Casting 2.0 for March 11 2021, Episode 28 we got the cat by the
tail. Always the cryptic messages always Friday once
again Time for a board meeting.
podcasting 2.0 as we discussed developments from podcast
index.org with special guest today very excited. I'm Adam
curry in Austin, Texas and in Alabama, the only man who can
chase a runaway SQL query my friend on the other end, Dave
Jones.
I have so much work to do now. I have to I gotta go in every
GitHub repo we have ever had to change do a search and replace
and change subscribe to follow. freakin apple. I
swear.
It's what everybody's doing now.
Oh, man. Okay, well, you you're scratching off the scab right
away. I had already kind of gotten over this what happened
earlier, I
knew this was gonna trigger you so hard. Ladies
and gentlemen. Apple has upgraded their podcast app. And
in 15 years, we have a huge development. We've changed
subscribe to follow and press went nuts.
At least we can hug. You know, he says we can hug now. So so
it's not all bad. I
have a story about follow. But first. Here's what I found
extremely disappointing. Okay, now I did not hear or read of a
single news or journalistic outlet that was taking all of
this great new information. We can now have more episodes in
the apple podcast app. And we've changed subscribe to follow. No
one said Hey, did you guys consider the podcast namespace
at all? Have you thought about it? No one ever asked these
questions, what the fuck?
It is journalists, journalistic,
journalistic, bankrupt it's bankrupt. I mean, we're so
German news is so used to sucking off these companies when
they release a new phone mainly. And they love reviewing the apps
on the beta. I'm reviewing the app. And no one says the simple
things. I'm flabbergasted by that. Anyway,
so the the idea that subscribe is confusing. I fully agree with
with Todd Cochran. Don't think that's an issue.
Know what? You describe all the tests. Everyone gives examples
of podcast apps. And no one again, journalism. No one came
up with Oh, YouTube has arguably the most successful. Published
subscription mechanism used today is YouTube that literally
says subscribe. But yeah, go ahead.
here's the here's a, here's a quick way to around this, like,
you hit the subscribe button. And if it asks you if you want
to pay money for it, just say no,
you know, it's such a non issue. And it's even stupider that oh,
well, you know, Spotify has already been doing this. Yeah,
they're so smart. Let me tell you, let me give the people a
little podcast history. Again, something I didn't read it was
would have been worthwhile as long as you're sucking off
everybody on the Follow button. In 2007, we were in San
Francisco with pod show. And we were building a podcast network,
which I later learned you really can't monetize story for a
different day. And we were really only doing the
advertising aggregating part and pre financing essentially kind
of running it like a record label, I guess. And we heard
about a competitor and this competitor was doing something
really cool because they had an interface which I got to see
once they had an interface that was all built in Flash. Now mind
you, this was early days for this type of interface,
particularly with multimedia and, and it was a publish and a
listening platform. Both. Wow, okay, this is really smart. And
I was you know, I knew we had the talent, which was our game,
but I felt that an interface could definitely you know, would
be important. You were worried. No, no, I wasn't worried. I
wasn't worried. But I was I was prepared and they never released
and they never released and, you know, when I finally saw what
they had, not Released, they had pivoted. And the one thing I
liked about their podcast interface at the time was
instead of subscribe, which was a discussion that went on for
ever in the beginning of podcasting. So in my mind, this
discussion would just do it, which is typical podcasting.
2.0. Let's do all the steps over again, just now we know the
outcome. So we can compress the timeline a little bit, which is
good, it's taking place. But they had changed, subscribe to
follow. And that was the first time that was ever used. And I
really thought that was a brilliant way to do it, because
we could never come up with the right wording. But this was also
the days when it meant right click on this orange icon, copy
the link and then paste it into your subscribe box. And they
pivoted odio went away. And they took that exact same technology,
and it became Twitter. And they and they carried over the whole
feed concept. It was in fact, RSS microblogging. It was in
fact built on RSS, which they, you know, hence the fail whale.
And they had to completely retool that but they kept the
Follow button. That's how old this is. And that's the origins
of it. It comes from podcasting.
I don't know if anybody how many people remember the first days
of Twitter that no one ever bothered to ask all it was all
the interface was terrible. It went the service went down. All
like multiple times a week. It was only SMS.
Oh, yeah. The fail whale baby. The SMS text messaging that was
that's how it started. Sure. Yeah, I
mean, it was it was garbage. Why did I wonder what why did they
switch? What made them bail out on podcasting? Was there? What
did was there some event that said new went through the
rippled through the news, they said, okay, podcasting is
overblown, it's gonna fail.
Yeah, there were two things that took place. Okay. One is
YouTube. YouTube was just coming out. This was before 2008, I
think, or 2009 was when they were purchased. And the second
thing was facebook, facebook was coming along, and they just went
from you had to be.edu to whatever. And you could sign up.
And I just and I think they brilliantly saw the opportunity.
And they had the infrastructure, it was the basic RSS
infrastructure, which did not scale to it for what they what
they wanted to do. And I can see why. Yeah, that was it. I said,
and they, I think they were actually it was one of these.
They, they built it internally. And we're using it and liked it.
That's the most organic form of development. It's amazing how
they actually succeeded because of how rocky that first couple
of years was, of the service being so unreliable and so
weird. But it's really, it's really stunning that Twitter
actually survived that that time period. Well,
remember, they, they were dying by success because they had
Ashton Kutcher. They brought in Demi Moore, they had the whole
Planet Hollywood celebrities, they immediately understood the
power of the celebrity tweet, and the celebrities caught it.
They immediately like holy crap. And now the whole follow thing
really fit in well with the cult status of celebrities Follow me.
I mean, this was a perfect, perfect combination.
Cancer. Oh, okay. So I'm seeing this now. So the follow thing
really is all about celebrity. Because you absolutely don't.
Because if you're talking about it to meet, subscribe in a
podcast is fits perfectly. Because you're subscribing. When
you subscribe to something. It means you automatically get
delivered. Like you subscribe to a newspaper, or you subscribe to
a magazine. You get it delivered to your mailbox on automatically
and you don't have to think about it. Correct. Follow you
don't follow a magazine lately. What about the word follow tells
you that you're going to get something automatically unless
you're talking about celebrities, because you people
do follow celebrities. Like oh, I follow. You know, what are you
use Ashton Kutcher? No.
No one says, Yeah, I follow the podcasting 2.0 podcast.
And nobody says that
subscribe to that. Yeah, I'm subscribed. So it's it's
meaningless. It was very disappointing. It tells me that
Apple has punted and they're going to do their podcast plus
or whatever they're going to do. Or the or they're doing a one
two punch with some other stuff. I don't know, I just I, I could
not believe how disappointing this release was. It must just
be a maintenance release because they're working on something
else. And they're clearly not interested in the exciting
development in the podcast ecosystem. And fact, we're doing
a great exercise partially at podcast index dot social, but on
GitHub, to explain have create a document that explains
podcasting 2.0. And so this has been interesting to look at the
document that kind of came together you wrote it, there's
been some other pieces of input from people some pull requests,
but it doesn't really matter. The the the brain trust kind of
put together what we were going to put in that document that
document mostly I released it to be community,
editable or whatever. Yeah, mostly because I just got so
tired of writing. I've been doing some stuff.
It was time to it was time for you to hand the baton over.
Yeah, so I'm rewriting A lot of it, not all of it. And I've
taken a different course. And so I'm cuz I have been asked, I
think what happened is we didn't say, Who is this really for? Who
was this document for the person who had the best answer,
actually, inadvertently, was James Cridland. He said, Oh, you
know, I want to place the journalists can understand, as I
said, at this point, so this comes into my rant. It's like,
well, if we can't make journalists understand and
report on it, we're failing. If we can make journalists
understand it, and report on it every single podcaster will be
able to understand what's going on here. Okay, so is a really
good point. So in my writing, I refer to legacy apps, Apple and
Spotify. It's true.
Thank you, My God, thank you for doing that. Because you know,
what pisses me off so much I know, go in the IT world is when
people take something that's that is perfect, worked
perfectly fine, and does and serves millions and millions of
people on a daily basis with something and they call it
legacy. Like it's old and beat up and full of Botox and like,
it's a piece of crap. Like, that is so erratic. And I love that
you did that. It's beautiful. It's a it's a turnaround.
It's the old and I'm writing the sentence about new these new
features. I like, Oh, no, because I want to say, you know,
you're podcasting. 2.0 is backwards compatible with legacy
apps. I love it. It's awesome. It's all about the positioning.
So yeah, so that's coming together and actually is with
the keeper right now. So you know that that shits getting
looked at she's now a communications professional.
There's, there's tons. Go ahead.
