i'm just gonna let that go to voicemail good evening you are listening to radio station
wbai 99.5 fm here in new york time is just about 7 p.m and it is time for another exciting edition
of off the hook
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off the wall
i cut myself while shaving now i can't make a call
we couldn't get much worse but if they could they would
but i best expect the worst i hope that's understood
a very very good evening to you indeed
the program is off the hook
rob t firefly here with you for a very special edition of this program
and i am alone in this studio which is unusual but i am joined in skype land by some very special
people out in skype land we have
off the hooks man on the ground voltaire are you with us
hey how's it going hey good to hear from you good to see from you
and we are we are also joined by a couple of very special guests from
hackers.town the mastodon server that is a friend of so many to
uh a friend of so many in our community uh we have the gibson
hi everybody good to be here and we have code babe
hi good evening hello everyone and uh thank you very much for joining us
here on this uh here program here that we do here and
there is so much to talk about um our other regulars are scattered to the four winds tonight
uh which leaves me in charge and i'm doing some
terrible terrible things and uh one of them is going to be asking you
there was a hacker conference recently
one that we talked a little bit about last week um emmanuel and kyle were there
um some of us were watching from afar uh defcon happened out in las vegas and uh
i understand at least one of you uh out on out in skype land there today
were there in person
uh yeah actually code babe and i were both there
uh yeah representing uh hackers.town valet uh various projects uh but but uh
yeah it was a it's a great event this year
um now of course not without some controversy it's defcon there's always some sort of controversy
comes out of it but overall it was really good uh we were also
um at uh b-sides las vegas uh and valet was represented there
valet networks for those unfamiliar uh we were represented there uh as one of the
charity sponsors so got to raise some money for the foundation and
keep operations going for the next year that that all went really well
um code babe you got any thoughts because i know i had a good time but
these sides was great we had all kinds of people going to be with people who
were in our discord already people who had never heard of us
and it was great because we got to talk it up and uh pretty much everyone left
going oh yeah that's a great idea which is a good feeling
now you mentioned the you mentioned the foundation this is uh the valid foundation
i think it yeah uh so valid foundation is it exists to uh promote the uh adoption
of the valid application framework which is a call to the dead cow project
um it is a application development framework that is privacy first uh and allows you to
build applications uh for any platform basically uh that uh will bake in privacy measures
yeah okay gibson you're dropping out a little bit audio
oh no uh now better uh in and out a little background noise going on
strange
uh
so
voltaire i think some of that noise might be coming from your end
uh no no worries there we go is that better okay
so uh basically uh it's so you can develop private applications that use
more or less in the modern age um very little leakage of metadata or personal data so
that someone could track you right uh we we built this with that premise first
uh we were able to drop the uh valid chat beta uh at defcon this year so that's out there and
being tested we are currently in bug bashing mode so uh trying to get that up to a 1.0 release so
that we can uh go let everybody build apps that make uh you know that may be very resilient
to um to data capitalism and surveillance
and uh valid chat so for those uh unfamiliar i mean you've been on this program before talking
about valid uh you had uh some other presentations at uh conferences near and far
about it but uh for for those unfamiliar uh how would you
describe uh valid and in particular valid chat
um so valid chat we'll just go there because the framework is a little esoteric to people i think
you know if you're a developer it makes a lot of sense if you're a standard user or non-developer
type you're not going to be playing around with that much but the um the the valid chat app
is a pretty simple uh chat app where you can talk to others uh through this encrypted model that we
built this this highly high encryption and routing uh guarantee showing that um you know basically it
allows you to not be tracked is the whole idea behind it so uh you can talk to anyone you know
uh now the interesting thing about it is anytime you get into a privacy project like this there is a
trade-off you hit in the first quarter of the project somewhere and it comes down to breaking
authentication away from identity right and you have to either do that or not uh we chose that we
weren't so much worried about identity so much as being able to authenticate the who i was talking to
was your intended recipient so because of that you have to exchange invites with people that would be in
your contact list so that uh you know you you either have to be in person and exchange the invite or
