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Exiting the system.
Goodbye.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
I'm really bummed for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
I'm really bummed.
Go to bed.
Good morning.
Bye.
Good morning.
Bye.
Thank you.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Hi, I'm Kyle.
And out on Skypeland, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Hi, I'm not Kyle.
We have Gila.
I am also not Kyle.
And also somewhere very far away, we have Alex.
You do indeed.
Good evening from London, from Chelsea, London.
How is everybody?
Well, that's a loaded question.
We're, gosh, how do we even begin?
We don't have enough time in this hour.
What I'd like to do, honestly, what I'd like to do is start off by hearing from our listeners.
We're not taking phone calls this week.
You had your chance last week.
Again, you'll have your chance again at 8 o'clock on Overtime over on YouTube.
But there are always letters.
OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
You can just start writing those letters right now.
And we read them all.
We don't read them all in the air, but we do read them all.
So whatever you have to say to us, feel free.
OTH at 2600.com.
And that's the numbers, 2600.com.
Let's see.
What's this one here?
I recently came across your podcast.
Okay, it's not really a podcast.
I mean, yeah, it's on the internet.
But it's a radio show.
What comes on at 8 o'clock on Overtime on YouTube, that's a podcast, I guess.
But we're a radio show that's also on the internet.
One of the first, by the way.
We started this in 1997.
A radio show started in 1988, but I digress.
Recently came across your podcast, and I've got to say, I've got to say, I think is what
you meant to say.
I'm hooked.
I wanted to reach out and ask if you're accepting guests on the show.
It's not really an application process.
You know, we sort of, we find people that are interesting to talk to, and we reach out
to them.
And oftentimes, they're quite willing to talk to us.
But we're always open to suggestion.
To give you a brief background, our CEO, here we go.
De Niro is a serial entrepreneur, seven-figure Amazon seller, former Google Ads agency owner,
and high-ticket consultant.
I don't understand what I just said.
He spent 14 years behind the mic as a podcaster and interviewed over 450 guests.
Can you imagine if we had to count how many guests we've had?
I'd never even thought to do that.
He's also an Amazon best-selling author and the founder of, how do you get to be an Amazon
best-selling author?
You just put material on Amazon and, well, I don't know.
Okay.
This just goes on and on.
We're thinking he could bring some value to your audience.
Yeah.
No.
You know what?
This, I don't know if this even was written by a human.
I don't think this is a listener.
I really don't.
Because these are not the kind of things that we talk about generally.
We don't even use this lingo.
A foolproof way to hire A-plus remote assistants.
What does that mean?
Fill your calendar with 40-plus calls every week in the next 30 days.
I don't want 40-plus calls every week.
Actually, that's not that many.
But, you know.
I'm sorry.
Sorry for wasting people's time with that.
And we need a better screening process in the back office there.
All right.
Here's another letter.
This is a friendly challenge.
From name withheld upon request.
Long-time listener.
Unfortunately, I'm not in range of your radio tower.
So, I have to listen to your show online.
I appreciate you doing that and not calling it a podcast.
One of the times that you were trying to get donations a few shows back,
you mentioned that Off the Hook was a show about hackers, electronics, and things like that.
Sounds like something any one of us would say.
Lately, for the past few months,
it seems to have gone away from that lineup.
And unfortunately, the shows are mainly about politics.
So, here's my friendly challenge, as alluded to in the title.
For one show, please do not talk about politics at all.
Don't mention the name Trump or Biden.
Oh.
By reading your letter, I've violated your request.
Wow.
What do I do now?
Don't mention the name Trump or Biden or any of the others.
Don't talk about how the world is ending because of the new president.
Please talk about what your roots are, about the hacker's life, about electronics, about new technology,
things like OSINT or privacy protection or encryption.
Please, for one week, do not talk about politics from a loyal listener,
but one that needs a break from all of the hate.
A couple of things in this letter that make me think that it's not so much the politics that you object to.
It's the criticism of one particular person, yeah, that we might be targeting
because they happen to be the most powerful person in the world now.
For one week, can we not talk about politics?
Well, first of all, with all due respect, I don't think we're going to be able to accommodate you this week.
Certainly not this week.
Number two, I don't think when we're talking about things that have to do with privacy, technology, basic human rights,
the media, all kinds of things like that, I don't think you can really label that as politics.
Politics are, you know, campaigns and elections and things like that.
Everything else is life, you know, it's what affects us.
And what is going on right now in the hallowed halls of the government,
I don't think has ever been more relevant to the subject matter of off the hook or to hackers in general.
Because what we are seeing, we're seeing some of the most powerful people on earth
who are basically taking control of how we communicate.
Communications, one of the things we talk about all the time.
Communications via social media, communications via the mass media, communications via what we read in newspapers
and hear on the radio and hear on television.
You know, we've talked about the media being controlled by fewer and fewer and fewer people.
But now what we see is this alliance that is basically constructed primarily out of fear.
Fear of this new administration.
And the fear is coming from some of the richest people on earth.
And you're seeing this alliance that should scare the crap out of all of us
because of the power that it could potentially hold.
And what we saw on Monday, whoa, I mean, I don't even know how to begin.
Just basically seeing people bow down and kiss the ring and pledge allegiance.
And the rest of us are just kind of left standing in shock, wondering what's going to happen next.
How bad can this possibly get?
It's been something.
It's been something to see.
This is history.
And people turn to radio shows like ours and radio stations like ours for comfort
and for a different perspective and to have their voices heard.
And of course, we listen to voices from all different perspectives,
some of which disagree, some of which agree, some of which have totally different ideas.
But we're not going to be intimidated or shamed into avoiding something,
into avoiding the elephant in the room,
into avoiding the potential threat ahead.
And our obligations, our duties, as true freedom of speech loving people
that don't pervert that phrase,
that have gone to prison for standing up for freedom of speech.
Many in our community have suffered greatly for that.
So we know a thing or two about it.
We know a thing or two about saying things that are inconvenient to the powerful
and revealing things and not shying away from controversy.
So thanks for the letter, but can't really help at this point.
Kyle?
Well, I'll be brief in that for us, I think the ongoing challenge,
or at least me personally, is not to admonish or correct listeners that say things like this.
You may be weary of those things, but I think you need to listen to us more.
I would say, you know, go listen to something that is as granular as what you're suggesting.
But the way we see it on our show is that this concept of consolidation and power being concentrated,
I mean, the government itself being bought, more or less,
that struggle between classes, yeah, I said struggle.
It's WBAI.
I get two.
I get one per hour.
So, like, yeah, this is class warfare.
The rich have bought the media, the government,
and are using as much technology as they can afford to wield their power and their desires for the rest of society.
You may not like that.
You may not believe it, but it is happening.
Class disparities,
the vast distance between the very wealthy and powerful and the rest of us is just getting bigger.
And the means to basically keep us at bay have a lot to do with technology.
And, I mean, the act of hacking itself in its roots, yes, your word, roots, has been inherently political in many ways.
So, without getting really into all the different ways I feel this comment is played out, cliched, and wrong,
it's just that you need to listen to more of what is being said.
And also, hey, we're open to the suggestions.
I mean, if you want to talk about any of that, write us a letter.
Call in.
We can diverge and talk about something that specific with those blinders on or whatever tunnel vision you want to trip out with.
But we're recognizing the interconnectedness of all of it.
We are an incredibly networked society.
And yet, we're not really galvanizing.
We're actually differentiating.
And I think that some of that needs work.
And in talking about the implications of the things that we call free services or whatever thing, yeah, it may seem boring.
It may seem like it isn't hacking.
But you have to understand, the government is itself a system.
A lot of these corporations run systems all throughout your life, in, out, up, and around your life.
Your life is run by the systems that these entities employ.
So, for you to, like, castigate, you know, tell us that we're wrong for laying out some of the implications that it has, I think, is foolish.
I'm sorry.
I mean, I, that's, again, that's my challenge.
I'm going to be as understanding and calm about this as I can muster.
And that's my challenge on an ongoing basis.
But I find this insulting.
Go ahead, Rob.
I see where this listener is coming from.
And this person has written to us a couple of times over the years with much the same sentiments.
But I can only speak personally for myself as a hacker.
My sense of the world is filtered through who I am as a hacker.
And my hacker mindset is a big part of how I see how things are and what things are.
And if I'm looking at something in front of me, whether it's a piece of technology or whether it's the participatory governmental system in which we find ourselves, I want to look at something in front of me and think about how can this be improved?
How can this be made better?
How can this be made less bad?
And as a hacker, that is what inspires me to become politically active?
I didn't become an activist because of anything so much as how my view of the world and as a hacker kind of sees how things are and how they can be improved.
And I think being part of that and being a responsible hacker is using the tools available to you to improve what's around you, whether that's your computer, whether that's a tool, whether that's the world.
Rob, were you able to look at the world this week through your TV or whatever and see a means of making that better?
I think even when we don't immediately see the means of making that better, I think it has to be a source of the hope that we can make it better and an openness to the possibility of this being, you know, this being something that we can look forward to improving in some way, whether it's within or without the sort of guidelines that that are put in front of us.
So I don't think it's a secret that I am probably less technologically savvy than a lot of people, certainly than a lot of folks on the panel, but I am really familiar with this amazing piece of technology I interact with every single day.
And that's my eyeballs and they are working fine.
And part of what is scaring me to little tiny bits and pieces right now are the number of people who are falling over themselves backwards to tell me that I didn't actually see what I saw.
I'm so happy to hear someone else say that because there are so few people that are saying that.
I assume you're referring to Elon Musk's display.
I very much am.
And the idea that that's not what happened, like, I am an awkward person.
I'm an awkward person and a bad dancer.
No.
Give yourself some time.
But I, yeah, I've accidentally moonwalked.
Like, it's weird things happen.
But you know what I've never accidentally done?
Ever?
I've never even accidentally, like, I can't even do that when I'm hailing a taxi.
Like, I just, my arms don't do that.
And the idea that 48 hours later, no one's going to come forward and say, actually, that wasn't what happened.
Yeah.
It was a full-on Nazi salute.
No question about that.
There is just no way you make that series of motions accidentally.
And people are saying, oh, he's autistic.
Give him a break.
As if that has anything to do with it.
And, you know, I think amongst us, we know hundreds, if not more, autistic people.
And I don't think we can point to a single one that ever did that because they're autistic or anything of that nature.
It's grossly disgusting.
And, you know, it brings to mind, you know, the white supremacist symbol that people make with their hands.
You know, it's like the OK symbol or whatever.
And, you know, if you confront them on this, even though there's 10 of them posing in a picture and all making the same sign kind of hidden, you know, they'll say, oh, we're just making the OK symbol.
And, you know, damn well, they're not, you know, it means something else.
With Elon Musk's case, this is a guy that is currently pushing for a far right party in Germany to take over a Nazi espousing organization in Germany.
And we're supposed to think this is all some big coincidence.
Now, and if you look at his statement in regard to this, it doesn't say anything about, no, that's not what this was or, oh, my God, that's not what I meant at all.
No, it was an attack on the people who would dare say that about him.
But no denial whatsoever.
Now, is he simply trolling, saying, oh, you know, stop hitting yourself.
You know, we're, you know, basically this, you can't prove that that's what I meant, but I'm going to do it again anyway.
