Freedom Fest UK with Nathan Day

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Freedom Tech Friday, a live and interactive show taking place every Friday at 9AM eastern, 2PM UK time across the ungovernable network. Each week, we dig into the latest in Freedom Tech, including Bitcoin, Monero, encrypted messengers, privacy tools, and everything in between.

Essentially, if there's a news item, tool, or topic that can help you take back some control in today's digital Panopticon, then we wanna talk about it. This show and the topics we cover are powered by freedom.tech,

a daily news desk that uses AI to power... To monitor hundreds of sources so we can continue to bring bring you the signal each and every week.

My name's Q and A. I'm head of customer experience at Foundation. And as always, I am joined by my good friends Max, the head honcho of the ungovernable network, and Seth, who is COO over at K Wallet.

This show is live and interactive, and we would love to have you help steer the conversation by commenting live, asking questions, boosting the show, or just sharing it with your friends.

Top support for last week's listener questions show comes from x patriotic who sent $10 in XMR. For those XMR enjoyers who like to hear me read the balances out, that is 0.018134098974 XMR.

And he said, very topical this one. We've just been talking about this off air. He said, new AI show instead of the Monero show. Speaking of which, when Monero monthly? I think we have so I definitely Yeah, ish. We officially renamed Yes.

Yeah. I think we're... We were planning off to dedicate, which we pretty much do already, let's be honest. At least one of the shows, free and set Friday shows per month to to AI, basically. Probably just... We're just gonna call it sets, escapades or something to that effect.

But like I say, we pretty much already do it anyway, but if we formalize it a bit more, then I think it's a great idea because it is very topical and it's... It's very much in line, especially with the way that Seth's doing it with

Freedom Tech and Personal Sovereignty as well. So great suggestion at Patriotic. Keep them coming. I agree. But definitely don't wanna replace the Monero show either. Without further ado, I'm gonna bring up our our esteemed guest very shortly. But, Max, Seth, how are you? Good week.

GM, guys. I... Yeah. It's a good week. It's a good week. Busy, of course. Lots of AI fun, of course. Lots of cake wallet fun, of course. No event for one week, so that's been nice, actually at home. And that changes again next week, so back out on the road. But,

yeah, it's been a good week. I'd... Still, I just... I like watching myself talk and seeing this profile picture. I don't I don't know. It's a weird it's a weird I'm feeling,

gonna I'm gonna do you a favor. I'm gonna take that photo where you look very very dapper. But I I'm I'm gonna have to put... I just need to add some red to it, though. So I think I'm gonna get my client to just change shirt to red. Yeah.

Maybe just the background. Maybe I put it, like, over a version of the old background or something. Oh. Make it more... Yeah. That's a good idea. How about you, Max? You've been you've been fighting off insects.

Yeah. I I told Keo I won a war against a giant centipede the other day... Yesterday. It was fucking terrifying. It's... I don't know if anyone else has done battle with a giant centipede, but they are venomous. They are vicious.

They are horrible little cunts. And even when I cut the thing in half, half of it went around to come and get me. It's... It kept moving for about another six hours. So... Literally sounds like something out of a horror movie. Mate, I'm telling you, if if I sent you a picture of this thing, it's thirty, forty centimeters long.

It looks like it's on juice. It's absolutely fucking hench, and they're so aggressive, like, fucking aggressive. And, yeah, cut it into half and then into three pieces, and it still moved. It was...

It's fucking terrifying. Yeah. Other than that, though, mate. Other than that, very, very good. Still, as as we were just talking about, troubled by Seth's profile picture, especially as I've just done a new outro and used his original

profile picture in there. It only took me two days to fuck around with it, so don't worry perfectly. You're welcome. Yeah. Thanks for that. And, yeah, very happy to have our guest on today. I won't ruin it, but, yeah, very excited to have him on. Yes. Absolutely. Today, we are welcoming mister Nathan Day to the show to talk about,

well, many things, namely Freedom Fest, which is a new event built around the question that runs basically everything that we cover here. How do you make sure technology expands human freedom rather than restricts it?

Freedom Fest lands in Manchester on Saturday, November 21, alongside Bitfest, which Nathan cofounded. Yeah. It isn't just a Bitcoin conference. It is an attempt to get privacy campaigners,

civil liberty groups, journalists, and freedom tech builders into the same room. I attended Bitfest last year. It was my favorite event of the year, and I'm genuinely not just saying that because Nathan's about to say hello.

It was it was excellent. I... And I'm looking forward to attending this year as well. So... Oh, and and, obviously, Nathan is an avid Vibe coder, so we're dive into some of his his tools and projects afterwards as well. Nathan, welcome to the show. How's it going, mate? Yeah. All good. Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

How's your your sleep levels? I've I've heard to... I've spoke to quite a few people who organize events similar to this, and and they say the closer it gets, the less and less sleep they get, the more disheveled they become.

