In this week's episode of The Part-Time Show with Dr Kapil Amarasinghe we head back to May 1st 2020 for an exploration of possible developments in predictive and preventative medicine, diagnostics, biomedical data analysis, data privacy and wellness with a deep dive into the cutting edge emergent technologies offered by Ned Saleh of Silicon Valley startup: Synsal.

Essential listening for any medical professional, inquisitive individual or futurist or technologist keen to understand the future direction of medical diagnostics and indeed the evolution of this profession in it's entirety.

Dr Kap, as he is universally known, is a leading Speciality Doctor in  Emergency Medicine and is the UK Community Ambassador to the Particl  Project/Foundation. His interests include Emergency Medicine, Business  Management, Arts, Geopolitics, Emerging Currency Markets and Distributed  Ledger Technologies. He is also the MD of artradio, a creative social  network that enables artists worldwide to share their work, see more at www.artradio.tv

Dr Kap is contactable through Twitter, LinkedIn, at particl.io or via hello@decentralize.today

Enjoy the podcast, more next week!

ICYMI - first run on decentralize.today in November 2020 - In this week's broadcast entitled 'Bitcoin is not decentralized but decentralised ecommerce will be' Dr Kapil Amarasinghe explains the inherent contradiction behind the assertion that bitcoin allows even & equal distribution in which all can participate - in theory!

Dr Kap then presents the case for true decentralization being found in Proof of Stake (POS) and decentralized marketplaces.

"The path towards a truly decentralised nation lies in de-commerce"

Believe me, this is 19 minutes well spent!

Dr Kap, as he is universally known, is a leading Speciality Doctor in Emergency Medicine and is the UK Community Ambassador to the Particl Project/Foundation. His interests include Emergency Medicine, Business Management, Arts, Geopolitics, Emerging Currency Markets and Distributed Ledger Technologies. He is also the MD of artradio, a creative social network that enables artists worldwide to share their work, see more at www.artradio.tv

Dr Kap is contactable through Twitter, LinkedIn, at particl.io or via hello@decentralize.today

Enjoy the podcast, more next week!

In our Messenger roundup we always try to look at encryption, decentralisation, privacy and the company behind the platform but , of course, usability has to be another important factor.

We have looked at XMPP in the past, and it seems to be one of the better solutions, most of all as you can host it yourself.

We've noticed and complained before about how security updates are not always applied by the administrators are 'in charge'...so you need to host it yourself, or you need to trust the administrators with your metadata. As usual there are pluses and minuses!

With WhatsApp sharing data with Facebook many people have flocked to Signal and Telegram. The first being believed to be the Gold Standard when it comes to encryption. However, Signal not only uses AWS (Amazon Web Services servers) but also Microsoft and Google servers, and now to make things even more toxic they are also using Cloudflare.

Which, even with great encryption, gives me goosebumps (but not in a good way).

So connect the dots here...even if you have every message encrypted and AWS and the like can't actually see your messages, they can see your IP address which connects to the server. Amazon might already have your IP address from something that you ordered or from any other function for which you used Amazon. Perhaps Google has the IP from your phone, the problem being that they have your exact address and more, so they could use that with existing metadata to connect it to you and all your contacts now using Signal.

Now it can be argued that not much metadata is provided but that's an entirely different discussion! Point is they can find you!

This month's review - Movim

The best solution is always decentralisation and our two favourites are probably Matrix (Element) followed by Status.im. However, XMPP has been around a long time, since 1998 in fact, which makes it a super early pioneer after it was developed and deployed to allow the exchange of information and data.

This is where XMPP still shines and, importantly, you can easily host it yourself. As a great 'for instance' you could use YunoHost to set it up and even have it on your Raspberry Pi! (Oh yes, the Privacy Advocate is doing “The One with the Pi” in the Privacy Cookbookat the moment).

So XMPP is decentralized unlike Signal, Telegram, Threema and the likeand a list of free XMPP servers can be found here:

Movim is an open-source decentralized social media platform. So, it's a bit more than your usual XMPP messenger and more than your usual messenger setup. Think of it as a Facebook/Messenger/Blogging community software. It is based on and compatible with all XMPP setups out there.

