Sovereign Computing with Matt Hill from Start9 - FFS #99

0:00 What are the actual problems with cloud computing? number one is invasion of privacy. number two is censorship. number three is outright cost. And number four is one that most people never think about, the inherent risk of honeypotting your data along with everyone else's We should be fighting on the education front, the cultural front, even the nutritional and health front. It's like, these are all valid fronts and each person should fight on whatever front they are best suited to do so. I, because of my, personality and tendencies and skill sets, fight on the technology front.

1:40 Matt, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yeah, hi Matt, uh, you, you work for Start9, or you started Start9, I guess, Co started, and co started, yeah, yeah, Yeah. I continue to overwork there, we'll call it. so, so this is a company where, uh, we're both very interested in, um, and the, um, the concepts there, uh, but first, um, a little Something about you. Maybe could you, could you give us the TLDR on, uh, Matt Hill, who you are and, uh, why you started start nine or CoStar start nine? who are you is always the hardest question I've ever had to answer because, you know, where do you start with something like that?

2:22 Um, so I'm a, I'm a technologist, sort of by spirit, uh, I'm a developer, a software developer by trade. I am a huge advocate for, um, libertarian philosophy, On the extreme end of that, crypto anarchist, capitalist extreme, uh, end of the philosophic spectrum, and, uh, I tried to use my, uh, My interests and skills in technology and coding to try to implement products and technologies that change incentives in order to bring about the kind of society that I want to see and live in and want for my children as well.

3:04 I'm also a father of two little girls, and we're hoping for more. And so my wife and I are You know, doing this journey together and trying to bring children into a better world that we help partially create. So I know that sounds a little fluffy, but it is very true in what I do. And, um, yeah, that's the high level about me. That sounds fantastic. It's, uh, what we do too, I guess, but maybe, maybe Our products are, uh, a little different. We do books and podcasts and stuff, uh, which is different from computers. side, which is something I admire and, you know, try to help with in any way that I can, uh, to those who do it well, but it's not.

3:46 Fully what I do. Yeah, and right back at you. We're impressed with whatever actual technical people can do. What the actual magicians behind things like, uh, magical internet money are doing behind the scenes. So, uh, so tell us like, um, where to start this. Um, I'm thinking what is the most common misconception about cloud computing that people have? Why, what, what's wrong today? And, uh, what, what problems need to be fixed? I mean, I, I love the, the sort of meme phrase, the cloud is just somebody else's computer.

4:26 Uh, I'm very happy that that phrase is becoming more widely, uh, propagated and understood. so the biggest misconception about the cloud is that it is some sort of magical ephemeral place where data goes to, to live safely. Um, the cloud is a computer. In somebody's building or warehouse, um, that is owned and operated, uh, and fully controlled by somebody else. And so when you, transact through, and I don't just mean monetary transactions. I mean, when you perform any sort of information transaction, through a cloud or store data on a cloud, process information through a cloud, uh, you are just temporarily, renting, leasing.

5:14 Uh, somebody else's computer to do those things. And so once you realize that, you go, well, why are they doing that? Why are they giving me access to their computer to do my computing needs? Well, the answer is they're getting quite a bit out of it, probably a lot more than you think. and, um, there are inherent, risks involved in, in that transaction, that most people are unaware of. So, you know, we, we very much view, uh, cloud computing as it exists today, namely, people all over the world transacting through processing data on, storing data on, third party servers that are owned by an increasingly small number of, of companies, uh, as a, as a viable threat To human society, we, we think that this is not some trivial, thing that should be overlooked or dismissed as an inconvenience or even, um, a less cost effective way to do things.

6:17 We believe that there are serious dangers that have been so thoroughly swept under the rug and, and perpetuated for so long that they are becoming, sort of structural in nature to these risks. that they are kind of. their, their failure, the failure of cloud computing in any meaningful way would, would mean sort of have disastrous consequences for society. So, so let me be more concrete about this. What are the actual problems with cloud computing? Um, number one is this idea of, uh, invasion of privacy. That cloud computing, um, inherently is non private, un private.

6:58 Uh, because you're using somebody else's computer. When you do that, they have. A view of what you're doing, even if there's encryption, they have an enormous amount of insight into your activities, whether that's messaging or data or whatever it is, um, through metadata analysis, through network graphing, and in most cases, it's not encrypted anyway, and so they're just reading your raw data and messages. Now, do you matter? A lot of people take this concern, invasion of privacy, and they're just like, well, I don't care. If Google reads my emails or Dropbox can see my files, because I have nothing to hide and I'm just nobody and they don't care.

7:38 And there's some validity to that. Um, but those people are often kind of missing the point, which is that you don't know what tomorrow holds. You have no idea, if you have something to hide or not. You might not have something to hide today because the things that you're doing today are perfectly acceptable, legal, uh, and commonplace, but if tomorrow, uh, you and your activities of yesterday are somehow stigmatized or made illegal, uh, all that data remains. So the things that you did in the past. can be held against you. furthermore, that information is used, uh, even if not to sort of spy on you in any sort of like, you know, deep state kind of authoritarian way.

8:22 That data is absolutely used to perform kind of like customer analytics on you and, and, and garner a profile. of you and your purchasing habits and your lifestyle so that that can be sold to advertisers and you can then be kind of manipulated, you know, because you've exposed so much about yourself unwittingly to so many different parties and increasingly A. I. s and that is where it can get even really weird is because they might misuse this information and come to some conclusion about you that a human might not have and Who knows what the consequences of this can be. So it's more of a better safe than sorry type of approach when it comes to privacy.

9:03 It's like private by default is good. And then when you choose to make something public under your own kind of volition, and you know what the, what the trade offs are, then you can choose to do that. But as it stands today, all of cloud computing is actually public by default, and you have to go to extreme measures to make things private, which is the opposite of how it should be, uh, for just a general, you know, approach. So that's number one. Uh, number two is censorship. So when you, when you and everyone else is using other people's computers, For your computing needs, those people decide what gets through, what doesn't get through, what is allowed, what is visible, what is invisible.

