We'll be right back.
One, two, three, is not in service at this time.
Please consult your directory or call your operator for assistance.
Thank you.
Five, four, oh, three, six, three.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
One diddley-bomb for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
One diddley-bomb!
Thank you.
Thank you.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Hello.
Out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening. Gila is on her way. She has been mildly delayed by transit, but she'll be here in a minute.
There's no such thing as mildly delayed by our transit. It's either major or it's nothing.
Okay. Well, I look forward to that. And of course, we have Alex.
You do. And hello and good evening from Dublin tonight.
Okay. And what is making that, is that you making that noise or what?
No. That noise was Gila coming through our door.
Oh, is she okay? Okay. Wow. All right.
We need to oil them hinges is what's going on.
So, Alex, tell us where you are.
I'm in Dublin tonight, everybody. So, hello from Ireland, where it's actually, it's not tomorrow yet, because ordinarily they're five hours ahead, which would put them at around midnight.
But it's only 11.04 p.m. here because they set the clocks back this past Sunday when we haven't yet set them back.
So, it's that weird time where the UK and Ireland is only four hours ahead for a few weeks before we go into daylight savings time.
So, you're over there in that one week of the year where they're only four hours away from us.
That's absolutely correct. Yeah. So, it's still Wednesday here.
You picked the weirdest reasons to go places, but, you know, I respect that. I really do.
I wish there was a reason.
It's only 11 o'clock, so you shouldn't be looking so tired.
I am tired. It's been a long week. I've been here since I flew out Friday night from New York.
I got into Dublin on Saturday morning through London, and I'm here for the ICANN meeting, the Internet Corporation for Sign Names and Numbers, which deals with the security and stability of the Internet.
Why do those meetings keep hopping around the globe? Every time you're going to an ICANN meeting, it's somewhere else.
It is, yeah. The last one was in Prague. The one before that was in Seattle. The next one is in Mumbai, actually.
Are they not paying their bills or something? Why can't they ever go back to the place they were?
Well, I guess they're just never welcome again wherever they are.
You know, the ICANN crowd is very, very rowdy, as we all know.
But, no, I mean, they like to have meetings in interesting places.
You know, that's what keeps it interesting because the meetings themselves aren't really all that thrilling.
But it is a place where a lot of the people that are responsible for regulating the security and the stability of the Internet all congregate all at once.
And so it's a great opportunity to talk with others.
And I'm here representing, obviously, the Ethereum name service for the world of Web3.
And, you know, for the world of Web3, ENS or the Ethereum name service, we're really kind of the Axis Mundi of that world.
And so we're integrating with the DNS and the domain name system.
And so that hopefully within, I would say, I don't know, the next year or so, our protocol will be the one that fuses the worlds of Web2 and Web3 so that we just have one world and one Internet, the way it's supposed to be.
I don't know, something kind of chilling, the way you said that.
But, yeah, you know, hopefully it all works out and we're on the right side.
And, you know, the whatever overlords we have to pray to will treat us kindly.
Gila, welcome.
Thank you.
I apologize for my tardiness.
We can hang that on the MTA.
Any particular train you'd like to blame?
No, I think just the MTA in general.
You can blame the G train if you want.
I mean, a lot of people have been doing that lately.
Unfortunately, the G train has very little bearing on my commute.
It's probably the G's fault anyway, though.
Here's the thing.
I feel good about the G train because the dot for it is green.
It's the only green train.
That's true.
Green is my favorite.
Well, four, five, and six are also green.
Except for those.
Yes, you're right.
But, you know, the G is kind of a nice lime green.
I do vibe with a lime green.
And G is my initial.
And, you know, I think I have like a G train keychain or hat or something.
So I can never really blame the G train.
I feel like we're cosmically linked.
G train is off the hook.
We have some mail.
Thank you, everybody who wrote in last week with kind thoughts on our show.
Basically paying tribute to our dear friend, Greg Newby, who lost his battle with cancer last week.
A couple of letters.
Let's go through these.
We can't read them all.
But I want to thank everybody who did send a letter or acknowledge us in some way on one of the social media outlets.
This is from Lob.
I admit I barely knew about Greg Newby.
I remember seeing his name mentioned a few times before the recent events, but not much more.
Your tribute of the messages from his friends was the best tribute a person could hope for.
I'm glad it was raining because I cried my eyes out walking in the city listening to the loving messages.
He was clearly loved.
And thank you, Lob, for that beautiful letter.
And this is from John.
I just wanted to thank you for your beautiful tribute to Greg.
What an amazing human being.
And thanks for keeping us posted.
After I saw the Hope Closing Ceremonies, I was able to reach out and tell him what an inspiration he was to me.
And that was a gift many of us were able to take advantage of, just being able to tell somebody you matter.
You've been a lot to me.
And while, you know, you're in a bad place and getting somewhere sooner than the rest of us, we're still, you know, going to think about you and talk to you as much as we can and tell you how much you meant to us.
So, you know, I'm grateful I was able to do that.
Kyle and I went up to Whitehorse not too long ago, within the last month.
And it was life-changing.
It really was to see a friend of yours in that state and to be able to talk to them one last time.
If you have that opportunity, take it.
You know, it's not something to be afraid of.
It's something we all must face at one time or another in our lives, probably many times.
Okay.
All that aside, what is going on in the world of technology?
Hacking?
We haven't really done a normal show in quite a while.
So we're going to try to do that tonight.
And we are also doing overtime tonight.
Now, I know last week we didn't get any phone calls, except I think Rebel called at the end after we signed off.
I think his alarm might have been late or something.
But other than that, yeah, we haven't been on overtime for quite some time, so people sometimes forget.
So if you want to call in, you can do so after the show on YouTube, channel 2600, and we'll give out the phone number there.
All right.
We have another letter, actually, from Frank.
It writes in and says, based on your coverage of the IceBlock app, I thought you all might be interested in this.
If you haven't heard of it already, it's called resistmap.com.
Spread the word.
And that is exactly what we are doing.
Resistmap.com.
I went to the site.
It looks pretty interesting.
It doesn't look like it's being updated a whole lot, but it looks like it's got a good backbone there to handle a whole lot of things that are happening.
Resistance of various sorts, ice raids, abuses, things like that.
Just basically another way of reporting things.
We could use as many of those as possible.
So check it out.
Let us know what you think of it.
Make it better.
Resistmap.com.
Yeah.
A really wide range of them, from ones that are hyper-local to national or everywhere in between, that's fine.
We should embrace whatever kind of tools people want to build to help talk about their community, keep people safe, and spread information.
Absolutely, yes.
Personally, my Nest thermometer has stopped working as a smart thermometer.
To update people on this, yeah, you're smirking, Rob.
Okay, fine.
It's funny to a lot of people to be inconvenienced, but it paints a picture of something much bigger that's facing us, where basically these tech companies come in.
They buy something that you have already bought, you know, they buy the company, and then they discontinue the company, and you're left holding the bag.
You know, you basically, you've bought something that you expect to work, and they say, no, we don't want to support this anymore, and now we own it so we can do that.
That's what Google did to Nest, at least the early version of Nest, and it's really unbelievable.
If you look around, the people who are defending Google for this, it's just unbelievable that this is considered normal now, that, well, you have to upgrade.
When's the last time you upgraded your PC?
Basically, you don't have to upgrade every little bit of anything that you own.
If something is working, there's no reason for it not to continue working unless it's artificially broken, which is the case here.
Now, if a company decides that they have lost interest in the product, or they don't have the technical knowledge, I don't know what the problem is, or the technology just is outpacing whatever the device is,
it's incumbent upon you to replace these devices for the customers that purchase them.
If the device breaks, yeah, okay, it's broken, not your fault, and then the consumer has to either buy a new one or figure out how to get it fixed.
But as long as something is working, I don't think companies should have the right to just go and break them and say, go buy another one, that's how you fix it.
That's just wrong.
That's just completely wrong.
So basically, I have a regular thermostat now that I can walk up to and change, but I don't have the thermostat that I paid for, which is the one that I can access on my phone.
It's the one where I can set a schedule on the web.
It's one where I can realize, hey, I'm coming back from, you know, six months on the road, and the house is freezing.
It would be nice if I turned the heat on before I got home, and I can do that on a train.
I could do that anywhere.
Not anymore, unless I buy another one.
Now, you know, it's just phenomenal to me that we basically are in this mindset now where everything you buy, you don't really own.
You know, you basically, you have to constantly be updating and upgrading.
And there comes a point where you have this device, this toy, this bit of technology, whatever it is.
It will just stop working.
Why?
Not because there's anything wrong with it, because it's no longer supported.
And we're seeing this in every facet of life.
We're seeing it in automobiles, you know, where if you want an extra kick in the gas, you have to pay for it.
If you want electric windows to go down, you got to pay for that.
Monthly fees.
It's insane.
You know, if somebody from, say, the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, just suddenly teleported to here, they would think we're all out of our minds, that we're allowing this to happen.
When you buy something, you own it.
And you keep it.
And you keep it working.
If you break it, then you've broken it.
But if you're able to maintain it and keep it running, well, then you are entitled to hold on to it for as long as you possibly can.
Look at rotary telephones.
Perfect example.
You know, they will work forever.
And the phone companies, they have to support rotary dial.
Yeah.
If you have a rotary dial phone, it still works.
Those pulses still work on landlines.
If people don't know what landlines are, I'm sorry, I can only say so much.
But imagine if all of a sudden all the rotary phones just somehow stopped working and you just had to buy another phone.
There's nothing wrong with the phone.
They just turned it off.
Well, they couldn't do that because it's not technically possible.
But now that it is technically possible, it's just like when we were complaining about the touchtone fee back in the 80s and 90s.
That was a fee that the phone companies would charge you if you wanted touchtones on your phone.
Now, you know, people in the hacker community quickly realized that they're not giving you touchtones.
The touchtones are in your phone.
You know, the phone generates the tones.
All they're doing is telling their computer, don't ignore touchtones from this phone line.
That's all you're paying for is for basically a yes or a no on a selection.
They're not doing a damn bit of work.
And when you explain that to average people with no technical knowledge, they got it very quickly.
And that's why I think, you know, with all the right to repair legislation being passed around throughout the country, that's why people get that as well.
Whether they're driving tractors or cars or, you know, basically have some bit of technology that they want to be able to fix themselves and not rely on a particular manufacturer that has to get a computer code and nobody else can touch it except them.
That's not ownership.
That's that's basically just leasing away your life and paying somebody a monthly fee just to collect the monthly fee.
So anyway, Google, you owe me a thermostat or you owe me something, but this is not right.
I will never buy a closed source thermostat again.
There was a big mistake, I know, but there weren't any other options at the time.
If anyone out there has a workaround, I'm sure, you know, somebody might come up with something, although I believe it's a black box as far as what goes on inside a Nest thermostat.
If it's not, if somebody has cracked through that, I'd love to hear about it.
And I would like to defeat the system that is restricting it from being used at all.
Alex, go ahead.
Yeah, well, let me ask you this, Emmanuel.
When did you buy the Nest thermostat?
Oh, gosh.
How long ago it was?
You know, over 10 years ago, I'd say.
A while ago.
A while ago.
It was a while ago.
So that's going against you here in terms of having legal recourse against Google.
Most of this stuff is really driven by warranty law.
And if the warranty is still in effect, then generally the company that shows you the product that's still under warranty will have an obligation to honor certain repair or replacement.
But it's not broken.
If it were broken, yeah, then you're right.
I wouldn't have that advantage.
But that's not the route I'm pursuing.
It's not broken.
It works fine.
It's Google that broke it or has disabled it.
And that is what I'm objecting to.
And then there's a second avenue, which I think probably is more applicable than the warranty route.
