If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. 
If you need help, stay on the line and a hacker will assist you shortly. 
And everybody else, stay tuned to 99.5 FM WBAI New York. 
It's time for Off The Hook. 
And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is Off The Hook. 
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening. 
Joined tonight by Kyle. 
Yeah, I'm over here. 
Can you hear me all right? 
I can hear you. 
You're about two feet away from me, but I can hear you through the microphone and everything. 
That's how it's supposed to work. 
And over in Skype-land. 
Is it Skype-land or Skype-ville? 
You know, I never get that straight. 
We have Rob T. Firefly. 
Good evening. 
And we have Gila. 
Good evening. 
And we don't have Alex because last time we didn't have you guys. 
And the contract stipulates that if you guys are out, then Alex has to be out. 
It's very complicated. 
We don't have to get into it. 
Lawyers and all that. 
But welcome back. 
Did anybody make it to the April 1st 2600 meeting last Friday? 
Yes, indeed. 
I was at the April 1st 2600 meeting in person at the Citigroup building at 53rd and Lexington. 
And you're not lying because you can do that on April 1st. 
I know that. 
But you can't do that when you're talking about April 1st afterwards. 
So let's be clear. 
Yes, indeed. 
No, I could have lied on the day. 
I'm not allowed to lie anymore because April 1st is over. 
But it was a good meeting. 
Nice crowd there. 
There was also a drag queen performing magic tricks and running a bingo game as well in the room. 
That was unrelated to the meeting, but it was something that was going on. 
It's an interesting place now, that Citigroup building. 
I have to check it out when I have time to actually go somewhere and look at something. 
But a sad side note to all of this, and this is a side note that we keep going back to, and it's the places that disappear, the places that close. 
Of course, the hotel is one thing. 
Hotel Pennsylvania is actively being torn down. 
I don't think they've actually started on the outside yet, but that's only a matter of weeks, I believe. 
But those of you who came to the New York City meetings years ago, I don't know if you remember this, Rob, but we used to afterwards go out to a place called Around the Clock. 
Do you remember that? 
Oh, yes. 
Most definitely. 
It was a place on Stuyvesant downtown in East Village. 
I believe it was 24 hours. 
Everything was 24 hours back then. 
Now even Veselka isn't 24 hours, but that's a whole other thing. 
Okay, so we would go to this place after every meeting. 
It was a cheap dining place, really good food, but they closed down many years ago. 
I was bummed out about that. 
They were affiliated also with a couple of other places called Dojo, where we went after other meetings. 
That closed down. 
But upstairs was this Japanese-slash-Korean place called Yokocho, owned by the same people. 
Also attached to that was the Sunrise Mart, which was a Japanese grocery store. 
And there was this really interesting bar that was attached to Yokocho. 
Anyway, it's all closed. 
It's all gone because landlords are demanding higher rents, and it's just everything seems to be disappearing, shutting down, just being rent kicked out of the neighborhood. 
Nobody can afford to rent a building anymore, to rent a storefront. 
And this is really terrible, especially at a time when we need to recover from the last couple of years, to have those familiar places there. 
And it's just so sad to see them all disappearing. 
And East Village is just turning into a bunch of vacant storefronts. 
There needs to be something that is done to prevent this from just becoming a community of franchises, where only the very, very rich can afford to operate. 
The magic of so many communities in New York City is the independence, the small town or the small family business that survives in a big city. 
That's the magic of it. 
And so many people were a part of that in the past. 
They came to our meetings, and they experienced that. 
They saw all the little shops and places to hang out afterwards. 
And to not have that in the future means that so many people won't be inspired. 
They won't get to enjoy that. 
Yeah, it's interesting. 
Over the years, I've been going to the local 2600 meetings since time immemorial. 
And one regular occurrence was at the end of the meeting, when they would kick us out of the food court or the public area in Citigroup, everyone would basically en masse go somewhere. 
And it was usually to one of those places in the village we used to go to all the time. 
And there would be a regular place that we would all go get dinner together. 
And we would take this walk through the city together. 
It was a nice experience, time to chat, hang out, whatever. 
Nowadays, it's actually interesting because the area has been made into a fully stocked, fully functional late-night hours having food court. 
So dinner kind of happens at the meeting now. 
There are all sorts of different food places there, and you can just go get something, bring it back to the table, keep hanging out. 
And I'm kind of on the fence over whether this is a good thing or whether something has been lost, I think. 
Well, I mean, that's different. 
That's something that's - I can see the coolness of that having places that are open, that are in the very place where the meetings are. 
As long as they're not McDonald's and Starbucks and just franchises, as long as they're unique and independent, that's a good thing, even if it's a different part of town. 
But what I'm bemoaning here is just losing one place after another, whether it's Around the Clock or Yokocho or St. 
Mark's Books or St. 
Mark's Comics or St. 
Mark's Records or Gem Spa or Yaffa. 
There's just so many places, and it's gotten to the point where the places that I'm thinking of, every single one of them is closed, and I can't think of any places that are open that I want to go to. 
And that's not what I want New York to become. 
Yeah. 
Alt Coffee. 
You remember Alt Coffee? 
Alt Coffee. 
Oh, my God. 
So many good places that we were just - it was part of the hacker culture. 
It was part of the East Village culture. 
Bookstores, record stores, coffee shops, restaurants, all sorts of really amazing places. 
You get rid of that, you get rid of the magic. 
And, you know, I know everyone's greedy, and they want to get as much money from their tenants as possible, but maybe this is a time to invest in a community and say, you know what, we want you to prosper first. 
We'll figure out how to get cash out of you later, but right now let's get you off the ground so that we have a community that people want to come to. 
But right now it's turning into the opposite, and it's really, really sad. 
So I just figured I'd mention that because I only just heard about that. 
That just happened at the end of March, actually, the beginning of April, that we lost Yokocho. 
For those who didn't ever go to Yokocho, it was the most incredible place. 
You'd go up this big staircase, and then you were in Japan, basically, just all these different rooms filled with people and just a festive atmosphere. 
And the Sunrise Mart, the only way to get there was to take this weird elevator with no markings whatsoever. 
You'd go up a floor, the door would open, and all of a sudden you're in this bustling supermarket. 
Magic like that. 
That's what New York has been known for, and that's what we need to continue to be known for. 
And I know the same thing is happening throughout the country, throughout the world. 
It's sadness. 
But the only way to get through this is by joining together and supporting each other, not by taking advantage of each other. 
You want a market for spaces that is varied instead of just on the incline and really nothing affordable below a certain threshold. 
That's dangerous. 
You lose people building businesses, building experience, and growing along that way. 
You create this barrier for people who want to enter into creating a business in an area, and then the places that are available, transitioning places that were formerly available into places that are at such a high bar, it really shuts out a lot of people that are still on their way, like building a business or just who have been there forever under a certain scheme. 
It gives them no time to reconfigure. 
All of a sudden they have new competition paying. 
It just simply has more resources and more cash. 
Well, think about this. 
You're walking down a street in New York, and you see a vacant store with a big realtor sign. 
I know that one of them ends in 2600. 
Please stop sending us pictures of that one. 
We've seen it a million times. 
There's a big realtor in New York whose last four digits of their phone number is 2600. 
Great. 
But you'll see that every few feet it seems. 
You'll ask yourself, why not just rent it cheaper to more people? 
You must be losing money by having all these empty storefronts. 
That's not how realtors, that's not how landlords think. 
Because if you start offering something at a lower price, then you're obligated to offer that lower price to others as well. 
And you can't have that. 
You can't have more businesses or people taking advantage of a lower price. 
Better that you have a lot of emptiness and a few people paying a lot. 
And what you wind up with when that happens is you have rich tenants, and that's it, and a lot of space. 
The fact that there is so much space tells you something is wrong with that way of thinking. 
So we need to, as a city, as citizens in New York and throughout the country, challenge this, demand that we do something differently, and that we have as many of these small businesses survive as possible. 
All right, getting off the soapbox now, getting right on to another soapbox. 
We still have this horrible and brutal war going on in Ukraine. 
Here's an interesting story that I think listeners might find a bit fascinating. 
The Federal Air Transport Agency, and I'll do my best to pronounce this, Rosaviatsiya is responsible for overseeing the civil aviation industry in Russia. 
Its website is favt.ru. 
They went offline a week ago Monday, and I believe they're still unreachable. 
The statement signed by the agency's head, Alexander Neredko, says due to the temporary lack of access to the Internet and a malfunction in the electronic document management system of the Federal Air Transport Agency, the Federal Air Transport Agency is switching to a paper version. 
Seems practical. 
Yeah, a paper version. 
Russian telegram channel Aviator Shina, that's Aviator as Aviator is spelled, S-H-I-N-A, said that Rosaviatsiya was hit by a severe cyber attack on Saturday, leading to the collapse of its entire network. 
Documents, mail, all kinds of files were allegedly erased. 
Approximately 65 terabytes of data has been lost. 
65 terabytes of data has been lost. 
Now, according to Aviator Shina's source, close to the matter, the agency lost a one and a half year worth of emails and has no backups to restore its system. 
No backups. 
The source also said that the prosecutor's office and the FSB, that's what the KGB turned into in Russia, they have been working with Rosaviatsiya since that Saturday. 
Now, Russian media outlet Kommersant quotes two independent sources close to the agency. 
They confirmed that outages were likely caused by a cyber attack, which was caused by a brutal war on an innocent country. 
They left that part out. 
The agency has presumably regained its access to the email service and expects to fully restore access to its data storage at some point in the future and hope that the whole thing just doesn't happen again. 
Meanwhile, Rosaviatsiya keeps posting updates on its social media channels, including Telegram and VK, and linking to its website as if nothing happened. 
That's how they do things over there. 
According to the Is It Down Right Now monitor, FAVT.ru is not down for everyone. 
Experts have sounded mixed security warnings in the wake of the pullout from Russia by Microsoft and other tech giants, with some playing down the impact on ordinary citizens and others predicting a return to pen and paper. 
According to Alex Artemonov, the Info Security Officer at Infinitely Virtual, they will end up going back to pen and paper as computers stop operating due to lack of updates, expired licenses, and failures. 
And don't forget, Alex, attacks as well. 
So, a bunch of terabytes lost. 
Rob? 
Well, I can confirm that FAVT.ru is way down right now. 
The site doesn't load, it doesn't return a ping, nothing. 
And according to downforeveryoneorjustme.com right now, it's down for everyone. 
Wow. 
Well, you know, I can't say I'm surprised. 
Can't say I'm surprised. 
What else is going on? 
Russia's telecommunications regulator has doubled down on its warnings to Russian-language Wikipedia over an article it says contains inaccurate information about the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine. 
Russ Komnadzor said on Thursday it's fining the nonprofit organization up to 4 million rubles, which is about $49,000. 
for refusing to delete information about the Ukraine war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24th. 
I don't know if that sentence is what they object to. 
In a press release, the agency said it was issuing the fine due to Wikipedia's failure to delete illegal information. 
The Russian-language Wikipedia contains, quote-unquote, false information on the subject of a special military operation of the armed forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine aimed at misinforming Russian users. 
It wasn't clear if that's what the invasion was for or if that's what the statement was for, but certainly misinforming Russian users is something the Russian government specializes in. 
