Phone ringing.
Thank you for listening to Off The Hook.
Phone ringing now.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
I'm sorry nobody answered the phone before.
I really thought somebody was going to pick up.
We went back in time and we were trying a thing.
It didn't work.
We'll figure it out.
This is Manuel.
I'm here for this hour.
Kyle's over there.
Hi.
How are you doing?
Over in Skype land, we have, hang on, I know this.
Rob, is that you, Rob?
Good evening.
It is indeed me.
It's been such a long time since we've been on the air.
That's why I'm having trouble recognizing.
And whoa, is that Gila over there on the other side?
Good evening.
Hello.
How are you doing?
And that must be Alex, right?
It is I.
Okay.
I got all the names right.
Folks, we've been super busy.
All kinds of things going on.
Life keeps getting in the way.
And there's no alternative.
But we're glad to be back.
We've got all your cards and letters and emails and things like that.
And we have a lot to talk about.
A lot, as always, in the world of high technology, low intelligence, and whatever else is out there.
Can I start by complaining?
I mean, I'm told I don't do that enough.
And I need to get better at it.
But I do have something to complain about.
I've actually complained about this already on the social media network.
So if you're a fan of those, you might already be familiar with this particular issue of mine.
Okay with you guys?
Go for it.
Okay.
There's this service out there on the television called Netflix.
You may have heard about it.
And there's a button on my remote on my television set that says Netflix.
If I push that button, my television set goes to Netflix.
Right?
It's something that other people have, a button, a Netflix button that immediately takes you to a Netflix screen.
And you log in or you're already logged in.
And you can view Netflix fare.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I hit that button.
And much to my surprise, I got a message on my television set saying, this device is no longer supported.
To watch instantly, please see the list of supported devices on our website.
I was fit to be tied.
You know, here it is.
I'm looking at a television set.
And the screen on the TV is telling me that my television is no longer supported.
Now, can you imagine if you turned on a television set in the past and you tuned to Channel 2 or something.
And Channel 2 said, no, your TV is no good anymore.
You have to go get a new TV in order to watch Channel 2.
Why? There'd be riots in the street.
There'd be insurrections.
There'd be all kinds of things going on.
People would not tolerate it.
Yet today, for some reason, this is considered normal where a service that you pay for is basically unavailable to you if you don't continue to buy new hardware.
So, I said some things about this on the Internet.
And the response was not surprising.
Not surprising.
And the reason I say that is because no matter what, if you complain about something involving technology, there are always people who will stand up for the bad technology.
Okay, let's read a couple of these.
Your TV was never supported by Netflix.
I just happened to have a Netflix client which worked for an earlier version of their service and hasn't been updated since because your TV vendor kept its firmware.
Okay, how does that help me exactly?
So, I'm supposed to be mad at my TV now instead of Netflix?
I just want to watch a damn TV show and I have to jump through hoops.
That's not right.
The next response was life offline is great.
Okay, great.
I have to lecture now on not watching television after complaining about something that I spent a lot of money on no longer working.
So, now you're telling me that, yeah, you're stupid to be watching TV.
Why don't you go outside?
First of all, it's two in the morning when I'm trying to do this, all right?
And I'm not going to go outside.
And then, okay, response number three.
People still use Netflix?
Oh, yeah, now I'm an old grandpa for like wanting to use Netflix.
Yeah, I'm not cool anymore.
I have yet to see a positive response, something that doesn't blame the end user.
And yeah, I'm an end user at times.
I'm proud to be an end user.
Here's a suggestion.
Why not just buy a NUC and you see or something and run it that way?
Then you'd have the added benefit of having an actual computer connected to your TV.
Maybe I don't want a computer connected to my TV.
Maybe I just want a damn TV set.
Maybe I just want to do things the way they're supposed to work.
I have a Netflix button on my remote.
That, to me, is an implied contract right there.
I'm sure Alex, you'd stand next to me in court and swear to that.
Having that on the remote is my promise to be able to watch Netflix by pushing that button instead of getting a scolding.
Okay, if the TV is that old, my TV is less than 10 years old.
You know what?
I grew up in Queens.
And in my entire life in Queens, we had the same TV set.
It's huge, black and white.
I think it was a Sylvania or something.
And we would never think of getting another television set.
It was the only one.
Occasionally, it had to get fixed.
That was a big deal.
But, yeah, things are meant to last.
And I like to hold on to things.
I like to hold on to technology.
I'm using a laptop right now.
How old is this laptop, Kyle?
How old do you say this one is?
It's almost 10 or 12 years.
I think it's 12 years.
I think it's, yeah.
It still works.
It does everything I want to do.
I'm not composing symphonies on it.
