January 9, 2024 • 31 mins
Robert sits down with a friend to discuss setting up a mesh network to enable off-grid, encrypted communications between you and your people.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Who Zone Media, Welcome back to it could happen here, everybody.
I am Robert Evans, and I want to start today
by kind of proposing a theoretical Right, you wake up
in the morning and something is awry. You know, maybe
maybe you hear shots, maybe there's some sort of natural disaster.
You know, maybe it's that that weird Havana syndron death
(00:25):
sound from the Obama movie that just came out on
what was it Netflix? But something's fucked up. And you know,
most people, I think especially most people who listen to
this podcast, you've probably had conversations with your friends and
loved ones about what do we do when the quote
unquote apocalypse or shit hits the fan. You know, you've
got your friends who maybe you know they have a
lot of stored food, or they have some other skill
that you think would be useful. And you've got some
(00:47):
stuff that's that that that you know you know how
to do. You've got your people right that you would
want to be with and around if something's really going
wrong out there, because you know how to take care
of each other. But how do you get in contact right,
assuming you don't all live together, assuming you're not all
on some sort of commune type situation, as most people aren't.
You're probably scattered throughout the city. Maybe you've got some
(01:09):
friends out, you know, in the suburbs, Maybe you've got
some friends who live out in rural land. Maybe you've
just got a friend who lives halfway across town. And
you know, that's no problem when you've got a phone
and you've got you know, Google Maps working. But can
you get there on your own? Can you get there
or get into contact with them if the streets are
all clogged up with cars or whatever, like, how are
you going to reach them? How are you going to
(01:31):
you know, get in touch in order to figure out
what's going on? And how are you going to stay
in touch while you handle whatever you need to handle
for whatever is going wrong. Well that's what we're going
to talk about today, because if the cell networks are down,
if they're being blocked, if you know, the Obama situation happens,
there are things you can do to allow you and
(01:53):
your friends, comrades, affinity group, whatever you want to call them,
to stay in touch. And a lot of this revolves
around a kind of technical usage called a mesh network.
And I don't know much about that because I am
a big dummy. But a person who is not a
dummy is our guest today. They go by Hydroponic Trash
(02:13):
on Twitter and they are going to talk to us
today about how to set up independent communications networks that
do not rely on the standard grid. Hello, and welcome
to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Hey, what's up? Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, thank you for coming on. You posted a thread
on Twitter about using You know, it's called like LOWRA
low frequency radio. Is that what it stands for?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, LORA stands technically for long range, but yeah, it's
a long range frequency radio that broadcasts a pretty specific
wavelength that can travel really far throughout the air. So
it's perfect for communications long distance.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
And it's if you've got devices set up on this
they each basically act as nodes, right, So the more
you have the kind of wider signal distribution you get.
If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, Like if you've
got someone three miles away and then another person five
miles to the west of them, then you kind of
are able to cover that whole distance.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, exactly. So think of it like a relay system, right, Yah,
one person has a message they send it off to
another person. That person passes it on to the next node,
and so mesh networks are really resilient when it comes
to emergencies, when it comes to protests, when it comes
to occupation and conflict zones, because if one node goes down,
(03:40):
as long as there's other ones that can pick up
that message and keep repeating it and broadcasting it out.
So it's a really interesting piece of technology that is
similar to traditional radios, but also different because all the
communications can be encrypted end to end, which is a
huge delay of security.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Because you can the thing most people's default if you're
thinking like, well, how do you get some like walkie talkies?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
You know, you get some and those can you know,
those have their place and stuff, but they are also
not always the most secure options. So being able to
encrypt shit is a huge deal, especially when you're talking
about like outside of a shit hits the fan kind
of deal, which is less likely than you know, some
sort of civil unrest protest use case. You know, being
able to actually encrypt is huge. Yeah, So I'm a dummy.
(04:31):
I don't understand much about setting up my own technology independently,
but I find this interesting. I see the use case.
I decide I want to you know, set this up
and start, you know, building an emergency mesh network with
a half dozen of my friends. Where do I start?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So, first thing is you'll need some hardware that supports LORA.
There are a ton of different things out there, ranging
from maybe twenty twenty five bucks going all the way
up to thousands of dollars, So there's a big range,
and that range really depends on the enclosure, what's included
in it, the broadcast strength, all that good stuff. So
(05:13):
obviously the cheaper you go, the weaker the broadcast strength is.
There might be development boards that are just literally like
the PCB, like actual hardware with no case around it.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, and there's there's some that you can just pick
up and immediately use, and so it kind of depends.
But that's the first step is finding hardware that can
handle LORA, and then you know obviously getting it and
then flashing it with the correct software. And that sounds
really complicated, but for our purposes of sending text messages
(05:48):
without any kind of cellular, LTE or Wi Fi connection,
you can use super cheap devices and flashing them is
you click a couple buttons and you're done.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So, first off, do you have any kind of specific
you know, I know you're working on a text piece
that you can put up to explain all this, and
I I will certainly share that as soon as it
gets up. But do you have any specific like if
somebody's saying, hey, I've got you know, a budget of
fifty bucks, you know, or so, is there a complete
device you would recommend if they're or somewhere in that
(06:21):
median range, like kind of on the lower end, a
thing that someone doesn't know how to take, you know,
a raw board and craft that into a usable device
that you would recommend they purchase. Is to start us
off here.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, definitely. So I kind of have two different options.
One is a standalone option that can kind of work
by itself, completely independent of anything else, and another one
uses your phone, So you'll flash it to the board
and then connective or bluetooth to your phone just like
a pair of headphones.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Awsot, Oh that's so easy.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, And so you kind of have options if you
want a standalone version. There's a company called Lilygo that
makes a thing called a te deck and it's pretty small.
