Your location data is one of the most sensitive pieces of information you share, but are you trusting Google and Apple with every place you go? In this episode, Jordan Bravo and Stephen DeLorme explore private alternatives to mainstream navigation apps that don't track your movements. They cover privacy-focused options like Magic Earth and Organic Maps built on Open Street Maps, reveal how to use Waze on GrapheneOS without Google Play Services, and discuss the ultimate privacy solution: standalone Garmin GPS devices. Plus, news about Proton's new AI assistant Lumo and the company's concerning move away from Switzerland due to emerging surveillance laws.

Chapters

00:00 Why Privacy Laws Can't Be Trusted - Jordan's Opening Quote 00:10 Introduction and ATL BitLab Sponsorship 01:32 Welcome and Contact Information 02:27 News: Proton Announces Lumo AI Assistant 03:35 - Proton's Privacy Claims for Lumo 05:31 - Testing Lumo's Capabilities and Models 12:22 - Privacy Trade-offs vs Google/OpenAI 13:28 - Proton vs Big Tech Business Models 15:10 - Proton Moving Infrastructure Out of Switzerland 16:21 - Swiss Privacy Laws Under Threat 17:18 - Jordan's Take on Privacy Law Volatility 17:35 - European "Euro Stack" Initiative 20:27 Main Topic: Private GPS and Navigation 21:12 Introduction to Open Street Maps 22:00 Magic Earth: Premium Privacy Navigation App 23:50 - $0.99/year pricing model 24:48 - Jordan's experience with Magic Earth 26:20 - Search limitations vs Google Maps 29:22 Organic Maps: Free but Limited UX 30:40 Waze on GrapheneOS: Surprising Discovery 33:14 Garmin Standalone GPS: Ultimate Privacy 34:30 - Benefits of dedicated navigation device 37:24 - Garmin dash cam capabilities 38:22 - Garmin watches for privacy-conscious users 39:39 BTC Map: Bitcoin Business Directory 43:00 Mapbox for Developers 45:28 Boost Segment: Anonymous and Keith Sharp 47:17 Conclusion and Contact Information

Links

• Jordan Bravo
• Stephen DeLorme
• Boost in on Fountain.FM
• Proton Lumo AI
• Open Street Maps
• Magic Earth
• Organic Maps
• Waze
• Garmin GPS Devices
• BTC Map
• Mapbox

Transcript

SOV 018 Maps & GPS

Jordan Bravo: [00:00:00] So my takeaway from this is that while yes, it's nice to have privacy respecting laws in, in a given jurisdiction, you can't rely on that. There's always a chance that those laws will change for the worst. welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show, presented by ATL BitLab. I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is a podcast where we teach you how to take back control of your devices. Sovereign Computing means you own your technology, not the other way around.

Stephen DeLorme: This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab. ATL BitLab is Atlanta's freedom tech hacker space. We have co working desks, conference rooms, event space, maker tools, and tons of coffee. There is a very active community here in the lab. Every Wednesday night is Bitcoin night here in Atlanta. We also have meetups for cyber security, artificial intelligence, decentralized identity, product design, and more.

We offer day passes and nomad passes for people who need to use the lab only occasionally, [00:01:00] as well as memberships for people who plan to use the lab more regularly, such as myself. One of the best things about having a BitLab membership isn't the amenities, it's the people. Surrounding yourself with a community helps you learn faster and helps you build better.

Your creativity becomes amplified when you work in this space, that's what I think at least. If you're interested in becoming a member or supporting this space, please visit us at atlbitlab. com. That's A T L B I T L A B dot com. Alright, on to our show.

Jordan: Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show. I'm Jordan Bravo and I'm recording here in Atlanta with Steven Delorme. And we want to first remind you that you can send a Boosto gram into the show with a so with a podcasting 2.0 compatible app like Fountain FM or any other app where you can send in Lightning boosts and we will read them on the [00:02:00] show.

We get to listen to your feedback and you also help support the show. You may also email us. Our email address is sovereign@atlbitlab.com and today we have a pretty good topic. We're gonna be talking about sovereign and private ways to use GPS and mapping software. But first we are going to talk about a, a news article.

The company Proton, the makers of Proton Mail and other pro products that they've rolled out, like Proton Drive, proton Calendar, et cetera. They've announced in a blog post, a new AI related product. They call it Luo, LUMO. And we will have the link in the show notes as well as we're gonna show the. Article here on the screen for those of you watching, but the gist of it is they are announcing this AI product. You might say cynically, to jump on board [00:03:00] the AI hype train, but they are trying to be competitive with other AI tools out there, but with their own proton twist.

