Hardware Podcasts

Mastodon with Kris Nova

Oxide and Friends · 14 Nov 2022 · 1h 30m · Episode 35

What this episode covers

Kris Nova, founder of the Hackderm Mastodon instance, explains the technical and social architecture of running a federated social network, including her home lab infrastructure and the ActivityPub protocol. Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal discuss the deliberate design choices of Mastodon, such as the absence of quote tweets and algorithms, which foster higher-quality discourse compared to Twitter. The group explores the sustainability of decentralized platforms through community sponsorship, volunteer moderation, and the potential for commercial support from companies like Oxide Computer Company.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Oxide Computer Company, GitHub, USAID
Products
Hackderm, Mastodon, Pleroma, PixelFed, PeerTube, MISKey, Discord, Twitch, Kubernetes
Also
ActivityPub, Rust, Go

Related episodes from other shows

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • How I Built This · 1h 18m

    Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie

    Chris Best, former CTO of Kik Interactive, and Hamish McKenzie, a journalist and author, co-founded Substack to create a direct monetization platform for writers, moving away from the ad-supported models of Facebook and Twitter. They discuss the skepticism they faced when pitching the idea that people would pay for newsletters, the strategic decision to take a low 10% cut to align incentives, and how a free-speech stance helped them attract prominent journalists during the pandemic. The episode also covers their refusal of an acquisition offer from Elon Musk and their strategy to maintain financial independence by avoiding excessive fundraising.

    Starting a product companyPricing, margins & unit economics
    8 chapters

  • Open Hardware Manufacturing Podcast · 47m

    Ep. 14 - Owning Your Data

    Stephen Hawes and Lucian Parr of Opulo discuss the trade-offs between data ownership and convenience, detailing their strategy of using proprietary tools like Gusto and Shopify for non-core functions while maintaining open-source control over design data via GitHub and MkDocs. They highlight the risks of relying on walled gardens like Discord for community management and Google for productivity, noting the difficulty of migrating away from these platforms if they fail. The hosts also explore the potential of self-hosting open-source alternatives like Nextcloud and Mattermost, emphasizing the need for robust local backups and export capabilities to ensure long-term data sovereignty.

    Direct-to-consumer & e-commerceAI & machine learning
    8 chapters

  • How I Built This · 52m

    Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman

    Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian recount the company's journey from a college project to a $1.8 billion valuation, detailing their pivot from a mobile menu app to Reddit after a rejection by Y Combinator. They discuss the early days of coding and user acquisition, the emotional toll of selling to Condé Nast, and the subsequent rift in their friendship that required therapy to repair. The founders also address the 2015 moderator protests and the challenge of managing toxic content and trolls on a platform with 300 million monthly users.

    Starting a product companyLeadership, teams & culture
    9 chapters

  • How I Built This · 1h 25m

    Discord: Jason Citron

    Jason Citron, founder and CEO of Discord, recounts his journey from building the mobile gaming SDK OpenFeint to pivoting twice before creating the social platform Discord. He details the failure of his tablet game studio Hammer & Chisel, the strategic decision to build a PC-based communication tool using WebRTC, and the subsequent pivot away from gaming to serve a broader audience. Citron also discusses the challenges of scaling culture, handling trust and safety issues, and rejecting a $10 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft.

    Starting a product companyValidation & product-market fit
    6 chapters

  • Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast · 1h 15m

    072 - EOF?

    Hosts Almero and Jen review the seven-year statistics of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast, noting 230,983 unique downloads and an average episode length of just over one hour. They discuss the evolution of their production workflow, moving from Audacity to Ferrite on iOS and using Zencastr for remote recording, while highlighting past guests like Ken Shiriff, Joe Grand, and Piotr Esden-Tempski. The episode also covers the hosts' decision to pause their Patreon due to reduced output and reflects on the fragmentation of social media platforms like Twitter and Mastodon.

    Creator businessEDA & CAD tools
    7 chapters

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Oxide and Friends. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.