And welcome to everybody here on Overtime. I seem to have made it, Kyle.
You here? Thank you. All right. Good. Rob, Gila, Alex, y'all here? Hello. Yes.
Well, okay. Great. And our listeners are here. And I believe they can chat.
Is that right, Gila? They certainly can. They certainly are. Hello, everybody in the
chat. As I just said, we are live in the chat and on the stream. Apologies for the
absence of chat last week on Overtime. I was away on assignment and unavailable to
mod the chat. Sorry, gang. But we are back and all systems are go. So... Oh, wow.
Look at all the words. Yeah, I see it scrolling. Wow. Yeah. Okay. All right.
Good. Good. I won't be looking at the words, though, because I get very distracted very easily.
And I like to... That's why I've got that. I'm holding it down in the chat, everybody.
So please be nice and try to stay on topic, basically part of the conversation.
Just a quick note. Okay. Yes. Bobcat, we...
See? Those long pauses. That's what happens when people look at the stream.
Bobcat, we do indeed have slow commenting turned on. We are going to leave slow commenting turned
on. It makes things easier both for us and I think for everybody else. So thank you. And Tim
in Connecticut, if you've got rules you'd like to share, we'd be happy to hear them.
Rules? Rules? Sharing rules? Who's... Wait, who's... Who's talking over...
What in God's name is going on? How are we getting audio?
Which one of you is doing this? That is coming from Alex, who I think needs to mute on his end.
Alex? If he doesn't want us to hear what he's doing. Stop being a pain in the ass.
Are you aware of the show, Alex? You seem puzzled.
Okay. He's not saying anything. He's just playing audio.
I think he's actually...
He got a work call.
...has an emergency he's taking care of or something.
Okay. Well, he should tell us that if that's the case.
He noted to us in our private little chat...
Oh, well, maybe you should share that information with me because I don't
know what the hell's going on. Thank you.
He seems to have stepped away, but we have not stepped away.
Why don't we mute Alex while he's dealing with that?
He has muted himself.
Take care of that.
We can't aggressively mute others. I don't know how YouTube works. I really don't.
Hey, whoa.
And I'm glad.
This isn't about aggressive muting. This is about talk.
Sometimes you want to shut other people up. You know what I mean?
Am I?
You just aggressively muted me.
Well, I just was demonstrating.
I'm operating phones for the people.
Yeah, it's useful sometimes.
Okay. Well, I hope things work out on Alex's end, whatever's going on there.
What was this about rules being imposed upon us? What?
It's not so much rules being imposed upon us as, I think,
a selected collection of rules that might help us in terms of what's going on in the chat.
See, right away, as soon as we have the chat, now there are rules.
Okay.
So I'm going to pause. I'm going to share the rules that Tim has popped into the chat.
If anybody on air or in the chat has issues with them.
I do. I have an issue.
Yes. Yes, Emmanuel.
I don't like rules. I don't like rules being imposed on chats. I mean, why can't we just
chat? You know, the only rules be nice.
I think we should just be nice, be on topic.
That's basically what they are.
Okay.
That's basically what they are. Don't use all caps or excessive emojis.
I mean, also, I can't read it out loud if it's emojis.
Oh, if you can't read, you shouldn't be doing this.
I can't read emojis out loud.
Yeah. Paraphrasing emojis is not really helpful because everybody,
they don't know all the different... you're trying to conjure a visualization.
Emojis are cool and all, but can we just, you know, enough already?
They had their day. Can we go back to English?
Go back to whatever language you want to use, but just a language.
I hate emojis.
No, seriously, people send me emojis on my phone, right?
And I'm supposed to understand what they mean.
I mean, it's a little tiny graphic.
Okay. So you sent me a picture of a celery stick.
I don't know what that's supposed to mean.
How does that pertain to a conversation?
I'm pretty sure that means it's time for Bloody Marys.
You got that right. You got that right.
Or maybe ants on a log. I don't know. It could go either way.
Chat is hopping. Thanks, everybody.
Welcome, Slick Hunters from Canada.
And if you have a cocktail or a mocktail recipe,
feel free to drop that in the chat using words, not emojis.
Yeah, words are good. And spell the words properly.
It doesn't take much. It makes it more pleasant to read.
And we may be on YouTube and free of things like FCC regulation,
but if we could keep the chat clean more than not, that would be super.
Yeah, unless it's absolutely necessary.
But if it's not absolutely necessary, then save those words for a special occasion.
That's what I do.
Exactly. They're like habanero peppers.
Yeah.
They do good things when they're used sparingly.
Oh, I thought you meant when you bite into one,
you definitely use those words, because that's what I do.
Well, whatever. So we should give out the phone number.
It's 802-321-4225. 802-321-HACK.
That's our telephone number.
We are waiting for the first call to come in.
While we were waiting for the first call to come in,
we did just get a cocktail recipe in the chat.
Wow, that's the power of chat.
Yeah. So here you go. Ready?
No, we're not. We don't have any of the ingredients, but we'll listen.
All right. Well, this is just something to keep in the hopper.
Delchi's Soul, four ounces orange juice, one shot Jägermeister.
Watch as it mutates like my soul.
Delchi, like the one that Delchi from the 1990s that I knew in Brooklyn?
This is AP Delchi.
That's the same name. Wow.
Somebody is either impersonating him or he's listening to us, which is a great honor to know that.
OJ and Jägermeister, very exciting.
And Bobcat informs us that they're drinking Bloody Marys with wasabi instead of horseradish.
Just kicked up an extra level.
Oh, my God. Wow.
Delightful.
Does not have to include alcohol.
I've missed out a lot.
Please keep those coming as well as your feedback.
We do have a call.
Don't we also have an IRC channel?
There is one, and it could be monitored.
But I don't know.
I mean, if it's going on, they should be acknowledged, too, shouldn't they?
I just IRC dot 2600 dot net.
Oh, yeah.
And we forgot to mention off the wall.
We forgot off the hook.
Get the show right.
This is off the hook off the walls on.
Oh, I said the wrong one.
I said the wrong one.
Okay.
But the important thing is, it's not the initials.
It's not OTW.
It's not OTH in this instance.
It's a secret out now that people know there's another show.
There's two shows.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I got that wrong.
But you don't do OTH.
It's off the hook.
You have to spell it out.
Right.
Exactly.
We forgot to mention meetings are taking place this Friday coming up.
We did indeed go to 2600 dot com slash meetings to find one near you or start one near you
here in the New York City area.
The info is on NYC 2600 dot net.
And Rob, you know, in the interest of full disclosure, and I always admit when we've
done something stupid, you discovered something today that I cannot believe was happening
and that nobody else discovered.
You want to just explain what you found concerning our meetings web page?
I cannot take credit for this.
This was told to me by our friend Leo, a friend of the show.
Who didn't tell anybody, apparently.
Yes, he told me about it.
And I passed it along where we still had the old meetings page up from before we slashed
and burned it all to the ground and started again after lockdown.
Pre-pandemic.
Pre-pandemic meetings.
Now, OK, the the the web page for the meetings is www.2600.com slash meetings.
But apparently not always, because sometimes people would add something.
Yes, if you if you had a slash on the end of meetings like the page used to have, the
old page was still there and giving the wrong information.
I didn't even know that was a thing where.
OK, so if you if you add a slash to the end of a URL, it goes to a different place.
And if you don't add the slash, I thought that was something from the 1990s or 1980s.
I don't know that.
Why would anybody want that?
OK, so, you know, I'm not even sure it's fixed yet.
It might still be broken because we have to go through a process to fix things.
And yes, so if you if if you want the correct info, it's 2600.com slash meetings with no
slash on the end of that.
Don't add the slash.
In fact, we will never have a slash at the end of a URL.
Can we all agree to that right now?
It's not something that we care for.
And this is why this is why we don't do it.
Yeah.
Use it sparingly only when you need it.
Why would you need it?
