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 s03e08 – Does a GPT future need software engineersOxF s04e04 – HeliosOxF s05e28 – Systems Software in the LargeOxF s04e20 – Pragmatic LLM Usage with Nicholas CarliniSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The issue Bryan was fixingiddqd: the crate Rain builtGhosttyDavid's bugs: 1 2 3Rain's nextest bug: SIGTTOU when test spawns interactive shellOxide RFD 619: Managing types across Dropshot API versionsdrift: the crate Adam builtIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Ian Grunert.Previously on Oxide and Friends:OxF s04e02 – Open Source LLMs with Simon WillisonOxF s02e23 – Predictions 2022OxF s03e20 – Predictions 2023!OxF s04e01 – Predictions 2024!OxF s05e01 – Predictions 2025Predictions during the show:Adam1 year: AI companies go on an acquisition binge (especially for anything that smells like data)3 year: Crisis of AI slop open source (both projects and contributions)6 year: Jensen hands over the reins at Nvidia6 year: Tesla is out of the consumer car business6 year: With the iPhone market shrinking, Apple has several new attempts at the next potential flagship productBryan1 year: "Vibe coding" is out of the lexicon -- or used strictly pejoratively it becomes a named condition (for which Adam -- in an act of nomenclature genius rivaling The Leventhal Conundrum -- suggested "Deep Blue")1 year: A frontier model company has a prominent whitepaper making the case that AI will lead to broad-based prosperity rather than job loss1 year: Harvey.ai becomes the pets.com of the AI boom -- and a harbinger of the coming bust (which becomes known as a Correction-like euphemism)1 year: A prominent S1 has revalations of economic behavior that has an effect beyond the company's IPO3 year: Frontier models treat AGI as "already done" -- and ASI as a non-goal3 year: Custom-written software thrives in lieu of SaaS6 year: DSM adds LLMs as a substance that can induce psychosis6 year: $NVDA not beyond its November 2025 peakSimon1 year: The AI for programming holdouts are going to have a nasty shock1 year: We're going to solve sandboxing1 year: Our own challenger disaster with respect to coding agent security - see the Normalization of Deviance in AI by Johann Rehberger3 year: Something that seems impossible for a coding agent to build today - like a full working web browser - won't just be built by coding agents, it will be unsurprising3 year: We will find out if the Jevons paradox saves our careers as software engineers or not6 year: The number of people employed to type code into computers will drop to almost nothing - it will be like punch card operators. Those of us who write code today will have very different jobs that still build software and take advantage of our previous coding experience.Steve1 year: Agent Orchestration will still be a hot topic. It'll be partially, but not entirely, solved. Updated with some more rigour: We won't have a "kubernetes for agents" just yet.3 year: Using AI tools when writing software professionally will be considered something closer to using autocomplete or syntax highlighting than something controversial or exceptional.6 year: AI will not have caused the total collapse of our economic and governmental systems.If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers

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 podcastOxF s05e12 – Hell is other networks — April 4, 2025"No Egress" was a ChatGPT joke!OxF s05e33 – A Grown-up ZFS Data Corruption Bug — November 26, 2025Simpsons scene deleted in syndicationOxF s05e29 – AI in Higher Education with Michael Littman — October 17, 2025OxF s05e28 – Systems Software in the LargeOxF s05e18 – AI, Materials, and Fraud with Ben ShindelOxF s04e21 – Adventures in Data Corruption"Duck season, Fire!"MLG Airhorn aka "the jj airhorn"OxF s05e31 – FuturelockLaura's blog post: A disappearing Service ProcessorOxF s05e34 – Death by Uptime"Painfully concrete" - ChatGPTOxF s05e03 – Holistic Engineering with Robert MustacchiOxF s05e30 – RIP USENIX ATCTeam DTrace meets Dennis Richie, redux"Fart Boy"OxF s05e?? – Books in the Box V — The latest annual book recommendation episode.Oxide Bingo by John HollowayOxF s05e16 – Scaling ManufacturingOxF s05e22 – Founder vs. InvestorOxF s05e27 – Character LimitStretch goal for 2026: finally a C&DOxF s05e24 – Diving InBryan's blog: College Baseball, Venture Capital, and the Long MaybeOxF s03e31 – Hiring Processes with Gergely OroszOxF s04e06 – Crucible: The Oxide Storage Service"Don't worry, Alan, no one will listen" -> one of our most popular episodesOxF s04e23 – RFDs: The Backbone of OxideOffice Space: Michael Bolton as AI em-dash"This isn't nostalgia, it's epistemology" - ChatGPT"Weaponized weariness" - ChatGPT"Dry Fatalism" - ChatGPT"Cougar turned in his wings..."OxF s05e16 – Solutions Software Engineering with Matthew SanabriaAlexander Hamilton: amazing. Also the world's pre-eminent subtweeter and blogger?If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 by Oxide colleagues, Cliff Biffle, Matt Keeter, and Will Chandler.Previously, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s05e03 – Holistic Engineering with Robert MustacchiOxF s04e14 – Rebooting a datacenter: A decade laterOxF s01e26 – The Pragmatism of HubrisOxF s05e20 – Debugger-Driven Development (omdb)OxF s05e07 – Transparency in Hardware/Software InterfacesOxF s05e31 – FuturelockOxF s05e33 – A Grown-up ZFS Data Corruption BugSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:hubris #2304: STM32H7 Ethernet driver stops yielding CPU after many packetsgist — Summarizing the Hubris side of investigationsMatt's blog: Hunting a spooky ethernet driver bugIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 - Crucible: the Oxide Storage ServiceOxF s5e28 - Systems Software in the LargeSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:ZFS fsync can trigger ZIL transaction reordering and data corruptionRFD 177: Implementation of Data Storagethe "fix" that introduced data corruptionPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Tuck (Oxide founder / CEO).Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Founder vs. InvestorTopic[@M:SS](link into recording) Leventhal's ConundrumPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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, John Gallagher, Rain Paharia. Sean Klein, and Eliza Weisman.Previously, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s05e22 - When Async Attacks!OxF s05e26 - Technological Revolutions with Jerry NeumannSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Oxide RFD 609: FuturelockPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 ShoupOxF s05e26 - Technological Revolutions with Jerry NeumannOxF s04e03 - Fork in the Road for TerraformOxF s01e16 - The Books in the BoxOxF s02e18 - Books in the Box ReduxOxF s03e22 - Books in the Box IIIOxF s04e28 - Books in the Box IVOther Notes:Princeton Review: Happiest StudentsUMass Dining Named Best Campus Food by The Princeton ReviewCHM Oral HistoriesNight Rider (and K.I.T.T.)From Bryan and Adam (and others)The Mouse Driver ChroniclesFumbling the FutureSlingshotChip WarTechnological Revolutions and Financial Capital @bcantrill (economics book recommendation)Snow Crash (another Neal Stephenson book)The Big ShortReinventing The WheelEccentric Orbits (recommended by listener)Language Machines Cultural AI and the End of Remainder Humanism (recommended by listener)Molly White's **review ** of Read Write OwnCareless PeopleNOT A RECOMMENDATION If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (If you are Molly White, please destroy this for us!)Surreal Numbers by Knuth (recommended by listeners)From Oliver HermanOpen CircuitsSystems PerformanceWhy We're Getting PoorerTermination ShockFrom Tom LyonFrom Airline Reservations to Sonic the HedgehogSee also Systems We Love: Life of an Airline FlightThe War of Don Emmanuel's Nether PartsThe NVIDIA WayFrom Dan McDonaldInventing the RenaissanceCharles Sumner: Conscience of a NationIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Michael Littman.Previous, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s01e18 - Dijkstra’s TweetstormOxF s04e02 - Open Source LLMs with Simon WillisonOxF s05e18 - AI, Materials, and Fraud with Ben ShindelSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Michael's home pageLeslie KaelblingComputing Up: Rich SuttonPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleague, Dave Pacheco.Previously on OxF:OxF s05e21 - Rebooting a Datacenter: A Decade LaterOxF s01e09 - Agile + 20OxF s04e11 - A Baseball Startup with Paul Freedman and Bryan CarmelSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Dave's talk: Path to self-service update (slides)Fire trucks dousing the champion BallersBryan's talk: Debugging Under FireRoger Faulkner: "I'm not here to make it perfect; I'm here to make it better"Mid-recording earthquakeIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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.Previously on Oxide and Friends...OxF s03e20 - Tales from Manufacturing: Shipping Rack 1Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Topic[@M:SS](link into recording) Leventhal's ConundrumPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Jerry's 2015 blog post: The Deployment AgePRs needed!Previous episodes mentioned:OxF s05e24 - Oxide’s $100M Series BOxF s05e04 - AI Disruption: DeepSeek and CerebrasIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 ComputersOxF s02e18 - Books in the Box ReduxOxF s05e10 - Lip‑Bu Tan’s IntelSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Scott's talk: Tech Promised Everything. Did it deliver?If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 and the Chamber of MysteriesOxF s04e27 - Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)OxF s05e14 - Bringing up CosmoSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:blog: Oxide's $100M Series BHacker News threadPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Gallagher, and Rain Paharia.Previous episodes mentioned:OxF s03e09 - Get You a State Machine for Great GoodOxF s03e20 - Shipping the first Oxide rack: Tales from ManufacturingOxF s04e25 - RTO or GTFOOxF s02e38 - A Debugging OdysseySome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The Update FrameworkOmicron Issue #3441 (Oxide Computer GitHub)Omicron Pull Request #3455 (Oxide Computer GitHub)stlouis Issue #454 (Oxide Computer GitHub)Changing psrset.out.txt (Oxide Computer)Commit 5ec2885322423c0cca0d006611b5c9ac94b0f588 (Oxide Computer)Omicron Pull Request #3560 (Oxide Computer GitHub)If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, Dave Pacheco, Eliza Weisman, and Augustus Mayo.Previous episodes mentioned:Oxide and the Chamber of MysteriesThe Saga of SagasDTrace at 20Cultural IdiosyncrasiesMr. Nagle’s Wild RideA Debugging OdysseyRTO or GTFOSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Falling in Love with RustTokio Runtime Builder – disable_lifo_slotmagic‑trace (GitHub)Magic Trace podcast episode from Jane Streetdiesel‑dtrace (GitHub)omicron issue commentqorbstatemaptokio‑dtracetokio issue #7411Visualizing Systems with StatemapsPostgreSQL WAL INIT ZEROStatemaps: Visualizing System Behavior (YouTube)The statemaps that we referred to:Nexus by thread, discussed starting at 55:29. (This statemap has some states coalesced; the full version is also available.)Nexus by Tokio task, tagged by thread, discussed starting at 1:15:33The D scripts that we referred to:nexus-statemap.d used to generate the initial statemapnexus-profile.d to understand what was consuming CPUtokio-statemap-tagged.d to generate the Tokio task statemapIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Baseball, Venture Capital, and the Long MaybeOxF: Debugger‑Driven DevelopmentAnthony Ervin – WikipediaEddie Reese – WikipediaMetaweb – WikipediaIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, Dave Pacheco. John Gallagher, Alan Hanson, and Eliza Weisman.Previous episodes mentioned:OxF: AI Discourse with Steve KlabnikOxF: The Saga of SagasOxF: A Crate is BornOxF: The Network Behind the NetworkOxF: Bringing up CosmoOxF: RIP USENIX ATCOxF: Dijkstra’s TweetstormSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:omdb ground rulesIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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").Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Steve's blog post: I am disappointed in the AI discourseOxF: A Baseball Startup with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel (The Ballers)OxF: Adversarial Machine Learning with Nicholas CarliniOxF: Hiring Processes with Gergely Orosz ("the RFD 3 podcast episode")OxF: AI Disruption: DeepSeek and CerebrasOxF: Reflecting on Founder Mode ("ego con")If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 special guest Ben Shindel.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Ben's blog: AI, Materials, and Fraud, Oh My!OxF: Theranos, Silicon Valley, and the March Madness of Tech FraudTopic[@M:SS](link into recording) Leventhal's ConundrumPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 hit on, in the order that we hit them:Bryan's blog 2025: RIP USENIX ATCOxF s1e13: Put the OS back in OSDIBryan's Lisa 2011 talk: Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumosBryan's USENIX 2016 talk: A Wardrobe for the EmperorUSENIX 2004Gnutella not NutellaUSENIX DTrace paperUSENIX Summer 1994Slab AllocatorNFSv3WSJ 2006 Technology Innovation Awards0xF s1e18: Dijkstra's TweetstormMeeting Dennis RitchieBoF sessionBirds of a feather flock togetherFreenix20032004Rik Farrow ;login: editorial on USENIX 2016Bryan's blog 2004: Wither USENIX?blog comments from Werner VogelsSystems We LoveAdam's blog 2004: nohup -pillumos sourceOxF s1e4: from /proc to proc_macroThings that don't work as advertisedDiffracting treesCold FusionAdam's blog 2009: Triple-Parity RAID-ZRob Pike 2000: Systems Software Research is IrrelevantZFS paperLiving Computer Museum (now-dead)SDFAll the Chips that Fit by Tom LyonOxF s2e22: RIP OptaneHistory of Programming Languages ConferenceIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Software Engineer applicationOxF: the "squeezefish" episodeThe Fallthrough podcastBusytownIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Jacob, and Eliza Weisman.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Goats in sweatersCNCF Slide: Why You Should Host Your Project at CNCFCNCF NATS documentsNATS GitHub discussionThe uncashed $10k checkCNCF landscapeCNCF blog on NATS / SynadiaSynadia response to the CNCFPostscript:The CNCF updated its blog with proof that the ACH transfer of $10,000 was completed [still very funny! -ahl].Derek Collison--as reported by Runtime News--has agreed to transfer the NATS trademark to the CNCF "because we just feel that the damage to the ecosystem and the ugliness is not worth it for anyone."If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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! Here's a helpful guide:Cosmo - Oxide’s next-generation sled (currently in development) with an AMD Turin CPUGimlet - Oxide’s current-generation sled with an AMD Milan CPUTurin - AMD Epyc 9005 SeriesMilan - AMD Epyc 7003 SeriesGenoa - AMD Epyc 9004 Series (Oxide chose to skip this generation)Sequencing - the precise control of when power rails are energized throughout a PCBSled - One of the (max 32) computers in an Oxide rack; a custom form-factor optimized for power and cooling efficiencyIBC - Intermediate Bus Converter (Our 54VDC -> 12VDC converter)RoT - Root of TrustSP - Service Processor, the small computer (running Hubris) that allows for low-level controlIgnition - An even lower-level control network for power management (including power of the SP)Ruby - The AMD reference platform (Oxide has used this to prepare Cosmo software in advance of bringup)DC-SCM - https://www.opencompute.org/documents/ocp-dc-scm-spec-rev-1-0-pdf and OpenCompute standard form factor.Grapefruit - OCP DC-SCM form-factor board with our SP, RoT, and FPGA on it, used to replace the OCP DC-SCM baseboard management controller in the Ruby platform.Cadence - Software Oxide previously used for PCB designAltium - Software Oxide now uses for PCB designHubris - Oxide’s embedded operating system, run on the SP and RoTHumility - The Hubris debuggerPLM - Product Lifecycle Management – a class of software used for managing hardware BOMsBOM - Bill of Materials – the components required to build a hardware productRFK - Our colleague, Robert Keith (to distinguish him from our other colleague, Robert, and our former colleague, Keith)FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Array – Also referred to as “soft logic” – effectively programmable hardwareILA - Integrated Logic AnalyzerJTAG - A debugging interface for various processorsUART - A serial port or connectionFor previous tales from the bringup lab:Tales from the bringup labMore tales from the bringup labBringup Lab Chronicles: A Measurement Two Years in the MakingRaiding the MinibarIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Conger.If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 colleagues, Levon Tarver, Alan Hanson, Will Chandler, and Trey Aspelund.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:PRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Ian Sobering, Doug Wibben, and Nathanael Huffman,Some other, related Oxide and FriendsOxF: Cabling the BackplaneOxF: The Network Behind the NetworkOxF: The Power of ProtoboardsImages from the show:

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 Kesling.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Cooking with Oxide and FriendsThe Oxide John von Neumann bustIntel's new CEO plots overhaul of manufacturing and AI operationsLip-Bu Tan: Remaking Our Company for the FutureIntel oneAPIMorris Chang: "A very discourteous fellow"If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 special guest, Dirkjan Ochtman, and treasured colleague, Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Steve: A Happy Day For RustPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, Andrew Stone, Rain Paharia, and John Gallagher.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Checking in on Bryan's 1 Year Intel CEO predictionHiring letter to Intel's co-CEOFrom The Register "Re-hire Gelsinger!"Oxide RFD 457: Control plane sled lifecycleOxide RFD 459: Control plane component lifecycledaft cratediffus crateIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 business benefits start to emerge.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleague, Ryan Goodfellow.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Oxide RFD 552: Transparency in Hardware/Software InterfacesBelling the catopenSILKerckhoff's principlePRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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.

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, and Josh Clulow.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:RatatuiOrhun's blogOrhun's FOSDEM 2025 talk (YT) or (fosdem.org) with slides link etc.MinitelMinitel rust stackratatui on MinitelSpotify player tuiDiscord TUIOrhun: tui-rs to ratatui transition blog postOxF: Oxide's ratatui based configurationtui-rsOxF: Describing the Oxide management networkRatzillaTerminal Collectivetui web bub / artratatui testing with snapshotsrizzuptui-realmAsterion (game)If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Wang, both of Cerebras.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:interactive inference with Cerebras100x Defect Tolerance: How Cerebras Solved the Yield ProblemTweet from Eric MeijerOuroborusQuine RelaySimon Willison’s Weblog when DeepSeek fell from spaceTweet from Naveen RaoBONUSMST3K archiveIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 and Principles for the Design of Operator FacilitiesOxide RFD 88: Chassis Management Responsibility AllocationIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 codegen templatemietteeliza_errorserde_path_to_errorratatuiRatatui episode on January 27th!modular-bitfieldlexoptloomOxF: Software VerificationpaloozaCDSCHECKER: Checking Concurrent Data Structures Written with C/C++ AtomicsThe Postcard Wire FormatpostcardBBQueue Explained [video]petgraphU2MatrixGraph in petgraph::matrix_graphWhat does ## (double hash) do in a preprocessor directive? - Stack Overflowsamitbasu/rhdl: A Hardware Description Language based on the Rust Programming LanguagehttpmockcaminoOxF: The episode formerly known as ℔OxF: Dijkstra's Tweetstorm - YouTubeevmapbuf-listIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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.

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: Discovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres FreundMaking the background imageOxF: Open Source LLMs with Simon WillisonOxF bonus blather 9/16/2024OxF: Cultural IdiosyncrasiesOxF: Technical BloggingOxF: RFDs: the Backbone of OxideOxF: RTO or GTFOOxF: Unshrouding TurinOxF: Adversarial Machine LearningOxF: Innovation StagnationOxF: Heterogeneous Computing with Raja KoduriIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 special guest, Paul Frazee, and slightly-less-special guest, Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:ScuttlebuttBluesky FirehoseBluesky JetstreamBluesky and the AT ProtocolBluesky Feed: Quiet PostersBluesky's bot invasion: AI accounts argue with everything you postAI Imagery labeleratprotoOxide starter packIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 live chat from the show:ellie.idb: 2005, huh? y’all met when i was 2goodjanet: yea i was younger than 10 loljgrillo_: I was just thinking I feel very young because I was a junior in high school but not anymore lolaka_pugs: my first conference - 1975ellie.idb: oxide appeals to the youthjbk1234: my first one was LISA in 05 or 06... mostly because it took a near act of god because my director didn't believe in sending his people to conferencesjgrillo_: "before software ate the world" is what I usually call "when the internet was still fun"ellie.idb: my earliest memory was, uhhh, Google I/O 2008 when they gave every attendee that android phoneellie.idb: i don’t recall which one it was, but i do remember playing with it when i was 5 hahahahataitomagatsu: I've only been to one tech conference in person, and it was a very tame SIGGRAPH that happened in Santiago, CL (I live in Chile). It was a lot about animation. I wanted it to have talks on image processing like the ones over on the US x3 but oh well, beggars can't be choosersgoodjanet: I've never been to a tech conferencedevdsp2175: The Germans know how to run a conference. The chaos communications congress is wild.ellie.idb: same!! never actually attended one as an adult hahahataitomagatsu: Have you attended one remotely?goodjanet: nope, closest is just watching recorded talks after the facttaitomagatsu: I attended the rustconf of 2 years ago remotely. It was amazing and I was soooo tired by the end of it. Brain got depleted of juice for the daynetwork2501: looking forward to in person dtrace conference with a dedicated zball roomahl0003: more of a trade show, but I went to the MacWorld conference in the late '90sahl0003: I still have some BeOS install CDs from thengoodjanet: im so thankful for recorded talksahl0003: this is kind of wild: I went with my brother who was 12 or so and we met a guy at Be... my brother would go on to work with him 30 years later!ellie.idb: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid the OG droid with the flip up keyboard and everythingtocococa: ISCA this year was just around the corner from Santiago in Buenos Aires and it was pretty cool, and CARLA took place this year in Santiago tooblacksmithforlife: Since I can never get a conference approved from work, I live off recorded conference videos on YouTubenetwork2501: best momdevdsp2175: The shade! Sending hugs to Bryan's inner child.taitomagatsu: daaaaaamn, I didn't know about either! I might keep an eye on ISCA, maybe I can go next year ❤️devdsp2175: You can't record the hallway track...jh179: Bryan's talk for Papers We Love on the History of Containers is how I found out about him, Oxide and all the rest. Had an incredible tangent about jails...zeanic: Conference idea: all hallway tracksdevdsp2175: YouTube keeps recommending Bryan's talks on running containers on the metal at Joyant.devdsp2175: And I keep watching them!ellie.idb: wow, ISCA had some really fucking cool talks this yearellie.idb: damn. i’m adding this to my watch list too!!! i’ll try and see if i can get funding for next year hahahatocococa: yeah, 100%, but my brain was melted after every daynahumshalman: Bryan has the luxury of working on OSS. I think the point that Theo was making is that Surge (I only attended the very last one) was a space where you could be open about proprietary stuff. Talking about failure in a safe space, etc.nahumshalman: Ah, Theo is now making that point.taitomagatsu: Does ISCA have any sort of official YT channel?taitomagatsu: Because I might... have a handful of talks to watchgoodjanet: 18 years ago isnt that long ago?network2501: 18 years ago is almost 3 generations of lives/eras agoellie.idb: what HPC conferences are going on? i need to hear about the deets going on with CXLjgrillo_: although 18yr is ~half my life it doesn't feel very long ago..tocococa: I am not sure, I know that all keynotes were recorded, but I don´t know where they might beellie.idb: 21 years ago i was not alive 😅network2501: What if the second time you do the talk it's even better than the last? Like book revisions?ahl0003: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i1OK4y9x0wtaitomagatsu: I've found a channel that has older ISCA videos https://www.youtube.com/@acmsigarch2299, imma keep looking for one that might have the 2024 oneblacksmithforlife: Working in government, watching "old" conference videos is great because they're "cutting edge" for where my organization is at currently. Case in point, we are just now going to the cloud and doing micro servicestaitomagatsu: https://xkcd.com/979/ahl0003: https://craft-conf.com/2025srockets: That’s why I liked !!con so much. No one tries to sell you anything.jgrillo_: I've never owned a car newer than 20yo, that's kind what it's like when you look at the car ads from its eradevdsp2175: Are you also doing an "Agile Transformation" which is neither transformative nor optimising for agility?ahl0003: https://monktoberfest.com/srockets: (Also, Ghent had better bike racing than Budapest)srockets: But worse weatherbcantrill: https://youtu.be/stMEuZJJDck?list=PLvsKqlNNP3R8JKE97pwewsDmZdcO5MEWVdrkellyannfitz: Here are the talks from this year: https://redmonk.com/?series=monktoberfest-2024blacksmithforlife: What does "hallway track" mean?zeanic: Cr...

