You have reached the 77th Street DMS-100.
Serving Codes 238-439-492-567-630-680-745-748-833-836-921.
Thank you very much.
I'm joined tonight by Kyle.
How are you doing there, Al?
Out in Skypeland, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
You do indeed.
Good evening.
Well, it's a chilly night.
It's a night hopefully you're bundled up snugly listening to the radio, as people do.
Alex, you're raising your index finger, which tells me that you have something to say.
Yeah.
The message that was played, the telephone message, that was a 9901 number, wasn't it?
Yes, yes, yes.
That was Elvis.
That's amazing.
Can you divulge if that's an active 9901 exchange identification number at a switch?
I cannot, but any of our listeners can dial 718, one of the exchanges that he listed, followed
by 9901, and see if he's still there.
Used to be that almost every exchange in New York, if you added the suffix 9901 at the end
of it, you'd get a recording like that, not with Elvis, that was a weird one, but you get
a recording that basically would identify every single exchange in the central office.
Now, there are so many exchanges these days, maybe they don't do that anymore, but that
used to be one of many fun phone company recordings.
Yeah, I just tried it with 212-279-9901 to see if that was still active, and it was.
So I think the 9901s are probably still active test lines.
Now, when you say you checked 212-279 to see if it's still active, you're going back
into time quite a bit.
You're going way past the Wall Street days of WBAI.
You're going past the Harlem days.
You're going all the way back to 35th Street by Penn Station.
That's when we used to have the 279 phone number.
So that's what you're referring to.
That's what I was referencing, exactly, yeah.
You've got an elephant-like memory there.
Well, you're the one that dialed the number, so you get some credit there, too.
But yeah, it might work.
It tended to be in the New York area.
I wish it was something that was standardized nationwide.
We also had other fun phone numbers, too.
For instance, the suffix 9970 oftentimes is always busy.
It's just a test of the busy signal.
9971, a test of the reorder, fast busy.
9979, you get a sweep tone, which was great for testing equipment.
There were a bunch of others as well.
There were loops.
There were business office shortcuts, things like that.
But these days, you don't know what you're dialing.
You know, you could dial, somebody could have the phone number 9901 and, you know, it goes
to their business or their home and send it to the phone company.
So it used to be everything starting with 99 was phone company related.
It used to be that every pay phone, the suffix began with a 9, sometimes an 8, but mostly a 9.
And these days, you can't even call pay phones if you can even find a pay phone.
All right.
But I'm just going to start complaining if we keep reminiscing about things like this.
Let's look to the future, okay?
We have some breaking news.
And this is important, folks.
So pay attention, all right?
All kidding aside.
Disney's Hulu plus live TV service and Fubo to merge in surprise deal ending Venu lawsuit.
What the hell did I just say?
There are so many words in there that are not words.
Hulu, Fubo, Venu, all in the same headline.
CNN put this out, and it wasn't a joke.
This is real.
All right.
Let's see if we can decipher this.
Disney's Hulu.
All right.
So Hulu, I know what Hulu is.
That is a streaming service.
It used to be free.
Now they want money for everything, and it's no fun anymore.
And they're owned by Disney, apparently.
I missed that.
Okay.
So Disney took over Hulu.
All right.
Disney's Hulu plus live TV service.
Now, they're not referring to just generic live TV.
They're referring to something called live TV service.
Does anybody know what that is?
No.
Not me.
Okay.
Everyone's as clueless as I am.
That's comforting.
But this is like a cord-cutting phenomenon, I think, because Hulu was around for really quite some time.
It was one of the first.
From early broadband internet rollout days, I guess, when people were looking for alternatives.
And I guess that acquisition changed their model.
And then now they have these sort of other things that are business areas they want to expand or control better.
Well, Hulu used to be great for seeing television programs that you might have missed on free TV.
You know, free TV being broadcast TV.
So you were able to just go to Hulu, figure out what show you wanted to see, and you'd see the show.
Then they said, okay, you know what?
We're going to start adding advertisements to this.
Advertisements that you can't skip easily.
And, you know, it might not be as many ads as on TV, but we're still going to barrage you with this.
And then they started demanding that you subscribe and then that you pay.
And, you know, we're still talking about free television here.
Now I know they do more things as well as free television.
Some of that, too.
We can't totally chalk up to any one sort of leadership choice or mission that they changed along the way.
A lot of it is market forces.
Because think about how much money was being made on other streaming platforms where they were running ads already, targeted ads, every kind of ad, you know, that kind of stuff.
So it sort of could have also been something they were forced into and further sort of ownership stuff and consolidation just kind of makes that just an easier thing to institute.
Not to cut you off here, but we're only a third of the way through the headline, and we still don't know what live TV is.
What is it?
What live TV service?
Has anyone out there researched this?
Go ahead, Gila.
So Hulu has been primarily a streaming platform, but as so many of the streaming services have, they've also created a way to watch live TV, sporting events, things of that nature.
So, you know, you can watch your FX on Hulu the next day, or theoretically, you can watch live.
It fascinates me the way that so many things that we all used to do very simply have been balkanized in all the different ways you can do them now.
Can I just stop you for a second here?
Because you just said one of my pet peeves here.
You said FX on Hulu.
I have FX.
I pay for FX, you know, and I don't see the shows that supposedly are FX.
FX on Hulu.
What does that mean?
It's on Hulu.
It's not on FX.
So why do you call it FX on Hulu?
You should just call it Hulu and stop giving me the impression that I can see it because I have FX.
You know, it really annoys me.
Little things like this.
Well, I mean, it's a branding and marketing thing, you know.
What we do in the shadows, which we love.
Perfect example.
Perfect example.
I wanted to watch that program, and I couldn't do it.
But do you have Hulu?
No, I don't have Hulu.
I'm not an idiot.
Well, there's your problem.
But, okay, I have Hulu.
I have FX.
And if a show is FX on Hulu, by definition and legally, Alex, back me up on this, it should be available to somebody with FX because FX is on Hulu.
No, it's FX on Hulu as opposed to what we do in the shadows on Amazon Prime or what we do in the shadows on Netflix.
The FX stuff is on Hulu.
But it's not on FX.
It's an exclusivity thing.
If you can find FX stuff on Hulu, if you have Hulu, not FX is going to be your free pass into the Hulu network.
I don't want to argue about this for the whole hour, but why is it called FX if it's not on FX?
It's FX.
Is it FX programming?
Did they produce it?
Yes.
It's the FX original programming.
Then its streaming home is on Hulu.
What makes it FX?
It's the...
Ah, you can't answer that, can you?
Yeah.
No, I can't.
So it's Reservoir Dogs.
It's what we do in the shadows.
It's not Nip Talks.
Reservation Dogs.
You see how...
Reservoir Dogs is something entirely different.
Yeah.
Sorry.
That's what confusion will do to you.
I get absent-minded when I get snarky.
That's what confusion will do to you.
You'll mix up FX on Hulu with FX and Reservation Dogs and Reservoir Dogs.
So, yes.
FX Original Programming's exclusive streaming home is on Hulu.
That's all.
You know what?
I don't care.
There's nothing there I want to see anyway.
But we still...
Okay.
So what is live TV?
Because the L is capitalized.
So that's some kind of a brand, Hulu plus live TV service?
It's a new...
It's another programming option you can opt into.
If you want to see probably some sporting events, probably other live TV things that
are going on, instead of cable, YouTube TV, whatever, or even a little broadcast antenna,
you can choose the live TV upgrade to your Hulu subscription and then watch live TV like
we used to all take for granted.
I wonder if FX is included in that.
But I'm not going to press the point.
But it's all owned by Disney.
Okay.
The first third of the headline, we've pretty much locked down.
Alex, you have something to add?
I mean, maybe it's going to be a bit of a digression here, but I think it's...
I just find the whole thing silly to have live TV added to these streaming services because
wasn't the original point of these streaming services to get away from live TV and commercials?
Well, it was to get away from cable, cutting the cord.
Not necessarily cutting the life.
Well, I guess that's one way of looking at it.
But it was really getting away from a lot of these commercials and things.
And then when you add these live TV options into the streaming services, you're just basically
reintroducing all of these really annoying...
Yeah, I'm not sure where you got that they were trying to get away from commercials because
I see nothing but commercials everywhere I look.
Well, now that's certainly the case.
But yeah, I know.
Anyhow, keep going.
Let's try and get through this.
Disney's Hulu plus live TV service and Fubo to merge.
Okay, what in the name of God is Fubo?
Anyone?
Go ahead.
Go ahead, Kayla.
I'm guessing.
I don't know.
But I'm assuming it's a fast service.
What do you mean a fast service?
So there are a few various services that are known as fast programming.
That's an acronym for free ad-supported television.
Congratulations, folks.
It's what TV is.
Fast services are basically what you used to be able to get with your cable provider over
the air.
It's live.
It's happening.
Also, it's...
Emmanuel, you know your other pet peeve of channels that show one specific program over
and over and over and over and over again?
Don't get me started.
With Channel 31 in New York City that Giuliani sold to the PAX network, it was a great TV station
before that.
And now it just shows those crime shows.
24 hours a day.
No, not even...
Never stops.
Like the PAX, the ION network, which is what they're called now, they'll do a whole day
of a specific program.
But what I'm talking about are the streaming channels where if you want to watch Murder
She Wrote at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday, they will have Murder She Wrote at 3 a.m., 4 a.m.,
5 a.m.
They just run Murder She Wrote on a loop.
These are the Roku channels you're talking about.
Not Fubo, Roku.
But Roku and Fubo and...
What is wrong with us?
Oh, my God.
...Tubi and Amazon Freebie, may it rest in peace?
Hold on, hold on.
Nobody brought up Tubi.
Let's keep them out of this.
It's another...
So these are all what are called fast services.
Free ad-supported television.
Okay, so Disney's Hulu plus live TV service and Fubo to merge in surprise deal ending Venu
lawsuit.
Okay, for the win.
Venu.
Who wants this one?
What is Venu?
Oh, come on.
Nobody knows?
Nobody look it up?
Go ahead, Dua.
Oh, oh.
Yes.
I believe it's a sports service and I believe it's called Venu.
Well, it's spelled V-E-N-U.
Yeah, I know.
How am I supposed to pronounce that?
Venu.
Would it help if they had put in like a hyphen?
No, it would help if they put an E like literate people do when they're spelling Venu.
So if I had to guess, I would say that it's a sports-related program that is another sort
of streaming situation.
I wouldn't...
Why do they care what Hulu and Fubo do together?
They're consenting services.
It's none of Venu's business.
All right, you know what?
Let's read the story.
Disney's Hulu plus live TV service and Fubo will merge, creating one of the country's
largest paid TV providers.
The company's announced this on Monday in a surprise deal that will potentially allow
the Venu sports streaming service to move forward.
So yeah, you were right about that.
Under the terms of the agreement, Disney will own 70% of Fubo, while the TV streaming services
current management team will operate the newly combined entries led by Fubo co-founder
and chief executive David Boo Boo.
The combined...
I'm sorry.
I'll mix that up.
No, hold on.
That was the wrong page.
Gandler.
His name is Gandler.
That's somebody else.
That was a different service.
The combined streaming cable service will have 6.2 million subscribers, making it the
second largest streaming pay provider behind only...
Well, who knows?
Who's number one?
Yes, Gila?
I only know because I'm reading along.
It's YouTube TV.
You didn't guess it if you're reading along.
Okay, yeah, fine.
YouTube TV, which you have, by the way.
Yes.
Yes, we do.
