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Let's celebrate each other.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
The time is 7 o'clock.
Time once again for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood.
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I hope that's understood.
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I hope that's understood.
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I hope that's understood.
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I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
And tonight's an exciting show because we have a special giveaway coming up.
It's the show before the annual Maker Faire here in New York, and we're going to have
pairs of tickets to give away in just a little bit, so stay tuned.
And don't bother calling the regular phone number because we have a whole different phone
number to call for this.
It's all coming up tonight on Off the Hook.
We also have some listener mail that I think we...
I'd like to just launch with listener mail.
Does anybody object to that?
Nobody?
Not at all.
Because sometimes we run out of time, and I don't want to run out of time and not read
listener mail.
You can write to us, othat2600.com, and we'll maybe read your listener mail on the air like
we're doing right now with this person.
I'm confused.
I'm missing something.
Most letters start that way, actually.
Why do you need to delete your old PGP keys before creating new ones?
Create a new key.
Publish the link or QR code in 2600 and mention on Off the Hook that you have a new key and
have a really big link on your homepage or on every page of the 2600 site with a link
to the new key.
If people use the old key, well, that's their problem, as often mentioned other lapses are.
They probably don't protect their Wi-Fi either.
You could also have an auto-reply that runs for an encrypted email that is based on an
old key that gives the sender a link to the new key.
Signed Max.
These are all good ideas, Max, but people continue to send us mail for the old keys.
They find them in various places.
In fact, Mike, you even did that this week.
I don't know why you did that.
What?
No, I replied to an email.
Well, you replied with some kind of key, and I couldn't read it, and this is...
I replied to the key.
People are going to get the bad idea.
Don't do what this person did.
Yeah.
I don't know what this person did because I couldn't read it, which is exactly the point
we were trying to make.
If we can wipe out all the keys that are out there, our keys, that is, we'll start fresh.
We'll do that.
We will, but we have to wipe it out.
This listener, Data Pack Rat, writes in saying, I've also noticed the problem of revoking
a PGP key after you lose the private key or just lose track of it.
I've started building a solution, and he's making an internet draft of an extension to
a vCard format, which, among other things, allows for the announcement that an old PGP
key is no longer valid.
Data Pack Rat is working through the process to get this adopted as an official RFC.
What is an RFC, anyone?
I think it's a request for comment, actually, but these RFC documents have, I think, been
used by the IETF, which is the Internet Engineering Task Force, and they are a standard setting
body for, guess what?
The internet.
Okay.
Data Pack Rat would appreciate any constructive criticism that he can get, and I know we're
always filled with constructive criticism here.
Anyone?
Nothing?
I haven't read the standard.
Okay.
I should have.
I got the email.
You should have.
I was busy replying to emails that were misdirected.
It's called homework, and you should always have your homework prepared when it comes
off the hook.
I don't like it, but it looks good.
Okay.
Is that constructive criticism?
Yeah.
That's as much as I got right now.
All right.
All right.
Well, that's good.
Let's see.
Jay writes in to say, I recently had a Trojan virus on my computer.
I was curious as to what it was doing.
Investigation revealed that it was possibly doing Bitcoin mining and click fraud.
Please consider talking about these topics on the show, as I am sure you guys will bring
up interesting insight into the hacking.
Well, I think this is something that would certainly play well in the mainstream, where
Bitcoin mining could be seen as something dangerous.
Well, I mean, it could be.
I don't know that Bitcoin mining itself is dangerous or not dangerous or even interesting,
but what is sort of interesting is it sounds like this guy's computer was doing Bitcoin
mining for someone who was not the owner of the computer against the will of the owner
of the computer, and that's sort of not nice.
You're saying his computer started mining Bitcoins without his knowledge?
Yeah.
That's what it sounds like from the email.
Okay.
Yeah.
You have to use your own cycles to make your Bitcoins.
Yeah.
And it gets harder every year, doesn't it?
Well, then again, the processing power gets more powerful every year.
Right.
Right.
Because it's based on encryption and the keys get longer for the blocks and it's, yeah,
there's a lot to it.
It's also this thing called Moore's Law.
And you know, I read something just today, actually, about Moore's Law, which is bending
and almost ready to break.
This comes from GCN, GCN.com.
Basically, Moore's Law has been interpreted many ways, most popular being that computing
power is set to double every two years, and it has, although Moore was actually only talking
about the number of transistors in his original theory, but it's been fairly consistent in
terms of processing power.
But here's what's changing.
And this came from an interview with Eric Ledizinski from D-Wave Systems, helped build
NASA's quantum computer.
Near the end of the interview, he casually mentioned that the government's next quantum
computer will have more qubits, Q-U-B-I-T-S, the physical components that make up the quantum
processing power, growing from 128 to 512.
But that won't quadruple the power.
It will result, he said, in a 300,000-fold increase in processing power.
So I guess this guy, Moore, didn't know what he was talking about because it's going a
lot faster than he ever imagined.
Do you want an explanation?
I thought I'd just explain.
Okay, go ahead.
Explain to us.
So this is about quantum computers, which is a kind of thing that is sort of science
fiction-y, but also starting to become real, where, I don't know how it works, but it relies
on quantum mechanics to do sort of different types of computations than conventional computers
can do.
All at once.
All at once.
And it seems to be good for certain classes of problems.
It's very kind of cutting-edge technology.
So it's not clear.
But it's not based on, like, base 10.
It doesn't compound, like, in a linear kind of 10, based on 10 rules.
It's all these calculations happening at once.
Right.
So this is a new type of computer.
So Gordon Moore, the former chairman of Intel, for whom Moore's Law is named, did not foresee
quantum computers.
So it's not clear that these types of computers are very practical for solving most normal
problems that people use computers for.
At least for now, they're very specialized.
Maybe we'll have much more complex problems to solve in the future.
We can only hope.
But there's certain problems.
Go ahead.
Aren't there certain problems that quantum computing might be especially useful for,
like brute-forcing encryption in text?
Certain kinds of public key encryption seem to be amenable to quantum computers helping
break them.
But there's also quantum encryption, which can actually sense being broken.
