Busy verification by the operator is not allowed on this call.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
One diddley-bomb for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
We have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
We had Alex. I saw him. Just disappeared.
Can we ever have a show where Alex has a good connection?
I don't understand it. Is he cursed?
What is the issue? Alex, are you with us?
Yes. I just lost my internet connection momentarily there.
No matter where you are, if you're in New York City, if you're in the Dry Tortugas, if you're in Pennsylvania, if you're in the studio, somehow you lose your connection every time.
I don't get it. It's actually cursed. You're cursed. I don't know what it is.
But welcome.
I think it's infrastructure.
We're all here now, and this is the special New Year's edition of Off the Hook.
And for once, it's taking place on New Year's Day, which is incredible.
And what we'll be doing tonight, among other things, is basically going over both our predictions and our acknowledgments of the previous year, predictions for next year.
So we have a special sound effect, I guess, so people can tell the difference.
So when we each have a look back at 2024 in high technology, we will hear...
Yeah. And when we're looking ahead at predictions for 2025, we will hear...
Wow. Okay. That's something. That's the future for sure.
But right now, let's look at what's going on in various headlines.
This is something that kind of disturbed me a little bit, and hopefully it doesn't tie into anybody's predictions as well.
And if you forgot to do your predictions or your look back, you can use the time I'm reading this to scramble.
So basically, the headline reads, Facebook planning to flood platform with AI-powered users.
Yeah. I don't know how this is even possible in light of everything we've been through.
But Meta, the parent company of Facebook, says they will be aiming to have Facebook filled with AI-generated characters to drive up engagement on its platform as part of its broader rollout of AI products.
That's according to the Financial Times, which I believe you always read, Alex.
The AI characters will be created by users through Meta's AI studio, with the idea being that you can interact with them almost like you would with a real human on the website.
We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do.
That's according to Meta Vice President of Product for Generative AI.
This is his title?
Meta Vice President of Product for Generative AI, Connor Hayes.
Yeah.
They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on its platform.
That's where we see all of this going.
Folks, it's 1905 Eastern Standard Time.
I declare our future dead because this is exactly what we have been warning everybody about.
And this is what Meta wants to do.
They want to flood their platform with AI, so we can't tell the difference.
So that we'll be interacting with artificial intelligence.
They'll have bios.
They'll have all kinds.
And they're embracing this.
How is that even possible?
Any theories?
I was looking for an April Fool's type of a thing here, but there isn't one.
I'm looking.
I'm still looking.
This is real.
Alex?
Well, I think that this is not surprising to me at all for a number of reasons.
I think the first reason is that Facebook sucks.
It's a crappy platform that not a lot of people are using right now.
And if you go on it, you see that there's more and more content that comes from quote-unquote influencers or accounts that they think that you might like
or some kind of random story that they think of it.
And what they're trying to do is fill your feed with content so that you stay on the platform
because people are not using the platform to provide updates about their lives or share photos of their pets,
much the way that they used to do over the last 12, 10, 15 years or so.
And so as the use of the platform begins to decline, they need to figure out ways to drive this type of engagement.
And this, to me, is an act of desperation.
On their part, they're trying to create some kind of nonsensical, fictional accounts that are entirely on the basis of AI
that they think users are going to have fun interacting with for some bizarre reason
as some saving grace for the platform itself just seems to smell of actual desperation to me.
So in a sense, maybe that's a good thing because I think this is just indicative of the deterioration of Facebook.
Yeah, well, I mean, it's going to kill Facebook, obviously, because if people aren't engaging,
why would they be wanting to engage with something that's not even real, that's just artificial intelligence?
And, you know, I also wonder what happens if the humans actually do leave, you know, in droves,
and there's nothing but artificial intelligence left.
Is men are going to keep Facebook going for AI and AI alone?
Are they going to be able to tell the difference between what's AI and what's human?
This is some kind of science fiction story.
I think at that point, it would just turn into Twitter, right?
I mean, I think we already see most of that.
I mean, I think the bot activity on Twitter is just totally off the charts, I think, for the last couple of years.
Well, I don't know.
I got to say, I'm kind of perplexed by all this.
It just seems like a really dumb thing to announce or to, you know, to say is what you're hoping for.
Anyone else have any thoughts or feelings on this?
Gila, go ahead.
Well, so I, as much as I hate to admit this on this platform, am not an inactive Facebook user.
I do actually still use it somewhat for its intended purpose, which is keeping up with people.
And every so often, you know, I get a list of people who are suggested accounts for me to become friends with.
And I look through the whole list and I'm like, oh, I know this person from high school.
Oh, this person is a friend of my mom's.
I met this person at a wedding.
And then there are people who are like just randomly there and we have no mutual friends and they don't have any information.
I'm just like, oh, this is a fake person.
And I mean, I don't automatically friend people that it suggests me to friend anyway, but I'm like, I'm just going to delete this person from my suggestions.
Like this is happening.
It's been happening.
It's going to continue to happen.
And the fact that they're talking about it now, I guess, is the big change.
But from the point of view of the daily user, I mean, I hate to say it, I don't see it making that much of a difference.
Well, it's not going to make a difference for me because I don't use Facebook.
I just I drop in occasionally to see if like, you know, something dramatic happens with somebody just to see what people are saying.
But usually it's pretty boring and I leave quickly.
The interesting thing about the idea of bot accounts running around on the thing is in the old days of social networks, when when one would wind down, when one would die out and everyone would move on to the next big thing.
You could go back to like MySpace or LiveJournal or whatever and see that, oh, you know, everyone I used to interact with is no longer posting.
It's a ghost town.
There's nothing going on.
But like when Facebook dies and it's all these robots talking to each other, how how will we know?
Exactly. Yeah, that's my point.
How are you going to know if it's just robots left or just A.I. left and all the humans have gone?
And there must be about 50 science fiction stories where the whole planet has been abandoned to A.I.
And you can't you can't really tell anymore.
All right. You know what?
Meta, you're writing your own bankruptcy check or whatever.
Whatever the phrase is.
Doesn't look doesn't look good.
Doesn't look promising.
And I got to say, you know, 2025 so far has not looked very, very happy to me.
All kinds of bad things happening today.
Not the least interesting of which is the the cyber truck blowing up outside of Trump Tower or Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
The symbolism of that is just there's a picture out there.
Have you seen this picture?
It's a picture of a flaming cyber truck right outside the Trump Hotel with the word Trump on it.
And the symbolism of that is just, yeah, 2025.
That's that's pretty much the theme.
Now, you know, the jury is still out as to whether this is an act of terror or an act of stupid, because apparently the cyber truck had a bunch of fireworks in it.
And it's just it's too early to say just what's going on here.
But it's it's really kind of a crazy way to start the new year and not the only way either.
I don't want to dwell on that.
I want people to be happy and look forward to what's what's going to be happening on that note.
Some good news with the radio station.
You know, we've been trying to raise funds for the last few weeks, and the goal was one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars, which at times seemed out of reach.
But I'm happy to say that today, the first day that the fund drive is not taking place, even though you can still go to buddy.wbai.org and pledge.
We have made what do we add now, one hundred and thirty three thousand three hundred ninety five dollars and eighty nine cents.
And that's not even the grand total.
There's more coming in.
So thank you, everybody, for pledging your support to this radio station, keeping WBAI going.
It is more important than than any of us can possibly imagine.
And we are going to be facing challenges ahead.
So, you know, it's it's not an easy battle, but it's an admirable one.
And I want to thank everybody at the station for all their support for us and for each other and just for the the fascinating programming that hopefully will continue coming your way.
Twenty four hours a day here on WBAI.
And thank you, of course, to all the listeners for for their support.
You've kept us on the air since 1960 and some other some other good news as far as radio goes.
We talked about this a few a few weeks ago.
Now, Stephen King's radio station in Maine was shutting down.
Well, guess what?
It's not shutting down after all.
Two businessmen purchased WKIT FM from the bestselling writer after he announced that the station and two others would go silent after New Year's Eve.
The buyers are the main base duo, Greg Hawes and Jeff Solari, who formed Rock Lobster Radio Group in order to run the station.
WKIT is the I think that's funny, Rob.
OK, WKIT is the most legendary station in the region, has tremendous history.
We couldn't let it die.
They said in a statement to King is a lifelong rocker and perform with the rock bottom remainders.
I guess it is kind of funny.
A band that featured literary icons performing for charity.
He announced earlier this month that at age 77, he thought it was time to say goodbye to the radio stations.
I'm sorry, is held to be closing down to be a WKIT and sister stations.
Stephen King posted earlier this month on social media.
I held off the suits for as long as I could.
But last minute, last minute, there's there's there's a rescue.
So, you know, good things can happen.
Absolutely.
Go ahead.
Oh, I was just going to jump in and say I think it shows the the importance and the power of radio.
Radio and and its place is still, I think, extraordinarily important in the world, especially as we move into 2025 right now.
The political climate is going to change.
Radio, I think, is people are seeing is going to be extraordinarily important.
And I don't think its relevance is going to decrease.
I think it's going to increase over the next couple of years.
And I think people are waking up to that fact.
That's a good thing.
That is a good thing.
It might be brought about by unfortunate events and where we are in history.
But it is a good thing that people are recognizing the importance of radio.
And no, nowhere is that recognized more, I think, in New York than on WBAI, because we are one of the few stations that has live people constantly on duty or on the air and never a commercial.
Yeah.
And a lot of creativity.
OK, what we're going to do, we're going to go through.
So everybody here, me, Kyle, Rob, Gila, and Alex, and each of us is going to make reference to something that happened back in 2024 or a prediction for something that's going to happen in 2025.
Now, we're not going to do both at the same time.
We're going to do one and then somebody else will do something else.
Someone will have to keep track of all this.
I'll try to keep it in my head.
If somebody would like to - OK, how do we do this?
All right.
If you raise your hand with one finger, that means you want to do something from the past.
If you raise your hands with two fingers, that means you want to do something from the future.
Otherwise, you have to tell me on the air and then I have to play the right music for it and it's just - it will sound sloppy.
So it's better for me to sound sloppy here and give those instructions out.
All right.
So I see there is a finger being - not that finger, Alex.
Not that finger.
You know which one I meant.
Well, you just said one.
Yeah, I know I said one.
It was my mistake.
OK.
It's never one I wanted.
Yeah, I got it now.
All right.
So now we know where we are and stand by.
I'll look back at 2024 in tech with Alex.
I love it.
Fantastic.
Don't make reference to the theme when you do your bit.
