How To Fix The Economics Of Online Content? With Keyan Kousha & Stacker News

Keyan Kousha is the founder of Stacker News, an online forum where you can share and discuss articles and content without the attention manipulation of social media. Instead of “likes” or invisible algorithms, Stacker News uses Bitcoin as an incentive mechanism, and for ranking content.

Stacker News rewards users for thoughtful contributions, and enables you to support your favourite content with micro-payments via the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

Stacker News - https://stacker.news/

SUPPORT ME - https://www.thetransformationofvalue.com/support

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
It is a very violent time when atechnology is emerging because
you're you're, you're making more trade-offs than you will
have to later when, when you're adopting it early.
Hello, I am Cody Ellingham and this is the transformation of
Value, a place for asking questions about freedom, money
and creativity. My guest today is Kian Kusha,

(00:22):
the founder of Stacker News. Stacker News is an online forum
where you can share and discuss articles and content without the
attention manipulation of socialmedia.
Instead of likes or invisible algorithms, Stacker News uses
Bitcoin as an incentive mechanism and for ranking
content, rewarding users for thoughtful contributions and

(00:43):
enabling you to support your favorite content with micro
payments via the Bitcoin Lightning Network key and
welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Cory.
I've been a big fan of Second News for a couple of years now.
It's pretty much the first thingI'll look at in the morning.
It's where I like to get a lot of my news, and I find it does a

(01:04):
great job of surfacing things that are interesting to me.
In short, it feels like an Oasisof calm in this world of noise.
But it's been pretty much four years, I think, since you
launched Second News. What have you learned since then
about how to build a good community?
Oh gosh, I've, I mean, I, it's, it's, I think the, the biggest

(01:30):
thing I've learned is that it's not much different than what you
want in a community in person. It's kind of what you'd expect.
You want thoughtful people helping each other out, doing
things for each other to the extent that they can.

(01:52):
And that that's, that's, that's most of what it is.
It doesn't really doesn't get much, much more complicated than
that in terms of what, what makes a good community.
It's online, it's a, it's a bit different, but I think most,
most of what we seek online is like like a hyper, a hyper

(02:14):
version of what we get in personand so, or a greater quantity of
what we might get in person, more efficient delivery of
community of what we might get in person.
So a lot of it's the same. It's where people join some
group, or some group of people, where the sum of them all

(02:36):
together is somehow greater thantheir parts, where their life is
better, more full, more productive.
That's what though. At least that's how I view it at
this stage. Yeah, that's fascinating.
You know, there's this kind of interesting difference between

(02:58):
the way the Internet is this globalizing force where you can
connect with anyone versus what I think is the innate desire for
local communities and people around you.
And it, it does feel like secondnews has been able to make that
happen. It feels like a very comfortable
place. And I hate to say that, you
know, a safe place in the sense that you can have these nuanced

(03:20):
conversations and, and in the sense it does feel like it also
comes back to the incentives. And so I mean that that word
sounds a little bit utilitarian.You know, it's all about the
incentives, but it does seem to make a difference.
And so you've written a little bit about natural communities
and how this project was all inspired from, was it the Austin

(03:41):
Bitcoin divisions made-up originally that you were?
Into Yeah, I went to the Austin bid devs.
And you felt something there that was sort of like a like in
real life, there was this community that people, you know,
kind of connecting and, and you were trying to look for a way to
bring that online, right? Yeah, yeah.
I'd been a a fan of online communities like Hacker News for

(04:04):
years, and I'd found I'd learneda lot in those communities that
I wouldn't have learned otherwise.
I'd learned things that without the Internet, without a site
like Hacker News, I might have had to have a, you know, 10,000
friends to tell me about all thethings that were happening in
technology. And instead I could find that on

(04:27):
Hacker News. And then I moved to Austin
trying to get closer to Bitcoiners and I went to the
meet ups here and they were, they were great.
They were, they were basically what I was looking for on Hacker
News for technology, but but forBitcoin.
And I couldn't find anywhere online that that had the Hacker
News feel. And so I had to move to Austin

(04:48):
to get it. And I'm so frustrated that I
couldn't find anything on the Internet that resembled Hacker
News but for Bitcoin stuff. And that was kind of kind of the
beginning. And then shortly after I
discovered the Lightning Networkand there was a project called
Sphinx Chat, which still exists today, really clever, uses a

(05:11):
Lightning Network to protect chats like big group chats
protect spam. And Ryan Gentry talked about it
at one of these bit devs. And I was like, oh, I can create
a hacker news like site for Bitcoin stuff using the

(05:32):
lightning network to make it sane and and comfy and prevent a
lot of bad stuff from happening.That usually requires a lot of
human subjectivity that ends up I think on some level eroding.
What makes a community good is like is the kind of inclusivity

(05:55):
and the like, and especially online communities pseudonymity.
So that's that's kind of the where bit devs plays.
Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned hacking news and I
mean I have used that before you.
I mean, Reddit is also more a more distant kind of resembling

(06:16):
this this forum, this kind of messaging board system.
There is resemblances there technically, but I really do
feel like there's something special about stacking news and
that hacking news. It's, it's a clique, you know,
like there's certain things you can't talk about and there's a
certain expectation about the way you should approach certain
topics. And there is a groupthink.
And I don't get that same vibe with with Second news.

(06:37):
And maybe this is because I'm a Bitcoiner myself, but it feels a
little bit more like you can have like an actual nuanced
discussion. And have you reflected on that
difference, especially with Hacker News and sort of the
culture? Yeah, it's it's it's it's hard
to tell what of stacker news is stacker news because of the
incentives. What is what is Stacker news

(06:57):
because it's small. I had a conversation with my
friend this morning about about that.
And we just, we were like, OK, stacker news gets 10 times
bigger. Do the market dynamics really
preserve this this like nuanced discussion and these thoughtful
this thoughtful feedback I get to why be as vulnerable?
My contention is yes, I think it, I think it's mostly the

(07:20):
market incentives that make it work that way and not the size,
but yeah, yeah. And then to the point about it,
like Hacker News being click ish, I I get a lot of complaints
from people who are like in the periphery of Bitcoin, people who
are working on these like other layer twos that kind of get
marginalized among bitcoiners. And the feedback I get is that

(07:44):
Stacker news is an echo chamber.So I think it just, and I
imagine if you're within the click on Hacker News, you don't.
You don't feel it. Yeah, you don't, You don't sense
it. And so perhaps we, we do have a
cliquish nature and I don't think that's even necessarily
bad. I think I, I think you don't,
you don't want it. Maybe in a case where the group

(08:07):
is doing something sort of pathological and to their
detriment, but in the case where, you know, it's keeping
out scams or things that are that are bad, it's probably
good. So it, it could be, but we still
get a lot of content that's posted about those other things.
They just don't get much attention.

