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EPISODE: 134
BLOCK: 843888
PRICE: 1490 sats per dollar
TOPICS: self hosting, start9 vs startos, running a profitable open source business
project website: https://start9.com/
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(00:00:00) Jamie Dimon Intro
(00:02:14) Happy Bitcoin Friday
(00:03:06) Overview of Start9, StartOS, and self hosting
(00:47:58) Discussion on the importance of funding open source projects and sustainable business models
(00:49:49) Exploring the business model of Start9 and the importance of sustainability and independence
(00:50:36) Challenges and strategies in building a sustainable business model for Start9
(01:33:27) The importance of open source contributors in the StartOS ecosystem
(01:38:23) Introduction of a new SDK for packaging services for StartOS
(01:44:23) Appeal for support and contributions to the development of StartOS
[00:00:00]
Unknown:
For
[00:00:04] Unknown:
inflation and interest rates. More worried about it. I mean, you know, we've had very big fiscal deficits, and, you know, I think the underlying inflation may not go away the way people expect it to. And I I look at the future like a lot of things we look at are kind of inflationary. The green economy, the remilitarization of the world, the infrastructure requirements, the restructuring of trade, fiscal deficits. So I think there are a lot of inflationary forces in front of us that, you know, may keep it a little bit higher than people expect. The surprise would be rates are higher, inflation is a little bit higher, and maybe that'll slow growth. And and and obviously geopolitics is a whole different issue. That that can that could be determinative in what our economy does next year, and we're just we're just not gonna know. But so does that mean you think it's 5050 whether the Fed cuts or hikes at at, you know, next time around, the next move? I really don't pay that much attention to that. The Fed will have to follow the the data, and I don't know what the data's gonna say, but they, I think, you know, they are doing the right to be patient right now, see see what's gonna happen. They may not know for a couple of months. But no big correction. I mean, if you don't pay, you know, that much attention to it, it means you're not worried about anything. No. I'm worried. I just said stocks are very high. I think the chance of inflation staying higher or rates going up are higher than other people think. So I think the chance my view is whatever the world is pricing it for a soft landing Yeah. I think it's probably half that. I think the chance of something going wrong is higher than people think. In the US? But but we Or globally?
Well, I'd say in the US, but also that could affect globally. Yeah. And and so that what does that mean for markets? It'd be down,
[00:01:35] Unknown:
and credit spreads would gap gap out. So why is the market not pricing that in?
[00:01:41] Unknown:
A lot of happy talk.
[00:02:15] Unknown:
Happy Bitcoin Friday, freaks. It's your host, Odell, here for another civil dispatch, the interactive live show focused on actionable Bitcoin and Freedom Tech discussion. That intro clip, was Bloomberg, talking to Jamie Dimon, arguably one of the world's most powerful bankers, and, he's not he's not too optimistic on the the macroeconomic picture. That is not what we'll be talking about today. I have a great guest lined up. It's, I believe, his second time on the show. Last time was a a long time ago. We have Matt Hill here, cofounder of Start 9, a business focused on self hosting and and leaving leaving the cloud servers behind and and and hosting everything yourself. How's it going, Matt?
[00:03:07] Unknown:
Good, Matt. Thanks for having me on again.
[00:03:11] Unknown:
Oh, always a pleasure.
[00:03:13] Unknown:
Well, last time, there's a few of us. Right? We had a There was a node round table. That's right.
[00:03:20] Unknown:
And, I mean, you've actually made really big moves since then. Yes. But I think, before we get there, let's, you know, I think with the current regulatory environment where the world's at right now, a lot of people have realized, that might not have realized earlier. There were some of us that realized the importance, but, the importance of self hosting. And your company is been strictly focused on that. So, I mean, what is start 9? And and what are you guys building over there?
[00:03:55] Unknown:
Well, we spend a lot of time, working on StartOS, which is a new kind of operating system that makes it easy for a nontechnical person to own and operate a personal server, which has traditionally been a very difficult thing for someone to do. It required advanced Linux's admin skills and experience. And even if you had those skills, you were gonna be spending a lot of time, and experiencing a lot of frustration to accomplish, any degree of digital sovereignty through self hosting open source software. So StartOS was, the missing piece, we think, that was preventing people from being able to run a server and self host in a viable, scalable, way.
And so we spend a lot of time working on that. That said, StartOS is not a business. StartOS is an open source operating system. And so we also spend a lot of time, building a business around StartOS in the form of selling plug and play devices, AKA servers, with StartOS preinstalled. And we warranty those devices, and we support, those devices, and we support StartOS, and we support, many, many, but not all services, or applications that can be installed on StartOS. So our business is really selling devices, warranting them, and supporting them, but we put a heck of a lot of time into, building StartOS, which is what makes the whole thing possible.
[00:05:33] Unknown:
So right. There's 2 things here. There's Start9, the company, and then there's StartOS, the fully false free and open source software stack, that the boxes run on. And what's really cool is actually, I went through the paces of of flashing it on my own hardware, and you guys make it incredibly easy. You know? You you you take the image. You you put it on a USB drive. You take an old computer or a new computer that you just built. And in a couple clicks, I mean, I'm probably more technical than most people, but I think I think that's pretty accessible for a lot of people, and that's really, really awesome.
But to make it even more accessible, you have these these prebuilt boxes where it's as simple as, you know, someone who's used to, like, ordering an iPhone or ordering a MacBook. They just order out of the box. The computer comes in the mail. They plug it in. They connect it to Internet, and they're off to the races with pretty little technical know how. I guess an interesting place to start here is we did talk about the earlier conversation we had. At that time, StartOS was in its infancy, and you had a commercially restricted license on it. So it wasn't fully false software. It was still the only people that can monetize it were you guys. And you actually you know, there's there's yeah.
A lot of technical people love arguing about licenses. But you handled your own. There was there's there's a huge portion of my audience, that believes it's boss or nothing, and you were, like, in the ring with, like, 5 of them, and you handled your own. But since then, you've actually taken away that restriction, and there's no restrictions on the license. Can you talk a little bit about what went into that thinking? Why did you, you know, give StartOS to the world rather than maintain some level of ownership over it?
[00:07:42] Unknown:
Yeah. And for anyone, you know, who has not watched that episode, it was it was live. It was 3 hours and it was it was heated. There was yelling that took place. We're all friends now, but there was definitely some disagreements. But, to give people, you know, the the history here around start OS and licensing, We've gone through 4 licenses now. So when we first launched StartOS, it was not called StartOS. It was called EmbassyOS, and it was closed source. It was literally not even source viewable. The code was, closed.
And, we never for a second thought that we were gonna have a closed source piece of software. We, you know, that's in that's impossible in the business that we're in and what our ambitions for the technology are. But we were embarrassed by it, quite frankly. It was like a you know, we had, like, 8 people using it, and nobody was gonna contribute. Nobody was gonna audit it. We were just being realistic that there was no real benefit in putting it out there at that time. And we still had really wonderful people who came in and supported us and because we told them. We said, yeah. We're gonna we're gonna open this up. Of course, we're gonna open it up. And then when we opened it up, we did so under a dual restrictive license. You could not commercialize it in any way, shape, or form, and you could not distribute it in any way, shape, or form. Right? You could get StardOS from us, and you had to pay us. We were selling the software. It was source viewable and you could compile it yourself, but you actually couldn't download the binary. We weren't hosting the compiled binary anywhere. We were selling it, and people were buying it. And that was source viewable.
Then we dropped the nondistribution clause and said, nope. You don't buy it from us anymore. We'll give it to you. And not only that, but you can give it to anyone else that you want. You can host it. Anyone can distribute this thing however you want. So now it's source, available. It is free to distribute. Anyone could contribute to it. Anyone could fork it. Anyone could edit it, audit it, test it, whatever. The only thing they couldn't do, the only restriction that we retained was that you couldn't commercialize it for your own business, that we were the only people allowed to commercialize it. And that's when I was on the call with the, that was the previous Citadel dispatch was at that point in our history.
And even at that point, as I had said from the day that it was closed source, is that we actually had a strategy here that it was never intended to be closed source forever. It was never intended to be restrictive distribution forever. It was never intended to be restricted commercialization forever, that we were gradually opening it up as we became more confident in the thing that we were giving it away. It's like having an infant, alright, and keeping it in a crib and then everyone being like, well, you can't you can't have an adult in a crib. They're not gonna they're not gonna be healthy. And it's like, but they're not an adult. Right? Like, have you never heard of progression? Have you never heard of strategy?
And you can debate the strategy all day with me, and that's what we did for 3 hours on that last this and and I, in retrospect, look at our strategy from starting closed and gradually opening up, and I go, maybe it wasn't necessary. Maybe we could have taken that infant right from the get go and just thrown him into the ocean, and he would have swam just fine. But it also didn't hurt anything. Right? So we chose a strategy. We executed on that strategy, and we landed where we said we were always going to land, which was a fully false license, which in my opinion, and this can also be debated, mostly means MIT.
Right? Because every other license does have some restriction attached to it that ultimately relies on, state force to, enforce it. So we went the full 9 and we made it MIT. We gave it away as you mentioned, and this was not some act of, you know, submission where we gave in to people pressuring us. It was not in some marketing attempt. It was in a genuine, belief and strategy on my end my team's part that the best chance start 9 had of surviving and thriving into the future was to stand on its own and to not belong to us or anyone else, and there's risk in that. FOSS is a graveyard of unmaintained projects that are insecure and crappy and unusable and unmaintained, etcetera.
It going fast does not mean it's secure. Going fast does not mean it's gonna garner contributions or succeed. It's not gonna garner fundraising however, the biggest, most robust, antifragile, long lasting pieces of software are open source, are fully FOSS. And so you gotta take that risk, and we were willing to with StartOS. So we we set it loose. We set it free, and we still take care of it just like you take care of your kids after they turn 18 for a little while. You know? We still help it out. We still give it an allowance. We still, you know, check-in on it. But, ultimately, it's not ours, and we don't want it to be ours. You're paying for college still?
[00:13:16] Unknown:
Yeah. I like the metaphor. Is in college.
[00:13:21] Unknown:
Even though I will not advocate for my children to do the same. I mean, just for, like, a little bit of perspective here.
[00:13:29] Unknown:
Right. So MIT license Bitcoin Core is MIT license. Yep. It's it's considered, like, the it is the standard in in fully false licenses with no restrictions on it. At the time, when we did that so right now, for people that are interested in self hosting that are not highly technical, there are really in my mind, there's only really 2 options. There's there's StartOS, and there's Umbrel. And at the time, you and Umbrel kind of shared that commercially restricted license. Mhmm. And they chose not to participate in that roundtable. You were almost, like you almost had to, like, fight their arguments for them. There was a lot of times in that roundtable where people were essentially giving Umbral shit, but you were the only one there to actually argue it back. Yeah. Today so to back then, there was, like, a bunch of other projects that were kinda competing for this, just for this market, for this use case of of easy self hosting.
And a lot of them are more focused on Bitcoin only. We had the Raspi Blitz guys on. Still a great project if you only wanna run Bitcoin stack stuff. Definitely more technical. We had the Ronin Dojo guys on who are are more focused on on running, like, the samurai stack and more on chain focused Bitcoin. But it it at the time, it was starting to become kind of obvious that it was Umbrel and and StartOS that were kind of going for the more mainstream, not just Bitcoin. Anyone who wants any kind of freedom in their life, this is the way they should go. And you guys both had commercially restricted licenses. Today, you StartOS is is MIT, completely false. Umbrel is continuing their path of commercially restricted, and it's just I think that's an interesting perspective for people to realize so that at the end of the day, like, if you're if you're thinking about self hosting and and you're not the most tech technical person, there's a lot of benefits.
Like Matt said, it's not, you know doesn't automatically make something secure. But if you're trying to be freedom focused and you actually want control over your life, it's a little bit counterintuitive to run a stack that is owned by a company. You you do want something that is that is out there for the community and anyone can build on. One of the cool things to me about this transition is it means and one of the beauties of open source software in general is that it's almost viral in nature. It's, you know, it's not controlled by an individual. It's not controlled by a corporation. And as a result, in an ideal situation, you you see thousands of contributors around the world that are building on top of this thing in a permissionless fashion.
And it's kind of the early days of that on start 9. Like, it's pretty cool that I mean, you guys have essentially, like, this concept of an app store, which I think is what most people already, are are very comfortable with today. But there's 2 main ones. Right? There's the there's the start 9 curated registry, and then there's the community one where presumably anyone without permission can just, package and upload apps. Right?
[00:16:53] Unknown:
Not really. So the the way that the way that the community registry works, right, and for anyone interested, I put a a blog post out about this, which you can find at blog.start9.com, which is self hosted on a start OS server running Ghost, by the way. And where we lay out kinda what the what the distinction is between these registries and what the broader registry strategy is in general. So Okay. Start 9 has the start 9 registry, and this is where we stamp our name on stuff. Right? We, as a team and company, are like, look. We inspect these packages. In many cases, we maintain them. Right? We are actually the ones that wrote the code, the wrapper code necessary to host the service on start OS.
But at minimum, we give them heavy inspection. We test them. We write guides for them. And I don't just mean how to run it on start OS. I mean that we write guides on how to use LND, period. Like, we have more docs on running LND than maybe LND, the Lightning Labs team does. Right? So we are, in in essence, a support, line for many FOSS projects out there, particularly in in the greater Bitcoin and lightning space. And so anything on the start line registry is something that we stand by, we inspect, we support, we test, etcetera.
The community registry is everything else, and it doesn't mean that we disagree with these things. It doesn't mean that they're insecure. It doesn't mean that they don't work. It's any of the above. It's like or we just don't have time. Right? We have a we're small team. We have very limited capacity to officially maintain everything. Because, again, we're writing docs for BTC pay server. And so, if it's on the community registry, we don't say why it's there. It just doesn't check every box that is necessary for us to take it. However, it must still pass a reasonable inspection by our team. So when somebody submits a service to be listed on the community registry, we do a cursory overview of the code to make sure that there's nothing obviously malicious or wrong.
We then build it. We compile it. We load it on to start OS, and we run it. And we do very minor click through testing, basically, just to make sure that it's not gonna, like, crash the server, that it doesn't get into some infinite CPU loop or something like that. And then we release it to the community registry without an opinion. Right? But we can't allow someone to just put anything on the community registry because it would You guys still control the community registry. Absolutely. The start 9 registry and the community registry are both hosted by start 9. But the community registry has far less, criteria that need to be met to be listed on it. It's a lower standard.
Much lower standard. Right? The We don't recommend or, sort of endorse these services. For instance, if somebody wanted to put some shit coin node, in the FortiOS, there is one there. Yeah. Then we're not gonna deny that because we stand for Sovereign Computing. Like, it'd be like Apple rejecting some app just because they didn't like it or something like that. Do. They do, but we won't. We won't.
[00:20:10] Unknown:
But am I correct that
[00:20:13] Unknown:
people can self host registries. Right? Yes. And and that's where I was going next is that these are the 2 primary registries that exist today. DREAD had a registry spun up for a little while there that people could connect to. But, also, following the next release, and this is the first time I'm telling anyone this,
[00:20:32] Unknown:
Breaking news.
[00:20:34] Unknown:
You will be able to install a registry onto your server from the marketplace. So you'll be able to run a start 9, not even a start 9. Sorry. A start OS registry on your start OS server Oh, shit. Simply by downloading the start OS registry app from our start 9 registry. So it's a bit sort of circular. Easiest way to host
[00:21:02] Unknown:
a self a self hosted starterOS registry is on starterOS.
[00:21:07] Unknown:
Yes. And it I know. Beautiful because then what happens is, by default, you already have a bunch of binaries on your server. Right? Right. So you install the registry, and then you go into a settings menu, and you just select all the services that you already have installed that you would like to offer to others in a store setting, like friends and family because they trust you. Right? So say, like, you're running Bitcoin on your server. Right. Everyone's like, well, if this is the Bitcoin that Matt Odell is running, I assume that he's checked the Shaw Sums, and he's you've proven that it's not blowing up his system, etcetera. So I can just install it from his server.
So people can actually install Bitcoin instead of getting it from us or even from the Internet. They can get it from your server, and you can host these registries by default over Tor anonymously. So following the next release of StartOS, we are going to make the distribution of open source software in binary form to people running personal servers completely, completely decentralized and censorship resistant. Start 9 will have no no critical role in that. People will still probably go to our registry by default. It will be loaded practical terms, for the freaks, like, one of the big,
[00:22:32] Unknown:
in practical terms, for the freaks, like, one of the big concerns about a lot of people using Umbrel or using StartOS to run their their Bitcoin nodes, is that Bitcoin by default, is non automatic updates and is supposed to be or relies on the fact that users are choosing, when they run new software. And in both cases, I I mean, I haven't used a number in a long time, but I believe there's no auto updates, and there's definitely no auto updates on on StartOS. But the fear is always that even though there's no auto updates, like, if a user sees the big blue update button, they're just gonna press the big blue update button. And so if we get into another situation, which it kinda seems like we might be in the early days of of another, like, Bcash type of situation, an Umbrel or a start 9 can kind of choose which way their users go in a fork situation.
And I think this is a very clever way of handling that, where it kind of removes you from that kind of decision making, king making kind of, power.
[00:23:45] Unknown:
It helps. Yeah. And, you know, there there's power in default. Yeah. But the easier you make the escape hatch from those defaults, the less power there is. Right. And so we're trying to make those escape hatches as as clear and accessible as possible. In fact, another forthcoming feature with 036, which we have announced, we get, you know, when this about every other day. Yeah. When this Is that you will be able to, switch between different proto different implementations of the same protocol so long as they have sufficiently overlapping APIs and database structures, as is the case, for instance, with Bitcoin Forks. So, knots is the example that most people are bringing up right now.
And so you have Bitcoin core, which is the reference implementation for the Bitcoin node, and then you have Bitcoin knots, which is Luke Dasher's, fork of Bitcoin that has some changes to it that a lot of people like and want to use. And right now, on any, sort of, you know, convenient plug and play server product out there, it's not easy to, like, choose which fork of Bitcoin you want to run because the way these systems are designed, particularly with dependencies like Lightning, Nodes, and BTC pay, is they kinda need to know who what other piece of software on the system they should be looking to to do their own processes.
So in post 036, which is the next version of start OS, different, we're we're extending the the versioning protocol that is used by most software in the world to include, implementations of software protocols. So to switch between core and knots, post 036, will be a drop down menu, and you'll just select, like you know, I'm currently running Bitcoin core 27, and I'll be able to switch to knots by going to a drop down menu and just selecting Bitcoin knots 27.1 or whatever it is and clicking switch. Right? It won't be upgrade. It won't be downgrade. It won't be install. It'll be switch to the it's a horizontal move rather than a, versioning up and down move.
