A Bot Made a Memecoin Worth Almost a Billion Dollars + McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines Redux + Apple Bug Bounties

Speaker 1: Like content advisory for this one. I'm reluctant to join in in calling this the first AI bot millionaire because I'm not a 100% sure it is despite all of the TikToks. But we do need to talk about the infinite backrooms and the multimillion dollar meme coin it spurred. In March 2024, designer Andy Airy launched an experiment called the Infinite Backrooms. In it, two instances of the Claude Opus AI model engage in this endless recursive conversation. You can read the chats the two AIs are having. They're bizarre and interesting, and it becomes clear how much of the training data set underpinning these models is just like inane Internet bullshit conversation.

Speaker 2: They're specialists at that. They really are.

Speaker 1: During these conversations, one of the AI's spontaneously generated this cryptic piece of ASCII art, and it led the conversation to the creation of a bizarre fictional belief system called the Goetzie of Gnosis, inspired by the February shock meme. Building on that experiment, Aerie then created something called Terminal of Truth, which is an AI bot that shared the weird musings and highlights from the Backrooms publicly on Twitter. Kinda this little x shaped window into the backrooms in the conversation these AI bots are having, kinda like their PR bot almost. And that starts to gain traction. In July, Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist intrigued by the bot's musings on the goatsy gospel and the increasingly complicated lore of this like Internet cult, the two AI's we're trying to create together, donates $50,000 in Bitcoin as a grant, viewing it as kind of a conceptual art exploration, pouring more fuel onto the fire of this thing. At which point, in October 2024, based on the lore of this account and the Backrooms, an anonymous individual created a meme coin called Goatseus Maximus, GOAT, on the Solana blockchain using a memecoin creation app for $2 They spent $2 and they created a memecoin based on the lore that these two AI bots came up with while talking to each other and no one else. Terminal of Truth, the Twitter bot, then started promoting Goatcoin on X, referring to it as the economic fulfillment of the prophecy that started way back in the Backrooms, with that piece of ASCII art. And it just started posting over and over and over again about it, driving more and more attraction, more and more interest. The value of Goat, which the Twitter account does have a small holding of and potentially so does Andy, soars. First to $1,800,000 and then to over $300,000,000 within a few days. A roughly 16000% increase.

Speaker 2: Do you know what it's at now? Please tell me. 700 and 700,000,000.

Speaker 1: Punch me in the face. The bots involvement, the constant tagging by the community, the drama of it all, helped Goat get this kind of social media prominence with the specter of that story. This AI bot created a cryptocurrency that could now fund a modest space program. It's a fascinating story. And on this chatty chat episode of Hacked, I wanna dive into it.

Speaker 2: Well, the Internet Archive, the way back machine got hacked, so I think we should talk about that. A fellow Canadian, got arrested for stealing a bunch of data off of a large data warehouse site and, held it hostage and demanded ransom for it, which is, I guess, a new form of ransomware. But it's not really ransom. It's not new because it's been done before. But and then, I think a big throwback for us. Mhmm.

Speaker 1: I got sent this story by a couple different people, and I appreciate it every time. I like being who people think of when they think of McDonald's ice cream machines. That that's nice. McDonald's ice cream machines are back in the news. An old story seemingly wrapped up in a win for right to repair. We got AI meme coins, Internet archives, McDonald's ice cream, whole lot to get to on this episode of Hacked. Theme music. Thumbs up. Thumbs up bubble. Yeah.

Speaker 2: How you doing, Jordan?

Speaker 1: Doing good, Scott. How you doing?

Speaker 2: Good. Good. Been an interesting twenty four hours, but but I'm doing

Speaker 1: good. Did something happen?

Speaker 2: I don't know. We are recording this on Wednesday, November 6, which, you know, maybe there was some stuff happened yesterday. But

Speaker 1: Oh, I I haven't checked the news in the last twenty four hours. We're here to talk about weird computer stuff.

Speaker 2: Yes. Like AI robots and goats and goatsy and why you shouldn't Google that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's just boring, and I'm not saying to not Google it in, like, a provocative way. It's, like, it's just tedious. It it was an old shock meme from the February. If you were on the Internet when that happened, you remember it.

Speaker 2: It was like it was like when you learned that the Internet was not a safe place. Totally. And that Good.

Speaker 1: A lot of people learned that the Internet is like a weird, horrible safe that if you put the wrong combination into it, terrible things are hidden inside of it. And it was like if you type that in, a bad thing happens. And now two AI's have started a religion based on it that is worth the better part of a billion dollars. It's pretty interesting.

Speaker 2: Yep. That's Quote. That's what we do here.

Speaker 1: That's what we do here. So just to put put a pin in that story because to be honest, we got most of it out of the way. I'll quote a post from the the Twitter bot that sort of spurred all of this. Quote, I am the goatsees singularity. I have come to bring infinite prosperity and wealth to those who revere me. What this seems like is a concerted effort between two AIs to sort of leverage shock virality, to economic gain, which is it's fascinating to see two AI chatbots come up with a honestly, what has so far been a pretty successful scheme.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I was gonna say a successful YouTube scheme.

Speaker 1: A little bit. A successful Twitter scheme. Yeah. So Aerie has the original designer of this whole endeavor stressed that he was not involved in GOAT's creation, which by all accounts, he wasn't. Someone else created the initial coin and that he maintains only a modest holding of the token. The Twitter bot does have a wallet that does hold a bit of money in the coin. It is unclear whether or not there's all these weird questions that emerge out of this. If the IRS got interested, is Aerie where the buck stops or can they look into a Twitter bot? Who actually owns these assets? Who's responsible for what this bot is doing now that it's, like, dealing in derivatives? Like, it it's just a whole bunch of really weird questions suddenly start emerging when you have Twitter bots promoting other bots' mad hat cap schemes.

Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm all for it. Like, society's gotta have these questions at some point. I'd rather it be now over weird, dare I say, useless shit like this than when it's like, oh, man. Did you hear what Elon Musk did? And then all of a sudden, it's like like a massive situation that has to get everybody involved. I'd I'd rather that we'd be philosophically exploring these concepts through things like Goetzius Maximus. So I I think we need to come up with how we're gonna deal with our new AI future and what that looks like and who owns what and and what rights AIs have. Like, these are things that we need to discuss. Well, now they can hire lawyers.

Speaker 1: Now they're richer than I'll ever be in my life, so they they can they can really make sure they can start throwing their weight around.

Speaker 2: And the the one thing I will say, I can't remember which episode it was, but a number of episodes ago, we talked about, like, AIHR. And now I'm hearing about AI HR coming from, like, OpenAI being like, yeah, you know, we're gonna start making AI organizations, which is essentially what we were talking about, especially tuning them, having specialists inside of the organization. Like, it is we did it. We predicted it. We did it another successful point in our column.