(08:28):
And they might do well if those people who posted about those
things brought other people who like them and talked about them.
But the the nature of those scams is they don't really have
organic participants really. They have promoters and
promoters don't really want to have thoughtful consult
conversations about those things.
They mostly want to talk about how they're going to trade it in

(08:52):
the right way or whatever. And I just don't think that
perhaps the format, the format almost filters that out to some
extent. Well, it's interesting.
So there's two points there. You also write that your
assumption is that we'll stack and use Bitcoin fixes be
incentives by having users stakesomething other than just pseudo
reputation. And through Bitcoin, they earn

(09:15):
rewards that are worth somethingin the external world.
And there's something quite powerful about that because
there's not really any rate limit or, or or or anything
slowing you down from spinning up a new Twitter account or
whatever. And, you know, you get these bot
farms and all sorts of stuff andthat's got its own externalities

(09:35):
that are that can be the the theattitude of somewhere like X is
that, you know, you just broadcast this stuff out and it
does feel like, you know, there is a reward in second news for
this kind of more nuanced content and a focus.
But or I wanted to just pick up on something you mentioned
around these like people on the fringes, marginal layer to

(09:57):
conversations, you know, people who maybe don't fit within a
strict, so-called Bitcoin maximalist lens.
What's your experience been withthose kinds of people that maybe
they've been haven't, but they say it's an echo chamber, but
they still get value from it. Or like what?
How have they felt about stacking news as a community?
Yeah, I mean, I haven't, I haven't had a super in depth

(10:18):
conversation with them, but theytend to crop up every now and
again when a conversation about static growth or something like
that comes up with Stacker news and they're like Stacker news
will never get very big. It's an echo chamber for Bitcoin
maximalist. You can't talk about really
anything else but but Bitcoin and I'm so I mean I'm the type

(10:40):
of person where I'm sympathetic to nearly.
I can't see everything. I can't tell everything that's
going on. You know, I, if they're going to
use their, their bodies senses and their minds processing power
to communicate information abouta product that I'm working on,
I'm going to listen. And so I, I think that it, I,

(11:04):
you know, that could be true. I, that could be a problem from
the perspective of a large number of people is that things
that they want to talk about aren't present there and they're
not treated properly. And I'm not sure how to change
that. We don't do that.
We that isn't an intention of usto marginalized those

(11:24):
communities, but there there might be in the incentives of
Stacker news and and the way it works, there might be, there
might be an indirect consequence.
And yeah. Yeah, that's interesting because
I have a few friends who, you know, love coming onto Stacker
news and they're not what I would think of as, you know,

(11:45):
hardcore maximalists in the sense that they're not they're
into Bitcoin, but they're not that into it.
And I think, you know, look at some of the like the writing and
the photography and the philosophy and stuff there.
And it's like, and it's, it's kind of an eclectic, very
interesting mix of things that in a way, man reminds me a lot
of the old Internet. And there's this website I used
to go to, you might know it and it's called everything to dot

(12:07):
com. Have you ever come across that?
I might. It's kind of like, you know,
this kind of long format, very simple, you know, pages, but
long format articles that peoplewrote.
And it was really popular, like early 2000s.
And it's like you'd find these essays on like the history of
anything. And it's kind of like, kind of
like Wikipedia, but a lot more creative.

(12:29):
And it was also mixed in there with like people's blogs and
their stories. And that's just this
discoverability that to this day, I still look back at that
and think, man, some of these like short stories that were
written by some Nim or these like reflections on, you know,
the history of, of even some of the stuff we're interested in,
like encryption and technology. You know, they just had this

(12:50):
kind of human touch, even thoughthey were Nims.
And it's just stands as like a moment in the Internet that in a
way now it's very old school, but it was very, it was very
powerful. And I think this, this also
reflects something, you know, maybe before our time, but the,
the, the Usenet era. And I don't know if you were

(13:11):
around for that, but no, it seemed like, you know, but this
was a thing, a moment that our, you know, our ancestors kind of
went through where there was this, you know, this, this new
thing, the Internet and people could get involved and they
could communicate and there was an etiquette for the way you
talk. But then there's, you know,
famously the, the, the eternal September, you know, these AOL
opened it all up and, and this flood of new users came in and,

(13:35):
you know, that etiquette kind ofgot diluted.
But it just feels like there is a sweet spot with stacking news
where you can have these conversations.
And I wonder if you've thought about the relationship with
something like the old Bitcoin talk forums as well and sort of
where those have gone since say 2013 compared to today?
Yeah, well, I wasn't. I mean, I wasn't really even

(13:55):
around Bitcoin back then. So I didn't get to, I didn't get
to participate in the heyday of Bitcoin talk, unfortunately.
So I don't, I don't really, I don't really know.
I do know I would find myself onthe forum occasionally much
later seeing things that were really interesting and names
that I would remember Ogs that had kind of stuck around and
ones, and for the for the most part ones that had kind of

(14:18):
disappeared. And then a lot of them having,
you know, complex journeys after, you know, maybe thinking
that blockchain could provide other types of services on the
Internet and maybe not. But yeah, I and now, but then I,
I remember, I recall, you know, having this, having this desire

(14:38):
to find a Hacker News. I was searching on the Internet
for something like Hacker News for her Bitcoin stuff and I
found myself on Bitcoin talk trying to get into it, but I
would run into so much spam and so many scams that I could, I
couldn't tolerate it. I have like a low, I have like a
low threshold for, for that kindof stuff.
I don't, I don't like to be assaulted by too much noise.

(15:01):
I get I get very frustrated and and you know, a lot platforms
like Hacker News, they have verythey have most of the product is
probably on the on the like filtering side of preventing
spam, preventing bad people frombanning people, all those kinds
of things. That's what they do to preserve

(15:22):
it. And I think Bitcoin talk
attempting to toe a line, I think maybe got got kind of
overwhelmed with that kind of stuff.
And then you also have the issueof like, how do I find things
don't surface, things surface kind of weird in an old form
system like that where I think it's primarily based on
activity. So it has like a huge recency

(15:43):
bias in terms of comment and participation rather than
content quality. And you'll get, you know, things
that have high comments are often maybe low quality.
They're just, you know, controversial.
And so there's a lot of, yeah, there's a, there's a lot of a
lot of things that can go wrong when you bring people together

(16:05):
on the Internet at operating under pseudonyms.
And that was my perception of Bitcoin talk was sort of a, it
survived while it was small. I'm not sure.
And it's still, it's still, it'sstill used by a lot of people
today, But I it's not a place I can go and feel like it's worth

(16:26):
it. Yeah.
Well, and even, I mean, there's these characters we have on
stacking news, right? And I think there's something
quite endearing about that. And again, it does.
Maybe this is me being a millennial getting nostalgic
about the old Internet of my childhood, but it just feels
like, you know, it takes me backto a simpler time.
And even the design of it, you know, it's, it's it's very clean

(16:49):
and easy to use on your phone, on any device.
You know, you're not being assaulted by these images and
these kind of dopamine hits and honestly key and you strike me
as it's a very creative and thoughtful person.
And I, I wonder how that has fitinto what you've done here.
You know, this, this kind of clean minimalist design, this

(17:10):
kind of sense of a community, the sense of creating something
deeper. Like have you reflected on that
even though you're you're a techperson?
Like do you consider yourself a creative person as well or?
Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't think of myself in, in
terms of positive labels, which I, I don't know, I don't know

(17:31):
what to make of that. But I, I don't, I've been told
I'm creative before. I used to, I was mostly I was, I
spent my early 20s doing a lot of art.
So I did, I was used to be an oil painter for a period of
time, did a lot of graffiti. You know, I had a had some, some
reckless times too during that, that period.