The article in question was titled, The Russian Invasion of Ukraine 2022. 
It mentions injuries and fatalities among Ukrainian civilians, citing UN data, as well as deaths among Russian servicemen. 
Russian authorities have prohibited media from calling Putin's invasion a war or an invasion. 
State-run media outlets adopt the term special military operation. 
Putin on February 24th said he wants to disarm Ukraine and eliminate the threat it poses to Russia's national security. 
He used the terms demilitarization and denazification. 
In some ways, the guy's right. 
I mean, Russia has never been in such bad shape as when it attacked Ukraine. 
So I guess in that sense, Ukraine is a big threat to Russia. 
You're saying they're getting out in front, like way out in front. 
Well, you know, basically, if we invade an innocent country and slaughter its people and look like real jerks in front of the entire world, that's going to hurt us. 
So yeah, Ukraine, that's your fault. 
That is the logic. 
That is the logic that I'm seeing right here. 
As a justification for the invasion, Putin stated the need to protect the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, and Russia itself, and also used the unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine is a neo-Nazi state, which is insane and crazy. 
There are probably more neo-Nazis in Manhattan than are in Ukraine. 
I don't know. 
There's nasty people everywhere, but that certainly is not something that justifies what Russia has done. 
It gets worse and worse every week, and this week we're seeing evidence of war crimes that Russia continues to insist are fake. 
It's just the parallels between what we've been going through in this country, where basically, whether it's talking about elections or talking about vaccines or virtually anything else, it doesn't matter how many facts you have on your side. 
It doesn't matter what kind of science you can point to, what kind of independent investigation you can point to, because the answer is always, no, it's fake. 
It's all a big conspiracy. 
And you're seeing the exact same thing in Russia now, where basically people are calling their relatives, people in Ukraine are calling their relatives who live in Russia, telling them what has happened to them, and they're not being believed because of what the state media is telling the people in Russia, that this is all fake, that basically, and try to follow me here, basically Ukrainians are dressing up as Russians, bombing their own cities, and then capturing and torturing their own people. 
All of this while not getting in the way of the Russian troops who are there liberating the country, and making sure that nobody shows any data or any video or any evidence whatsoever of what is really happening. 
And that is their version of the truth. 
It's so bizarre and crazy, but are we any less bizarre and crazy over here for some of the things that have been passed off in the media, in Congress, in our streets? 
We're in a very dangerous place, and a lot of it is propelled by social media, where people basically hear like-minded views over and over and over again, until they believe that's the only reality, and anything that goes against that has to be fake, has to be fiction. 
Yeah, it requires thinking. 
It requires stepping outside of that hypnotic feedback loop of your beliefs being reaffirmed and really driving your whole rationale. 
Yeah, I encourage people to go to Wikipedia and look up the article, 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, because right now, as of this broadcast, it's looking very good. 
There are obviously people in the know taking care of this page. 
Everything is well-sourced and cited. 
So I guess Putin should really be clicking the footnotes and suing those people. 
But it's amazing. 
Wikipedia, in general, is an example of how it's amazing when a bunch of people from all over the place can get together and make a thing happen that's useful to everybody, and this article is a great example of that. 
Now, are you seeing the same article they're seeing in Russia? 
Probably not. 
I don't know, because I cannot read Russian. 
There's a link to the Russian version here. 
I assume the one they're talking about is the one that is in Russian, over there, that people are able to see. 
And I don't know if we look that up here in the United States, will we be seeing the same text? 
Somebody should find it and translate it. 
Yeah, I'd like to know. 
Yeah, obviously it's not the exact same text. 
It's being built up by the Russian-speaking Wikipedia community as the English one is built up by the English-speaking Wikipedia community. 
So, yeah, it would be interesting to dive into. 
Now I'm looking at the Russian article. 
Of course, I can't read it, but it would be interesting to see what this is like. 
You can put it into Google Translate and get at least 20% of it right. 
I can. 
There's probably enough people that are interested that speak the language and are updating it just as much as I was indicating for the English. 
Now, Rob, how did you get to that article? 
Can you tell our listeners how you did that? 
Just by clicking around and looking at various things on the Wikipedia main page. 
I mean, current events are there. 
Yeah, but how did you get to the Russian version? 
The Russian version? 
On any Wikipedia article that there are international versions of, there is a column on the left side of the page that links to all the other language Wikipedias of that article. 
Okay, in different countries. 
It's not just a translation. 
It's actually going to where it's being… Right. 
Okay, interesting. 
They are the local equivalents to Wikipedia. 
I've got to say, pinpoints who this statement, this declaration, and lawsuit, I guess, is for. 
This is not for the consumption outside, I think, of Russia and countries that sympathize with Russia because who really would take this seriously? 
Do you think Wikipedia feels threatened that a nation that is being reported on in this way is condemning their accuracy? 
No, Wikipedia here is not going to feel threatened. 
No, not at all. 
But the poor person over there who's updating something, they very much are being threatened. 
And really bad things can happen to them. 
Well, I'm not sure how… That's a good point. 
I'm not sure how the accounts are managed. 
Someone who has moderated a bit more on Wikipedia would be able to tell us that, yeah, is it obfuscated in any way? 
Are there protections for people that are perhaps located there? 
I think it's hosted in this country for the most part. 
It's probably mirrored around the world in various content delivery systems. 
But the point is, I don't think that the headline is necessarily to put Wikipedia on notice because they're not going to feel like this is something they have to do better on or police their community over. 
This is strictly for them to say, look at how to point to this and have a domestic audience sympathize with how these big tech organizations are coming after their truth. 
And that's, again, a similarity with politics and the attitudes towards technology and so forth now. 
Do you have more info, Rob? 
Yeah, I've been looking at the Google translated version of the Russian Wikipedia article, which, Kyle, you're right, it is all hosted on the Wikipedia servers, which I believe are in the United States. 
But the Russian article for the 2022 invasion of the Ukraine has a link to another article, which is war crimes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 
And this is on the Russian Wikipedia. 
And it does seem to be well put together as well. 
There is info on here that I think the Russian government does not like being there. 
And, yeah, this is worth a look for any of you who are interested. 
Yeah, run the Russian Wikipedia article through Google Translate. 
And, of course, it's not perfect, but it is eye-opening to see what people who speak the language are saying about this and reading about this. 
What I'd like to know is has anyone in our circle used a VPN to actually become a presence inside Russia to see what they have access to and what they don't have access to and also to maybe figure out ways to influence that a bit to get more. 
See, the key, I think, to all of this is to get the news into Russia that is being censored and filtered and kept from the people. 
I think when the people find out, you know, there was a piece on VICE News tonight a few weeks ago about the invasion that was just so incredibly moving and just made you so angry to see. 
And, you know, this is real. 
You can't just conjure this up, and you certainly can't just dismiss it. 
And I think if people saw something like that, plus all the many other pieces that Al Jazeera English and BBC World News and CNN International are producing, if that just got to people, if they were able to see it by clicking something on the net, I don't know. 
The question is how much power do people have over there in the first place, but at least getting the truth out is something that I think is our responsibility. 
I know, you know, the truth is never absolute. 
I know there's always going to be inaccuracies, but the truth that is being peddled right now by Putin, that's the biggest lie of all, and that's the one that needs to be shattered by any means necessary. 
And there's a lot of Russian people that are outside of the country right now that are in various countries around the world that they can travel to or have stayed in by choice. 
They don't want to go back. 
I mean, obviously, you know, money and logistics are difficult, travel included. 
So that message in the story could also serve people that are outside of the territory, perhaps secondarily. 
Yeah. 
Russian people, they're not the enemy. 
That's important to realize. 
And, you know, if you simply are able to hear what they're saying, to speak to them, you'll recognize yourself in them. 
I'm also thinking about some of these other countries, India and China and all around the world, countries that have influence that can perhaps grow in their position on this and be more vocal. 
They have Russia's ear in many ways. 
They're very beneficial. 
Yes. 
Here's another story that is a result of what's going on over there. 
Earlier this week, or actually this was last week since we weren't on the air last week, the owner of the Club 8-Bit Museum in Mariupol, Ukraine, I don't have to say any more than that, do I? 
We've all heard of what's happened to Mariupol. 
They reported the news on their Facebook page. 
That's it. 
The Mariupol Computer Museum is no longer there. 
Dmitry Sherepanov told PCMag, I only have information that the museum area was bombed. 
He had evacuated on March 15th. 
We fled from Mariupol taking only documents and some money. 
It was not possible to take anything else out. 
The city is surrounded by Russian troops. 
It was founded in 2003. 
The Club 8-Bit Museum contained a collection of over 120 retro computers, many of them ZX Spectrum systems, which were popular in Ukraine and Russia during the 1980s. 
Gizmodo documented the museum two years ago in a video, so look that up if you want to see, because you won't see it in real life anymore. 
Sherepanov had spent over 15 years collecting the hardware, which also included an Apple IIc computer, Compact Portable 3, an Atari 400, and many Soviet-era computers from the 1980s and 1990s. 
In total, more than 500 exhibits of the IT sphere from the 1950s to the early 2000s were located at the museum. 
That's according to Club 8-Bit's website. 
The bombing of the museum area occurred as Mariupol was facing an intense siege from Russian military forces, which had been shelling residential buildings across the city. 
Unless you read Russian media, they have not been doing that. 
In his Facebook post, Sherepanov added, there is neither my museum nor my house, and it hurts, but I will definitely survive it and find a new home. 
Let's hope so. 
I'm feeling choked up reading this, but when you think of what's happened to the people, the people who live there, targeted just as nonchalantly as this museum was. 
It makes this seem rather small in comparison, but it affects us in so many different ways, and it's just a damn shame. 
It shows the collective spirit. 
Many places like this exist in Europe, of course in the United States and Western Hemisphere. 
It's heartbreaking. 
People really have so many other areas of interest too, but they poured their lives into something like that. 
It's so simple. 
It seems like a small thing, but it's a huge loss for their life. 
It's very easy to draw this mental image of warfare, especially when it's far away from where you are, and you think of old war movies and the front lines and the trenches and its soldiers shooting at soldiers. 
It's kind of easy to forget sometimes that this is in people's homes. 
This is in people's day-to-day lives in their cities and their towns, and it's at home. 
It was in this person's home, and it's very sad. 
Okay. 
We have a letter from a listener. 
Good evening. 
Off the hook. 
Before your radio show on March 23rd, I noticed an article on EFF's website, Warning of the Consequences of Engaging in Certain Forms of Anti-War Hacktivism. 
Basically, it discusses the Node IPC package. 
We discussed that a couple of weeks ago. 
It's a peace-not-war plug-in, and how the bad behavior described as being engaged by some versions of the package based on the location indicated by the IP address could lead to terrible unwanted consequences. 
Other forms of action intended for Russian and associated targets are similarly described as leading to trouble for good people. 
Thanks for drawing that to our attention. 
You can find the article on EFF.org. 
Anti-war hacktivism is leading to digital xenophobia and a more hostile Internet. 
I'll read a couple of paragraphs of this. 
The horrific Russian military invasion of Ukraine has understandably led to a backlash against Russia. 
The temptation is to label anything Russian, from state media and students to cats, as bad. 
