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Just like the next program that's about to air, that program happens to be off the hook. 
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Hello, you're listening to WBAI New York. 
It's 7 o'clock time once again for Off the Hook. 
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough. 
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
Bondi-li-bomper, the best is fake, the worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
Bondi-li-bo! 
We'll be right back. 
I just have to point out, Kyle built the studio since last week. 
Actually, Kyle built the studio today. 
We're at a different location. 
So it seems to work. 
Do you hear me, Kyle? 
So far. 
Okay. 
Well, you hear me. 
I hear me. 
I guess we should make sure the listeners can hear us. 
You know what? 
Our friends in Skypeland, we should check with them. 
You want to do that? 
You want to check in with our friends in Skypeland? 
Yeah, yeah. 
This is a test. 
We might make some changes, but let's do that first. 
All right. 
Let's open up the door to Skypeland, and I see Rob T. Firefly. 
Good evening from Skypeland. 
Rob T. Firefly could use a louder microphone. 
That's probably not something we can do from this end. 
Or maybe just raise your voice a little bit like you're angry. 
How's this? 
Is this any better? 
It's better. 
It's better. 
It's better. 
I just can't turn you up too much, or we get this weird noise, which I don't know what causes that. 
Gila, how about you? 
I'm here, too. 
And you're very low as well. 
How about now? 
Better. 
Better. 
You got closer to the microphone. 
That definitely has an effect. 
Alex, how are you? 
I am well, thank you for asking. 
How are you keeping, Emmanuel? 
We're good, but you guys are all pretty low. 
I don't know if there's something we can do about that. 
Kyle's working frantically to try and raise the levels on Skype, because I think that's where the problem is. 
But we're here for an hour on the radio tonight, and then about an hour or so on overtime on our YouTube channel. 
Our YouTube channel is Channel 2600, or you can follow the link that is on the 2600.com main page. 
And we will not be on next week. 
Next week, we are preempted, so everybody plan accordingly. 
Lots of people schedule their time off when we're not on the radio. 
We're going to have some very important, hope-related news coming up in a couple of minutes. 
But first, let's go over some of the headlines, some of the things that have been going on in the world. 
This is good news. 
I like good news. 
It happens occasionally. 
But the fight to free PACER, that's the federally managed database of public court records that has sat behind a paywall since its inception, has stretched on for more than a decade. 
These efforts may finally pay off this year, with a bill poised for the Senate floor that achieves many of the aims of the free PACER movement. 
The Open Courts Act of 2021 was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, with no recorded opposition clearing the path for the bill to go to the full Senate. 
And not only that, but nearly all the committee members have now co-sponsored the legislation, which is a clear indication of the bill's popularity. 
And if passed, the Open Courts Act would standardize search and filing mechanisms between different federal courts and eliminate fees for all but the highest volume users, those who are currently spending more than, say, $25,000 a quarter, as well as federal agencies. 
Now, that matters because under the current system, people who want to access court records on PACER are first charged $0.10 for search results and then $0.10 per page of document downloaded, despite the fact that every single record is part of the taxpayer-funded court system. 
And because of the clunky and non-standardized interface, it's not unusual to rack up fees just in the searching step. 
This arrangement is wildly hostile to transparency, and the result is a dramatically diminished public understanding of what is actually happening in American courts. 
Now, this story comes to us from our friends at Freedom of the Press Foundation, and they conclude by saying, beyond the basic press freedom principles at stake here, this issue hits close to home. 
Aaron Schwartz, the online activist who founded the SecureDrop project that is now maintained by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, he was also an early contributor to recap the paywall-free alternative to PACER that today makes tens of millions of documents freely available. 
And as you know, Aaron was pursued relentlessly by federal authorities for something that should not even be considered a crime, which led him to take his life years ago, which is one of the biggest tragedies of the hacker community. 
But Alex, I'd like to ask you, as a lawyer, this must be good news. 
Yeah, I think it's great news. 
And frankly, it's long overdue. 
What's bizarre to me is this $0.10 per page charge, which is reminiscent of something else. 
Do you remember what used to cost $0.10 per page, Emanuel? 
A regular copy in a library, I think, would cost $0.10 a page. 
That's exactly right. 
And so they have migrated over this concept of photocopying pages and charging per page for a document. 
And it's totally insane. 
And it can get very, very expensive when you think about, let's say, very easily a simple motion that's filed in any court case that any member of the public or the media could have an interest in could very easily be 30, 40 pages with a memorandum of law. 
So you're spending $3 or $4 to try to get one document. 
And if you're trying to download, let's say, the entire docket of a case that has spanned for several years, we're talking about thousands of pages of documents that have been filed in litigation, which can cost hundreds of dollars to access. 
And I think the article hit this right on the head when it talked about taxpayer-funded because the legal system at root, when we think about it, what really is the legal system and what is a court case and what do judges do? 
They decide disputes. 
And the court system is a publicly funded dispute resolution protocol. 
That's what you're doing. 
And when you go to court, you've got a problem with somebody, you've got a problem with a company or a problem between two companies or a criminal judge. 
And you are using the court system to decide this particular type of dispute, and it's all funded entirely by the taxpayers. 
So all of those documents that go into this publicly funded dispute resolution system should also be similarly accessible. 
It doesn't make sense for it to be behind a paywall, certainly not in 2022. 
I welcome this as a great equalizer, both for large and small law firms as well, because somebody who's been at very, very large law firms and also had run my own ship for quite a few years. 
Pacer charges can be very expensive. 
Most definitely. 
I see, by the way, that our special surprise guest for this hour has joined us. 
Greg Newby joins a conversation from the wilds of the Yukon. 
And Greg, I know this subject matter is near and dear to your heart as well, as you're always trying to make things available to people that ordinarily would be, they'd be forbidden from even seeing in many cases. 
Indeed. 
And it's additionally absurd to hear, as Alex says, that essentially there's a charge for something that costs just about nothing. 
And there's no real incremental cost in delivering that. 
And there's no reason, in this case, it's owned by the people. 
There's no reason for there to be a barrier. 
That's entirely true. 
There's no reason for that. 
Other than greed, of course, greed is a reason that makes the world go round, apparently. 
You know, one other consideration here is, you know, I guess there could be some kind of abuse that could occur from people scraping too much off of PACER or using some of these resources. 
But, again, I really think that that would be de minimis in today's world when there's so much computational power that's out there. 
And then once these documents are downloaded, the ability to share them does not necessarily rely entirely on PACER. 
So you can have a more decentralized system of sharing electronic court records. 
And I think I would love to see something like that. 
I also think that this will enable lots of different types of data analytics and very interesting projects that hitherto had only been within the realm and reach of companies like LexisNexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Legal. 
So I think this will open up the door to a lot of smaller players looking at legal data. 
And that will yield some rather interesting results. 
And just have access to the average person to court transcripts and papers and things like that, which is what this really should be all about. 
Greg, you had something else? 
It was similar to what Alex just mentioned. 
If you can consider that we live in a world of big data and deep machine learning and understanding, what could we discover by mass analysis of court documents about all types of things? 
So this is something that if I were in power, I would certainly be concerned about because there might be all types of injustices, all types of trends that are due to particular prosecutors, particular judges, particular jurisdiction, particular types of crimes. 
And by making that open, I think we would discover some very interesting trends. 
Gila, Rob, any reaction from you? 
I'm just always happy to hear about the opening of treasure troves of information like this, that by rights should be accessible to the people. 
This is a public resource. 
And in a perfect world, the public would have access to that resource. 
And it's just like people like Aaron Schwartz, who was known to this program, had fought for for ages. 
And yeah, it's a rare victory, I think. 
Common sense is prevailing. 
Okay. 
Let's stick with the theme of rare victories. 
Here's a small victory for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 
He has scored a small win. 
In fact, that's how they describe it in the news story. 
In London, on Monday, a judge granted him the right to appeal to the UK Supreme Court over his extradition to the US. 
The high court ruled that Assange has points that Supreme Court justices may want to consider ahead of the UK extraditing him. 
Assange will now petition the UK Supreme Court for a hearing, but there's no guarantee his request will be granted. 
That is, his request to get a hearing. 
He can petition the Supreme Court for a hearing. 
He might not get the hearing. 
And when he gets the hearing, it might not go the way that he wants it to go. 
So there are a lot of hurdles left still. 
His extradition, though, will continue to be stalled. 
And Assange remains in Belmarsh Prison, which is where he's been held since leaving, the way they phrase this makes it sound so passive, since leaving the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2019. 
He didn't just walk out the door. 
He was dragged out, kicking and screaming. 
And this whole thing has just gone on way too long, for God's sake. 
You know, we talked last week about Virgil's case, Virgil Griffith, and how we need to, our court system needs to start showing a little bit of compassion towards people. 
Here's another case of this. 
Whatever harm you may think that Julian Assange has caused, and believe me, I am not on the same page with him on many issues. 
He has suffered enough. 
He has suffered plenty. 
And it's time that we put this behind us and that he gets to live his life someplace. 
This chapter is over, and imprisoning people, threatening them with torture, because that is what they are doing. 
It's just, it's so wrong. 
It's so embarrassing. 
Any thoughts? 
Alex, you're waving your hand. 
Yeah, sure. 
Look, I have set out my thoughts and theories about this whole Julian Assange mess that's happening in London with the extradition in two separate opinion articles that I wrote for CNN. 
And you've got to remember the history of what Assange is dealing with here is that the first charges that the United States levied against Assange, I actually argued that those charges were very narrowly tailored in my first article for CNN, were very narrowly tailored and deliberately tailored so that they could not be considered political. 
And that first indictment against Assange really had to do with the collaboration with Chelsea Manning and the use of what's known as a rainbow table. 
And Assange giving and offering some kind of assistance to Chelsea Manning to crack a Department of Defense password. 
And it was very specific about what it was. 
And I thought it was shrewdly crafted because it maximized the chances that a UK court would not see this as political and that Assange would be extradited to the United States. 
Later on, there was a superseding indictment from the Department of Justice, and I argued that it was legally idiotic. 
That's literally in the title of the article that I wrote for CNN, because these new charges relate to seeking, to obtaining and publishing embarrassing U.S. 
government secrets, which makes the superseding indictment much more overtly political, much more journalistic in its nature. 
And the U.S.-U.K. 
extradition treaty that's in force is very clear about how U.S. 
and U.K. 
courts have to handle these types of situations. 
In fact, it literally says in the treaty, extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense. 
So I think, yeah, there is a lot that the U.K. 
Supreme Court should hear about this case, and I don't think it necessarily has to do with the conditions of confinement that Assange may be subject to in the United States, or rather, I would submit that it shouldn't specifically have to do with that. 
What my fear is, is that as the, and this happens in court cases all the time, as things go from, let's say, the trial level into an intermediate appellate court and then into, let's say, a Supreme Court of a state or a country, the issues get more and more narrow, and the ability to bring up issues that have been previously decided but not appealed is generally barred. 
So I hope that the U.K. 
Supreme Court hears this on a very broad and not a narrow basis, because I think that would give Assange the greatest chance at fighting this extradition, which I do find, especially with the superseding indictment, to be inherently political. 
Yeah, I agree with that. 
I do think it's a very political thing. 
And, you know, when you look back at it, we can focus on things that Julian may have done wrong, but we can also focus on things that we learned through WikiLeaks that are vital for us to know. 
The, you know, basically killing people without any good reason, as the Chelsea Manning revelations has showed us, we're forgetting that. 
We seem to be forgetting the incredible public service that we received by learning the truth, things that the military was trying to cover up. 
And instead, we're focused on, well, was it legal? 
Was it done this particular way? 
And I just think, you know, so much time has passed by, so much suffering has been undergone by Julian. 
It's time for us to simply say, let's put this into perspective. 
And let's look at what, you know, how many other crimes have been in the media in the last few years. 
And what are we, how do we compare this to that? 
I don't know. 
It just, it feels like this never ends. 
And I really, I really think everyone wants it to. 
You know, the interesting thing about Assange, I know you said you believe he's suffered enough. 
And I think that's, you know, that's certainly something that a lot of people believe. 
A lot of people believe he hasn't suffered enough and should suffer more. 
And the answer to that question can never be found as long as this case is this big political football. 
He has not had due process. 
He does not have a likely chance of due process. 
And whatever does happen to him, if he's extradited anywhere, will very probably happen behind closed doors, very far away in some deep, dark pit somewhere. 
And like the public will not, will not have the chance to review the facts of this case and decide whether or not justice is being done or has been done already. 
Or if he's suffered enough through time served with what he's been going through for 10, 11 years now. 
So I would be interested to see due process happen. 
I feel like that's a pipe dream in this situation. 
And so it's not an easy answer. 
I don't know where to go from here. 
Well, you know, I just want people to remember when he first went into the Ecuadorian embassy, how basically the narrative was, Julian, you're overreacting. 
You're not going to get extradited. 
This is about you hiding from the accusations in Sweden. 
And this is just an excuse. 
The United States has no interest in charging you with a crime. 
And it turns out they sure did. 
And they sure are trying to extradite him. 
And I just think that needs to be considered because our worst fears oftentimes turn into reality and then they become normal. 
And we forget that at one point it wasn't conceivable that this could happen. 
At least to many people, it wasn't conceivable. 
Well, look, here it is. 
It's happening. 
Like so many other things in our society are happening now that as early as 10 years ago, we'd say that's not possible. 
That couldn't happen. 
It couldn't possibly be the case. 
And here it is. 
And it's reality. 
So keep that in mind. 
Keep that in mind before reaching conclusions on this particular case. 
Okay. 
Crypto.com. 
We mentioned this, I think, last week on Overtime, not on the actual radio show. 
Crypto.com was hacked. 
And they finally said something about it. 
They were being very quiet and not saying a word. 
But in a blog post published early Thursday morning, I guess right after our show, CryptocurrencyExchangeCrypto.com, which I should point out is the former website of our friend Matt Blaze, who gave it to them in exchange for something. 
I'm not sure exactly what. 
I remember you saying that. 
That's like a previous owner. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah, yeah. 
It's like used. 
You know, Matt Blaze could have had a stadium named after him, I realize. 
Because, you know, there's a Crypto.com stadium. 
Exactly. 
I'd say a Matt Blaze stadium would sound better. 
But anyway, Crypto.com acknowledged that the company had lost well over $30 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum after a hack that took place on January 17th. 
The company has been criticized for vague communication around the hack, which was only confirmed on Thursday. 