Let me throw something in here real quick, because this fit
this fits in. So it fits into the talk of legacy apps. That's
a tweeted this morning on our account, which we don't usually
tweet that. I sent out a tweet. And, and I feel pretty strongly
about this. I started feeling thinking about it when I woke up
this morning. One thing that is I'll say this almost shameful
that more podcast apps have not adopted the transcript tag.
Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely.
And I mean, that I mean, that to the bottom of my heart, by the
way, from an MBA perspective, it'll probably be mandatory at
some point in the future.
Yes, you know, so many, so many of these podcasts, companies and
apps, and I can I think they're so you know, invested in, in,
you know, I don't even know what the word is, I don't want to say
whoa, but like, like a modern a modern care for things like the
climate, and all these things that we that we associate with
progressive thinking, considering minority groups and
that kind of thing. The fact that this so few apps have
adopted the transcript tag, which is immediately helps
people with disabilities and people learning trying to learn
another language. Yes, I
check. It's almost shameful.
You put that actually in the in the description in the document
about and I hadn't even considered the learning about a
second language and it's really true. And
we met and we met a guy when me and my wife met in Moscow,
Russia.
Okay, Dave, now you're blowing my mind, brother.
Sorry, that's a different story.
I usually spot the spook. Okay, go for it.
Well, who is it me or her comrade? Tama Jones?
Sir, no, we met on a trip to Russia. And at the time, we had
a translator and his name was That oh my gosh, I Yvonne and
Yvonne said that he learned English he spoke very good
English. He said that he learned English when he spent a couple
years as an exchange student in the US, and he learned it from
watching cartoons on television with subtitles.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's how the Dutch the Dutch have all movies
subtitled. That's how they learn English too. And they're very
proficient. Yeah,
I mean, I think that I really think that if you are a podcast,
and I'm not, I'm the type of guy that's like, Hey, you do it
every one of his frame free market free everything. But, but
I really do think that that that tag is such low hanging fruit
that would serve so much good in the community that I do feel
like it's worthy of being labeled as shameful that so many
have not done it.
At last count 13.2% of all podcast feeds had the names to
namespace adoption. So it's totally possible we have a
number of of hosting companies already pumping them out, and a
lot of apps that understand them. And the way to do this,
and this is this is the constant issue with podcasting. The
players as in the players in the game, app developers hosting
companies, they always forget the power of the content. The
podcast creators are your users too. And they will drive this
they will drive adoption. I mean, when I when I started
pushing the chapter images rotating, it became a thing.
Yeah. Yeah,
the content drives everything. Yes.
Well, that's often forgotten. And Well, anyway, this is why
the entire podcast in 2.0 so exciting as it kind of
centralizes around podcast index.org right now and one of
the first things that happened for us as we started this
project one less than six months ago, and the two stated goals
were to preserve podcasting as a platform for free speech. And to
retool podcasting as a platform for value for all the
participants. And we had the lightning network in mind. We
had already done a real deep dive and I was understanding it
and I was able to convince you and you foolishly went, Okay,
I'm sure Adam is right.
Now you called me You called me when I was driving up to North
Alabama. Oh, let's see, I meet up with a couple of guys. And
that was like a two hour phone call.
I think I was in my car when I was nine. I was in my car too.
For some reason. I can't remember. I think so. I think to
some call or something. Yeah.
Yeah. And you laid it all out. You're like, you're like, here's
the way I think this could work. And, and I think it can be like
this. And we I mean, that was like a marathon call.
So we basically, you know, jam this value for value was valued
tag into the namespace as Okay, we'll see when it really goes
in, but let's experiment with it. And then on podcast, index
dot social, I get this ping from cuz I was actually I was
searching around that's what I was. I was searching around who
who can do this stuff. This lightning i'd figured out keys
and and so I was trying to figure out where it you know,
who was doing keys and and I came across swings chat. I think
something on their GitHub, not even the actual app. And I was
like, God, this look what I from what I'm reading here. It sounds
like I think they even had a line on the GitHub, great for
podcasting, too. You know, I was like, Okay, this guy, it's like
soon to include podcasting. And like, holy crap, these guys kind
of get it so I think I emailed the info at stack work calm or
something like that. I think that's what it was. We're in
full swing stock chat. And then I got a ping back from one of
our guests who we have today who I wanted to bring in since we've
been chatting away and Dave you and I can have this board
meeting forever but we did invite two other members of the
community from swings chat, please welcome to podcasting.
2.0 Evan feenstra and Paul each boy
Hey guys.
You're as bad at interest as I am Yeah.
I think what let's start with Paul first because Paul was the
one who contacted me. Paul, once you tell me a bit about how you
found out I guess that email and then what you're thinking and
shoot want you to guys just tell us what the hell you're doing.
Well, I was first of all good to be here. I went into full on
podcast listening mode while you guys are talking because that's
how I'm used to hearing here and there pretty much gone. Whoa,
wait, I got to talk now.
So you to sleep.
You I was washing dishes over there.
It's just like clubhouse you're on stage. Okay, you can talk
now.
I can't say Wait, but but I didn't raise my hand.
So
yeah, I mean, I
remember getting your email, I think around the exact same
time, it really was amazing timing that I found your podcast
social. And some of the first features we did was was thanks
was around podcasters. Because if you think about what we're
doing, and just for people out there who don't know, us, but
we've been chatting for a while now with you guys. And we really
wanted to bring the ability to fund media and fun content
without having to go through the middleman. And so when I think I
heard you speak, on one of the podcasts you were on a camera
was a while ago, I just said, Man, this guy gets it. And I got
onto your mastodon, and then at some point, we're chatting. So
that was
great. Right, right, right. It probably would be handy if you
could explain a little bit about Sphinx chat. And how podcasting
integrates into that just for people who've never seen it
before.
Yeah, so thanks, chat is the ability to communicate over the
lightning network. And so what's different in a lot of people ask
you guys to talk to your listeners about lightning
network. But what's different about this is that everyone has
tried to do payments on top of the free internet. So you got a
website, now you can go pay with your credit card, that's always
stuck out as a sore thumb. with lightning network, you're really
adding the ability to communicate and send content
over a payment network, the payments are really just native
to the whole experience. And that's pretty cool. And that's
what when similar to you guys, when you were doing that
marathon call, I read the white paper and said, Oh, my God, this
is really big and really different. And then people like
Evan, who designed a lot of the systems itself, basically made
it all happen. So you can listen to podcasts, you can talk to
people, you can talk to your friends, you can join these
tribes, and we'll do a lot more going forward. You know,
what I enjoyed the most when when we actually hopped on, on a
call, Paul. And I think we spoke for an hour, maybe longer, just
philosophically, and it clicked so deeply right away. And I've
even stolen some of the things you said, because, you know, I
know the inherent issues with advertising and creating content
and how that, by definition limits you and what you can say
sort of we can talk about a competing product to favorably
just as one small example, or have a wrong political opinion
that might not fit with the advertiser. And you boil that
down for me into advertising is censorship. And, and I was like,
okay, just just like when you were listening to our shows, I
said, Yeah, this guy really gets it. And in addition to that,
it's like, as I was learning the Bitcoin community, and certainly
those who are in lightning development, everybody wants to
get their fair piece, and they want to get paid. In fact, one
of the things you and I talked about is, Hey, you know, if out
of this comes one or two huge Silicon Valley, multi
billionaires, then we fucked it up big time. But so that led to
another quote of yours that I use, the free is over. And
that's, I think, core to what Sphinx chat is all about, as you
talk about it being really an application that sits on top of
a payment network and uses that as the vehicle for all these
payloads of content.
Yeah, and I think what we talked about on that first call, is it
free to free sounds great, right? And humans are hardwired
to respond to free differently. But free when it comes to
technology turned out to be the most expensive business model
out there, if you value your time. And that's the problem.
We've all accidentally and without really intending traded
our attention on our time and bitcoiners talk a lot about
scarce assets. And so what's the one thing everyone talks about?
You never get more of his time? And so without really setting
out to do it, and I don't think there was some conspiracy
theory. And then, I mean, you and I are around for the early
days of the internet, no one set out a plan, hey, I'm going to
build this free service, I'm going to get everyone to pay
attention to it. I was there we were all trying to make money,
but there was no money to be made on the internet, right?
We're, you'd be crazy to put a credit card into a website in
the mid 90s. I felt totally unnatural, right. So if we had
had Bitcoin or an internet currency of that time, who knows
how we how it would have turned out, but if you have the
services and they are free, they will grow and someone has to pay
for it sometime. And advertisers raised their hand and said, Hey,
we'll pay for it. How do I know I worked in advertising in the
90s so believe me these guys were had no idea there was no
Plan, there was nothing, it was just where eyeballs will go pay
for eyeballs, whereas attention will pay for attention by my
widget, you know. So that is, I think, our the opportunity that
we're all sitting at now. And I think this is where podcasting
really is the crux of a historic change from what we accidentally
got into versus what we have going forward. So, and you guys
rag on Apple and stuff for being so out of date with podcasting,
but I view that as a positive because it is so ripe for
change. And what you guys are doing is kind of unlocking the
dam that is going to allow some of these changes to take place.
