1
00:00:00,320 --> 00:00:03,920
And feel free to drop it. Those are sturdy pieces of technology.

2
00:00:05,040 --> 00:00:07,120
How's that? You cannot rub on anything.

3
00:00:07,120 --> 00:00:10,480
All that looks good. I'll do one of these in case I need to recover

4
00:00:11,760 --> 00:00:16,640
and synchronize, which shouldn't happen, but has happened in the past.

5
00:00:19,120 --> 00:00:23,120
All right. And I'll just press and we just go and we just get into it.

6
00:00:24,400 --> 00:00:29,040
You know the drill. You've listened to every single one of those, which makes you,

7
00:00:29,120 --> 00:00:35,120
I think the only individual alive right now in the world that you have a claim to fame.

8
00:00:35,120 --> 00:00:41,280
The one person who listened to every single episode. I don't think there's anyone else.

9
00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:44,480
I myself haven't listened to every single one. I doubt Pablo has.

10
00:00:45,200 --> 00:00:52,320
I know you're very modest and the proverbial five listeners that you mentioned.

11
00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:55,120
It's a thing. It's not 500. I can tell you that.

12
00:00:56,080 --> 00:00:59,120
It's a small, it's a small crowd. It's a small crowd.

13
00:00:59,120 --> 00:01:01,040
But I consider all of them important people.

14
00:01:01,760 --> 00:01:08,240
So tell me about that. How did you end up finding no solutions?

15
00:01:08,240 --> 00:01:11,040
How did you end up finding out about sovereign engineering?

16
00:01:11,600 --> 00:01:14,000
What brings you here? You're a first time participant.

17
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:20,560
We're in SEC-08. And I want to just pick your brain about all of this.

18
00:01:20,880 --> 00:01:25,120
How come you're here? How did you discover this crazy niche world?

19
00:01:25,120 --> 00:01:26,400
This corner of the internet?

20
00:01:27,120 --> 00:01:34,800
Yeah, I think it's a series of breadcrumbs where each transition

21
00:01:35,840 --> 00:01:41,840
was a gate with a relatively low probability of passing through.

22
00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:45,520
So what was the first one? Was Bitcoin before that?

23
00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:48,880
Yeah, so Bitcoin was definitely before that.

24
00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:58,000
And I have heard of Nostr a few years back, but never explored it because

25
00:01:58,800 --> 00:02:04,240
it was initially framed to me as this decentralized social network.

26
00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:08,640
I have kind of an uneasy relationship and a history with social networks.

27
00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:11,520
So I just like I kind of dismissed it out of hand.

28
00:02:11,920 --> 00:02:15,680
How come? What were your social networks of choice, if any?

29
00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:17,760
And how come you have an uneasy relationship?

30
00:02:19,200 --> 00:02:21,680
Are you a terrorist and you were deplatformed all the time?

31
00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:27,120
I was deplatformed by Instagram of all places.

32
00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:35,040
And it's an interesting story. Not that I was censored, but my handle was rugged.

33
00:02:36,160 --> 00:02:38,720
So it's kind of, yeah, I think unusual story.

34
00:02:39,440 --> 00:02:40,080
But I had...

35
00:02:43,840 --> 00:02:45,280
A short one, probably.

36
00:02:45,280 --> 00:02:46,320
Without kind of...

37
00:02:47,280 --> 00:02:48,880
Without doxing yourself too hard.

38
00:02:48,880 --> 00:02:50,960
Reducing the anonymity too much.

39
00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:54,320
I had a very valuable Instagram handle.

40
00:02:55,680 --> 00:02:56,960
As valuable as they get.

41
00:02:58,080 --> 00:03:00,400
Because I was a super early user.

42
00:03:00,400 --> 00:03:07,120
I literally registered my account, I think maybe within an hour or so of them.

43
00:03:07,920 --> 00:03:11,280
Announcing that they're live on TechCrunch.

44
00:03:11,280 --> 00:03:11,840
Okay, wow.

45
00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:14,400
So I had a good handle.

46
00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:19,360
And about 10 years of history of posting.

47
00:03:19,360 --> 00:03:19,680
Yeah.

48
00:03:19,680 --> 00:03:22,320
Mostly travel photography and so on.

49
00:03:24,160 --> 00:03:27,760
So quite an investment.

50
00:03:27,760 --> 00:03:28,720
And I knew...

51
00:03:28,720 --> 00:03:30,480
You're not the only person that happened to...

52
00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:32,240
That ran into this issue.

53
00:03:32,240 --> 00:03:35,440
There are some other people that had like very valuable accounts.

54
00:03:35,440 --> 00:03:37,760
And the platform just decided to grab it.

55
00:03:37,760 --> 00:03:40,880
Yeah, so it was clearly an inside job.

56
00:03:40,880 --> 00:03:41,280
Yeah.

57
00:03:41,280 --> 00:03:44,400
Because I knew I had something valuable.

58
00:03:44,400 --> 00:03:47,520
So my OPSEC was top-notch.

59
00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:51,200
It was unguessable password of ridiculous length.

60
00:03:51,200 --> 00:03:51,440
Yeah.

61
00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:52,800
2FA.

62
00:03:53,360 --> 00:03:53,840
Yeah.

63
00:03:53,840 --> 00:03:57,200
My email was also similarly protected.

64
00:03:57,200 --> 00:03:59,200
There was just post-factum.

65
00:03:59,920 --> 00:04:03,760
I did a security audit, nothing else was compromised.

66
00:04:03,840 --> 00:04:06,080
It was quite clear that it was just rugged.

67
00:04:06,640 --> 00:04:07,680
And it was an inside job.

68
00:04:07,680 --> 00:04:10,400
You got an official statement from anyone or no?

69
00:04:10,400 --> 00:04:14,640
No, but there was an article in Wall Street Journal a few months later.

70
00:04:15,440 --> 00:04:16,400
I think it was titled,

71
00:04:17,520 --> 00:04:23,840
Meta employees and security guards fired for hijacking user accounts.

72
00:04:23,840 --> 00:04:24,400
Oh, okay.

73
00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:26,800
So that came out eventually.

74
00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:30,960
And it's interesting, I tried to actually recover my account.

75
00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:39,040
Because it's a massive entity.

76
00:04:39,040 --> 00:04:42,960
So you're unable to go through regular channels,

77
00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:44,720
because there's no person to talk to.

78
00:04:45,440 --> 00:04:50,000
But I used to live in Bay Area, in San Francisco.

79
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So I have my network there.

80
00:04:52,160 --> 00:04:55,520
So I was able to go out of band, actually,

81
00:04:55,520 --> 00:05:00,480
and talk to some people inside Facebook that were quite close.

82
00:05:01,120 --> 00:05:08,080
And they were actually even able to try to do a few things out of band,

83
00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:12,080
to restore my account, to give me access to the account.

84
00:05:12,080 --> 00:05:15,520
It was quite clear that there was something going on internally,

85
00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:18,800
where I could not regain access to my account.

86
00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:23,120
So someone higher up the food chain wanted to have your account?

87
00:05:23,120 --> 00:05:23,520
I don't know.

88
00:05:25,040 --> 00:05:28,720
I gave up on it and soured on the whole idea.

89
00:05:29,680 --> 00:05:30,180
Yeah.

90
00:05:32,560 --> 00:05:34,800
But in general, this kind of planted the seed.

91
00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:35,440
Yeah, yeah.

92
00:05:35,440 --> 00:05:38,240
Okay, this is, you really don't own this.

93
00:05:38,240 --> 00:05:38,640
Yes.

94
00:05:38,640 --> 00:05:41,840
And I knew this for a while, because I had something valuable.

95
00:05:41,840 --> 00:05:48,480
But I was very well aware that I really cannot make any claim.

96
00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:50,240
You know, I did not hold the keys.

97
00:05:50,240 --> 00:05:51,440
You have no power.

98
00:05:52,240 --> 00:05:56,560
You can also go the legal route and all those kind of things.

99
00:05:56,560 --> 00:05:59,760
But you won't have a leeway, because there's so much fine print.

100
00:06:00,880 --> 00:06:02,480
You don't own anything there.

101
00:06:02,480 --> 00:06:03,120
It's their house.

102
00:06:03,120 --> 00:06:05,840
They can kick you out at any time for any reason.

103
00:06:05,840 --> 00:06:07,600
They can do whatever.

104
00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:12,320
And so, yeah, that was one part of your radicalization.

105
00:06:12,320 --> 00:06:12,820
Yeah.

106
00:06:13,360 --> 00:06:14,720
That was one pillar, for sure.

107
00:06:16,320 --> 00:06:22,320
And then, yeah, like I said, I dismissed Nostr initially.

108
00:06:22,880 --> 00:06:29,840
And it was not until I decided to quit my Fiat job due to,

109
00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:32,400
you could say, like a crisis of purpose.

110
00:06:32,400 --> 00:06:34,240
I had quite a cushy...

111
00:06:34,240 --> 00:06:35,040
That makes two of us.

112
00:06:35,760 --> 00:06:36,080
Okay.

113
00:06:36,080 --> 00:06:41,520
Quite a cushy job where I was writing a sizable team, you know, a data team,

114
00:06:41,520 --> 00:06:45,920
maybe like 20 plus people across multiple layers of the stack.

115
00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:51,360
And yeah, I really couldn't continue doing this any longer.

116
00:06:51,360 --> 00:06:55,680
And I wanted to do something in Bitcoin specifically.

117
00:06:56,320 --> 00:07:04,240
So I spent a few months just going through the layers of the Bitcoin stack, top to bottom,

118
00:07:05,760 --> 00:07:10,800
looking for something that at the intersection of what I would be interested in

119
00:07:10,800 --> 00:07:14,720
and kind of the things that I understood well, you know, my capabilities.

120
00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:22,400
And I spent months and months actually on this and filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge, for sure.

121
00:07:23,760 --> 00:07:26,560
But in the end, I was like, fuck, man, this is like so mature, actually.

122
00:07:26,560 --> 00:07:28,160
There's so much that has been done.

123
00:07:29,200 --> 00:07:32,560
So when you're talking about data science and big data on Bitcoin,

124
00:07:32,560 --> 00:07:38,240
you're talking about stuff like Glassnode and analysis of block data

125
00:07:38,240 --> 00:07:40,240
and those kinds of things, potentially.

126
00:07:40,240 --> 00:07:43,600
Yeah, I was not even looking to do any kind of analysis.

127
00:07:43,680 --> 00:07:48,240
But I mean, before I was a data engineer guy and a data analyst,

128
00:07:48,240 --> 00:07:50,160
I was a software guy for like 20 years.

129
00:07:50,160 --> 00:07:50,640
Okay.

130
00:07:50,640 --> 00:07:52,880
So systems, anything.

131
00:07:54,080 --> 00:08:00,000
So I was just looking for something to do.

132
00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:02,720
And yeah, I was getting quite desperate.

133
00:08:02,720 --> 00:08:04,960
I feel like after a few months, I just,

134
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:08,240
I thought at some point I thought maybe I would do,

135
00:08:08,240 --> 00:08:10,560
I recognize this tunnel from the old episodes.

136
00:08:10,560 --> 00:08:12,640
Yeah, it's a free audio effect.

137
00:08:12,640 --> 00:08:13,440
Yes, I love it.

138
00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:14,640
I love it.

139
00:08:14,640 --> 00:08:17,120
I knew it the instant we were inside.

140
00:08:18,800 --> 00:08:20,880
Yeah, so I was getting quite desperate.

141
00:08:21,520 --> 00:08:26,640
And at some point I was like, okay, I'm just, I'm forcing it too hard.

142
00:08:26,640 --> 00:08:31,120
So fuck it, let me just play around a little bit and do whatever just for fun.

143
00:08:31,840 --> 00:08:37,760
And the thing that I picked up for fun was one of those so-called Lotto miners.

144
00:08:38,480 --> 00:08:42,800
It's literally a ESP32 board with a screen.

145
00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:45,440
Was it before BITX or was it?

146
00:08:45,440 --> 00:08:46,000
Before.

147
00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:46,240
Yeah.

148
00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:47,360
That was the precursor.

149
00:08:47,360 --> 00:08:47,600
Yeah.

150
00:08:48,240 --> 00:08:50,240
So I picked one of those up.

151
00:08:52,400 --> 00:08:57,200
And I was like quite captivated by the fact that it's, you know,

152
00:08:57,200 --> 00:09:02,640
here it is a super low power piece of compute

153
00:09:03,280 --> 00:09:06,880
that is actually contributing hash power to the network.

154
00:09:06,880 --> 00:09:07,280
Yeah.

155
00:09:07,280 --> 00:09:08,640
As miniscule as it is.

156
00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:08,960
Yeah.

157
00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:11,040
It's doing its work hashing.

158
00:09:11,840 --> 00:09:16,000
So I started tinkering with NerdMiner.

159
00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:22,640
It's the open source piece of software that was running on the ESP32 device.

160
00:09:23,440 --> 00:09:27,120
And this was also around the time where it became practical

161
00:09:27,120 --> 00:09:30,400
to actually do some byte coding and so on.

162
00:09:30,400 --> 00:09:34,800
Because my background is kind of computer science and mathematics,

163
00:09:34,800 --> 00:09:37,200
actually, of all things, not electrical engineering.

164
00:09:37,200 --> 00:09:38,240
So I was a total noob.

165
00:09:38,240 --> 00:09:40,880
It was a gap on the hardware side.

166
00:09:40,880 --> 00:09:48,960
So I was like, finally, with LLMs and coding agents, this became accessible.

167
00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:55,280
So I was able to just start hacking on NerdMiner and start modifying the software.

168
00:09:56,320 --> 00:09:57,760
So quite fascinating.

169
00:09:57,760 --> 00:10:00,560
And then, of course, at some point it occurs to me,

170
00:10:00,560 --> 00:10:03,840
all right, so I'm fucking around with this low hash rate.

171
00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:07,360
Let me get the real thing with a real ASIC in it.