The new blog post said the total value of the unauthorized withdrawals was $4,836.26 Ethereum. 
Yeah, run that through your calculators. 
And $443.93 Bitcoin, equivalent to roughly $15.2 million and $18.6 million, respectively, at current exchange rates. 
Of course, right now, it's probably a lot less than that. 
Um, also, $66,200 worth of other currencies. 
Um, according to the post, 483 Crypto.com users had their accounts compromised. 
Uh, Crypto.com has said that all affected customers have been fully reimbursed for the losses. 
Um, so, okay. 
Happy ending, I guess. 
The criminals get their money. 
Um, Crypto.com saves face. 
And the victims get their money back. 
I don't know. 
Who actually loses here? 
I mean, I'm sure somebody is doling out money. 
Is it an insurance company? 
Is it Crypto.com? 
Anyone know? 
Anyone even care? 
I mean, given the blockchain technology in play, uh, we all lose. 
The planet loses. 
Oh, yeah. 
There's that. 
That's true. 
That's true. 
No one else? 
Okay. 
Well, you know, look, it could be an insurance carrier. 
That's picking up some of this tab. 
It's quite, it's quite possible depending upon, you know, what their policies were that were in place and whether they activated them. 
But I, I think it would probably be a little premature given how, you know, for, for an insurance company to pay out so quickly. 
You know, I, I think Crypto.com wanted to, and, and rightly so, put this behind them rather quickly to save face and, and protect their brand. 
Well, we're still talking about it. 
So it's not quite behind them yet. 
But if they did, uh, refund the money already, that is much quicker than an insurance claim would, would go. 
So I'm curious if you're one of the Crypto.com users that was, uh, hacked somehow. 
And I'm curious how that happened. 
Uh, well, uh, let us know what, what, what you were told and what actually happened. 
Um, okay. 
One more story before we get into, uh, a special feature, um, pirates, interesting how they're called pirates when it, uh, when it refers to radio and pirates hijacked an infamous short wave radio station, uh, which dates back into the Soviet era, but it's online today. 
And, um, I guess not really a radio station. 
If it's online, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of confused by this story. 
Um, it's a number station, you know, all these number stations where basically somebody is reading a whole bunch of numbers and you don't know what it means, but there are people around the world who do know what it means. 
And they're writing down the numbers and, and basically cross-referencing to, uh, to letters and making messages out of them. 
Yeah. 
People still do that. 
Um, the number station known as UVB 76 has, uh, for many years, decades, in fact, admitted an enigmatic series, I'm so thrilled with that word, of beeps and a voice reading numbers and names, uh, in what people suspect is a long running communications method for Russian intelligence. 
Since the broadcast is public, pirates are able to use their software-defined radio transmitters to effectively flood the frequencies with noise and means. 
The recent barrage of attacks on the station come as Russia prepares to invade neighboring Ukraine. 
Is that a fact? 
I mean, we fear this, but this particular story, um, which comes from Vice, maybe that explains it, uh, has concluded that they are preparing to invade Ukraine. 
Okay. 
Well, I guess that makes it a lot easier. 
Um, radio enthusiasts are speculating at least some of the pirate broadcasts are originating from Ukraine. 
Now, number stations are shortwave radio stations known for their mysterious and cryptic broadcasts, long believed to be a method used by spy agencies to communicate with covert operatives. 
They typically involve voices reading off sequences of numbers or time pulses that can be decoded into messages. 
Now, while many stations have become obsolete or redundant, several broadcasts remain on the air, much to the fascination of amateur radio hobbyists. 
Uh, around, uh, October of 2010, the source of the broadcast moved and a male voice identified the station with a new call sign, MDZHB. 
I don't know why the H is lowercase and everything else is uppercase, because he certainly didn't say that in the, in the identification. 
Uh, the following year, enthusiasts entered the broadcast origination location in Poveravo, uh, Russia, and allegedly found a logbook which showed messages transmitted to UVB 76. 
Um, for now, the excitement appears to be over. 
At the time of writing, a live feed of the UVB 76 stream shows the station has returned to its characteristic rhythmic beeps. 
But again, you know, it's not clear to me if this is broadcast over the radio or if this is simply online. 
It's, it's kind of, uh, implies, implies a little bit of both. 
I think it's radio and it must be probably shortwave. 
Yeah. 
Well, that's, that's what the headline says. 
Uh, I guess it's online and shortwave. 
Yeah. 
Sometimes people rebroadcast them or, um, retransmit them over a stream, like they receive it and then transmit it. 
It's just, they said at the beginning, uh, it, it dates from the Soviet era, but it's still online today. 
Like that's the only thing left of it. 
But, um, you know, a frequency would be nice. 
How about, uh, someone tells us frequency of the station. 
I'd like to listen to it. 
And, um, apparently, uh, it's being rickrolled and all sorts of memes are being broadcast instead. 
How are they getting access? 
I'd really like to know that. 
I mean, I could see how an internet feed could get access. 
Is the station taking the internet feed and, and, and just putting that on the air with nobody, uh, watching over it. 
I guess that's possible too. 
Well, I think, I think they're overpowering the, the, the local reception of it is that, that's, that's my understanding. 
I, I think of what's happening here, but, you know, regardless, these number stations are, are absolutely fascinating and are an indication, I think, of the fact that radio today still remains very much a dark art and is incredibly cool and very, very interesting. 
And it's still used very actively by intelligence agencies. 
And the way in which this would work is that, um, and this is, this is very well documented. 
I'm not talking at a, at a school here, but number stations are still very effective at communicating with operatives in the field because just like if you're listening to the radio right now on WBAI, you tune your radio to a certain frequency, there's no handshake that happens with the station. 
There's no connection. 
There's no log of you listening or tuning into WBAI. 
You simply have a mechanical device that has the ability to receive these radio frequencies and translate them into something that your human ear can hear. 
And that's the same thing with shortwave. 
And so shortwave, because it's broadcast over this massive geographical distance, uh, dependent in, in large part, I think, uh, on weather and things like that, it is, it is broadcast to so many people, you know, much more than let's say the New York tri-state area that WBAI reaches. 
This can reach many countries, geographies, it can reach half the world given the right weather conditions. 
Yeah, but the signal is really awful. 
It sounds terrible. 
It sounds worse than AM radio. 
Yeah, that, well, that's true. 
But for these types of transmissions, you don't really need a very clear signal. 
You need a short burst of data. 
But the point being is that because so many people receive this passively and there's no log of anybody who's listening to it, an instruction that's broadcast over shortwave radio could be intended for somebody in Germany. 
It could be intended for somebody in Ukraine. 
It could be intended for somebody in China, Russia. 
You have no idea who the actual recipient is intended to be. 
However, if, let's say, disruptors wanted to interfere with the ability of operatives locally in somewhere in Ukraine from receiving an instruction sphere of these shortwave radios, they could disrupt that frequency and jam it. 
Oh, I see what you're saying. 
So basically, they'd be just overriding the signal in that local area, but not in the entire world. 
That's correct. 
That's right. 
And if you do that, you can disrupt operatives who are looking to receive information and perhaps some kind of instruction from that shortwave radio numbers broadcast from receiving, from actually getting those instructions. 
And the reason why they're numbers and they're called number stations, and this is really kind of fascinating, is that what's happening usually on the back end of this is there is some kind of one-time pad that's being used by the operative in the field. 
And a one-time pad is the only encryption technique in the history of the world that has been developed that cannot actually be cracked because it requires the use of this single pre-shared key that can't be smaller than the message being sent. 
There's a plain text pair with a random secret key, and that's called the one-time pad. 
And so you use it once. 
So go ahead, Emmanuel. 
Well, you know, you just gave me an idea. 
What I want to do is I want to do this with BAI listeners. 
I want to give them, all of them, the one-time pad, okay? 
And then let's read out a bunch of numbers, and the first person who gives us the message wins something. 
What do you think? 
That would be pretty awesome. 
It would be very confusing to people who don't know what we're doing, but I want to do this. 
Let's talk about this after the show. 
And by the way, thank you for saying Ukraine instead of the Ukraine. 
You have no idea how many times on the mainstream media you hear people referring to the region as the Ukraine. 
The reason why that's not accurate and, in fact, insulting is because the Ukraine was what it was referred to when it was part of the Soviet Union. 
It was a region. 
Right now, it's an independent country. 
I didn't mean to say right now. 
Now, it's going to stay an independent country, and it's called Ukraine, not the Ukraine. 
If you say the Ukraine, you're referring back to when it was a territory. 
Now, if I say the Yukon, Greg, you're not offended by that, because the Yukon is, in fact, a territory in Canada, correct? 
Indeed, it is. 
It's Yukon territory, and we now call it the Yukon. 
It turns out the government used to not call it the Yukon. 
So these things do change over time, just like with Ukraine. 
But indeed, it is the Yukon or Yukon territory. 
And that's where you are now. 
What is the temperature, by the way? 
Can I ask you that about? 
Well, it's really been unusually warm, and we're pretty upset about it, because some of the trails have melted. 
It's been above freezing for several days, not quite today. 
Today, it got up well into the 20s, but it was above freezing for the last week every day, including a couple of overnights, which is unusually warm. 
It happens pretty well every year. 
There's sort of a chinook wind that warms things up, and that results in a lot of ice and trails going away and sort of nastiness that usually we associate with places like New York, where, you know, you get this snow, then you get slush, and you get ice, and it's ugly, and it's gray. 
In Yukon, things tend to stay frozen and crisp and clear and pristine, and it's a much better winter experience. 
Anyway, we're getting back into winter now. 
I expected you to say minus 25 or minus 30 or something like that, Celsius, but it has a point where Fahrenheit and Celsius meet at that cold period. 
But anyway, we're getting a bomb cyclone this weekend, I hear, so I guess we're getting some winter. 
But I hope, I know since you have sled dogs, the trails are very important, and I hope the cold comes back to you soon. 
Um, sticking with, uh, um, the Ukraine region for just a moment, and we're going to get on to something else, uh, hacktivist in Belarus, uh, said on Monday they infected the network of the country's state-run railroad system with ransomware, and they would provide the decryption key only if Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator, that is part of his title, uh, stopped adding, uh, or I'm sorry, aiding Russian troops ahead of a possible invasion of Ukraine. 
How do you think that's going to go, guys? 
Referring to the Belarus Railway, a group calling itself Cyber Partisans, wrote on Telegram, um, that, um, hang on, they, they don't, they don't show me what they wrote. 
Oh, here it is. 
Okay. 
Uh, we have encryption keys, and we are ready to return Belarusian railroad systems to normal mode. 
Our conditions, release of the 50 political prisoners who are most in need of medical assistance, preventing the presence of Russian troops on the territory of Belarus. 
A representative from the group said in a direct message that the cyber campaign targets specific entities and government-run companies with the goal of pressuring the Belarus government to release political prisoners and stop Russian troops from entering Belarus to use its grounds, its ground for the attacks on Ukraine. 
This is the first, that I can recall, uh, instance of ransomware that I approve of. 
Good ransomware. 
Wow. 
What do you guys think of this? 
I mean, I appreciate the fact that they call themselves the cyber partisans. 
I think it's a really lovely callback to the partisans in World War II and the kind of work that they did in the resistance. 
So, good on them. 
And also, yeah, 100%, I think this is for the, for the, for the betterment of society, I think. 
Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, I never thought I'd see a ransomware used in a socially conscious way, but, um, this is a good indication of it. 
And I don't think it's going to work, though, because, you know, as I mentioned, uh, Lukashenko is a dictator, uh, a brutal dictator, uh, and, um, uh, Putin's not much better. 
I don't, I don't really see them, uh, saying, oh, you know what? 
Okay, we lose and, uh, we're going to, uh, dismantle this and, and do something else instead. 
It becomes like a asymmetric tactic, though, of, uh, broader, uh, resistance to their, um, ever tightening grip and, um, so much in military anyway is lauding cyber as, as a big, big deal. 
So here you go. 
People getting into it, um, for, for good reasons in some cases, I think. 
How, we've been on the Belarus Railway. 
How cyber-y do you think they are? 
You know, it's, it's, it's kind of ramshackle. 
Well, sometimes that's the best kind of cyber, I think. 
True, true. 
If, if, yeah, I mean, there's a certain amount of grit that, um, exists, but that doesn't mean there isn't technology there and people, people that know it. 
Alex, I didn't see you holding your finger up. 
Your finger is the same color as your wall, so, uh, it blended right in. 
I'm sorry. 
Hold up your whole hand next time. 
That way I'll, I'll know you're, you're asking me to say something. 
Go ahead. 
I, I didn't realize that I, I blended in so well with my family. 
Seamlessly, yeah. 
It's incredible. 
Some, some kind of chameleon or something. 
But, uh, you know, I, I think we, we have to be somewhat careful about being too, uh, I, we're seeing this as, as too agreeable, right? 
Because what we're talking about in essence is the disruption of some kind of critical infrastructure. 
And if we're, if we're allowing the disruption of critical infrastructure for one purpose that involves an armed conflict, we can then begin to normalize this type of activity, uh, in other contexts as well. 
And so even though the cyber partisans, I think are doing something laudable, it's not always the case that, uh, these, these trains are, are shipping food and, you know, massive amounts of pepperoni back and forth that, you know, it's, it's, it's more like, you know, they're shipping artillery and tanks that, that can be used to, uh, incur in the sovereignty of a, of a foreign nation that, that, you know, it's, it's much more problematic. 
Uh, but I do think we have to be careful, uh, about normalizing these types of attacks. 
One other thing that I, I found really interesting about the cyber partisans was that they had, uh, a spokesperson, uh, by the name of, uh, Juliana Shemitovitz, uh, who, who's based here in New York. 
Oh. 
And she, and she's been speaking to all these different types of press outlets, uh, on behalf of the cyber partisans. 
It's very interesting. 
She would be a great speaker at hope. 
And let's, let's see if we can make that happen, but that's a great way for us to transition into the topic that we are going to be discussing for the remainder of the show. 
And that is the upcoming hope conference known as a new hope July 22nd through 24th. 
Uh, we have, uh, been updating our, our website, adding all kinds of information, but tomorrow is an exciting day because tomorrow the call for participation goes out, um, for, um, uh, mostly for speakers at this point. 
And we'll be doing workshops as well, uh, coming up in, in the days and weeks ahead. 
Uh, but Greg, I know, uh, you have a lot to say on, on this particular subject. 