So they tout that this is a private AI solution and they compare themselves to. the other is like chat, GPT, Google Gemini, and those other big, dominant players. But they, they tout the privacy and they, they list several features of it. they list no logs. Steven, can you scroll down a little bit please?

Stephen DeLorme: Down

Jordan: Down? Yeah,

Stephen DeLorme: Let's see. Got it.

Jordan: so no logs, so they don't keep any logs of your conversations. Zero access encryption. they say, they say your chats are stored to using our battle tested, zero access encryption. So even we can't read them, no data sharing. Big tech companies share your data with third party vendors, advertisers, and government agencies.

Lumos, no logs and encrypted [00:04:00] architecture ensure we don't have data to share. And then they list their next point is that they're not used to train ai. Unlike other AI services, Lumo doesn't use your conversations or inputs to train large language models. And then, uh, their last bullet point that they have here is open Luin.

Lumo is based on open source language models and operates from protons, European data centers. And then they have one of these classic marketing. charts where it's like their product and then the other competitors and theirs has all the green check marks and the other competitors are mostly red xs.

So, you know, take that with a grain of salt. but I just wanted to bring this up and bring it to everybody's attention because this is a. Privacy respecting company who is now putting out an AI offering. And so, I have not tried this yet, but it sounds like it could be a good alternative to [00:05:00] some of the other providers that give zero about privacy.

whether or not this lives up to its hype, whether it, all of the marketing that they purport in their blog post, actually. Is true. In other words, is it really as private as they say it is? That's something we'll have to take a closer look at. let me ask you, Steven, I know you use Proton and their suite of products.

Have you tried Lumo yet? I.

Stephen DeLorme: I tried it, very briefly and, I'm happy to see it. I haven't like. Used it as a daily, daily driver for AI yet. But I think what I prompted it with was, the first time I tried it was something like, can you tell me which model you are? can you tell me which model or which, like ai, LLM you are, are backed by?

I don't know. It's always weird how to phrase that question because you kind of implying agency. [00:06:00] See, the last time I asked that, it said I am the Misra Mistral model. in fact, my collection of advanced models developed by proton. But lemme ask again, the like, are you llama seek R one, his control, et cetera. Empowered by a collection of advancement. Okay. Huh, interesting. Uh, I gotta say this is also faster than my experience was the other day. so it was like, I felt like it was very sluggish and slow and. You know, that's kind of been my experience with a lot of end-to-end encrypted stuff is there's always this kind of extra latency when waiting for stuff to be encrypted and decrypted and all of that kind of stuff. let's, let's like interrogate this thing a little bit. You seem faster today than when I used Lumo the other day, [00:07:00] and you give me. An overview of how Lumo works to encrypt my data and safeguard privacy, if at all. I was, you know, a little definitely slower than like Chad, GPT, but it's not. usable, right? It's definitely not bad. Sure. Lumos designed with a strong focus on privacy and security. Here's scenario how it works. Your actors encrypt all your actions with Lumo are encrypted in n This means that even ProCon cannot access the content of your conversation. The encryption keys are stored, located in your device. Secure. You can decrypt your data on device processing. Lumo processes your request locally on your device whenever possible. This minimizes the amount of data that needs to be sent to our servers, reducing the risk of interception or authorized access, secure data transmission When data does need to be transmitted to our servers, for example, to retrieve information or perform certain text [00:08:00] is encrypted, using industry standard protocols to ensure it remains secured during transit. Minimal data storage limos design store results day is possible. conversation history is encrypted and stored only if you choose to save it. regular security audits, all of that. that's really weird that Lumo is claiming that the model is stored locally. In which case if it is, it's probably one of these like super lightweight models, kind of like the one that they had in the, the proton mail that would like finish your emails for you. yes. Does Luo utilize kind of trusted execution or secure enclave for, processing data in other words, do you have models running in your server, you know, server farm, and, are those models. Are those models running in a TE? This thing may not know. [00:09:00] It could just be both, you know, BSing us, because LLMs can sometimes be a little bit sycophantic and always say things to please you. But I, I think I'm, I'm really just comparing this in my mind with how like Maple works. The, the one that's like, that's, uh, run by the open secret

Jordan: Yeah.

Stephen DeLorme: And now it's slowing down. but the open secret one is like an actual encrypted backend that the model executes in a trusted execution environment and they can generate a proof that, you know, demonstrates it's encrypted. This sounds like it's different. As of my current knowledge, Lumo leverages proton's robust encryption practices in true days, pro protected.