172
00:10:07,360 --> 00:10:07,840
All right.

173
00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:08,480
What I can do there.

174
00:10:08,480 --> 00:10:09,040
All right.

175
00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:10,320
So you got hooked.

176
00:10:10,320 --> 00:10:10,560
Yeah.

177
00:10:10,560 --> 00:10:12,400
So I got an S9 or something.

178
00:10:12,400 --> 00:10:14,080
No, not that far.

179
00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:15,920
But still solo mining.

180
00:10:16,480 --> 00:10:20,240
But BitAxe and the things that OSMU guys are doing.

181
00:10:20,240 --> 00:10:20,880
Yeah.

182
00:10:20,880 --> 00:10:25,760
So and lo and behold, it actually turns out that BitAxe is also based on ESP32.

183
00:10:25,760 --> 00:10:27,440
So it's a very versatile platform.

184
00:10:27,440 --> 00:10:29,120
I mean, surprise, surprise.

185
00:10:29,120 --> 00:10:31,920
Things are just good abstractions and good platforms.

186
00:10:31,920 --> 00:10:33,120
They just layer.

187
00:10:33,120 --> 00:10:33,760
So amazing.

188
00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:35,680
So I start looking into this.

189
00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:40,320
Start doing a bunch of things like overclocking them,

190
00:10:42,160 --> 00:10:45,200
building tooling for noise monitoring.

191
00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:48,720
For example, I'm quite sensitive to noise overall.

192
00:10:50,320 --> 00:10:57,600
And it was bothering me that I had at that point, like maybe four of these solo miners

193
00:10:57,600 --> 00:11:01,440
had a BitAxe and three QX++ at some point.

194
00:11:01,440 --> 00:11:04,480
I was like running something like 20 terahash and they were overclocked.

195
00:11:04,480 --> 00:11:04,720
Nice.

196
00:11:04,720 --> 00:11:05,920
So it was like it was quite loud.

197
00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:08,880
I was like, OK, let me try to actually tune these guys.

198
00:11:09,600 --> 00:11:09,840
But.

199
00:11:10,640 --> 00:11:12,560
And that was at home, basically.

200
00:11:12,560 --> 00:11:14,960
So noise is an issue with sleeping and everything.

201
00:11:14,960 --> 00:11:15,760
In a separate bedroom.

202
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:18,960
But still, I could hear it from the opposite end of the flat.

203
00:11:18,960 --> 00:11:26,960
So I tried to build software and actually a complementary hardware rig where I would

204
00:11:26,960 --> 00:11:33,440
have a noise sensor picking up on decibel levels and I would be able to tune.

205
00:11:33,440 --> 00:11:36,000
OK, like a thermometer, basically.

206
00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:41,440
Not just for the hashrate, but also for the decibels that I thought were acceptable.

207
00:11:42,160 --> 00:11:49,600
So through that, I had a few fans fail on these BitAxes.

208
00:11:51,280 --> 00:11:52,720
Because, of course, I was abusing them.

209
00:11:53,360 --> 00:11:54,640
So a couple of fans failed.

210
00:11:54,720 --> 00:11:57,920
And overall, noise, failure rates and so on.

211
00:11:57,920 --> 00:12:00,880
I was like, man, there's got to be a better way.

212
00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:07,680
I care less about, you know, after a while, you realize that you care maybe less about

213
00:12:07,680 --> 00:12:13,920
the hashrate rather than that you are hashing and it's low maintenance.

214
00:12:13,920 --> 00:12:18,880
You're co-living with your miners and you care more about the co-living aspect than

215
00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:22,320
the brute hashrate aspect.

216
00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:32,160
So I thought, wouldn't it be nice if a completely fanless miner existed?

217
00:12:32,160 --> 00:12:36,320
So a solo miner, but completely passively cool.

218
00:12:36,320 --> 00:12:41,760
So maybe like a honking piece of, you know, honking beautiful piece of copper that just

219
00:12:41,760 --> 00:12:44,480
sits on top of the ASIC and does the job.

220
00:12:44,480 --> 00:12:49,680
And then the software stack does the job of regulating.

221
00:12:50,400 --> 00:12:55,680
I mean, it turns out it's quite complex and you're working within a certain window.

222
00:12:55,680 --> 00:12:57,200
You cannot go too low.

223
00:12:57,200 --> 00:13:01,840
Anyway, but I was convinced that this is something I wanted to do.

224
00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:09,360
And at that point, actually, I distributed a few BitAxes through the local Bitcoin community.

225
00:13:09,360 --> 00:13:15,840
I knew that people were resonating with the whole idea of having their own little bit

226
00:13:15,840 --> 00:13:19,360
of hashrate and contributing to the network.

227
00:13:19,600 --> 00:13:25,360
I was convinced that I was going to build a fanless Bitcoin solo miner.

228
00:13:26,960 --> 00:13:27,760
Thought about the name.

229
00:13:28,720 --> 00:13:29,840
WhisperHash sounded...

230
00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:32,400
So that's where your handle comes from.

231
00:13:32,400 --> 00:13:33,840
I was about to ask you that.

232
00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:34,160
Okay.

233
00:13:34,720 --> 00:13:38,640
So it sounded like a good brand name as, you know, we're great at naming as nerds.

234
00:13:38,640 --> 00:13:39,840
So it sounded good to me.

235
00:13:40,560 --> 00:13:43,920
And then, yeah, I thought I was going to do that.

236
00:13:44,560 --> 00:13:52,160
And sort of like next logical transition is I will need a social identity to engage with

237
00:13:52,160 --> 00:13:52,720
the community.

238
00:13:52,720 --> 00:13:53,520
I see.

239
00:13:53,520 --> 00:13:56,960
So I created a TwitterX handle.

240
00:13:56,960 --> 00:14:03,280
And then from previous interactions with Bitcoiners, I knew about Nostr.

241
00:14:03,280 --> 00:14:04,960
I was like, okay, Bitcoiners are in Nostr.

242
00:14:06,160 --> 00:14:07,200
Some of them are.

243
00:14:07,200 --> 00:14:09,360
A surprising amount aren't.

244
00:14:09,360 --> 00:14:10,880
It's an interesting topic in itself.

245
00:14:11,440 --> 00:14:18,320
Why, given the extent, like maybe a side topic.

246
00:14:18,320 --> 00:14:23,200
Given the extent to which values align, why Bitcoiners?

247
00:14:23,200 --> 00:14:27,280
Why are so many Bitcoiners still cocked by Elon on Twitter?

248
00:14:28,240 --> 00:14:29,760
I mean, we can get into this.

249
00:14:30,640 --> 00:14:38,720
But yeah, so I created this identity on Nostr and just like started posting on my

250
00:14:39,280 --> 00:14:40,800
hardware explorations.

251
00:14:40,800 --> 00:14:41,360
I see.

252
00:14:41,360 --> 00:14:46,800
So you basically, you documented your journey a little bit and participated in the community

253
00:14:46,800 --> 00:14:47,360
in that way.

254
00:14:47,360 --> 00:14:47,920
Yep.

255
00:14:47,920 --> 00:14:48,480
Yeah.

256
00:14:48,480 --> 00:14:50,000
So some engagement.

257
00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:59,280
But then through that, I couldn't, I could not not just notice some, start noticing stuff.

258
00:15:00,011 --> 00:15:04,411
Some Nostr kind of unique traits.

259
00:15:04,411 --> 00:15:06,811
You got infected by the Nostr bug along the way.

260
00:15:06,811 --> 00:15:12,411
Yeah, so it was like, it piqued my curiosity to the point where, and it also gave me some ideas.

261
00:15:12,411 --> 00:15:15,811
Okay, this is like a pretty unique network.

262
00:15:15,811 --> 00:15:20,611
Maybe there's something I can do actually that is more network native.

263
00:15:20,611 --> 00:15:23,411
And I had some questions, some basic questions, including,

264
00:15:23,411 --> 00:15:26,611
but how, like, what is the state that this thing is at?

265
00:15:26,611 --> 00:15:32,211
Even in terms of active users and sats flowing through the economy and so on.

266
00:15:32,211 --> 00:15:36,011
So that's where your data, your data background came back in.

267
00:15:36,011 --> 00:15:40,811
So I went looking for our data, just like Google searches, saw a few things.

268
00:15:40,811 --> 00:15:41,211
Yeah.

269
00:15:41,211 --> 00:15:48,211
But I couldn't quite see what I thought was reliable data.

270
00:15:48,411 --> 00:15:53,411
Because I have, you know, this is, what is it called?

271
00:15:53,411 --> 00:15:56,011
Occupational hazard, you know?

272
00:15:56,011 --> 00:15:59,411
I see somebody's data product and I pick up on enough smells.

273
00:15:59,411 --> 00:16:01,811
I was like, okay, I don't think I can trust this.

274
00:16:01,811 --> 00:16:05,811
Plus I was seeing wildly varying numbers.

275
00:16:05,811 --> 00:16:09,611
Yeah, the data we have is subpar for sure.

276
00:16:09,611 --> 00:16:17,611
I know nothing about data science, but I know that the data we have is basically dog shit most of the time.

277
00:16:18,411 --> 00:16:21,811
So at that point, I was like, okay.

278
00:16:21,811 --> 00:16:25,611
I'm like, I'm sufficiently intrigued and I'm the data guy.

279
00:16:25,611 --> 00:16:28,811
You know, I'll just do this.

280
00:16:28,811 --> 00:16:29,611
I'll just do this.

281
00:16:29,611 --> 00:16:36,011
And this will be also sort of my active learning journey, hands-on.

282
00:16:36,011 --> 00:16:38,611
I will understand what's going on better.

283
00:16:38,611 --> 00:16:47,011
So I started building very early versions of the data acquisition infrastructure and also learning about key events, you know?

284
00:16:47,011 --> 00:16:48,011
Yeah.

285
00:16:48,011 --> 00:16:52,011
kind 1, kind 3, and so on, bit by bit.

286
00:16:52,011 --> 00:17:01,011
And so my initial push was to, very naive in retrospect, trying to understand active users, daily active users on Nostr.

287
00:17:01,011 --> 00:17:05,011
So, interesting, right?

288
00:17:05,011 --> 00:17:05,611
So through that...

289
00:17:05,611 --> 00:17:08,611
It should be such an easy thing to figure out, right?

290
00:17:08,611 --> 00:17:09,211
Yeah.

291
00:17:09,211 --> 00:17:16,211
So that took me on a scenic journey of Nostr and everything that's going on.

292
00:17:16,411 --> 00:17:21,411
And, yeah, sort of very...

293
00:17:21,411 --> 00:17:30,611
It didn't take very long where it just dawned on me that this was very special.

294
00:17:30,611 --> 00:17:35,811
This was very special and it was profound.

295
00:17:35,811 --> 00:17:37,611
What makes you say that?

296
00:17:37,611 --> 00:17:43,211
Like, what was the insight or the cascade of insights that you have that makes you say that now?

297
00:17:43,211 --> 00:17:46,211
So one is a cryptographic identity, of course.

298
00:17:46,211 --> 00:17:48,811
You hold your keys, nobody can...

299
00:17:48,811 --> 00:17:50,211
No one...

300
00:17:50,211 --> 00:17:53,211
Yeah, I mean, that's very apropos to what happened to you, right?

301
00:17:53,211 --> 00:17:55,411
The thing that happened to you is impossible to answer.

302
00:17:55,411 --> 00:17:56,211
Easy.

303
00:17:56,211 --> 00:18:03,811
And then next insight, and this is also when I was starting to listen to No Solutions.

304
00:18:03,811 --> 00:18:05,011
How did you discover that?

305
00:18:05,011 --> 00:18:06,411
How did you find it?

306
00:18:06,411 --> 00:18:09,011
Like, we do zero marketing or anything of that sort.

307
00:18:09,011 --> 00:18:09,611
I think...

308
00:18:09,611 --> 00:18:10,411
On purpose, you know?

309
00:18:10,411 --> 00:18:13,811
We want people to discover us in some weird way.

310
00:18:13,811 --> 00:18:16,211
I was trying to remember the sequence.

311
00:18:16,211 --> 00:18:21,011
I think the sequence was...

312
00:18:21,011 --> 00:18:24,611
It was...

313
00:18:24,611 --> 00:18:29,211
I think I saw an unrelated interview with Justin Moon.

314
00:18:29,211 --> 00:18:31,211
I think he was on TFTC, something like that.

315
00:18:31,211 --> 00:18:33,011
Eventually, yeah, yeah.

316
00:18:33,011 --> 00:18:34,411
So I was like, okay, this guy is...

317
00:18:34,411 --> 00:18:36,411
Yeah, he name dropped us a couple of times.

318
00:18:36,411 --> 00:18:37,011
He's amazing.

319
00:18:37,011 --> 00:18:38,011
I don't think he actually...

320
00:18:38,011 --> 00:18:39,411
So I don't think he did at that point.

321
00:18:39,411 --> 00:18:41,411
Or maybe he did.

322
00:18:41,411 --> 00:18:45,811
But I went and followed him on Nostr.

323
00:18:45,811 --> 00:18:50,211
And then I think this was actually between cohorts.

324
00:18:50,211 --> 00:18:52,811
So I was already following you, but it was between cohorts.

325
00:18:52,811 --> 00:18:56,211
So you were not publishing No Solutions episode.

326
00:18:56,211 --> 00:19:00,411
So I could not see it through that channel.

327
00:19:00,411 --> 00:19:06,411
But at some point, he mentioned just like a very simple comment he made somewhere.

328
00:19:06,411 --> 00:19:13,211
That wouldn't be great if somebody just built this thing where you could talk to...

329
00:19:13,211 --> 00:19:15,611
Something along the lines where you could talk to No Solutions...

330
00:19:15,611 --> 00:19:18,011
Maybe this is now my interpretation.

331
00:19:18,011 --> 00:19:23,211
Talk to No Solutions and kind of vet your ideas against how the topics were explored.

