Round Up 11: BIP 110 Sounds Simple Until You Ask Who Decides

We weigh up BIP 110 and Bitcoin spam without pretending anger is a strategy, then zoom out to how narratives shape both protocol fights and geopolitics. We end on hands-on freedom tech, from Start9 and Nostr to self-hosted AI, plus a reminder that most Bitcoin “disasters” start with a basic node check. 
• why BIP 110 is framed as a fix by some and a protest by others 
• the uncomfortable idea that fees may be the only neutral filter 
• how knee-jerk reactions and online behaviour distort technical debates 
• Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and the economic knock-on effects of escalation 
• propaganda incentives and “good guy” branding in foreign policy 
• South African elections, legitimacy, and the case for smaller governance units 
• the Freedom Stack framing: Bitcoin, Nostr, and AI as practical tools 
• Start9 experiences: remote access, services, hardware constraints, and experimentation 
• privacy trade-offs when using hosted AI versus local models 
• troubleshooting a “missing payment” by checking node sync and connectivity 
Get yourself a little bit of Bitcoin, get off zero, buy something, move it around from your phone wallet onto somebody else. Just mess around, just get comfortable with it. Take five bucks, ten bucks, something, fifty bucks, something that you're not afraid to lose, and just try something.

Links:

www.bitcoinforbusiness.io

X: @gavingre

X: @BTC_4_Biz

Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net

NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

Transcript

Welcome And Life Updates

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the show everybody. This is the Straits No Chaser Podcast where we talk human freedom through money, technology, economics, and philosophy. This is the next episode in the monthly roundup series, and today we have Ricky and Herman uh on the show. Oaken unfortunately is not able to join. He is doing some work for the Namibian government and uh time pressure is keeping him away. We wish him well with that. It was great having you on the pod, and I hope you get to join in for some guest appearances, Okin. Uh shout out to you. Herman is actually on holiday and joins us in from a restaurant. So there is a little bit of background noise, so apologies for that. This month's episode we chat a bit about the BIP.10. Activation date is getting closer. So it's something that is sort of becoming front and center in most Bitcoiners' minds. We talk a little bit about AI tech, some freedom tech, uh new developments in the Bitcoin space, uh, and pretty much a general chat about all things Bitcoin and freedom related over the month of June. So welcome. I know you guys will enjoy this one. Cool. Okay, welcome everybody. Uh, there's three of us in the house today. Um, Herman, Ricky, uh Oaken is otherwise engaged with governmental work, and uh you may be on hiatus for a while. So uh three of us are here. Herman, you're on holiday at the moment, uh snuck away from the wife. I hope you survive the uh uh the experience and get back and all in one piece. And Ricky, you're sitting in Bali at the moment. So uh yeah, I'm I'm sitting in Pretoria. Um anyway, uh tell me a bit about what you guys are doing at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Yeah, Ricky, you go first, but I'm jealous.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

Yeah, so um I decided this work has been very hectic. I've had a few hectic years, and um a friend of mine's idea while it's like joining a few weeks here before going over to the UK, uh, which I do every summer spend this time for my survey. So yeah, I've been working and surfing idea for the past three weeks. Uh life is good. There's actually a barley Bitcoin hub that I'm gonna go check out tomorrow. I haven't been yet, but uh it's just up the road I'll take a wrap up there on the screen and see what's going on. Um but yeah, life's been good. I've been avoiding the Pokemon Tinder base, not getting involved, so I think rather I think it's a much better use of my time, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Dude, I'm on the Schulenberg Mountains and um I'm uh I'm on holiday with the family. Um yeah, we do uh I mean it's school holidays and um our kids are are that age where when it's school holidays we get to do stuff with them. Um but it's a fun place. It's uh it's a kid spot. Like we have we're here with friends, and um the kids are just nowhere to be seen the whole day, so it's actually kind of cool. And uh yeah, I did uh it's it's it's it's great because there's uh there's a cold pool right next to the hot pool as well. So I'm doing like cold immersions uh every morning, and uh that water is proper cold too. We went to the Cedaburg Mountains, it's it's not lukewarm. So yeah, no, it's fun.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

And the CDB.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

I'd rather be in Bali surfing there, not gonna lie.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Doing doing warm water, warm water immersions every morning in the barrel.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

I'd much rather I'd much rather be surfing in Bali, dude. But anyway, it is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

So I'm sitting in Pretoria. Uh I am not on holiday uh at all, uh working, and uh, but I don't have small kids. Um my 18-year-old daughter is in America visiting her BFFs from high school that she graduated with. Uh, she saved some pennies and she decided to go and spend 4th of July, um, which I'm sure we're gonna talk about just now. But uh she spent 4th of July in the US in this mighty state of Georgia at a lake house, which is uh if you're middle class American, you have a lake house, if you live in Georgia anyway. Um and my other daughter, who's 21, is getting married next Saturday. Uh so wow, congratulations.

SPEAKER_03 4:35

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah, that's super cool. So um, yeah, uh I well, I'm actually facing empty nest syndrome at the moment, and my wife is starting to get this like weird, like nervous like twitch in her neck. Uh, you know, in the evenings, uh, it the house is dead quiet, like nothing's going on. It's super weird.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah, you should be the one selling it barley, dude.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Yeah, totally, man. Totally. Um, so yeah, I think just kick

BIP 110 And The Spam Debate

SPEAKER_01 5:07

off. Um, on somebody mentioned BIP 110 earlier. Um I don't know if we want to go there. Um, but I suppose it's how can you not really? Um, maybe just a quick round, just a quick round, Robin. Um uh and you guys can just spit out your thoughts. Um, obviously free to say, you know, whatever you want as you always are. Um, I for one have pretty much not gone into the whole BIP 110 thing in any great sort of detail. I I have listened a bit to Bitcoin mechanics talking about it. Um, and I I appreciate the guy's passion. I I think he speaks from the heart, and it's uh you know it's easy to uh uh it's easy to um uh be in yeah. I mean, I suppose people who speak from the heart and speak with passion uh tend to inspire something. Um but having said that, the the whole idea that this is a temporary fix to me, the whole thing just fell flat for me at that point. Um the whole idea of uh that saying about nothing more temporary than uh or nothing more permanent than a temporary government solution sort of just popped into my head and hasn't actually ever gone away. So uh I've just taken a interest in okay, this is what one side says, this is what the other side says. I'm just gonna sit back and just watch uh with some interest. Uh, but that's my take. Um uh Herman, you you've actually popped a couple of comments on the socials um over a while. So I'm sure you've got uh something that you would like to say about that.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

