And welcome everybody to Off the Hook Overtime here on YouTube. Kai, you make it okay?
Hi.
Good. Okay. And out on Skype land, we have Rob, Gila, and Alec. You all there?
Yeah. Somehow we made it.
And we can confirm we are actually broadcasting on YouTube. Well, good.
Yes.
We've accomplished quite a bit tonight. All right. So, you know, we're going to open up
the phone lines just a little bit, but I did want to talk about that Polish train story,
because it's such a milestone in the things that we talk about. But basically, the story begins,
they did DRM to a train. Yeah, they did. This is from 404media.co.
In one of the coolest and more outrageous repair stories in quite some time,
three white hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that
had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train's manufacturer after an independent
maintenance company worked on it. The train's manufacturer is now threatening to sue the
hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it. And whoever's got that package,
maybe you could mute yourself. That'd be nice. The fallout from the situation is currently
rolling Polish infrastructure circles, roiling, not rolling. It's hard to see the dot. And the
repair world with the manufacturer of those trains denying bricking the trains, despite ample
evidence to the contrary. The manufacturer is also now demanding that the repaired trains immediately
be removed from service because they have been hacked and thus might now be unsafe, a claim they
also cannot substantiate. The situation is a heavy machinery example of something that happens
across most categories of electronics and phones, laptops, health devices, and wearables to tractors
and apparently trains. In this new case, the company known as Newag, N-E-W-A-G, the manufacturer
of the Impulse family of trains, put code in the train's control systems that prevented them from
running if a GPS tracker detected that it spent a certain number of days in an independent repair
company's maintenance center and also prevented it from running if certain components had been
replaced without a manufacturer-approved serial number. This anti-repair mechanism is called
parts pairing. It's a common frustration for farmers who want to repair their John Deere
tractors without authorization from the company. It's also used by Apple to prevent independent
repair of iPhones. Well, you know, I think we're seeing the natural progression here. That's what
we've been talking about for years, this kind of thing. It kind of unites everybody together. We've
got farmers, we've got hackers, we've got train engineers now all on the same side against these
greedy companies that just want to milk every possible penny and control what it is that people
who have already bought the equipment can do. Yeah, the components are capable and they're sold
as a feature to the manufacturer and they integrate the designs that when the consumer gets to them
are pretty much tamper-proof. Yeah, and the sheer fact of a public utility like railroads having to
turn to independent hackers to allow them to fix devices that they have, that they own
ostensibly, that they bought and should have some matter of control over, especially something like
trains where public safety is an issue. You have to be able to know what every bit of your train
is doing at the same time if you're running a train. And the fact that the public
utility can be locked out of chunks of their own train's functionality and repairability,
that is obscene and terrifying. Yeah, and the fact that the company says, oh, this train
has been hacked as if it's some kind of an evil thing. Yes, people had to take matters
into their own hands because you disabled the train. I would say that was where it got hacked,
where the train was somehow disabled remotely because the conditions were not... I mean, it
sounds like ransomware. The conditions were not followed, therefore we bricked the train and made
it useless. That is not right. That is not what any company should be doing and I think they
should lose whatever license they have if that's the way they're going to run their business.
Once you are in control, once you buy something, you decide what you're going to do with it.
I mean, when did we lose touch with that common theory that that is what purchasing something
means? Just the idea of, imagine if it were a bunch of kids somewhere who had accessed
this train's functionality and bricked them and prevented them from being used
instead of the company that sells them. If this were some random tinkerer, that person would be
labeled all sorts of things. They would be a criminal, they would be a terrorist,
they would be ridden out of town on a rail. But because it's a
company with zillions of dollars and control over the hardware, it's okay.
The corollary to that too is, let's play devil's advocate for a moment.
Let's say you're the company that has essentially bricked the train.
Let's say, well, you didn't have to buy this particular train. You didn't have to agree
the terms of service that I provided you. You agreed to this. It's a contract. These are terms
that I'm going to enforce because on this basis is how I make my money as a company.
What about selling the train? Don't they make money selling the damn train?
Well, you would think, right? But then there's a subscription model in order to
update everything. Everybody wants some kind of goddamn subscription model
for everything these days, whether you're selling inkjet cartridges or apparently now even
train repair services have to be some kind of subscription-based product model so that you can
maximize revenue. This is the problem, I think, that it comes from private equity coming into
everything and everything these days, right? Anything and everything. Somehow every last
dollar and every last cent of any kind of business model needs to be squeezed out just for the
benefit of investors. You didn't last as devil's advocate very long, Alex. You're back on our side
now. Yeah, I know I am. Yeah, it was like a very fleeting moment. But yeah, I mean, I think it's a
product of this. I think if you look behind this Polish company that has developed the train
software, you'll probably find some kind of private equity interest that's driving this type
of business model. And I think you're right, Emmanuel. I hate to say it sometimes, but yeah,
I mean, this is, I think, a ransomware event. What do you mean you hate to say I'm right?
Well, yeah, I like to disagree with you more than most people. Just to be contrarian,
that's just my nature. I mean, you're very similar to me in that you'd
like to just be disagreeable. I don't think I am. Just hackers doing hacker stuff. Yeah, I mean.
Exactly right. Exactly the point. In any event, I do think this is a very ransomware and extortion-like
situation where because somebody fixed something that you wanted to charge them for, you're going
to break the device. And I also tend to agree with Rob. I think that the more dangerous situation
here is the lack of transparency and lack of transparency in the technology than anything
coming out of these white hat hackers accessing this and reverse engineering the software.
It's totally ridiculous. Case in point being some of the leaks with Tesla Automobile
and their feature development process and all of that that was revealed with that. I mean,
these companies are inherently handling vital systems, stuff that's heavy machinery or that
can otherwise be a hazard and themselves won't really share a lot of the inner workings.
And this is like, I think something, this paradox we're working with all that we're
fighting against ourselves with all the time, whether you're talking about intelligence stuff,
whether you're talking about product design and or software services, it's everywhere.
