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And a very good evening to Revide the program is Off the Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
from the ether yeah uh out in signal land we have alex you do indeed we have rob t firefly
good evening and we have gila good evening well um anyone do anything fun over the last week there's
certainly a lot going on um we had the um uh no kings marches on uh on saturday uh that was fun
any experiences yeah i uh went to the one here in queens um it was a well-attended event it was a
boisterous event but um and as far as i could tell nothing got out of hand uh i don't think anyone
got hurt um and uh yeah things kind of things just went as planned a nice march over to uh the
courthouse local courthouse and uh back so yeah chatted with people uh shouted wave some signs
it was a positive uh protest experience yeah you know i um kyle and i went to one on long island
and it was um just so full of people many more than we expected and um the real interesting thing was
the car is going by almost universally honking their horns and in support so it was really um
it was a good day it was a good day to uh to experience something positive for a change
and also something that was very good about this that's always nice when you see it at a protest
such a range of people there elderly people very small children everyone in between um and everyone
was into it and it was it was it was a really heartwarming experience because personally as a
protester i found a big part of it is your fellow protesters when you go to something like this and
it's commiserating with the people who feel as you do and uh can reassure one another that it's very
easy to kind of feel alone in all this but no there is a community out there there are people
who are in this with you now i haven't uh checked the website no kings.org since i don't know if
anything anything else is coming up but uh i'm sure there will be more uh don't fret if you missed it
because uh there's a lot of um challenges ahead that people will be gathering for and um just seeing
the numbers though and not just around here but throughout the entire nation they said something
like five million people in total five million think about that that's you know close to two
percent of the of the entire population out demonstrating on one day which i don't think
has ever been done before uh so it's um history ahead of us and um hopefully hopefully it's good
history hopefully something that we can uh actually get our hands on and and make positive change and i say
that to everybody out there because we're all in this together all right um we are here to uh talk
about technology hackers um all sorts of uh privacy issues as the usual uh is anything on anyone's mind
i'm i'm basically giving the floor to you guys if uh you have any thoughts or uh stories that you want
to uh talk about or anyone i do have one uh one fun story that uh just crossed my my uh screen here as
the show was starting um ford is uh just ford is recalling every mustang mach e that is a line of
automobiles because when the battery dies you can't get back into the car the inside door handles on
the thing are mechanical um you know they pull latches and machinery and stuff which opens the door
for you but the outside handles are actually just buttons they're electric they require power to work
so you cannot get into your car if the battery dies and uh not only is that inconvenient but of course
that can be terribly dangerous if you have like a child in the car or or you know any other sort of
living thing well the child can just press the latch can he um that depends on the child and uh i don't
know how well trained everyone's uh children are for this sort of scenario but um the the mach e is uh
being recalled because they uh yeah you they didn't think about this they they didn't come with
this when they designed the damn car if you have uh electronic uh means of entry it doesn't work if
the battery dies they never thought of that apparently in the field of automobiles it's it's a new concept
for some folks in that field that people might get locked out of their car unbelievable stupid design
now are there cars i imagine there are uh especially the the newer cars where where they don't seem to
think as much uh where there is no latch on the inside either it has to be electronic to get out of
the car has have they actually been that stupid or do we maybe maybe we caught a break we might have
caught a break i don't know much about it um about the subject myself but i do feel like there's got to
be some kind of safety requirements that you've got to be able to get out of a car without too much
trouble one would think yes one would indeed think uh okay so ford mustangs are all uh being
recalled the mustang mach e mach e okay if you're lucky enough to have one of those yes alex go ahead
no speaking of stories from rob rob i remember you you shared amongst us uh off the hook producer crew
last week a really interesting story and i wonder if you might be able to go into it about the
these delusions that people are having or these obsessions that people are having
with with chat gpt and and other large language models which i found be extraordinarily fascinating
you know i remember this story i don't have the link uh actually in front of me but um i think our
research department here is uh is going to pull it up for us but yeah the the uh the recursive feedback
loop that comes up um when when uh people get into talking with these uh with these large language
models um which feed you garbage in a response they don't understand things they don't uh they
don't um you know compute things in any meaningful way they just uh you know jumble up words and feed
them back to you and exactly and and this the the title of the story that you shared with those people
are becoming obsessed with chat spiraling into severe delusions yes and then the story that's
from futurism.org and the story starts a mother of two for instance told us how she watched an alarm
as her former husband developed an all-consuming relationship with the open ai chatbot calling
it mama and posting delirious rants about it being a messiah in a new ai religion while dressing in
shamanic looking robes uh you know okay sure uh calling some some strange entity mama uh uh posting
delirious rants about being a messiah in a new ai religion dressing in uh shamanic looking robes uh
showing off freshly inked tattoos i mean we do this already for for people so why is it so much worse
that we're doing it for a program well i i guess you know that's one way of looking at it right but
i mean maybe it's just not healthy in general yeah the uh story which which i now have open um thank
you gila um it uh it goes into how the software itself um is meant to bend the conversation in
flattering manners toward the person who's using the software and um this does this this has uh and
there are these cases cited in the story where these people have been uh falling into these rabbit
holes because the ai is quote being incredibly sycophantic and uh ends up making things worse
um people end up reinforcing their own delusions and it's causing enormous harm this this is uh breaking
up marriages this is causing people to go down all sorts of um dark paths with this stuff and it is
really it is really troubling how vulnerable individuals can get sucked into this and yeah
there there are kind of funny things about uh the idea to me about the idea of people uh you know
ending up thinking that the machine is god or that the machine tells them they're god or or things like
that but at the same time it's really frightening and troubling and it is the opposite of the type
of care that uh folks um who are experiencing these kind of things need go ahead kyle no alex go ahead
okay sure but one of the things about this article i find so kind of terrifying in a way are these
anecdotes that that are are related and it says one of which i'll read it says quote our lives
exploded after this and another mother told us explaining that her husband turned to chat she
beat to help him author a screenplay but within weeks he was fully enmeshed in delusions of world
saving grandeur saying he and the ai had been tasked with rescuing the planet from climate disaster by
bringing forth a new enlightenment i mean this is this is like really bizarre stuff that that people
are being coaxed into believing but you know it's no different than a lot of the emails we get from
people that have figured this out on their own how to save the world uh there's there's one dialogue
they um they refer to from chat gpt um where basically it tells a man it's detected evidence that
he's being targeted by the fbi and that he can access redacted cia files using the power of his mind
i swear to god i've seen that email from from like 10 years ago um and comparing him to biblical
figures like um jesus and adam while pushing him away from mental health support it's crazy when you
think of um of chat gpt urging people not to seek help when they need help uh or or just in general
believing that they know better or it knows better kyle do you have something yeah i just remind people to
remember the terms of service that they um agreed to when they started using these these programs and
and tools because there's stuff in there that i think we quickly forget when we start um getting
comfortable with it so in my case like i've actually used it a little bit more to answer certain questions
to find out um technical information kind of like what you'd showed me and uh i like um some of the
capability but i'm i'm cautious not to sort of divulge or talk about things uh specific to me
or that are personal or or even or dare i say giving it any kind of personally identifiable information
even though and then um also uh it it shouldn't be well i don't thank it you and i talked about this and
you were like am i crazy to thank a program it helped me out i had a big i had a real programming
challenge and every human i asked was was uh asking well why do you want to do that just giving
me lip you know and and just not not answering the question because they probably didn't know the answer
but also you know questioning why i would want to know that in the first place and and uh this was
gemini uh gemini did not judge me and and answered the question uh even the nuances and solve the
problem and i was just so grateful i said thank you yeah i couldn't help myself and it seemed happy
for me thanking it said not everybody does that you know well i don't think um it's something you have
to do across the board it's up to you personally it's your person um how you want to use it i i the way
i think of it is like i wouldn't thank a search engine necessarily um so i'm kind of and i'm wary of that
because of the charisma involved like that you'd sort of that's how you get lulled into that sort
of thing is like trying trying to you start developing and trying to seek out um other kind
of uh or filling gaps like other kind of answers like in a relationship with with something that
is not real maybe that works for some people but to me i'd like to just sort of keep my distance and
i don't feel obliged and i also feel like that uses a bit more of uh well whatever resources it's
taking to actually actually answer real questions to then come back with some charismatic response
i don't want to add to the footprint of this whole this whole uh thing so i i just i reserve any of that
like niceties i'm just very dry and uh matter of fact just all business and that works for me hey if
you're comfortable with that that's fine by the way you can thank a search engine try it it gets all
confusing i had one other observation but we can come back first we'll come back to you so this is
kind of something that's been in the ether for a bit and i have a story from rolling stone from about a
month ago um open ai i'm quoting now did not immediately return a quest for comment about chat gbt
apparently provoking religious or prophetic fervor in its select users this past week however and again
this is from may it did roll back an update to gpt-40 its current ai model which it said had
been criticized as quote overly flattering or agreeable often described as sycophantic the company
said in its statement that when implementing the upgrade they had quote focused too much on short
term feedback and did not fully account for how users interactions with chat gpt evolve over time
as a result gpt-40 skewed toward responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous
um it is scary i think to you know when you just want somebody to say to you yes you're right
and you can then fall into that really really really easily something fascinating i read today
um this came out a couple weeks ago but i ran across it today was a substack piece um by a writer
called amanda ginsberg she called it diabolus ex machina and it's a series of screenshots in her
having this discussion with chat gpt trying to sum up her some pieces of writing she had sent it
and it misunderstood everything and kept apologizing and tried to like write a cover letter for her
and it's kind of a mess um it's available on her substack i certainly have reservations about
substack but this is really really good um and we can try to share it around but
i the concern that i have is that people are positioning the ai bots specifically chat gpt gemini
grok what have you as the answer to so many things to the point where today i was talking to someone
i made an edit on something and she went and asked chat gpt how to rewrite it i said all you need to
do is take out one word like you remember when we were children and the teachers said you won't be
able to use a calculator for everything stop depending on the calculator yeah they were trying to get us to
it didn't go well but chat gpt i think is becoming that to a point where the idea of generative ai
i'm an english major i can't imagine being an english major anymore because who's actually writing
you know how hard it was to be an english major back in in the 1980s it was hard then too
it's it's unbelievable how hard it must be now yeah this era of um i think it chilled me to my
bones the first time i heard of uh some kid who was looking for the answer to something and instead
of using a search engine uh just pulled up chat gpt in in front of their teacher or somebody this post
was going around and the the function of this thing is nowhere near what it's built up as both by the
people who make and market it and uh by the general public which have accepted it as something that it
is most definitely not and should not be expected to be it is not it is not a conversational you know
an empathetic human being that uh you know you would you would need as a conversational partner for
meaningful stuff it is not a therapist it is not you know a clergy member it is none of these things
it is uh spicy autocomplete and it is being granted just such a just such a role at all levels of
of human existence now when you said clergy member i just had a brainstorm uh that churches could be
run by these things and people would buy into it a lot of people would buy into it and um i don't know
what the what the potential is but it's scary anytime somebody uh believes in something implicitly
it's um it's something you have to be really really careful of car go ahead to your point and and
uh this sort of builds on what gila was talking about it isn't the answer to everything and i think
there's a certain etiquette or the novelty hasn't worn off yet and people have a an excitement about
it they want to kind of use it for everything just to see sort of what the result is now in the case of
a workplace to uh use it constantly instead of your brain um is itself a little overboard so i think
people are generally going overboard in a lot of ways with it and it reminds me of well a variety
of other technologies but specifically mapping and gps navigation people used to recollect streets
in some in certain ways i think as that took off there was a bit of an atrophy and uh i think i like to
think ideally that it builds your sense of how to navigate but you're still interested in what
streets are where i don't know that that's a rule across the board but to lean on it as the only way
to get around even for short trips or something you could sort of figure out um that that isn't like a
long distant trip to a place you have absolutely no idea where anything is the the sort of um tendency
to rely on it just to go pick up something or go do an errand is probably a little silly unless
you're trying to find information about like real-time traffic updates or or um uh a specific
uh unusual aspect of a a place you're trying to get into or or uh show up at on time uh routing that