Although I probably could if I had any musical talent.
But people are too quick to throw out technology.
And just follow the instructions all the time about upgrades
and what becomes no longer relevant, no longer supported.
So if your TV is that old, it's 1080p at most,
so any streaming stick or device should work.
Okay, fine.
They're telling me to go use an iPhone or an iPad,
which I don't have, and other services.
Okay, great.
You know, I can do all this.
I know I can do all this.
The point is I shouldn't have to do all this.
It should still work.
Why is my TV all of a sudden not supported?
Because somebody made a programming decision someplace,
and everybody is expected to follow it.
Here's probably the most helpful response that I got
out of all these responses, and there are many, many more.
I'm skipping over.
This is why I want a dumb TV.
It's not an insult.
It's a thing.
A dumb TV.
A TV should only be a display, maybe also a speaker, nothing else.
Any smarts need to be in an attached device that can be replaced
or upgraded if outdated.
Amen to that.
Yeah, absolutely.
There are more.
In the end, yeah, I figured it out.
I didn't have to throw out my TV.
I used a Roku device.
But again, how many people out there instantly are able to do that,
able to figure it out?
They buy a TV, the salesman says,
yes, you can get Netflix as a Netflix button,
and all of a sudden your TV is outdated, you have to get a new TV,
and a lot of people, I'll bet, do that.
Any thoughts from out there in Skype land?
Delia, I know you had your hand up first.
I did.
Well, first I was curious what a NUC was,
but Rob walked me through that.
But, no, it made me think about something.
So there was a TV, bought it in 2015,
and it has a cute little remote with the buttons on it.
And this particular that I'm holding in my hand right now has a Netflix button,
an Amazon button, a Vudu button, and an RDO button.
And I'm curious now what would happen,
because some of these services don't exist anymore.
Don't press that button.
Delia, don't press buttons of services that don't exist.
That sounds like an old Roku.
You'll void your warranty.
The TV might even explode.
It might even explode.
We don't know.
And then we have the newer, got some extra ones.
And this one has an HBO Max button,
and I wonder if you push the HBO Max button,
will it tell you that's not my name anymore?
That's right.
It's called just Max now, isn't it?
Right.
So, you know, part of me wonders why we have these services on the buttons,
and you can't just program your own buttons.
There's a bunch of services here and here that we don't have,
buttons that are just taking up space.
Yeah, program your own buttons.
I like that idea.
Yeah, you should be able to, like, remap them to something that works
or a workaround that you've devised.
Mm-hmm.
Alex, go ahead.
You should look at the buttons and perhaps see them for what they are.
They're essentially advertisements.
They're advertising an online service,
and they're utilizing space in your house to do so.
So, I mean, I'm not a big fan of these buttons to begin with.
I like Gila's idea of programmable buttons,
or maybe, you know, something as crazy like,
if I hold in the number one on the keypad, it'll open Netflix,
and then you can program number two to open Max
and number three to open Crossy Road.
Like, that's not something I think that would be, you know,
beyond the realm of technical possibility.
But my question to you, Emmanuel, is, is the button itself not working only,
or is it the case that you just can't access Netflix by navigating to the app
and opening the app some other way?
No, obviously, the button is working
because it's generating the message on the screen.
What they've done is they've simply changed the requirements
so that, as some of these people said, your old TV is no longer supported.
So, it just means get a new TV and stop holding on to old technology,
which works fine in any way.
But can you access Netflix by any other method outside the button?
Oh, yes.
Yeah, so what I wound up doing was using a Roku device
and simply going to the Netflix app on that.
It worked just fine.
There's no reason for that to happen other than the fact that they can do it,
and a lot of people will be mystified.
Maybe you should just relabel.
Maybe you should just relabel the button with, like, a label maker
and just call it anger.
And then whenever you get yourself angry, just push that button.
We do have a label maker here.
Kyle's the official labeler, and maybe we'll do that.
But, again, you know, I like the idea of programmable buttons, you know,
where you can make the button do different things.
We don't have enough of that.
Go ahead, Rob.
So, the point someone made about just wanting to get a dumb TV
is something I find very interesting nowadays
because the way the TV business works now,
the manufacturers basically get the –
when you buy a television that is designated a television in the store,
you'll find it comes with a bunch of apps preloaded on it,
and that is because the price of the television is subsidized
by companies like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Max and whatever else
to put their apps on the device.
So it's in front of your eyes right when you start up your new television.
So those companies pay the TV manufacturer,
and the TV manufacturer passes, I guess, some of the savings along.
But also they want their own sort of rent-seeking behavior
and your membership and things like Roku and so on and so on.
So they want to keep making money off of you in any way they can.
You can buy a dumb TV, but it's not called that.