And serendipity serendipitously, here's Bitcoin, here's lightning
at the exact same time. We really have this opportunity, so
you guys better not screw it up. What,
you know what we're gonna screw it up?
No doubt about. So when Dave and I first
that's why we have Evan, you guys. Yes, yeah,
I'll fix the bugs.
That's a perfect time to bring Evan in. As you know, as we were
just getting this initial, you know, the initial front to back
working from podcaster wallet.com. And having the feed
show up and tribes automatically created and tons of stuff. You
know, we my conversations were really with Paul and two, were
talking, you know, the three of us, but then there was this
magical thing that would happen. And that turned out that magical
thing had a name. Evan, who's one of my favorite kind of
developers, because he's a musician. He plays, you know,
guitars, saxophone trumpet, which I know is like that, that
confirms my software development is science, but also really big
art. So admin, it's really, really good to meet the guy
who's been who's been doing a lot of that behind the scenes,
so to speak.
Yeah, it's been a lot of fun to work on this stuff. I
definitely. I mean, I've I've always kind of seen
micropayments in general, being the real sort of potential in
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And the thing that can really
change the internet, because exactly like you guys talked
about with your value for value. When you're streaming money one
way, and you're streaming content back the other way. You
don't necessarily need, you don't need that credit card
number, right. You don't need a username, you don't need a
password. I mean, we don't we don't even we don't even know
how many users we have on Sphinx. Good day. This is not
even a way to know. In fact, this release, where we just put
out earlier today is adding private lightning channels to
spank Ooh, nice, which means you won't even be able to see the
routing,
right, you won't be able to scan the graph to see who's using
Spanx.
I'm sure marnix is gonna love that. Message Board. He's always
bitching about he can't they can't i can't context. Thanks,
nodes. Hey, um, yeah,
so like, it's more that that gives more privacy to users,
obviously. But it also means for us, we don't we don't have to
manage all these identities and and these relationships with
users necessarily, I mean, why should my online identity be
mediated by some database in some data center, right? Like,
if I want to, I can do that. But also, if I want to, I can just
run my identity at home on a Raspberry Pi. So, you know,
I've been ever since I was introduced to, to the tribes
concept. And, and an important part of that is boosting, which
is just fucking phenomenal idea. The, the, I've been trying to
communicate to our developers, that once we have some
infrastructure in place with lightning network, how much
complexity goes away in creating community features? Exactly what
you just said, Evan, you don't need to maintain a database, you
know, your authentication can be built into your, your node ID,
all these things can just happen seamlessly. But I think it's one
of those things, you really have to see it and experience it to
understand it and believe it
exactly right.
How does that play into with the sinks, like, sinks relay is
something that, that I've been pretty intrigued by I know that
a lot of people are setting that up on a Raspberry Pi. I mean,
how much it's a little bit of a brain twister, to think about
that whole thing. And but if you set up a Sphinx relay, just for
my knowledge, and for anybody else, who's who's curious. I
mean, what can you not do and what I mean, are you a full
participant in in Sphynx chat, just like you would be if you
were hosted
Yeah, that's all a hosted note is is just a relay running in
the cloud. So if you set it at home, you're basically storing
your messages at home. And your, you know, chat records at home
and everything,
it really became apparent to me how it works, you know, because
when you just have your Sphinx chat app, and you just connected
to Sphinx chat, you know, whatever is working. And then
when I set one up on my raspy Blitz at home, and the minute my
full node, total came up, that's when it hit me, oh, it's just a
wallet. It has elements of all these other wallet, for
instance, Thunder hub, you can, you know, it's a little
different, but you can send a chat message with one satoshis
to another Thunder hub user. And that's when it boiling, it just
went, the lightning bolts went off. And from what and maybe I'd
really like to talk about scalability for a second,
because it's really important for the overall rollout of what
we're doing. First of all, I have the feeling that that we
broke you a little bit, but that really became advantageous,
because we learned so much about you know, the number of
transactions how this will be working with no, I mean, I know
you guys were working really hard behind the scenes for weeks
and weeks and weeks. And from what I understand, one of the
most exciting developments to come out of that is for scape
for scalability, is there'll be different ways to host virtual
nodes. Am I saying this correctly?
Right, yes, you heard of this?
Yeah, go ahead.
You pick it? Well, I was gonna say it's part of the Private
Channel. thing, being able to put a private channel node
behind another routing node, but also potentially, like a virtual
private node. Maybe you can explain them better. Paul, I'm
so deep into
that didn't help him
now. Thanks.
I'll, I think what we were talking about before is a
different way to read. So maybe taking a step back is think of
the app, the sinks app on your phone as a remote control. So
just the way you could control your TV from, you know, your if
you have an iPhone from your Apple remote, the Sphinx app on
your phone is really just talking to relay that's running
on a lightning node. Right? So relay is just translating the
tap finger tapping on your phone into things that lightning can
understand, as a relay translates that into a lightning
message. And then it sends from there out onto the lightning
network to everyone else, it looks just like a normal
lightning transaction, could be a payment, it could be an invite
to a video call, it could be a message, the whole point is you
don't know and no one should know, right? you increase the
privacy side of what's happening. And so you don't want
stuff that looks like a payment to look different from something
that looks like just the message. And if you have an I
think we just hit we just tried to, we actually can't tell. But
if you happen to be using one of our routing nodes on the
lightning network, we have forwarded well over 350,000
messages in the last three months. So far. Wow. That's
incredible. That's not the counting the minutes that are
being sent to you guys. Yeah, we that's just,
you know, we're seeing like 10,000 minutes a month, that's
off the last 10,000 transactions.
Well, that that's gonna grow with what, what happened, Tom
and the rest of the guys just did. So there's, there's several
people working on this mine, it seems to so just, we could have
everyone on. But um, so back to that thing. So you have remote
control, you have relay, translating, then you have
lightning, all of these message in all of these transactions
bouncing around the peer to peer lightning network. And so think
of the lightning record is just a constellation of these
computers that are talking to each other using the lightning
protocol. And you're sending tiny amounts of Bitcoin with
every transaction or message that goes through that network.
And you're paying your freight there's tiny tiny fees 1000s of
a penny or even a Mila fat right which I don't even know what the
unit of that is a penny right now, but you're paying miniscule
amounts but you are paying and what that does is I think of it
like those, it's like an immune system we're free it's in there
and free equals abuse free is denial of service for you to
spam. And then once you have all those things and you need
somebody to pay for it that opens the door to centralization
and advertising and all the censorship and you end up in the
same place we are now
oh I am writing down free is abuse as another one I'm just
steal from you. Thank you very much. Yeah, okay.
So that to me, and this is where just in this goes back to the
lightning protocol devs. And by the way, that goes down to The
Bitcoin devs, who we should all be supporting, we're trying to
figure out how to do a better job of that ourselves, as we are
freeloading off of Bitcoin and the lightning protocol and
building this app layer on top of these two things, and I know
you guys know Ryan Gentry and you've talked to folks at
lightning labs, there's other implementations are see
lightning, there's, I think in France, there's a really light
node client coming out of Japan. So there's really cool stuff
happening. And we're just scratching the surface. And just
one thing that's happening in one part of the lightning
network, so to people who are new to this, don't think of what
we're doing here as all inclusive of what's happening,
lightning, tons of other stuff happening. So but Yeah, go
ahead.
No, go ahead, please.
Yeah, so I was just gonna say so that understanding that
structure, Dave, to what you're asking about, what does relay do
is really important. So that gets you and if you are running
relay and your node and you have a channel, then you can operate
over this free protocol. And you're a full fledged lightning
node on the on the platform on the network. So that could be
from a Raspberry Pi. And there are tons of people now running
on rolls running, running Raspberry Pi, Blitz, all good
stuff, right? Different pros and cons to each. None of them are
simple yet. So if anyone tells you they're simple, I had
trouble doing it. People have trouble doing this. So if you're
trying if you're thinking, hey, that must be me. No, no, it's
not you. And what we're gonna do if there's interest and maybe
hit people up on the on the mastodon group, is if I talked
to Gonzalo about running a once a week, video chat, or just some
meetup or something online, where everyone who wants to run
one at home, we could spend an hour answering any questions.
Oh, that's right. On channels a good idea. It's kind of doing
like a build party.