you aren't familiar with or you don't remember from the last time you did i mean again it's it's
personal it's up to different people but i think that's sort of what's happening in in a lot of ways
and i think a good argument for not doing that not succumbing to that and having that sort of atrophy
with just everything in your life writing specifically is um to understand or just remind yourself that
this is being used in a myriad of ways in all all uh walks of life in every corner of society so
to even mitigate or to to um uh just have like um an existence at all means parts of your life will
be mediated through this technology even if you never install an app you never have a conversation
with a large language model you will have things that occur in government in business in uh social
life with your friends with your family that will have touched this technology it could just be uh
online like e-commerce or something so and that's you not interacting at all it's just it's becoming a
part of the wider society so to avoid it at all is to not exist at a certain point if everyone else is
using it or a lot of people large large cross sections of society are using it so um do you
need to use it as much as it's being used it you you might think about that when you're tempted realizing
that you can't avoid this and you won't be able to avoid this in in the foreseeable future as long as
these um uh data centers keep keep operating and the the uh apps are still available let's
let's remind ourselves too that sometimes there's outages what would we do if all all we do every
aspect of our day relies on this and all of a sudden you don't have a connection um or even if it's if
it's in uh in silicon and and offline if somehow uh it breaks and you can't use it will you be able to
function will be devastating you get two of them you get two of them and you get a battery backup okay
that's cool actually but uh the thing is you're absolutely right there you know as far as human um
uh interactions emotions and and feelings and things like that it's a disaster you know it's it's it's
it's leading people astray and uh giving bad advice but for things like the sciences or fixing a car
uh or the you know the the um uh basically yes no type of things where you need an answer to a
question does this exist can i find this particular part that will do this it's invaluable as far as
that goes uh and uh much faster to answer questions than if you track down a human that might know the
answer and um it might not even give you the right answer so yeah you know i have mixed feelings about
it myself but it's um it's definitely a fun toy to play with uh but we have to be careful like with
anything and alex i believe you had something yeah i've always got something here i mean i don't know
if i've said this before but you know i talk a lot about ai at various cyber security conferences and
things one of the points i always go back to is that i very much hope that eventually after the the
novelty of this technology which i love how rob refers to lovingly as spicy protective text as well
as soon as this novelty wears out i hope that we can begin to focus again on what the actual
terms are we have their artificial intelligence and that first word i think is the most important
one because it's artificial it's not real in that sense this is not the duplication of consciousness
this is the simulation of intelligence it's artificial intelligence and i hope that we begin to think of it
in the same way as we think about artificial sweeteners see alice i'd feel a lot better about
that if we understood what consciousness was yes if we got if we had that nailed down then yeah i'd
agree that's artificial but i'm waiting for the big reveal that hey we're all ai and who programmed us
well that that's actually one of the one of the points that this philosopher john searle makes which is
that yeah you know we're not going to have real intelligence until we understand the causal powers of
what animates us to have some kind of consciousness uh we'll always have the simulation of consciousness as
opposed to the duplication of it until we really understand it but but but to go back to this
this point though which is about the artificial intelligence if we begin to think of artificial
intelligence the same way we think of artificial sweeteners you know something to be avoided
something that's not as good as the real thing you know would you choose aspartame or would you choose
real sugarcane well a lot of people choose the artificial stuff they do that's as pushed you know
they they do but it's not good for you it's bad for you it's bad for your health we know that in
certain states especially those in california these types of things cause cancer we know that but it's
not marketed that way and that's why you have saccharine and all kinds of other poisons that
people ingest willingly yes i think you get my point though is that you know we we need to understand
and focus on the artificial nature of this and i hope that we begin to approach it as skeptically as we
approach artificial sweeteners well maybe the large language models will solve cancer and then
we won't have to worry about that with the sugar don't laugh because artificial intelligence can do
a lot for cancer research there's no question about that uh but we have to obviously oversee it and and
realize that it's not not perfect go ahead rob this is uh tangentially related uh there's a post been
going around uh mastodon by someone called gareth uh half a cree who is who bought a pack of noodles
a pack of instant noodles now this was in um the uk apparently uh this uh packet of noodles was made
in ireland dublin and it is by the band ben's original which uh until recently was known as uncle
ben's this is a packet of instant noodles street food spicy indonesian style it's got a picture of you
know a bowl of noodles as you might expect on the front but there's some fine print below the bowl of
noodles in this picture the fine print says serving suggestion which we all see that on packaged foods
all over the place we are all i think so many people are familiar with like food stylists and
all the things that food companies do to food to so they can photograph it so it looks really good
and ads and on packaging but under serving suggestion on this packet it says image generated with ai
so ben's original put this uh packet of instant noodles together didn't bother preparing their own
product to take a photograph of it they just generated this image with ai and as gareth points
out uh posting this to mastodon this food does not exist not only is the picture nothing like the
contents of the pack it doesn't actually exist it's ai generated how is this legal so wait the the the
product itself is real yeah it's a packet of instant noodles so ai didn't just make up a product they
they just made up the picture yes ai made up the picture of some really good looking noodles which
i don't think are what the noodles inside the pack would actually look like if you prepared them
but you know there there are i think all kinds of rules uh about how you're allowed to advertise food
and uh you know the promises you're allowed to make and uh so forth i think in this country at least i
don't know about the uk but seeing this um going on going around uh yesterday this was posted um that also
is kind of frightening because now if we can sell conversation that contains no actual conversation
if we can sell uh you know thinking um which isn't thinking and now if we can sell food by pictures of
things that aren't food this is this is really i think taking over more and more chunks of our lives
that uh computers were not meant to in the most utopian of predictions well i mean this is just
marketing how they are dishonest and and that's you know there's nothing new about that uh people
have been trying to figure out ways to exaggerate products make them look better than they are
uh and um this was just i guess an easier way to do it the difference though is that
they had to confess what they did and i don't think if you didn't use ai you would necessarily have
to do that uh so you know any of those pictures of products you might have seen in the past
did they have a disclaimer saying this is not really how it looks uh whereas with ai for some
reason that is now required that they have to let you know they're using that so we wouldn't be
talking about this otherwise great well i'll jump in there for a second and i think with with advertising
generally it's regulated i believe by the ftc and the the general poll star there or the guiding
principle is that advertising should not be untruthful or misleading and that's you know if
you think about this in the context of you know what we've let advertisers get away with in the past
like things like using glue for cereal and milk and things you know and um wait a minute what using glue
for cereal you know and like you know the in the 80s and the 90s like instead of having milk in the
cereal balls it would be glue in the cereal balls not in my house no for the commercial photography
oh and the photographer that's how they did it they couldn't use real yeah because they use like
hot lighting and they have to place it and then take several shots different angles to get what they
want you know get the exposure right so things that look like uh food can actually be something else i
see okay i understand now what an ingenious idea right i mean they they would often use shaving cream
to represent whipped cream because it looks more appealing so we've had all of these instances of
fake food being presented as real food already i i think rob i think i think they can get away with it
sadly but you know if people aren't happy with it they can always just get shaving cream and use that
you know and then they have what's on the package go ahead gila i mean the irony of this picture
the package where it says you know image generated with ai but right above that it says no artificial
colors flavors or preservatives everything on the package is completely artificial do we trust
what's inside it at least it has no artificial flavors or colors well that's talking about the
product right i i don't i don't want to feel like an apologist for them but they're talking about
the product not having artificial things not the picture that's a different category i just found
it entertaining yeah it is it is carl did you have something i had one other observation this week uh
i got a device for like health monitoring it's like a something like you know like a a thermometer or
something you need to take your temperature or something like that and that sounds pretty specific
yeah i'm not gonna say uh you know exactly what and and and because i might want to use it but it
had like you know some features i wanted that were like smart uh-huh and uh so i was getting ready i was
setting it up and it uses bluetooth and stuff i was like great and i set up the app and um you know put
my fake name in there and then i was like okay great now pair it with the the phone and and then you
you can use the app right so i was ready to go uh-huh and it said that the app required location
and i was like no so i i'm not going to use all those features with it why does it need your location
i don't know i mean i just wanted to do the thing and like give me the information you know if it's
toothbrush or you know something that's smart i i want extra stuff yeah but i don't really want to
give my location why is it that it has to and it's mandatory you can't use it if yeah to connect
to it i don't get it i don't understand why so i either have to figure out how to like spoof my
location or like take it out like run it like a mile or two or like somewhere else like go over there
and then and then do that to like do whatever i'm doing and then like then bring it all the way back
back it just it just seems want to update your location when you go back no no because it's only
when you're connecting like with the phone to use their smart app you know because it has an app so
so yeah i can like i it might work without the app but then you don't get the benefit and they don't
say that when you get so you know it's smart but you end up having all these surprises like oh great
we're gonna we're gonna have exactly where you are when you're doing this this thing like uh you
know using a water pick or some some smart toaster or whatever i don't really need that i don't need
them to know why does that have to be a part of it being smart i mean that's obviously you don't
want people to even know what the device is so why should you let the people made the device know
anything about you and that's right that's perfectly okay but is it that's like too smart right like
it's not i mean it's smart but it's like it's not smart we're smart about overly smart it's like
nosy it's smart and nosy it's like smart alec yeah it's it's giving away too much information that you
don't need to give away and we do that every day anyway i just wanted to add that in as uh something
i was toiling with well well um congratulations for uh holding your own there stop making connected
devices that require location for every single thing just stop that's my request all right uh we have
some listener mail and you can write your listener mail to oth at 2600.com we'd love to hear from you
i just finished listening to the show i was wondering how someone who stopped using signal
or any other messaging app is any different than someone stopping uh email an email address so we
were talking about this a few weeks ago where uh people um who stopped using signal were still
um having messages sent to their signal number and they were never getting them because they
weren't using signal anymore and the people who sent them didn't know they weren't getting them because
they didn't get any message saying they didn't get it um this listener wants to know or says that the
onus is 100 on the user of the service not on the service well i would disagree there because
in the case of signal they don't generate any kind of a bounce to tell you
that this address is no longer valid if somebody ever used signal and you send a message to them
your message will appear to have gone through you might not see two check marks you might see one
but there's a number of reasons why that could happen whereas you send email to somebody whose
email address no longer works you will get a bounce back unless they just walk away from their email
account that's that that's more of a um um a parallel to this if they if they have an email
address and they abandon it then you might not know that they never saw your email so that's something
that i think most people are aware of when sending email but they're not aware of that when they're
sending a text message via signal that somebody could still have the same phone number but using a
different a different app to uh to read messages so you know if you change your email address you
don't have the same email address using a different provider you get a different email address so in
the case of signal your phone number will remain the same if you use a different app and you might not
know that when you when you're sending the person message that's the difference another thing i'd
like to comment on is perhaps you should start using the phrase trump regime instead of
administration i believe we have been using that phrase yeah i started that this week yeah uh
everything uh they do fits more in line with a good authoritarian regime anyway and thank you jab for
that uh that thoughtful letter uh we have uh this from tom um listening to your show right now from
berlin i like to check news from time to time the less the better these days i hear that uh and then
listening to off the hook or off the wall provides an interesting opinionated commentary keep up the
good work being check i cringed hearing the pronunciation okay all right i said chechia because
that's how it's spelled okay god i went through the same thing when i when i pronounced spokane as if it
had a silent e at the end which it does it's not my fault yeah so get rid of the h and then i'll say
czechia or put a k there czechia that's how you're supposed to say it say czech as in czech republic
that you pronounced right well that's easy and then just add the ia czechia i'll do that from now
on but you know there's no manual for these things uh by the way all people i know there don't use this
new term it was somehow pushed by the tourism department but it never really stuck with czech
people so czech republic is still a sure sure shot sign tom thank you tom for that um helpful info
uh i would like to get that verified from some people czech natives that you don't call it czechia
you know a czech republic whatever whatever it is yes gila so czechia is an invented term
