And I love that you have those studies, too, that that that happened with using probiotics and the number again to get that product to show your support to this radio station is two one two two zero nine two nine five zero. 
We're going to give to WBAI dot org online. 
Moving on to the next program. 
It is now seven p.m. 
Stay tuned for off the hook. 
Coming up, WBAI New York, WBAI dot org. 
Hello. 
You're listening to WBAI in New York. 
It's seven o'clock. 
It's time once again for off the wall. 
Did I say off the wall? 
I meant off the hook. 
Wrong show, wrong station. 
But the right day. 
I cut myself while shaving. 
Now I can't make a call. 
We couldn't get much worse. 
But if they could, they would. 
Bum, did we bomb for the best, expect the worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
Bum, did we bomb? 
I'm, I'm. 
I'm. 
We'll be right back. 
Rob T. Firefly. 
Good evening. 
We have Gila. 
Hello. 
And over in Skype land, we have Alex. 
Hello, hello. 
Well, happy 2022. 
We're a bit flustered, but that's to be expected. 
How's this year been so far, 11 days in? 
Productive. 
Okay. 
Well, we haven't learned to not talk over each other, but we'll get there. 
Kyle, you first. 
I said productive. 
Uh-huh. 
Okay. 
Good. 
Good. 
Yeah. 
All right. 
And Rob, you said? 
I said busy. 
Busy. 
Okay. 
It's almost like productive. 
It can be. 
It can be. 
Off to a start. 
What would be more productive is if you had a louder microphone. 
I'll say that. 
How do we do that? 
I'll see what I can do about that. 
Okay. 
Just get a little closer. 
Okay. 
Well, we have a lot of things to discuss tonight. 
And of course, we have Overtime, which will be following this show on YouTube on our channel 2600. 
You can go over there and you can wait. 
You can just lie and wait for the show to begin at 8 o'clock there. 
And you can call us and ask questions and tell stories and things like that. 
That runs from 8 o'clock until whenever. 
But this show, where we aren't able to take phone calls at the moment, I hope that changes fairly soon, we'll be discussing various news items. 
Who's the wise guy calling now? 
You're not going to get through now. 
I see the phone ringing. 
No, it's not going to go anywhere. 
There's no point, no advantage to that at all. 
We have a bunch of interesting news items that we want to get to this hour. 
And I guess, you know, the elephant in the room. 
Did anybody see this Vice News story that came out yesterday about an ethical hacker convention? 
They're referring to DEFCON. 
And they're saying that this ethical hacker convention is fueling Donald Trump's big lie regarding elections. 
And it annoyed a lot of people. 
I've got to say, it annoyed a ton of people. 
It annoyed me. 
And I imagine it annoyed you guys as well. 
Let me give you the gist of it. 
And we can discuss this a little bit, see what is wrong with it and what might be right about it. 
Um, this is how the article begins. 
Nineteen tables were spread across a ballroom the size of an Olympic swimming pool, each with its own set of voting machines. 
That's how you start an article. 
You just have all this illustrative narration. 
Olympic-sized swimming pools. 
Yeah, hackers crowd around them, tinkering, unscrewing, and more or less destroying anything with a power button. 
Yeah, that's what we do. 
This is the voting village at DEFCON, the annual ethical hacker conference in Las... 
I hate that phrase, ethical hacking, so much, but we'll get into that later. 
Um, the ethical hacker conference in Las Vegas. 
And one of the few places where pretty much anyone has permission to do whatever they please to equipment that would otherwise be locked away. 
Well, okay, if that is the case, that's a good thing, but we'll continue here. 
Um, with its made-to-be shared antics, uh, the, um, the village that's, that's devoted, uh, to hacking voting machines, uh, regularly produces viral tweets and national headlines. 
It also has quick impact. 
Following demonstrations at the convention in 2017, Virginia's Department of Elections recommended decertifying some of its machines. 
Effective immediately. 
Multiple types of DREs, some of which are currently in use in Virginia, were hacked, according to public reports from DEFCON, the agency wrote. 
Now, before the 2020 election, these stunts were vaguely concerning to the general public, but largely confined to the elections industry. 
This has since changed. 
After former President Donald Trump's, uh, defeat in, uh, 2020, uh, material from DEFCON is now being used to sow the big lie that Trump actually won the election. 
Last year, Trump tweeted a video from the conference to support his baseless accusations of fraud. 
Many of the village's experts, like, uh, one of its organizers, Harry Hurstie, were approached by lawyers working to challenge the results of the, uh, 2020 election. 
Even if they refused to cooperate, their work was included in the infamous Kraken legal briefs that were supposed to prove the presence of widespread voter fraud. 
They did not. 
Now, um, at DEFCON, the experts agree there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. 
And many have worked hard to debunk those conspiracy theories, but with its sensationalist rhetoric, flashy theatrics, unstructured hacking, and lack of, you know, structured hacking is not hacking, but never mind. 
Uh, lack of context about how elections operate. 
DEFCON also emphasizes the vulnerabilities that are possible, even when they're not necessarily probable. 
As a result, the event serves as easy fodder for dis- and mal-information, uh, showing how even well-intentioned experts are being used to prop up the big lie. 
Okay, you know, there are just so many things here. 
First of all, uh, this, this set of guidelines and rules that apparently this hacker conference is violating in the writer's eyes, uh, it's, it's utter nonsense. 
Flashy theatrics, unstructured hacking, lack of context, you know, that's not their job. 
Okay, that's the job of, of, uh, the journalist, of somebody who is covering this and interpreting the results. 
What you see in, in, um, um, a, a, a hacking, um, uh, village, such as the kind they have here, uh, is basically experimentation. 
Can this machine be compromised? 
And, uh, you know, it's, it's not about nuance. 
It's not about, uh, how do we, do we, um, uh, play this particular story? 
What kind of headline? 
No. 
Can this be done theoretically, whether it's practical or not, that's, that's not what's relevant at the moment. 
And that is the purpose that they serve. 
And that's what I think this article misses is that this is not about backing one side versus another. 
This is about showing where potential flaws in the system lie. 
Now you say, okay, Trump is using this. 
Yeah. 
Trump will use anything to try and get his way. 
It doesn't make it valid. 
And I think that's another thing that, that they miss here that, yeah, he's, he's trying to use that. 
That doesn't, that doesn't mean that you should call into question the act itself of trying to compromise this technology. 
That is a healthy thing. 
That is something that we have an obligation to do. 
And, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a shame to see something like this come out and, um, and just get it so wrong. 
Uh, and, and to imply that somehow hackers are helping Trump with his lie. 
No, no, nobody in this community is, is consciously going out and helping Trump with his lies that I am aware of. 
And, um, it's, uh, I don't know. 
Do you guys have any, any strong feelings on this, Rob? 
Um, yeah, I mean, Harry Hirstie, uh, first of all, he's, he's, uh, a heck of a guy known in the election machine hacking scene. 
He's spoken to multiple hopes about the subject. 
Um, and yeah, he runs, he runs the hacking, uh, the, the election hacking village at DEF CON. 
But yes, I mean, pointing out the security flaws in something, pointing out how something is designed poorly, how something is not implemented right, how something is unsafe is not the same as making it unsafe. 
And the hacker world has tried time and again to get this through the head of, uh, people who want to write up reports like this, just blaming the shady hackers who are there to, uh, publicize what's wrong with the scene. 
And, uh, yeah, that, that, that issue is ongoing and, uh, longstanding and long predates anything that, uh, Trump has done, um, politically or otherwise. 
It's, it's always been the case. 
Also, I was just going to say, in terms of like fact checking this thing, Harry Hirstie, I would not say is really known for flashy theatrics. 
Just as a person, he's not that guy. 
Yeah. 
And it's, it's, it's really unfair to expect that, um, a bunch of hackers, uh, or, or people just trying to, um, uh, educate others on voting technology. 
That it's their job to, um, uh, you know, to be flashy, you know, or to, or to do things in a particular way, uh, to spin a story. 
These are the facts. 
Okay. 
The evidence is being presented now, um, journalists out there, good journalists will take those facts and interpret them, uh, and, and, and not paint these false alliances that simply call everything into question. 
And make it, and make it, make it so that, you know, the conclusion is don't do it, don't hack, don't, don't, uh, try and find these, these, um, weaknesses in the system. 
Because if you do, someone else is going to say that it benefits them. 
And, uh, this is something we've been battling for decades, you know, basically, um, forced ignorance, keeping, um, keeping things quiet. 
And if you reveal a security flaw, then you're the problem, then you're the one that is responsible for it somehow. 
And, you know, I, I, I expected better. 
Go ahead, go ahead, Alex. 
Yeah. 
On that, that very point, Emmanuel, I think revealing a security flaw is what we do. 
It's our duty. 
We share that type of information. 
And there is a very big difference between a potential vulnerability in a voting system and an actual exploit. 
And we've been pointing out for many, many years, you know, and, and among our ranks are Harry Hurstie, other people like Matt Blaze, who's a world recognized, uh, election security expert, who's, uh, on the speaker selection committee at Hope and a friend of all of ours, as is Harry Hurstie. 
I've been on, uh, Yahoo Finance News with Harry Hurstie talking about election security issues a couple of years ago. 
And, and in fact, I even debated the board of the executive director of the New York City Board of Elections ahead of the 2016 election about whether elections could be hacked. 
And one of the things I mentioned were these DRE voting machines, these direct recording electronic voting machines, where if you don't have a paper trail, it becomes very difficult to audit these things. 
These are issues that came up in the 2016 election, but in the 2020 election, people like Chris Krebs lost their jobs at CISA, the cybersecurity infrastructure security agency for coming out against Trump and saying on the record that we did not see any election interference here. 
That looking at all of the data, we didn't see any vulnerabilities exploited by a foreign actor. 
And remember, one of the things that we talk about every two years, every four years, whenever there's an election, is that this is a very much a patchwork of systems across the United States. 
The patchwork of systems prevents there from being some universal exploit applicable to all voting systems. 
And so with, with that in mind, that patchwork becomes a bit of a, a bit of a feature, not necessarily a bug. 
There's lots of security features that go into, or security precautions that go into voting systems, and they are by far certainly not perfect. 
But pointing out the imperfections is a far cry from supporting Trump and supporting the lie that somehow the election was stolen. 
It's a sad day to see a Vice article like this, because Vice is, Vice Motherboard has really been, I think, a friend of the information security community and a friend of the hacker community. 
And I believe that this nonsense about an ethical hacker convention comes from Vice in general and not necessarily Motherboard. 
Rob, would you know more about that? 
Let's see. 
No, this appears to be a Vice news piece, rather than it's not under the Motherboard banner. 
Yeah, and I think that explains a lot here. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah, given that, you know, people like Lorenzo Franceschi Bicchieri, you know, are not on the bylines of this. 
I think, you know, we shouldn't paint Vice Motherboard with the same brush, I think, that we are tempted to paint Vice with in general because of this article. 
If I could just step in, this is something that I know we tweeted this yesterday about how Vice news is better than this. 
And we got all kinds of blowback on that, saying, oh, no, they're not. 
They're the worst. 
They're horrible. 
You know, if they're terrible, who is good at exactly? 
We seem to have a real problem with giving anyone credit for doing good journalism. 
If I say, okay, the New York Times has a good job, now I'm going to get the same people saying, oh, they're terrible, too. 
Okay, you know, conservatives have Fox, and they have OAN, they have all kinds of things that they just line up behind. 
I'm not saying we should line up behind anyone blindly. 
But we do have to be able to learn degrees of awfulness and say, well, okay, you know, Vice news really did a bad job here, and they've done bad jobs on other things, but they're still better than Fox news. 
We can't seem to say that. 
And that's a problem. 
That's a problem that we can't ever seem to offer praise for something that occasionally gets it right. 
And, you know, Vice News Tonight, I don't know if that's different than Vice News or Vice Motherboard, I can't keep track of it all, but I do know that they do a very good job, and I'm not afraid to say so. 
Rob? 
And this reporter, I mean, they link to a Washington Post story talking about Harry Hirstie going to the cybersecurity symposium by the Idiot with the Pillows, who was a very good friend of Trump, apparently. 
But in that article they link to, Hirstie himself is quoted, because he went to the conference, and he's quoted by the reporter as saying, this is a big, fat nothing, it's a distraction. 
They fed us with garbage just to control the narrative, you know, making clear that he is not in any way on board with helping Trump, you know, spread the big lie. 
He was there in his capacity as an expert on these matters to take a look at things, see what they were saying. 
He saw what they were saying. 
He was not impressed. 
And it's like the evidence is all this, like, fabricated stuff, whereas, you know, people wanting to analyze this stuff and create better access to share information and have more transparent systems are somehow suspect. 
It's a pretty huge paradox or irony there. 
You know, and to that point, Kyle, I think, you know, the very idea of the voting village in DEFCON is dedicated to identifying these potential vulnerabilities and publishing them so that they can be corrected and so that they do not become actual exploits. 
You know, that can affect an election. 
So the idea about this is to protect elections from interference, to ensure election integrity, to point out these potential vulnerabilities to secure democracy, not to undermine it in the way that this article seems to be insinuating that it's doing. 
And it's it's very unfortunate. 
Thank you. 
It also kind of strikes me as a similar sort of line of thought to the governor of Missouri that it is clearly a problem that you are causing and seeking to exploit. 
You want you want to just tell that story for those listeners who might not be familiar with this? 
It's it's classic. 
OK, so somebody jump in and correct me if I get the facts wrong. 
