Welcome back to Linux Rapper.
Alright, what's new?
I just got back from Linux Fest Northwest this last week.
It was a great time.
I'm happy to talk about that.
Giving people trivia, tabling will also cover my experience traveling through Sequoia Fabrika, which is a community makerspace in San Francisco.
And then we'll go through on to Tahoe Laughs,
which is a distributed file share that me and a couple of friends are looking into.
I'm curious if some of you have done the same.
Uh, we'll get into some questions for the audience.
And then I think that'll basically round things out.
So please enjoy this new episode of Linux Prepper. some questions for the audience and then I think that will basically round things out.
So please enjoy this new episode of Linux Prepper.
Oh yeah.
I had the chance to elevate elevator pitch this podcast hundreds of times over multiple
days and it made me realize a little bit more concretely what my own show is about. At this point, I think Linux Prepper is about getting lost in the details,
and it's my no compromise solution to DIYing everything myself.
Because in the past, being involved in open source projects,
groups, hackerspaces, there's always some level of compromise.
You know, when you're working in a group, you need to get things done.
And I realized by going my own way, I'm able to push the envelope further than I ever have before,
you know, and a lot less time because it just takes away that excuse of like,
"Oh, I can't explore this thing because, you know,
I have to get whatever done.
Well, whether something succeeds or fails,
it's still interesting as part of this show.
And that's where I'm coming from.
It's like, how much free and open tooling can I use?
Not just in terms of the computer,
but I hope more moving forward,
it's also about
DIYing things like musical instruments
sewing making my own
merch making my own, you know promotional posters and
Anything I want electronics
It all kinds of good stuff
recording my own music.
See how far this bad boy can go.
And I'm happy to have you with me as someone that just like wants to see what it's like
to be challenged.
Not just to talk about things for the sake of saying, "Oh, you know, here's the new release
of whatever.
That's nice."
I'm going to actually try to use these tools tools whether it succeeds or it fails and that's gonna be more the focused like a project
Focus and it's okay if things don't work out. I don't care what people use. I don't care what tools they use to get their work done
It's just like the question remains how far can we go? It's not about judging anyone
The question remains how far can we go? It's not about judging anyone because failure is just a part of the thing and you only get as far as you can. So we'll see how far this rabbit hole goes together and I'm happy to have you as part of my audience in the continued experiments of Linux Prepper as a podcast.
And here's to another six months. Let's see where it goes. Thank you. Today's episode is actually going to end up becoming a two-parter. And by that, I mean,
there's so much for me to cover that I decided the best thing to do is I'm going to do a stagger
of this episode rather than release a multi-hour episode. I'm going to release the episode today where we'll be focused more on the Linux Fest Northwest conference experience
Ideas from audience members on hosting some distributed tooling
We'll also touch in on trivia challenge
as well as other fun things I've been up to and then in the follow up, there will be more of a focus to
terminal tools, self-hosting tools, but also moving more into the DIY sphere of paper crafting,
bookbinding, zenemaking, as well as chatting with volunteers from Linux Fest Northwest and hopefully Seagull to get more of their
perspective of what it takes and what is involved with people becoming involved
as volunteers at these conferences or even speaking and presenting and just
kind of getting more of a perspective on how that looks internally. So yeah, a lot
to look forward to. Please enjoy this episode. Obviously, both will stand
alone but I think there'll be nice companions to one another and allow you A lot to look forward to. Please enjoy this episode. Obviously, they both will stand alone,
but I think they'll be nice companions to one another and allow you to get through a lot of info
without having to sit here dragging through hours and hours of stuff. Please enjoy and look forward
to the follow-up release in the coming weeks. I want to take a moment to give a shout out to the
sponsor of this podcast, which is Ameradroid.
That's right Ameradroid located in Northern California. They have a bunch of great gear,
including the Home Assistant Green, which is what Sequoia Fabrika was using on the back end of
their hardware, along with the SkyConnect Zigbee controller, which is a little USB Zigbee matter extension. It's great. It costs about 40 bucks.
I've been personally using it for home automation over the last couple years. I've had no problems
with it honestly. I've had no problems with Zigbee either. Maybe my needs aren't as crazy as other
people. I have like 20 power little switches, like wall power switches returning on and
off, electrical things that I connect to using the SkyConnect.
And it's been working fine.
The SkyConnect also is an official project of Home Assistant, which they provide firmware
updates for and things like that.
So I can definitely recommend it.
Price is right.
I've had no problems with it personally if you've had a problem with it
Let me know but yeah
I'll conclude links to those things in the show notes. They're great tools
Be sure to check out a maradroid.com you can use Linux prepper at checkout for a little supports the show discount and
Also, I'll include some referral links for these devices in the show notes.
Ameradroid.com.
As I was heading up to Linux Fest Northwest,
I really wanted to, you know, engage with people as a community sponsor.
That was my goal.
Community sponsor just being someone given a table as I'm just this one-person operation, right?
Most people don't know about my show.
It's just the truth.
And I was like, "Man, I really want to reach as many people as possible." this one person operation, right? Most people don't know about my show. It's just the truth.
And I was like, man, I really want to reach as many people as possible. So I thought what
I'll do is I will table instead of giving a talk. I'm just going to be available in the
main space for people to meet with me, chat with me. And I wanted something to offer people
other than me just standing there, you know? So what I thought is I'm going to try to incorporate my love of paper crafts
and I was going to do like a printed
zine which we'll talk about outside right in a different part of this segment
because I've been into printing but I thought that's not quite doing it for me.
I also wanted to touch on my love of can boards
but it's like what is the way I could use these Post-it notes,
felt tip pens and butcher paper, colorful paper to engage with people.
So what I decided to do was I decorated my table with butcher paper and post-it notes
to show how I've, you know, set up different tooling at a glance.
And then also I wanted to use it
to create a leaderboard for a trivia challenge
because there's a lot of people who know a lot of trivia
about Linux, but how fun is it to make you
have to spout off the answers right there in the moment.
So let's talk about Saturday, first day of the con,
officially.
So as part of attending the first full day of the conference, I set up my little
table and then I ran my trivia challenge. So scores were stuck on butcher paper with
posted notes, contestants did their best to answer or pass on questions for 60 seconds
worth of Linux trivia. So I just made it up in the car, you know, and I wrote out like
a bunch of questions,
but honestly, even a few questions is enough.
You don't have to do nearly that many.
So people just give as many answers as they can before time runs out.
And the competition like continued to grow as the conference continued on.
And I just want to give a big thank you to everyone who participated because trivia is
difficult, especially when it demands you give an answer as quickly as possible
Because people knew the answers to these questions, right?
That's what I noticed the average person knows the answers to these questions who's at a Linux con
But it doesn't mean they can answer
When you're like blue in the face, you know like give me the answer right now. I'm gonna like that
With that said, Saturday was a mix of double and single contestants.
