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And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening,
Join tonight by Kyle over here and over in Skype land. We have Rob T firefly
Good evening. We have Gila. Good evening, and we have a very special guest for tonight's space rogue. Welcome
And space rogue I think you're muted
Hang on. I think maybe we muted you
Somebody muted me. Okay. I don't know. I'm unmuted now. Thank you for having me here. Glad to be here unmuted unshackled
That's the way you like it. So before we get started tonight
I just wanted to reassure some listeners because we're getting a lot of panicky emails and some phone calls of one visit and
People really seem to be thinking this is it
This is the end of civilization and you know what it might be it might very well be but it's not because of chat GPT
So let's calm down now what I did right before the show
I had a little conference with chat GPT and I asked a question
How can I tell the difference between a human and a chat bot and this is what?
The source says so, please listen, it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between a human and a chat bot
Especially if the chat bot is programmed to simulate human like conversation
However, there are a few things you can look for to help you distinguish between the two response time
Chatbots typically respond much faster than humans as they are able to process and generate responses instantly if you receive a response
Almost immediately after sending a message
It's likely you're talking to a chat bot
Whereas if it takes a day for somebody to get back to you, yeah, pretty sure that's a human. All right
Consistency chatbots tend to be consistent in their responses both in terms of the tone and language
They use as well as the information they provide humans on the other hand may vary in their responses depending on factors such as mood
Context and personal experience that's sort of that's kind of like a dis isn't it kind of saying that we're inconsistent
We don't really say the same thing all the time. Yeah, the the asymmetry the imperfections the nuance and
Long pauses so they're quick they're consistent
All right, but we make up for it in complexity while chatbots are getting increasingly sophisticated
They may still struggle with more complex conversations
Or responding to unexpected questions
If you're asking a question that requires a lot of context or knowledge and the response you get is overly simplistic or generic
It's possible. You're talking to a chatbot
Emotion while chatbots can be programmed to simulate emotion
They are not able to experience emotions in the same way that humans do
If you're having a conversation that involves strong emotions or personal experiences and the responses you're receiving feel detached or robotic
It's possible. You're talking to a chatbot
or
one of us
That meets the definition of so many people I know
Ultimately the best way to tell whether you're talking to a human or chatbot is to ask them directly. Oh, yeah, right
That's gonna work. Are you a chatbot humans? Don't tell the truth. We know that by now
Many chatbots will identify themselves as such if asked and humans will typically respond in a way that confirms their identity
I don't know about this
Chatbot here doesn't seem very experienced with the ways of either chatbots or humans, but you know what?
We just have to calm down. It's technology. It's a tool. It's something new
It's something fun to play with and yes, eventually we will be buried by it, but that's down the road
Space rogue welcome and congratulations. You have a book out called
Space rogue how the the hackers known as loft changed the world
And you guys you guys most definitely did change the world both of you who
Who don't know the loft was one of the first ever hacker spaces in the Boston area
these guys
pretty much
Where superstars of the time and still are to this day?
still making headlines
In various manners you testified in front of Congress in in 1998
I'd like to sort of set the tone just by reading a brief excerpt from your book, which just came out
Fairly recently, this is all about
Something that every hacker knows a little bit about and that's choosing a handle
You know that that that rite of passage that we all go through
so this this comes from from the book shortly after I left Boston University in the spring of
1991 and was working as a rent-a-cop at the Lafayette Place Mall
I called up a new online bulletin board or BBS for the first time. I think it was simply called M
They requested that users create a unique username something totally new that had not been used on any other system
The goal was to foster open communication without the baggage and existing identity would bring with it
I thought anonymity was an intriguing idea
No one would know who anyone else was elite or lamer old-timer or newbie. It wouldn't matter
Everyone on this new BBS would start out at the same level. I thought really hard about a new handle
Your handle became your identity
It was the only unique item you you took with you online
Your handle was linked to your reputation your hacking capabilities and your previous exploits
It was essentially a full resume summed up in one word or phrase
BBS's were all text all the time. No graphics
No icons or avatars to go along with your post and musings
The only thing that set your messages apart from everyone else's was your username
Your status was based on what you wrote and it was all attached to your handle early systems could only accommodate eight character usernames
Often not enough for a full first or last name
So people started to get creative and handles became the norm
I wanted something cool for this new BBS when the only thing separating your electronic bytes from someone else's bytes
Was your name or handle that moniker takes on a greater significance?