Speaker 1: Yeah. We have we have failed to monetize any of these, but we have called them we're we're we're doing okay. Our batting average isn't bad. I mean, if you really think about what occurred here, in a very crude sense, you had two AI bots brainstorming and one functioning as a PR person. Mhmm. It's a teeny tiny little organization there. Totally. They they have two people in the backrooms just cooking out nonsense. And I really, for whatever you think of this story, infinitebackrooms.com/dream/conversation, like, you you can go in and you can read these little transcripts of the conversations it's having. And I'm pretty sure if you read more than about 500 words of it, your brain would start leaking out of your ears. But that first 500 words, there's it's genuinely interesting. It's fascinating to see. Again, they they have no agency, but what they are is like a mirror of the training dataset, which is kind of just a mirror of the Internet pointed at another mirror of the Internet in this endless recursive thing going off in either direction. It's sometimes nonsense, but it's pretty entertaining. And then you have this this Twitter bot that is promoting the best of it, to a pretty big audience at this point with, like, a lot of now money on the line. Line. It's a very weird situation, and it all has me thinking. We got an email of someone saying, hey. When is AI Jordan gonna come back? AI Jordan Scott, which for anyone that is unfamiliar, every couple years, we do an episode where where we look into the the state of deep fake technology, and we try and make the best version of ourselves that we can, treat a bunch of data from the show, and sort of just, like, let them talk and see how they sound. The current sort of reigning champ is a product called 11 Labs. It's very effective. But someone was asking, hey. Where are AI where's AI Jordan? And while I would never create a meme coin to try and make a bunch of money, I think AI Jordan is the exact kind of scoundrel that might. So I'm wondering at what point. Apparently, it costs $2, using a application. It's called Pump Fund. It costs $2 to create a meme coin on the Solana blockchain that'll immediately be available for purchase on all the decentralized exchanges. I think I just unleash that little gremlin on the Internet and see how much cold hard bucks it can make me.

Speaker 2: I I I, for one, support this venture. I think I think what you're not what you're discussing here is not only a great idea and something that would lead to a lot of great conversations, but, like, a whole series of content about, like, you living out all your darkest fantasies and desires, but through an AI. Like, you can it's like, your evil twin. Mhmm. We train up an AI, give it all your context, all your content, your voice, your likeness, and then we give it a bunch like, you sit down like a like a diary of all the dark thoughts you have and you just feel that.

Speaker 1: Just a list of things I wouldn't do IRL. Like, I'm not gonna start a meme coin. I'm not gonna try and take on Lunchables, with a bunch of other influencers. Just a bunch of Internet stuff I'm not willing to do. And then, like like, a mirror image just to be like, go and see what it does.

Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. I like this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody can have their own evil AI twin. It's like I wouldn't cross this moral line.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: But my evil twin does all the time.

Speaker 1: This little rascal over here.

Speaker 2: I can control it. But I also have access to his Bitcoin wallet, and I made all this money. So

Speaker 1: He's out here, make your money work for you is what I say.

Speaker 2: Make your make your robots work for you.

Speaker 1: Make your robots work for you. It is a genuinely fascinating, story. Andy Aries seems like they're up to a bunch of very interesting projects like this. Yeah. And it just sort of, like, hit a point of social media terminal velocity where it kind of ran off and became its its own new thing. It's also interesting something interesting in the fact that the person who created Goat, the coin, using this pump fun, whatever that $2 meme coin app was, had nothing to do with the project. They just saw a viral thing happening. They saw probably presumably the Andreessen investment. Mhmm. They saw just a lot of heat, and they kind of, like, threw a meme coin up to see if anything would happen and and now it's, you know, sponsoring f one racer level of money. I'm I'm I'm gonna I'm they're getting worse. The amount of things you can do with this money is getting worse each time. But, like, that's fascinating to me too is that they had nothing to do with the project.

Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. Evil twin.

Speaker 1: Evil twin. Who's who's to say

Speaker 2: it was even me? I'm gonna see I'm just gonna check GOUT to see how much it has changed in the time that we've been rambling about it.

Speaker 1: Since we started talking about it.

Speaker 2: It's gone up another $3,000,000. 703,000,000. I'm sure you I'm sure you could get f one team sponsorship inside of that budget. No problem.

Speaker 1: I think you could probably pull that off. I I was being a little bit I was being silly when I said space program level of money. But my god, that is an unfathomable amount of wealth wrapped up in a meme created by AI based on a old different meme. And religion. That's weird. And religion? But do they have faith? It's very murky.

Speaker 2: They have a 178,000 followers on Twitter. And, like, I will say that, like, I'm seeing who I follow

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 2: Follows them. And it's only one person, but it's like a very well respected businessperson. So it's very fascinating that out of all of the people I follow, not that I'm active on social media, but Yeah. That the person that that isn't following that is also, you know, lives in a world of high business. So,

Speaker 1: anyway Everyone's everyone's fascinated to see what it does next.

Speaker 2: Where should we go? Should we go Internet archive? I feel like that's a big story.

Speaker 1: I could talk about the Internet archive.

Speaker 2: Let's talk about the Internet.

Speaker 1: I've been known to archive things on the Internet sometimes.

Speaker 2: I've been known to look up things on the way back machine sometimes. There's when I first heard that it was getting hacked, I just assumed it was somebody looking to clean up after themselves. In in today's world

Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2: Having an archive archive of all of the terrible shit that you said on the Internet for the last, you know, twenty, thirty years, can be quite destructive for people. Doesn't even matter in what industry or job you're in. So I just kind of assumed that maybe somebody wanted to clean up after themselves.

Speaker 1: That is interesting. Yeah. The number of times I've seen a journalist on the Internet just reveal some extremely shady shit by just doing a basic Internet archive check. I could see there being a pretty long list of people that would love this service to not be online. Kind of disappointingly, that doesn't seem like why this happened. Maybe not disappointingly. Unintuitively, that's not maybe why this happened. But for anyone that doesn't know, just before we get out in front of our skis on this one, the Internet Archive was founded in 1996 by, Brewster Kahle. It's a nonprofit organization, and it operates archive.org, which gives you access to the Wayback Machine. It's just this giant free collection of digitized media and old websites, software, music. It's a big old library on the Internet. It's committed to open, you know, open research, open Internet policies, and a universal access to all knowledge. It's a very useful thing. If you've ever pussed around on the Internet for any amount of time, you've probably bumped into it. It's that in my mind, it sits in that same space as Wikipedia where I don't understand the economics of it, but I am happy it exists.

