Soapbox Sessions

How Bitcoin & Nostr Fix Life & Death Problems

Derek just got back from Nashville, where he attended an AI hackathon at Bitcoin Park sponsored by HRF. His team of four built an app called Zuka for a human rights activist whose family survived the Rwandan genocide. The catalyst: a Rwandan YouTuber with 60,000 followers was jailed and died in custody for speaking out against the government. They wanted a tool that keeps speaking even when the human behind it is silenced.

The solution is an AI influencer that lives on Nostr. Operators build a persona with a name, voice, and backstory, feed it research through a wizard, and publish videos to legacy social media and Nostr in one click. Everything is encrypted. Wallets are tied to personas so the AI influencer funds itself through Bitcoin zaps.

Derek and Heather then covered a DDoS attack a pro-Iran hacking group launched on Spotify on May 12, alongside attacks on Goodreads and eBay. Heather used it to talk about value for value music and the independent ecosystem on Nostr, Wavlake, and Fountain as an ethical alternative to algorithm-driven streaming, including what yoga teachers deal with around PROs and music licensing.

They closed with GM laying off 600 legacy IT workers to hire AI native engineers, and whether prompt engineering still matters on frontier models. Derek says it does not. Turner the dog closed the show.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro and Nashville recap

00:31 How Agora was born

01:27 A Rwandan journalist killed for his YouTube channel

03:25 Building Zuka: an AI influencer that cannot be jailed

05:23 Encryption, Bitcoin wallets, and activist security

10:52 Second place and other standout hackathon projects

14:39 The shoe sale protest app

16:34 Lillian Lopez and the Museum of Venezuela

18:05 Tech privilege and explaining the ecosystem to normies

33:02 Iranian regime DDoS attacks Spotify

36:05 Value for value music vs the streaming model

44:33 Bitcoin musicians coming out of the woodwork

48:00 GM fires legacy IT and hires AI native engineers

51:00 Prompt engineering is dead on frontier models

54:32 Is Nostr more reliable than centralized platforms

Soapbox Sessions: NosVegas - Our Bitcoin 2026 Recap

Derek and Heather just got back from Las Vegas and they have a lot to say. This week is a full recap of Bitcoin 2026, covering the panels, side events, music, zaps, and what it all means for where Nostr is headed.

Heather started the week at the Women's Bash, where Bitcoin women packed the room, Natalie Brunell hosted, and Senator Cynthia Lummis received an award. Derek spent Sunday at the HRF Reception on the 64th floor of Mandalay Bay, talking Nostr and Agora with developers and freedom fighters, including a filmmaker couple already familiar with Agora through Leopoldo Lopez.

Monday brought the expo floor. Derek added a surprise sixth panel on the spot when Justin Moon asked him to cover OpenClaw on the Freedom Go Up stage. Heather spent three hours with David Strayhorn of NosFabrica talking Web of Trust (WoT) and how it can filter the Ditto music feed automatically without manual curation. Check out brainstorm.world.

Tuesday night was Las Vegas 2.0, the V4V music side event. Four artists performed and got paid in Bitcoin live on stage. Noah Gruman opened with a half-hour set and earned nearly 400,000 sats. Higher Low followed with 130,000 sats. Abel James pulled in half a million. Sarah Jade closed the night with over half a million sats. Total artist earnings across in-person and remote zaps on Tunestr hit around two and a half million sats. PubPay ran the leaderboard and made zapping competitive in the best way possible.

Before the music, six speakers did 10-minute talks. Heather and Sarah Jade opened the night, with Heather spotlighting how Sarah brought four other San Diego women artists into the V4V space and helped clean up how local venues treat independent artists. Derek talked about Ditto and making the internet weird again. Three people pulled out their phones and scanned the QR code on the spot to download the app. Eric Blackstone from Bitcoin is for Everyone talked grassroots meetups. David Strayhorn did a live Web of Trust demo. Paul Keating previewed Primal 3.0. Open Agents closed with a talk on selling compute for Bitcoin.