9:44 And I'm not just talking about the like first thing that comes to people's minds when you say censorship, which is this person's been like silenced, de platformed. That's actually not what I mean. That's extremely rare. What I'm talking about is. The benign kind of terms and conditions that everyone agrees to, right, which is like, I'm going to use your computer, you present me with terms and conditions that are 80 pages long and I'm never going to read, and I click OK. And if suddenly I do anything that violates any of those terms and conditions, you can just cut me off from the service, cut me off from my data. And this could have real consequences for me, my family, or my business. And so basically you're agreeing, right, somebody else's house, their rules, their house, their rules.

10:25 So if you're using somebody else's server, it's on their terms and you are agreeing to those terms blindly in most cases. And so therefore don't have any assurance that those services will continue to be provided for you. So there's risk. Number two is algorithmic Amplification and deamplification of messaging. That is how censorship happens in the modern world. It is extremely rare for somebody to be actually black bag silenced because that's too obvious. It's too overt. People notice that, but nobody notices algorithmic amplification. For example, if there's some narrative going around that is distasteful to the incumbent powers of the state, they don't need to silence it.

11:11 They just need to drown it out with something much louder, right, so they just amplify some other piece of narrative or information so that everyone's talking about that and nobody notices the thing that's really important, combined with algorithmic deamplification of the important thing Most people will never even see it, and nobody will know that it had been censored, either, because there was no overt deletion. So that's number two. Uh, number three is outright cost. When you use somebody else's computer for your computing needs is going to be more expensive than using your own computer for your computing needs, in the same reason that going out to a restaurant is more expensive than cooking your own meal, because you are outsourcing The effort and the capital necessary to produce that meal.

12:02 So when you do things yourself, it is cheaper. Sometimes it's harder, yes, but it is almost always cheaper than paying somebody else to do something for you. costs that these cloud providers and sats, software as a service providers, these are all your apps that run on your phones, the costs that they are incurring are rising very rapidly. In large part due to, uh, more extreme regulations, more extreme data practice, uh, you know, data privacy, regulations that are being imposed upon them, and their own just costs of servers and electricity and hiring employees and, you know, And as their costs rise, those costs get passed along to the consumer.

12:45 So this is not something that's getting cheaper over time. It's something that's getting more expensive and getting there very quickly, right? If you've noticed in modern years, the free tiers of SaaS products, the like, you know, entry level free tiers are getting smaller and smaller and smaller and less featureful and the paid tiers are getting more common and steeper. Part of that is because these companies are less able to monetize. data than they were 10 years ago, before all the consumers started, um, you know, uh, speaking up and demanding data privacy, which then causes politicians to step into the spotlight and force companies to, you know, listen to the demands of consumers and do the data privacy.

13:28 Well, in the process, what has happened is companies are no longer able to mine and monetize your data to the same extent that they could before. And so they're leaning more and more. And so expect those costs to continue to rise, as data privacy practices, uh, also continue to become more extreme. That's number three. Uh, and number four is one that most people never think about, which is the inherent risk of honeypotting your data along with everyone else's. This has nothing to do with surveillance or privacy or costs. It's simply, inherent in, you know, my data is worthless on its own, and your data is worthless on its own.

14:15 But if we all put our data together into a giant bank, now that data in aggregate is very valuable. And therefore, makes that bank, or data honeypot, a target. And it's very, very hard to secure a server. right, from an application security standpoint, an encryption standpoint, it's fairly easy to secure a server. From an operational security standpoint, and a personnel standpoint, it's almost impossible. In fact, it is impossible, given the value of the server. If the server is valuable enough, eventually it will be breached, because there's always Insiders that have access to the server.

14:56 They must, otherwise it's worthless data if nobody has access to it. So somebody has access to it, and getting to it is simply a matter of compromising that person, which can be done simply through creative social engineering, blackmail, bribery, threats, you name it. and so I say any server worth hacking will eventually be hacked. That server will have your data on it, even though you were not the target, and your data will be leaked, even though, that wasn't the intent of the hackers. They didn't even know who you were. You're just collateral damage in a cyber war that you didn't know existed, or that you never opted into. Um, and so, if you were in a city under siege, and that city was being, you know, attacked, you'd probably leave.

15:39 Um, and so if Google servers are under siege and being attacked on a daily basis, which they are, you should probably leave. You should probably get your stuff off of that server before it gets breached and you get a ransomware email. that says, hey, we have all of your photos. we also have all of your contacts. We also have all of the locations you visit, and we're going to leak the photos to everyone you don't want us to unless you send us Bitcoin to this address. Like I expect this to actually become a commonplace thing in the next 10 years. stuff, but it's certainly something that people should think of. A few things come to mind, like the first thing about, you know, you have nothing to hide now, but you might have something to hide in the future.

16:24 What you do now might have different legal consequences in the future. That's very much in line with libertarian ideas about You know, not giving, politicians emergency powers and stuff like this because you don't know who the next, president is, or who the next prime minister is. The dictator for life of Kanada Stan is currently doing some of these things, yes. yeah, yeah, Kanada stan is experiencing that right now, yeah. so regardless of what you think about The current policies, like, if you give politicians too much power, someone from the opposite side may misuse it in the future, so that's The way to stop it is, of course, as you say, to just not give them, give them the data, give them the, give them something to, to wield.

17:13 the second thing that comes to mind with the terms and condition is the, have you seen the South Park episode, Human Centipede? Oh yeah. Yeah. South Park always nails it, right? Yeah, that's a perfect metaphor for what may or may not happen if you don't read the terms and conditions before you sign something. And yeah, there were other stuff. I mean, I like this fourth point a lot about the honeypot, because I really think it's something that people don't think about. And how much does encryption, like save you from, from that kind of. Blackmail scenario like if you're all your data is encrypted when it goes up to the server, it's kind of hard to sell it to someone else.

17:58 Right. It helps a lot. Um, as I mentioned, there are still sort of Metadata that gets through, right? So even if you're using an end to end encrypted messenger like Signal, for example, Signal still knows a lot about you. They still know who you're talking to, when you're talking to them, how long the messages that you type are, right? And some inference can be made off of that. For example, if you have a quick back and forth message with somebody, And then you get in your car and drive somewhere, you can infer through those messages that you were arranging a meetup with someone, right? So, definitely not as bad as if it's a honeypot of unencrypted data, but it's still not ideal, and also, almost nothing is encrypted.

