South Africa and that's what pressure we're trying to build. Hazami Barmada,
thank you so much for joining us from outside of Blinken's fortress there in
the DC area. Thank you so much, thank you guys for having me. And the time now is
7 p.m. stay tuned for Off The Hook coming up here on WBAI New York 99.5 FM
and WBAI.org online. Stay tuned.
This is the Sam Hotel announcement. The number you have dialed has been
disconnected. We're sorry the number you have reached 99.5 WBAI is now off the
hook.
This is the Sam Hotel announcement. The number you have dialed is now off the hook. We're
sorry the number you have dialed is now off the hook. We're sorry the number you have
dialed is now off the hook. And a very good evening to everybody,
the program is Off The Hook Emmanuel Goldstein here with you joined tonight by Kyle. Right here and
over there at the Skype, we have Alex. You do indeed, good evening. You know this first
show in a couple of weeks, and it's not going to be a long one because we're not
going to have overtime at eight o'clock, because actually a few things are going
on. We are limping across the finish line here. A couple of our co-hosts have
COVID. I'm going through something right now at this very moment called an ocular
migraine. Look it up. It's a lot of fun. Basically, it involves, it's like a
migraine without the headache part. You have a bunch of flashing lights in front
of your eyes. It makes it very hard to read things, and sometimes it makes it
very hard to express yourself. You start saying nonsense, and it feels like you're
having a stroke. I've been through this for a number of years, so it's just, it's
particularly unfortunate what happens right at airtime. It's happened a couple
of times on my other show. And of course, Alex, you have a broken foot. Broken leg,
yes. Okay, yeah, it's even worse. And Kyle, is nothing wrong with you? No. Well,
that's a first. We're just so happy about that, Kyle. Very, very glad for you. Thank you.
Glad you're happy. I'm thrilled, absolutely thrilled. We'll talk later. Yeah, you know,
okay, so if I start not making sense and make a ridiculously hard
sentences for me to say, please take these papers from me and do with them as
you will. But we've had a very active weekend trying to basically get through
the Gmail wall. Alex, you know what I'm talking about. We're trying to get
information out about the conference that we're holding in a few months, the
one we have every two years, called Hope. And Google has decided that they don't
want people to know about this, for one reason or another. You know, I'm not
saying people at Google have decided this. In fact, I don't know if there are
any people at Google. It's some kind of an algorithm that we are butting heads
with, where we send out an announcement, a mass announcement to thousands of
people, and Google says, nope, that's spam. We're not going to send it to anybody.
We'll put it in their spam box. They're not going to see it there. But we don't
like what you're saying, and we're not going to allow you to talk to these
people who have basically signed up to be on the mailing list in one way or
another. Either they've expressed an interest in the conference, or they've
specifically signed up for that mailing list. So, you know, we've spent days, weeks
trying to figure out ways around this. We have made sure we're in compliance with
every single internet standard that there is. There are so many of them.
There's DMARC, DKIM, SBF, all sorts of things that we have admins working day
and night to make sure that there's absolutely nothing that makes us
unacceptable as far as mailing something out. And after days of this, and this is
time we really should be spending on things like the magazine, the radio show,
the conference. After days of this, we realized, you know, there's nothing wrong
with our end. It all works. In fact, we were getting higher scores than Gmail
themselves in some categories. It's the content. It's the content. Because, you
know, when we wind up sending, you know, an innocuous message like, hello, this is
a test message or something like that, it goes through fine. We made a test
mailing list with identical properties to our massive mailing list and set up a
few Gmail accounts to receive those emails to see if they got categorized as
spam. And when we sent the innocuous message, this is just a test, we got
them no problem. But when we said, hey, there's this hacker conference coming in
July that we'd like you to know about, spam. Right away, spam. We have gotten to
the point where we have trusted Google with all of this information, all of this
privacy, all of this making our decisions for us, that we find ourselves now in a
state where they are decreeing what is acceptable speech and what is not. This
is analogous to censorship on a state level. Worse, in fact, because it
transcends borders. It's all around the world. Most of our subscribers use Gmail.
It's unfortunate. It's funny to see the snide remarks on social media platforms
that say, well, you should just stop using Gmail. We don't use Gmail. We're
trying to avoid Gmail. But so many other people do use Gmail. We're trying to
reach them. They want to be reached by us. But Google is saying, no, you can't.
And, you know, at this point, I don't really know what we can do about it.