It's known as a commercial display.
And if you start looking for those, you'll realize that they cost a lot more,
like significant amounts of money more,
than if you walked into a store to buy a television,
even if they're the same size, even if they have the same brightness,
sound, whatever, the same amount of inputs,
because they charge you more to not have the pre-advertised garbage
put in front of you.
And that also gives the people who make the pre-advertised garbage,
such as the Netflix app, power over how their software works
with the device once you've got it up and running.
I think there's also like a symbiotic return for those service providers
because they then capture that subscribership,
and that actually in turn motivates people to buy more hardware.
If a TV fails, they're going to want their services back
or get back onto those the way they did on the previous bit of hardware.
So that relationship works back and forth to keep people buying hardware,
whether it's just sort of like a mechanical failure in the power supply
or in some component, or the entire software end of it
becomes unwieldy for the manufacturer.
And their cycles are much less than like even a year
when they're introducing new TVs.
And I also think like the way we're doing production now
is incredibly high resolution with digital cinema
and the affordability and the ability to make a lot of programming
at that level of picture quality.
And a lot of people have larger and larger resolution devices
to consume that content on.
And I think that also drives the manufacturer and the service providers
away from supporting legacy operating systems
that are connected to TVs that are HD,
which itself is still a valid and really good looking format.
But the sending of like very, very high resolution new programming
to downconvert or otherwise provide versions that are of lower resolution
or downconverted for those legacy TVs could become unwieldy
and is also beyond like what the manufacturer is doing
as far as the OS is concerned.
The actual service provider has to compensate
for doing sort of lower res copies of each of these new programs,
which it takes a little bit of infrastructure to accommodate
and sense that on these different things.
I don't know if that makes sense to anyone.
Go ahead, Rob.
But in the meantime, there was a great post
that went around Mastodon a few days ago
where somebody posted a photo of an old portable radio
and said this is something my father-in-law had.
It was never opened.
It was from 48 years ago, a GE radio in his garage.
And no pairing, no logins, no setup.
It just works.
You can listen to us right now with a radio you bought 50 years ago.
Well, not if it's an AM radio.
It might be an AM radio only, so he should check that.
Does he have a picture?
It's FM.
Not the case.
Okay, not the case with television
because that was the magic of television in days of old
where you could turn on a TV set and it would just work.
But now, you know, since we switched to digital,
all those frequencies, all those old TVs no longer work without conversion
and the signals aren't nearly as good.
When I was a kid, I was able to pick up distant signals
on hot summer days for some reason.
And I picked up stations in Kentucky, as far away as Kansas at one point,
from right here in New York.
And there was a certain magic to that.
You can still do that on AM radio.
Despite the fact that the car manufacturers are trying to get rid of AM radio,
you can still do that and experience that magic of hearing a distant place.
But today, you're just surrounded by just what I call technological blindness
where, yeah, something is cool, it's a good innovation,
but you're giving up something else
and not thinking about what you're really giving up when you do that.
Go ahead, Gaila.
The thing that I was thinking about was in terms of the, I'm sorry,
display terminal, right?
I was thinking about the difference between being in the Windows
and Microsoft ecosystem versus, you know, kind of rolling your own in that way.
And what it would take now to create your own home ecosystem for a TV
that you didn't immediately plug into the wall and download three apps
and you're good to go.
Like, I cannot imagine the kind of labor and setup it would take
to have the kind of setup that we have on our home TV now
without those automatic handholds.
And I wonder what we're losing by having those plug-and-play systems ready to go
without, it's not even a lack of curiosity that we have anymore,
but a lack of necessity.
You know, you can have 800 apps on your TV in a matter of moments
without even thinking about it
and not having to have an internet connection on your television necessarily.
But as Manuel was just saying, because of the global system of over the air
not being what it used to be, you know, what can we do for ourselves anymore?
Where is that?
The DIY ethos of television, man, where's it at?
I think also something I'm thinking about is the analytics side,
like what information they're trying to glean from these apps
and that maybe newer, faster displays that can run more apps
or the newer software have greater abilities for them to get sort of behavioral
and other information about how you use different service providers
that are on that embedded OS.
It's all very, it's something that's just a moving target.
It's just constantly new features and new services are being thrown at the consumers.
I love new features and new services and things like that, but I also love simplicity.
I want to be able, and I really should get an over the air antenna for digital TV
because there are all kinds of hidden stations that you can find there.
Unfortunately, you can't get long distance reception occasionally.
It's either you get it or you don't, and the signal strength is less than it was in the past.
But there is still a degree of magic there, and I urge people to explore as much as possible.
And speaking of the magic of radio, that's what we broadcast on right now.
