Due to the earthquake in the area you are calling, your call cannot be completed at this time. 
Please try your call later. 
078-T. 
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. 
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I've got me a cough. 
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
Von Diddley-Bohm put the best in spec, the worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
Von Diddley-Bohm! 
I hope that's understood. 
I hope that's understood. 
And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is Off The Hook. 
Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening. 
Joined tonight by Kyle. 
I say joined tonight by Kyle. 
Yes. 
And by Alex over on Skype Land. 
Good evening. 
Apparently you're in an echo tube of some sort. 
You know, I want to dive right into it. 
Okay, first of all, I had nothing to do with it. 
We're talking about all the leaked documents that are suddenly popping up everywhere that show all kinds of Pentagon classified information. 
I just would like to go around the room, rooms as it were, so that we can right away eliminate any possibility of our connection. 
So I already said I'm clean. 
Kyle? 
Yeah, I'm clean. 
You sure about that? 
You sound a little uncertain. 
I haven't, no, this has nothing to do with me. 
No, you're not clean? 
Get me out of this. 
I don't even know what's going on. 
I'd make a good prosecutor. 
Alex? 
Not it. 
Rob? 
Gala? 
Hmm. 
Silence. 
Okay. 
All right. 
I guess you do have the right. 
Oh, they're not in this week. 
Okay. 
Could they be on a jet flying to Tahiti or something as we speak? 
We'll talk about it afterwards. 
Okay. 
Well, the point is we don't know who did it. 
But we do know that this is driving people crazy. 
What do we know so far? 
Well, these are classified documents which have not actually been authenticated by U.S. 
officials. 
They're everything from briefing slides that map out Ukrainian military positions to assessments of international support for Ukraine and other sensitive topics, including under what circumstances Russian President Vladimir Putin might use nuclear weapons. 
So that's a fun read for anybody. 
We don't know how many documents were leaked. 
Associated Press has viewed approximately 50 documents. 
And some estimates put the total number in the hundreds. 
Now, nobody knows where they came from. 
They were somewhere in the web. 
And where exactly and who had access at that point, we don't know. 
We simply don't know. 
Said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as he banked his fist on the table repeatedly. 
We will continue to investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it. 
There is a really good summation of this on a site called Bellingcat.com, based in the Netherlands. 
From Discord to 4chan, the improbable journey of a U.S. 
intelligence leak. 
In recent days, the U.S. 
Justice Department and Pentagon have been investigating an apparent online leak of sensitive documents, including some that were marked top secret. 
A portion of the documents, which have since been widely covered by the news media, focused on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while others detailed analysis of potential U.K. 
policies on the South China Sea, the activities of a Houthi figure in Yemen. 
The existence of the documents was first reported by the New York Times, after a number of Russian telegram channels shared five photographed files related to the invasion of Ukraine on April 5th, at least one of which has since been found by Bellingcat to be crudely edited. 
Yeah. 
Now these documents seemed to be dated in early March, around the time they were first posted online on Discord, which, in case you don't know, is a messaging platform popular with gamers. 
Keep in mind that date. 
Early March is when they were posted. 
Now, Bellingcat has seen evidence that some documents dated to January could have been posted online even earlier, although it's unclear exactly when. 
Bellingcat also spoke to three members of the Discord community, where the images have been posted, who claim that many more documents have been shared across other Discord servers in recent months. 
As the channels were deleted following the controversy generated by the leaked documents, Bellingcat has not been able to confirm this particular claim. 
But bizarrely, in case this isn't bizarre enough, the Discord channels in which the documents dated from March were posted were focused on the Minecraft computer game and fandom for a Filipino YouTube celebrity. 
They then spread to other sites, such as the image board 4chan, before appearing on Telegram, Twitter, and then major media publishers around the world afterwards took interest. 
Some major media publishers are the last. 
Minecraft had it first, then Telegram, then Twitter. 
Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN that the documents showed the extent of US and NATO involvement in Ukraine, yet one pro-Russian Telegram channel that has been providing updates on the conflict wasn't convinced and said it was possible the documents could be Western disinformation. 
None of the documents that Bellingcat, what we're reading from right now, had seen were scanned. 
None of the documents were scanned, they were all photographed. 
You can see creases on the documents, with items such as a hunter's scope box and some gorilla glue visible in the background of those dated from early March. 
This appears to indicate that at least some of the documents were photographed in the same location. 
The content of the shared documents ranges widely, with some topics including maps of hotspots in Ukraine, such as Bakhmut and Kharkiv, a delivery timetable for Western munitions to Ukraine, as well as maps and catalogs of Ukrainian air defense assets, including a calendar of ammunition expenditures. 
A CIA Operations Center intelligence update marked Top Secret from March 2nd is also included in the images, while much of the information in these documents had previously been publicly available through media reports. 
While it has yet not been possible to uncover the original source of these apparent leaks, it has been possible to trace the spread of the documents over a variety of internet forums in recent months before they were reported by pro-Russian telegram channels and then major media outlets. 
Fascinating story and fascinating accounts of all this. 
In fact, one of the stories being related has to do with somebody getting into an argument on one of these, I believe, on one of the Discord channels and then simply posting a bunch of classified information to back up their argument and say, look, this proves what I was saying. 
And then the rest is history, I guess. 
Alex, you know a thing or two about leaks, about how the military handles these things and what they must be going through right now. 
What are your initial impressions of this? 
This is such a fascinating story on, I think, just so many levels, too. 
The idea of these documents being out there for about a month before anybody really noticed them is just so strange, number one. 
The idea that they're distributed through Discord is so strange, too. 
I mean, ordinarily you would think if somebody had a bucket of top-secret documents that they wanted to get out into the wild, they wouldn't just post them in some kind of random or seemingly random Discord server, right? 
You would probably send them over to WikiLeaks if you wanted to get them published, or the New York Times, AP, Reuters. 
There are lots of other alternative outlets where you could, and very securely as well, share information. 
I mean, there are things. 
You know, 2600 has a SecureDrop instance, right? 
So it allows people to securely share documents with the magazine. 
The New York Times has SecureDrop. 
This is something that I believe our dear friend, whose anniversary unfortunately just recently came up, Aaron Swartz, was instrumental in putting together SecureDrop, right? 
So it allows people with these types of documents to share them securely with media organizations. 
But yet whoever had these documents didn't do that. 
Maybe they didn't trust the system. 
Maybe they weren't technically sophisticated. 
And for whatever reason, they ended up in a Discord channel where gamers go and hang out. 
Another option here, something we saw obviously with the 2016 election, was passing documents of this type over to WikiLeaks. 
And in more recent times, our dear friends over at Distributed Denial of Secrets have become a major repository of leaked documents, particularly with respect to Russia and the Ukraine war. 
So I find it very, very odd that the source of these documents is in Discord. 
The other thing that's interesting about Discord too is, insofar as I can tell, it's a U.S. 
company. 
So that means that the original documents, if they were shared with Discord, once they've been processed by Discord, once they're put out there for anybody to download and then they're downloaded, they're going to lose all or I would say most of the metadata that's associated with those documents. 
It's going to be destroyed or disrupted in some way by virtue of the processing of those images on the Discord servers. 
But Discord, having received the original files themselves, are going to be in possession of all of the metadata if they still have those original files. 
So the metadata associated with these original images is very likely in the possession of Discord. 
I can guarantee that as a San Francisco-based company, they are very likely dealing with FBI and DOJ and search warrants, all kinds of interesting things going on there with respect to the investigation of the source of these leaks. 
So I think a lot is going to shake out over the next few months. 
I wouldn't expect anything to move extraordinarily quickly here, at least with respect to information coming into the public domain. 
But I do think over the next few months, things are going to shake out as this investigation moves forward and we learn a little bit more about the motivations and the aspirations of these particular leaks. 
So you're in traffic or you're in your office, aren't you? 
Yeah. 
I mean, it's just Manhattan. 
It's Manhattan. 
It's the hazards of the city, yes. 
Well, that's something. 
Yeah, it's coming back to life. 
Well, speaking of Discord, this is the part I was looking for before. 
This happened on March 4th, which was about a month before the Telegram and 4chan posts. 
Ten documents were posted in a Discord server called Minecraft Earth Map. 
I guess none of us were monitoring. 
We should have been, but we weren't. 
Minecraft is a popular computer game with millions of players around the world. 
This is the interesting part. 
After a brief spat with another person on the server about Minecraft maps and the war in Ukraine, one of the Discord users replied, here, have some leaked documents attaching ten documents about Ukraine, some of which bore the top secret markings. 
Yeah, I think the nonchalant nature, I mean, first of all, there is going to be a timeframe to reassemble that kind of window from when these documents were created and then when they were ultimately made public. 
The thing that's really interesting in the leak in this platform, particularly in being nonchalant in that way, seems like it could be a form of subterfuge as well. 
You don't know. 
It may be deliberate that it's not on one of the formal organizations that Alex had described. 
That may be something that is deliberate. 
The language just in that phrase, here, have some leaked documents, tells me it's possible it's been through a couple set of hands because if you were leaking them just then, would you describe them as already having been leaked? 
Based on previous involvement in hacker adventures over the decades, sometimes there's a trove of documents that everybody knows about except the authorities, so that when somebody finally is caught up to by the law and they're all in a tizzy about, oh my God, they had this, they had that, people in the hacker community are like, yeah, everyone had that. 
The netcom files come to mind, all sorts of… Curiosities. 
Yeah, the things that people just kind of collect. 
They might not even use it, but it's just something that's floating around. 
Apparently, this was floating around and intelligence governments didn't know about it. 
Now, this is kind of interesting too. 
I like your opinion on this, Alex. 
There was one image in common between the Telegram and 4chan post, which was a map that showed a number of statistics including the cumulative number of KIA, that's killed in action, soldiers on the Russian and Ukrainian sides through the course of the war. 
However, the numbers on these two sources differed, with the first source, 4chan, showing more Russian losses than Ukrainian, and the second source, Donbass-Dvushka, the reverse. 
A closer examination of the second image, with the much higher Ukrainian killed in action numbers, and that was posted on Telegram, shows crude image manipulation. 
As well as the later posting time and far blurrier resolution, the numbers are out of alignment, space between some numbers and letters is also too large to be consistent with the font. 
Therefore, it seems that either the Donbass-Dvushka Telegram account or previous source posted by this account altered the original image to paint the Ukrainian losses as heavier than in the original assessment. 
It seems that there was a leaked document and then somebody crudely tried to alter that leaked document to make it seem more beneficial for the Russian side. 
What do you think about that, Alex? 
Well, it's not surprising at all. 
I mean, I think this modification of the document itself is kind of stupid and silly, especially if you can't match the font right. 
It seems very amateurish, and so I think it's more of a red herring than anything else. 
But what I think is very telling about this, though, is that every single party involved with these leaks seems to have their own theory about how they came about, and they're spinning the information. 
So, for instance, you have Ukraine coming out and saying, well, we think Russia is behind this. 
We think they stole the documents and they somehow got them out there. 
And Russia is saying, well, this could be Western disinformation. 
And they're also saying, and if they're legitimate, then this indicates that we were right about the great extent of NATO and U.S. 
involvement in the Ukraine war with Russia. 
So they're meddling in these affairs, even though Ukraine is not a NATO nation. 
You know, NATO is really, really meddling here. 
And the United States has come out and said, well, we don't know where the hell these things came from. 
So everybody's got their own take and their own version and spin on the facts here. 
But I think that that modification was obviously done by somebody who was pro-Russia but also technically inept. 
I mean, there are much better ways of doing this. 
Or they just had a small monitor and they were in a hurry. 
Well, it definitely points to amateurs as far as trying to make something look better, not really a professional at work here. 
Well, but what is professional to my mind is the fact that we're dealing with photographs of the documents themselves. 