So some, there was more people like that wanted to do it as a, you know, as a duo, but they're
like, in addition to singles.
And this competition continued all the way to the end of day.
I mean, to the point that when it was supposedly over, the day's over and you go to, you know, get dinner and it's like, let's meet up at the end of day. I mean to the point that when it was supposedly over the days over and
you go to get dinner and it's like let's meet up at the spot for dinner and we're waiting to
order sandwiches or whatever in line. I actually had my leaderboard topped while I was waiting in
line because the people behind me had met. I'd met them while we were having breakfast before the
day started and I was like oh how'd your day go?" And we were chatting and then I realized like, "Oh, they haven't done the trivia challenge."
And they ended up taking first place because I only take 60 seconds.
And then when I was sitting at my table waiting for the food to arrive,
I had another top performer who was just, who I'd met at a, you know, social the night before downtown.
And we had the same conversation and then, you know, ended up being one of the strongest performers of the entire thing. It's
crazy. So it was really exciting and fun and I look forward to doing more of this
in the future. And the way it broke down basically is, let's see, Matthias
showed up with Shelby. I think they're both from Bitwarden and they seized a
pretty commanding lead early on
in the game.
But keep in mind the average score was closer
to like nine, 10 points overall, which was,
I just think it just shows that this is challenging.
And the attributed challenge was definitely difficult
for the average 10D 'cause it basically leaves
very little time for you to really consider your answers.
You just have to say them out loud. And it was also the first time I think that anyone's done
something like this because I just made it up. So then let's look at the leaderboard, right?
At the very top of the leaderboard, as a duo, we have Jonathan Wright from All and Carl George from Centos. They got 26 points.
And overall, they were just blasting
through answers related to text editors
and Fred had projects.
Not a surprise there, but it was both.
It were equally blistering.
That was followed by two single entrants
that both did an amazing job.
I mean, there's Cameron from Still HQ, Still OS,
and Matthias Bitward tying individually at 22 points,
then followed immediately by Joni and Archib,
that's a duo who did 21, Romeo at 19,
Courtney, who wanted to rep Smart OS,
who tied with Emon at 18 points. So yeah I
just want to give a huge thank you to everyone who participated I'm glad you
had so much fun and if you're curious I'll include a little snippet here of
what it sounded like when I was giving the trivia questions. Are you ready?
You ready? Okay here we go. What does the acronym bash mean?
Worn again, too.
What does FSF mean?
You still have for a company.
Who is RMS?
Richard and S, you sold them.
Name software licenses.
FSF, GPL, APL.
Perfect.
M&G.
There's more.
What is the successor to X?
Excellent. Wayward? Wayward? Wayward? >> What is the successor to X? >> What is pipe wire replace?
>> What window managers are there?
>> Get down to cinnamon.
>> Twn.
God. >> I don't know if you can ask.
>> You can ask.
>> What kind of things can you mount?
>> Devices.
>> Any block device.
Do you mean by a file system?
Somebody's file system is coming in less?
>> Yes.
>> XFS.
VFS.
BFS.
>> XFS. >> XFS. >> XP2FS, BFS, uh, (beep)
(beep)
And you can get an idea.
So I have a bunch more of these.
If anyone has a suggestion for how I might present trivia
to you in a more written form, I'm open to it.
But the only way this works right now is, you know,
I have to give it to you in person.
And I tried doing it remote. And the truth truth is I guess it's just the remote like if
whether it's the leg or not seeing my mouth move or being in person but I
noticed when I gave people this test remotely I've given a few no one can
top the leaderboards it's not possible so I just have to tell you that doing
this online on a video call,
it just ain't happening as far as like topping the leaderboards.
So we will just need to find a different way to do it.
People are remotely can like, they can get a solid like 15 points,
but no one's going much higher than that.
Now let's dip over onto Sunday.
So Sunday began really strong on trivia. People were expecting it. So when I was there at 9am, they're actually people waiting at
the table to play word and clearly spread. But you know, keep in mind that Sunday had
totally different questions. And I'm trying to give you like a variety of questions to
make it so that, you know, whether you answer or pass, like you definitely get a variety a variety so even when people pass on a question they might regret it at the
end they would say that because you know it was easier for him to answer one
question than the other and Sunday's questions I gave it a little more of a
focus on speed like of leaving a little more open for people to throw answers
out the average answer on Sunday actually jumped up to
basically 15 and the lowest score was a seven.
As opposed to Saturday, lowest score was like a four.
So almost every person on Sunday entered as a single.
I think it's because they just felt amped up,
like especially people who'd been there already
or heard about it.
And just, there were still some duos, but just fewer. Most people really felt like they wanted to take it on their
own. And so I had, let's see, Connor and Caleb had strong showings early in the day. Jonathan
Wright took the top score. But then he was immediately beaten by a competitor who was watching him from across the room and I guess just couldn't stand up saw his like elation
Immediately beat him so that score held for like an hour
Maybe and then it was dethroned by Toby and then at the end of the day
Let's see as I was leaving the space once again
I had strong performances from Donald Becker, Andrew, and Salt.
They all did extremely well.
And that was like the raffles over and, you know, pulling things down, but they just jumped in there.
So overall on the leaderboards for Sunday, the top was actually a single.
It was Mr. Toby repping Temple OS with 24 points. That was followed by a tie between salt of the
Seagull Conference, looking very smug, and Exoraxium from Calix OS, and they had 23 points.
Also at 23 points was a duel. It's a Donald Becker and Andrew. Below them, we got Jonathan Wright from All-Melinics
at 22 points, Matthias at 21 points,
and Caleb who tied with Connor,
repping Bellevue College at 20 points.
And I wanna give a huge thank you
to everyone else who participated.
It was very competitive,
and I'm glad everybody had so much fun. So thank you so much for taking part in the trivia
little trivia challenge on Saturday and Sunday. Like I said, if you have suggestions related to trivia, don't
hesitate to send them into me. You can send podcasts to James.network. You can also join the matrix chat
or fill out my little next cloud form with your feedback.
It's like a one-click anonymous form.
But yes, let me suggestions.
If there's another way you'd like to do this outside of in-person on the clock,
maybe there's a different way to handle this.
I'm open to it.
Obviously, I want people to have a fun, fair time.
And yeah, let me know.
Cool.
I wanted to take a moment this episode to give some serious gratitude.
Now that I'm out of Linux Fest Northwest and back home in California and I just wanted
to say thank you so much for all the support and big thank you to Linux Fest Northwest. I'm really glad that I went
up there and just met people face to face and to like put it in perspective. Like if you're listening
to this show, you're one of the only people in the world that knows about this show. Seriously,
you know, it's been a little over six months now seven months and It's just me man. It's just me like in a vacuum normally
so I just wanted to give this like gratitude shout out to all of you because meeting people was
amazing and
other people might be you know more like jaded or whatever but as like passion thing, as a passion project thing, you
know, enthusiast meeting people and talking to them at a table was such a
new experience and even though I've been to conventions, it's different when
you're at a table and people are talking to you, you know, all day and man it was
it was cool and I just wanted to say, yeah, a huge thank you.
