Not pay the $50 any time, and that problem has grown so rampantly that it cost the city $100 million last year. 
Paul Drianzo, New York. 
The previous program was Economic Update with Richard Wolff, heard Wednesdays at 6.30 p.m. 
here on WBAI New York 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online. 
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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
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We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
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And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is Off the Hook. 
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you. 
Joined tonight by Kyle. 
Yes, over here. 
How are you doing? 
Over in Skypeland, we have Alex. 
We do. 
Good evening. 
We have Gila. 
Good evening. 
And we have Rob. 
Good evening. 
I went backwards this time. 
You're all there, though. 
That's the important thing. 
And we're here again for another action-packed edition of Off the Hook, followed at 8 o'clock on YouTube by Overtime, where you have the opportunity to call us and berate us for all the things that we get wrong, which inevitably we will get something wrong, but we try to get most things right. 
Anything new in the world of high tech or just adventures in our lives, folks? 
No? 
Just your normal sort of rollercoaster ride through this media environment in which we live. 
Yeah, yeah. 
Well, we're all just trying the best we can to muddle through it all. 
We continue to prepare for the HOPE conference coming up in July 12th through 14th. 
We're getting a bunch of submissions. 
We're getting a bunch of workshops and speaker submissions. 
You can go to the webpage, hope.net, to get all the information as to how you can participate, facts about the location, activities, things like that. 
And there's going to be more and more information added as the date approaches. 
It's only January, I know, but events like this take a long time to prepare and so much coordination. 
So it's something that we're quite excited about and we hope to see you there as well. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
You've got to speak, Alex. 
I wanted to share with you guys that I was speaking with Virgil today, our friend Virgil, who is unfortunately in federal prison for attending a blockchain conference and presenting at it in the blockchain conferences in North Korea. 
I'm sure many of our listeners, long-time listeners, know all about this saga and I don't think we need to go into all the details now. 
But I do want to share with you that, look, he's doing well. 
He's been transferred over to a facility in Michigan as opposed to Pennsylvania. 
So it's a bit more difficult for me to see him, especially with a broken leg. 
I hope to see him soon, though. 
He sends his regards. 
And he also sent to me a poem that is written by Richard Brodigan in 1967. 
And I think we, it's a short poem. 
I think we should read it with the listeners, read it to the listeners because it's very interesting and I think even though it's by this hate-ash-by-art poet and written in 1967, it really captures the zeitgeist of what we are going through in society right now. 
Are we cleared for poetry on this show? 
Hang on one second. 
I just got to check to make sure. 
I don't want to violate any rules. 
Let's check. 
We can? 
Okay. 
I'm told if it's short and pertinent, we can do poetry. 
It's short and pertinent. 
But we should not make a habit of it, is what I'm told. 
That's true. 
Yes. 
So the title of this poem, written 1967 by Richard Brodigan, is all watched over by machines of loving grace. 
And here it goes. 
I like to think I like to think I like to think in the sooner the better of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. 
I like to think right now, please, of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. 
I like to think it has to be the cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, all watched over by machines of loving grace. 
That's it. 
I like the concept of deer strolling peacefully by computers. 
I'm picturing that in my mind right now. 
It's remarkably natural and I could definitely see that. 
But doesn't it also sound like it might have been generated by a large language model in some respect? 
Like if you asked an AI to write a poem about... 
I hope, Alex. 
I hope you didn't just read us an AI-generated poem. 
I did not. 
This was written literally in 1967. 
Yeah, but if AI told you that, you know, it makes things up. 
So, you know, I'm going to look this up later. 
In fact, our listeners are already looking this up. 
I'm sure they are. 
I hope they are. 
God help you if you've deceived us here. 
Yes, go ahead, Rob. 
I do like that this kind of... 
This is a nice little lesson that the word cybernetic is a lot older than a lot of people would assume it is and that people were already thinking about this stuff 60 years ago now. 
A hundred years ago people were thinking about things like this. 
There are definitely... 
A lot of the mistakes that we have already made have been predicted in the past where, you know, we let computers make decisions for us and humans are kind of put in the back seat knowing all too well that we're going down a bad road and, you know, in the end we'll be listened to. 
I like it. 
It's a very optimistic or sort of utopian lens, but I think it might... 
It might need a dose of realism as far as how far down the road or wrong road we might have gone. 
It takes quite a bit to reach even close to that ideal in many respects. 
But I like the idea of the empowerment or the freeing nature of these machines watching over in a loving way. 
Wow. 
It elevates the technology almost to like a deity or something or caretaker of sorts. 
But in other words enabling people to have a deeper connection with their natural environment or state of being enhanced by all of this technological good. 
But I don't know. 
It might be a rocky road to turn your course and change directions. 
Yeah, yeah. 
And no doubt we will make some mistakes before we go in the right direction. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
I loved it. 
I looked it up and I found it so I could read it also because, you know, I work better when I see stuff. 
And I loved the progression of it to, you know, from the sooner the better to right now, please, to it has to be of a cybernetic ecology. 
We're free of our labors and joined back to nature. 
I loved it. 
I love the image of this place where we're all working in it together and the computer, you know, is there but is not the only thing. 
I, oh my God, Alex, thank you for this. 
This is some beauty I needed today. 
Well, you know, this isn't what we expected to be discussing here tonight, probably, you know, poetry sent over from Virgil. 
But, you know, don't thank me, thank Virgil. 
This was something that he found in a book that he was reading and he shared it with me because he thought we would find this all interesting. 
And to add to that, Kyle, your point about the last lines here, all watched over by the machines of loving grace, that's exactly what Virgil and I were discussing earlier today. 
And that was his favorite line as well. 
And there is this notion of harmony and peace and it's so, it's a great poem. 
It's so fascinating, so prescient, so on point. 
You know, I just, I hate to, you know, cast aspersions here, but there's something kind of chilling about being watched over by machines. 
I just, you know, I'm a little uneasy about that. 
I'd like to be watching them and making sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing rather than having them watching me. 
You know what I mean? 
Good luck with that. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
Sorry, side note because, you know, I started as the off-the-hook research department and it never really went away. 
So, Richard Brodigan, his fifth book of poetry was called All Watched Over by Machines of Love and Grace. 
He distributed it under Copyleft. 
In 1967, he distributed it under Copyleft. 
Was there a Copyleft in 1967? 
Apparently so. 
Retains copyright but grants permission to reprint any poem in this book on the condition that magazines, books, and newspapers must be given away free if they reprint this poem. 
Well, he certainly got the gist of it, but I didn't know it went back that far. 
That's amazing. 
Learning a lot tonight already. 
That's pretty incredible. 
Okay, moving on to various things that are going on in our world. 
The MTA, we're all familiar with the MTA, right? 
Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 
I am. 
Be comfortable. 
You know what I like about the MTA? 
I like that they can tackle a problem, right? 
And by the time they've finished tackling the problem, they've created a whole new problem that made us forget about the first problem. 
It's a special skill when they're able to do that. 
they recently spent $700,000 installing these subway gates that are supposed to keep out fare beaters because apparently that's the biggest problem that we have right now are people jumping over the turnstiles. 
So they made these big Parisian-looking guards that enter the subway system. 
If you've ever been to Paris, they have a similar look, except these ones have a different feature where apparently, and if you go to the Sutphin Boulevard and Archer Avenue Station in Queens, maybe Gila and Rob, you can hop out there during the show. 
It's pretty close by, I think, and check this out. 
All you have to do is walk up to the gate and then lean over and wave your hand on the other side as if you were on the other side exiting. 
And guess what? 
The gates open. 
They just open because they assume that you're a person on the other side who wants to leave. 
So apparently nobody realized that when the gates open, people can go the other way as well as the way you intend for them to go. 
And so the gate opens for about five seconds and it doesn't even look suspicious. 
You know, it looks like you just placed your hand next to the thing and there you go, walking through the gate. 
They're red-faced with shame and embarrassment. 
Apparently it costs $700,000 just for this test subway station to install subway gates. 
That's incredible. 
It costs more than, you know, most people's houses just to install one subway station subway gates. 
Okay, they have to redesign this. 
But, you know, any hacker in 20 seconds would have figured this out. 
Why don't they run these things by before they install them, you know, and have people like us show them all the potential problems? 
Any thoughts? 
Kayla, go ahead. 
Well, okay, so I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but we saw these gates. 
We walked into the subway station and it was 11 o'clock at night and we were tired and we didn't notice that this was a possibility. 
So we're just like, hey, this is spiffy and tapped the omni cards and went in. 
Had it not been 11 o'clock at night, actually, you know, I feel like this is a train station that will help you get to St. 
John's. 
So if people are on the fence about going to help in person, you could go see these subway gates. 
Well, I have a feeling they're going to be in a dump pretty soon. 
I don't know if they're going to last that long. 
One never knows. 
Well, I mean, it's just, it's international embarrassment right now, basically showing that the MTA installed these things. 
It's actually, it's worse if you consider this a problem, it's worse than what we have right now where people hop over gates. 
Look, at least when people hop over gates, they're pretty much broadcasting the fact that they're stealing a subway fare. 
They're hopping over the gate. 
This, it doesn't look like you're doing anything wrong. 
It looks like you're just simply going through an open gate. 
So they've made it, they've made fare beating a lot more respectable and easy as well. 
Rob? 
This also seems, and we're watching the video of this demonstration, which was put on TikTok by an account called KingspiderTV, and there are two eyes in each eye. 
Yeah, that's the only person that seems to have done it so far, because every news story I've read about this leads back to him, as if he's the only one. 
And this really seems like something that should have been picked up in the most cursory of product testing. 
This seems like such an obvious way to get past this, and how did they not, I don't know, set one of these up and try it before spending $700,000 on outfitting this. 
It's really, it's simple, and it's brainless, and it's hilarious to watch. 
Wow. 
Yeah, you know, okay, so let's help them out. 
Let's think of solutions here. 
How would you do this differently? 
Kyle, do you have an idea? 
Relocate the motion sensor, like put it on the front somehow, like much further away. 
Make it so it's hard to reach. 
Maybe on the surface, furthest away from the corner of the entrance to the turn gate, and low somehow. 
So you'd have to reach all the way over and down like further than you could. 
You'd basically have to roll over it to actually get any kind of hand or object in front of it. 
What if we had facial recognition for people leaving, and their face has to be registered as somebody who had entered before, and if it doesn't register, the gate will not open? 
Why is everybody frowning? 
Why is everybody frowning at me? 
Can we make it smell-based? 
Well, we could. 
We could add to it. 
Is this a bad idea? 
We don't like that? 
You can't limit people who exit just to people who have been registered as entering, because that traps anybody who happens to be born in the subway system. 
And then you have great songs written about it. 
You know? 
Charlie and MTA? 
Yeah, look it up. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of what you were thinking, Emmanuel. 
Perhaps some kind of guillotine type of situation that, you know, if you try to reach around here to trigger the sensor, you receive some kind of amputation. 
I shouldn't have mentioned Paris. 