First of all, you've been working extremely hard on this and, um, uh, you know, I, I just get the sense of all around us that people are really looking forward to the conference now because it finally seems to be something real on the horizon. 
Uh, we've, we've, we've consulted with many people as to, uh, what the situation is likely to be like in July and, um, and it's all thumbs up and, and, and cautious optimism at this point. 
Indeed, we are cautiously optimistic that this is going to be an in-person event. 
We haven't had an in-person hope since 2018. 
We did virtual in 2020 and we want to be live and in person in 2022 at St. 
John's University on off the hook in the past, you've talked a bit about St. 
John's. 
We're excited about that, excited about the venue for a variety of reasons. 
And with the call for participation coming out tomorrow, that means that the excitement is taking the next, the next level really, which is to start getting speakers, getting ideas about keynotes. 
We'll also be looking for things like workshops and all the other stuff that we do. 
And finally, uh, to highlight volunteers, because if, uh, you might not want to speak, maybe you want to be involved as a volunteer. 
So all of that is rolling out at www.hope.net. 
And, uh, you may want to speak and volunteer. 
We have many speakers who also volunteer and, uh, it's just an incredible community that forms. 
And, uh, this is the first time we're, we're forming at St. 
John's University. 
Um, and I'm, you know, I'm so happy that that place is there. 
It's, it's such a healthy environment. 
We visited it many times at this point. 
We're very familiar with the place and we can't wait to share that with our attendees, uh, as, as they see what a hacker conference can really be like. 
Yeah. 
Hotel Pennsylvania was fun. 
It was unique. 
It was right smack in the middle of hectic midtown Manhattan, but we've outgrown it. 
And besides the fact that we've outgrown it, it's being demolished. 
So there's really not much we can do on that front. 
And, um, uh, this is something, we're still in New York city. 
We're in the, in the borough of Queens. 
It's easy to get to. 
And I can say that with assurance because we've all gotten there in one way or another, whether we're local or whether we're coming from the city or whether we're coming from Yukon or, or all over the place. 
It's near airports. 
It's got free parking. 
There are hotels nearby with, uh, with, um, uh, special rates that we are, um, uh, using. 
And, um, mostly though, it's, it's just this really healthy environment of learning and, um, and, and it's going to be a great gathering place for us as opposed to a cramped hotel where everybody is, is packed in like sardines. 
We have outdoor space, indoor space, and so many rooms, so many places to congregate and, and have conversations. 
It's, um, it's a, it's a turning point. 
It's a, it's a new chapter, both the fact that we're coming together for the first time in four years after the, uh, the, the horrors of the pandemic, but also launching a new chapter in hope history by, by changing the tone, by not having it in midtown Manhattan, having it instead in a different part of the city, uh, with a whole different mood, whole different atmosphere. 
And I, I, I think there was just so much room for growth here and, and, uh, things we haven't even thought of yet. 
It's not run down. 
It's not seedy. 
It's in a, actually a pretty good neighborhood, uh, uh, I think. 
And, um, and it's just going to be a whole change in attitude and boy, do we need that these days, a change in attitude, a change in venue and, uh, and looking up and looking forward. 
So, so, uh, crucial to be in a place that supports, uh, that will support a lot of the, um, projects and things we want to do instead of kind of solving problems of how do we make just the basics work? 
We'll have, um, a lot more freedom to just build and, uh, and share the innovative things that people are up to and, uh, creative and, uh, informative discussions and, and really, really highlight the talks and, uh, side projects and workshops and, and activity all around. 
And the, there will be, um, just, I think, uh, a real, really good mix because there's just been, um, really a lot missing with, uh, in-person stuff. 
And there's so much you can show when you're having an exhibition of some kind. 
And, and, uh, it's just, uh, it's, uh, it seems like it's been too long in, in, in most, in most ways, uh, we'll, we'll bring everything we've done before, but a lot of new ideas to this, uh, like I said, really supportive space. 
Go ahead, Kayla. 
It's really exciting, I think, to be on campus, to see the spaces that we have, to know that to get from place to place, you don't have to ride an express elevator that may or may not be working to get from place to place. 
You don't have to plan ahead in that, like, oh, if I want to see a bunch of stuff that's way upstairs, but I'm afraid of not getting back down, I have to stay there. 
No, everything is walkable. 
Everything is movable. 
Everything is doable. 
And I think the openness of the space and the adaptability of the space, I think is really going to help us a lot. 
And again, as we have discussed at great length over the last two years on the show, we live in Queens, we know from Queens, and I think the opportunity to showcase a slightly different part of the city to people who are coming from all over is really exciting. 
It's not Midtown Manhattan, and I think that's really all to the better. 
You really get to see more of the city in a lot of ways. 
And, you know, if you're nervous about getting around New York, transit information is already available on the HOPE website. 
So familiarize with it. 
Extremely detailed, extremely detailed transit information on how to get there. 
And if you want to go to Midtown Manhattan, it's not far. 
It's not hard to get to at all. 
But we think you'll want to stay at the conference and just live in that world for a few days, July 22nd through 24th. 
But, Greg, maybe we can go into a little bit more, and I know Alex, too, because we're all on the Speaker Committee, what kinds of talks are we looking for? 
What kinds of things do we want to see presented at A New Hope? 
The thing about HOPE and the thing about hackers is that we are all about learning and all about sharing information. 
And the thing that's really neat is we're open to just about any topic that you can make a link to the hacker community. 
And people that are familiar with the radio show, people that are familiar with the 2600 magazine know how open this is. 
We put in the CFP, which is going to be out momentarily, or I guess tomorrow, but we put a bunch of stuff that might get your mental juices flowing, but you're not limited by this. 
But it includes the regular stuff. 
It includes technology. 
It includes security, privacy, science, math, society, things along those lines that we've talked about so much. 
And we also tried to cast a net that I think is inclusive of St. 
John's and inclusive of what we hear about so much on the Off the Hook radio show, which is really celebrating how science and discovery and innovation and curiosity have helped us to overcome, to some extent, at least mitigate our current pandemic situation. 
And the one thing I want to share about that, because I hear you talking about all the time, you know, get your shots and wear your mask and so forth. 
I remember when we first started talking about, could there be a virus for COVID? 
And the answer at the time was there has never been an effective vaccination. 
They say virus. 
There's never been an effective vaccination for the common cold, right? 
Vaccinations against viruses are few and far between and just about never happened. 
And so what happened? 
Everyone came together, right? 
Science triumphed. 
This is the sort of thing that hackers celebrate because you discover you don't accept limitations. 
You don't accept what people tell you is possible or impossible. 
And you go out and you figure out how to do it, right? 
And that includes not just the medical side, but also all the incredible manufacturing, all the incredible creativity around distribution, right? 
So we're celebrating. 
We're able to do an in-person conference because of this innovation. 
We're celebrating that and other innovations. 
So that's an idea about the topic that I think we're excited about. 
But anything you've got, if you have a skill to share, if you want to teach a workshop, you want to do a performance, that's all welcome. 
In terms of speakers, it's really what you want to share with the Hope audience. 
And just on that note for a second, for those concerned, and we all should be concerned, everybody attending, everybody presenting will be vaccinated. 
That is just something that is the case for the city, for the campus, for us. 
And that's not going to be a debatable issue. 
And just also so people who might be concerned about privacy, the way it works, when you show that you're vaccinated, somebody checks your vaccination card or app and ID, and that information is not saved. 
That information is not stored by us. 
And you then proceed to the conference. 
So you can register as, you know, the dark overlord if you want, and we won't know your real name, but you do have to show that you're vaccinated before getting access to that registration desk. 
It'll be a simple system, but an effective one. 
Rob, go ahead. 
And on the subject of things that might inspire people to speak at Hope, if you know anything about what we do on this program or at 2600 Magazine or at Past Hopes or anything, we are very big on the hacker community encompassing all sorts of fields of interest, of study, of enthusiasm. 
You do not have to be a software engineer. 
You do not have to be a hardware engineer. 
You do not have to be an expert. 
We have had speakers with successful Hope presentations, everything from, like, professors and engineers speaking about what they do for a living to enthusiastic amateurs who just have an interesting take on something or a question about something that they want to pose or something they want to investigate. 
All ages, all levels of what you might call credential, ranging from none to less than none to all of them. 
Whoever you are, there are things that you can look at with a hacker outlook, with a hacker mindset, with a, what can I add to this? 
What do I want to investigate about this? 
What do I want to get up in front of a room of my fellow hackers and pose to that crowd? 
And we have been doing that at Hope since 1994. 
We are doing this now in a space with such wonderful facilities and who are making so many wonderful things available to us so we can do this. 
And in addition to auditorium-style spaces for the presentations, we have classrooms, we have common areas, we have all kinds of cool spaces for things like workshops, villages, performances, exhibitions. 
If you want to do art installations, we're interested in that sort of thing. 
And, of course, we're going to have a vendor area as well. 
And all of these things, go to hope.net and stay tuned to there, and you will get the information on how to throw in your ideas. 
No idea is too silly. 
Some of the silliest ideas have led to the most wonderful experiences at Hope. 
Absolutely. 
Go ahead. 
If you're excited or passionate about something, like Greg said, as we often say, all of us, but I want to repeat that Greg said it tonight, is that we're excited about sharing learning and sharing whatever you happen to be excited about. 
If you are excited enough about something that you can get up and talk about it for 45 minutes, there are going to be people at Hope who are going to want to listen to you talk about it. 
We want to share knowledge. 
That's ultimately what we are. 
I will tell you that before I had heard of Hope, before I had been to Hope, I didn't understand what the concept of the hacker mindset was. 
But having been to Hope, having been involved with the show, having experienced all these things, it encompasses so much. 
And there are so many things that we can all learn from each other if you're willing to get up and talk about it for 45 minutes. 
And what you guys have just said cannot be overstated as far as just being able to do something that hasn't been done before, something that you want to present. 
I'm thinking of just all the projects and workshops we have space for. 
Now, in the past, at Hotel Pennsylvania, we could, you know, a handful, a handful of workshops and different things. 
And it's, you know, in an inconvenient floor far away from everything else. 
Now we're talking dozens and just a huge expansion as to the kinds of things that we can do. 
It's, you know, our imaginations are literally the only limitation. 
We have plenty of space to expand, make the next conference even bigger than the one we have this year. 
But really, it's a question of, has this been done before? 
Can we do this better? 
And we are completely open to all of that. 
If you go to Hope.net, you'll see there's a bunch of buttons that are currently active, including a volunteer button and news about the venue and things like that. 
Tomorrow, there will be a CFP call for participation that will show you exactly how to present or submit your talk idea, talk or panel idea. 
And there are going to be all kinds of other things added to that website in the days and weeks ahead. 
Somebody had their hand up. 
Alex. 
Yeah. 
Very briefly, I want to add and build on what everybody else has said. 
Look, we love original content. 
We've had kids that are speakers. 
We've had senior citizens that are speakers. 
It really runs the gamut, and I want to emphasize that you do not have to be a professional speaker. 
If this is your first time speaking in front of a room, we would love to welcome you. 
We'll welcome you with open arms to give a talk about something of interest that the hacker community doesn't have to be super technical. 
It doesn't even have to deal with computers. 
It could be something that's generally of interest to the hacker community. 
And I really mean this about Hope. 
Hope is a different conference than any other conference, any other hacker conference or information security conference that I've been to, and I've been to so many of them. 
And it's because of the lack of hierarchy. 
There really is no hierarchy at Hope. 
It's very flat. 
The high, the low, the rich, the poor, we all meet on the level at Hope, and we hope to see you there. 
We hope you submit it and respond to the CFP. 
And also just to emphasize what you said, I've seen this happen, where a highly decorated college professor gives a lecture at Hope, and he was followed by a 12-year-old hacker giving another lecture, and he stayed to watch that lecture and learn something. 
That is what Hope is. 
That's the magic of Hope. 
Greg, go ahead. 
The thing that's great about Hope is that all levels are welcome, and we can't stress this enough. 
People all the time think that maybe they don't know enough. 
Maybe they're not an expert enough. 
You know, maybe they know something but not enough to stand up. 
And that's just not the case. 
Everybody that has something to share can consider a submission. 
And if your submission is not selected to be on the main stage, then there'll be other stages. 
There'll be workshops. 
There'll be other opportunities to share what you know. 
So don't be bashful. 
Don't think that if only you waited, if only you learned a little more, you would then be sort of good enough or educated enough or smart enough or unique enough. 
You know, forget about all that stuff. 
Simply start with, do you have something to share? 
And if the answer is yes, then consider submitting. 
And, of course, the question everyone is asking is, how do I get tickets? 
We will be announcing that in the weeks ahead. 
Right now we're getting the CFP out there and organizing the rest of the website. 
But figure in a week or two we'll have a more definitive word on that. 
And we're going to continue this conversation over time. 
Rob, final word from you. 
After every hope, I've had people come up to me and say, oh, I had something that I was thinking of submitting, but then I didn't think you guys would like it. 
I didn't think it was cool enough, whatever. 
And that is a shame because it's always interesting. 
It's always cool enough. 
And you're never going to have the chance to present that if you don't try. 
So anything that you're thinking of, feel free to submit it. 
We're not going to get angry at you if we don't use it. 
We would much rather have your submission. 
The website is hope.net. 
Go check it out today. 
Check it out tomorrow. 
There'll be more information posted then. 
Join us on Overtime on channel 2600 at YouTube or follow the link on the 2600.com web page. 
We're off next week. 
We'll see you in two weeks. 
Good night. 


And good evening to everybody on Overtime via YouTube. 
Did we all make it? 
I'm here. 
Kyle, are you there? 
Trying to be, yeah. 
Okay. 
Rob, Gila? 
We're here. 
Okay. 
Alex, where'd Alex go? 
Alex is missing. 
Okay, well, Alex has been abducted by aliens, apparently. 
Oh, there he is. 
Alex, nice of you to join us. 
Can you hear us? 
I can hear you loud and clear. 
I had to get myself, you know, a drink. 
Oh, well, good for you. 
And Greg, I know that you have to go. 
You have to feed the dogs or something? 
What are they expecting right now? 
Yeah, the dogs are hungry and I need to participate in the evening feeding and cleanup and all that sort of thing. 
We're not going mushing today, but I think tomorrow will be the mushing day because those temps are finally getting below freezing where they belong. 
And by the way, you asked earlier about the weather. 
The warm-up last week was the first time we'd seen temperatures above freezing since October. 
And we literally had our interior and external wood-burning stoves going continuously 24 hours a day since October. 