I started looking around my bedroom for inspiration and I hit upon the book that I was reading
Cyberpunk outlaws and hackers on the computer frontier by Katie Hafner and John Markov
The book was over-the-top full of exaggeration and inaccuracies, but still enthralling
While I didn't know it at the time the book had a significant influence on me
I began freely associating with the title, especially the cyber part even at that point
I knew using any handle with the word cyber in it would not be a wise choice and in these early days of the Internet
Cyber was considered an almost dirty word, but cyber led me to cyber space
So I started working with space instead and somehow hit on space rogue. I
Spent maybe all of ten minutes coming up with it. There was a new BBS. I don't want to get into
I didn't have time to stand around trying to pick the perfect handle. I just needed something new that was good enough for right now
I thought it would be a throwaway one-time use. I would use it on this board and that would be it
I had no idea the space rug would stick so well that I would still be using it nearly 30 years later
And with that space rogue an official welcome to the show and how's how's the handle holding out?
Yeah, well, it's interesting because I'm now if you notice like the book actually has my given name on the cover
As opposed to just space rogue. I wanted to ask okay to use that
So I can it's on the cover of the book. So I wanted to ask first though. So well, thank you
Welcome Chris everybody does Thomas. Okay. Yeah, Chris Thomas is the is the given name and that is the author name of the book
So I've been using space rogue, you know
Professionally for 30 years basically and have only recently started to use the given name in professional settings
It's hard to get paid as space rogue
Which kind of you know, you kind of can't go to the bank and show ideas space rogue to open a bank account anymore
I'm not that you ever could
But so, you know if I wanted to get paid I had to start using a given name
but even then I still tried to use the handle all the time because every that's what everybody knew me as I didn't want to
I still wanted to take advantage of that historical nature of the handle
But when I came to the book, I was like I thought about publishing it just as space rogue
But I also realized that was gonna cause a lot of a few hurdles that I might have to jump over that
I probably might not want to jump over
So I put the given name on the book as well
Wow, and of course, you know, that's sorry, too
Yeah, so people call me SR space. Mr. Rogue
Rouge some people mispronounce it as space Rouge
You know think I'm all red or something. I don't know. But yeah, I answer to most anything these days
Wow, well, no, I think probably the thing that people are most aware of
With the loft in general. We'll talk about a bunch of your other projects as well
But so the thing that the loft was known for was that testimony in that that spring day in 1998
I believe it was yes in May and
You guys went down to the Senate and you?
basically
schooled them on security and
I don't know. Do you think they listened back then?
Yes, and no, I mean it's taken a long time. I mean here we are 25 years later the 25th anniversary comes up this May
And it's been 25 years and in some ways not much has changed
In some ways a lot has changed. I mean, I'm I look at some of the
The initiatives taking place in government now, and I'm cautiously optimistic
CESA the computer information security cyber information security security agency
I think is the appropriate title is doing great great things under Jan Easterly and
It's sort of making things be very aware
Getting the word out there
Biden has a new
Cyber policy out which seems to be making some waves as well
I mean, I think it's still early to say whether or not these initiatives are going to stick
We've seen a lot of different initiatives over the years
But hopefully these current ones are actually going to make some difference and whether or not loft had some influence on those current activities or not
You know I like to think we did
But either way, it's good to see the progress
Can you describe the setting when you guys went down there?
How was it intimidating and I testified in front of Congress myself, but you guys had a much bigger platform
You were actually you had a full room. I had two senators and neither one of them really knew much
What they were talking about yeah, there's actually video of your testimony out there
And I mean I well I remember seeing it
I don't know where the link is now
But I I did mention your testimony in the book because I think a lot of people think that loft was first
And we were not like you predated us and then Susan Thunder actually predated you
As having testified at Congress, but the scene for us was we weren't really sure what to expect
We were aware of your previous testimony, and that it wasn't probably the most positive experience
And we were kind of concerned like what was gonna happen when we got in the room
I mean once you're in the room
Cameras are there people are there like they can ask you whatever you want so we didn't really advertise that we were going to Congress
You know tune in on C-SPAN
We figured if it goes badly. We just won't tell anybody and we'll pretend it didn't happen
But thankfully it was it was a more positive experience for us
So we went down
We testified under our handles
which was a big thing for us because we wanted to make sure that we were trying to protect ourselves from lawsuits by using our
handles and somehow we convinced the
Senate and Congress that too that was okay
That was the only time they allowed that for people that weren't in witness relocation
So that's what we were told in fact
You know one of the ways that we knew that it was serious was that we had to get reimbursed for our travel expenses in
cash
And to do that
we had to go down in the basement of the Capitol and talk to like this little guy in a closet who had all the
Petty cash for Congress and give them additional fake names
Because you can't you know put space rogue in the ledger as to who you paid off
For his $23 and gas money or whatever it was
So we had additional fake names that signed the ledger with so we could actually get our cash wait wait wait wait
We mean additional you mean you made up names on the spot. Yeah, yeah
Fake name they told you to do this or did they not know you were doing that no
They knew we were doing it ahead of time. They assigned us the names. Did you do you remember the name?
