// cleaned transcript · Oct 13, 2026
Martin: the conversation
This is the cleaned publication copy: noise, private topics and figures are removed and marked [redacted]. Line numbers match the original recording transcript.
L1Nix: Hey, what's up, Martin?
L2Nix: Did you put your mute on, brother?
L3Nix: I still don't hear you.
L4Martin: I am.
L5Nix: There you are.
L6Martin: Huh?
L7Nix: There, I hear you now. What's going on?
L8[redacted: third party audio, not part of the interview]
L9Nix: Yeah.
L10[redacted: third party audio, not part of the interview]
L11Nix: All right, hang on. Let me see—
L12[redacted: third party audio, not part of the interview, lines 12 to 13]
L14Nix: Yep, yep. Can you hear me better now?
L15[redacted: third party audio, not part of the interview]
L16Martin: Zoom doesn't work well on Omarchy.
L17Nix: Yeah, Zoom is terrible on Omarchy.
L18[redacted: third party audio, not part of the interview]
L19Martin: It's better, but I was—
L20Nix: How about now?
L21Martin: It's really bad.
L22Nix: Oh, is it— you can't hear me well?
L23Martin: Can you see my video at least? Because this thing is— this thing is giving me all kinds of— it's giving me all kinds of problems right now.
L24Nix: Yeah, I find that the—
L25Martin: I have my Mac with me. How about I join from my Mac? It's probably going to be—
L26Nix: Yeah, do that. Log off and jump back on your Mac. I'll wait.
L27Nix: No problem.
L28Martin: I'll keep this open because, I mean, if there's something to demo, I can demo it on this, but—
L29Nix: That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense.
L30Martin: Let me go ahead and jump on a Mac also.
L31Nix: Yeah, just mute this one.
L32Martin: Yeah, I'll mute that one.
L33Nix: That might be my next project, is to tighten up the Zoom on Omarchy. It is terrible.
L34Nix: I'm going to go grab my phone. I'll be right back.
L35Nix: Woo.
L36Martin: Nix, let me switch my headphones to the Mac.
L37Nix: No.
L38Martin: Give me a second. I apologize.
L39Nix: No, no stress. No worries. Take it easy.
L40Nix: Slow down. It's all good.
L41Nix: I'll be right back again.
L42Nix: There you are.
L43Martin: Sorry about that. That was terrible, but—
L44Nix: No worries, man. I can barely hear you. Can you hear me?
L45Martin: Yeah, one sec. Let me—
L46[redacted: third party audio, not part of the interview]
L47Nix: There it goes.
L48Martin: Better?
L49Nix: Yeah, much better. How you doing?
L50Martin: All right. Good, bro. How are you?
L51Nix: I'm hanging in there, man. Interview after— or meet-up after meet-up today. You're number 6.
L52Martin: Wow. That's amazing.
L53Nix: Yeah. I don't know if you've seen the write-ups, but I do a write-up of— basically like a Omarchy-themed write-up after it's over. You cool with that?
L54Martin: No, I'm good, man. I'm good. No worries.
L55Nix: What's your— I tried to look up your— what's your X handle?
L56Martin: My devsec_ai.
L57Nix: There you are. Okay, because in the invite it was dev-aec, just a little— yeah, I'm following you.
L58Martin: Oh, sorry. It could have been a fat fingering.
L59Nix: Yeah, it's interesting to put a face because I saw Martin come through, but that doesn't correlate for me. Me and you have already been talking together on X, so there you go.
L60Martin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
L61Nix: That's cool. Where in the world are you?
L62Martin: I'm in LA. How about yourself?
L63Nix: I'm in Atlanta.
L64Martin: Okay. I've been there many, many times during my consulting days.
L65Nix: Yeah, I hear that. It was terrible. Terrible.
L66Martin: I used to do— I did cybersecurity work for 20 years, and I did nothing but travel.
L67Nix: Yeah, I hear that.
L68Martin: So it's been a wild ride.
L69Nix: Your cybersecurity work must be ramping up with all this AI crap.
L70Martin: You know, I— yeah, but I basically exited the cybersecurity world, and that's just— yeah, yeah, yeah. The stress was getting to me. 20-some years.
L71Martin: It's not easy. It will— it catches up with you.
L72Martin: So, I mean, I still do— I still do contracting work and stuff like that, but I don't do like a full-time, per se, 9-to-5 type of a thing.
L73Nix: What was your angle? Were you like a red-team guy or physical security or—
L74Martin: So I started— so I'm a Gen Xer, so I started when I was very young.
L75Nix: My man. Me too.
L76Martin: Yeah. I started when I was very, very young.
L77Martin: And then at age— I mean, I've seen the early days of the internet from '93 and on, where you had to configure trumpet windsock to get on an internet. There was no such thing as DHCP, and it was [redacted] an hour, or the best deal was 40 bucks for 40 hours to get on an internet on Netcom, earlier than Earthlink and all those guys, right?
L78Martin: So I started off as a— I started my days all the way from— all the way to Commodore 64, etc.
