The number you have reached, area code 4143.
Hello.
And out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gilab.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
You do indeed.
Good evening.
And I want to thank everybody for staying with us here on WBAI instead of trying to see that stupid tree get lit, which is happening at exactly—they always do it Wednesday at 7 p.m., you know, for decades.
So I don't know whose fault it is, but we're always coming up against each other, but thank you for listening to us.
We're going to be spending the hour talking about high technology and the latest hijinks and things like that, and then we are going to have overtime at 8 o'clock on YouTube, so you can make your phone calls there.
Anyone have any interesting news or exciting events or anything to share with us?
Yes, Alex.
Well, funnily enough, you mentioned the tree.
I was invited to a Christmas tree lighting ceremony at a friend's new law firm that was the New York office of a law firm that just launched in New York, and we're looking down on it from 75 Rockefeller Center looking down at the tree.
But I elected instead to be here with you guys.
You really confused me.
You were invited to a tree lighting ceremony where you looked down on Rockefeller Center?
You looked down at the tree from Rockefeller Center.
Is that the ceremony?
Yeah, that's the tree lighting ceremony.
Wait, so—hold on a second.
So this event that thousands, if not millions of people flocked to, you got an invite to?
I got an invite to be in an office looking down at the ceremony.
So the office for this law firm is looking at the tree lighting ceremony.
It's happening right now.
I'm in a studio right now, and believe me, I'm looking down on the ceremony.
So I don't know exactly what you gained here, but thank you for being with us.
I guess that's a sacrifice of some sort.
Apparently I made the wrong choice.
Yeah, I think we could be in agreement on that.
It's sort of like a humblebrag and an insult, like, wrapped together.
Yeah, I picked that up.
I thought that's what it was.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
All right.
We'll be analyzing each other's comments throughout the hour as we try to get through it.
And we have some stories we want to share with people.
There is a new feature on Twitter.
Yes, another feature on Twitter.
Enhanced fascism, but the technical adjustments keep on coming.
Anyway, this one has stirred confusion, anger, and a wave of online sleuthing.
Oh, yeah.
It's just like the good old days.
After users discovered that the platform was suddenly displaying the surprising locations
where certain accounts are based.
Yeah.
This was actually two weekends ago that users noticed that clicking on an account's join date
now opens a tab that shows the country or region in which the account is located.
Wow, that's kind of cool.
You know, I haven't been on Twitter forever, but if anyone does have access to that platform,
please try that.
See if that still works.
The head of product for what they call X now, and that's a great title.
I'm head of product.
Oh, it just sounds so awful.
Well, Nikita Beer teased the feature last month as a way to help users verify the authenticity
of content they read and limit the influence of troll farms, which often run political accounts
from outside the countries they target.
At this point, does anyone see a problem with this?
This kind of, I guess, data that we get as far as where something was based?
The real fun with something like this is, of course, seeing all the, you know, there were
dozens of accounts, apparently, that are always going on about American politics and the president
and, you know, riling up the crowds and everything, and they turn out to be based anywhere from
Eastern Europe to, you know, Mars or wherever, but certainly not within the United States.
And that's amusing to look at.
It's also just kind of depressing when you think about how many followers accounts like
that have and how many people are being swayed by things like that.
But on the other hand, I wonder about how they are determining where an account is based,
because any number of people could be, say, in the United States, but using VPNs that make
them appear to be from somewhere else.
It's geolocation technology.
It's very easy to find your way around.
Absolutely.
We'll be getting into that in just a moment as well.
But basically, as soon as this feature appeared live, Twitter slash X was flooded with viral
posts showing that numerous high-engagement MAGA-branded accounts that present themselves as those
of patriotic Americans appeared to be instead based overseas, including Eastern Europe,
Thailand, Nigeria, Bangladesh, an account that calls itself ultra-maga Trump 2028, claiming
to be based in Washington, D.C., is listed as being based in Africa.
Another now-deleted account with a President Donald Trump-inspired username, Trump is my
president, was listed as being based in Macedonia.
Wait a minute.
Hold on a second.
That's not what you call it.
That's not what you call it.
I mean, really, NBC News, you should know better, North Macedonia.
Yeah, that's where it seems to be based.
It's not funny, Rob.
It's real.
Okay, so that account was based there, an account with a username American.
Really?
They got the username American on Twitter?
Wow.
Complete with a profile picture featuring a bald eagle over an American flag.
I mean, come on.
It's got to be an American, right?
A bald eagle over an American flag.
The account is called American.
Where is it based?
South Asia.
My world is exploding.
Yes, Alex.
I mean, this is a fascinating revelation, I think, that so many of these prominent accounts
were foreign-based.
I mean, it shows that there's a real need for transparency here.
It doesn't necessarily, to my mind, though, equate to something that could be legally actionable,
except in for certain really, I think, limited contexts, because, you know, it's okay for foreign
accounts to promote some kind of political ideology.
But when it crosses over into somebody acting as, like, an agent of a foreign government,
you might have to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
There could be, perhaps, campaign finance law violations here.
There could be national security law violations.
But it's, this is a fine line, too, right?
Because Twitter, or X, as we call it at this point, I just can't call it X.
I got, like, a block in my mind from that.
We all struggle with this.
I know.
So Twitter, X, et cetera, whatever.
You know, they still also benefit from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which
says, like, hey, we're not liable for what our users post on our network.
We're not considered publishers of that user content, because they're an electronic communications
network, and they have all these users, and, you know, just like Facebook or any other platform,
they're shielded from liability in that sense.
So they really don't have anything necessarily to worry about by revealing this information.
And I'm glad that they did, because I think it's an issue of transparency, and we really
should have a right to this.
It also, to my mind, brings up the issue of, if these were foreign agents acting on behalf
of some kind of hostile foreign government, why the hell weren't they using a VPN to connect
into Twitter, to mask their IP address, to make it look like the American account was
actually located in America?
This kind of basic operational security to make it look like you are from the place that
you say that you are.
So going full circle here, if we are dealing with these types of foreign actors, they're
idiotic foreign actors, and we probably don't really have very much to worry about.
Well, there's a difference between what somebody says on their social media account and how they
set up their social media account.
They might be smart as far as expressing themselves and a complete idiot as far as how to set it up
securely.
We see this all the time.
And I guess, you know, one of the reasons why this is probably so difficult for us to get
our heads around is because, you know, as Americans, it's long been our policy not to get involved
in other countries' affairs, not to interfere with other, you know, elections, regimes, that
kind of thing.
So, you know, to see somebody violate our trust like this and say things from a foreign land
about our country, it's just not something we're familiar with, you know?
Oh, I can sense the sarcasm.
I see it dripping over there, you know.
Oh, what?
Do we have a leak?
Yeah, I guess, right?
But from the perspective of the U.S. government, though, I think this is something that should
be looked into.
It would be interesting if there was, you know, perhaps a warrant issued or some kind of legal
process issued over to Twitter to acquire all of this information, not just the information
that relates to individual posts, but other information underlying the accounts like American
with the big American, I'm sorry, the bald eagle, et cetera, and the American flag, because
as somebody who has subpoenaed Twitter and X several times over many years, there's a lot
of account information and a lot of IP addresses that are associated with accounts that go beyond
the IP address that's used for the post itself.
So Twitter will also log the IP address that's used to create the account, IP addresses that are
used to log into the account, to post certain things.
All of that information together could be really quite interesting to look at.
And if Twitter was really interested, X perhaps, we can call it this time, if Twitter or X was
really interested in transparency, they might release that information out to the public
without any kind of legal process.
I think that would certainly attract my attention.
Well, apparently, I have an update on this.
The biggest frenzy came a Friday ago, one Friday ago, when screenshots and screen recordings
claiming that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security account was listed as being based in
Israel quickly went viral.
The department denied the speculation, claiming the posts are spreading misinformation.
And the feature abruptly disappeared later that day.
So if you're trying to use that feature right now, well, apparently somebody ruined it for
everybody.
And now you have no idea where the accounts are, but they could be anywhere.
And I think it might raise a very important point as far as trusting what it is you read.
Yeah, couldn't agree more.
And it wouldn't be the first time that a Twitter account was part of some kind of foreign influence
operation.
I mean, we've been seeing this quite literally since the 2016 election.
Absolutely.
Continuing on the subject of wondering where people are.
As of this week, half of the states in the United States are under restrictive age verification
laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access
legal porn.
This is true.
Really?
People have to do this?
I mean, wow.
You have your biometric and personal information to access porn.
This is crazy.
Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday.
As it's done in multiple other states, Bornhub and its network of sister sites, some of the
largest adult content platforms in the world, pulled service in Missouri, replacing their
homepages with a video of performer Sherry DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling
effects of age verification.
The other states, are you ready?
You might be shocked.
You might be in a state that is having this happen to them.
Louisiana, Utah, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, Montana, South Carolina.
Is anyone surprised by any of the states so far?
No?
Not yet.
Okay.
Where was I?
What was the last one I just said?
South Carolina.
Port.
That's weird because South Carolina isn't on the list I'm reading right now.
North Carolina.
I said North Carolina.
Did I say South Carolina?
That's weird.
Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Indiana, Alabama.
Oh, that surprises me.
Oklahoma, Florida.
Here's South Carolina.
Tennessee, Georgia, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Arizona, and Ohio.
Actually, you know, Arizona surprises me because there are so many libertarians out there.
You'd think that they would have stopped that, you know, having to tell the government your
information to access porn.
That seems like the kind of thing they would really stand up for, I guess, rather.
As you may know, your elected officials in Missouri are requiring us to verify your age before allowing
you access to our website.
While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you
want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and,
in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.
That is the statement by Sherry DeVille.
On the blocked homepages, there's also a link to an explanation of the restricted to adults, or RTA, label,
which porn site administrators place on their sites to signal to device-based parental controls
that the websites are inappropriate for minors.
Like most of the other 24 laws across the country, Missouri's age verification law requires websites
containing more than one-third of material that's considered harmful to minors or sexual content
to perform age verification checks.
Similar or more restrictive laws have swept the country since Louisiana became the first state
to enact age verification legislation way back in 2023.
Age verification laws reach beyond porn sites, however, in Wyoming, South Dakota, Mississippi, and Ohio,
where the laws are written broadly enough to cover social media sites and any platform hosting adult content.
Blue Sky users have to submit to a face scan by the third-party company, Yodi,
or they have to upload a photo of their credit card to verify they're over 18 years of age.
In July, Blue Sky started requiring all UK users to verify their ages in response to the Online Safety Act.
So this is not just in the United States here.
Previous reports have focused on the security risks in uploading sensitive personal data
to identify, to identify verification services, including the potential for hackers, of course,
because we're the threat, to then get a hold of that information themselves.
In October, after Discord started requiring UK users to verify ages,
the platform announced hackers had breached one of its third-party vendors
that handles age-related appeals and said it identified around 70,000 users
who may have had their government ID photos exposed as part of the breach.
This 404 media story is really pretty revealing and pretty scary.
I just can't believe that this is just happening.
Last week, Pornhub's parent company, Ilo?
Is that the parent company of Pornhub?
Okay, I didn't know that.
Sent letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft
urging them to support device-based age verification in their app stores
and operating systems, according to Wired.
Based on our real-world experience with existing age assurance laws,
we strongly support the initiative to protect minors online,
said Anthony Penhall, chief legal officer for Alo.
However, we have found site-based age assurance approaches
to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive.
Instead of protecting minors, age verification laws
spike usage of virtual private networks
and send users, including potentially minors,
to unregulated or unmoderated sites
that don't care about complying with U.S. or U.K. laws.
In Missouri, searches for VPNs spiked
following the law's enactment.
Now, Missouri schools are not required to teach sex education,
leaving it up to local school boards
to decide what, if anything, children are taught about sexual health.
School districts that do teach sex ed
are required to promote abstinence,
which is long recognized as being ineffective
at protecting children from engaging in risky sexual behaviors.
Even if a district offers sex ed,
parents are allowed to pull their kids out of that class altogether.
