[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hello, and welcome to Freedom Tech Wrap.
It's the week ending January 13, 2024.
My name is Marks, and this is your weekly source
for news and project updates in the freedom
and independent technology space.
We are in a highly connected world,
and Freedom Tech lets you decide when and how you want to connect
and really 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 with that, let's jump right into the news.
The Bitcoin ETF, it's here.
We've been waiting for it for so long.
And at the same time, we haven't been waiting for it.
Bitcoin rolls along, tick-tock, next block.
Every 10 minutes, we get a new block.
But it's been-- what was it?
Well, it's been over 10 years since the Winklevoss twins
submitted a proposal to run a Bitcoin ETF,
and they've been turned down.
All the proposals have been rejected over the years.
But we finally have it.
On January 10, the United States SEC
approved spot Bitcoin ETFs to be traded in the United States.
Now, I will say this is a very US-centric view.
There have been other Bitcoin products being
traded in other markets.
But this is arguably the biggest place to do it.
So it's very interesting.
If you want to read from the source itself,
you can go to the SEC website and read the statement
on the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products.
This is where they outline their approval, why they approved it.
Basically, they said that the judges forced
their hand in their lawsuit with Grayscale Trust.
And so they don't really endorse it.
Aside from approving it, I thought
it was kind of humorous that Chairman Gary Gensler felt
the need to state that Bitcoin may
be used for illegal activities and other things,
and speculation, that kind of stuff.
But really, you could say the same for US dollars,
for euros, and other sovereign currencies.
So those kind of factor themselves out.
He also made sure to point out that Bitcoin is not
a wise investment.
So there you go.
It's approved.
Do with what you wish.
There are 10 ETFs that began trading on January 11.
It's very possible that more will be in the works.
And of course, we're going to see all sorts
of derivatives built off of those.
But Bitcoin just keeps being Bitcoin.
And if you're here doing freedom technology,
you don't care about Bitcoin, you can just ignore this part.
But I also have to imagine that if you really
do care about freedom technology, at some point,
you will come around to realizing
what Bitcoin offers from a human freedom standpoint.
Now, if you want to use a Bitcoin ETF,
there are pros and cons.
A huge con being that somebody else
is going to have custody over the Bitcoin.
It isn't really your Bitcoin.
You're simply giving somebody money.
They're buying it and holding onto it.
And then for you to get it back, they sell it
and give you the cash back.
There might be some that allow you to withdraw the Bitcoin.
However, you're trusting them.
They are promising to give it back to you at some point,
but they might not honor that in the future.
A pro to using a Bitcoin ETF is that you
might have money locked away in some kind of retirement
account, like an IRA or a 401(k).
And so you can now put that money
into some kind of Bitcoin investment instrument,
and it will follow the price of Bitcoin with tax savings
along with it.
However, if you want to do more self-custody,
then you could look at something like what Unchained offers,
the financial company Unchained.
They have a Bitcoin IRA where you set up an account with them,
and then you send your IRA retirement funds to them.
They buy Bitcoin, and then you have effectively self-custody.
They hold one of the keys.
You hold two of the keys.
Two of the three keys are needed to move any of the Bitcoin.
So you are involved in the process.
All right, next up, we have the big tech product
that a lot of people are talking about coming out
of the week of CES, and that is the Rabbit R1.
This isn't necessarily freedom technology per se,
but it's a super interesting thing to look at.
It's a little hardware device, if you haven't seen it,
that has a push-to-talk button on it where you hold it down
and you talk to some kind of AI bot on the device.
And then it's really like Alexa or Siri
or one of these digital assistants,
but it's super fast, runs on your device,
and makes calls out to servers as well.
But the other odd thing about it is,
while it's a really cool demo and all this stuff,
it really feels like it could have just been an app
on an existing smartphone, especially if you pair it
with something like Graphene OS on a smartphone
that has a really good integrated GPU.
Run everything locally if you can,
make calls out to APIs as needed to different services.
But the Rabbit R1, Rabbit is definitely something
to look at, keep your eye on it, see what they're doing.
But it also feels like it could very much
just have been an app put onto some other kind
of hardware device that already exists.
So check that out, rabbit.tech.
Now, speaking of building independent tech,
we have the Sovereign Engineering Project that's happening.
This is an organization put together by a few people
in the space, including Gigi and Pablo,
and they have put together what they're calling SCC1,
which stands for Sovereign Engineering Cohort 1.
And they are currently together
in the Madeira Islands in Portugal,
and they're gonna be together for something like eight weeks
and they're building out technology.
It's 21 people plus a few more, and they're building,
they're collaborating, they're coming up with new ideas,
new projects, and then they're going to have a demo day
on March 1st.
So keep an eye on that, see what kind of cool things
come out of it.
This just launched this week, the first cohort.
They're gonna do a second one in May.
So if you are interested in participating in that,
go on their website, they have information there,
you can apply and read up more about it.
Great.
Now, when I posted last week's episode of Freedom Tech Wrap,
a user on Noster by the name of Serenity's Forge
told me about a #meshtastic, that's hard to say,
and told me to check it out
and maybe start reporting on it as well.
So I started looking around, digging around,
it looks really cool.