So it was really quite the warm-up. 
We're looking forward to getting back into wintry conditions. 
Wow. 
And, you know, for those who haven't experienced it, I'm sure most people haven't, the feeding ceremony is a sight to behold. 
How long does it take? 
Well, for the evening, we take usually two to a little bit more than two hours, and that includes letting all the dogs run around. 
And we do it in sort of groups because there's a couple of dogs that don't get along. 
But all the dogs get to run around and socialize. 
Otherwise, they spend their day in a pen with two or three of their best friends. 
But we let them all run around and socialize, clean up any dog debris in the yard, and then also, of course, feed. 
And the feeding system in the wintertime is a bucket system. 
So we don't give them water because the water just freezes, you know, just water in those bowls. 
But we give them a watery soup, which includes some meat, some kibble, and we just go around with the buckets and give everyone their evening food. 
And they eat it up. 
A dog, typical to any dog, they eat it up within about 30 to 90 seconds. 
They'll eat that. 
And then, strangely, it gets very quiet afterwards, except for the howl. 
Thank you, howl. 
Ian and Kyle have heard the evening howl. 
And we have a couple of pack leaders that love to howl. 
Some of them like to do it in the middle of the night. 
Some of them like to do it in the afternoon. 
But after mealtime is very typical. 
Howling is a happy occasion. 
So after dinner, typically one or two dogs will take up the howl. 
And everyone will howl just for maybe a minute to two minutes just to express their thanks and satisfaction with the meal. 
Well, we started howling, too, when we were there because it is contagious. 
And you just sort of get caught up in it. 
Yeah, it feels good. 
It's a happy thing. 
It's a very happy thing. 
And it's sort of a gratitude that I think dogs are showing. 
So you must get to that. 
We look forward to seeing that again. 
And it's a kind of magic that's so hard to describe. 
But it's so amazing that that's the world that you're involved in. 
It's a lifestyle. 
It's a lifestyle. 
And, you know, I spent a lot of time in New York City, grew up on Long Island. 
So I know that lifestyle, too. 
And it's just different. 
And being in the cold, having the dogs, being in the middle of nowhere, we're on a huge hill overlooking Lake LaBerge, which, if you know the cremation of Sam McGee, that is the lake that the poem takes place on by Robert Service. 
So we're in an area that has just a tremendous history, a tremendous outdoor spirit, and is not at all like living in a metropolitan area. 
But we enjoy it quite a bit. 
Did I send you the song, The Cremation of Sam McGee, by Debbie McClatchy? 
I know I sent you one of the Robert Service. 
She did two of them on an album. 
So I don't know if I sent you the Sam McGee song or a different one. 
It's about people freezing. 
No, you did. 
Okay. 
Yeah, yeah. 
It's The Cremation of Sam McGee, and it's set to music, basically. 
I can't recall. 
I don't think it was the exact poem. 
I have a feeling it was, you know, more or less about the poem, some of the words from the poem. 
It was a great song. 
And I actually have a picture of Robert Service and his wife on our wall, which I need to scan and get into Wikipedia, because it's not a picture that I've seen anywhere else, and it seems to be in the public domain. 
So it should be shared more widely. 
And just quickly, who was Robert Service? 
Robert Service was a famous poet, and he was someone that wrote poems about a variety of things, but a lot of it was of a northern theme. 
He spent time in the Yukon, and that was one of his themes. 
And there's a pretty famous poem of his, probably the most famous poem, called The Cremation of Sam McGee, which is about a—I can't recall if he was a miner or something else, but he was someone that was in Yukon working and living and was always cold, because it's cold. 
Even in summertime, it's not all that warm. 
And always cold, always cold. 
And the—this isn't too much of a spoiler, since it's a pretty old poem—but in the end, The Cremation of Sam McGee, he dies, he's cremated, and suddenly he actually feels warm, and he's just so happy about that. 
I don't think there was howling involved, but you can imagine that might have followed in another version of the poem. 
Yeah, the other song has to do with somebody named, I think, Bill McGee, who—the only way he could be transported out of the cabin where he froze to death was to have his arms and legs sawed off. 
There's another Robert Service poem, apparently. 
There's a theme here. 
A lot of happy themes there. 
Yeah, a lot of happy themes. 
I can hardly wait to— I'll tell you, I mean, you mentioned before how different it is. 
You know, in New York City, when it's, you know, in the 30s, and it's windy, and it's sleeting, it is cold. 
There's no doubt that it's cold. 
I don't belittle that at all. 
But when it's 30 or 40 degrees colder, which happens all the time in Yukon, it's a different sort of cold. 
And the good news is that it's usually not raining or sleeting and slushing, so you don't get all that ugly wetness that makes you so cold in New York and so miserable. 
But on the other hand, if you're not wearing gloves, you're not wearing a hat, if the wind is up, you can get frostbite. 
You can get hands that won't even move after just a couple of minutes. 
It's just a totally different type of cold. 
And when you finally get down to the 40 below, which is where Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same, at 40 below, it's actually an even more different type of cold. 
And at 40 below, for example, well, of course, you might have seen the experiment where you can take a glass of boiling water, throw it in the sky, and it automatically goes from liquid to gas, right? 
So it just puffs into a gaseous cloud. 
It's a fantastic experiment. 
But in addition, at that cold temperature, stuff that's not fragile is suddenly fragile. 
So, for example, an unbreakable comb becomes quite fragile at that temperature. 
Electronic components that normally are like solid state, surface mount type of things and, you know, very robust suddenly become brittle and fragile. 
Makes you appreciate what they do with sending stuff to Mars and whatnot throughout our space where it's so much colder than that even. 
But anyway, 40 below is just unbelievable compared to, you know, compared to, you know, a 30-degree day. 
Because consider it's 70 degrees different, which is the difference between a 30-degree day in New York and a 100-degree day in New York. 
So if you can imagine going from 30 degrees to 40 below zero, the same difference. 
It's equally as different feeling to your body. 
Of course, it's amazing that the dogs just do fine in 40 below, most of them. 
There's a couple that are maybe not as well suited to the cold temps. 
Dogs do just fine at that temperature. 
People, you've got to bundle up. 
Alex, you had a question? 
Yeah. 
Well, first to comment and then to build off of… And we have to let Greg go, too, after that because the dogs are hungry. 
Yeah, we have a phone call, too. 
They are. 
I hadn't realized that you were from Long Island. 
You know, I guess nobody's perfect, huh? 
Well, you know, I was born in Montreal and was there until I was about eight. 
And then moved with my family from Montreal when I was just eight years old from Montreal to Port Washington on Long Island and was there until I went off to college after high school. 
Oh, interesting. 
I guess you had too much culture in Montreal. 
You need to tone it down a little bit, I guess. 
Go over to Port Washington. 
The bagels are good. 
The bagels are good in Montreal, but not as good as New York. 
Yeah. 
I will tell you, though, about the 40 below. 
So I used to live in Vermont. 
I went to law school in Vermont. 
And I've been in 40 below in Montpelier. 
And I had a situation where I was trying to leave to drive back to New York at about 4 o'clock in the morning. 
It's about a six-hour drive back to Long Island, actually. 
And it was about 45 below zero at that time. 
It was really, really cold. 
And the ignition block in my car, just like you said, things start acting weird at that temperature. 
I couldn't turn it. 
It was completely frozen. 
And I spent about 45 minutes in the driveway of the car trying to turn the key over into the ignition block. 
And it was a 1992 Geo Prism. 
So it was a very old car by any stretch of the imagination, even for the years that I were in law school. 
So what I wound up having to do is take an extension cord out of the house, a very long extension cord, connect a hairdryer to it, and heat up the ignition block in the car with the hairdryer just to turn over the engine. 
And that took about a half an hour. 
So, I mean, things really do go nuts. 
And I'll never forget that experience. 
And you know it's that cold. 
When you go outside, you take that breath, and you feel your nose hair freeze. 
That and also if you touch metal. 
For example, I made the mistake when we lived in Alaska of going to pump gas and just grabbing the gas thing. 
And it wasn't even that cold. 
It was maybe 10 or 20 below. 
And I actually got instant frostbite on my fingers. 
I had to wear bandages, and I had actual damage to my fingers after touching for just a fraction of a second. 
I'm surprised you can get stuck to the pump. 
Well, nothing's wet, right? 
You know, it's so cold that, you know, anything would be ice almost instantly. 
But that would be a concern. 
And with Alex's story, the other experience I've had, and we actually helped people on our road with their Bobcat. 
They were doing some plowing. 
And same situation, it wouldn't start, wouldn't turn over. 
It had an engine block heater, so they plugged it into a little portable generator. 
But they also had to basically put a little propane stove, like a little camp stove, underneath it. 
And, you know, sort of cover it with coats and that sort of, you know, ad hoc stuff to try to warm things up. 
Because, you know, the battery doesn't work well when it's cold. 
The oil gets very thick when it's cold. 
And if you decide to start twiddling things, suddenly you discover that maybe the wires are brittle. 
We've also had the experience of setting, making coals, making a fire and burning down to coals and then putting the coals under the oil pan, which really is perilous. 
Because you've got to worry about, you know, fires, you've got to worry about melting, things that shouldn't be melted. 
On the other hand, if that's the only way you can warm it up, then, you know, otherwise you're stuck in 40 degree below, then that's what you do. 
So, yeah, it can be very, very interesting. 
Luckily, though, I mean, it's a civilized place. 
We plug in our vehicles, we have electricity, and, you know, we dress for the weather, which you would hope. 
But, of course, you don't always have the luxury of things like electricity. 
Are you on the grid, Greg, or do you generate your own electricity? 
Oh, this is a whole different story. 
So, and in fact, this is actually a good topic, you know, for one of these Hope Talks, potentially. 
So, we are in an off-grid house, and the off-grid house includes a solar panel, so there's batteries. 
It also includes a generator, a diesel generator. 
And we have a wood-burning stove inside. 
We also have a wood-burning hydronic furnace outside, which is one of these boilers that circulates glycol for under-floor heating. 
So, we are very much off-grid. 
It wasn't our goal, but we found a house that was perfect. 
But it's a little far out of town, and it's off-grid. 
So, off-grid turns out to be a true hacker experience. 
I've done things which Kyle would appreciate. 
I've diagnosed heating systems, diagnosed control systems for heating, for hydronics. 
I had to replace thermostats, you know, a variety of things. 
We had a situation where a pressure valve went because the diesel generator went out because a starter, a wire on the starter motor became loose. 
And so, the generator didn't start, the power went out, the glycol overheated, the pressure blew on the hydronic furnace, and we had, like, glycol all over the place from the furnace. 
Those cascading failures that then lead to big problems. 
Age of story as old as time with engineering. 
Complex systems. 
You've got to, yeah. 
And people engineer complex systems, and they know what they're doing, but they don't necessarily, they're not able necessarily to engineer for all the interactions. 
Or engineer. 
Among these complex systems. 
Exactly. 
To be maintained, you know, the real life circumstances, an engineer that designed it is not the person that is going to be faced with repairs and upkeep. 
Yeah. 
And so, the hacker mindset was crucial to diagnosing this stuff. 
But I'm not, you know, I'm not a plumber, I'm not an electrician, I'm not even all that talented, I'm not so good with soldering, you know, and so forth. 
But on the other hand, when you're an hour away from town in Yukon Territory, and there's snow on the road, and you can't get anyone to come out, because your generator just, you know, puked, or your, you know, solar system isn't working properly, or who knows what. 
Then, you know, enter hacker mindset, and, you know, of course, enter the internet also, that's been great, you know, reading manuals, and, you know, looking for help in different online forums, and that sort of thing. 
But it's very much a do-it-yourself environment in the Yukon. 
Knowing when to ask for help, or when you're out of your element is also good. 
Not trying to take on too much, but such an adventure. 
I would love to hear more about that. 
And, yeah, I can't even begin to list how many skills and interesting areas of engineering or physics that I've explored, because something broke, and I was facing, you know, having to fix it, or how could I fix it, or what's the most economical way, or what should I do with what pieces are left of something? 
And it's always a puzzle, and I love it, but it can be aggravating as well. 
But when you throw survival in there, oh, my gosh. 
Anyway, we'll have to talk more about this. 
It's so fascinating. 
Such great stories, too. 
What's your connectivity like? 
You mentioned that. 
Oh, this is, so in a nutshell, we're waiting for Elon Musk to save us with Starlink. 
So the connected, so we're off-grid. 
So that means we have no landline connection. 
We don't have a land telephone line. 
We don't have land, DSL, anything like that. 
Unfortunately, it's about five miles, three to five miles, depending on the route it would take to get to our house. 
And to put in an interconnect there would be substantial hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
So that's not happening until someone puts in a subdivision or something like that. 
So we have something called ExploreNet, which is basically the same as Hughes satellite. 
It's a geosynchronous satellite, so that is not too terrible, but it tends to be very congested in the afternoon. 
And also, your latency is never going to be good because of the speed of light, right? 
So your geosynchronous satellite connection with ExploreNet. 
The other thing that we have is mobile internet, and we have a booster, which was also another interesting journey. 
So we have a commercial cellular booster that we put up because we cannot quite see the antenna. 
We don't quite have line of sight to the nearest tower, but we almost have line of sight. 
And so with the booster, we're able to get from about, I can't remember what the numbers are, but we're able to get to a reasonable number of decibels of boosted power. 
Mobile is very expensive. 
Mobile data is even more expensive in Canada than it is in the U.S., and also tends to suffer from congestion. 
And in Yukon, there's only one carrier. 
Rogers is the carrier of the physical lines, the fiber, you know, that connects us to the rest of Canada. 
Even though you can have different companies, you can bring, like, your AT&T phone or whatever, and you get connectivity. 
But there's only one actual carrier with no physical route diversity. 
And so we have had a cable cut incident, but you also run into capacity limits. 
So basically, it's satellite or terrestrial mobile are my two options. 
But we are waiting. 
I'm signed up, and Starlink says they're going to install sometime in 2022. 
And that is, I can tell you, that's been a game changer for people in rural Canada and other parts of rural North America, because suddenly you're, you know, not only reasonably priced, but at a very reasonable latency and actually quite good bandwidth, often better than DSL. 
So I just can't wait for, you know, for Starlink to arrive. 
But you'll still have to worry about the speed of light, right? 
Well, the speed of light is certainly a factor, but it's much less of a factor because your geosynchronous satellites are on the order of 23,000 miles, right? 