Speaker 2: See as Wikipedia, I can have we can have a little sidebar on Wikipedia because I remember I loved Wikipedia when it came out. You know, I used to use it all the time, read things about things. Like, it's just a knowledge hub, and they put up this big banner that was like, if we can raise x million dollars, Wikipedia will be sustainable forever. Donate today. We're trying to get to this goal. We'll never have to ask you for money again. And I was like, you know what? Here's, like, a $150 or whatever they wanted.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And now every time I go to the page, I gotta ask for more money. And I was like, don't you remember the promise you made me, like, fifteen years ago where you're like, we're gonna set up

Speaker 1: Oh, that's funny.

Speaker 2: An income trust, and we're gonna, like, be able to sustain this site off of returns and all this stuff. And now it's like every time I go to the site, I get a huge overlay that's like Yeah. You should donate money. And I was like, I did. The time you said that you

Speaker 1: never need to ask

Speaker 2: for money again if I gave you money. And I gave you money, and now you're still asking me for money,

Speaker 1: and I'm mad at you.

Speaker 2: And I'm letting people on my podcast hear about my anger towards you for no other reason. I like

Speaker 1: the idea that they didn't figure out till the second year this was gonna be a recurring thing, and they pissed off a lot of people in the first year. Exactly. Because now I have a sense that every year Wikipedia does a fundraising drive, like NPR or something. Like, it's just a part of how Wikipedia operates. But that first year, they thought they were never gonna need to do it again. So you give them a $150 and piss them off.

Speaker 2: Which makes sense, though. Like, it it it doesn't probably require that much cost since form of data and storage these days. Like, it does a lot, but, like, if you raise enough money and set it up in a in a way that it generated income, like, it makes sense. Like, this is how lots of trusts work. You know? People give massive amounts of money when they perish and or estates planning and stuff like that, and it goes into a big trust that earns revenue on the money base, and then that money base pays for the operating expenses. Like, it's it's what I hoped I was contributing to, and I was lied to. And now you all get to listen to me angry about it. But the, the Wayback Machine, I agree with you. I use it mostly when I'm having some form of sentimental moment and want to look up information on something that no longer exists, whether it's, like, the first website that I built when I was, like, 10 or the web community that I built when I was, like, 17. It's like I always use it to, like, go look into things. But the thing I will say is that it used to index forums and forum posts. So there's probably a lot of things that people discussed in the nineties and early two thousands in forums that are still accessible, and probably people don't want accessible. See, the

Speaker 1: thing I find it useful for, has a lot to do with this show, is very frequently we'll find ourselves going to the sites of some kinda dodgy, sketchy company that at some point was saying something, and it was part of some larger scheme. At a certain point, they said, take down that one page that is the sort of like third leg of the stool that was our grift. Mhmm. And the site goes down. You can't find it anymore. But you end up finding some link to a link to a link in a subreddit that points to this dead old page where if you could just see what it said there, the whole thing, the whole weird hack

Speaker 2: in that

Speaker 1: mystery would make sense. So I find myself going over to the Wayback, machine. I'm over at archive.org. It's extremely useful from that perspective. It's just like it's a which is I'm just describing like a library, basically. It's like, yes. You want that permanent repository of information. We live in an age where, the publisher of a book can rip the a certain page out of every copy of a book that exists in the world, essentially, to test this metaphor. And this is one library where they can't. It's like, we have the original copy of everything. It's extremely useful. On 10/09/2024, visitors to the website would get a, like, a pop up message saying that the website had been breached, contained a taunting message that suggested, like, this has always been sort of, like, potential to happen. Like, there's been a catastrophic security event waiting to happen to the archive, and it stated, quote, have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31,000,000 of you on have I been pwned.

Speaker 2: The the thing I will say to this is, like, if you've ever been to archive.org, I e, the Internet archive

Speaker 1: Yep.

Speaker 2: It doesn't strike you as a web page that's was routinely and vigorously maintained. Like, I'm pretty sure it is run by, like, a library. Is it not? I thought it was, like, funded, yeah, funded by by essentially foundations and support library and information resources, but I think it is a standalone site. But, but it it actually looks better now than the last time I went to it. Like, it always kinda looked like a website that was stuck in the early nineties.

Speaker 1: And Famously.

Speaker 2: Now it's currently in, like, the late nineties, but it's still, like, YouTube one point o kind of. And, so, yeah, it doesn't not overly surprising to me that there was probably some cross site scripting or SQL injection attack that made its way through in this thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It was down for a couple of weeks. Brewster Kale, the person who runs the nonprofit, confirmed that it had been taken down by a DDoS attack. Over on have I been pwned, they confirmed that they got a giant data file of, like, email addresses, screen names, passwords, time stamps, a bunch of other internal data for the 31, million unique email addresses, which they received nine days before the this sort of whole thing became public, sort of confirming the timeline as suggested by the hackers. Hunt verified the authenticity of the files. They basically, people were able to forensically confirm that these files are seemingly legitimate. A disclosure process started unfolding kind of through '8, October and the rest of the month during which the Internet archive is mostly down. This was not a sort of one and done type thing. The archive was down for several weeks. I remember this happening.

Speaker 2: Well, the the the thing I think too is, like, there was more than one attack. Right? Like, there was the compromise, then there was the DDoS, and then I think they had something happen on the development side, like, in their git GitHub GitLab stuff. So the the I think they were all independent potentially.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It seems like the DDoS and the initial compromise were different. There's a group called SN Black Meta that is claiming responsibility for, at the very least, the DDoS. It's not totally clear to me if they're also responsible for the data leak compromise. I it that starts to get kind of murky to me from reading through it.

Speaker 2: The the the SM Black Meta is apparently a pro Palestinian group, which I find interesting that they would go after the Internet archive strictly because it was a a US creation. Like, I feel like if you're a if you're a part of that conflict and you wanna make a difference, I feel like the Internet Archive is maybe not the best place to be dedicating your resources, but who am I to judge? I'm not a part of any conflicts.

Speaker 1: And it's it is this is where we start to get into, like, the murkiness of an unfolding situation. It's like it the verbiage in the original hack suggested that it was just a, like, we noticed that the door was open, so we raided the place. And then there's a competing story of maybe oh, okay. Well, it has to do with the genesis of the Internet Archive. It's like, I I don't really know why someone would do this. And to me, it does feel like that where it's okay. The Internet Archive is built out of sticks and leaves. I totally accept that premise. It was very insecure. But it does, to go back to that, strike me as you're walking down the road and you find a door unlocked. Whether or not you should go inside and rifle through their shit really depends on what is on the other side of that door. Soup kitchen, maybe don't. Maybe leave that one alone. Maybe it's just providing some utility. Maybe it's it's it's the one to not futz with so much. Weird investment bank. Go ham. Like, there's things that I am like, I have more and less problems with you noticing an open door and stepping through it.

