1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:12,000 [Music] 2 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:17,000 Hey everyone, welcome to Freedom Tech Wrap for the weekend of January 6th. 3 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:25,000 My name is Marks and this is going to be a weekly source for news and project updates in the freedom technology space. 4 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:34,000 We all live in this world where we're so interconnected constantly and freedom technology gives you a little bit of that control back 5 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:39,000 where you can decide when you want to connect, how you want to connect, who you want to connect with 6 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:45,000 and really all about where your data is living and who has access to it. 7 00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:51,000 Freedom Tech Wrap is an independent show so if you want to support what we're doing 8 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:57,000 you can use Value for Value in your favorite podcasting 2.0 app and we'd really appreciate it. 9 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:00,000 So this format is a little bit different than what I was doing before. 10 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:05,000 These are going to be short, concise and just bring you all the hits from the week 11 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:08,000 and I'm hoping to do this on a weekly basis. 12 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:12,000 This is the first week of the year so what a great time to start. 13 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:17,000 With that let's jump right in. We'll do news first and then we'll do some project updates. 14 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:22,000 The first news story for the week is a new reporting requirement within the United States. 15 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:29,000 If you receive more than $10,000 or more in Bitcoin or crypto in a single payment 16 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:35,000 you are now required to report that to the IRS and you have to do so within 15 days 17 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:38,000 and it includes all sorts of personal information. 18 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:44,000 You have to include their names, their addresses, social security numbers for anybody involved in the transaction. 19 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:48,000 Now this is somewhat of an onerous reporting requirement. 20 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:53,000 There's a lot of people who speculate that this is not even constitutional, 21 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:56,000 that it violates a couple different amendments. 22 00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:01,000 If you want to read a good write-up about it you can check out tftc.io. 23 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:03,000 Marty Bent did a good article about it. 24 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:08,000 There are also plenty of people on Twitter, Jerry Brito being one of them, who have reported on it. 25 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:11,000 So go check that out. Important to know. 26 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:16,000 One of the examples that Marty uses on his article is that he talks about if you have a contractor 27 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:20,000 who came in to work on your house and you don't know this person. 28 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:25,000 You're both strangers but you ask them to do some work and then on their way out they're like, 29 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:29,000 "Hey, do you do Bitcoin?" and you pay them in Bitcoin. 30 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:33,000 And then they're like, "Oh, by the way, can I get your social security number?" 31 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:37,000 You're like, "I don't want this to be that kind of relationship. 32 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:44,000 How do I trust you as a person that I barely know to safely guard my social security number 33 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:46,000 and not steal my identity?" 34 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:53,000 So this seems like it's fraught with all sorts of identity theft potential. 35 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:56,000 So definitely keep an eye on this. 36 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:01,000 And really, if you live in the United States and you have concerns over this, 37 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:04,000 raise those concerns to your elected officials 38 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:09,000 because this is not something that will just go away on its own. 39 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:12,000 Okay, next up we have Forbes. 40 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:16,000 Forbes did a write-up about Bitcoin's role in human rights and global empowerment. 41 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:22,000 It's a great article. A lot of it talks about Alex Gladstein and the Human Rights Foundation. 42 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:28,000 And then it goes through and showcases a few different individuals and projects around the world 43 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:40,000 that are using Bitcoin to truly empower people who are trying to rise up in life from difficult circumstances. 44 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:43,000 So I recommend you check that out. 45 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:52,000 Speaking of Alex Gladstein, Ian Burrell, who's a columnist, a reporter, does a lot of work in Africa. 46 00:03:52,000 --> 00:04:00,000 He did a write-up this week where he traveled with Alex to Malawi in Southeast Africa. 47 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:08,000 And they visited some remote regions where Bitcoin has really actually helped improve the power grid 48 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:12,000 and is bringing electricity to a small village. 49 00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:14,000 And so his write-up is great. 50 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:18,000 It talks all about just the effects that that has on human life 51 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:24,000 to be able to have power at night and in the early mornings, as well as throughout the day. 52 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:30,000 The ability just to do simple things like cooking food in a much faster manner 53 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:36,000 and not having to go out and harvest charcoal from the forest and then burn that charcoal to cook their food. 54 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:40,000 And this is all made possible by Bitcoin mining operations that come in. 55 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:49,000 And they pay for the build-out and then they can be the buyer of last resort of that electricity. 56 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:51,000 So great write-up. 57 00:04:51,000 --> 00:05:00,000 Interesting thing about Ian is that he was supposedly a pretty big critic and pretty negative on Bitcoin leading up to this. 58 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:03,000 But this article is very positive about it. 59 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:10,000 So I don't know if his tune is changing or if this is simply just a very kind of objective view on it. 60 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:11,000 But go check that out. 61 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:13,000 You can find that on unheard.com. 62 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:21,000 It's called the African village mining Bitcoin. 