I shouldn't have mentioned anything that would get you thinking about guillotines. 
Okay, look, there's something else. 
You could maybe group all the exits on one side and all the entrances on another side that way, but then again, the gate's going to open and you can still go through the, but then it's obvious you're going through an exit because, but then someone has to be watching. 
You know what the problem is? 
The problem is, there's nobody watching because they laid off all the employees and replaced them with machines. 
So, you know, in the old days, if somebody jumped a turnstile, someone at least could shout at them and say, hey, don't do that. 
And if there's a cop nearby, they might do something about it. 
Now, it's, you know, you're supposed to save all this money. 
Well, okay, people are taking advantage of that and they're hopping gates and there's nobody there to chastise them. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
Oh, all I was going to say is, you know, I'm in my 40s, so if we could not say guillotine, I would really appreciate that. 
Oh, wow, you know, I'm sorry, I didn't even realize that. 
I was going to say it's guillotine. 
Guillotine. 
Guillotine. 
Gila is older than that. 
All right. 
So, thank you. 
All right. 
We will, that word is most likely to be used more in the future. 
I just want to emphasize what you're saying because that is exactly the, like, kind of cross intersection of returns for, like, having employees there and then sort of automating this, but factoring in fare evasion. 
And now they have to factor in failures and the costs to, like, redesign them. 
So, that's like an additional full design life cycle or something, redesign life cycle. 
And I don't know. 
It's problem solving that is about replacing supervision because they want supervision to be basically remote and automated and only on cameras or something. 
That's how this is observed. 
observed and then they just blame the people that are trying to get places instead of maybe the cumbersome nature of the whole system or the expense or other factors that are driving this kind of activity. 
See, this is the thing I have trouble with. 
And I'm reading from the New York Post, so, you know, take that for what it's worth. 
But they say the 8th Avenue Penn Station AC and E train is going to be the second station to get the new setup. 
And this is a quote which cost about $700,000 to install. 
Now, that tells me that every time they install this, that's another $700,000 thrown down, you know, into the sewer. 
And is fair beating that much of a problem that you have to invest $700,000 per station to tackle the problem? 
And, you know, the answer to my question is a couple of paragraphs up because they claim that there is $690 million were lost from fair beaters in 2022. 
$690,000, you know, I would think that was the revenue. 
How much was $690 million? 
Does somebody want to divide that by $2.90 and see how many people that is? 
That's a lot of fair beaters. 
That's more than I thought. 
Well, that's probably repeat, that's probably incidents, there's probably repeat offenders. 
Well, why shouldn't that count twice? 
If they, you know, jump a turnstile ten times, it's still ten fairs, right? 
Sure. 
Oh, okay, I'm sorry, we are agreeing then. 
These numbers are staggering. 
There's still a ton of people. 
Yeah, I obviously have no clue as to what's involved in running a subway system. 
But there's other design elements, there's other things that can be done, I think. 
I think. 
Yeah. 
I'm not a civil engineer. 
Is it really that much of a crisis? 
I mean, you know, if it is a crisis where, you know, more people are evading fairs than ever before, you have to ask yourself, why are more people evading fairs than ever before? 
Do people hate the subway? 
Do people feel it's too expensive? 
These are the issues to focus on rather than pouring money into something that is eventually going to fail at some point. 
I mean, even without the ridiculous wave your hand bug, you still have the gate is open for five seconds bug, which, you know, you need the gate to be open to allow slow moving people to get through or people with luggage or children. 
But if that's not the case, then the gate's open for five seconds and people easily can, you know, can piggyback onto your fare. 
You know, in the past or in the present, actually, all you have to do is jump over a turnstile. 
It seems simple, but it's pretty obvious what you're doing. 
And, you know, I don't really see that as something that needs to be phased out if you're looking to identify who is doing this or catch them in the process. 
Rob? 
The other thing about trying to throw numbers on how much the MTA is supposedly, you know, quote unquote, losing to fare beaters is the number is half imaginary because how many of those fare beaters would have ridden the system if they had to pay? 
We don't know. 
We can only theorize. 
We can only guess. 
And anybody trying to claim that people who haven't paid for a service like this are actual financial losses to the agency, I don't think that I don't think that calculates. 
I don't think that works. 
And in the meantime, there there are so many reasons that really in a perfect in a perfect world, which this is not, we would have public infrastructure that has things like public transportation available without cost to the user because it would be, you know, supported enough by local government and things like that. 
But, you know, the two dollars and 90 cents or whatever that they're not getting from somebody fare beating, I don't know if that calculates to some kind of profit when you spend seven hundred thousand dollars on something like this. 
Well, I will say, though, it's good for accessibility. 
People with special mobility needs and things like that will find something like this a lot easier to use legitimately. 
But apart from that, I I don't see that this is solving a six hundred whatever thousand dollar problem. 
No, million, six hundred million rather. 
Yeah, it's an insane number. 
I just I couldn't believe that when I when I read it. 
But, you know, it makes me think of cities like Berlin, which, by the way, they're they're they're train drivers went on strike today. 
So there were no trains. 
But when you get on the U-Bahn or the S-Bahn, there is no turnstile. 
You buy a ticket. 
You have a ticket. 
Nobody checks it. 
But if they do check to see if you have a ticket and you don't have one, the fine is pretty, pretty stiff. 
And people generally pay the pay the fare. 
And that's true of many European cities. 
I don't know why that kind of system can't work here. 
You see some of it on the select buses, you know, where you're supposed to either get your your ticket from the machine at the bus stop or you use your your Omnicard and you don't actually go through a system where somebody is checking to make sure you paid. 
But if you're challenged, you'd better have proof that you have a ticket. 
Kyle, go ahead. 
I will say if it's 700,000 for this trial entrance to the system, it is this is the instance where people like us and the public are allowed to test and play with this thing. 
And if it is actually if it is actually a multimillion dollar budget liability that something like this, if rolled out or scaled up across the system, actually fixes, then I guess makes sense to to spend the money, even if they have to redesign, refit it a couple of times through this process where the public actually can put hands on it and try this kind of stuff. 
So I think we are actively actually a part of that right now. 
Definitely reporting it and then people playing with it. 
But, you know, who else is part of this is the rest of the world, because this isn't the first subway system. 
There are lots of them. 
And this this issue has been dealt with by others. 
Oh, that's a great point. 
Now, how did they deal with it? 
Are there any where it works? 
And, you know, find the one where it works and try to apply to New York City, which, you know, arguably is the busiest. 
I bet you, though, the place with the lowest fare evasion, kind of like what Rob was along the lines of what Rob was saying, is it's probably other factors than some gate or, you know, advanced access technology. 
One thing that's unique about New York, which I certainly hope never changes, is that you do not have to show anything when you leave. 
Other cities are different and that enables them to charge more if you're going a further distance or if you're traveling at a particular time of day. 
Cities like Washington, D.C. 
do that. 
You have to show your car on the way out as well as the way in. 
That's something we should avoid at all costs, but it would allow for more control of the people inside. 
You would have to have some kind of ticket that matched the ticket when you went in. 
It's also an addition to more tracking of people, more monitoring of our whereabouts, exactly where we are going. 
Now they can tell when you enter a subway station, they can't tell where you left. 
And that's really important that we preserve that. 
It's really important that we preserve one fare for the entire metropolitan area. 
And hopefully we don't give that up. 
Okay. 
That said, more in the world of MTA fun. 
Yeah. 
I don't know if you heard about this, but there were some break-ins recently, and the MTA is planning to explore biometric technology to prevent them. 
We're talking about break-ins to off-limits areas of subway trains, you know, yards and things like that. 
A bunch of kids actually broke into a train in a yard and took it for a little spin. 
I'm not kidding. 
They actually did this. 
A 16-year-old was arrested, in fact, for being a part of that. 
But, yeah, there is a need for better locks, apparently, because unauthorized people are slipping into the cabs. 
In the future, they say, we will look at technology. 
There's an opportunity for locks with a biometric or a code. 
But what we want is a simple and fast solution that we can implement in weeks, not months, or years. 
That's where they're headed right now, talking about just having more physical locks. 
But in the future, we can expect things like, you know, retina scans or fingerprints or facial recognition. 
This is for employees. 
This is for people that should be in the cab of a subway train. 
I don't really have a problem with that kind of verification for somebody who is actually driving a subway train as opposed to people who are entering the subway system. 
Does that make sense? 
Yeah, it's perfectly reasonable, and I'm sure they'll have a saliva-based one where employees just spit on the train and it opens the door. 
Well, yeah, yeah, I guess, you know, that's a prevalence of that. 
The MTA does not keep statistics on how many times train crew cabs have been broken into, but they've seen an increase in other forms of subway mayhem, including reports of people riding outside of or on top of trains. 
Not a good idea. 
I don't care how much fun you think you're having. 
It's not a good idea. 
They blame the cab trespassing incidents on keys falling into the wrong hands because of theft and the duplication of keys, former employees not returning the keys, people taking pictures of keys and someone duplicating them based on the picture because that is a thing. 
So they say what we're focused on is tightening up a process that over time seems to have had some leaks in it. 
That's an understatement. 
The focus on cutting off access to restricted areas of trains comes as the MTA has in recent years experienced a surge in social media-fueled subway surfing incidents along with nearly 1,750 instances in 2023 of pranksters pulling emergency brakes on trains and break-ins to train crew cabs. 
I don't understand what's clever about pulling the emergency brake. 
That's, yeah. 
A spokesman says this is yet another stupid thing that some kids probably think is a funny prank. 
Yeah, and there's a very significant human toll on this as well. 
The spokesperson says, I implore any teenagers, find your kicks doing something else, but vandalizing trains, stealing keys, stealing conductors' belongings, it's illegal. 
It delays thousands of New Yorkers every day and in the instance of the yard movement, could have put one of our employees in danger. 
Not to mention the whole system if that train actually got out onto the real tracks. 
Yes, Rob, go ahead. 
Yeah, I can totally see the reasoning behind something like this. 
For the cab area of a subway train, you know, it's not any publicly accessible areas that are being put behind this, it's areas for employees only. 
We were recently watching a TV show from the 90s which involved people just wailing on the door to the cockpit of an airplane to get into where the pilots would be, and it reminded me how that was before, you know, certain events in our history that shored up that security because there are plenty of very good reasons to keep people out of the driving area of a train or an airplane or things like that. 
So, yeah, I like that they mentioned in this article that they're exploring locks with a biometric or a code, for example, because just a biometric alone that's prone to failure, you know, if you get a cut on the wrong finger, your fingerprint won't scan the same way and things like that. 
But, yeah, there are no reasons not to protect the people in the position of controlling trains throughout our great transit system. 
By the way, speaking of trains, I guess we should probably mention this as well. 
A bit of fun for people that ride the subway in New York. 
You may have noticed this, you may not have noticed this, but if you're look now, you will. 
And that's the fact that every time a train pulls into a station, you will see the conductor in the middle. 
Watch that conductor. 
What they do every single time they pull into a station is they point. 