Movim calls its instances 'pods' and offers the following official Pods:

https://nl.movim.eu/ server hosted in The Netherlands

https://jp.mov.im/ server hosted in Japan

https://de.movim.eu server hosted in Germany

If you would like to host a pod for yourself get a Debian based setup and all you have to do is type

sudo apt install movim

The beauty of doing it by yourself is that you are the master of your own setup. No-one-in-the-middle, no company to trust.

The setup lets you interact with Conversations (Android), Siskin IM (iOS) and Dino (desktop) and, of course, every other XMPP platform that you may like.

Movim is more than just the chat you would usually have with an XMPP setup, as it offers Chatrooms (one-on-one and group) plus you can also organize video conferences. These calls are supported by WebRTC which means one-on-one calls are encrypted. This is kind of funny considering Movim didn't have the OMEMO chat encryption implemented even thoough it was raised in 2015 on GitHub.

E2EE (End-to-End-Encryption) on most of the better XMPP setups and apps use OMEMO or the alternative OpenPGP. Both methods are based on the Double-Ratchet-Algorithm and PEP (XEP-0163). Double Ratchet was developed for Signal, but it is also used by other messaging apps such as Wire. The good news is that OMEMO uses PFS (Perfect Forwarding Secrecy) which should ensure no 'man in the middle' attacks can occur.

Movim, however, hasn't even got E2EE integrated yet! This means the chats are not done through E2EE encryption but just server encrypted. This takes the 'privacy by design' tag of away from Movim.

Another issue with XMPP are server logs which it has! The administrators can theoretically see all your logs, which can even include your login password, contacts, messages that been sent and received (those which were not encrypted — meaning all chats on Movim) and IP address connected. Pretty much everything we just complained about on Signal,except Signal actually has encryption implemented.

Now that all ofthat is out of the way, if you host a pod yourself you do not need to rely on administrators and no-one can see the logs. XMPP and Movim are not great privacy setups when you consider metadata. The latter does not even encrypt your messages! The own setup also only secures users on your pod, once you interact with users of different pods, you need to trust other admins to not look at your logs. And of course, you always need to have the security updates in mind.

In communities, you can publish articles and stories to the federated network, Movim automatically embeds links and images to your posts, explores topics by hashtags, auto-saves drafts, follows topics or publications, comments on topics and posts etc. so you can start your own blog within Movim. (We're looking at linking our articles into Movim in the future and imbedding it with our Write.as and Ghost setup.)

A couple of the best features are that during typing you can use Markdown and your drafts are saved automatically, Movim supports stickers (oh yes that'll pleases the Telegram and Signal people), edits and deletes chat messages, supports screen sharing! Yes, just like discord, you can insert pictures and videos to your conversations, reply to messages on a conversation, share articles in the discussion and react to posts.

You can search Chatrooms, communities, tags and contacts instantly, be notified on likes, mentions and comments and invite contacts into your chat room. And of course, it has a dark and light mode, so you can take it easy on your eyes during the night.

Movim is available on F-Droid which is another big plus, it is not available on iOS but does have a web version what works.

Overall Movim has great potential to be your Telegram replacement. Hell! it is even a great addition for social media like Mastodon, perhaps even see it as your Facebook replacement!

Telegram also has no E2EE in group chats but only in secret chats. Of course, you could always have conversations in your E2EE messenger and then use Movim as your group chat, blogging federated network. However, even with all this potential Movim will not become a killer privacy app until E2EE is fully implemented. It can however be your social media app where you share your stories with like minded people. For pictures and more private conversations, use XMPP/Conversations or a more privacy focussed messenger.

As already mentioned, you can, and should, look at hosting your own instance:

https://github.com/movim/movim

Till next month's review!

In this episode of the Part-Time Show, Dr Kapil Amarasinghe outlines the impact of Quantitative Easing (QE) on stabilizing financial markets post-2008 whilst simultaneously exacerbating global wealth inequality and worsening living standards for the majority of global citizens.

At the same time, he proposes some radical and completely novel structural changes to the current capitalist and corporate structure that would serve to perpetuate efficient stock market growth whilst reducing wealth inequality, improving social mobility and making the need for traditional independent trade unions redundant.