Well, the principal part of this, I really feel like is this strange thing of dual
meaning or a meaning of a term like hacking that has broad understanding, but
has different meanings and connotations in different linguistic contexts. And
they've kind of just ruled it out. The weird thing about that is, though,
paradoxically, there are contexts where that term is encouraged. And like the
kinds of things we talk about here, there are positive attributes to the spirit of
and the community of hackers and people that are passionate about figuring things
out and taking things apart and understanding technology. But so I think
this emphasis on their protecting user bases has really thrown that term into
one category with very little flexibility for the end of time. Like there's no
reinterpreting it. The positive connotation just doesn't fit with the
the kinds of security threat models they're implementing, which comes down to
the body of communications, people's email, the types of things that would come
through on a mailing list. And that to us is, I think, totally crazy and a real
slap in the face, especially if it's if it's stuff that people have solicited,
they're interested in. And we are cooperating and jumping through all these
hoops.
It's more than a slap in the face. It's an outrage. You know, it should be illegal
to to block speech in this manner. And that is that is what is going on. And you
believe, Kyle, that is because we use the word hacker.
Well, that's part of the distinction in the test that you've talked that you've
recently done. We've done a lot of other stuff. I haven't been as as intimately
involved. I did volunteer as much information about some of the accounts
that I've received mailing list mail through to try to help. But it just
doesn't seem it seems like it's very much directed at our particular mailing
list and the kinds of things that we say in a really long, comprehensive
announcement. Right. So if we're talking about get involved in a workshop or give
a talk about these types of subjects, we're going to have a lot of different
terms and and of course, present day threats.
Wait, wait, wait, we start listing the program. You know, when you see the kinds
of things that are being presented at the conference, they're going to have all
kinds of words in there that Google doesn't like.
If we talk about viruses or malware, and that's in several senses are listed with
bullet points. How how do you talk about that stuff in a safe way? We've also
talked about how URLs and other things like that.
Oh, I'll get to that in a second.
Yeah, that's important, too. But it's this sort of wholesale blocking off of
our particular topics and interest group, which is totally at odds with the way
this is, you know, the way that spirit and the things we really care about are
actually supported in the wider industry of technology. So we really want to we
want some equity here, because this is just totally wrong. And it happens to so
many other people that don't have a voice.
Here's the thing. There are people who are able to get our announcements were on
Gmail, who have whitelisted us, which is, you know, fine, great. That solves a
problem for you. You're able to see our announcements or email. It doesn't solve
the problem, though. And it's really hard to reach people to say, please whitelist
us because we're being censored. If you can't reach them, if you can't email
them, how do you do that? And the other thing, people don't know how to check.
People don't. I'm not even sure if if Google will tell you this, you know, have
I whitelisted this particular group? Who have I whitelisted? And yeah, if you
don't know how to do that, then you're kind of powerless. Now, we filed a
complaint with Gmail and their typically annoying response was, we will look at
this. It'll take at least two weeks for any changes to be applied if any changes
are applied. And we will not update you on anything that we do. A big middle
finger from them. So that is how they operate. You can't speak to people. At
best, you can speak to a bot. You are at the mercy of the algorithm. And it's
really, really terrible. And I don't know, Alex, we have to we have to do
something. Class action, something. I don't know.
You know, look, I think powerless here is the right word in so many respects as
well. I mean, you mentioned something. And by the way, before I launch into my
diatribe, let me just say, first off, I sympathize with you and your ocular
migraine. I'm really sorry to hear that you're going through that. And I hope you
feel better soon. Well, it's not as bad right now. Am I making sense? More than
usual. So, oh, OK, then it's got me. All right. Yeah, exactly. It's maybe somewhat
of an improvement. Before you do launch into your tirade, though, can I just ask,
did you receive I know you use Gmail. You do use Gmail, right? Yeah, sometimes.
Yeah. OK. But I believe you are signed on to our mailing list through your Gmail
account. I think maybe you could check this while we're on the air. But I'd like
to know, do you get our announcement from last week where basically you said on the
show a couple of weeks ago that you didn't see the call for participation? So what we
did was because we're responsive to people when they tell us things, we sent the call
for participation out through email so that everybody would see it. People like Alex
would see the CFP wouldn't have to go to the Web site to see that. And that was that
was flagged almost immediately by Gmail in many accounts and and rejected. But I'd
like to know, Alex, is if that showed up in your inbox, if you even saw it or if it
wound up in your spam box? I don't think I saw it. I don't think I saw it at all.
OK, well, if by the end of the show you could check your spam box on your Gmail account
and tell us if it's residing comfortably there, that would be something. Yeah, very
good. I will do that. I will. In fact, I'll look that up. But to go back to your one of
your original points here is that, you know, you said that this should be illegal to do
this kind of thing, to censor on the basis of speech or viewpoint or something like that.