They point with their finger at a particular sign. 
It's called pointing and calling. 
It's something that actually originated in Japan. 
And it's spread in various places. 
It actually started in the early 1900s. 
Train drivers were calling out the status of signals. 
Back in those days, steam locomotors were quite common. 
And there was wild noises, steam and smoke that made cooperation between two drivers very difficult, also made rail journeys dangerous. 
Drivers had to call out loudly to hear each other. 
And pointing was a way of calling attention to something that should be observed, such as a sign or a signal. 
So you'll find that working in various countries in Asia. 
In the MTA, New York City, before opening the train doors, subway conductors are required to point to a black and white striped board. 
Another thing to notice on subway platforms, every station has this, a striped board located opposite of the conductor's window. 
And they do this every time a train pulls into a station. 
Now, the boards are located at the middle of the platform so that when the conductor can see the sign, both ends of the train have reached the platform, it's safe to open the train doors at that point. 
Now, this procedure was implemented in 1996 after a series of incidents where doors opened in the tunnel. 
The procedure shows that the conductor is paying attention. 
If the conductor cannot see the strike board, they are not permitted to open the doors. 
In Toronto, they also use a similar system. 
Before opening the train doors, subway guards are required to point to a green triangle. 
Installed on the platform wall opposite the conductor's window every time a train pulls into a station. 
The procedure was implemented after a series of incidents where conductors open the doors on the wrong side of the train. 
Always unpleasant. 
The procedure is used to focus the conductor's attention. 
Now, you might think this is silly. 
You might even be tempted to point back at the conductor when they're pointing, which, you know, is silly and childish, but some people do it. 
But bear in mind, a 1994 study by the Railway Technical Research Institute showed that pointing and calling reduced mistakes by almost 85 percent when doing a simple task. 
Yeah. 
So watch where you point. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
In fact, there's I actually have a poem about pointing and calling. 
Oh, no. 
I'd like to read. 
Another poem? 
Buddy. 
Yeah. 
No, I'm joking. 
Yeah. 
But I do. 
I do. 
About this very subject. 
But sometimes there are two of those zebra-striped boards that are towards the ceiling on each on the same side of the platform. 
Can you figure out why? 
On the same side? 
Facing the same direction? 
Facing the same direction on the same side of the platform. 
Sometimes there are two, but in different locations. 
Well, the only thing I can think of is that there might be different length trains that go through that station. 
That's exactly right. 
You got it. 
Can't get one past you. 
Well, you know, I grew up on the subways, so yeah. 
Gila, did you have your hand up, Gila? 
No, I was just, I was like, I know the answer to that question. 
Oh, I'm sorry. 
I was waiting to be called on. 
Okay. 
All right. 
You'll get the next one. 
Letter time. 
You can write to us, OTH at 2600.com if you have something to say to Off the Hook here on WBAI. 
Hello to the Off the Hook crew. 
I'm reading about how there are not enough people signing up for the HOPE conference. 
At the same time, while buying my own ticket recently, I realized that you could pay for your tickets with Bitcoin, something which I've owned since back in 2015 and yet have never used to buy anything ever, except to diversify into other coins back in 2019 or so. 
There might be thousands. 
0.15 Bitcoin at 40K sounds like thousands. 
I would totally like to donate some of this to some people who want to come but can't afford it. 
Thing is, I don't even know how to get the money out of my own account. 
I got this all so long ago, but I have all the passwords, etc. 
If you can do it, I'd love to give you like 10 tickets. 
Make a thing out of it. 
Generate more publicity. 
I trust you folks because I've been listening to your show for, damn, maybe 15 years. 
Just a thought. 
And thank you, Alan, for that extremely generous offer. 
And, you know, we'll contact you for sure. 
Yeah, it can be challenging. 
It can be confusing. 
Oh, my God. 
Just, you know, I've dabbled in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency a bit over the years. 
And it's incredible. 
You reach both ends of the spectrum where things are so incredibly secure that it's insane. 
And then within five minutes, you're doing something that's so incredibly insecure that it's also insane. 
For instance, giving out your bank account information, password, and account to a company you've never heard of before. 
But yeah, you're supposed to do it that way. 
That's how it's done. 
Sure. 
There's so many weird contradictions, but it's an interesting system. 
It's a good system. 
And a lot of people have a lot of money they don't realize about. 
And a lot of people have lost a lot of money, too, by losing hard drives, losing passwords, not getting access. 
And it's fascinating. 
It's chaos. 
And that's kind of what I enjoy most about it. 
But yes, Bitcoin is definitely a possibility here. 
So again, thank you for that very generous offer. 
I want to just put it out there that certainly if this is something that they want to do, we will make sure that a contribution like that is a part of some kind of scholarship or something for people who can't otherwise get the chance to go to an event like Hope. 
So thank you for that idea. 
And if that's something that can happen, but be very careful when you're working with these things because, as E pointed out, it's incredibly complex and you should be sort of checking your work and very methodical about using these systems. 
Well, it's incredible to me. 
But I think we accept it and we can get tickets to people using that method. 
Like I say, I dabble sometimes, but I'm very ignorant on the whole process. 
I'm just kind of amazed how I'm told that this is how people do things anonymously. 
But then when you want to do something involving Bitcoin, you have to give out all this personal information and be verified. 
And it just seems like it's not really that anonymous. 
Well, I think a lot of it happens by proxies and people sort of diversify and do all these kinds of things to layer. 
I know mixing is another thing that happens with exchanges and currencies. 
And a lot of that exists because it's not a formal, regulated currency in the traditional sense. 
So, yeah, it's sort of bizarre by design. 
Yeah, okay. 
And I respect that for sure. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Well, I think it's a bit of a misconception that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are very often used for anonymous transactions. 
When you have to think about this, the blockchain is a public ledger. 
Everything is out there. 
It's public. 
So if you can associate an identity with a wallet, you know what those transactions are. 
It becomes more difficult to track and trace currency if you put them through mixers or coin swapping type systems or to track currency through an exchange. 
That can become kind of difficult as well. 
But for the most part, there isn't a lot of anonymity here. 
There are certain ways to preserve your anonymity, but a lot of KYC requirements have eviscerated that to a certain extent. 
There are separate cryptocurrencies that are designed with privacy-enhancing technologies in mind, but those are accepted in far fewer places. 
So it's certainly tricky, but I think the barrier to entering this market of Web3 technologies is getting lower and lower. 
And, you know, quick plug here for Ethereum and the Ethereum name service, and that's, I think, why things are getting a lot simpler because of things like ENS and the naming system that is allowing you to have easy access to areas on the blockchain by naming them with things like domains. 
So instead of having a long wallet address that relates to a manual Goldstein that's ridiculously long, you can't memorize it, you can't, you know, if you cut and paste it and you're missing a digit and you send cryptocurrency to it, it might just be gone forever. 
You could perhaps get goldstein.eth and assign that just like you would point a domain name to an IP address to an address on the blockchain. 
So there's a lot of new stuff that's coming out. 
And I would say that ENS or Ethereum is new and, but Ethereum name service is new. 
Just to be clear, you are involved with this, correct? 
Just to be clear, I am involved. 
Yeah, I'm the general counsel of it. 
And that's something I recently started, but it's solving the type of problems that you are exactly describing. 
Well, you know, as far as being anonymous, I would think the ransomware people would disagree and say that it's quite preferred as a method of staying anonymous because they almost always insist on being paid in Bitcoin. 
Well, they prefer that, right? 
And they'll often use wallets that are associated with exchanges that have very lax or no KYC requirements. 
You can, KYC being know your customer requirements. 
That's certainly the case there, but it still is trackable and traceable. 
You can see exactly where they put the money, what they do with it, whether it stays in one place, whether they're edging it out into fiat currency. 
And very often that money can be frozen and clawed back after a ransom payment, but that's a danger. 
You can see what they do with it. 
I think you can even see their balance, which seems like an odd thing to be able to see. 
Yeah. 
But as far as getting back something, how would you even know who the people were? 
You can watch your money disappear and go somewhere else, but how would you even start the process of getting it back? 
Well, there are certain ways to use legal process to get that back if the money ends up in a separate exchange or to use the powers of law enforcement if you're working with them to freeze that particular currency in an exchange. 
And then once it's frozen, essentially as the proceeds of a crime, just like you would freeze the proceeds of some drug lord or something like that, right? 
That would be in a bank account. 
You can use those same legal remedies to freeze the proceeds of a ransomware event. 
And then once it's frozen, that's another story in terms of getting it back because some of those exchanges don't do business with U.S. 
persons or don't want to have any interaction with the U.S. 
government or don't respond to legal process. 
So that can take a little bit longer to get the money back. 
But knowing where it is and freezing it are the first two steps to getting either stolen money back or money that you paid for some kind of ransom. 
But I will say this, though. 
It does very much anger the threat actors that might have been responsible for your ransomware event. 
If you pay them the money, they give you the decryption keys and then you essentially burn them by freezing that money. 
If they have any kind of foothold in your organization or they know another vulnerability that by which they might be able to compromise your system. 
Well, they still have your data. 
They could still release that. 
And that's oftentimes more harmful. 
Well, you know, according to most of the negotiations that you have with these ransomware threat actors, one of the things you always negotiate for is the deletion of your data. 
And how do you verify that? 
Well, you can't really, but they will give you some kind of deletion tree. 
Right. 
So I'll give you like a text file that shows the pathway through which like a command like RM-R had been run and that's supposed to indicate to you that the data is deleted, right? 
And you're going to believe that. 
You're going to believe that that's an actual deletion. 
Obviously, it's pretty easy to replicate or, you know, you can just have a copy of the data, but these guys live and die by their word. 
You know, if there's one instance where somebody negotiated for the deletion of their data and it wasn't actually deleted and it was subsequently released, then fewer people are going to trust them in the future. 
Yeah, there's nothing worse than being an untrusted ransomware person, but go ahead, Kyle. 
I just want to say this is a really big, thorny issue that, I mean, Alex is speaking from one perspective on certain particular hypothetical scenarios and I just want to point out that the things like, like the, no one is using things like Bitcoin or cryptocurrency and honestly telling themselves that just by virtue of transacting in that currency, they are somehow completely anonymous. 
I think the point here, the real, the crux of it, the thing that we're saying in short is that it can be an aspect of a larger effort to be completely anonymous, which many actors on the internet will use. 
it can become very helpful and we named off a couple of the techniques. 
There are a lot more ways and I think even like the know your customer thing, that's more of a like, hey, I want cryptocurrency to become fiat or some, that's an exchange thing. 
That's like, I need to get this into cash. 
That isn't always everyone's prerogative and the point Alex was making about policing it and trying to bring, bring the sort of law, like assuming actors care at all about that, is a jurist, ends up, I think, bottom line, a jurist, multi-jurisdictional issue because these exchanges are diffuse, dispersed, everywhere and nowhere on, you know, out in the ocean and in space, whatever, they're, as we said, bizarre by design if it's for real people trying to be anonymous with this as one aspect of their larger effort, not the average person buying pizza with crypto. 
