Oxide and Friends
Oxide hosts a weekly Discord show where they discuss a wide range of topics: computer history, startups, Oxide hardware bringup, and other topics du jour. These are the recordings in podcast form. Join them live usually Mondays at 5pm PT.
Episodes
The Oxide 3D Explorer
Recently, Oxide rolled out an eye-popping 3D rack explorer at explorer.oxide.computer. Oxide's designer extraordinaire, Ben Leonard, joined Bryan and Adam to describe the process of turning CAD drawings into an interactive site.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Oxide colleague, Ben Leonard.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Th
The Hardest Kind of Unsafe Rust
We love Rust for how much the compiler helps enforce safety. But sometimes it's up to us to uphold the complex--and often unclear--expectations of what constitutes safety on our own. Oxide colleague, Rain, joins Bryan and Adam to talk about the technical details of what it takes to impose safety on the hardest type of unsafe Rust.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were j
This Old Repo: LLMs and the Restoration of BattleTris
Bryan and Adam discuss the process of restoring a software project--BattleTris--untouched and unbuilt in over 20 years! How did LLMs help restore code Bryan started in the mid-1990s and what does that teach us about developing and maintaining software in the future?Your hosts were Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal.Previously on Oxide and FriendsOxF s03e24 - Fork in the road for Terraform?
Rooting for the Home Team with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel
Two years ago we introduced listeners to the Oakland Ballers, the startup returning baseball to the city of Oakland. Bryan and Adam were joined again by Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel to discuss the Ballers first two--highly successful--seasons, and to announce some exciting new collaborations between the Ballers and Oxide!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers include
The Tale of Reverso
Oxide ships a rack scale system--how to test the manufacturing of the backplane and switches? Previously we've been using a collection of sacrificial servers, but this was unwieldy, expensive, and unscalable--all big problems as we ramp up manufacturing to 100s a month! Enter "Reverso", an extremely simple test fixture, that uncovered an extremely complex bug.In addition to Bryan Cantrill
AI in Computer Science Education
AI is an existential topic for all aspects of education--for none more so than Computer Science. Bryan and Adam were joined by Kathi Fisler and Shriram Krishnamurthi, professors of Computer Science at Brown, to discuss their experimental introductory course that strongly incorporates agentic programming. What do students take away from their "smoke the whole pack" approach?In addition to
Mechanical Engineering at Oxide [chapter images]
Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide mechanical engineering team to talk the mechanical challenges of building a rack-scale computer, and--in particular--of scaling manufacturing from just a few racks to hundreds. NOTE: Keep an eye on the chapter art for the pictures under discussion.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide Colleagues Elliott
Are LLMs Insufficently Lazy?
Brogrammer Garry Tan has been boasting about "writing" tens of thousands of lines of code each day as the paragon of productivity. Is this really the right way to think about building systems? Bryan and Adam were joined by Polish software engineer, Gregorein, who took a closer look into what Tan was generating to discuss what was found.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our
Building a Quorum of Trust in the Oxide Rack
The Oxide rack contains within it a distributed system that needs to trust itself. But how is this trust built? Bryan and Adam were joined by colleagues Andrew and Finch to explore how Trust Quorum was designed, built, and verified.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, Andrew Stone, and Finch Foner.Previously, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s06e02
When Nine Nines Isn't Enough
Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide team to describe the multi-year search for a mysterious source of hardware failures. All related to an ultra-reliable--and yet still not reliable enough--component.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by members of the Oxide team: Nathanael Huffman, Alan Hanson, Cliff Biffle, Eric Aasen, Robert "RFK" Keith, and
Oxide's $200M Series C
Oxide raised a truckload of capital a few weeks ago to fund the business for the foreseeable future. Bryan and Steve describe the raise, and Adam poses the best the best (and worst) questions scraped from Hacker News.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide CEO, Steve Tuck.Previously on Oxide and Friends:OxF s01e25 - Tales from the Bringup LabOxF s04e30 -
Shell Game with Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff, journalist and podcaster, joined Bryan and Adam to talk about his extraordinary podcast, Shell Game, in which he started a company staffed exclusively by agentic AI.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Evan Ratliff.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Shell GameEvan on This American LifeMIT Review: Moltbook was peak A
Software Engineering Past, Present, and Future with Grady Booch
Bryan and Adam were joined by Grady Booch, software engineering pioneer and living legend, to speak about the past present and future of software engineering. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest, Grady Booch.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them (some LLM assistance):SAGE a
Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age
What do LLMs mean for the future of software engineering? Will vibe-coded AI slop be the norm? Will software engineers simply be less in-demand? Rain and David join Bryan and Adam to discuss how rigorous use of LLMs can make for much more robust systems.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Rain Paharia, and David Crespo.Previously, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s
Predictions 2026!!
