It's that's what's going on. This is not
Anything you can really work with and there's pockets of it everywhere
There's good people in montana and all those states too, but this is spite writ large
They're mad as hell. They didn't get their way. They're mad as hell. They're wrong
And and traitorous when didn't they get their way though?
They're always getting oh, well, well that that no one bought their lie about the last presidential election
Okay, there's that's them not getting their way. So they're gonna
They're gonna sink the whole thing. That's the plan
You're getting it in every little all these little fissures and places and all their little happy little pockets
And they want all the utmost respect. I think the reason
The reason they're doing that is because they have the power. I think they would be doing it
Even if they won the election, I think they'd still be screwing things up and and trying to ban abortion everywhere
That's what like throw throw the gays under the bus was always I mean that was back in 2016 before then it was like
That was gonna be it. I mean tiffany trump was never gonna lead
You know the lgbtq plus community, but trump would have you believe that I mean it's it's been on their their their hit list
of fun fun, uh
fascist, uh
Cosplay for for their plat the thing so-called
You know, this was the same like this doesn't get
um the same kind of press
because of
the holocaust
But gender non-conforming people transgender people
homosexuals
They were they were uh victims of the holocaust as well. Absolutely. They were some of the first victims of the nazis
Um that famous picture of the big pile of book burning
Was a sexual studies institute
that studied
that you know, uh
People that had changed their gender
Yeah, this is not this is not something that's just been invented
It's that it's not it's not something that's just been invented this has been around for for ages well established
Our understanding of it has evolved
I mean, uh
in samaria, they use
horse urine of pregnant horses that to
Hormonally transition, you know, the first hormone pills were literally the same substance
Yeah, it's not it's uh
It's it's history repeating. I think is what we're pointing out in a lot of ways and that that um,
you know the tactics may change and so forth, but that um,
that overall, uh sentiment is
Really pervading it's sad and in some ways, but I think that really it's um, it's crucial to not not
um think the best
uh all the time as has been done and and um be really really
um
Really practical about dealing with this this uh phenomena and and um, and just drop the
the expectation that that this is uh,
Anything but the the kind of hard line and um, uh foul politic that that
It's presenting itself as
right, so basically
um as hackers
we have to
wake up
resistance movements
to to the fact
That fascism isn't something that can happen. It's happening
Right, of course
It's happening in many places and it's it's not just as hackers as as humans. I think everybody has an obligation
to point to history
But hackers can be leaders
For the technical aspects of the revolution. Absolutely on a revolution
right
we need
anonymous messaging
strong encryption
uh
censorship resistant networking
Like get people off these cloud-based services
You know
um
Get back to distributed network stuff
Even set up new networks
You know, uh local networks like neighborhood networks
you know
um
Alex I think you had something
Yeah, I just I just wanted to comment. Um to come you see, you know, I think you finally
Found a a use for all that horse piss you've been collecting
I'm not sure. Um, i'm not sure uh what uh what you're talking about
We learned something new every day caller, thank you
Yeah, you know my what I would like to caution people about though is is is both siding because we have a tendency of doing
that and I think
what we saw
Happened with cnn last week is a good example of that where you know
They gave uh, donald trump this this incredible platform
And treated him as if he were sane, you know, just a sane candidate instead of uh his history and and the horrors
You know he is leading people into and just the utter ignorance and hatred that he spews
All of that was disregarded because he's he's a you know, he's a um, uh a front runner
and um
It's you know
It's not the same thing. You have to realize that you have to realize that
Um, it's it's not like elon musk says where it's just freedom of speech. We'll we'll figure it out ourselves
No, it's not that simple. It simply is not that simple you you would not give somebody
uh, who is uh guilty of crimes or
suspected of of uh
real horrors the same kind of treatment as you would somebody who is noble in in in their in their beliefs and
And and the way they go about things
Um, well the thing with the thing the thing with the cnn town hall with with trump
That was cnn buying access
and in the turn buying
Uh viewership, which they can sell that except they they they lost viewership
They did terribly and they've been doing terribly ever since they're paying the price for that
You know the people who go around saying go woke go broke
They're full of it because it's the exact opposite you do something like that and that's how you lose
You know newsmax is now ahead of cnn in the ratings if you care about such things
That is what you get when you do something like this people will react against it and what they did was I think
They thought it was 2016
Not only yeah, it's not 2016 obviously, but you know
Not only not only did they do this, but they shut out anybody who would ask a challenging question
So they turned it into a trump rally
And uh, you know, they they they did all the catering I guess
That is not that is not what the media is for
They are not
Instead of go woke go broke. We should say go fast lose cash
okay, uh
Yeah, I guess except you know
People aren't gonna know what fash means it sounds you know fascist obviously, but uh, maybe too slick maybe
Alex did you have something else?