Because you think about how did Reality Winner get caught, right? 
She printed a document from an official printer and using some kind of dot-matching system, they were able to identify that she was the source of this particular leak, right? 
And there was some big controversy with that, right, where she gave these documents over to the intercept, the intercept then posted the documents without protecting their source. 
And she was able to have been identified. 
So it seems like these documents, to my mind, if we're dealing with photographs of documents in some kind of bizarre setting with a Hunter scope and Gorilla Glue in the background too, I mean that's just also very odd. 
But because we're dealing with photographs of documents, it indicates to me that the person who had possession of these documents might have actually printed them from an official government source. 
Because if I were leaking documents, and I never have, I used to have access to classified information. 
I've never, ever removed classified information from any facility. 
But you would imagine that today if someone were doing that, they certainly would not want to have a high-resolution scan of that particular page or they wouldn't want to have any kind of original files that came out of, let's say, you know, a SCIF or anywhere in the intelligence community. 
So taking a picture of the document itself and degrading the resolution of it in some ways is a protective measure to mask whoever printed it, whoever was the source of the actual document itself. 
Of course, there are dangers in taking a picture. 
You could have geolocation data attached to the photograph. 
Well, that's very easy to remove, though. 
I mean, it's easy to turn it off when you're taking a picture, and it's also really easy. 
That's data called EXIF data that's associated with that image. 
And it's very easy to manipulate that data or to remove it from any particular file. 
Yeah, the generations of those photos are going to be really interesting, and not just location, geolocation, but also what type of camera or what type of phone, what type of network carrier, if any of that information was somehow something you were able to surmise. 
And then the geographic location, if you don't have exact coordinates, you could narrow down a lot of that stuff and then piece things together of other knowns. 
And that's, I think, what nobody has a full picture of, and it will take time, is just getting what the facts of the situation are. 
And then they're probably also scrambling to take some vacations and move some people around, because this is affecting a lot of the current activity. 
And I think also the thought about piecing it together will be about motivations. 
What are the motivations at play? 
As Alex kind of pointed out, the professional nature, I think it's, I don't know, one way to describe it, but it's the desirability of this information, the tense moment and high importance in this particular environment. 
There seems to be an agenda, and it seems to focus on Ukraine, because that's all I've heard about are documents related to that. 
And if there are other documents related to other things going on, they haven't been given the same amount of attention. 
So it seems that whoever did expose this is doing it for some kind of a reason. 
Now, why - and maybe, Alex, you can speak to this - why they would store it on a Minecraft Discord chat for months, is that just maybe a safe - I guess it is a safe place, because nobody discovered it, but is that something typical? 
No. 
I think it's really strange. 
I think it's very strange. 
I mean, I would presume that other people would have access to that particular Discord chat, that channel, that server, whatever the hell it was. 
And so the fact that these things are hanging out there, possibly just unnoticed, I think is really, really odd. 
I mean, it's a bunch of 12-year-olds that play Minecraft, right? 
I mean, I know adults play as well, but it's predominantly kids. 
Is it possible that they didn't know what they had, or could this be somebody who saw it in his dad's briefcase or something? 
Well, maybe. 
I think there's any number of reasons about how you could explain this. 
I don't necessarily know. 
But if we're thinking that this was some kind of intentional act, then perhaps an explanation would be that whoever was behind this uploaded these files to some random Discord server where people aren't necessarily going to understand the import or the significance of these files. 
Then after a certain period of time has passed, maybe they understand how Discord works and how they discard log files or information about who uploaded what when. 
After a certain period of time has passed and they know that that information has been erased, then all of a sudden that information is put back into the public domain by another emissary of this particular information, another conduit. 
At that point, they can then go back and say, well, I found this on a Discord server. 
And it checks out because there it is on this old Discord server. 
But the metadata that would be associated with who uploaded this file might be gone, might be erased. 
So maybe somebody has some inside knowledge about how Discord handles data retention. 
I don't know. 
That's a theory. 
I really have no idea. 
But hiding in plain sight and allowing it to be sort of found eventually buys time for someone and is a way of keeping it so that it's available and you can disassociate. 
And I guess they're able to get an escape plan or something. 
I mean, just basically distance themselves from the actual distribution method. 
It's one hell of a story. 
It's really something. 
It's interesting. 
I don't know. 
Maybe I'll start playing Minecraft now finally because I didn't know there were all kinds of hidden treasures like this that you could find. 
But let's predict. 
Alex, do you think they're going to catch this person? 
If so, what kind of a time frame and any hints as to what methods they might use? 
Well, they're definitely going to be using search warrants, subpoenas, interviews, trying to assess what was going on with Discord servers, any kind of data that they have that would lead back to who these individuals were. 
But the other aspect of this, and I think this is also something that Bellingcat had covered, which is that there seemed to have been way more documents out there that were shared on a separate Discord server or something called this Thug Shaker Central that used to be run by somebody by the name of Vaki. 
So I guess the Thug Shaker Central server was originally named after its original founder, one member of the server with the username Vaki. 
And this guy, Vaki, apparently knows or claims to know the identity or the person who was the original source of these leaked documents on the Discord servers, and that there were many other documents, perhaps, that were shared on this Thug Shaker Central server. 
So all of this, I think, maybe it doesn't make sense because somebody who, or maybe the parties behind this have created such a smokescreen here that they don't want any of these dots to connect. 
What I think here is you get this weird Thug Shaker Central thing, which has like 20 people talking about racist tropes and memes and sharing strange conservative things. 
And oddly enough, they're also into Orthodox Christianity in this channel. 
And then you combine that with Minecraft and then 4chan and Telegram. 
So it becomes so obfuscated that the timeline itself doesn't make any sense. 
Does any of it make sense, Alex? 
The whole thing is so baffling sometimes. 
What does make sense, though, is like what I said earlier, the fact that we're dealing with photographs of the documents themselves. 
That's what makes sense to me. 
That's what makes me think that we're dealing with something that has authenticity here. 
And I think the fact that the U.S. 
government is taking it so seriously means that these documents were authentic and that if you think about who would have had access to these particular types of documents, you're probably talking about somebody who works in the intelligence community, either a contractor or an employee, because these documents were at the TS level, the top secret level, and I think some of them were TSSCI level or sensitive compartmented information and go up into higher levels. 
I think some of it was signals intelligence. 
And so I think we might be dealing with somebody who has a very high security clearance, access to lots of documents in the intelligence community, and that's a very wide range of people, too. 
So I think back to the time that I had spent in the intelligence community and I had TSSCI and there were things, big document repositories, something where you could look at intelligence from lots of different sources and examine it, and that was by design, right? 
And so obviously what you're going to be doing if you're the U.S. 
government is going to be tracking and tracing who touched any one of these documents, who accessed them, when were they accessed, and there's going to be data trails and audit trails associated with who was accessing and touching and printing those documents. 
Yeah, they have a different side of all of those documents and can, like you said, authenticate and verify what was published when, and that's kind of what I mean, that little bit of a time frame, that narrow time frame from their publication, which the investigation side of it will probably have ready access to all the details of in whatever form is appropriate and so forth. 
So that's all going to be something that is part of the picture, the overall picture that they're going to be building and that we're talking about and describing here. 
Well, it'll be interesting to see how this is dealt with. 
I understand it's already had an effect on Ukrainian plans for military action in the region. 
If certain things are let out of the bag, well, obviously you have to change your plans and there's quite a bit of that going on right now. 
So it's going to be interesting the next couple of weeks, I think. 
Alex, did you have something in closing? 
Yeah, I think this has a very negative impact on the U.S. 
intelligence community and in particular the sources that it has in Russia because a lot of these documents indicate that we were able to identify early on the moves that the Russian military were going to make and then relay that information over to Ukraine. 
That information coming out of the bag and being publicly known and obviously now is known to Russia is going to have them hunting for whoever was relaying information, whoever is the source of those leaks, and they're going to take extra special precautions to make sure that their future planning procedures do not involve any unnecessary persons. 
It's going to be much, much harder, I think, to collect intelligence about Russia's moves. 
So I see this as very much harming the United States and also providing an advantage to Russia. 
Well, maybe look towards the Republicans. 
Just kidding, or am I? 
The most interesting account I was able to find about this, again, comes from Bellingcat.com, from Discord to 4chan, The Improbable Journey of a U.S. 
Intelligence Leak. 
Worth reading. 
Speaking of leaking intelligence or maybe just dropping intelligence, ahead of President Joe Biden's speech today in Northern Ireland, local police lost a document that detailed sensitive security information related to the president's visit. 
A local resident is believed to have found the document on a street in Belfast. 
A local law enforcement official confirmed the authenticity of the paper on the condition of anonymity. 
Not sure why, but okay, fine. 
The document contained names of Belfast police and postings, but nothing related to the Secret Service's operations, which oversees the president's security during foreign trips or its security plans. 
So that's a bit of fun, losing a document on a street. 
I mean, that's girl-fashioned incompetence, I guess. 
Okay, turning it a little bit lighter, I had an interesting conversation over the past week with Google Bard. 
How's that going? 
It's going okay. 
We had a rough spot, but I think we patched it up and we've been on good terms. 
For those who don't know, Google Bard is yet another one of these artificial intelligence creatures that you can have conversations with. 
And since you use your Google account to talk to it, it remembers you. 
I was asking it because sometimes I forget about the magazine that I edit. 
I wanted to know how long we've been publishing, and it told me. 
It said 2600. 
The Hacker Quarterly has been publishing since 1983. 
Well, okay, I can tell you 1984 is when we started, but whatever. 
I guess we were planning it in 1983. 
That must be what you meant, right, Bard? 
It was founded by a group of teenagers in New York City. 
Yeah, we weren't teenagers. 
We were in our 20s. 
Yeah. 
Who told you we were teenagers? 
Including Emanuel Goldstein, who is still the magazine's editor-in-chief. 
Okay, thank you for that. 
The magazine is named after the 2600 Hz tone that is used to access pay phones without inserting a coin. 
Yeah, not quite right. 
You're describing a red box. 
2600 Hz was used with blue boxes. 
It's a whole other thing. 
No time to get into it right now. 
Continuing, 2600 covers a wide range of topics related to hacking, including security, privacy, technology, and culture. 
It often features articles written by hackers themselves. 
Who else is going to write them? 
As well as interviews with security experts and other thought leaders. 
Thought leaders? 
That's some jargon. 
That's a buzzword, if there ever was one. 
I don't think I've ever heard that before. 
Oh, yeah, we're all about our thought leaders here. 
I want that on a business card. 
Emanuel Goldstein, thought leader. 
Thought leader. 
Yeah. 
The magazine has been influential in the hacker community, and it has been credited with helping to popularize the term hacker. 
Okay, a couple of things here. 
I would hope that we're somewhat influential in the hacker community being a hacker magazine coming out in this period of time, but we had nothing to do with the popularization of the term hacker. 
It's because the term existed that we became a hacker magazine. 
What we have been doing is defending the term from ignoramai who misuse it and refer to every instance of theft and crime as a hack. 
That's not the case. 
Okay, go ahead, Alex. 
I think the plural of ignoramus is actually ignoramuses. 
Well, you would know. 
I think it's Greek as opposed to Latin. 
I apologize for my ignorance on the phrase. 
Ignoramus, or actually I think it comes from maybe the verb, but I think, yeah, anyhow. 
Can we just say dumbasses? 
How about that? 
Does that work? 
We can say that. 
All right. 
Moving along. 
In 2012, 2600 was the subject of a documentary film called 2600, The Hacker Quarterly. 
Wait. 
The first I've heard of this. 
That got greenlit? 
No, seriously, Kyle. 
The first I heard of it was through Google Bard. 
So apparently there's a documentary film called 2600, The Hacker Quarterly. 
