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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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What's up, everybody?

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For the week ending February 3rd, my name is Marks, and

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this is Freedom Tech Wrap, a weekly source for news and

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project updates in the freedom and independent

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technology space.

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We live in a highly connected world.

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Freedom Tech lets you decide how you want to connect and

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where your data live.

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Freedom Tech Wrap is an independent show.

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If you want to support what we're doing, you can send us

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value through your Podcasting 2.0 app.

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Your support and your feedback are greatly appreciated.

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Now, this week's episode is going to be short.

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Just before I sat down to finalize everything, I lost a

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big portion of my notes.

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That's right, me.

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I'm the person who follows the mantra of, if it's not in two

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places, it doesn't exist.

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Well, I've been using the bookmark feature in the

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Domestik Nostra client as part of my research.

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And while troubleshooting an issue, I reinstalled the app,

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and boom, that's when I remembered bookmarks are only

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stored locally on the client.

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And they were all gone.

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So lesson learned for me to make sure that I'm not

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depending on a single device for a chunk of my research.

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All right, let's get on to the news.

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The environmental arm of the US government wants commercial

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Bitcoin miners to register with them on a survey.

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So this comes courtesy of an article posted on the US

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Energy Information Administration website.

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This is a government website dated on February 1, and it's

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called Tracking Electricity Consumption from US

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Cryptocurrency Mining Operations.

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So they are claiming that they want to do research to

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understand the load on the grid and all these things.

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But they went and got a mandatory court order to

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impel and compel, I should say, to compel these

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miners to register.

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Here are a couple quotes from the article.

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"Electricity demand associated with US cryptocurrency mining

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operations in the United States has grown very rapidly

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over the last several years.

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Our preliminary estimates suggest that an annual

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electricity use from cryptocurrency mining probably

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represents from 0.6% to 2.3% of US electricity consumption.

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This additional electricity use has drawn the attention of

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policymakers and grid planners concerned about its effects

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on cost, reliability, and emissions.

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Key challenges associated with tracking cryptocurrency mining

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energy use include the difficulty of identifying

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cryptocurrency mining activity among millions of US end user

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customers and the dynamic nature of the crypto market,

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where mining assets can be moved rapidly to areas with

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lower electricity prices."

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And then the last thing I want to quote out of here,

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"In order to develop more rigorous estimates of

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electricity use by US cryptocurrency miners, we have

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requested and received an emergency clearance pursuant to

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Office of Management and Budget procedures established."

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La-ya-ya-ya-da-ya-da.

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Okay.

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So they have to report their, the miners have to report from

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February of 2024 through July of 2024.

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That is when they want to collect their data on a

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monthly basis.

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So I want to go back to one of the lines that they said,

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where it says, "Where mining assets can be moved rapidly to

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areas with lower electricity prices."

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They really need to look at that last sentence and

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understand the implications of that.

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Why would a miner physically pick up and move machinery to

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a place with lower energy costs?

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It's not like this is just going into another room in a

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factory or even going across town.

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This might be moving cities, moving states.

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This can be quite a cost to incur.

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So why would they do that?

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Well, it's because the energy can't be sold for a higher

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price in that new area.

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The producer of electricity has two options.

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They can either lower the price until they find someone

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who's willing to buy it, or they can intentionally waste

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the excess power, like, for example,

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sending it into the ground.

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That's all they can do.

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They produce electricity and they sell it to people.

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And if people aren't willing to pay the price, then they

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lower it and try to find more people.

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And if they eventually can't find anyone to buy it at that

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price, then they just waste the electricity they produced.

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This should end the entire thing.

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Bitcoin is not profitable to mine where there are other

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people buying power.

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That's it.

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If you look at Europe, for example, which has higher

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energy costs, there's very little mining hash rate

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compared to the rest of the world.

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The places that have serious amounts of mining take place

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where energy is not being purchased for other users, or

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for other uses, I should say, and has become cheap.

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So policymakers continue to try and figure out how they can

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wrangle the mining process.

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But what they seem to not want to grasp is that it is

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actually helping to build out grid infrastructure in places

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that wouldn't be able to build it out to begin with, because

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there aren't enough customers to buy that power.

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So if you have a rural town and they don't have enough

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buyers to justify the build out of the grid, to justify

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transmission lines, to justify increased capacity, then the

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capital won't show up to build it out for them because they

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won't be able to pay off that capital in a reasonable amount

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of time.

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So that's where Bitcoin miners come into play.

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And they will buy all of that extra energy to offset the

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capital until more people move into the town and start

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buying electricity, and then it becomes too expensive for

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the Bitcoin miners, and they leave town and go to the next

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one.

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If you've listened to the show since the beginning, you'll

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notice that this is a theme that we talk about on here.

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This is also a great time to remind people that you can get

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a Bitcoin space heater.

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Even if it's not profitable, you get the heat for your room,

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which also adds value.

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My Bitcoin space heater that I have uses half the

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electricity of a normal one that I also have.

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They heat up the same room, but this one mines Bitcoin at a

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break-even pace.

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So there are also many times during the day that I might be

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the only person at home, and I turn the overall house

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thermostat down a few degrees, and I just heat up the room

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that I'm in with my Bitcoin miner.

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So I'm saving money on the overall heating bill.

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All right, next up.

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There is a service called Knitter, and it is shutting

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down.

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If you are familiar with this, this is a privacy-oriented way

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to browse Twitter.