That's why we want to continue broadcasting over FM radio, not just over the internet.
Yeah, the internet is great, and that's how we reach the entire world,
but radio is the true magic because right now, guarantee at some point,
somebody in New York City is driving right now.
Yeah, I'm talking to you, and you're hearing us, and you don't know who we are.
You've never heard us before.
You just tuned to 99.5 FM, and there are these voices talking on the radio
about something that you're mildly interested in or maybe even more interested in.
Well, that's the magic of radio, that you don't know who's out there,
that you don't know how many people really are listening,
that you don't know what lives you could be affecting,
that you don't know what station you'll happen upon next if you just keep tuning the FM dial.
When Kyle and I went to Texas not too long ago, we did that a lot.
We tuned the dial a lot and heard all kinds of interesting radio stations,
and I always suggest people do that rather than just listen to their mixtape or whatever.
Listen to what's local, and here in New York City, WBAI, we're real local,
and we've been local since 1960.
I'm saying local, not loco.
Since 1960.
Yeah, people are laughing.
The reason we stay on the air is because of listeners like you.
Yeah, and all you have to do is call 212-209-2950 and pledge support,
and you can be a part of this amazing family, a family that has existed now for over 60 years.
Wow, that is something.
A family of people coming and going, obviously, but it's magical programming.
If you listen to what goes on over the airwaves here at WBAI, you will hear such a variety.
You will hear things that inspire you.
You will hear things that outrage you.
You will hear things that you never thought of before.
Right now, though, we're asking you to give a call to 212-209-2950
and pledge whatever you can to keep this noncommercial radio station going.
Yeah, noncommercial.
Maybe we didn't mention that.
We're a noncommercial radio station, which means we can say things like,
Boy, Netflix is terrible because they don't sponsor us because, you know, we can insult them.
We can insult anybody, really, because we're not beholden to anyone but the listeners.
Now, for a pledge of $150 or more, we'll send you a thank you gift of the Off the Hook Anthology,
which consists of every program that we have done since 1988 up until the end of 2023 in MP3 format on a flash drive.
That's for everybody who pledges $150 or more.
It's called the Off the Hook Anthology.
The most important thing, though, is to keep WBAI broadcasting for another 60 years
and hopefully over an FM band that is not messed up by advances in technology
that will make it hard or impossible for somebody to just turn on the radio and hear a voice they never heard before
or turn on a radio and hear a voice they're expecting to hear.
You know, that is something that I think we all grew up with.
It's just that magic of radio, whether it's in our houses or whether it's in our cars.
Increasingly now, what I read is that most people listen in their cars
and most people in cars do listen to the radio at some point.
I'm not sure how many people still have radios in their houses.
Do any of you guys have a radio that you turn on occasionally and say,
Oh, you know what? I'm going to listen to the radio tonight in my den.
Does that still happen, Gila?
I have a clock radio with a CD player in it.
It's an absolute unit. I've been schlepping it around for 20 years.
And it's fascinating.
There have been times when I've checked us on the air from our bedroom.
And no, it's amazing. I love tuning it.
And occasionally when I hit the snooze button in the morning, I hit the tuning knob instead.
And then the sound is off, which is great.
So you use it every day. So the radio wakes you up every day.
Yeah. And sometimes when the tuner is off, fuzz wakes me up every day,
which is not a great start to the morning.
Okay. All right.
Wow. I forgot about clock radios. Yeah, that's still a thing.
So I hope people do use radios in their homes more
because some of my fondest memories are listening to, well, first AM radio
because I didn't have an FM radio at first.
And then FM and just exploring, knowing every station in the area,
knowing a little bit about the history. Go ahead, Alex.
I remember finding this station when I was out on Long Island
and I would listen to the radio on a Walkman that was also a radio.
But the cord for the headphones was acting as the antenna.
So in order to get WBAI, I had to string the headphone cord up around my bedpost.
I remember it being quite a production.
But I got it in and I could listen to this particular show.
This was the show that I wanted to find.
And it felt like some kind of revelation.
It felt like I was listening in on these wise gurus from the hacking community
that were imparting knowledge to little old me over in Suffolk County.
And it was pretty cool. It was really magical.
And I think that we've got to encourage that type of thing again.
I mean, this is just, I think, part and parcel of exploring
and playing around with technology.
And people forget that radio itself really is quite a dark art.
This is why the Flipper Zero is banned in Canada.
It allows you to play with radio frequencies.
It's also why intelligence agencies continue to use shortwave radio
to communicate with operatives in the field.
I mean, radio is something that does not require
any kind of acknowledgement of receipt of the information.
That's really, I think, extraordinarily unique and special in today's era
when everything is a log.