It seems like you can't avoid the stupidification of everything so that it's so secret or so
valuable information that we can't tell our consumers, we can't tell anybody about it.
And we have to craft and do all of this stuff around cordoning it off or making the entire field
of some technological development impossible for anyone to know about. And I mean, of course,
some of that comes up with like butts up against national security stuff. There's a lot of examples
and intricacies to that, but that is part of the dual use of things like semiconductors.
And I mean, I just feel like we're emerging with these capable networks and capable electronics and
the actual industry around it is protecting the information to the detriment of the people that
should be aware, like have technical literacy around it.
Well, we'll keep looking at that story and all the others that are bound to happen. Well,
here's one actually that might be a little bit more familiar to people. I didn't know you could
do this, but apparently with PlayStation, you can buy films and TV shows and things like that
and watch it through your, you guys do that? You ever watch TV shows through a PlayStation?
Not usually.
What's the advantage of that? Why do it that way?
Well, I'll tell you what, I mean, I use the PlayStation 5 that primarily my kids use
also as a streaming device, right? Because you've got a massive amount of processing power
in the PS5, right? Like way more than you would get in an Amazon Fire Stick or Roku or something
like that. So everything is very fast. Everything is seamless. There's a lot of
speed to, let's say, streaming something through Netflix, Amazon, etc., or just using Apple TV or
buying shows or whatever you want through a PS5. It's like a really over-specced smart TV device.
Okay. Well, from this story at Kotaku.com,
promise of digital media is that it can last forever, pristine and undisturbed by the forces
of entropy constantly buffeting the material world. Unfortunately, a mess of online DRM and
license agreements means that we mostly don't own the digital stuff we buy, as most recently
evidenced by the fact that Sony is about to delete Mythbusters, Naked and Afraid, and tons
of other Discovery shows from PlayStation users' libraries, even if they already purchased them.
Yeah, the latest pothole in the road to an all-digital future was discovered via
a warning that Sony recently sent out to PlayStation users who purchased TV shows
made by Discovery, the reality TV network that recently merged with Warner Brothers
in one of the most brutal and idiotic corporate maneuvers of our time, but we won't get into that.
Due to our content licensing agreements or arrangements with content providers,
you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content,
and the content will be removed from your video library, read a copy of the email.
Wow. You know, this is why piracy is a good thing, because of crap like this,
which I consider to be the ultimate in piracy. You already bought the content, all right? You
paid full price for it. You deserve to keep it. You can't have it taken away from you.
And I don't know if these people are getting their money back. I don't think that's the point.
The point is, you bought it like you would buy a book, like you would buy any other tangible item.
And if you want it to be treated the same way as a tangible item, which they certainly want to do
when it suits them, then you have to respect the people who actually agree to buy them.
Does that make sense, Rob? Absolutely. And this is why soft media
is all the rage these days. People have online accounts for all kinds of entertainment,
all kinds of media that they want to have access to. But you don't own it unless you've got some
kind of physical disc, unless you've got a DVD or a Blu-ray or a VHS tape, if you've still got
a player for those. You can access what you own all the time, and nobody can decide from a distance
to switch it off for you. You see, when we started doing the digital subscription at 2600,
there was a no-brainer. People buy copies of the magazine. You can do whatever you want with a
copy of a magazine. We can do whatever you want with a digital copy of the same magazine.
And it just feels wrong to even consider, oh, we're going to continue to manipulate this and
make it so you can't do this with something that you bought. I mean, we don't want people to
make a million copies and sell them and things like that. But you know what? That's not something
we can control. We presume our readers will support the magazine. And if they don't support
the magazine, obviously we're doing something wrong. So I don't know why other companies,
other entities can't get this and want to continually have their hands in the pockets
of people and manipulate how they use something that they have already legitimately purchased.
And it just leads everyone to just say, you know what? I'm just going to
download this off the dark web, and there's no content problems there. You don't even
get the FBI warnings there. They edit those out. So it's a ridiculous
chain of events that they're setting in motion here. Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, I mean, there is an analog here when it comes to, let's say, physical copies of 2,600
books or whatever it is, because of something called the first sale doctrine under copyright
law. And that essentially says, when you buy a book, you don't own the copyright to the text
itself, right? But you own a copyright to that particular book. You can do whatever the hell
you want with that book. You can burn that book. You can mark it up. You can write in it. You can
change the text. You could make photocopies of certain portions of it if you wanted to, right?
All portions. I mean, what portion couldn't you make a photocopy of?
Yeah, sure. But you shouldn't copy the entirety of the work.
No, you shouldn't, but you can. You have the ability. They can't prevent you from doing that.
You wouldn't be able to sell it.
Imagine if you copyright page 37 of someone's book, your arm gets broken.
That wouldn't be right.
Well, I agree. But the analog to the first sale doctrine in books does not necessarily
apply to these types of digital media. And I think the reason being is because of the terms
and the conditions and the terms of service and the terms of use to which you agree when you sign
up for these particular services. They give away those types of rights, grant onto the service
provider from which you have derived this particular benefit a great deal of power.
And you don't have any bargaining rights here. These are all contracts to which you have acquiesced
in some way or another as a matter of adhesion by just accessing the service.
They're kind of like the end user license agreements of software
packages. You know, remember back in the 80s and 90s when you would unbox a piece of software and
by virtue of you unboxing this, you agreed to the terms and conditions and the copyright
restrictions with regard to that particular piece of software. So, you know, you bargain this away
in a sense by using these particular services. And people are going to be really, really fed up
with this and they're going to stop using those services. And I think even a couple of years ago,
when these types of things were happening less and less, but as a matter of accessibility,
it was just hard to figure out where you could watch whatever particular movie.
And that's why I think things like the streaming media players like Kodi and then side loading
add-ons for Kodi like Genesis and Exodus and these other things that essentially aggregated
all of these illicit streams, these pirated streams, so that you could stream in whatever
content you want were extraordinarily popular because they were easier to use,
they were more predictable and more dependable. And I think, and I fear that's where we're heading.
