#287: EmbassyOS v0.3.0, building out the independent stack, and philosophy with Matt Hill
11/22/2021 · 154 min · transcript via mlx
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Key topics
— EmbassyOS v0.3.0 represents a complete rewrite focused on modularity, scalability, and transparency—designed to turn average people into sysadmins without requiring technical expertise.
— Start9 Labs is building a parallel computing paradigm to counter centralized tech giants; the operating system bridges commodity hardware, open-source software, and non-technical users through a generalized API and marketplace ecosystem.
— The marketplace will be decentralized after v0.3.1, allowing anyone to spin up competing marketplaces so Start9 is never a single point of failure for software discovery and installation.
— Services on Embassy (Bitcoin Core, Matrix chat, Bitwarden password manager, file storage, etc.) work seamlessly over Tor with planned ClearNet support coming in 2022, plus future I2P integration for network redundancy.
— Privacy and sovereignty are framed as insurance against future regime change and data monetization extraction, not just today's threats; Tor relay nodes will be toggleable in v0.3.1 to strengthen the Tor network itself.
— The vision extends beyond personal servers to a decentralized Internet of Things where users control their own smart home devices rather than surrendering them to Google and Amazon ecosystems.
Market & price signals
— None discussed.
Actionable insights
— Run a Bitcoin node on Embassy to eliminate dependency on third-party RPC providers and preserve transaction privacy without revealing your addresses to external services.
— Set up a self-hosted password manager (Bitwarden) and private file storage accessible from anywhere via Tor in under five minutes—eliminating subscription fees and corporate data harvesting indefinitely.
— Plan to enable your Embassy as a Tor relay node in v0.3.1 (requires router port-forwarding) to contribute to network resilience while gaining faster Tor access for yourself.
Episode sponsorships
Paid placements mentioned in this episode. BTC Pods is not sponsored by or affiliated with these advertisers. Links are included so you can find offers mentioned on the show.
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