It looks like a BlackBerry Clone. Yeah, it has a
little mouse thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
It looks like a BlackBerry kind of crossed with a
game camera. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's like thicker
in the back, it's got that big antenna. Yeah yeah,
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And so the Lego t Deck is what this is called.
It's a BlackBerry Clone. Basically, it has lowra built in,
it has Bluetooth, and so all you have to do
is get powered to this thing, flash it with mesh
tastic and there you go. Now you have a Now
you can type out messages, you can send direct messages,
(07:41):
you can send encrypted messages, all with one device. That's
thirty five dollars.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Oh man, that's great. And this is something you can
get like Ali Express was your recommendation, right, yeah, Ali Express.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Probably be the best if you're trying to order a lot.
If you want one right now, you can order them
on places like Amazon, but it's going to cost you
and also fuck Amazon.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
So yeah, I mean you are slightly doomed to support
one horrible billionaire or another like Kelly expresses. But no,
I get it.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, And I mean one of the upsides to like
an all in one thing like this is like I
three d printed this case, but you don't have to
print a case. You can literally just set this into
a shoe box or something and protect it. So there's
a lot of options on the cases that you want
to use. You could buy pre made cases, or you
could just, I don't know, just put something to protect
(08:40):
the board back here and then screw on an antenna.
You're good.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, I mean I've seen some shit people do with
duct tape. You can figure it out. So my question is,
or my other question is, you were talking about a
way that you can you can basically do the calming
(09:06):
like communications through yoursel phone, right, you can hook that
into the next mesh network. Is that something you're able
to kind of go over at least in brief or
provide people with, you know, here's where they can go
to read about how to do that.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah. So the same company, Liligo, makes a smaller little device.
It's really small, maybe about inch yeah. Yeah, and it
has a screen on it so when you power it
on you can actually see the messages come through on
the screen on the board itself.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And it connects through Bluetooth to your phone and you
use the mesh Tastic app to basically text like you
normally would on a phone. Yeah, it looks just like
signal pretty much if you're used to that that UI
but uh yeah it's super small. Yeah, it's perfect.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And so you're just also using that that mesh Tastic
app to flash the software on the devices once you
get them. Am I am I understanding that? Right? Yeah?
I'm just asking. I'm re asking everything because I want
to try to make this accessible for both me when
I do it and for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, for sure. So mesh Tastic is the software that's
running on these devices, and what Meshastic does is a
device that's also running Meshtastic can communicate with each other
over LORA long distance. And so you need the hardware
that supports the LORAW and a client which is mehtastic
(10:29):
that will allow you to send tax messages and stuff
like that and do the encryption handle all that stuff.
To actually flash these it's super simple. Mesh Tastic has
a link that you can go to. You plug in
your device, depending on the version, you hold down a button,
you press flash, wait like ten seconds, and boom, now
(10:51):
you have a working mesh Tastic node, probably in underneath
ten minutes after you get this out of the box.
You could be up and running in about ten to
fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
That's great and so all right, if I if I've
got like say, I'm the guy in my group of
friends who has more disposable cash, and I want to
get this going. So I pick up five of those
lily like boxes three D print a case for them
or just wrap them in something, you know, and I
keep one. I hand them out to my friends. I
get the software on all of them. How how do
(11:25):
I get them all kind of in comms together?
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Right? Like?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Or if you know, my friends buy them independently and
we each flash them and get them up and running.
How do we all kind of connect? Like? What is
that process?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Like? Yeah? So the good thing with mesh tastic is
it automatically handles adding new nodes to the network, and
so as soon as a new device that runs mess
tastic comes online, it'll broadcast and tell the entire mesh
Tastic network nearby, Hey, a new device got added. You
(11:56):
can send messages to me. So mesh Tastic has two
different things that it can do. It can do broadcasts,
where you're sending out a message to pretty much everyone
who has a device that's reachable, and that's good for say,
for instance, you know your friend comes online, you can't
talk to them directly. You could send them broadcast out
(12:17):
and say hey Joe, what device are you and they
could reply and broadcast everybody okay, I'm on this device.
You can also do direct messages, so once you know
that person's device name, you can actually send messages directly
to them. Now keep in mind it's not encrypted because
technically it's broadcasting throughout each node. It's just like filtering
(12:40):
out the messages for whoever it was addressed for. But yeah,
at that point then you could start dming people. And
if you want to get started with encryption, it's also
really easy. You can use the mesh Tastic client, so
you can install it on your computer, plug it into
your computer, and just sett in a encryption key, a passcode,
(13:02):
whatever you want to do to secure your communications, and
then once that person has that passcode key, whatever, those
two devices can connect and talk completely encrypted, either one
on one or if multiple people. Say, for instance, you
have an affinity group of like ten people, you all
say okay, hey, in an in an emergency, let's meet
(13:25):
up at this place and physically share a key or
passcode or whatever. Once everybody has that, you can also
do encrypted broadcasts to multiple people as well, so getting
up and running is super quick. When it comes to flashing,
actually communicating with people makes sense, especially on your phone.
It feels just like a normal texting situation.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So that's great.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, it's really it's really amazing. I mean, this is
a really interesting technology because, like I've been interested in
radio for a while. But the I guess downside to
that is a you can't encrypt any kind of radio
communications in the US b a license. Yeah, unless if
(14:10):
you're the cops of the military or the FEDS, you
cannot encrypt shit, and if you do, it's it's kind
of an issue. But yeah, you can't encrypt messages on
regular radios. Another thing is like usability. If you hand
somebody like a bow thaying handheld radio, most people are
(14:31):
not going to know what to do with it at all.