you transfer that over a known good channel like uh another texting method right so that at the end of
the day you're kind of old school guaranteeing who you're talking to is who it should be instead of
trying to make some complex system that isn't necessarily reliable so it sounds a little low tech on
that front but the case of the matter is that when you get down to basics like that you have to make
decisions in design and this was the best way we could do that to to enable people to guarantee who
they were talking to uh was uh was who they intended now once you get past that though uh the routing
ring as i like to call it the constructed routes that guarantee uh anonymity over the network and the
privacy methodologies kick in and and then you've got a a really strong communication model that
that you know can can basically uh keep anyone from being able to see who or what you're talking
about now the thing that people don't talk about about valet enough and this gets back to the framework
just a little bit is what it really is we've built a thing that is um that shares resources in a fully
distributed networks there's no centralized infrastructure and so at the end of the day
you've got this system that you can develop apps in that you don't owe amazon a bill for at the end of
the month for running it or you don't owe google cloud or whoever we like to think of it more of as
the people's cloud right so you have an option to build on this and not have the incentives uh of uh as
cory doctorow says in crapification let me make sure i got that right for uh for broadcast but um you
don't have the incentives that incentives that cause that nor does the network or framework as a whole
uh end up with this uh perverse incentive to necessarily uh you know make profit we can do this
with little to no cost to anyone that wants to run on it i'm a big fan of the usability for it too
is um when you open it and you look at it you're like oh this looks just like every other chat
application i've ever used you know here are my contacts here are my messages and um i think it's
going to be uh i'm really excited for us to get to one point out yeah i've uh i've played with it a
little bit uh so far and from a user experience standpoint it does it just uh feels like every other
chat app uh that uh that one is used and uh the usability of it is important because the back end
the privacy and everything this is the main i think reason to have something like this but in order for
that to take off it's got to be usable and it kind of takes me back uh as a user to the way things were
on the early uh online space um you know thinking way back to say like you were on america online or
something and you needed somebody else's screen name in order to contact them um there was no like
let me just grab somebody from the public and spam them there was no let me be found by anybody who
who wants to uh just ping me and uh bother me or or whatever it's it's a very person to person human
to human uh communication and uh maybe bringing that uh back into uh day-to-day chat in the modern
sphere is not such a bad thing uh you know there's there's a lot more there too uh from that that
model there's i mean there's some personal assurance at the end of the day that you're talking to the
people that are you're intended to talk to right um you know everything is encrypted on the device
it's on as well locally all the local storage uh there's there's there's very little way outside of
you know physically getting access to the device for anyone to to be able to mine data out of this
um and we made choices you may notice you guys have used this for a while so like one of the things that
was interesting to me is uh you don't get notifications in the app right there's no there's
no little red dot that shows them the app tell you someone's message to you and at the end of the day
that became a choice because doing that requires you to use either um you know apple's provider
or google's provider for those intermediary notifications that you get on on every other
app uh or you can spin up your own infrastructure to do it but at the end of the day we're in this
situation where you would have centralized infrastructure handling this that would be a
vulnerable access point for people to see what kind of messages are going right there'd be
metadata that leaked there we made a choice not to do that sort of thing it is rudimentary in some
ways but in other ways these are the things we kind of had to do in the modern infrastructure to
make this thing what we thought it should be so yeah and uh as in as far as what uh what we think
it should be what you think it should be the people behind it um what are you looking for because
obviously this is a non-commercial project this isn't going to make anyone rich this isn't even
uh pulling in any sort of uh this is not pulling in any sort of ad dollars or anything like that which
which you which you might expect from a social medium these days so like what's uh what's the what's
the end goal of like everything's usable everything's wonderful uh what where where do we see this going
the end goal uh for for this application is this is the first like hands-on product
uh or or project for a valid so a lot of developers have been holding back on getting involved because