When you consider it, when you listen online, you may feel anonymous,
but there is a log of you somewhere.
Whether the broadcasting entity is keeping track,
they can see your IP address.
They can see where you're coming from.
They can count how many people are actually listening at any time.
Can't do that on broadcast over the radio waves.
And I think that might drive some control freaks crazy
because they can't charge people a certain ad rate
based on hypothetical numbers,
but it also adds to that magic we're talking about.
And that's what we're asking you to help preserve
because, yes, WBAI is online,
but WBAI is also broadcasting off of a very tall building in Times Square
to the tri-state area, and that alone is a miracle.
Now, for pledges of $25 or more,
you get to vote in the WBAI elections and Pacifica elections
and all that fun stuff.
You get to have a voice in decisions that are made,
and that is something that I think is extremely important,
and that's why we're asking for your support.
Now, if you're hearing this at a time when you prefer to go to a website,
instead of calling 212-209-2950,
you can go to the website givetowbai.org,
and on there there's everything you need to know about how to pledge
and thank you gifts and all that kind of thing.
It's all right there for you.
Again, givetowbai.org, phone number 212-209-2950,
and we want to thank our listeners
who have really responded well to all of this over the past few weeks.
Yes, there are a number of crises.
There are always crises here of one sort or another,
but we do keep the content coming out,
and that is what is most important,
and it's your support that makes that possible,
and so many people have called in or gone to the website
and pledged in the name of Off The Hook,
and that just inspires us.
It inspires us to keep going and keep doing the things we do.
We have some letters you can write to us.
We've got the email address at the end of the program.
This is to Off The Hook.
I'm a WBAI sustaining listener.
Thank you very much.
I've been listening to your show for several years,
have learned a lot about technology in particular.
For safety and security,
I need to find a VPN provider that is lower cost yet effective
at hiding or changing my IP address online
so my activity is encrypted.
Do you have a recent archive program
where you list your VPN recommendations?
Signed, Ms. Robinson.
Well, Ms. Robinson,
we're not going to recommend one company over another,
and I don't really know anything about pricing,
but the concept of a VPN allows you
to watch Eurovision a couple of weeks ago
by pretending I was in Denmark,
seeing a four-hour competition without a single commercial,
just like people in Denmark got to do.
Things like that,
that you're not allowed to do in your geographical area
for no reason other than the fact
that certain powerful people say you're not allowed to do that.
That's what a VPN can do for you.
A VPN can also mask your whereabouts
if you're doing something sensitive,
and that does not make you a criminal.
That makes you smart.
That makes you somebody who...
Oh, wow, I just sounded like Trump for a second, didn't I?
No, I didn't mean it like that.
I mean, you know, tech savvy,
knowing that you don't have to always come from your home address.
You can manipulate the technology and come from a different address,
and there are many reasons why you might want to do that.
Now, there are all kinds of VPN companies out there.
Again, I'm not going to list the companies,
but if you do a search online,
just search for VPN,
you can do VPN cheap.
I don't know who that is. That's not me.
I don't think that's me because I closed the program that made that noise.
Is it one of you guys?
Alex, is it you? No?
All right, we're going to track down that noise, whatever it is.
Yeah, that's my thoughts on VPN.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, one thing for anybody who is not familiar,
just to really quickly give the CliffsNotes version of an explanation.
A VPN is a service where instead of connecting directly
to the things you look at over the internet,
they will sit in between that connection as an intermediary.
So everything you do gets bounced through this external server somewhere,
and the operators of the sites and things that you visit
will only see the address of that external server
and not your own IP address.
But one thing that I find very interesting
is that the concept of VPNs,
especially within the past few years,
has become kind of mainstream
to the point where there is a lot of help out there
if you do some searches
to not only find one, choose one,
but also set it up, maintain it, and so on.
There are ads for VPN companies on the subway now,
and we're at that level of the general public
kind of starting to understand how this is useful,
how it can be an important part of your digital life.
And I've seen on forums and things
about things entirely non-technical,
but somebody wants to accomplish something
and realizes, oh, yeah, I just used a VPN.
It's really out there, and it's really an interesting thing
to read about, get into, if you're not into it already.
Go ahead, Alex.
One thing I would add to this, too,
if you want to consider what the purpose is of the VPN
that you intend to use,
if you simply want to remain anonymous,
there are a lot of VPNs out there that don't have logging,
that advertise they don't have logging.
I will tell you this.
I think a lot of them have more logs than they let on,
but at least you would want one
that would be very privacy-conscious.
On the other hand, if you want to use a VPN
to get around censorship, let's say,
or access a service from a geographical area
that is otherwise geofenced,
then you would want to make sure that you're looking for a VPN
that would probably have something called
a dedicated IP address
in the country from which you want to appear
that your traffic is originating.
