What's up everybody? It's good to be back. Welcome to Freedom Tech Wrap. I am your host,
Marks, and this is a weekly source for news and project updates in the freedom and independent
technology space. We live in a highly connected world and Freedom Tech lets you decide how you
want to connect and where you want your data to live. Freedom Tech Wrap is an independent show,
so if you want to show your support for what we're doing, you can send us value through
your podcasting 2.0 app. Your support and feedback are greatly appreciated.
Now, if you hadn't noticed, Freedom Tech Wrap took a few months off. To quote a very famous
TV show line, we were on a break. Lots of things happened during that time in the world and in the
freedom tech space as well. One notable thing in my own personal life is I'm currently working
at a startup and we decided to wind down the Mutiny wallet that we were offering. This is a
software, lightning and Bitcoin, and e-cash wallet that was running in your browser, whether it was
on a mobile phone or on desktop. Very innovative.
Pushed the boundaries in a lot of ways, but we are winding it down.
Now, this podcast is not a production of Mutiny Wallet, but I'm talking about it because it's
something that I work at on a daily basis. So if you haven't heard about the sunset of our wallet,
you can go read the reasoning behind it and all of the details of the timeline over on the Mutiny
Wallet blog. It's mutinywallet.com. Now, I've really missed doing these shows.
They are so much fun. I love doing them. I love doing them. I love doing them. I love doing them.
They are a lot of work. It takes multiple hours to produce a short episode, but I've had help along
the way in various regards. But for now, I am going to go solo and I will try to speed up this
process to production as much as possible without giving up on too much of the quality. So with my
time off that I had, I did a lot of reflecting on what I was trying to do with work on a daily
basis.
As well as with kind of the message and the information that I was trying to gather and put
out on this show. So I thought about like, what are the main objectives that I'm trying to achieve?
So I've come up with two. Here are two main objectives that I want to accomplish with
Freedom Tech Wrap. And then I hope that these objectives align with people out there who are
listening and maybe share it with friends and family who might also benefit from this information.
Number one, I want to increase the reach of important
privacy tools to the general public. And number two, I would like to personally keep a pulse
on the Freedom Tech space. So one is for everyone and the other one is selfishly for me.
But I think that as I do number two, it actually helps number one. So let's talk about number one,
increase the reach of important privacy tools to the general public.
We are all better off as a society when we have privacy.
That's why in the U.S. Constitution, privacy is built in as one of the fundamental things.
We are able to make very personal decisions for our lives. Decisions that no company,
no government could feasibly understand because they don't know all the personal inputs that we
have to these decisions that we make. Yet every day when we use tools to help us make these
decisions, we are inviting third parties to be involved in that personal decision and in our
personal lives. And that's why I think that's a really important thing. And I think that's a really
when they don't really need to be. Privacy isn't really inherently nefarious. Privacy is something
that we ask for on a daily basis in so many parts of our lives. Things that we do that we don't
realize are us wanting privacy, but nevertheless, it is something that we really need.
Once we give up our privacy, it's kind of hard for people to regain it.
And it's especially hard if you don't know that tools exist that allow you to get that back.
What do I mean by this? Well, when everyone around you is using some large cloud-based platform,
one of these platforms that gives you a lot of really awesome features,
gives you a lot of convenience in your life, your data is available everywhere, high availability,
99.999%.
That kind of stuff. Well, those people are also taking your user data and they're mining through
it to get analytics to maybe share some of that data with marketing companies for pay.
And then you might not even realize that they're doing that. And because everybody's using it,
you might not realize that there are actually other alternatives out there.
Not only are there alternatives, some of them have become really good and
really easy to use. So I want to surface more of these projects and products so that people can
choose for themselves. It used to be that these great cloud tools, these SaaS tools came out
and they were the best to use. And when you looked at the alternative, it was like this old
clunky piece of software that you used to buy in a shriek-wrapped box at the store,
a CompUSA or something. That's not the case anymore.
These open tools have really caught up from a UX perspective. And you can make the shift
from this platform that has all of your data to one where you now have your data.
So I want to help people have more information. And I also don't fault users and I don't judge
them for using the products that do invade their privacy. I honestly still use many of those as
well. We have to make sure that we're using the right products. And I think that's a big part of
the process. And we can make our own informed decisions based on our own risk tolerance and our
personal situations. That said, let's make an informed decision. And that's really the key word.