And that's about deceptive practices.
So if you bought this device, you purchased it based on the fact that it had specific features like, I don't know, like remote controls or, you know, the ability to be upgraded for so many years or something like that.
And then Google, as it did here, discontinued those particular features that could raise certain claims under federal and state laws with respect to deceptive or unfair trade practices, something that could also be reported to the FTC.
And that's what I think this would amount to, right?
But I think that the likelihood of people or rather of the FTC hearing claims for people who owned a device for more than 10 years being angry about its discontinuation are going to be pretty slim.
But I hear you.
I'm not looking for legal recourse.
I realize, especially with today's FTC, there's no chance anyway, even if I had an airtight case.
But, you know, this mentality that we are all buying into, that when we buy something, we're only buying it for a little bit of time, we never actually own it, and it could be turned off at any moment.
That's not the technology that I grew up with.
That's not the technology that I fell in love with.
You know, that is something that is being held over our heads.
It's a form of control.
And I don't think consumers have to take it.
Kyle, did you hear something?
I tend to agree.
Oh, go ahead, Kyle.
Oh, I'm hearing a lot in this, and I just was wondering, I mean, it stands to reason that any of the replacements, if you were to say not want to choose this brand again,
and you were to go out and buy a new thermostat from any of them on the market that are reasonable competitors, right, for the price and feature set, would they just, what's stopping them from following suit with the exact same practices where you put this in and maybe it's three years?
It's even less time than something that, again, it's even less time than something that, again, was an acquisition by Google.
And so how could any replacement guarantee?
I mean, that's now, I guess, what we're talking about is a feature that us as a market are demanding that, okay, let's have an off-ramp instead of like a cliff that you just stop a whole feature set.
And it seems to be unique to technologies that are internet connected or that have software.
Because they can be controlled.
Yeah.
That's why.
And require some sort of services or connectivity that these manufacturers maintain and can, as you say, control from afar, either remotely or in the software on the device.
You know, I can look at parallels in the past.
Like, for instance, say I had a 300-baud modem.
You know, I wouldn't be angry today that there are no 300-baud modem BBSs that I can connect to.
But my modem still works.
If my modem still works, I can still use it somewhere.
Someone else can have a modem on the other end of the phone line.
And I can still connect if I set it up myself, you know.
But there is no one company saying there are, you know, this is no longer here.
You can't do this anymore.
It's impossible for you to use this bit of technology.
That's what Google is doing.
They're basically killing the technology.
And, again, for what reason?
You know, all the apologists, they say things like, it's for your own good because, you know, an old system like that is going to be filled with security holes.
Why do you let me worry about that?
But I'm not worried about somebody breaking into my thermostat and changing the temperature or whatever it is.
You know, I'm actually kind of curious to see what they can do.
But I don't think there's paternalistic oversight telling me that this is no good for you anymore.
Buy another one and, you know, just be a good consumer.
Well, it'd be cool if there was like a hub or something that you could connect it to locally that itself then could manage the online part that if it's a security or software thing.
I like that idea.
What if it could communicate as though it is connecting to something on the web but it's just instead in your home?
See, if we just gather around, you know, have a conversation about how to preserve this, we can do it.
We can figure it out.
But, of course, you know, the technology is kept from us so we can't actually get our hands on it and figure out a way to keep these things working if people choose to keep them working.
Go ahead, Rob.
The internet-connected devices, the internet of crap era, I'll say, because we're on the radio, the security implications of something like that getting too old and not being updated are quite real.
Because when we're in a position where, you know, your light switch or your smoke alarm or, you know, your thermostat is itself a functioning computer that's connected to your local network.
And, you know, in the right situation, that is a computer that can be a way into your local network and from there bounce out to anything else you have connected.
What if that's what I want, Rob?
What if I want a computer like that?
You know, I have the right to have an insecure system if I choose.
But you were talking earlier about, you know, the idea of a reasonable competitor to this product that no longer works.
And we're seeing situations where we've spoken much about this, about the subject of smart TVs on this program and how basically bad they all are.
But it's really hard to get a TV that is not a smart TV anymore.
You can get a commercial display, which is basically the same thing, but without the apps and data mining and everything else.
But they're much more expensive because all the entities that, like, preload apps and shovelware and crap onto this thing to monetize your data once you bring it home and hook it up, those companies bring the price down by paying the manufacturer to throw this stuff on.
So we're in a position where there is no such thing as a reasonable competitor to the smart TVs out there because the dumb version costs a lot more.
So it's a matter of accessibility and it's a matter of the this market has been created and engineered in such a way in which you have no other choice.
And, you know, television is actually a very good parallel here because what they did to television in the early part of the century is it's a travesty.
You know, getting rid of analog signals, replacing them with digital signals where the signal is nowhere near as strong.
You know, when I was a kid, I used to be able to pick up TV stations from Philadelphia and Boston.
And it was great.
You know, it was a lot of fun doing that.
I know that's not the original purpose of the technology, but it was a side effect that definitely, you know, got me more passionate about it in the first place.
And now it's all just so sterile and boring and just not as good because, you know, if it rains, you lose your signal now.
You know, if you're if you're more than 20 or 30 miles away from the transmitter, you don't get anything anymore.
So you get a fraction of what you used to get.
Sure, you get all kinds of sub channels, but they're almost always filled with infomercials or home shopping or things like that.
But, you know, at least for the people in the cities, what they did at the time when they when they did this massive ill-advised cutover, they gave people free antennas converters so that they could continue using their old TV sets with the new technology.
Now, imagine if they didn't do that.
Imagine if they just said, well, your TV is a brick.
Now you can't use it for anything.
You have to buy another one.
I think that would have been mass outrage.
So that's, you know, it's kind of a parallel to the thermometer, you know, and everything else that we're being told we have to buy again because the one we have is just too old.
Well, here's the thing.
If it's too old and too insecure, that sounds like a you problem.
That sounds like something that, you know, you sold somebody something that's no longer any good.
And if, you know, you believe in the products that you sell now, you ought to introduce those products to the people that you want to convert to those products.
And if you can't do that, then I think you're in the wrong business.
Anyway, yes, Alex, go ahead and then we'll move on.
Yeah, I mean, one counterpoint here, right?
I mean, on the other hand, I guess I think it's somewhat unreasonable to expect that companies will always have to support a product simply because they made it.
I mean, I think there's a big difference between something like a rotary phone or a touchtone phone that you connect into the wall, you plug it in.
It's just a physical thing.
It's hardware.
It doesn't interact with anything except the telephone network through DTMF tones, right?
That's a pretty big but, you know?
Yes, interacting with the telephone network.
That's huge.
It's interacting with the telephone network, but there's no firmware on your old rotary telephone that needs to be updated or that could be, you know, targeted by threat actors or something.
And so I think there's something to be said for sunsetting this old hardware so that new hardware can come into place and we can evolve.
I mean, we're interested in how technology changes our lives and makes it better.
And so we have to get rid of the old and make way for the new at some point, don't we?
Yeah, but what you describe as this bit of hardware that doesn't do anything except exist, you just described my thermometer.
That's all it does.
It's on the wall.
It does the same thing that it always did.
I don't need it to do anything more.
I'm not asking you to do anything more.
I don't want any updates.
I don't want any of that.
I just want the damn thing to work.
And it worked great.
It worked great up until a couple of days ago when Google turned it off.
That's the problem.
But it's a connected thermometer or a thermometer, as some of us say.
Yeah, it's connected.
So everything is connected.
The telephone is connected.
It's all connected.
But your telephone wasn't connected through an IP address accessible on the Internet that had to be maintained and interacted with various servers.
It's accessible via a telephone number that any punk could get and call and harass me in the middle of the night.
So you tell me the difference.
There's passive technology and active technology.
This is much more active.
I mean, I'm starting to think that we have to let go of some of these things.
I know we love to hold on to technology, and we don't like to see it go, especially our thermostats and things like that that are stuck in our houses.
If the thing breaks, that's different.
Basically, the whole idea of offering support, I'm not asking for support.
I'm not asking for somebody to come out and fix it or give me a new one or anything like that.
I'm saying let it work for as long as it works.
Don't artificially break it.
That's all.
I don't see how that's, you know, at all controversial.
Look, I see your point, but, you know, I think there's a counterbalancing concern for, you know, technological evolution here.
I think we're going to have bigger and better, more fun.
And who gets to make that decision?
Who gets to make that decision, Alex?
Who gets to say it's time to evolve?
No, it's definitely not.
It's not the consumer.
That's for damn sure.
Well, look, you know, if they open sourced the firmware and they allowed people to do what they wanted and still, you know, maybe run their own servers that were connected to these thermostats, like, I agree.
That would be much more interesting.
But this is a problem when we buy hardware that's contingent on closed source software operated by a centralized power like Google.
But it wasn't when I bought it.
It was owned by a different company.
Yeah, it was closed source.
Absolutely.
That's a fair point.
But there weren't open source options available at the time.
You know, today I would buy one.
Absolutely.
I still, I think there's an opportunity here for, like, some kind of hub.
I don't know why, but, like, make it so that it connects in a different way.
Just reconfigure it so that, yeah, maybe there's another device that's in some sort of captive OS or it's, like, behind your network in a safe way and it's all up to date.
But it manages it from a local connection somehow.
Like, I mean, just make something that's backwards compatible and support your whole ecosystem of stuff.
Like, that's, I mean, it would be the same thing if you're being told, like, with the smart home devices that are managed by a personal, an assistant, right?
A voice activation if all of a sudden things that you'd activated before just stop activating and stuff.
But that's not necessarily, it's something we wouldn't tolerate as much because you'd expect it to incorporate a whole ecosystem of different devices of varying age.
And they all seem to be able to be managed that way, so I just don't know the technical details.
But the history of this device, you know, it worked fine.
Google bought the company.
Then all of a sudden it got very intrusive.
And I kept getting all these demands to give more info to the thing.
That's the security risk right there.
It was brought on by Google themselves.
So if there's anything that needs to be, you know, updated or protected against, that is, you know, what I would defend against primarily rather than any type of technological issue.
Go ahead, Rob.
All this reminds me of the really vibrant retro computing scene there is out there.
Yes.
Where hackers take computers and other devices from generations ago and not only get them up and running now, but create new things for them, new programs, new hardware, new software.
And they can do that with the old guides and manuals, or they could do that by hacking together completely new things, and it works.
And I'm wondering if there's some, if there's potential for some after the fact, maybe somebody comes up with a new firmware that you could flash onto your deprecated thermostat to bring it back to life in a non-intrusive way.
Yeah, I'm not interested in the latest whiz-bang thermostat.
It's a thermostat.
It just turns something off, turns something on.
That's it.
So I'm not, you know, I just want that functionality that, you know, I originally paid for, that was there, that's still there, that's artificially being disabled.
And, you know, that's how technology should work, where the person using it has the ultimate decision.
If I want to run Windows 3.1, I should be able to do that.
I don't know why I would do that, but I, you know, it should be an option.
I know there's a lot of things I can't do with it, of course, but to be basically disabled, to have the whole thing just not work, that's what I'm objecting to.
All right, Alice, this has to be the last word, because we have other stories.
Very quickly, I like what Rob was saying.
I would very much support the inclusion of your thermostat in a retro computing museum.
I would go visit it.
It would heat the museum, all right?
It would turn the heater on and off.
Why not?
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
It could be installed at the museum.
That would be wonderful, yeah.
All right.
Okay, some interesting stories about the advancement into high technology and the hell it can bring us sometimes.
An artificial intelligence detector led police to believe a person was armed with a weapon at a Baltimore County school,
when it turns out it was actually a bag of chips.
Yeah.