Yeah, do people still do that? 
Yeah, there's so much out there that people have lost access to, you know, or I've even heard of cases where people have this immense amount that they've gotten somehow either by investing early or through some kind of a hack or God knows what and they have this huge amount of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency just sitting around that they really can't do anything with and it's, you know, it's bizarre to think of there's this number sitting in a wallet someplace that can be converted to actual cash and used to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people and, you know, one thing that I hope that all of us work on in the future is figuring out how to make those little numbers, those little digital numbers into something real that can help people, you know, and there must be lots of people who are working to get to that stage because right now it's mayhem. 
It's complete and total mayhem and it's fascinating as a result but I'm curious where it goes. 
Well, in the example in the letter I just, I would just end with, you know, putting that found currency towards like I kind of characterize scholarship or just information and experience where people can learn about and share or even present about technology. 
That's an interesting way. 
I mean, I don't know if it's necessarily, I mean, from the angle of carbon or whatever processing and making that value happen for someone who would otherwise not be able to go to a conference. 
I don't know. 
Is it better or less carbon than buying pizza with that same amount of cryptocurrency? 
Maybe it's a lot of pizza. 
I don't know. 
It does need to be made greener. 
That's for sure. 
Yeah, but also what you spend it on, right? 
Like, because it could consume a lot in processing and then you could spend it on your yacht made out of a precious metal. 
Like, it's, that in and of itself will not ultimately be a very friendly and beneficial thing to very many people. 
Do we have that kind of scrutiny on all types of currency, all types of payment? 
Do we say, is this going to, you know, a environmentally friendly product? 
No, I'm saying it just doubles the effect versus, I don't know, your handcrafted currency. 
Wow. 
Any other thoughts on cryptocurrency as we have about one minute left in the show? 
Yeah, where'd the time go? 
Cartoon drawings of ugly monkeys are still worthless. 
Oh, that's true. 
Yes, I forgot about, no one's talking about that anymore, are they? 
NFTs, no one's talking about NFTs anymore. 
Well, I think that they're, they're still, you know, out there and there's still something of a, of a market for them, but they have dropped drastically as, as the thing in itself, right? 
You know, it's like that German philosophical saying, I can't remember, divorce, ding on sick or something, beware of the things in themselves. 
So, an NFT as a thing in itself, simply as a token for being a token, I think always had some sort of dubious value, but as a function of something else or as part of some other ecosystem, I think NFTs are actually going to be growing in utility. 
So, you're going to see them incorporated in other different types of technology, not just as a record of stupid, ugly ape somewhere. 
All right, well, I look forward to that. 
Kyle, final words. 
Oh, I'm with like where Alex is coming from because a lot of the original hype was about it being an investment vehicle and I think it should be looked at more like reams of paper. 
You know, it's something we have access to that can be used functionally, but it's not something that is, you know, you should sow your fortunes to. 
That's it. 
Okay. 
I think it should just, you know, we may reinterpret what its use is. 
O-T-H at 2600.com is our email address. 
Please write to us. 
We are off next week, but we'll be back in two weeks and in just about nine minutes, eight minutes or so, we'll be on YouTube on channel 2600 or you can just go to 2600.com and click on the link that's right there on the front page. 
For Off the Hook, it's Emanuel. 
Have a good night. 
Hello, David. 
Hello, David. 
We can't help you if you won't let us do. 
You're lost. 
You're in limbo now. 
I thought I was heating pad. 
You've worked for the Contra Costa County Central Sanitary District. 
No. 
For 15 years, I worked for the Playbatch and they've just let you go. 
That's not even me. 
That's you. 
You don't know what you're going to do now. 
But, you know, as soon as you clear your throat, you're going to have to kill your boss. 
Now, that, I don't know where to go. 
I'm anyhow. 
Because there's a girl in the small star. 
I need to, like, I'm a socialist galaxy. 
But I just didn't want to. 
Repeating? 
You're in limbo now. 
Yes, I think you are. 
Just what do you want to do? 
You're fired from your job as well, I hope so. 
You don't have any idea what you're going to do. 
What? 
And you're completely lost now. 
Economic dire straits. 
David! 
David, those feelings are coming back! 
You don't know your name anymore. 
All the facts floating again. 
No, we're all here to help you, David. 
We all want to. 
Your wallet is missing at this time also. 
And, you're in limbo right now. 
And you know you're going to have to kill No. 
What's wrong with me anyway? 
You're going to have to kill No. 
You're fast. 
You will. 
Who still has a job in this brave new world? 
You will. 
It's poison. 
You will. 
You want to go to another planet? 
You will. 
Nobody has thoughts. 
Feelings like that. 
You will. 
Nobody's human anyway. 
You are scared to leave your house. 
Really? 
Your house. 
Your home. 
What is the meaning of this invasion? 
You let your legal identification expire. 
I don't want that you're in. 
So you cannot have a doctor's appointment. 
Brain treatment. 
If you get a legal ID, you will have to leave the house. 
And they will break in and kick your speaker. 
I don't know my name. 
Angry men destroying their engines on YouTube. 
The first time I didn't feel it. 
Dance explosions. 
This time I feel it. 
And you're completely lost. 
Did you know that you were saying you're lost? 
Is there anything else required from the human employees? 
A lot of patrons are tired of the law. 
The threat of violence is required. 
But I just didn't want to. 
Up, up, up, up. 
Just what do you want to do? 
Up, up, up, up. 
I just didn't want to. 
Up, up, up, up. 
I thought it was terrible that there were children in the building. 
Hold down, please. 
You don't even know who you are. 
I do know who I am. 
You're in limbo. 
Limbo. 
I don't know what I'm going to say next. 
There is no planet. 
I'm all screwed up now. 
Hey, man. 
The phone is ringing. 
Tell us about it. 
I know the lipstick is on upside down. 
My life is going to be something you want to miss an even first. 
It's a bad sign if it's ringing continuously. 
You better get it. 
I don't know what I'm going to do. 
It's going to catch on fire. 
Oh, there it goes. 
It's starting to melt. 
Limbo, and I'm in limbo. 
Yeah, yeah, I'm in limbo. 
Just what do you want to do? 
We're disciplinary causes of some kind in return for survival. 
Yeah, yeah, I'm in limbo. 
I can't stand to see this phone burning. 
I gotta go look at webcams. 
David. 
David, those feelings are coming back. 
And we need someone to say this really hurts. 
This is Ralph Poynter. 
Join me and others every Wednesday, 8 to 9 p.m. 
Eastern Time on WBAI 99.5 on your radio now. 
It would appear the human movement is such that at any moment in history, there are too few that understand possibilities of existence that would benefit all who inhabit this planet and are willing to act on this understanding. 
This program will feature that few. 
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Call in 212-209-2877 Wednesday, 8 to 9 p.m. 
on WBAI 99.5 on your radio now. 
  And welcome to everybody here on YouTube as we begin another exciting edition of Off the Hook Overtime. 
Kyle, you seem to have made it. 
Present. 
Okay, and Rob, Gila, Alex, you're all in the overtime land in Skypeville? 
That's true, I had to count it for. 
Okay. 
We are here. 
Awesome. 
And we are live. 
Well, that's all we ask for. 
That's all we ask for. 
And we've gotten our first make it louder comment. 
We haven't even started talking yet. 
How can people be demanding that we change the levels already? 
We're as loud as we're going to get, I think. 
Yeah, I'll adjust it just a little bit. 
But last week was really good. 
And the only reason it's set the way it is is because we accept phone calls. 
And we have, I don't know, only so much power, technically. 
And it works the way it works. 
So, I don't know. 
I'll do a little bit, but hopefully. 
I think we're sounding good. 
All right. 
Well, what you think, Rob, is what we're going to go by. 
I'm going to go with what Rob said, then. 
If Rob thinks we sound good, that's the barometer. 
See, when I mess with it, that's when it goes all crazy. 
I know, right? 
I'm going to not mess with it. 
Yeah. 
But it's mostly for the benefit so that the caller can hear, so that people that are joining us remotely can hear. 
And E, myself, we can all hear one another and talk. 
And so that's why it is the way it is. 
But please tell us if it's too loud or too slow. 
Or, you know, maybe let's talk about something other than our audio levels. 
Yeah. 
All we ever do. 
Yeah. 
It gets a bit tired. 
Yes, Alex? 
On the subject of the utility of NFTs. 
How does he sound? 
Is he too loud? 
He's good, right? 
I see. 
Now you're doing it. 
I'm just making sure everybody's, you know, even here. 
I heard it. 
He sounded clear to me. 
Good and clear. 
All right. 
I'm sorry, Alex. 
I'm sorry. 
As I said again, on the subject of the utility of NFTs, one of the things I'd like to share is that we have an active case right now in the Federal District Court in Alaska, believe it or not. 
I think I passed by that. 
Is that in Fairbanks? 
No, wait. 
Juneau. 
I think our case is in Alaska. 
No, I know. 
Alaska is a big state. 
I'm naming cities. 
Anchorage is what I meant to say. 
Okay. 
Yeah. 
Ours, I believe, is in Anchorage. 
I haven't been there. 
I would love to go there to make an appearance. 
But we made a - this is a case involving a sort of weird hostile takeover of a blockchain investigation company. 
And the facts of this case are really quite interesting. 
But some of the defendants are located overseas in places like Cyprus that are very - and it's very difficult to serve people in those jurisdictions with a summons and complaint from a federal district court in the United States. 
You have to go through the Hague Convention. 
It takes a long time. 
So we made a motion for court-ordered substituted service in that case that would allow us to do various other things than go through the Hague Convention for service of process, like publish the fact that there's a lawsuit against these people in certain magazines or contact their former lawyers. 
But one of the things we did, given the nature of the case involving blockchain investigators, was that we had the wallet addresses of a couple of these guys. 
So we asked the judge to authorize us to serve them by airdropping an NFT into their wallets. 
Oh, wow. 
And we did. 
Airdropping an NFT into their crypto wallet. 
That's great. 
That's right. 
And there's metadata associated with the NFT that says you have been - you know, you are basically a defendant in this lawsuit, and you can view the complaint at this web address. 
A crypto subpoena. 
Crypto NFT. 
Yeah, crypto subpoena through an NFT. 
So there's just like another use case for an NFT. 
Okay. 
Well, we'll see if anybody takes that seriously and shows up to crypto court or whatever. 
Go ahead, Dila. 
We actually did have a listener question. 
Before I pass on this listener question, did want to remind everybody that part of the reason that the chat exists is so you can communicate with us. 
And we do not monitor the chat before overtime starts. 
It's like it doesn't exist. 
It doesn't exist. 
So just as a reminder. 
Now, a listener asks, and I quote, why aren't y'all more skeptical about crypto? 
Wait, how do we not express skepticism over the last 20 minutes? 
I've heard nothing but skepticism, saying it's not real, it's crazy, it's chaos. 
I mean, what words do you want us to use? 
Look, we can't deny it exists. 
