The number you dialed is not a working number.
Please check the number and dial again.
Message 3. BAL6.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bum Diddly Bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum Diddly Bum!
Bum Diddly Bum
Bum Diddly Bum
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
Hi, I'm Kyle.
And out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Hi, I'm not Kyle.
We have Gila.
Hi, I'm also not Kyle.
And we have Alex.
I'm not joining in on that.
I'm Alex.
Hello, everybody.
And somehow you're still clever.
Okay, great.
We're all here.
Can I just say, I just want to stop everything just for one moment, just to proclaim one thing.
Pam Bondi is a horrible human being.
I'm sorry.
I just have to say that.
I have to say that over New York City airwaves because it just needs to be said over and over and over again.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go fire up the C-SPAN archives.
Go to YouTube.
It's all on there, today's hearings.
The hostility, the contempt that she holds towards lawmakers and democracy and freedom and the people and all that.
It's just, it's just, it's unreal.
You know, historians of the future.
Hey, how you doing?
Boy, what a time we're living through right now.
Please continue to document it.
All right, we have a lot to talk about because a lot has been going on.
Okay, so you know what the number one news story has been, right?
The number one news story.
Anybody want to take a stab at it?
No?
Number one?
Let me guess.
Is it the social media trials with respect to children and harm to children?
Is that what?
Bingo.
Bingo.
That is what the top rated news story should be, but it's not.
So, who wants to guess?
Rob?
Was it about the FBI not being able to unlock a journalist's iPhone?
Oh, that's a damn good story, isn't it?
That's a really good story.
Very relevant.
Very much of interest to people like us and, you know, in the media, journalism.
Yes, that is a great story, but no, it's wrong.
It's totally wrong.
Gila, it looks like you might have an answer.
Yeah, and I kind of hate myself for, A, knowing this, and B, what I'm about to suggest.
You have it.
Okay, go ahead.
Is it Savannah Guthrie's mom?
Yes, you got it 100%.
That is what everybody is talking about.
Look, I am not in favor of missing grandmothers, of kidnapping, of whatever is going on over there.
But, for God's sake, people, the only reason that the media is focusing on this is because it's a celebrity's mom.
That's the only reason.
And I sure hope that they find her and that they bring whoever did this to justice.
But I'm also thinking about the many other people who are missing, many other people who are victims of crimes who get completely ignored.
I can list people who are, you know, within 10 miles of where I'm sitting right now, and I'm sure all of you could as well, who have not gotten anything near the attention, who have suffered all kinds of horrors.
That said, there is a technological aspect to this story that is of interest to us.
And that's why, in addition to focusing on the unfairness of how we choose what stories to cover, that's why we're focusing on it just for a moment anyway.
And it's about how Google had played a key role in recovering the video from the cameras at Nancy Guthrie's house.
Now, those of you who weren't paying attention, what happened last night was that the pictures and some video from a camera that was not recording pictures or video was somehow obtained by Google.
A major breakthrough, they're calling it.
And it came down to Google's technical expertise in one of these ass-kissing articles about Google that CNN has printed.
The mother of today's host, Savannah Guthrie, disappeared over a week ago in Arizona.
But on Tuesday, authorities revealed footage of a masked and armed person outside her door on the day she went missing after initially saying the video was not able to be recovered.
And the reason there's no video is because, well, they didn't subscribe to the Google Nest service where you pay for that.
So, yeah, there should be any video there.
Now, engineers at Google, which owns Nest, as we have discussed many times on this particular program, were able to recover data after several days.
Can someone first clear up some confusion for me?
Because I thought that the doorbell camera was Ring, not Nest.
So, does anybody know what the difference is?
Yes.
Google owns Nest.
Amazon owns Ring.
Okay.
So, does Nest have doorbell cameras as well?
Yeah.
Really?
So, you could have either Nest or Ring?
I think Nest has a lot of, like, interior cameras.
Ring, you know, has doorbells with the function in it.
And I think Nest just has cameras.
I think you still have to have a separate doorbell and a camera.
Right.
With a Nest.
All right, fine.
Whatever works.
The task was so technically complex that investigators didn't know if it would be successful.
An FBI official said on Twitter that the Bureau released the images within hours of obtaining them and made a false arrest very quickly after that, apparently, as well.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos initially said there was no video available because Guthrie had no subscription to Google's video recording service.
Yeah, bear that in mind, people.
You might be kidnapped one day.
And if you haven't paid for Google's subscription, you might regret it.
In this particular case, they were able to get past that.
Because apparently, Nest still saves around three hours of event-based video history for free before being deleted.
Aha, you may say.
Well, a lot more than three hours had passed in that period of time.
So how on earth were they able to get that video recovered?
Well, hang on a second.
Let me finish the story.
That data lives in Google's cloud and servers.
Even if the data had been deleted from Google's systems, it could still exist somewhere and be recoverable because even files slated for deletion can exist until they are overwritten by new data.
That's something we all know.
It's the garbage file.
Yeah, it's a garbage file.
Exactly, yeah.
Except it was really in a lot of garbage because they had to track it down and it's somewhere in the cloud.
So, yeah, a delete function is just telling the file system to ignore that data and feel free to use that space on the hard drive for new data until it's actually used again.
That old data is still recoverable.
That's an explanation from the 1980s, which still applies today.
FBI Director Cash Patel.
I know, I know.
But we're going to quote him anyway, okay?
Let's just do this.
FBI Director Cash Patel wrote on social media yesterday that authorities, working closely with our private sector partners, recovered some video from residual data located in back-end systems.
Actually, only two words of that sentence were his words, so it wasn't so bad.
Investigators had sent a search warrant to Google for the Nest cameras at the Guthrie residence last week.
Such a move is common in a criminal investigation.
So, basically, they say they had to go through layers and layers of components to make the application work and to figure out just where this video might be hiding.
And the footage and its underlying data could go through hundreds of thousands of servers, hundreds of thousands of servers and systems all over the world, increasing the chance of residual data being left behind.
All those layers have code, and as data moves around to be processed and made available to the customer, it will move through different layers of sub-applications, sub-servers, sub-storage components.
How do you feel about all your images that you do want to save being passed through all of these servers all around the world, hundreds of thousands?
And each of these components present an opportunity for data recovery.
Now, we don't always want to recover the data.
Lots of times, there's private information that's being recorded, but yet it's still up there in the cloud.
In this particular case, yeah, good thing they were able to do this, but not in every case is it a benefit.
So, any thoughts on if this is a good or a bad thing?
Alex?
Yeah, well, I love that you just call on me.
I wasn't raising my hand or anything.
I thought your hand was up.
Sure, it looked like it.
That's fine.
Just put me on the spot.
That's fine.
I'm happy to talk about this in great detail.
I think that there are a lot of implications here, too, because this notion of residual back-end storage that's recovered from essentially unallocated space but is extraordinarily difficult.
And I think Google is being deliberately descriptive about the difficulty in obtaining this data because what they don't want is law enforcement continually pounding on their door to ask for this particular data over and over and over again.
Because it could be used in wide-ranging investigations or it could be subpoenaed by divorce attorneys, for God's sakes, or in civil suits.
And Google does not necessarily want to be on the hook for providing this information for any particular case.
I mean, they pulled out all the stops here because it's the, as you correctly know, Emmanuel, the mother of a celebrity.
So what Google will probably try to do later on is to just claim that, well, it's an undue burden for us to do this.
We did it in this one particular case because there was a threat to life and it was an abduction case and we were able to do it, but it's not something we're going to pull out all the stops for.
Or if you're just some random person who does not happen to be the mother of a famous person, then, you know, you're kind of, you know, you're out of luck.
You're up that creek that we can't talk about on the air here.
So there's that aspect of it, too.
But then you have this notion of user control over that particular type of data.
And there really is none, you know, and all of the dashboards and all of the settings that you can control, you may be able to have some kind of control over how long the data is retained, what is recorded, where it's sent.
Maybe, if you're lucky, you have access to those types of control.
But you certainly don't have any control over how Google is treating the back-end residual data.
So long as they disclose within their privacy policies and their user contracts that there is a potential that their camera can be recording even when you don't know it's recording and then that data is sent back to their servers, well, you've agreed to that processing of that data.
I think that's problematic here.
I think that's problematic, and I think that we should be really wary of the extent to which Google and other services are retaining this particular type of data over time, because obviously it can be recovered.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, somebody could conceivably, if they were concerned about their own data privacy, but they had one of these cameras lying around, they're like, well, maybe I'll get some use out of it.
I just won't subscribe to the service, so my data is safe.
And it would be very easy and reasonable to think that.
And the story proves that Google decides to still keep a little of your data as a treat, and there you are.
It's the sheer volume of things that depend on the cloud and that run things through the cloud, whether or not you want them, and the cloud being just other people's computers you don't control, it's a really insidious part of our current technological and media environment.
And it behooves all of us to be aware of that and to make each other aware of that.
I mean, if they'd had some local security system, which was not a Google thing or an Amazon thing, but just your standard cameras that would record to something in the building or maybe something off-site that you controlled, they would have all the footage they want.
But they would also have complete and total granular control over where that footage goes and how long it stays around.
Would it not be possible, as someone who knows virtually nothing about how this all pieces together, but would it not be possible to encrypt the data before it goes on its journey into the cloud?
And then as a default, you know what, just record it, record it for a day.
That way, if something happens and you're not a subscriber, you can say, okay, I'll subscribe now.
Let me see what just happened because I wasn't expecting that.
But you maintain control of it because only you have the password to decrypt the data that was sent up into the cloud.
Does that sound reasonable or crazy?
Alex, your hand is definitely up this time.
Yeah, I think it sounds reasonable.
I think it could be.
It would require more processing power because these are video files, so they're larger files.
So encrypting them is going to take some non-trivial amount of processing power.
But I think even more to the point, you could do that.
That would be one kind of privacy-enhancing technology.
And another thing that you could do is potentially for all of these files that are stored,
if they ever need to be recovered again in a way that makes it easier,
you could hash them, you know, have some kind of hash and track which hashes belong to which cameras
and then just recover the file through identification of that particular hash.
You know, or maybe those hashes would be stored for a small period of time,
like two weeks or three weeks or something like that.
