[Music]
What's up everybody? For the week ending March 9th, my name is Marks and this is Freedom Tech Wrap.
Freedom Tech Wrap is a weekly source for news and project updates in the freedom and independent technology space.
We live in a highly connected world. 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. If you want to support what we're doing, you can send us value through your Podcasting 2.0 app.
Your support and your feedback are greatly appreciated.
And now, on to the news.
First up, a story in from Egypt. This is courtesy of Mirror.
It says, "Egypt floats currency and agrees with IMF to increase bailout loan to $8 billion U.S."
From the article, it says, "Egypt has decided to float its currency and has agreed with the International Monetary Fund, or IMF,
to increase its bailout loan to $8 billion U.S., or 6.8 billion British Pounds.
This move is aimed at strengthening an economy that has been hit by a severe shortage of foreign currency and skyrocketing inflation.
The decision to float the Egyptian Pound, along with a significant increase in the main interest rate, is designed to fight inflation and attract foreign investment."
Now, I'd like to point out that the article says, "Egypt has decided to float its currency," as if it was a proactive choice on their part.
But later in the article, they do point out that this was actually a requirement by the IMF to get the new loan.
And this also caused dramatic devaluation of the currency.
It goes on to say, "After the announcement, the Egyptian Pound started floating and lost more than 60% of its value against the dollar within hours.
By the end of the day, commercial banks were trading the U.S. currency at over 50 pounds for $1, up from about 31 pounds."
Now, this is a strong example of the need for money that is outside of the control of government.
These citizens in Egypt had their savings and purchasing power effectively cut in half over the course of just a few hours, due to decisions by a few people.
So, the citizens are subject to the whims of rulers and bureaucrats, which really that isn't freedom at all.
Instead, a money that has limited supply like gold, but can move freely at internet speeds, is how citizens regain their freedoms.
The Human Rights Foundation, specifically Alex Gladstein, they've been studying and publishing information about the IMF and World Bank,
and the effect that their actions are having on countries around the world.
If you want to learn more about all of this, check out their website and social media accounts.
Next up, a leaky database spilled two-factor authentication codes for world's tech giants.
This comes by way of TechCrunch. The article goes on to say, "A technology company that routes millions of SMS text messages across the world
has secured an exposed database that was spilling one-time security codes that may have granted users access to their Facebook, Google, and TikTok accounts.
But the technology company left one of its internal databases exposed to the internet without a password,
allowing anyone to access the sensitive data inside using only a web browser, just with knowledge of the database's public IP address."
Then a security researcher came along and discovered it, thankfully, that it was leaking information onto the internet.
They go on to say, "Sen, the researcher, said it was not apparent whose database it belonged to, nor who to report the leak to."
So, Sen shared details of the exposed database with TechCrunch to help identify its owner and report the security lapse.
In the end, they found the owner of the database and it was taken offline.
The company said they did not have logs tracking access to the database, so they don't even know if anybody actually downloaded the data,
which means somebody could have, and they just have no idea.
So, this is a reminder to you to strengthen your two-factor authentication by using an authenticator app instead of SMS.
Having two-factor authentication is definitely better than not.
So, if you are using a service that offers it, turn it on, and if it's only SMS authentication, that's still better than nothing.
But, if it also offers the ability to do it through an app instead of through text messages, that is much better.
So, I suggest you learn how to use it and set that up.
Okay, next up. Dr. Phil. TV, radio, personality.
Dr. Phil reveals Facebook censored his video on child trafficking at the U.S. border.
This comes from a website, reclaimthenet.org, and it says, let's see here,
he went to the U.S.-Mexico border and he shot a video about child trafficking, and then it started to go viral,
and then Facebook and Instagram shut it down.
Specifically from the article, Dr. Phil stated, I put a clip up of my trip to the border, just a small clip,
I posted it up on Facebook and Instagram, and it was the part of me talking to him about trafficking these children.
It was up about 50 minutes and going viral super fast. I mean like tens of thousands of views in a matter of a few minutes.
It was going straight vertical, and then bang, it just stopped.
It stopped and it got shut down. They just, the algorithm, they just shut it down.
So, my take here is censorship is live, and with AI, it just continues to get stronger.
We need to use tools that are difficult to censor.
I haven't really looked into what Dr. Phil was discussing in this video, but that's really beside the point here.
Every day, people are being silenced by committees at corporations and governments.
You don't know what keywords are on their list, really their ever-changing list that day.
So, you don't know what you are allowed to say and what you are forbidden to say.
We've given these platforms the power to silence our voices because we've really grown dependent on them for communication.
There are alternatives out there, like Nostr, Mastodon, Signal, you know, so many others.
So, find them, try them out, and just keep your voice.
Okay, in a more positive news story, Mesh-tastic Network has been set up in Cape Town, South Africa.