But you also have to remember that Google is a private party and it's not illegal for
them to censor. We're sending email communications, we're transmitting data over their
networks and they have every right to censor, monitor, do whatever the hell they want to
do so long as it comports with the contract that they have with their user base. Because
remember, the Bill of Rights does not apply. The First Amendment does not apply to
anything but the government, to the state or the local or the federal government. And
for a long time, the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, Second Amendment, all that
didn't even apply to the states. It wasn't until the Doctrine of Incorporation through
the 14th Amendment actually made all of those amendments apply to the states themselves.
It used to just apply to the federal government. So the idea that this is censorship
or is in some way offensive to the First Amendment, unfortunately, is just nothing we
can rely upon legally.
Well, can I ask, are they allowed to discriminate? Can they say, well, you know, these
kinds of people, we're not going to send their email, we're going to block them because of
who they are? Are they allowed to do that?
Sure, yeah. So long as you're not discriminating on the basis of a protected
characteristic like race, gender, national origin, identity, that kind of thing. But being
a member of a subculture like a packer subculture or filtering by keyword, sure, they
can get away with that so long as they're doing it in accordance with their contract.
But maybe that's the way forward here, which is if we acknowledge that this is an
agreement and essentially a transaction between two private parties, well, we should also
acknowledge that it's not really an arm's length transaction here.
But the users, if we're going to walk away en masse, which a lot of people are doing
right now from Google, they're moving over to Perplexity, they're moving over to
ChatGPT and all these other search engines and other services.
Maybe there's an opportunity here to renegotiate that type of agreement that we have
or level set with our expectations for these larger platforms.
The other thing that comes to mind is with all of these advances in natural language
processing that we have seen over the last two years in particular, these large language
models, which are really just a form of advanced natural language processing, you would
think that spam filters and things like that, that type of technology would evolve in
lockstep and would also be able to better judge the context of certain speech.
But it certainly has not.
It seems like they're just idiotically filtering by keyword.
Well, you would think that on the surface, Alex, but I think it is actually an indicator
that this is not simply an inflexible policy, but rather a preference.
But it's hard to say because there's so much opaque and just no information, no
recourse for people that are perhaps that feel they have an exception.
And so in that is, I think, my earlier point, the irony or the sort of paradox of it is
that they can have like a Google hackathon or something that addresses all of the same
kinds of things. It can be totally fine.
And we could do the very same thing and be categorized this way just by virtue of the
way they feel about the types of texts in our communications or our domain or who we
are generally. Now, I mean, we are either going to have to put a lot more pressure on
collectively and get cut or get really cute about our language, which we ought not to
have to do because of the, I think, reputationally and that just the wider acceptance
and understanding of multiple definitions of terms like hacking and our overall mission,
which is about educating people and sharing and getting answers, you know, learning
about some of this stuff and being prevented by this in this way is it's just it
doesn't it doesn't really it doesn't really take much effort.
I mean, we have to kind of redirect, as you said, a lot of attention that we would like to
be doing on planning. But, you know, we can make like flyers with all the same information
in like a graphic and then poison that, you know, so that it doesn't actually so it's not
machine readable or something.
I mean, why do we have to get so crazy creative?
We have to send like puzzles to people just to get by their their categorization of us.
You know, you just gave me an idea, though.
You know, we're in the first of all, we're being penalized because we run our own mail
servers. We don't sign everything over to a big corporation.
We do it ourselves. It's a lot of work.
It's worth it. You have a lot more control.
It's a lot better. But that's one of the things that Google penalizes you for.
If you run your own mail server, it's it's, you know, all kinds of regulations are thrown at
you. But like I said, we meet all the regulations.
We fulfill all the standards.
But what if instead of text, we just sent the big graphic?
That's what I was giving an idea for.
Yeah. If we if we send a picture that says, oh, are they going to be able to scan the
picture and say these are unacceptable words?
That's why I said it would then have to be poisoned with some of the things we've talked
about recently. Everything that I see from Gmail, we get so much spam from them, which
they don't block.
So much of that has has graphics in it.
And I'm not used to sending graphics or reading graphics.
For me, email is just pure text.
But virtually everything that comes from Gmail is filled with graphics and ads and all
kinds of things like that.
What if we did the same thing?
What if we simply had a graphic that that conveyed our message that way?
You know, more offensive in my eyes, but probably less offensive to them.
It might actually work.
I was thinking that just in the conversation here, it occurred to me that that I mean,
that is the level of cuteness we're going to have to get to.
That's fine. We'll make our rave flyer, whatever.
I would feel so cheap.
We'll do it up in the grandest fashion.
But it really is more of like making us, you know, become, you know, art directors for
wild installations that are undetectable by their state of equipment at that
particular point in time is crazy.