Dr Kap, as he is universally known, is a leading Speciality Doctor in Emergency Medicine and is the UK Community Ambassador to the Particl Project/Foundation. His interests include Emergency Medicine, Business Management, Arts, Geopolitics, Emerging Currency Markets and Distributed Ledger Technologies. He is also the MD of artradio, a creative social network that enables artists worldwide to share their work, see more at www.artradio.tv

Dr Kap is contactable through Twitter, LinkedIn, at particl.io or via hello@decentralize.today

In this episode of the Part-Time Show, Dr Kapil Amarasinghe outlines the impact of Quantitative Easing (QE) on stabilizing financial markets post-2008 whilst simultaneously exacerbating global wealth inequality and worsening living standards for the majority of global citizens.

At the same time, he proposes some radical and completely novel structural changes to the current capitalist and corporate structure that would serve to perpetuate efficient stock market growth whilst reducing wealth inequality, improving social mobility and making the need for traditional independent trade unions redundant.

Dr Kap, as he is universally known, is a leading Speciality Doctor in Emergency Medicine and is the UK Community Ambassador to the Particl Project/Foundation. His interests include Emergency Medicine, Business Management, Arts, Geopolitics, Emerging Currency Markets and Distributed Ledger Technologies. He is also the MD of artradio, a creative social network that enables artists worldwide to share their work, see more at www.artradio.tv

Dr Kap is contactable through Twitter, LinkedIn, at particl.io or via hello@decentralize.today

In the most recent chapter of the Privacy Cookbook, no. 18, The One with the Pi, I covered a simple solution to becoming your very own Bitcoin lightning node, or even starting a small bitcoin company and all with a $35 USD Raspberry Pi .

Now I have previously covered VPN solutions before and also explained the need for a Firewall and a decent and secure DNS setup, however, what I didn't cover was an all-in-one solution, at home, using your Raspberry Pi.

One great solution is called PiVPN. It is an WireGuard or OpenVPN solution you can deploy on a server (to have a different IP) or at home with a Raspberry Pi. This means you would still have the original IP address, no slowdown in internet speed, but encrypted traffic so your ISP or any third-party can't see what you are doing online. It'll keep you safe and, best of all, you can combine it with a Pi-Hole setup and/or use AdguardHome or even NextDNS for the Adblocking. Of course, you can ultimately choose any DNS provider you want.

Let's dive in

First, of course, you need a Raspberry Pi. Next, unlike as with Umbrel, you do need to actually install the OS. This can be done with the Raspberry Imager.

For this setup, you can use any of the Raspberry OS flavours. Including the Light one.

If you want to install Pi-Hole you need to do this first:

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

This will install the Pi-Hole, it is straightforward, so all you need to do is follow the screen.

If you prefer to use AdGuardHome, go to AdGuardHome page and download binaries for Raspberry Pi.

wget https://static.adguard.com/adguardhome/release/AdGuardHome_linux_armv6.tar.gz
tar xvf AdGuardHome_linux_armv6.tar.gz```

It will unpack into a new directory called AdGuardHome .

All you have to do is simply type this command to the Terminal:

cd AdGuardHome
sudo ./AdGuardHome -s install

Once it's up and running, you can access your AdGuardHome web interface on port 3000 by typing this in your browser — http://192.168.10.20:3000/

Don't forget to substitute 192.168.10.20 with IP of your Pi.

Once you setup any of these two solutions, jump over to:

https://pivpn.io/

Or just use your Terminal and:

curl -L https://install.pivpn.io | bash

All you need to do is follow the screen, the first pick is WireGuard or OpenVPN. I prefer WireGuard which is the pre-selected option. Select and follow the screen for the rest of the setup.

When the setup asks you for the DNS you want to choose, use the local one and IP to link it with your AdguardHome or Pi-Hole. If you use NextDNS you can find the IP address in your NextDNS control panel.

The entire set up is done in under 5 minutes and is pretty straightforward.

After the PiVPN is installed the terminal will recommend a reboot of the Pi. Do the reboot and once the system is back up, open the terminal again and type

pivpn -a

This will add a VPN client. You can name it anything you like, for example, phone .