So, for instance, if I wanted to access, let's say,
Netflix in Belgium,
you would want to have a Belgian IP address,
and a lot of services, a lot of VPN services
will offer you a dedicated IP address in other countries
where they have servers for relatively cheap,
for really just a few dollars a month,
and that becomes really handy
if you want to access things like the BBC
while you're not in the UK,
and it can also unlock a whole bunch of programs
for your existing services.
So, for instance, if that Netflix button
that Emmanuel was complaining about earlier in the program
actually had worked, and he was connected to a VPN
that made it appear as if his traffic
was originating from London,
he would get a lot of different selections on Netflix
that aren't available in the United States.
He would get to watch things like In the Loop and Peep Show,
and you know what is also really weird, too,
is it's weirdly hard to stream The Office,
the American version of The Office,
in the United States these days,
but it seems like the entirety of it
is streaming from the UK.
So you get all these other different tips and tricks
that you can do with VPNs as well.
They're fun things to play with.
Yeah, for a lot better than just looking at
all the episodes of The Office.
There are all kinds of things that you can do,
and it's on Comedy Central all the time, Alex,
so, yeah, it's not hard to find.
For the folks, geofencing,
that's basically what we're talking about.
That's where you're restricted from doing something
simply because you're in a particular place, correct?
Yeah, if a site only wants people
from a certain part of the world to be able to see it,
wants people from another part of the world
to not be able to see it,
you can use a VPN to trick the site
into thinking that you're in the part of the world
they feel is okay.
Now, people are going to ask this,
so I might as well answer it now.
What's the difference between what we're talking about
and something like Tor?
Tor is kind of a crapshoot
because it is decentralized,
more decentralized than a VPN,
which is all one service
that you're bouncing everything through,
but Tor also, you can't really control
where the other side of the connection comes out
because it's random by its nature,
and it's re-randomized every time you start it up,
so you can't really go through Tor
and say, I want to be coming from this part of the world
or that part of the world
in a dependable manner as easily as you can with a VPN.
Also, Tor is not responsible for such things.
Alex, you have something.
Yeah, I think the other distinction is that Tor,
known as the onion router, right?
You think about the image of the onion.
It has lots of layers.
That's what onions are known for.
We always talk about peeling back the layers of the onions,
and when you're using the Tor router,
your traffic is going to take lots of different stops.
It's not going to just go through one other network
and then pop out somewhere else.
It's going to go, let's say, to, who knows,
you know, Liberia, then into Bangkok,
then it'll pop over to Istanbul,
then it'll go back into St. Petersburg,
then to Belgium,
and then come out the other side in New York.
I mean, who knows, right?
But it's also, Tor is generally a lot slower
than using a VPN for that reason.
Yeah, and while VPN services might be optimized
for things like watching high bandwidth video
or, you know, playing data-intensive games
or anything else that might take a large chunk of a connection,
if you're doing that sort of thing over Tor,
it tends to be seen as sort of abusing the network
because people are trying to use it
for smaller text-based things,
and so it's not really encouraged to use Tor
for that sort of purpose.
Oh, I just wanted to reiterate,
I mean, the thoughts Rob expressed
were, like, spot-on as far as I was concerned,
just as far as the acceptability,
like the idea of ads for tunneling software
in subway tunnels, it's pretty funny.
But the VPN acronym, for those who don't know,
is Virtual Private Network,
is the definition of that term,
and these service providers are using
what is a protocol that you can develop
and run your own system outside of all of these as well,
which is worth mentioning.
Perhaps a little bit more work is needed
to build that yourself,
but it is meant for all kinds of businesses
and personal uses
as a part of the IP protocol
that we use all the time,
and it has been established and used
for quite some time,
but it is much more geared
towards creating a full network connection
versus all of the layers in this.
What I also know is termed a hidden service,
so Tor requires special software
that's looking for this particular domain,
.onion addressing and the like,
so there's distinctions,
and yeah, a higher bandwidth traffic
is a little bit harder,
and it can be spotty
because the network is decentralized
and changing, it's sort of amorphous.
Well, you can get more information on Tor
by going to torproject.org,
S-T-O-R, project.org.
I should also point out that both with Tor
and certain VPNs,
sites like Google try and block them
because they don't approve of us
taking control of the technology.
In fact, good luck trying to access YouTube
using a Tor browser.
It's almost impossible sometimes.
That's the kind of opposition
that we tend to run into
when we try and change the technology
a little bit.
Go ahead, Kyle.