Time for the annual predictions episode! Bryan and Adam were joined by frequent future-ologists Simon Willison, Steve Klabnik, and Ian Grunert to review past predictions and peer into the future. If any of these predictions come to fruition, it's going to be an interest 1, 3, or 6 years!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Simon Willison, Steve Klabnik, and
OxF 2025 Wrap-Up
Bryan and Adam reflect on Oxide and Friends in 2025--favorite moments, episodes, and images. Happy new year and see you in 2026!Your hosts are Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:RFD 576: Using LLMs at Oxide (hacker news comments)OxF: Oxide and Friends 6/2/2025 -- AI Discourse with Steve Klabnik (around 1:08:00)Shell Game podcastOx
Death by Uptime
We hit a new (and disturbing!) failure mode recently when a production rack that had been up for several months saw every (!) compute sled's service processor become simultaneously unresponsive. Bryan and Adam were joined by the members of the Oxide team who debugged the vexing issue -- and reached its surprising root cause.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined
Grown-up ZFS Data Corruption Bug
Hey hey! We recently tripped over a ZFS data corruption bug–introduced over 18 years ago! Bryan and Adam discuss with members of the Oxide team as well as Matt Ahrens, the co-inventor of ZFS.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Alan Hanson, Matt Keeter, Andy Fiddaman, James MacMahon, and special guest, Matt Ahrens.Previously, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s4e6 -
Founder vs. Investor with Liz Zalman and Jerry Neumann
Oxide founders, Bryan and Steve, as well as Oxide investor, Seth Winterroth, were joined by Liz Zalman and Jerry Neumann, authors of the book Founder vs. Investor, discussing the collaboration and conflict in company formation. Adam was also present.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our guests included Liz Zalman, Jerry Neumann, Seth Winterroth (Oxide investor), and Steve
Futurelock
We're big users of async Rust at Oxide, and recently we found (another) very odd and hard to debug pathology related to async Rust that we dubbed "Futurelock". Oxide engineers who diagnosed the problem join Bryan and Adam to describe Futurelock and discuss methods to identify and avoid it.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included our Oxide colleagues Dave Pacheco
Books in the Box V
Revisiting an annual tradition--Books in the Box! Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends share book recommendations (and--sometimes--anti-recommendations). Take a listen if you're looking for your next read.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by some guests noted below:Previously, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s05e06 - A Half‑Century of Silicon Valley with Randy ShoupO
AI in Higher Education with Michael Littman
LLMs have had a dramatic impact on education. There are obvious reasons for concern, but what about the less obvious opportunities afforded by LLMs? Bryan and Adam were joined by Michael Littman, professor at Brown University and Associate Provost for AI, to talk about his role advising the university on productive, innovative, creative uses for AI in higher education.In addition to Bryan
Systems Software in the Large
Dave Pacheco is leading Oxide's multi-year effort around full-system update. He recently gave a talk about his experience leading that project, the complexities of designing the system and organizing the team. Dave, Bryan, and Adam discuss the project, the many sources of leadership, and the often underestimated peril of "organizational procrastination".In addition to Bryan Cantrill and A
Scaling Manufacturing
Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide manufacturing team to talk about all that goes into ramping up production, from people and processes to expanding the team and refining inefficiencies. It's a great problem to have!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, CJ Mendes, Kirstin Neira, Erik Anderson, Aaron Hartwig, and Doug Wibben.P
Technological Revolutions with Jerry Neumann
Jerry Neumann joined Bryan and Adam to discuss his blog post from 2015, examining the work of Carlota Perez on technological revolutions. These waves have similarities, in particular: frenzy, bust, and deployment. Is AI a new wave or the culmination of the IT wave of the last 50 years?In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest, Jerry Neumann.Some of
The Promises of Tech with Scott Hanselman
Scott Hanselman gave a terrific talk about the promises of tech: connection, convenience and creativity. Did it deliver? Scott joins Bryan and Adam to discuss... and also wander around as one expects from an Oxide and Friends episode.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Scott Hanselman.Past episodes mentioned:OxF s01e12 - A Brief History of Talking Compu
Oxide's $100M Series B
Oxide raised its $100M Series B round of venture capital. Oxide's founders, Bryan and Steve, answer questions selected by Adam from social media about the round, the company, and the future.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide CEO, the man, the myth, the legend, Steve Tuck.Previous episodes mentioned:OxF s05e10 - Lip‑Bu Tan’s IntelOxF s03e04 - Oxide an
Adventures in Data Corruption
Two years ago, the Oxide team encountered data corruption during a fairly simple network data transfer. The ensuing debugging sessions uncovered a truly bizarre bug involving CPU speculation! Bryan and Adam were joined by colleagues John and Rain to discuss the discovery and circuitous hunt to track down the bug.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included John Gall
When Async Attacks!
