If we're engaging in experiential avoidance and we're avoiding discomfort because we're numbing out or we're striving or we're working too hard or we're bracing with our bodies or we're checked out, then we miss out on the opportunities for growth that come from our suffering. Often our suffering is a big arrow that points to what we care about most. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Hello Diana and welcome to the show. We're happy to have you here and I know we've had some false starts but today is going to be the day. So why don't you do us the pleasure and let our audience know who you are and how you have come to find act and what we'll be discussing today. Sure, I'm a clinical psychologist. I like to think of myself as a psychological flexibility guide that helps people live lives that are more aligned with their values and pursue meaningful goals. And I do that through my individual work with folks. I also do that as a mom in my life but also on psychologist off the clock podcast as well as an author to a book called Act Daily Journal that I co-wrote with Debbie Sorenson. So I really believe in integrative psychology and flourishing in our daily lives. Okay, so for our audience, there are many terms that we are going to have to parse out and define and discuss there. There was that one last bit and I wanna set that aside because I wanna first get into psychological flexibility because that's going to need to be defined first and why it's so important. But there was, oh, and you said integrative, what was the last thing? Psychology. So let's get into that as well but let's start with psychological flexibility. Okay, so as a psychologically flexible psychologist, I'm gonna use some props and my first prop to help folks for the visual learners is Rubik's Cube. And one way to think about psychological flexibility is that it's six sides of a Rubik's Cube. So there's six processes that are involved in psychological flexibility and the goal of psychological flexibility, when you are psychologically flexible, you are better able to stay open, present, and aligned with what you care about when challenges arise. Now the six processes that you teach in Act help you do that and we can unpack those but it's about process, not outcome. And just like a Rubik's Cube, if you solve a Rubik's Cube, that you put it on your counter and nobody wants to touch the thing because it's solved, right? It's more about how you are in your daily life, these processes that you engage in. Am I out of a line with my values? How do I use some of these processes to get more aligned in the important domains to you, whether that's work or parenting or health behaviors or relationships. And why is it process versus outcome? Because so many in our audience want the well-defined outcomes and many are striving to reach those outcomes but yet psychological flexibility is about the process and getting comfortable with the process. Well, outcomes aren't bad. You know, I'm a runner, I'm a achiever, I've achieved a lot of things in my life. There's nothing bad about reaching outcomes but where process comes up is that actually when you engage in the process and in particular when you engage in things that are intrinsically rewarding and by intrinsically rewarding it means while you're doing them, they create motivation, right? It helps you with sustaining behaviors in the long run and it leads to a more satisfying life. So for many of us, we have been trained in a culture and an environment where we're trying to hit goals. So whether that's good girls or gold stars or A pluses or when you get older it's about like financial goals. What you actually find is that there's some neuroscience that's showing that when you're striving for an outcome, dopamine increases along the way and then when you actually hit that outcome you see a decrease in dopamine and a lot of people feel dissatisfied. They feel like they've achieved this thing. It's like, wow, I got that partner or I got that job that I was striving for but already the goalpost has moved. When you attend to process you're more an intrinsic values-based reinforcements. You're more likely to stick with it even when those extrinsic rewards aren't there. So on the days, say you're working on health behavior goals on the days where the scale doesn't go the way you want the scale to go you still engage in your health behavior goal, right? Not because that extrinsic outcome hasn't showed up for you. And I think when it comes to parenting, when it comes to work, when it comes to making change in the world it's the process that matters, not the outcome. This intrigues me. And then so for psychological flexibility we understand its importance and why we need to be psychologically flexible. However, my question then is what in life or what is it in our DNA that makes us psychologically rigid? And I will also state that in our work and for as long as we've been doing this we have certainly met some people who are incredibly psychologically rigid and it's odd to me how they have gotten to this place. Now I'm not sure whether that is something in their genetics that predisposition them to become that rigid or is it life in general or is it a little bit of both? Sure, I mean, I think in most psychologists would say it's a little bit of both. Evolutionarily our minds were designed to avoid pain and seek out pleasure and that works well when you're talking about things outside of ourselves but it doesn't work so well when you're talking about our inner experiences. So for example, one of the places that I get really psychologically inflexible is when I'm fighting with my partner. When I'm fighting with my partner it becomes about my point of view, how I'm right and I stop hearing him and I also block myself from feeling the feelings maybe underneath the anger is really sadness or hurt or anxiety, right? And so what happens is those feelings show up difficult stuff shows up. Say you're in a conflict with someone and how it becomes psychologically rigid bridges in a few ways and actually links to these processes. So one of the sides of psychological flexibility the opposite of psychological flexibilities inflexibility is about acceptance. When you're in a fight with somebody how are you practicing non-acceptance and maybe you're practicing non-acceptance by bracing with your body maybe you're practicing non-acceptance by not listening or maybe you're trying to prove a point so that you don't have to feel that inner discrepancy of that, gosh, I may not be fully right here, right? So that can lead to rigidity. Another area that we become really rigid in is our thoughts when we believe our thoughts to be true and we take our thoughts as the truth. And so when you are believing your mind we're all just sort of like these walking, chattering heads, right? When we believe our minds to be true it can actually lead us to rule following should, believing in shoulds, believing in self judgments and judgments of others those are all psychologically rigid ways of being. Another way that we can be psychologically rigid is believing self stories. So for many of us we develop stories about ourselves when we are children maybe someone told you along the way or you believe that you're not good at math or you believe that you're not a runner or you believe that relationships always fail for you and you take it on and you use that as the lens through which you operate in the world. And that leads to self fulfilling prophecy and blocking out, dis confirming evidence. So you can go around, we can go around the six core processes of psychological flexibility but the opposite of those processes is inflexibility and there's lots of different ways in which we just humans block the potential for adaptation and growth. We drop great content each and every week and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. I think what you're sharing is so relatable to many of us we've been in those situations of conflict where we're shutting down, we're not hearing, we're becoming rigid and we don't wanna be that. And when Johnny and I talk act principles on the show and we've had a lot of guests talk about it as well because we're such huge fans of acceptance treatment therapy we talk about these intrinsic values and the question that always comes up from our audience is how do we find and define those for ourselves? And I think it's overwhelming for many of us to think about those values because we tend to be outcome focused, right? If I get the house, I'll be happy. If I get the job, I'll be happy and we lose sight of our values or no one frankly taught us how to find those values. So what advice do you have for our audience members who are struggling to find those intrinsic values in their own life and define them? Well, I really believe that it's a tuning in process. So I see values as personal and chosen and much like if you were tuning a guitar you play the guitar and you listen in and a musician was interesting about musicians and you probably know this, Johnny is that we give musicians time to tune up before they play with if the musician's gonna play we're like take your time it's gonna be better if you tune up whatever time you need, right? So if you think about the strings of the guitar those can be represent the domains of your life, right?  Your parenting, your friendships, right?  