332
00:19:23,211 --> 00:19:24,211
Against the hive mind.

333
00:19:24,211 --> 00:19:25,211
Yeah.

334
00:19:25,211 --> 00:19:26,611
So I was like, hmm, interesting.

335
00:19:26,611 --> 00:19:28,211
But what is this No Solutions thing?

336
00:19:28,211 --> 00:19:30,211
So I went looking for it.

337
00:19:30,211 --> 00:19:32,411
And lo and behold, I found it.

338
00:19:32,411 --> 00:19:34,611
And I started with episode one.

339
00:19:34,611 --> 00:19:37,411
I know they're not episodes, but from the first dialogue.

340
00:19:37,411 --> 00:19:42,411
And then I just kept listening.

341
00:19:42,411 --> 00:19:44,011
That's amazing.

342
00:19:44,011 --> 00:19:44,611
Awesome.

343
00:19:44,611 --> 00:19:45,811
I kept listening.

344
00:19:45,811 --> 00:19:50,411
So you ended up listening to Justin again, you know?

345
00:19:50,411 --> 00:19:51,211
Yeah, twice.

346
00:19:51,211 --> 00:19:52,411
Yeah, at least twice.

347
00:19:52,411 --> 00:19:56,611
So I listened to a few early ones.

348
00:19:56,611 --> 00:20:01,211
Then I started complementing it with the more recent ones.

349
00:20:01,211 --> 00:20:02,611
With the most recent ones.

350
00:20:02,611 --> 00:20:04,211
Okay, jumping back and forth.

351
00:20:04,211 --> 00:20:07,011
Yeah, so I understood, okay, where's the frontier?

352
00:20:07,011 --> 00:20:09,011
And then I kind of like met in the middle somewhere.

353
00:20:09,011 --> 00:20:09,811
Yeah.

354
00:20:09,811 --> 00:20:13,011
Yeah, but I covered them all.

355
00:20:13,011 --> 00:20:19,811
And you mentioned to me before that it was quite useful on your journey.

356
00:20:19,811 --> 00:20:23,611
So that makes me very, very happy because that's, of course, the whole point.

357
00:20:23,611 --> 00:20:30,011
We are notoriously bad at explaining ourselves and getting the word out there.

358
00:20:30,011 --> 00:20:31,811
And kind of explaining our way of thinking.

359
00:20:31,811 --> 00:20:34,211
And kind of what we went through collectively.

360
00:20:34,211 --> 00:20:36,611
And kind of trying to work on Nostr and so on.

361
00:20:36,611 --> 00:20:41,611
And so I'm glad that the one artifact that we have, which is the recorded dialogues,

362
00:20:41,611 --> 00:20:43,611
were helpful to at least one person.

363
00:20:43,611 --> 00:20:44,811
So that's great.

364
00:20:44,811 --> 00:20:46,411
Massive success.

365
00:20:46,411 --> 00:20:49,011
So I'm very happy to hear that.

366
00:20:49,011 --> 00:20:51,611
No, I really think it's a crown jewel, honestly.

367
00:20:51,611 --> 00:20:56,811
And where are you now in terms of your journey?

368
00:20:56,811 --> 00:21:00,611
In terms of...

369
00:21:00,611 --> 00:21:05,611
One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you is because you mentioned to me

370
00:21:05,611 --> 00:21:07,611
that Nostr kind of swallowed you whole.

371
00:21:07,611 --> 00:21:14,411
And you were at a point where you felt so compelled to look into it and work on it and so on

372
00:21:14,411 --> 00:21:17,411
and figure it out that you weren't able to do much else.

373
00:21:17,411 --> 00:21:21,211
And so that to me is always interesting because there is very few people

374
00:21:21,211 --> 00:21:25,211
that will just say that publicly.

375
00:21:25,211 --> 00:21:26,611
Yeah, correct.

376
00:21:26,611 --> 00:21:32,611
I had about half a dozen other projects, including this Bitcoin miner thing going.

377
00:21:32,611 --> 00:21:38,011
And after a while I just realized that everything just kind of has been pushed to the side.

378
00:21:38,011 --> 00:21:45,411
And I was 24-7 more or less with my agents trying to progress.

379
00:21:45,411 --> 00:21:47,011
And how is it now for you?

380
00:21:47,011 --> 00:21:53,411
You just went through the first week of your first cohort that you're participating in.

381
00:21:53,411 --> 00:22:01,411
And I mean, you're way more well-versed about this whole thing than most other people

382
00:22:01,411 --> 00:22:03,411
because you listened to No Solutions and so on.

383
00:22:03,411 --> 00:22:06,811
You kind of knew what you would get yourself into.

384
00:22:06,811 --> 00:22:08,211
But still, how was it for you?

385
00:22:08,211 --> 00:22:11,211
How was kind of... What did you expect?

386
00:22:11,211 --> 00:22:14,811
What did align with your expectations?

387
00:22:14,811 --> 00:22:17,011
What are some things that surprised you?

388
00:22:17,011 --> 00:22:19,011
Did you enjoy it first and foremost?

389
00:22:19,011 --> 00:22:25,811
And where are you now, having gone through the first week and participated in the first Tuesday talks,

390
00:22:25,811 --> 00:22:29,211
the first Wednesday workshop, first Friday demo day?

391
00:22:29,211 --> 00:22:30,611
How was it for you?

392
00:22:30,611 --> 00:22:37,611
Yeah, I think overall the very first week is super intense.

393
00:22:37,611 --> 00:22:46,011
And it's also part of this could be me because my social muscle is not particularly well exercised.

394
00:22:46,011 --> 00:22:49,411
It's kind of atrophied, especially after months of just like me and my agents.

395
00:22:49,411 --> 00:22:55,011
That's the tension we're working with, inviting 21 introverts and nerds,

396
00:22:55,011 --> 00:22:58,611
like nerdy introverts, diverse kind of introverts to an island,

397
00:22:58,611 --> 00:23:01,611
not letting them leave and just packing them all into a room,

398
00:23:01,611 --> 00:23:05,411
working, trying to have them work together 24-7.

399
00:23:05,411 --> 00:23:07,211
It's, you know, there's some tension there.

400
00:23:07,211 --> 00:23:08,811
Everyone is feeling this.

401
00:23:08,811 --> 00:23:10,211
So you're in good company.

402
00:23:11,211 --> 00:23:17,611
I land and of course, these are remarkable individuals.

403
00:23:17,611 --> 00:23:23,211
So it's a very high bandwidth communication with every single one of them.

404
00:23:23,211 --> 00:23:23,811
Yeah.

405
00:23:23,811 --> 00:23:30,011
So it's just that alone is just taxing, maybe not the right word,

406
00:23:30,011 --> 00:23:35,211
but you've spent a lot of energy because you have to be so switched on.

407
00:23:35,211 --> 00:23:38,811
It's why my go-to pro tip for everyone who's new,

408
00:23:38,811 --> 00:23:41,611
I think I mentioned this to you as well in the beginning,

409
00:23:41,611 --> 00:23:44,211
plan in lots of alone time and get lots of sleep.

410
00:23:44,211 --> 00:23:44,811
Yeah.

411
00:23:44,811 --> 00:23:47,011
Like you'll need time to decompress.

412
00:23:47,011 --> 00:23:52,411
You need time where you're completely alone and you need sleep first and foremost

413
00:23:52,411 --> 00:23:55,611
because you have just too many inputs.

414
00:23:55,611 --> 00:23:59,611
You'll just get too many inputs from too many sites, too many new things, too many ideas

415
00:23:59,611 --> 00:24:03,411
and your subconscious mind will have to do a lot of integrational work

416
00:24:03,411 --> 00:24:07,011
and just kind of composting all those kind of things.

417
00:24:07,011 --> 00:24:09,211
So at least for me, like alone time and sleep,

418
00:24:09,211 --> 00:24:13,411
if I don't get enough alone time and sleep, I just go crazy and start engineering.

419
00:24:13,411 --> 00:24:19,011
Yeah. So the social aspect was intense.

420
00:24:19,011 --> 00:24:23,811
But then, yeah, so first week, I knew the structure roughly,

421
00:24:23,811 --> 00:24:33,011
but still it wasn't quite obvious to me

422
00:24:33,211 --> 00:24:37,411
how much time I would actually have to work on the demo.

423
00:24:37,411 --> 00:24:41,411
So I was a bit on edge early on in the week where, you know,

424
00:24:41,411 --> 00:24:45,411
I wanted to show something, something real by Friday.

425
00:24:45,411 --> 00:24:48,611
And I know the handbook and the way this is framed that, wow,

426
00:24:48,611 --> 00:24:51,611
Thursday is unstructured time.

427
00:24:51,611 --> 00:24:56,611
Yeah. You have all Thursday to prepare for Friday.

428
00:24:56,611 --> 00:25:02,211
Very, very unstructured. So I was a bit on edge about that

429
00:25:02,211 --> 00:25:05,611
and I think, but everybody is, it turns out.

430
00:25:05,611 --> 00:25:12,411
So I changed my mind as to what I was going to do on Wednesday.

431
00:25:12,411 --> 00:25:15,211
Also, as advertised, this many people told me,

432
00:25:15,211 --> 00:25:21,011
I was literally pacing on the beach Wednesday evening,

433
00:25:21,011 --> 00:25:25,611
just like for two hours probably, just like pacing, thinking,

434
00:25:25,611 --> 00:25:31,811
okay, this thing that I have in mind, am I actually able to produce something by Friday

435
00:25:31,811 --> 00:25:37,011
where I would just not bomb completely, you know?

436
00:25:37,011 --> 00:25:39,011
Bombing completely is also okay.

437
00:25:39,011 --> 00:25:41,611
Yes, totally. Yes, I think.

438
00:25:41,611 --> 00:25:46,011
As you know, only like opting out is not okay.

439
00:25:46,011 --> 00:25:48,411
You're not allowed to opt out and showing slides is not okay.

440
00:25:48,411 --> 00:25:51,011
Those are the big no-nos. Bombing is completely okay.

441
00:25:51,011 --> 00:25:54,611
Yeah, I think it should be encouraged also because that's kind of a sign

442
00:25:54,611 --> 00:25:58,211
that you attempted something maybe a little too ambitious.

443
00:25:58,411 --> 00:26:01,811
So you kind of, you want some rate of, not failure,

444
00:26:01,811 --> 00:26:04,011
but maybe, okay, the person didn't get there in time.

445
00:26:04,011 --> 00:26:08,811
Yeah, I mean, that's why we always say, just show something,

446
00:26:08,811 --> 00:26:12,811
even if the demo breaks, even if it doesn't work, doesn't matter.

447
00:26:12,811 --> 00:26:17,611
Like it's, get the idea across and if something fails, it really doesn't matter.

448
00:26:17,611 --> 00:26:21,811
At least you tried and at least you tried to demo actual,

449
00:26:21,811 --> 00:26:24,411
you know, working product, actual code.

450
00:26:24,411 --> 00:26:30,011
It's like one remarkable thing actually that I observed is that

451
00:26:30,011 --> 00:26:38,011
nobody has recorded any video of their stuff working in case they would bomb.

452
00:26:38,011 --> 00:26:40,211
So that is an interesting observation.

453
00:26:40,211 --> 00:26:44,611
So people were so confident but also comfortable in, you know,

454
00:26:44,611 --> 00:26:47,411
actually not having something working, you know, on stage.

455
00:26:47,411 --> 00:26:48,611
No time to record videos.

456
00:26:48,611 --> 00:26:52,411
And I decided, you know, I decided to do the same thing.

457
00:26:52,411 --> 00:26:56,011
I was like, okay, this may not work, but I'm just, fuck it.

458
00:26:56,011 --> 00:26:59,211
I'm just going to show what I have at that point in time.

459
00:26:59,211 --> 00:27:03,411
I took a few precautions, kind of like normal software engineering

460
00:27:03,411 --> 00:27:07,411
where I could go restore to a working configuration, but not too much.

461
00:27:07,411 --> 00:27:09,611
Yeah, yeah, that's the spirit.

462
00:27:09,611 --> 00:27:10,211
That's good.

463
00:27:10,211 --> 00:27:11,611
That's good.

464
00:27:11,611 --> 00:27:17,411
But the demos were incredible and it's also quite varied.

465
00:27:17,411 --> 00:27:24,011
Probably it's hard to pick favorites, but yeah, the variety was there

466
00:27:24,011 --> 00:27:27,811
and kind of some stuff was, I don't know, for example,

467
00:27:27,811 --> 00:27:32,811
we saw a port of FIPS to another operating system

468
00:27:32,811 --> 00:27:37,411
that was just done within a week or within a couple of days.

469
00:27:37,411 --> 00:27:37,811
Yeah.

470
00:27:37,811 --> 00:27:43,411
So not a particularly spectacular demo in the literal sense, you know.

471
00:27:43,411 --> 00:27:45,011
But lots of work has to go into it.

472
00:27:45,011 --> 00:27:46,211
Not a great animation.

473
00:27:46,411 --> 00:27:50,411
Literally, the gentleman was like, Andre was showing a terminal

474
00:27:50,411 --> 00:27:52,611
and just like packets going across.

475
00:27:52,611 --> 00:27:53,211
Yeah.

476
00:27:53,211 --> 00:27:54,411
But fucking hell, you know.

477
00:27:54,411 --> 00:27:54,811
Yeah.

478
00:27:54,811 --> 00:27:56,211
All right, this is...

479
00:27:56,211 --> 00:27:57,411
Yeah, we're cooking.

480
00:27:57,411 --> 00:28:00,011
I mean, like you said, these are all exceptional people that are here

481
00:28:00,011 --> 00:28:03,011
and they actually know how to get stuff done.

482
00:28:03,011 --> 00:28:04,211
So that's...

483
00:28:04,211 --> 00:28:07,411
And the demo days are always a testament to that.

484
00:28:07,411 --> 00:28:09,611
And like, it's...