Completely unrelated to anything.
Right.
I think anything with the word quantum in front of it is related somehow.
But do you think the NSA might have some of these quantum computers working on encrypting
or decrypting our keys?
They might.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I was going to say, the NSA probably is working on this now, whether they have any functioning
quantum computers that are actually cracking encryption keys.
We won't know, because I'm sure it's classified in secret.
Maybe one of those 50,000 classified documents that Ed Snowden has released to journalists
might touch on this subject.
I'd like to know.
Well, I'm sure we will.
Here's another letter from Dave.
Earlier this week, the former director of the CIA and NSA, Michael Hayden, said, and
this is a quote, Gmail is the preferred internet service provider of terrorists worldwide.
Wow.
That's an actual quote.
He actually said that.
It's an intriguing statement, because shortly before the Snowden documents began to surface,
a very different intelligence story was making headlines.
Brian C. Fogel, a CIA case officer, was arrested in Moscow on his way to recruit a Russian
agent.
One of the documents found in his possession contained instructions to his intended agent,
which included the following lines.
Open a new Gmail account.
Don't provide any real contacts.
Use it to send a message to, and here's the email address, folks, write it down, unbacggda
at gmail.com, I'll repeat that, unbacggda, and for some reason the A is capitalized,
at gmail.com.
Of course, the capitalization doesn't matter on a username like that.
This listener writes in and says, I see two possible scenarios.
What's good enough for, quote unquote, terrorists is good enough for intelligence agencies,
or Google cooperates closely with the CIA and NSA, and those agencies can use Google
systems to analyze the user accounts of their agents, where, when, how they're logging in,
their behavior, et cetera.
If they log in from Yonka instead of Vlad's Coffee Imperium, there's a problem.
In light of Snowden's revelations, I'm leaning toward the latter scenario, but I'd like to
know what you guys think.
Also, the interesting thing about this whole thing is that, obviously, an email address
got leaked in the process, which I thought was rather hilarious.
Any opinions on this, guys?
Go ahead, Alex.
I think that this Fogel incident was the matter that happened a month and a half ago, maybe
two months ago, when, actually, it might have even been longer, but this was the character
who was arrested in Moscow, I believe, with a blonde wig, who was supposedly out about
to meet some kind of asset.
I don't know if you can really read too much into this, aside from the fact that Gmail
is used for certain communications.
I think here that the signal-to-noise ratio is why Gmail works in favor of certain communications.
This is very, very hard for foreign intelligence agencies, I think, to track what Gmail accounts
are created and what Gmail accounts are used.
But the opposite of that might also be true if the listener, as he seems to be doing,
is implying that Google is somehow colluding with the intelligence community.
It may be the case that if a Gmail account is created from an IP address that's associated
with a certain geographic region, then there could be some kind of flag that comes up and
tells this intelligence agency that...
So I could see kind of the opposite of what the listener is implying being in effect.
But I don't know if you can necessarily read too much into these two statements together.
It is, I think, nonetheless, really interesting.
The email sort of lost me at Vlad's Coffee Emporium.
I don't know where that is.
But the email started with a statement from Michael Hayden, who, as attentive listeners
know, is a professional liar.
So we should be careful about reading too much into this.
Wait.
Clapper's the liar.
He holds the title right now.
He is possibly the most professional liar.
But we should not take anything that these people say in public too seriously.
Well, here's something that was said in public.
I don't know if we should take this very seriously.
Verizon Enterprise Solutions President John Stratton launched a stinging critique of several
U.S.-based IT companies that are suing the NSA in order to be able to reveal more about
their interactions with the intelligence agency.
In a media briefing in Tokyo, Stratton, who is the former chief operating officer of Verizon
Wireless, said the company is compelled to abide by the law in each country that it operates
in and accused companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo of playing up to their customers'
indignation at the information contained in the continuing Snowden leak saga.
I appreciate that the consumer-centric IT firms that are referenced here, Yahoo, Google,
Microsoft, it's important to grandstand a bit and wave their arms and protest loudly
so as not to offend the sensibility of their customers.
This is a more important issue than that which is generated in a press release.
This is a matter of national security.
He said the larger issue that failed to be addressed in the actions of the companies
is of keeping security and liberty in balance.
There's another question, he said, that needs to be kept in the balance, which is a question
of civil liberty and the rights of the individual citizen in the context of that broader set
of protections that the government seeks to create in its society.
So what do you guys think?
Grandstanding or hypocrisy?
Both.
Both?
Go ahead, Bernie.
Go ahead.
I think it's grandstanding and hypocrisy in Verizon's part.
Well, he's accusing Google and Yahoo and Microsoft of the grandstanding, but you're saying that...
I understand that, but, I mean, that's kind of a sour grapes thing for him, I think.
I think he...
Frankly, I think these other companies, Google, Microsoft, and so forth, they are trying to
cover their butts with the public and say, oh, oh, oh, we're really concerned about your
privacy, whatever, but I don't think they're really, really more concerned about our privacy
than Verizon is.
So maybe I think Verizon has just kind of missed that they're not looking as good from
a PR standpoint lately in the light of all these leaked documents.
But the substance of Stratton's statement is so outrageous that I ended up writing about
it.
I mean, he's claiming that he wants that Verizon follows the law and that it's for civil society
to determine what the law should be.
But he is in a very unique position because he is actually a party to proceedings in the
FISA court.
The civil society, we the people, do not know what's going on, and he does.
I would say that he has a responsibility to stand up for us, and he is not only shirking
this responsibility, but colluding with the people who are trying to spy on everyone.
This is a huge concern.
And I mean, he's the head of a division of Verizon called Enterprise Services, and what
is the largest enterprise in the world, the US government.
So of course, he's standing up for his customers, but in so doing, he is trampling the rest
of us.
You know, I think you make a great point here, Mike, and this also comes on the heels of
an article I think that we've been discussing offline a little bit about the fact that telcos
have not necessarily opposed any of these FISA orders.
And this also comes on the heels of a FISA order being recently released in which it
was displayed that very, very little attention was given to the Fourth Amendment and its
analysis of whether or not these programs are legal.