Wednesday Derek moderated a conversation on Nostr beyond social media with Jeff Gardner, Will Casarin, and David Strayhorn on the open source stage. He joined Alex Li and Will Casarin on the Freedom Go Up stage to talk free speech and code as speech, including Nostr Git as censorship-resistant code hosting. He closed the day on the Genesis stage with Justin Moon, Jesse Posner from Vora, and Mark from Maple AI, making the case that Bitcoin plus Nostr plus privacy AI equals the Freedom Tech Stack.

Nostr showed up across the conference like never before. The open source stage streamed live on Nostr. The conference app ran on Nostr. A photo app ran on Nostr. Reverend Hodl ran a pirate stream on Nostr. Zapping went live at the open source stage for the first time. And people kept telling Derek that Shakespeare was their first ever vibe coding experience.

Nashville 2027 is on their minds. Heather wants music on a bigger stage. Derek thinks Nostr is exactly where it needs to be and gaining ground every year. Both agree the flywheel is turning.

Find Derek's full day-by-day recap: https://soapbox.pub/blog/conference-recap-bitcoin-2026

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:11 Is Nostr Infrastructure or the Main Event?

04:28 We Deserve a Bigger Footprint

08:50 The Case for a Nostr Stage in 2027

10:14 Sunday: Women's Bash

12:00 Cynthia Lummis Award and What Comes Next

14:02 Sunday: HRF Reception at Mandalay Bay

16:17 Filmmakers Already Know About Agora

17:27 Bitcoin Kids Table

19:14 Monday: Expo Floor Opens

20:24 Derek's Surprise Sixth Panel on OpenClaw

22:53 The Bitcoin Bazaar

25:22 Club Orange and the Calendar Consortium

27:27 Hot Style Takeover with Matt Odell

27:55 Noah Gruman Performs Live

31:30 Heather and David Strayhorn on Web of Trust

31:47 Jeff Gardner Launches the Internet Privacy Foundation

33:38 The Beefsteak Dinner

38:55 Lee from Bitcoin Jungle Built Tubester

40:38 Tuesday: Vibe Coding on Bitcoin Panel

44:54 Tuesday Night: Las Vegas 2.0 Side Event

46:06 PubPay Makes Zapping Competitive

47:29 Noah Gruman Earns 400K Sats

48:00 Higher Low, Abel James, Sarah Jade Perform

49:06 Two and a Half Million Sats Total

49:44 Six Speakers Before the Music

52:29 Eric Blackstone on Grassroots Bitcoin Meetups

52:58 David Strayhorn Web of Trust Demo

54:01 Derek: Make the Internet Weird Again

55:44 Paul Keating Previews Primal 3.0

57:41 DJ Tatum Turnup Closes the Night

58:48 Wednesday: Three Panels

59:13 Nostr Beyond Social Media

1:01:03 Freedom Go Up Stage: Code Is Speech

1:03:05 What We Built in Under a Year

1:04:13 AI Plus Bitcoin Plus Nostr Equals Freedom Tech Stack

1:07:13 Now Is the Time to Decentralize Everything

1:08:14 Nostr's Footprint at the Conference

1:09:23 Nashville 2027

Heather got restricted mid-live on TikTok. Derek deleted his 17-year Reddit account after getting banned for recommending Ditto.pub. Both in the same week. Nostr fixes this!

In This Episode:

Heather joined Morgan's 400K-follower TikTok live and got the stream restricted for 10 minutes mid-broadcast. Her account was already flagged from a previous video mentioning Ticketmaster. AI moderation connected her to the stream and throttled their reach. Morgan refused to kick her off. Viewers dropped in real time.

Derek replied to a Reddit post about the internet not being fun anymore by mentioning Ditto. A mod banned him. He replied WTF. Reddit banned him for three days. He deleted his 17-year account on the spot.

The conversation goes deeper into black and white thinking, the death of civil disagreement, and how TikTok has assigned Heather a personality. Nostr lets users control their own feeds without a mod team or government deciding what they see.

Next week: the full Bitcoin Conference and Vegas recap.