Once this is done just type:

pivpn -qr

This will generate a QR code which you can scan within your WireGuard application on your Phone, iPad etc. You can also generate a file to be used on the computers.

Repeat the setup for each device you would like to have access to your setup.

In some cases you need to do a port forwarding on your router, this port would be UDP port 1194 but most routers won't need you to do anything.

If you want to get a different IP address and use an WireGuard as your permanent VPN with a location away from home you can do the entire setup on Hetzner, DigitalOcean etc., these servers do not need any Port forwarding.

As you can see the Pi gives you the power to have your very own WireGuard encryption, combined with a strong firewall or DNS protection to block and protect you against ISP or 3rd party surveillance and blocks tracking, ads and malware at the same time.

The Raspberry Pi is the mightiest little device that most people have ever heard about but don’t use. Never fear, I will continue to explore and explain many more real use cases for the mighty Pi in upcoming sections of this chapter.

So, in the beginning, or probably more appropriately,  "In a galaxy far far away..." Decentralize Today started up 6-7 years ago as a blog on Medium. And when there we were reasonably 'successful', and had a nice number of writers and several thousand followers and readers.

However, there was always the feeling that we could 'do more', that we could and should deliver a resource that supported, promoted and actually 'lived' the decentralized life we talked so much about. It has never been about the numbers, we just wanted to communicate, share, educate and to do that with professionalism and pride.

So we sharpened our scope, transferred the blog to its own secured site (along with the alternate, ultra-secure, super short TOR enabled dt.gl URL), 'rebranded' as decentralize.today, adopted the Ghost blogging software in order to be more privacy-friendly and committed to deliver to our promise of being 'Your Daily Dose of Decentralization' by posting at least one quality article each and every day.

Don't worry, we're not using this article to announce that we are about to shut down the site, far from it...in fact we are taking actions to expand our reach and make your participation even easier! At decentralize.today, decentralizing is in our DNA, so we move on and continue that process.

To kick-off, Write.as and Submit.as are partnering with decentralize.today to give writers and contributors an easy way to send in articles and connect to the Fediverse!

Or as Write.as famously puts it:

"Less distraction, more writing"

Free your thoughts
We don't track you, so you can write exactly what you feel. Write anonymously or under different identities, giving you full control over who knows what about you. Write.as is used by writers, students, and everyday people who need a safe outlet online.

With Submit.as you can use your Fediverse/Write.as or WriteFreely username and have the article directly linked into your profile. Alternatively, you can submit articles anonymously and then we take care of the rest.

"Clear the clutter and focus on your writing"

The process really is that simple.

Or to be more concise, as simple as this:

1. Go to https://submit.as/decentralize/guidance-for-contributing-writers
2. At this stage you can add your name and email
3. Click start writting and add text by typing or cut & pasting it in and you can use Markdown to modify or craft text or features
4. Finally, press Post and your entry is transfered to decentralize.today's Ghost account for review and publishing on the blog

Our review process is merely to ensure that work submitted falls within our broad parameters for topic, decency and legality as well as to schedule in the next slot plus prepare any supporting social media.  And whilst we accept product or service reviews, we do not carry open product endorsements unless declared and sponsored as such.

To assist you with the writing process, we provide an online resource in 'The Writers Recipe Book' which details the myriad of features available via the Ghost blog writing platform.

On content, we will continue to focus on our four key areas of concern and interest namely decentralization, privacy, blockchain and cryptocurrencies . Over the past year we have featured articles from over 30 different contributors from 20 plus countries (and been read in over 120 countries & territories!). We also cover multiple aspects of every area we look at with several regular features including EXPOSED! , Tweetstorm , Privacy Cookbook , Real Use Case , 21 Questions , our new podcast series plus over 25 content tags.

This move to integrate with the open & independant writing platform that is Write.as,  utilising the open-source Writefreely software and the Submit.as tool, is a further move for decentralize.today to open our platform up to a new army of readers and writers within the Fediverse. Anonymity is assured, anything submitted will always remain your property with no logging and no ads.

We will follow this integration with further introductions over the coming weeks and months to join our Mastodon instance and Funkwhale open audio podcast feature as we move decentralize.today further into the Fediverse and the Brave New World of Decentraliztion!