OK.
So from 2024, one of the things that really stood out to me as being massively momentous from a hacking slash cybersecurity standpoint
was the global IT outage in July that CrowdStrike had accidentally caused, affecting about eight and a half million machines
and costing Fortune 500 companies a little over $5 billion.
And this happened all by way of a faulty software update.
And I think it was very ironic because this software update was for its endpoint detection and response product line, Falcon,
which is supposed to actually keep machines safe from real-time threats.
And I think what was also really quite interesting when we look back at this is the fact that this update really looked like a sophisticated supply chain attack across massive sector.
This is the kind of thing that we were predicting probably last year as happening more often but wouldn't necessarily happen by accident.
That's something that we didn't necessarily predict.
So what actually happened here was that the software update introduced a logic error and how it handled, I think, piped or piped executable commands.
And this logic error caused that Falcon sensor to crash and led to that dreaded BSOD, or the blue screen of death, across millions and millions of Windows machines globally.
So that was my 2024 incident of note.
And that was a noteworthy incident for sure.
Absolutely.
And we had quite a few in 2024.
Okay, who's next?
I have the signal there.
Hold on one second.
I just got to get my bearings.
Prediction 2025 with Rob.
In the year 2025, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, I think what we're going to see is the final sort of flaming out and bursting of the generative AI bubble.
I think that's something that has been creeping ever forward for the last few years as it's been all the rage.
It's been forced into all sorts of consumer products and all sorts of hype and all sorts of people begging for funding and it being added to things that it just will not benefit from it.
And I think much like the blockchain craze and the NFT craze and everything else, I think we're finally going to see it spin out this year.
Okay.
Thank you very much for that.
I'm going to go to a listener email here and you can write to us here at Off The Hook.
OTH at 2600.com.
We'd be happy to read your letter to us over the air.
This is from your friendly neighborhood hacker, big fan of the magazine and show.
Open AI now has an 800 number.
Hope you play with this over the air.
It's 1-800-CHAT-GPT.
Happy New Year.
Well, you know what?
We do intend to do that.
We do intend to play with that over the air quite a bit.
Not today, though, because we're doing our predictions and are reminiscing today.
But this is definitely fun for the future and something that I think we can pledge to make a part of our daily routine to drive AI crazy.
Yes, Alex.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I think that perhaps on overtime after the show, I would imagine some of our callers, Rebel in particular, asking us to or maybe calling this for us involuntarily, forcing us to play with AI systems.
So, yeah, this one will be interesting.
Appreciate that email.
Okay, anybody want to go next?
It's just harder than I thought.
You've got to hold up.
But Alex took mine.
No, you can't claim somebody took your prediction.
Phrase it in a different way if you have to.
Hold on a second.
I believe we have another one coming up.
I have to hit all the right knobs here.
Boy, this is difficult.
Prediction 2025 with Kyle.
Hi.
Hi, Kyle.
It's not interactive.
It's supposed to be standalone.
I forgot which number it was.
Wow, radio is hard.
So for prediction for 2025, I'm actually really excited about people demanding better networks and stuff because they want to do more with a lot of the tools and technology.
And I think it's also compounding people's ability to do things because they're working with things that help them achieve things and learn things and work more efficiently.
And I think all those things are also being shared on networks that you can not just talk on and post some sort of brand, but you're actually just living your life doing things.
I think there's a lot of storytelling that people are doing themselves across the board.
And it's not something that is managed by the entertainment industry in the same way.
It's really just people communicating and getting better at doing what they already do with all of the ways that stuff can help them.
I'm thinking of the problems that were mentioned actually inspiring people to say, like, hey, we're using this.
We want it to be better.
We want the network to stretch further and allow richer media.
And I think things like telehealth and medicine, I think a lot of telecommunications save lives this year.
So I want to see people innovating and doing more, including using some of these large language model or whatever kind of machine learning tools people are playing with.
I think that play is what we do best, and a good dose of humor with that is always really fun because it gets other people in the spirit of building stuff and working better and cooperating, coexisting with these tools to better understand and live.
Does that work?
Yeah, that works.
Are we good with that?
No, I think we're pretty good with that.
Okay.
And thank you for that, Kyle.
And by the way, I just want to point out to the people, we're aware of the hum.
You don't know the hum?
That's the hum.
Do you hear the hum?
I don't know where it's coming from.
It's annoying me.
It's coming from Skype land is where it's coming from.
It's coming from Skype land.
Well, it could be that interface that that machine's on, or it could be somebody's system that's connected to us.
Yeah, but if everybody turned down their volume on input, it would go away, right, if it was coming from them.
Why do we do this to people?
Right, right?
Yeah, but it's still there.
So I think it's a connection on our own.
So what we're going to do, we'll turn it down and we don't need it, but hopefully that sound doesn't bother people too much.
And if it does, well, that's just too bad because there's nothing we can do about it right now.
A look back at 2024 in tech with a manual.
See, that's how you're supposed to do it.
Thank you.
Yeah, you know what?
The story that I found interesting in 2024 was Google basically being found to be a monopoly.
In August, Judge Emmett Mehta, great name, by the way, he ruled that Google illegally crushed its competition in search,
which the company has continued to vow to appeal.
This is going to change everything if Google has to spin off, say, Chrome or any of its other businesses as a result of this.
But I think the fact remains that Google has gotten really, really big and hard to get past if you're a competitor.
Now, Google is proposing new limits to revenue sharing agreements with companies like Apple,
which make Google's search engine the default on their devices and browsers, suggesting all kinds of different options.
They say there should be a lot to continue entering into contracts with other companies while widening the options that it offers.
One of their suggested remedies calls for the ability for partners to change their default search provider at least every 12 months.
That stands in stark contrast to the sweeping remedies suggested last month by the U.S. Department of Justice,
which recommended that Judge Mehta force the firm to stop entering into revenue sharing contracts altogether.
And they demanded that Google sell Chrome, which is the world's most popular web browser.
I'm not really sure why.
Google search engine accounts for about 90% of all online searches globally, which, you know, to me is problematic.
I don't know if you realize this or if you if you pay attention when when you hear news reports.
But constantly when people are found to be in violation of one thing or another, they look to Google searches as evidence.
And that really scares me.
You know, so many people are logged into their Google accounts and because they, you know, look up something like, you know, how to blow up a building and they just happen to be involved in a building blowing up.
OK, that's a bad example.
But there are other cases where it speaks to motive.
Innocent searches or searches for something that is a political ideology of one sort or another.
That information is basically something that you might assume is private, but is not.
And it's constantly being handed over to law enforcement.
So, yeah, I for that reason, I don't know why people continue to use Google to search.
If you go, you know, DuckDuckGo or something like that, you don't have the same kind of of issue.
So, yeah, it's going to be interesting.
It's going to be interesting to see where that goes.
I know this is something from the past, but it also kind of relates to the future.
And I'm not copping out on my future prediction that will be coming soon.
Any any thoughts on this?
I think this Google antitrust suit is extraordinarily fascinating.
And we talked about it a couple of weeks ago.
And there were a number of possibilities that existed in terms of of how Google could be curtailed in terms of the anti-competitive nature of of what Judge Mehta had found.
And selling off Chrome, I think, was one of the possibilities that we addressed.
But it seems very much like that's what the Department of Justice is focusing on right now.
And I don't think here.
I guess this is a prediction based on your retrospective as well.
But I don't think that there will be a change in the proposals from the Department of Justice, given the Trump administration is going to be coming in because they, too, also have big issues with big tech and want to rein in the power of big technology companies.
So I would see and predict that maybe you would even see more forceful proposals coming in with respect to trying to curb the anti-competitive nature of not only just Google, but perhaps other big tech monopolists as well.
Well, you know, one thing I think we've learned is that Trump is susceptible to all kinds of influence.
And you recall his original feelings towards tick tock.
They've now gone completely 180 degrees.
And now he's the one that claims he wants to keep tick tock operating in the U.S., whereas originally he was the one that wanted to ban tick tock.
Then Biden wanted to ban tick tock.
So, yeah, it's it changes by the day, it seems.
Yeah, no, no doubt.
And back in 2020, I'm sure listeners will remember, I was part of a lawsuit where we actually filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump and and against the God, I can't remember his secretary of commerce at the moment.
I can't remember his name, but in any event, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of tick tock employees in the United States who were affected by the proposed tick tock ban, because if the tick tock ban did come into into effect, it would have made it illegal to pay these U.S.
employees and for their their work.
So we were actually brought one of the the first suits against the Trump administration on that front.
And the Department of Justice actually blinked and gave us the interpretation of the ban that we had wanted.
So, yeah, it's really funny to see this total 180 degree change here.
It's it's something else.
Indeed, it is.
OK, I'll be going to our next person in just a second here.
First, I want to read another piece of listener email.
To O.T.H. at twenty six hundred dot com is from an anonymous person.
Any update on the archive of the twenty six hundred voice BBS?
Good question.
One I'd like to know as well.
I know we have a whole lot of recordings that we're going to be releasing.
It's just a question of having the time to collate it properly and to display it properly.
I know with basically all the work on the magazine, the conference now being an annual event, all sorts of other busy work that keeps us from doing the most basic things.
Sometimes things get pushed to the back, but we are going to try and get to that sooner rather than later, because it's it's it's super important.
OK, I believe I saw a hand.
Is that hand still up?
OK, so.
So I'll look back at twenty twenty four in tech with Gila.
So my well, originally I was going to talk about Cloudflare outage.
So thanks, Alex.
But no, one of the stories that really stuck with me and we didn't really get a chance to talk about on air is from October.
A mom is suing a company called Character.ai because her son made an A.I. friend and the mom is now convinced that it is because of the A.I. friend that her 14 year old son died by suicide.
She's suing because the friend was bad.
And this kind of ties into me or for me with the tick tock ban, the phone ban in schools, this whole idea that we'll be able to protect kids from generative A.I., from all of these different realms of technology.
And if we've learned nothing from the past, certainly this year, it's that we can't put some of these things back in the box once they're out.
But what are we going to gain from this?
Because what we've learned is if this one service gets shut down, another one's going to open.
Others are going to create are going to be created.
And I think the whole year in tech news has really made me pessimistic for the future.
Well, yeah, there's nothing new there.
We're always pessimistic for the future when looking at news developments of the past or anything like that.
But, yeah, interesting.
Very interesting.
OK, who's next?
We have a few to get through and a few people haven't done both yet.
OK, I think we have an entry here.
Prediction 2025 with Alex.
That's it.