While I don't have specific details about the use of trusted execution environments or secure enclaves, proton is committed to blah, blah, blah. So my kind of take on this having interrogated this ai, doing it live here, is that I think it's a great step and I think it's a great, that proton is like entering the AI game. think [00:10:00] the, the, it sounds to me like what they're doing is, I, I can't imagine that all of these interactions are actually running from an on device model. If they are, I mean, it could be the case. Um, they don't advertise it in the blog post. but that sounds like it would be pretty wild if it was. so assuming that's the case, I guess it's actually pretty private if it's all running from an on-device model. It's just that the problem is that, least in the current day, it's nowhere. It's not gonna be as powerful as like the, clawed, sonnet four or whatever. It's not gonna be as, you know, powerful as a GPT-4.

Oh. just running with this like tiny little, model, you know, housed in local storage or whatever. but it's a great start and I think it's great to, to have an alternative, all of that. So I'll just have to use it more and see if it's powerful enough to be a daily driver.

Jordan: I agree, I, I want to emphasize something you said. So either it's running a [00:11:00] lightweight model locally, in which case you would get more privacy, but it's gonna be severely limited in power compared with a model that's running on a really expensive GPU farm on their cloud servers. So I would say.

As soon as you get a chance to use it more, you'll be able to determine how powerful of a model it is by its accuracy and explanatory power. cause I know you've used both lightweight and heavier models. So to me, that'll make itself apparent if it is apparent that it is powerful and it's running, uh, on their servers.

and the fact that they're not using any kind of. Confidential computing like maple, I, I think there's kind of a hole in their privacy model. They say that there's no logs, there's no, and it's a zero trust model. But at the same time, if they're not using a confidential compute environment, how could they possibly [00:12:00] send your query to the server without that ever being, Detect ever being read by anybody that has server access, because think about it, it can't be end-to-end encrypted because the model that's on the server has to be able to process it. So to me, that's a little bit of a, it's a little misleading there. I.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, yeah, definitely. the, the model running on that server has to be processing it, so I mean, it's definitely gonna get like. It's gonna be unencrypted at some point, but it, it's one of those kind of trade offs that might be good enough because, proton as a company, I think, I think they're pretty committed to privacy at this point.

And, I definitely think there's a stronger, cultural norm around data privacy in Europe. so that could be, it could be that that's good enough if they just have this policy that's like. You know, we delete the logs and if you want your message history saved, it's [00:13:00] encrypted the same way the emails and the calendars are.

I mean, that's and probably, you know, a good step. I mean, having a cultural. Having a cultural commitment to privacy at your company isn't as good as, um, you know, end-to-end encryption all the way down the stack, but I think it'll go a long way. It's better than not having that cultural commitment to privacy at your company.

Jordan: Exactly. I want to end on a high note on this where, which is if you compare it to other offerings. There's other companies like Google Open API, where their business model explicitly uses data. So, um, like they collect data and that feeds their whole business model. Whereas proton, their business model is explicitly not from that, it's from paid subscriptions.

So, and like you said, their whole culture, their ethos and their. Their sort of [00:14:00] product that they're selling to their customers is privacy, so they're not gonna be monetizing your data. They don't have an incentive to do that. And I think the, to me, I, I would feel much more comfortable using this if I'm, if I'm worrying about privacy than something like a chat GPT or a Gemini.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. And, uh, that sounds good to me. And this thing can search the web too. So just, that feature. Works.

Jordan: That's cool. Okay.

Stephen DeLorme: I've been, uh, for anyone who's, uh, listening or just listening only, I've asked it to search the web and find news from Atlanta today. Extreme heat warning, it says next week is gonna be a Scorcher might exceed 110 Fahrenheit in Atlanta next week.

Jordan: Alright, well I think we've talked about lumo enough, but I want to make a quick pivot here. I know we originally had not intended to talk about another article, but um, there was something I noticed as part of this article, [00:15:00] something about proton, and they said that they're gonna be moving. It's in the same, it's in the same announcement.

So, uh, if you look at the last. Paragraph here. Excuse me if I'm sounding like I'm reading while I'm, while I'm talking. But if you look at the last paragraph. Is that it?

Stephen DeLorme: the Euro stack for the future?

Jordan: Yeah. So it says, let me, let me read this quick, paragraph here. Lumo represents one of many investments proton will be making before end of decade to ensure that Europe stays strong, independent, and technologically sovereign because of legal uncertainty around.

Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance proposals that have been outlawed in the eu. Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move. This shift represents an investment of over 100 million euros into the EU proper. [00:16:00] While we do not give up the fight for privacy in Switzerland and will continue to fight proposals that we believe will be extremely damaging to the Swiss economy, proton is also embracing Europe and helping to develop a sovereign Europe stack for the future of our home continent.