63 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:27,000 Next, I want to talk about a couple of websites that I've come across as I've been putting together this show. 64 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:29,000 The first one is called Free for Developers. 65 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:33,000 It's free-for.dev. 66 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:36,000 And it is a giant list of freedom. 67 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:43,000 And I shouldn't say freedom, but it's a giant list of cloud services that you can use for free as a developer. 68 00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:45,000 So it talks about all the different free tiers. 69 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:53,000 For example, one of the most famous ones is AWS, you know, giving you a free year of using their services. 70 00:05:53,000 --> 00:05:55,000 So check that out. 71 00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:58,000 And then it looks like I don't know if these two sites are related. 72 00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:01,000 Another one is called trackawesomelist.com. 73 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:10,000 And it also has updates on just awesome projects in the open source world and things that you can use for free. 74 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:15,000 Specifically, like in cloud computing. 75 00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:17,000 Okay, OpenSats. 76 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:27,000 If you're not familiar, OpenSats is an organization that provides support by way of grants to developers who are working on open technologies. 77 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:31,000 A lot of the developers are in the Bitcoin and the Nostra space. 78 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:34,000 So they did their 2023 year in review. 79 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:37,000 There's a big blog post on their website about it. 80 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:46,000 They go through and talk about the financing that came in and how they kicked off Nostra grants this year. 81 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:49,000 The real highlight is that they provided 90 grants. 82 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:52,000 And a big chunk of those were for long-term support. 83 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:56,000 And then the majority were for project-specific support. 84 00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:58,000 So really cool. 85 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:02,000 I love what OpenSats is doing. 86 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:04,000 Okay, two more stories. 87 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:06,000 First one, Lynn Alden. 88 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:15,000 That is a name that you probably recognize both in the macroeconomic space, investment space, and then really in the freedom technology space. 89 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:18,000 She published her January 2024 newsletter. 90 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:19,000 So go check that out. 91 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:22,000 It's chock full of great, great info to kick off the new year. 92 00:07:22,000 --> 00:07:27,000 And then lastly, NextCloud, another big project in the freedom tech world. 93 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:40,000 They have posted a new developer site that walks through and has different tutorials and developer tool info for building apps for NextCloud. 94 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:41,000 All right, let's go into the updates. 95 00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:43,000 First up, our friends over at Wavelike. 96 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:53,000 Wavelike is a project that is an independent music site where musicians can upload their music and then they can get paid directly when people like their songs. 97 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:54,000 So that's awesome. 98 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:56,000 Really enjoy listening to it. 99 00:07:56,000 --> 00:08:00,000 The update here is that their Android app is live now. 100 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:03,000 You can go download APK and load it on your device. 101 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:06,000 And then for iOS, it is still in beta. 102 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:12,000 It's been in beta for a few months now, but you can go sign up through TestFlight and check it out on iPhone. 103 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:14,000 I've been listening a lot. 104 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:16,000 A lot of great music on there. 105 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:23,000 It obviously is not as robust as the likes of Spotify or Apple Music and such, but there's still some great things that I've discovered on there. 106 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:24,000 So go check it out. 107 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:28,000 And then, yeah, if you like a song, support the artist. 108 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:32,000 Send a little bit of money. 109 00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:35,000 OK, let's jump over to the AI world. 110 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:38,000 We have Unleashed.Chat. 111 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:48,000 So Unleashed is another one of these projects that lets you run your own chat service, your own chat GPT, if you will. 112 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:52,000 And then you just pay for the server usage that you do. 113 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:55,000 A big one that kind of started this was PlebAI. 114 00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:57,000 You can go to PlebAI.com and check out that project. 115 00:08:57,000 --> 00:08:58,000 Very similar. 116 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:03,000 But Unleashed.Chat is running their own. 117 00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:10,000 This one is fed with live Nostra data and also has options for other data embedding. 118 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:11,000 So that's really cool. 119 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:18,000 It's like chatting with chat GPT, but having the live Internet being fed into it. 120 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:27,000 They also did an update here where they are storing data in Redis now, so it'll load much faster when you're running your chats. 121 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:34,000 There's a lot of power in using other chat services that are not part of big tech, really. 122 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:44,000 Being able to run them on your own at home or using distributed services where you spread around where you're chatting. 123 00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:48,000 You're not centralizing all your information. 124 00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:53,000 Let's go over to the encrypted messenger space. 