But your low Earth orbit satellites, which includes Starlink, are under 200 miles, right? 
So your latency to get from ground station to orbit is actually much, much less. 
I see. 
Okay. 
You know, fraction. 
And then you're looking more at the latency of routing latency. 
So it's the way Starlink works is it goes from, typically goes from one satellite to another satellite to another satellite before it gets to a ground station. 
And, of course, each one of those routing hops, as everyone recalls from reading Clifstool, the cuckoo's egg, each one of those routing hops adds its own delay. 
So you're probably still looking at maybe 100 milliseconds latency. 
But just a geosynchronous orbit tends to be closer to 400 milliseconds latency. 
So it should be quite a bit better. 
And by all reports, it's actually not only decent, but it's even good enough for gaming, you know, for people that are into gaming. 
Wow. 
Any final questions for Greg? 
He has to go feed those dogs. 
Okay. 
Well, good. 
Greg, fascinating talking to you, as always. 
And I look forward to the CFP for Hope being released tomorrow and all the fun of another Hope Conference ahead of us. 
It's going to be amazing. 
Yeah. 
It's so energizing to be at this phase. 
You know, a lot of us have done this before. 
But if you've been part of it or you want to be part of it or you've been reading about it in the magazine or on the radio show, just go for it. 
You know, get involved. 
Get a ticket. 
Sign up to be a volunteer. 
Send in a speaker proposal. 
We love new topics. 
The barrier to entry is not that high for any of this. 
You know, we want to choose the best topics. 
But you can just show up and talk about things. 
You can show up and join a workshop. 
Show up and become a volunteer. 
And that's how all of us got involved. 
You know, so I got involved showing up as a speaker and an AV volunteer and back in the year 2000. 
So anyone that has any interest should really just go for it. 
You know, make your plan. 
There's time to, you know, get time off from work. 
Think about your vaccination status. 
Think about your housing. 
Think about your travel expense. 
And make a plan, you know, because it will be fantastic to see you in July. 
Absolutely. 
All right. 
Greg, get home safely and say hi to all the dogs. 
How many of them are there? 
26 currently. 
26 dogs. 
Okay. 
Wow. 
That is incredible. 
That is incredible. 
And, again, thanks for all you do and for inspiring us to do so much more. 
And we will be talking to you in the future. 
All right. 
Be well. 
All right. 
Bye-bye. 
So I'm told, Rob, our volume is low on YouTube. 
Is that what you're telling us? 
Yeah. 
It's pretty low as these things go. 
This happens every week. 
I have it running in the background at full blast, and it's still nowhere near obscuring my ability to hear you guys. 
All right. 
Well, Kyle is trying to work on it right now. 
But I think, you know, maybe YouTube could turn their volume up just for everybody. 
I think that might make things a little easier. 
Yeah. 
Any better? 
We'll have to wait for the delay. 
Oh, that's right. 
We have to wait for the delay. 
It takes time. 
Alex, yes. 
Well, apropos of Greg's stories and his anecdotes about dogs, I want to read you guys a stanza. 
And while we're waiting for phone calls, 802-321-4225, by the way, I'd be curious to see if any of you know where this is from. 
And I think it's a beautiful stanza. 
I think it has to do with the inexorability of doing what's right, even though it frightens you. 
Walt Whitman. 
Of Greg and his dogs. 
This is the stanza. 
I guessed Walt Whitman. 
Am I right? 
No. 
I'm not. 
Damn it. 
The wild dogs cry out in the night as they go longing for some solitary. 
Is there something funny, Gila? 
There's a serious poem here. 
She knows what it is. 
Oh, my God. 
It's it, Alex, but I know what it is. 
What is it, Weird Al Yankovic or something? 
Let me start over. 
Yeah, please start over. 
And no more catcalls and heckling. 
As he often does, he interrupts the narrative flow. 
Emmanuel, that is. 
Yeah. 
The wild dogs cry out into the night as they grow restless, longing for some solitary company. 
I know that I must do what's right. 
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti, I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've become. 
All right, Gila, clearly you have some knowledge of this. 
So why don't you tell us what this is? 
I would like to thank the bards of the great band Toto, because that is the second verse of their song, Africa. 
That's exactly right. 
That is from Africa. 
That song I keep hearing. 
It's a beautiful song. 
It's such a big. 
I just recently read the lyrics to it, and I was so impressed by them. 
I had no idea what the hell was going on in the song for the entirety of my life. 
It's a gorgeous song. 
It's one of Kyle's favorites, I think. 
Okay, true story. 
If we have a minute, do we have a call on hold? 
We do have a call, but you know what? 
They called well before we gave out the phone number, so they should be on hold, because we didn't ask them to call. 
But stay on hold. 
We'll get to you. 
We'll get to you. 
A quick story to explain why I was able to recognize those lyrics right off. 
Embarrassing but true. 
I was in the acapella group when I was in college, and we tried to do Africa, and the second verse was my solo. 
And I could not get down the timing of the phrase, sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti. 
I had to practice that every day for two weeks. 
And we never actually did the song. 
Wow. 
And here it comes back, full circle. 
You never know what's going to become relevant later on. 
It's so true. 
Everything is copy, I suppose. 
From my teen years until now, I have never been able to take Toto seriously. 
I'm sorry. 
I've tried. 
I have. 
But what are you going to do? 
It's a beautiful song. 
I think it's a beautiful song. 
The lyrics are great. 
The melody, the beat, everything about it, it just comes together. 
Well, okay, you know, tastes differ, that's for sure. 
Shall we take this phone call that's been on hold for a good long time? 
All right, let's bring this up. 
And good evening, you're on overtime. 
Good evening. 
And yes, your sound has been low. 
I'm hearing you much better over the phone than I was over the computer, which I muted when I got on. 
Yeah, you're the only one on the phone, so I'm curious how people on the computer are hearing us, if they're hearing us. 
Rob, is it better? 
Rob, are you there? 
It's kind of where it was. 
It kind of hasn't changed. 
Well, I don't know how much more we can turn up. 
We can talk louder. 
You know, we can turn these. 
I don't know, Kyle, what do you think? 
What is causing this? 
Is it that program we use to send to YouTube, or is it just a problem with YouTube? 
Well, I mean, is this really what we're talking about now? 
Right now, if people can't hear us, we should probably figure out what's going on. 
Okay. 
Because it seems to happen every week. 
It does seem to be an issue. 
It's not an issue on the radio. 
I don't know why it's not an issue on the radio, but on YouTube. 
That tells me it's something with YouTube. 
I'm hearing some feedback that the volume is perfect. 
Oh, really? 
Okay. 
Well, see, there's different opinions. 
I raised it a little bit in the streaming software that we use to get to YouTube, so... 
Yeah, Rob, maybe you are the problem. 
But as I said at the beginning, like, you know, this is a new location, and we're going to tweak some of this, so just please bear with us. 
Yeah, bear with us. 
Hopefully, we are legible. 
Really, the information is what's important. 
We don't care if we sound terrible. 
No, we... 
We care if we sound terrible. 
Let's not say it that way. 
Um, just, yeah, we appreciate the feedback, and we'll do better. 
The feedback of voices, not the feedback of a speaker screeching, because we get that too sometimes. 
You know, maybe I mean both. 
Oh, okay. 
Hey, we have a caller. 
And good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Hi. 
Oh, we did this already. 
We already did this. 
Yes. 
Yes. 
I'm sorry. 
Yes. 
I wanted to let you know that even though I was switched to Fios, I am now fighting to try to be switched back to copper. 
Nobody has ever done that. 
Nobody in history has ever been able to do that. 
Well, I may not succeed, or maybe I'll make history. 
That is kind of... 
But anyway, to... 
That is so poetic, uh, using their new technology to, uh, you know, do all the web research and make all the phone calls you have to make to force them to get, to make you, um, to allow you back onto the older network. 
I like that. 
And they have to respect that. 
They may not like it, but... 
But you know what I realized... 
The people who come to, the people who come to switch me are people who have been working for the company for 20 years, and they all know how the copper works, they're just not allowed to use their knowledge. 
So when the company keeps telling me that the people who even know how to fix copper are far and few between, that has not been what I have found out when people have come to my house. 
And somebody came to my house today to install the emergency box, so that you know that there's maybe going to be a blizzard on Friday, and so if the... 
It's a bomb cyclone. 
Another bomb cyclone. 
If there should be an electricity outage, I now have that emergency box, which will keep me going for, I don't know, maybe almost 24 hours, if I don't actually use the phone. 
And this one, they used to have them with these special batteries, but now they're giving out ones that use 12D batteries. 
And so it's considered my responsibility to get extra batteries if I want to be safe for longer than that period of time, or if I want to actually be able to use the phone. 
Oh, that is so stupid. 
Well, no, actually, I think that's better, because that gives you the power, at least, to get your backup system working again, if you have D cell batteries, 12 of them, like God. 
Well, apparently, the ones with the special batteries, it was possible to order extras, but they were very expensive. 
But I'm sure getting loads of D batteries is also expensive. 
I did do some research, and I found out that Rayovac lasts longest, and they're also much cheaper than the other, the ones that advertise that they last longest. 
We all know who that is. 
Well, you know, it's interesting. 
It seems to be the road everyone's going down. 
But I realized something. 
Out on Long Island, a lot of people complain that fiber is not available. 
And I realize, if you're one of those people who complains that fiber isn't available, you're one of those people that can hold on to your copper line indefinitely. 
So I guess that's kind of a good thing. 
Yes. 
Yep. 
All right. 
Lucky them. 
They don't know. 
Well, we do have the bomb cyclone coming this weekend, so I guess this will be the first test to see how it goes. 
The last storm of significance, we had no power for two weeks. 
So we'll see how it goes. 
But they also say that if it veers a little to the left or to the right, it'll make a big difference as to how much snow we get. 
So we might not have a horrible snowstorm. 
Yeah. 
There's the American forecast, and then there's the European forecast. 
I don't know why the Europeans care. 
And I don't know why they always are different, but that's what you see on the weather channels. 
They use different prediction. 
You know, there's a whole bunch of different ways you can predict the weather. 
And they give different results. 
Yeah. 
Every time they get different results, apparently. 
It's just you think you'd know which one works better by now. 
Maybe they all work about equally. 
Well, we'll see. 
And they're all unreliable. 
The important thing, and I say this to everybody, the important thing is that if you watch the weather channel, they will try to name this storm that's coming. 
Don't accept that. 
Winter storms do not get named by the weather channel. 
Hurricanes get named by the people that name hurricanes, because that's what they do. 
But TV networks don't get to name storms in the winter. 
So I refuse to accept whatever they decide to call this one. 
Sorry. 
Well, if they name it anyway, what are you going to do? 
I'm not going to recognize it. 
If somebody says, hey, did you see Tom Barrow through here before? 
I'm going to say, who's that? 
I have no idea what you're talking about, even if I know what they're talking about. 
It's a blizzard. 
It's a, if you want to call it a bomb cyclone, go ahead and call it that. 
But don't name winter storms. 
You don't have the right. 
You're a weather channel. 
Report the damn weather. 
I'm sorry. 
This upsets me. 
Thank you for your call. 
And good luck with the storm and with the new fiber optics. 
And we'll talk to you next, two weeks, actually. 
Yes. 
All right. 
You know, you're listed on the WBAI programming chart as being on next week. 
Yeah. 
Well, there was some confusion about that, but I am assured that we are not on next week. 
That's what, that's what they have told us. 
Well, the people consulting the chart will be fooled. 
Yeah. 
They certainly wouldn't be the first time either. 
Anyway, thanks. 
They're just so sloppy. 
Well, we can get into that, but let's not. 
Thanks again for your call. 
We will talk to you again. 
And we're going to open up the phone line to 802-321-4225. 
That is our phone number. 
Yes, Rob. 
Yeah, I agree with you totally on the Weather Channel deciding they have the right to name storms thing. 
That has annoyed me so much. 
How dare they? 
Who are they to do this? 
You don't see that in other kinds of journalism, only weather. 
It's like, they don't decide that like somebody who holds up a store on 5th and Main, like they don't decide, oh, their name is John Smith and we're going to call them that. 
You do not get to dictate that. 
You don't know the storm. 
You don't have any idea, anything about this storm. 
You do not know its name. 
So this, you don't have the right. 
You don't have the right. 
You know, Fox News could name this storm something completely different. 
Who's to say who's right and who's wrong? 
You know, hurricanes, they're named by the Weather Authority. 
When the Weather Authority people take an interest in naming winter storms, I'll listen. 
Not until then. 
All right. 
We have another phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
I hope it doesn't snow Friday morning because I'm going to Kansas Friday morning. 
So I hope it just snows after Friday. 
And I hope it doesn't snow in Chicago because I'm changing planes in Chicago. 
Rebel, you are constantly traveling. 
What's going on? 
Are you making up for lost time? 
I will. 
I'm back from California, but I forgot to call last week. 
Uh-huh. 
Well, we forgot to pick up, so it's okay. 
But, yeah, so, Cal, last we heard from you, you were driving a Tesla near Disneyland. 
Right. 
Every bit as exciting as it sounds. 
I will never drive a Tesla again. 
I mean, they're nice cars, and, you know, but it's just too annoying. 
I mean, like, you have to have a college degree to learn how to drive a car now. 
It's really, you know, I didn't know how to use the auto driver feature. 
I wanted to play with that, but I didn't know how to use it. 
I didn't even know how to use the cruise control because everything is on a tablet. 
But I didn't want to - it was so many else's car, and I didn't want to mess with their settings and, you know, do anything, you know. 
It's different when it's like a rental agency. 
You feel like it's not personal. 
Right, because they know how to set it up again. 
You know, they know how to redo the settings when it's a rental. 
So they could help you, and, you know, but anyway. 
But I like the Nissan Leaf. 
You went to a guy's house, and you took his car, and then you're bringing it back to him, and you don't want to mess it up. 
Right. 
Yeah, I mean, that's, you know. 
But what I'm talking about Friday is they're going on a farm tour, and that is going to be staying on somebody's farm. 
A farm tour? 
Okay, you've got to describe what that is. 
A farm tour. 
I don't know. 
There's just something on YouTube that I found, and I just always wanted to know how things work, how food is made, and how, you know, it's grown and stuff. 
How food is made. 
I see these farms, I see these, you know, how you see these farms, and these things in the country, and these grain floods, or whatever, and you hear about the grain elevators, and what are you, you know, and. 
Well, don't get too close to those. 