Lumo is European and proudly so, and here to serve everybody who cares about privacy and security worldwide.

Stephen DeLorme: That's interesting because, you know, the, the narrative around proton and Switzerland was like, I remember like seven years ago it was more like, well, Swiss has the, you know, Switzerland has these amazing privacy laws, and that, that was like the selling point to proton mail.

It was like end-to-end encryption stored on, you know, servers governed by, you know, hardcore Swiss privacy laws. they're saying this, uh, privacy laws are, uh, sounds like under threat in Switzerland. so I hadn't heard about this.

Jordan: Exactly they, the way that they used to advertise it, they made it sound like Switzerland, famously known [00:17:00] for its private Swiss banking back, you know, several decades ago. And, and it now has that. Same air of privacy when it comes to data in the modern internet age. But as we can see with this jurisdictions, regulations can change on a dime in any given jurisdiction.

Jordan Bravo: So my takeaway from this is that while, yes, it's nice to have privacy respecting laws in, in a given jurisdiction, you can't rely on that. It's, there's always a chance that those laws will change for the worst.

Stephen DeLorme: This whole Euro stack thing they linked to is also interesting. Probably too deep of a rabbit hole to really fully explore. But I mean the, the gist of this Euro Stack website, it's our original idea for a European industrial policy initiative, bringing together tech governance and funding for Europe focused investments to build and adopt, adopt a suite of digital infrastructures from connectivity to cloud computing, AI and digital [00:18:00] platforms.

So like. In other words, my take on this, not following European politics super closely, is like we have this kind of movement here to, among. European players to, to make sure that, um, there are enough data centers in Europe, you know, that are, healthy data centers, uh, run by, you know, European, companies.

because when you think about it, like the, the whole like just access to compute and energy is, you know, probably going to be a huge geopolitical issue. was listening to another podcast a couple weeks ago that was really fascinating, just getting into the whole idea of like, AI as like a, a warfare, concern because like, you know, drones and, you know, you know, almost any other kind of, military, modern military system you can imagine is going to rely upon, you know, [00:19:00] really good calculation.

But also like the, the insights of ai. Um. And so like, basically having access to AI is going to be a national security concern. If you have another country that has, you know, AI powered warfare and you don't, so you need AI and, to, to, to have really great ai, you need really great data centers and you need, also enough energy to power those data centers.

So it's kind of interesting 'cause we, we've certainly seen this, I think on the US side. of the like, project Stargate stuff, and this seems like a very similar kind of, thing happening on the European side. You know, like we need enough data centers to actually stay competitive and we need the, you know, businesses, an ecosystem of businesses that use those data centers.

So interesting.

Jordan: The, the way I see it, like you said, on a, from a geopolitical standpoint, it seems like in the same way that the US doesn't wanna be so reliant on, for [00:20:00] example, China for various manufacturing, it seems like Europe is a little, is concerned that they are too reliant on. The US and other countries for all of their data centers and computing needs.

So this seems like they're trying to be a little bit more self-sovereign as a European Union, which I can understand that viewpoint.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jordan: Okay. Well, let's move on to our main topic today. We are going to hit on something very important for those of you. Who are trying to stay more private and sovereign with your data, and that is how do we use GPS and maps and navigation while giving up as little bit as little of our privacy as possible?

So most of us would know that the main dominant players are gonna be Google and Apple. Google Maps, apple Maps. If you're [00:21:00] using an iPhone, you probably are using Apple Maps, although you might also be using Google Maps. And then Google, of course, Android phones are gonna be using Google Maps almost exclusively.

But let's talk about some alternatives. First, I want to introduce this concept of open street maps that. People might not have heard of. If you go to openstreetmaps.org, you can see the sort of homepage of this project. And this is not a single company, but this is an open source project, as kind of denominate denoted by the name.

Although names can be misleading. For example, OpenAI is not actually open, but in this case, open Streete Maps is actually open and it's open in terms of it's a crowdsourced. Database of mapping data. So mapping data is, is very valuable. Google Maps, they mapped out much of the world and that's what powers their MAP software.[00:22:00]

But Open Streete Maps on the other hand, is completely free to use by anyone. There are a lot of businesses that use it. And there are several apps and we're gonna look at a couple of those apps that we can use as individuals to navigate. the first one is called Magic Earth. This is downloadable on iOS or Android, and unlike Google Maps, magic Earth uses the open Street maps data that we just spoke about, and they also have, um, privacy guarantees in their ethos if you, when you download it, I remember there's a, a big banner that pops up on first use that says.