Yeah, I I think it's hard for an organization like cnn to ignore
the leading candidate for the republican nomination
for president and in uh
You know in the coming years
So I didn't say ignore I didn't I just you don't have to give him a grand stage and uh and treat him as if he's
You know completely legitimate
That's a fair point, but I but you know, I think interviewing him having him on stage and you know
Asking him very difficult tough questions
Uh, which he didn't answer
He didn't answer the questions and he wasn't asked questions by the audience because they were all republicans
That's not fair
But I mean he answered them in in the craziest way. I mean
to to the people who
You know are not trump supporters. This just I think reinforced the fact that he's
Totally inane and and not fit for office
But I think we're seeing and really went wrong though as I and you touched on this Emmanuel was in the composition of the audience
You know the people that want to show up to see a trump town hall
Are not really going to be the people who don't like trump and they didn't filter
you know or try to have some kind of
Equality on both sides of the aisle here because you're right
It ended up being like some kind of trump rally when he was saying crazy things
People were cheering him on to do it and it it just came across as as all wrong
I think that they did try their best though as cnn
What was the woman's name of this doing the interview I can't remember it's like caitlin collins or something that
Um, you know, I think she did a good job trying to keep things on the rails
But you know like ozzy osbourne you should say I mean, this is a crazy train, right?
I mean this thing is a runaway train that's going completely off the rails. That's what you're trying to get with trump
I mean, you shouldn't have expected anything else
Also weren't wasn't there I think i've seen this in a couple places that the
Audience was instructed not only they were there, you know, ideologically leaning toward
Is that they had to be republican or undecided voting republican?
But I think they were also instructed that they were not allowed to boo. They were not allowed
To make any kind of reaction that was not cheering or laughing. Yeah, they were allowed to cheer but they weren't allowed to boo
What kind of crap is that?
It's fascist crap
Oh, it is. I mean, I don't want to I don't want to use I don't want to use the word fascist too loosely
But you know there there are people that are certainly filling the check marks and they deserve to be called that
But I don't want to I don't want to call everybody. I disagree with that
But in this particular case, you know, especially people like trump and the people that he has brought in
Uh, yeah, you know if it quacks like a duck you gotta label it such
Yeah, I mean it is I mean
I mean, what else can you call it when you're not allowed to disagree publicly?
What else can it be the things desantis is doing, uh to his critics, I mean i'm not one to um,
You know to to be a disney cheerleader by any stretch
But in this particular case where they are being punished just because they disagreed with him
That is insane. That is not right. That is that is uh, you know
Yeah, it's not it's not yeah, it's not that I need disney to win. I just need desantis to lose, right?
Right, I I think that's and this is this is where we have meet a challenge though because
There are many people I know who would say i'm not gonna support disney. They're they're fascist, too
Okay, but you know sometimes you got to pick which which one is is worse than the other
And make sure that side doesn't win and when you do that, right?
You might actually get somewhere and then you can work on on on improving whatever is left
Yeah, it's all about lesser evil in this point, you know, because when you support the lesser evil you do get less evil
you know
You get sometimes sometimes
Sometimes you get a surprise. I mean
You still you still get evil, but you know that but when that's the only choices you want to get less of it, right?