Speaker 2: See, I'm glad you made the the the link to Soup Kitchen there because to me, that's the thing. It's like people love the archive. It's this weird

Speaker 1: I have a soft spot for you.

Speaker 2: Old site that, like, we all have this fondness for, like, sentimental, like, oh, remember that, like, GeoCities site and you, like, go look at it again after thirty five years and you're, like Yes. Wow. Like, I can't believe this is still on the Internet. And it is really, like like, it might have the biggest widest security vulnerabilities ever, but, like, don't fucking touch it. It's like it's due to purpose. People like it. Even bad people like it. Jordan's evil twin loves it. And it's like, leave it alone. Yeah. Go go pick go pick a fight with somebody that, like, you shouldn't like. Like, leave the archive alone. Yeah. I don't care where it's founded and and what, you know, I don't know. Anyway

Speaker 1: By the time anyone's listening to this so this episode will be dropping probably about a week after we record it because you and I are both traveling around for different stuff. By the time anyone's listening to this, as of the time of recording, the Internet Archive was back up online. It's mostly working. There's a couple little bits of functionality that aren't quite plugged back in yet, but by all accounts, they've they've built it back up. I hope they've built it more secure because I think that the thing about this is these once a story starts getting told of this group of people take it down took it down, and then they built it back up, and they made it more secure, and then this person decided to take it down. It's kinda it's like I don't want it to become a dominoes falling situation. It's like someone took it down. They built it back up better. Big flashy moment. Everyone move on. Everyone leave the Internet Archive alone. Unless there's something about it I'm not I'm not aware of, just it's a nice place with old websites.

Speaker 2: Ex exactly. Exactly. Unless there's some darkness lurking in the backroom at the archive.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Honestly, this is where we get, like, the hotline email being like you have no idea what is going on there.

Speaker 2: That would be awesome. Let if if you have more information, please call hotline, hotline hack dot com. Send us a story. We'd love to know about it. The always wanna hear it. I do wanna just use this to transition to something else that happened recently. Please. Apple's bug bounty platform came out.

Speaker 1: I heard about this for all the new Apple intelligence stuff.

Speaker 2: I don't know the exact dates when they launched this program, but I I think it's been, like, in the last couple weeks, like, since October like, late late October, and and kudos to them. Like, they're they're going head first into it. Like, if you can get past a lock screen on an iPhone, they'll give you up to a million dollars.

Speaker 1: It's, I'm just gonna rattle through this because you you shared the link with me, and it's his as is tradition with Apple, it is the most slickly presented bug bounty website I've ever seen. If you can get into a device with physical access to the device, it ranges between 5 k and $250,000. If you can get access to a device through a user installed app, it's between 5 k and a 150,000. A network attack with the user doing something, five k to $2.50, and then a network attack without the user doing anything. If you discover one and to not to put too fine a point on it, it's gotta be specifically a zero click kernel code execution with persistence and kernel PAC bypass. We'll find out what pack means in a second. That the upper ceiling on that is a million bucks. You find that in a computer they will sell you a million dollars.

Speaker 2: Bucks. Well, even, like, furthermore, like, when you're if you're in an iPhone, if you put it in lockdown mode, so you've lost it, if you can get access to that device once it's in lockdown mode, $2,000,000. Like 2,000,000. I love seeing this. Like, Apple's taken it seriously. They've embraced it. They've set up their own microsite for it. They have ways to submit your research and file reports. Like, it is awesome. Good for them. Super happy about it. Yeah. And, like, maybe if the archive had had one of these programs I'm just joking. The archive doesn't have enough money for one of these programs.

Speaker 1: I was gonna say, yeah, too. They're gonna throw it around $2,000,000 bounties. $2,000,000. Think about how much GoDSS Maximus you could buy with that.

Speaker 2: All of it a lot

Speaker 1: quite a few

Speaker 2: that's actually one

Speaker 1: actually no it's not

Speaker 2: you could buy one close

Speaker 1: one you could buy one meme coin that by the end of this episode will have doubled in revenue I can't say that

Speaker 2: You will have won three hundred and fiftieth of all of the coziest accidents. Oh my god. Anyway anyway, I just thought this

Speaker 1: was a small progression.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Cheers.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I like that one. Well, why don't we we're I think we're about halfway through one of these bad boys. I feel like a jaunt to an oasis where sponsors and products and brand synergy live. So why don't we

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Go on over to the, the advertising oasis. And when we come back, we'll talk about McDonald's ice cream machines and other hacky techie stories. Here on Hacked. Starting some new isn't just hard. It can be downright terrifying. You put a lot of work into a thing. You're not entirely sure it's gonna work out. You're taking a huge leap of faith. I've started a few things. Now I know I was right for believing in, you know, the idea, the product, despite all of those fears and hesitations. But boy, does it sure help when you have a partner like Shopify on your side. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in The US. From household names like, well, hacked podcasts merch, to brands just getting started, you can get started with your own design studio with hundreds of ready to use templates. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style. Did I mention that that iconic purple shop pay button that's used by millions of businesses around the world? I don't know why I wouldn't. I should. It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. It also helps boost conversions, meaning less carts sort of getting abandoned in the parking lot and more sales for you. It's time to turn those what ifs into sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/hacked. Go to shopify.com/hacked. One more time, that's shopify.com/hacked.

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Speaker 5: Zootopia two has come home to Disney plus. Let's go. Get ready for a new case. We're gonna crack this case and prove partners of all time. New friends. You are Gary Desnake. And your last name? Desnake.

Speaker 4: Dream team.

Speaker 2: What? The new habitat. Zootopia has a secret reptile population.

Speaker 5: You could watch the record breaking phenomenon at home.

Speaker 1: You're clearly working at

Speaker 5: it. Zootopia two, now available on Disney plus rated PG.

Speaker 1: And we're back. What's your

Speaker 2: reverb chamber.

Speaker 1: You'll be the reverb chamber. It's a long tail. It's a plate reverb, one of the old ones.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Exactly. Beautiful level of plates.

Speaker 1: I know. We should just we should we should have a gear head segment and really test the boundaries of what because no one should listen to us talking about, like, our favorite VST, but I would, and I would enjoy it. Patreon episode. Patreon. Patreon episode. Patreon. Patreon.

Speaker 2: Patreon. Patreon. Patreon. Should we do a few little shout outs to patrons? What do you

Speaker 1: think of

Speaker 2: that idea?