And this goes back to the Smith v. Maryland case that we keep going on and on about every
single week, which had established this third-party doctrine that you don't necessarily have a
reasonable expectation of privacy in records that are kept in the possession of a third
party.
So what's absolutely horrible is that the law as it stands right now doesn't really
afford you very much protection.
But you're absolutely right, Mike.
I mean, these are the people that can actually evolve the law.
These are the people that have the standing to challenge it.
I mean, the body of constitutional law that pertains to privacy will never evolve in this
context if there's only ex parte proceedings, when the government presents one side and
we don't hear anything else.
In this sense, the telcos are really...they should be looking at themselves as the gatekeepers,
almost acting in some kind of judicial or custodial or fiduciary role to protect our
data.
So the law is going to evolve when we have cogent arguments made by both parties.
And that party, that both parties, that party is the telcos.
They're the people that possibly could and should be representing us.
We're their customers.
We pay them their money.
It comes out of our bank accounts and it goes into theirs.
I mean, we're the reason that they all go to work in the morning.
So unless we have very difficult decisions that the court is going to have to make between
two cogent arguments, this body of constitutional law is not going to evolve and we're going
to be stuck with Smith v. Maryland.
I do...I mean, there's one more thing that I thought was interesting about this article.
Do you have the very last sentence, the one in italics that you probably didn't even notice
the first time?
Hang on.
I'm retrieving the article now from a pile of...
Chris Duckett traveled to Tokyo as a guest of Verizon.
Who is Chris Duckett?
Chris Duckett wrote the article?
Yeah.
Wow.
As a guest of Verizon.
Which is why I think Chris Duckett didn't ask any of the questions that we're asking.
Interesting.
Now, this front comes from ZDNet.
So it's interesting they made that revelation.
They could have easily not made that revelation.
Yeah.
Well, a score one point for journalistic ethics, you know, lose a million.
Interesting.
I feel kind of bad now.
Chris Duckett actually paid for my subway fare to the station today, so maybe I shouldn't
comment.
I'm going to say everything while we're at it.
Here's a revelation, and this is kind of interesting.
We just found out about this today, thanks to Bernie, who is always feeding us interesting
information.
It comes from the current edition of Harper's Magazine, our good friends at Harper's, who
we've done many things in co-conspiracy with.
It's one of those little factual sections that they have in their magazine, where they
give you little tidbits that you might not know about ordinarily.
And we didn't know about this ordinarily, even though we're in it.
It's called Unloaded Magazines.
It's a list.
Well, it's not the whole list, but there is a list of 891 periodicals that were removed
in July from the U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange Services on-base stores.
Now, they list a bunch of these magazines, maybe about 15 of them in total.
Animals and You, Antique Power, Prom Night.
I don't know why that would be there.
Bathroom Trends.
I'm fascinated by some.
What are Bathroom Trends?
There's a whole magazine about that.
But at the very bottom of the list, 2600, The Hacker Quarterly.
Now, I'm not going to say if I believe that sales for Bathroom Trends and Arabian Horse
World and American Bungalow are actually plummeting in Army bases.
But one thing I do know is that sales of 2600, The Hacker Quarterly, are not.
Because quite a lot of people in the military are fascinated by what hackers are doing and
saying, especially in light of the whole Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden thing.
So in this particular case, there's a sentence in this little tidbit here that says, magazine
sales at military exchanges declined by 18.3% between 2011 and 2012.
I don't doubt that.
That's not really a huge number, but it is significant.
I think that might apply overall to magazines.
I would be very surprised if that applied to a magazine like ours.
Because I know that it sells out whenever it's sold in military.
It might be kind of surprising that it's sold in military bases in the first place.
But the fact of the matter is that it was.
And the fact of the matter is, as of July, it's not.
It was taken off.
And I have to wonder why.
I don't think sales are the answer for that.
Maybe for fashion floors and good old Boat and all these other ... They listed the funniest
sounding magazines.
But they put us at the very end of it, I think, to drive home a point.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm over-reading it.
It definitely got lumped in with whatever kind of reorganization they're doing of their
titles.
But I don't really see it as something that you would want to get rid of on a military
base, especially like-
Oh, I see it as something that they would want to get rid of.
Yeah, but out of interest.
Not the people in the military.
Right.
Because they're fascinated by it.
Right.
Do you have any thoughts?
Well, I mean, again, this is in the October edition of Harper's on page 24.
And it's really funny seeing how we're being lumped in.
I kind of thought it was like, oh, it's like a shot across the bow, but the U.S. military
attacking 2600, the hacker quarterly, by removing us from their PX door.
Well, let it be known they fired the first shot, Bernie.
Let that be known.
So this means war.
No, I think we should really kind of get to the bottom of this and find out what the real
reason is, why they're taking 2600 off the stands from the military PX doors.
Because I agree with you.
Sales cannot be down in Footage Setter Magazine compared to these other top titles in light
of everything that's going on in the hacker world and the military right now.
So there's got to be another reason here, and it's really interesting.
You know, I also wondered the same about Contemporary Doll Collector Magazine.
They took that out, and I can't imagine sales flagging for Contemporary Doll Collector either.
But I think, Bernie, I think you're right.
Maybe we could get to the bottom of this.
Maybe this sounds like it would be ripe for a Freedom of Information Act request to figure
out what's going on here.
As far as subject matter, I think they're really doing a disservice to people that are
in the military.
Out of all those magazines combined, I think as far as information and timeliness and relevancy,
I think that's a real loss for them if the magazine discontinues as it seems it has.
You're referring to Bathroom Trend, right?
No, I'm referring to 20th Century The Hacker Quarterly.
I imagine those stationed on military bases who still want to get hold of us could possibly
still use the electronic sources of the digital edition of our magazine or just subscribe
directly through us.
Well, if that's allowed.
Yeah.
I mean, there's subsidized...
They could send a letter to a military base overseas for the cost of sending it domestically.
So they should take advantage of that, the people in the military.
Now, it's interesting.