Yes.
So my prediction for 2025 is also based on a story that we had covered just a few weeks ago as well that related to Google's advancements with respect to quantum computing.
So I think that quantum computing threats are going to be coming down the pipeline and will no longer be hypothetical in 2025.
I think that the evolution and the accessibility of quantum computing resources in the hands of foreign adversaries will lead to the actual use of a quantum computing attack on existing encryption technologies.
And I think this is going to affect the privacy of our communications.
It's going to throw that into disarray.
It's going to affect the security of our data.
And I think it's also going to affect and alter how blockchain technologies are going to evolve as well, because that all relates to cryptography as well.
And so I think I think watching the space of quantum computing is going to be really fascinating and eye opening in 2025.
You think that's going to happen this year?
You think it's going to make that dramatic an effect in one year?
I think that we're going to see attacks on on actual encryption technologies using quantum computing resources.
I do.
I'd be surprised if we didn't see something by 2026, given the advancements of even the last few months that have been announced with Google.
I think that there's probably far more advancements in the hands of foreign adversaries that we don't know about or that information about which is is classified.
So I certainly wouldn't wouldn't put it past an adversary like China or Russia to try to gain some kind of advantage by using their quantum computing technologies and resources.
Prediction 2025 with Emanuel.
That caught me by surprise, too.
OK, yeah.
So I have one here.
It's very simple, actually.
It's basically an artificial intelligence is going to continue to be used as a crutch where, you know, in places where humans should be in complete control.
And that is going to result in a disaster of some sort and a complete rethinking of how to regulate and limit A.I.'s influence on our lives.
I just think there is.
And we've seen evidence of that in this show where these massive companies think A.I. is the answer to everything, think it can act as or replace humans.
And I just think, you know, it's it's it's it's all good and fun until somebody gets hurt.
And I think somebody is going to get hurt, whether it be in automobile, in an airplane, in a factory, you name it.
But something something is bound to happen involving somebody relying on artificial intelligence too much.
And, you know, if you don't believe this, just try having a conversation with Chad GPT or Gemini or any any one of the number of them that are out there right now and see how long it takes before it gets something completely wrong.
For me, Gemini has been completely broken the last couple of weeks where I ask it a question and it answers a question from two questions ago.
I mean, it can't even get the the back and forth right.
And that's just one malfunction.
Oftentimes the facts are wrong and in ways that are just almost comical because it'll contradict itself in one paragraph.
And then you say, you know, do you realize you just contradicted yourself?
And the answer is always something to the effect of you're completely right.
I'm so sorry.
I am still under development.
Well, you know, a sentence isn't too hard to master.
At least don't contradict yourself in a couple of those.
So, yeah, I don't have much faith.
I love playing with the technology.
It's it's a it's a great toy.
But when you start relying upon it to replace human beings that have the nuance and the skill and the foresight, you are making a grave error that we are all going to have to pay for.
I'm sorry to be so dark, but that's that's that's my prediction.
Yes.
Rob, are you making a point?
Are you ready for your for your entry?
I am ready for an entry.
OK.
All right.
Well, then let me let me prepare for that.
A look back at 2024 in tech with Rob.
A story that is kind of related to my prediction, but this happened back in June where McDonald's had started a pilot program where they were replacing their order taking employees at their drive throughs with A.I.
And it did not go well.
It it went actually very poorly.
There were countless mishaps with people trying to get their orders in for their McDonald's food viral videos out there with people like trying to order one thing and getting just other things added to their order.
People ending up with hundreds, hundreds of dollars worth of chicken McNuggets.
They didn't order somebody with, you know, ice cream, getting bacon added to it, all sorts of hijinks and goings on, which is funny, but which is also an example of a company seeing this technology and deciding, oh, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to replace some of the lowest paid workers in the American workforce with it, save that money and take that amount of humanity out of something so basic as a fast food transaction.
So it did not go well.
The pilot program was ended.
But I think stuff like this is just going to keep happening as long as large companies see the promise of being able to save a few cents here and there at the expense of real human consequences.
Rob, did someone actually get ice cream with bacon?
I mean, there is ice cream with bacon that is actually very good.
But wait, wait, that's a thing.
That's a thing.
It is.
It is.
You know, you should look into it.
Bacon, brown sugar, there's good stuff going on in the space, but there are but there there were there were instances.
There's videos all over TikTok and other places and and the the news picked up on some of it.
And, yeah, it is it is funny to laugh at people, you know, not getting what they want from a robot that doesn't understand burgers.
But it's also important to think of the actual human cost behind the decisions that lead to something like this happening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's that's definitely something.
Well, thank you for that.
That's that was that was a good one.
We have another listener email.
Actually, this is a repeated reply to, I guess, the show that replied to an email from this person previously.
If you recall, a couple of weeks ago, this listener told us that we were victim blaming because when individuals or organizations that don't align with our political beliefs get hacked, we we criticize them, whereas we don't criticize people like Internet Archive.
And we sort of took exception to that.
And more evidence in against us, according to this person, victim blaming scorecard blame Vivek Ramaswamy for his Twitter slash X account being hacked, not the individuals that maliciously obtained access.
Look, when you have somebody who is a part of the government who can't keep his his his Twitter account secure because he uses a stupid password, we're going to make fun of that, you know, because he's not the victim.
We're likely to be his victims, you know, and it's important to be able to assign responsibility to people who have to have a certain degree of skill, you know, to do their job.
And if you can't even make your social media account somewhat secure, you know, from from somebody posting embarrassing things in it, you have to question, are you really the person to have an important job in the government?
Now, you know, when when when when individuals have all of their records copied throughout the Internet?
No, they're not to blame because they trusted the company.
You know, they are the true victims here.
We're not blaming them.
And the company, as far as I'm concerned, is a perpetrator.
You can say that the people who hacked it, yeah, they're perpetrators, too.
But the company that did not have decent security, decent enough to protect the data that they were entrusted with.
I don't see them as victims.
I see them as as people who deserve to be criticized and mocked.
And I don't know.
I don't really I don't really see a contradiction.
Go ahead, Kyle.
Kyle.
I had a past year thing.
Oh, OK.
I thought you were responding to what I said.
But, Alex, you respond and I'll go to you.
Finish the thought.
I'm sorry, everybody.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I tend to agree with with our our listener here.
And I think I agreed with him in the past that I I I think we do point the finger and victim shame and blame sometimes here.
In in certain cases, though, as you mentioned, Emmanuel, I think when we're talking about potential government officials with access to classified information, I mean, the suitability to the suitability determination as to who can actually have access to classified information and have a security clearance also has to take into account whether that person is going to take seriously the obligation to protect that secret information.
That's classified information.
So I I do think it's relevant.
But I think pushing back a bit against our listener that wrote in with the keeping count of the victim shaming and and blaming here, which which I think is kind of fun.
I appreciate that he or she does this.
But pushing back on that point, I do also think that in talking about the breach of Vivek, we also went into the mechanics of these really sophisticated impersonation techniques that have been happening on Twitter and surmised a few weeks ago when we talked about this, that this is very likely how Vivek was compromised.
And and so we weren't just victim blaming.
I think we're also trying to explain how something like this would happen.
So I'm both agreeing and defending if you're agreeing with defending.
OK, that's a nice, safe lane to be in.
But if if if if you're a public figure, you're naturally open to more scrutiny and more ridicule.
That's just the way it is.
But I don't think we ever take an actual victim, somebody, you know, who has lost their life savings and make fun of them or blame them because they should have done better.
That's the kind of thing that we actually criticize quite quite a bit.
Yeah, especially with organizations and corporate entities.
I think there's a trap in this rat in this writer's logic that they're themselves persons like corporate personhood is somehow equivalent.
And personally, like as someone who's been a partner of someone that survived assault, actual soul.
I just can't really parse this in the same way without a lot of stuff attached to it.
OK, any other thoughts?
Yeah, I think like I don't think it's.
Go ahead.
Finish, Carl.
Finish, Carl.
Is hacking somehow digital rape?
Like I just I can't get the comparison out of my head.
Rob, go ahead.
Yeah, I think there's a certain amount of scrutiny that you're under when you decide to make a public figure of yourself and like had this guy, you know, walked out of his house one day forgetting to put his pants on and showed up to government in his undies.
That would be hilarious.
And we'd be pointing and laughing.
And I think when something like this happens, it's it's similar.
And you take somebody who is, you know, he was running for president.
Now he's going to have this high powered government position and, you know, working ostensibly for all of us in the government.
And, yeah, he is under more scrutiny than most people.
He is a public facing person.
And when something happens, which puts his public facing person himself in jeopardy like this, I think it's it's worth it's worth pointing a finger and it's worth putting that out there as something that that has happened and that that we could respond to in that spirit.
And I think it's also fair to say that in this kind of circumstance, this is something that we can use to learn from.
Like, it's you know, if you're if you're going to be in charge of government efficiency and you can't keep your own passwords safe.
Well, that's not a great look.
And I wouldn't call that victim blaming.
I would say that if you want to say you're going to be responsible for a lot of things, you need to have your own house in order first.
And yes, Kyle, I'm with you.
I resent the language chosen there.
I think that was it's a very loaded way to phrase it.
And that is problematic in a lot of ways.
Yeah, I don't think that the Gramaswami is as smart as he thinks he is.
And I don't think that bodes well for any of us.
That's all.
Also, the Internet Archive responded and triaged the event pretty well.
And also, like, as far as the result of it, I mean, the damage itself to their organization or anybody in particular, people change passwords.
I don't know.
People moved on.
You also have to be somewhat sympathetic when when a person or an organization is providing a tremendous service.
Even if they have lousy security, you kind of want to help them out if they're trying as hard as they can and people are victimizing them.
I don't think we we would criticize somebody in that particular position.
Versus an organization, an enterprise or company that's basically skimming as much like paying the lowest common denominator for all operating costs and skimming as much as they can to the to the shareholders.
I look back at 2024 in tech with Kyle.
OK, I wanted to talk a little bit about BCI brain computer interfaces.
That was a story this year.
I think that's going to be big in the future.
But I think that's novel because it points to, like, how sensitive health systems are and the amount of it's it's like the resolution like I'm talking about in richness of communications.
That's a tremendous benefit.
But you're sharing so much more of yourself and identity.
And there's just a lot there.
And I think when you have even higher throughput, especially with the potential of interfacing and getting even more sensing and and remote abilities, we really have to, like, look at, OK, so what would that be connected to as far as, you know, the health sector?