(17:52):
And then I finally found tech after a long time.
But yeah, I mean, I think I'm, you know, if I, if we, if we did
like a personality test, I'm probably high openness relative
to most people. So and I think that.
And then I'm also, I think basedon the test I've taken, high in
conscientiousness. And I think those are like,

(18:13):
those are the things for creativity.
That's kind of that's kind of what I got.
Yeah, sorry, I don't mean to put, put labels out there.
I, I have the same issue. I I, I don't like, you know,
people like what do you do, Cody?
And I'm not mad. I can't even tell you.
But what I'm getting at, though,is if I reflect on again, kind
of the the archetype, the founding archetype that comes

(18:34):
into something when I reflect onunit Zuckerberg or, you know,
one of these kinds of charactersand you think, man, you know,
this kind of engineers are kind of quantifying things or numbers
algorithmic. But even though there's a
simplicity in this clean list that I can use, it's like that
kind of founding ethos feels like it comes through.
And that's why I think I respondto and, and a couple of friends
I know who, who use it in real life are a little bit more

(18:57):
creative. Like 1's a musician.
They're kind of thinkers, philosophers.
And there's this kind of vibe going.
And I don't know, man, maybe we're all just kind of syncing
up on, on this light nebula of the Internet.
But I'm, I, I feel, I feel it, you know?
Yeah, Yeah. I think that definitely makes
sense. I'm not.
I'm trying. I think I'm just, I'm trying to
be, I'm trying to express myselfthrough Stacker news.

(19:19):
That's kind of that's kind of the way I view it as I'm trying
to pour my life's energy. I'm trying to like transmute it
in my time and my, and my life'senergy and my experiences and to
a product such that it brings value to other people and it
somehow can be transferred and have an impact on other people.

(19:42):
And I think that that probably does register.
I think that's what I think that's what anyone who is, who
needs expression or just simply wants it, that's what they
that's what they end up strivingfor in the end.
Yeah, Yeah. Well, the other one that's sort
of, you know, I live here in Japan and I'm part of this

(20:02):
writers group and it's kind of really incredible.
You know, we've all started using sub stack and like sharing
each other's work and we meet upin real life and it's kind of,
it's very quaint and kind of, you know, fun but.
It's, it's, it's, it's incredible to see like the way
those real life communities can then be connected virtually.

(20:22):
And, and it just feels like a very big change to what I guess
I grew up with, which was the Facebook Instagram era and this
kind of mass panopticon thing. And it may, maybe this is
something that younger people are already starting to wake up
to. I think, you know, Gen.
Z feels like they're much more interested in like private
groups and like small chats and and kind of getting off of being

(20:44):
this like public persona, at least from a lot of the stuff
I've seen that I mean, not obviously not everyone, but a
lot of people do seem to be migrating towards that kind of
more local thing, you know, things like signal groups for
your friends. It feels like there is this kind
of move, this pendulum swing back to smaller, more intimate

(21:06):
groups perhaps. And I don't know if you have any
thoughts maybe on that. You know, I think I've observed
that too. I think that's just the way
technology goes as we go really hard in One Direction and then
we're we end up realizing our mistake and we kind of swing
back. So I do think, I do think I see
that happening. I think most people use a lot of

(21:29):
these platforms now in some sense to promote themselves or
simply collect followers as a kind of a number go up metric
for themselves and or, you know,in the hopes that later they'll
be able to somehow monetize their followership.
It's less about kind of companionship than it used to

(21:50):
be. And I I don't know who's to
blame for that exactly. You know, it might be sort of
like a mass hysteric kind of phenomena where we're all just
kind of being kind of, you know,making this mistake together.
Or it might be the algorithm or it might be the advertisers.
But it is definitely a a mistake.

(22:14):
I think it I think it is. I think it is wrong.
I don't think it's what we want to do.
And I do, I do. I do see that as reassuring.
I think. I think it's exactly what people
want is especially with people you know or people you have you
otherwise trust for some reason have have small conversations.
I, you know, I'm at when you look at like some of these big,

(22:35):
big celebrities, it's not like Idon't I don't think who they are
is their is like represented in their Twitter feed.
Maybe aside from Elon Musk. I think that's true.
Elon Musk might be an exception to that, but I think about
someone like Jack Dorsey. Where is he spending his time on
the Internet? It's probably in these private
chats. I mean, you, you can't show up

(22:56):
somewhere as Jack Dorsey and notjust get mobbed by, you know,
people with mixed intentions. So yeah.
Well, a keyword that comes out for me is web of trust.
And this is something, you know,back in New Zealand we sort of
developed this. We had a few Telegram groups and
signal groups with some of my Bitcoin friends and for various

(23:18):
reasons, you know, it seemed appropriate at the time to
really be focused on web of trust.
And so if you trust someone, they can then invite someone
else to join this group and it basically self regulated quite
well. And we still have some of these
groups going. And I compare that with like
open, you know, back in the heyday, 2021, sort of, you know,
Bull Run, whatever, you know, had these like open groups where

(23:39):
there was like scammers and people getting like rugged and
like all sorts of issues. And that seemed to have made a
huge difference where we've got this group that's based on, you
know, if you trust someone, thenby virtue I'm going to trust
that person too. And it seemed to work, you know,
and I imagine that at all layersof, you know, human relations is
that web of trust is going to play a role, right?

(24:02):
Yeah, I think it's, I think it'san abstraction on something that
occurs naturally in humans. I think, you know, the digital
webs of trust that we form. I think it's just, you know, the
Internet's manifestation of that, you know, the and, and I
think we use explicitly, we use something we call web of trust

(24:25):
to rank content and to determinewhether someone's someone's zaps
are more authentic and you know than someone else's.
And we do that. We do that based on their zaps
relationships to other people. If you and I ZAP the same
things, you and I trust each other's zaps.
And so if you ZAP something and I want to be more likely to see

(24:46):
it, if I ZAP something, you might be more likely to, you
want to be more likely to see it.
And, and then we extend that outfurther.
It has like this kind of, you know, the, the transitive
nature, this friends of friends thing.
And it has this kind of decay asit kind of goes out like I, I
may trust your friends of friendhalf of what I trust you and

(25:07):
then I might trust their friendshalf as much as I trust them and
so on. And I think that is, you know,
that is just how we naturally want to do things 'cause it is,
you know, agents, humans are self interested agents to a
large degree, I think for good and you know, to some to some
extent for bad. And so trust plays a critical

(25:29):
role in assessing whether you want to partner or engage with
another human being. So I think it makes a lot of
sense to have webs of trust everywhere.
Yeah. Well, something I wanted to ask
you about, which I've been thinking about key and as this
idea of walled gardens, and I think this gets a hot take from

(25:53):
one end of the spectrum, which is that, you know, walled
gardens are bad. We've got to break these walls
down and go open. Yet I also think that there is a
nuance because we know, you know, if you just have an open
telegram group where anyone can come in or you, you know, some
kind of open group, doesn't matter what the tickers, you are
going to have issues. And you know, some people coming
in who are bad actors. And this is a classic issue.