they're like can this actually do what we say it does uh and then so to have such a like everybody
uses some kind of chat application these days so to have a very uh relatable demo of the network
uh using a chat it's a i think it's going to be a really good starting point for bringing in
developers because they're going to see you know the working example
uh yes i think you you know the valid chat itself is the uh like not commercially focused um i think it's
important to note that like it's an open source license i think it's mozilla public license 2.0 so
that means you can do with the uh the valid um uh protocol itself that underlying protocol you can
build uh like cell services on top of that as long as they're like freely licensed so i think that's
important to note that's exactly right voltaire uh and that was a choice we made when we were choosing
which model to use for this thing right uh mozilla won out for that very reason uh we wanted other
people to be able to not i mean if they want to commercialize something on valid we're not going
to stop that right that's not part of our game yeah i think that's a really good choice yeah and it
makes a lot of sense because you've as you said you've got this uh you've got this protocol you've
got uh valid as a concept and people want to see well what can you do with it and not only is it
something commonplace something pervasive everyone uh as you said uses a chat app but it's also it also
seems like something a bit uh a bit i guess simpler um to start with as as an example of this thing
working and uh to prove to people that yes you can drop a service into this you can uh you can maybe
build other things into it as well yeah i think it's you mentioned early web earlier uh one of our
internal and then i think i actually said it last year when we were on this same show with you guys
one of our internal sayings is referring to it as web 1.5 right uh because we look at this as kind
of where the web should have went if we hadn't uh crashed against the forces of monetization right
so uh if you want to monetize something on valid you're welcome to nobody nobody's against that uh but
we also want to take away the requirement to do that so that people can just go build cool stuff if
they want to right just build something that's fun it doesn't have to be about making money in order
to justify the cost building thing absolutely and so um velichat is uh it's it's in early days it's in
uh uh are you calling it beta or alpha or where where are we open beta open beta and uh so that's uh so
that's the wheels are in motion there and you've uh talked about this now at uh at a couple of events
what's the reaction been like uh hope was a great reaction yeah i i gotta be real that's the first
time i made it up to hope in person and um i the energy in that room was great uh i i i love that
i hope this doesn't come along the wrong way rob you've heard me say this it's very much the
philosophical side of our of our world it felt like while we were there because it's like the
discussions happening weren't just oh i've got a cool exploit or i've got a cool tech i'm talking
about it was yes but should we use it in this way right the the it was it was very much the
um the philosophy of hacking on show there now there was other highly technical stuff i'm not saying it
wasn't there but it was it was eye-opening to me that people were open to to these new ideas and
new things and then were able to have real discussions about how these things should be
used right and that's i think that's not typical at a lot of other uh hacking conventions so kudos on
that first of all uh but we had a great reaction for those that weren't there um because we were in
queens uh we basically reskinned our entire presentation to be wu-tang clan base including uh
including uh song titles that were modified for our presentation titles uh so uh it was a really
good really good presentation i think it went great uh you know we've we've talked about it uh
defcon last year when we launched the framework we we uh we've had numerous uh numerous uh
presentations on this at other cons and events uh the reaction's always been good you know now
you know part of that's because we it's a call to the dead cow project so you show up with that
logo and people kind of get excited so that's been an experience as well but overall the tech is solid
uh you know i i'm looking forward to us getting past beta because i think there's a lot of bugs that
we gotta we gotta still iron out uh but we're able to show that it's working right and that was
really the goal here so that and we needed more users to get feedback the really cool thing about
this code babe's probably tired of me talking about this she heard it they heard it for like a like two
weeks now straight as node density grows as you get more users this network becomes more performant
and more private which kind of blows my mind right you usually think about oh well it's going to get
slower and worse but because you get more nodes you have more routes you have you have more resources
available to the network and you just get more and more powerful as you go so it's uh it's exciting
to me to get this first real push of nodes into the network and see what what kind of load we can