And how do you rate that?
I know the rates just went up.
They did.
I quite enjoy it.
I'm sorry to say, but I do quite enjoy it, and I'm not receiving any compensation from
Google for saying this.
I like it a lot.
I especially enjoy the fact that I've been able to just take some channels out of my lineup.
I don't even know they exist anymore.
It's great.
You know, I don't have YouTube TV.
I look at YouTube.
I like to see things at YouTube, and the complaint I had early last year holds till now, where Google
has completely destroyed the platform by inserting ads everywhere.
I was watching Jimmy Carter lying in state, you know, a very solemn thing.
And they insert a damn deodorant ad in the middle of that.
I don't think C-SPAN is monetizing or looking for ads in the middle of something like that.
You know, if you watch C-SPAN, they never have ads, and why would they do it there?
How much could they possibly be making?
But Google just throws the ads everywhere, and it's oftentimes in the worst possible places,
and it's completely out of the spirit of whatever it is you're watching.
And it's just a shame.
It really is.
It used to be a good service.
But, yeah, streaming services?
I don't know.
I would just remind people they don't necessarily have to watch TV or at least work on this,
get it right, so that you don't waste your time with all these sorts of interruptions
that really make the stories and the cultural artifacts you're trying to consume impossible to enjoy.
I mean, that's the crux of this.
And the larger thing, I think, with them is, what does that say?
I mean, is that all for their legal war chest for, like, upcoming battles?
Like, how much operating costs and money and, you know, employees are they going to have to shed
for their sort of non-business model or, let's say, ad-supported business model that no one likes anymore?
We're sick of it.
Getting sold out, you know?
I, like, I just, I find that itself sort of a performance of, like, a corporate floundering,
like, that they need these ads in everybody's face so badly.
Like, what is your business model?
What are you for?
Your extant operating largesse is for what?
I mean, you're hosting all these videos.
You're, you know, supposedly making the world's information more accessible.
And I just, I don't really understand why them flailing about finding themselves as an entity
is something we have to suffer under.
And so, anyway, I would just remind people, you know, books are a great way to access stories.
Also, radio, community radio, especially WBAI.
Yes, that's us.
Is a great example of that.
Absolutely.
And you just turn your TV off, turn other people's TV off, figure it out offline, and
then turn it back on when you can queue up stuff that just tells you the story you want to see.
Or when you can find a decent channel that doesn't interrupt everything with ads.
First of all, you know, what you say about Google and YouTube and all that, yeah, that's,
it's annoying as hell, especially since they stick the ads in the middle of the content now
instead of just at the beginning and the end, which I could tolerate.
That wasn't, you know, too bad, but they're just everywhere now and you can't focus on
anything, but there's a way out.
And they even taunt you with this.
They say, are you tired of commercials?
Pay us money and we'll stop.
It's literally what they say.
And they claim that the money that they get from this will go to the creators of the videos,
but there's absolutely no way of verifying that.
And it kind of reminds me of what Amazon does to publishers, where they say, you know what,
we're not going to pay you anymore, but we're going to make your content available for free
to all these people.
And if enough people read it, you'll get a taste.
You'll get something back.
It never works.
You know, it sounds good.
It sounds like a lot of people might be helped by this, but the only people helped are the
big corporations.
They're the ones that make all the money.
They're the ones that basically force us to make these impossible choices, where
you know, you have to pay them not to annoy the hell out of you.
Now, as far as things that don't annoy you, well, I know BAI, we can be annoying with the
things we say, but that's the extent of it.
It's us talking.
It's thoughts and ideas.
And those are always going to be annoying because they're parts of conversations and
debates and disagreements and things like that.
And that's healthy.
You will never hear a commercial on WBAI.
You will never hear advertising like you hear everywhere else, especially on American
TV.
It is so incredibly annoying when you turn on television and let's say you're going to
CNN or something like that.
Every time I turn that on, it's an ad.
It's not news.
You know, if you stick around long enough, it's news for about a minute.
That's more ads.
That's American television.
You go to other countries.
It's not like that.
You know, there are a bunch of channels.
We've talked about this on the other radio show.
So Kyle and I watch Inuit TV, which is up in the north in Canada.
We have a Canadian dish.
We're able to do this.
It's Inuit programming.
It's, you know, you might see somebody, you know, butchering a seal.
OK, that's different.
Or sewing a coat or cooking or just telling stories of things like that.
It's very different.
But somehow it's really relaxing to have that on and to just, you know, check in every
now and then to a different world.
There's other networks that you can get here, like, you know, Turner Classic Movies, Never
a Commercial, and Always Old Films, things like that.
You know, there are refuges from the hell of constant commercial programming being shoved
down your throat.
So hopefully people find those.
Those media outlets, like you said, are obscene in how much of that dominates their programming.
And I'm really excited for some of the alternatives.
Like you mentioned, they're actually building production facilities and starting their own
journey with original content.
So I think people, yeah, spend as much time making your own stuff really, really, you
know, finding and finding a great way to share it that suits you.
Because I think also with some of the self-generated streaming stuff, you have to hit certain thresholds
to even begin to monetize or anything.
Like they're making you play the same.
I mean, Amazon does the same thing with publishers.
It's ridiculous.
And you can't talk about it.
And it's this whole bar that you have to abide by for really giving up and compromising
yourself.
You have to talk about, you know, subscribing or all of that kind of stuff.
It really changes the story that you're telling.
It changes the type of choices you make editing because you're trying to get people to be excited
about everything.
Absolutely.
Oh, Rob, I'm sorry.
I didn't see your hand.
It merges into your white coat there.
So I didn't see it.
Okay, go ahead.
Well, just on the subject of WBAI and the place of us in the media environment, you guys
know what today is.
It's the day after January 6th?
Oh, wait.
No, it's two days after January 6th.
Wow, it seems so long ago.
Today is January 8th.
This is the 65th anniversary of WBAI hitting the airwaves.
Today is the day?
Today is the day.
January 8th, 1960 is when we went live.
So we qualify for Social Security now.
Wow.
Absolutely.
All right.
Medicare, certainly.
That's good news.
You know, we said we were going to do something special, and then we forgot this day was coming,
and here it is.
65 years ago.
That's when the station went on.
I wonder, does anybody, any listener out there, any really faithful listener, have a tape?
Wait, they didn't have cassettes back then.
How would they have taped it?
Real-to-real, I guess.
Yeah.
A real-to-real tape of us going on the air as WBAI on January 8th, 1960.
Come on.
Somebody must have it someplace.
Somebody must have it.
Wow.
Or just early recordings.
Absolutely.
I'd love to hear early recordings when the station was finding its way, because WBAI actually
turned into the first radio station to dare to ask for funds on the air.
Yeah.
We were the first.
We started that.
We started a lot of trends, but that's probably the biggest trend we started, because everybody
does that now.
And it worked, and it still works.
You know, we just finished our fund drive last month, and we came in over the goal.
And, you know, I've seen summations of this.
I haven't seen such positive outlooks at this place in a while.
So I am really thrilled with where we're going, especially at a time like this, where
you're going to need a station like WBAI to counter the crap you are going to be hearing.
Oh, my God.
I mean, just over the last 24 hours, just the nonsense.
We might be going to war with Greenland and Panama and Canada.
No, and I say we.
I'll be on the other side, folks.
I'm not going to be on the side of whatever this is.
This is what we're looking at right now.
You know, it's not even January 20th yet, and already the world is, you know, saying
they're shocked by what they're hearing, and they don't know how to deal with it.
So buckle up.
It's going to be fun, and WBAI is going to be right there.
I hope we have your support.
I hope that we continue to spit in the face of authority.
I'm having so much fun right now.
Good.
I'm happy to hear that.
I'm happy this is all working out.
It's a big carnival ride.
It's wee.
It's so fun.
I'm overjoyed, exuberant, effervescent with how excited and, yeah, relaxed.
It's going to be exciting.
I mean, you have so many, dare I say, characters out there that are really going to push the
limits of our patience.
You know, I'm thinking of Elon Musk particularly, what the things he is doing or the things that
he thinks he has control over, being, you know, the richest person on earth.
I mean, it reads like some kind of science fiction, second class, you know, TV drama where you have
this evil person who is very rich, the richest person on earth.
And the whole film is dedicated to thwarting him.
And we're in the film.
We're going to be attending to thwart him all the time.
It never ends well for those people, by the way.
It never ends well, in the movies at least.
So, you know, real life, I don't know where this is going.
But I don't see him getting along with Trump for very much longer.
So that's going to be fun when that split happens.
But they want to find out.
Uh-huh.
Zuckerberg, though, from Facebook, he's choosing the dark paths lately.
Have you noticed this?
You know, first they said they were going to introduce artificial intelligence all over
the place, make them users and things like that with bios.
And I don't know, I thought he lost his mind.
But the latest thing, Zuckerberg has decided to get rid of Facebook's 40,000 moderators
that basically, I guess, find things that are objectionable, false, basically fact checkers.
He's going to get rid of the fact checkers, content moderation team, they're called.
And in their place, they're basically going to have mob rule.
They're going to have, you know, people decide what is right and what is wrong, what is fair,
what is not.
Ignoring the fact that, you know, misinformation is spread by people and it catches on and it
develops a life of its own.
And people aren't really keen on checking the actual facts.
They want the narrative that they believe in, you know, and that's why, you know, you're seeing
the horrible wildfires out in California right now being blamed on Democrats because everything
gets blamed on Democrats somehow.
So no matter what it is, a meteor could hit us from from space.
Democrats.
It's going to be Biden's fault somehow.
And people are going to believe that.
Now, what Zuckerberg is setting up here is a situation where that'll spread around like
crazy and there'll be nobody there to say, but the facts say otherwise.
It'll be, well, these people say this.
Those people say that everybody has an opinion.
Everybody is equal.
And that's how the truth dies.
Not in darkness, in full light.
Perfect.
Am I?
You think that's perfect?
I'm being sarcastic.
Yeah.
Okay.
No, sarcasm is definitely called for.
Alex, I think you have a point.
Go ahead.
I find this this whole policy shift from meta slash Facebook to be really just kind of bizarre
on on so many levels is, I mean, it's obviously kowtowing to the Trump administration is trying
to curry favor with Trump, trying to cozy up to him and show that, hey, we're going to make
efforts to fall in line, essentially, is is really what I think the message to the administration
is.
And I think that's extraordinarily dangerous.
On the other hand, I think we do also have to acknowledge that Facebook and meta, these
are not public service companies, right?
They're not utilities.
We shouldn't look at them like that.
They're not regulated like that.
And they can do whatever the hell they want to do with their moderators or not.
I mean, they're a private company, right?
So they can fire all those moderators or mostly employees at will in the United States, I would
imagine so they can all be terminated whenever Mark Zuckerberg decides to fire them.
And they are well within their rights to do that, whether it's a good decision when there
is a massive increase of misinformation, when you look at Twitter and you look at the goddamn
dumpster fire that Twitter has become and you realize that Facebook will very likely become
that very same dumpster fire or a similar dumpster fire when there aren't these fact checkers
and they aren't these moderators that are playing these crucial roles in combating the spread
of false information.
And maybe that's the point, though, because like we said last week, I think user engagement
on the platform has been floundering on Facebook for some time because people, without figuring
out a better or more complicated way of saying this, people have figured out that Facebook
really sucks.
And so now removing these moderators is going to cause more inflamed engagement between Facebook
participants, which may actually generate a hell of a lot more revenue and eyeballs on
the platform itself.
So maybe it's a good move.