And you won't have to resync the chain. You won't have to do anything. You'll just switch to knots, and it'll reboot, and you'll be running knots. And then you could go back to core. And if there is, by chance, any kind of database difference, then it's up to the package developers to write those migrations that enable, users to go back and forth. And since we take responsibility for Bitcoin on StartOS, we will make sure that those, transitions are seamless so that in a soft fork or even hard fork scenario, people can, with no technical expertise, however, with lots of warnings, be able to, just sort of chain hop, for cop at will.
[00:26:58] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, it's I think it's important to just drill down on that because if if you guys are doing your job right, which from my experience with StartOS, you've done a phenomenal job. The user kind of takes it for granted how many of the services have dependencies on other services that are running on the same box. And a perfect example of that is, my self hosted mempool instance. My self hosted mempool instance, relies on Bitcoin Core at the base, and then it relies on electrics, the Electrum server that is also running to make it quicker. And so that one package, that mempool space package is really dependent on those other two services working properly.
[00:27:47] Unknown:
And l and d?
[00:27:48] Unknown:
And l and d if I'm doing lightning if I'm doing the lightning portion. Yeah. Which I'm not right now because I just don't really care about it. But if you do your job correctly, the user doesn't like, that isn't that is is easier said than done, providing that in a seamless experience, like, all the all the different, packages all relying on each other and still being clean for the user. Right?
[00:28:15] Unknown:
Yeah. And to be to be very clear, nobody, very few, in fact, I would venture to say, understand the complexity of the problem that we're attempting to solve here. We surely did not. You know, Star OS is in its 4th major revision currently. When we launched it, it worked really well, but it immediately ran into scaling issues. And I don't mean, like, user base because there is no user base. Everyone's using their own server. When I say scaling issues, I mean usability scaling. Right? Like, I wanna run mempool. I wanna self host mempool. Well, it's like, that has a whole different set of requirements.
Right? A whole different set of skills that would have been necessary on the command line to achieve than just installing running Bitcoin. It's a whole different level of of effort and skill and time. And so there's ways to kind of just, like, naively and in the software engineering world, the word is fragile, right, to, like, build a a build it so that it works, but it's really ugly and inelegant and fragile. Like, any change would, you know, break everything type of thing. And we were early enough in the development of StartOS that every time we ran into one of these, like, oh, crap, Our current infrastructure architecture and code, you know, engineering strategy does not accommodate or account for this new use case, this new service that people want to run rather than just sort of, like, hacking it in and as quickly as possible so that, you know, we get the big marketing announcement and everyone gets to run it.
We chose to go back to the drawing board, so to speak, and redesign StartOS as low level as necessary to get it to provide the feature or service that everyone wants, but in a way that now accommodates, say, other services that have similar needs or even, you know, slightly similar needs. And we finally think that we've got them all. Right? It's we're in our 5th year. We're almost gonna be 5, and we're in our 4th major rewrite of StartOS. And we think that this one, sort of solves the problem that is how can a nontechnical person self host any type of software on their own server without possessing the traditional skills necessary to accomplish that? I think we've done it. I think the next major version gets us to what we were gonna what we're gonna call 1 point o. We're sort of it's a finished product minus the forever features and bug fixes that will there follow, but we got the architecture right finally.
[00:31:27] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, I want to, first of all, famous last words. I wanted to talk about I definitely wanna talk about the future with you, because that seems like where a lot of the questions from the audience have come from. I've a lot of the dispatch, a lot of the freaks that listen to dispatch, seem to be running start OS already, myself included. So a lot of it is, you know, when this, when that, what's the future. But before we get to that, I wanna unpack the boxes a little bit because I think it's really cool and absolutely important that anyone can just, you know, build their own computer, use an old computer, run this thing themselves.
That's the path that I chose particularly because, I'm a crazy person, and I have, like, an insanely souped up box. And I just wanted to see, like, how I can how if I can push it to its limit. But I think the overwhelming majority of people will probably end up buying prebuilts. And, I mean, the way you have it architectured, I guess, other companies, you know, in in a in a world where start 9 becomes the main way that people host their lives, and this is way bigger than Bitcoin. This is photos. This is everything you rely on the cloud for, but instead running in your home or your office.
There probably will be other vendors that are, like, packaging prebuilt boxes, and we're just, like, in the early days. So it's it's just you guys. But these two boxes that you're offering, you're offering, the server 1 and the server pure. I wanted to like, I I think a lot of people's first interaction will be simply buying one of those. Like, I know when I talk to friends and family that want to self host, I don't tell them, you know, I will build your computer and then flash flash the OS. Like, I just send them the link to the store page. And particularly, what I wanna talk about is so, my good friend, Catan, of Ministry of Nodes, was absolutely incorrect about mempools and and how, you know, how the fee environment in Bitcoin would would interact.
But he was very much correct, I think, on, like, the death of running self hosting on a Raspberry Pi. And I think it's pretty cool that you guys seem to have embraced it, essentially. Like like, these are not low power boxes. These are, you know, these are these are, you know, properly spec'd, very powerful computers that you're selling to people. And I'm kinda curious, like, your thoughts there on, like, those two offerings, the server 1 and the server pure.
[00:34:09] Unknown:
Yep. The, the hardware that you choose to do any kind of computing activity very much depends on what you plan to run on it. Okay? So for instance, we still provide a build for the Raspberry Pi. Yeah. You can run start OS on a Raspberry Pi. And it works just fine if you are running a file server or a messaging app, you know, or you wanna share some photos and, you know, you are attaching a 4 terabyte drive to it, it works fine. Right? The Pi is a fine, low powered, cheap computer that could satisfy the needs of somebody doing some lightweight self hosting. It's not open source, from a firmware perspective. Right? The the pie is a as NVK likes to talk about it, he hates it.
[00:35:15] Unknown:
He he thinks it's What do they do to him in his childhood?
[00:35:18] Unknown:
He thinks it's the most backdoored, surveilled pile of crap that's ever existed. And, you know, maybe it is. We don't know. That's sort of the point. Right? Is that the the firmware drivers and the we don't they're all closed source. So even though StartOS is open source, the pie is sort of notoriously kinda low level backdoored, so to speak. But that said, it'll get the job done for a lot of hosting needs. And it's cheap as fuck. It's super cheap. It's a great way for somebody looking to just, as a hobby, spin something up and try it out. Right? Like, you can't go wrong. You can literally run it off a micro SD card. You don't even need, an external drive. Right? You get yourself a 128 gigabyte micro SD card and have a good time for probably, like, 4 or 5 years on that thing.
Self hosting messaging and data applications. No big deal. But if you wanna run Bitcoin, you wanna run a Alect RS, you wanna run LND, and you wanna run mempool, you wanna run these things alongside other stuff, BTC pay, the pie is going to ship the bed very quickly. I mean, most people I think, like, most people's general reaction when, like, they when they get into this is
[00:36:28] Unknown:
especially when you have this nice layout for the app store is just install, install, install, install, install. Like, they just wanna run everything. Yeah.
[00:36:36] Unknown:
And that works on the devices that we offer now. You can install it all, and it'll all work. You're not gonna hit resource limitations. So we are selling devices currently, both the server 1 and the server Pure, that are properly overkill for a lot of people. Okay? Like, a lot of people are buying these devices right now, and it's more power than they need. But we don't really see that as a problem as long as the price is still reasonable. Right? It's better to get more than you need, more power than you need at a reasonable price than, you know, cut it close or get less power than you need trying to save a buck. It's just not worth it. So we finally just gave up on on trying to run make everything run on a perfectly, you know, low resourced device like a pie, and we just said, if you wanna do more stuff, you gotta get a more powerful device.
We're happy to sell them. We don't mark them up in any massive way. Right? We're not, like, fleecing people that It's very competitive. The, prices that we charge for our devices are similar to what you can get anywhere else, and you are you are that is your donation. You're contributing to the project. Like, we can't continue to fund the development of these technologies forever unless we receive either donations or, purchases. And so that's how we view people who buy our hardware. We view it more as a donation because they don't have to, and we actually, like you said at the beginning, encourage the DIY approach. We don't hide it. It's not like something we I make it super easy. You have documentation and everything. Advertise it. Right? Like, I love it when people DIY because they they contribute in a different way. Right? Because I I want to impress them. I want to make the DIY experience, seamless and equal to the purchasing approach because they'll appreciate that. And oftentimes, when people appreciate something, they show their appreciation, And we need that more now than we need sales. I would rather have somebody DIY and go brag about it on Twitter or Noster Yeah. I can't brag about it on Twitter. Sorry. Then have somebody buy from us and remain silent. If I had the choice, I would choose that they do not give us money, but about how wonderful their experience was. I think there's, like, another piece to it too about
[00:39:03] Unknown:
I mean, I've always been an overkill electronics guy. I think most people are overkill electronics people, and they don't even know it. Like, most people, if they get the newest iPhone or the newest MacBook Yeah. They don't need all that power. Yeah. But they do, and they they they buy it, and then they have a great experience. But I think in the self hosting world, which is very new, like, we're on the cutting edge, freaks. Like, this is everyone moved to the cloud, the world moved to the cloud, everyone's trusting other people's computers, all your data is being monetized, And, hopefully, like, the start and hinds of the world, the start OSs, all the different open source projects that are being funded by open sets, bring us to a new better world in the in the future because I don't think this is sustainable.
But in my mind, when I think about whether it's an uncle Jim kind of scenario where someone's running it for their community or their family, or if you're just running it for yourself and and and your immediate family. It it seems to me like more of, like, a hot water heater per purchase. Like, it's a boiler purchase or something. It's not it's it's not this thing that I'm I'm supposed to be upgrading on a yearly basis or a 2 year basis. Like, I I think you want it to be, like, a 5 to 10 year machine, that you can rely on, because our whole lives well, most people's lives wholly rely on the cloud, and they're just assuming that Google will always have all their emails or they'll always have Apple will always have all their photos.
And it's it's it it there's a mental burden. It's it's almost more of a mental burden than an economic burden. I think freaks can relate to this if they've attempted to to live this type of life. You know, I recently had a child. Like, I don't wanna lose my child's photos, and I'm not trying to save $200 and then upgrade in a year or 2 years, over my child's photos. Like, there's an there's a un a nonquantifiable value in those photos. And I I would almost relate it more to, like, a, like, a, like, a central air AC heat or boiler purchase. Right? It's like you're kinda trying to think a little bit more long term on it. I sure hope so. Yeah. Right? Because
[00:41:29] Unknown:
these are not high touch devices. They're they're not supposed to be. They are now because we're early and it's still evolving, and we're still learning and, but we hope to eventually have the server completely fade to the background again. Right? Like, servers were at the forefront of computing back when we started connecting computers to each other, and then they faded away to the background. And nobody even knows what a server is Right? All they know were what clients are. They have their phone and they have their laptop and they install apps, and the servers are just these mystical beings that exist somewhere out of sight that is making all the synchronization and persistence and, you know, processing happen.
And, it was that opacity of just sort of putting this out of mind and out of sight that has allowed the people who didn't put it out of mind and out of sight, who are doing it on behalf of everywhere else, to grow immense power for themselves, wealth and power. And it's we've created a monster. And the consequences of that the monster's starting to eat people now. And so the the the consequences are becoming increasingly, apparent. And so we have to bring servers back into the public consciousness, so that people understand what a server is, what its role in the computing paradigm is, and how running your own server it's almost like farms. Right? Like, people just forgot about farms. Food is just at the grocery store. It's the same thing with servers. Right? And once they realize what's what the farmers are doing, often at the behest of the regulators, they're like, oh, shit. I better grow my own food. It's the same thing with servers. At some point, you just go, I gotta run my own server because what they're doing is unacceptable.
And but our goal long term is actually to get the technology to the point where you don't even really realize that it's a server anymore. It's just some appliance in your house. Right? More of an appliance. Yeah. It's just some appliance. The analogy to farming here would be, like, you know, everyone doing horticulture today and, like, having your own farm at your house is very difficult, but you can imagine an advanced technological world where that could be some automated system as well. Right? Advanced irrigation and robots doing all your farming, but it's still your farm. You're still the farmer. It's just not as hard as it used to be. And that's kind of what we're doing with servers, is you bring the server in house, and start OS is the the key to to making it more of an appliance and less of a skill and activity.
And so, eventually, our vision be a hobby. It should be just your family relies on it. It's working. Servers are just infrastructure. They're they're needed, but they should be in the background. So we're at this very awkward phase right now where we need servers to come back to the foreground. We need people to understand them and adopt them and put up with some pain and effort for a while, the early adopters, while we gradually work towards sending them to the background again, but this time in the right way. This time in a decentralized, proprietary way where everybody owns their own infrastructure computing infrastructure.
And, eventually, the UX that we have always sought for, I mean, from day 1 to late 2019 at start 9, we were talking about this, is, ultimately what we want is a client device. So you have your Graphene phone here. Okay? And you install an app from F droid or you side load it or whatever, you get an app on your phone. We'll call it a Bitcoin wallet. K? So you I download a client Bitcoin wallet onto my phone. Now let's pretend that I don't have a Bitcoin node running. Right? But the wallet so I'm I'm signed into my server from my phone. You know how, like, on the iPhones and and the Pixels when you have stock Android, one of the first things that you do when you set the phone up is you, like, sign in to your Icloud account. You Sign in to your Google account.
You are authenticating to that account at the root of the phone. It's not some app. It's like the phone is signing in to that account. Right? So now whenever I install a Google app onto my phone, I don't have to log in. Right? It's using the SSO of the of the authenticated account on the phone to access the app. What we envision is a similar, UX for your own server in the future. You will open up your phone, and you will sign in to your server. Now you won't even know what that is. It's just it's a router. It's it's appliance that's in your home. You plugged it in, and it gave you some credentials. And now you get your phone and your laptop, and you just sign in to that thing. So now when I install, say, a Bitcoin wallet, the Bitcoin wallet would say, well, where's my node?
Right? Do you want me to use the server, or do you wanna use some other server? Well, you'd say mine. That would be the default. Right. But it's not installed. Right? You never installed Bitcoin. You never synced Bitcoin. Right? But you don't now you don't have to. The wallet will do it. The wallet will be like, oh, you've said that you wanna use your own server for this. May I make changes to your server? Can I install Bitcoin and, you know, do all this? And you just click yes. And now you're so the entire experience is pushed back to the client. You never actually have to directly administer the server.
The client makes changes to the server as needed in order to do the things that you want to do on your phone and laptop. And we believe that we can actually get to this point, in a reasonable amount of time. Not for everything, but slowly but surely, we can make it usable for more and more things.
[00:47:22] Unknown:
That's awesome. Okay. I wanna dive deep. But before we dive deep, I feel like this is a good point to discuss. First of all, by the way, do you see in the live chat, it's you see Kieran in the live chat? He's the container of AppStream.
[00:47:36] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:47:38] Unknown:
I Thanks, Kieran. This is great. This is Matt's this is Matt's first introduction to Zapsdream. I think it's a fucking awesome project. And, you know, Kieran has the vision that there'll be many instances of ZapStream. So maybe one day, we'll see it on on start OS. That could be fucking cool. I feel like this is a good moment to highlight, because I hate when pump and other people don't highlight it. And I'm a little bit of a you know, I'm I have I have battling, angels in my head constantly, when when it comes to open source and when it comes to funding the future and making being being the change we wanna see in the world.
To me, so I have you know, I'm cofounder of OpenSats and managing partner in 1031. To me, they both play a key pivotal role in in the future. And, and and how I kind of frame that in my head is, I think OpenSats is a way to to seed the future, to to to to basically throw gasoline on the fire that is open source contributors around the world, making the world a better place. But grants are, like, never a sustainable path. I I I'm grateful for all of our donors. I hope our donation base increases over time. I hope we build a massive Bitcoin treasury and we expand our grants from a 120 20 plus people to thousands of people around the world who are able to go full time into open source development.
But I'm also a capitalist, and I think the the real sustainable future is businesses, that build, maintain, foster open source projects, but are also able to make a sustainable, SaaS flow, make a sustainable Bitcoin cash flow, so that so that they are not reliant on anyone else, that they're truly independent and and not relying on anyone else. And on that note, 1031 is a investor in Start 9. And I wanna talk a little bit before we dive deep into StartOS, I wanna talk a little bit about what what you see as the business model for Start 9, the company. Like, how does how does the company make a sustainable profit going into the future, so that you're not reliant I mean, you've never taken a grant, but that you're not reliant on grants and you're not reliant on, like, Fiat VC, which we're not Fiat VC. Like, we're not we're not just gonna give you money forever with no growth and no profitability. Yeah. Like, that's not gonna happen. So how do you how do you think about, like, the business model of Start9 Today, going forward, like, what's that path?
[00:50:36] Unknown:
Yeah. You are touching on something that really, I had to really sort of meditate on for years as we were building start 9. Right? So in 2019, man, we had ideas. You know, we didn't really know what the business model was gonna be and would evolve into, and now I do. And but the process from getting from there to here, which is not a crazy thing, which I'll say in a second, was much harder than it might appear at first glance. Right? Like, in the open source decentralized world so not decentralized. Disintermediated. Okay? Yep. If your goal is to write open source software and not be a necessary middleman somewhere in the equation, you have a very hard time making money because those are the two places to make money. Right? It's property that you can leverage for rent They're rent seeking.
Or it is, positioning that you can leverage for brokering fees, that you can leverage for free fees. And if we wanna build a world that's open and decentralized, you can't do those things. So how do you make money? Well, what I realized was I just looked at the world as it as it exists, and one of my favorite analogies is restaurants. Why do people go to restaurants? Right? It has nothing to do with intermediation or property. Nothing. Restaurants are making money strictly on convenience. They're making money on, leisure and convenience. They're basically saying that, you don't you don't need us. You can cook your own food, and you can do it cheaper.
We in no way are sitting in your kitchen and charging you fees while we, you know, set your table. That's called catering, and you can do that as well if you want. But, restaurants make money because people like luxury. They like convenience. They like to go out. They like to not have to do things themselves. They like to be waited on and cared for and supported. You know, it's a service business, not a product business. And so I realized that in the open source decentralized world, the only things that you can really sell sustainably, scalably, is a service, some sort of unnecessary service, right, where people don't need it, but they want it.
And increasingly, services can be thought of as emotional services as well or even more poignantly, community services. So, like, people need humans need a sense of belongingness, purpose, and community. Okay? And if you can provide that, they are grateful. And where people are grateful, they are willing to provide back, as in they're willing to pay for it as long as the relationship feels value for value. So, ultimately, what we have decided to monetize and build a business around is support, helping people to use, technologies that improve their lives, holding their hand, being kind to them, being exceedingly generous and helpful, and to provide spaces for these people to discover other people like them, right, to provide a sense of community and purpose and mission. Right? Like, a lot of start 9 customers, I don't think of as customers.
Right? These people don't have to buy anything from us. They are choosing to join a community that they think is meaningful and important and that they fit in with. And paying a few bucks for a server is is a non thought for that person. They're just like, of course. Right? It's not an admission fee. They don't have to pay it. Right. But they want to. It's almost a donation of sorts or a dues you could call it, like a membership fee that's optional. And I think that you can build a massive business on this model, and I'm one of the few people who think that you can do that. And, I really do, and it's proving itself to be correct. Okay? Like, start 9 is accelerating. We are moving very much and very quickly in a profitable direction, and we've barely scratched the surface of the potential market that we're dealing with here. And we have done it while all the while encouraging people to DIY, giving away the software, removing ourselves from the experience at every possible opportunity, but then opening a door and saying, hey.