They're gonna be like, what the fuck is this? But
if I hand you a BlackBerry clon and say just type,
and if you want to send a DM to somebody
to find them and just send it like it's it's
really easy for your average person to pick it up
and use it, which is honestly the best kind of situation,
especially in an emergency where you can't really rely on
(14:54):
highly technical people all the time, because what if everybody
in your affinity group isn't super technical, you know. So
it's a it's a good common device that anybody can
pick up and start sending messages, even encrypted messages, pretty easily.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So I think that covers the technical basics of what
you need to do. I did want to ask real
quick before we get onto some of the more ideological
you know stuff here conversations about like why you specifically
gotten into this and why like this is important for people.
I wanted to ask just really quickly in terms of
that three D printed case. Did you just go search
(15:33):
in some repository and find when someone had made or
is there one that you've put up somewhere that you
might recommend to people?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah? Actually it was recently uploaded to thing thing everse,
which is a website that has free three D print
plans and files, And so I just searched up lilygo
t deck on thing everse and the full case, I
mean the back Yeah, I loves great has Yeah, it
looks like an actual device.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, and I'm assuming that one's just pla Yeah, just
type of classic, super basic Yeah, yeah, looks great.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, and this only took all these pieces snapped together,
so no glue required, and all these pieces took roughly
about eight hours to print at one hundred percent density.
So you have a pretty solid case with plans that
are available online and in eight hours you can have
(16:31):
a literal professional looking device that's protected and able to go,
you know, in adverse situations.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah. So now I want to get into some of
the more kind of like just talking about First off,
what got you into this, Like when did you decide
this is a skill I want to develop and a
thing I want to figure out?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah. I mean, so for my day job, I'm an
offensive security consultant, which is just a fancy way of
saying that.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
It's a cool job, pat living. Yeah, you're doing like
Red Team stuff. It sounds like, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
So I've always been interested in technology and specifically like
how do you make technology work in the benefit of
people as opposed to working the benefit for profits or
corporate interest or state interests. So I think technology is
a really good tool when used correctly and there's a
(17:27):
lot of moral and social and political implications when when
it comes to technology and actually making it. But that's
kind of how I got into it, was kind of
combining my interest in computers and hacking combined with kind
of the social and political activism I've been a part of.
So that was kind of my entry point into it.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, that makes that makes sense because I do think,
like when I think about what inspired me about the
early Internet, about like file sharing back in the late nineties,
about you know, when Wikipedia first started up and stuff
all that stuff like that. We talk a lot about
like the days when we thought the Internet was going
to be an unqualified boon for human liberty, the ability
(18:11):
to create effectively, like a smaller and more limited private
Internet for like you and your people to communicate safely
through definitely like scratches that itch. And when we say
like more limited Internet, you're not through one of these
networks we're talking about. You're not going to be like
sending YouTube videos and shit, right, But that's not what
(18:34):
it's for.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
It's got its own use and it's very much kind
of what the Internet was about at the beginning, which
is just allowing people to connect that otherwise wouldn't be
able to or wouldn't be able to as securely.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, exactly, And actually the same protocol LORA, you actually
kind of can run a basic Internet protocol that it's
called Laura WAN Laura Wide Access Networking, and you can
run some pretty basic programs on it outside of just
text based stuff. So it's a really interesting kind of
(19:10):
rabbit hole to go down into. I will say, if
you start looking at Laura and mestastic stuff, you will
eventually start to run into like a right leaning, yes,
sometimes straight out fascist people because there's a crossover between
you know, the uh, the gun community and kind of
(19:31):
off grid prepper doomsday prepper people, you know, so you'll
run into that.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Anyone who doesn't like like the government is going to
have a vested interest in being able to communicate in
a way that can't be easily intercepted, right like that,
And that doesn't always mean your buddies. I think most
people are pretty familiar with that.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Exactly. Yea, but yeah, it's it's it's really useful. There
there are other ways to say, for instance, make your
own kind of like micro internet. I read an article
that talked about making kind of like a DIY internet
in quotes, where you can basically take your home router
(20:16):
and connect say, for instance, your neighbors to the same network,
and then if you have a server of your own
that has books, that has maps, that has music and information,
you can easily share that with other people. And so
there are other ways to kind of get your own
off grid quote unquote internet together, but just outside of text.
(20:42):
But yeah, it's definitely possible. It's just needs a little
bit more technical know how, but hopefully soon it'll be
a little simpler to where you can just download something,
get you a book server up and running, and then
have anybody come along and download books about you know,
permaculture or about you know, emergency medical aid or fixing
(21:06):
infrastructure and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
So yeah, that's huge being able to actually like transmit
text and stuff through that too. So yeah, you said
when we were chatting online kind of before we hooked
(21:28):
this up, you said something along the lines of you
had a bit of a tangent you wanted to go on.
So I've asked kind of my questions here if there
is anything else you wanted to get out or express
or say, just kind of on the subject of people
taking more autonomy for themselves in their communications technology. Well,
now's the time.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, sounds good. I mean so earlier you asked, like,
what kind of got me into this? Yeah, But there's
another situation that happened because I live in Texas, Oh
and a couple Yeah, so you know where I'm going
with this. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. A couple of years ago,
there was a really bad winter storm. And for most
(22:10):
people listening, you might be in the northeast, like, who cares?
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, I was there for that storm.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Oh it was it was crazy. It was crazy. Yeah.
And so for people outside of Texas, you might be saying, Okay, well,
winter storm whatever, like, how could that affect anything? But
Texas's power grid is privately owned. Yeah, it's completely separate
from the rest of us. Yeah. Urkat is a private
company that runs the Texas power grid. And so we
(22:38):
had a winter storm event happen, and our power systems
are not in any way built for extreme cold, and
so we had the situation where pretty much the entire
state was out of power, except for maybe a few
areas in certain cities that had, you know, a specific
(23:00):
environment where they had backup generators and stuff like that.