18:42 At rest. Almost nothing, right? There's very, very few cloud or SaaS products in the world where your data is actually sitting on a server encrypted in such a way that you are the only person that can decrypt it. It's almost non existent. What about like encryption models where you can't see the length of messages like SHA 256 it always. Turns not enough of an expert. Well, okay, actually, I'll answer that one. That's not, SHA 256 isn't encryption, it's a hash, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But , you know, uh, there, there are encryption models that, that put out the, the same length of date digits, regardless of what en encrypts.

19:24 No, that's a hash. That's a hash. That's not, that's not the same thing as encryption. So, so encryption, there's, there's two types of encryption. There's public private key encryption, and Bitcoin uses that. And, uh, well, it's, it's used almost everywhere. On the internet, but, but, but that's, and then, and then there's so called symmetrical encryption, and that's a lot easier to do, and, and so this symmetrical encryption is what almost every kind of, um, say, data on a hard drive or data on the cloud or something is going to be encrypted with that, and then the public key cryptography is used for digital signatures and, and other related things, order for, um, all of your messages on Signal, for example, to appear to be the same length, Your client would have to be, sort of coming up with an assumed maximum length of a message that you can send, and then just filling all your other messages with gibberish past some sort of like identifier byte, which would be a massive waste of space.

20:23 And nobody would do. Like, Signal wouldn't do that. They'd just be intentionally storing junk on their servers, and maybe they would do it, but they don't. And, um, yeah, I mean, again, it's not a hash, as Luke said. It is the amount of bytes of encrypted data will correlate to the amount of unencrypted bytes of data that produced it. sorry, putting on my, putting on my cyber hat, man, I, that's nice. I mean, uh, the, the notion of a hash just, uh, popped in as a brain fart here, uh, because of like the, the, the, the thing you said about knowing the length of messages. Anyway, so, point is that it's not encrypted. Almost nothing is encrypted because if it were, right, let's say that you were using some SaaS or cloud provider where everything was encrypted, encrypted client side and sent to the server and stored that way, that would mean that if their servers ever rebooted, right, or you ever logged out or whatever, that that data is completely garbage and useless.

21:26 And, um, they don't do that. I think iCloud might have some kind of opt in encryption capabilities now, but your assumption, unless you are thoroughly proven otherwise, should be that every piece of data you store on any cloud server is completely unencrypted. At least for you, they might store it encrypted using their own keys, so that if a third party got physical access to the server, they wouldn't They might not get something, but they have access, which means somebody at the company has access, which means if that person is compromised, so does the attacker. So it's like encryption only matters if it's your encryption, if it's done client side.

22:08 And I'm telling you, that's extremely rare. It's almost non existent. yeah. Um, so. If we pretend that we're not libertarians for a while here and we, we, uh, give these government regulations the benefits of, the benefit of the does the, uh, this interference and, and, uh, you, you, you talked about tiers, so, uh, the, the 8 blue check on Twitter, for instance, uh, should the consumer assume that, uh, Their data is more private or more secure because they're not as much of the product since they're paying for the product.

22:51 Assuming the answer no here, but anyway. Um, definitely not more secure. Um, you know, companies might have policies again, according to their terms and conditions that are like, if you pay us, we won't. Mine more of your data and sell it to advertisers. I'm actually not aware of any companies that say that. Usually what they say is, we won't show you advertisements. Right, they say like, your experience in X won't be filled with ads, they never said we won't collect your data and sell it to advertisers so that they can show it to you on Google. Okay, so you may to produce a better user experience, not better data protection.

23:36 some more money. Yes, yeah, what they're saying is that we're going to annoy you. Until you give us money and then we'll stop annoying you. But the way that they collect and analyze your data hasn't changed a drop and they've never claimed that it would. Yeah, so you're still part of the human centipede. It's just that you don't know that you're part Just is expresses itself differently. There's different consequences, but yeah, I mean, you use somebody else's computer, it's their house, it's their rules. You don't have a lot of say. To what extent does Nostr fix this? Like, um, are you a great believer in Nostr? And like, uh, how, how much, how much of these problems does a thing like Nostr fix?

24:22 That's a great question. Nostr is a great example. A decentralized network, in this case, one that is optimized for micro blogging, right? So, sharing, sharing news and consuming news. Nostr can be used, uh, in theory for other purposes, but it's really perfect for that use case. and so, you know, until now we've been broadly talking about cloud computing and that's everything from like a calculator that you use on somebody else's computer to a giant social network, right? Um, to a messaging app. Like, there's all sorts of things that run on third party servers, aka cloud computers.

25:07 and social media, the sort of collaborative space is one type. It's like one vertical that we put into the whole, like, of human computing needs. Nostr is arguably, and is my contention, the best candidate. That we have ever seen for a viable, scalable, uh, decentralized social media, platform. prior attempts, maybe Mastodon was the best. Uh, Mastodon uses a federation model where anyone can spin up a server. And then people can create accounts on those servers, and then those servers can connect to each other, such that everyone ends up with the same feed.

25:53 Nostr does not work like that. it is a completely novel approach to, sort of, Social media architecture, in that all the power is pushed to the clients, all the power is pushed to the edges of the network, there are no servers in Nostr, there are relays, and you can those analogous to a server, I mean, they technically are a server, they're up running 24 7, 365, and they're performing back office operations, we'll call it. But there's no account structure related to those servers. The servers are really stupid. They're very dumb. They just sort of serve a relaying purpose. They're there to store and relay information, and you can circumvent any one of those relays at any time, and as a User of Nostr, your goal to increase your own censorship resistance and to ensure that you receive, uh, as much raw data, uncensored raw data as possible is to collect relays.

26:56 Right, is to like, have as many relays as possible, to be broadcasting your message to as many corners of the world as possible, and to be receiving information from as many servers and relays as possible, and then it's up to your client, local device, to To, uh, de duplicate that information, right, to, if you get the same message from 30 different relays, you don't want to see it 30 times, so the client is responsible for making sure you only see it once, uh, your client is also responsible for deciding who receives your messages that you publish, and so long as there are sufficient people running quality relays, And that those relays are publicly, uh, available, Nostr will remain decentralized, uh, and so it seems to be kind of infinitely scalable, without compromising on its, on its promise.