I don't want to give them too many ideas, but because I do think it is, to a certain extent,
privacy eroding to have these types of things continually occur,
that the devices that we put in our house to answer our doors and whatnot
just continually record and monitor us and send that data to a third party
for some kind of back-end processing about which we have no control and have no idea.
Well, we have control in that we don't have to put a camera there.
But I do think it can be helpful in certain situations,
and you never know when that situation will strike.
So it's a tough one.
It really is.
It's weird to me that, as I understand it, they weren't subscribing.
I think that's the crux of this.
Yet it was storing something off-site.
To my mind, that seems like, okay, it's dishonesty in what the product's doing
because I might choose something that I don't want to have
storing something at a third party or multiple third party places
I don't really have control over,
but I still want it to function in a way that records,
which I think is still a good solution
because running your private residence, however you design it,
you could come up with your own strategy to have copies go places
or be viewable,
but you're not necessarily losing control over it.
So in the event that there's something of this level of severity,
that stuff can be potentially found and covered, but within limitations.
But I don't know.
It's this revealing the trust level that we really don't have
or shouldn't have, like a false sense of trust.
Well, I mean, let's say somebody commits a crime and it's their house,
but they commit a crime in front of their own camera,
but they're not subscribed.
Can that evidence be grabbed by Google
at the behest of some law enforcement agency
and used against them?
Alex, I think that's a good question for you.
Yeah, why wouldn't it be?
I mean, they're using it in this particular situation.
There's literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
I'm saying legally they have the right to do that.
Sure, absolutely.
It's a record in the possession of a third party
that you voluntarily created.
Google can hand that over.
Except you didn't want Google to save it.
You explicitly said,
I don't want to subscribe to the service being saved.
You're saying they can save it anyway and use it against you.
Well, that depends.
If when you sign up for the service,
you are giving authorization to Google
that they can record even when you aren't subscribed,
and that's okay.
Like, if you've given your consent
to having that device on your property
and recording it in a way,
even if you're not subscribed,
then yes, they can certainly hand that data over to law enforcement.
Is that in the agreement?
I think it is.
I think it has to be in the agreement
because otherwise this would be a big problem for Google
if it wasn't in the agreement
that they have the right to record
even when you're not subscribed.
Yeah, that's the key.
Kila, go ahead.
Exactly.
And the other thing that was making me think of
along these lines is
there was an ad on the Super Bowl
that people are kind of up in arms about.
That was my next story, the ring ad, yes.
I'm so sorry, the ring ad.
But I think it's an interesting kind of tie-in here
because this idea of the search party thing,
and if everybody in the neighborhood
has the same kind of doorbell camera,
then we can all search for lost dogs together.
Does that not sound utterly dystopian?
Of course it does, yes.
The ad in question, by the way,
it was basically a couple of lost dog ads in the Super Bowl,
but this lost dog got out somehow,
and I guess an alert was posted,
and every ring camera in the neighborhood,
you could see it graphically represented,
started searching for the dog,
and of course the dog was found
and reunited with its owner,
so why would anybody criticize this?
But apparently a lot of people were upset
when they realized,
hey, my ring camera is recording
when I don't want it to record
and sharing information,
and yeah, okay, you can retrieve a lost dog,
but you can also track down a dissident this way
and all kinds of other privacy horrors.
Yeah, and the whole idea
that if you give it a picture,
then the AI that's everywhere can look for this one thing,
and let's not even talk about
where the footage from your cameras might be ending up.
Imagine that you spend millions of dollars
on a Super Bowl ad
to bolster the image of your company,
and you wind up making people want to leave in droves.
I mean, someone's having a bad week.
Kyle, did you have something else?
Sure, I just am imagining,
I think that feature was like search party,
and it was using, of course,
the buzzword AI, right?
Everything's got it now,
so it uses that and can easily find this shape
and size and particular specific dog,
but replace dog with anything, I guess,
is the subtext there,
and that was, I think,
a largely good reaction by people,
like just understanding what
and how these things are being packaged,
and I think that what's being lost
is that before these entrants,
these tech companies,
I think the cost of the components
and the pieces and parts
both got better and cheaper,
but people forget that like many of these platforms
and different types of technology,
there was stuff before this
and many different types and schemes of camera setups
that without being hosted
by one of these large companies
does practically the same thing.
In fact, those companies still exist today,
and in the back of my mind,
I'm kind of laughing, thinking,
yeah, right, I can imagine all the little Nest cams
inside Google's data centers
protecting all of their equipment and stuff.
Like, I highly doubt that's the kind of platform
they run their own security cameras with,
and I'm thinking to myself,
imagine the crimes that go on
within some of these tech firms
that we'd love to see subpoena
and review all of their video camera footage
of premises and various protected sites.
That'd be such a joy, wouldn't it?
And it's the same thing,
except these are private individuals
versus corporate individuals.
Shall we stick with Google sharing information?
Because that seems to be a popular topic.
Well, Google fulfilled an ICE enforcement
or an ICE subpoena
that demanded a wide array of personal data
on a student activist and journalist,
including his credit card
and bank account numbers.
That's according to a copy of an ICE subpoena
obtained by The Intercept.
Amandla Thomas-Johnson
had attended a protest
targeting companies that supplied weapons to Israel
at a Cornell University job fair in 2024
for five minutes.
Five whole minutes.
But the action got him banned from campus.
When Trump assumed office
and issued a series of executive orders
targeting students
who protested in support of Palestinians,
Thomas Johnson and his friend,
Mamadou Tal,
went into hiding.
Google informed Thomas Johnson
via a brief email in April
that it had already shared his metadata
with the Department of Homeland Security
as The Intercept previously reported.
But the full extent of the information
the agency sought,
including usernames, addresses,
itemized list of services,
including any IP masking services,
telephone or instrument numbers,
subscriber numbers or identities,
and credit card and bank account numbers,
that was not previously known.
I'd already seen the subpoena requests
that Google and Meta had sent to Mamadou
and I knew that he had gotten in touch
with a lawyer
and the lawyer successfully challenged that,
Thomas Johnson said.
I was quite surprised to see
that I didn't have that opportunity.
The subpoena provides no justification
for why ICE is asking for this information,
except that it's required,
quote,
in connection with an investigation
or inquiry related to the enforcement
of U.S. immigration laws, unquote.
In the subpoena,
ICE requests that Google not disclose
the existence of this summons
for indefinite period of time.
Thomas Johnson, who is British,
believes that ICE requested
that information to track
and eventually detain him,
but he had already fled to Geneva, Switzerland,
and is now in Dakar, Senegal.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
is representing Thomas Johnson,
the ACLU of Northern California,
sent a letter to Google, Amazon,
Apple, Discord, Meta, Microsoft,
and Reddit last week calling on tech companies
to resist similar subpoenas in the future
from DHS without court intervention.
The letter asks the companies
to provide users with as much notice as possible
before complying with a subpoena
to give them the opportunity to fight it
and to resist gag orders
that would prevent the tech companies
from informing targets
that a subpoena was issued.
Your promises to protect the privacy of users
are being tested right now
as part of the federal government's unprecedented campaign
to target critics of its conduct and policies.
Agencies like DHS have repeatedly demanded access
to the identities and information
of people on your services.
Based on our own contact with targeted users,
we are deeply concerned your companies
are failing to challenge unlawful surveillance
and defend user privacy and speech.
That's according to that letter.
Any thoughts on this concern, such subpoenas?
Are they legal?
Are they not legal?
Does Google have more of a responsibility
to its users to let them know
and not hand over all this private information?
Alex, that's your hand.
Sure, I'll jump right in here.
I mean, this was also, by the way,
an administrative subpoena.
So that means that this isn't a subpoena
that is approved by a judge.
It's not a subpoena
that even resembles a warrant in any way, right?
Sometimes you have subpoenas
that are so ordered by a judge
or you have an active case
or something like that.
Administrative subpoenas
subpoenas are basically
just like just something
that comes on ICE letterhead.
Like ICE can issue
these administrative subpoenas
and tech companies
and any entity that houses
massive amounts of our personal information,
kind of like a dossier on us,
should really be very skeptical
and look scant at these administrative subpoenas
in any context,
especially coming from an organization like ICE.
I think they have a duty to push back on these.
They have a duty to try to narrow them.
They don't want to be bothered by doing that
because it takes time and effort and money
and it undermines their bottom line.
They don't want to be on the hook for that.
But at least push back in some way
on the notice provision
so that you could give your users the opportunity
to step up before their information is handed over
and before you just voluntarily hand over that information.
I mean, at least be something of a bulwark.
I mean, that's what I find so disheartening here.
And that, in another sense too,
like this is exactly what the administration wants.
It's exactly what ICE wants.
I mean, this is the system that they want in place.
I mean, your Google account has your whole life in it, right?
It's got your payment methods in it.
It's got your IP addresses.
It has your subscriber identities.
It's got all the sites into which you log.
I mean, it's all sitting there.
And it's just one administrative subpoena
with ICE's letterhead away from disclosure.
You have to understand that.
Like, this is not a technical exploit.
This is a procedural exploit.
And this exploit allows ICE or the government
to essentially dox you to steal your data.
There's no patch for that.
This is something that can only be solved with legislation.
So I think it's particularly problematic.
I'm sorry, you're going to have to say that.
It's very disheartening that our massive companies,
particularly problematic and really disheartening.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
I think they're trying to silence you there.
Let me just ask you a couple of stupid questions, if I may.
So administrative subpoena, what does that look like?
You say it's on letterhead.
Well, who signs it?
Does anybody sign it?
Yeah, I mean, it's an ICE officer that will sign it.
You know, somebody with authority to issue
these administrative subpoenas from ICE.
So are they trying to look like a judge when they sign it?
Is there a stamp next to their name?
I don't know if there's a stamp.
There's probably, it's got to be on ICE letterhead,
but they're just agency issued.
There's no prior judicial review.
Could someone forward us an administrative subpoena,
please?
There are so many of them floating around.
I just want to see what one looks like.
I want to see if they're trying to make themselves look like judges,
see how official it actually seems.
Who can issue administrative subpoenas?
Is that something anyone can do?
Only government agencies?
How does that work?
Yeah, certain government agencies will have authority
to issue administrative subpoenas like this.
And ICE would be one of them.
Other law enforcement agencies.
