The subscriber you have dialed is not in service.
If you feel you've received this message in error, please hang up and try your call again later.
Message MD-0256.
But if they could, they would.
Bum Diddley Bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum Diddley Bum!
Bum Diddley Bum.
Bum Diddley Bum.
Bum Diddley Bum.
And a very good evening to our right program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
Hi.
Out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
Good morning.
I'm ensconced in Thursday over here.
Yeah, it's Thursday where you are already.
Okay.
I have to say, you have a much better connection than you do here in New York.
So wherever you are, that might be your new permanent place because I don't think you've ever sounded better.
Is that right?
That's amazing.
Yeah, maybe it's the acoustics of this lovely hotel room.
I'm actually in Taipei right now in Taiwan.
So pretty far away.
I don't think anyone on the show has ever been there before.
So this is a first.
Wow.
You know, March 2026.
Off the Hook is broadcast from Taipei, Taiwan.
And note there's no latency.
You're right there.
There's no satellite delay.
None of that stuff.
It all seems to be quite local.
Yeah, the internet infrastructure here, I have to say, is pretty amazing.
I mean, just the general infrastructure of Taipei is pretty excellent.
I mean, I've been spending a lot of time on the subways over the last couple of days.
But, you know, I'm here for work, of course.
So my days are taken up.
But pretty extraordinary place.
Have you guys ever been?
I've never been there.
I've been to Beijing, which is in China.
And I know there are all kinds of comparisons that people make between the two.
For instance, okay, you mentioned you're on the subway.
When the subway pulls in, does everybody try to get on first before all the people get off?
No.
No, absolutely not.
Okay, because in Beijing and in Shanghai, they do that.
Oh, no.
You know, it's quite interesting.
When you get on the subway here, I find this so fascinating.
Everybody is extremely courteous, number one.
So the train will pull in.
And the first time I got on the subway the other night, I started to think to myself,
what is this really beautiful music that's all of a sudden playing?
And as the train is about to approach, the station will play some really sonorous music,
you know, announcing the arrival of the train.
It's really nice.
It's uplifting.
The train is here.
And then at every place where the train stops, there are three different arrows.
And in the middle is an arrow pointing away from the train.
And on the two sides of this rectangle are arrows pointing in.
And so the people getting out leave through the middle and the people coming in go along
the sides.
It's pretty, pretty simple.
Why don't they just wait for the people to get off the train?
Well, I guess it's this way.
You can have traffic going in and out at exactly the same time.
People know where it's going.
It sounds to me like they have the same problem as Beijing had, except they're dealing with
it by painting arrows.
So people pass each other instead of waiting for each other.
So that's interesting.
Well, yeah, there's that.
And then there's also this other strange thing that happens in the subways where there are
these rectangular boxes that go out from the door for a few feet and then over at a right
angle.
And you line up in these rectangular boxes and wait for the train.
And then that's the order of entry for people boarding the train is by standing in these
rectangular boxes.
It's very orderly.
Wow.
I have to say I was very I was very impressed.
And how long are you there for?
Well, I'm actually flying back tonight.
So I've been I left on Saturday.
I was in I was in London last week.
It's hard to miss you guys.
And so I fly back tonight.
I leave this evening from Taipei and go kind of up and around Alaska, across the United
States, across the international date line, basically around the world.
I arrive in New York only three hours after I leave the time in Taipei because I cross the
international date line.
You may lose all of that time when you arrive due to the way airports.
Well, you know what?
I'll just let it be a surprise.
I've heard I've heard quite a bit that our friends from from ICE are doing, you know,
menial administrative tasks and whatnot over at it's unbelievable that I have to come back
to the United States and be greeted by, of all people, ICE.
And, you know, it's it's kind of remarkable that those bastards at ICE, you know, all due
respect, they get paid for doing the job of the TSA workers who aren't getting paid.
I mean, that is that is that just shows the injustice in this.
Yeah.
In this current.
The whole thing has become just extremely psychotropic to listen to from from from afar,
you know, over the last week and a half or so that I've been here.
It's just unbelievable what's happening.
Well, I hope you bring back lots of stories and you'll be in New York next week, I take
it.
I will indeed.
Yeah, a rarity.
Maybe we'll see you at the No Kings rally on Saturday because they're happening all over
the country.
Oh, is that right?
I was not aware of that.
That's something.
Yeah.
Well, maybe I'm probably going to be in Pennsylvania this Saturday.
I'm hoping they have them there, too.
I've heard I have heard they need them there probably more than most places.
I'm sure they'll be hard to avoid.
Yeah, well, we'll have it come to you.
All right.
Very good.
Make it as easy as possible.
Hey, I know a lot of people want to talk about hope.
We're going to talk about hope and the big announcement and all that.
Yeah, it's back in Manhattan.
But we're going to talk about that on overtime.
So overtime is on YouTube channel 2600 at eight o'clock.
And we're happy to take calls and have an extended conversation or whatnot.
We just have so much so much other material to get into.
And we're kind of sick about sick of talking about it the last few weeks in our personal
lives.
But there's so many stories going on.
And one of the most interesting ones has has to do with this this striker hack.
Have you heard about this?
And now the U.S. Department of Justice, they've seized four domains belonging to the pro-Iran
hacking group called Handala in the wake of an attack on the global medical giant known
as striker.
I don't know if that's their friendliest name for a medical medical giant striker.
It sounds violent.
But the hackers behind that cyber attack basically wound up losing websites.
In fact, the I have some of the sites listed.
Well, I had some of the sites listed.
Oh, yeah, here they are.
JusticeHomeland.org, Handala-Hack.to, KarmaBelow80.org, and Handala-RedWanted.to.
Does anyone know where .to is?
Is that .to?
I think it might be.
That's a common CCTLD for threat actors, though.
A lot of them love to use that country code top-level domain.
Tonga.
Tonga, there you go, yeah.
Okay, who can find Tonga on a map?
That's a good question.
Yeah, all right.
FBI Director Cash Patel, who cannot, by the way, was bullish regarding the success of the
current operations against Handala and any future efforts to stymie the Iran-backed group.
Iran thought they could hide behind fake websites and keyboard threats to terrorize Americans
and silence dissidents.
We took down four of their operations pillars, and we're not done.
The FBI will hunt down every actor behind these cowardly death threats and cyberattacks,
and we'll bring the full force of American law enforcement down on them, etc., etc., etc.
You know, all fine and good, except how?
You know, you know, the internet works globally.
I'm curious how they managed to take down a .to site.
Maybe it was hosted in the United States.
But correct me if I'm wrong.
The DOJ cannot just go out and shut down any website it wants.
It has to have some amount of control over it in the first place.
Alex, you know something about this.
Yeah.
I mean, it kind of depends on where the infrastructure is, whether you have a cooperating party on
the other side of whatever the DOJ or FBI is requesting.
With Tonga, they probably had some kind of coordination with the operator of the CCTLD,
the Country Code Top Level Domain for DOJ.
Every Country Code Top Level Domain has, you know, an operator, right?
And they're generally associated with the telecommunications infrastructure of the country
for that particular CCTLD.
So my guess is that they made some kind of multilateral assistance request over to Tonga,
and Tonga complied and said, okay, sure, we'll take down this infrastructure.
On the other hand, you could be absolutely right, Manuel, in that if you're using a .to
domain, that domain can be any, it can point to any type of name server or any host, and
it can be hosted by any company around the world.
You could have a .to domain that's hosted in Russia.
You could have a .to domain that's hosted in New Jersey.
It doesn't really matter.
That's how the Internet works.
But the other thing that I find just absolutely laughable, risable, as some would say, is that,
you know, they think that this is some kind of big win in taking down this threat actor
infrastructure.
It's a couple of domain names.
It's not like they can't just spin up a couple of new domains.
Well, guess what?
Guess what they did?
They spun up a few more domains, yes.
I didn't think more than a couple hours, I don't think.
But yeah, they restored all the websites.
In fact, I think they even have more now.
But here's my question, and maybe it's a stupid question, I'm sure it is.
Why didn't these so-called hackers just use .ir, the Iranian top-level domain?
Is it because their own government was shutting it down?
That's a good question, actually.
I think that the .ir cctld, that country code top-level domain, is probably not as connected
as it used to be.
I bet you there's a lot of the infrastructure that has been disconnected as part of the
Internet blackout.
So the service is probably sporadic.
And yeah, it's really just a matter of personal preference, too.
I mean, the .ir cctld operator certainly wouldn't cooperate with a multilateral assistance treaty
from the United States.
But domains, you know, are like weeds, right?
I mean, they just pop up wherever you don't want them.
It really doesn't matter whatever they want.
If they want consistent infrastructure, then maybe .ir or .ru or something like that would
have been better.
But also, .ir domains are probably a lot harder to access on the client side.
So if you want people to go to those domains, if you want publicity over towards them, they're
probably going to be blocked by a lot of firewall rules and various things that are blocking
cctlds like .ir.
So it also depends on what the point is of the threat actors.
Do they want to bring the public's attention to these particular sites?
Or do they just want to take up resources of the FBI by having them play whack-a-mole
and take down all these domains while they just pop up new infrastructure?
I'll tell you, I never heard of these domains until DOJ started talking about them.
Yeah.
Well, that makes perfect sense, too, right?
So now they're touting this as some massive win.
But yet what they're doing is just bringing publicity to the messages that they're sending
on these domains.
They get so few wins, Alex.
Let them have this.
I mean, it's the Streisand effect, I guess, in the form of a domain takedown.
Well, here's something a little bit more understandable, at least to me.
There are 45,000 malicious IP addresses and servers out there.
And there was a sweeping international cybercrime operation that dismantled them, coordinated
by Interpol, the operation known as Operation Synergia 3.
I guess there were two other ones.
I'm not quite sure how to pronounce Synergia either, but hopefully I'm doing it right.
It brought together law enforcement agencies from 72 countries in a months-long effort to
disrupt cybercriminal networks operating across continents.
That's how you do it.
That's how you cooperate.
You bring people together.
You bring countries together.
72 countries, law enforcement, agents.
You imagine the stories they traded.
You know, that is, you combine your forces.
You work together for a common goal.
That makes more sense to me than a single country going out and saying,
hey, look, we took down four websites for these nasty people.
Um, and, um, yeah, they got more websites, but, uh, that's not what we're talking about
today.
Yeah.
I mean, uh, that it is, I mean, these, these coordinated efforts are really kind of interesting
and they're, you know, taking down massive botnets and things require a lot of, you know,
multilateral coordination between these agencies, between Interpol and they're very effective,
but you really have to think about like, how are you going to squash this infrastructure?
How are you going to, to create a lot of friction for the threat actor when you take down the
infrastructure so that they don't just spin up new domains and we're, we're point the
existing domains.
If you've, if you've decided to take them down to host level to different hosts, um, you
really have to be careful about what you say and, and tout as a victory, you know, while
the bad guys on the other end are, are, you know, making an end run around your place
already.
Well, operation, uh, center GF three ran between July 18th of 2025.
And January 31st of this year, combining intelligence sharing cross-border coordination and targeted
enforcement actions, uh, during this period, investigators identified key nodes within
cyber criminal ecosystems and dismantled the infrastructure, enabling large scale fraud and
hacking campaigns.
Um, beyond the technical takedown, the operation led to significant enforcement outcomes on the
ground.
Authorities confirmed 94 individuals were arrested, uh, further 110 suspects remain under
investigation.
And in addition, 212 electronic devices and servers were seized during raids across multiple
countries.
It doesn't sound like very many, uh, when, uh, when, uh, you look at the scale of the story,
uh, I, I know people who have been raided who had more electronic devices than, than 212.
Uh, but the, uh, coordinated actions were made possible by transforming large volumes of cyber
threat data into actionable intelligence, allowing national police forces to identify and target
key actors within criminal networks.