Yeah. 
Stay away from those. 
Those are really dangerous. 
And some of them are missile silos, so be careful of those. 
Yeah. 
No, that's the one in the ground, but, you know, so I'm going on a farm tour for the weekend, and, you know. 
Okay, well, are you going to be involved in slaughtering anything? 
No. 
I'll feed the cows and everything, but I won't, you know. 
Okay. 
But, you know. 
It might be a little cold there, you know. 
Yeah, what are you looking forward to? 
Well, actually, it's going to be 50 degrees there. 
I checked the weather for that day. 
Okay, all right. 
Yes, Kyle, go ahead. 
What are you looking forward to, specifically there? 
Yeah, what's on your mind, too? 
Oh, well, about California, you know, I did my usual thing. 
I go there every year. 
I know somebody in California, in San Diego. 
And, you know, I must say, you know, going through California, I will not go into Mexico again. 
I mean, I've never been into Mexico. 
What happened, Rebel? 
What happened when you went into Mexico? 
No, nothing happened. 
No, I'm just saying, you know, just because of what's been going on. 
And, you know, 10 years ago was the last. 
No, I mean, 10 years ago was the last time I went to Mexico, and I will never go. 
But, you know, recently with the, you know, the caravan thing a couple years ago. 
And, you know, going to New Mexico, you go to a place called Cali-Exico. 
It's like California and Mexico. 
Right. 
It's a border town. 
You know, there are these, you know, National Guard troops, you know, stationed there. 
And, you know, it's his Operation Border Shield on there, like, bulletproof vests. 
And, you know, I asked, you know, I asked them, you know, hey, it's a National Guard in every state in the South. 
They said, yeah, we're helping the border patrol. 
Oh, for God's sake. 
You know, every time I've been to Mexico, it's been an awesome experience. 
And just because of what you hear about roving gangs of immigrants approaching our border, you don't have to panic. 
You don't have to worry about it. 
Well, no, it's when you go on the needed highway, the main highway, you know, they have these road, these checkpoints. 
When the highway gets too close to the border, they have these checkpoints where you drive. 
It's like a toll booth. 
A border patrol person says, hey, usually they'll say, are you a U.S. citizen? 
And then you'll say, yes, and they'll, you know, I get to get on with that, and then they'll say, thank you. 
This one just, you know, this person just waved me through. 
It didn't ask me any questions, you know. 
And, of course, there's this building there that says, you know, additional checkpoint or whatever, additional search or whatever. 
You know, of course, there's two National Guard soldiers there just, you know, standing there. 
But this person just waved me through, you know. 
I just, you know, drove up to the thing and, you know, no question of, you know, it just waved me through and, you know. 
Sounds like you're upset you didn't get stopped and ask questions in your own country about your citizenship. 
No, no, I'm just surprised, you know, because usually they'll ask you if you're, you know, are you a citizen? 
And they won't ask you for any proof like a driver's license or anything. 
It's not like going through the border checkpoint where at the show I do. 
Yeah, because you're not going through a border, yet you get stopped in your own country and asked if you're a citizen. 
Listen, that just doesn't seem right. 
Right. 
Well, I mean, you have to have this, you know, this special, like every state now has to have an enhanced ID so that when you go through borders and airports, you know, it's, I guess it's easier for them to check and cross-reference. 
I heard Washington still doesn't have an enhanced ID. 
Is that true, Kyle? 
All right. 
You don't have to do that. 
No, it's in October, though. 
Hats off if they don't because they're still working on it. 
Still working on it. 
Okay. 
All right. 
I think they got an extension, actually. 
Wow. 
Anything else, Rebel? 
Nothing. 
I guess just, you know, I was at the store, you know, I was in Texas one day and, you know, I had a store near the border and, you know, Brownsville, Texas one time. 
You know, and of course, you know, I see this, you know, National Guard, you know, this Operation Border Shield people, you know, there too. 
And this is like a year or two ago. 
Uh-huh. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
And anyone out there have questions for Rebel? 
No? 
Will you be taking precautions when you go visit those farms that there are no mix-ups and they don't... 
No, I mean, I'm not going to be at a bar. 
I mean, what kind of questions... 
You guys can't be talking at the same time. 
You don't hear each other. 
So, let Rob finish his question. 
I'm just wishing you the best for your trip, Rebel, and, you know, have fun in the chicken coops and whatnot. 
Okay. 
Well, I'll be staying at a farm. 
It's a farm barn lost. 
I don't know what that means, but it's a basin in somebody's house. 
Oh, boy. 
I've never done that before. 
I mean, I've seen pictures of it. 
It looks, you know, pretty nice. 
Tell somebody where you're going, okay, just so that we can check in and... 
Well, you know, and... 
I don't know what farm in Kansas you're going to be in. 
There's a million of them. 
Come on. 
It's a line near McPherson. 
No, it's in Astoria, Kansas, or Astoria, Kansas State. 
You're going to a farm in Astoria? 
Really? 
You're a Queens native? 
Amazing. 
Wow. 
Okay, when you find the one in Flushing, let me know. 
It sounds like an awesome trip. 
That's something good to have in common, though. 
Yeah, that's true. 
Astoria to Astoria. 
Sister cities. 
Well, safe travels, Rebel, and please call us in two weeks. 
Yeah, in two weeks. 
Yes. 
Okay, am I going to be on? 
Let's see, Wednesday I'll be in... 
Okay, yeah. 
I understand the 9th of February. 
Rebel's World Tour. 
Right. 
All right. 
Safe travels. 
Okay, bye. 
I don't know what that demonic laugh is all about. 
Farmers in Kansas, you've been warned. 
Go to whatever protocol you go to in these situations. 
802-321-4225. 
Boy, our universe is interesting. 
From Greg to Rebel, all sorts of fascinating adventures going on. 
All right, let's see who's out there now. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Hello, it's Phillip from Missouri. 
How are you? 
Pretty good. 
You sound a little different this week. 
Yeah, well, I just got back from the doctor. 
And how are things? 
I'm all dilated. 
My eyes are all dilated, so I'm seeing, like, all kinds of weird stuff. 
Uh-huh. 
Enjoy it. 
Enjoy it. 
Yeah, I haven't forgot about Alex. 
I'm just, you know, I just don't have a lot going on right now. 
If I've got anything going on, I'll be sure to email him. 
I was going to ask. 
Have you heard? 
I'm glad you mentioned it. 
Very good. 
And glad you called. 
Yeah, I think Alex has something to help you. 
If you just email him, he'll email you back with the details. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, that's right. 
It works as easy as you can email OTH at 2600.com, and I'll respond to that. 
Yes. 
I'll just put Alex in, like, the subject line or something like that so he knows me. 
He's very good at responding. 
Yeah. 
I guess I should just give myself a handle, right? 
I don't know, Mr. 
Chicago or Phil to Peel. 
I like Phil to Peel called to put him to sleep, all right? 
We'll figure it out. 
We will. 
Okay. 
Well, anyway, did you hear today where Cardi B won a lawsuit against a YouTuber for spreading lies about her? 
No, I did not. 
A liable. 
Yeah, a liable lawsuit. 
Apparently, the YouTuber's going around saying that she was a prostitute and all this other stuff. 
And now you've said it. 
Cardi B. 
Now you've said it. 
Cardi B's going to be coming after you now. 
Oh, allegedly. 
I'm sorry. 
I'm just relating the story. 
So if the FBI's listening or anything like that, yeah. 
I'm just relating the story I saw. 
Well, anyway, apparently she won a liable suit against them. 
So I guess these YouTubers, especially these rumor channels, right? 
Mm-hmm. 
I guess they need to, you know, start taking what they send out there more seriously. 
We're also going to be out of some money. 
Well, do you think that's a good thing? 
Well, in a way, yes. 
In a way, no. 
Um, you know, like, uh, like the whole QAnon thing, talking about, um, this, uh, this, that and the other, like, eating children to live forever and all that junk. 
Mm-hmm. 
You know, that's liable. 
I mean, that's, that's really liable. 
I don't understand why these people don't pick these gods up on this and just, you know, just zoom to oblivion because, you know, that's kind of crazy. 
Well, I think, I think what you just said now, it's kind of crazy. 
So people say, wow, this is insane. 
No one's going to believe it. 
But then they, they realize, oh my God, people are believing it. 
Yes, they are. 
And you have to redefine the boundaries. 
Those people, those people who were in Dallas are still there. 
Um, found that out the other night. 
Through, um, I think it was Seth Meyer. 
Uh, he was talking about the other night, um, where they're still there. 
There's not as many, but they're still there in those hotels. 
Just waiting for JFK Jr. 
to come around. 
Oh, those people. 
The JFK Jr. 
is coming back to life, people. 
Yeah, they're still there. 
And they still believe all this junk. 
And they keep, they keep, um, keep, you know, saying the same old stuff. 
So, you know, I'm surprised that Fox News doesn't have more liable on them. 
Um, especially with the Bob Saget thing where they started, tried to start a rumor that was based on COVID and his family's hiding it from everybody and all this other stuff. 
Uh-huh. 
I'm surprised they didn't get knocked down for that. 
There's only so much time in a day, I guess. 
There's so many crazy, uh, conspiracy theories out there now. 
Yeah, for real. 
I mean, um, Tucker Carlson last night was going, why is everybody picking on Russia? 
Russia's so great. 
Um, well, it turns out that, um, Russia's got this super secret cool, um, uh, ship they built, right? 
And they said it was, like, for ocean, oceanographic research or something like that. 
But apparently, this bad boy's been using sonar to, like, um, cut lines off. 
Like, um, in Norway, you know, the SOSA, SOSA system, down the water, microphones, all that to track, um, track, um, track, to track submarines and stuff like that. 
Well, they apparently have the communication lines, too. 
So, apparently, somebody's been going around cutting those, uh, communication lines through Norway, down the water ones. 
Oh, wow. 
And they've been doing it, and they started doing it in Ireland, too. 
Uh, some of that's been cut off. 
Wasn't Ireland the country that just told Russia they weren't welcome to do war games off their coast? 
Exactly. 
A bunch of fishermen are going to go out there, and I hope they don't get killed. 
Wow. 
Because Russia, Russia don't play around, man. 
You didn't, you wouldn't think it would be Ireland that stood up to Russia. 
I mean, they're not even near each other, so I'm not sure how that even works. 
But, uh, yeah, it's getting nasty. 
I don't want, I don't want nukes flying. 
That's my thing. 
You, you don't want nukes flying. 
Okay. 
Yeah. 
Chalk one up for the anti-nuclear war, um, uh, camp. 
I mean, um, I don't know why Fox News decided to be Putin's best friend in the last few years, but good grief, man. 
Tucker Carlson left side. 
It's just... 
Well, I, I don't watch Tucker Carlson, but I do know that, uh, we had a president for four years who was very cozy with Putin, and now you have a president who's standing up to Putin, who is not part of the Fox party. 
So, uh, do the math. 
That's, that's why they're allying themselves literally with a foreign nation over their own. 
Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just totally nuts, and I just, I don't understand how you can call yourself patriots and the next thing, hey, you know what? 
They are patriots, just not patriots to us, to democracy, to, you know. 
There's real patriotism, and there's like this phony patriotism you do for Facebook. 
Like, um, one year, during the Super Bowl, some dude decided to send to a local TV station his kids standing up for the Pledge of Allegiance while they're watching the Super Bowl at home. 
Uh-huh. 
Stuff like that. 
And he got all kinds of shares and likes on it, and I was like, man, that's just made up, man. 
You know what? 
Nobody does that. 
Nobody cares to do that. 
And it's just, he's just doing it to get, get the likes and shares out, and I got blasted on it before, but you know what? 
I'm calling it like it is. 
It's like standing, you cannot coerce somebody to be patriotic. 
That's the thing. 
It's in the Constitution. 
No coercion. 
Uh-huh. 
It's freedom of speech. 
You don't have to, you don't have to stand up for a pledge. 
You don't have to sit, you don't have to do anything. 
It's just, you know, I don't, the founding fathers didn't come up with a pledge, and they didn't come up with a national anthem either. 
That's true. 
As a matter of fact, if I remember right, if I remember my history from high school, they didn't like that kind of stuff, because it's beholden to too many, too many kings and queens, you know? 
They could come up with a much better tune, I think. 
Alexander Hamilton alone, from what I hear, was a very good songwriter. 
Hey, you know, I'm hoping, I'm hoping against what they'll rename the football team in Washington to do. 
What is with that? 
Washington Hamilton. 
No, seriously. 
Why are they taking so long to rename that team? 
Washington football team. 
It's like they're making a statement, like, look, you forced us to call ourselves nothing. 
You know, it's just, it's so silly at this point. 
They should just name it something and be done with it. 
Well, the Cleveland Indians, they just, they did it overnight, right? 
Yeah, the Guardians, so that they could keep the last few letters. 
Yeah, it's the same number of syllables, same pronunciation. 
So, you know, it was fairly easy. 
Yeah, I mean, and it's still like Native Americans, why not, because the Guardians on the, on the bridge are like Natives or something like that, right? 
So, I just, I just, I think it's just a ploy. 
Look, here's my, here's my suggestion, and this is literally thinking about it for 10 seconds. 
Washington, call your team the Red Hawks, all right? 
That way you keep the red, sounds sort of similar, it's got a bird in it, you know, and we can all go home and, and, and live our lives. 
Washington Red Hawks, already, you know, I know who they are, so do that, and, and let's, let's stop at this football team nonsense. 
Well, I think Hamilton's would be the greatest, because it fits, because Hamilton and, uh, Washington were buds at one time, right? 
True. 
And, um, he kind of, especially if you played Hamilton, uh, the, uh, um, opening, opening song to Hamilton, it's like a fight song that's coming out. 
Uh-huh. 
I mean, it'd be great. 
It's just, it fits. 
Do you know, there's a city named Hamilton in Canada, and they have a football team, do you know what that football team is called? 
Uh, Red Fighters, didn't it? 
No, that's Saskatchewan, but very, points for knowing that, no, they're the Hamilton Tiger Cats. 
Yeah. 
Oh. 
Or at least they were, last time I checked, they might have gone out of business, who knows? 
But yeah, that's, uh, that's a little fact for you here. 
Well, something else, too, I think the DOJ should just go ahead and pull the trigger on this whole, we need a criminal investigation thing going on, because when, uh, there are like, uh, you know, unsigned executive orders saying, we're going to take the military and take all the voting, voting machines, and we got all these faked electorates, and it seems like every time I, uh, uh, I turn on YouTube, there's a new video about more electorates, more fraudulent electorates, who went, who went through the trouble of forcing the, fortunate papers, but didn't, didn't bother to make it to the way the states do it, so it's all like Xerox-style. 