I mean even in our electoral system
I mean the democratic party
Is not on the left it's also a right it's a right-wing party
That's why you know when I hear them saying, you know socialist and communist
These people don't know what socialism and communism is if they studied history
They'd realize what they're actually referring to they would know what what uh is wrong with those particular systems instead
They're they're taking people who are just so mildly over the line in the direction of left and calling them these
It's it's hilarious, but what's not funny is the fact that people are believing it
Yeah, it's because it's
Well, you know people they they stay in this country. They don't travel
They don't get exposed to other cultures. They don't watch eurovision. They don't watch eurovision. They don't know all the acts
They don't watch eurovision. They don't you know, like me. I lived in amsterdam. I hung out with my friends in hactic
You know, well they well they stopped being hectic they became exes for all
You know, but I lived in a democratic socialist monarchy
You know, I you know, and I understood the lie that we were a free country
When I lived in in a country that that had so much more freedom
than than america
And strong social services
Well, you know doctors that still made health calls this is what country now this is netherlands
The netherlands. Okay. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not a competition but we could probably find things in the netherlands that
Are problematic as far as freedom i'm sure we can. Oh, yeah, they were like they were extremely racist to their immigrant population
There you go, you know
There's always something you know
Yeah, you know, you know not not not to look at the whole thing with rose-colored glasses
But I mean, but I had a contrast of living experience
Where I was propagandized through my 13 years of public schooling
Of you're in the greatest country in the world. We're the most free ra ra ra
You know, we you know, we
No more kings, you know, you know growing up with schoolhouse rock in the 70s
You know
You know all the all the propaganda about how great america is that we're the best but they never con
They never really contrasted
With anything with any other modern country
Just how bad 18th century england was
A lot of good literature though
Yeah, yeah, so well sure, you know, there's always a payoff 2600 magazine speaking of good literature, you know
Yeah, well we fit in there somewhere
All right, well hopefully you're you're writing more but writing more articles hopefully and uh
Go ahead. I realized something about the democratic party. What's that? It's basically there for rich people with the content
To vote for something so they don't feel bad, but they can maintain the status quo and keep their money
Sure, I mean, yeah, but you know all that as it is
There's still the better choice when it comes down to certain decisions and we can't say
It's all the same as I have said in the past. No, they're not. No, they're not all the same. But you know, they're not
I mean they're beholden to corporations
Yeah, there's so much evil you can point to there's so much evil there's so much hypocrisy you can point to but if you sit it out
It's going to be bad. It's going to be much much worse than than if you yeah republicans are downright fascist
right now johnny
Yeah, you're you're I I get it you're you're onto something but you gotta you gotta at least like put it in perspective
and uh and not be paralyzed because
The more you try to idealize and look for the perfect
The more like the better solution will pass you by and exactly, you know
we can't just put all of this on hackers and we can't just like look for like the one silver bullet like
solution to it and um, I we we all want a better uh,
option, right but the you know, yeah, it's
There are times
paralyzes us
We're we're stagnant, you know
I understand we got to be pragmatic
and we got and um
The revolution has to be multifaceted
You know, I understand that we each play our part
Yeah, and and we do got to be pragmatic so we gotta you know
Vote for the best option out of a lot of bad options
But we do got to use the electoral process because it's the main process we have to affect change
Yeah, and we have to unite and uh, uh, you know work on the same side even if you know
You use the word revolution and somebody else uses the word change, you know
You don't necessarily have to use the same terminology
The important thing is to realize that only by working together will you achieve the goal?
I mean, you know if if conor roy had just dropped out of the damn race, they wouldn't have elected a
Fascist on succession. Did I give anything away?
I'm, sorry if I did
Yeah, and if you um didn't have 18th century england you wouldn't have uh, you know
Labor laws or unions or I I don't know you you gotta go through some stuff and even in this the solidarity
is coming with the acknowledgement that we
Want different things all of us within parties
across political parties
and the
Consensus is that we have a deliberative functional political system so that we can sift through and sort
uh, what is a priority and
How to come to consensus on where we do differ. So
I don't know if that's inspiring or stirring
But there's hope I believe diversity is a strength
Right, yeah
And you know, but if there's this bitterness diversity of view diversity of outlook diversity of method
Yeah, it's it's never it's never hurt me. That's for sure
but if there's this bitterness and this spite or resentment where it's like a zero-sum thing where it's like well i've
Decided I can't work with with these people or that I won't work on this
Project that it's it's not worth contributing to or that i'm going to sabotage it with all the power I have
uh
You're you're you're going to meet an adversary with that added with that behavior
No matter where you're coming from
so like and so with with with the value of diversity like the opposition they're all about
us alone
Have the power and we control everyone else and we want everyone we want the other
Everyone else that's not like us
Yeah, they want to homogenize and and rile up
and uh
and uh redefine what normal or what what the um,
the
the um
the lion's share of people believe and it's all
About that kind of but it's not hyperbole. It's not that simple
Unity, you can you can get people who are quote-unquote diverse to say the things that you're saying as well
So that's why you'll see people of color. You'll see immigrants. You'll see women
Saying things that you wouldn't expect them to say because it doesn't really
um
support their interests
Uh, you know, it takes away their rights
But you can get people to say these things and you and people can believe these things because
There there are no monolithic masses as far as uh, as far as uh, where people are are coming from so
Don't get surprised. That's what i'm saying
No, no, no, that's true. You know, there's there's always some that feel like that
That kind of thing. Well, i'll be one of the good ones and i'll be okay
and they don't realize it's like
Those in power will eventually come for you, too
And they do act against their own interests
You know, they don't realize that no, they won't you know, like look at what the log log cabin republicans have
Gone through when when they were kicked out of cpac
right, they said but but we're
Republicans were one of you and all and all the cpac organizers said said no you're gay. We're you're not welcome here
I would love to be kicked out of cpac. It's one of my bucket list things, but
Another day listen, uh, we're gonna we're gonna run. It's late. Uh, but thanks for calling
We hope you write more articles soon and um, and and keep calling
Okay, thank you, thank you for having me, uh, it's always a pleasure to talk with you likewise
Have a great night. See you. Thank you. All right folks. Uh, sorry gila looks like you have something
As we are preparing to wrap up. I do want to share one particular question. Uh, tim
Thank you. We're gonna hold on to that for now because it's it's been a minute
um, but
The question we're seeing a lot is will the chat be open again in future?