But if I'm remembering correctly, what happened was a reporter in the state of Missouri was on a state website and clicked into the source code and found a vulnerability and reported it to the state. 
And the governor freaked out and tried to sue him or arrest him. 
He's calling him a hacker as if that's an insult and and not backing down, doubling down. 
In fact, saying that he committed a crime by clicking view source in a browser. 
So, kids, if you're looking at a browser, don't click view source. 
You could be committing a crime by pressing a button on your own damn browser in this guy's world. 
So what we're learning is that if you show someone that there is a mistake, clearly you are exploiting that mistake. 
So, you know, as a person who often sees punctuation and grammar issues in the world at large, apparently I am causing all the problems when I see a comma splice in the wild. 
Only if you try to fix it. 
Only if you try to fix it or if you point it out and ridicule people. 
Yeah, that causes all sorts of unrest. 
So, yeah, you got to be careful these days. 
All right. 
Anything else before we move on to another topic? 
Appreciate the media you have. 
Yeah, yeah. 
I think that's a good thing. 
And make better media, you know? 
I want to hear. 
For all those people that are trashing everything that we mention, point us to something good. 
You know, because I say, okay, you don't like that, BBC? 
No, not BBC. 
Al Jazeera? 
Who then? 
Who? 
Because we're going to wind up with just the mainstream garbage. 
And we won't have any kind of a choice if you don't support alternatives. 
Yeah, I loved your remark when we were first learning about this. 
Like, you're upset that Vice is going to, they're running through too many jungles and covering things, too many firefights in between gunfire. 
No, literally. 
That's what they do. 
Or their reporters translate and code switch into different language. 
Too many languages. 
Too many multilingual reporters. 
You know, I don't want to sing their praises, especially after this article. 
I'm not sure how related it all is. 
But they have reporters on their nightly news show, which, by the way, is no longer nightly because it's not getting enough support. 
It's only on two nights a week now. 
But they have reporters that speak the language of the places that they happen to be in. 
Try that, NBC. 
And they literally are running through jungles and embedding with rebels and getting shot at and covering the story. 
They deserve credit for that. 
That is good. 
That is good journalism. 
And it's not perfect. 
Sure. 
And they get things wrong. 
Absolutely. 
But you can't condemn it all. 
If you condemn it all, you wind up with absolutely no alternatives. 
I know this from working at WBAI because we try as hard as we can to do a good job here at this radio station. 
I know that our news department tries their very best with the limited resources they have. 
And when they get condemned as part of the mainstream media, like everybody else, it really hurts. 
It really hurts because we're trying to do something different. 
And there are degrees, as I mentioned. 
There are degrees. 
NPR, it's better than Fox. 
It might not be as good as us, but it's better than Fox. 
And we can admit that. 
We can say, yeah, you know, if I'm in the middle of Iowa or Idaho or some other state, beginning with I, and there's no radio stations except for religion and country music and hate radio on the AM talk circuit, I'm going to be damn happy that I heard an NPR station. 
You know, that's a good thing. 
And, you know, in New York City, there are better things. 
And 99.5 happens to be one of them. 
By the way, feel free to support us. 
Go to give2wbai.org or call 212-209-2950. 
I just figured I'd mention that. 
And NPR is not without their travails. 
I know, I think Adi Cornish left. 
So they have people changing and dynamics there. 
Their own policy. 
It's all a big revolving door of people leaving. 
Every newsroom has tumult and politics and change management styles and things like that. 
That is a part of the media business. 
But, yeah, like you said, this is different. 
Community radio is so crucial. 
We're constantly trying to improve. 
We appreciate and take to heart feedback. 
And it does. 
It matters because our devotion, when we get feedback, it's different when it's not like just a job. 
It's like, you know, we care. 
We really do care. 
And we're going to continue to care. 
So if you do, too, contributing to the station is a great way. 
And, you know, when dealing with any media outlet, yes, criticize, critique, figure out ways to make things better, correct the mistakes, and save the blanket condemnation for those that really get it wrong all the time. 
And there are plenty of candidates for that. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
And just to throw in here, our Tower Fund drive here at WBAI is still ongoing. 
There is another couple of weeks left in it. 
And we are specifically raising money to pay our rent on our broadcast tower and keep these airwaves buzzing. 
So if you go to towerfund.wbai.org, you can get all the info on that and how you can help out. 
Just really quickly to echo what everybody has been saying, but also just a reminder in my other hat as a nonprofit development professional, don't forget you can get matching gifts from a lot of your employers. 
You can double or triple your personal impact by matching your gift at the corporate level. 
All you have to do is provide your employer's match program with the data that you gave this gift to a nonprofit organization, and they will just give free money to that. 
So find out about Employee Match. 
That information is also on towerfund.wbai.org. 
It's a really wonderful opportunity to expand the impact of your personal donations. 
How is someone working for a company find out about something like that? 
Who do they ask? 
What kind of person do they ask? 
I believe that is part of probably the employee benefit structure. 
Yeah. 
Ask around. 
Ask probably HR just to find out. 
It's a really wonderful thing that a lot of companies are doing more and more. 
But they won't get mad, right? 
If you're asking, do you have a matching program? 
It's not like you're taking money from them. 
They're allocating this, right? 
Not at all. 
It exists for this reason, and WBI is a great place for it to go. 
Absolutely. 
Absolutely. 
Yes, Alex? 
Yeah. 
On the subject of being critical and fair, I won't say fair and balanced because that's the motto of another station. 
You can say balanced and fair, though. 
Say balanced and fair, and we can reclaim the words that way. 
Yeah, that's right. 
I think balanced and fair. 
In the interest of being balanced and fair, it may seem like we are pinko liberal, left of left, trump-hating, hippies running around with Birkenstocks and tie-dye socks all the time here on WBI. 
But, I mean, I can recall this station being very, very critical of the Clinton administration and things like the Communications Decency Act. 
And, look, we give it to all sides, and I think that being critical and being balanced and fair is part of what WBI does. 
And I think a lot of people will take issue with that. 
But all they have to do is go back into the archives of this particular show to realize that it's more than just a left-leaning radio station. 
It's an important radio station for dialogue, for free speech, and for, really, I think, ensuring the protection of democracy. 
This is what the Pacifica Foundation was designed to do at its inception, which was to use dialogue to try to prevent future wars. 
That's where the word Pacifica comes from, this notion of being a pacifist through dialogue. 
That's what we do. 
Speaking of fairness, do you remember the organization FAIR? 
Freedom and Accuracy in Reporting, I believe, is what FAIR stood for. 
Yeah, I remember that. 
Are they still around? 
They should be if they're not. 
I believe so. 
Okay, well, we need to hear more from them. 
And vote. 
If you're not disassembling voting machines to make them better, just use them normally and help others who aren't having as much of a good time voting. 
And if that means getting some support from legislators, that's a good idea, too. 
And just to put a closing chapter on this whole talk of hacking voting machines, remember that in addition to Trump possibly using the information that is gleaned from this to spread his lies, remember, these people are also taking notes on how they can do it themselves. 
And that is very, very important because that information is going to get out there one way or another far better that it get out to the public so that we can watch for this, so that we can see them and catch them in the act. 
Because for all the talk of voter fraud, most of it is coming from that side. 
Most of the documented cases have been on the right. 
And it's very disturbing to see that. 
And it's something that we have to be educated on. 
Yes, Gila. 
It is. 
It's, first of all, very, very disturbing to see that. 
And the other question that I have is, Trump was interviewed on NPR yesterday. 
Why are we not keeping our eye on the ball here? 
Like, why is this happening today, yesterday? 
As he keeps getting more and more places to spread this, why are we saying that something that is actively not doing that is perpetrating the same fiction? 
That's my question. 
Maybe that's why they're having staffing issues in NPR. 
I don't know. 
I don't know. 
Okay. 
We're going to move on, though. 
Talking about our favorite subject, Log4j. 
Remember that? 
From last year. 
Now, here's a story from the Washington Post or an analysis. 
And I guess I'll direct this question to you from this headline. 
One month in, there aren't any huge known Log4j hacks. 
What's going on, Alex? 
I thought everything was going to fall apart, that this Log4j was unstoppable and it's everywhere. 
And we're all going to see the effects of it. 
And honestly, it's almost two weeks into January and I'm not really seeing much. 
Oh, so that's a legitimate question. 
Okay. 
I see. 
I thought that was rhetorical. 
Yeah. 
Look, there have been active threat actors that have been trying to exploit Log4j. 
Log4j and I believe even threat actors such as, you know, very well-known ransomware groups like Conti, as well as many nation states have been exploiting this out in the wild. 
And so there have been compromises based on Log4j. 
And there are a lot of people developing exploits for it. 
But there's also a massive amount of patching that's been going on. 
There's a directive that came out from CISA, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, with respect to federal agencies that they had to patch essentially before Christmas and report right after Christmas. 
I think on December 29th, we had a client alert actually go out about that. 
And then there was another directive that came out that was directed towards civilian companies, you know, civilian, you know, just, you know, private organizations about patching Log4j. 
So there is a massive effort to patch the Log4j exploit. 
And I think it is a great credit to all of the IT people and all of the information security personnel who have been working literally around the clock since this exploit was released to the public to try to patch and identify where Log4j exists and get the latest version of Log4j implemented within their source code, push it out to the customer. 
So there has been a lot of tireless work in trying to prevent this from happening. 
And I think the fact that there has been few exploits that are very well known in the wild is certainly to the credit of all of these men and women that have really been putting their heart into this for several weeks now. 
That being said, I do predict, and this was one of my predictions at the end of the year of 2021, was that there were going to be variations on the theme of this Log4j exploit, given the nature of the exploit itself and how embedded it is. 
It's very likely that advanced cyber adversaries and threat actor groups or APTs, advanced persistent threats, are actively trying to develop new versions of exploits that this patching won't be able to protect against, new versions of exploits that can be exploited without detection. 
And so I think that's probably what we're in store for in the months to come. 
Does anybody else see a parallel in what Alex just said to the whole DHS way of talking about terrorism? 
You know, we're going to form this agency. 
We're going to push the Patriot Act because these terrorists are everywhere and they're going to strike. 
And, okay, years have gone by and there hasn't been a single incident. 
It's testament to how good a job we've done. 
I'm not saying the motivation is the same, but it's a remarkable parallel because it sounds very similar. 
Well, it's cogent reasoning, right? 
I mean, you're looking at the absence of event as proof of something else, right? 
So it could also be a logical fallacy, right? 
That, you know, post hoc ergo propter hoc after something, therefore, on account of it, right? 
After all of this work, there hasn't been some kind of exploit, therefore, it's on account of all of this work. 
But I think we would be remiss to all of those in the hacker community and the information security community that listen to this show who gave up their holidays and their Christmases with their loved ones to identify where Log4j was being founded within their IT infrastructure, patch it, remediate it, remove it, you know, and generally pull your hair out over this thing. 
Because it has been an absolute nightmare for many, many people. 
Yeah, but if they sacrificed their holiday with their family, we probably kept them from catching COVID. 
So you're welcome. 
Something like that. 
Sure. 
I really hear you, Alex, especially that thing where if you go by exploits alone, you would say it's a mess, right? 
They've not done a very good job at all if they're really tasked, other than being sort of a reactionary or a warning system of sorts for industry. 
But there's been a lot of damage, I mean, not just with, I know we're talking about Log4j specifically, but in general, in like the entirety, the whole scope of what DHS does. 
And, yeah, that culture of like saying, well, we're successful because nothing happened is, I think, part of that phrasing they use in a lot of the lingo where it speaks to the sort of always vigilant attitude and, you know, they would probably or it would be characterized as an ongoing thing. 
You just haven't seen it because, as you said, as they've characterized, you know, warnings and people have been working really hard. 
And, yeah, and that must be it. 
I'm not really being that sarcastic either. 
I'm serious. 
Okay. 
Well, moving on. 
There's apparently a threat with Google Docs. 
I know people are aware of this, but a team of security reachers at Avanon. 
Researchers. 
Yeah, researchers. 
Okay. 
Did I not say that? 
Sort of. 
Yeah. 
Researchers at Avanon reporting hackers are taking advantage of a Google Docs security vulnerability. 
Everyone's always sending Google Docs. 
Everyone's always saying, yeah, you know, I want to show you this, but you got to log on to your Google account and basically team up with other people that are reading the same doc. 
Well, it turns out this particular hack takes advantage of a comment feature. 
They're claiming they saw hackers using the vulnerability to target 500 inboxes of 30 Outlook users involving over 100 individual email accounts. 
Those are serious numbers, aren't they? 
The team at Avanon claims that they found an earlier exploit in Google Docs in June, one that allowed hackers to send phishing links to users. 
That's phishing with a PH. 
Then this past October, they discovered that hackers had found another way to send phishing links to unsuspecting users using the comment feature. 
They further claim that the vulnerability was not fixed by Google, and because of that, they began seeing hackers taking advantage of the vulnerability last month. 
The hacking approach is both simple and straightforward. 
A hacker creates, you know, stop saying hacker. 
Anyone can do this, all right? 
And the people with bad intent are doing this, but I'll keep reading the way the story is written here. 
A hacker creates a Google Docs document and adds comments to it that include an at sign symbol followed by an email address. 
The symbol automatically alerts the system to send an email to the person designated in the email address. 
The email that is sent has phishing links in it, sending the user to a web page that could lead to malicious code. 
Of course, that only happens if the user receiving the email goes to that link, and if they're using a service that automatically goes to that link, that's a very bad idea. 