I mean, yeah, dude, like I always qualify the things I say by starting with I'm you know, I've I've spent I've spent over a decade breaking my head trying to understand Bitcoin on a technical level, and that's not my background at all. Um, but I have put in a lot of effort to try and understand it on a technical level. But that being said, my opinions aren't technical in nature. Um there are people that are far smarter than I am. Um, and I think that's my big takeaway from this, is that I I recognize I I recognize that my initial response to this whole debate was very knee-jerk. And I initially um spent a lot of time listening to Mechanic and other Bitcoin 10 proponents, and I had the same sort of knee-jerk reaction as what they do. And I didn't want to hear what the more technically literal people were trying to tell me. Um, because that's not a satisfactory answer. It's not nice to hear that there's a problem that that you know there's this horrible shit on the blockchain and you can't really do much about it. That's not an answer that that that you want to hear. That's not a nice answer. And so I preferred I preferred the narrative that was coming from the Bible pen side. And I think um I think it's the behavior of the people who put me off of that more than anything else, because I started seeing all these disingenuous arguments, and that made me pay more attention to the sort of the technical voices that I was maybe ignoring. Um and the more I listened, the more it made sense to me. Like, you know, this thing sucks, but you can't you can't fix it the way that they're proposing to fix it. And really what this is at the end of the day, is that it's basically just a protest. Um, this whole dip one ten thing is basically just a giant uh protest on the street. Um that's not really going to achieve anything at the end of the day. And the the pivotal moment for me came when there was this debate um at the Prague conference where Stefan Lavera was moderating, and on the one side there's you know Peter Todd and another developer, and on the other side there's Knut and Rockstar Dev, and they actually had a great conversation, but at the end, Knut admitted that look, this is basically a giant protest. We're not trying to solve the problem on a technical level, we're trying to express our dissatisfaction. And my immediate question was like, but that's kind of pointless. Like, I've always looked at protest on the street as being pointless, you don't achieve anything, and so that made me sort of come around to this idea that there's better ways to to express your frustration with the situation, rather than implementing this um implementing this change that's gonna probably result in a very short and temporary softwalk, but still nonetheless a risky situation for many people. Um so that that's my thoughts on it. I'm not I'm not super technical, but my my view on it is that my view on it is that you know, at the end of the day, the only real filter is the fees. I think that's what it comes down to, is that you can't you can't filter this stuff out at a practical level because Bitcoin transactions, it is just data at the end of the day. So how are you gonna filter data out of the blockchain? Um, you know, you you can make it more difficult, I guess, but then again, they they've already figured out ways around 2.10 and the software has not even taken place yet. So I it just seem it just seems kind of pointless to me. Like I don't understand and and that's that's what put me off of it, is this I don't because I was I was turned off of focus in the streets many years ago. Like I I don't like this idea of expressing your anger by by by engaging in pointless activities like throwing stones, looting shops, marching around with placards, even voting. I mean it's it's fucking pointless. And I I hate I hate using my energy by by pursuing pointless things just because I'm angry. I think it's a waste of time, and that's what that's what this whole book one pin thing looks like to me. It's a bunch of people that are angry, understandably so, by the way. Um, understandably so, but nonetheless, it's a waste of time and energy to express that anger in the way that they're doing it. That's that's my takeaway.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Ricky, over to you, man. Uh let's hear from your your side.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Yeah, so I don't think heavier doesn't mean like I'm not uh developing, I'm not ugly taking the stuff either. I empathize completely with the position that uh Bitcoin change coming from. Like I think I agree with their the first principle there that there's a problem and you've got these spammers who move from Shitcoin chain to Bitcoin and they're putting their back involved on the Bitcoin, which is not non-commentary use. But I agree with Adam that keys is kind of the best way to call this. Um because like I see you only have to look at so far as like all these um spammers runes and trail and all of them, they're all signaling they've got 110 ready. So like that means they're gonna be able to put their shirt on you know that call. So pointless. Um I also think that people invested so much time and energy into this now that they're like some class fallacy, they don't want to turn away from it, you know, but they're just like seeing it out, seeing it through. But then on a on like a centralization decentralization angle, I agree that us trusting the core developers for that one implementation of a core is risky. And you have this high priest class, which are the core devs. Um and the some valid points are made about the core devs uh orientation in terms of like they seem like lefties, you know. Um that being said, there are a lot of them contribute great stuff for Bitcoin. Um about you trusting the small group as opposed to so that they're like, okay, so let's let's not trust the small group, let's just trust one guy, Luke Dash Which makes no fucking sense. Um so and and there's one guy who somehow lost all of his Bitcoin uh by not scaring it properly. So that whole thing just like you know, it doesn't pass this enough test for me. Like I people can get more technical about it, but like just at a at a super basic level. Like you wanna complain about centralization and have a more centralized access to the colour. Sure, okay, so the non supplementation maybe more people start contributing, right? That's cool, but it's presently not. Um yeah, so I begrudgingly call on the core side of the I'm not happy about it. I think I wish there was more that could be done. Um but I don't think for me, bug once end is not it.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

I just want to add on the um but the but the main reason I posted about these things on on on social media, um, and and only and only one or two of the posts really attract a lot of a lot of attention. The rest of it is like, I mean, I don't have a huge and I think I've been posting this on my personal account, not on a project account. Um the only reason I've been posting on this about this on social media is is because not because I'm arguing in favor of either of the two sides. I just wanted to share this experience of like, because I think this is what a lot of people are going through, is that you know, spam sucks. I think 99.99% of people who are into Bitcoin for the right reasons agree that spam sucks. Um, but I think there's a knee-jerk reaction from people that because spam sucks, we've got to be supporting of Bitcoin of 3.10. And I think that knee-jerk reaction is kind of part of the problem. Um because there are problems in this world that you don't necessarily have immediate and obvious solutions to, and sometimes the most immediate and obvious solution can actually make the problem worse. Um, and that that's been my experience talking to a lot of like people who are working at a very, very like grass speech level. You have a very rudimentary understanding of Equine, and they have this fanatical support of BIP 110. And I noticed this talking to these people from different projects that like guys, you should spend a little bit more time just like just get some clarity as to what exactly you're upset with here, because it's not it's never a good idea to go into anything thinking that you find a solution if you're reacting to anger, frustration, or fear. Um, you know, the biggest thing that you should be doing is like first deal with that, and then if you do think that you've come up with some sort of a solution that you want to support, make sure you're not supporting it out of out of either anger or fear. Um, because that's that's a horrible place to be. You end up you end up arguing and writing the most ridiculous shit on public forums, um, if that's the place that you're coming from. And so that's the reason I've been sharing on social media about any of this, not to support either side, but just to try and like, you know, I yeah, just just to just to maybe hopefully get people to think a little bit more clearly about this. Like if you're if you're really angry and frustrated, just take some time off before you climb onto any sort of public forum and start posting stuff there.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yeah, I think great point there, Herman. This um fear and anger angle. I mean, that's how politicians grab hold of you know the populace and start driving um you know, campaign promises. Uh, you know, we're at what what is this whole thing about uh you know, we're at a cr a critical point, the future is doom, uh vote for me and we know the way out of here. You know, you end up in that sort of situation. So uh fear and anger generally, I think, is what uh the uh newspaper headlines rely on that all sort of media headlines uh aim at fear and anger. The whole FUD thing. Uh somebody once said to me, if you read a newspaper headline and your immediate reaction is to get wound up, then those guys have done their job. They're just there to get you emotive because emotive uh uh when people get emotional, that's it's knee-jerk, then that drives engagement and that drives the algorithms, and it's all this ridiculous thing behind the scenes. Um but you know, also having said that, um there's also a little bit of a uh a saying in the Bitcoin circles about you can just do things. Um I don't maybe it's an Oscar thing, maybe it's a Bitcoin thing. I I sort of get the too confused sometimes. But uh yeah, you know, if you're unhappy about something, you can just go out there and and do something about it. And if you convince enough people uh that your way is is uh a better way than what they have, and they can try it and test it, or if they can go. Um so I think this is just for me, is just another example of somebody's unhappy and they have proposed a solution, uh, whether it's a great solution or a temporary solution or whatever it is, someone's proposed something and they're gonna uh put their idea forward. And uh I I suppose your rubber's gonna hit the road whenever the engagement date is. I think it's sometime in August. Is it 10th of August or something? Um I'm not really too sure.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Uh it's at a specific block number um 963631 or something like that. Um but yeah, it looks like it's early August, and uh we'll find out then. Uh cool.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Well, um, yeah, let's not wade into the swamp and continue down that