Uh, they carried out raids on identified locations, disrupting operations ranging from phishing hubs,
that's with a pH, uh, to fraud rings and malware distribution systems.
So, uh, yeah, I don't think anybody can really, uh, say that's a bad idea.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah.
And, uh, Stryker, for those that are familiar, is, um, a manufacturer of medical equipment,
uh, things used in all sorts of medicine and also things used inside people, medical devices.
And they've been, uh, quick to announce that this hack didn't compromise anything relating
to the medical devices that their, that their customers and, uh, patients are using.
So, uh, that seems good.
This seems just, uh, just to have affected Stryker's own system.
Um, but now Stryker itself is being, uh, sued, uh, four of their employees are suing Stryker
for, um, fearing, for fear that their own employee PII personal identifying information
was, uh, leaked to ne'er-do-wells in this hack.
So, uh, they're looking to make that a class action suit and it'll be interesting to see
how that goes.
Yeah.
And it's about time too, that, uh, these companies that, uh, don't have sufficient
security take responsibility for that.
So having their own employees sue them because they were compromised, uh, you know, usually
we don't hear about that.
We don't hear about the victims and how their lives have been disrupted because of sloppiness.
So it's good to see them finally, um, uh, saying something about it.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah.
This is a common thing nowadays when, when there's a data breach, there's always some
kind of a plaintiff's firm out there ready to file a lawsuit on behalf of the employees.
And I'm, I'm not trying to, to undermine the validity of these claims.
I think they are valid.
And in fact, that I, I bring this up to my class because you guys know, I, I, one of the
reasons why I'm often over in London is because I, I teach over at King's college in the
law faculty there and I teach through the lens of the great hacks.
And I talk about different hacks and teach the law after we talk about how these hacks
have happened.
It's, it's, it's a really, it's a fun course, but the first one that we do is about the
Sony hack back in 2014.
And that was, you know, a massive data breach that affected so much internal information
that was leaked, you know, by North Korean threat actors.
And then there's some questions about whether it was North Korea for whether it was several
threat actors running rampant through Sony systems at the time.
There's still a lot of questions about that attribution.
So I'll acknowledge that for a moment.
But one of the things that I bring up in my lecture is that there was a woman who was an
employee at Sony.
And once the data was leaked back in 2014, the end of 2014 into 2015, there was a disciplinary
report about her that had claimed that she had stolen some company property when she was
leaving the company and that there was this report.
And then, so anytime that she went and looked for a job after Sony, people would Google her
name.
That's just common practice.
You Google your employee, your prospective employees' names.
And this report would show up on the internet claiming that she was accused of theft.
And it turns out that this report related to something like a $4 mouse that the company
alleged she didn't return when she left Sony.
And this report was basically preventing her from getting a job because everybody believed
that she was some kind of kleptomaniac, you know, inside a company.
She couldn't get a job because of it.
So these things, I think it just goes to really undermine that these claims are valid, that there
are real people that are affected by this.
Once the data is out there on the internet, accurate or not, it can be misleading.
Wait, did you say it was because of a mouse?
A mouse.
One mouse.
One mouse.
One mouse.
There was a report inside Sony about this particular woman having stolen, I think it was a $4 or $6
mouse.
It might've been $6.
So what kind of companies would not give her a job because somebody else accused her of taking
a $4 mouse?
Well, it wasn't clear from the information on the report that was available online that
it actually related to a $4 or $6 mouse.
It just was a report of theft from a company property.
I see.
Okay.
All right.
Wow.
They're pretty petty over there at Sony.
Yeah, you would think so.
Right?
Unbelievable.
I mean, just think about the amount of time and effort you would have to spend to submit
that report.
Way over $6 worth of your time.
Somebody had an issue of one sort or another and really wanted to get even.
Okay.
I think so.
All right.
Getting back to the United States versus the whole rest of the world.
Now we have banned new foreign-made consumer internet routers.
Yeah, this is almost unbelievable.
And an update Monday to a list of equipment seen as not secure enough for use.
The Federal Communications Commission, run by that, well, I'm not going to say that word
on the air, but run by Brendan Carr, let's put it that way, added all consumer grade routers
made outside the U.S. are forbidden now.
Wow.
Now, routers, which are widely used in homes and businesses to connect computers, phones,
TVs, and other devices to the internet, are basically now on a par with foreign-made
drones, which were banned at the end of last year.
I guess your router could maybe turn into a drone and attack you.
You don't know.
Who knows what these people are doing?
Malicious actors have exploited security gaps in foreign-made routers to attack American
households, disrupt networks, enable espionage, and facilitate intellectual property theft,
said the FCC.
While people will still be able to use foreign-made routers that they already own, in case anybody
was panicking about that, the ban applies to all new device models.
It stems from growing concern over the last year that routers were a point of easy access
for malicious actors.
Look, I don't want to get too patriotic here, but I believe that any router built in the United
States is just as capable of being compromised as something from a different country, all right?
We can design things that will be accessed by all sorts of malicious actors.
We don't need to buy foreign for that.
So I don't know what's being proven here.
I really don't.
USA.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
God, I hate that chant.
I hate that chant so much.
Quiet.
I think this really begs the question, what about all of the current routers?
Because I, as a broadband consumer, just like anybody else, in a lot of households, these
things are sitting there for a really long time.
This isn't something that you generally want to pay for.
I mean, sometimes they lease them to people.
There's different schemes depending on your provider.
But in my mind, it's the kind of thing that, you know, if this is such a big threat, what
on earth is being done now for all of the devices that are deployed?
Yeah.
I mean, I could go on and on, but I'll just leave it at that.
Do you have a foreign router in your house right now?
Is it watching you?
Is it attacking you?
Okay, everybody.
Just because you can, they're letting us.
Oh, goodness.
I don't feel better.
I'm looking at all of you now.
Point to a router.
Can you do it?
Okay, good, good.
All right, Alex, what's wrong with you?
You don't have a router?
Yeah, I mean, I'm in the hotel room.
You're in a foreign country.
You're in a foreign country.
This is where the problem is, the foreign routers.
And you could actually attack one of them before they get to us.
I could technically.
I'm in the Republic of China, right?
And you claim you don't know where the router is.
I have no idea where the router is in this hotel, but I've been looking for it for days.
Just to say hello.
Very convenient.
Yeah.
All right, Rob.
How do you wake up?
What's clear is that, you know, even American electronics companies manufacture their equipment overseas.
The vast majority of them do.
One notable exception to this, one company that's manufacturing their routers in the United States is Starlink, owned by SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk.
So, yeah, they're fantastic products.
Maybe the only things we're allowed to get hold of anymore.
Wow.
Okay.
Interesting.
Well, of course, they say that Starlink routers are made in Texas.
What do you say to that?
Well, I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess perhaps.
But where does this end naturally, right?
I mean, we're talking about routers.
I mean, routers are important.
It's important to update your router.
You know, people have, you know, routers that have firmware on them that hasn't been updated since, you know, 2005 that they're still using in most cases.
Rob, as I think you had indicated, most people's routers in their homes are generally given to them by their broadband provider, right?
So, you know, whether it's Spectrum or Blue Ridge Cable or whoever it is, right?
Right.
So where are those routers manufactured?
Those probably are not manufactured in the United States.
I would imagine this will affect them.
But all the routers, to Kyle's point, that are still in people's homes are not going to be recalled.
I mean, and these are very likely routers that have very old firmware that hasn't been patched.
So this whole national security framing of the issue, to my mind, is really kind of crazy, right?
Because if the routers are trustworthy, or rather, I'm sorry, if they're untrustworthy, then what's the evidence of this, right?
Like, other than what we've already known.
My router has an account name and a password.
Yeah, they're both the same, I know, but, you know, good luck guessing it.
Well, I think that this is an excellent point, that the thing you're given isn't necessarily something you're updating and taking care of.
And that these things, I think, my reaction is that a lot of them are managed and updated, if they do any of that at all, but mostly by the carrier.
And they're aware of their supply chain.
They're aware of where they're made, possibly other countries like Malaysia or wherever.
You know, there's a lot of other places that things are assembled for exactly these reasons, and not just routers.
I do think it is a valid problem.
And it is funny that, you know, Texas is the American entity, although there's a lot of long history of semiconductors and electronics there.
So, I guess it's not surprising, and they're going to use their own in-house supply chains for that particular product.
So, yeah, we should have more, and we should be aware of this stuff.
But I'm so behind Alex's point about where the stuff is made, essentially, and giving us more information about, like, disclosing what the actual vulnerability is, because that's a huge gap in this.
Like, we don't get actual concrete information about what exact routers.
I mean, okay, I just said, yeah, a lot of the carriers probably manage this and have a well-thought-out device that they're giving people.
But what percentage of this, are these routers that people buy off the shelf independently of a carrier, kind of like an unlocked phone?
We need more information about what the actual vulnerabilities are.
And I think this is something that is criminal.
Like, we got to have more info about this stuff.
This whole, like, coy, cagey vagueness or, like, just, oh, let's all follow this edict from the FCC, that's not enough.
Like, I get that they want to distance themselves from details and maybe obfuscate a little bit about the actual incidences that we're asking for as evidence.
Because we really want to know, like, okay, name and, not shame necessarily, but name the manufacturers.
Where are the problems?
How are these things?
Which ones are being exploited?
What controllers?
What hardware is at effect?
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It's easier to say just all the foreign routers are the problem.
Totally.
I mean, we tested it out on the people.
Now we're testing it out on the routers.
Well, I mean, without evidence, as Alex said, there's the case, we're only left to our imaginations about, like, what the motive is.
Evidence takes so much time, and we just don't have the patience.
Alex, go ahead.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't want to belabor the point, but they should have this technical evidence, and it should be published, or there should be some kind of independent audit.
And it would be very easy for them to set some kind of security baseline for all vendors, foreign or domestic, that are manufacturing communications equipment that are used in Americans' homes across the United States.
And those are baselines that everybody should meet.
Just because something is American doesn't mean it's any less vulnerable than a Chinese router or a South Korean router or an Asus or a TP-Link or something like that.
And also, if they're concerned about this, maybe we should be making sure that the communications providers push out automatic firmware updates across these routers.
That's something that would solve a lot of these things being compromised, because these routers are devices that have historically been compromised and then co-opted by massive botnets like we were just talking about earlier in the show.
And then what's the - yeah.
Go ahead, Kyle.
Absolutely, I'll just add that, yeah, make the product capable enough to be maintained for longer periods as they do sit in people's homes and take responsibility, because leaving it to the consumer, you're giving them this device and going for the lowest kind of design quality that isn't really well-maintainable in the field.
Then, yeah, you're setting us up for failure and then leaving citizens and people that are, depending on your service, totally vulnerable.
And that's not fair.
You're setting people up, in my view.
Yeah.
And taking a broader view of this, what's scary about this, what should be scary for our listeners, is this whole idea that the government can decide, without publishing evidence or any kind of independent audits, about what types of boxes and electronics you're allowed to plug into your own damn wall.
Well, what's that - what's to stop them from deciding next step for an IP-enabled IoT devices like a refrigerator is not allowed in your particular home or apartment or something like that?
Those can be compromised just as easily as a router and turned into some kind of packet-sniffing device, depending upon how they're configured, the hardware, and the software.
Yeah, I just - and I would just add that, like, I think it's not really about, you know, that our systems are necessarily better or that we're preferring it.
But if we're going to say they are, let's, like, come up with a criteria that we agree on and then, like, stick to it.
We should know that, like, yeah, these have met certain criteria that people can count on, just like any other consumer product.
All right, moving on, we have some listener mail, and you can write to us and become listener mail yourself by simply emailing OTH at 2600.com, OTH at 2600.com.