But many of us, most of us, I would hope, would have to actually physically click on the link to get there and make that mistake themselves. 
Had you folks heard about this particular vulnerability? 
No, but now that I have, you're definitely going to be using it, right? 
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. 
You brought it up, so you're clearly going to be. 
Mm-hmm. 
I'm sorry I interrupted you, Alex. 
No, I'm a little bit confused about it in that I understand how the emails are sent out, but the phishing link is contained within the document itself, so the Google Doc is weaponized. 
That's my understanding, that the problem was within the Google Doc, and that by entering that email link, it's automatically sent to those particular addresses with the phishing links included in the doc, and then when they receive the email, they either are magically transported to that phishing link or they go there themselves. 
And does anybody want to define what a phishing link is for those people who might not know this? 
A phishing link is a link that is made to look like something that you would normally trust and put your info in, log into, usernames, passwords, personal identifying information, things like that. 
I got an email from Amazon today saying I was canceled, and I had to log in to uncancel myself. 
Was I wrong to do that? 
Absolutely, because that's what a phishing link is. 
And it'll trick you to putting your info in and maybe log you into the real thing, but in the meantime, you've given your personal info to that intermediary who put up the fake site. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
On the other hand, if this is as simple as weaponizing a Google Doc document with phishing links that are contained within it and then having emails sent out to these users using the at sign, so they're legitimate emails that come from Google, I'm frankly surprised that it's taken people this long to figure out how to weaponize a Google Doc. 
It seems like it's a pretty simple exploit to my mind, but I'm sure that there are very simple ways of combating this type of exploitation of Google Docs, and that would be simply by having Google scan the document, look for any kind of suspicious links, phishing links, errant domains, anything that would be on their blacklist of domains or websites or malicious URLs for phishing links, and then just cancel that document or remove that link or replace that link. 
Well, if I could, I guess, more detail from this article, it comes from techexplorer.com. 
The hack works because the email that is sent does not show the hacker's email address, just a name they designate, and because the email comes from Google, users trust that it is legitimate. 
Big mistake. 
Most of my spam comes from Google. 
The same feature also allows the email to sneak its way through spam filters. 
Now, this is interesting. 
Victims don't even have to open a Google Docs document to be targeted because they're targeted by what appears to be a friendly email message. 
To make matters worse, the attacker does not even have to share the document. 
Just putting a victim's address in a comment gets the job done. 
Yeah. 
So, I don't know. 
How do you counter this? 
I'm really confused about how this works, frankly. 
I don't necessarily understand it. 
Maybe somebody can call us at overtime and explain this exploit to us because simply putting a user's name in a comment, I don't understand how that would relate to anything malicious. 
Well, the team at Avanon reports, and maybe they can call us and clarify some of this. 
They say, thus far, most attacks have involved Outlook, but note it could work equally well for virtually any email system. 
They also note that to avoid falling victim of such an attack, users need only refrain from clicking on links. 
The first thing I said, which are embedded in emails that are sent from Google Docs. 
They closed by claiming that they briefed Google on their findings on January 4th, but the vulnerability has not been fixed. 
So, folks, don't click on links. 
I think that's rule number one without knowing exactly what you're going to. 
And always view source. 
Well, if you want to be charged with a crime in Missouri, yeah, view source, Kyle, but I don't know. 
It's dangerous. 
I have a theory. 
This has become more prevalent because people are maybe using Google Docs more widely. 
I think initially it was something that maybe people would use in an internal way, and it's more something that's shared and that connected, that linking feature, I think, is what's being exploited here, where contacts lists and so on sort of in a helpful way connect all of these different accounts, especially when everybody's on Gmail. 
You have different networks of accounts interacting with others. 
There's some secret Google stuff going on there that I think people are noticing or because it's being relied upon more, they're taking advantage in this case. 
I don't care for Google Docs. 
I don't like having to go on to an external site to read something that someone wants to send to me and then be told, oh, you have to log into Google in order to be able to read this, which many of these docs insist that you do. 
Right away, there's a lot here that just rubs me the wrong way. 
All kinds of logging, all kinds of surveillance-type features can be implemented. 
What's wrong with just sending something to somebody? 
What's wrong with just regular emails? 
And I don't want to sound like I'm anti-new developments here, but there are things that work, and we should continue to use the things that work. 
If you want to add something else, fine, but forcing everybody to go along on this expedition is ill-advised, I think. 
I think the feature of that live editing, the collaborative nature of it where you can edit a document live. 
Don't like that either. 
I don't like editing things with - I'm an editor, so I like to edit without other people editing while I'm editing. 
Just leave me alone. 
I'll do it myself. 
That is so understandable and much respect because the attitude that this is how we edit documents is - it's not for everyone. 
You want to collaborate? 
Let's take down Fox News or something. 
I'll work on that, okay? 
But as far as editing - I don't know. 
It's just - That's a Google Doc you can get logged into. 
I don't work well with others. 
I just don't. 
Alex, go ahead. 
All right. 
So I think I do have a better understanding of how this thing works now. 
So when you would put in the at sign with a comment, what happens here - and I apologize if I missed this very simple point before. 
But if you put a comment in that - and the comment itself contains the malicious link, then the email is sent to the user that's associated with the at username. 
Then because that email is coming from Google, it may be on some kind of trusted whitelist. 
It's a trusted domain, so it can more easily sail through your email gateway and any kind of filtering for spam or phishing links that would otherwise be in place. 
Then if the user clicks on that link after it's presumably gotten through your email gateway and come into your inbox, then and only then would the malicious link be activated. 
So, yeah, the two defenses here are, number one, don't click on the links. 
And number two, Google should be scanning all of the comments that contain links or any kind of URL for phishing. 
So really simple protective measures on both counts. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
You were wondering about the appeal of Google Docs, and it's funny because the general feeling among companies that use it and organizations that use it was sending around like a Word document is often a very thin point in computer security because it's very easy to infect a Word document with malicious things. 
And so there will be policies in place. 
You know, never send Word documents around. 
Instead, just use Google Docs. 
You don't have to download anything. 
It's nice and safe. 
It's like streaming instead of downloading a video or something similar to that. 
And so when the vulnerability is then located in Google Docs, there's a certain little level of irony in there. 
Yeah, that's brilliant. 
It's encapsulated sort of the comments and the notification being set and arriving from Google, that in and of itself is a vehicle for the exploit, I guess, through this link in the comments. 
The interesting thing to me is I use Google Docs a lot, both in my personal life and my professional life. 
My family will collaborate on a menu through Google Docs. 
We'll put together a menu and a shopping list in a Google Doc together. 
But we never use the comments. 
I don't know one who uses the comments. 
Well, I think you need to send the comment and see what happens. 
Well, no, I'm tempted. 
Yeah. 
All right. 
Well, let's cover this story, too. 
Involves one of our favorite companies, Canon. 
For years, printers have been encumbered with digital rights management systems that prevent users from buying third-party ink and toner cartridges. 
We've talked about this a number of times. 
Printer companies have claimed that their chip-enabled cartridges can, quote, enhance the quality and performance, unquote, of their equipment, providing the best consumer experience and protect the printers from counterfeit and third-party ink cartridges. 
In actuality, they're able to have them expire before they actually run out, forcing you to buy their overpriced products instead of a reasonably priced alternative. 
Well, guess what? 
So, requiring first-party cartridges also ensures a recurring revenue stream. 
And that's a no-brainer right there. 
And to enforce this, they basically embed chips inside the consumables for the printers to authenticate. 
Here's the deal. 
Chips are now in short supply, like now. 
And Canon has found itself in a bit of a bind. 
So, Canon is now telling its customers how to defeat its own warnings about third-party cartridges. 
Due to the worldwide continuing shortage of semiconductor components, Canon is currently facing challenges in procuring certain electronic components that are used in our consumables for our multifunction printers In order to ensure a continuous and reliable supply of consumables, we have decided to supply consumables without a semiconductor component until the normal supply takes place again. 
The chip in question tells the printer when toner levels are getting low, which can be a useful feature. 
But it's one that printer companies often use to lock out third-party cartridges. 
Without the chip, the printer will say it doesn't know how much ink or toner is inside the cartridge, assume it's zero, and refuse to print. 
But Canon has been having a hard time getting chips amid the shortage. 
So, the company is telling owners of its image-runner large office printers how to defeat its own protections against cartridges that don't have chips. 
The software on these printers comes with a relatively simple way to defeat the chip checks. 
Depending on the model, when an error message occurs after inserting the toner, users can press either I agree, close, or okay. 
When users press that button, the world does not end. 
Rather, Canon says users may find that their toner cartridge doesn't give them a low toner warning before running empty. 
Although there are no negative effects on print quality when consumables are used without electronic components, certain additional functions, such as the detection of the toner level, may be impaired, says Canon. 
And, yeah, so this article comes to us from Tech Policy Department of Ars Technica. 
It's great to see this finally happen. 
Alex? 
This whole thing is really ridiculous. 
You think? 
Yeah, I don't understand how that could even be considered a security mechanism or a way to block out users if all you have to do is click I agree, okay, or close. 
The article doesn't mention which one of those you click in order to defeat the alleged security function that locks out third-party competitors. 
But to my mind, if all you have to do is click on I agree, throw in some third-party toner, and then deal with the fact that you may not get some kind of advanced warning when toner levels are low, that hardly seems like a bona fide effort to lock out competitors. 
So your problem is that they didn't do enough to make it impossible for people to use third-party toner? 
Well, no, I just don't think that this should be classified in any way as something even remotely resembling some kind of security mechanism because it seems like no matter what you click at that particular point, you still get to use the toner of your choice. 
So on the first count, this shouldn't be considered security or locking out a competitor. 
And on the second count, perhaps we shouldn't be giving Canon kudos for doing the right thing. 
Oh, I don't think we were doing that. 
You can click on anything and get past the security. 
If my tone was giving kudos, I was not doing that at all. 
I don't think this article is doing that. 
And it's not a security issue at all. 
The security is bypassing it because that secures you in being able to use the toner of your choice, as is your right. 
The only security this is protecting is Canon's own security of forced income from its consumers. 
Rob? 
I love this story so much because as someone who's like worked in the design industry and had a close eye on sort of how printers have evolved since the very early days of personal computers, it used to be that you would just run out of ink and you would try to print something and notice that you were out of ink and go, OK, I'll change my ink. 
But then printer manufacturers started really wanting to take the razor blade model and upsell you on the cartridges. 
And how do you justify taking what's essentially a tiny plastic bottle with a sponge in it that's full of a few drops of a chemical and charge like $50 for it? 
And when you when you add like DRM and stuff, that's that's corporate evil. 
But you could also say, well, this has to be expensive. 
We have a microchip in there. 
We have digital technology that's actively doing things. 
And this is this is sort of like the facade falls away in the they when they realize, oh, you can't get the chips, you know, and you got to you got to do something to keep your customers functioning. 
You you you you come out and admit if you're canon that, oh, yeah, this this was all, you know, BS to to start with and you could just get past it rather than all the scary warnings that are like, you'll you'll break your printer. 
If you use non canonical ink, you'll you'll you know, you'll destroy things if you use the wrong the cartridge. 
And yeah, yeah, yeah, do they say canonical? 
Do they use that word? 
I think that was a joke. 
Yeah, they ought to. 
They should. 
I'm I'm so hearing that it's I don't like the warning. 
Does I does anyone really appreciate the low ink warning by feature rising it, making it a feature? 
This thing that just held a powder is somehow whiz bang and and and authentic as though not having options to actually have a market where you can decide and maybe have lower prices on certain things. 
They take that out of the picture because they have a special feature, which isn't really that much of a feature. 
I'm with you. 
I don't appreciate a low level warning. 
I'll figure it out when I look at it. 
Yeah, there you go, Rob. 
It's it's fun. 
I'm enjoying it. 
OK, Alex, did you have something else? 
Oh, I think I appreciate Rob's point on on this. 
And, you know, I think I've come to my senses on that on the canon article. 
But looking forward to hearing from our listeners, hopefully on overtime, they can join us on YouTube. 
Always fun to get to take phone calls. 
Yeah. 
And we will be going over to YouTube at the channel 2600 channel or you can follow the link that's at the top of the 2600 dot com Web page. 
Join us at eight o'clock and you can call in and share your stories or ask us questions. 
Rob, I want to ask you a question, actually, concerning the the last 2600 meeting. 
Was there one this month? 
I know a lot of meetings opted not to meet in person because of Omicron. 
And we're still we still have a wait and see approach right now to see if if this variant stops being as prevalent. 
The predictions are that come February, it will start to decline. 
And I'm hoping that after that, we'll start getting back to a more normal type of normal. 
Yeah, there there were a few people that gathered. 
It was a small group. 
I'm given to understand I was not among them. 
Instead, I stuck to the virtual meeting, which took place over Zoom, like we've been doing as an alternative since the original lockdown. 
Not many people joined me there. 
So if if you are interested in using the Zoom for future 2600 meetings in the New York area, you know, let us know, because it's something that we need to know if it's still being used, if there's still interest in it, if we should keep it going or not. 
But but but but yeah, it was it did happen. 
And we're keeping an eye on all the numbers for the next one. 
All right. 
And that's what we're doing here at the magazine and at the conference, holding back a little bit, watching how things develop. 
But expect some exciting announcements coming up in the weeks ahead as we move forward into 2022. 
It's going to be a better year than 2021. 
Welcome, everybody. 
Right to us. 
OTH at 2600 dot com. 
See you over on overtime on YouTube. 
We'll talk to you on WBAI next week. 