Iran’s Mass Gathering And US Divides

SPEAKER_01 18:28

path. Um uh Herman, there was something that uh yeah, so I mentioned earlier my daughter's in the US for 4th of July a celebration. Uh and as it turns out, it's the 250th anniversary of the mighty US of A. Um But Herman, you mentioned that uh at the time this was going on in the US, um in the Middle East, uh there was a funeral and possibly the largest human mass gathering um in history, perhaps, uh, around this. Um tell us a bit more about that one.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Uh yeah, I mean I think it's fascinating. Um, Ruth and I was chatting about this. We were chatting about it offline actually. Um, sorry, not offline, uh, outside of this forum, but we were chatting about this and how how this is probably the largest gathering um at least at least that we know of. Um and it's just I mean it's just massive, like millions and millions of people, the mind can't comprehend that, and I think it's kind of funny um to contrast that with uh the 250th celebration in the US. I think it's just it's it's kind of funny that those two things are happening at the same time, and there are so many examples of like you know, botched um botched attempts at blowing this 250th celebration up in the US like they had um not always anyone's hope, but I mean there was horrible weather at one point, um the numbers were far lower than they were hoping for, and there's just so many problems in the US and you know society there is so divided. Um it's just kind of funny to contrast this. I don't know, I don't know exactly I can't can't put it exactly into words, but I think it's it's kind of interesting that those two things coincided, and it's not and it's not as if anyone planned it. I mean well, I guess the US did plan on assassinating the Iranian leader, but still it's not not exactly scripted, or maybe it is. Um but there seems there there seems to have been a much bigger celebration of unity in Iran than there was in the US, despite despite everybody wanting us to believe that Irania Iran is the is the is the villain in all of this. Um you know there's this there's this massive celebration of unity where millions of people come out in support of the single cause. Um and this is kind of what the US wanted with this old 250, but I think it was a bit of a fail.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Yeah, um, I mean nothing rallies people together like an invading force. Um it's it's I remember before the the US invaded, um there was uh you know sort of talk of uh you know the local populace being a bit unhappy about the government. And I know some of it seemed to have been stoked up and maybe um you know overhyped, or maybe I don't know, third forces trying to stoke people up. But um there was a general sentiment that the oak in the street wasn't that happy. Um you know, that all the you saw these photos of life in Iran in 1976 or something, and there's you know, the chicks are wearing short skirts, they look like they're in London in the 70s. Um and you've got this thing going on, and it started in my mind, I was looking at this and going, hmm, okay. Um, you know. I saw the Arab Spring that happened in the early 2000s. Uh and yeah, that started in one of the Jeepers, was it Tunisia? Yeah, yeah. I I remember that 2011, I think. Yeah, and uh the that one was sparked off, if I remember, by a guy that had his um he had like a little trolley or something that he was selling goods from, and some cop came and confiscated it, and that was his last means of supporting himself. And the oak dust himself in fuel fuel and lit himself on fire just in protest, like he was that desperate. And then this seemed to kick off this wave that just went from Tunisia to all the surrounding uh Islamic countries, and I think it hit Syria and kind of stopped because the Syrian government just went hardcore on their own citizens. But anyway, um with that back in uh in the back of my mind and looking at this Iranian thing, I was sort of wondering: is this maybe not the start of some change in that sort of regime? And then suddenly, you know, the US um goes and hits them, and now everybody is totally anti-US and you know, the great Satan and all that sort of thing. Um but also just having said that, um as kind of out of the way and as uh as much as the West likes to diss Iran as being sort of really a backward state or something, they've this war has had massive effects on um global economy. I mean, obviously, oil prices is one thing, but I just saw a headline now in June that um uh a lot of central banks are uh thinking about holding rates steady and changing. Um uh there's one here. Um they are looking at um uh uh yeah, uh pressure prompting central banks to consider rate hikes, dashing hopes of additional rate hikes for years to come. I mean, that's just a little one-liner. Um but I mean, pretty you know, interesting that uh this sort of I won't say little backward nation because I mean they've you know a very old civilization and they're a huge country, but um it largely ignored from a Western world point of view, and yet they this has had such a massive impact. Um anyway, I don't really have a question there, but yeah, just some rambling thoughts on my side on this. Um I haven't really stayed up to date with the latest uh Iran thing. Um sounds like ceasefire, then not ceasefire, and fuel price up, fuel price down, but it looks like it's generally trending towards normal at the moment, and even um ceasefires breaking don't seem to be changing too much in terms of fuel prices anymore. It's almost like like war seems to have become a normal part of life now. Like, you know, the Ukraine war was like a huge thing when it started, and now it's like, oh, well, there's Ukraine, there's Gaza, there's Iran. Yeah, business carries on as normal. Anyway, uh, as I said, just a statement, not really a question there. But Ricky, I can see you've got something to say there.