Or whether or not he actually meant it at the time, we can't say because we can't get inside his head.
I'm disgusted with the way the media has handled this, the way the mass media has handled this.
Listen to what CNN said moments afterwards.
And this is one of the few networks that actually addressed it.
They said that that was an odd looking salute and, quote, evocative of things we have seen in history.
Evocative of things we have seen in history.
They never said the N-word, the Nazi word.
They never said that.
And the late night talk shows, same thing.
You know, if they make reference to it at all, they don't use that word.
They're afraid of Elon Musk.
And, you know, here at WBAI, we ain't afraid of Elon Musk.
We're not afraid of Trump.
We're not afraid of any of these people.
And we will speak our minds.
You can disagree with us.
No law against that, for sure.
But absolutely, absolutely.
We will call things as we see them.
And wow, that was something to see.
And there was a lot to see on that day.
You know, just looking at the New York Times right now, I'm live scrolling through their front page.
I'm just going to read you some of the headlines that are on the front page.
Federal workers told to inform on colleagues trying to dodge DEI crackdown.
All right, right underneath that, the bishop who pleaded with Trump, was anyone going to say anything?
Right underneath that, far-right leaders granted clemency by Trump expressed desire for retribution.
Right underneath that, Trump seeks to paralyze independent privacy and civil liberties watchdog.
Right next to that, Congress clears measure to deport immigrants accused of crimes.
That's probably the least controversial, believe it or not.
And it goes on.
That's only the first five stories.
But wow.
It's, you know, it's like, imagine we were doing a radio show and everything was burning around us.
And there are people saying, can you not talk about the fire?
Can you just not bring that up?
It's so unpleasant to hear.
Well, we're sorry.
We're sorry that everything is on fire.
We're sorry that we're seeing our civilization here collapse in front of us.
We're sorry to say that we warned you this was going to happen.
And we're sorry that not enough people heeded those warnings, not just from us, obviously, but from so many people.
And now we're sorry for what we're going to be witnessing.
But just like every hacker who has gone to prison, we're going to be sharing our experience.
And we're going to do it through hacker eyes in ways that others cannot.
And we hope we have your support and your help with that.
All right.
Alex, I realize you haven't spoken up yet.
I assume you have something to say.
Yeah.
I mean, I've always got something to say, right?
I mean, I figured.
Yeah.
I mean, it's late here.
It's so happy Thursday from from London.
But to go back to the original point, which was that the caller was criticizing us about talking politics too much.
I think I agree with him.
I think we do talk politics a bit too much.
I think it's divisive in many ways.
But I also tend to agree with Kyle, because I think the solution the solution here is is to listen more.
I think the more that you listen to the show, you'll actually find that the signal to noise ratio with respect to politics is probably better here as opposed to anywhere else.
I mean, but look, we're airing and we're we're weighing strong opinions on things.
That's what terrestrial radio has always been about.
That's what it's supposed to be about and what it's going to it's going to continue to be about.
And I'm happy to duke it out with you guys every week on these subjects.
I think that's what the First Amendment is here for.
So, look, I wish we didn't have to talk politics.
If we didn't have to talk politics, we wouldn't.
But we don't pull punches.
And I think that's what's important to remember.
It does not matter if it's a Republican in office or if it's Democrat in office.
If they cross us, if they cross the line, we will hit the Democrats as hard as we will hit the Republicans.
That's what I promise you.
All right. Thank you very much.
It sounds like you're running for office.
But but yes, that is that is what we stand for.
Absolutely. Not yet.
Yeah. I just saw this story also in the Times.
Many Reddit users are boycotting a social media site known as X.
We know it as Twitter after Elon Musk twice made a Nazi salute.
I'm kind of skipping over how they phrased it.
Mr. Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform, was speaking at the celebratory rally after Trump's installment.
Well, we all know what happened.
We all saw it.
And if you didn't see it, well, I don't know if I envy you or what.
Although Mr. Musk played down the criticism, speculation about the gestures meeting broke out online, including on Reddit, where people gather in thousands of forums known as subreddits to discuss all kinds of interests.
By yesterday, a proposal had emerged in dozens of Reddit groups across a wide spectrum of interest.
Many users wanted to place a ban on linking to any Twitter posts as a way of boycotting the platform and Mr. Musk.
A moderator of a subreddit devoted to Formula One racing said it would ban content from Twitter for a trial period.
Links from Twitter are now also banned in r slash New Jersey.
For some reason, the moderators of that forum said in a post that was accompanied by a photo of Mr. Musk emblazoned with a red block symbol.
Other place-centered forums had similar posts.
Two X chromosomes, a space centered on women's perspectives, said that a bot would automatically remove any links to Twitter.
That announcement garnered thousands of approving votes.
By this morning, organizers of groups with vast audiences focusing on hometowns, sporting teams, board games, and the economy were discussing or surveying the appetite of their members for a potential boycott of Twitter.
Users who supported one cited several reasons, chief among them to push back against Musk after his appearance at the inauguration event.
Others say they had been frustrated with Musk for some time because of his transformation of Twitter and his views on politics and other matters.
You know, if only they were views on politics makes it sound so innocent, but this is so much more threatening than simply views.
This is, I mean, he is, he is a villain from all these, you know, science fiction films of somebody in the future that just takes over everything and is, is, is the enemy of the people.
I think this is actually, this is the kind of small steps that need to occur to, to, to, uh, dismantle the amount of power that was placed in Twitter.
A lot of that was sort of an after effect of what Twitter was.
And as people see, uh, his prerogative and his actions for what they are, these little cuts, you know, are what it will take to, um, basically leave him with what he deserves in Twitter, which isn't much.
You know, a lot of people that agree and, um, bots as he thought he was going to get rid of, but if that's all he ends up with, I think that's, um, that's a just end, uh, to that platform.
But it, it is by no means a requirement that any of the, uh, spaces that link to, as you pointed out, or, um, otherwise use the content that, uh, was on Twitter.
There's, they're under no obligation to continue to, uh, district, to perpetuate it, distribute it, um, and, uh, and allow it to be further seen and basically direct traffic back to the site.
If the traffic there is only bots and, and trolls and stuff, then, I mean, who really will care then it won't be as powerful as it was when it was purchased.
And I think that's, that's really the strength is that the people that matter need to leave there.
They need to leave.
I mean, it's good to stay there, you know, idling, as you've pointed out to, to be aware of what's said.
And it's good.
I think in investigative reasons and journalists and stuff, uh, who can stomach it should stay, but, you know, and not.
Completely abandon it.
Uh, but in, in so far as it is used as a, a town square, I think that there are plenty of other options at this stage.
And, uh, an exodus is probably the best course, especially when you, you see this kind of, uh, tone deaf leadership and, and, uh, ugliness.
Now, you know, for, for me, Twitter is good for bitching out corporations.
You know, if they ever do something that upsets you, you simply tag them and complain.
And, uh, within a few minutes, usually they contact you to try to make it right.
It's good for that.
And that's about it.
Not much else.
Uh, some people have not left there.
So it's, you know, I don't want to cut off all ties to people.
I might not be able to contact in other ways, but as far as taking it seriously, though, that ship has sailed.
That is an incredible point that, that corporations themselves using it as a PR mechanism or a customer support mechanism, as well as government agencies.
There are a lot of government agencies, especially in the U S government that are just there.
That's, that's where they feel they need to be to reach whomever and get information out.
And that, that they are, uh, suffering from the switching costs, the, the inability to leave because then all of their cohorts and, and, uh, associates and people that are interested, uh, concerned partners and all of the, what, what, I don't know the lingo in, in, uh, in those services.
But they are scared to death that they won't be able to communicate with people who are not, who are in their organization or not directly in their organization, but follow their work.
Uh, those affiliates then would vaporize unless they actually collectively.
And, and imagine how many different agencies from a government perspective would have to, uh, marshal and organize and move in one direction, uh, in unison, um, so that you didn't have fragments.
Cause then you have like distrust, like who, which platform do you go for?
What agency is like USDA is over here and they're over there.
Senate's over there.
I think it's important to establish a presence.
I say this for both individuals and for corporations, but I do think that, um, we can't rely on corporations to do the right thing here because look at what's happening with, um, uh, you know, with the social media, uh, corporations.
Uh, corporations and how they fall into lockstep so easily, so quickly.
And you'd think they'd be the ones with the biggest voice, but no, they're Facebook.
They're terrified.
Google terrified.
They're all lining up to bow down to Trump in DC.
And, um, uh, the rest of us are just left to, you know, shake our heads in amazement.
Um, so I, I don't really expect them to abandon Twitter like we hope they would.
Um, and, and, and that's, that's a shame.
That's a shame because, um, we, um, we, we, we need to be able to speak up freely and, and, and know that, uh, we have platforms we can rely upon and that we're not, um, segregating ourselves.
And that's what we're seeing.
We're seeing that happen more and more.
Um, oh, we had a letter, uh, from another listener, um, who, um, says I listened to the latest, um, off the hook podcast.
Okay.
Another podcast.
It's a radio program.
It's a radio program, but I'm not going to.
Podcasting is diluting what this is.
I realized a couple of years ago, I was like, people that know me know that I like, you know, I'm on the radio.
I've said that.
And, but ultimately there was like this, this like threshold where I became the podcast guy.
Yeah.
Because radio is 1930 and nothing changed.
Nothing changed about my presence here.
And I'm not saying it's like something I go around and brandish.
I just happened to help out and, and, and show up here.
It's not like a resume material or something, but I realized like it went from this like unique, weird thing that, yeah, if you listen, you know, if you don't, you don't.
But then it's like, oh, you're, you're doing that podcast thing.
And now I'm like just another podcast guy to people that once might've said, wow, that's neat.
You're on the radio.
So thanks for nothing.
Podcasters.
You've really like basically made me as lame as you.
Well, on that, continuing along this, uh, this, this vein here, um, you know, there was talk by the way, someone was doing a documentary not too long ago.
Uh, and there was talk that perhaps off the hook was the first podcast because we started so early back in, in 97 simulcasting the radio show.
But I think, I think we were just edged out, um, uh, by, by somebody else.
Uh, but anyway, uh, so I, I listened to the latest, uh, off the hook podcast.
I'd like to, uh, follow all of you who are on blue sky.
I refuse to be a part of a Twitter slash X.
I despise Mark Zuckerberg for his stances.
If you all can give me your blue sky handles, I would appreciate it very much.
A long time listener, having started to listen way back in 1991, I think I've listened to almost every episode.
Wow.
That's probably more than we've done.
Um, I love the show.
Keep doing what you're doing as you've gained a very loyal follower.
Yeah.
I hear that listeners who want us to stop talking about relevant things.
Well, uh, some people appreciate it.
Uh, thanks for taking the time to read this.
I look forward to many more years of hearing off the hook.
Well, there might be some rough years ahead, but we'll have to see.
Um, okay.
Thank you, Brent.
Uh, well, I can say personally, um, you can find me on, um, on blue sky at Goldstein with,
um, a dot before the I N, uh, and, uh, on.
And, uh, Mastodon at Goldstein without the dot.
That's how you find me.
But I think, Rob, you have a, you have a better way of finding everybody, right?
Well, yeah.
Um, this program has a blue sky account.
It's, uh, at off the hook radio, all one word, dot B sky dot social.