Who's labeled cats? 
Russian cats as bad. 
And to block it to signal outrage and ostracization. 
This type of thinking has infected the open source and Internet security communities as well. 
A terrible idea with potentially harmful consequences. 
Recently, the maintainer of a popular open source Node.js package, Node-IPC, released a new plug-in called peace-not-war. 
A Node.js package is publicly available JavaScript code used by developers to add functionality to applications. 
According to the maintainer, this plug-in would display a message of peace on users' desktops serving as a non-violent protest against Russia's aggression. 
Some versions of the Node-IPC package, a networking tool that has been downloaded millions of times, will automatically run this protestware. 
Then a post on GitHub claimed that some versions of the Node-IPC package were deleting and overwriting all files with a heart emoji if the package was installed on a computer with a Russian or Belarusian IP address. 
And if the accusations are true, this is a terrible idea which could result in all sorts of horrible and unintended outcomes. 
What if a Russian human rights or anti-war organization or a Russian hospital was using this particular software package? 
This action, although conceived of as a simple non-violent protest by the package creator, could result in the loss of important footage of protests or war crimes, loss of medical records, or even the deaths of innocent people. 
It's a really good read, a good article on EFF.org. 
And it's basically labeling these kinds of actions as half-baked hectivism. 
And I can see why. 
Your heart is in the right place, but the actions don't match what it is that you want to accomplish. 
By all means, express yourself, get the word out there, but when it comes to destruction, don't you know that you can count me out? 
Wow, how did I get there? 
No, seriously, when it comes to destruction, it's a different story because you don't know what you're destroying. 
And you could be destroying something that's important, something that is evidence of war crimes that happens to be in Russia or Belarus. 
So let's not make assumptions. 
By all means, don't tone it down. 
Get the word out. 
But there are things that need to remain up and in place if we're going to get past this. 
Again, the article is called Anti-War Hectivism is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet can be found on EFF.org. 
Speaking of EFF, this is April. 
And as is our tradition, in April, when there's a HOPE conference coming up later in the year, we give 10% of all HOPE ticket sales for the month of April to EFF as a donation. 
So we encourage people who have not yet decided to come to HOPE or who just want to buy a ticket and support the conference and EFF, go to hope.net. 
All the details are there. 
HOPE, of course, Hackers on Planet Earth, that's our biannual, the one that means every two years. 
We have that conference every two years. 
And it's an amazing gathering place for people from all over. 
I think we're going to have all kinds of interesting presentations, displays on what's going on in Russia, the whole Ukrainian situation, and just ways from a hacker perspective that we can address world situations like this, as well as talks about the coronavirus and just the hacker culture in general. 
There's still time to submit talk proposals or workshop proposals or seminars or all kinds of different things. 
And all the details are on hope.net. 
It's at St. 
John's University. 
First time we've been there. 
As I mentioned, they're tearing down the Hotel Pennsylvania. 
But so many things have changed since the last time we got together in 2018. 
So I really hope that we see a lot of people this summer because we're recovering from the last two years of hell. 
We're dealing with a world that's tearing itself apart. 
And we're trying to build something positive and different. 
And we want to hear from you. 
So hope.net, support EFF, come to the conference, and learn what the real hacker world is all about. 
Absolutely. 
And every couple of years, without fail, after we've locked the schedule for Hope, someone asks me, oh, I was thinking of getting my proposal in. 
Is it too late? 
So don't wait until that point. 
Get your proposal in. 
We want to hear your ideas. 
We want to hear from new voices, people who haven't presented at something like this before. 
We want to hear from people who have presented at something like this before. 
We generally just want to build the best conference we can through the work of our community, through all the diverse and interesting people who are doing all sorts of diverse and interesting things that have always been the Hope community. 
This is what it's made of. 
It's not made of us. 
It's made of you out there who throw in on this with us and get up on a stage and share what it is you have to share. 
Go to Hope.net. 
All the information is there to submit your talks, your workshops, your ideas. 
We want to hear them. 
I just wanted to add, instead of doing something half-baked, maybe share your enthusiasm or get involved with people who are working on something that is fully formed and thought through. 
You can share bad ideas and get feedback from people. 
That's what this conference is about. 
It's about getting insight, having a bad idea or two, but coming up with better ones as a result. 
That can lead to really positive and fruitful protest wear or hacktivism, stuff that isn't destructive in essence. 
Don't assume your idea is bad. 
You might not have much faith in it, but let someone else tell you. 
Don't tell someone their idea is bad. 
We don't like to shoot things down, but conversation and back and forth and here's how I think it could be improved and things like that. 
I didn't mean to use simple terms. 
Gila. 
We talk. 
We share. 
I think if you're thinking about it, someone else is going to want to hear about it. 
I think the diversity of thought, of experience, of the opportunity to share all of that I think is really exemplified in HOPE and at HOPE and the ways that we can share and come together as a community. 
There's always somebody who's going to want to hear what you have to say and to have the opportunity to bump into each other in person again. 
Seize that opportunity. 
Send in your proposal. 
Plan to be here. 
Plan to hang out and get to know other people and experience new ideas. 
And the beauty of it is there is no prequalification. 
You don't have to have a degree. 
You don't have to have a doctorate. 
I mean you can. 
It doesn't hurt. 
We have plenty of people that are giving talks that have all sorts of letters after their name, but you can also be in high school. 
You could be in junior high school. 
If you have something to say and you're passionate about it and you've played with technology in one form or another, we want to hear from you. 
Send us your ideas. 
And if you have a talk or a presentation that you want to give, this is the opportunity to do that. 
And anyone from anywhere in the world can do this. 
And since our new location is so close to the airports, LaGuardia and JFK, it's minutes away from that, it's so much more convenient. 
It really is so much more convenient to get to. 
Yeah, I know it's not midtown Manhattan, but I'll tell you midtown Manhattan gets pretty crowded, gets pretty expensive, and of course with the hotel being torn down, it's pretty inaccessible as well. 
So that's the reality of the situation. 
But I think what we did was, because we made this decision before they decided to tear down the hotel, that it would be better for us to go to a more open space that's a more positive environment where the people of St. 
John's actually are supporting what the conference is all about. 
The hotel, you know, it basically allowed us to do various things, but I wouldn't say they were supportive. 
You know, we were just another business to them. 
And that's kind of how it worked. 
That's how it works in any hotel. 
And it was kind of self-service after a while because we knew most of how we needed to do things and we could do it better anyway ourselves. 
One thing that we really do need help doing better is publicizing. 
We're terrible at publicizing our own things. 
Yeah, we're talking about it here, but we're awful at getting it out into the media, into the streets, and that's where we could use your help. 
So please help us spread the word. 
You may have noticed we've been talking about this now for 10 minutes and we haven't even said the date of when it's going to happen. 
So we leave out things like that. 
We forget to talk about the important aspects of it. 
And then we'll just go the whole hour and, hey, when is it? 
You never told us. 
I'm going to tell you. 
Right now, mark this down. 
Wouldn't it be funny if we still forgot to tell them? 
This summer, the end of July. 
Wait, it's this summer? 
Oh, my God. 
This summer, yeah. 
Okay. 
No. 
Yeah, no. 
Come on, come on. 
I'm with you. 
Yeah, wake up. 
The 22nd to the 24th. 
Of what? 
July. 
I said July. 
Oh, I didn't hear that part. 
Okay. 
Yes, July 22nd through 24th. 
That's a Friday through a Sunday. 
So, okay. 
Hope.net, all the info is there. 
Get your talk proposal in. 
Yes. 
And, by the way, we have overtime coming up at 8 o'clock on YouTube, channel 2600. 
You can join us there. 
You can call us there. 
We'll give you all the information at 8 o'clock on our YouTube channel. 
But some more stories. 
For the second time in 24 hours, an electronic roadside message board was hacked to display a profane message to motorists driving by. 
This was in Phoenix. 
The message condemns Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declared war on Ukraine, basically, I guess, six weeks ago or so. 
A mystery prankster with unauthorized access to construction traffic signs along Interstate 17 in Phoenix basically hacked the sign and sent this message that I can't read on the air. 
But it's the same message that Trump people are saying about Biden. 
So, you'll probably see those signs around. 
So, this is basically the same type of message. 
Within the first 24 hours, more than 100 missiles rained down on troops and civilians in Ukraine. 
Well, you know all that. 
I don't have to go over the early part of the war there. 
But I guess this is another form of hacktivism, very crude hacktivism. 
But highway hackers, highway hackers hacking signs. 
Well, and these are systems that we kind of don't give a second thought when we're passing them by. 
They're so useful for various purposes. 
And sometimes, you know, the right people, the right information, you can make them do different things. 
They can still inform people. 
It's just a sign. 
It's a damn sign. 
It's not really a hack. 
I can tell you this because, you know, back in 1997 when we had the subway hack, do you remember that? 
It was basically the autumn 1997 edition of 2600. 
After the Beyond Hope conference, on our cover, we have a hack sign in the subway system. 
It basically says the hacker quarterly, volume whatever, number whatever. 
It was done as the illustration for our front cover. 
It was done in advance of that front cover for us as a gift. 
And it was kind of like a message to get out to people that, hey, we're still around, you know. 
But it was reported in all of the newscast. 
Every single TV station in New York City reported this as the subway system being hacked. 
And all it was was somebody pointing like the equivalent of a TV remote at one of those signs that scrolls a message. 
There was no password. 
There was nothing that could prevent somebody from doing this. 
That was the hack. 
And it was only one sign that was affected. 
So this is not that different. 
It was one sign on a highway. 
So they changed it, you know, with some Putin advice. 
Okay, now Russian hackers are accused of targeting U.S. and Ukrainian organizations. 
And they have set their sights on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and multiple Eastern European countries. 
Google's Threat Analysis Group reported this last Wednesday, reinforcing U.S. officials' warnings about Russian-based cyber attacks on global targets. 
A Russian-based hacking group known as Cold Driver, or Callisto, your pick, has targeted one of NATO's Centers of Excellence military training organizations, as well as multiple unnamed Eastern European nations. 
Google said this in a tag blog. 
All these phrases I'm supposed to know that I don't think I do. 
A tag, well, that's the Threat Analysis Group, but they have their own blogs, I guess. 
And they say these are the first observed attempts by Cold Driver to target the NATO training center or the Eastern European countries. 
The hackers attempted to carry out phishing campaigns, which is a type of cyber attack that tries to steal user data, like usernames, passwords, or credit card information, using email addresses that appear to belong to trusted entities. 
Google said it is unsure whether the attacks were successful, as the hackers targeted non-Google email addresses using new Gmail accounts, but it has not spotted any successful phishing attacks on Gmail accounts during these campaigns. 
Cold Driver has also attempted phishing attacks against multiple unnamed U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, a Ukrainian defense contractor, and the military of an unnamed Balkan country. 
I don't think this could be any more vague than if you just kind of made it up on the fly. 
Yeah, there's people out there using Gmail accounts to try and get information and hack other accounts. 
Not surprised. 
Not surprised at all. 
It's so funny to me that the other information that you would need to verify or kind of cross-reference this and place it to give you more insight into it is stuff that might not be public or remains only certain organizations know about it, or there are private security companies that are aware of more details. 