There's no, there's no good way to play that, it just isn't, and I can hardly wait to see what the investigation finds. 
Well, they, um, they, um, they, uh, found out that Giuliani was, uh, ahead of all that. 
Of course he was. 
So, it figures, I mean, he ended up around a porn shop thinking it's Four Seasons Hotel one. 
I can hardly wait for Giuliani the musical on Broadway, that is going to be something. 
We need it. 
Yeah. 
We need it. 
Oh, uh, you mentioned Hamilton before, I found out something very interesting. 
You remember when Pelosi did that little, um, that, uh, had, uh, what, whatchamacallit, like, do that song? 
The, um, the guy who wrote Hamilton, uh, write those lyrics for, like, the January 6th stuff? 
Lin-Manuel Miranda. 
Yeah. 
Check this out, now, I found this out, I found this out. 
Um, Pelosi has stock in Disney. 
I'm sure she has stock in everything. 
She's not poor. 
Yeah, but Disney owns the right to Hamilton, so. 
It's not that big of a leap to think that, hmm. 
I didn't know that. 
Disney owns the right to Hamilton. 
Yeah. 
Wow, that's kind of depressing. 
Yeah, they, they own the right to Hamilton. 
You can go on Disney Plus right now and watch it. 
They, they, um, took out the, uh, whole two, three F-words in it, but. 
Oh, really? 
You know, uh, the, the, uh, the Beatles documentary, uh, Peter Jackson was able to get them to, uh, keep the swear words in, because Disney usually doesn't allow swear words. 
Oh, wow. 
Yeah, what kind of, what kind of world is this where, uh, a premium service will, will censor out, uh, certain words. 
It's just, uh, it's silly, but fortunately it's in that. 
Yeah, and speaking of Disney, speaking of Disney, Abigail Disney, who's like one of the kids, the grandkids. 
Abigail Disney, wow. 
Yeah. 
I, I didn't think that was a real person. 
That's a real person. 
She did a documentary on Disney, um, Disneyland and the, uh, employees there, and how badly they've been treated and all this stuff. 
Uh-huh. 
So she, like, uh, she, like, has a, she put a scene on, uh, uh, MSNBC and it's like, um, they're sitting around in some room and she's like, how many people had to sleep in their car since they started working here? 
Uh, here. 
And they start raising their hand and stuff like that. 
Uh-huh. 
And, um, she's kind of got a point, you know, we're, Disney's making a lot of money off Marvel and everything and it's not trickling down to their employees at all and, I mean, you got people who are paying $6,000 a night for a cruise, a Star Wars cruise, where you just, like, hang out in a room and it's not really even a cruise. 
They make pretend that, um, that you're in a spaceship in a hotel room for $6,000 a night. 
Oh, God. 
That's, that's criminal. 
And you make pretend that you're on a bridge, a bridge of said spaceship shooting down TIE fighters. 
So, you know, you got like these 40, 50-year-old guys like me hanging out, waiting in line to be able to go, go bing, bing, bing, or pew, pew, like they're little kids and stuff like that. 
But, because they are, they are little kids with a lot of money. 
Yeah. 
It's like the, uh, it's like the, uh, Galaxy's Edge. 
I mean, I wouldn't mind seeing the, uh, the, uh, life-size Millennium Falcon and all that, but they want $200 a ticket to go in there. 
Plus, they want an extra $200 to be able to build your own lightsaber. 
And it's like, there's no kids there. 
I've seen, I went on YouTube channels where they, um, where they go do these rods and everything. 
No kids at all with these things, because it's not made for kids. 
It's made for a bunch of rich nerds who have nothing better to do with their money. 
And kids are too smart for this kind of crap. 
They don't get girlfriends with it. 
Wow. 
All right. 
Listen, you've given us a lot to talk about, and we're going to try to get one more call in, but, uh, best of luck with everything. 
No, I'm not going to apologize for you. 
Definitely give us a lot to, uh, mull over. 
I guess that's about it. 
I mean, just watch what you say on YouTube. 
I guess we can get sued. 
Wow. 
Yes. 
We have to be careful. 
All right. 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
All right. 
Hang in there. 
Yeah. 
Have a good one. 
Take care. 
Again, our phone number, 802-321-4225. 
You guys have any, anything, you're just eating and drinking over there in Skype land. 
What's, uh. 
Well, you know, not to, not to plug our, uh, you know, unaffiliated nonprofit organizations, but we got a shipment of cookies from, um, someone we know who has a girl who's in a scouting program and, uh, sells cookies as part of it. 
So we're, we're pretty happy right now. 
You have Girl Scout cookies. 
We have Girl Scout cookies. 
I mean, it's pretty damn obvious. 
Okay. 
Well, some people get all the perks and, uh, Alex, uh, you're continuing to pour yourself some, uh, refreshments there, I see. 
Yes. 
In fact, I'm, I'm having a, uh, a Baltic style porter here, uh, that's brewed with cacao nibs and salt. 
So it is, it's quite tasty, I have to say. 
I mean, it, it, it, it's nothing compared to, you know, a Bulgarian delicacy or anything like that. 
But, um, to, to bring things back to the, to the, the issue of that libel suit, um, look, I, I think it's a good reminder that sometimes you have to be cautious of spreading lies about people. 
You know, whether you do it online or not, you know, you're, you're not immune. 
You know, it, it is absolutely wrong to libel somebody, to defame somebody online or in print or in person. 
And whether you're a celebrity or, or an individual, you know, that's legally actionable, right? 
You can bring a claim against somebody who spreads lies about you. 
And I, and I think that that it's an important right that we all have. 
Well, then it comes down to what is a lie. 
Like if I say Donald Trump is a fascist, is that a lie? 
I don't think it's a lie at all. 
I think it's provable, but, uh, you know, someone like that might, uh, might go in and, and, and contest it. 
Well, one, one way to get around these defamation libel laws is to begin every sentence where you're criticizing somebody like that with, I believe that, or I think that because you can never be sued for an opinion. 
If you present something as a fact, right? 
If you say, I saw Donald Trump at a meeting in the basement of my local, uh, uh, uh, my, my, my local wall bounds grocery store. 
Let me, let me correct you, Alex. 
You believe you saw him. 
You believe you saw him there could have been a clone. 
I believe I saw him. 
Sure. 
It gets silly really quickly. 
It does silly very quickly, but there's a difference between believing something or having an opinion about something. 
But even then, I think you could be crossing a line. 
And if you believe something that was supposedly a fact, um, but in any event, look, um, people have to be careful about what they say. 
It's not, uh, you don't have this absolute right to say anything you want online. 
And I think it's a good reminder. 
I think it's unfortunate though, that it can be very costly to enforce that right. 
And that's why most of these defamation and libel cases are brought by people with means, but people with lesser means can protect themselves by exercising those very same rights. 
Let me just say, Donald Trump is a fascist. 
Donald Trump Jr. 
Is a fascist. 
Eric Trump is a fascist. 
Um, uh, Ivanka Trump is a fascist. 
I don't know about Tiffany yet, but, uh, the, the jury's out on that. 
And I not prefacing that with any conditional statement. 
Um, go ahead. 
Yeah. 
I've gotten us in trouble. 
I think it's interesting is these suits and the argument keeps getting made that, excuse me, nobody can expect serious. 
So many, nobody can expect that you're taking these people seriously. 
Like, wasn't that Alex Jones's defense in one of his suits that nobody can expect that he's, that nobody should be taking Alex Jones seriously. 
And I think they're saying some of the same things about Fox news is that this is obviously entertainment. 
So therefore the libel statute doesn't apply. 
Right. 
Rogan's the same way. 
He's like, Oh, I'm an idiot. 
Don't listen to me as he like cashes checks for millions of subscribers on Spotify. 
You know, it's like, Oh no, I have no, I'm, I'm bummed about Neil Young. 
What do you mean you're bummed about? 
No, what happened? 
Neil Young told Spotify that if they were going to continue to platform Joe Rogan, they had to pull all his music. 
I heard that. 
That, I thought that was great. 
No, it is great. 
I am sad that Spotify refused to de-platform Joe Rogan and has pulled all of Neil Young's music. 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
Well, that's their decision then. 
And I, I don't use Spotify. 
That's one of the reasons we have a phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook over time. 
Hello. 
It's a Labrador calling again. 
Oh, wow. 
Labrador. 
How, how's the weather in Labrador? 
Oh, it is minus 29. 
It's a lot warmer. 
It's a lot colder here than, uh, uh, Mr. 
Newby in, uh, Yukon there. 
That's for sure. 
Yeah. 
You have his weather. 
Uh, we do, but I guess we get where he's getting the Pacific. 
The Pacific heat, I guess it's a lot warmer. 
I guess they get that little bit of blast of warmth, I guess, once in a while. 
Do you have a lot of, uh, Here in Labrador, we're getting that Atlantic cold. 
Do you have a lot of dog teams there, dog sledding? 
Uh, we do, but I don't think it's as much as it is in, uh, in the Yukon. 
It's, uh, we do my, actually my sister, uh, my, my Mrs. 
Uh, sister had a team for a while there, but, uh, unfortunately she had to get rid of it. 
But, uh, some people do have it, but it's not as, uh, prevalent as, uh, the Yukon, I don't think. 
Wow. 
That's, that's me. 
We still want to, uh, uh, stop by sometime on our, our, our travels through Labrador, uh, when, when all the craziness is over and, uh, hopefully when it's, uh, when it's cold too, because I understand that's when it's at its best. 
Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's nice country. 
It's, it's beautiful. 
Did you have something, uh, you wanted to bring up? 
I just wanted to say hi, really, uh, I didn't want to keep you guys too long. 
It was just nice to hear, uh, from the Yukon there. 
I figured I'd jump in and, uh, give a call. 
Yeah, from both sides of Canada. 
That's, it's, it's pretty awesome. 
And, and sides that people don't, uh, check out nearly enough. 
Uh, can you tell us something about Labrador that might, uh, uh, pique the average person's interest? 
Because we're already interested. 
Oh, man, it's, uh, it's just wide open space. 
They, they call it the big land. 
That's what they call Labrador. 
It's called the big land. 
It's, uh, it's just wide open space. 
It's beautiful country. 
If you're an outdoors person, you like fishing, nature, it's got it all, really. 
Uh, you're in the middle of nowhere, really. 
What are the people like? 
Oh, they're wonderful. 
Uh, friendly people. 
I don't think you can find any more friendlier than, than the people from Newfoundland, Labrador. 
That's for sure. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah, it's, um, it's interesting, too, because, uh, Newfoundland, the, the province, I believe, is called, uh, Newfoundland and Labrador. 
Uh, so it's, it's two different parts. 
Newfoundland being the, um, the island, I guess. 
And, and, uh, uh, Labrador being the mainland. 
Yes, that's right, yeah. 
Yeah, we're all the same province, basically, but, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's a beautiful province. 
The people are really friendly. 
There's a lot of culture here, like, uh, like, I think I said on a previous program, I'm, I'm Inuit. 
Uh, there's a lot of, uh, native indigenous population here in the, in Labrador. 
Uh, in Newfoundland, now you've got the Newfoundlanders, which, which is basically, I guess, uh, mostly European descent. 
But, uh, so maybe, yeah, it's a, maybe you can help, I mean, I, maybe you can help clear up some confusion that I've had. 
Uh, uh, uh, I, I think we, we told you we took the train, uh, from, uh, Settile to Shefferville, uh, passing through, uh, Labrador. 
Yep. 
Um, and we, we met a lot of kids on that train, uh, who, I'm not sure if they were Inuit or, uh, is, is Inuk and Inuit, is that, is that similar? 
Are they totally different? 
That would be, that would be the, the same. 
Inuk and Inuit would be considered the same. 
You have, you have, you do have the Inu population here, though. 
Oh, boy. 
That would be, that would be in Quebec and also in, in Labrador. 
Uh, they would be the, yeah, they would be the actual, uh, considered the First Nations Aboriginal people. 
So Inu, Inuk, and Inuit. 
Inu, Inu, Inu, Inuk is kind of, is, Inuk is kind of the same. 
It's kind of like, uh, what we call ourselves, I guess, like an Inuk person, but we're actually, uh, Inuit. 
Okay. 
Uh, but then there's the other, the other Aboriginal group, which was the Inu, which would be, uh, more of a First Nations, First Nations group. 
And they're, they're, like, in Quebec, and they're also in Labrador as well. 
Is the language similar? 
No. 
Oh, boy. 
No, not at all. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
You see, you see my confusion. 
And as far as I know, like, there's different dialects of Inuit that kind of come across the, the, the North, actually. 
Uh, so it's not, there might be a bit of similarities, but I'm not sure. 
Unfortunately, I don't speak the language. 
It's kind of been lost, uh, unfortunately with myself. 
But, uh, along the coast of Labrador, it's still quite strong. 
So, we brought this up before. 
They spoke Dene, French, and English. 
Dene? 
Dene. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
What language is that? 
It's Dene. 
I'm really not sure. 
I mean, is that, is that related, is that related to, uh, uh, to, to Inu, or? 
I, I, I, I couldn't tell you. 
I really have not, I really don't know. 
Uh, uh, like, uh, like I said, the, the, the, the, the. 
The dialects are so different amongst the different populations, is what I've heard, so I really don't know. 
Right. 
Now, my understanding is that the Inuit people are generally treated better by the Canadian government than the Inuit and others that are part of First Nations. 
Is that accurate? 
I don't know about that. 
I mean, as far as being treated better, I pay taxes. 
I guess, apparently, some groups don't. 
I really don't know if that's being treated better or not. 
Basically, I can say with our group of people, we've kind of had an agreement with the government, I guess, and we kind of govern ourselves in that kind of way. 
We've kind of got our own little thing on the go. 
There seems to be more independence in the Inuit communities than in other areas of Canada. 
I mean, I know nothing about this. 
Yeah, I can see why you say that. 
Yeah, I can see that. 
I can see why you say that. 
Yeah, I guess maybe it has something to do with geographics. 
I really don't know. 
Like, I mean, the indigenous groups are spread so far across. 
Right. 
I mean, there's so many different groups of us, too, right? 
Well, there's such remote neighborhoods, you know, like up in Baffin Island, that whole region, Arctic Bay. 