really handle and we're starting to get those those numbers back it's it's looking really positive so
i'm fingers crossed but i think we're we're going down the right path yeah that's a that's a sweet
spot for it to be because uh as with other distributed models if people are familiar with things like uh
like bit torrent or uh or or or things like that where the more people are in the mix the actual
better it is for everyone for everyone involved and uh so where where do where do people go if
they're interested in uh checking out uh valid valid chat oh definitely uh head to uh valid.com
that's uh v-e-l-v-e-i man it's been a long we can't even spell it yeah it's veil id basically um so
valer.com and uh we have links to our discord community where you can come and help us work
on the valer project and we have links to uh get the beta for ios or android and we also have
uh links to our donation pages if you want to chip in for our project that's right sounds good
and uh so you you most recently went to uh vegas and the conferences there what was you know what was
your general experience like there because there is a lot of chatter and discourse about uh the event
as it uh as it went off as it happened this time around
um i thought the reactions were really great at both uh b-sides and defcon i helped uh run the booth
at b-sides and we had um my favorite was when like the the really prickly crankly like uh tedious folks
would come up and they would ask a lot of like really detailed questions and but we had answers
for everything and they're like oh okay you you you thought about this okay and they left satisfied
and that was fun to watch
defcon it's you know defcon itself we were we had a a developer meet up there right so it was a big
room we we basically got the war stories stage room uh brought out the the old uh cult of the dead cow
banners from uh the bo2k launch if you remember the blue ones they had back kind of holy relics of the
scene uh and hung those up and and sort of just did a chat and swap meet actually where people could
just bring the various swag they had on board and trade out with other people so uh that was kind of
fun uh got to meet a lot of people from the fediverse this time around uh we had a huge presence there this
year uh so that was good uh you were none of us were ever without a friend to hang out with i'll put
it that way that was that was a good feeling um the uh some of the more interesting things that happened
at defcon for me at least was uh on thursday as defcon's kicking off and and am i getting into the news
story too early rob should i wait do you want to you know go for it uh on wednesday night i had heard
about a a political fundraiser for vice president harris that was uh supposed to be held at defcon
um and i could find no information about where or when it was going to be and so i just started
reaching out to contacts to find out uh when this thing was and nobody seemed to know i finally got
in touch with someone who i will who remain unnamed for reasons that will be obvious shortly uh that
told me look uh we can't promote this in any way because we have contracts that would would be a
problem if we if we're seen to be promoting a political candidate right i totally get it uh you
know we have to do the same thing for valet uh so what i'm about to talk about is not in context of
the valet foundation or any other foundation this is just my my personal thing sure uh and uh
you know so i took the hint and i started promoting this thing when i found out where it
was going to be and uh so hackers for harris was an event we actually had an article covering it in
nbc covered it i think uh and i think we had a couple other uh major media outlets that talked
about it a little bit so we uh we got about 150 people together for this thing they raised about
150 000 for the harris campaign while we were there uh we got a little bit of uh face time with
uh former directors of the office of national cyber defense uh that uh put this sort of were
uh helping to get this thing going so um we came away from the whole front row of this event was
hackers.town cdc and loft members right it was like it was just when i look back at that it was just
amazing it was like oh okay here we are real world's gallery there yeah so uh we got some
face time with everybody there there are some stories i will not tell on the air that were really cool
uh but what i will say was that there was a little bit of motivation from that to do more than we
usually do right um and uh on sunday i i spoke with a uh another friend of ours rob you know uh tech
from the fediverse of course voltair you may know as well out there um a very good friend of the town
and he had this idea about how to do more than what we've done uh to ensure the right to vote
for uh people who get disenfranchised particularly in battleground states we started having a discussion
around it and i couldn't get the thought out of my brain right for the next several days it was like
wow that's actually really simple and a really good idea we should we should see if we can do this
um so we started talking to code babe who uh is a really good voice of reason whenever we get crazy
ideas around there right it's like it's true we like we'll have a crazy idea at hackers.town and then