What happens when the Oxide API is slow? A podcast episode! More specifically, one about how the team employed all manner of debugging techniques to track it down to one obscure and configurable async runtime feature! Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the team to talk about that journey and the tools we used (and made!) along the way.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal
Diving In with Robert Bogart
On the heels of Bryan's blog post about the similarities between aspiring college athletes finding a team and entrepreneurs raising a round of capital, Bryan and Adam were joined by Robert Bogart to discuss his own experiences with both--and the life lesson accrued along the way.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest, Robert Bogart.College Baseba
Debugger-Driven Development
Building systems software can be quite opaque, leading to the need for great debugging tools. At Oxide, we've found that debuggers can be even more valuable leading rather than following system development. Bryan and Adam talk with Oxide colleagues about how domain specific debugging tools help us build systems not only more robustly, but faster as well.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and A
AI Discourse with Steve Klabnik
Last week, our colleague (and frequent Oxide and Friends guest) Steve Klabnik made some new friends on the Internet with a blog entry on AI discourse. Bryan and Adam were joined by Steve to try to de-polarize the discussion a little.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest, Steve Klabnik, and valued listener, Julian Giamblanco (aka "Oatmealdealer")
AI, Materials, and Fraud with Ben Shindel
Late in 2024, an economics paper captured the attention of the world. AI, it claimed, had a tremendous impact on materials research, disproportionally benefitted the most productive, and--sadly--reduced job statisfaction. It now appears that the results are entirely fabricated! Ben Shindel joins Bryan and Adam to discuss.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by
RIP USENIX ATC
Bryan and Adam discuss the recent announcement of the discontinuation of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC), reminiscing about their own visits to the ATC and the impact of the conference. Long-time Oxide Friend, Tom Lyon, joined to dial the reminiscence back a couple more decades!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Tom Lyon.Some of the topics we
Solutions Software Engineering with Matthew Sanabria
Matthew Sanabria joins Bryan and Adam to talk about his role at Oxide--Solutions Software Engineer--and how it fits in with engineering, sales, support and marketing. It takes everyone in Busytown! Sound good? Apply!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleague, Matthew Sanabria.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Solutiuons So
Shootout at the CNCF Corral
Last week the kerfuffle between Synadia and CNCF, tussling over the ownership and futures of NATS, bled into the public. The outcome may cast a long shadow for open source and for the CNCF. Bryan and Adam were joined by Rachel Stephens and Adam Jacob to discuss how we got here and possible outcomes.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Rachel Stephens Adam Ja
Bringing up Cosmo
Oxide is bringing up its next generation server. To discuss the (amazingly smooth) bringup process, Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the oxide team. Tales of adversity, re-work, un-re-work, and triumph!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues Nathanael Huffman, Ian Sobering, Matt Keeter, and Aaron Hartwig.We mentioned quite a few terms!