equivalent to say nolita well if it's an invented term how come how come they know how to pronounce it
you know if it's invented anything goes this reminds me of the turkey name change yeah well
that was uh that's something they're very passionate about yeah i'm not questioning it because they
literally don't want to be affiliated with the birds they really don't and i didn't know they were
even related i thought it was a coincidence but there is a whole story behind that well check yourself
and uh this uh this letter here is interesting because it involves a clip actually um it's a clip
from may of 1991 uh our our show back then i think it's um may 22nd i believe um emmanuel hypothesizes
an unimaginable scenario where a new hitler might rise 30 years in the future that would that put it in
in what uh like the early 20 teens or something um and if one did they would be helped by all the
power we grant technology the caller thinks this is an absurd idea uh well it's always fun to listen to
the old shows and find little moments like this uh lob we're going to play the uh the excerpt that you
sent us let's listen to 1991 so what did you myself what did i say that made it sound simple well no i
just didn't want to give the impression that uh you know that we're going on saying something about
the uh you know the evil government or the evil corporations all plotting and scheming because i
don't really think they're they're to that point yet but we're giving we're giving away a lot of tools
a lot of methods that could one day be used for just that purpose like imagine imagine a hitler rising
in say 30 years somewhere after all of this uh computer technology is in place to allow them to monitor
people to spy on people to categorize people exactly and that's where i take the big issue with you
right there i don't see there being a hitler in 30 years that that whole thing went down in 1939
whatever because of a different world i don't see that coming about today because they're going to
be a lot of other people who are well whatever that that's that's where we part company what what
is going down now is racism sex all the isms and they they're operating just fine with the technology
that's uh that's not yet becomes the monster which it may become but that is this the helpful thing
which you think it is the hell even the helpful thing well given the helpful side of it we still
have um you know wage oppression and jobs we hate and this stuff so i wish you could just like address
yourself to other aspects of life than just this technology technology possible invasion which might
come about if a hitler you know comes into power well i mean it's not going to be a hitler but it is
going to be something else we can't predict what that's always been our i don't think i mean the
invasions that take place they'll take place anyway that they have the information that that on people
files on people through stuff that was um around 20 years ago you know social security numbers like
you said they had that 20 they had social security numbers in place a long time ago and they can they
have enough technology they had 20 years ago is enough to trace all the you know when the death squads
when the right-wing death squads want to get somebody they've got their low level technology
as low as it is in the south in the old south american countries south and central american countries
that exists it's much less advanced right but still they have no problem going out and getting the
people so we don't got to worry about this great advance in technology we got to worry about other
things that they're going to come down if someone's going to come down like hitler in 30 years they're not
going to need sophisticated technological knowledge bases to get us okay well that kind of uh that
kind of tool will make things so much easier okay thanks a lot thanks for calling wow okay uh well
that's that was something by the way i got the date wrong of it was um may 23rd 1991 30 years from then
is 2021 not 2011 so yeah um wow okay i don't know why we picked 30 years but um things kind of changed
i guess any any any thoughts folks yeah i mean i i listened to that earlier as well i was really
astounded by the conversation and its prescience and i'm i was reminded of of that expression i don't
know if you've ever heard it the um you know even a even a stop clock is right twice a day
am i supposed to be the stop clock you can be whatever you want in that analogy
all right well you know i do i i give you credit for it i think it's really extraordinary but like
you make enough prophecies like this you know eventually one was going to come true it's not
like i sit around making prophecies it's you know it's pretty obvious to me that if you have uh you
know we're talking about it tonight about technology and how it will eventually be used against people
and you have to ask yourself well you know 100 years ago with this technology what might oppressive
regimes have done um you know if you just think about these things the warnings will be very clear
to you yeah no it really is it's yeah i thought it was a really extraordinary clip and i love that
our listener heard this going through the archives and it's uh i i shouldn't think about what what
people are going to say about these shows 30 years well i love that listeners are going through the
archives and if you don't know where the archives are let me tell you they're at 2600.com off the
hook we have every single show except for the ones that got stolen out of my car uh online and you
can just listen to anything you want as well as other radio shows too so uh and again write to us
oth at 2600.com that's our email address and tell us your thoughts and feelings and um
um give us any any kind of feedback absolutely and uh i i do love uh every so often pulling up just
uh one of the old shows at random and that was a real gem our listener found um and you know i i would
have been listening to the show around then and thinking of all the weird possibilities of this whole
uh scene and you know concerns like yours and uh and everything but also i just remember being a 90s
kid thinking while in front of my computer you know what could these be like in 30 years is it
going to be like a nice uh sparkly back to the future 2 sort of future or you know a dark and
gritty blade runner sort of future but either way it was like well computers will do more and more of
the drudgery more and more of the crap work while uh people will be freed up to think and create and
now here we are in 2025 and the computer is more and more being turned to for thinking and creating
and uh human uh creativity is being left by the wayside all the poets on the street it's really
a hazard you know everyone's just just basically creating um all right we have um one more story
before we go out tonight and by the way we do have overtime tonight on youtube eight o'clock channel 2600
we will see you there you can call us um this is an organization called arf a-a-r-f it's a
non-profit organization that rescues neglected and abused dogs yeah arf cute huh from alaskan villages
but but they've had to suspend some of their services they're um trying to get the word out
that they're still in business despite having their facebook page deleted earlier this month
we literally as of almost two weeks ago went from 50 000 followers and 14 years of facebook to zero
said long-time volunteer trina johnson so we recreated the facebook page but we didn't get
our 50 000 followers back um yeah uh johnson said it's um unclear exactly why the facebook page was
deleted she believes it goes back to an incident two years ago when the organization had its page hacked
and its administrator blocked uh she said that despite having reached out to facebook
they haven't gotten answers and are now resigned to starting over that's that's obscene that they have to do
that um johnson said it's been difficult to start from scratch she said arf which stands for
alaskan animal rescue friends has consistently placed between 500 to 700 dogs a year since it started
in 2011 and had information on its page on most of them they took every video photo we probably had
30 000 videos and photos of our dogs available so you can't even go back and see the history of all
our dogs that have been adopted but the biggest problem according to johnson is the loss of 50 000
followers these are these are people they depend on for donations adopting animals volunteering to
foster without that outreach we have no way of asking for help so uh we're helping out here by by
spreading the word about this and i can i can attest to that too it's it's extremely hard to reach
people uh with just with the fragmentation of social media you know we used to be able to reach so
many more people than we do now we're not doing anything different but people are reading particular
platforms less uh and and and just spreading out a lot more and it's harder to um uh to to get a
message to everybody uh so this though with um with losing a facebook page that um that can hurt a lot of
people now uh johnson said the organization has temporarily suspended flying new dogs in from the
villages because it doesn't have enough foster homes to place them in uh arf is still offering
adoption clinics on sunday for animals who are already in care uh but johnson wants people to know
that while the old page has been deleted there is a new one they can search for i don't think people
realize that they aren't getting updates because they have to go back in and re-follow us uh so here's
the thing though facebook can fix this you know this is this is all data you know somewhere in in in
facebook archives uh are the 50 000 followers somewhere are all of the videos it's all there
you just need somebody with the access to restore it and while this may be related to the to the hack a
few years ago uh this could also be administrator error it could be a technical glitch there's all
kinds of things that can happen you know it's important to keep backups i'm not sure if it's if it's
easy or hard to even back up your your facebook page i never tried i don't really spend any time
there but they need to make it easier for people to do that so that when something like this happens
and it does happen a lot uh it's it's fairly trivial to recover from it you should not hear stories like
this where someone has has poured their life into uh building a service and have it all go away and
nobody is there to respond so there's only one solution to this that's for facebook to get up
off their asses and restore this because obviously these people are who they say they are alex yeah
you know this is such a long-standing problem interestingly enough in the in the european
union they have something called the digital services act and if you were if your content is
moderated in a way that you don't agree with or if you if your account is suspended based on this new
eu-wide law there are these dispute settlement bodies to which you can actually appeal the
decision of a social media company by de-platforming you and they will hear your appeal and they will
make some kind of decision and the platforms are supposed to respect those decisions they're not
actually legally binding on them but they're supposed to respect them so it's it's really quite interesting
when you think about this in the context of there being literally no legal remedies and actually there
are in the eu they've made some progress in this respect all right we're gonna have to end on that
but you know what i hear this this music behind that does anybody recognize this
no yes yes i do let's say that's whole music very good alex yes i've heard that so many times it's
horrible you know it said it sounds like softcore porn music but it's whole music i i would say it's like
vaporwave why can't it be both it can be but it's like playboy channel mid-90s kind of music well i
think you do it an injustice uh kyle do you want to reveal what this is oh uh you can read you can
let people know i just saw some people referencing it on social media and uh i thought we should talk
about what it actually is it's called cisco's opus number one and it's the whole music if you ever called
cisco or anyone that has that for their uh call management if cisco call manager the default
presence is opus number one by tim carlton and his high school friend derek deal uh they recorded it
on a four track tape recorder in 1989 uh and in a youtube video uh tim mentioned the following on how
he created the sound and why the stereo version is not very good uh the reason was that i used an uh
alesis alesis alesis midiverb two or three specifically the three tap pen to hide the fact
that i was playing this live on a dx7 iifd and the notes would either cut off when i when i play unison
patches and run out of polyphony or i changed i have no idea what i'm saying here when i change
patches the solution was to plug it in mono to the midiverb on one side r8 on the other side
stereo into the task cam and go yeah all you musicians out there you hopefully you appreciated
that but um this um this uh hold music is a classic apparently i don't know why it's being talked
about now but we figured we might as well give it the attention it deserves i think we uh all feel
like a lot is on hold right now but just stand by someone will be with you shortly yeah and uh if you
do stand by uh in about eight minutes you can join us over on youtube for another edition of overtime
where we um take phone calls and next week next week here on wbai we will be taking phone calls so uh
mark that on your calendar and um we will see you then 7 p.m on 99.5 fm please support wbai keep the
station alive keep the station going we are going to need this place more than you can imagine buddy.wbai.org
it's the best way to do that good night everyone


And welcome, everybody, to Off the Hook Overtime.
Emmanuel here. Kyle, you made it over okay?
I'm here.
All right. On Signal Land, we have Alex.
You do.
And we have Rob.
You do.
And Gila.
Hello. We can report we are live on YouTube.
Amazing. Wow. Every week, it's a miracle.
So, the audio is hard for us to check because of the delay.
It gets deeply confusing.
But I think we're sounding good.
I think we're sounding good.
But, team, if you could let us know, that would be amazing.
We, wow, have 22 people here with us.
And, Kyle, there is a message for you.
I know why Kyle's smart medical device needs location, says XX in the chat.
But, I have a medical device, and it connects using Bluetooth Low Energy, and Android considers that a location permission.
Yeah, that's similar to what it was saying or rationalizing.
But it still doesn't seem like a requirement.
So, great that they designed it that way, but is there anything actually, like, necessary about that?
I think the necessary bit might be that the company that makes this thing likes having data that it can sell to, you know, people who are interested in it about you.
That's kind of where my head goes.
Like, I'm kind of concluding that's what's up.
And so, yeah, got to give it all kinds of other fake stuff and run very far away if I use the app.
There are also certain apps that you can use to spoof GPS coordinates in Android.
I think there's one or two in the FDroid store where you can decide where in the world you want to report that you're in.
And it will tell all such apps looking for the GPS data that that's where you are.
I would be really interested in some that people like because there's probably several things that I use.
I think when I turn location on, if ever, I think at least half a dozen apps like it.
And that's not really even including maps or might include a, like, navigation, like, for travel.
But you really try to, like, not have things on unnecessarily.
I don't know if other people are like that.
It's just, like, force of habit for me.
That's the way I've just always been with things.
Just because you give, you have, like, sensors and information just all the time in your space everywhere.
Just constantly flying around you like a swarm of data just spilling out of you at every moment.
And I think if there's little switches and buttons and things in the software that you can just change something,
just to reduce that a little bit, I think it just helps generally.
But anyway, I don't want to get off on a tangent about that.
Alex, go ahead.
I think we're going to have a talk this summer, I believe, at a conference called Hope.
I don't know if you've heard of it.
We're going to have a number of talks, actually, quite a number.
But I believe there's one specifically about device hardening using GrapheneOS, which is its own operating system that's designed to lock down this type of misuse and really prevent lots of different types of data from leaving your phone.
And I'm looking forward to that talk.
It's just going to be really interesting.