But millions of people lost power. And when people lose power,
it isn't just oh I can't like watch TV or
like do anything. There's lies that are lost, you know,
directly from people who require ventilators to live to people
who need electricity to run their medical devices. That impacted everything, right,
(23:27):
So the power going out impacted transportation, impacted water, it
impacted sanitation. So all these bits of infrastructure are all connected,
and communications is kind of at the core of our
modern day infrastructure, right, because in order to run a
(23:48):
power plant, you need to have power, but not only that,
you need to be able to communicate with other places
in order to properly run the water sanitation, you know,
program same with transfera I mean, if communication goes out,
you literally can't deliver food, You literally can't deliver water
to people and places that need it. And so it's
(24:10):
not just an impact directly to communications, but an impact
to your entire life. And so when we're talking about
these pieces of infrastructure, we really have to think about
the larger picture of how all this infrastructure is integrated
in our lives and how an impact to one part
(24:31):
of it can impact your life in ways that you
never even thought of.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, yeah, and that's also I mean, I think I
would imagine one of the benefits I can say, just
from sort of the fairly minimal degree to which I've
done stuff like understand the basics of solar power and
what I can do and can't do in my area
with it, you know, even outside of the stuff that
is green and renewable, understanding like how you can and
(24:57):
cannot use generators in an out emergency, and like which work.
It's just given me more of an understanding of how
the regular stuff that I use day to day works
a little bit better about what the real power draw
of my life is, you know, and anytime you're kind
of expanding your autonomy technologically, it also just increases the
degree to which you understand what's going on every day,
(25:19):
which I think is always of value, right, Like, even
outside of whatever theoreticals we might prompt for like what
could happen or what is likely to happen, because we're
all going to deal with more disasters in our lives
before they're over, hopefully more than one. The alternative is worse.
But yeah, well that's kind of all I had to say.
(25:42):
Did you have anything else you wanted to get into
before we roll out.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of use cases
outside of like whether events or natural disasters to protests
is one of them. A really big security concern when
you're at a protest is bringing your cell phone. Not
a lot of people know that your cell phone has
a unique identifier number, and police governments states all have
(26:12):
technology to basically like bring up a fake cell phone
tower and have your device connect to it, so there
are ways to track say, for instance, you go to
a protest, you have your phone on. Now your identifier
is kind of tied to being at this protest, right,
But with technology like this, it kind of circumvents that,
(26:33):
especially when it comes to the ability for a threat
actor to track you or know that you've been there.
And it's encrypted, so even if say, for instance, a
police department was able to intercept low raw, they wouldn't
be able to read the messages period. And so that's
another good thing. Same with you know, conflict zones. Yeah,
(26:54):
you know, we're seeing now with the genocide that's happening
in Palas in the Palestinians, it's increasingly harder for people
to communicate what areas are safe it's hard to communicate,
you know, oh, we need to get out now, have
an early warning system of there are literal tanks coming
(27:15):
down the highway towards us, we need to leave. And
so something like this can also be you know, really
good in that situation because again the messages are encrypted,
it can go pretty long range, especially if you have
direct line of site. We're talking like up to ten miles,
and so being able to just send a text message
to somebody can save someone's life in a situation like that.
(27:37):
So there's a lot of different use cases outside of
you know, emergencies that this stuff can be used. But
that's where building the autonomy kind of comes from. And
if we're talking about like leftist political organizing and talking
about building a better future, being autonomous from stay in
(27:59):
corporate control. Infrastructure is really important, right because if say,
for instance, hypothetically we had the big r Revolution, right, right,
the first thing that people in power are going to
go after is power, water, sanitation, and communications. Right, They're
going to go after the main infrastructure. And so if
we want to have an autonomous and free future, we
(28:22):
have to think about collectively owning the means of infrastructure,
not just to means of production. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Well, and even outside you know, the big R scenario,
something that I think is probably at least certainly more
immediate is continuing sort of downs in social order and
areas expanding where non state actors, including the aforementioned Nazis
that we had talked about, are able to get bolder, right,
(28:52):
And like, one thing we've seen right now, if you
watch videos of cartel operations in parts of Mexico right now,
one thing you will see on their really good guys,
right on their special ops style teams, is they will
all have these weird looking things, look kind of like
a microphone attached to their plate carriers, and that's a
cell jammer. It's the standard thing for them to carry
(29:12):
into the field because it stops people from reporting in
real time when they're carrying out an operation. And cartels
are not the only people who do that, right, Like,
it is a widely used tactic now. You see it
all over in Ukraine. Right it's in part not just
because of like cell phones, but because of like shit
like drones and stuff. It's just an increasingly common thing.
(29:33):
And so when you're talking about what our threats that
are realistic, well, it's not just the state that can
interrupt your ability to communicate traditionally, right, it's also your
non state opponents. And so for a variety of reasons,
having backups, having alternates is just an incredibly important thing
to be able to do to some extent, Yeah, definitely, Yeah,
(29:59):
Well anything else.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
No, I mean, right now, I'm working on a kind
of step by step article that kind of goes into
more detail on what you need to do this, all
the equipment you need, how to actually flash devices, how
to start sending messages, and so once that's ready, I'll
publish it. I publish you know, diy articles and stuff
(30:24):
to my substack. It's an Archo solar Punk or you
can go to hydroponictrash dot solar and I have a
link there that goes to substack as well.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Beautiful. Well, all right, Hydroponic Trash, thank you so much
for everything. This has really been useful and enlightening. I'm
going to go hop on to Ali Express in a
second here and make a couple of purchases, and I'm
sure there's going to be a number of folks doing
a version of that.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Again.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
You can find our guests at Hydroponic trash on Twitter,
where you can get in touch with them and keep
an eye on what they're writing their substack. Very very
excited to play around with this technology. Thank you so
much for working to make it more visible.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, of course, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yes, absolutely, it could.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Thanks for listening,
Who Zone Media, Welcome back to it could happen here, everybody.