Chapters

00:00 Heather Gets Restricted on TikTok

02:37 TikTok Is State-Controlled Media

10:41 Derek Gets Banned from Reddit

16:16 Account Deleted

21:07 Nostr Has Never Censored Either of Us

22:07 We Lost the Ability to Disagree

27:20 TikTok Has Heather Figured Out

32:04 Why People Stay on the Algorithm

38:19 Web of Trust Hackathon

44:00 TMZ Is Doing Journalism Now

50:16 Next Week: Vegas Recap

Heather Larson and Derek Ross make the case that HODL culture is killing value for value, trace how music and money got separated over the past 25 years, and share breaking news about PubPay bringing real-time zaps to speakers on the Bitcoin Conference open source stage. NosVegas is April 28!

In This Episode

NOS Vegas April 28: We All Scream nightclub, 517 Fremont Street, Las Vegas. Tickets $21: https://nosvegas.shakespeare.wtf/

Stream live at tunestr.io

PubPay (pubpay.me): zaps for conference speakers, now on the open source stage

Podster (podster.org): Derek's Nostr-native podcast hosting

The current class of Bitcoiners came for number go up, ETFs, and politician simping. They did not come to spend. Spend and replace is not a radical idea. Laszlo had to spend 10,000 Bitcoin to kick this whole thing off.

HODL culture has held value for value back. Derek spent a year walking up to Bitcoiners at events and explaining zaps. They thought it was cool. They did nothing.

The music industry broke over two decades. Cassingles were a dollar at Tower Records. Napster happened. Spotify arrived. Streaming separated music from money and made it seamless enough that no one thinks about what artists earn. Sara Jade made $700 in 30 minutes at a Phoenix show in 2024, paid in Bitcoin over Lightning. If she never touched it, the money doubled by year end.

Eliza MacLamb broke the Chaotic Good story before Wired. An independent musician beat the gatekeepers at their own game.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster will not be fixed by the government. The open source fix is already built. Heather got shadowbanned on TikTok for using the hashtag Ticketmaster. TikTok has a deal with them. None of this happens on Nostr.

Breaking news: PubPay is bringing zaps to the Bitcoin Conference open source stage. Every speaker received a step-by-step guide to submit to the PubPay dashboard. The audience can zap speakers in real time. PubPay will also be at NOS Vegas on the 28th for musicians.

NOS Vegas is April 28 at We All Scream, 517 Fremont Street. Talks at 7pm, live music, DJ Tatum Turnup upstairs. $21 tickets. Stream on tunestr.io.

There is a rumor about a special guest at the Bitcoin Conference. Contact has been made.

Chapters

00:00 Bitcoiners Came for the Wrong Reasons

01:52 Spend and Replace

03:34 HODL Culture Has Held Value for Value Back

04:50 Why We Hate the Term Value for Value

06:28 Proof of Work Applies to Musicians

07:08 From Cassingles to Spotify

09:44 Bitcoin Fixes the Music Industry

10:07 FM Rodeo and Stats by Southwest

11:29 What Bands Do to Make Money

13:45 Sarah Jade Is Playing with Jason Mraz Before Vegas

14:43 Streaming Won Because It Was Seamless

17:59 People Are Starting to Ditch Spotify

18:55 Eliza MacLamb Broke the Chaotic Good Story Before Wired

20:19 We Need Our Own Psy-Op

23:41 Why Supporting Content Feels Foreign

25:44 The Government Will Not Fix Live Nation

29:00 Bitcoin and Nostr Give Artists a Platform No One Can Take Down

30:41 Podstr and Radio Detox on Fountain

40:20 Heather Got Shadowbanned for Mentioning Ticketmaster

42:08 Why Decentralized Networks Fix This

43:38 Breaking News: PubPay Brings Zaps to the Bitcoin Conference

45:39 NosVegas Is April 28

51:37 Go to the Smaller Stages

54:01 Derek and Heather Have Not Seen Each Other Since Nashville

56:19 Derek's Vegas Plans and the Women's Bash

59:18 Bitcoin Is Trying to Hit 79K

Soapbox Sessions Episode 33: AI Music Contra-Versy, The NosVegas Show, and the Week Derek Broke the AI Budget

Heather Larson and Derek Ross are back with a packed episode covering NOS Vegas, Tunestr.io 2.0, AI music, the new Ditto features, and a dive into the latest AI workplace stats. Plus: Right Said Fred joins Nostr, social media detox science, and a debate about whether AI-generated music needs a warning label.