Character Limit with Kate Conger and Ryan Mac
Bryan and Adam have been gushing for months over Character Limit, the fantastic book by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac about Elon Musk's haphazard and disastrous takeover of Twitter. They're joined by the authors themselves to discuss the book, Musk, DOGE, and some of the Character Limit unreleased B-sides.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our guests were Ryan Mac and Kate Conge
Hell is other networks
An Oxide customer encountered a peculiar issue at the intersection of their Oxide network and their broader network. Bryan and Adam were joined by several members of the Oxide team who collaborated to investigate and--ultimately--solve the problem using a combination of tooling, intuition, and dark knowledge.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleag
Raiding the Minibar
Much of the work at Oxide goes into hardware and software used to build and test the eventual product. Bryan and Adam were joined by Ian, Doug, and Nathanael to talk about "Minibar", a rig for connecting up an Oxide server (code name: Gimlet) for manufacturing and internal use. Triumphs and catastrophes including stabbing a connector with a guide pin and bringup mishaps!In addition to Bry
Lip-Bu Tan's Intel
Intel has a new CEO! And it's Lip-Bu Tan. We had assumed it would not be Lip-Bu--he was such a clear front-runner that the more time passed the less likely it seemed it would be him... and yet! Bryan and Adam were joined by Reuter's Max Cherney to discuss.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our esteemed guest was Max Cherney; we were also joined by Bryan Russett, and Alex Ke
A Happy Day For Rust
Recently, a change to a utility in the Rust toolchain changed behavior in a way that impacted users. Rather than being a story of frustration and aspersions, it was a story of a community working... and working well together! Bryan and Adam were joined by Dirkjan Ochtman (of the rustup team) and Steve Klabnik to discuss.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by s
A Crate is Born
Bryan and Adam were joined by Oxide colleagues Andrew, Rain, and John to talk about creating a general purpose crate for diffing structures. More generally, how do you know when something new is needed? How do you know when the investment of time to validate an idea is warranted? Software engineering is hard! (And also: general enthusiasm for Rust macros.)In addition to Bryan Cantrill and
Transparency in Hardware/Software Interfaces
The value of transparency in engineering can have huge benefits--nothing can compare to the momentum of an enthusiastic community! Bryan and Adam discuss the value of transparency at the hardware/software interface with Oxide colleague, Ryan Goodfellow. Transparency can be scary--especially in the hardware domain where secrecy is the norm--but once we knock down some of those fears, the b
A Half-Century of Silicon Valley with Randy Shoup
Randy Shoup joined Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to look at the history of Silicon Valley through the lens of Randy's 50 years--as the child of graphics legend, Dick Shoup; an intern at Intel; aspiring diplomat; engineering leader; and father to the next generation of Shoup engineers.
Textual UIs with Orhun Parmaksız
Ratatui is a Rust framework for building rich--and incredible--UIs in the terminal. Bryan and Adam were joined by Orhun Parmaksız, who leads the project, to discuss the glory--as well as the ubiquity and utility!--of TUIs.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Orhun Parmaksız. We were also joined by slightly-less-special guests Andrew Stone, Rain Paharia,
AI Disruption: DeepSeek and Cerebras
DeepSeek was a disruptive surprise at the start of 2025--an open weights model trained at a fraction of the cost of previous models. Bryan and Adam were joined by Andy Hock and James Wang from Cerebras, whose wafer-scale silicon executes these models faster than is possible with any number of GPUs.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Andy Hock, and James Wan
Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleague, Robert Mustacchi.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Experiences Porting KVM to SmartOSMeltdown and SpectreRobert's "Big Theory Statement" for MACRobert's "Big Theory Statement" for cpuidAGESAOxF: Put the OS back in OSDIOxide RFD 63: Network ArchitectureOxide RFD 82: Motivations an
Crates We Love
Love Rust? Us too. One of its great strengths is its ecosystem of crates. Rain, Eliza, and Steve from the Oxide team join Bryan and Adam to talk about the crates we love.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Rain Paharia, Eliza Weisman, and Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:prettypleasewinnowBlessed.rs crate listAdam's
Predictions 2025
The annual predictions tradition returns for 2025! Bryan and Adam were joined by Simon Willison, Mike Cafarella, Steve Tuck, and Steve Klabnik to review past predictions and look 1-, 3-, and 6-years into the future.See the table of predictions on GitHub.