It does seem like the markets have approved of this, but I think it's really dangerous.
I think it's terrible.
And I also think that areas outside the United States, areas that are non-English speaking
countries that have historically been overlooked by Facebook's fact checkers and content moderators
are going to be even more vulnerable than they were before.
A couple of years ago in 2600, I published an article about digital hate and misinformation about
the Rohingya that had then spread into physical violence.
And there were no fact checkers at Facebook to prevent this, to stop it.
And there was a UN report about how this digital hate and mischaracterization of the Rohingyas as
basically becoming inhuman, you know, they were referred to as rodents and various things,
spilled over into actual physical violence.
So this is really dangerous territory, in my opinion, that we're treading into.
I would just add to what Alex said, from a network security perspective, you become very
quickly with these kinds of policies, a untrusted partner in industry.
And I don't know that you can really be relied upon if you don't have mechanisms and staffing,
you know, entities within the organization that can take on issues regarding this.
And so then you're really entertaining becoming a vector for problems that your partners in industry
would actually like to see you proactively involved with, not basically a source of it.
Um, and, and I think, uh, it, it is just, um, you know, it, like Alex said, could be a choice
for them, but it doesn't necessarily, um, make for a better environment.
And, and I think people have retreated because of the way people, they see the platforms for
what they are and they use it as much or as little as they can, um, tolerate.
And then I think I've found other ways.
I think people are retreating to more specific ways of networking or, or just, um, uh, I guess
leaving, leaving this kinds of virtual, um, uh, type, uh, well alone as it stands now without
these controls, without this kind of, uh, and in the ways that it's sort of exploiting human
behavior.
It's great that people leave.
It's great that people say, okay, this is not for me anymore, but it's still there and
it's still getting stronger.
I mean, look at what's happening with Twitter.
You know, Elon Musk now thinks that he can dictate, uh, who leads countries, you know,
Germany and the UK and various other places.
Right.
He has, he has no end to the amount of power he thinks he is entitled to.
And, and, and, and Twitter has helped give him that power.
And I see the same thing happening on Facebook.
I mean, Zuckerberg just appointed a close Trump ally to Meta's board and obviously more and
more right-leaning people are taking control of that platform.
And that, you know, as Alex said, can translate into actual real physical violence.
We've seen it happen.
We saw it happen in England, uh, late last year where, where, uh, migrants were, were,
were blamed for horrible crimes that they had nothing to do with.
We see it here where, where people are accused of eating dogs and cats.
When there's no truth to that whatsoever, it spreads on social media.
It turns into something real.
So yeah, it's, it's one thing to say, um, this is not for me anymore.
I'm going to go somewhere better where, you know, people are nicer, but you have to also
destroy the place that you leave, or it's going to keep growing like a cancer and it's
going to affect you in real life.
So I think we all need to go back there and light the place on fire.
Sorry, California.
I know it's not appropriate right now, but I, I, I think that is our responsibility is
to make sure they do not have an easy time of it.
Yeah, I think that's true because it's a synthetic public comments really.
It's, it's basically, um, uh, authoritarian or other kinds of, um, uh, uh, leaders or people
in so-called leaders, people in power that basically create that are in effect creating sort
of a botnet that is, uh, uh, uh, kind of, uh, re, re, uh, defined as the public comments,
like instead of it as like a pseudo or synthetic public comments, instead of what people are
actually, uh, thinking.
And I, and people with bad information could well contribute to all of that, whether it
is, um, you know, automated to a degree, but again, you're letting the floodgates open to
machines to mix among everybody who might actually be a person under, let's remember the auspices
of, we want to get all the bots off of Twitter.
Like that was the whole premise of the purchase of X.
So, I mean, uh, yeah, we cannot allow, um, the actual human public comments to be replaced
by some, by botnets that, that, uh, you know, benevolent, benevolent fools control.
Well said, well said.
Now, um, moving on the, um, the highly decorated soldier.
I don't know why the media is describing a terrorist this way, but the highly decorated soldier who
exploded a Tesla cyber truck outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas used generative AI, including
chat GPT to help plan the attack.
According to Las Vegas police yesterday, um, 37 year old Matthew Livisberger fatally shot
himself.
Uh, official said, according to writings, he didn't intend to kill anyone else.
Interesting way of not killing anyone else, driving a vehicle up and blowing it up in front
of a hotel with people in front of it.
Uh, I, I, I don't know why people take this at face value, uh, an investigation of his
searches through chat GPT indicated he was looking for information on explosive targets,
uh, the speed at which certain rounds of ammunition would travel and whether fireworks were legal
in Arizona.
You're going to blow yourself up in a cyber truck in front of a hotel and you're, you care
about whether what you're carrying is legal in Arizona.
All right.
Um, Kevin McMahill is the sheriff of the Las Vegas metropolitan police department.
Uh, he called the use of a generative AI, a game changer and said the department was sharing
information with other law enforcement agencies.
This is the first incident I'm aware of on us soil where chat GPT is utilized to help an
individual build a particular device.
He said, it's a concerning moment.
Oh, actually that's so untrue.
I can't even begin to, uh, uh, address that many devices have been, have been, uh, built
with the help of chat GPT.
Um, in an email statement, open AI said it was committed to seeing its tools used responsibly
and that they're designed to refuse harmful instructions.
In this case, chat GPT responded with information already publicly available on the internet and provided
warnings against harmful or illegal activities.
We're working with law enforcement to support their investigation.
Yes, Rob, go ahead.
Yeah, I don't condone what this person did.
I don't think people should be building explosive devices, but, uh, I also don't think if someone
is going to build an explosive device, it's a good idea to ask a large, large language model
like chat GPT, how to do it.
These are the same things that tell you that you can make pizza with glue and eat rocks and
drink turpentine and things.
Um, this does not seem like a winning strategy from this, uh, highly decorated soldier.
Yeah.
And, uh, again, you know, the, the fact the guy had PTSD, which is terrible, um, but PTSD
does not make you go out and want to blow up trucks and hotels and things like that.
I don't care what he says his motivations are.
The guy is a terror, was a terrorist and case closed.
That's, um, just because somebody was in the military and supported Trump, you know,
he was a big Trump supporter.
You don't get a pass for that.
You know, you don't get it.
It's too bad you didn't get help beforehand, but, um, it's just, um, typical of the way
the media describes these things.
Yes, Alex, go ahead.
This story in, in, in particular, the chat GPT angle reminds me of issues that we had
with BBS is way back in the nineties.
Remember when the newspapers and things made a big stink about this, uh, the anarchist cookbook
text file being available on BBSs and how, you know, this could allow terrorists to create
thermite and various bombs and all of this information that was publicly available.
I mean, look, the information is there.
It's out there.
It's going to be accessed one way or another, right?
I think that's what we've all come to realize over the last 30 years of, of essentially being
online and having a network to life.
So I, I think the chat GPT angle here is really much ado about nothing.
In my opinion.
No, I agree.
I agree.
It's basically, you know, he used an advanced search engine to, uh, get answers to questions.
If that wasn't there, he would have used something else or he would have read a book.
You know, the, the, um, the details of how to do these things, they don't change, you know,
things are still going to blow up in the same way.
Um, and people are going to use tools, you know, to get from one place to another, or,
you know, to map out a place using Google maps or whatever.
These tools exist for good or for bad.
So, uh, we shouldn't be so surprised when we see people using those tools.
We should be surprised that people want to do this kind of thing in the first place and
that we don't seem to be able to figure out ways of, um, of getting them to not want to
do that.
So, yeah, that's, um, that's what's happening there.
Uh, speaking of U.S. soldiers, uh, a U.S. soldier was arrested after allegedly posting
hacked Trump and Harris call logs.
Yeah, um, basically, um, the United States arrested a U.S. Army soldier, charged him with
being part of a hacking scheme to sell and distribute stolen phone records.
Okay, you know, the way the headline read, it sounded like he was just arrested after posting
hacked call logs.
It seems a bit much.
You know, if, if, if, if those call logs are out there, I think we deserve to know the
call logs are out there.
Uh, but if you're selling them, okay, then you're stepping over into true criminal behavior
there.
Uh, indictment alleges 20 year old Cameron, uh, what, what Guinness, um, knowingly sold confidential
phone records over online forums and other communications platforms last November.
Uh, the incident doesn't detail the hacked material, uh, but Krebs on security reports that what
genius, his name is genius, actually.
Why genius.
Okay.
Appears to be connected to a series of high profile data breaches linked to the online
alias Kyber Phantom.
Kyber Phantom claimed to have hacked 15 telecom firms and was working with the person allegedly
behind the snowflake data breaches to sell the stolen information.
You know, why genius, whatever your name is, it would have been so much better if you just
simply revealed the, um, security issues here and how embarrassing it could be to certain
people without trying to make a buck without trying to, uh, you know, basically sell this
information.
I think that makes it a lot harder for anyone to actually say, yeah, this was done in, in,
in the public service.
This was done out of an interest in, in security.
Uh, no, it seems to have been done just to make money.
And, um, yeah, that's a, that's a shame.
I'd like to know more about this.
I can know how this was done.
I know there are a whole lot of phone companies.
Almost every one of them has been hacked.
And what kind of information about us are they storing?
You know, our phone records, what can they find out about us?
So much we can learn from these, um, um, these, these intrusions, these, um, these security
breaches, but it always turns into, yeah, the person wanted to sell what they found and
they were just in it for that.
Any, any thoughts, Alex?
I tend to agree with you here.
I think this is, uh, really just misguided.
It would have been really quite interesting had this been more of like a, a disclosure or
something that could have been done as part of a bug bounty program.
I think there are a lot of ways that he ethically could have divulged these vulnerabilities
in a way that didn't implicate himself, didn't make it appear as if really what motivated him
was entirely, uh, money.
So I, I think this is a really unfortunate situation.
Something similar, um, hacker who stole and sold unreleased Coldplay and Shawn Mendes songs
has been sentenced to prison.
Again, that seems awfully harsh.
Somebody who just was able to find unreleased Coldplay songs and, uh, you, you send them to
jail.
I mean, you know, I think personally we should be avoiding sending people to prison.
I would, I would, um, uh, you know, save prison for people who are, oh, I don't know, uh, sex
offenders, financial, uh, uh, cheaters, people who try to overthrow the government, people
like that.
They belong in prison, but, uh, people will simply download music that they're not supposed
to have.
I don't know.
Skylar Dazell, uh, 22 year old from Luton, England.
Oh, he made over $50,000 from the scheme.
Okay.
Well, here we go again.
Always about money, always about money, always about greed.
Well, he pleaded guilty to stealing and selling unreleased music by artists like Coldplay and
Shawn Mendes, 21 months in prison.
Hmm.
He was accused of hacking cloud storage accounts linked to various artists and then selling
the stolen tracks on the dark web.
He allegedly made an estimated $52,000 from the scheme between April, 2021 and January,
2023.
According to police, uh, he was charged with and later pleaded guilty to 11 copyright
offenses for selling items without a license from the owner, one count of transferring
criminal property and three counts of acquiring, using, or possessing criminal property.
Uh, and on top of the prison sentence, he has, um, uh, he has to also complete 180 hours
of unpaid work.
Actually, I'm sorry, she, this is written really weird.
It's spelled S H E L apostrophe L L. So I don't know what word that is, but I think, um, yeah,
I have no idea.
The story's very, uh, confusedly written.
It's from Rolling Stone too.
I'm going to look into that.
Um, I don't know if, if, if there wasn't money involved, Alex, what do you think the penalty
would have been?