And you didn't have to sign stupid contracts. And I think the contracts are the problem,
you know, because when you buy a book, you know, or a DVD or Blu-ray, you're not signing contracts
that sign away things that you would never want to sign away in the first place. Yet for some reason
when you download something, you're giving away all this control, yet you're still paying the
same dollars, you know, that's, it's just not right. It's not something that I think we should
continue to agree to. I don't know. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Rob.
No, there's the idea that now when you're quote-unquote buying something, you don't actually
own the thing that you've just bought. And our friend Cory Doctorow wrote a blog post on this
situation recently, and he highlighted this quote by someone called Tyler James Hill. And the quote
is, if buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing. There you go. Can I use that? Or do I have to
credit somebody if I use that? I don't want to get in trouble. I think they get a quarter every time
you use it. That is an amazing paragraph before it, though. And hey, we're on YouTube, so one
could quote it out loud if they really wanted to.
Oh, you mean using cuss words and stuff?
Oh, it is. Can I read it, though?
If you want to read it, go right ahead. I won't stop you. Then Kyle, after that.
Sure. Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup,
but save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come
into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway.
Fuck them sideways with a brick.
Gila, I have never heard you talk that way.
And we've been in all kinds of different scenarios, including one like bank robbery,
which we won't get into here. But wow, you read that well. You read that very well. And
those are powerful words. They really are. And there's no other way you could say that.
This is why I felt it necessary to share.
Part of the access has been driven just by software piracy. And I'm thinking back to
the history of serial numbers and how a lot of that emerged. And I think that's where
we ended up with a lot of hosted services. There was imminently more control using the networks
where people are presumed connected all the time. And those schemes were deemed better than
having whole copies in the box, like Alex said. So I think the history is worth noting. And it's
interesting how it's driven this idea of, well, this dilution of the sense of property,
and especially when we're talking about digital items. For things like books and publishing,
I think the spirit of our attitude, I mean, we should be so lucky if people are
reading so much and pirating and sharing all kinds of knowledge. That actually,
beyond other forms of media, maybe it's less important. But there's still ideas and stories
being told in those things that if you make it imminently, like with region coding and all kinds
of other barriers, you make it impossible for people to create understanding in their worlds
through these networks and through heightened knowledge. And anyway, so it's all, I think,
just making us dumber. Absolutely. Go ahead, Gail.
First of all, just wanted to say hello to the 51 people who are currently with us.
That's true. That's more than we've ever had before. Wow.
That's why I wanted to say 51. But also wanted to share something that one of our listeners wrote in
and said, piracy isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement.
I have feelings about that. The act of what you would call piracy, and I can illustrate this
with some completely legitimate use of the series of steps you would take to pirate something.
Some time ago in this household, we had to switch out the cable box we had. And that cable box was
also a DVR unit that saved the things you recorded on it locally. And lots of debate and laws and
things over the years had enshrined your ability to record things onto your personal media at home
since the VHS days. And we had things on that DVR that you would never find a purchasable release of.
And so I spent the day before we had the appointment for the worker to come and swap
this cable box out for us, just playing the stuff off the DVR, running it through
a video capture device, through a computer that was running Handbrake and some other things so we
could save local digital copies of the things we had recorded. If we were going to be traditional
video pirates, we would then upload those somewhere with BitTorrent or what have you.
But we weren't. We were just keeping our own copies of things we recorded legally. And that
was infringing no copyrights. That was exercising our own rights as recorders of the material.
And we still have it. We would not have it had we just let them take the box away.
Do you know how hard it is for people to do that, though? I mean, in the past,
with a VCR, you just hit record, it's on the tape, and you can play it anytime you want.
But now, ask yourself, okay, you've got your DVR, many times it's not stored locally,
many times it's stored at the cable or satellite company. But okay, you want your own local copy
because you're canceling their service. How do you do that? And I guarantee you,
99 out of 100 people will not know how to do what you did. And I'm going to ask you later
how to do what you did, because I need to do that, too. Sure thing. There was something similar when
a family member passed away, and there were voicemail messages that folks were interested
in saving. And we had to, you know, run the call through a recorder so we could, you know,
get our own WAV files of these things before the service was shut off, and therefore,
the messages lost forever. In the past, you had an answering machine, and you could just
hold on to the cassette and make copies at your leisure. Absolutely. Wow.
So I wanted to throw something else in from the chat, which is a listener who is jumping into the
chat for the first time, but who emailed us on the show recently, said, would love to call in,
but is currently making a song out of last week's show. Guess what I sampled?
I don't know, but I hope you got permission. Because Alice is a lawyer, you know, and,
you know, we'll stick his at knob. We're kidding. We're kidding. Do whatever you want.
And I do have a guess about what it is. And if I had to guess, I would say that it is a you,
Emmanuel, saying, was it gay furry hackers or furry gay hackers?
Well, I talked about gay furry hackers once, and the whole world goes ballistic, you know.
First of all, I didn't make it up. It's a real thing. And all kinds of serious security people
out there are writing papers and symposiums on gay furry hackers, all right? Deal with it. It's
a thing. It's happening. And there's going to be more of them, too.
Just the resonance with the way that you said it. Also, we're at 57 right now.
Oh, it's out of control. It's out of control. It's amazing. And there are new people participating
in the chat tonight, which is great. The magic of overtime is that so few people
knew about it. And now somebody told somebody, told you to keep it quiet. And now it's ballooning.
All right. You know what? We'll try and keep the magic as much as possible.
Yeah. Should we take phone calls? I guess we can.
I'm ready.
802-321-4225 is our phone number. 802-321-HACK. Please give us a call. Let's open up to as many
people as we can, so don't take too long. And if you have a question or a comment or
something you wish to share with us, great. It didn't take long at all. Let's see who's out
there. You give me that expression, Kyle, so that tells me you know who it is. And I guess we just
need to get this over with quickly. And Rebel, if in fact this is you, that giggle tells me that
it is you. You just need to follow the same guidelines that we're issuing to everybody,
don't take too long, make your points coherently and succinctly, and let's just
swallow the painkillers and get this over with. Go ahead.