But despite research showing age verification laws don't work either,
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hannaway
believes forcing adults to undergo age verification
protects the children in her state.
We are proud to stand on the side of parents, families, and basic decency.
Missouri will not apologize for protecting children.
Well, I think we need to inform children and everybody else
how to bypass these idiots.
But first, thoughts.
Rob?
Yeah, won't someone think of the children?
That's what's always pulled out in times like this.
And, of course, it's nothing to do with that
because no one is arguing that children should have access to pornography.
You know, responsible adults doing their own thing
where there's consent all around is perfectly fine.
But the definite first,
there is the difficulty of the legal definition of pornography,
which is still not a thing that's very clear.
And it has been used against all sorts of things
from sex education material,
which teenagers need
well before they reach the age of legal adulthood,
to even media depicting the LGBTQIA plus community,
acknowledging the existence of queer people,
a children's book in which a character has two dads,
gets, you know, pulled off the shelf in some library
because a parent complains that it's sexualizing things.
And this is where it's really dangerous
for something like this to be an available weapon.
Also leading to the question of whether or not
the age verification methods that are available
are even functional at all, which they aren't.
We spoke on this program about kids using
the image of a character in a video game
to bypass face-based age verification in the UK,
where they could make the character look at the camera
and, you know, do whatever it needed to do
to prove that it was an adult and go from there.
In this article, it refers to kids taking a photo
of their credit card to,
or people taking a photo of their credit card
to prove they're an adult.
Lots of kids have credit cards.
There is just nothing good
that can be achieved with this
and everything bad that can be achieved with this.
Well, you know, I have to wonder,
what is the issue that is new?
Because the internet has been around for a while,
pornography has been around forever.
Why is it suddenly something where you have to take such draconian measures
and invade everybody's privacy
and put so many people at risk for all kinds of different hazards?
Go ahead, Alex.
Well, because it's, as Rob said,
it's not about the issue that they claim it's about.
It's about intimidation.
They want to intimidate people from accessing this content.
But I have a question to ask you guys,
and you girls as well, Gila.
The pornography itself, what do you think about this?
Do you think that pornography is protected by the First Amendment?
I think that's been challenged time and time again
over the course of, you know, human history.
And I think generally people have come to the conclusion
that pornography is an acceptable medium,
as long as it's, you know, non-exploitative,
everyone's an adult,
and it's something that, you know,
an adult should be legally allowed to go and partake in,
if they so choose.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
I mean, pornography itself is protected by the First Amendment.
It's legal content that adults can access if we want to access it.
So we shouldn't be intimidated through age verification laws
or something like that to not access content
that's protected by the First Amendment.
So I find that, you know, patently offensive
to have these types of age verification laws.
The only time that pornography will cross over the line
is something you learn in constitutional law,
first-year law school type stuff,
is if it's obscene.
So if pornography is obscene...
Wait a minute, well, hold on.
How is pornography...
I mean, how do you define obscenity?
Oftentimes people use salty language in pornography.
So you're saying the pornography is not a problem,
but if somebody says a word I can't say on the radio,
that's the issue?
Well, perhaps.
That's one of the things.
I mean, the classic line about pornography is,
you know, it's really hard to define,
but you know it when you see it, right?
But something is obscene,
and this is like a really kind of loosey-goosey standard, too.
It comes from this really famous case,
Miller v. California,
and it has to do with contemporary standards.
So if the average person,
this is quite literally the sense,
if the average person applying
contemporary community standards
would find that the work at issue,
the bit of pornography that might be obscene,
and taken as a whole,
appeals to shameful or prurient interests,
then it's obscene.
Yeah.
So, I mean, it's a standard that's community-based,
which is what's really kind of, you know,
odd about this, right?
And as somebody involved in radio,
I'm very familiar with that phrase,
and I've always been wondering how,
you know, an entity like the FCC
can determine what my community's standards are.
Or the whole thing is nonsense.
Kyle, do you have something?
Yeah, I just wanted to point out,
I mean, that's a very good observation that is true.
It's obscenity and indecency,
especially with a visual and now video
and other sorts of mediums for this stuff.
But it is protected as an art form
and something that I find paradoxical
when you're taking away sexual education,
because the sorts of curiosities and stuff
that the people they're trying to protect
will eventually stumble into
are going to require some kind of education.
And to gut the education system of anything
that doesn't perpetuate things like abstinence
and stuff that is itself useful,
but I don't know how practical it is
in that sort of modern community
that would set the standard.
And I think there's a lot more
that you're doing to eliminate discussion,
eliminate the kind of understanding
that needs to happen.
I think we need to decide.
I mean, it just, this is a very,
these feel like very unsexy times.
And I think we need to understand.
And that's my question here is like,
are we for sex and the sexual education or not?
Because the sort of puritanical attitude
that they're fixing the rest,
you know, the entirety of the country.
And, and as Alex pointed out,
making us less free
because it feels very unfree as an adult
to have to give up more information
that could potentially be breached.
But that they're trying to set that ideal,
it just feels paradoxical
and sort of historically irrelevant
to the kinds of education
and the things that people should be talking about.
And we should be having healthier conversations
about sex and sexual education.
And I just, I find this whole issues
really disappointing the way it's being hollowed out.
And then adults somehow are punished
for something that to my mind
has a lot more to do with,
and I could be wrong,
but to some degree, bad parenting.
Because a lot of what minors do
is mediated and filtered through the safety bubble
that is the family and that is parenting.
And that, that the internet is everywhere
and we all have to now be concerned
because there's so many kitties on the internet.
It just, it boggles the mind.
It is, it has always been an adult environment.
It was never kid safe.
It wasn't designed that way.
And I think parents have a lot of control here.
And to punish adults
and say that they need to be responsible
for jumping through more hoops
to do adult things,
which we agree are allowed and legal
and honestly should be advocated for
in the ways that a lot of these sites
and entities are crying for in this moment.
Because to have that be sort of
eviscerating the idea of sex
or even anything but this sorts of ideal
that they want to somehow teach,
I guess they're not going to teach it
and then nobody's going to watch it.
So we're just going to learn it in church or something.
I don't know what tradition
they're trying to encourage.
And it's very, like I said, paradoxical
in light of the amount of talk
about mediated distractions.
And I think that it's really the bottom line
of the things that are distracting us
in social media
and taking away from
the sorts of connection
and actual conversations
people should be having.
It's just tragic.
The whole thing is really tragic
because there's so many misunderstandings
and so many downsides
to trying to force this
onto the entirety of America.
And now half, you say, half of America.
Go ahead, Gaila.
I think it's of a piece
with a lot of what has already happened.
And one thing I would really like to see
is a chart laying out
which states fall under this
porn ban situation
in which states have tightened
their restrictions on abortion
and other reproductive care.
I think, Kyle, you make
a really interesting point.
I think that when people think about sex
in certain contexts,
contexts, they want one thing to exist
and one thing only.
It is penetrative sex
between two people of opposite genders
who are preferably of the same race
and the same cultural group.
And it is procreative, not fun,
and involves two people and two people only.
And they have to be married to each other.
And the idea that anything else
outside of that scripted text exists
is the thing that they're trying
to get away from.
I'm just wondering,
is there a category of porn
where married people are having sex?
Is that...
I've never heard of that category.
I mean, it must be a turn-on for somebody,
but it's...
I just have never heard of that one.
Nor have I.
But that the...
I think a lot of the people
who are creating these same laws
are in this world
where you only have sex
with the person that you're married to
and you only do it when you're fertile
and when people don't want to have children,
they don't have sex.
And when people...
Like, it's all tied into this puritanical
think-of-the-children thing
which then just wraps in on itself
like an Ouroboros of futility,
if nothing else.
Wow.
Well, you know,
I think if you did have
some kind of overlay map,
you, of course, would notice
that all the states involved
are red states.
With the possible exception of Virginia
because, as my understanding,
Virginia was getting increasingly blue.
But here they are on this list.
As I said,
I was kind of surprised
with Arizona being on there
because, you know,
they have dabbled in democracy.
But, yeah,
you have to ask yourself,
what is it about red states
where people are so willing
to give up their rights?
Because that's exactly
what's happening here.
People are giving up their rights
to do as they wish on the internet
without being beholden
to some authority figure
that's going to tell them
if they're allowed to or not.
You know, there are ways of,
you know,
Kyle mentioned bad parenting.
There are ways of keeping track
of what your kids are doing
and making sure they have access
or don't have access
to things that are appropriate for them.
And if you've completely lost control
of your kids,
that's really on you.
It shouldn't be on everybody else.
And all the adults
shouldn't have to pay for your failings.
And there should be another solution.
So I just,
I'm really disturbed by how easily people,
especially people who claim
to stand for,
you know,
the First Amendment,
the Second Amendment,
all the amendments,
you know,
freedom of speech,
all of that,
how easily they give it up
when their leaders tell them to.
Rob.
And there's the side of this
where this is all
just performative anyway
to rile up a certain political crowd
because,
as I said earlier,
in practice,
it's trivial to disguise
where you are located
when you're looking at stuff
on the internet.
You can get a VPN,
you can use Tor.
And that leads me to think
that the next thing
that the people behind
restrictive rules like this
are going to try and do
is to try and outlaw
the use of a VPN
or Tor
or similar measures
to protect your own privacy online,
which you might do
for any number of reasons
above and beyond
accessing porn.
Over in the UK
where they instituted
age verification
for these sort of things,
it became a matter of course
for so many more people
to be familiar with VPNs
and how they work
and get subscriptions to them
just because people
want to access this material.
There will always be people
who want to
and serving those people
will always be a business model.
So if you want to get
into the VPN business
and start something up
to help people
around things like this
or to just put the info
out there online
of how people can work
their way around it themselves,
the information,
the very information
about how to get around
these technical restrictions,
you know,
the meat and drink
of those of us
in the hacker community
and on this program,
that is the next thing
that's going to be
under major threat.
Well, before it gets outlawed,
before it is threatened
into extinction,
let's explain it to people.
Let's tell people
how they can get around
this idiocy.
And again, you know,
it's adults
that are being punished here.
We should not accept
anyone having their rights
restricted like this.
So we talk about VPNs,
we talk about Tor.
Who would like to give
some very fundamental explanation
as to how people
can study?
Kyle, go ahead.
Well, it's kind of
a baseline for this,
but essentially you can
make your connection
to the internet appear
as though you're
in a jurisdiction
where these requirements
are not in place.
So you can access
the material,
even though you're
physically in one place,
your connection
to the internet
will look as though
it's originating someplace
that still allows
the kind of browsing
that wouldn't require you
to participate
in giving any kind
of information over
like an ID or something.
This is how I watch
Eurovision every year.
The internet thinks
I'm in Denmark
and I can see it
without any commercials
and, you know,
you can't see it here
without paying
through the nose.
Same basic principle.
Absolutely.
And there's a variety
of different ways
to set up a VPN.
There's stuff
that actually runs
through browsers
that don't even really
require that.
You could set up
both in combination,
for instance,
running Tor
as well as running a VPN.
There's a myriad of ways.
Even an incognito tab
is going to stop
quite a few
of what the sorts
of consumer,
what is it,
surveillance capitalism
that we talk about
and have talked about
for many years
and many other
far more scholarly types
have noted
what the surveillance
is about
and how it works
through cookies
and various things
in your browsing.
But basically,
eliminating
the amounts
of those things
that are running
and changing
your geography
by employing
some of these tools
will step up
the levels
of obscurity
for the kinds
of browsing
that you want to do
and also have
the benefit
of getting around
these geo-fencing
sorts of things
that the sites
at question
are having to do
based on state laws.
I'm going to do
the opposite.
I'm going to try
and use a VPN
to wind up
in Alabama
and see if I can
access a porn site
from there
and just see
what kind of message
I get
and then route
my way out of there.
That's how the internet
is designed.
You route yourself
where you wish to be.
You know,
the censorship in China,
this is how people
get around it.
You know,
for so many reasons
and it's very important
whether you're into
pornography or not,
this is not about
pornography.