We're here. If anyone wants to be in this room, come on in. You're welcome here. We will help you. We will provide assistance. We will, we'll task you. I get people that show up and they're just like, what can I do? What can I do to help? And I'm like, I take that seriously. I go, here's what you can do. I'm so happy that you're here and willing to help. Right? So that's the business model is now let's get real specific real quick because that was long winded but important, I think. Let me get real let me get real specific about, like, what that actually means. We sell hardware. We will continue to sell hardware because hardware is convenience. Right? People can buy hardware from a hardware store or a computer store anywhere they want and install StartOS.
But we sell it. We we we ship it within 24 hours in almost every case. It comes in a beautiful box. The unboxing experience is very elegant. They plug it in. It just works. If something goes wrong or they have any questions, we have somebody literally standing by. The best box. Yeah. The They just it's in the best box. It's a it's a it's a suction box, but it doesn't suck too hard. Right? You lift it, and you don't have to, like, fight to get it off. It just sort of lifts slowly. Lot of care went into that. So and if you have any questions or troubles whatsoever, you hop into, an email or direct chat or a community chat, and we have somebody almost 24 hours a day responding to direct inquiries within, like, 3 minutes. Our support is outrageous.
And people get blown away by that. And that's what they're buying when they buy a device is they're buying that experience, that convenience, and that experience. And we can scale that. Yeah. Now, number 2 is if people think that open source software and self hosting stops with software and data, you don't understand what's going on with the world. Okay? The world is getting smart. Everything is going to be connected to the Internet at some point. Okay? We're already seeing absurdities with this with certain appliances, and people scoff at it. But, ultimately, it connects My fridge wanted to connect to the Wi Fi. Yeah. And you were just like, no. You're not no. Because, like because it's absurd and because you know, ultimately, Google's gonna know what temperature your refrigerator is at, and that's an invasion of privacy. They have no business knowing how cold you like your food because they will use that against you, and they will turn the temperature down, and you'll end up with drinks that are too cold.
So so but but the point is that everything is getting smart. Okay? The world is going to be connected whether you like it or not. And, eventually, that's gonna be a huge benefit to efficiencies and productivity. Right? Like, having everything connected where, you know, your refrigerator's light or the, the water filter is getting old, and the computer knows that it's getting old, and you get a notification. And with one button, you've just ordered the cheapest water filter off of Amazon or some other marketplace that's gonna be delivered tomorrow. And it's just like your life just got a lot more streamlined as a result of having intelligent devices.
The reason why most people reject the intelligent devices is because they know somewhere deep down that it's not their device. Right? They're renting it. They're they're using it by the grace of the over the tech overlords that if they stop paying their monthly subscription, the refrigerator will turn off. Yeah. I don't want to say I was just like to turn off my fridge. Yeah. They're they're not I know how often I open it. Yeah. It's about control. It's about control over data, and it's about control over the physical machinery as well. And what we are envisioning and what StartOS, as well as a broader strategy that we're taking, enable is a connected intelligent future that is entirely within the control and purview of the owners of the devices themselves.
And we think that that will be welcomed by many people, if not everyone, but I would certainly welcome that. Right? I would love to have a a connected world where all my data exists under my control and is being aggregated and analyzed, and I'm being given recommendations about when I should run, what I should eat, and all the rest. You get the best of both worlds. Yes. You get the intelligent robot future, but it's under your control with making you an overlord. You're a powerful powerful sovereign of yourself and your family, maybe, right, or your business.
And this is available to everyone and off limits to no one. And so start 9 does not intend to just sell servers forever. Servers were just the first device. There's always going to be a scenario where somebody wants to add another device to their computing fleet. Right? And they want it to play nicely with their server because the server is the backbone of the computing infrastructure, and they want it to be under their total control. And so as we come out with new devices into the future, that is again, you won't have to buy it from us. People will always be able to go get a device somewhere else, flash it with our open source firmware and software, and make it work, but empirical history has demonstrated to us that a very few number of people are actually going to do that. The vast majority of people want the plug and play elegant experience from the company that they trust and that they know they can reach out to for support and whose community they know wants them and accepts them. And so we're gonna build a hardware business around a piece of open source software that really has no limit to the number of devices that we could come out with into the future.
And we have another one coming very soon, and we haven't made that announcement yet. Tease it? But it's coming. It's the next obvious one. It's the only hint I'll give you. People think, like, they're like,
[01:02:03] Unknown:
you know, Dell said this thing on RHR, like, blah blah blah. Like, he's got a big mouth. Like, I have so many secrets in this head. I have so many secrets in this head. I, I I the future's bright freaks.
[01:02:18] Unknown:
If if the server is the backbone of a computing network, what's the doorway?
[01:02:25] Unknown:
Yep.
[01:02:26] Unknown:
Okay. That's a good tease. There's a very obvious next device but it's necessary in order to get all the other devices.
[01:02:36] Unknown:
The core of it is hardware and and, premium services. Right? Yes. Like, that's the business model. And I would say that Matt is correct that he is mostly treated as crazy, for this this belief that it's gonna be a massive business. So is 1031. Like, that's why 10 that that if if the freaks are wondering why 1031 exists, that's why 1031 exists.
[01:03:04] Unknown:
Is because investment thesis is bonkers.
[01:03:07] Unknown:
Yeah. People think they're fucking crazy. Yeah. We're we're the we're the same support for companies like yours, because we're aligned. And then for the investors, a lot of times, we're the crazy ones. I will say that most of our invest well, the ones that actually agree to be a part of 1031 are usually very aligned with us, or they they come around to it. Yeah. And I think we'll both make a lot of money, and the world will also be a better place. And I think that is the beautiful, synchronicity that happens. I I think that's sustainable synchronicity.
Let's let's make the world a better place, and let's make a lot of money while we do it. Yeah. Because that's sustainable. It doesn't rely on donations.
[01:03:52] Unknown:
Well, what's what's cool about the model, though, too, is that it is off limits to no one to reimplement the model that I just described. Right? Start 9 has no special position here. There is no start OS. Yeah. There's there's no mode other than our own brand and reputation. That's it. Basically, the only moat we have is to keep being awesome. Right? As long as we keep crushing in support and we continue to be honest and transparent and, you know, act with integrity, we can grow a huge business. The second we betray any of our values, the only moat that we had just vanishes overnight. And so, I love that incentive structure. I love the fact that our my entire business depends on me having integrity.
Yeah. It's so cool because it's usually the opposite for a lot of business owners. Yeah. Success in the business, you have to portray the values. If we do that, we're done because there's no other mode. We have no IP.
[01:04:55] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, like, that I mean, that's the easy way to make money. It's just like you throw integrity out the window. You you become a rent seeker in the middle. You harvest everyone's data. You sell it for profit.
[01:05:07] Unknown:
Super easy. Yeah. Lock them lock them in. They get sticky. We Then then go then go lobby some politicians to make it illegal to switch.
[01:05:16] Unknown:
Right? Like Is that freaks? We don't do it because it's easy. We do it because we thought it was easy. I love that quote. I think that's a great quote. I saw none of your business in the Nostra chat and the ZapStream chat. By the way, if for some reason you're listening on Twitter or YouTube, you can join us in that Nostra chat that is is streamed that you can visibly see at dispatch.com/stream. You don't need to have a nostril account, to do it. You can create 1. None of your business raided us again. A raid, I'm not a Twitch native person.
It was adopted from Twitch, is when someone brings their audience from their stream over to our stream. And this is the second time Nonya has done this. He did it on Wednesday as well. And I said I couldn't place him when he said we met at Pitbullock Boom. I actually placed you last night. Much love, brother. I appreciate you. Sorry. It took took me a couple hours to many hours to place you. Okay. I'm glad we talked about that. I wanna dive deep. I wanna dive deep a little bit on start OS. We're at, almost at the hour and 10 mark. K. Yep. I love it.
It's fucking awesome. I'm running it, and and my box is, like, 3 feet away from me right now, just humming along. The the biggest e issue we're seeing as users right now is is the reliance on Tor, that if I'm not on this network, I have to access it through Tor Browser. And Tor is, you know, it is it it's not a great experience. It's like a it's slow. You know? It just I'm just, like, sitting there. My wife's like, why are you on the phone? I'm like, I'm trying to do something on our note. Give me a break. And I'm just, like, sitting there and it's, like, updating. It's, like, slowly getting there. What what what what can we have to look for? How do you please fix it, sir. Mi Familia. Yeah. We're we're
[01:07:31] Unknown:
we're fixing it. Tor was a great place to start. I'm glad we did it because it's 0 configuration. It doesn't require any kind of networking knowledge or skills, no router configurations. It does NAT punching inherently because it's 2 outbound TCP connections. Yep. So it just works. Now works is a generous word, but that's not the server's fault. That's just Tor. Tor is inherently slow because of its architecture. Right. Which the trade off there is that it's insanely private and secure. But it's also under attack, like, 90% of the time. So, it's just slow. It's really unbearable, at times.
And so, we recognize the the need for, you know, better solutions. And, unfortunately, those are really hard. Like, you start getting into somebody else's game and world at that point. Right? Like, the Internet over the last few decades has evolved in such a way that it really does rely on this appeal to authority and, sort of best not best practices, but sort of agreed upon practices and protocols that all depend upon third parties and trust and have privacy implications. And so the second you try to play in that world, you find this horrible battle of, well, we want to be able to use our computers in the way that we're used to using them, but without all the spyware and censorship.
And it's really hard to do. But we have found what we consider to be acceptable trade offs that we can also message very clearly to the user so that they can choose their own threat model, and and the strategy that's right for them. So there is a a few new networking options coming to StartOS in the near future that will allow you to break free of the the Tor chains with a message telling you exactly what you're doing and what the trade off is, and there's multiple tiers of that. You can sort of go all the way to full blown clear net, which will make your self hosting experience both for you, the person administering the server and using services on it, but, also, potentially, your audience or your employees or your family or your friends who are also accessing resources that are running on your server will be able to do so in a way that is indistinguishable from the way they currently use websites and the Internet. They will have no idea that they are accessing web apps and other resources from a self hosted server run by you. They will just view it as going to a middle, which is, VPN access, and VPN access is, VPN access.
VPN access. And VPN access is, really useful because it strikes the right balance of performance and speed with the privacy, they're in. So following 036, all of your services, and I use that lightly because it's really all of your service interfaces, because each service has multiple interfaces, meaning take Bitcoin for example. Right? Bitcoin has an RPC interface, which is what your wallets are gonna connect to. It has a p two p interface, which is what your node uses to connect with other nodes, and it also has a z m q interface, which is used by dependent services in those cases to access resources on the Bitcoin node.
And you could imagine a scenario where Bitcoin even has a user interface, like a UI, a web app, where you could, you know, see stats about your node and stuff like that. So Bitcoin is looking at up to 4 interfaces, and you don't necessarily want all those interfaces to be, like, bundled together into a single web resource. Right? Like, I don't necessarily want people to have access to my user interface to see my node stats and stuff like that. Right. Possibly even create transactions using the Hot Wallet on the node. But I might want them to have access to my RPC interface with, restricted permissions. Right? A friend who wants to use my node to connect their wallet in a read only way or something like that. Yep. So you have to be able to control these different interfaces of any given service in a very granular way. And so starting in 036, you will be able to go into every interface of every service and select in a granular way kind of how this interface is exposed or not exposed to the Internet.
You could say, I only want it on Tor because it's super private, and I I'm I'm willing to put up with the slowness because this resource is, like, really, really private, and I need it to be secure. Or you could say, I want, you know, my LND node to be on ClearNet so that it's easily discoverable and can connect with peers really well, and I don't really care if I'm exposing my home IP address. But then somebody goes, oh, crap. I really don't wanna expose my home IP address. I prefer to proxy traffic, through some VPS reverse proxy that I have on the DigitalOcean in the cloud. They use a cloud server just as a proxy. That's And we'll be able to facilitate that as well. So you will have lots of options on how you want to expose the things. And it's on an individual services basis? It's on an individual interface of an individual service. It's very granular. You're able to do this. Now it comes with same defaults, like when you first install a service. Now I'm mincing a little bit here between what's gonna be available in 036 through the UI and what's gonna be available in 0 4 o. We are developing these two versions in parallel because Let me hold you to everything you say, and we're gonna get very angry at you. Here's here's deliver. I'll make it very clear, and you can hold me to this.
Everything I'm describing right now is possible in 036, but some of it will require you to use SSH and go in and do it the the sort of dev dev hat way. And we're doing that intentionally because these are so advanced and so so complicated, these features, that that we actually don't want everyone doing it at first through the UI. We want the more, competent and and and adventurous people to get in there through the command line and try some of these things so that we can flesh out the bugs so that we can make the u so that we can make the UX seamless. And then in 0 4 o, all of these features get brought to the user interface, so that a normal nontechnical person can can have access to them, but only after they're stable.
[01:14:57] Unknown:
Got it. I like that. That makes sense to me. We'll be your guinea pigs. I I mean, Steve Lee said this the other day, like, a slow and steady approach. I like the slow and steady approach, that you guys are he didn't say it about you guys. He said that about Bitcoin Core, but I I'm just gonna translate that to you guys, and I don't like that approach.
[01:15:24] Unknown:
I mean, it's how you grow something that lasts. You can get big fast, but it's not on a solid foundation.
[01:15:33] Unknown:
So Carlos is asking in the live chat, when 036.
[01:15:38] Unknown:
It's in testing. It's in testing. It runs. It exists. It works, but it's in testing. Okay. I can't provide an ETA for launch.
[01:15:48] Unknown:
Okay. Well, I think that's gonna be a massive, that's gonna be a massive improvement in in terms of, like, actual usability of these these home servers or office servers.
[01:16:04] Unknown:
It actually makes it fairly usable by businesses at that point too because
[01:16:08] Unknown:
every business should be running their own.
[01:16:10] Unknown:
Small businesses, especially. I mean, they're they don't have necessarily the the funds and expertise to host their own, you know, servers and pay Linux's admins tons of money to maintain them. And so what do they do? They just outsource it to 20 different SaaS companies. The average bill for a small business of 20 people, their monthly software bill is between $810,000 a month. It's a meaningful cost center for a for a small business.
[01:16:38] Unknown:
Dude, we're so we're like I believe in the dream. I believe in the dream. My dad's small business, though, is, like, 1 phishing email away from just destruction. So
[01:16:48] Unknown:
So follow 0 36. Long day. I'm gonna be able to and will be going into small businesses starting in the Greater Bitcoin space and convincing them to slowly but surely drop their SaaS subscriptions and cloud service providers in favor of their own server or fleet of servers that are being used to, you know, back each other up and make sure that there's no downtime and that data that data loss, never occurs to run their business. So, currently, just to prove to people that 036 is, you know, sort of working, start 9 hosts a significant amount of our, like, internal business, software needs on a couple of server peers. We have 2 server peers, and we run almost everything on it. For instance, if you go to blog.start9.com, that is a clear net website blog running on a start 9 server peer.
[01:17:47] Unknown:
Is it running 036?
[01:17:49] Unknown:
It is running a thing that doesn't exist. It's it's not 036. It's not 0351. It is a it is the stuff that will eventually be 036. It's pretty quick. It loads really quick. Yeah.
[01:18:03] Unknown:
Okay. I'm just gonna go through we'll just go through my wish list. Okay. Okay. So I have I have I have this box. It's it's awesome. It's way overkill. It's like probably the most overkill home server you can manage. What do you got on it? I mean, it's like It's a Ryzen 9 16 core
[01:18:27] Unknown:
Yeah.
[01:18:29] Unknown:
Processor. I got an NVIDIA GPU in there. K. And, it's it's running coreboot. So I, like, tried to open source the firmware as much as possible. It's got 32 gigs of RAM. Okay. But here's here's the wish list. Right? I only have a 2 terabyte NVMe drive in there. Yeah. First of all, probably not enough. Okay. I'm gonna probably have to upgrade the size of the main drive. And then second of all, like, I would really like it has multiple drive bays, obviously. I would I would ultimately like to have it in a a raid esque configuration where a second drive so I I wanna increase the drive space, and I want to have it in a RAID configuration, where it bat it's, like, automatically just backing up.
I I don't wanna lose my child photos, Matt. Like, I just I I I want and, like, I promised my wife You would. Photos would not be lost, and then they will not be harvested. So what it what are the thoughts there? I I believe under the current configuration, I could I could do the backup process Yeah. Like an external drive, upgrade to a larger drive. But is start OS gonna does I I believe it doesn't currently recognize multiple drives. No.
[01:19:58] Unknown:
So here's here's the options today when it comes to drive space and upgrading. If the drive is not dead, like, if your drive has not died, okay, assuming it's working fine, you can upgrade to a larger drive by transferring the data over. You do not need to restore from backup. Okay. Right? So it's a it's a much faster experience because it doesn't have to decrypt. The backups are all encrypted. So if it's a lot of data, that adds a significant amount of time to the process. Right. So if you know in advance that you're gonna upgrade your drive, you can take out the one that's in there, put the one in that you want, or, like you said, yours has multiple bays. You just put the new one in.
You'll reflash, start OS. So you basically reinstall the OS. And then during initial setup, we have a a button that says transfer. So rather than fresh setup, you select transfer, you select the drive that, you know, you're transferring from, you select the drive that you're transferring to, you hit go, it transfers it. And then when you're done, you can take the old one out, and you're good to go. Boom. Bigger drive. Got it. Boom. Bigger drive. That's that's the easiest way to do that. Already exists. Now as long as StartOS sees the drive as a single drive, it'll work. Meaning, you can do hardware RAID today. You can set up a hardware RAID configuration and plug it into your server, and StartOS will just see that as one drive. It'll be like, oh, here's my drive. It has no idea that there's actually multiple drives being Okay. You know, aggregated beneath the hood because it sees it as one.
There's a lot of people that hate hardware RAID and prefer software RAID and that it's better, and we don't support that right now. We will. We will support software RAID such that you can plug multiple drives in and use them in any RAID configuration that you want. Secondly 036 is not gonna have that. No. No. No. No. 036 doesn't have that. Don't put that on my plate right now. Okay. I just did, kinda. But okay. Yeah. It's it's it's there's a ticket for it. It's just not making it into 036. Okay. Secondly, we we do have it such that we're going to allow for just extending drives. So say, like, you have a 2 terabyte drive in there and you're running out of space, you'll be able to just take another 2 terabyte or a 4 terabyte and plug it in and go into your settings and just add that drive to your total drive space, and starter bus will now tell you that you have 6 terabytes. And Does 0 36 have that?