Oh, I don't know. I have no idea what's been going on. So, uh,
Gila, you you're probably the best suited to tell us because you've been looking at it
I have um, it has been
Fun to watch there have been
The thing that I thought might happen has been happening people have been
Continuing the discussion we're having on air
Or you know in the ether I suppose
um, it's
It's been fun to watch people have been
Respectful and people have been I think slow mode is good. Um,
Rebel, especially I think slow mode is a good choice for us
and um
I think that um
You know, I think it's working well, so
you know the the chat is a privilege not a right so
We're gonna keep an eye on it. But um
Yes, thank you everybody for being part of it tonight
Yeah, it was it was fun. I mean it was kind of transparent to me because I was focused on on the microphone
Uh, but it's good to know people are out there participating one way or another and I guess it's good for listeners because
You know, they don't have to just listen to us. They can talk to each other and maybe organize against us
You know, that's it's inevitable. It's going to happen. So might as well make our peace with it
Go ahead rob
Um while we're talking about uh new platforms and new things we're trying
Um, many of you out there may know that we've been on mastodon for a long time as hacker radio show at mastodon dot social
Um, i'm excited to announce that we've moved instances
um, we've uh, we were talking about this for a while and uh, while
Actually while rebel was on the phone today. We pushed the button to make it happen officially
And we are now hosted by the good people at hackers.town
So if you if you use mastodon, you could find us at off the hook at hackers.town
If you followed our old account, um, your follow is being transferred over to the new one. That should happen automatically
Um, and uh, yeah, we are looking forward to uh, this comfy new site and
Um, they are happy to have us
a couple of a couple of questions a few questions actually, so
There was some kind of issue with the old site right where the people running it were jerks
Can I say that?
Um, I think we can say that now. Okay
Well, you could see that's the thing we couldn't say it before because we were afraid of what they might do
This is not good. This is not what I like to see in social media places
I should be able to say people at hackers.town are jerks and nothing should happen
I don't know who they are
I don't know anything about them
But the point is you should be allowed to be yourself and not have to be punished for that now apparently
We did something on what was the other one called?
uh mastodon.social
sort of the largest uh mastodon
um instance, but also the
Moderators the admins of that instance, uh their actions and choices they're making have been coming up for a lot of question lately
Um, the instance has been generating a lot of spam
a lot of bad behavior, um
Moderators of other mastodon instances out there in the fediverse have been talking about uh, muting it defederating it whatever
um, but that that will proceed, uh as however it proceeds but
um, it's no longer our problem because we are on an instance where they are very very excited to have us and
I I've known the community for a long time there
They're they're a great bunch and I think I think it'll be a very a very good fit for us there
so, uh many thanks to the folks in charge of hackers.town and uh,
Yep, that's where we are now. And was it was it a difficult off? It's called off the hook
It's called off the hook. Oh great. So it's not hacker radio show. That was confusing people
Okay, that's that's that's a really good idea
um
But somehow it's transferring the old hacker radio show at mastodon.social over to
offthehook.hackers.town
Off the hook at hackers.town. Yes
How do you do that?
It's very the process is very easy
You just go into the settings of both and it basically holds your hand through the whole thing
Um, you just have to you know
Start you have to if you want to move mastodon instances and you already have one
Um, you will move your followers over, um from the old one to the new one
Um, it won't move your content over the posts
Uh won't be moved over but it'll move your followers over and the old one
Will then become a redirect that tells people this is no longer the droids you're looking for
It'll have a link to the new one. So, um, it was all very very easy to put through
I did it while we were on the phone with rebel
You're supposed to be paying attention to the show rob, but okay, I was doing that too
I'm, we said don't look at the chat, but you did this instead. That's fine. That's fine
Uh, but I you know, I knew you could automated process. I knew you could move instances
I didn't know you could move usernames at the same time to change change your username. So that's great. That's great
Uh, okay. Well, let's uh, let's get more involved in that and hopefully do do more things one question though
You said the posts don't move but what about uh, can people see the posts from the past if they followed us in the past?