I mean, sometimes even like, you know,
housing-related agencies and things
will be able to issue administrative subpoenas
to require landlords to produce certain records
and documents, that type of thing.
But it's obviously right for abuse.
And that's what we're seeing here.
I mean, these administrative subpoenas
that have no judicial oversight
and no accountability mechanisms associated with them
are going to be abused.
And that's what we see happening.
Can anyone just ignore one of these things
or do they have any kind of legal standing?
But they can try to compel.
They can try to compel your disclosure there.
But generally, you don't have to automatically comply, right?
You will have an opportunity generally
to narrow or constrain the scope of the disclosure.
And we don't see any pushback
on these types of administrative subpoenas
from the tech companies, as I understand it,
and especially based on these stories.
Is it possible they don't know
it's an administrative subpoena?
Are they labeled on top,
this is an administrative subpoena?
I would think that they would know
that they are an administrative subpoena
because subpoena processing,
especially at any big tech company
like Google, Meta, TikTok, et cetera,
it's a big deal, right?
Like there are a lot of people
that are associated with that particular function
because they get subpoenaed all the time
for different documents and records.
So they would certainly know the difference
between a subpoena that relates
to an active litigation,
a subpoena that's so ordered by a judge,
a warrant that's issued from law enforcement
that also has undergone judicial review.
And I would certainly hope
that they would understand the difference
between those on the one hand
and administrative subpoenas
that are issued basically
just as a matter of agency practice
by agencies like ICE.
But maybe I am expecting too much of them.
I don't know.
Now that I mentioned it.
Yeah, I think you might be
because in this day and age
with the amount of fear-mongering
that's out there
and the way the tech companies
have let us all down,
I think they could just write
a handwritten note saying,
hey, could you please give us
what you got on this Alex guy
who's on the radio?
And they'd fall over themselves
because they don't want to be
on the bad side of Trump or ICE.
You know, I don't think it really matters
how they ask.
I think, you know,
they're demonstrating how easily
they can be convinced
just to turn over all our info.
Rob, go ahead.
Yeah, and the double talk
that Google's doing around this
is interesting
because as noted in the story,
an attorney for Google
told Thomas Johnson's lawyer,
Google has already fulfilled
this subpoena.
Production consisted
of basic subscriber information.
That's what Thomas Johnson
was told about.
The info requested about him.
But as the story points out,
this isn't basic subscriber information
in terms of like,
oh, what's it's your name
and email address.
Maybe that's it.
No, it's usernames, addresses,
lists of services
that he was subscribing to.
Telephone or instrument numbers,
subscriber numbers or identities,
the credit card
and the bank account numbers,
all of that.
And as you mentioned,
your whole life is wrapped up
in a Google account nowadays
down to like where you travel
if you keep that info
in Google Maps.
You know, where you are step by step,
minute by minute, day by day,
all of that is in there.
And all of that is apparently
just basic information
that Google will drop on a whim.
Wow.
We could talk about this all night.
And, you know,
we have conversations like this
whenever we have
one of our conferences
at wherever they happen to be.
Enough people have been writing to us
asking this question
where I feel we should address it.
Hope does not have a home.
We don't have a conference
at the moment for this year.
And Hope is also now
a 501c3 nonprofit organization
independent of 2600,
independent of us.
And I just wanted to
let people know where we stand.
We're going to be talking
about this more on Overtime.
But we want to have
conversations like this.
But it's partially
because of conversations
like this that we got
kicked out of St. John's
because it gets
a little controversial.
It gets a little,
you know, edgy.
And so many people
don't want to have
those kinds of conversations
associated with them.
You think Google
are acting like cowards.
They're not alone.
They're so far
from being alone on this.
We're seeing so many people cave.
We're seeing so many organizations,
college campuses especially.
I am so disappointed
in how they have caved
and bent over
to do whatever
they are told to do
by this administration.
These are tough times.
These are very
dangerous times.
We are committed here
on WBI
to have these conversations,
to point these things out,
to give our listeners
a voice
and to support
wherever possible
this kind of dialogue.
So while it might be
a difficult situation
right now,
we know it's not
going to stay that way.
And we know that
because you're out there
and you're supporting
places like WBAI.
Please support
the radio station.
Give to WBAI.org
or go to
buddy.wbai.org.
Pledge whatever you can.
And having this place
for people to speak out
and stand up
to oppression,
which I think we all
can see now,
is so vital.
You either get
your top 40 music
or your state-sponsored
propaganda
or you get individuals.
And we might not always
agree with each other,
but we certainly have
a lot to say
and a lot to make you
think about.
And if that matters to you,
if you want to preserve that,
please go to that website.
Support this place.
Keep it going.
We've been on the air
since 1960.
And we haven't stopped
complaining yet
because there's so much
out there
that needs attention
drawn to it.
And this is,
you know,
I wish there were
48 hours in the day
because there is so much
now to devote
attention to.
And,
you know,
it feels terrible
to see so many things
that we were worried
about come true,
but that's what's happening.
That's exactly
what's happening.
So join us.
Keep this place
on the air.
Make it stronger
and support everything
that fosters free speech.
It is vital.
It is so vital.
Alex.
And we do speak
very freely
about all things.
And I know
certain people
will complain about
the political nature
of what we talk about
sometimes,
but I go back
to this a lot.
You know,
look,
we don't pull any punches
if it's a Democrat
or if it's a Republican
or not one-sided.
I think we're rather
independent
on all these issues
and we just never
shut up about it.
And we haven't shut up
for a really long time.
And especially
this radio show,
which,
Emmanuel,
remind me again
what year it started?
Well,
the first episode
of Off the Hook
was 1988,
but that was
a one-time thing.
And it actually
had been preempted
once
and rescheduled
for a nighttime show.
So the initial one
was three hours long
because it was a special.
We had no idea
it was going to turn
into a series.
That didn't really start
until 1991.
And then it was
a bi-weekly series.
And then shortly after that,
it became a weekly series
and the rest is history.
Wow.
So 30,
35 years
is,
is it?
There's no need to say
how many years it's been.
Yeah,
it's been on the air
for a while.
Yeah,
it's a long,
that's a long time.
That's a long,
that's a lot of words
on the air here.
And look,
you know,
I think,
you know,
to bring it back
to the story
that we were talking about,
right,
I mean,
there's a big
contradistinction here.
I mean,
in that particular story
with Google and ICE,
I mean,
ICE slapped a gag order
in that subpoena.
You didn't hear Google
saying a damn word
about this,
right?
And those gag orders
and administrative subpoenas,
they have literally
no teeth,
right?
Google did not have
to comply with that.
Google could have notified
the subscriber
about this.
They chose silence.
And when a corporation
like that voluntarily
adopts a secrecy posture
of law enforcement,
you have to wonder
whose side they're on.
You never have to wonder
whose side we're on.
Yeah,
like you said,
we can't shut up.
Google had no trouble
shutting up.
That's right.
Yeah,
that's right.
We keep talking.
That's a good way
of phrasing it,
of illustrating
just what the people
affiliated with a station
like WBAI
are all about
or the various projects
that we get involved in.
Yeah,
people who can't shut up,
people who keep
spouting forward.
It can be a pain sometimes,
especially if you disagree,
but that's part of the process
and we welcome it all.
Kyle,
go ahead.
I just wanted to point out
that,
yeah,
those contributions
and keeping the station here
and being a listener,
just your listenership alone
advances so much
in society,
so much in your world,
in our world,
and gets the message
out to people
if what we're talking
about resonates,
if you give us feedback,
we become better
at sharing news stories
and giving our own
perspective on it
and that is really symbiotic.
We don't really know
who's out there
at any one time,
but it is truly
an honor
and a big responsibility.
I think we've taken seriously
since way back
in getting that message out,
your listenership.
It basically,
you become better informed
by listening to WBAI.
You become someone
that people share
their perspectives on
in your community
and you can put people
onto things
that you've heard about
that might be affecting them
in ways they don't even realize
and that is incredible
and what we've noticed
in my experience
being on the air
and I don't know
if the people
who have been around longer
share this,
but what we've noticed
with technology,
what we've noticed
with hacking,
with people
that are curious
about it,
that notice the flaws,
notice how it breaks,
how it doesn't really
suit humans
in some ways
or how it's really,
truly magical
and transformative.
What we've noticed
is that it really
pervades
all aspects of life.
It really affects
so many different things,
especially as more
is adopted
and it becomes
more capable
and something
and something
that everybody
has experience
with so many
different types
of interfaces
and devices
down to software
or firms
that are managing
it all
and somehow
people are
making it work
and jettisoning
the things
that are
cumbersome
and flawed
and we want
to elevate
those observations.
We want to share
that and get it out
and then your
listenership,
what I'm saying
at its core
is that that gets
it out further
to the places
that matter,
to representatives
when you
register your
distaste
with elected
officials.
all of that
is connected
and that's
the metaphor
of this
computer network
we call the internet
that we are
really truly connected
so share in that,
listen,
and give us
your feedback.
Yeah,
I think you touched
upon something
really important
that we have
no idea
who's out there
and that's
the beauty
of radio.
You don't know
who's out there.
There could be
10 people,
there could be
100 people,
it could be
a million people.
You do not know
because radio
is anonymous,
it's passive,
you turn on the radio,
there's no record
of that,
you know,
on the internet,
yes,
you can keep track
of how many people
are there
but the other thing
that we have
is an archive
and you have no idea
how many people
are hearing the archive.
We're talking now live
on February 11,
2026
but somebody
could be hearing this
years from now
because we have
an archive
on our site
which is
2600.com
slash off the hook
of every show
ever made
and boy,
there is such
history there.
So many different
things to talk about
but also so many
different sound effects
of technology,
how things used to be
and it's important
to document all that.
That's what the conversation
also does.
If we were just
talking about
exploits
and the latest version
of Windows
or something boring
like that,
I don't think
you would appreciate
it as much
in the future.
However,
if you listen
to the show
decades from now
and you tune
back onto this
era or the
era before it,
you'll see
how things
have changed
and you might
see how things
might change
more in the future.
So it's vital
to document,
to save,
and to keep
listening
and I hope
people do.
Okay,
we have another
interesting story
kind of related
to what we're
talking about.
The FBI
has so far
been unable
to access data
from a Washington
Post reporter's
iPhone.
