Shows
Self-Directed ResearchHow far can you take OpenFX? 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 ot...2025-08-0652 minSelf-Directed ResearchBlackmagic Fusion is weird 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 op...2025-07-3050 minSelf-Directed ResearchHow is software safety certifiedJames 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 fa...2025-07-2353 minSelf-Directed ResearchAll you need is three iPhonesAmos 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...2025-07-161h 00Self-Directed ResearchTraceabilityJames 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...2025-07-0929 minSelf-Directed ResearchHTML5 videoAmos 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 pl...2025-07-0251 minSelf-Directed ResearchTypst is pretty neatJames 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...2025-06-2541 minSelf-Directed ResearchDRM schemesThe 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, fa...2025-06-1852 minSelf-Directed Researchsans-io: meh 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 fo...2025-06-1137 minSelf-Directed Researchautomating macOSJoin 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, ma...2025-06-0444 minSelf-Directed ResearchProxying is just dumb routing 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 ot...2025-05-2827 minSelf-Directed ResearchThe Embedded Buddy System 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...2024-12-1143 minSelf-Directed ResearchMerde is not Serde 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. 2024-12-0448 minSelf-Directed ResearchA different serde 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. 2024-11-2740 minSelf-Directed ResearchMy home automation journey 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. 2024-11-2040 minSelf-Directed ResearchCompile Time Crimes 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. 2024-11-1336 minSelf-Directed ResearchTarget triples 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. 2024-11-0638 minSelf-Directed ResearchWhat good is partial understanding? 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.2024-10-3034 minSelf-Directed ResearchThings you might not have known about clipboards 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. 2024-10-2329 minSelf-Directed ResearchAsync Allocators 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. 2024-10-1622 minSelf-Directed ResearchFrame Synchronization 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...2024-10-0928 minSelf-Directed ResearchFixing build times with rubiconAmos 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 contact...2024-10-0223 minSelf-Directed ResearchWhat Are You Syncing About?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.2024-09-2530 minSelf-Directed ResearchYou might not need ArcSelf-Directed ResearchTalking to Microcontrollers with Postcard-RPCA 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.2024-09-1128 minSelf-Directed ResearchThread-locals galoreAn 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.2024-09-0435 minSelf-Directed ResearchDirect Memory Access for the UninitiatedAn 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.2024-08-2822 minSelf-Directed ResearchHow Usable is the Rust Cranelift Backend TodayAn 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.2024-08-2118 minSelf-Directed ResearchBBQueue - Going Just Far Enough with GenericsA 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.2024-08-1431 minSelf-Directed ResearchI Was Wrong About Rust Build TimesAn 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.2024-08-0727 minSelf-Directed ResearchTrailerMeet 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!2024-08-0501 min