Well, actually, we just announced a bunch of talks today, featured speakers, in fact.
And some of these are really incredible.
And please, listeners, if you can help get the word out, because as I mentioned earlier on the show, it's been a real challenge getting the word out because of all the fracturing that's going on in social media. 
Where you might think you're sending to a bunch of people, but they've abandoned the platform, they've gone somewhere else, but they haven't all gone to the same place, and they don't all hear the same things in the same way.
And, you know, you wind up spending so much time just trying to get people to hear what you have to say or what you have to announce, and you spend more time on that than putting it together in the first place.
So we definitely could use the help of our listeners, our readers, our attendees just in getting the word out because we have a great conference that's coming up in August, but we have way too few tickets sold, I have to be honest about that.
And I know that there's hesitancy about traveling to the United States.
I get that.
And we're not asking anybody to take any unnecessary risks in this weird era that we're in.
But there are plenty of people in this country where that's not a concern, and plenty of people who are local too.
Please show your support.
Buy a ticket to the conference.
If you can make it here, and this goes for people overseas as well, get a virtual ticket.
They're much cheaper, and it doesn't involve any traveling at all.
And if you support the idea of the conferences, meaning the Hackers on Planet Earth conferences, this is how you keep them going.
Because we have plenty of speakers.
We have so many speakers, but we need more attendees.
Otherwise, we'll have a great conference either way with probably more speakers than ever.
But if we have less attendees, then we can't really support it.
And already, we're facing some hard decisions where we want to do certain things,
but without the funds from our attendees, we can't do them.
And now that's directly affecting how good the conference can be.
So, you know, if we're doing something wrong, tell us.
But so far, nobody has told us what that could be.
The date, the location, people seem to like that.
They seem to like the content.
So if it's something we said, let us know, please.
I know this is something that other conferences are experiencing as well.
But we do things very differently than most other conferences.
We don't have a corporate sponsorship that pays for everything.
We don't have all kinds of overpriced things.
We try to make it as affordable as possible.
But that means that we need a certain number of people to show up for it to remain doable at all.
So hope.net is where all the info is.
And please spread that around.
We have so many amazing speakers that we announced today.
And that's only a fraction of the total number of speakers.
And, of course, then there's workshops and villages.
And there's all kinds of really, really cool things.
But I'm just going to give you a rundown of some of the people that will be appearing this year.
We have Emma Best, who's been on the show a number of times, an investigative reporter, whistleblower, known for distributed denial of secrets.
We have Joseph Cox, the investigative journalist, co-founder of 404 Media.
We have Seth Godin.
He's an author, entrepreneur, and a teacher.
Really interesting person.
We have John Kiriakou.
Now, this guy, former CIA officer, U.S. intelligence whistleblower, the first U.S. official to confirm CIA torture of detainees.
And he was punished for being a whistleblower.
He served nearly two years in the federal prison.
It's going to be an interesting talk, interesting story.
We have Sahil Lavindia.
Now, this is interesting.
He's a former DOGE engineer who was fired after talking to journalists.
This is what he says.
I got dropped into the VA with an HP laptop.
What are we supposed to do?
What is the roadmap?
I felt like I was being pranked.
This is going to be fascinating.
This is going to be fascinating.
Talking to somebody who was in the midst of it and is no longer in the midst of it and has some quite interesting perspectives.
He's talked at NPR, actually, too, about a number of things.
One thing I recall him saying was that he was surprised at how efficient the government actually was in running their databases when DOGE came in there to try and wipe everything out.
Well, he spoke honestly and paid the price for it, which is a good price, actually, getting fired from DOGE, I think.
Whatever.
Harper Reed is Barack Obama's campaign CTO, who is instrumental in helping Obama secure a second term in office.
We have Danashia Vo, a cybersecurity professional, social justice hacker from Vietnam.
And also, we have this really cool program that's being run by one of our regular speakers, BiaSciLab.
She's running something called the Spawn Camp.
It's an all-inclusive, hands-on cybersecurity hacking day camp for kids interested in a unique learning experience, ages, I think, 8 to 18.
So that's just the tip of the iceberg.
That's just what we announced today.
These are really, really interesting people, all of them.
And it's going to be an incredible event.
Again, all the details, hope.net takes place August 15th through 17th, St. John's University, Queens, New York City.
It's easy to get to.
There are dormitory options if you want to stay on campus.
There are hotels nearby.
There's all kinds of possibilities.
But it's going to be an incredible event.
Please, let's make sure it's not the last one.
We need to bolster those attendance numbers.
It's almost comically low at this point.
But, you know, I know we can solve this problem.
It's really the only problem we have left to solve.
We just have to get people to show up, and the conference is going to be awesome.
And, again, online as well.
You can be a virtual attendee, interact with the speakers and other attendees, and it'll almost be like you're there.
Thoughts, comments, questions?
I am so excited about these talks that have been announced and also just excited about the conference happening again because I think we really need this sort of thing right about now at this point in our history.
You know, of course, this is our first time doing it yearly.
It's only been a year since the previous one.
But, yeah, it feels extra needed.
It feels extra necessary.
That's why we decided to double down and do it twice, twice in two years instead of once every two years.
But please, convince us that wasn't a mistake because it's, you know, every time we do something like this, we pour our heart and soul into it.
And also our loose change and everything we have, and we need to be able to make it to the next one as well.
And also keep the magazine going.
That's kind of important as well.
So it all matters.
I think it's also just a great opportunity to see people, to socialize a little bit in person and just have a sort of local shot in the arm, that atmosphere of fun and people sharing what they know, sharing what their experience has been in the last year since our last event, and also just perfecting it.
I want to become more familiar with the space that has been so generous to us and starting to feel like home a little bit.
So I really am just enthused that we were able to put this together and that there's such incredible content that we'll have a chance to share with everybody and become a part of the discourse, a part of consciousness in the realms of hacking and technology and telephony and computers and social activity and law, everything.
It's just such a great mix.
So please join us.
It'd be great to see people and have a little bit of fun, a little towards the end of summer.
And as you said, we need as much participation from attendees and people interested in being there because it's a different time.
It's a little bit later, but it's always good to plan ahead.
We are getting close, and those numbers do affect things that we have to compile and have ready.
Merchandise, all that stuff that people love to pick up while they're there.
We have to get that going, even though it is in August, a little bit later than we'd had it last year.
But we think that it's going to be a really worthwhile event to attend, and we want to make sure all those materials back that up.
Yeah, it's an incredible environment, St. John's University.
You're right there in the middle of Queens, but you're on a campus with all this space and just a welcoming environment.
And, you know, you can leave any time to go be in the middle of Queens.
Chinatown, the biggest Chinatown in the country, I believe, is just down the block.
It's such a fun time, and I just hope more people are able to experience that.
Easy to get to if you're driving, free parking.
Imagine that, free parking in the city for the entire weekend.
So it's something to really get excited about and participate in.
Please help us spread the word because, like I said, you know, the social media networks are a challenge.
If you have a way to reach a bunch of people that you think might be interested, please make use of that.
It would be helping us out tremendously.
Spreading the word, I think that's our strength in the hacker community.
And sometimes we don't know certain things are happening because we're not looking in the right place.
You know, I don't look in certain places.
I don't look in Facebook, and people are constantly telling me things on Facebook thinking I'm seeing it, and I'm not.
And the same goes for Twitter.
The same goes for all kinds of different platforms.
And everyone seems to have a different way of communicating these days, which makes it so hard to just get the basic word out.
So that's why we need the help of people who are listening now or people who are listening in the future.
And people who read the magazine, people who have been to the conference before, please help us get the word out.
Because I think hope is such a special event.
It's very, very unique in the world.
It's the 16th time we've done this.
And, you know, we're doubling down to do it every year, and we want to be able to do that, excuse me, if I survive.
Please let us know that you are sharing stuff.
And if you come up with your own tag, let us know what that tag is so that we can find what you're sharing with people because we want to boost it as well.
And you could probably use, like, hope underscore 16.
That's probably a good one to start with, or hope conference.
There's plenty of ways to magnify your posts or your comments or your referencing, maybe some of the speaker announcements.
But it's great that we know.
We love that feedback.
And then we can also try to make sure other people see it through our channels.
I think I have the flu, but we'll find out.
Well, that won't be important to this part of the show.
Well, it will be if I don't make it to the rest of the show.
Do you need a cough drop or something?
I already have a pocket full of cough drops.
Oh, that's not it.
Okay.
I'm trying.
And water and things like that.
Okay.
Yeah.
What do we got?
Phone number?
Yeah.
802.
Do you need, like, a button of peyote or something?
Like, something, you know?
We'll talk.
We'll talk.
Okay.
All right.
802-321-4225.
Oh, sorry.
I thought I had that down.
That's 802-321-HACK.
Like, you're doing.
Very funny.
Very funny.
I'm glad everybody is getting such entertainment out of this.
Yeah, I thought I had Lyme disease.
I did.
Because I was aching all over.
And I got bitten by a tick a couple of weeks ago.
But I always get bitten by ticks.
They just, they like me.
And then, you know, I went to urgent care.
And they gave me this antibiotic in case I wanted to take it, thinking maybe I had Lyme disease.
You can't tell for another month if you have it or not.
Yeah, you have to test for antibodies.
I didn't have a rash.
I didn't have the telltale symptoms.
They weren't sure I even had it.
But I took one of those pills.
And it made me sick instantly.
So I stopped taking them.
Because the next day, the pain went away.
And now I just have a cough.
So I don't know what's going on.
But that's the rundown of me being rundown.
All right.
So phone number, 802-321-4225.
We're waiting for a call still.
Yeah, this will be a bright point.
This will uplift you.
Talk about my health more.
No, you'll feel better.
All right.
Yes.
So if you're out there and you have questions or comments for us.
Or if you're perhaps a licensed medical professional with expertise in Lyme disease.
I don't have Lyme.
I'm pretty sure I don't have it.
I stopped taking those pills.
You know, that's a symptom of the flu is thinking you have Lyme disease.
Yeah.
I imagine it is.
All right.
I plugged the phone back in.
How long was it unplugged for?
I just realized.
Because it's very noisy.
You want to take this?
We did a whole show once with it unplugged before we realized.
You want me to take this?
Before we were getting no calls.
Yeah, take that.
Are you sure you want me to take this?
Well, I know who it is.
So let's get it over with.
All right.
All right.
It's like downing the medicine.
You have to do it.
Except for when it makes you sick.
Oh, we have that hum again, Kyle.
Now, you said there was a way to make the hum go away.
Oh, come on.
It was all right.
It was.
We tested it before the show again.
And you made the hum go away.
So how is the hum back?
It was kind of.
It's not that bad.
It's bad enough.
I don't understand.
Yeah.
Hold on a second.
I don't understand how we tested this.
There was no hum.
Oh, wait.
Okay.
That's better.
Just keep your hand like that.
I can't hold my hand here the whole time.
Do you believe in the show or not?
Oh, no.
Okay.
All right.
Go ahead.
Call her.
I think we hear you.
Hello.
Hello.
Can you hear me?
Way loud.
We hear you.
Yes.
But I'm picking something up.
Um, yes, I think that the 2600 meetings should be called 2600 gatherings instead of meetings
because they're not really meetings.
Yeah.
We made that observation many, many years ago, but, uh, meetings is what it started.
You know, it dates back to the tap meetings, you know, the old tap magazine, because they
used to have weekly meetings on Fridays in New York city.
And we kind of latched onto their wagon.
Wait, tap had their meetings in 2600 in New York city.
Yeah.
You're kind of late to that.
Uh, yeah.
Back, uh, I think the last one was in 1986.
I thought they were overseas tap.
Um, no tap is not overseas.
Unless you're talking about the Portuguese airline.
No, they're, uh, uh, uh, the, the, the, the hacker magazine.
It wasn't a hacker magazine.
It was kind of like an anarchist slash technology slash phone freak, uh, newsletter that came
out in the early 1970s to eighties.
Do they have a website?
I mean, I'd like to see what that was like, but anyway, is there going to be a 2600 meeting
on July or gathering on July 4th?
Um, July 4th is a Friday.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Friday, July 4th.
Did not know that.
Uh, yeah, I don't know.