But only you really know what is in tune for you and what's interesting is oftentimes we know that we're out of tune with our values but all these other processes get in the way non-acceptance beliefs about ourself thoughts and I know I'll give a personal example for me of times when I've been out of tune and actually one of the ways that I came to act was by being out of tune. So I found my way to a PhD program in graduate school I was studying Eden Disorders with one of the leaders in the field of Eden Disorders and when I had a history of anorexia and an Eden Disorder and when I went into the field I was really, really clear that my commitment to my recovery was the number one thing for me. If I'm gonna go work with people in this area and research this, I'm gonna commit to that. And in my first year of graduate school, I got out of tune. The pressure, the competition, the program that really didn't integrate a lot of sort of more I guess would say feminist sort of the art, the spirituality of recovery. And I actually left my program. I was willing to say I'm going to leave this thing that I've worked so hard for because I'm so committed to my values around taking care of my recovery. And I went to a yoga ashram and I studied yoga and I was so clear, okay, I'm gonna be a yoga instructor and actually in that ashram I got really clear about wait a minute, no, I can go back and I can integrate these principles of acceptance, these principles of tuning in into this hardcore research division, one research university. And I ended up researching, I found a psychiatrist at Stanford at the time, Deborah Safer, she was really the only one that was working with Eden Disorders and mindfulness-based approaches. I sought her out and we did a study together. And all of a sudden here I am back in tune because there's also a part of me that really believes in the science. And with ACT, that's really the thing that I really appreciate about this methodology and this really modern approach to psychology is that there's an integration here. And when you ask about integration and an integrative psychologist, what does that mean, Johnny? I believe that means both balancing the science of psychology with the wisdom. Like there's deep wisdom in Jungian psychology, there's deep wisdom in Eastern and Buddhist psychology, and there's deep wisdom in embodiment and listening into our bodies that really there's a balance of all of that. So tuning in is really, I think, the first part of values. I think the second part of it is that sometimes what points us to our values is what's most painful to us. And if we're engaging in experiential avoidance and we're avoiding discomfort because we're numbing out or we're striving or we're working too hard or we're bracing with our bodies or we're checked out, then we miss out on the opportunities for growth that come from our suffering. Often our suffering is a big arrow that points to what we care about most. Is this idea of integrative psychology the same as the Jungian idea of integration or is this a play on it or is it slightly different? For me, when I say integrative psychology, I'm saying I bring in concepts from neuroscience, I bring in concepts from Eastern and contemplative practice, I bring in concepts from behavioral psychology. So that's more nutritional psychology is also another deep interest of mine of what we eat and how we move impacts our behavior and our mental health. So that's what I mean by integrative psychology that there's many different disciplines that we can learn from and for a long time and I think in the field and research, people are very much in silos.  So all of these more integrative approaches to living well and wellness. I think that's very important where in today's world it seems like everyone can zero in on a certain part or a certain discipline or a certain idea. It begins to be that the parable or the meme of the elephant and each person is on a different place than the elephant. And so one person's grabbing the trunk, he's like, I think it's a snake and somebody's grabbing his foot. He's like, I think it's a tree but if you zoom out for all of them, right? The system is going to be the elephant rather than the parts. Yes, but you also need to know the difference between a snake and snake oil. And so there has to be some degree of organization and for me, that's evidence-based approaches but flexible ones. Now you bring up a very interesting point around striving and it's linked to experiential avoidance. Many of us think striving is the way is exactly what we need or should be doing to get ahead. And again, going back to those outcomes that we all have in our lives that we care so much about, how does striving lead to experiential avoidance and what are the downsides of striving that many in our audience may be facing and not realizing? Yeah, so maybe I'll define experiential avoidance first because there's lots of terms and act that we get really termy. And experiential avoidance is when you are engaging in a behavior that is meant to avoid some inner experience that you're having and that also moves you away from your values. So for me, striving as experiential avoidance is when I don't feel good enough, then maybe I do more so that I don't have to feel that feeling of not good enough, right? When I am comparing myself to another person and saying, ooh, I don't measure up or maybe we're experientially avoiding just the discomfort of our lives. Like my relationships are kind of not doing so well or my relationship with my mom isn't so great. So therefore I'm gonna go strive and do in this other area so that I can almost not have to experience the discomfort of living, which is just part of being human, the first noble truth is life is uncomfortable. It's what we do with that discomfort that matters. And so for me, just because I've worked with eating disorders for a long time and now work with executives, I see that the dark sides of striving, I see that, for me with anorexia that I was like an Olympian of striving. I did everything that a young woman was supposed to do to be successful in the world to the nth degree and you end up with anorexia, right? It could kill you. It's actually the most lethal of the mental health disorders that you can have. The flip side of that is what was interesting is this summer I was prepping for an interview on psychologist off the clock with the Radical Healing Collective, who are a group of individuals that work on racial trauma and healing racial trauma. And in prepping for that, I started reading through the APA guidelines on race and ethnicity. And so for a long time I've had this association with striving is like bad. I need to not strive. I need to stop striving. I need to like tame my inner striver, right? Cause it makes me sick. And I read through those guidelines and every single one of them started with the words psychologist strive. Psychologist strive to blah, blah, blah, blah. And I started realizing that there's other ways that we can strive and actually what we can engage in is values based striving. That you can take all that energy that actually leads you in samsara, the modern day samsara of just being on the cycle of achievement and you can use it and pivot it to a cycle that is about what you care about and what can make a difference in the world. And you can write a book and you can do all sorts of great things, but now you're striving for something that's bigger than you, that's bigger than the ego.


All right, so thank you all for joining us tonight for the wedge wood in South Hills water and sewer improvements community design meeting. During today's agenda, we'll be covering introductions of those involved with the project. Going through an overview of what the project entails and the areas being affected. As well as answer some frequently asked questions that we have when we go to construction and going through a timeline of the project. So, your project team includes myself Brenda, my phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And my email address is Brenda period, O. R. O. P. E. Z. A at 4th word Texas all spelled out. And I am the project manager for this project and our engineering design consultant is Daltech. And I believe they are on the call as well. Okay. So, why are we doing this project? So, 4th word does prioritize replacing water and sewer lines that have a high risk of failure. Um, risk of failure is determined on a variety of criteria, including the water, main break history. Leak history. Low circuit TV inspection age of the line. Let services that are on that line, or if that. Um, line material is cast iron or that fight play things like that. So, this area was identified to have cast iron lines. And that's why we're doing this project. Um, the project will replace cast iron water lines on warden drive. Vega drive, Wilkie way. Wayland drive, Ren Avenue. Denver drive and Calusa drive. There are some sewer lines that are also being replaced. And those state back to the 1950s and 60s, and we'll be going through those areas as well. The capital improvements project capital improvement project is predominantly residential. But construction may impact little people park at Walton and Calusa drive. West Creek elementary school at West Creek drive and Walton Avenue and harmony science academy. Um, a 4th word at Odessa Avenue and Walton. So, what are the boundaries of the city's project? So, for this project, we will be replacing the water and sanitary sewer mains in 8 streets and 5 easements in an area that is. Bound by so south of Southwest loop 820. West of Odessa Avenue north of Wokey way and Denver drive and East of Vega drive. The project area itself. We have Wharton drive from Vega drive to Que fonction drive in that area. We will be replacing the water in sewer. Rent Avenue from Vega drive to West Creek drive, we will be replacing the water in sewer. Wailan drive from Vega drive to Kalusa drive. We will be doing the water in sewer. Well, give away from Vega drive to Wailan drive. We will be replacing the water and sewer. Vega Drive from Wharton Drive to Wilkie Way. We will be replacing the water and sewer. Calusa Drive from Walton Avenue to Wayland Drive. We will be replacing the water and sewer. Denver Drive from Calusa Drive to West Creek Drive will be a water and sewer replacement. Morley Avenue from Ren Avenue to 150 feet south. That'll be a sewer replacement. It's a small segment. The easement between Wharton Drive and Ren Avenue from 392 feet west of Calusa Drive to 725 feet east of Calusa Drive will be a sewer replacement. An easement between Morley Avenue and Calusa Drive from 170 feet south of Morley Avenue and Wharton Drive intersection to 415 feet south will be a sewer replacement. An easement between Ren Avenue and Walton Avenue from 295 feet west of Calusa Drive to Morley Avenue will be a sewer replacement. An easement from Odessa Avenue and West Creek Drive from Walton Avenue to 212 feet south of Slee Drive will be a sewer replacement. The easement south of South Gate Drive and Walton Avenue from West Creek Drive to 180 feet east will be. A sewer replacement. I think that went backwards. And you can kind of see that on that first map we included, which kind of shows all the areas affected, which includes the easements, which can be seen in the back of the homes. No, it's scary us. So, this capital improvement project is in Council District 9. Construction will impact the Wedgewood East neighborhood association and the south host south neighborhood. So, will water be turned off water will be turned off for about 15 to 30 minutes when services are transferred from the existing water line to the temporary water line. And when the services are transferred from that temporary water line to the new water line and those transitions occur during the day. The contractor will knock on your door and let you know when the water will be turned off and there will also be door hangers 24 hours before this occurs. The transfer typically takes 30 minutes per home. So, how does the temporary line impact my home