And, uh, if you, if you would like to pull up the show's account, uh, you can see who
it's following and find some more folks involved with the show, um, from there.
So we're all pretty much listed.
Those of us who are over there, I think, uh, I think maybe on this.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, Tashi was, at least, at least most of us, Alex, I think your hand is raised, but
it's off screen.
Yes.
I'm, I'm, I'm the odd man out here.
I'm not on blue sky.
So maybe, maybe at some point, yeah, I'll hear a valid argument that would compel me
to join.
It's better.
How about that?
Okay.
All right.
That's, that's succinct.
I'll give you that.
I am not on blue sky either, but, uh, I, I do still love my mastodon.
Didn't you say last week you made a blue sky account?
You're just not doing anything with it?
No, I, I said I was considering doing that, but, uh, I, I have not done so yet.
Ah, okay.
Uh, so anyway, Alex, go ahead.
Oh no, no, that's it.
That, that, that was my piece.
That's all you had to say.
Okay.
Yeah.
That was it.
I just want to again point out that it's pronounced blue ski.
Oh boy.
Um, yeah.
Okay.
Let's just fracture as many ways as we possibly can.
Um, all right.
So something else, uh, interesting development after this, um, whole inauguration thing, uh,
hours after Trump was sworn in as president on Monday, uh, some Instagram and Facebook
users started noticing that their accounts were suddenly following pages associated with
the new president.
Uh, first lady Melania Trump, vice president J.D.
Vance, uh, the official POTUS and white house Facebook pages are owned and controlled
by the current administration.
So it's possible some Facebook users were already following those accounts.
Uh, while Biden was in office and did not opt to unfollow them once they were transferred
to the new Trump administration.
But a number of users who have taken to Reddit to complain about their new unwanted follows
claim they had never elected to follow those official pages before.
Uh, others noted that some of the pages they're following, like, um, uh, one for Vance in particular
appear to have been created in early January.
While the page for, um, Kamala Harris is now marked as archived.
Um, Reddit users also noted yesterday that when they search for hashtags like, um, a pound
sign Democrats or, uh, hash Democrats, uh, hash Bernie Sanders, hash Joe Biden, searching
for that on Instagram, they received a pop-up message saying the results have been hidden
due to sensitive content.
While searches for hash Donald Trump, hash Republicans did not trigger a similar flag.
Interesting.
Uh, Yahoo News, uh, corroborated, uh, these results when searching for the same political hashtags
on Instagram on Tuesday morning.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Democratic Party related terms were no longer hidden.
Uh, Facebook's communications director, Andy Stone, responded to the complaints in a post
on Threads Tuesday.
And for people who don't know all this, Instagram, Facebook, Threads are all owned by Meta.
So that's something to consider.
They, um, Andy acknowledged that there was an issue affecting people's ability to search
for a number of different hashtags on Instagram, not just those on the left.
Hmm.
Well, I guess the people on the left just complained more.
That must be it.
Uh, Stone also addressed complaints from those who said they were now following official Trump
administration, Facebook pages, explaining that the pages change when the occupant of
the White House changes.
However, he did not offer an explanation for those who insist they had never previously
followed any of these political accounts.
So if that's happened to you, we'd like to hear about it.
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
We certainly would, uh, be interested in, in, in, in, in, in digging into that a little bit
more, here's another letter from, um, a listener named Lobb.
It's kind of like your name, Rob, except with an L instead of an R. Uh, the news about Meta
moderation changes got me thinking about the issue.
I believe, like I assume you do, that Meta is not doing these changes out of good intentions,
but there's also a part of me that thinks, why should Meta fact check content?
Why should people need to be told if something is true by the corporation when the corporation
has been doing a lot of shady and immoral acts in the past?
We are all humans with brains, and it's condescending to think that Facebook users need official
handholding when we all grew up during the internet's wild west era with basically zero
moderation.
We seem to have turned out almost okay.
Ooh, I was with you up until that last sentence.
One, one funny outcome of this thing is that Reddit users have made fun of the changes, uh,
when Reddit has zero official fact checking and purely relies on users and comments.
It's, there's not even the community notes type options.
There seems to be an idea that we are smart enough to moderate ourselves, but those dummies
in Facebook need an authority to tell them what's real.
I'd appreciate it if you took a little moment to discuss this.
Signed, Rob.
Well, Rob, you make some good points here.
Um, actually, you know what?
Gila, you, you have an answer to this?
Go ahead.
I, I have a thought because I don't think it's a fair apples to apples kind of comparison.
I think that when you're talking about Reddit, um, there are,
like, there's nothing that you can talk about that's just Reddit qua Reddit, because everything
on Reddit is so incredibly subdivided.
And we've talked about, or I've certainly talked about in the past, this idea that you
can become the internet's main character on Twitter, or you could, because it was all
so incredibly broadcast.
And Reddit doesn't have the same kind of idea.
Now, again, I was not as much of a Wild West internet user as many of you were, so I will
happily take a backseat to those discussions.
But I think there was also, the internet was not as broadly in use in the Wild West frontier
years as it is like now with the grandmas, you know?
Now, it wasn't as universal a thing as it is now, which is, I think, why we need some
kind of, you can't, again, I just don't think you can compare Reddit and Facebook.
Kyle?
Well, I think this is sort of diluting the idea of a community and community standards.
And it sort of reminds me of younger people acting and talking about TikTok as though it
is the internet.
It's like a sort of lack of understanding of what the actual infrastructure itself is.
And I mean, just because you've curated your whole world on one particular platform that
has a set of standards that you just abide by without really thinking about, or maybe
you do, you transgress and find out from the company that you've done something and you can't
access stuff.
But have a little bit wider view of what actually you're able to do as far as this and understand
that your one app that you use, that you've curated your life on, they may have community
standards for a reason.
And it's to maybe not protect you per se, but there are people there that may need extra
protection from standards like this because of the history and the awareness of how vast
and wild said internet can be.
And one other point, and this is definitely along the lines of what Gila was pointing out,
I'm just going to remind everyone that Wild West heyday we like to talk about on the internet,
was much, much slower.
Okay?
The amount and the speed and the richness of content.
Like, you know, with 300 baud, you weren't getting violent videos or, you know, I'm not
going to get into the worst of the worst on the internet, but like rotten was it.
And even that was slow.
Oh, rotten.
So, um, the memories, let's just pace ourselves and understand that.
Yeah, it was really bad back then, but it was like, you know, some text in IRC or some
grainy GIFs, but like things have changed.
And the amount, like, especially the concept of having an entire computer in your pocket
with many sensors, specifically with geolocation and other things that can really, really affect
you if that information was just sort of out there because, uh, you know, someone violated
a standard and started posting someone's information or doing some sort of like, you know, ugly stuff
online.
And like, I just think the implications that like, and a particular platform needs to be
like the whole of the internet with just no, like completely, uh, unbridled and, and, and,
uh, uh, um, just, uh, a free for all couldn't have consequences is foolish.
We need to recognize that.
Yeah.
You know, you, you have many places to go on the internet and certain places have different
ideas of how to interact there.
For those of us who, who, um, did grow up in the wild west of, uh, of, of the early internet,
the idea back then with our IRC channels and use net news groups and, and, uh, rudimentary
email, uh, that this group of people could influence things in society, um, that would
be so far fetched as to be science fiction.
And now we're looking at a world where social media decides presidential races and very much
steers the ship.
And I think that's where we are today that, uh, we have done that.
We have, um, uh, achieved this.
So when I don't use Reddit, I don't use Facebook, just not enough hours in a day, but I do think
there's a difference and correct me if I'm wrong.
Reddit is kind of open to anybody that wants to say whatever.
And Facebook is a little bit more insular, right?
It's like your friends, your family, you get to control who, who you're connected to.
So for that reason, let's, let's, let's take the, um, the, the, um, 2020 election, 2020
election was stolen.
All right.
It's a fact.
The 2020 election was stolen.
It's not a fact.
Who's saying it's not a fact.
There are fact checkers out there saying it's not a fact.
Well, okay.
But I heard that it was a fact and my facts are as good as your facts.
So I'm going to keep saying something that's demonstrably proven wrong over and over and
over and over again in courts, through journalism, people who have done actual real research have
concluded this.
Now, when you don't have fact checkers, it never goes away because the next person comes
along and says, well, I'm not convinced.
Explain it to me.
You won't explain it to me.
You say you've explained it 10,000 times before, but you won't explain it to me.
Why?
What are you afraid of?
This never ends.
Now, the reason I think it does better in Reddit is because you have everybody kind of
pitching in and taken about as seriously as the next person with Facebook though, you
can kind of close off the conversation to anybody who doesn't agree with you.
And so you have all these little groups of people or relatives or whatever who firmly
believe something and there's nobody there to tell them, Hey, this has been proven to be
wrong.
Absolutely 100% wrong.
And we can't even reach you to tell you this and to say, look at, look at the facts, look
at the decisions made by people that, you know, either run courtrooms or, you know, basically
people who know what they're talking about.
If you never open yourself up to that, you're just going to be living in a fantasy world.
And that is the danger.
All of these people going around believing things that aren't true.
On Monday, we saw Trump saying one falsehood after another.
They were lies.
And you could see it on, on, on major networks.
They still have fact checkers.
The guy on CNN is amazing.
He just spends so much time going through one by one.
It's easy to check this yourself to see that they're telling the truth that yes.
In fact, this never happened.
Yes, in fact, this did happen.
But when you don't even open the door to listening, that's when you have a brainwashed populace.
That's when you have people elected on lies.
That's when you have societies hurtling in the wrong direction.
And that's when you have people being controlled like they've never been controlled before.
So, yes, fact checkers are extremely important.
I don't believe Meta themselves were doing the fact checking.
I believe they had fact checkers that were not people controlled by Meta.
I don't have the details.
And that's a fact.
But you do need fact checkers for, for things that are being spread around as truth,
for things that people will believe, for things that people will act upon.
Otherwise, what is the point of anything?
You know, we're just, we're just basically in the wind as far as things go.
Go ahead, Gila.
No, I think there is a lot to be said about the idea on Reddit of all these smaller communities.
And again, corporate Reddit isn't saying, oh, we need fact checkers.
But every individual community is setting their own standards for what is and is not okay.
And I think that's a very interesting thing.
The other thing that this all brought to mind for me, because I was reading an op-ed in the New York Times about this girl.
She's like, I'm 17 and I'm addicted to Reddit.
This ban is going to be the best thing ever because I've got so much time back and I'll do my homework.
And complaining about how this is where all the trends are and this is how we know what to eat for dinner.
And Kyle, I very much agree with what you're saying as this idea that the internet just came into being for this one TikTok moment.
And thinking back a few months ago, right?
You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.
Remember she said that and everyone laughed and everyone made fun of it.
But it is so true.
And if we cease to understand how interconnected we all are in so many ways, we cease to see everyone's humanity.
And society and the world cannot advance if we cease to see everyone at every moment in its context.
I just wanted to add that not everyone was online back in the day.
And those who were tended to be more anonymous than the inverse.
I think this has inverted.
Now, a lot of the platforms encourage people to use their actual identity for their own accountability, right?
To police people and have them realize that they themselves are being presented online.
Google did this.
Facebook is very much the same way.