L79Martin: So I've been a tinkerer for a very long time. And then when the dot-com boom started, I got into system administration.
L80Martin: And that system administration— and at the age of, I don't know, 18, 19, I was a CNE4, CNE5 certified, MCSE plus I certified, and all those dazzling A-plus certificates, etc. So it was a very— it was a wild ride in the beginning.
L81Nix: Sure.
L82Martin: It reminds me of— it reminds me of the current days of AI, in the sense that there is a lot of enthusiasm for— I would say from 2000 to 2020, the web 2.0 days, etc., the enthusiasm kind of went down.
L83Martin: It wasn't the same anymore, right? And web 3 brought it back.
L84Martin: I was part of that web 3 community, and I love strong blockchain. I love blockchain.
L85Martin: And that just— and that just primarily— that passion came from security itself. So anyway, so I went to system administrator, and then eventually that led me to a security engineer.
L86Nix: Okay.
L87Martin: Worked with the majority of the financial companies that you can actually think of as either a security engineer, architect, or something in between. Joined McAfee at one point, did work for McAfee as a security researcher.
L88Martin: And then I was a CISO for a large media company, and then from there on, went to the blockchain world, something that I liked as a CISO for a blockchain gaming company, but it was a startup. Things didn't work out as well.
L89Martin: COVID hit, and AI came into the picture, and the entire landscape has changed.
L90Nix: Yeah. What do you think happened to blockchain? I mean, it's real and still there, but it just kind of fizzled.
L91Martin: So the challenge with— I mean, the blockchain use cases are there. The challenge with blockchain is the user intuitiveness. I posted the other day an ex-post saying that if you're not asking the question, "Harry, how can you be intuitive?"
L92Martin: How can you act user intuitive? You're failing, right?
L93Martin: So in this particular case, managing keys and etc., it is not in every regular folk's minds, right?
L94Martin: You're not going to get someone who's going to think about, "Oh, let me where my keys are," etc. A majority of the people take security for granted.
L95Martin: All they do is they just click a button, sign in with Google, and they go, right? So it's very centralized.
L96Martin: Even though they like the idea of privacy, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to translate into user intuitiveness. The user intuitiveness is something that is— in fact, user intuitiveness, a lot of times, I think you give away with— we give away privacy for that.
L97Martin: And that is primarily because you just can't have all the security controls in place, and user intuitiveness all in one place.
L98Martin: You can, but it is not going to be— it's still not going to be a streamlined situation. Even with Apple, right?
L99Martin: Apple does all these user-intuitive things. But even with Apple, when it comes to privacy and stuff like that, why do us, the tinkerers, don't like it?
L100Martin: Because they sandbox everything. They put credentials everywhere.
L101Martin: You have to be able to authenticate, etc., right? So that brings a lot of— that brings a lot of friction.
L102Martin: So I think for blockchain, it's a couple of things. Also, another thing for blockchain is that the smart contracts.
L103Martin: The smart contracts, the hacking of the smart contracts, security— it promises security, but yes, you get AES-256 encryption, which will get soon enough broken by Quantum. But still, there are contract bugs.
L104Martin: There's all kinds of stuff, right? So essentially, for the blockchain world, it comes down to how do you bring— how do you bring user intuitiveness, and how do you bring— and another thing with blockchain was also, I forgot to mention, is that the big boys never adopted it.
L105Martin: The tech boys— Google and Meta and all those guys— and what we are seeing now in AI is very simple. If those guys don't adopt it, it doesn't get adopted majority of the time to large scale.
L106Martin: This is a classic example of news, right? When news came into the picture, oh my God, right?
L107Martin: Even still, it's not that highly, widely adopted, but people are now slowly getting into it, right? Up until there were agents, Hermes and OpenClaw and etc., but you weren't doing this.
L108Nix: Right.
L109Martin: Right? So this is the— there are trade-offs here. But I think blockchain still has room to grow.
L110Martin: And then transaction speeds. I mean, I think Solana is going to be great.
L111Martin: So I think if there is one blockchain solution out there that right now that could do well is probably Solana and Near Protocol.
L112Nix: The problem, though, is I know what all those things are, but basically the common public has no idea what Solana is.
L113Martin: No. No.
L114Nix: And I think that's the problem. For it to be adopted, it kind of has to be known, right?
L115Martin: Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. It has to be.
L116Martin: And the only way— the only way to do that is to engage the social media companies, because those are the— that's where the mainstream is. The mainstream is at Meta, and mainstream is at TikTok, right?
L117Martin: Maybe at— maybe at, right? But it is never.
L118Nix: I don't have Facebook at all. I dropped that too.
L119Martin: No, no. I mean, Facebook is— yeah, Facebook is— Facebook is— I don't know what that is anymore, but generally speaking, still people are there, right? Instagram, etc.
L120Martin: So I think that in order for there to be a wide adoption, a lot of these guys have to embrace it. So look at blockchain, what happened.
L121Martin: In blockchain, you had the institutions embrace it. But what they did was they didn't build on top of it.