I don't know, Kyle, if you mentioned this because we were on one of those military bases
when we went to the Bradley Manning trial and those exchanges.
Did you explain how those work exactly?
Oh, yeah.
I could briefly.
Very briefly.
Yes.
Basically, it's a mall on the base itself and it supplies sort of everybody that works
there and lives there with regular comforts of your average, like, I don't know, department
type store.
Dare I say Walmart or something like that, but they have like basically electronic section,
like all kinds of magazines and clothing, stuff military people would be interested
in.
And then there's all kinds of comforting fast food places and stuff like that.
But it basically puts some things from the outside world onto the base and in a kind
of a strip mall format and actually ends up being a bit of a cultural center for people
that live there, if you could call it that.
I guess it's just like any other shopping center or mall or something like that.
But they don't pay tax on certain items.
Yeah, the prices are pretty low.
The prices are different because of their affiliation with government.
But when we were at the particular, what was the one that we went to called?
Do you remember?
They all have X's in their names.
Yeah, we went to, I believe it was a PX.
A PX.
Okay.
And what's the difference again?
PX is?
PX is a post exchange.
Okay.
And a BX would be a base exchange.
And I hear they're merging them all and they're all going to call them the same thing.
Yeah, they're going to put some uniformity into it by just calling them all PX.
See, that's an interesting article right there.
How the X's work in military shopping centers.
But we were there during the trial, or after the trial, and we actually found a bunch of
magazines in the store and I was saying, wouldn't it be great if 2600 were here, not knowing
that 2600 had been there and taken out.
And they had all kinds of nonsensical magazines, even with funnier names than the ones we just
read.
So, we're going to look into this.
We're going to look into this.
And if anybody out there in the military has more information on this, please write to
us.
OTH at 2600.com.
Let us know your feelings.
I remember an excessive amount of tattoo magazines.
Okay.
Those I know would sell over there for sure.
But take one out and get 2600 back in there.
Come on.
Joining us on the phone is Sherry Huss, who is the coordinator of Maker Faire, which is
happening again this weekend coming up at the Academy of Science in Queens.
Is it the Academy of Science or the Hall of Science?
The Hall of Science.
Hall of Science.
I'm sorry.
I always get that wrong.
I'm not going to be back.
Yeah.
This is now turning into a tradition.
You've been on, I think, every year that the Maker Faire has been in New York, right?
I think so.
I think this is year number four.
That's true.
Wow.
So, is anything different about this year?
Oh, gosh.
I would say this year, it's bigger, it's better.
I know that's hard to believe.
We've actually taken over about another 180,000 square feet extending into Corona Park in
Flushing here, which is awesome.
Wow.
And we're still actually out of space, as I talked to you guys, too.
It's just like one of those things, there's so much great making, especially from the
area that's happening, that it's actually quite encouraging.
But other big things this year, 3D printing.
I think we have over 60 exhibits from both big companies like MakerBot and Ultimaker
and folks like Brook from PrinterBot to the RepRap groups, and that's kind of cool, and
we'll have about 24 different presentations in their own stage.
So I would say 3D printing, microcontrollers tend to be definitely top themes.
Wow.
I remember when it started, there was basically 3D printing, but it seems to have really exploded.
People are very much into this now.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's actually quite exciting, I mean, I have to say, there's nothing better than
to see kids going, oh my gosh, see it printing, and it sort of takes them to a whole new area.
So I would say this is the year of the 3D printing presence at Maker Faire, for sure.
Well, what you say certainly is true, and I think it's worth going just to see all the
kids saying, oh my gosh, because there certainly are so many of them.
I don't know what you did to draw all the kids to these Maker Faires, but they are by
far the biggest population, and they're all really into experimenting and playing and
building.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, come on, when their alternative is going to school and sort of star testing
and that, these kids want to build and get hands-on and explore and take things apart,
and that's what Maker Faire's all about.
So it's a lot of fun, and I don't think it's...it's definitely not foreign to your audience.
You guys get it.
And I'm kind of excited about the next generation of makers, and I'll tell you, these kids are
doing it.
So pretty excited about that.
Absolutely.
And for those listeners out there, the 2600 van will be there, so you can come and visit
us and say hi to Off the Hook and 2600 and all that.
And also, you'll have an opportunity in just a couple of moments to win yourself a pair
of tickets for the day of your choice.
Sherry, it's happening on Saturday and Sunday?
It is Saturday and Sunday.
It is 10 a.m. to 7 a.m. on Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 on Sunday.
We've got parking in Citi Field.
We've got an organized bike ride that you can check out that's on our website.
And the 7 train brings you here right from the city at the 111th Street stop.
Tell us about the bike ride.
That's new, isn't it?
Actually, the bike ride is new.
We've got a group that I think that they're leaving from Brooklyn, and they've spotted
out the best way to get here.
They'll get badges, and it's kind of all our part of trying to do, you know, be as green
as possible, have some fun, get some exercise, and cut down on the overall congestion.
More details, if you're interested in riding, go to the – actually, go to our website,
and it's listed in Maker Week activities, which I just came – we did a whole day today
at the Hardware Innovation Workshop.
And we just got presented with a pretty great proclamation from Bloomberg's office.
And I don't know if you guys know this, but in the proclamation, if I can share it
with you, it starts out – and it's not a standard proclamation.
This one, it looks like he's written it or has had his writers write it, but he said,
you know, long before I was a long-shot candidate for mayor, I was an electrical engineer major
at John Hopkins.
Mayor Bloomberg was?
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
He said, just another student working hard to help pay for college.
The problem with being an – with an engineering major was that none of my professors ever
thought I would become an engineer.
I took the hint and went to business school instead, but my interest in science never
went away.
I always enjoyed taking things apart and figuring out how they worked.
Later when I had an idea to deliver financial information faster and more efficiently on
a desktop, it worked out.
And it worked out in a large part because in New York City, we had both a market for
our product and as our company grew, access to the most talented and most creative workforce
in the country.
It goes on in this maker week and, you know, he kind of ends it with saying, our city's
makers don't spend a whole lot of time in the spotlight, of course.
That's how they prefer it.