They think they still would have gone to prison?
Um, I, I think it's possible.
I think it could all really, and, uh, it could all just entirely hinge on what judge you drew
for your particular case.
You know, that's, uh, that's really kind of the sad state of things, but, um, it could
always go down to what the judge had for breakfast that particular day when sentencing happens.
But I think it would have been a hell of a lot less likely that this person would have
received some kind of custodial sentence like this, had there not been some kind of massive
monetary gain like that.
And, and frankly, it's not even a lot of money.
I think this does seem quite, uh, disproportionate to the particular crime, but I also tend to
agree with you as well, Emmanuel.
I think there are way more constructive ways to deal with these particular types of individuals
than to hand out custodial sentences like this.
I have confirmed, uh, female hacker.
Her hard drives, uh, contained about 290,000 tracks.
Uh, other artists, uh, affected included, uh, Melanie Martinez, Upsal, and, uh, Babe Rexhaugh.
I'm probably pronouncing all those names wrong.
Um, authorities also found a spreadsheet detailing the track transactions as well as PayPal and
bank account statements, uh, showing how much Dalzal had made.
It's always, always a good idea to keep meticulous records, keep records when you're, when you're
committing financial crimes.
Yeah.
How else do you keep track of it all?
Um, and you know, I, I called her a hacker, not really sure.
This is hacking so much.
Uh, if you figured out the way in, if you've got a way to, to compromise these systems,
yeah, there's a degree of hacking in that.
But as soon as you started selling things, it's just, um, you became something else as well.
Rob?
Yeah, pretty, pretty much, uh, every popular band out there has, uh, um, sort of the scene
among their fans that comes up of people who trade, uh, obscure stuff back and forth.
It could be bootlegs, uh, recordings of events and, you know, maybe unreleased things that,
uh, that leak out.
But, uh, that's always kind of tacitly a person to person, uh, non for financial gain sort of
thing.
And yeah, I don't have much sympathy for somebody who suffers consequences for, of, um, you know,
just trying to get rich off of this stuff.
I, I, you know, information wants to be free.
I don't think it wants to be sold.
Right.
Like the Grateful Dead just got the Kennedy Center honor and they were talking about the
whole ethos of once the music is out there, it's there to be shared.
I just wanted to say, I appreciated the way the Guardian phrased it.
They didn't say hacker.
They said dark web dealer.
Dark web dealer.
Okay.
Yeah, that, that has a ring to it.
That has a ring to it.
And that's, that, that's accurate.
Yeah.
It just seems like these are the kinds of stories that we always see representing the
hacker world.
And it's time that we, um, you know, we push back against that and, and, and start printing
the stories that are about accomplishments that are about revelations that are about things
that are in the public service and not just for financial gain.
I mean, if you're, if you, if you really want to make a career out of it, the financial
game will come at some point.
But if that is where you start, I don't think it's ever really going to progress too far
for you.
All right.
You know what?
We are pretty much out of time, but this announcement next week, we will be taking phone
calls again here on WBAI.
We did that once already in December and we vowed we do it once a month and it's been
about a month.
So we're going to do it again next week.
So next week will be a, uh, a call in episode of off the hook on WBAI.
It means we won't have overtime next week, but we will have overtime tonight.
So if you've got something you really need to say to us, well, you can call in on YouTube.
Yeah.
I know we, we spent part of the hour trashing YouTube, but we do use it and we don't have
ads on it though.
We, we, we check the box that turns the ads off.
They keep trying to get us to check it off and have ads, but no, we're not doing that.
Um, our YouTube channel is channel 2600, one word.
And, um, you can join us there at eight o'clock.
You can write to us OTH at 2600.com and remember to keep supporting WBAI because this is the radio
station that will be there for you in whatever lies ahead.
And, um, I think we all really don't know what that is.
See you soon.
Well, we know where we're going, but we don't know where we've been.
And we know what we're knowing, but we can't say what we've seen.
And we're not little children, and we know what we want, and the future is certain.
Give us time to work it out.
Yeah.
We're on the road from nowhere, and come on inside.
Take a night ride to nowhere, and we'll take that ride.
We're on the road from nowhere, and we'll take that ride.
Take a night ride to nowhere, and come on inside.
Take a night ride to nowhere, and we'll take that ride.
Maybe it'll walk that way you are, and I don't care.
Here is where time is on our side.
Take a night ride.
Take you there.
Take you there.
Take you there.
We're on the road from nowhere.
We're on the road to nowhere
We're on the road to nowhere
There's a city in my mind
I'm going to take that right
It's over
It's over
And it's there and far away
But it's growing day by day
It's alright
It's alright
Would you like to come along
You can help me sing the song
It's alright
It's alright
We can tell you what to do
What don't make me fool you
It's alright
It's alright
There's a city in my mind
Come along
You can take that right
It's alright
It's alright
It's ready for me
But it's growing day by day
It's alright
It's alright
Hey
We can help you sing the song
It's alright
It's alright
It's alright
Come along
And I'll tell you what to do
Cause I can't fool you
It's alright
It's alright
We're on the road to nowhere
We're on the road to nowhere
We're on the road to nowhere
We're on the drive
We're on the road to nowhere
We're on the road to nowhere
We're on the road to nowhere
We're on the road to the all
We're on the road to nowhere


Emanuel, we're here on Channel 2600.
Kyle?
Hi.
Out in Skype land, we have Rob and Gila and Alex.
You all make it?
You got to say something.
Oh, wait, wait, wait.
My fault.
Buttons were pressed.
Okay.
Say that again.
I'm sorry.
Something.
Hello.
All right.
Good.
Yeah.
So here we are, Overtime.
Again, there won't be an Overtime next week because we're taking phone calls on WBAI.
And if you call tonight on Overtime, please don't call next week on BAI so that we have
some variety of listeners and things like that.
But you can call now.
802-321-4225 is our telephone number.
We'd love to hear from you.
And tell us what you've been up to.
Your thoughts, feelings on technology or the hacker world or anything else on your mind.
And 802-321-HACK is our telephone number.
And you're going to share that joke with us, Gila?
I am.
First of all, to begin by saying welcome to the 28 people we have with us right now.
Welcome.
We're glad you're here.
And despite the fact that the chat did kick off a little bit before we officially opened
it, that's okay.
I'm not angry.
But we did just have someone in the chat share the following message.
Alex, you're muted.
That was the message?
Yes.
They wrote that in the chat.
So that was, I just wanted to pass that along.
That's very funny.
What was the message?
The obligatory, Alex, you're muted.
Oh.
And that is why I started laughing.
Wait, how would they know he was muted?
They can't see him.
That's the funny part.
Well, because you muted everybody, I guess, by accident.
Ah, okay.
He was assuming it was some kind of screw up from, on my part, which it usually is.
Yeah, okay.
No, we assume it's your fault usually.
So, yeah, that does track.
But right now.
Ironically, ironically, though, this was the one episode, I think, in God knows how long
that I had zero.
Oh, Alex, you're muted.
Very funny.
Good evening.
Very funny.
You're on off-hook overtime.
Go ahead.
Hey, guys.
Hi.
How are you?
Good.
How are you?
Where are you calling from?
I'm calling from Queens.
Queens.
The wonderful borough of Queens.
What's on your mind?
Yes.
I'm the guy with the gang dog.
You better?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
From Hope.
Yes, we remember you.
Right.
But I got a bone to pick with you.
You know, you always say that when you call in, that you have a bone to pick with us.
We have a lot of bones, so pick away.
Okay.
Number one.
You say you're against, you know, Facebook having no moderation, and you say, there's got
to be fact checkers.
Let's go back to the 1970s.
How would you guys like it if someone, when you have the phone company, say, oh, you can't
say that.
You can't put out, tell people about 2600.
You can't tell them how to build an oscillator.
I think free speech is the best thing.
It's up to each individual person to decide if they like or they don't like what they hear,
and it's up to each individual person to decide what the truth is.
Yeah.
What should you be the one to say?
Well, I'm not saying I should be the one.
I'm saying people who have knowledge and facts and access to this.
I mean, why have newspapers?
Why have journalists?
Why have anybody that knows what they're talking about?
Sorry?
You should have journalists, and they should tell you what they think.
Let's put it to you this way.
How about if I said, I'm a fact checker, and I don't like, and I don't like what you say
about Israel, and I could say, well, let's stop them from saying that because that's not
right.
Well, my understanding of the fact checkers, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, they
didn't decide policy.
They just presented, is this backed up by evidence or not?
And it was up to somebody else up in Facebook to decide if there was any action.
But now what we're going to have is we're not going to have anybody checking anything,
just people weighing in with their opinions, which is great.
You know, I like to hear opinions, but, you know, you have to have facts as well and evidence
and things like that.
And it just seems like...
Wait a minute.
How do you know that the people, the facts are correct?
How do I know what you're saying is correct?
How you find out is through the marketplace of ideas.
You and I go at it, and it's up to the audience to say, you know what?
I am correct or manuals correct.
No, okay.
That is where I'm getting it.
No, facts are not decided by popular vote.
That's not how facts work.
That's the problem.
You're doing a better job identifying the problem than I am.
You can't vote for facts.
No, but hold on.
But yes, but who determines the facts?
Okay, who determines...
Yes, you're assigned to facts.
Let's put it to you this way.
If I say to you that if we do X, we won't have inflation.
We do Y, we will have inflation.
How do you determine facts?
Okay, how about if we talk about COVID?
When you have people say, no, you can't say that because that's not true,
when they talked about the lab leak.
The lab leak.
Or if I say, you know what?
But I feel, well, I think it's better not to take a vaccine, okay?
Okay, you're picking politically charged issues that we're just going to go around circles forever on.
Let's pick something a little bit more simple so we can, you know, both look at this objectively.
You know, flat earth society.
Have you ever talked to flat earth people who are convinced the earth is flat?
Have you ever tried to convince them that it's not?
It's impossible because they'll just say, well, that's your opinion and you can't prove it.
How do you prove the earth is round to somebody?
Has anybody ever tried to do that?
It's not easy.
Listen, if they want to believe that, that's fine.
But if I say to you the earth is round, prove it to me.
Sure, you can prove it.
You can take a satellite.
You can prove it by...
I don't believe that satellite is up in space.
You can't prove to me the satellite is really there.
I can prove that as an engineer that the planet is round because, you know, radio waves at higher frequencies go line of sight.
So they go out into space.
So if the planet was flat, I'd be able to go from New York to California on 99.5 megabytes.
But it doesn't.
It goes 100 miles or whatever the line of sight is.
Well, that's your opinion.
That's your opinion.
Now, Rob has another opinion.
Go ahead, Rob.
Well, opinions are at the heart of what's going on because an important addendum to the story about Facebook getting rid of its content moderators is they also quietly changed a number of clauses in their hate speech policy.
This was noticed by The Independent.
And in particular, they removed a clause saying you cannot compare women to household objects or property.
They removed a clause on claiming there is no such thing as a trans or a gay person.
There are new clauses...
Wait, those were necessary?
They had to put those in to start?
You can't compare a woman to an object and trans people exist?
That was their bar?
Oh, my God.
Okay.
It keeps getting better.
There were also clauses added into the policy to explicitly allow common anti-trans arguments, such as advocating for trans people to be banned from public bathrooms, school sports, certain jobs.
The same section previously said that users couldn't call protected groups freaks or abnormal.
This is the sort of shift in Facebook's moderation that we're seeing.
Not only are they not getting people to, you know, are they not having the people review behavior like this on the platform anymore, but they have specifically changed the rules to allow terrible things.
