The PCS telephone number you've dialed is temporarily not in service.
Message 116-3.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bum Diddly Bum, for the best, it's back 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 on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Hello.
Out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
You do.
Good evening.
Well, this has been a fun, eventful week.
All sorts of things happening, obviously, throughout the world.
And we're going to try and give our perspective on the technological developments and where hackers fit in and all that.
You know, there's something that has been talked about increasingly over the past few months.
And that is all this age verification that all of a sudden we're obsessed with.
It's starting to become of concern, I think, to those of us that care about privacy and First Amendment rights and things like that.
And, you know, at least one of us is a parent here, so, you know, let's get some perspective on that.
But I'm seeing more and more pushback to all of this age verification obsession that is basically hitting us.
And a bunch of academics about a week ago said that governments should stop their plans to roll out all these age checks on online services until the privacy and security concerns are addressed.
The warning comes as countries around the world, and it's happening everywhere, move to bar children from social media, which requires some way of checking users' ages to decide if they can access online services.
In an open letter, 371 security and privacy academics across 29 countries said that technologies being rolled out are not effective and carry significant risks.
Now, companies, including OpenAI, Roblox, I believe I said that right?
Roblox.
Roblox.
I don't know how to pronounce the new words.
I'm sorry.
And Discord, implement age checks in anticipation of being obliged to the signatories.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I read that wrong.
In anticipation of being obliged to.
Didn't see the comma.
The signatories said it is dangerous and socially unacceptable to introduce a large-scale access control mechanism
without a clear understanding of the implications for security, privacy, and people's freedom and autonomy.
They're calling instead for a global pause until the scientific consensus settles on the benefits and harms that age assurance technologies can bring and on the technical feasibility.
Now, France is planning to ban kids under 15 from social media as soon as September, while Germany, Denmark, and Spain are also accelerating efforts.
Australia became the first country in the world to introduce a ban in December 2025.
So, if you're talking to a kid under 15 in Australia, they're either very smart or, I don't know, I don't exactly know how they're getting around it.
But, many leaders have expressed support on the basis it would protect children's physical and mental health.
But, countries have yet to decide how bans will be implemented or enforced.
We share the concerns about the negative effects that exposure to harmful content online has on children.
And, the academics, right?
But, current plans would require all users, minors and adults, to prove their age, to converse with friends and family,
confirm their age to read news, confirm their age to search for information.
I mean, you know, you start adding this up and all of a sudden, anonymity is no longer a thing.
A robust age verification system would require checking government-issued IDs with strong cryptographic protection for every single interaction with the service.
That's according to the academics.
Such infrastructure is not only hard to build and maintain on a global scale, but would add friction in services, meaning many providers would simply refuse to install age checks.
And, using technologies like cryptography to sign the problem, risks centralizing tools in the hands of the few companies that can deploy them at scale.
And, they also warn of the risks that governments would ban virtual private networks to stop people from getting around age bans.
And, BPNs, as we know, are frequently used by people looking to protect their identities from authoritarian regimes, as we're becoming more and more familiar with.
All right.
So, you know, this is something that is definitely of concern.
Of course, we want to protect children from harm of any sort.
But, at what stage does that outweigh our rights as individuals to communicate freely?
Who would like to begin?
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I think, you know, like any good lawyer, I could argue both sides on this, right?
I mean, from a child safety perspective, you know, some reduction in access to content that's very clearly harmful is definitely positive here, right?
But then the downside to that is, well, kids are very easily routed around this, right?
I mean, they know how to get around this.
These protections are extremely leaky.
They're easy to navigate around.
And then, therefore, they're ineffective and the risks still remain, right?
It gives lawmakers, on the other hand, something to latch on to and say, hey, we're doing something to protect children here, even though if it is completely form over substance, as we know.
And I've come into contact with these age verification laws during my travels around the world.
The more places I go, the more times I see these age verification requirements popping up.
And it's interesting to see jurisdiction from jurisdiction.
I mean, and going back to the pros and cons here, I think, you know, parents, and as a parent, it's important to have some kind of safety tool to steer kids away from some spaces.
But those same safety tools can then disproportionately block access for marginalized communities to have access to these types of sites and networks.
So I think there's a way around this.
You know, if the issue is harmful content, and it depends on the context here, but if we're talking about, let's say, social media sites,
you know, I'm constantly seeing advertisements now on Instagram for teen accounts for Instagram, which, coincidentally, I'm about to have a teenager.
So it's really weird to see all these ads popping up for Instagram.
I absolutely do not want my 12 about to be 13-year-old on Instagram, though.
But if we're talking about the addictiveness and the harmful content associated with social media sites, well, there's an easy fix for that.
Why don't we just tame the addictiveness?
Why don't we limit things like infinite scrolling and these reels that automatically play and limit the amount of casino-style notifications that are dopamine-inducing for these kids and get them addicted?
So I think there are design flaws.
Well, maybe they're not flaws at all.
These are design components to ensure addictiveness and ensure that our teens and our young people get addicted to these particular social media sites
and then become the new products, the new generation of surveillance capitalism.
Why don't we tame that before we institute age verification laws across the board?
You know, I think you've hit upon something here because they are indeed design flaws for individuals,
for people that want to think and not get distracted and not get lured into the next post
and spend all of their time just following what somebody is saying and getting lured into all kinds of arguments and hatefulness and things like that.
It's a design flaw for people, but it's a design feature for these companies
because that is how they get people to stay on their sites forever and get more and more involved in what is being said,
what is being peddled to them.
So I think that is the key right there.
If social media behavior that they encourage is seen as the problem, not the age,
because there are very insightful 12-year-olds out there, as I'm sure you know, having one,
that can be part of a conversation or something online.
We're talking about operating systems that will require age verification.
I mean, how do you even justify that, saying you can't configure a Linux machine unless you're a minimum age?
It's not like drinking alcohol.
It's something that really can be extremely beneficial to a child.
And basically closing them out of that is, I think, a lot more harmful than it is good.
But the social media networks, you know, it's bad for grown-ups as well as kids.
What are we doing for the grown-ups that are basically facing the same problems?
You know, I think all these congressional hearings that they have occasionally
where they, you know, drag somebody running, you know, running Facebook or Twitter or whatever
and ask them hard questions and then they just go back and keep doing it.
They need to actually have people who know what they're talking about ask them these questions
and say, look, do it this way and that lessens the problem on children, on adults,
and we don't have to talk about something so draconian as requiring government ID to use the internet.
Rob, go ahead.
Yeah, this all bears thinking about, I mean, not all of us here are parents,
but I think all of us here remember being children, tinkering with technology and things.
And it's pretty safe to say that one thing that does not stop a curious kid from looking at something,
obtaining something, messing with something is being told you're not allowed to.
But the sheer volume of kids who are doing terribly clever things to get around the age verification tools
that are out there continues to entertain me.
But you touched on something that I'm finding really scary about all this,
and that's that these rules are being extended to software providers,
including operating system vendors, including things like distributions of Linux,
a free and open source operating system for computers.
And people, the general population, are used to things like Windows or Apple's OS
where you create an account and you're already tied to this commercial entity
and you're doing things that require they know you're an adult or at least know what age you are.
And you try and apply that same rule to something like Linux
where people just download and circulate the software freely.
And a lot of Linux projects are becoming very concerned with what they're going to have to do
to verify anything about their users when that's simply never been a factor in the past.
And the operating system is not objectionable content.
It is not adult content or kid content.
It is the basic software required to use your computer to do anything.
And so the rules are very sort of vague and wide-ranging and put into law
without any real concern or understanding for the technological realities
beyond what it is they want to do.
Kyle?
I will say that I've actually had a lot of conversations.
Anyone who has older adults in their lives, aging parents, that kind of thing,
they have brought up and I find many different people, a lot of cross-sections of life
are talking about and thinking about more consciously their amount of time using a lot of these platforms.
And they really are not the same type of blog platform that the early web people might have experienced
in the early web.
They're much, much different.
And I think people who have been using the internet a long time and so on and so forth,
as this conversation has emerged with younger adults and the harmful effects of some of these things,
older adults as well, and I'm really glad that that was pointed out in this conversation,
are really thinking about how they spend time online.
And it's, I think, as important that we talk about how we're all using,
and the behaviors, how we're all using these devices and these social media platforms,
what we're saying, of course, but also how much of our daily life is being consumed by it
and the types of messaging that we're ingesting consciously and subconsciously.
And that topic of conversation is incredibly important, especially as we age.
And I think if it doesn't make sense to regulate an older age limit,
it probably shouldn't be the same way on the younger spectrum,
especially when people are starting to use tools to read and to write.
And computing power can enable that to an incredible degree with all we have now at our fingertips.
So could you just imagine, and I think it's silly, but could you imagine,
okay, we have an age restriction.
You can't actually install Linux if you're older than a certain age.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, you're cut off.
And you can't join the social media platform.
You can't talk about anything.
You can't post.
You can't comment after another period of time where you're just, you're aged out.
You're not allowed on the network.
Can you imagine how absurd that sounds?
Careful, Kyle, because Congress people do listen to this show and they might get ideas.
Well, maybe it's applicable to them.
Oh, to them, yes.
Okay, Congress, stay away.
Go ahead, Alex.
I love the idea of having an age ceiling on installing Linux, though.
I just think that's absolutely hilarious, Kyle.
I want to go back to what Rob said, though, as you mentioned, that he doesn't have children.
I just want to say, Rob, you know, just don't underestimate yourself.
It's amazing what a man can create in three or four minutes if you do put your mind to it.
Put it that way.
Just, you know, kind of amazing.
More seriously, though, I do think there is some low-hanging fruit here when it comes to protecting children, though, because we know how they're harmed, right?
Like it's the same pattern over and over and over again.
So you can have really risk-based regulation of these platforms if we think about it.
I mean, I don't even think you have to think about it, like, too deeply, right?
If the law was focused on things like the most harmful features of social media, like getting direct messages from strangers, going live on various things, taking selfies, nude selfies of yourself and sending them over to strangers.
And also micro-targeting ads to kids.
I don't know if you guys remember, but several years ago, during one of the midterm election cycles, when we were spending a lot of time in Pennsylvania, one of my children came over to me and said, you know, Daddy, is this true?
You know, if so, if this Democrat is elected in Congress in Pennsylvania, are they going to really release everybody from prison?
I said, what the hell are you talking about?
And it turns out they were getting these micro-targeted ads on YouTube kids or politics, which was just to me unbelievably inappropriate and unethical to target these things, these political ads at kids.
And maybe it was accidental, maybe it was unintentional, or maybe it was deliberate in the sense that they're hoping that there's an adult in the room that would hear these advertisements when they came on during kids' YouTube.
That type of stuff is horrible.
That's the type of stuff that, to my mind, is the low-hanging fruit for regulation.
And we can actually have substance over form if we think about these things even minimally.
I have an idea.
What if social media sites are forbidden from running advertisements?
Would that not get all the billionaires out of the business?
And maybe we'd actually have some conversation between people?
Go ahead, Gila.