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 hit them:Intel announces the retirement of Pat GelsingerAndy Jassy/Pat Gelsinger re:Invent 2018 premises/premise supercutAcquired: Adapting Episode 3: IntelCHM: Pat Gelsinger Oral HistoryWins Above Replacement (WAR)Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy GroveLarrabeeCannon LakeOxF: RIP OptaneXsight's X2NervanaIntel GaudiSpring HillInvest Like the Best: Redefining Semi-conductor ProgressIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 (BlueSky), Will Snow, Cynthia Dunlop and Piotr Sarna.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Writing for Developers50% off (!) with code OXIDE50ongoing by Tim BrayTim Bray on blogs.sun.comScobleizerBryan: Blogging through the decadesBryan: Remembering Charles BeelerAdam: APFS in Detail: ConclusionsBeastie Boys Book: Live & DirectAdam: AWS Outposts by the Numbers: A Far-Too-Deep Dive Into PricingAdam: I Love Go; I Hate GoAdam: I am not a resourceAdam: First Rust Program Pain (So you can avoid it...)Bryan: Falling in love with RustAdam: On Blogging (Briefly)Bryan: The Power of a PronounAdam: DTrace "Scobleized"Appendix: Cool Technical BlogsCrowdsourced by the Oxide Friends:Nova - in the writer's words, "a JavaScript apologist's exploration of how JavaScript could be good"The Pragmatic EngineerTigerBeetleFaster than Lime - a very humane and deep dive into all sorts of technology, with special focus on tools and infrastructure. Recommended article: I want off Mr. Golang's Wild RideHillel Wayne - tons of formal methods talk. Also about quality assurance in the world of software, in general.Reid Atcheson - down the rabbit hole of computational math; this person is a floating point savant.Computational Complexity Blog - what it says on the tin. It might be the best blog-like resource on computational complexity.Without boatsBonus technical articles from chat and beyond:Why we at $FAMOUS_COMPANY Switched to $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY - Saagar JhaShip Shape: How Canva does hand-drawn shape recognition in the browserRust after the honeymoon - Bryan CantrillRedpanda vs. Kafka: A performance comparison25% or 6 to 4: the 11/6/23 authentication outage - DiscordMeta: From zero to 10 million lines of KotlinSun almost bought Apple in 1996If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 XamotRecommendations:Into the Raging Sea - SladeThe Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan MechnerThe Big Score - MaloneCHM: Oral History of Hector RuizAMD Founder Jerry Sanders Rare Interview (video)Chip War - MillerCHM: Morris Chang, in conversation with Jen-Hsun Huang (video)Acquired: TSMC (audio)Creativity Inc. - Catmull and WallaceHardcore Software - SinofskyOxF: The Showstopper ShowExploding the Phone - LapsleyThe Cuckoo's Egg - StollInside the Hidden World of Elevator Phone PhreakingThe Last BookstoreThe MouseDriver Chronicles - Lusk, HarrisonHatching Twitter - BiltonCharacter Limit - Conger, MacThe Maniac - LabatutShift Happens - WicharyThe Last Philosopher in Texas - ChaconThe Idea Factory - GertnerObservability Engineering - Majors, Fong-Jones, MirandaRed Cloud at Dawn - GordinBiohazard - AlibekMore Money than God - MallabyRemembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War - CarlsonIBM and the Holocaust - BlackBryan's blog on the topicDEC is Dead, Long Live DEC - Schein, DeLisi, Kampas, SonduckOxF: The Rise and Fall of DECBonus recommendations from chatNot the End of the World - RitchieThe Man Who Broke Capitalism - GellesChildren of Time (series) - TchaikovskyThe Murderbot Diaries (series) - WellsOrganizational Behavior Real Research for Real Managers - PearceHacking: The Art of Exploitation - EricksonTakeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power Hardcover - RybackSuccessful Aging - Levitin (felt like maybe a dig at Adam and Bryan?)Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape and How It Challenged Microsoft - Quittner, SlatallaCreative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs - KociendaIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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, and the quietly observant Aaron Hartwig.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Chips and Cheese: AMD's Turin: 5th Gen EPYC LaunchedEnd of the Road: An Anandtech FarewellCentaur TechnologyAVX-512Zen5's AVX512 Teardown + More...Thermal Power Design (TDP)OxF: Rack Scale Networking (use of p4)P4AGESAOxF: The Network Behind the Network (Oxide server recovery)openSILphoronix: openSILPCB backdrillingOxF: AMD's MI300 (APUs)dtrace.conf(24) -- The DTrace unconference, December 11th, 2024If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:RFD 463: The Oxide Query LanguageGenAI podcast on the OxQL RFDRFD 125: Telemetry requirements and building blocksInfluxDBClickHouseSimon Willison: SQL Has Problems. We Can Fix Them: Pipe Syntax In SQLOxide CLI timeseries docsOxide CLI timeseries dashboard codeOxQL source codeRust peg crateGorillaClickhouse paperOxF: Whither CockroachDB?ANTLRACM Queue 2009: Purpose Built LanguagesIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Message from CEO Andy Jassy: Strengthening our culture and teamsOxF: The Future of WorkAmazon leadership principlesNathanael's blog: Building Big Systems with Remote Hardware TeamsIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 that we hit them:Paul Graham Founder ModeBryan Reflecting on Founder ModeTim O'Reilly How I FailedCamille Fournier Founder Create ManagersBryan Chesky interview we mentionOxF: on Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big ThingSeagull ManagementHow to Castrate a Bull NOT AN ENDORSEMENT; DO NOT READThe ego con: Non-Stop HitzIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 consumable.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, Robert Mustacchi, David Crespo, Ben Leonard, and Augustus Mayo.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:We're sorry, GermanyOxide RFD siteRFD 1: Requests for DiscussionA Tool for Discussion (Oxide blog post from Ben)Sun PSARC casesThe Queen's DuckThe Hairy ArmJoyent RFDsRFC-3AsciiDocJoyent RFD 77OxF: Hiring Processes with Gergely OroszOxide RFD API... with it's CLI generated by progenitor... which we talked about some on OxF here and here"Own your strategic weirdness"RFD 113: Engineering Determination, or how we close out RFDsIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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, our special guest was Dave Pacheco.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:TechCrunch: Cockroach Labs shakes up its licensing to force bigger companies to payKelsey's TweetOxide RFD 53: Control plane data storage requirementsOxide RFD 110: CockroachDB for the control plane databaseOxide RFD 508: Whither CockroachDBJoyent blog post on the outage due to postgres autovacuumJepsenDave's CRDB exploration repoChronyOxF: A Debugging Odyssey -- debugging an issue that manifested in CRDBThe Liberation of RethinkDBIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 plane.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Dave Pacheco. Eliza Weisman, Andrew Stone, Greg Colombo, and James MacMahon.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Distributed Sagas: A Protocol for Coordinating Microservices - Caitie McCaffreyOxide RFD 107: Workflows EngineStenochat: "the trouble with other people's workflow engines, somehow with all the yaml in the world they're never quite extensible enough"Not our first bit of background noise on OxF (trombone)SAGAS paperchat: "when i hear sagas i think "transaction semantics enforced at the application layer" and when i hear workflow i hear "a dsl that doesn't have a for loop""Automated saga testingOxide RFD 289: Steno UpgradeFeral Concurrency Control paper from Berkeley and the University of SydneyEliza's PRSteno's description of its divergence from Distributed SagasAWS "constant work" blogchat: "Now, migrate the owl."OxF on formal methodsA complex bug with sagas: "tl;dr there's TWENTY steps in 5042 that leads to an accounting bug"Oxide RFD 373: Reliable Persistent WorkflowsEliza's novella on updating an instanceIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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, Nicholas Carlini as well as by listeners Mike Cafarella, p5commit, and chrisbur.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Nicholas' blog: How I Use "AI"The McLaughlin GroupSurge 2011 ~ Closing Plenary ~ Theo SchlossnagleMicrosoft's Tay chatbotCurb Your Enthusiasm: Larry vs. SiriSal Khan on LLMsGoogle's awful AI adGoogle pulls adIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 order that we hit them:3dfx Oral History Panel with Ross Smith, Scott Sellers, Gary Tarolli, and Gordon Campbell3dfxOpenGLGlideDirect3DCUDADennard scalingVLIWGPGPUAMD APUEnergy Efficiency and AI HardwarePRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Majors.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Glyph: Against Innovation TokensCharity's Twitter ThreadOxF: Let That Sink In! (Whither Twitter?) with CharityDruidScuba whitepaperOxide RFD 68: Partnership as Shared ValuesGood Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard RumeltDropshot and ProgenitorOxF: The Pragmatism of HubrisOxF: HeliosIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The Tweet!OxF: Innovation Stagnation? -- wherein we forgot to read the tweetFramework laptop RISC-V mainboardTadpole SPARCbookOxF: A Requiem for SPARC with Tom Lyon -- we're RISC dead-endersAcquired on NVIDIA: part I, part II, part III, JensenRIVA 128OxF: Steve Jobs & the Next Big ThingIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 InsanityStraight outta KubeconBreakmaster CylinderAdam Stac on githubChangelog Dance Party by BMCComputer History Museum: Oral HistoriesBryan's talk on social audioIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 recording them all; here is the recording.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Josh Clulow, Brian Bennett, Robert Mustacchi, and Steve Tuck.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The Register: Fat-fingered admin downs entire Joyent data centerBryan's talk: Debugging Under FireOxide and Friends on the Oakland BallersThe Ur AgentJoyent post-mortemPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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, in the order that we hit them:The Turing patternRNA as a precursor to DNAXenopus frogXenobotsAnton computerBryan's reading notesCentral themesPower and limitations of metaphor – especially mechanical onesThe fundamental, diametrical opposition between life and machines. (Nature does not use simulations!)Rejecting the neo-Darwinian paradigmPassages of note:p. 91: “of the common SNPs seen in human populations, fully 62 percent are associated with height” … “the most common genomic associations for complex traits like this are in the noncoding regions” What is cognition? p. 137: “Life is, as biologist Michael Levin Jeremy Gunawardenaand philosopher Daniel Dennet have argued, ‘cognition all the way down’” AlphaFold2 p. 148 “AlphaFold does not so much solve the infamously difficult protein-folding problem as sidestep it. The algorithm makes no predictions about how a polypeptide chain folds, but simply predicts the end result based on the sequence.”p. 156: allostery refers to how a🤯 p. 160: “The popular view that science is the process of studying what the world is like needs to be given an important qualification: science tends to be the study of what we can study.”p. 166: “The misfolding pathology of PrPs (prion proteins) is the price paid for the benefits of disorder. … Disordered proteins can increase the complexity and versatility of our regulatory networks, but at the cost of increased risk of toxic aggregates formed from misfolded proteins.”p. 181: “The [training] analogy is far from perfect, not least because proteins don’t need to be ‘trained’ to acquire their roles.” Ball himself loves to use computing a metaphor, even when it is inapt or imperfect!p. 189: “What you’re really looking at here is a diagram not of a molecular event but of a failed paradigm.”p. 201: Clifford Brangwynne: “Many of the textbooks and even our language conveys this kind of factory-floor image of what goes on inside the cell. But the reality is that the computational logic underlying life is much more soft, wet and stochastic than anyone appreciates.” To which I would add: the information machine is MUCH more deterministic than anyone appreciates!p. 205: “Because the binding of BMPs to BMP receptors can be altered by other molecules, the BMP pathway can interact with other pathways to create crosstalk between cells during development.” Mike Olson’s observation of everything working through side-effect. 🤯 p. 212: “It seems likely that metazoans have evolved this evolvability. One of the odd features of transcription factors that bind to DNA is that, in eukaryotes, the base sequences that they recognize are often surprisingly short – perhaps six or so base pairs long. … But there’s no reason the selectivity has to be this approximate; in prokaryotes the binding sites are longer and therefore more specific. It seems that eukaryotes have, so to speak, chosen this sloppiness – probably because it allows new regulatory pathways to develop.”p 217: “While causal emergence seems to be a general design principle for life, it is rarely evident in our own technologies.” Disagree with: “...maybe the better computers of the future will be more causally emergent.” We can’t even get asynchronous systems working!🤯 p. 222: “Is there, after all, really such an obvious advantage to being multicellular? If so, we don’t know what it is.” … “If [evolutionary biologist Michael] Lynch is right, the implication is humbling: we are here not because the multicellular lifestyle of metazoans like us is superior or even advantageous, but because chance mutations created possibilities for new regulatory and multicellular behaviors that natural selection merely found no reason to eliminate.”p. 226: “If we want to understand the mechanisms behind some key evolutionary shifts – for example, the emergence of complex body shapes and lifestyles in the Cambrian explosion, the emergence of nervous systems and of new modes of cognition, and the divergence of mammals and other vertebrates – genomes are the wrong place to look.”p. 245: “The switching of cell states often happens gradually rather than by abrupt switching at a sharply defined fork in the landscape.”p. 248: “One of the most useful pieces of advice I heard from Nature’s biology editor many years ago was that the answer in biology is always ‘yes’”p. 258: “Such leveraging of noise, the researchers suggested, might represent ‘a central and unifying principle underlying the properties of stem and progenitor cells that are central to the evolution of metazoan life.’ Noisiness helps to keep all the cell-fate options open.”p. 263: “In short, says biologist Dennis Bray, the cells circuitry (if that is even a good metaphor at all) ‘is a long way from a silicon chip or any circuit a human would design.’ The more we learn about living systems, Bray writes, ‘the more we realize how idiosyncratic and discontinuous they are’ relative to computers.”p. 267: “Planarians challenge our notions of what life can be.”p. 276: “Lewis Wolpert is said to have once claimed, ‘It is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life.’”p. 291: “The heart drives and shapes its own formation, bootstrapping itself into existence by virtue of its very function.”p. 293: “If there’s a central feature of how life works, it is surely in this ability to create outcomes that are neither arbitrary nor wholly prescribed.”p. 295: “The plasticity of form shown by living organisms might be not only a good way but the only way of making entities as complex as us”, but goes onto to liken us to universal computationp. 296: “But what really is ‘normal’? … There are many types of benign skin growths; I’ve had a lipoma on my upper arm throughout my adult life.”🤔 p. 297: “Conjoined twins like the Hensels are the result of an incomplete separation.” I think this is wrong? Certainly, it is odds with Mutants by by Armand Marie Leroi.😡 p. 309: “Once a relatively obscure figure, Turing is now widely hailed as a visionary genius, thanks in part to the 2014 biopic The Imitation Game and the decision to feature him on the British fifty-pound note.” WTAFp. 326: “The positioning of our organs on the correct side is controlled by stirring!” Mutants goes into this as wellp. 331: “Hsp90 acts as a kind of ‘capacitor for morphological evolution,’ storing up variation of form that might be released in times of stress”p. 333: “It seems that the exploration of shape in the early Cambrian was excessively profligate: some of the body plans found in the fossil record of that time soon vanished. How could they have been selected for, only then to be so rapidly selected a...

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 guests lined up to talk about the xz exploit discovery and founding the Oakland Ballers… but we ran out of distractions! Bryan and Adam talk about this FUD and FUD generally.Your hosts were Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Infoworld: OpenTofu may be showing us the wrong way to forkOpenTofu responsePRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Freedman and Bryan Carmel as well our somewhat-special boss, Steve Tuck.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The Oakland BallersBryan and Adam at Manaea's no-noThe Munson-Nixon lineThe Pioneer LeagueBaseball's longest gameAdam's neighbor, Bill George, scorer of the longest gameYolo HighwheelersBART's sponsorship of the BallersJ.T. Snow joins the BallersJ.T. saves Dusty's sonIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 what saved us all from what would have been a pervasive and damaging attack!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Andres Freund.Our research for this episode:Andres' initial public disclosureNew York Times: Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack? by Kevin RooseKevin RooseNew York Times front page from April 4th, 2024How I got started as a developer with Andres Freund & Heikki Linnakangas | Path To Citus Con Ep08The Mystery of ‘Jia Tan,’ the XZ Backdoor Mastermind | WIREDHow one volunteer stopped a backdoor from exposing Linux systems worldwide - The VergeLinux backdoor was a long con, possibly with nation-state support, experts say - Nextgov/FCWresearch!rsc: Timeline of the xz open source attackBrian Krebs thread on mastodonXz/liblzma: Bash-stage Obfuscation ExplainedA Microcosm of the interactions in Open Source projectsRisky Business #743 -- A chat about the xz backdoor with the guy who found it (podcast)Risky Biz News: F-Droid narrowly avoided XZ-like incident in 2020 (podcast)What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world | Ars TechnicaEverything I know about the XZ backdoorLINUX Unplugged 556: The xz Backdoor Exposed 🚨 (podcast)If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!Recorded April 8th, 2024

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, we were joined by Oxide colleague Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Bryan: Engineering a cultureMatt: It's Free Real EstateCliff: Who killed the network switch?OxF: Engineering CultureDemo DayJujutsuCovid as a catalyst for remote-friendly featuresWatercooler morning meetingNo-meet WednesdayOtM: Jeff RothschildNo (formalized) review processThe non-zero-sum value of praisePositive Coaching AllianceChat as the apple of discord (and remember email?! Or jabber??!!)DORAOxide RFDsRFD 68: Partnership as Shared ValuesMatthew Sanabria: Observability Companies to Watch in 2024"Chat""Rock and stone"If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide Colleague, Charlie Park.(00:00) - Intro (13:39) - OODA (22:30) - Back to Bryan (24:27) - Flame Graphs (28:58) - Statemap (32:39) - Minard / Tufte (44:53) - thingskatedid (46:39) - DTrace aggregations (56:06) - ParaView (01:03:08) - Simpsons IMDb (01:05:16) - Survivorship Bias (01:15:03) - Kartlytics (01:18:15) - Kartlytics sample group (01:19:11) - Wrapping up (01:22:02) - OxF book club Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Bryan's rad gnuplotGitHub PR with Bryan's visualizationsTuftePronunciation of "Tufte" is /ˈtʌfti/Flame Graphsflamegraph-rsOODAThis American Life: A Little Bit of KnowledgeStatemapsMinard's diagramhttps://twitter.com/thingskatedid/status/1386077306381242371plot.awkVisualizing regular expressions and BNF grammars with GraphvizExample implementations of isvg and idotDTrace aggregationsRust crate ratatuiPrograms and libraries for plotting and other data visualizations:gnuplotMatplotlibggplot2ParaViewGLVisSimpsons IMDB visualizationAbraham Wald and the airplane diagram with red bullet holes – here’s the origin storyKartlyticsHow Life Works by Philip BallIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 we hit them:Hyper-converged infrastructureFibre ChannelZFSIntroduction to Flexible Data Placement: A New Era of Optimized Data ManagementStorage Architecture ConsiderationsCephRFD 60: Storage Architecture ConsiderationsRFD 177: Implementation of Data StorageRFD 444: Crucible Upstairs RefactoringRFD 445: Crucible Upstairs BackpressureIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 SilverSecularitySecular stagnationAngela Collier: physics progress in the last 70 years?Haber processCRISPR gene editingBook: Code Breaker by Walter IsaacsonLeonhard EulerDijkstra's algorithmRaftAntibioticAcquired: TSMCEUV lithographyIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

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 that we hit them:The Helios github repoHacker News thread its releaseOmniOSRust Tier 2 supportBryan's talk on holistic bootOxide and Friends: Holistic BootOxide and Friends: Shipping Rack 1The Quality Death SpiralOxide's "St. Louis" branch of illumosBryan's sleeper bug from 1991illumos books (How's this for some SEO?!)If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

We love Rust at Oxide, but the haters aren’t wrong: builds can be slow. Bryan and Adam are joined by Sean Klein, Rain Paharia, and Steve Klabnik to discuss techniques for analyzing and accelerating Rust builds.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Sean Klein, Rain Paharia, and the illustrious Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:go forth and vibe in this minecraft paradise I seededDinosaur bookRoslyn--timingsSteve's "outlining" exampleRain's cargo-hakariRain speeding up Omicron buildsBlog post on many of these topicsSean's fix to u32 overflow bugminiserdemoldDavid Tolnay on pre-compiled macros in wasmBuck2Build Systems à la CarteIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Simon Willison joined Bryan and Adam to discuss a recent article maligning open source large language models. Simon has so much practical experience with LLMs, and brings so much clarity to what they can and can’t do. How do these systems work? How do they break? What are open and proprietary LLMs out there?Recorded 1/15/2024We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Simon Willison.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:IEEE Spectrum: Open-Source AI Is Uniquely DangerousNewsroom Robots with Simon WillisonOxF: Another LPC55 ROM VulnerabilitySimon Willison: Stuff we figured out about AI in 2023llama.cppMistral AIFrance’s Mistral AI blows in with a $113M seed round at a $260M valuation to take on OpenAISimon again: The AI trust crisisReply All: Is Facebook Spying on You?Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language ModelsNew York Times Sues OpenAILycosChatGPT Can Be Broken by Entering These Strange Words, And Nobody Is Sure WhySimon posted a follow up blog article where he explains using MacWhisper and Claude to make his LLM pull out a few of his favorite quotes from this episode:Talking about Open Source LLMs on Oxide and FriendsIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Adam are joined by MIT Research Scientist, Michael Cafarella, for our annual predictions episode where we check in on past predictions and gaze 1-, 3-, and 6- years into the future. No surprise: there were a lot of AI-related predictions. Big surprise: many of them came from Bryan … and with unabashed optimism!Recorded 1/8/2024Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal were your hosts. Additional speakers--and predicters--are listed below with their predictions. (If you made predictions, please submit a PR to add or clarify yours)PRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

George Cozma from Chips and Cheese and Jordan Ranous from Storage Review joined Adam, Bryan, and the Oxide Friends to discuss AMD’s recent MI300 announcement and the implications to accelerated to compute. The MI300A particularly caught our eye--CPU and GPU chiplets on in the same package! Bryan pronounced ML "the biggest thing since the spreadsheet!"... we'll see!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included George Cozma, Jordan Ranous, and :Josh Clulow.PRs to show notes are a great way to help out the show!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Nirav Patel, CEO and founder of Framework Computer, join Bryan and Adam to talk about building a new computer company (yes! another new computer company!) focused on making laptops repairable and open. It turns out, there are a bunch of shared lessons between building a 3lb laptop and a 2,500lb cloud computer!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Nirav Patel, founder and CEO of Framework Computer.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Frameworkr/spicypillowsFramework expansion cardsFramework-based gaming console from the communityOptima Braille laptopOxide and Friends: A brief history of talking computersAcer Ferrari 3400 c. 2004 -- 6.6lb favorite of Solaris Kernel engineersIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

So… OpenAI happened… and Bryan and Adam try it break it down with help from Steve Tuck and even more special guest Chuck McManis.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by variously special guests Steve Tuck and Chuck McManis.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Hacker News: OpenAPI's board has fired Sam AltmanEmployee Letter to OpenAI's BoardWho Controls OpenAI? by Matt Levine, the G.O.A.T.Axios: Who is Larry Summers, the controversial pick to join OpenAI's boardMike Olsen: What is a Board of Directors For?Fermat's Last Theorem (an + bn = cn only possible for n = 1 or n = 2)> I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain. - FermatHomer vs. FermatIBM and the Holocaust

Bryan and Adam were joined by Gergely Orosz, the Pragmatic Engineer, to talk about Oxide's hiring process, the experiences that led to that process, and hiring generally. There's a lot there for anyone interested in hiring or being hired... and especially for anyone who's considered applying to Oxide!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Gergely Orosz.The "Litter Box" is what we call the recording studio... thus named for reasons best left to the imaginationOxide Hiring ProcessThe Pragmatic EngineerOxide and Friends: Tech Layoffs (Nov. 8, 2022)The Oxide RFD processThe Psychopath TestOxide Principles and ValuesAdam's detente with the American Hockey LeagueLeventhal's conundrum - there is a performance pathology, find the butterfly that caused the hurricane.Compensation as a Reflection of ValuesLight's Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of GEGergely's new book The Software Engineer's GuidebookIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide Founder and CEO, Steve Tuck, joined Bryan, Adam, and Oxide Friend, Steve Klabnik, to talk about our recent announcements: general availability of the Oxide Cloud Computer, and raising $44m. The reception was (broadly) great! Bryan and Steve answered questions about the product, company, and launch.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Steve Tuck and Steve Klabnik.If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Ashley Williams and Adam Jacob joined Adam and Bryan to continue their panel discussion with Bryan following up his p99conf talk revisiting open source anti-patterns. Notably, open source has accelerated the distribution of value… without clarity on how contributors can capture that value. Has open source accelerated unequal distribution?In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by friends of the show Ashley Williams and Adam Jacob.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Bryan's Talk, Corporate Open Source Anti-Patterns: A Decade Later by Bryan Cantrill, OxideSubsequent panel with Adam J. and AshleyOxide and Friends: Open Source Anti-Patterns with Kelsey Hightower from August 28th, 2023Oxide and Friends: Docker, Inc., an Early Epitaph from September 13th, 2021If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Recently, a clip from Oxide and Friends was played by another podcast as something of a punching bag. Adam was called "uneducated" and Bryan, it was observed accurately, "hadn't used C++ since the '90s". Well, Conor Hoekstra from the ADSP pod joined us to settle the beef.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Conor Hoekstra and Oxide colleague Cliff Biffle.

Adam and the Oxide Friends follow Bryan on Mr. Nagle's Wild Ride as he investigates performance anomalies. Bryan used all manner of tool from gnuplot to DTrace-inspired bpftrace! If you have ever or plan to ever care about the latency of network-borne protocols, you won't want to miss this!We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from October 2nd, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Tom Lyon, James Tucker, Eliza Weisman, and Dan Ports.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Latency Art: X marks the spotLatency Art: Rainbow PterodactylNagle on NagleDan's tweet on NagleEliza's tweet on NagleTCP_NODELAY or TCP? No, delay!Dr. Angela Collier on violin plotsPRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Adam reminisce about the DTrace journey 20 years after first integrating the code into Solaris back in September 2003.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Josh Clulow.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Hungry Jack'sBryan's other online dating profileThe Sun E10000 (E10k), the world's worst routerLeventhal's ConundrumDTrace as Half-Life 3, eternal vaporwareMore on SPARC, its TLB, the %npc, and dtrace_fish from OxF May 2021Solaris 9 was the completion of the Solaris 2.0 visionDTrace Kernel Technical Discussion (2002)Mr. SparkleFirefox? Mozilla? Firebird!Dynamic Instrumentation of Production Systems, Usenix 2004Graydon on DTrace in RustRust USDT crateDTrace on WindowsAdam's blog: DTrace on macOSAdam's blog: DTrace for OELPSARC cases from 2003If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Kelsey Hightower joined Bryan and Adam to revisit a topic Bryan had spoken about a decade ago: corporate open source anti-patterns. Kelsey brought his typical sagacity to a complex and fraught topic.We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from August 28th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Kelsey Hightower.Here is the (lightly edited) live chat from the show:xxxxbubbler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8P4oCIY3g here is Bryan's talk from 1 decade ago, for referencerolipo.li: web3 is going greatrolipo.li: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ahl0003: Last time Kelsey joined us for predictionsblainehansen: "Governance orgies" happen when the governance mechanisms aren't well-designed ha. If they are well-designed then governance is good!jbk: opsware maybe? or tivoli?uptill3: hp openview was one as wellsevanj: "they've got us working for trinkets"sevanj: this was mentioned on the bugzilla anouncement regarding funded staff being pulled from working on project in the last 3 years.blainehansen: All open source problems are secretly public goods problems hahacarpetbomberz.com: Hashicorp DID do a "thing"blacksmithforlife: Just like taxes fund roads, we should have a internet usage tax that then funds these open source projects that everyone finds value in. The person taxed should get to decide which open source project gets the moneykaliszad: The problem is, you can help other people, but first you have to sustain yourself. 🙂aarondgoldman: Too boring to be evilrolipo.li: too busy to be evil?aarondgoldman: Angular never got budget even when Inbox used it and had millions of usersblainehansen: Most open source projects are probably not best led/governed by a for-profit company haaarondgoldman: HP had a huge repair service business when their hardware got much more reliable it almost killed the companygeekgonecrazy: Never actually considered using CNCF membership as a qualification for using a toolahl0003: it's the nintendo seal of quality!geekgonecrazy: It’s an interesting thought now that I’ve heard it 🙈 especially for any sort of core utility like thissaone: On the topic of patterns that seem to be working, Docker Desktop's license requiring subscriptions for larger organizations for use of their product and focusing on providing a really good developer experience seems to be a really good spot for them to begoodjanet: The term freeloading comes up only when there's a "problem" (usually fiscal in a company/group), the rest of the time the exact same actions are fine or often encouragedmrdanack: I disagree, there are freeloaders. Multi-billion companies like IBM and Oracle have benefited from the PHP project for multiple decades and really haven't contributed even a modest amount back.geekgonecrazy: Anytime hitting CLA I always use that as clue to take hesitation and think about contributing. 🙈quasarken: I love that bit about community Adamblacksmithforlife: https://www.linux.com/news/us-government-opens-access-federal-source-code-codegov/blainehansen: Sometimes a community of passionate contributors is more a burden than a gift. Every project is different, not every project can be supported by many well-paid engineers at vc-funded incentive-aligned companies. I don't think the BUSL is smart or good, but there's a funding/support problem here that legitimately needs to be solved, and the existing open source social contract hasn't solved it. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/burden-open-source-maintainerblacksmithforlife: Disclaimer: I'm a federal employee who tried to get more software open source while I was working at various agencies. For the most part it was soundly ignored and the agencies just claimed it was too hard and they didn't have enough funding to do it, which in my opinion is just falseblacksmithforlife: But, if you want it, just do a FOIA, then they have to give it to yousaone: There's a great deal of fear at my company that software being open sourced must be carefully vetted to avoid potential embarassment so the hurdles to open source anything are very highgirgias: The French government has released code which was pure garbage, and I don't think one can do worse than the APB codegeekgonecrazy: That sucks. 😬I can totally see individual developers being afraid. I’ve faced that with my team. Weird to think org would be especially if trusting engineersnorthrup: Adam to your point though - I don't see how that's any different than other open source projects that aren't corporate backed. No open source projected is obligated to honor your issue to drive a project in a direction, or accept your PR to add a feature or function...ahl0003: Great point!blainehansen: The open source cooperative idea is the best I can come up with to solve the problemblacksmithforlife: What is dev rail?bcantrill: Developer relationsahl0003: developer relationsjbk: dev rel(ations)?bcantrill: JYNXblacksmithforlife: Never heard that term beforegeekgonecrazy: Curious at what scale you think devrel is needed vs the engineers in company directly involvedgeekgonecrazy: I’ve often wondered if doesn’t create unnecessary barrier between engineers and community. Especially at certain sizequasarken: Dev Rel seems a lot like community solutions engineeringgeekgonecrazy: I’ve personally seen some companies use devrel as sole tie to open source and “community” in place of more of company getting involvedrolipo.li: devrel as a service. now it's a consulting firm?northrup: When I worked at GitLab in the early days, some of my most favorite experiences were going to conferences and hanging out in the GitLab booth to answer questions and talk with / help users. SOO much great feedback, clear "oh wow!" edge cases brought forward, and amazing feedback of "yeah, you made this feature, but that wasn't what we needed"ahl0003: I remember liking this book on devrel:

