Development
Building software: programming, developer tools, APIs, deployment and DevOps, and building with AI (agents, MCP servers, RAG, AI coding tools). An extra channel alongside an episode's main one, so AI engineering episodes sit in both.
#5476: When Login Systems Lock Out Their Own Users
Why do login systems permanently lock out real users? A look at the hidden design failures behind OTP dead ends and circular recovery flows.
#5469: Open Source's New Map: India, Croatia, Ethiopia
One in three new GitHub developers now comes from a country outside 2020's top ten. What that shift means for open source.
#5467: Small Models, Big Schemas: When JSON Constraints Backfire
Small models plus strict JSON schemas should be a safe bet. A 15,000-generation study found the opposite.
#5465: Packaging AI Pipelines So They Actually Get Reused
Daniel's podcast pipeline works — so why can't he reuse it? Recipes, containers, and Hebrew code-switching TTS.
#5464: Your Keyboard's Hidden Data Problem
Your keyboard knows your email address, your phrases, your habits — and you can't take any of it with you.
#5463: What Happens When You Click "Connect" on an AI Plugin
You click accept, the tool runs, and a credential you never saw is doing the work. Here's who actually owns it.
#5461: TTS Can't Pronounce Hebrew Inside English
Your TTS reads Hebrew words with English phonetics. Here's why — and why the obvious fix doesn't work yet.
#5460: Four Small Models, One Android Phone: Does It Actually Work?
A chained on-device dictation pipeline — VAD, ASR, cleanup — and why "it feels smooth" isn't the same as knowing it works.
#5459: Rebuilding the Podcast: Turn-Taking, Buttons, and Chatterbox
Daniel wants a push-to-interrupt button and a live voice loop. The research says the button is easy and the live part is a research project.
#5457: Pigeon Alerts on a Repurposed i5: Frigate Without the TPU
Daniel wants a pigeon notification, not a custom model. Frigate already ships with bird detection — the real work is masks, zones, and filters.
#5456: Parakeet vs Whisper: Picking a Phone ASR Model
Why Whisper loses on Android, why Parakeet v2 beat v3, and how to benchmark speech-to-text without any tooling.
#5455: Custom GPTs Are Sunsetting: What Happens to Your Actions
OpenAI is retiring Custom GPTs — and custom Actions don't survive the migration. What that means for your workflow.
#5447: The Models That Never Talk Back
Some models read text, score it, and return a number. No chat, no reasoning, just decisions — and they're running under every router you use.
#5436: Small Models as Rewriters, Not Writers
Why "don't say X" prompts backfire, and how a tiny grammar-constrained model can scrub a script without breaking its grammar.
#5435: When Your TTS Model Eats the Numbers
Numbers, dates, and acronyms break text-to-speech in specific, documented ways. Here's where normalization lives — and why it depends on your model.
#5433: Thermostats, Thermal Mass, and the Buildings That Fight Back
A thermostat is a sensor, a set point, and a switch — until thermal mass, bad models, and sustainability mandates get involved.
#5425: Preview Branches Without the Branch Dance
Daniel dreads the branch-switching dance. Turns out Vercel's promote-to-production makes most of those steps not exist.
#5422: Switching Android Keyboards Without the Tap Dance
One listener wants a one-tap jump between his Parakeet voice keyboard and his typing keyboard. Android says no — unless you know the trick.
#5420: How Keyboard Middleware Actually Works
A keyboard isn't one thing — it's a stack. Here's how input methods, composition buffers, and hooks really work on Linux, Android, and Windows.
#5419: The Attention Budget in Your Pocket
Why phone dictation runs out of room, and how bounded attention windows buy you punctuation without blowing your memory budget.