So it remains this vagary, this gray area, and we don't really get a good explanation for it. 
Because, yeah, it could be, matter of fact, just another day at NATO's training center or specifically these Putin hackers. 
I think they should be Putin hackers, right? 
They're not Russian. 
Putin hackers. 
I like the sound of that. 
Hey, are you a Putin hacker? 
Everybody's so convinced, well, the priorities of this military campaign, they wouldn't be the same if he wasn't there. 
So I'm not entirely convinced of that. 
But like, okay, let's say that the Russian hackers aren't necessarily at fault here. 
These are state hackers, and it's not necessarily the government so much. 
It's Putin's regime, so it's Putin's hackers in this case. 
I meant it the other way. 
I meant somebody who's hacking Putin. 
Putin hackers. 
That's what I meant by it. 
But I guess it probably could work out. 
What was the hack on NATO? 
Okay, go on. 
Anyway, sorry. 
Don't want to get on their knees. 
That's it. 
We're suspecting that there's entities hacking other entities. 
Hey, you got to take it all, be skeptical of it all, and realize that there's these kinds of things going back and forth, and they can be all manner of wrong. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
But are we not saying there's not enough actual news that the news is maybe this sort of thing is maybe happening? 
We have hard evidence of a lot of other things that are going on. 
Maybe this is not the best place to focus our energies at the moment. 
Maybe. 
Maybe. 
Maybe. 
Maybe. 
Well, here's a listener letter. 
How about that? 
From Charlotte. 
Good evening. 
I heard your show recently when you talked about an email scam involving Bitcoin payoff to stop the scammer from sharing video with porn use to all your contacts, et cetera. 
All right. 
What? 
All right. 
Does that ring a bell? 
I've recalled this email. 
I know a lot about this type of thing. 
Can I read the email first? 
Yeah, go ahead. 
Read it. 
My partner received that email this afternoon. 
We are not worried about the porn part since it isn't a reality. 
We are concerned about them having her email password, which they showed. 
She changed her password, but we don't understand how they got it to begin with and how to prevent them getting it again. 
Also, should we report this to someone, and if so, who? 
We love your show and support WBAI. 
Please let us know what we should do. 
Thanks, Charlotte, for that nice letter. 
As far as what you should do, first of all, support WBAI. 
Give to WBAI.org or call 212-209-2950 and pledge your support to keep this radio station going. 
That is super important. 
But letting us know about this is important because then we can talk about it and let other people know. 
I'll let Kyle speak in a second, but basically what I believe is that, and I've seen these emails too, they didn't just hack your password. 
What they did was they hacked a service that was insecure where that password was used by that email account. 
I'll give you an example. 
Let's say that you have your main email account. 
Let's call it Gmail since so many people use Gmail. 
You have your Gmail account. 
You use a password there. 
Then you have your supermarket loyalty program, which nobody really cares if they hack into that. 
It's just a filler, but you use the same password there. 
Okay, Gmail wasn't hacked, but the supermarket was, and they got everybody's password. 
You're going to see that password, and you're going to say, oh, my God, how did they get my password? 
Because you use the same password for different things. 
Now, if you use a different password or a variation, you can tell where the insecurity was and which one was compromised. 
They did not get into your machine. 
They got into a weak link in the chain where that password was used, so it's an argument for not using the same password. 
It's an argument for mixing it up a bit because somewhere along the line, something will be compromised. 
Go ahead, Kyle. 
Yeah, I was just going to say it could even be that very e-mail organization depending on what address. 
Okay, even Gmail. 
Maybe there was a breach along the way. 
Someone bought or otherwise obtained a huge list of passwords and e-mail addresses that could be targets. 
So this campaign is instead of getting in and just pulling all of your e-mail, which maybe they had time or were or were not interested, they're using this to hustle you, make you feel the sense of urgency and act to send them a fee because of embarrassing information they allege to have. 
You know that's not true, but they're setting you up in this way. 
You can easily tell if you use text-based e-mail or otherwise look at where the e-mail is coming from. 
Sometimes there's spoofing and other ways that they're trying to trick you into thinking that this is an actual - that's coming from somewhere else and so on and so forth. 
Rob, you have to add the last word because we're out of time. 
Yeah, check your e-mail address at haveibeenpwned.com. 
That's H-A-V-E-I-B-E-N-P-W-E-N-E-D.com. 
That's haveibeenpwned because that will check to see if your e-mail address was in any other data breaches that these people could have gotten a hold of, and you'll then know where that data breach was. 
Okay, we are out of time, but we're going to continue on overtime, which you can find on YouTube. 
Channel 2600 is our channel. 
You can click on the link that's on the 2600.com webpage. 
We'll be back next week. 
Write to us, oth at 2600.com. 
Good night. 


And welcome everybody to Off the Hook Overtime here on YouTube, where we continue the fun and shenanigans of Off the Hook, except in an online environment. 
And Rob, you have to... 
Kyle's blocking the screen. 
I couldn't see if you were signaling me. 
Did we make it to YouTube? 
Are we actually on? 
Or am I talking to nobody? 
We did make it to YouTube. 
Okay, thank you very much for that. 
And we're also paying strict attention to our levels this week, because sometimes the levels are different. 
Sometimes they're really low, sometimes they're really high. 
Okay, I see what happened. 
That thing fell off the screen there. 
Okay. 
Yeah, I think we have good levels. 
It's going about halfway up the indicator. 
Honestly, it sounds a little quiet to me. 
A little quiet. 
So maybe I'll bring it up a little bit. 
Should I do that, Kyle? 
Wait. 
Are we good? 
I don't know. 
Okay, well, I'm bringing it up a little bit. 
I'm trying to follow the instructions here. 
So that's where we are right now. 
See, it's a little low, but I don't want to go too high. 
Are we good? 
Okay. 
Rob, if we sound... 
Now I sound too loud. 
I'm sorry, folks. 
We're trying to sort this out. 
If you hear us sounding distorted or too low or something, Rob, let us know. 
Okay, we're still sounding low to me, but I don't know if that's just my setup here. 
Our listeners, let us know. 
Send us a tweet at Hacker Radio Show with how this sounds now. 
Okay. 
Oh, it's sounding a lot better now, actually. 
It just started. 
I think it just caught up. 
Okay, good. 
It's slightly delayed over there, which is why I'm listening to us in the past right now. 
And this is very confusing. 
I know. 
This is my world over here. 
It gets extremely confusing. 
Okay. 
Just stop touching things, everybody. 
I didn't touch anything. 
Okay. 
This is good. 
This is good, you guys. 
All right. 
Our phone number. 
I have not touched anything. 
You guys can touch things. 
I mean, you know, we're near the board. 
Yeah, I didn't see Gilo touch anything. 
No. 
802-321-4225 is our phone number. 
And you can call us and be a part of the conversation and maybe add some color. 
Are you indicating we have a call? 
No, I was just testing the line. 
Okay. 
Yeah, make sure the line is there. 
That's... 
Yeah, one show was unplugged the whole time. 
We didn't know. 
These things happen. 
So, yeah. 
Have you seen the list of Amazon Forbidden Words that's floating around? 
I got a hold of this. 
And wow. 
Union. 
Union is one of them, right? 
Union is one of them. 
Let's read some others. 
Harassment. 
Yeah, good luck spelling that right. 
You just spell it with two R's and you get away with it. 
Because not harassment, the actual saying the word harassment. 
You can't say terminated. 
You can't say fire. 
What if there's a fire? 
Well, I don't know why you'd be saying that in a chat room in Amazon. 
But you can't say I hate. 
Which I guess is a good thing. 
There's no room for that. 
You can't say petition. 
You can't say this is dumb. 
You can't say stupid. 
That means you can say dumb. 
You just can't say this is dumb. 
But you can't say stupid. 
And I assume you can't say this is stupid. 
You can't say bullying. 
You can't say I don't care. 
Wow. 
You can't say prison. 
Grievance. 
Injustice. 
Diversity. 
I like how diversity gets thrown in there as something negative. 
You can't say ethics. 
You can't say fairness. 
This doesn't make Amazon look very good. 
But basically what we're looking at here. 
They will block and flag employee posts on their planned internal messaging app. 
That contains these keywords. 
Now this is a planned messaging app. 
And that means it's not working yet. 
So this is like a truth social type of thing here. 
Where it's planned. 
And many of us will be able to see it light up in the sky as it plummets to its doom. 
But it's just kind of interesting to get inside the heads here. 
And see what they're thinking. 
And how much they're not thinking. 
Wow. 
You can't say pay raise. 
They have a bunch of other ones too. 
You can't say representation. 
Unfair. 
T-O-T. 
I don't know what that means. 
But you can't say that. 
You can't say plantation. 
Wow. 
You can't say slave or slave labor. 
You can't say freedom. 
You can't say robots. 
And you can't say trash. 
Wow. 
This is just. 
It's so much fun. 
So much fun for everybody. 
Okay. 
I think I heard the phone ring before Kyle. 
Was that indeed the phone? 
Yes. 
Okay. 
Well, let's take this phone call. 
See who's out there. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook over time. 
Go ahead. 
Yes. 
Yes. 
You picked up the phone. 
You heard the phone ring and you picked up the phone. 
Did you not hear me saying hello? 
Hello? 
No, the phone is picked up in a different part of the studio. 
I don't hear you until I have this conversation. 
Oh, it's not like WBAI. 
It's unattended. 
Nothing here is like WBAI. 
When we pick up. 
How does it work there? 
It's like a remote radio station you have. 
Oh, you'd like the schematics, wouldn't you? 
You'd like to know exactly all our secrets. 
Nice try. 
Yeah. 
Social engineering there. 
Spearfishing is what he's doing right now. 
No. 
It's crude, but it works. 
And that's the important thing. 
It's kind of our style. 
Crude, but it works. 
Right. 
Now, the whole conference is the end of July or the middle of July. 
Well, the 22nd. 
Where do you put that? 
That's sort of in between. 
Okay, good. 
Because I'll be in Russia and some of the odd countries. 
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. 
Hold on. 
Everybody stop. 
Everybody stop. 
You're going to Russia? 
What? 
Are you out of your mind? 
You know, I'd like to go behind the scenes and see what, you know, what our news is like. 
You're going to go behind the scenes and below the scenes and maybe never come back if you do this. 
No, seriously. 
I advise you not to do that, Rebel. 
Well, you know, I've been to Ukraine a few years ago. 
And it was very different then. 
There wasn't an invasion in progress. 
Right. 
But I'd like to go to Russia. 
I'd like to go to Grofny, which is in Russia. 
But I'd like to go to, I mean, other kind of countries that are like. 
I would like to go to Mars, but I'm not going to go until it's safe, you know, until they have oxygen and things like that. 
And I don't think it's safe for you to go to Ukraine or to Russia at this point as an American. 
Unless there's, you know, you have citizenship I'm not aware of. 
I'm sorry? 
But no, I'm not going to. 
I'm not going to Ukraine. 
I'm just going to go to Russia. 
I thought that you weren't letting U.S. citizens in, but I was one of them. 
I mean, I've gone to the Russian visa office and they said, yes. 
Yeah. 
Anybody else want to have a word with him? 