On the March 18th edition of Off the Hook, you were talking about returning to the good old days of interoperability, being able to read and post to the social media side of your choice and have it cross-post to everywhere else, complete with working replies.
Hear, hear. The reason we lost interoperability is that Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it a felony to tamper with a digital lock, punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine.
Most of the social media sites sit behind those locks.
This is a big part of Cory Doctorow's outstanding 2025 book, whose title I can't say on the air, but I'll just call it Encrapification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.
The minute we get more reasonable representatives in Congress, we need to join with the EFF to start lobbying hard to repeal the DMCA, especially Part 1201, and not give up until we can all start making interoperability work again.
Think of it as right to repair for software.
That's a big way to chip away at the oligarchy.
Great show. Good to hear your voices. Keep up the good work. Much love to you all.
Thank you very much for that wonderful letter.
Speaking of not being able to say a title on the air, anybody catch SNL UK, the UK edition of the Saturday Night Live that debuted this past Saturday?
They can use cuss words there.
I mean, it took them 51 years to rip us off.
We ripped them off a lot quicker.
But they instantly said, yeah, we're not going to have these regulations.
And it worked.
It really works when you're not, you know, muzzled so much.
Yeah, the broadcast rules in the UK, as I understand it, are basically it depends on what time you're on.
If it's late in the evening, the kids are in bed.
You can speak like a grownup to other grownups.
And so you don't get in trouble for the sorts of dirty words that get stations like WBAI in trouble sometimes.
And here in this country, we are being told to watch what we say to be more patriotic, thanks to Brendan Carr over at the FCC.
It's not being met well.
It's not being met very well at all.
And the fight will continue.
Here is another letter.
Well, you people have announced that you're going to announce something.
I just wanted to announce to you upon your announcement, I'm here and ready to help you both spread the announcement and be part of whatever you announce.
Good luck, folks, signed Old Guy.
You know, I know who that is.
I'm not going to say the name because he didn't say the name or she didn't say the name.
It says Guy, though.
But this probably has something to do with our Hope News, which, as I said, that's at 8 o'clock on Overtime on YouTube, channel 2600.
But thank you.
Thank you for the support and look forward to hanging out and doing all kinds of fun things.
Here's a letter from Maine.
I've been a longtime listener and subscriber, and I'm writing because I've noticed the recent feedback regarding the show's heavy focus on politics.
I'd like to offer a middle ground, topics that align with current events but remain firmly rooted in the hacker world.
We live in heavy times, and for years off the hook has been my one-hour escape while mowing the lawn or commuting.
I've never listened to anything while mowing the lawn, but that must be, that must, how do you hear people screaming?
You know, if you're going somewhere you're not supposed to go.
I don't know.
I just, I'm very cautious with headphones.
Recently, it feels less like an escape and more like an extension of the daily grind.
I'd love to see a return to the technical roots that make the show unique.
Are you politically neutral?
You know what?
I challenge that statement.
I doubt you're politically neutral because to be politically neutral in this day and age means you're not paying any attention.
You don't know what's going on, and you don't care.
I have a feeling you care.
You just, and I get this, you don't want it to become a part of everything.
You don't want the political, you know, issues to come up in every conversation.
And, you know, I don't think we do that.
At least we try not to do that, but let's continue.
I simply want to hear about hacking, cybersecurity, and the how-to of tech.
Here are a few topics that could bridge that gap.
All right, let's listen.
Anti-surveillance.
Using high-output infrared LEDs or CV-dazzle clothing to confuse facial recognition.
Well, slight problem there.
The government really likes surveillance.
They really want that to work.
They really want to know what you're doing.
And by pushing anti-surveillance, you're kind of taking a political stand against them that they're not going to appreciate.
I'm not saying I'm against this.
I'm all for it.
I'm just letting you know that you might get some pushback from some very powerful people and entities.
All right, next point.
Off-grid comms.
A deep dive into LoRa and MeshTastic for encrypted, decentralized communication.
Ooh, getting off the grid.
Yeah, you know, that could be seen as anti-patriotic, anti-government as well.
Not saying that's the case here.
But when you start experimenting with different kinds of technology, you know, like let's look at blue boxes and red boxes of the past.
You know, we try to explain to the authorities it's not just for making fraudulent phone calls.
There's all kinds of other uses and also the joy of simply building it.
They never got it.
They never got that.
And a lot of people never got that as well.
They said, of course, why else would you want to build something like that unless you are up to something?
You know, if you've got nothing to hide, then you should have no problem being out in the clear.
We get this all the time.
So, yeah, problem with that as well.
Operational security.
Practical mobile security like managing SD cards or encrypted volumes when crossing borders.
Ooh, okay.
Who wants to take this one?
Crossing borders, hiding data, not giving up everything to border control.
They want your laptop.
They want your passwords.
They want your social media access.
And if you're not going to give that to them, you become an enemy of the state.
You know, you become a threat.
And there aren't very many enemies of the state that are considered apolitical.
You know, the thing is, I'm into all these things.
I really am.
Hardware projects, using the ESP32 for Wi-Fi source monitoring, steganography techniques or DIY GPS units.
Okay, so we're talking about hiding messages in images.
You know, that's like James Bond stuff there.
No, I'm all for it.
I'm into it.
But it can be seen as a threat, can be seen as something very dangerous to the status quo.
Continuing with the letter, and I'm sorry for nitpicking every single one of your points.
You can still give people hope and address the state of the world by teaching us how to build the tools to navigate it.
I'd much rather hear about the latest in Wi-Fi security than the latest headlines.
Hope you all have a great day.
Name withheld upon request.
And I agree.
I agree with everything said here.
And, you know, when we talk about issues, I think we always relate it to something in the hacker world or in the technological world.
It may not always be as apparent as we'd like it to be.
We might also get into debates every now and then.
You know, you have to defend yourself sometimes when somebody says something, you know, outrageous, which happens occasionally.
Um, but, um, for the most part, we, we, we, we keep that link to technology.
There's always a link to technology because technology in itself is political, you know, access, uh, how much data, uh, you're, you're able to, um, hold on to yourself, privacy, encryption, all of that.
It's, it's, it's, you know, something we're passionate about, but there are people, there are entities that are against it because they want more control.
And then there are people who say, if we talk about that, that's too political.
So it's, it's a question of degree, you know, how much politicization are you willing to endure?
And, um, you know, we try to make it as minimal as possible, but your, your points are heard and valued.
So thank you for writing, Rob.
Yeah, I, I am entertained by the irony of the, uh, final line in this person's email.
I'd much rather hear about the latest in wifi security than the latest headlines.
Um, and of course we were talking earlier in the show about a major headline story that's directly about wifi security, but, uh, yeah, I can see where they're coming from.
And at the other, you know, on the other hand, I am also going to push back on anyone claiming to be politically neutral.
Um, no one is politically neutral.
Well, being politically neutral, I think right now means I'm not going to make trouble because I'm okay with how things are and I can't classify myself, uh, as that.
I think also at this point, political neutrality is almost willful ignorance, not almost it is, it is willful ignorance.
And it's hard to really talk about anything at all without relating it both to the hacker world, the hacker mindset technology and the world we're living in right now.
Like, no, sorry, words are gone, but political neutrality is willful ignorance right now.
And we would be, um, remiss, I think, to have this radio hour and be willfully ignorant out loud for an hour.
Yeah, I, I, I hear you.
Uh, we're not calling anybody ignorant.
We're not saying that, uh, this is something that people aspire to.
I think it's something we all want.
We all want to be, um, not having to think about what's going on all the time because it's so depressing.
It's so outrageous.
But, you know, if we go down that road and we don't, um, react and we don't have an opinion, it's kind of what they want.
They want you not to be any trouble whatsoever.
So we're here to be a cog in the wheel, you know, uh, we're, we're here to, uh, uh, make trouble, good trouble, Alex.
Yeah, the, the things that we're talking about, I, I, I think we always have some kind of link in some way or another to, to the, the tech focus or the tech aspect of this.
I mean, this is a show that's been on the air for so many years now, and it, it builds itself as talking about the societal ramifications of technology.
And you can't talk about those societal ramifications without talking about the political sphere.
And if you think about the political sphere itself, these are, these are systems that are exploited.
These are systems that have loopholes.
These are systems that are abused, just like technical systems.
And, and we have to talk about those particular vulnerabilities as well.
These types of systems are really just code, but they're for human beings and they're affecting human beings.
And just like any other kind of vulnerability that we find or any kind of abuse, we should shout about it.
And I think we, we don't, you know, we're not talking about amendments to the civil procedure and things like that, things that have no rational relationship whatsoever to technology.
Everything's got it, but it's, it's very difficult to divorce those issues.
And, um, you know, I've, I've oftentimes agreed with the people that write in and criticize us and, and I appreciate the time and effort that they take to criticize us.
And I think they're the right to do it sometimes, but there's always the, these implications.
And I would, I would challenge our listeners as well to take a wider view of these particular issues while they're asking us to constrain our views at the same time.
So, Kyle, we're really thoughtful about all of this.
So, um, I take the listeners point and I'm so thankful for their, um, what, what we are to them and that they've, that for their listenership, that they've been around.
Um, and we want to talk about all those things too.
Like we're excited.
And, um, for the, for us, a lot of this is an escape, um, from the day to day.
And we, we're happy to hear it is for you as well.
And, and we do our part.
Um, it also is, um, something that, uh, we're typically trying to keep a lot of what we're saying approachable.
So, um, when we get chided, I think for being, not being, you know, wildly technical, sometimes that can make it, um, so it isn't as approachable to people.
And we're here on a wonderful, uh, radio station that has so many different people and their level of understanding of technology probably is, is wide ranging.
So, so we like to keep a careful balance in, um, the topic of conversation.
But all of that said, I think that, um, we do our best with, with the, the time we have.
And I think the urgency, if, if there wasn't such an urgency, I think we would be more focused on, um, escaping or maybe projects and things that, uh, didn't seem to have as much consequence.
But I think because of that, we feel a little bit of a responsibility, um, and, and, uh, owe it and owe it to the dynamic of, of this medium that it is just a conversation and it goes in so many different directions all the time.
And we like to draw connections.
We like to make it approachable, draw those connections and keep it moving, keep the conversation, something that is integral, exciting, uh, relevant to people's daily lives, but also interesting and, um, can be applied.
And I think in the point that the, the, uh, uh, writer is making here, um, my counterpoise, I, the way I would come at that is just to say it's, you're missing.
And I think your reading of it was, was, was, was making this point, but you're, um, wanting us to, uh, talk about things to prepare you for a hellscape when what we're talking about is ways to avoid arriving at a world that is that very hellscape.
Yeah. And we've been talking about that for decades before, before now, we kind of warn people about, uh, societies like the one that's forming around us, what, how technology can be used and abused, you know, same thing in 2600, same thing at Hope, basically the same thing throughout the hacker world.
Uh, people have been warning about the very things that we're seeing now, you know, we, there was a story, I don't know why this story was so popular, but the, the stupid dancing robot that went out of control and started smashing dishes in California somewhere.
Yeah. Yeah. Why was that on every channel? Of course that's going to happen. If you have a robot in a restaurant and you expect it to not go crazy at some point, uh, you're, you're, you're woefully misled. That's, uh, it's inevitable. It really is. Um, what are you pointing at, Gila?
I'm trying to get Rob to the right tab.
Oh, I see. Okay. I didn't know what that was. Uh, we have this, uh, final letter here from, uh, Kirk over in the UK, uh, and who says this may be noteworthy for listeners. I, I backed this, um, uh, this project on Kickstarter a long time ago. We're talking about the joy bubbles movie, which is premiering on May 2nd at the Bartos screening room at the museum of the moving image in Astoria.