125 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:57,000 This is a guy by the name of Jiraj Bednar. 126 00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:03,000 He has a long write-up that compares different encrypted messaging services. 127 00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:05,000 He just updated his article. 128 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:14,000 So I'll put it in the show notes, but you can find him, Jiraj@nostra.fan. 129 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:17,000 You can use that to look him up on Nostra. 130 00:10:17,000 --> 00:10:29,000 He's got a great write-up, great comparison of all the different services out there that allow you to do secure encrypted messaging with friends and with colleagues. 131 00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:34,000 Over in the home server space, we have Start9. 132 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:40,000 They have updated their Bitcoin Node client to Bitcoin Core 26.0. 133 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:44,000 That gives you the option to enable v2 P2P transport protocol. 134 00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:46,000 So if you'd like that, go ahead and update. 135 00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:51,000 And then with Umbrel, they just announced a new app for downloading YouTube videos to your Umbrel. 136 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:56,000 So you can have your home server download YouTube videos for you. 137 00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:01,000 Over in the Bitcoin space, we have Fetiment. 138 00:11:01,000 --> 00:11:04,000 Just did their 0.2 release. 139 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:08,000 And even though it's a 0.2, it's actually quite a major release. 140 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:12,000 People are saying that this is mostly feature complete now. 141 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:22,000 And so you can run an e-cash system that you can feed with Bitcoin and then run in a distributed, federated manner. 142 00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:28,000 And they're hoping that this can be, from now on, just mostly bug fixes and backward compatibility. 143 00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:29,000 So that's really cool. 144 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:32,000 And then right on the heels of that, we have the Mutiny wallet. 145 00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:40,000 They did a 0.5.1 release where they did a bunch of work and improvements to integrate with Fetiment. 146 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:46,000 So Mutiny up to now has worked really well with obviously Bitcoin on chain, but then Lightning Network. 147 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:47,000 And now they're working with Fetiment. 148 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:52,000 So a lot of options going on, which is really cool. 149 00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:56,000 We have a new Bitcoin wallet called Aqua. 150 00:11:56,000 --> 00:11:58,000 And they just released. 151 00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:01,000 And it does Bitcoin, Lightning, and Liquid. 152 00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:04,000 And that's a unique thing that you haven't really seen much yet. 153 00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:07,000 And that is wallet support for the Liquid network. 154 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:14,000 Liquid last year finally provided the ability to be a little more federated. 155 00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:21,000 And so I think we're going to see a lot more things happening in that space. 156 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:25,000 OK, and last on Bitcoin, we have a new piece of hardware. 157 00:12:25,000 --> 00:12:28,000 It's another space heater that's available. 158 00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:29,000 There's a few of these out there. 159 00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:34,000 Most of them started off as DIY, but now people are starting to create actual products around it. 160 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:44,000 But you take a Bitcoin miner that produces a lot of heat, and you channel it into an enclosure that acts like a space heater. 161 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:48,000 So now you're heating your room, heating your home, but you're also mining Bitcoin at the same time. 162 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:52,000 This one comes to us from Canan or Canan. 163 00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:55,000 I don't know how you say their company name, but they're out of Singapore. 164 00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,000 And they make Bitcoin ASICs. 165 00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:00,000 So the product is Avalon Nano 3. 166 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:04,000 You can check it out on Indiegogo if you want to preorder it. 167 00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:09,000 And they're going to ship this year. 168 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:14,000 Last update is a small project that was just posted to GitHub as well as posted on Noster. 169 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:17,000 It's called NHTTP. 170 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:20,000 And it is trying to do Noster over HTTP. 171 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:29,000 If you're familiar with Noster, it's an open protocol that allows you to send messages to other people or other nodes and relays. 172 00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:33,000 And then you can build all sorts of really interesting things on top of this. 173 00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:36,000 You really could build almost an entirely new internet on top of Noster. 174 00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:43,000 Noster uses WebSocket technology under the hood for passing around and relaying all the information. 175 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:52,000 So this user, Youle, has decided to try and build it on HTTP instead of WebSockets. 176 00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:57,000 A big reason for this is trying to solve the mobile bandwidth issue. 177 00:13:57,000 --> 00:14:03,000 Noster uses a lot of bandwidth, and so when you're on a mobile device, that can be quite hefty. 178 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:09,000 And the hope is with HTTP, potentially reduce that quite a bit. 179 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:11,000 And with that, we're going to call it a wrap. 180 00:14:11,000 --> 00:14:13,000 This is the Freedom Tech Wrap. 181 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:20,000 Weekly updates, news, project updates in the freedom technology space. 182 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:22,000 I hope you enjoyed this. 183 00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:24,000 I'm going to be bringing this to you weekly. 184 00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:29,000 If you have any projects that you would like us to start tracking, hit me up on Noster. 185 00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:33,000 My name is Marks@NosterPlebs.com. 186 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:35,000 You can find me there. 187 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:39,000 Until then, take care and remember to live independent. 188 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:59,000 [Music.] 189 00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:01,060 you