It's out there, and there are large sums of money floating around that are either lost or can be guided into something constructive or can be used for criminal purposes. 
But, yeah, like it or hate it, it's real. 
It's there. 
Yeah, I'm firmly on the record as the more I learned about cryptocurrency over the past 15 years or so, the less I liked it. 
And I reached a point where I decided to have nothing to do with it. 
I don't own any, don't buy any, don't fiddle with any, and don't plan to. 
And that's, you know, that's my take on it. 
But, you know, if people can use it for good things, like the listener who, you know, offered to donate 10 tickets to Hope for people who can't afford to go, you know, we're better off having that than not having that. 
And if we can find other constructive uses for people who, you know, have decided they don't need it themselves, then I think we should encourage that rather than simply pretend it doesn't exist, right? 
Yes. 
So while we have all expressed personal skepticism, and I'm also willing to say that in my professional life, someone said, hey, why don't we accept crypto for donations at this organization? 
And I said, oh, boy, did you ask the wrong person and proceeded to explain for like 15 minutes why it was a bad idea? 
And they said, oh, but we did have another listener follow up and say the fact that you can buy tickets with Bitcoin is seen as a lack of skepticism. 
Well, I mean, that's the question. 
The thing is, you know, you can buy things using all kinds of currencies right now, stable ones, unstable ones. 
We just like to be open to whatever works for whomever. 
And it's not an endorsement. 
It's just opening up the gates for if this is easier for somebody, they have that option. 
And we're not going to indoctrinate you with our opinions as to what you should do or what you shouldn't do or what words you should use or shouldn't use. 
It's just it is. 
It's there. 
Oh, I want to basically clarify. 
I think basically exactly the circumstance Gila referred to was how we began to accept it in the first place. 
It was at the behest of the hacker community, people that read the magazine, that come to hope. 
We weren't really that aware of it early on. 
And I guess the skepticism. 
Yeah, we're entirely skeptical of it. 
It's it's it's it's really something that like I was trying to advise on the show that that should be handled seriously because it's not an investment vehicle. 
Like you really need to be clear eyed about how and what you're doing. 
And there's been a lot. 
There's been changes with it. 
You have to like Alex talks about a lot. 
Like you kind of have to follow the state of the art, what people are doing with it, what the trends are. 
This goes to how it's being used and things like like malware. 
So all of that are like the backdrop against which we accept it for things like the conference. 
And it was it was new to us still is in in what we're saying here. 
And basically early on was something we wanted to experiment with because it involved technology. 
There were friends of ours in the the crypto punk and cypher punk scene that hate it. 
It bothers them that and I think for the exact reasons that I critique that, you know, people treated it as an investment vehicle, as something that is like hedge funds and that kind of stuff. 
So like then that itself has its own reputation in the financial sector and in some ways began to be bleed into cryptocurrency, like perhaps experts or feigned experts in that area kind of trying to work it into as a way to like hedge against people that they already compete with in finance and stuff. 
So, yeah, there were like forces pushing and pulling this thing that did not have a sort of central body directing it. 
It was directed by the people using it. 
And so the instance of people saying, hey, why don't you accept crypto? 
That's actually how people get started in using it. 
It isn't necessarily because they have some, you know, undying faith in it or it was presented or they're, you know, all in on it in some way. 
We wanted to experiment with it and that's how we got into it. 
But let's be clear. 
Do not invest your life savings in crypto. 
It's not something that I would ever rely upon and it could all disappear tomorrow. 
That's that's those are facts. 
So, uh, be careful out there and don't invest more than you can afford to to see at zero tomorrow. 
OK, Alex, go ahead. 
Yeah, yeah. 
Building on what you said, Kyle, in terms of the evolution of this and also going back to to our friend Virgil, you know, and I'll tell you, I think that he is such an incredibly talented and smart guy, too. 
And when when I was taking this position with the theory of name service, one of the things Virgil did, because he was intimately involved, I think, with the creation of that, of the of the protocol itself, of the ENS protocol. 
And so, yeah, he gave me a reading list of things that I should read ahead of time. 
All right. 
That so you understand the foundation, the the mindset, the mentality of various people, players and things like that, which I thought was really cool. 
So he in a sense became my tutor and I was reading Vitalik Buterin's book, Proof of Stake, which Virgil had recommended certain chapters that I read, not the entirety of it. 
But I wanted to just going through and reading the entirety of it because it was it was fascinating. 
It's mostly a compilation of his blog posts about Ethereum before it started and and and the idea behind it and putting together this platform and whatnot. 
But one of the things that Vitalik had said a couple of years ago in this book, I thought was super interesting because he was saying, look, we we in to evolve this this notion of Ethereum and the blockchain and the usage of it. 
We don't need more computer scientists and we don't need more finance people joining the fray here. 
What we need are actually more philosophers. 
We need more people who understand the social implications of technology and can forecast how this is going to be used in more innovative ways. 
That's what we need as opposed to just programmers and engineers. 
I thought that was a really, really cool insight. 
And I think if we do have that, if we have more of those types of people joining, that's when we're going to see the real utility of blockchains and cryptocurrency being realized. 
Really good point. 
Really good point. 
It's when to it's when to think about there. 
I'd like to get into a story we didn't have time for on the radio show. 
And folks, please don't call the number until we give it out. 
So we're going to give out the phone number at a certain point. 
If you call before we give the number out, we're not going to pick up and your call will just go into some wasteland someplace. 
So we'll give it out in a couple of minutes. 
But a German court has charged a programmer investigating an IT problem with hacking and fined them €3,000, which is about $3,200, for what it deemed was unauthorized access to external computer systems and spying on data. 
According to the original report, the programmer, who apparently is unnamed in this entire story, which is interesting, operating as a freelance IT service provider, was initially tasked by a client to resolve excessive log generation issues with the merchandise management software they were using. 
The programmer examined the software and found that it established a MySQL connection with a remote server belonging to Modern Solution, GmbH, the management software vendor. 
After connecting to the database, it was determined that it not only contained his customers' data, but also the data for nearly 700,000 of Modern Solution's other customers, constituting a significant data privacy issue. 
Upon realizing that the database contained data for other companies, the programmer disconnected from the remote database and worked with a tech blogger to help notify the software vendor of the cybersecurity and privacy issue. 
All sounds pretty good so far. 
Modern Solution, GmbH, took the server offline to fix the problem, denying there was a security gap in their systems. 
The programmer and tech blogger quickly disclosed the issue the same day without waiting for a comment from the management software vendor. 
Soon after, the company reported the programmer to the police for unauthorized access to the exposed data and their database server. 
The programmer told tech blog, word filters, that the management software was found connecting to a MySQL server over the internet to determine what the database connection was for. 
The programmer extracted the plain text password for the MySQL database connection from one of the management software's executables. 
The prosecution argued that the defendant went as far as decompiling the software. 
However, the programmer confirmed that they simply listed the strings to the msconnect.exe executable to find the plain text password. 
However, the court decided that unauthorized access to data protected with a password violates Section 202C of the German Criminal Code, also known as the hacker paragraph. 
The hacker paragraph. 
The judge cited a 2007 legislative amendment on hacking, emphasizing that protection doesn't need to be robust to warrant offense. 
However, the judge demonstrated some leniency towards the consultant, considering his previous clean record and imposed a lower fine than the prosecution demanded. 
The defendant's lawyer argued that his client acted in the general public's interest, responsibly informing the software vendor about the security lapse, and criticized the court's views on the matter as outdated. 
The programmer has decided to appeal the decision, and the case will be assigned to a higher regional court, where the decision could assume an important role as a legal precedent. 
This is an amazing story, and of course, this cites Section 202C of the German Criminal Code. 
Now, there is a site that is run by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which is providing a translation of this bit of the German Criminal Code. 
So, it's very short. 
So, I'll read it out, and maybe our law-talking guy friend here can add his thoughts. 
Section 202C, Acts Preparatory to Data Espionage and Phishing. 
One, whosoever prepares the commission of an offense under Section 202A or Section 202B by producing, acquiring for himself or another, selling, supplying to another, disseminating, or making otherwise accessible. 
One, passwords or other security codes enabling access to data. 
Or two, software for the purpose of the commission of such an offense shall be liable to imprisonment, not exceeding one year or a fine. 
There's no further information here, no info on whether there are any exceptions for people who are actually doing the right thing and, you know, responsibly disclosing things. 
Nothing else. 
So, this seems to be what is being thrown at that researcher. 
Yeah, and you also have to remember, too, that Germany is a civil law jurisdiction as opposed to a common law jurisdiction. 
I think that's a really important distinction here. 
And the difference being common law is something that really the British had invented. 
And when we had engaged in the American Revolution and fought the British and won, even though we were our own nation, we had actually adopted all of the British common law, essentially the history of English decisions in court. 
And common law really is about judge-made law, right? 
So, when a judge decides a particular issue, that decision becomes part of the evolution of the law itself. 
And that interpretation of the law is itself an act of making new law. 
And so, in the United States, the equivalent provisions would be the unauthorized access sections of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the federal statute that was passed in 1984 after Ronald Reagan watched war games and then exhorted Congress to pass a law because it seemed like hacking wasn't illegal at the federal level at that particular point. 
And since then, for literally the last 40 years, we have case law of judges interpreting the provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and what it means to exceed authorization. 
And in Germany, they just have the statutes. 
Judge-made law really isn't a thing over there. 
It's civil law, meaning the law of the statute and what the legislature has put into that law is what controls. 
And the judges don't really have a lot of discretion in how to interpret that. 
So, even though it seems like there was very, very minimal security here and the intention behind extracting the password for the SQL database was to diagnose a problem, because we're talking about interpretation of law in the civil law country and statute controls, the judge's hands were probably tied in terms of what he could do. 
Well, you know, I look at the story and I see a company that says they don't have a problem, and I see this programmer saying, yes, you do, and here's how, and being penalized for doing that. 
I mean, what other way could this have gone? 
Either you just accept these people saying they don't have a problem when they clearly do, or you challenge them and wind up in court. 
Well, that's true, too. 
I mean, maybe another way of doing it would be to do that, to bring a case against them, but that would be just ridiculous and cumbersome to have to do that. 
I mean, I agree. 
There really isn't a good solution here, and you could argue back and forth, but ultimately, this IT consultant had an obligation. 
He had a job and a duty, and he was trying to fulfill that job and perform his obligations, and he did so in a pretty zealous manner. 
I would think that in the United States, this hopefully wouldn't have been prosecuted as a crime. 
I would just add, in retrospect, I think that 40 years, specifically the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, we as defending organizations have ended up less security-minded and I think less well-equipped for locking people up for pointing this stuff out. 
I think those laws had a lot more of a cost as we look back on the kind of education, the kind of openness to information sharing and reporting, and it's shaped us and made us ill-equipped for an environment where the actors who are now compromising systems don't care in the first place about any laws. 
And or they're empowered to break them by their state governments or if they're stateless, whatever, whatever organization they might affiliate themselves with. 