So why would you ever need it for you?
No, it's a stupid idea.
And OK, so hopefully it appears to be fixed.
It is fixed.
OK, good.
Well, then you have to take our word for it that it was broken twice.
But it seems to be working.
We never we never put a URL with a slash at the end.
We never told people to go there.
I don't think so.
If people were doing that, they added the slash themselves or somebody else told them.
All right.
Wow.
That was embarrassing, though.
But thanks for pointing it out, Rob.
And thanks to Leo.
Yes.
Do we have a phone call?
Important advice.
Notice things just generally.
Yeah, we do.
We have a phone call.
OK.
Sorry for keeping you on hold.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hi, Emmanuel.
All right.
You know, a call that starts that way is not something I really want to continue.
That's like a ringtone right there.
That's just that should be a ringtone.
But, you know, should I bring the volume back up?
Because how could first of all, that's about as entertaining as it's going to get, I think.
And second of all, I'm in fear of what else is going to be said after that.
What do you guys think?
Should we proceed or try something else?
I think we should.
We obviously we answered the call.
We did.
Let's hear the caller.
And we should have known that, you know, Rebels always been the first call.
He's going to be the first call again.
It's never going to end.
So we've been greeted.
We should greet back.
Just rip that bandaid off and get started.
OK.
Hi, Rebel.
How you doing?
OK.
Hi.
Yes, Emmanuel.
Yes.
Hi.
IOC, isn't that from the 90s?
I don't think I tried.
IOC doesn't work.
IOC works.
It's just you have to try it the correct way.
I'm on there now.
Yeah, he's on there now.
Go join Rob on IRC.
He'll kick you off the channel.
What I like is the ringtone.
Like when you call my cell phone.
I have never called your cell phone.
Let's just make that crystal clear.
If anybody calls my cell phone, instead of getting the regular, you know, the general like ring.
You know, like regular you get.
Try to imitate a ring before.
OK, that's that's not bad.
Can you do it again?
Rebel, I want to hear that one more time.
That's an electronic.
Can you do a crossbar?
That's step.
Come on.
That's a step.
Come on.
You think I'm an idiot?
Come on.
No, a step is.
That's that's a different kind of step.
That's a stroger step.
But number five crossbar or number one crossbar.
You can't do that.
That's disappointing.
You know, I'm trying to.
You've never sounded better, Rebel.
But let's let's continue with this as.
OK, I like that as my ringtone, like when you know, like you used to be able to like
play music at your ringtone when you call somebody, they say, please listen to this
song while your party is rich or something.
And the person who owns a cell phone would have a choice of like songs.
I could play while they're, you know, instead of the ringing.
Not on their phone, but to the person who's calling them.
I seem to recall Verizon offered that they had some kind of thing like that, and I think
you can you could certainly compose and record your or record it when you leave your own.
But you mean selectively, like for different people or for different scenarios or something?
No, no.
Just just like instead of music, like if I was to call, let's say a manual phone, let's
say instead of getting the regular ring that that I hear on my own, I mean, anyone would
have music.
I said, please listen to this while while, you know, the phone is ringing.
Yeah, instead of instead of a ring.
I actually thought of this when I was a kid.
I thought, well, it wouldn't be cool if you heard like I actually thought an advertisement
would be interesting to have while the phone is ringing rather than the ringtone.
But that was before it would be interesting.
Wouldn't it be kind of cool to have a crossbar ring like a like a tone?
That would be cool.
Like a crossbar.
That would be way cool.
Yeah.
Bring it back.
Bring back the old crossbar, but send it out to the call, the calling party.
So that's what they hear.
And they're calling you.
Yeah, I like that idea.
Right.
Exactly.
That's what I want.
I was like, you know what I mean?
Like retrofies the call process.
And people have already done that with with making like a bell ring on their on their
cell phones.
How many times you hear that when you're on their cell phone?
The bell ring.
That's another idea I came up with in the 1990s.
I said, hey, wouldn't it be cool if you had a ringing phone that sounded like a regular
desk phone, but it was a cell phone.
So it's like it's like a setup.
And of course, that happened.
I got no credit for it, but whatever.
Right.
Yeah.
Call set up.
The person who is calling the cell phone.
Here's this crossbar ring instead of music.
They hear the crossbar, the shepherding or whatever, the MF Jones.
I'm pretty sure we just said that.
Yeah.
But OK, that would be cool.
I'll again express my enthusiasm for it.
I'd record.
OK, what's going on now?
I like.
No, I was just playing basketball.
You're playing basketball again.
Shooting hoops.
Well, I'm just throwing a basketball into the hoop.
I just, you know, not playing a game.
You know, OK.
Now I'd like to demonstrate.
Remember how you say that things are annoying when you can't get to a person
when you call Enterprise Rent-A-Car?
I'm not going to call it.
I'm just going to demonstrate it.
I'm not going to call.
I'm just going to demonstrate it.
What's the difference?
Well, no, no, no.
I mean, like, when you call it, it says, welcome to Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
If you have, you know, press one quarter.
If you put zero, it says, I'm sorry, please make a selection.
You know, maybe you'll just demonstrate.
You want to hold?
Are you asking me if I want to hold?
No, I don't want to hold.
I don't want to hold.
I want to keep this conversation going.
Then I got to keep on saying what I want to ask.
You say.
Yeah, so they don't have zero.
A lot of places don't have zero.
Right.
Don't have zero.
And then they'll say, please say whatever.
But you don't say anything.
And then it says, I'm sorry, you didn't say anything.
We're hanging on.
Yeah, because you have a rotary phone.
We don't want to talk to you.
That's that's basically what it is.
But the thing is, is that when you call somebody,
I remember you demonstrating this in the 90s where you call something and it doesn't.
Why are we hearing audio from the past?
Oh, I don't know.
People are just trying to.
Those are people in the background.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But when you don't call.
All right.
I'm going to call a particular entity.
I'm going to say what the entity is.
What the hell does that mean?
I'm going to say, I mean, it's going to say what it is,
but I'm just going to call it and demonstrate the fact that it does not.
That's the fact that that does not, you know, basically, I'm not going to say anything.
Why is this so mysterious?
Why are you being so mysterious?
Is this a human?
Is this on Earth?
You're calling an entity?
What do you mean?
No, it's not a human.
It's a recording.
It just says, thank you for calling whatever.
Well, that's a human saying it, I'll bet.
But okay, fine.
Call it.
No, it's a recording.
It's a recording.
It's a press.
If you know the extension, please enter it now.
For this department, press one, or for that department, press two.
If you don't press anything, it just repeats the same thing.
Thank you for calling whatever trucking company.
Do you really think we've never heard anything like this before?
Is this something that...
I know.
Why do we need to hear this again?
I'm sorry, what?
You demonstrate it, and then you press zero, and then you say, oh, I don't have a rotary phone.
I have a rotary phone, so I won't press anything.
And then it just goes.
Right.
It hangs up on you.
We've demonstrated this about a thousand times.
Yeah, it hangs up on you.
I try to rent a car, and I press zero, and it doesn't...
Like car rental, they...
I think the best advice I've found with systems like this, because you're all right,
they're getting very distant, and they have been since your examples in the 90s that you recall.
Try different keys and combinations, even out of frustration.
Sometimes it can confuse it.
He's talking to somebody else.
He's not listening to you.
Oh, okay, he's not listening to me.
Sometimes you can confuse it enough.
So listeners, if you're not getting zero to work, if star, or pound, or other combinations,
sometimes a slight combination of the two, weird tests that you can run sometimes might actually...
You know what else works?
...get you somewhere.
Hanging up and calling a different company.
Yeah, forget them on top.
Yeah, because they're not gonna...
You're like, oh, a different company, but what if you have to use that company?
What if you just don't press anything, and it just keeps repeating the same menu?
If you don't press anything, it just keeps repeating the same menu.
I'd say their phone is broken, and you tell them that.
Maybe I will.