They'd rather be at work in their classroom labs, in their garages, or at their kitchen
tables.
Every so often, though, it's fun to come together at events like this week when makers
can hear interesting feedback about our ideas, or maybe they can just ask questions that
lead a fellow maker to his or her own new insight.
As the old song goes, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, and I join you in
applauding all the makers who continue to tinker, take risks, and try new things and
introduce their ideas first to New York City and then to the world.
So I have to say, that's the best proclamation I've ever received.
It's a pretty good one.
And we learn now where Mayor Bloomberg learned to take things apart, so it serves two purposes
there.
Exactly.
So that's cool.
Alex.
That sounds really great.
That's a wonderful quote from Bloomberg as well.
I had no idea that he had an electrical engineering background.
I don't think a lot of people did, actually.
So thanks for sharing that with us.
So for adults, I've never been to a Maker Faire.
It sounds really, really wonderful.
What would there be there that would be of interest to someone who's a nerdy lawyer like me?
You know, I think just about anything.
Like when we say, when people come, there's definitely more than anyone can experience.
Like so we say, you know, maybe find one or two things you want to see, and then just
sort of like explore and kind of be open to new things that you see around any corner.
I mean, we have, you know, we've got robots.
We have rockets.
We have, you know, attractions like the Life-Size Mouse Trap.
We've got the Austin Bike Zoo that's come here that has made these wonderful theatrical
butterfly bikes.
We've got seven stages of people talking, you know, everything from, you know, the classics
like Massimo, founder of Arduino, to Eben Upton, the founder of Raspberry Pi, to, you
know, Clive Thompson from Wired, New York Times.
We have a guy, David Lang.
We have Douglas Rushkoff that's here, Robert Scoble.
You know, it just, we have something for everyone, whether it's food or sustainability
or learning how to knit or learning how to pick a lock.
I don't know if you guys know the folks from TOOL, but I'll tell you.
Everyone is quite interested in learning how to pick a lock, and I have to say, there's
no one that does it better than those guys.
You know who does it better than those guys are kids.
For some reason, kids really take a shine to lock picking.
Absolutely.
Who wouldn't, right?
It's amazing.
It's a lot of fun.
It's a lot of fun for everyone, and it's one of those very special events where everybody,
it's multi-generational.
There's little kids.
There's adults.
There's grandparents.
There's, it's really, it's pretty special, and, you know, we have a team here that works
really hard to make it a great experience, and, you know, and you get to talk to makers.
Like, we have, I think, like 700 maker entries, so literally thousands of makers will be here
that just want to talk to you about their project, and you can ask them questions, and
really, it's really a great celebration.
So, I would encourage you to come, and I think you'll find a lot of interesting things.
You mentioned so many interesting people.
That's such a great lineup, and I imagine that they're going to be giving talks.
Do you know what any of the topics are off the top of your head?
I do.
Well, you know, and actually, we're, another thing, too, is that if you can't make it,
or if you miss part of it, we'll have, Fora TV is actually broadcasting on Saturday and
Sunday, and this will be all on our website.
So, the main stage, so, you know, Brie Pettis is going to talk about, you know, the MakerBot
digitizer desktop 3D scanner.
John Maeda, who is the president of Rhode Island School of Design, is going to talk,
like, about the art of critical making.
Irgina Dugan, who actually used to be part of DARPA, is now working at Motorola, and
she's going to talk about the future of what we choose to make.
So, kind of hacking phones and whatnot.
We have Peter Hirschberg, who's actually a historian, and this is another cool thing,
is that next year is the 50th and 75th anniversary of the New York World's Fair, and this is
the property that it happened.
So, we're starting to talk about, well, you know, so people telling us about what the
future is, we can now have an audience, we'll start kind of creating the future.
And it goes on, I mean, you know, Carla Diana, who works at School of Visual Arts, is going
to talk about kind of the rise of design.
Just, you know, I think you'll find it's kind of an amazing, you know, amazing sense of
information.
We have an app, actually, if you go, you can download it both, and you can kind of scroll
through and see things, you can kind of create your own schedule in advance.
But like I said, once you're here, it's sort of like, you know, things are exploding and
different things are happening, and we've got Brooklyn Aerodrome, we've got drones,
people like drones kind of flying around.
The friendly drones.
The friendly drones, absolutely.
It's all friendly here and good fun.
Nerdy Derby, which was a project that came out of NYU's ITP program last year, which
is really kind of resurrecting the old Pinewood Derby.
So, you get to make your cars, they've got a track, you can race them, and people are
there kind of constructing and making, learning to solder.
We have that again.
We have the Power Series Racing that came out of the guys from Pumping Station One,
the hackerspace in Chicago, which was challenging fellow makerspaces to kind of get one of those
old little kids Power Wheels.
And you have up to $500, and you kind of hack it, and then they race them.
So, a lot of fun there.
Well, any event that has something called a Nerdy Derby is worth going to, in my opinion.
There you go.
Now, Bernie, I think you had a question?
Yeah, I just want to mention, I was talking just a couple hours ago with Babak Javadi,
our friend from Tool, the open organization of lockpickers, and he was saying how the
lockpicking area is getting bigger and bigger every year, and it's going so well.
And he had good things to say about you and how well the organization works with the lockpicking culture.
I do have a question for you.
It's a nonjudgmental question, but one that our listeners might be interested in.
Does Maker Faire still accept military funding from DARPA for some of its projects?
You know, we actually never, Maker Faire never accepted it.
There was a DARPA project that actually Dale was working on, and we're done.
We don't accept it anymore, and we've probably beaten that one to death, to be perfectly honest.
That's not, we're pretty, you know, apolitical.
We don't really want to get into politics or things like that.
And we also don't want, we want people, we want to expose people to things and let them make up their own minds.
So I think with DARPA, and you know, and actually we've talked to Mitch about it, and he gets it now,
and you know, and honestly, Maker Faire is, I mean, we could not do this event without supporting the makers.
And my team, I have a team that comes together twice a year.
A lot of them have other jobs.
They're the best in the world for the production community, but they come here because they like working with the makers.
And I don't know if I'm answering your question, but.