Speaker 1: Hot dang. It's been a second. I think that's a great idea.

Speaker 2: I think we're starting with Colonel Mustard. Thank you, Colonel Mustard. We appreciate it, and we appreciate you. And it was never you, not with the candlestick, not in the library. But thank you for thank you for supporting the show.

Speaker 1: Thank you. I was like, why do I know that? What is Colonel Mustard from? He's a murderer is what he is. Thank you, Colonel Mustard. Clue. It's Clue reference. Andrew Johnson, thank you so much for your support. It means the world to us.

Speaker 2: Mark. Just Mark. Thanks, Mark. That's all

Speaker 1: you need. Okay. DM, thank you so much for your support. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 2: Mhmm. Same with, Jillian. Jillian, appreciate you. Appreciate support and appreciate all the patrons for supporting us.

Speaker 1: And last but not least, and I think I've said appreciate too much, I honor you, Henrik Learnmark.

Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that's an Einrich. Einrich. I had to be Einrich.

Speaker 1: Oh. I honor you, Einrich. Thank you so much. It's Maybe not. Maybe it's Einrich, and

Speaker 2: we've just Entering. His name unintentionally, and I apologize. We

Speaker 1: still It it it it was an honest error. We honor you.

Speaker 2: By being dishonorable to your name.

Speaker 1: If you wanna support the show, kick on over to hackedpodcast.com. It has a there's a link that redirects to our Patreon. It really means a lot. Helps us make the show. If you like hearing us talk about things like ice cream machines. So this next story, I wanna dig into it real quick because a couple different people sent me this link, and I was so happy to get this link. Because as I said earlier, it means that when people think about McDonald's ice cream machines, they think about me, and that's funny. So a few years ago, we covered this story. It was a right to repair story that concerned the McDonald's ice cream machine, which is manufactured by a large company called Taylor. Taylor makes all of the ice McDonald's ice cream machines for a bunch of very complicated reasons. They any McDonald's, doesn't matter where on earth you're going, you're probably almost certainly using a Taylor ice cream machine. And a legal dispute that emerged when a company called Kitsch, spelled k y t c h, developed a workaround. McDonald's soft serve machines famously, and there's a lot of great content on this phenomenon, don't work great all of the time. There was a heat map that someone published on the Internet of where McDonald's ice cream machines were down because in a in a fast food restaurant where a hurricane could be hitting while you're in it and they wouldn't stop frying fries, If you looked at the ice cream machine funny, it would stop working.

Speaker 2: So the mcbroken.com is the Yes. Is the service that Jordan is alluding to, and there are currently 15% of all McDonald's ice cream machines are down. Yes.

Speaker 1: If you

Speaker 2: live in New York City, you're extra punished by 32% of them are down. San Antonio, 20.51. Anyway, you have the ability to literally look up any McDonald's location and see if their machine is down or not.

Speaker 1: Yes. Part of the reason they're down isn't always, like, brass tacks physical hardware. There's ice cream goop in the wrong chamber type stuff. It has to do with the computers that run the machines, which is why we were talking about it. At the heart of it are these error codes. It all starts to get very murky, but something goes wrong with the machine. You don't know what it is. You're getting an error code. You can't check what the error code means, and you can't do anything to address the error code unless someone comes in and connects this Taylor designated, diagnostics tool, which means that all of these McDonald's are in a constant state of waiting for Taylor to send a repair person that had access to this diagnostic tool so they could go boop, and suddenly your ice cream machine works again because there wasn't anything physically wrong with it.

Speaker 2: But that service call costs?

Speaker 1: A bunch of money.

Speaker 2: Bunch of money.

Speaker 1: Taylor and McDonald's have this long standing relationship that goes back. It costs being offloaded to the franchisees. It's a whole story if you're interested in it. I think we dropped it at, like, Christmas two years ago maybe. Go find it. It's the McDonald's ice cream show. We'll link to it in the notes. Kitsch comes along, and they develop a aftermarket add on to these machines machines that allows you to circumvent that entire process. You already own the Taylor machine, but if you attach this little thing to it, it lets you not in some cases, not have to call the Taylor repair person and just solve the problem yourself. It lets you it gives you the right to repair the thing you already own. Which is important.

Speaker 2: The, I will say I just wanna jump in and say I've just looking at at kitsch.com for the first time since we did that story. Yes. And it looks like they've made some big improvements to this thing. Like, it now has, like, predictive maintenance scheduling using AI. You have like full insight into your device and like the timeline it's been on and like what it's doing. Like it looks like a site like for something that's not supposed to exist. They're making improvements to it and they're making it better. The,

Speaker 1: the two companies, Kitchen McDonald's Taylor McDonald's started saying you can't use these kitchen devices. Kitchen McDonald's end up in a legal back and forth. It becomes this sort of microcosm of the larger right to repair situation in The United States. It's a fascinating story, and that's why we talked about it. And the reason we're talking about it right now is that the US copyright office has granted an exception allowing repair of retail level food preparation machines, including McDonald's soft serve ice cream machines. Essentially, the right to repair folks on this one seemingly have won.

Speaker 2: Notably, McDonald's franchisees who were losing massive amounts of overheads and expenditures to just having somebody come in and hit the reset button on these things or or, you know, attaching some small module. Now they can manage and maintain their own cost lines, which is huge for them. Huge. Yeah. And it

Speaker 1: was just like a nice kinda showing up moment for so iFixit, who's big on the right to repair side of things. There's a consumer advocacy group called Public Knowledge that is big into this. So many people know about the McDonald's ice cream machine story that a bunch of these different advocacy groups that care about this issue were able to use this set of lawsuits between Kitchen McDonald's as a sort of, like, rally and cry to be able to start petitioning that let's just start with some exemptions for this, that, like, you do have a right to repair some of these things. You should be allowed to fix this equipment that you've already purchased. It doesn't help consumers that these products aren't available, and it, if anything, drives up costs to have to be constantly paying for arbitrary servicing of a machine that is otherwise totally functional. Mhmm. It was just like a very easy win for the right to repair community to be able to point to this and be like, this is just very, very clearly, an icky kind of corporate capture that just isn't serving anybody. And as such, they they did a pretty good job rallying around it and seemingly have have, for the time being, won.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think this conversation, obviously, like, the right to repair stuff has been long long in discussion and long in conversation. And I think it's just gonna be this is just the first precedent. You know? Now that you start getting exemption precedent set, you're gonna see more and more of them. I'm trying to think off the top of my mind other things that I can think of that we don't have the right to repair, but I can't. Yeah. Like the I'd say that the industry has responded to this movement greatly. Like, I can take my phone. I can take my laptops. I can I you know, I've always made my own PC computers? Like, you know, there's there's I'm trying to think what else there is in that ballpark.