485
00:28:09,611 --> 00:28:11,611
Yeah, it's fun to...

486
00:28:11,611 --> 00:28:16,611
For me, the most fun is seeing how things come together

487
00:28:16,611 --> 00:28:20,011
in terms of some of the building blocks we're using now

488
00:28:20,011 --> 00:28:22,211
didn't even exist a year ago.

489
00:28:22,211 --> 00:28:25,811
And now it's kind of like second nature to a lot of people.

490
00:28:25,811 --> 00:28:28,011
And this just kind of keeps happening.

491
00:28:28,011 --> 00:28:33,611
And it's a positive spiral.

492
00:28:33,611 --> 00:28:36,611
It's a reinforcing feedback loop of positivity of,

493
00:28:36,611 --> 00:28:38,411
okay, now we have Blossom.

494
00:28:38,411 --> 00:28:39,611
Now we have Nsights.

495
00:28:39,611 --> 00:28:41,611
Now we have Napplets, for example.

496
00:28:41,611 --> 00:28:43,411
And now we have FIPS.

497
00:28:43,411 --> 00:28:46,011
And you can just plug all these things together

498
00:28:46,011 --> 00:28:48,211
and build things very easily

499
00:28:48,211 --> 00:28:51,211
that were borderline impossible to do

500
00:28:51,211 --> 00:28:52,611
before we had these building blocks.

501
00:28:52,611 --> 00:28:54,211
And that's just so beautiful to see.

502
00:28:54,211 --> 00:28:56,611
And of course, you know, like Nostr, same thing and so on.

503
00:28:56,611 --> 00:28:59,811
And, you know, on the monetary side, of course,

504
00:28:59,811 --> 00:29:03,011
nothing we do, almost nothing we do

505
00:29:03,011 --> 00:29:05,411
would be possible without Bitcoin and without E-cash

506
00:29:05,411 --> 00:29:06,811
and all those underlying things.

507
00:29:06,811 --> 00:29:08,211
But they are, of course, a given.

508
00:29:08,211 --> 00:29:10,211
They're not second nature.

509
00:29:10,211 --> 00:29:11,011
They're first nature.

510
00:29:11,011 --> 00:29:13,411
They're like the air we breathe.

511
00:29:13,411 --> 00:29:16,811
And so to me, that's amazing to see the evolution

512
00:29:16,811 --> 00:29:18,211
cohort by cohort,

513
00:29:18,211 --> 00:29:22,011
and also new people coming in and getting up to speed

514
00:29:22,011 --> 00:29:25,211
and really getting it quickly,

515
00:29:25,211 --> 00:29:31,011
like getting the various primitives that we have.

516
00:29:31,011 --> 00:29:33,011
It just makes sense to them.

517
00:29:33,011 --> 00:29:35,611
And that also, to me, is a good signal

518
00:29:35,611 --> 00:29:37,011
that we're on the right track.

519
00:29:37,011 --> 00:29:39,211
Like we're not completely deluding ourselves

520
00:29:39,211 --> 00:29:42,011
and just, you know, like hallucinating shit left and right.

521
00:29:42,011 --> 00:29:44,811
So I'm very happy that, you know,

522
00:29:44,811 --> 00:29:48,211
like the new people like you that joined this cohort,

523
00:29:48,211 --> 00:29:51,811
it seems like everyone got something out of it

524
00:29:51,811 --> 00:29:54,011
and stuff more or less makes sense.

525
00:29:54,011 --> 00:29:56,011
So that's a good sign.

526
00:29:56,011 --> 00:29:57,011
That's a good sign for me.

527
00:29:57,011 --> 00:30:00,011
It's also...

528
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:05,920
Something to be expected also, in the sense that when you're building stuff,

529
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:12,800
if you pick the right abstractions, you know, and the right primitives,

530
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:21,840
yeah, then things compose, things layer in the beautiful way that is capable of supporting

531
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:28,160
very tall structures, you know, complex structures reliably. So we have at this point,

532
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:34,160
we have some wonderful primitives, I think. Blossom is one of them, you know, content

533
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:42,960
undressable, blob storage. Yeah. One of them, obviously, right? Yeah. FIPS on a networking

534
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:49,840
layer. FIPS. So there's a, it's quite clear we're still kind of at the network fabric

535
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:58,080
infrastructure and primitives stage. Yeah. But you're already seeing some outlier success stories.

536
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:04,080
For example, one of my favorites is Zapstore. Yeah. That thing just needed to exist. This is

537
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:14,560
such a perfect fit for Nostr. Yeah. You're a developer, you publish in an uncensorable

538
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:21,040
fashion. Everything is signed with your Nostr identity. Yeah. People see who you are through

539
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:27,120
the web of trust. It's amazing. This just fits so perfectly. It's awesome. It's the first and

540
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:32,960
only thing I install on a new phone. And then everything goes from there. It's like, I get a

541
00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:37,840
new phone, I install Zapstore. I install the apps that I have in my list. And I, you know, like I

542
00:31:37,840 --> 00:31:41,680
use my various phones differently. I install some other things. If it's not on Zapstore, I'm not

543
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:48,960
interested, basically. And that's it. I live a very pure life, very simple life. And of course,

544
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:55,200
what makes me insanely happy is Zapstore came out of the first cohort. So it actually evolved

545
00:31:55,200 --> 00:32:04,960
from discussions we had around how would you do an anti-virus system using Nostr. You have

546
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:13,680
binaries and you can, you know, like malware scanning, basically. And then I think France

547
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:18,240
was working on this idea already, had this idea already. And then we kind of turned it around.

548
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:22,400
And basically, if you do the positive of that, then you have an app store. Those are the apps

549
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:27,120
I trust. Those are the binaries I trust. And then we went to, okay, what if the developers,

550
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:31,760
you trust the developer and the developer signs the release and so on and so on. And of course,

551
00:32:31,760 --> 00:32:37,280
you know, like, I mean, there's lots of prior work on this. Lots of people still use GitHub release

552
00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:43,440
pages, similar idea and so on. And I just love it how it evolved and how well it works. Like

553
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:49,200
it worked from the get-go already. France have put a ton of effort into this. And I talked to him,

554
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:54,400
like we recorded, we have a recorded dialogue with France. That's how blessed we are.

555
00:32:55,920 --> 00:33:06,480
And now it's just, it's a fantastic app store, no matter how you cut it. Like it's on par,

556
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:12,960
basically, with the big app stores that everyone uses. And it has all the features and it just

557
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:17,520
fucking works. It just fucking works. It's so great. It's amazing. And there's, I mean,

558
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:25,360
credit to the team because having listened to the dialogue with him, there's a lot of stuff that

559
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:30,240
they need to grind on continually. Absolutely. Version mismatches. It's not an easy task. And

560
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:35,040
so on. But yeah, I'm very grateful. And now also publishing. I think I mentioned it when I talked

561
00:33:35,040 --> 00:33:38,960
to him, but it's worthwhile mentioning it. And I actually, myself didn't do it yet, but I plan

562
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:44,240
to do that very, very soon. I haven't built a native app in a very long time, but someone,

563
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:48,560
I think it was American hotly, but I'm sure some other people as well. You can just instruct your

564
00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:53,040
agent, build an Android app and publish it on an app store on Zapstore. And it will just work.

565
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:58,240
That's how permissionless it is. And then you don't even need an Android phone. You don't need

566
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:03,280
anything. It's just the publication, the publication pipeline that's built for Zapstore

567
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:11,200
is so well done. And pushing an Android app to Zapstore is so easy and so seamless right now.

568
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:16,000
That's just, that's just amazing. Like anyone who who's ever been fighting with the review process

569
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:22,880
of, you know, it doesn't matter if it's iOS or if it's the Google play store, like knows how

570
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:26,960
painful this can, can get. And that's, I mean, that's the main benefit of the permissionless

571
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:31,120
world. You actually don't have to ask for permission. You can just push stuff out there

572
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:38,080
and give it to the people that are interested in it. Yeah. It's also a wonder. It seems like the

573
00:34:38,080 --> 00:34:49,360
next natural step is making part, part of this application pipeline app release pipeline

574
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:58,720
seamless in a way where somebody could vibe an app maybe by talking to their phone and it would

575
00:34:58,720 --> 00:35:07,120
get published to the Zapstore and maybe in a fashion with everything around it, where that

576
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:13,200
becomes kind of this remixable type of content. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I don't know how much

577
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:19,680
headache it would cause to the Zapstore guys if we suddenly saw an explosion of apps. Yeah. I mean,

578
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:24,800
that's how every single Linux distribution started, right? Like you fork something that exists and you

579
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:29,600
give it your own spin and so on. And Pablo actually played around with this idea in the past.

580
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:34,960
He put a little, like in some of his projects, and I'm not sure where his thinking is now,

581
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:40,960
but a while ago he was like, what if every little app has like a little chat box that lets you

582
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:47,280
chat with an in-app agent that can modify the software that's running. So you can just prompt

583
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:54,240
the feature into existence and just modify some things to your liking. I'm, yeah, I'm of two minds

584
00:35:54,240 --> 00:36:03,440
of that when it comes to that, because to me an app and the interface of an app and how an app works,

585
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:08,720
it's almost like a shared language. Like Excel is a great example. Everyone knows Excel and how it

586
00:36:08,720 --> 00:36:12,880
works and how it looks and feels like and so on. There would be many other ways to do a spreadsheet

587
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:18,080
software, but it all looks the same and everyone's so used to that it's a skill and it's a shared

588
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:25,760
language. So if everyone would have their own flavor of this, some sort of communication would

589
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:30,960
break down in between people if you want to, if you need to cooperate with people. Just like the,

590
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:35,600
I think I talked about this in the past, but there are some genius mathematicians and physicists

591
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:41,520
that came up with their own mathematical notations to describe, you know, what they're

592
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:47,040
working on. And not using the default notation that everyone knows, but they came up with their

593
00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:52,320
own because they thought it was better. And then of course they can't talk to anyone about their

594
00:36:52,320 --> 00:37:01,200
discoveries and no one can, you know, like make sense of it. So I don't know. I'm definitely a fan

595
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:08,080
of opinionated software. I love opinionated software, but I'm not sure how the world would

596
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:16,240
look like if the software stack of everyone would be hyper-personalized and I don't know.

597
00:37:16,240 --> 00:37:20,800
I think we'll find out. We'll find out. People like Pablo and people like Martti Malmi, they're

598
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:26,560
rebuilding the whole software stack that they're using from the ground up right now. So yeah, we'll

599
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:35,840
find out. But this also touches on how things layer fundamentally because there is the data

600
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:43,760
formats and protocols and then there is a user experience. So maybe what emerges naturally

601
00:37:44,640 --> 00:37:51,680
is that in the spreadsheet example that we would converge on one representation which relates to

602
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:58,240
Nostr, right? We have effectively, you know, we're agreeing on schema for events, but maybe this is a

603
00:37:58,240 --> 00:38:04,160
more elaborate format, but just as an example. So we converge on the format that describes

604
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:11,040
any sensible spreadsheet and then users are able to interact with spreadsheets in a

605
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:16,400
hyper-personalized way. Yeah. And maybe this is mediated by the agents that are aware of the

606
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:23,200
underlying format and the protocol. Yeah. So maybe this, I don't know, maybe this is one version of

607
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:27,840
the future. Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense and that's also, I think it was on

608
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:32,400
Tuesday I showed this one slide, Justin actually sent it to me, Justin Moon, with kind of the

609
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:37,680
velocity of how fast things evolve and data formats were at the very bottom and then protocols and so

610
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:44,240
on. And the top layer was intelligence, which is, you know, all the rage right now, which was just

611
00:38:44,240 --> 00:38:51,360
kind of a squiggly line, like a drunken random walk evolving very fast. And so the point was

612
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:57,680
kind of don't worry too much about what agent you use or your harness or what model or whatever.

613
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:03,360
Worry more about what protocol do you build up on, what does your data structure look like,

614
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:08,560
and so on and so forth. Like worry more about the primitives, because that is what will provide a

615
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:13,280
solid foundation for whatever you're building and that also doesn't move very quickly. Like that's,

616
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:18,160
if you want to have this thing used in 10 years from now, really think about your data format and

617
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:24,080
those kind of things. So yeah, no, I think that's very well said. Like we might have a

618
00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:29,920
Cambrian explosion of like UIs and interfaces and how do you interface with the data,

619
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:34,000
but we might be able to agree on a shared data format and all those kind of things that

620
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:42,400
make collaboration possible. I have one more question for you in regards to, you mentioned

621
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:48,960
you were in Silicon Valley and now you are in Hong Kong. Yeah. So how did this happen and did

622
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:56,960
this in any way relate to your journey and your decision to step out of your professional

623
00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:03,200
fiat life? No, this is, we're talking multiple distinct chapters that extend very far into the

624
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:12,480
past. So Silicon Valley chapter was early on, essentially straight out of uni. I got swept up

625
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:19,520
into the first internet wave, also sometimes known as the dot-com bubble. So straight out of uni,

626
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:27,840
I had an opportunity to go work in the Bay Area. At that point, I remember vividly, I had to look

627
00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:35,200
at the map. So yeah, I have an option to go to this place. I look at the map, like San Francisco,

628
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:41,760
the Bay. Let's turn around here, otherwise I'll collapse. So this is where the Silicon Valley at,

629
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:52,080
the proverbial one. I mean, it was no accident that I went into computer science. So to me,

630
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:58,640
there was just zero question that, okay, I'm just going to go for it. So I went for it. This was

631
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:06,560
late 90s. Total change of scene and also interesting point in time.

632
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:17,360
And time flies. How was it for you in Silicon Valley? Like, did you enjoy your time there?