I mean, we would, but in the world we're in right now, if you can't monetize it, then what is the point?
And the other thing that I was thinking about was what Kyle was saying in terms of kids reading and writing and what that can...
I remember being four years old and typing out things on our home computer and spending hours playing computer games with my cousin.
We did really well on Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego one summer.
And the whole idea of where does it extend to, and it's not just going to be about social networks.
It's going to be about operating systems.
And because everything in the house is becoming a smart item, we were notified on Mastodon, actually, just a little bit ago, that the California law can also affect refrigerators and calculators.
If you have to age verify to get a snack, I think we have kind of overstepped into a bit of a nanny state situation.
I kind of want to see that happen just to see how that plays out.
Oh, my God.
Okay, so clearly this is the wrong path to be going down.
I mean, I think anyone intelligent can see that.
Left, right, you name it, this is not something that serves us.
But there is a problem.
There is a big problem with the way we communicate these days.
And, you know, Alex, you pointed it out earlier, just the annoying ways that they get you to engage.
For me, it's, you know, as someone who's older, it's almost impossible to figure out how to find, you know, if I'm on, occasionally I look at Facebook.
I don't go on there on a regular basis, and I'm not going to.
But occasionally I go on there, and I'm looking for something because someone says that you're tagged, I can never find it.
Or I'm reading something, and the page refreshes, and it's gone, and I can never find it again.
Things like that, it just makes you all jittery.
And I guess that's how they want you.
But it's unhealthy.
I know it's unhealthy.
I feel it's unhealthy.
Other people must feel this as well.
And I think if we just maybe introduce some standards and some basic requirements that prevent people from falling victim to the crass commercialization of these social media networks, that might do more good than any age verification could.
Because I really don't see how shutting out a whole category of people who might well have something to contribute serves anybody.
Rob?
And this whole concept of crass commercialization is, I think, a major factor in this sort of thing.
Because in this current age in which the technological media environment is full of all these huge companies trying to push people away from even nominally owning anything,
your data is in the cloud.
It's on someone else's machine.
The video games you're playing are streamed from the cloud.
The, you know, your very identity is tied to so much of what you're doing back and forth over the internet.
And, you know, when the basic, I think the biggest threat to that sort of thing is, like, putting Linux on a computer and just using it for what you want to do,
not necessarily having to connect to the greater net with it.
I think this sort of plays into that.
Let's make it more difficult to actually own and control your own things.
Let's run everything you're doing through these massive monoliths.
And, you know, this think of the children aspect, I think, is just pushing governments and such toward that.
Well, it's scary.
And to think that a country like Australia already has implemented something like this.
I just, has anyone heard how it's going down there?
No?
We have no idea what's happening in Australia.
Okay.
Well, if you're from Australia, please write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
We want to hear how that's working out for you.
It just seems like a really bad idea.
You know, here's a site that we just found called agelesslinux.org.
This is really kind of fun because they have the right attitude, I think.
They're just listing all kinds of hardware, software.
I'm just going to read you some excerpts here.
The pamphlet, minimum viable violation, a bootable Linux device with a display network connectivity and an app store.
No battery, no keyboard, just proof that this constitutes a regulated device under AB1043.
Good for bulk handout at conferences.
I'm not exactly sure what it is I'm describing here.
But here's something else.
This is, I believe, a micro SD cable.
Legal status arguable.
No, I think this is an actual computer.
The 128 by 64 display introduces fuzziness.
The AG could claim it's a dev board.
That's fine.
Ambiguity is instructive, too.
How about this?
This is a computer with a color display, keyboard, Wi-Fi, Linux, and an app store.
It does not collect age data.
It is handed to a child.
The maximum fine is $7,500.
Or a self-contained battery-powered pocket Linux computer.
The educational device Angle, a modern descendant of the Acorn BBC Micro and the original Raspberry Pi.
Or a pocket computer with a color screen, keyboard, battery, Wi-Fi, 8 gigabytes of storage, and an AI accelerator.
Costs less than a large pizza, and it fits in a child's hand.
I don't know exactly what they're doing here, but they've got the right spirit.
I can tell.
AgelessLinux.org.
See if you can figure it out.
But we're going to have more and more conversations about this sort of thing, and it's going to really involve all of us.
It is.
And, you know, I think the best thing we can do is to just keep playing with these things.
I mean, this Ageless Linux project is incredibly entertaining, even to just read the site and what they're doing.
But, yeah, I'm curious to get hold of one of these now.
And, yeah, this is the sort of reaction I want to see.
I want to see things that call out, you know, people making bad decisions on what they're doing and having some fun at their expense.
You have to challenge them.
You have to challenge bad laws, bad ideas.
You have to show the absurdity.
Kyle, go ahead.
I love this idea of not having ads in certain parts of the web.
I mean, I think that commercializing everything and monetizing everything, that speaks to a broader sense of maybe consumerism itself becoming out of control and just in too many aspects of people's life or the marketplace or however you look at it.
And I'm not saying that that's not something we should have at all.
This isn't like anti-ads.
Like, yes, okay, sharing that, you know, good or service is available is an important part of our economy.
Right.
I'm anti-ad.
But the sites where we're socializing and creating individual content don't necessarily cost so much that we can't support the infrastructure of them hosting or whatever it costs and whatever hassle it is to not have those kinds.
Not to base it around a model that's not in your control, which is a big part of this, but also that requires some sort of advertising from a third party.
That's something we're, we're, we've been conditioned to accept and it's not necessarily requisite for us to have a thriving discourse on private platforms.
We've talked about federated systems and even as I was talking about a little bit earlier, the blogs of yesteryear, yes, the old web, as we might talk about it, they, and, and even early host hosted sites didn't really have a lot, maybe banner ads, I guess.
And that, of course, blocking battles ensued, but there are ways of creating your own webpage and stuff like that without, if you can afford, and, and, and I would say it's remarkably more available as far as different types of ways to host your own website.
And, um, it's worth taking a look at if you want to model this.
And that's my last point, uh, just in observing our conversation here is we can also, um, call out, but model good behavior.
Like let's model, like show off, show examples of like, yeah, this is a cool way to do it.
This is how I do it and be playful and have fun with it.
Um, and I think that's a really good thing because the conversation often is like, well, it's this bad thing, this evil thing of advertising or being a self promoter.
Trying to come up with your own individual brand while, uh, you know, and being endorsed and all that, like kind of social, social media climbing where you've kind of, um, lauded.
It doesn't have to be that way.
And boom, here's an example of somebody that's kind of carved out their own niche.
They run their own stuff.
They, they do it in a unique and interesting way and, and are open about it.
There's plenty and plenty of examples and we can be playful and model that and show people like, this is another way to use the,
the network and the tools and the services that we have online.
Yeah, I, I think you raise some really good points there, but the whole concept of monetization, I just think is unhealthy as the goal.
And I think way too many of us focus on that.
I mean, look at us.
We are on a radio station that has no commercials.
We, we, we put out a magazine that has no ads.
We, we help out with a conference that encourages people to speak their minds and, and, and not advertise things.
Uh, you know, that is our, that is our, our life.
We're used to that.
Uh, and we believe that that's how you have good communication and, and the people who communicate with us seem to bear that out.
Uh, but there are other entities that have so many more listeners, so many more readers, so many more, uh, huge numbers, and they're making tons of money.
Uh, and, uh, that's what's driving them.
But I honestly think that the conversations we have here in WBAI and, and throughout all the other, uh, areas that we're involved with, uh, I think those are better conversations.
And I think that, you know, when you take away the whole monetization aspect of it, uh, you get more sincerity.
Unfortunately, that doesn't appeal to the people that are into the latest fad and, and whatever else, um, uh, it is driving whatever YouTube channel you're watching.
Uh, I just think that is part of the problem because people are thinking about, um, uh, being an influencer and what they can say and do to be trending.
And it's not really, it's not really soul searching.
It's not really, um, um, thinking, uh, outside the box.
Uh, it's not really expanding who you are as a person.
Some of it's quite good.
Some of it is interesting, but when monetization is the goal is, is, is the main aspect of it all.
It's no better than commercial TV where it's just about selling advertisements and not about content.
True content shouldn't require advertising.
The content should speak for itself.
And I think a lot of us are afraid to let the content speak for itself because of what it might say, what it might say about us, what it might say.
We, to, to other people out there who might object.
And, you know, we get that all the time.
People are always upset at us for, for saying one thing or another.
Uh, in fact, you know, I think we, uh, did we get a letter today?
Um, yeah, here's a letter that we just got today.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to read the, uh, the name.
I'm doing you a favor.
Believe me.
Uh, please stop crying about Trump.
No one cares.
Well, I've got some bad news for you, sunshine.
Trump isn't well.
He's going straight to hell.
And if anybody else wants to finish it, go ahead.
But, but, you know, we talk about things that are happening and we're not going to ignore what's happening.
And, uh, you know, maybe that loses us some listeners.
Fine.
But, you know, it's, um, it's, it's, it's something that needs to be addressed.
And when something is happening right in front of you, and we've had things happen right in front of us at this radio show that we felt compelled to report on.
Um, you know, we're not going to ignore it, uh, because that is part of the whole experience.
And I think that should extend to social media.
That should extend, uh, to YouTube channels, to whatever it is that you're expressing.
And we shouldn't be so obsessed with how much money we're making or how we monetize this or what ads go where.
Or God forbid we piss off Google or Facebook and, and, and get banned in one way or another.
Um, we are the ones in control and we have to maintain that control and never give that away to advertisers, to, uh, to, to massive tech companies, to governments, uh, to intimidating people, um, to, to, to pissed off Trump followers.
We want you to stop talking about all the things that are wrong these days.
Um, basically we need individuals to be out there.
I think that's the solution to this whole thing was individuals being individuals.
Rob also, I've, I've been told on many occasions that nobody cares about something or other.
I don't think they've even once been correct in that, in that, uh, assessment.
No, the people who, uh, who say nobody cares are the people who care the most, uh, about looking bad or about somebody they like looking bad.
Uh, because, uh, yeah, obviously if things aren't going well, they want you to shut up and not bring attention to it.
I I've heard it a million times, Alex.
I mean, I, I wonder, uh, I, I saw that email and I wonder about the, the listener that wrote it in.
And would they be complaining if we were talking about Biden, if we were talking about Clinton, if we were talking about Janet Reno, we go back to our shows.
You know, we talked about all of them just as critically as well, but we're in this weird situation right now where the controller of the surveillance state apparatus happens to be somebody acting like the bastard operator from hell.
I mean, I mean, I even wrote an article about this, about Trump basically centralizing powers unto himself and acting like an evil sysadmin, you know, the, and, and those of you who don't know who the bastard operator from hell is, he's kind of a nineties text file.
Um, I don't know, Rob, how would you describe it as kind of like a nineties text file extraordinaire?
I mean, there were all these tales, you go ahead.
You probably know more about this than I do.
Yeah, no, it's, it's pretty much, as you were saying this, it was almost a mythical figure and these adventures and crazy things that were happening to this person, almost a literary figure, like, like Zorro or Robin Hood.