And remember, support WBAI. 
Give to WBAI dot org. 
209-2950 to support the station. 
Good night. 
Good night. 
We'll see you on WBAI next week. 


And here we are on YouTube for another exciting edition of Overtime. 
Of course, we also have to make sure that we successfully made it onto YouTube, because sometimes we don't. 
Sometimes it doesn't work. 
Kyle, I see that you made it to YouTube. 
Oh, yeah. 
Yeah. 
There you are. 
I like it. 
It's all right. 
Alex has just arrived in YouTube land. 
Welcome. 
Yo. 
Rob T. 
Firefly, I went for the thumbs up from you to ensure. 
Okay, we are on YouTube, and Gila, welcome as well to YouTube land. 
Those are not thumbs. 
What I'd like to say is, for those people calling in, we'd like for new people to call in first. 
What happens is, this is the feedback I've been getting, people hear the same people calling in at the top of the hour, and then another familiar voice comes in after that, and then a third voice, and then they think, you know what, this is just some kind of a club that I'm not a part of, so I'm not going to call because I feel out of place. 
So what I'm asking is that those people should call, but not call right away. 
They should call after a brief period of time to allow those new, sometimes shy people to call in and become part of the club. 
Not that there is a club, but if there were, they should feel welcome. 
Okay? 
So 802-321-4225 is our phone number, 802-321-HACK. 
If you have never called before, or if you haven't called for a very long time, give us a call now. 
We'd love to hear from you. 
We can only take one call at a time, obviously. 
And if you connect, then you'll be talking to us. 
And if someone else is talking to us, when you call, you might go to voicemail, and there's nothing we can do about that, unfortunately. 
We want to have one phone line where if somebody else calls, we get a busy signal. 
But you would not believe how hard it is to do that these days. 
No, you have to have call waiting. 
You have to forward someplace. 
You can't have a busy signal. 
Oh, my God. 
I like busy signals. 
I really do. 
It used to be plain old telephone service. 
Got a call, Kyle. 
Got a call. 
I don't hear the phone. 
What's going on here? 
It's not working at all. 
It's got features. 
What's going on? 
The phone's not ringing. 
I see it on caller ID, but I didn't see it ringing. 
I didn't hear it ringing. 
All right. 
Well, I picked up. 
You picked up? 
Is there a phone call? 
Yeah, talk to him. 
All right. 
No, you see something? 
Okay, here's another phone call. 
And I don't hear the phone ringing. 
I'm sorry, folks. 
It's on our end again. 
Okay, there's a person there, I think. 
Is somebody there? 
Somebody on the radio? 
I hear myself on the phone. 
Well, we're getting phone calls, but they're not going to the phone. 
Why is that? 
I heard the phone ringing during the show, so something very strange is happening. 
Someone's figured out how to call us without ringing the phone. 
If you're one of the two people who called in just now, please call back. 
802-321-4225. 
Kyle has the phone off the hook, so you might bypass the phone. 
I'm being as frantic as I can be. 
The phone didn't ring. 
I saw it on caller ID, so I don't understand how that's even possible. 
But those were two new calls, I could tell. 
Okay, there you go. 
There you go. 
Now, that's a new call, I think. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the wall. 
I did it again. 
Off the hook overtime. 
There is no off the wall overtime. 
Yet. 
Yeah. 
Hello, it's Phillip from Missouri. 
How are you guys doing? 
Okay, well, you're not a new caller, but you haven't called in a while, so we'll... 
Yes, you said if you haven't called in a while, I haven't called in a while, so I was like, okay. 
Of course, we haven't been on the air in a while either, but you know what? 
I'll let it go this time. 
But we do want people who have never called before. 
Okay, the next person who calls after this semi-regular caller, please be somebody who hasn't called before. 
How about that? 
He didn't call. 
Yes, for real. 
The more people, the better, you know? 
Yeah. 
In fact, if you could encourage the next person to call, that would be... 
I think it would carry more weight. 
Okay. 
He hasn't been on since last year. 
Last year was less than two weeks ago. 
He hasn't been on this year. 
Just let him talk. 
It's 11 days old this year. 
Okay, you know what? 
We're going to stop bickering. 
What's on your mind? 
Well, it just amazes me how it seems like our Congress people just want to hang out on Twitter and get in these little stupid fights with one another. 
It's so much fun. 
It's so much fun hanging out on Twitter and getting into fights with everybody. 
I hear you. 
Yeah, but, you know, it's so high school, you know? 
Oh, my high school was far better than that. 
Well, you know, these people are supposed to be out there making laws and arguing about the laws they're supposed to be making, right? 
Mm-hmm. 
Making compromises to get them through and all this other stuff. 
But, no, I mean, it's like this AOC thing with something about her boyfriend's foot. 
What? 
Or something. 
Wait, what? 
I haven't heard this at all. 
Don't know about it. 
Yeah, well, apparently Fox News or something went nuts because she was, like, photographed down in Florida with her boyfriend, and they went all crazy because he was wearing flip-flops or something. 
Is that not allowed? 
I don't know. 
I just know, well, she's not wearing a mask, and she's in Florida, and her boyfriend's wearing flip-flops. 
It's all I know. 
Okay. 
And AOC, somebody else. 
I don't know why she went to Florida. 
Why would she go to Florida, of all places? 
But, you know, if you're outside, you don't have to wear a mask. 
That's pretty obvious. 
We all know that. 
So is she getting shamed for that? 
Well, yeah, I guess they were trying to catch her on something. 
And somebody went on Twitter, I guess. 
I don't think it was Green. 
I think it was Bober. 
Somebody, like, I just went on Twitter and started talking about it. 
She fought back. 
She's like, well, you're just mad because you guys want me. 
You think I'm pretty. 
You know, just hot school junk. 
Oh, Lord. 
I mean, I'm serious. 
It's just, it's got me so sick. 
I mean, I've, my eyesight's gotten so bad now that I'm on disability now. 
I had to go on incomplete on my schoolwork. 
I've been fusting my butt to try to, you know, with the pandemic and hard-flying job, I figured I'd just try to get a degree in something. 
And I had to put that on hold because of everything that's going on with my health. 
And that comes from not being able to afford insulin and stuff I need, you know. 
That's crazy that you have to worry about that. 
Yeah. 
I mean, you got, you got, here's the thing. 
I mean, nobody wants to have health care to where people can actually use it. 
But, but yet, you know, you have Apple, you have like a corporation like Apple going on, going on about how to make, and they're two trillion, or is it three trillion? 
I can't remember. 
It's not three trillion. 
Three trillion. 
And I remember when they became one trillion. 
One trillion was only a couple of years ago, and that was a big deal. 
Yeah. 
And this shows how when you have lots of money, you make even more. 
It's just, it's a snowball effect. 
Yeah. 
And the thing is, it's like, okay, well, this is, they're making money off stuff we don't need. 
You know, nobody needs a cell phone. 
Well, some Apple followers would disagree strongly with any product that they put out. 
Yeah, but the point, the point is, is people make this, make this big thing about, well, if we do health care, then people will not want to pay for the health care and all this other stuff. 
It's like, that's what they sound like. 
But you have no problem paying $4,000 for a phone. 
Yeah. 
And they do sound like that when they talk. 
The life cycle, the rate with which they develop new products, it's unnecessary. 
They're making enough money because they've done that so many times over and over again, constantly reselling and reselling and improving incrementally. 
But if they waited just a little bit longer, made these things more desirable, had the features actually be evolutionary, it might be a slower, less profitable in the short term. 
But they just want to keep repeating this life cycle and keeping people in a frenzy of never having anything that they're really on for an appreciable amount. 
Well, keep in mind, they're not just developing a new product, but they're also making sure their old product is something nobody wants anymore so that you have to buy 19 different iPhones in your lifetime when it's, you know, it's just, you think about old technology and how things would last for a long period of time to form the same basic function. 
Yeah, it's great to have to have new features and things added on. 
But to make the old product garbage within a space of months, it's clear that they know exactly what they're doing. 
And they're, they're just milking us for maximum profit. 
Well, it's corporate communism too, because the way everything's gone digital and everything, ownership is just a thing of the past. 
They don't want you to own anything. 
They just want you to keep paying them money for the, for the, you know, the honor of being able to watch a crappy sci-fi series on HBO Max or like, like the Matrix. 
I don't know if you've seen the Matrix. 
The new Matrix? 
No, I haven't seen that. 
Have you seen the new Matrix yet? 
No, I have not. 
We have not, no. 
Still trying to figure out the, uh, the, the, the last one. 
Yeah, the old Matrix, we're still, uh, working our way out of. 
Well, you know, they got, they got, they set it up in a second movie where they said the Matrix reboots every so often anyway. 
It's like, it's like, uh, with Marvel and the multiverse now, all they gotta do is just snap their fingers and say, oh, well, that didn't work. 
So, you know, multiverse and we'll just start it over. 
You know, there's no, they, they can't, they can't really lose because they can just throw ideas against the wall and see whatever sticks. 
And if it doesn't stick, well, you know, the Matrix says it reboots every so often, so we'll just reboot it again. 
Reboot the entire franchise, yes. 
Yeah, that's what they, that's what they try to do with the newest movie. 
It's like, um, they actually, the beginning of it, it actually goes into, like, uh, how Warner Brothers is forcing them to do a Matrix sequel. 
Uh, and they actually say this in the movie, um, they say, well, Warner Brothers said if we don't do the sequel, they're going to do it anyway. 
That's, I mean, it's just. 
That's just wrong. 
Treat us like we're idiots. 
Mm-hmm. 
Just. 
Yeah. 
And they try to say, well, we're just trying to be edgy and, uh, really deep. 
No, you're not. 
You're there telling us that you're just screwing with us to get more money. 
If you want to be edgy, how about coming up with a new idea, not just rebooting an old idea over and over again? 
I, I would have been fine if they would, uh, recast everybody, had a new Neo and everything instead of having, like, a 60-year-old Keanu Reeves go there and, like, half-ass everything. 
It's just. 
Why, why not tell a different story from the Matrix? 
I mean, Neo's not the only guy in there, you know? 
What, what about some other person? 
Yep. 
How about Otto? 
What's he up to? 
I don't know. 
There's got to be a different story. 
Rob, go ahead. 
Um, I, I don't know how much this will light up our phone lines, but I, I saw the new Matrix and I liked it. 
So, I'll just, I'll just leave it at that. 
Well, the, I, I thought. 
The beginning, I'm going to raise with that because the beginning is actually a best of episode from TV where they're actually showing clips from the other movie saying, remember this? 
And they cut away to, to, to, to a clip from the other movie. 
A best of Matrix. 
They do do that. 
They do do that, but it's in, it's in a weird metafictional way. 
And the, the themes of the movie actually re-examine what it means to reboot something or, or consume something and want more of it and be nostalgic for it. 
I thought it was clever. 
Not, not everyone did, but I was a fan of the old trilogy and I enjoyed this one. 
And, and, and, uh, Gila was a very good sport for going with me, even though she, she is not into any of it. 
He's got a point. 
Yeah. 
I am a good sport. 
All right. 
Caller, anything else you want to, um, um, uh, say to us besides encouraging the next caller? 
I'm just kind of mad, you know, I had to put my, put my life on hold because of the health thing and, and I think we can do much better. 
And yeah, we certainly can. 
Uh, do you, do you have health insurance? 
I sort of now, but that's from Medicaid or whatever. 
Uh-huh. 
With a disability. 
Well, you have to, uh, you know, work with what you've got and, um, and, and, and don't let it get you down. 
That's basically, you know, your health is most important thing. 
So regardless of what someone tells you something costs, if it's, if it's important, you do it and you worry about that later or not at all because you have the right to, to, uh, you know, to be healthy. 
Yeah. 
Um, um, I just wish that these stupid politicians would quit acting like children on Twitter and stuff and just actually tend to their jobs. 
That would be nice. 
I mean, Josh Halley out here, he's, he's got the most absentee votes of anybody in the Senate. 
Yeah. 
And, uh, the biggest thing he complains about is book deals and, oh, they're going to cancel, they're going to cancel such and such or something like that or CRT or whatever, whatever the buzzword is today. 
I don't know. 
It's, it's criminal what they do. 
And, and, you know, right now trying to get the, uh, the filibuster, uh, to be, um, uh, you know, dispensed with, or to at least, uh, change the rules so that, uh, we can have something as, as basic as voter rights, you know, a pass in the Senate, the, the degree with which that is being opposed shows you exactly how little these people care about their, their constituents, about the country in general, about even democracy. 
It's, it's, it's sickening. 
I mean, uh, it's just, I just don't get it. 
I don't, I don't get how, how the more money you get, the better off you have it in this world. 
And, and, and then you like, um, you basically shame other people for not having it. 
It's like, well, you know, I have a right to have this, uh, Maserati, but you don't. 
I mean, even if you had, let's say you've won the lottery, you bought a Ferrari, right? 
Would you be able to hang out in the same places that the, uh, rich people hang out with the Ferraris? 
Hey, you wouldn't call. 
They would just look at you like, yeah, you didn't have the money before. 
You're not, you're not the same as us. 
They'd be like, you, you drove it, you drove it here. 
You know, if, if I can make a, um, excuse me, a suggestion, uh, for people who are interested in the effects of money, watch the, the, uh, series succession. 
I think, I think that's a, that's a lesson right there. 
And it's a parallel to what so many people, uh, in the 1% are actually like. 
And it also proves money does not buy you happiness by any stretch of the imagination. 