633
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:23,200
Was it kind of too crazy sometimes? Or how was your experience? I'd be curious. For me, this was

634
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:31,040
also my 20s. So it was also a journey of, an inner journey of just kind of understanding a bit

635
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:42,480
more about myself, the kind of person I was and also understanding firsthand what America stood

636
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:52,000
for, kind of the internals. So there's the professional component, which I think left an

637
00:41:52,000 --> 00:42:04,000
imprint forever in me, which is that I'm just very fluid with software. When I look at other

638
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:11,200
people or in other places that are attempting to do software, then I can see kind of, it's almost

639
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:16,720
like a difference when you look at a professional athlete that is doing things kind of naturally,

640
00:42:16,720 --> 00:42:24,560
effortlessly. It looks like it. Versus people that are just kind of doing it in a tortured way,

641
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:31,440
maybe they try to follow the form, not understanding the essence. So later on,

642
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:36,960
I observed a lot of this, including I lived in London actually for like five years during a wave

643
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:43,680
where agile development was all the rage and there were a lot of snake oil salesmen going

644
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:50,400
around kind of ruining teams. Selling Kanban boards. Exactly, Kanban boards, pair programming and so on.

645
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:59,600
So the professional side, I'm quite grateful that I got to

646
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:08,720
live in the belly of the beast for a while. Yes, and meet other hardcore people.

647
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:13,520
It was very interesting. But at the same time, I was kind of becoming aware of the

648
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:21,680
broader world and also the internals of the US. 9-11 happened when I was there

649
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:28,400
and I saw all the consequences, how they were rolling back on a lot of things that

650
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:35,840
America stood for. I was also quite idealistic, I think. The final straw for me was

651
00:43:36,720 --> 00:43:43,200
when George W. Bush got re-elected. I was in California and so on.

652
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:48,880
First time he was elected, I thought, okay, this is just like an accident.

653
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:55,360
But then when he got re-elected, despite everything that

654
00:43:56,080 --> 00:44:01,040
everybody has had a chance to observe, that really raised some questions in my head as to

655
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:05,600
how rotten the system was. Yeah, I see. So at that point, I was like, okay,

656
00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:12,400
I think I'm ready to... I was more certain that I'm kind of European at heart.

657
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:20,000
And as much as there are many things that I love about the States, including the nature, for instance,

658
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:26,160
and the variety of very distinct and deep communities that they have. It's a big place.

659
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:32,400
It's a big place in many ways, on many dimensions. Yeah. So I was ready to leave.

660
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:38,960
And I was also feeling confident, professional. Okay, I can take what I have learned and mastered

661
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:46,160
and just land anywhere and do something else. I mean, use this to do something else

662
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:51,680
outside of the area. So at that point, I had a choice of, okay, I can always go back to Europe.

663
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:59,840
So let me just go to Asia first. Okay. So... I see. So you accident and you didn't...

664
00:45:00,011 --> 00:45:06,171
want to take the easiest route out. I was like, okay, let me go to Asia, check it out. I can always go back here.

665
00:45:06,811 --> 00:45:13,531
So, uh, went to China first and then while I was in mainland China, I discovered Hong Kong. I think

666
00:45:13,531 --> 00:45:17,211
I was doing like a visa run or something like this. Just took a flight to Hong Kong

667
00:45:18,971 --> 00:45:25,051
and just fell in love with the place instantly. What a, what a beautiful place, very special

668
00:45:25,371 --> 00:45:31,211
anyway. So what made you fall in love with it? I, I guess because it's a mix,

669
00:45:31,211 --> 00:45:36,171
it's a, it's a melting pot kind of place, right? It's a, what, what, what aspect of it made you

670
00:45:36,171 --> 00:45:41,211
fall in love with it? I, because I've never been to Hong Kong. I don't know, like you just mentioned

671
00:45:41,211 --> 00:45:46,091
the nature in the U S and so on. I guess for Hong Kong, it, it must be something else a little bit.

672
00:45:46,091 --> 00:45:52,411
So a lot of it, I think is just resonated with me personally, but, uh, but some are,

673
00:45:53,291 --> 00:46:00,811
some aspects are, um, objective. So it's a, it's in a beautiful natural setting overall. It's a

674
00:46:00,811 --> 00:46:06,731
very compact place, but, uh, not as compact as, uh, as Singapore and, and in a, in a different

675
00:46:06,731 --> 00:46:12,411
category altogether, but it's a, it's in a beautiful setting. So Hong Kong Island, uh,

676
00:46:12,411 --> 00:46:15,691
which is the main Island, it's kind of like Madeira, you know, it's an Island.

677
00:46:15,691 --> 00:46:22,891
So you have, uh, water on all sides. So you're, you always see the horizon and, uh, um,

678
00:46:23,851 --> 00:46:31,131
it's also mountainous. So even though this is as urban as it gets and super dense,

679
00:46:31,691 --> 00:46:37,851
you don't have this feeling that you're just like trapped in a, in a jungle. Okay. And, uh,

680
00:46:38,411 --> 00:46:46,091
and, uh, and then because of the density and the space constraints, uh, they are benefiting

681
00:46:46,091 --> 00:46:54,011
uniquely from being able to construct a top-notch transportation system. Okay. Their Metro system,

682
00:46:54,011 --> 00:47:00,571
the MTR, it really is the best in the world. Uh, you know, I've lived in many places, I travel

683
00:47:01,691 --> 00:47:06,731
too many places, including Japan, you know, I'm intimately familiar with the London

684
00:47:07,691 --> 00:47:15,531
you know, with the London system, the tube and all the anxiety that causes people. So the Hong

685
00:47:15,531 --> 00:47:23,851
Kong MTR system really is a gem. And when you rely on it, it just, uh, it really affects the

686
00:47:23,851 --> 00:47:31,851
quality of life. So you're able to do things, um, in a single day that would be impractical in other

687
00:47:31,851 --> 00:47:36,891
places. So literally do maybe just, just the ease of moving around, just ease the ease of moving

688
00:47:36,891 --> 00:47:43,291
around, uh, because it's, it's reliable. It's constructed in a way where you don't need to,

689
00:47:44,171 --> 00:47:50,171
it's just a very, very well-designed, very reliable system that you just nothing breaks ever.

690
00:47:51,051 --> 00:48:01,131
Uh, and so huge difference. And then of course the location, uh, in terms of regionally. So Hong

691
00:48:01,131 --> 00:48:07,931
Kong is like easy to travel to other places in Asia and it's super connected to, uh, other,

692
00:48:09,291 --> 00:48:13,931
other places in the world. Yeah, sure. Yeah. It's a hub for sure. Yeah. There are downsides of

693
00:48:13,931 --> 00:48:22,411
course. And, uh, one of the downsides is that, uh, and one of the one where that I think affects

694
00:48:22,411 --> 00:48:29,451
me most directly is that, um, the pallets of industries and spaces that you get can get into

695
00:48:29,451 --> 00:48:34,731
professionally is a different one, radically different. Yeah. So there is, uh, finance is a

696
00:48:34,731 --> 00:48:47,851
big pillar, insurance, property, logistics, very few startups. Um, so yeah, it's, uh, that part

697
00:48:47,851 --> 00:48:52,891
is limiting and it, it bothers me and I'm still reconciling this. And this is also part of the

698
00:48:52,891 --> 00:49:00,491
reason why, I guess I'm like loose looking outside of this at this point, like track where

699
00:49:01,531 --> 00:49:06,411
you go into particular industry or whatever vertical, I'm like, okay, maybe this is the

700
00:49:06,411 --> 00:49:13,211
point where I just pick the thing, you know, pick the thing I really feel passionate about and just

701
00:49:14,171 --> 00:49:19,291
you're ready to do something in that space that is kind of, it's a irrespective of the physical

702
00:49:19,291 --> 00:49:23,691
realm. I see. And you're, you, you feel like you're ready to plunge yourself into a new

703
00:49:23,691 --> 00:49:28,891
vertical in some sense. Yeah, I think so. Yes. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Uh, you're

704
00:49:28,891 --> 00:49:34,811
not the only one from Hong Kong that, uh, is participating in this cohort, by the way. Uh,

705
00:49:34,811 --> 00:49:42,251
we have three Hong Kongers, uh, in this cohort, right? Yeah. Uncoordinated, which is interesting

706
00:49:42,251 --> 00:49:49,531
also. Yeah. So, so people are discovering Hong Kong for themselves individually and discovering,

707
00:49:49,531 --> 00:49:54,331
uh, sovereign engineering also in their own way and are coming and now there's three people from

708
00:49:54,331 --> 00:49:59,771
Hong Kong here. So G sovereignty is in Hong Kong and you know, like, wouldn't you think it

709
00:49:59,771 --> 00:50:06,491
with a female participant? Is this the first ever? Yes. I know we had, we had like,

710
00:50:07,371 --> 00:50:13,051
if you want to squint, we had like two and a half female participants, but not really.

711
00:50:13,051 --> 00:50:18,251
They kind of were looped in just because they were around basically kind of thing.

712
00:50:18,811 --> 00:50:23,451
This is the first female participant that actually signed up, went through the whole

713
00:50:23,451 --> 00:50:28,731
process, everything. And it's here and it's actually also proper technical, like, uh, actually

714
00:50:30,331 --> 00:50:34,331
we're getting there. We're getting there. And we just full disclosure. We just,

715
00:50:34,331 --> 00:50:41,771
we don't discriminate by sex. All we ask is like an npub and a repo that contains proof of work,

716
00:50:41,771 --> 00:50:47,131
like whether it's GitHub or something else doesn't matter, but just, you know, get repository and

717
00:50:47,131 --> 00:50:53,451
npub. And so, yeah, I was pleasantly surprised that we, we have a female participant and,

718
00:50:53,451 --> 00:50:56,971
and she, that was something nice as well. Fantastic. Everything's great. Like I'm,

719
00:50:56,971 --> 00:51:05,771
I'm very, very happy. So, um, yeah, tell me more about your kind of what, what you've,

720
00:51:05,771 --> 00:51:11,771
what you're currently exploring, uh, from the, from the, and I think we, we didn't,

721
00:51:11,771 --> 00:51:16,811
we didn't finish the conversation about the Nostr data science, kind of how that journey,

722
00:51:18,491 --> 00:51:23,611
what did you discover and how did it turn out? Like you're, you were trying to find out the daily

723
00:51:23,611 --> 00:51:27,931
active users of Nostr and so on. You published some of this data, right? Yes. Like what did you

724
00:51:27,931 --> 00:51:34,971
end up publishing and what are the issues you ran into? Um, so the issues of course, that you run

725
00:51:34,971 --> 00:51:40,171
into is, uh, like I said, my, my, my, there's no global. It's one of the issues. Yeah, exactly.

726
00:51:41,291 --> 00:51:48,331
Episode one, episode one. There is no global. This has been mentioned a few times. Uh, this,

727
00:51:48,331 --> 00:51:54,491
this should be internalized in a similar fashion as, uh, the fact that there is no deleting,

728
00:51:54,491 --> 00:52:02,171
you know, there's no confirmation of deletion. Exactly. So let's get on with it. Um, yeah, so

729
00:52:03,931 --> 00:52:08,571
I was literally just like acquiring the data and trying to construct for my own purpose, the,

730
00:52:08,571 --> 00:52:15,931
the usual DAU, MAU, you know, daily active users, monthly active users and, uh, through various events

731
00:52:15,931 --> 00:52:21,691
and just like plotting, okay, these are the unique npubs that publish an event. Uh,

732
00:52:21,691 --> 00:52:27,051
and let me just plot this and see, uh, what this looks like. And they arrive at the, uh,

733
00:52:27,051 --> 00:52:33,531
at the main metric, you know, the DAU given, uh, activity, you know, unique npubs for,

734
00:52:34,331 --> 00:52:40,251
um, various events on that date. And of course, what I was seeing is all kinds of crazy shit,

735
00:52:41,051 --> 00:52:49,371
massive spikes. And, uh, so it's just, it was, uh, very clear that, uh, that deserved a second

736
00:52:49,371 --> 00:52:58,971
look and, uh, and that I just, yeah, there was like very quickly takes you to like the notion

737
00:52:58,971 --> 00:53:04,891
of a web of trust. Yeah. You have to, so I had to learn that myself. You saw some of the attacks

738
00:53:04,891 --> 00:53:09,051
that we had to go through. I saw crazy spikes. My first instinct was, okay, I just want to get

739
00:53:09,051 --> 00:53:16,171
to the fucking DAU. So let me try to, uh, construct a block list of, uh, of npubs

740
00:53:16,171 --> 00:53:24,411
that are polluting my, my amazing data sets. So my method was quite, uh, simple. I was just

741
00:53:24,411 --> 00:53:31,291
literally, uh, I would pick a spike on the, on the graph I was seeing, and I would ask the bot,

742
00:53:31,291 --> 00:53:37,611
Hey, like there's like something going on here. Can you just look into the anomaly? And it's

743
00:53:37,611 --> 00:53:42,971
actually surprisingly, it does surprisingly well at picking the patterns and constructing

744
00:53:42,971 --> 00:53:50,571
the block lists and so on. So for a while I was like cruising like this. Um, but then, uh, so I

745
00:53:50,571 --> 00:53:57,451
kind of, I, I got, got to the point where I, I satisfied my own curiosity as to at least the

746
00:53:57,451 --> 00:54:04,811
order of magnitude that the MAU/DAU was at for the network, uh, as a whole. Tell me the number.

747
00:54:05,771 --> 00:54:12,811
It's small. It's a, it's moderate. I wouldn't call it small. It's a moderate, but.