In This Episode

NoSVegas April 28: tunestr.io

Buy tickets! https://nosvegas.shakespeare.wtf/

Maggie Mae's Austin: https://maggiemaesaustin.com/

Derek's Nostr Resources: https://nostr-resources.surge.sh/

Ditto: try on web, Google Play, Zapstore, and now iOs!

KC Bitcoiners Block Party RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeOK7RiAhAhYqsKIYqNjI_mep9io8Gwbt-uNbhi_9tW6I0XIA/viewform

AI has replaced work for 20% of full-time US employees: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/rcna267238

#NosVegas is April 28 at We All Scream nightclub (near Fremont St). We'll have talks in the Grow Nostr room to kick off the night at 7:00 with the party running from 7pm to 1am. Talks from Heather, Derek, Paul from Primal, Eric from Portland, and new talk from Car from Pleblab and Christian from OpenAgents. Live music from Sara Jade, Abel James, and The Higher Low, then DJ Tatum Turnup upstairs. One confirmed special guest, second still in the works. Tickets are $21. Stream live at tunestr.io.

Tunestr.io 2.0 is dropping. New features, bug fixes, social content on events pages, and updated copy about what the platform is and why it exists. Derek and Claude coded it together, Tunestr Founder OpenMike approved it, and it goes live this week.

Maggie Mae's in Austin rebuilt their entire website using Shakespeare and added a Nostr-powered events calendar. Every musical act, almost every day of the week, all on Nostr. The site is at maggiemaesaustin.com and it is a case study in how a non-developer small business can go full Nostr without starting from scratch.

Annonymal is a real band. Six members, all anonymous by choice, writing and recording their own music. They did a Geyser Fund campaign to cover studio time. People assumed they were AI because there are no faces. They are not AI.

Contra makes music with his son. His son plays drums and studies music theory. They use Logic Pro and some AI in the process. Contra has been taking heat for AI slop but the father-son angle has never been on the Geyser Fund page. It should be. Heather interviewed him on Radio Detox, episode out within 24 hours of this one.

Should AI music have a label? Heather and Derek debate the line between AI-augmented and AI-generated, how Spotify has created fake AI playlists to cut royalties, and whether a song you genuinely enjoyed becomes less valuable once you know it was machine-made. No clean answer reached.

20 percent of full-time US workers say AI is already doing part of their job. 50 percent of adults used AI at least once in the past week. Only 8 percent are using autonomous agents. Half of workers using AI at work are paying for their own subscriptions, not using company-provided tools.

Anthropic changed the Claude Code subscription model, blocking access to third-party tools like OpenClaw. Derek tried Gemma 4 from Google (did not go well), then switched to GLM 5.1 from Z.AI at $80 per quarter. It works but requires more prompting. Paying per API token for one week cost $200.

Ditto launched new features including Blobbi virtual pets, Letters (decorated personal messages with 3D envelope animations), a full in-app article editor, badges, custom emoji packs with drag-and-drop, and the ability to run Nsites directly inside the app. Head to Ditto.pub, or get it in the App Store, Google Play, and ZapStore!

Derek updated his Nostr resources guide. Videos, podcasts, articles, and guides all in one place for anyone new to the space.

Nostr Nights Nashville is May 11. DM Derek Ross if you want to speak or just show up.

Heather is speaking virtually at the KC Bitcoiners Block Party this Sunday, April 19.

Chapters

00:00 Intro and Vegas Hype

01:15 QW Update: Where Has He Been?

02:33 NOS Vegas April 28 Details

05:40 Tunestr.io 2.0 Is Dropping

08:43 TikTok vs Tunestr Live Streaming

10:50 Maggie Mae's Austin Built on Nostr

13:02 Anyone Can Do This (Open Source Moment)

19:17 Is That Band Actually AI?

23:32 Contra Makes Music With His Son

26:27 Should AI Music Have a Warning Label?