(26:16):
The bad apple spoils the lot. And I think I want to hear your
thoughts because I get the impression that you have thought
about this deeply, and the nuance between walled gardens
and open and closed systems. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think
everyone, everyone kind of everyone tends to define a

(26:36):
walled garden to suit themselves.
And no one. And we use a walled garden to
mean something bad. And so no one uses a walled
garden to describe their own work or their own whatever, even
though, even though in reality, and you know, if you come across
a walled garden, it's quite niceif you can somehow get inside of
it. And so I, my, my intention with

(27:01):
Stanker news was to not whateversomeone might think it as was
not to create a wallet's garden.It was to create a garden.
So I just want to create a garden.
And to the extent that there arewalls, I wanted them to be fined
by things that everyone has access to so long as they are
motivated enough, which is money.
And so I didn't want it to be gated by identity.

(27:22):
I didn't want it to be gated by who, you know, web of trust by
itself tends to be very exclusive.
So I might have a very hard timecontacting Cody if I have no
relationship to him with you know, which I might not if in a,
in a, in a world of 8 billion people.
And so, but if, if Cody's willing to accept an invitation

(27:45):
to talk from anyone and I have, but for the small price of 10
SAT's, I, I can get access to Cody.
And so that was, that's, that was my, that's the, that's the
wall. That's the only wall that I
wanted on a garden. When people, there are people in
Bitcoin describe Stacker news asa walled garden and they mean it
as like in a bad way. They mean that the content

(28:08):
itself and may perhaps even their identity on Stacker News
cannot, cannot leave very effectively.
And I'm sympathetic to that. I think that actually is, you
know, it's not a, it's not a quality that I want Stacker News
to have, but I do want it to, I do want it to be a garden.
I don't want it to be a trash heap, a Wallace trash heap.

(28:31):
That is not what I want it to be.
I want it to be a Wallace garden.
But there is I, there is I thinkto, to, to keep it a garden.
We need the we need, we need a wall that is or or a gate that
is very easy to enter with payment, but we perhaps do not
need a wall such that people can't view the garden or

(28:57):
participate in in gardening easily, those kinds of things
and maybe even leave to go to another garden.
I think is what a lot of how a lot of people frame this now is
like if I'm growing my watermelons and and on Stack and
Stacker News's garden, I cannot move to rent its garden with
those watermelons trivially so therefore it's a walled garden.

(29:21):
That's bad and I would agree with them.
It'd be nice for them to be ableto leave with the watermelons
and go somewhere else. I.
Yeah. I wonder if there's a nuance to
that though, because I, I'm aware that there, there has been
a few people who have made that critique, the walled garden
critique of Second news and I disagree with that.
And I think those are actually bad faith attacks on what you

(29:42):
have done, which is build this incredible community.
But, and, and this idea of, you know, you, you pay to get in,
you know, you, there's are many things, you know, I live near
Tokyo, it's like 20 million people.
You know, there's very there's many things that are like nice
to pay for and you get a bit of service, right.
But I actually wonder, coming back to kind of the, the

(30:03):
engineering mind versus the creative mind that there's
almost this kind of idea that, you know, somehow, you know, I
just, if I could only port my content over, if I could only
bring it with me. And, and I just, I sometimes
wonder exactly what is meant by that, because identity is one
thing, but there's a spirit and there's a time.

(30:23):
And, you know, you could easily just go into Bitcoin talk and
bring all of that content to a new forum, but maybe no one's
going to use it. And it becomes more like an
archive. And I mean, stacking users, you
know, it's all public stuff. So, you know, you can scrape it
if you really wanted to, But it feels like the essence of it,
the kind of the soul of it is this web of trust and these
people who are using it and they're coming there every day.

(30:44):
And I don't know if you can justlike migrate there very easily.
And I think there's like an indescribable quality that maybe
an engineering mind wouldn't pick up on that.
Well, if we just could port it through some API to this thing,
you know that it would, you know, it would be OK.
But there's, there's an essence I feel, well, I mean, what do
you think about that? I think I think that's

(31:04):
insightful. I'm yeah, I think that I think
that that's there's like a context in which we engage with
other people. And so this conversation, I'm
not going to, I'm not going to have this conversation with my
mom. I could, you know, maybe I, you
know, this is a podcast is a walled garden because I can't

(31:26):
port this conversation and have it exactly with my mom.
It won't, you know, it won't make sense.
It's your fault, Cody. But yeah, I just think, I think
that I think the context really matters.
There are, there is, there are certain kinds of content, like,
you know, a post about somethingreally interesting that might,
that is portable and perhaps that deserves to be portable,

(31:47):
but it, but it's not like the human language itself is a
protocol. And so I can copy and paste
human language and that is there.
So it is portable. So there's like a, there is a
lot of nuance here, but I'm, I'msympathetic to the idea that it,
it shouldn't be copy paste. It should be more automatic.

(32:09):
It should be programmable. It should be, it should be so
much better. It should be whatever it can be.
It should give people as much freedom as possible and, and as
easy as possible. I'm sympathetic to all that.
So but I am also defensive of the context, the garden, the
soil, the quality of experience in the garden, the all, all of

(32:29):
those kinds of things. I don't want those to be
degraded and service of, of whatever someone else thinks is
is ideal. And I, you know, I think in most
cases where they have that criticism, they haven't spent a
lot of time on Stacker news or they, they just don't really
care and haven't given it much thought that would and.

(32:53):
Yeah, if I, if I can make and I,if I can make a proposition
here, I actually wonder, there'sone person in particular.
I wonder if that person is actually the right vibe for
stacking news because there's a certain humility required.
There's a certain openness required to be using hacking
news, I think, or not required, but it certainly suits a
collegiate, you know, open discourse.

(33:15):
And you know, you know, if that's not what someone's into,
then, you know, they can go and use X and shout and X or they
can go and use some other platform and use that.
But I feel like in a way, it's almost like, I mean the old
school subculture idea, you know, we've got our, we've got
our, we've got our hood man, we've got our place where we
hang out. And I love it.

(33:35):
It's, it's, it's, it's because Imean, certainly in the early,
maybe earlier 2000s, you know, certainly in the 20th century,
you know, subcultures were a thing.
And then we saw Facebook and theFacebook phenomena and we just
saw the concrete utilitarian infrastructure of this place.
And you have one, one color for everyone.
You have one thing for everyone.And that was like the killer

(33:58):
that was like the highway through the, the, the eclectic
neighborhood in Louisiana or something that just like
demolished all of this fabric. And now maybe it's healing.
Maybe we're starting to get places like Stacker news.
I mean, there's a few other places.
You know, I have my own signal groups and my friends, my art
friends. I got my Bitcoin friends on
other groups and we've got theselittle like patchworks and it's

(34:19):
kind of like I wonder, I'm really interested key and like
urban planning and like cities and like what makes a good city?
And like, what is it about Austin that makes us so much
more like Liverpool and hip thenlike, I don't know, Dallas or
what makes, you know, a small East Coast city, like really fun
and, and, and easy to, you know,easy to live in versus like Los

(34:40):
Angeles. And there's something there, but
it's like density, like community.
There's all these pieces, right?And maybe that's an interesting
way to frame this, right, is like cities versus, you know,
digital communities? Yeah.
No, I think that. I think that's really
interesting. I've had, I've tried to draw
that comparison myself. Unfortunately, I haven't gone
very deep in the urban planning sense, but I do, I do try to

(35:02):
pull ideas from urban planning into Stacker News or I have, I
have plans to pull certain ideasfrom urban planning into Stacker
news. Like one of one of the more
popular books on urban planning.I forget the name of it, but
it's a woman who lived in New York City and she's describing.
Yeah, that's that's probably it.Yeah.
But I, I was just, I was stuck on the idea of sidewalks being

(35:25):
the critical element that makes a city really a city like makes
it a real like a really like a, a very nice city to be in.
That is like self policing. And because that makes a lot of
sense for Stacker news, given that we want it to be self
policing. We don't want to have police.