No, seriously.
I mean, it's not hard to simply give people options, and if they don't have a working
touch-tone phone, then you have it forward somewhere else.
Alex has something to contribute here.
Go ahead, Alex, and welcome back.
Yeah, sorry.
I just got back.
I had a call from Virgil, by the way.
So I was...
Yes, he's calling Collette.
Virgil had called, so he says hello to everybody.
But I wanted to say, I obviously missed the beginning of all this.
It sounds so fascinating.
I'm wondering if we can just go right back to the beginning.
If you click on our channel, you can drag the little thing over and start over again,
and we'll just wait for you.
Yeah.
Yeah, no need.
No need.
Wow.
Yeah, you can do it later.
You're a little late, Alex.
You're a little late, Alex.
We're not repeating it for you.
Yeah, you got to do it.
Thank you, Rebel.
I was being slightly sarcastic if that wasn't coming through to everyone.
I just can't believe you got chastised by Rebel.
Yep.
You got told.
Yeah.
And he's playing basketball, too, so...
That's right.
Yep.
All right, Rebels, this is the home stretch.
What else do you have to tell us before we move on to the next call?
Let's see.
What else?
Postal hacking.
You know, if you get free mail, instead of paying 50 cents for a stamp to mail a letter
or whatever, you just put the same return address as it says.
If I put OTH at 2600.com, I mean, AutoHawk, WBAI, whatever, 120 Waffle, whatever it is.
That was three studios ago.
Yeah.
Um, and then I'll just put the same address as the return address, and it'll just be mailed
to you, and then it'll...
You know, that trick was revealed by the yippies in the 1960s.
So it's not exactly breaking news here.
Well, I actually, I mentioned it, like, in the 90s.
Okay, fine.
Even if that's true, that's still 30 years ago.
And it still works, I believe.
I don't know if it does.
I don't know if it does.
You know, there was another one I remember talking about called Postman's Choice, where
you had a postcard, and you'd put a different address on either side, and you'd just see
which one it wound up at eventually, or if it just bounced back and forth from one to
the other until it finally landed on one.
Try that.
And you put a stamp on each side, so you're not even getting away with anything.
Oh.
Okay.
Yeah, try that.
Anything else?
Let's see.
I guess that's it.
Okay, then.
Well, it's been a pleasure, a joy, and all that.
And we'll probably talk to you again next week.
Yeah.
All right.
And at the 2600 meeting.
At the 2600 meeting this Friday at the Citigroup Center.
Is that right, Rob?
That is right.
Okay.
Starting at 5 p.m. and going on till whenever.
53rd Street and Lexington Avenue, right down in the food court.
That's right, where it's always been.
Right.
And again, you can find meetings in your area by going to 2600.com slash meetings.
And just, you know, for safety, don't put a slash at the end there.
All right, Rebel.
Have a good night.
Okay.
I'll go back to playing basketball now.
Yes, go work out there.
The ball is in our court.
Uh, yeah.
All right.
Our phone number, 802-321-4225.
802-321-HECK.
Thanks for sharing, Rebel.
That's a good update.
How's our chat going, Gila?
It's going great.
Um, people are talking to each other, which is nice.
Um.
And they're not listening to us at all anymore, right?
And that's, that's probably made them a lot happier.
No, actually, it's discussions based on stuff we're talking about.
Okay.
Could someone in the chat define IVR for me, though?
Oh, um.
It's interactive voice recording.
Are you in the chat, Kyle?
Oh, sorry.
I'm chatting.
Specifically ask somebody in the chat to do that.
To help make them feel like they're part of the conversation.
I'm not allowed to comment?
And you took that from them.
You took that from them.
Well, they're busy talking.
I'm sorry.
Someone else can correct me.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I'm sorry, Gila.
Don't assume I'm right.
Um, Kyle Bobcat has confirmed.
Thank you both.
I, I learn something new every week on this show, and that's fantastic.
Thank you.
I'm talking of chats.
Someone mentioned the IRC.
So I pulled that up on IRC.2600.net, the channel pound off the hook.
And I am in there monitoring.
Absolutely nothing going on because everyone is idling.
Pound sign, by the way, not the word pound, just not LB.
Pound sign off the hook.
I don't know who has never used IRC before.
It's, it's fascinating, though.
It's, it's, it's always been fun.
Do you know something we discovered, though, while we were in, in the, in the
break moment, um, here was, we were looking at Twitter and a difference now
between the app on my telephone and the web interface where now my phone informed
me that someone has reposted stuff.
It's part of the tweet purge.
I don't understand.
In my phone.
So in the changeover to X, they're getting rid of the word tweet.
They're getting rid of everything that's revolved with Twitter and all the birds
and everything.
And so the web interface is still telling us that people retweeted the notification
about us being here for overtime.
But on my phone, it's telling me it's reposted, not retweeted.
Wow.
Okay.
So they're insidious.
They're taking their own word and destroying it.
Yep.
Do they not want to need a brand identity?
Twitter.com.
Can I have that now?
If they don't need it, I mean, I'll take it.
Wow.
I don't, I just don't get it.
I just, it's just rich people with money, just playing games is all this is.
Oh, we have another call.
We do.
I'm sorry for bantering.
Good evening.
You're on off the go time.
Hi, Emmanuel.
It's still shy.
It is actually still shy.
Wow.
Welcome.
How you been?
I'm really having a grand old time of things.
I wanted to plug what I'm doing for DEF CON this year.
Okay.
Which is what next?
Is that next week, by the way, or is that this week?
Yes, it is next week.
Next week.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
I stepped on you.
What do you want to promote?
Well, HDA or hackers with disabilities.
What it is, is I'm a little miniature department of DEF CON now that provides assistance for
people with disabilities who want to attend.
That's awesome.
With a hotel room, transportation.
Also, I advocate for people with the venue.
We've been able to get concessions, like allowing people to charge their chairs at any outlet
they find and helping them with making things more accessible.
And we also publish a PDF guide every year showing maps and where the elevators are,
how to get around if something breaks down and generally how to have a grand old time
while you're at DEF CON.
That's so amazing.
That really is incredible and sorely needed, definitely.
Yeah, it's really thoughtful and considerate.
So I hope other people emulate it.
Wow, that's good ideas.
We're officially a part of DEF CON now.
We started out as just a helpline.
Now we're an actual, not a village, but a community.
So we actually have three community rooms this year.
One just for associating and hanging out, where we're providing safe recharging stations
for any kind of ability device you have, whether it's an insulin pump or a chair.
We'll have a charging station for you.
We've got separate lectures for people.
We've got a guy coming in and giving us a lecture on hacking and modifying power wheelchairs.
And there's also a safe harbor room where people can semi-privately do what they need
to do, like make adjustments to their ability devices, refill the insulin pump, change the
batteries.
It's semi-private, but it's better than doing it in the bathroom.
Definitely.
Definitely.
Gila, go ahead.
We did have a question from Bobcat who asked if you have a mobile DJ setup.
A mobile DJ setup.
Actually, yes, I do.
I will be DJing in two different locations this year using that mobile setup.
I'll be in the Axe space, which has been moved, I think, to the foyer, to the foot of the
escalators.
And I'll be DJing at GothCon.
And GothCon is what now?
That's a separate party inside of DefCon.
Okay.
It's really getting huge.
It is getting huge.
We're looking at, what, 30,000 some odd people.
Oh, my goodness.
We're back to, like, three hotels.
Plus, we're in the new Caesars Forum area.
You might wind up just building your own city.
You ever think about that?
Just because I don't think Vegas is cool enough to hold you guys anymore.
There's a middle step coming.
But yeah, I think before we take over the whole city, we could probably take over Reno.
That would be a city we could take over.
Wow.
Yeah, I've been to Reno, though.
Not to cast dispersions on Reno.
It just kind of depressed me.
Because it was like Vegas, but it was chilly.
Yeah, it is kind of depressing.
