Sir Gene Speaks

0031 Sir Gene Speaks Special - Interview Alecks Gates

April 09, 2021 Gene Naftulyev Season 1 Episode 31
Sir Gene Speaks
0031 Sir Gene Speaks Special - Interview Alecks Gates
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Gene:

I hope everybody is excited for the beginning of this interview series. I'm going to have 10 to 12 interviews that I've been recording over the last week with people that are doing development work or just are generally providing some more insight into crypto and podcasting, 2.0 and how micropayments allow individual pod-casters to be able to receive money. Directly from supporters through micro-transactions. This is all bleeding edge stuff. Everything should be considered beta, but it is very fascinating. And as more and more people set up crypto accounts to be able to utilize the podcast apps, to listen to these, 2.0 certified podcasts, like the one you're listening to right now. It's going to change face of the market no longer will. People need to be putting ads for VPNs into their podcasts. They can simply talk to their listeners directly and then watch as little micropayments three-man. In real time while people are listening to their podcasts. It's very cool tech. again, keep in mind, it's all very beta right now. The network could crash. You could lose all your Bitcoin in that wallet. So I very much encourage people to have a separate small wallet for anything they're doing with podcasting 2.0, but as the network matures, this is opening up a lot of possibilities. The first interview that I'm going to have for you guys is. With Alex Gates. Alex is a no agenda producer who is actually set up no agenda tube, which is essentially a peer to peer video app. And you've probably watched some videos that I've posted that are actually hosted on Alex's platform. that platform essentially allows us to keep videos that YouTube may not want to have on their system. to keep those videos on the separate platform so they can be shared and viewed by people in the knowledge and the community. Alex is also very involved in podcasting 2.0, being the main, or I would say certainly the primary representative of video content, not just audio content and the new podcasting 2.0 index because of Alex and because of a thought going in ahead of time. Is going to allow for the exact same seamless experience with video streaming as it does for audio only traditional podcasts listening. Adam has said on several occasions that in his mind, podcasting should not be limited to audio, even though historically that's what it's been. And so with the video model of podcasting, 2.0. Becoming a reality it's people like Alex that are helping to make sure that the bugs are out of there and all the features that are necessary for video, but may not be necessary for audio actually go in there. So with that, let me start off the interview I hope you guys enjoy, and there will be plenty, more interviews coming your way. this interview segment is going to be with Alex Gates. Now, Alex is doing customization and development work on the no agenda. What's it called? Help me out here out. It's an tube, right? Yes, no agenda, tube.com. And that's essentially a sort of, open source YouTube competitor kind of thing,

Alecks:

Yeah. Yeah. It's it was designed to be like a decentralized YouTube alternative to work in like the messed on Federation

Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into the tech details. I'm just trying to get the general gist of it here as I'm introducing you. And I'm already asking you questions during the introduction, but essentially you're doing that. And then the other aspect of it that kind of ties in is I've seen you pop up with some questions slash suggestions on the podcasting 2.0 forums and get hub as well. And what's interesting. There is specifically, you are. I think one of the very few people, if not the only one that is looking at the new podcasting 2.0 spec as something that should be applied to both audio and video. So I definitely want to cover that aspect of it as well. All right. So Alex as this was just introduction is there anything that I kinda missed about introducing you that you want to bring up? That's important, two people knowing who you are.

Alecks:

I'm not really part of the no genic community. But what happened was in December, I guess it was January. I made my name down by standing up this website and it was just a, I had a passion to do it cause it was missing from the void. So here I am, we had no agenda to bad come and let's figure it out.

Gene:

okay, but now are you in the Elgin, the LR or not? It's not like you have to be.

Alecks:

Yeah, I've been listening for a couple of years now. I was originally introduced by unfilter from Jupiter broadcasting and here I am here to stay.