So the push to have people use their real identities, I think, has made it also a little bit more treacherous than it was back in the old days.
Here's a story that we're just getting details on from TechCrunch concerning the Trump administration firing members of a cybersecurity review board in what's being called a horribly short-sighted decision.
This happened yesterday, the day after Trump's inauguration, basically, the Department of Homeland Security told members of several advisory committees that they were effectively fired.
Among the communities impacted is the Cyber Safety Review Board, or CSRB.
That's according to sources familiar with the board who spoke to TechCrunch as well as reporting by other news outlets.
The CSRB was made up of both private sector and government cybersecurity experts.
One person familiar with the CSRB who received the letter informing them that their membership in the CSRB was being terminated criticized the decision.
Shutting down all DHS advisory boards without consideration of the impact was horribly short-sighted.
The person who asked to remain anonymous told TechCrunch, stopping the CSRB review when China has ongoing cyber attacks into our critical infrastructure is a dangerous blunder.
We need to learn from Salt Typhoon and protect ourselves better.
The fact this isn't a priority for Trump is telling.
You can't stop what you don't understand.
And the CSRB was arming us with understanding.
The person was referring to the CSRB's review of the devastating recent breaches at several telecoms in the U.S., allegedly carried out by Chinese government hackers.
I don't understand.
I don't understand the logic behind firing people like that, other than they're saying something that's inconvenient to your regime, to your plans.
But boy, it's troubling.
It really is.
Okay, one more letter.
Hey, I was listening to your show, having had a career in hardware and software security.
One thing I enjoy is that you expand the discussion to the ethical and even moral arena, which is food for thought.
Last week, one of the group used a TLA, which I was not tracking with.
A TLA.
May I make a suggestion to help the discussion be more educational for non-techs and even for geezers who remember mag tape, floppy disks, and 1,200-baud modems?
Oh, yeah.
When you use TLA's or FLAs, please explain what you were referring to.
If you don't know what a TLA or FLA is, that is the point.
Signed, Michael from Amityville.
What is a TLA or FLA?
I have no idea.
I didn't know this either.
And shout out to the geezers, just generally.
Well, shout out in 30 seconds, because that's all we have.
Well, TLA's are three-letter acronyms, like FBI, CIA, DOS.
What's FLA?
CPU.
Wait, four-letter.
Wait a minute.
This is an acronym about acronyms?
USDA.
Oh, he's telling us that we don't know what he's talking about, so we should be more careful as far as giving out acronyms.
I agree.
I agree completely.
Many of the time, you guys are saying things I have no idea what you're talking about.
I really, you know, I just smile and try to get on.
Back at you.
Yeah.
Oh, I see.
All right.
Well, you know what?
We are out of time, but we're going to be over on YouTube, so visit us over on Channel 2600.
We'll see you there.
OTH at 2600.com.
Back on BAI next week.
Stay free, everybody.
Good night.
I'm free.
I'm free.
And freedom tastes.
I'm free.
I'm free.
I'm free.
And I'm waiting for you to follow me.
If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high.
You'd like to say nothing's that simple.
But you've been told many times before.
Messiah's pointed to the door.
No one had the guts to leave the temple.
I'm free.
And freedom tastes of reality.
I'm free
And I'm waiting for you
To follow me
How can we follow?
Thank you.


And welcome, everybody, here on YouTube, where we are hopefully streaming onto actual YouTube.
Rob, is that true?
Slowly but true.
I'm waiting for it to sync up and start up and waiting for the internet to catch up with reality here.
Okay.
Things are a little choppy on the internet, I think.
Well, we know that. It's not us this time. It's not us.
Yeah. No, we're hearing from some listeners over social media that, yeah, the connection on the radio stream was a bit choppy.
Yeah, that's a BAI issue, but the archive will be fine, and that should be up fairly soon.
Oh, we woke Alex up. I'm sorry, Alex. He was sleeping so peacefully.
I know.
For the last 15 minutes, Alex was just dozing on screen. I'm sorry. I don't mean to rat you out here, but it was funny as hell.
That's okay.
It's late here.
It's very late, and you've been up since, like, what, 5.30 in the morning, your time?
5.30 in the morning, my time. It's been a long day.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's almost 5.30 in the morning again, your time.
That's true. That's right. I'm tired.
And don't you have a plane to catch in a half hour?
I have a plane to catch, I have to leave in about six hours.
Okay. All right. Well.
Well.
It's not going to be the best flight. I've got to tell you that.
What makes you predict this?
I just, you're going to be cranky. You're going to not have enough sleep.
Yeah.
There's going to be a crying baby behind you. I did check that, and that is true.
Oh.
And then you'll be winding up in a crowded New York airport later.
Yeah. And I'll be going back to a new country for me.
That's true. Brand new era. Oh, boy. You're going to love it.
All right. So, again, sorry for the stream, folks. We had no control over that.
If you listen to the radio, though, in New York City, that's why radio is better, because that doesn't happen.
Unless there's a problem with our stream going from our remote studio. That happens sometimes.
It's, it could be better.
Yeah.
But I'm watching it. It's enough, but it's, uh, it's about 60% of what we normally have at best.
Well, it doesn't matter because we're not a video stream.
No, not at all.
We're on YouTube, but we're only audio.
Yeah.
If you're watching us on YouTube and you wonder why we don't move, it's okay. That's, that's how we want it.
Yeah.
Uh, but this is a call-in portion, and you can reach us at 802-321-4225.
That's 802-321-4225.
4225 spells hack, by the way. And 321 is what you say before you lift off.
Before you hack, yeah.
Right. And 802 is Vermont. That doesn't mean anything, but, you know, that's, all together, that's our phone number.
Operators are chilling coolly.
Oh, we have no operators. We're just us. Um, but yeah, okay, um, here we have another letter.
Uh, hi. Thanks for the shows. Definitely appreciate the call-in shows again, meaning the shows that we do once a month on BAI, uh, where we take calls like we did last week.
I was wondering, uh, is there anything you can do about the audio leveling? The phone conversations are really hard to understand without maxing the volume.
All right. That was co-pilot.
Who's the wise ass that did that?
Was that us on this end?
Shh.
No, I, I want to know. I got to finish this letter. Hold on a second. I got to finish the letter.
Um, really hard to understand without maxing the volume.
Um, and then when someone in studio or Skype starts talking, you're deafened, uh, have a hopefully, uh, um, decent ish New York.
Oh, not New York, New Year's.
Sorry.
They typed N Y. What was I supposed to think?
Have a hopefully decent ish.
I was trying to get over decent ish.
That's a weird word to look at.
Uh, New Year's.
And I hope you survive all the Trump crap.
Thank you, John, Jen, or Jan.
I'm not sure how to pronounce J A N, but thank you.
Um, we are trying with the audio.
I, I turned up the ratio on our expander, which is what we're putting the telephone line through.
And I will kindly suggest to E that he crank the telephone up a little past unity.
When we have a phone call.
When we have a call, see if that helps.
Maybe it's been higher.
We've been messing with our headphone volume, blah, blah, blah.
But, uh, in the event we get a call, we'll, we'll turn it a little higher than it has been.
And, and hopefully the ratio on the expander will make up for it.
Can I say our post-production engineer, Jens, um, uh, spends a great deal of time and, you
know, a lot of his sanity, uh, fixing the audio issues and, and basically boosting things
that need boosting and silencing things that need silencing and, and, and coming up with
a product that we're all proud of in the end.
Yes, Gila.
Um, do you want to, first of all, first say hi to the 54 people who are with us right
now on the chat.
However, tonight's lag is extreme.
Um, normally we have about a 15 second lag tonight.
It's about three minutes.
Um, with a lot of buffering.
So when you say it's a three minute, what does that mean exactly?
It means that we started talking at eight o'clock and it didn't start going out of our YouTube
until eight Oh three.
So, whereas we're pretty close to in real time on a normal evening, um, tonight we are significantly laggier.
Kyle, do you think this might be a problem with our, our setup here?
Do you want to give me a minute to like relaunch or just should we relaunch?
Does that, does that mean we, we go silent for, we have to land first.
Okay.
What, what, what, what does this mean to listeners?
What, what might we have to do?
All right.
I'll turn it off for a minute and we'll come back in a minute.
Does that mean we're just leave YouTube alone?
Okay.
But will listeners hear nothing for a period of time?
Yeah.
And it may drop on your side.
So why don't you look at that?
Okay.
So we'll be back in what?
One minute.
Yeah.
Let me like restart this.
There was an update I ignored.
So I don't know.
I don't know what it is.
It could also just be genuinely bandwidth.
I mean, there could be like some Xbox PlayStation tournament.
We don't know about going on like, uh, in, uh, in the vicinity.
So anyway, we'll, we'll see.
Okay.
Be patient with us.
One minute, two max, please.
Uh, if you get booted, come back and we'll start taking phone calls.
Yeah.
And let the switches switch.
Yeah.
Okay.
We're back.
Uh, Kyle, we, uh, it's still not great, but we did everything we could do on this end.
Yeah.
Um, I don't know what else for now.
I think we should just, uh, continue on.
Maybe try this call.
It does seem to be a little bit better as far as, uh, overall bandwidth.
We can't reboot the whole internet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't have that much control contrary to, uh, what people might think about us.
Uh, we are at the mercy of, uh, of, uh, our own resources.
And, uh, okay.
So we are, we are back live on YouTube.
We are only, um, a couple of seconds behind live right now.
Um, but, uh, we will have to give out the phone number again because we interrupted the bit
where we were giving out the phone number.
That's how far behind we were earlier.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
All right.
Well, that's interesting.
I wonder if, um, cause on our end here, we finished speaking.
So, uh, and we have a local recorder here that obviously would have picked that up.
So maybe we need to replace the Facebook archive with our archive because Facebook archive is
going to sound like crap.
So if you're listening to this later, not Facebook, what am I saying?
YouTube.
Yeah.
YouTube, uh, archive.
If you're listening to this on YouTube, there's a better version on 2600.com.
Yeah.
So listen to that instead.
Okay.
Uh, 802-321-4225 is our phone number.
802-321-4225.
But we already have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the cover time.
Go ahead.
There's nobody there, Kyle.
Okay.
The phone line is open.
It's sorry.
Now it's now they're ringing.
Uh,
802-321-4225.
It's number not to call right now because someone's on the phone and you'll go to voicemail.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hello?
Yes.
Who's calling?
Who's on the, who's on the phone there?
Who's there?
Oh, yes.
I'm back from California.
And who is this?
I'm, I'm so confused.
Okay.
I'm calling from my computer.
So wait, did I call you?
No, I'm calling you from, from Google voice.
You're, you're Google voice.
You're the voice of Google.
Oh my God.
Finally.
Nice to meet you.
I sent you the link of when I went to Seattle.
He was in your town, Kyle.
What do you think about that?
More power to him.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, uh, this is rebel, I assume.
So give us, and Rob, you're signaling that you wish to speak.
And you're not speaking because you're muted.
It seems like it's more, we are, we are still buffering on YouTube about every five seconds.
It's still a very choppy experience over there.
All right.
Well, I'm, I'm sorry.
This is a YouTube problem.
It's, I don't understand why everything is messed up.
Um, we're trying here.
We really are.
We rebooted everything.