In fact, it makes you so much more miserable and so much more of a miserable person in so many cases. 
Well, um, I do have one question though about parodies, right? 
I was like working on a little thing with, uh, with kind of Trump. 
And, uh, I was going to call it Trump to like T-R-U-M-P apostrophe, I mean, um, exclamation point D. 
Okay. 
And I, I'm just being raunchy about it. 
It's like every little raunchy thing you could think about it. 
He and Ted Cruz will be doing like at Marty Largo. 
So, and, um, uh, it's like, um, somebody, uh, somebody told me you might get in trouble for that, but I was like, no, it's a parody. 
I can make fun of whoever I want. 
You know what? 
Even if you get in trouble with it, which I doubt you will, it's worth it. 
And the publicity you get will easily counter any trouble you do get into. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
I just got to be able to see the screen. 
If it is, it's just, I got, I got all kinds of stories running through my mind. 
It should drop me notes. 
I can't just put it down unless I'm like pushing a microphone button on the stupid iPad and it just don't take the notes. 
Right. 
Okay. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
But, um, the thing about parody caller is, um, uh, as long as you're using it and this is in the United States, um, as someone who's, who's a media creator and, uh, a paradist and a comic and stuff like that, I've, I've been very close to this. 
Um, you're, you're basically protected by fair use if you're making critical commentary on something, um, such as a public figure and, uh, Trump and, uh, the rest of them are definitely public figures. 
Um, so as long as you are, you are not, uh, trying to pose as the actual Trump for like some sort of fraudulent purpose, um, and it's obvious that you're, you're making fun of him and, uh, and, uh, such, you know, obviously I'm not a lawyer. 
I'm not your lawyer. 
Um, but, uh, my, my advice as an artist is, yeah, you're probably fine. 
You just want to research, uh, fair use and, uh, parody and how they relate to one each, to one another and, uh, how they protect creative people. 
Well, I got him, I got him like running around in a, uh, in a, uh, broken down limo that he has to rent, uh, waving at, at squirrels, not realizing there's nobody out there really to wave to. 
That's funny. 
And doing stuff with the president that he got from Putin inside the, inside, inside the limo. 
So, so if you can think of Rusty, broken down, old limo from the eighties, riding around with Trump, just doing the nastiest stuff you can think of with Putin as, as, uh, giving him a president in the backseat. 
Hang, hang on a second. 
You said... 
Waving at squirrels and the squirrels going, I don't know what's going on. 
You said this is a parody. 
It sounds like a documentary. 
You sure? 
It's, I think, I'm thinking I'm becoming a prophet on this. 
I could swear I've seen this, this play out. 
Alex, did you have something? 
Yeah. 
Um, I think, uh, I think Rob's right on point, going through various points. 
I think Rob's right on point with respect to, uh, the fair use doctrine, any kind of criticism, critique, parody, satire is generally going to be protected if it's a public figure, but definitely, uh, consult your own attorney or local attorney if you've got some questions. 
Yeah, but I don't think people need to get attorneys in order to engage in parody. 
I think that pretty much closes it off to most people if you, if you say that. 
Well, not necessarily. 
Yeah, well, then it can even be all the time. 
Don't ever hesitate to reach out directly to any of us, to, to me included, and, you know, happy to, uh, have an offline chat. 
Um, in any event, the, um, I reserve judgment on the matrix because I haven't seen it, but to go back to the caller's original point, I entirely agree with him. 
I think that Twitter is certainly the wrong forum for real political dialogue. 
What's happening there is childish. 
And as I've been saying on this show for many years now, it's absolutely goddamn frightening to me that Twitter is used as a forum for dialogue between national leaders, between leaders of, of hostile nations, between leaders of nations that are nuclear powers, insulting each other to go back to, to Trump. 
I mean, it was absolutely terrifying when we saw dialogue between North Korea and the United States on goddamn Twitter. 
It is not what this was designed for. 
It is limited. 
It is propelled by outrage and amplification by others where truth is determined by who gets the most applause and who's the most outrageous, not by the validity of any individual statement. 
So I entirely agree with, uh, with the caller and his sentiment and both he and I are sick of it. 
Yeah. 
It gives way too much power to the, uh, to the companies that are, uh, conveying that stuff. 
And, uh, they're not, they're not as critical. 
Like, yeah, maybe the, uh, internet itself has the sort of, uh, infrastructure that we, we depend on, but these internet companies are not that, it's not that serious. 
They should not be, uh, the forum necessarily where official business, uh, for states or counties and, uh, or nations, uh, negotiate and, uh, and, and, and, you know, do diplomacy and, and, uh, and, uh, deals and, uh, policy arrangements. 
It's not the place. 
It's a terrible, terrible place to do it. 
It gives them companies way too much power. 
And I, and then they, they in turn become more focused on profits and deliver products that are subpar that don't have the interests of their users and makes a sort of digital feudalism, a sort of their, um, the royalty and we're all playing whatever game they arrange for their enjoyment and, uh, and profit. 
It should be made clear too, that, uh, Twitter is not a trusted source for official announcements and news and political statements and things like that, which is why I believe that that, uh, as many Twitter accounts as possible should be hacked just to prove that, just to show that, you know what, did, uh, did Kim Jong-un say this, or maybe it was some hacker somewhere said this, who knows, we can't take it seriously. 
And that way, uh, you know, you don't have these Twitter wars. 
You realize, Hey, it's only Twitter, you know, and let's, uh, let's wait for a press conference or something more official before we take something that seriously. 
Anyway, caller, thank you for, uh, for calling in. 
Um, we want to open it up to somebody new, uh, one, one last comment and then, uh, we're going to open up the phone line again. 
Well, well, yeah, well, the politicians use this free advertising anyway, and that's what they're really upset about. 
That's why they don't really go to these other sites like Gitter or whatever. 
Mm-hmm. 
Uh, what's that one with the, um... 
There's a lot of them. 
There's a lot of them. 
Yeah, there's a lot of them now. 
Uh-huh. 
Or they'll show up on somebody's podcast on YouTube or something like that. 
It's free advertising for them. 
Yes, absolutely. 
And, uh, because these other places don't reach out as much as Twitter and Facebook does, they raise Cain about it. 
They don't care about the other accounts. 
They just care about the ones that give them the most views. 
Mm-hmm. 
That's very true. 
Anyway, thanks again for your call. 
Good luck with all the, uh, challenges. 
You'll, you'll get through it, though. 
I hope so. 
All right. 
It's terrible. 
It is. 
You have a good one. 
All right. 
You take care. 
And our phone number, 802-321-4225. 
We saw a couple of calls coming in on call waiting. 
Uh, I saw a call from California come in, and it, it went away because, well, it had no way to go. 
But, um, we need a new caller to call in, somebody who has not called before. 
We want to hear from new people. 
802-321-HACK. 
802-321-4225. 
Is our telephone number. 
While we're waiting, uh, just, uh, you know, on the subject of, like, tweets being official presidential statements and stuff, as, uh, I think was ground into the public view by, by the previous president. 
Um, I remember wondering during all that, like, what if previous forms of, uh, social media drama were considered, uh, you know, official business? 
Like, what if Bill Clinton was on IRC in the 90s, um, in, like, pound 2600, trying to get his, uh, official statements out among people shouting at each other and slapping each other with fish? 
It's the same thing. 
Hilarious parody. 
That would be great. 
You should put that together. 
Or, or, or he wants likes on his saxophone video on YouTube. 
I, I see some of these conversations on Twitter, these back and forth, and I, I realize I've been here before. 
This is IRC in the 1990s, except now they're leading countries and determining policy, but they're the same immature idiots. 
And they might be the same immature idiots too. 
That's the really scary part. 
When, and then this is the epoch. 
This is where we, um, we have the most powerful technology. 
This is what we're using these incredibly advanced computers for to, uh, talk trash and, and do all the stuff that we had at many other outmoded forms to, uh, to, um, use to, to, uh, communicate the very same cruddy stuff. 
Like it's just not worth it. 
Okay. 
We got an incoming call, but it's coming from Bulgaria. 
So the odds of a second caller from Bulgaria are very slim. 
So I know it's Bobson, but we're not going to pick up this time, uh, because we want a new caller to call in. 
If we don't get a new caller in the next 10 minutes, then we'll open up to old callers. 
And then we would love to hear from Bobson and others. 
Yeah. 
We have caller ID. 
We can tell even from Bulgaria, um, that, uh, the same people are calling, but we need new people. 
We know we want to know that there's other people out there. 
And I know you might be shy. 
You never talked on the radio before. 
Well, it's not really radio. 
It's just YouTube right now. 
Uh, sure. 
It'll be saved in our archives for all time. 
And a hundred years from now, you'll be able to go there and hear your voice. 
Um, but that's nothing to get nervous about because we do this every week. 
And, um, after a while it just becomes, you know, normal. 
So please give us a call, show us that there are new people out there and, um, then we can hear from the, uh, the regular callers afterwards. 
802-321-4225-802-321-HACK. 
That is our phone number. 
Maybe somebody else can implore new people to call in. 
I don't seem to be convincing anyone. 
Yeah. 
You, you mentioned shy people and, uh, we appreciate shy people. 
Some of us on this program, I won't name names, but, uh, off the air are shy people. 
And, uh, and, you know, if, uh, however intimidating it might be, uh, we want to hear from you. 
We, we love hearing from you. 
It's why we're doing this all over time, why we've done it since, uh, since the initial lockdown when we couldn't take your phone calls live anymore. 
Um, it's a part of the actual radio show. 
We miss very much and, uh, we, we hope we can bring it back soon, but until then, this is the next best thing. 
So, uh, give us a call, uh, at 802-321-4225. 
That's 802-321-HACK. 
Um, or in the U.S., you could use toll-free phone number 833-755-2600. 
Um, and, uh, and tell us what's on your mind. 
Uh, join, join the dialogue. 
Uh, be part of what's going on here. 
When we're at the radio station, we can get 10 phone calls at once. 
Of course, we only pick up one, but you see the phone lines lighting up with all these callers from all over the place. 
So, yeah, you know, it's, um, it's, it's a memory that we hope to come back to sometime in the near future. 
Right now, this is the best we can do. 
And, uh, putting it together. 
Wow. 
I can't believe we were even able to pull this off. 
Uh, but, um, it's, it's a two-way street, you know, we, we want to, uh, talk to our listeners and, and hear things from them. 
Guaranteed, if you call us and, and, and say something to us, we'll learn something that we didn't know before. 
Right now, I'm learning that we have no new listeners or no new listeners that want to call us. 
Yeah. 
Maximum three questions. 
We'll learn something new. 
Probably, probably less than that. 
Probably two questions. 
All right. 
Well, I'll give it another five minutes. 
And if we really don't have any new callers in five minutes and I'll say, okay, open up the floodgates. 
But I mean, I'm, I'm looking at our YouTube right now and there are 32 people. 
Uh, watching the stream. 
So, you know, that's a lot of people out there that are just listening and not talking with us. 
Right. 
That's, that's 31 people. 
I will say that, you know, we're obviously not going to call in. 
No, we're not going to call it. 
We're not going to call it. 
But the 31 other people are more than welcome to. 
I don't understand why it's only 31. 
It should be, it should be much higher than that. 
I know a lot of people listen to it over the week, but I guess listening live is something that, see on the radio, it's different because you get people that are driving in their cars. 
And this is why we want to be on the radio more than anything, because radio is magic. 
You can't see how many or how few people are actually out there. 
Um, but YouTube for all it's, uh, you know, pomp and circumstance, uh, it doesn't carry the same weight. 
Yeah. 
And if you're viral, you know, if you post a picture of a, of a kitten flying an airplane, yeah. 
Okay. 
Uh, you'll get a million views, but most people, they don't, they don't feel that at all. 
Radio is magic. 
And that's why we are continually drawn to it. 
And we don't have a YouTube channel so that we can have, um, just, uh, thousands upon thousands of subscribers adding up week after week, after week, after week, that is not exactly what we're, uh, striving for. 
We don't tell people to, uh, to subscribe, make sure you subscribe. 
Don't forget to click over, over here. 
It was so damn annoying. 
A different, it would be a totally different kind of show if all we wanted to do was get more and more and more and more people. 
It's about the likes, Kyle. 
We want people to be there. 
Yeah. 
We want you to maybe even call right now or, or just, uh, when you get around to it, catching up with how things evolved, you know, what direction the conversation took. 
That's what's cool about this. 
It's, uh, it's not just about having passive people out there. 
That's kind of what I was alluding to with the way we're using phones. 
It's what it's, these services, these things that, as, uh, was said, like you never, the caller said, you never really own it. 
It's just, you're a continuing subscriber. 
You're just, uh, uh, paying for it. 
Um, and, and, um, uh, only on their terms, you don't get to modify it. 
You don't get to customize it. 
You're just one account of many on their system. 
Um, that's not high technology yet. 
These politicians, these, uh, uh, uh, celebrities, people out there, they think this, this is it. 
This is the epoch. 
This is what I'm doing with information technology. 
The height of human evolution is talking trash on a social media service. 
Like get real. 
Like that, that is not intelligent at all. 
You're a sucker. 
Like, you know, we've been saying one of many, the same thing for decades. 
I mean, before this, it was IRC before that it was CB radio. 
I just think there's always been this least common denominator outlet for people to waste their time on. 
Yeah, I, I, when I saw, uh, games with in-app purchases, that, that was like the first use of like color screens on phones that is just blatantly there to take people's money and divert their attention from anything, from thinking about anything that matters. 
I know there's circumstances where you want to mindlessly do things. 