They were they all started with the same first and last the same letter of the first and last name and they were baseball related
I don't remember exactly what they were
Kingpin knows and it were used to know but it was interesting we go down. We give our fake name. We give him our receipts
He totaled them up put a ledger in the book entry in the books
They signed here. We'd sign the fake name and give us the cash
So that was that was interesting. That's kind of how we knew like, okay
They were really serious about this whole handle thing and we appreciated that because like I said, you know
We're trying to protect ourselves from lawsuits from companies trying to sue us for releasing information about their security vulnerabilities
You know, I want to hear the story of that guy in the basement. Somebody has to tell his story
That is incredible. Okay, so
The the testimony itself was was that intense? I think it went on for what about an hour or so
Yeah, it was a little over an hour a little under an hour. It was it was intense and very stressful at least for me
We got we got together ahead of time and we had a written testimony that's published in the congressional record
And then we had a verbal testimony as well
We wrote out the written testimony wrote out the introductions like the the written testimony was like a week before the introductions
We did the night before in the hotel room
So we each had like a paragraph that we said is our introduction and then we took questions from the senators
But it's it was really like for the first half an hour
I'm just sitting there like I don't know what to say
And if you look there's a there's a famous picture of us testifying like I'm looking down at the table in the picture
Like because I can't I can't even bring myself to look up in the room because it's you know
It's it's a very stately room. The senators are up on a raised bench in front of you
There's oak or cherry paneling everywhere
Very very intimidating to sit there and it wasn't until like the second half of the testimony where I start to like
Oh, I should probably say something and I start to try to answer some of the questions
So if you watch the testimony, like I don't say much for the first half and it's not until the second half, right?
I'm able to get in a few answers. Well, something was said and we were up in New York. We were doing radio
I remember I think we did a show the day you guys
Testified and we only heard
Rumors of that famous quote the week after we it certainly hit all the newspapers. We have a clip
We actually have a clip from our show
from May of
1998 let's just listen to the the initial reaction that that that we had
Boy yeah, we talked about the the loft thing for just a couple of minutes last week
You know that that that that quote
That everybody's been like quoting. What's up? I don't know. It's really a quote because I haven't seen it in context yet
We haven't been successful getting a hold of those people because I imagine they're they're in demand after
after things like that got out
basically the
The the idea was that hackers could take down the entire internet in 30 minutes or less
That's right a band of seven hackers from Boston told the Senate committee last Tuesday
they could bring down the foundation of the internet in 30 minutes and
One of the people is much who was on our radio show a few a few months ago actually and
You know, it's it's it's an interesting thing. I mean you're there in front of Congress
They can be kind of intimidating and I guess you know things come out that maybe you don't want them to be
interpreted in just that way I
Can tell you right now hackers are not going to take down the internet and I mean
I've been getting calls from reporters now for the past
Couple of days ever since I got back
Wanting responses to this threat that the loft poses to the internet, of course, you know
It doesn't take a a rocket scientist to realize that saying I can take down the internet in 30 minutes
Is going to be perceived as a threat by some dim-minded
media people
but there are certainly
Security problems that could result in somebody with the proper access
And access to a lot of different things and
knowledge
To achieve a desired effect
And the desire
To do something bad all that wrapped together. And yes, somebody could cause significant mayhem
And that's never really been an issue
Thing is
Is it a threat from hackers? The answer is no. Hackers are not going to take down the internet in 30 minutes
So no need to panic but definite need to increase security because
There are all kinds of technical problems all kinds of security issues
That are definitely relevant and things are stupid as as you know satellites that don't have any backup
Same mentality goes into some aspects of the internet
And that's what you have to take into consideration
Is that a failure in one way can lead to a failure somewhere else and it just keeps
Multiplying until you have a complete breakdown of communication
That's what you have to watch out for
And that's I think what the people at the loft were
Trying to warn congress about of course, you know, i've been there i've been in front of congress
I know that
You say certain things and it doesn't exactly get interpreted the way you want it to be interpreted
So I think we we know what the interpretation was meant to be
The boneheads in the media, of course will get it wrong every time
All right, that's an excerpt from 1998
Reacting to the testimony of the loft where in fact you can see the testimony of the loft
1998 reacting to the testimony of the loft where in fact you guys
Did sort of say something like that?