[01:22:24] Unknown:
No. Okay. I've it's important. I'm I'm asking. I have to All the drive
[01:22:28] Unknown:
extensibility stuff is not in 036. Okay. So because because quite frankly, it just isn't in that high of demand because most people are not at the point where they're filling up 4 terabyte drives, which is what we offer, if devices that we sell. Like, today, if this is a problem, just get a bigger drive. We will solve it in a more comprehensive manner later when we have a minute to breathe. Okay. So,
[01:22:56] Unknown:
yeah, I think that's it on the drive front. Okay. That's pretty good. Freaks, I mean, you're in the live chat. If you have any questions, for Matt or future requests that are not in 036, like, feel free to put them in the comments. Matt, I mean, so okay. Those are the 2 biggest things for me is I love hate Tor. I it's like a horrible relationship we have. I someone just asked when SimpleX support. I believe it's already in the service.
[01:23:28] Unknown:
Yeah. SimpleX is amazing and well supported by StartOS.
[01:23:36] Unknown:
But those are my those are my 2 main things. It's, like, first of all, like, I have horrible experience with drive failure. Yeah. It happened. I'm, like, constantly thinking about it. I have horrible experience with drive filling up, which so, like, even though, like, honestly, the 4 terabyte is, like, really overkill. I'm not even close to filling up the 2 terabyte yet, but, like, I'm still thinking about it. Right? Like, I I gotta a course, it's coming. And then just like the auto backups, like, having just, like, a secondary drive there is huge. And, yeah, I love the information to make it more. Though. So that is so automatic backups
[01:24:18] Unknown:
is a different feature than, having, like, a a RAID setup Okay. Or even just extending the drive. Right? So what is that? So currently, the way that you make a backup on StartOS is you plug in the drive to the device, you go into your settings, you click backup, you select the services you wanna back up, and it backs them up in an encrypted way. You could also create a backup over the air to another device on your home network. You don't need to plug in a physical drive into the device. You could create a backup of your server onto your laptop or desktop or any computer on the network. It could be a a Synology NAS or a TrueNAS device or whatever you have. Okay. And that all works great, and we have guides for all of that. But it does require you to go in and click a button. You have to, like, go in and go back up, and you have to do it.
[01:25:08] Unknown:
Which you never do. You might do it every month
[01:25:11] Unknown:
until the time it fails, and then it's, like, 8 months previous. You you always forget when it fails. Yeah. And it's so critical to do backups. Like, the idea of running a server or self hosting without creating frequent quality encrypted backups is is like it's it's, you know, skydiving without a parachute. You're you're gonna get hurt. You are going to lose data. You're gonna lose money. You're going to get pissed, and then you're never gonna go back. So you gotta do backups, which, by the way, like, for anyone listening, StartOS is the only system that has a backups feature. Like, you cannot back up your data on a numeral without doing it manually on a service by service basis, which means you're never gonna do it. So having an OS that has a backup feature seems to me to be table stakes. Like, we would never have considered launching without a such a critical feature such as backups. But, anyway, what's coming next for us, this will be in 0 four o, not an o three six. I was gonna ask. It's it's already largely coded for 0 four o, but it's not coming in 0 three six, is you will be able to schedule automated backups to any local or remote target that you want. So for instance and it'll be like creating a calendar event. That's the UX we're going for is you'll create a calendar a recurring calendar event. You'll be like, every day at 2 AM, I want my, LND node to be backed up to my other start 9 server in another state.
I want my CLN node to be backed up to Google Drive at 4 AM every day, etcetera, etcetera. You will be able to Oh, it sounds great. Encrypted backups of your server in a very granular, customizable way, as frequently as you like, and they'll just run. And if one of them fails for some reason, that'll be apparent in the UI that a backup failed. And in o in o, 4 o, you also will be able to send yourself an email notifying you, that it failed as well. What is,
[01:27:25] Unknown:
I'm gonna put you yeah. I I agree with the average Gary, like, bronze age game dog asked, he said the Starlink, router, doesn't give him dot local access. I mean, the Starlink router is just crap. Like, just use you can still use Starlink with a different router. You can get a downstream router, but also,
[01:27:45] Unknown:
we are getting rid of the, the unique dot locals for services in 036. Those will go away. Why? How how do I access it through IP? Yeah. Well, no. You'll still you'll still have the primary dot local. I got a great random dot local. I'm not The services will exist at a port now. So instead of having, you know, some random pubkey.local for one of your, you know, Bitcoin interfaces Yep. It'll be the primary dot local of the server and then a custom port. Okay. And you could use the IP in the port. The reason for this is, 1, it it is a it's a necessity for VPN access and remote access to the home because VPNs don't support Avahi aliasing. So the way that we implemented these, like, weird dot locals that you see for every service, is it's a it's a piece of software called Avahi, and it it it's an MDNS.
It's a software that enables m d advanced MDNS stuff. MDNS is dot locals. Okay? But what Avahi enables you to do is do a, MDNS aliasing. So, like, basically, all of the m d, dot locals that you see on your start OS server are actually all just aliases for the primary one, but then they do host name resolution in the same way that, like, you know, something.com does host name resolution. There's essentially a lookup, and it's it's nasty. And, we thought it was clever, and that was before we realized that it was 1 like, the software itself, Avahi, as a piece of open source software is crap. Like, it's largely unmaintained.
It's ancient. It just doesn't work very well. There's bugs. And 2, MDNS aliasing is not supported by almost any VPN provider. In fact, we're not aware of one that supports it. And so, it prohibits VPN access, which has been a huge, like, crutch for us. You know, it's been a big drawback for people, and we're fixing it. 036 fixes it. Awesome.
[01:29:50] Unknown:
So, I mean,
[01:29:52] Unknown:
when when 036, You said it's in testing. Are is it 2 weeks?
[01:29:57] Unknown:
Is it 4 weeks? No. I don't do that anymore.
[01:30:00] Unknown:
You're not you're not going to? I can't. No. On the spot. Every time I've done that, it's been false and people get angry. Okay. Matt's saying it's gonna be 3 weeks. Not not quite 2 weeks, not quite a month. 2 weeks is the is the joke that we make to everyone who asks because it's always 2 weeks. It's gonna be so 3, I feel like, is the nice conservative we added a week.
[01:30:23] Unknown:
I and, Matt, what are you most excited about with 036? Besides the networking stuff? Besides what we already talked about? Honestly Am I missing something? Like, what is Oh, I mean, so so so with 0 36 proper,
[01:30:38] Unknown:
it's that. But what I'm actually most excited about is to get past 0 36 because 0 36 was the the, like, dirty work hard stuff we had to do before we can do the really fun stuff with 0 4 o. 0 4 o is where I'm excited because 04 o doesn't just take all these wonderful features and bring them to the forefront. It's actually Oforo completely redesigns the UI. So it's it's cosmetic change as well. 0 4 o, is a different app. It it looks it's been redesigned from scratch. We we rewrote the front end code base, and that's that's done ironically enough. The the o four zero redesign and code rewrite is is done. What do you think, like, the ETA for o four o is not like It won't be that far behind o three six. Right? So, compared to how long 0 36 took, we've been working on 0 36 for almost a year. Oh, I have another question for you, Matt.
[01:31:37] Unknown:
People like apps Yeah. On their phone, and people don't have computers anymore. I mean, they don't have servers either, but they'll get a server without getting a computer. And, like, currently, you have to go into the web browser and connect to your start 9 to, like, set it up and stuff. Is there any thoughts on, like, downloading the start 9 app, like, scanning a QR code to, like, start your Start OS experience. Like, is that a is that in the cards? Is that something like, people like apps, you know, just, like, you download the app, scan to the network.
[01:32:14] Unknown:
We had it. We killed it. Okay. That's where we were, 3 years ago. We had an app. It was called the setup app. Okay. Available on the App Store and the Google Play Store, and you used it to set up your server. Apple cut us off. Yeah. They'll do that. Yeah. No. Apple Apple banned us because the app was, in their opinion, administering a remote device that was downloading software that didn't come from the App Store. They're kinda correct. Their terms and conditions. We fought them on it by saying, like, wait. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. We're not allowing people to download software to their phone from something that's not the App Store. We're we're letting people use an app to download something to their server, which is not competing with Apple in any way, and they they they almost just didn't get it. It was really, really hard for their team to, like, understand what we were saying because it's so abnormal.
And so they didn't wanna fuck with it. They weren't gonna make an exception for us. I I tried to escalate it, and they didn't wanna hear it. So So we is We circumvented them. We do everything through the web now. The web is the only safe place to operate. App stores are vulnerable.
[01:33:29] Unknown:
Fair enough. I agree. Oh, I actually do have one more question before we wrap. So to me, like, the way I look at it is, like, this rides or dies on start OS. It rides or dies on the open source stack that anyone can run, anyone can distribute, anyone can try to monetize. What are your thoughts on and in this current regulatory environment, it also comes down to a liability thing. Like, the more services that are maintained and distributed outside of start 9, the better, because we get more powerful stuff that you guys might not necessarily wanna be involved in. What are your thoughts on, like, increasing open source contributors in terms of the start OS ecosystem, packages and maintaining packages and releasing these services out to the public.
How do we how do we, you know, how do how do we jump start that? How do we make that I want everything. I want I start OS is great, and there's so many services that I can run. I want more. There's not enough. Like, how do we increase that?
[01:34:48] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, we need help on all fronts. Service packaging is definitely what I would call, like, a, you know, a front, a battleground for us. And I've been putting quite a bit of pressure on, upstream development teams and individuals to take responsibility for their own software on StartOS, right, just like they would for Windows and Mac and iOS and Android. It's like when you build a piece of software, you you have to do certain specialty things like compilations and forms or whatever to get distribution on different platforms and to different devices. And, StartOS is no different in that respect except that we're a lot smaller and not everyone sees value in garnering distribution, to node runners. But we're going to increase that that over time. Like, we're going to gain more influence and leverage as we become more popular and we have more users. People will want distribution on starter less. We're already seeing that.
And so I'm starting to get into a position where I can push back when someone's just like, well, I'm not I'm not putting it on there. I'm like, well, then you're not gonna have it because I don't have time to do it. I don't have the resources to pay people to package open source software for an open source OS that in no way drives the it's it's just like start 9 in a way feels very alone right now as, like, a company Yeah. Because our business model is not StartOS. Our business model is not these open source packages that people want to run on StartOS. Our business model is plug and play devices and support around these things. But we find ourselves like, if there's nothing to run, if the OS doesn't work and there's nothing to run on it, then we obviously can't sell plug and play devices. So we have an incentive as a company to fund and promote, the development of StartOS and of services service packages for StartOS, but we are quite frankly alone in that effort right now. We've had a few people spin up, crowd funds, for particular services, like public pool, I believe.
Someone spun up and was like, hey. We need someone to package this. And they came to us, and I was like, I wish. I fucking wish. I don't have the resources. We're we're not some, like, big monster tech giant company profitable and all the rest. We're a bootstrap startup that penny pinches at every corner. And so I can't just bring on more service packagers to help build out this ecosystem. So, you know, we'll do what we can, which is quite a bit, and we will continue to to do what we can. And, hopefully, we get really profitable and can and do even more. But, really, it's up to the the best leverage play that we and the greater StartOS and open source community has to get more services running on StartOS is to pressure the teams themselves that build the software Yep. To go through the exercise of packaging it up. But in the absence of that, you know, we gotta we gotta, fund individuals and community members who are willing to take it on, and act as that middle man between StartOS and the upstream development team and and make the package.
So it's it's it's politics. It's, it's networking, and it's, time and pressure and, and ease ease. Right? So 036 I I didn't mention this during the whole call today. 036 introduces an entirely new, SDK, software development kit for packaging services for StartOS, and it blows the old one away. Like, we, in 036, someone will be able to take an existing package off the shelf and get it bundled for StartOS in a far, with far less effort than was previously needed, and it's way more featureful. So there's a lot more that you can do with these packages now. Like, the developer has an enormous amount of creative opportunity and control over the end user experience that somebody will have with Bitcoin or will have with LND.
And I'm not just talking about cosmetic stuff like the description that shows up in the marketplace. I'm talking about, like, the actual user experience of it. Like, for instance, just to give people an idea of how, like, how nasty some of this stuff can get, Take, BTC pay server for instance. Okay? And, so the package developer for BTC pay server is Lucy, and she's she's with Thank you, Mike. We've been with us since the beginning. She's wonderful, great developer, and so she's working on she maintains BTC pay server. And b t c pay server doesn't just have a lot of dependencies and a lot of moving parts. Right? Their Docker compose image is, like, 5 different pieces of software all smashed together and running in very, bespoke ways. And on StartOS, you know, we don't use Docker anymore. We definitely don't use Docker Compose. It's all garbage. It leads to all sorts of, like, hanging situations and invalid states that cause server restarts and all the rest. And so we take a very, like, more robust and reliable approach to packaging this stuff up, and that required her to really get under the hood and do a lot of advanced kind of, you know, binary, manipulation so that these different pieces of software could interact with each other as expected.
Well, you have settings in BTCPay where a user can go in, and they're allowed 1 or the other, either LND or CLN. Right? You gotta use BTCP server with one underlying, lightning implementation, and we wanted people to be able to use either or. We didn't want to pin users down and be like, you have to use LND with BTCPay like some other node projects do. Right? We don't want to impose those opinions onto people. And so what we did is you can go into your config of BTCPay, and you can turn lightning off entirely, in which case you don't have to install LND or CLN, and BTPC pay will be perfectly happy. But if you say that you do wanna run lightning, now you're forced to choose, do you want LND or CLN? So you choose, oh, okay. I wanna run CLN, and you click save.
Start OS now actually creates a required dependency on CLN, and it tells you you need to go install this thing if it's not already installed. And you can do that with a button, of course. Then it is like, well, it's not fully synced. And so BTCPay is acutely aware of its own needs. And I'm not just talking about whether it's installed or not. I'm talking about whether it's running or not, whether it's configured properly, whether it's fully synced, and all of that messaging gets propagated back to the user in the form of a simple message and a button to fix or change whatever needs to be fixed or changed.
That is an enormous amount of like, what I just described there is like a Linux sysadmin sort of nightmare on the end line, and we've we've diluted it down into a UX that a normal person can can do. And that wasn't just a start OS thing. That was a BTC pay packaging thing. Right? Lucy had to make that happen, and she makes that happen by using the start SDK, right, which is the software development kit for StartOS, which we also wrote, that makes doing all the advanced things that she had to do with BTZ Pay not accessible to, like, grandma and user, but accessible to, like, interested community member who wants to help out. Right? Like, I believe that we have gotten the star SDK to the point where a reasonably technical, like, junior coder could come in and be like, I love public pool, and I want it to be on start OS, and I'll be like, you can do it.
I promise you. Like, you can change you wanna see in the world. Yeah. And but we had to make it easy enough, and I think that we have with 036. So Awesome. You know, it's it's a mixture of we need more leverage. We need to become more popular so that people feel more pressure to, package for us. We need, ease of implementation. But on top of that, we need help. We need support. I would love for, you know, open source organizations and individual donors to, like, understand that start 9 is sort of, like, single handedly trying to to uphold and and drive forward the development of StartOS and the packaging ecosystem, which if you understand it, could someday prove to be an important component in the maintenance of Bitcoin's decentralization, Lightning's decentralization, Noster's decentralization, quite frankly, just self hosting in general. I hope that doesn't sound too arrogant. I just that is my ambitions for this project is that it turns out to be meaningful and important.
And if others agree, help, please. Contact your local rich person and ask them to help fund these open source developers to,
[01:44:22] Unknown:
help us build this thing. I mean, look, that's what I wanna hear. I think I think a lot of what you guys do well is reducing friction, whether that's from the user side or from the dev side. And to all the devs out there, like, if you're listening right now, please contribute to StartOS. Please contribute to StartOS. If if if you're currently working a dead end job, you wanna work on this stuff full time, apply to OpenSats. You have my support, but please contribute. Make the world a better place. I will say it's all about reducing friction. Like, we need to reduce the friction as much as possible, whether that's on the user side or the dev side. I think you guys have done a fantastic job with that.
Unfortunately, I do have a hard stop. I can't tell you guys why, but it's important. I I hope Matt joins us again many times in the future. I would love, like, constant updates on StartOS. I think that's a great idea. I'm trying to do this more often, to have to have the proper rider dies just come on dispatch on an often basis to you know, we'll do, like, every maybe, like, not quite quarterly, not not quite, twice a year, somewhere in the middle. 2 times a year. You you're down for that? I'm gonna make that happen. Awesome. Freaks.
As always, dispatch is is we have no ads or sponsors. We rely solely on, and when I say we, it's just me. I have no producer or anything. So this is a royal we. We rely solely on on your support, to keep this going in and out, And that comes in various fashions. That comes in people joining for the live chat, people sharing the show with friends and family. We're on every podcast app. All the links are still at dispatch.com, and it comes in the form of you guys actually donating Bitcoin, whether that's through zap.stream, live on air, or if that's through podcasting 2.0 apps like Fountain and Breeze.
Our biggest supporters this week was v with 23,000 sets, 8 with 24,000 sets, Pringle Stacks with 11,000 sets, Erza CC with 10,000 sats, and Jeff g with 10,000 sats. Guys, I'm gonna keep pushing forward. I hope you guys keep pushing forward. We've been on a long rip of dispatches. I think, this next week, I might take off and just put Freedom Money episodes on, which was a couple years ago, but important and a lot of you probably haven't listened to it. So I'm just gonna throw that on the podcast feed, or maybe there will be a dispatch. If there is a dispatch, you'll be notified via nostr. Promel.net/odel is the easiest way to find my profile. Matt, final thoughts before we wrap.
No. I think the the last rant I had is a good note to end end on. That that was a good you had good final thoughts already? Yeah. Thanks for asking. I respect that. I appreciate you, Matt. I'm, proud to call you a friend. I'm, proud that 10:31 is supporting you guys, and anything I can do or or help to support. And and and and thank you for making it easy for me to self host all the stuff my family relies on. I do appreciate you. I'll keep fighting for you. Likewise, brother. Thanks for having me on. Thanks. K. See you.
[01:49:39] Unknown:
Good evening and welcome to this week's showcase of your favorite music. And one of the hottest sounds in pop leads us off tonight. Break my stride, our number 10 hit by Matthew Wilder. For the next 60 minutes, this is the place to be. And for more of what you wanna hear, let's get back to Matthew Wilder.
[01:51:19] Unknown:
Love you, freaks. That track was break my stride by Matthew Wilder. Ain't nobody gonna break my stride. Let's fucking go. Let's keep pushing forward. I love you all. Like I said earlier, I think I might just drop all 6 episodes of free money, which we recorded about 3 years ago, but I've aged quite well, because I like to think that's why we're here, is is that people should just be able to save and spend without permission. It's quite simple. I think at the end of the day, if you don't have freedom, you're a slave. So you gotta just keep pushing forward, be the change you wanna see in the world.