Why?
Because it
was protected
by Apple.
Yes,
Apple steadfastly
refuses to cooperate.
Well,
actually,
no,
not entirely.
It's Apple's
lockdown mode.
So when agents
seized the device
from the reporter's
home,
Apple's lockdown
mode kicked in.
They were able
to access the reporter's
work laptop
by telling her
to place her index
finger on the
MacBook Pro's
fingerprint reader.
I would have
placed a different
finger in a different
position,
but everyone does
it differently.
This occurred
during the
January 14th
search at the
Virginia home
of reporter
Hannah Natanson.
But as previously
reported,
the FBI executed
a search warrant
at her home
as part of an
investigation into
a Pentagon
contractor accused
of illegally
leaking classified
data.
It's really kind
of unprecedented.
FBI agents
seized an
iPhone 13
owned by the
Post,
one MacBook
Pro owned
by the Post,
and another
MacBook Pro
owned by Natanson,
a one-terabyte
portable hard drive,
a voice recorder,
and a Garmin
watch.
Government
investigators
want to read
Natanson's
signal messages
and were able
to view at least
some of them
on her work
laptop.
The reporter
has said she
has a contact
list of 1100
current and
former government
employees in
Signal,
which she uses
for encrypted
chats.
The iPhone
was found
powered on
and charging.
Its display
noted that the
phone was in
lockdown mode,
the government
filing said.
After the seized
devices were
taken to the
FBI's
Washington field
office,
the computer
analysis response
team,
known as
CART,
began processing
each device
to preserve
the information
that was
there.
CART couldn't
get anything
from the iPhone
because the
iPhone was in
lockdown mode.
They could not
extract that
device.
The government
also submitted
a declaration
by FBI
Assistant
Director
Roman
Rajaski
that said
the agency
has paused
any further
efforts to
extract this
device because
of the
court's
standstill
order.
I'd never
heard of
that.
The FBI
did extract
information
from the
SIM card
with an
auto-generated
HTML report
created by
the tool
utilized by
CART,
but the
data contained
in the
HTML was
limited to
the telephone
number.
Apple says
that lockdown
mode helps
protect
devices against
extremely rare
and highly
sophisticated
cyber attacks,
i.e.
what the FBI
is trying to
do.
And it's
designed for
the very few
individuals who
because of
who they
are or
what they
do might
be personally
targeted by
some of the
most sophisticated
digital threats.
Again,
FBI.
Yeah,
introduced in
2022,
lockdown mode is
available for
iPhones,
iPads,
and Macs.
It must be
enabled separately
for each
device.
To enable
it on an
iPhone or
iPad,
a user would
simply open
the settings
app,
tap privacy
and security.
Just waiting
for people to
catch up.
Got that?
Okay.
Scroll down
and tap
lockdown
mode and
then tap
turn on
lockdown
mode.
Process is
similar on
Macs in
the system
settings app
that can be
accessed via
the Apple
menu.
A user would
click privacy
and security,
scroll down
and click
lockdown
mode,
and now
click
turn on.
When lockdown
mode is
enabled,
your device
won't
function like
it typically
does,
says Apple,
to reduce
the attack
surface that
potentially could
be exploited
by highly
targeted
mercenary
spyware.
Certain apps,
websites,
and features
are strictly
limited for
security,
and some
experiences
might not
be available
at all.
All right,
well,
you know,
that's kind
of a happy
note to end
on,
I think.
They can't
get everything
they want.
Yeah,
go ahead,
Rob.
Yeah,
no,
I was just
going to
agree as
well,
absolutely,
and it's
kind of
really great
that this
is available
as part
of the
stock OS
in these
things.
Yeah,
I would just
say,
has anybody
taken a
look at
their phones
and looked
at features?
I've personally
looked at a
lot of the
features on
different devices
that I've
accessed to,
and yeah,
a lot of
it's come a
long way.
There is a
lot more
stuff built
in,
and I
think that
you don't
have to
be totally
going overboard
and becoming
really unusable
in your
digital world,
but if you've
got features
that you're
not really
checking out
on your
phone that
might help
you in
certain
situations,
check them
out,
try them
out,
test them
out,
see what
works for
you.
There's a
lot of
ability
that is
built in
now,
and it
reminds me,
I have a
fingerprint story,
but we'll
get back to
that.
Do that on
overtime.
Alex,
10 seconds,
go ahead.
Sure,
I think this
is...
I'm sorry,
Alex,
that counts.
for journalists
to keep
sensitive
reporting.
Oh,
okay,
we're going
to have
to continue
that later.
Yeah,
you froze.
I'm sorry.
Is that it?
Well,
we'll continue
this on
overtime,
but I did
want to
point out
that hackers
are breaking
into Jeffrey
Epstein's
personal email
accounts after
finding passwords
in some of
the files
that have
been released
in the
latest
document.
Yeah,
that's a lot
of fun here,
but if you
go to a
site called
jmail.world,
have any of
you been to
this site?
You can act
like you are
Jeffrey Epstein's
Gmail.
Don't act
like Jeffrey Epstein.
No,
no,
you can be
his Gmail
user and
be able to
see who
mail was sent
to,
who mail was
received from,
and catalog
it.
jmail.world.
I didn't know
world was a
top-level
domain.
It's a lot
of fun for
the whole
family,
and
a way
of finding
out more
things that
are being
hidden and
obscured.
It's
fascinating,
fascinating to
see.
Hey,
we are
out of
time.
Join us
on
Overtime,
youtube.com
slash
channel 2600.
Good night.
Allah,
Allah,
Christ,
don't you
understand?
I'm nervous
waiting for
my baby's
plane to
land.
Returning
with the
family from
the Holy
land.
Allah,
Allah,
Christ,
don't you
understand?
I walked
direct in
my brain,
I ran.
I can't
find my
people,
got this
travel ban.
I didn't
see them
pass through
the customs
gate.
I checked
the screen
and the
plane ain't
late.
flowers that
I bought
are beginning
to wilt
and the
frango
mincer
turned to
chocolate
milk.
I walked
direct in
my brain,
I ran.
They got a
handcuff to a
rail down in
carousel town.
I knew I'd
need help to
break her free,
so I gave a
shout out to
my local
DJ.
I made a
song request,
confess my
sins to the
only friend I
got,
knows the
shape I'm
in.
Hey,
Mr.
DJ,
help me break
her chains.
Get your
pole cutters
and meet me
down in
baggage claim.
Off the
Hook will be
back on
WBAI New
York next
Wednesday night,
7 p.m.
Join us now on
YouTube on
Channel 2600 at
8 o'clock for
Off the Hook
Overtime.
Where we
would need a
diversion before
we made a
break.
I threw
myself on
the ground
and I began
to shake.
The DJ cut
my baby and
her mama's
chains and
said,
welcome pretty
ladies to
the USA.
The car was
at the curb
and I threw
in the keys.
We went to
Gene and
George Eddie's
with the
Refugees.
Well, make no
mistake about
it, we got
a civil war.
My eyes have
seen the cracks
in the glory
of our
lords.
Golden
showers from
golden towers
rained down
upon us at
the midnight
hour.
I walked
out wreck
of my
brain, I
ran.
Allah, Allah
Christ stole
our dreams
again.
The dreams
of the
daughters and
the mothers
and the
family that
you thought
you'd never
see again.
the dreams
of the
dogs, the
Irish and
the blacks,
the refugees
and the
immigrants,
the dreams
of our
DJ and
his deepest
tracks.
When your
dreams get
stole, you
gotta steal
them back.
Yeah!
Yeah!
Fly!
Fly!
Fly!
Fly!
guitar solo


And welcome, everybody, to Off the Hook Overtime here on YouTube.
This is Emmanuel. Kyle is over there.
Hi, I'm Kyle, over here.
Out in Signal Land. Why don't you all introduce yourselves this week?
Hi, I'm myself, and I seem to be over here.
Don't be a wise guy, Rob. We all know who you are, so introduce yourself.
I am Rob T. Firefly, and I can also confirm that we're live on YouTube.
We are indeed on YouTube, and could you please turn us down?
Because, yeah, the delay was starting to get to my head a little bit.
Hi, I'm Gila, and also greetings to the 25 people who are currently with us online.
That doesn't sound like much, but it's going to grow. It's going to grow one day.
It's 30.
See? See? That happens sometimes.
I believe there's somebody else out there in Romp-A-Room Land.
Yeah, there is. Romp-A-Room Land? Is that what it's called now?
This is Alex. How is everybody? Hello, everyone.
Whoa. Good conversation, I have to say.
Some interesting stories out there, and I'm sorry if it's too political.
You know, there's nothing political about human rights. I'm sorry.
It's something that we discuss because it's interesting, and we always bring technical issues to the front.
I don't know if you saw that. I was on the phone during the break, and that was the president of radio.
I did not spend my time looking at you while we had a break. I actually went out and did some other stuff.
Yeah. No, but it was. It was the president of radio. He was calling me, and he wanted to tell me that it was a good show, and the conversation was great.
Well, that's good, but, you know, the president of radio has no say here because we're on the Internet now.
Yeah, that's right. But he was just calling about the radio show.
So it was nice to get that feedback from the president of radio.
We do give permission for people to broadcast us on radio on overtime, but we should warn you that we cuss on this show because we're not on the radio.
And if you put us on the radio, well, that's on you.
Yes, we can say the shit word over here.
We certainly fucking can.
How quickly it devolves. That's what happens.
It's just the Internet.
Okay. So, yeah, we mentioned Hope a little bit and just, you know, some updates.
We've had some lots and lots of people wanting to get involved and wanting to help the new Hope nonprofit flourish and get a conference going.
And we are still looking for a home.
You would think it would be easier to just be able to say, hey, can we have the conference at this particular location?
And have someone say, sure, that sounds like, you know, a blast.
This is, you know, what we charge for rental.
It's reasonable and you can afford it if you if you have a certain number of attendees.
It's not like that at all.
Sometimes they don't even answer.
Sometimes they just say, go away.
And not so many words.
Sometimes they give numbers that I didn't even to sound like Trump.
Nobody ever saw numbers like that.
Wow. You've got to be kidding.
Is that is that a joke?
Is that real?
And, you know, this is the conversation we've been having.
So I know it's not reality.