Gene:

Got it. So obviously that absolutely makes you part of the no agenda community. It doesn't have to be a an account set up somewhere. It's there you're a listener. So you, the biggest thing that I think differentiates no agenda people and non-agenda people, is there so much inside. Sports or inside baseball talk and no agenda that if you're brand new coming into it, half the stuff you hear on that show are references to something from the past on that show. And I think it would be pretty hard to try and get up to speed quickly because without having listened to all those past episodes you don't have the context that a lot of the current listeners have and I've been listening pretty much since episode one. So for me, it's it's just purely an exercise in trying to imagine what that would be like, because I've, haven't had to do that. I've always been a listener. I was listening to Adam's original podcast before no agenda was on which was the daily source code, which was the podcast he started literally, as he was inventing podcasting.

Alecks:

Yeah, the first, I think it was probably the first few months out were the most confusing. Isn't the right word, but most of the lingo actually comes from. P listeners writing another show. I don't think Adam and John do most of it and they had to, they, every few months they get asked the same questions and they have to really explain everything. So it's it wasn't too hard. And I think along with the trends, everyone else's now.

Gene:

Yup. That makes sense. Now is your background programming or it related, or how did you decide that you're going to be volunteering to work on getting this package up and running

Alecks:

Yeah, career wise and historically a software developer. And I ended up in the it world. So I kinda has the best of both. And I just had the experience of running software called like peer to peer, which is what no gen tube is running on.

Gene:

So how do you have experience with that software previously then? We're not really.

Alecks:

No, not at all. The first time I stood up, I don't know what came over me and I just decided to do it one day. I heard about peer to you about another podcast. I think it was Kota radio. And I spent all night until five in the morning, standing it up.

Gene:

Okay.

Alecks:

no, it was, this is my first time with it.

Gene:

Interesting. Okay. And so you got onto, I'm just trying to walk through the your path and getting into this stuff. So you signed down at some point to no agenda social, which is now locked and closed a full 10,000 users, but you get on there and. You notice that while there was a lot of peer to peer stuff, the aspect that was missing was videos. And that's where this, the software comes in. Right?

Alecks:

Yeah, I think some of that probably came around with talk about the deep pallet forming was enemy to no agenda and it just kinda video is hard to do. And I'll be the first to admit that, but it's, the software makes it easy enough to host for a small session.

Gene:

okay. And I've played around with it. I think I was one of the first people that when I heard you were doing this, jumped in there and started testing and uploading some videos and trying to, frankly, trying to crash it, see what happens, see how stable it is, but it's actually been amazingly stout. I would say.

Alecks:

yeah, one of the benefits is how it's architected in the back end. Thanks to. But th the developers, like most of it's on them, not me. I just put it all together. So when you actually like download a file not only is it, connecting peer to peer, to other people who may be watching at the same time, it's not plenty of them, the server directly either. So it's not really my infrastructure that you'd be questioning at that point, unless you get, 10 million people trying to load it.

Gene:

Sure. Sure. And it, now I've seen a messages on there relating to how much upload potential there is or how much available space. And it's, it seems like there's some fairly large numbers either that, or there's just not much on there using any bandwidth right now, even though I think I've uploaded at least 30, 40 videos on there, this point. So where's the bandwidth coming from and who's paying for it.

Alecks:

It's all hosted on Linode. They're I think they're privately owned and posting company, so they're not publicly traded everything. And I get, when you go with Linode, I think podcasts index uses I'm also you get a certain amount of bandwidth per every resource you have. So I think right now I have about 11 terabytes of available bandwidth per month to use. And we're only, we only hit 8% of that this

Gene:

Yeah, that's what it looked like. And this is a peer to peer up. So how does that make a different from other YouTube type competitors like rumble or something else?

Alecks:

Yeah. So when you go on load up a video anyone else who. Watch us at the same time can help share that bandwidth when they watch it. So if you download part of the video and your web browser, it's going to help optionally upload part of the video to anyone else watching it, which is most useful for when you know, you have thousands of people watching something at the same time.