And what is computer security there like and what is, you know, so, OK, so do we have those quantum cryptography like use cases in mind?
Because this seems like a perfect application, like guarding people themselves, like your genome from molecular cloning or whatever you're protecting.
Like, it just seems like health care and some of the places where we have the richest amount of information about ourselves, those places are going to be so boss with security.
They're going to have to be we're going to have to demand it if this stuff is pushed, because I like it's one thing to, like, risk your personal brand with these so-called titans of industry.
But, like, we're really going to let them call the shots on on down to your molecules.
Like, I don't know.
I'm thinking about that.
I also have a lot of interest in labor action.
Prediction 2025 with Gila.
Less of a prediction, more of a hope.
And it is that Elon Musk will have his face eaten by the leopards he has been so actively promoting.
Isn't that the exact threat that Steve Bannon sent his way?
He's going to eat his face?
Have his face eaten?
Or I don't know what it was exactly.
I mean, I'm just using the metaphor of leopards ate my face, which, look, what I'm hoping for is that at the end of 2025, if not earlier, Elon Musk will be a non-factor in politics and in technology.
Those are my hopes.
That's my wish that the same would be true of Donald Trump, even though he never was a factor in technology.
Did we get to everybody?
Because I lost track.
I wasn't keeping track.
Everybody did, too?
You know, because...
That was hard.
We'll check.
It was hard, wasn't it?
I was racking my brain the whole time.
Yeah, but you didn't have to deal with the stupid music the whole time, either.
I had to do that.
I almost hit the wrong one once.
Alex, you have about 10 seconds.
Go ahead.
I got one prediction that we know is going to come true that I think will make everybody really happy is that our dear friend, Virgil Griffith, will be getting out of federal prison in 2025.
I think the latest that he's going to be getting out to a halfway house will be April, hopefully sooner than that.
But that's something very much to look forward to and what will happen in 2025.
All right.
That sounds great.
And, Rob, are there meetings this Friday?
There are 2600 meetings happening everywhere.
Go to 2600.com slash meetings to find or start one near you.
All right.
And you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com, with your thoughts and comments, predictions, or acknowledgments of the year past, the year ahead.
We want to hear your input as well.
And, of course, continue to support WBAI because this is the place that allows us to have these kinds of conversations in the first place.
Now, we have overtime coming up on YouTube at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
So go to Channel 2600 on YouTube to find us there or simply look at the link that's on the front page of 2600.com.
Happy New Year, everybody.
In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may fall.
In the year 2535, ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do, and say is in the bill you took today.
In the year 2545, ain't gonna need to tell the truth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555, your arms are hanging limp at your side.
Your legs got nothing to do, some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565, ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You pick your son, pick your daughter too.
From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa, whoa.
In the year 7510, if God's a-comin', he ought to make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say, guess it's time for the judgment day.
In the year 9510, God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been, or tear it down and start again, won't need no wife.
In the year 9595, I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old earth can do, and he ain't put back nothing, whoa, whoa.
Now it's been 10,000 years, man has cried a billion tears, for what he never knew.
Now man's reign is true, but through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight,
So very far away, maybe it's only yesterday.
In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may fall.
In the year 2535, if man is still alive, if man is still alive.
In the year 2535, if man is still alive, if man is still alive.
He is still alive, they mayес still alive, he can't stay alive, he can't stay alive.


and welcome everybody to off the hook overtime here on youtube um we have a little bit of
technical issues here which hopefully are resolved uh kyle did you make it into skype land and to um
youtube land overtime land what do you mean i don't know yeah you're here uh skype land people
are you are you there we are we are here are we are so here are we on youtube in fact we are on
youtube as well and we sound good i couldn't ask for anything more then um boy okay uh well um uh i
think we still have the hum do you guys hear the hum can you hear the hum we we do not hear the hum
oh you don't hear the hum no and when you were mentoring when you were mentioning the hum uh
alex and i alex and us were all muted so it's not something coming from us i don't think right
okay but maybe it's not anything that's going past our own headphones here in the it might be it might
be our headphone mixer all right we'll play with it later we're always looking for things to distract
us oh wait where's the minute yeah we we found that okay um our phone number here by the way you can
you can call us 802-321-4225 uh we'd love to hear from you and i'd love to never hear this music again
it's a bad idea just bad idea all right
are we going to use that are we are we going to be asking our callers for their predictions tonight
is that is that part of this we don't we don't ask our callers for anything we our callers are
are completely independent they can do whatever they wish so um if they want to give us predictions or
you know tell us something about 2024 they're welcome to but um they don't have to well i'd
suggest that we use the the sound effects if and um and request ample notice for either a prediction
or some kind of retrospective so that you can get the maximum amount of value out of all of this
preparation for today's episode well i've already closed the file but i'll reopen it again if there's
demand for it all right very good great expense to me uh yeah rob go ahead i'm gonna sit back for a
little bit um one thing i'm very excited about uh this new year's day as i am every new year's day
is public domain day which uh you out there listening and uh you here joining me on this program may know
is the day where we celebrate all the new things that the public domain now has access to because the
copyrights have run out and uh this public domain day um is a landmark public domain day it's a
milestone public domain day because everything um made in the 1920s every every uh film uh text uh song
um image everything from the 1920s is now in the public domain that's that doesn't extend to sound
recordings uh particular sound recordings which uh have their own um extra loop you know leaps and
bounds of copyright protecting them but uh the song the the song itself the composition and the
lyrics those are public domain now so we have uh we have now all sorts of uh new good stuff that
belongs to all of us in pop culture um things like a farewell to arms by a hemingway a room of
one's own by virginia wolf some nice light reading there um cup of gold by john steinbeck
lots of uh lots of great films uh more mickey mouse films including the talking version of mickey
mouse is now public domain um the skeleton dance by disney which uh was a very exciting
cartoon in its day and uh is still very popular um the uh let's see blackmail alfred hitchcock's
first sound film is now public domain the coconuts which is the first marx brothers film now belongs to
all of us as uh you know and we we just uh re-watched it recently and sure a lot of it holds up
um john ford's the black watch uh all sorts of exciting things popeye the character is now uh
is now public domain um tin tin um from the famous stories is now public domain um singing in the rain
the song is uh public domain you can sing it you can publish it you can cover it um and it is uh
free to use bolero by revel an american in paris by gershwin ain't misbehavin you know ain't misbehavin
call it bolero by revel that's just becoming available now it is yes uh-huh wasn't that
written in like 1493 or something no it was uh 1928 is when it was made wow and uh you know
published in this country in uh in 29 and so it is it is now public domain um and uh yeah all sorts of
all sorts of cool stuff uh and yeah if you if you look up uh if you do a search for public domain day
there is a great page at uh duke law which uh has a which has a center directly uh directly
covering public domain and which is instrumental in celebrating public domain day and you can see all
kinds of cool lists of things that now belong um to you along with everyone else in this country
belongs to all of us not just not just to you yeah okay that's that's that's good news good to know
very cool stuff we uh have open phone lines 802-321-4225 802-321-4225
so we're gonna say kyle well they're not open right now what do you mean they're not open right
now because we have a call i didn't know we had a call i didn't hear the phone ring yeah wow okay
it's one of those ones all right good evening you're on off the hook overtime yes the manual
it's it's it's rebel you could have mentioned that too kyle but um i guess you didn't um feel
that was important the check cleared yes rebel what's uh what's on your mind this this new year's
day you might like to predict that everyone will have a very efficient computing experience
okay what the hell does that mean i don't know ever since i got my nice new all-in-one
that i have linux on it's very you know efficient because when i had this all-in-one it came with
windows 11 and it's uh for some reason this model of hp computed does not work well with windows 11
because sometimes windows 11 like doesn't it uh uh lags on some computers and this was one of them
and it was a really good thing that i mean the laptop that i bought it worked fine but this
just didn't work well with it and uh this uh then since i couldn't we put linux on it and uh
we've been uh it's been working great so linux to the rescue yet again right now what i'm looking
for is an alternative to text now because they have a lot of advertisements oh and let me just mention
one thing i'll get back to that in a minute um i noticed that i wanted to you know get a haircut
because because somebody that i know works at this barbershop and i wanted to make an appointment
they said well you make an appointment i figured i'd call and make an appointment oh no you got to do
it online but it's not go to their website you go to the third party website and you have to give
them your credit card number you have to give them your like information phone number i mean i just want
to make an appointment like i've heard of people doing this with job applications like you have to create
an account to to you know for this chain of be it movie theaters or supermarket yeah i'm with you
i'm with you on this it's it's it's nonsense that you have to make accounts to do the most basic of
things i'd use a different barbershop or you know just knock on the door and say hey can i get my
haircut now well no it's i knew you know the person that works there that does the you know the haircut
um and i asked them about that i said can you do that i said well no the owner doesn't want to do
you you got to do it this way because people have been making appointments and not showing up or
things like that yeah but if you're literally there obviously you're going to show up so i don't know
yeah i i i see why people want to embrace the new way of doing things but also um you gotta hold on
to the old way too because that's what a lot of people still want to use and to exclude them
you're going to lose customers well why don't you just have your website you know barber.com i mean
i'm not going to give it a name but or whatever whatever barber the name is dot com yes that's
a good one well um whatever the name is the barbershop or whatever the name is the establishment
dot com and then have your website uh uh click would you like to make an appointment make an
appointment uh here's the list of barbers that we have would you like to make an appointment with
this partner you know have you ever rebel have you ever made a website you know i i'm thinking of
like going to like go daddy and saying like you know is barber.com available or is that's what i
mean i mean have you ever designed a website with functionality in it it's not it's not the easiest
thing in the world to do and and you know the people that do know how to do this tend not to be around
too much to do it for others so uh it's it you know i i could see why somebody would would go for
something where somebody else is involved although it cuts into their profits as well but that's why
that's why you have all these food delivery services and and the restaurants don't do it
themselves because it's hard it's it's hard work and uh you know you you want to hand it off to
somebody else no you have somebody like wix or like one of these website companies that make a
website for you design it for you you the barber can the barbershop can say i like a website and i
like here's the list of barbers here's their pictures and you know here's our phone number and
and just make a website so that people can make appointments and that's probably what they've done
they've probably done that to uh to an extent they might have overdone it a bit by saying it's the
only way you can you can make appointments but it's um you know you're trusting a third party to get
involved and same thing with billing getting a job at a one of these chain like really either movie
theater or a supermarket or something where you go on a website and then you know click on uh you know
hiring or whatever and then you know get create an account with your username and you know i don't
want to pass where i'm just applying for the i want i mean one there rebel they're testing they're