Mudge, I believe was the one who said that we have actually the exact excerpt we'll play in a moment
uh, but um, uh was was that a correct interpretation that it wasn't intended to cause panic or to
Be interpreted as a threat from hackers
Oh, absolutely not. No, um, and and it
Media did take it that way and and we have a collection of headlines
I think kingpin still has a collection of headlines of you know, hackers threaten internet, you know, mayhem, etc
Uh, but the the issue specifically was had already been disclosed and had already been patched
Uh when it was announced during that testimony basically was an issue with bgp
Where it would cause a castating failure of routers?
Uh, and the only way to fix it would be to turn everything off and turn it back on again
Like the entire internet, right? Uh, but it had already been disclosed. It had already a patch had already been issued
Uh, it wasn't really a major concern at the time. We announced it
Uh, but it was a possibility. I think I think we're going to play this excerpt from mudge
I think he was um, maybe theorizing about other potential ways where this could actually still be a threat
Uh, if if certain things weren't taken seriously and and that's something I would even say to this day
If security is not taken seriously, then then there will definitely be catastrophic
Um, um occurrences and that's not a threat. That's a fact, you know, you have to absolutely have decent security and back then
It really was um, and it's in its early days
Um, let's listen to the actual quote from mudge
i'm informed that
You uh
Think that within 30 minutes the seven of you could make the internet unusable for the entire nation
Is that correct? That's correct. Actually one of us with just a few packets
Um
I
we've told a few agencies about this, uh, it's kind of funny because
We think that this is something that the various government agencies should be actively going after we know the department of defense just did a
very large uh
Investigation into what's known as denial of service attacks against the infrastructure
In our various day jobs, we contributed a large portion of the information to that
actual
investigation
much to our chagrin the
Learnings from it were instantly classified
Which we were giving them largely public information
It
It is very trivial with the old protocols
to segregate and separate
The different major long-haul providers, uh, which would then be the national access points the metropolitan area ether
Sections at&t can't talk to mci can't talk to psi net can't talk to alternate
Etc etc and keep it down that way as long as we really wanted to
It would definitely take a few days for people to figure out what was going on
And that's from the congressional testimony of the loft back in 1998. I think that's that's pretty clear
that's pretty succinct as to uh, what exactly was meant there and if the
If the newspapers and the politicians have been a little less hysterical
I think they they would have learned a lot more more quickly how to deal with the situation
Yeah, no, I agree. And as you mentioned, I mean it was still dealing with an internet and a network that is very fragile
We still have issues with bgp today
where routing issues, uh
You know take down large sections of the internet for short periods of time
thankfully or major providers that just basically go offline because somebody pushed a button that was
Sent to configuration that was wrong. So yeah, the whole internet is still built on bubble gum and bailing twine
I I think you're right. I think you're right about that
Uh, well, we've been focusing on on this one, uh instance. It's only one day in in the world of the loft. Um,
Tell us how did the loft?
begin in the first place
Um, so the loft, uh arose out of a group of hackers in boston, uh who basically came together to store computer equipment
Uh in an old warehouse artist loft space in south boston
uh, the building still exists, uh, and but now it is, uh,
high-priced condos
It's no longer the derelict
Factory warehouse building that it was
Uh, but we basically just stored our equipment there
And then eventually we started plugging it in
And then we bought a modem and got online and built the website and the rest is history
well
Is there a truth to the rumor that i've heard that somehow?
This is related to a hat business. Yes
yeah, so count zero and uh, brian oblivion's wives, uh were
Basically, we're going to design hats like the kind you wear on your head
uh, and uh
They were gonna they had half of this space that they because it was a pretty decent size space
And so brian and count zero had the other half, but even that was too much for brian and count zero
So they invited white knight gogo13
A couple other folks to share this space with them while the the wives did the hat business on the other side
Well, the hat business did not take off and failed, uh within a couple of months
And so they still had now they had all this more space
Uh, and that's when they invited myself and kingpin and wild pond
Uh and to help share the rent basically, uh and store some equipment in this space
Wow, yeah
I was reading some of the accounts and um, I didn't realize you guys some of you guys met at a 2600 meeting and then
Went to the loft afterwards for the maybe the first time to to yeah
Wow, so yeah 2600 was was uh, one of the uh,
Communal gathering places. I think in boston. We had a bulletin board called the works and the works had gatherings
Infrequently they weren't scheduled that happened every now and then
Uh, but then 2600 came along and put a little bit of structure into it
And so we'd have 2600 meetings in harvard square every month, uh, first friday of the month
Have auburn pan i'd go get my large iced coffee americano chocolate frothy drink thing, which I don't drink anymore
but i'd sit outside with the old man and the chess tables and uh,
all the hackers would show up and we'd kind of sit there and and
Do a 2600 meeting and then the weather would get cold and we'd go to the pizza shop around the corner