and water bill? The temporary water line ensures that you are not without water during construction in the summer months. The continuous flow keeps water from becoming stagnant in the above ground line. During the winter months, water must be continuously flowing through the temporary line to keep the water from freezing. So, we do encourage customers to keep their faucets stripping during the winter. The bill for your water usage while you are on the temporary water line is based on an average of the previous month's usage. Will you need access to our property during construction? Construction will be mostly in the streets and easements. If worth, worth water needs access to your property, we will be contacting you if an easement is needed for your property. The land agent should have reached out, but this particular project already had existing easements. So, there were no easements necessary. Will sewer service be disrupted sanitary sewer service will not be interrupted. While we're installing the sewer lines, the new sewer cleanouts will be installed at the property or easement line. And the sewer cleanouts provide cruise and easy access if a backup or blockage occurs and kind of helps us determine if that blockage is on the private or the public side as well. Will I have access to my driveway during construction? The inspector and the contractor will work with you if they need access, if they're going to be interrupting your access during active construction hours. How are you going to coordinate traffic during construction? So, we will have a traffic control plan in place before the contractor starts to work right now. We're still in the design phase. So, we don't have a contractor on board. But once we have our public construction meeting, we will have more information about the actual traffic flow.   Lane closures during construction. So, yes, there will be lane closures when we're installing our utilities and signs will be posted to alert motors. What are the construction hours? So, the hours of construction are Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and if requested by the contractor 9 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. on Saturdays. So timeline, so this project is still in the design phase. We anticipate advertising in late October and that will put us in construction the start of next year. We will have more information once we actually have a contractor on board and are under contract with the contractor as to when they will be starting. We will be hosting a pre construction meeting with the contractor to set a start date for construction and create a schedule for the streets that will be impacted and in what order. So, we will have more information during that construction meeting. We will see so we that meeting will be held before we start construction. So, where can I get more information? So, we do have a city website. You can go to www.forthward, Texas, all spelled out dot gov and type in the project. Number 1, 0, 3, 6, 1, 9 in the search bar on the upper right hand corner of the web page. Once you type 1, 0, 3, 6, 1, 9 and click the little search icon, the name, which would and South Hills water and sewer improvements will pop up. You'll be able to click on that web link and it'll take you to the project page to get project updates. You can scroll down to the bottom of that project page and click on subscribe to this page. So, when you subscribe to the page, any updates that are posted, it'll notify you through email. The link to end the PDF to this PowerPoint. Will be linked to that project page as well. So, how do I report an emergency or non emergency emergencies can be reported to 817. 3, 9, 2, 4, 4, 7, 7, and you can select option 1 if it's outside of the Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and that's to report any water main breaks or sewer backups. We also have a call center for non emergencies open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday and that number is 817. 3, 9, 2, 4, 4, 7, 7. So, it's the same number, but when there's an emergency, you'll be able to select option 1. We also have a city website, the my FW app that's available on both the app store and Google play. On that application, they allow you to report any sewer overflows. Leaks and water main breaks missing or broken meter lids theft of water about water violations, lack of water service. Any water pressure issues you're experiencing or other sewer concerns. Again, here's my contact information. My name is Brenda, my phone number is 817. 3, 9, 2, 8, 2, 7, 1, and my email address is Brenda, period, O, R, O, P, E, Z, a at 4th word, Texas dot gov all spelled out and our engineer and design consultant on this project is style tech. Right. Thank you. And with that, I'll hand it over to Sally for any questions that were posted on the chat during the presentation. We had a lot of questions. The 1st 1, I went ahead and answered it in chat, but the question is, can we receive a copy of this PowerPoint presentation? The answer is, yes, you can log in to that project page. Can you go back to that slide, Brenda? If you go back to the. Okay, right there, it's going to say, type in 1036.9. The page pops up. It'll be down the bottom right hand corner. I think the heading is related information. So we will have a YouTube video of this meeting. We'll have a PDF of the PowerPoint. So if you don't want to listen to it again, but you want to look at the power at the PowerPoint, you can do that too. Thank you, Tobin. Laura wants to know you were talking about the water turn off. Oh, we're not. Will our water be turned off? And you said the contractor will knock on the door. Laura said a knock on the door won't do it. I'm not home during the days and my housemate can't get to the door fast. Can we arrange for a text notification? Okay, that's something I can check once we have an inspector on board as well. I'll check with him to see if that's something he can do, but we also do door hangers 24 hours ahead of time to let everyone know that they're going to be turning off the water the next day. Okay, and then they ask for the link to the project page. We've got that already taken care of Laura asked. How will they access the sewer in the rear easement of the home and will they be removing fences to do that? So we're proposing to do pipe enlargement. It's a trenchless method. So there's manholes already out there or they'll be kind of accessing it through those manholes. But if they need access to your backyard to be able to access that manhole, though, be knocking on doors to be able to gain access back there, but it will be a trenchless method. So it's the least invasive method we have though. They will have to kind of dig up your individual service to reconnect you to that sewer line. So they will be contacting you to make those reconnections as well. So they will be knocking on doors to do that. Okay, that's all we have in chat. Does anyone else have questions? David, do you have one? Let me let me unmute you. Okay, no questions. Okay. Don Harden. No questions from Don. Okay. Our early birds were Laura and I apologize if I mispronounce it. Brute. Once the contractor is selected, will we be advised that when the construction will start with that work? Yes, once we have a contractor on board, we will be having another public meeting. It'll be in person.  So, you could specifically see your property if you're interested in seeing that and any questions you may have, we'll be able to get answers from them as well. Okay, good. Okay, Laura says she has no questions. Linda, you were another early bird. Do you have any questions? No, I don't. Thank you. Okay, we've got Paul, Douglas, Andrews. No questions, Paul. Okay. And Tobin, did you have any more? Thank you guys. No more questions. I appreciate all the info. Now, we had a couple of calling users. So if you have any questions, go ahead and send them to us now. Okay. This is the Thursday, right? The video link and the PowerPoint should be up on the page no later than Monday. So make sure you go back and all you got to do is the 103-619 in the search bar at the top of the first page of the... Can you hear me now? Yes. All right. I have a question. When the water is turned off, how long will it be turned off? Approximately 30 minutes, just long enough for them to be able to connect you to the new line and transfer you from the old line to the new line. Okay. And if you guys want to write down Brenda's contact information, if you have any questions, you can call her. Like I said, we will reach out to you once we have a contractor on board and we'll set up another meeting. Generally, those are in-person meetings, but that's up to your council member. So we might be seeing face-to-face with you in a couple of months. All right. That'll be good. The estimated start date, you said, I think, was October. We plan to bid the project in late October, so construction probably will not be starting until early next year. Okay. That's what I was concerned about as well for the holiday situation. Yeah. It'll be after Christmas time. Okay. That'll be fine. Okay. Laura has another question later. If anything, it will... Hang on, Laura. Okay. Later, if I know about impact to sprinkler systems, it would be good to know provisions for that. Can you explain that? Yes. So we do have a pay item for the contractor to go out there and locate those irrigation systems and cap them before they start construction. So they'll go out there, cap the systems, ask you to turn them on to make sure they're not damaging anything. Anything they damage, they will be responsible for repairing. Yes, we're a great group tonight. We appreciate it. Thank you, Tobin. You had a lot of questions, too. Thank you. And make sure you check that page on Monday. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