Yeah. It's definitely ramping up for in that... What we got, six, seven weeks to go. So it's, yeah, it's getting into the chaotic stage, should we say? Nice. Yeah. I remember on day one last year, I bumped into you just before everything kicked off, and

I I... You probably won't get I probably won't get much hate for this, but it looked like you you you could have done with an extra half an hour in bed or so. I think I I heard you wanna... You did one of the pods afterwards, and I think you said, yeah. I saw Nathan, and he looked like shit.

Yes. Such a way with words. Well, it it was worth it anyway because, like I say, it was genuinely a great event. So I'm really looking forward to this year as well. Well, this year so far, at least, has been less stressful.

Last year, it's good. This one, we were kinda just figuring stuff out as we were going along. So we know a little bit more this year than we did last year. Nice. Okay. Well... Yeah. I mean, let's dive into it. Like, give us give us the

the deep dive on, you know, we've got, like, multiple events running kind of concurrently here. So maybe just walk us through, you know, obviously, like, it started last year with Bit Fest, and there was kind of a side event with with Nostashire.

And how is how is this year gonna be bigger and better? Yeah. So last year was, as you say, Nostashire and Bitcoin were the kind of main events. We had a full dedicated day to Nostasher on the Friday and then into Bitcoin stuff Saturday and Sunday, actually. So we had three full days of consecutive programming,

which is probably... Well, was definitely probably too much. So this year, we're doing Nostricher dedicated again on the Friday. And then Saturday, we're running in parallel FreedomFest and and Bitfest.

And so FreedomFest is is new this year, and that's an attempt to draw in those freedom loving adjacent communities to to Bitcoin that we know are out there who are perhaps allergic to the word Bitcoin because, you know, they haven't done the work yet.

So that's gonna be... That is separately ticketed and is being separately marketed without using the b word. And the program for that day of... There will be Bitcoin stuff on there, but it'd be a much broader view of of freedom and and privacy, really. So, for example, we've got the guys from Torcoming.

We've got the folk from Graphene also. The FreeCity guys are gonna be there as well. We've got the CVPC tracker crew from HRF there also. So much broader. And then if you find yourself at Freedom Fest and you wanna be...

You wanna get curious about the Bitcoin stuff, then you're able to kind of upgrade your ticket there and then and go hang out with the Bitcoiners also. Man, how'd you get tour guys and graphene guys there? I feel like that's a that's a hard pool. They're not at a lot of events, especially not, like, speaking

up front. So that's that's pretty amazing. Yeah. Not at all. So maybe maybe, Seth, you need to look at your diary again.

So, yeah, I think we're gonna get some interesting talks coming out of that. But the the wider kind of arc of of the event is... Because it is a festival. It's not just sit down and listen to panels and and talks. And so on the Friday...

Well, actually kicking off on the Thursday night, we're screening the $600,000,000 man movie, the latest Assange documentary. And that's gonna be in the theater on Thursday night with with drinks afterwards.

Friday evening, we've got NPUB dub, which is a a dub night. And then Saturday is the main event where we're doing the new music economy again, which is gathering all of the v for v, value for value artists, predominantly from The UK, but from further afield also to take part in a gig,

which will be live streamed again like it was last year, audience sending the artist apps as they're playing, but also people streaming in sets via Nosta from wherever they may be. Have you got the bowl after bowl guys and all that sort of crew in there for the music?

Honestly, I have no idea right now. So that's the the one part that I'm least involved in. So Okay. There's some there's some good music that comes out of that little crew, actually. It's really it's really good. I was gonna ask you something outside of the festival that I can't help but ask. Have you still got your amazing Mercedes

camper? The monster truck Almageddon vehicle? Yeah. Yeah. It's so fucking cool. I'm trying to get it, so I can come park it outside the conference somewhere so people can come have a nosy, but, we'll we'll see.

But, yeah, still got that, fueled up, ready to go. Still mining? Still mining with it? And Yeah. Got about three terahash in the back at the moment. Very nice. That's running off off a solar and then battery overnight. And so that gets... That's $24.07.

Yeah. Sun powered sets. And You might be in the wrong country for that, though, mate. Yeah. I mean, it it works. I mean, I wouldn't We've had a pretty good summer. I wouldn't put many more terahash in there.

Have you seen this thing, Keith? We're actually using the heat as well, so it gets even off a handful of bit axes. It gets quite hot because, of course, the camera is is insulated. Mhmm.

And so I've now got extraction running into the air vent system of the truck. So it's providing sort of background heat as well coming into the habitation unit.