This is about speech.
This is about access.
This is about your rights
as, you know,
a freedom-loving person.
So, the same training
that you get
to access a porn site
from the Deep South
will help you
to access
a newspaper
that's banned
in the future.
And don't think
those days aren't coming
because the way
things are going
right now,
next week,
is a possibility.
Alex, go ahead.
On that very subject,
I want to talk
about TOR for a second.
I think Kyle
did a great job
in talking about VPNs
and this type
of technology,
but there's some
kind of irony here,
too, because TOR,
which stands
for the Onion Router,
the core technology
here was actually
developed in the
mid-1990s
by researchers
in none other
than the U.S.
Naval Research Laboratory.
It was a government
project,
and the whole idea
behind TOR
was that they were
trying to protect
sensitive government
and intelligence
communications online.
So the Navy
ultimately later
released the code,
and that's how
the Onion Router
came into being here.
So the Onion Router
now is really
this free system
that balances
your Internet traffic
around the world
by volunteer-run nodes,
and it wraps
that traffic
in different layers
of encryption
so that you go
through these various nodes
and it becomes
very, very difficult
to figure out
the origin
of any particular
piece of Internet traffic,
which is why
it's used today
by dissidents,
as you mentioned,
Emanuel,
as well as journalists
and some bad guys, too.
We'll also use TOR,
of course,
but it's a technology
that really was
ultimately developed,
I'm sorry,
was originally developed
by the U.S. government
and now is being used
to access porn sites.
Well, because a bad guy
uses a bit of technology,
does not make
that technology bad.
I agree with that.
That is the leap
in logic
that I think
we really have
to attack here.
Now, you mentioned
with TOR,
it's very difficult.
Does that mean
it's not impossible
to trace somebody?
There have been leaks
in different TOR nodes
and things,
in like rogue TOR nodes,
so it hasn't been
entirely impossible,
but it does make
it extremely difficult.
Yeah, just to expound,
that's actually
something that is ongoing,
so please support people
that are running TOR relays.
There have been some raids
and these kinds of actions
taken against people
that are supporting
this network
and it's true
that when you're talking
about encryption
and really technology
in many ways
that it can have
multitudes of uses
and the sort of behavior
around using it
and the purpose
of using that tool
can be good, bad,
it could be both.
We deal with this paradox often
and yeah,
the TOR technology
is fantastic.
It's very interesting.
It's vast.
There's a lot of tools
that make it much easier
that are still being developed
and they do great work there.
The hidden services
is basically a network
that isn't visible
on the regular internet
if you think of it
like your regular
top-level domains
and there's many layers
of encryption
that are involved
in that architecture.
So support the people
that are supporting
the methods
to get the word out
because yes,
it can come in handy
for people using it recreationally
but it really does save
and impact a lot of lives
to be able to use the internet
without giving up
a whole lot of information.
It's so important
to actually go out
and support these organizations
and the way you can do that
with TOR,
their site is
torproject.org
that's T-O-R project
dot O-R-G
and you can get involved
in any number of ways
you can become part
of the project yourself.
It's so important
to learn about the technology
because that way
when it's used against you,
you have a counter-strike
and you can use
the same technology
to basically bypass
the restrictions
that are being forced on you.
Absolutely.
And something that they're
working on right now
actively,
I think they're still
in some sort of beta test
of Onion Share
which is,
I believe they're putting
an application
so that you can
use the network
and send files
from like
a mobile handset
and use a link
on that very same network
in a sort of easy-to-use way.
So they're just
constantly improving
but it doesn't come
from just,
you know,
just out of nowhere.
People have been
working on this stuff
and like we were
talking about VPNs,
there are really
so many good tools,
so many good projects
out there
and yeah,
I mean,
let's,
it is,
I would also
just add that
it is a little bit
about pornography
but your core message
is so spot on.
It really isn't though.
It really isn't about pornography.
Pornography is what
they are using
just like,
you know,
they will always use
the,
you know,
the specter of terrorism
to get what they want.
You know,
Trump is a perfect example
of this
with the horrible shooting
of the National Guard's
people last week.
He used that
to target all Afghans
because he didn't like Afghans
and then he used it
to target Somalians
because he doesn't
like them either.
He froze the whole
third world
immigration
to the United States
program.
You know,
that is what he wanted.
It was,
it was his fantasy
come true.
It had nothing to do
with what was actually happening
just like this
has nothing to do
with pornography.
Yeah,
I was just thinking
that in the way
that it is disappearing
the things
that certain people
don't like
or don't think
should exist
and that's
the crux of it.
Except it's not
disappearing them.
You know,
you can't just get rid
of these things.
That's,
that's I think
our point
is that a lot
of it,
it,
as you said,
has been there.
The impulses
and curiosities
of the people
they're feigning
to protect
will be there.
That's an age-old thing
and in general
sex in society
is not something
you're going to just
be able to change
with some decrees
like in the same way
as I fear
as like Roe v. Wade
and stuff,
people will find ways
around this
and people,
I don't know,
they will put up
with a lot
but when you start
doing these kinds
of things
I think
there's some
compelling reasons
to pump the brakes
a little bit.
Adults,
adults deserve
to do adult things.
Absolutely
and our goal here
is so people
will be educated
as to how to route
around these restrictions
because,
you know,
it's supposedly
pornography today,
it will be speech tomorrow
and you need to know
these skills.
Now we mentioned VPNs,
I don't think we really
focused enough
on how you get involved
with the VPN
and I guess
the first thing
you would do
is you'd search
for VPNs
and find something
that is,
you know,
cheap enough
or even free
where you can use it
and what happens
after you sign up
you will basically
be faced with
a choice of places
you want to go
or appear to be
coming from
like countries
in Europe,
Canada,
who knows.
You pick one
and then you
go to Google
and you see
if it says,
you know,
google.ca
instead of google.com
then you know
that the internet
thinks you're in Canada.
I think it's
basically that simple.
Alex,
did you have something?
Yeah,
I wanted to mention,
you know,
there is this kind
of countervailing
argument here too,
right,
where I think
a lot of people
might be sucked
into this,
which is if you argue
the other side of this,
you say,
well,
you go back
to the 90s
or the 2000s,
remember when you
would go into
a convenience store
and if you wanted
to look at
or buy some kind
of pornographic magazine,
you had to show
your ID,
right?
They wouldn't just
sell that to a miner,
so what's the big
difference here?
What's the difference
between having to show
your ID to look
at pornography
in a convenience store
and showing your ID
to look at pornography
on a website
to get access to it,
right?
I mean,
this is the analogy.
I think Gila has an answer
to that.
Go ahead.
Well,
but I think I have an answer
to it too.
I mean,
there's a massive difference
here,
right?
Because there's no data
stored about your browsing
habits after you buy
that magazine
and you leave the store.
Nobody's creating a record
of your license having been
there at that particular time.
I mean,
now basically your entire
pornographic browsing
history is stored in
what could amount
to a dossier
about your curious,
your curiosities,
your sexual curiosities.
And that dossier
can be lost.
It can be breached.
It can be transferred.
It can be shared
with affiliates
or third parties
for advertising purposes.
I mean,
you have no idea
what the hell
is going to happen
with that.
And so you're creating
all these records
that wouldn't otherwise
have been created.
And I think the analogy
completely fails
because of that.
So,
I mean,
I just see that,
you know,
a lot of lawmakers
when you go back
to Virginia
in 2023
when that age
verification law
was passed
and it was
a Republican
controlled legislature
at that particular time.
It's now
a Democrat
controlled legislature.
And I wonder
if there's going
to be backlash
because of these
porn verification laws
in these various states.
I don't know,
but apparently
in doing a little bit
of research about this,
it was unanimously passed.
It was a bipartisan bill
that sailed through
the state legislature
to require age verification
for pornographic access.
So I think
we've got
a bit of a problem
on our hands here.
Well,
it's kind of
inspiring the states
that this isn't
even an issue
and we're in
one of those states
where this kind of thing
has no chance
of becoming law.
But it doesn't mean
in the future
things won't change
even more.
We never could have
predicted this.
Half the country
is now subject to this.
And it's just
it's terrible.
It's sad.
It's scary.
But it's
it's the reality
we seem to be
we seem to be facing
increasingly.
Kyle?
Absolutely.
And I could go on
and on.
I'll wait till the
the other part
of the show
to elaborate.
We'll take some
phone calls
then as well.
And yeah,
I just encourage
people to
support the things
we were talking about
in as many ways
as they can.
Do beautiful things
with their body
with your body
you know
and you
are in charge
you have the agency
and be good
to yourselves
and like
let's
let's be
reasonable
about this stuff
and
and
I just think
that it's
it's
it's
something that
will just
creep into
other things
if we're not
adamant about it.
and take care
of your kids
don't let the
government do it
for you.
That's the worst
idea ever.
Best idea ever
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in this
We'll be right back.


And welcome, everybody, as we start Overtime here on YouTube.
This is Emmanuel. Kyle is over there. Hi.
And out in Signal Land, we have Rob and Gila and Alex.
Hello.
That's correct.
All right. And we might actually be on YouTube. Is that possible?
I'm waiting for us to catch up, and here we go.
Okay, we are live on YouTube.
YouTube is always a little slow.
But did they light the tree? Is the tree on fire?
You know, when some guy did that, some guy lit the tree on fire at Rockefeller Center.
It was a few years ago. I think it was French or something.
And he said, but it's our tradition.
It's like, really, to light a huge towering tree in front of a skyscraper on fire.
That's your tradition?
Yeah, I think it was after Christmas, so at least, you know, it wasn't ruined for the children.
So it was good and dry.
Yeah, yeah, something like that.
But yeah, I'd like to know if anyone out there can report on the scene or, you know, maybe someone's listening to us as they're there.
Alex, maybe you could check in on the party that you opted not to go to to hang out with us instead.
Yeah, I know. What a mistake.
Yeah.
How does that work?
I mean, are they all staring out the window down all these flights?
Is it in the RCA building, whatever they call it now?
Yeah, it is.
Yeah.
So this party's at 75 Rockefeller Center.
So I guess it looks right down on this.
Well, it's 75 Rockefeller Center.
Is that the NBC building?
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm not there.
So I don't know.
You would have found out.
You would have found out.
Maybe it was SNL.
Maybe you would have been in one of the studios.
You'd be in a sketch or something.
You know, I've never watched SNL.
What are you talking about?
You've never watched it on Saturday.
I've seen like, you know.
No, no, no, that's not possible.
You're saying the show that's been on since 1975, you have never watched.
Never watched it while it was live on Saturdays.
I don't even know what channel.
Okay, you're attaching some conditions to this.
You didn't watch it live, but you have watched it.
I've seen like bits and skits.
No, no, no, no.
Now, you've watched an episode of it.
No, I've never watched a full episode.
What the hell's wrong with you?
You're a New Yorker and you've never watched SNL?
Yeah, I'm a New Yorker.
I'm out doing things.
Alex, some of the things you uncover sometimes are really disturbing.
This might be the leading contender.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not like, you know, I eat pizza with a knife and fork or something.
I'm beginning to wonder.
Rob, I'm not crazy here.
There's something seriously wrong here, right?
Thank you.
I have a lot of feelings about all of this, but I would like to point out that the Rockefeller
Center Christmas tree lighting extravaganza is running until 10 o'clock this evening.
So the tree itself is probably not yet lit.
What the hell are they waiting for?
What's going on?
Just turn it on.
Yeah, that's what I heard.
That it's not going to happen until 10 o'clock.
So there's singing and dancing and the Rockettes are performing and there's pushing and shoving
and a lot of angry people.
That's what's happening.
It might it might be nice on TV, but I was in that crowd and it's not pleasant.
And maybe it's just because I'm not a person who's ever been a Christmas celebrator.
I don't get it.
I don't understand the point of this evening's event.
I don't entirely understand the point of having a gigantic tree and going to look at
that gigantic tree, especially if you have a tree in your own house.
It's a bigger tree.
It's a bigger tree and a lot more people are going to look at it.
Right.