The film was directed by Nadia Halgren, and it explores the history of the magazine and the hacker community. 
And we'll get back to this in a second, but just finishing up about the magazine. 
2600 is available in print and online. 
The print edition is published quarterly, and the online edition is updated regularly. 
Okay, they're both quarterly because it's the same magazine. 
And the final sentence here, another surprise, the magazine is available in both English and Spanish. 
Again, that's news to me because we don't translate it into Spanish, so if somebody out there is doing it, please share it with us because we'd love to have it available in Spanish as well. 
Great idea, but thank you, Google Bard, for your creative recounting of the facts here. 
So I immediately asked Google Bard to tell me more about the film, 2600, The Hacker Quarterly, and it was very eager to comply. 
2600, The Hacker Quarterly is a 2012 documentary film about the magazine 2600, The Hacker Quarterly, and the hacker community. 
The film was directed by Nadia Hallgren and produced by Alex Gibney. 
The film explores the history of 2600 from its founding in 1983. 
Yeah, Google Bard's going to stick to that. 
To the present day, it also interviews a number of people associated with the magazine, including its editor-in-chief, Emanuel Goldstein, and several prominent hackers. 
The film was well-received by critics who praised it for its insightful look into the hacker community. 
It was also a commercial success, grossing over $1 million at the box office. 
You know, sometimes we just get so caught up in our lives that we don't realize that there's a documentary film carrying our name out there, making money and getting high marks from critics. 
My face is red with shame for not even knowing about this 11 years afterwards. 
2600, The Hacker Quarterly is an important film that provides a unique perspective on the hacker community. 
It's a must-see for anyone interested in hacking technology or the history of the Internet. 
I would say it's a must-see for anyone that puts out the damn magazine and should know that there's a film with the same name. 
Here are some reviews. 
They actually have reviews. 
A fascinating and thought-provoking look into the world of hackers. 
That's the New York Times. 
A must-see for anyone interested in the history of the Internet. 
That's the Washington Post. 
A timely and important film that sheds light on a misunderstood community. 
That's the Los Angeles Times. 
I looked up every single one of those quotes and could not find them anywhere. 
These are completely made up. 
Google barred, made these up, attributed them to newspapers and is passing this off as fact. 
Before we start freaking out about artificial intelligence and how it's taking over the world, there's a lot of lying going on here. 
Unless I'm completely off the mark and there is a film out there that somehow was very popular that we never heard about that carries our name. 
This is the thing they describe as hallucinating. 
It's almost as if you asked it to write a story about a movie review or write a movie review with those. 
That's not what I asked. 
You didn't at all. 
In fact, it volunteered information. 
I asked about the magazine. 
It volunteered information about the film. 
Then I asked about the film. 
It gave me all these details. 
It never said this is my imagination or I'm on LSD right now. 
It basically just related all this as if it were true. 
I continued to ask more questions. 
When was 2600 the Hacker Quarterly released? 
Where did it play? 
Came right back. 
2600 the Hacker Quarterly was released in 2012. 
It was first shown at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 22nd, 2012. 
It was then released in theaters on July 27th, 2012. 
The film was also released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 16th, 2012. 
Just making updates. 
The film played in a number of theaters across the United States. 
It also played in theaters in Canada, Europe, and Asia. 
Here are some of the theaters where the film played. 
United States, AMC Lowe's, Lincoln Square 13, New York City, Arclight Hollywood, Los Angeles, Alamo Draft House Cinema, Austin, Texas. 
In Canada, Scotia Bank Theater in Toronto, Cineplex Odeon Square One in Mississauga, Ontario. 
In Europe, the Odeon Leicester Square in London, Cinemaxx Berlin, Pathé by Grinnell in Paris. 
In Asia, the Golden Village Grand in Singapore, Cathay Cineplex in Hong Kong, and Cinema Paradiso in Tokyo. 
Okay, and just to kind of wrap this up here. 
Who was featured in the documentary film 2600 The Hacker Quarterly? 
Bard says the documentary film 2600 The Hacker Quarterly featured a number of people associated with the magazine 2600 The Hacker Quarterly and the hacker community. 
Some of the people featured in the film include Emanuel Goldstein, the editor-in-chief of 2600, Kevin Mitnick, a former hacker who was convicted of computer fraud and sentenced to five years in prison, John Draper, a former phone freak who was known as Captain Crunch, Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and blogger who was a vocal advocate for digital rights, Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and author who is considered one of the world's leading experts on computer security. 
The film also features interviews with a number of other hackers, including members of the Loft Heavy Hackers, yeah, Loft Heavy Hackers, that's their new name, and the cult of the dead cow. 
And finally, what production company released the documentary 2600 The Hacker Quarterly? 
The production company that released the documentary was Jigsaw Productions. 
It's a documentary film production company founded by Alex Gibney. 
The company has produced a number of award-winning documentaries, including Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Going Clear, Scientology, and The Prison of Belief. 
These guys actually exist, and I'd be honored to have a film made by them about us, but I think they'd be as puzzled as we are right now as to where this came from. 
But the very last question I asked was, where can I see the documentary 2600 The Hacker Quarterly? 
And listeners, take note, you can watch the documentary 2600 The Hacker Quarterly on a number of different platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, Google Play Movies and TV, YouTube, and Vudu, whatever the hell that is. 
And that's the story of our feature film documentary that we are only just learning about right now. 
Now, some people have said, could they be mixing this up with Freedom Downtime, the documentary film that you actually did make? 
Yeah, but that came out in, what, 2000? 
And that did not have any of the elements that were described here, other than a couple of the same people, but certainly not the production team, and certainly not the success with the box office or the places it played. 
So, Alex, what does this tell you about artificial intelligence? 
You know, it just wings it whenever it doesn't have the facts? 
I think the trick there is in the name, right? 
It's artificial. 
It's just making things up. 
I mean, it's totally crazy, right? 
Well, it's fictitious. 
Fictitious intelligence, basically, is what it is. 
Yeah. 
I mean, look, I think it's obviously going to evolve, and this issue with quotes and making things up is going to have, I think, stronger and clearer parameters around it, because this seems to be one of the most common criticism of these large-language, GPT-type AI systems. 
But, yeah, I mean, look, I think they're generally untrustworthy. 
You can't expect them to go out and pull fantastic citations for you without any errors whatsoever. 
I think that that's going to take some time, but the utility in other areas, I think, is beyond question. 
You know, in kind of formulating and outlining thoughts and arguments and, you know, things like collecting information, providing a narrative where you wouldn't otherwise have one, it's really kind of fascinating. 
Well, my question is, if it's so fanciful in making stuff up like this, and yet another feature that is described is, like, creating a code or putting the finishing touches on some algorithm or function or math problem, how do you check a math problem? 
I mean, are people just going to trust this? 
I mean, or is it getting it right all the time just because it's math and it's going to always obey that? 
I think math is relatively easy for a computer to get right. 
Right, right, but if this is the system that can't be trusted in certain scenarios with language, but then you ask it something with natural language about something scientific, how do you trust it in the same breath? 
What I'm thinking here is, you know, all the kids thinking, wow, I can write a term paper now with this thing, all the professors and teachers living in fear of people doing just that. 
Well, here's an example of how what you get is not necessarily correct in any sense, and you'd better not rely on this to write your paper for you because it's just going to spin some tall tales and you're going to be exposed for the fraud you are if you try to pass it off as your own work. 
Yeah, I think so, but I think to Kyle's point, I think people are just going to get more and more used to this. 
I mean, even just the idea now of searching for information and having to click through and piece together bits and data points from five or six different websites to try to understand a story or something, almost seems antiquated in a sense, right? 
Now we've gotten used to this technology being there that's going to provide some kind of coherent narrative with structure that answers any question that we had. 
Now, prior to that, what did we do? 
You quote-unquote Googled it. 
This is how Google became a verb, right? 
And now you go to Google, right, and it just seems like a goddamn cesspit in a lot of ways to me because you search for something, you have half a page of sponsored ads, and then you have a whole bunch of websites that have obviously been using some kind of search engine optimization technique to get there. 
So that first page of search results isn't as grand and clean and useful. 
But you know what, Alex? 
You can tell that that's happening. 
You can say, wow, this is an ad. 
This person doesn't seem to know what they're talking about. 
What does the next one say? 
You can sort of weigh out what you trust and what you don't trust. 
What I don't see is just pure fiction being taken as gospel because you still have the ability to make the choice. 
Here, though, it's presented as fact when it's completely fabricated. 
I can't find this fabrication on Google. 
I don't know where it drew it from. 
Well, the fabrication aspect of it, so I think that's its biggest problem. 
It just tends to make things up. 
I think we're going to have guardrails around that. 
I think that's going to get better. 
But right now, yeah, I wouldn't trust it, absolutely. 
But look, I would guarantee that you'll probably get more accurate results if you're searching for information from something like ChatGPT than you would clicking on some of those sponsored ads that Google is providing you. 
I mean some of them are also known to be malicious, not necessarily to push out malware but to push you to false or fraudulent sites where you might end up with a remote access fraud or credentials harvester or something like that. 
So I think when one system becomes untrustworthy, another one is going to step into that particular void and will exploit that lack of trust. 
I think people should cook something that they get with a recipe and find out if it's actually good. 
That's the test. 
And throw a cup of arsenic. 
The machines have taste. 
Who's going to lie about this? 
Who knows who's going to lie about it regarding food? 
Okay, final story for tonight involves National Public Radio, our relatives on the FM dial. 
NPR will no longer be posting fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. 
In explaining his decision, NPR cited Twitter's decision to first label the network as state-affiliated media, the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China, and other autocratic countries. 
The decision by Twitter last week took the public radio network off guard. 
When queried by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allen, Twitter owner Elon Musk asked how NPR functioned. 
Musk allowed that he might have gotten it wrong. 
Twitter then revised its label on NPR's account to government-funded media. 
The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading given that NPR is a private non-profit company with editorial independence and it receives less than 1% of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 
You know what, if you say NPR is government-funded, you'd have to say WBAI is government-funded because we get a small amount too from Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or we have in the past, and this is obviously some kind of agenda on the part of Elon Musk to basically label, as the right wing has done, label NPR and other non-commercial radio networks as leftist, as having some kind of agenda, as being woke, all these things that they love to harp on. 
But in actuality, it's the same as it's always been. 
You know, the one test you can run to see if something is government-supported or government-funded. 
Generally, they would support the government, wouldn't they? 
So when Trump was in power, was NPR any different? 
Or did they report pretty much the same way they report now? 
If not, then it sounds like they're independent. 
It sounds like, yeah, the money might come, part of the money might come from the government, but they are independent, and it's a real disservice to label them this way. 
Any thoughts, Alex? 
You know, I want to know, how is the BBC labeled on Twitter? 
BBC is going through something similar, because I don't know what they're labeled as right now. 
I think they're not labeled at the moment. 
But I think they had the same label attached at one point. 
And I don't think Elon Musk understood how BBC worked. 
BBC works with a licensing fee. 
Now, you can call that a tax, but it's more publicly supported than government-supported. 
They're independent of the government. 
At least, most of it is. 
There might be certain parts, like World Service. 
I'm not exactly sure what the difference is. 
But some have commercials, some don't have commercials. 
But it's the public that funds it. 
It's not controlled by the government. 
The government doesn't tell them, you have to cover this story. 
Although, they do cover things in a particular way, thinking of the recent royal funeral, they dressed in a particular way, they reported the news in a particular style. 
So you would have a better case, I think, with them. 
But I still think you would be wrong to label them as state-affiliated or government-sponsored, or anything like that. 
And they're not labeled that way. 
I'm looking at it right now. 
NPR does have that label on Twitter as being government-funded media, but BBC is not. 
It doesn't have any indication of government funding there. 