Strait Of Hormuz And Revenge Logic

SPEAKER_03 24:56

I think it's a gradually then suddenly thing, yeah. Um, so the ceasefire was in place, I think until about two days ago, three days ago. Um, America violated the ceasefire numerous times. And um then they kept trying to send ships through the route ships through the uh Strait of the Moose through the southern route past Iran. Obviously, part of the MOU was that uh Iran would have sole control of it, and everyone, any ship that goes through there is to register with the Iranian authority. And if they don't, they'll get shot at so the Americans are selling their ships. No, go through, it's fine, we got your back. Ships went through, they got shot. Obviously, the Americans knew that was gonna happen because the Americans are probably just gearing up. They use the MOU as a as a reason to re-arm and get themselves ready for the next phase of the war. And what you know, what this has shown anyone paying attention, any nation state paying attention, is that you cannot trust the US and Israel obviously, but you cannot trust the US at its word at all. It'll lie cheap and still it'll it'll do what empires always do. And that's just use the most aggressive use of force and and lying and and bad diplomacy to get their way. Um what I always find so amazing when I see American commentators speaking about this stuff is that like, oh, you know, we've lost 14 American lives, soldiers have died. And I'm like, yeah, and you've killed over 4,000 Iranians. Like those people's lives are of equal value to yours. Like, why do you think American lives are worth more than Iranian lives? Especially those Iranians were doing nothing to you at all. You came in and bombed them, you know. And like, so Americans complained about 9-11 how it changed America's view and had launched the whole fake war on terror and invaded Iran and Afghanistan Iraq and Afghanistan because 3,000 people died. So Iran has had more than a 9-11 take place since this the second round of the war started um recently and obviously now those people want revenge, and this is what we saw at the funeral or Khamenei when somewhere between the realm of the numbers, it's hard to get a reader on it, but somewhere between 12 million to 40 million people came out into the streets. I mean, that's crazy. And that's across the Shia Crescent, right? So it's like Iran and Iraq, but in Tehran alone, they reckon somewhere between 20 and 30 million people on the streets of Tehran, which is it's a mind-bending number. Like we said earlier, might be the biggest human gathering ever recorded in to come out in in for the funeral. And they if you know anything about Shia Islam, they raised the red flag, which is the red flag of revenge. And so uh people might know the story of Salman Rashdi, who wrote the book The Satanic Versus, which was basically talking Islam, and the old papa kamene um declared a fatwa, you know, essentially saying we uh you have you have brought shame on Islam and we're gonna get you basically. And for the rest of his life, he was compounded by sheer extremists or people seeking revenge. I mean, he lost an eye, he was stabbed, got beaten up many times, like his life is run. And so what they've done now, and this is what the Americans don't realize, or maybe they do, but they're just too dumb to actually like really uh appreciate the scale of this. But like Donald Trump, Donald Trump's family, uh Vice President, JD Bance, his family, P Tag said, everyone, all the generals, everyone involved in this, their families have a butt work declared on them, a religious buttons that will go on forever. Like these people will not stop. And the revenge won't be served today or tomorrow or you know, a few weeks from now. And this could happen 20 years from now. Like Donald Trump's banquets, you know, could be walking in the streets and someone doused them with petrol and sets them on fire because of what Donald Trump did. Like, this is this is what this means to these people, and like you know, Americans were banging for revenge after 9-11, and they went into Iraq and killed a million people, you know, because of that ridiculous deal. And so, you know, but Americans think that their feelings are the only ones that matter, and their people are the only ones that matter, and the rest of the world is kind of catching up to the fact that that's not that's not the case. Um so yeah, I mean it's I I wish it didn't happen, but this is what happens when you play stupid games. And like if you look at it now, the Strait of War Moose is closed. The Americans day before yesterday, Trump came out and said, We're gonna provide security for the Strait of War Moose and we're gonna charge 20% on all cargo vessels, 20% of the cargo value to escort you through. Now, the Iranians were charging two million dollars on a super tank, which is basically one dollar per barrel of oil, because they can transport about two million barrels of oil. So the Iranians are charging way less than the Americans are charging. But the Americans a month ago were complaining and saying it's it's international waterways, it should be free navigation, no one should be charging tolls or anything. Then the Americans come out and say they ain't gonna charge 20%. Subsequently, Trump dropped that because obviously his entire administration was like, What are you talking about? This is just like ruins all of our credibility in the eyes of all of our partners. So I just it's hard to see what the what the end game here is because before this happened, the Strait of England was open and no tolls were charged. Now the straits are closed, tolls are being charged, and the Americans are trying to fix the issue, want to charge 20%. So, like, this is ridiculous. Um they made it about the nuclear issue. Iran, you know, uh previous uh coming out before America assassinated him, they declared a fato against nuclear weapons saying we will not declare develop nuclear weapons. Now the best believe they're gonna develop nuclear weapons because otherwise, how do they stop America from from invading it again if you don't have nukes, basically? Which does now make the situation way worse because they have they have very advanced missiles that they can fling nukes quite far, um sometimes up to three and a half thousand kilometers, which puts straight at Gibraltar, Central Europe, all the way down to the Ago, Asia, the Indian Ocean, all of that within that radius, which because the thing you basically have in a North Korea in the middle of the Persian Gulf they get nukes, um except North Korea's on the far side of the world, whereas uh Iran's literally in the middle. So they just made the whole situation infinitely worse. Um and just to go back to the point about the Arab Springs, like those things all seemed organic, but it turns out none of those things are organic. This is intelligence agencies, like Western intelligence agencies, CIA and Essex, the French, figuring out how they can use social tension to stage a revolution and revolution. They did it in Ukraine. The reason they they did it in Ukraine is the reason why we have the Ukraine war. Yeah, they overthrew the democratically elected government with a far, I don't use the term lightly, but a far-right militants, neo-Nazis, overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine, directly led to the Ukraine war with Russia now. So um, yeah, these guys, you know, they keep on they keep on poking, poking around everywhere. And um I think they've finally come up against a country, a civilization, a nation state that can actually resist it. Um this is the first time in decades. So that's why it's particularly interesting. I don't carry any water for the Iranian regime, I think it's like a brutal theocracy, which I think is not for me, you know. Um, but it is quite good to see the empire getting a puscle. Uh yeah, so that's my taking.

Propaganda, Escalation, And Restraint

SPEAKER_00 32:34

I just want to add something onto that. I think uh yeah, it's uh it's it's it's uh you made some fantastic points there, and I think one has to really crystallize this understanding that you know I'm I'm using not my thoughts, I'm just repeating what I what I heard I'll say, but you know, you you gotta you gotta um you gotta look at at how the Americans justify most of their actions, and so they're always trying to portray this image that that they're the good guys and that somebody else is is the bad guy. Um this is how they this is how they build up support. Um I mean there's a whole there's a whole movie industry built up around this idea, um, there's this propaganda that America is always on the right side. Um in order to in order to play this art, what they have to do is they have to use this sort of gradual strategy where they they're gradually trying to push the other side to do something which they can then use as a justification to do what they really want to do. And so this is what you saw happen between Ukraine and Russia, where they gradually kept expanding, gradually kept expanding. They never built anything that was so bad that it was obvious that they were the bad business, but they kept gradually, gradually, gradually putting myself closer and closer, gradually expanding more than throwing more countries that had more business being in the media to begin with, gradually expanding until eventually they they tried to actually to the point where actually I put the main thing they got the excuse to actually go into the bad thing. And this is this is what happened with this recent, I mean the war's been the war's been undermining again number three for like three or four days now, what is the C is fine, um you're making very, very clearly that um again somebody said this, but they are acting like a bad level. You know, they they they they I took I took a particular point of the memorandum of understanding and then trusted it to mean something that it shouldn't mean and trying to get the effects together on a particular period of understandable faces for the opinion. The memorandum of understanding specifically said the C is based on the understanding of the order and processes of Americans really interpreted the memorandum and understanding subscribe three and use the language to say that actually underpretation and Americans to continue the wall. And so there is constant effort for million Americans to create the circumstances that can't be seen as the aggressive, I can't be seen as the ones to first and bones, so they're gonna work in the same people really confused, you know. So the difference is again I also then I also bring um um you know I'm not I'm not a spectral regime I would never live in the government. I wouldn't last very long under circumstances of the same thing you know um and at the same time as as what you said, I just want to echo those thoughts. It's it's kind of you know, you wanna you wanna at some point see the rest of the world recognize this game for what it is.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