(35:46):
We want citizen police like theyhave, like they had in New York
City at one time as the author RQS.
And so how do I bring, how do I bring wider sidewalks?
How do I bring more sidewalks tosoccer news?
How do I, how do I make more functional sidewalks?
I think about that kind of stuff.
I do think about, to the extent that I think about city

(36:06):
planning, you know, our territory territories.
I, I, I want to give the territory founders as many dials
as possible. Territories are like Stacker
News's version of subreddits. I don't want to give the
territory founders as many dialsas possible such that they get
to decide whether their city is Boston or, or their territory is
is Boston or LA or whatever. And you know, with perhaps to

(36:30):
their own peril decide, decide incorrectly how to get there.
But I do. I do think it's a great analogy.
I think it lines up perfectly. Translating.
Translating them is like hard though.
I don't know how to do it exactly.
Yeah, no, so I'm, I'm pretty sure it's yeah.
Jane Jacobs, the The Death and Life of Great American Cities

(36:50):
that you're referring to. And she, she was writing in the
1950s, nineteen 60s. And at that time, New York was
like, you know, putting these highways through, you know,
Manhattan and like just destroying these communities.
And in a sense, I mean, the the New York of today's is a very
different place to what it once was.
And there's another concept that's quite interesting that

(37:10):
she talks about a lot, which is like the watching eyes.
And so, you know, you'd have these, like, small, yeah, I
don't know, the communities and like Manhattan.
And you'd have, like, the grandma sitting on the stoop,
like watching. You would have the shop owner,
like, all of these different people just kind of watching.
And the kids would stay in line because just because there was
like an older figure there, there was this kind of watchful

(37:32):
eye. And that's not something you get
in, like a mass suburbia. That's not something you get in,
you know, concrete highways or freeway territory and that kind
of community, as you say, it's like self policing.
There's sort of just like a, youknow, enough of a range of
people that just sort of holds together in the strata, which is
very interesting. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, my,

(37:56):
again, my take away is mostly the sidewalk thing.
And that's, that's what brought the grandma to the stoop is
because there's, there's enough going on that she can entertain
herself by sitting on the stoop because there's a wide sidewalk
where lots of people are hangingout.
And all of those people are alsocontributing to the, to the
watching eyes. And the kids are able have
enough space to play on the sidewalk.

(38:16):
The adults have enough space to have dinner if they want to have
dinner. I had a friend who was in France
recently and he said people are,he was walking around and people
are just having dinner on the sidewalks.
They were, they had a tape, theypulled the table out and they
were just hanging out and havinghaving dinner.
And these are, you know, this friend travels to France for
this, for these types of experiences because they don't

(38:38):
get these experiences in the United States.
And, you know, is that the sidewalk is it, you know, kind
of this kind of generational traditional thing or someone's
in the same house for a long time?
And I don't know, I don't know exactly what it is, but I think
she has a point with the sidewalks.
I do think that is a an aspect of it is, is creating this

(38:58):
communal public space where everyone can meet and everyone
can see and everyone has some some interest in keeping it
good. It's pretty cool.
Yeah, no, it's, it's and it's a fascinating way to look at it.
And I, I mean, the other thing that does happen on sidewalks as
you bump into someone, you know,and you have a conversation, you
know, and you don't. And again, I just wonder

(39:20):
whether, you know, there's there's something here that, you
know, one day the anthropologists will look back
and they'll say, you know, the Facebook what, you know, it was
the freeway moment. It was the Detroit moment where
we said, well, you know, we can just build bigger.
We can make it this amazing hugething, but actually what we
needed was something a bit more smaller, intimate, local.
And I mean, I do feel that with second news.

(39:41):
And I feel like as we enter intothis kind of brave new world
that's coming, which feels kind of weird.
You know, it's like I'm going through this transition myself,
man. It's like, you know what, I you
know, the world I knew 1015 years ago, you know, it's sort
of slowly just slipping away andwe're moving into a new place
and I think kind of adapting to that.

(40:02):
And kind of almost healing from that as part of what we're
coming into. And I don't know, man, there's
it's a big idea. And then like, how do you
translate that into a piece of, you know, software into, into a
website, right? Yeah, that's what I get to spend
the rest of my life doing. And so I'm pretty, I'm pretty
excited about it. Yeah, I do.
I do think we do have, we do have some healing to do.

(40:25):
I do think the, you know, getting smaller, getting more
local is generally more healthy.But I also wonder about how you
get there are thing there. There are there's value to what
the Facebooks of the world provide.
There's value to what the Amazons in the wall, even though
we hate them on so many levels, there is something that they're
providing for us and that's why they end up taking over.

(40:45):
And it's not just that they are like they are manipulating us
exclusively. They are they are also providing
value. And there's something like we
want scale, We want, we want lots of people together as much
as possible. It's like something is kind of
something we desire. And how do you, how do you just
do that in a healthy way? So that's like another, another
thing I think about. It's like, maybe we don't need

(41:07):
to go smaller. I think we most, we mostly just
want to go healthier. And I don't know, I don't know
if you can get both. You don't know if you can get
scale and health and preserve health, but that's that's like
another side to it. Well, it's interesting to
mention that, man, just a littleanecdotes.
I'm from New Zealand originally and we don't have Amazon in New
Zealand. And it's very much like kind of

(41:29):
a pain to get stuff like, you know, certainly now that I live
in Japan, it's like next day, same day delivery.
I can get anything. I don't have to go to the shop.
And that's like, I've had to learn that.
And like my my default kind of Arcadian background in the in
the hills and the farmland of New Zealand is it, you know, we

(41:51):
didn't have that. And I realized for a long time I
was kind of a contrary. And I was like, you know, like,
fuck Amazon. You know, I pardon my French,
but like I kind of felt this kind of negativity towards it.
Certainly with my own business. I don't want to use Amazon.
I want to own my own, you know, customer list.
I don't want to be dealing with their systems.
But now I'm like, yeah, actuallyI kind of appreciate the

(42:11):
incentives are there for like scale and for like getting it
out to people. And I've, I haven't really fully
thought this through, but there's some sort of change that
I've witnessed in myself. Like I kind of understand
there's value in these large systems, these, you know, many
to many networks that I, I kind of was just by default against
for some reason before. And I, I, I tried to roll my

(42:34):
own, I had my own like website and stuff.
But you know, you just get so much more traffic when you run
it through Amazon. And there's like a
discoverability, there's a, there's a graph, social graph,
all of this stuff. And yeah, as you say, you know,
is there a healthy way of doing that?
And that's maybe the key part. It's like, yeah, how to do that
in a, in a, in a good. Good's a problematic word, but

(42:55):
yeah, in a healthy way, perhaps.Yeah.
And I think, you know my, I'm anoptimist and I think that's the
arrow of the arrow of time. The like technology is, is that
we we do get things that we wantthat are healthier generally.
And so I think, you know, the Amazons of tomorrow, you know,
before the Internet, we didn't have Amazons and it was all

