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.
#3322: Desk Pets: Local AI on Your Desktop
Are desk pets useful tools or expensive Tamagotchis? We break down the local AI, privacy tradeoffs, and psychology behind these devices.
#3289: From Breadboard to PCB: Your First Board Design
You can code and breadboard. Here's how to cross the gap to custom PCBs with free tools and minimal risk.
#3284: Agent Infrastructure Engineer: The New DevOps
Agentic AI is splintering into real engineering disciplines. Here's what the "DevOps of AI" actually does.
#3283: Fine-Tuning DeepSeek for One Podcast
Can a purpose-specific fine-tune fix a model's stubborn writing tics? We explore the practical engineering behind it.
#3278: How to Get Early AI Model Access as a Solo Developer
How a solo developer spending $300/month can get early access to new AI models before the press release.
#3271: LLMs as Parsers, Not Calculators
Stop letting LLMs do math. Use them to parse messy text, then let deterministic code handle the numbers.
#3218: Building Your Own Cloud in 2026
The software and hardware for a DIY private cloud have never been more feasible. Here's how to pick the right pieces.
#3189: Drawing the Melody: SSML's Hidden Power
How SSML gives developers narrative control over AI voices — and why ElevenLabs became its center of gravity.
#3171: How to Break an LLM's Bad Verbal Habits
Blacklists fail and regex inverts meaning. Here's what actually works to clean up AI writing tics.
#3168: 30 BLE Tags for $60: DIY ADHD Object Tracking
Stop losing your stuff. Build a self-hosted BLE tracker system for 30 items at 1/8 the cost of commercial trackers.
#3120: What Makes Agentic Search Tools Like Exa Actually Work?
Why swapping Google for Exa transformed our show's accuracy — and what agentic search does differently.
#3038: Animating Toy Story: Math, Patience, and No Undo Button
Before Pixar could make Woody blink, animators typed coordinates by hand and waited hours to see if it worked.
#3033: 3,000 Episodes, 3 Copies: Is This Backup Setup Enough?
Three copies, two clouds, one NAS. But is this setup truly protecting 3,000 podcast episodes?
#3024: How to Incrementally Back Up Google Photos to Your NAS
Build a quarterly backup pipeline for Google Photos using the Library API, hash deduplication, and your NAS.
#3020: How Chatterbox Locks Your Voice Clone Across Thousands of Generations
Why most single-shot TTS models drift over time—and how Chatterbox's cached embedding approach solves it.
#2982: Why Your TTS Model Nails "Shabbat" but Not "Keren Hishtalmut
Why multilingual TTS models handle loanwords but fail at niche vocabulary — and what you can do about it.
#2943: Mapping a Gamepad to Control Android Dictation
How to map an 8BitDo Micro gamepad to control dictation apps on Android without root access.
#2941: Distrobox: Linux Containers That Feel Like Native Apps
How Distrobox merges container isolation with native desktop integration for immutable distros, GPU work, and messy builds.
#2940: Distrobox: Linux Containers for Humans, Not Servers
Run any distro's apps on any Linux host—no VM, no dual-boot, no dependency hell.
#2939: Can a Security Camera Detect a Baby Not Moving?
Can AI tell when a baby is about to fall—or has stopped moving? We break down what's possible and what's not.