Okay, let's see. Oh, there's an echo. Well, there wasn't. All right. I was talking about TVs and
like, well, you know, there's answering machines that has an output, like a auxiliary, like an
output for your tape recorder, like your phone output, that you could... I had an answering
machine like that that you could put, you know, record it on a tape.
Yeah, that was back in the good old days, and you could do things like that.
Right. You know, on TVs, I'd like to get a regular antenna and get regular channels, except,
you know, so that I don't have to worry about the 500 channels and the this and that, because it's
really annoying to, you know, to... Usually a TV, it's like you got to like have a college degree
to use a TV now. Well, you know, you used to be able to just have...
Excuse me, this is Nina. Hello, this is Nina. Emergency interruption for 802-321-4765.
Okay, you know what, Rebel, you were making sense for a second there, and then you laughed into some
other alternate personality. Let me just say, getting back to your TV complaint, yes, I remember
the day when you could, or days, when you could tune a rotary dial, and you go from channel two...
It doesn't have to be a rotary dial.
Well, you know, it was... Mine was, all right, and you click from a two, and you clicked over
three, because you didn't get channel three, and you went to channel four, and it was immediately
there. It was immediately there. Here you have to wait like five seconds for something to process,
and there it is. God forbid you're trying to get somewhere fast. And you know what else? Here's
another one of my gripes. Let's say you want to show somebody something, and you want to surprise
them by saying, you know, this is a piece from NBC Nightly News or something like that. I don't know.
It's going to show the title of what it is you're going to play for them, and there's very few ways
that you can get around that without revealing what it is you're about to show them. And that's
just one of my little pet peeves there. I'll shut up now and let Rebel talk.
What if you have a TV antenna, like a digital antenna, and not go through the cable company?
Oh, you mean if you just go through over-the-air transmissions? Yeah, you have to deal with a lot of
hoops to jump through there. You have to be close to the signal. It's digital, so it won't come in
at all if it's out of range. It's not like the old analog days where you could get
distant signals sometimes, or a TV signal would travel a much further distance.
I don't know what you're doing with the tones there, Rebel.
All right, Rebel, you know what? That's it. Final words. Did he hang up?
I think he hung up. Okay, well, that's it. One phone call per person.
My fingers slip. You hung up on him?
Did I? Oh, silly me. If you hung up on him, then he gets another call.
I thought he was... You don't get to do that. No. Is this him again?
I don't know. Okay, let's pick this up. Go ahead.
And you are on Off the Hook Overtime. Go ahead. Yes, hi. Earlier tonight you said that you made
some changes to Hope, and you think that you addressed all of the critiques from the most
recent conference. Let me guess. You have one we didn't address.
I'm pretty confident. I'm about 99% confident that you didn't address it because you didn't
mention it. It's about the workshops, and I was hoping that it would be possible logistically
for you guys to record the workshops, either audio or video, preferably video. I know it's a
lot of work, but obviously you can't attend all the workshops because there are some great talks
given simultaneously. So how have you addressed that issue of recording the workshops?
There are two things to overcome here. Number one, first of all, you have to get the permission
of the people doing the workshops. Do you want your workshop to be recorded? It's not the same
thing as a speaker. I think most probably wouldn't have a problem with that. But the biggest challenge
is staff. We need AV volunteers that will help with that. And if we have a good AV staff and
we're able to get the equipment we need, which is a very good possibility at a place like St. John's,
then yes, we can do that. But we, again, Hope relies on volunteers to get everything done
and AV is one of the most challenging parts of that conference. So we definitely want to do that.
So let's see if we can pull it off this time. Okay. And the other issue is the handouts or
the slide decks that the speakers use in the workshops. I know not every workshop would
necessarily have a slide deck or a handout, but if it's not possible to record the workshop,
if you could encourage the speaker, if they're willing to do so, to upload their presentation,
like their PowerPoint, or their slide deck to the Hope website. So if I'm unable to attend a
given workshop, I can at least see the handout from it. Is that a possibility? Yeah, that certainly
is a possibility. Can you summarize this and email us feedback at hope.net? That way we get it to the
right people and we can start working on it early. Okay. Yeah, I can do that. Oh, and also I know that
you said tickets are going to go on sale this Friday. Well, limited tickets. And the main
ticket sales will go on sale in January. Is it possible, will it be possible to actually purchase
tickets in person at St. John's the weekend of the conference? Probably not. Are you considering that?
Probably not. And there's a couple of reasons for that. But basically,
we don't want surprises of massive amounts of people showing up that we're not prepared for.
This way we know how many people are going to be there. And it's just, it's a better
situation. And we did that in 2022. And it worked out so much better than the years that we did.
Basically, anybody can walk into the hotel off the street and come to the conference.
And it's just, you know, we expected this amount of people and we got that amount of people and it
just made it harder to plan. Right, right. You don't want like a Woodstock festival.
Exactly. Woodstock comes to mind. Yes, you got it. Yeah, Woodstock or the Isle of Wight festival.
Yeah, minus the mud, but with the chaos. So if I can't get through on Friday,
you will have multiple opportunities. You will provide multiple opportunities for attendees,
for people to purchase tickets online. Yeah. I mean, you know, we'll cut it off at some point.
We'll decide when. But if you're early, you should be fine. Probably after three seconds.
Okay. No, hopefully. And just one last thing. You were talking about Sony and the whole issue
of like, you purchase something online. There was a case a couple of years ago,
I don't remember the company, but it was 1984 by George Orwell that people had purchased it
through some service. That was through Kindle. Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, it's really horrible. It was very Orwellian. They didn't seem to get that.