Everyone to talk to me, just so you understand, that was my first time with that experience.
And I have this background in performance and everything, but it doesn't mean I have
the same experience of sitting at a table and letting people just come and talk to me about
the work I do.
And it was just a new experience. And the fact that we have this
like common enthusiasm, right, with everyone coming up and talking and stuff was amazing.
So I really do hope that everyone had a great experience engaging with me. I truly mean
that and just know that it really meant a lot to me. You know, it's like overwhelming
and new and surprising. So huge. Thank you. and I also want to give a huge thank you to
everyone that's been giving me feedback you know like comments or anything like
that engaging with me even even anything positive negative is is so
helpful you know so much more helpful than than no feedback because then I don't
know if things are working or
they're not working and on the same front man people who have donated to me I was really
surprised in this last month basically like people have been done I had no idea I didn't
realize it until just the other day people have actually sent me donations. I was shocked.
That's the first. So thank you to you pioneers, the several of you
who have donated, that's really amazing.
And it was a nice thing to come home to, you know,
driving for an entire day back home
and kind of like, okay, you know, it's exhausted.
And then that was a really
cool thing to come home to. And thank you. And people want to support me. Of course, you could do that.
I still need to get out, you know, a like a subscriber kind of thing in order to give people
access to more content. And I think that that'll be good'll be good. I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it.
Yeah, I am a one person operation at Linux Fest Northwest.
It was so interesting to be there.
The second morning as I was at my table, just chatting with people, I thought about having
a talk, but then I was like, "I just want to engage with people. People don't having a talk but then I was like I
just want to engage with people. People don't know me they don't know my show. So I was just
tabling and then Jupiter broadcasting invited me to go on in the morning and to be giving
my trivia challenge right on their Linux unplugged show which you can listen to. But
like to put it in perspective,
like right now I am sitting in my living room
with a cup of coffee at my recorder.
I use a hands-free mic because it just makes me
feel more comfortable.
And yeah, it's a lot to do with this all by yourself,
you know?
And even though I am a performer, professional performer,
when I'm talking about something like this
that's like more of my volunteer side thing
that I do just because I do it quietly
and now it's something I talk about with all of you
'cause I didn't want it to just live in darkness forever,
right?
'Cause we have all these fun experiences
and things to share.
It's like, it's a lot.
So then to go on Jupiter broadcasting and be wearing like a headset,
fancy mic, staring at people. I'd never even recorded my own podcast with another person face to face
ever. So then to be sitting in a room with however many people staring at me, suddenly given this
trivia challenge instead of like, you know, face to face one to one, I'm like doing it in this like audience situation. Like I was shaking man, like I was like, whoa, this far removed
from me sitting in my living room. And now all of a sudden I'm like wearing this headset
and it feels like, you know, it just felt like totally different situation. And I realized
I'm not used to it. I'm used to like the car effect, you know, where like you're in your
car and you start singing music and unwinding like you're in your car and you start singing music and unwinding
because you're in your car
and you kind of feel good in your little space.
So anyway, it's, it, all of it was very new
and that's just all to say, thank you, thank you,
thank you for engaging with me
and letting me be at that show with you.
And if you like this show, seriously,
the number one thing that you can do to support me is to share this show
I just trying to make this show and make it better
And if people have suggestions send them in because everything is new in regards to making this show the strongest
It can be if you want to share this to social media or with friends
I would appreciate that so much because I just I don't want to focus on that personally
because making a show already is so much work and that's what I want it to I want it to be a better show and
That's what I want to focus and if you can help me by getting
One more person to listen to this show. I would so appreciate it because it is in the end
It's a passion thing and and at the same time, yeah, if you want to send me feedback,
including the fact that you don't like a segment,
you don't like this segment, send it in.
'Cause that also helps me to know that people
at least want to engage.
And I just want to say again, thank you.
If you want to reach out to me, podcast@James.network,
you can join the matrix, there's a link.
You can also join the forum forum discuss.James.Network.
It's pretty quiet there, but I'm including show notes.
And like I said, anyone who engaged me at the conference, there were so many of you.
Just know it really meant a lot to me, and it's still a surprising experience to talk about something that I do.
I'm sure like all of you, I don't necessarily talk to the
stuff. I don't talk to my friends about this very much, obviously my you know, but most
people don't even know what any of this is about. So for everyone who does, it is a wonderful
experience to talk about and I look forward to doing more of it, getting more comfortable,
and I just want to say again, thank you. Thank you. Let's move on with the show.
I'm now going to recreate a live conversation that happened
between three people, including myself,
at the table at Linux Fest Northwest,
in relation to Tahoe Least Authority File System,
which was recommended to me
since I was talking about distributing ZFS backups
amongst friends over a virtual network.
So someone coming up to the table wanted to talk to me about Tahoe Least Authority.
Three of us got into a conversation about it.
The quality of the call in the room is horrible because it's so noisy.
So I'm going to recreate the call.
Plus I didn't get, I was asking for permission to use people's voices.
And I haven't received that yet. I want to get I was asking for permission to use people's voices and I haven't received that yet I want to get this episode out
So I'm gonna recreate this conversation as three different voices just like South Park
I'm going to intimidate your I'm going to do your voices very poorly just for the sake of doing it and and moving on
So here we go
So what you're talking about in terms of distributed backups. have you considered, you know, the least authority file system?
Well, yeah, I've been curious.
Well, you know, especially with you sending all these Raspberry Pies all over the place, like you have here on the chart, I just think it would be perfect, you know?
You know what I'm talking about, right? Least Authority file system?
Yeah, it's distributed.
Exactly. It's a distributed object storage. It's object storage. It's just this completely decentralized network
that just needs a central, introducer, negotiator node.
And then it talks to every other node on the network.
And you set your own recovery threshold.
So say you distribute, say, seven nodes of shares,
and you only need four shares to recover the file.
That means it's completely encrypted from your client onwards.
So you could store this on a storage network run by the NSA.
You could distribute these to other people running these and get just whoever you want
to join your network.
You don't have to trust any of these people.