(43:17):
about scale. I think the Amazons of tomorrow
are probably the Amazons that achieve the scale, but in a way
that people have like less regret and less negative
feelings about it. I think, you know, regret
minimization is like a is like aterm that gets thrown around in
social media circles because a lot of these, a lot of these

(43:37):
products are the 11 group, 11 technology group at a, at a
company is trying to addict people to their feed.
And then another technology group is trying to preserve the
mental health of, of people. And it's a, they end up in this
weird situation. But I think you just, yeah, I

(43:57):
think I think you want to, you probably want to start from a
foundation where the the health is kind of a, a key aspect that
you were addressing. Yeah.
Speaking of health, I would be curious what your relationships
like with your smartphone. Do you find yourself as the kind
of person who puts it away and goes for a long walk without it?
Or are you using it just normally or, you know, more than

(44:20):
average? Like how would you write write
that? Oh, I would say I'm probably, I
would guess I'm below average. I only really use Stacker news
on my phone and that is I do spend quite a bit of time on
Stacker news because it's like my work and I'm doing a lot of
customer support. I have a lot of friends on
Stacker news I'm talking to. So I do spend a lot of time on,

(44:44):
I would guess probably roughly an hour or so on my phone on
Stacker news mostly just when I'm away from my laptop and I
can't interact that way. But when I'm, I typically walk
or bike to and from home every day.
And that that is without I'm not, I'm not really doing much.
I'm just kind of either ruminating is probably my

(45:07):
natural state, but you know, thinking, reminiscing, I don't
know, whatever. Thinking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just kind of thinking something
I read or like, OK, I'm working on, can I get good at coding in
my brain as I'm walking? Can I this problem, I can't
solve it. Maybe I can just, if I could

(45:28):
just think about it the right way and I can go over every
possible combination of the way it can be done.
Maybe I'll. And so I think there's a lot,
there's a lot to that I'm spending over the last couple
weeks, I've been spending a lot more time doing that kind of
thing where I'm I'm kind of away, I'm kind of separated from
the devices and just thinking and it's really nice.

(45:50):
I think it's a very like a natural healthy state, but I
don't use other social media really.
I use Noster. I'll use Domus on my phone and
I'll use Twitter a little bit toI I try it's so hard.
It's like it's like fighting like a current when I go to the
main feed, 'cause they really they just suck you in so hard

(46:12):
with the algorithm. But I'll try to get to a list
where I have, I have a few listsof like, OK, here's some Bitcoin
developers I who I know are likenot noisy.
Here's here's a group of like AIpeople that are great.
Here's a group of people I see as like mentors that I, that I,
I'm going to passively intake their wisdom.

(46:34):
And that's how I consume something like Twitter if I'm
going to do it, But I don't do Instagram or anything really
else. Would you be willing to share
with me who's inspired you or who has provided some of that
thought leadership that you you follow?
Yeah, I mean, not. It's probably unsurprising, but
Paul Graham is a big influence. He, but he's a founder of Hacker

(46:55):
News, founder of Y Combinator. I think, you know, I think he's
responsible probably for most ofstart up culture, you know, most
of the products we use on the Internet.
I, I think he's a, he's a huge influence.
I think, I think I might have felt an extra like special

(47:18):
connection to him because he wasalso a painter before he became
a programmer. But yeah, he's one, he's a big
one. Just a really smart guy, writes
a lot, writes well, cares about writing and then cares about
start-ups. So there's a lot of overlap.
I think Naval is very wise. I, I tend to and he's, he tries

(47:41):
to compress the crap out of things and it, it makes a very
his consuming. His content is very pleasant for
that reason is he's always trying to reduce it to something
more abstract and therefore moregeneral.
There. I like Robert Greene who 48 laws
of power. I I know people, some people

(48:03):
have a bad view of him, but I I tend to take an optimistic view.
Kevin Kelly is a big one. Just such a creative force and
so, so open and brave. I think like creatively brave
just kind of does what he wants all the time.

(48:26):
There's, there's so many, you know, Huberman, he's like kind
of a, he's a Stanford neuroscientist and he does these
kind of health podcasts, which I, I have a bit of a thing for.
Yeah, just so they're those are,those are like some of the ones
that come off the top of my hip.But there's a There's a handful
more in one of those lists in particular.

(48:49):
Yeah, that paints a picture. I mean, I guess I think I
understand, I'm beginning to understand what we're really
talking about here, which is that there's something about,
you know, say, put your phone down, you know, you go and have
a think. You, you, you're, you're
creating a world within yourself.
You're, you're kind of, yeah, I mean, you're being and, you

(49:11):
know, with the big capital B in that sense.
And I wonder whether the opposite of that, and it's often
useful to look at the opposite of something to understand the
thing itself. But is the opposite of that this
kind of reduction of, of people into like a number and this kind
of like totalitizing force of like modernity to like make
someone into just like a database entry.
And you know, these people you mentioned, I, I feel like

(49:35):
there's like this, this seeking out of knowledge and wisdom.
You know, what does that even mean in the age of like AI, Like
what does it mean to be wise? You can't necessarily just
prompt your way to wisdom. And so I wonder if what we're
really talking about key in is the sense of being in the world,
you know, expressing relationships digitally, but not
being reduced to the digital in a way.

(49:58):
And that that's certainly what Ifeel.
You know, again, as an artist, you know, I feel like there's a
connection here where I'm attracted to coming to this
place. And it's not, it's not just me
as another database entry, even though part of me is as a
technology, but there's also part of me that is, you know,
the the soul of the person actually using that.

(50:20):
Just yeah, a couple of ideas there.
No, Yeah, I think, I think that's where I think it's very
interesting, very wise, I think.But I do, yeah.
You don't want to, you don't want to completely part yourself
out and be fully digitized. It's just like the parts that
are necessary for you to communicate yourself, that's the

(50:41):
part you want to make, you kind of want to make digital.
And yeah, I think that's a, that's an interesting way of
viewing it. It's like how, how, how little
of a person can we digitize or how much can we let them express
themselves? Like really without, without
them being forced to digitize themselves.

(51:02):
But it's a yeah. Oh man, it's like kind of a big
idea. Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, as I
asked the question about the smartphones before, but I have
this thing, you know, if I have friends visit, you know, I just
gently remind them, you know, ifwe're having dinner to just, you
know, put their phone in their pocket instead of having it on
the table just because I, I feellike, you know, if we're there
and, and I see this all the timearound me, man, I live in Japan,

(51:23):
you know, everyone's on their phone all the time.
And it's like, you know, have a couple, you know, they're on a
romantic date, but there's 2 phones there.
There's actually a four person date happening.
And it's just like a different dynamic, you know, and that kind
of sense of presence. And, and I think one of my meta
critics, sorry, this is going off off, off the, you know, for
tangent, but one of my meta critics of like where we're at

(51:45):
right now is that modernity and this kind of like late stage
digital culture is actually it really is trying to like peel
off the human and then kind of do away with it.
And, and this kind of ideology of like AI and, you know, we're
going to just automate all the things, all the jobs are going
to go away. You know, that's a that's a
certain ideology. Like that's not truth with a
capital T That's just like wherewe happen to be going.