Very nice. To answer your question, Max, yes, I have. And I'm frantically scanning through his nostril and his Twitter to see if I can find any photos to bring it up on screen because it it... Like, you guys need to see this. It's a beast. I

know. I have no idea what this is. I def... Definitely need to see this. Get... Walk us through it, Nathan, because it's like... This is definitely worth... Worthwhile diving into. It's a proper bit of freedom tech.

Yeah. So it's it's a... An eight ton... They call them overland overlanders or overland vehicles. So they're basically camper vans but on on steroids. So they're meant for full time living, which we we did do for about three years or so, but also for off grid terrain.

So it means you can be away from, you know, fuel and water for long periods of time and is kind of, you know, four by four and fixed diff locks and all that kind of stuff. That means you can actually get to places that you need to when you're in the middle of nowhere.

I'll try and I'll try and dig out a picture of that. I found I just sent it to queue. Here we go. Look at this. That was my first ever Bitcoin tweet, by the way. Was it?

Yeah. What a taste. That is a Is it an eight one five, is it? $1.05, but then we had it shipped to eight one eight. So it's a 180 horsepower on an eight ton frame. Look at that. Man, I I was expecting, like, one of those Sprinter vans. I was not expecting No. No. An an RV built for the apocalypse.

Sprinters are for girls.

That thing is incredible, man. Yes. So that that tweet was, was was the first time I thought I've said a lot about Bitcoin. If you read the text, I think it's I'm in the Bitcoin blockchain for the first time over LTE in in a field near Manchester, UK, streaming solar powered sats as we roll. Have node will travel.

Yeah. Love it. So I I think I'd read the white paper a week before then, so that was a rough week.

This is excellent stuff. Where have you taken that? I'm curious. Oh, and and Sovereign Logos is asking if it's diesel. I'm gonna guess yes. Yes. Yes. Diesel. So it's a 4.25 turbo diesel. So it's pretty decent on efficiency given its size.

But, yeah, given the diesel prices right now, it costs quite a bit to fill the two tanks it has. And and, yeah, we've taken all over, really. So we were North Africa through... And then up through sort of Scandinavia.

We did Norway, which was excellent a couple of summers ago. And then when we were full time and homeschooling the kids and stuff, we'd shipped it down to South America. So that was down to Montefideo in Uruguay and then down through Argentina and Chile down into Patagonia.

And then we started making the trip back up, but then the flu arrived and the world locked down. So we were we were stuck in a field in Chile for four months. Jesus.

I could think of worse places to be to be holdover, I guess. It was great. It was actually one of the highlights of the trip because we were locked down with a couple of other families on this kind of eco farm thing that its... All its own resources.

And the Chilean government weren't, like, super crazy about things like the Argentines were. And so, yeah, we had a great time, and people were really concerned about us locked in their homes in The UK banging pans on a Friday. And

we're like, don't worry about it, guys. We're we're good. I'm sure you had some nice wine and steak and views and everything else. It sounds lovely. No. It was great. It really was. Sovereign Logos is is obviously quite interested in this. He's he's asking,

can you delete it in The UK, or does it have an EGR? Not sure about the regulations in Europe, but in Texas, we can remove the aids from our diesels. Delete it?

I I think, yeah, I think he's talking about, like, the the emission side of things. But looking at the age of that, I'd imagine it probably predates a lot of the the euro. Yeah. So I... Yeah. I understand. So, yeah, when we purposely got an old vehicle, so that's a... The base vehicle is 2006, so it's twenty years old now.

And it means it's got just the right amount of electronics on it. So there's there's lights for low fuel or disengaged and all that kind of stuff. But there is no limp mode. There is no onboard computer,

and there is no AdBlue. So there's no additives on the diesel or anything. So that's the sort of stuff you need when you're in the middle of nowhere and, you know, you need to get something fixed by a mechanic that doesn't have a $10,000 Mercedes laptop to plug into it or whatever. So...

Yeah. It's... It was picked precisely to be as as maintainable as possible. Great choice. Yeah. But sovereign logos just responded said, yeah. Oh, so it predates the woke AIDS. Yeah. Very, very apt. This feels like a a vehicle that I could see John driving around in.

He's super driving cool for him. None at reckon? He... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't he doesn't really understand anything European. He can only drive like a Chevy or a Ford. It's gotta be gay and American and shit.

It's the same as as a good Canadian friend. They they don't understand. I always say to him, like, just get a Toyota. Like, you're always in in trouble. There's always a problem with your vehicle. You're constantly having to pay for repairs, but they they can't imagine buying anything non American.

Fair enough. I mean, it's the right size to be on American roads, isn't it? Mhmm.

Nathan, back to the conference and and the Bitfest side. Who have we got as speakers that we can look forward to? And, you know, what are some of the kind of headline talks that we've got?