And you don't have to trust that they're going to keep their node running either because
you've set a recovery threshold that auto repairs
and that'll cover if someone disappears, right? If they unplug their box, they never plug it back in again. You're covered. It's just for something like this, I just think it's perfect. Yeah,
thanks. That's awesome. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it would be totally open to setting something
up like this with you guys. Yeah, I know friends who did this actually 10 or 12 years ago, it would be totally open to setting something up like this with you guys
Yeah, I know friends who did this actually 10 or 12 years ago
It was like seven nodes or something like that. Yeah, you can configure whatever you want
Yeah, I think the default seven nodes though. Oh, I can't remember what the number was exactly
But you should be able to set your own configuration like you're talking about years ago At for a time there was actually a commercial service running on Tahoe least authority file system
It was backed by s3 so because it was backed by s3 they did just one single share
It was a commercial service running this and you could just have it completely encrypted on your side through their gateway and then you just
Send whatever you needed right completely distributed you didn't have to trust anyone. All your stuff distributed,
automatically, no concern about trust. But yeah, I think you can set limits. At least you should
have been able to for some time now. Yeah, I think you can set limits. It's been a while
and it's done through the clients, I believe. Yeah, you know, there's been some blockchain projects that have come out since, right?
Where you have to contribute so much in order to get so much and send so much payment into
the network.
But I don't think that's as explicit here, right?
So all right.
I think it's kind of like intuitively makes sense to set this up, especially with small people giving in a modest amount of space.
Yeah, totally. That just makes sense to me.
Yeah, and it could be as simple as a Raspberry Pi or another single board computer because it's really just a USB-C drive that you're plugging in or SSD.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
Yeah, I knew it'd be simple, you know? We should just keep it simple at first, right?
Like as a sort of challenge.
Yeah, I think that makes the most sense.
Just keep it smaller.
Yeah, and then we focus on keeping it alive, right?
For like six months.
Yeah, and then we sort of re-evaluate.
Yeah, that sounds like a good point to me, right?
Six months to a year.
Honestly, 32 gigabytes is a great starting
point, you know, because like I'm using an old Dropbox account for the same sort of thing, right?
For storing some stuff. And I prefer to use something like this, because honestly, I'm stuck
with like six gigs, a data on there, right? It's always like six gigs or something. And thanks six
gigs, right? That amount of data is always full. But if I had 32 gigs, I mean, to gigs right that amount of data is always full but if I had 32 gigs
I mean 32 gigs is nothing right I can see it happening like I'm setting it up right now I mean
it's it's enough to store the most useful important things you know yeah yeah yeah and you know like
I want to store some paperwork or I want to store some PDF books I just bought over the years
yeah everything I've collected in my life that's this level of important, I mean, it fits on a couple gigs, you know, and yeah, I've been hoarding it for years or whatever,
but if we're just talking about the most important kind of small things, you know, it's not really
about hoarding anymore.
It's just about finding something small that fits.
For some extra thoughts and insight on Tahoe,
least authority file system, I decided to play the previous clip to my buddy,
HB, who was my guest co-host on my audience feedback episode just to get his
thoughts on what he thinks about Tahoe laughs and setting it up. Curious.
So let's hear that.
What are your insta reactions hearing the little clip about Tahoe laughs and setting it up. Curious, so let's hear that. What are your Insta reactions hearing the little clip
about Tahoe from the conference?
- I mean, yeah, I mean, that sounds like something
that I'd be interesting in checking out
'cause as a larger effort, just trying to find ways
to distribute resources have always been kind of interesting
to me for a lot of different reasons.
So it was interesting to hear a person you're interviewing talking about.
There's some level of protection involved.
It's not like just you're sending unencrypted data to somebody you don't know.
And so there's no reassurance really that your data is going to be safe.
But in this scenario that was described,
as far as I can kind of analyze from it,
you have encrypted backups that you're distributing
as object storage, which I'm familiar with.
I had to transfer some backup style object storage
for clients some years back.
It was interesting to see how that process works
to get back to Tahoe thing. I mean, I've always wanted to see just like more collaborative things
where people are sharing resources or finding new ways to kind of stretch the
limits of knowledge especially with like servers. As you know, I kind of had a
lot of interest in BBS systems and that was kind of like a distributed network if you think about it
before the internet really existed and in the way that we know it today.
Something like Tahoe sounds definitely cool to explore.
You know, there's so many things that you could explore that share resources, but definitely sounds like something that's interesting to me.
Cool. Then I want to get your hot take on this.
I got excited by the fact that somebody wanted to use Tahoe,
because I previously knew about it through NoiseBridge, right?
Like literally over 10 years ago and people running it.
It's been around a long time, you know, like almost 20 years, I think.
I think it's interesting to hear it brought up again in the modern day.
And so I'm definitely down to give it a go.
And people just got me excited from,
basically from volunteering with noise bridge,
but also with like next cloud,
where someone's like sharing a sync solution.
But at the end of the day,
the underlying data is like the weak point, right?
Like if you spin up a service,
if the service goes down, you're in trouble.
You just have your data on a disk.
So it's like if anything happens to the disk, you're in trouble. So this is
solving that issue, right, which that service doesn't solve. Like you still have
to have your data in like multiple locations, online, whatever. Obviously
using Google or something gives you that. But that's what this is an alternative
to, right? It's like using a major data broker with redundancy. And I think it's
cool, but I got too excited
as I want to do that part.
I mean, that's like, yay, exciting.
Took over and my negativity disappeared for a moment.
And I was like, oh gosh, this is so fun.
And I was like, who wants to be involved?
And I asked more publicly, and I just got all this negativity
a lot, right?
Like, there's never not someone ready to tear you down online.
They were just like, oh my God.
This is the worst idea ever.
It's like you can't have nice things.
Like at least they're, you know, self-hosters who are telling me like, I'm, you know,
making me regret my life.
And I was like, I see I'm fine with not sharing nice things with other people publicly.
I've still down to do it with friends, but it just makes me curious too.
My first question to you in regards to this is, have you ever done a distributed...
Have you done something that was actually distributed across more than your own computer with somebody else?
Well, what I have done and I don't know if this falls into the same category is you know I
used to have at least two to three VPSs you know through different services and what happened was
that I wouldn't really need to use them all the time you know and I wouldn't really exhaust the
resources on each one of them because you know a lot of the time when you buy a VPS
It's like a tiered thing
And you kind of anticipate that you'll need so much space and so much RAM and so much CPU in this scenario that I had
You know I had like I said two to three VPS's on board
What I just started doing was you know
I'd tell my friends like hey dude just send me your SSH key and
You can use the server too to do whatever you want."
I was like, "I don't care what you do on it,
you know, just within reason, obviously,
but just you can use it for your app that you're making
or whatever, right?"
And that made sense to me because low-cost VPS,
I don't care if someone else uses that,
especially much more of a benefit to me
'cause I don't feel like I'm wasting it.
You know what I mean? Another thing I did, and I'm still doing this, you and I are doing this,
finding a way to kind of connect people remotely before you and I connected again
over this stuff. I had another person in Sacramento that I was sharing my servers with, so they were
able to connect to some of my servers here in my home lab and I was connecting to another server over there and at their place.
And so that was kind of cool.
You know, things like that, I think they're really great because like I said, like not
wasting resources in the general like responsible way that we exist in this, you know, world
where a lot of things go to waste.