Any thoughts, caller?
Well, the only thing I can say is this.
Facebook isn't perfect.
I don't use Facebook that much.
Do I have a webpage?
Absolutely.
But do I listen to it all?
I don't know.
It's up to each individual person to make the decision.
I can have a very strong argument with you, Manuel, about Israel, which I could say, you know what, because you are, I feel Israel did wrong, and I don't think they did wrong, because Israel didn't go and kill all these people on October 7th, and they have a right to defend themselves, okay?
Do you believe Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?
Yes, they do, but they don't have a right to kill people, and they don't have a right to put their military equipment, their arms, underneath hospitals and all that stuff.
So they're both violating.
What should Israel do?
Say, okay, we're going to be sitting ducks?
And you know what, I can carry it.
Just because you have that opinion doesn't mean, I can say, you know what, I don't like what you're saying.
I'm not going to come to any more hope to mention, but I wouldn't do that.
You have a right to your opinion.
I don't like it, and I don't know if, and basically as far as it comes to WBAI, I don't support WBAI.
Do I think one or two shows are okay on it?
Fine.
But they're mainly a very left-wing type radio station.
Well, it's interesting because, yeah, the left-wing radio stations tend to have conversations where people debate and disagree, and free speech lives, and I would think you'd support that.
Well, they have a right to do that, and I have a right not to support it, but guess what?
If somebody else wants to pay for it, that's their business, but I do say they have a legal right to say anything they want to on the air, and the FCC and the government can't stop it.
Well, that's not true.
They can't say certain things, and the FCC will stop it.
They can't curse, and they can't call for, you know, calling for murder of certain people.
But other than that, they have a right to say whatever they want to say.
Most of what they say on WBAI, I'm not a big fan of, but that's their privilege.
And the people who want to write checks and support WBAI, they have that right.
And as far as Facebook, if you don't like what Facebook is saying, don't go on Facebook.
Close out your account.
And if you want to have an antibody, an antibiotic to what you don't like, then fight for what you believe in.
Go on Facebook and say, this is not right.
That's what every person should do.
If you don't like what they're saying, if you don't like that they're right-wing or they support Trump, then you have a right to go on and say, I don't support Trump.
This guy is bad.
That is your God-given right as a free person.
Yeah, I don't think anybody was being disciplined or kicked off for supporting Trump or for saying things that are, you know, in disagreement with other people.
They were talking about, you know, things like what Rob was outlining before, and things that are pretty much over the line for most free-thinking people.
Now it's just going to be something that, I don't know, I think it's going to lower the bar quite a bit.
I don't use Facebook, so I don't really know how low the bar is already.
So it doesn't really affect me that much, but it's an interesting trend.
You have to ask yourself, why now?
Why is it happening right now?
And is Zuckerberg going down the same path that Elon Musk did?
Alex, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
I pretty much gave my thoughts almost entirely during the initial show, but I think it's currying favor.
It's kowtowing, in my opinion.
I think it's hopeful that there might be more engagement on the platform for doing this, but I really see it as very much a trend of not only just these big tech platforms,
but also the media too, which is really quite scary, of trying to get close and curry favor and be on what they perceive to be as the right side of the Trump administration
so that they don't attract any undue attention or the unnecessary ire of Trump.
I mean, nobody wants to be on the receiving end of some kind of vitriol from Trump, or what if he tweets about them or something?
I mean, it's because it's very clear that the Trump administration has made claims that they are going to weaponize the Justice Department
and go after the media and go after their critics, and so they want to be on the right side here.
And strangely enough, you know, the markets seem to reflect that currying favor may be the right thing to do.
I mean, you can't—the right thing to do financially.
I'm not saying it's the right thing to do morally whatsoever.
I think this is extraordinarily dangerous to do this type of thing, especially in the face of so much evidence
that without fact-checkers, these platforms devolve into dangerous places that can spill over into physical violence.
I think removing 40,000 fact-checkers from Facebook will result in the loss of life at some point.
That's a sad, crazy fact.
Caller, we'll give you the last word on this.
Okay.
First of all, most of the media is not on Trump's side.
Most of the media is liberal.
And if you want to talk about which side is weaponizing the Justice Department, look at what Joe Biden's administration did with the Justice Department.
And you know something that's so funny?
If the Democrats and all of these people would have left Trump alone, he probably would not be president today.
You know what?
By weaponizing and going after him with all of this legal stuff is why he's president.
I can almost guarantee you if they would have left him alone and let him say whatever he wanted to, he probably would not have been elected president.
Well, interesting theory.
And we'll chew on that.
Okay, guys.
Have a great evening.
All right.
Take care.
All right.
You know, I said I'd give him the last word, but that doesn't mean we can't continue talking about this.
You know, it's basically, if you're going to say that Biden's Justice Department was weaponized and coordinated, well, they went about it in a rather funny way.
And it wasn't about letting Trump say whatever he wanted.
It was about letting Trump steal votes, lead an insurrection, hide classified material, sexually abuse people.
That's not speech.
That's definitely not speech.
And the prosecutions came from a variety of places.
And I just don't see the evidence that it was all coordinated.
I really don't see that.
Whereas Trump now is saying, yeah, I'm going to coordinate it.
I'm going to go after these people who say all kinds of things.
He sued a newspaper for printing a poll that showed him trailing Kamala Harris.
He is suing them and the poll takers for this.
You know, you can't make this up.
So I just don't think it's, you know, the same situations we're talking about here.
All right.
Our phone number 8023214225.
Any thoughts from you guys on any of that?
Yeah, I think the place of the media in Trump's election, both of them, is subject to be analyzed by academics for generations hence, assuming we keep having them.
But the truth of the matter, I think, is that had the media not had this love for hanging on everything he did because it was so bizarre and so, you know, trollish and so spectacular and got in the views and the clicks and the everything.
Had they just like left the weird little guy alone, he would never have he would never have been elected.
It's the fact that he was platformed by pretty much every media outlet out there that that got his message across and that reached the people sympathetic to it.
And that's how you get elected.
Exactly. And the preemptive compliance is a it's a distressing and frightening thing to see.
One thing we were talking about this morning was could you imagine if they just printed if they built him a little briefing room just filled with cardboard cutouts and he could go give press conferences all day long?
And no one would know. Let it be imaginary president.
Yeah, that's that's next level stuff there. I'd love to see that done, but I don't hold out hope that we're ever going to achieve that.
But, you know, you guys are saying something similar to what the caller said.
You're saying that, you know, because we didn't leave him alone and because we paid attention to what he said and did.
That's why he gained power.
You're saying it was it was the press paying attention to him.
He was saying it's because of all the lawyers and judges and prosecutors that were paying attention to what he was doing.
Had we not done that, then he wouldn't have had the power.
So it's interesting. Do you just ignore somebody who is basically causing all kinds of issues and hope they go away?
It doesn't seem like the smartest move to just, you know, cross your fingers and hope that you can ignore them into oblivion.
I'm not sure he would have gone away.
I'm not sure he wouldn't have still had the same amount.
And it's because of what we're talking about tonight.
It's because of things like, you know, Facebook being the great equalizer where everybody's voice matters equally.
OK, that's great, except when you have a whole lot of people who are misinformed and nobody is correcting them and they continue to believe that something is happening that is not happening.
I mean, you can't say that's not a threat.
That's happened many, many times over the course of history.
That's like info zombie complex apocalypse.
Mm hmm.
Straight up.
Yeah.
You know, people with bad data run around like zombies.
I feel like I'm running around like a zombie, but whatever.
There are definitely zombies in the mix.
We have a phone call.
We have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Yes, Emmanuel.
I just got into San Diego.
Oh, boy.
We're wondering where you were.
OK, well, thanks for calling.
Well, I was in Seattle.
I visited the telephone museum.
You went to the telephone museum.
Isn't that an awesome place?
It really is.
But they do not have the PSPS console, which is in storage.
It's in storage.
And they said the storage is off site.
So there's another place in Tacoma, which they told me about just now, that has it, that
I even may go to.
But now I'm hearing, I saw a video that's in New Mexico that they may have.
So I may need to go to back to Tacoma on the way home, to Seattle on the way home, or
to New Mexico.
I hear there's a nice one in Guam.
Maybe you should go there.
What?
They have telephones in Guam, you know.
They do.
Yeah, but they don't have TFPS consoles.
Oh, you don't know that.
You don't know.
You got to check and make sure.
Guam, let's just keep going west.
Just keep going west over the ocean.
You'll be there soon.
Let's see.
So I'm either going to go back to Seattle or to New Mexico.
Wait a minute.
You're in Southern California now that's on fire?
No, well, I'm in San Diego.
Los Angeles is where they have the fires.
And that's...
Not far away.
Yeah, well, I'm going to be here until next week.
And then I'm either going to go back to Seattle or San Diego or New Mexico, depending on who
has the TSPS console.
Well, I know that Seattle has, or maybe just the New Mexico place has.
Once you find the TSPS console, Rebel, what will you do with it?
Well, I'm going to make a detailed video of it.
It's not going to work, obviously.
It's not going to work because I can't be hooked up to anything.
But I'm going to make a detailed video of how it works, what the buttons do, and how the
display works, and all this kind of stuff.
Because there's nothing on the internet.
There's only pictures, like blurry pictures of it, and pictures that are not good, and
like a video that's quick.
And they don't show the details of what the buttons are and what the display is and how
it works.
I'm going to show how it works, how it's connected, what the, you know, things like
that.
Very cool.
Yeah, yeah.
Do it.
It's up to us to archive this stuff for history, you know, because nobody else cared enough
to do it.
Right.
And I had to tell him, I mean, I got a private, well, I guess it's kind of a private talk
because they're only open one day a week.
They're one in Seattle.
And they had this kid here that didn't really know much about anything.
I think I knew a little bit more than him.
I mean, he actually taught me things.
Like the 1EFS has little things that click that, you know what, that's where you hear
when you make a phone call because it has some sort of a, you know, mechanical thing.
What else?
I think you should give a guest lecture there.
I really do.
I think we should all, like, open our own telephone museum.
I'd like to hope or something.
Well, you need a phone company.
But once you have one of those, yeah, you're set.
There is one on Long Island.
There's a phone museum on Long Island, I know.
I believe in Comac.
One?
Yeah, in Comac, Suffolk County.
Yeah, but it's probably not as good as these.
I don't know.
Maybe it's not as good, but it's something.
It's pretty cool.
It does not have as many displays of the different sorts of systems that were used in the central
offices.
But it does have a lot of display and history and other kinds of exhibits.
They had a green phone company van.
Remember when phone company vans didn't have stripes on them?
They were just one color?
I forgot about that.
Oh, my time.
Well, you know, maybe it was not too far before your time.
They existed into the 70s.
But I know that there was a terminal that AT&T used back in the old days.
Not in the old days.
In like the 80s.
It's like called Telex.
I don't know if it's an AT&T terminal, but it's called Telex, and it's got a model number.
I'm going to look it up.
But it's the actual terminal that at the Full Museum in Seattle, they had an acoustic modem
with 300 board hooked up to like a Linux system.
Wow.
Okay.
That's a cool thing to do.
Yeah.
And because I see videos and pictures of like a business office representative using this
terminal.
So because I saw it and I said, oh, you recognize that terminal.
I think, you know, and I thought it said AT&T, but it said Telex on it.
What else?
Yeah, they had a DMS 10 that they had in Seattle.
Mm-hmm.