She was seven so today. I'm going to talk about dating Using the law of attraction. Okay a lot of people know what the law track law of law of attraction is, you know, it's you know Attracting what you want by having positive thoughts or visualizing or thinking something and then it's gonna come to you. Okay, so When I was younger I used to date using the law of attraction as I got older. I used it more and more, okay? So I'm gonna give y'all some techniques and how it works and how it worked for me and maybe a little short story time So when I was young, maybe 20 years ago 19 years ago when I was In my prime and I was going out to the clubs and dancing and stuff like that My sister and her friends and I would all go out as a group. We were like We were fabulous. Okay, you know, so y'all use that as a group and we would only go to certain clubs Okay, first of all the law of attraction that we would Kind of use is Making a list. Okay, we would say, okay, we're gonna we're only gonna talk to these type of men We're gonna get the guys with the most money to buy us drinks. We're gonna do this We're gonna do that. We're all we're gonna meet our goal tonight is to meet someone to pay for all our drinks A celebrity or something. Well, so we would all make these plans before we went out. Okay, this is We didn't go out without a purpose. Okay, and I was just a young one. So I was just following along I wasn't making the I wouldn't call the shots. That was my sister. She She's like 10 times Worst in me, okay, so Well, she would make all the plans and we would execute them, okay, we would all have a part to play So through the law of attraction, okay, I would say, okay I'm going to to meet somebody that has like a business or something or you know owns their own company and And then she would be like, okay, I'm gonna meet an athlete or a celebrity and then my other friend would be like, okay I'll meet someone who you know My other friend was always attracted to like the drug dealers and the shady thugs, but they had money You know, I'm seeing that illegal people she was always attracted to them for some reason I don't know why but she was so we let her roll with it.  I'm in heaven and of course he's gonna all buy us all drinks for the rest of the night Okay, you know that right? So that's what we would do we would manifest before we got in the club what we were gonna do It was a plan we would seek it out We would already be subconsciously prepared to You know Pick out the certain types of people it would be You know, since we were attracting it the men would actually sometimes, you know Seek us out or we would run into them in an unexpected way or whatever, you know what I'm saying But it always worked So if you go out by yourself or with a group of girls always make a Plan visualize yourself meeting the certain type of man that you want to meet for the night or for a lifetime You don't have to use this for golding and you can use it to find a mate a spouse I did it when I was older, but This is what you can do you can make your list say okay tonight.  I want to meet a woman who's educated. I want to meet a woman who's uh You know ready to have a real relationship who doesn't play games I want to you know, I want to meet one that's decent and pretty or whatever have that your mind Okay, that way that's what you'll attract and you're not going to be looking at hoochies That's the least common day hoochies Uh, y'all y'all see my age. I'm old y'all you're not going to be looking at the type of women That doesn't fit that description.  Um And no offense to women with children. Okay.  Okay You just do and if if one if the woman does have a child it's their option and their Right to decide if they want to date someone like that or not just like as a woman It's your option and you're right not to date men who have children. So That's just what it is.  Some men will not date women Unless they have a certain amount of kids or the kids are of a certain age. That's just it. Okay.  That's what you're going to attract. Okay. Um So That's that mean that's how i'm at my husband. Okay when I was I think I've told this story a thousand times, but I was like, you know what? I want to meet a man with money who's going to take care of me for the rest of my life and But that's it. That's what I want. That's just what I want, you know And every time I would go out, I wouldn't talk to no one unless they could do that I really wouldn't if they tried to approach me. They tried to talk to me.  I'm not gonna date you unless you can do this This isn't that for me and they would think I was crazy or joking, but I was Perfectly honest and I was perfectly real. They thought I was joking. They tried again.  Okay And then one day I was just, you know, sitting in the bar because my friend was the bartender and Y'all see my story I was waiting because I was getting ready to go to work I had a phone call to wait for in order to go to my job Which was at a funeral home and I did not have the keys So I had to wait for the owner to get there in order for me to get in I was going to be bonding a body that night And so the bar was right around the corner from the funeral home.  Okay So I said he's first of all, I didn't want to talk to him because he was my type at all He was not my type. Ladies, that's why I say don't get hung up on looks because that could be your husband Um, so he was not my type at all. So I was gonna dismiss him quick, right? I was like, uh So he was really smart. He you know, real smart. He was like, hi, my name is such and such He was like really proper and you know, how you want a man to approach you, you know Not able to show name, you know, nothing like that. He was really proper And so I was impressed by his property. So I gave him two minutes He had two minutes to offer to buy me a drink if he didn't offer to buy me a drink in two minutes I was gonna dismiss him, right? So He talked and talked and talked for about one minute and 30 seconds. Then I was getting you know, I was getting kind of like Oh my god, so then he said, what are you drinking? I mean by your drink. I was like, okay You saved yourself.  I don't tell out everything so, um, I let him talk I ask him questions like First of all, I'm just glad I got the drink because You know, that was the goal And so then he had Five minutes until you know, or maybe until I finished my drink Maybe 10 minutes to finish Impressing me if he didn't impress me. I was gonna let him go So I asked all the worst questions a woman could ask them. What kind of what kind of work do you do? What kind of car do you drive? You know, are you married? Do you have kids? Or this is a blah blah blah blah blah, okay? Um, so thinking it was gonna make him go away Right because he wasn't my type, right And plus it was a test to see if he could do what I needed him to do, right So he told me what he did. He gave me a card. I didn't even ask. I'm like, what? CEO, okay owner, what? Oh CEO owner, whatever. I'm like, okay Everybody's a CEO these days. Then I and then I and then he said, well, oh, I work with He named all these giant corporations and he's like, I work with this I'm like, I don't even know what that is. But okay, and I was like, okay, what kind of car do you drive? And I was just being rude on purpose y'all. I was like, I don't know It's the law of attraction. It must have been because this person should have been walking out. Okay Maybe he thought it was funny.  That's nice. I just I didn't even look out the window. I'm just like, okay That's nice convertible bins Is I don't know what year is it though? I didn't ask what year because that was I didn't ask what year it was. It was brand new basically. Okay, so It's like, okay Um, well, I have to go to work.  Let's go out somewhere Let's go do something the night is young and I was like, I don't know you It'll be a serial killer. He's like, he gave me his cell phone guys. He gave me a cell phone. He said here If you don't feel safe You can use this phone to call wherever you want the police. You can call them now and tell them who you're with Here's my number. Here's my name. Whatever whatever you need to do to feel safe. That's blah blah blah. It's like, okay So he paid my cab And I was like, okay. Thank you. He said, okay. Now. Let's go have some fun I said, but wait, I gotta go to work. He's like here. Use my phone and call in like Well, I was gonna make I have to make money, you know, I was gonna make, you know, this my this amount of money He gave me the money in my hand here cash Okay Call in. He says call in I call in. I'm like, uh, I ain't coming to work And anyway, the guy was like, that's okay because I'm running late anyway And I'm probably not gonna be there until that. So don't worry about it. I'll do it. It's like, okay. Thank you. Bye And so we went out So I went out to the parking lot I might have to extend this video past 15 minutes 16 minutes So went out to the parking lot and I walk He, you know, there's a little remote click click.  I don't even know what 500 s l I don't it was 2001 y'all.  I did not I was impressed by the car But I did not like the color. I'm like yellow I was like, wow yellow Like I was like I act a little bit impressed. But I was like, why did you choose yellow? You know Oh, so everybody can see me. I'm bright and I'm flashy.  I was like, okay. Yeah, whatever and so He gave me his phone He said call whatever you need to call telling when you're going who you're with blah blah safety first So I call my sister and tell her, oh, I'm at this guy's name's James. This is his number That gave him the license plate on the car like, you know safety first, you know, so got in his car.  It's okay for me. That's good for me So he goes, where do you want to go?  Yeah, I was kind of rude y'all And he was like, no, I was like, well, I don't like this music.  I'm like, okay. So, you know me. I'm greedy. I'm like, I'm picking up double discs Uh collectors hit greatest hits and stuff like that I got prints greatest hits the b-side. I got michael jackson I got uh maxwell. I got bryan mcneigh. Yeah, I remember everything. I got mariah carry I still remember everything I bought because we have still have some of those CDs and that's crazy, huh? um I got all those CDs probably came out to a hundred dollars or something and We went back in the car Popped in the CD. He had the top down. We was cruising. It was nighttime. We were in the nice part of the city and was just Atmosphere was like, yeah, you know, you have to get the soundtrack to your life, right? You know So he was happy because he liked the music too, you know, he liked everybody like michael jackson everybody like prince, you know So We were jamming in the car and we got to the destination Which was this really nice club cost a lot of money to get in, you know exclusive whatever whatever Drinks cost like ten dollars. Okay, you can't be cheap to go there. This is this is my test. Okay So it's it's all he's already trying to impress me. So why not right?  It's really nice. Um, okay, y'all had to I had to cut off but yes, so We were in the little club. We were dancing. What's having a good time. Okay, so we left We didn't stay there all night. So we want to go someplace else And on the way out of the club, he's like He was like really trying to get me. I don't know. He was really trying to impress me He's like, do you want to go get your nails done? Do you do you need anything? I'm like, okay No My nails I already done. I'm trying to say, you know, so I was like, no, you know, I'm ready to go out. I'm drinking. I'm ready to drink.    