I think that applies to like bandwidth and space that you have.
You have a petabyte of storage or something
and you're only using 10 gigs of it.
Like, why not share somebody else?
I don't know.
It just makes sense to share things
and then you get to learn things together too.
That's always something that I find interesting.
- Yeah, that's where my pie in the sky brain was going.
It's not about even how much data,
it's not like everyone's gonna change their life overnight
or something, it's more like that educational,
this is like the maker space, hacker space kind of ideology
of I wanna learn something, I wanna try something,
I'm finding enough people that I can make it possible.
That's where my mind goes.
And then the response I got the other side of negativity is people just saying like, Oh, this is just going to be, this is
a subject of abuse, you know, like people are going to do this for bad reasons, which is
totally not where my mind was, you know, and like, of course, they bring me back to reality.
And people are going to use this for illegal stuff and kind of going to an emotional place
of like, how do you feel about people doing illegal things on your on this service?
And I'm just like, okay, I guess to focus that question as I was saying, you know, maybe
at first I was kind of, oh man, this is lame.
But then I thought about it more and it kind of brought into my mind too.
In general, it kind of brings that question since time began.
Is it worth kind of empowering people with autonomy with tools, right?
Is it a good thing to give you the ability for example to distribute and
You know keep alive your own files and infrastructure at a minimum, right?
Whether you do this with people in the public or with just your own friends family or whatever because that's kind of what we're
That's what this is about in the end, right?
You know what I mean? Like does it is if for example, I, I guess the question, which is an ongoing question in today is like,
if you have a stable distributed system that's working
and protecting your data and I don't have access to the data,
even though we're working together,
you're using Tahoe, Least Authority,
and only you have access to your data,
I guess the first question is like, is that a bad thing?
- Yeah.
- Is it a bad thing that I can't access your data
that I'm helping you back up?
- Yeah, I mean, I've had people poo poo
my ideas about things like this before too,
a number of different scenarios.
There should always be some level of control
for the person that's engaging in something like this, there has to be some protections.
If the end goal really is to have a solid backup of your data, right, that's protected, right, encrypted.
And, you know, it's distributed across several machines, you know, wherever they are, that kind of doesn't matter a whole lot.
If someone can't access it, right, but you can, I guess it really depends on your level of trust.
Like for example, here's a scenario
that might be useful, right?
Let's say James, like you and I are sharing
cryptid system, right, or storage maybe,
like just like a piece, let's say chunk, whatever,
to use a less glamorous or specific way of defining this.
Let's say I have a chunk of data, right? And it's encrypted, you can't access it, a less glamorous or specific way of defining this.
Let's say I have a chunk of data, right? And it's encrypted, you can't access it, but I can.
But let's say my feeling about it is,
well, it's my data, I don't want anybody else
to be able to access it, but I do want to be able
to host it in a crowd-source way or whatever
so that we're sharing those resources.
That's one take on it.
But let's say, for example example that that chunk of data is
something completely different than
just something that belongs to me privately.
Let's say that I have data for a novel I'm working on.
This is just an example.
It's encrypted and so I can access it.
But I think to myself, well, you know, I trust James.
And if anything happens to me, I want James to be able
to access this novel.
So maybe they can publish it after I kicked the bucket, right?
Having like that kind of, I guess a little more like freedom
to kind of choose between other options.
I could see how this might be something that would fall into play.
Like if there's a company, some sort of business endeavor,
joint parties, stuff like that, right?
I think that it's good to have options for sure.
But I have in the past always had people when I bring up something similar to this,
because I didn't even know anything about Tahoe until you told me about it.
Say something like, well, that's all fine and dandy,
but what are you gonna do if someone steals your stuff, right?
Or whatever, like what if there's some malicious actor
or whatever, like you said,
some criminal activity involved or whatever.
But my level of anxiety is already high enough
that I've already thought about that stuff.
So if I'm participating in something like this, it's because I've at least let some of that go. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does make sense. And I think the other thing about, I'm not even doing this from the
paranoia standpoint, right? But like, let's talk about the paranoia standpoint. I mean, the whole
idea of Tahoe, this is why I didn't spin it up in the past, is like, I'm trying to engage with other people, right?
That's why I run like next cloud or whatever. I want to engage with people.
I just wanted my data to be accessed at all. But with Tahoe, we're doing a share between a number of people,
but you are the only one who has access. So in your book example, if you die,
we have your data online, but no one else has access to your data, only you do
on your end. So your book will not be recovered. It'll just live in this encrypted
vault of data forever. And unless you've told someone how to get on it, it's just that's it.
Data might eventually be deleted, but it won't be non-recoverable by design. That's why people
were recommending it as an alternative distributed backups. As an alternative to what I was talking about, the conference of
a thing I wanted to do of ZFS distributed backups, which you and I have talked about using something
like Trueness at the level to make data. Somebody brought this up as an alternative. I got excited
data. So somebody brought this up as an alternative. And so I got excited because my question is simply, can I host a service with 10 other people and keep it alive for a year? That's really what
it comes to. It's like, would this even work? Because I see, for example, I see IPFS, the interplanetary
file system, which is similar of like a distributed system of keeping files,
folders alive.
And I see all these IPFS links, and they're just dead.
They don't go anywhere.
And so it's a cool idea, similar to like torrent files,
where people share a torrent file to download a movie or whatever.
But if no one's sharing the torrent anymore, the data,
then it just dies.
And there's nothing.
There's a torrent file to nowhere.
If having this protection makes people more excited
to actually run the service, I'm interested in that.
It was also brought to my attention.
People were like, "Oh, you're not getting like Bitcoin
"for doing this or whatever."
But that's for me, that's actually a turn off.
I get it, but I'm not doing it.
I'm not doing this because I wanna like profit from it.
I'm doing it because I want it to work. That makes sense. Maybe the two can't be distinguished. But the point is that I just want
to do this with people that want to do it for the sake of the learning and trying. Everything else
is secondary. I'm not going to pretend like this is how I'm going to do all my data backups now.
It's like, that's ridiculous. I just want to see if it works. You feel me? Anyway, that's where
I'm coming from. That is a huge draw for me too me like, anyway, that's where I'm coming from.
That is a huge draw for me too is like, well, what am I going to learn from this, right? Because
that's kind of how my approach has always been, right? You know, reluctance a lot of times when
you try new technology, but if I had, you know, submitted to that, like every time that I heard
of something new, I would have never learned anything. Some monetary thing, it seems ancillary
to the whole entire effort.
My primary thing, like with having a home lab
in the first place was like independence, right?
I don't wanna have to depend on somebody else's systems,
right, to do the things that I normally do.
I could take my router right now and throw it in the trash,
and it wouldn't matter.
I'd still be able to access my files.
Well, not literally, but my ISP is router.
If I have my own router, I can probably figure things out
and just have a local network that works,
and have my services on it, and use my computer.