go to code babe like please shoot this down tell us we're nuts we should not do this yeah only only
only this time i was like oh yeah sign me up let's go so that's when we knew we had a good one um so
what what we came up with was uh you know voter registration data is accessible legally it's
public information for the most part uh in every state uh and so we decided to put together a project
that would gather voter registration databases uh and allow people to be able to be notified
to be uh get an alert if they're if they were deregistered for any reason whatsoever and what
that reason is uh so we started putting this together and in less than what it's been right
it's not even two weeks yet it's been a week and a half um a new non-profit is formed and we have a
working proof of concept of this in a private area uh so in the next few weeks we're maybe a little
longer in time for the election though we're hoping to debut this system called keep the vote
uh and it is uh going to protect uh particularly uh voter registrations for those uh disenfranchised
areas uh so uh yeah it's uh it's kind of the crazy idea that came out of defcon this year and it
happened way faster than we thought it would awesome is there is there anything uh public facing
folks can uh look up yet or uh no not yet no no we're moving fast uh to do this and no we don't
have anything up yet but it is coming everything all the domains are registered okay it's like this
is going to happen it's just uh we're we're a few weeks out before we really want to really want to
we want to have something to show before we do this so uh but um we we have a the the plan is
amazingly simple and to be clear uh data gathering such it's all above board and legal we're not we're
not you know this is not a a uh data mining thing or anything like that but we uh you know we are
being very careful to minimize the amount of data we have and to do this in the most efficient and
safe way we can for everybody who could be affected by this um you guys talked about a uh the whole
thing that started about this was uh i don't know maybe even a few months back uh on this very show
uh i think you guys talked about uh certain uh well-known billionaires who were taking measures to
disenroll voters uh in certain battleground states and that's really kind of what where we came up with
the idea was like well what if we help re-enroll them because at the end of the day if you put a
little bit of defense in front of a system like that it doesn't even have to be much
it disincentivizes them from doing it because they may not get the results they want right and so that
was really the core philosophy here well this is uh this is all very interesting and do keep us posted
on the status of this project uh voltaire go ahead yeah i can tell you it's not just battleground
states that that disenrollment happens and i know in new york it actually happened to me it took me
over a year to get uh back on the border roads and started frustrating um during the 2000
i think the 2020 um democratic uh nominations they there are a ton of people that went to go
vote uh nomination day and they were disenfranchised especially in new york city area
so it happens here as well um yeah i i have checked my uh voting registry and uh it is uh it is intact
um i i encourage uh everyone to be aware of their own status if they're if they've registered to vote
in the past uh just double check uh find out how to do that near you and uh just double check on your
own registration and uh see how things are going and if they are where you want them um
yeah check that out um absolutely plan on moving us to all 50 states by the next election cycle right
but we have a limited amount of time to get this thing up and running and be impactful so
sure uh right now we're focusing on the ones that that are the most impacted by these sorts of
shenanigans sounds good uh you are listening to radio station wbai 99.5 fm new york we are part of
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and along these uh along these uh lines there is so much going on here uh we are in about a half
an hour going to throw over to coverage of the democratic national convention um and everything
that's uh going on out there so uh stay tuned to bai after that uh we won't be doing off the hook
over time this week we are bringing it back in the future the future is not yet now for that so we are
just doing our radio hour so um on the subject of things that have been going on um you mentioned uh
cult of the dead cow and uh they are of course a very storied and historically amazing uh hacker group
that have been around since the old days there's another hacker group or another uh publishing group
that has been around since the old days called frack p-h-r-a-c-k and uh one thing that's been in
kind of the hacker news this week is that they who have been publishing an online zine since 1985
since they were text files has published another issue it's been a few years but uh they have published
an issue uh recently and uh uh you folks out in skype land uh are you uh are you frack readers or
familiar with this no i am not but i think i saw gibbs with the copy yeah i got a physical copy at
defcon i i am way more proud of getting a physical copy of that than i should be but yeah you can't