I am Robert Evans, and I want to start today
by kind of proposing a theoretical Right, you wake up
in the morning and something is awry. You know, maybe
maybe you hear shots, maybe there's some sort of natural disaster.
You know, maybe it's that that weird Havana syndron death
(00:25):
sound from the Obama movie that just came out on
what was it Netflix? But something's fucked up. And you know,
most people, I think especially most people who listen to
this podcast, you've probably had conversations with your friends and
loved ones about what do we do when the quote
unquote apocalypse or shit hits the fan. You know, you've
got your friends who maybe you know they have a
lot of stored food, or they have some other skill
that you think would be useful. And you've got some
(00:47):
stuff that's that that that you know you know how
to do. You've got your people right that you would
want to be with and around if something's really going
wrong out there, because you know how to take care
of each other. But how do you get in contact right,
assuming you don't all live together, assuming you're not all
on some sort of commune type situation, as most people aren't.
You're probably scattered throughout the city. Maybe you've got some
(01:09):
friends out, you know, in the suburbs, Maybe you've got
some friends who live out in rural land. Maybe you've
just got a friend who lives halfway across town. And
you know, that's no problem when you've got a phone
and you've got you know, Google Maps working. But can
you get there on your own? Can you get there
or get into contact with them if the streets are
all clogged up with cars or whatever, like, how are
you going to reach them? How are you going to
(01:31):
you know, get in touch in order to figure out
what's going on? And how are you going to stay
in touch while you handle whatever you need to handle
for whatever is going wrong. Well that's what we're going
to talk about today, because if the cell networks are down,
if they're being blocked, if you know, the Obama situation happens,
there are things you can do to allow you and
(01:53):
your friends, comrades, affinity group, whatever you want to call them,
to stay in touch. And a lot of this revolves
around a kind of technical usage called a mesh network.
And I don't know much about that because I am
a big dummy. But a person who is not a
dummy is our guest today. They go by Hydroponic Trash
(02:13):
on Twitter and they are going to talk to us
today about how to set up independent communications networks that
do not rely on the standard grid. Hello, and welcome
to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Hey, what's up? Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, thank you for coming on. You posted a thread
on Twitter about using You know, it's called like LOWRA
low frequency radio. Is that what it stands for?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, LORA stands technically for long range, but yeah, it's
a long range frequency radio that broadcasts a pretty specific
wavelength that can travel really far throughout the air. So
it's perfect for communications long distance.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
And it's if you've got devices set up on this
they each basically act as nodes, right, So the more
you have the kind of wider signal distribution you get.
If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, Like if you've
got someone three miles away and then another person five
miles to the west of them, then you kind of
are able to cover that whole distance.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, exactly. So think of it like a relay system, right, Yah,
one person has a message they send it off to
another person. That person passes it on to the next node,
and so mesh networks are really resilient when it comes
to emergencies, when it comes to protests, when it comes
to occupation and conflict zones, because if one node goes down,
(03:40):
as long as there's other ones that can pick up
that message and keep repeating it and broadcasting it out.
So it's a really interesting piece of technology that is
similar to traditional radios, but also different because all the
communications can be encrypted end to end, which is a
huge delay of security.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Because you can the thing most people's default if you're
thinking like, well, how do you get some like walkie talkies?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
You know, you get some and those can you know,
those have their place and stuff, but they are also
not always the most secure options. So being able to
encrypt shit is a huge deal, especially when you're talking
about like outside of a shit hits the fan kind
of deal, which is less likely than you know, some
sort of civil unrest protest use case. You know, being
able to actually encrypt is huge. Yeah, So I'm a dummy.
(04:31):
I don't understand much about setting up my own technology independently,
but I find this interesting. I see the use case.
I decide I want to you know, set this up
and start, you know, building an emergency mesh network with
a half dozen of my friends. Where do I start?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So, first thing is you'll need some hardware that supports LORA.
There are a ton of different things out there, ranging
from maybe twenty twenty five bucks going all the way
up to thousands of dollars, So there's a big range,
and that range really depends on the enclosure, what's included
in it, the broadcast strength, all that good stuff. So
(05:13):
obviously the cheaper you go, the weaker the broadcast strength is.
There might be development boards that are just literally like
the PCB, like actual hardware with no case around it.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, and there's there's some that you can just pick
up and immediately use, and so it kind of depends.
But that's the first step is finding hardware that can
handle LORA, and then you know obviously getting it and
then flashing it with the correct software. And that sounds
really complicated, but for our purposes of sending text messages
(05:48):
without any kind of cellular, LTE or Wi Fi connection,
you can use super cheap devices and flashing them is
you click a couple buttons and you're done.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So, first off, do you have any kind of specific
you know, I know you're working on a text piece
that you can put up to explain all this, and
I I will certainly share that as soon as it
gets up. But do you have any specific like if
somebody's saying, hey, I've got you know, a budget of
fifty bucks, you know, or so, is there a complete
device you would recommend if they're or somewhere in that
(06:21):
median range, like kind of on the lower end, a
thing that someone doesn't know how to take, you know,
a raw board and craft that into a usable device
that you would recommend they purchase. Is to start us
off here.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, definitely. So I kind of have two different options.
One is a standalone option that can kind of work
by itself, completely independent of anything else, and another one
uses your phone, So you'll flash it to the board
and then connective or bluetooth to your phone just like
a pair of headphones.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Awsot, Oh that's so easy.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, And so you kind of have options if you
want a standalone version. There's a company called Lilygo that
makes a thing called a te deck and it's pretty small.
