Nerding Out With Viktor (audio only)

Viktor Petersson

Nerding Out With Viktor is a podcast about tech, startups, and everything in between. Hosted by Viktor, a lifelong nerd and seasoned entrepreneur, the show features real conversations with builders, hackers, and technologists. Viktor got his start in Silicon Valley with YippieMove, an early email migration tool, and later created Blotter, a top-ranked productivity app for macOS. He now runs Screenly — the first developer-friendly digital signage platform — and built its open-source sibling, Anthias. He's also been leading remote teams for over a decade, long before it became the norm. Each episode explores topics like AI, software, cybersecurity, hardware, and the messy reality of building and scaling products. With a no-fluff, straight-talking approach, Nerding Out With Viktor is perfect for anyone who enjoys smart, technical conversations without the hype. Subscribe to join the ride.

  1. 6d ago

    Sovereign AI and the Agentic Cloud with Peter Damm

    In this episode of Nerding Out with Viktor, host Viktor Petersson sits down with Peter Damm, co-founder of Granite, a European company building infrastructure for sovereign AI, to unpack why the next phase of AI may be decided by infrastructure as much as by models. The UK pays offshore wind operators around three billion a year to switch their turbines off, while AI companies struggle to find power for the GPUs they have already bought. Peter explains why agentic workloads need a different kind of cloud, one that balances GPUs, CPUs, memory and storage, and why the hardware ratio is flipping from eight GPUs per CPU toward eight CPUs per GPU. Granite builds modular, container-sized data centers that go where the stranded energy is, deploying in about four months rather than the five to seven years it takes to bring a traditional data center online. The episode reframes sovereignty as a question of control rather than regulation. Closed models can be switched off or repriced overnight, while open models like Kimi now match frontier quality and can be audited and run on your own hardware. Viktor and Peter also cover unpredictable agent costs, the YOLO era of agent permissions, AI-driven security threats, and whether OpenAI and Anthropic will survive the revolution they helped start. For founders and engineering teams building on AI, it is a practical look at keeping models, data and costs under their own control.

  2. Jul 29

    Leadership Coaching for Founders: Burnout, Habits, and Building Clarity with Ed Ley

    In this episode of Nerding Out with Viktor, host Viktor Petersson sits down with Ed Ley, a leadership coach, author, former gym owner, and two-time TEDx speaker, to unpack why capable leaders get stuck even when they already know what they should be doing. Most leadership advice assumes the problem is information, but the gap between knowing and doing rarely closes by being told the right thing again. Ed's route into this work started in fitness, where results are hard to hide, and moved through neuroscience, habit change, and years spent around both high-performance sport and business. The conversation traces how he came to treat behavior as a recipe that can be mapped rather than a plan that can be prescribed, and why the brain is better understood as a survival machine reacting to threat and uncertainty than as a rational one waiting for a destination. The episode reframes burnout as a design problem rather than a workload one. Viktor and Ed cover the bungee cord effect of becoming the source of certainty for everyone around you, the predictions that sit underneath micromanagement, temporal discounting and the cost of inaction, and why bottlenecks in a company are solved by changing the architecture rather than asking the bottleneck to work harder.

  3. May 27

    Post-Quantum Cryptography: The Trust Crisis Coming for Every System with David Pollak

    In this episode of Nerding Out with Viktor, host Viktor Petersson sits down with David Pollak, founder of Spice Labs and creator of the Lift web framework, to unpack post-quantum cryptography and why the migration window is shorter than most teams realize. Google now estimates elliptic curve encryption could be breakable by quantum computers in 2029, putting the trust layer behind every bank transaction, signed document, software update, and Bitcoin wallet on a fixed timeline. David draws on a career that spans writing software for FEMA at 14, beating Lotus in the NeXT spreadsheet market, diagnosing Twitter's original Fail Whale, and years at Cisco's firewall group. The conversation moves from the mechanics of Shor's algorithm and lattice-based replacements to the harder problem underneath: discovering where cryptography actually lives across millions of microservices, legacy mainframes, and post-build artifacts that no SBOM tool can see. The episode reframes the post-quantum transition as a discovery and prioritization problem before it is a remediation one. Viktor and David cover crypto agility, the hardware root-of-trust gap in TPMs and HSMs, why the forgery threat is bigger than harvest-now-decrypt-later, and what engineering teams should be doing in the next three years.

  4. Apr 30

    Rethinking Container Security: Why Isolation Was Never Built In (with Alex Zenla)

    In this episode of Nerding Out with Viktor, host Viktor Petersson sits down with Alex Zenla, Founder and CTO of Edera, to unpack why container security has been built on a flawed assumption from the start. The conversation traces Alex's journey from working in deeply insecure IoT and industrial systems to building Edera, a company focused on rethinking isolation at the runtime level. Along the way, they explore how containers became the default abstraction, despite relying on shared kernel state and weak isolation guarantees. The discussion covers the technical trade-offs behind namespaces, virtualization, and hypervisor-based approaches, as well as the real-world challenges of securing modern workloads. As AI agents and autonomous systems push infrastructure in new directions, the limits of today's container security runtime are becoming harder to ignore. This episode offers a grounded look at what needs to change and why a different approach to isolation may be necessary for the next generation of systems.

