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Hey, everybody.
Welcome to Freedom Tech Wrap.
My name is Marks, and this is the week ending January 20.
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 when and how you want to
connect and where your data live.
Freedom Tech Wrap is an independent show.
If you want to support what we're doing,
you can send us value through your Podcasting 2.0 app,
and your support and your feedback
are greatly appreciated.
All right, so let's get on with the news.
First up today, we have an announcement
from the venture capital fund, Ego Death Capital.
They have announced that they're raising $100 million
for their fund, too.
Now, if you aren't familiar with Ego Death Capital,
they have names like Jeff Booth, Andy Pitt, Niko LaChuga,
Preston Pysh, Lynn Alden, and Pablo Fernandez involved.
In their fund, number one, they led funding
for names like Fetty, Breeze, and others,
companies that you've probably heard of before.
Now, here is an excerpt from their announcement.
They say, "In 2024, the funding market still hasn't caught up
with the opportunity, and a significant gap
exists in Series A funding for Bitcoin-only companies.
This makes sense because a majority of venture capital
still doesn't understand the transformative nature
of the Bitcoin protocol, nor how it is emerging in layers.
Without this key knowledge, it would
be hard to understand the profound shift this entails
to businesses in the future.
This leaves Bitcoin-only entrepreneurs
not only pitching on the value and metrics of their business,
but in parallel trying to teach capital
that has been burned with their crypto investments
about a new protocol."
So they are trying to help entrepreneurs
who are having a difficult time convincing
traditional venture capitalists to invest
in Bitcoin-only companies.
If you are a builder looking for funding,
or if you have money that you want to deploy,
head over to egodeath.capital and hit the Contact Us button.
Next up is a story from Bloomberg.
It's talking about OpenAI.
The title is, "OpenAI is Working with US Military
on Cybersecurity Tools."
They say the maker of ChatGPT sees merit
in working with the Defense Department,
and that their company's terms of service
prohibit using the technology for weapons.
This is difficult because I don't
see how they prevent this from happening logistically.
There's not really any way that they can prevent it
from making its way into that.
Maybe they can try and avoid it directly.
But if it's being used by defense contractor companies,
it will indirectly influence the development of weapons.
And really, eventually it'll find its way in there.
So I think this is a good reminder for all of us
to be judicious about our ChatGPT usage.
You should try and find ways to use other services that
are more conscious of your privacy, something like PlebAI.
And also consider running your own AI service at home.
It's a lot easier than you think.
Next up, we have a really cool website,
and also really kind of scary but cool,
from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
And this is all about street-level surveillance.
It's a site they published that talks
about the technologies being utilized by law enforcement
for broad surveillance.
A couple excerpts from the article
says, "EFF's street-level surveillance project
shines a light on the surveillance technologies
that law enforcement agencies routinely deploy."
A short excerpt from the article that says,
"EFF's street-level surveillance project shines a light
on the surveillance technologies that law enforcement agencies
routinely deploy in our communities.
These resources are designed for advocacy organizations,
journalists, defense attorneys, policymakers,
and members of the public who are often not getting
the straight story from police representatives or the vendors
marketing this equipment.
Whether it's phone-based location tracking,
ubiquitous video recording, biometric data collection,
or police access to people's smart devices,
law enforcement agencies follow closely
behind their counterparts in the military and intelligence
services in acquiring privacy-invasive technologies
and getting access to consumer data.
Just as analog surveillance historically
has been used as a tool for oppression,
we must understand the threat posed by emerging technologies
to successfully defend civil liberties and civil rights
in the digital age."
So this website's awesome.
It breaks down about, I don't know,
probably like 16 different categories of technology.
These are things like automated license plate readers,
biometric surveillance, body cameras,
surveillance camera networks, cell site simulators,
drones, robots, facial recognition.
It goes on and on.
And each one of these, you can actually click on it.
And it gives a moderately in-depth discussion
about the topic.
And then it also gives you a good jumping point
if you want to go even deeper in your own research.
So it's really good for us to be aware of what tools are being
used on a daily basis around us to track us.
And if we do encounter law enforcement for some reason,
to know what kind of information and data
might be used in the situation.
Now, if you are a builder of freedom technologies,
would like to let you know that a building competition just
kicked off this week.