But also the idea of like someone grew this tree in their front yard and then you killed
it.
Yeah.
Yep.
That's true.
Okay.
I don't understand Christmas trees.
Why don't they just plant the big tree in front of Rockefeller Center?
Just plant a huge tree there.
Then you don't have to do this every year.
It's always there.
You leave the lights on.
You know, people do that all the time.
They leave the lights on outside their house.
They just don't turn them on, but they don't have to do this every year.
It's a lot of work.
I'm still more interested in this.
Never watch Saturday Night Live thing.
I mean, this is really upsetting, Alex.
Were you just not allowed to stay up that late on Saturday nights?
No, I've just never watched it.
I've never really had any interest in it.
Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi.
All these people that you have missed because you never even turned on a damn TV set.
And don't tell me you don't know what network it's on.
Give me a break.
I have no idea what network it's on.
Well, I just pretty much told you tonight when I made reference to the building.
Oh, is it NBC?
Yes.
Wow.
The last horse crosses the finish line.
Boy.
Yeah.
SNL is on NBC.
Stay tuned for more fun facts here on Overtime.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm always out doing something on Saturday night or sleeping.
See, you're pivoting now.
Make it you're too cool to see SNL because you're always out on Saturday night doing something fun.
And maybe you even hang out at the after party and you didn't realize there was a TV show before it.
Yeah.
Or at home reading or something.
Reading.
I'm identifying myself.
Being intellectual and furthering yourself.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Doing productive things as opposed to watching, I don't know, television and commercials and things.
You know?
I'm just, I'm just, I'm just trying to think of all the sketches that he grabbed the new book, please.
He would not know the punchlines to so many sketches, you know?
Yeah.
I have no idea about any of this.
What do you got there?
What is that?
This is a new book that came out from Mary Ellen Matthews.
It's called The Art of the SNL Portrait.
You just have that within reach.
Actually, yes, because I just got it recently.
Alex, you need to understand what fighting words you have uttered.
Yeah.
Pay attention.
I am a bit of an amateur SNL historian.
One of my life dreams is to go to the live show.
I'm obsessive.
I talk about it all the time.
So I am just stunned.
What you have said here tonight, Alex, cuts deeply.
Yeah, I guess.
Well, look, I don't have any opinions on it because I don't really know very much about it.
It could be a great thing.
Also, side note, how did you miss all the 50th anniversary stuff?
Stuff going on last year, including the installation at the 47th, 50th Street Rockefeller Center subway stop where they just filled it with Saturday Night Live ephemera for the entire month of February.
I had no idea any of that was happening.
Well, you never bothered to ask, did you?
Yeah.
I'm never over there either.
That's like 20 blocks farther north than I usually ever go.
And we kept you from going there tonight, too.
That's the ultimate irony.
Yeah.
You might have wound up learning more about SNL tonight than any of us ever knew.
I feel like I'm getting schooled here.
We kept you from there.
Well, you will get schooled.
Sir.
Yeah.
So, look, I mean, if you have any recommendations for SNL things that I should watch.
Alex, it's 50 years worth.
That ship has sailed.
I mean, seriously, it's the show has been on for 50 years and, you know, we can't possibly help you catch up at this point.
Well, maybe you'll have a fun retirement.
You need an intervention that we can't provide.
But listeners, you're welcome to help out with this.
Let's get back to the show.
We'll deal with Alex later.
I'm sorry.
Our show or Saturday Night Live?
No, no, our show or our show here.
Good discussion.
We had the good discussion.
But go ahead.
Yes.
Final point.
Sorry.
Can I throw in one thing?
Alex.
Yeah.
If you need to see something that will just encapsulate everything you need to know.
A documentary that came out this past year as part of the whole 50th anniversary thing is called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of Music on Saturday Night Live.
Questlove put it together.
Questlove.
Questlove.
Okay.
Do you not know who that is?
I have no idea.
Oh, for God's sake.
All right.
We have some work to do, but we got to take this offline and get to the rest of what we're doing.
It's a work in progress.
It's a work in progress.
It's out of love that we will do the best we can.
That's a person?
Yes.
Have you heard of a band called The Roots?
Yes.
I've heard of The Roots.
Yeah.
Okay.
So Questlove is one of the guys in The Roots.
He's like the founder and band leader of The Roots.
Okay.
And he made a really wonderful documentary about music on Saturday Night Live, and it starts with a seven-minute supercut of a bunch of performances, and it's really, really, really good.
But if you, yeah, the documentaries, that may be your way in.
Last year, there was a plethora of films and documentaries about the 50th anniversary of SNL, including one fictitious film, which I recommend seeing as well.
It just tells you so much about the culture and about how so many people came up because of that show.
And it made a huge difference in New York and just in the entertainment world in general.
Rob?
And I want to give a shout-out to a stage play that's actually closing on the 7th of this month called Not Ready for Prime Time.
Gila surprised me with this play, tickets to it.
And it is a fictionalized account of the first couple of seasons of the show, and it's very, very good.
And they're selling a shirt that says Medium Talent.
Yes.
Which...
If you know, you know.
If you know, you know.
And it's in a small theater on the west side.
Interesting.
I mean, I had no idea about any of this 50th anniversary stuff or whatnot.
So, I mean, it just escapes me.
I guess this is a function of living in the age of algorithms these days because I've never watched it before, so I've never confronted with it in any of my feeds or anything like that.
So, we all live in our echo chambers.
I think that this is a great example just of how we're all really smart people, but we have different interests.
We're busy, and we can't know all of everything.
We all have something to offer and share with one another, and that's part of what this discussion's all about.
50 years, Kyle.
50 years of a show, and he has no clue.
I know, but there's probably a show or a phenomena.
How does that happen?
I'd like to use that skill.
I really would.
I'd like to be able to ignore something for 50 years, you know?
And you're right.
There are massive gaps with all of us that would surprise everyone else if it only came out.
I find this when I talk to smart people, when I'm around hackers, when I'm around other people that have areas of expertise.
You might make an assumption.
Like, we were talking about VPNs earlier.
Like, that's built into the Internet protocol.
Right.
The hidden services of the Onion Network, that was built after the Internet protocol.
Sure.
The same facts of history are why a VPN doesn't necessarily have to be something that you get from a different provider.
You can make a machine or a system yourself and host your own VPN and access it through the protocol and address that port and communicate with all your own equipment using your own virtual private network.
So it's this interesting thing.
We make assumptions when we talk about things, but some people know a little bit more about the history.
Some people know a little bit more about, like I said, or like we were talking about, different cultural phenomena.
It is exciting when we share and we learn things and we even, like, take joy in the fact that we can be honest and say, like, hey, I don't know about that.
Tell me more about that.
And you get turned on to different things.
And that's so much of what people that are passionate about different things are able to do.
That's what they bring to the conversation is these sort of exciting turns and interesting things of like, oh, wow, I didn't know that I could share that and that you would get something out of it.
So it's cool to hear in conversation.
It's so true.
I remember, you know, the early days there were people who were into computers and people who were into phones.
And very often the people who were into computers had no clue how to even make a phone call, you know, using different long distance companies and things like that.
There's just, you know, a finite amount of room in your brain.
And you can be an expert in one thing but not something else.
And like Kyle said, you know, when he talks to smart people, not realizing that he's a smart person himself, there are certain things that they might not know that you can teach them about.
You know, dare I say, brain surgeons don't know the first thing about how to fix a car, you know.
And car mechanics are dealing with things that are so damn intricate these days, they might as well be brain surgeons.
So, yeah, there's a vastness to this.
And I think it was pointed out, too, in the conversation is that this is the algorithmic age, but it's also just the information age large.
There's so much content.
There's so much to know about out there and so much being so many different things going on that you don't want to be sort of now.
You don't want to be overloaded, but narrowing it just doesn't seem as exciting as learning about all kinds of different things and getting an understanding of the world of information out there.
And it's all it's varied, varied wackiness, which extends to the other conversation we were having.
So it's really cool.
I'm ready with the equipment, too, if that was opening up.
The phone line is not yet turned off.
We have some exciting bits of news.
Oh, yeah.
First of all, we're not going to be here.
Kyle and I are going to be here for the for overtime or for the in-person show for a little while.
But you're in good hands.
Don't worry.
But this is the last overtime of the year because we have the studio and I don't think anybody else wants to do this.
But we'll be back as soon as we possibly can.
What else?
The Voice BBS.
It's been released as flash drives.
I know some people want it immediately delivered to them.
We're talking about thousands of files here, and we don't have the setup for that.
Not yet, but we're working on it.
But for now, those of you who want to hear the 2600 Voice BBS, you can.
It just comes on a flash drive, which is really cool.
It looks great.
I cannot believe how well it turned out.
And boy, is there some entertainment there that will keep you listening for hours and hours and hours.
We also have the Hope videos from the most previous conference, Hope 16.
That has just been released.
So, again, flash drives.
That will be on YouTube for people who want everything for free.
Yes, it's going to be on YouTube.
We just, it takes a lot of work to put it on YouTube.
So, probably we're looking at sometime January or after, you know, if we catch a break.
And we're able to spend hours uploading and refining and dealing with Google's problems and, you know, the usual crap.
But it is available now on a flash drive, fully copyable and all that.
And we also have our holiday specials up on 2600.
Oh, the new thing.
The new thing we've introduced.
You want to talk about this, Kyle?
This is amazing.
Do I ever.
Never in my life did I think we'd be offering something like this.
But boy, it's causing a stir.
I believe it started with an over-caffeinated conversation.
Maybe just caffeinated enough.
Kyle and I go to various coffee shops and we get involved in these back and forth discussions.
Usually end up with us both standing up and like talking in an animated tone.
I know the people staring at us with some concern.
But what comes out when we're ushered out of the place is usually a plan to do something better or with a different direction.
And this is one of the things that came from that.
Basically, I had been looking around at some of the facilities and noticed that I needed this new type of thing.
And then I started thinking about it and I was like, wow, what if I had one that was custom?
And then I realized, why aren't we doing this?
So I came up with it and then I mentioned it in this caffeinated conversation at a coffee shop.
What if we printed on some kind of like home decor item?
And anyway, I was like looking around and we were able to do this.
In a similar way, we started offering T-shirts with the cover design.
And I asked you, what do you think about us offering a shower curtain for the holiday special?
A shower curtain.
Yeah.
A hacker shower curtain.
What the hell are you talking about, Kyle?
What is that?
What are you talking about?
Well, the one I was looking at was like deteriorating.
It was falling apart.
It was really in need of an upgrade.
And you can do different designs.
And then I realized, well, maybe the same way we offer these other designs, maybe we could just offer it.
It turns out it's a new product, new item that we're trying out and that is being offered through this process.
It is a heat transfer sublimination process, if you want to know, similar to direct-to-garment printing methods that we've used for other merchandise.
So, yeah, we looked into it and then compiled the artwork to give it a test.
And it looks really, really good for how large of design.
And it's, again, something that is novel.
And I didn't know you could print something this large and have it be durable.
So, we're giving it a try.
And hopefully, if people are interested in it, they can check that out, too.
Gila.
Go ahead, Gila.
Hi.
So, the thing I was thinking is that we actually have in our home a fun, customized shower curtain that Rob got for me because he's lovely.
And, no, I think it's a great idea, Kyle.
I'm just sorry.
We only have one bathroom.
Yeah.
I don't know what the tie-in.
It's very random.
But I wanted to play around.
I thought maybe this could be a fun thing to do.
I would love to display the art that we have and even other designs.
And offer that in really, like, high resolution.
But it was also just basically out of necessity and, like, upkeep that this idea came up.
And it actually exists now.
So, I'm very proud of it.
But we'll see.
It's kind of unusual.
I know there was a scene.
I think, speaking of tie-ins, I think in Hackers, Joey gets pulled out when the cops raid them.
Yeah.
Well, the last cover of the magazine is an allusion to that.
Yes, it is a rendition, a rendering of that.
I believe that.
I haven't rewatched that scene or found animation of it.