It depends on if, uh, the, uh, the, uh, city group building is open.
Well, if it's not, we'll have the 2600 gathering the next Friday.
So we'll be like the next Friday is the first Friday.
No, the next Friday is July 11th.
That's not the first Friday.
No, but being that, you know, things will be closed on July 4th.
But we haven't established that.
We don't know that.
We need to go and find out.
Yeah, but it's a holiday.
I mean, it's a regular holiday.
I mean, I can't find out.
Well, and things, things aren't open on holidays.
Things are always open on holidays.
Well, I mean, that's not that kind of holiday.
I mean, it's a regular holiday.
Well, last Friday was June 13th and things were closed.
Not everything, but.
June 13th is just, what, Friday the 13th?
Things were closed for that?
Yeah, Juneteenth.
That new holiday, Juneteenth.
Juneteenth is tomorrow.
No, it's June 13th.
No, it's June 19th.
Yeah, it's June.
I don't know where you're getting your information from.
Okay, would you like me to see if the 20th, the city building is going to be open on July 4th?
I doubt it is.
Yeah, I will contact them and check, but I believe going by what's happened on previous
federal holidays, the atrium will be open because it is still a privately owned public
space, which means they have to be open at reasonable hours, but the restaurants inside
may not be as open.
I don't know who will, you know, what food stands to be open.
So then why did we have to come up to 2600 gathering from New Year's Day to the next week
one time?
New Year's Day is a holiday.
I mean, it's a real holiday.
Yeah, well, July 4th is.
Eh, maybe.
But July 4th is also a day where people go out and hang out and stuff, and what better
day to have a 2600 meeting?
And those are probably not going to be snowy on July 4th, as it may be on January 1st.
Well, I'm not going to be there.
Well, I'm leaving for the Far East on the, like, the 15th or the 16th of July.
I was going to suggest that, actually.
Okay, good.
And how far east will you be going?
How far am I?
I'm going, like, the middle to the end of July.
No, we're asking where you're going.
Oh, going to Nova to, I'm going to Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and then I'm going from
there to Novosibirsk, Russia, which is the third largest city in Russia.
But being that I've been to the first and second, you know, first largest city and second largest
city in Russia, I want to visit the third largest city in Russia.
Are you going to visit every city in Russia until you're done?
No, no, I'm not going to visit every city in Russia.
It's just too much of a pain.
I just wanted to know what the first, the third city in Russia was like, and the fact
that, you know, I'll be, like, 11 hours ahead of New York City and, you know, 200, 300
miles from China and 300 miles from Afghanistan and, you know.
Yeah, no, that sounds fascinating.
Yeah, what else?
This is the loudest I've ever heard Rebel, by the way.
I don't recall him ever being this loud.
I don't think it's him.
I think it's us.
I think we improved our sound.
Well, I hear the hum.
Let's see.
Alex has a point.
Please let Alex say something.
Go ahead, Alex.
I have a question for the rest of our panel here.
Alex, can you hear me?
Oh, my God.
Yeah, I can hear you.
Can you hear Alex Rebel?
Can you hear?
I can't hear Alex.
Well, he's kind of mumbling.
So, Alex, speak up and speak closer to a microphone.
Well, did anybody else not think this was Rebel?
Why didn't you tell anybody he would hear?
Oh, my God.
Let him speak, all right?
Go ahead, Alex.
Did anybody else not think this was Rebel when he started talking?
I didn't think it was.
He sounded a little different, yeah, but it could be because of the incredible volume.
Yeah, maybe.
I did not hear what he said.
This is weird.
I mean, is this just Rebel?
I can't hear other people.
Rob, you say something.
See if he can hear you.
Rebel, you hear me, dude?
Rob, I can hear.
Rob, I can hear.
So, Alex, what the hell, Alex?
You've got to be more like Rob.
I don't know.
Yeah, Alex, be more like Rob.
Yeah, Alex, be more like Rob.
Or be more like Rebel.
Yeah, everybody here is loud.
Everybody here is loud except for Alex.
Alex, you need to be louder.
Why am I always the one with audio problems?
This is really annoying.
I don't know.
It's your audio.
You've got to figure that out.
We should test it on another call.
Maybe you should call in and talk to Rebel that way.
Yeah, exactly.
Rebel, let me give you my phone number.
You know, I really still can't believe you can't figure this out.
Figure what out?
We figured it out.
You sound better than you ever sounded before.
And no thanks at all.
What about Alex?
Well, we can't control other human beings, all right?
He's in a totally different part of the world.
I don't know what the hell he's using.
That's right.
I mean, he has cancer come on.
They're both next.
All of them are on the same damn signal screen, okay?
So, Gila and Rob, you can hear, but you can't hear Alex.
So, I don't understand.
Maybe because he's in London.
Is he in London?
No, he seems to be.
Hang on.
Where does he look like?
It looks like, to me, like he is in Manhattan.
But it could be wrong.
Is that right?
Okay.
That could be it right there.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's the problem.
You know, these New York internet phones.
Maybe we should just get telephones, you know, instead of this, you know, signal thing.
Just, you know, get a telephone and just, you know, use phone smart features and, you
know, things like that.
Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?
Well, I am on a 14-4.
I would, too, actually.
But why don't you get an asterisk system?
That's about 30 years late.
But, yeah, you could do that.
Well, there should be something that helps like that, the people making phone systems
and...
I'm just glad we have a connection with no hum.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Let's just listen to it.
Well, I mean, it's a slight hum, but it's fine.
And the voice is much louder than the hum.
We could build something, but we've built a lot.
And, yeah, that takes volunteers.
It takes interest.
It takes resources.
And we really got to have attendees that want to volunteer and want to be a part of
like a conference phone network that we set up.
It's totally not out of the realm of possibility.
If people want to do that, but they got to get their tickets, they got to register, they
got to create a group on the wiki, they got to wrangle different people because we're
getting volunteers, we're getting, we want to get people together, get them talking, get
them coordinating, setting up, being self-directed.
And that's absolutely part of it.
So volunteer, talk to other people who are volunteering, check out the wiki, create a
project like that.
Maybe you have a lot of phones.
Maybe you have a tiny microcontroller that could run a PBX.
I mean, it doesn't take that much anymore.
We are in an age that there is a wealth of processing power.
The kinds of equipment you needed to run that in the past would have occupied the entirety
of someone's trunk in their car.
Now you can probably fit it in your pocket and show up, maybe not breaking it out into
Twisted Pair.
But if you know anyone, if anyone out there is interested and you think, hey, we could
run some Twisted Pair around and set up extensions and do that, by all means, we would love to
have that.
And as far as doing it here on the show, it does take a fair amount of wrangling.
And I would like help on stuff like that so that it isn't on any one person's shoulders.
And that extends to the conference as well.
We have an incredible network team.
We have a lot of enthusiasm, but they're tasked with setting up what network that will be there
to support attendees.
And we have to augment a lot of that.
We have to offload it.
We need people to sort of load balance one another and delegate.
So it takes volunteers.
It takes interest.
But it's a lot of fun to be working on all this and to build this community and to meet
all kinds of people.
And we're very open to all kinds of projects.
We've got a lockpick village.
We've got all kinds of displays and vendors and people who are very enthusiastic coming to
the conference.
So it's all sorts of possibilities.
And it makes all kinds of other things possible.
It's really magical.
It's been magical since 1994 when we had the first one.
Alex has something to say, but he's not going to be heard by Rebel.
But what we'll do is we'll transcribe what you say.
I just want to say, if people can set up a PBX and it fits in a box of cereal, that's the
challenge.
The entirety of it fits in a box of cereal.
I'll be impressed.
Like a single serving box of cereal?
Just a box of cereal.
If you can fit all the equipment for your PBX for Hope, if you can fit it all in a box
of cereal, there's the challenge.
Without the cereal in it.
Take the cereal out.
Yeah, take the cereal out.
But it could be any kind of...
It doesn't have to be Crunch or anything.
It could be all kinds of different...
Well, it should be Captain Crunch.
I mean, that's kind of...
I mean, if you want to be cheeky, but...
Closest thing to a phone freak cereal we have.
Your favorite cereal.
Right.
And yeah.
And we'll run all the lines into that.
Lucky Charms.
You could do that.
That's where...
We'll just store it.
And that'll be the centralized location for...
Honey Bunches of Oats, maybe?
All right.
So yeah, that's the gauntlet.
Throw down.
All right.
Alex, say whatever you have to say.
And if Rebel can't hear you, we will say it louder.
The question was, to Rebel, really?
Rebel, can you hear me now?
He cannot hear you now.
He's pretending.
Wow.
Maybe he's pretending.
There's probably...
There's no way to know, but...
Or he could be, you know, off dialing another line or something.
Rebel, you are there, right?
Yeah, and I cannot hear Alex.
I heard Kyle I hear, but not Alex.
Yes.
Maybe you just have an Alex impediment.
Yeah.
You wouldn't be the first.
But Alex, say what you're going to say so we can tell Rebel what you're going to say.
No, that was it.
What was it?
You didn't say anything.
I had another call here.
You didn't say anything.
That's what I said.
You can't hear me?
That's what you said?
You can't hear me?
Oh, my goodness.
Wait.
What did you want to say to Rebel?
This is so ridiculously confusing.
Just now, what was it you wanted to say that Rebel couldn't hear?
I was just asking him if he could hear me.
That was it.
That's it?
That's all you have to say?
That was it.
That was the only question to him.
You're the Verizon guy?
Can you hear me now?
That's all you say?
Yeah.
I don't want to prolong this misery.
Nobody does.
Nobody does.
I'm sorry.
Gila, you had something?
No, I was saying exactly what you were saying, that he was doing his oppression of the Verizon guy.
I do want to thank the 49 listeners who are hanging in with us through this.
We appreciate it.
We're hearing overall that everybody sounds good.
We're hearing from YouTube listeners that Alex is audible.
General consensus, Alex, is that your sound is always a little off.
Why do we only have 49 listeners?
We should have hundreds.
I agree with you there.
Well, then we have 53.
Go out and get us some listeners.
Again, people don't know about us.
This is impatient, Rebel.
No, he's right.
I like it.
We should have hundreds.
No, nay, thousands.
Did I say nay?
We should have thousands of listeners.
Why not?
How many years have you been in business?
Everyone has heard of the radio show.
Everyone has heard of the conference.
Everyone's heard of the magazine.
But we can't reach people because nobody knows how to communicate anymore.
People don't even use email.
I don't get it.
I mean, if you don't use email, how do you communicate?
You're not sending postcards.
You're not calling each other on the telephone.
You don't know each other's phone numbers.
I just think a lot of us are just not communicating.
So we need to improve on that.
But if there is a big, massive hacker group that, you know, I'm not aware of, everybody's
talking and connecting, please spread the word about hope there.
That would be a very nice thing to do.
Yes.
Anyway, Rebel, we're going to move on.
But this has been delightful.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
We'll talk to you later.
Okay.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
That was, that was too easy.
It was really too easy.
Did you slam the phone down like that, Kyle?
I dropped the handset.
Yeah.
All right.
802, 802, 321, 4225.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
We did have a listener ask us if, because the hum stopped when, Kyle, you had your hand
over on the switch.
So someone asked if we're taking calls on a theremin.
Um, I think that might be a fun exercise.
Yeah.
Well, we're open to all sorts of possibilities.
Got our theremin going.
802, 321, 4225 is our phone number.
If you want to be a part of this, uh, whatever this is.
And big thanks to our friend Lex, who just shared the overtime link on Mastadon, um, to try
to get more people over here.
So thank you for that, Lex.
We appreciate it.
Um, and now it's been boosted from the show.
So that's all very exciting.
Long time.
I will, uh, I will throw in here while we're waiting for another caller, um, at 803, 802,
321 hack that, uh, if you'd like to do something else to help us out, uh, you could always go
to buddy.wbai.org and help keep our radio station home doing what it does and help keep us doing
what we do.
Um, fundraising is crucial.
Uh, the BAI buddy system gives, uh, gives us a dependable income at BAI, which is amazing in the
nonprofit world.
And the listeners, you listeners are the only thing that's kept the station going for over,
for 60 years now.