I know there's a certain like corporate mentality that takes over where people say fantastic things that make absolutely no sense to human beings.
And we hope to get back to that world because we've been living in that world since 1994 when the first conference happened.
And we have been able to have successful conferences 16 times.
And we just want to be able to continue doing that.
Being nonprofit definitely helps as far as allowing us to have more opportunities and get more people involved and not be confused with with other for profit organizations.
And, you know, just basically build something new.
People are very excited by this.
But we do want to stay in New York City.
And by New York City, I mean either Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island or Brooklyn.
That's all New York City right there.
Manhattan would be amazing.
If we can pull off Manhattan, that would be a true hack.
And we are looking for space that can fit.
Well, right now, around a thousand people would be great.
If we have to go below that, then we'll go below that.
We would like to be able to expand because, you know, back when we were at the hotel, we were at around 2,500 people.
We don't want to get much bigger than that.
We don't want to have this massive event that just is almost unmanageable and kind of loses the flavor of what hope is.
Hope has always been this magical experience.
So many people tell us this, where all different ideas are entertained and basically debates occur.
And people are very accepting and enthusiastic about technology.
People have met at conferences.
They have gotten married because of conferences.
They have made lifelong friends because of conferences.
We want to be able to continue that.
We want to be able to do that every year.
But we have some challenges.
Being kicked out of St. John's didn't see that coming.
A lot of people warned us, hey, it's a religious institution.
They're not going to like what you do.
The thing is, that wasn't true for the most part.
People who taught there, people who had careers there for decades loved us and wanted us to come back.
And it was really only because one person, literally one person had it in for us and had a connection up high in the administration that they were able to say, you know what, we don't want you around.
You're too much trouble.
And we didn't even know there was any issue until after they made that decision months later.
It was really kind of weird and bizarre.
Everybody had nothing but praise for us.
And then three months later, we find out, oh, yeah, there was a problem and we decided to kick you off.
It's weird.
We don't want to work with people like that.
We don't want to have anyone looking over our shoulder telling us what we can and cannot talk about.
We had panels about abortion rights at St. John's University.
That was not a problem.
That was never brought up as, oh, you can't do that.
No, the people we were working with understood what we were about.
They understood what freedom of speech was.
And they agreed.
Their code of conduct was impressive.
You know, it was something that we said was great.
They care about trans people.
You know, they care about all kinds of marginalized communities.
They protect them.
That's why we didn't see it coming.
And I guess, you know, we're looking at literally old school versus new school, where certain people are in power that can dictate policy.
And it makes people very unhappy at that institution, for sure.
And we have yet to find an institution like it that we can just hop over to.
We're looking.
We are trying.
At this point, we're looking at schools.
We're looking at hotels.
And somewhere in there, in New York City, in those five boroughs, somewhere there is a place for us.
Well, I sound like a song from West Side Story, don't I?
Yeah, it's a place for us.
Somewhere, a place for us.
If we can get someone to just do that musically, I think maybe, you know, it'll go viral.
But, yeah, you know, this is, the thing is, you know, we're relatively small as far as people who are searching.
So any help we can get for people who have connections or tips or things like that.
But, yeah, we've heard all the suggestions that, you know, this place down the block from my house, a thousand miles from where you are, is perfect.
For you, yes, it would be perfect.
For us, not so much, because we do have to work somewhat locally.
We do want it to be accessible by mass transit in New York City.
And, plus, you know, it's just, it's tradition.
It's tradition.
And New York is a very welcoming place for this kind of thing.
I just want to add one thing real quick.
Also, we've had suggestions for, hey, I know this abandoned building way off on a gravel road somewhere.
Yeah, we love that idea.
Fantastic.
But, practically speaking, there are a lot of services, there's access, there are issues for just accommodations.
So many considerations when you actually think about what our attendees and what people, what their expectations are going into an event and what is sort of standard in and across many different types of events, especially multi-day events.
We need to have facilities.
We need to have power.
We need to have infrastructure.
This is actually taking kind of a back seat, but network infrastructure is really important to us.
Academic environments, we're hugely validating.
The religious part, I think, is practically an afterthought as far as our experience there.
But it is important to be in proximity to the internet to some degree.
It helps us get our talks published and streamed live and for people to participate, for people there to enjoy the experience and find out about things, for presenters to access things and show demonstrations, workshops.
All of that relies on internet to a degree.
So, as E is pointing out right now, I just want to emphasize, we love all the ideas.
And in the future, in a future utopia where we can have all kinds of extra things and work parties and things like that, I am so into that.
We've had really fun experiences before events where they host host nights around an activity.
We'd love to do all of that.
We're open to those ideas, too.
But we really have to remain focused on what is practical for putting on the size event you just mentioned, a thousand people.
Schools and hotels are our primary focus right now because they do have a lot of that as a baseline.
Was that the abandoned mental institution that person was talking about?
Because I'll still go to that.
I just don't think we should have a conference there.
But I'm fascinated by that kind of thing.
We love nooks and crannies in New York and Manhattan specifically all about it.
But that takes a lot of surveying, engineering, some considerations to liability.
You've got to understand what you're taking on when you do stuff like that.
What a lot of people don't realize is that there's more than just a place.
You need to have rooms that are set up for people to sit down in and have a place for people to speak to those people sitting down.
You know, podiums, yeah, tables, chairs, you know, and sound of some sort.
And, you know, when you look at places, you might get a quote for a rental.
But then they don't include things like chair rental or audiovisual, meaning just turning on a speaker.
And sometimes they insist that you sign up for catering, which we don't really need.
We don't really need coffee and donuts, but it would be nice.
But, you know, if it doesn't break the bank, I'm all for it.
But if that's a condition, then sometimes they jack that up and make it so that, you know, the rental price that you are quoted is only a fraction of what you have to pay in the end.
And if we can't reach that number, then it's just not not possible.
The good thing about St. John's was a lot of the rooms were already set up.
They already had permanent chairs and AV that worked.
So that's why, you know, schools work.
They can work.
But sometimes they're just not open to something like hope, like what we do.
So, you know, we're just looking for all kinds of ways that we can make this happen.
And now that we're a nonprofit, hope.net, if you check it out, you'll see a better explanation as to what we're all about.
We can do things like accept grants.
And, you know, a couple of grants could make things possible.
Carl's talking about, you know, parties and things like that.
Work parties.
Work parties.
Well, I mean, there's that.
But also, you know, conference parties, people, you know, introduction to what's happening at Hope.
So these can be sponsored by other organizations.
And that's not a big deal.
It doesn't affect our program.
We've always made it clear we don't want any sponsorship or donation to steer the conversation in any way.
That cannot change.
And, you know, we would rather not have the conference than compromise in any way.
And basically, with the ability to make all these tax-deductible donations and support something that matters, you know, I think we could be in midtown Manhattan and be successful with the right connections.
We just need those connections to connect with us.
And we need to be able to talk back and forth and just realize that we've been hit hard with all kinds of challenges over the past year or two.
And we're going to get back up.
We're going to get back up and keep doing what we want to do.
Because that's hugely important.
Dila, your hand is way up.
I'm sorry.
I didn't see you.
My hand is way up.
No, it's fine.
Okay, so first of all, speaking of getting back up, I would like to - there's 66 people with us on YouTube right now, which is, I think, the biggest number I've ever seen.
Wow.
That is very exciting.
I would also like to - the conversation is jumping about the venue.
So just to clear up a few things, Lex, we love you.
We're not coming to Pittsburgh.
Didn't we just say -
We did, but I want to just clarify it.
We're not going to Carnegie Mellon University.
Hope is also not moving to New Jersey.
You know, no, we shouldn't.
But, you know, if it's right there in Jersey City, right overlooking Manhattan, you know, that's so close.
But it'd have to be a really good deal.
And I will consider Minneapolis, just out of respect.
That's it, though.
That's it.
From a personal perspective, I will say that there are advantages to both the university setting and the hotel setting.
Obviously, we lose some things in some places, gain some things in other places.
Both options are great.
I'm looking forward to see where Hope lands.
And I'm also really excited about - and I know I said this last week, but I'm going to say it again - about what the possibilities that exist now that Hope is a 501c3.
I think that's great.
And I'm very curious.
So, Emmanuel, I just want to clarify.
No one knows where Hope is going to be yet.
No, unless someone can tell the future.
Nobody knows.
So, anyone who was on IRC suggesting that Hope is going to be in Jersey City is speculating at best.
Yeah, I'd say so.
Okay, just clarifying.
Yeah, I did just say Jersey City.
That could be why they're saying that.
But, you know, only because I know Jersey City is - and WFMU is there.
You know, it's all kinds of cool things.
Before you said Jersey City, this is going on.
They have a tram.
It's a cool place.
And we did just get a question.
What about Stony Brook?
Okay, the thing about Stony Brook is it's not in New York City.
There's that.
It's also - well, because it's not in New York City, it's far away.
And, you know, we don't want people to spend two hours on a train getting to the conference after they get to New York.
That's - I don't think that's right.
And also, we seem to be running into an issue with both CUNY and SUNY schools where they are very bureaucratic and they tack on all kinds of additional charges that make it unaffordable.
St. John's is a private university, which is why it was more reasonable.
So I think that's what we're looking for if we choose to wind up in a university setting.
And I'm going to posit that similarly, maybe Staten Island is not super high on the list.
I wouldn't write off Staten Island.
I mean, it's part of New York City.
You have to take a ferry to get there.
But, I mean, I don't really know.
A ferry is a nice ride.
I don't really - it's free, too.
I don't really - I mean, I'll have it on Governor's Island.
We could take the whole damn island, couldn't we?
That would be fun.
That would be fun.
Also, just a fun mention, there is a kosher schnitzel place that has - well, multiple locations, but one's on Staten Island.
And it's called Holy Schnitzel.
Wow.
Well, that alone is the reason to go.
But the thing is, you know, we're always told it's impossible.
This can't be done.
And we all know as hackers, there's always an exception, there's always a way around these restrictions.
Can I just add to that?
Because that is such a good point.
Immediately, I've been thinking this at the back of my mind.
I'm screaming in my head when you say that.
Like, just the network alone.
I've been helping out, volunteering, and it's been a big part of my life.
Okay, Kyle, tell us the story of the network.
I want to gather around.