Uh until they got uh realized that we weren't buying any pizza and kicked us out
Uh, and then we ended up at the prudential center in boston
Which I think is where the meetings still are i'd have to check the listing, you know
The web page 2600.com slash meetings. I don't know where they are myself
I do know they exist in boston, but i'm not sure where exactly they are
I think they're at the proof. They may have gone back to harvard square. I'm not sure either but yeah check the website
Uh, but that was the ineptest of this pretty much where we all met
Uh, brian oblivion ran a bulletin board called black crawling systems
And he would only let people on the board who he had actually met in person
Um, so there wasn't a lot of a lot of people on the board
Uh, but that's also where the the loft came from from membership from that board
Which is from people he met at 2600 meetings
Gila the expression on your face tells me that you just found out where the meetings are
Um, I did actually, uh boston the garage at harvard square in the food court area
That's where we used to that's where we got kicked out of uh, 25 years ago and now
And now the hackers are the hackers are back for round two
Indelible, you know what's amazing about that is I realize you guys were just kids back then and uh, you know looked upon with suspicion
By the mainstream
But look what you went on to do
I I just hope people are listening to this that are our kids now that are going to meetings that are
Uh, you know just trying to fit in or figure out how technology works or how to manipulate things
And realizing that yeah, you can you can become amazing too
You can be writing books in in a couple of decades and um, and and maybe even testifying in front of congress in a good way
Yeah, I mean kingpin was was still in high school at the time when he joined the loft
Uh, I think I was in my early 30s
Uh, so we had a wide range of ages, uh, so yeah, there isn't any one particular age
It's good or bad that like oh i'm too old. I'm too young whatever
Uh, there's definitely any time you can jump in and get started
You in your 30s then you look like you're in your 30s now
Yeah, I age slowly I guess some kind of time traveler. Okay. Well, that's that's that's pretty amazing
Um, so, uh, tell us tell us about the book. What where'd the idea for the book come from?
And uh, what did you hope to capture?
Um, well i've been thinking about writing the book for a while, uh,
The the story of the loft is has kind of reached mythological status
I think and it's sort of been retold and retold and
I've heard different versions of some of the stories and i'm like that's not what I remember
Uh, not to say that somebody else's version isn't accurate either
But i was like I was there and I remember things a little bit differently
So I felt it was important to record my version, uh and write the story
but I had a problem like writing like i'm not a writer and so
Getting the the the stuff down was difficult and I would start and I would write a page and i'll be like
Oh, I can't do this and I would write another page and i'll be like, oh, this is terrible
And then I don't know somehow at some point something clicked and I ended up doing an outline and that's what
That's what did it for me. I did outlines like I want to do this story. I want to do that story
I'll put this story in and I just listed the stories then I organized the stories
And then I filled in all the blanks and when I was done I was like I got a book
Uh, and so I think I really wanted to just capture
Uh, you know some of the big important aspects of what loft did and what loft was
And some of the impact that we had
Uh, not just directly but indirectly and the people that we influenced over the years
Wow
that's uh, that's pretty incredible and and uh, you were able to to uh,
Find interest in publishing the book without uh, not too much of a challenge
Yeah, yes and no as as i'm sure you know publishing is is a whole
Yes, uh, yes
I sent out so the basically if you write a book or before you write a book the
Traditional publishing says you need an agent to get an agent
You send out query letters, which is basically nowadays emails and you format an email you mail it off
And if you're lucky you'll hear something back
Generally, you hear nothing and that's normal for this industry
Like it just goes into a black hole and you don't hear nothing back. I sent out about maybe
200 250 query letters to different agents
Uh, I probably heard back from maybe 75 of them like the rest of them are just lost and gone forever
Although 75 I had like four I think who were very interested in the story
Wanted to do something with the idea but like oh, this is really important
I want to publish this but I want you to change all this stuff and do it different
I'm, like well i've written a book. It's a memoir. I don't want to go and do a total non-fiction
treatment
like i've this is the book I wrote this is the book I want to publish and
After like the fourth agent telling me that i'm like, you know, I'm just gonna do it myself
um, but this took like two years to go through and you know go through all these agents and these query letters and whatnot and
People think oh you self-publish it's real easy. You just upload it click a button. Yeah, it's great
If you just want to do amazon and have a kind of a you know, crappy book
uh, so I ended up having to hire editors and uh proofreaders and a
Book designer and get the cover done
And all that sort of things just took months and months and months as well to do
And then I was able to upload it and push a button for amazon
But I also wanted a hardcover because you know
It's not really a book to me if you unless you have a hardcover
Which meant a whole nother website called ingram spark which you have to upload and then you have to have an ebook on top
Of that because everybody buys ebook. So yeah, there's a lot involved in the actual publishing of the the book yourself
What kinds of things do they want you to change?