On August 10th, HashiCorp made the controversial decision to re-license some of the popular, formerly-open source project under the Business Source License (BUSL). Bryan and Adam spoke with founders of the OpenTF project, an effort to keep Terraform operating in the open.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on August 21st included Josh Padnick, Malcolm Matalka, and Cory O'Daniel.Our condolences to the friends, family, and loved ones of Kris NóvaOminous figure squeezing a fish that is vomiting gold coinsSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:OpenTFHashiCorp BUSL announcementHashiCorp BUSL FAQSqueezefish "Interview" (image)Cory's blog postCNCF issue for tracking Hashicorp license changeIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Steve Klabnik discuss Fred Brooks' essay "No Silver Bullets"--ostensibly apropos of nothing!--discussing the challenges to 10x (or 100x!) improvements in software engineering.In addition to Bryan Cantrill speakers on included Steve Klabnik, Ian Grunert, and Tom Lyon.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:No Silver Bullet by Fred BrooksSub-podcasting (it's a thing!) thisvideo: Fred Brooks speaking on No Silver BulletRuby on Rails demo (2005)Future of coding podcastAmdahl's lawFizzBuzzEnterpriseEditionKnuth and McIlroy Approach a ProblemIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

In an Oxide and Friends tradition, Bryan and Adam invite the community to share book recommendations.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on included Steve Klabnik, Tom Lyon, Ian Grunert, Owen Anderson, phillipov, makowski, and saethlin. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Elon JetHigh Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems by Southwick, KarenMaking PCR: A Story of Biotechnology by Paul RabinowSun Labs vs. SunSoft Water Fight 1992Cyberville: Clicks, Culture, and the Creation of an Online Town Hardcover by Stacy HornBuilt to Fail: The Inside Story of Blockbuster's Inevitable Bust Kindle Edition by Alan PayneA History of Silicon Valley - Vol 1: The 20th Century Paperback by Piero ScaruffiH-E-BMoby Dick by Herman Melville (Arion Press)A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky ChambersEndurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred LansingInto the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El FaroIf Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future Hardcover by Jill LeporeUNIVAC and the 1952 Presidential ElectionNPR: The Night A Computer Predicted The Next PresidentDoom Guy: Life in First Person by John RomeroFrom Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting by Judith BrettBryan had a reading list for his wedding?! (his wife confirms)The Fatal Shore by Robert HughesHarp in the South by Ruth ParkCloudstreet by Tim WintonDeath of the Lucky Country by Donald Horne30 Days in Sydney by Peter CareyLeviathan by John BirminghamThe Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding by Robert HughesBarbarians Led by Bill Gates by Jennifer Edstrom and, Marlin EllerMurray Sargent's account of how his Scroll Screen Tracer got Windows to work in protected modeStartup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry KaplanDeviceScriptWashington: A Life by ChernowCalifornia Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric--and What It Means for America's Power GridCommand and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric SchlosserThe Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard RothsteinActs of the Apostles: Mind over Matter: Volume Blue by John F.X. SundmanThunder Below!: The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II by Eugene B. FluckeyThinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel KahnemanThe Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory ZuckermanThe Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall Street by Thomas A. BassThe Eudaemonic Pie: The Bizarre True Story of How a Band of Physicists and Computer Wizards Took On Las Vegas by Thomas A BassSome of the other books mentioned in the Discord channel:Herr aller Dinge/Lord of All Things by Andreas EschbachDebt: The First 5,000 Years by David GraeberThe Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert A. SimonCalifornia Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric--and What It Means for America's Power Grid by Katherine BluntThe Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution Hardcover by Gregory ZuckermanThe Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall Street by Thomas A. BassThe Eudaemonic Pie: The Bizarre True Story of How a Band of Physicists and Computer Wizards Took On Las Vegas by Thomas A BassModels.Behaving.Badly.: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life by Emanuel Derman

Bryan and Adam were joined by Justin and David from the Oxide team to talk about their work on the Oxide Console--the frontend to the Oxide computer. The rigor they've brought to all aspects of the frontend--client/server type safety, test automation, a11y--it's astounding!We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from July 17th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues David Crespo, and Justin Bennett.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Justin's podcast: devtools.fmDavid's talk: Folding Time with Signals in ElmOxide and Friends where we mentioned ElmPlaywrightKent C. DoddsDropshot web frameworkOxide Typescript SDKOxide console repoOxide docs siteIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide operations team to discuss the logistics of actually assembling the first Oxide Rack, crating it, shipping it... and all the false starts, blind alleys, and failed tests along the way.We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from July 10th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, Kate Hicks, Kirstin Neira, CJ Mendez, Erik Anderson, Josh Clulow, Nathanael Huffman and Aaron Hartwig.If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

On this week's show, Adam Leventhal posed questions from Hacker News (mostly) to Oxide founders Bryan Cantrill and Steve Tuck. Stick around until the end to hear about the hardest parts of building Oxide--great, surprising answers from both Bryan and Steve.They were also joined by Steve Klabnik.Questions for Steve and Bryan:[@6:38] Q:Congrats to the team, but after hearing about Oxide for literal years since the beginning of the company and repeatedly reading different iterations of their landing page, I still don't know what their product actually is. It's a hypervisor host? Maybe? So I can host VMs on it? And a network switch? So I can....switch stuff? (*)A:Steve: A rack-scale computer; "A product that allows the rest of the market that runs on-premises IT access to cloud computing."Bryan: agrees[@8:46] Q:It's like an on prem AWS for devs. I don't understand the use case but the hardware is cool. (*)I didn’t understand the business opportunity of Oxide at all. Didn’t make sense to me.However if they’re aiming at the companies parachuting out of the cloud back to data centers and on prem then it makes a lot of sense.It’s possible that the price comparison is not with comparable computing devices, but simply with the 9 cents per gigabyte egress fee from major clouds. (*)A:Bryan: "Elastic infrastructure is great and shouldn't be cloistered to the public cloud"; Good reasons to run on-prem: compliance, security, risk management, latency, economics; "Once you get to a certain size, it really makes sense to own"Steve: As more things move onto the internet, need for on-prem is going to grow; you should have the freedom to own[@13:31] Q:Somebody help me understand the business value. All the tech is cool but I don't get the business model, it seems deeply impractical.You buy your own servers instead of renting, which is what most people are doing now. They argue there's a case for this, but it seems like a shrinking market. Everything has gone cloud.Even if there are lots of people who want to leave the cloud, all their data is there. That's how they get you -- it costs nothing to bring data in and a lot to transfer it out. So high cost to switch.AWS and others provide tons of other services in their clouds, which if you depend on you'll have to build out on top of Oxide. So even higher cost to switch.Even though you bought your own servers, you still have to run everything inside VMs, which introduce the sort of issues you would hope to avoid by buying your own servers! Why is this? Because they're building everything on Illumos (Solaris) which is for all practical purposes is dead outside Oxide and delivering questionable value here.Based on blogs/twitter/mastodon they have put a lot of effort into perfecting these weird EE side quests, but they're not making real new hardware (no new CPU, no new fabric, etc). I am skeptical any customers will notice or care and would have not noticed had they used off the shelf hardware/power setups.So you have to be this ultra-bizarre customer, somebody who wants their own servers, but doesn't mind VMs, doesn't need to migrate out of the cloud but wants this instead of whatever hardware they manage themselves now, who will buy a rack at a time, who doesn't need any custom hardware, and is willing to put up with whatever off-the-beaten path difficulties are going to occur because of the custom stuff they've done that's AFAICT is very low value for the customer. Who is this? Even the poster child for needing on prem, the CIA is on AWS now.I don't get it, it just seems like a bunch of geeks playing with VC money?(*)A:Bryan: "EE side quests" rant; you can't build robust, elastic infrastructure on commodity hardware at scale; "The minimum viable product is really, really big"; Example: monitoring fan power draw, tweaking reference desgins doesn't cut it Example: eliminating redundant AC power suppliesSteve: "Feels like I’m dealing with my divorced parents" post[@32:24] Q (Chat):It would be nice to see what this thing is like before having to write a big checkSteve: We are striving to have lab infrastructure available for test drives[@32:56] Q (Chat):I want to know about shipping insurance, logistics, who does the install, ...Bryan: "Next week we'll be joined by the operations team" we want to have an indepth conversation about those topics[@34:40] Q:Seems like Oxide is aiming to be the Apple of the enterprise hardware (which isn't too surprising given the background of the people involved - Sun used to be something like that as were other fully-integrated providers, though granted that Sun didn't write Unix from scratch). Almost like coming to a full circle from the days where the hardware and the software was all done in an integrated fashion before Linux turned-up and started to run on your toaster. (*)A:Bryan: We find things to emulate in both Apple and Sun, e.g., integrated hard- and software; AS/400Steve: "It's not hardware and software together for integration sake", it's required to deliver what the customer wants; "You can't control that experience when you only do half the equation"[@42:38] Q:I truly and honestly hope you succeed. I know for certain that the market for on-prem will remain large for certain sectors for the forseeable future. However. The kind of customer who spends this type of money can be conservative. They already have to go with on an unknown vendor, and rely on unknown hardware. Then they end up with a hypervisor virtually no one else in the same market segment uses.Would you say that KVM or ESXi would be an easier or harder sell here?Innovation budget can be a useful concept. And I'm afraid it's being stretched a lot. (*)A:Bryan: We can deliver more value with our own hypervisor; we've had a lot of experience in that domain from Joyent. There are a lot of reasons that VMware et al. are not popular with their own customers; Intel vs. AMDSteve: "We think it's super important that we're very transparent with what we're building"[@56:05] Q:what is the interface I get when I turn this $$$ computer on? What is the zero to first value when I buy this hardware? (*)A:Steve: "You roll the rack in, you have to give it power, and you have give it networking [...] and you are then off on starting the software experience"; Large pool of infrastructure reosources for customers/devs/SREs/... in a day or less; Similar experience to public cloud providers[@01:02:06] Q:One of my concerns when buying a complete so...

Bryan and Adam offer a rebuttal to the AI doomerism that has been gaining volume. And--hoo-boy--this one had some range. Heaven’s Gate, ceteris paribus, WWII, derpy security robots, press-fit DIMM sockets, async Rust, etc. And optimistic as always: the hardware and systems AI doomers imagine are incredibly hard to get right; let’s see AIs help us before we worry about our own obsolescence!On this episode Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal were on a rant; but we welcome others on-stage!Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:How we got here: Tweet from Liron ShapiraComet Hale-BoppHeaven's GateCross price supply elasticity of copper and molybdenum marketsCeteris paribus -- Bryan's exit from economicsChris Dixon's book releasing in March 2024 (NOT AN ENDORSEMENT)British to American translation guide"It's not just human-level extinction... it's like potential destruction of all value in the light cone" - Emmett ShearVingian SingularityOxide and Friends: Tales from the bringup labOxide and Friends: More tales from the bringup labBullying self-driving carsAI Resistance Reservists: "For the Lightcone!"Samsung security robotsOxide and Friends: Does a GPT future need software engineers?"I for one welcome our new AI overlords"If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Greg and Rain from the Oxide team joined Bryan and Adam to talk about powerful methods of verifying software: formal methods in the form of TLA+ and property-based testing in the form of the proptest Rust crate. If you care about making software right, don't miss it!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues Greg Colombo and Rain Paharia.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Distributed SagasSteno -- Oxide's implementation of distributed sagasLearn TLA+Hillel Wayne talksHillel Wayne on Alloy 6Quickcheck Paper (2000)Proptest docsRain's example codeuse proptest::prelude::*; use proptest::collection::vec; proptest! { #[test] fn proptest_my_sort_pairs(input in vec(any::(), 0..128)) { let output = my_sort(input); for window in output.windows(2) { assert!(window[0] (), 0..128)) { let output = my_sort(input.clone()); let bubble_output = bubble_sort(input); assert_eq!(output, bubble_output); } // These proptests implicitly check that my_sort doesn't crash. }buf-list crateguppy crate... and stay tuned for an upcoming episode revisiting async/await in RustIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Jordan Hendricks joined Bryan and Adam to talk about her work virtualizing time--particularly challenging when migrating virtual machines from one physical machine to another!We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from June 12th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleague Jordan Hendricks.The (lightly edited) live chat from the show:DanCrossNYC: The TSC ticks at a fixed rate now days, regardless of voltage scaling on the CPU.jbk: just x86 doesn't provide a consistent want to determine what the rate isjbk: (I guess some chips will tell you via CPUID, but I've yet to actually encounter such chips)jbk: some hypervisors will tell you via an MSRzorg24: Looks the Linux kernel docs have some documentation on the x86 TSC and PIT https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/next/virt/kvm/x86/timekeeping.htmlDanCrossNYC: CPUID or an MSR, but yeah, most systems sample over a fixed interval (determined by another time source) to figure it out.jbk: no, versus some other present component that allows you to measure the frequencyDanCrossNYC: No, the PIT or HPET or something.jbk: https://src.illumos.org/source/xref/illumos-gate/usr/src/uts/i86pc/os/tscc_pit.c?r=236cb9a8jbk: is how it uses the PITjbk: (the HPET code needs to improve it's accuracy, so it's only used when the PIT isn't there at the moment)jbk: some Intel NUCs have no PITjbk: so HPET is the only optionbcantrill: https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/717646f7112314de3f464bc0b75f034f009c861eDanCrossNYC: Two big ones: system maintenance without disturbing guest workloads, and also load balancing across a rack."Sevan: ah, thanks.https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/717646f7112314de3f464bc0b75f034f009c861e/usr/src/test/bhyve-tests/tests/common/common.c#L166"bcantrill: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/tsc-simulator/tree/masterDanCrossNYC: The guest may well be running NTP itself.iangrunert: I assume you could also check that NTP is alive / has synced recently before doing a migration right?aka_pugs: Do people use IEEE 1588/PTP in datacenters? Maybe finance wackos?zorg24: also it might be tricky to check if NTP synced recently if it is happening in usermodeiangrunert: Might've missed this - is it just the hypervisor that has to run NTP recently or the VM as well?saone: I believe it was just the hypervisorDanCrossNYC: The host.DanCrossNYC: A guest may or may not; that's up to the guest.jbk: but IIUC, if the guest IS running NTP, then the host definitely needs it to avoid any time warpsDanCrossNYC: Yup.DanCrossNYC: Fortunately, there's a bit of an out for the blackout window during migration: SMM mode can effectively pause a machine for an indefinite period of time.DanCrossNYC: We don't USE SMM anywhere, but robust systems software kinda needs to handle the case where the machine goes out to lunch for a minute.zorg24: 🙌 hooray for hardware with no SMM useDanCrossNYC: We have done everything we can to turn it off.ahl: https://github.com/dtolnay/case-studies/blob/master/autoref-specialization/README.mdahl: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propolisearltea: it worked so well I almost thought the VM didn't migrate 😅saone: It's easy to forget that there's a world outside the cloud, but edge deployments that have physical peripherals hooked up need to maintain those connections to peripherals; migrating those peripherals to cloud environments and managing that integration has been a big challenge for my group.iangrunert: https://signalsandthreads.com/clock-synchronization/ Good listen about clock synchronization and PTP in the ""finance weirdos"" world. MiFID 2 time sync requirements require timestamping key trading event records to within 100 microseconds of UTC.jhendricks: a bit belated, but the propolis side of these changes: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propolis/commit/7ed480843d3b5cfd9fd07dce41772f8eac4e9171saethlin: The calvalry??saethlin: Are we just going to let that slidesaethlin: Is this a pronunciation situation againzorg24: not the first time I've heard it pronounced that way 🤷saethlin: Well maybe it's me learning this timeDanCrossNYC: CalvaryDanCrossNYC: That's the religious thing.ahl: https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/0c5967db436935325af441af2b27d337f4e64af5/usr/src/uts/common/os/cyclic.c#L44zooooooooo: thought this was rust typescript at first 😳DanCrossNYC: Dunno... I missed it. 🙂ahl: * Starting in about 1994, chip architectures began specifying high resolution * timestamp registers. As of this writing (1999), all major chip families * (UltraSPARC, PentiumPro, MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha) have high resolution * timestamp registers, and two (UltraSPARC and MIPS) have added the capacity * to interrupt based on timestamp values. These timestamp-compare registers * present a time-based interrupt source which can be reprogrammed arbitrarily * often without introducing error. Given the low cost of implementing such a * timestamp-compare register (and the tangible benefit of eliminating * discrete timer parts), it is reasonable to expect that future chip * architectures will adopt this feature. aka_pugs: Bryan's TSC is overflowing.DanCrossNYC: That's Tom.DanCrossNYC: Riding in with the cavalry.aka_pugs: Good session.ahl: Thanks...

Bryan and Adam are joined by Ashley Williams to talk about open source governance... and the recently, and various stumblings of the Rust project leadership.

Bryan and Adam are joined by Jonathan and Jignesh from Samtec to discuss working together to build the Oxide Rack. We've all seen bad vendors--what does it mean to be a great partner? Also: silicon photonics are (still!) just 18 months away!

Bryan and Adam are joined by Oxide colleagues Arjen, Matt, John, and Nathaneal to talk about the management network--the brainstem of the Oxide Rack. Just as it ties together so many components, this episode ties together many many (many!) topics we've discussed in other episodes.We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from May 8th 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues Arjen Roodselaar, Matt Keeter, John Gallagher, and Nathanael Huffman.This built on work described in many previous episodes:Cabling the Backplane Prior to going all-in on a cabled backplane with blind-mated server sleds (i.e. no plugging, unplugging, mis-plugging network cables). We (Bryan) espoused an "NC-SI or bust" mantra... at least in part to avoid doubling the cable count. With the cabled backplane, the reasons for NC-SI disappeared (which let the many reasons against truly shine).The Pragmatism of Hubris in which we talk about our embedded operating system, Hubris (and it's companion debugger, Humility). Hubris runs on the service processors that are the main endpoints on the management network. Matt's work controlling the management network switch (the VSC7448) is in the context of Hubris, as is John's work communicating with the sleds over the management network.The Power of Proto Boards showed and told about the many small boards we've used in development. Several of those were purpose built for controlling and simulating parts of the management network.The Oxide Supply Chain Kate Hicks joined us to talk about the challenges of navigating the supply chain. Mentioned here in the context of "supply-chain-driven design": we designed around the parts we could procure! Tip: stay away from "automotive-quality" parts when the auto industry is soaking them all up.Holistic Boot in which we talked about how (uniquely!) Oxide boots from nothing to its operating system and services. Over the management network, we can drive server recovery by piping in a RAMdisk over the network and then (slowly) through the UART to the CPU.Get You a State Machine for Great Good Andrew joined us to talk about his work on a state-machine driven text-UI and its companion replay debugger. We mentioned this in the context of John replaying the long upload process in seconds rather than hours to fix a UI bug.Major components of the management networkMatt's VSC7448 dev kitMatt's remote tuning setup via webcamManagement network debuggingManagement network debugging

Erin Kissane joins Bryan and Adam to talk the new social network "Bluesky" through the lens of her blog post "Blue Skies Over Mastodon". Long-time friends of Oxide and social-media aficionados Time Bray and Steve Klabnik also helped shed light on technical and social aspects of the net network.Blue Skies Over Mastodon (with Erin Kissane and Tim Bray)We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from May 1st, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Erin Kissane and long-time acquaintances of the show Tim Bray and Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Erin's blog post Blue Skies Over MastodonMastodon blog (5/1) A new onboarding experience on Mastodon]Tim's blog post from November Bye Twitter"Buy the rumor, sell the news"Hellthread"Skeet" is to "Tweet" is to "Toot" (aka "Publish")skyline.gayBluesky blog Composable ModerationLobstersPhanpySo you've been publically shamed by Jon RonsonIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

The Rust Foundation caused a fracas with their proposed new trademark rules. Bryan and Adam were lucky enough to be joined by Ashley Williams, Adam Jacob, and Steve Klabnik for an insightful discussion of open source governance and communities--in particular as applied to Rust.Rust Trademark: Argle-bargle or Foofaraw?We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from April 17th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Ashley Williams, Adam Jacob, and Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:SuccessionThe Simpsons (explaining the title of this episode)The WireThe Wire at 20 PodcastThe Register: Rust Foundation Apologizes for Trademark PolicyJomboy (our aspiration)Ice WeaselPamela ChestekBryan's talk from Node Summit 2017: Platform as a Reflection of ValuesLinux Foundation form 990Rust Foundation BoardRust Foundation participation rulesIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Adam are joined by Doug Wibben and Robert Keith to talk about the mechanical design of the cabled backplane of the Oxide rack that allows for "blind-mated" server sleds--no network and power cables to plug, unplug, and mis-plug! Watch the chapter art for relevant pictures.We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from April 3rd, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleague, Robert Keith, and special guest, Doug Wibben.00:00 03:02 09:52 11:09 12:16 12:58 ...

Andrew Stone of Oxide Engineering joined Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to talk about his purpose-built, replay debugger for the Oxide setup textual UI. Andrew borrowed a technique from his extensive work with distributed systems to built a UI that was well-structured... and highly amenable to debuggability. He built a custom debugger "in a weekend"!Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:tui-rsCrosstermThe reedline crateEpisode about the "Sidecar" switchElm time-travel debuggingReplay.ioDevtools.fm episode on Replay.ioAADEBUG conferenceCalifornia horse meat lawThe (lightly) edited live chat from the show:MattCampbell: I'm gathering that this is more like the fancy pseudo-GUI style of TUI, which is possibly bad for accessibilityahl: we are also building with accessibility in mind, stripping away some of the non-textual elements optionallyMattCampbell: oh, coolahl: Episode about the "Sidecar" switch: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/oxide-and-friends/blob/master/2021_11_29.mdMattCampbell: ooh! That kind of recording is definitely better for accessibility than a video.uwaces: Were you inspired by Elm? (The programming language for web browsers?)bcantrill: Here's Andrew's PR for this, FWIW: oxidecomputer/omicron#2682uwaces: Elm has a very similar model. They have even had a debugger that let you run events in reverse: https://elm-lang.org/news/time-travel-made-easybch: I’m joining late - 1) does this state-machine replay model have a name 2) expand on (describe ) the I/o logic separation distinction?ahl: http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2015/06/22/first-rust-program-pain/zk: RE: logic separation in consensus protocols: the benefit of seperating out the state machine into a side-effect free function allows you to write a formally verified implementation in a pure FP lang or theorem prover, and then extract a reference program from the proof.we're going to the zoo: lol i’m a web dev && we do UI tests via StorybookJS + snapshots of each story + snapshots of the end state of an interactionig: At that point you could turn the recording into an “expect test”. https://blog.janestreet.com/the-joy-of-expect-tests/we're going to the zoo: TOFU but for tests 🥰uwaces: Are you at all worried that you are replicating the horror that is the IBM 3270 terminal? — I have personal history programming on z/OS where the only interface is a graphical EBCDIC 3027 interface — the horror is that people write programs to interact with graphical window (assuming a certain size).ahl: https://docs.rs/serde/latest/serde/#data-formatsahl: SHOW NOTES Bryan as "semi-elderly" engineerMattCampbell: didn't Bryan write a blog post on this?MattCampbell: http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2008/11/16/on-modalities-and-misadventures/uwaces: https://www.replay.ioahl: https://devtools.fm/episode/9ahl: e.g. https://altsysrq.github.io/proptest-book/intro.htmlwe're going to the zoo: https://github.com/AFLplusplus/LibAFLig: Are you using proptest, quickcheck, or something else?nickik: This really started with Haskell https://hackage.haskell.org/package/QuickCheck Its also cool that it does 'narrowing' meaning it will try to find an error, and then try to generate a simpler error case.endigma: how different is something like this from what go calls "fuzzing"Riking: Fuzzing does also have a minimization stepwe're going to the zoo: https://github.com/dubzzz/fast-checkRiking: Property-based testing tends to be structured differently in philosophy, while fuzzers are more aligned to "give you a bag of bytes"nickik: http://www.quviq.com/products/erlang-quickcheck/endigma: yeah I can tell its a different structure, but the overall goal seems similarwe're going to the zoo: they are nonexclusive approaches to testingpapertigers: I think Kelly was doing a bunch of tests at Joyent based on quick check and prop test. First time I encountered itwe're going to the zoo: libafl provides a #[derive(Arbitrary)] macro that will provide the correct values for a structuwaces: Lots of stuff in Rust existed first in Haskell (build.rs, quote!, Derive macros, Traits, ect….)…nixinator: https://tenor.com/view/%C3%B3culos-escuro-exterminador-terminator-arnold-schwarzenegger-gif-14440790we're going to the zoo: “what do these means” depends on who you ask lolwe're going to the zoo: fast-check is 🔥 for TypeScriptendigma: if the tested function is deterministic and the test is testing arbitrary input and testing against the result to be derivative in some way of the input function by some f(x), don't you end up re-implementing the tested function to provide the expected result? how does the author choose what properties of a system to test without falling into a "testing the test" pit?we're going to the zoo: Rust: “Here comes the Haskell plane!”nixinator: Isn’t rust == oxidationendigma: yesendigma: in a scientific sensenixinator: Iron oxide 🙂 lolnixinator: Very good!GeneralShaw: Is prop test a way of formal verification? Is it same/different?ahl: https://dl.acm.org/conference/aadebugig: I mean, Haskell is an academic rese...