This is a great story.
All right, everyone.
It all started, but I've been told - I can't even remember.
It's a blur, but many different times and working with different iterations of the network team, I remember having difficulties in asking for outside help.
And people that are very smart people and accomplished and, you know, noteworthy hackers out there telling me, like, okay, just, like, why don't you have an event with no network?
You know, as I'm talking about a technical problem, like, yeah, we're running into this and doing that.
Like, their listening is give up, their immediate reaction in listening to the challenges of navigating different scenarios and different technical solutions to supply an uplink for our event.
And imagine my bright eyes, my optimistic, my young hacker spirit out there appealing to people that I trust, that I want to, you know, get maybe some insight or at least let them understand what I'm tackling, you know, maybe get a little encouragement, a little cheerleading.
And that light just dim a little as they tell me to give up or, like, in my mind, playing out, okay, yes, here's our hacker event, and I'm selling the idea that there's no internet this time.
Everyone just deal.
Like, and this is in an era when phones were getting faster and better, but, like, I just - I couldn't - it, like, it kind of, like, made me glitch.
Like, I just was like, what?
Like, how do we even sell that to everybody that, like, oh, just rely on your own bandwidth, and that's somehow enough for this big event?
Maybe that's the case.
Maybe we don't need that anymore.
And I've been - it's happened not one, but, like, maybe a couple times.
There's also, and I will say this, equal measure of people that I've appealed to, listened, you know, asked advice on from the 2600 community, from Hope community that have been, like, keep trying, keep it up, you know, very, very encouraging over the years.
So I'm not saying that's, like, across the board.
No, but there's definitely a contingent of people who are resigned to not getting anything they want.
You would be amazed that people say, like, okay, you're trying to, like, repair this old thing.
Well, why don't you just sell it and give up?
And here I am, you know, 10, 20 years later, still using that same thing or something, and just thinking to myself, wow, what a life that would have been had I given up, had I decided, like, long ago we should just dissolve having a network.
Like, what's the point?
Well, for perspective here, Kyle is the person who discovered fiber in the hotel when the hotel didn't know they had fiber.
We had been paying a huge amount for some satellite connection with a company called Rainbow that we actually got to become a supplier to the hotel.
And there was some kind of, I guess, microwave link to a building, and that got us, what was it, 10 megabit?
Is that the connection we got from that?
It was a very paltry amount of bandwidth.
And we didn't even get a discount for finding them in the first place, and they didn't, it was just, whatever, every year it just felt wrong.
And then somehow Kyle was able to discover that there had been a Super Bowl party in the hotel, and they had actually put fiber in the hotel for that one party many years ago.
And the hotel discovered it, and we were able to use it until they tore down the hotel.
Yeah, yeah, it wasn't necessarily, I mean, there was a lot of help along the way, particularly Alex and our network crew.
They were, like, instrumental in tracking down some of that stuff once we knew something existed.
But it was also some of the leadership from the IT department at the hotel just kind of saying, hey, why don't you check this room out and, you know, see what you can do.
And just giving a kind of nudging us in the right direction.
And also, but, and this is credit to me, credit to the imperative and being strong enough to ask questions and listen.
It's really listening and hearing what the staff's saying, like, hey, maybe you don't want to get a contract from this guy.
Like, why don't you, did you know this is going on?
And that's what it really, what put me on to, like, hey, there's this dark fiber.
Like, what can we do with that?
And then talking through with really, really smart people that work with infrastructure and different providers all the time, doing a survey, using their tools, looking around in the neighborhood.
I mean, we had been talking about digging out from the hotel at one point prior to that.
And then to find that a major television network had already done that for us was just incredible.
Also, we had, I'm not saying begrudging connections, but we kind of forced a connection with some of our people that work in the industry and some representatives at RCN that were incredibly kind to us over the years.
They, you know, we paid fair, you know, market rates, but they were pretty good to us.
I think they're astound now.
And I don't know if anyone's still working in any of those positions, but a big thank you across the board.
Everybody's helped along the way for those things and tying it all together, keeping focused and pushing for it made it happen.
And once it was there, it was something we were able to return to as a playbook.
And that began to happen at St. John's too.
They were very, you know, cautious at first and then gradually gave us a little bit more control and access to things that we needed.
Yeah.
Well, you had a good reputation there.
They still, I think, feel a good relationship as far as the technical side.
But what a number of these companies and representatives had told us over the years was if only you guys were a 501c3, we could donate all this stuff to you.
And it's tax deductible.
So we're more than willing to do that.
Well, now hope is a 501c3.
So what I'm hoping to see is more of those donations.
We already have a grant, which is amazing, in one week.
So there's definitely enthusiasm for this.
And if we're able to get a lot of these tech companies involved on that level, then we don't have to worry about scrounging, about finding a place, because we'll be in the place and we'll have the support.
And I really, really hope that the community comes together on this.
Gila, I know you had something.
I did.
And, again, the chat has been hopping.
We're at 62 right now.
And I just wanted to pass along one comment from someone whose username on YouTube is a string of letters and numbers.
So I'm not even going to try.
But Kyle is the glue holding it all together.
That's correct.
That is correct.
I'm glad people see that.
Recognize.
They absolutely do.
Yeah, tax-deductible donations.
Absolutely.
You will not be able to claim your ticket to Hope as a tax-deductible expense.
But if you give a donation to the organization, go nuts.
Yeah.
And we'll have a lot more information about exactly different criteria and different types of things that we're going to offer in relation to that.
But fundraising and donations in general, that, I think, is going to remain an ongoing thing, especially as we're still in an exploratory phase for venue stuff.
And I just wanted to talk about sponsoring in general.
I think we're going to continue to do what we've always done.
And I just want to emphasize that, yeah, we felt like companies in general that especially wanted to wish they could contribute in that way, I think that's best suited for our infrastructure, particularly the network.
So as we've done in the past, I think we're just going to keep it the way it's been as far as corporate stuff staying in the realm of our network.
So any of, like, big companies, we kind of want to keep it in support of the network so that that's a strong area of interest.
So we find that kind of fits, is the best fit for corporations.
And then for event and workshops and other aspects of the event, we would like to have organizations be behind that.
But that's just a general framework of what we've done in the past.
We're certainly open to ways it could go in the future.
But everything is at will, and particularly our will.
We don't take contributions in exchange for any kind of direction from any entity.
If you don't want to be a part of that, then don't contribute.
But we absolutely appreciate all the support and interest that's been out there.
There are a lot of ways people are interested in contributing that are new to us that we're learning about.
So it's going to be interesting going forward.
But I just wanted to talk about that in general because we've never really had, like, big companies or anything.
And that's not necessarily what we're inviting.
But it definitely allows money that's already been allocated to giving to nonprofit organizations to be directed in ways that hadn't been in the past.
And if you want to get involved, write to us, feedback at hope.net.
That is the email address for that, feedback at hope.net.
And tell us your ideas, how you can help, what you'd like to do.
And we will certainly read it, and we will hopefully get back to you soon.
We're kind of deluged.
We're kind of understaffed.
So we need to improve.
We definitely need to have more people working on outreach.
And that's where everybody can help is just getting the word out because that will make it happen.
That will make it actually a possibility.
Okay.
Any other - Gaila, did you have something else?
And I know, Kyle, you have something else as well?
Just people are starting to have questions about donating.
Don't forget, you can always go to hope.net.
There's information, including the organization's EIN number,
which is something that you need for donations in a lot of situations.
There's a credit card processor on hope.net that can allow you to make a one-time donation,
set up a monthly recurring or an annual recurring donation.
Go check that out, hope.net, and watch for more information as it becomes public.
And Kyle, you had something else?
Sure.
I just thought that I could encourage people to volunteer.
Volunteers at hope.net is still active, so you can get involved.
We are interested in anybody, all levels of skill.
That's something we've counted on and have been really relying on for so long,
and that has not changed.
We are still volunteer-powered in a way that is quite unusual for tech events
and the sort of subculture we work in,
but it also is actually quite typical.
And in making something as unusual and astounding as hope possible,
we rely so heavily on the just skill and enthusiasm of people that volunteer and help out.
And the other thing I was going to say is think about what you want to talk about.
We are going to work on this stuff operationally.
We're going to get volunteers and the right kind of liaisons and help that we're talking about
as far as we work through this stuff.
But that means we are going to be interested in what people have to say.
So think about what needs to be said because that's a really important part of hope.
Think about what's going on, what needs to be said.
Assuming things go well, we will be looking for presentations.
So I just want people to be thinking about what is important to us,
what is important to hackers going forward.
What will we be looking at in the future?
What might you have to say about what's going on,
about where we need to go as a community, as a society,
or as firms or innovators or entrepreneurs?
All of that stuff is super welcome.
Students, everybody, we want to hear what people have to say because it is just a deluge.
There is so much going on.
And as much as people have encouraged us,
we want to continue to get contributions and get new information out there in whatever form we take in the future.
You know, you mentioned the volunteer aspect of all this.
Over the winter, well, this is still winter, and a good winter it is, too, by the way.
In December, we were at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg.
And that is, that's like hope times times, I don't know how many, 50?
It's so many people.
It's huge.
We will never be that huge.
We don't want to be that huge.
But boy, they do a great job, and they're entirely volunteer-driven.
And it's just amazing to see what they can pull off.
Of course, you know, they're German, so obviously they're going to get all the technical stuff right.
But it really is, it's inspirational to see that.
And considering it was the European conferences that inspired the first hope,
I'm not, I'm not at all surprised.
But it just, it shows you can do it.
You can definitely do it if you unite and if you believe in something.
And that's something, you know, we can apply to many parts of our lives.
Oh, that is such a great point.
And I just want to thank people that have helped out with hope from overseas,
from other parts of the U.S. and North America and this hemisphere all over.
We are such a global collective of interested people.
And I will say absolutely the inspiration, the enthusiasm that I came back with is something I'm thinking about a lot.
And there are so many things that we've brought back from attending other events
and not being sort of running a show and doing a production where we get to observe.
And we bring those things back.
There are many, many aspects of what we do, what we're able to do with hope that are only possible
from learning about technology and tools and features, things you've said,
Hey, why don't we have that at hope?
And we just say like, then we've like figure out what we need to do.
And that has made what we do a lot more functional over the years.