copy and paste from dead trees it turns out but uh it uh yeah they were there it's a little messy
though yeah yeah not with my typing skills you can't um but uh yeah they were there and they were
they had physical copies um they were hard to track down and find i have to be full full uh full
out in the open here i didn't track them down and find them a friend of mine another townie got a
copy a couple of days before me and uh i was very jealous of it and my lovely uh significant other
uh went and tracked down frack and got me a copy of the magazine so uh yeah very happy about that
it's you know it's so good to see an old standard like this still out there doing it you know and
it just made me happy it really is and that that's love find someone who gets you a copy of frack
um but uh so what what uh have you have you had a look at the content uh how is it
yeah there's um a really interesting it piqued my curiosity an interesting article out there about
uh the hacker spirit can break any spell and he misses so it kind of goes into the you know i like
the the kind of crossing over of uh esotericism and tech so it kind of went to that that was an
interesting one a lot of really interesting um code snippets in there regarding uh of all things uh
virus writing uh that that were pretty interesting and in my line of work professionally uh seeing those
kind of tactics written down and and uh and sort of use you know being able to identify them is pretty
cool so i liked it it was great it's got a good mix of art and culture and tech in there so very
very well worth the read uh and the online edition i think dropped earlier this week so well worth checking
out yeah and uh they are about to celebrate an anniversary next year it will be 40 years since that first
issue uh hit the online scene of 1985 40 years yeah as as another as another section of uh my my body
hair goes gray um this is well for what it's one of the hackers dot or pardon me uh cult of the dead
cows 40th anniversary was at defcon this year too so they they were pushing that 40 number pretty hard and
that that hurt a little but uh you know they they have there has been uh you know turnover and uh
people people get involved new people show up and uh i think that's kept various hacker projects uh
vital um cdc frack um this particular program and uh it can only it can only get better going forward
so yeah very uh very interested in that a lot of other stuff been going on in the news i want to get a
little uh into into a little bit of this google we we know all we all know google you deal with
google whether or not you want to um new an article from bloomberg is uh pointing out the fact that
google's ai search has taken a turn has taken a step um generative ai is everywhere you can't get away
from it um no matter how hard you try and there are little methods that people who operate websites
and uh things that are on the on the net can sort of discourage the ai bots from stealing from their
particular content um things like robots.txt files but uh it is now becoming apparent to a lot of people
running uh running their own sites that if google finds that your particular site is discouraging their
ai bots they will make your uh your listings your search rankings suffer as a result um this happening
of course at uh at a period where google's monopoly status is uh very much under um inspection by uh by
the relevant people and uh so i know i know folks uh folks on here have operated and administrated uh
various things uh what what is what does this feel like this era of uh just uh trying to deal with
things like this
well as uh kind of like an old school hacker philosophy i actually don't have a problem with
things especially with intangible goods so if they like copy it and use it for
transform their work even if they use it for ai models to make new things even if they're slightly
similar to my things but what i do have a problem with is a lot of these ai companies i think google is a lot
better in this regard but a lot of the other ai like are particularly bad at like scanning websites
over and over and over again they're not respectful of like limits and that is like a really big issue
and that uh i think more concerning to me it's causing way too much traffic yeah so from a purely uh
bandwidth uh respect yeah precisely yeah i've heard this from other i've heard that from other people
uh other system administrators they've been like oh why do i feel why does this look like i'm getting
a ddos attack and it's just a high speed scan because they don't throttle their their stuff
hmm well i think it's good i think google should do this and i think google should become more irrelevant
by doing so i if you're going to have corporate owned internet uh you know let go ahead make it worse
because what we're doing the under net we've all been living on building in our own way that's not a
part of the commercial internet we're still going to flourish nobody needs google to go do the fun stuff
you know i mean it's uh if they continue to go down a route like this they only damage their own value
at the end of the day and and you know i'm sure other people will feel pain from it i'm not trying
to belittle that but you know ultimately making heavy-handed decisions like this only hurts them