Yeah, totally.
And, and what he always did was, you know, he, he undermined everybody around him, threw people under the bus, he manipulated people and he was constantly centralizing powers unto himself and abusing the systems around him for his own personal gain.
I mean, that's what we have happening right now to our government.
So of course, we're going to have to talk about it.
It would be negligent if we didn't.
And, um, I think we always try and tie it to our main interest of technology and liberty and freedom of speech, uh, anonymity, consumer rights, all of that.
It's, it's all related.
And you may not like the conclusions.
You may not like the questions.
You may not like the criticism, but it's part of the dialogue.
And, um, you know, we welcome people to be a part of that dialogue as well.
We don't care about advertisers because we don't have any, we don't care about influencers because we're not influencers.
We don't claim to be.
And maybe we, uh, only get 60 people on YouTube as opposed to a million people on YouTube.
We don't care.
You know, it's, it's, the dialogue is, is what we are invested in and we're happy to be able to do that.
Go ahead, Alex.
And the other thing to note too, is listen to the archives here, please, because, you know, we're not all singing from the same hymnal, right?
It's not, we're not all of the same exact political persuasion.
We have differing views on lots of different topics and we often get into arguments and debate them.
And yet we continue to be civil with each other.
We continue to be friends and it's totally okay that we disagree on, on many, many different topics on this show.
I mean, over the last 10 years that I've been on here, I mean, I, I can't count the amount of times, Emmanuel, that you and I have gotten into it on various topics.
Yeah, it's probably best not to bring it up.
This is going to get me upset.
And we're still, you know, very, very close friends, the best of friends.
And I've, you know, I think that's something to be said for that.
I think it's, it's very symbolic.
And I, and I think should be, you know, used as an exemplar for how people should respect each other and respectfully disagree with each other.
So, you know, we are going to continue talking about Trump.
We'll talk about all the other politicians that we think in our own personal opinions are doing stupid and idiotic things or things that are wrong.
That's what we're here to do.
And may I say good use of the word hymnal.
You don't hear that one often enough.
No, you don't.
I agree.
Thank you.
Okay, so now we have this situation where a billion identity records have been exposed in an ID verification data leak.
Yeah, you knew this was coming.
A billion identity.
Can you even wrap your brain around that?
We're talking about names, home addresses, date of birth, social security numbers, all of it.
And it may have been sitting on the open internet.
And it's a company called ID Merit, which I think they need to lose the last part of that.
And it's a company that claims to help businesses verify identities.
And they left a billion sensitive records across 26 countries just lying out there.
And if you knew the address, you could just access all of it.
The United States, we're talking about 203 million records left unsecured.
How many people are in the United States?
It's not many more than that, is it?
It's like 300 million, right?
Yeah.
So that's, we're probably, at least a couple of us are probably affected by that.
It involves the exact documents and details companies use to confirm you are really you.
But now anybody can be really you because they have the same information.
You feel more secure now giving out all that information to these companies?
This is what happens inevitably.
Well, so I did get a, your information has been found on the dark web, notice from my bank a couple days ago.
So I think I know why.
But also, very importantly, can the last person in the United States who hasn't yet had their ID leaked in one of these just turn out the lights on the way out?
I don't know anyone who hasn't been ID leaked at this point.
And it's, it's getting to the point where it's not funny, but it's funny because it has to be because this just keeps happening.
And, you know, my alerts on my bank app are like, hey, we found your stuff on the dark web.
We found your stuff on the dark web.
Like 15 notifications going back across a few years.
And they don't say where.
They're just like, hey, dude, it's out there if you want to go look for it.
I'm good.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, okay.
And like I said, it's inevitable.
If you give out your information to these companies, they will mishandle it at some point.
Which is why I think it's wise to have a public persona and a private persona.
Information you don't mind getting out.
And that's what you give to the companies that demand information.
And information you want to keep to yourself.
And that only is given to people that you genuinely trust.
Sure, accidents can happen with them as well, but not on such a scale as with banks.
A good example.
Back in the day when everybody had a landline, many of us had unlisted phone numbers.
Somehow you'd have to pay the phone company for an unlisted phone number.
I won't get into that.
But at least they didn't give out your phone number.
If somebody called information or looked in the phone book, they wouldn't be able to find your phone number.
However, if you gave that number to a bank, well, not only could they lose it or have it exposed in a data breach of one sort or another, they could sell it.
They could just sell that information to another bank, a credit reporting agency, whatever.
And there's your private phone number, no longer private.
So, you know, your privacy is only as good as the trust of the entities you give it to.
And that has not changed.
It hasn't.
And one thing that my dad did when he was alive, which I'm sure a lot of folks who are listening do or have done, is whenever he signed up for a list, he would tweak his name just a tiny bit.
So then he could track who was selling his information to whom by what tweak appeared on what junk mail, which I kind of loved.
Yeah.
And then, you know, people looking for him won't find him if they use that particular spelling or, yeah, it's just one other degree of privacy.
It's ingenious.
It's only mildly problematic.
He passed away eight years ago, and there's still junk mail for random misspellings of his name arriving at my mom's house.
I have to think he's laughing about that somewhere.
Hope so.
Anyway, researchers at Cyber News, which is a great name, a cybersecurity news and research publication, discovered an exposed MongoDB database on November 11th of last year that they believe belongs to ID Merit, which is a global identity verification provider that serves banks.
FinTech firms and other financial services companies.
ID Merit uses artificial intelligence tools to help businesses perform KYC.
Who knows what KYC means?
Go ahead, Alex.
You got to say it out loud.
Yeah.
I got to give me a second to unmute here.
You know, jeez.
Can I beat him to it?
Why don't you raise your hand after you're on mute?
Can I beat him to it?
You're like the guy at the stoplight.
Don't you even start.
I said it like five times.
As soon as the light turns green.
I will honk my horn.
Yes.
If you're in front of me, I'm going to do it.
Will you say what KYC means?
Unbelievable.
Yeah, I'll take my time.
Thank you.
It's know your customer.
As you can see, the tension between us is just growing by the week.
Yes, you're correct, Alex.
This time you are correct.
That is the identity verification process required when you open financial accounts.
It's like basically, did you live on 8th Street or 10th Street or 12th Street?
You got to pick the right one.
And somehow they know where you used to live or what kind of car you used to have.
So they have all this information if they were able to access that particular bit of data.
The database was not protected by a password.
No password.
Anyone who knew where to look could access it.
Inside were full names, home addresses, postal codes, dates of birth, national ID numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, gender information.
Some records also included telecom-related metadata and internal flags that may have referenced past breaches.
And as I mentioned, they affected people in 26 countries.
The United States had the highest number of exposed records.
Go USA.
More than 203 million.
But coming up behind us, Mexico, Philippines, Germany, Italy, France.
Yeah, researchers notified the company.
The database was secured the following day.
And there is currently no public evidence that criminals downloaded the data.
So maybe we're okay, but we don't know.
And it's that uncertainty, you know?
You never really know.
Alex?
Well, you don't know because the only people in possession of information about whether or not this data was actually accessed or downloaded would be the people that were in charge of actually securing that data.
Because they're the ones that have the log files about whether it was accessed.
But I think we have to assume that a lot of this data probably was accessed.
And if a billion records were out there in the open, whether it were breached or not, I mean, we've also just, I think, gotten past the point now where our identity verification systems are just totally broken.
This is why we have this proliferation of SIM swapping attacks that are hitting people, account takeovers that are easier.
Because just like you said, Emmanuel, these guys are completely in charge of all this information about our personal lives.
They know where we live.
They know where our first address was, what our first car was, et cetera.
So, you know, and they have copies of our driver's licenses now because of all these idiotic age verification and know your customer requirements, supposedly keeping us secure.
They're not.
They're keeping businesses compliant with silly rules.
That's what they're doing most of the time.
But this is why I think this battle over who owns your identity and how we authenticate ourselves is going to come to a head sometime soon.
You know, whether we're going to sign in continually with Google, with Facebook, we're going to use Meta's products, or are we going to do it ourselves?
And this is why I think we need to do it with cryptography.
We need to take back control of our own identity because you can rotate your keys and you can rotate these types of credentials if they're compromised.
You can't rotate your date of birth.
You can't rotate your social security number without extreme hassle, right?
You know, once they're dumped in a breach, you're kind of screwed.
Yeah.
But you can rotate your private cryptographic keys.
And these are the types of things we should think continuously about in terms of how we evolve our notion and understanding of identity.
Well, you know, key in that is making it simple for people who are not technically inclined.
And I think that's the mistake many of us always make is we come up with a great solution, but you have to do all kinds of, you know, jumping through hoops to get it to work properly.
And even those of us who are technically inclined have difficulty and there's complications.
But, you know, imagine explaining it to your grandmother.
If you can't do that, it's not going to work.
So that's what I think we should definitely focus our attention on.
Anyway, I just want to continue making people insecure and uncomfortable by saying that today an Iranian-linked hacking group claimed responsibility for a destructive cyber attack on U.S.-based medical device and services provider Striker, according to messages posted to the group's Telegram channel.
The Michigan-based company, with 56,000 employees and operations in 61 countries, said in a filing with the SEC that the attack caused disruptions and limitations of access to some systems and that the timeline for a full restoration is not yet known.
Staff and contractors said in social media posts that the logo of an Iran-linked hacking group has appeared on the company's login pages.
Wow, hacking groups with logos.
We have no indication of ransomware or malware and believe the incident is contained, the company's spokesperson said.
They tend to say things like that, though.
They did not comment on who may have been behind the attack.
Calls to the company's global headquarters in Portage, Michigan were answered with a recording that said the company is currently experiencing a building emergency.
Wow.
Okay.
Fears have mounted that Iran, which has sophisticated cyber espionage capabilities,
might retaliate against U.S. or Israeli entities after the two countries began bombing it.
Well, who could have thought that would happen?
Wow.
All right.
So there might be some Iranian retaliation using digital access and various companies.
So Striker, S-T-R-Y-K-E-R, U.S.-based medical device and services provider.
It's going to be an interesting next few days, I guess, with that company.
Any thoughts?
Go ahead, Alex.
I think it's interesting that we haven't seen more cyber-related retaliation from Iran in this instance.
You know, and maybe some of it relates to the fact that perhaps a lot of their infrastructure was taken out.
I think the fact that there's an Internet blackout in Iran itself probably contributes to a decrease in this type of cyber retaliation activity that we would ordinarily see.
We know that the Iranian APTs, the advanced persistent threat groups that have been out there, have used some, you know,
I would say less sophisticated means for compromising companies and things like lots of spray and pray types of approaches on things.
I think there are, you know, very sophisticated actors there.
But I do think that there's a risk calculus here that that's involved, because if there was some kind of truly destructive cyber attack against U.S. critical infrastructure,
well, that would risk major escalation.
And I think that they want to stay in the gray zone here.
So I think they're going to use things like wipers, ransomware, extortion against these softer types of commercial targets,
just like we see with Striker, as well as some nuisance DDoS attacks or distributed denial of service attacks.