27:49 The challenge that Nostr is going to have, is spam is going to be a very serious challenge, um, as it is with all other social media platforms. And the way that X handles. Spam is through great central power through identity verification and, you know, canceling of accounts that it deems to be bots. And so there's this, like, it's this, it's this theory of endow the central party with unlimited power to fight spam and criminality. Um, and that doesn't scale very well, right? It can work to a degree, but it doesn't scale very well.

28:30 And it has these. Uh, sort of unintended consequences of good things getting banned and censored, et cetera. Um, so Nostr's challenge and what remains to be determined about its survivability is when it becomes popular, which it is not, there's like this tiny little corner of weirdos in the world using Nostr right now, and I'm one of them, but it is not a popular platform and is therefore not worth Attacking for either an opportunistic solo, you know, uh, just troublemaker or for like a nation state. Okay. Like if a not even well resourced.

29:10 Just if a motivated person or a group of people wanted to like, take down Nostr. They could do it with ease right now. Nostr is an infant. It is not capable of defending itself against any kind of coordinated denial of service attack against known relays, right? Like, I'm talking about somebody's weekend project here, okay? You could, in a weekend, take down the Nostr network simply by taking every known popular relay and just slamming it with a distributed denial of service attack, and the whole network would just cease to function, basically.

29:50 Now, it would recover. Because it's anti fragile and would overcome that, but it is not capable of being a reliable source of news right now under attack. Yeah, we actually have an experience with that, me and Luke, from Madeira, we met the guy that makes Primal, it's one of the Nostr clients, so, at a party, and he approaches me and he said, dude, you're Knut, right? And I'm like, yeah. Uh, you broke, you broke my Nostr, you broke Nostr. I'm like, what are you talking about? Or you broke my client. And he is, uh, apparently, because we had the idea of just taking my first book and as a, as a txt file and just Putting it on Nostr as one single post.

30:39 And I had a back and forth with Luke about it. Is this a good idea? Is this a stupid idea? But we decided to do it. Fuck it, like, no one's probably done this before, so, like, let's see what happens. So I posted the entire, the entirety of Sovereignty Through Mathematics on Nostr. And apparently it broke his client, because the post is so big, and it got quite popular, so that slowed it down. So, yeah, I see, there are some concerns with these, uh, clients, and the relays, uh, That they have to be, be, uh, behind paywalls in the future. Uh, simply because of the fact of the, the spam prevention.

31:20 Like that's the, that's the only solution to that that you, you'll have to pay for the service. Uh, otherwise you have the spam issue. You can fire up a million noster, private public key pairs, and, uh, just sap one of them from every other account. Yeah, ultimately, ultimately, as is the case with most systems, there will be a centralization trend in Nostr, and that centralization trend will come about through, Issues with user experience, issues with security, um, and there will arise companies that do paid relays and they work wonderfully so everyone moves to them and now that relay has a ton of power because 80 percent of network traffic is flowing through it and suddenly they come out with the terms and conditions and, you know, and again, this is a natural trend.

32:08 however, truly decentralized systems with proper incentive structures can resist this trend, as we have seen with Bitcoin, but it's still trying. Bitcoin is still trying to centralize, right? Like, there are a lot of people trying to, push that agenda, and it's still to be determined if it withstands, um, and Nostr likewise. Nostr does not have as much. of a built in incentive, though, as Bitcoin does, right? Bitcoin's decentralization is based on a whole bunch of economic incentives, whereas Nostr's decentralization is, in part, built on best practice and sort of, um, just everyone playing ball, but we'll see, we'll see.

32:55 I'm Nostr. But I'm not, uh, what was your original phrasing? A believer, right? I don't believe any, in anything. I, I, uh, I have convictions and I have, you know, scenarios and probabilities, but we'll see. I'm gonna do whatever I can from our angle to help, uh, Nostr to flourish as intended as a decentralized social media platform. And Start9, to be honest, I Can help, right? That's where we come in. In fact, I mean, like, the whole reason we exist is to promote self hosting, which in turn promotes self sovereignty, um, and acts as the counterbalance To many of these centralization pressures that we see throughout society, people taking personal responsibility for their own lives is the counterbalance to authoritarianism.

33:50 And oftentimes that's just too hard to do. It's too hard to take responsibility for everything because you don't know how to do it and you don't have time to learn it because you're a slave and you have to work 18 hours a day. And so. We are coming in and just trying to lower the barrier to entry, lower the bar, make it easier so that those who do care can opt out, take responsibility for themselves. And if enough people do that, the entire system becomes Resilient. Even if not everyone does it, you just need a critical mass of people to not join in, and the whole system gets stuck at a level of, uh, we'll call it acceptable, non freedom, right?

34:37 Like, tiny bits, This is how we view Bitcoin as well. Like, uh, we don't need like 50%. That's not the threshold for a critical mass. The critical mass is probably a very small percentile of the population before the old systems just crumble, because you can't deny the power of this thing. Uh, that's what's so beautiful about it.

35:53 let's, uh, explore a Start 9 then. What are, what is a Start 9, and, uh, how does it solve these problems? It takes, it gives the, the user, uh, the power back. But yeah, can you give us the TLDR on the start 9? sure thing. So, Start9 is, is an organization, strictly speaking, it's a company, corporation. But in reality, it's a group of individuals who got together and decided to build something. And a corporate structure is a Reasonable way to do that, uh, to, to garner resources and make sure everyone gets compensated appropriately and build something together. Uh, there are other approaches, but this was right for us. So, what Start9 does is our primary, activity is to build StartOS.

36:39 This is a operating system, uh, Linux based, that, uh, is different from all other operating systems, uh, in ex in existence, uh, at least to date, in one very meaningful way. If you look at macOS, Windows, all your Linux distros, from Debian to Ubuntu to Fedora to PopOS, and you look at Android and iOS, these are mobile operating systems, uh, Graphene, like what I use, all of these operating systems have user interfaces, like the way that users are supposed to interact with them.