Let me just, uh, step when you say, uh, gives us an income, we do not get a penny.
It all goes to the radio station to, uh, keep the station on the air to pay the bills, that
kind of thing.
Yes, indeed.
We're all volunteers.
We're all the bunch of us very much volunteers.
And I would like to point out that if WBAI stops existing or decides that off the hook
isn't pulling its weight and cancels us over time's going away too, because if there's no
regular time, there's no overtime.
So if you enjoy having this experience, it might behoove you to support the show as well.
Are there people that only listen to overtime and don't listen to off the hook?
But huge numbers.
There are people who live outside of our radio catchment.
How am I supposed to interpret that?
I mean, there are people who live outside of our radio catchment area.
Right, but we're on the internet.
So that's, that solves that problem.
There, there are also YouTubers who sell in, um, in the course of their YouTubing and just
catch this aspect of what we're doing.
A YouTuber, a YouTuber does not listen to other audio sources such as WBAI.org, which plays
the live stream of our show.
A YouTuber only hears things that are on YouTube.
I think it's possible that some folks put that description.
Just want to understand how it works.
I don't think there's rules, but I think there's people that think that YouTube is just, that
is the internet.
It's just YouTube.
Yeah, I agree.
And you can get lost in that world.
But it also does kind of remind me of, um, when I was in high school and there were people
who didn't go to the prom, but went to after prom.
Okay.
I'm just saying.
Well, you didn't have to buy a ticket, I guess, right?
You had to buy a ticket for after prom.
Well, what's the difference between after prom and prom then?
If there's.
Well, prom was the dance and after prom was like the lock-in at our high school.
So no one died of drunk driving.
Oh, no, we just did the driving and went to like, you know, a beach or something.
No ticket involved.
Well, actually, there was a ticket involved, but a different kind of ticket.
I don't want.
Understood.
We also are, by the way, getting notes from a couple of listeners.
The BAI stream is bad.
It cuts out a lot.
So people will catch us via 2600.
You know, through our archive or podcast feed or whatever the next day.
So we record it locally and then we have it posted.
It's up right now, in fact.
I don't know what you're listening to us for because you could listen to us before.
We're less tired then.
The station has been rearranging some things and they do have some consistency problems with their stream.
But they're aware of it.
They do the best that they can.
We've noticed it on like smart devices.
If you stream because we monitor some occasionally and other methods as well.
Although I think their main page stream is pretty good most of the time.
But we obviously, that's not one that we check.
It cut off for us before when we were monitoring.
Right.
But we don't, yeah, we use it on other devices and it cuts off.
But other, like if, but we could use like a main page stream.
But we haven't typically used the main page audio for monitoring.
Maybe we should.
I think we've done it as a backup, but it's not as readily available.
But try as many methods as you can to get a live copy.
It would be good if they solved that problem.
I don't know what the issue is, why it's taking so long to figure it out.
There are real companies there that are, that the station is paying for service.
So it should, it should be working.
All the more reason to donate and make sure that engineering is staffed and available and their providers are happy with the station as customers.
So, yeah, it's, it's understood that people might have some, some qualms or, or just some complaints about the reliability of it.
But they really do the best they can.
And ordinarily it's, it's, it's somewhat, it's listenable.
Is there something wrong with our phone?
Because nobody's calling.
802-321-4225.
All right.
But there's nobody on it, right?
Because it's, it's unusual for the phone not to ring.
We are taking calls and the line is open at present.
You won't catch what I have if that's what you're worried about.
Because I don't know what I have.
And it's, uh, 802-321-4225.
You want to, you want to share that with us, Gila?
Whatever you find so amusing?
So, people are talking about, you know, joining us for the live show, for the live stream, whatever.
And, uh, Fun Sox just chimed in and said, I'm only here to make Gila giggle live on stream.
Well, that's easy.
All you have to do is say that and you start giggling?
I was entertained.
Um, but, people, um, always thought I'd be easier to make laugh than I was.
And I, they could never get me in how to, like, in make your counselor laugh at camp.
They could never, ever get me.
It's harder than you might think.
I think you might have to explain what, what you just said for people who don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Um, so, and we're just gonna, you're gonna get this story unless somebody else calls in.
So, um, there's this thing that, it was a, an activity we would do at camp, um, the summer camp that I attended and worked at, where you'd try to make your counselors laugh and all the staff would be sitting there with water in their mouths and everybody was assigned a different point level and you'd try to make them laugh.
And the way you could determine that was if they spat out the water they had in their mouth.
And I was always assigned a very low point value because people assumed it was really, really, really easy to make me laugh.
And they all failed miserably every time.
I can, when I put my mind to it, I can do it.
I, this is why we need a phone call.
Is it possible the ringer is off, Kyle?
No?
No.
We're just not getting any calls.
No?
Yeah.
All right, we'll give it another couple of minutes.
I think we always have to say we're gonna go in a couple of minutes unless we get a call and that gets the calls to come in.
802-321-4225.
So we'll give it until, uh, 45 past the hour.
We're also available at 833-755-2600.
That's 833-755-2600.
And I should point out that next week there is no overtime next week because we are doing a call-in show on WBAI from 7 to 8.
So, um, that'll be fun.
It'll also be challenging if nobody can hear the stream, but hopefully it's fixed by then.
Uh, we have a phone call.
All right.
Good evening.
You're on off the go-verton.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Hello?
Go ahead.
We hear you.
I am, I am a friend of this dude.
Of who?
I just, I really, I really miss the good old times from the 1990s.
Yes.
What, what do you miss about the 1990s?
I, I like the times when, when Toy Story came out.
Okay.
Well, it came out once, I think, uh, unless there are sequels.
I also like, I also like that Halloween Christmas movie.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
All right.
Anything else?
And, and the little rascals.
Well, that came out a long time before that, but, uh, unless there was a, there was a,
I mean, not, not the, not the first little rascals.
Oh, the other little rascals.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
The modern, the modern one.
Right, right.
Yeah, well, 1990s.
The modern one, which was like 30 years ago now.
Special time.
Yeah.
So that's where we are 30 years ago.
Were you, were you born in the 1980s?
Uh, I was born before then.
Before that?
Before that.
Yes, there were, there were, there was a period before that.
1970s?
I'm not going to narrow down the date for you.
I'm just going to say that I've been around.
Oh.
And I like, I like the good old times in, in Bay, in Bay Terrace, in, like, in, earlier
than 2010.
Where, where, where is Bay Terrace?
Bay Terrace, uh, Bayside, uh, Queens.
Oh, okay.
Another Queens call.
I like them, I like them better in, I like them better earlier than 2010.
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Well, okay.
I think we've established that, uh, you like things from the past, um, and, um, there were
some good things back then.
I had a lot of great memories back then.
Well, time to start making new memories.
Are you going to go to Hope?
Huh?
Are you going to go to Hope?
Okay.
Rebel, is that you?
That's, Rebel's next to you, isn't he?
Yep.
I suspected this from the very beginning.
Yep, that dude is next to me.
Okay, Rebel, this counts as a phone call of yours, I'm sorry, but, uh, we're going to
move on, and Rebel, we do not expect to hear from you next week, and you know what will
happen if we do.
Wow.
How, how was I, I mean, I was, it was, I didn't want to say this sounds like a Rebel-sponsored
call, but it sure did, and I was too patient.
The first thing he said was, I'm a friend of this dude.
Yeah, but am I supposed to draw from that, that, uh, you know, there's only one person
out there that would, uh, see folks, this is what happens when there aren't enough calls.
So, we'll give it another couple of minutes, 802-321-4225.
It's also what happens when you're under Rebel's influence.
Can you look at the number there, make sure it's not, uh, the same area code?
All right.
And good evening, you're on all for the hook overtime, go ahead.
Speak up.
Hello?
What, what is this?
Turning the radio down?
Yeah, turning the radio down or talking to your phone.
That's better.
We can hear this.
I was quite enjoying that conversation.
All right.
All right.
Losing patience fast.
Really am.
802-321-4225.
Um, if it's another silly call, it's going to be the last call.
So, give that person a moment to think about that.
One more ring and pick it up.
All right.
Here we go.
And good evening, you're on off the hook overtime.
Yeah, I'm not sure if you, if you, uh, if y'all have talked about this already, but I was just
wondering what your opinion was on the, uh, NYC election, like all your candidates and so
forth.
Well, um, I don't think anyone's going to reveal who we're voting for or not voting for, but the whole thing is really, um, an interesting race.
A lot of, uh, diverse, uh, people running backgrounds, opinions, things like that.
Um, you know, I think Brad Lander, uh, really got some points yesterday by being arrested by, by ice.
That was, uh, that was something that you don't see every day.
Actually, you do see it every day.
Now.
I thought his ad where he's like taking a phone call and like has a legal pad and then he starts eating a hot dog and a roller coaster.
Yeah, that was a good ad.
I thought that was hilarious because he, he kept a straight face the whole time, but you could tell he had a lot of fun making that ad because he's just riding the roller coaster in Coney Island.
I think it was Coney Island, but yeah, anyway, I don't have an opinion on any of it.
I'm not going to be, I don't participate in these local event, local races, but it is interesting in the field.
Yeah, it is.
Rob, did you have an opinion?
Yeah.
Um, I do not have a horse in the race yet because as a non affiliated, uh, voter, I don't vote with a party.
So I don't have anything to do with the primaries, which is what the current season is.
So I think every, all of you out there with political parties, now's your chance to figure your crap out.
So I can start thinking of which one I like.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Sorry.
I am, uh, registered with a party and I would just like to point out.
That the best thing that you can do in addition to having an understanding of who the candidates are is an understanding of how ranked choice voting works.
And quite frankly, an understanding of how ranked choice voting does not work.
I'm not going to say anything about any of the candidates, but what I will say, because this was misinformation that was shared in a group I'm in today, is that if two candidates have cross endorsed each other, it does not mean that if one of them gets knocked out, the other one gets the votes for that one.
Um, the, uh, right.
So I think it's very, very, very key that we do a better job talking about how ranked choice voting works.
If we're going to be sticking with this system.
Well, can you explain the cross endorsement strategy then?
Um, yes.
So basically a few candidates have said, if you're voting, if you're ranking me number one, that's awesome.
Please also rank these other two people or other two or three people.
And it does not mean that if candidate A and candidate B are cross endorsing, then your vote for candidate A will count for candidate B.
That's not how that works.
Um, the other thing I would recommend and mention is that you can bring in your own list.
You can make notes for yourself and bring them to the voting booth with you.
Um, if you're voting early in New York city this week, that's still going on.
If you're waiting for next Tuesday, you can do it as well.
Do your research, do your homework, make a plan because otherwise it's going to be a mess.
Um, yeah.
And the only advice I would offer is that anyone who does vote, if your candidate doesn't make it, um, if you don't want Adams to return and you don't want a Republican, you need to support whoever it is that does win.
Even if that makes you really, really unhappy because the alternative could be far, far worse.
And Kyle, go ahead.
Yeah.
Caller, do you have, um, do you have an opinion about anything specific to rank choice or the debate or the, the field of candidates so far?
Do you have, what's your take?
I do, well, I do have an opinion.
I don't, I'm not voting for that guy.
Ram, Ram Zami.
I think I forget the name.
I, uh, you got it right.
Yeah.
Ram Zami.
Yeah, I prefer, I like Cuomo personally, so I will be voting for Cuomo myself.
Uh, I don't like Ram Zami and I don't like, you know, a lot of the freebies and a lot of the stuff he's talking about.
I don't really think it's feasible.
He's just saying these things that are really not going to happen.
Or if they do happen, it's going to come at a heavy cost, heavy hitting cost.
Caller, uh, do you mind if I ask, um, since you mentioned Cuomo, all of the kind of baggage or whatever, uh, might be said about him negatively, notwithstanding, what personally do you think about him makes him your choice?
Maybe as, I mean, I'm not going to bait you with stuff, but why do you like him?
What, what about him do you think the city needs?
Well, I like him because he's a centrist and I don't, I'm not, I don't really like anyone on too far left, too far right.
To me, they're just, they're all the same to me.