But I mean, size-wise, Vegas has been growing at a substantial rate.
And with all the sports teams we're bringing in, and the Formula One racing we're bringing in,
it's just getting bigger and bigger.
So it's kind of catching up, getting as big as DefCon.
Vegas is catching up.
That's good to know.
Wow.
It's changed a lot.
I've been living here about 15 years now.
Wow.
And it's interesting to live here and watch it change.
I can imagine.
As somebody who can only stand to be in Vegas for no more than three days at a time,
I always wonder, people who live there probably
don't venture into the actual glamour and glitzy part of it that often, right?
Not that often, no.
Mostly because those people are the people that fly in, and they've got a big wad of cash,
and they want to spend $300 for a $10 bottle of vodka.
Those people, you kind of get tired of them after a while.
The locals have their local places they go to, which are just a hell of a lot of fun.
And you can have your Vegas-esque fun 24-7, 365.
Yeah.
Discovering those places, the times I've been out there going off the Strip and just
finding the real Las Vegas downtown, and also just side streets and other communities,
that was the real discovery.
That's where you had the most fun.
A lot of people are afraid of that.
They're afraid to go off the Strip.
And in some cases, they have reason to be, and in some cases, they don't.
One of the newest things that we have out here that is definitely worth leaving the Strip for
is we have a sci-fi cosplay bar called the Millennium Fandom.
Oh, wow.
If you remember Quarks from back in the days of the Hilton Quarks bar, it's kind of like that,
but without any one official fandom.
It's a wide open, any fandom you want.
People come in costumes every week.
They've got karaoke nights.
They have theme nights.
It's just an amazing place to hang out and cosplay and be a sci-fi nerd in a really
supportive and positive environment.
That sounds awesome.
Alex has a question.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, and more of a comment, too.
But I think you're totally right about going off the Strip.
I'll be over at DEF CON in a few days, I guess it is.
It's next week, and I think I'm only going really for three days as well,
which is usually more than a day because being on the Strip, it can be challenging at best.
But every year, a buddy of mine who's part of the hacker community, we all get together over there,
he organizes a whole bunch of dinners and meetings and things like that for people
within his core group, and everything happens off the Strip.
And it's really kind of amazing to see all these other neighborhoods and places.
And I remember one year, we went to a Filipino restaurant that was off the Strip,
and it was in some Strip mall.
And the food was incredible.
And then it also had karaoke and really kind of super fun karaoke
that everybody was doing while it was eating.
And it was just, you know, a kind of random place.
It was so incredibly cheap compared to, you know,
you literally spent $20 for a slice of pizza on the Strip.
It's totally insane.
Anything is cheaper than the Strip.
Absolutely anything is cheaper.
New York City is cheaper than the Strip.
It is, yes, it is actually.
I didn't live there.
It is far cheaper than the Strip.
It's pretty incredible.
In fact, lately, they've been upping the prices on everything
and starting to charge for things that used to be free.
Wow.
Well, I went to a million dollar projector dome and some stuff like that, you know?
Well, it is.
It's terrible.
Last year, I was on the Strip, and I didn't want to pay like $50 to have breakfast.
I just wanted an egg sandwich.
And that's it.
I was hungry.
What about those signs used to say 99 cent breakfast or even cheaper?
Don't have those anymore?
I don't see any of those.
Not on the Strip.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
You can find it on Fremont Street, but you got to be careful
because you'll end up with some kind of food poisoning or some kind of, you know,
gastric disruption.
But, Alex, also, if you gamble a lot, sometimes they comp you the breakfast.
So that's a handy tip.
Yeah, they comp you the buffet.
But a lot of those buffets have shut down.
That's true, that's true.
A lot of the buffets during COVID, because they never recovered from the COVID shutdown.
The same thing we're seeing in New York, yeah, with places that haven't reopened.
Well, but then the other problem with the buffets in Vegas is that if you find one that
you want to go to, you have to wait on line to get into it.
And it's always an insane line.
It's always going to take, you know, a half hour or 40 minutes waiting on this goddamn
line so that you can spend $40 to have breakfast.
You sound very bitter about this, Alex.
I am.
This was a year ago.
Wow.
But I want to tell you what happened to me when I tried to get there.
So I tried to do, like, a cheap option in getting breakfast.
So I went to Dunkin' Donuts on the Strip.
And then I got the bill.
And I was like, are you kidding me?
It was, like, almost $20 for a Dunkin' Donuts egg sandwich and a coffee.
Yep.
You know, something that would normally be $4 anywhere else in the country.
And I said to myself, are you kidding me?
Far end of the Strip.
But that's far end of the Strip, there's a McDonald's.
It's called the Far End of the Strip for a reason, because it's on the far end of the
Strip.
I'm not talking about going into North Las Vegas.
I'm just talking about, like, going past the Stratosphere.
Uh-huh.
You know, like, one or two blocks past the Stratosphere, there's a McDonald's that has
normal prices.
I went on the parachute thing on the Stratosphere.
You know, they have a roller coaster on the top of it, and they shoot you up into space,
and you come back down, hopefully.
That was scary.
That really was.
And you're way above the street when you do that, too.
But let's let Alex finish his story.
Oh, that was it.
Oh, that's it.
I thought there was something else.
There's no...
You know, bring your own food this time, I would suggest.
They're kind of proud on that, but there are ways to get away with it.
I would listen to Del Chai here.
He knows ways around all systems.
Sounds like it.
You just have to be casual about it, and you have to just not, you know, go waving
around.
Look at me.
I've got food from the outside, because they really are touchy about bringing food and
drink from the outside.
Oh, my God.
One thing I would definitely suggest to avoid is the pizza vending machine.
What the hell is that?
They have a machine.
They have a vending machine that hands out slices of pizza.
You know, even Tokyo doesn't do that.
Well, they have another one that hands out slices of cake, and the cake ones are actually
halfway decent.
But the slices of pizza are not all that great.
You're better off walking the extra 10 feet and getting the slice out of the actual kitchen.
You're best off booking a flight to New York, getting a slice there, and coming back.
Well, that's just a given, no matter where you are, if you want good pizza.
I mean, that's just a given.
Yeah, if you're going to Vegas, I wouldn't go for the pizza.
I'd go for something else, but not that.
Yeah, you don't come to Vegas for the pizza, that's for certain.
I mean, we've got a few good places.
Well, how about just going to In-N-Out Burger or something, you know?
It's like, it can't be too expensive, right?
It's not.
In-N-Out Burger is not expensive, but it is off the strip, and it's incredibly popular.
During lunch times, the car line to get into In-N-Out Burger can be down the street.
Wow.
You've got to change the name.
You get a Bible passage on every cup, and you get the animal menu, right?
They still have that?
Oh, yeah.
They still have all the secret menus and stuff like that.
The thing is, you don't have to go that far off the strip to get better stuff.
Chinatown has a lot of amazing deals and a lot of different kinds of food.
You wouldn't expect to find a French restaurant in Chinatown, but there is one.
I wouldn't expect to find a Chinatown in Vegas.
Oh, there is.
It's a fairly decent size, too.
Do they have genuine Szechuan there?
I mean, the kind that will just burn your ass off.
Yes.
Okay, Alex, go there.
You may have to ask for it to burn your ass off, because a lot of people are kind of like,
you know, please don't hurt me.
Get the Shonking Chicken and just say, don't hold back.
They'll know what that means.
Hold back.
All right.
I'll remember those words.
Just look for the restaurants that have the asbestos seats.
Okay.
Wow.
Gosh.
Well, it sounds like a fascinating time is ahead for all of you.
I look forward to hearing about it.
Oh, yeah.
And I'll be showing off the bone box that I sent you the picture of.
Okay.
The end of the dog bone, the craft access terminal that I hacked up.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
A couple of months ago.
Right, right.
You said he was going to make the back cover.
It's a combination of a blue box, a red box, and a beige box in the body of an old craft
access terminal.