And so, yeah, adopting precedent wholesale over time can actually shape what society becomes. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
I agree with that, Kyle. 
And I think there's also a massive cost in how slowly we have evolved our notion of what unauthorized access means under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. 
And it's literally cost us lives in this community. 
It was the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that Aaron Swartz was charged. 
And it was that charge that caused him and the refusal of the Department of Justice to settle that charge and engage in a meaningful plea arrangement with him. 
And they wanted to pursue those charges against him. 
And he took his own life because of that. 
And I think that's incredibly sad that we lost such talented and shining lights in our community because of the idiotic interpretation of these types of laws to people trying to solve problems. 
I mean, think about, like, how awesome would it be if we had Aaron Swartz's voice right now in shaping the use of large language models? 
I'd love to hear what he would have to say about that or the evolution of AI. 
It's just so incredibly sad that we're robbed of that. 
Right. 
When we look at the landscape now and what's going on and the real need for expertise, that contrasted with looking back how much, like, the cost has been in really talented individuals. 
It's really, really hard to grapple with. 
I get more upset the more I look back. 
And our takeaway when we lose somebody like this, it shouldn't be like, oh, we learned to follow rules better. 
You know, like, that isn't hacking, I think. 
We've talked about political acts. 
We've talked about, like, you know, I don't know. 
I think in memorializing people, we've talked about, like, so what is the lesson? 
What is the point of all of this? 
Where are we going to go if there is less human involvement and less connection between individuals? 
I just I really want to challenge our mindsets in thinking about all of these things because there really has been, sadly, a cost. 
And we're left in a position where we're still evangelizing, trying to create understanding around the spirit of hacking, why it's beneficial, why we can actually have better systems when that act is not punished so, so in such a costly way. 
So violently, I want to say. 
No, it's absolutely accurate to say that because it is violent. 
You know, when you put someone like Virgil in prison for the simple act of going to North Korea and talking about ways that a system can be subverted, that's not a democratic system at work. 
That is a system that is designed to crush the individual spirit. 
And that's what we've been talking about tonight. 
People that show weaknesses in systems, whether it's the MTA, whether it's the system in Germany. 
Whatever hackers have done throughout the ages, it's mostly about pointing out that, yeah, you think you're secure, but you're not. 
We're not talking about people who use it for their own benefit and steal money and take advantage of people. 
That's a whole different kettle of fish. 
We're talking about people who simply state the inconvenient and bring on the wrath of the system and the powerful people that have the power to throw them in prison or to make their lives miserable, you know, to the extent that someone does take their life. 
That is what is outrageous. 
That is what we have always been fighting against. 
And hopefully many more people will also fight against that, that kind of injustice. 
All right. 
I guess we should open up the phone lines. 
Totally. 
It's offloading the costs to people that, you know, from a company, from a government perspective, to people that are just pointing something out that otherwise would not be observed or known about. 
Our phone number is 802-321-4225. 
That's 802-321-HACK. 
Call us, and we will accept your phone calls. 
And please be fairly brief and let us know what's on your mind and if there's anything you want to share. 
I hear the phone already ringing. 
So shall we pick that up, Kyle? 
Is it who we think it is? 
It is who we think it is. 
Okay. 
Well, then I will say a big hello to Rebel. 
Good evening. 
Okay. 
Let me see if the volume is good. 
As we have caller ID. 
So you might want to block that if you call us, star six, seven. 
Yeah, maybe I'll start doing that from now on. 
Yeah, maybe you should not advertise your presence so much. 
Okay. 
Let me see if the volume is okay for me. 
Yeah, let's check our audio level. 
Everybody else, check their levels. 
Everyone good? 
Hold on. 
Yeah. 
Hold on. 
Check. 
I can phone check. 
You know what's a good thing? 
A dial tone is really good for checking levels. 
You want to get one of those? 
Okay. 
My volume could be a tiny bit louder. 
It's good. 
It could be, but we're lucky that it's not. 
There's a certain threshold where it feeds back. 
You might want to turn your headphones down. 
There's only so much Rebel we can take. 
What about my headphones? 
How are my headphones? 
It's all going to go haywire. 
I just know. 
I'm already hearing too much. 
Hey, Rebel, what's on your mind? 
Yeah, we're ready. 
Okay. 
As you know, I'm back from California. 
I've been back for the last week, but you weren't taking phone calls. 
Wow. 
Well, I'm sorry to have ruined your week. 
Well, I noticed that I've, I don't know if I can, I guess I can mention airlines that I fly home because, you know, I flew American Airlines to California, well, to Phoenix Express, and then United Airlines back. 
But, you know, they don't even give you food on the plane on a New York to Arizona flight or a, well, they gave you food on the plane for California to New York, but, I mean, American Airlines, they don't even give you food on the plane anymore. 
I know, like, they give you snacks from New York to Arizona. 
Uh-huh. 
That's, that's nothing new. 
They've been, they've been cutting down on that. 
And then, and New York to California to New York, they gave you meals, but, oh, you have to pay for it. 
But no, I, okay, I'll use my credit card. 
No, you go, you have to do it on our app. 
Are you kidding? 
Really? 
You can't use a credit card anymore? 
Yeah. 
You have to go on their app or their, you know, their, their portal or whatever. 
What if you don't have a smartphone? 
What if you don't have a smartphone? 
Oh my God. 
I consider the same thing as Rebel. 
Or what if you didn't pay for Wi-Fi? 
Oh man, maybe they have free Wi-Fi. 
I don't know. 
It doesn't really matter, but. 
Point taken, point taken. 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
So what did you do? 
I mean, I just didn't, I mean, I asked, I complained. 
I said, you know, I, I don't have, you know, well, I didn't say they didn't have a smartphone, but I just said, well, I'm willing to pay for this with a credit card. 
And, but they said, oh, I'm sorry, you have to use their app or download or whatever. 
You know, it's, it's, it's airline food. 
It's really not worth even, even, you know, getting upset about. 
I just, I, I get something, you know, from, uh, the, the neighborhood or from the airport and, uh, you know, just bring that on the plane instead. 
And usually. 
I mean, remember, remember when I used to like, I would take cars from play one state to another and do that back in 2005, 2006, 2007. 
I mean, I, before, you know, get a nice meal on a plane, New York to Florida, California to New York, a nice meal. 
And the meals are pretty good. 
And you didn't have to pay for that check badge ever since, you know, now you, you know, you have. 
Well, you know, take a train next time. 
You got good meals on the train. 
Yeah, that's true. 
But yeah, you have to pay for those. 
Well, you have to pay for everything, Rebel. 
That's, that's the way it works. 
Well, back then, 2007 and 2006, you didn't have to pay for meals on the plane. 
You paid in a different way. 
Well, they were free and they were good and you didn't have to pay to check your bags. 
Yeah. 
Well, you know, things do change. 
That's, that's certainly true. 
But, you know, airlines were subsidized so much that it got ridiculously, you know, much cheaper than it should have been for what you were using. 
It's the pandemic. 
I mean, it's the pandemic, you know, like I remember hearing the news reports from, I think it was Chuck Schumer said, well, the airlines are making so much money now. 
They should stop charging for, you know, checking luggage. 
Yeah, I agree with that. 
They, they, they should, they're ripping people off. 
There's no question about it, but I just, you know, I find different ways of traveling so much more pleasant and less stressful. 
Let's see, what else? 
Have you ever heard of a data speed terminal? 
Like it's what the bell system used in like, you know, the 80s or? 
I'm not sure. 
Tell us about it. 
It's a data speed terminal. 
If you look it up on Google, it's like a bell system type terminal. 
They, like AT&T was not allowed to make computers and sell them on the open market. 
They basically made their own computers and used it within their own company. 
I think, I think Gila knows something about this. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
Oh, no, I don't. 
But we did have a listener comment that Rebel can do an old time thing like hitchhike for free. 
You would, you would, you know, you would suggest that to the people of the United States that have Rebel sticking his thumb out in their neighborhood and potentially getting into their vehicles. 
I am merely passing along a suggestion from another member of our community. 
Just remember, suggestions carry consequences. 
And, you know, somebody is going to stop and pick Rebel up. 
And then this conversation, you know, could go on for quite some time where he tells us all about the Bell computer. 
Or was it Rebel? 
Terminal. 
Terminal. 
Well, yeah, the Bell, the Data Speed 40, I think it was called. 
I don't know about it myself, but we can certainly look it up. 
Yeah. 
The, if you Google it, you all have access to Google over there, I'm sure. 
Data Speed 40 is, you can see a picture of it. 
Not a very good one, but you can see a picture of it. 
And it's like when you called repair service, that's what they would look up your phone number. 
And I think the business office used it to look up the one you gave in your phone number to look up your bill or something. 
I think. 
I mean. 
Well, they don't need them anymore. 
You know, there are no more operators or, you know. 
Sounds like the craft access terminal, but it's probably similar. 
Yeah, I guess. 
Maybe older. 
But it's just the terminal. 
What else you got? 
What else you got, Rebel? 
Let's see. 
Let's see what else. 
Um, when I get a call from like telemarketers or something, I get one phone. 
I, I, all right. 
I, I use my regular phone number. 
They call my regular phone number. 
When I call it back, it says. 
It's a different number. 
Yeah. 
It's not the same number because they're faking. 
No, it says one thing like, uh, uh, well, uh, this phone number cannot be dialed. 
But when I call from another number, I get a different thing. 
Like I get the actual company. 
Like they're blocking one number, but like. 
You know, you call the exact same number from a different phone and it goes through, but on another phone, it doesn't. 
Right. 
But not the goes through type where like a caller ID blocking kind of goes through it. 
The type where it's. 
There are a message coming from them or their company saying, you know, this voicemail is not working or something like that. 
Well, my, my theory is that they have something programmed that looks for a particular number or lack of a number and sends a message back to that. 
And if you call from something other than that, it'll let you get through. 
What, what you could do test, test this dial star six, seven on each one that'll block call or ID. 
And the number should show up the same way from each phone. 
You should get the same exact result if you call that way. 
Are you saying, are you saying it times out like the last number it called for like 10 minutes or something? 
Is that what you're suggesting? 
Like whatever system they're using blocks the previous number it just called? 
No. 
Well, like if you get a call from a telemarketer on, on your cell phone, call it from your cell phone. 
It'll work at a go to whatever, but if you dial from a different, or like if you have a Google voice number and you call it from that, it'll give you a message saying, you know, uh, we can't complete this, call the voicemail or the voicemail is full of something like that. 
Well, you can, you can program responses based on, uh, where a phone call is coming from. 
So they're probably doing something like that. 
So, you know, that's, uh, that's what's going on. 
The question is, what are their motives? 
So that, right. 
They, they also, you know, you know, call in and not say anything, which I think is like, you know, whoever is clicking, please mute your microphone. 
You're clicking too loud. 
Thank you. 
Go ahead. 
Um, yeah. 