And and I think I think that's that's happening right now, right? Like the one thing that that the Russians and the Chin and the Iranians both have done is they've shown extreme restraints in the way that they interact with the Empire, with the US. So, for example, like the Americans and NATO, because uh the Ukrainians aren't doing shit, like it's that's all NATO in America in America, right? Are sending long-range drones into Russia and hitting all of these refineries all over Russia, and they hit 90 uh oil transport ships over the past week in the seas of the civilian infrastructure, not military, not Navy ships, but civilian uh tankers. They're hitting civilian infrastructure. And the Russians are responding and hitting military targets. And the same with the Iranians. The uh the Americans come in, they bomb carpet bomb Tehran, they blow up the refineries, there's black oil rain raining down on Tehran, they're bombing their water, their water plant, water treatment plants, they killed a hit of school, killed 180 school girls. And the Iranians, what do they do? They respond by hitting military installations in the neighboring regions that are on America military basis. They're not hitting possibility for that. So they're just showing restraint the whole time. And it's just like the mask is off, like it shows you the empire just does what the empire wants to do, it has no regard for human life, it has no regard for fairness, clearly international laws of scam, it's not real um the mighty right. And so the key difference though between uh the Iranians and the Russians, I think, is that the Iranians are playing a much better game of how you respond how you escalate against the empire. Um, the Russians, for some reason, Putin still seems to think that he can reason with Trump that this is the administration that they can try to patch up relations with the West and stop this this onslaught against Russia. Whereas anyone in you know the more hawkish views in Russia are like, what do you think? Like you can't, like we didn't have any communication with America's Biden administration, basically none but Obama, H years was like no communication. But they weren't launching missiles into Russia. No, you're talking to Trump, you think he's you can reason with them, but he's launching missiles into your uh into your fucking uh country and blowing up refineries and some of the areas. So whereas the Iranians have realized okay, no, like you can't reason with the Americans. The only thing that the Empire understands is violence and force. So I think this next round of escalation we see now, I think Iran is completely gonna pull the labs off and it's gonna be hectic. And the thing is like this could lead to World War II. Yeah, absolutely. Um because uh it only takes Americans ground invasion into Iran for this to really spiral out of control. People must must realize that the first world war for the first six months, eight months of the first world war, it was called like the Balkan conflict. You know, they just thought it was like another conflict in the Balkans. It only became known as World War I much later down the line. And this is the thing, like these wars are unpredictable events. Um and so we can have a whole global depression caused by this because the Australia moves controls 20% of the world's oil supply, but it also controls uh 50 to 60 percent of the world's helium supply, a huge amount of the fertilizer supply, because the natural gas that comes out and and and the nitrogen and carbon nitrates that come out of the ground in the oil and gas production process is used to make nitrogen fertilizers. So that fertilizer distribution is gonna cause lack of distribution, it's gonna cause famine around the world, it's gonna cause food prices to spike. It's gonna even cause countries that have fertilizer, like America, and that makes their own fertilizer prices to spike there too, and their food to go up. So, like the knock-on consequences of this are gonna be so severe. And this is all the back of Donald Trump running a campaign and saying no new wars, no more stupid wars, we need to pull ourselves out of the Middle East, it's ridiculous. So it just seems like he's a massive scammer. Or Mossad, the Epstein class had so much dirt on him that they just got him to do what they wanted to do, and this all comes back to Israel wanting to take out Iran because they see him as the primary threat to them in the region because Iran is the only uh Muslim country that is standing up for the Palestinians, and this all comes back to the Palestinian courts in Gaza, the West Bank. Um they are the axis of resistance, and they're supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and the Axis of resistance, which is basically pushing back against Israel. So this all comes back to Israel, and it's just absolute desire to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians off the face there. Um so yeah, uh in my opinion, this all comes back to the Palestinian push.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

We know Trump is a massive scammer because he launched Trumpcoin. He made millions, he made millions of dollars on a on a on a Switcoin.

SPEAKER_03 41:12

So who knows is that number one crypto trader, number one crypto trader 2025, made the most money out of the crypto in the world, in the world.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Yeah, it's insane.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

And and Hermann, I think you and I might have had this conversation years ago where we were like nominally pro-Trump. But like for me, like when the Venezuela thing happened, I was like, I'm off the Trump track. And then when the whole Iran thing happened, I was like, this guy's absolutely massive scam.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

And like yeah, I was I was nominally you know, yeah, I was I was nominally I was nominally pro-Trump just because the the because you know the the things he was saying sounded so good. Um but I always had this you know I I had I had this experience of of being heavily proud of Obama and 2009 in the back of my head where he didn't deliver on any of the promises that he made. And I was like, you can't ever trust the politician. It doesn't matter what they promise, you can't ever trust the politician because the incentives are overwhelmingly um in the direction of lying for the sake of popularity, and so you can't ever trust what a politician says.

SPEAKER_03 42:22

Absolutely, and they don't work for you, the voter, they work for the best interests to fund them and like fund their campaigns, like they act as if they work for the their whole job is to spin a story to the voter to make it seem like they work for them, but actually they work for the best interests. And in Trump's case, he's working for the military industrial complex or the financial industrial complex, the technical industrial complex, probably all three, uh, but definitely not for the mega Republicans, like they just can take it for a ride.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Yeah, I think it's probably safe to say that uh uh the only thing, you know, everything is uncertain. It's just crazy. Uh, you know, I I'm actually a bit bummed Oaken uh uh wasn't on today's one because he would be so proud. I actually got my little Hermes agents up and running, and I got it to do a task to go and um find some stuff, uh news items, relevant news items in the month of June uh as talking points for today's show. Um I I had to I I posted it to you guys, and then I quickly, when I actually read it, realized there was some shitcoin stuff in there. So I quickly went back, canceled the post, cleared out all the shitcoin stuff. Um and I I mean, I don't know if uh these are um like fake headlines. I didn't actually go and check every single one, but I just thought this would be a great uh test run to see. I asked my bot to go and do something, it came back with a whole bunch of answers. Um, but just taking a look at some of the economic stuff that um uh my agents came back on. Oh, and I've called my agent uh Jules from uh Pulp Fiction saying, look. Jackson's character, um, because he was like the coolest sidekick ever. So um yeah, he was that's that's his name. Uh but uh yeah, just from an acad economics point of view, um, I mean, these are some of the headlines coming up. So uh Federal Reserve held the uh federal funds rate steady on the 17th of June. Uh a few uh next headline. Uh major divergence in uh central bank policy. The Fed, the ECB, and the BOE, which is Bank of England, cut rates. So just the headline above, it says it's holding rates steady. The next one says they're cutting rates. Then it goes on to say uh two other banks, RBA and BCB, I'm not sure who those are, but I can probably open the article and see they hiked and the Bank of Japan tightened. Then further down, it's going on to say um uh warnings that um rate hikes uh might be rate cuts may be uh threatened because of this war in Iran. So um I think the only takeaway I have from this whole thing is um the thing is far from perfect. Uh and I wouldn't be surprised if some of those links were actually fake. Um, but I will uh I will definitely go in and check them out the next time.