Yeah. So really good speakers across sort of all of the different events. We started to schedule it this week and try and get the pacing right between, you know, all the different events and stuff.

Yeah, on the on the Nossa side, we've got people like Derek Ross from the Soapbox team, and he's he's doing a bunch of other stuff right now across Amache, which I'm sure we'll get on to.

We've got Short Fiat who's doing the fanfare stuff and some community work down in Paraguay right now. No. Uruguay, I think. We got Avi Burra coming over again for that. Obviously, people like Ben Ark who are local to The UK and heavily involved in in Nosta since its inception.

We've got Marty Malmi coming back again to go through all the amount of crazy stuff he's done in the past few months. He's basically... We created the the whole g Suite, Google Suite on Nosta, Nosta VPN, Nosta Drive, all that kind of stuff.

So that's on the Nosta side.

And then, yeah, on the Bitcoin side, we've got Ben Devol. He's talking. He's got a new book out talking about the sort of political spectrum around Bitcoin, and we've got either returning speakers or a bunch of new speakers

that will be joining us too. So we're gonna be announcing speakers throughout the next week or so and dropping that to try and get even more interest in the event. Very cool. I... Now is probably a great time to mention the discount code for tickets.

I believe you set one up for us just this week. Yes, sir. And where do they go, how do they use the the the discount code? So just go to bitfest.uk. It's the main site. We set up a code ungovernable, and that gets you 21% discount.

And we've kept that at 21 uses as well. So get it while you can. Why the number 21?

Everything is always 21 in Bitcoin land, isn't it? Yep. If the listeners jump through that, then maybe we can we can look at it again. But right now, it's it's 21 tickets and 21% off. Very nice. Very generous. Let's go.

You recently attended BTC BTC Hell, it's literally called, up in Helsinki, and you gave a talk around the the state of Bitcoin merchant adoption. Could you walk us through, like, some of the the the key points that you mentioned there? Because, again, it's very on brand for us in terms of, like, grassroots Bitcoin stuff.

Yeah. So that was that was literally last weekend, I think. Yeah, we had... It's a good event. I think that's only been running... This was its second year and some good speakers across various different topics. I was there talking about BTC map, which is one of the projects I contribute to.

And it was... I think, Seth, we were talking about this on on x. It was the first slide deck that I'd done that AI had written for me. So using the OpenSlide project and and heavily relying on previous content that I'd had, but it was the first time that I was just talking to the AI, and the AI

created a much better slide set than than I ever could. So that was pretty cool, particularly around the data side. So the the presentation was around why we should be spending Bitcoin, not just holding it and trying to dispel some of the myths around hodling and and Gresham's law and and all that kind of stuff.

A lot of Bitcoiners really misunderstand some of these concepts in order to justify why they... They're not spending Bitcoin. But then we got into some of the the stats. And so, yeah, we're up to, like, 27,000 merchants plus ATMs on top of that. So almost three... 30,000

places in total at the moment. And and, yeah, that's that's growing healthily. We've got a nice graph that is is going up at a a steady pace rather than crazy kind of hockey stick growth.

You can find these slides, by the way, at... If you go to nathan.day.ag, there's a presentation section, and you'll see the slides from there. But what the... I was able to do with the AIs is these kind of... You see the the race bars that, you know, changes on top over a time period? So I ran those for

country level adoption and also for community adoption as well to see how different communities or countries have changed positions in terms of total number of merchants. So we have all that data going back for almost three years now. So it's really nice to see that very easy... Easily visualized with with the bots in the control.

There you go. Yeah. So if you go to... Go down a few slides and get to the There we go. Into the file. So... Yeah. There you go. So that was Nice. Look at this. Beautiful. And and while that's playing, for for the uninitiated, how does a merchant end up on BTC Map? What does that flow look like?

So you can just add yourself to OpenStreetMap, which is what we use as the kind of geographic back end. And as long as you put the correct tags on the place, then you will just appear in BTC Map. So it is permissionless in that sense.

It is kind of audited and verified by the community at large, so junk tends to not stay on for very long. So it's kind of like a data commons in that in that sense. Or you can just go to the website, and we've just implemented a new onboarding flow for for people who wanting to add merchants.

So it's super simple, couple of fields you have to fill out. And then if you submit that, one of our volunteers that we we call the shadowy super taggers will pick that up. They'll verify that information, and then they'll add it to OpenStreetMaps themselves.

So there's two two routes to to go at it. And verifying that information is like boots on the ground, checking with the merchant that they actually accept Bitcoin. Right? Ideally, it's as local as possible and in person.

And so one of our biggest challenges is is to try and get local communities to fully own their data. There are some communities that are really good, and we we don't have to get involved at all.

And others, you know, we basically maintain them all on their behalf.