and apt in in the light of last week's ruling uh that they were they were guilty of antitrust activities
um you know good just go ahead you're just pushing yourself further down down the path of of some sort
of strange insignificance i look at these silos and they're always on fire there's something always on
fire it doesn't mean that they're burning down but they don't have enough fire crews to put out all
the fires at this point and that goes for google as well as any other uh major tech firm that's
that's engaged in the sort of spying they do so you know um okay good this is fine that's certainly an
interesting way to look at it and i i hadn't really thought of it from that perspective thank you
um you know and that that being a latest you know one of the one of the latest examples of large scale
um as we're calling it on the air in crapification um there's another one that uh there was an article
in the times um about the snoo now are you folks familiar with the snoo and no it's that the snoo is
a baby bassinet it is uh it is a device that uh you can you know park your baby in if uh if you've got
one of those and it uh it is it is a sleeping uh sort of vessel but um it also has functions it uh it
plays it plays sounds it monitors your your baby's activities and things and uh all sorts of
technological additions to your standard uh baby bassinet that might be useful to parents
but those functions are being paywalled uh users of the snoo which uh which comes at a price of about
wow that's a lot um yeah i just pulled this up um that's what i would call an investment yes this
this is a premium item for uh people with i guess a certain amount of disposable income even after
they've had a child and uh the company that makes this does not want people like something you get
something for an infant and traditionally it's not unusual for somebody to use something like this
while the baby is small and then pass it along to maybe somebody else who has a baby that age
who could uh get use out of it you know hand me down secondhand things things like that you are not
doing that with your snoo because uh you're you need to have an app to go with it that is registered
and that is now paywalled and uh will cost parents twenty dollars a month so uh people are people are a bit
angry at this uh people who have spent large amounts of money on their on their baby bassinets are angry
about this and uh it seems like uh there is uh let's see according to the article here um happiest
baby in june who is happiest baby is is the uh app that uh goes that goes with this thing sent an
email notifying users of changes coming to the app the following month by august parents who hadn't
upgraded had fallen into two camps some had been bumped down to a lower tier of the app losing many
of the features they'd come to rely on others who bought the snoo directly from happiest baby
whether new or certified pre-loved were offered free access to a nine-month premium app subscription
for each baby that uses the bassinet and the fact that you can buy something and functions of it will
just be beyond your reach unless you have a premium membership or you have some kind of you pay some
kind of extra ongoing bill for it um yeah that that fits right into cory doctorose uh in
crapification i think i i i'm fine with google making bad business choices that's okay when it
comes to nap time as a service that's where i draw the line no yeah gibbs you're you're a parent you
have you have dealt with uh you know this era of a child's life and uh i i you know what what uh
what would you say if if any of the devices you used to uh you know nurture and raise uh your your
offspring wanted subscriptions from you i wouldn't use those devices first of all but second of all
uh i i mean where do we draw the line here when do you really own something right it's like okay i have
to pay a subscription to have a bassinet that will rock my child to sleep i mean
this is rent seeking this is like for for the goofiest reasons
i i mean i i don't know what to say beyond that outside of like i i mean
how did we get here it's like we've got we've got all this technology all this amazing stuff and and to
use it to and i want to be clear i am not anti-capitalist i'm not that guy a lot of people
that i'm friends with are and that's cool i respect that but this is just i mean we have to nickel and
dime everything to death just to keep supporting whatever this economy we've built is where are we
ultimately i look at things like this i'm like this is how unhealthy our economy is we have to charge to
rock a baby to sleep right that if we're having to eek dollars pennies dives whatever this is
out of people at that level we should be asking a lot of different questions about why our economy
is in the position where we have to be monetizing rocking a baby to sleep and and to to be clear too
these are functions that are available in the device and that will just be arbitrarily locked out for
you if you if you don't pay for this thing like we have we talked about uh in the past on this
program the cars that uh wanted to charge you extra to activate the seat heaters that were installed in
the seats the hardware was there the switch was there all the necessary stuff was already there but to be