Top Builder 2024, hosted by Plub Lab, sponsored by Wolf,
kicked off this week.
It runs from January 13 to March 14.
And they will have a demo day on March 14.
Teams participating typically already
have a working prototype or a really strong idea.
And then they're doing something in the freedom technology
space, typically with Bitcoin, Lightning, and Nostr.
The grand prize is $15,000 in Bitcoin,
so $15,000 worth of Bitcoin.
A few of the projects I saw on the site that
looked interesting, first one is Alpaca.
This is a system for running your business and point
of sale.
It accepts a Bitcoin and traditional credit cards.
There's one called BitPension.
This is for setting up a Bitcoin pension for your employees.
Next one was CCNS.
And this is like Reddit built on Nostr.
And then a really interesting one was Resolver.
This is a project that is trying to allow for dispute resolution
outside of state-run courts, so mediation and such.
It's really cool.
Then the last one I thought was interesting was Shopster.
It's an online marketplace built on top of Nostr.
The other projects were interesting, too.
Those are just a few that I thought I'd call out.
Now, along those lines of building competitions,
there is an open design challenge
that just kicked off as well.
And this was courtesy of Stacker News.
Here, they are just looking for people to share ideas
and then collaborate on those ideas,
not actually build a product from it,
but build up the idea, flesh it out more,
get designs behind it, get some research behind it,
really package it up in a way that if someone is a builder,
they could come along, grab that idea for free,
and start working with it.
So this is, again, not a builder challenge.
All ideas will be open and free,
and anybody can take them and build with them.
The goal is to get more fresh, developed,
and designed ideas out there,
typically for free, open-source projects.
The design competition is taking place on Stacker News,
so go check it out, because it's also a great place
to get notice for funding.
So if you are a builder, then go participate in this,
and you'll get some recognition
and potentially could line up some funding
for yourself down the road.
There is a new documentary that has been made,
and it is having its theatrical debut
this Friday in Austin, Texas.
The film is called "Bitcoiners,"
and it says, "Bitcoiners is an independent documentary film
that takes an inside look at the grassroots movement
of diehard Bitcoin devotees
and why they think Bitcoin can save America.
Filmed from 2021 to 2023,
this film follows a group of Bitcoin plebs in Texas
and includes key interviews with well-known Bitcoin voices."
So again, the premiere is this Friday, January 26, in Austin.
You can get your tickets at bitcoinersmovie.com,
and they use Zapwrite for payment processing,
which means that you can pay with Bitcoin, Lightning,
or with a traditional credit card.
So check it out if you're in the Texas area
and wanna come check out a movie.
Next up, we have a list of Nostr relays
that have their own Tor Onion service.
Now, why is this important?
As you are using an open protocol like Nostr,
every time you connect to a relay,
your IP address is being exposed to that relay.
And as a matter of best practice,
you should be aware of when your IP address
is being linked to your online activity,
especially when it comes to social things
that could potentially identify you.
If you don't know what IP address is,
an IP address is your address on the internet.
Your home has one, your cell phone has one.
These IP addresses rarely change,
and so they are used to track your browsing habits,
your communication, shopping habits, all sorts of things.
So it really is nice to kind of be aware
of how that is getting around online.
Check this out if you are using Nostr
and want to maybe bring a little more privacy
into your Nostr communications.
This is a list that's maintained by a few different users,
OXTR, Semisol, Bleetube, and the same cat.
And always, pull requests are welcome.
So if you see more, add some to the list.
Last news for the day
is a Bitcoin Lightning Wallet comparison site.
Now, the site Bitcoin Rocks has had this up for a little while
but they just updated it this week
to include the Mutiny Wallet.
So they, on that website, compare Phoenix, Breeze, Mutiny,
and Wallet of Satoshi.
They talk about self-sovereignty, custodian,
all that stuff, and kind of walk you through
what are the trade-offs between the two.
So go check that out to learn a little bit more
about Lightning Wallets.
Now, in between the news and the project updates,
I'd like to read any boosts or zaps I got
through Podcasting 2.0 or on Nostr.
So we have a boost with 2,000 sets
from @thewildhustle, says, "Fantastic pod."
Thank you @thewildhustle.