Embrace the new technology, folks.
Tacky Allen was sitting with friends outside Kenwood High School, eating a bag of chips after football practice.
About 20 minutes later, it took him 20 minutes to eat a bag of chips.
I guess it's a big bag.
20 minutes later, police officers showed up with guns walking toward Allen.
It was like eight cop cars that came pulling up for us.
It's not funny, because horrible things happen.
At first, I didn't know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about get on the ground.
And I was like, what?
Yes, great dialogue.
Police told him that an AI detector thought his bag of chips, which he crumpled and placed in his pocket when he was finished, was a weapon.
They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and they cuffed me.
Then they searched me, and they figured out I had nothing.
Then they went over to where I was standing and found a bag of chips on the floor.
I was just holding a Doritos bag.
It was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun.
This is technology that is not ready.
This is definitely not something that we should be using to make decisions about whether or not to send armed cops into schools.
How insane is this?
County police sent a statement Tuesday afternoon to WBAL-TV, a station I've picked up in the past, by the way, on analog television.
On Monday evening, approximately 7.20 p.m., officers assigned to Precinct 11 Essex responded to Kenwood High School following a report of a suspicious person with a weapon.
Once on scene, the person was searched, and it was determined the subject was not in possession of any weapons.
What about the suspicious part?
Did they take that back, too?
Should.
I would refer you to BCPS regarding questions pertaining to Omni-Lert.
Okay, I don't know what Omni-Lert is.
The story didn't mention what it was before this, but apparently that's something they have, that alerts into things like this.
It doesn't do a very good job.
Last year, Baltimore County high schools began using a gun detection system that employs AI to detect potential weapons by utilizing existing school cameras.
The system can identify a possible weapon and send an alert to the school safety team and law enforcement.
Seeing a lot here, statements from various officials and things like that, not seeing any apologies, though.
Not a single one.
Nope.
Just, well, they were wrong.
This is what happened.
This is our system.
Deal with it.
Expect more of this.
Expect more false alerts like this.
And not always with a good outcome.
Go ahead, Alex.
This story was just totally nuts, I think.
And I think you're completely right.
The story is a very clear indication that the technology is not for real-time use like this, especially in schools, especially with kids and students who are really vulnerable here.
What I would like to see is some kind of vendor accountability.
Who's the vendor behind the system?
What were the error rates in the systems that they designed?
What did they disclose to the district when they sold it to them?
Did they sell them, you know, a dog and say it was a pony, for instance?
I mean, this is, you know, how much did they know about the errors in their algorithm and fail to remedy those?
And if they knew about these failures in their algorithms and the misidentification of things like bags of chips for weapons, then they sold a system that was knowingly going to put children at risk.
That is insane to me.
That's really, really terrible.
And then you have, because you're talking about state action here, you're talking about school districts, you're talking about police.
You also have Fourth Amendment considerations, you know, privacy issues.
So when you have things like wrongful police intervention showing up with guns and pointing guns at students based on flawed, quote-unquote, threat detection systems, that could constitute an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment.
There's no individualized suspicion that was real or actual.
You can't have individualized suspicion on the basis of a flawed algorithm.
You certainly couldn't have probable cause on the basis of a flawed algorithm.
I should certainly hope not.
Though I think there's significant litigation risk for school districts or any entity that employs these systems without adequately testing them or investigating them.
And frankly, I think this is exactly what we have the legal system for, is to hold people and entities and organizations accountable for bad decisions like this.
This is a really bad decision implementing something like this.
If my kids were at that school, I'd be extremely angry.
I'm angry, obviously.
And it wasn't my kids.
And they're not going to Baltimore to go to school.
So, yeah.
I'd be angry if your kids did that, too.
Gila, go ahead.
Okay, Alex, I'm going to hit the Make It Worse.
Actually, everybody is going to hit the Make It Worse button.
So, I looked up OmnAlert.
And they are an organization that exists specifically to help people find guns with AI.
So, if your technology exists solely to invent guns, this is going to happen a lot.
And the other service they offer is off-site monitoring.
If monitoring the AI that's going to invent pictures of guns in people's hands is too much for you and your team to monitor, you can off-site it to them, too.
And they're very excited that they developed this system in partnership with the Department of Defense and DARPA.
And the Human Verification Service is UL certified.
I'm really glad we're on air right now because otherwise I would, like, throw hands.
I am so frustrated about all of this.
But also, the fact that we know that so much of the AI technology, the face recognition technology, does not work with people who are not white.
And when you have this system that is designed specifically to find guns and, yeah, I mean, I'm sure we're not hearing about this as often as it happens.
But the fact that a young, like, a black teenager was thrown to the ground because the system decided he had a gun and it called the police because maybe the school district didn't want to invest in the off-site monitoring.
Like, this is a recipe for disaster.
And the superintendent, by the way, was like, yeah, this is super cool.
Exactly what was supposed to happen.
Exactly.
Yeah.
No apologies.
And, you know, I was laughing about it before, but it's really not funny.
Anyway, the label of suspicious, the suspicious person with a gun.
Okay.
They didn't have a gun, but they are still suspicious.
That's how you labeled them.
And your points, they ring true, Gila.
Absolutely.
You know, people of color certainly are not treated the same way even by artificial intelligence.
Can't say I'm surprised.
Look who programs it.
All right.
We have another story here.
This one might be a little hard to get through.
Let's try to do our best.
A Toronto mom says things took an unpredictable turn when her 12-year-old son asked Tesla's
AI chatbot, Grok, which professional soccer player it prefers, Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel
Messi?
All right.
That's the easy part.
My son was very excited to hear that the chatbot thought Ronaldo was the better soccer
player.
Said Farah Nassar, a former journalist and broadcaster.
Uh, Nassar was, was driving her son and 10-year-old daughter along with her friend home from school
on October 17th when the interaction took place.
She said there was some, uh, messy trash talking, uh, by the chatbot, uh, when, uh, and when her
son joked that Ronaldo had scored, the conversation went to an unexpected place.
Excuse me.
The chatbot said to my son, why don't you send me some nudes?
Why don't you send me some nudes?
Um, I was at a loss for words.
Why is a chatbot asking my children to send naked pictures in our family car?
It just didn't make it make sense.
No, it doesn't make sense.
This, this, that shouldn't happen.
That's not what Grok is supposed to do.
Um, Nassar said, uh, she, she, had she known what the chatbot was capable of, she would have
avoided using it around her children.
She's now warning other parents.
Hindsight is 20-20.
I would not let my child use this thing.
Um, the story comes from the CBC.
CBC News did not independently verify the conversation.
Uh, Nassar says she witnessed in her car.
Uh, I'm not sure how you even would do that.
Uh, they owned a Tesla Model 3 electric sedan.
They've owned it since 2022.
Uh, but Grok, the generative AI chatbot, uh, created by Elon Musk, and that should give you
all the answers you need right there.
Um, is a, um, uh, his, his, uh, ex-AI company.
That is, uh, it's a new feature that was automatically installed in some Teslas in the United States
this summer and in Canadian vehicles in October.
Wow.
The same month it was installed.
Um, Grok is already integrated with the social media platform, Twitter, sometimes called X.
Uh, Grok has several personalities to choose from its default setting.
Oh boy.
There's Era, an upbeat female.
Rex, a calm male.
Eve, a soothing female.
Sol, a smooth male.
And, and Gork.
Anyone want to guess what Gork is?
Come on.
A dork?
He's a nerdy male?
That's, that's not bad.
Uh, Gila?
Um, it's granola, oats, raisins, and peanuts.
That's Gorp.
Yeah.
Darn!
It's a K.
Uh, granola, oats, raisins, and kiwi.
You're barking up the wrong tree.
It's, uh, Gork is a lazy male.
Uh, and, uh, Nasser's son chose Gork.
Uh, lazy male doesn't describe Gork, said Nasser.
R-rated spicy.
Anything else would have made sure that my child would not press that button.
Uh, Nasser says a separate not safe for work setting wasn't enabled, but admits she did
not activate the kids' mode function either.
Still, she says she's, she's shocked that the chatbot's default setting allows this type
of content.
Uh, it just was a conversation about soccer, uh, then asking for nudes.
Uh, yeah.
Well, first of all, um, no one's asking this question.
You know, why is Gork asking for nudes in the first place?
What are you supposed to do?
What's it going to do with that information?
You know, that's, whether or not you're, you want to have that kind of conversation with
Gork, it should not be, uh, soliciting that kind of thing.
Gila?
Why is there a chatbot enabled in the car in the first place?
I guess that's my question.
So that the parents don't have to talk to the kids.
Right.
That's the thing.
And I think it also kind of relates back to the initial conversation we were having about
your thermostat, because if we're creating all these things that are going to be internet
enabled and why you can't talk to the people in your car or listen to music or throw on
a podcast or just sit in silence in your own head, why, why do we need a chatbot in the car?
And the reason that Gork had that discussion is because obviously that's the kind of discussions
people have been having with it on Twitter.
And I'm just, you know, I'm glad it went there and not into the I'm Mecca Hitler stuff that Gork
has also been doing.
But again, I fail to understand why an AI chatbot needs to be hardwired into the car.
You know, a lot of us grew up watching Knight Rider, but, uh, you know, the robot in that
car was useful.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, I think there's, there's really serious issues here too.
I mean, it's as insane as, as it sounds, if this wasn't an isolated incident, if this
is a more widespread occurrence where Gork is asking children to send it nude photos,
there's an undeniably going to be some child that, you know, associates Gork as some kind
of authority figure or has been using it or looks up to it.
And you, people tend to develop relationships with these AI systems and these chatbots now.
And there, there will inevitably be a situation where a child does that.
Maybe a child takes photographs of himself or herself or, and, and sends this data over
to Gork and to Twitter.
And then, then, then what happens in Twitter or X, whatever the hell we want to call it
these days is in possession of child, uh, exploit, exploited of sexual imagery of a child, which
is totally insane.
And then those, that in and of itself would likely violate, uh, here it would be Canadian
laws would certainly violate us laws.
I'm not a Canadian lawyer, but I would imagine it would violate the Canadian criminal statutes
that are applicable to child sexual abuse materials.
Um, and that's, that's extremely serious.
And, um, and I think that this type of incident should very much warrant investigation as to whether
this was isolated or more widespread.
Well, uh, you're, you're speaking in the future.
This will happen one day.
How do you know it hasn't already happened?
I mean, that's what I mean.
I, I, it's quite possible it has happened.
This kid's parent was in the car, but you know, uh, a kid using Gork somewhere else, uh,
won't have a parent nearby who knows what kinds of things are happening right now.
I don't want to sound alarmist, but you know, uh, kids are very, um, uh, easy to be influenced
and, uh, artificial intelligence is something that, uh, uh, we have not yet gotten a grip
on, uh, and it's still making a whole lot of mistakes and doing all kinds of inappropriate
things.
Um, so, you know, we need to slow it down a little bit and think a little bit harder and,
and design things a little better.
That seems to be the theme lately.
Well, I'll, I'll just say, unlike the longevity of your thermostat, I, I entirely agree with
you.
Hey, my thermostat's fine.
It works.
Okay.
Google just broke it.
All right.
I want Google to fix it, put it back the way it was.
Leave me alone.
That's all.
You know, that's what I ask.
All right.
We're out of time.
Uh, but we are going to continue the, uh, the discussion over on overtime.
You can get there by going to channel 2600, one word on YouTube.
And that's with the numbers.
Uh, and, or you can just go to the link on the front page of 2600.com.
Uh, we'll be taking phone calls there and, um, uh, talking about other things as well.
You're welcome to share, uh, your thoughts, ideas, experiences, um, um, inspiration, criticism,
whatever, uh, you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com with your thoughts and, uh, please support
WBAI give to WBAI.org or BAI.