But, and also just, I feel like, you know, we are all, you know, adults in this lovely hacking world.
And very, very much cleaner than I think the stereotype may have.
And if not, then maybe this will incentivize people who are in need of that.
But, you know, I just wanted to push back against that, too.
Because some people like being clean.
Well, I should point out some concern that I was notified of.
These shower curtains have a leak.
Yeah, they do.
They have a leak in them.
Do you know what that leak is?
It's the next cover of the next magazine that has not come out yet.
And there's a damn leak on our shower curtain because that cover is there.
Yeah.
I almost forgot.
Yeah, you're right.
That's there.
In fact, if you look at the preview, you can probably make out part of it.
But you won't get the whole thing unless you get the shower curtain or the issue next month.
So, yeah, we've never done that before.
And we didn't mean to do that.
No, it was a necessity of coming up with that.
And in advance, the timing of it, we wanted to be able to offer it.
And so we were able to get an early, I think, earlier version, but pretty close to the final rendering.
And everything just worked out just in time.
So we hope that makes people happy.
Cheeseburger.
Cheeseburger.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Where?
No, I'm just trying to see if Alex is lying to us.
You brought a snack?
You don't know what I'm talking about, do you, Alex?
No idea.
One of the greatest sketches of all time.
Cheeseburger.
And you don't know it.
Cheeseburger.
Cheeseburger.
Sounds brilliant.
There was so much work to do.
Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood with Eddie Murphy?
No?
I think I've seen bits of that.
Bits of that?
You walked away in the middle of it?
It sounds somewhat familiar.
Black Jeopardy?
Black Jeopardy, no.
Oh, my God.
Wayne's World?
Wayne's World.
Wayne's World?
I've seen the movie.
Where do you think the movie came from?
I'm sorry.
I promise I wasn't going to hear you.
No idea.
No idea.
Coneheads?
It's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
What was that?
Coneheads.
Coneheads.
Was that like the alien thing?
Are they aliens or something?
No, they came from France.
They come from France, yes.
Same thing.
Yeah.
Different type of alien.
More cowbell?
More cowbell?
Do you know that?
No.
Oh, Lord.
No.
I remember like the conehead stuff.
Maybe that was like a 90s thing, right?
Was that in the 90s, perhaps?
It transcends decades, Alex.
It really does.
It really does.
Apparently it does, yeah.
All right.
Well, I've got a lot of catching up to do.
There are people living in mud huts.
I'm just saying I don't know.
There are people living in mud huts in various parts of the world who know more about this,
much more than you do.
And you live.
You live blocks away from this, from the magic.
But look, I don't have any judgment about the show.
Like, unlike many things, I don't have many judgments or opinions about the show because
I haven't really seen it.
I'm sure it's great.
I just don't know.
Right.
No.
And, you know, that's our failing in a way.
All these times we haven't made enough illusions to it to get you to be interested.
And we could have.
You know, I shouldn't have spent a lot of Saturday nights sitting home by the fire reading Ulysses.
I've known you since the 1990s.
That's more than half of SNL's life that you could have experienced had I only made more
references.
If you, you know, you never turned me on to it.
So, you know, it's partly your fault.
Yeah, I take that responsibility.
I will, however, say this, you know, after Overtime ended last week and we were having
a conversation about various shows and things, Gila did give me a recommendation for a show
called I Think You Should Leave.
She was all this recommendation.
I have watched the entirety of that show within the last week now because I thought it was
so absolutely hilarious.
And I watched it with my 12-year-old son.
I mean, some bits of this were totally inappropriate to watch with a 12-year-old, but we have been
cracking up.
I mean, and that show, I find, I think is absolutely brilliant in the absurdity of everything that's
happening.
And there's profundity within the absurdity.
And so, look, I'm open-minded here.
I'm willing to try new things and learn new things and admit when I'm wrong about various
things, you know.
The main fellow on I Think You Should Leave was part of Saturday Night Live until he left
and did his own thing.
For a year, yeah.
There's no escape, Alex, because everything around you is SNL.
There you go.
Eventually, it'll all go back there.
Each of us were on SNL for at least one season.
And you didn't even know that.
I wouldn't have known if that were the case.
We were hoping you'd notice.
We were hoping you'd say something.
And you never did.
Yeah, I guess I'm the odd man out here, huh?
For God's sake, turn on the damn TV.
It's all we're saying.
Our friend Mitch Altman would back us up on that, too.
You want a funny show?
Portlandia.
Watch Portlandia.
That's funny.
That's a good one.
I've seen that.
And anyone who says that lefties can't make fun of themselves is wrong.
Watch that show, and you'll see.
It's something incredible.
And Big Mouth.
Oh, my God.
Speaking of sex education and pornography and all that stuff, Big Mouth is just a
genius animation with all kinds of great voice actors, and it's all about kids experiencing
sexuality for the first time, growing up what every kid should see, I think.
An adult.
An adult.
Absolutely agreed.
And also, if you have not seen Human Resources, which is the spinoff of Big Mouth.
A short-lived spinoff, yes.
Also very, very good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, shall we take phone calls?
I'm going to turn on the phone line.
Remember, last week, though, it didn't work, even though I turned it on.
For some reason, something at Google was broken, and I had to turn it off and turn it on again,
literally.
And that worked.
So, 802-321-4225, the phone line is not on.
The phone line is now on.
So, if you wound up in voicemail hell, that's why.
802-321-4225, and note that it might not work still, because they seem to be having some
problems down there.
So, we'll wait for the phone to ring, and hopefully somebody will say something while
I'm double-checking.
But while we're waiting for that to all happen, there's a lot of chatter in the YouTube chat,
a lot of SNL references being thrown around in the YouTube chat, each of which makes me
happy.
We did have a user ask if Alex grew up without TV, which we know is not true.
Yeah.
Well, I grew up with a TV.
Yeah, I did.
And I am okay, if somebody else was asking.
So, thanks for the concern.
I almost feel like, you know, this is something that SNL themselves should get involved in,
and maybe, you know, bring Alex to the show, and embarrass him on national TV, as somebody
who has never seen the program, and maybe we can get in, too.
That'd be nice.
Okay.
I'm all for it.
I'm all for it.
We have our first phone call.
It's a dial tone.
Thank you, Kyle.
Is somebody pranking us?
Is that what's going on?
We know it's Rebel.
For God's sake, it's always Rebel.
It was the first call that, you know...
If it's not Rebel, we should be concerned.
I had a hunch.
I don't know what tipped me off, but they are not on the phone line.
The phone line is open right now.
Anyone can call.
Anyone that can hear us, please, anyone can call.
Also, we might take that other call, but anyone can call.
If people want to use a telephone.
Someone is calling, Kyle.
And remember, we have an improved phone system now.
Thank you again, Kyle, for setting that up.
No hum.
And as of last week, people could hear me, too, which was amazing.
But they can hear everybody, which is a new feature that we didn't have before.
Yes, we've improved a little bit.
And I just want everything to work really well and be, you know, normal and pleasant so that we can have those conversations I was talking about that were so exciting.
Yes.
And good evening.
You're on overtime.
Go ahead.
Yes, Emmanuel.
Hello, Rebel.
How are you?
It's such a surprise.
I'm surprised to hear your voice.
Rebel, you've watched SNL, right?
I've seen it, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
That's all I wanted to know.
Go ahead.
What's on your mind?
Okay.
I noticed that I demonstrated this last time about the fact that sometimes, I remember, I've been listening to the old Off the Hooks lately, you know, from the 90s.
Well, you called those shows every night, too.
Right.
And I remember, I just like the way you, like, call different places and entities and operators and different things.
And I was just noticing that on digital switching, when you call certain things, like, mainly I told three numbers.
I'm not talking about operators and information and things like that, because they usually pick up right away without a ring.
Sometimes they ring when they're busy, but I'm talking about, like, 800 numbers that belong to different businesses and entities.
Sometimes it'll ring.
Sometimes it won't.
Now I have a demonstration of one that does ring and one that doesn't.
Okay.
And you're going to play that for us?
Yes.
We will play it right now.
All right.
All right.
You know what?
It's a holiday season.
I'm going to be patient.
Go ahead.
Okay.
I can't think this one rings.
Let's see.
This is, this one will ring.
This is going to, like, Greyhound bus, like this.
Welcome to Greyhound.
For English.
Notice how that rung?
How that rung?
It just rang half a ring.
It rung and then it picked up.
Now I'll call.
You just demonstrated a telephone call.
I mean, we've experienced that.
But, okay, go ahead.
It rung.
But now I'll call a written number that does not ring.
Let's try this.
Hi.
I'm Julie.
Wait a minute.
That was the answer.
Wait a minute.
I heard a ring.
That ring.
Yeah, that rung.
You messed up, Rebel, the whole thing.
This is the one that doesn't work.
Okay.
All right.
Now that rings.
That's the AM track and that's that.
This has not been, I'm not playing any edited video or.
No, that's obvious.
That's obvious.
You're messing this up live on the air.
I know.
No, I'm not messing it up.
I'm not doing this on purpose.
I'm not playing any recording.
I heard a ring.
I heard a ring.
You said there would be no ring.
I heard a ring.
I'm going to call AT&T now, customer service, and you'll hear what happens now.
Now I'm calling it now.
Oh, that one rang.
Rebel, you are off your game tonight.
I don't know what's going on.
Let's try something here.
Let's try every phone number until you get one that doesn't ring.
All right.
Just let's, let's, let's, let's, let's see.
Okay.
Let's try this one.
I'm on round two.
What is going on here?
I don't know, Rebel.
The phone network has turned against you.
Let's do, oh, go on.
Let's.
I'm told you only have two more chances.
That's all right.
And that, the clock runs out.
I have an idea.
All right.
My point is.
Hold on a second, Rebel.
Alex is speaking to you and we know that you can hear him now.
So Alex, go ahead.
Rebel.
Try 1-800-288-2880.
See if it rings.
That's AT&T.
Okay.
Yeah.
You told me.
I forgot about that.
All right.
Try that.
But he doesn't know what SNL is.
So don't take what he says.
Okay.
Hold on.
Let's try this one.
IntelliCall Operator Services.
Wow.
Wait.
Why is it a telecall?
Hang on.
How did, how did, how did, how did 288-288-0, which is ATT, ATT-0, how did that turn into
IntelliCall?
Exactly.
No, explain it to me.
I want to know.
Well, AT&T, obviously.
Remember when you call, remember, I remember 1-800-C-A-L-L-A-T-T, 800-225-5288.
Call ATT.
Listen to what happens when you call that.
Oh my God.
Is he calling that now?
He's calling that now.
That, that ran too.
See, that one ran.
See, that one ran.
The other one didn't.
Oh my God.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
So the point is that I guess it's not a digital switching thing.
Why does it sometimes ring first and then sometimes it doesn't?
Do you know where your central office is?
No, I don't know.
I mean, I know where my central office is.
Okay.
That's where I'm at.
That's literally what I asked.
Okay.
We suggest, you know where it is, go to the central office, knock on the door and ask them
why that happens and you will get an answer.
No.
How about going to the 2600 meeting this Friday and asking them?
That's a good idea.
That's a good idea.
And fair warning to the people going there.
Go ahead.
I think this is a worthy question.
It's, it's interesting.
I don't know if knocking on the door is going to get the fastest answer.
I think there's probably a good explanation.
I don't know.
I'm not saying I know exactly.
I theorize that each of those different entities provides their, their connection in a certain
way or provisions in a certain way.
And maybe that is when it, when it hands off that something's going on there when it's making
that connection that's in maybe a timing synchronization thing or something where that call setup interferes
with the ring or doesn't like you're, like you're noticing.
I would experiment more though.
Cause that may not be true at all.
It might not be a ring at all.
It might be part of the recording.
You know, people do that.
No, it's not part of the recording.
How do you know?
How do you know?
It sounds the same every time.
Maybe it's an SS7 thing.
I don't know.
There's no way we can know.
There really is no way to know this.
What I was getting at is that it may be that some, some are hosted in one way.