And then @joelw boosted 333 sats.
Those both came in through Podcasting 2.0.
And then over in the Nostr world,
we have @rogueava zapped 21 sats and said,
"Very cool, listening now."
Thank you all for the boosts and the zaps,
really appreciate it.
And any of you who are streaming sats, you all rock.
Thank you so much.
If you wanna send a boost with a message,
I will be reading boosts and zaps on every episode.
So if you have a message you wanna get out there,
go ahead and boost and I'll read it on air.
Now onto the project updates.
First up, we have SparrowWallet1.8.2.
In their release notes, they have a few things here,
improved transaction tree, quicker transaction tab loading,
reduced rescans on Bitcoin Core,
effective fee rate for CPFP,
reduced server calls on opening a transaction tab
by using open wallet history
when performing spent output lookups.
So go check that out if you're running Sparrow Wallet.
It's a great wallet.
Next is another wallet, this one's Lightning.
So Plasma Core Lightning Wallet is a brand new launch.
You can connect to your Core Lightning node
over Lightning using LN Socket.
This is available on the iOS App Store.
We have another release from Unleashed Chat.
They are releasing 0.1.7,
and this provides initial support for an API.
The API is currently invite only,
so if you'd like access, go ahead and contact them.
And you can also look in the release notes,
there's other things that they are including
in this release.
Now something brand new
that is actually in initial development.
It's not a release, but I wanted to put it on here
to get it on your radar.
This is NDK, which stands for Nostra Development Kit.
NDK for Drupal.
Do you remember Drupal?
Drupal was one of those content management systems
that took the world by storm like 20 years ago, maybe.
Well, it's still around, it's still kicking,
it's still in development.
And now someone is trying to bring Nostra
and integrate it in.
So if you use Drupal and want to integrate Nostra with it,
keep an eye on this project.
The user is sebastix, S-E-B-A-S-T-I-X.
Check it out.
Next up to our Meshtastic friends who are running LoRa
and getting these long range mesh networks out there,
there is a new way to flash your devices.
It's the Meshtastic Web Flasher.
It's a new flasher for uploading firmware
to your device via the web.
It uses web serial technology,
which is currently available in the Chromium browsers
and on Edge.
And if you're setting up
and maintaining Meshtastic LoRa devices, check this out.
The last project update for the day
is also kind of a news announcement,
but I think you'll get why I put it here.
So Fountain, the podcast app,
Fountain 1.0 is launching on Product Hunt.
If you're not familiar with the Product Hunt website,
it's a place where a lot of projects get discovered.
Things like Slack, Notion, Robinhood, Zapier,
some of these big products really kind of rose up
when they were brought onto this website as an announcement.
So Fountain is trying to get the coveted
product of the day designation.
And what they are saying here is,
"We are launching on Product Hunt on Thursday,
"the 25th of January, 2024,
"to help raise awareness of Podcasting 2.0
"and value for value with a global audience,
"and we need your help.
"Before launch day, we kindly ask you
"to sign up on Product Hunt.
"We launch on Thursday, the 25th of January
"at 12.01 Pacific Standard Time,
"and welcome you to join the discussion
"and support us with a review if you love what we do.
"The Fountain team will respond to each comment,
"please taking your feedback on board.
"The Fountain team will respond to each comment,
"taking your feedback on board.
"If you have ideas on what we could improve,
"please include these in your review,
"and we will factor your suggestions into our roadmap."
I think this is awesome and phenomenal.
Podcasting 2.0 started as a niche technology,
but it has grown a ton over the last year or so,
and it would be really sweet to see it start landing
into some more mainstream podcasting circles,
and I think Product Hunt is a great way
to start pushing into that realm.
So please check it out.
If you don't use Fountain,
if you use a different Podcasting 2.0 app,
that's awesome, that's totally cool,
but it would be great if you would go to Product Hunt
and at least support this
so that you can help support Podcasting 2.0,
help support Value for Value.
That's really what this is about.
It's not just about Fountain, it's about the entire space.
So that's it for news and updates this week.
This is Frieden Tech Wrap.
If you find this weekly source useful,
please share it with your people.
You can also support us through Value for Value
and send us feedback on Noster
to marks@nosterplebs.com.
And always remember to live independent.
Later.
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