And, uh, uh, anyway, rebel, you go ahead because you know, if you're choppy, people won't really
notice.
Can you hear me better?
Oh, we hear you fine.
Okay.
You hear me better.
You sound like you always sound.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I went to Seattle and I went to, finally got to play with a TSPS concert, but it didn't
work, of course.
Um, it's not connected.
And I sent you a video to 2600.com.
When did you do that?
I did it a couple of times.
I think I sent you a link there and I sent the link on the chat.
Hold on.
I'll send another link on the chat here.
Here's a link to my video.
And when I went to Seattle, are you choppy again?
Uh, people tell me we're choppy.
Uh, Gila, you're saying something.
We don't hear you.
Thing is that rebel cannot send a link to the chat.
It's one of our chat settings.
Yeah.
You can't send a link to us.
That's why we never got it.
Wait a minute.
You can send a link.
You can't, I mean, no, you can send a link.
Maybe you can't click on the link, but copy it and paste it.
Yeah.
Um, if you send us an email between seven o'clock and eight o'clock, we're not going to see it
while we're on air.
I saw that you sent us an email, but none of us had a chance to look at it because we
were on the radio.
Oh, right.
Because I thought you said, please send emails because we're not taking phone calls.
No, no, no, no.
Um, so, so I apologize.
You cannot post a link in the chat.
It won't let you do that.
Um, sorry about that.
Um, but yes, do carry on.
Tell us about the TSPS.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, um, if you go, well, you'll get the link in the description.
You go to, uh, um, um, I have a video of me playing with the TSPS console.
Now, of course it wasn't connected.
It's a, um, and I've had pictures.
I think I sent you guys pictures too.
Um, it's a, uh, business console from the, uh, like Seattle or Portland from back in
1984 or two or just before the, uh, the best of sure.
And actually, you know what?
It wasn't, it was from like the, after the divestiture, divestiture before they got OSPS,
which is an operator service position system, which is a computer terminal based thing, which
has, you know, instead of a big, you know, like switchboard type thing, it has like a computer
terminal.
So, um, I got to, you know, um, push the buttons and they, the lady there who was not
a TSPS operator, but she was a guide at the museum told me about, you know, what they did
and, uh, kind of how they worked.
And, uh, I saw the multi-leaf folder, you know, that little mold, like kind of Rolodex
kind of a thing that has all these cards with different areas, what to do, where the area
goes over and what the rates are and all that other stuff.
Guys, I'm going to start to break in here for a second.
Um, now, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Rebel.
You're, you're, you're, you're still on the phone.
Um, how are we doing, um, YouTube wise?
Cause we're thinking of doing a, a bigger reboot of, uh, of, of other things as well
that, uh, that might actually fix it if it is, if it is on our end.
We were hearing things are not great, um, out through YouTube.
If people can hold on for another couple of minutes, we're going to go silent.
We'll do a massive reboot, but that's literally the last thing we can do.
Otherwise maybe everything is broken and there's nothing, no way to fix it.
I don't know.
I'm tempted to like change the frame rates and stuff, but we're already doing like 24
frames, like 23 frames is very cinematic for a still image.
And I mean, I could look like knock the video down and like try to make the audio really
low res to try to get reliability at a lower bandwidth.
Except we pay for high bandwidth, so we should have high bandwidth.
So if we, if we reboot it and there's an issue with the machine, if there's a Roblox tournament
we don't know about and it's affecting our connection, what are we going to do?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's true.
So let's give it a try.
Um, what, what's your ETA Kyle, as far as how long we'll be, we'll be down for it.
I don't know.
Two minutes.
Maybe I'm not the co-pilot here.
So I'm at the mercy of the OS of something crazy's, uh, in need of, please be patient.
We'll be, we'll be back as soon as we possibly can.
We're going to keep rebel on hold.
So, uh, we're not going to lose rebel.
Don't worry about that.
We'll be back in a moment.
All right.
We are back and I think it's better.
Um, the numbers look a little bit better.
Um, let's see how long it takes our friends out in Skype land to hear us.
Um, I hear you, but not on you.
Oh, okay.
We've just popped up on YouTube.
Okay.
That's much, much better.
We're sounding good so far.
We lost all this.
Keep an eye on this.
We lost just about everybody.
Uh, no, we, we've got a good band of, uh, people shouting at us in the chat.
Okay.
I see zero as the number of viewers.
I don't know why I see that here.
I see 11 now.
Um, we had 54 before us.
So that's a lot that we lost.
The bandwidth and the frame rate are normal now, more or less.
So hopefully everybody's happy and we can continue talking to rebel.
So continue rebel.
Go ahead.
Yes.
So, um, I, you saw the flip book thing.
You saw the clip, the flip book thing.
Oh yeah.
The flip book thing.
Well, they call it a, what do they call it?
Multi-leaf folder, multi-leaf one, whatever it is.
If you see a PSP, if you see a picture or video, you'll know what I'm talking about.
It's on the left of where the operators sit, where the keys are.
All right.
So on the left of that, and you have to look up the area codes and look up like country
it goes and rates and things like that.
Um, and I, you know, and in the 1980s.
It's like quick reference, like a quick reference guide or something.
Yeah.
And, but in the 1980s, after the breakup of the bill system, they, that went to computer.
So it was a computer terminal.
Um, I wish I could put something in the video, any chat with a link to like a video or pictures
or something.
I can't put pictures in this chat, right?
So.
Nope.
This is a text only chat.
No links, no pictures.
All right.
Well, okay.
Maybe I should just have my own podcast.
Wow.
Wait a minute.
Couldn't you just put spaces in between things in the link?
Wouldn't it go through or does it filter that, Rob?
Um, it, it, it does not, uh, let things like that through.
I don't think.
Oh, you can't break up a link.
I'm not encouraging it.
I'm just pointing out maybe on your, um, your personal blog or website.
I think you're missing the, the, the, the, the lead here.
A rebel just threatened to, to, uh, divest from, from us and start his own podcast.
Yeah, actually, that's a good point.
Tell us about this podcast.
What would, uh, what would be the, no, don't give him, don't give him a forum for that.
It's going to destroy our listenership.
How dare you?
You know, we'll see you in court.
How about that?
Well, let's say what else?
Uh, um, I don't know.
Let's say, so I went all the way back up to Seattle to see the thing in Tacoma, Washington.
Um, what else?
Um, oh, I saw a, uh, Telex charity, Seattle museum.
I saw a Telex terminal.
You know, Telex or Teletype, I think it was called.
Okay.
Teletype 5410 model.
And it was used by AT&T.
It's a computer terminal, but I don't confuse it with Telex because it says Telex.
It was Teletype, but it was acting like a computer terminal.
They had it on a 300 board acoustic modem hooked up to a Linux, uh, server, I guess.
Yeah, there's incredible demonstrations there.
And for people listening, the name of this museum is the Connections Museum.
Right.
It is located in Georgetown, Washington in the Soto area, the South downtown area of Seattle.
And they have a once weekly, um, uh, day that they're open to the public and a lot of really
passionate and knowledgeable volunteers that can, uh, answer your questions and point you
in the right direction.
If you want to check out some of the exhibits and all the exhibits are functional more or
less and, uh, tangible, or, uh, you know, it's very hands-on.
You can, you can get a feel for what things were like.
Um, and they're set up in a way that it can demonstrate what the purpose, uh, purpose was
or what the, um, device or what the system did, uh, sometimes emulating it with modern
devices and rigging it up so that it appears as though it would have, were it connected and
set up, um, in its original, with its original intent.
But of course, a lot of them are set up so that it can work without that emulating the
sorts of things that would have been connected to, but it's a fascinating place.
And, uh, what else, what else did you see there?
What other highlights do you have for us?
Well, I mean, it's only open on Sundays, but, um, I did see, uh, you know, switchings and
things like that.
Um, I did see a picture phone.
I mean, remember the picture phone?
Well, you don't remember, but.
I actually do.
I was at the world's fair in 1963 as a toddler.
And I do, I do remember picture phones.
Before my, it was before my time, but.
Yeah, it was, it was a wonderful time.
That's nasty.
I'm sorry, but I didn't know any better.
It was in Queens at the old world's fair.
So that was, uh, that was something else.
And I, I've seen videos and pictures of a picture phone.
And I, when the guy said, wait, there's a picture phone here and here it is.
And I was like, does it work?
And then I did that the point from the set.
Yes, it worked.
They had it connected.
And, uh, you know, it was interesting.
We just need the flying cars now.
We'll be set.
Right.
And, um, and they had the, uh, push button things where the, uh, they did not have the
pound button, but they had like a R button or something like that.
I guess it was a special phone back then.
There were, there were all kinds of different phones.
Some of the early touchtone phones, uh, just don't have buttons where the star and pound
sign are.
Uh, and that's kind of cool.
And, and then there are the, uh, military phones that had the extra row, ABCD.
Uh, or they had different names for them.
Not only military, but there was used for other things as well.
Well, phone freaks like to use them for various other things as well.
Yes.
Yeah.
But about teletypes, I mean, I don't understand because it says teletype, but maybe the teletype,
when I think of a teletype, a typewriter was, but that when you type on it, it not only prints
on the paper that you're typing on, but could it, you dial a number and then it types whatever
you type, you know, all I can tell you is there are a lot of different terms.
There's telex, there's TWX, there's TTY, there's teletype.
Uh, and, um, I'm not going to get it right, but I'm sure if you go to Wikipedia and look
all those terms up, you'll get a pretty concise explanation.
But I'm saying what, how is a computer terminal a teletype?
Well, some of them didn't have displays, I think early on, I think that's one aspect
of it, but as he said, there's many different generations and they evolved to have different
purposes for different situations or to, um, accommodate different, different, uh, input
methods, depending on what they were connected to or, or what type of communication was going
on.
Yeah.
Rebel, if you look at any Unix based system like Linux or whatever and type W for, for who
you'll see all the users have TTY numbers and that's, you know, a throwback to the old
days when they were TTYs, teletypes.
So they're not anymore, obviously, but that, that name remains.
Okay.
I just typed W on my Linux system and it says at a time and it says up and it says one
user and it says load average of user and then my name and then TTY from, and then
nothing, login, add, well, I'll just turn my, turned on my computer, uh, then idle and
then JCPU.
I don't know what that means.
PCPU.
And then what?
Do you see an IP number there?
IP number?
Uh, no, there's no IP.
There's no IP really?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
There is.
It says load average and then it says 0.35 comma.
Yeah.
Yeah.
0.45 comma.
Those aren't IP numbers.
If that's what you know.
Okay.
No, there's no IP because I'm not on.
Well, that shouldn't.
No, it doesn't say an IP number.
Should it?
I don't know.
Maybe if you type last, you should see everybody who has logged into your system and there you
should see an IP for each.
Yeah.
You see the IP there?
Okay.
It says six dot.
Okay.
Don't give out your IP, Rebel, because that could lead to all kinds of unpleasantness.
People know your IP.
But yeah, there's all kinds of, you know, if you type uname-a, U-N-A-M-E space.
It says my name and this is TTY7.
Okay.
I don't know if you heard me, but if you type the command uname, U-N-A-M-E space-a, you'll
get the name of your operating system and other data as well.
Yeah, but I thought that was NeoFetch.
I don't understand what you just said.