That's in Queens. Um, and basically, um, uh, it was, um, it's a 79 minute documentary, uh, about Joe and Grecia known as joy bubbles. Uh, he discovered that at a very young age, by whistling a specific tone into the telephone, he could manipulate the entire system. He was born blind in 1949. Uh, and, uh, Joe legally changed his name to joy bubbles in 1991. He was a whiz kid with an IQ of 172.
Uh, he, um, uh, rejected the idea of adulthood, preferred to think of himself as an eternal five-year-old. I'm sure this will be a fascinating film, uh, for phone freaks and, and pretty much anyone who is, uh, interested in technology and also, um, this person who was a very interesting, um, uh, human being. Uh, so again, that's happening May 2nd at the, at the Saturday at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. Rob.
Yeah. Yeah. I was also a Kickstarter backer of this documentary and I am so excited to see this. Um, it's been a very long time in the making. Um, but, uh, joy bubbles was a fascinating figure in hacker and freak history and technical history.
Um, just as, um, as, um, as a person, just as himself is fascinating person to look into. Um, I had the pleasure of speaking with him, um, only once on a conference call many, many years ago that, uh, someone had, uh, looped him into and he was just very, very nice. And I, I look forward to learning more about him, uh, through this movie.
All right. Maybe we'll all see that film then. Uh, we are out of time. Uh, again, please write to us. OTH at 2600.com. We're going to continue the conversation over on YouTube at eight o'clock and, uh, you can get the address there. Well, the address is channel 2600 on YouTube, or just, uh, go to the link on top of 2600.com webpage. We will see you here on WBAI next week. Oh, and by the way, next week will be a call-in show for WBAI.
So, uh, mark that on your calendars.
of the day
Ho, ho, ho
A gift of guidance
from above
And ho, ho, ho
Pairs the heart
in mother's blood
No plans could be conceived
No ships could bear the seas
If there would be no courage
Were it not for love
Now the path before it slides
Before our blurry eyes
Don't you see?
And it leads up to the gateway
To lead you through
Don't you see?
Then come and take my hand
Raise up your hand
And dry your eyes
For up ahead I see
Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah
A way of peace
A shining on me
So let us feel hope
And feel the sunrise in our minds
To give hope
Is to enlighten all mankind
All but lose hope
And life seems black as blind
When faith gives way to fear
When motivation disappears
All is lost
If one abandons her
All is lost
If one abandons her


And welcome everybody to Off the Hook Overtime here on YouTube.
I seem to be on YouTube right now, in fact.
Kyle, it looks like you are too.
Hi.
Rob and Gila and Alex, are you all naked?
We did.
We certainly seems that we did.
Oh, yeah.
And I can only stay for a few minutes, guys, because I have to get going here.
Every week is a new excuse.
Every week.
Well, I've got to get some breakfast.
It's very early here.
Breakfast started at this hotel at 7.
But I want to...
My heart weeps.
But, okay, let's get into it fast.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I want to jump into this because there's so many exciting things.
Yeah, well, the big news, of course, is that Hope is back in Manhattan.
And, wow, we kind of pulled a rabbit out of a hat on this one.
But there's this fantastic hotel called The New Yorker, which is about as New York as you can get.
Amazing history.
Nikola Tesla lived there.
He also died there.
In fact, fun fact, you can rent the room.
You can get the room that Nikola Tesla lived and died in, if that's your thing.
But, you know what?
We might have it for some special things.
I don't know.
The hotel has over 1,000 rooms in it and plenty of space for us to do our thing.
Hope is August 14th through 16th.
Tickets went on sale yesterday.
And, I don't know.
I think that pretty much says it all.
Since St. John's kicked us out over the anarchist pamphlet they didn't like, we have been scrambling, searching for a new place.
And, boy, I got to tell you, it was a challenge.
It really was because finding an affordable place, not that this is entirely affordable, but it's meant to be impossible, I think.
And we've had people just basically, you know, roaming the streets literally looking for a place.
And the funny thing about The New Yorker is that it's so close to where Hotel Penn was.
Only this time we got the name of the state right.
You know, in New York, it should be The New Yorker Hotel, not Hotel Pennsylvania.
But it's, you know, everything that people complained about in Queens, not that people just complained.
There are so many good things about Queens as well.
And I still love Queens.
But the complaints were, you know, I'd like to stay in the same place, the same building as the conference.
Okay, solved.
We're in a hotel now.
I want a place where, you know, I can get food late at night.
Well, you are in probably the busiest part of the country.
There are things open around the clock.
It's a block from Penn Station.
You will not be bored.
We have said this, and it's certainly true.
Honestly, I think this is a best-case scenario for us.
The only thing we have to do is make it work.
If we make it work, this looks like a permanent home for us.
And if we fall short, then, yeah, we can't keep doing it, obviously.
So I think it's up to everybody to support the venture that we're embarking on.
And spread the word.
Absolutely, yeah, because that's the main challenge, is getting word out.
Yeah, we're on the radio.
We have a magazine, although it didn't make it into the magazine because, you know, the deadline for that was before we signed the papers.
But, you know, we have all these outlets, but it's still not enough because they're all alternative outlets.
They don't get to a lot of people who only pay attention to what's trending.
And, you know, there are several ways to do that.
If everybody just simply spread the word and got it into places where it would not have been heard otherwise, that might reach somebody who never would have even thought to come to Hope.
And they might tell other people who are even more into it, you never really know who you're going to reach just by spreading word.
And another thing people can do is participate, give a talk, give a workshop, volunteer.
There are so many ways to make Hope work.
And, you know, we've done it 17 times before.
No, 16 times before.
This is the 17th one.
And that's how it's worked every single time.
And it's always been successful on that level.
Yeah, that's really, really crucial.
Just do what you're going to do.
If you're going to participate, please get involved, get started, talk to other people about your plans, and be self-directed.
We really count on volunteers and people working independently, coming up with things that they'd like to see happen,
and getting other people to help out and work on different aspects of the event or different features or exhibits that could be really, really interesting and get people excited about Hope in general or topics of interest.
So that is super important because as that's occurring in the period of time we have planning and building things up, we're going to want to share.
We're going to let people know, hey, sign up for this workshop that's going on.
Here's some exciting things that we're adding to the schedule.
All that will be stuff we share and report on.
So as people do things and get involved and declare how they want to participate, we'll do our best to share with the world what's coming up, what's exciting, what people can look forward to if they're going to attend.
It's been eight years since we've held the conference in Manhattan, and a lot has changed, obviously.
This is post-pandemic, and the city has matured in many ways.
There's a lot more technology being used in mass transit and various other places.
It's really going to be fun.
I'm sorry to say, I regret to announce, the Blarney Rock has closed.
So if people are looking for a watering hole late at night, it's not going to be that.
There are plenty, though.
And, you know, even the TikTok diner is downstairs in the hotel.
It's 24 hours, and that's a great place to hang out with friends for hours and hours.
Yes, Gila?
It's in the hotel.
They have a full bar.
It's right there in the basement.
It's amazing.
You can crawl back to your room.
Nobody's going to stop you.
Exactly.
Get stuck in the revolving door.
It'll be great.
So we have 48 people with us right now, which is wonderful and fantastic.
Removing a couple of us who are on the show who are in this, we've got over 40 people listening
to us right now who can go tell their friends about hope.
Congratulations, Off the Hook Nation, Overtime Nation.
You're the street team.
Wow.
Go talk to people.
That's high praise.
Let's go.
Make it happen.
Yeah.
We really appreciate any efforts out there, for sure.
It's the only way we can really know for sure that interested people are getting put
onto this exciting event that so many people have found rewarding over the course of their
lives, revisited, and even brought family members.
You know, really that sharing of what it is to them and what kinds of things they got
interested in as a result.
I think that those stories are just so invaluable.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah.
And had things gone according to plan with the old venue, we would have been able to nail
down the date and announce the conference long ago, months ago.
But since we're coming up from behind here, we are all the more in need of people.
Go to hope.net.
We need attendees.
We need speakers.
We need workshops.
We need everything.
We need all the volunteers.
And if you're interested in being one or more of these things, go to hope.net.
Check out all the info there.
Get in touch with us there.
Um, because we need to, we need to hit the ground running with this.
And, uh, that's our only chance of getting a good event going is with you folks.
We are two months behind where we normally would be starting, uh, selling tickets.
And, uh, well, we, we opened up, uh, speaker submissions early because, you know, if people
want to, uh, put together a talk, we felt they should, uh, have the chance to do that
if they were determined to come.
Uh, interesting fact too, is that, uh, the date that we have is the date we did announce
when we thought we were going to be at St.
John's, uh, and, and luckily we were able to get that particular date, August 14th through
16th.
Uh, you know, I, I've also, you know, heard some feedback from people saying, yeah, I
can't travel to the United States in the current condition.
I get that, you know, I'm not going to debate you on that.
Absolutely.
Uh, but that's why we have the virtual ticket.
So you can still participate and, uh, and, and support the conference.
Yes, Alex.
Yeah.
I just want to throw my wholehearted support behind the return to Manhattan offer.
For you and Kyle and the rest of the crew, hearty congratulations on making this happen
too.
I mean, it's literally down the block from you.
Of course you're happy.
I love it.
I literally, yeah.
I mean, it's going to be so, so much easier for me as well.
And I'm, I should hopefully be living even closer to, to the hotel.
I mean, every time I come back from Pennsylvania and I, I go through the Lincoln tunnel and then
drive down, um, I'm just, uh, uh, always in awe and looking at the New Yorker hotel.
The idea that hope is going to be in there is, is just awesome.
And I think really, honestly, if hotel Pennsylvania is not available and we all know what
Vornado did to it, I mean, it's gone now.
I can't imagine a better place in all of New York than the New Yorker hotel, given its
significance, its history, uh, it's relevance to the hacker culture.
I mean, being in the same place where Tesla lived and died, having a hacker conference
in that, that space, that time and space is, is, is very unique.
I think this is, uh, I think this portends great things to come for the summer for hope
and hopefully for many, many years to come at this hotel.
So congratulations to, to you guys.
I can't wait for it to happen.
Um, I think we're going to have, uh, a shit ton of fun.
I think so too.
I should also point this out.
It's premature to point it out right now, but, uh, we are going to cap attendance at
a certain number.
We're not going to say what the number is, just that this is our first time in a new
place.
We don't want to overwhelm ourselves or, or anybody else.
Uh, but we are going to put a cap.
So if you're, if you're planning on, uh, delaying buying a ticket, don't delay too long.
Uh, we'll let you know when it's getting close.
Uh, and right now, you know, we're not in danger of that, but, um, uh, it's just something
to consider to keep in mind.
Well, guys, I'm going to jump, um, excellent to catch up with you as always.
I hope you have a rest of, uh, a wonderful rest of the overtime and, um, and I'll be listening
after the fact.
I can't wait to hear what, uh, what our callers and listeners have to say about, I just have
one request of you, Alex, before you leave.
Sure.
That is that you tell somebody, anybody in Taiwan about hope.
Will you do that for us?
Sure.
Absolutely.
Spread the word over there.
And, you know, uh, we, we, we, uh, should also be looking for really good speakers, people
that, uh, uh, you know, attendees will be thrilled to see, uh, because, you know, being in Manhattan
now, being in the heart of Manhattan, it's a lot easier to get to.
Uh, and I think we can, uh, the sky's the limit.
If we can do this, we can do anything.
I really believe that.
Yep.
I agree.
Look, we've been pulling rabbits out of hats for so many decades now that, that, you know,
it's, it shouldn't be surprising.
But this one was alive.
I know.
That's funny.
Okay.
All right.
I'll, I'll leave it at that.
Thanks for sticking around.
Yes.
You got it guys.
Have a good one.
Talk to you all soon.
Safe travels.
Have fun.
That was Alex in Taiwan, Taipei to be precise.
Yeah.
Under duress, I don't think should be our comfort zone, but definitely we, we are, we
are showing the skill.