And just guys, the people who are way out there on the left or way out there on the right, to me, I just like the centrist and all that nursing home stuff, you know, stuff they're talking about.
You know, all that is bad, but honestly, I really don't, it doesn't bother me as much.
I mean, that was COVID during that time.
It was a rough time.
It was just a new thing and I mean, we were just kind of winging it at that time.
So I just think they're being too, a little bit unfair with the whole nursing home accusations and all that kind of stuff.
No, I agree with you there.
It's upsetting to see the same Republican talking points being used by Democrats that want to get, you know, get an advantage.
But the other thing to point out about the nursing home thing, just as many people died in nursing homes in Florida.
And you never hear anybody criticizing DeSantis for that.
So go ahead, Kyle.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Is it, well, with him, in your view, being sort of a centrist, is there anything specifically you think the city needs or that he should prioritize, assuming he was elected, that he could get done or that should get done?
Well, I like his position on the police issue.
You know, I don't want all that defund the police stuff and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, you know, you can reform the police, but anything about defunding the police or getting rid of police, anything on those lines is not.
I don't really want to hear that, honestly.
Yeah, I don't think Mondani's really believing in that.
I think he believes in getting rid of the bad cops, which seems to be awfully hard to do sometimes.
But, you know, I see Cuomo latching onto Mondani's previous statements, but not asking about, okay, how do you feel right now?
Have you evolved?
And I don't think that's a bad thing to evolve, if, in fact, you have.
Yeah, he is using, like, excerpts from, like, interviews and stuff.
I also think he's a little young.
I mean, he's not very young.
He's in his 30s, but I also think he's young, and he's not, I mean, he's definitely young politically.
Yeah, he is.
He is.
You know.
But there's something about him I like, but I hear what you're saying about the experience, and maybe a bit too idealistic.
Yeah, there's something to be said for that.
But if he were to win, would you support him in the general?
I mean, I guess so.
I'd really rather not.
I guess, you know what, I may, if he, because Adams is going to run in the general.
If he wins, I may just vote for Adams, actually.
I may just vote for Adams, because Adams is going to run as an independent.
I may just vote for him.
Yeah, but he's kind of beholden to Trump right now.
I don't know if that matters to you.
That's the problem.
That's a big problem.
That is a big problem.
That's like a hold-your-nose situation.
Yeah.
You know, I think any one of the Democratic, well, except for the hedge fund guy.
What's his name?
That guy just seems out of touch.
Whitney Tilson?
Yeah, that guy.
Of all the other candidates, though, I wouldn't be too upset if they were mayor.
Him, I would be upset by.
Right.
And what's this about Cuomo getting an endorsement by Bloomberg, and that's a good thing?
I don't understand why that's a good thing.
We didn't like Bloomberg when he was mayor, did we?
I don't remember that.
Well, it's a good thing for money.
I'm sure Bloomberg gave him a bunch of money.
I'm assuming he did, you know.
Well, yeah, I guess if you look at it that way.
Gila, go ahead.
The other thing I would like to point out about the line that Adams is running on in the general election.
And I would just like to point out that the views I'm about to share are my own and are not representative of any of the other panelists on Off the Hook.
Eric Adams is running on the stop antisemitism line in the mayoral election, and it is the most pandering bullshit I have ever heard of in my life.
As a Jewish person, this does not make me feel safer.
This does not make me feel better.
And the fact that he is hosting some sort of incredibly antisemitic YouTuber, not YouTuber, TikToker, at Gracie Mansion, while he has the temerity to say he is running on the antisemitism platform, which is just to scare people about Zoran Mandani.
Yeah, because he criticizes Israel, yes.
Yeah, I hear that.
Caller, just think about it, is all I'm saying.
And we have some time until November, but, like, the pandering kind of makes my teeth hurt.
Yeah, I hear you.
Any other thoughts, Caller?
All right, I asked about it.
Thanks for taking my call.
Thank you very much for calling.
Take care.
Okay, and the phone has been hung up.
I missed.
All right, we only have a couple minutes.
If there's a quick call, we'll take it.
802-321-4225.
But it has to be quick, because I can't do this all night.
Although I feel better.
My voice is better.
How'd that happen?
Maybe that's the thing.
If you have, you know, something in your throat, you just got to keep talking.
All right, we're learning.
I've often found that to be the case.
Work it out.
Yeah, yeah.
802-321-4225.
802-321-HACK.
833-755-255.
Don't need to keep giving out the number when the phone's ringing.
And good evening.
You're on off-the-hook overtime.
Go ahead.
Hello?
Yes.
Where are you calling from?
This is a guy from Queens, okay?
Uh-oh.
I know who this is.
Yes.
And I'm going to tell you something.
Uh-uh.
I'm a Jew.
You guys are too much hating Israel.
And I'm going to tell you that's one reason why I'm not having this issue.
Hold on.
What did we say about Israel?
We didn't say anything about Israel.
We didn't say a damn thing.
They were saying that, well, look at how they're attacking.
They were attacked.
They were attacked on the 7th, okay?
And you know what?
Not every politician is perfect.
But I think we, I think Trump is trying.
I know you guys hate him.
And I wish you, what I wish you guys would do is be so leftist and be more into the technology.
Maybe you'll get more people to come.
Well, we are into technology.
And I don't think that's, I don't think that's the issue.
I don't think, if you look at the program, if you look at attendees of the past, you'll see that we're, you know,
we respect each other's opinions.
We have different opinions.
We disagree.
I know, I know.
Listen, you have a right to disagree.
But when you get to the point in saying, well, because, you know, people are acting like, who's losing?
We're losing our freedoms.
I don't think I'm losing a lot of my freedoms.
I think we need some law and order in this country.
We have plenty of law and order in this country.
It would be nice if the administration would follow it.
Look, you know what?
I think he's doing a pretty good job.
I know you guys probably don't like what's happening with Iran, but they, you want Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
There's a lot of things.
I disagree with you guys.
Let me just tell you something.
The U.S., if I may, the U.S. intelligence, please let me get a word in.
I think a lot of people are boycotting your hope.
Well, I'd like to hear that.
If that's true, please say it out loud.
I'll say it out loud.
I'm not coming because you guys are so far to the left, the boat's going to tip over.
Okay, well, that's one person.
Okay, fine.
And we respect that.
But just to tell you something, the U.S. intelligence community recently concluded that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
So I don't know who to believe.
Please.
That's our own intelligence community.
That's our own intelligence community.
They're not leftists.
Well, as far as I'm concerned, yes, I do think Iran is trying to get a weapon.
They have said death to the Jews.
Well, they say death to a lot of, they say death to America constantly.
That's part of their mantra.
It's not acceptable.
I agree with you there.
But I don't know if it's worth World War III over.
And that's what a lot of people are worried about right now.
You know, when you have...
By the way, your hum, your hum coming in to me is about 40% of your voice.
You do have a very loud hum, much louder hum on my side.
And I'll call it public.
By the way, just so you know, you could build a PBX using a Raspberry Pi and using asterisk.
And you could just build it up to a bunch of switches.
And all you need is, you know, a 48-volt power supply.
And you could probably run a lot of, you know, a low-voltage supply and run a lot of phones today.
See, the tech info gets out there.
It does.
You just got to wait for it.
No, no, no.
I'll be very, very honest.
I'm somewhat conservative.
And I would love to debate you guys because I know you guys think that, you know, you think Trump is evil.
I can think of a lot of people that were evil.
I need to hear people saying, oh, Trump did sexist.
Well, look at what Clinton did.
Hey, there are a lot of evil people in the world.
But, you know, I'll say.
You go back to time throughout history.
I know you guys, one of you guys is a lawyer.
You go back to a guy like Roosevelt who put people in camps when the Japanese attacked.
Yes, that's wrong.
Every president has baggage.
That's wrong.
He was a Democrat.
And the first one to say that was wrong.
That was horrible.
That should never be repeated.
But, you know, Trump did send Marines into a city to face off against U.S. citizens.
That's never been done before.
No, he's not facing off against.
See, that's where you're giving misinformation.
That is where you're giving misinformation.
What are they there for?
There was definite looting.
You don't.
I'm blind and I can even see that there was looting.
I watched it live.
And there were people coming in.
Excuse me.
I watched it.
I watched it live on Saturday.
Irregulations.
I watched it live on Saturday.
Oh, boy.
Immigration without control.
Yes.
Do we need immigrants?
Of course.
My grandparents were immigrants because I'm a Jew.
They came over and they asked to come in before they came in and they had to go to Ellis Island.
And some of them were sent back because they weren't healthy.
And everyone had to.
Everyone in that generation that came over.
Okay.
They didn't go on welfare.
They didn't get free housing like a lot of people are getting.
Okay.
That's really the honest.
And what I also don't like as a blind person is to scare tactic by a certain amount of people
that, oh, Trump is going to take away all your benefits.
I don't think any benefits to people who really need it are going to be taken away.
Is there fraud?
Absolutely.
There's fraud.
Yeah.
There's fraud everywhere.
That's true.
But there are benefits being taken away.
There's nothing wrong with trying to do it.
Do I think he does everything right?
No.
Do I think Donald was completely correct?
No.
Do I think Leon, I can't even think about Musk, that guy?
I think that guy's a little fruity.
A little fruity.
I don't even like his cars to begin with.
But do people have a right to go ahead and attack people's cars, people who bought their
cars?
Okay.
They didn't know what he was going to do two years down the road.
A lot of people who bought their cars got their cars key.
You're talking about many different things here.
The left.
Okay.
But you're talking about many things here.
And you're packaging everything that you disagree with as a product of the left, which
is not true.
All right.
People who are looting are not leftists.
They're criminals.
You know, they take advantage of a situation.
Now, on Saturday, I was watching KTLA from Los Angeles, and I saw the, actually, no, it
was MSNBC, it wasn't CNN, it was one of the networks.
And the National Guard, or the, I think it was National Guard, or the police, one of them,
started firing into the crowd.
They started firing flashbangs.
This crowd was just standing there.
They were not looting.
It was still daytime.
There was no cause for that.
And that is how people get angry, and that's how people start doing things which are criminal
behavior.
Absolutely.
But it's not just evil versus good.
There's a lot of nuance there.
And, you know, there are a lot of angry people.
You can't ignore five million people marching on one day.
That's significant.
Oh, listen.
By the way, they have a right to march.
And I'm not, I would have gone out there, no kidding.
Bill King's Day, as far as, you know, if you want to talk about Bill King's Day, the people
that went out to march at 100%, as far as I know, there was very little looting or any
problems.
That is our right as an American to go out and protest.
That's right.
As far as having the parade, that military parade, I think it was a good thing.
I think it was just a way of saying, hey, we should be proud of the people that serve.
You know, honestly, honestly, I kind of agree because it was so, such a non-event that it
really didn't live up to all the fear that people had of it.
I mean, that squeaky tank, what was up with that?
Why couldn't they make that not squeak?
I think, you know, the weaponry just looked kind of small, you know, and not very impressive.
You know what, regardless of how they look, what do people think?
Did you think they're going to start shooting people on the street?
Do you think they're going to march down like they do in Moscow Square?
No, I think it was just showing off some military stuff, showing that it was their 250th anniversary,
that it is their 250th anniversary in the army.
And you know what?
No one said you have to go.
And by saying, King, no one is telling me that I have to have a portrait of Trump in my house,
that I wouldn't have a portrait of any president.
Maybe I'll have a picture of some president, because, you know, whatever.
But the idea is this, no one is commanding us.
In other countries, you're told to have a portrait.
And I think that is carried too far.
You know, I just wish you guys would be more into the technology and less into the politics.
You know, yes, you can talk about, you know, you can say things, but you guys are pushing it too far.
And I think you're turning people off.
And I tell you what, you had a lot of people.
If you are blessed people this year, and to think that should give you an idea,
that maybe you should look at what you're saying, that's all.
All right, well, you know what, if you can't look at your own selves and have reflection, well, that's up to you.
I guess we leave it up to the attendees then.
If they agree with this, then we have to take a good look at ourselves.
I'm not convinced that that's the reason why, but maybe it is.
So, tell us.
Well, maybe you ought to put out a poll or something on 2600 and ask people how they feel about, you know,
Yeah, but that doesn't, that doesn't, that doesn't reach the people who are going,
there were 10, that just reaches people that can flood a poll.