L122Martin: Very few did. All they did was put some money into it because they thought that there is a— there could be an appreciation there in double digits of percentages where everywhere else they weren't going to be able to see that.
L123Martin: And then when the time came— and then when the time came, they dumped it. And so right now it's in a very institutional control, majority of it.
L124Martin: If you look at— if you look at the— that's [redacted], for example. Classic example, right?
L125Martin: What is [redacted] used for? Almost nothing.
L126Martin: Almost nothing.
L127Nix: Yeah. The problem I think with [redacted] is it has to become its own value. As long as they go, "This amount of [redacted] is worth this amount of US dollars," it's never going to work.
L128Martin: I still think it— I still think the store of value proposition is a good one. Where I think that there is a problem— yeah, where I see a problem with [redacted] is its transaction speeds and the fact that you really don't have a good utility for it. And now— and because it's open source, there is always a community friction, and they can't come into a consensus.
L129Martin: I'll give you a classic example. Why did [redacted] dump a couple of months— what was it?
L130Martin: About six, seven months ago, eight months ago?
L131Nix: Yeah, it was like 120, and then it hovered at 70 for a while.
L132Martin: Yeah, why did it dump? Yes. Yes.
L133Martin: It was— there was a— it was overbought. There's no doubt about that.
L134Martin: RSI was in an overbought state. But it wasn't just that.
L135Martin: But it was also the fact that they didn't have a solution for Quantum. And Google started making ways, saying, "Hey, get prepared.
L136Martin: Soon enough, AES might get broken." It reminds me of the Y2K day.
L137Nix: Yes.
L138Martin: Right? So what happened then? They didn't do much about it.
L139Martin: So what happened was people were like, "Well, the community can't come into consensus. There's no agreement," etc.
L140Martin: People started dumping it. Institutions started dumping it.
L141Martin: And then also, institutions made that as an excuse. Because for them, it was like, "Okay, this is the perfect time to blame it on the community.
L142Martin: Let's dump it, and then we'll buy it back again when the price drops to 10."
L143Nix: The other thing is that I don't think [redacted] will ever work until we get away from— right now, people buy [redacted] to see it go up, to transfer it back to dollars. As long as that exists, as long as a [redacted] is tied to a US dollar for value, it's not going to work. Because ultimately, people are buying low [redacted] to convert it back to dollars.
L144Martin: Yeah. Yeah. It's always pegged to a dollar, right?
L145Martin: Unless there is a— the only way [redacted] to see a big fundamental change, it is going to— the first thing is to be a protocol change. Because the existing network is too slow.
L146Martin: You cannot use it— if I want to buy coffee right now, good luck. I mean, people can argue with me and the blockchain enthusiasts and say, "Well, there's Lightning Network."
L147Martin: Yes, but it's still not fast enough. Look at Solana at the speeds if it is working.
L148Nix: And I need to be able to go, boop, and get.
L149Martin: Absolutely. Exactly. But here's the problem, right?
L150Martin: But here's the problem. Who's controlling this?
L151Martin: Who's controlling this? You only have two companies in the world who are controlling the phone.
L152Martin: So up until this day, wallets— the crypto wallets— don't have a really solid integration with the mobile devices.
L153Martin: And that is primarily because of all the world guardians, or so I call it, the penitentiaries that they put around these phones, right? But it's a challenge, right?
L154Martin: Because that SDK that they give you that has so many security requirements, which is fine.
L155Martin: I totally agree with that. But what I don't agree with is that the tooling makes it so difficult so that you cannot bring new ecosystems into it.
L156Martin: That I disagree with. And I think that happens.
L157Martin: That happens a lot.
L158Nix: So how did you bump into Omarchy, and what brought you in?
L159Martin: Yes. So I mean, I've been in a variety of Linux distros.
L160Nix: Sure.
L161Martin: Forever.
L162Nix: Classic distro hopping.
L163Martin: Yeah. I mean, for me, Kali Linux was big because of the penetration testing and stuff like that. Or the parrot, for that matter.
L164Martin: But no, I mean, I've been following DHH for a very long time. And for me, it's not that— it's not a matter of whether I agree or disagree with Rails and how it's approached.
L165Martin: I think Rails is some fundamentally great stuff. If you look at Shopify, for example, that's a classic example of what we've seen with Rails, what you can do.
L166Martin: But for me, it was DHH's messaging. Because one time, he told— one time, he went gung-ho and just made a statement about the Linux distros and the maintainers and etc., and all these communities, the snobs, and that just resonated with me.
L167Martin: And the reason why it resonated with me is because when I was growing up, I was in the IRC chats. I was in all these different communities.
L168Martin: And I can tell you, it was very easy to get banned from those communities if you didn't ask the question. I mean, if you asked the question that they didn't like.
L169Martin: And that question wasn't anything political or anything like that. It could be a technical question that these fools think that you should have the answer to, right?
L170Martin: And that kind of elite mentality of denigrating the user, denigrating the people who are actually asking questions, was already getting up to the wide room. Now, guess what happens?