And, um, I think this is a good fit.
As Alex was saying, a number of us, I know Gila, we, we definitely sort of had a
good, a good feeling of the space in general.
And I think it's just really exciting to think of like, okay, how are we going to use
it now?
How are we going to make it all work as, as he's pointing out?
Because, Hey, uh, we have some familiarity and, uh, wow.
The time and place are set.
So everything else is up to what we put together collectively.
So you can get all the details at hope.net.
Uh, everything is there.
That's how you get involved.
That's how you get the latest updates.
That's how you get your tickets, uh, all kinds of, um, uh, new information being posted
on a daily basis because we really are, um, uh, cranking it up, moving, moving extremely
fast, very quickly, because as I said, we're two months behind.
Uh, it took that long, you know, several months, about four months for us to find a new place.
Uh, and we, we searched long and hard and we want to thank people for all the, um, uh,
suggestions, some of which were really good.
And some of which were a little wacky, but, uh, you know, we, we need a good laugh occasionally
as well, but, uh, we really do appreciate it.
And again, for those folks that are uncomfortable coming to the United States, I get it.
Uh, but please support us digitally by getting a, um, a virtual ticket and we'll make that
fun.
And yeah, host a watch party and have your own, uh, uh, remote experience.
We're all for it.
Please, uh, please join us regardless.
Cool.
Any, absolutely.
And if, if you were, if you remember the hotel Pennsylvania for those, uh, long time attendees
of hope, this is literally around the corner for, I know not everyone's familiar with the
area.
This is around the corner.
This is steps away from where it used to be.
And I, you know, as much as I enjoyed it, having it in Queens, because I live in Queens
and it was very close.
I could just take the bus.
I, I am going to really enjoy having it in, uh, in Manhattan again, right in the center of
everything.
And for someone from Queens to say that, that, that, that matters.
That means, but everyone told us they liked Queens, you know, everyone was so polite saying,
yeah, this is great.
I love all the, you know, campus space and everything, you know, tell us, no, we want
to be back in Manhattan.
If, you know, we would have said it was impossible because it really was impossible, but we were
able to, uh, to work it out.
And, um, well, and of the people that told us, I mean, there were a precipitous amount.
So we just, you know, we never forgot.
And it, as has been said, was something that Greg had a lot of optimism about more than,
than even we did at times.
He really did.
He really did.
It's something that, uh, we're just really thrilled.
We were able to make it happen.
And, uh, we'd love to rest on our laurels here and, and, um, uh, I guess leave it at
that, but we absolutely cannot.
We are, uh, as he said, uh, moving full steam ahead, steam and every other propulsion, uh,
uh, source we can, we can muster.
Gila, I know, uh, you're somewhat familiar with the hotel as well.
Yeah.
You want to share any, uh, impressions?
Um, I think it's going to be great.
I think, you know, there were a lot of really wonderful things about St. John's, but, you
know, if you felt you needed to get a hamburger at two o'clock in the morning, it was a little
more complex, um, you're right in the center of everything.
It is, we're all right there.
And the other thing is, and I don't want to sound too sappy, but being at the New Yorker
and thinking about the conference and thinking about what that could mean, the vibe felt right.
And I think it is, you know, I could imagine what the space is going to look like with everybody
there.
Um, and I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be a fantastic venue for the
conference.
And I think phenomenal things are going to happen.
And I guess the biggest decision is where's the banner going to go?
You know, uh, we have some ideas for that.
We actually did.
We couldn't find a place at St. John's to put the help banner, but, um, we see some
potential at the hotel.
There were a lot of attempts.
We eventually found a couple ways.
We did the first year.
The first year we did it after a day.
A big help from Chris.
There were a lot of people that, that, uh, stepped up and made it happen.
We worked with the space as we had, uh, there are some very tall, um, ceilings in some
of the spaces.
So, um, it could potentially be a part of a main, uh, main track space.
Also, I mean, I don't know.
There, there's a lot of different ways.
Uh, the, some of the, um, smaller rooms, I think we're going to be having access to
are a little bit lower ceiling.
So it may be, it may be that there's one or two spots that it's best, maybe in the
back of a room, uh, as you're leaving a main track.
I don't know.
We'll, we're definitely going to, we'll figure it out.
We'll be walking through, of course, and we'll definitely accommodate hotels, 40 stories
tall.
We're going to put that banner somewhere.
It will be visible somehow, somewhere.
The city will know the city will know.
I have, uh, I just have an idea, but we can talk about that offline.
Um, so drinking black night points out that the fact that it's the hotel where Tesla died
is going to drive up ticket sales.
So here's the thing about the New Yorker is they have a lot of history and they're really
proud of it.
There's a whole Tesla exhibit in the basement and there are all kinds of things about the
history of the New Yorker hotel, things specific to radio.
There's a program from the Hudson river region conference of ham radio operators from the
1930s.
Some of whom might be at our conference.
No, seriously.
They're very motivated.
A hundred year old hams.
Yeah, definitely.
That you doubt this.
Have you met the ham radio community?
Yes.
You make a very, very good point.
That is very true.
But I think the, I think the, the synergy of hope and 2600 and the New Yorker hotel is,
yeah, it's, you know, yes.
So there, there, the exhibit, there's a lot of stuff.
There's, it's, um, a huge selling point.
I think it's going to be, I think this is going to be a really good opportunity and I'm
really excited to see what happens.
And, you know, we, we, we, we, we tell people, uh, you know, you're here for the conference.
Uh, so, you know, being all the way out in Queens, uh, you know, you'll have fun in Queens.
You don't have to be in Times Square.
Well, okay.
Now you can be in Times Square if you want to, you can go see a show, you can go to, uh,
you know, a fancy restaurant somewhere, or you can just walk around the city.
We get it.
You know, we missed it too, but now you have that opportunity.
You can have a great time, spend a week in the city, you know, and, and wander around,
but you can always take a break from hope and, and, you know, go and see cats.
Is that still playing?
I don't know.
I mean, I heard it was today, tomorrow and forever, but no, it is not currently, but who
knows what's going to be better.
A Vita then, you know, one of the current ones.
It's so cool.
It's going to be so exciting there.
And there's so much old stuff.
The hotel itself is, is, uh, it's in great shape, the architecture.
And, um, uh, I, I just love the, the style.
I believe it's art deco.
Um, just what a, what an interesting and, and, uh, cool space.
So I think a lot of, there's going to be a lot of, uh, I think things to learn to figure
out how to move around the flow overall.
Yeah.
So, um, but we're going to, again, uh, be moving quickly to adapt.
And we are going to need a ton of help with this because, uh, it's, it's so much work to
put this together, you know, finding it was a ton of work, but putting it together, making
it look good, decorations, uh, AV lighting, all of this, we are, we are going to need a
lot of help with, uh, in order, everybody who works in the conference is a volunteer,
myself included.
Uh, it's, it's something that, um, uh, we feel passionate about.
And now we're in Manhattan and now we're every year.
This is what people dreamed of many years ago.
Uh, and, uh, let's see if we can do it.
And I, I really hope we can, because, uh, this is a very positive thing for the entire
community.
It is absolutely.
And I'm going to mention one other thing, which is that the HVAC is in great shape.
It is a, it is ready to do battle with August in Manhattan.
Uh, so if you want to not go outside for three days, you can walk into the hotel on Friday
and not leave until Sunday afternoon, your room will be air conditioned.
The spaces will be in, will be air conditioned.
Um, if you want to go to the TikTok diner again, it's literally in the basement of the
hotel.
You don't have to go outside.
If you don't want to, you can go to Times Square, but you don't have to.
There's also a steakhouse, uh, inside the hotel, which is good as well.
And there's an Italian restaurant.
You don't have to leave for either of those.
Uh, coffee stand.
Yeah.
It's just, it's, it's, it's incredible.
There really is.
Um, I had something else.
Oh yeah.
Uh, the hotel has, um, uh, discounted rooms.
Did we mention that?
Uh, special, special deal, uh, for a New Yorker hotel.
Uh, the links are on hope.net and, um, we suggest booking your rooms.
You won't get charged until you check out.
Uh, and I'm not sure that that works everywhere, but that's, that's how the New Yorker does
things.
So you can reserve your room and, uh, not worry about, uh, um, it being charged until
August when you actually leave.
And that other super cool thing that they're doing, um, which is that there is a, oh God,
what is it?
It's not a resort fee, but.
Oh, the facility fee.
Okay.
This is cool.
This is cool.
Okay.
Phone freaks.
Listen to this.
All right.
Um, there is a facility fee of $40 per day and that fee is waived for us.
We do not have to pay that fee at all.
40 a day, a mandatory facility fee is what they call it.
That's not mandatory for us.
And that's great.
Uh, and that fee gets you free long distance phone calls to anywhere in the world for unlimited
period of time.
You can go to hope and go to your hotel room and, and, and get on the phone and call somebody
in Botswana and stay on the phone until Sunday night and it won't cost you a penny.
And I, you know, can you imagine saying this in 1994 at our first conference to a bunch
of phone freaks at hotel pen?
Like, yeah, you can use, because back then if you made a local phone call, it was like
$10.
It was ridiculous.
Hotel phones were the biggest ripoff.
But here we have a hotel where you can call anybody anywhere for as long as you want.
It doesn't cost a damn thing.
There's also free wifi, you know, and people are used to that, I guess, but free wifi in
the rooms, uh, free access to the fitness center, free access to the business center, both 24
hours.
Um, so yeah, a lot of cool stuff.
What a, what a cool home base.
Yeah.
We've run out of things.
And a huge bank vault.
There's a huge bank vault.
Yes.
You're right.
Yes.
That you can go and eat dinner and that's where the steakhouse is.
I aim to, I want to, I would like to check out all these spaces at least once, at least
like maybe, uh, uh, order a drink or something.
It just, we should book a room like a week in advance so we can explore the whole place.
I know.
I know.
We're going to have to spend a little bit more time there.
Go ahead.
Um, the room rate includes Sunday evening.
So if you want to stay in your room past the end of the conference, you can check out
on Monday.
Our room rate is a room rate covers that time as well.
So just to make sure everybody's aware, uh, we had a question in the chat.
How many stages and tracks will hope have, we are still working that out.
It depends on, it depends on submissions.
It depends on how we decide to allocate the space.
I will say though, uh, and I was kind of surprised by this.
When we look the place over, there is room for expansion so we can get even bigger, uh,
going down the road, but, uh, it's, it's certainly going to be comparable to previous
hopes.
Um, okay.
And here's one more question from the chat.
Can we crack the bank vault lock?
No, because they've turned it into a room that you can walk into.
Um, yes, the actual lock mechanism is behind, uh, behind a case.
And there'll be people in there making steaks with very sharp knives.
So I'd be very careful about, uh, messing around with the bank vault.
But definitely go and enjoy it.
I mean, you can sit in the vault and, and have a meal if you'd like.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Here's the thing.
If you check in on Friday and check out on Monday, there are, um, three restaurants in
the hotel.
So you could have a different dining experience every night.
You can go to the fancy steakhouse.
You can go to the nice Italian restaurant.
You can go to the diner.
You can go across the street, across the street to McDonald's.
If you want, there's a Starbucks there.
There's a Taco Bell.
There's a five guys.
Everything is there.
There's a Staples across the street.
That's right.
That's right.
I'm going to go to Chinatown in Queens, but Penn station, a block away.
There's this, there's this, um, uh, crazy all night taco stand outside Penn station.
I've never been there, but we passed by it and there are people lined up.
We're definitely going there.
Did you tell the story?
There was, wasn't there a story on the news we saw where someone sued?
This guy came, I think it was from Switzerland.
He came to the United States and filed three lawsuits in New York city against, um, the taco
place that I just mentioned because there's, their sauce was too hot, uh, against the police
for not taking him seriously.