There are plenty of game systems and other ways to mindlessly do things. 
We're just, you know, observe society, but no, uh, you have to have earphones and eye covers and, and, uh, augmented everything. 
Yeah, that's it. 
That's you being as, uh, intelligent and evolved as, as humanity could ever hope. 
Okay. 
It's eight 30 and we're going to open up the phone lines to everybody. 
Now we have no new listeners, apparently. 
So everybody, or we have shy new listeners. 
Um, anybody can call now, including Bobson from Bulgaria, 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK. 
Just tell me something you do on your processors that isn't a waste of time and isn't ostensibly survival, like just working, you know, do something else. 
Everything hackers do is a waste of time in the eyes of the mainstream. 
But what curious things, what, what are you evolving? 
You know, I looked up a game that I really liked and people are still developing it. 
All right, I'm going to answer this. 
Yeah. 
Answer this call. 
And I'm still ranting. 
Go ahead and rant. 
I reserve my rant. 
Rant in the other room. 
We have a phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook overtime. 
Hi gang. 
Uh, Tim from Connecticut. 
How are you doing? 
Hi Tim. 
Oh, actually you haven't called in a while. 
So you kind of qualify as a non-regular. 
Well, I also stayed back because you were looking for new people. 
Yeah. 
Out of curiosity, why not just enable the chat on the YouTube channel? 
Well, then we'd have to look at that too, you know? 
That would be a floodgate. 
You'd have somebody moderate it. 
And who's that going to be? 
You'd have other people, uh... 
We wouldn't wish that upon anyone. 
...putting in their comments that might not want to speak on the telephone. 
But it's a call-in show. 
That's the whole point. 
That's true. 
Oh, man. 
Getting back to another thing that you were talking about, the, uh, spoofing emails. 
Yeah. 
I get them from Amazon all the time. 
Oh, yeah. 
And I forward my stuff over to, uh, stop, uh, dash spoofing at amazon.com. 
Oh, they have an email address for this. 
I try to do the same thing for each company that I get a spoof email from. 
Do they all have something for you to send, uh, such an email to? 
So far, I've been, uh, pretty successful in finding the, the fraud department email for that. 
I just Google, uh, spam email, and then whatever it was, Chase Bank or Amazon or... 
So there's some... 
And then just forward it off. 
Because, I mean, if they're, if they have the audacity to, to try and spoof me, and, yeah, okay, I'll take the one or two or three minutes it takes to forward it off to Amazon, et cetera. 
I mean, they always give me an acknowledgement email back, you know, thank you very much for letting us know, and then falls off the face of the earth. 
So there's some poor person at Amazon that, whose job it is to go through all the, the, the spam that is sent to you in their name or anybody. 
Yes. 
I'm sure there must be. 
It doesn't take... 
It doesn't take... 
Unless they throw it. 
It doesn't take much time, but yeah, it's that person's job. 
And it's the more important thing is it's not your job. 
It's not your job. 
And you take a little bit to divert it. 
Yeah. 
And it says, thank you for writing to Amazon.com for bringing this to our attention. 
Your message has been forwarded to our security department. 
We will investigate the situation. 
Please note that you may not receive a personal response. 
In all likelihood, the message you received was not sent to you by Amazon.com. 
We strongly advise that you not send any information about yourself back to this individual, especially your credit card number or any personal information. 
Yeah. 
I can hardly wait till... 
There's more stuff. 
I can hardly wait till something like that. 
And a boilerplate. 
Where words like that are part of a spam email. 
You know that's going to happen. 
Someone's going to send that out saying, we understand that you got fake email. 
Please give us your information so that we can stop it. 
And then it's, sincerely, Amazon.com. 
Okay. 
Yeah. 
Don't expect a human response because those, you don't get those anymore. 
No, not at all. 
But I mean, it's something. 
Mm-hmm. 
All right. 
Well, good on you for doing that. 
That's important. 
Alex, did you have something? 
Yeah. 
I have a sort of long-winded anecdote about this issue of sending messages to messages and repeating. 
So when I used to live in D.C. 
a long time ago, it had to be like 2002 or 2003 or something. 
I was working for the Army, the U.S. Army JAG at the time. 
And I was living in this weird residential building that was in Roslyn, Virginia, right over the bridge, right over the Key Bridge. 
And we used to get these memos from the management that had all of this flowery language, this orchidaceous prose written into it. 
You know, it sounded like it was written by a British lord in the 18th century or something like that. 
But they were memos that would be slipped under your door. 
And so one of them warned about Fourth of July parties on the roof. 
So we had apparently, you know, we had this nice view of D.C. 
And so you could see the Fourth of July fireworks very well. 
And the manager in this memo had had said that, you know, they were going to be police stationed around the building this year. 
And this was due to the antics of the, and I remember this specifically, the, quote, overstimulated revelers, quote, on the roof last year. 
And so, you know, everyone was very upset about this memo coming around and whatnot. 
And I remember reading this over and over again. 
And that was just, you know, one example of the prose that was throughout this entire memo. 
Hang on, hang on, hang on, Alex. 
Something doesn't add up here. 
They have police stationed to monitor your roof. 
I mean, that seems overkill. 
On the Fourth of July, what kind of pull does this manager have? 
That's exactly my point. 
I mean, it was totally overkill and crazy. 
And I don't think there were any police that were out there whatsoever. 
So to that point, one of the nice things the building used to do in the morning was they would put out a complimentary coffee thing in the lobby. 
But it being D.C., people would get up so goddamn early that by the time I would get up and go to the lobby, all of the complimentary coffee was gone, completely gone. 
So I got really angry about that. 
And I took the letterhead of the building and I recreated it and I wrote my own memo in the language of the management board about the complimentary coffee. 
I remember how it went. 
I remember it started that, you know, it has recently come to the attention of management that certain malicious residents have been misappropriating the complimentary coffee. 
You know, this is a clear violation of the building's name, Residential Code, Article 10, Section 1029. 
That would constitute waste and misuse, subjecting you to fines up to and including eviction from the building. 
You know, we have and then I went on to say that we had installed to deter and or detect we had installed, excuse me, covert surveillance cameras to deter and or detect whoever was misappropriating complimentary coffee. 
And you would be brought up on charges under the building's residential code. 
You know, if you were seen to be doing this and then at the end of it, you know, I just said, you know, thank you for your attention. 
You know, hope you enjoy the coffee exclamation point. 
So the memo, I posted the memo behind where the coffee stand was surrepetitiously one morning and it was there for about five days. 
Nobody took this memo down and people stopped taking big. 
Oh, the other thing I mentioned was that people were taking travel mugs, like, you know, filling up their travel mugs. 
So I mentioned that in the memo, people stopped doing that and I was able to get coffee in the morning. 
So the memo had the intended effect, but it really pissed off the management board of the company of the building because they wrote another memo to everybody that they then distributed under all of their doors about the childish and asinine prank that somebody had played by posting a memo under the door, you know, and it's, you know, you know, please take heed. 
You know, we will never, you know, post a memo. 
We will always distribute a flyer under each and every resident's door and whatnot. 
It went on and on. 
Yeah. 
Why didn't you do that? 
Why did you slide under everybody's door? 
That's the appropriate way to send a fake memo. 
Yeah, exactly. 
I know. 
Can I ask something, Alex, though? 
You cited a code. 
Was that an actual code or did you just make that code up? 
Oh, I completely made it up, but it was believable that something like that would exist given the language that was constantly used in these memoranda that were being passed around. 
Now, you know, you know, at Stony Brook, my college, some friends of mine and I... 
I'm going to drop off, guys, so somebody else can call in. 
Okay, good talking to you. 
And I saw we got a call from Alabama. 
So whoever called from Alabama, call back. 
We want to hear your perspective. 
But at Stony Brook, we, you know, engaged in many false memos, including one that involved a curfew being re-implemented from the 1960s. 
And this was, I think, in the 1980s. 
We re-implemented it, saying that people had to be inside by 10 o'clock. 
And this made it so incredibly inconvenient that the university had to come out with a retraction saying, no, there is no curfew. 
But we cited basically the previous curfew name or number. 
And when they refuted it, they also cited that. 
So we created a curfew that had never existed. 
And the university was referring to that non-existent curfew. 
So you can have so much fun by sending out. 
I don't know if you can still do it. 
If it's considered terrorism now, it might be. 
But you can have so much fun just messing with people's minds in various ways. 
Oh, no doubt. 
And, you know, my great regret, one of my great regrets in life is that I didn't respond to the responsive memo with another responsive memo calling, you know, the fact that, you know, called the real memo childish and asinine. 
That itself was the real childish and asinine thing. 
And that, you know, we will always post memos. 
We're not going to distribute them. 
If it's ever distributed under your door, it's absolutely fake. 
You know, and just go on a memo. 
That was my great regret that I didn't respond. 
Well, it deteriorates quickly at that point. 
But, hey, we have another phone call. 
I think this phone call is from West Virginia. 
Is that true, caller? 
Yes, it is. 
Wow. 
Welcome. 
How are you doing? 
This is the first time I've called. 
There you go. 
I've been a... 
Pardon me? 
Yeah. 
Our new caller. 
We've been waiting for our new caller. 
So thank you for calling. 
Yes. 
I've been reading your magazine in 2600 for quite a long time. 
And I'm glad you have this show. 
Thank you. 
And I... 
There's an airport here in town. 
It's on a mountaintop. 
And last week, I was walking, taking a walk, and I saw this E-2 radar plane fly through. 
And I thought they were supposed to be, like, stateside. 
I mean, along the coast. 
Along the coast. 
And this is, like, the fourth time I've seen it fly into the airport. 
And I'm thinking, what's going on here? 
You know? 
Wow. 
I'm just curious about, like, the NSA and that kind of thing. 
Well, first of all... 
You know, we have the... 
Go ahead. 
Is there a reason why you'd only expect to see those along the coastline? 
Well, we're not on... 
West Virginia's not along the coast. 
Right. 
But I don't know. 
I'm just kind of curious about it. 
But anyway... 
Is the plane, the type you're talking about, have, like, a big disc on top? 
Yes, it does. 
Yeah. 
So, it's pretty far inland. 
But there could be some kind of training. 
There could be some kind of maneuver. 
Yeah. 
Because of stuff we're not... 
We don't have sensors and we're not being alerted to because it's not necessarily our job. 
What I'm trying to find is, why is it surprising that it's so far inland? 
Why is that unusual? 
Well, I mean, I thought they were supposed to just survey, like, the coastline. 
That's why I was under the impression. 
But, I mean... 
Well, I think the advantage, it can fill in where there is not a fixed location for radar that is pointed, maybe over the Atlantic or further. 
And so, they may be filling in. 
They may be training. 
It depends on whose equipment it is and what exactly their mission is that day. 
But that's interesting. 
Just a difference you've noted. 
But there have been a lot of things going on with aerospace at every altitude. 
So, it doesn't surprise me there's wild stuff going on in the air. 
How many times have you seen this plane? 
Four times in the last year. 
In fact, about four years ago, down in Sugar Grove, I don't know if you're familiar with that. 
The NSA had a listening station down there. 
And they closed it up. 
They still have some parts to it that are kind of off the radar, so to speak. 
And it's in the National Radio Quiet Zone down there. 
And that's where they have the Green Bank Telescope down there. 
Okay. 
Yeah, I'm familiar. 
I've read a little bit anecdotally some stories about that. 
There's also people with radio sensitivities, I think, that live out there. 
People that are sensitive or feel that they have health vulnerabilities. 
So, I've read a little bit about that quiet zone. 
I know about it. 
And it is very interesting stuff that you're noticing. 
And it's great to hear different anecdotes about. 
Why didn't we visit that when we were driving through West Virginia a few months ago? 
That would have been fun. 
It would have been really cool. 
There's some interesting stuff. 
But it's basically, there's not a lot of RF noise there. 
Caller, have you ever been to Morgantown? 
Yes. 
We were there recently. 
It's a pretty cool place. 
Yeah, yeah. 
That's where WVU is located? 
Yes. 
And they have those personal transportation devices that it's the biggest system in the world. 
Wow. 
Yeah. 
We learned that. 
We haven't been very much, but we're exploring. 
We're venturing down into West Virginia more. 
We've been there, I think, on other trips. 
But we're learning more and more about it. 
And there's a lot of research, defense stuff, the university there, health and high technology. 
So it's a lot more than people think about the stereotypes and so forth maybe preceding what life's like there. 
So thanks for sharing. 
Yes. 
Well, I'm originally from Columbus, Ohio, but I've been living here. 
I had a job. 
My background is in mainframe computing. 
Oh, wow. 
And I retired from IBM, and so that's all. 
I didn't start working for IBM until later on in my career or so. 
But, yeah. 
Did you work with Punch Cards? 
Oh, yes. 
Wow. 
Back in 1970. 
Uh-huh. 
That's awesome. 
Yep. 
That really is. 
You should write an article for 2600 about this, because people are fascinated by this kind of stuff. 
Yeah, I could. 
Well, let me tell you this. 
I used to work for Honda in Marysville, Ohio. 
And they had their very - I got a picture of their very first computer that I got to dig it up, and I was going to send it to you guys. 
And it's their very first computer using floppy disks. 
It stored all their company information and everything on it. 
Wow. 
Yeah, definitely send that to us, please. 
We'd love to see that. 
Yeah, this is - imagine - these are the building blocks of now what all these companies do just all the time in machines and on their virtual platforms. 
It's the beginnings, and we love archiving. 
We love getting examples of that. 