This comes courtesy of user Danny, D-A-N-N-I-E, and Danny maintains a website called gadgeteer.co.za.
And I just want to read directly from Danny's post.
Myself and two other ham radio operators have established three Mesh-tastic nodes that will operate 24/7 to help build out more connectivity across Cape Town.
We are using license-free 868 MHz radios, so anyone can buy these cheap-ish devices and get connected.
The more nodes we have, the better the connectivity gets across the whole city.
These radios will keep messaging going regardless of whether there is internet or not.
So, if we hit stage 8 plus load shedding and cell towers and internet starts to go down, this messaging network will still work.
It goes on to talk about other things, like you can use the public channels, or you can make your own private channels that are protected by a password.
This is really great for disaster scenarios and also really for everyday backup communication.
We need more backups to these proprietary systems that we depend on every single day.
So, it's not just finding a decentralized social network because we don't want to be captive to the centralized ones.
It's also our cell phone communications, our power grids, all these things, right?
Mesh-tastic devices are really a bit hard to come by right now due to their increasing popularity.
I think supply will catch up, though. So, if you're trying to get some, keep hitting the websites, sign up for availability drops, and you can get your hands on some.
And if you're listening to this right now near Cape Town, I know that there are some who do.
You can hop on the mesh network there.
Wherever you are, consider joining or starting a mesh network.
You can find others who are doing it.
I know that there are some on Noster using #meshtastic.
You can also find them on Twitter and other places, and use that as a starting point to find people.
Or just look in your own local community messaging apps that you use and get started.
Now, speaking of a project that many people use to protect their freedom, Tor.
If you aren't familiar with Tor, I'm guessing you are.
Tor is an internet browser and really an overall network for using the internet in a more privacy-aware way.
And they have a new project called RT, A-R-T-I, which is an attempt to rewrite Tor in Rust.
So, from their post, they said, "We are seeking experienced Rust developers to become part of the network team and help us future-proof the Tor network, make a real impact in the world, and join our team."
If you are a Rust developer and are interested in helping to build the future of privacy on the internet, hit up Tor and see if it's the right fit for you.
Last news story of the day. We talked about this a while ago when it first started.
This is the Sovereign Engineering Cohort #1.
It has come to an end. Known as SEC01, a group of builders temporarily relocated to Madeira, which is in the Atlantic Ocean, for a focused development effort to build and improve freedom technologies.
It sounds like it was a really intense 8-12 weeks. Really cool. Everybody bonded super close. And there were a lot of ideas and really a lot of code written to start multiple different projects and prove the concepts.
So, here is a list of some of those project names if you are interested in looking up more of them.
We've actually discussed some of them here on the show already in previous weeks.
But this is a non-exhaustive list. There are more than what I have here.
But here you go. We have Noster Rocket, G-Hole, Git Pair, Seeker, Keynest, npub.cache, Hypernote, zap.store, Satellite, Wasabi, Mutiny Fetiment E-Cache, which is a feature within Mutiny,
Noster DVM Kit, Wasm DVM, Malware Scanning DVM, Alpha Amma, Blossom, pubkey.land, GoNuts, LNMe, Noster Web Search.
So, check out these projects to see what they are about.
And if you like what's being built, zap the developers that are working on it because that is going to help support future development and let them know that this is something that you really like and want to see more of.
Alright, let's move on and read the boosts and zaps from the previous episode.
By way of boosts, these are people who went into their Podcasting 2.0 app as they were listening to the episode and sent a boost.
Now, depending on when you're listening to the episode, you might boost me or you might boost a musician that is being played on the episode.
I love it when you boost the musicians for the music that I play, so please do that.
And then also, when you send boosts outside of those music spots, you're sending it to me and that's awesome too.
So, the first boost is from JustListenIn and they sent 1,776 sats and the message is, "Appreciate you brother. Got my stuff off Coinbase last year. Listening to Odell did the trick."
Thank you, JustListenIn. I'm going to guess if you're listening to Odell, then you were probably staying humble while he did that.
Next up is TheWildHustle with 1,000 sats saying, "Let's go."
Then, ManLikeQueks, 255 sats says, "Thanks for the spin. I played their song on the previous episode."
And then, Jill W. with 111 sats, "Thank you all for your boosts. You are all awesome."
And then, on Zaps, these are people on Noster who zapped the note when I published the episode.
And first, we have Dan G. Druin with 42 sats and they say, "Onward" with a salute emoji.
Then, we have Florian with 21 sats and ManLikeQueks with 3 sats.
"Thank you all so much. We really appreciate every single one."
Okay, moving on to project updates.
The first one is from a project known as Actual Budget and it is version 24.3.0.
Now, this is an open-source personal money management tool.