Maybe some light espionage, some trade secret theft, some business interruption.
But other than that, I don't think we're going to see major escalation, because they know it probably will not go well for them.
Well, I don't know if that line of thinking necessarily holds.
I think, you know, people all over the world might be trying to do various things.
I'm surprised more hasn't happened, as you are as well.
And I'm sure there are more things afoot than we'll find out about.
Here's something, though, that's kind of interesting.
Hackers have reportedly broken into the networks of the FBI Thursday, citing an anonymous source.
CNN reported the breach affected a system used to manage wiretaps and foreign intelligence surveillance warrants.
Yeah, that's kind of a big deal.
The FBI identified and addressed suspicious activities on FBI networks,
and we have leveraged all technical capabilities to respond, said a Bureau of Spokesperson to TechCrunch.
Boy, if the FBI isn't secure, who is?
That is something.
But, of course, considering who's running it these days, I'm not surprised.
Oh, did I get political?
I'm sorry.
Didn't mean to.
Okay, we are out of time, just about.
We are going to continue on Overtime on YouTube, channel 2600, or just go to the link that's on the 2600.com webpage.
I wanted to close with an important news story.
Our good friend and hope keynote, Jello Biafra, you might have heard about this,
was rushed to the hospital over the weekend after suffering a stroke.
The punk rocker reassured fans he's in stable condition and recovering in the hospital.
I still have a lot of great stuff in me, but right now I got a lot of rehabbing to do, he says.
Biafra shared that the stroke, which caused the left side of his body to go completely numb,
was a result of high blood pressure.
It happened when he tried to get out of bed on Saturday night.
My left leg just collapsed under me and I fell to the floor, he said.
I couldn't even break the fall with my left arm because it wasn't working either.
I tried to hop back up again and couldn't.
The fact that he's talking about it, though, is a very good sign.
His record label, Alternative Tentacles, is speaking for the Alternative Tentacles family.
We're all just very thankful he is okay in getting the care that he needs.
As you may know, Jello Biafra was the lead singer and co-founder of the San Francisco punk band
Dead Kennedys from 1978 until when the band split in 1986.
And any current versions of that band are not the same thing, so just remember that.
I hope Jello is improving.
Definitely look forward to hearing from him again.
He has so much to say, so much to do.
And please keep an eye on high blood pressure.
It's important.
It's important to keep an eye on your health.
And that goes for all of us.
All right, we're moving on to Channel 2600 on YouTube at 8 o'clock.
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
Let's go out with a Jello Biafra song and wish him the best.
Good night, everyone.
I'm looking at my job, I'm so happy, for going by the day, Monday, baby.
Now it's time to take a break.
Come straight to far or you'll be late.
Thank you for your service and a long career.
Glad you gave us your best years.
Thank you for your service and a long career.
Thank you.


Spring-Bike BBSes, that's what I say.
Oh, we are back. We are here. We are on YouTube, I think.
Off the Hook Overtime, Emmanuel here. Kyle, are you there?
Hi.
In Signal Land, we have Rob, we have Gila, we have Alex.
We're all here. Hail, hail.
Okay, and are we on YouTube?
Still waiting for that little delay to catch up.
On my machine, we're Stargate.
Oh.
Wow, your machine's faster. How about that?
But let's wait for Rob, though.
Okay, we're there.
Rob has caught up. Good.
Alex, you have a special guest, it looks like.
Yeah, we do. Why don't you say hello?
Hello.
That doesn't help us identify the special guest, now, does it?
Yeah, why don't you introduce yourself, get a little closer.
I'm Sasha.
We know you, yes. You've been on before.
You've been on before.
You've been on the radio before.
You've been a guest on YouTube before.
And who are you, and what's your relationship to the show?
Don't you know these things, Alex?
I do, yeah.
I know him to say.
All right.
I'll put him on the spot.
I'm my dad's son.
You are?
You're your father's son?
That's right.
That's definitely one way of putting it.
That's right.
And who's your father?
Alex.
That's right.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Oh, it's you?
I didn't know this would be trivia night.
Now I get it.
All right.
You made that about as difficult as you possibly could.
All right.
Cool.
And this is the one that's about to become a teenager, right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
This is what happens when you keep feeding them.
Yes.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that's kind of cool.
Let me ask Sasha if you have any feelings about these age requirements that we're talking
about as far as access to social media and the internet and even operating systems.
I think it could prove to be a little bad because, as we know, in Australia, they've
made it up to be, how much, like 13 years old.
So I think kids are going to start getting really excited about using social media and
just start using it more when they reach 13.
Do you think they'll obey it before they're 13?
Oh, I think they'll get this type of a, what's it called?
A VPN, you mean?
No, no.
Yeah, maybe they'll get VPNs.
But also, I feel like they'll get this, I forgot what it's called.
But, like, they'll get this type of excitement to get social media.
I feel like this will well up inside them.
So then when they get it, they'll use it way, way, way more.
So you think it'll have the opposite effect.
Instead of, like, controlling it and kids, it's going to make kids want to use it all
the more.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I hadn't thought of it that way.
Right.
Because, like, you know, why people like to drink alcohol, you know, before you're 21.
It's something that's forbidden.
So it becomes more interesting and more exciting to do it because it's forbidden, right?
And that's why, you know, you slam a six-pack in the woods when you're 15 years old because
it's kind of exciting and you can drink, right?
You know, you guys remember doing that.
Of course, you know, we were all from Long Island.
These are the types of things that we do.
You know, just because we're from Long Island doesn't mean that we do that.
But, yeah, I mean, we knew.
Also, I would like to remind you that we're not all from Long Island.
That's true, too.
That's true.
Yeah, nobody's perfect.
Some of us are from the Midwest and, you know, they have their habits as well.
So there's different things.
Yeah.
So, but in Germany, you know, drinking age is, what, 16?
And they're a lot more mature when they reach, say, 18 because they already are allowed to
do these things.
And it's, you know, I guess some people can't handle it, but some people are able to.
And it's, you know, it doesn't really define who they are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, when I lived in England for a year when I was, I guess I was 19 to 20, it was
amazing.
I mean, to be able to drink at that age and responsibly and just kind of get used to going
and having a drink at a pub or, you know, out with your friends, whatever.
And then coming back to New York, you know, when I was 20 and had to wait an entire year
again just to be able to go, it's, it's, the whole thing seemed just so silly to me.
And, you know, and there really is something that's just inherently contradictory or some
sort of perverse result when you can enlist in the military at 18 and you can die for
your country, but you are just too, too young to have a drink.
I think you can enlist at 17.
You just can't join until you're 18.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that's, you know, I think all of these instances where age has been implemented
as the way of deciding when you're mature enough, they don't seem to work.
You know, I remember when the drinking age was 18 in New York and then it went to 19 and
then a year later it went to 21.
And there were people who actually had turned 18 just when it went up to 19 and they were
about to turn 19 and then they went up to 21.
And I think some of them just left the country at that point.
Gila, go ahead.
So I did want to take a moment and say hello to the 57 people who are with us right now.
That's actually really a shockingly high number for six minutes in.
And to share a comment from our friend Zap in the chat who says, love how Sasha is playing
it cool.
Like he doesn't know how to get around the restrictions in front of his dad.
Clever kid.
You think your dad is going to keep you from using the internet because you're not of a
certain age?
He's, he's cooler than that, isn't he?
Yeah.
Good.
Good to hear.
Good to hear that.
If that changes, let us know.
Yeah.
Let us know right away if that changes.
He's not under any duress at the moment.
Uh-huh.
You know, if he said that himself without you staring intently at him like that, I'd believe
it a lot more.
But also I had one other thing I was thinking of, which was I was on a teen trip to another
country when I was in high school.
And one of the forms that your parents had to sign was the smoking form because there was
not an age restriction on cigarette purchases there.
And if your parents were okay with you smoking, because this was in the nineties, they could sign
a form and our counselors kept them.
And if your parents said it was okay for you to smoke, then by gum, you could smoke when
there was no age restriction.
It was gross.
My high school had a smoking shed.
Can anyone else say that?
Ward Melville High School had a smoking shed and, and teachers and students would hang out
in it.
In fact, once the principal even walked in and, and people were smoking pot and, uh, he just
made like he didn't know what was going on and was looking for somebody.
Uh, things were different.
Things were very different.
Alex.
Yeah, we, we had one of those in my high school as well.
There was like this, this outdoor area that, you know, I guess, uh, ironically had a, some
kind of ceiling over it too, which doesn't make for a good smoking environment presumably,
but, but that's where, uh, you know, all the bad kids hung out and the teachers would go
out there and smoke too.
And it was just, it was normal.
It was a, it was a normal thing.
I remember, uh, going to, um, classes at Stony Brook in my freshman year and professors and
students in these small classrooms would be smoking like chimneys and it, it, it really
annoyed me, but it was normal.
It was something, you know, I don't think that was a good thing at all.
I think, you know, when you're forced to inhale smoke and it was true in restaurants and bars
and, and on trains, uh, it was awful.
It was really awful.
So, you know, uh, I'm all for people having the freedom to do what they want, but not to,
uh, force other people to, um, uh, experience that with them.
And especially if there's no way out.
All right.
I don't know where all this came from.
Uh, but, uh, yeah, so we were talking about, um, about, uh, changing, um, uh, the way people
look at social media, maybe not having so much advertising or any advertising.
And we were thinking, and we're talking about it during the, uh, the break that, uh, you know,
BBS is actually kind of, you know, uh, typified that it was a forum for people to go back and
forth with various things.
Yeah.
It was slow.
Uh, it was something that only one person could access at a time, but it wasn't controlled
by any massive company.
It was controlled by the people who ran the BBS.
I think something more in that direction would be healthier.
Rob.
Yeah.
I mean, I was, uh, I, I want to shout out my pals on Mastodon because, um, they're, you
know, every Mastodon instance has its own rules and a lot of them will boot you off.
If you're an advertiser, they won't allow commercial entities on.
And critically, your feed is just the accounts that you follow.
There's no, there's no extra stuff slipped in there by an algorithm to, uh, you know,
get in front of your eyeballs because someone paid for it.
Um, they end up self-supporting little things.
Either somebody runs it as a hobby or the community, you know, pitches in and helps keep
it going in a nonprofit sort of way.
And that, that was how a lot of BBS has worked back in the day.
That's how a lot of, uh, fed diverse instances work nowadays.
And, uh, you know, it's one of the places where you can kind of see what, what things
are like with, uh, that sort of attitude again.
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean, that seems like a healthy, uh, healthy way to deal with it, Alex.
Yeah.
You know, I, I missed the, the days of BBSs and I was just looking this up.
Um, you know, it's, it's kind of interesting.
There's still this weird BBS culture.
It's very different obviously because it's not on, it's not through modems anymore.
Right.
But it, it, there are telnet based BBSs or BBSs that you can SSH into and, and have that
similar experience.
And they, they run, um, software called Synchronet, Mystic, WWIV, you know, remember back in the
day there was Renegade, there was God, I can't remember the other.