We can all be adults. We can make choices for ourselves. So let's make sure that people are aware of them.
to personally keep a pulse on the freedom tech space.
I follow this area closely already.
It's a passion of mine.
It's a hobby.
It's a job.
It's something that's important to me.
And has been really for the span of my career.
I have ebbed and flowed in how much I understood
or how seriously I took it.
You know, we as a technology space,
we kind of went through this journey
and this harkens back to the number one objective
of making people more aware of the privacy tools
that are out there.
But we started with computers that took up large rooms
and then eventually we shrunk those down
to personal computers that could sit on our desks.
And that was great.
Everything lived on our computer.
That was peak privacy in a way, right?
Everything was just right there.
Then we started to connect them.
You know, we ran cables
and had these computers talk to each other.
We started to give up a little bit of our privacy
because we were sharing information.
Sharing is not bad, right?
Sharing in a proactive way,
sharing our information can help make things more productive.
And it can be additive.
We can take information from someone else that they've shared
and we can build on it
and create something bigger out of the sum of both parts.
Then as we connected,
we needed to build up tools that could host that information
and that could make it easier to share.
And we started to move to servers that were in data centers
still run by maybe you or a few people
or a few small companies, right?
But then that became difficult,
racking your own servers,
having a redundancy,
managing for scale and load
because if the Christmas season was coming up
or some important holiday
or the end of school
and everybody was going to be taking their tests at the same time,
you had to buy enough servers
and get them online to handle that load.
But then when that load disappears
and is gone for nine months of the year,
you have all these extra servers sitting around not being used
and that's a huge capital expense.
So,
because of that,
we then advanced to this cloud model that we are on.
This is the SaaS model,
software as a service,
where you can have automatic scaling
that comes,
spins up and down based on your load
and your costs also go up and down based on the load.
And this has been phenomenal.
It's been great.
It's allowed the internet to really explode in usage
and has been the backbone of so many apps that we use.
So, we're going to talk about the cloud
and how we can use it on a daily basis.
Well, we're at a point now where that came at a cost
and that cost was our privacy and our data.
We see data leaks every single day.
We see our information being shared and sold away from us
to marketing companies.
So, we are, the technology has caught up in a way
that we can peel that back.
We can have the convenience of the cloud
and convenience of cloud computing,
which the cloud is really doing,
and we can have the convenience of the cloud
and convenience of cloud computing,
which the cloud is really doing.
The cloud is really just someone else's computer running
with our data on it.
And we can have the convenience of the cloud,
but with our own control over our data.
That is the reality today
and will continue to get even better over time.
And the goal of this podcast is to spread that information
and that news far and wide that we can have
our privacy. We can have our cake and eat it too, effectively. Okay, now with those two main
objectives, I'm making some changes to the format of the show. First, I am increasing the distribution
channels of Freedom Tech Wrap. This will include all major podcasting platforms. I initially started
just on the podcast index and just on podcasting 2.0 apps. Well, now we are going to be on Apple,
Spotify, YouTube, you name it, this will be there. Yes, I'm still going to be on the podcast index
because I think that is a wonderful place to have a show, especially one that talks about freedom
technology. Now, this show doesn't have any sponsors and I don't have plans to add any sponsors to it.
So this increased distribution is not about trying to get more money for myself and not trying to,
you know, turn this into a full-time job. It really is just to achieve objective number one.
I want to spread this.
And this information far and wide. The increased reach of privacy tools, that is really what I want.
So this is a podcasting 2.0 enabled show, which means listeners are totally welcome to stream
their credits to me and stream them to the show as they listen. They can also send a message with
a boost. I'm incredibly grateful when people do that because it is a strong signal to me that
people are getting value from the show. Aside from me reading those boosts on the podcast,
I'm really grateful for the feedback that you guys are sending. I'm really grateful for the feedback
that you guys are sending. I'm really grateful for the feedback that you guys are sending. I'm really
grateful for the feedback that you guys are sending. I'm really grateful for the feedback that you guys
are sending. I'm really grateful for the feedback that you guys are sending. I'm really grateful for the
feedback that you guys are sending. I'm really grateful for the feedback that you guys are sending.
I'm really grateful for the feedback that you guys are sending. I'm really grateful for the feedback that you guys are sending.
I don't have any sponsors to answer to.