And we aim to continue to use a lot of that stuff and improve upon it as we have.
But that takes a lot of skill.
And we want to continue to be inspired and bring new things to the table,
but also gain volunteers that can work with us and work with what we have built so far.
But we absolutely credit is due to there are pieces, so many pieces of our production
that we have built from seeing other events.
Well, you know, one of the best compliments that we've ever gotten is from the Europeans
saying we are the most European conference they know of in the States, you know, the hope conference,
which is really a very amazing thing to say, because they are the inspiration for that.
And it's just, it's something that makes you keep moving forward.
Absolutely.
And there's so many people that attend from around the world.
They're watching, they're streaming it on the chat in Matrix or wherever we're communicating.
They're a part of it.
And then we end up, I mean, every hope that I've been involved with, I think, I mean,
that I've been, you know, had visibility into volunteers and the sort of production aspect
has had people from other parts of the world producing remotely, helping out in one way
or another.
And that is like, it's such an amazing thing to know that people are out there.
They give us a little bit of time, teach us some things and our backup that just really
appear in really the right moments.
And just, it's just amazing how, and I say this a lot, but we have such good friends in
unlikely places.
And I'm so appreciative to anybody who's volunteered and helped out remotely, because while we're
producing an event, knowing someone's out there checking things and monitoring has been really
beneficial.
And we really need those people now.
We need more such people to make this a reality.
And I really think we can do it.
You know, in fact, we are so confident we can do it.
And this probably should have been the first thing I mentioned.
We will be opening up speaker submissions to the conference, even though the conference
does not yet have a home.
And we can't be 100% sure that the date will remain what it was announced at, which I believe
is August 14th through 16th.
That is when we were at St. John's.
That was the date we agreed on.
And it might not be that depending on whatever venue we wind up finding.
And we do intend to find something with the help of people listening, with the help of
people that will step up and lend their support and skill and connections and things like that.
But we will be announcing that very soon, next few days, I think.
If you are committed to giving a talk at Hope, again, you know, if the date changes or if
the location is something that isn't convenient for you, you can always back out.
But if you want to start preparing a presentation, this is the opportunity to do that.
And, you know, better than doing it all at the last minute, let's start the process now
and we will take the next step and hopefully find a good location for us.
So keep watching hope.net, 2600.com for announcements, listen to Off the Hook, and we will take the
next step.
Any other comments before we open up the phone lines?
I feel like this is the longest run up to opening up the phone lines we've had ever.
Yeah.
Well, there's a time the phones didn't work and we never opened them.
That happened.
Well, and also, there's been a lot of stuff going on that's been going on that has taken
a lot of planning that's been going on behind the scenes.
I am diatribing and reminiscing a bit here.
I know that.
But we do want to kind of bring people up to speed and share as much as we can to, you
know, just level with everybody and be on the same page.
And so we're, you know, keeping on time with the sort of imperative that is before us.
So, yeah, there's just a lot going on in general.
And we've been waiting and had a lot to say for a while.
So it does feel good to share as much as we have here.
OK, again, keep checking Hope.net for updates.
Now, who would like to give out the off the hook overtime official phone number for call
in?
I would like to not only because I like to say it, but I accidentally called it in the
middle of the week last week and I did mean to apologize for that.
Wait, I'm not going to say it didn't cause a whole lot of commotion here.
But what what exactly happened when you did that?
Because I don't think it was connected.
It wasn't.
So I did get the the the voicemail that says and I didn't even realize I had done it.
I got a new cell phone recently and I'm still getting used to, like, how big it is.
And sometimes I accidentally, like, call people when I don't mean to.
And I had we'd been doing some work with the making sure that things are working in
the home and people allegedly not being able to hear Emanuel.
So it was in my recent calls and I picked up the phone and all of a sudden I was like,
why is Emanuel's voice coming out of my phone right now?
Wow.
And I realized that I had accidentally called the overtime number and the voicemail message
that says don't leave a voicemail had picked up.
So there's a voicemail message that says don't leave a voicemail.
What is the voicemail that you left?
Like the message that you recorded.
You think I call this number?
I have no idea what's out there.
Do you not remember saying it?
Well, I probably said it five years ago.
So, no, I don't remember it.
Tom Mitchell, watch your step.
The OK, well, I wasn't listening, but all of a sudden I heard your voice.
So who has to watch their step?
Hang on.
You're confusing me here.
Sorry, a commenter who said something about.
Yeah.
Oh, I thought you had like a dog or something you were warning not to.
We've had a very quiet dog in here.
Yes.
You hear our door.
How would you not?
Like, you'd know if we had a dog.
So if we're ready, I'm happy to say that you can give us a call at U.S. phone number 802-321-HACK.
That is 802-321-4225.
And as soon as Gila said five, that is when the phone line got activated.
So now it'll start working.
If you tried calling it before then, you would have gotten the mysterious message that Gila was alluding to, which I have no recollection of.
But if you want to hear it, you can also call the phone line while we have a caller.
If that's right, you have a good time.
I'm not saying it is, but.
The phone is ringing.
So we're about to pick it up.
Did we pick it up, Kyle?
No, it's still ringing.
So, okay.
Now the phone has been picked up.
And I'm going to say, Kyle, the phone is still ringing.
Does your button not work?
Let me know when it's picked up.
When it's actually picked up.
Okay.
It's actually picked up.
All right.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Clever.
Very clever.
Let's try it again.
802-321-4225.
Here's how it works.
You stay on the phone line and you talk and we hear you and we talk back and forth.
It's called a phone call.
A phone call.
Also, if you're really feeling sporting, we have a toll-free line, but I don't remember that number right now.
Also, if you want to talk to someone who's not us, scroll back up for a sec, please.
If you want to talk to someone who's not us, you are always free to call phone number 833-922-4692 and make a pledge to WBAI.
Also, always available to take you there.
We should have given that number out when we were on the radio station.
We probably should have, but it's a pinned post on the off-the-hook Mastodon account.
So, you can call us at 802-321-4225 or 833-something-something-something-2600.
833-755-2600.
That's it.
I can't believe I still remembered most of that.
That was nicely done.
Thank you.
The 2600 isn't that hard and you know it's an eight-something.
All right.
We have a phone call, Kyle?
All right.
You do.
And good evening.
You're on off-the-hook overtime.
Yes, Emmanuel.
Rebel, you did it again.
You're only, I think, five short of the record of being the first caller in American radio history.
I looked it up.
Okay.
Before I get into what I wanted to ask and mention.
He doesn't care.
Before I get into what I wanted to ask and mention, I'd like to mention, I'd like to say that I'd like to,
help volunteer.
This is the pre-Rebel call here.
Okay, go ahead.
I'd like to say that I'd like to help with the volunteering and help with the nonprofit and all that.
Maybe sell for them.
I mean, you know how some nonprofits have, like, people that, it's not a salesperson, but it's like people that get people to donate, like, get some, like, maybe, I don't know if you want corporate donors, like, like, AT&T or, you know, all these companies that we always mention.
Okay, so what you're saying is, with your skill of harassing operators over the decades, you think you can get AT&T to donate, I mean, give it a shot.
I'd like to see what happens.
They may pay all kinds of money to get you off the phone.
No, no, I'm saying corporate donors, like, would you want Google to donate to Hope or Yahoo or, you know, or Facebook people, I mean.
That bridge is not anywhere near us right now.
As it gets closer, we can have that conversation and talk about the pros and cons, but right now I just think it would be a waste of oxygen to even discuss it, because I don't see that happening.
I mean, maybe, maybe that's something that we want to consider, but it's really, it's going to be up to the people that are part of Hope.
Okay, I'd like to.
I'm not going to decree it here or anything.
I don't know, I'd like to, of course, be a part of Hope, because, you know, I've gone to all, you know, a lot of Hope conferences, and I've learned a lot from the Hope conferences.
Rebel, which Hopes have you not been to?
I think I've been to a couple in, like, maybe, I don't know, maybe it wasn't the one in 2006, or.
Hope number six?
Was I Hope number six?
I don't know, but I wasn't, I mean, I wasn't at every single one of them.
I just, I mean, there was some of that I missed.
Actually, you know what?
No, wait, that was the fifth Hope.
The fifth Hope was something.
Okay, the first one time you were at St. John's?
The first time we were at St. John's.
In 2002.
2024, 22, rather.
22, or whatever it was, but 24, that's when I didn't go, because I, you know, the talks were in, you know, I wasn't interested in what was going on.
And it was, it was in your own burrow, too.
Right, well, I went to the last one, of course.
Yes, we remember.
Yeah, okay, let's see.
I'd like to know, remember Frame Relay?
What is Frame Relay?
Is this the call?
Has the call started now?
This is the actual Rebel call?
I just want to be able to know.
Yes, this is the actual call with questions.
Okay, all right.
How does Frame Relay work?
Is that like when a company, like, leases a line for data?
You know, I remember Frame Relay being discussed in, like, every article in some of those technical magazines.
I just, it was some kind of network technology.
I mean, I never really got into it.
Anybody out there?
I think it's a file.
Alex is raising his hand.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, it's like a, it's a packet switching system, usually, that would connect two different LANs together, or multiple LANs, so multiple local area networks connected through a packet switching network that makes it, I guess, technically a wide area network.
But that's the gist of it, if I recall correctly.
It's been a while since I thought about Frame Relay.
Yeah, me too.
I didn't think about it much then, either.
Okay, is that like, like, for example, I'm just wanting to know how networks of, computer networks of terminals in the night, late, the mid-80s, mid-90s work.
Is it like, like, let's say Blockbuster Video, they had these VT320 terminals.
Did all, did each, like, and their main office is in, like, I don't know, Texas or something like that.
I don't know where it exactly was, but did each store have a, go through, like, a, like, rent a Frame Relay, go through a Frame Relay system to get the data from the mainframe?
Is that the way it worked?
I don't think any of us know.
Do you know about this, Alex?
No, I have no idea how Blockbuster, you know, set up their systems and things there, but, you know, there wouldn't be a dedicated physical circuit between these two sites.
They'd probably use some kind of virtual circuit inside of a provider's network, and then that would allow the data.
Kyle, you've got an answer.
I cheated a little bit, but it's a protocol that was used over traditional telephone lines based on X25 that allowed them to use lines that were subject to a lot of noise.