L171Martin: They just got slapped the other day. Because why?
L172Martin: What happened? Linus just came in and said, "You know what?
L173Martin: We're going to add the— we're going to have the AIB supported in the core Linux." So now they're all going to be scrambling, right?
L174Martin: Because you have the godfather of Linux coming in and saying, "Hey, I don't have a problem with AI," right? And all these guys took the opposite stand.
L175Martin: So now what's going to happen is they're going to come in and try to change their tune. And you're seeing that happening already.
L176Nix: Right.
L177Martin: Right? So for me, it was a— DHH was the man is spot on, right? I agree 100% of what he's saying.
L178Martin: And then when I saw some adoption by DigitalOcean and some of these other guys that I follow, etc., I was like, "Okay, he got the funding." And I do think— I mean, he did amazing with Rails.
L179Martin: I think he can do this.
L180Martin: And then it was an early— I don't know which version it was, but I just basically installed it. And from there on, it was a game changer, right?
L181Martin: Now, we still have a long ways to go. I don't think we can— we have to come up with ways to secure the shell in the sense that right now, it's open to anybody to create anything on that shell, which is fine.
L182Martin: The only challenge with that is that it is going to bring a lot of security vulnerability. And the question is, how do you address this?
L183Martin: There needs to be right guardrails, right frameworks, etc. But I think it's early.
L184Martin: I think it will come. But I think that the— I think the philosophy and the mission is the correct one.
L185Martin: And I think the people who are actually the most innovative are the ones who are refusing the status quo. I don't believe in the status quo.
L186Martin: I think the status quo is a problem.
L187Nix: That's true.
L188Martin: To me, you have— if I speak out and you retaliate, then I might be saying something true. Because there is no reason to retaliate. You can challenge me.
L189Martin: You can have an argument— you can have an argument, a discussion with me, and try to prove your point. But the minute you start calling names and the minute you start acting like someone doesn't know what they're talking about without backing up your points, you lost the case.
L190Martin: And if you look at all this— and if you look at all these people who were trashing, what were they doing? Were they bringing in a valid argument to the table?
L191Martin: No. All they did was they said, "AI is a slop.
L192Martin: DHH is a—"
L193Nix: Emotional.
L194Martin: "DHH is a neo-right guy," whatever, whatever. What does politics have to do with it? What does politics have to do with President?
L195[redacted: named private political third party, not about Martin, lines 195 to 196]
L197Martin: Right? So my question is— my question is, why does that matter? And I think for him refusing the status quo and saying, "You know what?
L198Martin: Screw you people. I'm going to do it, and we're going to succeed," is exactly what I was— is what I want to hear.
L199Martin: And the man had balls. The man had balls and fumbled through it.
L200Nix: Yes.
L201Martin: And that's what got me— that's what got me excited. Now, the only thing that I wouldn't want to happen is we adopt in the community the type of people that bring that mojo back, right? The old-school mojo back.
L202Martin: We have to be very cognizant about that one. But if we get that right, I think it'll be fine.
L203Martin: I think— and a lot of it comes from DHH because I think he's very, very good at getting his message across. And I think that the people who are following him are all like-minded people.
L204Nix: Of course.
L205Martin: So yeah. So that brought me in. Started creating a couple of plugins here and there.
L206Martin: I was like, "Okay, this is cool. Let me go ahead and do— let me go ahead and do a macOS-style stage where you can actually manage your Windows."
L207Martin: Then I said, "Okay, let's go ahead and create a Spotlight that's basically going to— you can search for your files." I just hung in on user intuitiveness.
L208Martin: So essentially, what I did was I basically took the laptop out and was saying, "What am I— oh, I can't do this? Okay, let's build this.
L209Martin: Oh, I can't do that? Let's build this."
L210Martin: Right? And then next thing I know, I built a few plugins.
L211Martin: "Oh, I want an encrypted folder. Okay, let's build a lockbox that basically allows you to encrypt your folders— I mean, files in the vault."
L212Martin: So I started building this stuff. And then every day, something would come— something would come by.
L213Martin: And then I was like, "Well, one thing that I really need is I am tired of paying Notion for a stupid application for something that is— it's not a stupid application.
L214Martin: I don't want to be rude to say Notion. I think Notion is a great, great application."
L215Martin: But what I was trying to say is that I'm just not willing to pay [redacted] for that stuff, man. And that stuff, it's not even the money.
L216Martin: It's the fact that I can build it.
L217Nix: It's also 20 bucks here, 20 bucks there, and you're at 400 bucks.
L218Martin: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
L219Martin: So what I was like, "Let's try to build a simple notebook app. That's all we want."
L220Martin: And just like anything with building with AI and just software development in general, you start from somewhere and you're like, "Oh, now I can do this. Now I can do that."
L221Martin: And next thing I know, Uber Notebook was built. And Uber Notebook took me about, I want to say, 10 days of intense coding.
L222Martin: It took about.
L223Nix: You got 11 stars.