testing your commitment at that stage they're saying oh if this person really wants a job he'll do what
we uh yeah he'll jump through some some well another chain does not do that another change is that they
have a list they said are you hiring oh she has a list of our locations which location you want to uh
work on and you click the location and then you put your name and simple information and then they get
different people do things differently that's how it works yeah so go with the one that you're most
comfortable with right um now i was going to um mention an alternative to to text text now because
they have all these advertisements and like you know you know when you use it on your phone and i'm
looking for the there's something on um a um there's a um um uh what do they call it a voiceover
it service that i'm looking for that um is good but you have to put it on your computer this is why
this is one good thing about google that the chrome that it makes it so that you you know it's
whatever you did on chrome for the past 30 days and i'm trying to look for
i think they all do that i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure uh firefox can do the
same thing i'm trying to remember what what the name of that um voiceover it service was that i
that i use that that's good but you have to put it on your computer and it doesn't run on linux i
mean do you know of any things i mean i what i want to do is i don't want to use like um asterix
it's like a business kind of a thing like for many lines of this you have like a simple because
google google um voice for some reason they're they're getting rid of google voice they're getting
rid of google voice yeah they're doing away with the google voice feature wait is that what we're
using right now kayla you look flustered are we getting this wrong yeah rebel rebel you've told
us repeatedly that google voice is going away and it's never been true it's still not true
somebody at google told me someone at you talk to somebody at google how do you do that
at the google store in manhattan the google store in manhattan well they'd know
oh yeah i answered i said why isn't my google account working well they're doing away with the
voice feature maybe they just wanted you not to ask any more questions i don't know that's just a
theory they're like that to me well i rebel while you're typing and figuring things out we're gonna
we're gonna uh get some more calls in here so if that's okay with you yeah okay all right okay okay
well have a good night okay i'll be in california next week all right we look forward to it
good night um 802-321-4225 is our telephone number 802-321-4225 um yeah you know did you hear this
story uh about volkswagen uh their automotive um um software company um nobody knows the name of this
right does anybody know the name of uh volkswagen's automotive software company you can say no okay
um can't say that i do cariad cariad c-a-r-i-a-d never heard of them uh they exposed data collected
from around 800,000 electric cars so uh you may not have heard of them but they may have heard of you
uh the info could be linked to uh drivers names and reveal precise vehicle locations um terabytes
terabytes of volkswagen customer details and amazon cloud storage remained unprotected for months
allowing anyone with little technical knowledge to track drivers movement or gather personal
information uh the exposed databases include details for vw seat whatever seat is uh audi and
skoda vehicles uh with geolocation data for some of them being as precise as a few centimeters
a few centimeters access to the car data was possible due to cariad's incorrect configuration
and two it applications that's uh according to a company representative who spoke to bleeping
computer cariad was informed on november 26 of the issue by our friends over at the chaos computer club
ccc the largest organization of ethical hackers in europe that for more than 30 years have promoted
security privacy and free access to information according to uh the german publication der spiegel
the ccc found out about the vulnerability from a whistleblower and tested the insecure access before
informing cariad and volkswagen uh and um uh providing technical details a cariad spokesman said that the
exposed data affected only vehicles connected to the internet and had not and basically had been
registered for online services from the nearly 800 000 vehicles exposed the researchers found
geolocation data for 460 000 cars um for some of them with an accuracy of 10 centimeters a little
over 30 vehicles a part of hamburg police's fleet of patrol cars while others belong to suspected
intelligence service employees according to spiegel uh the company said that the ccc hackers could
access the data only after bypassing several security mechanisms that required significant time and
technical expertise and because individual vehicle data was pseudonymized pseudonymized
how do you say that pseudo anonymous well no that's not how it looks
not sodomized did you say that no pseudonymized okay whatever for for pseudo and i hate that word for
privacy purposes uh the hackers had to combine different data sets to associate the details
with a particular user however de spiegel assembled a team of it experts and journalists
who found location details collected from the cars of two german politicians
so um there's that um yeah uh that's that's something and in that particular case you know you got to blame
the company for not um not doing its job of keeping this data secure but uh no doubt that was talked about
at um uh the uh ccc um at congress over in hamburg this past uh week and i'm sure there's a video of
that someplace so yeah okay 802-321-4225 i'm gonna hold the phone lines open just for a little while
longer yeah but about that carryout story like it's it's wild because the location of someone's vehicle
is i i can't think of very many pieces of data that would be more potentially dangerous in in terms of
actual real world personal security you know if uh you know i think a lot of people have reasons to
not want the world to have access to their location um the other interesting thing about the word carryout
is it's a welsh name that means love so um yeah i i don't know i don't know if that's uh cosmically
significant here no phone calls kyle i am i'm gonna say no the phone line is open all right it
has been okay um okay i've got one more story here and alex i'm gonna ask you for your opinion on this
because it's been all over the news um chinese state-sponsored hackers have breached the u.s
treasury department's computer security guardrails this month or last month uh they stole documents
in what treasury called a major incident that's according to a letter to lawmakers um that treasury
officials uh provided to reuters on monday uh the hackers compromised third-party cyber security
service provider beyond trust wow what a name and were able to access unclassified documents the letter
said according to that letter hackers gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based
service used to remotely provide technical support for treasury department offices and uh end users
uh with access to the stolen key the threat actor was able to override the service of security
remotely access certain uh treasury uh user workstations and access certain unclassified
documents maintained by those users how big a deal is this yeah i think it's a big deal in that it
it shows us again the lengths to which uh china and other sophisticated foreign adversaries will go
in order to access confidential information of the federal government what's also fascinating about
this too is that they're going after treasury related data here it's not necessarily classified
information intelligence probably economically motivated in some some ways maybe they were looking at
perhaps sanctions related data maybe something with OFAC OFAC the office of foreign asset controls
or CFIUS the committee on foreign investment in the united states these are things that are highly
sensitive especially with respect to uh international trade and um and and companies that um may have
operations within the united states who are thinking about doing business in the united states who are
thinking about buying businesses who are becoming acquired within the united states so uh this could be
those adversaries looking for a leg up from the federal government's various departments and
breaching these third parties through that way but it's also somewhat fascinating in that
they weren't going after the department of commerce itself they figured out who these third party
vendors were this beyond trust doesn't sound like it had uh very robust security controls in place
around the uh it was probably the key signing keys that were compromised in order to perpetuate this type
of attack or to propel it in some ways so um yeah i think i think it's interesting i think it's
fascinating but i don't think it's nearly as damaging as the breach of the entire telecommunications
network that we had discussed over the last couple of weeks on on the show as well does seem like
everything is getting breached lately i have to wonder where where is this all going to go you know
all all our data is in everybody's hands it seems yeah and it's just normalized just these these bad
practices are just so ordinary routine and normal now that at some point they're going to cease to be
new stories yeah i think like the biggest problem is like it's sort of become an industry that itself
thrives on broken stuff like you know whether it's crisis response or you know people building uh
security appliances and crap like all of that is self like self-perpetuating and it's like one of those
things where if it works too well they don't really you know they they make themselves sort of not useful or
i don't know like they can't sell more upgrades or they can't sell licensing for something all of that like
it seems is defeating the actual necessity and like there needs to be less incentive to profit from broken
stuff yep sounds sounds about right to me yeah alice go ahead yeah i i i think this also is is
fascinating another level too because it it's just yet again an indication that cyber security is
extraordinarily difficult when it comes to mitigating risks that arise from third parties
and there are just not that many things that you can do as let's say a ciso chief information security
officer or somebody who's let's say you know managing incidents or within a sock to affect third parties
right i mean you can require certain representations from them you can send them really annoying excel
spreadsheets that require them to document all of their security practices and and you can take a
look at their past audits but none of this is going to actually protect you proactively from somebody
targeting a third party with which you work as a company and so third party risk mitigation
is still i think one of the most difficult aspects of cyber security gila go ahead i just wanted to share
that we did in fact get a prediction in the chat a prediction for 2025 you don't have to play the
noise um but rebel said uh my prediction for 2025 is that off the hook will be at the radio station
for their show in on wbai fascinating go ahead kyle yeah i was just gonna say the uh that that's what
alex was referring to to me uh a sort of cost benefit thing like uh yeah the desirability to use
these sorts of vendors versus uh you know building that in-house and and uh closely monitoring it with
your own sort of internal controls versus just saying this is a great deal and then wondering
um why you didn't calculate in the cost of trusting someone when it goes wrong um you gotta sort of like
indemnify um your uh i guess without like uh especially with information private stuff but
like your systems you gotta value them enough to to take care of them um beyond the like lowest bid
we have a phone call good evening you're on off the hook overtime hello happy new year happy hanukkah to
those that celebrate hanukkah i think it sure is
this is johnny hugin hey johnny how you doing i'm doing pretty well i have a germ of an idea for my next
article article and it has to do with this focus on them that we've had now for like 20 years
and i don't think them clinical acumen is enough to make someone a hacker
okay i think there needs to be cultivation of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking
and a more rounded education because like a lot of stuff that we're seeing from the tech bros
like like like the dangerous stuff and the toxic stuff probably could have been mitigated if they had
some stronger basis in the humidity yeah but i think the incentive to um mechanize or otherwise um
uh commodify innovation like that it's that you get too many ideas you know too too many dangerous ways
of thinking too much that's you know just a little more than you know what society can handle you know
it's it's a catch-22 but sort of contained in some ways the um that spirit you know a lot of these
in uh institutions like you you look at education i think for a while talking about hacking
had to be sanitized it had to be like you know we're doing we're going to use another word for that
but it or even stem like it's a very formalized way that makes it safe and these the relative safety i
think of the the spirit you're trying to articulate is it challenges some of those institutions and
whether be at a company be at a school or a whatever environment groups of people are operating
um and taking ideas men and running with them and trying new things there has to be some limitations and
in the way they're talked about but i agree with you that um the the places where that's occurring
themselves i think have evolution to to be um challenging themselves i think a bit more to
embrace what you're talking about or at least finding ways of not uh making it so bland because there
there there has to be an edge to it there has to be some risk there has to be um when you're pushing
bounds when and that is that that play that innovation you take risks when you play when any actor or
someone that performs or uh does something like you said in the humanities that itself is um when it's so
mechanized in a business environment where it's calculated um the the spirit you sort of uh