But it was originally developed for ISDN.
So, a lot of the companies, like Blockbuster or whomever, they'd have a telephone line, they'd have boxes on either end, and they'd use this protocol to send data over those.
Or, in some cases, a business might hire or connect or bond, what, several lines to create an ISDN line and run the same protocol, albeit with less interference from noise because of the structure of ISDN being distinct from voice telephone lines.
So, that's my quick glance at it.
Yeah, but is it like a T1 line, like a leaf line of T1?
Well, it could be whatever.
That's kind of it.
Yeah, maybe they'd get a private line for sort of like uptime or just to guarantee a connection, depending on how critical the service was for their business.
But, yeah, theoretically, they could hire or connect whatever type of line was available for business customers in that market.
Does that sound right?
I don't know.
I'm just saying from my hypothesis.
It could be another way or multitudes of ways.
What about the packet switch network, like Telnet and Pinet?
And there was like these companies that provided packet data networks, if they were?
That stuff predates stuff that I ever got to really mess with, but I think you might also be talking about Telnet.
No, you're talking about Telnet.
No, not Telnet.
Telnet and Timenet.
Yeah, okay.
What was the one in Canada?
Data Pack?
Was that what it was?
Yeah.
You all know these things a little bit better than I do.
Like, I didn't mess with any of that stuff.
I was too young.
It was a way you could connect to remote computers locally, and I got in a lot of trouble doing that.
But, hey, Rebel, we're going to move on, because there are other calls, and we're running out of time.
We don't want to dominate.
Is that when WBAI connected to their transmitter back in the 80s and 90s?
What about connected to the transmitter?
What now?
Like when WBAI, like when on 505 8th Avenue, how did they connect 505 8th Avenue to the Empire State Building?
Did they use, like, phone lines?
I would imagine they probably used a T1, because it would be kind of silly to have a microwave relay so close,
and I think it might be kind of difficult, too, with all the buildings.
So, yeah, I think they broadcast off the Empire State Building and probably used a T1 to get there.
And same thing with down in Wall Street.
They used a phone line, like a T1.
Sure.
Why not?
Yeah, why not?
And I don't know what they're using now.
I don't think it's a T1.
I think it's something else.
Well, the thing with the stations is they use multitudes now.
So they're able, I think, just generally speaking, to use commodity broadband, but also use what telephone lines are available.
But you've got to understand the same things are happening, like copper lines are disappearing.
So a lot of, like, if you get or have one of those, even in the city, keeping it is sometimes in flux.
So that changes.
That's something that the management and operations at the radio stations have to deal with all the time.
But, yeah, so, like, they get just as much guff from Verizon saying, hey, you've got to be Fios now and stuff like that.
But typically something that's broadcasting that needs something that's reliable since, you know, the class of service for business leased or other types of lines can sometimes be really extraordinary.
And it might be outside the budget of community radio.
There are ways of using other connections, but having backups so that if something happens, you can still get to the tower.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Now, T1, when was T1 invented?
In the 80s?
You know, you can look all this stuff up because we're not Wikipedia here.
And we do know how the people want to get through.
But, Rebel, thanks.
We'll talk to you in future weeks.
Want to open up the phone lines for more people because we're at 52 minutes past the hour.
I know we spent a lot of time talking ourselves, but we had important things to say.
802-321-4225.
Let's take one or two more phone calls before we have to run because we do have other things to do, you know.
We're in all kinds of modes here and we have all kinds of projects.
And, yeah, Skila, go ahead.
So, a couple people chimed in.
University of Washington Library still has a bunch of X25 books.
Needless to say, they have a lot of dust built up on them.
And Tim in Connecticut says,
Frame Relay is a standardized wide area network technology that specifies the physical and data link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology.
Originally developed as a simplified version of the X25 system designed to be carried over the emerging integrated services digital networks.
Cool.
Well, that pretty much explains it.
And Rebel, you can look that stuff up.
It's not hard to do a little bit of research.
But thanks for sharing and getting people thinking about it.
That's important, too.
802-321-4225.
We're going to wait a couple minutes to get a phone call.
I love the discussion of all this stuff because what people have got to realize is it still works.
Yeah.
You talk about it a lot.
We've talked about it over the years a lot.
Our listeners would know this.
But they retire it because the business model doesn't work.
But the technology, the protocols, they all still work.
It's like pay phones.
Pay phones still work if you don't let them fall apart.
Sure, sure.
That sometimes these technologies are superseded for reasons of power and capabilities.
But in many cases, they're supplanted for newer, different protocols and technologies and to accommodate more heavier traffic and stuff like that.
But people can still play around with the protocols, simulate things, test things.
If you have a lab or a workbench and you want to try stuff out.
In fact, there's ways of emulating and doing this stuff with modern microprocessing.
And it's all so much more capable.
So it's really your creativity is the limit.
So by all means, get interested, play around with it, implement it for something silly or fun or or I guess preferably in these times, something that helps, something that matters, something that affects something that or that that points something out that makes a statement of some kind or is useful in a novel way.
This is the kind of thing that happens at Hope times 100 times 200 times 1000 802-3214-225.
We'll give it one more minute.
And Rob, did you have something?
Go ahead.
Yeah.
While we're waiting for a call, I just want to say I do love looking into older technologies, because if you're someone who's mainly familiar with how things work now, it can be amazing to learn your roots and go back and learn how these things came about.
What came before and realize that, oh, my God, they're basically a step away from banging rocks together.
And how did we ever get this work?
It is amazing.
And it is the sort of thing that can happen when, you know, smart people get together and, you know, decide that they're going to make something happen and do it.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
And, you know, it's just taking something apart, putting it back together.
That is the key in learning how technology works.
And I just fear today, with everything just, you know, pre-assembled and tiny, it's impossible to do that.
Yeah, you can take it apart.
You can do that.
But you'll never get it back together again, because humans can't do that.
And I just feel sorry for kids that won't experience that.
But, you know, the old technology, as Kyle said, still works.
It's still there.
So let's preserve that and use it as learning tools, because that's, you know, that's really, really fascinating.
Gila.
A comment from Tim in Connecticut, who says, most all the stuff works, but things are slow these days.
Last Christmas, my nephews wouldn't have a LAN party on the 10G hub I donated, as it was too slow.
Wow.
Those sound like fun kids.
You know, we were talking about connectivity at Hope, and I remember when connectivity came to Hope.
And it was one room full of dumb terminals, just in text mode, that, you know, was something new.
It was a connection to the Internet.
And, like, there were people who spent the whole conference in that room just banging away on a VT100 or whatever they were, because that was amazing for the time.
And it was something that not everyone got to do.
Wow.
Well, you know, if and when we do have hope, I shouldn't say if and.
And I should say, when we have hope, we will have vintage technology of one sort or another, computers, phones, where people can play with them and learn about them and be inspired by them.
That's what it's all about.
Is that a plane passing over someone's house?
Yes.
Sorry.
That's our plane.
No, no, no, no.
Hold on a second.
Because when Rebel was on the phone, I heard what sounded like a plane over his phone call.
And I'm thinking that two of you are here in the same planes, because he's in Queens, you're in Queens.
How about that?
It's possible.
It is possible.
We've got a couple of big airports in range.
The whole burr of Queens here is the same plane.
We're all under the same big sky.
What a tiny community we all are in the end.
It's so true.
All right.
We are going to close it up for tonight.
Final words?
Um, yes, uh, sort of to envelope what we were talking about with celebrity news earlier
today.
Um, did they find her?
Did they find her?
They, if they found her, I'm not aware of it, but, um, in other celebrity news, um, please
make sure you're getting your necessary health screenings.
Um, James Vanderbeek was 48 years old.
Okay.
Who's that?
Who's that?
That's he.
What he.
He was an actor.
Uh, he played Dawson on Dawson's Creek among Dawson died.
Yeah.
Are you kidding me?
Wow.
I remember Dawson's Creek.
They, they had a free Kevin sticker on one of their episodes and that was a big deal.
And, but Dawson, he was a heartthrob.
Yeah.
God, I didn't know about this.
I just, I got a message that Harold died.
Yeah.
Harold and we were having a discussion in our house about who the Farrah Fawcett of today
is going to be.
Um, my theory is that.
It's going to be Budcourt, unfortunately.
Um, but he was also 30 years older than James Vanderbeek.
I don't understand what you just said.
The Farrah, I know Farrah Fawcett died years ago.
Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett's death was in
the news for about an hour before Michael Jackson.
And they're like, Michael Jackson was found unconscious at the Neverland Ranch and he's good.
And then he died.
So like Farrah Fawcett died and no one talked about it.
Um, wow.
I remember that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, uh, yeah.
For the computer nerds out there, he was Edgar, the computer in Electric Dreams, um, which
I liked a lot.
That I didn't know.
Yes.
He was also the, um, corporeal form of God in Dogma.
You know, uh, for those who don't know Harold and Maude, it was, uh, it was a weird film
from, I think, the 70s about this kid.
It was like, you know, a teenager, uh, you know, not, not a very old teenager either,
uh, who hooked up with this, uh, um, uh, lady in, in her 80s, I think.
Uh, what was the actress's name?
Ruth Gordon.
Ruth Gordon.
I don't know if she's still around.
Um.
No, she, she died shortly after Harold and Maude, I think.
Did she?
Okay.
Because, yeah, she'd only be about, um, uh, 130 by now.
But yeah, okay.
That makes sense.
Uh, wow.
Okay.
Tough day.
Boy.
A tough day.
But ultimately, remember that you, you as an individual have a lot to contribute to the
world and you can't do that if you're dead.
So please stay on top of your preventive screenings and preventive care and stay with
us.
Yep.
Also, I misspoke.
Ruth Gordon passed in 85.
85.
Okay.
I missed that.
1985.
I'm sorry to hear that.
But, uh, yeah.
She was 88 when she passed away though.
That's too young.
I, I, I mean it.
That's too young.
It really is.
Yeah.
Okay.
Uh, so ending on a somber note, um, keep hope alive.
Hope.net will, uh, hopefully, um, uh, get in touch with many more people and have more
to report in the weeks ahead.
Um, and, um, good seeing you all as always.
Alex, Gila, Rob, Kyle.
Good night all.
Bye.
Good night.