Gene:

So if you have a video that's not particularly popular, it's just coming directly off the server. And if you have something that's just. Hitting it out of the ballpark and people are sharing it left. And right then the server isn't going to have to absorb all of those requests because it's going to redirect some of that to peer downloads so that somebody that's already downloaded the video and is currently watching it is going to become an upload node for the new person.

Alecks:

Yeah, that's correct. Although it's important to note that you can turn off the peer to peer stuff. If you're. Conscious about that.

Gene:

and is

Alecks:

Another,

Gene:

you

Alecks:

another aspect to it is you can share if another peer tube instance follows your instance it can help share the bandwidth too. So it's not just users

Gene:

Got it. And so if you want to turn that on or off, is that in the settings for the the peer tube or in this case? No agenda tube.

Alecks:

Yeah, you literally just when you log in, you click on your name and you just uncheck, help share videos.

Gene:

Okay. It seems to be pretty quick too on uploads. That's the other thing is it's the uploads to that service are way faster than if I upload something to YouTube. Yeah.

Alecks:

yeah. There's no rate limiting in this case. Because it's just me,

Gene:

all the transcoding that's going on when you upload through YouTube as well.

Alecks:

Actually it does do transcoding. It'll do I have 4k 1440 P all the way down to two 40 P enabled

Gene:

okay. So you've got 4k enabled and I also saw that you've got live streaming support now as well.

Alecks:

yeah, there's a one or two people that actually use it. And some of those videos has gotten paid for otherwise. It's a few thousand views, so I think. Pops life from Texas is the main one. Okay.

Gene:

I'll have to check that out. And so he's just streaming directly, like from OBS or something to this thing

Alecks:

Yeah, I think they use one of the restraint platforms to string multiple places.

Gene:

Okay. Got it. That makes sense. And then. Let's talk a little more about the the podcast index podcast. What's a podcast. The 2.0 stuff, because I think some of the questions I've seen or topics I've seen brought up from you or. Are very good questions. And that is something that I'm actually mean to say is a good question. In case John or Adam are listening because it brings up the question of could this be used for video? Not just audio and if it is used for video, what differences would there be in the RSS feed for video versus audio?

Alecks:

Well, yeah, that's not immediately obvious because Adam is going to be the first one to tell you it can be video, but the problem is Competing with YouTube and storing video and other bandwidth classes has been pretty hard. While a technology like peer tube can help with that it doesn't really, it doesn't really mitigate the risk entirely because it is a lot of data. For example, if an admitted, no agenda. Got really popular. I could probably handle 500,000 and a million views per one video before I started having to pay extra. The problem is with the current RSS ecosystem, you can only really give it one file and typically podcast players while they can play the video. Just expect that to be just one video, maybe it's 10 ADP and. That's a pretty big limitation for people who might might not a lot of storage space and want to download it, or maybe they don't have a 10 80 P screen. There's no reason to play it to an ADP video. So there's one seven 20

Gene:

phones are higher than 10 ADP at this point, I would think

Alecks:

I think it'd be surprised, especially if some of them were budgeted phones, like the Motorolas and especially in other countries outside of the

Gene:

Oh, that's they Asher that's true. But it just seems like all the new ones I read about they're all higher than 10 ADP format. Anyway. So I think the, no, Joan, the no agenda cartoons the shorts are a perfect example of something that is small enough. I wouldn't see a reason not to set something like that up in a podcast to just download automatically every time there's an episode. And then I can watch it even in an area that might have worse phone connectivity, or maybe wouldn't have the 5g, not like you need 5g to download that stuff, but still an area that may be is just experiencing outages on there. Their phone network or are doing speed limiting or something else. So I don't think that the idea of having downloaded videos on your phone is it's not bad at all. In fact, it's being promoted by both Amazon and YouTube in both of those apps. It asks me on a sort of a regular, maybe at least once a month basis, it says, Hey, would you like to download some videos to watch later, directly to your device? Here's a quick link going directly to that. And I, so I think they're clearly they have no problem with storing videos on your devices and in an encrypted form and then playing them back later. So I think that. That will help to get people accustomed to the idea that it's not just audio that you can download. And the inverse is also happening by the way, on some of the podcasting 2.0 related apps for listening to audio podcasts, their default is to not download their default is just to stream each new episode. So when a new episode comes in, it'll notify you that it's available, but it doesn't bother downloading it. And then when you hit play is when it actually starts to download which I think has some pros and cons. I liked the idea of pre downloading the podcast, just like we have been for many years, it appears like some of the apps are not having that as the default method.