Um, I mean, of course, old switchboards with cords and all cords, but, but, um, um, but
yeah, so in search of a TFPS console.
You check eBay?
What?
Have you checked eBay?
They have everything.
Oh, yeah.
I check eBay.
Well, I'm the president of William Reade.
I check eBay.
I check, I mean, all over the internet.
It's just pictures and like various unclear pictures and like, you know, various videos
that are not.
No, I mean the actual console.
Get the actual console on eBay.
Right.
But it's, remember, it's in pairs and I want to just see one up close, see one and sit at
one and touch one.
And that's what, something that I've wanted to do since I was like 10 years old.
I remember going to the phone company.
My teacher took me on a trip specifically to the phone company because I think I requested
it or something.
Well, I, yeah, you must have knowing you.
Yeah.
That's definitely what you would have requested.
And then I did, I went to Jamaica Queen and they had a thing.
It was the directory assistance operators.
And I was so disappointed.
I was like, I was expecting to see a zero operator because I saw the film that.
So wait a minute.
Hold on a second.
You're 10 years old.
You go into the phone company, see operators, but they're directory assistance operators, not
the operator you get when you dial O and you were disappointed.
Right.
Cause I know I've seen that film, but I don't know.
Telezonia.
Yes.
I watched that.
Telezonia.
That's amazing.
The operator wouldn't have the operator.
And I looked and saw that at the TF3S console.
And I saw that and I was like, I was expecting to see that.
Seriously, folks, if you want to see something called Telezonia, it's spelled the way it sounds.
It's on YouTube.
There's a bunch of them.
It's badly acted, but it's really interesting.
But it's very, I mean, the one from the seventies, not the one from the forties.
Well, the one from the forties is kind of interesting too.
When you think about how long ago that was.
Right.
But, um, the one from the, but they only show the TSPS console just briefly and they don't
show like, you know, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
But I got the idea in my mind and I said, this is what I want to see when I, cause I always
just call the operator.
Guys, let's make this a quest.
All of us.
Let's get together and find a TSPS console for Rebel.
One that he can, he can sit at and play with and just, you know, I'm here.
I mean, we can do that.
I mean, everybody listening, everybody listening to, come on, we can all join forces and make
this happen.
Right.
Anybody?
Yes.
Okay.
Good, good.
I'm going to go back to Seattle on the way home or to New Mexico.
It's one of the two.
Or just keep traveling until you find it.
And then, yeah, you're definitely in the right, in the right places.
And asking around is certainly the right, the right path forward, forward for this project.
Maybe Canada, Canada might have it.
No, I don't know.
They have a TOPS console, you know, that came after TSPS, the traffic operator position
service, which is a terminal, a computer, which is another thing I would kind of like
to see, but I don't know in any, it's a video of those.
Well, you know, I'll bet there is an old building someplace where operators used to be.
Where they never quite cleared everything out.
And there's a TSPS console just sitting there.
Are you thinking it's 30 years and 40 years?
You think they know?
Yeah, I've seen things last a long time that don't get cleaned out.
And yeah, I'm sure somewhere there's a building that they just lost track of or just don't
care about.
Or maybe there's something where they just have it, you know, enshrined in a corner someplace
and they still use the building for other things.
That's true.
If you find the location where operators were in every major city or town, if you can
get all those addresses and just meticulously go through every one of them, I'll bet you'll
find a building that still has one.
You're going to go in and ask where the TSPS is.
They're not going to come.
The people that we're working in now are not going to know what it is.
They're, say, the big machine that nobody knows what it is.
Then, you know, do it that way.
And you might find something.
It's, look, it's a shot in the dark.
I mean, I don't know.
How big is it?
How heavy is it?
Because if they, remember, there's two people that sit at these things.
It's not a single thing.
It's a two position unit.
You know what I mean?
You know what I mean, right?
Yeah.
You need two keys to turn it.
Otherwise, the guy shoots you in the head, right?
Or wait, no, that's, no, I'm thinking nuclear missiles.
I always mix them up.
This is for phone calls, right?
Yeah, for phone calls.
Okay.
So, yeah, there's two people in there, and you have Keith, and you have an LED display, which is a Nixie tube display, which is another thing I did in Seattle, which is a working Nixie tube, might I add.
And I videotaped that, recorded that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, check around on YouTube also.
I'm promoting YouTube a lot, considering how much I trash them.
But check for TSPS videos.
I'll bet there's something out there that's not that bad.
Oh, yeah, no, there is TSPS video.
I looked at them all.
Like, they're not the ones, I mean, they give you the idea, but they don't give you, like, what did this display, actually display?
What did these buttons mean?
Or how did the, you know, those little slots that, what did the tickets look like?
What did that little foot card thing that they have on the side, what does that say?
What is the little thing on the, like, the desk part?
What is, like, I guess I'm not supposed to be area codes.
What did that say?
You know, things like that.
Yeah, stay curious to answer those questions, because those are really, really good questions and details that you'll need when you're installing it in your house.
What would you, I guess you'd need one ESS to hook it up, so you can't just plug it in.
The other thing you want to know, how does it plug in?
How does it, is it networked?
Is it a, is it just like a, like a, kept up like a computer?
Is it a, you know?
Yeah, I just looked up on, online, uh, TSPS console tutorial, and I got something called the TrueSight Presentation Server, in parentheses, TSPS console.
So it's not something else entirely.
They just, they just took on the name.
Yeah.
Wow.
Is it snowing there?
That's sad.
I'm sorry?
Is it snowing there?
Uh, I have no idea.
We're, we're deep underground, so we haven't looked outside in a while.
How cold is it there?
It's really cold.
It's cold here in New York.
And, um, I like it that way.
It's, it's winter.
It should be cold.
Well, it's winter in California.
It's warm up.
No, no, it's not winter.
You have fire out there.
That's, don't get me started.
It's hell on earth.
It's wrong on so many levels.
I was like, why in January is this fire, Jimmy?
Don't the fire happen in the summer?
Yeah, welcome to Climate Change Rebel.
They happen all the time now.
The Santa Ana winds, they help fuel this.
And, um, uh, there's no water.
There's, there's, the drought has been going on forever.
And, uh, yeah, it's, it's awful.
It's really awful.
By the way, uh, you know, I recommend people go to ktla.com and watch the live feed of the
TV channel, KTLA, because it is something, it's something you will never forget.
And it's going on 24 hours a day now, just, uh, in neighborhoods that are burning and talking
to the people.
And, um, you just get a sense of, of the tragedy of it all.
Yeah.
I saw the large animal evacuation footage.
That was interesting.
Wow.
What was that about?
Just corralling a whole, a whole bunch of horses in a, at a, um, fairgrounds, I think, or some
kind of elephants.
Any elephants?
I didn't see any elephants.
I was looking for other kinds of large animals, but all of those kinds of considerations have
to be made.
Kind of reminds you of the devastation in Australia.
I think it was.
In Hawaii.
I don't remember that.
That was, was that last year or was that two years ago?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that was two years.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, that got a little dark, but, um, it's happening right now.
And, uh, our thoughts go out to our listeners who are affected by this.
And I know a lot of people are affected by this, even if you just know somebody out there.
You're affected by it.
So anyway, uh, Rebel, uh, continue to have fun out there in California or, or start to
have fun either way.
Uh, and, uh, I hope you find your TSPS console and don't give up.
Hey.
And, uh, we'll see you at Hope later this year.
Oh yeah.
I should point out, um, we will be opening up ticket sales to this year's Hope, Hope 16.
And we'll be doing that a week from tomorrow on the 16th.
Hey, look what happened there.
It's going to be on the 16th.
And then, then, uh, we will start, uh, organizing that conference for real.
And if you want to give a talk, uh, maybe about TSPS consoles or some other, um, um, part
of the hacker world, uh, we are very open to whatever you have to say and present.
And we'll be putting all that information up as well.
So it's going to be fun.
It's going to be a blast.
Hope is now an annual event.
And, um, I can hardly wait.
It's going to be fun.
St.
John's university again.
Uh, it worked out so well last time.
We want to keep it going and, um, and build, make it grow.
Think about what you want to do in the future.
And, um, you don't have to wait two years anymore, which, uh, yeah, a lot of people felt, uh,
inconvenienced by that because who knows where you're going to be in two years, but one year.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's kind of easy to say I'll be around next year as well.
All right.
Um, hope.net is the website and, uh, we'll be updating that in the week ahead.
802-321-4225 is our phone number.
And of course you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
Any questions about anything you've heard tonight, or if you have to have a spare TSPS console
lying around, uh, let us know that too.
And we'll pass the word on to rebel, uh, 802-321-4225.
Phone lines are open.
Operators are standing by.
Um, for what it's worth, just rebel has fans in the chat.
Um, people who someone said, I would go to hope just to get a peek at rebel.
Yeah.
People have been saying that for years, actually, but, um, yeah, there's, there's a lot more to
see though.
And just that, but yeah, you know, it's, um, I'm sure that could be thrilling too.
Um, we hope to see you there.
Yeah.
I saw him at, uh, hope doing like a forced entry tutorial, like, like opening a door
with like some kind of large heavy object or like a pry bar or something.
It was, it was pretty intense.
That's not exactly lockpicking, is it?
Well, it's a sort of lockpicking.
It's sort of a breaking and entering.
It's what it sounds like just using a, okay, whatever.
You could kick the door too.
Sometimes that works.
We have a phone call.
Oh, all right then.
Good evening.
Uh, the mute button is your friend, Rob.
Um, yeah, scared me.
Um, good evening.
You're on off the hook overtime.
Was that a joke, Kyle?
I think so because it was, it came through as eye doctors.
Just get me to, um, to listen to the theme.
All right.
Eight, zero, two, three, two, one, four, two, two, five.
We got a spam call.
Oh, is that what that was?
Eye doctors?
Why are they calling at eight 37 at night?
Your best guess is mine.
Which I can see because my eyes work fine.
So you shouldn't be calling me at all.
Eight, oh, two, three, two, one, four, two, two, five.
And, uh, we'll wait a couple of minutes and then we'll just go on our merry way.
Maybe have, uh, some refreshments.
Yeah.
Refreshments are always nice.
Uh, we'll talk about how this went.
Those phone lines are still open.
Rob, you're reaching for the air.
Does that mean you have something to say?
Yeah.
Um, while we're waiting for a phone call, we were talking about Hulu on our radio hour.
And I'll tell a quick story about my favorite thing about Hulu, which is when it first started.
And it was just a web browser thing and a way to watch old shows and movies and stuff.
And of course they put ads in them.
And I was, I was an avid user.
I enjoyed it.
But the same ads kept, uh, being shown to me.
And I don't know what their algorithms were like, but they were, there were three categories
of ads that I was getting and nothing else.
One category was beer and alcohol products.
One category was shampoo and hair products.
And one category was cars.
And I have no driver's license and never have.
I'm a lifelong teetotaler and I am bald headed.
So Hulu knew nothing about me.
And is it any wonder Disney had to come along and buy them?
Wow.
Uh, we have a phone call?
Well played.
Um, yes, we do.
Okay.
I'm going to get to him one second.
I just got this alert on my phone from the New York times.
This is kind of what we were talking about just, just now, but it's, it's really phrased
in a strange way.
Trump inauguration runs out of perks for big donors.
Oh, poor Trump, Trump or inauguration people.
You ran out of perks because you have so many big donors.
The president elect has raised more than $170 million for swearing in.
Uh, an inaugural record as wealthy Americans flock to curry favor with him.
And some give money even without the prospect of VIP access.
Yeah.
We are.