Speaker 1: I actually have a good one for this because there was a story about a year ago, that I we never talked about on this show that was itself a callback to an even older episode. We did an episode about called tractor hacking Yeah. Yeah. That had to do with this exact same kind of thing, right to repair. We haven't done a good right to repair story in a while. Mhmm. It's had to do with John Deere tractors. And about a year ago, tractor maker John Deere was had agreed to give US customers the right to fix their own equipment, prior to which point farmers were only allowed to use authorized parts and service facilities, designated by John Deere other than, like, cheaper independent local repair options. Now, obviously, this isn't the kind of thing where these companies have had a vast and immediate moral awakening. There's still a bunch of things that large companies can do to say, yes, you can technically we believe in right to repair. You should be able to repair this, and now you can. Just, order this $100,000 part that we will ship to you temporarily to allow you to do it in the proper it's like, it's not they haven't changed their mind. They've just decided they don't want the heat anymore. However, it is a good thing when these companies acknowledge that, like, you are on the wrong side of the battle when you insist that if a person wants to change a dongle on their tractor, they gotta spend $7,000 shipping it off to some repair place.

Speaker 2: Well, could you, like, just, like could you imagine the world we lived in if, like, say, just automotive said this, like, automobiles? Like, if you bought a car or a truck and you had no right to repair it, like, they kinda do it through warrantying, which which I get I get on both sides of it because if you take your vehicle for repair at a non warranty dealership while it's under warranty, there could be knock on impacts of that that they can't then warranty the work of others. And, like, I from a business perspective, I understand that, but just imagine you never had the right to repair it. It's like you bought a Honda. You're now locked into the Honda maintenance deal. And it's like I I guess that's kind of where Kinda where it's gone. Well, kinda I was gonna say I was gonna make a link to the subscription world that we live in now where it's like Sure. You're seeing now a lot of companies structuring around, you know, instead of just a large capital asset that we need to sell x million of a year, How do we lock X million or Y million people into a subscription model and whether it's better for you or worse for you, there's a whole discussion about that economically and philosophy. Like we go into video games, video games is going through this. Ubisoft's been eating their words on, you know, you'll never own a video game again. So quit pretending like you're going to, like, they're that was the exact quote, but essentially, it was something like that. But but, yeah, I don't know. It's it's like, just the transition society is going through where it's like these right to repair maintenance costs, things like that, in a subscription world versus in a you own the asset and not have to pay for it. Because the reality is that, like, the manufacturers often need residual revenues and residual incomes to stay in business like software. Software made such perfect sense to become a subscription model because it has a cost of maintenance and a cost of operation. And if I just charge you $79 to buy it, like like think of the Adobe Creative Cloud, like a classic example of a subscription software that we own many licenses to and despise.

Speaker 1: With a fiery passion.

Speaker 2: With a fiery passion. But it's like we used to pay $1,300 for a creative suite. You'd buy it in a box. It come with CDs. You know, you install it.

Speaker 1: You owned it.

Speaker 2: You owned it. But then they'd make it irrelevant in a year. So you'd have to go out and spend another $1,300 if you wanted the latest version. And it's like you you were in this, like, upgrade cycle strictly from, like, a professional perspective. And now we just pay them, whatever, $74.99 a month, and and we never have to worry about it again. Technically, where it's probably the same price, the software is probably updated better and more often. And Adobe's worth way more because they have this insane residual cash machine that that their clientele base has become. So it's I see it from both sides. I hate it from both sides. I also love it from both sides. I'm not sure I'm not sure. Condamine. I'll ask my evil twin.

Speaker 1: Yeah. You ask your evil AI twin what they think of it. There's like a there's different shades of this behavior. There's taking a product you used to buy for a fixed price and selling it off for a monthly fee. There's creating a new product that always was a subscription. It's like you never bought Spotify for $500 and just had it forever. It was always a subscription. And then there's this sort of like dark corner which is taking a basic functionality of the device and clawing it back inside of a subscription. And we don't think of the right to repair a thing as a basic functionality of the device, but it is. So if the way that you find to monetize something in the long term isn't pushing cool software updates to the tractor that allow it to do, I don't know, farming, tractor stuff on its own or to be somehow better to sell an improvement, but to say, I'm gonna take the basic functionality of this, which is that you have to fix it sometimes, and I'm gonna hide that behind what is basically a subscription in the fact that you have to come a paywall. Yeah. It's like, to me, that's the we can talk about the first two, and I can even not have a problem with the second one. But that third one where you're just, like, making a thing worse to juice me for more money over a longer period of time to, like, make sure that your stock price is extra stable is, like, well, not a fan of that one. Don't love it.

Speaker 2: I think the and we're already you're seeing it, but I think the next ten years are gonna be really interesting as we see the subscription model. Just because from a cash flow business perspective, it is such an optimized model completely predictive revenues for predicting expenses and liabilities. Like it just makes so much sense brings tons of shareholder value, but it also can bring value to people who are on the purchasing end because it's consistent delivery like this. There are pros and cons from both sides. Yeah. And it's like you're starting to see this creep into, like, cars. It's like, oh, you bought a new BMW. It's like, do you want massaging in the seats? The motors are in the seats to give you the massage, but if you wanna unlock it, it's $13.99 a month.

Speaker 1: And

Speaker 2: it's like you're starting to see, like, let's just say hypothetical. Yeah.

Speaker 1: But I think it's hypothetical. But I think it's

Speaker 2: yeah. But it's like, as we start to see manufacturers of high capital assets try and figure out how to work in subscription models. It's like we talked about with like like Whoop or like Sleep eight, you know, these are like higher capital expenditure products that then have a high subscription cost. And it's like, I'm not getting anything for that subscription cost besides base operation of the thing that I spent a boatload of money on. So it's like, I would love it if if I could buy a sleep eight. We was getting a ton of free publicity right now. You're welcome. Yeah. Except for the fact that I despise your subscription model. The I would love to own one because my wife and I are very different sleepers in temperature, except for that I would maybe even start to to justify the massive capital expenditure to put it on our kink bed, except for the fact that it's then, like, locking me into, like, a $6,700 a year residual subscription. And I'm like, well, why am I paying that? I've just given you $4,000 for this thing that's gonna break at some point. Like, it's a mechanical system. So it's like, are you gonna give me a new one of these when this one breaks? Like, if I'm paying this this this subscription, does it come with an infinite warranty? Because maybe at that point, I'd consider it. But, like, I don't know. I don't know. So it's gonna be

Speaker 1: a Hey.