Okay, all right.
Oh, wow.
That's really cool.
I remember those craft access terminals.
They were fun to come by.
Yes.
What do you mean by that?
Come by?
You didn't just happen to find one lying and inside, you know, I've heard that certain
people got them in some mysterious ways and they would show up and well, you know, in
Manhattan, it wasn't unheard of to find one just laying on the street, you know, just
oh, wow, look at this next to a phone company van with a broken window.
Well, sometimes you go down to Canal Street and you'd see one in a surplus shop.
Okay, that's more my method of getting them on eBay and things like that.
Yeah.
Well, now that they're not used anymore, they show up on eBay for about $40 to $50.
Yeah, it's actually quite fascinating to have.
I got mine at the MIT flea market.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, that's the perfect place to get one, along with a payphone.
Yeah.
I don't have a payphone, but I do have my own app.
Don't have a payphone, but I do have my own asterisk server now.
Oh, good.
Okay.
That's pretty awesome.
Well, Delta, it's great hearing from you and I hope you stay in touch.
I hope you're going to be a regular listener if you have been a regular listener.
Oh, I have been.
I just haven't had a lot of time between everything I'm doing right now.
I don't always have time to participate, but I wanted to get the message out.
Great.
You'd be amazed how many people have responded to HGA over the last four years.
Uh-huh.
I can imagine.
It's a valuable service.
And I think it's something that should be at all hacker cons, all cons in general,
but definitely something that I hope spreads.
Here's to hoping.
All right.
Take care.
Enjoy.
Thanks.
All right.
Go ahead, Deela.
All right.
Here is our chat update.
Joshua Pritt, I want to make sure you know that we are indeed seeing your comments.
He tells us, or Joshua tells us, I don't want to assume anybody's pronouns without knowing them.
The hackerspace makerslocal256 had a portable DJ booth they called Party Squid,
which I just think is spiffy.
Brady McNulty wanted to say thanks for letting me volunteer at Hope last year.
Looking forward to doing it again in 24.
Thank you.
We look forward to the same.
Watch this space for information about Hope 2024 as time goes on.
And Emmanuel, we have a question for you.
Slick Hunters from Canada asks, says,
Emmanuel seems like a guy who has been all over the world.
What African countries has Emmanuel been to?
None.
And it really distresses me that I haven't been able to do that.
And I would like to.
The ones I would really like to go to are Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, South Africa, possibly Egypt.
That's a good start, I think.
Maybe Tanzania.
I'd like to see Tanzania.
And Zambia, you know, Zambia just won their first World Cup game,
Women's World Cup.
That's pretty amazing.
What about Ghana and Gambia?
Yeah, you know, Ghana, Gambia.
If you're going to go for the G countries, sure, why not?
But there's a lot of countries in Africa.
If we can name them all, I'd be amazed.
Senegal.
Senegal?
What's wrong with Senegal?
Nothing's wrong with Senegal.
Don't forget North Africa.
That's where I've been.
That's not a country.
Well, there's Tunisia.
That's Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt.
I said Morocco.
I said Egypt.
Not really sure I want to go to Libya.
I'll be honest, Libya is kind of tense.
I would love to go to Libya, actually.
I'll tell you what, there are some pretty amazing Roman ruins, something called the
Leptis Magna that is in Libya.
I think it'd be a fascinating place to see.
I think it would have been more interesting to see while Gaddafi was in power.
When I was traveling through Tunisia, and I was there maybe about six months before
the Arab Spring started in southern Tunisia.
Did you plant the seeds for the Arab Spring?
Well, I will say that for many people there, my friend John and I were the only Americans
they'd ever met in their entire lives.
So we were kind of like the representation of the country.
I don't know.
We might have inspired some people.
Wow.
I'm obviously joking here.
But where was I going with this?
Oh, yeah.
So when I was going back up the coast, or rather the border of Tunisia, into this town
Gabez, I remember thinking it was so weird because there were literally signs that say,
go this way if you want to get to Tripoli.
So you were that close to Libya, where you're not supposed to go when I was over there.
I thought it was a fascinating country, Tunisia, and really, really beautiful, amazing food.
It was great.
I think there's lots to be said about that continent.
Oh, my God.
It's probably the most interesting continent of all of them.
Yeah, you're probably right.
Madagascar.
I'd love to go to Madagascar.
Yeah, I think we all would.
No, because Madagascar, basically it's off the coast of the mainland.
But it has its own environment.
There are animals there that only exist there.
There are plants there that you cannot find outside of Madagascar.
It is one of the most fascinating places on Earth, and a lot of it is unspoiled.
And that's one of the places I'd really like to see.
Yeah, I'm there with you.
I'm there with you.
Well, maybe we should all do a road trip to Madagascar.
Yeah, off the hook goes to Africa.
That sounds like fun.
Actually, it would be fun.
Uh-huh.
If you find a way to drive to Madagascar, let us know.
Why?
Because we're going to go by car?
It wouldn't be a road trip otherwise.
That's true.
You might have ferries.
I don't think they have a ferry to Madagascar, Carl.
I'm pretty sure.
How far off of the continent is it?
Oh, from the continent?
I'm not sure.
Maybe they do.
Maybe they have some kind of a boat, I'm sure.
Often these places that are so remote do.
So the answer, I guess, is zero.
But aspirational.
Madagascar is really big, but it is off the mainland.
Wow.
Apparently, there are no ferries.
No passenger ferries from South Africa, Mozambique, or Tanzania to Madagascar.
Maybe there are from other places, but I don't think so.
Okay.
So they probably have some kind of ships that show up there.
Well, I'm sure they have ships.
They're on the ocean.
It's not feasible to travel.
They're Indian Ocean, I believe.
So I'm sure from India, there are probably things that come on a regular basis.
It's actually interesting.
It says the only practical way of getting to Madagascar is by air.
This is roughguides.com.
And there aren't even any boats running from Madagascar's nearest neighbor,
it's the Comoros Islands and Mauritius.
Wow.
It's kind of weird.
Well, maybe they're ripe for boating industry.
You know, maybe we can open up the ferry companies to Madagascar,
because it sounds like there's a lot of potential here.
Well, maybe that would destroy the fauna, the local fauna.
Maybe they like the isolation.
They do it by design.
Possibly.
Possibly.
But we'll never know if we don't try to find out.
That's true.
Any more questions?
Look what this opened up.
And now there's going to be a billboard for a ferry, and it's going to be our fault.
Never going to go to Africa.
Okay.
Next caller, is anyone?
Do we have another one?
No, no one's here.
All right.
The line is free for the calling.
So it's 802-321-4225, 802-321-HAC.
And yeah, and if there's any other questions on the chat, we can address those as well.
Yes, feel free to interject.
And also, if you are calling from the US, you can also reach us at toll-free number 833-755-2600.
That's right.
Yes.
And we've made sure that number still works, right?
Yes, we've tested it recently.
Okay, good.
That was put up by a lucky friend of the show.
Awesome.
Tim in Connecticut, thank you very much for, yes, it's a thousand miles from Madagascar
to the African continent.
Thank your Alexa device for us by extension.
And Joshua Pritt, thank you for pointing that out.
Today is Earth Overshoot Day, which is...
What is that?
Today is the day that we have exhausted the resources of the planet to date, I believe.
Wait, today is the day we did that?
Like for the year.
Oh, for the year, okay.
I thought humanity ends tomorrow then.
Oh yeah, surprise.
Earth Overshoot Day marks the date in which humanity's demand for ecological resources
and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can reach.
Exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.
Well, we made it to August.
That's something, right?
August 2nd.
Should we be proud of that?
What was it last year?
That's how you know how you're doing.
Let's see what we can find out here.
Yeah.
Okay, Earth Overshoot Day, Geneva Environment Network.
Just Earth Overshoot Day 2022.
Oh, here we go.
In 2022, it was around this same time, but in 1971, it was in December.