Another thing I would mention
is getting around geofencing is one use,
but if your activities,
if whatever it is you're doing online
is disallowed, say, in one place,
but you're testing some network elsewhere,
VPNs are used for this as well,
sort of jurisdictional hopping
with whatever work you're doing
versus where that work is originating from.
That's all I want to say about that.
We have another letter.
That's right, we get multiple letters.
Look how much time we spent on that one.
Hey, I don't really know
who else to discuss this with,
but here goes.
I can't tell you how many letters
begin that way.
I have a French cell subscription,
and I'm using it roaming in Switzerland
because it's so much cheaper
than a Swiss plan.
It's ridiculous, but that's another topic.
Yeah, Switzerland is extremely expensive.
So I have this number
from my health insurance
I can call to speak to a doctor,
and I called it with my French line
while roaming.
Every time the call is answered,
I get this recording
of a random conversation
between a few seemingly U.S. English speakers.
It's always the same conversation.
That is, when redialing the number,
it starts off at the same point,
plays the same audio,
and it drops the call
after a variable amount of time.
If I call that same number
with a Swiss cell line,
then I get the right service,
my health insurance's doctor,
and not the random conversation.
I'm completely puzzled by this.
I don't know anyone
who is into freaking
or knows anything about telephones
or knows anything about telephone systems,
but I thought you guys
might be able to appreciate
the weirdness of it
and maybe even figure out
what's going on.
And who are these people
on the recording?
Where was it made?
How long ago?
Why am I hearing it?
I have a video recording of it
on speakerphone
and the number I'm calling.
It's rather large,
so I'm not emailing it.
I'd love to figure this out.
Let me know if this is something
you're curious to talk about more.
From Pierre.
Well, Pierre,
the first thing I think you should do
is make an audio recording of this,
a video recording.
There are sites
where you can upload your video
and turn it into audio
if you don't have the software
to do that yourself,
and then send that to us
so we can hear it.
You say it's a random conversation,
but then you say
it's always the same conversation,
so I'm a little confused.
Is it always the same phrases being said?
And what are those phrases?
We can help figure out what this is
and why it could be
some kind of telephone company recording
or something weird,
or maybe it's a recording
that's supposed to play
from the phone company
and somebody somehow wrote over it
with something else.
I don't know.
It's a bizarre scenario,
but it's certainly possible.
This sounds very bizarre,
but I'm curious.
I'd like to know more.
How about you guys?
I am so curious about this.
It has been a long time,
and I'm an old phone freak,
and it has been a very long time
since I've been able to be presented
with some sort of glitch
in routing like this,
and I've never heard
of something like this happening
just routing a call different ways
depending on where it's coming from.
I think we've all,
those of us who lived in the 90s
and further back,
we all can remember crossed lines.
We pick up the phone
and all of a sudden
you're talking to somebody
you didn't call.
Has anybody not experienced that
in our group?
We all have?
I can't tell you.
Yeah, we have.
Okay.
Well, it doesn't happen much anymore,
if at all.
I remember back,
I grew up in what's known
as the number five crossbar switch.
There were periods of time,
I don't know what caused this,
maybe a well-informed listener
out there can tell us,
but sometimes you would pick up the phone
and instead of a dial tone,
you'd immediately get connected
to somebody else.
Now, when this happened,
it happened a lot.
In other words,
it wouldn't happen for weeks
and all of a sudden
it would start happening
almost every time
you picked up the phone.
It was so much fun
that my friends and I
would immediately contact each other
saying,
it's happening again.
And when it was happening,
we could get away
with all kinds of mischief.
I was at the Stony Brook campus
and I would be constantly
picking up the phone,
being connected to people.
I convinced people
there was a curfew going on
and that they were not
to leave their dormitories.
And they believed me
and they spread the word.
It wasn't hard to do this.
But there's all kinds of other,
you meet all sorts of people.
One fun thing that we did was
we talked to the person
who had just picked up the phone
on their end,
asking them what they intended to do.
Why did you just pick up your phone?
And they said,
well, I was going to call this person.
I said, well,
we have to make sure,
we have to manually place
phone calls now.
That's required by law.
Tell us the number you're calling
and we'll let them know
to expect your call.
And that's exactly what we did.
We would call them and say,
you're going to get a call
from this person.
And they would be just as mystified
as everybody else.
All kinds of fun
that you used to be able to have
that I don't think people
are having anymore.
I'd love to hear
about other adventures though,
other things that people
are having fun with
with phone networks.
Absolutely.
And the more I think about this,
the more I'm wondering
if it is,
if not itself,
an error message
at the phone company,
at some phone company
in between A and B,
but maybe routing
to where there should be
some kind of error message
and isn't anymore
because not a lot of those
aren't used anymore.
Some just kind of weirdness
along the way like that.