So I've seen we already have day probably like five or six devs
now who have set up a variety of different different types of
nodes at home are
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. And it's been it's been beautiful to watch, you know,
the all the struggles, all the things that can go wrong, even,
you know, hey, I set up a raspy Blitz, but I don't have the
chain on my drive, you know, two days later, okay. All of these
minor things, Nat, port forwarding, etc. But yeah, of
course, that's it's all going to get easier. How are you going?
How are you positioning, Sphinx chat? in the market? It being? I
mean, is there? Is there a category that it fits under? Is
it because it doesn't really feel like it? That's the
category all by itself? Yeah,
I mean, I try to think about that. Because when you're trying
to describe what you're working on your friends, it's a little
bit confusing. So they're saying, you know, friends, they
still wait, you guys are a podcast app now?
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, a lot of people say wallet. I think all of those
terms can really limit what if you haven't system that's this
new. To use a dated analogy can sometimes be a problem, right?
It can limit what people think you can do or what you think you
can do yourself, right. So what we're maybe what we're trying to
do is if I think back to a couple of things, it's the
wallet part is really about the ability to earn. Right now.
Hopefully, this is generating stats to podcast index.
Oh, it's generating SATs. Let me just say something about that
quick. Yeah. So one of the one of the things that we came up
with was this split. So you're sending, you know, payments,
you're splitting up a per minute payment to podcast or defined
recipients. And just to give you an idea, because the numbers are
very low, it's micro payments, and we only have you know, what,
maybe a dozen people or so who I really, I don't know, I mean, no
one knows exactly how much I think Marty has a lot of
listeners, but it's limited. And so one of the guys who he his
name is Neil, he's the clip custodian nickname. And he's
been creating like 10 to 12 really high quality clips for me
to play on no agenda, every single show. And so I gave him a
5% split in the in the in the value block. And, and Neil, you
know, I don't know how sophisticated he is. But I sent
him an invite he got set up on swings chat. I said, you know,
can you give me your node, he was able to figure that out.
Dave put it into the block. And now he says it's Adams it's such
cuz he will do this for free. He doesn't need anything for it. He
says it's like mental fuel of motivation, like a micro dosing
little bits of goodness, every single time because that each
payment each streaming payment, represents someone who is
enjoying what he was also a part of, it's I get I really get
goosebumps when I say it because I know that if this is times
1000 people are going to be making some real money. And it's
gonna be really crazy.
I want to see it, I love to see it. That's the freedom to earn
it. Here's the thing, too, that we shouldn't ignore. So for
everyone who's doing podcasting or any content creation, but for
now podcasting, the audience was limited by the payment system,
right? So if you want audience support, how do I get you to
support? We'll do Venmo, do you have PayPal, cash, app cards,
cash out, you just cut out what percentage of the universe of
the world right can't pay you. So you have an audience, someone
in a suburb outside of Manila, listen, your podcast and getting
a lot of value out of it. Now you can capture that value. That
person actually I think, experiences it differently. When
they are supporting the thing they appreciate, I actually
think the listening experience is better, when you know that
you are contributing to the hole
that is proven. 14 years of no agenda proves people really want
to pay makes them feel good. They want to pay something
that's meaningful to them, which can be numerology or just how
much money they can afford. And this is, I think, how this fits
into bitcoin, I'm going to use the term space is its inherent,
this inherent to people who are switched on to Bitcoin, to be
philanthropic and be open and the freedom they feel of owning
and controlling their own money and sending it like a text
message. Because that's what it is. It's like, wow, I just sent
you a money, but it didn't go through a whole bunch of other
people. You know, I didn't have to do a whole bunch of things.
It's, it's, it's a very good experience.
Well, that I mean, going back to that, that's about personal
sovereignty and responsibility. And if you are going to take
that on, that means that you can't be a spectator alone, you
have to be the man in the arena, you have to step in, and that
could be just streaming SAS as you listen to a podcast, right?
We're not asking anyone to go into battle here. But it's you
need to act. Yeah, things aren't gonna, I mean, advertisers will
let you consume passively. Sure. That's one model you can exist
in. But I think that in the back of people's mind, it doesn't
feel right. And I think that once you start to see something
new, and you start to feel that it feels different, and that's
when I listen to, you know, Marty's podcasts or your
podcast. Three things that I said, Wow, I didn't predict that
it would actually change the listening experience. And I feel
better.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yeah, it totally does. I felt that when I
first started using Sphinx, the saints have as well, when we
talked about it on the show of how very quickly I mean, within
a couple of days, I started to feel guilty if there was a show
on Sphinx chat. That was that I knew it was there. But I was
listening in a different app. So I would just flip back to that
switch back to Sphinx chat, and, and start listening just purely
so I could know, that I was sending them value, no matter
how small it was, you know,
I love it. I love
it. You know, and I only say this, say this I on that whole
idea of free and free versus you know, pay. I think we actually
wrote a blog about this forever ago, I think that we miss, I
think that we may misunderstand this, that issue that we I think
we tend to mentally see it as a spectrum, to where you have free
on one side, and you have very expensive on the other side. And
we think of it like like a just a long spectrum, single line.
But I think I really think it's more like a, like a circle. So
where where the where the ends of the spectrums bend around and
begin to meet again at the bottom, so that you have free,
you know, free on the left and priceless on the right. And
those things are actually closer together, then you can go yes.
And so like, what that and I think that's where the social
media and the freemium stuff, I think they operate in that
psychological space. Because if they can give you a service for
free, you'll be willing to give away things that are actually
priceless. In order to use it. Because the the the idea of free
and priceless are not opposite ends of the spectrum. They're
actually they're, they're hard to discern the difference
mentally, because there's not really a cost you can put on
either one of them is a thing, that idea. Like if you actually
split it out and take away free and say that this does cost
something, it helps you to actually place a value on it and
say, Okay, this is what I'm not willing to give up. These things
in my life like my personal information, like my contacts
list on a phone, if it's club All these things that you're not
willing to give away, when the thing actually costs money, you
may be willing to give it away when it's free, because you just
your mind had the human mind, I think has a difficult time
making sense out of something that's free as far as how do you
value that in relation to something else?
It's not just the law, the state or the zero state, you know,
yeah, David's microdosing stats, I think, but no.
I,
I see exactly what you mean. And they do meet back, right. And
I'm actually just picturing a graphic, we should put that into
a graphic, right? You do come full circle back, when you get
priceless and free our neighbors not opposites, right. But I so
but to me, that whole going back to the whole thing of freedom to
earn, right, that's, that shouldn't be a human right. And
it shouldn't be limited by the place you were born necessarily,
right. I feel like that's going to be an artifact, hopefully, of
the future. Someone's got something interesting to say in
some random place that no one's been to. And they're going to be
able to collect an audience of tons of people around the world
and make a living from that because they're providing value.
You can remove those friction points, I think we all benefit
from kind of adding their contributions to the idea soup
instead of getting the same ones from the same people around us.
So the borderless part, I think, really is important. And I think
we'll end up with a more interesting kind of exchange
here, right? If it happens, this is the whole importance of
decentralization. And this is you guys turned us on to RSS
like I didn't really pay attention RSS since I think when
it came out. We all look at it and we're all hacking away on
things but amazing that this becomes the foundation for
decent,
decentralized AI. Hey, man, decentralized RSS is such a
beautiful thing. It's It's so obvious why Google kills their
feed reader. You cannot you cannot compete with it. It's
just it's too good.
In a dissent,
someone pointed out to me though, that did you know that?
And I haven't played with it. But medium and substack offer
RSS
is kind of interesting. appstack is doing podcast now. Oh, yeah.
They're on my list. I want they need to
have a frickin node. Kidding. He could do we need this might be
the next board meeting right here. It is. It
is a board meeting. Paul, we take everything you say serious?
And it's on the
record. Yeah, you're an honorary. So
it's a I'm also gonna say, it's pretty amazing that this like
decades old or I don't know how old RSS is, but seems like it's
been around. Yeah, it's kind of this perfect system that's
already sort of been there for a long time. And it's sort of
creating this bastion of free speech, like no matter what,
you're not gonna be able to necessarily take down a file.
You can even email someone an RSS file. The multi modality of
it makes it so there's not really any way to, you know,
cancel it.
Evan, I have a couple of questions for you specifically.
The first one is when can I on? Like no agenda, say? Everybody
needs to go get swings chat right now. Because
we live your world.
That's what I've been waiting for. That's it. I've been
waiting to be able to say that. And, and I understand the issues
of me saying that, because I just don't know how, how does
this scale?
Paul is gonna tell you today, and I'll tell you next week.
That's kind of how we've been going. But But literally, next
week, this time, it's for real next week. Oh, although Paul
will say yeah,
we just, I think literally right before this episode started,
Evan pushed the multi tenant version a relay out to GitHub,
so don't anyone go turn it on right now? I'm not gonna need to
use cowboys. I thought you were Paul.