So, yeah, where possible, local and in person. If not, it can be remote. But, yeah, we... We're literally emailing and calling merchants that get added to verify the information. Awesome. And just going back to this slide here where we had the massive jump in The US, I'm guessing that's driven by the

the Square terminals, was it, last year? Yeah. Nice. Okay. Yeah. Just before Square, there was stake and shake, a couple of 100 locations, but Square has has been relentless. So it's been almost a year now, and we had a a really big influx, so... As you'd expect, over the first few months.

And then it started to drop to about a thousand a month, and I think we're about 500 a month still now. So we're still getting daily handfuls of merchants coming through Square. So that shows no sign in in letting us at all.

Pretty cool. This is a a great initiative. And how long have you been kind of, like, at the helm sort of driving it now? I wanna reme... I wanna say I remember you showing me, like, an early concept in Riga maybe when we we went It was Riga that... It

it really took off. So there was there was activity prior to that. I mean, even going back to 2017 or so, people were using OpenStreetMap to to tag places. It was actually quite a big part of the the big blocker in narrative because it was all around, you know, Bitcoin for merchants.

And so, yeah, there was a lot of places that got added and subsequently went stale on OpenStreetMap going back years and years. So our first job was to to clear it all up, which was a huge undertaking.

Took us almost a year to do that. And then, yeah, one of the other contributors, I'd done a Android app, which then I had found actually trying to find places to spend Bitcoin in Uighur for Honeybadger, which was 22, I think it was. Yeah. It was.

And then, yeah, him and I got chatting, and then, yeah, we we kind of made it into what it is now, which is across all platforms, much more well known. And in fact, all of the designs were were done over that weekend in Rigo in '22.

Because I remember we met we met a few other British guys for breakfast, and Mhmm. I remember bringing the laptop along and showing you all, you know, three or four different designs that we we were thinking about implementing.

So so... Yeah. You you It's amazing to see how it's grown and the traction that it's gained in a relatively short space of time, although I can't believe that's four years ago already. Yeah. It's it's one of those things that sort of seems obvious in hindsight, but back then, there was nothing that really...

Well, that I would want to use as a as a user. There was a couple of, I don't know, localized Google Maps style versions, and there was also a couple of, like, centralized ones, but they were all kind of crypto related and or ATM focused.

So there was definitely a a need for it, which is obvious... You know, obviously why it's been a a success because people like to like to use it. It's completely wild.

Sorry. It's completely wild to me. Like, I've just zoomed in on some island somewhere in the Pacific that I've never even heard before, and there's merchant adoption there. It's crazy. Yeah. It's nuts. What I like to do, you can toggle.

If you go onto the toggle on the right, you can put the globe mode on as well.

Down... No. The net... The filter one down a bit. Yeah. Glow view. View. Okay. That's fine. And then you zoom out. Oh, nice. Okay. Very cool. And you can overlay the heat map onto that as well.

So, yeah, I mean, it's it's... It is the map now, really, and most of the wallets have integrated. So I think we've got eighteen, twenty different apps where people have either integrated the data using the API, so, like, Blink have done, or they've they've just embedded the web app.

Aqua have done that and and Bullet, Satoshi, and people like that. So so... Yeah. Basically, it is the map now. Features are coming thick and fast given all the agentic AI stuff going on at the moment. Mhmm.

And so our focus is now more about community and trying to get data ownership as local as possible. Yeah. This is awesome. I mean, thank you to you and the team. Like, it's it's a absolutely fantastic initiative.

You you mentioned, like, the... What AI is gonna enable and the the speed at which you can kind of start to integrate now. You are one of the people in my feed that seems to be going down the...

I'm gonna and I'm gonna butcher the name now. Oh, Omaki? Omaki? Is that how you say it? It's Omaki. Omaki is is how it's supposed to be. Omaki. Just this Linux thing. Exactly. I I was gonna say because it's based on Arch, which is a Linux disto... Disto. Ah, okay.

Well, I I was hoping you could give us a a TLDR around what it is, why everybody's so hyped about it, and what your experience has been like. Yeah. So it's been around for two or three years. It was called something else prior to it, and I think it was based on Ubuntu to begin with.

But it was DHH, so the guy from thirty seven signals who do hay and base camp, and also the Ruby on Rails founder. And he had a fight with Apple based upon... I think it was some licensing around Basecamp and in app purchases.

And it was kind of like one of those BTC pay server moments where, you it was just like, I'm gonna obsolete you. So so I think that the driving force was to try and get a, like, up up to date contemporary view of Linux.

He's coming from a Mac background, but, basically, a Linux distro that he would want to use. And and so that's where it started a couple of years back, and Amache is is now... I think since Quattro v four came out a couple of months back, and that's where it's gone parabolic in terms of contributions and also in terms of fundraising.