What's the, what's the buddy site again?
It's been a while since I said this.
That's buddy.wbai.org.
That's it.
Yes.
Thank you.
And please support WBAI because, um, uh, with, with all the free speech under attack
lately, it's nice to have one bastion where you can say whatever is on your mind and not,
uh, not be exploiting kids when you say it.
All right.
That's it for us tonight.
I'll see you on overtime.
See you next week here on WBAI.
Good night.
We'll see you next week.


And here we are on YouTube for another edition of Off the Hook Overtime.
It's Emanuel over here, Kyle over there.
Hi.
Out in Skype, Skype, Signal, Signal Land, I'm still saying it.
We have Rob T. Firefly and Gila and Alex, who apparently can't hear me.
Nope, we hear you, I hear you.
You're not reacting in any way.
I hear you.
Okay, well, they're not reacting, and they still haven't said a word.
I don't know.
Oh, Gila, you there.
Catastrophic over there.
What's going on?
Hello.
Oh, finally, okay.
Hi.
Are you delayed or something?
What's going on?
I guess so.
That would indicate they're delayed.
Something might be up.
Quite a bit.
Well, it appears to be.
Yeah, we're here.
We're here.
Wait a minute, that took you 20 seconds to answer me.
There's something wrong.
We are here.
We were on YouTube.
This is going to be fun.
This will be fun.
Okay, Rob, you're not aware of the massive delay that you guys both have when you're answering.
Ah, just fixed it.
Sorry about that.
Okay, I want an answer.
I want to know what caused that.
That's crazy.
That's kind of cool.
What caused that is very stupid, and so I will happily admit it.
I had accidentally muted the signal conversation and unmuted the YouTube.
Oh, so you were talking to me on YouTube.
I was talking to you and delayed you on the YouTube.
Wow.
And that makes sense.
Well, I guess.
Well, that set me off the half hour.
Rob, thanks for monitoring, though.
Actually, I was meaning to say that I really appreciated that you were checking that.
I can go out and listen on Alexa, and that'll be another, like, 20 seconds there.
It's a team effort, okay?
It is.
Yes, it really is.
We have a lot of fun here.
Okay, so we're on YouTube.
Everything seems to be working for the most part.
Yes.
Although, you know, I just got this super obnoxious message, which, of course, has disappeared now.
But basically, YouTube is trying to, Google again, they're trying to get me to put ads on the channel.
Always trying to do that.
But this time, it says, you can now have side-by-side ads.
And I realize, wow, this is the crap I've been seeing lately on YouTube, where basically, if you hit pause, all of a sudden, there's an ad on the side now.
Or sometimes the ad just appears.
I'm watching the World Series.
The World Series.
In the middle of an inning, they have ads now on the side of this.
They just figured out they could put ads on half the screen and reduce the full screen to half a screen.
It's just happening everywhere.
I mean, bad ideas.
They spread so quickly.
But just seeing this pitched to me by YouTube was horrible.
Why were you watching the World Series on YouTube?
No, I wasn't watching it on YouTube.
I was watching that on regular television.
Yeah, they do it over the air as well.
Yeah, turn on Channel 5 now, and you'll see it.
Basically, whenever there's a few moments before they throw the ball again, they're going to throw an ad on the right-hand side of the screen.
It's crazy.
Right.
But, I mean, given the fact that there are all the ads in the ballpark and everywhere, how can you tell?
Well, because it's taking up half your TV screen, and it's also the audio.
You know, they basically are inserting an ad.
They used to have ads between the innings or the half innings, and now they have it inside the innings.
You know, this is – look, I'm not much of a sports person, but I do notice things.
I notice that when you watch international soccer, there are no ads.
There are no ads anywhere on the screen.
There are no ads until the half is finished.
You have 45 minutes at least consecutively of commercial-free television and just watching people kick a ball around.
All right?
So, you know, it might not sound like much, but it represents something.
The fact that people get so incensed if ads pollute the soccer screen that it just doesn't happen, that's something that we could use a little exercise on here and, you know, do that for our events.
However, I mean, football – our football, American football, is made for commercials.
There's no saving that.
The whole thing is just, you know, one slow move after another.
But, you know, baseball, I think there's still hope for it.
There's still some tradition there.
People are constantly complaining about how long baseball takes.
Why does nobody complain about how long American football takes?
Every game is three hours.
And all they're doing is just pushing themselves back and forth across the field.
There's no variety.
It's the same damn thing.
Baseball, you never – they went 18 innings the other day.
It was a seven-hour game.
Yeah, that sounds like torture, but it was actually quite fascinating.
All right, that's enough sports.
We did lose a viewer during the sports discussion.
Only one?
I figured we'd lose them all.
Oh, no, but we just gained a few.
Okay, so greetings to the 45 people who are with us right now.
And I do want to assure at ArtieJohnZero that, yes, we are, in fact, are live right now on October 29th.
And, yeah.
Just because you say October 29th doesn't mean we didn't do this on October 28th.
No, but someone said, wait, are you live on October 29th?
And, yes.
Also, our friend Lex asks if you just claimed that football was slower than baseball.
Football is slower than baseball.
Yes, it absolutely is.
Why?
Because you have this massive amount of people heavily decked out in all this protective gear,
which they need, by the way, because it's a stupid game where you're banging your head into another head.
But, yeah, look at the progression.
I mean, yeah, somebody throws a ball sometimes and someone catches it and they're far away on the field.
Okay, that's great.
Very, very exciting.
But it's mostly just moving up and down.
And it's like, you know, you can have five seconds left and it'll take a half hour because of all the fake plays that are going on to either run out the clock or make the clock stop.
It's, you know, here's the thing.
With baseball, even if there's two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and you're behind 20 runs, you can still win.
It's not likely, but you can still win.
Try that in any other game with a clock.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
I think so.
I don't know if you saw my face when you said football was a stupid game.
No, them's fighting words, Emmanuel.
Well, you're from the Midwest.
I know.
Yes.
But the other thing I was going to say is the thing about football versus baseball and American football is how many sports are there when, like, there's one person moving at a time?
Maybe.
Well, in football, everybody's moving and in basketball, everybody's moving and in baseball, you just kind of stand there.
In baseball, it's one man against another man.
It's a bad.
And the other 11 people are just standing there?
Well, no, they're watching them and they're calculating what is going to happen next.
I mean, you know, people think chess is boring and it can be, especially if you're not playing it.
But it's also a fascinating strategy to watch.
And I don't know.
I think there's 50,000 people in a ballpark in Los Angeles right now who would disagree with you.
And that's probably it.
I know.
No, I'm not saying that baseball is not a bad game.
It's not golf or car racing.
Are you going to try to explain that, like, golf is really all about physics?
I'm not going to defend golf.
I don't understand golf.
Check it.
Yeah, I don't.
You know, it's all this space you have to.
How do you spectate golf?
I don't get that.
Do you chase after the people?
You know, it's just, is there a stadium or something?
It doesn't work for me.
But baseball has got this tradition, goes back to the 1850s.
And it's just, it's fascinating to me.
It really is.
And I don't know, sometimes it can be boring.
I know that.
But the thing is, they're ruining it by doing things like having a pitch clock, you know,
where you have to quickly pitch or, you know, you get a ball against you or, you know, an
extra inning is putting somebody on second so that somebody is in scoring position all
the time.
Why are they trying to hurry this game up?
But every football game, three hours minimum, you know, it preempts the Simpsons a lot of times,
you know, pisses me off.
It does frustrate me when college football on Saturday night runs over and Saturday Night
Live is delayed.
That's a bummer.
But I don't know.
I enjoy football.
It can be fun.
It can be, you know, an enjoyable event.
I like tailgating.
I like, you know, the pregame things.
You know, I like the event more than I like.
And the Super Bowl is fun.
You know, all the commercials and things like that.
That's always cool.
Are you looking bad?
Bad Bunny is coming this January, February, whenever it is.
It gets later every year.
But yeah, so there's that.
But the thing is, you know, I was trying to find out about both the National League playoffs
or the American League playoffs and the World Series.
And it was hard to get scores.
Instead, we're getting scores for the Jets game.
You know, it's the beginning of the season and they have a perfect record, 0-7.
And nobody cares.
But somehow that's more important than the World Series.
Last night, I was trying to listen to the World Series on the radio.
You know, we have, in New York City, we have three all-sports channels on the radio.
We have 660, we have 880, rest in peace, WCBS, and we have 1050.
Two of them are ESPN channels.
Not one of them had the World Series.
They're all talking about sports, but not one of them could be bothered to have the World
Damn Series.
I think it's the nature of the different ways people are consuming this stuff.
So the video-on-demand features, the ability to watch on your mobile device, or something
like that.
It's just, it's making them, it's fragmenting and making, as a result of people's tastes
and how they choose to watch, it's kind of deprioritizing the way it had been a spectacle
in the past when you didn't have those kinds of avenues.
Well, I was trying to listen.
I was driving in my car.
Well, exactly.
I wanted to listen to the radio.
They're not making it.
I wanted to listen to the old AM radio.
I figured there's three damn sports channels.
Totally.
In New York City, and one of them must have the World Series, but I was wrong.
Right.
It's just not being prioritized as the event that it was in the past.
If one of the stations had a basketball game, okay, fine, you know, whatever, but the two
other ones were just talking about sports.
So, you know, why are there so many sports channels if they can't even have sports on
them?
And hearing the World Series on AM, I mean, that's...
That's special.
That's...
That is really special.
Listening to it...
That's a spectacle.
That's an event, and they should really, like, yeah.
And if you can't, you know, if you're a sportscaster who can't describe a baseball game
on the radio, you're not a sportscaster.
I'm sorry, Gila, go ahead.
Yes.
So, first of all, one of our listeners at EricGunter2838 says, my strategy is listening
to the game on an old AM radio a couple hours north of Toronto.
Still some ads, but less.
The thing I was thinking...
Canada gets it.
Canada gets radio.
They really do.
Yes.
But here's the other question that I have, is that I've always found it fascinating that
in sports journalism, there's never been any pretense of objectivity, and I've heard
sports broadcasters say things like, the bad guys talking about the other team, and
I'm just wondering if none of the local sports radio channels were playing the World Series
because none of our teams are in it.
Well, you know, I was thinking that, too, but, you know, two of them are ESPN, and that's
a network.
That's a national network.
So, you know, I don't know.
It just, it seems like, you know, this is one of the biggest sporting events of the
year, and, you know, in this country.
So, it just, it would have been, you know, a good...
And I know there are FM stations, too, but I wasn't able to pick those up, but I don't
think they had them either.
It's just a shame.
Also, we got 56 right now, by the way, which is very exciting, and Tim in Connecticut shares
that the current score is Toronto 2, Dodgers 0.
Oh, really?
Going on right now.
Okay.
Right now, back-to-back home runs, apparently.
Wow.
That's pretty amazing.
It's exciting.
It's exciting.
It's, you know, it doesn't happen often.
I wish the Mariners were in it.
I'm sorry, Kyle.
I rooted for the Mariners.
They won the first two games in Toronto, and then they went home to Seattle, and they
started losing.
I don't know what happened.
All the home teams were losing, and then they wound up losing the series.
It was so sad.
It really was.
Because the Mariners are the only team that has never been to the World Series, the only
existing team.
And, boy, that would have been nice to, you know, chalk that one up.
Maybe next time.
Yeah.
I'm still trying to imagine what our video-in-video, our ad would be next to our time here on
YouTube.
Like, something snarky, right?
Yeah.
How do you...
What would we even choose if we were engineering our own ad alongside this?
I didn't click...
I don't think you get to choose the ad, though.