Because I'm not getting through. 
I would just say, look at some of the travel advisories if you're seriously planning on going there. 
Yeah. 
You know, you say the wrong thing and all of a sudden, you know, you're in an FSB facility. 
Well, that's the thing. 
You know, you don't, I mean, you know, you're careful of what you say and things like that. 
I mean, I'm not going to bring up things. 
I'm just going there to, you know, as if nothing was going on and just going at the turf, you know. 
Rebel, how do I say this? 
If I think of all the people I know who hold their tongue and don't say whatever is on their mind, you don't bob to the top of that list. 
You know, you're somebody who says what's on their mind and you do volunteer a lot of information and you tell people when something is wrong or not working. 
These are all things that can work to your disadvantage in a place like that right now. 
Right, I know. 
But, I mean, of course I know what, you know, things, I mean, I've been doing research of, you know, like what's going on and I've been talking to people that are on YouTube and stuff like that. 
Rebel, have you been to Canada? 
It's a wonderful country and it's so close. 
Yes, I've been to Canada and I've been to Mexico. 
Well, I have been to Mexico, but I will never go to Mexico. 
Have you been, okay, hold on a second, have you been to Newfoundland? 
Ah, you haven't been there, have you? 
That used to be its own country, so. 
Yeah, I actually have been to Newfoundland. 
Damn it. 
He's not making this easy. 
Yeah, I remember going to Newfoundland, you know. 
Why now, Rebel? 
Because, I don't know, I was going to go two years ago, but I didn't. 
I don't know, you just faded into the ether just now. 
You were going to go a few years ago and then what? 
Okay, well, while he's trying to get his hot air balloon to land, Rob, I think you have something to help out with here? 
Go ahead. 
I did, and I do hope, Rebel, that you can still hear me or that you'll hear this later, but I'm just remembering not too long ago on this program when, Rebel, you called us from the last trip you were on when you were driving around and you were trying to get to, I think, Disney World and you couldn't make it. 
And you were having trouble finding where you were on your GPS and you were driving a Tesla and you were having trouble finding a place to charge the thing. 
And I just, with this track record, I don't know if I want you to go to Russia and have to take care of yourself there. 
Agreed. 
Navigating Anaheim is one thing. 
Getting to Russia is quite another. 
What do you think, heading to Russia is excellent? 
Hello? 
Rebel, come in. 
Did you say, can you hear us? 
Did you say heading to Russia is excellent? 
No, I said, I said, navigating Anaheim is one thing. 
Getting to Russia is quite another. 
I did not say excellent. 
Oh, right. 
Right. 
Yeah, I know. 
When I was in Ukraine, I, you know, used Google Translate to translate things. 
And, you know, people spoke English there and everything. 
And, yes, I got lost a little and, you know, but I found my way around different things. 
But I had a tour guide of somebody who's, you know, I knew and prearranged, you know, tours with. 
And same thing with Russia. 
There's people that are going to kind of translate for me. 
Let me explain it this way, Rebel. 
When you're over there in Russia, your credit cards aren't going to work. 
Anything? 
Well, that's the other thing, yeah. 
Yeah, you won't be able to. 
I may not have to take cash or. 
Right. 
And it's going to be extremely difficult and unpleasant. 
Well, that's why I'm not. 
I'm just going to get a one-way ticket. 
And it's like. 
Oh, my God. 
I don't like. 
Just getting a one-way ticket to Russia. 
Come on already. 
This is this is a big red flag you're waving at us. 
I'm not not the Russian kind. 
This is this is. 
Oh, boy. 
You're so full of it. 
I don't know. 
You had us going. 
No, he's going to do it. 
I know him. 
He's going to do it. 
Oh, my God. 
Look. 
Yeah. 
And when we have to do emergency fundraising for like airlift rebel out of Russia. 
When were you planning? 
When were you planning on doing this rebel? 
Well, I've been wanting to go to Russia for a couple of years. 
And I've been planning on doing this for like, you know, a few months, actually, before the what was going on. 
But I mean, I mean, if I don't like it, I know U.S. things like McDonald's and like fast food and like food things are not working over that. 
I mean, I don't know. 
I mean, there may not be open herbs. 
Well, that's not a deal breaker. 
Why? 
I mean, if I have to, you know, keep eating like cabbage and borscht, you know, but, you know. 
There's nothing wrong with that. 
No, look. 
No, no. 
You're planning this after Hope? 
No, no. 
June. 
Oh, for God's sake. 
No. 
Push it. 
So at least we can have an intervention or something. 
And talk to you about this before. 
No, it's not a good idea. 
Let's see. 
Go to Poland. 
Poland's a great place. 
I'm a bit overcrowded at the moment. 
That's why I'm going first. 
I'm going first to Poland because there's no direct flights to Russia from the United States, first of all. 
And second of all, you don't want to spend like nine, ten hours on a plane. 
You have to like spend like six hours, go somewhere, take a shower, sleep and all. 
Then go to the next country, you know. 
You know, I don't see how people go to like Asia, I guess it's kind of 12 hours on a plane. 
You know. 
You know, have you been to Russia before or not? 
No. 
Okay. 
I've been to Ukraine, but not Russia. 
I've been to Europe regularly. 
Maybe this is what you do instead. 
Go to Poland and then just take a day trip into Kaliningrad, which is Russia, but it's a tiny part of Russia and it's isolated from the rest of Russia. 
That way you get a taste of it, but you're not actually in the whole massive country. 
And, you know, you come back the same day. 
Oh, Kaliningrad is near Poland? 
Really? 
Oh, maybe I should do that. 
Yeah. 
In Lithuania? 
It's not hard to get to. 
Well, it's a bus, but other than that, it's not hard to get to. 
Okay. 
Because, I mean, I was going to go to Poland for like a few days because I want to, you know, go to Warsaw and just look back because I like the new subway and, you know, it was like a Warsaw-packed country anyway. 
Well, they sort of, yeah, they are a Warsaw-packed country in Poland. 
But it's an amazing country and they have great mass transit and I do recommend going to Warsaw and you'll certainly meet a lot of Ukrainians when you're over there, which will be fascinating too. 
Yeah. 
And maybe don't decide until then, okay? 
Because there'll be plenty of people who will have advice for you. 
I guarantee that. 
Okay. 
Well, when I was in Ukraine, they were speaking like Ukrainian and Russian and they were like, do I translate in Ukrainian or Russian? 
That's the thing. 
If I go to Russia, then I know everybody will speak Russian and if I go to Poland, everybody will speak Poland. 
And, uh, Rob, you have, you have some words of wisdom I hope? 
Yeah. 
I mean, I know we don't, uh, we don't often say on this program things like, uh, oh, the government is saying something and we should listen to them. 
But I'm on the website right now of the State Department and, uh, the Russia Travel Advisory part of the State Department website where it says things like, do not travel to Russia due to the unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces, the potential for harassment against U.S. citizens by Russian government security officials, the singling out of U.S. 
citizens in Russia by Russian government security officials, including for detention, the arbitrary enforcement of local law, limited flights into and out of Russia, the embassy's limited ability to assist U.S. citizens in Russia, um, COVID-19, uh, and related entry restrictions and terrorism. 
U.S. citizens residing or traveling in Russia should depart Russia immediately. 
That was the, uh, that was the travel advisory I was talking about. 
Yeah, and, and let me just, let me just add to that. 
Um, you know, you, you say that, uh, you could be subject to harassment by, by government agents, et cetera. 
How about just individual people who are believing the crap that's being fed to them, uh, through the state media saying that the United States is causing all these problems and Ukrainians are causing all these problems. 
If you go over there as an American citizen, um, it's, it's quite possible that you will be the victim of an angry mob that, uh, does not know the facts and just assumes that whatever they're hearing is true. 
And as Rob said, you know, the, the, uh, embassy isn't really going to be able to help you because they're, they're operating on a very limited basis. 
And, uh, I would say it would make for some awkward conversation on your way back, uh, when you're going through customs, you know, uh, how long was your trip? 
Why the hell were you in Russia? 
I wouldn't worry about that part. 
I just worry about getting out safely. 
You know, Rebel, I think we've said all we can say about this. 
Well, when I went to Ukraine, they had the same kind of advisory there because they, you know, they said, don't go to Eastern Ukraine, just, you know, things like that. 
And, you know, I, I, I registered with the, uh, state of mama when I went to Ukraine and everybody said, well, you know, be careful when you're there. 
And well, you went to Western Ukraine. 
You, you, you went to Kiev, you went to, you know, Lviv, places like that. 
That's, that's very different. 
It was very, very different. 
Yeah. 
Those, that was similar for us, uh, on our trip to Moldova, uh, the Transnistria region was, uh, we were advised do not, uh, travel to that area. 
It's, um, a wholly different thing when the state department is telling you don't go to this country instead of we're advising a certain area where there's just disputed territories and so forth. 
That's not the entire country. 
So there is a distinction to be made between those advisories, I'd say. 
All right. 
I think, I think we've pretty much laid out our position, Rebel, but you know, there's time, there's still time. 
We're going to keep working on, uh, convincing you to do something. 
Well, maybe by June, they, uh, we'll have some sort of like anything for June. 
I don't know. 
There you go. 
Forever the optimist. 
Yeah. 
If that's, if that's not motivation to end this war quickly, Rebel wants to come out. 
Rebel's on his way over. 
And, uh, yeah, it's going to be trouble otherwise. 
Um, any, anything else on your mind, Rebel, before we move on to another phone call? 
Um, not really. 
Uh, let's see. 
Um, I don't know. 
Um, uh, no. 
Well, when you, when you use the Omni feature and, uh, uh, you know, in the, the new Omni, too bad Jim's not around because, you know, the Omni thing where you tap to pay in the subways and buses in New York City. 
The new, yeah, the new MetroCard equivalent. 
Yeah. 
If you tap, if you have a credit card that's either expired or not working or whatever, it'll still work. 
It'll still work with an expired credit card? 
Not expired, but not, uh, not working credit card. 
Like a key credit card's like been turned off for some reason or whatever. 
So if you get your credit card turned off, you're saying, how do you test that? 
You got to have your credit card turned off and then see if it works. 
I mean, let's say if your credit card, uh, you know, let's say you lost your credit card and you reported it lost and they, they turned it off or whatever. 
They, and, and then, but you could still use it on the MetroCard. 
I mean, you can't use your credit card, but you can use it on the Omni thing. 
Cause Omni just, I guess, takes the credit card numbers and, and every hour they just. 
Well, I imagine it's going to be updated at some point where, you know, that credit card gets canceled. 
They're not going to accept it. 
Right. 
Well, I, cause I think what they do is they, they keep the credit card numbers and like maybe every hour or every couple of hours, they, they, you know how, like when you tap your card and they have a store, it checks the credit card to see if it's valid. 
Of course. 
Yeah. 
Omni thing doesn't do that. 
They probably, you know, stores it. 
And then every hour or two, they, uh. 
Batch process. 
They may check it. 
All right. 
That's, I don't know why they wouldn't check it like any supermarket would check it with the same basic motion. 
Um, but. 
Well, maybe because it's too fast. 
They don't want people to be waiting. 
Well, if what you say is true and, and invalid credit cards can be used to access the New York city subway and bus system, it'll become a major story pretty soon. 