Bryan and Adam and the Oxide Friends take on GPT and its implications for software engineering. Many aspiring programmers are concerned that the future of the profession is in jeopardy. Spoiler: the Oxide Friends see a bright future for human/GPT collaboration in software engineering.We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from March 20th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on MM DD included Josh Clulow, Keith Adams, Ashley Williams, and others. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Live chat from the show (lightly edited):ahl: John Carmack's tweetahl: ...and the discussionWizord: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1636797265317867520 (the $1M bet on BTC, I take)dataphract: "prompt engineering" as in "social engineering" rather than "civil engineering"Grevian: I was surprised at how challenging getting good prompts could be, even if I wouldn't quite label it engineeringTronDD: https://www.aiweirdness.com/search-or-fabrication/MattCampbell: I tested ChatGPT in an area where I have domain expertise, and it got it very wrong.TronDD: Also interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPhJbKBuNnAWizord: the question is, when will it be in competition with people?Wizord: copilot also can review code and find bugs if you ask it in a right wayag_dubs: i suspect that a new job will be building tools that help make training sets better and i strongly suspect that will be a programming job. ai will need tools and data and content and there's just a whole bunch of jobs to build tools for AI instead of peopleWizord: re "reading manual and writing DTrace scripts" I think it's possible, if done with a large enough token window.Wizord: (there are already examples of GPT debugging code, although trivial ones)flaviusb: The chat here is really interesting to me, as it seems to miss the point of the thing. ChatGPT does not and can not ever 'actually work' - and whether it works is kind of irrelevant. Like, the Jaquard Looms and Numerical Control for machining did not 'work', but that didn't stop the roll out.Columbus: Maybe it has read the dtrace manual 😉JustinAzoff: I work with a "long tail" language, and chatgpt sure is good at generating code that LOOKS like it might work, but is usually completely wrongclairegiordano: Some definite fans of DTrace on this showag_dubs: a thing i want to chat about is how GPT can affect the "pace" of software developmentsudomateo: I also think it's a lot less than 100% of engineers that engage in code review.Wizord: yes, I've had some good experience with using copilot for code reviewag_dubs: chatgpt is good at things that are already established... its not good at new things, or things that were just publishedWizord: very few people I know use it for the purpose of comments/docs. just pure codegen/boilerplayeschadbrewbaker: "How would you write a process tree with dtrace?" (ChatGPT4)#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s BEGIN { printf(""%5s %5s %5s %s\n"", ""PID"", ""PPID"", ""UID"", ""COMMAND""); } proc:::exec-success { printf(""%5d %5d %5d %s\n"", pid, ppid, uid, execname); }TronDD: That's interesting as expensive, specialized code analysis tools have been varying level of terrible for a long timeJustinAzoff: I did an experiment before where I asked it to write me some php to insert a record into a database. so of course it generated code with sql injectionchiefnoah: It's ability seems to scale with how many times someone has done the exact thing you're trying to do beforeJustinAzoff: but then I asked if sql injection was bad, which it explained that it was. then I asked if the code it wrote me was vulnerable to sql injection. it then explained it wasColumbus: It misses empirical verification; forming a hypothesis, testing it, and learning from the result. There have been some attempts to implement this by feeding back e.g. command output into the promptJustinAzoff: so then the crazy part, I asked if sql injection was bad, why did it give me code that was vulnerable to sql injection. It the went on to say that the first thing it gave me was just for example purposesJustinAzoff: so no wonder people get into "prompt engineering" since it's clear that you need to do things like ask for code that does something, and is secure, high performance, does not have buffer overflows or sql injection vulnsMattCampbell: In my test case ("Write a Win32 UI Automation provider in C++"), all it did was produce plausible-sounding crapag_dubs: pattern matching over very very large data setsclairegiordano: Bryan just said this and I wanted to write it down, re GPT-3: "the degree that it changes its answers when you tell GPT-3 to think like someone else"JustinAzoff: or even just, "do that, but better"ag_dubs: i think a lot of the awe of gpt is recognizing how simple our own strategies are instead of how complex the AI's strategy ischadbrewbaker: "How would Bryan Cantrill re-write this script?" (ChatGPT4)#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s #pragma D option quiet dtrace:::BEGIN { printf(""%5s %5s %5s %s\n"", ""PID"", ""PPID"", ""UID"", ""COMMAND""); self->indent = 0; } sched:::off-cpu { self->indent = 0; } proc:::exec-success { this->curpid = pid; this->curppid = ppid; this->curuid = uid; this->indent = self->indent; } proc:::exec-success /execname != ""dtrace""/ { printf(""%*s"", this->indent * 2, """"); printf(""%5d %5d %5d %s\n"", this->curpid, this->curppid, this->curuid, execname); } proc:::exec-success, sched:::on-cpu /this->curpid == pid/ { self->indent++; }antranigv: that's pretty hit on!chiefnoah: Yup. Most people are not doing things that haven't been done before. A significant portion of software is just building blocks of librariesWizord: intelligence is compression, in some sense.dataphract: "critique the epoll API as though you are Bryan Cantrill"ag_dubs: a brain would be much stranger!!Wizord: the ability to reduce a large dataset to a coherent set of rulesantranigv: "Explain the issues of epoll, write as if it's a Bryan ...

Eric Vishria of Benchmark and Oxide CEO, Steve Tuck, join Bryan and Adam to talk about Silicon Valley Bank, its role in the startup ecosystem, and the short- and long-term effects of its collapse.We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from March 17th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined special guests Eric Vishria and Steve Tuck.(Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Curated chat log from the show:davidf: Sharing this here because I loved every bit of it: My Startup Banking Story by Mitchell Hashimotoewen: 'The teller looks at the paper, then looks at me, then looks back at the paper, then asks ""Are you the HashiCorp guy?"" ' 😮 (Definitely agree that post looks relevant, and is worth reading; thanks for sharing. There's quite the impedance mismatch between ""traditional banking"" and ""startup"" approaches to things. Which I suspect in part explains how SVB was so widely used by startups.)"antranigv: Question: Are there any reasons why the US is behind in these banking things? all countries in the EU and developing countries have solved these problems decade(s) ago.statuscalamitous: my personal, barely informed take: we built this infra earlier, so we have more legacya172: It sounds like what SVB was providing that was so rare was a kind of business as a service.statuscalamitous: my favorite "scare a developer" story: the way ACH payments work. that's right, SFTP!antranigv: I think you mean FTPS? did they move to SFTP? 😄drkamoz: I think the opposite is also true, without the infra, Africa’s been very early to adopt mobile banking https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20131217-east-africa-a-mobile-banking-hubdrkamoz: Can you explain sweep funds?Eric Likness - carpetbomberz.com: 6 months of runway some place else. Not what Peter Thiel was telling people.antranigv: What was his response?arjenroodselaar: Eject! Eject!ahl: this was a fun summary: https://svbhallofshame.wordpress.com/ahl: https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2023/pr23016.htmlantranigv: This Venture Debt is intriguing, specially for startups who have a good background but are having a hard time... kinda? I guess?ahl: Acquired: Benchmark Part Iahl: Acquired: Benchmark Part II: The DinnerIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Bryan and Adam are joined by a number of members of the Oxide networking team to talk about the networking software that drives the Oxide rack. It turns out that rack-scale networking is hard... and has enormous benefits!We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from February 27th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Ryan Goodfellow, Levon Tarver, Ben Naecker, and Arjen Roodselaar.LinksIntel Tofino SeriesP4 (programming language) - Wikipediap4lang/p4c: P4_16 reference compileroxidecomputer/p4: A P4 compilerThe quote crate: Rust quasi-quotingRIFT WG - Routing In Fat Trees | IETF Community WikiHere's (much of) the live chat from the show:ahl https://github.com/oxidecomputer/oxide-and-friends/blob/master/2021_11_29.mdahl That's the Sidecar switch episodebcantrill https://p4.org/admchl What does "at line rate" mean?Riking Line rate = As fast as the packets could possibly come. 1Gbit, 10Gbit, 100Gbit, etcadmchl Do you need ASICs to hit that speed? I assume x86_64 is not going to be fast enough for these specialised operations?levon Yes, the Tofino 2 is the ASICbcantrill You need ASICsbnaecker Yes, you really can't do these kinds of operations on a general purpose CPU.rng_drizzt Yeah, you need specialized silicon here.JustinAzoff Right, also often across all ports at the same time in both direction. a 48 port 10gbps switch will have a line rate of 960gbps (10 ** 48 ** 2)duckman So the advantage is being able to offload compute to the switch?bnaecker Yes, and specifically that you can separate the data plane (operations on the packets) from the control plane (decisions about what operations to allow or make).tahnok What's TCAM?levon Ternary Content Addressable Memorybnaecker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-addressable_memory#Ternary_CAMsryaeng Sure beats logging into a number of Cisco switches and making changes at the console.admchl This is my favourite episode in a long time, this is all really fascinating.rng_drizzt the first Sidecar episode was nearly 1.5 years ago 🤯 , right after we cut the first revlevon That episode blew my mindduckman This sounds like a big deal on the scale of ebpfduckman Or biggerbnaecker It is extremely useful for understanding the processing pipelines. As long as you only run single-packet integration tests 🙂od0 just want to go out and find things to write P4 code forJustinAzoff yeah one way to think about that sort of thing is that xdp can be used to run little programs on a nic, where p4 is kind of like that, but running on effectively a nic with 48+ portsbcantrill https://github.com/oxidecomputer/p4SyntheticGate sidecar is the "codename" of our switch boxSyntheticGate "gimlet" is our server sledbcantrill https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propoliswmf So you have P4 and OPTE in the hypervisor at the same time?bnaecker OPTE is in the host kernel.arjenroodselaar The P4 runtime Ry described only exists in the test bed, where it high level simulates the switches. OPTE is part of the production environment.arjenroodselaar The rough difference between P4 and OPTE is that P4 works on individual packets without much concept of a session (so it can't reason about TCP streams, packet order etc, so no firewall like functionality), while OPTE aims to operate on streams of packets.JustinAzoff So you can run 100 VMs on a test system and wire them up to your virtual switch compiled by x4c?arjenroodselaar Correct.bcantrill OPTE == Oxide Packet Transformation Engineadmchl Gimlet?rng_drizzt Compute serverrng_drizzt The Sidecar switch is actually just a PCIe peripheral to a Gimlet.bnaecker The Gimlet managing the Sidecar is often called a "Scrimlet" for "Sidecar attached Gimlet"Riking and "how do i reconfigure this giant network without hosing my ability to reconfigure this giant network"ShaunO can identify with that - we seriously struggle to keep our own products inter-operating, let alone anyone else'slevon It can feel like a Sisyphean task.a172 Setup a much smaller/simpler network in parallel that is accessible from "not your network" that gets you to the management interface.levon It's a whole new world when you can look at the actual table definitions in P4rng_drizzt Owning all the layers here is immensely beneficiallevon Those DTrace probes have been very helpfulbnaecker Those probes turned out to be everywhere. They are are in: SQL queries, HTTP queries, log messages, Propolis hypervisor state, virtual storage system, networking protocol messages, the P4 emulator, and probably more that I'm forgetting about.levon For those unfamiliar with the DTrace tool, or the rationale behind leveraging DTrace over other tracing / debugging tools: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall05/cos518/papers/dtrace.pdfbcantrill https://github.com/oxidecomputer/progenitorahl some notes on rust codegen: https://github.com/ahl/codegen-templatearjenroodselaar DDM! Bring us home!a172 it astonishes me how many "cloud" type architectures are built on v4 only or v4 first.a172 IPv6 is older than Wi-Fia172 It solves real problems. PLEASE use it.nyanotech yessss fina...

Yael Grauer joined Bryan, Adam, Steve Klabnik, and the Oxide Friends to talk about her recent Consumer Reports article on memory safety and memory safe languages. How do we inform the general public? How do we persuade practitioners and companies? Thanks for joining us, Yael!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Yael Grauer, and Steve Klabnik.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them (experiment in turning the show live-chat into notes):Nahum: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/ if anyone wants to read up on the 3-2-1 Backup strategy. 👅Cyborus: can we get a link to the talk?Nahum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9s2NxILBK8Nahum: https://digital-lab-wp.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Memory-Safety-Convening-Report-.pdf via https://digital-lab-wp.consumerreports.org/2023/01/23/new-report-future-of-memory-safety/Nahum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)Cyborus: "can we talk" => "hey. you. have a panic attack. anyways i got a cool sandwich"AaronW: "of course we should have seatbelts" 😄MattCampbell: but then you've got the C die-hards who say that Rust itself is too complexAaronW: https://twitter.com/markrussinovich/status/1571995117233504257?s=46DanCrossNYC: People used to say the same thing about PL/I and recently the COBOL people have been saying the same thing. Nothing new under the sun.statuscalamitous: https://blog.yossarian.net/2023/02/11/The-unsafe-language-doom-principleDanCrossNYC: People who still want to treat C as a high-level assembler are saying the same stuff the PL/I people were saying when I was young.Eric Likness - carpetbomberz.com: In support of Yael, Ralph Nader wasn't/isn't an automotive engineer and he could still argue for lowering safety risks to car buyers. It's advocacy.cdaringe: As an ocaml user, i was hoping revery would take off https://github.com/revery-ui/reverystatuscalamitous: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174952/the-tyranny-of-metricsSaethlin: Wake up babe, new 0xide reading assignment droppedAaronW: Labelled like a can of pringles -- "20% more malloc() free()!"Nahum: Relevant to rules based accounting: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/02/hacking-the-tax-code.htmldrew: Rigorous definitions of “unsafe code” just wont cut it igig: 40% less direct pointer arithmetic than the leading brand of operating systemsa172: How does principle based accounting even work? Like, how do you define if something violates the principle or not, without just turning it back into rules based?Eden: Checkboxes are meaningful for operational checklists. Aviation and medicine use them pretty heavily. Not so meaningful for systemic work like developing a new aircraft or a new surgery.Eden: So I guess a rules-based approach works for lines of code, but breaks down for project-level decisions such as which language to use.Saethlin: The S in IoT is for securitybenstoltz: ifixit repairability score for HW should have an analog for SW/FW.DanCrossNYC: That's precisely what the pl/i folks acted like 25 years ago.sam801: c++ will live on thru carbon, cppfront, and val.DanCrossNYC: Prediction: carbon is doa.Saethlin: I'll believe it once anyone uses thoseig: I think the other part is there's some really important pieces of software that everyone uses daily which use memory unsafe languages. Our web browsers, and our operating systems.AaronW: I live in a condo and I still unplug expensive electronics during a thunderstorm. Maybe it's because I had many electronics fried when I was young, and my first language was C++.Eric Likness - carpetbomberz.com: Same with answering a landline during a thunderstorm.DanCrossNYC: Had to stop training during thunderstorms in the Marines.Eden: My day job is security. 😉 I rail against compliance checklists on a regular basis because a lot of auditors insist on the checkbox rather than proper security consideration. For example, PCI-DSS requires password rotation, which everyone has known for decades leads to users picking worse passwords.alilleybrinker: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec22summer_alexopoulos.pdfstatuscalamitous: https://security.googleblog.com/2022/12/memory-safe-languages-in-android-13.htmla172: Google and Mozilla are making pretty good strides in migrating their browser to Rust. Still a ton of work to go, but entire systems have been moved to Rust.JamesBrock: "Lindy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effectstatuscalamitous: https://security.googleblog.com/2021/04/rust-in-android-platform.htmlDanCrossNYC: Another issue with C/C++ in particular is that UB causes latent bugs to surface years later.alilleybrinker: In the paper linked above, the average lifetime looks to have been about 3.5 years.Saethlin: I learned Rust faster than C++alilleybrinker: Related, you might be interested in EPSS: https://www.first.org/epss/DanCrossNYC: Rust requires a bit of humility. For veteran C programmers, that can be a gut punch.srockets: “Compiler says no” is something that Haskell was proud of, but Rust is the first language I’ve seen that managed to get popular despite of italilleybrinker: Humility also requires a lot of Rust https://github.com/oxidecomputer/humilityEden: I do like the checklist item that every change must be...

Members of the Oxide team join Bryan and Adam to talk about our journey through compliance (spoiler: we passed!). Oxide and Friends: February 6th, 2023 We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from February 6th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on February 6th included Arjen Roodselaar, Nathanael Huffman, Robert Keith, Eric Aasen, and Josh Clulow,Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends: January 23rd, 2023Revisiting UnikernelsWe've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from January 23rd, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on January 23rd included Steve Klabnik, Dan Cross, and others.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Bryan's 2016 blog post Unikernels are unfit for productionIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!Give feedback

We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from January 16th, 2023.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Nathanael Huffman, Cliff Biffle, Rick Altherr, Matt Keeter, Eric Aasen, and Dan Cross.Check out the show notes on github to browse the images.(00:00) - Intro (11:42) - Gemini (18:33) - Root of Trust (RoT) carrier (20:53) - Power (23:41) - Trimmed Power (28:11) - SPI MUX (29:38) - SPI MUX rework (33:14) - Gimletlet (41:10) - Gimletlet NIC (46:28) - DIMMlet (56:39) - Gimletlet mk2 (58:27) - Adapters (59:54) - Adapters zoom (01:01:47) - Ignition (FPGA) (01:04:40) - Gimletlet peripherals (01:06:12) - Gimletlet with management switch (1/2) (01:07:22) - Gimletlet with management switch (2/2) (01:09:21) - Kludge.2 (K.2) (01:16:23) - Donglet (01:25:49) - RoT carrier carrier (01:26:17) - Tranceiver load tester (01:29:06) - Load slammer for Tofino 2 (01:31:30) - Power (improved) (01:32:08) - Part Toaster (01:33:28) - K.2r2 Images of each proto board:@11:42 Gemini @18:33 Root of Trust (RoT) carrier @20:53 Power @23:41 Trimmed Power @28:11 SPI MUX

See github for the list of predictions (and add your own!)

Break it down with Ian BrownWe've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from December 26th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Ian Brown.

A Debugging OdysseyWe've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from December 19th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Dave Pacheco.

Oxide and Friends: December 12th, 2022Podcasts for Podcast-LoversWe've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from December 12th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on MM DD included XXX, and YY. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Podcasts mentioned on the showZiade&Ford AdvisorsBrady HeywoodEconTalkLamorna Ash on Dark, Salt, ClearThe Amp Hour Electronics PodcastTools & CraftResilient web designSoftware Defined TalkKubernetes: The Documentary part 1 and part 2devtools FMScience and Futurism with Isaac ArthurAs the Ice Cream ChurnsLost TerminalLet's Make A Sci-FiInvest Like the Best: Shane BattierNew York Times: The No-Stats All-StarMark and CarrieNerdOut@Spotify: Open Source Work Is WorkThe Flop HouseThe MothIt Could Happen HerePlaydate PodcastThe Chernobyl PodcastBehind the BastardsBehind the PoliceTerrorism BadGuys We F****dHow Did This Get Made: Holy MatrimonyStartup: How Not to Pitch a BillionaireBoom / Bust HQ TriviaAcquired: TSMCThe Pitch ShowBad BetsToolsEmbedded.fmHuff DufferOther links from the audienceBSD NowHardcore HistoryEMCrit Podcasthttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9lbWNyaXQub3JnL2ZlZWQvcG9kY2FzdC8?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwiIuNvvuPX7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=enhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Weekhttps://99percentinvisible.org/about/the-show/https://intel.com/aipodcasthttps://nextcloud.com/podcast/https://gzmshows.com/shows/listing/the-big-fib/http://wandb.com/podcasthttps://feeds.captivate.fm/gradient-dissent/https://blart.libsyn.com/https://darknetdiaries.com/https://theretrohour.com/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPxHg4192hLDpTI2w7F9rPghttps://reasonablysound.comhttps://www.youtube.com/@NoBoilerplatehttps://www.youtube.com/@Namtaohttps://signalsandthreads.com/https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvg9/episodes/downloadshttps://darknetdiaries.com/https://blog.mainframe.dev/https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutions/id703889772https://gimletmedia.com/shows/mystery-showhttps://mast.hpc.social/@freemin7https://feeds.megaphone.fm/uncivilhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/4cJ7NqRen0OSJ2a4Wg4uaO?si=XYNwryI0Sc6MeYRboeUcgAhttps://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minister-tony-abbotts-passport-number-on-instagramhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/5EUBBoQVZtQMkhTjfSIvzu?si=j9wcHSKGSfCiP2khHsWBughttp://www.autonocast.comhttps://risky.bizhttps://share.transistor.fm/s/7809611e

Oxide and Friends: November 28th, 2022Leaving Twitter with Tim BrayWe've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from November 28th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Tim Bray. Other speakers on November 28th included Adam Jacob, Toasterson, and raggi. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Bye, Twitter by Tim Brayjwz: PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internetjwz: Mastodon stampede "Federation" now apparently means "DDoS yourself."Tim Bray On AlgorithmsOn terrible Twitter ads: @intelnews: "Moore’s Law only stops when innovation stops.”PRs needed!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

We've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 14th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Kris Nova. Other speakers on November 14th included XXX, and YY. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: November 7th, 2022Tech LayoffsWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 7th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on November 7th included XXX, and YY. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 31st, 2022Open Source FirmwareWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 31st, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guests were Christian Walker and Philipp Deppenwiese.

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 27th, 2022Let That Sink In! (Whither Twitter?)We've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 27th, 2022.In this special, breaking news edition of Oxide and Friends, Bryan Cantrill was joined by Joshua M. Clulow, Charity Majors, mick, Rishi Desai, linear cannon, ignaloidas, Craig Traynor, Cargo Occultist, and Aaron David Goldman.

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 24th, 2022Open Source Inside BaseballWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 24th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was dear friend-of-Oxide, Stephen O'Grady. Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:For non-American and/or non-baseball fans "inside baseball" is an idiom meaning "an expert's take or opinion"Also, Stephen, Bryan, and Adam love actual baseball so there was quite a bit of that as well...For the baseball fans, the Bryce Harper at bat we were so excited aboutThe main event: Stephen's The Dead End

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 10th, 2022Holistic BootWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 10th, 2022.

Inspired by the incentives at Google that apparently promote launching--but not sustaining--new products, Bryan, Adam and the Oxide Friends discuss the efficacy of various incentives... and the incentives that can lead to unintended and negative outcomes.

Bryan and Adam interview Sean Silcoff, co-author of "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry"... Soon to be a major motion picture! Losing the Signal with Sean Silcoff (The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry)We've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for September 26th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our esteemed guest was one of the authors of Losing the Signal, Sean Silcoff.Not many links, mostly anecdotes from Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, the book Sean co-wrote with Jacquie McNishSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:@05:01 The aha moment for BBM@09:42 Ruffled feathers from partner interactionsBell South thought they had an exlusive deal and they didn'tYears later, people didn't seem to hold it against them@12:40 Brian's anecdote about a meeting with Balsillie and Lazaridis@15:30 Lost opportunities to course-correctThe touch screen button@20:00 The Blackberry StormPotentially rushed to market when it was not up to standardsRIM's own testing lab found serious problems but shipped it anywayRIM was a great innovator and a terrible follower, some have said that of Apple, though@25:40 Lazaridis as the product guyThis I get (keypad), this I don't get (touchscreen)Story on the way up is as important as on the way down@30:20 Parallels with DECAmazing riseFailure to pass controlco-CEO model at RIM - worked really well until it didn't@34:19 NTP Patent caseCase briefJury selection was weighed incredibly far towards lay folks with very little technical understandingTechnical demonstration goes sideways@45:10 Trusting the other co-CEO and the option backdating scandalLazaridis didn't really understand the options stuff and felt Balsillie had put the company at riskKept their fights private, but people could tell "mom and dad weren't getting along"Is it right or wrong if everyone was doing it?They left an extensive digital paper trail making it easy to make a caseThanks to Tom for the clarification - options backdating was okay, failing to report it was not@52:50 Larry ConleeFire and brimstone, had a pocket veto, spoke with the voice of the CEOsCo COOs!Carriers were afraid of becoming dumb pipes, so were anti-app storeBlackberry didn't care about doing an app store, then AT&T bent to Apple and allowed them to have an app storeRIM did not believe that Silicon Valley would be let in the front door at the carriersRIM would talk about Apple as "the toy company" while being actively devouredIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

A problem has been eating at Adam: we use async/await in many languages and yet we're not so good at explaining the moving parts. Bryan and the Oxide Friends therapeutically explore the space.

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Kate Hicks from Oxide operations joins to talk about the supply chain meltdown, war stories from the past, and the innovative ways she and her team have charted a steady course through these turbulent waters

The Oxide electrical engineers share their experience bringing up a 100Gb link--it's got everything from a purpose-built probing station to a 100Ω resistor that proved to be the difference between life and death (of the company)

Bryan, Adam, and Steve consider nuggets of conventional wisdom that turn out to be turds.

The Oxide Friends pour one out for Optane, Intel's great hope that never managed to find traction.

Seth Winterroth and Ian Rountree join Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to talk about investing in deep tech / hard tech.