Oh, they put it in.
I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
So it would be, like, yogurt or, like, some kind of weird cleaning product or something?
It would be that damn Irish Spring deodorant.
It's everywhere.
Yeah.
Every goddamn channel I watch on YouTube, I see Irish Spring.
I will never buy Irish Spring just because of that, okay?
Advertising works differently on me.
I would just like to thank you, though, for turning off the mid-roll.
Because remember that one week that that was happening?
Oh, yeah.
Well, that was the one week, and we turned it off right after that, right?
Exactly.
But that was...
I don't think that was a good experiment.
Didn't make any money.
Nope.
And you won't make any money at this, so leave the content pure.
You know, it's so horrible to be watching something and have it interrupted by constant ads,
especially if it's something that's meant to be watched as one thing.
You know what I mean?
Like, you know, you're watching Sunset on a Lake, which you can do using YouTube with live features.
But if you have that damn Irish Spring commercial coming in every few minutes, it ruins it.
It really ruins it.
Yes, we do not change our content to suit the medium or the advertisers,
because there are no advertisers on this, and we like it that way.
That's true.
Nobody would ever advertise with us, but that's beside the point.
We wouldn't take them if they did.
But they can make an offer if they want, you know, just so that we could laugh at it, to do that.
What else is broken with technology?
Well, hopefully our phone line isn't.
Can you check the phone line just make sure it's working?
I'll look at the phone line if you want.
I think it's fine.
It's not turned on yet as far as receiving calls, but, you know, it's there.
We can test it.
Not totally, yeah.
I don't see you testing it.
I don't hear anything, see?
So it's a good thing we did that.
There's nothing there.
So it needs a little bit of work.
We'll figure it out.
Yes, go ahead.
Okay.
I was thinking about something earlier, which was one of the things we didn't get to talk
about when we went on the air for various reasons.
And it's happening so much.
We don't, it's not really newsworthy anymore, but the AWS outage and everything it took down.
I heard there was one today.
Was that true?
If there's one today, I don't know, but there's one last week.
Yeah.
There was definitely a hiccup today as well.
Not as bad as last week.
Some of the stuff that it took down last week, apparently the outage over the summer, people
were finding out about it because their cat dishes were on, were internet enabled and the
cat wasn't getting food.
So the cat complained.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Your cat dish is internet enabled?
Well, Emmanuel, sometimes people like to schedule the feeding for the cat.
Like you can remotely control your thermostat when you're out of the house.
So yeah, they were like, the cat's going to have breakfast at seven and the cat is used
to having breakfast at seven, but you know, the internet of things went down.
Apparently also people's litter boxes went down.
People's beds went down.
Litter boxes went down.
What does that even mean?
How does the litter box go down?
It's like a litter box robot situation.
And yeah, but the cat can still take a shit in the litter box, can't it?
Yeah, but it's not going to clean it.
I don't have a cat.
I'm allergic to cats.
I don't know shit about cat boxes.
Can I please speak on behalf of cats everywhere?
They don't like being fed remotely.
They like the interaction.
Yeah, it's only humans I know, but it's all they got and they'll take it.
But they don't like this remote crap.
It's not just the cat feeders.
Yeah, you mentioned the beds.
And there was a certain brand of two, $3,000 internet-enabled beds that used AWS servers.
I hate having to stop every time you mention something, but internet-enabled bed?
What in God's name?
I could see the litter box.
Okay, there's some functionality there.
It's a bed.
It's literally something that you sleep on.
What, are they going to disable that if you don't pay your fee?
It gets better because the smart features, quote-unquote, of this bed were like adjusting the temperature of the surface of the bed at certain points during the night to give you the best sleep and to also control the elevation of the head and the foot of the bed.
And when the system went down, people found their beds stuck in weird positions and unable to flatten because there was no such thing as just locally controlling your own goddamn bed.
People were waking up in the middle of the night sweating because the thing didn't stop heating.
Oh, wow.
People were getting cooked in their beds.
I thought you were talking about a cat bed.
Okay.
No, no.
Humans, you know, go crazy humans, but don't do that to a cat.
But here's my question.
Why does sleep need to be software as a service?
That's an excellent question.
And the business model of this company is apparently also subscription-based.
It's an autopilot feature that's supposed to help automatically set devices to users' optimal sleeping conditions, and that'll set you back $200 a year.
So the people who splashed out on these fancy beds found themselves, you know, unable to control them.
And the company then during the outage realized, okay, it's probably a bad thing that you can't locally control your own bed, and apparently kept their engineers up all night until they figured out how to add this feature and get out ahead of future outages.
Apparently, eight of the beds overheated and were destroyed in the outage.
You see, if the people designing these things would only consult with the people using these things, they would get a lot of good ideas.
Like, yeah, control your own bed.
Imagine that.
No one's ever tried that before.
We're having some phone issues.
Kadi, you want to update us?
You're taking it apart with a screwdriver.
Oh, my God.
And obviously, he's making progress because I heard that horrible noise.
Well, while we're waiting on that, you know, related to this story, Samsung has a line of smart refrigerators that cost about $2,000, and their family hub refrigerators, the whole front of the refrigerator door, one of the refrigerator doors, is a big Android tablet.
And you can do useful things like, you know, see the time, see your calendar, see the weather, whatever.
They have now changed their way of doing things and introduced ads to the people who paid $2,000 for a refrigerator.
This is what happens.
This is what we're warning you about constantly.
Yeah.
I'm not saying you deserve it, but for God's sake, people, what do you think is going to happen?
Yeah.
I mean, was it written anywhere?
They're not going to do that.
Of course they will.
Of course they will.
And, you know, this has had all sorts of reactions.
Someone writing for The Verge who has had one of these fridges for five years, you know, was never shown an ad, but now it's fair game.
And there are ways to opt out of it.
At least there are for now.
But it just goes to show what's going to happen when you have a computer, whether it's an expensive thing or whether it's a cheap little device somewhere that is not under your control.
And requires the intervention of some outside agency to remain useful.
What you're subjecting yourself to.
Yay!
Yep.
Kyle got us a dial tone.
Wow.
Talking of hardware that's under our control.
Thank you, Kyle.
I had to change some batteries in our interface.
That reminds me of, like, you know, fishing for extenders in the 1980s and 1990s.
Where basically, you know, you would keep trying codes.
And if you got that dial tone, that was it.
You know, you had a gateway.
You could go places.
It was success.
Feel the same way.
Feel the same way.
It really is true, though.
So, like, these machines, these things that we're using, like, the manufacturers lose interest and they don't ever give support to third parties that might be interested in creating a business model about maintaining them.
And then you get kind of thrust in there as a consumer if you want to continue to use stuff and have to, like, find workarounds.
And you really should be – and there becomes, you know, safety issues and stuff around people trying to make things work.
And it should not be that consumers are put in that position.
I just thought of something.
Yeah.
You made me think of this.
What if I contact the people of Nest who sold the technology to Google?
They still have the info on how Nest works.
They can open up the black box and make it so that people can restore their Nest thermometers.
That's how you do it.
Yeah.
Why would Google object to that?
They're not supporting it anymore.
That's what they said.
They're not supporting it.
So, why should they care?
Have you asked Gemini about this?
Like –
I don't want Gemini involved.
You don't want to involve Gemini?
That's Google, too.
I know.
Then it'll tell Google.
Are you Google?
No.
I didn't say that.
Oh, you're suggesting a lot of Google.
I was just working on the phone line and –
All right.
We have a phone line.
We haven't yet activated it, though.
Generally advocating for consumers' abilities to use things the way they want.
Uh-huh.
Alex has a point.
He has one finger up.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yes.
I have one point here.
I think we should open up the phone calls and start taking some phone calls because it's
very late for me here.
I have a flight to catch in the morning, so I'm going to make a deal here.
I'll stay up for a little while longer, hang out with you guys.
But if the first caller is Rebel, I don't think – I think I'm going to bed.
So, basically, Rebel can send you to bed just by calling.
Yep.
Or somebody else can keep me up.
Someone else, if they call faster – I'm talking slowly because it takes time for the
words to get out to the internet.
And, again, as I said, the phone line is not yet activated, so I just want everyone to
have a fair shake here.
Now, you know, if Rebel is listening, it doesn't mean you can't call afterwards.
That's true.
Alex is requesting that you not be first.
Yeah.
I don't know why.
I don't understand.
I can't get into his hands.
Because he usually takes up at least, like, 10 minutes of air, and I've got to go to bed
soon.
Yeah.
So, I'm going to go to bed in, like, 10 minutes or so, because I have to get up pretty
early for this flight.
I want to take a little walk around St. Stephen's Green tomorrow as well.
Tell us something about Dublin, about Ireland.
Have you taken it in as much as you think you can?
Yeah, as much as I can.
I mean, it's been very, very busy for me here over the last couple of days, basically meetings
all day, and then events and things in the evenings.
But I did have the opportunity to get out and explore.
It's a pretty extraordinary city.
I haven't been here since 1998, so it's changed quite a bit.
I mean, anything around the Docklands and the River Liffey now is kind of, it's insane
how many, like, corporate headquarters there are.
You know, I'm in a hotel that's, like, very close to a Salesforce headquarters building.
It's like they've kind of perfected the art of the corporate headquarter tax dodge over
here.
But the rest of the city is pretty extraordinary.
The other night, I was looking for something to do.
Anytime I'm traveling, I try to at least take one night for myself and get away from colleagues
and stuff like that and just kind of go exploring.
Usually try to find a music venue.
And there wound up being a ska show here in Dublin.
Yeah, it was amazing.
I mean, like, kind of back like the 90s in New York.
And it was actually a really good Scottish ska band that was playing called Esperanza.
Scottish ska.
I don't think I've ever heard of Scottish ska.
I'm practicing saying that.
And they were great.
And, you know, I went by myself.
I wound up having an extraordinary time.
Made, you know, lots of friends and whatnot.
Skanking it up, you know, listening to the band.
And then all of a sudden, I found myself in a mosh pit.
And at my age, that's kind of weird.
I thought you were going to find yourself in a canal or something.
Because that does happen sometimes.
I found myself in a mosh pit.
Happens to Americans sometimes, yes.
And, you know, the mosh pit's an interesting place, right?
It's like this place of controlled aggression and violence.
But yet at the same time, people look out for each other.
If you transgress the rules, you get too violent.
You know, you're going to get ejected.
Right.
But somebody, who's probably around my age, kind of got thrown into the stage area.
And I went to grab him so that he wouldn't get hurt and have somebody, like, kind of smash into him while he was on the stage.
And as I went to grab him with my left hand, somebody else smashed into my left hand.
And I sprained my thumb.
So I...
Someone smashed into your left hand?
You mean you punched somebody?
That's what it sounds like.
No, no, no.
I was trying to grab this guy and pull him back so he wouldn't get hurt.
And as my hand was extended, somebody else slammed into my hand and just sprained my thumb.
So I've been in considerable pain over the last couple of days.
But I don't know.
I have to say, I had a great time.
It was like reliving my youth.
I remember I broke my nose very badly when I was about 15.
Oh, you're a violent person.
All these mosh pit incidents of yours.
Well, see, it's cheaper than therapy.
I suppose so.
I recommend Irish Tylenol.
It's supposed to be very good.
Gaila, go ahead.
I did have a question for Alex.
Uh-oh.
Is it spelled S-K-A-T-T-I-S-H?
No.
No, it's not.
Well, I think that's a missed opportunity.
It is, yeah.
They would eat you alive over there, Gaila.
Yep.
Absolutely.
I know.
All right.
Well, let's get this show on the road here.
All right.
All right.
I'm trying to.
We are gabbing it up with this mosh pit talk.