allowed to use it they wanted to charge you extra i'm i'm with gibbs on this it's at what point do you
actually own the product well this is a question that's a service delivery mechanism not a product
yeah televisions as well they there is uh there is a lot going on about how they are basically billboards
um in your home now that uh are generating income off of you you know regardless of what you do or don't
subscribe to the makers of the tvs are paid um to show you ads to show you things you did not request
and the days seem to be long gone for most people where you could just turn on a tv and see only what
you wanted to um even including the barrage of ads that are on a lot of commercial programming
i'm at the point that i think my next television is going to be a commercial display is which is what
they sell their tv but without the smart part yeah that's that's going to be my next purchase i'm i'm not
even going to buy a home television yeah um and that's uh that's not an uncommon attitude but of
course those cost a lot more than than a comparable tv of uh of the same like size and capability because
they're not being uh i i think not a lot of people realize the reason why we can have
a 200 tv is because it's being subsidized by the data gathering and by the advertising
100 i mean these are profit models and and everybody doesn't i not everybody a lot of
people the vast majority of people don't realize the value of the data they generate like how it can
be leveraged by other people to make money uh you know i and it's i find the act abhorrent i think
signing a eula that takes away part of who you are to monetize it should be completely illegal i mean
that data construct you put on the internet is a part of you just like your right hand i that's my
radical belief right there it is i i don't see any difference between the you you build on the internet
and who you are and if that's the case then we are looking at a horrible human rights violation and
we need to talk about that in better better ways than we do today yeah i agree and i think in most
europe those contracts that call contract of adhesion where it's like you have to accept it or you can't
use the product there's like they're they're not accepted so i think it's a political thing that we
can change i do too i do too and that's one of i mean it's one reason we do things like valet like
valet foundation right it's not about succeeding i mean it's nice if we do succeed it's nice if we get
these things out there it's about moving the way the press and the people talk about the problems in
front of us right and and getting that popular support to change what we understand now that is
so encrapified that that is hard to say but something that is so encrapified you know everything
about our our system of life right now is encroached on by this and and so you know changing the way
people think about it how they talk about these problems is really the way we make long-term
lasting change happen too right in general so you know to me we have to keep doing the projects we
do the things we do um and not just us i mean everybody that's working in this space i think we
have to continue down this path in order to change public opinion uh from ooh scary things happen in
private parts of the internet to no i use this because nobody can spy on me here and i don't like that
and so uh what's what's the you know i guess the best way to uh try and make this happen is to just
keep shouting when things like this happen because we we see so many things just creep and creep and
get worse and worse and um i don't know it gets disheartening sometimes seeing uh folks around just
not maybe have the problem with it you think they should and so you know don't let the apathy get to
you don't let it uh don't don't uh let the encrapification get you down keep doing what
you're doing keep uh telling folks what uh what it is you want to tell them and uh keep it going and
that's what we're going to keep doing on this uh program on this station and in the hacker scene in
general i think because that sort of thing is what we are all about um as we're as we're uh closing up
here uh gibson code babe uh where where can folks find more about uh what what you're up to
uh for valid definitely check out valid.com uh and if you want to know more about the foundation
we're valid.org that's right of course hackers.town uh cdc communications is a term you can
you can search for more of the cult of the dead cow projects uh you know we you know we'll have
more on keep the vote in the coming weeks and and i'll be i'm sure you'll hear me talking about that
when i get to that point uh rob voltaire so but uh yeah i mean these projects are things that are
going to be very public we're going to continue uh continue pushing this because we think it's the
right way to fix things absolutely so we're going to keep doing what we can to fix things
send us email oth at 2600.com find us on the fediverse off the hook at hackers.town
and uh stay in touch stay uh tuned to bai for the dnc and that uh associated party
and just keep what you're doing out keep uh doing what you're doing out there and keep them flying
and have a wonderful week for off the hook this has been rob t firefly we'll be back next week
have a good night