(52:06):
It doesn't have to be where we end up.
And I look at some of these movements towards like localism
towards people using like dumb phones, people using like long
format stuff. I write like these long emails
to people like correspondence all the time.
You know, I wonder whether that's making a comeback.
And not everyone will be on board with that, obviously, but
certainly if the intellectuals, for the creators, for the

(52:28):
artists, for people who are curious, I guess, you know,
there will be an appeal to, I don't know, doing things a
little bit differently perhaps. Yeah, No, I think, I think
you're definitely right. I do think, yeah, I do think
that there is something that we've gotten that we've gotten
pretty wrong and it'll be nice to get back to being more

(52:53):
present. I really like the peeling off
visualization 'cause that is, and I think, I think we're doing
it to scale. I think that's like, I think
it's the reason why, why we're being asked to peel these layers
off of ourselves is so that the machines that we're making to
process our lives have to do like less difficult work to get

(53:16):
to get us through the process. And so they're, they're peeling
these layers off. If we're all, if we're all
square shaped, we'll all fit in the square holes of the machines
and then society can run a little more smoothly, yeah.
So there's there's actually a guy who was watching his
lectures a couple of weeks ago, Matthew Crawford.
Have you come across his writing?

(53:38):
So he he he talks about in in reference to AI.
He's got some, some really interesting critiques.
Matthew Crawford, He says the space for intelligent human
action is being colonized by machines.
And as this happens, our abilities atrophy.

(53:58):
And there's this role within that.
I think of these, these anti humanists who maybe hide behind
something like safety as a keyword where they say, well,
look, we have to make things safe.
We have to make things OK for people.
As if man, as if humankind is somehow vulnerable to or
something, whereas, you know, wesomehow we got to where we are,

(54:21):
you know, on our own, yet here we are needing safety.
And he's got some really interesting critiques and maybe
I could send you his lecture later, but I thought his his
critique of the dominant ideology, especially coming from
the big tech world, is that, youknow, they say humans are
stupid, obsolete, fragile, hateful, and, and these are all

(54:42):
problems that something like AI would fix and it seeks to fix,
you know, AI cars being a perfect example, you know, it's
a safer driver. Humans are bad drivers.
But I don't know, man, again, that's not necessarily truth.
It's just someone's idea. And I don't know, I'm throwing a
bit of stuff at you, but like, that is very interesting, right?
Yeah, no, I do. I do.

(55:04):
I do. You know, it's hard.
It's hard to consider how much of life will change as a result
of that technology specifically,especially the way some people
are imagining it. We're just seeing how fast it's
growing. It's, it's really tricky.
I, I, I can't, I, I haven't given it enough much thought,

(55:26):
but I, I do. My fear is that it drives, it
drives us away from something like the Internet because we
are, we are crowded out by these, these human imitators
just operating on the Internet and we can't, we begin to not be
able to tell the difference. And that perhaps forces us to be
more local. I wrote about, I think about, I

(55:49):
think about, I think I when I watched Star Wars, I went
through and watched the Star Wars stuff recently and I was
thinking about, OK, what if, what if they're post AI?
Like, so like they don't really use devices or anything.
I'm like, what would drive them in a world where they have
intelligent machines to not use their screens all the time and,
you know, talk to each other by a hologram, human to human and,

(56:14):
you know, not just be like VR inAVR chair all day.
And I think it's that perhaps like the digital space is not
safe from these like human imitators.
And they just get they get Sybil, like they get Sybil
attacked out of digital spaces. And like, the only, the only way
they can like preserve their sanity and have a decent life is

(56:34):
they connect more with flesh andblood humans in person.
And so maybe, you know, maybe the AI, the like AI boom will be
a driver in the, the like localism boom.
Maybe it will force us to be more present because otherwise
we are, we are our companions onthe Internet aren't even people
anymore. They're machines that we don't

(56:57):
feel the same with. I don't.
Yeah. That's fascinating.
I, I think this really stood outto me.
I went to a meet up event recently and it was like some
like VR kind of people. And I was really interesting
because I, I tried the vision pro for the first time and I had

(57:18):
used VR stuff before just, you know, trying it out, playing a
few games. But that was the first time I'd
used the Apple device, which was, you know, pretty high
quality. And as an artist, actually, I
kind of wasn't really comfortable with it because it
is total totalitizing. Like there's no screen through
which you can delineate your reality and say, well, that
inside the screen, that's the computer, but outside is real.

(57:40):
It's like, ah, This is why I kind of like put the thing on to
enjoy it, but and then to kind of, you know, be nice.
Someone had offered it. But I was also like, this is
really weird, man. And, and it was like, man, what
are you? What are you offering me here?
Like it felt like this kind of Faustian bargain.
There's like, there's a reality within the machine.
And I reflect on like the failure of the metaverse and

(58:01):
these stupid looking VR goggles.And I think, man, that just
cannot be the reality that, you know, humankind opts for.
You know, it just, it felt wrong.
And I wonder again, that was like the metaverse, that's like
Zuckerberg, these kind of peoplekind of assuming what they think
is the right way to go about things.
And that whole thing has floppedin it.

(58:22):
And, and it's not really, I don't see it really taking off.
And again, I was like, man, let's just go outside and touch
grass, you know, and have a havea drink and have some fun.
And I wonder, yeah, I wonder whether that is all fading into
this. And I don't know who's writing
about this at at the moment, butit seems like it's very
important topic as tech becomes more and more embedded in our

(58:45):
lives, that connection to reality, you know?
Yeah, I mean, my, my sense is the, the like the AIAI stuff
becoming ubiquitous. It, it, you know, it isn't,
maybe it isn't, it's inevitability isn't truth.
But you know, going back to Kevin Kelly, he, I think he
wrote, he wrote that these kindsof things.

(59:07):
He wrote a book about the inevitable technologies at least
like the arrows are in certain directions.
I don't think it has they have to be, you know, a kind of
disgusting abuse of, of, of humanity in pursuit of their
inevitable path. But I think they are going to
progress. I think there are people that

(59:27):
want them and they are and it's because they are.
It's kind of like Amazon. It's not, it's not 100% gross.
It's, you know, it's some percent gross and we all hate
it, but it's another percent great.
And so we're we're making those trade-offs.
And I think the same is true of something like VR, while it is
inferior to grass, if you don't,if you live somewhere where

(59:49):
there's no grass, you, you know,I want to touch digital grass.
At least give me, give me something.
And so I think we'll, you know, that I think we'll have gross
versions of the technology. Then over time, they'll be
quaint, nice versions that, thatwe've, that we've adapted to.
At least that's my hope. I just think it it is, it is a

(01:00:11):
very violent time. When a technology is emerging
because you're you're you're making more trade-offs than you
will have to later when, when you're adopting it early
relative to later. So.
And I mean, look, the exciting thing is that at this time,
people like you and me actually have an opportunity to really

(01:00:34):
throw our lot in and, and actually nudge things in certain
ways just as much as as some of these these big, you know, these
big organizations. You know, there is kind of an
opportunity to, to share and, and kind of respond to it,
right, which is what I think we're doing.
I just just coming back to Stacking News, though, I am
curious. So you, you, you founded this

(01:00:54):
project, but you, you have some people working with you now.
You've got open source contributors as well.
Can you maybe just tell me a little bit about sort of the the
the community behind the community of Stacking News?
Oh yeah, sure. Well, our first, the first
person who joined Stacker News to work on Stacker News was
actually our first investor, Kevin Rook.