That sound you hear is a lot of sucking up going on.
And it's just the most pathetic thing I think I've ever seen.
Wow.
I, I, you know, I always knew that, you know, rich people were pathetic, but this, this shows
you how pathetic they are.
They're this scared that they have to do this.
Um, and, and what exactly do you need money for swearing in $170 million for his swearing
in?
What, what, what, what is the money for?
Is this for like valet parking or something?
I mean, what do you need all that money for just to be sworn in?
You show up, you place your hand on the Bible, you say your name, some other stuff, and that's
it.
Go home.
Which unfortunately is the White House.
I didn't bring up the phone.
The phone told me this just now.
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook overtime.
Go ahead.
Hello, everyone.
This is Johnny Fusion.
Hey, Johnny Fusion.
How are you?
Good.
I was on top of this, uh, Facebook transparency policy that they got, right?
Where they said it's okay to call someone mentally ill.
Okay.
Johnny, Johnny, can I stop you for a second?
Are you on a train?
Yes, I am.
Ah, I could tell.
All right.
Thank you.
Continue.
So, you can call somebody mentally ill based on gender, identity, and sexual orientation,
right?
And they use the example, such as the common religious or conservative discussion around
homosexuality.
And they use the term transgenderism, which isn't actually a thing.
It's just something right-wingers say.
But here's the thing.
They just said, is for any, for, you can call someone mentally ill based on their orientation
and gender expression.
They didn't say you had to be one of the marginalized ones.
So, to test the new moderation, I made posts calling, uh, cisgender and heterosexual people
mentally ill and deluded.
And we'll see if it's evenly applied.
And that's the world we're going to be living in.
Someone finally said it.
Yeah.
Well, you know, we suspected it for a while.
Can you hear us, Johnny, on that train there?
Yeah, I can hear you.
I got, I got your, but it's good.
But yeah, it's going to be interesting.
It's going to be, but you know, I, I think if we make it as difficult as possible and,
um, challenge it at every turn, um, at least we can have some fun with it and with the people
that will no doubt piss off to no end.
Right, right, right.
I'm going to go, uh, just going to Utah.
I know this is a bad-wing call.
What, what, what train are you on?
Is that, is that BART?
Is that, uh, a Metro?
It's, it's BART?
He said it was BART, right?
I believe he said BART.
Yeah, that's BART.
Listen to that.
Listen to that tunnel.
There's carpet on the floor, right?
You're underground, too.
I can tell.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, not next week, but later, I'm writing.
Okay.
Sounds good.
All right.
Good hearing from you.
Get home safe.
Thanks.
All right.
By all means, call us from Mass Transit if, uh, you so choose.
8-0-2-3-2-1-4-2-2-5.
Sounded like a fast train, too, you know?
Sounded like he was getting somewhere.
Yeah, that was a good gallop.
That was good.
I was impressed.
Okay.
Um, so, uh, we have room, I think, for one more call if we get it.
Wait a couple of minutes.
Anyone else have anything they want to say?
8-0-2-3-2-1-4-2-2-5.
8-0-2-3-2-1-4-2-2-5.
You were really hoping there'd be a call by the time you finished that, weren't you?
Now you still have to keep talking because I'm tired of hearing my voice.
We have a phone call.
We have a phone call.
What joy.
Okay.
And good evening.
You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Go ahead.
Hi, Emmanuel.
It's Bobcat.
Hey, Bobcat.
How are you?
Factual reporting.
Did anybody ever report that Captain Crunch was abusing young boys when he went to hacker conferences?
I'm sure people said things like that, but, um, I don't know.
And it skipped your attention.
I believe we spoke about it on this program.
There was an article in CNN.
It was CNN or CNN.
CNN about, uh, uh, uh, uh, John trying to persuade, uh, young boys to go up to his room
for an energy tune-up.
Okay.
Well, you know, uh, okay, we're not, we're not going to, uh, assassinate a character here,
uh, based on, on, on things that have been said in the past.
And, uh, this was something that we dealt with and, uh, we issued a blanket ban for that
person for accusations that were made.
I can't see any reason to rehash this now.
Am I wrong?
Does anybody want to talk about this?
We definitely spoke about it when, uh, when we, uh, banned him from the conference, um,
on this program.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I don't know what else, uh, we can do about it now.
We don't.
But, uh, as soon as we find out about something, we, we, we act on it.
Right.
Yeah.
And, uh, you, you can, um, you can make a distinction.
I mean, in some circles, this may have been something that people were observing at one
time or another, but, uh, it has to be widely understood.
And I think that there were a lot of rumors and things that led up to the actual, uh, accusations
that you might be speaking of, but that didn't involve us in the same way.
I think that you might drag us into this.
We, as soon as we heard about it, we did something about it.
It may have been, you know, you're running joke or something, but we can't, you know,
take what people are saying in some circles.
And then like you said, turn it into, uh, assassinating.
I think we're the only conference that did something about it too, by the way.
Yeah.
I might be wrong about that.
Might be other conferences I did, but I know we, uh, when the story came out with further
detail.
Yeah.
Yes.
Go ahead.
Oh, no, I'm just, uh, apparently on the wiki, um, at least for hacking and security related
conferences have banned him.
Okay.
I'm just not comfortable, uh, you know, talking about a person like this and how many people
have banned him.
It's, it's something that we dealt with.
So we don't have to keep talking about it in a public forum.
Um, do we, something that doesn't involve us anymore?
No, someone say something.
I mean, you know, you want to talk about this all night long.
I'll sit back and listen.
Yeah.
I don't know that there's more to be said on this point.
Um, yeah, not about this case.
Okay.
802-321-4225.
If anybody has anything else to say, go ahead.
And good evening.
You're on, off the hook, over time.
Go ahead.
Uh, yeah, no, I was just trying to respond to the, uh, the earlier, uh, commenter who
was saying something about Trump wouldn't have won if we did, if we ignored him.
Sure.
Go ahead.
And, um, I just think Trump would have won regardless.
I just think, first of all, I mean, a lot of this whole Trump winning, there's a lot of
rehashing going on and everybody's blaming this and blaming that.
I just think, first of all, I think the world in general is moving to the right.
I was in Austria, uh, last month and there's a, there's a very, very far right government
that's about to take over the country that hasn't been in power in decades.
I mean, the same thing is happening in France.
The same thing is happening in several countries.
I think just in general, I think it's the world is tilting towards the right.
Yeah.
I've noticed that.
I don't know.
I don't think there's anything that would have been done differently.
Plus we, you know, the Democrats have a likable candidate, you know, and that's about it.
I don't think, you know, ignoring Trump or all that stuff, you know, I'm just tired of
hearing these different excuses every day.
Every day I turn on the news, there's somebody saying, well, they lost because of this.
Right.
No, you're so right about that.
There's so much finger pointing and, you know, there's, there's one reason why, uh,
Trump won is because more people voted for him, you know, and it just so happened to coincide
with the electoral college this time.
But fact is more people voted for him.
It's on the people who voted for him.
Everybody else, you know, yeah, it could have been better, but you know, it wasn't bad.
And if, um, if that many people really believe Trump deserved the second chance, not much we
could have done to prevent that.
And, um, now it's on them, whatever happens from this point.
So I don't want to hear any excuses, you know, when, when everything gets completely
screwed up and Hey, maybe I'll be wrong.
And then I'll look like a fool in four years if we even survived that long.
But right now, you know, it's Democrats can breathe and maybe restructure themselves and
have, uh, more exciting people.
That would be great.
But I'm not, I'm not blaming, uh, them for not convincing us.
How much convincing do you need?
It was all there, you know, all the evidence was there.
And when you lay out the evidence, oh, you're not supposed to lay out the evidence.
That's inappropriate.
You're going to give them more power.
People just want us to shut up all the time.
And, uh, if you listen to them, you never get to say what's on your mind.
And if you say what's on your mind and they vote anyway for the guy, well, then that's
their problem.
It's going to be our problem too, but they're the ones that brought this upon us.
And we can't forget that.
We will not forget that.
Let's see what happens and let's try to stay sane.
Yeah.
All these things he's starting to do now.
I mean, he said all this before, like, it's not like he's just saying it now, like taking
over Greenland.
What the hell is up with that?
Oh my God.
Greenland, Panama, Canada.
He's out of his damn mind.
He hasn't even taken office yet.
Can you imagine on the 20th?
I don't know.
I just hope something or somebody steps in to, uh, uh, put some kind of guardrail up
because the guy is, he's lost it.
He is.
He never had it really, but he's, he's lost whatever little he did have.
Anyway, I enjoyed your show.
Thanks for taking my call.
Thanks.
And where are you calling from?
Queens, Queens, New York.
Oh, another Queens call.
Wow.
Okay, cool.
Thanks for your call.
Thanks.
Two calls from Queens in one night.
Wow.
That's, that's, that's something.
And that's not even including us though.
Well, you didn't call, but yeah, you're, you're there.
Well, we're, we're just always connected.
Um, okay.
I would like to say something publicly and also, okay.
Stand back, everybody.
So first of all, we are using slow mode on the YouTube chat.
What does that mean?
We're, it means that you cannot comment frequently.
You're slowed down.
You can't comment more than once every 30 seconds.
This prevents people from spamming our chat.
It's not because we're fascists and it's not censorship.
No, we know that.
I know that we know that.
I want to make sure that it's clear for everyone.
So I'm saying it publicly.
You're saying it slow too.
Is that part of the slow motion?
Um, I don't use this.
It's no, that's not part of the slow mode.
That's just, I want to make sure.
I am very, very clear right now.
Um, there has been an accusation that someone was muted on a phone call because you didn't
want to hear what they had to say and that person is about to be banned from our chat.
Oh, good.
Okay.
You know, I'm sick of people that just want to cause issues and just want to dredge up
crap.
And, you know, if, if, if, if you don't want to do that, then you're part of the problem.
Fine.
Part of the problem then.
But, um, you don't have to be part of our problem.
So fine.
Do whatever you have to do.
All right.
Just, um, again, ban hammer in full effect.
Um, no, we don't have to do this.
Don't have to do what?
Ban people or do the whole show?
We don't, we don't have to have the live chat.
Oh, no, we don't over time.
Look, remember, I argued against the live chat because people get distracted.
Look how distracted you are by a live chat.
We should be talking amongst ourselves.
Let the chatters chat away and whatever happens happens.
But I wouldn't even look at it.
I don't look at it.
I have no idea what's going on there.
Don't care.
I'm sure.
It's not that I don't care about the people.
I just, I'm doing this.
All right.
And, and, and this takes a lot of concentration and, you know, trying to, um, address certain
points and stuff like that.
But, um, the points have to have a point, you know, and if we're just going to dig our
tires into the mud, there's no point to that.
And I'm going to move on.
Yeah.
And I think there's, there's ways to talk about, uh, sensitive things like, um, you know,
in the abstract and, and in, um, you know, pretty productive ways.
So, um, yeah, I'm, I'm sure we'll get better at insights about, around socializing and,
um, how we treat one another.
And it's interesting how everything we're saying about the toxicity of social media is
being proven right in front of us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, uh, it's very interesting how we're framing and, and what, what things we choose
to, to, and, and how we choose to characterize them.
Mm-hmm.
Um, yeah.
All right.
802-3214-225.
If you have something, uh, constructive or interesting to say, we'll, uh, we'll definitely
open up the phone lines.
802-3214-225.
But we're running out of time.
So if you'd like to talk about hacking or telephony or taboos, please look, looks like
Rob wants to talk about something.