Right. No, they didn't. But it's a terrible thing. And that's why I guess we should always
keep in mind, get a hard copy. Don't rely on streaming, basically. Because as you said,
they can delete at will, anytime, anywhere, anything you buy.
And not only that, they can change it. You know, if something falls out of favor,
they can be very Stalinistic and just go in and change the line or erase a character completely.
So yeah, if you have your own physical copy, they can't do that. You know, Kyle and I did a project
where we saw every Academy Award winning film since they started giving out Academy Awards.
And our thing was, we would always want to get the physical copy of it, the DVD or the Blu-ray.
And it wasn't until Apple released the film. Remember the name of the film? It was about
the deaf people? Coda.
Coda, yeah. They wouldn't release that on physical media. You had to subscribe to Apple Plus to see
the damn film. And this was just in complete violation of our terms of service, where we say,
no, we have the right to buy something and have it in our library. We had to go and buy a copy
from a different country in Europe and make sure that we had a region free Blu-ray player to play
it. But it was worth it. It was worth it to have that kind of control over something that you buy.
Right. No, absolutely. Yeah. All right. Well, I will get that email out to you.
You said that's feedback at hope.net, right?
That's right. Yes.
Okay. All right. Well, thanks and happy holidays to all of you and
have a happy 2024.
Thanks. You too. Take care.
Bye.
Great call. Again, our phone number 802-321-4225. Any thoughts from the gallery? Go ahead, Alex.
Alex, your mouth is moving, but we can't hear you.
No, there we go. I had to get back to the right screen there. Yeah, I had a question,
really, for our listeners, and maybe somebody will call in or have some ideas in the chat.
You're supposed to ask us questions. You're asking them questions?
Yeah, but they're good resource. They're a smart bunch of people that are all just hanging out,
so I figured you might as well take advantage of them. I think they have
a far greater combined IQ than the four or five of us.
Are you done buttering them up? Ask the question that you want to ask.
Can't even count. That's my problem. Yeah, so I have a 10-year-old. Christmas and holiday
season is coming up here. And interestingly enough, and without any prompting on my part,
my son is really interested in retro computing. He loves old computers. He loves CRTs. He just
finds them really fascinating and interesting. I'm wondering if anybody would have any ideas for
holiday gifts, Christmas gifts for a 10-year-old that's interested in things like x86 computers.
If I could buy him an old XT with a CGA monitor, I think he would absolutely love it. But what's the
equivalent here? What should I be thinking of? Can he handle a Univac? Because I know I can get
one of those, but you need a semi to get it to you. Yeah, I know that might be the problem, right?
Yeah. Do you have a loading dock? Yeah. We don't have a dock. Are you serious about this or not,
Alex? I mean, come on. We want to help your kid out here. I'm being really sure. I mean,
if we could have like a VAX VMS system, you know, at home, I think he would totally love it. It
comes with a punch card reader, but I don't have punch cards, unfortunately. Yeah. Gila has an
answer. Go ahead. We're getting a recommendation in the chat. All right. Awesome. A listener.
Wow. OK. So a listener called the Mac Geek asks, what about a Raspberry Pi kit that he can build
and program with? That's not a bad idea. That doesn't sound very retro to me. Yeah, I know.
That's what I was thinking, too. Like the Pi kit, I think would be very, very cool. And it has a
retro feel, especially if you're just using it, you know, in a terminal session or something like
that. Like we actually started doing some bash scripting the other day and he loved it. He
absolutely loved being able to create a loop that ran the fortune command every ten seconds.
And wow, he's a kindred spirit. I'll say that because that thrills me as well. And by the way,
I use the command fortune dash. Oh, when we did it, much to my chagrin, though, I don't know if
you know what fortune dash does. I haven't typed that flag. I know what fortune does was fortune
dash. Oh, do it only displays offensive fortunes? They're flagged as offensive. Yeah. Okay. Well,
I'll tell you, you know, on one of our Linux machines, we added Adventure, the text game
Adventure. And our productivity has has dropped quite a bit because people are still trying to
figure out how to get through it. It's great. Text based adventures are so much fun. It's on
the terminal. It's on. It's on. It's on. It's on various machines. So we can we can we can guide
you in the right direction. Go ahead. More recommendations. Okay. So rebel made a helpful
suggestion. That's not rebel, then that's got to be someone masquerading as rebel. People do that.
A DEC VT 320 would be good. I want one first, though. Someone else recommends the Mr. FPGA
computer says does everything up to 486 SX 25. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Someone else suggests a
spectrum 48k. Um, this is great. We should ask more questions of our listeners. They'll answer
them. The commander x 16 is a new retro computer. Oh, and see, that could be interesting. A new
retro computer. j craft, if you could say more, we would appreciate that. He says get the commander
x 16. It's a new retro computer. smiley face. Okay, Rob has something and then we have a caller
who's been patiently waiting on hold. Go ahead. Yeah, if you if you get one of the earlier
generations of Raspberry Pi, not only will it be very good at emulating the old eight bit stuff,
but they also had a composite video out on those still so you could hook it to a CRT
that you happen to get hold of with with minimal hassle. That's pretty cool. That's a great idea,
too. And I'm going to look into this the commander x 16 as well and be googling that momentarily
while we take this phone call. And you can pair it with your monochrome monitor of choice.
That's right. We have a phone call. Let's go to the phones. Good evening. You're on off the
government. Go ahead. Oh, so you hung up on the manual. So no, I didn't do it. Kyle's finger
slipped. Kyle's finger slipped. It happens occasionally. Let's turn this this is considered
your first call. Let's finish it up. Okay, we're talking about old school computers. Now I think
you should get your kid a informant and informant. Well, an informant d3 or four would be good, but
they're very rare. I did an IBM 3270 or something the ones with the old quickie keyboards either
that or the ones like a similar recommending vt 320 I think it is
or PC jr. They have
how about a TRC? RadioShack? Did he want to push button computer? I'm sure he does.