Believe me.
I'm suppressing that instinct as much. So the the Umbro guys need
time to update the release. They don't have an ad hoc release
system on the App Store yet that they have. So they have these
apps and we can as app, you know, presence on on their
dashboard. We don't have the ability to push updates to the
roads, which is probably smart for them, right? Yeah, yeah. And
so you just told them yesterday. Hey, guys, we have a new version
coming out. We need to do the same, but with anyone else.
How does that work? I mean, so if a whole bunch of people go
get this chat app. I mean, the I'm just talking about listeners
who want to support the show, will they it's seamless to them
about any upgrades you've done all that stuff is it's all in
the background. And they can just go ahead and and I guess I
would presume purchase their node for a couple bucks and then
get up and running.
Yeah, we're gonna offer two different types of nodes. One is
meant for podcasters. And that's we calling those dedicated. And
that means you have a channel and you are running the lnd
software and relay software on a virtual machine. Gotcha. And you
can do that exactly, exactly what you have now this will you
have any Raspberry Pi Blitz in general? So you have a channel,
think of it as I have a channel, because the channel is a Bitcoin
transaction. Bitcoin has limited real estate, you cannot create a
million channels a day on the Bitcoin blockchain even if you
wanted to write. And so what the virtual node does, where we're
calling lighter virtual node, is that you have the ability to be
a participant on someone else's node. So in Bitcoin, they call
this the Uncle Jim model, where someone you know, and somewhat
trust is running a node and has the channel and you are
piggybacking off their system. All your content is still
private. You can still do everything you want on the on
the lightning network, but you are running from somebody
running on someone else's node and sharing their channel which
is communicating out. Gotcha.
So that's how you scale it. Oh, yeah. Okay. So I
still end to end encrypted, basically. So it's not like
Uncle Jim can read your messages,
which is real creepy. And my uncle.
That was lm D. Is that where that came from?
It did good. Yeah, cuz lm d 12. Has this HDFC interceptor.
feature. And then, so now we're able to create these private
channels. I'm just writing day or may not be real. There's a
lot of pieces to it.
Are you gonna drop that at dinner? Just sound sound killer
here.
He should absolutely have a HPLC interceptor t shirts made?
credit. I mean, credit goes to, I believe the breeze guys, you
guys are talking to worked with lightning labs on the original
thing. I may be getting the history wrong. But that is just
a feature of the underlying protocol that we're using to
help people get on board. So they
only did that because they're not a full on. Yeah,
there's no one knows. Right?
Yeah, if you're running a node, they run mobile nodes, I
believe. But I'm not I'm not an expert on it. But they run
mobile nodes. And so sometimes if your phone's off, the
interceptor can capture the payment on the way in, I
believe, the
Watchtower.
Kind of like that. Yeah, yeah, it is a little bit like that.
Maybe. So the Watchtower is more like, hey, someone tried to
cheat me out of my channel. But so what this so think about this
model for a second, if we were to go the most private version,
and then work our way back to the hosted versions, but let's
say you were the Raspberry Pi Blitz, if you were running this
multi tenant version, you could say to your no agenda listeners,
hey, sign up on my node as a virtual node, they would provide
Bitcoin they would or you know, they would either buy it or send
it. Now, what they would have is a full on address, the app and
everything. They'd be listening to the podcast talking on tribes
doing everything, but they wouldn't have their own channel.
They would be running off of your
right, and how many how many? Do you have virtual nodes? Or you
know, how many if I'm Uncle Jim, how many kids can I have?
Well, we haven't quite really tested the limits, but 1000s and
1000s. Oh, well,
that'll be my job then.
Hello.
test the limits. Now.
Now, are you guys setting
we'll have a love a bounty. If you can break it will you'll win
some reward a
bad idea? Or a bad idea? Man, I'm,
I'm an expert.
I'm an expert at breakage.
It'll be worth it. It'll be worth it.
That's very exciting. That is that is super exciting. And now
will this all be also be available, like as an add on to
any of the voltage nodes or anyone who wants to go more with
a host hosted solution?
We're talking to Graham, I mean, I just painted with him
yesterday. So anyone with a voltage node can run one of
these. They have a channel
fucking love this community.
Also, I mean, this is also why it's so difficult to roll stuff
out because there's all these people with different app
versions and different relay versions, different lnd
versions. Yeah,
who's
really on there? So
Oh, but Evan also different different business models,
different philosophy, well does a general philosophy. And
that's, I think what pulls it all together, I am constantly
amazed, you know how, you know, we're, we were looking for kind
of a semi hosted solution and bumped into Tim over at ln PE.
And he's like, Sure, I'll throw some API together. And everyone
just kind of puts it all in there and SATs start flowing.
And everyone says, Okay, I'm getting some SATs here from
either a split or routing fee, and everyone sees where they can
benefit from it and, and grow.
It's just, it's,
it's so and I don't know how old you are, Evan, but it's so
analogous to the early days, I'm talking yo 90. For me, it was
like 9394, when the web just you know, the NCSA mosaic browser
browser just came along, but how people were all kind of working
together, even with with peering agreements at the network level.
I mean, it's so analogous to that.
Yeah, I was a baby at the time. So
if Did you see marnix posted that that like layout that
showed all the node interconnects on the mastodon,
it, it's just basically he just boiled all the he took all the
podcast or nodes that are listed he, he's my he's constantly
monitoring the podcast index to see who has value blocks, and
where the nodes in what node keys, they are good. So then he
does analysis on that. So he put together this map that shows all
the interconnections between all the nodes. And it's, it's cool,
man, it's like a complete like podcast. It's like a podcast
routing network within lightning itself.
Yeah, yeah. It's cool. And you know, I'd like channels to your
to your routing node, I think you got a routing node and
voltage. So I've opened a channel there. And everyone's
opening channels is really quite interesting.
So the the ideal state here would be that podcaster, sets up
node, get voltage home, whatever the in the beginning, we're
running this to make sure we can work out the kinks. They could.
So they could start a node, bring on these light node users
who will probably be their listeners, but don't necessarily
have to be someone could join the no agenda node. And then
listen to Tales from the Crypt. Yeah, of course, of course, just
like a normal user. And then what you could do is, so now
you're running all of these users. And then they want to
decide to run their own node, they have a real lightning pub
key and can leave, they can leave their own up, right,
right. Yep. And then they can get their own channel, which is
great. And we've always wanted that portability. So if someone
has a hosted node and wants to go to a home node they can
write. And then this also allows you to do some neat stuff with
forwarding and stuff like that, too. So if you have one of these
virtual nodes, you can actually just forward it to another node.
Oh, my God, I'm interesting. No way. Now you can sign up for
something using a completely different pub key that no one
knows that's your normal pub key and supporting trick, it gets to
be all kinds of fun things here. And so that I think is so that
will remove this whole issue of Can I get one of these nodes?
And can I get an invite, which we're not trying to be exclusive
about this? We're literally running a server and doing a
Bitcoin transaction for every single user on this network
right now, right? So this way, it can bring people on. They are
dependent on that note, they could kick you off, they could
go down at your your unroll or your Raspberry Pi Blitz, Adam
could go down and all your friends are yelling at you
again, right. So it's not you know, it's like the early days
of isbs when it was in closets and apartments, right, and a
bunch of modems.
Believe me, I run a mastodon server with 10,000 users. And I
know what happens when it goes down.
Emails fun,
not fun. It's not fun.
Wow. So I wanted that.
So that if you if you think about the friction wages weren't
real quick, I want to make sure that we talked about some of the
main friction points about running loose ends because this
is a message to the podcasters thinking about doing this is
that now you have a place to interact. podcasting has not had
community very well. Right. So now you can interact with people
who are self selecting to be your most loyal listeners
because they want to contribute value for what you're providing.
Right.
Now, Adam, you run into this, you're going to get SAS, it's
going to pile up with the lightning network. If all of the
stats are on your side of the channel channels boards, you got
to rebalance. Yeah, you have a clog in the pipe. Right. And so
with lightning labs and the tools that they're coming out
with, they have these new things of auto loop out so
oh my god, so smart. Cool.
So if you have this kind of I guess, first class problem of
having too many fats, you can set it and say, Hey, if I hit
this percentage on my side of the channel, rebounded, I would
like Bitcoin to be sent on chain to this backup address, and then
you can send it to that address.
Yeah, because that function used to be done by a guy named Paul
E. Toi. Who I would then email and say, my channels works like
liquidity, Brahma.
And then I'd be in my car with a laptop.
I think we got like nine, like, like, 10 channels to Marty's
node because oh, keep catching up on that side.
So yeah, Marty's on fire, man. He's on fire.
And so that and so the channel issues the second thing. So
another thing that's coming out is, what's already out is pool.