And right after this story came out, Elon Musk tweeted, defund NPR. 
So I think you know where he's coming from. 
Or he's trying to be clever, saying, okay, well, if they're not funded by the government, then defund them and see how they react to that. 
But again, it's a very tiny amount. 
The remark I made on Twitter a while ago was, well, if you say that, I think it's 0.01% of their income comes from a government grant, you have to say that Fox News is funded by MyPillow, because they certainly get more of a percentage of money from them than NPR gets from the federal government. 
Hey, we are out of time. 
Boy, it flew by. 
But we are going to continue the conversation over on YouTube at 8 o'clock. 
Just go to Channel 2600, or click on the link at the 2600.com webpage, and it'll take you right there. 
You can call us. 
You can participate in various ways, or just listen to more such dialogue. 
We will be back next week at 7 p.m. 
here on WBAI. 
And you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
Good night, everyone. 
  And welcome to everybody over on YouTube as we begin another edition of Off the Hook Overtime. 
Emmanuel over here. 
Kyle, did you make it? 
Of course. 
All right. 
And Alex over on Skyplan, did you make it? 
I did indeed. 
Okay. 
Since we don't have Rob and Gila this week, we have no way of actually knowing we're on YouTube. 
But I think it's going to work. 
I have faith. 
It's worked all the past few weeks. 
And if for whatever reason we don't make it onto YouTube, I'm sure somebody will tell us. 
Our phone number is 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK. 
Yeah, I gave the phone number out well before somebody actually called. 
So how about that? 
Operators are standing by. 
Are they? 
Well, you're the operator. 
You're the one who picks up the phone. 
All right. 
Kind of lounging. 
All right. 
Is it ringing yet? 
Not as of yet. 
Okay. 
Sometimes it rings before we even get on the air or start this particular segment. 
Did anyone have anything additional to add to the whole NPR conversation or anything else we were talking about? 
Not the previous hour. 
No, not necessarily. 
I think, you know, stuff will come up just naturally. 
But I think it does bear mentioning that we are, in fact, on YouTube. 
I just checked it. 
Oh, thank you very much. 
That's good to know. 
Yeah, you know, the NPR thing is upsetting because it just feels like there's somebody with an agenda labeling things that he doesn't like in a particular way and just trying to push an agenda. 
Yeah, it's really petty and, I don't know, if that's big moves, then okay, you can have that. 
But it's wrong. 
Like, it puts them in a category of organizations that are wholly distinct from the kind of reporting. 
No, there is a difference between, you know, state-controlled media that, you know, changes its tune based on what they are ordered to do by a dictator or by a totalitarian regime and something like NPR or Pacifica. 
It's completely different. 
And if you're going to categorize things, get it right. 
I understand. 
I've heard their critique, but it's technically kind of, it's misinformed. 
It's not really based. 
There's no basis, really. 
I mean, it's indirectly been associated. 
It's been accused of that a lot in popular culture. 
And I think that's more what this is, is latching onto that and showing that you have some kind of, I don't know, influence. 
Explain to me why Fox News simply can't be categorized right-wing media, because that's what it is. 
Can anybody argue that point? 
It's absolutely right-wing media. 
Or hate group. 
Yeah. 
Well, okay. 
You see, that's where you get into some, you know, rather turbulent territory. 
Well, you're listing different things you could label. 
Look, they're going to say they're not, you know, they're not promoting hate speech. 
And we'll argue that they are. 
But they can't say they're not right-wing. 
They can't say that. 
Who can say that Fox News is not right-wing media? 
Well, they would enjoy that. 
Yeah. 
Who cares if they enjoy it or not? 
The point is, this is an accurate label, but it's not being applied to them. 
Why is that? 
They're just getting the blanket moniker of media, you know, something like that. 
But you're not willing to give that to NPR. 
You have to put some kind of asterisk next to them and say, oh, look, the government is controlling them, when the government is absolutely not controlling them. 
Could you even say that NPR is left-wing media, then, if that scenario played out? 
You could say that, but it's a lot harder to prove it than it is to prove that Fox News is right-wing. 
The reason for that is because, you know, left-wing has particular meaning, particular points that NPR does not blindly follow. 
They report things. 
And oftentimes you hear people with a left-wing philosophy being heard or represented, but it doesn't mean the network itself has those particular values. 
It can become unbearable from administration to administration, especially the press corps, White House press corps, following around George W. 
Bush for, you know, all of that invasion or whatnot. 
I mean, it was pretty nauseating after a while. 
And so that's where I would say, like, is it really that left-wing? 
Like, I don't know. 
It's more left-wing. 
They have different personalities. 
It's more left-wing than Fox. 
Okay. 
But that's not hard to do. 
Again, you're not, yeah, you're not qualifying very much. 
Maybe Pacifica, you could say there, I mean, Pacifica is most certainly more left-wing than anything else. 
Although there are some ultra-left people on Pacifica who you can see coming around the corner with the right ring because that's what happens. 
What is in the label anyway? 
And, like, those terms themselves are in different circles taking on different meanings, even to this day, you know, at the moment to moment. 
But there are dog whistles. 
And when you say certain things, it implies something else. 
And that's what Elon Musk is doing. 
So he basically enjoys the attention. 
We have a phone call? 
Okay. 
Yes. 
I wouldn't have babbled for so long if I knew we had a phone call. 
Oh, no, no, no. 
I didn't want to interrupt. 
Okay. 
No, no, they're not going to be fine. 
Okay. 
It appears they're already speaking before I even introduced them. 
But let me try again. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Hi, Emmanuel. 
Calling from Maker Faire or, you know, a Maker Space, a Hacker Space. 
Okay, because if you're calling from Maker Faire, you'd be calling from the past because there are no more Maker Faires. 
It's a Maker Space, Hacker Space. 
I don't know what you're called, but we have some guests. 
We have some guests here. 
We have Leo. 
Say hello. 
You remember Leo? 
Hello. 
Hello, Leo. 
And we have Logic X. 
Hello, Logic X. 
Hey, how's it going? 
How you doing? 
Great. 
Now, X389214. 
Oh, you can't expect us to remember that. 
That's a ham radio signal. 
Anyway, we are here, and I really like it. 
I've never been to this. 
I met these guys at the 2600 meeting. 
Oh, I know Leo already, but I met the other guys at the 2600 meeting. 
Wait, there is no 2600. 
Oh, you met them at the 2600 meeting? 
Oh, we should go. 
Yeah, last Friday. 
Okay. 
How was the meeting? 
The meeting was good. 
Good to hear. 
The meeting was great. 
I liked it. 
Well, that's awesome. 
I do hope to make it to one of them. 
Yeah, it sounds like you're connected with a good crew there. 
Yeah, definitely. 
What's going on? 
Yeah, what are you guys up to? 
What are you doing? 
Are you revealing leaked documents or anything like that? 
Yeah, have you seen any crumpled papers? 
I sound awfully busy. 
There's a lot of activity going on there. 
Emmanuel, hold on. 
I'm going to pair you with a Bluetooth speaker so I can hear you better. 
Yeah, don't let me interfere with whatever you're doing. 
No, no, no, no. 
Is this going to be painful? 
I'm going to pair it with a Bluetooth speaker so that's what it calls. 
All right. 
Oh, I have to do this. 
Take your time. 
Our time is your time. 
No, okay. 
Never mind. 
So anyway, we're here at the Hacker Fair or Hacker Space. 
Yeah, get it right. 
Yeah, the Hacker Space. 
Maker Space. 
Is it a Maker Space or a Hacker Space? 
You've got to make up your mind. 
They'll tell you. 
It's a Maker Space or a Hacker Space. 
It's Fat Cat Fab Labs. 
It's the one in Manhattan. 
It's Maker Space. 
We call it Hacker Space because we're old school. 
Okay. 
All right. 
All right. 
You can do that. 
That's clear. 
Do you know this place? 
I've never seen this place before. 
What was the name of it again? 
Anyone? 
No, I asked you. 
What's the name of it? 
It's Fat Cat Fab Lab. 
Okay, yeah. 
I've heard of it. 
Oh, yeah. 
Okay. 
Yeah, I like it. 
We used to park our van next to Maker Faire. 
It reminds me of like a mini Hope Conference. 
Okay. 
No, that's a good thing. 
And there's people doing Linux. 
You know what I like about Linux? 
I'm hearing about Linux. 
It's like the terminal, like an old terminal, like, you know, the text terminal. 
Tell me you've used Linux before now. 
I never used Linux. 
I'm just saying. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
Well, you know, I'm a bit envious because there is so much ahead of you now. 
Well, I mean, I went to the 2600 meeting and people were running Linux and it looked like, it reminded me of terminals from like the 90s, like the text terminals. 
Yes. 
You've been asking about those lately, too. 
Yeah, now here they are. 
You know, now here they are. 
But I can't, I mean, I could do it, put it on my computer, but I'd have to choose. 
I mean, it'd be kind of a pain because I'd have to partition my hard drive and do this and do all sorts of things. 
Wait a minute. 
You could do it in newer versions. 
What operating system? 
I mean, there's lots of, ask around there. 
Yeah. 
I don't want to get into the particulars, but there's, there's all kinds of ways to, to have fun with it. 
Okay. 
Now, getting to what I want to talk about. 
I am in Bayside, Queens in the 718 area code. 
There's a couple of exchanges and all of them that used to do 9901 used to say the central office and the 5DS. 
So now they all go to this with, we, the number you've reached cannot be, it's not in service, but we can help you find another list. 
All the exchanges in Bayside, Queens do that. 
Okay. 
Remember when I told you that? 
I remember you telling us this every week. 
And also some of the 212-279 exchange, the old WBARC, now it just lists the area codes that it's served. 
We serve area codes 212-929 and 347 or something like that. 
That's it. 
They don't say the exchanges that it lists and all. 
It just says the area codes it lists. 
What a disappointment. 
Yeah. 
It's being relegated. 
Yeah, there's all sorts of 3D printers and laser cutters here. 
I wonder if there's any other, you know. 
That's awesome. 
Yeah, they're going to come here every week. 
I'll bet you'll never leave. 
Well, actually, I can't because I'm not a member. 
Ah. 
You should become a member. 
Support them. 
Yeah, but that's true. 
I should. 
That's true. 
Yeah. 
Maybe I'll bring my portable CB radio and, you know, tinker with that and, you know, the one with the little rubber antenna. 
Anything that you want to fix or, you know, explore, by all means. 
That's the place. 
Yeah, that's what it's for. 
That's what it's for. 
We're trying to find out somebody who stole an electric bicycle. 
We have their phone number, but we're trying to find out what their last name is, but here at the Hackerspace, we found out it's an AT&T cell phone. 
Okay. 
Those are very exotic. 
They are everywhere. 
Rebel, I know you mentioned you had an electric bicycle. 
This wouldn't be your electric bicycle that got stolen, would it? 
Actually, it would be. 
Oh, dear. 
I'm so sorry. 
And actually, I lent this person. 
I've known this person for a couple of years. 
Wait, you know who it is, then? 
You know who it is? 
Well, I know. 
I actually don't. 
I mean, I kind of have the first name, but it's a friend of a friend, so it's kind of a long story, and, you know, it's like, you know, kind of, you know, you thought you trusted the person, and, you know, and then now he's, you know, I know the first name. 
I know where he lives and first name Queens. 
Let me tell you about people, Rebel. 
People will always let you down. 
You got to keep a wary eye out whenever you have that person in your life. 
That's all I got to say. 
Alex has some advice for you, I believe. 
Alex, go ahead. 
Oh, okay. 
Yes. 
One question, one bit of advice. 
What does this number relate to, this AT&T number? 
This is not the number of the person that you stole. 
There's an AT&T, yeah. 
It is? 
It's an AT&T phone, because we looked it up here at the Hackerspace. 