Some actually have a path through a line that they lease or some in some way that it is.
It could just be an idiosyncrasy or some nuance of the differences of how each of those entities
are set up.
And it's either onsite, like co-located in some way or nearby or, um, maybe has multiple.
Thanks for calling Choice Hotels.
Okay.
Now that one did not.
That had no ring.
No ring.
Yeah.
That had no ring.
Yeah.
You know, I'm, I'm not kidding.
The people in the switching centers are the ones who know the answer to it.
Go to phone.
I don't know.
Go to phone museums and ask them.
But there are people who know these things.
You know what?
That's a good idea.
I'll ask the telephone museum in Seattle.
That's a good idea.
Or the one in, uh, on Long Island.
There's one there too.
In Comac, I believe.
No, I have to go.
You know what?
That's...
Wait, it's easier for you to go to Seattle from Queens than it is to go to Long Island?
Actually, yeah.
I'll inquire about the one on Long Island.
What is it called?
I don't know.
The Long Island Phone Museum?
Something like that.
The Long Island Phone Museum.
All right.
So we'll inquire about that.
Now, I also noticed that when you call certain things, really, like where I would call different
things, like what you called in the 90s, like 1-800-54-9X or 1-800, you know, things that
used to be like 9X and different things that don't exist anymore, like cable and wireless
and working assets long distance.
This is what happens when you call all those numbers.
It's like any number that I, you know, hear that you mentioned back when I was listening
to the videos, to the shows, I call all these numbers, and this is what you hear.
This call may be recorded for quality assurance.
We have a special promotion today for select callers.
If you are over 50, please press 1 now.
Okay.
So that's, that's what that means.
Didn't you demonstrate this for us last week?
And you've been asking this question week after week.
So, you know, I don't know what we're gaining here.
We don't know any more than we do, what we did last week.
So, you know.
Maybe some other people in the chat know.
Well, maybe, maybe, yeah.
Or somebody can call in or somebody can write in.
OTH at 2600.com.
Alex seems to have an answer.
Go ahead, Alex.
I mean, I think the answer is obvious, unless I'm missing something.
Is that these numbers that used to be popular in the 90s, when these companies became defunct, they lost the asset.
That was the telephone number.
And they were scooped up by, presumably, some uniform type of scammer system that bought this 800 number.
And now, Rebel, I'm guessing you're saying they all ring into the same prerecorded message.
Is that correct?
Well, either that message or something similar, some other kind of thing.
Right.
Some kind of advertisement type thing.
So the numbers were released.
If you call a wrong number now, it says, like, the number you have reached is not in service.
But we can help you find another number in the area.
Hold on.
While we check.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
You know, things like that.
That's what they do now.
Like, when you call a business, that's like, it disconnects their number.
Yeah.
What was the, what was that, that sound effect?
Well, in fact, that said you'll play that thing.
Like, I don't have a number offhand, but it'll play something like this.
Like, if you call a number, maybe you forget, like, doo-doo-doo, the number you have reached,
two, seven, nine, three, four, zero, zero, is not in service or has been changed.
No, it's not in service.
If it's been disconnected, it'll say, the number you have reached is not in service or has been disconnected.
However, we can help you find another business in the area.
Hold on.
While we should look.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
And then it'll, you know, play something.
That's the sound of the technology working.
That's what that is.
Ah, that's the sound of the technology, the thinking.
Rebel, we have to open up the phone line to other people, but this has been very entertaining,
and we look forward to doing this again sometime next year.
And we look forward to seeing you at the 2600 meeting.
Yeah, we'll keep looking forward to that.
Oh, by the way, lease lines.
How did lease lines, how did that work?
Data lines.
Is the question that we will take up next time we talk to you.
Good night.
And that's it from Rebel this week.
And Rob, you have something.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I just want to throw in that the Long Island Telephone Museum can be found.
Their website can be found at longislandtelephonemuseum.com.
And it's got the info for it.
They're located in Comac, and it's got their contact info and hours and everything there.
And it looks like an interesting place.
I'll have to check this out sometime.
Yeah, I was pretty close to the name.
I really was.
So Long Island Telephone Museum.
And Alex, you know, when you said, unless I'm missing something, boy, I was so tempted
to say, like, every episode of SNL.
Oh, well, there you go.
You couldn't hold back.
I couldn't hold back.
Well, no, I did hold back until now.
Until now.
But I also, in that period of time, while I was restraining myself, I looked up how many
episodes of SNL there have been.
Anybody like to guess?
It doesn't matter if you like to or not.
I'm asking you to guess.
Go ahead, Gila.
It's over 1,000.
2,500.
You don't get to guess, Alex.
It was 50 years, 52 weeks in a year.
It's on weekly.
It's about 2,500.
Oh, God.
I'll say less than that, because they're only on for part of the year with new episodes.
So I'll say around 1,500.
Okay.
And Kyle?
Oh, my gosh.
You caught me off guard.
I was doing some...
Three people guessed in front of you.
I was doing some engineering stuff.
How many episodes?
Of SNL.
Total.
Yeah.
4,000.
I don't know.
You know, I asked Google, and what's weird is when you ask Google how many SNL episodes
have been made?
It says 991.
And then, if you read below that AI overview, as of late 2025, there have been 1,012 SNL
episodes.
So I don't understand what the 991 is.
It says that in big type, but then it tells you something completely different.
This number includes all episodes up to and including season 50, which concluded in May
2025.
But I think, Gila, you're right.
It's over 1,000.
Oh, so does that mean that according to Price is Right rules, I win Saturday Night Live?
I think you do.
It's mine now?
What I was hoping for was to know when the 1,000th episode would be.
Uh, but apparently that already happened.
Um, hang on.
Well, it was interesting because the second episode this season was on the 50th anniversary
of the first, which is pretty great.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
All right.
Well, let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Go ahead.
Hopefully the new 2600, uh, you just turned into a robot.
All we got was hopefully the new 2600.
Can you come back down to Earth so that we can understand you?
It's pretty cool.
I like the sound of this voice, but, uh, we're not able to understand any of that.
What do you think makes, makes that happen?
It almost sounds like music, doesn't it?
It does.
I could dance to it.
All right.
Well, you know, we'll, we'll give you some time to move to a better place where we can
hear you.
Uh, maybe it's a transmitter of some sort, or dare I say, maybe use a landline.
I'm calling the regular number.
There you go.
Okay.
You're back.
So, uh, finish your sentence that you started with.
Hopefully the new 2600 shower curtain will inspire you to watch some pornography on your
smart shower tap.
All right.
Absolutely.
I'm sure many, many different activities will take place behind those curtains and it is
a curtain that can be used for all kinds of purposes, but yeah, I hope people enjoy
it.
Have some good, clean fun.
Now, remember the, uh, the 2600 covers are visible from outside the shower, not from inside
the shower, except in reverse.
It depends.
I don't know.
We have to get feedback.
Things don't work that way.
Well, there could be like, depending on the lighting, we don't know.
Like this, this is yet to be seen.
Every shower is different.
If people have lighting in certain ways, you might be able to see the reverse of the image,
like sort of projected.
It's not printed on the other side.
You know what I love though, when we were like researching this, uh, the, the suppliers
of the shower curtains, they say it's waterproof or not water resistant.
Yeah.
It's like, it's a shower curtain.
The damn well better be.
What if I want my shower curtain to be absorbent?
Uh, well, direct us to an absorbent shower curtain and we'll look into that.
I don't know.
I don't really like things that are hydrophobic.
I think you're looking for a towel.
I guess.
Yeah.
You know what?
Layer it up, layer up.
You know, you can add other, other parts to your, your whole, uh, decor there.
It's really up to you.
This could just be a nice sort of outer layer.
So, uh, we're interested to see what people do with them.
I was wondering if people will like upcycle them, like basically cut them.
Shut up the shower curtain and turn it into something else.
That would be kind of cool.
Why don't you cut up your shower curtain?
Well, cause you could.
Cut up your shower curtain and turn it into a 2600 magazine.
Well, hold on.
You don't have to do that.
I mean, if, if, um, you get tired of it as a shower curtain and you decide you want
to make some pillows, I don't know, do whatever you want.
Cut up the shower curtain and sell it as a limited edition item.
Why would someone ever get tired of the shower curtain?
I don't know, but maybe they want to turn it into something else.
I don't know.
Maybe they want to make like two window curtains out of it.
Yeah.
The shower curtain has existed for literally two days now and already you're cutting it
up.
I'm just curious what people do with it.
It's such a cool, I, I think the, the, the finish is really nice.
So it, and yeah, it'll look cool no matter what you do with it.
Anyway, uh, we didn't give out the address store.2600.com to find all of this stuff.
And, uh, I can't believe we're talking about this.
It's pretty cool.
Oh, and also, um, uh, people were asking about the conference.
Um, yeah, you know, well, we're still kicked out of St. John's.
Uh, that's, that's not changing.
Uh, I, I, you know, yeah, I, I wouldn't be comfortable going back there anyway, uh, with,
with, uh, that kind of, um, uh, judgment of speech and, and, and things like that.
But good news is there are many other locations we are looking at, uh, in the New York area too.
So stay tuned, we, we will know more in the weeks ahead, uh, and, um, keep planning for
this summer.
Uh, we'll, we'll, we'll find out if we can keep the dates that we already planned for.
Uh, and if not, it'll be a different date, but, um, we'll be, we'll be figuring things
out.
So, uh, don't give up, don't give up.
There will be hope of one sort or another.
Anything else, caller?
About, about the robot voice that you heard me supposedly at the beginning of the call.
Yeah, that was really cool.
You want, if somebody wants to like simulate that effect, what I believe is happening is
that it's like the, what it is is that, you know, when you drop your packets or whatever,
the waveform of the audio, it gets stuck.
It holds that waveform, but then it decreases the volume.
So, same, uh, static waveform, uh, volume goes down, sort of like a string pluck, and
then you just like update the waveform to the, every interval, so it just keeps plucking
again and again, and I believe that is what that effect is and how you can replicate that
if you so wish.
Wow, okay, what a very helpful suggestion because, uh, I'm sure there are people, you
know, making films and documentaries that would love to be able to replicate that sound.
Without cutting open an ethernet cable and like, no, I don't know.
Anyways, it's great to see that the voice VBS files are finally up after literal years.
I remember listening to the, uh, off the hook episode that initially, uh, talked about these.
Yeah.
I mean, it's great, it's great to have this available and for sale for only 20 bucks at
the 2600 store, but have you considered giving these recordings to the Internet Archive or
some other place where they're, they're, they are safe?
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, anybody can do, absolutely.
Anybody can do this if they just buy it.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, that is true, too.
Anyone else can do that.
But that is certainly the intent for, uh, Jason and folks at Internet Archive to, uh,
be able to, uh, store these and keep them safe.
You're trying to monetize your history.
But, you know, well, yeah.
I mean, look, we spent literally years putting this together.
I don't know if it's monetizing or just surviving.
Uh, you know, it would have happened a lot faster if we were monetized more.
That's for damn sure.
Uh, but we're talking about thousands of files here and we had to go through every single
one of them and make sure there wasn't identifying information.
Even after like 30 years, you still don't want people to reveal their address or their
phone number or whatever, because what happened is this system encompassed all of the recordings.
Some of them were voicemail recordings.
Some of them were public BBS recordings.
Some of them were greetings.
And we had to differentiate what was meant to be public and what was not meant to be public
and therefore kept from ever becoming public.
So, uh, you know, we take that very seriously and, uh, took a lot of time, a lot of effort,
but, you know, we're done and, um, we have a great bit of history now.
You're a robot again.
There should be a way to like translate this, you know?
Uh, that's definitely percussion, you know, that's a percussion type of a sound right there.
All right.
Uh, listen, Kraftwerk, we're going to have to go.
Uh, we, uh, we'll, we'll speak to you next year, hopefully.
And, um, yes, have a, have a great holiday season.
No.
Oh, okay.
You're back.
Yes.
One more thing.
Go ahead.
Oh my, I still, I still have so much more.