It looks like a BlackBerry Clone. Yeah, it has a
little mouse thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
It looks like a BlackBerry kind of crossed with a
game camera. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's like thicker
in the back, it's got that big antenna. Yeah yeah,
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And so the Lego t Deck is what this is called.
It's a BlackBerry Clone. Basically, it has lowra built in,
it has Bluetooth, and so all you have to do
is get powered to this thing, flash it with mesh
tastic and there you go. Now you have a Now
you can type out messages, you can send direct messages,
(07:41):
you can send encrypted messages, all with one device. That's
thirty five dollars.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Oh man, that's great. And this is something you can
get like Ali Express was your recommendation, right, yeah, Ali Express.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Probably be the best if you're trying to order a lot.
If you want one right now, you can order them
on places like Amazon, but it's going to cost you
and also fuck Amazon.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
So yeah, I mean you are slightly doomed to support
one horrible billionaire or another like Kelly expresses. But no,
I get it.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, And I mean one of the upsides to like
an all in one thing like this is like I
three d printed this case, but you don't have to
print a case. You can literally just set this into
a shoe box or something and protect it. So there's
a lot of options on the cases that you want
to use. You could buy pre made cases, or you
could just, I don't know, just put something to protect
(08:40):
the board back here and then screw on an antenna.
You're good.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, I mean I've seen some shit people do with
duct tape. You can figure it out. So my question is,
or my other question is, you were talking about a
way that you can you can basically do the calming
(09:06):
like communications through yoursel phone, right, you can hook that
into the next mesh network. Is that something you're able
to kind of go over at least in brief or
provide people with, you know, here's where they can go
to read about how to do that.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah. So the same company, Liligo, makes a smaller little device.
It's really small, maybe about inch yeah. Yeah, and it
has a screen on it so when you power it
on you can actually see the messages come through on
the screen on the board itself.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And it connects through Bluetooth to your phone and you
use the mesh Tastic app to basically text like you
normally would on a phone. Yeah, it looks just like
signal pretty much if you're used to that that UI
but uh yeah it's super small. Yeah, it's perfect.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And so you're just also using that that mesh Tastic
app to flash the software on the devices once you
get them. Am I am I understanding that? Right? Yeah?
I'm just asking. I'm re asking everything because I want
to try to make this accessible for both me when
I do it and for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, for sure. So mesh Tastic is the software that's
running on these devices, and what Meshastic does is a
device that's also running Meshtastic can communicate with each other
over LORA long distance. And so you need the hardware
that supports the LORAW and a client which is mehtastic
(10:29):
that will allow you to send tax messages and stuff
like that and do the encryption handle all that stuff.
To actually flash these it's super simple. Mesh Tastic has
a link that you can go to. You plug in
your device, depending on the version, you hold down a button,
you press flash, wait like ten seconds, and boom, now
(10:51):
you have a working mesh Tastic node, probably in underneath
ten minutes after you get this out of the box.
You could be up and running in about ten to
fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
That's great and so all right, if I if I've
got like say, I'm the guy in my group of
friends who has more disposable cash, and I want to
get this going. So I pick up five of those
lily like boxes three D print a case for them
or just wrap them in something, you know, and I
keep one. I hand them out to my friends. I
get the software on all of them. How how do
(11:25):
I get them all kind of in comms together?
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Right? Like?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Or if you know, my friends buy them independently and
we each flash them and get them up and running.
How do we all kind of connect? Like? What is
that process?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Like? Yeah? So the good thing with mesh tastic is
it automatically handles adding new nodes to the network, and
so as soon as a new device that runs mess
tastic comes online, it'll broadcast and tell the entire mesh
Tastic network nearby, Hey, a new device got added. You
(11:56):
can send messages to me. So mesh Tastic has two
different things that it can do. It can do broadcasts,
where you're sending out a message to pretty much everyone
who has a device that's reachable, and that's good for say,
for instance, you know your friend comes online, you can't
talk to them directly. You could send them broadcast out
(12:17):
and say hey Joe, what device are you and they
could reply and broadcast everybody okay, I'm on this device.
You can also do direct messages, so once you know
that person's device name, you can actually send messages directly
to them. Now keep in mind it's not encrypted because
technically it's broadcasting throughout each node. It's just like filtering
(12:40):
out the messages for whoever it was addressed for. But yeah,
at that point then you could start dming people. And
if you want to get started with encryption, it's also
really easy. You can use the mesh Tastic client, so
you can install it on your computer, plug it into
your computer, and just sett in a encryption key, a passcode,
(13:02):
whatever you want to do to secure your communications, and
then once that person has that passcode key, whatever, those
two devices can connect and talk completely encrypted, either one
on one or if multiple people. Say, for instance, you
have an affinity group of like ten people, you all
say okay, hey, in an in an emergency, let's meet
(13:25):
up at this place and physically share a key or
passcode or whatever. Once everybody has that, you can also
do encrypted broadcasts to multiple people as well, so getting
up and running is super quick. When it comes to flashing,
actually communicating with people makes sense, especially on your phone.
It feels just like a normal texting situation.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So that's great.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, it's really it's really amazing. I mean, this is
a really interesting technology because, like I've been interested in
radio for a while. But the I guess downside to
that is a you can't encrypt any kind of radio
communications in the US b a license. Yeah, unless if
(14:10):
you're the cops of the military or the FEDS, you
cannot encrypt shit, and if you do, it's it's kind
of an issue. But yeah, you can't encrypt messages on
regular radios. Another thing is like usability. If you hand
somebody like a bow thaying handheld radio, most people are
(14:31):
not going to know what to do with it at all.