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: July 18th, 2022Across the Chasm with RustWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for July 18th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guests were Steve Klabnik and Luqman Aden. Other speakers included Dan Cross, Tim McNamara, and others. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:@0:27 let_chains are stable in Rust 1.64Adam's tweetThe stabilization PR, with the full saga leading up to stabilizationAs Steve mentions, the feature dates all the way back to 2017 and extends the Swift-inspired if let expressions Rust has had for a whileSome Rust features, like async functions in traits, are huge rabbit holesDiscussion about Rust's commitment to stability and how it's enforced with things like craterAs an example of the process leading to burnout in programming language communities: Guido stepping down as BDFL after PEP 572 (Assignment Expressions, "the walrus operator")Discussion about Ruby also taking stability seriously: flip-flops weren't removed in Ruby 2.0 in part because of this pretty incredible snippet from Yusuke EndohQuines and variations, Yusuke Endoh's Qlobe (reproduced here), their infamous quine-relay, and their other projectsThe G-Portugol programming languageThe unstable features mechanism in Rust ("first class support for experimental features") and how this allows for user experimentationExclusive range patterns in Rust and some of their perils, specifically in tockContrasting the Rust unstable feature mechanism with Haskell language pragmas: the former requires a nightly compiler to use, the latter does not@18:20 Discussion about the Rust process; going from RFC to stable RustThe Rust inline assembly feature (tracking issue)The Rust RFC repoThe Generic Associated Types (GATs) Rust RFChubris is on nightly Rust but with an allow list of featuresNaked functions in Rust (tracking issue), Destructuring assignments, #[cmse_nonsecure_entry]Talking about LWN-style reports and curation as a way to lessen the pain of using Zulip style chat platforms for discussionLWN is hiring, looking for someone to keep up with Rust development, among other things[[partial notes]]

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: July 11th, 2022Integrating Hardware and Software TeamsWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for July 11th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our esteemed guest was Jon Masters. Other speakers included Nathaneal Huffman, Tom Lyon, Dan Cross, Rick Altherr, Matt Keeter, Peter Corless, Timon, Siddharth Joshi, Bob Mader, Aaron David Goldman, Simeon Miteff, Remy Goldschmidt, and MattSci. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:@4:32 Fostering of mutual hatred between hardware and software peopleHuge difference in cost of errors in both time and money@9:38 Dealing with perishable pre-preg material Tachyon 100GTachyon 100G@15:06 The black magic that is DDRDIMM training demo@21:58 Open source tooling for EEsOpen FPGA toolingOpen RISCRISC VZero to ASIC courseLinux from scratchBen Eater's 8bit computerPhil's lab, KiCad 6 PCB design walkthoughPhil's lab, Altium Designer PCB design walkthough@33:18 Matt Keeter's take on ECAD toolsEagle CADSmaller breakout boards made with KiCad for unit testing@36:55 Timon's take on EE curriculumMath-heavy electrical engineering curriculumArts of ElectronicsKnowing at least basics of adjacent disciplines goes a long way@49:03 Software shouldn't pierce abstractions in order to work reliably, but people should to deepen their knowledge@1:04:54 Making microchips at homeSam Zeloof, maskless-photolithographyJeri Elseworth, making microchips at home@1:06:05 Oxide gets a Pick'n'Place machine?Open Hardware Pick'n'Place machine@1:09:40 Bob's take on silosSMM, System Management Mode@1:22:15 Vintage gaming as an intro into embedded softwareWiFi Game Boy Cartridge@1:26:14 Fabs at UNI@1:29:40 Intel Tofino (TM) Series Programmable Ethernet Switch ASICIntel Tofino@1:31:13 Google's open source high level synth. (HLS) tool XLSXLSBluespecChiselIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

We've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for June 27th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Scott Johnson. Other speakers included XX and YY. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:@2:00 Beautiful C++@13:45 DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC@15:00 Almost Perfect@17:20 The Friendly Orange Glow@18:10 Steve Jobs & the NeXT Big Thing@18:50 The Soul of a New Machine@36:08 Reinventing the Wheel@38:13 Creative Capital

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Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: June 13th, 2022The Rise and Fall of DECWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for June 13th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on June 13th included Tom Lyon, Dan Cross, Tim Bray, Ian Grunert, and XXX. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Pronunciation and mispronunciationBryan's DEC reading list:The Ultimate Entrepreneur by Glenn Rifkin, George HarrarLearn, Earn & Return - My Life as a Computer Pioneer by Harlan AndersonHigh-tech Ventures: The Guide For Entrepreneurial Success by C. Gordon Bell, John McNamaraComputer engineering: A DEC view of hardware systems design by C. Gordon Bell, J. Craig Mudge, John McNamaraCreative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital by Spencer E. AnteDEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation by Edgar H. Schein, Paul J. Kampas, Michael M. Sonduck, Peter S. Delisi@1:29:05 Ian mentions Computer History Museum's oral history program prompting strong recommendations:Ian: Bernie LacrouteAdam: Pierre LamondBryan: Dave CutlerIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 23rd, 2022Surviving the Dot-Com BustWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for May 23rd, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on May 23rd included Dan McDonald, Dan Cross, Joshua Clulow, Steve Tuck, Matt Campbell and Theo Schlossnagle. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:@1:37 Pick and shovels story circulating at SunOakes Ames "King of Spades", pbs article, wikiboo.com wikipets.com wiki@11:00 IPOs and public exposuretheGlobe.com wiki@18:20 "The Correction"Feasting like 19th century robber baronsNov 2000, free fallTrilogy, Inc wiki@28:49 Students looking for placementClarity of the bust@36:35 Billboards on the 101garden.com, cnn blurb@39:13 Theo's story, roulette at TrilogyExpansion and contraction of CS student enrollment@46:20 Matt's memoriesAllAdvantage wikiExcite@Home wikiJohn Talbott "The Fall of Silicon Graphics" articleFucked Company wikiCamaraderie over watching your companies imploding@53:39 Looking towards the looming housing bubbleDuring Oxide raise, race against time for VC fundingPandemicHot venture environment, over-valued companiesStimulus, spending on non-essentials, exacerbating income inequality@58:56 Differences from the dot-com era, more defined revenue models?Food delivery services, harbingers of bust?Steve anecdote: Dellionaires, margin call day, layoffs@1:08:12 Dan's second startup experienceWindows on the World wiki@1:10:15 Matt's question: can Oxide weather a tech bust?Adam: downturn can motivate seeking value, looking away from (stable, pricey) incumbents to (riskier, cheaper) new offeringsBryan: dot com bust pushed us toward open-source, for economic reasons.@1:15:51 Are we headed for a bust? How deep?How does a company survive the lean times?Negative human consequencesmammon (money, material wealth) wikiAdvice for practitioners?Dan McDonald: controlling inflation, starting companiesTheo: downturn will hit industries differently, concerns over global supply chainAdam: don't forget about helping others, looking out for other people, for the future of our world.Dan Cross: if it looks to good to be true, it probably is.If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 16th, 2022Debugging MethodologiesWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for May 16th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guests on May 16th were Jordan Hendricks and Luqman Aden. Other speakers included jasonbking, Rick Altherr and Ben Kimock. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Green Room wikiNVMe wiki (Non-Volatile Memory. PCI Express)@3:38 Jordan's storyJordan's thorough bug write-up, (reported by Josh Clulow as "nvme_quiesce() can hang preventing reboot")Non-maskable interrupt wiki@8:04 Adam interrupts a box with a kitchen knifekmdb man page and page in the mdb book@14:11 Josh recites a poem about timeoutsAvoiding getting stuck, experimenting@20:10 A previous encounter with NVMe/PCIe issues (see also: Jordan's NVMe Hotplug discussion video ~26mins)mdb format character "j" (for Jordan!) (and jazzed-up) feature@26:50 Normal and abrupt shutdown notification, breakthrough, writing up a narrative@32:27 Luqman's storyThe blog post "Achievement Unlocked: rustc segfault"dtrace usdtcscope, rust analyzer@43:50 Inspecting LLVM IR, RustC MIRasync blocks, inline assemblyboiling down reproducible casesmaking quality write-ups, telling a story, teaching debuggingpopular on Hacker Newsdead reproducible?@1:03:02 Bugs: psychotic, non reproducibleDebugging mindsetDifferent tools and methodologies for different problemsanonymous tracing book page, speculative tracing page@1:10:03 Jason: number literal formats with underscores, now in mdb@1:12:35 Ben prompts a debugging story, checking conditions in debug, program abort on errorud2 instructionRick describes the Oxide boot loaderXMODEM wikiTriple fault wikiRust "heapless" crateIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: April 25th, 2022Fail WhalingWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for April 25th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Jason Hoffman. Other speakers included Joshua Clulow, Matt Campbell and Ian. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Debugging RailsJason walks chain of events leading to "twttr"@10:46 The first mock up, SMS@13:42 Twitter goes live, early daysTcl, Mongrel, LiteSpeed@19:30 First problemsBryan's debugging story, exceptions and backtraces, index out of boundsDiscovery of the problem was not met with gratitude@29:53 Jason tells another problem story, production directories full of junk test files@38:30 Story of the first Hadoop cluster@42:22 Matt's comment on directory limits@46:35 Companies growing up, on-prem and cloud infrastructure@49:26 The Fail WhaleRuby runtime, Ryan DahlMoved to Java, Scala eventuallyDTrace and dynamic languagesRaku, Parrot VM, MoarVM@59:53 Changing language and hardware landscapes, video presentation sharing, short social media handles, ahl, getting into hockey@1:12:30 Billionaire's playground?Quick diversion, history trivia bet@1:18:43 ModerationMicrosoft Tay bot (shutdown 16 hours after launch)Can anything kill Twitter?@1;29:26 Matt: what replaces Spaces?How could an alternative be built? What would it look like?Bryan predicts: change of headquarters, "burning the flag"Adam predicts: resale or IPO within 3 yearsSee also: Jason Hoffman and Bryan Cantrill CTO vs VP Engineering video ~45mins (audio is rough, content is good)If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: April 18th, 2022More Tales from the Bringup LabWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for April 18th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by members of the Oxide team: Arjen Roodselaar, Nathaneal Huffman, Robert Mustacchi, Aaron Hartwig, Steve Tuck, Matt Keeter, Eric Aasen, Rick Altherr, and RFK.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:@2:25 Overview of upcoming themes related to the bringup lab@4:28 Defining the different terms and code-names of the hardware in development at oxide@4:40 Gimlet, the compute node@5:10 Sidecar, a board based on a switching ASIC from Intel@7:24 Arjen's twitter thread with details related to the bringup and Eric's description of the challenges in designing the PDN (Power Delivery Network) ATT@15:34 The load-slammer, an electronic load to simulate the power draw of an ASIC / BGA-part LS@19:06 Bouncing supply cables on load steps@22:27 FPGA that controls everything on the Sidecar board@24:05 TOML's unstable table order made the team pop a couple ICs off the board searching for bugs@31:41 Brown-out in the hotel during first bringup session from a blown bus duct@33:45 Debugging ground bounce issues while testing the PDN with the load-slammer (phantom over/undershoot)@40:15 Hardware team pranks the management during a meeting with a potential investor@43:20 Chonky heat sink that weighs 8 pounds / moment arm crisis@48:19 First time powering up, checking temperature with thermal camera, learning about "puppy dog warm"@52:12 Matt talks about the second, "lesser" network switch on the Sidecar board@57:28 Secret 8051 cores, slew-rate woes: impedance missmatch on SPI traces that manifested in unreliable communication in full bandwidth mode of the SPI/GPIO driver@1:03:19 PLL config issues and Matt's verbose config tool to fix them@1:04:26 Load-bearing dongles@1:06:37 Debugging PCIe link, Arjen's Frankenstein PCIe analyzer/exerciser@1:22:36 Gimlet, stumbling blocks found in January@1:30:08 Arjen's big breakthrough on the Sidecar, shouting at the T6@1:32:08 Cursed pull-downs, Rick's remote hardware debugging support by incrementally breaking his T6 boards to find issue with the DUT@1:36:24 T6 finally comes out of reset, "we're gonna live! we're gonna live!"@1:41:06 Rick reworks gnarly footprint error, on multiple ICs, to verify design for Rev. B - dead bug style.@1:53:12 Sidecar progress continuation, cable oupsi, off-by-one error@1:59:42 Dedicated support by IC vendor with very understanding wives@2:01:20 Summary and parting thoughtsIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: April 4th, 2022Another LPC55 ROM VulnerabilityWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for April 4th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Laura Abbott.Other speakers on April 4th included Ian, jasonbking, Todd Gamblin?, Ben ?, MattSci, jasonbking and Evan?. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Jonathan Goldstein's Heavyweight podcastOxide and Friends podcasttransistor.fm launch point, has links to Spotify, Google, Amazon etc playersLaura did talk about the first LPC55 vulnerability in the May 3, 2021 space, but the recording for that day missed it.Laura Abbott (30 April, 2021) Exploiting Undocumented Hardware Blocks in the LPC55S69 write-upAnd DEF CON talk with Rick Altherr@4:01 Today's topic: Laura Abbott (23 March 2022) Another vulnerability in the LPC55S69 ROM write upHow do you brick a chip?@7:20 The spreadsheet, ROM patch after bootCompany dismisses or downplays vulnerabilitiesSees CVEs as optional??@15:19 CVEs as more software focused. What does a CVE for hardware even mean?NXP doesn't want to open their software"Even though we are not believers in security by obscurity, the product specific ROM code is not open to external parties except for approved test labs for vulnerability reviews"@19:43 The story of the current vulnerabilityGhidra@27:26 Picking apart the codeBounds checks, writing outside the bounds of the bufferDICE by Trusted Computing GroupRequest for DiscussionEvaluating potential chips when building a product@41:09 Secure hardware, work around potential pitfallsOpen source would help@45:37 Disclosed to NXP, more receptive this timeDiscussion on HN@54:21 Security review industry@57:11 Ian: building up your own (open) documentation on LPC55?@1:01:31 Jason: questionable definitions of "open" sourceAccess to source as building confidence in the product@1:05:20 Todd: securing supply chain for code in large scale projects with lots of contributorsVulnerabilities can occur so easily@1:08:54 Ben: custom setups abound. Hard to trust a whole stack of assembled pieces@1:12:16 Matt: what is the ROM doing? Assembly or C? Could the provider's hands be tied as far as releasing proprietary code?@1:17:19 Jason: X.509 parsing as a good place to look for vulnerabilities?@1:18:25 Evan: encouragement around fuzzing X.509Next time: more tales from the bringup lab!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: March 28th, 2022Time, Timezones, Metric Time, Losing and SavingWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for March 28th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on March 28th included Tom Lyon, jasonbking, Matt Campbell, Akshay Kumar, Aaron Goldman and Simeon Miteff. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:[@8:07](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=487) Y2K, leap years The Staff of Ra“at” command[@15:28](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=928) Matt’s stories elm email[@23:29](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=1409) Jason: daylight saving time in Indiana “Time in Indiana” wiki[@26:31](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=1591) Time zone database John Bemelmans Marciano (2014) Whatever Happened to the Metric System? How America Kept Its Feet bookGeopolitical aspects of timeEastman plan calendar[@32:23](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=1943) Aaron’s stories, setting clocks back, Leap Day[@35:54](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=2154) Akshay: Ken Thompson’s six day work week?Leap seconds Time of day hardware bug[@48:54](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=2934) 2038 - the end of time Y2K problemsGPS week number rollover wiki[@57:58](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=3478) Matt: Cory Doctorow’s “Epoch” short story podcast commissioned by Mark Shuttleworth[@1:00:28](https://youtu.be/BHtfqleSHAs?t=3628) Ultimate, penultimate, antepenultimateOxide and Friends podcast!! transistor.fm launch point, has links to Spotify, Google, Amazon etc playersLaura Abbott (23 March 2022) Another vulnerability in the LPC55S69 ROM write upIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: March 21st, 2022Trolltron, Assemble!We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for March 21st, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on March 21st included Antranig Vartanian, Dan Cross, Ian, jasonbking, Jason Ozolins, Ken and Drew Vogel. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:[@9:23](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=563) I was learning from people who were further down the track than I was Startups can have problems when founders fail to learn from the experiences of others[@12:43](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=763) Dan: hubris of youth is an age old problem, see middle ages nobilityFor some “child wonders”, their childhood is effectively sacrificed because their adulthood arrives too early[@16:22](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=982) When I went to school, there was a math prodigy.. Challenging operating system course[@25:44](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=1544) Ian: for early accelerated learners, the work is easy until it isn’t. They didn’t need to spend long hours studying, so they didn’t practice it. > You have to take that youthful ego, and gently massacre it. Then build them upThe Dropout series, premiered March 2022[@31:26](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=1886) Jason O: praising ability vs effort, negative effects[@34:55](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=2095) 30 under 30, and such thingsEmpathy, learning to compromise, learning from being a parent[@41:04](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=2464) How venture views human capital Student loans, (some predatory lenders)Does making a young person comfy lead to their best work?Taking a share of future earnings, kinda demotivating. Misaligned incentivesLambda school, coding bootcamps. Fixed costs and incoming sharing[@50:17](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=3017) Sourcing these kids? “You’re a baseball card for someone” story, why are these kids at this party??[@57:40](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=3460) Sometimes kids who are extremely comfortable aren’t terribly motivated to put in the hours[@59:25](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=3565) Drew: Income sharing and other schemes to pay for education Ken: doesn’t feel like kids would be set up for success[@1:04:07](https://youtu.be/WrEef_bsWas?t=3847) Background beef leading to this hairy scheme Some entrepreneurs have trouble seeing the role of luck in their successThiel Fellowship wikiIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: March 14th, 2022UkraineWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for March 14th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Andrey Akselrod.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:If you’re interested in donating to support Ukrainians, Andrey recommends Nova Ukraine[@1:52](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=112) Andrey introduces himself, background in computing[@11:20](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=68) Andrey talks about where he lived in Ukraine, DniproConfluence of culturesMoves to New York[@22:53](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=1373) Events of 2014, family and coworkers in Ukraine Crimea[@29:12](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=1752) Earlier disputed regions (Crimea, Donbas) and relations to current events Ukrainian national identity[@38:21](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=2301) Armed forces, self governance Business as usual, life goes on[@44:45](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=2685) Characterizing Ukraine as European democracy, and economic functions/trade Nuclear reactors[@49:12](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=2952) Invasion Leadership disconnect with reality[@1:02:28](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=3748) Family still in Dnipro Electronic communicationsKids understanding of what’s happening[@1:07:59](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=4079) How to help?[@1:16:50](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=4610) Andrey’s coworkers and team members remaining in Ukraine > Yes it’s war, but, the economy needs to continue to be healthy.[@1:21:24](https://youtu.be/EdJU8mSWzQk?t=4884) Where is this going?If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: March 7th, 2022The Future Of WorkWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for March 7th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on March 7th included Lucas Ives, Dan McDonald, Steve Tuck, Ian, Matt Campbell, MattSci, Jim Rybarski, Austin, Aaron Goldman, Jake Demarest-Mays, Jason Ozolins, Tom Lyon, Timon, Matthew Amdur, jasonbking, and Horace. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:[@8:15](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=495) Lucas’ storyRemote before pandemic, comparisons[@16:29](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=989) Sidebar chat, backchannel[@22:49](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=1369) Pre-recorded talks, speaker commenting in chat engaging with questions Multitasking during meetings, different from in-person single-threaded meetingsRecording meetings for later reviewHolding onto a thought may detract from fully listening to another’s point[@34:40](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=2080) Oxide’s full team meetup, what did they focus on?[@38:01](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=2281) Austin’s remote experience[@44:30](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=2670) Dan’s question: remote employees “pilgrimage” back to home often, how often?[@50:23](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=3023) Disadvantages to full remote?[@56:15](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=3375) Jake’s experience, asynchronous work style Meetings as unprepared group think sessions, not valuable as decision makingRequests for discussion, as decision making tools[@1:02:29](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=3749) Jason: service delivery vs product delivery Class devision between “the desked” and “the un-desked”[@1:07:17](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=4037) Is “back to office” about command and control? Other factors: big tech companies receive substantial local subsidies[@1:14:00](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=4440) Timon on working in different timezones Recorded meetings/discussions as valuable contentPandemic boosted remote work tool quality[@1:23:32](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=5012) Difficulties with remote? Building rapport, judging emotions and nuanced communicationOrganic, unplanned communications with in-person office spaces (watercooler)[@1:33:24](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=5604) Matt: remote work as cost savings?Value of “down time” communication, unstructured[@1:43:50](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=6230) Starting career, making connections, in all-remote world[@1:47:58](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=6478) Future of remote work since pandemic[@1:51:30](https://youtu.be/GTluipbKeII?t=6690) Horace’s experience with remote workIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: February 21st, 2022Engineering CultureWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for February 21st, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on February 21st included Tom Lyon, Tom Killalea, Ian, Antranig Vartanian, Matt Campbell, Simeon Miteff, Matt Ranney and Aaron Hartwig. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Alex Heath’s tweet on FB meeting about updated values: “meta, metamates, me”[@4:44](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=284) Can an established company “change its values” in any sense?[@8:43](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=523) Draw the owl > Twilio CEO: Yes, it was a meme, but it’s a great representation of our job. > There is no instruction book and no one is going to tell us how to do our work. > It’s now woven into our culture and used as a cheeky, but encouraging reply to > those who email colleagues at Twilio asking how to do something.[@12:42](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=762) How do you establish engineering culture? Copy-paste values?[@20:44](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=1244) When are values set down in a company’s history? Amazon’s brand image, expanding beyond booksAssessing values when hiring[@27:51](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=1671) Principles vs values Principles are absolutes, cannot be taken too farValues are about relative importance, in balance with other valuesACM Code of EthicsRelative importance of values. Can some values be learned, while others cannot?[@45:11](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=2711) “Turn-around CEOs”, trying to change an established company culture[@47:39](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=2859) Sun culture, early days[@54:32](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=3272) Connection between values and business model Urgency in context, requires nuance[@1:03:37](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=3817) Values on the wall. When are values simply ignored? Jack Handey wiki, Deep Thoughts recurring SNL short sketches, eg Thanksgiving ~30secs“Sharpen fast”[@1:13:49](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=4429) What are the important things to get set early? Bryan and Adam on Joyent and Delphix[@1:22:05](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=4925) Matt Ranney on his time at Uber Trying to shape an established cultureLeadership’s values vs engineersBusiness ethics[@1:35:47](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=5747) GEThomas Gryta and Ted Mann (2020) Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric book[@1:37:03](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=5823) Conclusions Adam: Get it right first, but it’s not a lost cause if you don’t.Bryan: Look for value alignment in organizations you might want to join, it’s tough to change course after the fact.Matt: generous compensation has an effect on how closely one cares to scrutinize their organization’s values ¯_(ツ)_/¯If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: February 14th, 2022Breakthroughs DelayedWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for February 14th, 2022In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on February 14th included Chris DiBona, Tom Lyon, Ian, MattSci, Jeff Nickoloff, Ahmed, Tim Burnham and vint serp. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Adam’s tweetSteven Johnson (2021) Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer book[@6:00](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=360) Pasteurization 1850’s swill milk scandal wiki[@10:25](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=625) Automotive safety Three-point seat belt wikiWindshield safety glass wikiRalph Nader (1965) Unsafe at Any Speed book[@16:25](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=985) Bryan proposes a rubric, are multiple teams racing? Walter Isaacson (2021) The Code Breaker bookEdward Jenner, 1796 smallpox vaccine[@24:32](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=1472) DTrace Compact C Type Format CTF[@27:25](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=1645) Docker OverlayFSBryan’s Papers We Love talk on Jails and Zones video ~100mins1963 Honeywell H200 wikiBryan on harware virtualization history video ~10mins, also here[@37:22](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=2242) The Greate Stirrup Controversy wikiSteve Kemper (2005) Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition bookJevons paradox wiki[@47:51](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=2871) Wikipedia Bryan gets worked up at a dinner partyCliff Clavin (Cheers character) wiki[@52:54](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=3174) Hello Chris Wordle trolling [@57:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGgkBxz-mg&t=3460s) Audio editing[@1:01:03](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=3663) JSON[@1:02:22](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=3742) Chris on HBO Silicon Valley[@1:07:05](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=4025) Antikythera mechanism wikiIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: February 7th, 2022I Know This! (Purpose-built systems with general-purpose guts)We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for February 7th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on February 7th included MattSci, Ian, Matt Ranney and Ken. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Calendly tweet context[@11:47](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=707) Hacker News post[@18:15](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=1095) James Garfield shooting[@21:29](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=1289) Adam’s story about customers taking on heroic interventions themselves, learning the value of logging all commands, and digging through email chains for paydirt Developed “three strikes” rule, focus on fixing the proximate issues (and defer general health boosters for another time) so as not to lose the faith of the customer[@27:35](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=1655) E-cache parity error[@33:38](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=2018) Support personnel remaining calm in the face of unknown damage[@41:22](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=2482) Outages, postmortem, software as a service and public cloud providers Vendor transparency or lack thereof[@48:28](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=2908) Ken: transparency as part of legal compliance?MITRE CVE List of publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities[@52:45](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=3165) Adventures in shady pay to play industry events Fixed raffles[@1:01:30](https://youtu.be/WsvJT6i_atw?t=3690) “We never lost anyone’s data but it took some long vacations” Incident where someone corrupted kernel data structuresAdam pulls a fast onePaul Newman and Robert Redford in (1973) The Sting movieDifferent ways to structure support contractsmdb -kw, the w is load bearingIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: January 24th, 2022Taxonomy of HypeWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for January 24th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on January 24th included MattSci, Todd Gamblin, Aaron Goldman and Tom Lyon. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The tweet about the topic: Johannes Klingebiel’s (2022) The five Levels of Hype taxonomy[@8:24](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=504) Roko’s Basilisk (slate.com)[@10:21](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=621) Cloud Computing[@12:09](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=729) Mobile, Wi-Fi (introduced in 1997) Adam broke his hand, but can still type dtrace with one hand[@15:14](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=914) Java Write once run anywhereCross platform graphical interfacesWindows NT[@17:47](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=1067) Storage technology DedupZFS copies setting and redundant_metadataInfiniBand, iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER), SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP)[@26:15](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=1575) 3D XPoint (Intel Optane) wikiHP Memristor FAQHP “The Machine” HP research’s pure hype marketing pitchThe (absolutely incredible) Star Trek crossover ad > I’m gonna provide you the emotion of a revolution, but not the technical detail to > support it, not yet, but it’s coming.[@31:02](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=1862) Segway (wiki) Dean Kamen wikiDecoder Ring podcast (June 2021) Who Killed the Segway? ~40mins slate.com, Apple podcasts2001 Good Morning America Segway unveiling, Diane Sawyer is underwhelmed > I’m tempted to say “that’s it??” (nervous laughter) > But that can’t be it!?[@34:29](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=2069) Maglev, Cold fusionWalter Isaacson (2021) The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race bookHuman Genome Project wikiHype booms and bustsTodd’s story on working on fusion at a national lab, and the nature of gaining funding for large projects[@45:30](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=2730) Rust[@48:43](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=2923) DTrace[@52:14](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=3134) Nanotechnology K. Eric Drexler wikiExpert Systems, AR/VR[@56:23](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=3383) Chatbots Dan Olson (Jan 2022) Line Goes Up - The Problem with NFTs ~2hr video (worth every minute)[@59:11](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=3551) Serverless Itanium IA-64, Very long instruction word VLIWFibre Channel over Ethernet FCoE, ATA over Ethernet AoE > A solution in search of a problem[@1:06:50](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=4010) Taligent wikiTom Hormby (2014) Pink: Apple’s First Stab at a Modern Operating System postBe Inc wikiBryan’s Be whiteboard story[@1:13:47](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=4427) Docker Monetizing open source[@1:20:28](https://youtu.be/qrWgmkBfn9s?t=4828) 5GIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: January 10th, 2022Flying Blind with Peter RobisonWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for January 10th, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Peter Robison.Other speakers on January 10th included MattSci and Simeon Miteff. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:[@5:02](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=302) Peter on Japan Air Lines Flight 123Boeing 777 > Bryan: The things I am the most proud of are the things I’ve worked with other people on, > when a team does something that feels beyond an individual’s grasp.[@12:25](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=745) Peter’s history covering aerospace McDonnell Douglas[@15:53](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=953) Jack Welch, corporate culture Investors over customersJohn Godson 1975 The Rise and Fall of the DC-10 book[@24:12](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=1452) Questionable morals from execsJohn Newhouse 1982 The Sporty Game book[@27:41](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=1661) When did it become clear that the 737 MAX was problematic? Lion Air Flight 610Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System MCASEthiopian Airlines Flight 302Shifting blame, public messaging vs behind closed doors opinion forming[@36:31](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=2191) Why pilots had no training (or knowledge of) the MCAS system[@39:23](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=2363) Angle of Attack indicator[@48:48](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=2928) MCAS software, writing safety critical computer code [@53:19](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=3199) “Blood on the seats”[@58:48](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=3528) Matt asks about “fly-by-wire” and MCAS. “Optional” safety features[@1:08:04](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=4084) Testing safety, lack of technical scrutiny[@1:12:31](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=4351) Simeon asks about the FAA’s relationship with Boeing[@1:15:05](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=4505) Bryan: what are the lessons for other disciplines? Peter: Valuing employee views. Tolerating bad news.Adam: The engineering culture at Boeing was so arduous to build, and so quick to corrode[@1:18:39](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=4719) Matt: relationship to F-35? Military vs commercial[@1:23:23](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=5003) Gene Kim: CEO congressional testimony[@1:26:22](https://youtu.be/q6i9NPslfE4?t=5182) Passing certifications, alternatives to MCASIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: January 3rd, 2022Predictions 2022We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for January 3rd, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest on January 3rd included was tech prediction expert and noted Red Sox fan Steven O’Grady.Below is a table of the oracles and their predictions: (If you made predictions, please submit a PR to add or clarify yours) Futurist  1 year  3 year  6 year  | @openlabbott 47:15 |  Discord are going to annoy their userbase.  |  We’ll finally get a RISC V server in a datacenter, in some shape or form.  |  Email goes the way of the landline. | @MattSci2 1:10:05 |  The framework laptop company will be unsuccessful. Existing laptops are not substantially different; with some retooling.  |  One major FPGA vendor will have a completely open toolchain for high end FPGAs.  |  At least 1 RISC-V supercomputer in the Top 500. | @tomk_ 1:16:45 |  At least one of the hyperscalers will become startlingly good at partnering.  |  Stablecoins will become regulated.  |  The biggest datacenter server provider (outside the hyperscalers) will be a company that hasn’t yet shipped its first server. | @tinco 1:18:57 |  Multiple companies will have demonstrated a AGI (one shot machine learning system). It’s not gonna be useful for anything, but I think the problem is less hard than many critics think it is and several companies/organizations are actually going to be showing the first versions of these systems.  |  Drones autonomously flying around private properties will be a common thing. Factory managers, powerlines inspectors, large building sites etc. will have commonly available and affordable options to inspect or patrol their properties.  |  Web3 will actually happen, but not in the way it’s currently being talked about. In 6 years time bots will have improved to the point that they can not be warded off the major platforms (or any platforms) and will make the web absolutely unusable due to them disrupting all established crowd funded moderation systems. A new paradigm will have to emerge that fundamentally changes how we use the web (thus web3), so that we can still derive value from it. | Ben Stoltz 1:24:40 |  Smart glasses become a viable alternative for computer monitors youtube. People who used to look away from their phones to have their own thoughts, and are now using smart glasses in real life situations, are subjected to an ads vs. attention “Tragedy of the commons”. As costs per unit decrease leading to ubiquity, this forces a modern-day “Highway Beautification Act” to legislate Ad Blocking.  |  A significant percentage of commercial office space will be converted to housing.  |  The best AIs have emotional problems. We don’t really know how they work. AI specialists are more therapists than programmers. | @kelseyhightower 1:29:30 |  This year will be more of the same, competition to define the new normal as the pandemic winds down.  |  Pandemic-era solutions will backfire; crypto-currencies will give governments an excuse to track all actual spending. “We will give you the transparency, but not the kind you wanted.”  |  Technology will be recognized as sovereignty like money and land used to be. Governments will be wary of using technology from weak allies or competitors. Local hardware manufacturing, growth of local university training, etc. Possibly manifesting as national protectionism, or a reprise of the space-race. Open source will be the default model. | @orangecms 1:53:45 |  a major OS from China emerges  |  high performance computing from Europe  |  ARM no longer as relevant | @ahl 1:58:00 |  web3 is done; we’re not talking about it, it’s not a thing, we don’t use the term and we only vaguely recall what it was supposed to mean.  |  Productivity per watt becomes a highly important metric in computing. Tools tell us about our power use. We spin workloads up and down depending on power cost and availability.  |  AWS offers RISC-V instance types. | @AaronDGoldman 1:07:14 |  Single-node computing: people will realize that that distributed computing has a lot of overhead and that one server can do a lot of work. This will lead people to people doing business analytics jobs by pulling all their data to a single a computer and doing the calculation, getting the result 100x faster than splitting data over many computers.  |  Microservices inlining: taking a lot of microservices and statically linking them together. This will enable calling functions without network overhead, making things run 100x faster.  |  We will start do scaling properly. Instead of thinking “how can I make this big data and scale up to infinity”, we will try to get the most out of single node. Only once a single node has been pushed to its limit will we scale up to first a rack, then a datacenter, and then the world. | @dancrossnyc 2:01:10 |  Major workplace changes due to the pandemic will amplify and accentuate the wealth gap and disparity. Only some industries are privileged enough to be able to work from home. This will create social problems.  |  Regulation of social media in the aftermath of widespread political unrest, particularly after the US 2024 political season.  |  The effects of climate change will be sufficiently apparent that people will get serious about retooling around compute and power efficiency. | @iangrunert 56:06 |  No one year prediction.  | CCPA copycat laws in other states, perhaps US federal legislation, plus changing global regulatory environment lead to GDPR-like protections to no longer be geo-fenced by bigger players. This’ll also have impacts on SaaS adoption - spreading data around makes right to amendment and right to deletion harder.  | RISC-V chip in mainstream phone (likely Samsung). Previously moving target, but longer upgrade times and slower pace of improvements will cause Samsung to chase RISC-V for high volume phones due to better unit economics. Will have prior experience in RISC-V fab for other applications.