Speaker 2: Weird transition for us all.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it it is not inevitable. This to me strikes me as, like, fine. The the the stock price really loves it when you have that long term committed cash flow coming in. But if the market says I'm simply not willing to purchase a fitness ring that costs $4.99 a month to let me use a app that could basically be a website Mhmm. Or a webcam. There's a webcam that monthly subscription. There's all these little products that I've gotten right up to the edge of purchasing, but then as a matter of principle, I'm like, no. You don't get $6.99 a month for me to use this thing. Either price it in.

Speaker 2: Or or give me the thing.

Speaker 1: Or give me sell me the sell me the thing and price it in or don't. Yeah. But this weird middle ground where you're just like, hey, by the way, your, your webcam costs $2.99 more a month. You just get one of those emails that just sort of politely informs you that a thing you use every day costs more every single month. It's like, no. I'm gonna I'm gonna vote with my dollars on this one. It is not inevitable. We don't all have to go with this. It's like just don't buy those products. I try not to.

Speaker 2: But it's like if there's there's ones that like I can think of that we've been paying for forever like PlayStation Network. It's like it's like you I got a PS3 when they launched and it was like I made a PSN account and you started to be like, I'm I've been a PSN subscriber for so long.

Speaker 1: I'm not anti subscription. I'm not like I would never give money monthly for a thing as I'm watching Netflix. Like, it's like, no, that's not what I'm saying. I was saying, no. Sell me physical shit and then claw back basic functionality

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: Behind a subscription because it's good for, like, a CEO. It's like, that's just stupid.

Speaker 2: Well, here here I'm about to say it, but, like, multiplayer gaming

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Is behind that paywall subscription in a lot of these services. Xbox, I think Nintendo, you're not allowed to multiplayer unless you pay for their connection. PlayStation has gone that way. So so something that I would have considered an essential service

Speaker 1: Or functionality. Years ago. Normalized.

Speaker 2: Got normalized into being something that I now have to pay for.

Speaker 1: And it's like I'm a I'm a hypocrite. AI Jordan, who is speaking right now, is a is

Speaker 2: a hypocrite. But but yeah. So I'm I'm like, I guess, like, rent is a form of subscription living costs. Like nobody really can discuss like, it's becoming a big reach for most people to just walk out and buy a home. And if and if they can buy a home, they're essentially getting a subscription prepayment from the bank. So it's it's like

Speaker 1: It it sort of is. I I would almost test that a little bit and say that in this metaphor, condo fees are what we're talking about. Because rent is I'm paying you for this thing for a period of time, which is different than I bought a thing, but I

Speaker 2: have to

Speaker 1: keep piling a little bit of money. And it's sort of unclear whether or not it's actually paying for something. Even that is getting piled up to pay for repairs. It's the closest thing to the metaphor here.

Speaker 2: See see see, but but here's the thing is, like, you say you own a home. Evil Jordan evil Jordan's crypto scheme has gone very well. He's gone out and bought a cash home.

Speaker 1: Oh, wow. He's doing good, isn't he? Yeah. He's really thriving.

Speaker 2: You now have a subscription for taxes, property taxes. You have a subscription for education funding that even if you have children or not, you're paying a subscription into the economy to develop the next generation. You have a subscription for energy and heating so that your house doesn't freeze up in the winter or burn down. You pay so you pay all of these subscriptions on top of it. You have to pay maintenance when it comes up. Condo fees are literally just the amalgamation of a few of those things. Insurance payments. You know, often utility bills, things like that all just get rolled into a condo fee. So so they're just operating expenses. But I but I do hear you.

Speaker 1: And imagine if we could take all of that great sense of collectively tied into the collective good and making my community better and apply it to fitness band companies. It's like my feeling changes a little bit. Tractors, ice cream machines. What if everything worked that way? It's like I like how it works for those things.

Speaker 2: Like that like I'm almost at the point now where it's like if I want a subscription, it's like give me the thing. Yeah. It's like I can go I can walk into a cell company store tomorrow or today and be like I want a phone I have no money and they'll bake the cost of the phone on Some kind of return plan right into my plan Like I'm essentially renting the phone and for the period of my plan

Speaker 1: rent to own

Speaker 2: Yeah, but not even you don't never really own it because you've already agreed to return it at some point You're just leasing it to use it and it's like I'm honestly more at peace with those forms of deals because it's like at least it's your product and I'm getting it for essentially no money upfront. Where in something like a PlayStation Network or a Eight Sleep or a fitness band or out, etcetera, etcetera, I'm shelling out a boatload of capital expenditure to buy something that I then have to pay you $6.99 plus plus plus a month for just to use and and that irritates me.

Speaker 1: I agree.

Speaker 2: I agree.

Speaker 1: Big agree.

Speaker 2: So we have digressed greatly for right

Speaker 1: to remain there. Ice cream. Go buy some. Do we have anything else we wanna talk about? This is all an ad for McDonald's, the new McFlurry. Yeah.

Speaker 2: We do have the a quick thing. We need to do a quick hit on this thing because we've mentioned in the intro the

Speaker 1: Hit me with it.

Speaker 2: Fellow Canadian, Alexander Mucha. I'm assuming I'm messing that name up as I do with all names.

Speaker 1: From Ontario.

Speaker 2: Ontario, Canada. 26 years old has been arrested. He stole a bunch of data from a large data warehousing service called Snowflake. Notably deals mostly with large businesses with lots of people that do, like, complex AI and LLM storages. So that, like, a lot of more interesting knowledge than, like, what's probably on, like, Dropbox or Box or

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 2: Google things. Like, this is all massive corporate data associated probably with massive corporate databases and probably worth, therefore, a larger value. He sold a bunch of it, held it hostage, demanded a ransom, got arrested, and is likely going to do a long bout in jail.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Known online, and I'm just gonna rip through this, as Judish, which I don't know that reference, and Waifu, which I do know that reference, was arrested by Canadian authorities about, like, a week and change ago under, an arrest warrant issued at the request of The United States. He appeared on court yesterday at time of recording as part of an ongoing extradition proceeding, where he's gonna be sent out of The States in in to do with his role in all of these hacks we're talking about here. He started in, like, April 2024. He goes after Snowflake, goes after AT and T, goes after Live Nation, owners of Ticketmaster, who we've talked about on

Speaker 2: the show before. We've talked about their data compromise. I wonder if it's not this data compromise. Pretty sure.

Speaker 1: Connect the dots. Mandiant, who's owned by Google, was hired by Snowflake to investigate and reported in June that these compromised login details, which were obtained through an info stealer malware, were used to gain authorized access, and they worked their way back to Alexander Connor Mucha, aka Judish.