They they can if they followed us in the past they can still see our past posts
Um because the instance they're on will know about them basically from from their following us
So, uh, yeah, they'll still be able to see our past posts. Um
And uh, they will if you if you want to see our new ones
Make sure you're following us at off the hook at hackers dot town
I think this is worthy of an announcement on twitter where many people are migrating from
Uh, we have done that for everything as well. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh, we're still on twitter hacker radio shout still exists but um
Yeah, this is an indication of how easy it is to modify things if it's not quite working out
So that's that's that's really good to see
Yeah, it's a real strength of the uh federated platform
Where if you don't like how someone's running the the one you're on you can very easily move over to a death to another one
You can't do that with closed systems like twitter or or facebook or what have you?
um, so if you if you don't like what the uh
People in charge of twitter are doing for any reason like there could ever be a reason
Not to like what the people in charge of twitter are doing
Um, you can't move, you know sideways to another twitter, but you can unmask it on
Do you see all the pearls i'm clutching? I can't believe that you
Wow, good heavens. All right. Well folks, you know, we're not on next week. So, um, we have a vacation coming up. So that's good
Um people can write to us oth at 2600.com
You can stream past episodes of this program on our website
Uh, it's 2600.com
off the hook
there are drop downs and uh
Places where you select what year and month and you can see every show and there are descriptions in different formats
Very easy to do
So I encourage you to check that out. You can also
Um listen, uh on your
um
Alexa kind of a personal assistant device if you talk to some kind of computer and it does things for you
you just say
Hey device wake word, whatever
play
The off the hook radio show. Yeah
um
I guess it's that easy. Uh, or you can you can uh play wbai anytime you want
I don't know who did this
But there's a whole lot of uh commercial announcements before it gets to the content when you do that with uh with bai
If anyone knows how that works i'd sure like to get to the bottom of it
I do think some radio stations have figured out ways to monetize
Uh, I don't know if that actually gets to the radio station literally a couple of minutes
More than any other station i've ever seen. I I can't imagine that's what we want to do
I I sure hope it does benefit the station. It's or or
That someone can look at that, uh, or if this was a policy change
Who knows it could have been uh right out from under
a lot of the major stations
on
Um, I think in this case, it's the tune-in app
um
we'd like to know more about how that works or what might be going on with some of those because
specifically for a community-run station or
um other low-power or non-profit
ventures
uh having ads like that, it's
Well incredibly disruptive. It's sort of antithetical to uh, the way that stream should work and it makes the whole
um
Radio programming over those devices a lot less. Um, how shall I say seamless?
which kind of is the point and so it you know, it's
Takes a lot of the luster out of it if you do enjoy listening that way
But however, you get this program and other programs. We do hope that you continue to listen
Yes, and as kyle said it's easy to listen on our website
2600.com slash off the hook every show that uh, we have since
1988 is up online. You can stream it. You can download it. You can trade it. You can do whatever you want with it
1988, you know that uh creation band I played before I said they were around for a long time 1987
They we've been around about the same amount of time
So that's uh, that's something to to to imagine
But they were in eurovision and we weren't and that's something we're just gonna have to
Have to deal with I just know we're gonna be like having you talk to different
Years of yourself that someone trained like oh, here's emmanuel talking to 1989. Emmanuel. Do you think somebody will do that?
Someone will do it. Yeah, so we'll hear each of us saying things that we would never say
And um, I guess we'll I guess we'll just get used to it. It'll be the new reality
Uh, alex looks like you have something to say
I I was just thinking you brought up this whole eurovision thing again
You know, we have this outro for off the hook. I think we should have a separate outro possibly one that doesn't have to
uh, not have
explicit lyrics for overtime except that that youtube will flag us and then people won't be able to see the damn video or
It's not really a video but still it's a trap. It sounds nice. Yeah, it's a trap alex. We we learned this, uh
Doing events and yeah, it's uh, you got to be careful with youtube be original
I should point out that uh at times whenever there's some kind of issue with youtube, uh
Are we always have the archive up on that same 2200.com slash off the hook?
Uh site so you can always find the audio there rob. Go ahead
Oh, no, I was I was going to say what you were going to say, which was that's a copyright nightmare
Um as far as youtube's filters go, but uh alex if you want to sing something before we sign off
I'm sure that uh, that won't trip any alarms. Yeah, just don't be too good or it might catch it anyway
Yeah, i'm going to pass on this one but let's um, let's try again next week or two weeks from now
Yeah, yes
Yeah, we can gather and watch rebel call in next week and not not pick up the phone. But other than that, uh,
I'd love to see somebody create a conversation of rebel with rebel
that would be
Interesting. Okay. I i'm seeing a movie in this uh, like a terminator type of a thing
Okay, we'll talk we'll talk all right night everybody good night