Okay. 
I know the first name. 
What does it have to do with the crime? 
What is that? 
What does it have to do with any of the circumstances? 
Well, trying to find out where the person is and where he lives and things like that, but if I turn, I don't know, social engineering, AT&T, or... 
You have to come into possession of this phone number and associate it with the electric bike. 
I don't understand what you said. 
But I... 
So I could find out what's going on and where the person lives and what his last name is. 
What Alex has asked is, how did you get the phone number in the first place? 
Where is it coming from? 
From my friend. 
From my friend. 
He's a friend of a friend, so my friend gave me his number. 
Oh, okay. 
So here's a little trick with numbers. 
I don't know if you've tried this or not, but very often people with cell phones will have things like WhatsApp profiles that will have their actual name on them. 
So if you add him... 
No, it isn't an actual... 
Let him finish. 
Let him finish, Rubble. 
Let him finish here. 
Yeah, let him finish. 
If you add him as a contact in your phone, if you just add, put it, you know, whatever random name you want to call it, call it Emanuel Goldstein on your phone. 
Hey. 
And then you go into WhatsApp and you look for that contact, you may see a photograph of that person. 
You might see his name associated with it. 
Or perhaps in Telegram. 
Or perhaps in, you know, Signal. 
But, you know, I would take a look on WhatsApp first. 
That is a valuable tip, Alex. 
Yeah, I know. 
That might be the most helpful thing. 
Maybe I'll try that. 
I could try that. 
And if he has Twitter or Instagram or... 
Uh-huh, uh-huh. 
Well, go for WhatsApp first to basically try to do a reverse lookup on that telephone number because he might be on a mobile device that's registered on WhatsApp with that number. 
Now, Alex, what you just told Rebel is very handy in tracking somebody down, possibly tracking somebody down. 
What would you say to people who don't want to be tracked down to avoid falling into that trap? 
Obviously, this is something they overlooked. 
Yeah. 
Oh, absolutely. 
I mean, this is a very rudimentary but effective technique that people very often overlook, right? 
If you want to connect a phone number to a name, that's a very good way of doing it. 
But if you don't want that to happen, don't use your real name associated with that telephone number on a WhatsApp profile or just don't associate your phone number with a WhatsApp profile because it's... 
I don't think there's a setting where you can't be looked up. 
I could be wrong, but I'm not sure if you have the ability to change those types of privacy settings. 
Why don't you guys have WhatsApp so that we can see each other like I can put it on my WhatsApp and when you call... 
Well, I think you just explained it. 
I think Alex just explained why we don't. 
Okay. 
Well, now, the thing is that when I call this person, it says, The party you've called is not accepting incoming calls. 
That was something like that. 
And I recognize that recording from when my friend, who I know, who knows this person, had the same recording a couple of years ago. 
And sometimes it would be, I guess, I don't know if he's turning off his phone or because I call the same number and he'd answer. 
So I don't know what that means. 
Maybe the way to block calls temporarily or something or... 
All kinds of things can happen with cell phones. 
Kyle, you were having an episode with your phone where it was blocking you and then it wasn't blocking you when you're trying to access your voicemail. 
Yeah, I had a phone number forwarding and it was disrupting a lot of the functionality that I was expecting with my voice and message system. 
Yeah, so that happens all the time. 
I call from different phone numbers and get the same thing. 
Really? 
But then you get something different. 
No, you don't get something different. 
You get the same kind of recording. 
The party you have called is not wanting to accept something like that. 
Well, you know, one trick that I like to do is basically, I'm not going to tell you how to do this, but figure out how to forge your caller ID, which is pretty simple. 
And then you call from that number itself. 
And sometimes that gets a different response. 
Sometimes you wind up writing their voicemail, too, because some people don't really think it through and they say, yeah, it'd be convenient for me not to have to enter my password from my phone. 
So if I'm calling from my phone, just log me into my voicemail without asking for a password. 
However, if somebody basically emulates your phone number on caller ID and then calls that, they're going to get into your voicemail. 
Right, I see what you're saying. 
That's kind of tricky. 
And now I just want to ask Alex a question. 
They said that because I lent the guy my bike, I said, oh, yes, you want to go up to the down the block and then, you know, you can use it. 
And then he just never came back. 
They said that's a simple thing because you let him use your bike and it's not a fact. 
Wait, wait, wait, wait. 
Hold on a second. 
You lent him your bike. 
He rode down the street and he just got smaller and smaller and didn't come back. 
And that's what this is about. 
Right. 
OK, I don't think I don't think lending someone your bike means that they can keep it forever. 
But, Alex, you're the lawyer. 
Tell me if that's true. 
Yeah, I mean, it's theft, right? 
It's when you have the intention to keep it. 
All right. 
So, you know, if he has the intention of, let's say, bringing it back in an hour or something like that, you know, arguably it wouldn't wouldn't be theft. 
But if he had the intention to keep it and you didn't authorize him to do it, it's not technically a civil thing. 
Just because you gave him authorization to ride the bike doesn't mean you gave him authorization to keep the bike. 
Like, it's it's is that what the police told you, Rebel, that this is a civil thing? 
That's what they did with the the people who I need to complain to the precinct. 
Yeah, they're wrong about that. 
They just don't feel like helping. 
I'm sorry. 
What if you charge him like 25 cents around the block, you know, and then they didn't return it? 
That's a transaction, right? 
Yeah, but that's still be theft, right? 
I mean, well, that's what I'm saying. 
That would escalate it to theft instead of this civil nonsense you're talking about. 
But don't ever let go of the handlebars. 
Rebel, do you have proof of ownership of that bike? 
Yeah. 
OK, that's a simple thing. 
If you locate where the bike is and you say, hey, that's my bike. 
I can prove it. 
And this person stole it. 
Right. 
So even though I let him use it and I was assuming that he was going to come back and trusting him, he never came back. 
Now, Rebel, does that friend that, you know, this person through, do they have anything to say about this? 
I mean, what's their kind of take? 
Well, he did. 
He said, well, you know, he doesn't know. 
And, uh, he, you know, he was trying, he doesn't know, because he was there. 
I mean, he was there when I lent, because I let him ride it, too. 
Now, I let this person ride this bike before a couple of years ago. 
And, you know, of course, he brought it back, you know. 
But, um, you know, so I, you know, it's not something that I just, somebody that I just met and my friend introduced me to. 
Hey, this is Kevin. 
And then he told me his name. 
We don't want to know who he is. 
Don't tell us his name. 
Well, I don't know his last name. 
Okay, and neither do we, and we don't want to. 
But here's the thing. 
If your friend was there, okay, and witnessed all this, he's a witness. 
Is he going to help you? 
Uh, he did try and help me by giving me his phone number. 
Okay. 
Which you assume is his phone number. 
But, you know, if he's, if he's still the friend of this guy, and he still sees him, and he's not doing anything about this, I question if he's really your friend. 
Well, he says he's not going to hang out with him because of what he did. 
I don't know. 
That's what he said. 
Okay, well, that's something, I guess. 
I don't know. 
That's what I'm going to try, the social media thing. 
Maybe I could track it through social media. 
Yeah, but, you know, just finding him won't necessarily get him to give you a bike back. 
Right, that's true. 
Is there anything that we could do here at this hacker fair that, as you said, is that social media entering that phone number in, like, you got to go through WhatsApp, don't you? 
Well, finding out the guy's name is a good start. 
I can't believe your friend doesn't know his full name. 
I don't know. 
I mean, I, well. 
That would be a good start because you could learn a lot very quickly and create some pretty funny scenarios where all of a sudden it's compelling to give the bike back. 
Do you know your friend's full name? 
Yeah. 
Okay, so go on to Facebook or Twitter or whatever place. 
I did, I did that. 
Facebook, he doesn't have a Facebook, I don't think. 
Really? 
Yeah. 
You sure? 
Well, if he did. 
Well, my friend has a Facebook, yeah. 
That's what I'm saying. 
I look. 
Go on your friends and look for any, any, you said Kevin. 
Okay, fine. 
Look for anybody with that name or anybody with that face. 
I looked, I looked. 
It's not on Facebook, I looked. 
Okay, well, you know, at some point he might have mentioned him somewhere. 
There's always more information to be found if you keep looking. 
Yeah, try to think of what else you know about them and what direction they went and where you were there. 
You know all that, yeah. 
But just try to piece some of that stuff together. 
Terrible. 
You know, they make, you know what happens to bicycle thieves? 
What? 
They make bicycle thief pie. 
Wow, where'd you get that one, Kyle? 
That's very dark. 
Yeah. 
Rules are rules. 
I suggest, though. 
I've had this for two years. 
I've had this for two years with Spike. 
I mean. 
I suggest watching the film Bicycle Thief from Italy in the 1930s, was it? 
It was an excellent film. 
40s, 50s? 
It's just, it's about a bicycle thief, but it's kind of, you know, who is the bicycle thief? 
I'm not going to give it away. 
It's a good movie. 
It'll make you feel better. 
So sorry that happened. 
It's not an electric bicycle, though, so don't get your hopes up on that. 
Right. 
But don't give up and just keep looking for more details. 
There's always more details out there someplace. 
There's always something. 
There's always a clue. 
No, he could have sold the bike. 
He could have just sold it. 
He could have sold it. 
That's true. 
That's true. 
At his own peril. 
You're going to get to the bottom of this, Rebel. 
Just don't lose faith. 
Keep asking around. 
Sounds like you have a good team there that could help you sort some of the details out. 
But don't let people ride your bike. 
Yeah. 
I mean, I guess checking pawn shops, I mean, you're going to have to do all that kind of stuff if you really want it back and try to compare the serial number and stuff like that. 
Yeah. 
I mean, I think it's like a, well, I don't know if he would sell it to a pawn shop or a bike shop. 
You think you would just, but then if he rides it around and you, you know, catch up with them could lead to a tense situation and, and, or it could be a really positive situation if you're like, Hey, that's not fair. 
And you got, you know, some support. 
And listen, don't let your friend off the hook either. 
Your friend introduced you. 
Your friend was there when it happened. 
He bears some responsibility for this. 
And certainly it's possible that he still is in contact with this person. 
So I don't want to say that he was in on it, but he definitely is not uninvolved. 
Now I wish this was off the hook on the radio so I could mention this, what's going on for a, you know, all of New York city. 
Well, we're not going to mention it on off the hook on, on the radio, especially since you can't call in. 
Um, but we do hope you get it back and, uh, we'll offer any advice we can get. 
I'm sure your, your new hacker friends at the hacker space will help you. 
And, um, maybe you have some ideas for a bicycle lojack or something. 
I'm going to put a tile on it. 
If I get it back or I'm going to put a tile, I have a regular bike. 
One of those air tag type. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Regular bike. 
Yeah. 
You'll, you'll be better in better shape. 
You'll be stronger and you'll be able to catch up to the. 
Yeah. 
I mean, I've had it 10 years. 
So. 
Wow. 
I'm sorry to hear this happen, but it does happen. 
And maybe that's a warning to other people out there. 
Not to lend your stuff out to people. 
Yeah. 
Well, let's say goodbye from, uh, let's say goodbye from here. 
Leo. 
Goodbye. 
Goodbye. 
Goodbye. 
Goodbye. 
Bye, Leo. 
Have fun. 
Great talking. 
Hack the planet. 
Hack the planet indeed. 
Yes. 
I'm said from a hacker space that that matters. 
And others. 
All right. 
We'll see you next time, Rebel. 
Good luck with all that. 
Thanks for coming. 
All right. 
Thanks. 
You know, when I was a kid, I remember this, um, there was this kid that I would always let ride my bike, you know, uh, cause he didn't have a bike and I did. 
And I'd always, I'd always let him ride it. 
Then one day he got a bike, he got a brand new bike and I asked to ride it. 