So please do if you get the chance. 
Also, what was the name of the quiet zone you mentioned? 
It was Sugar Grove? 
Yeah, Sugar Grove, West Virginia. 
Got it. 
It's all about the NSA. 
They shut it down, like they said, about four years ago. 
And they offered the governor of West Virginia that he could have the property with all the buildings empty, of course, for a dollar, and he turned it down. 
And so somebody bid on it, put it up for auction. 
I think they paid like $11 million or $4 million. 
I don't know what it was for the property. 
But they still have some listing stations, and you can read up all about the NSA and everything. 
They offered it to him for a dollar, and he turned it down. 
I can't believe that. 
Yeah. 
Wow. 
Whenever that happens, that should be made known so someone else can offer $2 and get the thing if he doesn't want it. 
That's right. 
By the way, speaking of the governor, we heard he has COVID and is not doing well. 
We heard that today. 
Yes. 
Fingers crossed for him. 
He basically was one of the proponents of getting vaccinated. 
He's fully vaccinated. 
He's had his booster. 
He's 70 years old. 
And hopefully he'll poo through, but supposedly he wasn't doing too well as of a while ago. 
Yeah, that whole virus stuff is just crazy. 
I'm vaccinated, and I know some people that may downright, they think, well, there's some kind of put some kind of like a little transmitter to gather whatever. 
I mean, track it or something like that. 
People are just, you know, I don't know what's going on. 
I mean, well, nobody does really, but they keep coming with all these bearings. 
And I'm thinking, what is really going on? 
You know what? 
To those people who think that there's some kind of transmitter being inserted into you when you get a vaccine, at some point, the truth is going to come out and people will figure out, hey, you're right. 
There is a transmitter. 
And then when that happens, you'll be part of the most massive lawsuit against the government ever. 
And you will make out like a bandit. 
So it's worth your while to get that shot, because if there is a transmitter there, you're going to profit handsomely from it. 
And if there isn't a transmitter there, you'll get the vaccine. 
So it's win-win. 
Right. 
That's how you do it. 
That's hilarious. 
Crazy. 
Alex, did you have a question? 
No, I did not. 
I really enjoyed having a new caller on the air. 
Such fascinating stories. 
Chris, thank you so much for your time and for calling in. 
Yes. 
Thank you very much. 
And please send us those pictures and write an article, because you have some fascinating stories, I'll bet. 
Okay. 
Well, yeah, I also worked for the Department of Defense, and I was using Unix at that time. 
I worked there for 10 years, using Unix, and also a similar language at that time. 
And programmed in that. 
So, yeah, that was, I had a top-secret clearance on that. 
Wow. 
You have a bunch of good stories, I can tell. 
Yeah. 
Well, so, I guess I'll let you guys go. 
All right. 
Well, thanks so much for calling, and we hope to hear from you again. 
Yes, sure. 
All right. 
Thank you. 
Thank you. 
Now, how awesome is that? 
That is a new caller. 
That's how cool it is when you get new callers. 
And West Virginia, we were just there. 
It's really an interesting place, and I suggest people visit it and learn more about it. 
And I see this call from Alabama has been trying several times, so I hope that person makes it through. 
I know there's a delay, but between the time I say that and the time they hear that. 
So, 802-321-4225, we'll see if we get another new caller tonight. 
But, boy, that was worth it. 
That was so worth it. 
Yeah. 
So, and just getting that conversation, I don't know, and talking about things that are, you know, a little wild, but not in someone's right or wrong, just airing it and seeing what you've been hearing and technically observing. 
I'm going to answer this. 
Okay. 
The first call is Bobson. 
The second call is Alabama's. 
I'm not sure which one this is. 
You know, I want to speak to both of them, but if it's Bobson, we'll have a quick conversation. 
But let's pick up, and we'll see what happens. 
And good evening. 
You are on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Good evening, Off the Hook Overtime. 
And you do not sound like Alabama. 
You sound like Bobson. 
Happy New Year 2022. 
Yeah, you sound like Bobson. 
Happy New Year to you. 
And it's good to hear from you. 
Yes, I can hear you. 
I can hear you. 
I can hear my voice being transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean. 
Well, twice, I guess. 
That was my headphones that I turned off. 
You sound pretty awake tonight. 
Is it very lively over there in Bulgaria? 
Well, if it is, I haven't been informed yet. 
But there's no unusual noise coming from the window or anything like that. 
Okay, all right. 
To speak of. 
Yes, well, watch that cough. 
Has 2022 been fairly good over there so far with the Omicron variant and all that? 
Well, the numbers are good in terms of, you know, people getting sick and all that stuff. 
But, oh, well. 
What I've heard is that it's going to probably reach its peak by the beginning of February. 
And then the possibility of a sharp decline. 
That's what I've got my fingers crossed for. 
Okay. 
Well, it better be sharp. 
I don't know anything about epidemiologic sticks to predict anything for sure. 
But if it's a sharp decline, I'm not going to be disappointed. 
Yes, I don't think any of us will be. 
Guys, anybody have anything to say to Bobson? 
Okay, Alex, it's not going to be another interrogation about Bulgarian groceries, I hope. 
Because that lasted 20 minutes last time. 
I do have a comment. 
All right. 
A quick comment. 
Yes. 
Bulgarian groceries for Bobson. 
However, the comment is that I have to apologize. 
I have not yet made it back to the Bulgarian grocery store in Pennsylvania. 
However, I promise to do so this week. 
And we'll have a lengthy discourse next week. 
Unless the Bulgarian grocery store knows about your impending visit and locks its doors. 
I haven't been able to go looking for the cookies that you mentioned and try and figure out what you were talking about. 
But oh well. 
Oh, the Triana. 
Yeah. 
Those, you know, keep an eye out for them. 
I think that, you know, you'll enjoy them. 
They're absolutely fantastic. 
I've seen them in the past, so it shouldn't be too hard to do. 
I don't think the two of you can hear each other when you're both talking at the same time. 
So, Alex, what were you saying? 
I think it was the jam, the cookies with the jam in which you were interested. 
So, I wish you the best of luck in the search. 
And I believe, Alex, you were going to send one of those cookies to all of us so that we could all be on equal footing. 
But we have failed to get them. 
You know what? 
You're absolutely right. 
I completely forgot about that. 
You completely forgot about that, didn't you? 
I did. 
Yeah, all right. 
Well, I haven't been back to that store, but I will buy five. 
No, I guess I only really need a couple. 
I only need two more boxes, right? 
So, you know, send it again. 
So, two boxes to send. 
Yeah, send it FedEx Custom Critical. 
No, no, no, no, no. 
Get a courier. 
A courier's faster. 
All right. 
They're not on bicycle, they're not. 
From Pennsylvania? 
All right, Bobson, any... 
I'll go ahead, Alex. 
You had something else? 
Oh, no, no. 
I'm just... 
I'm looking forward to that. 
Yes. 
Uh, Bobson, anything else from you? 
Well, I enjoyed hearing the new callers tonight, earlier. 
It's really one new caller, but yeah, he was awesome. 
Wasn't there more than one? 
Well, there's somebody from Alabama that keeps trying to reach us, but other callers keep getting in the way, Bobson. 
Yes, sorry, I tried to avoid it. 
You just dialed too fast. 
You're a speed dialer there. 
Well, I have a device that remembers numbers dialed and repeats them easily, so it's nuts. 
That's... 
That's some cyber stuff there. 
That's, uh, pretty impressive. 
Did you... 
Did you see some talks at Congress? 
I watched some of them, but I have to go through the recordings now because I didn't watch enough of them. 
Yeah, it was a really packed schedule and, uh, so many different things to watch, but, uh, we did the same. 
Well, they had, uh, they had something like three or four consecutive tracks. 
Yeah. 
At the same time, so... 
Yeah, but, you know, that's, you can, uh, you can see them all now at, at your leisure. 
Does anybody have the URL where listeners can go to see the talks that took place at Congress in Germany? 
I think it's still streaming.media.ccc.de. 
A lot of dots there. 
Streaming.media.ccc.de. 
Or just media.ccc.de. 
Okay. 
All right. 
If you have trouble, write to us and we'll, we'll help you out. 
All right. 
Well, Bobson, it's been great hearing from you. 
We're running a little low on time. 
So, uh, thanks for calling and best of, uh, of 2022 to you so far. 
And we hope to talk to you again. 
Same here. 
All right. 
Have a great night. 
You too. 
Take care. 
Have a great 2022 as well. 
Yes. 
All right. 
Good night. 
And, um, that's Bobson from Bulgaria. 
Our phone number, 802-321-4225. 
See, that's, that's the call from Alabama, but I bet if we pick up, there's nobody there, right? 
Because I think it came in on call waiting or she came in on call waiting. 
Yeah. 
So, if that person trying to call can call again, then you'll make the phone ring and then we can pick up. 
It's good to hear Bobson though. 
Yeah. 
It's great to hear Bobson. 
I know there's stuff going on there. 
I wonder, uh, yeah, I was going to ask him what the weather's like, but that seemed a bit idle. 
Uh-huh. 
I'd rather, you know, have a really meaningful conversation. 
There's a lot going on and, uh, well, it's just good to share. 
And, uh, that was what was so good about watching some talks. 
It was a good refresher. 
I'm getting really excited for the, uh, the HOPE conference, which is going to be more talks, maybe even live talks. 
Oh, absolutely. 
Yeah. 
I remember those. 
They, that was, uh, it's an in-person event, in-person event. 
And, uh, uh, this is the conference that I think we need. 
We all need, uh, Alex, you have your finger up at Rob T. 
Firefly has his whole hand up. 
So he wins. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Just confirming that the site is media.ccc.de if you want to check out videos from Congress. 
Okay. 
And, and go ahead, Alex. 
Yeah. 
Nothing to do with Congress, thankfully. 
Uh, but very, very quickly. 
Wait, why don't you try to pick that up? 
Yeah. 
It's, it's, it's a private caller. 
So it's not necessarily the Alabama caller, but, uh, uh, good evening. 
You're on off the hook overtime. 
Yes. 
Uh, here we are calling from Disneyland. 
Well, not really Disneyland, but. 
This is Rebel, and it's definitely not in Alabama. 
No, I'm in California. 
Okay. 
All right. 
What's your area code, Rebel? 
Uh, 714. 
Okay. 
That is a California area code. 
So obviously, yeah, you can't be making that up. 
So, uh, wow. 
Are you really in Disneyland? 
I was, but it just got so boring that I just, why am I in Anaheim Stadium? 
You just realized you're in Anaheim Stadium? 
Well, no, I, I, I left Disneyland. 
Yeah, I, I, I, yeah, I. 
This is such a California thing. 
But you just said, why am I in Anaheim Stadium, like, like you just woke up there? 
Yeah, because, you know, I just left Disneyland, and I'm playing, looking for a place to charge this Tesla, which I don't know, no, why, I just thought I'd go, rent a Tesla. 
Rebel, Rebel is driving a Tesla. 
I never thought I'd say that. 
That's amazing. 
Yeah. 
I thought I'd try it, but, you know, this is a Model 3, and it's like a $50,000 car, and, and, you know, while it's nice and futuristic and everything, it's, it gets kind of annoying. 
I mean, when the light turns green, it dings, and, and you could get in, you have to type a card, you know, this card is a key card, that's a RFID card, that to turn it on, you have to tap it by the console, and it's really annoying. 
I know, I mean, I've got to find a charging station now, a super, one of those supercharging things. 
Is there something we can help with? 
Yeah, yeah, tell us if we can, in any way, help you find that. 
You're probably going to find, you'll run into one. 
Oh, okay, I'll just do a, supercharger, Anaheim, California, well, I know where it is, because I'm at the, well. 
And there's probably, in icons, doesn't the map thing show you in the car? 
It's got like. 
Yeah, you see, the thing with the map, I mean, it's so complicated, I mean, not that it's complicated, but it's just, I mean, it really, it's not my car. 
It's somebody, I rented this through Toro, which is. 
That's how rentals work, it's not your car. 
You rented it from a private. 
Well, this is not, it's not like that, it's like, rental companies don't rent Teslas, so you got to go through this thing called Toro, I don't want to go on the freeway. 
No, nobody does, but wait, what's Toro? 
It's like people renting. 
I'm asking him. 
I'm sorry. 
The people renting their cars out, like, the rental company doesn't have a particular car. 
Wait, so it's, hold on a second, so it's individual people, it's like, it's like. 
Right. 
Airbnb. 
Airbnb for cars. 
But why would someone rent their, their, their Tesla to you? 
I mean, I'm not saying you're any worse than anybody else, but I'm saying, why would anybody rent their Tesla to someone, a stranger? 
Well, they, they, people have rented their Porsches and, and Lamborghinis out. 
Why don't we do this, Kyle? 
Well, I don't know. 
You want to drive a Porsche, it's the best way to do it. 
Well, we'll find one, yeah, I mean, that's one way to do it. 
Wow. 
Was it expensive, Rebel? 
Uh, well, it was like a hundred and something a day, $110 a day, or. 
That's comparable to rental companies. 
Not for a Tesla. 
No, not for a, because, but they don't rent Tesla, so we know that. 
All right, where is this charging station? 
I'm looking for the supercharger. 
What's a supercharger? 
I'm talking to you and I'm looking. 
It's like. 
Oh, you don't know anything about Tesla, do you? 
I know nothing about Tesla, as I never said I did. 
Rebel, this is why you should have stayed at Disney World. 
Let me just check. 
All right. 
I think he's still in Disney World. 