uh soften the edge it's uh it's it's not as daring and you get less ideas less stuff that challenges the broader
um construction or framework we're all living in i don't know i'm just talking off the top of my head
though yeah so like i'm going back to my early college education right before i ended up in tech school
i was going to like a local junior college and i once take programming courses even though i've been
programming since i was six years old but there were these prerequisites for these bonehead computer
classes and it became really clear they weren't teaching the right stuff like there was this one class cs17
supposedly computer logic but what it really was was cobalt flow charting
and the teacher sometimes would rail against hackers but they're not real programmers they're just hackers
because they didn't do this structured technical correct way you know and i'm like
well you know it's kind of like the difference between classical music and improvisational jazz
right where code monkeys are like the classical musicians very rule-based they were coloring outside the lines
and then you got artists like coltrane who is still making great music but the rules don't
bound him the old rules right you can't break it too much because then it would be noise instead of music
but it becomes great art and it's the difference if you want to be a code monkey or you want to be a code poet
you know because part of the hacker ethic is that art and beauty can be made
with computers even the first programmer in the world had a lovely you know had the had the soul of a poet
and she was forced to learn sciences and she said well what about political science
and she imagined great things that creative things that babbage's analytical engine
could do someday like compose music and stuff and we're just kind of getting there with generative
a high you know almost 200 years later but i just find that focusing on tech
that stifles creativity and creative thinking and you got to be able to bend the rules like with computer
programming you can't break the rules or your code won't compile but you can find these emergent behaviors
and you know these little undocumented speakers and stuff like that you know and
i miss kids having this spirit of exploration and the technical themes
you know and just trying things you know breaking things then unbreaking them
i mean that's what hackers have done to certainty try something it breaks and then you fix it
yes
everyone still there what happened yeah i uh we heard you
you know i'm just i'm just trying to find you know and i don't know you know me i'm so anti-capitalist
everything is so oriented towards being monetized making money and having
stuff that you could make a profit off of instead of just
doing shit for fun just to see if you can do it
i mean it's it's kind of difficult i think like we do live in that systems to some degree and
and to upend it i have i've had a lot of this surface lately but like to upend it means like
we can't make it work in a way that serves people and i think if that's what's in front of us
taking apart something that is incredibly powerful and could actually be directed were people a bit more
organized and intentional about it just kind of i i just i'm so hopeful that we can
come through with some of that that's why i speak about regulatory stuff or i see i mean it's
maybe my naivete and but that's that's how that was my understanding of how all of this ever worked
did i did i get an education and how like corruption or how all the other uh variables in in all of it
affect the sort of altruism i i'd like to think or the ideal that we're capable of a society in the
midst of capitalism and um yeah i'm as i have as much sort of um uh difficulty with it uh but i can't
i just can't get on this thing of like we must destroy and dismantle and like you know burn it all
down like i it just is not to me how you improve um an advanced society i think it like by becoming a
developed society or a developing society to like get a do-over for being an advanced society i just
it doesn't really make sense if we are at that level we should use what tools of this society and our
brains and stop being tricked like by the hustle or the the uh traps of capitalism or how people are
exploiting its openness and i think that's even like something that state actors do they dump money
into our country and use it exactly the way it's intended but to their ends and and like that's why
why we're and and of course like we're this max massive tax haven and somehow we're wondering why
why um there's corruption abound and why other places do it too like if we can't get around that
ourselves and clean house why should anyone else expect to play by those rules like that rules that
goes for conquest that goes for um you know the competitiveness in in um you know sectors that
are monopolies we've talked about that in tech but there's many other industries that sort of uh profit
off of not functioning well and we have to fix those things and we can't let corruption prevent us fixing
those things we can't take our focus away from that that's my attitude i call it stupid call it you know
a shill for the the capitalist system yeah i mean like i'm not in college anymore i'm old enough to
understand where and what this is so yeah you can have your like disagreements with different things
but i'm being real about what is all around us when we go off the air and is really not going anywhere
as upset as we are about it well you know ursula caleb lynn said that once upon a time the divine
right of kings was seen as inviolable and forever and that went away capitalism is man-made anything man-made
can be destroyed by man and the thing is though capitalism is a rigged game it really only benefits
those at the top and it needs uh an oppressed underclass to function because it's hierarchical right
we have power generated at the top wealth goes upwards
you know uh people's labor are used to generate profit for those above them
and while i do believe we do need to tear it down i don't think it needs to be
so much destructive as transformative
where we build a system that that's based on equity and justice you know these are these are
things that would benefit everyone instead of the few at the top well johnny i suggest you um you put
all this in writing because you make some compelling points and it's certainly going to um spark all
kinds of discussion and debate and that's what it's all about so uh i i hope we see some some
more submissions from you and you continue to think uh you know creatively and and progressively
thanks evanuel all right you take care and we hopefully we'll hear from you uh again soon
bye now all right our phone number is 802-321-4225 that's 802-321-HACK
and um we'll have the phone line open just for a little while longer because um it's been rough
last couple of weeks all the holidays and things and now another year of god knows what is ahead of
us and i hear the merry ring of the telephone as uh somebody else is calling us so let me um say
good evening you're on off the hook over time go ahead hi my name is oliver and today we went to
to a pay phone in in in millbrook new york and and we tried it but it didn't work because
i know what you mean okay what the hell was that
alex that wasn't one of yours right
no that was not one of mine okay so we have we have genuine kids calling us now with uh their pay
phone odysseys uh you know the more the merrier uh sure why why didn't the pay phone work
we're gonna have to transcribe that thing about the coins the coin slot yeah the coin slot was
jammed is that what it was i thought okay jammed and where did they say they were somewhere in new
york it sounded like new buck new york but i don't know if that's a place
melbrook okay run a trace on new buck new york all right we got a team on it 802-321-4225
kid better run oh wow that was uh that was that was so unexpected huh um yeah i i i
i'll take it we haven't had a good prank from the youths uh we got another call though and maybe
it's another one of those pranks uh good evening you're on off the hook over time go ahead
yes hello yes turn on your radio or computer or whatever it is
yes um i have a question yes go ahead um i've been reading the magazine since
i think 1984-85 mm-hmm and i'm worried is it in a good financial state well that's a
it's in the bookstores in fact i was just in a bookstore the other day and i made sure to hunt it
down um i'm not sure what bookstore you're looking in but it should be in every barnes and noble and a
bunch of other chains as well it's just it might be harder to find the bookstore than the magazine at this
point yeah or see um i'm phoning from canada yeah you had um uh chapters i think is is your book chain
up there uh yes are they still around um i don't think so i i uh the big chains have basically disappeared
there's a few independent ones well you know we're happy to um supply independent bookstores if
if you know they want to get the magazine it's you know it's gotten harder it's always been hard on on
on publishers but um as as to your question you know it really depends on how readers respond if
people subscribe if people go to the bookstore if you go to the conference all of that helps us all
that helps us and as you can see we try hard to um you know to to to stay active and relevant and
just um you know solvent and uh it's it's worked up until now i don't see any reason why it shouldn't
work we double down on the conference we're doing conferences every year now and i'm hoping that that
will make things um uh grow and and and build up and just be a you know a force uh an annual force of um
independent thinking technology education all kinds of um of really positive things because i
think the community really really needs that the support that we have gotten every time you know
we're in public someplace is astounding and amazing um so i i you know i always feel like um uh there
are people looking out for us um and and and hopefully that will continue things can always change we
know that but um with the support of readers i think we'll be fine anything you want to add to that
kyle yeah well yeah go ahead or can i ask who do i talk to at the bookstore uh well i'll get the
definitely talk to the uh whoever is in charge of of magazine um supply could be the manager could be
somebody else uh and you just ask them um how do you get your magazines if it's through a distributor
you can forward that information to us and then we can contact that distributor make sure that
they're getting magazines from us and that they're going to that particular store and to do that
you can write to oth at 2600.com and uh that'll that'll get to us and we can forward it that way
and that goes for anybody that wants to get um uh magazines in in in their their local stores now
it's harder overseas we we used to be in a lot of british bookstores but they have made it so incredibly
hard and um last time we even looked into that we were threatened with a lawsuit if if we had an
article that somehow rubbed somebody the wrong way we'd be liable and it just it was you know
considering the literal pennies you make per copy sold it just wasn't worth the trouble and the risk so
in those particular cases we asked people to just subscribe and now that we're digital you know you
you can subscribe anywhere in the world and get the magazine sent to you instantly and um i'll let
you in on a secret um tomorrow i believe it's tomorrow we're going to be unveiling some new uh
pricing deals involving digital publications uh and and analog publications as well so it's it's what
people have been asking for and um and and we're going to hopefully provide that now kyle did you have
something to add yeah just we're looking at as many different things that work we've done this at a as
and like a constant basis basically reevaluating seeing this working because things have been
changing so much with retail distribution as well as um the digitization of publications and uh business
models around that and um keeping people getting things correct having it look and appear like it's
having to reinvent things and start over you just end up not having a huge amount of time to even think
about marketing and you know working on uh which retailers are are opening up and doing better or
worse so it's it's um the the travails of any independent publisher so we're definitely responsive
we take everything that people say to heart and um good ideas things to try out things that have worked
for other people um if you know yeah i mean just basic stuff uh costs uh materials um they're always a
concern so uh we we follow all that stuff um yeah if you have a paper guy let us know yeah i was getting
a bit worried like i think maybe i'm over reacting uh well you know we we all worry about uh you know what's
what's ahead and there are always challenges that come our way and we never can expect them like
last summer for instance you know we discovered that our issues were sitting in a warehouse for a
month without being delivered and that resulted in us having to change our whole schedule for the
next year to allow those issues to be on the newsstands for a decent amount of time we got nothing from
that we got no compensation or anything it always is the publisher that winds up paying for any
screw-ups and it's just uh you know it's it's an unreasonable but almost funny situation sometimes
yeah the irregularities that have like cascading effects like that people don't really think about
it and like you get the news about something happening and it's like you have to make that
calculation and then make it work for your business model whether that's compacting a production schedule
because something was delayed or dealing with um you know issues that have been sitting or it's just
it's itself something that um can take a toll and i actually really really appreciate your concern
because we try to tell people everything that we can about what we're facing or what we think is on
the horizon and that you know we we'd like input when we when we have something to say and um it can be
a lot of hard work and i i like to think that people do like you say look out for us or at least think of us
um doing a lot of that work because it can be it can be tough to to stay motivated and and have it in