Thank you.
I'm really glad you cleared that up because that's still out there.
A lot of people are still thinking about that, and I'm really glad that you clarified the situation.
Yeah, it's not, and that's not, you know, seriously, there's so many things.
I mean, we're trying to make Maker Spaces, and you know, how we can actually grow what we're doing in the Making Space is by creating tools.
So we'll have over, I think, 86 Mini Maker Faires this year, and we've created a Mini Maker Faire playbook.
We have a Make a Maker Space playbook, and we actually have a whole, I mean, we really want to give the community tools.
I mean, you know, we kind of grew up in O'Reilly, so open source, sharing, transparency, those are still very much ideals that we have.
And also kind of teaching folks, so the folks at TOOL are wonderful.
I mean, they've just continued to grow, and, you know, the more that we can kind of share, that's kind of where we're at.
Sherry Huss from Maker Faire.
I'm going to ask you a little bit about the history, but I want to give out the phone number for people who are interested in going this weekend to the Hall of Science in Queens.
It's right across the Grand Central Parkway from the World's Fair, you know, those globes and things from the 1960s.
I hope they rebuild those someday and make them look a lot nicer.
Well, maybe getting a whole lot of people to show up is a good first step towards getting some attention.
You can take the number 7 train.
You can do the bike rides, all kinds of ways to get there.
It takes place this Saturday and Sunday, and we are giving away 10 pairs of tickets for the day of your choice.
So what we're going to do, we're going to give out the phone number, and you're going to call that number, assuming you want to go, and tell us which day you'd like to go and your name.
And then I believe their name will simply be on the list.
Is that correct?
What we'll do is actually, it doesn't matter which day.
The tickets are good either day.
I'll tell you what.
If you get me their email addresses, I will send them a link to a ticket site, and they can get their tickets.
Okay.
Somebody needs to run down the hallway and tell Rob T. Firefly, who's taking the calls, that he has to get the email address as well.
And now I'm going to give out the phone number, which is a special phone number that we don't usually give out.
So write it down.
212-650-7481.
And the first 10 people to call that.
And it will take a while because we have one person and one phone line.
212-650-7481.
The first 10 people will have their choice of Saturday or Sunday.
You can just show up either day and give us your email address, and we'll give you a link to tickets, and you can bring a friend.
Absolutely.
All right.
So, Sherry, how did this all begin?
How did Maker Faire start?
Yeah, Maker Faire started, actually, Make Magazine is in its ninth year, and we'll start our tenth year next year.
And basically in 2005, in 2006, we came together and thought, how do we kind of create a festival that celebrates making?
I mean, we write about the makers in the magazine.
We write about projects.
Makers want to come together.
So I started working with Dale, and we kind of stepped back and said, well, we don't want it to be in an event center.
We don't want it to be a convention.
We don't want it to be all male.
We want it to be inclusive.
We want lots of different disciplines.
And so what we found is that we were really creating kind of the old county fair, you know, where people had – they came together.
They got to, you know, instead of pigs and pies, it's now like rockets and robots and Arduino and Raspberry Pi, I guess, this year.
But, you know, it really is just kind of pulling together communities that had really just been talking to themselves.
You know, like the robot group usually talks to the robot group, and the Lego group talks to the Lego group.
But when you put them together, you know, they start talking to each other and kind of things start mashing up.
And, you know, the rest has been history.
So it's been a while kind of building it.
This is our eighth year.
This is our 16th Maker Faire, our fourth in New York.
I think New York ultimately will probably outgrow the Bay Area because we're getting a lot of international representation from makers.
And even with the advent of kind of crowdfunding, we have a lot of makers that are coming and bringing their projects here and, you know, want to like kind of float it by people.
Do you think this will work? You know, can I do this or that?
So it's really – it's been good.
When you say New York will outgrow the Bay Area, you mean it will become bigger than the Bay Area Maker Faire?
I think so.
And how many people show up to that one?
That one this year we had about 125,000.
Oh, boy.
We had 55,000 in New York last year.
And I think we'll probably be in the 70,000, 75,000 range this year.
Where are we going to put them?
Well, you know, there's a whole beautiful park here, like I will say.
I mean, how many times have I come into New York and you just sort of drive by and you see the Unisphere?
We've got a park to expand into, and we can actually – you know, we're trying to also get underserved communities and kids in schools and whatnot.
We have Education Day tomorrow.
But there's a wonderful park here that I think we can kind of slowly start working towards.
And things don't all have to be paid.
I mean, we want more people to be exposed to making.
So as we continue to grow, those are some of the challenges.
I mean, make wants to make makers.
And however we can do that, I think that's awesome.
But New York is just – you know, there's so many – we've got folks in from, you know, Boston, Vermont,
all the way down to, like, the D.C. corridor into Pennsylvania.
And there's just makers coming in from all over, which is great.
This sounds really amazing.
So you've obviously been dealing with this for many years.
Can you tell us what is the coolest thing that you have seen made there?
What was your favorite aspect?
Do you have one?
You know, that's so hard because at any time – you know, I would say the coolest thing is seeing kind of kids, like, just –
like, when they get it.
Like, I'll tell you, like, when kids learn to solder, it's just something like, you know, a little light bulb goes off,
and all of a sudden they feel, like, empowered to do things.
That's awesome.
But, you know, fire arts.
We have more fire arts in the Bay Area, primarily because of the proximity to more of the Burning Man community
that are creating kind of large-scale art.
So we don't have a lot of that in New York, primarily because of storing and whatnot.
But what we do have, there's a lot of kind of regional things.
There's a lot of great theater.
You know, people express it in different ways.
A lot of the, like, microelectronics and different projects, a lot of sensor things this year, which is pretty cool.
You know, I don't know.
It goes on and on.
It's really hard to find one thing.
But I think the biggest thing is just sort of the glee that, you know, kids have.
And you know that when they go home, it's like, uh-oh.
Kind of go, look out, parents, because, you know, they're going to start taking things apart.
And that's pretty cool, too.
Do you ever have concern expressed by parents who are maybe afraid of what their kids might be exposed to?