748
00:54:14,251 --> 00:54:19,451
Because I have a number in mind, but just based on pure vibes. So I'd be curious what the data

749
00:54:19,451 --> 00:54:24,011
says. It's stable. I haven't looked at this in a while. I think it's like something on the order of

750
00:54:24,731 --> 00:54:32,331
20, 30,000 daily active users. Yeah. But, uh, 20 is my gut feeling. Yeah. So I'm, uh, I'm actually

751
00:54:33,131 --> 00:54:40,091
one of the reasons I decided not to pursue this MAU/DAU thing in the end was that, uh,

752
00:54:41,291 --> 00:54:48,411
maybe this is, uh, maybe this is actually not going to have a positive effect. If people knew

753
00:54:48,411 --> 00:54:54,491
ahead of time that, okay, the network is relatively small. Uh, so they need to fall in love with it

754
00:54:54,491 --> 00:55:00,411
for other reasons than there being a massive user base. Yeah. So, and I have, uh, since

755
00:55:00,491 --> 00:55:05,451
arrived, or I still have a question in my mind that, uh, the thing I was showing, you know,

756
00:55:05,451 --> 00:55:13,771
Nostrology, Nostrolo.gy, um, one of the, one of the domains that I looked at, uh, from the

757
00:55:13,771 --> 00:55:19,371
data perspective was, uh, uh, Nutzaps. Yeah. Trying to understand, okay, what's the sat flow,

758
00:55:20,091 --> 00:55:25,691
how many active users they are. And it's, it's small. Yeah. It's very small. It's small to the

759
00:55:25,931 --> 00:55:31,451
point where, uh, it got me thinking, okay, so I can, even though the data is out there, right?

760
00:55:31,451 --> 00:55:36,571
Anybody can acquire it and cut the data, arrive at the numbers, but the, even the act of me

761
00:55:37,771 --> 00:55:42,731
publicizing this data, you know, is it gonna be useful to the people that are working with this,

762
00:55:42,731 --> 00:55:46,491
or is it going to do more damage in the sense that, okay, this is so fucking tiny,

763
00:55:46,491 --> 00:55:51,211
which is going to ignore it, you know? Uh, so it's still a question in my mind. I think

764
00:55:51,451 --> 00:55:56,011
it's still a question in my mind. I think maybe there's a way to expose it in a way where

765
00:55:56,011 --> 00:56:02,331
people working on it benefit so they can, they can see their MOU, GAU, uh, metrics, uh, moving.

766
00:56:03,931 --> 00:56:09,131
I think from a builder's perspective, it's positive in the sense that, you know, uh, and

767
00:56:09,131 --> 00:56:14,171
that's what I tell people at Summer in Engineering always, uh, as well, just push your stuff out

768
00:56:14,171 --> 00:56:19,691
there. It's literally like half the, half the power users of Nostr are in this room. Like

769
00:56:20,251 --> 00:56:24,891
at most you'll offend like 30 people, you know, don't worry, just, just do your thing,

770
00:56:24,891 --> 00:56:30,011
push your stuff out. Don't overthink it. You're not gonna, even if it, if, even if it goes viral

771
00:56:30,011 --> 00:56:35,771
in a bad way, it's still, you know, like it's such a small group of people. It's live, I just don't

772
00:56:35,771 --> 00:56:42,331
expose it like on, uh, it's buried a little bit. Okay. Great name, by the way, Nostrology. Yeah.

773
00:56:42,811 --> 00:56:53,611
Uh, so I basically, I had this running locally for the longest time and, uh, a few weeks,

774
00:56:53,611 --> 00:56:59,851
uh, before the cohort, uh, I set the goal to actually stand this up as a proper environment,

775
00:57:00,651 --> 00:57:08,091
uh, and, um, yeah, have all the data infrastructure, you know, data processing,

776
00:57:08,091 --> 00:57:14,251
all the jobs and the publishing of the, of the charts, uh, happening reliably on a schedule.

777
00:57:14,251 --> 00:57:21,451
So this is live now. I have a look, uh, kind of a few domains that, uh, publishing, uh, data on,

778
00:57:21,451 --> 00:57:26,331
which is one is the relays. I had to look. Okay. I mean, it's a foundational piece of

779
00:57:26,331 --> 00:57:34,251
infrastructure. I was curious, you know, uh, what's going on then relays. And, uh, I have

780
00:57:34,251 --> 00:57:39,931
some metrics around lightning and then of course my darling Zap store. Yeah. I was interested.

781
00:57:39,931 --> 00:57:47,851
What are the trends in a total number of, uh, apps, uh, breakdown by, uh, most are native apps,

782
00:57:47,851 --> 00:57:53,611
which is, you know, uh, a developer publishing using their own Nostr identity versus what is

783
00:57:53,611 --> 00:57:59,931
being republished, uh, and signed by Zap store. Uh, yeah. From a GitHub or Android. And then

784
00:57:59,931 --> 00:58:06,411
other, other metrics like, uh, you know, Zaps that are attributable to, to an app and other

785
00:58:06,411 --> 00:58:10,491
aggregations. So this, I think this is kind of the most baked thing that I have working,

786
00:58:11,451 --> 00:58:18,891
but then, uh, this connects to what I wanted to do actually, while I'm here, this got me thinking,

787
00:58:19,931 --> 00:58:25,131
you know, I've done all this work to, um, acquire the data from the network,

788
00:58:26,091 --> 00:58:30,091
figure it out. And the process is in a way where I now have an artifact, you know,

789
00:58:30,091 --> 00:58:36,491
in the form of a chart that I can plot. For example, a simple chart where I show,

790
00:58:37,371 --> 00:58:45,291
um, bar like a bar chart where I'm showing a count of Zaps on a, uh, per day and, uh,

791
00:58:45,291 --> 00:58:51,851
overlaid with a cumulative number, a cumulative amount of sets that are attributable to

792
00:58:51,851 --> 00:59:01,051
Zap store apps over time. And then, uh, so I've done all that, but, uh, what occurred to me

793
00:59:01,771 --> 00:59:11,211
then was that it's kind of, uh, there are two problems. One problem is that I have to

794
00:59:11,211 --> 00:59:16,411
essentially make an editorial decision, a subjective one, or decision that was aligned

795
00:59:16,411 --> 00:59:22,171
with the quote unquote data story. I was trying to tell you how to slice up the data, how to

796
00:59:22,171 --> 00:59:26,171
slice it up. And then, you know, what, what am I trying to, what is the message, right? So that's

797
00:59:26,171 --> 00:59:34,971
a decision I had to make that is a divorce from the underlying data. And, uh, second thing that

798
00:59:34,971 --> 00:59:42,091
bothered me was that, uh, again, even though I've done all this work and I have this data now,

799
00:59:42,731 --> 00:59:48,811
it's going to, it's going to die here. You know, like nobody else in the ecosystem is able to

800
00:59:48,811 --> 00:59:54,331
benefit from this other than maybe copy pasting the chart, the final chart. Yeah. So that got

801
00:59:54,331 --> 00:59:59,691
me thinking, okay, maybe there's a way to expose this. Yeah.

802
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:08,880
Set the data free and make it available for other participants in the ecosystem in the

803
01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:16,320
form where it's a primitive that is done in a Nostr native way.

804
01:00:16,320 --> 01:00:22,140
But at the same time done in a way so that it's easily ingestible by data manipulation

805
01:00:22,140 --> 01:00:25,040
tools that a data scientist would use.

806
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:33,680
Going back to, yeah, you want to stand kind of on the shoulders of, again, this layered

807
01:00:33,680 --> 01:00:34,680
cake, right?

808
01:00:34,680 --> 01:00:36,480
You have the formats at the bottom.

809
01:00:36,480 --> 01:00:40,320
So one of the decisions is how do you, in what format do you expose the data?

810
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:46,400
So I picked Parquet, which is lingua franca of a big data world.

811
01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:53,920
If you want to expose a data set that is terabytes in size and you want to run a crazy aggregation

812
01:00:53,920 --> 01:00:57,520
on one column, this is the format.

813
01:00:57,520 --> 01:00:59,240
It's incredible.

814
01:00:59,240 --> 01:01:03,720
Like lots of serious dudes, mostly dudes, have done a lot of work just on the freaking

815
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:04,720
format.

816
01:01:04,720 --> 01:01:05,720
Sure, sure, sure.

817
01:01:05,720 --> 01:01:06,720
It's a hard thing to do.

818
01:01:06,720 --> 01:01:07,720
Yeah.

819
01:01:07,720 --> 01:01:08,720
Yeah.

820
01:01:08,720 --> 01:01:15,080
And it's optimized to the point where, which, I mean, it's incredible the lengths to which

821
01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:18,600
people go to when they're singularly focused on something.

822
01:01:18,600 --> 01:01:25,560
So Parquet is optimized to the point where it actually takes into consideration the speculative

823
01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:27,640
execution on the CPU.

824
01:01:27,640 --> 01:01:29,160
So it's able to optimize at that level.

825
01:01:29,160 --> 01:01:30,840
It does its own branch protection.

826
01:01:30,840 --> 01:01:31,840
Yeah.

827
01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:32,840
So it's incredible.

828
01:01:32,840 --> 01:01:40,840
So I picked Parquet format and I landed on, the design I landed on was I would be publishing

829
01:01:40,840 --> 01:01:50,880
a data manifest event of sorts that would, of course, it's an Austria event, which means

830
01:01:50,880 --> 01:01:56,560
the manifest is signed with the publisher, you know, with the data producer's identity

831
01:01:56,560 --> 01:02:02,920
and the data would be, these Parquet blobs would be exposed by a blossom.

832
01:02:02,920 --> 01:02:07,160
So yeah, this is where I'm at.

833
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:19,400
Basically, data in a bedrock format that is signed by a data producer's identity that

834
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:28,040
is exposed in a Nostr native way.

835
01:02:28,040 --> 01:02:34,360
That is, you know, in a fashion where somebody can provide your own lens on the data.

836
01:02:34,560 --> 01:02:39,560
You can take it and do something with it that the original data producer did not intend.

837
01:02:39,560 --> 01:02:43,120
And slice it up in your own way.

838
01:02:43,120 --> 01:02:54,480
There are some aspects to this that are interesting and deep and need to be unpacked.

839
01:02:54,480 --> 01:03:00,760
For example, the question of data provenance, you know.

840
01:03:00,760 --> 01:03:06,280
I have taken these Nostr events from somewhere at a point in time and so on.

841
01:03:06,280 --> 01:03:09,800
So how do you capture this?

842
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:12,560
So this is like, I need to think through this.

843
01:03:12,560 --> 01:03:18,880
And then maybe also the question of data lineage, it's called.

844
01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:25,400
So essentially, you know, I am producing and publishing a data set, but...

845
01:03:25,400 --> 01:03:26,400
Where did it come from?

846
01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:27,640
How did it evolve over time?

847
01:03:27,640 --> 01:03:28,640
Yeah, exactly.

848
01:03:28,640 --> 01:03:29,640
So this data set.

849
01:03:29,640 --> 01:03:30,640
What's the history?

850
01:03:31,520 --> 01:03:32,520
What was upstream of the data set?

851
01:03:32,520 --> 01:03:37,400
You know, you can think of this data as a direct cyclic graph, you know, a DAG.

852
01:03:37,400 --> 01:03:43,600
So each data output has inputs and kind of a transformation.

853
01:03:43,600 --> 01:03:45,200
What entity produced the data?

854
01:03:45,200 --> 01:03:46,200
What happened to it?

855
01:03:46,200 --> 01:03:53,680
So I think this is also worth thinking through, because like in the spirit of Nofter, yes,

856
01:03:53,680 --> 01:03:58,600
I am producing and publishing this data artifact, you know, it's signed with my key, but it's

857
01:03:58,600 --> 01:03:59,600
still kind of...

858
01:03:59,600 --> 01:04:04,960
It's still signed with my key, but it's sort of, you know, trust me, bro, this is loosely

859
01:04:04,960 --> 01:04:08,720
what I did with the data and maybe loosely where I got the data.

860
01:04:08,720 --> 01:04:14,240
So I think maybe, depending on the response I get, maybe it's worth pushing further in

861
01:04:14,240 --> 01:04:15,440
terms of the data lineage.

862
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:16,440
Okay.

863
01:04:16,440 --> 01:04:17,440
I see.

864
01:04:17,440 --> 01:04:21,600
This data set was produced with this exact transform from these upstream data sets and

865
01:04:21,600 --> 01:04:23,600
maybe publish the whole chain.

866
01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:24,600
Yeah.

867
01:04:24,600 --> 01:04:30,120
In which case you ultimately actually, if you push in that direction, you have to publish

868
01:04:30,120 --> 01:04:34,880
the kind of the raw events ultimately, you know, these are the ZapStore events that I

869
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:36,680
collected.

870
01:04:36,680 --> 01:04:39,840
And then there are some interesting questions actually, you know, is that a good thing or

871
01:04:39,840 --> 01:04:40,840
not?

872
01:04:40,840 --> 01:04:46,280
Because this gets into a question of bit rot, you know.

873
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:50,960
Some bit rot is good, but when you talk about kind of structured data that you want to take

874
01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:54,440
downstream into applications, bit rot, not so good.

875
01:04:55,280 --> 01:04:58,200
You want to have the whole chain, you know.

876
01:04:58,200 --> 01:05:00,240
What makes you say that some bit rot is good?

877
01:05:00,240 --> 01:05:01,720
When is bit rot good?

878
01:05:01,720 --> 01:05:05,440
I think social data, bit rot is good, you know.

879
01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:07,560
In the sense of just like forgetting?

880
01:05:07,560 --> 01:05:08,560
Yeah.

881
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:09,560
Yeah.

882
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:16,280
So for instance, I'm not sure if I want to draw it, I mean, it's obvious, but sometimes

883
01:05:16,280 --> 01:05:19,600
you question whether you should draw attention to it or not.

884
01:05:19,600 --> 01:05:24,520
But the history of your follows, somebody can capture this.

885
01:05:24,520 --> 01:05:31,200
You know, if I stand up or like some party stands up a data acquisition infrastructure

886
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:37,880
and just captures every mutation of the kind three events, they have the whole history,

887
01:05:37,880 --> 01:05:38,880
you know.

888
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:39,880
Yeah.

889
01:05:39,880 --> 01:05:48,000
So it's things like this, I think, maybe borderline where it's worth pausing at least for a moment.

890
01:05:48,400 --> 01:05:49,400
Is this a good thing?