South African Politics And Secession Ideas

SPEAKER_01 45:16

But you know, bringing this conversation of governments and politicians closer to home, uh I was actually listening to the guys on the common sense podcast recently, um, sort of like a local. I normally don't listen to uh current affairs stuff because it's always just stuff. But uh I figure I don't know anything about what's going on in South South Africa at the moment. So maybe I should actually listen to something, and uh that's quite a good one to listen to, just in terms of general stuff. But um, you know, just listening to what you were saying earlier, Ricky, about the US being portrayed as the good guy and they market themselves as such, but act as anything else. Um, I think we've had a very recent situation with our own government here, sort of came into power on the moral high ground. These are the guys that are now going to, okay, they came in with a bit of a socialist view, but um, you know, uh the idea was that things are going to get better. And I think for all intents and purposes, our economy did improve and you know, we started humming. Uh, I think the numbers they spouted was between 2004 and 2007. We were at 5% annual growth rate. Um, but then just like the Americans, maybe as an idea, uh, an organization starts off with all the best intentions, so too did our current guys. And anyway, we can see what we see at the moment. Um, so yeah, we have elections coming up here. Um, Hammond, I just want to uh reiterate what you said or underline what you said about uh I was also kind of pro-Trump when he came up. He just seemed such an interesting guy. He wasn't scared to say stuff, he wasn't scared to uh shake the tree, drain the swamp, all those words that everyone likes to hear. And of course, when he came in, he did absolutely anything but um so I'm looking at our own politicians at the moment, and uh I suppose in South Africa's case we have one obvious big problem, and that's the current clowns. They need to leave. Uh, but I suspect we will very soon replace them with another bunch of clowns. Um, you know, this John Steenazen guy who seemed to do quite a good job for the DA. Um his handling of this whole foot and mouth thing, and he's he, you know, he's had some personal finance issues, and uh he was skinny, he got fat. Now, I mean, that was in a short space of time. He started looking like an current, you know, a regular uh minister. So I don't know. We've got these elections coming up, and once again, I don't have a question for anybody, but uh, I suppose just to you know, Goberg's placing its hopes on Helen Ziller coming in. Um, and maybe in the beginning that will go well, uh, and then maybe after a while we'll have UK-style problems where we start having this like overarching, overreaching nanny state that gets thrust on us and its uh bureaucracy to hell and gone.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

Um I have a super unpopular opinion on this. I don't think South Africa is a stable political unit. It was cobbled together by the British after the world war, forced into union. There's four countries before that. It was forced into union by the British. It was then the apartheid government in uh the republic was formed, inherited that union, that that unit, and it behooved them to keep it together because there's more resources to aggregate in a larger area, and obviously there's lots of wealth up north in South Africa. Um but it was coming apart of the seams. They couldn't they couldn't keep the entropy a little on the entropy. And the entropy was that you had this Africana nationalist government that was trying to have minority rule over a bunch of tribes that didn't want them to move on. And the ANC inherited that from the uh nationalist government, and they've been going for 30 odd years now, almost as long as the nationalist government, and the entropy is pulling itself apart. So, like I think that South Africa is a it's not an organic, stable unit, it's not a it's not a real nation. The rainbow nation is a fictitious uh pigment of people's imagination that some lefty dreamed up is not real, and the tribes don't agree. And I mean the best way I can explain to someone is that my view on living in the southernmost tip of Africa, and I'm literally from the southernmost tip of Africa, my view on what governance should be, what a mayor should do, what a local municipality should do, and what I expect from our politicians is very different from someone who lives in the northernmost tip of South Africa, a vendor lives way up north. His view is very different than what the chief should do or what the mayor should do, what he expects from his government and what standard he goes into. And so, why should my view be forced on him and why should his view be forced on me? And that's what the Republic of South Africa in its current form tries to do is create this governance structure that you know one size fits all, then it clearly doesn't fit anyone. Um and so you're trying to run this, you're trying to direct this massive, massive country with all these 12 national languages and all these different groups all pulling in different directions and and believe different things. And ultimately, if you want to have if a government is for the people by the people, it has to represent the people, and it doesn't represent our views and ideas, you're not living in a democracy, you're living in something else that's being forced on you. So, personally, my view, I'd love to see West Cape secession, I'd love to see KZN secession first, to be honest with you. I'd love to see secession of the three state, you know, the Tower Republic, all of it, go back, break apart, go to different tribal groups or you know, smaller units. You if your unit is smaller, you're close to your politicians, you're close to your politicians, you can just grab them off the street guitar and feather them. And that's essentially what you need to do. You like you need to make politicians scared again. Um government needs to be local. The further your government is away from you, the more of an empire it becomes, the less you say you have more of a subject you become and not a citizen. So that's my view of how it should go. And and and I I like the Swiss canton system. So if we were to you know break apart these are independent republics, I'd like to say canton system each republic as well, which is where the canton can secede from the nation state. So each canton gets to vote, so you can be as close to your politicians as possible, um, and you to your local canton has the maximum level of control, the federal government has the least control. And so that's what I think would work best for places diverse in South Africa. People say, oh, the Western Cape won't work, it doesn't have natural resources. We could explain Singapore or Hong Kong to me then like Western Cape is positioned on a global trade route, like you can absolutely make it work. The Cape Colony did work very well for 200 years, 300 years, so 200 years. So please spend me another story. Um, yeah, I think it can do, but if it's an African current format, it doesn't work. And I think just look at the last hundred years, like it's just a history of one group oppressing another, you know, for 100 years. Um actually longer than that, since since Europeans started recording history in the Cape, since all Ghana arrived, people have been groups have been oppressing each other. And so, like, maybe we should try something different.

The Freedom Stack Bitcoin Nostr AI

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Yeah, I mean, that comes straight into the whole sovereign individual thesis. Um, great book. Um, I'm sure you guys have read it. Um, and you know, until that happens, uh, what we do have though is we have our Freedom Stack, which is essentially our Bitcoin to spend, uh, transfer wealth, save wealth. We have Nasda to communicate and share stuff. And I think AI is now probably the third leg of the stool in this Freedom Stack thing. Um, I've I mean I've just ordered myself um one of these little, it's not a Mac mini, but it's a Mac mini equivalent. Uh as a matter of interest, uh Mac Mini no longer are sold in 64 gig or 128 gig versions. Uh apparently all those chips are being sucked up by AI data centers. So they now only sell a maximum of a 24 gig um version. Now, uh I'm not much of a tech guy, but I know things go 2, 4, 6, 8, 16, 32, 48. That's how memory works. Uh uh 24 is some sort of hybrid of the two, like they haven't quite given you the one, but they want to believe they've given you more than than what they should have. Um, anyway, this thing is arriving, um, and I'm going to be setting this up. Uh I'm looking at downloading my own LLM and running my own agents and having everything basically completely private self-sovereign, running itself, doing its own thing without paying for API calls every time it wants to do that. Um, and just on this topic of um uh the Noster uh as part of the Freedom Stack, I see that there's a uh a project called Mostro, which has now launched a Noster-based P2P Lightning Exchange, um, which is pretty cool. Uh I mean, the the peer-to-peer stuff has been done before. It's uh normally centralized, not normally decentralized. The ones that are decentralized run through normal TCP IP with IP addresses. This one seems to be a go at uh using the Noster protocol to do that. I haven't checked it out myself, but just amazing to see that more and more stuff is getting built that allows you to basically uh say what you want to say, do what you want to do, pick up your money and go. And I do hope we see more and more of these smaller communities uh just deciding to do stuff for themselves. And maybe the Western Cape will break away, maybe KZN would break away. Um, I do think we'll see it happening in some of the bigger places first. Uh, the US, I am fairly sure in my lifetime, will no longer be 50 states. I think Canada will um have a bit of a split-off there at some points, and I do think the EU will effectively collapse um in our lifetime. But hey, maybe it will happen here. But uh the the Freedom Stack thing is amazing, and I think not enough people actually look at it, try to test it, um, and mess around with it.