(01:01:16):
And so he, he was seeing me struggle having to do like
social media outreach and schedule Amas.
And so he joined he yeah. And yeah.
And then and then Ek started contributing to the open source
project. He was interested, got
interested in Bitcoin stuff. He came across Stacker news
somehow. And then you start to contribute
the open source project and I'm like, hey, you're, you're a good

(01:01:37):
programmer. You should let me pay you more
money than I'm paying you on thebounties for our open source
projects. And, you know, come in.
And so he, he's joined and he's been with Stacker News now for,
I guess 2, nearly two years, maybe maybe 18 months.
But really, really, you know, Stacker, it's, you know, Stacker

(01:01:59):
news. Stacker news is quaintness or
whatever. It tends to select for very
excellent people and Ek is one of them, also a great
programmer. More recently, Sox joined our
team and similar thing started to contribute to the open source
project. You know, great programmer.
So if we had em, we had em come on.
And but that's it. That's just me and Sox and Ek.

(01:02:26):
Kevin was part of the team for awhile and then decided to take a
break. And then more recently we've had
we, we have, and we also have car.
He helps with the Stacker News Live podcast.
We have pleb poet who helps withour Zine.
We make a little, we print a little a little Zine, which is

(01:02:49):
really cool. Getting back to kind of the
local tactile things that are just, you know, for fun and for,
for, for appreciating reality type of thing.
But yeah, the team is a team is very, very small relative to
what it might be. And I'd like to keep it that

(01:03:12):
way. We our open source contribute,
the open source contributors arepretty excellent too.
We have a create, we have like Stacker News.
We have an incentivized kind of open source project where we
explicitly say how much we'll pay for things.
We try to incentivize all the positive behaviors that we can.
We try to disincentivize bad ones.
And it's like another incentive game that we're messing around

(01:03:32):
with and it's gone pretty well. I think I would like to, at some
point I would like to compare usto other open source projects
without the incentive structure and see how much better we're
doing. But that was an interest of mine
before Stacker News was was opensource, so and the problems
there, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome, man.

(01:03:52):
And I mean, I guess finally, I mean, you're in Austin, right?
And there's a little bit of a, aBitcoin community there.
I mean, just reflecting because I know there's there's
especially where you are, there's a few other, you know,
Bitcoiners hanging out. There's there's a bit of like a,
a thing going. You guys got a little bit of a
hub there. Like maybe just tell me about
Austin as a Bitcoin place. Yeah, so I don't, I don't know,

(01:04:16):
I don't know exactly how Austin became a Bitcoin place, but I, I
think my, my, my understanding of the genesis is that unchanged
capital started here and they got to a certain size where they
started attracting talent and then that talent brought with
it, you know, more people movingacross the country.

(01:04:37):
Then COVID hit and then when people were deciding where to go
in the United States, Texas seemed like a great place 'cause
it was, you know, pretty, prettyliberal in terms of if you had
to wear a mask or not. And so a lot like I, I relocated
Austin around that time, but they had A and then they, their,
their meet up here got huge. It got like, it was like 200

(01:04:59):
people every bit devs. And now we have a meet up.
We have four or five different Bitcoin meetups that I'm aware
of. They're probably even more.
Oh yeah. And there's Bitcoin park now
took over Bitcoin Commons here with Bitcoin park has a place in
in Nashville. They're they're expanding out

(01:05:21):
and then I'm part of a Co working startup incubator called
Pleblab. And we we try to be we're kind
of like a misfit hacker group where, you know, kind of we a
lot of a lot of us are like odd pieces in the Bitcoin community,

(01:05:42):
or at least we would probably label ourselves that way.
And we're all just trying to like make stuff together and
help each other. And that's, yeah, that's kind
of. That's cool, man.
Yeah, yeah, I just, I reflect onhow these communities come back

(01:06:03):
because you know, when I was back in New Zealand, I had like
a little bit of a Co working space going on a few more, but
Bitcoin friends would come through and it was just a vibe,
man. We had some sofas, you know,
watch some movies, you know, it's like we had we had a lot of
fun and I'm still now, you know,I'm where I'm living now, you
know, slowly starting to build something similar.
But there's something awesome about just having friends that
you can hang out with and build stuff with, right?

(01:06:24):
It's the best. It's so important.
That's why we did it. I think we started when when
Pleblab started, there was thereweren't Co working spaces for
Bitcoin and how it ended up starting was I was hanging out
with the people who ended up starting Pleblab and I was like,
I want to work with Bitcoiners more frequently.
Let's have people work out of mylike, will you guys work out of

(01:06:47):
my garage? I have like a one car garage and
I'll just let us all work out ofit.
Then I put out, I put it out on Twitter.
It might still to this day be mymost popular tweet ever, but I
was like, I'm thinking of just letting bitcoiners work in my
garage for free. Would anyone want to do it?
And it ended. That ended up causing super test
net to move to Austin and then Pleblab.

(01:07:11):
And then everyone's like, we don't actually want to work in a
garage, but we do want to work together.
So Pleblab started and then the Bitcoin Commons emerged and then
Bitcoin Park emerged in Nashville.
It kind of set, it was kind of, it was pretty awesome to like
set off a chain. But there's like, and most of
that is just from, there's so much, there's so much value in,

(01:07:31):
in person especially, but just connecting with people, talking
to people, combining your insights together, it's great.
Yeah, well, certainly. As you wrote, you said something
special happens when you share space with people you share
values with. So look man, I think that's
awesome. I think we might wrap it up

(01:07:53):
there, key, and it's certainly been awesome talking to you
finding out about stacking news.Just quickly though, is there
anything you wanted to share in terms of sort of road map for 25
things on the horizon and also where people can follow you if
they would like to learn more? Yeah, road map is the road map

(01:08:17):
is complicated, but one of the things we're really excited
about is trying to make territories something that is
more sort of atomic and gives people like Stacker news as a
tool. It's it's like it's kind of
money as moderation tools. These kind of these kind of

(01:08:38):
incentives, this kind of naturalness that they bring.
How do we give that to more people and allow them to kind of
bring their own communities? So that's kind of that's
something we're working on actively.
Yeah. There's just so much there with
the road map. But that's like our big, our big
things that we we developed all these tools to make Stacker news

(01:08:59):
what it is. How do we give it to more, more
people in a way that they're willing to accept?
And then you can find me at stacker dot news.
That's the easiest way. That's the place to go stacking
news Kian. All right, man.
Well, thank you so much for sharing that for your time.
I hope I can come out to Austin sometime.
I've never actually been to the US sort of on my my big my big

(01:09:23):
plan to to come out and and visit Texas and Austin in
particular. So yeah, I do hope we can catch
up in person, but otherwise I appreciate your time and thank
you. Thank you so much for having me.
Please do come out to Austin. We want you here.
I am Cody Allingham, and that was the transformation of value.
If you would like to support this show, please consider
making a donation either throughmy website or by directly

(01:09:46):
tipping to the show's Bitcoin wallet.
Or just pass this episode on to a friend who you think may enjoy
it. And you can always e-mail me at
[e-mail].