I think. 
It sounds like it doesn't do it a whole day either. 
Well, I have plenty of expired credit cards. 
So. 
Okay. 
So tap it at the, uh, the Metro thing. 
Okay. 
Well, we'll have to do that. 
All right. 
Rebel. 
Good hearing from you. 
Stay safe. 
Okay. 
All right. 
Oh boy. 
Um, I admire the spirit. 
I mean, I've been longing to travel. 
I have the same spirit, but boy, want to be in some of these places. 
You really, it's, it's tough looking at it from a distance. 
I've been to Cuba. 
I've been to North Korea. 
I, you know, I've been to places that I'm told not to go, um, because I'm curious and because I have faith in people, but, uh, war zones, you know, if you're not a correspondent being well paid for doing whatever it is you're doing, um, yeah, it's, it's not something you should just, uh, um, uh, hop into, uh, as if it's some kind of, uh, you know, a site to see it's, uh, this is, uh, while there's, while there isn't a war going on in Russia right now, there's a war of a different kind going on there. 
And that's the war on truth. 
And, uh, and, and definitely a lot of hostility towards people from our country right now. 
And who knows what it's going to be like in a couple of months. 
I hope it's going to be better. 
I hope things start, uh, turning in a different direction, but, uh, I don't know. 
It's, it's a bad situation right now. 
802-321-4225 is our phone number. 
802-321-HACK. 
Um, if you're planning on going somewhere dangerous, don't tell us because I think we've used up our energy on convincing people. 
If you want to ask us a question about the upcoming HOPE conference this July, please, uh, have that for us. 
We'll try our best to, uh, let you know what to do, what not to do. 
If you want to submit a talk or learn how you can participate. 
If you have a question about anything that has been hacked, or if you have an update or news about something that, uh, got hacked or that maybe we didn't have enough time to cover in our, uh, regular hour on WBAI, please call us now so that we can talk about it and, uh, maybe add some insight and, and, uh, we'll, we'll discuss it more. 
If you're in Russia or Ukraine or Eastern Europe or really anywhere, country code is one phone number 802-321-4225. 
We'd love to hear from you. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
I did have a question about the Amazon story we were talking about before Rebel called. 
We can pop back to that for a second. 
I am curious, and this is also an invitation for people to call if you are listening. 
Well, it's not going to work, but if you're listening to us in a place where you have an Amazon Echo that's listening to you, if there are issues with that now that these words have all been read in a quick list, I was like, it's anybody listening through us, but then I realized we're on YouTube, so never mind about that. 
Well, the Amazon Echo is going to allow you to use those words. 
Is that what you're asking? 
Well, yeah, but I mean, you know, if you were listening to, I was thinking about people like casting us through the Echo when we were on the radio, which obviously is not now, but, you know, is the Echo going to listen a little closer now if this whole list of words is happening? 
Maybe, but I don't think our local Amazon Echoes are concerned about us joining a union at Amazon. 
Maybe they are. 
I don't know. 
I do know that they pipe up at weird times. 
You know, they suddenly respond, like you're having a conversation with somebody, and all of a sudden your Amazon Echo joins a conversation when you didn't utter its name, so there was no way that could have happened. 
And sometimes you look back and you try to figure out what it was that triggered it. 
And you can't figure it out. 
There is a phrase. 
I think you can say, let's say it's Alexa. 
Alexa, why did you do that? 
And she'll allegedly tell you. 
So next time that happens, try that. 
Okay, we have a phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Daryl McPherson, Bronx, New York. 
Hey, how you doing? 
Oh, glad I could get in touch with you. 
One, have you all looked at, or may I discuss BAI's phone problems? 
BAI's phone problems. 
We don't know about BAI's any problems because we haven't been there in two years. 
Well, if you have a call-in to BAI, it may take up to two minutes before it even rings if it's a quote-unquote busy calling time. 
In other words, if they ask for call-ins. 
And is there any way that you all could consult to help them with their phone challenges? 
Well, this is a challenge that pretty much was solved decades ago. 
I have never heard of this before. 
You're saying, if you call them, what do you hear? 
You don't hear anything for about two minutes before it rings. 
Two minutes of silence before you even get a ring. 
It's like you're calling... 
That's correct. 
You're calling as far away as you can possibly call. 
That is... 
Well, okay, the first thing I would ask them is, what kind of phone system are you using? 
Who is your phone company? 
And, you know, I doubt anybody at BAI can fix it, but those companies certainly would be held accountable. 
I think it's their equipment. 
Bertolt is aware that there is a problem, and he says that Grayson and company are working on it. 
But I think what's required here is a suggestion for totally new equipment and then the listenership coming up with the capital to pay for it. 
The next time you get an opportunity, I know this is putting a burden on you all, but just next time they ask for call-in, or you can even try and call Max right now. 
Not right now while you're doing your show, but I mean, after the show, but call into BAI and see how long it takes for it to ring. 
The other challenge is if there are a lot of calls coming in at the same time, it'll go like ring busy. 
And then there's a whole bunch of stuff going on with that phone system that isn't the phone company. 
They have Verizon with, I think, Spectrum as a backup. 
However, I'm unclear as to what the phone system on site actually is. 
But if you have time to do that, I mean, if you could take pity on them, it may be helpful. 
The thing is, is 2600 a 501c3? 
No, we are not. 
Oh, okay. 
Because I need someone to look into. 
BAI is a member of Good Shop, which then allows people to search using Good Search. 
Good Search uses Yahoo as their search engine. 
However, the more important part is, is that it's a way that you can donate money to a 501c3 without having any physical capital. 
And so if you can get a million people to do a single search, you can raise $100,000 for a charity of your choice. 
So what I'm requesting here is, is that you will go to either goodshop.com or goodsearch.org and take a look and see if I'm missing something. 
Because I think that if everybody changed over to Good Search, we could raise a lot of money for places that need money as compared to giving the penny to Google. 
Interesting. 
Kyle, you had something? 
I think that's an outstanding idea. 
Yeah, we'll certainly pass it along if we're asked. 
And if any listeners out there want to share that with the management of the station, that's another avenue, another avenue to make some contributions work for us. 
So that's great. 
We love ideas like that, especially when fundraising season is coming around. 
And for the most part, with the phone systems, we've seen different selections that have been done in the past. 
We've been asked to help in the past, but unfortunately, we're really limited in the amount of time that we can donate to the process, especially when it's stuff that, I mean, granted, we'd love to see everything fixed and working. 
But if it's stuff that we're not familiar with and that we weren't really involved in the process, we don't necessarily want to be involved. 
We just want to go in and do good radio and be able to take calls. 
So we'll pass that along. 
It sounds like you're not able to do it. 
I'm curious. 
I want to experience this myself. 
I want to try it. 
To take two minutes for a phone to start ringing in this day and age, that's an accomplishment. 
It sounds like a new issue, definitely. 
So we will investigate ourselves. 
And my suspicion is that perhaps it's like it's forwarding. 
I know occasionally they forward sometimes, so maybe it's in a weird forward. 
That's a lot of forwarding. 
That's a lot of silence like that. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Thanks for it. 
Yeah. 
I mean, it would be hard for us to help with this when we still can't go to the station, really. 
But about the other thing, this search site, I have not heard of this particular site. 
If it's legit, then it's interesting. 
My first question with something like this is, who's putting up $100,000 that they can give it away to people arranging a web search? 
And I want to know more about who runs this and who owns it and that sort of thing. 
Okay. 
So if you go to the site and you go to the About page, it talks about the Rambergs who were in radio and they wanted to give back to the community. 
So they set up, they made an arrangement with, I'm talking just about the good search part because that's the part that I'm most interested in because it enables people who want to give, however they're limited with their capital flow, simply by changing their behavior, they're able to do this. 
And so what I'm asking people to do, since I have very little credibility anymore, is to just go there and look, BAI currently has $1,400 sitting there and we're trying to figure out, I'm trying to figure out how I can get them to pick up the money. 
They're aware of both the phone problem and about good search because they're already a member of good search. 
What I'm proposing is, is that once everybody decides that this is legit, we could raise funds. 
Is the Electronic Freedom Foundation a 501c3? 
Yes. 
Okay. 
We could raise tons of money for EFS simply by changing our behavior. 
I mean, I had a psychiatrist today tell me that it sounds like a great idea. 
It doesn't matter what it sounds like to me. 
People need to go and read the information themselves and then see the potential. 
All you have to do is change behavior in order to take advantage of the 21st century way capitalist transformation. 
Well, as long as changing that behavior isn't something that is unpalatable, something that you don't want to do, it sounds great. 
But I'm sure there are listeners out there who know more about this who can let us know, and we'll certainly look into it ourselves. 
I've heard of it. 
I don't know details about it, but from my understanding, it's a way of making activities that people are normally doing every day, kind of like a point system with credit cards. 
But it's a way of channeling small amounts of revenue and sort of microfunding and then in ways, basically getting transaction fees to accrue in the form of a donation. 
Caller, it's a great idea. 
If it does what you think it does for us to organize and figure out a way to channel that, I'm all for it. 
Because functionally for the radio station, it'd be as simple as playing a promo for this way of contributing during the fundraisers period, or we could refer to it as we pitch normally on our show. 
So it's certainly functionally easy to do. 
Create a promo, air that along with everything else, and then us, of course, pitching, mentioning it along with the SMS and the other avenues that people have heard us when we're pitching. 
So integrating it, that's a great idea, and harnessing the power in numbers. 
What I would say is we need this and 10 other ideas just like it. 
But let's start with one good idea, and that might lead to another. 
Can I give you just one more piece of information? 
You had a gentleman who called in who had an eye problem. 
I think he was from North Carolina. 
Yeah, I think Missouri, actually, but yes. 
All right. 
There is a gentleman who actually does fundraising for BAI, but he runs an eye, I'm going to say an eye clinic out in Colorado. 
His name is John Monroe, and the name of the clinic is DrBanker, I think it's DrBanker.com. 
If someone can take a look at the information that he's offering to see if it's appropriate for the person who called in, I think it would be quite helpful for the gentleman who's having the sight problems to at least have a free conversation with John about treatments that are available in his condition. 
There was a doctor, Deborah Banker, who he trained under, who did some miraculous work around eyes, eye exercises, feeding the eye the appropriate nutrients and all that kind of stuff. 
Once again, if you go to DrBanker.com or give John Monroe a call, I think that would be very helpful to that gentleman. 
All right, well, thanks for looking out for our other listeners as well, and that's what we do, so thank you. 
I used to be in the phone business, it's just that we were using cans at that time and working for AT&T. 
Wow. 
Your true name, 2600. 
So I'm just glad that you all are continuing to share information, and hopefully I'll be able to convince people just to take a look at the website, because there are a lot of people making larger 501c3s, making a lot of money using this particular venue. 
And what I'm looking at is I'm looking to do research on including employee matching, but there's a way to shop at, for instance, at Amazon, beast, beast, beast. 
If you shop at Amazon, there's a way to shop at Amazon where you can give money to a registered charity of your choice. 
You can give money to any seller. 
In fact, we have that ourselves at 2600 as a certain tag that you put on the end of a purchase, and you get a few pennies for that. 