Okay, we all know 1971 was better than now as far as the environment goes.
Okay, this is actually a very spiffy graph, which I'm gonna put in the chat because it's very cool.
You can put graphs in the chat?
No, I can put a link to the graph in the chat.
Oh, okay.
All right.
All right, gang, check this out.
That doesn't really help people listening.
No, it doesn't.
Check out a URL that you can't see.
If you go to GenevaEnvironmentNetwork.org, they've got all the information you need about Earth
Overshoot Day, and if it's any consolation, it gives the specific days that Earth Overshoot Day
would be globally if every country lived like a specific, if the entire world lived like a
specific country.
So if we were all the US, Earth Overshoot Day.
Oh, that's bad.
Don't do that.
That's bad.
Well, January 4th, we'll be running out of everything.
March 13th, the shortest Earth Overshoot Day for the record is Qatar, which is February 10th.
However, we're...
Wow.
Yeah.
There were some.
There were some of us.
Were we all Jamaica?
December 20th.
Jamaica.
All right.
Another reason to support Jamaica.
Well, how about if...
Is Jamaica the lowest as far as...
Jamaica is the lowest, yes.
Okay.
I was going to say something like Norway.
How did they do?
Let me see if I can find it.
This is fascinating.
It's not searchable.
It doesn't appear to be.
It's not searchable.
It's not searchable.
It doesn't appear to be.
I'm looking.
I'm looking.
I don't see it.
Oh, for a full list of countries,
visit overshootday.org slash country dash overshoot dash days.
Okay.
How about we go to this call and we'll...
I'm going to keep looking.
We'll have more options in a few minutes.
Good evening.
You're on off the cover time.
Go ahead.
Hello?
Yeah, hello.
Is that me?
That's you.
Yeah, is that me?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
I was just wondering.
I just have a quick question.
The conference for this year, that HOPE conference, has it happened already?
No, there is no HOPE conference in 2023.
There is no HOPE conference right now.
We're in even years only.
So the next one will be 2024.
Oh, that's what it is.
Yeah.
I just didn't hear any talk about it.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's all I really have.
That's all I really had.
That's all I...
Oh, one other thing.
Do you have any thoughts on Julia Sanchez?
And as far as the news out today, they're still trying to get him to come back here.
Wait, what's the news out today?
Well, I read today Australians are refusing to...
They don't want him deported back to the US to face justice or whatever.
Right.
Okay.
That's good.
I mean, he's still in England, though.
He's locked up in England.
He's still in England.
Yeah.
But I don't know.
Somehow they're lobbying Biden to just...
Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, he should be released.
If you believe he's guilty of everything he's been accused of, he has suffered enough.
Okay.
And you would have to be some kind of masochist to want him to suffer more.
So, you know, and if you think he's innocent, obviously, he shouldn't be imprisoned.
So it's just it's an embarrassment.
It's shameful that we just are basically ignoring this and saying, oh, yeah, he's going to be
locked up for the rest of his life or something, or whatever he did justifies this.
No, it doesn't.
He needs to be released, go back and try to live a life because it's barbaric what's happening.
Yeah, I've kind of reached the same.
We understand the case.
We understand the stories involved.
But the world itself would be different were he to be free.
And I think the suffering itself, punishment has been served mostly due to his self-imposed
isolation.
Yeah, but, you know, that's self-imposed.
Everybody was laughing at him when it was a self-imposed isolation.
Oh, boy, you're paranoid.
Well, now look, look at how he's being treated now.
I think everything that he thought was going to happen to him is exactly what's happening
to him.
So he's entirely correct.
We may not feel like there's a more extensive case and more details.
He's not under house arrest?
No, he is in prison.
He is in prison in England.
Yeah, Balmore, I think.
Okay, all right.
But the ideas we have aren't necessarily the same as the institutions that were affected.
And that, I think, is something we've been very clear about, that the government, the
US may yet continue.
They may stop at nothing.
That is the nature, those were the stakes that were in play at the time and stand to
this day, regardless of the administration, I would say.
And that's an important, I think, point that is being made.
And that may be why there's international pressure.
And so, to that end, I think the implications technically of what's going on, I mean,
yeah, he may still be at fault.
But as we've said, as I'm saying, the world has changed and he would not go without scrutiny
were he free, okay?
He would be not in a position to do the same, I think, things.
He would himself be trying to reassemble his life, I think.
He'd really think he'd want to do the same things again.
Exactly.
He would probably be trying to keep some kind of family and sanity and work on his own well-being.
And that is what the government is saying they would wish to deny him when you're hearing
the prospects of that unfolding.
It just makes the governments look really, really bad.
You wanted to destroy his life, mission accomplished, you did it.
Okay, move on to the next person.
Seriously, there's just nothing to be gained from continuing this.
And regardless of what you think about him, regardless of what you
believe or disagree with, that's where we stand on that.
Alex, go ahead.
Yeah, one thing to note here is I think this whole issue has really spanned three different
administrations of U.S. governments.
The publication had actually started under Obama.
And one thing to remember is Obama prosecuted Chelsea Manning and then commuted her sentence
as well.
So she was given some form of clemency.
But at the time, the Obama administration refused to actually indict Assange because
to do so would be tantamount to indicting a journalist for reporting.
That was the policy choice in not going after Assange under the Obama administration.
Now, fast forward to post-2016.
Trump is in office.
Trump's Justice Department not only indicts Assange once, and I actually wrote an op-ed
about that indictment, and I thought it was actually legally defensible.
But then there was a superseding indictment that added a whole bunch of other charges
seemingly to make it political.
And it was very clear.
And I wrote another op-ed for CNN saying, this one is crazy and it is tantamount to
prosecuting journalists.
This is a Rubicon that we don't want to cross in this country.
And it's what the Obama administration didn't want to do.
Now you go to 2021 and we have the Biden administration.
What's fascinating is the Biden administration, its Justice Department under the direction
of somebody that was a Biden presidential appointee, has not changed at all its policy
direction with respect to the prosecution of Julian Assange.
It's an extenuation of the Trump administration's policy here, not the Obama administration's
policy to not go after journalists.
So what the hell is the Biden administration doing?
I think it's right for us to call out the Democrats for inaction and extending what
is a Trump policy here.
It's absurd.
Inaction.
It's very different from negative action, but it's still very harmful.
And maybe it just hasn't reached his desk, but it's something I really think he should
be taking seriously and something that needs to be addressed.
And I would also add, just to put this nice patriotic cherry on the conversation, all
of it has, I think, detracted from the contents of what, journalistically, Julian Assange
was doing.
Right.
Okay.
The depravity of the US military in the colonial aspirations in the Mideast, the decades of
that, the lost blood and treasure, it's wrong.
And that has been superseded by the skittishness and veracity of the intelligence community
and the way, as Alex described, this has turned into something that is sort of an
unrelenting desire to continue to punish somebody for whatever reason until the end of time.
The people responsible for that massacre, basically, they have never been punished.
They have never even been named.
All right.
And that is the legacy of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.
I think it's one of the greatest public services ever for democracy.
And look at the price that they've paid collectively.
It's simply not right.
Rob, go ahead.
I think if we're talking about the legacy of Julian Assange, I think if we want to look
at it charitably and say that the most important things that he was ever going to do, he did
and accomplished, which was he started Wikileaks, which did accomplish some good things.
After Wikileaks stopped doing those things, after Wikileaks took a turn and started promoting
all kinds of crap, I think the torch was well and truly taken up by others out there, our
friends at Distributed Denial of Secrets and other hacktivists who took what the example
of what early Wikileaks was trying to do, further refined it and continue to do that
work in ways that are very important to all of us.
So, yes, he had his role in history and he is suffering for that.
But on the other hand, the work continues and in the hands of, I think, a lot of very
capable people who deserve remembering and recognizing.
Right, right.