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It lets you look at Twitter, but it anonymizes your traffic.

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It tries to turn off cookies and ads and other things.

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Well, unfortunately, this is the end for Knitter.

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According to Zed, the main developer, they say, "It

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appears the project's termination is linked to X or

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Twitter's decision to disable the creation of guest

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accounts.

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Knitter was heavily reliant on these anonymous accounts,

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which were only supported by older versions of the Twitter

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app."

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So, fairly well.

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Knitter is still running on a few servers, but it looks like

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once those guest accounts expire, then the service will

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cease to be usable.

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Okay.

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You might remember from last week's episode, we talked

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about an alternative project to GitHub.

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This is another one of those projects.

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This one is courtesy of Fiat Jaff, who is the creator of the

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Noster protocol, coincidentally.

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And this project is called Gitster, G-I-T-S-T-R.

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And the reason this actually surfaced with me is that the

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creator of the Amethyst app, which is an Android Noster

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client, said, his name's Vitor, Vitor said that with Fiat

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Jaff's Gitster, you can now send a Git patch to the Amethyst

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project through Noster's relays and fully avoid GitHub.

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So that's really cool.

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You are able to contribute to this project in a decentralized

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manner to contribute to a Noster client using Noster

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protocol, which is awesome.

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Also it should be noted that Fiat Jaff has been one of the

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people outspoken on the topic of an alternative to GitHub and

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thinks that we should build a bunch of smaller apps and

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microservices as opposed to a monolithic open source app that

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would replace GitHub.

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It doesn't think that we really need to have just one big

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thing because then it tends to centralize and just becomes

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difficult to work with.

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So let's build a bunch of small things that can all

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communicate together.

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Last news story of the day is that there is another

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conference that has been announced.

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This is Nostriga 2024.

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If you remember, the Noster Unconference first started in

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Costa Rica as Nostriga.

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Then it went to Japan and Hong Kong under the

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name of Nostrasia.

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And now it is going to Riga, Latvia under the

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name of Nostriga.

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And it is going to be part of a larger Riga Bitcoin Week

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that also has the Baltic Honey Badger Conference.

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So if you would like to attend, this is happening on

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August 22 to 23, 2024.

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That is this upcoming summer.

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You can go to Noster.world to find more information.

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OK.

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Let's read boosts that we received and zaps that we

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received from last week's episode.

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First up, we have the Wild Hustle zapped 2,000 sats and

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said, great rip.

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Thank you, Wild Hustle.

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Appreciate you every week.

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Next up, we have Joel W. who boosted 333 sats without a

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message--

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well, really it was a message that says dot, dot, dot.

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So thank you, Joel.

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Really appreciate that.

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On Noster, on the note where I published this episode last

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week, Mazin, who was mentioned in the episode, zapped 888

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sats.

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Thank you, Mazin.

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Quinton zapped 555 sats.

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Thank you, Quinton.

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Also mentioned in the episode.

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And then Raya, 50 sats.

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Thank you, Raya.

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And Jeff G zapped 21 sats.

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All four of these people were mentioned in the episode.

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Y'all are great.

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Thank you so much for zapping.

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And thank you for the projects that you're working on and

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what you're doing for the freedom and independent

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technology community.

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Thank you for your support.

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As a reminder, if you send a boost on an episode using your

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Podcasting 2.0 app or zap me on Noster, I will read it on

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every show.

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OK, on to project updates.

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First up, we have Graphene OS version 2024-01-2600,

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effectively January 26, 2024.

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And this update has lots of updates for how eSIMs are

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handled, as well as updates to the camera settings, and then

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lots of kernel fixes and updates.

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So check that out if you're running Graphene.

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Next, we have Domus, which is a major client for Noster.

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Domus released version 1.7 to test flight.

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It has not quite made it into the App Store yet, but it's

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notable to mention it here because they introduced a new

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service called Domus Purple.

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And this is a paid service that lets you support Domus

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development, as well as get additional features.

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So to quote Will, creator of Domus, he says, "We are pumped

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to announce the launch of Domus Purple.

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You can be part of the roadmap for the year to come and

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beyond by supporting our team with this

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optional membership.

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Currently, it's open to test flight users only, but we'll

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be on the App Store shortly.

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Thanks for joining us on this wild ride."

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Next up, we have a Bitcoin wallet.

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BlueWallet 6.5.0.

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They have added crash detection for the Watch app and

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lots of bug fixes.

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And then last today, our friends over at Start9 have

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announced that there is a new app on their App Store, and

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this is Noster Wallet Connect.

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Officially, it's version 0.4.2.

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This is really cool because it lets you run Noster Wallet

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Connect on your own server and connect to your own

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Lightning Node.

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So you can be sovereign with your Bitcoin Lightning Node

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and the way that it talks to the world.

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This was built by our friends over at Albi, who many of you

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use their wallet.

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And this will connect your Lightning Wallet to apps using

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the Noster protocol.

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So a bunch of open protocols, open communication, and now

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open money is able to communicate out in a

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self-sovereign way.

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So check it out if you're running StartOS.

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That's it for news and updates this week.

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This is Freedom Tech Rep.

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If you find this weekly source useful, please share it with

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your people.

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You can also support us through Value for Value and

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send us feedback on Noster to marks@nosterclubs.com.

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And remember to live independent.

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Later.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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(bells chiming)

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you