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One of Dave's favorite episodes is John Chidgey's Causality episode on a radiation machine (the Therac-25) whose software bug caused horrible injuries. It digs into the assembly code.
one of my favorite episodes of John. G's called causality show. Podcast is where he taught he goes over this radiation machine
Dave has owned Audio-Technica ATH-M20x headphones, says they're really nice, and points out they cost only about 50 bucks, a cheap way to monitor your podcast audio.
Technica, I've had a pair of the at H, M 20 x's, and they're really nice. Here. I have headphones, and they're only 50 bucks.
Don't click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of spam email, or the links in spam texts. Spammers use the click to confirm you have a live account.
don't ever click the unsubscribe link on the bottom of a spam mail Exactly, yeah, just because they just use that to determine whether you actually have a live account.
Value for value doesn't require app support. At the Bands at Bitcoin event, Dave sent every donation by scanning a QR code on screen. The funding tag can point to any donation page (Lightning, PayPal), and The Board Room gets more monthly donation money through PayPal than through Lightning.
you do not need in app support for this to work. You just need a QR code. All you need is a link so the funding tag could take you out just like we saw at bands.
Life tipsUse microwave power levels for dense leftovers
For dense leftovers like lasagna, use the microwave power setting, or you'll end up with cold layers in the middle, even though microwave power UIs are baffling.
when you go to heat it up in the microwave. You got to use the power thing, because you'll end up with its cold in the middle
For apps that keep their own feed database: besides watching Podping, watch the Podcast Index tracking endpoint at tracking.podcastindex.org/current, which also covers feeds that don't use Podping. Fetch current, then follow the 'previous' links back until you reach the last one you checked, and you'll have seen everything the Index has seen. It's a static file in object storage, cached at Cloudflare.
Or even better, first to encompass feeds that don't have pod pain as well. You can watch our tracking endpoint also. So you, you watch into sort of two fire hoses there, because we publish if you go to tracking dot podcast index.org/current
SoftwareRun your own database, sync from the Podcast Index
The responsible way to build a podcast app on Podcast Index data, as Podverse's next-generation version does, is to run your own database and sync things from the Index as needed, rather than hammering the API live.
he's doing it also in the responsible way that you do if you're running a system, is he's, he's using his own database, but just, you know, syncing things out from us as needed
SoftwareClonezilla (booted from a Rufus USB stick)
Dave's recipe for migrating a Windows machine: put Clonezilla on a USB stick with Rufus, boot the old machine, do a device-to-image clone to an external drive, then boot the new machine and do image-to-device. Afterwards, expand the partition in Disk Management. Beforehand, download the new machine's network drivers onto the stick so you can get online and pull the rest. Image the new machine's factory install first, just in case, so you can revert.
Boot it with boot with Clonezilla. Yeah, doing it do a device to image clone. Yeah, pointing it at the at the your external drive that you plugged in, yes. And then save it as an image file, go to the new machine, boot it with with Clonezilla. Choose Image to device,
Not in the audio. The network-driver and back-up-the-factory-install tips come from the turns at 00:08:49 and 00:10:35. The Lenovo-specific driver utility mentioned is garbled in the transcript.
A principle Dave has kept everywhere he's worked (discussed during the CrowdStrike outage): every employee turns their computer off at night, partly to protect against power surges and brownouts.
a principle I've always had is every bit every employee turn their computer off at night. Right. That's always been my because for a lot of different reasons.
Life tipsCross-post namespace proposals to GitHub and podcastindex.social
When you post a proposal on the podcast namespace GitHub repo, also cross-post it to podcastindex.social. Otherwise people miss it for a few weeks and come back to a 75-comment thread nobody can follow.
I would I would recommend if you're gonna if you when you post something on the on the Get on the GitHub repo for the namespace also cross posted to podcast
Not in the audio. The quote is cut off at 'podcast'. The destination (podcastindex.social) and the 75-comment-thread reason come from context and the next turn at 00:25:04.
ToolsEnough preamp gain for dynamic mics (RE320 / SM7B; Cloudlifter or a device with strong built-in preamps)
Reacting to Adam's demo of Fernando's PodMobile device, which has strong built-in preamps, Dave noted that dynamic mics like the Electro-Voice RE320 (and even more the Shure SM7B) are 'hungry'. Without a decent preamp or a Cloudlifter, they suffer.
Well, I mean the RA 320 is a hungry mind too. It needs a lot of pre does. Yeah. And I don't think it's as much as the SM seven V but it's pretty close.
OtherBryan Barletta's article on Spotify (Sounds Profitable)
Dave recommended Bryan Barletta's piece on Spotify and podcast advertising, calling it a good read for anyone thinking about podcasting from the ad side.
when I was reading Brian Bartlett, his piece on Spotify, which I which I think is a good piece I think everybody should read it
Modern USB-C/Thunderbolt docks route USB 1, 2 and 3, video and power over a few pins, and the number of things that can go wrong is limitless. Some faults (multi-monitor issues, mic buzz) can't be fixed from the computer at all. You have to reboot the dock itself.