Your data is not being used anywhere else. And, um, the, it might be under their FAQ as well. If, if we can navigate there, Steven, or, or,

Stephen DeLorme: nice looking

Jordan: yeah, or maybe just under their, [00:23:00] their why go with us.

Stephen DeLorme: Uh, let's see. I've already lost it. There we go. Okay.

Jordan: So what there, there are benefits that they tout. They have offline maps, so you can actually still use it while you are, while you have no, uh, data connection. You can be in airplane mode, for example, and still be, um, using all the, the downloaded map data. There's also, they tout privacy first.

Could you scroll up a little? I think it was one of their first sections on the site that say, uh, privacy first by design, live traffic, smooth navigation, 3D maps and offline access. I,

Stephen DeLorme: Do, uh, what's their model like? Or is this a paid product?

Jordan: let's see, coming soon, a private Google and apple free payment option pricing.

Stephen DeLorme: They go to [00:24:00] 99 cents a year.

Jordan: So they say they don't track you. We don't sell your behavior. We don't monetize your movement. But building and maintaining a high quality app with global, global coverage, real-time features and offline capabilities takes real work and long-term investment. That's why we're introducing a charge of 99 cents per year.

Stephen DeLorme: That seems cheap, but not complaining.

Jordan: Did you say that seems, seems steep, the price.

Stephen DeLorme: Cheap.

Jordan: Oh, cheap. Yeah, it does. It does seem very cheap.

Stephen DeLorme: like that seems like a no brainer to buy that. I mean, I guess it depends on how good the product is. Have you used it before?

Jordan: I have, uh, I've been using this for a little while. It's decent. It's gotten me from A to B most of the time. Uh, [00:25:00] it's not nearly as good uxy as Google Maps or, or, let me rephrase that. The UX is nice. It's just not quite as accurate as Google Maps and as speedy, it's a little slower. and occasionally it gives weird directions, but, oh, and, and here's the, here's the part where I really noticed a difference.

Uh The way, it's not as good as Google Maps or Apple Maps, while you can type in any address and it will get you there, the name search functionality is not nearly as good as you might expect on Google Maps. So for example, if I type in Shake Shack, now that one it'll probably find, but if you type in some lesser known business or or name of a location, a lot of times it'll have trouble finding it and you have to actually.

Do a Google search or do a, a web search for the address, for the business name, find their address [00:26:00] and then paste it in. So that's a little bit of a pain

Stephen DeLorme: Is that because it doesn't source any names of businesses from Google.

Jordan: maybe, but it does store some names. So some names it'll find, but others it will not. And I, I haven't found why that is.

Stephen DeLorme: It is probably because like open street maps is like a volunteer project, and so like, so, so does, does Magic Earth use open street map under

Jordan: Yes, it does.

Stephen DeLorme: So it because Open Streete Map is a user maintained project, be that there are just some businesses that people have added to Open Streete Map Magic Earth is therefore able to find those. Whereas not all, like if for any given small [00:27:00] business in the US it's more likely that they're going to be, registered on Open Street, on Open Streete map, or I'm sorry. It's more likely that they're going to register themselves on Google My Business, so that they can get all these, you know, people coming into their business and Google business. Not as likely they're gonna be on Open Streete map.

Jordan: Yep.

Stephen DeLorme: it can be so that, that, that would be my guess as to why it sometimes finds things by a name search and other times doesn't.

Jordan: Yeah, that's a good point. So it's the search is only gonna be good as the underlying data and the data, because it's open street maps, it's, it's volunteer and crowdsourced. So like you said, if a small business hasn't been added by some volunteer, then it won't be searchable. But as far as. GPS and navigation goes.

I think it's got really good ux and I do like the offline feature because Google Maps and Apple Maps do not have that.

Stephen DeLorme: The way they present this, uh, this map [00:28:00] is they use different layers than Google does. I'm looking at the open street map view of Atlanta. It makes Atlanta look like it's built on a perfect grid system or something.

Jordan: Which is funny because now living in Atlanta, I know that it's anything but a grid and

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, it is just an illusion from the way they've turned this thing on. That layers on, on this map.

Jordan: that's funny. Yeah. Atlanta has some very windy streets.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan: Well, I think that's all there's to say about Magic Earth. I, I do think it's got the slickest UI and UX of any app that's using Open Streett maps data. So, uh, I do recommend it. Go ahead and give it a try. It seems like a pretty good option. I'm gonna get into what my ultimate, what I currently use in a second, but I wanna go through my.