I wanted to get back with you guys, you know, can you give more details about the machine
that was running this BBS, you know, what kind of, uh, processor it was?
Uh, well, we can, I don't know if you're emulating rebel or you just really want us to tell you
this.
Uh, but Kyle, it was, uh, windows three one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, this is actually a really good question and it's a part of the whole thing.
And I take issue with you, your point about, uh, our history and what we do with it
and how we curate things over time with everything else in American society.
And then we turn around, it's, it's like someone has something to say when we want to do something.
I find that astonishing time and time again, but that aside, uh, I, I, um, basically recovered
this machine from an old data closet and, um, the power supply had failed and we scrapped
another power supply actually from like an old Mac and got it to, uh, basically light
up where it had not been turning on.
Anyone else would have thrown that machine out, you know, taking it to the landfill.
No one else would have even bothered to turn it on and look on it.
I, and I was like going through machines and, and sort of trying to discern what, uh, had
historic value, what needed to stop taking up space and what needed to be improved, um, around
our facilities.
And that was something that took a really long time for me to do.
And, um, uh, all I knew is that you had told me that machine, uh, did this.
I saw the cards in it, uh, for the phone lines, uh, which are very large, large components,
nothing, you know, very old circuitry, um, taking up the entire length of the case.
There's two stacks of cards.
I think there are four total jacks, maybe five RJ, uh, uh, 11 or, um, analog phone connections.
So the, the basic setup fits in a small ATX case, uh, and the one drive that was in it
was a very small drive and it's, you know, old IDE.
I think the machine is, uh, an early, like two 86 or it could be even older, uh, or, um,
earlier generation Intel, uh, x86, uh, hardware.
And that drive, very small drive, I think like megabytes or something, um, uh, I was
told had windows 3.1.
So what we did is pulled that IDE drive a long time ago and tried to mount it on a modern
system so that we could copy everything that was on that drive or otherwise like clone it,
uh, onto, uh, a like thumb drive or SD or other directory on our, um, administrated,
like work group.
And, uh, that way we could then save it, back it up and then process it eventually, which
we only, um, figured out because we started sharing a little bit and trying to appeal for
a little bit of help.
And it took a long time.
We, we mentioned it, I think twice before someone wrote with instructions to help us.
And we had even contacted the manufacturer.
They didn't know how to convert their own audio files into something you could listen to
today.
Yeah, they were supposed to give me some kind of command line program that I could run and
it, uh, like a windows program that I could run in the command prompt, but it either didn't
work or some kind of converter file.
I, I, it basically, the, the re the software that they, they alleged would help us really
didn't go anywhere.
We just basically hit a wall with them.
I mean, we communicated once we're supposed to maybe get somewhere and it just sort of fizzled
at that point, the data just sat on our, uh, backups and in our directories for a really,
really long time until we started getting into the specifics about stuff that you probably
know about.
Somebody called the show and said, Hey, I know how to convert this particular format
into something you can listen to today.
Yes.
Into an MP3 and, uh, we did it.
It turned out to be, uh, uh, I think too fast at first and we were able to do it again and
slow it down.
So that looked normal.
It sounded normal.
And, uh, then, you know, that's when the real work began of going through all these messages
and seeing what's there and then trying to figure out how the hell do we present all
this?
Because, you know, it's all this audio.
How do you, you can't just list a bunch of audio files.
So I think, you know, what you'll find is that it's, it's pretty, uh, navigable.
And the, the interesting thing that I think ultimately I was imagining now that we got it
to this point, um, is that as you pointed out, like it runs a specific software, um, we're
pretty close to, um, both this whole system being able to be like emulated basically.
Um, you could potentially do a lot of things like run the same system software, uh, virtually
run the same, um, voicemail system and, uh, include the same prompts.
You could set up an original reconstruction of it, uh, because we're including some of
the prompts that Emmanuel recorded.
Um, but you could also set up a totally different voicemail system with the same prompts using,
um, a different sort of, uh, scheme.
Maybe it would be weird if they use my voice on a, on, on some system somewhere again, creative
creativity.
I mean, we could set up a new version of it, um, running on a modern voicemail system.
There's a lot of interesting things that become possible once it's out there and people can
play with it.
And you did a really good job trying to make it so that people could play the files and,
um, navigate it easily.
And I don't know, it's, it's, uh, really kind of fascinating this little time capsule.
You found the box that the big math software came in.
That's what it's called big mouth, which is funny because we just recommended a TV show
called big mouth, but that's what our voicemail system was called many years earlier.
Uh, and I came from a company called talking technologies and, um, we have a picture of
the box that all of it came in and it's on the store next to the, um, uh, the, the, the
software and the five inch floppies are still there.
They're still in great condition.
Um, so yeah, it's kind of interesting.
I'm, I'm assuming our license is still good.
So if we, I don't know about that, we wanted to run it again.
I'm sure we could, but it's just, it's kind of cool.
Cause most all the pieces of it, they got saved.
They're all there and it's such an interesting, uh, little snap snapshot of history.
This is why you save things.
This is why you reconstruct things.
This is why you don't throw things out.
That's our lesson for today.
Any final words, caller?
Um, so I'm not sure if this is correct that you, um, Kyle used a, an Apple supply power supply
to replace the dead one in the voice PBS machine.
Um, you said the, although when you said the case was ATX, because I assumed it was AT, uh,
knowing that it was a windows three one machine.
Are you sure it's ATX?
Like, dude, wait, no.
How much does this really matter?
I don't know.
I'm just trying to get too much in.
Okay.
Maybe I'll save this for next year.
I'll say you might be right.
It, it may have predated ATX, but it's an ATX style tower enclosure, I guess is what you
would say.
So AT may be correct for that, uh, size motherboard.
And as far as, uh, yeah, it's not an Apple power supply per se.
It's whomever was supplying the supplier to what was an iMac.
And it basically was around the same wattage and, uh, more specifically the same connector
type for the motherboard I was using.
So it kind of did get recycled from an old Mac, which is weird.
I know, but I'm pretty sure that's where it came from.
Wow.
Well, now that you're saying an iMac, that sounds like it's an ATX power supply, but we'll
talk about this next year.
I have one final topic to get to.
Okay.
Remember the, remember the Airbus A320 saga, you know, the thing that was going on recently
with their, uh, computer.
Yeah.
They had to like, uh, put them all into the garage for a little while.
And I think, I think they're almost done.
It's not completely finished.
Yeah.
So this is still on topic of the, uh, retro computing stuff because the flight computers in
these planes, both use microprocessors released in 1982, the Motorola 68010 and the Intel 186,
8101, 8186.
There we go.
So that, that, that, that Intel processor, that might be pretty similar in line to what
was running the voice BBS.
Now think about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're, you might be right.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, uh, well, good things last for a long time.
Well, not apparently since they were affected by solar radiation.
So here's the research.
Our voice BBS might be affected by solar radiation.
We never tested it.
Well, your voice BBS also doesn't travel thousands of miles up into the atmosphere.
It does.
If you call it via satellite.
Oh, so anyways, um, these planes, the Airbus A320s have two types of computer systems.
They have two E-LAC units, elevator and aileron computer.
So now the elevator in a plane is a small flap on the back that controls, um, the, how far
up or down it goes, I believe.
Okay.
And then it has three other computers that are called the SEC, spoiler and elevator.
So wait, we have two systems to control two different sets of, um, elevators, but in total,
that's five computer systems on an Airbus A320.
And the one at fault, um, recently has been the E-LAC.
That one uses the Motorola 68010 microprocessor from 1982.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, good to know.
What I want to know, though, is exactly, is exactly like what was at fault here?
Because we all know that, you know, a basic computer system, it has ROM, it has RAM.
Like, what part of the system was actually affected by the solar radiation?
Nobody seems to be talking about this.
Was it the ROM?
Was it the RAM?
Because if it was a RAM fault, well, you simply reset the RAM while you're good to go.
If it was in ROM, though, because ROM is normally meant to be a read-only memory, well, once you've
changed that, that error is going to be continually read out over and over.
And what they did, actually, was, they say that they upgraded the software on the Airbus
E-LAC to fix this issue, but what they actually did is downgrade it.
Like, the version with the problem was version 104, and now what they're doing, putting them
in the garage and fixing it, is downgrading them to 103+, so, like, one version down.
And somehow that fixes it.
Wow.
Okay, well, you know, that sounds familiar, that kind of a fix.
But it's crazy to think it's a fix.
And I have no idea why.
Well, let's hope they do.
I'd like to, I'd just like to know more about these systems.
I mean, if you're trying to protect these kinds of silicon circuits from being affected by
radiation, you know, maybe the fix is not a software one, but rather, you know, you need
to put some more metal shields on it.
That's what I was thinking.
All right, well, we're going to leave it there.
But thanks for raising all these questions.
And Kyle, do you have something to add?
No, the caller pointed out that, yeah, some variants of these processors and memory modules
do have radiation hardening.
If that was included in the original design, yeah, it's something that we will probably find
out more about in the future.
We'll definitely look at this again.
We had some very long phone calls, so we have time for one more, maybe.
Let's make it a short one.
802-321-4225 is our phone number.
Go ahead, Alex.
I didn't realize how long RAM has been around, actually.
I was just doing a little bit of digging on that, thinking like, was RAM really used,
you know, in processors back in, you know, the 1980s, right?
Because especially since you go back to the 90s, and I remember when it was a dollar a
meg for RAM, right?
I mean, it was, like, massively expensive back in, like, 1994.
No, it was like $40 a meg, sorry.
It used to be about a dollar per meg hard drive space back then.
But RAM actually goes back to the 1940s, apparently, was the first time of RAM being used inside
modern microprocessors.
Did they call it RAM then?
They called it RAM then, yeah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, it was, and it was, it was interesting.
It was apparently a Williams-Kilburn tube that stored bits of charged spots on a cathode
ray tube screen, which could be read and written in any order, making it true random access memory.
Alex, I'm going to ask you to find me something written from the 1940s that references RAM,
and you have until after New Year's to get me that, because I'm not, I don't,
I don't believe you, it's just, I'd like to see that, because that sounds really cool.
Yeah, that'd be interesting.
Gila, what do you have?
Oh, I was just going to ask if anyone ever put RAM in an old telephone that went together,
like Ram-o-Lam-a, ding-dong.
Someone's on the phone, right?
Yeah, there's a phone call.
Let's, let's rush over to the phone.
Good evening, you're on overtime.
Go ahead.
Yeah, this will be a short call.
You got to speak up.
We can barely hear you.
Oh, there you are.
That's better.
Go ahead.
I was just going to ask, you said you're not going to be on the, on the rate, on, on YouTube
for a few weeks.
Why is that?
Well, if you must know, we are not going to be around, and the studio only exists when
Kyle and I are around.
So the studio is necessary for overtime, however, the radio show can be, can be run by other
people, and that's what's going to happen.
Oh, okay.
And my other question is, are there any off-the-hook meetings in New Jersey?
Do you know?
There are no off-the-hook meetings at 2600 meetings, that's what you're asking, I assume.
Yes, there are, there are meetings in New Jersey.
Hang on a second.
I've got an issue right here.
And of course, you can go to 2600.com slash meetings to get an updated list.
But let's see, in New Jersey, we have a meeting in a place called Bridgewater.
Do you know where that is?
Okay.
I don't know where that is.
You do, yes.
Okay.
Well, that's where the meeting is.
It's at the Bridgewater Commons Mall.
And that's, is that it?
Do you know what, do they, do you know what days the meetings are?
It's the first Friday of the month, about 5 p.m. is usually when they start.
The first Friday, okay.
Yep.
Okay, very good.
That answers my question.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you.
That was an easy phone call.
That was such an easy phone call.
I'm almost tempted to say, okay, we can fit one more because that was such an easy phone call.
Under the condition that the next phone call be easy as well.
All right.
802-321-4225.
All right.
Yeah.
Come in and be the last phone call of the year on this program.
Imagine that.
That's an honor you'll carry for the rest of your life.