I just remember Renegade, Rob, you're shaking your head.
What were the other BBS softwares that were Wildcat was a big one too.
Yeah.
I remember WWIV definitely.
We used to run that.
I think at WWIV, I remember that too.
Oh really?
Yeah.
WWIV.
Really?
I don't remember that one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'd never heard of that until now, but, um, but there is this culture of success.
I think it'd be pretty cool to, to play around with it, but it's different when anybody
can turn it into a machine.
I mean, it's just an open port, right?
It was, it was kind of unique when you had to wait for somebody to get off the BBS so
you could go on and collect your mail and interact with people.
It was your time on somebody else's machine.
But I assume with the way you're, you're describing that more than one person can access
it at once.
I would, I would think so.
Right.
I mean, that would be really unique if could have only one.
If somebody can, uh, can come up with an address, we'll, we'll, we'll share it tonight.
And maybe that can be our, our BBS home for a little while.
That'd be pretty cool.
I think we should have an off the hook overtime BBS system.
Okay.
Well, you suggested it so you get to run it.
Easy.
Easy.
I'll happily be the sysop.
Why not?
Yep.
DLFH.
Yep.
You just wait.
Oh boy.
I look forward to, uh, uploading text files compressed with the least compression.
So it gets my ratio up.
Yeah, that's right.
Yep.
Honestly, there are like a ton of examples and this is possible.
People have emulated this stuff.
There are, um, probably even like retro hardware sites that are hosting the ability to connect
and access older stuff online.
Like it is really, um, it's, it's a great time to try to interconnect and build these things
and play around with them.
And I really mean what I said earlier about like, just like show off, let's like have
examples of cool ways to communicate or whatever, tell your stories or share information like,
um, that, that is a nod in, in a certain way to, to like BBS is and that, that way of
communicating, but there's all kinds of ways to implement it.
So I, I really encourage people to play around with it.
It doesn't have to be any, any way that someone decided at a third party.
You, you can kind of make it up and, and innovate in the process.
And, and, you know, one thing that gets overlooked or, or often forgot, forgotten was, you know,
the whole, not only just the, the old school 1990s and eighties aesthetic of it, but there's,
there was a real art scene associated with BBSs back in the day.
I mean, you had ice, you had acid, right?
I mean, I was, I was part of both of them at some point, but I was, I used to run telecom
as like the resident phone freak for all these artists for acid, which was ANSI creators in
demand back then.
And some of the artwork that these guys through ANSI would create still to this day, it was
mind bogglingly beautiful and just absolutely amazing.
And to think that they did it literally bit by bit there, you know, one ANSI code to another
was really kind of extraordinary that they would create this really beautiful, ornate
BBS art that would load just, you know, you know, line by line by line, you know, on your
screen.
There was something about that aesthetic and something about that art that I think, you
know, will always stand the test of time.
And I think that acid and some of these groups still exist today and are still creating art.
It's just not as widely appreciated.
Sorry, we've got a bunch of people in the chat talking about how there absolutely are
still modem-based BBSs to be found out there.
And I want to ask our folks out there, where can we find them?
What's a good place to start looking if you're getting back into this after a while or just
interested in checking it out for the first time now?
If someone out there wants to actually give us a phone number, we'll try the number first
and then we'll say it publicly so people can hear it, hear a modem pick up in 2026.
Absolutely.
I was going to mention the phones are ready to go whenever we want to get to that.
No, they're not.
I haven't.
Well, I'm ready to go on that side.
Okay.
Also, yeah, we had been talking about a listing of WebSDR, that's for radio and remote listening,
which is an incredible thing that's hosted in a lot of ways.
And there was a particular site we mentioned that is basically a directory listing of a
lot of web accessible SDR stations or relays or whatever they're called.
But is there a directory of BBSs that are currently on?
Has someone curated like a current list so that, okay, here's a bunch of numbers.
Are there multiple versions of that?
Please share that.
We can share it too.
Go ahead.
We had a chime in in the chat from SindWS or SindDWS.
I apologize.
Do chime in with your preferred pronunciation.
But apparently Tuxedo Cat Lounge is a good active wildcat-based BBS with Telnet and modem
connection.
Telnet BBS guide is good for a list.
There you go.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, this sounds like something interesting.
Then I'm seeing C64 specific ones too, 1015H here.
I'm just going to keep reading because I don't understand any of this.
I think 1015H is someone telling what time it is where they are.
Yeah.
Oh, yes.
If we had WW4 and then 1015H, you're like, which one are you running?
So, yeah, go ahead.
Someone else just chimed in and said, love me some BBS.
I use a TNC ROM on a Commodore 64 to connect to Telnet BBSs.
That is awesome.
Well, you know, last week we were talking about SDR, Software Defined Radio, and some
great sites that enable you to basically tune a radio in various parts of the world.
And we started listening to an Iranian number station or the frequency that had an Iranian
number station and started hearing this weird sound, which later turned out to be confirmed
as jamming.
And we were listening to it live and heard this.
Now, the radio signal with the number station first started broadcasting on February 28th,
about 12 hours after the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran.
I'm not sure how people are able to pinpoint exactly when a particular frequency started
broadcasting, but there are people out there who are very dedicated.
On a scratchy shortwave signal almost twice a day, I believe the frequency was 7910kHz.
In the early morning and early evening, uncoordinated universal time, a man's voice can be heard
speaking Persian, counting out a series of apparently random numbers.
Numbers are read out for varying stretches of time, followed by a pause, in which the
word in Persian for attention is spoken three times.
The mystery of the transmission transfixed many in the global community of amateur radius
loose, who have traded notes and tips on the signal, who's behind it and what its purpose
might be.
Then, beginning on March 4th, which is actually exactly one week ago when we were listening,
the signal started to be jammed.
I have to wonder, was it one of our listeners?
No, because we started talking about it and we tuned to it and then it started being jammed while
we were listening.
Well, we have listeners in unlikely places, so perhaps.
Yeah, we sure do.
There was a screech of electronic noise that made it all but impossible to hear the numbers.
The original transmission paused for a period of time, then moved to another shortwave
frequency, because you can do that in the shortwave world.
So, yeah, now we have to find it again.
But the number stations are really interesting.
It's just basically people reading numbers and if you have a one-time pad, you're able to
translate that.
And if you don't, you're not able to.
It's simple.
And it's also pretty damn secure.
Yes, Alex.
So, in thinking about this, and also there was a pretty excellent Financial Times article
about this particular shortwave station yesterday that came out and had some recordings of it,
of the actual transmissions, as well as some older transmissions.
And it got me into thinking, like, God, what the hell?
You know, way back a long time ago, 20-something years ago, when I lived in D.C., and coincidentally
at the time, I was working at the CIA way back then, and something came out called the
Conant Project.
Do you guys remember the Conant Project by any chance?
Have you ever heard of this?
No.
So the Conant Project...
You can ice cream and a thing you can hold, right?
No, a little bit different.
This was a guy who, back in the early 2000s, had compiled a huge archive of recordings of
number stations, and then put them on these various CDs, and then released the recordings
out to the internet, as well.
So you could freely download the Conant Project number stations recordings, and they're pretty
cool, and they're still out there.
And, you know, you would hear the recordings like the Lincolnshire Poacher, you know, that
would predate, I'm sorry, that would be like the preamble to a British number station coming
out.
But, in any event, I digress.
I think the Conant Project is really cool.
We should maybe play some of their stuff, if we can, if we can find it.
And I'm sure we can find it, probably pretty easily.
It's C-O-N-E-T, and then Project, spelled like Project.
But we were always thinking about, because this was a transmission in Farsi that would
be coming, and that the transmission started at the time when the war with Iran had started,
we were operating under the assumption that this was an Iranian number station.
It's very interesting that it could be the opposite of this.
And this is what the Financial Times article had intimated yesterday, was that some people,
based on the time it would take for the transmission to get from one place to another, had crudely
triangulated the location of the broadcaster of the shortwave signal to someplace in Western
Europe, as opposed to Iran, which would indicate that, in all likelihood, the number station was
not Iranian in origin at all, because in order for an Iranian intelligence operative to do
that at such capacity, they would probably need the OK or some kind of authority from
the local government in order to broadcast at that power level.
So in all likelihood, this was an intelligence agency from the Western world, possibly the
United States, that could be broadcasting over to Iran and trying to communicate with Iranian
assets in Tehran or elsewhere as a means of communication, because the Internet is down,
the phone lines are down.
You can't, you know, meet with these people, obviously, in person anymore.
And so shortwave radio would be a way.
And this is this is something that is not my own making or mine.
This is what the Financial Times article had had stated yesterday.
So this isn't anything classified at all.
But in all likelihood, this was Western intelligence agencies broadcasting out numbers to Iranian
assets.
And there is also the possibility that Western intelligence agencies started this number station
for the sole purpose of making Iran think that they were broadcasting out instructions to
operatives internally in Tehran when maybe there were actually none.
So the whole thing could really also be a subterfuge.
And the jamming that we were hearing was very likely Iran jamming that that number station.
Well, it's pretty interesting that we were kind of right in the midst of all of this last
week while we're on the air.
Let me also point out that the story I just read was titled Random Numbers Persian Code,
a Mysterious Signal Transfixes Radio Sleuths and Intelligence Experts.
And that story came from RFERL.org, which is Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
So what if what you're saying is true, Alex, then then not only are is U.S.
intelligence involved in this signal, but they're also involved in putting out stories
that make it seem like they don't know what the signal is.
I mean, that's that's a level of subterfuge that I didn't think we were capable of.
But I guess, you know, U.S.
intelligence can do anything.
And right now, you might hear some static in the background.
That is us listening to the frequency from last week, 7910 kilohertz live.
And we're listening to that from the Netherlands.
So that's what it sounds like right now.
So if somebody out there, one of our listeners has a jammer, go ahead, turn it on.
Let's let's hear you.
But I think they might have moved to a different frequency.
And if anyone knows that frequency, let us know and we'll we'll tune to it.
That noise isn't too distracting, isn't it?
It's it.
Hey, it's better than the ringing.
Um, I would also you want to I'll bring the crossbar ringing back.
I can do that.
I will absolutely cry.
Um, also would like to point out that, Alex, a bunch of people have mentioned the Conant
Project, remembering it.
Um, and Tim in Connecticut points out there is a Conant Project wiki page.
Um, and people are asking, um, the 2600 BBS archive voice, the voice BBS archive.
Is that, um, something that can be accessed online or is it just the thing you can buy?
Uh, well, we don't have the bandwidth to have it online.
People would be constantly connecting to it and listening because there's a lot there.
Uh, and, um, you know, uh, we, we, we spent years putting it together.
Uh, and, uh, we'd like to offer it for free, obviously, but we don't, you know, we don't
want to have to pay to offer it for free.
So there's only so much we can put into this.
Um, so all it takes is one person buying it and putting it online at a place where they
have the bandwidth to handle it.
Uh, nobody's done that yet.
Uh, and, and I think about three people have bought it.