Well, mostly they since it's a memoir people didn't want it as a memoir the idea was that memoirs don't sell so they wanted a full
regular non-fiction
interview
footnote treatment
Uh, very dry, very boring very matter of fact type book and i'm like that's that's that's what sells
That's not gonna sell like a historian
would make
Okay, like really
Academic and oh wow. Wow. Yeah, and I was I just I was like, well, you know
I know you're the expert and you probably know the market better than I do
But one I ain't got time to write that like that's a lot of work
Um, and like I'd have to interview at least seven people not to mention
You know everybody else, uh, and I was like I the book is you know, 80 percent done
I just needed some help with the editing and stuff and like oh no
No, we got to change all this and do this and do that and like yeah. No, thanks
Uh, i'll just do it myself good for you. And so I did wow that that is awesome
We're speaking with uh, chris thomas known as space rogue
The book is called space rogue how the hacker hackers known as loft changed the world
Um, and guess what for you listeners? We're offering a special, uh deal for the first two people who call in
um, or or connect and become bai buddies
You will get an autographed copy of this book from space rogue himself
um
Rob, uh, gila, would you tell us how people can connect and become bai buddies and you have to email us?
um
Before eight o'clock tonight to tell us that you did that if you do it after eight o'clock
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um, I had a question, uh, what were some of the uh,
Fall-on impacts and and uh things that happened as the loft. Um had sort of this renown
uh after the uh hearing of course and then um
progressed as an as a space and people went on uh to
Do different projects how was their impact felt and and what kinds of reaction?
Did the group continue to get and influence might you say?
Uh, i'm not sure that we really felt an impact right away, uh, I mean, yeah, everybody was surprised
Oh, wow, loft was at congress, you know, and then we got into some press
But after a little while it seemed to that all sort of died down and went back to normal for us
uh
we just kind of went back to hacking things and publishing things and went back to our day jobs and
Uh, we didn't like become overnight rich or anything and and suddenly retired to miami or something. Uh,
So it didn't seem like that much changed immediately
Uh, and maybe it did and it was just the subtle ways that we didn't realize and I think but now looking back
you know, it was it was kind of a watershed moment, uh, and it is a moment that that is
You know one of those time marks in history is like pre-loft testimony and then after loft testimony
uh
and for loft like we just kind of kept on doing what our thing was and kept hacking things and publishing things and trying to
make a
Loft pay for itself, which was our initial goal. We just wanted it to to earn enough money so we could quit our jobs
uh, and
You know and then two thousand y2k bug came along and uh, the dot com boom came along kind of at the same time
And we're looking around seeing all our friends getting rich off vc money
And we're like we're still sitting here trying to barely pay the internet bill and we're like, you know
Be nice to get uh, get a piece of that
So we started went out and started looking for some venture capital and ended up forming at stake
Yeah, tell us about the at stake days because that that pretty much was how loft finished, right?
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. That was how loft finished. Um
so I uh
There was a venture capital company that had a company
Internet security company that they had already founded called at stake
uh had you know had a handful of employees and was trying to make a go of it and
Um mudge was shopping us around to some of the vc and this particular venture capital was like, you know
We already got a company
But maybe we can we can buy you and and merge you into together and make one big company
We're like, you know, it sounds like a good idea
uh, and and we sort of knew that loft had reached a point where
If we had kept on doing what we were doing, we would eventually get to our goal slowly
But it would have been slow and painful and a lot of road bumps along the road along the way
uh, and now here is sort of a
instant
Instant out just add water and boom. We're where we want to be. We've got the credibility or we got more people
Um, we're able to hack on stuff all day
Uh, and so we're like, yeah, let's do this and it's kind of what we wanted to do what we were looking for anyway
Uh, but of course, you know as what happens with a lot of good things once you add money it becomes a bad thing
uh, so, uh
Shortly after at stake and loft kind of merged or at stake bought loft technically, um the venture capital were like, you know
We kind of want our money back. Uh, that's kind of why we invented in you in the first place
And so they put some uh management in place
Uh, they brought in a ceo
They got a cfo and whatnot and they started making some some rather big changes
One of those changes was to get rid of me and the hacker news network
Uh, and so I had to exit stage left and then a year two years later they sold what was left to uh,
semantic
And then semantic kind of shut everything down and and that was the end of everything. Why did they come after you right away?