So

they've now formed a foundation and people like Jack Dorsey have have put money into it in order to build kind of a freedom orientated distro with kind of agentic AI built into the OS. So

I think where Linux kind of lost its way a little bit, certainly from a distro, not from a kernel perspective, is there were a lot of distributions that were rejecting AI contributions because the the gray bears wanted to kind of hand chisel things.

And, also, it was kind of... There was lots of covenants stuff going on in the Linux space. I think a lot of, like, wokeism had infiltrated a number of distributions. So there's lots of purity tests you had to pass in order to contribute to a project.

And Amashi's turned that on its head, and and it... This happened within thirty seven signals itself about four or five years ago where they basically had a a a mass call of people because they wanted to be a a political, just focusing on shipping good products without having to,

you know, say that you agree or disagree with various different geopolitical things before you can More concept. Exactly. And so, yeah, I'm actually... I I I I did try it a year or so ago, and it's a little bit too hardcore for me then. So I tried it on Quattro, and it really clicked.

And it's just annoying all the right people as well. So I was like, if these people are getting annoyed about somebody making some software, then it's it's probably worth a look.

So, yeah, I mean, be... Because the the the agents are are in the OS and you can you can pick whatever harness and whatever provider you want, it means it's just malleable. So you can you can make it look and feel however you want.

And with Linux... I mean, I've been using Linux on desktop for twenty years now, and I've spent hours, you know, back in the day configuring printers and monitors and all that kind of stuff.

And what used to be its Achilles heel, which is a load of text based config files and CLIs, has now, in an agentic age, become its superpower because agents can just drive Linux where they can't they can't really drive Mac, they can't drive Windows in in the same way.

So, yeah, all the things that used to be really annoying about Linux have now become the perfect tools for for AIs to just... To to really customize the experience. I feel like this came out just a little bit too late after I'd already given up on manually manually fixing all the things about Linux that I hated.

It's kind of frustrating that now I'm I'm on Macs, but just it looks like such a good tooling. Because like you nailed it when you mentioned all of the things that made Linux kind of painful, where you had to learn, oh, where is this config file? What format does it expect?

Like, the customizability is what a lot of people, I think, love about Linux. Like, you see people always talking about their their window manager and Their pricing. And Yeah. All all of the things that, like, they have

built it explicitly for what they want, which is great, but that was only really accessible to extremely technical people with a lot of spare time on their hands. And the... Theoretically, the change now is something like Omarshi.

Omarshi, how do you say it? I keep butchering it. Let's Yeah. I need that. Regular person do it where you can say, hey. I I need this app, or hey. This isn't working right with this monitor,

and it can figure it out and make the tweaks. I've I've even seen a really cool one where someone set up a laptop where they're having a problem with one of their monitors. They set up the laptop so that the webcam

of the laptop could see the monitor. Points back at it. Yeah. Saw that. Yeah. Yeah. And it was able to diagnose and resolve the issue and get full support for that monitor by watching what the monitor did as it did different things and tried tried changes and config files and

stuff like that. I'm dead serious. It's really, really cool. Yeah. It's really, really cool. So so hold on. Just so I understand. Uh-huh. The laptop was set up in front of a mirror. The webcam on the laptop was turned on so it could see its own reflection, and it fixed itself. Correct.

Yep. And I've seen the same with a with a monitor as well, like an external monitor that had problems. Or that, yeah, did the same thing. Use the webcam. It uses OCR to read what's on the screen and see see what size issues there are and resolution issues and and, yeah, resolve it.

They just sat it in front of the monitor and walked away and came back, and it was fixed. Yeah. It's pretty It's really a pretty bad inspection. Sign of that. Yeah. Yeah. And and this... You know, for example, if an app crashes... So I'm on a Marching hour. If something crashed, I just got a little notification,

and it says diagnose with AI. So you click it, and it will spin up a process in the background, figure out what the crash was, and all of those really verbose Linux reports that you used to have to sift through to... And then put into

Google or whatever to try and figure out is absolute gold for an AI because they're trained on the kernel. And and so, yeah, it'll fix itself. And if there is an issue, it will just open a PR to the repo of whatever the the software is and post a fix. So I've I've I've contributed to, like, 10 different projects.

In that way, I have no idea what the code is, what language it's written in. But the Clank has figured it out, and they've pushed changes, and they've been merged. So It's a wild wild time. So you've actually been building some plugins for Omachi as well, haven't you?

Yeah. So the one that I created was called Shazmoi Hound. And Shazmoi is a preexisting package for dot file management. So, basically, your whole config of your desktop is is defined in those, you know, quote dot files, as they're called.