And what do you think? 
He said, no, his parents said nobody can ride his new bike. 
I told my mother about that and then he let me ride it. 
That's the kind of involvement you want parents to get into, you know, instances of justice like that. 
But you know what? 
We've fallen out of touch. 
I, I, I don't even remember his name. 
Wow. 
I was six, so I don't remember anybody's name back then. 
Um, okay, uh, 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK is our telephone number. 
If anybody out there would like to talk to us about any other issue, please feel free to dial those numbers and we'll be happy to put you on the air and, um, let us know. 
Maybe somebody out there has seen 2600 The Hacker Quarterly, the documentary motion picture that grossed a million dollars and got positive reviews from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. 
Among others, I'm sure I could ask Google Bar to make up some more crap about this. 
I'm thinking it's going to actually produce the film, um, with the next, uh, installment or whatever of the, the, uh, GTP setup there. 
Maybe it will actually produce the full length of the video. 
Well, I mean, it's using, it's using our name. 
They made a million bucks off of it. 
You know, I think we should get a taste of that. 
This, this, this, this is a lot here that is, is keeping me up at night. 
You know, it's. 
Yeah, yeah. 
There's some, some loose ends and stuff we got to deal with production side. 
Yeah. 
Uh, chat GTP has, has no idea what I'm talking about, by the way. 
Never heard of the film, but, but Google Bard. 
Yeah. 
Oh yeah. 
I said chat GTP. 
They're competing, right? 
They don't, they don't share, um, um, a brainstem or whatever it is. 
Hmm. 
Yet. 
Yet. 
Yeah. 
What happens when they like, uh, become one and like, uh, by osmosis sort of like meld into one another with modules and so forth. 
Is that a third, um, AI or, or, uh, machine learning in, uh, in, in and of itself? 
Like, is it wholly new or is it, it's just the evolution? 
There'll be a name for it. 
Alex, are you there? 
Yeah. 
It looks like you're doing something else. 
Yeah. 
I'm here. 
I'm, uh, it looks like you're soldering something. 
I don't know. 
It looks like you're busy. 
Yeah. 
Soldering. 
Yes. 
Yeah. 
No, not, not soldering. 
Yeah. 
Do we have any, if anyone calls, we can go, we can go home early. 
Well, um, the line is open now. 
We're going to give it a couple more minutes. 
802-321-4225. 
Cause you know, eventually we run out of things to say to ourselves. 
And, um, um, not that we don't have things. 
You know, we've been talking for a while, right? 
So, you know, we've been blathering on for quite some time, but not as long as we usually do. 
So we have the opportunity. 
We have a lot more room for, uh, for discussion with, with callers. 
Maybe Alex, if you ask for a call, somebody will, will take it seriously. 
Sure. 
Uh, 802-321-4225. 
Call us. 
The phone lines are open and our operators are standing by. 
Remember when, uh, commercials were like that, right? 
And everything, for some reason, you know, you had to, it always took like six to eight weeks for delivery and everything. 
You had to always mail some kind of self-addressed stamp envelope to wherever in Omaha, Nebraska. 
Or send a postcard. 
And I always wondered what people send postcards saying greetings from the Statue of Liberty. 
I never did that. 
I never requested something using a postcard, but the six day weeks, uh, waiting for something to arrive and no CODs. 
I remember that as well. 
Uh, that was, um, that was a special time. 
Quaint. 
Yeah. 
Very quaint. 
Yeah. 
But why was it always, what was going on in Omaha, Nebraska? 
I don't know. 
I don't know. 
Uh, Pueblo, Colorado. 
That's where all the government printing took place. 
It was a proper process. 
Totally different. 
Mm-hmm. 
But it wasn't just there. 
It was other places as well that, uh, had various things. 
Yeah. 
I do hear the, I hear the phone, Kyle. 
Do you not hear the phone? 
Okay. 
So we have a phone call? 
All right. 
Good evening. 
You're on. 
I'll have to go every time. 
Hey, how's it going? 
How you doing? 
Where are you calling from? 
Uh, call from New Jersey. 
New Jersey. 
Great state. 
That's right. 
Thanks. 
Um, I'm not a first time caller. 
I have called before. 
I love your show. 
I listen to you guys all the time. 
Why, thank you. 
Two things. 
I'll try to just have one, uh, about like naming, um, categorizing media. 
Um, you know, I only learned this myself when I was going to these fact checking websites. 
Like one of them is media bias, fact check dot, I don't know, order com or whatever. 
And, uh, stuff like that. 
How they categorize, one of the ways they categorize, one criteria they use is, is it commercially funded, government funded, or listener funded? 
I guess that's like the other category, but I mean, that right there to me kind of closes the whole confusion, which it seems to me like a lot of people maybe just aren't aware of that. 
Like you're calling it BBC wanting, BBC is funded by, they're a government, they're government funded. 
Deutsche Welle in Germany is government funded. 
Um, you know, Fox News is commercially funded. 
WBI, listener, like, and that at least gives you three different ways to know. 
And it's a good thing to know, too, because a commercial media is going to be, uh, they're going to be pro-business. 
They're not going to run anti-union stuff as much, let's just say, for example, uh, a government funded site, yeah, isn't going to maybe talk as much trash about the president or if the government's not doing something. 
So, uh, and then listener sponsored is, you know, supposed to be, in a way, neither of those, but then, you know, whatever has its own drawbacks. 
Um, that's just something I wanted to put out there, I guess, for listeners, because I feel like I hear a lot of people talk about it. 
Even friends of mine, and even myself, I mean, I didn't, I didn't know it until I was looking this stuff up in the past couple of years. 
Yeah, it's not a binary, it's not the binary people want it to be, like, it's either this or that. 
Right, right. 
You know, I agree for the most part. 
I'm a little uncertain about BBC. 
I hear what you're saying about them being government funded, but it does come from the listeners and the viewers. 
However, it's mandated that they pay a licensing fee where that money goes to them, but it's not controlled by the government. 
In other words, they don't say, you can't cover this story or things like that. 
However, it's probably more in that direction than we're used to here. 
Um, so I don't know. 
That's a, it's a tricky one because that's kind of a combination. 
Yeah, that is tricky. 
I guess maybe it comes down to the government that it's, that's funding it. 
And if it's a government, let's say, whatever, Russia, China, Myanmar or something that's funding it, then kind of obvious that it's going to be government controlled and funded. 
But in more democratic places, um, the government technically is supposed to be run by people to begin with. 
Yeah, it quickly becomes philosophical, right? 
About where your information is coming from. 
And of course, you know, they're broadcasting in the public interest for the public good, presumably, and they have a mandate, uh, and serve in that function. 
And of course, for breaking news or emergencies and, and, and the like, they're, um, um, an important emergency resource, which is very, very similar to all the broadcast types, um, TV, radio, the, the sort of traditional, uh, older types in the U S. 
So you could argue there's a public interest and there is, uh, um, uh, a certain loyalty to the audience, which may be from that country. 
Right. 
Respectively. 
So you get into philosophical good. 
Like what is the purpose of this, uh, broadcast? 
I remember when, when Trump was in power, uh, people were calling Fox news state media. 
And I always had a problem with that because for the same reason, um, when Trump was out of power, Fox is still Fox. 
It's not like they suddenly changed to, to Biden propaganda. 
They're still right wing. 
That's why I think right wing media fits them because whether their person is in power or not, they're going to have the same philosophy. 
Okay. 
That was another criteria on the media bias fact check. 
There's just one site. 
I'm not trying to say it's the best one. 
There's other ones, other ones out there, but that was another thing that they say is, does it lean left or does it lean right? 
Right. 
And they have their own metrics and each site has their own kind of metrics. 
And that's how you can kind of think to yourself, whether you're going to believe them or not. 
Uh, but yeah, that was another criteria. 
They had what's, how much, uh, how many times has a story been retracted or proven false or something like that? 
Right. 
That's another criteria that they had. 
So they had a bunch of strikes against them. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
What was the name of the site that you were referencing? 
This was media bias fact check. 
I'm pretty sure that's it. 
It could be a little bit off with that. 
And I don't even know if it was a.org or not. 
And, and then when I went to, I went and looked at that site and then I looked at some other sites and what I found was they all use different criteria. 
And even the sites themselves are run by different types of groups of people. 
Some of them are like related to universities. 
Some of them are just like, I don't know, a couple of friends that came up with this thing that used to be journalists or something like that. 
And so even those things, I'm just not saying like, you know, not for people to kind of swallow whole what they say when they're like saying that, uh, a media outlet is good or bad, but just that, like, we should at least be starting to all speak the same language. 
When we go to ask what, what is the media that we're listening to? 
Very true. 
It's going to be more complicated. 
Like, like you said, it's not going to be black and white. 
I'm sorry. 
That's how things are. 
It's not going to be black and white. 
Right, right. 
It's complicated. 
Yeah, yeah. 
No, I like that you said that you pointed that out, that even the, uh, the fact checkers themselves may, they, you know, may be taken worth a grain of salt, uh, or may have a certain weight or validity, uh, because of their reputation. 
Well, I think we can all agree that we can all agree. 
Elon Musk is not the arbiter. 
He's not the one that has all the answers. 
That's a takeaway. 
He's not ahead. 
He's not ahead in that way. 
I'd like to categorize him. 
I'll jump off after this is, is what I find interesting. 
You guys talk about chat and GPT and, you know, we, we try to ask it stuff that, um, we want to be fact-based and then it lies or it gives us, you know, answers that aren't actually based in fact or whatever. 
And I was kind of thinking to myself, like the real purpose, I feel like of this is to be creative, this thing. 
It's to, it's to not make facts, but to like make crazy stuff up that sounds funny or cool. 
I mean, and you know, I could be wrong about that, but I feel like that's what it's doing. 
And that, to me, I thought was, uh, what, what we thought would be the final, uh, um, hurdle for AI to get over was that there's no way it'll be able to be creative. 
It can't be. 
And now it's like, it's coming up with stuff that's just as creative. 
Well, it's not telling us. 
I think it's funny. 
It's not telling us as being creative. 
It's, it's pretending to tell the truth and actually making up fiction. 
Um, but you know, we had, we had some success with chat GPT when we asked it to write a David Lynch film about hackers and it wasn't bad. 
Oh, that's right. 
That's right. 
Yeah. 
See, that's what I mean. 
That was kind of creative. 
It dark room is throwing some adjectives, envisioning what it might be like. 
Exactly. 
Yeah. 
That connective, uh, linguistic, um, uh, transitional verbiage, all of the work, the assembly of it, uh, based on those cues. 
But it's as good as, as how, how you, um, how much information you, and the criteria you feed it. 
Here's the thing though. 
With the, with the film that, that, uh, Google Bard made up, it attached a real life person to it and said they were the director. 
How does that person feel? 
You know, they didn't have anything to do with this. 
That's what it gets. 
They have to put that little statement at the beginning that says, if this film has any relation to real life, like it's not on purpose or something. 
Well, they should say that before they say anything on Google Bard, I guess. 
Every single thing that comes out should have that little watermark on it. 
Yeah. 
It's probably, it's probably there somewhere in the page. 
Like, do not trust. 
Step away. 
Anything else? 
I appreciate you guys taking my call. 
I appreciate you guys taking my call. 
I'm going to jump off to somebody else again on a lot. 
Okay. 
Great. 
I love the show. 
Thanks. 
Thanks for listening. 
Take care. 
Have a good night. 
Bye. 
New Jersey. 
There you go. 
Great conversation. 
Those are good questions. 
And so, so very true. 
802-321-4225 remains our phone number. 
We have a toll-free number, too, don't we? 
But I always forget that. 
Does anybody have that in their head? 
No? 
888- Alex is doing something else. 
7-0. 
What's the Vermont 321 hack? 