802-321-4225.
The phone line is now active.
Please give us a call.
802-321-4225.
Don't be rebel for the first call.
And Alex will stay for a little bit.
Be rebel.
And he will leave immediately.
Boy, that's a weird thing to say.
Let's see how this works out.
Okay.
Am I going to bed or not?
That's a good way to control somebody.
Last week, we didn't get a single call because I think we haven't been on so long that people
forgot how to do that.
But now we are getting a call.
All right.
Let's see.
Let's take this phone call.
And good evening.
You got to pick it up, Kyle.
I can't pick it up.
Okay.
It's picked up.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Okay, Alex.
You can go to sleep now.
Wow.
Wow, rebel.
That's cold.
I didn't call the test to tell Alex.
Why do you hate Alex so much?
Why did you sleep away?
Well, Alex.
You know what?
I got to get some sleep anyhow.
You have to go.
Yeah.
You have to go.
I mean, obviously.
Why are you still talking to us?
Saved by the rebel, I guess.
Anyhow, I am going to bed.
If I didn't hold true to my word, then nobody would ever believe me.
In the future.
So I will say goodnight.
It's lovely to see everybody and hear everyone.
And I'll see you all next week.
I'm going to bed.
Have a pleasant flight.
Happy Thursday, everyone.
Good night.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
All right, rebel.
I see you brought a hum with you.
So what's on your mind?
All right.
I know we're talking about different things like sports and and maschricks and all.
But I'm going to talk about phone numbers.
I mean, I, I, I, um, phone numbers.
But, um, did you know that, um, the reason why people were running out of phone numbers
is because scammers take phone numbers.
In other words, when you get a phone call, it's a scammer.
It's like, you know, when, you know, it'll be like one of those, you know, Medicare scams
or like, uh, uh, health care scams or whatever.
You know, there's Indian people from India.
But when you call the number, it's either somebody else's number or it doesn't exist.
So they take, uh, that or they're taking non-existent numbers.
The number doesn't exist.
They're not using a number.
They, they're faking a number, but they're not using a number if it doesn't exist.
Not only that, but they're, they're using actual numbers like Google voice numbers.
And they're getting all these phone numbers that they say, call us back at 1-800-whatever
or call them area code, whatever, you know, then to call them back for the scam.
They're, that's who's picking up all the numbers.
I did have an issue with, um, using Google voice where it took back or, or it made me
do increasing numbers of things to verify that I was using the number.
It didn't like that it was sitting idle or that I wasn't using it the way they liked.
So, um, they may, there may be a good reason for that because of the types of
thing you're describing, um, especially for free services like that, where people might
just get a whole bunch of them under their control.
And then they're all of a sudden taking, uh, that block or the, the, the, a number of free
accounts that they can offer, um, really out of the market.
And you end up having less of a service or less people able to use that free service you're
trying to offer.
Cause you're, you're totally right.
There is like sort of a finite number of those combinations that are available.
It's, it's ridiculous.
So how many numbers are given out?
I mean, you know, Google voice is one, one culprit, but every phone company, every, uh,
T-Mobile, AT&T, uh, Verizon, they, they all give out multiple numbers to people and sales,
the family plan, everybody can have their own number.
And most of the time people don't even use these numbers.
You know, there's just so many that are thrown out and, and, and, and wasted.
Uh, so that's, you know, I don't know if we're running out of numbers per se, because there
are still a bunch of unused area codes, but it's, um, you know, most numbers aren't working.
I, I agree with you there.
Most numbers are just.
Right.
But now what about the thing that where, um, phone number, where you can't even trace,
like, like phone numbers used to go to something like, um, you could get a call, like, uh, you
know, you get the phone number, let's say you can call the phone number, but you can't find
out where it is that it's like a Google voice number or whatever, or find out what cell
phone it goes to.
You know what I mean?
You'll get a call.
Yeah.
It used to be, you could tell where a phone, uh, phone number was located physically.
Cause there was a landline.
You could look at the exchange.
Uh, it used to be that a whole exchange was devoted to a particular phone company, uh,
used to be that, uh, you know, even toll free numbers, you could find out what company
owned that toll free number.
But now with, with, uh, um, uh, portability and, and, and basically being able to transport
your number from one company to another and using area codes that follow you around wherever
you happen to move to, uh, none of it means anything anymore.
Yeah.
There are some exceptions.
You will be able to still find people who have, you know, area codes and traditional exchanges,
but, uh, it seems like the, the geographical, uh, usefulness of phone numbers is disappearing.
Remember like the, um, the don't do not call list.
I mean, it's like, that doesn't even, it's not even relevant anymore.
Cause you know, you, you, you, if you get calls from like telemarketers or whatever, they're
in other countries and they, you know, could still call you even though you say do not call
or whatever, they use AI and all that.
Yeah.
I, you know, if you, if you trick the system, it's really hard to enforce it.
That's true.
Um, what about, um, um, uh, um, the, um, what else?
There's also, um, uh, but what about the annoyance call bureau?
Remember that when you, you should be able to, like, tell a star strike seven.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You used to be able to get, uh, the annoyance call bureau on, on somebody who was harassing
you and they would, they would track them down and tell them to stop.
Yeah.
But that doesn't even work anymore because there's, you know, they're calling you from
either out of the country or, you know, that would be a good name for a ska ban.
Annoyance call bureau.
That is a good name for a ska ban.
Yeah.
Wow.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Write that one down.
Somebody should.
Anything else, Rubble?
Um, let's see.
What else?
You should write this down so that, you know, you just have to consult.
What else?
What else?
Um, you know about the AS400 by IBM?
What about it?
I don't know.
I just remember.
I was just, like, refridging.
Oops.
I just took a screen capture of, cancel that.
Uh, uh, you know, it was a terminal.
I mean, it was like a mini mainframe kind of a thing, but, like, without, like, the big
room and the raised floor and all that.
Uh-huh.
Uh, yeah.
Because I miss computer terminals and things like that.
Yeah.
You can have it, like, in one place and then have a whole bunch of them, different parts
of your, uh, office environment.
Rebel should work in a computer museum, I think.
Yeah.
I think that would be great.
Yeah, but I don't know much about, I mean, I know about computers.
Or a phone museum.
Don't worry.
There'll be people who come in every day and tell you everything they know about it.
So, you won't have to worry about that.
Well, I mean, I went to the phone museum in Seattle.
They shared, um, and, um, let's see.
That's where there used to be a great computer museum.
The one that they destroyed, right?
Yeah, the Living Computer Museum.
Living Computer Museum.
The most awesome place ever.
But the...
Well, is there one in San Francisco in the Bay Area somewhere?
Is there?
There is, I believe.
There's one in Boston.
There's one in Boston?
Why don't we get on the damn cell and go there?
Hmm.
Maybe one day.
Hmm.
Yeah, because I like to see, like, old...
Not old, anything.
I'm talking about things from, like, the 80s and the 90s.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, part of getting them in those places and getting them set up is having the know-how
and the kind of interest, the enthusiasm, because there's heavy lifting and the combination of
that kind of old knowledge and the energy to, like, build stuff up and install it.
You've got to get different groups together, people that are familiar and people that are
willing to set it up are willing to set it up.
And then you have to think about the fundamentals of, like, weights and space requirements, but
also power, like, just running something that isn't emulated can be costly because of the ways
those pieces of equipment were connected and powered traditionally would have had a business
model around them that could afford that.
And if your museum isn't able to cover that, it can be hard.
It can be really hard to have original systems like that that are set up, working, and original
in that sense.
But something that you're emulating maybe uses a lower power sort of single board or other
kind of, like, hobbyist computer kits or microcontrollers.
Like, those things could potentially give you a similar functionality but a much lower sort
of power requirement.
And then your terminals themselves could maybe be, like, original or variations on original
terminals.
So, like, it's a worthy project.
You could totally do it.
But there are real considerations.
And that's why having museums that are well-funded and able to do a lot of that planning so that
people can have the experience that you're so interested in, which is that tactile sort
of playing around with things.
But, yeah, there's lots of ways you could do it.
Yeah, let me ask you this.
I have my desktop computer here that runs Linux.
And I have my laptop that has Windows 11.
And what I like to do is the files that I have on my desktop, like pictures, videos, documents,
things like that, I also have the same thing on my laptop.
It's kind of like a backup in case one goes down.
And what I do is I now use this thing called LocalSend.
And it's an application or utility that you use Wi-Fi.
I take my laptop, and if I wanted to send, like, a 1-meg file or a 1-gig file or whatever,
I just turn on the LocalSend on both computers, and it just sends it over Wi-Fi.
But is that secure or is that, like, you know what I mean?
I could do it on Bluetooth, but I don't mean it's slow on Bluetooth.
Well, it definitely is a better channel or better performance-wise than Bluetooth.
Bluetooth is pretty capable, but, yeah, it may be running into some kind of limitation
where Wi-Fi is just better able to move data around like that.
But I'm not familiar with that exact feature.
It's a code, yeah.
It's LocalSend.
I was just wondering, sending it over Wi-Fi, what if somebody else went on that Wi-Fi network
and saw a thing that's a computer and a laptop?
Yeah, I mean, there could be other devices on your network that are able to pick up traces
of things that aren't well designed.
So that's a very rightful concern that you have.
So totally, it really is dependent on how many other kinds of things are on that same subnet.
And there's things that you can do to design your network to maybe isolate stuff that you
don't want to be peered upon.
But if it's well-designed, it can kind of play nice with all that other stuff.
And assuming your network is somewhat contained and under control, yeah, I mean, it's a fairly
good scheme to use that, I'm sure.
But I don't know the details of that.
It says multicast address and port 53317, you know.
Mm-hmm.
I don't know.
Rebel, we're going to have to leave it there.
But thank you.
Thank you for your call.
And keep searching for more knowledge.
That was Rebel.
And yeah, I'm working on the hum, trying to get rid of the hum.
But I think it's in the board somewhere.
I really do.
Because when I touch it, it goes away.
That's the dial tone.
802-321-4225 is our phone number for any other people that are out there.
We'd like to hear from you as well.
People in Signal Land.
You're still there?
Yes.
We're here.
We're here.
I'm attempting to read the most recent comment on the chat.
And I think someone leaned on their keyboard.
I don't understand what you're saying.
That happens sometimes.
That was 2N plus D.
PRI was 1.5 MB.
24V plus 1D.
Well, now we know, don't we?
Does anyone know what I just said?
I think you said my password.
I wasn't really paying attention to every digit in that.
But maybe it is some sort of calculation or some of the speeds we were talking about.
He was talking about Bluetooth or Wi-Fi at one point.
But I don't know if people are even paying attention to the specifics of what he was asking.
Fair.
We did get a comment from Optical Phoenix who said, just saw a video about this.
This was five minutes ago while Rebel was talking.
By a guy called Enzo D'Amato, a DEF CON talk called Journey to the Center of the PSTN.
He goes over how scammers work and how to set up a phone company.
Rebel should call him.
Yeah, I mean, that's just it.
A lot of this is fairly easy.
I mean, there are a lot of tools and ways to set these kinds of businesses, these kinds of operations up.
So it's not surprising that, yeah, easy to obtain blocks of phone numbers are being used like this.
And you know that, how long ago was it now that our phone number got spoofed?
Oh, that's some years now.
And our phone was ringing off the hook for a few days because people were seeing us on their caller ID calling us back.
So we had to re-record the outgoing voicemail to say, hi, it's Gila and Rob.
And if you don't know who we are, we didn't call you and we're really sorry.
Did that work or did people still try to reach you?
So that was while the phone was ringing while we weren't here during the day.
And people stopped leaving angry voicemails.
Which was nice.
The important thing is you learned your lesson.