And so when you're making changes, those files are changing, and you normally commit those into into GitHub or repo or whatever. So, yeah, I've got a a a toolbar plug in that just looks for Drift in

what has changed in your config, but yet that hasn't yet been committed as a as a change so that you can restore it. So, for example, if I move my icon in the toolbar around, immediately, the handle will just detect that there's one change.

I can just click on that. I can actually have the commit comment created by AI. So it looks at the change, suggests there's a a comment, and then I can commit that. So that means if I need a new... I have a new laptop and I want my my perfectly right setup resuming, I just can attach that repo,

and within one click, I've got my desktop back again. So, yeah, it's just a little hound that keeps on top of those changes and stops dot file drift as it's known. Very nice. And presumably, can plug into any agent, be it cloud or local, to to do all of this sort of stuff.

Yeah. Exactly. So all the main harnesses are supported and shipped with Amache. And and then, yeah, you can configure those using whatever back ends sort of inference providers you use. In fact, one of the changes I made a couple of days ago was this little agent toolbar that ships with Amache, and you get the...

Your usage patterns. So it was saying, you know, how much have you got left within each period, so whether that's the session, the week, or the month. But he didn't tell me how far through the session, the week, and the month we were on on a time basis, so I didn't know whether I was behind or ahead.

So I've submitted a PR that tells me on a weekly basis. So currently, I'm 22% behind my token allocation for this week, so I need to I need to think harder. Oh, I feel your pain there. Oh, that's very cool.... Tokens on the table. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Cram it in before the deadline.

You... I have... I'm just guessing here, but you also strike me as the kind of guy who's been messing with OpenCode and Hermes. Would that be a fair assumption to make? If so, like, what's your what's your setup been like there?

Yeah. So I started... Well, I started with OpenCode and and still drop into that occasionally, and, obviously, that was just to do coding stuff about a year or so ago. I did use Claw, OpenClaw, when it first came out. I never really got it to be that effective.

There were a bunch of people, you know, looking at memory systems back then, and I I always found the... It wasn't terribly efficient token wise, and it kept just doing dumb stuff. So we did have a bot named Dave

that was like the family bot, that was based on OpenClaw doing a bunch of stuff. But I think, certainly, back then, I don't know what it's like now. It was a lot of hype, and I didn't get a bunch out of it.

But a few months ago, I'm with Hermes,

which is... Is it the Noose Noose project or something like that? Yeah. Noose research. Yeah. Noose research. And it's phenomenal. There's just a lot of skills out of the box. It learns really quickly and then reinforces those skills so you very quickly get to kind of a personalized set of skills.

And then with... I think the the the models have also come on, not just in terms of capability, but in terms of value. So I... I'm a DeepSeek v four dot one Flash Maxi right now, so it's an incredibly capable model, and it is almost free.

I'm not running anything locally. That's all, you know, through inference providers, but, you know, OpenCode Go, for example, is $10 a month, and I think they've got, like, a four x offer on on that model in particular. So, I mean, I can I can run that full bore pretty much all month and,

you know, stay within $10? So it's basically free.

Yeah. I love that you've been you've been falling down that rabbit hole too. I feel like either Bitcoiners are full in AI psychosis or, like, fully against it or not embracing it at all. So it's been cool to see that you've you've found some good ways to to plug that into your into your workflow.

There was one thing I wanted to circle back to about the the BTC Map stuff. I know you mentioned the the Square terminals,

adding Bitcoin support, and that that increasing number is quite a lot. I'd love to hear if you have, like, insight or feedback from people on, like, how frequently those are used. I I know you... Maybe you won't have direct info, but,

I'm curious kinda what the the vibes are, for you as someone who's so so in touch with with this side of things. Yeah. So, yeah, we don't have kind of use details. We're we're in talks with some of the wallet providers in in order to give us a ping almost for a merchant. So has there been activity this week or this month so that we can

verify that place is still accepting Bitcoin without it going stale? But, yeah, in terms of, like, actual usage, yeah, that's down to the the wallets. My instinct is it's it's super low, though.

Just speaking to merchants that that do come on the map, they they normally end up getting, you know, a handful of people a month through because... Yeah. Just because we're we're so early in this and going back to some of the points I was making at my BTC held presentation, Bitcoiners are often

laughing when it comes to spending Bitcoin, and and they they just don't do it and expect Bitcoin as a network to just, you know, grow and evolve without their participation. So Mhmm. I think...

Yeah. Bitcoin is just... If we wanna replace fiat, we need to use Bitcoin.

Nathan, I've got a question around this. Not to throw a wet blanket on it all, but do you think about when it isn't like a Square terminal or something where someone's doing a top up card and doing it over the Visa network, etcetera?

If you're paying someone in a store who knows you're paying in Bitcoin, is there a concern around organized crime, people getting kidnapped, the massive rise with all this sort of stuff. Like, if I was traveling, especially if I was with family, I would personally be hesitant to pay in Bitcoin to someone who knows I'm paying in Bitcoin.