So I welcome any feedback that you might have because I want this show to be informative and entertaining.
I want you to get value out of it.
All right, so second, I'm going to limit the number of stories and updates that I cover in each episode.
There is so much to read about and talk about that these could become one, two, three hour episodes, and I want to make them more bite-sized.
So my goal is to stay around 30 minutes, maybe even less if I can.
Because really going back, when I first started the show, I began to collect more and more projects that I would track.
And it became very difficult to keep these within a certain time limit.
So that is my goal is to keep them within a bite-sized amount.
Again, give me feedback, though.
If you really want more and you want these to be an hour long, we can make them longer.
But for now, trying to stick to 30 minutes.
Now, along those lines, my third one is that I want to expand the focus of the show.
Many people find freedom technology by way of one of the biggest freedom tech tools out there, which is Bitcoin.
But freedom tech is more than that.
It's really a category of technology that puts the individual in control of their data without need for permission from a central authority.
That's kind of my loose definition.
I'm happy to debate it with people and come up with a better one if you want.
But in that spirit, I plan to cover all sorts of tools out there to help people decouple any aspect of their life from permission platforms.
People don't have to move their entire lives over to freedom tech tools, but they can if they want to.
I'm not expecting everyone to do that.
But there are good permission platforms out there that we use every day for convenience.
We talked about that already just a second ago.
So it's important to have a mix.
Be familiar with the tools.
Have backup options for you to get off of certain platforms if you need to, etc.
For example, I use Twitter, but I also use Noster.
So if I were ever to get booted off Twitter, I'm already using something that I can't get booted off of.
All right, fourth, I am moving this to a separate feed.
This originally started as a show called No Strings, and that was the beginning of this podcast feed.
And then I morphed it into this weekly update show called Freedom Tech Rap.
I'm going to separate these and go back to No Strings being called that.
And that is going to be more of an interview focused show.
And it's going to be more sporadic in its timing.
Whereas I want Freedom Tech Rap to be clean, have a good weekly cadence and be a feed by itself.
So I will be doing that.
And you might be listening to this from the No Strings feed, or you might be listening from the new feed.
Welcome to everyone.
Fifth, this is...
This is probably my last one in the list.
But fifth, I've made a new website, freedomtechrap.com.
That's freedomtech, and then rap is spelled W-R-A-P dot com.
Aside from just having the podcast episodes on there, it's actually going to have a...
It has a tools page where I will be curating a list of tools that I think are approachable for an average user.
My goal is for this to have like different categories on it.
And that way, if you are using a tool, you're going to be able to use it.
If you're using a tool in your life and you think, you know, I use this for my bookkeeping.
I wonder if something exists out there that I don't have to pay a subscription fee to a cloud service provider.
And I could do this on my own.
I want to create a place where you could go and explore and find ways to migrate off.
Or at least have a backup option that you could migrate off if you need to.
So go check it out, freedomtechrap.com.
Now, let's see.
We've been going here for about 15 minutes.
Which has taken up a big chunk of the time.
So for this episode, I'm going to cover three news stories.
And then normally I would do...
Actually, sorry, four news stories.
And then normally I would do project updates on some of the big projects in the Freedom Tech space.
But if I have time left over after doing the news stories,
I'm just going to do a little more introduction into the tools page that I have on the website.
And kind of let you know what's out there.
So first, let's jump into the news.
There have been...
There's been a big story brewing over the last month.
And that is with WordPress and WP Engine.
So if you have not been following it, I can give you a quick update here.
But this whole story comes down to open source versus hosted.
And who really owns the code?
Who owns the brand?
What is the agreement and the arrangement when you're using open source?
So WordPress is a website I'm sure you're familiar with.
Sorry, not a website.
A website technology I'm sure you're familiar with that really powers probably like 40% of the Internet.
And it is an open source platform for managing your content, managing your website.
And then WP Engine is a hosting service that hosts WordPress installs for people
and gives them reliability and availability around the world.
Now, what has happened is that the owner of WordPress.com, Automatic,
is upset with the fact that WordPress is not a website.
So they're upset with how WP Engine is treating the WordPress installs that they have.
They don't like how they have turned off certain features.
They don't like that they're using the WP letters because they think that confuses the brands
and that there might be some brand infringement.
They have since pulled back on that.