But yes, anywhere you'd like to see a 2600 meeting, go to 2600.com slash meetings.
You can see the ones that exist.
You can also see how to put together one of your own in a place that needs one.
You know what you can see on Saturday?
A new episode of SNL, Alex.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Live.
NBC.
This show is still active?
Mm-hmm.
You're just messing with us now.
Yeah, now I'm just messing.
The funny thing is, and maybe somebody can tell me this, the show starts on NBC, not at
1130, not at 1135, but at 1129.
And 30 seconds.
Yeah, and 30 seconds.
Why does it do that?
And it ends a little bit after one o'clock, like 102 or something.
102.
Why?
Can somebody tell me why?
I'm very curious.
Because they can.
I don't actually know.
Probably because they can, partially to make sure that everything gets fit in and what
have you.
It's padding, right?
It's like so that you have something playing that's a part of that entire program.
And as networks cut to pick up and then release it after the end of the hour or whatever, they
vary widely.
It's in so many markets.
So you build a little post and pre-roll of stuff, an extra minute or whatever, in case
one station or somebody is a little slower or they have less at the top of that hour.
It fills time.
Well, it's also, I think it's because it's a live show, there are some unpredictable things
that could happen.
Yeah.
That's what a buffer is good for.
That too.
So you'd have to talk to a production director or somebody.
What's amazing is the same guy's been running it for the whole 50 years, too.
Not the whole 50 years.
Oh, that's right.
He took a couple of years off, didn't he?
He took five years off.
Yes.
There was also something interesting that happened in October of this year.
The show started late after a football game and the musical guest, well, hosting a musical
guest that night, definitely said a word that could have incurred FCC fines, but because
it was after 1 a.m.
Eastern, because the show had run late.
And also on the West Coast, they air it three hours later when it's not live.
But some stations, including King in Seattle, air the live version two, three hours earlier.
So when that particular incident happened, a lot of people were afraid that they were going
to get fined.
But it turned out it happened after 10 o'clock their time, which is at Safe Harbor.
So they were OK.
Yeah.
If you're going to curse on SNL, do it after the first half hour.
It runs live.
Yeah.
Coast to coast now.
Yeah.
I know.
So, yeah.
All right.
We have one more phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the cover time.
Go ahead.
Are you joking?
What?
There's no calls.
You told me there was a call.
No, I didn't.
Well, you looked at the phone in a knowing way.
I thought that's OK.
I will have you know, I look at the phone whichever damn way I want.
Really, it's between me and the phone.
You have two minutes, caller.
802-321-4225.
Don't make us wait.
Maybe the phone is looking at me.
We have nothing to say to each other.
What?
Yeah.
What else is going on?
What do you got, Rob?
Well, I'm just really excited to learn who's going to be the final call of the year.
But if nobody's going to be the final call of the year, then, you know, we can we can all just relax.
And, you know, I will mention 2600 meetings.
The New York one is happening at the Citigroup Center and the food court, 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue this Friday, starting around 5, gets going maybe around 6 or 7.
That's a damn cool food court, by the way.
It really is.
They really spruced it up.
Yeah.
Are we doing predictions later in the month?
Oh, you know, I forgot about that.
But, yeah, we should.
Thanks for reminding me.
I mean, we're on New Year's Eve.
Yeah.
What's this?
This caller's called before.
Which caller is it?
It's that caller.
I don't know what that means.
Are you talking about Rebel?
Rebel.
Yeah, he's back.
Okay.
Rebel, if you're calling us again, you're going to get banned.
All right?
You're going to get banned for the next show, which means further in the new year.
So, you know the rules.
Don't make us do this.
In the future, I won't say this.
We'll just ban you if you call us again.
Of course, anyone who knows Rebel's phone number can get him banned as well.
All right.
Do we have another phone call, or is it the same one?
I can't tell.
It's a different number.
All right.
Well, I said what I said.
Let's pick it up.
Go ahead.
And good evening.
You're on Off The Govertime.
Go ahead.
All right, Rebel, you're banned.
Rebel, you just got yourself banned for the first show of next year.
So, congratulations, and good night.
It's going to come in a week late to the new year.
All right.
We'll give it one and a half more minutes, and then we're going to sign up for the night.
Yeah, we're really trying to take calls.
Alex, go ahead.
How do we know that wasn't just somebody else calling, playing a recording?
Are you his lawyer?
Are you his lawyer now?
I'm just raising some reasonable doubts here.
It's not reasonable at all.
Yeah.
I mean, Kyle could combat that by saying, no, it was the same number that you ordinarily
see.
But then somebody could be spoofing his number and spoofing his voice.
This could all be altered reality.
We don't know.
We just don't know.
I could argue it either way.
I will take notes, contemporaneous notes, if we need to revisit this.
Someone please remind me next year that Rebel is banned, too.
Oh, I'm on it.
Don't worry.
You could be the real-life moderator as well as the YouTube moderator.
That would be very helpful.
I want to go back to this issue of RAM appearing in a 1940s publication because I think I found
something.
It's called The Storage System for Use with Binary Digital Computing Machines by F.C.
Williams and Mr. T.
Kilburn, which was from March 4th, 1948, and located in the Proceedings of the Institution
of Electrical Engineers.
His initials were F.C.?
F.C.
Was it Federal Communications?
Was that his first middle name?
It might have been.
Yeah, that's right.
F.C.
Williams and T.
Kilburn.
I don't know what any of those letters stand for, though.
Well, the F.C.C.
was named after this guy.
We can say that.
And by the way, I texted it to you, Rob, because for whatever reason, I was in the chat, but
I couldn't post in the chat.
But you could post that article in the chat if people are interested.
There's a link to a PDF that I sent you.
Well, no one can post links to the chat except the chat's moderator, which is our Gila here.
You can't post links in the chat?
I didn't know that.
No.
It's a cut down on spam.
Ah, okay.
Fair enough.
If you like, you can make a special exception or random dispensation to somebody to do this.
Also, I would like to point out that a bunch of people in the chat are calling for Rebel
to have let his phone call through.
So I would like to posit that if you would like to speak to Rebel, feel free to put your
phone number in the chat and Rebel can call you instead of us.
Okay.
Are you sure that's not Rebel posting that?
Unless he has several different accounts going right now, which I wouldn't have put past
him, quite frankly.
But consider who we're dealing with.
You make a very good point.
Yeah.
But yes, if anybody would like to talk to Rebel right now, just feel free to drop your
number in the chat and Rebel can call you.
Well, while we're waiting for anything else to happen, I will mention that we won't be
doing overtime for the next few weeks, but we will still be doing the radio hour on WBAI.
So tune in at 99.5 FM or WBAI.org at 7 p.m. Eastern time, Wednesday evenings.
And you can hear a version of the show without listener interaction via phone calls, but with
what we hope will be some good stuff nonetheless.
Jane, you ignorant slut.
You see, you guys are doubled over on the floor and Alex is just stoic as always.
And Alex, your life could be so much more enjoyable if you knew what that meant.
I thought your neighbor came over or something.
I didn't know.
Joan, not Jane.
So no.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I always get it mixed up.
Well, isn't that special?
No, you're not really that fond of her.
No, nothing on that either.
Isn't that special?
Guys, you must have some taglines you can use here.
Was that church lady?
Yeah, church lady.
You know church lady?
Debbie Downer.
Do you know Debbie Downer?
Man, I've heard the expression.
Guy just bought a boat?
No?
No.
Oh.
You are a cultural desert here.
Do you realize that?
It's so sad.
Guy just bought a boat.
That sounds funny, though.
Oh, that's definitely your type.
You know what?
It is funny.
There is humor here.
You are right about that.
Okay.
What up with that?
Are you familiar with what up with that?
What up with that?
Could it be Satan?
Yeah.
Okay.
However, I will point out, just to kind of sympathize with Alex for a minute, I'm going
to admit something, which is, I have never seen any of the Star Wars movies, any of them.
Honestly, honestly, that to me is, that's not easy to do.
And I respect that because that's a conscious decision.
That's not just, you know, being oblivious.
That's saying, you know what?
This is playing.
I'm not going to see it.
And then saying that again in three years.
And then another three years.
And then another 30 years after that.
However, many times, you know, we had to do this.
And it got kind of ridiculous, too.
But SNL, they're over a thousand episodes.
I'm sorry.
It's just not the same thing.
There's too many.
There's so many.
That's why I said there were 4,000.
Because it's just, there's so many sketches that they've done that are so familiar.
I think Alex knows more of it than he realized.
He's probably watched several episodes just in sketches and clips and, you know, references.
Wild and crazy, guys.
Is that said in like a Russian accent or something like that?
Yeah, you could say that.
You could say that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've heard of that.
I've heard people say that before.
I never knew from what it came of.
Dick in a box, Alex?
Are you familiar with Dick in a Box?
I have seen that.
I've seen that, the Dick in a Box.
Of course.
That's the one, you know.
Yeah.
But I didn't know that it was SNL.
I had no idea.
I just knew it as a skit.
I'm good enough.
I'm smart enough.
And doggone it, people like me.
No?
Whatever you've got to tell yourself.
No, that's...
Get through the day, you know?
The thing is, like, not having seen Star Wars, I mean, the Star Wars movies, the original
three are, what, like, eight hours of material, seven, eight hours.
You know, if you count the prequels and the sequels, that's, you know, maybe two, three
dozen hours of material versus Saturday Night Live, which has thousands of hours in the
public, you know, in the public pop culture sphere.
And, Alex, you could just jump on with the next episode.
I don't think you have to catch up with all the 50 years' worth up till now to understand
what's going on.
And it's going to be good.
Melissa McCarthy's hosting this week.
All right.
Oh, spicy.
Don't look out who that is.
Don't look out who that is.
Don't look out who that is.
You don't know who Melissa McCarthy is?
Oh, my God.
Here we go again.
I'm feeling, John.
I'm terrible with all this stuff.
Oh, wow.
I'm not as up with pop culture as you guys.
I'm not as hip, I guess.
Well, we are going to send you a bunch of links and assign you a bunch of homework after
we're off the air tonight.
Okay.
Yeah, because I loved I think you should leave.
And so, by the way, last week we were watching that in Pennsylvania, and my son and I were
watching it.
My wife is always suspicious of anything that we're watching together that she doesn't
know.
So she comes over and she asks, what are you watching?
And then the doctor says to her, I think you should leave.
And she just looked at me like, did he actually just say that to me?
How, you know, and I was just like a little bit confused by the whole situation.
That's why they named it that, I'll bet.
Yes, maybe for that exact situation, because I forgot the name of the show that we were watching.
And it caused me a lot of confusion.
Like, did he actually just say that?
And then I realized, oh, my God, no, it was the name of the show.
And then I had to go explain that to my wife, that he wasn't being extremely rude.
But I just forgot at that moment that it was the name of the show.
And yeah, she didn't believe it.
And he was severely punished.
And he's just realizing it now.
Well, you know, that's why I always wanted to make a movie called Closed or for rents,
because those things on the marquee outside would confuse the hell out of people and piss
off the theater.
That would be funny, actually.
Excellent.
Now, it's like the old serial ad, you know, what are you having?
Nothing, honey.
Or, you know, the Nirvana album that really broke through to the mainstream.
Oh, yes.
What album was that?
Never mind.
They all broke through to the mainstream.
I'll find out later.
Well, it's Never Mind.
Yeah, it wasn't that one.
It was the one after that.
No, it was Never Mind.
No, no, now you're thinking of something else.
I forgot.
That's not a Nirvana album.
Well, this has been a fun show to end the year.
It certainly has, yeah.
We can't find the off button.
That's the problem.
I've been searching for it.
Oh, there it is.
Okay.
I got it.
I got it.
All right.
Yeah.
So, thanks, everybody.
We will see you again on Overtime in, I don't know, at some point.
Not this year.
Yes, we've worked very hard.
We've had some discussions.
And this is where we part.
Yes.
Next week, there'll be regular Off the Hook at 7 p.m. on WBAI and also on the internet.
So, write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
And we'll see you next time.
Good night.