Let's go back to get to the top of technology. 
I think it's one of the rides at Disneyland. 
That's what I think this is. 
All right. 
No, let's go back. 
All right. 
Last weekend, I was in the Bay Area. 
I rented a Nissan Leaf. 
That's an electric car, a Nissan. 
Now, that's a more nicer, you know, it's easy. 
It's a regular car and it's regular, you know, the regular type of a Nissan, like renting a Nissan, you know, Maxima or something. 
But it's electric. 
Now, I'll just stop here. 
Was that more, like, user-friendly? 
Yes. 
Okay. 
Less unwieldy, more like, you know, manageable. 
Right. 
Manageable. 
It has a regular key fob and, you know, it doesn't have this thing in it and, you know. 
I don't even know where the cruise control is. 
It's auto-driver thing and Kinect and this thing. 
I don't want to touch it because, I mean, I don't want to mess any of the settings because I meant it's somebody's car, so I don't want to, you know. 
Yeah, and then also, those ones are kind of fast. 
They got, like, all these, they might have, like, a secret button that launches you somewhere. 
You got to be kind of careful. 
I don't think, I don't think the Leaf. 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
They do. 
It's not a button, but it's a, it's a setting that, the drive setting to sport mode and it really accelerates. 
So I turned that off. 
Yeah, turn, keep that off. 
Yeah, it's, but you need the juice. 
You got to get, and the superchargers are the high-speed ones, right? 
Right, so you just are there for, like, 10 minutes while you're talking to us, right? 
Well, it's a half hour to charge. 
Half hour, okay. 
But I'm not at the supercharger yet, and I just stopped to talk, stopped to talk to you. 
Well, now I feel guilty. 
An hour for the Leaf to charge, from 10% to 90% or 80%, it takes, like, an hour to charge a Leaf, but from, like, 10% to 80%, it takes, like, 20, 30, 40 minutes to charge a Leaf. 
What I don't understand about all these charging stations, what are people supposed to be doing while their cars are charging? 
Is there some kind of activity for them, or are they just sitting in their damn car? 
Well, they usually put them, like, near restaurants and shopping centers and things like that, so... 
They're supposed to be liking and subscribing the channel 2600 YouTube channel. 
Oh, there you go, yeah. 
Did you find it yet? 
He stopped to talk to us. 
It's our fault. 
It's our fault he hasn't found it. 
Does he know where he's going? 
All right, wait a minute. 
I'm impressed. 
I'm going to put you on. 
All right. 
He's doing a... 
That's not... 
Wait, you suddenly sound muffled. 
Are we on speaker? 
Is that what's going on? 
I think you put a phone down. 
Oh. 
Yeah, because I'm looking for the... 
He's navigating it. 
Now we're in an unknown... 
Now we're doing this. 
This is how hard movies start. 
See, that's the thing. 
I would do it on the Bluetooth, but the Bluetooth doesn't... 
It was working, but then, for some reason, it stopped working. 
It'll do that. 
So right now we're in a cup holder. 
Right. 
Well, you're not in a cup holder now. 
I'm holding the phone, which I'm... 
You know, I hope that... 
I know. 
I'm sure that California... 
Yeah, that might not be legal, Rebel. 
You might get in trouble. 
Yeah. 
You're going to get arrested for talking to us. 
But then we can talk to us from jail. 
That'd be kind of interesting, too. 
Well, no. 
You just get a ticket. 
You know how California is with their tickets. 
You know, they really, you know... 
Yeah, but they tell you to hang up the phone when they're giving you a ticket, and you won't do that, so then you'll get arrested. 
He called us for help. 
We're supposed to be helping... 
Well, that was his mistake, wasn't it? 
He calling us for help? 
Really? 
I like the survey. 
I like these surveying different things, checking out all this new stuff, and I guess... 
Okay. 
And now I've got to make a right... 
Well, it's good. 
You did this back in the 90s. 
You know, you called in when you were in different places, and... 
No, you're right. 
Good memory. 
I did call in while I was driving around California. 
I remember that. 
There was one show where my voice changed while I was talking on a cell phone, and it didn't sound like me, and nobody believed it was me. 
That was really weird, because I couldn't hear the difference, obviously, but everybody else could, and when I listened to it, I didn't believe it was me either. 
I think that was... 
I wanted to make this a green trip, so, you know, that's why I wanted a... 
It's pretty green. 
Yeah, you sound like you're going out of your way to make the choices that would, you know, produce less carbon. 
Right. 
You know, I have not emitted any greenhouse gases since I've, you know, come here. 
Well, I'm not sure I believe that. 
Yeah, I don't know about that, Rebel. 
Well, listen, we want to wish you well. 
I didn't even have any gasoline fumes, have I? 
Yeah, no gasoline fumes. 
We want to wish you well in your travels. 
And I think... 
Oh, now I've got to make a U-turn. 
Oh, boy. 
You see, this is where it gets complicated. 
I think I missed it. 
Uh-huh. 
Oh, 0.1 miles make a U-turn. 
Okay, well, we have every confidence you're going to find a supercharging station and get everything you need. 
Are you going to be back in New York in the next week or two? 
I'm coming back to New York City on Friday. 
Okay, great. 
So, maybe you'll call us locally next week. 
You can tell us all about the Tesla. 
Yeah, next week. 
All right, sounds good. 
Safe travels. 
And, yeah, sorry Disneyland was a disappointment. 
I'm glad it was, because... 
Yeah, the one in Florida was so much better. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah, that's Disney World, and that's the whole state. 
Right, yeah, that's what I went a couple months ago. 
It's so much more exciting. 
Mm-hmm. 
All right, Rebel, thanks for calling, and best of luck. 
Okay. 
All right, be well. 
Bye. 
Have fun. 
Wow. 
I wasn't expecting that. 
I was not expecting that. 
You know what? 
We're going to give it another few minutes. 
A person from Alabama was trying. 
We'll see if they ever get through. 
We'll give it another, like, three minutes or so. 
And if they do, we'll pick it up. 
And if not, we'll do something next week. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
I think it's been a really great overtime. 
This one has been a lot of fun. 
It has been. 
Having new callers, and then some old callers come in. 
And I heard from an anonymous listener that, and this, I think, is a testament to the power of taking phone calls, is that overtime is becoming more interesting and entertaining than off the hook. 
Wow. 
Is that your opinion, Alex? 
It says fraudulent call. 
You've got to pick this up, Kyle. 
You've got to pick this up. 
On the screen, the call from Alabama says fraudulent call. 
Is this a fraudulent call? 
Hey. 
That's what your call says. 
It says fraudulent call. 
How did you do that? 
I feel like I've been war dialing. 
It's a Singapore number. 
You're calling from Singapore, not Alabama. 
Well, yeah, yeah. 
Wait. 
I don't know what the prefix is. 
What is the country code for Singapore? 
Plus 65. 
Okay. 
What was showing up was 659, which is an area code in Alabama. 
So that's why we thought it was Alabama. 
But, wow. 
It says fraudulent call for a call from Singapore. 
That's what our phone company thinks of your country. 
That explains why a lot of people aren't picking up my calls. 
That is what it says by default. 
That's so insulting. 
Anyway, what's on your mind tonight? 
Well, I was just asking to, calling up to see whether or not you can provide me with your mother's maiden name. 
First time caller, been listening for years, missing Oscars all night, Deli. 
Oh, my God. 
You really have been listening for years. 
I know, right? 
It was pretty bad. 
But, no, I just calling up to say hi. 
But also kind of topical things happening at the moment. 
So I live in Singapore, but I'm kind of stopping with friends in the U.K. 
at the moment. 
For Christmas and whatnot. 
Obviously, our Premier, Boris Johnson, is currently going through some trials and tribulations. 
Oh, yeah. 
If you've been following it. 
Oh, yes. 
But it's interesting that arguably probably the most availed place in the U.K. 
is his residence. 
And it's interesting to see whether or not the police authorities now have enough evidence, given all that CCTV that exists in that area, as to whether or not they can now investigate if he was at a wine and cheese party or not. 
Oh, I'm sure they can. 
I'm sure they can. 
Whether or not that might have backed up. 
Because they were saying a couple of weeks ago that there wasn't enough evidence to investigate. 
But I'm sure there's probably enough body of evidence now with all the surveillance in that area to surely to be able to find out whether or not the blonde-haired, floppy individual was present or not. 
Well, between CCTV and all the surveillance that a prime minister would get normally, I think they can account for as every movement. 
I heard today there was some footage of him with wine glasses next to him and a cheese board. 
So I think they got all the evidence they need. 
Yeah, I think so, right? 
So I think it'll just come down to a question of whether or not he's... 
Also, there used to be a saying that people would have a suit made of Teflon. 
It feels like Boris is a bit like that at the moment. 
I'm amazed that he's had about four or five different things recently that he's managed to evade. 
But we'll see. 
So watch this space, I guess. 
What's interesting about this is that Boris Johnson is a member of a rather conservative party, obviously, in England, in the UK. 
And members of his own party are calling for him to resign. 
Now, contrast that to what happens in this country where it doesn't matter what somebody does in a particular party. 
They will never call for that. 
They will continue to back them up, no matter how unreasonable, how crazy they get. 
So even though I don't like Boris Johnson, it's kind of interesting that they have that much integrity that they're saying, you know what, you're out of here because you weren't honest and you didn't live up to your responsibilities. 
Well, it's an interesting thing, Emmanuel, that prior to his kind of involvement in sort of higher politics, if you want to call that, he was a journalist for the press. 
But he was also a fairly regular host of a TV show called Have I Got News For You, which I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's a satirical panel show that kind of reviews and berates politics, largely. 
So he went from a relatively brief period of time from hosting that show to then becoming, I think he was foreign minister. 
And then before you know it, after a number of resignations, he's prime minister. 
So it's kind of a strange trajectory for a premier. 
But I hear what you're saying. 
It's an interesting situation that you have over your part of the world where I'm surprised that there isn't more of a culture of people kind of calling for politicians to stand down. 
Why is that, do you think? 
Is that just not in the kind of the DNA of the politics in the U.S.? 
Well, it didn't used to be. 
And I think when you have cult mentality, which I honestly believe this is, it doesn't matter what the facts point out. 
It doesn't matter what the actions of the person you're following are. 
They will never be questioned. 
They will never be wrong. 
And it's really kind of scary. 
We've seen it before in other places, in other times. 
And we're seeing it firsthand here. 
And it's just, it's frightening how many people have fallen under that spell. 
And I wonder what it's going to take to get them to wake up and see reality, which is not necessarily the reality of the other party. 
It's reality of, wow, I'm being lied to, this is wrong, this doesn't make any sense, and I should be questioning things. 
And do you see that both sides of the aisle? 
No, I mean, you know, to a degree, obviously, there's blind following in any leadership role, but no, there's no comparison. 
There's no comparison. 
I mean, if anything, Democrats have the problem of self-criticism that hurts them to the degree where they basically keep losing to the Republicans, you know, where somebody does something that's slightly wrong. 
And they're treated with the same gravity that somebody who is doing something really wrong on the other side and standing in the way of democracy. 
It's a problem that they can't seem to get past, like getting in their own way. 
I don't know. 
It's kind of depressing. 
It's kind of depressing, but it's also fascinating to watch. 
It's an example of the political hyperbole, the political currency being hyperbolic language and that language morphing to out-and-out lies and falsehoods and not seeing those as a liability in the way that the Prime Minister's party might be. 
Here, it's like, well, it's a lie. 
Well, they're running with everything, right? 
And because the more outrageous and reaction that it provokes and more provocative the things are, that's seen as being more valuable than doing right and seeing sort of long-term political liability. 
And that's what we're really missing. 
Like the Republicans, I think, are not seeing this as the liability I think it is. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Alex, please. 
Go ahead. 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
I had to go off mute there. 
You know, it's like somebody beeping before you get into first gear, you know, when the light changes from red to green. 
You have trouble with that, too. 
Beep. 
I know. 
Yeah. 
One thing that Collar forgot to mention with respect to the trajectory of Boris Johnson was that he did spend a considerable amount of years as the mayor of London. 
And that was, I think, you know, sort of the last step before the national politics again. 
But I lived in London for a few years under Boris Johnson and having studied in the UK as well. 
I can say I can imagine nothing more British than taking down a prime minister with a wine and cheese board and a garden party. 
I mean, this is absolutely fantastic. 
Yeah. 
It seems like so nothing. 
Sorry, go ahead, Rob. 
No, yeah. 
Go ahead. 
We'll see. 
I mean, watch this space. 
Who knows? 
Yes. 
Maybe it'll be the haggis that finishes him off. 
But who knows? 
All right. 
Well, look, we're going to leave it there. 
Thanks so much for calling. 
Are you currently in the UK or in Singapore? 
I'm in the UK right now. 
I'll be back in Singapore around about the 20th, and I'll be doing my lockdown. 
So I'll probably catch you then. 
Yes, call us from Singapore because it'll be daytime there while it's nighttime here, and it'll be kind of cool to say that. 
Sweet. 
All right. 
Will do. 
All right. 
Nice one. 
Stay safe. 
You too. 
Catch you in a bit. 
Take care. 
Great to hear you. 
All right. 
There you go. 
Another new call. 
Aren't these amazing? 
I thought it was Alabama, and it turned out to be Singapore. 
That's funny. 
Okay. 
Yeah, well, well over our usual time period. 
So I say we say goodnight, and thank everybody for listening and for calling in. 
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Goodnight, everybody. 
Everybody? 
Bye-bye. 
Goodbye.