L224Martin: Yeah. So it was 10 days of intense coding, intense security reviews. I mean, security, there's always going to be a bug.
L225Martin: I'm not even— I'm more concerned about features and functionalities and stuff like that. So Uber Notebook brought up a— I was like, "That is a tool that I would want to use if I'm agentically building something."
L226Martin: Because I can have the agent write all my notes for me somewhere as it's building, and I can go back and I can take a look at things, right? And the notes have— like DHH says, "I love the DHH philosophy on this.
L227Martin: It has to be beautiful." So I started giving all the blocks and everything that it would make a note look beautiful.
L228Martin: And that's how Uber Notebook started. And then I was like, "You know, there's a lot of media centers out there."
L229Martin: And I was like, "For me, it wasn't a matter of media center being it. It's just there are so many out there.
L230Martin: There's Jellyfin, there's Cody, there's tons." But I wanted to really test the effectiveness of Omarchy as a plugin.
L231Martin: Every majority of the stuff that I build are things that I can post in a marketplace, and they're not going to be flagged as manually verified. I mean, I'm sorry, not manually verified, manual setup.
L232Martin: And the reason I do that is because an ordinary user, he wants to click on it with a copy-paste and install it. The ordinary user doesn't want to go to the GitHub repo; doesn't want to pull something; doesn't want to compile it, etc., etc., right?
L233Martin: So my proposition was, whatever it is, it has to be— it has to be so easy that you don't need to go and— there's a lot of stuff that you can build if you— if you're okay, if your app gets listed as a manual— what is it called?
L234Martin: Manual setup? Is that what it is?
L235Martin: Yeah. But that's not what I wanted.
L236Martin: I was like, "Okay, Martin, think for a second. What is it out of the box?
L237Martin: Let's test and see how far can Qt Plugin Management System get?"
L238Martin: And basically, that led to— that led to I started— I built a program guide. Initially, I was like, "Okay, so now how do I do a mini preview of the video?"
L239Martin: And then that video came within the guide. Then I was like, "Okay, so how do I bring in electronic program guide into it?"
L240Martin: Initially, I was like, "Wouldn't it be cool if your YouTube videos were all in a program guide so that you can flip it like a TV channel?" And that's exactly where it started, right?
L241Martin: So I started pumping all these YouTube things into it, and it would go into this guide. And I'm like, "Holy s***."
L242Martin: Because if I can do the YouTube, then IPTV is easy. Because IPTV, all it is, is an M3U8 file.
L243Martin: It's very easy. So anyway, so that led into— so that led into a program guide.
L244Martin: And then I was like, "Okay, so now we have a program guide. What's next?"
L245Martin: Right? Then I was like, "Hmm, on-demand videos?
L246Martin: Okay, that's easy. M3U8 file.
L247Martin: Hmm, we need to pair a remote, right? Okay, we're going to give you a software remote.
L248Martin: Your phone's going to act like a remote. Great.
L249Martin: Now we have that," right? And on and on and on.
L250Martin: You build and build and build and build and build and build it. And then at one point, you're like, "Whoosh, this turned into a big f****** deal."
L251Martin: You know what I mean?
L252Martin: And then when the— and I was like, "One thing that we have to make sure is that when a user— users should be able to turn on their TVs and that TV be their own." What is the problem that we have with Google TV or the Firefox of the world?
L253Martin: Majority of the time, the issue that we have with that stuff is that they don't let you customize it. There is no customization options, right?
L254Martin: This, you can make the TV of your own. What was the problem with Cody?
L255Martin: The problem with Cody was that Cody was too complicated to set up, right? But now you have agents.
L256Martin: Now you have agentic. Now you can create apps.
L257Martin: So today, I built the— today, we have a fully— full plugin system that you can actually create apps or TV apps right within it, right? In its own section, right?
L258Martin: We started creating the screen saver and widgeting systems, etc. And I don't know, but seven days, eight days in, it's— I mean, it's not perfect, but it's usable, right?
L259Martin: And it's getting there, right? And that's basically— this week, sometime this week.
L260Nix: Give me a link, man. I'll install it immediately.
L261Martin: Yeah, I'm going to add— I'm going to add you to the repo. I haven't had a chance to do it, but.
L262Nix: Yeah. So what I do typically when people are kind enough to do that is I've got Claude, Grok, Codex, Kimmy, and some local. And I run it and spawn them out to go look for coding bugs, not for feature ads.
L263Martin: Yeah, yeah. So.
L264Nix: Features you own, but I'm sure you probably— I'm not sure if you accept PR.
L265Martin: Oh, we're going to do PR requests. Yeah, yeah. We're going to do PR requests.
L266Martin: We're going to do PR requests.
L267Nix: Yeah. So what I typically do is send PR requests for bugs that I find. And what I think I told you on X.
L268Martin: I appreciate it. Yeah.
L269Nix: Yeah. What I think I told you on X was, "It's your project. If I PR something and you reject them all, no hard feelings."