He already spent a bunch of money, but So I was good with that, but I wanted to go sing. I wanted to sound like a little sign a little bit You know, I went to sign So and I was feeling good. I was drunk not really drunk, but like tipsy Um So we drove to this little karaoke place and um, we're sitting at the little table.  This is like this is just like Love attraction to the you know, whoo. Thank you. Bye This is beautiful. So this is beautiful.  Okay ugly.   She just was A work of ugliness. Okay, because of her choice of attire hair color and such and such and such Okay now he's broke because That's why he's my ex because he was broken. He never went anywhere Um, and so I walk in with this guy who has a lot of money, you know, niceest car in the parking lot You know, everybody could tell he had money because of the way he dressed looked talk. Okay, so Like he stuck out like a sore thumb. So I was like, oh, yeah, this is my Date whatever James and this is you know, such and such My ex-boyfriend who was with another woman was ready to fight him like right up in there With the woman the woman got mad at him and started arguing with him and then me and my uh date left I didn't get a chance to sing so, um I had put my song in I was ready to sing but I didn't get a chance to sing because Oh stupid was in there. Okay. So we left And I'm sick. I'm so sorry. I didn't know he's gonna be in there. Whatever whatever I really didn't know like seriously. There's like I didn't know. Um, I wouldn't even think in that he would be in there because I had seen him in months and months, right? so He's like, oh, no big deal. Whatever whatever. Let's let's go somewhere else. So then we go I forgot where we went. Mm-hmm. Where we go after that? I don't know. I can't remember but we went somewhere else and had a few more drinks and And then I was like, okay.  It's time to go um So he was like, okay. Well, you have my card call me anytime, you know, we'll live to see you again. I'm like, okay So go home and um He didn't have my phone number because I didn't give him my phone so Back in the old days Don't we didn't have you know smartphones and stuff like that We couldn't just it would take forever to put your number in the phone So you just wrote it down and gave it on the card or whatever, right? because you had to push one to get a One two times to get beat y'all remember the old days So, um, I called him like two days later I gave him a day. I caught him two days later.  Like, he was already trying to take me out of here for lunch And I'm like, uh, I'm just waking up and what am I doing for lunch? Um And so I was like, well, I can meet you Uh for dinner Sure, let's do it. Let's do it. So We dated basically every day for two weeks. Okay We didn't We saw each other every day for two weeks after that. So after two weeks, he was like, um You know, he was trying to get some and I'm like, I don't I don't have sex outside of relationships.  I'm like well I'm like, well, I don't date guys that you know, I don't I don't I wouldn't date a guy seriously unless they could do Certain things for me and he's like, what do you mean? And this is where you have to this is where I dropped it on him that I need him to pay all my bills. Okay And so I was like, oh god, this is it This is it Okay, so I was like, well, you know I need, you know, I need someone to take care of me. I need the one to take care of my bills, you know, um If I'm gonna date them seriously and be attracted to them and feel like, you know Secure with them. I immediately didn't take care of my bills And he's like, oh, well, how much are your bills? And so I gave him the price and he said, oh, I can do that. That's not a problem Don't worry about it. I can give you that. No problem. It's like, okay So We became a couple at first and then I thought he was bluffing.  All right So I So I was like, okay, well my car notes do tomorrow, you know, I'm thinking, you know what This is it again. And then he he drives. He's driving I'm thinking he's driving me back to my car because he's driving in that direction. I'm like, oh god He drives up to the ATM and gives me the money It's just here. You gotta go pay your car note. Of course. I told him my car note was twice what it was because you know So I paid up to so I'll pay two months up. Okay This is how you do. I'm teaching y'all. Okay, so you pay two months up And then the next month when you get when you get the car note, then you can go shop. Okay, so, um Because he's gonna give you double the car note. So you always gonna have extra money.  Okay, so I did that He still don't know to this day job He does not know that my car note was not there But I think he would laugh he wouldn't be upset. Um So Yeah, he started paying on my bills Um, I was uh working and then he told me to quit my job. He's like, you know, that job is not good for you I don't get to see you enough. You know, it's bad hours I'll take care of you quit. I'm like, okay. I quit. I quit right now. You know, I quit So after that I was just like, okay. Now, what do I do with my free time? Um So eventually, uh, we moved in together about Three months after we were dating I moved into his apartment He had a very nice condo on the lake and you know, uh Then I was like, you know I was going to school at the time as well. Like I was Also in school and working. Um So I was like, well I'm go I started something new because I quit my whole job. I'm like, well, I need to do something else So I started going back to school And so my school was an hour away from his place. I'm like, I drove every day And then I finally finished school and then, um I was like, well, the lease is up here. You know, let's move Let's move downtown So we moved downtown in a big high rise at the top.  Let's just say that so he wears glasses He had his hair cut or like, you know sweaters and stuff like that, but you know, he's into technology So he was a geek actually Um, so that's the kind of guy he was but back in the day you had to be suave You had to go to the nice eyebrows, the baby hairs, you know That's the day that I learned that looks are not important anymore. Okay. It's what somebody can actually Contribute to you and make you better. So while he was paying my car notes my bills and stuff I had a chance to go to school. I had a chance to you know, um Get a second degree and he paid for my school He paid for my school y'all he paid for my school my second school and I got a second degree and then I began to work in the field that I was Um Had the degree in and his friend owned a business that was in that field. So he got me a job And I would only work like three nights a week, you know, um Because you know, it was Not I didn't need the money. I was just doing it to do something, you know So after we got married I stopped working Totally because we got married After I finished school and Um stuff like that. So we got married a couple months after that and I didn't have to work anymore And then I was a housewife So basically I met my husband through the law of attraction and being a gold digger Now I'm not saying that's gonna work for everybody I'm just saying it worked for me I'm just saying it worked for me because I knew exactly what I wanted And I wasn't gonna put up with anything less and I was attracting it the whole time I was I was like, this is what I want. This is what's coming to me. I know this is going to be my life I'm not going to be doing this. I'm not going to be working. I'm not going to work as a wife I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. I want to be this.  I was the controller of the situation. Okay um So that's why I Have the husband that I have that takes care of me and doesn't Because that's what I attracted by the law of attraction. I said it. I said it. Look, I don't care if he's The most gorgeous man in the world. I want somebody to do this this and that for me And that who I can raise a family with who I can have kids with who my kids can have a nice house Cars go to good schools. I want all that. Okay. I want it off. That's what I said And you know, that's what that's what we're having, you know, that's what we're doing And it's important to know what you want In life so that it can come to you if you're not sure what you want If you don't know what you want if you don't have no clue You're just waiting for something to show up and see if you like it or not You're gonna get surprises.  You're gonna have disappointment So it's very important to know what you want.  Okay um The moment I knew that he was gonna be my husband is when he Got all those CDs He didn't know me for An hour and he bought me a hundred dollars worth of CDs Um, because I didn't like his music and he never once flinched when I insulted him three four times That's the kind of man you want to marry.  Okay, because that means he sees past your flaws Your emotion and all that and he can put up with you.   Okay He's what I tracked it. Okay. I didn't attract somebody Who thinks that they're all that can't afford to take care of a family or a wife Got his hand out at rent time. I didn't marry that because that's not the kind of life I want. Okay I'm not putting anyone down for having that life, but that's not what I wanted. That's not what I was going to attract That's not what I saw myself doing Okay, so ladies love attraction make your list before you go out don't entertain anything that's not on that list and You'll probably get what you're looking for two one day.  All right. I'll see y'all later. Bye