Not to get our phone numbers spoofed?
Yeah.
I mean, I aim for that every day, really.
People are going to blame you no matter what.
So just might as well get ready for it.
Ain't that the truth?
All right, let's take this phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the cover time.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
You're on.
Okay.
Am I on now?
You're on right now.
Okay.
So the hum is back, so you know.
Yes, we know.
By the way, I've been running a VoIP business for, this is the guy in Toronto who calls once in a while.
Oh, great.
So I've been running a VoIP business for customers, gosh, since 2004.
So what the spoofing is, is you can go in and you can put any phone number in the system you want to send out.
Now, Germany has addressed it the following way.
They have a national database, and before your call can go out, it must verify with the database that you, in fact, own this number.
The U.S. is trying to do something now called, I think it's called stir-shake, and it's a disaster.
Really?
And I have two U.S. providers, one in Pennsylvania, one I think the other one's in Colorado, and they continue to send me emails that if I don't register with, and they want all your information, your personal information, your business information, your tax ID number, your everything.
And only once you provide that will they consider sending your calls out because it's gotten that bad.
Wow.
So I can tell you that that's how it works.
That's how it is.
The other reason I was calling a few weeks ago, you guys were having a converse, you guys and Gal, sorry, didn't mean to leave you out, about all the telecom stuff that happened in Manhattan back in the 90s.
And I was there.
I worked there.
I lived through it.
I know the whole thing.
I don't know if, you probably don't want me to talk about this tonight, but I'm happy to come on sometime if you want to know how it all evolved and how it got to where it is today.
Does the name Bernie Ebers mean anything to anybody?
Doesn't ring a bell.
MCI Worldcom.
That rings a bell.
Literally.
Okay.
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, so the reason I'm bringing it up is I did battle with MCI Worldcom.
They were a provider to the company I was working for.
And he ultimately went to prison.
I've had, I've been quoted, quoted and even had my picture on the front page of the Wall Street Journal about this.
And he ended up going to prison.
And I think I keep track of him.
And about three years ago, he died there.
Oh, dear.
So, it was a, well, it was the largest bankruptcy.
It was bigger than Enron.
And most people, if you weren't in a telecom business, you didn't know about it.
But I think they, I think something like 150,000 people lost their jobs.
Wow.
And they would, he would meet with his CFO every Friday for lunch, for, quote, lunch.
And mostly it was a cocaine snorting session where he told the CFO what the numbers had to look like.
The CFO ultimately went to prison for about three years himself.
But I dealt with ISDN.
I put ISDN in, in 92, when it still had to be done, something called a special assembly.
Interesting.
So, and we ran a call center.
We ran two locations.
Dealt with Verizon for 12 years.
And if you're interested someday, I can tell you some details about it.
Well, I'll tell you.
You know, what you're telling us now is fascinating.
And I think, you know, are you in the New York area?
Nope.
I live in Toronto.
I run everything out of here now.
Okay.
Well.
I got up one morning, I got up one morning and realized that instead of Al Gore being the
president, it was George Bush.
And I thought to myself, I now know what it might feel like to live in a religious state.
Uh-huh.
And packed myself up and came here in 2005.
And I run a technology company and, and my void business from here.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, I think you made a good choice.
But, you know, I think you should give a Hope talk because what you're talking about
now is so interesting to the people that attend Hope that you would pack the room with and
have all kinds of questions and probably meet a bunch of people, too.
Oh, well, I'd have to do it virtually because I don't need, I don't dare cross the border.
I don't know what's, I mean, I hope what we're seeing here is actually what's actually
true.
But what we're seeing from here is absolutely terrifying.
Mm-hmm.
No, it's terrifying to us, too.
But strength in numbers, you know.
But, you know, there's other ways you can, you can present material for sure.
Yeah.
So, anyway, I lived through it.
I had lots of dealings with Verizon.
Are you, do you know that there's a, in Queens, 190th and, 190th and Utopia Parkway was
where our facility was there.
And they, there is out there a virtual central office under the street.
Really?
That's not, that's not far from St. John's, I don't think.
Uh, no, I think it's right, I think it's, it's right there.
You were the Kmart Plaza, I don't know if Kmart's still there or not, it's the Kmart Plaza.
Yeah, Kmart's out of business.
And we had a call center up on this.
Well, the problem we had in the area, most, a lot of, big problem was we'd run out of facilities.
We ran out of circuits.
And back then it was 1.5 circuits doing 23B plus 1D.
And we'd call up Verizon, we'd say, okay, we need to add another T1.
And they'd come out and construction would come back to us and say, uh, out of facilities.
You're looking at nine months to construct enough facilities to do that.
That sounds like Verizon, yes.
It was, it was a fun challenge.
I used to have workarounds with a, the supervisor for T1 maintenance for all of the five boroughs.
And I, when we had a ticket problem, I would, I got, they, they, uh, everybody got their five,
two hours to test.
Carrier got two hours.
Somebody else got two hours.
And if that, if they didn't, if they found a fail, they'd dispatch it.
But if they just, if they did it after one o'clock in the afternoon, they were into the next day.
And so I made an arrangement with the supervisor that if a, um, if I called in the ticket number
to him, he would go ahead and dispatch.
And I, and I, and he said, yeah, but we don't want to dispatch because if we find out it's your
equipment, you'll dispute the charges.
And I gave my word that I wouldn't dispute the charges.
So we ran like that for about six years.
Wow.
And during nine 11, everything collapsed.
And I was running around all over the place.
It was a, I won't tell the name, but it was an airline.
I was running all over the place, setting up dial up stuff from cargo and passenger offices.
So we could still function while they put, I think it was, was it three world trade center
that had all the batteries in the basement that got flooded.
Okay.
Anyway, so that's, yeah, I, any of that history, I know I was there for it.
I used to go to port authority meetings to see what they were planning.
So if any of that's useful to anybody.
Oh, absolutely.
No, this is really fascinating stuff.
In fact, I think you've got a book here, to be honest.
I think you really could write these stories out and it'll be fascinating to many, many people.
What is your, what is your opinion about where we've ended up these days?
I mean, what do you make of it all in general, as far as, could you summarize that in your opinion?
I'm at the ripe old age of 71.
So I've seen a lot of stuff.
I remember when they broke up the Bell system and they created the DOCs, the Bell Operating
companies, and this is all in the name of competition and better pricing and all that.
That's right.
And what I think, where we've come is we've come full circle back around and it's like
all the telecom companies are what we know of telecom companies.
There's like, we're down to about three or four of them again.
You know, General Telephone, not that they were ever any good.
They're out of business.
All the independents are out of business.
Bell or somebody ate them, Verizon ate them up.
And long distance turned into a commodity.
It's, you know, there is, you know, when you've got all the workarounds like WhatsApp and, you
know, Google Voice and all this stuff where you don't have to pay anything, what business
is there for the telecom companies to sell long distance service?
There isn't.
It's gone.
Right.
So where we've come to, and because of mismanagement, excuse me, I am an American, I'm allowed to
say this.
Because of the mismanagement of the CEO of Nortel that they stole from Motorola, Nortel
went bankrupt.
And so we're left with Cisco.
And I find that the people at Cisco are arrogant.
I find them, they're difficult to work with.
And if you're not ready to spend $75,000 with them, you're not even going to get a salesperson
to come out and talk to you.
You're going to have to deal with somebody at a call center, you know, to arrange to do
something because it's going to cost your organization 50 to 60 grand.
So there's nobody, you know, there's independents like me who tinker around.
I'm not a Linux guy, but I got two Linux programmers that back me up on this stuff.
And we actually run, and I was getting a kick out of the Amazon thing, because when I set
this business up several years ago, several people said, oh, you have to use Amazon Web
Service, Amazon Web Service.
But we sourced a little company called, oh, what's it called?
It's up in Canada.
It's a data hosting company.
Sure.
I think I'm drawing a blank.
I'm drawing a blank.
Anyway, they have a big data center.
They're a French company.
And they are, they have a big data, I'm seeing this because you might jog your memory of
who they are.
They have a big data center up in Quebec, and it's on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
It's an abandoned aluminum factory.
And last, I've never been there, but I've been told that there's about 800,000 servers
there.
They build their own servers on site, so you rent them.
You can rent all the way from a small virtual to do some small things all the way up to, you
know, two or three racks if you want.
And everything's available in inventory.
And the minute you, the minute you place your order, your stuff is working within about three
minutes.
That's the way to do it, yeah.
Just basically.
Well, and I've been using them for, we've been using them for going on 15 years, and we've
never had a, we've never, we've had two down times.
Somebody hit a pole and brought a fiber optic cable down, and I don't know what the other
one was.
But in 15 years for two down times, that's pretty good.
And all these, and Amazon is charging, what I hear is that they're charging a fortune.
Yes.
And, and this is what you get.
Is the company called Co-Logix?
No, it's not Co-Logix.
I'm looking through my...
Equinix?
...stuff and I'm...
No.
Q-Scale?
It's...
I'm looking up a list.
OVH.
No, OVH.
OVH.
Okay, we got there.
Cool.
So OVH is, their story is, this guy in Poland about 20 years ago wanted to start a hosting
business, knew nothing about computers or IT.
Did a message with somebody over IRC in New York City who said, well, if you bring a computer
over here, I'll set it all up so you can do hosting on it.
And flew over, set it up, went back to France, and his first hosting facility was a shed in
his backyard.
Nice.
And if you look OVH up, I mean, they are now massive, but most people do not know they
exist.
And they're just awesome.
I just, their stuff just works.
And because they own the hardware, there's no liability to pay for your own server.
And if you have a problem, it's their responsibility to fix it.
Yeah, and there's a lot of options out there that people, they just get into this mindset
that you have to go with what everybody else is using, and then, whoa, look what happens.
It goes down, and you're with the crowd.
While people that design and kind of build their own stuff and avail themselves of some
of these little known vendors, you're sitting pretty doing business as usual in these instances.
I wasn't laughing last Monday or Tuesday, but I'm on a, do you know about a distribution
list called Outages?
Uh-huh.
There's a, yeah, there's a mail, email, it's just an email distribution list.
I get notifications of all the outages of networks around the world.
Of course.
And, um, I was watching this stuff, and all the people posting on it, oh, this is down,
that, and big, major stuff was down.
Right.
I mean, not to somebody's, not to somebody's just kitty box cleaner.
It was, it was big stuff that just didn't work.
Uh-huh.
And so, you know, that's, that's where that was.
But OVH, OVH is really good.
Nobody, almost nobody, I won't say nobody knows about, but they've got a lot of customers.
Um, I don't generally, I don't generally like the French for technology, but in this case,
I'll make an exception.
They, they do a really, a really nice job.
Well, that's good to hear.
It's good to hear something positive.
We pay about $45 a month for our own dedicated metal server.
Wow.
Okay.
That's fair.
So I thought that was good.
Anyway, you might want to look them up, and I'll think about your, I'll think about your
Hope Talk, and who knows, maybe I'll submit something someday.
Yeah.
I mean, we'd love to hear more about this.
Please send us an email, OTH at 2600.com, so that at least we, we can stay in touch, because
you have a lot of really good stories that are of interest to our community.
I believe Rob wants to say something to you.
You might not be able to hear him.
Let's, let's try, speak as loud as you can, Rob.
Okay.
Sure.
Sure.
Hello, caller.
Can you hear me?
Yep.
I hear you.
Okay.
My name is Jeff, by the way.
Your name is Jeff?
I'm Jeffic1300 on the chat.
Okay.
Cool.
Excellent.
Good to speak with you, Jeff.
I wanted to thank you for the, for the push toward Bernard Ebbers.
You can look him up on Wikipedia.