  5. Mar 24

    SBOMs & CRA Compliance with Olle Johansson and Anthony Harrison

    In this episode of Nerding Out with Viktor, host Viktor Petersson sits down with Olle Johansson and Anthony Harrison to explore the intersection of Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) and the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Together, they unpack what CRA compliance looks like in practice and why SBOMs are becoming a critical piece of the regulatory puzzle. Olle and Anthony share their hands-on experience navigating SBOM tooling, formats like CycloneDX and SPDX, and the operational challenges teams face when integrating these workflows into real-world development pipelines. The conversation covers how organizations can move beyond checkbox compliance toward meaningful transparency in their software supply chains. They also discuss the timeline and enforcement realities of the CRA, how it interacts with existing standards, and what engineering teams should be doing now to prepare. For anyone building, shipping, or securing software in the EU market, this episode offers a grounded, practical guide to the compliance landscape ahead.

  6. Feb 11

    Biohacking Resilience: Engineering the Human System with Marcelo Garcia

    In this episode of "Nerding Out with Viktor," host Viktor Petersson sits down with Marcelo Garcia, a telecom infrastructure veteran turned extreme biohacker, to explore what biohacking looks like when approached through systems thinking and data. Marcelo recently completed a 50-day water-only fast while hiking nearly 1,000 kilometers, tracking everything from DEXA scans and VO2 max to HRV and metabolic panels. The conversation moves from the mechanics of prolonged fasting and fat oxidation to muscle preservation under sustained load, immune adaptation, and the role of movement as a metabolic signal. Viktor and Marcelo also discuss biological age modeling and how AI can synthesize large sets of biomarkers into practical health span projections. For builders and technically inclined listeners, this episode reframes resilience as something measurable, testable, and intentionally designed.

  7. 12/17/2025

    CRA Explained: What the Cyber Resilience Act Means for Device Manufacturers

    In this episode of "Nerding Out with Viktor," host Viktor Petersson sits down with Sarah Fluchs, CTO and OT cybersecurity expert, to unpack the EU's Cyber Resilience Act and what it means for anyone building connected devices. Sarah shares her journey from engineering into the world of OT security, and explains her involvement in the CRA expert group that's shaping how the regulation gets implemented. Together, they explore what CRA compliance looks like in practice—from the requirement to provide five years of vulnerability support, to the constraints around over-the-air updates, and the rising importance of Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) in embedded systems. The conversation dives into the practical challenges facing device manufacturers, including how to structure security workflows, manage firmware lifecycles, and prepare for regulatory scrutiny. Sarah offers clear, grounded insights into the timeline, scope, and enforcement mechanisms of the CRA, helping listeners understand what's required and what's still being defined. Viktor and Sarah also discuss the broader implications of the CRA for the embedded and IoT ecosystem, exploring how the regulation intersects with existing standards and what it means for both large enterprises and smaller hardware teams. They examine common misconceptions about compliance and share strategies for teams looking to get ahead of the requirements. Whether you're managing firmware, building security workflows, or navigating hardware compliance, this episode offers a practical guide to understanding the CRA and preparing your organization for what's ahead.

  8. 11/19/2025

    UK Online Safety Act: Digital ID and the Risks of a Database State

    In this episode of "Nerding Out with Viktor," host Viktor Petersson sits down with James Baker, Policy and Campaigns Manager at Open Rights Group, to explore the real-world impact of the UK Online Safety Act and proposed Digital ID systems. Together, they unpack how the UK's approach to digital identity is raising concerns about centralization, privacy, and long-term control over personal data. James shares his experience fighting the UK's original ID card proposal and why current models risk repeating the same mistakes—only with more data and less oversight. The conversation covers how enforcement is playing out across infrastructure, the role of companies like Palantir, and how surveillance tools like facial recognition and metadata scanning are already affecting users and platforms. Viktor and James delve into the technical and policy implications of centralized identity systems, examining how seemingly convenient digital ID solutions can create unprecedented opportunities for surveillance and control. They discuss the challenges facing platforms trying to comply with age verification requirements while protecting user privacy, and why the current regulatory approach may be fundamentally incompatible with secure, decentralized systems. The discussion also explores the broader implications for encryption, anonymity, and digital rights in an increasingly surveilled digital landscape. James provides insights into how civil liberties organizations are pushing back against overreaching legislation, and what individuals and organizations can do to protect privacy and freedom in the digital age. This episode is especially relevant for anyone working on identity, encryption, or infrastructure. It offers a clear look at how policy and implementation intersect—and why design choices today matter more than ever for the future of digital rights and privacy.

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Nerding Out With Viktor is a podcast about tech, startups, and everything in between. Hosted by Viktor, a lifelong nerd and seasoned entrepreneur, the show features real conversations with builders, hackers, and technologists. Viktor got his start in Silicon Valley with YippieMove, an early email migration tool, and later created Blotter, a top-ranked productivity app for macOS. He now runs Screenly — the first developer-friendly digital signage platform — and built its open-source sibling, Anthias. He's also been leading remote teams for over a decade, long before it became the norm. Each episode explores topics like AI, software, cybersecurity, hardware, and the messy reality of building and scaling products. With a no-fluff, straight-talking approach, Nerding Out With Viktor is perfect for anyone who enjoys smart, technical conversations without the hype. Subscribe to join the ride.

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