Or they're just calling
someone's weirdly set up
answering machine.
Well, I want to hear,
I want to hear that recording.
I really do.
I definitely want to hear that.
Hey, we have only
a couple minutes left,
but I wanted to read
a crazy story
because there's always
crazy stories in the news.
A photographer
has sued a woman
who posted an image
of her grandmother's apartment
that featured wallpaper
that apparently he designed.
Okay, what happened here
was that the grandmother
moved out of her apartment.
She's no longer able
to live there.
She moved in
with her granddaughter
so that she could maintain
the cost of caring
for her grandmother.
The granddaughter
took over the apartment
and rented it out
as a vacation property.
She advertised
the apartment
on a rental website
and it included photos
of the property
on the listing.
Eight years later,
the granddaughter
received a warning letter
for copyright infringement
from a Canadian company
because she had posted
an image of a room
in her grandmother's apartment
that featured
this guy Bones
photo-based wallpaper.
Yeah,
Stefan Bones,
his photo was spotted
listing photos
for the apartment
and according to a report
by the German news publication
Heiz.de,
the photographer
is now suing
the granddaughter
in Cologne Regional Court
in Cologne, Germany.
In the lawsuit,
Bones alleges
that while he may have authorized
the printing of his photo
on the wallpaper,
he did not authorize
the reproduction of the photo
on the wall
in the image
posted by the landlady
on the vacation property
rental website.
Oh my God.
Have we all lost our damn minds?
So somebody
shows a picture of a room
and this guy actually
has the audacity
to sue them
for copyright infringement.
He claims
the making available
of the photo of the wall
is an infringement
of copyright law.
He's also alleging
the grandmother
infringed his moral rights
because she did not find out
that he was the photographer
behind the wallpaper
and did not credit him
on the property rental website.
You know what?
I credit this guy
with being a first...
Well, I can't say that.
Alex,
you're our resident lawyer here.
Stand up for your profession.
This sounds really idiotic
on so many ways
and so many levels here.
Emmanuel,
is it the case
that the woman
who took the photo
was actually sued
or they just received
some kind of
cease and desist letter?
It sounds like
they just received
a threatening letter.
Well, my understanding
is she was in Canada
and this is all happening
in Germany,
but these days
you send a letter
like that to somebody
it can scare them.
Absolutely.
It absolutely can
and it's an abuse
of I think
the legal process
for doing that too.
I mean,
there is this concept
of de minimis non curat lex
where the law
doesn't care for trifles.
You're not necessarily
going to have damages
I think
from this type
of infringement.
The other thing
about this is
it seems like
this might have been
born out of
some overly
aggressive
or zealous
copyright protection
third-party service.
That's what it sounds
like to me
that maybe this photographer
who originally
owned the copyright
to this particular wallpaper
is using some
third-party service
to identify
infringements online.
We're going to have
to continue this conversation
over on YouTube
in overtime.
YouTube.com
is channel 2600
to continue
at 8 o'clock
over there.
Gila, did you have
a closing thought on this?
I did,
but I'm going to
save it for overtime.
Okay.
That's going to
just about do it
for us here tonight.
I want to thank
everybody for listening.
You can write to us
oth at 2600.com
and please remember
to support WBAI
212-209-2950
and give to WBAI.org.
We'll be back here
next week
and on overtime
YouTube.com
slash channel 2600.
We'll see you there.
Good night.
The loudspeaker
spoke up and said
Christianity is stupid.
Communism is good.
Can you hear that?
Give up.
Can you hear that?
Give up.
Christianity is stupid.
Give up! Give up! Give up!
Communism is stupid! Communism is stupid!
Christianity is stupid! Communism is stupid!
Give up! Give up! Give up!
Communism is stupid! Communism is stupid!
Give up! Give up! Give up!
From five o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at night!!
Give up! Give up! Give up!
From five o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at night!!
Give up! Give up! Give up!
From five o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at night!!
Communism is stupid! Communism is stupid!
Christianity is stupid!
Good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good
good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good
good, good, good, good, good, good, good
Sharpe as usual
and avoid panic Planning
Usually, the left would focus on the conditions under which people make choices, how power
creates those conditions. But apparently, that approach isn't relevant when men's sexual
pleasure is at stake.
Robert Jensen, quoting from his current article in Counterpunch magazine, Radical Feminism
and the Failures of the Left. In it, he takes the left to task for refusing to apply its
anti-capitalist critique of how systems of power work to the oppression of women.
Professor Jensen will be our guest on Joy of Resistance this Thursday between 11am and
noon and will take your phone calls. That's Thursday, May 30th, 11am, Joy of Resistance,
where we put the left and feminism back together again.