Self-Directed Research Podcast
'eating your vegetables' for software
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.
Chaos is a bitrate ladder
Amos explains their choices when it comes to encoding settings for images and for short videos in browsers in 2025.
tl;dr: a programming language for documents
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.
A short history of copy protection
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.
Much ado about no i/o
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.