But I reserve the right to just rip a dispatch next week as well. So you should follow me at Noster if you wanna be, notified of that. I love you all. Consider self hosting, whether that's with StartOS or some other way of self hosting. You can do it yourself the hard way if you want, but StartOS makes it quite easy. And and and it makes it even easier if you just go buy a box. Love you all. Stay on, Let's fucking do this thing.
For
[00:00:04] Unknown:
inflation and interest rates. More worried about it. I mean, you know, we've had very big fiscal deficits, and, you know, I think the underlying inflation may not go away the way people expect it to. And I I look at the future like a lot of things we look at are kind of inflationary. The green economy, the remilitarization of the world, the infrastructure requirements, the restructuring of trade, fiscal deficits. So I think there are a lot of inflationary forces in front of us that, you know, may keep it a little bit higher than people expect. The surprise would be rates are higher, inflation is a little bit higher, and maybe that'll slow growth. And and and obviously geopolitics is a whole different issue. That that can that could be determinative in what our economy does next year, and we're just we're just not gonna know. But so does that mean you think it's 5050 whether the Fed cuts or hikes at at, you know, next time around, the next move? I really don't pay that much attention to that. The Fed will have to follow the the data, and I don't know what the data's gonna say, but they, I think, you know, they are doing the right to be patient right now, see see what's gonna happen. They may not know for a couple of months. But no big correction. I mean, if you don't pay, you know, that much attention to it, it means you're not worried about anything. No. I'm worried. I just said stocks are very high. I think the chance of inflation staying higher or rates going up are higher than other people think. So I think the chance my view is whatever the world is pricing it for a soft landing Yeah. I think it's probably half that. I think the chance of something going wrong is higher than people think. In the US? But but we Or globally?
Well, I'd say in the US, but also that could affect globally. Yeah. And and so that what does that mean for markets? It'd be down,
[00:01:35] Unknown:
and credit spreads would gap gap out. So why is the market not pricing that in?
[00:01:41] Unknown:
A lot of happy talk.
[00:02:15] Unknown:
Happy Bitcoin Friday, freaks. It's your host, Odell, here for another civil dispatch, the interactive live show focused on actionable Bitcoin and Freedom Tech discussion. That intro clip, was Bloomberg, talking to Jamie Dimon, arguably one of the world's most powerful bankers, and, he's not he's not too optimistic on the the macroeconomic picture. That is not what we'll be talking about today. I have a great guest lined up. It's, I believe, his second time on the show. Last time was a a long time ago. We have Matt Hill here, cofounder of Start 9, a business focused on self hosting and and leaving leaving the cloud servers behind and and and hosting everything yourself. How's it going, Matt?
[00:03:07] Unknown:
Good, Matt. Thanks for having me on again.
[00:03:11] Unknown:
Oh, always a pleasure.
[00:03:13] Unknown:
Well, last time, there's a few of us. Right? We had a There was a node round table. That's right.
[00:03:20] Unknown:
And, I mean, you've actually made really big moves since then. Yes. But I think, before we get there, let's, you know, I think with the current regulatory environment where the world's at right now, a lot of people have realized, that might not have realized earlier. There were some of us that realized the importance, but, the importance of self hosting. And your company is been strictly focused on that. So, I mean, what is start 9? And and what are you guys building over there?
[00:03:55] Unknown:
Well, we spend a lot of time, working on StartOS, which is a new kind of operating system that makes it easy for a nontechnical person to own and operate a personal server, which has traditionally been a very difficult thing for someone to do. It required advanced Linux's admin skills and experience. And even if you had those skills, you were gonna be spending a lot of time, and experiencing a lot of frustration to accomplish, any degree of digital sovereignty through self hosting open source software. So StartOS was, the missing piece, we think, that was preventing people from being able to run a server and self host in a viable, scalable, way.
And so we spend a lot of time working on that. That said, StartOS is not a business. StartOS is an open source operating system. And so we also spend a lot of time, building a business around StartOS in the form of selling plug and play devices, AKA servers, with StartOS preinstalled. And we warranty those devices, and we support, those devices, and we support StartOS, and we support, many, many, but not all services, or applications that can be installed on StartOS. So our business is really selling devices, warranting them, and supporting them, but we put a heck of a lot of time into, building StartOS, which is what makes the whole thing possible.
[00:05:33] Unknown:
So right. There's 2 things here. There's Start9, the company, and then there's StartOS, the fully false free and open source software stack, that the boxes run on. And what's really cool is actually, I went through the paces of of flashing it on my own hardware, and you guys make it incredibly easy. You know? You you you take the image. You you put it on a USB drive. You take an old computer or a new computer that you just built. And in a couple clicks, I mean, I'm probably more technical than most people, but I think I think that's pretty accessible for a lot of people, and that's really, really awesome.
But to make it even more accessible, you have these these prebuilt boxes where it's as simple as, you know, someone who's used to, like, ordering an iPhone or ordering a MacBook. They just order out of the box. The computer comes in the mail. They plug it in. They connect it to Internet, and they're off to the races with pretty little technical know how. I guess an interesting place to start here is we did talk about the earlier conversation we had. At that time, StartOS was in its infancy, and you had a commercially restricted license on it. So it wasn't fully false software. It was still the only people that can monetize it were you guys. And you actually you know, there's there's yeah.
A lot of technical people love arguing about licenses. But you handled your own. There was there's there's a huge portion of my audience, that believes it's boss or nothing, and you were, like, in the ring with, like, 5 of them, and you handled your own. But since then, you've actually taken away that restriction, and there's no restrictions on the license. Can you talk a little bit about what went into that thinking? Why did you, you know, give StartOS to the world rather than maintain some level of ownership over it?
[00:07:42] Unknown:
Yeah. And for anyone, you know, who has not watched that episode, it was it was live. It was 3 hours and it was it was heated. There was yelling that took place. We're all friends now, but there was definitely some disagreements. But, to give people, you know, the the history here around start OS and licensing, We've gone through 4 licenses now. So when we first launched StartOS, it was not called StartOS. It was called EmbassyOS, and it was closed source. It was literally not even source viewable. The code was, closed.
And, we never for a second thought that we were gonna have a closed source piece of software. We, you know, that's in that's impossible in the business that we're in and what our ambitions for the technology are. But we were embarrassed by it, quite frankly. It was like a you know, we had, like, 8 people using it, and nobody was gonna contribute. Nobody was gonna audit it. We were just being realistic that there was no real benefit in putting it out there at that time. And we still had really wonderful people who came in and supported us and because we told them. We said, yeah. We're gonna we're gonna open this up. Of course, we're gonna open it up. And then when we opened it up, we did so under a dual restrictive license. You could not commercialize it in any way, shape, or form, and you could not distribute it in any way, shape, or form. Right? You could get StardOS from us, and you had to pay us. We were selling the software. It was source viewable and you could compile it yourself, but you actually couldn't download the binary. We weren't hosting the compiled binary anywhere. We were selling it, and people were buying it. And that was source viewable.
Then we dropped the nondistribution clause and said, nope. You don't buy it from us anymore. We'll give it to you. And not only that, but you can give it to anyone else that you want. You can host it. Anyone can distribute this thing however you want. So now it's source, available. It is free to distribute. Anyone could contribute to it. Anyone could fork it. Anyone could edit it, audit it, test it, whatever. The only thing they couldn't do, the only restriction that we retained was that you couldn't commercialize it for your own business, that we were the only people allowed to commercialize it. And that's when I was on the call with the, that was the previous Citadel dispatch was at that point in our history.
And even at that point, as I had said from the day that it was closed source, is that we actually had a strategy here that it was never intended to be closed source forever. It was never intended to be restrictive distribution forever. It was never intended to be restricted commercialization forever, that we were gradually opening it up as we became more confident in the thing that we were giving it away. It's like having an infant, alright, and keeping it in a crib and then everyone being like, well, you can't you can't have an adult in a crib. They're not gonna they're not gonna be healthy. And it's like, but they're not an adult. Right? Like, have you never heard of progression? Have you never heard of strategy?
And you can debate the strategy all day with me, and that's what we did for 3 hours on that last this and and I, in retrospect, look at our strategy from starting closed and gradually opening up, and I go, maybe it wasn't necessary. Maybe we could have taken that infant right from the get go and just thrown him into the ocean, and he would have swam just fine. But it also didn't hurt anything. Right? So we chose a strategy. We executed on that strategy, and we landed where we said we were always going to land, which was a fully false license, which in my opinion, and this can also be debated, mostly means MIT.
Right? Because every other license does have some restriction attached to it that ultimately relies on, state force to, enforce it. So we went the full 9 and we made it MIT. We gave it away as you mentioned, and this was not some act of, you know, submission where we gave in to people pressuring us. It was not in some marketing attempt. It was in a genuine, belief and strategy on my end my team's part that the best chance start 9 had of surviving and thriving into the future was to stand on its own and to not belong to us or anyone else, and there's risk in that. FOSS is a graveyard of unmaintained projects that are insecure and crappy and unusable and unmaintained, etcetera.
It going fast does not mean it's secure. Going fast does not mean it's gonna garner contributions or succeed. It's not gonna garner fundraising however, the biggest, most robust, antifragile, long lasting pieces of software are open source, are fully FOSS. And so you gotta take that risk, and we were willing to with StartOS. So we we set it loose. We set it free, and we still take care of it just like you take care of your kids after they turn 18 for a little while. You know? We still help it out. We still give it an allowance. We still, you know, check-in on it. But, ultimately, it's not ours, and we don't want it to be ours. You're paying for college still?
[00:13:16] Unknown:
Yeah. I like the metaphor. Is in college.
[00:13:21] Unknown:
Even though I will not advocate for my children to do the same. I mean, just for, like, a little bit of perspective here.
[00:13:29] Unknown:
Right. So MIT license Bitcoin Core is MIT license. Yep. It's it's considered, like, the it is the standard in in fully false licenses with no restrictions on it. At the time, when we did that so right now, for people that are interested in self hosting that are not highly technical, there are really in my mind, there's only really 2 options. There's there's StartOS, and there's Umbrel. And at the time, you and Umbrel kind of shared that commercially restricted license. Mhmm. And they chose not to participate in that roundtable. You were almost, like you almost had to, like, fight their arguments for them. There was a lot of times in that roundtable where people were essentially giving Umbral shit, but you were the only one there to actually argue it back. Yeah. Today so to back then, there was, like, a bunch of other projects that were kinda competing for this, just for this market, for this use case of of easy self hosting.
And a lot of them are more focused on Bitcoin only. We had the Raspi Blitz guys on. Still a great project if you only wanna run Bitcoin stack stuff. Definitely more technical. We had the Ronin Dojo guys on who are are more focused on on running, like, the samurai stack and more on chain focused Bitcoin. But it it at the time, it was starting to become kind of obvious that it was Umbrel and and StartOS that were kind of going for the more mainstream, not just Bitcoin. Anyone who wants any kind of freedom in their life, this is the way they should go. And you guys both had commercially restricted licenses. Today, you StartOS is is MIT, completely false. Umbrel is continuing their path of commercially restricted, and it's just I think that's an interesting perspective for people to realize so that at the end of the day, like, if you're if you're thinking about self hosting and and you're not the most tech technical person, there's a lot of benefits.
Like Matt said, it's not, you know doesn't automatically make something secure. But if you're trying to be freedom focused and you actually want control over your life, it's a little bit counterintuitive to run a stack that is owned by a company. You you do want something that is that is out there for the community and anyone can build on. One of the cool things to me about this transition is it means and one of the beauties of open source software in general is that it's almost viral in nature. It's, you know, it's not controlled by an individual. It's not controlled by a corporation. And as a result, in an ideal situation, you you see thousands of contributors around the world that are building on top of this thing in a permissionless fashion.
And it's kind of the early days of that on start 9. Like, it's pretty cool that I mean, you guys have essentially, like, this concept of an app store, which I think is what most people already, are are very comfortable with today. But there's 2 main ones. Right? There's the there's the start 9 curated registry, and then there's the community one where presumably anyone without permission can just, package and upload apps. Right?
[00:16:53] Unknown:
Not really. So the the way that the way that the community registry works, right, and for anyone interested, I put a a blog post out about this, which you can find at blog.start9.com, which is self hosted on a start OS server running Ghost, by the way. And where we lay out kinda what the what the distinction is between these registries and what the broader registry strategy is in general. So Okay. Start 9 has the start 9 registry, and this is where we stamp our name on stuff. Right? We, as a team and company, are like, look. We inspect these packages. In many cases, we maintain them. Right? We are actually the ones that wrote the code, the wrapper code necessary to host the service on start OS.
But at minimum, we give them heavy inspection. We test them. We write guides for them. And I don't just mean how to run it on start OS. I mean that we write guides on how to use LND, period. Like, we have more docs on running LND than maybe LND, the Lightning Labs team does. Right? So we are, in in essence, a support, line for many FOSS projects out there, particularly in in the greater Bitcoin and lightning space. And so anything on the start line registry is something that we stand by, we inspect, we support, we test, etcetera.
The community registry is everything else, and it doesn't mean that we disagree with these things. It doesn't mean that they're insecure. It doesn't mean that they don't work. It's any of the above. It's like or we just don't have time. Right? We have a we're small team. We have very limited capacity to officially maintain everything. Because, again, we're writing docs for BTC pay server. And so, if it's on the community registry, we don't say why it's there. It just doesn't check every box that is necessary for us to take it. However, it must still pass a reasonable inspection by our team. So when somebody submits a service to be listed on the community registry, we do a cursory overview of the code to make sure that there's nothing obviously malicious or wrong.
We then build it. We compile it. We load it on to start OS, and we run it. And we do very minor click through testing, basically, just to make sure that it's not gonna, like, crash the server, that it doesn't get into some infinite CPU loop or something like that. And then we release it to the community registry without an opinion. Right? But we can't allow someone to just put anything on the community registry because it would You guys still control the community registry. Absolutely. The start 9 registry and the community registry are both hosted by start 9. But the community registry has far less, criteria that need to be met to be listed on it. It's a lower standard.
Much lower standard. Right? The We don't recommend or, sort of endorse these services. For instance, if somebody wanted to put some shit coin node, in the FortiOS, there is one there. Yeah. Then we're not gonna deny that because we stand for Sovereign Computing. Like, it'd be like Apple rejecting some app just because they didn't like it or something like that. Do. They do, but we won't. We won't.
[00:20:10] Unknown:
But am I correct that
[00:20:13] Unknown:
people can self host registries. Right? Yes. And and that's where I was going next is that these are the 2 primary registries that exist today. DREAD had a registry spun up for a little while there that people could connect to. But, also, following the next release, and this is the first time I'm telling anyone this,
[00:20:32] Unknown:
Breaking news.
[00:20:34] Unknown:
You will be able to install a registry onto your server from the marketplace. So you'll be able to run a start 9, not even a start 9. Sorry. A start OS registry on your start OS server Oh, shit. Simply by downloading the start OS registry app from our start 9 registry. So it's a bit sort of circular. Easiest way to host
[00:21:02] Unknown:
a self a self hosted starterOS registry is on starterOS.
[00:21:07] Unknown:
Yes. And it I know. Beautiful because then what happens is, by default, you already have a bunch of binaries on your server. Right? Right. So you install the registry, and then you go into a settings menu, and you just select all the services that you already have installed that you would like to offer to others in a store setting, like friends and family because they trust you. Right? So say, like, you're running Bitcoin on your server. Right. Everyone's like, well, if this is the Bitcoin that Matt Odell is running, I assume that he's checked the Shaw Sums, and he's you've proven that it's not blowing up his system, etcetera. So I can just install it from his server.
So people can actually install Bitcoin instead of getting it from us or even from the Internet. They can get it from your server, and you can host these registries by default over Tor anonymously. So following the next release of StartOS, we are going to make the distribution of open source software in binary form to people running personal servers completely, completely decentralized and censorship resistant. Start 9 will have no no critical role in that. People will still probably go to our registry by default. It will be loaded practical terms, for the freaks, like, one of the big,
[00:22:32] Unknown:
in practical terms, for the freaks, like, one of the big concerns about a lot of people using Umbrel or using StartOS to run their their Bitcoin nodes, is that Bitcoin by default, is non automatic updates and is supposed to be or relies on the fact that users are choosing, when they run new software. And in both cases, I I mean, I haven't used a number in a long time, but I believe there's no auto updates, and there's definitely no auto updates on on StartOS. But the fear is always that even though there's no auto updates, like, if a user sees the big blue update button, they're just gonna press the big blue update button. And so if we get into another situation, which it kinda seems like we might be in the early days of of another, like, Bcash type of situation, an Umbrel or a start 9 can kind of choose which way their users go in a fork situation.
And I think this is a very clever way of handling that, where it kind of removes you from that kind of decision making, king making kind of, power.
[00:23:45] Unknown:
It helps. Yeah. And, you know, there there's power in default. Yeah. But the easier you make the escape hatch from those defaults, the less power there is. Right. And so we're trying to make those escape hatches as as clear and accessible as possible. In fact, another forthcoming feature with 036, which we have announced, we get, you know, when this about every other day. Yeah. When this Is that you will be able to, switch between different proto different implementations of the same protocol so long as they have sufficiently overlapping APIs and database structures, as is the case, for instance, with Bitcoin Forks. So, knots is the example that most people are bringing up right now.
And so you have Bitcoin core, which is the reference implementation for the Bitcoin node, and then you have Bitcoin knots, which is Luke Dasher's, fork of Bitcoin that has some changes to it that a lot of people like and want to use. And right now, on any, sort of, you know, convenient plug and play server product out there, it's not easy to, like, choose which fork of Bitcoin you want to run because the way these systems are designed, particularly with dependencies like Lightning, Nodes, and BTC pay, is they kinda need to know who what other piece of software on the system they should be looking to to do their own processes.
So in post 036, which is the next version of start OS, different, we're we're extending the the versioning protocol that is used by most software in the world to include, implementations of software protocols. So to switch between core and knots, post 036, will be a drop down menu, and you'll just select, like you know, I'm currently running Bitcoin core 27, and I'll be able to switch to knots by going to a drop down menu and just selecting Bitcoin knots 27.1 or whatever it is and clicking switch. Right? It won't be upgrade. It won't be downgrade. It won't be install. It'll be switch to the it's a horizontal move rather than a, versioning up and down move.
And you won't have to resync the chain. You won't have to do anything. You'll just switch to knots, and it'll reboot, and you'll be running knots. And then you could go back to core. And if there is, by chance, any kind of database difference, then it's up to the package developers to write those migrations that enable, users to go back and forth. And since we take responsibility for Bitcoin on StartOS, we will make sure that those, transitions are seamless so that in a soft fork or even hard fork scenario, people can, with no technical expertise, however, with lots of warnings, be able to, just sort of chain hop, for cop at will.
[00:26:58] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, it's I think it's important to just drill down on that because if if you guys are doing your job right, which from my experience with StartOS, you've done a phenomenal job. The user kind of takes it for granted how many of the services have dependencies on other services that are running on the same box. And a perfect example of that is, my self hosted mempool instance. My self hosted mempool instance, relies on Bitcoin Core at the base, and then it relies on electrics, the Electrum server that is also running to make it quicker. And so that one package, that mempool space package is really dependent on those other two services working properly.