So, uh, you know, we need a little more community here and, uh, maybe, uh, maybe more of us can
hear it, but it's there.
It's all structured.
There's thousands of messages and we, we want them out there.
That's why we did it.
And the link for the BBS archive, the BBS voice archive, um, is now in the chat.
If anybody wants to pick that up for themselves.
Well, you can give the link out, I guess, cause even I can, I'm the only one who can do that.
Yeah.
I don't, I don't even know what it is.
Well, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a place you go to, you click on it.
It takes you to a website, but that's not important right now.
Okay.
Don't give it out.
I don't care.
Um, it's stored at 2600.com.
It's in the store.
Um, just search for voice BBS, I guess.
Search for voice BBS.
It's right there.
All right.
Uh, we're going to, um, uh, activate the phone line.
Uh, who wants to give out the phone number?
Sasha.
I don't think he knows the phone number.
You know what?
If none of you know the phone number, I'm not going to take calls.
Oh, she's going to do it.
It's 802-321-HACK.
Okay.
But it has to be numerical.
802-321-4225.
All right.
802-321-4225.
Thank you.
And, uh, the phone lines are now open.
Uh, if you're out there and you wish to, uh, share something with us, please give us a call.
And we'll be happy to hear from you.
Um, yes, Rob.
And while, while we're waiting, uh, someone did mention that, uh, to anyone that does have the 2600 voice PBS files, look up, uh, M11212 and M11213 to hear young me talking.
Um, because I did, I did use the voice PBS back in the day.
I don't remember what I said.
I hope it wasn't too, uh, ridiculous, but, uh, I assure people I'm much older and wiser these days.
Okay.
Um, and just to clarify, um, someone says, um, are you all asking us to buy it and then share it publicly?
We're not asking you to do it.
We're just saying that, like, that's the thing that you could do and no one would be upset if you did that.
Right.
Yeah.
It's not, it's not forbidden to do that.
And, uh, it is available to get the complete thing.
Uh, there are examples online and yeah, we put a lot of effort and got a lot of help trying to organize it and recover it and keep it, uh, so that people could listen to it.
So anyway, yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's up to you.
Do what you want, do what you like, listen to it in private.
Share it freely is what we're, what we're trying to say here.
And, uh, I think, um, you know, that's, that's the best way we can, uh, we can spread it around.
Okay.
We have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Speak up, please.
Go ahead.
Yes.
All right.
Well, um, I was wondering if, uh, aside from all you've been talking about on the radio and now, if anybody heard, uh, yesterday's, uh, uh, press conference by our enlightened,
American leader, uh, what I found interesting about that was the defanged and by pledge signed with the Pentagon, uh, now muted, uh, media.
Uh, this, uh, this, this has been the most underreported war other than, you know, in the course of, uh, what needs to be, uh, essentially propaganda.
Uh, what needs to be told to the people here, um, what was, what I found extremely interesting was that, um, um, nobody questioned Trump on his, um, phone call with Putin.
And his various claims, you know, the, the most bombastic, uh, of course, attracted a lot of attention, but factually, he said that they have nothing left, uh, all their raiders are being taken out.
Well, how are they continuing to target infrastructure in the Gulf states?
And since you've talked to Putin, have you asked him what kind of targeting help he's offering to the Iranians?
Um, why nobody got, not even the guts, but the imagination to ask a question like this.
And, you know, it's obvious the facts were laid out there.
I, I, I don't follow the bastard and I just happened to be on a site that was carrying it live.
And normally I don't even look at the video.
It's an Italian newspaper site, but I saw it.
I looked at the time.
I said, Hmm, it's 11 o'clock in Italy.
It's five o'clock here.
Maybe it's life.
And sure enough, it was.
And, um, yeah, I was just shocked by the bevy.
The, the, the, the, it was like, um, a pack of dogs were screaming at, uh, at every chance they got.
And nobody, I mean, I'm sure it's highly scripted.
And by now they only pick the people that they know are going, I'm not going to ask any real questions.
But I was really just shocked by how banal this would have been for anybody who was paying any kind of attention.
And yet nobody came up with this.
Well, I will, I, I, I have to contribute tonight.
Okay.
Yeah, go on.
I, um, I agree with most of what you say, but I think we're talking about the same press conference.
There was one instance where there was a New York Times reporter, uh, who asked him to clarify what, that he was saying that Iran somehow fired a Tomahawk missile and hit that girl's school.
Uh, and, uh, you know, the, the, the Times reporter was not letting that go.
So, and I was impressed, I was impressed that somebody actually was holding him to account.
I was even more impressed that, I guess, because there was a guy, Trump did not attack the reporter, uh, and, and, and simply said that, uh, if I'm wrong, I'll, uh, you know, I'll, I'll say so when I, when I find out more.
Uh, but what he was, what he was claiming was utterly ridiculous and the reporter was having none of it.
And I, I, I, I encourage people to find that in that press conference because it's really impressive.
Well, yes, but I, I, you know, I, I beg to differ in, in this regard in that, first of all, it's an acquired from the day one, it was known that it was a Tomahawk and nobody questioned Trump again on his assertion.
Oh, all kinds of people have the Tomahawks.
And today, finally, somebody came out and corrected the record.
I think it was the Pentagon itself to say, no, we are the only one who have the Tomahawks.
That's one of our missiles.
The only question is, how do we target it wrong?
So, but, but that to me was already acquired through, you know, even just reading the press releases that came out.
I don't call them news reporting from the beginning of the war.
And by the way, interestingly, no one is pointing out that this is exactly what Putin did.
He still doesn't call the war in Ukraine war.
And our elected officials, so to say, are also not calling this a war.
Well, I mean, they keep calling it a war themselves.
They can't keep track of what it is.
Right, right, right.
No, but they don't use the word war.
You know, they don't say where war will be run.
And by the way, they absolutely do say that.
They absolutely do say that.
It's been caught many times.
They slip up quite a bit.
But, okay, that's good.
You're paying closer attention than I am.
And I want to add that, you know, to the list of war crimes and crimes against humanities that have been committed in the last 10 days,
there is also the one of piracy because, you know, they are sinking ships without any notification and any declaration of war.
And last I checked, you know, these are people get tried and hung for this kind of stuff.
But I guess not anymore.
I just wanted to point all that out.
And I'll listen to the rest of the show.
And thank you for all the good work you do.
Thank you.
Thanks for your call.
Uh, 802-321-4225.
Uh, who had something?
Alex, you had something.
Go ahead.
Alex, you got to, you got to unmute.
No, we were, we didn't mean to chime in.
We would rather take a, uh, another phone call.
But it's always good to hear from, from that caller.
Sasha and I have been, uh, looking at some old acid art packs in the meantime as well from, from back in the day.
On the site 16 color colors, which is 16 colo.rs, um, and which is pretty interesting archive of ANSI art going back to the 90s.
And we're taking a look at the, uh, the acid packs from 1994, 1995 and seeing my old hacker handle in the, uh, in the telecom section.
Is that one six or is it spelled out?
Uh, one six.
Yeah.
One six.
So one six C O L O dot R S.
And where is dot R S?
I think that's Serbia.
I believe it's Serbia.
Is it Serbia?
Yeah.
Pretty sure it's the Serbian CCTLD.
Okay.
I think so.
You can look it up.
Go ahead, Kyle.
A lot of that stuff has been preserved and it's, it's really cool to, to look at and get kind of, uh, inspired and maybe create your own stuff and kind of develop a little bit of the, the same style and, and, and make it, make it rework it in, in your own way.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, we do have a call now.
We have a call.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hi, I just want to say, I am a fan of your publication and also of the radio show and a first time caller and got to say, I love the work that you're doing.
It's very informative and just overall love it.
But when it comes to all these age verifications, you know, one thing I got to thinking of is when you have an enterprise or you have like a shared facility, like a, I don't know, a university, how are they going to do age checks on like batch rollouts?
It's an enterprise for all these machines when it's different people because they're not necessarily, like when you would be an individual home user, how, how does that even work in enterprise?
Is that they've got this mapped out?
Because if this is on all systems, you'd think it would be all of them.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It seems like it's a ready-made nightmare for anyone trying to set it up or procure equipment because you have to take all of these new kinds of baked-in policies, like, in the actual product.
Uh, when you're making large purchasing decisions and trying to forecast and, and, uh, keep the life cycle for whatever institution you're operating.
No, that's a, that, that, that's, uh, incredibly good point.
Or, um, really, uh, just kind of the level of havoc that, uh, this has the potential of, of, uh, unleashing on, on people that are just trying to get tools in front of people, like at a library and, and, and so forth.
Is this, is that kind of what you're getting at?
Yeah, because I'm just trying to picture going, like, if you have, like, a whole rollout of brand new machines, let's say you're a new company and you're rolling out 50 machines and you have an automated file, that is just wacko with how that would even work.
I just can't even imagine how you would even try this from a technical standpoint.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, this is a, this is a great example of the rules being put together and announced without any consideration for how the tech actually works, how the implementation of this would actually work.
It's very easy to just go and say, you need to do such and such a thing without considering the technological realities behind what it is you're saying.
It seems like the first default setting that, that someone like that would, would change.
Yeah, because you understand, well, you all probably do from an administrative standpoint, being a system.
I mean, this is just, like, hair-pulling and, like, okay, so how do we, how do we even, because I don't think any of this has been actually thought out very thoroughly.
Yeah.
When it comes to enterprise.
I think we're getting that, definitely.
And, really, that's my only other point.
I wanted to thank you for being on the show, and, again, I love you all.
You make my Wednesday nights very fun to sit there and phone in and listen.
It's a great way to do a Wednesday and get informed.
There's no other, you know, media bias.
That's great to hear.
And can we ask where you're calling from?
I'm in Orlando, Florida, and you can call me Little Miss Carol.
Okay.
Wow.
Well, that's awesome.
That's something good out of Florida, for sure.
And we hope you keep listening.
No worries.
Like I said, my friends, I actually go to the 2600 Club that just started here in Orlando.
A great group.
I'm happy we finally got one down here.
And I like to joke around that I'm a resident goth.
But I absolutely love the show.
Uh-huh.
Great.
Yeah, I was aware that there are meetings in Orlando now, so that's really good to hear.
Oh, it's great.
The energy and the people are so friendly.
I mean, it's really amazing.
Cool.
Awesome.
Well, best of luck with that.
And, yeah, we hope to do more things in the months ahead.
And, you know, we'll have all kinds of content to share.
All right.
Thanks again for letting me be on the air with you all.
It's been really fun.
All right.
Take care.
Good night.
Bye.
Isn't that great when we get a call from a place like Orlando?
I mean, it's not, you know, it's not that weird a place, but it's, you know.
We live in a big country.
We live in a big country.
It's not a monolith.
There's a lot of interesting people all over.
Let's just not forget that.
Mm-hmm.
Calls are, lines open.
802-321-4225.
Rob?
I'm having a great time looking at that 16-color site, but also I want to shout
telnetbbsguide.com, which somebody gave out in the chat when we were talking about
modem-based BBSs.
And this is an excellent site.