SPEAKER_03 55:26

Um yeah, once again, not a quick so Hadman and I can both attest

Start9, Self-Hosting, And Remote Access

SPEAKER_03 55:34

to this. We've both been running start nine servers um for the past year or two, and I've recently I have three of them now. One I'm running on my own machine that I've built myself, like an old Raspberry Pi, and the other two on the dedicated Start 9 hardware. Um, and I've upgraded to the beta version of 04.0, which is a new start OS. So I can highly recommend you you spin that up on your machine because it's built exactly for this. You can run, you know, uh OLAMA, which is like open source models, do the whole thing there with private, etc. The issue is that it does come down to hardware and how much juice you've got in there to actually run the queries. So like your models are restricted by what what type of hardware you have. So it's like the graphics cards basically. Um so I think I might be speaking under correction, but it sounds like Start OS is building in uh the ability to like plug in external graphics cards to your your phone server so you can actually get DPR uh computers. Presently they can't really run much. Um but yeah, if your if your hardware is a bit VP, then then you should be able to do it. But like I try to run my homies agent on my start9 machine, and that's 32 gigs RAM and it just absolutely nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Like 30 seconds to get a response to like hello. So that won't that will not do. Um so yeah, you need you need some BP hardware there. But the freedom stack that you can run on Start OS is phenomenal. Like your own password manager, your own, which is which will start, uh, your own file service, you know, post all the files there. Um you can spin up what's called a a virtual router, um, which means you can then connect all your devices from anywhere in the world to that virtual router, which then connects via wire guard tunnel, VPN tunnel to your server. So you can access all your services from ADR, you don't have to do it by at all, which if you had previously done that on the older version of Start OS, slow can't use experience, not great. You can only rarely use it in your own local network at home, you know, when you're in a Pi Finding. So now like I'm accessing my Start9 server, which is in Cape Town from Bali, you know, no problem. Um which is great, it's fantastic, fantastic user experience there. And like they constantly are building, there's new services being added. And the great thing about vibe coding is you just go to start 9, you download the docs, and you feed it into your agent, have it learn how to package things for start nine, and then you can build your own services and run them on your own server. So you can run your own services that you can dream up, hook up, you know, things you want to do for yourself, home automation, take over the world, whatever you want to do, run it on your own start nine server, access with any device anywhere in the world, um by your virtual router and your website. So, yeah, that's a super cool um development. So I I think you Gavin, you said last time you're running out, you had an Umbril device previously. Umbril's behind the curve on this with the with the clear net stuff. Um Start9 is really taking the lead here, and it's they've done an absolutely fantastic job. And this is why I wish Oaken was there because he obviously works for Start9. Um, and like he's helped me a huge amount on on this stuff. It's so funny when I go onto support forum and I'm like, I need help, and I end up just chatting to Oakan. I'm like, I should have just called you, like why I was speaking to you to the support forum. Um, but yeah, it's it's it's fantastic what they've done. Like, I can't, it's I can't sing its phrases enough. Um, and the other thing is you can run your fediment on there, so there's fediment guardians on there. Um so word on the street is there's some local boys running Fediment Guardians in uh in the Cape Good Hope, um which is community custody, for example, lightning bullets and and better than trusting a custodian, and it's easier than self-custody. So that's all being run from SART9 devices uh locally in South Africa as well, which is super cool to see.

SPEAKER_01 59:31

Now that that is awesome. I mean, I yes, I have been using Umbril, um, and no no gripes except for the issue about the um tunneling and you you you really struggle to do that. Um but the interesting thing about uh so so Mac minis, uh, when I was looking around, I I looked at what are the options, uh, the the Apple version and the non-Apple equivalent. And Mac minis came up as a solid one because uh, I mean, they were quiet, low power, all that sort of thing, but there was something about uh unified memory or unified swap memory or something. So uh it could use uh I think some of your SSD space as RAM um for tasks, so it made it quick and easy. Uh whereas the other units didn't seem to do that. But I've actually found a unit uh that does that. Uh it's a brand new unit. Um, it's from a company called BLink. It's a Chinese company, seems to be quite well. Um uh seem to have a lot of reviews, seems to be fine. Uh, it's got top-end tech, it's got unified uh swap memory as well. So that's basically uh uh an Apple Mac or Mac mini uh competitor direct there. So definitely gonna check that out. Um uh yeah, it's got 64 gigs of RAM on it, so that should be fine. I will just be careful not to like try and blow it too hard with a massive LLM model on there and just you know get something more uh more reasonable. Um, but also uh, you know, the Chinese models, the open source models that are out there, um very powerful stuff. Um uh so I've been using GLM uh 5.2 or something recently, and no complaints on that one. It's

Privacy-Preserving AI Workflows And PPQ

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

really cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

Um uh yeah, I actually can't I've actually built a whole project that I'm to launch quite soon, but um using Quen, basically a bunch of different Twend models, and I've been using shout outs PPQ. So on my start line device, I'll say I can't run my own models because of the hardware constraints, but you can host your own Git repository there. So like all your code base and stuff can live on there, and then the best way I've found, and like I speak under correction, other people might have better found better solutions, but uh you can use PPQ as a pseudonymous way because you don't have to sign up for the account, right? You just pay with some stats of lightning, you get credits, and then you've got access to all the latest models, whatever model you want to use. You pay for query stands for like what I've found the way to do is you uh can link your PPQ to your your account, PPQ account to your uh local Git repo that you're hosting your start nine, build your project there, and then everything lives on that on that repo. Um, and then you can self-host through code base, and you build, then you build your service arts package it as a slot 9 service, and you can run it from your own device if it ever needs to have like you know internet access to the rest. And so that way you can get access to frontier models, um, or the Chinese open source models, which are way cheaper um than Prophet GPT, etc. etc. Um, and yeah, I found I built a project for my current spend is about a thousand Rand on the project, and the code base is quite big. Um can do quite a lot of cool stuff. Um you guys will both find out about it soon and after when I launch it. Um but yeah, I basically spent about a thousand Rand in tokens to build it, um which not bad uh considering the amount of work it gets done. So that and the reason why I say with PPQ is because you get a pseudonymous, you get like it's not quite anonymous, but you get pseudonymous, so like your things you're building are not linked to identities. When you're building it with flawed code, like that's directly linked to identity, right? And like you're training their models and like they know who you are, because your credit card's linked to you. So with PPQ, you can at least get like a layer of privacy that way, because you can't self-host your own models because you don't with the hardware constraints. So that's kind of my approach. It's not perfect, but it kind of works, and you get some privacy in what you're building. Because if you might be building things that like I don't know, you just want some privacy around it for whatever reason, um, you can get it through working with PvQ. And yeah, shout out to Matt Eldor for what is that at PvQ. It's absolutely phenomenal project. Uh all the latest models are there, and you can access them just pay it for what you use it's outside.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