37:21 Not necessarily other computers or developers, but normal consumers and users. They have user interfaces that are designed to administer, to empower you, the individual, to administer that device as a client. Okay? Client is a very particular word here. Those devices are clients, a. k. a. remote controls. You can think of clients as remote controls. They do more than just remote control, but that is arguably their primary function, is to be a remote control for one or more servers located behind the scenes.

38:04 And so your Android phone, your iOS phone, your MacBook, your Linux laptop, your Windows desktop, these are all primarily remote controls. And the operating systems that are installed on these computers, enable you to use that remote control effectively, right? They provide you with a GUI, with a bunch of buttons, and all these things that make it super easy for you to use this remote control. Those remote controls, these clients, is the more kind of industry term for them, clients, These are remotely controlling servers, and in almost all cases, as is the case with cloud computing, these servers are not yours. So all everyone is doing is walking around with remote controls that operate somebody else's computer, which has all the consequences we discussed.

38:51 What StartOS is, is arguably the first ever Mass market operating system that is designed purposefully, intentionally for you, a normal user of computers, not a developer, not a technical person to administer a server, not a client. Previously, if you wanted to administer a server, You had to go on the command line. You couldn't use the graphical interface. You had to go under the hood. You had to pop the hood of the car, get on the Linux command line or in the Mac terminal and execute commands, right? And this is a skillset that is commonly known as systems administration, right?

39:34 Linux sysadmins have the ability to get on a command line and run server software, server applications, and then connect to those. Applications from their remote controls. Almost nobody else has the ability to do this. You either are a Linux sysadmin. And DevOps Engineer is another skill set that overlaps with, with Linux Systems Administration. You either have those skills and the time and patience to use them, because just like cooking, it takes a while. It's not easy, even if you have the skills, or you don't. And if you had those skills, you could do this, but nobody does. The vast majority of the human population does not have the skill set or the time or the energy to do it.

40:19 to run their own servers. And the main reason for that was because there has never been an operating system that made it simple enough, clear enough, easy enough for a normal computer literate person to administer a server. So that's what we took on because we thought, recognized, that that was the THE elephant in the room, that was THE missing piece of the puzzle that was preventing the practice of self hosting, which we believe is necessary for the decentralization and therefore continued survival and freedom of the digital infrastructure of earth.

41:02 We don't want centralized computing systems. We want decentralized computing systems, and we can talk about why that's super important, but I'm assuming that a lot of people listening to this podcast already agree with that statement that decentralized systems are preferable to centralized for all the problems we see with the centralization of power. And in order for systems, computer systems to be decentralized, people must run their own servers. There's no way around this. There's no other special magic solution. It's like if you want decentralized farming, everyone needs to farm. Or not everyone, right, but a lot of people need to farm. One person farms, it's centralized. If everyone's farming, it's decentralized. It's really that simple.

41:43 And if you want decentralized Computing systems, if you want a decentralized internet, if you want an information society that isn't bottlenecked and choked by a single central authority, people have to run their own servers. There's no other solution. Some people have proposed alternative solutions, namely in the phrase, the gimmick phrase, of serverless. Okay, serverless is something that people say usually when they're trying to raise money. Serverless means clients talking to clients. There are no servers. Let's just get rid of the servers and create a completely peer to peer decentralized system. You can't do it. Servers are necessary. Servers are the thing that runs all the time.

42:25 They need to be super powerful. They won't fit in your pocket. If you drive through a tunnel. Right? Your cell signal goes out. It's no longer functioning as a server. So like servers need to be static, powerful, 24 7 on, 24 7 connected. They require a totally different, they're running totally different types of applications. So this idea of like combining what servers do into clients is a pipe dream. Servers have a permanent place in the future of computing. And once you admit that, even for Nostr, relays, and Bitcoin nodes, these are servers, don't run a Bitcoin node on your phone, that's not a good idea, right, that's come up a few times over the years, and it's just like, no, there's no reason to do that, it's not a good idea, so once you admit that servers are part of the permanent architecture, computers, you're You come to the conclusion that we need people to be running their own servers.

43:24 Otherwise, it's a totally centralized system. And why weren't people running their own servers? Because they couldn't. Because it's too technically difficult. Why is it too technically difficult? Because there's no operating system in existence that makes it easy. Let's build the operating system. That was our logic. And so we did. We built it. We launched it. And we've been iterating it for almost four years now. And it has undergone massive, massive changes during those four years. We've essentially rewritten it three times now, uh, from scratch, not just iterated it. Like, we've had to start over because we were figuring it out as we went. Nobody's ever done this before. So, so we were like breaking ground here.

44:05 And a lot of what we learned along the way. was how very different a server OS is from a client OS. They're like very different animals. all the way from how it functions under the hood to the way, to the user experience. You can't just take Mac OS, copy it and be like, okay, now it's a server OS. It's like, no, no, no. The users are You're, you're, you're actually making it worse for people because what you're making them think is that a server and a client are super similar because the operating system makes them look super similar. Like, imagine if iOS, iOS was the first, like, you know, mobile OS.

44:49 Imagine if Apple had just taken Mac OS and shrunk the screen size. It wouldn't have worked well, because a mobile OS is different, it is a fundamentally different animal, both in function and in experience, than a desktop OS. And Windows, at one point, tried to create a unified one. Do you remember that? The Windows Phone? Where they basically just tried to take their desktop operating system and crunch it down to mobile and be like, Oh, it's all just the same. It's a nice idea, but it wasn't good. Right? The mobile OS sucked.

45:31 Um, and so, for the same reasons, you can't just make a server OS look and feel like some desktop OS. They are different. And we had to learn the hard way what a lot of those differences were by putting it into the hands of people, And seeing where they got confused and where they got tripped up and where it broke, um, and then gradually being like, crap, our abstractions are wrong. Our approach is wrong. Well, good thing we're still young and nobody knows about us. We can just blow it up and start over again and we won't get, um, it won't destroy us as a company. And so, anyway, uh, that's what we do.