There are so many BBSs listed here.
A lot of them have telnet addresses, but also modem numbers that you can dial in in
the old manner.
You can search the list.
You can browse the list.
You can filter the list.
It is, there is a lot of stuff on here that I'm going to have to, you know, lose days of
my life playing with.
Wow.
You know, we're not picking up anything on this shortwave frequency, 7910.
So if anyone knows of another frequency where the number station might have gone to, or even
the jammer, we'll be happy to tune to that.
We're listening from the Netherlands right now.
But boy, it just, it sounds kind of empty, doesn't it?
I like the sound.
I do.
But I wouldn't mind hearing some beeps and numbers, maybe.
A number or two.
Yeah, a number or two.
That's all.
Wow.
Talking of sounds, how are we sounding this week?
Have you had that mystery noise going on?
Oh, you don't sound tinny anymore.
I heard it once.
I heard that noise once, but it was nothing like before.
So it's definitely an improvement.
I got a better mic hooked up.
But also, we think we've narrowed it down to plumbing in the walls.
So there may not be a heck of a lot we can do about it.
Wow.
Well, you know, tear down the walls and find the source.
That's what you have to do.
We have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Can you hear me fine?
We hear you just fine.
Go ahead.
Okay.
This is Cindy.
I was in the chat earlier and, you know, first time caller, you know, a long time.
Listener.
Well, not long time, you know.
Listener.
Okay.
But, you know, I was more wanting to talk about alternate forms of communication like we were talking about earlier.
And because, you know, we were talking about setting up BBSs and stuff like that.
But I feel like a lot of that is also a good way to circumvent, you know, a lot of the digital censorship right now, especially the age verification stuff in regards to, you know, forcing it up on operating system maintainers.
This is a big issue because it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how these systems work from, you know, the very highest level of, you know, legislation.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Like they explicitly don't understand that much of this either isn't possible to enforce or it's not.
And the other issue when they're doing this in Colorado is they're saying there's going to be heavy fines for anyone who doesn't comply, which, you know, what's going to happen then?
Are distro maintainers basically just going to go online and, you know, I assume they're going to have some sort of a checkbox on their, you know, download sites that say something like,
I declare I don't reside in the state of Colorado or the state of California or something like that, depending on, you know, wherever these are implemented.
And especially, I feel like 2600 should definitely set up some sort of either, you know, voice BBS or text-based BBS or something of that form, again, just to give people, you know, an alternate way to communicate and meet each other and stuff like that.
It would be great if the voice BBS was the answer to all this.
We just went right back to it.
But obviously, it has to change with the times and grow more capacity and things like that.
But, you know, I think that's a good way of thinking, you know, that we can come up with a solution ourselves.
Yeah, definitely.
And as for, you know, it's a way you can play your part.
As for, you know, something like Telmont BBS Guide, it's probably very interesting because a lot of these kinds of communities and, you know, concepts that I've thought to have been, you know,
either lost the time or very not prevalent anymore are totally still around in just smaller circles with less publicity.
Like even the, you know, there's still a decently vibrant phone-freaking scene that's just, you know, there's not much publicity anymore, but it's very much still a thing.
All of these scenes have never really gone away.
A lot of the stuff that you can find on these networks has never even fully gone away.
And you really just have to know where to look for it all.
Can you describe what the phone-freaking scene is like today?
It all still boils down to exploration in the very end.
And not only exploration of, you know, the U.S. telephone system, but, for example, calling internationally.
Even, you know, stuff like blue-boxable trunks, stuff like that, are still in use in very, very rural parts of, you know, like,
there are still electromechanical, you know, step-by-step switches with SF signaling out in rural parts of Russia and, you know, other, like, eastern countries,
especially eastern countries, a lot of strange signaling in South America.
And, of course, in the U.S., still, it's still this massive network with tons of, you know, strange recordings, strange things to hear, strange hardware to call into, stuff like that.
And, you know, everyday people are still just finding strange ways to pick at it.
If you come across any phone numbers that go to any step or crossbar switches out there, we would love to hear them and call them.
That sounds amazing.
I do actually have a few, and I have one, but I'm not sure if I should share it.
Technically, I can ask right now.
Well, you can email us, OTH at 2600.com, and not share with the whole world, I guess.
And we won't abuse it, we promise.
Yeah, no, I'm sure.
But, yeah, a lot of this old equipment is still in use and just, you know, as I said, you just need to know where to look for things.
Oh, you know, Alaska's a good place, especially, like, outside of the continental United States.
There's still a lot of, like, the Alaskan telcos still have really strange stuff.
There's loop around, stuff like that, you know, especially in places like Alaska.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Okay, I thought everything was completely digital in the States, even Alaska and Hawaii.
I mean, even in the States, there's still some analog in use.
Very, very rare, but, you know, weird corners of the network, weird stuff shows up,
because you can only imagine how massive it is and how long this has been going on.
I mean, yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the telephone.
I didn't know that.
Oh, wow, I missed that.
That's 150th anniversary of the telephone.
Yeah, March 10th.
Graham Bell made the first, you know, successful phone call.
Wow.
Okay, well, let's mark that now, then, a day late, but still, 150 years.
It was very significant.
150 years, and, you know, so much of this is still around.
So many of these aspects of the network that, by most people, were thought to have died out years and years ago.
Uh-huh.
Wow.
Well, that's fascinating info.
It really is.
Kyle?
Yeah, I love the discussion you're talking about.
That's really what hacking has always been about, and what, you know, stuff like this has always been about.
It's just exploration, understanding systems, and understanding, you know, ways to use them that are, you know, above what's, I guess, you know, the norm.
Yeah, oftentimes there's so many layers of the networks that are built on top of the same bits of infrastructure, so they don't really go away.
They get retired.
They're kind of pushed over, pushed aside, but a lot of the stuff remains in place if it didn't sort of succumb to another layer of a new service.
So, you know, that's a great way to characterize it.
Really, thank you for that explanation.
Yeah, yeah, it really sums it up well.
In the physical sense, like you were kind of talking about right there.
Now, there are very few, you know, electromechanical switches in the network that you can still call into, stuff like that.
But I'm sure plenty of these switches are still just left around rotting in central offices all over the world because many of these things are so large they can't manage to move them out.
It's not worth it.
They have enough space for, you know, other equipment because it's gotten so much smaller, for example.
So a lot of this is just left practically abandoned in a CO somewhere, for example.
That's an excellent point.
And, you know, if you look at central office, every neighborhood has a central office.
Track it down.
It's usually like a brick building.
It has a phone company logo or something on it.
But it's much bigger than it needs to be because today's digital switches, they're tiny.
And these are buildings filled with, you know, the equivalent of mainframes, I guess.
A lot of space.
And, yeah, how do you move that out of there?
Why do you move that out of there?
They're inside literally rotting.
Maybe we can find some kind of use for them.
You know, get the old phone never going again.
A few things that I recommend definitely are two things.
On Verizon's website, if you look up Verizon network disclosures, they're mass retiring a lot of 5ESSs in, you know, some of their territories.
So they list, you know, you can find the exchanges that are used for those and just kind of call around them, try to find anything interesting on the switches they're retiring.
It's all in good fun.
And there's also a website, Freakscan.com, which is basically for, you know, people who are interested in this to post interesting phone numbers and list them by category.
And there's just plenty of, you know, weird stuff to go call around and post if you, you know, make an account with them and go through all that process.
But especially just stuff to call around, kind of listen to this, you know, old equipment.
There's much of it still in use and much of it is there.
Wow.
Well, thank you so much for all the info and inspiration.
May we ask where you're calling from?
I'm calling from Las Vegas, Nevada.
Okay, awesome.
Well, please, if you know any of those switches or ways that we can hear them, let us know.
And, you know, this makes me very hopeful that there's still old technology out there that we can hear and play with and just learn something from.
Yep, spirit of exploration.
Absolutely.
I'll definitely shoot an email, OTH at 2600.
Okay, thank you.
And, wow.
Good phone calls tonight.
I'm amazed.
Yeah.
802-321-4225 if people want to join that list.
You want to hear some cool stuff in the meantime?
You wanted to hear some weird noises and stuff?
Well, first, I want to hear what Gila had to say.
Then we'll hear the cool stuff.
Well, not that Gila's not the cool stuff, too.
But I'm just saying Gila first and then more cool stuff.
I was going to say, I raised my hand.
So the callers have been great tonight.
The chat has also been great tonight.
We actually, we believe, have broken a record tonight.
At one point, we had 78 people with us.
Right now, we're at 72.
This is fantastic.
Bunch of first-time callers.
Everything is wonderful.
And I would like to take this opportunity to share that listener, one of our listeners, has gotten the VoiceBBS archive up on their site.
Oh, really?
Okay.
However, if you visit 2600.loop0, that's the word loop and the number 0.sh, you will be prompted to put in a password.
There's a little CTF feature that will require you to find the password.
But once you do, you can access the VoiceBBS archive.
If you look hard enough, you should be able to find the password to access this page.
I'm telling you.
Well, where do I look?
Do I look in this room or a different room?
I suppose that would be telling.
Maybe it's in a different country.
Do I have to go somewhere?
That's a good way.
I mean, I like this.
Make it a puzzle.
Do you have the password, Kyle?
I didn't tell you.
No, I don't have it.
Is that to interrogate you to get the password?
I'm operating the phone.
Well, someone has the password here.
We're not going anywhere until we get it.
I mean, are any of us loop zero?
No.
Huh.
Well, if anyone figures this out, let me know.
Because I'd like to hear the VoiceBBS myself.
I'm guessing it's 2600, this password, or maybe it is embedded in the HTML somewhere.
I just entered 2600.
It says invalid password.
I feel like an idiot.
Thank you, Alex.
Well, you know, I'm sure it wasn't the first time today.
No, actually, it wasn't.
I know.
Loop Zero, the person who owns the website says, and I quote, use your hacker brain, Emmanuel.
Look, I wasn't doing anything.
I followed Alex's advice.
I guess my hacker brain should have told me not to do that.
Maybe it's 1984 or something.
Yeah, that's pretty funny.
Hang on, hang on.
This is a shipping forecast that we just found on 198 kilohertz.
Let's listen for a second.
Okay, if you understand any of that, then you're a captain of something, I guess.
But that's just an example of some of the fun things you can hear.
I hope that was enjoyable.
Okay, Alex, you had some stuff that you wanted to share.
Yeah, so listen to this.
For God's sake.
I like you.
I like you.
Six, four, six, no, six, do, do, and do, yikes, six.
Six, four, six, five, and, and, and, and.
Yeah, well, so, so that was a recording of the Iranian number station.
That was a real broadcast from it before it was jammed.
All right, extra points.
Can you find audio of the jamming sound that we heard last week?
Yes, I think I can.
Okay, while I'm just busy with that, we're going to take another phone call.
And good evening, you're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hello, guys.
It's Howard from Queens.
Hey, how's it going?
How are you guys?
We're doing pretty good.
Okay, a couple of things.
One thing I want to talk to Alex after, seriously.
Here's something about that ringing.