And there was one other, uh, I don't think he was successful in any of them.
And he's since gone home.
Yeah.
I think he, he just had a very bad trip, but we would like to get some tacos.
Yeah.
Wait, are you looking this up?
Okay.
That place looks good.
It looks really good.
He said a taco gave him diarrhea, a Walmart store discriminated against him and an interaction
with the police had given him insomnia.
He sued for $20 million in damages.
He's from Germany.
I'm sorry, Switzerland.
Um, but can I point one thing out?
That wall, Walmart, Walgreens, which was it?
They discriminate against everybody.
They discriminate against everybody.
What Walmart was he suing?
There is no Walmart in the five boroughs.
You think he meant Walgreens?
Cause I just mixed them up.
I, yeah, I got nothing.
Um, that definitely could have impacted his lawsuit.
So he went to Los Tacos, number one.
That's what it's called?
Los Tacos?
That's an easy name to remember.
Los Tacos, number one.
Oh, number one.
That's not so easy.
Number one.
There's this place in Seattle.
Unfortunately, Kyle just left the room, but there's this place in Seattle that has amazing
Mexican food.
It's a chain.
And I can never remember that damn name in Kyle's back.
What is the name of that place?
Oh, I can barely remember.
It's Rinsconcito.
I can't, I can't pronounce.
You always, you always tell me what it is when I'm struggling for it.
Yeah, you put me on the spot.
I'll have to look it up, but I always pronounce it probably the wrong way.
I just read it a certain way, but it's a wonderful chain.
And you can go there and you get, what's the soup called?
It's so amazing.
Puzzle.
Oh my God.
It's big.
It's just, you don't feel like you're in a chain.
It's a mini chain.
I wish they would open here in New York, but Los Tacos, number one.
See, I remember that name.
They, they look pretty good.
I want to ask our, our, our callers about their bad taco experiences.
No, no, let's not.
Let's not make that a thing, but let's open up the phone lines.
We're going to do that right now.
When the last digit is said, that's when the phone lines will be operational.
Rinsconcito.
Rinsconcito.
I feel like it with four words in it.
It's only one word.
Oh, that's such a cute name.
Rinsconcito.
I don't know.
Yeah, but there's like, uh, the, the word for, for kitchen and.
Tecuria.
Yeah.
Tecuria.
Uh, it's okay.
It's all there.
I got intimidated.
It's an awesome place.
It really is.
You can go there.
It gets up late night.
And then I think when we, we did our road trip, we were in Eastern Washington and we found
one there in one city.
Yeah.
Spokane.
I think we, we, we, it was near what didn't have the same atmosphere.
It didn't have.
Oh, not at all.
But it had pretty much the, the, uh, same menu and everything that you would expect.
So it was, it was a great comfort.
If they open in New York, I think they have one in Mexico too.
So if they open in New York, I guarantee it'll do well and, uh, it'll, it'll become a hit.
Okay.
Our phone number eight zero two three, two one four two two five.
And, uh, you may call us and we may answer and, uh, please, um, talk about anything you
want, uh, feedback to this, feedback to something you're doing, um, opinions, suggestions, criticisms,
whatnot.
802-321-HACK is our phone number.
Or if you're interested in calling toll-free within the U.S., 833-755-2600 should still work.
Okay.
And, uh, thank you everyone in the chat for the taco discourse.
Um, I will also mention the, um, the breakfast taco, breakfast burrito situation.
I still think is weird, but it's awesome.
Um, just.
At that place?
No, in general.
Oh, just breakfast tacos in general.
You're, you're in favor of.
I am simultaneously in favor of them and a little weirded out.
That's the correct response.
Because eggs and hash browns and cheese in a burrito with salsa early in the morning,
it's a lot.
And I know that some people would eat bacon.
I'm not a bacon person.
Um, someone called it.
I'd eat my own head in a flour tortilla.
That sounds like a college thing.
Like, I, I remember making that with a lot of friends in college.
Like, yeah.
We do have a caller, right?
A little cilantro.
Yeah, there's a call.
And we're continuing to talk like this.
And okay.
Tacos are a great topic of conversation.
Breakfast or otherwise.
You can, you could kill so much time.
I'm so sorry to the caller.
I hear mushrooms on them are very good.
Go ahead, call it.
Can I let them on the air now?
Okay.
Uh, good evening.
You're on off the hook overtime.
Go ahead.
I love Mexican food.
I love quesadillas.
See?
See what you encourage?
Well, that's good.
You'll be happy.
You'll be happy in, in, in New York for sure.
You know, congratulations on finding the new venue.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
It was, uh, it was torturous.
We did it.
Uh, let's hope we can, we can pull off the conference now.
So, last week you were trying to look at the Twitter profile for the new Ayatollah of Iran.
There is a service out there called, it's xcancel.com.
If you swap the domain name in the link to a, uh, a Twitter link to, you change the, if you change the domain from x.com to xcancel.com, it will allow you to view that tweet or profile or such.
Really?
As if you were signed in.
Oh, wow.
But you used to be able to.
Yeah, you used to be able to read tweets without being signed in, and of course Elon Musk took care of that, so you have to, you know, get an account to actually read anything.
But you're saying by using xcancel.com with the, um, um, where do you put the username?
Um, you just take a normal Twitter link and you just change the domain.
Okay.
Excellent.
Like, it can be a link to a profile, tweet, such and such, and you can search, you can search for different things by just going to xcancel.
If I remember correctly, it's a instance of Sitter, I don't remember.
So, who is running this?
I think it's an open source project that used to be around, that would be, that was an alternate interface for Twitter, and I think this is just one of the prominent ones that's actively being maintained and developed, and it still works.
So, yet another cool thing being developed on the internet, thanks to open source.
All right.
Okay, that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
All right, thanks for your call.
802-321-4225 is our telephone number, and, um, yeah, we have room for, uh, for many people to call in.
I'm sorry, I just, I'm just kind of talked out.
One at a time.
Um, yeah, so this is very exciting, and 67 people.
And if you, again, discount three of us, um, because you guys have a machine going, and we've got two, um, I'm pretty, pretty confident that one of the other 60-something people who are with us right now would be interested in calling.
And, Kyle, I gotta say, the slide looks great.
Oh, yeah, we have a new slide with the phone number.
Oh, thank you.
I worked on that, uh, over the weekend.
Yeah, you demand, and we hop to it.
People wanted the phone number.
I just came in and did a little touch-up and, you know, found a nice marker.
We just discovered the ringer wasn't on, so we weren't hearing the phone ring.
It's on now.
It's on now.
And we have a call from a regular listener.
What does that mean, a regular listener?
Uh, someone that we have spoken to before, yes.
Didn't we speak to the last caller before as well?
Yeah, I'm adding color to our calls now.
It's a new thing I do.
I mean, they're not irregular.
Is it orange?
Is the color orange?
It's a very bright shade of orange, yeah.
Okay, all right.
Uh, let's, uh, take the phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off-the-hook overtime.
Yes, Emmanuel.
Ah, it's Rebel.
Well, you know, Rebel, you're slipping.
You used to be number one.
Last week, you weren't any number.
You didn't even call last week.
What the hell?
Oh, I did.
I don't know why I did call last week.
I don't remember.
You found something better to do.
You can just say it.
I don't know.
Maybe I was fixing my computer or something.
I don't know.
I don't remember.
But, oh, maybe I forgot.
I think I forgot.
I don't know.
Just keep digging that knife in.
Go right ahead.
Okay.
But, um, you know, I can't wait for a whole good August, and I would like to contribute something.
Okay.
I would like to get pay phones, like old pay phones, uh, from like the 80s or the 90s
or whatever.
I'm sure that somebody could find old pay phones.
Do you know how heavy old pay phones are?
You might get a bunch of them, but moving them is going to be a real, uh, a real escapade.
No.
I mean, regular pay phone, like from the 90s.
I mean, not a whole phone booth.
I'm talking about like a little pay phone.
There's no such thing as a little pay phone.
They're massive.
They're big.
You ever have one fall on your foot?
Come on.
Okay.
You can hang them in the wall, but, um, I don't think the hotel would appreciate that.
You know, I do think that they, they might have a pay phone.
Did they have a pay phone?
I believe they did.
Yeah.
I think I saw a pay phone in there.
So I'm sure our attendees will find one.
Well, now what I would like to do is hook up a pay phone or an old pay phone, maybe get
a desktop pay phone.
One of those, you know, things that you put a quarter in.
Uh-huh.
Well, we're not discouraging any of this.
Just a point.
I just want to remind you, though, that there are free calls at the hotel.
Yeah.
Free 24 hours.
That's what you're competing with.
You're asking, it's a heavy lift and you got to bring a lot of coins and you also could
make calls and just not do any of that.
So it'd be good to display, but that's your competition.
Right.
But, I mean, you can hook it up to the point you deposit, it'll be donated to the whole
organization.
That's a great plan.
I think, though, also people bringing old phones to connect, as long as you're not damaging
anything, I'm sure that's fine.
If you prefer a certain ergonomic handset for your typical calling experience, that I think
is perfectly acceptable.
It should bring all kinds of things that you think will make your experience a good time.
But what my idea was is that hooking up the old pay phones to, like, I don't know, like
an asterisk system or some sort of a thing where when you dial a number, it, you know,
has a recording and then it says, you know, if you make a local call, it says, please deposit
25 cents.
Or if you make a one-tenths call, it says, please deposit dollars.
You know, like in that old-time voice.
Yes.
Yeah, I will.
Rob, go ahead.
I will say that, you know, this doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Of course, it requires access to the equipment and people to loan us the equipment and manage
the equipment.
And I know there are a lot of hobbyists out there in the hacker world who have their own
pay phones and play with these sorts of things.
So if you or if anyone listening to this knows of anybody who would be interested in wrangling
something like this at the HOPE conference, they should go to hope.net and use the information
there to get in touch with us.
The thing we learned in Germany, we've learned many times actually, is that when you have
projects like this, they work if the people suggesting them are the people doing them.
You know, instead of saying, why don't you do this?
And we have a thousand different things that people want us to do, which, you know, invariably
we're going to get overloaded.
But we welcome people bringing their projects and, you know, you'll have space to do that
and it'll be amazing.
I think also the types of phones you bring, I mean, something to put in lots of different
places or spread out to make calls meaningful from room to room and stuff like that.
Bringing things that are smaller, that are maybe a smaller system that you could network
together would be a little bit more practical or like field telephones or something, something
that's repurposed, but meant to be used sort of ad hoc.
That might be easier to configure.
We just run some cables or set up things in different places.
And I will say also that we're going to do our best to possibly have the telephone booth
that we've brought before show up.
And I will say it's connected and otherwise wired to work, but it doesn't necessarily accept
coins.
So you can use it to talk through.
So if there is a system or we want to design something and somebody has a project, we can
certainly interconnect with it so that that phone booth could be a part of that, that
whole setup or demonstration.
We're, we're totally open to that.
And we've done demos ourselves, just using a battery, setting up sort of a little intercom.
We did that a lot at Maker Faire in the past and other exhibitions where we brought the phone
booth.
So it's set up.
I mean, we've got our own kit, but we're, we're happy to hear what other people's ideas
are and see if there's a way we can coordinate and get it all connected.
We're also happy to bring the 2600 van.
If somebody can help us figure out where to park it, uh, because Manhattan is, is definitely
more challenging with, with cars and, and, and, uh, vans certainly.
But, you know, if there's a fairly reasonably priced, uh, a garage that can handle vans, uh,
in the neighborhood, you know, we'll consider that as well, because we do want people to,
uh, you know, to, to, to see the van and to witness a little bit of history.
Hi, man, you have commercial plates.
You could park the van on the street.
Uh, yes, but, um, not for free and just meters and they last three hours and you have to constantly
be checking.