NeoFetch?
Do you know what NeoFetch does?
That's a command?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Could you spell it?
N-E-O-F-E-T-C-H.
I don't think I have to ever type that.
I don't think I ever have.
Is that a new command or something for your OS specific?
I don't know.
It's a Linux thing.
I'm surprised you don't know it.
Well, there's a lot we don't know.
There's so much I don't know.
That would surprise you even more.
Believe me.
Eric, I'm going to-
It's so funny when we talk about this stuff and the whole point of being involved in hacking
or being self-taught with computers is that you don't know anything.
You don't.
You want to know.
You want to talk to people that do.
You want to share what you know or learn from someone who has-
Everybody knows something, but nobody knows everything.
And even the biggest expert in the world might not understand the phone network.
But being interested is not a stand-in for knowing everything.
And I think that is a misnomer.
That's something that actually a lot of hackers end up riding a little bit too much in getting all kinds of undue adulation when they really should be just,
you know, hey, I've got a little bit of knowledge on this and, you know, I might not know what you know.
And that's it.
I mean, that kind of thing of like, well, you know, I'm going to be standoffish because everyone assumes I know, you know,
all there is about, you know, one operating system or a set of commands or certain types of things.
Because you've got to be a little bit more open-minded because that's how we all learn.
I can't believe you didn't know that, Rebel.
I didn't.
Well, I mean, you know.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah.
So NeoFetch is basically you name.
If you use you name dash A on a Linux system that has that installed, it will give you one little line of text that has some info about your computer.
If you use NeoFetch, it's basically a prettier display of a lot of text that says a lot of different things about the computer you're using.
And depending on your settings, it will show up in pretty colors.
You'll see the logo of your particular distro of Linux, all kinds of other cool stuff.
Well, that explains why I didn't know it because I don't like pretty and I don't like lots of data.
I just wanted one line of text.
Go ahead, Alex.
Alex, go ahead.
Yeah, I'm here.
I'm here.
I just wanted to say I have to go to bed, guys.
You are in bed.
You are literally in bed.
You have a pillow behind you and you were asleep only a few minutes ago.
So what do you mean you have to go to bed?
You're in bed.
I guess I have to go back to bed.
You don't have to go anywhere.
You just have to stay where you are.
That's all you have to do.
You don't even have to say this.
I need to sleep.
But you were sleeping.
Look, are we talking too loud?
We can tone it down a little.
Rebel, it's not a problem.
That's very funny.
I know as thrilling as this call with Rebel was, I do have to go to bed, guys.
It's still going on.
The call with Rebel has just begun.
Alex, have a safe journey and get that rest.
Yes.
I will.
I will.
It's a thrill as always.
I wish you guys the best.
And keep America safe for me.
I'll be up.
Just keep it warm.
I'll be back tomorrow.
Is it possible you will be on the ground next Wednesday and not traveling anywhere?
Yeah, I think so.
I really hope so.
I should be back next week.
And yeah.
And same time.
So that would be very nice.
Try something different.
That'd be nice.
Yeah.
Come back.
We all miss you.
Yeah.
Let's do that.
No doubt.
No doubt.
I wish you guys a wonderful rest of overtime.
I'm going back to bed and I'll see you next week.
Rebel, don't you want to say good night to Alex?
Good night, Alex.
Good night, Rebel.
Rebel, that's very, very kind of you.
That was surprisingly easy of me to get him to do that.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right, Alex.
Sleep well.
Thank you.
Good night, everybody.
And Alex is out.
All right, Rebel, let's wrap things up with you, too.
Okay.
So we can take another phone call.
Yeah, so now, this teletype, it was from the 1980s.
I guess this was a successor to the mechanical teletype with paper.
So, because I remember seeing videos of it in, like, the late 80s, this particular model.
I mean, I just think it was the particular model.
So that's why I wish I would have done NeoFetch on that thing.
So I would have seen what...
Well, it may not have supported that command if it's a newer command at all, or depending on what system it was or what OS that machine was running.
Hey, Rebel, I have a command for you to type.
Are you at a prompt?
Hold on.
Let me get to the...
We're having a very efficient computing experience, aren't we?
Aren't we?
Yeah, this is amazing.
Wow.
I'm just so blown away by this.
Okay.
I'm at the terminal.
Would you like me to print, ma'am?
All right, don't call me ma'am, all right?
Let's get that settled right now.
Are you ready to type a command?
Yes, I'm at the prompt.
Okay, just type the word yes and hit return, Y-E-S.
Enjoy, Rebel, enjoy.
Hold on.
Control C.
Folks, don't try this at home unless you have a lot of time.
All right, at least I learned Control C at the 2600 meeting from somebody at the 2600 meeting.
We used to have somebody at the 2600 meeting named Control C, in fact.
Yeah, I remember that.
When did Control C work on the VAX terminal?
I learned that in college.
I don't know.
I don't remember.
All right, Rebel, it was great talking to you.
As always, let's open up the phone lines for someone else, and we will hopefully talk to you next week.
Are you back?
Maybe at Hope somebody could bring one of those terminals to Hope.
Yes, yes, that would be.
Oh, by the way, Hope is happening this summer.
Tickets are on sale.
We're getting a lot of enthusiasm from vendors and from people running tables and villages and things like that, speakers.
So it's happening August 15th through 17th of this year.
Hope is an annual event now.
It's going to be awesome.
And it's at St. John's and Queens.
I'm still trying to get rid of my computer.
And it's a good place to do that, too.
You can get rid of your computer.
Well, no, I'm not going to do it at Hope.
I want to get rid of it now.
The old computer that I had that's with the tower.
Maybe you'll find a new computer at Hope.
I don't know.
I can't solve all the problems.
I have a new computer.
I have a new all-in-one computer.
Then what are you upset about?
Because my old computer, it's four years old.
And I don't, well, I don't want to.
I mean, it has Windows 10.
It's four years old.
It's, you know, it's, you know, I like the desktop with the all-in-one.
And, you know, I have the nice keyboard.
And it looks, you know, and.
So you'll be bringing this computer to the next 2600 meeting?
I'm not going to bring my computer.
I'm not bringing it to 2600.
Well, how do you expect somebody to take it if you don't bring it to people?
I'm not bringing a whole, lugging a whole desktop with a tower to a 2600 meeting.
Well, it just sounds like you're being really negative here.
Put it on a skateboard.
I mean, if I had it.
If I had it.
Yeah.
Use your rollerblades and just go down, you know, over the bridge.
And, yeah, you'll be fine.
If I had a car, I'd, you know, drag it in.
All right.
Well, if anybody wants Rebels computer, should we give out your address so they can just visit
you and get it that way?
Uh, they could email, well, hmm, how could they get in contact with me?
Um, can I have an address on 2600, like rebel at 2600.com?
Nice try.
Uh, you know, they could visit eBay.
No, they can't visit eBay because I put it on eBay.
Where is eBay in Washington?
That's a long trip.
They might, they might have a pickup locations.
I don't know.
I don't know how eBay works, but I think they have like various places where you can drop
things or, or have people, I don't know.
There's this guy named Craig.
He has a list of all kinds of things where you could, uh, sell and buy and get attacked
and all sorts of other things.
Okay.
Honestly, it's New York.
Just put it on the curb.
You don't need our help for this.
This is something that...
I don't want to throw it away.
It's good.
It's a good computer.
I don't want to throw it away.
All right.
Well, I'm glad you reconciled with your computer.
We'll find a good place to find it.
Yeah.
And, uh, you know, I wish the two of you much success in the future.
Thank you for your call.
Our phone number remains 802-321-4225.
We have time for at least one more call.
Um, I'm impressed.
He's really improved his system and you know, this is good.
All our listeners came back.
That's great.
We all should be, uh, evaluating our, our systems and setting them up the way we want,
embracing new operating systems, perhaps ones we have a little bit more control over and
learning, learning stuff that you thought, you know, maybe I could do this, make it a
project.
And I've, I've said this in the past, you know, you don't wait until you're out of a
machine or something breaks, do it while it's working and then kind of slowly migrate over
and then repurpose it.
And then you end up, uh, at the stage where you're, you find a new home for the old stuff.
We have a call.
It is cold outside, but I'm just looking up the weather forecast.
It's minus 11 Celsius.
That's 12 degrees Fahrenheit.
So if you're outside, what's wrong with you?
Get inside now.
It's, uh, it's dangerous out there.
It really is.
But I love it.
I love the cold in the winter.
It's awesome.
We have another phone call.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook overtime.
Go ahead.
Hi.
Hey, what's on your mind?
I, I remember last week, someone was talking about, uh, police making you unlock your phone
with your fingerprint.
Yeah.
I think we might've mentioned that.
Yeah.
It sounds familiar.
Well, if you don't want to use a pin that they can't make you reveal, you could always
try using a different finger from the one they would expect you to use.
So they make you use the finger they think you'd be using and it won't work.
Are you suggesting we use the middle finger?
You could.
Wow.
Okay.
Daring.
Or a different one.
A different one.
I, you know, I'm, I'm woefully ignorant on this.
Do we have the same fingerprint on all our fingers or is it a different fingerprint for
every finger?
No, they're each different.
I didn't know that.
I mean, honestly, I didn't know that.
Wow.
I, when I first got, uh, my first Mac and I was at the, the Apple store and someone was
walking me through, um, the button that you use your finger to activate and I used a finger
that, uh, the person who was helping me didn't like and he was trying to grab my hand and
make me use the finger he wanted and I was offended by that.
Yeah.
I think anybody would be offended by having our fingers grabbed.
Yeah.
And this was during, you know, you know, COVID and it, you know, he had his, you know, hands
were on blood gloves and everything.
And I was very uncomfortable with that.
I'm sorry.
I'm still so.
If I want to use a different finger, I can use a different finger.
I'm still so ignorant about this.
Do, do, do toes have prints as well?
Does anybody know this?
Toes have, yes, they, they have.
Why does nobody use a toe print?
I mean, think how easy it, if you got booked right down, down at the headquarters, you just
have to take your shoe off and walk.
You don't have to do anything else.
And boom, they got your toe print.
It's just worth thinking about.
Really?
No, no, it's not.
But I, I didn't know that.
I didn't know that toes had prints as well.
No one ever talks about that.
Yes, they do.
And I think, um, our, our cousins, bonobos, and chimpanzees, I think they have this too.
I'm learning a lot tonight.
Other primates, got it.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, someone in the chat said if I really wanted to get into that phone, it wouldn't take long
to go through all ten fingers.
But the thing is, they would have to think of it.
If they have it locked in their brain, there's just one finger you use, might not occur to
them.
That's true.
That's true.
What about a nose print?
All right, now I just think we're getting silly here.
Uh, Rob, did you have something?
Yeah, I was, uh, I was saying, and I think I mentioned this last time when this came up,
that the police can force you to unlock your phone with a finger.
And I do think it's probably likely that if they try one of your fingers and it doesn't
work, they'll try the rest.
Even the NYPD, I think, might make that leap of logic.
I don't know.
Uh, I've, I've been in their custody and there's a lot they miss.
We had a caller the other week talk about other portions of, of your hand also that have
print.
A palm, palm print?
Yeah, different parts of, of your palm.
Wow.
There, that are raised can potentially be used as well.