Uh, they, you know, you don't, they don't, uh, you know, you don't hear them or whatever, you know, but I don't know if they're recording your voice for artificial intelligence or if when you call back the number, it's either busy or you get a strange tone and where you get, uh, you know, a recording thing, your call cannot be completed or whatever. 
And all of that can be like changing in real time, like really quickly, like it can be dynamic. 
So for you to call back from like 10 different numbers really quickly and see how it reacts or responds or directs. 
Each of those calls might be an interesting test, but it'd be hard to like set that up and react to having been called from that with that kind of a setup immediately. 
Hey, uh, Rebel, have you ever used SpoofCard? 
Uh, SpoofCard, is it an app? 
It's, it's, well, go to the website, um, what is it, SpoofCard.com or something? 
Uh, you basically can get, um, um, uh, you can get cards from them where you can change your number to whatever you want to, um, uh, call from. 
And you can do all kinds of experiments. 
It's like text now. 
I'm sorry? 
Yeah, it's like text now. 
It's like text now. 
Uh. 
It might be like the parent of it or. 
That I don't know. 
Yeah, it is, uh, SpoofCard.com. 
Call and text my virtual phone number and you can, you can change the number and do all kinds of experiments. 
That way, you know, you can see what happens if you call from, say, California or you call from the White House. 
You're under no obligation to play nice with these people. 
That's true. 
That is, I think, something that people know universally about this. 
And I think. 
Well, that's why I think that, that we're running out of phone numbers because there are all these phone numbers. 
Yeah. 
832, 432. 
Well, I mean, like, I think we should go back to the days with, you know, numbers going to a central office. 
I agree with that. 
I totally agree with that. 
And this whole, uh, you know, glut of overflow area codes is, is, is nonsense. 
What they should have done. 
I'm going to go into this tirade again was make area codes four digits. 
You know, you would have had 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 3, and nobody would have had to have gotten these ridiculous, um, uh, area codes that don't have any geographical, um, um, you know, uh, correlation. 
The overlays. 
Yeah. 
Well, it just simply added a digit to the phone number. 
I would have opened up so many more phone numbers without, you know, this, this fake crisis of running out of numbers because people waste them. 
Yeah. 
That's why I like these Indian, uh, like, uh, I don't know, scammers was they get 800 numbers and, and, uh, regular phone numbers. 
I mean, they're, they're, they're not even in our country and they're using our phone numbers and full phone numbers. 
How dare they tell, tell, tell Trump about this, you know, they're not even getting to the wall. 
They're, they're, they're using our, our actual numbers, our phone number. 
He could go off on this. 
He could, he could have a long tirade, you know, he can imitate a touchstone pad at some point. 
Beep, bop, boop. 
Yeah. 
He'll do that. 
Um, yeah. 
You know, rebel, this is, this is what I think you should focus. 
Your attention on right now. 
They have to use our numbers the right way. 
Yeah. 
Call Trump. 
He'll take your call for sure. 
Say they a lot. 
I'm killing a lot of birds. 
Uh, no, we can't hold a rebel. 
We're actually taking another call right now. 
We have, we have to go. 
All right. 
So we're going to, we're going to be disconnecting. 
Thank you, ma'am. 
Uh, and, uh, we wish you well and, uh, have a, have a, have a good rest of your night. 
Okay. 
Oh boy. 
Please wait for your dying. 
You know, when he laughs like that, it's, it's, it's, it's something that stays with me for a while. 
Uh, when you laugh like that too, Rob, same thing. 
And yeah, you see, that's what happens when, when you laugh like that. 
All right. 
Um, 802-321-4225 is our phone number. 
800. 
I'm not 802. 
Uh, 321-HACK. 
Slow down. 
Slow down. 
Easy. 
Easy now. 
Yeah. 
It takes a lot out of me talking, talking to him. 
He raises, he's not wrong. 
About what? 
Just all the crazy stuff. 
People waste this on and, and regular people that use these systems don't think to fight back and to set up experiments like we're talking about and even take an interest in what the different things are doing and yeah, we end up with crazy systems and we wonder why it's here. 
Um, I was just reading, there's a new overlay in Seattle. 
I think 564 is being added. 
You know, there's, there are area codes in New York city that I don't even know. 
I think 929 is one of them. 
That's one of the ones I do know, but there's others. 
Do you know them? 
We have a 929 number. 
You have a 929 number? 
Yeah. 
Wow. 
Well, good. 
I thought 929 was only Manhattan, but see, that shows how much I know. 
No, no, no, no, no, no. 
I think, what is it? 
322? 
322. 
What a stupid area code. 
I'm sorry, but that's, I mean, 347. 
I know that's Brooklyn and Queens, I think. 
Um, but I remember what the 718 split. 
I remember when everything in New York city was 212, including Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. 
Uh, but then they split the 718. 
You know, I, I had my grandparents old rotary phone in the other room that has their old 212 number. 
They live in Sunnyside, Queens. 
Uh, yeah, that's how, that's how far back it dates. 
And the phone still works better than any other phone. 
I'll have, you know, so, uh, that's, that's something about bell technology. 
Like we had this discussion like a year ago on overtime and it's 332, I think is the newest New York area code. 
And we found like a taco bell that has that phone number, like has a 332 number. 
Um, what did they do to, to, to piss off the phone company to get something in that area because no one's going to think they're local. 
I don't know who calls taco bell, but still. 
No one's going to know where anybody is. 
I mean, we have a nine to nine number. 
And I remember a while ago now we were getting spoofed. 
Our phone number was getting spoofed and people were busy call. 
So we would have dozens of messages, people saying, why did you call me? 
Why did you call me to the point where we rerecorded the outgoing voicemail to say, if you know us great, if you don't know us and you're returning a phone call from this number, it wasn't us. 
And we're really, really sorry. 
Um, you don't have to be sorry. 
You didn't do anything. 
Yeah. 
People stop being sorry. 
Yeah. 
Don't be sorry. 
It's not your fault. 
Say this, this phone, this phone call cost $10 a minute and that'll get them to hang up really quickly. 
Um, also a couple of notes from the chat. 
Um, we did, we, we were asked if this conversation with rebel was a rerun, um, which did remind me also of, uh, one of my favorite episodes of Saturday night live, but that's a different discussion. 
You think he's doing that? 
He's playing himself back and I'm falling for it each time that could be happening. 
Cause I get deja vu every time I talk to him. 
Um, we had a listener who asked if we can change the YouTube picture and put something more cheerful. 
Um, what's, what's not cheerful about we'll be removed. 
That's pretty cheerful. 
You should see the old one. 
It showed you what was there before they removed it. 
You know, that was really depressing. 
Hey listeners, if you had other suggestions, uh, someone did suggest the, um, the bell van would be a good look. 
Um, okay. 
As a general talking point, did anyone see the Gizmodo article about the 18 year old kid who decided to use the airport's wifi to send a text on Snapchat that said on my way to blow up the plane? 
Not the brightest bulb in the bunch, huh? 
Guess I missed that one. 
Um, and from our friend Lou ratio, who made that awesome dance track with our voices, uh, the story on the white open SQL database reminds me of how early cell phones communicated over unencrypted radio. 
This shit is totally out there and accessible. 
It sucks. 
And instead of making the system more secure, the FCC decided to make listening in on those particular frequencies illegal. 
It's essentially the same thing with that inventory software company. 
Their system is insecure. 
They don't want to fix it. 
And anyone who accesses said bad system should be penalized. 
Right. 
Um, and someone just chimed in now and said rebel was concerned about his volume levels. 
If he was planning on recording it for future use, so that would make a lot of sense. 
Uh-huh. 
Okay. 
We're starting to zero in on, on, on, on his motives here and his operation. 
Okay. 
We have a phone call, right? 
Carl. 
There is someone waiting. 
Okay. 
And good evening. 
You're on off the cover time. 
Go ahead. 
I guess that's me. 
Yes, it is. 
It is definitely. 
All right. 
Okay. 
I was going to warn you otherwise, because I called the 833 number and I was listening, um, carefully. 
I guess it just plays the show until I'm on. 
Uh, my, my question is very simple. 
Uh, what is the title of the book that Alex mentioned a proof of? 
I, I didn't get the last one. 
Before we tell you, you must tell us where you're calling from. 
Oh, Manhattan. 
Manhattan. 
Manhattan. 
Okay. 
And Alex, do you have that title handy? 
I do indeed. 
It's called Proof of Stake by Vitalik Buterin. 
B-U-T-E-R-I-N. 
Sorry. 
Again, uh, Proof of Stake by? 
By Vitalik, V-I-T-A-L-I-K, Buterin. 
B-U-T-E-R-I-N. 
Okay. 
Great. 
I'll find it. 
Yeah. 
Now, I could also launch into another conversation, but I don't want to do what, um, what his name did, uh, you know, wasting precious airtime on, uh, Minouje, but I do congratulate you, Emmanuel, on your sense of humor. 
I really liked that joke that went almost undetected about the dial tone that when you were basically threatening to disconnect him. 
Yeah, you got that. 
Yes, I did. 
I did, and I thought it was brilliant. 
On the other hand, that picture, I, I don't, you know, your sense of humor is sometimes a little over everybody's head. 
That picture is not funny. 
It doesn't communicate anything. 
I never said it was funny. 
I never said it was a funny picture. 
Did I say that? 
Yeah, I think you did, but, um. 
I just said it wasn't a depressing picture. 
It's not a depressing picture. 
Well, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a nothing picture. 
Not really. 
Yeah, that's, that's what I shoot for. 
Nothing. 
We could do better. 
Yeah. 
Well, maybe we can do better. 
Okay. 
All right. 
Well, then you got your result. 
But I, we could also have a listener's contest. 
Everybody could send in their thing and, and, and then, you know, a committee could decide what. 
So we have committees now. 
Did you just turn it upside down, Kyle? 
What did you do? 
What are you talking about? 
Oh my God. 
How did you, wait, first of all, when does that show up? 
Does it show up immediately or? 
Oh yeah. 
Because I'm looking at a script. 
Oh, it just did it for me. 
Wow. 
Well, I had nothing to do with that at all. 
All right. 
I do not endorse Kyle's actions here. 
I have more power. 
People, this is what you get. 
I yield to my colleagues who might have more interesting questions to, to bring up. 
And thank you again. 
All right. 
Thank you for your call. 
Take care. 
Thanks for listening. 
My pleasure. 
Bye-bye. 
Notes taken. 
So this is what we do to people when they make helpful suggestions on improving things. 
We just throw it in their face and turn it upside down. 
When I touch things, it's just, ah. 
It looks, if you look at it carefully, it looks like it's in Russian. 
Sure. 
Doesn't it? 
A little bit. 
Yeah, that R. 
Not to somebody who knows Russian, obviously, but. 
No, to the, un. 
To somebody who doesn't know Russian and is sort of looking at it out of the side of their eyes, but yeah, we're talking about the picture on the, for people listening later who aren't looking at the YouTube channel right now, um, yeah, this will be lost on you. 
But for people who play back YouTube, maybe Gila, you know that. 
I'm sorry. 
Did I make you sneeze? 