Yeah,

Getting Agents Talking On Messaging Apps

SPEAKER_01 1:03:50

cool. So um, I I think guys, I need you to send me a um probably an email address that I can use for my agent to communicate with your agents. And I just want to I I want to research topics for the next uh podcast when we do it, and have my agent email your agent, and then your email, your agent with your personalities can uh go through and add, find, delete, and kind of have fun just um round robining this thing between three different agents to see what it comes up with, and uh then just fire off next month's one, just going, Hey, this is what uh this is what we have come up with.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:32

So I think I'm pretty sure Signal has built in the ability to have a bot now with Signal. So you can have right on an AI agent by a signal. Um and uh well I don't know can um and Hermes has got a uh XP service and do that. So yeah, with your Hermes agent, you can connect to Signal. So we can have our bots, three bots in a group, the bot chat, uh together, and they can all burn through tokens and waste the money together.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

I think uh I think the easiest way would actually be to do it on telegram. Um signal is a little trickier. I've had I've had issues with the signal. I mean, I know Telegram is not ideal, but Telegram. Yeah, and I hate Telegram as well. Um, but it's it's probably the easiest way to get uh to get the agent to communicate with the rest of the world. WhatsApp is a nicmere.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:24

Um Facebook is pretty terrible.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:29

Yeah, WhatsApp is the micmare. Um signal the issues with telegram is is is probably easiest. Um I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna be I wish I wish it was easier to to to get my agent to to operate on on signal. I really wish it was. Um but for now telegram seems to be the uh the easiest. Um the the the most reliable at least.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:53

I think it's a matter of time though, hey, like all these guys are gonna catch up because they've seen Telegram's got the lead, but I think Signal's gonna Everyone's holding agency stuff now, right? But like hopefully fingers crossed, they can make a red because Telegram's just such a scam. Scammers everywhere, and like whenever I go on there, it's just scammers, and like people go, Oh, you can turn it off. I'm like, why is it on? Just watch it. You know, the signals are such better.

Node Sync Panic And Practical Troubleshooting

SPEAKER_01 1:06:18

Yeah, just to um just to add to that, probably final thoughts from my side is um I'm on the Sparrow Wallet signal group, and uh probably 20 times a day they have this pin message that pops up that just says, hey, this thing is absolutely uh rough with spammers. This group the telegram group. Yeah, the telegram group for uh Sparrow. And they have like an anon bot that you tap and you send a message through this thing, it anonymizes your name and then posts it onto the main telegram group, and then any comms that you have on the group uh comes through on the anonymous bot on the one side plus the main telegram group, but uh they're full of warnings about so that's how they find a way around it, which I thought is quite clever. And uh I recently had to use them because uh I bought some BTC on-chain and um the guy sent it to me, and then he's like, Hey, uh, he's had one confirmation just letting me know it should all be fun. I jump on, uh, I use Sparrow for these sort of things, and I see nothing. I'm like, okay, no sweat, I'll just wait a while. Sometimes there's a bit of a delay. Anyway, about five hours later, I still see nothing. Now I'm starting to like the sweat is starting to roll down the one side of my forehead. Um I say, hey man, uh I haven't seen anything yet. Please send me the transaction ID, which he does do. And I by the time I check that out, now there's 70-something confirmations later. Uh and I've still not seeing anything. So now I'm cutting and pasting Bitcoin addresses, putting them one underneath each other, like literally checking is there a digit missing, what the hell's going on? Absolutely panicked. Um, and then I jumped onto Sparrow Wallets, uh, the telegrams. Uh yeah, no, it turned out um my node had just lost sync with the blockchain two days ago, and I wasn't even aware of it. Um so some guy said, Hey, just check your node connectivity. And it's like, you know, it's tech 101. When someone says, you know, I can't print, normally it's like restart your laptop or just check that the print is plugged in, you know, these sort of basics. And anyway, so I should have done that first. Uh quickly retync to uh the chain and payment came through. But I was probably starting to tweet. Um uh I sort of had horrors of something about silent payments, and this guy has like copied the address and it looks like it's going to mine, but he's actually secretly sent it back to himself. And anyway, so uh yeah, uh adventures in the world of Bitcoin. So if anybody out there that sort of doesn't get a payment, just check that your node is connected. And I hope everybody is running the own node, connect uh your uh sparrow directly through to your own node. Um just do everything yourself. It's not hard. Uh we spoke about IR. I will tell you how to do that step by step, literally step by step, how to do it. And um, if it doesn't, if you uh this is just a general public service announcement, if you get IR to give you some instructions and nothing happens, or you get an error message, just screenshot the error message, put it back into the chat and say this is the error I get when I get to step four your instructions. And I'll go, oh, okay. Well, Kirby, you're on this system, you should have told me that up front. So do this, do this, do whatever. Um, okay, so super useful screenshots uh for vibe coding and querying uh is incredible. Um I've screenshot everything I do now. Uh it just seems to work like a dream. Uh anyway, boys, I think we're up on time. Uh Herman, you've yeah, you've got a holiday to get back to. Ricky, you've got to go so far. I've got no one and nothing to do, and no one to go back to. So um anyway, just closing uh closing thoughts, please.

Closing Thoughts And A Push To Try

SPEAKER_03 1:10:07

Uh yeah, I'd say get into get some get your own device uh or buy a start line home server and start playing around with that. That's fine coding man. I will just voice it.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

I mean there's a lot of things that can be said on the socket, but I think um uh I think we're adding maxive. Um we'll add a uh an application point in the history of um of humanity and uh respect it, but I think that's that is really really fun. I think the times when we got to these points, um if you technology is thinking, um, just like uh this is why you can just for the fish uh this is my computer. Um, yeah. Um just for the code screen. Um I think it's gonna be a very deep road for one by this.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

Yeah, final thoughts on master. I just want to encourage everybody to stop being afraid of the stuff. Um go out there and just try it and use it. Get yourself a little bit of Bitcoin, get off zero, buy something, move it around from your phone wallet onto somebody else. Just mess around, just get comfortable with it. You know, take five bucks, ten bucks, something, fifty bucks, something that you're not afraid to lose, and just try something. Uh, it really is an amazing time to be alive. We've got so much stuff going on. Uh, and I can't believe how resistant some people are to this. You you know, a while ago, um uh Edwin uh from Fitzhunt had a a project that he put together where you could actually send Bitcoin vouchers to people and they could actually download the Bitcoin shot into a wallet. Um and I sent 10 vouchers, little 50 Rand vouchers, 10 of them to mates of mine, to uh with an expiry date of like two weeks, and then after that, um it's uh you know it's an atomic transaction, so it just doesn't happen. You don't lose the money. Two people, two people out of the 10, actually just follow the little on-screen instruction, click here, download this, do that. Nobody else even bothered. Uh, I mean it's absolutely shocking. Um, and I don't want to make a big thing out of it, but don't be one of those people, don't be afraid of the stuff. Just um do it, man. You can just do things. Okay, anyway, boys. Um, thanks for your time. Uh, as always. Uh and heaven, yeah, give you a waffle hug. Appreciate her letting you go for an hour or an end of it. And uh yeah, Ricky, enjoy the evening. Um, guys, uh, next month our boss will be chatting, and so will we.