Okay. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for turning up at 10 o'clock in the morning on Saturday to the hangover talk slot. So pretty much. So pretty much. I'm screw in case you didn't figure that out already. We've got Strom Carlson, Vidiot, and Datagram up here, and the talk that we're doing is entitled social message relay using existing social networks to transmit covert messages in public. So you've probably, you know, read the description of this either on the website or in the program or something like that, and you've got a pretty good idea of, you know, what you've come to see. Well, not really. The description we gave you while accurate doesn't exactly tell you 100% of what we're going to be doing here. I'm not gonna say anything more. I'm gonna let everyone else go ahead and take care of that. So, without further ado, here is Mr. Strom Carlson. Actually, I think Datagram... Yeah. That's my fault. We also sucked in rehearsal. Assuming there was actually a rehearsal. Well, at least we're not... Can everybody hear me? Wait a second. Yes? No? Okay. So throughout history, there have been a lot of ways to do this. A lot of different approaches. Look at this. And one of those has been number stations and Does anybody know what number stations are? Show of hands? Okay. For those of you who don't know, it's shortwave radio stations that broadcast series of encrypted numbers pretty much any way you want to encode a message. This is just one of the types of ways to do social message relay, but it's kind of popular. As far as geek scene goes, just because it's kind of creepy, kind of... What am I thinking of? Well, anyways. Yeah, spy world, that kind of stuff. So a little bit of history. They've been reported since around World War II probably earlier, but reported since World War II. The big thing about them is that there are a lot of irregularities during major world events. I listed two on the bottom that are big things as far as Russia is concerned. And when big world events happen, a lot of number station spikes in activity, broadcasting happen. So give you an idea of what these are used for potentially. And again, spike in appearance since 90. So, I like how there's no text. Oh, sweet. I didn't know I was this fancy. Anyways, some prerequisite paranoia. Most people think, and some of these may be confirmed with quotes around it, to be used by intelligence agencies. And the ones that most people think are using them are listed there, CIA, MI6 England, KGB's, former Soviet Union, BND's, Germany, and Mossad's Israel. I'm not mistaken. Also a rumor to be used by organized crime groups like that. So, we have some examples just so you guys could hear. How these work. This is the Lincolnshire Poacher. It's a pretty famous, famous number station, and it's still broadcasting. I don't know from where, but if I'm not mistaken, it's, yeah, it's MI6 operated. That was just a little clip. It goes on 24 hours a day sometimes. Sometimes not for weeks on end it'll be off. But that's the basic formats. Music and then some more, like numbers or phonetic alphabets, sometimes just rising note scales. We have another one. This one's a bit more creepy. It's called the Swedish Rhapsody. A little German girl, rattling off spine numbers. And something we were really interested in. Most recently there was the appearance of VoIP number stations. All of these, these two previous examples have been over shortwave. Which is from what I understand, a lot harder to operate than a VoIP line, but easier or harder to trace. So we have the example of the VoIP station. Okay, so basically we found this and we were really interested in it. How many of you number station people heard of this? Few of you. Okay. We're here to tell you that was us. We decided to see how hard it would be to make one and get it transmitted through social networks. So Strahm's going to talk to you next about basically getting it set up. So basically those of you who, so of those of you who heard of it, how many of you dialed the number station directly? All right. So yeah, that number station was running off my asterisk box in my apartment the whole time. So it's just basically a series of sound clips on my box that I threw together. So assembling the audio for the number station was an interesting project because there are several things you have to consider. First, you need some music. Second, you need, you know, numbers which are not identifiable as a single person and then you need some way of having encoded messages delivered. So the first bit about the music was actually fairly simple. I was driving around in my car and I had my iPod on shuffle mode and I have the Konect project CD's on my iPod. So how many of you have heard of the Konect project? Okay. It's basically a connection of the number station kind of things we just put it. It's basically, for those of you who haven't heard of it, it's like a four CD reset of recordings of all various number stations. So it's a lot of number stations. So my effort on shuffle mode is just like playing. C-O-N-E-T. And they're free for download. Yeah. So I'm listening. I'm driving around. There's like the cars plays and then a spine number station plays and then an a-ha song that I had on their plays. And I'm listening to the bridge of this a-ha song and I'm like, you know, that kind of sounds like it might be a number station. So when it came time to do the number station, I said, well, just use the bridge of that song as the music for the number station. So it's an a-ha song called Little Black Heart. So then to get the various recordings of the numbers, I considered several options. The first was recording my voice saying 1, 2, 3, but then I thought, no, I've given talks, people recognize my voice.  But then they just get weird looks and people might say, oh, that was me and I know this person. So I discovered that how many of you heard of Craigslist? Sorry. Yeah. So how many of you have browsed through Craigslist and found people advertising services with telephone numbers attached to them? Okay. People will list, you know, for services of various personal nature with the telephone numbers to call them. So it turns out that when you call people who are expecting calls from random people and you just repeat the same thing over and over and over again, eventually they'll repeat it back to you just to get you to try and say something different. So what I've got here is a collection of, what I've got here is a collection of the recordings of the other side of the conversation. This doesn't include me saying the numbers, so I'll just, I'll pretend to be them. And it also doesn't include the beep tone of the place, let them know they're being recorded because I didn't want that on the number station. But, so, you go ahead and play this. Hello. One. One. Hello. One. One. One. One. Three. I don't know. If you leave me a message, I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Five what? Six. Six. How's it going? Huh? Six. Six. Six. Hello. Seven. Yes. Seven. Hello. Seven. How you doing? Seven. This is Kevin? Seven. Seven. Eight. Eight. Eight. Nine. Nine. What nine? I don't have zero because I accidentally deleted that recording. But, that's pretty much how we did it. That's why it sounds like the audio equivalent of those ransom notes with little letters from every newspaper. Because it pretty much is. Next slide. Yeah, next slide. So, then all I did was I wrote an AGI script, run it on my Astros box, cut all these up into little half second clips, and wrote an AGI script to encrypt the message every time you call it, because that was easier than putting the encrypted messages in separate files. So, you just encrypt the message and then it turns it into numbers and it reads back all the numbers. So, what we've actually got is I've got CDs of all the little pieces, and I'll be tossing those out into the audience later. And that has the AGI script on it. So, if you want to make your own number station, you'll have the kit on the CD. This is a snippet of the code to play back the numbers. We just thought that would look cool. Yeah. We thought that was the coolest part of the script. Yeah, and so now I turn it over to Vidiotz and we get into the history of Project Evil. Yeah, Project Evil is the name we gave the experiment, because we wanted to be able to talk about it at 2600 meetings without other people going louder into the mic. Sorry. We wanted to be able to talk about this at 2600 meetings without other people knowing what we were saying, that we were referring to minefrowline. So, we called it Project Evil. I have no idea where the name came from.  This section is going to, I'm going to walk you through everything that happened to us while we were doing it, because this kind of became an international phenomenon for a short while. And I want to, as you can see by the subtitle there, it's aimed at anyone who might be interested in running a crypto challenge someday, learn from our mistakes, because we made quite a few. So, let's get up here just easier. Okay, how it all began. Well, this picture is of Philippe's deli in downtown LA. That's where LA 2600 meets. And because we live in the People's Republic of California, we have to go outside to smoke, so we get all our really bad ideas on this piece of sidewalk. That's why I put it there. So, we had the idea, why not set up a number station by VoIP? It happened right after Datagram had given a talk about the history of number stations. And what it was was a number station by VoIP. How? We decided we were going to release about four number stations, use one-time pads to encrypt them, and we were going to repeat the key on the first and last messages, hoping someone would look for a key collision. If you're not familiar with how one-time pads work, they're a very old form of encryption, but they're considered almost unbreakable. If you don't know what the exact key is, all possible decryptions are mathematically equally probable. Now, the reason why key collision is so often used to try to crack these is because it's very unlikely that you'll get one key that will produce two sensible messages or will decrypt two separate messages sensibly. So, we were hoping we could get someone to do this. And because the messages were very short, we didn't think it would be too much trouble to get someone to write a script and let their computer do all the work. And the reason why we did it is we wanted to see if we could estimate how big and powerful the online cryptographic community was. We just wanted to throw it out there and see what would happen. So, on May 8th, we posted this on the New York's Craig's List. For Mind Fry Line. Mind Fry Line, I haven't heard from you in a while. Won't you call me? And this 2-1-2 number. This was the first number station we set up. We let this mellow for a couple of days and then we sent one email. And I want to stress that all we did to start this whole experiment was send one email. I sent this one to the Spooks list. That's a mailing list for number stations enthusiasts. Screw, posing as somebody named Jay Random Entity, sent this email to them. Burr basically said, hey, I found this weird phone number you call and it sounds like a number station. You should check it out. You don't have to read the whole thing. So, on May 11th, we got 61 calls to that number in the first 24 hours. On May 24th, it showed up on the Off the Hook radio show. Now, we think we know how this happened. Bernie S., it turns out, who is a member of the Off the Hook crew, is subscribed to the Spooks numbers list. So, on that day, suddenly the number got 117 calls and by that point, it had been building slowly. More and more people had been posting about it. It had been spreading and we'd received almost a little over 1,700 calls by that point. On May 29th, we released the second number and it got 218 in the first 24 hours. So, interest was starting to build. We were getting a