And it's going to drive us crazy and the rest of the world crazy.
We're just trying to have an event.
We're already crazy. We're already crazy.
But you mentioned something about links before.
I wanted to get into that before I turn it back to Alex.
Oh, yeah. So this is something this is the epitome of craziness right now.
Within our text, we have links to various websites, but we also mention websites.
Now, what's the difference?
Well, a link basically has the entire address, HTTPS colon slash slash and then the
website name. But if we're just talking about, say, the Hope.net website, you know,
it's part of the conversation.
Go visit the Hope.net website.
Well, here's what happens when you do that.
Gmail converts Hope.net to a link.
And if you just say Hope.net, Gmail converts it to HTTP, not HTTPS.
Why do they do that?
I have no idea.
They should convert it to the default, which should be the secure version, HTTPS
encrypted. Instead, they convert what they believe is a website by default to the
insecure standard, and then they penalize the sender for sending an insecure link.
I'm not making this up.
This is what actually happens.
So because we had a paragraph in there where we were referring to our Hope.net
website, we were penalized for an insecure link.
That is how crazy it is.
So, you know, if Google were monitoring us speaking now, we would have just committed
some sins by referring to the Hope.net website.
Instead, what we should be doing is saying, go visit the HTTPS://www.hope.net website.
Every time we mention the damn website, we have to talk like that.
So that is the level that we are dealing with now, the level of absurdity.
Back to you, Alex.
Are you sure?
That doesn't sound right to me.
That sounds really ridiculous.
I asked our chief admin repeatedly, and he will tell you how annoying I was.
This cannot be real.
This is the most idiotic thing I have ever seen.
You cannot be serious that this is what is happening here.
And it was later confirmed by another one of our admins that, yeah, in fact, that is what's
happening. It's making an insecure link.
So, yeah, that's the level of absurdity we're at.
That's a massive error on Gmail's part, not your part.
I'm very curious about that.
That's so bizarre.
It raises two things to my mind in terms of testing this.
Well, actually, one way of testing it and another, which is just a point.
But have you tried using the word hack in other contexts as far as a test?
A lot of people love to use that idiotic phrase.
Here's a life hack, right?
You know, people call so many stupid things hacks these days that are really just tricks.
Right. So have you tried sending something with a life hack in it and see if that gets
flagged? Because that would test essentially the limits of the contextual type of
censorship that is being implemented at the mail server level.
I would love nothing more than to be able to spend all day, every day experimenting with
Google to see just how idiotic they are behaving today.
The fact of the matter is this is what's happening to us.
We are not able to get our message out to the people who want to read it and we have to
figure something else out to get to them.
And we have to hold them to account for this because it's absurd.
I'm sure our listeners are sick of hearing about hearing us complain about this week
after week. But it is definitely hurting us.
If you see the and I know Alex, you have seen this, the response that we are getting from
potential speakers, workshop hosts of sponsors of various sorts, people who found out
about the conference. It is amazing.
We are getting some really, really good submissions, but there are an incredibly high
number of people who do not even know the conference is happening because they haven't
been able to see the announcements that we've sent out.
And that's hurting the conference, because if we're not getting enough people signing up
to go to the conference, then we don't have the flexibility to do more to prepare for the
conference. So it's very frustrating.
And like I said, it's taking so much time that we should be spending on other more
important things. I tend to agree with that entirely.
And that brings me to the second point that I was going to mention, which is that I think
we have to think about alternative ways of getting the message out here.
I think email is becoming totally deprecated here.
It's always been an unreliable means of communication now that everything is being
filtered by Gmail and everybody is signed up through these massive mail services over
which they have zero control and zero idea how they work or even how they can be
configured to whitelist certain certain people.
Just even requiring that kind of affirmative act on the part of a recipient is going to
make this a really unreliable means of communication email.
I think we have to come to the conclusion is being pretty much deprecated.
I think we should really think about other means of getting the word out to interested
parties that is direct and does not require any kind of mail server type of middleman.
Well, other than a sandwich board, what do you have in mind?
Because everything, you know, social media is dead as well.
You know, everybody is fractured on those platforms.
Nobody speaks the same language anymore.
There's no instant messaging per se.
So what is effective in reaching people these days with all this craziness on the net?
I will tell you, and I think you're right.
I think you cannot rely on social media anymore because it's so damn balkanized and you
can't rely at all on Twitter pretty much or X, whatever you want to call it for
anything these days whatsoever.
But I think what I'm seeing a lot more organizations doing is establishing instant
messaging channels on things like Signal and Telegram.
And I think if as part of Hope this year, we created a separate mailing list that was
a Telegram channel or was a Signal channel, we could pretty much ensure that we have
end-to-end encrypted communications with, let's say, hundreds or thousands of people
that are going to receive those messages.