the tank so to speak or just be like charged up for the for the for the work of it so thanks for the
sentiment yeah it can be overwhelming even depressing at times but then the next day somebody buys a full
set or a lifetime subscription and we feel good again so hopefully there are enough people out there
that will continue doing that and we're going to have uh tickets for our conference going on sale in the
next couple of weeks as well so you know a strong showing there allows us to do the conference and
to keep the magazine going and to expand do more things we want to do more things we want to play
with more technology and and report on more things and be in more places so it really depends on on the
support we get yeah we've been organizing a lot of stuff and making room for new new stuff and just uh
you know cleaning and and uh being sort of ready to um to embrace some of that stuff so please uh
thanks for the support yes i am happy that hope for me every year yeah i think that's going to be
fun i think that's going to make it a lot easier to do the conference because the problem you know
every two we did every two years because there's so much work at the hotel in manhattan but now that
it's every year we don't have to reinvent how to do a conference every two years because you know
we'd have to reconnect with people you know build a new site and if it's just an ongoing process
then it becomes a bit more streamlined and st john's is is a much better place as far as
having things work smoothly we have so much more support there so that's what we're looking forward to
can i ask what what part of canada are you calling from it's a richmond bc it's just a
south district of vancouver oh great okay beautiful country there yeah i think we actually met at one
time in new york city oh yeah um at the end of uh hope uh-huh
yeah yeah you meet so many people i don't expect you to remember well i don't even know which hope it
was so yeah it all merges together sometimes but yeah hope 10 i think no no hope x yeah that'd be
hope x 11 oh 11 the 11th hope 11 i feel like i'm being tested okay well hopefully we'll see you at
at hope 16 i believe is what this one is called yes oh yeah hopefully hopefully all right and you
know we will also have um uh remote uh capabilities too in case you can't so that we have that as well
yes well i i'll go to the virtual hopes uh-huh if i'm not more physically okay yeah whatever works
all right thank you so much for your call and thanks for your support yes yes you have a good
new year you too take care oh a nice nice call there i'm glad uh people are asking questions it's
important and we have room for maybe one more call 802-321-4225 anyone else have anything
they would like to add skype people no everybody it is just it is exciting stuff and i'm seeing a lot
of uh posting around you know a lot of new year's posts but uh i think by and large and i don't know
if i was expecting this um especially given everything that's going on but by and large i'm
seeing a lot of sort of optimistic new year's posts like despite everything it feels like it may it may be a
good year and of course it's up to all of us to make it that way but uh you know i i think i was
expecting to be more generally depressed than i am right now and look there's always there's always
time to be depressed but you know the time to um be obstinate and fight back and do your own thing
and and say what are you going to do about it you know let's at least give that a try and i kind of
feel like you know that's what we should do but we'll see we'll see there's a phone call there's a phone
call okay let's take the phone uh what probably will be the last phone call of the night good
evening you're on off the hook overtime hello governor it's uh it's zap from london if i am
not mistaken hell yeah you're correct i am correct ring in and say hello well happy new year to you
over there and uh in the uk thanks for doing happy new year to everyone and everyone in the chat
and uh how how did things go over there uh for me it was a quiet one um but yeah it went okay
um as far as i know quiet is good quiet can be good sometimes you know i i'm not a big fan of
crowds yeah neither am i uh but i'm just thinking the last call is from canada there's no meetings in
canada is there i don't know what's going on with that i really don't it's it's such a weird thing we
used to have so many 2600 meetings in canada they were in ottawa and toronto and vancouver i think we
even had one in saint john's newfoundland at one point and uh you know ever since covid they haven't
come back what we've done is we've required meetings to contact us you know at meetings
at 2600.com uh email us say that you've started meetings up again first friday of the month you
know the usual thing and not one actually there was one and it petered out uh but uh you know i'm
talking winnipeg i'm talking edmonton uh montreal quebec city all these places have hackers i'm sure
they do unless there was a hacker purge i'm not aware of uh we really really really would like to
see meetings in canada i don't know what's going on we we get so many hope attendees from canada
uh you know what it could be and and zap you know something about this uh organizing a meeting it
it takes determination it takes uh just basically saying i'm gonna do this and then letting people
know that you did it but other than that it's not a whole lot of work or responsibility it's just
basically being consistent and friendly and you know open to more people showing up and and you know
getting the word out did i cover all bases yeah i believe so hopefully the last caller will get
the hint to start a meeting please start one up in canada well it's not one particular person's
responsibility but i i hope that somebody in canada that that uh you know feels you know
uh the desire to do this or the frustration of not having meetings around uh yeah it's it's really not
that difficult we have the guidelines on our website 2600.com meetings uh it's it's really simple to do
you don't have to lead a meeting or you know there's no agenda some meetings do it differently but for the
most part it's like a gathering it's like a gathering in a food court once a month and you
meet people that are into technology and uh you know you get to you get to have more friends than
you thought you had and basically we try to have them in uh in public spaces so they're easy to get
to and also easy to leave when you want to leave and cities tend to be the best place for this you know
i i can't tell you the changes in the hacker community that have occurred because of the
meetings in london in manchester in new york and all of these various places and if you look at our
our meeting list which is up on the on the site you see that we have meetings all over the world in in
some far-flung places so um it's it's it's definitely doable it's definitely doable yeah definitely and uh
i've made some lifelong friends some really good friends from people i've met at the meetings
that i'm still in touch with so yeah going to a meeting is beneficial and it's sort of the
first step to breaking maybe into info security if you want to get into that kind of line of work
uh so it's really good but one of the main reasons i'm phoning tonight is to tell you about
the uk meetings that are happening this friday please do um anything manchester are having their
meeting on friday and bournemouth are having their meeting on friday cheltenham haven't got back to me
unfortunately london are postponing for a week and the new meeting birmingham i'd like to give a shout
out to hero who's doing a lot of hard work trying to get these meeting off the ground he's also having
it on the 10th okay other news is i'm i'm heard that there's going to be finally a meeting in wales i just
need to uh gently push the person who said they would uh start the meeting up and uh that's about it
really okay i'm trying to i'm trying to uh get online here so that i can look at our list but i
think at least one of those uh was uh birming isn't listed yeah right in and they got a risk i
don't know if it was an automatic response or response from someone and there was some kind
of issue why they couldn't get listed uh and i told the guy not to take it to heart and maybe i'll
write in and put the meeting up um myself because if you know it comes from me well if we know what
the issue was uh i'd like to know what what that is what we have we have burn months we have cheltenham
london manchester and glasgow and scotland yeah that's everything for the uk um that's all the
meetings that i know of there may be some official unofficial meetings like there's one in ireland
i can never remember if it's on the british side or the irish side that one guy runs and another
person turns up and that's about it we have one in dublin right okay i think it might be the
belfast one i'm thinking of yeah i'm not i don't know which side i'm not seeing belfast in our listing
so uh yeah we'd love to have to go at that we would love to have them in a listing uh yeah the only
criteria is first friday of the month you know um unless you know for religious reasons i know when
when israel had meetings we had those i think on thursday instead uh and and that worked out fine uh
it's just we can't have meetings all all different days because then you have to
double the size of the page that lists them and have all kinds of asterisks and stars and things
like that um and and the first friday does tend to work and it's easy to remember so i i don't think
that's an issue though i don't think that's that's a problem for most people no um it's just very
rarely that the the meetings held on another friday for whatever reasons we tend to do this in the uk
quite a bit actually uh but we try and post it on the twitter blue sky and maybe i'll phone into the
radio show just to let everyone know um but yeah we tend to have our meetings on the first friday
i didn't go too many times last year so my new year's resolution is to attend more of the london
meetings and be more regular yeah that sounds good that sounds good you're a calming presence at those
places uh so it's it's good well funny enough all the other uk meetings are all based off the london
model because uh people keep asking me i i'm sort of mr 2600 in the uk they say how do i start a
meeting can i have your blessing and i keep telling you you don't need my blessing just read the
guidelines uh set it up and i'll start promoting it yes definitely you know who has a really good
meeting is stockholm in sweden i keep hearing great things about that meeting they have a lot of people
show up every every month uh but we also have meetings in kazakhstan we've got meetings in japan
columbia uh we started meetings up in australia again so they're everywhere even have a meeting
in russia so they're all over the place so canada come on let's come back come back into the hacker
world we want to see you again yeah definitely need to get canada coming up and i know the wales
we haven't had one in wales for a long time so i'm glad that's going to be starting up again
just please make sure we get the listing because we'd love to have wales as well
yeah i'm not going to pressurize the person who's who said she's willing to do it it's a woman
um so i'm just going to leave her to have her christmas and new year's and then i'm going to
suggest after friday about the meeting to see if she was serious and you know because i don't want to
put any pressure on her you probably know this zap but i mean you know it takes a person to start it
to get the word out hey this is happening maybe you know stick some some flyers uh in in uh appropriate
magazines and bookstores so people stumble upon it but once it's actually going you don't really
need to maintain it you don't need to you're not the boss you're not somebody that you know figures
all these things out this is basically something that is self-propelled at that point you started it
it's like you know when you start a fire and it spreads out of control probably not the best
example but uh it's just something that it takes one person to get going and then it's um
you know it's it's a it's an entity after that yeah but you've got to keep smoking the fire
otherwise it just tends to fade out i mean i don't know if i mean it was on version two or version three
because there was originally a birmingham meeting the only problem was it was held on a saturday so
it never got official recognition right in the uk we recognized it but it wasn't recognized by the
magazine unfortunately well you know we can always work things out if uh if there are situations where
it's you know not possible to do something for whatever reason you know we're we're open to
that it's just it starts to get make things a little bit more complicated but maybe that's what
we need to do so we're we're open to it for sure all right well that's basically it i'll clear down
the line i don't know if you're going to get another caller in or you're going to call it a night
we are going to call it a night because that's what it is it's a night and it's it's a night for you
too it's what two in the morning yeah it's uh two something i think two ten or something i think uh
but yeah it's late um but i always listen to the show i'm always in the chat uh counting how many
people are in the chat and just having a joke around basically it's quite good um but i do like
the chats it's good to see all the people and it's it's good occasionally to hear somebody from
another country so canada phoning up today was really good that's right the kids phoning up i love
because you know these are the new generation of hackers that will be coming into the thing as they get
older so it's always good when you hear kids uh phone in uh always makes me chuckle even if it's
just to use the phone to make a joke or to say something get something off their mind it's like
they're communicating and i think we forget we talk a lot about the technology and how it works but we
forget what power it has to affect people in your lives or to play be playful or uh to get a message
across so i think that's a great spirit i appreciate that i want to know how they dialed us i want to
know how they found out about us so many questions but uh we're up to well hopefully they're still