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: December 13th, 2021The Pragmatism of HubrisWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for December 13th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on December 13th included special guests Cliff Biffle and Steve Klabnik as well as Laura Abbott, Rick Altherr, James Tucker, Simeon Miteff and MattSci. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Hubris and Humility context tweetCliff’s written version of his Hubris talkHubris Fervently Anticipated Questions FAQ[@8:07](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=487) Prehistory of Hubris, Cliff’s storyProject Loon wiki[@14:23](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=863) Did Cliff know what he wanted to build at Oxide?Tock embedded OSQNX Unix-like real-time OS[@17:55](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=1075) Laura on evaluating existing OS options[@22:03](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=1323) Alignment of values and goals with other projects Bryan’s 2017 Platform as a Reflection of Values video ~30mins[@25:00](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=1500) Steve: convincing low-level people that they are allowed to have nice thingsRISC-V ROPI/RWPI Specification (Embedded PIC)Position-independent code wiki[@28:59](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=1739) Secure FPGAs?Laura Abbott’s Exploiting Undocumented Hardware Blocks in the LPC55S69 write-upAnd DEF CON talk with Rick Altherr[@32:20](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=1940) Early implementation, journal clubJonathan Shapiro 2003 Vulnerabilities in synchronous IPC designs paperHeiser and Elphinstone’s L4 Microkernels: The Lessons from 20 Years of Research and Deployment paper[@37:20](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=2240) Microkernels. MachL4 microkernel family wikiJochen LiedtkeBryan decides not to go to graduate schoolFuchsia OS[@51:09](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=3069) Origin of Humility. Debugging TockilatorSemihosting[@1:03:15](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=3795) Archive files, self-descriptive binaries, debugging[@1:10:33](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=4233) CORRECTION Windows does have a package manager: Windows Package Manager was released May 13, 2020[@1:14:15](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=4455) Build tools and build systems cargo xtask[@1:18:59](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=4739) DWARF Ada language[@1:25:01](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=5101) Tock: Rust kernel, C userspace IDLOzymandias[@1:32:28](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=5548) build.rs build scripts Simeon’s story, code generationSoftware-hardware codesign[@1:52:14](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=6734) Conway’s law[@1:54:30](https://youtu.be/cypmufnPfLw?t=6870) Diagnosing problems, failing tasks, formatting error messagesJoe Rozner and Rick Altherr getting Hubris and Humility running on a STM32, tweet from Dec 1, and video ~2hrsIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: December 6th, 2021Tales from the Bringup LabWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for December 6th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on December 6th included special guests Nathanael Huffman, Eric Aasen, as well as Rick Altherr, MattSci, Dan Cross and Steve Tuck. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:[@5:57](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=357) Lay of the land[@6:58](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=418) Power[@11:14](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=674) Matt: what goes in the middle of the board?[@14:32](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=872) iCE40 FPGA[@21:20](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=1280) Taking meticulous notes[@25:41](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=1541) Power-on sequencing Using service processor flash to store FPGA bitstreamSolder reworkinclude_bytes[@32:37](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=1957) “Zombie board” Flying probe video ~2minsThermal cameras[@46:41](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=2801) Main chip power-on Level shifters, I2CGoogly Eye of Sauron[@55:24](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=3324) SPI wiggles (Serial Peripheral Interface) Precious cargo in a rented minivan[@1:02:00](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=3720) Value of record keepingPower management[@1:09:49](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=3720) “Valley of despair”, infinite reset loop SP3 socketMagnet wire connecting to a pin, see picture with dime for scale > Book on ENIAC quote: when things wouldn’t work, frustrated workers > referred to the machine as the MANIAC.[@1:24:10](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=5050) Eric’s big breakthrough > Boom! SPI wiggles[@1:30:59](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=5459) “The next day we had a demo!” Yet another hurdle..DuPont wire[@1:39:39](https://youtu.be/lhji-kP3Lhk?t=5979) “These are the stories that don’t get told..”If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: November 29th, 2021The Sidecar SwitchWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 29th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Arjen Roodselaar; other speakers on November 29th included Rick Altherr, Simeon Miteff, MattSci, Jason Ozolins, Thomas and Edwin Peer. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:[@3:04](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=184) Arjen’s announcement about the rack switchCadence Allegro PCB editor[@11:35](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=695) Should we do our own switch? “We’re just going to tweak existing designs…”Intel Tofino 2 pageBarefoot Networks wikiP4 language wiki[@24:07](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=1447) What makes this chip a beast?[@33:24](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=2004) Cable backplane, sleds[@37:11](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=2231) Sidecar[@38:52](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=2332) Management network (out of band) NC-SI network controller sideband interface wiki > Rick: A lot of the BMC style management functionality just > kinda got tacked on to PC systems.[@48:36](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=2916) SDN software-defined networking wikiNCI National Computational Infrastructure (Australia) wikiNetwork function virtualization wiki[@55:12](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=3312) The tofino simulator[@59:51](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=3591) Trust model, root of trust, service processor[@1:02:31](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=3751) Can the switch run independent of the PCIe host?[@1:08:35](https://youtu.be/yl24yHlLRy0?t=4115) The journey. The time scale of these signaling components. Heat sinks and practice boardsHappy Hanukkah!If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: November 22nd, 2021Talking TurkeysWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 22nd, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on November 22nd included Rick Altherr, Ian, Simeon Miteff, MattSci, Nahum Shalman, Jason Ozolins, pgray, Bill Blum, Matt Ranney, Matt Campbell, FesterCluck, Rahul Saxena and Bartz the Man. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:[@4:26](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=266) Thanksgiving[@6:13](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=373) David Tolnay twitter and githubProjects SerdeAnyhowthiserrorLondon hip hop musician Loyle Carner[@8:16](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=496) Adam is thankful for: ANTLR parser generatorpestusdt DTrace probes[@11:35](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=695) Bryan is thankful for: build.rs Rust build scriptsSaleae logic analyzers[@16:33](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=993) Ian: YubiKey[@19:09](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=1149) Matt Campbell: open source, Python accessibility Windows libraries from Chapel Hill[@23:52](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=1432) FesterCluck: Nodejs[@26:03](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=1563) Patrick: RabbitMQ[@28:19](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=1699) Nahum: WireGuard and Tailscale[@32:04](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=1924) Jason: truss by Roger Faulkner[@37:37](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=2257) Rahul: tldp.org Linux documentation[@42:11](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=2531) Simeon: sigrok, PulseView, Anyhow, thiserror[@44:35](https://github.com/dtolnay/thiserror) Adam: QMK, Magic Lantern by Trammell Hudson (twitter)[@47:36](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=2856) Matt: eBPF, (wiki)[@54:59](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=3299) MattSci: CUDA, EthernetGPSJohn Bloom (2016) Eccentric Orbits bookDifferential GPSBeiDou Chinese satellites, GLONASS Russian satellites, and Galileo European Union satellites[@1:09:20](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=4160) Bartz: grep[@1:10:30](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=4230) Rick: Ghidra reverse engineering tool Interactive Disassembler IDA[@1:12:28](https://youtu.be/U10SuAHV8kQ?t=4348) Bill: Fastest Fourier Transform in the West FFTW, and gnuplot > I’m thankful that everywhere I look there’s always something that hits my > sense of wonder. That’s the thing I love about working in this industry.Adam appreciates spreadsheets as tools for analysisIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: November 15th, 2021The Wrath of KahnWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 15th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on November 15th included Dan Cross, Tom Lyon, Antranig Vartanian, Mat Trudel, Gabe Rudy, Simeon Miteff and bch. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Severo Ornstein (2002) Computing in the Middle Ages: A View from the Trenches 1955-1983 bookTX-2 computer in 1958LINC Laboratory INstrument Computer in 1962Wesley ClarkIMP[@6:21](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=381) Quote on paternity of ARPANET and the Internet[@7:51](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=471) Bryan meets Knuth… briefly SOAP[@20:00](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=1200) Quote from oral history of Bob Taylor (2008)[@21:37](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=1297) Dan meets Knuth?[@25:23](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=1523) The lone inventor[@26:40](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=1600) The patent race with Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray (wiki) “Inventor” of email[@30:49](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=1849) Fathering and parenting (pioneers and settlers)Any lone inventors?Credit where credit is due. Teams as more than the sum of the parts. Turing Awards[@35:49](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=2149) Science papers, teams[@37:14](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=2234) Andy van Dam (wiki) “Hypertext ’87 Keynote” address“Reflections on a Half Century of Hypertext” (2019) ~100mins presentationRon Minnich (On the Metal podcast)[@39:11](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=2351) Dennis Klatt and DECtalkDECtalk DTC01 used a 68000 and a TI 32010 DSP; DECtalk DTC03 used a 80186 and the same TI 32010. mameDoug Engelbart (wiki)[@44:37](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=2677) Who’s going to lead the charge? Michael Stonebraker (wiki)Seeing things through[@49:23](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=2963) bch: communications and crediting[@50:53](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=3053) DTrace, ZFS[@53:15](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=3195) Mat: The Dream Machine M. Mitchell Waldrop (2001) “The Dream Machine: JCR Licklider and the Revolution that Made Computing Personal” bookDARPA, private public research funding[@56:57](https://youtu.be/oft5i5RzIC8?t=3417) The hero narrative sells wellIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: November 8th, 2021Supercomputers, Cray, and How Sun Picked SGI’s PocketWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 8th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on November 8th included Tom Lyon, Shahin Khan, Darryl Ramm, Dan Cross, Courtney Malone, MattSci, Aaron Goldman, Simeon Miteff, and Jason Ozolins. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Bryan’s tweet about George Brown’s recommending “The Supermen”Charles Murray (1997) “The Supermen: The story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer” book[@1:28](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=88) Tom’s story meeting Boris Tom’s tweet on meeting Boris BabayanElbrus computers[@9:27](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=567) Supercomputers and power[@15:16](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=916) Cray designs Engineering Research Associates wikiControl Data Corporation wiki, CDC 1604[@20:36](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=1236) ETA Systems wiki[@23:57](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=1437) On to the next big thing Steve ChenCray X-MP[@29:37](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=1777) Super computers as one-offs National Computational Infrastructure in Australia, NCIGallium arsenideGPGPU[@33:47](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=2027) Shahin on interconnects Jason on failure caused by a stormCray C90[@41:06](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=2466) Courtney on bespoke toolchains and systems[@42:42](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=2562) Influence of Cray on Sun 1996 Sun to purchase Cray Business Systems Division, hpcwireFloating Point Systems Inc wiki > Shahin: SGI really had no use for this system. They should have just killed it.[@50:10](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=3010) Origin story of DTrace (2006 article) E10k[@56:14](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=3374) Thinking Machines Corp, wiki[@57:36](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=3456) Seymour Cray Les Davis “The ultimate team player” write up2010 Oral history of Les Davis pdf[@1:00:08](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=3608) Business Systems Division history, long road to Starfire[@1:04:20](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=3860) SGI and Sun early history Non-uniform memory access NUMA[@1:10:40](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=4240) Cray T3EMassively parallel MPP[@1:12:33](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=4353) E10k stories boo.com wiki[@1:18:37](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=4717) Cray, spooks, pop count[@1:20:45](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=4845) Chen Cray X-MP and Y-MPSequent[@1:24:04](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=5044) An engineer sees his defunct machine being scrapped[@1:26:27](https://youtu.be/y07PyBrrzMw?t=5187) Jason’s story of capacitors popping off the board The Capacitor plagueIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: November 1st, 2021On Code ReviewWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 1st, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on November 1st included Kendall Morgan, Edwin Peer, Ryan Zezeski, Ian, Joshua Hoeflich, ZK Miyavi, Jason Ozolins, Nick Sherron and Austin Wise. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Context tweetKendall Morgan (2021) “Thoughts on Code Review” essay[@3:57](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=237) Adam’s story, first code review at Sun[@6:32](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=392) Choosing a reviewer[@9:43](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=583) Unblocking others. Empathy in feedback. Asking questions, learning.[@15:43](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=943) Bryan reviewing Jeff Bonwick’s code at Sun Odd working hoursScreaming Red Chairs[@19:47](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=1187) In-person code review vs digitized. Tools[@24:29](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=1469) Not just finding bugs. Darin’s Law[@25:59](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=1559) Adam’s story around a bug in a big diff, tracepoints in the kernel[@32:28](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=1948) Adam’s favorite useless code review comment Marginally useful changes, what to do with multiple good alternativesMatters of style and taste > Joe Kowalski: Is there a problem with this code, or is it not > implemented the way you would implement it?[@38:41](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=2321) Ian on tools. Different languages, mediums. loom for short video messages[@44:37](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=2677) Tools designed for specific tasks. GerritCode review policies[@49:31](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=2971) Jason’s story about HPE project with SCSI bug. Patch submitted to kernel group[@54:59](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=3299) Bryan’s story about an n^3 algorithm in SCSI target code[@56:55](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=3415) Rust compiler, resource awareness, error paths Often more modular than C coderust-analyzer, seeing inferred types[@1:01:15](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=3675) Joshua’s experience with in-person reviews, whiteboarding Working arm-in-arm with peopleSourcegraph Dev Tool Time videos[@1:05:21](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=3921) How do you scale quality code review in bigger teams? Culture of code review at a company[@1:07:15](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=4035) How to convince your team of the value of code review? Review can catch bugsCross team knowledge, bus factorSpeed in the short term vs speed in the long term[@1:14:39](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=4479) Ian on cultivating organizational review practices[@1:16:32](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=4592) Austin’s story on assuaging management fears around new practices Joshua: communication, writing, and accountabilityWhat code don’t we review?Code review as quality check[@1:23:55](https://youtu.be/JZdXDyeSvtc?t=5035) Engineering product quality, not always obviously of benefit to the business Skipping code reviews to show quality consequencesAdopting code review practices, incrementallyIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 25th, 2021Coder’s BlockWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 25th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on October 25th included Brigid Gaffikin, Tom Lyon, MattSci, Simeon Miteff, Edwin Peer, Ian, Nima Johari, Matt Campbell, Joshua Hoeflich, Bill, Ariel Machado, and Kendall Morgan. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:BattleTris stories[@10:15](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=615) Writer’s block, flow (instigating tweet)National Novel Writing Month NaNoWriMoFlow wiki[@16:54](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=1014) “If you’re just problem solving, you can’t have writers block” Many degrees of freedomShiny new object[@20:39](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=1239) Remedies for writer’s block? Decide if you’re looking for tactics or strategy; is it small technical issues or not?Tactics: Hone in on ‘the craft’ – work on the languageStrategy: Is this going to reach an audience/get an agent?Write a scene from a different character’s PoV; write a vignetteThis sounds like prototyping in softwareIf you’re stuck on debugging, write some debug infrastructure[@24:16](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=1456) Doing something else entirely Brigid: ceramics, sound walks[@27:43](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=1663) Not everything is burnout[@34:13](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=2053) Software analogies to writer’s techniques[@36:04](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=2164) Personal productivity obsession Writer Emergency Pack by John August, site“You’ve got to get back to the coal face. You’ve got to finish it.”[@41:00](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=2460) Does Rust make this indecision worse? Pressure to find the “right” way[@43:56](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=2636) Arthur Whitney (wiki) > The best analog for software is poetryPandemic life, collaboration and conferences[@51:51](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=3111) Hallway track. Software is collaborative but ultimately programming is a solitary act Nimo’s experience, it’s all collaborative. Code review, art[@59:36](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=3576) Cliff code reviews, how to do good reviews Lack of code reviewers for Rust at Google[@1:04:16](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=3856) Writer’s groups, different focuses[@1:08:04](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=4084) Grad school during pandemic, gather.town - video chat platform for virtual interactions[@1:11:54](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=4314) Goals, take the wins that you can, boundaries between work life and home lifeKendall Morgan “Thoughts on Code Reviews” blog post[@1:17:38](https://youtu.be/QGs5hlH6cLk?t=4658) Bill’s experience switching things up, and enjoying computing againWrap up tweetIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 18th, 2021Dijkstra’s TweetstormWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 18th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on October 18th included Edwin Peer, Dan Cross, Ryan Zezeski, Tom Lyon, Aaron Goldman, Simeon Miteff, MattSci, Nate, raycar5, night, and Drew Vogel. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Dijkstra’s 1975 “How do we tell truths that might hurt?” EWD 498 tweet > PL/1 > belongs more to the problem set than to the solution setThe use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offenceAPL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums - [@3:08](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=188) Languages affect the way you think It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. - [@4:33](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=273) Adam’s Perl story - The Camel Book, not to be confused with OCaml - “You needed books to learn how to do things” - CGI - [@9:04](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=544) Adam meets Larry Wall - [@11:59](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=719) Meeting Dennis Ritchie - “We were very excited; too excited some would say…” - [@15:04](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=904) Effects of learning languages, goals of a language, impediments to learning - Roger Hui of APL and J fame, RIP. - Accessible as a language value - Microsoft Pascal, Turbo Pascal - Scratch - LabVIEW - [@25:31](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=1531) Nate’s experience - Languages have different audiences - [@27:18](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=1638) Human languages - The Esperanto con-lang - Tonal langages - Learning new and different programming languages - [@37:06](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=2226) Adam’s early JavaScript (tweet) - circa 1996 - [@44:10](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=2650) Learning from books, sitting down and learning by typing out examples - How do you learn to program in a language? - Zed Shaw on learning programming through spaced repetition blog - Rigid advice on how to learn - ALGOL 68, planned successor to ALGOL 60 - ALGOL 60, was, according to Tony Hoare, “An improvment on nearly all of its successors” - [@50:41](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=3041) Where does Rust belong in the progression of languages someone learns? Rust is what happens when you’ve got 25 years of experience with C++, and you remove most of the rough edges and make it safer? - “Everyone needs to learn enough C, to appreciate what it is and what it isn’t” - [@52:45](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=3165) “I wish I had learned Rust instead of C++” - [@53:35](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=3215) Adam: Brown revisits intro curriculum, teaching Scheme, ML, then Java - Adam learning Rust back in 2015 (tweet) “First Rust Program Pain (So you can avoid it…)” Tom: There’s a tension in learning between the people who hate magic and want to know how everything works in great detail, versus the people who just want to see something useful done. It’s hard to satisfy both. - [@1:00:02](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=3602) Bryan coming to Rust - “Learn Rust with entirely too many linked lists” guide - Rob Pike interview Its concurrency is rooted in CSP, but evolved through a series of languages done at Bell Labs in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Newsqueak, Alef, and Limbo. - [@1:03:01](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=3781) Debugging Erlang processes. Ryan on runtime v. language - Tuning runtimes. Go and Rust - [@1:06:42](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=4002) Rust is its own build system - Bryan’s 2018 “Falling in love with Rust” post - Lisp macros, Clean, Logo, Scratch - [@1:11:27](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=4287) The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity. - [@1:12:09](https://youtu.be/D-Uzo7M-ioQ?t=4329) Oxide bringup updates - I2C Inter-Integrated Circuit - SPI Serial Peripheral Interface - iCE40If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 4th, 2021Economics and Open SourceWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 4th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on October 4th included Edwin Peer, James Todd, Peter Corless, Matt Campbell, jasonbking, Simeon Miteff, Josh Clulow, Ian, Joe Thompson, Dan Cross, Tom Lyon, Tim Burnham, and vint serp. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Mark Jones Lorenzo (2017) Endless Loop: The History of the BASIC Programming Language bookJohn Kemeny wiki[@3:11](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=191) Tim’s excellent tweetWilliam Gibson wikiJohn Browne (1996) The Bug Count Also Rises short story[@5:38](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=338) Growing up with BASIC[@8:03](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=483) Braille ’n Speak PDA (intro video), BASIC programmingTI-BASIC language[@10:39](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=639) Speaking program reading off system calls in real time snoop could output to /dev/audio[@13:39](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=819) Joel Spolsky (2002) Strategy Letter V blogBryan’s (2004) The Economics of Software blogSoftware “maintenance”[@20:02](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=1202) Cathedral and the Bazaar, wiki“Forkophilic” development model and the Alan Cox -ac Linux tree[@26:07](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=1567) Open source as something in the commercial best interest of a business SCO v IBM wikiHalloween documents wikiSteve Ballmer’s “Linux is a cancer” quote in the Chicago Sun-TimesOpenOffice.org wiki (open sourced from StarOffice)[@30:29](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=1829) Document editing as a service. Services and open sourceRichard Stallman on SaaS[@33:34](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=2014) The Joel Test linkJoel’s (2007) Strategy Letter VI blog“Everybody wants to be a platform”[@38:58](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=2338) Joel’s take on Sun Making the pie larger. Porting NFS to rival platformsThe Sun Network Filesystem: Design, Implementation and Experience has a section on porting experiences.Monetizing software - “Sun could never monetize software, only hardware”[@44:44](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=2684) Window toolkits, “cross platform”, write once run anywhere“Write once, debug everywhere”What’s the directory separator on MVS? or Stratos VOS?[@51:40](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=3100) James’ experience working on Tomcat Joel’s (2002) Lord Palmerston on Programming blogGraphics toolkits, Electron/Web vs Native[@1:05:21](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=3921) “OpenSolaris downloads are potential buyers for the ZFS appliance”[@1:06:17](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=3977) Jason Hoffman “The Sun does not shine on me” Strategy cannot make up for poor executionSun CEO Jonathan Schwartz didn’t travel to meet customersDemoing to a hostile audience“Asteroid named Linux on a collision course” tweet[@1:13:20](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=4400) Open-core, AWS services, monetizing open source “People will pay for a service”Could Apple open source?[@1:18:43](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=4723) Packaged solutions; giving mom a linux box. Free software: free for whom? Support relationships. People want support[@1:22:05](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=4925) Why didn’t Sun embrace Linux? ZFS on Linux, UbuntuThe Sourceware Operating System Proposal – Larry McVoy’s open source SunOS 4 proposal.Sun bought Cobalt wiki[@1:25:33](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=5133) “The writing was on the wall for Sun..” x86 price-performance“Couldn’t you buy like 100 x86 computers for that price?”RISC machine in-fighting, while Intel undercuts the market[@1:31:01](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=5461) Josh’s work on frustrating hardware configuration[@1:33:25](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=5605) Peter’s experience as a Sun customer Vertical scaling, but not so much horizontal scalingClusters of cheap commodity hardware outperforming big multiway boxesImportance of open source for big internet companiesTraders used Sun workstations, for fast trading[@1:38:39](ht...