[00:27:47] Unknown:
And l and d?
[00:27:48] Unknown:
And l and d if I'm doing lightning if I'm doing the lightning portion. Yeah. Which I'm not right now because I just don't really care about it. But if you do your job correctly, the user doesn't like, that isn't that is is easier said than done, providing that in a seamless experience, like, all the all the different, packages all relying on each other and still being clean for the user. Right?
[00:28:15] Unknown:
Yeah. And to be to be very clear, nobody, very few, in fact, I would venture to say, understand the complexity of the problem that we're attempting to solve here. We surely did not. You know, Star OS is in its 4th major revision currently. When we launched it, it worked really well, but it immediately ran into scaling issues. And I don't mean, like, user base because there is no user base. Everyone's using their own server. When I say scaling issues, I mean usability scaling. Right? Like, I wanna run mempool. I wanna self host mempool. Well, it's like, that has a whole different set of requirements.
Right? A whole different set of skills that would have been necessary on the command line to achieve than just installing running Bitcoin. It's a whole different level of of effort and skill and time. And so there's ways to kind of just, like, naively and in the software engineering world, the word is fragile, right, to, like, build a a build it so that it works, but it's really ugly and inelegant and fragile. Like, any change would, you know, break everything type of thing. And we were early enough in the development of StartOS that every time we ran into one of these, like, oh, crap, Our current infrastructure architecture and code, you know, engineering strategy does not accommodate or account for this new use case, this new service that people want to run rather than just sort of, like, hacking it in and as quickly as possible so that, you know, we get the big marketing announcement and everyone gets to run it.
We chose to go back to the drawing board, so to speak, and redesign StartOS as low level as necessary to get it to provide the feature or service that everyone wants, but in a way that now accommodates, say, other services that have similar needs or even, you know, slightly similar needs. And we finally think that we've got them all. Right? It's we're in our 5th year. We're almost gonna be 5, and we're in our 4th major rewrite of StartOS. And we think that this one, sort of solves the problem that is how can a nontechnical person self host any type of software on their own server without possessing the traditional skills necessary to accomplish that? I think we've done it. I think the next major version gets us to what we were gonna what we're gonna call 1 point o. We're sort of it's a finished product minus the forever features and bug fixes that will there follow, but we got the architecture right finally.
[00:31:27] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, I want to, first of all, famous last words. I wanted to talk about I definitely wanna talk about the future with you, because that seems like where a lot of the questions from the audience have come from. I've a lot of the dispatch, a lot of the freaks that listen to dispatch, seem to be running start OS already, myself included. So a lot of it is, you know, when this, when that, what's the future. But before we get to that, I wanna unpack the boxes a little bit because I think it's really cool and absolutely important that anyone can just, you know, build their own computer, use an old computer, run this thing themselves.
That's the path that I chose particularly because, I'm a crazy person, and I have, like, an insanely souped up box. And I just wanted to see, like, how I can how if I can push it to its limit. But I think the overwhelming majority of people will probably end up buying prebuilts. And, I mean, the way you have it architectured, I guess, other companies, you know, in in a in a world where start 9 becomes the main way that people host their lives, and this is way bigger than Bitcoin. This is photos. This is everything you rely on the cloud for, but instead running in your home or your office.
There probably will be other vendors that are, like, packaging prebuilt boxes, and we're just, like, in the early days. So it's it's just you guys. But these two boxes that you're offering, you're offering, the server 1 and the server pure. I wanted to like, I I think a lot of people's first interaction will be simply buying one of those. Like, I know when I talk to friends and family that want to self host, I don't tell them, you know, I will build your computer and then flash flash the OS. Like, I just send them the link to the store page. And particularly, what I wanna talk about is so, my good friend, Catan, of Ministry of Nodes, was absolutely incorrect about mempools and and how, you know, how the fee environment in Bitcoin would would interact.
But he was very much correct, I think, on, like, the death of running self hosting on a Raspberry Pi. And I think it's pretty cool that you guys seem to have embraced it, essentially. Like like, these are not low power boxes. These are, you know, these are these are, you know, properly spec'd, very powerful computers that you're selling to people. And I'm kinda curious, like, your thoughts there on, like, those two offerings, the server 1 and the server pure.
[00:34:09] Unknown:
Yep. The, the hardware that you choose to do any kind of computing activity very much depends on what you plan to run on it. Okay? So for instance, we still provide a build for the Raspberry Pi. Yeah. You can run start OS on a Raspberry Pi. And it works just fine if you are running a file server or a messaging app, you know, or you wanna share some photos and, you know, you are attaching a 4 terabyte drive to it, it works fine. Right? The Pi is a fine, low powered, cheap computer that could satisfy the needs of somebody doing some lightweight self hosting. It's not open source, from a firmware perspective. Right? The the pie is a as NVK likes to talk about it, he hates it.
[00:35:15] Unknown:
He he thinks it's What do they do to him in his childhood?
[00:35:18] Unknown:
He thinks it's the most backdoored, surveilled pile of crap that's ever existed. And, you know, maybe it is. We don't know. That's sort of the point. Right? Is that the the firmware drivers and the we don't they're all closed source. So even though StartOS is open source, the pie is sort of notoriously kinda low level backdoored, so to speak. But that said, it'll get the job done for a lot of hosting needs. And it's cheap as fuck. It's super cheap. It's a great way for somebody looking to just, as a hobby, spin something up and try it out. Right? Like, you can't go wrong. You can literally run it off a micro SD card. You don't even need, an external drive. Right? You get yourself a 128 gigabyte micro SD card and have a good time for probably, like, 4 or 5 years on that thing.
Self hosting messaging and data applications. No big deal. But if you wanna run Bitcoin, you wanna run a Alect RS, you wanna run LND, and you wanna run mempool, you wanna run these things alongside other stuff, BTC pay, the pie is going to ship the bed very quickly. I mean, most people I think, like, most people's general reaction when, like, they when they get into this is
[00:36:28] Unknown:
especially when you have this nice layout for the app store is just install, install, install, install, install. Like, they just wanna run everything. Yeah.
[00:36:36] Unknown:
And that works on the devices that we offer now. You can install it all, and it'll all work. You're not gonna hit resource limitations. So we are selling devices currently, both the server 1 and the server Pure, that are properly overkill for a lot of people. Okay? Like, a lot of people are buying these devices right now, and it's more power than they need. But we don't really see that as a problem as long as the price is still reasonable. Right? It's better to get more than you need, more power than you need at a reasonable price than, you know, cut it close or get less power than you need trying to save a buck. It's just not worth it. So we finally just gave up on on trying to run make everything run on a perfectly, you know, low resourced device like a pie, and we just said, if you wanna do more stuff, you gotta get a more powerful device.
We're happy to sell them. We don't mark them up in any massive way. Right? We're not, like, fleecing people that It's very competitive. The, prices that we charge for our devices are similar to what you can get anywhere else, and you are you are that is your donation. You're contributing to the project. Like, we can't continue to fund the development of these technologies forever unless we receive either donations or, purchases. And so that's how we view people who buy our hardware. We view it more as a donation because they don't have to, and we actually, like you said at the beginning, encourage the DIY approach. We don't hide it. It's not like something we I make it super easy. You have documentation and everything. Advertise it. Right? Like, I love it when people DIY because they they contribute in a different way. Right? Because I I want to impress them. I want to make the DIY experience, seamless and equal to the purchasing approach because they'll appreciate that. And oftentimes, when people appreciate something, they show their appreciation, And we need that more now than we need sales. I would rather have somebody DIY and go brag about it on Twitter or Noster Yeah. I can't brag about it on Twitter. Sorry. Then have somebody buy from us and remain silent. If I had the choice, I would choose that they do not give us money, but about how wonderful their experience was. I think there's, like, another piece to it too about
[00:39:03] Unknown:
I mean, I've always been an overkill electronics guy. I think most people are overkill electronics people, and they don't even know it. Like, most people, if they get the newest iPhone or the newest MacBook Yeah. They don't need all that power. Yeah. But they do, and they they they buy it, and then they have a great experience. But I think in the self hosting world, which is very new, like, we're on the cutting edge, freaks. Like, this is everyone moved to the cloud, the world moved to the cloud, everyone's trusting other people's computers, all your data is being monetized, And, hopefully, like, the start and hinds of the world, the start OSs, all the different open source projects that are being funded by open sets, bring us to a new better world in the in the future because I don't think this is sustainable.
But in my mind, when I think about whether it's an uncle Jim kind of scenario where someone's running it for their community or their family, or if you're just running it for yourself and and and your immediate family. It it seems to me like more of, like, a hot water heater per purchase. Like, it's a boiler purchase or something. It's not it's it's not this thing that I'm I'm supposed to be upgrading on a yearly basis or a 2 year basis. Like, I I think you want it to be, like, a 5 to 10 year machine, that you can rely on, because our whole lives well, most people's lives wholly rely on the cloud, and they're just assuming that Google will always have all their emails or they'll always have Apple will always have all their photos.
And it's it's it it there's a mental burden. It's it's almost more of a mental burden than an economic burden. I think freaks can relate to this if they've attempted to to live this type of life. You know, I recently had a child. Like, I don't wanna lose my child's photos, and I'm not trying to save $200 and then upgrade in a year or 2 years, over my child's photos. Like, there's an there's a un a nonquantifiable value in those photos. And I I would almost relate it more to, like, a, like, a, like, a central air AC heat or boiler purchase. Right? It's like you're kinda trying to think a little bit more long term on it. I sure hope so. Yeah. Right? Because
[00:41:29] Unknown:
these are not high touch devices. They're they're not supposed to be. They are now because we're early and it's still evolving, and we're still learning and, but we hope to eventually have the server completely fade to the background again. Right? Like, servers were at the forefront of computing back when we started connecting computers to each other, and then they faded away to the background. And nobody even knows what a server is Right? All they know were what clients are. They have their phone and they have their laptop and they install apps, and the servers are just these mystical beings that exist somewhere out of sight that is making all the synchronization and persistence and, you know, processing happen.
And, it was that opacity of just sort of putting this out of mind and out of sight that has allowed the people who didn't put it out of mind and out of sight, who are doing it on behalf of everywhere else, to grow immense power for themselves, wealth and power. And it's we've created a monster. And the consequences of that the monster's starting to eat people now. And so the the the consequences are becoming increasingly, apparent. And so we have to bring servers back into the public consciousness, so that people understand what a server is, what its role in the computing paradigm is, and how running your own server it's almost like farms. Right? Like, people just forgot about farms. Food is just at the grocery store. It's the same thing with servers. Right? And once they realize what's what the farmers are doing, often at the behest of the regulators, they're like, oh, shit. I better grow my own food. It's the same thing with servers. At some point, you just go, I gotta run my own server because what they're doing is unacceptable.
And but our goal long term is actually to get the technology to the point where you don't even really realize that it's a server anymore. It's just some appliance in your house. Right? More of an appliance. Yeah. It's just some appliance. The analogy to farming here would be, like, you know, everyone doing horticulture today and, like, having your own farm at your house is very difficult, but you can imagine an advanced technological world where that could be some automated system as well. Right? Advanced irrigation and robots doing all your farming, but it's still your farm. You're still the farmer. It's just not as hard as it used to be. And that's kind of what we're doing with servers, is you bring the server in house, and start OS is the the key to to making it more of an appliance and less of a skill and activity.
And so, eventually, our vision be a hobby. It should be just your family relies on it. It's working. Servers are just infrastructure. They're they're needed, but they should be in the background. So we're at this very awkward phase right now where we need servers to come back to the foreground. We need people to understand them and adopt them and put up with some pain and effort for a while, the early adopters, while we gradually work towards sending them to the background again, but this time in the right way. This time in a decentralized, proprietary way where everybody owns their own infrastructure computing infrastructure.
And, eventually, the UX that we have always sought for, I mean, from day 1 to late 2019 at start 9, we were talking about this, is, ultimately what we want is a client device. So you have your Graphene phone here. Okay? And you install an app from F droid or you side load it or whatever, you get an app on your phone. We'll call it a Bitcoin wallet. K? So you I download a client Bitcoin wallet onto my phone. Now let's pretend that I don't have a Bitcoin node running. Right? But the wallet so I'm I'm signed into my server from my phone. You know how, like, on the iPhones and and the Pixels when you have stock Android, one of the first things that you do when you set the phone up is you, like, sign in to your Icloud account. You Sign in to your Google account.
You are authenticating to that account at the root of the phone. It's not some app. It's like the phone is signing in to that account. Right? So now whenever I install a Google app onto my phone, I don't have to log in. Right? It's using the SSO of the of the authenticated account on the phone to access the app. What we envision is a similar, UX for your own server in the future. You will open up your phone, and you will sign in to your server. Now you won't even know what that is. It's just it's a router. It's it's appliance that's in your home. You plugged it in, and it gave you some credentials. And now you get your phone and your laptop, and you just sign in to that thing. So now when I install, say, a Bitcoin wallet, the Bitcoin wallet would say, well, where's my node?
Right? Do you want me to use the server, or do you wanna use some other server? Well, you'd say mine. That would be the default. Right. But it's not installed. Right? You never installed Bitcoin. You never synced Bitcoin. Right? But you don't now you don't have to. The wallet will do it. The wallet will be like, oh, you've said that you wanna use your own server for this. May I make changes to your server? Can I install Bitcoin and, you know, do all this? And you just click yes. And now you're so the entire experience is pushed back to the client. You never actually have to directly administer the server.
The client makes changes to the server as needed in order to do the things that you want to do on your phone and laptop. And we believe that we can actually get to this point, in a reasonable amount of time. Not for everything, but slowly but surely, we can make it usable for more and more things.
[00:47:22] Unknown:
That's awesome. Okay. I wanna dive deep. But before we dive deep, I feel like this is a good point to discuss. First of all, by the way, do you see in the live chat, it's you see Kieran in the live chat? He's the container of AppStream.
[00:47:36] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:47:38] Unknown:
I Thanks, Kieran. This is great. This is Matt's this is Matt's first introduction to Zapsdream. I think it's a fucking awesome project. And, you know, Kieran has the vision that there'll be many instances of ZapStream. So maybe one day, we'll see it on on start OS. That could be fucking cool. I feel like this is a good moment to highlight, because I hate when pump and other people don't highlight it. And I'm a little bit of a you know, I'm I have I have battling, angels in my head constantly, when when it comes to open source and when it comes to funding the future and making being being the change we wanna see in the world.
To me, so I have you know, I'm cofounder of OpenSats and managing partner in 1031. To me, they both play a key pivotal role in in the future. And, and and how I kind of frame that in my head is, I think OpenSats is a way to to seed the future, to to to to basically throw gasoline on the fire that is open source contributors around the world, making the world a better place. But grants are, like, never a sustainable path. I I I'm grateful for all of our donors. I hope our donation base increases over time. I hope we build a massive Bitcoin treasury and we expand our grants from a 120 20 plus people to thousands of people around the world who are able to go full time into open source development.
But I'm also a capitalist, and I think the the real sustainable future is businesses, that build, maintain, foster open source projects, but are also able to make a sustainable, SaaS flow, make a sustainable Bitcoin cash flow, so that so that they are not reliant on anyone else, that they're truly independent and and not relying on anyone else. And on that note, 1031 is a investor in Start 9. And I wanna talk a little bit before we dive deep into StartOS, I wanna talk a little bit about what what you see as the business model for Start 9, the company. Like, how does how does the company make a sustainable profit going into the future, so that you're not reliant I mean, you've never taken a grant, but that you're not reliant on grants and you're not reliant on, like, Fiat VC, which we're not Fiat VC. Like, we're not we're not just gonna give you money forever with no growth and no profitability. Yeah. Like, that's not gonna happen. So how do you how do you think about, like, the business model of Start9 Today, going forward, like, what's that path?
[00:50:36] Unknown:
Yeah. You are touching on something that really, I had to really sort of meditate on for years as we were building start 9. Right? So in 2019, man, we had ideas. You know, we didn't really know what the business model was gonna be and would evolve into, and now I do. And but the process from getting from there to here, which is not a crazy thing, which I'll say in a second, was much harder than it might appear at first glance. Right? Like, in the open source decentralized world so not decentralized. Disintermediated. Okay? Yep. If your goal is to write open source software and not be a necessary middleman somewhere in the equation, you have a very hard time making money because those are the two places to make money. Right? It's property that you can leverage for rent They're rent seeking.
Or it is, positioning that you can leverage for brokering fees, that you can leverage for free fees. And if we wanna build a world that's open and decentralized, you can't do those things. So how do you make money? Well, what I realized was I just looked at the world as it as it exists, and one of my favorite analogies is restaurants. Why do people go to restaurants? Right? It has nothing to do with intermediation or property. Nothing. Restaurants are making money strictly on convenience. They're making money on, leisure and convenience. They're basically saying that, you don't you don't need us. You can cook your own food, and you can do it cheaper.
We in no way are sitting in your kitchen and charging you fees while we, you know, set your table. That's called catering, and you can do that as well if you want. But, restaurants make money because people like luxury. They like convenience. They like to go out. They like to not have to do things themselves. They like to be waited on and cared for and supported. You know, it's a service business, not a product business. And so I realized that in the open source decentralized world, the only things that you can really sell sustainably, scalably, is a service, some sort of unnecessary service, right, where people don't need it, but they want it.
And increasingly, services can be thought of as emotional services as well or even more poignantly, community services. So, like, people need humans need a sense of belongingness, purpose, and community. Okay? And if you can provide that, they are grateful. And where people are grateful, they are willing to provide back, as in they're willing to pay for it as long as the relationship feels value for value. So, ultimately, what we have decided to monetize and build a business around is support, helping people to use, technologies that improve their lives, holding their hand, being kind to them, being exceedingly generous and helpful, and to provide spaces for these people to discover other people like them, right, to provide a sense of community and purpose and mission. Right? Like, a lot of start 9 customers, I don't think of as customers.
Right? These people don't have to buy anything from us. They are choosing to join a community that they think is meaningful and important and that they fit in with. And paying a few bucks for a server is is a non thought for that person. They're just like, of course. Right? It's not an admission fee. They don't have to pay it. Right. But they want to. It's almost a donation of sorts or a dues you could call it, like a membership fee that's optional. And I think that you can build a massive business on this model, and I'm one of the few people who think that you can do that. And, I really do, and it's proving itself to be correct. Okay? Like, start 9 is accelerating. We are moving very much and very quickly in a profitable direction, and we've barely scratched the surface of the potential market that we're dealing with here. And we have done it while all the while encouraging people to DIY, giving away the software, removing ourselves from the experience at every possible opportunity, but then opening a door and saying, hey.
We're here. If anyone wants to be in this room, come on in. You're welcome here. We will help you. We will provide assistance. We will, we'll task you. I get people that show up and they're just like, what can I do? What can I do to help? And I'm like, I take that seriously. I go, here's what you can do. I'm so happy that you're here and willing to help. Right? So that's the business model is now let's get real specific real quick because that was long winded but important, I think. Let me get real let me get real specific about, like, what that actually means. We sell hardware. We will continue to sell hardware because hardware is convenience. Right? People can buy hardware from a hardware store or a computer store anywhere they want and install StartOS.