It's, it's, it's not easy.
It's not easy to do this.
If there's a good strategy or people have an idea, uh, for that as well on, uh, ways
you can make it visible and not run afoul and not have to, um, have someone watching it
full time in that way.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's a complex task, but we, we brought it to, uh, hope at, um, many instances
it would, it would be parked near hotel pen.
Um, and, uh, we, we can, um, you know, we've come up with clever ways of, of making it work.
So we're, we're thinking about all those things.
If people see good spots or notice, um, uh, ways other vehicles are, are, uh, able to
place themselves that that'd be a great tip, but all kinds of tips, uh, for the neighborhood,
just reminding us of things, um, that worked at the hotel, um, across the street from Penn
station, they will probably, they will likely apply.
So that, that's all, um, good info to, uh, kind of recollect and, and, uh, apply to this
scenario.
We're hackers.
We make things work.
And, um, I would like to do, um, like maybe do like tour guide, like maybe I can like, uh,
do like, you know, tour guide, show people where things are in Manhattan.
Yeah, absolutely.
If you know the neighborhood for sure, people are going to need that.
Yeah.
We could even have a pilgrimage over to the hotel Penn site, which is now a hole in the ground.
Hey, no, I, you know, no joking around.
That's a very somber thing.
We'll all place a road flare in front of it.
I think you're joking about that.
I'm, I'm going to insist that people maintain some, some decorum, um, it's a sacred site.
I could show people where WBAI used to be at eighth Avenue and 30th Street.
You know, what's funny about that WBAI is literally one block away from the hotel, literally
across the street, 35th street, as opposed to 34th street.
No, it's in Brooklyn and they, and when you ask Google for the phone number, it gives
you a two and two number.
It doesn't have the Brooklyn number.
I think, don't we give out a two and two number on the air for, for in studio?
Yes.
I think that makes sense.
Two and two, two, zero nine, two, nine hundred.
Yeah.
I think, I think we have that number again.
I'm pretty sure.
We'll call it and see who answers.
Like you call us.
Uh, what else?
Um, oh, well, that's about all the time we have rebel, but, um, we want to thank you
for your call.
It is a two on two number.
Okay.
Gila, the fact checker is, uh, confirming that BAI has a two on two number.
I certainly am.
Yeah.
But it doesn't work when you call it.
Oh, it does.
What do you get when you call it?
Nothing.
I don't think you call a number and you get nothing.
It's no such thing.
There's gotta be something.
All right.
Well, you work on that rebel.
We're going to move on to another call, but thanks for the call.
And, uh, we look forward to seeing you.
All right.
Take care.
Eight Oh two, three, two, one, four, two, two, five.
Oh, I'm looking at the screen.
That's whose handwriting is that?
That's really kind of cool.
That's mine.
That's your handwriting.
Wow.
I was going to say, it looked like it was made by a serial killer.
I'm glad I didn't say that.
No, I like the little smiley face at the bottom.
That's, that's kind of nice as well.
That's new.
Yeah.
What do you mean that's new?
There wasn't a smiley face there?
Did you draw a smiley face?
That's my smiley face.
Wow.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I don't know.
It doesn't look like you.
No, it's not me.
It's not a self-portrait.
But yes, I drew that while I was drawing other stuff.
And relax.
I'm from Washington.
I have a question.
Why is the serial killer?
Why is number there twice?
It's typed and then it's written.
Because I got bored of typing.
I don't know.
No, I needed the other one after I was done with the text box.
So I just drew on it.
Okay.
Well, we don't need the number twice is my point.
No, it's, it's spelled out.
And then it's numeric in the second one.
Oh, you're saying it's there.
It's there for a hack.
They wanted the last four.
Hey, Kyle.
What?
Will you draw the rest of us too?
Yeah.
Do you want a whole line of smiley faces?
Okay.
I think a whole line of smiley faces are like smiley faces in all the corners.
I thought Rob was the one that drew people.
I'll see what I can do.
He is.
Do we have them in the phone call?
Yes, we do.
All right.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Oh, hello.
I want to sell roux to you.
You want to buy cheap roux?
A hundred dollars.
Buy one.
Get one free.
Two hundred dollars.
No, we're good.
We're full.
But thanks.
Are you sure?
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks for your, thanks for the offer though.
802-321-4225.
Takes all types, doesn't it?
In any case, we've been, we've been getting some, we've been getting some good responses to
things we were talking about over on, not only in the YouTube chat, but over on
Mastodon, which I've been keeping an eye on, some discussion about the foreign router
ban stuff.
Do share.
All our, our pal, Dr. 47 said, you know, as far as I'm concerned, anything this administration
says can't be trusted.
Our government is compromised.
I wouldn't trust their read of the prices on a McDonald's drive-thru sign.
Nevermind anything like this.
To me, it's automatically incredibly suspect.
They claim security concerns, but I have to turn that back around on them.
Are they working toward legally mandating back doors in future U.S.-built devices?
And that, that's an interesting point because if they can control who's allowed to sell
writers, sell routers in this country, yeah, that, that does make me think that maybe they
want to do more than, you know, drum up patriotism and support local businesses.
They, they want to maintain some sort of control over the supply chain.
Yep.
Sounds about right.
Any, any other feedback?
Just some, uh, good stuff.
Uh, people, uh, people letting us know that, uh, they couldn't find Tonga on Google Maps.
Um, Google Maps can't find Tonga.
We've got a screenshot.
Um.
Wow.
Even Google Maps can't find it, let alone the people.
Boy, that's something.
Wow.
We have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook overtime.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Hi.
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
We hear you fine.
Yeah.
Was that last call a prank call?
Was that some type of prank call?
You'd have to ask the caller.
I will say it was in an international call.
That's about all I could say.
It was an international call?
Yes.
Wow.
Okay.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is interesting.
My question is, maybe you talked about this already, but I'm trying to find out.
You say you need volunteers.
I'm looking to volunteer.
Um.
I do some construction work and electrical work and carpentry, et cetera.
So, if you need any kind of hand, are you need any kind of volunteers to help you?
Yeah.
Uh.
Well, the hotel's already built, so, you know, you don't have to worry about that.
Uh.
But definitely things for our project, right?
Definitely rigging and building up, of course, sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like stage, uh, uh, production stuff, of course.
Yeah.
There's a lot of, uh, tape and, and, uh, uh, you know, hot glue.
So, it's, it's, it's a, it's a whole operation.
So, there's, there's plenty of things people have, um, to do and room for people to jump
on tasks and, and be self-directed.
People with knowledge and skill will always be welcome.
And I know we're going to have a wiki up fairly soon, if it's not up already, wiki.hope.net,
uh, where people will be discussing specifics as to what we need and when and all that kind
of thing.
Uh, okay.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
So, that, is that, that would be the forum to, you know, to put this in, right?
To submit my name or whatever.
Yeah, definitely.
They just write to, uh, volunteers at hope.net as well, uh, and, and, and submit it there.
And, and that way somebody will get back to you.
We're going to be collecting all of the correspondence in the intervening period.
Just catch up and try to organize that and get people on what are essentially, uh, news,
news lists for organizing purposes.
So, there will be announcements about maybe welcoming people who have expressed interest
and we really count on people speaking up.
So, like, if you get communications in that vein, we need you to say, like, hey, I'm here.
I got the email.
I'm ready to go.
I want to, um, you know, support this thing you mentioned and this other thing that I know
you're planning on, on, uh, getting a group together to work on.
Like, that's the level of participation.
That's, that's what we count on.
Okay.
Okay.
That's my question.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Thanks for your call.
Take care.
It's, you know, it's really amazing to see volunteers come together though and, and just
build something amazing.
It's happened every time and I look forward to seeing, you know, what we all come up with
this time.
Yeah.
We're putting, um, our best ideas to work and, um, we're also keeping it.
We're going to keep things very, very simple.
We've already put out some little hints and things about, um, the sorts of theme, uh, signage
is, is, is a one direction we're going with in this.
So, um, we want people to kind of take that run with it and, uh, we'll, we'll put out some
more things that, uh, we think are fun ways to think about, uh, what this next event will
be like.
And, um, we'll hopefully get a lot of creative interest to, um, uh, people looking at some
of the art and maybe getting submissions for art again, that was something that was very
popular.
Yes.
We are going to talk about that, uh, definitely in the near future.
So.
Oh, sorry.
I thought the phone was ringing.
Um, what was I going to say?
You were, you were going to say, uh,
People are having a great time, which is good.
We're keeping up, you guys.
No, sorry.
The other thing I was thinking about Tonga.
So the, the reason I feel like a lot of people know about Tonga and not just because the top
level domain, but the guy who was the flag bearer for Tonga in the Olympics, starting in
2016, got a lot of people's attention.
How did he do that?
But he was a very good looking man who was wearing traditional Tongan attire and a lot
of body oil and carrying the flag.
And then I think he came back as a winter Olympian.
Like he's been the flag bearer for multiple Olympics Olympics from Tonga.
Did anybody find Tonga on the map yet?
I know it is.
Someone did.
It is in a warm climate.
Yes.
So that explains that, um, that one incident.
And I do remember that as, as well.
The phone line is currently open.
Okay.
802-321-4225 is our phone number.
Uh, we have time for one or two more phone calls and, um, but all kinds of discussion that
we can, uh, have from the chat or from, from people here is our pal, uh, Drak and Black
Knight, uh, had posted over on Mastodon where you can find us at off the hook at masto.hackers.town.
Um, Drak and posted a screenshot of Tonga on open street map and, uh, added a reference to
Manos, the hands of fate to the, uh, to the picture, which, uh, you know, nicely done.
Nicely done.
Um, uh, Lupa zero SH, uh, says, wasn't Tonga also the place that had a huge volcano eruption
that could be seen from space a few years ago?
Hang on.
That's a good question.
I thought that was Iceland, but maybe it was both.
There's volcanoes everywhere, so.
Okay.
I am sorry to have to tell you this.
In December, 2021, um, an eruption began on a submarine volcano in the Tongan archipelago.
Um, it went on for about a month.
Um, seven people died.
However.
What's funny about that, Gila?
The volcano is called Honga Tonga.
All right.
Um, don't know what else you'd name a volcano, but, um, sure.
That makes sense.
It was bound to go at some point.
What's a submarine volcano?
Regardless of the name.
It's, it's under.
Under the water.
It's a submarine.
Volcano.
Oh.
That's what submarine means.
Okay.
Because it goes.
Okay.
I just figured all that out.
Uh, we have another phone call.
I'm sorry.
Tonga Tonga.
Hanga Haapai.
But.
You need to visit Tonga and make, make friends with the natives there.
They'll, they'll love you.
I hope so.
Yeah.
Let's take this phone call.
Good evening.
You're on, off.
Look over time.
Go ahead.
Hello, everybody.
This is Zap from London.
Zap.
Hey, long time.
How you been?
Well, um.
Doing okay, but you were a little bit rude hanging up to me when I was doing my Chinese
impression.
So I'd like to apologize to our Oriental friends first.
Oh boy.
There's so much there to unpack.
Um, okay.
Well, you know what?
You're in, you're in, you're in England.
Um, things are different over there.
Uh, but yeah, uh, let's, let's, let's keep to the, the British accent for you.
Okay.
Well, the reason I was signing in and hence the fake Chinese accent.
Uh-huh.
I don't know if you heard recently about the problems we've got over here with our social
media.
People are getting arrested.
Uh, the police went to go and arrest a guy because his online name is Ching Chong Chinaman.
Wow.
Um, and it's not you, right?
Oh, hell no.
Okay, good.
Um, that's, uh, that's, that's a bit much.
So they're, you're saying they're arresting people for, for being racist online or something
like that for their online posts and their political views, right?
Yeah.
It's different there than here.
