Ep4-The Internet Cube

What is it and what can you do with it?

Download Mp3

Rethinking the direction of the podcast

I've been doing some major thinking about the direction of where I want to take this podcast. I was listening to one of the episodes as I usually do. Us podcasters do that alot. Listen to ourselves in order to critique our abililites. We're not really that self important, we are are our worst and toughest critics. But I noticed that I had said that:

I am doing this podcast as a I take the journey into self hosting and the fediverse to show how easy it is. I want this podcast to be fully self hosted and wont be on anything like Apple Podcasts.

Thats when the stupidity and the irony of those two statemenst hit me like a ton of bricks in the face. The whole concept of the podcast and vidcast is basically "self hosting for dummies", more specificaly "Yunohost for dummies". And by only making it available on the fediverse and totally self hosted I am basically alienating the very people who are searching for this kind of information. So after a whole week of contemplating this for nearly every available minute that my brain wasnt occupied I've made a decisiion. I am going to use Anchor.fm for the audio podcast. Anhor.fm is a free podcast host that is owned by Spotify and will distribute the podcast on just about every available podcast platform that is out there. It's what I've used for TruckinNutz and currently for Break19 Podcast.

Am I a hypocrite?

No, I dont think so. To alienate and obscure people from finding the podcast makes me think I'm more of a luddite. Not that there is anything wrong with being a luddite but its people like me that need to find out how to take back control. In order to find them and tell them how easy it is to do I need to go to where they are. And the added benefit is that more eyes and ears will know about the softeware such as Yunohost, Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc will be discovered by more "normal" people,

Whats going to change

I'll be adding the podcast to Anchor.fm and people will be able to discover and share it everywhere and hopefully it will change lives and liberate people and their data all over the world and we can all sit and hold hands and sing. Lol I submitted it this afternoon and it's already on Spotify. I know imagine that! (Spotify owns Anchor.fm now).

Whats not going to change

  • If you are already subscribed to the feed on the fediverse - nothing.
  • The feed for the vidcast on Peertube is not going to be changed. It will always be there.
  • If you are subscribed to the feed on boneheadmedia.com/site/shp then yes, you will need to subscribe through the one generated by Anchor. Click here to subscribe I just updated that and if you are a new subscriber it will take you right to it.
  • This also means that the files will no longer be hosted on my server but rather be on Anchor.fm. I will however put very high quaility mp3's or ogg's on my Funkwhale instance.

I want to hear from you!

Send me your ideas, questions or comments to [email protected]. Dont forget to follow me on Mastodon, Pixelfed and Peertube.

The Internet Cube

What is it? - It's a box similar to Freedombox. The idea is to have your own wifi to connect to the internet and be free, neutral and decentralized. Looks like it is a joint venture between FFDN and Yunohost

How it works - You can either purchase one already to go or build it yourself. Either way its going to cost you about the same amount of money. So if you are looking to save some moolah by DIY'ing it, lets just say I hope you know what you are doing, lol. Cause I dont have a clue of what to buy. From what I can tell from the specs is that it is basically the same hardware as the Freedombox. So this is what it does. You plug it into your ethernet (orwifi). It will put out it's own wifi. That is the one that you connect to. This thing comes with Yunohost on it so you will have your own email, chat, peertube, mastodon, etc. Damn near whatever you want. But heres what is so cool. Its running through a VPN to your isp. So all of your traffic on the Cube's wifi is protected. Your isp cant sniff you, hell it dont even know what you are serving. But the coolest part of it all is that this is portable. It can run on ac with a plug or a battery. Hell there is even a small solar panel that will power this thing. Take this with you camping or hiking connected to your phones hot spot. Dude my mind is just blown with ideas of what I want to do with this.

I can see myself getting one of these and mounting it in the truck so I could have my own little network while I'm out running all week. I would love to be able to tailor this to trucking related apps. Traffic, maps, weigh stations, etc. This would work great for a small/medium sized fleet of trucks. Think about it. You could have discourse for forums, a private Mastodon for employees, each driver would have their own email server, could do fleet wide messages through XMPP, etc.

How do you get it? At the link above of course! There is full instructions on the site and a video explaining what it is and does. I suggest you go check it out. Here it is again in case you glossed over it. The Internet Cube

Just my two cents - Opinion

I just got to throw this opinion out there. You know I've run across of statements lately about the Fediverse.

  • "Nobody is on it!"
  • "It's not going to take off/be adopted by the masses"
  • "It's boring"

Well , ya know what? It's not going to if people dont start practicing what they preach! People wont make the switch to join you on Mastodon if you dont post to Mastodon. Stop with the Twitter to Mastodon bots. Just delete your damn Twitter and jump head first into it. If people want to find you they will. If you really want to get off the big giant tech companies then STOP BEING A PRODUCT FOR THEM!!!

I swear the hypocrisy drives me nuts. Especially when it comes to politics. Conservatives complain about getting shadow banned and demonitzed by Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. Yet they dont go anywhere. They just sit and whine and cry. Ya'all want to gripe about politics go to Gab and cry to each other. The Fediverse is plenty big enough for everyone. There are so many different intstances of Mastodon and other apps that anyone can literally find a home. Hell I just learned a couple of hours ago that there is a Mastodon instance just for indie musicians! Thats my kind of instance! I've been listening to alot more music here lately simply because I've about had it up to my eyeballs in political news. You cant even watch a weather report or hear a traffic report without hearing a damn political commentary. It's getting really, really old. But its got me wanting to start up NTROradio again and start giving some relief to people like me. So watch for it to start back up. It will probably only be mix tapes release on my Funkwhale instance but it will be fun to do.

Music by Unfa Why you need your own server

  1. Protect your privacy
  2. Protect your data
  3. IT'S YOUR DATA! NOT A PRODUCT FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO PROFIT FROOM!

Get in touch with me

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