Well, I go into this in the book
I think that there was the ceo and and the the management that was brought in needed to make an example of
Uh the rank and file that nobody was protected
I just happened to be the one person that they really didn't know what to do with the hacker news network
They weren't interested in at the time, which was a website that I had created that was getting some moderate traffic
But they didn't really know what to do with it as a consulting company. It didn't fit their business model
They weren't really interested. They were going to close it down
They were probably worried about what I would say when they did
so they're like, you know, we'll just get rid of space rogue and his hnn and
um, so they got they fired me and they fired one other person in the uh,
Uh in the virginia office or at the same time, uh, the research triangle park, which is in north carolina. I don't remember
Wow, I don't know. It's virginia, right? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway
So, uh, they fired me and one of the person in the other office sort of as a as a token
I think to say okay, not everybody's untouchable like there's nobody untouchable
Uh, and I think that was that was kind of why uh, I was let go
Um, but that was it was a big shock to me. Did you guys still have the space the loft space?
No, um, the lease had gotten up a few months earlier
Uh, and so it was it had been closed down and cleaned out and weren't using it anymore at all
Um, I think I went there
Uh by the time the day I got fired, of course by the time I got home
My loft email was turned off which is shocking because I wasn't expecting my loft email to get turned off
I was expecting my at stake email to go away, of course
But not my loft email that I'd had for seven years
And so I lost all that mail spool all that history was gone
when it came time to write the book, I wasn't able to refer to that which was kind of a
A pain made it difficult, uh, but the loft space itself
The lease had been up and we had moved most of the stuff out of there into the at stake office
Um, and so there wasn't really anything there
Uh to go back to wow, that's that's a sad ending as far as uh,
Especially losing your mail you would think that you know a hacker space
Um, that would never happen to but when corporations get involved, I guess I guess anything's possible. Wow
Had no had no idea
Tell us. I don't know if you remember you had another uh show about at stake with uh fiber fiber optic
I do remember I do remember that. In fact, if I can recall, uh, he had tried to get a job there
And they rejected him because he had been arrested for being a hacker because he was a hacker
Was the ultimate irony and and something, uh that started as the loft. Yeah, basically rejecting somebody for being a hacker
Um, yeah, so that that that definitely was something. Um
Being the first one out, uh, were there others who who uh left afterwards is
Did were you able to stay on good terms with the original members?
so, uh
At stake it also hired a uh, not a hacker type but a luminary and cyber security even then dan gear
Uh and dan ended up co-authoring a paper on um, uh homogeneous networks basically windows networks
Uh and saying that that such networks were not a good idea and not very secure
Uh, and he was uh, pretty much let go shortly thereafter
um for
He they didn't say it was for his writing of the paper
But i'm fairly positive it was but there's more dan's story to tell than mine
Um, but yeah, so there were some other and then there was the fiber optic incident. Um,
Management I think didn't really understand what loft was or what we did or what we stood for or
Uh any of that, um, unfortunately, so like I said when you add money things money to things it often goes bad
Uh, sorry just wanted to jump in for a second and
Speaking of a good way to add money to things that will not go bad
We do want to thank our first recipient of a signed copy of space rogues book one left 15 minutes to go
Um, just know that there's one more so if you're going to do it do it quick. Yes
You have to email us before eight o'clock
Uh, you know you can you can pledge after that and you'll be helping the station but uh
You won't be eligible for this particular offer
So anyone who pledges as a bai buddy will get an autographed paperback copy of space rogues book. Uh, go ahead rob
Yes, and if you are one of the first two people, um this person or the next one to uh,
Get your info to us about your new bai buddy ship
Uh, we will be in touch with you about getting your mailing info and all that good stuff
So if you hear from us, you're lucky and we thank you
And we encourage lots of people to become baa buddies even if you know, you're not able to get a book tonight
Now we've mentioned hacker news network and uh, can you tell us something about how that got started what it was all about and and uh,
Did it relaunch?
Yeah, so hacker news network was an idea I had years ago of trying to
Basically earn some money for the loft to pay our rent and our electric bill
Um, we had this, you know loft.com was one of the probably one of the first 10 000 websites on the internet
Um, so it was a very early website
and so we published all our advisories and all our other information and it became very very popular and
Uh, it got a you know back in the day. We call them hits right?
A lot of web hits on on that site
But we didn't want to put web ads on the site web ads were huge
a lot of people were making a lot of money on banner ads from their websites, but
we didn't want to be beholden to add be beholden to advertisers or or
Have them influence anything that we'd say so we didn't want to put ads on loft.com
But at the same time i'm like looking at all these other websites with tons of banner ads making tons of money
And i'm like, you know
There's got to be a way that we can get a small slice of that
So I came up with this idea to create an entirely new website called hacker news network
And I was just going to put links on it of
news stories related to
Hackers, right?