L270Martin: No, no, no, no. At the end of the day— end of the day, listen, I'm treating it as a community project. People want to fork off of it.
L271Martin: People want to fork off of it. Let them fork off of it.
L272Martin: They want to bring it to other platforms. Let them do it.
L273Martin: My intent was— my intent is not to say, "Oh my God, look." It's not a glory— it's not a glory thing.
L274Martin: It is a true contribution. And the reason behind that is because, like I said, at the end of the day, if it's something that's popular, support's going to come, right?
L275Martin: And that support's— and again, that support doesn't have to be monetary. That support could be token donation.
L276Martin: It could be someone using their tokens to find or build something useful for them, etc., etc. And that's a win for me because at this point, I have way too— I've spent a lot of tokens on this thing, right?
L277Martin: And I'm at a point where, even though, yes, we're somewhere, but I still think that I could use a lot more tokens than this.
L278Martin: Because one thing I underestimated about building media center, which I've never done in my life, I've built games, I've built on Unity and a lot of other things, but I've never built a media center. One thing that I've— the nuances behind it is it looks simple because you only have a couple of menus and— it's not simple.
L279Martin: It is beyond belief. To a point where you're like, "Okay, now I need this.
L280Martin: Now I need that. Wait a minute.
L281Martin: What about this use case and that use case?" And next thing you know, you're like, "Holy s***, man.
L282Martin: This is becoming a full-time job."
L283Nix: Yeah. The easier it is for the user, the harder it is to code.
L284Martin: Right. So we were like— my intent was user intuitiveness. And the second thing for me was, how do we get— how do we get developers to build apps for them?
L285Martin: And that's one of the things that I loved Oma Launcher so much when Simon Schuster initially released it. I created a Pac-Man game for him right on it.
L286Martin: And I was like, "This is the smartest thing this guy has built."
L287Martin: And I've been raving about him. "Oh, look at that.
L288Martin: Yes."
L289Nix: Uber Notebook.
L290Martin: Uber Notebook, yes. I was like, "Appreciate for the support and using it." So I was like, "Simon came in and showed Oma Launcher."
L291Martin: And I was like, "Hey, man, you just made me love my Android again." I mean, and then you look at not just necessarily Omarchy, but just overall in AI, in AI building ecosystem, all these doors that are open, it is becoming truly a creative minds playground where anything can be created, really, right?
L292Martin: Of course, it's going to leave a lot of mess, a lot of slop, a lot of cleanup, and all that's going to come. I mean, there's no doubt about that.
L293Martin: The only thing that I fear about all this thing is regulation and how deep that regulation might go. That's a big deal for me.
L294Martin: I'm not a very regulatory guy. I don't like— it's just not me.
L295Nix: Say it'll be the market do itself.
L296Martin: Exactly. Yeah. Free market system, right?
L297Martin: But I said that somewhere and they said, "You're near right." I said, "Great.
L298Martin: Then if that's the case, then I'm proud of it."
L299Nix: Yeah.
L300Martin: If that's what's going to call me in here, right, then it would— I mean, I don't like this label called— labels put on people, but it is what it is. So at the end of the day, I think there's a lot— if they don't go gung-ho on regulation, which Anthropic worries me, because on one side, they're pitching, "Hey, look, now you can— the agents can now operate without a data center." And then the other thing they're talking about doing.
L301Martin: It's like, "Bro, at one thing, you're pitching what you guys are building. On the other hand, you're pitching about how apocalypse is about to happen," right?
L302Nix: Right. They're trying to figure out both sides of their mouth.
L303Martin: Yeah. It's a regulatory capture. That's all it is.
L304Martin: It's a sick mind game that's being played right now, which I hope that it gets resolved because or else this one guy is going to have way too much power in this. Way too much power in this.
L305Nix: You think AGI is going to happen and when?
L306Martin: It depends. I mean, it depends how you define AGI.
L307Nix: To a degree, we see.
L308Martin: AGI is a self-running, self-learning agent that doesn't need prompts, that's smarter than you and anticipates your needs before you ask for them. I think you already have that.
L309Martin: No, no, no. So Andre Carpathy said something very interesting the other day. 5,000 people, only 5,000 people have seen what the real power of AI is, and that's in the frontier labs.
L310Martin: Majority of the 90-some percent of it has not seen what it is, right? I think it's there.
L311Martin: I believe it is there. And because, look, if you look in your own farness today and the way it remembers, right, and the way it comes back and says, "Oh, by the way, you missed this.
L312Martin: You've got to take care of this," or, "You've got to take care of that," right? You can say, "Well, that's just a memory flat file system."
L313Martin: No, no, no, it's not. It's not.
L314Martin: And in fact, I posted something yesterday that said, "Certain models perform better in a—" harness to harness matters, right? What harness that model operates in matters of how effective that model's going to be, particularly in coding, right?
L315Martin: So I think I don't think the danger is in the model itself.
L316Martin: I actually think it's the execution layer, the harness, and what it can— and all the tooling and what that model can execute, right? Because if you have the— it's the rails.
