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525: Some Sort of Metal

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Release Date: 05/14/2026

525: Some Sort of Metal show art 525: Some Sort of Metal

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Dr. Tom Williams spoke with us about robots, ethics, teaching, and books. Then we talked about mines, umpires, water, and more books. Tom is the author of (free at MIT Press: !).  As part of the discussion, we talked about some other books and media: Nonfiction: by Ayanna Howard (Embedded episodes and ) by Philip Koopman (related Embedded episode )  by Kate Crawford Waki Kamino’s research on robot umpires: (or see the summary in the Cornell Chronicle: ) Fiction: by Becky Chalmers  by Martha Wells (Embedded episode )  by Nnedi Okorafor was...

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Nathan Jones spoke with us about hardware security, motivation, conference talks, and writing. Nathan wrote an in-depth series of posts about the benefits of superloops vs RTOS: , , , and . He also wrote about and which discusses the . See his and . And Nathan’s excellent Github repo. Nathan recommends by Jasper van Woudenberg and Colin O'Flynn. It is an excellent resource on embedded security. We spoke with Jasper about the book in and with Colin about the Chip Whisperer in . The has specific features that are required to be implemented by all devices that want the safety CE label....

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Chris and Elecia chat about Leapfrog toys, things they like, large company politics, awards, and open source governance.  The with LilyPad toy which is suspiciously similar to the tablet. Which is different from the which had cartridges and capacitive touch (capacitive touch was used on the as well… the ). Why does Elecia want an award? Who knows? But right now, she’s getting ready for a listener to nominate the show (Chris and Elecia) for IEEE’s . Probably. But we’ve got nominators and endorsers so that’s mostly sorted. She also signed Embedded up for the Women Podcasters...

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Sonia Grego speaks with us about a topic no one likes to talk about, but could be used to monitor personal dietary health and widespread disease outbreaks. Toilets! Sonia leads Duke University’s Smart Toilet Lab and the spin out Coprata which makes the Microbiome Activity Tracker.  As discussed in the show, when developing a project far from where it will be deployed, there are many common issues. The chapter of Sonia’s recent book gives an excellent introduction to the unexpected environment far from the comfort of desks. The book is (free online!) ,  See , the   as...

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Kenneth Finnegan entertained us with stories about accidentally contributing to the internet’s ability to network. Wondering how the internet works? All those terms about IPv4, IPv6, BGP, OSPF, CDN and other alphabet  soup? Check out the YouTube videos by . Kenneth writes about his adventures on his blog, . Some of the posts related to this show are: We also mention FCIX aka or the You can also find Kenneth at where you will find more about half-dollars, nickels, and trains. If you also secretly long to run a locomotive, take a look at the program at WPRM. The title is...

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Chris and Elecia apologize, discuss uses and abuses of chatbots, reach out to an uncertain manager, try to help someone out of their professor’s draconian rules, and extol the joys of reading.  is in Oakland, CA, US. It is wonderful! Some suggestions for UncertainManager: Hang in there! You are probably doing better than you think. Audio books are great! In the US, many libraries have digital libraries with extensive audio collections. There are several apps with different catalogs for the same library Libby, Kanopy, Hoopla, and Palace (check out the California shelf at...

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Mark Omo and James Rowley spoke with us about safecracking, security, and the ethics of doing a bad job. Mark and James gave an excellent talk on the development of their safecracking tools at . It included a section of interaction involving the lock maker’s lawyers bullying them and how the Electronic Frontier Foundation () has a to support security research. As mentioned in the show, the US Cyber Trust Mark baseline has a very straightforward checklist; is the overall standard, is the technical checklist, is the non-technical (process/maintenance) checklist. Roughly the process is...

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James Cameron spoke with us about programming for and operating a large telescope. The show is a blend of astronomy, engineering on the fly, and weird lady bug habitats.  The (AAT) is part of the Australian National University’s in Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia.  The AAT has an where you can check in on a very dark sky.  James was on where we talked about the Forth programming language and his experiences with One Laptop Per Child.  Unrelated to the AAT, Chris took this image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) from his over 9 hours (multiple days), stacking...

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Nathan Jones and Chris Svec give Chris and Elecia their 2025 performance review.  Donations went to , an organization that provides funding and support to low-income and first-generation college students as well as free STEM tutoring for underserved schools.  Embedded has already sent in the for a total of over $5000.  Here is . We mentioned the , a small but mighty microscope. Also, mentioned was the book The show this week is sponsored by us. And you. Please consider on or . Or tell a friend about the show.

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Sophi Kravitz joined us to talk about art, science, and engineering.  You can see on Sophi’s website ). A subset of the artwork had a short stay for a demo at . The completed work will be shown in 2026. Sophi mentioned collaborating with two sonic environment artists and . is an ionizing radiation detector. move through space at nearly the speed of light, generally originating far away and long ago. You can also see them in a We also talked about using sculpting in Blender (there are many online video introductions). Sophi does EE consulting and system quality checking...

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Dr. Tom Williams spoke with us about robots, ethics, teaching, and books. Then we talked about mines, umpires, water, and more books.

Tom is the author of Degrees of Freedom: On Robotics and Social Justice (free at MIT Press: Degrees of Freedom: On Robotics and Social Justice!). 

As part of the discussion, we talked about some other books and media:

There was a discussion about water use in AI. Tom recommends Why is Everyone So Wrong About AI Water Use?? while Elecia unsurprisingly mispronounces synecdoche. 

Tom is a computer science professor at the Colorado School of Mines where he runs the Mines Interactive Robotics Research Lab (MIRROR lab). See also Tom’s page on mines.edu.

The final quote is from an essay written by Karel Capek and translated to English in in The Man Who Coined the Word “Robot” Defends Himself - IEEE Spectrum.