For instance, the Blockchain Association in Washington, D.C., of which I'm a member
professionally, they don't send out emails anymore.
They just don't because they're dealing with a lot of cryptocurrency related stuff.
The terms that they're using are very often getting filtered out.
They just use a Signal channel to communicate to the user base.
And there's one channel that only admins can communicate through and another channel
that is for the membership to chat amongst each other.
Signal had potential.
Signal had a lot of potential.
Just today, Signal booted me off a machine that had been running Signal because it's
not running a version of Windows that it likes.
It's too old.
It can't operate on an older OS that's doing something relatively simple and all
these conditions.
Basically, they're saying you have to buy a new machine if you want to run this software.
Not really the kind of thing that email, you could read that anyplace.
You need a terminal just to connect to a machine somewhere that hosts your email.
It's so simple.
I don't think it's a comparison.
The other thing with Signal that is so annoying, I think it intrudes upon your privacy.
If you sign up for Signal, guaranteed, if you haven't done this yet, go ahead, sign
up for Signal, you will start getting greetings from people saying, hey, welcome to Signal
because they will be told if they're a contact of you in any way that, hey, this person is
now on Signal.
And I find that to be just so offensive.
How dare you go out and tell the world that I'm now using this platform and this is how
they can reach me?
These might be people I'm trying to avoid and all of a sudden, I'm getting all these
greetings.
No, that's not the way I really envision starting to use a private means of communication.
Well, are you using Windows 3.1 or 3.11?
It doesn't matter.
I should be able to use Windows 3.1.
If it can connect to the internet, I should be able to use it to send a message.
I'm not using Windows 3.1 but I understand people, they like to use old operating systems
but these days, Windows 11 is considered out of date.
You have to keep up.
You have to have that Macintosh mentality where you buy a new machine and now you have
to upgrade the software but the software requires another new machine to run.
It's a never-ending spiral.
Well, frankly, since we are a hacker show and we talk about security and things, I don't
think people who are interested in security should actually even be using the desktop
version of Signal anyway.
Let's say you're using an iPhone.
Androids are not as secure as iPhones in my opinion but iPhone is an incredibly secure
device in its inherent state.
Why would you…
Can you just say that again?
I think an iPhone is a pretty secure device.
I think it's an inherent…
You heard that, folks.
You heard.
Okay.
iPhone is incredibly secure.
Okay.
Okay.
It is.
That's fine.
No, you can say that.
You said that in its inherent state.
That means not being completely taken apart and reverse-engineered and like sideload.
You can do so much with all kinds of this technology.
China, are you listening?
Russia, are you listening to this?
With the right tools.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm done.
I'm done.
Yeah.
I mean, look.
Yeah.
The NSO group aside here, targeting iPhones with zero days and stuff like that, it is
pretty secure.
And you have end-to-end encrypted messaging through Signal or Telegram.
But then once you introduce the desktop client to that end-to-end encrypted communication,
you are introducing a much greater attack surface by which your communications could
be compromised.
So I don't necessarily agree with using the desktop client for Signal and Telegram anyway.
But that's a separate story.
But I do agree with you, Emmanuel.
Both Telegram and Signal sending out these announcements that you've signed up is really
just idiotic.
I mean, that needs to stop.
I don't know why they're still doing that.
Everybody's complaining about it.
We've complained about it multiple times.
I just like to have a choice in these things.
Just today, OK, you're talking about iPhone.
Let me talk about Android.
I have a Samsung phone.
Every week or so, it insists on updating the OS.
Fine.
Whatever.
Do that.
So it spent a few minutes doing that today, updated the OS.
And look what it did.
It changed the font of my clock.
I have a clock on my phone at all times.
It tells me what time it is.
So that's what they do.
And now it's a different font.
And I can't go back to the font I had because somebody decided that this font is better.
That's a tiny thing.
But it annoys me that someone's making that decision for me.
And I have absolutely no say.
Can I see that?
Yeah.
Oh, wait.
Yeah.
How can you take that?
That's not a serious font.
No, it's not a serious font at all.
I think the other one was Helvetica.
If someone sees that in an important meeting.
Yeah, I'll be laughed out of the room.
So.
Yeah, forget it.
Yeah.
Any progress on finding that announcement, Alex?
Oh, no.
I've been talking it up with you guys.
We'll let you go to the next topic.
I'm looking at my spam box in one of my Gmail accounts.
I have several.
I experiment with them.
I don't rely on them.
They could all blow up tomorrow.
And I wouldn't lose anything.
There's a whole lot of mail in my spam box that
I'm looking at now for the first time.