Yeah, something like that, you know, something that looks kind of kind of cool, like, you know,
something that looks like an old XT. I mean, like my first machine I remember, was an XT with that
ran at four megahertz with a 30 megabyte hard drive and a CGA monitor. And you know how much
RAM it had? 16k. Oh, okay. Well, it had 640k conventional memory, but zero RAM. Because
remember, Bill Gates made that famous statement, I think it was probably correctly attributed to
him that he said, you know, that computers will never need anything more than 640k conventional
memory, which is hilarious when you think about the channel needs more likes. I mean, the website,
I mean, the YouTube video needs more likes. It's only one like here. Why would we get to get more
likes? I don't know. I'm just saying. Is there some kind of payout for that? I mean, what's what
who cares? Well, you may, you may get more viewers or, you know, I don't know.
What else? What else is on your list? Rebel?
Um, let's see. When I call 800 numbers, I used to listen when I was listening to the old off
the hook. Different lists. He veered off. Yeah, go ahead. Finish this up. And then we're gonna
move to another call. All right. I noticed that when I called different numbers, like 1-800
uh, easy NYT or things like that, it goes to the same thing. Let's demonstrate.
Why do I have a feeling we've done this before? And not just once either.
Hold on. I don't have control over this call. Nobody has control. Um, but we're going to let
this happen. And then it's going to get to the point where we just can't take any more. And
that's, we're going to move on. All right. I'll move my hand, but you can't keep us on hold
forever for God's sake. It's, it's, it's YouTube. Nobody wants to wait.
Does he think we're, we're listening? Cause we're not, there's nobody there.
Emmanuel? Oh, there you are. Don't leave us alone for so long.
Um, hold on. I'm trying to do, um, you can't three-way. Can you?
Well, maybe not. You know, some companies, like when you call, I won't demonstrate, but
some like companies that like, uh, telemarketers, I like to fool around with them. I'll just three,
what, like they'll call you and, you know, leave a message or whatever. But when you call them
back, you know, you know, you could three-way, you know, go on three-way and kind of conference
them in together. Sometimes it says, uh, multiple calls are not allowed. I don't know how that works.
Interesting. You get an announcement.
Yeah, no, no, no. It's not an announcement. It's something on my phone or maybe it's on my phone or
what, what, what kind of, what kind of service are you using? Like a service message?
Is this a cell phone or an Android? It's a cell phone. No, it's an Android cell phone.
All right. And sometimes if I call a certain number, it'll, you know, do three-way. I could
put off to five people on at once. It could have something to do with, with, uh, where you're
calling the area code, the type of call, or if they've picked up or not, uh, or just what kind
of service you have on your particular line. But it's not like it was in the old days where you
could just, you know, pair lines together and, and, um, you know, you could, you could share
a ring with somebody and have, you know, two different lines on when they pick up the phone.
Um, those days don't seem to be around anymore. No, it's, it's, um, I think when, when I'm doing
like a three-way call, like I could do a three-way call with you, but, um, other number,
I think it's a particular number. Maybe the number is blocking three-way. I don't know.
I don't think you can block three-way, but a certain type of phone call might be, um, uh,
like maybe to a toll free number. I'm just theorizing here because I haven't tried to
even use that function. And, you know, I find that most people do not know how to pair calls
together anymore. And, you know, try that on a cell phone, a guarantee you'll screw it up
and have to do it again. And that's, that's, I think the way they like it, but, um,
it's not like it used to be. I hate saying that all the time, but it's not like it used to be.
It used to be pretty cool. Although you couldn't, you couldn't three-way incoming calls. That always
annoyed me. You know, if you got call waiting, you know, and you couldn't pair that with another
call you were talking to, it had to be outgoing. Well, with IntelliDial you can. IntelliDial,
does that still exist even in trash cans? I don't think it does. I mean, no, I mean,
yeah. Yeah. I actually had IntelliDial. That was, that was a nine X service that very few
people knew about. So please hold for long distance. Uh, no, we're not going to hold
for anything more rebel because, uh, we we've, we've, we've talked enough, but thank you for,
for calling and for sharing. Do not want, I want nothing less than that, believe me,
but thank you for calling and, uh, please, um, um, be well, we'll, we'll talk to you again soon.
On my dime back. Uh, you're not going to get that either. Our phone number 802-321-4225
for everybody in the planet, except rebel right now. Uh, and, and the previous call,
because you get to call once and that he got two calls because you, uh, accidentally hung up on him,
Kyle. And, um, it was a minor oversight that happens sometimes. Uh, so please, uh, the quicker
people call in 802-321-4225, uh, the more we're assured that we'll get some variety in phone calls
tonight, which is always a fun thing. Um, would love to say that we have received a demo version
of the gay free hackers song. What do you mean a demo version, a rough cut, a rough cut, um,
our listener is going to touch it up for a, a, a real, um, release, but, um, we just received it
via email. And well, now I kind of want to end over time so we can listen to the song.
We'll listen to the song after the show. And if it's really good, we'll maybe play it at some
point. I don't know if the only words in it are gay furry hackers. We could play it on air and
it could be the outro. Right. I was just, I meant when I said that, but you know, we can't make that
promise. One furry step. It's a whole thing. Let's just keep our paws. You have no idea the
steps that go through picking a song for the outro. You can't just do it. There are people saying is
you never hear their voices, but they're part of the process. All right. I listened to 20 seconds
of it. And so far it seems to fit the FCC guidelines and it slaps. It does. We have a phone
call. Okay. And good evening. You're on off the hook over time. Go ahead.
Good evening. This is Johnny fusion. Hey, Johnny fusion. How are you doing?
I'm doing great. I had clinic yesterday. I'm the healthiest I've been since transplant.
Awesome. Everything's looking great. All right. Congrats. So on the show,
you were talking about all these data breaches and stuff and hacks that went on. There was one
this week or this past week. Antifa in Sweden released the order list of a white power
music and merchandise site called Midgard. Okay. So they, and these guys basically, they
organize for Nazi. They even take place in internal discussions with the Nazi organization.