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Information Networks

I n this episode of the Part-Time Show, Dr Kapil Amarasinghe explores the idea of social mobility being linked to physical mobility and the idea that public transport networks function in and serve a similar purpose to social media networks by enabling the flow of people and ideas.

He makes the argument, based broadly on the UK model, that public transport should be free (or significantly less expensive) and how this would improve the economy and culture whilst helping to combat the isolationism that is enabled by many social networks.

"How are you supposed to know anything about what life really is if you're not listening to anyone?"

Dr Kap, as he universally known, is a leading Speciality Doctor in Emergency Medicine and is the UK Community Ambassador to the Particl Project/Foundation. His interests include Emergency Medicine, Business Management, Arts, Geopolitics, Emerging Currency Markets and Distributed Ledger Technologies. He is also the MD of artradio, a creative social network that enables artists worldwide to share their work, see more at www.artradio.tv

Dr Kap is contactable through Twitter, LinkedIn, at particl.io or via hello@decentralize.today

Regulars here will know that I am always on the hunt for new tools that can make your lives more decentralized and more private and to bring these to you in The Privacy Cookbook. Finding something that does both is usually the best solution.

I also cover blockchain technology and as I was a bitcoin early adopter I thought I would circle back and pick up on a device that has actually been around a while and that sometimes gets overlooked.

So in this new chapter, No 18, called "The One with the Pi" (yes, ok, also a former Friends fanatic) I am referring to, and looking at, the Raspberry Pi, and since we mentioned Bitcoin I will start off with a Bitcoin node.

buy bitcoin
become bitcoin

A catchy headline isn't it, but Umbrel is more than just a personal Bitcoin Lightning Network. It's about privacy, and you can connect Tresor, Ledger, Wasabi, Blockstream Green, Electrum, Zap, BlueWallet, you name it, to your Lightning Pi, thereby helping you achieve unparalleled privacy.

The wallet providers usually use a company server which knows your IP address and can link it to your bitcoin address. In the case of Ledger, which leaked a hell of a lot of its clients' data, they also have your address, telephone number etc. as well!  This is less than ideal, not that bitcoin ever claimed to be anonymous, but the information shouldn’t be available to others and even the companies you are using shouldn't hold any of your information.

“By running Bitcoin Core, your Umbrel stores and validates every single Bitcoin transaction that has ever existed and will ever exist. It’s “don’t trust, verify” on steroids. Not only that, transacting with your Umbrel also helps keep the entire Bitcoin network decentralized; win-win!”

So, what do you need to be able to have Umbrel on a Raspberry Pi?

1. Raspberry Pi 4
2. 1 TB SSD

The setup cannot be more simple or straightforward, just download UmbrelOS, install it via Balena Etcher and pop the SSD card into your Pi. Add at least 1 TB SSD hard disk to the Pi and power the beast up. After you have set your Raspberry Pi up you are ready to use Bitcoin - private, trustless, uncensored and permission-less - and from anywhere in the world.

The beauty behind this setup is that you control the node, not some company and you get  privacy by default.

“All services on Umbrel, including Bitcoin, Lightning and Electrum are configured to use Tor by default, thus preserving your anonymity at all times.“

So you can also access your Umbrel from anywhere in the world with a Tor-enabled browser. Automatic backups are in place and future developments via the Umbrel App Store will make things even more interesting.

Examples would be BTCPay Server which lets you become your own payment processor, you can set up multi-signature custody with Specter Desktop, run your own Blockchain Explorer, chat over the Lightning Network. The possibilities are endless, and all from your little Pi. A unique Tor hidden service (onion address) is generated and configured for every app you install and you can individually connect to each with a separate onion address.

Umbrel have also released the Umbrel App Framework for developers, so they can build, test and submit apps to Umbrel.

Each app running is isolated from all the others. The best part of this is that each app is sitting at your home, on your Pi and whilst your data can only be accessed with your private onion address it is accessible to you from anywhere in the world.

Perhaps you are just one Pi away from being in control of your Bitcoin startup or just to make sure your transactions are private.

More servings of Pi to follow!