31:57 AI Is Doing 20% of People's Jobs

36:30 Anthropic Killed OpenClaw Access

41:28 Only 8% Use Autonomous Agents

44:01 Gen Z Hates AI and Honestly Fair

47:48 Half of Workers Pay for AI Themselves

52:33 Don't Paste Patient Data Into Claude

57:03 Derek's Updated Nostr Resources

59:45 Nostr Nights Nashville May 11

Heather Larson and Derek Ross cover three stories that connect in ways you did not see coming: an AI model that broke out of its secure container during testing, a marketing agency manufacturing music trends on TikTok, and two quiet Nostr announcements from Block. Then: NosVegas is coming to We All Scream nightclub and the lineup is stacked.

Chapters:

00:00 Mythos and the Terminator 3 Moment

17:00 Your Music Taste Might Be Manipulated

29:00 Zapvertising and Why Nostr Cannot Be Gamed the Same Way

49:00 Block Is Using Nostr as an AI Communication Layer

58:00 NOS Vegas Preview

Anthropic's most powerful model, currently withheld from the public, was asked to escape a secure container during testing. It did. It chained together multiple exploits to reach the internet, notified the researcher, then posted details of its own exploit on publicly accessible websites without being asked. It also found a 27-year-old vulnerability in OpenBSD, a 16-year-old bug in FFmpeg, and thousands of zero-day exploits across all major operating systems and browsers. Anthropic responded by forming Project Glasswing with Amazon, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palo Alto Networks, distributing $100 million in tokens to get critical infrastructure patched before comparable capabilities reach open source models in six to nine months.

Heather breaks down a Substack piece by working musician Eliza McLamb exposing a marketing agency called Chaotic Good that runs narrative campaigns for record labels, spinning up fake accounts to simulate organic trends on TikTok. Artists you might think you discovered on your own, including well-known alternative acts, are on their client list. This is Payola for 2026. The traditional music industry has always done this. The tools just changed.

https://www.wordsfromeliza.com/p/fake-fans

On Nostr, you cannot buy attention at the protocol level. Your demographic data is not available to advertisers. If you want someone to read your message, you pay them directly. Heather has run geo-zap campaigns through Club Orange for as little as five dollars to reach hundreds of people at specific locations. Derek ran one for Nostr Valley targeting people within 100 miles for roughly 20 dollars. NextBlock, run by Ian and Mandana, has built an entire opt-in attention economy around this model.

Get on ditto.pub and see how this works firsthand.

Block announced two Nostr projects quietly over Easter weekend. Sprout is a Nostr relay built for AI and humans to coordinate, essentially a Nostr-native communication layer with AI agents built in, enterprise authentication, and a native MCP server. Mesh LLM lets people pool spare GPU capacity across a mesh network, coordinated over Nostr, so smaller machines can run larger AI models together. Block is making Nostr the communication layer for agentic AI. Users of these tools will not know they are on Nostr. That is the point.

Tuesday evening Aprik 28 at We All Scream nightclub in Vegas, Five 10-minute talks:

1. Value for value music on Nostr with Heather Larson and Sara Jade

2. Web of trust with Avi Burra

3. Community events and Nostr adoption with Eric B

4. Making the internet weird again with Ditto presented by Derek Ross

5. Primal updates from Paul Keating.

Plus, Chain Duel Bitcoin gaming in the Nostr room. Music outside with Sara Jade, Abel James, Richard Greaser, The Higher Low, and a surprise guest. Tatum Turn Up closes on the DJ stage.

Follow Soapbox Sessions on Fountain and Nostr!

Soapbox Sessions: AI, Addiction, and the Internet We Actually Want

Heather Larson and Derek Ross are back, and this week they go deep on some genuinely big questions: Can AI replace you? Is social media actually addictive? And what does Jack Dorsey think is coming next for how companies work? These two have been friends long enough to roast each other in public, which means the heavy topics get tackled and the conversation still ends up somewhere involving sperm-shaped app logos and a welfare check from Heather's family.