But what it comes down to is both of these companies are sending lawyer letters to each other
and trying to get each other to stop doing certain things.
WordPress has actually blocked WP Engine.
And so they've been trying to get users from updating with their plugins and themes.
They lifted that ban temporarily and then to allow WP Engine to set up their own thing.
And then they put the ban back in.
So there's a lot going on here and it's constantly evolving.
But I did want to share a take from DHH.
He's the creator of Ruby on Rails and a bunch of other, you know, he contributes in a lot of other open source ways.
And he wrote a whole blog post about what is the arrangement?
That you have when you're using open source.
And he has a great blog post on it that you can read.
But his tweet says, that's the deal.
That's open source.
I give you a gift of code.
You accept the terms of the license.
There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations that might suddenly apply.
If you strike it rich using software, then the license is meaningless.
And that's really what this comes down to.
Automatic wants WP Engine to contribute financially back to WordPress.
And they think that they owe them money somehow because they're using it and making money off of it.
But that is not the license.
That's not the arrangement that was made.
If Automatic wants to change the license for WordPress, go ahead.
But it can't be retroactively applied.
So that's the latest on that.
WordPress really is a freedom technology, even though it's one that is so pervasive and, you know, has a lot of companies involved.
At its core.
WordPress is one of the original freedom tech tools that helped blow a huge hole in mass market media.
It gave birth to the blogging revolution.
There were other tools prior to WordPress, but WordPress is the one that really took off and enabled people to become their own publishers.
And there has been many other tools now that have come in their wake that are doing great things as well.
Next up on our stories.
We have...
Fediment released a web SDK that allows people to build Fediment eCache tools for the web.
This is great.
Fediment, if you're not familiar, is an eCache platform that lets people set up federations with trusted family and friends.
And then they can provide eCache custody, if you will, eCache services to other people so that they can transact.
What this effectively creates are...
A bunch of little banks that are on their own islands.
And you are now trusting a few people in your community or in your family or in your company, whoever it is.
But then what really makes this usable and viable is that each of these little federations are linked together using the Lightning Network.
So now if I have eCache from Federation 1, I can use that eCache at Federation 2 because they link together.
Through Lightning and can settle over Lightning, which in turn settles on the Bitcoin base layer.
And so there is accountability and verifiability all the way down there.
So really cool because prior to this...
So really cool to see that they are making this easier to develop for the web and in the browser.
Okay, and then back on...
More controversial topics.
And this is Michael Saylor and his remarks about Bitcoin self-custody.
I don't really like getting into the more tabloid style stories.
But I think this one is important because Michael Saylor has become such a big voice in the Bitcoin community.
And many people have elevated him.
In my words and the words of many other that I've read online...
They have elevated him to hero status in some regards.
But his comments have given a lot of people pause.
So he went on to a show called Markets with Madison.
And she asked him a question about what risks are created when more third parties are taking custody of people's Bitcoin.
This is referring to things like the ETFs or...
Yeah, really, really specifically talking about the ETFs.
Does that increase the risk of government seizure of Bitcoin?
Yeah.
Saylor proceeded to say that people holding Bitcoin using their own keys in a self-custodial format
is the thing that actually increases the risk of seizure.
And he called them crypto anarchists and that they are paranoid.
He doesn't think that the government will seize Bitcoin at the ETFs
because the lawmakers who create these laws,
they are the ones who also have their assets invested at these ETFs.
So his take is that the government...
The government seized gold back in the 1930s because it was on a gold standard.
We don't live on a Bitcoin standard.
So the government would not need to seize the Bitcoin.
He says that in the 1930s, the gold was voluntarily turned in.
And that's a myth when people talk about the government seizing gold.
However, if you go research Executive Order 6102,
they did require gold to be turned in when that gold was in custody at third parties like banks.
So there was seizure.
That went on.
In the end, this is really just an argument about trust and pressure points.
It's the same discussion we have about our data and cloud computing.
If there is a person at a company who can be pressured to turn over data
or turn over assets and value on your behalf, then that is a risk to you.
So you need to understand the risks and make the decisions that are best for you.
If that means that you are going to custody your Bitcoin at a third party,
at an exchange,
or that you're going to custody your Bitcoin at a third party,
or that you're going to buy an ETF that holds Bitcoin for you,
understand those risks.
Also, this, again, is just a reminder to not elevate too many people in your life to hero status.