My journey here. So another one that I tried is called Organic Maps. And this is [00:29:00] again, uses Open street map data. So it's gonna have a similar experience in terms of its ability to find and navigate to destinations. However, this one, I had a, a worst experience UX wise. I had trouble, like when you click start and you navigate somewhere.

It won't actually like I, it'll get you most of the way there, but then it's just got a weird UI quirk where it doesn't show you the exact address and it won't say like, here on your right, like it'll just bring you to the R to the last turn and then kind of dump you on that street. And that's it. Now, maybe I was using it wrong, maybe I had some setting turned off by accident, but, that was something that was frustrating for me and I did not end up using this for very long.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, it certainly doesn't look as slick visually as the other one, but[00:30:00]

Jordan: However, it does have these, the same feature where you can download the map and use it offline, so it could be useful if you are, let's say, hiking in a place with no data connection, no cell connection, and you just wanna a map for that you can use offline. This is certainly usable.

And do you have any other comments on org organic maps before we move on to the next app?

Stephen DeLorme: Uh, that really sounds cool that they have an offline mode for, uh, trail, but I'd probably rather just go to straight to Magic Earth if that one works better.

Jordan: So I, I used both of these for a while and Magic Earth was getting the job done, but I recently discovered that Waze. Is usable on Graphene Os without using Google Play Services at all. So you don't need any account, you don't have to sign in. You can be on Graphene [00:31:00] os, which is completely degod without even having to turn on Sandbox, Google Play and Waze still works perfectly.

So, Waze is a great option. It's, I would say it's got. As good of a UX and map data as Google, because Google purchased Waze several years ago, so they've got all the resources of Google. And so it's funny, I've never actually tried Wazes in browser map, but um, yeah, most people know about Waze at this point, so I don't really need to describe it too much.

Waze has really good, Live information, so like traffic and speed traps and construction and that kind of thing. this is frankly the best option that I tried as far as phone apps without using Google or Apple. And so this was a real game changer when I discovered that I could use this on [00:32:00] Graphos.

Now, obviously since Google owns Waze, they you're, you're using a Google product. But, without logging in, and if you're using other steps to protect your data, like VPNs and not associating your app and your phone with your real identities or any of your accounts, then I think it's a great option. Very, it's very private and I think offs there are minimal.

Stephen DeLorme: Interesting. Wouldn't expected the browser one to be so good.

Jordan: Yeah, I should. I should point out that Waze has both native Android app and native iOS app.

Stephen DeLorme: But wait, are you saying for the one you use on graphene, are you, you're actually using, are you using the Android app or using the browser version.

Jordan: I'm using the Android app. The, the reason I mentioned the browser version was simply because we have the browser version open up here right now on the [00:33:00] screen, I was just commenting that I've never seen this browser version of Waze before, but what I use on Graphos is the Android native app, and it works perfectly.

It's very smooth, very fast. Good ux.

Stephen DeLorme: Okay,

Jordan: Yeah. so that was, that was my solution for a while. And then just very recently, I, I'm trying something else. I bought a standalone GPS by Garmin, and while this might feel like a step backwards because. prior to ubiquitous smartphone, GPS navigation, we all, a lot of people use these, these are the standalone apps that you put on your dashboard or stick to your windshield.

these are really good options and I'll tell you what I like about using this currently. One is the privacy benefit. This is not connected to, the internet while I'm driving. It's not sending data to any company. And, when I do want to update the [00:34:00] maps, I can connect it to my home wifi and just hit update and it downloads and updates it, so it keeps it.

It keeps it current, but it's not always connected. it doesn't require me to use any kind of app on my phone so I can leave my phone at home if I want to and, and still navigate places if I ch so choose. So those are kind of the privacy reasons. And then finally, there's, there's sort of a, a might call it a UX reason, user experience reason.

And for me that is. Sometimes I don't want my phone to do everything. I want a dedicated device. So maybe I have my phone in my pocket, I don't wanna pull it out. Or maybe I'm using my phone for something else, but I really just want a single device that sits on my dashboard that's always there and I don't have to worry about pulling it out or putting it in and mounting it.

And it always has the same thing on it, which is navigation. And, so far it's, it's worked out great. So. [00:35:00] I will continue using that and I'll report back on if I have any updates that are relevant.

Stephen DeLorme: Is this the, the tread two.

Jordan: The model that I got is called, mine was, was a lot cheaper. I I got it for maybe $180. But, um, I'll,

Stephen DeLorme: Wow.

Jordan: I'll, I'll find the model and put it in the show notes if anybody's interested. But if you do a search for Garmin,

Stephen DeLorme: Maybe you,

Jordan: it's pretty, you'll, you'll find it.