Right. 
And if we could, once again, harness that to get people to understand that the old way, when I'm saying old, I'm 73, right? 
The old way that people conceive of capital is gone. 
And they've moved on to, like, your email address is more important in many ways than your physical address, because they can make more money out of that. 
So that's the kind of stuff that I appreciate you all sharing with the public. 
Well, thank you for the good ideas. 
They're inspirational. 
And continue doing the work. 
All right. 
We'll look into all of this. 
Thanks again. 
Take care. 
Peace. 
All right. 
That guy's 73. 
Wow. 
He could have fooled me. 
It's not like he was in his 20s. 
So full of ideas and inspiration. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
Sorry, putting on my real world hat here for a second. 
I'm sorry, my day job hat here for a second. 
The specific concept he's talking about is Amazon Smile, and that is for registered 501c3 organizations. 
Okay, that's different from what I was thinking. 
You know what I'm talking about, right? 
There's a thing that comes after, I don't know what to even call it. 
But what he was talking about was Amazon Smile, which is you get 1% of specific purchases. 
Like, not everything is eligible for it. 
But if you can go to smile.amazon.com, select your charity. 
The EFF may be an option. 
I don't know the place where I work is. 
That's why I know about it. 
I manage it for us. 
But it is a really great way to sort of passively support organizations that you care about. 
So just FYI. 
Let's discuss this later, and maybe we can figure out a way to make that work for the radio station and for EFF, others as well. 
Okay, we have another phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off The Hook Overtime. 
Hello, it's Spiff from Missouri. 
Hey, we were just talking about you. 
Yeah, I know. 
How you guys doing? 
We're doing okay. 
How are you doing? 
Hanging in there. 
Good. 
It's been a rough day. 
Have you heard of a service called ultraday.ai? 
It's a website. 
I have not, and I don't think anyone else has either. 
It deepstakes voices. 
Oh, okay. 
Yeah, it's actually pretty good. 
How does it work? 
Well, the AI just takes samples of people's voices, like celebrities and whatnot, and it just kind of strings it together and whatnot. 
So you tell it what you want it to say, and it uses some pre... 
Yeah, it does it live. 
You don't have to type any text or nothing like that. 
You just speak it to a microphone and it comes out like you're Patrick Stewart or something. 
Oh, so you say something that comes out in a celebrity's voice. 
Mm-hmm. 
Now, can you add other people's voices if you want? 
Yeah. 
It can be whoever you want. 
Wow. 
So I could say, put Kyle's voice in there and make him say things that he would never say. 
And that he would never understand, and then I would just sound exactly like this, and it would just be indiscernible to anyone listening, and then I could just switch back and continue talking on the show. 
How are you? 
Kyle's not in the room. 
Oh, Rob, you did this, didn't you? 
You programmed the website. 
That was good. 
That was good. 
Okay. 
It's like a paid service, though. 
Oh, it's paid? 
Oh, you got to pay for it. 
Well, that's a deal breaker. 
What's the site again so our listeners can have fun with this? 
Altered.ai. 
Okay. 
All right, Rob, you're nodding on recognition. 
Have you played with this? 
I have not played with this, but I'm looking at the site right now, and it's interesting because they've got a whole page about their ethics code. 
Oh, tell us about that. 
It's just blank, right? 
Well, it's kind of long, but it says, among other things, it says, voice cloning, like other deepfake technology, can be used for nefarious purposes, including disinformation, defamation, information warfare, as well as phone call frauds and hacking attacks. 
No. 
I never would have guessed. 
Sign me up. 
Any technological advancement carries its risks. 
Altering human perception rightfully raises ethical questions about its purpose and its effect on the fabric of any society. 
Do they have an unlimited account? 
That, you know, what fabric? 
Right. 
But basically, they say, our answer is that we should not be afraid of new technologies when they are potent. 
Instead, we should tame them and put them to good use. 
Okay. 
I'm just thinking, you know, what do we make Trump say? 
Because this could be, you know, 24 hours of fun. 
Just have him go on and on about all sorts of things. 
Well, just give him enough time he'll say to himself. 
That's true. 
You're right. 
Maybe that's a bad example. 
You just make a rant line where he never shuts up. 
People can call in. 
That's reality. 
That's today. 
Oh, wait a minute. 
You're right. 
There is our idea. 
It's the actual person. 
Anything else on you, caller? 
Well, you know, I'm going to update you on the little convoy thing going on. 
Oh, yeah. 
That's still happening? 
Yeah, they went out to California. 
They're on their way out to California. 
You know, a confession here. 
We actually were monitoring them for about a month. 
We have recordings of one of their channels. 
I'm not sure if we're going to release it. 
It's just fascinating stuff. 
Some of it's hours and hours every day. 
Yeah, they literally stream for hours and hours and hours. 
And a couple of them got in a fight the other day, called them. 
Yeah. 
They were trying to take pictures of the convoy and whatnot. 
Yeah, we got some fights. 
Eventually, though, we got kicked off because they didn't know who we were. 
But it took them over a month to do that. 
Well, they have a Discord. 
Yeah, this was not that. 
This is something that it's public on Zello, but they were treating it like it wasn't. 
Oh, I got you. 
Yeah. 
Well, a small group stayed behind. 
They managed to talk the race track and they keep them for an extra week. 
But today they were like flipping out because they have no place to go. 
So they were begging anybody on stream in their chat to give them land so they can have a place to go and so that the convoy will have a place to go on the way back. 
Wait, my question is, where are they from? 
Why don't they just go there? 
This dude, he says he's from Jersey. 
He goes by Jersey J on YouTube. 
They also, I looked into this a little bit more. 
There's this guy named Oriel Express who does it. 
He, I looked into his website, theoreoexpress.com. 
I went to ICANN. 
And they have, they are hosted by a service called KingdomX.com. 
Now, KingdomX.com has a few websites on them. 
They are hosting like really, really right-wing stuff. 
So I looked into KingdomX and it's on my, something called, oh, what is it? 
Epic, Epic Holdings, Inc. 
Right, Epic, okay. 
Okay. 
They do a lot of right-wing stuff. 
It's ran by a guy named, I think his name is actually Rick Monster or something like that. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, he's based in East Side in King County in Washington. 
When you say that, East Side of Seattle, right? 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
Yeah, he does this out of his house apparently called to look up the address on Google Maps. 
It's just like a house. 
Yeah, yeah, we looked him up a long time ago. 
Yeah, he also hosts neo-Nazi stuff. 
That's probably how you heard of him. 
Yeah, that is how we heard of him. 
Yeah. 
I actually messed around with him one day. 
I was able to set up OBS and had a few streams going and re-streaming them. 
So you like to re-stream each other. 
Mm-hmm. 
Like there's this one channel called Fry TV. 
If you pop it up, you'll see like literally like, I guess a dozen screens of other streams. 
Okay. 
So I set one up and I said, well, you know what? 
I'm going to make this a gay pride ride. 
Ride along, right? 
Oh, that must have been very popular with them. 
Yes, it was. 
They got mad at me. 
This is the kind of thing we need to do more of. 
Huh? 
We need to do more things like this. 
If it gets them that upset, then you know you're doing the right thing. 
Yeah, I was like, you know, donate now to like GLAD and like BLM and like ACLU. 
And they didn't like that a bit. 
But one of them was so far as like, look me up on Facebook. 
Well, I kind of egged that on because the same screenshot of what I was doing on Facebook. 
Let's be careful. 
He said, look at this guy. 
This guy's a bot. 
He first called me a Satanist bot, right? 
A Satanist bot. 
And I ripped this to my, yeah, I was able to record this onto my computer. 
That's what was funny. 
And he showed my picture and stuff like that. 
And I was like, well, go ahead and do what you want, man. 
I don't care. 
I'm nobody. 
It was great. 
Wow. 
Well, try not to become too much of a target of these people because some of them are truly unhinged. 
You know, honestly, I don't know what it is that they want because, you know, most of the mandates are done because of vaccinations and things like that. 
Do they want the pandemic to come back? 
What are they really pushing for here? 
Right before they left Maryland, right, they went down to Black Lives Matter Plaza in D.C., which I didn't even know they did. 
But they tried to occupy that. 
They said. 
So it's changing. 
The guy, Mike Landis, he was like, he's like, he pled guilty to some kind of fraud charges, concern donations for something. 
The other guy, his name is Bill, not Bill. 
What is his name? 
Well, it doesn't matter what their names are because we don't really want to give them more publicity. 
It's just, you know, I just wonder what it is. 
What's their game? 
It's weird because people ask the same question of Occupy Wall Street when that was happening. 
What is it they want? 
What do they stand for? 
At least it was more of a festive atmosphere there. 
But I'm asking the same questions of these people. 
I don't know what they want. 
I mean, in Ottawa, at least, you know, you kind of understood that there was a situation there and they wanted, you know, mandates to go away, even though they were necessary at the time. 
But now, you know, things have gotten better and there's less of that around. 
It just seems like they're just complaining about everything. 
Well, that's the interesting thing because one of the Ottawa guys came down to visit them and they had a meeting. 
I mean, they live streamed a meeting with him and he said, you guys are wasting your time. 
You're wasting money. 
These people need to be out of working. 
Interesting. 
How was that received? 
Well, Brian, it's Brian Brian, Brian's or whatever his name is, who's like the main face of this stuff. 
He says, yeah, you're right. 
We are wasting time. 
We are wasting money. 
And then he backtracked as soon as he said it. 
Wow. 
Because it's all a scam. 
Well, yeah, there could be some scamming going on. 
That's certainly true with situations like this. 
But, you know, it's interesting to follow. 
Well, yeah. 
I mean, they don't have places to go, so they're kind of winging it. 
That's what I don't get. 
Why don't they have places to go? 
Why don't they go home? 
Don't they have families and things like that? 
I mean, they've been doing this for months. 
Yeah, they were driving down to Dallas and they didn't have a place to go to. 
So they said, well, just drive it out. 
We'll figure it out when we get there. 
Yikes. 
I don't understand how this is working. 
You know, if you just say to them, you know, you're acting like a bunch of hippies, I think that'll diffuse the situation right there. 
And they'll say, oh, my God, what have we become? 
And they'll just go back to their lives. 
They're already acting like, you know, panhandlers as it is because they don't want to work. 
They don't want to go back to their jobs and stuff. 
That's for sure. 
And they picked the worst possible time to do this when fuel is more expensive than it's been in a long time. 
That's why they'll get calls. 
Why don't they take it like almost two million and get like tanker trucks and just fuel them off the tanker trucks? 
But no, they're going to gas stations to do this. 
Yeah. 
It doesn't make any sense. 
Not the brightest bulbs in the bunch. 
Anyway, we're going to move on. 
But good hearing from you. 
And did you hear what that last caller suggested that you look into? 
Yeah, I'll look into it. 
Look into that. 
Let us know if that works out. 
And, you know, we're rooting for you. 
Okay. 
Well, thanks, son. 
You have a good one. 
All right. 
You take care. 
And our phone line is open for maybe one more phone call, I think. 
802-321-4225. 
Yeah, we'll stick around. 
Stick around for that. 
Stick around for that call. 
Yeah. 
And for all listeners, you can always check out the archives, 2600.com slash off the hook. 