891
01:05:49,400 --> 01:05:52,360
Like publishing some data, even though it's out there.

892
01:05:52,360 --> 01:05:58,000
But when you get like all the way upstream, this is maybe this kind of events.

893
01:05:58,000 --> 01:06:05,800
Because with what I'm proposing, you know, it's data is, these are large data sets that

894
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:12,880
are in a format that makes it possible to ingest and process just enormous amounts of

895
01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:13,880
data.

896
01:06:13,880 --> 01:06:14,880
Yeah.

897
01:06:14,880 --> 01:06:19,360
So to the extent that somebody is able to acquire data from a representative slice of

898
01:06:19,360 --> 01:06:22,080
the network or as much data as they're able to grab.

899
01:06:22,080 --> 01:06:23,080
Yeah.

900
01:06:23,080 --> 01:06:28,920
Somebody would be able to run some computation on it and get to something they're looking

901
01:06:28,920 --> 01:06:29,920
at.

902
01:06:29,920 --> 01:06:30,920
Yeah.

903
01:06:30,920 --> 01:06:31,920
Yeah.

904
01:06:31,920 --> 01:06:32,920
Make inferences based on it.

905
01:06:32,920 --> 01:06:33,920
Yeah.

906
01:06:33,920 --> 01:06:34,920
So there's that question.

907
01:06:34,920 --> 01:06:35,920
I think eventually it brushes up against this.

908
01:06:35,920 --> 01:06:41,600
But I think this is, I'm hopeful that it's, this doesn't surface in every domain.

909
01:06:41,600 --> 01:06:45,000
For example, I mentioned this app store is one of the domains that's kind of like, it's

910
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:52,880
a very specific domain and the data, you know, they're not capturing application usage data.

911
01:06:52,880 --> 01:06:53,880
It's nowhere.

912
01:06:53,880 --> 01:06:54,880
Yeah.

913
01:06:54,880 --> 01:07:00,380
It's not available anywhere that, you know, Gigi has these apps installed and he's using

914
01:07:00,380 --> 01:07:02,720
them on this cadence, whatever.

915
01:07:02,720 --> 01:07:04,480
That data is not available.

916
01:07:04,480 --> 01:07:07,840
But the app catalog is available, releases and so on.

917
01:07:07,840 --> 01:07:14,920
So I think it's okay for that data to go like all the way upstream to all the events

918
01:07:14,920 --> 01:07:16,480
that were collected at some point.

919
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:17,480
I see.

920
01:07:17,480 --> 01:07:18,480
I see.

921
01:07:18,480 --> 01:07:19,480
Okay.

922
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:20,480
Yeah.

923
01:07:20,480 --> 01:07:21,480
No, I think all that's very interesting.

924
01:07:21,480 --> 01:07:27,200
And we had some, after your demo, we had some good discussions about like, why are Nostr

925
01:07:27,200 --> 01:07:30,120
events structured in the way they are?

926
01:07:30,120 --> 01:07:33,120
What are some pitfalls that you might run into?

927
01:07:33,120 --> 01:07:37,240
And you also mentioned like exposing these datasets on Blossom servers.

928
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:41,760
And I think you yourself made this comment.

929
01:07:41,760 --> 01:07:46,920
Maybe you want to look into ContextVM and exposing it in a different way as well.

930
01:07:46,920 --> 01:07:55,540
So there is a lot of prior work that has been done by Jesus and also by Pete Wynn.

931
01:07:55,540 --> 01:08:00,680
And I think it's inspired by no solutions.

932
01:08:00,680 --> 01:08:01,840
There is the good stuff.

933
01:08:01,840 --> 01:08:04,160
It's also recorded dialogues.

934
01:08:04,160 --> 01:08:07,120
Great, great format.

935
01:08:07,120 --> 01:08:13,600
And they talk a lot about kind of, if you have a server that serves certain data, how

936
01:08:13,600 --> 01:08:18,840
do you expose it over Nostr without sending all the events over Nostr basically, like

937
01:08:18,840 --> 01:08:23,920
without getting all the data out from the database onto relays.

938
01:08:23,920 --> 01:08:28,360
And that's, you know, like, again, that's where ContextVM is also relevant and so on.

939
01:08:28,360 --> 01:08:34,280
And you can make these bridges, make kind of Nostr native bridges without porting everything

940
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:37,780
to Nostr, like directly, so to speak.

941
01:08:37,780 --> 01:08:43,080
And I think it's, you know, like every, you have to figure out what's the right tool for

942
01:08:43,080 --> 01:08:51,820
the job and kind of, you know, what trade-offs are you okay with and what also is actually

943
01:08:51,820 --> 01:08:56,920
workable in practice, because the things you mentioned with, if you have datasets that

944
01:08:56,920 --> 01:09:01,320
are like terabytes and terabytes in size, then you have to think about this stuff differently

945
01:09:01,320 --> 01:09:06,520
than it's just, you know, a couple of kilobytes that you send around that can be everywhere

946
01:09:06,520 --> 01:09:08,520
and so on.

947
01:09:08,520 --> 01:09:14,480
Like globally replicating terabytes and terabytes of datasets is not an easy task.

948
01:09:14,480 --> 01:09:21,000
Maybe not even the, I'm not sure if I want to host terabytes and terabytes of data I don't

949
01:09:21,000 --> 01:09:22,920
care about in my Boston servers.

950
01:09:22,920 --> 01:09:29,240
This is another aspect to unpack at some point, which is, okay, so maybe you make the

951
01:09:29,240 --> 01:09:38,320
data available as blossom blobs, but maybe you're not constraining yourself only to this

952
01:09:38,320 --> 01:09:40,320
method of distribution.

953
01:09:40,320 --> 01:09:43,000
Maybe some data you distribute through...

954
01:09:43,000 --> 01:09:48,280
Maybe you don't care what the storage provider is, basically, yeah.

955
01:09:48,280 --> 01:09:53,920
So maybe the right interface would be one abstraction layer.

956
01:09:53,920 --> 01:09:57,520
I'm not sure if it's above or below, but whether it's stored on the blossom or as a torrent

957
01:09:57,520 --> 01:10:02,960
or we mentioned Marty Malny's hash tree as well, which I think would work well for your

958
01:10:02,960 --> 01:10:09,400
use case, almost shouldn't matter, you know, and I think that's also historically with

959
01:10:09,400 --> 01:10:13,840
stuff gravitated to where you just, you have a storage provider and in the background,

960
01:10:13,840 --> 01:10:20,880
whether it's like S3 or like whatever else, it doesn't matter and yeah, it's interesting.

961
01:10:20,880 --> 01:10:22,720
It's an interesting problem space.

962
01:10:22,720 --> 01:10:26,080
There are many directions, so I'm kind of at the stage where there are many directions

963
01:10:26,080 --> 01:10:33,440
that I can push this into and I feel quite confident that I would get there, next step

964
01:10:33,440 --> 01:10:41,040
along every dimension so far, but what I'm trying to, I'm trying to validate this, instead

965
01:10:41,040 --> 01:10:45,920
I'm trying to validate this end-to-end, so just light this up kind of a tracer, a tracer

966
01:10:45,920 --> 01:10:54,720
bullet cell, okay, find somebody who is interested and enough, who has a burning need to actually

967
01:10:54,720 --> 01:10:59,680
consume some data that somebody may be producing through this method.

968
01:10:59,680 --> 01:11:08,040
So I, and I think once you actually light things up end-to-end, you flesh out, it just

969
01:11:08,040 --> 01:11:13,120
becomes clear, it becomes less theoretical and more concrete, the concerns come into

970
01:11:13,120 --> 01:11:14,840
focus that you may not have.

971
01:11:14,840 --> 01:11:21,080
No, that's always a good approach, get a real user, get really, get at least one real user,

972
01:11:21,080 --> 01:11:26,480
even if it's yourself, in the best case, get multiple users that are actually real, actually

973
01:11:26,480 --> 01:11:33,080
using your stuff, that have real needs and serve those needs and then iterate from there.

974
01:11:33,080 --> 01:11:37,560
So yeah, no, I think it's a good approach.

975
01:11:37,560 --> 01:11:41,600
But what are some things on Friday that you liked?

976
01:11:41,600 --> 01:11:47,760
You mentioned one already, but we saw 21 demos, so, which is awesome that we managed to land

977
01:11:47,760 --> 01:11:51,640
on 21, by the way, just kind of as a side note, that's the number we're aiming for,

978
01:11:51,640 --> 01:11:53,000
we managed this time.

979
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:57,560
So we saw 21 demos, what's, what's some of the things that stood out to you?

980
01:11:57,560 --> 01:12:00,280
Again, difficult to pick, but.

981
01:12:00,280 --> 01:12:03,600
Yeah, yeah, you mentioned you don't want to pick favorites, but I'm not, I'm not asking

982
01:12:03,600 --> 01:12:07,520
you for favorites, just kind of what, what is something that resonated?

983
01:12:07,520 --> 01:12:13,400
I think the, the globe, the FIPS globe, I think it was Thomas demoed this.

984
01:12:13,400 --> 01:12:14,400
Yeah.

985
01:12:14,400 --> 01:12:21,640
This was very well done, and also, I mean, it showed the extent to which the FIPS network

986
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:22,640
has propagated.

987
01:12:22,640 --> 01:12:23,640
Yeah.

988
01:12:23,640 --> 01:12:25,400
So that was, that was good.

989
01:12:25,400 --> 01:12:33,960
I was also, what I liked was that some folks who use the opportunity to just like play

990
01:12:33,960 --> 01:12:36,520
with things, play around, just have a little fun.

991
01:12:36,520 --> 01:12:46,040
So we had a demo by the FLX, Felix, Felix, the, you know, 600 billions, gentlemen, and

992
01:12:46,040 --> 01:12:54,280
yeah, he has the, I don't know, NFTs, trading cards, trading cards, trading cards, and it

993
01:12:54,280 --> 01:12:59,080
was done beautifully, tastefully, and it's like a lighthearted project, but obviously

994
01:12:59,080 --> 01:13:08,440
a lot of work went into this and it's, I think it's a, I think it's a, it's good to mix things

995
01:13:08,440 --> 01:13:09,440
up like this.

996
01:13:09,440 --> 01:13:11,240
So not everything is serious.

997
01:13:11,240 --> 01:13:17,800
Some things are through play and this is actually maybe one way that you stumble, stumble, stumble

998
01:13:17,800 --> 01:13:18,800
on something.

999
01:13:18,800 --> 01:13:19,800
Oh, absolutely.

1000
01:13:19,800 --> 01:13:20,800
Yeah.

1001
01:13:20,800 --> 01:13:27,960
G also showed something similar, Nostragochis, I don't remember the name, but that was a,

1002
01:13:27,960 --> 01:13:28,960
that was compelling.

1003
01:13:28,960 --> 01:13:34,000
I was really impressed by what the Archipelago guys are doing.

1004
01:13:34,000 --> 01:13:35,000
Yeah.

1005
01:13:35,000 --> 01:13:36,440
It is a very impressive project.

1006
01:13:36,440 --> 01:13:37,440
It's very far along.

1007
01:13:37,440 --> 01:13:38,440
Yeah.

1008
01:13:38,440 --> 01:13:39,440
It's very, very polished already.

1009
01:13:39,440 --> 01:13:40,440
Yeah.

1010
01:13:40,440 --> 01:13:41,440
Yeah.

1011
01:13:41,440 --> 01:13:58,200
But overall, it's a, I think it's, it's just very clear that we have, it's a, we have a

1012
01:13:58,200 --> 01:14:05,520
lot of capability and creativity and diversity packed into, into a cohort.

1013
01:14:05,520 --> 01:14:12,160
So this is a, to your earlier question, you know, did it kind of, is it the way I imagined

1014
01:14:12,160 --> 01:14:13,160
it?

1015
01:14:13,160 --> 01:14:20,280
And it's, and it very much is, you know, it was something that was, that came through,

1016
01:14:20,280 --> 01:14:28,920
through the previous dialogues on no solutions was just kind of the caliber and the level

1017
01:14:28,920 --> 01:14:32,120
of agency of the people that are part of the group.

1018
01:14:32,120 --> 01:14:33,120
Yeah.

1019
01:14:33,520 --> 01:14:36,640
It turns out that you actually really can just do things.

1020
01:14:36,640 --> 01:14:37,640
Yeah.

1021
01:14:37,640 --> 01:14:38,640
You can just put stuff.

1022
01:14:38,640 --> 01:14:48,040
I am, yeah, very grateful that the stars aligned, that I could be here as part of this group,

1023
01:14:48,040 --> 01:14:52,040
you know, in this place, in this particular moment in time.

1024
01:14:52,040 --> 01:14:53,040
Awesome.

1025
01:14:53,040 --> 01:14:54,040
Awesome.

1026
01:14:54,040 --> 01:14:55,040
Yeah.

1027
01:14:55,040 --> 01:14:56,440
I mean, I'm, I'm very glad it worked out.

1028
01:14:56,440 --> 01:15:00,040
I'm very glad you managed to make it.