That's what I want.
I want to know how things work without the larger internet
involved.
My pipe dream that will never come to fruition,
where the real internet, as they call it, dies.
And people take their own technological knowledge
and make something different and better.
Now I've gone on a tangent. Yeah, so I'm still down to see it through what I came to realize from the
feedback I got online in terms of doing something cool. If people don't want to
be involved, they can be uninvited. Still doing it. And if people are
interested, you know, like reach out in terms of the podcast, like podcast
games.network or like in our Matrix or whatever, I guess this becomes an open question to the
audience as far as like, has anyone done something like this? So you run into distributed network
with friends, family, other people, I'd be curious to hear from people who are or that failed.
I'm still down to do it. Like, and you know, it's fine to stick to people I know or whatever.
That's not a problem. Yeah.
So that's fine.
Yeah.
That's why I'm out with it.
Yeah.
I agree.
And like you said, I would just echo that statement.
I think you and I talked about this not that long ago, really the level of
participation that you get in a project that you might have interest in isn't
really the best metric for whether it was a success or not.
A lot of the things that we just talked about right now,
like in the end, it's a technical pursuit
and you're just saying if you can do it, right?
And if you pull it off, at least on the technical side,
that is in a lot of ways a success, right?
If it's a success within the community,
I feel like that's just a kind of like a different kind of success, right?
But it shouldn't deter you to to do something new like this
Just because you think people won't be interested enough. Yeah
on the fund raising front of this show right now
I'm in the middle of doing a little podcasting 2.0 fundraiser
so some people have podcasting 2.0 confoundable clients and I am in
the process of raising the satoshis to register my own self-hosted Albi Hub. And for that I need
to raise I think, I can't remember, between 20 and 50,000 SATs So I just wanna say thank you for people sending in
sets on podcasting 2.0.
That just started happening in the last month.
I set it up a while ago.
I was like, is this even working?
But now people seem to be using it.
So I just wanna say thank you for doing that.
And yeah, if you're using it and you want to send in boosts or
send in value for value donations through podcasting 2.0 that is much
appreciated and I will guess I'll give an update once I'm able to register my
own self-hosted instance to the podcasting 2.0 network. I just think it'd be
funner to crowdsource it than to just, you know, do it myself because
that's kind of the whole point, right? Anyway, we'll get there when we get there. So thank
you for people sending in donations through podcasting 2.0, as well as through the PayPal,
which is what I have right now. So yeah, thanks again for everyone doing that. Much appreciated.
Let's talk Sequoia Fabrika. It is a community makerspace in San Francisco's
Petrero Hill neighborhood, fostering the next generation of makers, designers,
craftspeople, we're home to a wood textile workshop, 3D printers, laser
cutters, electronics, crafts, fine art supplies, to volunteer 501(c)(3) nonprofit
that hosts classes, events, and workshops which are open to the public. They also
offer memberships for makers to access the space and equipment outside of
classes and people are welcome to teach or organize events as part of being involved
in that space.
This has classes for the public, but in general it's a pretty quiet space is what I found.
There's about 20 to 30 actual dues paying members and And it's, I noticed that like good amount of diversity
in this space as opposed to most maker hacker spaces
I've been to.
There's a nice breakup in terms of gender and all that.
And which is good.
The space is also very clean, which is noteworthy.
'Cause a lot of maker spaces look like crap.
And anyone who's been to one knows what I'm talking about and you know it just looks like really
trashy but this space is a notable exception it looks very clean very
organized and it feels like a space where you can actually work on things like the
tables aren't cluttered the shelves aren't cluttered so I had a positive
initial reaction to walking into the space and
let's get into it. Do keep in mind for these Sequoia Fabrika interviews that I
asked people about. People didn't want to be recorded so I'm just gonna recite
their words. Okay. One person said, "I've made some clothes, pants, shirts, jackets
there. It was nicer than making them at home because it had large cutting tables.
There was a stronger, faster industrial machine.
Other members have some pretty rad woodworking workshops and there's a kid
oriented workshops as well. Some really popular needlework and fiber workshops.
In terms of experience, last summer we did coffee roasting and soldering
workshops at public libraries. Those were super cool. They attracted a lot of
participants who expanded beyond the typical maker space demographic in soldering workshops at public libraries. Those were super cool. They attracted a lot of participants
who expanded beyond the typical
makerspace demographic in terms of their age, ethnicity,
race, gender.
It's really cool because you get to demystify
this makerspace idea to people.
It's not some untouchable tech thing.
And participants also share their own experiences,
which can remind you that there are already
a whole lot of
happenings in the world before and outside of maker spaces. You know, like people who work at the semiconductor factory or roast coffee and like a cultural ceremony. I guess I'm going a
little off-chopped here, but to sum it up, meeting so many different people from the community and
seeing all the creativity and skills and interesting world outlooks is one of the most exciting things about this for me.
So Sequoia Fabrika has a solid share of tech people in tech activities, you know, like what people think of when you say "maker space" and that's all happening, but it's pretty diverse.
There's a spread of talent and interest and we dip into fine arts, fiber arts and like random. And I think it's neat that those things can coexist.
So I think there's an answer in there somewhere.
Another answer I got is, well, I like
it's that this is an entirely volunteer run group
that we're friendly to kids and youth,
that we have high school and public library partnerships.
But if you're asking about classes,
then I would say maybe the embroidery and crochet circles that happen on Tuesday nights or highlight
So I guess now I'll just dip into my own experience going into this
space a little more and
Want to say that thing I really liked about it was you know again that clean
presentation and
Also, just how friendly the people were that
were there. If I was spending more time in that neighborhood, I would do a membership,
personally, because the tables are big, open, and the materials and tools seem to be in like
solid functional order, which is critically important in terms
of like actually getting work done. And if you've ever been to a makerspace, the idea
of a makerspace as opposed to a hagger space, I want to I guess maybe I'll break those apart,
a makerspace is usually a more professional space by design. It's kind of differentiating itself as a space people go to to work on projects.
So when you go to a makerspace, typically you're talking about a space that has tools or a working
area where some people want to go to what a co-working space and basically sit on their computer and
make your spaces dipping into that art side of things,
which is like you're not just there to be on a computer
but you also wanna have access to like more,
I guess of an environment where you could make things.
So make things in this case being, you know,
if it's 3D printing or paper crafts, sewing, but also
industrial type machines like laser cutters, which can become quite expensive or CNCs where
you're cutting, you know, larger wood objects. Like, for example, you could use a CNC to
make your own door, you know, like an eight by four or whatever piece of wood and you're you know cutting
etching into it with this machine which is something that would be incredibly hard to do
with a dremel but you can do it with one of these machines. Let's take a moment to go over the
Sequoia Fabrika FAQ and then I'll do a quick comparison between a maker space and a hacker space.