Uh, and that's what I did. Uh, and after about a year or two, it got to be pretty popular
I'd post the i'd wake up every morning. I'd
scour the my list of bookmarks for
Relevant news stories. I'd write a small blurb for each one and i'd post it try to have it posted up by 9 a.m
Eastern every day, uh, so I was waking up early in the morning gathering the news
Posting it online, uh, and it came to be a pretty good, uh de facto source for you know hacker related news
Yeah, we use it all the time for the for the radio show. We always used it. Oh nice
That's great. I'm, sorry if we never gave credit, but we did use it
Well, you're not the only ones if you watch there's a video out of uh from the fbi about solar sunrise, which was an active
a uh
Mission that the fbi did years ago about hacking and whatnot and in the background
On several of the shots in that video, there's a hacker news network on the computer monitor
So that was that was a nice thing, too
But then uh, you know as stake happened and the venture capital didn't want hacker news network
And after they fired me they they kind of killed the website pretty quickly
wow, and so like
15 years later 10 years later, uh tan one of the loft guys calls me up out of the blue and he's like dude
I'm, like what and he's like we gotta we gotta bring hnn back. I'm like, no, we don't he's like, yeah
Yeah, yeah, we'll do it as video. I'm like, I don't know nothing about video me neither. And so
He convinced me. I borrowed a camera from my job
And
I filmed a pilot episode and I was like, yeah, I get get right back into this
So, uh, we brought it back for a couple years as video. I did a weekly news show
Of uh hacker news network of me in front of the camera reading the news
And we had a bunch of different segments in the show
But it was about a half hour long
Uh, so I couldn't really upload it to youtube because at the time youtube had a 10 minute limit. That's right
Yeah, yeah
So we were kind of like ahead of the time, uh ahead of the curve as it were
I think if I had held on for like another six months or so and waited for youtube get rid of their 10 minute limit
You know the sky would have been in the limit
But as it was I was putting 40 hours a week into doing the hnn video show and then still trying to work 40 hours
A week at my regular job, uh, and so after two years of that
It was just it was too much and I just I couldn't keep it up anymore. I was burnt out so I shut it down
Um, and that was the end of the second incarnation of hacker news network
Wow had a really fun vibe to it
Um, though I loved the production design of it and the sunglasses everywhere. It was a lot of fun
Yeah, so the show had a max hedron motif and all that was basically thanks to tan. Um,
I would film the show in front of a green screen
and uh
I would
Write the whole copy and I would read the copy for the show
And I would upload my green screen video and he would edit it and put the backgrounds in and the sound effects and the
The logos and all that funny stuff. Uh, so big. Thanks to tan for for that
Space rug, we're out of time. I'm, sorry. That was quick. I hope I hope you can stick around for overtime
Uh, I can stick around for a little while. Okay, that'd be great
So the conversation will continue on channel 2600 on youtube at eight o'clock for anybody who wants to maybe even call in as well
And for those of you who are still looking for an autographed copy of space rogues book space rogue
How the hackers known as loft changed the world actually chris thomas is the author's name space rogue is the handle
please
Go to give to wbai.org
And become a bai buddy and email us at oth at 2600.com by eight o'clock
And if it's a tie, you know what we'll uh, we'll we'll pitch in and donate and get an extra book
so people, uh, don't do that and and not get a book, uh, but for those of you who are listening in the future or
Don't want to do it that way the book is available on amazon, uh
Everywhere else, uh, are there other everywhere else? Okay, wherever you get your books. There you go
And it's um, it's really such a great thing. I I really look forward to reading the rest of it myself
Uh, and we'll be continuing the conversation over on youtube
Um
Excellent. Um before we go. I uh, just want to say a quick a couple of words the hacker community
Very sadly has just had to say goodbye to uh,
Luminary among their ranks, uh, kelly lum who was known as a laurea
um passed away
um due to uh complications from an illness and uh
She was known by so many in this community. She was a regular presence at uh at conferences and everything and
Basically, nobody has a negative thing to say about her
She was a wonderful person very welcoming very helpful
And uh, we're going to close with a piece of music that she once tweeted about
Enjoying while complaining that she has terrible taste in music. So, uh, yes a laurea will be missed
Thank you, rob
We'll see you in two weeks
oth at 2600.com and on youtube
at eight o'clock channel 2600
Why don't we
Sit right here for half an hour i will speak of what a waste I am
Just to stay
Move on
That's right, we're dead and gone
We're taking back all the things that's said
We're taking back all the things that's said
You are the substance
You're the substance
And I swear on you
We walk alone
We walk alone
We walk alone
We walk alone
We walk alone
Back home
Alone
Back home
You're almost gone, almost gone I still see your shadow
So don't you dare to be afraid I'll never hear your voice again
I remember your presence
I hope to God you come down
I hope to God you feel this now
I hope to God you come down
I hope to God you feel this now
I know there must be someone out of here
That God himself will be waiting to hear