It's just so far removed from mainstream Canada. 
Yeah, it is, for sure. 
Like, in Iqalui right now, they're having a major water problem. 
Yes. 
So, I mean, like... 
We have Canadian TV, so we watch news. 
APTN. 
Yeah, APTN, and we watch Northbeat on CBC. 
Yeah, we've been keeping up with some of that. 
I don't know if you have any updates or can explain it for people who don't know about what's going on there. 
Well, in Iqalui, as far as I know, they've had an oil, like there's gasoline or oil or something going in the water, and they're having issues up there. 
I'm not totally sure what's going behind there, either, but it's just an issue that really needs to be cleaned up. 
So, I mean... 
Some kind of contamination. 
It's really unfortunate, but it's, you know, and it's a small group of people, and they really rely, they need water. 
I mean, we all need water. 
Right, absolutely. 
And it's definitely an issue. 
I don't know how it's going. 
Like, as far as I know, like, last... 
I've seen something recently that it's still an issue. 
So, I mean, for a country like Canada to have, I mean, the money that we've got, I mean, there's still a long way to go, for sure. 
Absolutely. 
In a lot of certain areas. 
I mean, with all people, really, not just indigenous people, but, I mean, I think everybody should have clean drinking water. 
Yeah, especially, you know, a place like Iqaluit, where, you know, the people come from the outside and pollute everything, and then you have to live with that, you know? 
It's insane. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, that's right. 
Wow. 
Yeah, it's unfortunate, really. 
Can I ask, being in Labrador, are you off the grid as well as Greg in the Yukon? 
Uh, no, we've got power. 
Well, we've, well, being in Labrador, there's the Muskrat Falls and Churchill Falls hydroelectric dams that were constructed. 
So, electricity is not really an issue here, as far as that goes, because we're producers of it, and we're trying to, yeah. 
Yeah, but, that being said, if you're in a small, like, if you're in a major town like I'm in, like, Happy Valley, uh, yeah, we're not off the grid. 
But now, I mean, I also have a cabin that's about maybe 40, 50 minutes away. 
That's, that's off the grid. 
So, uh, yeah, I'd like to get that cabin set up eventually for it with solar power and whatnot. 
Uh-huh. 
And I'm actually thinking about constructing a, uh, solar pop, uh, pop, solar powered, uh, heating system that's created by pop cans. 
I think you've probably seen that on, you've probably seen that solar, uh, pop can solar, uh. 
No, I don't think, I don't think we've seen that. 
Constructed, so I'm going to probably construct one of those myself. 
Wow. 
In the near future, for my cabin. 
That's awesome. 
That sounds great. 
Kind of a hacking kind of a thing to do with what you got. 
Uh-huh. 
It's just pop cans, really, painted black. 
So, your cabin is basically so you can, you can get away from the big city of Happy Valley, right, and, and just see nature a bit. 
Well, it's more of a, I wouldn't really call it a city. 
It's more of a, it's a town, but, I mean, it's got power. 
Right. 
We have a grid of power here. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah, power's not an issue. 
Internet's not an issue. 
But, uh, uh, listening to Greg earlier about the Starlink, and that's a great thing. 
Actually, I've seen the Starlink satellites just fly right over here, uh, within the last couple weeks, actually. 
So, that's something that's going to probably bring a lot of internet to places where it's a bit more remote, where people have cabins in the middle of nowhere, which is a good thing. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, it's true. 
I just, I, you know, I'm a little upset that they're interfering with astronomer, uh, work. 
Supposedly, they're blocking views, all these satellites that they've lost. 
Yeah. 
So, they have to, they have to deal with that. 
That's the first thing I thought of, too. 
I mean, I'm like, oh, and then you've got all these beautiful northern lights up here in the north. 
Oh, the northern lights. 
Yeah, you must see the northern lights every day. 
Not every day, but we do see them. 
But, I mean, that's, that's kind of going to be the sad thing of the future with, I guess, with progress brings a lot of, uh, downsides. 
And that's going to be unfortunate. 
You're going to be looking at this beautiful aurora borealis, and, and then there's all these satellites going to be zipping through it. 
Well, we don't have to let that happen. 
We don't have to let it happen quite that way. 
We can, we can improve and make it, uh, uh, not as painful. 
Uh, yeah, I mean, yeah, I've always had that, I've always kind of been, uh, worried about technology myself, too. 
It's always got a little negative thing that comes along with it, don't it? 
It's not really, uh, it helps in a lot of ways, and, uh, sometimes we don't really think about what we need to do, but we still produce all these technologies that kind of, we don't really see it out far down in the future sometimes. 
I think kind of money gets in the way, jobs, oh, we need these jobs, we need this, we need that, and sometimes that stuff kind of gets in the way, we miss out on some of that beauty that we're going to ruin because of it. 
There's always, there's always an alternative. 
It's always a different way to, uh, uh, to accomplish things. 
Uh, guys in SkyPeland, did you have any questions for our Labrador friend? 
No, but it's just, it's really good to hear from you. 
Thank you so much for calling. 
Oh, for sure. 
Yeah, and you guys are sounding good through, uh, uh, through the YouTube up here, right? 
See, see, I told you, I told you the YouTube wasn't, uh, the problem. 
Thanks for the feedback. 
Yeah. 
Oh, I can hear you good when the volume's turned up. 
I just figured I'd let you know that, too. 
Okay, yeah, we've been, uh, reconfigured, so we're going to try to work out, uh, a little bit of conditioning on the, on the power and the audio, make it, clean it up a little bit. 
So thanks for that, and keep listening. 
Yes. 
Like, I hear you and I hear Emmanuel really fine, but, uh, the other guests are the other, uh, like, uh, Gila and those guys, I don't hear them as well through the phone. 
Yeah, they don't, they don't, they don't speak loud, they don't, they need to, they need to raise their voices a little bit. 
We've always said this. 
Yeah. 
We need to project. 
Yeah, they're really hard to hear when, when, when they're talking, like, I could barely hear Rob just then, actually, when he was, when he was, when he was saying that. 
Uh-huh. 
Hmm. 
What about now? 
You guys sound great. 
Well, thank you. 
Thanks. 
Always good to hear that. 
Uh, so we're going to go, uh, but thanks so much for calling, and, uh, best to everybody in Labrador. 
We hope to see you there someday. 
Uh, we'll probably take a drive or something and try to get to, uh, can we get to St. 
John's by going through Happy Valley? 
Oh, well, that would be on the island. 
Right. 
Well, we know that. 
St. 
John's would be in Newfoundland. 
Well, that's the idea, is to go through Labrador and, and cut over to Newfoundland and come back through Nova Scotia. 
Yep. 
All you've got to do is take a ferry from, uh, St. 
Barb, uh, from, uh, the south coast of Labrador over to St. 
Barb, Newfoundland, the tip of Newfoundland there, and, uh, northern peninsula of Newfoundland, I meant to say. 
And then you can just drive straight on down to St. 
John's. 
And then from there, you would have to probably, to get back to, uh, to home, you, or to get back to the mainland, I think you'd have to take a ferry from Argentia or something, uh, Newfoundland, and then you go from there. 
Port-au-Basque, I believe, uh, to, uh, Sydney. 
Or Port-au-Basque as well. 
Yeah, that's right, too. 
There's two, I think there's two you can take, depending on what side of the island you are, yeah. 
And we'd have to visit St. 
Pierre-Miquelon, which is part of France, so that's right off the coast of Newfoundland. 
Yeah, yeah. 
Wow, so many things. 
And is that year-round that we can take that boat? 
I believe so. 
Well, that, now, uh, going from, going from Labrador to Newfoundland has issues sometimes because of the ice buildup three times a year. 
Okay. 
They have, you could get stranded trying to get across there. 
But now from Port-au-Basque to go to Halifax or wherever it goes, I can't remember exactly where it goes. 
Uh, I don't think there's many issues there, but the, that little strait, that Labrador strait, does get packed with ice at certain times of the year. 
Okay, we'll just, we'll just drive over then. 
We'll just drive over the ice. 
That's not a problem. 
Yeah, sure. 
All right. 
Hey, thanks so much for calling and, um, and, and, and keep doing what you're doing up there. 
Yeah. 
Thanks a lot. 
Take care, guys. 
Take care. 
All right. 
You know, we've gotten some good calls tonight. 
I think, uh, I think we're ready to pack it in. 
You guys want to go another hour? 
What are you, Joe Biden? 
It's been a good night. 
I'll tell you what. 
I'll tell you what. 
This is what I'll do. 
He's looking at his watch. 
We'll go for 15. 
You know what? 
Let's make it 14 minutes. 
Let's make it none. 
I'm tired. 
I'm tired and cranky. 
We've been doing radio all night. 
So, um, yeah, we'll be back in two weeks, folks. 
Any, any last words from our, uh, our Skype people? 
Uh, stay tuned to hope.net and, uh, check out those, uh, calls for participation and everything else. 
If you want to speak, if you have ideas for a village, uh, a workshop, um, people you think we should, uh, we should get for things like keynotes, uh, whatever your suggestions are, because we're all figuring this out, uh, largely from scratch with our new venue. 
And, uh, we, we don't have all the answers and we would love to hear your suggestions. 
Go to hope.net. 
I apologize to the person calling in. 
Maybe you didn't get the message that we're done. 
We're finished, but thank you. 
Thank you for listening and for dialing. 
We should take it, but leave it to 30 seconds. 
You hear this? 
Is it ringing? 
30 seconds? 
Okay. 
Caller, you have 30 seconds. 
Thanks to Alex. 
Go ahead, quickly. 
Yes, hi. 
Um, about the H.O.P. 
conference, will it be entirely in person or will there be some panels that, uh, people can attend virtually? 
Wait, you're not Rebel. 
You sound like Rebel. 
Oh, my God. 
I'm not Rebel, no. 
Wow. 
I just want to know, will any of the conference be available online or virtual? 
Right now, right now we're planning the in-person part. 
Uh, there's always, uh, the conference is always available in some form online. 
We're not at that stage yet. 
Right now, what we have to do is plan the in-person. 
It's, it's in July, so we have plenty of time for that. 
And we will certainly talk about that. 
Um, okay, so there will be a hybrid aspect to the, uh, conference, uh, part online and part in-person. 
It's like, no doubt there'll be, there'll be something, yeah, it's primarily in-person. 
I think that's probably the best way to phrase it. 
Okay, well, I'll keep my fingers crossed I can get a ticket tomorrow. 
So, uh, okay, well, uh, yes, all right, no, no, no tickets are available yet, but, uh, they will be in a couple of weeks. 
Um, yes, so, uh, I want to say, uh, anything else before we sign off? 
I have a closing thought. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
Which is the fact that we're preempted next week means that between now and the next time we're back on air is the first Friday of the month. 
Oh. 
So, for next week, don't forget to check out the information about your local 2600 meeting and be safe and be careful. 
Yes, the February meetings, I think, are, we're in better shape than we were in January when we urged a lot of meetings not to meet in person. 
Uh, but, uh, Omicron is, is beginning to fade as predicted. 
And, um, that's, uh, that's, that's, that's a good thing. 
So, I think a lot of meetings are taking place next, next Friday. 
I just wanted to build, uh, or comment on the virtual and, uh, hybrid nature of the event. 
We will do our best to incorporate all aspects of, uh, the virtual stuff, but it's primarily about having talks, getting the information out there, sharing in person as much as possible. 
And, um, you know, we'll do our best. 
We're going to build on what we've done and see what form it will take. 
Um, trying to do a little bit of both, no doubt people, uh, who cannot be in country will, uh, present or otherwise, uh, watch and, uh, maybe ask questions through our, um, various communications platforms. 
Really what we're about is tying all of those things together. 
And it just seems like, you know, it gets changes and it gets put, gets pushed further and further every month or week. 
So, who knows what a virtual, um, space will even be by then we will be paying attention. 
We'll, we'll incorporate it in some form. 
And, um, also if you're not a hacker, be mindful of your computer, you know? 
Yeah. 
Be careful cause it might get hacked. 
And if you are a hacker, uh, make sure that you're out there hacking some things. 
Uh, there's a lot of responsibility and, uh, you know, people are counting on you. 
You're talking about in general, right? 
Yeah. 
In general, people should just be, be wary and not let things install in their computers. 
Yeah. 
Watch the links they go to and all that kind of thing. 
It's a wild world these days. 
But, you know, on the subject of the conference, there's no substitute for being there in person. 
That is a fact. 
That's always been the case. 
Uh, so while we will try to do as much online as we can, there's no way it's going to capture the magic. 
It's, it's not going to capture all the different, uh, workshops and hallways and, and just, uh, uh, get togethers and spontaneous events. 
Um, and, and, you know, we always are, we're very good at documenting what, uh, what hope is. 
And that's why pretty much every talk is available online and, and on flash drives and everything like that. 
Uh, so we always have that, but we're organizing right now. 
What we, what we hope that you join us in is, is the in-person gathering, the first one in four years, it's going to be awesome. 
And with so many new aspects of the space, the venue, uh, uh, neighborhood in general, uh, and, uh, uh, being back in a physical form after so long, those are the things we want to really, uh, emphasize and, and, uh, get your help on and do very well. 
Capture the recording, stream it, get that info out there. 
We want people to, to have that experience, to be up on the latest information and the things that, uh, hackers are doing. 
So, um, and, and that's why we're appealing now and in the coming weeks to get ready, uh, look out for communications and updates from hope and keep checking our hope.net website. 
That's right. 
Hit reload on that. 
Just keep hitting reload and, uh, you'll see things change. 
All right, folks. 
Uh, Oh, Alex, you have something else? 
Well, just, you know, I, I agree with what you guys said, but just playing devil's advocate here, there's a, there's no small talk online. 
That's, that's one benefit. 
You can avoid that. 
Well, I like small talk. 
You like small talk. 
You like making small talk. 
Yeah, I do. 
All right. 
Small talk is the best talk. 
All right. 
All right. 
Small talk, big talk. 
You're, you're for all talks. 
And who says you avoid small talk online? 
I do. 
It's very easy to do that. 
It's easy to do that in person. 
Well, by, by the way, but you don't, you know, you can't avoid small talk, but unless you're a very rude person, you can't avoid small talk. 
Oh, well that's how then. 
Okay. 
At least we figured that out. 
Yeah. 
All right. 
You know what? 
I'm going to avoid any more talk now because, uh, we got to go. 
Thanks everybody. 
Bye.