Money goes to Nazi organization in the Nordic region. And you can get to, you can see it
at midgard.antifa.se. And actually set up a nice little front end for you to browse like 20 seconds
and sell records all around the world who done business at this.
Well, basically this Nazi merchandise organization.
Wow. 20,000. That's, that's larger than I thought it would be.
Unfortunately, that's the world we live in.
And it's all around the world. You said, Oh, just in Sweden.
Well, they're based in Sweden, but they, but they had customers all around the world because
right ring right wing and fascist ideology is growing worldwide. So,
but I just looked at the first page and there were, you know, there were
orders from Sweden and Denmark and great Britain. And that's just on the first page.
Gosh. Wow. And, and, and what is it people are ordering? You said it's music.
Well, music and t-shirts and stickers and stuff like that of all white power stuff.
What's on their website now?
I'm who's
on that? The Swedish Nazi website. Okay. Embarrassed by this.
I didn't, I didn't, I didn't want that in my history.
Well, nobody does, but while some people do obviously, but you know use some, you know,
virtual ways to get around that or, or tour or something.
Yeah. I mean, I always got my VPN on, so there's that, you know? So yeah. Hey,
do you have contact information for the meeting organizers for the 2600 meetings on the first
Friday? Well, we don't give out information, contact information because lots of times people
don't want to be contacted, but what we do list are, are, are Twitter IDs and when available
websites. And it's exactly for this reason that we encourage people who are starting meetings
to share that information so that if you go to to the meetings page on 2600,
you'll be able to contact those people.
Yeah. Cause like I've gone to the San Francisco meeting twice and no one,
last time nobody showed up. I was there by myself.
Really? That whole time or just a particular time?
Um, I, I hung out for an hour.
Okay. Cause sometimes, you know, I've been to meetings where they start at like seven
o'clock when it's listed at five, uh, generally the period between five and eight, unless otherwise
noted is, um, is a period where people are likely to show up like Rob, you probably know
more about this as you, you are a regular attendee of meetings.
Yeah. Um, though they, though they're, uh, they started a certain hour, but like people
keep showing up different people get out of work or school or whatever at different times. And
the gathering keeps going. I know here in New York, uh, people still, people are still showing
up, you know, into seven o'clock, eight o'clock and the food court that we're in is, you know,
still open and accessible at that point. Um, but, uh, so sometimes it takes a while to get going.
Yeah. Let me just say, uh, Kyle and I dropped by there actually the Friday after the meeting,
uh, just to hang out that place, what Citigroup has turned into is incredible. It's, it's such
a cool hangout. So many people are there, um, whether there's a meeting or not. Uh, and the,
the really fun thing you can buy Club Mate there. I didn't realize this. There's a German place and
you can buy Club Mate and this it's so cool to be able to do that. Uh, you know, it brings back
memories of the old days when we were a part of that. There's so many options for food there.
It's, it's wild and just, uh, really well used people coming and going, um, and maybe after work
or after school. And, and you just feel like this sense of busyness and, and, and it's,
it's really interesting. So I can imagine the meetings are a lot of fun there.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah. Um, to the caller's concern about, uh, going to the San Francisco meeting and nobody
having nobody else show up. Um, part of the beauty of the 2600 meetings is that no one's
really in charge. So that means everyone gets to throw in on the sort of organizational end of it,
where you can post it around to like, uh, local tech forums, local, uh, hacker sort of forums,
um, put up a leaflets, whatever you'd like to do and get the word out yourself to get more folks
who would be interested in the local area to, to show up there with you. And, uh, you, you may end
up, uh, spearheading a big revival of these things. And, you know, sometimes, uh, you can't
tell meeting attendees from, from regular people. Uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's a darndest thing. We fit
right in sometimes. Uh, but if you have some kind of identifier, like a 2600 hat or a magazine or
just something that indicates you're a, you're a hacker. Uh-huh. And then also, yeah, I see the
meetings. These meetings don't have, uh, any, any, uh, Twitter ID or website, but, uh, they've been
taking place at Embarcadero, for Embarcadero Center. Um, that's a big place, uh, that they
could wander. They could be someplace else. Um, but it's also possible that, um, people just weren't
there that month or that you might've missed them in some way, but talking about it here definitely
helps. And, um, it, it, it tells, it tells people out there that at least one person wants to show
up and others should show up as well at the appointed time. Yeah, maybe I'll maybe, well,
since there's no Twitter handle or, or a website, maybe I could just take over. Well, take over is
probably the wrong word, but yeah, but definitely you could be, um, uh, somebody. Okay. I'll say,
I'll show the initiative. Yeah, that's, that's all. If, if there, if there's an opening there,
go ahead and, uh, and, and, um, basically use a Twitter ID, uh, something that has
2600 or San Francisco in it. So that it's obvious that that's what it is. Uh, and of course,
those of you who want to put in more effort, uh, websites are great because let's say there's,
um, you know, a construction or something going on in the place where you usually have a meeting.
You got to tell people somehow the magazine comes out four times a year. So that's three
months per issue that we can't change if something happens in say the second month.
So websites are great because you can just change them. And, uh, we, if we list the website,
people will know to go there to check for any, any updates.
Yeah. Okay. So with your encouragement, I think I'll show some initiatives.
Very cool. Very cool. And that goes for meetings all over the world.
Right. I mean, yield to the hands-on imperative, right? That's what it's all about.
Correct. Is it so before we move on to any, anything else, uh, from you? Um, let's see.
I wanted to talk about Midgard. I talked about 2600 meetings in San Francisco.