But we sell it. We we we ship it within 24 hours in almost every case. It comes in a beautiful box. The unboxing experience is very elegant. They plug it in. It just works. If something goes wrong or they have any questions, we have somebody literally standing by. The best box. Yeah. The They just it's in the best box. It's a it's a it's a suction box, but it doesn't suck too hard. Right? You lift it, and you don't have to, like, fight to get it off. It just sort of lifts slowly. Lot of care went into that. So and if you have any questions or troubles whatsoever, you hop into, an email or direct chat or a community chat, and we have somebody almost 24 hours a day responding to direct inquiries within, like, 3 minutes. Our support is outrageous.
And people get blown away by that. And that's what they're buying when they buy a device is they're buying that experience, that convenience, and that experience. And we can scale that. Yeah. Now, number 2 is if people think that open source software and self hosting stops with software and data, you don't understand what's going on with the world. Okay? The world is getting smart. Everything is going to be connected to the Internet at some point. Okay? We're already seeing absurdities with this with certain appliances, and people scoff at it. But, ultimately, it connects My fridge wanted to connect to the Wi Fi. Yeah. And you were just like, no. You're not no. Because, like because it's absurd and because you know, ultimately, Google's gonna know what temperature your refrigerator is at, and that's an invasion of privacy. They have no business knowing how cold you like your food because they will use that against you, and they will turn the temperature down, and you'll end up with drinks that are too cold.
So so but but the point is that everything is getting smart. Okay? The world is going to be connected whether you like it or not. And, eventually, that's gonna be a huge benefit to efficiencies and productivity. Right? Like, having everything connected where, you know, your refrigerator's light or the, the water filter is getting old, and the computer knows that it's getting old, and you get a notification. And with one button, you've just ordered the cheapest water filter off of Amazon or some other marketplace that's gonna be delivered tomorrow. And it's just like your life just got a lot more streamlined as a result of having intelligent devices.
The reason why most people reject the intelligent devices is because they know somewhere deep down that it's not their device. Right? They're renting it. They're they're using it by the grace of the over the tech overlords that if they stop paying their monthly subscription, the refrigerator will turn off. Yeah. I don't want to say I was just like to turn off my fridge. Yeah. They're they're not I know how often I open it. Yeah. It's about control. It's about control over data, and it's about control over the physical machinery as well. And what we are envisioning and what StartOS, as well as a broader strategy that we're taking, enable is a connected intelligent future that is entirely within the control and purview of the owners of the devices themselves.
And we think that that will be welcomed by many people, if not everyone, but I would certainly welcome that. Right? I would love to have a a connected world where all my data exists under my control and is being aggregated and analyzed, and I'm being given recommendations about when I should run, what I should eat, and all the rest. You get the best of both worlds. Yes. You get the intelligent robot future, but it's under your control with making you an overlord. You're a powerful powerful sovereign of yourself and your family, maybe, right, or your business.
And this is available to everyone and off limits to no one. And so start 9 does not intend to just sell servers forever. Servers were just the first device. There's always going to be a scenario where somebody wants to add another device to their computing fleet. Right? And they want it to play nicely with their server because the server is the backbone of the computing infrastructure, and they want it to be under their total control. And so as we come out with new devices into the future, that is again, you won't have to buy it from us. People will always be able to go get a device somewhere else, flash it with our open source firmware and software, and make it work, but empirical history has demonstrated to us that a very few number of people are actually going to do that. The vast majority of people want the plug and play elegant experience from the company that they trust and that they know they can reach out to for support and whose community they know wants them and accepts them. And so we're gonna build a hardware business around a piece of open source software that really has no limit to the number of devices that we could come out with into the future.
And we have another one coming very soon, and we haven't made that announcement yet. Tease it? But it's coming. It's the next obvious one. It's the only hint I'll give you. People think, like, they're like,
[01:02:03] Unknown:
you know, Dell said this thing on RHR, like, blah blah blah. Like, he's got a big mouth. Like, I have so many secrets in this head. I have so many secrets in this head. I, I I the future's bright freaks.
[01:02:18] Unknown:
If if the server is the backbone of a computing network, what's the doorway?
[01:02:25] Unknown:
Yep.
[01:02:26] Unknown:
Okay. That's a good tease. There's a very obvious next device but it's necessary in order to get all the other devices.
[01:02:36] Unknown:
The core of it is hardware and and, premium services. Right? Yes. Like, that's the business model. And I would say that Matt is correct that he is mostly treated as crazy, for this this belief that it's gonna be a massive business. So is 1031. Like, that's why 10 that that if if the freaks are wondering why 1031 exists, that's why 1031 exists.
[01:03:04] Unknown:
Is because investment thesis is bonkers.
[01:03:07] Unknown:
Yeah. People think they're fucking crazy. Yeah. We're we're the we're the same support for companies like yours, because we're aligned. And then for the investors, a lot of times, we're the crazy ones. I will say that most of our invest well, the ones that actually agree to be a part of 1031 are usually very aligned with us, or they they come around to it. Yeah. And I think we'll both make a lot of money, and the world will also be a better place. And I think that is the beautiful, synchronicity that happens. I I think that's sustainable synchronicity.
Let's let's make the world a better place, and let's make a lot of money while we do it. Yeah. Because that's sustainable. It doesn't rely on donations.
[01:03:52] Unknown:
Well, what's what's cool about the model, though, too, is that it is off limits to no one to reimplement the model that I just described. Right? Start 9 has no special position here. There is no start OS. Yeah. There's there's no mode other than our own brand and reputation. That's it. Basically, the only moat we have is to keep being awesome. Right? As long as we keep crushing in support and we continue to be honest and transparent and, you know, act with integrity, we can grow a huge business. The second we betray any of our values, the only moat that we had just vanishes overnight. And so, I love that incentive structure. I love the fact that our my entire business depends on me having integrity.
Yeah. It's so cool because it's usually the opposite for a lot of business owners. Yeah. Success in the business, you have to portray the values. If we do that, we're done because there's no other mode. We have no IP.
[01:04:55] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, like, that I mean, that's the easy way to make money. It's just like you throw integrity out the window. You you become a rent seeker in the middle. You harvest everyone's data. You sell it for profit.
[01:05:07] Unknown:
Super easy. Yeah. Lock them lock them in. They get sticky. We Then then go then go lobby some politicians to make it illegal to switch.
[01:05:16] Unknown:
Right? Like Is that freaks? We don't do it because it's easy. We do it because we thought it was easy. I love that quote. I think that's a great quote. I saw none of your business in the Nostra chat and the ZapStream chat. By the way, if for some reason you're listening on Twitter or YouTube, you can join us in that Nostra chat that is is streamed that you can visibly see at dispatch.com/stream. You don't need to have a nostril account, to do it. You can create 1. None of your business raided us again. A raid, I'm not a Twitch native person.
It was adopted from Twitch, is when someone brings their audience from their stream over to our stream. And this is the second time Nonya has done this. He did it on Wednesday as well. And I said I couldn't place him when he said we met at Pitbullock Boom. I actually placed you last night. Much love, brother. I appreciate you. Sorry. It took took me a couple hours to many hours to place you. Okay. I'm glad we talked about that. I wanna dive deep. I wanna dive deep a little bit on start OS. We're at, almost at the hour and 10 mark. K. Yep. I love it.
It's fucking awesome. I'm running it, and and my box is, like, 3 feet away from me right now, just humming along. The the biggest e issue we're seeing as users right now is is the reliance on Tor, that if I'm not on this network, I have to access it through Tor Browser. And Tor is, you know, it is it it's not a great experience. It's like a it's slow. You know? It just I'm just, like, sitting there. My wife's like, why are you on the phone? I'm like, I'm trying to do something on our note. Give me a break. And I'm just, like, sitting there and it's, like, updating. It's, like, slowly getting there. What what what what can we have to look for? How do you please fix it, sir. Mi Familia. Yeah. We're we're
[01:07:31] Unknown:
we're fixing it. Tor was a great place to start. I'm glad we did it because it's 0 configuration. It doesn't require any kind of networking knowledge or skills, no router configurations. It does NAT punching inherently because it's 2 outbound TCP connections. Yep. So it just works. Now works is a generous word, but that's not the server's fault. That's just Tor. Tor is inherently slow because of its architecture. Right. Which the trade off there is that it's insanely private and secure. But it's also under attack, like, 90% of the time. So, it's just slow. It's really unbearable, at times.
And so, we recognize the the need for, you know, better solutions. And, unfortunately, those are really hard. Like, you start getting into somebody else's game and world at that point. Right? Like, the Internet over the last few decades has evolved in such a way that it really does rely on this appeal to authority and, sort of best not best practices, but sort of agreed upon practices and protocols that all depend upon third parties and trust and have privacy implications. And so the second you try to play in that world, you find this horrible battle of, well, we want to be able to use our computers in the way that we're used to using them, but without all the spyware and censorship.
And it's really hard to do. But we have found what we consider to be acceptable trade offs that we can also message very clearly to the user so that they can choose their own threat model, and and the strategy that's right for them. So there is a a few new networking options coming to StartOS in the near future that will allow you to break free of the the Tor chains with a message telling you exactly what you're doing and what the trade off is, and there's multiple tiers of that. You can sort of go all the way to full blown clear net, which will make your self hosting experience both for you, the person administering the server and using services on it, but, also, potentially, your audience or your employees or your family or your friends who are also accessing resources that are running on your server will be able to do so in a way that is indistinguishable from the way they currently use websites and the Internet. They will have no idea that they are accessing web apps and other resources from a self hosted server run by you. They will just view it as going to a middle, which is, VPN access, and VPN access is, VPN access.
VPN access. And VPN access is, really useful because it strikes the right balance of performance and speed with the privacy, they're in. So following 036, all of your services, and I use that lightly because it's really all of your service interfaces, because each service has multiple interfaces, meaning take Bitcoin for example. Right? Bitcoin has an RPC interface, which is what your wallets are gonna connect to. It has a p two p interface, which is what your node uses to connect with other nodes, and it also has a z m q interface, which is used by dependent services in those cases to access resources on the Bitcoin node.
And you could imagine a scenario where Bitcoin even has a user interface, like a UI, a web app, where you could, you know, see stats about your node and stuff like that. So Bitcoin is looking at up to 4 interfaces, and you don't necessarily want all those interfaces to be, like, bundled together into a single web resource. Right? Like, I don't necessarily want people to have access to my user interface to see my node stats and stuff like that. Right. Possibly even create transactions using the Hot Wallet on the node. But I might want them to have access to my RPC interface with, restricted permissions. Right? A friend who wants to use my node to connect their wallet in a read only way or something like that. Yep. So you have to be able to control these different interfaces of any given service in a very granular way. And so starting in 036, you will be able to go into every interface of every service and select in a granular way kind of how this interface is exposed or not exposed to the Internet.
You could say, I only want it on Tor because it's super private, and I I'm I'm willing to put up with the slowness because this resource is, like, really, really private, and I need it to be secure. Or you could say, I want, you know, my LND node to be on ClearNet so that it's easily discoverable and can connect with peers really well, and I don't really care if I'm exposing my home IP address. But then somebody goes, oh, crap. I really don't wanna expose my home IP address. I prefer to proxy traffic, through some VPS reverse proxy that I have on the DigitalOcean in the cloud. They use a cloud server just as a proxy. That's And we'll be able to facilitate that as well. So you will have lots of options on how you want to expose the things. And it's on an individual services basis? It's on an individual interface of an individual service. It's very granular. You're able to do this. Now it comes with same defaults, like when you first install a service. Now I'm mincing a little bit here between what's gonna be available in 036 through the UI and what's gonna be available in 0 4 o. We are developing these two versions in parallel because Let me hold you to everything you say, and we're gonna get very angry at you. Here's here's deliver. I'll make it very clear, and you can hold me to this.
Everything I'm describing right now is possible in 036, but some of it will require you to use SSH and go in and do it the the sort of dev dev hat way. And we're doing that intentionally because these are so advanced and so so complicated, these features, that that we actually don't want everyone doing it at first through the UI. We want the more, competent and and and adventurous people to get in there through the command line and try some of these things so that we can flesh out the bugs so that we can make the u so that we can make the UX seamless. And then in 0 4 o, all of these features get brought to the user interface, so that a normal nontechnical person can can have access to them, but only after they're stable.
[01:14:57] Unknown:
Got it. I like that. That makes sense to me. We'll be your guinea pigs. I I mean, Steve Lee said this the other day, like, a slow and steady approach. I like the slow and steady approach, that you guys are he didn't say it about you guys. He said that about Bitcoin Core, but I I'm just gonna translate that to you guys, and I don't like that approach.
[01:15:24] Unknown:
I mean, it's how you grow something that lasts. You can get big fast, but it's not on a solid foundation.
[01:15:33] Unknown:
So Carlos is asking in the live chat, when 036.
[01:15:38] Unknown:
It's in testing. It's in testing. It runs. It exists. It works, but it's in testing. Okay. I can't provide an ETA for launch.
[01:15:48] Unknown:
Okay. Well, I think that's gonna be a massive, that's gonna be a massive improvement in in terms of, like, actual usability of these these home servers or office servers.
[01:16:04] Unknown:
It actually makes it fairly usable by businesses at that point too because
[01:16:08] Unknown:
every business should be running their own.
[01:16:10] Unknown:
Small businesses, especially. I mean, they're they don't have necessarily the the funds and expertise to host their own, you know, servers and pay Linux's admins tons of money to maintain them. And so what do they do? They just outsource it to 20 different SaaS companies. The average bill for a small business of 20 people, their monthly software bill is between $810,000 a month. It's a meaningful cost center for a for a small business.
[01:16:38] Unknown:
Dude, we're so we're like I believe in the dream. I believe in the dream. My dad's small business, though, is, like, 1 phishing email away from just destruction. So
[01:16:48] Unknown:
So follow 0 36. Long day. I'm gonna be able to and will be going into small businesses starting in the Greater Bitcoin space and convincing them to slowly but surely drop their SaaS subscriptions and cloud service providers in favor of their own server or fleet of servers that are being used to, you know, back each other up and make sure that there's no downtime and that data that data loss, never occurs to run their business. So, currently, just to prove to people that 036 is, you know, sort of working, start 9 hosts a significant amount of our, like, internal business, software needs on a couple of server peers. We have 2 server peers, and we run almost everything on it. For instance, if you go to blog.start9.com, that is a clear net website blog running on a start 9 server peer.
[01:17:47] Unknown:
Is it running 036?
[01:17:49] Unknown:
It is running a thing that doesn't exist. It's it's not 036. It's not 0351. It is a it is the stuff that will eventually be 036. It's pretty quick. It loads really quick. Yeah.
[01:18:03] Unknown:
Okay. I'm just gonna go through we'll just go through my wish list. Okay. Okay. So I have I have I have this box. It's it's awesome. It's way overkill. It's like probably the most overkill home server you can manage. What do you got on it? I mean, it's like It's a Ryzen 9 16 core
[01:18:27] Unknown:
Yeah.
[01:18:29] Unknown:
Processor. I got an NVIDIA GPU in there. K. And, it's it's running coreboot. So I, like, tried to open source the firmware as much as possible. It's got 32 gigs of RAM. Okay. But here's here's the wish list. Right? I only have a 2 terabyte NVMe drive in there. Yeah. First of all, probably not enough. Okay. I'm gonna probably have to upgrade the size of the main drive. And then second of all, like, I would really like it has multiple drive bays, obviously. I would I would ultimately like to have it in a a raid esque configuration where a second drive so I I wanna increase the drive space, and I want to have it in a RAID configuration, where it bat it's, like, automatically just backing up.
I I don't wanna lose my child photos, Matt. Like, I just I I I want and, like, I promised my wife You would. Photos would not be lost, and then they will not be harvested. So what it what are the thoughts there? I I believe under the current configuration, I could I could do the backup process Yeah. Like an external drive, upgrade to a larger drive. But is start OS gonna does I I believe it doesn't currently recognize multiple drives. No.
[01:19:58] Unknown:
So here's here's the options today when it comes to drive space and upgrading. If the drive is not dead, like, if your drive has not died, okay, assuming it's working fine, you can upgrade to a larger drive by transferring the data over. You do not need to restore from backup. Okay. Right? So it's a it's a much faster experience because it doesn't have to decrypt. The backups are all encrypted. So if it's a lot of data, that adds a significant amount of time to the process. Right. So if you know in advance that you're gonna upgrade your drive, you can take out the one that's in there, put the one in that you want, or, like you said, yours has multiple bays. You just put the new one in.
You'll reflash, start OS. So you basically reinstall the OS. And then during initial setup, we have a a button that says transfer. So rather than fresh setup, you select transfer, you select the drive that, you know, you're transferring from, you select the drive that you're transferring to, you hit go, it transfers it. And then when you're done, you can take the old one out, and you're good to go. Boom. Bigger drive. Got it. Boom. Bigger drive. That's that's the easiest way to do that. Already exists. Now as long as StartOS sees the drive as a single drive, it'll work. Meaning, you can do hardware RAID today. You can set up a hardware RAID configuration and plug it into your server, and StartOS will just see that as one drive. It'll be like, oh, here's my drive. It has no idea that there's actually multiple drives being Okay. You know, aggregated beneath the hood because it sees it as one.
There's a lot of people that hate hardware RAID and prefer software RAID and that it's better, and we don't support that right now. We will. We will support software RAID such that you can plug multiple drives in and use them in any RAID configuration that you want. Secondly 036 is not gonna have that. No. No. No. No. 036 doesn't have that. Don't put that on my plate right now. Okay. I just did, kinda. But okay. Yeah. It's it's it's there's a ticket for it. It's just not making it into 036. Okay. Secondly, we we do have it such that we're going to allow for just extending drives. So say, like, you have a 2 terabyte drive in there and you're running out of space, you'll be able to just take another 2 terabyte or a 4 terabyte and plug it in and go into your settings and just add that drive to your total drive space, and starter bus will now tell you that you have 6 terabytes. And Does 0 36 have that?
[01:22:24] Unknown:
No. Okay. I've it's important. I'm I'm asking. I have to All the drive
[01:22:28] Unknown:
extensibility stuff is not in 036. Okay. So because because quite frankly, it just isn't in that high of demand because most people are not at the point where they're filling up 4 terabyte drives, which is what we offer, if devices that we sell. Like, today, if this is a problem, just get a bigger drive. We will solve it in a more comprehensive manner later when we have a minute to breathe. Okay. So,
[01:22:56] Unknown:
yeah, I think that's it on the drive front. Okay. That's pretty good. Freaks, I mean, you're in the live chat. If you have any questions, for Matt or future requests that are not in 036, like, feel free to put them in the comments. Matt, I mean, so okay. Those are the 2 biggest things for me is I love hate Tor. I it's like a horrible relationship we have. I someone just asked when SimpleX support. I believe it's already in the service.