Hey, Alex, it's us. 
Yeah, I'm here. 
I'm just... 
You're doing another radio show for somebody else? 
I'm doing a little coding at the same time here. 
I've got some things I've got to sort out. 
But I'm listening. 
I'm here. 
Well, do you know what the toll-free number is? 
Because I don't. 
It's 1-800-something. 
Okay, first of all, it's not 1-800. 
It's 1-800-something else. 
I'll tell you who would know. 
It was Eleanor. 
Eleanor, whose name she always wanted us to speak. 
Okay, well, now that you've spoken her name, maybe you could give her a call and find out what the phone number is. 
I don't know. 
I don't know her number. 
But we haven't heard from her ever since you refused to say her name. 
I said her name. 
Not in full. 
As she was. 
Because we don't say full names. 
That's long been our policy. 
Because of privacy issues. 
Because we're hackers and we know that. 
We know about privacy. 
We know it's not a good idea to give someone's full name out and say where they're from. 
If you want to do that on your own, go ahead. 
But we're not going to help. 
Not with that. 
Even though somebody is generous to us and would like that, wouldn't be able to sleep at night. 
Your call is in our good care here and we take it very seriously. 
And do we have a call? 
We have an open phone line for the next caller. 
So the phone number remains country code 1, for those of you overseas, 802-321-4225. 
Hack. 
Yeah, hack is what that spells. 
In case you have letters on your phone. 
Does anybody still have letters on their keypads? 
I don't know if people still do. 
Well, I'll have to put it on a t-shirt so people remember. 
All right. 
We'll give it a couple minutes and then we can retire early. 
That'd be kind of nice. 
Alex, any adventures this week? 
Oh, jeez. 
I went to this boulder park out in the Poconos. 
I don't know if you've ever heard of that. 
What is a boulder park? 
Climbing. 
Yeah, it's a park full of giant rocks that have been there for about 20,000 years. 
And, yeah, so I was over there. 
It's in Hickory Run State Park in the Poconos. 
And it's this fascinating park. 
I've been there a couple of times now. 
You basically have to drive into the middle of this massive state park and you're driving for a while. 
And then it turns into this dirt road. 
It's very narrow. 
And it seems like it should be a one-lane road, but it's got two-way traffic on it. 
It feels like you could be driving in Italy or something like that. 
It feels very European in a sense because of how narrow the roads are. 
And then you go in for miles on these one-lane roads. 
And then all of a sudden you come to this area that's kind of cleared a little bit. 
It's kind of like a makeshift parking lot. 
And you walk over to this edge. 
And then out of nowhere is just as far as you can see these massive white kind of orangey boulders in the middle of this forest with no trees. 
Who put them there? 
Well, obviously aliens. 
I mean, come on. 
Wow, okay. 
Okay, so what are you supposed to do when you drive all this way and you see all these boulders? 
Is it just you take a picture and go home? 
No, you can climb on the boulders and you can walk amongst them and you can go just kind of have fun on the boulders. 
It's a form of recreation. 
Have fun on the boulders. 
Yeah. 
I mean, it's this bizarre scene because all around you is very, very heavily wooded areas. 
And out of nowhere is just this massive boulder field, right? 
So it feels very incongruous with the surroundings. 
It feels like you could be on another planet or something. 
It's definitely odd. 
It's very, very strange. 
And are there boulder people there that are sharing the experience? 
Yeah, there's a lot of people. 
Well, I wouldn't say a lot of people over there, but I've never been there by myself. 
There's always others that are there. 
And what was really interesting when I was there this past weekend is because it was actually Easter Sunday when I went over there. 
So most people, I guess, are doing Easter, right, you know, unless you're a Jewish. 
But the majority of people that I was seeing out at the state park were all Orthodox Jews, you know, most of them from Brooklyn. 
It was kind of out in Pennsylvania and out in the Poconos. 
And one of them came up to me as I had passed by as I was going into the parking lot, and I see a couple of the Orthodox Jews over there. 
So I rolled down the window, and I said, you know, Happy Pesach, Happy Passover, Hotsamaya. 
And then they showed up at my car, like three of these guys, big guys, too. 
And they just said to me, do you have a jack? 
I said, what? 
What do you mean do I have a jack? 
Like, what is this? 
Sounds like I had a flat tire, and they know that they can talk to you. 
I had a flat tire. 
Yeah. 
I had a flat tire. 
It's not hard to interpret that. 
So I got my jack out for them. 
So, of course, you know, so I got the jack. 
And then it turns out I had the jack, but I didn't know this. 
I was missing the metal piece that you used to crank the jack over. 
Oh, my goodness. 
So they didn't have a jack, nor did they have a metal piece, right? 
So, you know, we're there trying to figure out, you know, what we can use to crank this thing up. 
Screwdriver? 
What's that? 
Screwdriver? 
Well, we didn't have a screwdriver either. 
Not one that would fit. 
You can't go into the boulders unprepared like this, Alex. 
So what did you use? 
How did you figure this out? 
Well, one thing that wound up working for a little while was if you took the back, like your seat post off, like the headrest of your seat. 
Ah, yeah. 
That's smart, right? 
It's got those iron bars underneath it. 
You could use that to turn it until it starts to get, you know, too heavy, right, for it. 
So then this guy came in a big pickup truck with a U.S. 
Marine Corps T-shirt on. 
And no way he doesn't have a screwdriver. 
Well, he didn't have a screwdriver or a jack. 
Oh, my God. 
I know. 
This is crazy, right? 
So then another guy shows up in this van. 
And so he comes out and asks him, you know, do you have a jack or do you even, you know, just have like the metal piece over there for the jack? 
And he said, you know, I think I do. 
But then he couldn't figure out how to get the jack out of the back of his car. 
So it was like the jack was extended and he couldn't figure out how to retract the jack so that it would become smaller. 
And he was able to pull it out of the side pocket in the back of, you know, what was essentially. 
Hold on a second. 
And all these people, not one of them has a jack. 
Well, this is the thing. 
Yeah. 
And the interesting thing, though, about this guy, too, eventually I showed him how to retract the jack. 
We were able to do it manually with our hand. 
He got the jack out and then he comes over and he hands over the metal bar so that we could turn my jack over that's already underneath the car. 
And I looked over at this guy and he was, you know, another guy with a really long beard. 
He wasn't wearing just a white shirt. 
He had kind of like a parka or something over him. 
I looked at him and I said, you know, I think this is another Orthodox Jew that just showed up in the parking lot. 
Right. 
So I said to him, I said, you know, did you guys come together? 
And he said, no, we didn't. 
He said, we just happened to be here at the same time. 
I said, you know, we're part of the same tribe. 
I was driving around for a half an hour until I could find the entrance to this place. 
And then I showed up and there's another, you know, guy who's Orthodox, you know, with a flat tire. 
So I'm like, oh, well, this is, you know, kind of weird. 
Right. 
So then at the end of it, we got the tire done. 
Everybody was happy. 
We got the new, we got this donut on. 
And then we made the joke. 
How many Jews does it take to change a tire? 
Wow. 
You know, it was actually very funny because there were a whole bunch of us there. 
And, you know, really, it took like seven or eight people to change one tire because nobody had a jack. 
That was quite a story and much longer than I was hoping for because I just wanted to fill the time. 
We had a caller on almost the entire story. 
But I didn't want to say. 
You told me that. 
Well, I couldn't interrupt a story like that. 
That's too good. 
Yeah. 
So many elements. 
And also just one little fact to inject. 
You said that it's Easter last Sunday, which you were correct on partially, but Orthodox Easter is next Sunday. 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
I know. 
Christos and Estes. 
Yeah, it was Palm Sunday for the Orthodox community, the other Orthodox community. 
That's right. 
We have a phone call, and this person is very patient. 
Thank you for waiting. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Hi, everyone. 
This is Johnny Fusion this week. 
Hey, Johnny Fusion. 
How are you doing? 
I'm doing well. 
I'm out of the hospital a week. 
Awesome. 
And doing okay. 
You know, I celebrated my birthday last week. 
Oh, great. 
Happy birthday. 
Thank you very much. 
I'm getting up there. 
You know, the old hat is getting older. 
Well, you can always get another hat. 
Yeah. 
I wanted to talk about, you know, this large language model and their propensity for hallucinations. 
And a little bit about why this happens. 
Go right ahead. 
So, um, the thing about these large language models is they don't actually have knowledge. 
They're about putting together conversation, right? 
You know, putting one word in front of the other in a way that makes grammatical and syntax sense, right? 
And facts don't really come into play. 
Like, I've heard large language models described as spicy autocomplete. 
Yeah, I was thinking that when we were talking earlier. 
Audio autocomplete is like sort of something you use. 
You don't necessarily trust it. 
You use it more in an editing way, much in the way that people started using word processors to edit in real time and so forth. 
Yeah, I mean, so I've been saying, I've had this little witticism for a long time that Google knows everything, but sometimes it lies. 
Yeah, that seems to be true. 
You know, and, uh, for, for, uh, this last article I wrote, you know, I used, um, this service called Character AI, and they actually do have a disclaimer that says everything our AI says is made up, right? 
Because everything's fictional, like everything is a fantasy to these things, you know, it's, it's not based in reality, and they're very straightforward for that. 
And I think this is just kind of, you know, a bit of the hype machine that these corporations are doing with the AI, and they're not being completely honest about the limitations of AI, because they're selling the hype of what they're doing, and they're overselling, right? 
Because, you know, and this, and the hype and the anxiety, like we've talked in past weeks and what I wrote the article about, about the fear of AI replacing human creative endeavor. 
And it, and it's just not there yet, you know, because what AI does, like what it generates, humans have to fix. 
Because, uh, there was a story of, uh, one of the papers, they wrote a health article, and at the end, you know, they did the big reveal that, oh, by the way, this article was completely written by AI. 
And the thing is, though, everything in the article was wrong. 
And it was supposedly health information, and it was misinformation. 
Oh, wow. 
Like, it got through editorial, and they just trusted whatever the AI said, and people are, you know, and you see this in, like on Reddit and Facebook and stuff like this, where people are using these large language models as a substitute for certain, and it's a complete misuse of the technology, because these large language models are living in a fantasy world. 
You know, they're just making shit up, and it's not reliable as fact. 
Yeah, I think we're starting to see that. 
I think that people's eyes are opening to this. 
Yeah, and, like, code-wise, like, large language models are not programmers, right? 
So, what they're going by is any code examples that are in their database. 
Yeah. 
Right, or in their, in their training set, I should say, not database, because of how neural nets are made. 
And applying syntactic rules based on whatever language you're talking about, presumably, right? 
Right, right. 
But they're going, but they don't understand the logic of the language. 
And so they're going by code examples without actual cognition or understanding of how the computer language functions. 
That's why I was... 
Because they're seeing it as grammar, not as logic. 
That's why I was suggesting recipes might be interesting to play with, because... 
Oh, boy. 
Just trying to follow the directions, if it's trained on all of that, or like you're saying, if it just puts something together based on ingredients you say you have in different proportions... 
The first person poisoned. 
The lawsuits. 
Who's responsible? 
I can just see it all playing out now. 
Well, would it even taste like any kind of approximation that a human would be able to, as a cook, be able to interpret? 
Okay, I have an idea. 
Or something like that. 
The Artificial Intelligence Cookbook. 
Read it at your own risk. 
And it'll just come up with all kinds of weird dishes. 
And you can try it, but we're not responsible for what happens. 
I'm certain there's been TikToks and YouTube that have already done this experiment. 
Oh, okay, okay. 
Damn it. 
It's over. 
You know, I've seen people do crochet patterns, and they've turned out awful. 
Yeah, yeah. 
Again, I think it's just more evidence of the kind of point we're making here, that it's fantasy, like you said, in a fantasy world. 