Always? 
Anytime you can do that? 
Yeah. 
24 hours a day? 
Yeah, from anywhere in the world. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
All right. 
We always have somebody on duty just in case somebody needs help. 
They're meticulously maintained. 
Downloading a file or something like that. 
We always have somebody watching to make sure. 
Experts are standing by. 
How do they do? 
Where do they go? 
I said 2600.com slash off the hook. 
Well, you know, some people weren't paying attention. 
And we have a phone call. 
And good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Hi, guys. 
Tim in Connecticut. 
How are you guys doing? 
Hey, what's up? 
And gals. 
I'm sorry. 
Once it would be appropriate. 
Thank you. 
I've been doing fine. 
I hope everything's doing good with you guys. 
Well, for the most part. 
And they're still batting around the next variant of COVID that's supposed to come around. 
Yeah, we're looking forward to that. 
Boy, it just never ends, does it? 
I have my fourth shot, so. 
Okay. 
I'm getting there. 
Out of curiosity, Hope.net. 
I was curious if there was any more information on hotels and places to stay. 
Well, here's what we have so far. 
If you go to Hope.net, you'll see that we have special deals with two hotels just down the road. 
Yeah. 
It's not Marriott. 
It's, what are they, courtyards? 
It's a Fairfield and a Courtyard, which are both Marriott properties. 
Oh, they are Marriott. 
Okay. 
I can't keep track. 
And they're really convenient, and they're near a lot of places, and it's easy to get to the campus from there. 
And we are working on the on-campus situation next, on-campus housing. 
And we should have an announcement on that, I'd say within a week. 
Oh, okay. 
So, if that's what you're looking into. 
Yeah, I've already got my ticket, so. 
Great, great. 
Yeah, so. 
I'll be driving, and I noticed that the valet charge is considerable at those locations. 
At what locations? 
The hotels? 
Yes. 
Well, you know, I know about that. 
I know there's street parking near the hotels, and I also know that on campus, it's free. 
You can park for free. 
Oh, that sounds good. 
Yeah. 
But hotels, they tend to do that. 
Yeah, and their parking situation for the hotels themselves is, I think, unclear. 
It may not be as relevant for those particular hotels. 
So, definitely, if you have any questions, feel free to call the hotel. 
And clarify. 
And look into specific things if you think that's something that you may need. 
But whatever they're charging for parking, I guarantee Hotel Penn would have charged a lot more. 
Oh, absolutely. 
Yeah. 
No doubt. 
Downtown Manhattan, sure. 
And it may be something that was. 
Well, of course, you know, go down, you know, the Hope, if you go down to the hotel for the Hope Conference, and you just stay there. 
Mm-hmm. 
Everything's self-contained. 
Well, yeah, that's true. 
But anyway, looking forward to it. 
Kyle, you got something? 
I'm going to jump off the line, so if you want to get another call in. 
Oh, I think Kyle has something to say. 
Go ahead. 
Oh, no. 
I just wanted to say that they have some lots, I think small lots. 
But it may be that it's carried over in sort of a form or that it's sort of a standard rate, but that hotel doesn't specifically have that service, and it's just appearing that way on their website. 
Their website is, it's their website, so we'll just say that. 
It's also Queens, and Queens is always a space somewhere. 
So just, you can circle the block, and it's free parking, and it's going to be the weekend. 
Okay, because the last thing I saw was like a $40 a day charge, if you want to take your car in and out. 
Yeah. 
It wasn't for somebody to park it. 
It was more for just the access. 
Yeah, you can do better than that. 
You definitely could do better than that. 
Certainly a consideration. 
So it's good that you're thinking about this. 
We'll definitely look at it ourselves since you brought it up. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, another thing to consider there is that the parking lot at the university is meant to hold an entire university's worth of students' cars, and I think there will be enough free space for a considerable amount of our attendees to just chill their car out there and maybe use public transit to get to and from their hotels. 
So you could park your car on campus and then take a bus or even an Uber to the hotel and save a lot of money that way. 
Tons. 
See? 
We have a solution for you. 
Yeah, you'll be able to walk on and off campus, so if you need to get something from it, it's fine. 
24 hours. 
Does that help? 
Oh, that sounds great. 
I mean, it wasn't so much parking the car as security of parking my car. 
Well, the campus is secure. 
That much we can definitely tell you. 
That, I would think, versus street parking. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah. 
All right. 
Well, I look forward to seeing you there and hearing you in shows before then. 
Okay. 
Take care. 
Keep listening. 
All right. 
See you guys. 
Bye-bye. 
Good night. 
I guess we have time for one more. 
If there's one more out there, we have a... 
I said we'd stick around. 
Fairly lively switchboard tonight. 
So, 802-321-4225 is our phone number. 
Country code 1 if you're overseas. 
Yes, indeed. 
And while we're waiting, just a big shout-out to the Amazon Union in Staten Island. 
And congratulations on pulling that together. 
Yes. 
That was something else, huh? 
You want to outline this bit of history that happened? 
I mean, basically, just Amazon has long been a very union-busty sort of employer. 
And, you know, it's been beat. 
So, let's hear this caller, because I'm interested in what they have to say. 
But, yeah, it's a big deal. 
It's a big deal, and hopefully more Amazon facilities follow suit. 
All right. 
This will be our last call, I think. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Yes. 
Hi. 
I tuned in late, so I apologize if you may have addressed this already. 
But will there be vendor tables at the HOPE Conference, like people selling books and magazines? 
Absolutely. 
Yes. 
There will be. 
The 2600 store will be there as well. 
It will be there for sure. 
I know others will be there as well. 
Yeah. 
Many other vendors. 
We're going to do this. 
We'll have a location. 
And, yeah, we have our normal cadre of nonprofits and a whole variety of organizations. 
Everything that was at HOPE before will be at this HOPE as well. 
It's just in a different place. 
Okay. 
And the campus is enormous. 
Do you have a building yet? 
Which building it'll be taking place in? 
We have several buildings. 
And, yes, it is enormous. 
And that's the beauty of it. 
And we'll have maps. 
We'll have signs. 
It'll be easy for you to get around. 
But, yeah, we are planning several different buildings. 
We may even have... 
Oh, several different. 
Wow. 
Yep. 
Color coding and landing strips and... 
Well, don't give away the secrets. 
...fog lighting for inclement weather. 
We will make sure you arrive at the right buildings. 
Okay. 
And will everything be recorded by that Internet Society of New York or whatever that's called? 
That is the plan. 
They are in as well. 
Rumor has it they're on board. 
Yeah. 
We're looking forward to that. 
Well, I'm looking forward to it. 
And I wish you guys the best of luck with it. 
Okay. 
Thank you. 
Look forward to seeing you. 
Thanks for doing it. 
All right. 
We don't know how to do anything else, but... 
Please spread the word. 
Tell your... 
Appreciate it. 
Yeah. 
Thanks for that. 
We really appreciate it. 
We want to get the enthusiasm out there. 
Tell your friends, your neighbors, students, people that are hackers and builders that are maybe thinking of talking, presenting something. 
We would love more excitement, more involvement to really set this thing off and start it in the grand tradition, you know, in this space. 
But in the way we know how... 
All right. 
I'll take one more. 
I said we'd hang out. 
Let me just say this is our first conference in a new location. 
It's going to be different. 
We're getting our feet wet for the first time. 
It's, you know, so we need to learn things as well. 
So help us with that by having, you know, some friends around to volunteer and to bring good talks and participate in all different ways. 
There is so much we can do. 
Just workshops alone. 
We have so many rooms that we can just have for the weekend to, you know, ham radio people or radio statler or lock picking or soldering. 
There's so many things we can do. 
So many things. 
And we have the space. 
We have the enthusiasm. 
So hope.net, all the info is there. 
And shall we take this? 
This should be what they hung up. 
Yeah, but I'll just add on to what you're saying. 
Feedback, too. 
We want all the good and exciting stuff to really outnumber the challenges that we encounter in the new space. 
But continuous feedback just so that we can be aware of issues and respond and make sure that that isn't the primary thing that folks remember, you know, whatever challenge they had. 
Right. 
We want to make sure that all of these standout presenters and vendors, all of those memories are forefront. 
And if you want to volunteer to help, and we certainly could use a lot of volunteers because we have so much more space to work with, volunteers at hope.net is our email address for that. 
But you can find all the information on the hope.net website. 
We have everything there, all the email addresses, all the things that we're planning so far. 
All right, let's take this one last call. 
This really will be the last call. 
Person's already speaking. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook over time. 
Go ahead. 
Hello, that's me? 
Yeah, it's you. 
Yes, go ahead. 
Okay. 
No, I just wanted to say, I just wanted to talk about the gentleman earlier who's going to Russia. 
Yes, please. 
Talk some sense into him. 
I just think the State Department should have a policy that people who do things like that, who do very stupid things like that, just leave them there. 
Leave them there. 
Forget about the government. 
Any English-speaking person going to Russia, you're probably going to get beat up on the streets. 
Well, that's what I said. 
Beat up, sacked. 
Yeah, you know, Rebel is very outspoken, and he says what's on his mind, and that's good. 
I like that. 
But in a situation like this, it really could be a bad thing. 
This is going to be a campaign by next week. 
Keep Rebel from going to Russia. 
It's like everybody rooting for him. 
The State Department, they should leave him there. 
Whoever gets caught out there, just leave him there. 
Don't go to get them. 
Just leave him there. 
I don't know about that, but I think we should encourage him to do something better with his vacation time. 
Yeah, don't create a circumstance where this is at the State Department's feet. 
And they have to be accountable to yourself when you're traveling. 
You have to obey the laws. 
And, you know, I should have been thinking faster on my feet. 
Okay, he's been to Newfoundland. 
He hasn't been to Nunavut, I'll bet. 
So, you know, go to Canada and keep going north and go there. 
It's an amazing place. 
Go to a Calouette. 
Just explore. 
I think he was messing with us, to be honest. 
Rebel doesn't mess with you. 
It seems like he's messing with you. 
I hope he was. 
I hope he was, too. 
It seems like he's messing with you, but he's always telling you the truth. 
It's just the truth is weird. 
Your Poland idea, by the way, is the best idea. 
The Poland suggestion is best. 
Poland's an awesome place. 
It really is. 
All right. 
I had a great show. 
Thank you. 
See you again. 
All right. 
Take care. 
All right. 
We had good callers tonight. 
And I want to thank everybody who did call in, and I want to thank those people who did not, because, yeah, because it was your decision, and we agree with that. 
But you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com, with your feedback, ideas, things like that. 
Remember, visit hope.net. 
And, of course, every show is archived on 2600.com slash off the hook. 
24 hours a day, I'm told. 
And remember, take care of your computing machines, and they'll take care of you. 
Oh, what a nice sentiment to end on. 
All right. 
I'm going to hold them to that. 
They'll take care of me, huh? 
Okay. 
Well, with that, that's a lovely thought to end on. 
We're going to sign off for it tonight. 
We'll be back again next week. 
Another exciting edition of Off the Hook at 7 p.m. 
on WBAI and Off the Hook Overtime at 8 p.m. 
on YouTube. 
Again, write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
And for everybody, have a good night.