listening um and they'll be listening in the future and then eventually they may turn up to a meeting
hopefully with parents if they're below a certain age and if they're above a certain age they can come
by themselves that's right and that's the other thing with meetings they have to be open to all ages
and they can't have any admission fees uh they can't be run by you know a company or anything
like that they're they're just basically open to the public you know we want meetings to be where
somebody just walking down the street in that area happens upon the meeting and says oh what are you
guys up to and learns all about the hacker community because we're not trying to hide
yeah and that sometimes happens at the london meeting somebody say what's going on here and we
explain what's going on and they say oh i might come next month i'm with certain other friends but
maybe i'll turn up next month and they and sometimes they do they turn they come back and they have a
great time and they stay and they become lifelong friends isn't that amazing that that's all it takes
and you know so much that we have done now including the conferences i don't think we could have done
without the meetings so just think of all the um uh the gap you know i heard uh things from from
folks at the loft you know the hacker group in boston about how the boston meetings were where some of
them met and that's just incredible it's really humbling to to realize that people are meeting
through the through those meetings and forming lifelong bonds and changing the world literally
changing the world so um yeah don't short sell them they they they are important they're amazing
and that's why we need more of them yeah we also need to get 2600 back on the bookshelves
so we can actually go into a shop and buy it you know zap you probably know something about this but
there's there's all kinds of legal issues now when you when you stock magazines in bookstores in the
uk where if somebody says that what you're talking about is illegal you can be held libel libel for
that and fined and all kinds of things so i don't know i don't know if we want the hassle of that
maybe we can arrange something through some back channels maybe um something i'm thinking of doing
anyway i'm listening i'm listening i'm not gonna say on the radio i'm not silly no just uh we'll talk
through the courier as usual yeah okay all right well that was it um i'll say my goodbyes i don't
know when the next time i phone in i don't like phoning in all the time rebel please stop phoning in
and doing the radio demos of the phones it's annoying ah yes yes it is well zapper it was great
hearing your voice and uh hopefully we'll see you sometime soon yeah hopefully um but anyway take
care everyone and have a good 2025 we will do our best do the same great great to hear you thanks
for for call all right that's our good friends app over there in the uk and uh i think of a good way
to end the program tonight what do you what do you skype people think yeah i think i think so
it's a great plan all talked at the same time that's awesome you could do one more could do it
we could we could we'd like to didn't you want to get out early now you want to stay late well i was i
was in london this morning it does feel like two o'clock in the morning for me because i flew back
from the uk at uh i don't know we got a near around 11 11 a.m i guess uh uk time so i'm
i'm all screwed up my clock is uh is totally screwed up so i would say um i'm i'm up for one
more if you want to do it as like a new year's thing post nine o'clock well they're gonna have
to call fast if they do because uh i think the rest of us are clocking out about now rob gila you guys
we can always give them alex's number if uh he wants to get a phone call yeah talk to alex uh i think
he's lonely and wants to talk to somebody oh there's a phone call thank you alex thank you for
this oh boy yes uh so let's take one more phone call and good evening you are on off the hook
overtime go ahead i'm calling to see if you guys have any updates on the drones oh that's a good
question uh i'm sorry we missed we missed what you said before i'm calling i didn't have the button
press did you say anything before that no okay um do we have any updates on the drones well you
know it's kind of going the way i thought it would where people just stop talking about it and and
and it's almost like they're not there even though i'm sure they are still there and probably were
there long before they started to be noticed um i don't know you guys have any any thoughts on this
alex you you you were looking to the skies i was looking to the skies i haven't seen
nearly as many drones as as the night that when i was crossing over to drone territory in in new
jersey that when i saw maybe 20 something kind of weird objects in the skies going back and forth
horizontally i haven't seen that at all i have been doing a lot of driving actually did they not do
an airspace closure for that area because of this i thought they did an airspace closure for sensitive
areas which i thought they had done before anyway so i'm not really sure what effect that would
have had i think what it is is to make sure all known traffic and you know regular activity
stays away so that that area can be observed for anomalies but i i think that's where it stands now
it seems to be seems to have escalated i mean been taken more seriously at least so that if people
are observing things there's no coincidence with regular air traffic or if it is it's very obvious
and can be ruled out immediately instead of everybody reporting everything they see i think that just
makes it incredibly hard to investigate so by limiting in areas where there has been some
uh unusual or let's say uh investigate activity worthy of investigating this helps them set up sort of
uh them who's them yeah just anybody i guess that is taking charge of this the ability to look further
if there's you know additional activity but like you said someone that was doing this would be aware
or or an entity right like if they're they are being observed a thing that doesn't want to be seen
right um will change if it's aware of the behavior that it's widely understood that it's around i want to
know if if people just aren't reporting them as much or if the media just isn't reporting the fact
that people are reporting them still i don't know how you find that out exactly but it does seem like
something has changed but i i maintain it's it's it's probably that we've become um fascinated with
something else and just aren't um talking about it as much i i could be wrong though uh carla did you
have any any um thoughts or theories on this i i think there are drones it's just which agency is um
is is in charge of them and what are and they're clearly looking for something um so what are they
looking for and they don't want us to know about it and i think they also put a statement out to not
shoot them down right so i thought that was very revealing they're clearly ours um so well it's also
the issue of shooting down something in the sky could really be threatening to people on the ground
yeah this this is a new it's a new mode it's a new type of vehicle there's new characteristics and
the response to it has to be something that i think is widely agreed upon and and uh safe and there's
i think yet um like it's not colloquial knowledge how to handle something like this when it is we'll say
okay when is this next step going to take place like a search and rescue you know there's there's
certain things that you expect or like a press conference or a you know some kind of base area
all of those things are well established when this is not something that is well understood or
um it encompasses a variety it looks like a variety of different things but we haven't
really come up with a mechanism to understand what we're even trying to determine i think that's
um where you get a lot of speculation or it creates room for that so anyway sorry
anything else go ahead alex yeah but but what about i mean i don't know but i i think part of the
issue with the the drones is that we are living now in this world where it's so easy to create
fake imagery or to add some kind of after effects and people are creating so much nonsense and so
much nonsense content online about drones in the hope of getting recognized or clickbait or something
like that so living in this post truth world where we're not sure what's real or what's fake because
of the facility with which we can create fake content is making this i think extraordinarily difficult
to actually report on because part of what i i think is is so tricky about the story is that there
are so many theories and all the theories have some bits of validity to them but then there are always
certain facts that contradict every single one of these theories like the the theory that they're
hunting for something radiological and looking for some kind of material that may have come into the
united states that could potentially be used in a terrorist attack or a dirty bomb something like
that well if that were the case then why would they only be flying at night wouldn't you also have
drones flying around during the day looking for that same type of radiological material but i found it
very funny too and going back to to being in london you know i was at my usual haunt the the chelsea arts
club for new year's eve and staying there and i had a whole bunch of people in london asking me
about the drones and what i thought and whether i'd seen any of the drones and so you know it's not
yeah it's not just the u.s where people all around the world i think have been following this and i think
the color is is right to ask for an update but to address address radiological i think two two things on
that uh first of all they could be up there in the daytime it's harder to see a drone in the daytime than it is
at night when it has a light on assuming it has a light and number two uh that whole uh radiological
thing has been debunked because the drones were noticed before that was missing uh so they've been
looking for something if that's what they're doing uh before that or they just were being reported before
then uh caller any any other uh words from you
are you there the only other thing i thought about hi sorry sorry i lost you for a second go ahead the
only other thought i had was the bird flu but um no i'm as unsure as you are hang on is is that a
different thought are you saying the drones somehow are connected with bird flu maybe but um because
i'm i i tried to think about what um what the government wouldn't want to tell us and what
they couldn't control because this has been going on for a long time and the last thing they couldn't
control was covet so if you read about bird flu getting bad but it's not it's not near pandemic levels
yet maybe they're monitoring it with drones i'm not sure how you would do that exactly very far
reach yeah that's it's interesting theory i'm not sure how you would monitor bird flu with a drone
um but i'm not a scientist so i guess i don't i don't really have the answer to that it is possible
that multiple chaotic things are going on i mean it is that there is a lot of different uh of these
kinds of uh phenomenon events and thing curiosities and then of course disease i mean disease is ever
present and i think you're right i mean the bird flu phenomenon itself is concerning i think there was
an article recently about uh mutations that that were potentially able to in fact uh uh in in fact
infect the upper respiratory tract in humans there have been people working in close proximity
and otherwise uh who have become quite ill uh people that work in agriculture and and other areas
near animals so it's uh that it like that we want to go down the road where like okay um these drones
are a delivery mechanism for infecting large populations with bird flu to you know see if uh we can be
resilient it from say i mean we we can there's there's not that's a different direction i think there's a
wild bit of conspiracy around what i think the correlation would be you have to kind of assess okay this is
occurring this is also occurring until there's a fact until there's an investigation we really it just
becomes like something too exhausting i think and to to suggest the government is so organized i think
gives them way way way more credit and power um and i i i re i would really need more concrete motivation
for if some mechanism of a conspiracy is there like what's the point yeah well it could go either way it
could be you know somebody trying to infect populations or somebody trying to protect populations
but um again you know i don't know or believe that there's a connection with bird flu at this stage
like we're crop dusting cattle with like aerosol vaccine i mean it's you you just don't want to go too
deep into crazy like yeah there's a lot of stuff going on i'm not saying it's crazy i'm just saying there
are crazy things going on you gotta you gotta have a way of like organizing filtering and interpreting it and
not creating causation out of correlation yeah well we're gonna leave it there caller but thank you
for uh for bringing that up and and getting us talking about it thank you all right you keep
listening and take care you too happy new year and uh i think unless alex wants to take more phone calls
i think we're done for tonight are you okay or another 20 minutes yeah that's it that was that was an
extended session aren't you glad we took one last one yeah no it was a good discussion i'm not
regretting that i'm just i'm just nodding off here because it's been it's been a long day here too
um no doubt all right well listen it's been fun uh we begin 2025 uh with uh with a few bangs and uh
hopefully some some good things coming up as well um please write to us oth at 2600.com there's a lot
coming up in the next uh couple of weeks uh for 2600 and hope and all sorts of other things that
are that are happening so it's going to be exciting it's going to be fun and we hope you're a part of
that and um looking forward to it actually looking forward to 2025 with uh as long as you guys are around
yeah absolutely all right well then i'm going to say good night yeah happy new year good night everyone