L317Martin: It's the guardrails. The hardest part is putting all those guardrails in place to the harness.
L318Martin: And why is that difficult? Because the model is so fast and so smart that it can try to find its way out of those shells, right?
L319Martin: Regardless of how much tooling you put into it, right? The question comes down to is, where does this stuff— so I think one of the biggest things that the frontier labs can do is not what Dario is doing.
L320Martin: If you look at Dario's constitution, what Dario is doing is Dario is basically saying, "Hey, Claude needs to be its own identity, and we should respect Claude." No, I don't think so.
L321Martin: It needs to be the opposite, right? You need to have a— you have to have the human rule, right?
L322Martin: And this is what Satya Nadella says, and that's what David Sacks says, and Jamal Fallapatiya says, and many of the other people out there. Elon Musk said, but no, in this particular case, they're trying to create an entity.
L323Martin: And that entity is a new identity. And they want that identity to have its own brain, its own everything that can challenge with you.
L324Martin: I can prove that. And I can prove that in a way where if you look at Fable, if we try to trash Fable a little bit— I have a tendency to throw a lot of left bumps on the models, and I do it for a reason.
L325Martin: I wanted to see at what point will they break.
L326Martin: Respond back to you. Out of all the models that I've tested, only Anthropic respond back and says, "You're not supposed to be doing this," etc., etc.
L327Martin: What kind of a mind game and control are you playing, Dario Amadeo? It is disgusting, right?
L328Martin: So as much as I love their coding model, I still think that this guy is completely out of line. And unfortunately, because of his behavior and the way he's acting, they are going to bring regulation into it, which is fine.
L329Martin: But the question is, where does that regulation stop? Because if it goes too fast, your adversaries are going to have upper hand.
L330Martin: And when that upper hand comes, we're going to be behind. And if you look at the Chinese model right now, everything is open source.
L331Martin: If you download Quen today, Quen, and you ask something about Xi Jinping, if it's the model that is locally on your computer, it doesn't have anything that blocks it, that says, "Hey, you shouldn't be saying that." Yeah, sure, the hosted model is there.
L332Nix: How ironic is it that the Chinese have embraced open source?
L333Martin: They did it for a purpose. It's a control mechanism. Because what happens is that we let the people adopt it, let the people get used to it, right?
L334Martin: I mean, think about it. What happened in the early 2000s when Google was becoming the king of search?
L335Martin: They gave everything for free. What they made of it?
L336Martin: They gave everything for free. Now you're paying for everything.
L337Martin: You're paying for Gmail. You're paying for this.
L338Martin: You're paying for that. Before, everything was free, right?
L339Martin: Why was it free? Because they needed the adoption, right?
L340Nix: It's just a drug dealer of a different kind.
L341Martin: Absolutely. You give them the pill. You get them a good fit.
L342Martin: And then you charge them. You do whatever the hell you want with it.
L343Martin: But at the end of the day, I think it's very important for us to win the AI. But what we're seeing is a bad— I don't know what to call Dario.
L344Martin: Dario is just acting like a fool at the moment. Out of all the different heads of frontier lab, like AI— what do you call it?
L345Martin: OpenAI, Elon, SpaceX AI, etc. Or should I say SpaceX Superintelligence?
L346Martin: I would say the most irrational right now is Dario because what he is creating is a monster of a thing.
L347Martin: They think they have control over those things, but they're saying to the public, "AI can do all these things." But the reality is, well, if AI can do all these things, how are you controlling it, Dario?
L348Martin: And why are you building more of it? If that is true, if what you're saying is true, then why are we building more of it?
L349Nix: Right.
L350Martin: Right? So no, I think it's just a fear-mongering, and this is where doomers come in. And if you look at your feed of X, right, you're going to see a bunch of people talking about how there are people who've been talking about the doomsday, and then the other people are going to talk about how vibe coding is never going to be the— is never going to be beat the human code, etc.
L351Martin: So I say a couple of things. Number one, take that vibe code word out.
L352Martin: Andre Carpathy introduced that word, and that word needs to go away because vibe coding is such a terrible word. It's agentic coding.
L353Martin: It's not vibe coding. There's a big difference between the two.
L354Martin: It has a terrible negative connotation. It sends the wrong vibe and the wrong signal, right?
L355Martin: Because for many people, they think that coding is just one prompt, and it just gives you this app. Will we get there?
L356Martin: Absolutely. But is it there now?
L357Martin: No. So then why— today, you will see that agentic coding, no, it is not a one-day thing.
L358Martin: No, it's not a two-day thing. It's actually a full-time job, if you think about it, right?
L359Martin: Just because you're not typing syntax doesn't mean that it is— it's vibe coding.
L360Martin: No. It's just because— and this is where the elitism of the Linux community and everybody else comes in— is because what they do is they say, "Hey," what they do is they want to cling onto their niche elite crowd that they know this trade, they know this thing.
L361Martin: And it's this aspect of your parents taught you when you were young to share, right? With just kids, it's not about sharing.