They're gonna be like, what the fuck is this? But
if I hand you a BlackBerry clon and say just type,
and if you want to send a DM to somebody
to find them and just send it like it's it's
really easy for your average person to pick it up
and use it, which is honestly the best kind of situation,
especially in an emergency where you can't really rely on
(14:54):
highly technical people all the time, because what if everybody
in your affinity group isn't super technical, you know. So
it's a it's a good common device that anybody can
pick up and start sending messages, even encrypted messages, pretty easily.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So I think that covers the technical basics of what
you need to do. I did want to ask real
quick before we get onto some of the more ideological
you know stuff here conversations about like why you specifically
gotten into this and why like this is important for people.
I wanted to ask just really quickly in terms of
that three D printed case. Did you just go search
(15:33):
in some repository and find when someone had made or
is there one that you've put up somewhere that you
might recommend to people?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah? Actually it was recently uploaded to thing thing everse,
which is a website that has free three D print
plans and files, And so I just searched up lilygo
t deck on thing everse and the full case, I
mean the back Yeah, I loves great has Yeah, it
looks like an actual device.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, and I'm assuming that one's just pla Yeah, just
type of classic, super basic Yeah, yeah, looks great.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, and this only took all these pieces snapped together,
so no glue required, and all these pieces took roughly
about eight hours to print at one hundred percent density.
So you have a pretty solid case with plans that
are available online and in eight hours you can have
(16:31):
a literal professional looking device that's protected and able to go,
you know, in adverse situations.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah. So now I want to get into some of
the more kind of like just talking about First off,
what got you into this, Like when did you decide
this is a skill I want to develop and a
thing I want to figure out?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah. I mean, so for my day job, I'm an
offensive security consultant, which is just a fancy way of
saying that.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
It's a cool job, pat living. Yeah, you're doing like
Red Team stuff. It sounds like, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
So I've always been interested in technology and specifically like
how do you make technology work in the benefit of
people as opposed to working the benefit for profits or
corporate interest or state interests. So I think technology is
a really good tool when used correctly and there's a
(17:27):
lot of moral and social and political implications when when
it comes to technology and actually making it. But that's
kind of how I got into it, was kind of
combining my interest in computers and hacking combined with kind
of the social and political activism I've been a part of.
So that was kind of my entry point into it.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, that makes that makes sense because I do think,
like when I think about what inspired me about the
early Internet, about like file sharing back in the late nineties,
about you know, when Wikipedia first started up and stuff
all that stuff like that. We talk a lot about
like the days when we thought the Internet was going
to be an unqualified boon for human liberty, the ability
(18:11):
to create effectively, like a smaller and more limited private
Internet for like you and your people to communicate safely
through definitely like scratches that itch. And when we say
like more limited Internet, you're not through one of these
networks we're talking about. You're not going to be like
sending YouTube videos and shit, right, But that's not what
(18:34):
it's for.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
It's got its own use and it's very much kind
of what the Internet was about at the beginning, which
is just allowing people to connect that otherwise wouldn't be
able to or wouldn't be able to as securely.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, exactly, And actually the same protocol LORA, you actually
kind of can run a basic Internet protocol that it's
called Laura WAN Laura Wide Access Networking, and you can
run some pretty basic programs on it outside of just
text based stuff. So it's a really interesting kind of
(19:10):
rabbit hole to go down into. I will say, if
you start looking at Laura and mestastic stuff, you will
eventually start to run into like a right leaning, yes,
sometimes straight out fascist people because there's a crossover between
you know, the uh, the gun community and kind of
(19:31):
off grid prepper doomsday prepper people, you know, so you'll
run into that.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Anyone who doesn't like like the government is going to
have a vested interest in being able to communicate in
a way that can't be easily intercepted, right like that,
And that doesn't always mean your buddies. I think most
people are pretty familiar with that.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Exactly. Yea, but yeah, it's it's it's really useful. There
there are other ways to say, for instance, make your
own kind of like micro internet. I read an article
that talked about making kind of like a DIY internet
in quotes, where you can basically take your home router
(20:16):
and connect say, for instance, your neighbors to the same network,
and then if you have a server of your own
that has books, that has maps, that has music and information,
you can easily share that with other people. And so
there are other ways to kind of get your own
off grid quote unquote internet together, but just outside of text.
(20:42):
But yeah, it's definitely possible. It's just needs a little
bit more technical know how, but hopefully soon it'll be
a little simpler to where you can just download something,
get you a book server up and running, and then
have anybody come along and download books about you know,
permaculture or about you know, emergency medical aid or fixing
(21:06):
infrastructure and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
So yeah, that's huge being able to actually like transmit
text and stuff through that too. So yeah, you said
when we were chatting online kind of before we hooked
(21:28):
this up, you said something along the lines of you
had a bit of a tangent you wanted to go on.
So I've asked kind of my questions here if there
is anything else you wanted to get out or express
or say, just kind of on the subject of people
taking more autonomy for themselves in their communications technology. Well,
now's the time.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, sounds good. I mean so earlier you asked, like,
what kind of got me into this? Yeah, But there's
another situation that happened because I live in Texas, Oh
and a couple Yeah, so you know where I'm going
with this. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. A couple of years ago,
there was a really bad winter storm. And for most
(22:10):
people listening, you might be in the northeast, like, who cares?
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, I was there for that storm.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Oh it was it was crazy. It was crazy. Yeah.
And so for people outside of Texas, you might be saying, Okay, well,
winter storm whatever, like, how could that affect anything? But
Texas's power grid is privately owned. Yeah, it's completely separate
from the rest of us. Yeah. Urkat is a private
company that runs the Texas power grid. And so we
(22:38):
had a winter storm event happen, and our power systems
are not in any way built for extreme cold, and
so we had the situation where pretty much the entire
state was out of power, except for maybe a few
areas in certain cities that had, you know, a specific
(23:00):
environment where they had backup generators and stuff like that.