So yeah, if you're, if you're a podcaster, and you don't want to
lock up you to open a big lightning channel that requires
a Bitcoin, I think if it is it's escrowed, in this account,
between you and the other node. So if you don't want to put
$5,000 worth of Bitcoin in a hot wallet on a node between you and
someone else, you can rent and you can actually pay someone
right now, whatever it is where I've seen aprs of three to 10%.
Let's say it's caught five, I feel like is a great number to
get to. You can rent someone else's Bitcoin for 5%. So you
could be paying $30 a month for your get voltage node $20 a
month your channel. And you could be hosting 1000s of light
nodes. Who are your listeners? Yep. And that 50 bucks is
nothing right. It's just a it's part of the cost of doing
business. Interesting. I
in order to proceed, I have to ask in pool that have been there
for six weeks. And it's I don't know why I just I can't get my I
can't get my my offers to be taken up by anybody. I'm going
to come on man. This is I got low, low low APR Come on. Yeah,
practically given the channel away. That still had that
marketplace to last to heat up a bit.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's coming.
The interface is very complicated still. So
yeah, boy, and they're making huge improvements on that front.
But I think that demand here could come from podcasters.
Again, no, podcaster deciding, right. And then the savvy and
then getting those channels, and then having this flow of value
coming through. Then they discover other podcasts. Now
they're, you know, they might be on the no agenda node, but
they're listening to 10 podcasts. And they're streaming
SATs can be a great system.
And can you as Uncle Jim, do you tell you also take advantage of
the network fees that are sent through these nodes?
You can set them to whatever you want, but it'll probably be
competitive, right? I'm skeptical that lightning routing
fees, at least in the short term will add up to a whole lot. But
you never know. Right? I mean, I think there will be competition
for routing fees.
There has to be a market, right?
Yeah. Like I think that the what you'll pay to rent Bitcoin for
channels will also go down over time. Competition,
which will consolidate? Yeah. Evan Hammond, much of that lnd
development? Are you responsible for you? Are you doing pull
requests directly on the l&d code base at all?
No, we are just using it basically. I mean, there's so
many other things to build on our side. But we do talk to them
pretty often and just hear what's coming. And they can get
feedback from us.
Which roast beef. And Ryan, you helped suggest the multi tenant
solution which we had been hemming and hawing about for a
while, but they just put the pieces together in such a nice
way that beautiful what was it six weeks ago or something maybe
eight weeks ago that we have this?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's there's, there's plenty of
sorry, interrupted. There's plenty of systems that
basically, you know, send the user ID in the TLV of a
lightning transaction. Like that. I mean, there's a bunch of
other projects out there that do that, but every transaction is
still going to the same pub key. Right? So what we really wanted
is the ability to, to start in multi tenant mode and move off.
Right? So we're really basically it's based on the routing hand
and the Private Channel concept. So you have a real, you have a
real key pair from the beginning. So you can move off
at any time and there's not any. I mean, you don't have to tell
all your friends, okay, my pump keeps changing, or whatever, you
can just take that
perfect, but you could be kicked off right so we want to make
sure everyone knows this is not But most sovereign way to do it
right? Doing it from your house or doing it on your own is
always going to be better. So, but not everyone's ready to go
spend 200 bucks on hardware, put it together and wrecked do all
that deal with just. And then if you get a taste of it, then you
can move on.
Paul, I want to be sensitive your time do you have to go?
Because I have a couple more questions for me.
I just got a phone call. So I'm I've got five more minutes. But
I wanted to ask Evan, because we have an entire namespace with a
whole bunch of features. I know you guys are busy. Do you see
those being integrated anytime soon into the podcast part of
Sphinx chat? Oh, yes, we
are. We're getting back to the podcast stuff here. We basically
heads down on this route enhanced admin and multi tenant
stuff. But I mean, just to go back to like, the whole multi
modal thing that is the Bitcoin ecosystem. I love to see that
there's other apps, you know, like breeze, integrating
podcasts, and doing similar things. And I think, I mean,
we've always talked about Sphinx sort of being like, the Pro
Tools for this for the podcasters themselves, right? So
yeah, we're definitely gonna build in actually hosting your
podcast files on on the meme server. Oh, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop young man. Do tell
what this is interesting.
I mean, we want to make it completely basically self
sovereign that way, wow, it's great that you can link out to
these other systems. But what would be even better is hosting
your files yourself on your Sphinx node, and actually
authenticating the access to those files, using using keys
that would be sent as lightning transactions. So we already do
that for means like, if you buy an image on Sphinx, that's a
file, but you can't decrypt it until you have the key for it
basically, is
that l set how you do that?
Is not we started to build our own thing and called the L that
I can see that B, I could see that being an immediate solution
for true private member only feeds Yeah,
goodbye, Patreon.
Yeah, right. Exactly. Right.
Wow, very, and then being able to see all the stats, you know,
who's listening or not even who's listening, but like, when
are people listening? When are we Yeah, this is this is a
podcasters don't even know what's going to hit him. And it
doesn't even exclude advertisers. Actually, it makes
it much better if you want to provide statistics for for what
you're doing. And we'll have, you know, listening statistics,
which is just a complete upgrade from any other interactive
agency bureau certification mumbo jumbo, this is going to be
the real deal is great. And so now, of course, as someone
hosting files on their own node, you know, that brings a whole I
mean, hosting of podcast brings all bunch of shit along with it.
Which will be interesting to see how that scales for people who
are doing that all self hosted.
Right, but you can also, for example, use our meme server
node. And when pay for it, we don't we don't charge anything
for it now, but we could charge a millionth of a cent. And so
it's like, you know, the infrastructure can be
centralized. But the the incentives are decentralized,
because you're just paying a millionth of a standard to
access this file. I mean, it can all just sort of be more fair.
You just got you just got the attention of several guys. I
know.
Nice. Well, yeah. You know what? I listened to your guyses last
week, episode last night. Yeah. And I liked what you're saying
about. I mean, I, I always sort of hated advertising. But it was
an interesting part where you're saying, you know, advertising
isn't really the problem. Like it's not necessarily the worst
thing in the world to put out there. Like, hey, I've got this
cool thing. Check it out to my to your friends and show. Sure.
The negative part is the machine that's behind it. Right. The
algos? Yes, that are profit driven. Yeah. So by creating
basically balanced incentives, we don't need these algorithms.
Right. Exactly.
Exactly. Holy crap. That's big. That's very, very big. And I
think the the part that, that really hits home is the idea of
quickly authenticated access based upon a payment. You know,
certainly for private feeds. It can negate the whole but negate
its you just blow up. The Patreon model is just exploded.
It's gone. It's gone. Yep. And people who are willing to
credit card number and you know why you have your email in there
at all? Right? You don't even need to know necessarily who
these people are, you know, the 1000 people are enjoying your
podcast. That's great.
Yeah, the way I've always looked at the value for value model is
can I pay my rent this month? Okay, I've got enough listeners.
That's what it is. It literally comes down to that, Paul, if you
want any parting words, because I know it's your son's birthday.
So I want to
let you go, No, I think you're in good hands. So just
appreciate the work you guys are doing and open it up to any
podcasters who want to do this. But we're going to we're going
to literally when we pushed it today, we'll have the podcast or
wallet integration that Dave did. And we have it down, we
timed it to about 40 seconds. So it grabs your podcast, index ID
number. And we can do this with you, we can give you an invite
with that ID number. And it takes about 40 seconds, you
download the app from the App Store, we're out on the app
store right now Google Play, or the APK. Yes, and, and then you
you scan that specific invite code. And then while you're
entering your name and setting up things chat, it actually
creates the tribe with the artwork, the name, the RSS feed,
everything pulling from podcast index. And then by the time you
open the dashboard, your tribe that you own for your podcast is
set up and waiting for you in your dashboard. When you open
the app and you're ready to go day then with the virtual nodes,
we can likewise you can scan a QR code that will your listeners
will auto join your tribe. And so you when they open the app,
they are in the tribe that they intended to be in in the first
place just to listen to your podcast, beautiful dance. So
just
take the friction points out. Dave, is
this working in the end from podcaster? wallet?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, this, this is basically just the thing that
we you know, this is the same thing we set up what a while
back, it just works. Yeah. But now the
different nodes, we can, we can now say hey, with every
podcaster, who sets up we will give you 20 invites day one. So
invite your 20 closest people. And then we can even give
invites every day, every week, people can give them away on
their podcast or on Twitter. It's not spinning up a note on
the channel every time.
Alright, so when I download the apk, after the show today, I can
publish a QR code that people can scan with the app from the
new app from the App Store.