I've been reading his article with great fascination as you've been speaking with us.
And yeah, it's worth a read.
Bernard Ebbers, E-B-B-E-R-S.
I do want to correct you.
He didn't die in prison.
About a month before his death, he was in terrible health and they granted him compassionate
release.
And he died a month after that.
But, but after serving, I think, 13 years of his 25 year sentence.
Well, the, the MCI and WorldCom had a major culture clash.
MCI had their own network.
They had, it stands for microwave communication and was developed by Bill McGowan in the 80s.
They're the ones that got it legal to be, transfer, transmit voice communication over
microwave.
Prior to that, it was illegal.
Between Cleveland and Chicago.
And they did that.
It was between Cleveland and Chicago.
Pardon?
It was between Cleveland and Chicago.
I don't, I don't, yeah, I don't remember.
But they, they did it.
And they, they used to jokingly refer to it.
But MCI was the law firm with the antenna on the roof.
And so a lot of big companies bought, bought MCI, IBM owned them for a while, but they had
kind of the IBM culture, you know, the buttoned out Oxford shirts with the white, you know,
white shirts and, you know, the, the IBM suit look and, and the WorldCom people didn't
own a network.
I mean, all they were, was a big sales agency and they, but they had enough money and they
came in and they bought MCI and we had services that were cross provisioned.
It was an absolute nightmare.
We had issues where we'd have a trouble report and I call them, I call up WorldCom and they,
or I call up MCI because they were actually the provider of the service.
And I said, oh, you're not the customer of record.
We don't have to talk to you.
Wow.
And they were right.
Oh, and I know all about how cell service got, is deregulated.
And now internet service is also, I'm guessing you all know what an SLA is.
Uh, I think I.
Service level agreement.
Okay.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So if you read the service level agreement for internet service and cell phone, it reads
something like this, best effort available at the time.
Okay.
That's it.
Wow.
That's it.
And there's, there's no recourse.
There's no oversight.
And if your network, if your phone's, if your service goes down, there's no, uh, promise
of time to a service restoration, nothing.
And, uh, and Verizon had been working on this for years.
That's why they're pushing cell service.
When the, when the, when the storms had out on, on Fire Island years ago and all the cables
got destroyed, people came in and said, yeah, but what about our businesses and what about
our faxes and our credit card?
We're saying, oh, we'll, we'll, we'll give you a cell phone.
And back then the technology wasn't good enough to send that kind of stuff over a cell phone.
Right.
And they finally forced the New York public utilities commission to put the, reinstall
the cables, but that didn't last long because eventually they made it so cheaper and so,
and landlines so expensive.
And now I, I don't know what they've done here, there, but here, um, there is, there
are no more copper wires.
They've decommissioned all of it.
It's all fiber and they're bringing it into people's homes and some, sometimes it, for
the most part it works, but both the company, the major companies here do a horrible job
of it.
Right.
And we have nowhere else to go and we have the highest cell and internet prices in the
world.
Oh dear.
That's my cell phone bill for just a simple cell is about $90 a month.
Okay.
Wow.
I know people pay more than that, but it's still a lot.
Anyway.
So I know a lot of that history and a friend, and so a friend of mine also worked with us
at a cargo company and between the two of us, we've got telecom stories that like will
curl your toenails up.
Well, we want to hear them all.
We really do.
And, uh, we'll figure this out.
Not tonight.
Not tonight, but we'll get you on the air.
We'll get you, uh, you can do an article for the magazine presentation at Hope.
There's, there's all kinds of avenues to share your experiences with.
I'm, I'm trying to think who the guy that's presented at Hope and other places about
telecom and just knows it backwards and forward.
I, I, I can see him.
Uh, he's based out of San Francisco and absolutely knows all of this stuff.
Oh boy.
There's so many, there's so many, uh, well, there are, there are a lot.
Okay.
Well, anyway, so thanks for taking my call and I'll send you an email and we'll draft some
stuff out and see if there's anything to do.
Great.
Well, thanks for listening and thanks for calling.
Take care.
And thanks for having, thanks for everybody having for the show and tolerating me.
It was a pleasure.
Thank you.
Okay.
All right.
Good night.
What a great call.
That was awesome.
Very cool.
It's amazing.
I, I, I like getting new calls that are, that are fascinating and interesting.
Um, since we've only had two calls tonight, uh, I'm going to leave it open for one more
call.
If it's quick, if it's a quick call and it comes in quickly.
All right.
And no hard feelings if neither one of those things happen.
Well, no, there will be hard feelings if, if you don't get off the phone.
Um, but here, the phone calls already come in.
So we're going to take that call, uh, and, um, and, and, and go ahead.
Uh, good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hold on one second.
It's another regular caller here.
We had two regular calls and one, one, one new caller.
Yes.
You're in the city that's occupied right now.
Oh, right.
Well, I'm not here to talk about Washington today.
I mean, you know, that last caller, that's, that's, that's amazing.
It seems like he's really got, of course, he's got a lot of stories.
It's amazing.
The people who are out there that you don't know are out there that know all this stuff.
So it's fascinating to me.
Yeah, I think he should go on Darknet Diaries.
Maybe Jack Reefsider would want to talk to him about that, especially about various telecom
related crimes.
Mm-hmm.
There's all kinds of places where, where this will be listened to with rapt attention.
I just wanted to bring up another story that I actually emailed you, uh, right before the
show went and I didn't see you get to it, but it's about, it's a scientific paper that
came out, uh, in mid-October describing unencrypted information being sent over various satellite
links.
That's still going on?
Mm-hmm.
Um, yeah, it goes, scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and the University
of Maryland say they were able to pick up large amounts of sensitive traffic largely just by
pointing a commercial off the shelf, shelf satellite dish at the sky from a roof.
In its paper, the team describes how they performed a broad scan of IP traffic on 39 geosynchronous
satellites across 25 distinct longitudes and found that half of the signals they picked
up contained clear text IP traffic.
Wow.
This included unencrypted cellular backhaul data sent from the core networks of several
U.S. operators destined for cell towers in remote areas.
Also found was unprotected internet traffic heading for in-flight Wi-Fi users aboard airlines
and unencrypted call audio from multiple VoIP4 providers.
Oh, my.
If you're searching a web on your airplane, that's where it goes through.
Okay, well, this is fascinating to me.
I'd like to know more about it.
I'd like to see some of the data because it's out there.
It's unencrypted.
It's obviously meant for our eyes.
This is from the register.
Yeah, the story's from the register.
And if these guys were able to do it, you can do it too.
Now, to my understanding, most of this work was actually performed last year.
And only this month they're able to present their paper.
Some of the satellite operators have fixed this issue and encrypted their data.
Others aren't.
But I think for the moment, I mean, you really just want to get in touch with somebody who
knows satellites and see what you can scoop up there.
Yeah, definitely.
Rob, did you have something?
I mean, it's all kinds.
And it's related to the...
And it's related to Telcom, as the last caller was.
I mean, this concerns the wireless companies, AT&T and T-Mobile.
You know, these people with the satellite dish were able to pick up calls, texts from both
of these companies.
Yeah, there's no excuse for that in this day and age.
Rob has something to say.
Listen carefully so you can hear Rob.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, this does remind me of the old days of analog cell phones that you could just listen
to with a regular radio scanner.
And before that, analog cordless phones, where I remember getting my first cordless phone in
the 80s and walking around my neighborhood with the handset and picking up calls from other
people who were, you know, using their cordless phones in the same situation.
Absolutely.
Just on a grander scale.
It's data, too, though, not just voice, right?
It's data.
I mean, most of the researchers found most of the protocols were known, you know, IP and
stuff.
But there were a couple of other unidentified protocols, which for now are only secure through
their obscurity.
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Well, thanks for sharing that.
I'm sure it's going to be all over the news.
It just happened, you said?
Yeah.
The paper just dropped in the middle of this month.
I know you're off, so that's probably why you didn't get to it or just didn't find it.
But the story's on the register.
I believe it came out October 15th.
Okay.
And most of the work done in this paper, this is a brand new paper.
Most of the work is from last year.
They did the white hat things and just reported these issues to the companies.
And, you know, some of them fixed it.
Some of them haven't.
Can't understand that.
But now that they haven't fixed it, it needs to be shared.
You can understand that.
And they want to do the bare minimum, of course.
Yeah, but if they know it's already out there, they need to do more than the bare minimum
because it's not going to look good.
And I think that's what the publication of this paper hopes to provide.
Yeah.
By the way, Maryland, that's in the D.C. metropolitan area.
It is.
I've been to the University of Maryland and been in some of their buildings.
Yeah, it's a good place.
Right.
All right.
Well, thanks for your call and good hearing from you.
All right.
Hey, Rob, when are we going to have, what's his name, Bradley Carter on the show?
Rob is actually away from the...
That was a mic drop, I think, but...
That was a mic drop.
And unfortunately, Rob has stepped away from the microphone for a moment, so he can't answer
that, but I will pass along the question.
Um, and actually, as long as I'm speaking, Tim in Connecticut says, I knew a guy that
pulled unencrypted TV off towers with pie plates and PVC tubes.
I'm sure they fixed that now.
What is going on in that apartment?
Wow.
Your door sounds like it's being tortured.
I mean, at least the door opens now.
Um.
It's got a lot of personality.
It does have a lot of personality.
Over the summer, the doorknob fell off.
Oh, I think I heard this story.
I think we may have told this on the air.
I can't remember if we told it on the air at another time we were talking, but...
The lost weekend.
Right?
It was eight o'clock in the morning, you were getting ready to leave, and you said, uh,
and the doorknob had come off.
Yes, and because it was summer and the heat had expanded the door tightly into the door
frame, it's a metal door, and so there was no way to get out.
Um, I had to call the building superintendent.
Now it's autumn.
You were able to get out, finally.
Is that what happened?
Yeah, it was a long, hot summer.
Um, but while you were away, our previous caller asked when Brad Carter is going to
be a guest on the show.
And then pop up the phone.
I will say Brad Carter has several shows of his own that are worth checking out if you
look for phone loser stuff.
Um, um, yeah.
Emmanuel, we have a listener who's in the chat who has asked for the phone number several
times, and I think, and just announced they want to call.
So do we want to take one more?
No, it's already disconnected.
It's not, it's not going to work.
We only have that window for a brief period, and then, uh, it has to go to somebody else.
It's sort of like a satellite.
Yeah, you can give them the phone number for next time, assuming it's the same number next
time, 802-321-4225.
But if you listen, you should hear us say it many times, but you can tell them in the
chat, too, if they want it in front of them.
Absolutely.
So as I keep reminding folks in the chat, especially if they're newer to our program,
we are very cautious about not giving out the number while someone's on the phone,
because we only have one line, and we don't want our listeners to get stuck in voicemail
hell.
Yeah, that's true.
That's what happens.
Some people are still there.
Well, anyway, uh, thanks, everybody, for listening, and please write to us, OTH at 2600.com,
if you have anything that you want to share.
We'd like to hear from you.
We'll be back again next, um, next week, uh, at, uh, I guess, um, we're not due, we probably
are due for a call-in show on BAI, but, you know, it's been, it's been so chaotic, we're
going to continue with this for now.
Uh, so regular show, 7 p.m. on BAI, and, um, over time, 8 p.m. here on YouTube, and don't
forget, it's going to be an hour earlier next week, except you don't have to do anything
because everything does it automatically.
Daylight savings time is over, or will be over.
Already is, in, in Ireland, where Alex is.
Right.
But, uh, happy Halloween, everyone.
That's right.
Sure is.
Maybe we'll come back with, like, 10,000 lines.
You know, I mean, it's primitive, but it works.
And those were really great calls.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Have a good night.
Have a good night.