Alecks:

Yeah. Even I work from home full time, so I'm always on wifi. I actually started turning on stream by default because half the time I don't even listen to the stuff I download, to be honest. So unless I know I'm going on a trip and I downloaded download them ahead of time. Sometimes it's just not worth it.

Gene:

And I think streaming also provides a more accurate view to the consumption of the contents. Because it's something I've talked about on this show before is. How many podcasts are downloaded on a regular basis and never listened to ever

Alecks:

Oh, that's a lot. I've got several gigabytes on my phone.

Gene:

same here. Say there things that I signed up for, because I like one or two episodes, but I just don't get around to listening to the new episodes because there are other podcasts that I enjoy more or lately. Cause I'm too damn busy making my own on a regular basis. The amount of free time available for listening goes down dramatically at that point.

Alecks:

Yeah. Yeah. It's sometimes I have trouble finishing no agenda every week, especially when we get four hours long, then you add, some of the other hour long podcasts and then network. And. To be clear enemy, I, no agendas really short one, like an episode of that might be 20 megabytes because there's just a couple of minutes. However, one of the things we're proposing with, along with video is dynamic streaming. So you know how you might go on the Twitch is a good example where if you love Twitch on your phone, and then you want to lock your screen, cause you're walking away, it'll switch to audio. And then there's no reason to download all the video.

Gene:

Yeah. YouTube does the same thing. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And. If you're pre downloaded the video, then obviously it's not an issue. It doesn't matter because you already used up the data. But if you're currently streaming, there's no reason to be downloading the video. If the phone is turned off

Alecks:

That's right. And especially if you're streaming, like in 4g or something, I'm not in your mobile data. Data is still data. I don't know about you, but I pay for gigabyte. I use, I don't have an unlimited plan, which is very nice to be able to have that option.

Gene:

on your phone.

Alecks:

Yeah. You use a pay as you go plan

Gene:

Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, no, I've got an unlimited thing, but I think a lot of people probably don't have unlimited.

Alecks:

well, especially if you're you're. Cost conscious about that. You can save a lot of money if you really know how to save data. And this is one of those potential future options that we're working on.

Gene:

Yeah. No for sure. And so what have you found to be your experiences in working with the the podcasting 2.0 working group?

Alecks:

Oh, that's a big question. It's so at the highest level, it feels like the. I mean I'm only 29, so I haven't been around that long, but it feels like the old internet, at least what I've read about it. Right. Everyone's really excited working on new things and we're, everyone's got their own little things they're working on. We're all working out together and it doesn't feel like we have any restrictions because we're doing the wrong way. That's what RSS is about. And that's also what cryptocurrency is about.

Gene:

Yeah. And I would definitely agree with you on that. I am old enough to have been around the internet since before it was available to the public and that. Feeling is at least to some extent, definitely there in the podcasting 2.0 working group, I would agree with you like people that otherwise would be seeing themselves as competitors are sharing data about things that they're finding or standards that they think are easier to implement. With others and all of it is being very quickly reviewed and, assuming nothing negative comes out, it's being incorporated into the standard. And I've worked on a number of different or with, I should say, different standards organizations on a number of different standards including the cloud security Alliance standards back when those were being put together I guess would have been about 15 years ago. And this process is on the one hand, definitely less formal because the group is not managed by a standards body of any size or proportion. That's, it's basically volunteer years. But on the other hand, I'm also quite impressed with the the method of communication with the way that people are exchanging data they're proposing standards is a lot formal than what you might see. In some other groups, it's almost like it's a bunch of volunteers, but they've all been through the process before at some point in their lives. And so they're following the commonly adhere to standards while proposing changes in submissions to a standard that's in development, which is really cool to see for me. Anyway. Maybe I'm nerding out on that a little too much.