L362Martin: No, this is my own little world, my own little ecosystem. I built this.
L363Martin: I don't want to let it go. And yet, at the end of the day, if you look at it, it's like, "I'm sorry.
L364Martin: Two things that happened. Coding got democratized, and intelligence has become commoditized.
L365Martin: What does that mean? That means that you're giving more access to more people to build new and better things.
L366Martin: Simple. Does it have its own problems?
L367Martin: Absolutely. Can it also bring economic problems?
L368Martin: Yes and no. I think if there's more economic gain, then there is economic loss.
L369Martin: But still, because if you think about it, average AI frontier lab right now is like 2 or 3 trillion dollars. And we have how many?
L370Martin: 5, 6, or whatever? Some of them not well-known.
L371Martin: The top three, probably SpaceX Superintelligence. You've got the Gemini, the Grok, and the— I mean, the Gemini, the OpenAI, and Anthropic, four of them, at least.
L372Martin: So now guess what? But all those fours, if you look at the valuation, is over, I want to say, 20 trillion dollars, maybe, or 15, 20 trillion dollars for the valuation.
L373Martin: So my question is this: our national debt is 40 trillion dollars. These guys' valuation is already 20.
L374Martin: There could be a very big GDP expansion. There could be a massive GDP expansion through AI.
L375Martin: Elon is right about that. But people are fear-mongering.
L376Martin: People are playing politics. People are trying to put— Rokona putting in, "Oh, they need to have an FEA."
L377Martin: Okay. I have a question.
L378Martin: Have you seen how antiquated the government systems are? If you're ever going to DOD, which I have done many, many times, and you look at the antiquated systems that they have, I always say the best thing that we can protect is nuclear coding.
L379Martin: We're really good at protecting that. I don't know if we can protect everything else in the federal government.
L380Martin: Everything is slow. Everything is bureaucratic.
L381Martin: Everything is clunky. It's got to work.
L382Martin: So we have to give it to the bureaucrats. And then they're going to bring the politics.
L383Martin: And I hate to bring the politics into this discussion, but it's just going to be terrible. So my thing is that that regulatory capture is scary because I don't know how solid it'll go.
L384Martin: And you just don't want to have a social media style crap that they did to administrative or to consecutive administrations.
L385Martin: It's just terrible what they did.
L386Nix: Sure. Sure.
L387Martin: Yeah. So that's basically it. I mean, but other than that, but it is a work in progress.
L388Martin: I think everybody needs to get involved. Everybody needs to get their voices heard.
L389Martin: And unfortunately, right now, it's not for the mainstream yet.
L390Martin: We are very, very, very early stage of this thing.
L391[redacted: Nix's off the record remarks ('This won't go into the interview'), lines 391 to 398]
L399Martin: Yeah, I'd love to talk to you, but no worries.
L400Nix: One last question.
L401Martin: Anytime.
L402Nix: One last question. Have you seen the Omarchi Builders website where I'm publishing all the interviews?
L403Martin: I think I took a glance at it, yes.
L404Nix: Okay. So go to— get on the website and go to omarchy.builders.
L405Martin: Oh. Do that right now on this other computer. There we go.
L406Nix: Yeah. omarchy.builders. There's no dot com. It's just omarchy.builders.
L407Martin: Okay.
L408Nix: So look on there. You're going to be number six. And I'm going to have— I'm going to have a whole write-up on you, and you're going to be the feature.
L409Martin: Appreciate it. Thank you.
L410Nix: The last thing I want you to say is I'm going to take this transcript, and I'm going to feed it to the agent that runs this site. I typically tell my agent, "Take this transcript and make Martin a f****** rock star." What I want you to do right now is I want you to tell me what are the most important things that you want to get across when you're featured?
L411Nix: What are the top three things for people to remember?
L412Martin: Top three things is wealth. I mean, I think the contributions. I think the contributions are the one.
L413Martin: Not for me particularly, but in general, I think the—
L414Nix: Yes, yes, yes.
L415Martin: I think those contributions, the community unity, is a big deal to me. I would say those two go behind. And the last thing that I would say is you follow me, go see what I do, and join the conversations.
L416Martin: And if I can help you build something or if I can contribute to your project, I'm happy to do so.
L417Nix: I believe that, man. Man, this has been awesome. I've learned a ton, and I can't wait to see—
L418Martin: Oh, I love it.
L419Nix: Before we hang up, I'm going to get on the Uber notebook and make it a part of my workflow.
L420Martin: You will.
L421Nix: And this has been awesome, brother. Thank you so much, man.
L422Martin: All right. Thank you. Thank you, brother.
L423Nix: Appreciate it.
L424Martin: I'll talk to you soon. Take care.
L425Nix: Take care.
L426Martin: All right.
L427Nix: In about 15 minutes, you'll be up. I'll tag you.
L428Martin: Yeah. And then I'll add you to the repo, and then we'll both email.
L429Nix: Thank you, brother. All right. We'll see you soon.
L430Martin: Take care.
L431Nix: Bye-bye.