August 15, 202638 min
The Tinfoil House
Ben's friend is locked out of their AWS account and Matt's AI has decided he's a hacker. The escape route runs through a cheap computer, a mesh network, and Neal Stephenson.
Episodes
74
Latest episode
Aug 2026
Language
EN
About the show
If you come to a fork in the road, take it! Two’s Complement is a programming podcast, hosted by Matt Godbolt and Ben Rady; two programmers who both grew up wanting to make video games. One of them did, one of them didn’t, but now they both work together despite coming from very different backgrounds.
Listen to episodes
July 10, 202644 min
Never Twice the Same Color
Matt records from the wrong continent and explains how he taught his computer to be a 1950s television. Ben guesses his way to the secret of the colo(u?)r burst and wins today's podcast.
June 14, 202631 min
Programming in English
Ben sets out to learn Rust by only reading it, while Matt wonders if you can learn to land a plane from a book. Also: is snark a portmanteau?
May 25, 202643 min
The Rabbit Was Always There
Ben asks what happens when you curl google.com, and Matt peels back HTTP until the rabbit turns out to have been in the hat all along. Then a USB hub stages a dramatic intervention.
April 11, 202649 min
Speed of Thought
Ben has stopped talking to Claude directly. Matt hasn't opened his editor in days. They try to work out whether this is fun, programming, or a very expensive slot machine.
March 9, 202646 min
Measure Twice, Optimize Once
Ben asks a simple question about performance and Matt talks for 46 minutes. The one true use case for linked lists is revealed, and a part three is threatened.
February 14, 202645 min
How Fast Is Fast?
Ben interviews Matt with a deceptively simple question: make my program go fast. 44 minutes later, robot dogs are falling over, Grace Hopper's wire makes an appearance, and Matt still hasn't gotten the job.
January 10, 202627 min
Gaming on Linux
Ben wipes his PC over Thanksgiving and installs Ubuntu for gaming. Matt recalls the dark days of himem.sys and IRQ conflicts. The universe was created last Thursday, and someone gets a hangover.
December 6, 202524 min
Factorio
Ben's new TCP backpressure explanation: conveyor belts full. Matt zooms out and mistakes his factory for a Pentium 2. Ben plans to switch to Linux gaming; Matt's start bar keeps popping up and he's had it.
November 13, 202542 min
Vibe Coding and Robot Teammates
Ben worries replacing juniors with LLMs creates a future hiring crisis - who'll train the robot-wranglers? Matt blames COVID brain fog, then proves it by botching NP-completeness. Capitalism is bad at escaping local minima.
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