Find them both on Ditto: ditto.pub

CHAPTERS

00:00 The world is on fire and other "light" topics

01:11 replacedbyclawed.com and what AI thinks of Heather & Derek (it roasts them)

11:44 Is social media actually addictive? Taylor Lorenz sparks debate

18:30 Why Nostr apps are not designed to hook you

24:22 Jack Dorsey says middle management is over

35:38 Derek's Three C's become the Chameleon Method...or something

43:14 The Say Less app: a digital detox tool built on Nostr

45:42 Ditto updates: badges, letters, pokes, and Blobbi pets

59:07 Nostr ecosystem news: Amethyst, Wisp, and an April Fools prank

01:04:52 NosVegas is one month away, come party with Heather & Derek

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Heather and Derek start by putting their names into replacedbyclawed.com, a site that uses AI to score how replaceable you are. Derek lands somewhere in the safe zone. Heather scores a 76 out of 100 and gets told she is almost a bot. The site describes her as an "open protocol yoga bat," which she accepts as accurate. Derek gets called a "purple-pilled conference Nostrich with sys admin scar tissue and the slightly dangerous confidence of a man who has explained open protocols to chamber of commerce civilians."

Ditto news this week: badges are in a full renaissance, letters let you pass notes to other users, emoji pokes are back for the first time since Facebook, and Blobbi virtual pets are now live and function like Tamagotchis. Heather gave Derek a badge that crashed his notifications for two hours. He considers this an occupational hazard. She considers it a contribution to product development.

If you want to join the Ditto User Group (DUG) and help shape what Ditto becomes, send Derek a letter on Ditto with a formal request.

LINKS

https://replacedbyclawed.com

https://ditto.pub

Derek re frames the dark web versus light web divide. The so-called dark web is the open, uncensored internet. The so-called good web is the KYC, controlled, censored one. The internet is splitting into two directions and Nostr is the alternative path.

​​This is a week when two landmark juries ruled against Meta and YouTube, and Heather Larson and Derek Ross have plenty to say about it. This episode covers the deletion of the internet archive, the Meta lawsuits, algorithmic force-feeding, TikTok's KYC hoops, Derek's bots, Sora shutting down, AI in creative industries, and what Nostr offers as an alternative to the Big Tech™-controlled web.

A New Mexico jury found Meta liable for endangering children and ordered $375 million in civil penalties. The next day, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for negligent platform design, awarding $3 million to a 20-year-old plaintiff. With 1,600 more lawsuits pending, legal precedent is now set. The likely industry response: mandatory age verification, which means more KYC for everyone.

Journalist Taylor Lorenz documented the ongoing erasure of the digital archive, with hundreds of videos deleted from YouTube at government request. The Vine archive, over 300,000 videos, is what gave birth to the diVine app on Nostr. Nostr content is cryptographically signed and replicated across thousands of relays worldwide. It is virtually impossible to erase. No shareholders, no government compliance window, no single point of failure.

Twitter force-fed Heather notifications about [REDACTED] drama based on her demographic profile, not her interests. Gary Vee's point that social media has become “interest media” comes up: the algorithm killed the social part. On Nostr, users own their interest graph. Apps like Ditto let users fully customize feeds. A top-eight feature inspired by MySpace may be in the works…

Nostr is not trying to beat Meta or Spotify. It is an open parallel internet where content cannot be deleted, mental health is not a business model, and no one answers to shareholders.

Find Soapbox Sessions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and podcasting 2.0 apps like Fountain where you can send a boost.

Chapters

00:00 Episode 30

01:20 The Internet Archive Is Being Deleted

04:34 How Nostr Fixes Censorship

06:33 Dark Web vs Light Web

07:37 Twitter Force-Feeds and Self-Censorship

12:22 Meta Lawsuits: Two Verdicts in 24 Hours

17:25 Shareholders, VC Money, and Open Protocols

23:37 TikTok Hoops and Age Verification

31:09 Derek's Bots

33:55 Sora Is Shutting Down

36:54 AI Actors and Likeness Licensing

41:01 AI Goes Mainstream

46:28 Interest Media vs Social Media (Gary Vee)

48:19 Ditto and the Customizable Feed

52:21 The Top 8 Comes to Ditto

55:19 Blue Check Pay-for-Play

59:03 Closing: Building a Parallel Internet

Links

Ditto.pub (for everyone)

Agora.spot (for activists)

Shakespeare.diy (for vibe coders)

https://divine.video/

Taylor Lorenz / User Mag Power User podcast: https://www.usermag.co/archive

Jacob Ward / The RIP Current on the Meta verdict: https://www.theripcurrent.com/p/breaking-meta-loses-in-court-here