Uh, and you know, there are people here who want to make it more like that, where you can
get arrested for saying things that are, that are, you know, insensitive or, uh, controversial.
Um, but, um, you know, I, I, I think on both sides of the aisle, you will find plenty
of people who don't want what you're describing.
Yep.
Um, in fact, recently, in fact, last year, October, I was arrested.
Oh no, I didn't know about this.
Yep.
Well, I kept it quiet because going through a few legal problems, shall we say?
Uh huh.
So what did they say you did?
Uh, I was getting investigated under the malicious communications act 2003, I believe.
It wasn't one of the phone calls to us, was it?
It wasn't, it wasn't an off the hook call.
Oh no, no, no, no.
Good.
Okay.
No, that would be an obscene phone call.
Yeah, exactly.
That's yeah.
We value those.
It's funny and clean.
Yeah.
So what, what are they saying you did though?
Yeah.
Um, well, I posted some, a picture, uh, of a pressure cooker because I wanted to buy a pressure
cooker and my stalker, uh, took it as I was going to blow up his apartment block.
Did you say you're a stalker?
Yes.
You have a stalker.
I have a stalker now.
And that didn't enter into the conversation with the authorities that somebody stalking
you and, and, and saying false things about you.
Oh, it did at the police interview.
I mentioned it a few times.
I made a big point of mentioning it every time they were asking me about the person.
I'm not going to mention the name for legal reasons.
Yeah, please don't.
But when they mentioned them, I said, I know two of that name.
One is an old school friend.
Or do you mean my stalker?
And they said, well, we're not going to refer to him as the stalker, but that one.
I went, ah, my stalker.
So, okay, uh, you were legitimately looking for a pressure cooker and posted a picture
of one online and they have a thing about pressure cookers because they can be used to
make things blow up.
No, this, this problem, this guy has lots of problems and, uh, basically he's claiming
he's been stalked, cyber bullied.
And I'm part of a crew that won't put up with that mischief, shall we say?
I mean, infosex hackers, we police our own.
Uh-huh.
And the only reason I'm discussing it now is because I got the letter today saying the
police are going to do no further action.
Well, that's good, right?
So, I'm in the clear.
Yeah, it's clear, but we don't actually have freedom of speech in this country, which is
a bit annoying.
Yeah, that is true.
That is true.
Because they say we do, but we don't.
Uh-huh.
So, I thought I'd just phone in mentioning about this poor person that had the police turn
over their door, uh-huh, and that's not me, uh, because he's, I think, getting the tag
was Ching Chong Chinaman, and somebody took offense to that because they said it was racist.
So, when the police turned up, they actually found out he was Chinese.
Oh, my God.
Wow, that must have been embarrassing for them.
Yes, it was.
They said, ah, yeah, nothing, we're going to go now, and I think they left.
But it was a little bit of big news in England because it's hilarious.
It's stupid that people are getting arrested for their tweets and Facebook posts.
I mean, yeah, some may be considered offensive and racist because you always get that.
Uh, but some innocent thing like Ching Chong Chinaman, and you've got the police turning
up, and he's like, yeah, can I help you?
And he's like, uh, no, it's okay, we go now.
Yeah.
I mean, you have to look at intent if somebody is trying to hurt somebody or, uh, you know,
cause harassment or anything like that.
That's very different than somebody, you know, making a poor joke or even, in this case,
somebody, uh, who, uh, wasn't making a joke at all.
Um, you know, we, we, we, we have to, go ahead.
Yeah, go on.
No, I'm saying we, we, we just, he's a child, you know.
Right, right, yeah.
We just have to, um, uh, consider, you know, we might not have the whole picture.
There might be more to this.
And, you know, always try to assume the best of people until they, they clearly prove otherwise.
No, it's just, I, I think somebody's taken offense to his game attack that he had when
he was a teenager.
He's now a fully grown man and he still posts under that name.
He's like me.
I post under his app on whatever names that I post.
I'm going to blow my own box.
See, the thing that bugs me about stories like this is that, um, uh, he's going to get
all kinds of allies now and some of them will be the national front or whatever, you know,
a super right wing racist people for real.
And they'll think that, you know, he's on their side because he got harassed and, uh,
accused of being racist when he wasn't.
Uh, and that's, you know, that's something to be careful of because that's how they, uh,
they build support among people who, um, really don't support them, but feel like they have
nowhere else to, uh, to turn or people who are listening to them.
Yeah, we're going to have to be very careful in that because we could get a bit more right
wing, especially with the politics at the moment.
And we've got elections.
I think the local elections are coming up in May and I think a lot of people are going
to vote for the far right, unfortunately, because they don't want the conservatives.
They don't want labor.
But the only other option is, is they thinking is to go and vote for the fascists or the right
wing people.
I think they called reform or restore.
I can't remember.
There may be even two groups now.
And it's like, well, no, we've got liberal Democrats or we've got the green party, which
is more environmentally friendly and slightly better for the country.
But, you know, vote for who you vote for.
Right, right.
Um, that's your right.
But yeah, but I just thought I'd thrown up and I'm in a silly mood because I'm celebrating
because I'm off the hook.
Oh, wow.
When it comes to this police charge, I thought I'd be funny with my Rupert joke.
And unfortunately, you hung up on me before I could explain it was me.
Well, yeah, you know, we just have to, there's, there's, okay, you know, uh, that's a perfect
example of what we're just talking about, where there's more to something than we realize.
And, uh, yes, but you know what?
Um, uh, I'll bet it wasn't an expensive phone call.
Uh, you keep on hold for a while.
So I always have to top up the phone to make sure I can get through, but I've actually got
a, a tariff plan that I think is a penny a minute.
So that's why I can always phone up.
Okay.
All right.
This is why I've got this plan because I've found internationally quite a lot.
I found up America.
I found up Spain because you know, my history.
And, um, it's, it's good that I phone, uh, different people.
I can find my American friends, my English friends, and some people that are in Europe,
you know, cause I have family in Europe.
Right.
Right.
For me, it works out.
So if you come to hope, you can call all of them for nothing and stay on the phone all
weekend.
I heard, I heard.
Yes.
I've now got to promote hope because I've been told by Gila to do it, uh, because I
made a funny comment in the, in the chat.
So I'm now on a mission because I'll be streaking across the country, trying to give out the
news.
He'll do it too.
I know.
No, I'll do it.
But, um, no, that's it.
All right.
I'll get off the line.
Let somebody else call.
And I apologize again for being a bit cheeky with my antics.
Well, the heartiest of congratulations to you.
And, um, and, and all the best.
And we hope to see you soon.
Yeah.
Hope, hope to see you soon.
I haven't actually been to a meeting this year.
I haven't been for a long time.
I'm hoping maybe to go in April.
Uh-huh.
But that's another thing, actually.
It's on Good Friday.
So some people are saying, well, it's a holiday season.
So we don't really want to go.
Can we have it a week later?
And I'm saying, well, it's up to you guys.
And I've noticed that Lee has just joined the fray.
Uh-huh.
It's a new meeting that had their meeting, uh, in March, their first one.
I believe.
Okay.
So we've now got about six meetings in England.
Yeah.
It's growing.
Scotland or Ireland.
It's growing.
It's growing.
Yeah.
That's a healthy show in there.
Yeah.
So that's a week from this coming Friday would be the next meetings, right?
Officially, yes.
But the English pen to sometimes postpone it by a week.
Uh-huh.
Well, you have that right.
You can have them with you.
When do you feel like having them?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I put it to the Democratic vote.
So, you know, I let everyone say their piece and decide what they want to do.
But it was mentioned just after the last meeting in March that the next one is actually on Good Friday.
Yeah.
I see the Leeds meeting.
It's at the brewery tap upstairs.
Is that correct?
I believe so.
Wow.
Whatever is on the meeting page.
I notice a lot of the meetings in England tend to happen in pubs.
Yeah, because we don't have moles.
So it's a bother because it means youngsters can't really turn up at the pubs.
It's a little bit of an issue we have.
Uh-huh.
But I've always said if they get in touch to say they want to attend the meeting and they're underage for the drinking age of 18 in this country, we can make special arrangements.
And sometimes we even do a mid-month meeting, which is two weeks after, normally on a Saturday, from the main meeting.
So sometimes we have two meetings a month.
So we can accommodate the kids as they turn up.
But they've got to turn up first, and it would be nice if they were accompanied by an adult.
Yeah.
And it's also why it's a good idea to have a website so you can tell people these things.
Yeah, we do.
We did have a Twitter.
We've got a Discord.
I know the person is a lady that was part of Manchester, but she's branched off into the Leeds one now.
So she's running the Leeds one.
Ah, interesting.
Okay.
So what I see here, I see Birmingham.
I see Bournemouth.
I see Cheltenham, Leeds, London, and Manchester.
That is correct.
So if there are any others that come up, let me know.
I will.
I will.
Well, the Leeds one slipped past me, but I've been off the Discord because when I was arrested,
I didn't want to bring any bad news to the 2600s.
So I said, kick me off the Discord because I don't want to be associated with that,
and I didn't want to bring trouble.
And they said, well, we do it reluctantly, but we'll do it because you asked us.
Oh, that's very considerate.
Yeah.
All right.
Anyway, Zap, great hearing from you, and be well.
I will.
And all the best to everyone.
I'll see you on the chat.
Great.
Rob, did you have something for Zap?
Well, yeah, for Zap or for anyone.
If there's someplace that you think there should be a meeting and there isn't one,
you can always start one.
They start organically as the community comes together.
So go to 2600.com slash meetings.
And if you don't see one near you, you can start one near you.
All the info is there.
All right.
Good night, Zap.
One last thing.
Yeah, go ahead.
Hold on, Emmanuel.
One last thing, very quick.
All the meetings that started up are all the old meetings that were there in the 90s,
more or less.
I'd have to look to see if they all got restored.
I'm not sure.
More or less, because Leeds, Manchester, and London are the original three.
Okay.
And then you've got the extras, which is Bournemouth and Cheltenham.
And there used to be one on Birmingham, but they were never official because they was
on the Saturday, not the Friday.
Okay.
Well, now there's one in Birmingham.
And there might have been one in Southampton.
I'm not sure about that, though.
Yeah, there was a few others in Norfolk.
But I'll get off the line.
But okay.
All the best.
All right.
Take care.
And in the United Kingdom, we also have Glasgow in Scotland.
We have a meeting there.
But nothing in Northern Ireland that I can see.
So, yeah, that's something.
At least not yet.
It does shift.
Ebbs and flows.
But it's important that these things come back, that people are gathering one way or another.
I think there was a while that there were not meetings in Canada, and that has since changed.
Yeah, we have meetings in Canada now.
So that's really cool.
Seeing them return, it's fantastic.
And if people are gathering informally, this is a great way to bring in more people.
And find kindred spirits and affinity groups you did not realize were all around you.
And, of course, they can be in all kinds of places, including pubs.
So wherever people gather, those are excellent spots for these meetings.
Well, we are pretty much done for tonight.
I want to thank everybody who called in.
And please write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
A reminder, next week, there is no overtime because we're doing the call-in on WBAI.
It's a monthly thing.
And I believe next week is also April 1st.
So that's going to be something.
Okay.
You couldn't believe anything we said anyway.
So there's that.
All right.
So more info on hope.
Go to hope.net.
Please spread the word.
Please get your tickets.
Please reserve your rooms.
Let's make this a really fun occasion.
The first of many, hopefully, in our new home.
And I'm looking forward to it.
Return to Manhattan.
Never thought it would be possible.
I really did not think this would be possible.
But I should know, in the hacker world, anything is possible.
You just have to believe.
Absolutely.
All right, then.
So no further business.
I move that we adjourn.
Second.
Have a second?
Third.
I can't wait to see what people come up with.
It's going to be great.
Yes.
Good night, everyone.