I see President Trump, Nikki Haley.
Okay, so these are fine going into the spam box.
They're just ridiculous pitches for money.
But here's Sirius XM.
I happen to subscribe to them.
And yeah, they're mailed to me saying my subscription is expiring.
Went to spam.
Isn't that nice?
That's something.
There's a store that I went to that went to spam.
So these are businesses, organizations that I have done business with.
And Google is deciding that I should not see what they say to me.
That's actually something really worth pointing out because that's a level of filtering that's
actually hurting the kinds of promotional campaigns that small businesses are doing.
And inherently, maybe their domain doesn't have as long or as much of a reputation or
some kind of score or whatever.
So then they're put into this basket automatically with no say, no recourse.
And they don't even really know.
They're totally blind to it.
They just think they're doing their best communication to have customer retention,
have people come back and spend more money.
But bigger businesses, somehow this doesn't affect them because they do larger volumes
and they're taken with more credibility in this, however this is done.
But that really bolsters a certain type of business and hinders another.
Here's the New York Times.
I subscribe to the New York Times and there's a whole bunch of mail from them
talking to me about various things in my account.
Went right to spam.
Google decided that was spam.
Here's somebody who is running for my congressional seat, my local congressional seat.
No less than eight of her emails went directly to spam.
I'm sure that people running for office would be very interested to know that their constituent,
their potential constituents are not even being allowed to read their emails
announcing that they're running for a campaign.
Here's a phone company, a phone company that I do business with, went to spam.
This is just on one page of one account.
It's something incredible.
I'm wondering why I didn't see anything from these people and that's pretty amazing.
And that's probably true of just about everybody who uses Gmail,
that things they want wind up in the spam box, very important things.
Okay, speaking of important things, Taylor Swift.
Have you heard about this?
Yeah, you remember a couple of years ago, was it?
We were talking about Elon Musk's jet and this guy that ran a site
that tracked where his private jet was at all times.
Yeah.
Yeah, his name is Jack Sweeney.
He's a junior at the University of Central Florida,
which means he must have been a freshman when he started this.
He has been running accounts that log the takeoffs and landings of planes and helicopters
owned by hundreds of billionaires, politicians, Russian oligarchs, and other public figures,
along with estimates of their planet warming emissions.
Because, hey, you know, we need to know these things.
Sweeney's accounts fueled a free speech debate in late 2022,
when Twitter banned him for sharing what the platform's owner, Elon Musk,
said were his assassination coordinates.
That's Elon Musk's words, and not surprising at all.
Now, the accounts don't say who is traveling on the aircraft
or where they go once the planes land.
They just say where the planes are at the moment.
I mean, okay, you know, I get that.
You know you're doing good in the world when everywhere you are
is your assassination coordinates.
Well, yeah, you must be really paranoid one way or another.
A real sweetheart.
So the website is called groundcontrol.net,
and that's ground control without any vowels.
So it's g-r-n-d-c-n-t-r-l dot net.
And there's two basic categories, a few,
but the main ones are Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.
Now, we'll get to Taylor Swift in a second.
I just want to check out where Elon Musk's planes are at the moment.
He has several planes.
Um, yeah, okay.
And it connects to OpenSky, and that tells you,
gives you a map.
And if you have decent internet coverage,
I imagine it will actually show you where on the map this...
So we're finding out where this plane,
that sometimes this particular singer, artist, songwriter...
Well, here's the thing.
The story is that Taylor Swift had the same thing happen to her,
and she's threatening the guy now with a lawsuit,
saying that he has to stop this stalking and harassing behavior.
Oh, you were just using the site generally,
not looking for any particular plane?
Well, I clicked on one of Elon Musk's planes.
Oh, oh, his planes. Okay.
But you can select of a myriad,
as you originally were describing the whole place.
Yeah.
And it filters, or you can search sort of easily.
Let's see if I can get info on Taylor Swift's jets at the moment.
There seem to be two of them.
Two jets.
Okay, wait a minute.
So what do we got?
Super Bowl.
But wait, there's this performance in Japan.
So yeah, one's probably at home,
and the other one's probably off being...
The thing is, if you have a private jet,
this information is available public.
It's public information.
I love Taylor Swift.
What would she stand for?
Her music, all that kind of thing.
But this is not the way to fight this.
The way to fight this is to mask your identity,
travel on other people's jets, maybe,
but not make a big deal out of it,
because it's only going to make people like me
look at things that I wouldn't be looking at normally.
And yeah, it's part of the price of being a celebrity.
And I hope that reason prevails here,
because this is not a fight you want to be in.