So you could get creative, but that's not to get in those situations in the first place
and don't bring your phone everywhere.
And also I hear foreheads have unique prints as well.
Ah, really?
No, I'm just trying to get people to press their phones against their foreheads and look
like idiots, but I don't know.
I don't know what other unique identifiers.
The chat has a couple people, uh, someone, uh, uh, surfed, their daughter surfed up their
unlock patterns that they needed to use a 13 character password every time to open their
phone.
Someone else said the DC circuit said recently that forcing a finger unlock was akin to
forcing a password and it's protected testimonial speech under the fifth amendment.
Yeah.
But if you get somebody's fingerprint, i.e.
they handle a glass or something like that, you're able to reproduce it.
Um, what's that?
It's like writing your code down someplace and then somebody using it.
I don't know what the legalities of that are and Alex is gone, so I can't ask him.
Yeah.
Uh, I, I saw, uh, a TV show where you had to be warm and have a pulse for your thing
to do, but that was a TV show.
That was a TV show.
Exactly.
And potentially, I mean, if you used, uh, like a thin, uh, like latex or some kind of
form to make that print and then put it over a live finger, maybe then it is trick.
I mean, someone has probably exhausted how far you can go making a fake print and using a
warm finger or something.
I don't know.
There's probably ways around it, but in the context of being stopped, you're not going
to be as prepared for any of that.
So, or they, they may not have the resources on a, on a, on the street corner as someone
who maybe has confiscated it and can play with it for, you know, as long as they want.
And at that point they can employ all kinds of other tools to, uh, you know, everything,
you know, like they could be, um, disassembling it and, uh, and, um, attempting to bypass some
of those restrictions at the, um, the level of the circuitry, so to speak.
And, um, well, let's just say with lots of time and lots of resources, lots of things
are possible.
So anyway.
Well, what if you, what if you just, uh, smash the case, you know, the, people are always
smashing the front of their phones and they don't work.
So just render your phone inoperative.
Well, the screens can be transplanted in some cases.
I mean, I know, uh, parts are sort of locked in some cases on Apple phones and perhaps other
manufacturers, but you could swap, swap things around to basically replace the screen and
get right back to a whole phone.
Um, so that's not necessarily that great, but you could like degauze it or like, uh, in
Mr. Robot, throw in a microwave.
Does that work?
Can we microwave our phones?
Put it in the air fryer, put your iPhone in the air fryer.
Do you carry an air fryer with you when you're everywhere I go?
Put it in the air fryer.
Where have I heard?
I've heard that somewhere.
I have heard that somewhere.
Okay.
Well, um, thank you for your call.
Any other points?
So we got to move on.
Um, have a nice evening.
All right.
You take care.
Stay warm.
Yes.
Cause it is cold.
At least in New York, it's cold, but it seems to be cold all around the country.
It's snowed in the South.
It's snowed in New Orleans.
What the hell?
It's snowed in Dallas.
About to snow in Texas again.
802-321-4.
Sorry.
I hit the wrong button.
802-321-4.
Why are you doing that?
I don't know.
I'll hold my hands up.
I'm sorry.
What Kyle was trying to say was 802-321-4225 is our phone number.
But now he's, he's left the room so I can't pick up the phone because it's all the way on the other side.
And the phone's ringing.
I did this to myself, didn't I?
You kind of did, yeah.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Kyle's left the room.
Alex is off dreaming with a British accent.
Dropping like flies here.
I know.
See, I did it to myself now.
Doing it to my own voice.
Yeah, you're, wow.
You're, I don't even know what the technical term for what's happening is right now, but it's loud.
You know, Emmanuel, what this reminds me of is the time I followed a float, like I had a cart full of soda, and I pushed it into the elevator, and I got stuck behind it.
I couldn't reach any of the buttons.
Oh, wow.
That's, no, continue describing it.
I think we're due for another Gila laughing spell here.
I was stuck in the elevator, and I couldn't go anywhere, and I couldn't call anyone because I was in the elevator.
I was holding myself up.
And then what?
Well, okay.
Well, all this is all happening.
We lost our call.
We lost our call, but I still don't have the ability to pick it up from where I am.
Someone called Jinx from the YouTube chat asks, so what happened with the copyright infringement from last night's show?
I don't, I have no idea what they're talking about.
Copyright infringement?
Me either.
I thought you might, but.
No.
If you're, okay, if you're looking for something on YouTube, Google goes nuts with copyright things that aren't pertinent to radio stations, but they don't understand.
Like we were talking about before, a radio show, they don't understand that.
They don't understand what a podcast, you know, the difference between the two.
You can always find it on 2600.com, either slash off the hook or off the wall.
That's where we keep all our shows.
Sounds good.
I can't ever tell this story.
It was 24 years ago.
I'm no longer stuck in that elevator, just for the record.
But yeah, I could see the buttons.
I just couldn't push the buttons.
And why couldn't you push the buttons?
So I was in a hotel, and I was staffing a convention in a hotel, and I needed to get a bunch of stuff up to a hospitality suite on one of the top floors of the hotel.
I needed to take the elevator.
So I had like a cart, right, like a flat.
And it was full of packs of soda, like 24 packs of soda.
And I pushed the thing into the elevator.
Are we going to go through this again?
We never get through this story.
I'm so sorry.
I love this story so much.
Have you ever heard it, Rob?
Have you gotten all the way through it?
Because I don't know if we can.
We've been together a long time.
I've gotten all the bits of it individually.
So you just have to assemble them now into, you know, cohesive form.
So you're in the elevator.
With this huge cart full of soda.
And the door closes.
And you cannot reach the buttons because of the cart full of soda.
I've seen video of people getting trapped.
They're wheeling something in to the elevator, and they get trapped far away from the button.
That is precisely what happened.
You have to wait for somebody to call the elevator to rescue you.
And the problem was, because I was pushing such a large cart, other people in the hotel, like random guests, were trying to use the elevator.
But they couldn't.
They couldn't get in.
You couldn't get out.
Because it was so old.
Wow.
Well, I see the issue here.
And then the convention director yelled at me because I hadn't taken the stuff upstairs.
How was the convention director yelling at you when you were trapped in an elevator and no one could find you?
He didn't know I was trapped in an elevator.
He was like, where have you been?
Why didn't you take the soda upstairs?
I was like, because I couldn't push the buttons.
Oh, this was afterwards.
But how did you get out is the question.
So eventually the elevator came back down to the floor where everybody was working.
And they said, where have you been?
And can we have the cart back?
And I said, I didn't get up to the suite because I was stuck.
Okay.
Wow.
And sorry, you're not being able to reach the phone did put me in mind of that story.
My apologies to everyone because someone did say I sounded choppier than the beginning.
And you were moving up and down the whole time?
And I was trying to contact anybody, but because I was in the elevator, my phone wasn't working.
Wasn't there a phone in the elevator?
No!
Oh, my God.
I guess you couldn't have reached that emergency button.
Also true, even if there were a phone, I couldn't have gotten to it.
Kyle's back.
And I just want to issue an official apology to Kyle for hitting the button.
I thought it was funny, but not nearly as funny as Gila's elevator story, which has had her in hysterics almost the entire time that you've been gone, Kyle.
So welcome back.
You are profoundly unserious people.
You're saying that like it's news.
Oh, Lord.
I made a drink, though.
Thank you for that.
No, Gila got stuck in an elevator and she couldn't get out.
It was like one of those videos where somebody wheels something in and they don't realize that they can't reach the buttons and nobody else can get in the elevator.
And yeah.
It's a whole thing.
It's a really killer story.
And thank you for the assist, Rob.
No, it was inspired by me not being able to reach the phone here when the phone was ringing.
And Gila was laughing like you could not believe it.
It's this button.
I know, but I can't reach it from here.
That sounds like a you problem.
It is a me problem.
It's a big me problem.
802-321-4225.
Wow, that was something.
I'll teach you how to hotwire it next time.
Okay.
You want this one?
Yeah, let's take this one.
Again, my sincere apologies for...
We'll talk later.
We went off the rails here.
All right.
We have a phone call.
Too much power.
What's in this drink?
I think we both need it.
Take a sip.
It's good.
All right.
Mine's probably poison.
802-321-4225.
Wait.
I'm not giving out the phone number as a caller.
Good evening.
You're on off the overtime.
Go ahead.
Hi.
Well, I called the number that you didn't give out, the 833 number.
Oh, why don't you give that number out for other people?
Again, 833-something.
I think it is 833-755-2600.
I think you're right.
I still have a working memory.
Holy crap.
That's a strong drink, Kyle.
A strong drink you made.
Yeah, it's so by Eski.
Polish vodka.
So, first, with a light-hearted note, you know, the issue of the foot fingerprints, that's
true, they use not exactly the toe print, but, you know, for an infant, for a birth certificate,
they use the footprint.
So, there is something that, you know, food for thought.
And also, on the same note, when you mentioned we don't have infinite time, it came to mind
the story of the 500 monkeys with unlimited time would come up with the complete works
of Shakespeare.
Apparently, that's been scientifically tested, and it's not true.
500 monkeys with unlimited time would not come up with...
All right.
Let me just stop you right there.
First of all, getting 500 monkeys together on anything is difficult.
Well, getting 500 typewriters is really difficult.
And what about the infinite time part?
How did they manage that?
Well, I don't know.
Somebody must have figured out the algorithm.
Simulated.
I read it on the BBC.
Yeah, it's like simulated.
And talking of other mediums, I, you know, I tend to listen to the five minutes of NPR headlines,
and I did so while I was waiting for you to come online.
And it sort of bled into a show that NPR was doing tonight.
It was a national call-in about, quote, changes in the civil service.
And apparently, the Trumpies are already asking people who are prospectively applying to federal jobs
who they voted for and what are their opinions on January 6th.
So, it gets weirder.
But if you recall, well, you probably don't.
But I called in right after the election, and I expressed my despair.
And, you know, I'm not despairing anymore, because it's obvious that we have to cope with this.
But we better get creative soon.
That's all I'm saying.
Oh, I think we're getting creative right now.
And I have no doubt that there's going to be some very interesting methods of resistance.
But, you know, one thing I can say that I think will help most people, just look at the difference.
Look at the people who aren't in power.
Look at the people who are in power.
Who is angrier?
Who seems to be about to burst a blood vessel?
You know, these people who are now running the country, they never seem to achieve happiness.
It's always something else, always more enemies, always more frustration, always more failure.
I see no reason that's going to change.
And I intend to enjoy that ride, at least.
Well, you know, the bad part is that they tend to thrive on making the rest of us miserable, though.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and that's, I think, where your power is.
Just remember, I mean, just with, like, money and these other perceived accoutrement of power, your power is what you feel, where you feel that.
I mean, it is what you make it.
It is what you value.
So people controlling your upset or your happiness, I think, because of this flood of things.
And that's something I'd said, or I've been hearing a bit about, is pace yourself.
Because this initial part, this flood of things, is meant to get reactions.
Even the Musk thing, I know it is what it is.
But there's a lot of stuff that I know from past experience in this, with these people running things,
that I think we've learned that it's not actually worth taking every bit of bait that's put out there, because that's all it is.
And the real thing is, I think, pacing yourself and understanding that having a sense of humor and not being upset by things that are designed to upset people, quote,
like you, is reclaiming power that they want to deprive you of by making you feel as though they are inevitable or their actions are just when they aren't.