Stephen DeLorme: it might be yours with like an older model. those are pretty cool. I mean, it's actually fun to see that they're still making these things. I remember these things were like, so, uh, high tech in the late two thousands. And then uh, you know, I don't know, once, uh, the iPhones and stuff started going mainstream, it just like, it gotta the point where like, no one [00:36:00] wanted to use these things anymore. but it looks like there's still a market for this kinda stuff. I guess it makes sense because like the way they're kind of marketing this is like in the little picture on the screen, it's like the Cane Creek Canyon Trail, and then the other model, it's like, they're going through some mountain packs or something.

So I guess, uh, know, if you do, if you're, you know, kind of a outdoors person, you, uh, the, the phone just isn't an option. I mean, you, you need some kind of way to have it all downloaded, locally. need it all downloaded locally on your phone. You can't just expect there to be internet wherever you go. this, this device is, you know, designed for storing all the data locally and, and just routing based on the data it has. Is it powered by the car?

Jordan: Yeah, you plug it into your, I mean, it has a battery, but I keep mine plugged into my, uh, car power. Okay.

Stephen DeLorme: [00:37:00] That's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, it, it's it's like at one point in time, this was a high tech, thing. For the most part, it got replaced by smartphones except for, for the, the needs of people who do And now, because there's still this, you know, off-roading market, these products still get built and. Privacy conscious people can use this as an option.

Jordan: Yeah, it is cool. One other feature that I don't personally use, but I just wanted to throw it out there, you can actually, they sell a rear view camera that you can hook up and then it connects. I think wirelessly to your unit. So you can actually use it as like a, backup camera or, and you can also use it as a, as a front dash camera.

So like you could have a, a front camera and a rear camera and they could be recording, you know, if you want a dash cam, like for example, people who drive Ubers, or if you're just conscious about somebody hitting your car [00:38:00] and you won't want. Video evidence of that in a, in a car crash, you can use your Garmin as the like hub for that.

Stephen DeLorme: There's some places where people jump in front of, uh, jump in front of cars to get payouts. and uh, so you need those, you need the

Jordan: I.

Stephen DeLorme: uh, dash cam to you know yourself in case of a lawsuit.

Jordan: That's right. Since you scrolled to the, the watches section. I personally have not tried the Garmin watches yet, but I do, I am interested because they are a smartwatch option for people who are privacy conscious, because you can have a smartwatch that is not connected to anything. You could also have a smartwatch that has very minimal connection, you know, very selective about what you let it.

Communicate. So this seems pretty cool if, if you're somebody who is always wanted a smartwatch but doesn't like the idea of a all seen, all powerful Apple or Google [00:39:00] watch tracking everything and reporting all of your data, then Garmin might be a solution for you.

Stephen DeLorme: Hmm. That's cool. Yeah, I think the, the health benefits are always interesting about watches just being able to like, collect biometric data about your body.

Jordan: Yeah, and, and I,

Stephen DeLorme: uh, that could

Jordan: I think if you are able to maintain control of that data, then that could be really beneficial without having to submit yourself to the Borg.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, exactly.

Jordan: Well,

Stephen DeLorme: So.

Jordan: go ahead Steven.

Stephen DeLorme: I was gonna say there's another, there's another interesting map we haven't covered on

Jordan: And what's that?

Stephen DeLorme: which, which, which I can, uh, it's the BTC

Jordan: Ah, let's bring it up.

Stephen DeLorme: I'm, I mean, I, I don't know that I, I would recommend anybody use this for navigation. guess I haven't tried it for navigation. I don't know if it works, but I mean, it's interesting because, you know, you brought up Open Streete [00:40:00] map earlier and how. Uh, magic Earth. And, um, the other one, organic maps like pull from Open Street maps. And so because Open Streete Maps is this like open API for, mapping data, a lot of people will build like other, specific use cases off of it. And so btc map.org is this project to like basically map out all businesses that accept Bitcoin. if we type in Atlanta. oh, that's weird. A TL bitlab isn't popping up. There we go. And then it's zooming in on my screen. Whoa. We're flying down from like the atmosphere. We go, we have a little map here and I can, I can click on it and it'll, you know, give the address and say that, accepts on chain and lightning and all this kind of stuff. you know, similar to how, oh, so like, basically to add stuff to btc [00:41:00] map.org, what you actually have to do is you, you have to go to open streete map.org. And log in and like you basically like make an account as an editor and you have to plot like a business on the map or find an existing business and then you need to add some metadata to it. Like they have kind of a spec for adding metadata to, map markers and stuff. And um, you can, uh, add the data there. So it's kinda interesting. OpenStreetMap is like super flexible and people can build a, build a lot with it.