I'm sorry. 
Um, for people who are watching this and watching the chat go by, are you okay? 
For some reason, we, we, we, we're both breaking up here. 
And there goes Alex. 
Okay. 
Will they see the picture flip at the same? 
It's really not that funny. 
What's going on here? 
Oh, I don't know. 
I don't know. 
It's, it's just. 
You just have to turn your screen. 
No, I, I know. 
But what I'm asking. 
I think it's the noises you're making that are setting me off. 
I'm so sorry. 
I can turn my mic. 
Okay. 
I can. 
What were we talking about? 
Okay. 
If anybody else knows the answer to this question, let's say someone's playing back the show on YouTube and they see the chat going by, right? 
Because that's how we have it set up. 
They see the chat in live time, right? 
Mm-hmm. 
Mm-hmm. 
Okay. 
That's the first part. 
Will they see the picture flip also? 
Mm-hmm. 
They will. 
Okay. 
All right. 
That's all I need to know, Gila. 
Thank you. 
Go, go about whatever you need to do there. 
She's moderating. 
Yeah. 
Give her, give her some room here. 
Okay. 
Do we have another call? 
We do have a call. 
Yeah. 
And all the commotion. 
I didn't even hear it. 
No, I picked it up. 
It was ringing when you were addressing this, but we're ready now. 
Okay. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Well, how you doing there, Manuel? 
I reckon your moderator, she sounds like she's been smoking marijuana or something, giggling so much. 
Well, yeah, some people have that effect, but that's not what's happening here. 
Oh, okay. 
Well, it just sounded like the shishore was tickled. 
Uh-huh. 
I just wanted to talk about something I saw today that was pretty funny. 
You know, HP, they're always trying to lock their printers down with all this jib-jab about you got to buy our ink and buy it a whole bunch of times and stuff. 
And the CEO, he done came out today, boys, and he said that blocking third-party ink for printers fights for us. 
And everybody knows that's a big load of junk. 
It's just stupid. 
They're greed-driven corporations and everything. 
But you know what else came out today, buddy? 
What's that? 
Uh, today, Ewlett Packard disclosed to the SEC that they were compromised by APT-29, a.k.a. 
Cozy Bear, a.k.a. 
Midnight Blizzard. 
Oh, wow. 
And I thought that was pretty funny. 
That is pretty funny. 
That is pretty funny. 
That is ironic. 
I like to call that karma. 
I think that's exactly what it is. 
Indeed it is, yeah. 
Wow. 
That's about it, though. 
I'll let y'all get back to talking. 
Just wanted to, you know, drop a little break in the news out, courtesy of VX Underground. 
Can we ask what part of the world you're calling from? 
Oh, Eastern Kentucky. 
Eastern Kentucky. 
Best part of Kentucky. 
All righty. 
Thanks for doing what you're doing. 
Thanks for listening to us. 
And absolutely, I saw some of those. 
Go ahead. 
Oh, I'll just say, no, yeah, love you guys. 
And I'm just going to let you go. 
All right. 
Great. 
Thanks for calling. 
I caught those stories. 
All right. 
Take care. 
He was talking about it, and it was absurd. 
It's exactly right. 
The apparently cartridges that can introduce malware or some sort of software. 
And, I mean, come on. 
It's a consumable that supplies the ink for this thing. 
It's not supposed to be a vector, and they just don't want third-party competition. 
It's crazy. 
You know, they don't make enough money selling what they sell. 
They have to resort to these tactics. 
It's just too much. 
Another call, I take it? 
People are wise to it, though. 
Go ahead. 
Yeah, we have a call. 
And good evening. 
It's a busy signal, Kyle. 
What are you trying to make me look like a fool? 
Too quick or slow. 
No, I don't think it was you. 
I think I'm not sure how a busy signal even calls us. 
We can deal with that kind of feedback. 
All right. 
802-321-4225. 
On for another 10 minutes or so. 
Anything from Skypeland? 
You know, it's kind of nice to hear a busy signal because you just don't really get those anymore. 
That's true. 
You know, I wish you could get it when you call us, you know, because we can only take one phone call at a time. 
But we're using Google Voice or whatever, and they don't believe in busy signals, so they're going to send people who call while we're talking to somebody else off into the ether. 
And there's nothing we can do about it. 
Okay, that was a phone call. 
Let's try this again. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off Look Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Oh, hi. 
It's Eddie. 
I called a while ago when you were talking about the ad block. 
I'm the teacher that was calling you about how the DOE is dealing with all this stuff. 
I just wanted a little update. 
They actually block now Firefox as well as DuckDuckGo on, like, all the DOE devices, whether it's a complete laptop. 
Hold on. 
First of all, you're moving your mouthpiece a bit, so it's hard to hear you. 
But who's blocking what now? 
We're always blocking Firefox along with DuckDuckGo as a browser. 
Well, wait. 
DuckDuckGo is a site. 
Firefox is a browser. 
So how are they? 
There's also a DuckDuckGo browser. 
Yeah, they're blocking it off on all the OE devices. 
I use my own computer in the school, so I can still get Firefox and use it. 
But I can't use DuckDuckGo to search. 
So what's behind all this? 
I'm not sure. 
I mean, right now they're only allowing Google, Edge, and I guess when they're using Apple stuff, what is that, the Navigate? 
I mean, I forget what the Apple one is called. 
It's just ridiculous because I'm just - what I don't understand is how I can - on my personal device, I can still get Firefox even though I can't use DuckDuckGo to search. 
Now, which is weird because on all of the computers that are controlled by the DOE, they can't even use Firefox. 
So it's just - And this is New York City, right? 
Yeah. 
Wow. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
You know, maybe it doesn't have to do with the type of browser or the technology, but it has to perhaps do with the executable files, and they may have some kind of policy that essentially just locks down running any kind of executable file other than those that are whitelisted. 
So they might just have Chrome and whatever the hell it is that they have whitelisted without really giving any thought to alternative browsers and things like that. 
That's my guess about why the system works the way it does. 
What is it they do allow? 
They allow using Google or Chrome. 
You can use the Edge browser with Bing, I guess. 
And the - what is - I don't use Apple stuff, so I forget what the Apple one is called. 
The Navigator, whatever it is. 
Safari. 
Safari. 
Those are basically the only three. 
Safari. 
Safari, yeah, Safari. 
So it was at the point where you could still use Firefox on all the DOE devices, but then now they even block that. 
You know, you can even download the installation for it. 
That gets blocked as soon as you start installing it. 
It's just strange how they're doing it. 
So is this something that is throughout the entire system in New York City? 
Yeah, basically, basically it's the whole DOE doing it. 
It's all the schools. 
And users include students, teachers, administrators? 
Students, teachers. 
Because I was helping teachers get around the ad blockers, especially with Firefox. 
And I showed them - you know, I downloaded the ad blockers for them and set them up. 
They were happy because they could actually teach and use whatever videos on YouTube without getting any ads. 
Right, right. 
There was a situation where I was in a classroom with one of the teachers, and there was this reading assignment that they were doing, and they were using a video from YouTube, and it was a story. 
Right in the middle of the story, there was some ads for something unrelated to anything. 
You could hear even the kids groaning. 
It's terrible. 
It's awful. 
Yeah, it's absolutely awful. 
It's obscene. 
And, you know, well, since all the students are affected, I think that's where the answer will be because they'll be the ones to figure out how to get around this. 
Yeah. 
I mean, the only thing I can do is, like, you know, bring your own computer, and you can set up Firefox that way. 
Because I still have my ad blockers. 
I still use it, even though I can't - I'm forced to use Google to do it. 
But you can also - I think, what, with Edge, you can add ad blockers, but it seems to be a little bit clunkier than Firefox. 
I like the way Firefox works. 
It's better. 
It seems smoother. 
Yeah, you know, and this is something - let Firefox know about this as well, you know, because they deserve to know that the entire Board of Education in New York City is blocking them. 
Yeah. 
It's just - there's no reason for it, but they just don't want it. 
Well, the reason is that they want ads to somehow pollute the minds of kids and things like that. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
You have something? 
Yeah. 
I'm wondering about the exact models and makes of these devices and maybe if there are ways to load alternative operating systems onto them, which the user could then run whatever they like on. 
Yeah. 
I don't know if they would allow that either, but most of them are Chromebooks. 
The kids are using mostly Chromebooks. 
The teachers are using the Noble ThinkPad. 
Yeah. 
11, I forget which model specifically, but they're just like the convertible ThinkPad. 
See, it seems so amazing that all these machines were made available at little to no cost. 
There's always a price. 
You know, you might not see it today. 
You might not see it tomorrow, but it'll come due at some point, and I think that's what we're seeing here. 
Yeah. 
It's, you know, it just makes things more awkward for the teacher since they have to now just got to wait. 
You know, it's wasting time because they, you know, add plays, but then they'll give you the time to skip it, but it's after a few seconds of playing so they can actually push whatever they're trying to sell onto the kids. 
You know, I don't know if we suggested this before, but this would be a really good article in 2600, just outlining what you've noticed, what you've tried. 
You know, that will certainly get a lot of attention. 
Oh, wow. 
I didn't think about that. 
Yeah. 
Give all the details, and you'll have many thousands of people analyzing it, and yeah, it'll turn some heads. 
Oh, okay. 
Thank you. 
Sure. 
Good luck. 
Okay. 
Bye-bye. 
All right. 
Take care. 
I think that's going to do it for us. 
It's a great conversation, though. 
Yeah. 
It's really amazing. 
You would think there would be tiers of service for educators specifically from a lot of these platforms that these hardware devices and classrooms are so vitally connected to and dependent on for lessons and for, you know, searching and all that. 
That is really unfortunate because you're creating this moment of disruption and making class time something other than what it should be. 
You want to take this one last call? 
It seems like it would be easy to get through to people to create something specifically for educators. 
It's not that fair for everybody else who's using these services, though, but the fact they don't even care to offer something like that is pretty telling. 
Okay. 
We're going to take this one more call, but Robert, you go first. 
Yeah. 
Just thinking about how so many bad policy decisions have been made with the think of the children justification, and here we are seeing the rules forced on to forcing a situation which is demonstrably worse for children by any measure. 
Absolutely. 
Okay, you are the last phone call. 
Go ahead. 
I forgot to mention on high-definition voice on Android phones. 
I forgot when I was trying to get high-definition voice, you know, like I think I had a phone that has HD voice. 
I was trying to get it, and I'm asking T-Mobile. 
They don't know. 
I'm asking Samsung. 
They said T-Mobile does it, and how does that even work? 
Will be the question that we tackle next time on Off the Hook. 
Thank you very much, everybody, for calling and for participating. 
Write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com. 
This sad note, I wanted to mark the passing of our good friend Winnie in Germany, who was key in designing Hope pages for Hope X in 2014, the 11th Hope in 2016, the Circle of Hope 2018. 
And we will miss him quite a bit. 
Write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com. 
We will not be on next week. 
We'll be on in two weeks. 
And we hopefully will see you then. 
Good night.