I have heard about this before,
but hadn't heard this phrase necessarily,
but it is people who are building mesh networks
for long-range communications, or LORA,
and this allows for a distributed network
for doing things like text messaging,
other kinds of data communication,
in really an independent, long-range manner.
So I think this is super cool.
I'm gonna start paying attention to the space more.
And so while looking into this,
I actually came across a pretty awesome, amazing write-up
that was just published this week
by a person by the name of Hydroponic Trash,
and it's called "Building Autonomous Off-Grid,
"Encrypted, and Solar-Powered Communications Infrastructure."
So reading from the document,
just the very first paragraph here,
it says, "This will be a guide on how to use LORA,
"or long-range, radio hardware to create mesh networks
"that can transmit text messages miles away
"with no cellular signal, LTE,
"no Wi-Fi, and no infrastructure.
"These nodes can be powered directly
"off portable solar panels with USB chargers,
"or used with portable battery banks.
"This can create a resilient mesh network of devices
"that can send text messages without the need
"for wider infrastructure in emergencies,
"such as natural disasters, during protests,
"or in areas of military or state occupation."
Now, this article is really long, like epically long.
It's really more like a full handbook
for how to build out an autonomous communications network.
So check it out.
I definitely have not read through the entire thing yet.
I've skimmed it, poked into a few areas,
and it's got my interest.
And so I'm going to start looking into this place
a little bit more,
looking into maybe adding myself as a node
onto a mesh network.
I think that's a really interesting and needed technology.
Now, speaking of nodes on a network,
the Lightning Network built on top of Bitcoin
is something that has been mostly centralized up until now
because running Lightning is much more difficult,
like 10 times more difficult
than running a simple Bitcoin node
that you just turn on and let it sync
and then let it sit there.
So if you're looking to do self-custody Lightning,
I have been trying it.
It's been a bit difficult.
I opened up my first channel a while ago
and the channel is offline, even though my node is online.
So I'm still trying to work through that.
But if you want some help and a little tutorial
on how to get going on this,
user on Noster, anita@githalby.com,
they have posted a 10-minute video on YouTube
called "Use Lightning with Self-Custody in 10 Minutes."
So I'll put that in the notes.
You can check that out
and it can help you on your way
to your Lightning self-custody.
My last news update for today comes by way of Wavelake.
They are a project and music projects
will probably get mentioned here a lot
because I am very into music.
And so Wavelake posted a blog post saying,
"We are not Bandcamp for Bitcoin."
Now, if you are familiar with Bandcamp
or really if you're not familiar with Bandcamp,
it's a site that was used for years and years
by independent musicians
who are trying to publish their music online.
And so that's great.
I think that's fine.
Wavelake is saying we are so much more than that.
We are not just a place to publish your music,
but they are also an API that allows your music
to live on all sorts of other platforms.
And then also they have the whole Bitcoin monetization
built into it as well.
So check out that blog post and check out Wavelake.
I highly recommend it.
Let's jump on over into the updates for projects this week.
I only have about, let's see, one, two, three, five projects
to talk about.
I'll have more in the future.
First one is a Noster project.
This is Nostream 2.0.0 finally released.
This is a Noster relay written in TypeScript
and this one has breaking changes in it
where they remove NIP 26 delegated events support.
So check that out if you're running Nostream.
Be sure to read the release notes
and look at how you're using it to see if you want to upgrade
at this point or if you didn't make any changes
before you upgrade.
Graphene OS, they've had a big release.
Release number 2024-011-300.
And this is big because they recently realized
that there is an auto reboot vulnerability
that is not necessarily their fault,
but it certainly is the problem of their users to deal with.
And so they've done an improved auto reboot implementation.
This will harden security against data intruders,
including forensic analysis,
companies that do forensics on devices.
They've also added night mode for the camera
on the Pixel 6 and higher.
So you can take better night mode photos
and then lots of other changes, tons of changes.
So check out the release notes for that.
If you're running Graphene OS, read through that and update,
especially for the security implications.
If you're not running Graphene OS,
check it out, see if it's something for you.
Next up is, it's called AppVerifier.
And this is a project on GitHub that lets you verify
that the apps you're about to install
were not tampered with during the download process.
So I discovered this one from user Ava on Noster.
Check it out, it's on GitHub.
It lets you verify APKs.
Now in the Office productivity space,
we have LibreOffice.
This is a project that's been around for years.
They have a 24.2 release
that is in the final stages of beta testing.
They have a release candidate one
that's available for public testing
and you can get it for Linux, Mac OS or Windows.
So if you'd like to help them test
and help the future of Office software by them,
then check it out.
And lastly, Firefly3 has a 6.1.6 release.
If you aren't familiar with this project,
this is an accounting software project
that is supposed to replace QuickBooks, Quicken,
other Intuit type products
or other accounting software using out there.
So give them a look, version 6.1.6.
So thank you for listening.
That's it for this week.
I hope that you are having an enjoyable start
to the new year.
And check out the Bitcoin ETF fund
that is available online.
There's been so many ups and downs this week
as they were trying to release it
and things got hacked and posted early
and deleted and whatnot.
It's been quite a fun rollercoaster
and the price of Bitcoin
has been rollercoasting along with it.
So with that, my name is Marks.
Thanks for listening this week.
And as always, live independent.
(upbeat music)
(low-pitched tone)
(bell ringing)
you