[01:23:28] Unknown:
Yeah. SimpleX is amazing and well supported by StartOS.
[01:23:36] Unknown:
But those are my those are my 2 main things. It's, like, first of all, like, I have horrible experience with drive failure. Yeah. It happened. I'm, like, constantly thinking about it. I have horrible experience with drive filling up, which so, like, even though, like, honestly, the 4 terabyte is, like, really overkill. I'm not even close to filling up the 2 terabyte yet, but, like, I'm still thinking about it. Right? Like, I I gotta a course, it's coming. And then just like the auto backups, like, having just, like, a secondary drive there is huge. And, yeah, I love the information to make it more. Though. So that is so automatic backups
[01:24:18] Unknown:
is a different feature than, having, like, a a RAID setup Okay. Or even just extending the drive. Right? So what is that? So currently, the way that you make a backup on StartOS is you plug in the drive to the device, you go into your settings, you click backup, you select the services you wanna back up, and it backs them up in an encrypted way. You could also create a backup over the air to another device on your home network. You don't need to plug in a physical drive into the device. You could create a backup of your server onto your laptop or desktop or any computer on the network. It could be a a Synology NAS or a TrueNAS device or whatever you have. Okay. And that all works great, and we have guides for all of that. But it does require you to go in and click a button. You have to, like, go in and go back up, and you have to do it.
[01:25:08] Unknown:
Which you never do. You might do it every month
[01:25:11] Unknown:
until the time it fails, and then it's, like, 8 months previous. You you always forget when it fails. Yeah. And it's so critical to do backups. Like, the idea of running a server or self hosting without creating frequent quality encrypted backups is is like it's it's, you know, skydiving without a parachute. You're you're gonna get hurt. You are going to lose data. You're gonna lose money. You're going to get pissed, and then you're never gonna go back. So you gotta do backups, which, by the way, like, for anyone listening, StartOS is the only system that has a backups feature. Like, you cannot back up your data on a numeral without doing it manually on a service by service basis, which means you're never gonna do it. So having an OS that has a backup feature seems to me to be table stakes. Like, we would never have considered launching without a such a critical feature such as backups. But, anyway, what's coming next for us, this will be in 0 four o, not an o three six. I was gonna ask. It's it's already largely coded for 0 four o, but it's not coming in 0 three six, is you will be able to schedule automated backups to any local or remote target that you want. So for instance and it'll be like creating a calendar event. That's the UX we're going for is you'll create a calendar a recurring calendar event. You'll be like, every day at 2 AM, I want my, LND node to be backed up to my other start 9 server in another state.
I want my CLN node to be backed up to Google Drive at 4 AM every day, etcetera, etcetera. You will be able to Oh, it sounds great. Encrypted backups of your server in a very granular, customizable way, as frequently as you like, and they'll just run. And if one of them fails for some reason, that'll be apparent in the UI that a backup failed. And in o in o, 4 o, you also will be able to send yourself an email notifying you, that it failed as well. What is,
[01:27:25] Unknown:
I'm gonna put you yeah. I I agree with the average Gary, like, bronze age game dog asked, he said the Starlink, router, doesn't give him dot local access. I mean, the Starlink router is just crap. Like, just use you can still use Starlink with a different router. You can get a downstream router, but also,
[01:27:45] Unknown:
we are getting rid of the, the unique dot locals for services in 036. Those will go away. Why? How how do I access it through IP? Yeah. Well, no. You'll still you'll still have the primary dot local. I got a great random dot local. I'm not The services will exist at a port now. So instead of having, you know, some random pubkey.local for one of your, you know, Bitcoin interfaces Yep. It'll be the primary dot local of the server and then a custom port. Okay. And you could use the IP in the port. The reason for this is, 1, it it is a it's a necessity for VPN access and remote access to the home because VPNs don't support Avahi aliasing. So the way that we implemented these, like, weird dot locals that you see for every service, is it's a it's a piece of software called Avahi, and it it it's an MDNS.
It's a software that enables m d advanced MDNS stuff. MDNS is dot locals. Okay? But what Avahi enables you to do is do a, MDNS aliasing. So, like, basically, all of the m d, dot locals that you see on your start OS server are actually all just aliases for the primary one, but then they do host name resolution in the same way that, like, you know, something.com does host name resolution. There's essentially a lookup, and it's it's nasty. And, we thought it was clever, and that was before we realized that it was 1 like, the software itself, Avahi, as a piece of open source software is crap. Like, it's largely unmaintained.
It's ancient. It just doesn't work very well. There's bugs. And 2, MDNS aliasing is not supported by almost any VPN provider. In fact, we're not aware of one that supports it. And so, it prohibits VPN access, which has been a huge, like, crutch for us. You know, it's been a big drawback for people, and we're fixing it. 036 fixes it. Awesome.
[01:29:50] Unknown:
So, I mean,
[01:29:52] Unknown:
when when 036, You said it's in testing. Are is it 2 weeks?
[01:29:57] Unknown:
Is it 4 weeks? No. I don't do that anymore.
[01:30:00] Unknown:
You're not you're not going to? I can't. No. On the spot. Every time I've done that, it's been false and people get angry. Okay. Matt's saying it's gonna be 3 weeks. Not not quite 2 weeks, not quite a month. 2 weeks is the is the joke that we make to everyone who asks because it's always 2 weeks. It's gonna be so 3, I feel like, is the nice conservative we added a week.
[01:30:23] Unknown:
I and, Matt, what are you most excited about with 036? Besides the networking stuff? Besides what we already talked about? Honestly Am I missing something? Like, what is Oh, I mean, so so so with 0 36 proper,
[01:30:38] Unknown:
it's that. But what I'm actually most excited about is to get past 0 36 because 0 36 was the the, like, dirty work hard stuff we had to do before we can do the really fun stuff with 0 4 o. 0 4 o is where I'm excited because 04 o doesn't just take all these wonderful features and bring them to the forefront. It's actually Oforo completely redesigns the UI. So it's it's cosmetic change as well. 0 4 o, is a different app. It it looks it's been redesigned from scratch. We we rewrote the front end code base, and that's that's done ironically enough. The the o four zero redesign and code rewrite is is done. What do you think, like, the ETA for o four o is not like It won't be that far behind o three six. Right? So, compared to how long 0 36 took, we've been working on 0 36 for almost a year. Oh, I have another question for you, Matt.
[01:31:37] Unknown:
People like apps Yeah. On their phone, and people don't have computers anymore. I mean, they don't have servers either, but they'll get a server without getting a computer. And, like, currently, you have to go into the web browser and connect to your start 9 to, like, set it up and stuff. Is there any thoughts on, like, downloading the start 9 app, like, scanning a QR code to, like, start your Start OS experience. Like, is that a is that in the cards? Is that something like, people like apps, you know, just, like, you download the app, scan to the network.
[01:32:14] Unknown:
We had it. We killed it. Okay. That's where we were, 3 years ago. We had an app. It was called the setup app. Okay. Available on the App Store and the Google Play Store, and you used it to set up your server. Apple cut us off. Yeah. They'll do that. Yeah. No. Apple Apple banned us because the app was, in their opinion, administering a remote device that was downloading software that didn't come from the App Store. They're kinda correct. Their terms and conditions. We fought them on it by saying, like, wait. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. We're not allowing people to download software to their phone from something that's not the App Store. We're we're letting people use an app to download something to their server, which is not competing with Apple in any way, and they they they almost just didn't get it. It was really, really hard for their team to, like, understand what we were saying because it's so abnormal.
And so they didn't wanna fuck with it. They weren't gonna make an exception for us. I I tried to escalate it, and they didn't wanna hear it. So So we is We circumvented them. We do everything through the web now. The web is the only safe place to operate. App stores are vulnerable.
[01:33:29] Unknown:
Fair enough. I agree. Oh, I actually do have one more question before we wrap. So to me, like, the way I look at it is, like, this rides or dies on start OS. It rides or dies on the open source stack that anyone can run, anyone can distribute, anyone can try to monetize. What are your thoughts on and in this current regulatory environment, it also comes down to a liability thing. Like, the more services that are maintained and distributed outside of start 9, the better, because we get more powerful stuff that you guys might not necessarily wanna be involved in. What are your thoughts on, like, increasing open source contributors in terms of the start OS ecosystem, packages and maintaining packages and releasing these services out to the public.
How do we how do we, you know, how do how do we jump start that? How do we make that I want everything. I want I start OS is great, and there's so many services that I can run. I want more. There's not enough. Like, how do we increase that?
[01:34:48] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, we need help on all fronts. Service packaging is definitely what I would call, like, a, you know, a front, a battleground for us. And I've been putting quite a bit of pressure on, upstream development teams and individuals to take responsibility for their own software on StartOS, right, just like they would for Windows and Mac and iOS and Android. It's like when you build a piece of software, you you have to do certain specialty things like compilations and forms or whatever to get distribution on different platforms and to different devices. And, StartOS is no different in that respect except that we're a lot smaller and not everyone sees value in garnering distribution, to node runners. But we're going to increase that that over time. Like, we're going to gain more influence and leverage as we become more popular and we have more users. People will want distribution on starter less. We're already seeing that.
And so I'm starting to get into a position where I can push back when someone's just like, well, I'm not I'm not putting it on there. I'm like, well, then you're not gonna have it because I don't have time to do it. I don't have the resources to pay people to package open source software for an open source OS that in no way drives the it's it's just like start 9 in a way feels very alone right now as, like, a company Yeah. Because our business model is not StartOS. Our business model is not these open source packages that people want to run on StartOS. Our business model is plug and play devices and support around these things. But we find ourselves like, if there's nothing to run, if the OS doesn't work and there's nothing to run on it, then we obviously can't sell plug and play devices. So we have an incentive as a company to fund and promote, the development of StartOS and of services service packages for StartOS, but we are quite frankly alone in that effort right now. We've had a few people spin up, crowd funds, for particular services, like public pool, I believe.
Someone spun up and was like, hey. We need someone to package this. And they came to us, and I was like, I wish. I fucking wish. I don't have the resources. We're we're not some, like, big monster tech giant company profitable and all the rest. We're a bootstrap startup that penny pinches at every corner. And so I can't just bring on more service packagers to help build out this ecosystem. So, you know, we'll do what we can, which is quite a bit, and we will continue to to do what we can. And, hopefully, we get really profitable and can and do even more. But, really, it's up to the the best leverage play that we and the greater StartOS and open source community has to get more services running on StartOS is to pressure the teams themselves that build the software Yep. To go through the exercise of packaging it up. But in the absence of that, you know, we gotta we gotta, fund individuals and community members who are willing to take it on, and act as that middle man between StartOS and the upstream development team and and make the package.
So it's it's it's politics. It's, it's networking, and it's, time and pressure and, and ease ease. Right? So 036 I I didn't mention this during the whole call today. 036 introduces an entirely new, SDK, software development kit for packaging services for StartOS, and it blows the old one away. Like, we, in 036, someone will be able to take an existing package off the shelf and get it bundled for StartOS in a far, with far less effort than was previously needed, and it's way more featureful. So there's a lot more that you can do with these packages now. Like, the developer has an enormous amount of creative opportunity and control over the end user experience that somebody will have with Bitcoin or will have with LND.
And I'm not just talking about cosmetic stuff like the description that shows up in the marketplace. I'm talking about, like, the actual user experience of it. Like, for instance, just to give people an idea of how, like, how nasty some of this stuff can get, Take, BTC pay server for instance. Okay? And, so the package developer for BTC pay server is Lucy, and she's she's with Thank you, Mike. We've been with us since the beginning. She's wonderful, great developer, and so she's working on she maintains BTC pay server. And b t c pay server doesn't just have a lot of dependencies and a lot of moving parts. Right? Their Docker compose image is, like, 5 different pieces of software all smashed together and running in very, bespoke ways. And on StartOS, you know, we don't use Docker anymore. We definitely don't use Docker Compose. It's all garbage. It leads to all sorts of, like, hanging situations and invalid states that cause server restarts and all the rest. And so we take a very, like, more robust and reliable approach to packaging this stuff up, and that required her to really get under the hood and do a lot of advanced kind of, you know, binary, manipulation so that these different pieces of software could interact with each other as expected.
Well, you have settings in BTCPay where a user can go in, and they're allowed 1 or the other, either LND or CLN. Right? You gotta use BTCP server with one underlying, lightning implementation, and we wanted people to be able to use either or. We didn't want to pin users down and be like, you have to use LND with BTCPay like some other node projects do. Right? We don't want to impose those opinions onto people. And so what we did is you can go into your config of BTCPay, and you can turn lightning off entirely, in which case you don't have to install LND or CLN, and BTPC pay will be perfectly happy. But if you say that you do wanna run lightning, now you're forced to choose, do you want LND or CLN? So you choose, oh, okay. I wanna run CLN, and you click save.
Start OS now actually creates a required dependency on CLN, and it tells you you need to go install this thing if it's not already installed. And you can do that with a button, of course. Then it is like, well, it's not fully synced. And so BTCPay is acutely aware of its own needs. And I'm not just talking about whether it's installed or not. I'm talking about whether it's running or not, whether it's configured properly, whether it's fully synced, and all of that messaging gets propagated back to the user in the form of a simple message and a button to fix or change whatever needs to be fixed or changed.
That is an enormous amount of like, what I just described there is like a Linux sysadmin sort of nightmare on the end line, and we've we've diluted it down into a UX that a normal person can can do. And that wasn't just a start OS thing. That was a BTC pay packaging thing. Right? Lucy had to make that happen, and she makes that happen by using the start SDK, right, which is the software development kit for StartOS, which we also wrote, that makes doing all the advanced things that she had to do with BTZ Pay not accessible to, like, grandma and user, but accessible to, like, interested community member who wants to help out. Right? Like, I believe that we have gotten the star SDK to the point where a reasonably technical, like, junior coder could come in and be like, I love public pool, and I want it to be on start OS, and I'll be like, you can do it.
I promise you. Like, you can change you wanna see in the world. Yeah. And but we had to make it easy enough, and I think that we have with 036. So Awesome. You know, it's it's a mixture of we need more leverage. We need to become more popular so that people feel more pressure to, package for us. We need, ease of implementation. But on top of that, we need help. We need support. I would love for, you know, open source organizations and individual donors to, like, understand that start 9 is sort of, like, single handedly trying to to uphold and and drive forward the development of StartOS and the packaging ecosystem, which if you understand it, could someday prove to be an important component in the maintenance of Bitcoin's decentralization, Lightning's decentralization, Noster's decentralization, quite frankly, just self hosting in general. I hope that doesn't sound too arrogant. I just that is my ambitions for this project is that it turns out to be meaningful and important.
And if others agree, help, please. Contact your local rich person and ask them to help fund these open source developers to,
[01:44:22] Unknown:
help us build this thing. I mean, look, that's what I wanna hear. I think I think a lot of what you guys do well is reducing friction, whether that's from the user side or from the dev side. And to all the devs out there, like, if you're listening right now, please contribute to StartOS. Please contribute to StartOS. If if if you're currently working a dead end job, you wanna work on this stuff full time, apply to OpenSats. You have my support, but please contribute. Make the world a better place. I will say it's all about reducing friction. Like, we need to reduce the friction as much as possible, whether that's on the user side or the dev side. I think you guys have done a fantastic job with that.
Unfortunately, I do have a hard stop. I can't tell you guys why, but it's important. I I hope Matt joins us again many times in the future. I would love, like, constant updates on StartOS. I think that's a great idea. I'm trying to do this more often, to have to have the proper rider dies just come on dispatch on an often basis to you know, we'll do, like, every maybe, like, not quite quarterly, not not quite, twice a year, somewhere in the middle. 2 times a year. You you're down for that? I'm gonna make that happen. Awesome. Freaks.
As always, dispatch is is we have no ads or sponsors. We rely solely on, and when I say we, it's just me. I have no producer or anything. So this is a royal we. We rely solely on on your support, to keep this going in and out, And that comes in various fashions. That comes in people joining for the live chat, people sharing the show with friends and family. We're on every podcast app. All the links are still at dispatch.com, and it comes in the form of you guys actually donating Bitcoin, whether that's through zap.stream, live on air, or if that's through podcasting 2.0 apps like Fountain and Breeze.
Our biggest supporters this week was v with 23,000 sets, 8 with 24,000 sets, Pringle Stacks with 11,000 sets, Erza CC with 10,000 sats, and Jeff g with 10,000 sats. Guys, I'm gonna keep pushing forward. I hope you guys keep pushing forward. We've been on a long rip of dispatches. I think, this next week, I might take off and just put Freedom Money episodes on, which was a couple years ago, but important and a lot of you probably haven't listened to it. So I'm just gonna throw that on the podcast feed, or maybe there will be a dispatch. If there is a dispatch, you'll be notified via nostr. Promel.net/odel is the easiest way to find my profile. Matt, final thoughts before we wrap.
No. I think the the last rant I had is a good note to end end on. That that was a good you had good final thoughts already? Yeah. Thanks for asking. I respect that. I appreciate you, Matt. I'm, proud to call you a friend. I'm, proud that 10:31 is supporting you guys, and anything I can do or or help to support. And and and and thank you for making it easy for me to self host all the stuff my family relies on. I do appreciate you. I'll keep fighting for you. Likewise, brother. Thanks for having me on. Thanks. K. See you.
[01:49:39] Unknown:
Good evening and welcome to this week's showcase of your favorite music. And one of the hottest sounds in pop leads us off tonight. Break my stride, our number 10 hit by Matthew Wilder. For the next 60 minutes, this is the place to be. And for more of what you wanna hear, let's get back to Matthew Wilder.
[01:51:19] Unknown:
Love you, freaks. That track was break my stride by Matthew Wilder. Ain't nobody gonna break my stride. Let's fucking go. Let's keep pushing forward. I love you all. Like I said earlier, I think I might just drop all 6 episodes of free money, which we recorded about 3 years ago, but I've aged quite well, because I like to think that's why we're here, is is that people should just be able to save and spend without permission. It's quite simple. I think at the end of the day, if you don't have freedom, you're a slave. So you gotta just keep pushing forward, be the change you wanna see in the world.
But I reserve the right to just rip a dispatch next week as well. So you should follow me at Noster if you wanna be, notified of that. I love you all. Consider self hosting, whether that's with StartOS or some other way of self hosting. You can do it yourself the hard way if you want, but StartOS makes it quite easy. And and and it makes it even easier if you just go buy a box. Love you all. Stay on, Let's fucking do this thing.
Jamie Dimon Intro
Happy Bitcoin Friday
Overview of Start9, StartOS, and self hosting
Discussion on the importance of funding open source projects and sustainable business models
Exploring the business model of Start9 and the importance of sustainability and independence
Challenges and strategies in building a sustainable business model for Start9
The importance of open source contributors in the StartOS ecosystem
Introduction of a new SDK for packaging services for StartOS
Appeal for support and contributions to the development of StartOS