OxF 2024 Wrap-Up
Bryan and Adam look back on the year of Oxide and Friends episodes, reflecting on favorite shows, moments, and (at length) cover images.Your hosts were Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Oxide and Friends 2024 in ImagesOxF: Musing With Changelog's Adam StacoviakOxF: I know this!OxF: What's taking so long?XKCD: DependencyOxF: Disco
Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee
Paul Frazee joins Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to talk about the inner workings of Bluesky and the AT Protocol. Paul and the Bluesky team have been working on decentralized systems for years and years--very cool to see both the next evolutionary step in those ideas and their successful application in Bluesky!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included our spe
Conferences in Tech
Bryan and Adam were joined by Theo Schlossnagle, KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, and Steve O'Grady to talk about conferences in tech. A lot has changed in the past couple of decades about the impetus for conferences and what makes it worthwhile to attend.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Theo Schlossnagle, KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, and Steve O'Grady.The lightly edited
Intel after Gelsinger
Holy Sh**! Pat Gelsinger announced his "retirement" leaving a rudderless Intel without a captain. How did Intel get here? Some of the cultural problems may be deep in the DNA. Bryan and Adam have some ideas for what happens next, and who might be the next CEO.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Ian Grunert.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we
Technical Blogging
Bryan and Adam were joined by authors of the forthcoming book "Writing for Developers", Piotr Sarna and Cynthia Dunlop, to talk about blogging--for Bryan and Adam, it's been 20 years since they started blogging at Sun. The Oxide Friends were also joined by Tim Bray and Will Snow who kicked off blogging at Sun.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Tim Bray (Bl
Books in the Box IV
The 4th installment of the Oxide and Friends book recommendation series. After a brief(ish) diversion into Crimson Twins, Tomax and Xamot, Bryan and Adam are joined by several Oxide Friends to discuss their favorite recent reads.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Nick Gideo, Josh, Ian Grunert, Tom Lyon, Zander, and Oliver Herman.Tomax and XamotRecommendati
Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)
George Cozma of Chips and Cheese joined Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to talk about AMD's new 5th generation EPYC processor, codename: Turin. What's new in Turin and how is Oxide's Turin-based platform coming along?In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest George Cozma, as well as Oxide colleagues Robert Mustacchi, Eric Aasen, Nathanael Huffman
Querying Metrics with OxQL
Bryan and Adam were joined by Oxide colleague, Ben Naecker, to talk about OxQL--the Oxide Query Language we've developed for interacting with our metrics system. Yes, another query language, and, yes, we're DSL maximalists, but listen in before you accuse us of simple NIH!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Oxide colleague, Ben Naecker.Some of the topic
RTO or GTFO
With Amazon's return to office (RTO) mandate in the news, Bryan and Adam revisit the topic (it's been 2.5 years since last time!). Are in-office epiphanies real or is RTO fueled by nostalgia, fear... and finance? Stay tuned / we apologize for the exposition on in-office games.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included friend of the pod, Matt Amdur, and Chris.Some
Reflecting on Founder Mode
With some time passed, Bryan and Adam offer a non-hot take on Paul Graham's "Founder Mode" post. While there is plenty to quibble over, there's also the kernel of an important idea: how to balance experience, novel thinking, and limited time? Also stay tuned as they share a years old "ego con".Your hosts were Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order tha
RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide
RFDs--Requests for Discussion--are how we at Oxide discuss... just about everything! Technical design, hardware component selection, changes in process, culture, interview systems, (even) chat--we have RFDs for all of these, over 500 in a bit under 5 years. Bryan and Adam were joined by Oxide colleagues instrumental to RFDs, from their most prolific author to those making them more consum
Whither CockroachDB?
Lots of engineering decisions get made on vibes. Popularity, anecdotes—they can lead to expedient decisions rather than rigorous ones. At Oxide, our choice to go with CockroachDB was hardly hasty! Dave Pacheco joins Bryan and Adam to talk about why we choose CRDB… and how Cockroach Lab’s recent switch to a proprietary license impacts that.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal,
The Saga of Sagas
The Oxide control plane coordinates multiple services to do complex, compound operations. Early on, we knew we wanted to provide a robust structure for these multi-part workflows. We stumbled onto Distributed Sagas and built our own implementation in Steno. Bryan and Adam are joined by several members of the Oxide team who built and use Steno to drive the complex operation of the control
Pragmatic LLM usage with Nicholas Carlini
Nicholas Carlini joined Bryan and Adam to talk about his terrific blog post on his many pragmatic uses of LLMs to solve real problems. He has great advice about when to use them (often!) and what kinds of problems they handle well. LLMs aren't great at many things, but used well they can be an amazing tool.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest,
CrowdStrike BSOD Fiasco with Katie Moussouris
Bryan and Adam were joined by security expert, Katie Moussouris, to discuss the largest global IT outage in history. It was an event as broadly impactful as it will be instructive; as Bryan noted, you can see all of computing from here, from crash dumps to antitrust.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Katie Moussouris.PRs needed!If we got some
Heterogeneous Computing with Raja Koduri
Raja Koduri joined Bryan and Adam to answer a question sent in from a listener: what's are the differences between a CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ASIC? And after a walk through history of hardware, software, their intersection and relevant companies, we ... almost answered it!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Raja Koduri.Some of the topics we hit on, in the or
Innovation Tokens with Charity Majors
Charity Majors joined Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to talk about the idea of "innovation tokens"--a fixed budget for, so called, "innovative" projects. When is boring better and when is innovation the safer approach? Is Oxide issuing innovation tokens in some sort of hyper-inflationary cycle!?In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Charity M
Is NVIDIA like Sun from the Dot Com Bubble?