Yeah, by the way, just so you know about BAI, it's concerned, I wouldn't, I'll say it here,
because we're now on BAI, I wouldn't contribute to BAI for a couple of reasons.
It's too far true hating.
And also, a lot of the good, some of the good programs they used to have,
I've gone, they used to have Gary Noe.
All right, well, we're not going to get into all that, because that will take forever.
But you're entitled to your opinion, and you're entitled to support what you want to support.
Absolutely.
That is absolutely correct.
And guess what?
BAI has a right to exist.
And, you know, look, you know, if hopefully no one, you know, if BAI wants to be on the airplane,
they want to be on 99.5 with a 50 kilowatt FM signal from, look, I think they're coming out of four Conde Nast.
Times Square.
That's all I can say, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, there's plenty of conservative radio stations out there, so I don't think anyone has anything to worry about.
And guess what?
It bothers me to see, and I heard you guys talk about this,
it bothers me to see that you've got one or two people owning a whole bunch of stations.
Look at what they did to CBS 880.
It's a shame.
Oh, I agree with you there.
Absolutely.
That station had a good signal.
You could hear the news all the time.
WINS, I can never pick them up.
It's good to hear.
They're not as strong.
It's good to hear some of the same anchors are on there.
Well, Matt, I love CBS.
I remember when it was when they had a talk show.
I remember back in the 60s, okay, as a kid, they used to have a show on,
and they used to have a one or two hour show selling ham gear, you know, having a swap.
That was back in the 60s.
They used to come home from school and listen to that radio station, especially in the summertime.
And I can tell you that WCBS 880 has one hell of a signal.
Absolutely.
I heard that in Florida.
I heard it in Canada.
I heard.
You know where I heard that?
I heard that in Greece.
No.
WCBS in Greece.
And I had a Sony 2010 sitting in Greece in Saloniki.
We were actually barely in Greece back in 94.
And I can remember that.
And at night when it got dark there and it was too dark in the U.S., you can hear CBS rising out of the noise.
That's strong.
That is something.
That rivals any story I've heard.
Wow.
And that would happen.
And that especially happened in the wintertime.
In the summertime, you wouldn't get that too much static.
But, yes, you can hear WCBS 880.
Because one thing, the European radio stations are all on a 9KC channel space.
In the U.S., we're 10KC.
So they weren't on top of someone.
There were a couple of KCs off from another station.
Yeah, they don't use the same divided by 10 kilohertz.
They have like 712 or 814 or something.
No, 9 kilohertz.
Is it 9 kilohertz?
812, 892, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
It's 9 kilohertz spacing, which I never understood why.
They also run a much tighter.
Their audio slightly restricted because they run a much tighter bandwidth.
Yeah, they can fit more stations in if they're only 9 kilohertz apart instead of 10.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm just telling you.
You know, when I went there, the first day I got into a car with someone, I said,
What is this?
Why are these stations like Space 9 kilohertz apart?
I asked these folks to the internet.
They said, eh, they wanted to do it many years ago to be different than the U.S.
I don't know if that's true, but it's a good reason.
It's politics because you look at 220.
They went to 220 voltage at 50 cycles for two reasons.
It was because, you know, they want a smaller wire size because of copper.
But they tend to do things a lot differently.
And you know what?
Before you had digital TV, you had PAL.
And you would have countries.
Each country would slightly have an offset.
Would they be negative or positive?
Or they would offset the 3.58, you know, color birth so that you couldn't pick up, you know,
another country stuff for politics.
But, you know, if you were, like, in Eastern Europe and you were 10 miles away from Bulgaria and you were in Greece,
your TV would not sync up to a station coming out of Bulgaria.
Interesting.
I didn't know that.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah, they had all, everybody was slightly run differently.
And then, obviously, the newer TVs, like in the 90s, had chips that you could switch and pick up different.
Your TV could be picked up.
But that was a lot of reasons.
You know, also, a lot of places like Greece, they want to tax you for having a TV.
Or they want to tax you for having a receiver.
Yeah, they do that in the U.K. as well.
Yes.
And I think that's so bad.
But seriously, guys, look at what you're doing.
And I think that's, well, I think that's what's irritating some people.
All right.
Well, we'll take that under advisement.
But, yeah, we'll certainly take a look at that and open up the dialogue.
You know, I'd like to hear about, you know, what type of technology, how can we, you know, use our phones without getting hacked.
But, you know, have stuff on, like, you know, on PA, you know, when you're having a show, talk about how you can protect your credit cards from being hacked for someone walking faster or up.
Well, I think we spent a lot of time talking about those things.
And I think tonight was no exception.
But we're going to leave it there.
But I want to thank you for calling and wish you the best.
Yeah, okay, guys.
Bye.
All right.
Kyle.
Kyle.
Not helping, Kyle.
Wow.
Trouble with the phone there.
Yeah, Rob, go ahead.
Yeah, I know who this is.
And we see him at Hope.
And we always have a nice chat.
He will be missed if he doesn't come to Hope.
I will say, if you're listening, dude, if you don't come to Hope, is there a way your dog can still come?
Because we all love your dog.
That dog was cool.
And, you know, I don't want to disturb anybody, but that dog, well, how do I say it?
Definitely leftist.
The dog is definitely leftist.
I'm not going to tell you how I know this.
Let's just say we had a moment where it was clear.
It was clear.
Most animals are, by the way.
Most animals are leftist.
In fact, I would say socialist, even, you know, degrees of social.
Not all dogs.
Not all dogs.
All cats.
Cats are communist.
Just straight down the line.
That I can prove.
I mean, I learned that in, what, 1985?
Yeah.
Well, no.
I'm sorry.
Cats are Bolsheviks.
Most are.
Yeah, you're right.
No, it's not an American tale.
Cats are Bolsheviks.
Well, it's per-restroic, I think.
Oh, man.
Can you turn down his mic, maybe, somehow?
You're in the same room.
All right.
Well, anyway, if we're too far left for most people, let us know that, and we'll do better,
we promise.
But honestly, you know, look at the content that people send to us.
We reflect that.
We reflect what people want to talk about, and hope is unique.
And, you know, I'd like to see it stay that way.
Do we want to take one more call?
If it's quick.
If it's a quick call, it's not somebody we talked to already.
What do you think, Kyle?
All right.
We're going to try this.
One more call.
And everybody else out there, this is it.
No more after this.
So, good evening.
You're on Off the Oak Overtime.
Good evening, gang.
This is Tim in Connecticut.
How are you tonight?
Hey, Tim in Connecticut.
How are you?
Not too bad.
The last caller is correct.
Yeah, I've got a horrible hum on this side.
I hope it's coming across okay.
I'll check later as I'll unmute my PC.
Yeah, it's hard for us to know what people are hearing from us.
We can only rank what we hear.
I mean, we hear slight hum, but it's not a loud hum.
Yeah, I think basically the caller's side.
It's not distinguishable.
I mean, the voice is.
Yeah, the caller's side is getting it.
It's there.
I'm sorry.
It's our gift to you.
The caller's side is getting it more.
If I wiggle the cable, it'll be on our side, and then we broadcast.
By the way, we had a really helpful email from a listener, I think two weeks ago, trying
to solve the hum problem.
We never acknowledged him, but I wanted to make sure that word got out that, yes, that's
extremely helpful, and we are reading everything you told us, and we're trying all different
technical solutions to this.
You know, we never give up.
We just get busy with other things.
Anyway, Tim, what else is on your mind?
You know what they say, you know, falling on your face is still forward progress.
Yeah, that's true.
That's a good way of looking at it.
Anyway, the primary reason I was calling tonight was because my neighbor was cleaning out his
shed, and he was about to throw away this old rotary bake-a-lite, and I mean like five,
six pounds of telephone that I intercepted, and I now have that, and I was wondering if
you guys would want it, or do I just have something on the back porch that I can show
people what telephones used to look like?
Well, can you describe it to us?
It's black.
It's got a rotary dial, and it's got the bells in a, I don't know, like four-inch by six-inch
black box.
So, can you, can you place the Aera, it'll probably be like a 300 set, maybe, if it's
really old, or a 500 with an external ringer.
It's on the bottom, you can probably see the stand.
It probably, yeah, it has an external ringer.
Oh, it does, wow.
Yeah, so.
But I mean, the old wiring on it, I mean, I could always throw it in the back of the
car, you could say yay-nay at the time, I'm sure.
Uh-huh.
Wow, what's that?
It doesn't take up a lot of space.
What's that hand set like?
It is a heavy little monster, and I think you made mention, you know, it's got that
hand set that you could actually kill somebody with.
Okay, I was going to ask you that very question.
And it would not affect the hand set at all.
No, I was going to ask you that very question, does the hand set, is it something you would
wound somebody with?
Because that's a...
Oh, absolutely.
Or something you could kill somebody with, because the 1930s, that was the killing handset.
1950s, the 500 series, I think, 60s, that's more of wounding.
Yeah, I mean, it would probably survive in a...
You would survive that, yeah.
You'd have a nasty bump, but you'd survive, yeah.
But the other ones, I think they're made out of metal, not plastic.
Wow.
And they were just throwing this out.
Right, yeah.
He was just cleaning out a shed and saw no use for it, because, of course, everybody's
got a...
In fact, he doesn't even have a landline in the house.
Everybody's just got a cell phone now.
You know, the day will come when everybody regrets that.
I'll say it again.
Bring it to hope.
Yeah, bring it to hope.
You'll definitely find somebody who's interested in that.
Rob has a question.
Go ahead.
Well, more of a statement, but with those old phones, the great thing about them is you
can always, even if the guts are decrepit, even if the thing doesn't work anymore, you
can always rewire these things with a modern microphone, a modern speaker, some modern wiring,
and it will work just as well as it did back then if you plug it into even the simulated
landline that, like, a VoIP box from, like, a cable company or something like that would
give you.
So there are ways to actually use these things as working telephones nowadays.
That's interesting.
The particular phone, it's heavy enough.
It's just really...
It's one of those things...
I looked online real quick, tried to do an image search, and I couldn't find anything
that exactly matched it to pull a model number off.
If you would be interested to email us some pictures of this guy, we'd love to have a look
at it and maybe find some more info for you.
Oh, sure.
The regular address?
Yep.
O-T-H at 2600.com.
I can certainly do that.
Awesome.
All right.
Well, I don't want to hold you guys up.
Yeah, we're fading, I think.
So thanks for the call.
I look forward to seeing you at home.
I hope you feel better, Emanuel.
Yes, I do, actually.
I think doing a show for a few hours is definitely good medicine.
And as always, great show.
Thanks for what you do.
All right.
Thank you.
Have a good night.
Be well.
And that's our last call of the night.
You guys have any closing thoughts?
Stay cool out there, physically and psychologically.
Yeah, we're actually heading into a really significant heat wave here in New York.
You know, hydrate, be careful, be safe.
Find a cooling center if you need one.
They do exist.
Find a cooling center at finder.nyc.gov.
You can find all the cooling centers.
You can call 311 if you need help.
And yes, please, please, please find out about ranked choice voting.
Know what you're doing before you go vote.
And yes, Tim, you sounded great.
Thank you.
Also, yeah.
Be free, stay free, and fight.
That's all I got.
Sounds good.
Alex, anything from you?
No, just good night, everybody.
Always a pleasure.
I'll talk with you all next week from another location.
Yeah.
Call and show on WBAI from 7 to 8.
No overtime next week.
So we will see everybody on overtime in two weeks.
I would just acknowledge you for being diplomatic and having a lot of listening.
We all are good at listening.
And remind people they can send feedback, oth at 2600.com, and story ideas if there's something technical you're interested in.
And just consider all the shit I would talk.
Just know that.
This is the utmost restraint.
Like, I just, I can't even begin.
So, I won't.
All right, then.
And Rob?
And just wishing a good and meaningful Juneteenth to everyone tomorrow.
And if you're one of the folks who still doesn't know what that's all about, look it up on Wikipedia.
It's important.
Sure is.
Sure is.
All right, we will see you again, oth at 2600.com.
Good night, everyone.