Elon Musk, everybody ridiculed him for trying to engage this guy,
and I think he lost in the court of public opinion.
I don't want to see the same thing happen to Taylor Swift.
She's too smart for that.
So yeah, this kind of thing happens.
Maybe consider different ways of traveling.
I think those are actually really good observations and suggestions,
because if you're in this level of transportation,
you have these kinds of vessels,
you could, for probably a very unnoticeable amount,
make some very key steps to remove your identity,
certain courses of action,
probably exactly what Elon Musk ended up doing
or at least considered amidst all of that litigation.
But having the entirety of how these vessels are
tracked and otherwise work,
having the rules change just for you is ridiculous.
You're buying a certain kind of vehicle,
and it is a part of a wider class of vehicle
that has to operate a certain way.
And by virtue of how they operate,
you kind of need to know where they are,
and lots of different entities need to know where they are
and what they're doing at any given time.
And it just seems like, yeah, rewriting the rules just so it's okay for you,
because you can afford one of these planes.
Like you said, you could just as easily have fractional ownership
or just use commercial carriers somehow
or deal with your entourage, maybe walk, I don't know.
Trust me, there are ways of fooling paparazzi,
there are ways of fooling databases and tracking sites.
Lawsuit is not the way to do that.
We'd be happy to offer advice,
because we don't think anybody should be going through this,
but yeah, this is not the way.
Alex, did you find anything interesting?
You look a little perplexed over there.
I'm still going here because I was looking on my phone
to determine whether or not the Hope emails,
which I found in Gmail,
but I couldn't determine whether or not Gmail
was searching all of the folders,
namely junk together with the inbox,
when it was returning the hit,
or if it was just searching the junk folder.
So you have to go into the spam folder,
and then in the search bar,
you type whatever you're looking for next to the word spam,
which will show up up there.
That's what I found.
But now I also realized that
if you log into the web version of this,
there we go.
Okay, hackers on planet Earth.
It'll tell you which folder it found the message in,
whether it was the inbox, the junk folder, etc.,
when you search for it.
And it's actually in my inbox.
Okay, so it made it to you then.
It did, but I didn't see it.
How did you not see it if it made it to your inbox?
Because I get so much crap in this Gmail account
that I ignore it, mostly.
So that's the other problem.
There are going to be so many interesting panels about this
at Hope and Joy.
So many, you know.
And everybody who shows up will have shown up
despite all this.
True.
Okay, we have some listener mail.
In fact, we got a lot of listener mail
from our last show, last couple of shows, in fact.
Dear OffTheHook,
I thought you might be interested to know
the last phone books are being delivered in the UK.
The last will be delivered in March of 2024.
They're usually delivered to every household free of charge.
With most people either moving to X directory
or providers other than British Telecom,
they have become a lot less useful.
In recent years, they're barely one centimeter thick.
It's an end of an era from 1880 to 2024,
according to the book itself.
Wow.
B.R.
Actually, no, the name is Stu, I'm sorry,
from Cambridge in the UK.
And Stu, you know, what we would want,
you offered us a scan.
What we want is the book itself.
So if anybody from the UK can send us a phone book,
we will definitely be grateful for that.
But basically they're the newsroom from British Telecom.
Our mission to connect for good guides,
I'm sorry, our mission to connect for good
guides everything we do as a business
from being more efficient and greener
to providing the best possible service for our customers
and adapting how we operate in an increasingly digital world.
As a part of our directory services,
one area we are evolving in the coming year
is how we deliver the phone book.
Since 1880, the phone book has been synonymous with BT.
For many years, it was an essential resource
and the only way to find contact information
for a person or business.
But times have changed.
And today it's easy to find this information
at the click of a mouse or the tap of a smartphone.
Really, I take issue with that
because how do you find someone's cell phone number?
There's no cell phone directory, is there?
There's been a promise of one for decades,
but I've never seen one.
So I don't think it's easy to find this information
at the click of a mouse or the tap of a smartphone.
With the explosion in data and choice of devices
over the past decade
and the increased digitization of services,
the printed phone book has now become a memory for many.
In fact, we still print 18 million phone books every year,
but with dwindling demand
and the high environmental impact of printing
and distributing these hard copies,
we've decided that March 2024
will see the last books rolling off the print run.
It's a move that will have a positive impact
on the environment,
helping us save around 6,000 tons of paper every year,
the equivalent of 72,000 trees.
It will also help us progress towards BT Group's target
to become a net zero business by 2030.
This is a positive change
and it's something many of our customers
have been asking us for.
Your customers have asked you to stop sending the books.
However, it's not a decision we've taken lightly.
We know there are a small number of customers
who may still rely on a printed phone book.