Go ahead, Bob.
And also just while we're waiting, uh, just a big thank you to everyone who supported,
uh, BAI over the winter fundraiser.
Um, I think we started to mention this on the radio hour, but it, it went really well
for the station.
And, uh, yeah, morale at the station is at an, is at a high it's everyone's, everyone's
feeling good.
Everyone is, uh, you know, ready to, I think do 65 more years of this.
Yeah.
Let's, let's jump right in.
I'm so stoked.
Alex, did you have something as well?
Uh, while we were waiting for a caller, I was going to say, you know, what, what the
hell has anybody heard about the drone, about the drone?
Stop hitting the microphone with your hand.
The one time you have a working microphone and you can't keep your hands off it.
Good God.
Well, I'm not used to it being there.
That's just the problem.
I'm not used to being able to hear you, but fortunately.
Yeah.
Uh, uh, but anyhow, I'm wondering what, what the hell's going on with the drones?
I haven't heard anything.
Well, anybody heard anything?
You know, I, I think when we did our drone show, we were talking about all this.
In fact, that was the call in show.
Um, we, uh, uh, pretty much said, I know I said, I think people agree with me that, uh,
it was just going to fade away because people are going to stop looking up at the sky as much
and just will become used to whatever is up there like they were before.
And, um, uh, the ammunition for blaming Biden somehow for this will run out.
Yes.
And, uh, you know, I, I, I think that's where we are.
I, I really do.
Oh, as, as the Kurgan from Highlander used to say, it's better to burn out and to fade
away.
Okay.
I'm not sure that's true, but, um, yeah, sure.
Uh, we have a phone call, Kyle.
Yes.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on off the cover time.
Go ahead.
Uh, I'm not rebel, but here's a couple of hacking things that you can enjoy.
You can be rebel and you can not be rebel and you're fine.
So don't worry about that.
Go ahead.
Boy, boy, a man, you all.
All right.
That's good.
Anyway, that's not bad.
Okay.
Out of curiosity, though, out of curiosity, where are you calling from?
I'm calling from what is soon to be my ex office in the Connecticut.
Okay.
Cool.
If you need any, if you need any cables or printers or something, I'm throwing out like
a million dollars worth.
Wow.
Okay.
Give it a TSPS console in there.
I need a BT 100.
You can, you can get on a console.
You can figure it out yourself.
Yeah.
I don't think that's it.
Okay.
So what's on your mind?
Go ahead.
Okay.
So, uh, um, let's see.
The hack today is, uh, you are not using an Android phone, uh, for your, uh, Google voice
number that has, uh, auto lock turned on because you can go to android.com slash lock, put in
anybody's phone number and it will lock their screen and it will warn them that somebody
locked their screen and they will have no goddamn idea what the hell is going on.
Wow.
So it sounds like a security feature.
If you lose your device or something and you're saying you can activate it, which someone
that is in possession of the device might just not really realize that it's been activated,
maybe find it annoying and just enter their code and move on.
Well, they're going to have the code.
So it's going to be like, what the hell is going on?
Yeah.
Why am I getting it?
Like one of these warnings, like, uh, somebody asked for a password reset.
Exactly.
Did you do this?
Ignore it.
You know, but you do have to actually unlock your phone.
So I'm guessing you're either using the web app or, uh, an iPhone.
So hang on.
You go on a website to do this and you have to show.
Android.com slash lock.
Yeah.
Go right there.
Not right now.
You have my phone number.
You can lock my phone.
Well, okay.
But what I don't understand is you don't have to enter a password or anything.
No.
So I can just lock anyone's phone whose phone number I have was an Android phone.
That's what you're saying.
If you know that it's an Android phone and they have remote lock turned on, you can't
wipe it.
You can't destroy it.
Okay.
But you can lock it.
And they have to enter their, uh, whatever code, their, their screen code.
Well, I mean, how are they going to know?
Because, you know, my phone after a few minutes, I have to do that anyway, because it, it, the
screen locks.
Right.
So, uh, how would they know that's not just what happened?
They wouldn't know unless the Android system told them your phone has been remotely locked,
which it does.
Oh, okay.
Uh, well, that's, that sounds like fun.
I'd give it the website out one more time for our listeners.
Android.com slash lock.
All right.
I think it is.
Well, I know how I'm spending my night.
Okay.
Now, now I have another one, which is, um, so I'm, I'm here in the office.
I've got a, a damaged radio that I'm, I'm trying to tune into something that I can hear.
And, uh, I tuned into a NPR station, you know, or it might've been even a BAI.
And then I hear the noise from the emergency alert system.
And okay.
And so, you know, it's an automated announcement, but right before I heard the tone, I heard,
this is Clay and Buck.
Okay.
Do you know who Clay and Buck are?
No, I don't think so.
Uh, uh, talk radio, W-O-R.
Okay.
Okay.
So I hear on the BBAI, Clay and Buck, saying they're Clay and Buck, and then, and then the,
uh, emergency announcement.
Okay.
Now there wasn't an interesting show on that.
So I tuned down the dial and I was listening for a few seconds.
Then I heard again, play in Buck, pop up, and then the emergency broadcasting system.
Excuse me.
Emergency alert system.
It is now.
Right.
Now, back in the day, a burning ass could explain this perfectly, but there was like a,
a main station that would start to broadcast.
The other stations would listen to that station, but you can sit in the parking lot of the radio
station, key up your mic and start, uh, emergency broadcast system spreading across the nation
because the stations were listening to each other to authenticate that it was a valid
emergency.
Now, apparently, uh, the AES, the emergency, uh, uh, alert system does something similar.
It's, it's, it's copying stuff from station to station.
Right.
And accidentally played about five to 10 seconds, either before or after.
It was like, okay.
Now, now that you've explained it, I think, I think I know what happened is, uh, the station
that you were tuned to, uh, is a relay of WOR.
They sent out the AES alert and, um, uh, sometimes depending on what kind of test it is,
the receiving station will play some audio from both before and after the AES alert.
And that's what you probably heard.
And it probably sounded kind of crappy because it was AM.
And, um, that's, that's, I would explain why you heard, uh, that particular, um, um,
those particular people on, on a different frequency.
I'm not sure if it was BAI.
You said you're in Connecticut.
I'm not sure our signal comes in.
That was one of the states, I think that was the first time it started, but I tuned
down the dial and it happened over and over and over.
Yeah.
It sounds like you were, you were following the, you were following the AES alert.
It must've been a regional or a state or a national alert.
Yeah.
Yeah.
New York state, New York state alert.
It said.
Okay.
All right.
Interesting.
But I mean, they're first, uh, if I'm listening to BAI, I don't need to listen to play and fuck
for even a second.
No, that was weird.
That's, um, that was just a real chance occurrence, I guess.
Well, this is a flaw.
I mean, I can imagine ways to fuck with everybody by little snippets before and after that announcement.
Well, if you can generate them, sure.
Like, this is real, but there's nuclear weapons coming from Korea.
Yeah.
If you, if you were doing, okay.
If you're doing like a radio drama about a real life nuclear event and the AES alert
went out in the middle of somebody screaming about how this is really happening.
That could be interesting.
That could be really interesting.
You can do this any day of the week because as many comedians pointed out that on nine
11, nobody did the EAS thing.
There's no tone anywhere.
We just like run away.
Yeah.
You know, I remember on that day wondering that myself, why, I think it was EBS at the
time, uh, why that wasn't, uh, activated because that certainly seemed like something worthy
of activating, uh, the emergency alert system for.
Or it couldn't help.
That's the, that's the problem.
Oh, I, you know, Jim Vincenche, Jim Vincenche.
Yes.
Our Jim.
He was there, uh, on nine 11.
He got off the subway.
He was going to the job interview apparently.
And he stepped out of the subway station and looked up to see a plane smashing into the
tower over his head.
And he got back on the train and went back to New Jersey.
And he told that story on our show.
The week after.
He got there.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, definitely miss him.
Definitely miss him a lot.
Uh-huh.
Hey, thanks so much for your call.
Thanks.
Thanks for these, uh, these, uh, interesting technological tidbits there.
Uh, we'll have, we'll have something again later.
Okay, great.
Okay.
Everybody have a happy new year and pay attention to actual facts.
Yes.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for that.
It's nice to end on a bit of sanity.
Don't you think, Gila?
Certainly is.
And a bunch of people in the chat all just tried it themselves.
And I can mention that someone not in the chat tried it himself, too.
Um, I'm an iPhone user.
Doesn't really help me.
But, um, no, lots of people tried it.
Um, so I want to thank the most recent caller for bringing everybody back up.
So phones are being locked all over the country now.
Yeah, it's, uh, there's a setting in an Android phone to enable remote lock.
It's a, it's a theft protection, uh, uh, option.
And, uh, so you can, you can enable this thing if you want to.
You can disable it if you want to.
But I tried it with, uh, remote lock disabled and it didn't work.
Obviously, I tried it.
I enabled it and then tried it again.
And, yes, it immediately locks, it immediately locks your screen.
It lets you know that your device was locked remotely.
And if I were a thief looking at my phone, I might have been disappointed.
So, hold on.
It tells you if you were able to lock somebody's phone.
It tells you that.
It, it doesn't tell you on, on the website, but, uh, it tells you on the phone that the
phone has been locked remotely.
Okay.
All right.
Because, uh, if it told you on the website, then that would really make it worth people
spending time on saying, Hey, I got another one, you know, but you don't know if you've
actually locked somebody's phone.
In fact, you can probably put in any phone number.
It won't even tell you if you're calling a landline or trying to lock a landline or something
like that.
All right.
Interesting.
I'll, I'll play with it and see what, uh, we can find out.
But that's, uh, that's a cool little thing and that's exactly the kind of thing we should
be talking about, you know, fun phone numbers.
All right.
Any, uh, final words from anybody before we sign off?
Uh, just keep, uh, keep warm, everyone.
Yeah.
They wouldn't have thought of that, Rob.
Thank you for that.
That's, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's, uh, 20 degrees outside, but, um, let's try something,
something more comfortable.
And yeah, just have a good time because it's all just really fun.
It's just so fun right now.
Yeah.
Let's frolic in the snow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, when it comes and it's going to come better, it's going to come.
Yeah.
Um, the humanity of everyone on the other side of your screen, um, just, you know, keep that
in mind, um, when there is, in fact, when, when they're not AI bots.
Okay.
Well, I care about bots too, you know, they have feelings where they can be programmed
to have feelings.
Do they though?
Yeah.
Was, uh, was that a phone call?
Yes, but we're done with phone calls, Alex.
We're finished.
Sure.
Yes.
We're finished.
I'm seven minutes after nine.
We usually finish at nine.
Usually when we take that last one, it's a good one.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You're, you're, you're muted again somehow, Alex, because I like to control what everybody
says.
You know, that's right.
Yep.
It is a theme for the evening.
Yep.
No doubt.
All right.
Um, so any other, uh, we're going to do the call in show next week.
That's going to be fun.
On BAI.
Um, and, um, ticket sales for hope coming next Thursday, a week from tomorrow.
Uh, our email address, OTH at 2600.com.
Um, oh yeah, we finally, uh, we combined digital and paper subscriptions.
We've been asking about that since forever.
And, uh, we had a team of people working on that and we finally figured it out and it's,
it's up online now.
So that was, that was fun.
That was fun.
Stay beautiful.
Be kind to yourself and, uh, and others.
It's a nice sentiment to end on.
We will see you next week.
No overtime next week.
Overtime in two weeks.
And, um, good night, everyone.