Now I know one started recently in San Jose, and I'm wondering if they're sucking the, uh,
the people that used to go to San Francisco are going to San Jose now, because it was,
because it's easier for them to get to. Well, that's happened in real life. You know,
people who worked in, uh, who used to commute from San Francisco to San Jose now live in San. So that
that could happen, but it's not likely that, uh, it's going to drain all the hackers in San Francisco
because there are plenty of them. So many, in fact, that you could have meetings in San Francisco,
Oakland, and Berkeley, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
Oakland and Berkeley and have plenty of people at each one. Just a question of coordination
and getting the word out. Yeah. I remember the other thing I wanted to talk about,
cause you talked on the radio show about the new Omni card. And I had, so I'm still playing with
the Bart Clipper card. Well, it does all the transit in the Bay area. Clipper card. That's
what it's called. I remember that. Okay. I think I have an old one. Really? Wow. It's that old.
Yeah, it does. You can get on Bart, you can get on all the local buses, you can get on
Cal train, commuter train, all on one card and it's contactless. You know,
it has this little sensor and it has a website. You're supposed to be able to put funds on the
website. Yeah. That's what, uh, that's what Omni does as well. Yeah. But here's the thing. I needed
to take a bus, you know, I wasn't using the Bart where the state where you can get the Clipper
cards cause you can really only get them at the Bart stations. And, um, so I put $20 on there
cause I had some bus trips coming up to get my phone repaired. I had to get to the phone repair
shop and it never, it never went on, never went on. And my Clipper card balance was getting lower
and lower. And by the time I had to go pick up my phone, I only had enough for one bus ride one
way. So I borrowed my lady friends Clipper card for that trip. And then, so, and I was going to
the 2600 meeting. So I, I walked to the Bart station near my house and it's one train all
the way to Embarcadero. And I had, well, I have to put money on, it still hasn't gone on the website.
So I go up another $20 on, and then when I touch it to tap the card, when you put money on,
when I went through the turnstile, I had $40 on it. It waited until the physical card got to,
got to a sensor that has rights ability. Oh wow. The money ran on my card. You know,
you might've just answered a question that I had from earlier today because I did something
similar. I, my, my Omnicard only had about $2 left on it. I wanted to add money to it and I
set it up so that once it gets below $10, it adds another 20. So it was already below $10. It's at
two. And you know, I, I, I added that function, gave it a credit card number and all, and it
didn't do anything. It's still a $2. So I'm wondering, is it going to do it or do I, do I
have to actually have it working before it'll implement that? So maybe if next time I walk up
to a turnstile, it'll just immediately give me $20. If it, if the turnstiles have right access,
because, well, I guess they all need right access because they deduct funds, right?
Well, I don't think it's on the card. It's not written on the card.
Um, I saw, I saw someone hacking it and you, you can write values to the card,
but it voids it after first use.
Okay. I figured the values were written someplace else in the card. We're simply accessing that.
Yeah, they are. And like, there's a check sum of course. And, but, um, yeah, I think
you actually have to put it on one of those pucks for it to actually write in the system.
Okay. I'm going to head to a, to a subway stop and see what happens because my curiosity has been
piqued. Yeah. Cause, cause it seems like the cards are only really changed when they interact with,
with the little reader writers at the, at the station. Right.
And it didn't do that on the bus. Cause I think the buses are, I don't, cause you got to think,
are buses connected wirelessly? Well, they're not connected with wires. I can tell you that
they definitely are connected with wirelessly, you know, but are, is it over radio or do they
just look for the value that's written to the card and deduct it? And then it's updated centrally
at another, at another place along the lines. With the metro card, it was, it was,
it was done wirelessly. So I imagine they're doing something similar with, with Omni.
Yeah. Well, yeah. Or they do it in batches. Like at the end of the day,
the buses upload the data of what rides there were or something.
I would say, but the thing that you got to imagine is they have all these other interests,
all this, there's all this other interest and justification to have a bus.
And justification to have the bus be trackable and connected for the general operation of the
system. Oh, that's true. Cause they're always updated. Like I have the transit app, I guess
it's for big metropolitan areas. Like you, like it's the same app for New York city.
It's just called transit. And you can actually opt in to be tracked on the transit app
for, to make scheduled, to make more accurate bus schedules and stuff because they know where
you are on the bus and they update that to all the other app users. I see. Okay.
So it's a bit of a community effort then. Yeah. Well, that's it. All right. Thanks for your call.
Thanks. All right. Good night. Good hearing from you. Wow. Okay. You know what? I didn't realize
so much time had passed by, so I think we're, we're gonna, we're gonna call it, but any,
any other thoughts or adventures people, people had? It has been amazing watching everybody,
Alex, this conversation you've started, people are talking about their first computers,
things they started with. And I want to give a personal shout out to my first, which was the TI
99 slash four a, I learned how to program basic on that thing and fell down the tiniest
little rabbit hole. Cause apparently some of them exist. eBay Mercado this, I think I know what I'm
asking for for my birthday next year. I'm very excited to know that those are still available.
And Alex, I highly recommend that particular model. It is a keyboard only with a disc,
like with a slot thing and you plug it into the computer, into the TV. And it's super fun. And
I also found that the loading screen for it, that you had to like, had to hit a key to get started.
You can get things with that on it, on red bubble. And I'm very happy. So thank you.
Yeah. I'll just shut out the TRS-80 color computer too, which was my first.
You always remember your first. Amazing. And thank you both for the recommendations and for everybody
in the chat for all their recommendations. It's it's great. I knew we could count on the wisdom
of our listeners to surpass our own. Yes. That's an easy bet there. But thank you again for
everybody who has contributed and for everybody who has called in or has participated in the chat
or just basically listening. We value you and look forward to talking next week as well. We'll be back
for Off the Hook at seven o'clock, Off the Hook Overtime at eight. Write to us, othat2600.com.
Don't forget the HULP tickets go on sale, limited number at, I believe it's 2 p.m. on Friday, the 15th.
It's HULP XV. XV, of course, means 15. And that's why it's happening on the 15th. And don't worry if
you don't get tickets this time around, there'll be another opportunity in January. And again,
the conference, July 12th through 14th, St. John's University in Queens. Easy to get to, a lot of fun
to be at. And it's it's going to be another historic event. All right. That's it. See you next time.
Good night.