Alecks:

Well, yeah, I think as Dave put it in the last episode of a podcast in two point, Oh, we all have day jobs. Some of them are, some of us are striving not to be, not to have day jobs, but For me, this is just a hobby and I enjoy helping everyone out. I have a unique skillset of seeing, where everything is going and helping people from every aspect do what they want. Some of them are, some of them are learning new languages. Some of them are new to programming. Some of them have been around the block, so it's, we got a little bit of everyone and everyone just wants to see it succeed.

Gene:

exactly. And the end result, what came out of Adam's work last time? It was Adam de Wiener and I'm sure other people involved in that as well, but certainly very much. Adam was at the core of this. And what came out of it is really. What Apple has been using with very few changes for the last 18 years. So it's it is surprisingly robust. And also the reason that we have a need for 2.0 is because Apple who's was given. The the standard has really not done much. They made a few tweaks early on in the process, but for the most part the standard has not changed for podcasting in many years. It's good to see the excitement and the positive attitudes, and frankly, get to see a bunch of new apps or old apps. Introducing new features. And has gotten people like me excited to add all the functionality when creating the podcasts, because it, I talked about in the recent show, as well as you do have the chicken and egg scenario, where do you really want to spend the time and effort that it takes to make your podcast or in your case videos be fully taking advantage of 2.0 features if there's no. Possibility of people watching it because, or listening to it because the apps aren't there yet. And of course the app developers, what incentive do they have to develop the apps until the know they know that the podcasts are including these features. And so they're going to get used by the app. It's like why waste a bunch of time, coding something brand new into your app that no one's using.

Alecks:

Yeah. Yes and no. I think I actually disagree with you your there, because what Adam and Dave have done is they formed an independent body that has that, but they don't really have any stake in the game. They just want to work on the standard itself. And they can do that while communicating with everyone else who has a piece of the puzzle. So if we can create new features that make sense to everyone without having to worry about, the wasting of developer time on making something, a pack, an app isn't getting implemented, because what they're doing is they're talking to both at once and. Just saying, Hey, we're going to do it. And they're not wasting years doing it with the standards, body, and what I've done with no agenda tube is I've gone to the, how I am a host. So I'm working out some of those podcasts into an all features and working with application developers and helping them influence on that or asking them what w what they're interested in what they are interested in.

Gene:

Yeah, but I don't think that's actually disagreeing with me. I think that's totally in line with what I'm saying is that they're the standards body, but both groups on the other sides. They need to have some incentive to spend extra time. So for podcasters, for people putting out, creating content adding a bunch of extra fields and chapters and icons and images and doing a transcription of your podcasts, which could cost, five, 10 bucks an episode doing all those things, if nobody's going to actually be able to utilize that. Is a waste of my time. So in order for me to feel good about spending the time, do that when creating a podcast, I need to have some reassurance that people are going to be able to use this stuff. And it's, that's the counter, the chicken and egg thing with developers is that if they add these features, which you know, you're going to have to pay a developer, if you're a creator, if you're not a solo guy doing it yourself, Then you're paying somebody to work on all these new features. If you're a solo guy, then you've just dedicated a bunch of hours that could be spent watching Netflix or doing other things, to creating new features for the for an app that you have no idea how many users are going to be able to take advantage of. And that's the part that I think Adam and Dave and the rest of the folks there. I've done. A great job of is just adding things to the standard, but really being evangelists for the idea of pod guessing 2.0 and convincing everybody else that it's worth their time to create 2.0 content and to create 2.0 applications.

Alecks:

Yeah, it's quite frankly. So I'm a huge open source guy. It's an extension of the open source philosophy. It's doing everything out in the open. It's saying, Hey, we have this, let's all work out together. And everyone's kinda taking the responsibility of what they want to work on.