Okay, and then as part of the news,
I have a slightly different segment that I want to do every single week on the show,
and that is to highlight the latest data breaches or the data leaks that have happened.
Just because they are so common doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about them.
It actually means we should talk about them more
because they are so common that we shouldn't talk about them.
These should not be commonplace.
So this one is from a site that allowed people to have an AI girlfriend,
and they claim to have really high security and that they would not be able to leak people's information.
But the site was breached and user fantasies were stolen.
This is a website called Mwah.ai, spelled M-A-U-H.ai.
And on there,
they say AI technology should be for everyone,
and it's a use case to be decided by each mature individual adult.
So that means we don't actively censor or filter AI.
Any topic can be discussed without running into a wall.
Now, there are plenty of people that agree with that statement,
that we should not be prohibiting people from chatting with AI about any topic.
That's why there is a thriving local LLM market out there
for people to download open source AI.
And that's why we're doing this.
We're doing this because we want to be able to talk about open source LLMs
and run them on their own computers where they can talk about anything they want to.
However, when you are doing that on a third-party service like this website,
one that is not using secure compute,
one that claims they're encrypting your stuff,
but they are encrypted in a way that can be hacked like this,
well, you're waiting for your data to potentially be stolen or coerced out of them.
And that is what has happened.
The data of many of these people has been leaked online.
There are a lot of sexual fantasies that people played out using AI
that are now leaked out onto the internet.
Okay.
That kind of wraps it up here.
We're pushing up against our 30-minute time.
I would like to recommend everybody go over to freedomtechrap.com,
check out the tools page, and start to explore.
Send me feedback if you want to see other tools that I missed.
I know that I missed some tools,
and I'm going to be...
I'm continually adding to this list.
So please help me out.
Shoot me a message to say,
this is a tool that I love using.
I think you should include it on the page.
If there's a tool on that page that you think does not belong there,
I would also love to hear that
because I don't want to have tools up there that are captured
or that really are not useful for freedom.
So please let me know that as well.
So that is it for news and project updates this week.
Freedom Tech Rap. If you find this weekly source useful, please share it with your people.
You can also support us through value for value in your podcasting 2.0 app,
or send us a message on Nostr. If you have any feedback for us,
send it our way on Nostr to marks at nostrplebs.com. We are back to doing the song of the
week, where we pick a song from Wavelake that we really like, or that we find interesting,
and we'll play it. So if you want to stick around for that and send money to that artist,
feel free to stream sats. All your sats that you're streaming during the song go directly
to that artist based on their value split that they have set up, or you can go on to Wavelake
and send a boost directly to them if you want to do it that way as well. Also, any boosts that
are sent during the song on this podcast go to the artist. For everybody else,
this is what we're doing. We're going to be doing a little bit of a live stream of the song.
We're going to be doing a little bit of a live stream of the song. We're going to be doing a little
bit of a live stream of the song. We're going to be doing a little bit of a live stream of the song.
We're going to be doing a little bit of a live stream of the song. We're going to be doing a little bit
of a live stream of the song. We're going to be doing a little bit of a live stream of the song.
We're going to be doing a little bit of a live stream of the song. We're going to be doing a little bit
That's my wearing from ear to ear
Makes my heart feel so warm
Sometimes I think that it's too late for us
But now and then we find our way back to us
Moments when we sit and I laugh together
When no one's apologized
Used to think that it was too late for us
But now and then we find our way back to this
That smile you're wearing goes ear to ear
I hadn't seen it so long
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
Makes my heart feel so warm
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
I hadn't seen it so long
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
Makes my heart feel so warm
I forgot about the world I had to chase
I'm suspended out to bad direction in the face
I'm just glad we're sitting face to face
We just never seem to see eye to eye
I don't think that any of us ever tried
Right now I've forgotten what I had to forgive
All that's been said and done
I'm thinking my mind's a song that says
You're never fully dressed without that smile
You glow from head to toe when you wear that smile
You're just so beautiful when you give me that smile
You glow from ear to ear when you wear that smile
You're just so beautiful when you give me that smile
My favorite thing to see right now is that smile
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
I hadn't seen it so long
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
Makes my heart feel so warm
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
I hadn't seen it so long
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
Makes my heart feel so warm
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
I hadn't seen it so long
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
Makes my heart feel so warm
That smile you're wearing from ear to ear
you