Well, you know, I think it's up to us as hackers to try and break this as much as possible and try to make it do things that's embarrassing and obviously wrong, just so we can make it clear that this doesn't replace us. 
This doesn't replace human beings. 
It doesn't replace individuals' writing. 
And if you do depend on that and think that that's the answer, you're going to ruin the day. 
You will. 
Yeah, and, you know, and the premise, I mean, that's the whole premise of what you're going to publish of me in an upcoming issue, is that humans aren't replaceable. 
Like, we're not interchangeable. 
Like, what you write and what I write are not interchangeable because we're unique individuals. 
I have a unique voice. 
You have a unique voice. 
And even if we got artificial general intelligence, like, I really do think it's going to happen eventually, right? 
We're not there yet. 
But I really do think we're going to have real machine intelligence someday. 
But even when we do, it's not going to replace us. 
It's going to be beside us. 
It's going to be our little digital sibling, you know, who's going to work hand-in-hand with us or maybe automate menial things. 
But, of course, we've got to break away from capitalism and have our basic needs met, you know, either through universal basic income or universal needs just met, you know, housing and clothing and food and education. 
And enrichment and all that stuff, get away from the grind, you know, but, you know, so automation can be a good thing. 
But, I mean, they're doing it ass-backwards. 
They're saying, here, let AI create art and have everyone work in their cubicles, which is wrong. 
It should be the other way around. 
Yeah, I just felt like the usefulness in the real world, as you're saying, is where the direction - where I think they want the usefulness to be eventually, like you said, and it may emerge. 
But the product, like now, in this moment, like you were talking about earlier, the hype itself is, you know, the types of examples we were thinking - that people have shown to be wrong and just don't work. 
Like, oh, you can make - you know, come up with - have it make recipes and do all this stuff custom. 
You know, that was the sort of selling point. 
And, again, I don't even know if there's an actual product now. 
I think really what it is is to get people to use it and revise it in real time based on public inquiries. 
And, I mean, that's a lot of how Google's search engine emerged, right? 
I mean, people were using it. 
We were all using it. 
Yeah, right now, I mean, again, it's being used by surveillance capitalism. 
We are the product. 
We're feeding it with our queries because these are conversational. 
We're having conversations with it, and it's learning from us. 
Everything we type into ChatGPT or into BARD goes into its data set. 
Yeah, that's kind of where I'm going is that, like, there may be sets of information that you don't even want to go - you don't want entered into it. 
You don't want it in there at all. 
Otherwise, you're all of a sudden being credited for having produced a documentary that you didn't produce, you know, and stuff like that. 
And, I mean, there is serious interest in not supplying it with information because I think that's really what is going on now, why it looks like a lot of hype and doesn't really fit with the way it's being described. 
And it's basically to get a lot of people to use it in different ways so that - I mean, even if it's training itself on all the activity, there's going to be aspects of it. 
I think that from a management perspective, they're going to just look at it and say, like, ooh, let's do more of that and, like, let's get good at this. 
We can - then we can build that into this product we already have and just make more dog food or whatever. 
Yeah, and the thing is, though, you know - like, you talked about on the radio show about the leak of the top secret documents, right? 
Yes. 
You know these AI models have secret information in them because of someone brainstorming with either proprietary company information or government information. 
And OpenAI or Google or whoever's doing these models has been fed proprietary or secret information. 
That's a really interesting part of it too is, like, how compartmentalized is it if it's being trained on everything or actively modified and so forth? 
I mean, there's probably strict rules about how this is being used in different government and private enterprises and for those specific reasons. 
But you're right, there's probably a lot of really public information that it could put together. 
But again, in a creative way. 
But if it's verifiable and so forth, yeah, it could be, like, kind of too much information, like, in real life. 
Yeah, but, you know, because, you know, there was somebody who was being lazy. 
Right, right. 
Who wanted - you know, who just decided to use it. 
Like, supposedly these top secret documents were leaked on Discord to win an argument, right? 
Because it was an online beef, right? 
Right, right. 
It was like a flame war or something. 
And, you know, and this guy had clearance and he needed to be right on the internet. 
And so he - so he - I presume he - but, you know, it was a leaning right ring discord and women do not fare well in those spaces. 
So I presume a guy. 
Yeah, it sounds to me that if you want to get more leaked documents out there, just get into a lot of arguments with a lot of people and eventually somebody's going to crack and say, oh, here's the proof and show you something they're really not supposed to share. 
Yeah, like that tank game. 
I mean, like, every week there's some military secret on their forums. 
Oh, really? 
But tell us more about this. 
No, we know nothing about this. 
Okay, so there's this tank simulator game. 
Well, it started off as tanks, but now they got jets and ships and other stuff like that. 
And the selling point of this game, this tank sim, is its accuracy to real-world hardware. 
And so - and real-life soldiers like playing this game from the real military. 
And when a simulated tank or piece of military hardware is a little bit off in the simulation, they get on the forums, they complain. 
And lots of times, to back up how the simulation is wrong, they'll upload to the forums military classified documents about these weapon system capabilities to this tank game forum, you know, and just leak it to the world to say, hey, get your game right. 
That is a special kind of, like, first-world problem, you know, that, like, guy's getting mad. 
Yeah, but it's - yeah, but it's American military, Chinese military, Russian military, like, all different militaries. 
And, yeah, it's like - I'm exaggerating by saying every week, but - No, I've heard anecdotes. 
But about six or seven times a year, there's a leak on this forum of some weapon system capability. 
And they have proximity to a lot of the equipment, their interests, and, of course, playing the game. 
And they are using the platforms and the forums in public - you know, with people they can't really verify who they are or anything. 
And their personal pride is sort of outweighing their judgment. 
Yeah, especially when they lose because they think their online simulated tank or fighter jet should have been able to win the skirmish or whatever. 
And they get mad, and they say, no, see, this has this capability. 
All right. 
And - yeah. 
Bless you. 
Yes. 
Are we done for the night, do you think? 
I think we are. 
Yeah, we could be done. 
All right. 
Yeah, we just passed top of the hour. 
Yeah, I just saw the clock up there. 
Is there any other story or - I just wanted to talk about, you know, the large language models. 
They have real - they have no knowledge about the world, right? 
They - they're just - they're just making conversation, and they're making shit up. 
Yep. 
As you found out about the 2600 movie. 
Which I still want to see. 
Maybe somebody will make it. 
Yeah, that'd be great, wouldn't it? 
Wouldn't it be great? 
Yeah, I'd come up with a better title than that, though. 
It's a pretty lousy, unimaginative title, but I guess they're busy doing other things. 
2600. 
Yeah, I mean, I'd watch that movie. 
Yeah. 
Well, let's see if maybe the people named will make it now that Bart has said they did. 
Well, it was good talking to everyone. 
Yeah, it's good hearing from you. 
I'm glad you're out of the hospital, and I hope you stay healthy. 
I'm trying. 
All right. 
I'm trying. 
Okay, then. 
Good night. 
Take care. 
And I think that's going to do it for us tonight. 
Yeah, let's call it. 
Any final words from you guys? 
No. 
I think it was a lot of great conversation tonight and some really interesting topics. 
So let's see how this whole Bellingcat thing goes over the next couple of weeks. 
I'm really curious about that. 
I'm sure we're going to continue to talk about that one. 
The which now? 
Oh, I'm sorry. 
The Discord leaks that Bellingcat had covered. 
Oh, yeah, right. 
I don't think it has an official name yet, but I think it's the 2023 Pentagon Documents leak. 
Look, I think we should make some predictions, though. 
I predict by next week they'll know who it was. 
Come on, guys. 
Come up with a prediction like that. 
I don't know. 
I think it's going to be longer than that. 
I think that there very well may be some kind of foreign intelligence angle here, and I don't think we're going to learn who's actually behind us for a while. 
Because it's a foreign source? 
Yeah. 
Yeah, I think it might take a little while to unwind. 
Or it might be of such a nature that criminal charges can't be brought. 
I'll say Friday, then. 
This Friday? 
Yeah, this Friday. 
Okay. 
I said it. 
All right. 
I don't know. 
You want to make it interesting. 
I'll say midnight. 
How about that? 
Yeah, step on it. 
So you just did like the $1 over on the prices, right? 
I probably did. 
I got pressed. 
That's what you want. 
I do think they will find somebody involved with this. 
There's already somebody out there saying they know who it is, right? 
So if that's the case, then someone else is going to talk for sure. 
Yeah. 
I mean, there haven't been official warrants or any kind of persons of interest. 
And, of course, that always can come with some sort of reward. 
They're going to put pressure on because this is not a good situation for the international world stage and the State Department itself and their interests and having trust. 
Well, it's good for somebody. 
It's good for us. 
You have to ask yourself, who is this good for? 
And that might lead you somewhere. 
That's a good - yeah. 
Those lines of inquiry, that's exactly the kind of thinking imaginative. 
Or is a particular injustice, a la Snowden, being revealed here that might benefit us knowing? 
So these are the questions that have to be asked. 
But considering there are documents out there, considering there are pictures of documents out there, there might be something that gives a hint as to where they're from or what they've been through to get there. 
So we'll know more. 
We'll learn more. 
This all happened within a week or so where people found out about it. 
Yeah. 
I didn't really - I wasn't following it at all. 
I didn't know that the story had evolved as much. 
I was just catching up a little bit. 
I didn't even know what was in it. 
I just heard people talking about it happening. 
So everyone's still trying to get the facts right of what exactly it was about. 
All right. 
I'll predict this too though. 
Go ahead. 
If this is somebody that is identified accurately within the next couple of days or a week or something like that, then I think that the story behind it is going to be a story of just absolute stupidity or idiocy. 
And, you know, somebody taking these documents and getting drunk and uploading things accidentally to a Discord server. 
It might be some kind of accidental type of situation where the stuff is out there. 
And then, you know, once you send something presumably to a Discord server, whether it's intentionally or by accident, you can't reel it back. 
I don't think so. 
Maybe it was this accident. 
I still think it could be, you know, some kid's dad who had documents in the briefcase and a kid took pictures of them and uploaded them to Discord while he was playing Minecraft and got into an argument with someone. 
I don't know. 
It's as sane an argument as anything. 
But why are they folded up? 
Why are they folded up? 
Why does anyone fold anything up? 
Well, if they're in the briefcase, they're going to be in like folders. 
Maybe there's a lot in the briefcase. 
Maybe. 
Or is his dad, like, stuffing his pockets and I don't know. 
It just makes you wonder. 
Maybe they got folded by accident. 
I don't know. 
Maybe his dad is the spy and the kid's trying to, you know, do the right thing. 
But doesn't want to get in trouble himself or herself. 
Yeah. 
Or the person on the Discord server didn't really know what it was. 
I just thought it was part of one of many different sources they get these things and it was somewhere else. 
And then that's itself. 
These documents have not been certified as authentic yet. 
Have they, Alex? 
Well, I don't think that they have. 
I don't think. 
I think. 
So maybe some new form of artificial intelligence generated these at someone's behest and they're just confusing the hell out of everybody. 
That would be a funny story. 
Or maybe the whole beef was artificial intelligence. 
Well, I just had a conversation with ChatGPT about sensitive documents and it wanted no part of it. 
Receiving them or generating them wanted no part. 
So you'd be hard-pressed to find artificial intelligence that's more willing. 
Hmm. 
Yeah. 
All right. 
Well, you were having a lot of conversations lately with ChatGPT. 
ChatGPT, I feel like there's an intimate relationship evolving here. 
I don't even need a keyboard anymore. 
I hear it all the time. 
So much. 
Okay. 
All right. 
With that, we're going to leave you until next week. 
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
And we'll see you next Wednesday at 7 p.m. 
on WBAI, 8 p.m. 
on Overtime. 
Good night.