To make sure they aren't left behind,
we have consulted with Ofcom,
not sure what that is exactly,
but it's part of the system,
and are proactively putting measures in place
to support these customers.
So I guess for a fee,
you'll be able to get a phone book in the future,
but for most people,
yeah, it's all going to be online in one form or another.
Go ahead, Alex.
Ofcom is actually the Office of Communications
in the United Kingdom,
and they are like the communications regulator,
kind of like the FCC.
It's with Ofcom that you're supposed to have a license
to utilize a television in the UK as well.
Okay, all right.
Wow.
Here's another letter.
Just listen to the show of January 24th.
And while you were discussing the anonymity
of cryptocurrencies and other stuff,
I was a bit disheartened to hear nothing
of the massive abuse of power and electricity this has brought.
And it's a very good point.
I know that Ethereum is trying to solve this,
proof of stake versus proof of work,
but most crypto just burns energy,
which would be way more useful if put elsewhere.
Bitcoin alone consumes more than a few countries.
Signed Jan or Jan,
sorry how to pronounce that exactly,
but thank you for that letter.
It's a very good point.
You know, I saw a news story fairly recently
where people who live near a Bitcoin mine,
I'd never even seen a Bitcoin mine before.
It's a building basically that's mining Bitcoin.
It makes so much noise.
It is loud.
Let alone that it's consuming all kinds of electricity,
but boy, it's not environmentally friendly.
I don't know how they ever were able to go down that road
in the first place.
Unfortunately, now that road exists.
If it were me, I would say,
Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, whatever,
you can do what you do, but don't do it on earth.
Get the energy on the moon or something like that
and mine it there, but don't pollute us.
Because that's the last thing we need.
But unfortunately, now it's become the norm.
So I'm not sure what the best step is at this point.
Yeah, I think it's a real problem,
but it's more a problem with Bitcoin.
I think as the listener had identified,
Ethereum was really trying to solve this
by moving over to the proof of stake model
as opposed to proof of work.
And I've always thought that the environmental impact
of Bitcoin mining is something
that had been underestimated for some time.
And these mines, they don't just exist
in far-flung places in the world.
I think China has effectively,
I think maybe even outlawed them.
I remember there was at least some kind of
massive regulation of them,
but they exist in places like Texas
and elsewhere where energy might be cheap.
You might have an abundance of land
and there was a news story a couple of weeks ago
about an NYU student from China
who wound up being the beneficial owner
of some massive Bitcoin mining operation in Texas
that was driving local residents somewhat nuts,
if I recall correctly.
So this is not a problem that is unique
to other parts of the world.
It's something that hits really close to home too.
Yeah, seems that way.
Right, I think that in the initial implementation
this aspect of it wasn't really something
that had been considered and worked out
as far as what this whole system of currency,
what it would actually take to scale up
and be running and functional the way it operates.
I think there's probably also more sensitivity to this now.
And I think I've seen, it's strange.
I think there's a lot of weird entrance
and implementations of setting up these mines.
And as was pointed out,
they are in some places pretty crummy,
like not considerate of where they are.
But there's also other designs that are integrated,
that are co-located in interesting ways,
and maybe aren't as big and ambitious.
Maybe some of that smaller distributed
and put near places that make sense
or with sources of power that aren't as nasty
or in places that have an abundance of energy.
But it really is a huge, huge problem.
There's not a really clear-cut answer, I think, yet.
Green coin.
Green coin is the cyber currency
that uses completely renewable energy to mine its crypto.
Hook it up to a wind turbine or an array of solar panels
and help the environment at the same time,
or at least not hurt the environment.
That's my invention.
It's my idea.
So somebody come up with the rest of it
and we'll share the proceeds or whatnot.
Hey, we're out of time pretty much.
Again, no overtime tonight
because we're all recovering from one thing or another.
Alex, I hope you're feeling better.
I think I'm feeling better.
I hope Rob and Gila are also feeling better.
And Kyle, whenever something happens to you,
I hope you feel better as well.
Listeners, please write to us, OTH at 2600.com
and tell us what's going on with you.
I'm fine.
Nothing's going to happen to me.
Okay, fine, fine.
I went for a bicycle ride today.
Good for you.
Because there's no winter this year, apparently.
But keep listening to WBAI and keep supporting WBAI.
Give to WBAI.org or 212-209-2950.
We will see you next week.
Good night.
Bye.
I walk in a bar and immediately I sense danger
You look at me girl as if I was some kind of a total stranger
When did you get that blank, blank, blank expression on your face?
The streets are dark and there's no one about
I wander home and all the lights are out
and I put on my dreams
When did you get that blank, blank, blank expression on your face?
Where did you get that blank expression on your face?