So from there FAQ, Sequoia Fabrika is located in
San Francisco, Patero Hill neighborhood. They're near several, several major bus
lines. There's street parking in the neighborhood and how do you access the
space? The makerspace is open to the general public for regular events and
workshops which you can sign up for and attend and you can give donations or you
know pay a
material fee for that. So then if you want to have regular access to their
facility and to use the equipment at other times, you have to become a member
or volunteer to become involved with that space. If this model does not meet
your needs, then of course there are other maker spaces in the Bay Area or
around the world. In this case,
like maker space is meaning, you know, a space that's more professional. And now let's do a
comparison to a nearby space, noise bridge, which is how I know people involved in Sequoia
Fibrika. So noise bridge, much larger, right. Whereas say Sequoia Fabrikas is kind of dedicated group of you know 25 people
noise bridge is way more ad hoc and they have this massive rotating cast of characters like in
an ever revolving door kind of situation right because of that noise bridge is how I met these people.
And it's a huge turning point in my own life.
I don't want to go too much into it other than to say,
I'll drop a link for noisebridge.net.
It is literally a physical Wikipedia of a space.
People will build walls one day.
They will tear that wall down the next day.
Because of that, it's kind of open season on doing creative things.
The rule being you're supposed to stay excellent to each other. It's a Bill and Ted reference.
But of course, your definition of excellent is going to be very different from mine. Because of that,
it's a great space if you don't know what you want to do, but it's a difficult space if you
know exactly what you want to do. That's a hard working environment you don't know what you want to do, but it's a difficult space if you know exactly what you want to do.
That's a hard-working environment.
I think that's where somewhere like Sequoia Fabrika offers this really nice step into
a more professional environment.
By being in a space where it's not a revolving door, it is a focused space.
It is a small space of people who know each other,
want to know each other, and want to get work done. But they still want to do these things like,
let's see, textiles with sewing embroidery knitting, a serger, straight stitch sewing.
So you can see there's a lot of sewing stuff, screen printing supplies, you want to make like t-shirts, they've got power tools, dremels, hand tools, wood tools, a number of 3D printers, laser cutter, a CNC,
vinyl cutter, you know, you can be cutting stickers, all kinds of, I mean, there's a
lot of options here, right?
Entirely run by volunteers.
And it's just a nice, friendly space.
And the other thing about it that I think can't be overstated is the fact that
they are kid friendly and connecting with a high school.
That is a big separation between them and other spaces because the truth is most
spaces, just like any space, right?
You're not going to let your kids in there.
But the fact that this space does allow kids with supervision and not only offers it, but encourages it. I was told to me that a local high school works on robotics projects in the space
I mean, that's that's amazing
So I mean that's the proof is in the pudding kind of thing like people are actually using this space a quad across a
wider range of you know age and
interest and it's interesting and the fact that it's a clean and safe environment
is huge because you could actually work on a professional project in this space and expect it
to be respected. So that's why I wanted to give this highlight on Sequoia Fabrika. So Sequoia in
this case refers to the iconic California redwood trees.
These trees grow from a tiny seed and are among the oldest and largest living organisms
on earth.
We hope from our modest beginning to create a community that lasts and thrives.
Fabrika comes from the Latin word meaning workshop or factory.
It also evokes fabric.
Fabrics woven together to form a hole.
Our workshop is a place where people come together across disciplines to build, learn, create, and
make things with their hands and with machines and conveniently our initials
RSF. Yeah I just think it's such a cool space. It's a more recent addition over
the last number of years as you know and I just I think it's it's great to see a
space like this that's
more professional but they're still accessible to the average person. If you
like co-working spaces as most people probably do or whatever that's great I
never even used one personally so this is more in line with my actual interests
as a person, as a show, and the fact that they're willing to maintain all their own kind
of infra and everything is interesting to me. So like they have a wiki page, let's look at that.
It talks about their areas of interests, which is access control, automation, digital fabrication,
electronics, networking, textiles, woodworking, let's go to electronics. So it says tools offered soldering iron solder supplies project kits ESP 32 micro
controllers bench power supplies. You know the fact that like all this information is on here
for example in this wiki in a lot of ways is a homage to classic hacker spaces like noise bridge
like these other spaces where you you know try to make a, a wiki page in that anyone can edit it just like
Wikipedia and keep information up to date, right, as opposed to a more traditional web
page format, which is cool.
And this is an interesting concept, right?
And then let's look at their networking.
So they have an internet drop from a local ISP, monkey brains.
Of course, most people don't have that level of flexibility in their networking.
You might only have one provider in San Francisco.
Of course, we have some amazing providers like Monkey Brains and Sonic.net.
Monkey Brains physically lands a Juniper Switch, connects to Proxmox, hosting virtual machines.
There's a ViOS router connecting VLANs. It
explains all of it. So if you want to go on the network page of Sequoia Fabrika, you can see a
full breakdown of exactly how their systems are managed in VLANs, IP spaces, DNS zones,
general networking, how they're using Ubuntu Proxmox, Free PBX, so you can physically call the space on a phone, right?
As well as their different tools. Home Assistant Green, which has Zigbee modules, which is being used for physical automation, turning things on and off in space.
Details of security, guest access, and telephones.
Just cool, you know?
Like, it's cool because this is all lowering also
that kind of barrier of entry of like,
how would I do something like this?
Right?
Like, how would I manage a space,
like a physical space that other people use?
And you can use pages like this
to get a better understanding of like how to automation tools and hosted tools
Come together to allow me to
Create a space that is then used by 30 people
Whether they know about how it works or not, you know, there's like a detailed breakdown
Which is cool really really really cool and
This is like the same kind of model right that I want
in my own work in my own show. So I hope people feel inspired. I'll drop a link for the wiki of
Sequoia Fabrika. Take a look. And if you're curious about yourself, I'll include a link for the
hacker spaces.org overall site, which you can go on to to see if there is a space in
your area and there are many around the world at this point it's huge. I'd like to hear your
thoughts on Sequoia you know we went there a few weeks back but I was just curious to what
you thought about it in terms of like is it a space that you would use say it was down the
street from your house you know. Yeah it's definitely like, I felt like, you know, there's been, I've been to at least
a handful of hacker spaces at this point in life and maker spaces, different, you know,
terminology that people have for it.
If it was down the street, sure, I'd, you know, go check it out.
There's always some differences.
I remember there was the tech shop.
I think that's what it was called.
It had a similar vibe.
They had a lot of equipment to work with.
You know, one, you know, small speed bump
on those things, usually with the membership fees.
You know, so that's probably one thing
that tends to deter me from spaces
that do you have a, you know,
like a larger membership fees
kind of something that I can't really negotiate all the time.
Aside from that I don't think that's you know maybe the most important thing.