Gene:

exactly. That sounds cool. I'm glad we got an opportunity to chat a little bit. So is there anything else you want to mention before we wrap up here?

Alecks:

I'm working. With a damn Jennifer, I'm trying to get a version of animated, no agenda, podcast ready. It's not ready yet. However, eventually I want to be able to add the whole value for value Bitcoin thing to that with no agenda tube and have it searchable on any podcast app. So that's where, you know what I'm working on.

Gene:

that's very cool. And that's a, it brings up a very good point that we didn't specifically mention is that certainly for audio podcasts, we've been talking about the. A couple of test apps that already have, or I shouldn't say texts, but a couple of podcasting apps that are testing the ability to do streaming donations right now, but nothing like that has been done for video. So you're definitely on the very bleeding edge of that. So that was very cool.

Alecks:

Yeah. If no genitive gets. Really popular for some reason, that's the only way it's going to survive Which I haven't really asked for donations.

Gene:

No that's a very good point. And I think things are moving in the direction of micro donations. Anyway. And people are just going to start getting used to the idea that if you do something, you will get charged for it, whether it's a donation or just a fee or whatever it is. But the beauty is when you're not using it imagine that Photoshop worked that way, adobe products. A lot of us pay 50 bucks a month for access. And a lot of us haven't touched those for several months because we only need them occasionally. And how cool would it be to just pay by the minute? For Photoshop use. And if I use it for a couple hours, okay. Then,$20 goes out of my account to Adobe and then the next month I don't use it at all. So my payment is zero, but it's still sitting there and install on my computer, ready to use. I love that idea. Yeah.

Alecks:

Yeah, I see it going down the whole stack. Right now it's just with podcasting and, we were talking about video, but at the same time, there's all this other open-source software that kind of goes ignored behind the scenes. They're just guys like me working out in the passion project, but I'm sort of, it's critical to the entire internet. And if we can include some of that, if they, even, if they get 0.1% value block that could go a long way to help him keep everything open. And, we can go all the way up the stack, if we can integrate this and in a Mastodon or something and have, shared scientific papers, for example they could go, although it could go all the way

Gene:

Absolutely. All right. Cool. Well, Alex, I'm glad you were able to join me for this short segment here, but I'm sure we'll touch base again and keep keep the work going. We all appreciate you providing the video functionality for no agenda.

Alecks:

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Gene:

I hope you enjoyed that interview with Alex. He's doing some great stuff. This episode has been brought to you by Bruce city, Mike, along with a few anonymous donors. It's thanks to people like Bruce city, Mike, that I'm able to spend the time that I have been in creating this slew of episodes for you guys. I love doing podcasting, but there are also some costs associated with hosting and the creation of these episodes and having donations come in, certainly makes me not have to think about having to pay for these costs directly out of my own pocket and really focus on making the best episodes that I can. I've hope you guys are enjoying it. If you are using an app that has set payments enabled, I would certainly appreciate that you turn that on or boost during the portions of the podcasts that you feel are the most interesting. In fact boosts will eventually, although not quite yet, we'll have timestamps that I can compare to the episode itself and be able to see during which portions of the episode. People were hitting the boost button. This is some of the cool tech coming out of podcasting 2.0, that is really exciting for us to be able to use. And right now, of course, people that are using this represent less than 1% of the population. And if you're one of those 1%, then I appreciate you being a beta tester as well as donator, of course. And for everybody else, people listening to this podcast on podcast apps that maybe you've had on your system for a long time. the link to my PayPal donation page is in the description of every podcast and certainly the traditional method of us dollars rather than Bitcoin is very much appreciated as well. That money is what I actually use to pay the bills for hosting and other service fees associated with the podcast, the Bitcoin that I'm receiving through the network. I generally funneled back to other podcasters by listening to their podcasts while donating. Thanks again to everybody that is donating the podcast. Don't forget to tell other friends about it. If you enjoy it and stay tuned for more episodes with interviews coming your way this week, and probably a good check of next week. Take care.