Every so often we like to give our Oxide and Friends hot takes (or as Adam puts it "Bryan getting trolled on Twitter"). This time, a viral tweet suggests that NVIDIA is on the same trajectory as Sun Microsystems on its ascent during the Dot Com Bubble. From two alumni of Sun's rise and fall: maaaaybe not.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Todd Gamblin.Some
Musing with Changelog's Adam Stacoviak
Bryan and Adam were joined by The Changelog’s Adam Stacoviak for a … wide ranging conversation! Something for everyone—especially fans of HBO’s Silicon Valley!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Adam Stacoviak.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Bryan on ChangelogChangelog: 23 years of Ruby with MatzSWOTBachmanity Insan
Rebooting a datacenter: A decade later
Back in May 2014 Joyent accidentally rebooted an entire datacenter (not just the handful of nodes as intended!). That incident--traumatic was it was--informed many aspects of the Oxide product. Bryan and Adam were joined by members of that former Joyent team to discuss, commiserate, and--perhaps--get some things off their chests. a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and
Bookclub: How Life Works by Philip Ball
The long-awaited Oxide and Friends bookclub! Bryan and Adam were joined by special guest--and real life biologist--Greg Cost to discuss Philip Ball's terrific book, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology. Spoiler: Alan Turing makes a very expected appearance!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Greg Cost.Some of the topics we hit on,
All we have to fear is FUD itself
The Oxide Friends have talked about the Hashicorp license change, the emergence of an open source fork of Terraform in OpenTofu, and other topics in open source. A few weeks ago both InfoWorld and Hashicorp (independently?) accused OpenTofu of stealing Terraform code—a serious claim that turned out to be fully unfounded. We (you!) have been lucky to avoid this topic with a couple of guest
A Baseball Startup with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel
Bryan, Adam, Steve, and the Oxide Friends are joined by the founders of the Oakland Ballers, the continuation of a long history of baseball in Oakland. There turns out to be a plenty in common between founding a computer company and founding a baseball team--and we both have our fans supporting us!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by very special guests Paul
Discovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres Freund
Andres Freund joined Bryan and Adam to talk about his discovery of the xz backdoor. It’s an incredible story… so great to get into the details with Andres. We started by ranting about the coverage in the New York Times… coverage that explicitly refused to dig into the details! It’s all the more shocking because the big story here is how Andres’ penchant for digging into the details is wha
Cultural Idiosyncrasies
The Oxide Friends talk about about cultural idiosyncrasies--turns out we have a lot of them at Oxide! Some might even sound good enough for you to try out! Demo Fridays, morning water-cooler, no-meet Wednesdays, recorded meetings, dog-pile debugging (aka CSPAN for debugging), RFDs (requests for discussion), no performance review process...In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal,
Adversarial Machine Learning
Nicholas Carlini joined Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to talk about his work with adversarial machine learning. He's found sequences of--seemingly random--tokens that cause LLMs to ignore their restrictions! Also: printf is Turing complete?!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Nicholas Carlini.If we got something wrong or missed something,
Data Visualization
Data visualization is an important--and overlooked!--tool in the software engineer's tool belt. Bryan describes a recent journey with gnuplot while Oxide colleague, Charlie Park, shares his own experience with data visualization and Adam offers a visual analysis of Simpsons episodes. Stay tuned to the end to find out about the Oxide and Friends book club coming up in May.In addition to Br
Crucible: The Oxide Storage Service
Bryan and Adam are joined by members of the Oxide storage team--Josh, Alan, James, and Matt--to talk about Crucible, the service that provides block storage for VM instances running in the Oxide Rack.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues Josh Clulow, Alan Hanson, James MacMahon, and Matt Keeter.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that
Innovation Stagnation?
Sometimes Bryan gets trolled by a tweet and brings it to Adam and the Oxide Friends. This was a well-crafted troll: is innovation slowing? Are the most interesting problems solved. In a word: no. For many more words, listen in!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The TweetNate SilverSe
Helios
Bryan and Adam are joined by Oxide colleagues Josh Clulow, Patrick Mooney, and Steve Klabnik to discuss Helios, the operating system that runs on the Oxide Rack. Helios is a distro of illumos (derived from OpenSolaris, derived from Solaris, etc.). What's a distro? Why did Oxide choose illumos? Plenty of cross-generational appeal in this episode!Some of the topics we hit on, in the order t
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