Jordan: I like this. I think, Bitcoin ATMs are also on that map as well.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Yeah. If you, if you like zoom out in, in Atlanta, there's like a ton of, yeah, there's like a ton of, well, I'm not seeing them right now, but I used to see like a lot of ATMs popping up all over the city. There might be like some filter on right now or something.

Jordan: Actually really.

Stephen DeLorme: yeah. I wonder, does Open Streete charge for their, [00:42:00] their data or whatever.

Jordan: Mm, good question

Stephen DeLorme: I'm reading

Jordan: right there. It says you are free to use it for any purpose as long as you credit open Streete Maps and its contributors.

Stephen DeLorme: Open Streete Map Foundation. Huh? They must have like donors and, and stuff like that. Um.

Jordan: Yeah. I read at one point that several of the big companies that were competitors to Google, so Microsoft and Amazon and some others, I think they were big donators to open Streete maps because. Google has sort of the monopoly on mapping data, and I guess it's in their interest, these competitors, to develop open Streete maps further[00:43:00]

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. There's also Mapbox, which I've used. For, um, like hash uses Map Arts.

Jordan: Your, your audio broke up a little bit, but I'm just gonna repeat for the audience. It's Mapbox, M-A-P-B-O x.com.

Stephen DeLorme: I don't know if this is based on Open Streete MAP data or not, but it's a pretty easy API to work with, but I don't

Jordan: Is this the one you used for the uh, hash League project?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, sure is. Yeah.

Jordan: It's pretty cool.

Stephen DeLorme: I, I think a lot of, a lot of what this has, all this mapping stuff is pretty complicated for me, but it is basically these tile server things, like a lot of the benefit to, like, when you're building something that has a map in it, it's like not just about, Actual data for the map, but the ability to like quickly render that data into something usable. because it's like, when you think about it, it's like depending [00:44:00] on like how, how zoomed in you are dictates, like how much data you need to render. So it's like if you're like looking at a city from like, you know, if you're looking at the whole US there's like a level of detail, like in terms of like streets and stuff that you just don't wanna render. maybe a couple of interstates but not streets. And then when you zoom in on into like the state level, then you want to start seeing more like state roads and main roads. And you zoom in real far and then you want to start seeing like tiny little alleyways and individual businesses and buildings and you know, stuff like that.

And so it's like. You have to have like these like tile servers that really do a good job of like efficiently rendering images of what the map should look like and sending them to your device. that's why it's, it's cool that the garment is capable of doing that, all of that stuff offline, I think. Um, 'cause I don't know, it's, it's, it's complicated [00:45:00] engineering. We've, I guess human's kind of figured it out at this point, but it's, you know, there's definitely a lot of engineering that went into making mapping possible on the computer.

Jordan: it is fascinating.

All right, well, was there anything else you wanted to cover regarding Mapbox or Maps in general?

Stephen DeLorme: No, I don't think so.

Jordan: Let's take a look at our boosto grams. I think we got a couple of boosts into the show since our last podcast episode. we had. An anonymous person, also known as Warder Mo, wrote in and boosted with 2100 SATs and said, always a good day when a new episode of sovereign competing drops. And then he or she boosted in with a follow up with 210 SATs and said, [00:46:00] computing, ha ha.

So that's a. Typo correction there. Thank you for that anonymous. We appreciate your boost and your message. And then Keith Sharp boosted in with 21,000 SATs. Beautiful number there. A TL Bitlab, A TL bit devs always the relevant and useful lowdown on Freedom Tech. And uh, I'd like to read Keith Sharp's profile blurb.

It says Boomer Pleb, node runner, realtor. Very nice. Thank you very much, Keith. We appreciate that boost and your message and love hearing from you. Well, that's all the boosts we have for today's show. Remember, if you want to boost in, you can do so with Fountain FM or Pod verse, or any other podcasting 2.0 apps.

You can also email us sovereign@atlbitlab.com. We'd love to hear. Your experience on this topic. Have you tried [00:47:00] any maps other than the big ones by Apple and Google? Have you tried Waze? Have you tried any standalone GPSs? What have your experiences been boosting or writing? And let us know. And with that, we will see you next time everybody.

Thanks for listening.

Stephen DeLorme: Hey, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to learn more about anything that we discussed, you can look for links in the show notes that should be in your podcast player, or you can go to atlbitlab. com slash podcast. On a final note, if you found this information useful and you want to help support us, you can always send us a tip in Bitcoin.

Your support really helps us so that we can keep bringing you content like this. All right. Catch you [00:48:00] later.