1029
01:15:00,011 --> 01:15:06,091
I'm very glad you're here and I can just echo what you said, you know, like I think it's

1030
01:15:06,091 --> 01:15:16,171
an amazing group of people again and in terms of being too early to tell, usually what happens

1031
01:15:16,171 --> 01:15:24,291
is like you said, lots of ideas, lots of stimuli in the beginning and then the dust settles

1032
01:15:24,291 --> 01:15:30,731
a little bit in week two and week three and usually what happens is some idea or some

1033
01:15:30,731 --> 01:15:40,811
combination of ideas catches fire and after the dust has settled, like the real kind of

1034
01:15:40,811 --> 01:15:46,891
the real building starts. So usually after two, end of week two, beginning of week three,

1035
01:15:46,891 --> 01:15:51,051
really interesting things usually tend to emerge because it's always like everything

1036
01:15:51,051 --> 01:15:57,691
is a remix, right? Right. And you take parts of one project or one idea and marry it with

1037
01:15:57,691 --> 01:16:02,811
the thing you always had in your head and then something new pops up. So that's usually

1038
01:16:02,811 --> 01:16:17,131
how it works. And also, I knew, you know, I was trying to go as fast as I can, given

1039
01:16:17,131 --> 01:16:23,531
my interest and just kind of moving at the limit of just the amount of time that's available

1040
01:16:23,531 --> 01:16:32,451
to try to fill the gaps that I have in my Nostr knowledge because the frontier, there

1041
01:16:32,451 --> 01:16:38,931
are many things at the frontier and the frontier changes quite quickly. So there were a few

1042
01:16:38,931 --> 01:16:47,451
things like FIPS, for example, I knew this is profound and this has momentum and excitement

1043
01:16:47,451 --> 01:16:59,051
and it's, you know, it's very clear that this needs to exist and so on. But I also knew

1044
01:16:59,051 --> 01:17:03,171
that I have other gaps that I need to fill ahead of this. I wanted to prepare. I also

1045
01:17:03,171 --> 01:17:09,171
knew, you know, this would be a big theme here. Jonathan would be here. Others are here.

1046
01:17:09,171 --> 01:17:16,091
So this is my chance to actually immerse myself in an area I haven't had a chance to touch

1047
01:17:16,091 --> 01:17:23,851
yet. So I will try to be mindful of how I balance my time. So even though it seems like

1048
01:17:23,851 --> 01:17:29,411
six weeks is a good chunk of time, but I'll try to balance things in a way where it's

1049
01:17:29,411 --> 01:17:35,211
not just the stuff that I came here with, you know, in my head already kind of preconceived

1050
01:17:35,211 --> 01:17:40,611
or kind of the itch, the pre-existing itch, but also the things that I haven't touched

1051
01:17:40,611 --> 01:17:47,651
yet that I'm exposed to here. So I'll try to balance this. Yeah, no, I like how you're

1052
01:17:47,651 --> 01:17:56,531
approaching it, you know, with some thought and some planning, some strategy, because

1053
01:17:56,531 --> 01:18:02,011
yeah, I mean, six weeks, it's a lot to commit to. But once you're actually here, the time

1054
01:18:02,011 --> 01:18:09,691
goes by really fast. And always at the end of every cohort, we ask people kind of for

1055
01:18:09,691 --> 01:18:14,211
feedback and what would they do different, like, you know, what was good, what was bad

1056
01:18:14,211 --> 01:18:19,971
and so on. And consistently we get, it was too short. And it doesn't matter how long

1057
01:18:19,971 --> 01:18:23,411
we make it, you know, like the first course were like eight weeks and we still got like,

1058
01:18:23,411 --> 01:18:32,131
it was too short. But you know, like we can't do constant cohorts all the time. So what

1059
01:18:32,131 --> 01:18:39,011
we landed on now with six weeks is, I think, pretty perfect. And it also has to end, you

1060
01:18:39,011 --> 01:18:47,091
know, like you mentioned the intensity and so on. You can't stomach it for a prolonged

1061
01:18:47,091 --> 01:18:52,051
amount of time. You need the decompression time, you need the alone time. Everyone needs

1062
01:18:52,051 --> 01:19:01,091
to go back into their bunker, you know, and just have some solitude and again, like compost

1063
01:19:01,091 --> 01:19:06,611
all the thoughts and the inputs and so on. And also regenerate in some sense. And then

1064
01:19:06,611 --> 01:19:13,491
you can start again fresh. Like you can't be in full on cohort mode all the time. It

1065
01:19:13,491 --> 01:19:14,491
would destroy you.

1066
01:19:14,491 --> 01:19:20,971
Yeah, you need a pause where, a restorative pause where you get to the point where it

1067
01:19:20,971 --> 01:19:27,611
doesn't feel like you're pushing uphill. But you again start feeling the pull. Okay,

1068
01:19:27,611 --> 01:19:32,891
this thing is pulling. I'm just gonna like, I'm just gonna see what's going on here.

1069
01:19:32,891 --> 01:19:38,251
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you need this. Again, just like in nature, you need these cycles,

1070
01:19:38,251 --> 01:19:44,091
you know, there is a winter exists for a reason and so on. And then spring comes again. And

1071
01:19:44,091 --> 01:19:48,411
you know, let winter be winter, let spring be spring. Those kinds of things. Give me

1072
01:19:48,411 --> 01:19:56,891
just one second. I'll need to I'll need some water. I'm on. I'm at my limit. When it comes

1073
01:19:56,891 --> 01:20:03,771
to hydration. But I'm, I'm, I'm glad that I can be outside and walking and so on like

1074
01:20:03,771 --> 01:20:14,331
hooray for modern medicine. Hooray for painkillers. Yeah, fantastic. No, like, I'm glad that stuff

1075
01:20:14,331 --> 01:20:20,651
makes sense to you. I'm always worried about because there is definitely an iterative in

1076
01:20:20,651 --> 01:20:24,411
group dynamic in sovereign engineering. And that's also one thing that actually

1077
01:20:25,771 --> 01:20:30,171
surprises me, and keeps surprising me. People keep coming back.

1078
01:20:32,091 --> 01:20:36,651
Let's switch places again, because of the mics. And because when we started, I was like,

1079
01:20:36,651 --> 01:20:42,571
that's such a crazy idea. And it's so strenuous and taxing and kind of out there. And there's,

1080
01:20:42,571 --> 01:20:47,131
there's like, basically no payoff except work with cool people build cool, cool shit, you know,

1081
01:20:47,131 --> 01:20:51,531
like no one, everyone loses money on sovereign engineering. That's just how it's set up to be.

1082
01:20:52,091 --> 01:20:58,491
And, and still people come back, like we have, we have many repeat participants with people

1083
01:20:58,491 --> 01:21:04,411
like Jesus who participated in every every cohort so far. And, and that that also tells me that

1084
01:21:05,131 --> 01:21:10,651
there is a need for such a program, like you mentioned, the high bandwidth interaction with

1085
01:21:10,731 --> 01:21:16,491
high quality people, and just hashing things out together and having, yeah, lots of

1086
01:21:16,491 --> 01:21:22,571
dialogos around those problems we're trying to solve. And yeah, I'm just glad it's working. And

1087
01:21:22,571 --> 01:21:28,411
I'm glad that we are, you know, like people like you are discovering it, bumping into it and

1088
01:21:28,411 --> 01:21:34,571
actually making the plunge to participate. So yeah, thank you for that. That's fantastic.

1089
01:21:34,571 --> 01:21:42,251
No, thank you. Very grateful that this all comes together. And that this exists to begin with,

1090
01:21:42,251 --> 01:21:47,211
that this is not to be. Yeah, that's why doing it needs to exist. And it's

1091
01:21:49,211 --> 01:21:55,371
things don't crystallize by accident. And it's, yeah, it's specific individuals also.

1092
01:21:55,371 --> 01:22:00,971
So if any OG, if any OG whales are listening, we're looking for sponsors, we're looking for,

1093
01:22:00,971 --> 01:22:07,291
you know, large scale philanthropists to sponsor Sovereign Engineering so they can continue to

1094
01:22:07,291 --> 01:22:13,131
exist. We want to make patronage great again. All the great artworks in the past

1095
01:22:14,411 --> 01:22:23,451
were made possible by patrons. So yeah, we want to continue with the program for as long as we can.

1096
01:22:23,451 --> 01:22:27,931
And hopefully also build it out in some way, shape or form. We discussed this briefly,

1097
01:22:28,411 --> 01:22:35,931
that Madeira is fantastic. I love doing the cohorts here because it's just so conducive

1098
01:22:35,931 --> 01:22:41,851
to everything we want to do. Just like, you know, like the walk we just took along the coastline,

1099
01:22:41,851 --> 01:22:46,251
it's very beautiful. It's very kind of, it gets you in a different frame of mind. And so you're

1100
01:22:46,251 --> 01:22:52,251
not sitting in a room drawing on whiteboards and so on. And yeah, we've been thinking about

1101
01:22:53,051 --> 01:22:58,971
kind of branching out potentially geographically as well. You mentioned Hong Kong, or you mentioned

1102
01:22:58,971 --> 01:23:07,211
also mainland China going to like a hardware heavy place, somewhere where you can just,

1103
01:23:07,211 --> 01:23:14,411
you know, like send a file to whatever, you know, a fab or something, and you have like an

1104
01:23:14,411 --> 01:23:19,051
integrated circuit, like three days later. No joke, no. Same day, you can get things same day.

1105
01:23:19,051 --> 01:23:24,811
Same day. The European mind cannot comprehend. So that would be fun too.

1106
01:23:24,811 --> 01:23:30,411
And you will actually, this is like maybe one thing to touch on. There's a lot of vilification

1107
01:23:30,411 --> 01:23:36,731
that goes on, especially kind of in the States. They're obviously dialing things up, turning the

1108
01:23:36,731 --> 01:23:42,971
level of heat up against China. And you know, I'm based in that part of the world and I have

1109
01:23:42,971 --> 01:23:49,211
direct experience with people, including people from the mainland, including as,

1110
01:23:50,891 --> 01:23:55,771
you know, I get to meet the nerds and I see how people work. And it's,

1111
01:23:58,811 --> 01:24:02,331
there's a lot of hardworking people along many dimensions.

1112
01:24:07,611 --> 01:24:10,651
So not everyone is a villain just because they're Chinese.

1113
01:24:11,291 --> 01:24:17,691
So I think this is kind of, it's a, that's a trap, clearly.

1114
01:24:20,651 --> 01:24:24,731
Yeah, unfortunately, the propaganda is still working to some degree, but I feel like the

1115
01:24:25,451 --> 01:24:32,251
propaganda machinery is also breaking down to some degree, like one side effect of the

1116
01:24:32,251 --> 01:24:35,771
internet and social media is like the hyper fragmentation of everything and so on. I mean,

1117
01:24:35,851 --> 01:24:42,811
it's different forms of propaganda now, but it's, you know, like, I don't know. I feel like,

1118
01:24:42,811 --> 01:24:47,771
I feel like people that are internet native and grew up on the internet and so on,

1119
01:24:47,771 --> 01:24:53,691
they understand that the regular people are just regular people. Doesn't matter where they come

1120
01:24:53,691 --> 01:24:58,971
from. You know, like it's, it doesn't matter if you're Russian or China or from the US or

1121
01:24:58,971 --> 01:25:03,211
whatever. It's all just people like just by playing computer games, you'll know that it's all just

1122
01:25:03,211 --> 01:25:08,491
the same kind of people. Government structures might be different and, you know, economic

1123
01:25:08,491 --> 01:25:13,291
situations might be different and so on, but people are people usually. And most people are good,

1124
01:25:13,291 --> 01:25:17,771
like that's otherwise the world wouldn't work. Yeah. Once you have a direct experience of

1125
01:25:19,131 --> 01:25:24,171
individuals, you know, specific individuals in the group that may be otherwise rolled up to you

1126
01:25:24,171 --> 01:25:30,491
through media or whatever, this, it just, that shatters the image very quickly. Yeah. Yeah.

1127
01:25:31,131 --> 01:25:37,051
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. I'm all out of steam. Any last words from your side?

1128
01:25:37,051 --> 01:25:42,171
Anything you want to touch on? Any wisdom you maybe want to pass on to the younglings

1129
01:25:42,171 --> 01:25:47,531
that aren't listening? I think this is a bit circular, but no solutions, do the homework.

1130
01:25:48,411 --> 01:25:55,131
Every single episode I would highly recommend. This is, I don't know of a better way to

1131
01:25:55,131 --> 01:26:01,931
immerse yourself and try to understand the inherent tension, you know, the trade-offs

1132
01:26:01,931 --> 01:26:08,011
that are involved. I think this is, otherwise it's much easier to fall into traps,

1133
01:26:09,291 --> 01:26:15,931
common traps that are based on sort of pre-existing conceptions of how things work

1134
01:26:15,931 --> 01:26:23,051
on the internet. And then I think, yeah, I would like to just encourage people to,

1135
01:26:23,931 --> 01:26:30,251
if they're on the fence, just fucking go for it. You know, I had a very distinct

1136
01:26:31,611 --> 01:26:38,491
decision fork at some point, you know, I spent several months being immersed in Nostr stuff,

1137
01:26:38,491 --> 01:26:44,171
hands-on, on my own. And I had a choice to make, you know, do I just continue in that mode or

1138
01:26:45,291 --> 01:26:51,451
do I just go all the way? And I chose to go all the way and arrange everything

1139
01:26:52,411 --> 01:26:59,131
in the universe around me to be able to be here now. And I'm thoroughly enjoying this.

1140
01:26:59,131 --> 01:27:03,211
And this is just the beginning. Awesome. Awesome. I love it. I love it. I want to echo that. Always

1141
01:27:03,211 --> 01:27:06,811
go all the way. You have nothing to lose. We're all going to die anyway. Might as well go all the

1142
01:27:06,811 --> 01:27:14,651
way. Thanks so much. Thank you. That was a great joy. And now same dance as always. Let's hope

1143
01:27:14,651 --> 01:27:19,131
the recording and everything worked because I hate nothing more than having to manually

1144
01:27:19,131 --> 01:27:24,811
recover stuff. This is the part that makes my heart sink every time I'm listening to it.

1145
01:27:24,811 --> 01:27:28,571
No, that looks good. That looks good. For a fraction of a second, it's like, oh my god,

1146
01:27:28,571 --> 01:27:32,651
did you record this? But then, of course, it's like, okay, but I'm listening to it.

1147
01:27:32,651 --> 01:27:38,971
We have backups. We have backups. Momentary. We have backups and we have backups of backups.

1148
01:27:38,971 --> 01:27:43,531
No recording was ever lost. It's just about manual labor. And I want to minimize manual

1149
01:27:43,531 --> 01:27:46,891
labor. So the clankers will do the rest. All right. Awesome.