But millions of people lost power. And when people lose power,
it isn't just oh I can't like watch TV or
like do anything. There's lies that are lost, you know,
directly from people who require ventilators to live to people
who need electricity to run their medical devices. That impacted everything, right,
(23:27):
So the power going out impacted transportation, impacted water, it
impacted sanitation. So all these bits of infrastructure are all connected,
and communications is kind of at the core of our
modern day infrastructure, right, because in order to run a
(23:48):
power plant, you need to have power, but not only that,
you need to be able to communicate with other places
in order to properly run the water sanitation, you know,
program same with transfera I mean, if communication goes out,
you literally can't deliver food, You literally can't deliver water
to people and places that need it. And so it's
(24:10):
not just an impact directly to communications, but an impact
to your entire life. And so when we're talking about
these pieces of infrastructure, we really have to think about
the larger picture of how all this infrastructure is integrated
in our lives and how an impact to one part
(24:31):
of it can impact your life in ways that you
never even thought of.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, yeah, and that's also I mean, I think I
would imagine one of the benefits I can say, just
from sort of the fairly minimal degree to which I've
done stuff like understand the basics of solar power and
what I can do and can't do in my area
with it, you know, even outside of the stuff that
is green and renewable, understanding like how you can and
(24:57):
cannot use generators in an out emergency, and like which work.
It's just given me more of an understanding of how
the regular stuff that I use day to day works
a little bit better about what the real power draw
of my life is, you know, and anytime you're kind
of expanding your autonomy technologically, it also just increases the
degree to which you understand what's going on every day,
(25:19):
which I think is always of value, right, Like, even
outside of whatever theoreticals we might prompt for like what
could happen or what is likely to happen, because we're
all going to deal with more disasters in our lives
before they're over, hopefully more than one. The alternative is worse.
But yeah, well that's kind of all I had to say.
(25:42):
Did you have anything else you wanted to get into
before we roll out.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of use cases
outside of like whether events or natural disasters to protests
is one of them. A really big security concern when
you're at a protest is bringing your cell phone. Not
a lot of people know that your cell phone has
a unique identifier number, and police governments states all have
(26:12):
technology to basically like bring up a fake cell phone
tower and have your device connect to it, so there
are ways to track say, for instance, you go to
a protest, you have your phone on. Now your identifier
is kind of tied to being at this protest, right,
But with technology like this, it kind of circumvents that,
(26:33):
especially when it comes to the ability for a threat
actor to track you or know that you've been there.
And it's encrypted, so even if say, for instance, a
police department was able to intercept low raw, they wouldn't
be able to read the messages period. And so that's
another good thing. Same with you know, conflict zones. Yeah,
(26:54):
you know, we're seeing now with the genocide that's happening
in Palas in the Palestinians, it's increasingly harder for people
to communicate what areas are safe it's hard to communicate,
you know, oh, we need to get out now, have
an early warning system of there are literal tanks coming
(27:15):
down the highway towards us, we need to leave. And
so something like this can also be you know, really
good in that situation because again the messages are encrypted,
it can go pretty long range, especially if you have
direct line of site. We're talking like up to ten miles,
and so being able to just send a text message
to somebody can save someone's life in a situation like that.
(27:37):
So there's a lot of different use cases outside of
you know, emergencies that this stuff can be used. But
that's where building the autonomy kind of comes from. And
if we're talking about like leftist political organizing and talking
about building a better future, being autonomous from stay in
(27:59):
corporate control. Infrastructure is really important, right because if say,
for instance, hypothetically we had the big r Revolution, right, right,
the first thing that people in power are going to
go after is power, water, sanitation, and communications. Right, They're
going to go after the main infrastructure. And so if
we want to have an autonomous and free future, we
(28:22):
have to think about collectively owning the means of infrastructure,
not just to means of production. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Well, and even outside you know, the big R scenario,
something that I think is probably at least certainly more
immediate is continuing sort of downs in social order and
areas expanding where non state actors, including the aforementioned Nazis
that we had talked about, are able to get bolder, right,
(28:52):
And like, one thing we've seen right now, if you
watch videos of cartel operations in parts of Mexico right now,
one thing you will see on their really good guys,
right on their special ops style teams, is they will
all have these weird looking things, look kind of like
a microphone attached to their plate carriers, and that's a
cell jammer. It's the standard thing for them to carry
(29:12):
into the field because it stops people from reporting in
real time when they're carrying out an operation. And cartels
are not the only people who do that, right, Like,
it is a widely used tactic now. You see it
all over in Ukraine. Right it's in part not just
because of like cell phones, but because of like shit
like drones and stuff. It's just an increasingly common thing.
(29:33):
And so when you're talking about what our threats that
are realistic, well, it's not just the state that can
interrupt your ability to communicate traditionally, right, it's also your
non state opponents. And so for a variety of reasons,
having backups, having alternates is just an incredibly important thing
to be able to do to some extent, Yeah, definitely, Yeah,
(29:59):
Well anything else.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
No, I mean, right now, I'm working on a kind
of step by step article that kind of goes into
more detail on what you need to do this, all
the equipment you need, how to actually flash devices, how
to start sending messages, and so once that's ready, I'll
publish it. I publish you know, diy articles and stuff
(30:24):
to my substack. It's an Archo solar Punk or you
can go to hydroponictrash dot solar and I have a
link there that goes to substack as well.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Beautiful. Well, all right, Hydroponic Trash, thank you so much
for everything. This has really been useful and enlightening. I'm
going to go hop on to Ali Express in a
second here and make a couple of purchases, and I'm
sure there's going to be a number of folks doing
a version of that.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Again.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
You can find our guests at Hydroponic trash on Twitter,
where you can get in touch with them and keep
an eye on what they're writing their substack. Very very
excited to play around with this technology. Thank you so
much for working to make it more visible.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, of course, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yes, absolutely, it could.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Thanks for listening,
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
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