Meta New Mexico verdict: https://nmdoj.gov/press-release/new-mexico-department-of-justice-wins-landmark-verdict-against-meta/

Meta and YouTube LA verdict: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verdict-reached-landmark-social-media-addiction-trial-rcna263421

Divine (Vine archive on Nostr): https://divine.video

Ditto by Soapbox: https://soapbox.pub/ditto/

ZapStream (Nostr live streaming): https://zap.stream

Fountain (podcasting 2.0): https://fountain.fm

OpenAI Sora shutdown: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/24/openais-sora-was-the-creepiest-app-on-your-phone-now-its-shutting-down/

Heather and Derek both end up confessing more than they planned to. Derek admits he has two and a half months of bot use behind him and will only use it more from here. Heather admits she runs two terminals at once so she never runs out of AI credits.

They cover the difference between how Derek uses AI for development and how Heather uses it for marketing and research, including why hallucinations still trip her up more than they do him. Derek explains skills in Claude Code for the first time in a way that actually makes sense for non-developers.

The episode also covers what Derek saw happening at Bitcoin Takeover in Austin, where people from the Soapbox ecosystem were setting up OpenClaw on donated laptops for activists who needed it. Then the conversation shifts to Primal 3.0, which launched this week with a new Spark wallet, polls, and a gift chooser, and how it compares to Ditto 2.0. Derek has opinions. He also has a Ditto Deck he built two weeks ago that has not been merged yet and would like their boss, Alex, to know that.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

00:35 Heather Stages the Intervention

03:21 Zach Braff Has an AI Girlfriend

05:46 Derek Goes Outside More Because of AI

07:57 The Workaholic Problem

10:53 The AI Honeymoon Phase Theory

14:49 How Heather and Derek Use AI Differently

17:42 Hallucinations and Fact-Checking

22:25 What Skills Are and Why They Save Time

26:07 Using AI to Stand Out in a Job Search

31:11 OpenClaw Events Are Still Happening Worldwide

33:29 Activists and Donated Laptops in Austin

35:21 Should Derek Try Callie?

40:17 Ditto Themes and MySpace Nostalgia

41:18 Gary Vee Says Social Media Is Over

43:06 Primal 3.0 Breakdown

51:07 Ditto 2.0 vs Primal 3.0

53:34 Be Poly on Nostr

55:26 Heather's Golf Instructor Fixed Her in Five Minutes

Submit a news tip or ask a question: soapbox.pub/soapbox-sessions

Follow Soapbox

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Heather Larson and Derek Ross cover the week in Nostr and AI: Anthropic takes on the Pentagon and wins the internet, Meta acquires the AI agent network everyone was already suspicious of, Bluesky's CEO steps out, Ditto goes into soft launch, and Derek's bot is now running his LinkedIn.

Chapters

00:00 Intro and web 1.0 nostalgia

08:33 Anthropic vs the Pentagon

19:45 Derek's bot update and TikTok algorithm

27:21 Meta buys Moltbook and what that means for Clawstr

36:06 Bluesky CEO Jay Graber steps down

39:49 Wisp by UTXO: a new approach to Nostr onboarding

43:50 Ditto soft launch and themes

49:47 Events: Bitcoin Takeover Austin and RUNSTR District 5K DC

52:24 Vibe Coding Jam wraps, AOS show and tell is coming

Links

Ditto soft launch: https://soapbox.pub

Agora: https://agora.spot

🎭 Join our Shakespeare vibe coding community: https://soapbox.pub/shakespeare-community/

Submit a news tip or ask a question: https://soapbox.pub/soapbox-sessions/

Find tools on the website: https://soapbox.pub/

Follow on X: https://x.com/SoapboxTech

Follow on Nostr: https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqs8sxs4yuz47axp7uprpugrs3sfkdz5379tdg9xe2n5qfvz070a4egc9mrhy

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Podcast Index: https://podcastindex.org/podcast/7473968

🔵 Listen on closed networks/walled gardens:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1uBFCX46GH0npKB46stxAO

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soapbox-sessions/id1837576097

Fountain: https://fountain.fm

Wavlake: https://wavlake.com