No, you know, we haven't.
We do a really good job of trying to get parents and kids, like, to understand, like, you have to do a safety waiver,
which is really nothing more than saying that, hey, I'm going to do something.
I know that that could possibly hurt me.
Most people don't want to hurt themselves, really.
And I have to say, in 16 events, we've been really lucky.
But I think we've got a smart audience here that just kind of wants to learn.
And we've not had any issues.
I think parents are really pretty excited about what's happening with their kids.
And I will say with this whole 3D printer revolution, it's kind of reminding a lot of parents of the old kind of the homebrew computer club,
where, you know, kind of what happened with the old kind of Jobs, Wozniak days of personal computers.
Just seeing what's happening now with sort of this personal fabrication and tools and kind of now with things being safe,
so you can design using, you know, AutoCAD or SketchUp.
You can actually then send it to a CNC machine or a shop bot or to a 3D printer without actually, you know, hurting yourself.
Without getting out the X-Acto knife.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's sort of, you know, I think parents are kind of actually pretty excited that there are places like this that exist.
And kind of going back to that county fair kind of model, there is a nostalgic part about it.
You know, like when you were a kid or someone, you know, I don't know, for me, I can remember aunts or uncles or grandparents that kind of taught you things.
And I kind of think for kids, it gets them off the computer or off playing video games and gets them kind of physically making and, you know, or taking things apart.
Solving problems.
So I kind of think parents are pretty excited by it.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean when you see that light bulb go off.
And I think when you're an adult, you often forget what it was like to have that light bulb go off.
You go to work every day and the things that you were doing for so long that were so exciting when you were climbing that learning curve.
You know, once you hit that plateau, things get a little bit more boring.
I think this could be an opportunity for adults to reinvigorate their own kind of intellectual curiosity, see something that inspires them.
Absolutely.
And I love this county fair model that you keep going back to.
And I have to ask, you know, is it possible to get a corndog at Maker Faire?
In the Bay Area it is because we kind of fight with the food service there.
And I will say sometimes people want them.
I don't think we have corndogs here.
We actually have really great food.
You know, we've got some of the Brooklyn Red Hook food vendors that are here.
Oh, great.
We have Caesar with Sober Pizzas.
We have, gosh, we were just kind of going over the food.
We kind of have the best.
You know, we've got Treats Truck, you know, which I can remember Kim from the Treats Truck years ago before food trucks were popular.
I think the food choices, we try to make them a little bit more healthy here.
The one thing I'm really pushing hard to get is coffee.
And I don't know, it's like in San Francisco, which is where we're from, it's sort of coffee is kind of the drug of choice for most of the makers,
probably because they've been up too long and, you know, just trying to keep things going.
So I'm trying to get more coffee vendors here.
So if there's any coffee vendors that are out there, email Sherry at Maker Media because I think we need some more.
But we don't have corndogs.
Not yet.
I'm sure a maker will make one and figure this out.
Exactly.
Go ahead, Kyle.
The services and the food and stuff there is really excellent.
I can attest to that.
I've been to one of the events in Queens.
But I really enjoyed going and getting reinvigorated myself because when I was growing up, I didn't have a lot of this stuff.
Like we, I don't think, had a robotics club at our school, which is pretty standard in a lot of education systems and, you know, schools, whatever type they are.
But it's an amazing place to go and realize how much of your own projects are impacted.
And sharing and getting that excitement kind of osmosis going where you know you have your own projects,
but you're seeing other people's take on them and their craftsmanship and that kind of stuff.
It really excites me and gets me back into all the stuff that I still do to this day, building things and working with machines and stuff.
I hope to see some highly functioning robots this time.
They seem to get more and more advanced.
Yeah, they do.
They do.
And actually, there's a lot.
We have quite a few robotics, everything from more structured like the first robotics to, you know,
we've got David Lang who's got an underwater ROV, which is kind of an underwater camera exploring robot.
And actually, David was the maker, which is sort of interesting because we've always talked about this as sort of do-it-yourself.
And, you know, David's point is it's really more about doing it together.
You find people of like minds and you start working on projects and, you know,
you kind of really sort of push each other and take it to the next level and take it to the next level.
And David wrote this book called Zero to Maker, which is just coming out this year,
where it's just sort of really kind of people being inspired that maybe they thought they couldn't do it,
but actually finding a passion and realizing that, hey, there's pretty much, you know, we can all do pretty much anything.
That's kind of the cool thing about Maker Faire.
And there's this optimism that's kind of wonderful and a little bit infectious that definitely kind of exudes throughout the event.
Yeah, that getting together part is critical too, finding your community, seeing that your peers are there or, you know,
or across generations just realizing that you are stronger and add more to these ideas together
than trying to go it alone and pulling your hair out.
Absolutely.
And Firefly is back.
Rob, did we give away all the tickets?
Yes, indeed.
We gave away all of them.
I want to say thanks to everyone who called, everyone I got to speak to, and everyone I didn't get to speak to.
Sorry, perhaps next time, but thanks for listening.
And please destroy that phone number that we gave you because we only use it for things like this.
If anyone really wants to come too, we've got a Maker Corps if you go on for volunteering.
If you give four hours of your time, you get a ticket, you know.
We also, for other parts, we do a street team.
So it's a little too late to do that now, but we let people sort of get the word out into their community
and give them a couple tickets.
So we really want to turn people on, and we don't really want, you know, price to be a barrier.
So if you really want to be here, you can be here.
Again, we can always use folks in our Maker Corps to kind of volunteer and do different things.
So check that out if you didn't get to come, and you'll get to meet a whole bunch of great people.
I think our team now is about 170 people that are working on this event.
We've actually developed a really great team from the New York area.
So it's wonderful to see them too.
So Sherry, what you're saying is if somebody just volunteers four hours of their time, they can get into the event.
Absolutely.
How would they contact people?
Go on our website, makerfair.com, and look under something called Maker Corps, which is sort of like the volunteer area.
And, you know, Sonja heads that program, and honestly, it's a great way to get involved
and also meet people that, you know, kind of are civically minded.