So there are things that can happen with with these. Where, where nothing you do on the computer For itself actually, we'll fix it. You have to reboot the doc because the doc is acting, it's acting.
Dovydas runs a 24/7 live stream test feed that switches value blocks every minute or so. Dave tells app developers adding live streams, with or without value blocks, to hook into it and sandbox their app.
So if anybody's wanting to support live streams with value blocks, or I mean, or just live streams in general, with your podcast app, yeah. Go hook into WDS as live stream. And that way you can, you know, sandbox, your app.
Not in the audio. 'Dobby Das' / 'WDS' in the transcript are Dovydas (a Podcasting 2.0 developer). The 'switching blocks every minute' detail comes from Adam's line.
ToolsWatch your object-storage bill for 'denial of wallet'
A newer class of attack: AWS charges for object-storage PUT operations even when they fail, so anyone can flood your bucket with failed PUTs, even a private bucket, and rack up thousands of dollars. Dave advises keeping it in mind and watching your bill. If you're targeted, you may have to ask Amazon to waive the charges.
you still get charged for puts for AWS Object Object Storage put operations even if they fail. So basically some use somebody can just flood a bucket of yours with failed puts and rack up 1000s of dollars in charges
Not in the audio. This reflects AWS billing behaviour as Dave described it in 2024. AWS has since said it changed S3 billing for unauthorized requests; check current terms.
Fixing a Podcast Index API bug where requests returned too few episodes, Dave explains MySQL 'early row lookups'. A poorly thought-out GROUP BY or ORDER BY can make MySQL fetch full rows from disk (say 100,000) before filtering down to the 5,000 you deliver. Keep the work in the in-memory index and fetch the actual row data at the last minute, finagling the query if needed.
a poorly thought out use of something like, group by or order by can trigger this problem where you end up fetching 100,000 rows. And then you actually only deliver 5000 of them.
Dave deliberately keeps different identities for different contexts (for example, his Podcast Index social account versus a federated podcast-app identity) because identities online are meant to serve you, and they serve different needs. Universal single-sign-on digital identity schemes creep him out.
I like the compartmentalization of these different things because they serve me in identities online are meant to serve you. And they serve me in different from, they serve my needs in different ways.
Life tipsNarrated newsletter feed + dedicated playlist
Matt Taibbi pays a narrator to read his posts and publishes them as an RSS feed. Instead of reading them in his inbox, Dave waits for the audio version, keeps a dedicated playlist for that feed, and plays it top to bottom when he wants his articles read to him. He'd like more writers to do this.
I just wait for the podcast version. And then I have a specific playlist just for that feed. And when I get ready to hear those headlines and read and have those articles written to me read to me. I just hit that play list.
Dave dislikes AI-voiced books, but he used the iPhone's read-aloud feature at the gym to get through a 6,000-word article. It mispronounces things, but it gets you through.
I was in the gym. And I was there was this long article, gosh, this this article was like 6000 words long article that I was trying to get through. And I just read I really wanted to get through this thing and I'll and I did the like read it to me function on the iPhone
Dave calls himself a heavy Audible user. At one point he finished about four audiobooks in a couple of weeks and was listening to more audiobooks than podcasts.
I listened to tons of audiobooks like the last couple of weeks, I've listened have completed probably for audiobooks. My my heavy audible user
Dave bought a very old, run-down house cheaply, did the emergency structural work first, and has spent about ten years renovating it himself room by room (gutting and insulating) instead of taking out a $50,000 equity line. From the start he decided he wasn't going into debt for the house.
So now we're going back and just gutting a room doing all the insulation here Yes, I hear it's just all that stuff this like yeah, so I'm just doing all that stuff myself because I'm not about to like drop a you know $50,000 equity line instead.
Dave calls AntennaPod a great free and open source Android podcast app that doesn't get talked about enough. It put out a call for open source contributors to help add Podcasting 2.0 features like cross-app comments.
pod, which is a great FOSS application, podcast app that we don't talk enough about antenna pod had a call for contributors this week for 2.0 features like cross app comments
For embedded web players, Dave agrees with James Cridland and John Spurlock that not preloading audio gives creators cleaner download stats. Unless there's a compelling reason otherwise, setting preload to none is the courteous, play-nice thing to do.
In, in the, in the absence of a compelling reason not to sit in preload to none, is a courteous thing to do I get I agree with that. You're, you're you're just gonna kind of play nice, so to speak.
Not in the audio. Context is the Podverse embed-player stats controversy. 'Sit in preload to none' is a transcription of 'setting preload to none' (the HTML audio preload attribute).
Life tipsBlanket restriction on putting work data into AI tools
You can't put your organisation's material into AI tools like Copilot or ChatGPT because you don't know where it's going. Dave's workplace has a blanket restriction, as do most companies.