It behaves much like tools you've probably used, Mint, YNAB, Quicken, or even GnuCash.
Here's a summary from the project homepage for this app.
Actual Budget is a super-fast and privacy-focused app for managing your finances.
At its heart is the well-proven and much-loved envelope budgeting methodology.
You own your data and can do whatever you want with it.
Featuring multi-device sync, optional end-to-end encryption, and so much more.
Now, in this release, they have transaction lists sortable by cleared status,
offline PWA support, creating schedules from existing transactions,
and then an experimental feature, custom report saving,
and they ask that people please send feedback for that.
As I look at this, the phrase "You need a budget" comes to mind.
And it really is quite true, which is why there's an app called You Need a Budget.
You should really know where your money is being spent.
So using the actual app like this, you can track one of your most important resources
without sacrificing privacy like you do when you're using one of the proprietary services.
Now, continuing in the money talk, we have a few Bitcoin and Lightning-related updates.
The first one is from Mutiny. Mutiny Wallet is now available officially on the App Store and Play Store.
From their release, they said, "We built Mutiny to be unstoppable.
To do that, we knew we had to build it first for the web, without the censorship of permissioned app stores."
So some people think that maybe they're giving in here to those app stores.
I don't see it that way. They're not giving in to censorship.
They are distributing to a broader audience while still having a place to fall back on
should that distribution channel get shut down.
So go download Mutiny from your favorite store if you'd like to use it from there.
Sparrow. Sparrow 1.8.3 has been released.
And from that release, they have PGP download file verifier, support for the Cold Card Q1 device,
support for Trezor Safe 3 device, and then improved QR reading.
Next up, we have Polar 2.2.0, and they have updates and fixes for their release notes.
And a little bit more from NoBSBitcoin's website.
It says, "Polar is a tool for creating one-click Lightning networks used in local app development and testing.
It's available on Windows, Mac, and Linux."
So if that sounds interesting, check it out.
Moving over into the world of Nostra, we have a few client updates.
First is Amethyst with version 0.85.0.
And in this one, they add support for a lot of things.
You have post edits, post forks, pull requests, open timestamps,
Git repositories, issues, patches and replies, wiki pages, and some medical data.
What I like about this is that Amethyst is constantly pushing the boundaries of Nostra and trying new things.
So if you would like to live on the cutting edge, check it out.
I like that we have different clients that are taking their own approach to Nostra,
because really, the more that we experiment, the more that we discover.
So with Nostra, you can use various clients at once.
You just take your key, and you authorize it for use in other apps.
I have clients that I use for experimenting, and then I have clients that I use
that maintain a more consistent user experience over time.
And I use them for different purposes.
So check out the latest from Amethyst if you want all these awesome new features
for updating and forking things.
Primal for Android has been updated, version 0.95.4.
And from the release, it says, "Primal for Android 0.95.4 is here.
We focused on app stability performance in this release.
Everything should be faster, more solid, and reliable."
Now personally, having shipped countless app updates myself over 15 plus years,
I can understand the need for releases like this.
Developing new features can have unintended consequences for app performance and bugs.
So you kind of play this game of releasing cool things
and then releasing updates that clean up a bit of the mess.
And that's okay.
To me, it's much like building a piece of furniture.
The chair might be completed and moved into the house where it's supposed to be,
but you have wood shavings all over the floor and drop cloths
and other things in the workshop that still need to be cleaned up.
The main goal is really just to make each update better than the last one.
So keep up the good work, Primal.
Last update for today is from SlideStir from user Florian.
There's a new update to SlideStir, and here are the bullet points for that.
We have a global feed update.
You have a not safe for work filter on the homepage,
and the ability to make reposts.
All right, that's it for news and project updates this week.
This is Freedom Tech Wrap.
If you find this weekly source useful, please share it with your people.
You can also support us through Value for Value in your podcast app or on Noster.
If you have any feedback for us, send it our way on Noster to marks@nosterplubs.com.
To close it out, we have the Song of the Week,
where your stats directly support that artist, so stick around and boost.
For the rest of you, thanks for listening to Freedom Tech Wrap,
and remember to live independent.
Later.
[Music]
This week I bring you a cut from the artist Bry360.
In the middle of this track, it talks about how we grow up
and start paying attention to how the world sees us.
It asks you a question.
Would you rather be at war with yourself and at peace with the world,
or at peace with yourself and at war with the world?
Think about it.
Here is the track "Paper Planes" by Bry360.
[Music]
I think as human beings, everybody has a natural gift and a natural passion,
but then you go outside and you get influenced and you feel pressure from what's going on outside.
And so, you know, I read one time, like, would you rather be at war with yourself and at peace with the world,
or at peace with yourself and at war with the world?
[Music]
Yeah!
[Music]
Yeah.