lot of, starting to see posts turn up in blogs, more people linking back and forth, a lot of speculation flying around, what the hell are these things? On May 31st, Homeland Stupidity posted an article about us and this was really kind of the first salient event in the whole thing because this was the first time the community actually tried to get organized to crack these codes. Michael Hampton, the guy who runs Homeland Stupidity, organized his forums and he created a new forum for each message where people could post and they could put up their theories and start working on them together. And then all of a sudden, on June 1st, Slash Dot, out of the blue. We had no clue that was coming. The number stations 1 and 2 got 2,180 calls thanks to Slash Dot. It was just amazing. It caught us completely by surprise. I think I got a phone call at like 3 a.m. going, oh my god, go to Slash Dot right now. I think it's also got digged for all stations, all numbers that we did but as far as I know they never hit the front page but they have something like 2,500 digs each at this point. I think that 2,180 calls was like the day it got Slash Dot. But then disaster struck for us. On June 20th, the guys who run the Hope conference back east created a copycat number station. They recorded ours, recut it, and then they announced it on the Off the Hook radio show and this is what they posted on Craigslist. Parasites. Our fourth number station we released just after the Hope contest but it only received 22 calls because everyone thought that it was all a stunt to promote hope up to that point. Interest just took a nosedive in this thing immediately after it. They were smart, they struck while the iron was hot and they got in right with the best perfect time to make a publicity coup out of this but they killed it afterwards. We never really got the level of interest back up to the point where it was before. And as you can see from this, 146 calls total and then it just kept getting worse. So yeah, on July 15th we finally had our first real meeting to discuss what the hell we were going to do because we're hackers, we're not exactly organized. We decided what we would do is create six more messages instead of the original four and we were going to release a batch of them in quick succession to try to get people's interest back up. We thought maybe if the people who were still following this thing thought wow, something's going on, maybe this is heating up, maybe it's related to the mid-east or something it might get out there and get more exposure. So these are the numbers that we continue to release. Ottawa, Lubbock, Orlando, Milwaukee and Fort Lauderdale. As far as I know, no one ever actually found Fort Lauderdale. Still there. No, they did. It finally got published. I feel like it was like a week after the fact or two weeks after the fact. Okay, I thought that was Milwaukee that you got late. It was one of them. There was one of them, I think. Lubbock was late. No one's found Fort Lauderdale yet as far as I can tell. And we didn't do anything different. We just would put them up on his asterisk box and then push out an ad on Craig's list with the title Four Mind Frow Line. Ostensibly, there were people out there running scripts that were checking Craig's list all the time to see if they could find a new one, but apparently their scripts sucked because they never found that one. So in total, the first four numbers received 58% of the calls. And the first four numbers were also up for a much shorter period of time. So if you really look at the call detail records, you can see that we did manage to rekindle some interest, but it didn't really ever come back fully. Now, before we go into Easter eggs, I should also just tell you the reason why we decided to do six number stations and try to rekindle some interest was right before the off-the-hook contest, we called Dark Tangent, the fellow that runs DefCon, and we let him in on the secret. We said, we want to do this, but we can't have anything published. Otherwise, it'll be blown. So DT kept its secret from the rest of the DefCon staff and from everybody else and put us up here under the pseudonym of Social Message Relay. I just want to make sure I put that in because I forgot to put in a slide for it. Now, for those of you who are actually following MindFileLine, here's some Easter eggs that you may or may not have found. First, the group numbers. Originally, the group numbers were supposed to identify the city the next message was going to appear in. But then, Will Wheaton posted this on Slash. Anyway, my prediction, the next message will be posted on Craig's List for Boston. And the second message was posted on Craig's List for San Francisco. Thanks for blowing my surprise Ensign Crusher. So, on messages 3 through 6, we changed the group numbers to 1, 3, 4, 2, 5, 0, 2, 2, and 1, 6, 9, which were rearranged to become the octets of Will Wheaton.net. Similarly, the 7 through 10 messages are 1, 1, 6, 0, 1, 8, 2, 1, 6, and 2, 5, 4, and when rearranged, that's LA2600.org. Also, the initials of the cities that they were released in, if you read them in order. Somebody actually figured out NSA had posted about that on Homeland Stupidity and got really excited about it, but then he stopped. So, why don't we decrypt a couple messages? Now, also, before I go into this, I should say for reasons that will become clear, we're not going to release the decryptions of the first four messages yet. As I said, after the first four messages were published, we finally had a meeting and got reorganized, and we're going to start with the sixth message and go from there. If you keep following this, you'll eventually hear about the first four messages were, but we're not going to decrypt those here in this talk today. All right, the 613 number. The one-time pad for that was, I found two pennies in my pocket, here's my two cents. We should probably explain the one-time pads. There's the guy. If you subscribe to the... What's the next time I talk? Do you mind? Oh, sorry, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, there's a guy who shows up to the LA2600 meetings, and those of you, I see some familiar faces out here, will know who I'm talking about.  Okay, he's known for posting these somewhat ranting, very bizarre emails that yet somehow make a weird kind of cool sense. I can't explain it. Anyway, we decided that you could not get a better random text generator in the world than an email this guy posted to our list. So we just started grabbing random ones out of our archives. So those of you who are with LA2600 and subscribed to the LA2600 mailing list will probably recognize some of these. Yeah, and if you pipe his email into dev random, you give back pi. The full thing. So how the decryptions work. When you call the number station, you get group 415 and then a series of digits. Those digits are the decimal ASCII representations of letters padded with zeros to make them fill out the space. When you take out the padded zeros, the cipher text that looks like this, 14, 83, 2, etc. You take the one-time pad, again converted to decimal ASCII, zore it out, and that gives you your clear text. And in this case, the clear text is... We figured it was appropriate. This is at the point where we knew we were going to be giving this talk. And I'm just going to speed through the rest of these, hitting them really fast because you don't want to read a bunch of random numbers. The 806 number was also, the one-time pad in a hard time locating my salt lick and hip-waiters. Yes, that's really one of his. And that decrypts too. Captain's Logs 302,606.2 Pwned by Ensign Crusher. The 407 number. Be careful what you say. It will always come back at you and you will be quoted. How little did he know. And this is an apology to the Spooks list because we did have some trepidation about actually launching our experiment off of their back and detracting their attention from other might possibly be meaningful work. Legitimate stations. Legitimate stations.  And the 414 number. This one is, as the media reporting the Pope being unavailable I have not yet received permission to eat meat on Friday. I have no idea what the hell that email was about. This was the most sane sentence in that email that he sent. This is like the only one that was even in English. Thank you priest. So this one was our thank you to Michael Hampton and to the cryptographic community but especially to Michael Hampton because if you go to Homeland Stipidity and you start reading all the forums by the time you get to the 10th number station that poor guy is going completely insane. You could tell by the tone he is just pulling his hair out, beating his head against the desk he really wants to know what these things say. So we had to mention him. And the final number. I hope and wish none of you is enamored enough with me to quote my rantings. In case you want to use my writings as evidence I will gladly refer you. Again, I have no idea what the hell that means. This one is aimed at the organizers of the Hope Contest. Dear Emmanuel, glad to see Creativity is alive and well over 2600 magazine. If you ever need help, again give us a call. Parasite. Total cost to set this up by the way for everything including our webpage was $202. I put that in because those of you who work in a big company go back and ask your marketing department if they can get three months of international exposure and 20,000 phone calls for $202. So running a crypto challenge here is our advice to you learn from our mistakes and most importantly, I think be organized and have all your content ready before you start. When we were doing the first four numbers we would just pick stuff at random at the time we were setting up the station. Part of the reason why we're not decrypting those messages is because the content was not really well thought out and would not fit well with what we're continuing to do. Second, don't underestimate the cryptographic community but don't overcomplicate your challenge. I'll get a little bit more on overcomplication later. And finally, maybe most importantly, have a plan to handle copycats like a manual. This is the best copycat we got. Mindfrow Line, stop calling me. I told you yesterday I don't love you. Give you back my records and my good leather jacket. And if whoever posted that in the audience is here, come on up, we actually have something for you. We did appreciate that greatly. In fact, we picked Orlando as a city to release one of our numbers in just because of this guy. Now we have some observations we'd like to share about the crypto community because we watched pretty closely as the community tried to decipher these messages and figure out what the hell was going on. And the first and biggest one is that the community tends to ignore any answers it doesn't like, even if they're correct. I'd like to read this quote here. But the starter of such a game could hardly count on anyone calling the phone number and asking about it online. So the person who first noted it would almost certainly have to be in on it if not the instigator himself. That's the most logical thing anyone said about decrypting our number stations. As I said earlier, we sent one e-mail to launch this project. We got exactly one e-mail back saying, where did you find this? We sent them the lamest excuse so we could think up something along the lines of oh my buddy found it and he sent it to me because he knows I'm into this stuff. And they bought it. We never heard anything about it again despite the fact that all the messages and supposedly thousands of people were trying to solve all these ciphers, no one ever went back to look for the source. The second thing is people kept asking probably up to today they still are asking, is this real? Is this really a number station? Well, duh. Why go to the trouble of setting up a number station when you can just use public key encryption? It seems like pretty obvious but the crypto community seems to want to have a mystery to solve. They seem to want to have something to go after their own blinders. So if you're running a crypto challenge factor that in. Second thing about the crypto community it seems to only organize to the lowest level necessary.  