Self-Directed Research

Sure, it's unsafe, but it's not like, UNSAFE unsafe. Visit sdr-podcast.com/intrusive-lists-for-fun-and-profit to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

Amos continues on the arc of nerd-sniping themselves to make their videos in the silliest possible way. Visit sdr-podcast.com/how-far-can-you-take-openfx to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

Amos goes further into automating their video production workflow. Get ready to play a game! Visit sdr-podcast.com/blackmagic-fusion-is-weird to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

James explains a bit about how safety critical industries think about reliability, the work that goes into shipping safety critical software, and how the Rust language and compiler are a good fit these industries. Visit sdr-podcast.com/how-is-software-safety-certified to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

Amos shares the audio, video, and lighting equipment they use (past and present!) to produce the videos on the fasterthanlime channel. It turns out you can save a lot of money by just buying three iPhones. Visit sdr-podcast.com/all-you-need-is-three-iphones to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

James discusses the concept of software traceability tools, used in safety critical software development, and his wishes for an open source version that could give all of the benefits with a minimal amount of fuss. Visit sdr-podcast.com/traceability to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

Amos explains their choices when it comes to encoding settings for images and for short videos in browsers in 2025. Visit sdr-podcast.com/html5-video to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

James shares a bit about Typst as an excited newcomer to the 'documents as code' ecosystem, while simultaneously throwing a lot of shade at LaTeX, a tool that James and Amos have never really actually used. Visit sdr-podcast.com/typst-is-pretty-neat to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

The top 10? Bottom 10? In any case, enjoy a breakdown of 10 digital rights management schemes. Also, admire Amos' restraint as a YouTuber that they waited until 2025 to make a numbered list. Visit sdr-podcast.com/drm-schemes to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

James and Amos have a spirited discussion about sans-io, a technique for writing protocol libraries, and the tradeoffs of sans-io when compared to leaning into async/await. Visit sdr-podcast.com/sans-io to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

Join us as Amos falls down the rabbit hole of automation tools to bring you, the viewer, the absolute highest quality screenshots and code snippets. Visit sdr-podcast.com/automating-macos to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

James and Amos are back, and talking about routing, reverse proxies, and yeeting packets onto the internet. Visit sdr-podcast.com/proxying-is-just-dumb-routing to see the show notes and transcript! This episode is sponsored by Depot: the build acceleration platform that's on a mission to make all builds near instant. If you're tired of watching your builds in GitHub Actions crawl like the modern-day equivalent of paint drying, give Depot's GitHub Actions runners a try. They’re up to 10x faster, with unlimited concurrency, faster caching, support for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and they plug right into other Depot optimizations like accelerated container image builds and remote caching for Bazel, Turborepo, Gradle, and more. Depot was built by developers who were tired of wasting time waiting on builds instead of shipping. It's made for teams that want to move faster and stay focused on what actually matters. That’s why companies like PostHog use Depot to cut build times from over 3 hours to just 3 minutes, saving tens of thousands of build hours every week. Start your free 7-day trial at depot.dev and let them know we sent you.

James shares why you might want to design embedded systems as a network of devices, instead of trying to cram everything into a single chip Visit sdr-podcast.com/the-embedded-buddy-system to see the show notes and transcript! **Sponsor:** Poststation, a tool from OneVariable that makes it easy to set up communication between your desktop, laptop, or an embedded Linux system, to as a many connected microcontrollers as you need. If you're a company building a product around multiple devices, and would like to have all of the "plumbing", tooling, and device management handled out of the box, send us an email to [email protected] for early access.

In a rare direct follow-up episode, Amos shares an even differenter take on Serde, this time focusing on the kind of needs a server would have when handling data. Spoiler: Yes, merde means poop in French. Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/merde-is-not-serde/ to see the show notes and transcript! CodeCrafters is a service for learning programming skills by doing. Visit our referral link at CodeCrafters to start your free trial. If you decide to upgrade, you'll get a discount and a portion of the sale will support this podcast.

A bit about how serde works well, a bit about how serde doesn't work well, and a bit about a different, questionable way of doing things Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/a-different-serde/ to see the show notes and transcript! CodeCrafters is a service for learning programming skills by doing. Visit our referral link at CodeCrafters to start your free trial. If you decide to upgrade, you'll get a discount and a portion of the sale will support this podcast.

Join us on this adventure as Amos describes the history of Bluetooth & co., the trials and tribulations of connecting devices in their home and how this has helped their mental well-being (yes, really). Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/my-home-automation-journey/ to see the show notes and transcript! CodeCrafters is a service for learning programming skills by doing. Visit our referral link at CodeCrafters to start your free trial. If you decide to upgrade, you'll get a discount and a portion of the sale will support this podcast.