The space itself was really nice. Definitely had more of like a
co-working like collaborative you know art space kind of vibe and I like to
have regular classes too so So, it seems like
there's a lot to offer there. I'll definitely try to go back and visit it even though it's not
in my neighborhood really. It's not so far that, you know, I couldn't just get in the car and go
over there. So, I have fun. We were there. It was great. Yeah. Well, let me ask it a different way.
How would you feel if you had a project to work on?
Let's say there was a project and we were keeping materials
at that space.
How would you feel about that versus any other space
you've gone to?
Does that help in terms of cost and use of a space
to get projects done?
Yeah, so I think one of the things
like before when I had worked at a co-working space downtown I had some subsidy I guess you would call it from my job to work there
so that was nice definitely a little more secure so I think it you know
probably additional benefit of having a space like that there's not a lot of
traffic going on there whereas some you know some spaces
they have a lot of people going in and out there's nowhere to put your gear so
you kind of have to be at least aware of the fact that your stuff might get
tampered with or something else so if I had like a serious project yeah but I
was working on I could see a huge benefit of that being a space because I
wouldn't be as worried about whether or not someone's going to, like I said,
tamper with something that I'm working on that might be maybe a little bit more
of a professional kind of operation. Yeah, being honest obviously like
Noisebridge being like especially in the past,
being even more open than it is now, which is still open, but even more so, it's like,
that's how I know you, it's how I know everyone from Sequoia. That is how we met. But having been
involved in that space, it's like, personally, I don't really, it's hard for me to see it as a
space where I actually get projects completed where I'm not really loose about the project
or unless it's something that's more like a virtual project,
kind of like us having this online call right now.
But if you're having to do stuff in space,
like even with a physical audio recorder or something,
I wouldn't feel comfortable keeping that at Noisebridge
unless it was something we'd paid to have donated there that I didn't feel I had physical ownership of.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think resource-wise, having a place like NoiseBridge is great because there's stuff
that's open to everyone.
But again, that can also be the issue.
Everything is open to everyone.
The balance between that is a little bit hard sometimes.
But one of the things that I always liked about working with stuff there is that you can just
have these kind of, you know, materials to work with that otherwise wouldn't be used.
So like, for example, server projects that I did in the past, there's just like tons
of abandoned workstation computers and motherboards and you know, here in their parts that you
get easily built into a workable machine.
So for that, like I guess accessibility, like with people being able to tinker on something that's otherwise not going to be used,
so things being upcycled, that can be something that's interesting.
Collaborative projects, if they get started, I've always seen some really cool stuff come out of that.
I guess it just really depends on what you're looking for.
Sometimes you want a space where you can just focus
on your project and have less distractions.
So that might be where something like Sequoia
would be a huge benefit.
Just having a smaller space that's a little bit more
focused on just projects.
- Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, we're really spoiled is what it comes down to.
We have like so many spaces to choose from.
Those people don't even have one maybe
But yeah, we got tons
Yeah, yeah, absolutely
I remember a long time ago. I was looking for spaces for
For my son for the summer. He was in Oklahoma
And I was like, well, I gotta have a hacker squeeze out there somewhere and I looked and it was like nothing
Nothing out there, you know some of and it was like nothing. Nothing out there.
Some of the places I did find were closed down.
So I imagine that's not exclusive to Oklahoma
or probably lots of places in California,
or maybe a little bit further from a larger city,
probably don't have the same kind of access
to hacker spaces or anything.
- Yeah, I think the other thing that's really cool,
you know, regardless of where anyone does work,
is kind of the idea of like creating shared resources
is really rad, you know?
Like if people don't understand anything
we're talking about right now, it's like,
basically the concept of like,
if you buy a tool, right, and it costs $500,
it's like there's something awesome about say splitting that cost with five to 10 other people
and then having something that you can share. But the truth is you're not going to use it all the time anyway,
right? But then by splitting up the cost, like, you know, taking something from $500 to $50.
If you continue doing that, it's like you can start to build up a really nice collection
of tools and resources to like do things with.
It's really rad.
And I think there's always more, there can be more of that, you know, it's, that's the
coolest part, like in the community side.
Yeah, definitely, you know, and I was like, I can't always commit to projects,
but like, you know, I like seeing what other people are working on. And, you know, recently,
I got to tag along for SpaceBridge and just seeing them, how far that project's gone.
This is like a weather balloon that they send up into, you know, the stratosphere for those of you who are listening
information about it's on, you know, noise bridge website, but
just kind of seeing how they were organizing things and, you know,
watching them work on their
their project
was pretty cool and some of the stuff that I had laying around.
You know, I had some parts here, some MOSFETs and just power supply stuff here at my house.
And I was able to offer, if they wanted it, to just kind of use it, right?
So that's kind of a thing I think you can share with people.
Like if you have more experience and certain things to like maybe you're better at soldering
things, you can help people out with that or whatever, you know.
It's nice to be a human resource, so to speak, and try to help people out with stuff.
Could you give the Wikipedia style elevator pitch in two minutes or less of basically maybe
what space bridge is and if you need separately
what the experience was like of doing it recently?
I just know it's a long-term project,
but what is it like to be a part of it?
What is it?
- Yeah, I mean, I can give it Wikipedia overview.
I'm not affiliated with the project directly.
So just to be clear on that, I just heard they were doing a launch of a weather balloon.
And I was like, "Whoa, that's pretty cool." You know, because like, who doesn't want
to see a giant balloon go into the sky? But they're just testing, launching balloon, collecting data.
They're using some interesting stuff, like radio equipment,
Laura boards and like Yagi antennas.
I believe some GPS stuff to just kind of track the trajectory of the weather balloon.
I'm 100% sure there's more to it than not,
but these folks are all really interested in space
and trying to make it something that's accessible
to normal humans.
Like just a bunch of hackers just trying to see
how far can they go with this and what kind of data
can they get, why is it even useful,
but just a shared interest in that. So it was like I said, it's nice to have just like
an opportunity to kind of just like sit in and see what people are doing in a project.
Maybe you're not necessarily familiar with or actively working on, but just to see that
they're making progress and regularly meeting up,
which is another thing you can probably find out more about on the Noisebridge
website. But as far as like having like a ton of technical details about what
they're doing, like to be honest a lot of the stuff they were doing was stuff
that I was not familiar with at all, but nonetheless excited to check out. So yeah, check it out.
I want to give a huge thank you to Sequoia Fabrika for having their open night
being able to attend, and I just had a great time. And yeah, all right. Thank you so much for
enjoying this very lengthy episode of Linux Prepper Podcast. Please do send in your thoughts. There will be the anonymous
feedback form in the show notes. You can also join discuss.James.network or email me podcast
at James.network with your thoughts. Always happy to hear from you. Let me know what you think.
You can enjoy the part two sister piece to this coming out in the coming weeks. And yeah, there's
a lot to get through
There's a lot happening and I appreciate you being here
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Alright, take care and best to all of you (dramatic music)