And we need to continue to question because, I mean, that's what the crux of this is, is
does the military, does the things that Wikileaks was covering, do they deserve scrutiny?
Is transparency now a part of the process or is it still sort of elusive?
And I think those questions really get lost in the effect of the consequences and the
way this is playing out.
What I worry about, though, is the next person that takes this on, they're going to look
at how Julian is being treated and say, I don't want that to happen to me.
I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to take that chance.
I think maybe that's the real reason why he is being tortured like this, because they
want to make sure nobody else ever dares to expose the war crimes of the U.S. military.
Exactly.
They that's what I mean by skittishness.
That's what I mean by like, it's just it's there's this nervous thing.
It's and it's, I think, even a parallel to the indictment that was dropped this week.
The government does not want it to be undermined by whatever mechanism people try to employ,
unless it's protected in some way.
Journalism, in some ways, is protected.
Leaks and whistleblowers now have, I think, maybe even a little bit more protection than
in the midst of some of those conflicts we've been talking about.
But anyway, we could go on and on and diverge.
But that's just a taste of where I think we're at.
Does that answer your question, caller?
Yes, it does.
OK.
I have one other quick question.
Do you have like 2,600 meetings in Washington, D.C.?
Would you know?
I don't think we do.
I don't think there are meetings in Washington, D.C.
There might be some in Virginia near Washington, D.C., but the only thing preventing us from
having meetings in any particular place is somebody who hasn't started them yet.
I'm told somebody was asking if we have meetings in Canada.
We don't.
I think we have meetings maybe in one city in Canada, but we should have meetings in
very many cities out there.
We used to.
In fact, when we saw the old web page earlier today, I was reminded how many meetings we
had in Canada before the pandemic.
All it takes is somebody going to 2600.com meetings, reading the guidelines, which are
really, really simple to follow, and starting a meeting on the first Friday and letting
us know how it goes.
And then we publish it and you get more and more people showing up and it'll be amazing.
Gila?
There is indeed a meeting in the D.C. area in Arlington, Virginia.
I guess that is D.C., isn't it?
I don't know D.C. that well.
It's super close, I think.
But are we listing it as Washington, D.C., or are we listing it as Virginia?
No, we're listing it as Virginia, but I searched Washington and then Virginia, you
know, VW, so it was right there.
So it's in Arlington, so maybe we should list it as Washington, D.C. as well, like
we used to.
Your call.
Okay.
All right.
Does that...
Okay, thanks.
Thanks for taking my call.
Okay.
That answers my question.
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks for your call and for letting us know where we have meetings.
Thanks for listening, too.
Yeah.
I didn't know we had meetings in D.C., but I guess we do.
Do you have more information, Gila, on what we're looking up?
No, I mean, I did inform the person who asked about meetings in Canada earlier.
I put it in the chat.
The only meeting listed in Canada right now is in Calgary, Alberta.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Yeah.
But Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, we used to have meetings in all these places, so I'm
hoping people...
And they may still be happening, I just don't know.
Vancouver, yeah.
Vancouver, wherever it's happening.
Yeah, you got to tell us about it.
If you don't tell us about it, then we can't list it.
Exactly.
Also, a couple of questions that came up in the chat when we got to talking about...
while we were talking about Julie and Assange.
They're thankfully not related to Julie and Assange.
Checkers Lane Checkers, all kinds of information about Hope and the history of Hope, which
began in 1994, are available at Hope.net.
Every Hope webpage is archived there.
You can search to your heart's content, find out all kinds of information.
To answer your second question, WBAI does not run commercials because we are a non-profit
radio station, and we don't do that.
But if you want to help support WBAI, you can go to the website, give2wbai.org, and
become a BAI buddy in the name of Off the Hook.
We would appreciate that.
And Joshua Print asks if the SecureDrop is still available for whistler blowers.
Yes, absolutely.
Yes.
Do we have more information than just that?
Is there more data on that?
Yes.
What more do you need to know?
Well, we should have a link.
The URL is the same.
If you go under submissions, where do you find it?
We're so bad at promoting ourselves.
It's 2600.com slash SecureDrop.
Yeah, do that.
2600.com slash SecureDrop.
That's this way.
But we should put it on the main page.
That is the landing site.
We'll make a button.
You want a SecureDrop button?
We'll make a SecureDrop button.
I think that's a good idea.
I think we had one there with the long URL.
Somebody stole it or something.
I'm not sure what happened to it.
We had, I believe, a slide at the top for a little while, but it is not currently active.
So we'll come up with something so it is more visible.
But you just type slash SecureDrop with nothing after the...
Don't put a slash after that.
God knows what'll happen.
Then there's a follow-up question to that, which is,
is IPFS just as secure for whistleblowers to share material?
Also not part of the question, but whistleblowers is kind of hard to say.
Does anyone want to answer that?
IPFS.
So I'm not conjuring up exactly what they are referring to by that.
Yeah, somebody look up that acronym so it doesn't look like idiots.
It's probably a concept that this technology uses.
It's like a cloud-based thing.
It's interplanetary file system, presumably.
Peer-to-peer.
It's like a distributed file storage protocol.
Okay, so that is more like, I believe, what Distributed Denial of Secrets uses.
It also allows them to scale submissions so they can be much larger.
I'm not sure that that's what they use.
Don't quote me on that.
I can't remember from our conversations with them.
But SecureDrop itself is a relatively good way to anonymize who you are,
so long as you kind of don't scan your driver's license and send it to us.
That kind of stuff, obviously.
And it might take a little bit of time to get to the staff.
It might take some correspondence if you want to get attention,
because the SecureDrop mechanism is not totally immune to erroneous stuff.
We get submissions there pretty regularly, though, and so people do check it.
And I guess it is an option, but if you have something extremely large,
there are limitations.
And of course, the scope of whatever you're talking about would be limited
to what you might imagine the editorial and hacker community would want to share,
namely technology, communications, other things.
If you have a personal crisis, if you are aware of a faith that you don't like,
or you have a faith you think everyone should like, we're not as interested in that.
Yeah, there's a lot of garbage that comes across.
People have sent us legal issues with their landlords and things like that.
Not really what we're looking for, not really something we can help with.
It's for if you have found a smoking gun somewhere
and you don't want to attach your name to it, SecureDrop is the way to do it.
If you want to write an article for 2600, it's not the way to go,
because it'll take much longer.
The way to go there is articles at 2600.com, an email address
where we will shield your identity.
And basically, that's where people submit all kinds of material.
I would just also add, don't talk about using the system.
SecureDrop is used in a lot of different newsrooms.
It's used in a lot of different publications.
It's a simple, more or less easy-to-use way to put some layers,
to put some distance between a newsroom and someone who wants to submit something.
Once you do it, and there are instructions about this on that landing page,
but I would just reiterate, this is kind of like,
hey, I just want to leave this here, or hey, I want to get in touch quietly.
You ought to withhold your interactions with a publication
that you are seeking to communicate with and submit something to,
for your own safety, for your operational security,
depending on what it is that you are submitting,
and to also protect the ability of the publisher to perhaps review it,
perhaps seek advice, however it may apply to the publishing entity in our case.
I hope that's clear, that it is something that is only as good as the ways you are using it,
and it's simply a tool, a part of a lot of different options that there are out there.
It's not totally 100% everything, but it's a great way for publishers to say,
hey, we got something that we think is in the public interest.
We don't know where we got it.
Oftentimes, when things do break from these systems,
how and the exact system that was used is not the story.
So you hear about a lot of things that probably got to a newsroom through one of these systems,
but the Times or the newspaper of record, whatever it is,
they're not exactly talking about the how and so on and so forth.
They're just doing a good job protecting sources.
I guess that's the final word on that.
Okay, Alex, did you have something?
Not really.
I would just say that I don't know how IPFS is used in a secure way with this distributed file
system, but I would say if you really want to be secure in what you're delivering and protecting
your identity, you would really want to rely on SecureDrop, something that's been tried,
tested, proven, and maybe there's a protocol where it works with IPFS.