46:12 we also sell devices, servers. With our operating system, uh, pre installed for people who don't want to, uh, go through the DIY approach of getting their own hardware and downloading it and installing it. So essentially we're selling convenience, right? The operating system is licensed under MIT. It's about as free as it can possibly be. It doesn't belong to us in any way, shape or form. Um, but we know people will pay, uh, for community. And convenience and customer support. And so that's really what we do as a company. We build a free operating system, then we give it away. Uh, and then we, we sell devices with it pre installed and support it with our, with our people.

46:56 And, um, we think that's a very viable and scalable business model, to be honest. Fantastic. I love a thing you said in the, in the very beginning of the answer to that question. And that was that you're a company, and that's just one way for a group of people to do stuff. That's like a libertarian disclaimer that this is something we did because this is how, how nation states work. You need to do this to do that. So, because it reminds me of like, uh, ideas we have about, uh, uh, uh, What a company looks like on a Bitcoin standard or a post hyperbitcoinization or whatever you may call it, like even now for a Bitcoin company, it doesn't really have to be more than a telegram group or I would say the equivalent on a start nine rather than a centralized telegram group or a Nostr group or whatever.

47:48 So it's just a group of people being able to communicate and being able to pay one another. And all you need for that is communication and Bitcoin, right? You don't need anything else. You don't really need permission and you don't really need the company structure. Well, it depends. Uh, it depends on how big you want that group to grow. you know, if it's a few people working on something and sending each other bitcoin every once in a while, you can probably fly under the radar. But, um, you know, if you're looking to capitalize, like, raise money, uh, through people who want to contribute, yes, you can accept donations, but, um, it's often Much more lucrative to accept investments because those people are expecting a return, right?

48:32 So you can get a lot more donations, essentially, if you promise to give something back. and that all requires, that all has legal structure to it. you know, in the US, if I were to, if Start9 wasn't a company, and ignore the fundraising aspect of it, if we weren't a company, And we, everyone needed to get paid. At some point, we're breaking the law. We are, we are breaking the law. You're like, not allowed to just hire people indefinitely to, to work, without, like, classifying them as an employee and paying for health benefits. And there's like, you know, You know, you can get in trouble due to the nature of these, these systems that we've built. And I know that sounds a little petty, like, ooh, get in trouble, but that's real.

49:15 That's real consequences, right? Like, I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to be fined, uh, into bankruptcy. Like, you know, you have to live within the, the game, uh, that's being played while trying to change the game. But in, you know, it's, uh, it's hard. We, we debated. Going the like. official charitable route. Um, but even that's a filing. That's still a 501c3 corporate entity. It's just a different type. It's like doing nothing, filing nothing, just living, breathing, and doing the things you want to do is like kind of not allowed. past a certain scale, you just get in trouble.

49:57 Absolutely. But if there was a question in there, it's sort of like, do you see this as a possible future? I know it's hard right now because we still live in these Um, all the dinosaur institution run nations. Uh, but like, I mean, we are building these freedom tools, uh, in order to get humanity to a better state. As you said in the beginning for our kids, right? To live in a world where, where you have more freedoms and more, more options and more opportunities. And so, so do you foresee like these, Legal structures not being roadblocks to as big an extent as they are today.

50:41 Convoluted sentence, but yeah.

52:00 No, I understand completely. I'm, um, I'm hopeful on various timelines. So the answer to your question is, On what timeline? Uh, I'm not at all optimistic that we'll see anything close to what you described, in the next two decades. I'm cautiously optimistic that we could see some degree of meaningful reform slash political restructuring. In my lifetime. these systems take time to adjust. And this is something that a lot of Bitcoiners and, you know, um, fellow freedom fighters and I disagree on is the timeline for a lot of our ambitions.

52:47 Um, I largely buy into the thesis, the underlying thesis, of the sovereign individual. I don't know if you've read that, but I largely agree with their Have, I love it. We, uh, we agree with it totally too. I'm speaking for Luke here, but like, I love that book and I absolutely buy that. That's where we're headed. So the question is, is, you know, what does that timeline look like? And even that book admits That the process is very hazy, right? Like, Sovereign Individual takes an extreme macro view of political history and technological history.

53:30 It does not pretend to predict specific events along the way. It did, in fact, predict some specific events, but it also, in so doing, was like, this is a process. May or may not happen. It's based on decisions and chance and, you know, unforeseen new technologies. And so I believe in where we're going. Like I am convinced. That we are gonna win, or that we have a really good shot at winning. However, I don't know how long it's going to take.

54:10 I think it's going to take longer than most in my circles do, and we don't know how turbulent the transition is going to be. I think there's so many factors at play that trying to predict the degree of turbulence is kind of. Um, an effort in futility. I think it's best to maybe be prepared for various scenarios and have contingency plans and not buy in too much to a single scenario because then you'll be taken by surprise when it doesn't come true. Um, so to try to keep the highest level picture in mind as possible and then be flexible, uh, in terms of the path and if we end up getting Where we want to be much faster than I have kind of internally, uh, predicted, and it's super smooth and the state just folds and hands over power and all the rest, then I will be very happy, and I won't complain at all, but I'm definitely not expecting that.

55:13 I'm expecting a prolonged, gritty guerrilla war over the next century. where many, many people will fall through the cracks and suffer, um, and others will sell out and flourish, and we'll just kind of see where the, you know, when all the dust settles, um, who's still standing, and I think it'll be us. Now, that said, I also, due to my s Study of history and my understanding of just kind of philosophy and to be honest, even metaphysics. I don't think it ever ends. Right? I believe that all of existence and human history in particular are cyclical in nature and that it's one giant never ending spiral with the rhythm repeating itself to infinity.

56:02 And that as we quote, win, win. There will emerge some new form of oppression and totalitarianism that will be the next, that will mark the next cycle of freedom fighters and all the rest. So, I don't pretend that there's like, Some permanent fix coming where all of humanity will flourish for the end till the end of time. I just am trying to play my role in this cycle to the best that I perceive it and can in hopes that maybe my children or their children will experience one of those rare moments in history of Prosperity and, and, and human flourishing and maybe even get us off this planet and, and take it to the, to the stars.