James explains how to combine macros and const-fns to work around limitations of what is possible at compile time, and how to do extremely wasteful calculations at compile time to deduplicate lists of things to make embedded systems go brrr Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/compile-time-criemes/ to see the show notes and transcript! CodeCrafters is a service for learning programming skills by doing. Visit our referral link at CodeCrafters to start your free trial. If you decide to upgrade, you'll get a discount and a portion of the sale will support this podcast.

The Wonderful Story of Target Triples and Six More Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/target-triples/ to see the show notes and transcript! CodeCrafters is a service for learning programming skills by doing. Visit our referral link at CodeCrafters to start your free trial. If you decide to upgrade, you'll get a discount and a portion of the sale will support this podcast.

An exploration of self-describing vs non-self-describing formats, and how it changes the shape of your programs more than you might think Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/partial-understanding/ to see the show notes and transcript! Descript is the fully featured, end-to-end video editor that you already know how to use. Check out our referral link here to start a free trial - if you decide to upgrade, a portion of the sale will support this podcast.

Amos and James reminisce about how weird clipboards have always been. Or is it pasteboards? Or buffers? Oh boy. Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/clipboards/ to see the show notes and transcript! CodeCrafters is a service for learning programming skills by _doing_. Visit our referral link at CodeCrafters to start your free trial. If you decide to upgrade, you'll get a discount and a portion of the sale will support this podcast.

A deep dive into the potential benefits, and awkward drawbacks, by making all allocations async and fallible Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/async-allocators/ to see the show notes and transcript! CodeCrafters is a service for learning programming skills by _doing_. Visit our referral link at CodeCrafters to start your free trial. If you decide to upgrade, you'll get a discount and a portion of the sale will support this podcast.

An overview of how devices decide how to split streams of bits and bytes into frames, and the things that can go wrong Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/frame-sync/ to see the show notes and transcript! The Self-Directed Research podcast is made possible by our sponsors. We offer 30 second host-read ads at the end of every episode. Not sure how to get your message out, or what to say? Let us help! If you'd like to promote your company, project, conference, or open job positions to an audience interested in programming and technical deep dives, send us an email to [email protected] for more information about sponsorship.

Amos presents rubicon, which through terrible dynamic linking crimes, brought joy again into developing their website Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/dynamic-linking/ to see the show notes and transcript! The Self-Directed Research podcast is made possible by our sponsors. We offer 30 second host-read ads at the end of every episode. Not sure how to get your message out, or what to say? Let us help! If you'd like to promote your company, project, conference, or open job positions to an audience interested in programming and technical deep dives, send us an email to [email protected] for more information about sponsorship.

An introduction to how the 'plumbing' of async tasks and drivers wait, sleep, and are notified for efficient cooperative action; and a glowing overview of the maitake-sync crate's main primitives Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/syncing to see the show notes and transcript! The postcard crate, which is looking for sponsors for the 2.0 release. More info to be found on the OneVariable blog.

How global is your context? And does it really need atomic reference counting? Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/arc to see the show notes and transcript! Episode sponsor: Visit ladybird.org for more information and to join the mailing list.

A conceptual introduction to structured communication protocols, and the design decisions behind the postcard-rpc crate Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/postcard-rpc to see the show notes and transcript! Episode sponsor: Visit ladybird.org for more information and to join the mailing list.

An overview of Thread Local Variables, and the challenges they pose for experimental dynamic linking support. Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/thread-locals to see the show notes and transcript! Episode sponsor: Visit ladybird.org for more information and to join the mailing list.

An introduction to DMA, including what it is commonly used for, and a model of how to think about what the hardware does. Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/dma to see the show notes and transcript! You can read the Inside Rust Survey Announcement for information about the Embedded Rust Community Micro Survey, or you can take the survey now by clicking here.

An experience report of attempting and MOSTLY succeeding in using the Cranelift backend for real MacOS applications Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/cranelift/ to see the show notes and transcript! Episode sponsor: fasterthanlime, who makes articles and videos about computers for a living. You can support Amos's work by reading articles on their website, watching their videos on YouTube, and by sponsoring them on GitHub sponsors or Patreon.

A dive into abstracting unusual behavior differences using generics to manage different storage and async usage styles Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/bbqueue/ to see the show notes and transcript! Episode sponsor: OneVariable is a consultancy focused on advising and development services in the areas of systems engineering, embedded systems, and software development in the Rust programming language. Do you need help building something in Rust? Check out onevariable.com/work to see if one of the specialties speaks to your needs.

An update to previous research about speeding build times, informed by unexpected increased cost of maintenance Visit sdr-podcast.com/episodes/wrong-build-times to see the show notes and transcript! Thank you to Tweede golf for sponsoring this episode. Tweede golf is a Rust consultancy from the Netherlands. Reach out to them if you need help building software in Rust, embedded or otherwise, or to book a training to get your teams up to speed on topics like using async on bare metal systems.

Meet the hosts of the Self-Directed Research Podcast, and learn what it is all about! Visit About us page to get to know who we are!