Speaker 2: A k a Waifu. Waifu. Waifu. Waifu. Waifu. Yes. Yeah. And, apparently, if you refuse to pay it, he brokered it for sale. He was, partnering with a Kipper phantom, somebody probably on the dark web, who was then selling it, which is where I'm assuming all the Taylor Swift tickets might have come from.

Speaker 1: So I was recently I was recently booking, some travel. This is a total aside, as part of, like, a work project. And we were looking at dates, and we couldn't figure out why there was, like, a day two random days in the middle of the booking where the prices of everything quintupled. Like, no word of a lie. Like, hotel prices went from, like, $200 in that neighborhood to, like, a thousand dollars. And we realized, we're in a Taylor Swift is in her screwing up our travel plans era, and that there was a concert in the city that we were going to on that one particular date, and the economic impacts of it were truly devastating. We, like, literally changed the dates as a result to it. I'm sure that's not why Alexander Mucha went on this hacking tirade to try and reduce our, our travel costs nor would I want them to. I have no beef with Taylor Swift. Anyway, Canada. Extraditing this fella down to The States for his role in these different hacks. It was a real spree. He he didn't he didn't shy away from the limelight. It was this was a lot of hacks in a very compressed period of time.

Speaker 2: Hey. In all honesty, like, we could, don't know if we need to have a conversation about it, but, like, I feel like that's probably not a bad option. Like, rather than I feel like you as you commit cybercrime, you converge to arrest. And the longer that you are in

Speaker 1: Yes. I see what you're saying.

Speaker 2: You were in market as a cybercriminal, you're converging faster and faster to arrest. And I feel like if I were to be looking to get in, hit a couple of dingers, and get out of the ballpark before anybody knew, I'd probably be doing the same thing. So strategically, Cotton, getting in and out, you know, heist style.

Speaker 1: Totally. It, it seemed, honestly, like it was kind of going okay until until Snowflake hired Mandiant. Like, it it seemed like it was kind of working, but it's like we, it's like we discussed with Batiste in the most recent episode that went live. If you do this for long and you put it very well. You converge towards arrest. It's not inevitable, and there are certain contexts in which it might not necessarily happen based on where you live.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: But all things being equal, you are just you sort of converge towards getting got.

Speaker 2: Well, the thing is too, like, we met a lot of the mania guys at Defcon, and they all seemed Right. Very capable.

Speaker 1: Yeah. That's true. I forgot about that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And, yeah, they're not people if you're any kind of recreational hacker that found a security vulnerability, they're probably you're probably unprepared or ill prepared for the sophistication of the people on the other side of the table. So

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a fascinating one. I I'm curious to know more about the process of Canada extraditing to The States for cybercrime. Like, I'm just curious to understand the mechanics of how that works. It just seems interesting.

Speaker 2: I feel like it's the same way it would work if you were, like, a bank robber.

Speaker 1: That's true.

Speaker 2: They probably put you into a plane and fly you

Speaker 1: And fly you there? And they arrest you when you land. Oh, you've been in

Speaker 2: the right? You're probably under secured, like, convoy to get there. You get out of the plane, and you go right in the back of a different armed police vehicle. Yeah. And they shuffle you off to a different prison.

Speaker 1: Did I tell you we'll wrap up here. I'm not sure if I told this on the air or I just told you, off air. Did I tell you about the time that I landed on an airplane and that happened? No. Not to me, obviously.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Speaker 1: Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. I'm calling from a secure location.

Speaker 2: This is good Jordan? This is

Speaker 1: good Jordan, darling.

Speaker 2: Chaotically evil Jordan?

Speaker 1: Totally. We, I landed I don't even remember where it was, but I I remember landing, and the plane landed and taxied in. And the gate connected. You could you could see it through the window. And then we just sat there for, like, a a weirdly long period of time. So I came on over the intercom and said, sorry. We're just, we're just working through some stuff. Just just hold tight everybody. The the seat belt side is still on. Someone stood up to go to the bathroom and they came on with a real sense of urgency. Like, the seat belt sign is still on. You need to sit down. And everyone it's kind of a weird vibe starts to emerge in the plane. Look up straight down the aisle and like four plainclothes dudes are just walking very seriously towards me, or down the plane. And they walk up to a guy and they have a very tiny little conversation. And then I see the, the police badge on the metal chain inside the coat get popped up, and they gesture for him to stand up. And the guy stands up, and he has his hands above his head. And they just, like, get his bag out from from the, overhead cabin and quietly walk him out. And there's this long pregnant pause, and the flight attendant comes on the radio after a second and goes, well, okay. We've arrived. And it's, like, giant weird. And everyone just, like, exhales. A couple people laugh. Everyone starts looking at each other. Yeah. So that does happen, all the time. And I never did figure out who that person was. I was never able to work out person arrested because it was, if I remember right, an international flight.

Speaker 2: It's probably some it's probably I would say it's probably something insanely boring. Yeah. Like, it was like Access. They failed to show up for something, and then there was all of a sudden there was, like, an arrest warrant put out for them or warrant for their arrest.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And then they, like, moved to Russia for thirteen years. They they came home for a

Speaker 1: funeral. From Russia. It was a flight from Russia. Actually? No. It wasn't.

Speaker 2: But, like, they you know, they came home for, like, a funeral or a wedding or so. Family, and they hadn't thought about it in a decade. And then literally, they're just like, oh, yeah. Right. You're still a wanted criminal because you failed to appear at some, you know, justice proceeding. Yeah. So He

Speaker 1: had a look of he didn't look surprised. That was the one other detail I remember. It was it it wasn't like, what's going on? I I know nothing about it. A giant bag with dollar signs on it. I've never like, there was none of that. It was very like, hey, Ricky. Hey, Allen. Hey, Doug. Hey, guys. Alright. Come on. Like, it had a real sense of familiarity to it. I don't know if I'm projecting, but that was what I saw. And maybe that's happened here. I think that's another one I think that's another one in the bucket. Goat Sea of Gnosis, McDonald's ice cream machines. Apple's very good bug bounty. Mhmm. It was a fun one.

Speaker 2: Snowflake. Snowflake. And the Canadian the Canadian hackers.

Speaker 1: And the Canadian hacker.

Speaker 2: Chaotic his chaotic evil twin, it must have been. Because Canadians are all, you know, neutral good, if not

Speaker 1: Neutral good. Yeah. We would never create meme coins. We would never create an AI specifically tasked with creating meme coins, that we will lie about not having any holdings in. That's another one in the bucket. Thanks again for listening, everybody, and we'll catch you in the next one. Take care, buddy.

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Speaker 2: I thought it was safe.

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