Do you think that's a reasonable talk, or am I ruining bit... Bitcoin's chance of actually becoming money? Yeah. The latter, I think, because we have to normalize the use of Bitcoin as money, and that means buying stuff day in, day out with it.

And I get right now that we're in this early adoption phase, which, obviously, then is is easier to target people. But if we fast forward to a point where everyone's using Bitcoin, then nobody's a target because it's not it's not an abnormal thing to be doing. It's just what everyone does.

So, yeah, I I I think so we've we've gotta accept some responsibility for kinda moving the whole thing forward, and that's by, you know, human action doing the things.

Mhmm. Yeah. No. I I I get that. And I think it's it's that layer of obscurity to me that is missing to some extent. Like, if you're paying at a terminal where you could be paying in fear or you could... You know, you're tapping with your phone is all they really see or paying a QR code. They don't know what you're doing.

Or if you're doing a Visa top up card where you're topping up with Bitcoin or Monero or whatever you're doing, and then you're paying, they don't know. And I just feel like I wonder whether there's a way to push that these terminals are accepting both options and that it's not so immediately obvious to a cashier what you're doing.

Be... Because I just... Especially in areas where there's poverty, they see someone traveling, they see someone paying in Bitcoin, it would be extremely easy to just send a message to someone else who waits outside with a wrench. And

these attacks are... Like I said, I'm I'm not trying to throw a wet blanket on it. I'm just trying to out a way around it. It's it's a genuine concern where I would be hesitant with family around because, yes, I wanna push Bitcoin adoption.

I want my family to be alive more. Yes. Me too. I guess cup... Couple of points on that. I think if we're we're using these kind of halfway houses, these fiat rails, then we're kind of strengthening the system we're trying to move away from.

And so as much as possible, I try not to to do that. And then secondly, I think that the biggest risk takers in in this scenario are the merchants themselves because we have a literal map telling them...

Telling the the wrench attackers where these merchants are. And so in in many ways, it's the merchants that are the heroes here taking on that early risk. True. Yeah. That's true. And I I I just think it's the least we can do to to support them in doing that.

Big boost just just come in from Brocket. Just wanted to give him a shout out. So great show, fellas, the fat bowling man. I'm not sure what that's in reference to. I've got no idea there. But thank you for thank you for being a boob nonetheless.... Bowling ball of a man is

is from Minor John's recent show talking about... I can't remember the guy's name, from MK Ultra who would sit on on the toilet drinking while he's watching the Johns get dosed

by the by the brasses. I don't know if you got to that bit or not. I have not in... No. No. All of that just sounds completely alien to me. So, yeah, need to check that out. I'm like He's he's people with it. He's dosing people with LSD while he sits on a toilet behind a two way mirror drinking margaritas,

and he does that so he doesn't have to stop watching these people fuck the hookers while they're high on LSD. And he can just carry on drinking and just piss on the toilet without leaving. And that's one of the the MK Ultra detectives, like the head of MK Ultra, and he's a fat bowling ball of a man.

That sounds like an interesting podcast.

Yeah.

Alright. We are almost at time. Max said, did you have anything else just before I close this out? I didn't wanna cut you guys off. I think that's about it for me. No. I think main thing is where can we learn more, get tickets, etcetera, for those that can jump in and join.

Yeah. I know this was originally about a conference. I know we we felt that we'd put rabbit holes, but

We did indeed. Yeah. Nathan, just give us the round out. Where can we go? Codes, websites, dates, the whole shebang. Yeah. So I guess for this audience, head to bitfest.uk. All the details are on there. So we're running Manchester from the nineteenth to the twenty second inclusive with a variety of events going on. Tickets are 149

for the whole thing. That gets you access to the evening events, the guided walk on a Sunday. And if you use code ungovernable, then you will get a sweet 21% discount off that.

Very nice. Yeah. Nothing more from me. Really cool to see how BTC Maps has evolved over the years. It's very, very cool, and this event looks awesome. If I was still in The UK, I'd be making my way there and suggest anyone listening who can

go and do it. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for filling the void there, Max. I was happily chatting away to myself on mute. I appreciate you jamming in.

Yeah. I'm I'm very... What I was saying is I'm just... It's basically the same as Max. I'm very much looking forward to it. Get yourselves there. Don't forget to use code on Governable. And Nathan, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing us with your wisdom, and

I will see you in a a matter of weeks in Manchester, mate. Yes, mate. Looking forward to it. Alright. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for your your questions, your comments, and for chiming in and helping steer the show. We will be back with the brief on Monday, and we'll be back with free and set Friday at the exact same time next week.

Until then, hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and don't forget to stay ungovernable.

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