If you read through those forms suppose you're someone brand new who's never heard of this before and is interested.  With linear posts going way down the page and there's tons of misinformation and duplicated effort. No one has actually put up any even the wiki was not well organized. There was nothing there that could really help someone dig in and make them more efficient. Actually everything that was there would just slow you down if you were trying to start out. The other thing is the community is incredibly powerful as evidenced by how quickly they cracked the code from the hope contest but it's not proportionally insightful. Now that's no different than probably the rest of society. We're all standing on the shoulders of some incredibly brilliant freaks who invented stuff like electricity and medicine etc. But in the crypto community when someone gets one of those insights it doesn't necessarily propagate down again usually because of very poor organization or because they're wearing blinders as I said before. Here's an example. We estimated that there was about 100 different cipher systems tested to decrypt this thing during the time it was up there. Not one single person tried to find a key collision which is the classic way to decrypt a one-time pad. And also because our messages are very long by my my feelings it wouldn't be hard to identify a real message from a fake message because randomly generating keys and just soaring it against the cipher text the majority of what you get will be pure garbage versus actually seeing a few words that make sense. So they could have cracked this very easily had they just generated 10 lines of code to just generate random keys and try and zore it against any of our ciphers. So here's our suggestion to the web crypto analysis community if they want to make themselves more efficient. We'd like to propose that they or someone build a web portal something that's easily deployable so that people who aren't necessarily coders or systems admins can get it out there. Make it open source and extensible. Use common cipher tools because there are cipher tools written in Perl and PHP and other things that are out there for every kind of transpositional cipher anything else that you'd ever want those tools are already out there sitting in open source repositories and they're not collected anywhere. There's not one easy to use tool. This is from a common data set. One of the big problems we saw with people pulling data from a whole bunch of different places was typos. They'd get things from over here, get pasted into a blog, cut and pasted and emailed somewhere else. Next thing you know they're working from something that's completely different from what the original message was. And finally, standardized data reporting and this is probably the most important part.  If you had something with an interface that would make it very easy to identify which ciphers have been tested, what was done, common data reporting you're going to make yourself a lot more efficient. Tenth message. If you were keeping track you may have noticed I would only give you nine so far. So those of you who are following mine for outline now might be a really good time to get a pencil and a cell phone. This appeared or will appear very shortly. A few minutes ago after I pulled my laptop away. On the Gulfport Biloxi Craigslist mine for outline I regret the burden I placed upon you confer with me once again by the Rivers West Bank and I will take you home. Call me.<PHONE_NUMBER> This is going to be the final mine for outline message. Now you're probably thinking well that's cool and all but what am I going to do with another one time pad? This one's not a one time pad. This one can be cracked with pen and paper. This is the one that people really wanted when this whole thing started so we decided to give it to you. And we have one more hint because we like you and this is what you might want to write down if you're interested in taking a stab at cracking this. When DEF CON is online there is no hope. I'll give you a moment to write that down. Quick question though actually is Ilanka in the house? No? Okay good the rest of you have a chance. If you don't know who Ilanka is she's probably the best amateur cryptologist working in probably the world right now. She's almost always here at DEF CON and she's famous for solving all the CON crypto challenges pretty much the day they're released. So we're going to open up the floor to Q&A right now. Don't be shy. Come on questions. Just have a question. None of you? Wow. I'm sorry what was the question again? Are you maintaining the anonymity? How do I maintain the anonymity of the phone number? Well pretty much it's along the lines of there's no name associated with the number because I'm buying it through a VoIP company and pretty much it's on the VoIP company to not release my personal information or else I sue their sorry little ass. That's for the most part. So you can theoretically buy a number station or buy a VoIP account with like a fake PayPal account or one of those prepaid cash credit cards or something like that so you can if you use that and tour and then put the asterisk box on some random server that you compromise or whatever you could theoretically make it almost untraceable but I didn't bother to do that. For the last station? Also one other thing which is sort of related to your question particularly somebody mentioned on one of the many posts that were made in relation to the stations going up it's really dumb doing this over VoIP because well how do you maintain anonymity if you have someone who's actually trying to pick up this message to decode it to get instructions it doesn't work well yes and no what you have to remember is that while there may be caller ID records for the VoIP station number one there are ways of defeating caller ID number two even with those in place we still have plenty of people coming up making MP3s of the station and then distributing them which other people distribute I've actually found these things turning up on peer-to-peer networks which is rather interesting we even had one that ended up on you're the man now dog as an animation that somebody did so pretty much it's a pretty good way of getting the message out there if unreliable it's not necessarily targeted but it does provide some obfuscation The difference between VoIP and using shortwave is that you trade shortwave you can't identify where people are receiving messages but with the VoIP I could just buy a VoIP account wherever they can identify where it's coming from does that make sense? well there's also one other thing to add to that which is they can identify where that message is actually located but they don't have any real way of knowing who placed it so the degree of anonymity is still there but you're trading off one thing for another by the way one thing I noticed looking through the call detail records the number stations of the approximately 6100 calls we received about 33% came from Skype and I don't know if you guys have figured this out yet but Skype kind of blows the call quality is horrible and you can't hear what the numbers that are being said are so don't use Skype for this stuff please please please use a real phone so any more questions? from here well there's the crypto challenge you write down the numbers it reads back to you you decrypt the message and then you get instructions on what to do next in the message where are we going with it? we're having fun we're just having fun at this point our experiment to see what the community is going to do is pretty much over and if anybody wants to try and crack the first 4 numbers if you can find them probably on homelands to put into those recordings my suggestion is just generate random keys and so are against it and if you ever come across one-time pad encryption which is we chose one-time pad because that's traditional with number stations and we thought it was kind of funny in all the comments on all these sites trying to decrypt them they're like well if you shift the bits to the left and then you you zort against the bible and then one guy would go well it's a one-time pad and it would just get lost in all the noise so my advice would be just try and brute force it I think we need to wrap up we're going to start wrapping up okay yeah so we can take a couple more questions take like one or two more questions if anyone has any questions yes very last one also we did go to kinko and we did pay for the copies and and we did make up crypto challenge flyers which will be up and about so all the stuff is on the flyer so you don't screw it down too hard but so those will be distributed also I've got some CDs brought to the audience which contain recordings of all the number stations right off my pbx and the text of the number stations and the program and the assemble your own Mind Friline station kit plus we have the best we made mind friline t-shirts ten dollars today only come get yours after the talk out in the hallway you see me we have all sizes quantities are limited very very limited but if you want more information go to project evil dot org all right cool thank you very much thank you