Because you haven't I just described the new podcaster
experience that you you already have. So you'll get legacy
deals, you'll get a QR code, you don't get to do that fun setup
process to tribe, but you can get will give you a QR code
that's specific to your tribe. And I find people
in the new app. That's it. Well, that's
Yeah, that part's been there. What's been the tough part is
how do you give everybody knows that wants to node right? So
yeah, so good to have that problem finally solved.
for y'all, too. Yeah,
yeah. And it's about three hours old. So take that with a grain
of salt. There will be pain. There will be pain, though,
Paul,
Dave and I feel a little bit responsible for this necessary
upgrade. But we feel that we did come in and break you a little
bit just with the with well really flowing channels.
But I want to build on.
You know, I've offered several times. I want to thank you
personally, because you've been such a motivating powerful force
in this entire value for value model, you have given me
incredible insight. And Dave's well of course, your philosophy,
everything about you, which carries through the organization
has just been fucking delightful. It's it's amazing to
work with another organization. without, you know, without any
true business relationship. We've signed no contracts, you
know, we're all kind of on the same page. It's inherent to
Bitcoin that that's not necessarily needed anymore, but
just really, man, you have a vision and I congratulate you on
everything you've gotten done so far. And I look forward to
working with you and the entire team there for a long time on
this.
Thanks so much. It really does mean a ton and is you know, as
well as I do with Evan and the team behind you. Just appreciate
these guys for what they do. I mean, it's it's amazing. stop
believing and we're gonna blow people away with stuff to come.
Yeah, we're
going to really suck up to Evan once you're gone, so don't worry
about
Excellent. Well, just tell me what you guys decide to do.
Alright, well, happy birthday.
Your Sunday. All right, man.
Thank you. Bye Bye. Thanks. Bye, Paul.
Evan, question for you just because I can't can't help not
asking you As I grew up in the Netherlands and although it
would be spelled with a V feenstra is that from those
parts of the woods?
Yeah, it's freezin. So, free Islam Baba. Exactly. I wish I
knew any Dutch, but my grandma does speak free priests. And my
dad speaks Dutch she kind of has an accent.
Oh, okay. But you were born in the US? Yes. All right.
Interesting. Yeah, saints that is normally it's vive and
Friesian is almost like Welsh, it's a it's a dilates like Welsh
and Friesian. I think they can understand each other. It's
like, it's like the sect of people that have thought these
little spots in the world where they have their own cool little
language.
Answer got a super interesting history. They like they never
had a feudal type system. Yes. Right. With lords and serfs and
stuff. They all just got together. Yep.
So you're free is your freedom of association here a bit a bit
corny pointer?
Exactly, exactly as a lot of the same, you know, philosophy, like
just come together when we need to. But other than that, we're
all individuals and kind of like the family. Very cool unit is
the core of the culture. So
how did you come to think so? I mean, I guess that's not the
question want to ask, I guess the question want to ask is, how
do you how did you get into the development position? You are
like, what, what is your development timeline look like?
Well, it's the long and circuitous. I had to tell you
the truth, I sort of grew up something of a Luddite. I mean,
I was like the last of my friends to get a smartphone. And
I only signed up for Twitter last year, like, I have never
really been a big Facebook user. But when was it was 2010, I
decided to travel a bunch and I spent eight months in Nepal,
teaching English. Wow. And awesome experience. But
surprisingly, the biggest thing that really hit me was how
technology was completely transforming people's lives.
Like they would, they would take their cell phones and climb to
the top of the hill and give each other missed calls. Like,
yeah, like and not not pick it up. And they would make
agreements, okay, to miss calls, means the three missed calls
means that, so they wouldn't have to pay the service
provider. Wow. Literally, that is Morse code of missed call
system. And that would save them, you know, 12 hours needing
to walk to the next village and back. So it just sort of blew my
mind, even the most decrepit and old crappy technology is such an
amazing improvement. from, from not that, and I mean, growing up
where everyone is digital, native, everyone's on the
internet, you know, I sort of took it all for granted. But
that kind of opened my eyes to, to the internet and how awesome
it is. So when I came back from that trip, I actually started a
Nepalese food card with my friend from Nepal. And, and we,
I made a WordPress site. That was my first coding experience.
I was like 2012 and went down the WordPress, rabbit hole for a
few years making like websites for small businesses and stuff.
And eventually got into JavaScript got into web
development. And yeah, just totally became addicted to
coding.
what language you spend most your time in now as a
JavaScript?
Java, I mean, it's all TypeScript. But yeah, JavaScript
is TypeScript. Same same. But a lot of our stuff is built in go,
like the drive and the meme stuff. So I really like go for
back end development. Okay, and I'm learning rust.
That's a really cool language. Is that something but I'm gonna
use that Spanx? Or is that something you're just doing as a
side project?
I mean, it would be great to to have kind of like something of a
dream but sort of wrapping up relay as this rust lightning
thing that would make it much much more efficient and be able
to run not on a 520 dollar Raspberry Pi but on like a five
cent you know, yeah, thing the size of a nickel
like that to get get it down to bare metal.
Yeah, right. Like it's probably not quite possible yet, but one
day, it will be so yeah, I'm trying to remember how I got
into bitcoin. My friend in 2016 got me into it. And I definitely
saw the potential for, for like, Okay, this could possibly be a
whole new global financial system. But until micro payments
and lightning came around, I didn't really see how it could
be used by regular people
will probably could I mean until lightning came around, it really
couldn't that much I
mean, right, like you can buy it and hold it cool, like a hedge
against inflation or whatever. But it's not necessarily
something that's going to help change the world like the
internet in general did. But micro payments, I do feel like
Like I said earlier, it totally changes the system, because you
just don't need to keep a persistent record of who is
interacting with your service online. If you're streaming
value one way, and whatever service you're providing the
other way. And I mean, if the if the customer stopped streaming
stats, you stopped streaming yard side. So you just don't
need that credit card number.
How does? Let me this may have been a poll question, but just
thinks it do you think things will ever do any sort of
onboarding from Fiat? Or is that something you'll just want to
avoid altogether?
Yeah, I mean, I, we do have a little button in there to add
from cash app. So
I didn't know that. I don't see that.
That's basically how we do it. It works all the time. Yeah.
Well, the
reason I asked is because like, currently, my flow to get to get
funds and to get lightning into my Sphinx app, or anywhere
really, is I go strike through a debit card, and then send that
send that money to wherever I want it. And so that is like
basically zero fees. And it gets me my lightning without having
to go through any Bitcoin steps at all. But the problem is
outside of the US, you know, strikes not really available
everywhere, so that, you know, there is for people we ran into
this with with Martin from pod friend, for example, he was
trying to get some will. And I think we ran this with a dilemma
to you know, just even test their apps, they were like,
Whoa, I mean, I got onboard somewhere. And so we ended up
sending them some lightning, just do 20 bucks with the
lightning just to get them go. And, and you know that while the
onboarding problem i think is being solved. I just wonder how
deep y'all were going? What y'all his plans were around that
if y'all ever plan to get into that game, or if you're just
gonna be like, Man, that we don't want to do that.
Yeah, I know. It's a little stressful to, for Paul to think
about, well, like, Are we going to be a banking? Right? Yeah. I
mean, like, is this make as if we're onboarding Fiat? Does that
make us like a money transfer company or whatever? So? I don't
we're not working on that yet. At this point. Yeah. But I think
it is talking to different legal advice, just to see what that
would imply.
It's a big step. I mean, cuz then you get a gig and all the
regulations, all the KYC stuff. Yeah, it's right. It's big. It's
a big deal. It's not something to be taken lightly at all.
And of course, the limit is like, whatever it is, it's in,
it's in dollars. So yeah, if we're doing like 5000 sets, like
maybe that's under the limit today, but who knows what it is,
tomorrow. So
and that's, to me, that's the genius of strike is they they're
like avoiding the whole conversion thing. You get it in
there. And it's, it's, you're moving lightning, but it's all
denominated in currency. So you're not really, you're
avoiding that conversion step. Until you send it out. And then
it's, it's, it's fairly genius, the way the way that it because
you never see how many sets you have in strike. It's always,
it's always be.
And it fluctuates, or they just know, as soon as you send it
out, it's fine. But then at that,
if you buy 20, if you buy $20, if you put $20 into your strike
wallet, it shows up as 20 US dollars forever, no matter what
Bitcoin does underneath. And so they really are only using
lightning as a transport mechanism.
And yeah,
yeah, it avoids having to do those conversion swaps, which
brings in a whole another host of regulations. But then if I
send it to a to a lightning app, it comes in as lightning. Yeah,
it's beautiful. Yeah, I
mean, we've always been on the train of like, it's the new
standard, that make everyone think in terms of sets, but who
knows if that is ever gonna happen.
Well, I mean, I think in SATs more and more, it's been, you
know, good nine months to a year. And there's a lot of
places where my brain just starts to make the connection.