56:50 And it's like, so I'm not, again, it depends on your timeline. I'm not optimistic or pessimistic at the ultimate timeline because nature is nature and there is no, it just is what it is. On a short time, I'm extremely pessimistic. I think that these people who are currently in power are going to try to blow the house up before they let anybody else in it. and then the medium term gets really gray really fast, and I'm just trying to do my best to make it as good as possible and to make the period of turbulence and darkness as short as possible. Have you read a book by Michael Malice called the white pill?

57:31 Because this reminds me of that because it's basically the history of the Soviet Union and the East Block and how quickly it just disappeared and everyone went to bed one day and everyone was a communist and they woke up the next day and no one was a communist and how no one expected that, like, and that there are Examples in history of, you know, the good guys just winning at a certain point. Like when, when it looks the bleakest, so let me ask you something. Soviet bloc just up and vanished, right? Well, my understanding of how the world functions is not that there was this all powerful Soviet communist government that just sort of went bankrupt one day, and that there isn't this counterforce in the United States that is an all powerful anti communist government that just sort of won overnight in that Cold War.

58:35 My understanding of it is that underneath both of those countries, is an extremely powerful set of financiers that were funding both sides of that war in order to keep everyone afraid and increase, you know, totalitarian practices and bankrupt both countries by printing infinite money on both sides. And so my view of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Taking a step back from it is that it was actually kind of part of a larger strategy of like, if you want to implement global socialism, right? If you want a global government that has a global central bank that can print infinite money and effectively enslave through a digital feudalism the entire world, It would be a really good idea to get rid of the boogeyman in the room called communism, because it's just distasteful.

59:37 Nobody likes that word, right? Effectively, what you're trying to implement is global socialism slash communism, but better to let everyone think communism died and is no longer a threat. Like, oh, it's gone. It's gone. So all these socialist, kind of practices that the West is now indulging in are perfectly fine because it's not communism. Communism died, remember? So I view it as like, it's still going on, like we're, we are actively daily fighting the aggressive emergence of a global communist order. Yeah, if the, if that was a question, like, um, I have a slightly different view.

1:00:20 I don't think this is being deliberately planned out that way and that there's some grand master schemer somewhere. I just think that the very notion of Central banks existing and the system we live in existing sort of makes that happen regardless of what anyone wants. It leads to global socialism do you think the central bankers understand that? Or are they naive to the consequences of their own policies? I think that both are true, can be true. I don't think there's Mutual, they are mutually exclusive. I don't think that the founders of the Federal Reserve. Could foresee what would happen a hundred years later.

1:01:00 I think they were, you know, high time preference people who just wanted to print money to enrich themselves. I don't think they had this, you know, totalitarian, Oh, what, our children will live in this totalitarian state and it would be awesome. I don't think they have that plan in mind when they started the thing. It's just what happens when you run that experiment for a long time. It's a very valid point and I don't think that, maybe with a few exceptions, that anyone involved with founding or perpetuating the Federal Reserve and essentially central banking Uh, cartel and system. We're necessarily like doing this and saying let's enslave humanity.

1:01:41 I think that their psychology and philosophy is such that they believe that the only way to maintain social order is central planning and authority. It's not that they're trying to enslave, enslave. They're trying to take care of, right? It's a paternal kind of, uh, uh, it goal. It's like, ultimately, you know, if you're on the receiving side of that, you're not free and you see it as slavery, but the people who are doing it are like, this is for your own good. If we weren't managing the economy. Oh, my God. Like, and yes, I believe that there are some of them who realize that an economy is going to flourish.

1:02:27 Unencumbered, right? A free market will always produce maximum prosperity and minimum poverty. And there's definitely some who understand this, but I actually think the majority do not. I think the majority have bought in to the macroeconomic Keynesian BS that's taught in the higher education, and they actually believe that central planning and authority is necessary to run an effective economy. But I also believe that there are people Who are, who have the levers of power at their disposal, who absolutely understand that they are doing this on the backs of the rest of us, that they are personally enriching themselves and empowering themselves at the expense of the rest of the human race, I believe that those people do exist, and that they do sit at levers of power, now I'm not talking about some sort of like grand, This kind of pervasive conspiracy, I'm talking about powerful individuals who find themselves in positions of power who are personally or with a small group of friends, very intentionally Taking some of these actions and perpetuating them.

1:03:34 And I believe that there's a good amount of evidence to support that from the last hundred years that some of these people knew exactly what they were doing. it's hard to know exactly what's going on because we don't see it. We don't know. We don't know. What we see is the actions and the consequences. And so it's like, wow, is this a result of, you know, Purely kind of, uh, you know, incentives and chance and chaos, or is there somebody who really, uh, is trying to sort of plan this out? I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. I think that there are planners, and I think that there are bystanders. I think that there are opportunists, and I think that there are, uh, you know, malicious people who want to attack and enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else.

1:04:18 I think it's all of it, but I think there's probably more understanding. intelligence and planning than most people believe. I don't think they're idiots. I really don't think these people are idiots. I think that they're malicious. No, I agree on all points. And just to be clear here, I definitely agree that like when communism quote unquote died, the problem didn't go away. And it is a perpetual fight. Every generation will have to fight it. Uh, I think that's a Reagan quote, like every generation has to fight for freedom. Anyway, um, So having said that, I do think like living in like Bulgaria or Czechoslovakia today is way, uh, a person living there is way more free than they were back in the eighties.

1:05:09 Like the, there's just no doubt of that. And no, and, and, uh, um, that people in the, in the, so-called West, the West is sort of like the New East. Now the pendulum has swing over to our part of the world and the, these can Canada, Canada, Stan for instances. More intrusive than Czechoslovakia is at this point, and very much so. So, so there's, there's going to be ups and downs there. There are hopeful places though, like Miele being elected in Argentina, just quoting Rothbard, uh, and winning an election by doing that. That's to me, that's pretty amazing that, that a politician that is basically just Quoting Rothbard over and over again is winning with a majority.

1:05:54 That gives me hope. Uh, I don't have much hope for politicians and I don't trust him. I don't trust any politician. but still, I think if, if we lose hope, then we'd lost the fight by, by definition. So, so like fighting for freedom and trying to find the tools is always the noble thing to do. And maybe we can never get rid of taxes, but I still think that regardless of how low the tax rate is, fighting for lowering it even more is always the right move. Like, we should always try to fight for less government. Like, that's always the correct fight to fight. I agree. And I think that all fronts are valid.