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: September 27th, 2021The Books in the BoxWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for September 27th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on September 27th included Tom Lyon, Dan Cross, Antranig Vartanian Simeon Miteff Matt Campbell, Jeremy Tanner, Joshua Clulow, Ian, Tim Burnham, and Nathaniel Reindl. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Not recommended :-( Dave Hitz and Pat Walsh (2008) How to Castrate a Bull bookPeter Thiel (2014) Zero to One book[@2:45](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=165) David Jacques Gerber (2015) The Inventor’s Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber book[@7:21](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=441) Sidney Dekker (2011) Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems book[@13:08](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=788) Robert Buderi (1996) The Invention that Changed the World: The Story of Radar from War to Peace bookMIT Rad Lab Series infoNuclear Magnetic Resonance wikiRichard Rhodes (1995) Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb bookMichael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson (1997) Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age bookCraig Canine (1995) Dream Reaper: The Story of an Old-Fashioned Inventor in the High-Tech, High-Stakes World of Modern Agriculture bookDavid Fisher and Marshall Fisher (1996) Tube: The Invention of Television bookMichael Hiltzik (2015) Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex book[@18:05](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=1085) Ben Rich and Leo Janos (1994) Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed bookNetwork Software EnvironmentLockheed SR-71 on display at the Sea, Air and Space Museum in NYC.[@26:52](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=1612) Brian Dear (2017) The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the Rise of Cyberculture book[@30:15](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=1815) Randall Stross (1993) Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing book[@32:21](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=1941) Christophe Lécuyer and David C. Brock (2010) Makers of the Microchip: A Documentary History of Fairchild Semiconductor book[@33:06](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=1986) Lamont Wood (2012) Datapoint: The Lost Story of the Texans Who Invented the Personal Computer Revolution bookCharles Kenney (1992) Riding the Runaway Horse: The Rise and Decline of Wang Laboratories bookTom’s tweet[@34:06](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=2046) Bryan’s Lost Box of Books!Edgar H. Schein et al (2003) DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation book[@36:56](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=2216) Alan Payne (2021) Built to Fail: The Inside Story of Blockbuster’s Inevitable Bust bookVideotape format war wikiHackers (1995) movie. Watch the trailer ~2minsSteven Levy (1984) Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution book[@42:32](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=2552) Paul Halmos (1985) I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography bookPaul Hoffman (1998) The Man Who Loved Only Numbers about Paul Erdős book1981 text adventure game for the Apple II by Sierra On-Line, “Softporn Adventure” (wiki)[@49:16](https://youtu.be/zrZAHO89XGk?t=2956) Douglas Engelbart The Mother of All Demos wikiJohn Markoff (2005) What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry bookKatie Hafner and Matthew Lyon (1998) Where Wizards Stay Up Late book1972 Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing documentary ~26mins (wiki) included big names like Corbató, Licklider and Bob Kahn.Gordon Moore (1965) Cramming more components onto integrated circuits paper and Moore’s Law wiki[@52:3...

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: September 20th, 2021Theranos, Silicon Valley, and the March Madness of Tech FraudWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for September 20th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on September 20th included Land Belenky, Toasterson, Cole Frederick, and Simeon Miteff. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:John Carreyrou on Theranos “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” 2018 book“Bad Blood the Final Chapter” podcast as the trial proceeds (announcement), on apple, spotifyCole’s tweet linking to a ~5min video of a would-be Theranos competitor commenting on its collapse > The lone inventor is a dangerous impression to give people.Related: Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman “The Myth of the Genius Programmer” 2009 talk ~55mins[@9:47](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=587) Companies that drive scientific people nuts uBeam “claims to be developing a wireless charging system to work via ultrasound. Scientists have strongly criticised the plausibility under physics of this proposal.”uBiome > To innovate, you have to balance the world as it is with the world as it isn’t.[@13:44](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=824) Theranos’ fantastical vision. European attitudes around business and innovation. PCR Polymerase chain reaction invented 1983 by Kary Mullis.[@18:39](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=1119) Fake it till you make it? Optative voice > The secrecy of Theranos should have been a red flag[@23:57](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=1437) Whistleblower Avie Tevanian. Smoke and mirrors, giving the board the run around.[@29:05](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=1745) “Everyone was relying on someone else to do their due diligence” Tech risk, venture capitalCerebras Systems wafer scale processorsEllen Pao NYT editorial “The Elizabeth Holmes Trial is a Wake-up Call for Sexism in Tech”[@35:20](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=2120) Software cure-all 737 MAX failures[@40:14](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=2414) Founding myths Jean-Louis Gassée2015 “Theranos Trouble: A First Person Account” blog2018 “Theranos Could Have Been Stopped” blog[@44:06](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=2646) Tesla “Autopilot”, Uber self driving Anthony Levandowski > Judge Alsup: This is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. > This was not small. This was massive in scale.[@48:21](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=2901) March Madness of Silicon Valley Fraudsters Solyndra bankrupt 2011Tether[@59:02](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=3542) Levandowski jeopardizes employee Better PlaceThe Economist ObituaryJuiceroFlip Video bought by Cisco 2009[@1:04:35](https://youtu.be/YWdk9CKML2g?t=3875) Warning signs of fraudulent companies Transparency, celebrity boardsOptaneInconsistency between board and leadership on what the coming milestones areIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: September 13th, 2021Docker, Inc., an Early EpitaphWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for September 13th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on September 13th included Steve Tuck, Tom Lyon, Dan Cross, Josh Clulow, Ian, Nick Gerace, Aaron Goldman, Drew Vogel, and vint serp. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Topic: Scott Carey’s article How Docker broke in halfMore by Carey on Docker: Docker Desktop is no longer free for enterprise usersWhat is Docker? The spark for the container revolutionAndrej Karpathy’s tweet showing InfoWorld.com spamming adsCarey talked to:Solomon Hykes (Docker cofounder with Sebastien Pahl)Ben Golub (Docker CEO 2013-2017)Craig McLuckie (Kubernetes cofounder)Nick Stinemates (early employee and former VP of Business Development)[@5:21](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=321) Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 Rashomon ~90mins. Watch a 2min trailerBox office bomb “The Hottie and the Nottie” movie. Other stinkers: Gigli, Gotti[@9:31](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=571) Jerry Kaplan’s 1996 book Startup: A Silicon Valley AdventureSteve’s take on commercialization > Bryan: There’s no question that they hit on something very big. > We saw a container as an operational vessel, but we failed to see > a container as a development vessel.[@14:36](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=876) dotCloud (PaaS) struggles to find a buyer; ultimately open sources as last resort > All of a sudden a company that nobody had heard of, > was a company that everybody had heard of.They took too much money.[@17:40](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=1060) Pitfalls in raising money and scaling sales by imitating big companiesHBO’s Silicon ValleyClip ~1min with Jan the Man, Keith, and Doug (I’m shadowing Keith) > Everybody should be spending time arm in arm with customers understanding > how is this technology going to solve a problem > which they’ll want to pay to have a solution.Tom: Was there actually a business anyways? Or was it just technology?What if developers are attracted to those things they know cannot be monetized?There was this belief that if a technology is this ubiquitous, it will be readily monetizable.[@27:26](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=1646) Docker Swarm and Kubernetes > Hykes: We didn’t work at Google, we didn’t go to Stanford, > we didn’t have a PhD in computer science.Stinemates: (The Kubernetes team) had strong opinions about the need for a service level API and Docker technically had its own opinion about a single API from a simplicity standpoint. We couldn’t agree.DockerCon 2015: No mentioning Kubernetes! Brendan Burns’ talk “The distributed system toolkit: Container patterns for modular distributed system design” was unfortunately made private by Docker sometime in the last two years. The internet archive only has this. Burns wrote a blog post about the topics from his talk.rkt (“Rocket”), CoreOS[@36:11](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=2171) Docker coming to marketEnterprise teams wanted supportInitial support offerings were expensive and limited (no after hours, no weekends) > Bryan: I floated to Solomon in 2014: run container management as a service.Rancher Labs, K3s (lightweight kubernetes)People care about GitHub stars (for better or worse)[@48:02](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=2882) Monetizing open source technologiesTriton implementing the Docker APIThe support relationships are the foothold to figure out the product.[@54:36](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=3276) Venture capital going into DockerDocker acquires TutumProduct market fitAcquisitions[@1:04:42](https://youtu.be/l9LTJdT0sZ8?t=3882) Could the outcome have been materially different?Who made money on Docker? Cloud companies? Developers?VMware acquires HeptioWho invented containers? BSD Jails, Plan9 namespaces?Tyler Tringas’ post about how small teams can create value with little outside investment, as a result of the Peace Dividend of the SaaS Wars.If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: September 6th, 2021Put the OS back in OSDIWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for September 6th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on September 6th included Dan Cross, Josh Clulow, Tom Lyon, Simeon Miteff, Daniel Maslowski, Matt Campbell and Moritz. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Adam’s tweets on recording Twitter Spaces.Tweet on recovering a recording Timothy Roscoe’s Keynote Screenshots teasing his slidesConf videoComplicated relationship with academia and industry [@8:09](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=489) Adam’s MS graphics experienceBryan’s USENIX 2016 keynote ~1hr: A Wardrobe for the Emperor – Stitching Practical Bias into Systems Software Research Conferences as the publishing vector for CS research[@13:47](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=827) What a modern OS does > … accreted and not designed. > They were not designed, they congealed.[@17:10](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=1030) Rob Pike’s 2000 “Systems Software Research is Irrelevant” paperThe value of incremental improvements[@21:47](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=1307) Building on extant working components and interfaces Opaque, proprietary hardwareAMD Platform Security Processor > Artifacts of the OS implementation tend to have outsized impact > on overall system performance[@26:27](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=1587) Performance is not the only axis of a system Security, malleability, convenience, reliability[@31:12](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=1872) Specialization HarmonyOS, FuchsiaDifferent chips performing different tasksFirmware everywhereIntel OptaneIntel 8051[@37:02](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=2222) Open hardware and firmware ARM Cortex-M0 > That’s why we land at incrementalism, we ossify at some boundary. > And it’s very hard to change things on either side without moving in lockstep.Tom: The PC architecture was a great thing, but now the OS vendors have abdicated any knowledge of the hardware. Give us UEFI and we don’t care what happens beneath that.Should ARM have UEFI? (or something like it)[@45:29](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=2729) Developing hardware is still challenging, but has never been easier than today (especially low-speed) Tom’s tweet about parallels with homebrew computing in the 70’sPrecursor and Xous[@50:58](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=3058) Where will new systems development fit in with our existing (working) systems? Low-speed is an opportunity areaRISC-V for peripherals[@56:37](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=3397) Backwards compatibility seems to be more important than marginal gains: Shingled magnetic recording offered Optane: gains didn’t justify the costSmart NICs only made sense in hyperscale server fleets > Josh: If you’re going to change the programming model, you have to blow the doors off on at least one axis[@1:00:45] Moving management plane to a NIC. AWS Nitro implements this with a series of PCIe offload cards.[@1:01:22](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=3682) Abstraction boundaries not designed for the current circumstances Coordination problems between vendorsVestigial componentsAMI, AST2500Arcane boot processes and shortcuts available for cloud compute xhyve[@1:08:57](https://youtu.be/PVJfqjJJCkg?t=4137) Removing things is so hard Things change given enough timeGraham Lee’s essay on legacy and software dependencies …and in the end will be the command lineIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: August 30th, 2021A brief history of talking computersWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for August 30, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on August 30th included special guest Matt Campbell, as well as MattSci, TVRaman, Jessamyn West and Dan Cross. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Brian Dear’s The Friendly Orange GlowBrodie Lockard created amazing software on PLATOControl Data Corp Homework[@2:47](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=167) Matt’s intro Deane Blazie created TotalTalk, a speaking terminal. See his 2004 interview.Apple IIe computer and the Echo II speech synthesizer card.[@4:15](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=255) The Echo ][ sound sample Wargames computer: GREETINGS PROFESSOR FALKEN. Listen > SHALL WE PLAY A GAME? > Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War? > … > Is this a game or is it real? > WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? > … > What’s it doing? > It’s learning… > … > A STRANGE GAME. > THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS > NOT TO PLAY.[@7:46](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=466) Prose 2000 sampleDECtalk audio sample[@12:14](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=734) Apple to PC Keynote Gold, Master Touch, Zoom Text[@14:53](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=893) Keynote Gold sampleTalking Moose. Watch a sample.[@17:17](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=1037) GUI screen readers outSPOKEN used QuickDrawWindow Bridge 1992[@21:58](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=1318) Meeting another sight impaired person on a MUDpwWebSpeakEmacspeak[@26:44](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=1604) Early programming experiences Apple IIGS[@28:47](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=1727) Emacspeak user base[@31:34](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=1894) Things were getting better on the Windows side.. JAWS, patch parody sampleMicrosoft Narrator[@36:12](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=2172) Linux SpeakupMixing multiple sound streams, hardware limitationsSlackwareZipSpeak by Matthew Campbell[@44:53](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=2693) Editors for the visually impaired? ed text editorEdbrowse[@49:36](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=2976) Working on accessibility (a11y) for pay FreedomBoxGNOME EsounDKDE aRtsGnopernicusOrca[@57:46](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=3466) Microsoft Active AccessibilityAT-SPICORBA, D-Bus[@1:03:11](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=3791) Handheld devices Apple VoiceOverGoogle TalkBackiPhone Screen Recognition article[@1:08:09](https://youtu.be/b9GVJg0LRX4?t=4089) What should software engineers know about accessibility? Use a mature UI framework!Microsoft UI Automation is the successor to MSAA.AccessKit by today’s speaker Matt Campbell DECtalk samples One of the most important settings a blind person will want to change in their speech synthesizer is how fast it talks. JAWS parody clipAlt text image captionsTopical recent conference presentation: - Emily Shea (2019) Voice Driven Development videoIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: August 23rd, 2021The episode formerly known as ℔We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for August 23rd, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on August 23rd included Neal Gompa, Tom Lyon, Laura Abbott, Jeremy Tanner, Matt Campbell, Simeon Miteff and others. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Last week’s recording on “Showstopper” with author G. Pascal Zachary, and Jessamyn West.Ashton-Tate history (there never was any Ashton, and dBASE II was the first version) dBASE IV was “slow, buggy” and didn’t get fixed in a timely mannerLast week, Pascal mentioned that CEO Ed Esber “in a fit of insanity admitted to me (a journalist) he didn’t know how to use his company’s own product!”Friday! personal information manager, and Sidekick from Borland (like Google calendar for DOS)[@3:01](https://youtu.be/-ZRv6EHaQYM?t=181) Phrasing: operating program (vs operating system) Steve Jobs 1992 MIT Sloan talk ~72mins on consultants, hiring people and leaving Apple (see mit.edu summary) > Jobs: NeXTSTEP is not an operating system, it’s an operating environmentJuly 5th recording discussing NeXT. Randall Stross book: Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing (1993) > Mac OSX focused on user capabilities of the desktop environment, but they considered it one and the same with the operating system[@7:42](https://youtu.be/-ZRv6EHaQYM?t=462) Windows NT had “multiple personalities” > Adam: I was instantly transported to the 90’s. > Bryan: I could hear Smashing Pumpkins playing on the radio. Sun’s Spring OS was the ne plus ultra of this approachMach microkernel, GNU Hurd, Apple M1,Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL > Adam: Docker takes static linking to the extreme and just ships everything[@12:40](https://youtu.be/-ZRv6EHaQYM?t=760) Microkernels > Simeon: (Oxide) is working on a microkernel for Hubis, tell us about that Minix, and the Tanenbaum-Torvalds 1992 microkernel vs monolithic debateQNX Unix-like real-time OS See ACM ByteCast interview with Rashmi Mohan, Bryan tells the story ~3mins of coming to QNX after reading about it in the “Operating Systems Roundup” of Byte Magazine 1993 (see also Bryan’s blog post and remembering Dan Hildebrand)L4 microkernelThe QNX 1.44M demo diskThe GUI was called Photon. > Bryan: why would we not run this (QNX) absolutely everywhere?Oberon OS. Photon microGUI[@15:49](https://youtu.be/-ZRv6EHaQYM?t=949) Laura on writing a microcontroller operating system Cliff Biffle’s websiteMicrokernels, root of trust, embedded systemsThere is very little (or no) dynamic memory allocation in Hubris.Tock multitasking embedded OS, and Bryan’s “Tockilator: Deducing Tock execution flows from Ibex Verilator traces” video ~12minsIn Tock, dynamic program loading is central. Hubris functions as a security-minded service processor. The programs it will use are all known in advance; so dynamic loading (and the accompanying security concerns) can be left out.Fit-to-purpose OSs[@24:19](https://youtu.be/-ZRv6EHaQYM?t=1459) ROPI/RWPI (aka “Ropy Rippy”) and the growing pains of RISC-V GitHub issue ROPI/RWPI Specification (Embedded PIC)OpenTitan, ARM Cortex-M > When we set out to write Hubris, we spent a lot of time reading > and learning what’s out there.QNX vs monolithic systems. QNX was robust against module failure, so bugs in modules were tolerable. At Sun, faults in a module were system faults, so bugs were unacceptable.Memory protection. Stack growing into (and corrupting) data segment, hard to debug.Stack corruption, a hit and run.[@32:39](https://youtu.be/-ZRv6EHaQYM?t=1959) Humor: Oxide rustfmt bot is named Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” poem > LOOK UPON MY REFORMATTING YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR!stale bot, open source maintainers, communicating bugs and issues[@39:54](https://youtu.be/-ZRv6EHaQYM?t=2394) Fun QNX bug story QNX wrote their own POSIX utilities, they wrote their own AWKQNX developers, incl. Peter van der Veen[@43:00](https://youtu.be/-ZRv6EHaQYM?t=2580) How do you say… vi, ed > Tom: Off with their eds!sed, ps, kubectl, /etc/passwd, QNX (...

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: August 16th, 2021The Showstopper ShowWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for August 16th, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on August 16th included special guests G. Pascal Zachary (see gpascalzachary.com), and Jessamyn West (see jessamyn.medium.com), as well as Dan Cross, Tom Lyon, Josh Clulow, and others. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:G. Pascal Zachary’s “Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft” bookTracy Kidder’s “The Soul of a New Machine” book[@0:46](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=46) “The endless debate of NT vs Unix.” Bryan: My whole career was kind of defined by going where Windows wasn’t. I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I found was a real time capsule from software development in the 90’s.[@2:46](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=166) Jessamyn: There was some familial impact (from developing DG Eclipse) that wasn’t mentioned in the book. “O, Engineers!” retrospective from wired[@6:30](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=390) What was Kidder’s process? “He lived in my house!”[@8:32](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=512) Zachary interviewed family members extensively. > People couldn’t leave, they were staying at the office all the time.[@14:23](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=863) I do feel this is a time capsule. A time before two mega-trends hit: the Internet and open source.[@17:33](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1053) Microsoft was kind of a joke software company in the early 90’s. > Dave Cutler was a force of nature.[@19:59](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1199) No one understood why someone was good at coding. It was a mystery to everyone, why there was such a wide stratification of coders. > There were projects that never saw the light of day. Ashton-Tate, dBase > There was a sense from Cutler and Perazzoli, that leadership of the team, > that these guys at Microsoft really didn’t get how serious the process > of building this battleship was.I think the level of anguish did surprise me.[@23:59](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1439) In “Soul of the New Machine,” the machine was the star, and people served it. East Coast vs West Coast attitudes. > On the West Coast, the personal computer were supposed to help you > actualize your counter-cultural values. Ken Olsen of DEC > Computing is equivalent with IBM. There was no software industry > so long as IBM gave all the software away for free.[@26:09](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1569) Crashes. > Wozniak dreamed of owning > his own PDP > computer, which cost as much as a house. So he was aware of the robustness > of the minicomputer, and by contrast, the puny power of a personal computer. Thirtysomething > Dave Cutler was not cuddly. He was menacing, he could lose his temper. > And I tried not to get to close to him physically for that reason. > There were two looming father figures in Cutler and Gates. > And I think it created a lot of anxiety.[@29:52](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1792) The stakes for NT at Microsoft were high. Fred Brooks’ “The Mythical Man-Month” book > It was a watershed moment in the history of computing. > It was more like the last battleship, rather than the next frontier.Bryan: I didn’t realize this, that Gates was arguing against memory protection with Cutler. From our perspective, shipping an operating system without memory protection, in an era when microprocessors supported it, is malpractice.[@33:14](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1994) Cutler’s vendetta against Unix. > Conflict was at the heart of innovation at Microsoft at that time. Mitch Kapor of Lotus. > These early personal computer innovators were dismissed and sometimes > humiliated by mainstream big iron people of the 60’s and 70’s.Bill Gates’ “The Road Ahead” book doesn’t mention the internet.Zachary’s “Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century” book > Computers on the West Coast were seen as extensions of your creativity, > and a tool for liberation. And for a long time that dominated the horizons.In 2005 Gates and Ballmer don’t want to do cloud computing. “Who’s gonna want to put their stuff in the cloud?” We’ve found that computing is a collective experience.[@38:28](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=2308) Email and personal messaging Sun Ray thin client computerDennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson’s “The UNIX time-sharing system” paper > Unix was an experiment in collaboration.RSX-11 for the PDP-11. And VMS for the VAX. > The attitude of looking down on Unix (as undesigned, academic) is > carried forward by Microsofties today.Tom: You can forgive Cutler’s misgivings, because Unix pretty much stole the thunder out of VMS.[@42:24](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=2544) Interviews for the book. Family members perspective on workplace behavior. Betty Shanahan, Society of Women Engineers. Brief Q&AEAGLE (Eclipse Appreciation and Gratitude for Lonely Evenings) award > Betty’s husband got an award for having to do his own laundry…Jessamyn’s “Women in Early Tech” blog entry about Shanahan