So it does grow on you, but Also in I'm used to euros and you
know, and dealing with that often. And these cookbooks in
Australia and Canada navia, which are, you know, to like,
one one Canadian dollars, like three cents us.
For j for James gray
really, really?
Well, Evan, this is a really Congratulations, man on on all
this work and, and in because you know, I know a lot of the
developer goes into this and the love shows, man.
Yeah, it's been it's been a wild ride, honestly. And it has been
great working with Paul. I mean, he's, he's definitely involved
all the time. But he's also just sort of like, do what you're
gonna do. You know, are you gonna use l SATs? And I was
like, I don't know, I'm probably just build my own thing that
I'm, which of course, it's good to standardize. It's good to
have standards. But I'm sure you've seen the cartoon where
there's like 10 competing standards, and then they create
the one standard to rule them all. And now there's 11
competing.
Oh, believe me, that one's cut. That cartoon has been posted on
the namespace and the namespace.
For sure, yeah. I've
always been like, let's build it, you know, whatever,
whatever. headaches. I mean, outside is awesome. But it was a
little bit pre peace end. And you don't necessarily need,
right, some of the those. I don't know what to do with the
keys and you can do things just directly. So
what do you ever do you want to stick around and listen in for
the donation segment? And we can you can kind of listen to how
many people are involved in this whole thing?
Sure. Yeah. I'll just be on in the background here.
This is a value for value production, not just this
podcast, but podcast index.org, the the gathering the watering
hole at podcast index dot social, the GitHub, all of that
is part of podcasting. 2.0 we are upgrading podcasting and the
value for value is very simple. If you're listening to this, if
you see any value you get out of the project, if you want to
contribute, and we always looking for the three T's your
time, your talent, your treasure, we got a lot of people
contributing a crapload of time and talent, Evan included. For
those who want to sponsor us and support us financially. We make
that possible. A couple of ways podcast index.org big yellow
Donate button down at the bottom. That page is also a
place to read red bread. I have too many shows that I do. You
can also get on a subscription payment schedule with your
lightning there. And if you're in one of the podcasting 2.0
certified apps, you'll see a Donate button pop up and Dave,
what have we, we're kind of treasure have we received this
week.
We get to we get to donors this week. One of them is Myron
Webber. He donated $66.78 I'm not sure what the Oh, here's his
message explains that he says here's a donation in the amount
of pat proprietary magic number. Monaco, I'm a co host of the
mental supermodels podcast explore Okay, so it gives the
website is mental supermodels calm. co host of mental
supermodels podcast exploring the theory and practice art and
science of mental modeling for problem solving and decision
making. Less expensive, less exciting than I thought it was.
I'm at the website already. Mental supermodels,
send pictures. I've discovered your awesome work. And I'm
trying to figure out how I can help with the time and talent.
Since this exhausts my treasure at the moment, is there a guide
for how to supercharge my plain old podcast to be 2.0 certified?
There is yes. I don't need a lodge put me in the right
direction. And I'll document it along the way to create a better
guide for the next folks down the trail. Well, Myron that's in
the works.
Yeah. But you can always go to new podcast apps calm and select
hosts. And there are a number of hosts who already already
provide a lot of the features of the of the podcast namespace. So
that would be that would be a you know, if you want that's you
can get started right away or migrate or there's a ton of
different places that can help you already today. Yeah, thank
you. Thank you for your support.
Christopher Tomkinson gave us $50 and Chris says go podcasting
and donated previously out of a pure love for podcasts in open
source, but this time I'm providing value for a different
reason. I soft launched my own new podcast on that stage.
proprietary fruit decks earlier this week was
proprietary what fruit decks
fruit decks FRUITDX Oh, Apple Apple podcast. Okay. Gabrielle
No, good. Okay, so soft launched my own new podcast on that
stupid proprietary fruit decks earlier this week. But this
morning I signed up for a podcast index.org API account
submitted the feed to make it officially live. All right, so I
felt the compulsion to provide some good old fashioned Thea in
return for services rendered keep rocking hard, and he gave
us $50 Thanks,
man. Can we still accept cut bucks no problem.
Oh, yeah, yeah, we're not ashamed that and I also wanted
to we have a lot of monthly donors who contribute small
amounts Yes. I never read them.
Did you do that could just you had the list there just run down
and
real quick. Yeah, and there is way more than I thought there
were Oh, wow. Yeah, so these are monthly donors who get a lot of
these are just $2 $3 $5 $1 and but there's a couple of that are
20 $50 we got Paul Saltzman, Keith Gibson, Chad Feroz, do
coats. Michael kimmerer. Leslie Martin. Jeff Miller, Chris
Cowan. Martin Morrison. Jeremy Cavanaugh.
Martin is donating pod Frank Martin. Wow, man.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Mitch Downey from pod verse.
You guys, David Norman swiper. catcher.
Yep. Soren Miller. Derek visca. Christopher, chair, rubber chair
a bark. pod verse, LLC. Greg Thomas and Jeremy new Cameron
rows, Charles current Clark sales. Christopher raymer.
Thomas Carson. Dred Scott. He's monthly done. Yeah. Jason. Jason
defilippo. Gary Keller, David metus. Joseph maraca Mark Graham
Scott Joubert Duane Goldy. Larry Hey, Aaron Renaud, Pedro and
Gunn call this Kevin row a droid works LLC and borderline
promotions.
Wow. Great. That's a great list. No wonder we we haven't gone
broke yet. We can still pay for stuff. That's fine. That's
great.
That's Yeah, I didn't realize I started going through the list
and looking up all the monthly donor emails and stuff. And then
I went through and subtracted the like, crossed out the people
who cancelled and there was so many on this list. I had to I
had to get a bigger piece of paper. That is
well, thank you to each and every one of you. And this new
developer guys, man like this.
Thank you.
I'm always a bit humbled by that.
Yeah. Awesome. So that's a great
podcast. index.org support the value for value proposition.
Maybe as we wrap this up, as we go around the the boardroom
table, maybe Evan, do you have any questions for us about
podcasting, 2.0, or anything, any features you'd like to see,
or just anything in general about our side?
Um,
I just think it's an awesome project. And I would, I mean,
I'd love to sit down again and just figure out like you
mentioned, there's all these other namespace tags that I
have, I'm not even familiar with. So knowing what's out
there, what's happening, what's in the future is gonna be cool.
Well, we've got a lot of really smart people working on a lot of
great features. And same for you having new podcast apps. COMM
Sphinx chat is there. It's pretty pretty nifty with those
guys. Well, I can't wait to end the show for once. Because I'm
ready to go download the new, the new APK where is the APK? I
listed on the homepage.
an APK has not been updated in a while but I'm gonna upload it
later today. Oh, thank
you, because I've been running graphene OS and I'm quite
partial to it. But I have a I have an iPhone. So I'll get it
from the app store as well to test that there.
Is that F droid? Is that what Griffin uses?
Yeah, I mean, you can use any apk file but there's there's
three different apps. f droid would be the one I would hope it
would show up in.
Okay. Yeah, well, we're actually going to completely from scratch
we build Android to support graphene and stuff it's it's
built on React Native right now, which is alright, but it's kind
of hard to get around some of the standard things so
well, it runs on graphene just fine. I mean, I've no issues
Yeah, no issues at all.
I've had people say they couldn't get the QR scanner to
work or something. But maybe that was different issue.
All user error. No doubt. Damn users don't know what they're
doing. Hey, Evan, thank you again, man. Thank you for your
time. Thank you for your talent. Everything that that you've been
doing, it's been great connecting and great. Great
getting a bit of insight into into you and Paul as well and
everything that's going on over there. And we'll have to have
you back on.
Yeah. Thanks for having us on. It's been really fun. And yeah,
have an awesome week. Thank you. I can't win. Yeah, I'm
gonna go to the app store right after this. Dave, anything for
you anything that we need to do to lighten your load?
now now now now? I'm good. We're gonna have bit Benjamin Bellamy
on next week.
Feed directory. Yeah.
No, no, no, no. I'm counting the podcast.
Yes, yes. Yeah. Oh, good. I get to pressure him. Yeah. Where the
hell is it, brother?
We're gonna have him on. And he's got he. I don't know if you
noticed. But he gave us a proposal type proposal for
podcast recommendation. Yes.
I saw that. And I saw and I've started to look at it. And that
should let's say I want to go ahead.
Yeah, I want a deep dive with him.
Yeah. That's an algo killer right there. algorithm killer
right there. Yeah,
it's exactly I think it's intended that way too. We are
pirates. We're wrecking everything. Thank you both very
much. This has been podcasting. 2.0 we'll be back next week for
another board meeting as we discuss what's going on at
podcasts. index.org See
you then.
You have been listening to podcasting 2.0.
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