You know why in the 70s they stopped letting you ring forever?
Because if you knew how to build a black box,
you could load down the phone line for a split second.
That would stop the ringing, but you still had an audio path.
So if somebody had a black box,
they could call your phone number from a pay phone or call you and not get billed.
Yeah.
Because you don't get supervision.
No supervision.
Yeah, that's what it was called.
When the phone line clicked in a certain way, that's when billing began, even for local calls.
Yeah, well, what it was, it would look like a second.
You had to hold it down long enough for supervision.
But if you were able to, if you had a circuit with a capacitor,
basically what you were doing is you didn't have enough impedance,
you weren't drawing enough current.
Once you stopped the ringing, you then just went to a higher impedance circuit.
That's basically what it was.
That's right.
Yeah, the other thing I want to just say is that it's getting annoying with all these regulations,
protect the young, protect the young.
I'll give you a great example of stupidity.
Hearing aid batteries, okay?
Because I do have Bluetooth hearing aids.
They went to a situation now that they went to tamper-proof hearing aid batteries.
I mean, that you have, you know, the card with the batteries,
and now you want to take out a battery, you have to have a scissor with you.
So if you're out on the bat and you want to, you know, you're carrying some extra batteries,
the battery holders are now protected.
Because some kid, some baby got to the battery, so they passed the law about that.
So here's the situation.
Senior citizen or anybody else who, you know, might have a hearing aid,
you would have to carry some kind of a razor blade to open up the batteries.
Wow.
Okay.
And presumably a baby's not going to do that, but still, that sounds a little dangerous.
Well, it's crazy.
Alex could look it up, basically, and look up the law.
They passed the law that hearing aid batteries holders have to be sealed,
and they have to be tamper-proof.
What the hell, Alex?
Well, I mean, it's not my fault.
I didn't do it.
The reason why I mentioned your name about that is that you were a lawyer,
so you were just able to Google the law.
I don't know the name of the law, but it's just a ridiculous thing.
It was passed a couple years ago by Congress.
It's interesting.
Yeah, it's probably some kind of regulation that pertains to this particular type of device.
Maybe it comes from, like, it could be even like an FDA regulation or an FTC regulation
or something like that.
But I can see that very paternalistic type of regulatory action taken here.
And I guess the ironic thing is, Howard, that if you're in need of a hearing aid change
and you don't have a razor blade on you, you probably can just ask your nearest kid.
They're the ones who are probably going to have knives and razor blades on them in the first place.
So, yeah, you might have to ask your nearest 12-year-old or something, right?
Sasha, do you carry any knives or any razor blades on you these days?
You're asking your own kid this question?
Wow.
Only when he needs to.
Only when he needs to.
Okay.
So would you help, Howard?
What I'm getting at is the stupidity of, say, you try to solve one problem and you create
another problem.
No, I couldn't agree more.
I could not agree more.
Go ahead, Kyle.
I'm not sure if this applies to hearing aid batteries.
They're very small.
Alex, the only other thing I'd like to ask you is this.
Hang on, hang on.
Kyle's talking.
Go ahead, Kyle.
Finish what you're saying.
I was just going to say, I noticed on some, maybe not hearing aid batteries, but some batteries
of the smaller size are actually coated in a way that makes them taste bad, I guess, because
of young people ingesting them and the fears around that.
So it seems like this is an entirely...
Well, they've already ingested them.
They're tasting them.
Yeah.
It's like a well-trod path of consumer safety.
And I guess with the prevalence of small batteries in households, it is a real concern.
But maybe...
Or maybe that's something they're going to make it so the packaging is more accessible
because they taste bad.
But it seems like this is something that is really common.
Clearly, this is not the right solution.
And...
It shouldn't be impossible to open your hearing aid battery.
No, no.
That's ridiculous.
That's for sure.
And maybe there's something around that can help with that.
Back to you, Howard.
The other thing is, just real quick, Alex, any way to get a hold of you if you want to
talk legal stuff and maybe pay for legal services in a certain area?
Well, I'm happy to have a conversation with you.
I don't take many private clients on anymore because I'm the general counsel of the Ethereum
name service.
But I do practice a little bit of law through my old firm, Crowley Mooring.
But I'm happy to talk with you, Howard.
And if I can't help you, then I can maybe direct you to somebody who can.
And you can just email me.
I can actually tell you a little bit.
I'm having a hard time getting a hold of Kalshi, K-A-L-S-H-I.
That's the company that's doing the prediction services.
Basically, what they're doing is that they have done some updates to their service systems
and now it doesn't work at all with voiceover, with people who are blind.
And, man, you can't get a hold of them.
There's no way to even - it's all AI-driven customer service.
And I'm trying to figure out a way to get a hold of them and let them know that they've
got to fix some of their ADA compliance issues.
Can you give us the exact name and then everybody listening can also maybe help out?
Yeah, Kalshi, K-A-L-S-H-I dot com.
That's the company that does the prediction market where you can bet yes or no on different
outcomes like political races or what will the price of Bitcoin be.
And they also have a big issue right now, government, where they didn't pay off on a
certain bet if a certain leader in Iran would not be there because he was killed.
So they have a death thing that if somebody dies on death, you can't bet they'll leave office.
And that's - my issue is not - I don't have any problem with them as far as money issues.
It's just that they're just no longer accessible to be used with voiceover like on an iPhone
or a screen reader.
And, Howard, you can email me if you want.
It's just alex at erbelis.com, which is my last name.
So it's alex at U-R-B-E-L-I-S dot com.
That's umbrella, Romeo, Bravo, Echo, Lima, India, Sierra dot com.
I had a question for our caller.
I was just curious, are you just looking on these - I guess this is like a polymarket,
these kinds of betting things.
Do you just go on there like on speculation?
Are you doing anything in particular?
What interests you about these platforms or are you just kind of exploring?
I have an actual account with them.
It has a couple hundred dollars in it, and I'd like to bet yes and no.
And what happened was I did a stupid thing.
I updated their app, and now I can't even make bets because there's a searching button
on this particular app, which says like to buy.
If you do Google searches, you'll see there's some issues about it.
They're having a lot of issues, and they just don't even - if you try to call customer
service, they've got no phone numbers, nothing like that.
And what I was hoping is somebody with your knowledge can tell me how can you get a hold
of an online person.
That's basically what I wanted to do.
Howard, let me ask you.
Do you have a Gmail account?
Do I have what?
A Gmail account.
I actually have a - do you know about QRZ.com?
Do you know what that is?
The stuff for the ham radios?
I can give out my ham call.
You can find my email that way.
Uh-huh.
You know my ham calls.
Well, the reason I ask is because if you have a Gmail account, you can access Gemini,
Gemini.google.com, and just simply ask there, how do I reach a human at this particular company?
I found -
Well, I've done that.
I've tried that.
I've tried Grok, and they give you - you cannot - you go to their site, and nobody says
it.
If you go to Reddit and look at all of this stuff, people are complaining that there's
no human customer service.
Okay.
All right.
Sounds like a challenge for our listeners and for our legal people, and we'll see what
we can find out.
But I might send a request to 2600 at - you know, what is it again to send emails to you
guys at 2600?
It's O-T-H at 2600.com.
O-T-H at - what I might just send and say, this is Howard, could Alex get back to me?
Okay.
And that's all.
I just wanted to - I don't want to - and if you needed me to pay you a fee, I don't
like abusing people's professional things.
All right.
Well, we'll look into it for sure and get the word out.
It's kind of frustrating that they have an issue, and I can't believe how companies are
going to the point where you can't even get to speak to a person anymore.
It's just ridiculous.
Everything is AI-driven.
Even when you call up a bank, if you don't say the exact way, you can't get the answers
anymore.
And they call it customer service when it's all AI-driven.
Mm-hmm.
I hear you.
I hear you.
It's frustrating as hell.
Listen, Howard, have a good night.
Thanks for calling, and best of luck with everything.
Thank you very much, Alex.
I enjoy listening to you, Alex.
You make a lot of sense.
And I'll tell you what, I'm amused that the attorney would admit that he did some hacking.
It's just, it's amazing what we guys did back in the 60s and 70s.
Very true, except I don't think Alex was around back then, but he definitely has made a name
for himself.
Yeah, later 70s, yeah.
But thank you for that, Howard.
I appreciate that.
Yes.
And that's our last call, I think, because we've filled the hour.
However, we found some interesting things on shortwave.
This might be a jammer.
Supposedly, there was a number station here a little while ago.
This is 11175 kilohertz.
And yeah, there's some other frequencies I'm trying right now.
Sounded like Pac-Man was there for a moment.
Well, that was the signal from the jammer that I had found from last week.
That was a recording of the jammer of 7910.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
The jamming was being done by Pac-Man.
We've confirmed it.
Yep.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
Well, I've heard about enough of that for tonight.
But yeah.
Go to websdr.org, and you can pick all kinds of locations to tune shortwave radios.
And, you know, you can go into the AM band as well and listen to local radio stations in various countries.
It's fascinating.
It's amazing.
A lot of people can do it at the same time at the same tuner.
Yeah.
So that is definitely something.
If you want to write to us, we're at OTH at 2600.com.
We have all kinds of exciting things coming up.
We'll be doing radio again next week, 7 p.m. on WBAI, 8 o'clock here on Overtime on YouTube.
We are working on Hope stuff.
There will be some information on that coming up pretty soon.
Pretty soon.
We are in the midst of working some things out.
So stay tuned on that.
But let your friends know.
We will have more news imminently.
That's all we can say.
I'm sorry.
All right.
And happy 150th birthday to the telephone.
Can't believe we missed it.
So we'd have to wait for the 200th now.
Oh, well.
Or the 151st.
And just, you know, if we start planning now, we can have a really kick-ass party next year.
151.
Yeah, I guess that's a good number.
Why not?
It's a palindrome.
It's a palindrome number.
Those are always fun.
Who doesn't love a palindrome?
Also, just we have had over 70 people with us for the last little while.
And it's been fantastic.
Thank you to everyone.
We had a lot of first-time chatters tonight, which was great.
And I hope we can keep up this kind of momentum.
You know, it's amazing.
And, you know, I don't regret it at all.
We are so thrilled to have over 70 listeners.
And meanwhile, you go to YouTube and some, like, you know, 12-year-old surfer has a million and he's not satisfied with that.
What kind of a world is this?
Yeah, but they're monetized.
We're not.
We're not monetized.
I know.
They make money, too, on top of having a million.
It's ridiculous.
This world is all topsy-turvy.
You know what?
I have an idea.
What's that?
Well, this is the thing, because we're audio only.
If we did an unboxing video, I bet we'd get views.
I am not doing that.
I've said that a million times.
I have my standards.
I might do one as a parody, but not this week.
Actually, I don't even know what I'm saying I'm not going to do, but I just don't feel like it's wise.
We'll explain later.
Okay.
All right.
We'll do, like, black and white, like, noir.
It'll be...
No, I have it in my head.
It's fine.
Thank you, everyone, for listening.
We will see you again.
Have a good night.
Have a good night.