Episode 879 transcript

FLOSS-879 Jonathan: [00:00:00] This week we're talking with Nathan Freitas of The Guardian Project, talking about their work with Tor and the Butter Box some things for Signal, and a whole lot more. You don't wanna miss it, so stay tuned. This is Floss Weekly, episode 879, recorded Tuesday, August the 25th. Easy like butter It's time for FOSS Weekly. That's the show about free, libre, and open source software. I'm your host, Jonathan Bennett, and today we have a treat. We have a returning... I don't remember if it's a returning guest, at least a returning topic. I think it's the same guest. We're talking about the Guardian Project, and we've got Nathan Freitas with us, and he is the founder, the director. He's the guy from Guardian Project. He's also the director of reality at Proof Mode. And he's been around for a while. His first open source work was back in 1996 over at UC Santa Barbara working [00:01:00] on an NSF/NASA-funded digital library project, Alexandria, a precursor to Google Maps. And a bunch of other things from doing Java at Palm to Tor, the first port of Tor to Android. He's- Nathan's been around. He's been around the block. And we're gonna talk to him, get an update on things that the Guardian Project is doing, and I think probably just talk a bit about the state of the world, which is a little dangerous, but we're gonna, we're gonna brave it. We're gonna do it. So without any further ado, Nathan, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here. Nathan: Thanks so much. Yeah. Returning guest and have talked, yeah with Doc and folks in the past on- ... pre- previous incarnations. And I definitely enjoy this podcast because we can get into the weeds, and people love it, the details. Jonathan: Absolutely. Nathan: The packets, the patches, the- whatever you wanna talk about. Jonathan: I reached out, yeah, for sure. I reached out to both Doc and Simon to be able to co-host today, and didn't hear back from either of them. I think they're both super busy and didn't get a chance to get back to me. [00:02:00] But Nathan: it's- It is summer still, though. Jonathan: Yes. Nathan: We're s- my kids are in s- camps and things, so you know. It feels like summer here in Boston, so I don't mind if they're out on the beach or somewhere. Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Were you at, I should have asked this before the show. Did you make it to DEF CON this year? Nathan: I didn't, and I missed Hope as well. As a East Coaster, I'm a big Hope guy generally. And yeah, I- I'll admit COVID got me off going to big things, and I just haven't mentally gotten back. There's a couple things I do. But the beauty of being in the Boston area often is it's feels like a constant hackathon of ideas and code- ... and meetups, and you've got so many big brains and open source history and things to do that I often o- feel already overwhelmed by stuff, I unders- Jonathan: I understand. Nathan: But I know a lot of great people were at both New York and Vegas, Jonathan: yeah. So I'm in southwestern Oklahoma. Long-time listeners of the show know this, but I'm in southwestern Oklahoma, and great, amazing people here, but not a hotbed of open source and technology most of the [00:03:00] time. So I really enjoy being able to get out to things like DEF CON. I made DEF CON for the first time this year, and really had a blast. Already making plans for going back with a bigger presence next year. Awesome ... but it was a, yeah, it was really cool. I saw there was a Tor booth at DEF CON, actually. Yeah, absolutely. And I did not get a chance to stop by and talk to them. I really wanted to because Tor, Tor is one of those technologies that I've been interested in for a very long time. I it's one of the things that got me started with the security aspects of technology, 'cause I had a buddy that was d- at a college behind a firewall, and we had to do something to get his internet traffic out. Yeah. And then I had at least one person I was helping for a while try to run Tor through the Chinese fire, or the, the great firewall of China. And it's like, it's a really interesting project. It's got a weird history. And you've