Maybe that's what they're referencing, but I think, you know,
I think SecureDrop's pretty reliable.
Now, Aguila, you were looking up when we were going to run out of things on Earth, right?
Did you learn more about that system?
I did, actually. So I know your question was about Norway.
Well, I just wanted to use Norway. I always thought they were kind of clean, but maybe they're not.
Norway's overshoot day was April 12th.
What? Is that worse than us?
No, they're not worse than us.
U.S. was in March.
Oh, I thought we were in August. Oh, that's the whole world is in August.
Today's the whole world.
I don't think you said U.S. was in March.
U.S. is in March.
The thing I found very interesting is that there's a list of countries that would be none,
but I don't know if it's because of their patterns of
consumption or because we don't have the data.
I actually don't know.
So I found that interesting. And also just for argument's sake,
Canada and the U.S. would have hit March 13th.
Canada, U.S. and the UAE all on March 13th. That's the day after Bahrain and the day before Estonia.
What about Russia? Tell me we beat Russia, at least.
The Russian Federation is coming in on April 19th.
Oh, wow. They're better than us. How about China?
And Ukraine is
August 27th.
Really? Wow.
Really. China, June 2nd.
How are they so much better?
That's amazing.
Fewer single-use plastics. I don't know the answer.
That's a good answer.
I'm just making stuff up at this point. But yes, there's also a significant list of countries
for whom there is no overshoot date. But again, I'm curious as to whether that is about consumption
patterns or about data. So yeah, it's also, if anybody's curious, if your birthday is any
country's overshoot day, do let me know.
Why? Do you get a prize or something?
No, I just think it might be interesting to know.
Okay. All right.
Yeah. And now I'm curious about one other thing because Canada and the U.S. were on the same day
and Mexico is five months later. Mexico is August 31st.
Interesting. So many of the less industrialized countries or third world countries have a much
better record. They pollute much less. I mean, I guess that's not surprising when you think about
it, but we're not so enlightened is my point.
Also, Joshua Pritt, thank you for pointing that out. There are solutions on the Overshoot website
for moving the date. I'm just kind of fascinated by the list right now.
Can you give us one solution that probably would be a good note to end on?
Cities.
Loading. Please hold.
Get rid of cities? Is that the solution?
Oh, move the date 13 days. If we reduce our footprint from driving by 50% around the world
and assume one third of car miles are replaced by public transportation and the rest by biking
and walking, Earth Overshoot Day would move back 13 days.
Wait, is that if everybody on Earth did that?
Yeah, if everybody on Earth did that.
Yeah, that's kind of hard to guarantee.
It's true, but if we can invest in the infrastructure for decent public transit,
which is a nice envelope for all the discussion we've had so far this evening,
because did we not begin by talking about the MTA?
That's always good, but it also shows just how little such a huge part of our individual
contributions is a part of the larger equation where industry has a lot more control over vast
amounts of emissions. It's just not in their corporate interest, so to speak.
Should we all do that? Yeah. Should the infrastructure be done? Yeah,
but there's so many other entities that have contributions.
I'm sure there's a section on that, though.
There's a ton of stuff here to find solutions to move Earth Overshoot Day to what you personally
can do. Visit overshootday.org slash solutions slash food or slash solutions. And yes, Joshua
Pritt, we all are doing this show from our own home studios. We have been doing the show remotely
since 2020, and that's why we have off-the-hook overtime, because we don't have our multiple phone
numbers and we don't have the FCC. We're not subject to FCC regulations here, so if somebody
calls in and says something that we can't air, we don't get in trouble for having it on YouTube.
So yes, we have not done this all together in person in three years. We're all at home.
We can't stand each other in person, too. You might as well tell them that.
Well, I don't want a repeat of the scene we had last time we were together.
I will say it has contributed to lower commuting emissions.
Yeah, because we don't go anywhere. Yeah, definitely.
Shorter commutes, earlier bedtimes.
Realized time. Right. More of an agrarian type of lifestyle.
Yeah. I like that.
Yes. A bunch of urban cowboys we are.
It is crazy to think, though, that it's been over three years now, I guess, right? Hasn't it? And
that last time we got together and then had dinner after the show, like we usually do, was
we had no idea at that point that it would be the last dinner that we would have together
after the show and for three years. I mean, it's crazy, right?
That place went out of business.
Yeah. Well, and it's true. We've basically kept away, but it is also still station policy.
You cannot have a group larger than, I believe, two individuals in the studio.
I think that's overdue that we, you know.
I don't know if we haven't been updated on it, but we were keeping distance basically
out of respect for the staff and cramming all of us into one space, all of us mutually having
our own consideration for health and proximity and so to speak. It's not just personality.
But so we're open to doing other configurations in the future.
Absolutely. But this, you know, it's not a negative thing. It's a positive thing because
it's so damn convenient. We don't have to, I mean, think of what we are, as Kyle said,
not expending in fuel to drive two hours to get to Brooklyn, you know, for us and everybody else
has their own way of getting there and then doing things afterwards. So we are saving quite a bit,
both financially and environmentally. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do more
things in the future together. And I would like to see that as well.
And that's, yes, indeed. That's, you know, activity that the city doesn't realize because
we're away so that the dynamic changes, you know, we like, you know, exploring,
you know, what there is to offer after the show. And of course, sharing time with one another,
being with one another, that's important. I encourage everybody to go out there and
be with people as much as you can too.
This Friday is a good way to do that at the 2600 meetings all around the world.
So definitely show up. The list will be updated tomorrow for Friday with any new August meetings
that might show up. And if you have an August meeting that you're starting, or if you've been
having meetings that you didn't tell us about, great time to let us know before tomorrow.
Meetings at 2600.com is the email address. 2600.com slash meetings is the webpage. And
yeah, I think that's a great note to end on.
You too may support local places after the meeting with your newfound friends.
Go out to your favorite establishments and buy lots of things and keep them in business, because
certainly in New York, we've seen a lot of places close. We've seen a lot of nightlife disappear.
It's getting better. You know, I was watching Canadian news the other day, and I heard that
Halifax in Nova Scotia has more tourists and economic boom than they did before the pandemic.
A lot of that is because of the indigenous games that just took place up there.
And they had an exhibition CFL game, which drew a lot of people. Things like that. It's a smaller
place, but if you show up, you can make a big difference. So definitely take part in things.
It matters. All right. OTH at 2600.com is our email address. Please write to us with any
thoughts or opinions. Any final words, people? Go ahead, Rob.
Yep. You can also, if you're in the Fediverse, find us on Mastodon,
offthehookathackers.town. I also want to give a shout out to, there's a community on Lemmy,
which is the Fediverse equivalent to things like Reddit, which are themselves also,
you know, tearing themselves down as we speak. But there's a Lemmy community at lemmy.world.
How the hell do you spell that? Lemmy?
Just like the name. Just like Lemmy Kilmeister. L-E-M-M-Y.
I would have put one M in there. Okay. L-E-M-M-Y. And I can't figure out
lemmings when you say that. So, Lemmy. I was seeing like Lemmy, like Lemmy Adam,
like L-E-M-M-I-E. Well, that would be L-E-M-M-I-E. Right.
Well, this service exists and it's federated, and there is somebody who was running a community,
probably still is, on Reddit for 2600, but is now doing one on Lemmy as well,
and really working hard on it. So it's the 2600 community on the instance lemmy.world,
if you're interested in that sort of thing. You know what would be a good idea is if
somebody wrote all this down, and we maybe printed it somewhere, because I can't keep
track of it all, but it would be nice to have a guide. We could use a slash.
We will put such a thing out on our Mastodon and Twitter, I think.
All right. Maybe in the magazine too. Yes.
You know, share it with us and we'll probably get it printed. All right.
Sounds good. All right. Well, good night, everybody.
Thanks for doing this. See you next time.