And Maker Fair, by the way, has an E at the end.
It does.
Yeah, so people don't get confused by that, M-A-K-E-R-F-A-I-R-E.com.
Well, Sherry, any final words from you, any aspirations for the future, things we might be looking forward to?
You know, I would say we're, again, I'm looking forward to, like, having a great weekend here.
It's awesome to talk to your audience and, you know, so appreciate all the, you know, points of view.
You know, you guys are pretty much right out there and kind of inspirations to a lot of the kids that are coming, too.
So we appreciate, I appreciate being on the show.
I'd love to.
We meet so many of them, too.
They come up to the 2600 van, and they want to know about the phone company and about hackers.
Well, let me ask you this.
Do you ever get any kind of negative play from use of the word hackers?
We haven't.
You know, I kind of think it's becoming a little bit more understood that, you know, it's not a bad thing.
I mean, we've got someone here like Farm Hacks.
So kind of hacker, I mean, I think that people are starting to get it, pretty enlightened crowd that we have, I'd say,
but understanding that kind of hacking doesn't have to be kind of, you know, evil or dark or bad, that it's actually a good thing.
So I think it's been a lot more accepted.
Well, that's good.
Let me just ask you the one thing that hangs over everyone's head, literally, the prospect of rain.
This never happened in New York.
We've been fine.
We've been lucky.
Well, it rained a little bit last year.
You know, I don't know.
I would say last year, I've got pictures.
We do a maker night on Friday, and Gerard, who's one of our makers, makes paella.
And I'll tell you, I'd say the New York folks are pretty hardy, and I agree.
Rain could just kind of completely wipe us out, but we try to get people prepared, and, you know, the show must go on.
Yeah, I think we'd show up even if Sandy came back.
I kind of think so.
But, you know, knock on wood, 16 events, we've been pretty lucky.
It's rained crazy the day after, or we've had a hurricane two days before, but, you know.
No hurricanes set for this weekend, as far as I know.
Okay, that's good.
Now, for listeners who aren't in the New York area, what other cities are you guys planning on being in?
Well, there's two major maker fairs that our team produces, the Bay Area and San Francisco.
There's something called Featured Fairs, which are fairs over about 20,000 people, and those have been London, New York, Detroit, Kansas City, and October 3rd through the 6th, Rome, the home of Arduino.
So maker fairs there.
And then there's, like, 86 other cities everywhere from, you know, Pittsburgh to Evanston, Illinois, cities in Canada.
I mean, go to our, again, how to make a maker fair or find a fair near you, and, you know, summer and kind of fall is maker fair season, so you might just find one.
And, again, you can go online.
We're trying to capture as much as possible.
We have, I think, about 10 of our editors here.
They all have different beats.
We'll be streaming live from the forest stage and the main stage.
We'll be doing Google Plus Hangouts on Air from our Make Live stage, and then we're capturing video.
And I'm going to try to put up, like, what I love about Burning Man is that there's a camera, so even if you're not there, you can kind of see what's going on.
So Ralph, who does our IT, is trying to mount a couple cameras, and then we're trying to have some live camera streams.
We're trying to make it that, again, you kind of get a sense of what's here and can kind of check in on us, too.
So if you check the website out over the weekend, maybe you can kind of get some glimpses and participate from afar.
Well, I'm not sure.
You said there are 86 other cities, but they're not of the same scope as New York and Bay Area.
No, no, no.
You know, they're anything from, you know, like 500 to, like, 5,000 schools that are doing those fundraisers.
We give them a playbook, and we kind of tell them, like, give them a recipe for how to do it.
We share resources.
We do a mini Maker Faire of producers, like Google Group.
We try to create tools for people to kind of replicate this in their town.
So, you know, you'll find them, again, all over, like all over the world.
Awesome.
And I will say that, you know, you don't have to have 50,000 or 70,000 people.
Honestly, if you have, you know, a couple dozen great makers, that can inspire the same.
I imagine the details on how to start something in your area can be found on the website as well.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Okay.
Sherry Huss, thank you so much for your time and just for what you do.
It's very inspirational and good for the hacker community and just makers in general.
And I look forward to seeing you this weekend over in Queens.
That sounds great.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Take care, everyone.
Bye-bye.
Thanks, Sherry.
Yeah, thank you.
That's the Science in Queens on Saturday and Sunday of this week.
More details can be found at makerfair.com.
Again, there's an E at the end of fair.
And, guys, any final comments because we have to move out of here.
The personal computer people are coming in.
Yes, Alex.
One thing, one short update on the Chelsea Manning situation here.
As we spoke about a couple of weeks ago, the next stage in this matter is the clemency request.
And since about a week and a half ago, the defense team has been soliciting for letters to be sent to Major General Jeffrey Buchanan,
who is the convening authority of the court-martial.
Now, he has the power to actually reduce Chelsea Manning's sentence to zero if he wants to.
He can shave a lot of time off this.
It could possibly make a big difference.
If you want to write a letter, I know that it would get to Chelsea.
They're collecting them at nathanatbradleymanning.org.
The letter should be about one page.
It shouldn't really be anti-military, and it should specify why you support Chelsea Manning and why she should not be kept in a military prison.
So, again, the clemency petition is underway, and I think that she could use your support.
That's nathanatbradleymanning.org.
They didn't get the Chelsea Manning domain, did they?
I think something happened with it.
From what I heard, this wasn't coordinated properly.
If you have the Chelsea Manning domain, please turn it over.
Chelseamanning.org.
Last I checked, redirects to bradleymanning.org.
So it's chelseemanning.org.
Fantastic.
Got it.
Okay.
We're out of here.
Again, our email address, othat2600.com.
We'll see you at Maker Faire this weekend with the 2600 van, and we'll see you next week here on WBAI.
Stay tuned for The Personal Computer Show.
Good night.
Good night.
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Radical
Radical
Radical
Original
Wow.
I love it.
Hey man, I'm glad I beat that ticket.
that ticket. Riding my bicycle in Central Park, the cop gave me a ticket for failing
to yield to an invisible pedestrian. The judge saw right through that. Yes, he did.