You can't you cannot put your stuff into this because you don't know where it's going. You mean, but basically, we just have a blanket restriction on all that stuff right now. Yeah, most companies have this is pretty much across the board.
Food & healthBeef protein milkshake (Equip Foods beef protein + whey isolate + milk; later creatine)
Dave's signature drink, made in a blender: three ice cubes, a cup of milk, a scoop of whey protein isolate and a scoop of Equip Foods grass-fed hydrolyzed beef protein (chocolate; 'a little pricey, but high quality'). Later versions add creatine and high-protein, low-sugar milk. He says chocolate works and vanilla doesn't.
It is the it is three ice cubes. This is in a blender. Three Ice cubes. A cup of milk. A scoop of whey protein isolate, and a scoop of equipped foods. grass fed beef protein hydrolyzed beef protein from equip foods.com That is that is the recipe.
Not in the audio. Brand spelled 'equipped foods'/'equip foods.com' in transcript; product line name (e.g. 'Prime') is never said. Milk is 'a cup of milk' (ep171) and 'high protein, low sugar milk' (ep194); whole milk is never mentioned.
If you don't manage streaming subscriptions, you end up paying more than cable for things you don't watch. Dave's family loosely tries to keep streaming to about $25-30 a month and rotates services.
Because if you don't, you'll end up with it's worse than cable if you if you don't watch it. That's so we you know, we we've kind of just kind of loosely said let's not let's try not to have more than, you know, 2025 bucks or 30 bucks
Life tipsSelect-all and delete your podcast backlog
When your podcast queue is overloaded, treat it like an inbox with hundreds of unread emails: select all and delete. Shows that cover ongoing topics will talk about the same thing next week anyway.
You just gotta like, you know, it's kinda like your inbox, whether you have several 100 unread emails or not, you hit your control a delete,
Helipad, the Podcast Index's boostagram viewer for Lightning nodes, gained webhooks. Dave calls it essentially a built-in boost bot: point a webhook at any receiver and it can post boosts wherever you want, or trigger anything that accepts a webhook.
Yeah, you set up a set up a web hook to go out to some sort of receiver and then it posts wherever you want it.
Before triggering Linode's live migration of the Podcast Index's main database VM, the busiest and heaviest-writing machine, Dave shut down all the aggregators and the Podping watcher so there was radio silence on writes, then let the migration run.
just shut down. All the aggregators shut down the pod paying watcher, all that kind of stuff. And like, okay, radio silence on the rights. And then wait and hope and just cross your fingers.
To run a language model locally, you don't need a powerful GPU. Dave says a roughly $200 NVIDIA 3050, or any 3000-series card, is enough.
Get a 3050 It's not a powerful card, but you don't need much you'll all you need is is eight, you need a 3000 series card. And you need which 3050 is like $200
Not in the audio. Context is running a local LLM trained on the podcast namespace. 'Eight' presumably means 8 GB of VRAM. The price is Dave's estimate at the time.
Castamatic is Dave's daily-driver podcast app. One reason is that it shows a big, obvious warning when your Lightning wallet gets disconnected, so you don't silently stop sending value.
That's one thing about cast ematic that, that I like. And one of the reasons I have maintained it as my daily driver is because it's right. When, when you're out, when your wallet gets disconnected, there's a big thing right
Dave likes long-form articles he can live with and digest, not rapid-fire scrolling where you're defending your eyeballs. He says it feels good.
I love just articles, just reading articles, long form text, things that you can just sort of like live with and digest rather than this rapid fire scrolling or scrolling attack that you're just having to defend your eyeballs from all the time. And no, it feels good.
After watching his way through a family list of musicals, Dave declares Hello, Dolly! with Barbra Streisand the greatest musical of all time, with no second place. (He also warns that Cats was so bad the family quit after about 30 minutes.)
I can confidently say this, with like, with full authority that I've granted to myself. The greatest musical of all time. Is Hello, Dolly. With Barbra Streisand. Wow. There is no second place.
Dave says one particular episode of Little House on the Prairie taught him more about what being a man really is than anyone or anything else in his life. He doesn't name the episode here and promises to tell the story another day.
There's an epic, there's a single episode of Little House on the Prairie. That taught me what being a man really is more than any other thing.
Life tipsCoffee and a 10-minute walk before you SSH
When a server goes down and you feel the panic, get a coffee and take a 10-minute walk before opening a terminal. Everyone's servers go down, and it's not a reflection on you.
When somebody tells you, the servers are down, and you feel that that panic in your stomach, go go get a cup of coffee. Take a 10 minute walk before you ever open up an SSH terminal. Just go chill out. It's fine.
For the Podcast Index, Dave has always wanted at least five years of cushion: enough that if donations dropped to zero, the project could keep running for five years without missing a day, to keep their promise.
what I've always wanted and you concur is to have at least five years of cushion built up to where you have the donations dropped to zero. Yeah, we could keep on truckin and not miss a day for five years.