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: July 26, 2021Agile + 20We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for July 26, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on July 26 included Tom Lyon, Tom Killalea, Dan Cross, Aaron Goldman, and others. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Al Tenhundfeld’s Agile at 20: The Failed RebellionThe Agile Manifesto[@0:55](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=55) Adam’s experiencesFrom the Agile Manifesto history > The only concern with the term agile came from Martin Fowler > (a Brit for those who don’t know him) who allowed that > most Americans didn’t know how to pronounce the word ‘agile’.[@6:25](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=385) > The problem with agile is when it became so prescriptive that it > lost a lot of its agility.[@8:06](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=486) > There’s so much that is unstructured in the way we develop software, > that we are constantly seeking people to tell us how to do it. > The answer is it’s complicated.Steve Yegge’s Good Agile, Bad Agile > So the consultants, now having lost their primary customer, were at > a bar one day, and one of them (named L. Ron Hubbard) said: > “This nickel-a-line-of-code gig is lame. You know where > the real money is at? You start your own religion.” > And that’s how both Extreme Programming and Scientology were born.[@9:15](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=555) Edward Yourdon“Decline and Fall of the American Programmer” book[@10:26](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=626) “The principles are not all wrong. Some today even feel obvious.” > There’s also a lack of specificity, which gives one lots of opportunity > for faith healers to come in.[@14:43](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=883) “Something I found surprising about Agile was how rigid it became.” Dan’s perils of personal tracking methodologySun’s engineers connecting directly with customersThe Agile Ceremonies. (an ultimate guide) Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-Up, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective[@20:48](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=1248) “I think we overly enshrine schedule estimation. If there are any unknowns it becomes really hard.” > I think there’s a Heisenberg principle at work with software: > you can tell what’s in a release or when it ships, but not both.[@23:25](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=1405) Tom Killalea talks to success stories he’s seen with Agile Building S3 at AWS[@28:31](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=1711) Sprint planning and backlogs Big work chunks, responding to changing priorities[@33:39](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=2019) Success or failure of an Agile team? “Do demos and retrospectives”Unknowns in software development make estimation hard[@39:11](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=2351) Dan’s experiences Personal Software Process, Team software process, Software Engineering Institute > Some people really benefit from the level of rigidity that is set out > by these processes. Prior to that, they just weren’t having > these conversations with their sales team, product owners, etc.Construction analogies, repeatability.Self-anchored suspension bridge[@46:40](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=2800) Software as both information and machine. Consultancies, repeatability, incremental results.“For each success story, there are many failures.”Manifesto as a compromise between different methodologiesSilver Bullet solutions, cure-alls. See Fred Brooks’ (1987) “No Silver Bullet” paper[@51:18](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=3078) Demos: “Working software is the primary measure of progress.” Experimentation and iterationNo true Scotsman fallacyWhat does Agile even mean anymore?“Letting people pretend to agree while actually disagreeing, but then going off and building working software anyway.”[@59:45](https://youtu.be/3tp5EtPdPwY?t=3585) Ed Yourdon and the Y2K problemMaybe there are too many Agile books already.Tom Killalea conversation with Werner Vogels AWS developmentAgile is more like a guideline than a target to hit.Consistent team composition over time“Soul of a New Machine”: trust is riskThe answer can’t be “you’re doing it wrong.”How do you know if it’s working for your team?(Did we miss anything? PRs always welcome!)If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: July 5, 2021NeXT, Objective-C, and contrasting historiesWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for July 5, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on July 5th included Tom Lyon, Ian, bch, Theo Schlossnagle, Rick Altherr, and Nate. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:First Twitter Space, May 3rdthe lost recording (~31mins)(possible?) genesis of the idea to record spacesAdam’s process for recording spacesSomeone (Sid?) mentioned NeXT’s transparent compensation modelOxide: Compensation as a Reflection of Values[@2:28](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=148) Randall Stross book: Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing (1993)[@4:42](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=282) The SPARCstation 1 and the Sun-4c (campus) architecture > The hardware was not competitive, but dammit they sure looked good!NeXTcube[@9:15](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=555) It’s nuts how much time and energy they spent on the look of it. > They were building a huge factory, just about the time people were > starting to outsource everything.Sun was doing incremental things, and Steve was going for the 100 yard pass.Apple Lisa computer > NeXT refused to interoperate with anything. > They had this idea that a NeXT customer is going to buy all NeXT machines.[@13:20](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=800) NeXT was a really proprietary company, contrasted with Sun, a really open company. > Bill Gates volunteers that he would gladly urinate on a NeXT machine.They are attempting to reinvent absolutely everything, so they need all software to be written from scratch, effectively.Jobs does this over and over again at NeXT. He does things to make NeXT look bigger than it is.[@16:23](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=983) Jobs blows off important meeting with IBM[@18:56](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1136) Mathematica went whole hog on NeXT[@20:55](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1255) “Steve Jobs yells at your dad a lot?”Quark Software Inc, QuarkXPress[@22:22](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1342) Story of Jobs trying to sell NeXT machines to Brown’s CS dept > “Your product looks great, I’m just not sure your company is > going to be around for as long as we need it to be.” > Then Steve Jobs calls him an a**hole and storms out.[@23:35](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1415) NeXT spent very freely. Lavish offices, catering, etc > He did not take VC money. He had weird money from beginning to end. > Ross Perot thought Jobs was a total genius. Then realized that whether > he was a genius or not, he wasn’t selling any computers.The 80’s were all about fear of Japan.Ultimately they had to pivot away from hardware.[@26:38](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1598) In contrast to SunMetaphor Computer SystemsBryan’s tweet from July 3 > Measured by most any yardstick one could choose, Sun was one of > the most successful stories of the 1980’s for all of industrial America.John Gage[@32:43](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1963)the NeXTSTEP operating system, based on the Mach microkernelObjective-C HOPL paperWalter Isaacson biography on Steve JobsBe Inc, computer company. Jean-Louis GasséeStepstone (originally PPI) > Not that I’ve read a ton of HOPL papers, but I don’t think HOPL papers > spill the tea quite this much..[@39:53](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=2393) Named parameters in programming languagesThe software crisis, Object Orientation, “Software ICs”[@44:40](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=2680) NeXT was building real things with Objective-C, PPI wasn’t.[@45:54](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=2754) Rick’s experience with Objective-C at AppleObjective-C, Objective-C++, and Swift[@54:08](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=3248) Objective-C and Swift are mandated. If it were an open ecosystem, would they be significant? > There was a feeling that the hardware didn’t matter. > You shouldn’t trouble yourself with any details.[@57:46](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=3466) Secrecy at NeXT and AppleNDAs signed per project > Secrecy is a lot of work.It was all about being able to walk on stage, and dramatically drop something that was going to be life changing.It seems like the secrecy was being used to manipulate people.[@1:03:13](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=3793) x86 port at Apple[@1:05:34](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=3934) Jobs tells them to make it great, because it’s currently sh*t.[@1:08:04](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=4084) Is Objective-C being used anywhere today outside the Apple ecosystem?GNUstep, Agent-based modelingIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: June 21, 2021What’s a bug? What’s a debugger?We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for June 21, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on June 21st included Dan Cross, Sean Klein, Aram Hăvărneanu, and the mononymous Nate. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Adam’s toddler (being chased by a rooster) > Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are three-year-olds.[@3:12](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=192) Sy Brand’s tutorial Writing a DebuggerLobsters – when HN isn’t enough Bryan’s debuggersMDB Modular Debugger > Adam: I think people are using cargo-cult debugging, rather than getting to the root cause > of these things, or being satisfied until they get to the root cause. > Bryan: I think with software systems, it’s really hard to know what they’re actually doing.Procedure Linkage Table aka “the plits”“Runtime Performance Analysis of the M-to-N Scheduling Model” (pdf) 1996 undergrad thesis (Brown CS dept website)[@6:29](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=389) Threadmon website and 1997 paper (a retooling of the ’96 paper) > When I built that tooling, it revealed this thing > is not doing at all what anyone thought it was doing.TNF Trace Normal Form > Part of the problem with debuggers… debuggers are historically written by compiler folks, > and not system folks. As a result, debuggers are designed to debug the problem that > compiler folks have the most familiarity with, and that’s a compiler. > Debuggers are designed for reproducible problems, way too frequently.I view in situ breakpoint debugging as one sliver of debugging that’s useful for one particular and somewhat unusual class of bugs. That’s actually not the kind of debugger I want to use most of the time.Software breakpoints[@11:59](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=719) > libdis was my intern project in 2000. The idea was to take the program text, > and interpret it in some structural form, and try to infer different things about the program.Ghidra: software reverse engineering toolLaura Abbott’s Exploiting Undocumented Hardware Blocks in the LPC55S69Volatility: the memory forensics framework Adam couldn’t quite remember.[@14:59](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=899) I meant this question earnestly, what is a debugger?The first bug > The term is somewhat regrettable… It implies a problem, when there may not be a problem. > It may just be I want to understand how the system is operating, independent of whether > it’s doing it badly.Wikipedia on Observability (control theory)Oxide’s embedded OS and companion debugger: Hubris and Humility[@19:01](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=1141) Using DTrace to help customers understand their systems. > If you strings the DTrace binary, > you’re not gonna find any mention of raincoats.Cliff Moon on Boundary[@22:13](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=1333) Cardinal rule of debuggers: Don’t kill the patient! (see also: Do No Harm) > Not killing the patient is really important, > this was always an Ur principle for us.The notion that the debugger has now become load bearing in the execution of the program, is a pretty grave responsibility.[@26:54](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=1614) Post-mortem debugging > It is a tragedy of our domain that we do not debug post-mortem, routinely.Heisenbug (when the act of observing the problem, hides the problem)[@31:11](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=1871) > What’s going on in the system? It’s not crashing, there’s no core dump. > But the system is behaving in a way I didn’t expect it to, and I want to know why.[@33:51](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=2031) Pre-production reliability techniques > All of our pre-production work has gotten way better than it was, and I think that’s > compensation for the fact we can’t understand these systems when we deploy them.[@37:58](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=2278) > The move to testing has in fact obviated some of the need for > what we consider traditional debuggers. > (Bryan audibly cringes)[@39:08](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=2348) Automated and Algorithmic Debugging conference AADEBUG 2003HOPL History of Programming Languages > There was a test suite of excellence when it comes to automated program debugging. > And it was some pile of C programs with known bugs, and you would throw your new > paper at it, and it would find 84% of the bugs, and there would be a lot of > slapping each other on the back on that. Really focused on the simplest of simple bugs.[@43:15](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=2595) Bryan’s Postmortem Object Type Identification paper > Who is my neighbor in memory? Because my neighbor just burned down my house basically.mdb’s ::kgrep > I need to pause you there because it’s so crazy, and I want to emphasize that > he means what he’s saying. We look for the 64 bit value, and see where we find it. > This is a game of bingo across the entire address space.We can follow the pointers and propagate types.[@48:49](https://youtu.be/UOucW3F7nCg?t=2929) printf/println debugging – everyone’s doing it > I think it’s a mistake for people to denigrate printf debugging. > If you’ve got a situation that you ca...

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: June 7, 2021Barracuda 7200.11: broken firmware is broken software!We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p (PT) for about an hour. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Laura Abbott, Joshua Clulow, Dan Cross, Bill Blum, Rick Altherr, Tom Lyon, and others. The recording is here.(Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The Seagate ST3000DM001class action[@2:01](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=121) Bryan and Adam’s experience FishworksHGSTBryan is unable to forget SU0D > This thing damn near ruined our livesBroad InstituteThe Seagate Barracuda product line. 7200.10, 7200.11[@8:10](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=490) Tough customers[@10:17](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=617) Cargo cultism and bad interview questions What is a Good New Englander? We’re not a hugging people.[@12:35](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=755) Adam and Bryan after Sean Manaea’s 2018 no-noThe Gift of the Magi, LBA[@15:11](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=911) Adam torments the interns[@16:41](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=1001) Bill and the HP Z620sThe Wisdom of James Mickens[@19:21](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=1161) Rick’s story Fast and loose firmware source controlWestern Digital’s Sparta drive, flying too low[@25:34](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=1534) Need for open source firmware (see also: Bryan explains why proprietary firmware is a problem ~3mins) Vendor gaslighting[@27:48](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=1668) Tom on custom firmware Rent seekingS.M.A.R.T.ADM-3A “dumb terminal”[@32:08](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=1928) Adam’s firmware horror story flashbacks HBAWhen turning it off and on again isn’t enough: unplug and replugSun’s ILOM bugSun’s embarrassing ticker symbol change[@38:10](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=2290) After Sun > Stay the hell away from hardware[@39:55](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=2395) Hard drive API wish list? Adam’s series on APFS > There is no bit rot here..Networking vs Storage. Intermittent, transient failure[@44:40](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=2680) Firmware as differentiator Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR)Microwave-assisted magentic recording (MAMR)see also: Jessie’s Life of a Data Byte surveys storage media tech through historyAmazing physics, mediocre firmware. Firmware is software[@48:23](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=2903) The only firmware that didn’t give us problems.. Adam on flash: A File System All Its Own, Flash Storage Today, History of SSDs blog entry mentioning sTec and GnuteksTec aquires Gnutek LtdThe SEC’s complaint against Manouchehr Moshayedi of sTecChannel stuffingSee also: Bryan mentions sTec misconduct on the Data Center Podcast[@54:04](https://youtu.be/qisoAIx8EE8?t=3244) Sans firmware? FPGA to ASIC transition article 2011. (aside: treat yourself to this amazing vintage mouse-themed site announcing the same) > It’s when microprocessors show up that all the trouble starts.(Did we miss anything? PRs always welcome!)Our next Twitter Space will be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time. Join us; we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 31, 2021Silicon CowboysWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Steve Tuck, Tom Lyon, Dan Cross, and others. The recording is here.(Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Silicon Cowboys documentaryOpen by Rod CanionPortable before Compaq, Silent 700Osborne EffectPBS Silicon Valley documentaryIBM’s role in Compaq history80’s Ads: John Cleese, Charlie ChaplinCompaq and iPhone?Decline and AcquisitionSomething Ventured documentaryPRs welcome Bryan: Have you listened to the Reply All episode “Is the Facebook Microphone On?”The truth is actually scarier, Facebook doesn’t need the mic to be on … to read your mind.Silicon Cowboys[@2:46](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=166) The 2016 documentary “Silicon Cowboys” follows the rise of the Compaq computer company. (IMDb) (Watch the trailer ~3mins)I was trying to watch “Halt and Catch Fire” with my kid … and there’s a lot of spontaneous sex breaking out…Fastest to one billion in revenue… fastest to Fortune 500… a meteoric riseOpen by Canion[@7:05](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=425) The 2013 book “Open” by Rod Canion (cofounder and CEO of Compaq): “How Compaq Ended IBM’s PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing.”[@10:02](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=602) Steve: Ben Rosen was the venture capitalist who wrote the first check to Compaq, really got them off the ground. On the board for 20 years.Their timing was right. The way they did the company was right. And they executed really really well.To go from zero to 50 thousand units, of almost anything, in the time span they did, is incredible.[@14:40](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=880) Tom: The thing that really put them on the map was having the portable when nobody else did. And being 100% compatible.Those portables were barely luggable, they were huge!Back in a time when there was no network. Being able to pick up your computer and take it to a place, was your network.[@16:47](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1007) Steve: A big catalyst for their success was the channel. People were able to pick it up and go, they didn’t need special training.[@19:25](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1165) Dad used to bring home the luggable so I could play Space Invaders, and he would work on spreadsheets.Portable before Compaq[@20:49](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1249) There were portable solutions before Compaq, but for timesharing.You had the T.I. Silent 700, in the 70’s, you could tote that home and plug it into the modem.Osborne Effect[@22:41](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1361) Tom: They killed their company with the famous Osborne EffectBryan and Steve (clearly excited): What was the Osborne Effect!? Tom: Pre-announcing the next machine.Telling customers: man, if you love the Osborne 1, just wait till the Osborne 2… So they did Bryan: Something I found surprising about the history of Compaq was the different organizational approach that they had.Early on, before even thinking about what to go do, they were talking about the kind of company they wanted to build.PBS Silicon Valley[@26:14](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1574) The 2013 PBS documentary “Silicon Valley” tells the story of Fairchild Semiconductor. (Watch chapter one ~17mins)[@28:14](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1694) We ask people, when they apply to Oxide, when they’ve been most unhappy in their careers. And it all boils down to people not feeling listened to, not having agency.IBM’s role[@29:41](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1781) How much of Compaq’s success is just pure mis-execution from IBM? IBM inadvertently creates this pseudo open architecture, and makes exactly the wrong move in trying to reproprietarize it with the PS/2 and Micro Channel architecture; which is an absolute disaster.In many ways the story of Compaq is as much the story of the failed PS/2.It was such a mis-execution to do this analysis on the market and say: we need to grab our existing customers and lock them in, before they slip through our fingers, and in doing so, just hasten their departure. And Compaq was in the right spot to pick up the pieces.MCA (Micro Channel architecture), ISA, EISA[@33:22](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=2002) We were ripping out a bunch of ISA and EISA drivers..I am a sacrificial sheep, I can’t possibly go. You are a sacrificial lamb.The machines themselves are anemic, if you want any functionality you go to a third party.. There were magazines filled with advice on which sound-generating card you should buy.IBM PC XT – Hercules graphics card[@37:00](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=2220) Driver for Token Ring.PCI – SBus – VME – VLB – AGP[@40:20](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=2420) Speaking of Intel, a big part of the Compaq story is what happens with the 386.IBM clearly thought Intel would never give some clone manufacturer the first rights to the 386.They went from fast follower to innovator.OS/2 supported both 16 bit (for the

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 24, 2021from /proc to proc_macroWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Brian Cantrell (not making that one up!), Nima Johari, Joshua Clulow, Laura Abbott, and Tom Lyon. The recording is here.(Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The other Adam Leventhal [1] and the other AHL [2][@3:16](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=196) Hockey Calder CupCharlotte CheckersGrand Rapids Griffins[@4:02](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=242) Roger Faulkner invented the /proc filesystemGerald Ford Presidential Library and MuseumGerald Ford inaugural address (including its most famous line, “our long national nightmare is over”) > I went in a Gerald Ford cynic, and came out a Gerald Ford super-fanRoger’s “The Process File System and Process Model in UNIX System V” paper[@7:43](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=463) “I am on a mission from God to make programs debuggable” AVL trees and linked lists > Performance is the root of all evil.Trace Normal FormWatchpoints, libwatchmalloc > Watchpoints are magical, when they work. It feels like a superpower.[@11:37](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=697) > Roger made this incredible contribution about debugging infrastructure > being an attribute of a production system. strace, trussBONUS: 1986 USENIX: A System Call Tracer in UNIXThe ptrace(2) system callptrace’s overloading of the wait(2) system callThe German word that we’re seeking: Misappropriation-of-mechanism-in-a-seemingly-clever way-but-is-ultimately-a-disaster > ptrace is the x86 of system calls[@16:45](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=1005) A long-coming apology.. Linux branded zones (LX)“Method and system for child-parent mechanism emulation via a general interface” patent > You have to be bug-for-bug compatible.LX vfork/signal bug that broke golang > vfork: unsafe at any speed, toxic in any quantity[@20:16](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=1216) Upstart’s problematic use of ptrace(2)Celebrating Joshua getting ptrace correct for LX branded zonesStack shenanigans breaking LXRed zone, segmented stacks[@24:39](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=1479) The application was fishing in its own stack.. Clozure Common Lisp, mcontext > These kinds of lies just don’t nest. Magic does not layer well.[@28:56](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=1736) Windows Subsystem for Linux WSLillumos on an M1? QEMU, ARM Cortex-M > It’s hard to get the machine really properly emulatedAWS Mac minis[@33:55](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=2035) It’s kind of amazing that Apple has never had much interest in the server space. Apple XserveCHRPThe story of the stolen laptop. Little endian PowerPC OpenPOWER[@37:35](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=2255) Language H! NCRLanguage H: An informal overview ( part 1, part 2)The (other) D language[@39:12](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=2352) AADEBUG’03Postmortem Object Type Identification[@41:31](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=2491) It all comes back to awkBourne shell source code / Algol68 #definesThompson shellBryan’s 2007 Dtrace review, Google TechTalk ~80mins[@48:07](https://youtu.be/85eApYSj3ic?t=2887) Dtrace language inspiration Dtrace clones > It was all based on us exploring some phenomenon, > something being kind of a pain in the ass or impossible, > and inventing something that was easy to use.Architectural review board: “This reminds us a lot of awk..” > What’s the most powerful one-liner you can crank out with awk?CUDA, Bluespec[@52:35](https://...

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 17, 2021golang asserts and the PLATO terminalWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Adam Jacob, Matt Ranney, Nima Johari, Antranig Vartanian, Joshua Clulow, Tom Lyon, and Bob Mader (and thanks to Jeremy Morris for catching Bob’s profile!).(Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)We recorded the space, but we had some challenges, and we lost the recording when the first Twitter Space died at around 5:30p. We recorded the second half though; the recording is here.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Khan Academy blog entry on GoAdam’s blog entry, I Love Go, I Hate Go > I found novelty in the strictures, but objected to some of the specifics[@2:40](https://youtu.be/8tJEwCvZWsg?t=160) Go’s assertion assertionThe Elm Language[@4:40](https://youtu.be/8tJEwCvZWsg?t=280) Lionizing Unix > 7th edition is amazing, incredible, a break through.. > and it’s also kind of a shitty engineering artifact that needed a lot of work.[@6:32](https://youtu.be/8tJEwCvZWsg?t=392) Core dumps[@7:03](https://youtu.be/8tJEwCvZWsg?t=423) Impromptu PSA: Happy 81st Birthday Alan Kay!Alan Kay tribute video to Ted Nelson, including the story of how Alan Kay and his wife – Bonnie MacBird – were brought together by Ted Nelson, and how PARC inspired her to write TRON (!)Bedknobs and Broomsticks (WAT)[@13:18](https://youtu.be/8tJEwCvZWsg?t=798) Brian Dear’s The Friendly Orange GlowThe PLATO TerminalControl Data Corp (CDC)Dr. David Gräper’s GrapenotesEmpire game[@20:05](https://youtu.be/8tJEwCvZWsg?t=1205) Write your own lessons in TUTORDartmouth BASICSNOBOL[@23:12](https://youtu.be/8tJEwCvZWsg?t=1392) Dr. David Gräper’s Grapenotes started in 1977Xerox Alto computer(Did we miss anything? PRs always welcome!)Our next Twitter Space will be on May 24th, 2021 at 5p Pacific! We’ll be kicking off the discussion with Silicon Cowboys (aka the real and sexless Halt and Catch Fire) on the rise of Compaq – and their aspiration to be a different kind of company. Join us; we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 10, 2021A Requiem for SPARC with Tom LyonWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. In addition to [@bcantrill](https://twitter.com/bcantrill) and [@ahl](https://twitter.com/ahl), speakers included special guest Tom Lyon plus Joshua Clulow, Dan McDonald, Dan Cross, Tom Killalea, Theo Schlossnagle, Antranig Vartanian, and [@perlhack](https://twitter.com/perlhack).We recorded the space; the recording is here.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:[@2:06](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=126) SPARC 30th anniversary dinner > SPARC was an amazing achievement for its time, > but there were some nasty trade-offs made.[@2:56](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=176) illumos announcement on the end of SPARC supportSPARCstation 2[@4:37](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=277) “There is no photography allowed in the bring-up lab” storySPARCstation 1 (code-named Campus) > They bricked their first CPU..[@6:23](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=383) UltraSPARC-II E-cache parity error[@8:51](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=531) Register windows > Most people don’t know, about that first SPARC, > there was no integer multiply or divide.. > It would trap on the instructions.I feel so decadent, I’ve just been sprinkling multiplications around my code for years.[@9:55](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=595) popc instruction (also called Hamming Weight)IBM Stretch 1961, and the one-of-a-kind IBM Harvest made for the NSAHenry Warren’s 2002 Hacker’s Delight Ch. 5 shows a ~20 instruction algorithm (no branches, only adds/shifts/masks by constants) > Warren: According to computer folklore, the population count function is important to the > National Security Agency. No one (outside of NSA) seems to know just what they use it for, > but it may be in cryptography work or in searching huge amounts of material.According to Agner Fog, Ice Lake performs popcnt with a 3 cycle latency, and Zen 3 with just 1 cycle latency.Phil Bagwell’s 2001 Ideal Hash Trees depend on pop count > Bagwell: Note that the performance of the algorithm is seriously impacted > by the poor execution speed of the POPCT emulation in Java, a problem > the Java designers may wish to address. Persistent versions of Bagwell’s trees are used for the built-in hash maps of Clojure, and in libraries for Scala etc.[@11:39](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=699) This was the debate between Roger Faulkner and Jeff Bonwick: register windowsRoger Faulkner (RIP) thought they were horrific[@12:35](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=755) Register fishing: Bryan’s version and Adam’s version > When you want to know the state of some other process, you have to flush > those register windows to memory to be able to recover the stack trace.[@14:30](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=870) Delay slot > We sat around the lunch table talking about how crazy it would > be to have a branch that executed right after a branch.DCTI couple (delayed control transfer instruction)[@15:31](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=931) “Well, the instruction set doesn’t allow that..” story > Bedlam. As far as Solaris kernel discussions go, bedlam.Leibniz vs. Newton[@20:14](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=1214) Annulled branches[@22:17](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=1337) Praise for SPARCSPARC address space identifiers > When we were porting Solaris to x86, and deciding what fraction of the > address space would belong to the kernel vs the user, it felt disgusting to me.[@25:26](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=1526) Software-filled TLB > They just didn’t have the room to cram a hardware page table walk into the chip.MIPS would give you a trap on a VAC conflict (virtual address cache)[@27:34](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=1654) It was slow, it was late, and it had a lot of problems, it was wrong.UltraSPARC-III, code-named “Cheetah” > It’s weird, I compile this thing over and over, and every 80th time when > I compile and run it, it’s 40x slower..UltraSPARC-IV+, code-named “Panther”[@32:17](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=1937) Does the Viking I-cache bug ring a bell?SuperSPARC, code-named “Viking” > You’d have to DC balance the I-cache. If you had too many zeros, > they’d start flipping to ones.E-cache parity error > It was due to everything but high energy particle strikes.Radioactive boron in our SRAM manufacturing process[@38:52](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=2332) “Move it further from the tube” story > When you’re going to have a customer do something, you have to remember there’s > a human being on the other end of that. You cannot have them chasing your theories. > You need to be transparent and honest with them.[@42:25](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=2545) Micron DRAM story[@44:38](https://youtu.be/79NNXn5Kr90?t=2678) High priced consultants and cosmic rays > They literally lined the roof with lead.. and it didn’t change the error rat...

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 3, 2021Mr. Leventhal, Come here I want to see youWe’ve been holding a Twitter Space on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for May 3, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on May 3rd included Laura Abbott, Nate, Antranig Vartanian, François Baldassari, Tom Killalea, Land Belenky, and Sid?. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Before the recording started, we discussed:2011 Solaris Family Reunion video ~20minsKatie Moussouris’s blog entry on the Clubhouse vulnerabilitiesLaura’s blog entry on the LPC55 vulnerabilityLand pointing us to the Atmega 328p MCU in a BK Medical endorectal probeFrançois on the STM32F103 found in PebbleIntel Management EngineSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:ASPEED BMC chip[@1:24](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=84) So formal correctness is something that I think we are all very sympathetic with. > It’s very laudable, it’s also very hard.From L3 to seL4 What Have We Learnt in 20 Years of L4 Microkernels? (paper)Who guards the guards? Formal validation of the Arm v8-m architecture specification (paper) > Hardware architecture is an area where formal verification is more tenable, > a level you can readily reason about.Our challenge is how can we satisfy our need for formalism without getting too pedantic about it. You don’t want to lose the forest for the trees. A system we never deliver doesn’t actually improve anyone’s lives, that’s the challenge.[@5:20](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=320) Journal club experiencesBootstrapping Trust in Modern Computers (book) > [@9:45](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=585) > We’ve tried to build a culture of looking to other work that’s been done. > Not because everything’s been done before, but because you don’t want to have to > relearn something that someone has already learned and talked about. > If you can leverage someone’s wisdom, that’s energy well spent.[@11:46](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=706) When systems repeat mistakes, engineers feel deprived of agency: “I suffered for nothing.” > Engineering is this complicated balance between seeing the world as it could be, > and accepting the world as it is. > As you get older as an engineer, it’s too easy to no longer see what could be, > and you get mired in the ways the world is broken. You can become pessimistic.Caitie McCaffrey on Distributed Sagas: A Protocol for Coordinating Microservices (video ~45min)[@14:17](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=857) It’s dangerous to live only in the future, detached from present reality. Optative voice[@16:45](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=1005) At Oxide, we ask applicants “when have you been happiest and why? Unhappiest?” Interesting to see that unhappy is all the same story: we were trying to do the right thing and management prevented it. > When I was younger and maybe more idealistic and willing to charge at the windmills, > I stayed too long with a company. > All the developers that interviewed me were gone by the time I got there. > I should have walked out the door, but I was too young and didn’t know better.[@18:43](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=1123) “How do you and your cofounder resolve conflicts?” > I don’t want to hear about how you don’t have conflicts, tell me about how you resolve them.Folks aren’t able to walk away, they’ve got this commitment both to the work and to their colleagues. I’ve been a dead-ender a couple of times, I’ll go down with the ship.[@20:28](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=1228) In “Soul of a New Machine” (wiki) Tom West says he wants to trust his engineers, but that trust is risk. > I just love that line: that trust is risk. > That’s part of the reason some of these companies > have a hard time trusting their technologists, > they just don’t want to take the risk.People are so not versed in how to deal with conflict, and there’s nothing scarier than salary negotiation.They need you, that’s why you’re here, you’ve made it all the way through the interview to this point, you’ve got leverage, now’s the time to use it.[@23:04](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=1384) Oxide: Compensation as a Reflection of Values > It takes the need for negotiation out, > because it replaces it with total transparency.Sometimes it’s not about what you’re getting paid, it’s about what the other person is getting paid. Not wanting to get taken advantage of.It’s a social experiment for sure.[@28:07](https://youtu.be/h-WSU3kiXVg?t=1687) Steve Jobs famously tried this at NeXT: pay was transparent but not equal.History of compensation at NeXT (wiki) (quora post) > I think that’s the worst of both worlds, a recipe for disaster.If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!