1:06:36 Um, you know, that it might not be the most effective way to, uh, fight, but even, you know, politics is a, is a battleground, right? Like we should strive to get, um, liberty candidates in place, especially at the local level of government. sure, if you can get them at the national level, that's even better in, in many cases. And. We should be fighting on the education front, the cultural front, um, you know, um, even the nutritional and health front. It's like, these are all valid fronts and each person should fight on whatever front they are best suited to do so. I, because of my, you know, personality and tendencies and skill sets, fight on the technology front.

1:07:21 And I think that there's real leverage there, right? Because You don't really need, it's, it's, it's in line with the sovereign individual thesis, which is that technology in large part determines politics, not the other way around, that political structures orient themselves around the techno, the technology of the, of the day and it, the incentives that it produces, which is why we're, this is why we Bitcoin, right? That's like the whole point is that Bitcoin is this revolutionary We'll call it networking technology that is optimal for producing a monetary network and technology that undermines arguably the single greatest, um, mechanism of totalitarianism, which is control over the creation and distribution of money.

1:08:22 And so I have always viewed, at least since starting Start9, Um, Bitcoin as kind of the, um, the hero of the army, so to speak, right? Like Bitcoin is the, like our hero is fighting their champion, right? Like our champion is fighting their champion. And it's almost like these two, these two incredibly powerful, um, representatives of the two armies are fighting in the, in the arena. And Bitcoin is fighting the central banks, right? Like Bitcoin is fighting fiat money. And, um, that is an important fight, because if our champion and hero loses, boy, it's gonna be demoralizing, and to be honest, it's practically speaking, almost a death blow to the entire army.

1:09:11 So it's really important that Bitcoin win its battle. Personal fight with, uh, the Federal Reserve really is how, if you want to really get specific about it. Um, but there's still two armies standing behind these people, right? Like money is just a tool of oppression. It is not the essential and holistic nature of evil and oppression and totalitarianism. It's just a mechanism, a tool, but there are other mechanisms and the grittiest of which is physical force. Oh, we can't control your money. Well, we can control your body. Um, and so there are other fronts.

1:09:51 So while we're cheering Bitcoin on, which is a valid thing to do, it's also really important to be fighting our own battles against the other members of the opponent. And so our role in this. Huge battlefield, if you want to stick with the analogy, is communications, right? We have taken on, the, the responsibility and role of ensuring that our soldiers and army can effectively communicate with one another across time and space without the enemy being able to stop it, surveil it, um, or use it against us, right?

1:10:38 Comms, communications. are an essential part of a, uh, of, of winning a battle or a war, and we don't have them. We don't have comms right now. We have horrible comms. We can't communicate with each other. It's almost impossible for me to form a group text with the two of you and talk from country to country day by day, and it not be completely, uh, in the open and And so, Start9's sort of underlying mission, not just texting, but data and comms in general, right?

1:11:20 Like, if you view this war as an information war, right, like it's social media propaganda, it is surveillance, it is security, data security, like, if you view this as an information war, Overinformation becomes the key to victory. It becomes the crux. It's like air superiority in WWII. You need information superiority in an information war. And we're getting crushed on that front right now because we're using our enemies computers to talk to each other. We have no chance. Bitcoin honestly has no chance.

1:12:02 of surviving long term indefinitely if every node in the world is being run on an Amazon server. It just dies because Amazon is not on our side. that's what we have carved out for ourselves. That niche is making sure that the fighters, at least, can coordinate effectively. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And, uh, that's how you're increasing your freedom footprint, I guess. And, uh, we urge everyone to, to do, to play their part in, um, uh, you know, liberating ourselves.

1:12:43 Emancipation. Matt, this has been a, a, a great conversation. Um, we're so happy we had you on and where can we send our listeners? Where can we, where can they find themselves a and where can they find you online and so on and so forth? Uh, yes. So our website is startnine. com, which will ultimately lead you. To everything else. but what I would like to emphasize is that we have, um, and a lot of people say this, but I don't, I don't think, uh, everyone means the same thing when they say it, we have a wonderful community. Um, the people who are actively engaged in the start nine community are kind of the real deal. Like we have a great, great group of people, not only working within and adjacent to the company, but also just customers and users of start OS, um, are really great people.

1:13:34 They're super helpful. And like, really, really active. So if you join our, um, Matrix server, where we have a bunch of rooms, or our Telegram chat, uh, which is obviously hosted on Telegram servers, and eventually we will cancel that chat, but for now it's where people are, and so we're willing to deal with it, you will find a almost 24 7 kind of engagement with us. And if you have any questions about Start9, about StartOS, about how to get started, about how to use it, any issues with using it, you drop into those channels, you ask questions, you will get clear, welcome responses.

1:14:15 In a matter of minutes at the most, whether it's from an official Start9 support representative or from a knowledgeable community member, you will be welcome. You will be assisted. and we are, you know, kind of here to help you on your journey to your own personal digital liberation and journey. And if enough people do this, it will provide that critical mass And tipping point for everyone else to just be dragged into it, whether they like it or not, you will be dragged into freedom. Um, I shouldn't say dragged.

1:14:56 You will wander your way there, whether you like it or not. So, You'll be pulled in. yeah, I, I don't like the force aspect. It's just, it's just the incentives will naturally, uh, sort of expand to include even those who didn't take the initiative. to free themselves. So anyway, um, join the community, buy one of our servers. That is the one of the best ways you can contribute to our efforts. Um, you're welcome to DIY and you know, that's great. Uh, if you do give us a shout out, maybe throw us a donation, but if you want to contribute, buy one of our devices, join our community, ask how you can help.

1:15:37 We need a lot of help. Um, and, uh, that's it. Fantastic. Matt, really appreciate you coming on, telling us all about this, everything that's going on with Start9. We're, we're definitely big fans, uh, just, yeah, based on everything, the, the ethos where we're very aligned. So thank you again. This has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening. Talk soon guys. Yeah. Bye.