And no one's countering it because the communication methods have been sabotaged or whatnot.
So that is something to remind yourself.
And, yeah, I think that it will take time for people to realize how to kind of navigate this kind of thing en masse.
But it is, by being, by not letting it get to you as much, and I think finding out how we can organize, it will emerge.
But people are still, this is meant to shock people.
A lot of the actions, a lot of the executive orders that were done yesterday or the day before, and all of that is designed to get a reaction.
I don't think reacting is good.
I think let it play out so that they get more upset because they don't, they're, as E said, not satisfied until they get pushback.
And that's exactly the kind of stuff, like people out in the streets, that's the kind of stuff where you get draconian reactions.
Because if you give them a reason to do these clampdowns and, you know, get, you know, tear gas and beanbags and rubber bullets and stuff, like, then you have a lot of injuries and they can recast it as, you know, all these terrible people that are reacting.
So don't react.
I mean, be water.
I agree with most of that, but I do think there are some things that we absolutely cannot ignore when people are being victimized, when, you know, it's immigrants or the trans community or anyone that is being targeted right now.
So, um, we, we, you know, obviously, absolutely in court or in the streets, we will react to that.
We will defend our fellow citizens.
Um, I think they know that.
And I think, you know, they need to realize the gravity of some of the crap they're trying to pull.
But, yes, Kyle's right as far as, um, uh, you know, keeping our sense of who we are, not letting it, um, uh, throw us off what we believe in, remaining happy because they hate that.
They really do.
And, um, I, I think through all of that, we'll find strength.
Yeah.
No, I'm totally on board with that.
And I am not miserable.
I am not, you know, you could hear me laughing at my, at my, uh, uh, earlier interjection.
Uh, I am having the time of my life, you know, just, just looking at this.
Bear witness.
But at the same time, at the same time, there are objective consequences, you know, not just for the people in federal service, but to tell you something stupid.
I have one of the old, old green cards that never expired.
And I've been a legal immigrant in this country for 40 something years.
And now I'm considering, you know, what will happen if I come back?
I want to, I want to go to somewhere hot, you know, in the tropics, this, this weather is really not to my liking and tickets are incredibly cheap.
You know, to go to Brazil right now, it's like less than $200 one way.
And I am thinking, should I take that chance and come back and being told, oh, this is an old green card and you need a new one or some crap like that, which aside from being, you know, incredibly, um, how can I say inconvenient to be euphemistic?
You know, if I, if I, if I, if I had to do that, uh, there is also a serious, uh, financial consequence because now the, the green cards that were, were made after 1986, uh, there was a special court settlement.
Uh, Emmanuel may remember this because I know he's up on the news and he was pensioned back then.
We are the same age and, um, you know, the, the, basically they had a huge case with the American civil liberty unions and other, um, libertarian associations.
And the, I, uh, it wasn't the IC, it was called the INS as it was then known, settled and said, okay, these green cards up to 1986, they will never expire.
Now, if you get a new green card, every 10 years, you have to give $1,500 to Uncle Sam just for the privilege of continuing to reside here.
Uh, if you didn't become an American citizen, which I don't particularly, especially at this time, uh, climber to be.
Yeah.
So, you know, um, while I am trying to keep a cheery outlook and, and use my brain as much as possible.
And by the way, Emmanuel, like you, I continue to use all kinds of operating system.
I was just, uh, uh, you might get a kick out of this.
I was playing pinball on Windows XP, which I think is the best, uh, that Microsoft ever came up with in terms of operating systems.
Uh, but, uh, you know, at the same time, I'm also considering the implications, both large and small.
Yeah.
In the lives of everybody.
There, there are actual practical consequences and you're absolutely right.
And I will, I will develop, I mean, I do speak from relative privilege as someone who is not worrying about green cards and 15, you know, whatever the cost is for, um, for that, or, or these sort of fast changing goal lines of like, okay, it's this, now it's that, and now it's this.
Believe me, I'm not here communicating and advocating the way I am because everything I'm talking about actually affects me.
Yeah.
It's a big secret, but really not.
I'll be fine.
Ostensibly for a lot of reasons that aren't really in my control, but they're systemic.
They are the structure of our society.
But I talk about it because I know other people are affected and I want to live in a world where the people that are affected by those things don't have to have as bad a time because that affects me.
Yeah.
That's selfish.
I know.
But I would like everyone to be okay so that when I'm out there, I'm not dealing with such aggrieved people that are suffering and we're all suffering in different ways.
And believe me, I have my own vulnerabilities and, and things that, that affect me personally and will in this, in this term, we're all going to find things that really get to us, but we have to communicate about it.
We have to find our strength and tell our stories and try to advocate for one another and, and solve these things piece by piece.
Cause you're absolutely right.
There are practical consequences.
To your credit, Kyle, you, you, you don't care about people just because it makes you feel bad when they're hurting.
You do genuinely care about people.
Well, let's just say people that are, that are high EQ are just as capable of, of psychopathy, but you're choosing not to be a crazy, you must be in empathy, be understanding.
And I, I am very empathetic and I'm, but I am, I'm just admitting that there is a sliver of selfishness because I benefit from a society where people aren't drowning in, in, in all of these consequences.
Well, we all do.
We all do.
Absolutely.
And I, it's the greater good.
It's however you want to characterize it.
Let me just ask the caller, uh, regarding this, this permanent green card, I just did a little looking up of things here.
Do you happen to know the, the number that's on your card?
Does it say I dash one 51 or I dash five 51?
Do you know that?
I don't know it offhand, but you mean the, the, the name of the form, in other words, because, uh, it's the actual number to the name, which means alien.
I am officially an alien.
According, according to, um, a site I'm looking at, if you're holding a card that says I dash one five one or form I dash one five one in small print, uh, you have an invalid card.
But in 1977, the I one 51 was discontinued.
They replaced it with the I five 51 and, um, form I one five one form I five five one are simply the government's internal name for green card for green cards.
And, um, so you need the five five one.
So if you don't have that, uh, there's, there's definitely an issue.
But, you know, those, those are the ones that up to 1985 or 86 were issued and, you know, it's permanent resident and those never expired.
I mean, that's the definition is still the same.
You are a permanent resident, but every 10 years you have to, uh, get a new one, essentially.
And give $1,500 to the government and we'll send you a new one.
Um, this is for the ones that were issued after 1985 or 86, whenever the settlement, uh, was, was done.
And, you know, speaking to what Kyle said, yes, empathy is great.
And by the way, in my view, is a sign of high intelligence, meaning the IQ tests don't test for empathy.
But I don't think that having a billion dollars or several hundred billions will make up for having a functioning society where people are not suspicious of everybody, are not ready to rob you when they see that you have real money.
Uh, how much is that worth?
Yeah, I, I, my, what I go to when I think about this is, does having a lot of money make you smart?
If you can answer that, depending on how you answer that, it tells me a lot about you.
I think it makes people believe you're smart.
I don't think it makes you smart at all.
Exactly.
Yeah.
It makes you maybe, you know, feel like you're lucky or something.
Let me reframe it.
Yeah.
There are a lot of really stupid people with money.
Mm-hmm.
I agree.
I know.
And also, to make money is really not that hard, especially today.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying that if you don't have money, you're stupid.
Okay.
But I mean, if you're stupid, you still can make a lot of money, which, you know, a lot of people are doing today.
And that, to me, is not a sign of high achievement.
You need as much as you need to keep your brain working and to do the things that make you happy.
That, to me, is the highest value.
And how much money do I have?
And I don't look up to people who have made a lot of money by whatever means.
Exactly.
So step outside of economics, though.
Let's step outside of that.
And then, okay, so what is power?
Because people with money are equating it with power.
And that inherently is an individual concept.
Like, what do you think of as power?
A lot of leftists might say it's people.
It's collective action, right?
That's power, right?
So our concepts of power differ.
And people who think that money is the ultimate power.
What I just said, that is, I don't need a lot of money, and I don't need a lot of power.
The only power I need is the illusion that I have some power over my own destiny, and I, to certain, in certain measures, I can do what I want.
Things that make me happy, and possibly give back to the community, make other people feel happy.
And that, to me, is my power that I'm interested in.
I'm not interested in having absolute power over anybody.
And as Emmanuel implied, that's a lot of work, you know, to make, for these people who are constantly angry because they want to control things, that's not the way I want to live.
And I don't think the people I want to talk to either see money as a big achievement or power as a big achievement.
I mean, there are a lot of people that, if you have a lot of money, will look up to you.
That's why Trump got, so to say, elected.
And that, to me, is not a value.
When I arrived in this country almost a half a century ago, I looked at this guy who was building this horrible so-called tower on 56th, and I said, this is not somebody.
Why is he in the papers?
Why are people looking up to this guy?
He's scum.
And I still think he is.
You know, in my view, and if there was a judiciary that is working, this guy is the only criminal who appointed the judges who are judging him.
And he's a traitor, and he should be punished as a traitor.
I don't care what he says about the January 6th people.
They should still be behind bars.
One that was graced or pardoned or whatever said, do not pardon me because what I did is wrong.
Yeah, one person said that.
That one person said that.
I was very impressed, actually.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And, of course, you know, on the trolls that people call social media, anti-social media, in my view, are already calling her, you know, the eye plant or whatever.
But regardless, you cannot, you can try to change history, and history is written by the winners, they say.
Well, who is the winner?
Only time can tell, in my view.
And we have plenty of time.
We have plenty of time, and we're going to be okay as long as we don't give up on each other.
Thank you so much for that call.
That's going to have to be the last word for tonight.
As you can see, we are not shy about discussing these things.
And we have so much to talk about.
Yeah, my phrase about emotional quotient is, and it's a way I think about it, is that people with high EQ are just as capable of psychopathy as those without.
And that will be the last word.
All right.
So, final words, guys, on Skypeland?
Just thanks for everyone for bearing with us, both on the big national stage and also in the YouTube feed today.
Yes.
And it might be kind of late for people who have listened to the whole thing on YouTube, but there's a much better copy that will be on 2600.com in the off-the-hook section.
So, listen to Overtime there.
That's what you should always do because we make sure it sounds as good as possible there.
We will be back next week, 7 p.m. on WBAI, 8 p.m. on Overtime.
And, oh, new issue of 2600 is officially hitting the stands tomorrow.
Some people have already gotten it.
Yeah, that cover.
Boy, that cover is really going to – yeah, don't give it away.
Don't give anything away.
Yeah, I won't, but there has been such a response we've seen on Mastodon about this.
And, yeah, there is much love for this cover.
Well, that's not going to last because when the right people see it, the love is going to vanish pretty quickly.
But I won't say any more.
I won't say any more.
But you will be able to get a shirt of it as well.
So, yeah, that will be up on our store tomorrow, the winter issue of 2600.
And also, right now, tickets to Hope taking place in August.
They are on sale as well.
Please, if you're able to come, please buy a ticket now so that we can invest in more things for the conference.
If you can't make it but you want to support the conference, we have virtual tickets as well.
So, please look on our store.2600.com site for all that.
All right, that's going to do it for us here tonight.
Thank you, everybody, for listening.
Write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com.
We will see you next week.
Good night.
Good night.