Shows / Oxide and Friends
Oxide and Friends
Oxide hosts a weekly Discord show where we discuss a wide range of topics: computer history, startups, Oxide hardware bringup, and other topics du jour. These are the recordings in podcast form. Join us live (usually Mondays at 5pm PT) https://discord.gg/gcQxNHAKCB Subscribe to our calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_318925f4185aa71c4524d0d6127f31058c9e21f29f017d48a0fca6f564969cd0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Episodes
Oxide and FriendsBooks in the Box VI
It's the annual Oxide and Friends tradition: Books in the Box! What books have the Oxide friends enjoyed? Didn't catch the show live, feel free to add your…
Oxide and FriendsDead Printers Tell No Tales
We've talked about Oxide's Root of Trust--the hardware underpinning the security of the product--but how do we keep a bad actor from spoofing Oxide to load…
Oxide and FriendsOxide's $445M Series D
After raising $200M in February... we raised another $445M in July! Your favorite computer company is capitalized to the gills--enough to weather the supply…
Oxide and FriendsWorking on Wicked Problems
Wicked problems defy simple solutions. Even as we describe the problem, we may be presupposing particular solutions and narrowing scope. Our greatest, most…
Oxide and FriendsFor Want of a Resistor
When the supply chain crunch catches up with you, sometimes a tiny resistor the size of a fleck of pepper is the difference between a world-class computer…
Oxide and FriendsEmulating Oxide: How Faux Can You Go?
We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording. How do you test configurations you…
Oxide and FriendsAI Detection with Max Spero
More and more, people are relying on AI to do their writing for them. Is this the new normal, or the intellectual equivalent of claiming take-out is your own…
Oxide and FriendsThe Return to the Chamber of Mysteries
Oxide returns to the chamber... of EMC compliance to earn FCC approval to sell our next generation rack. Did it go smoothly? If it had, would there be a…
Oxide and FriendsThe Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison
Simon Willison joined Bryan and Adam to discuss a wild couple of weeks in AI. First, we have a high-profile, AI-induced, AI-diagnosed security incident. Next…
Oxide and FriendsThe Past, Present, and Future of Digital Storytelling with Ramy Katrib
Ramy Katrib has been at the forefront of digital storytelling for over 25 years, with his post-production company, DigitalFilm Tree, earning a reputation as…
Oxide and FriendsThe Oxide 3D Explorer
Recently, Oxide rolled out an eye-popping 3D rack explorer at explorer.oxide.computer. Oxide's designer extraordinaire, Ben Leonard, joined Bryan and Adam to…
Oxide and FriendsThe Hardest Kind of Unsafe Rust
We love Rust for how much the compiler helps enforce safety. But sometimes it's up to us to uphold the complex--and often unclear--expectations of what…
Oxide and FriendsThis Old Repo: LLMs and the Restoration of BattleTris
Bryan and Adam discuss the process of restoring a software project--BattleTris--untouched and unbuilt in over 20 years! How did LLMs help restore code Bryan…
Oxide and FriendsRooting for the Home Team with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel
Two years ago we introduced listeners to the Oakland Ballers, the startup returning baseball to the city of Oakland. Bryan and Adam were joined again by Paul…
Oxide and FriendsThe Tale of Reverso
Oxide ships a rack scale system--how to test the manufacturing of the backplane and switches? Previously we've been using a collection of sacrificial servers…
Oxide and FriendsAI in Computer Science Education
AI is an existential topic for all aspects of education--for none more so than Computer Science. Bryan and Adam were joined by Kathi Fisler and Shriram…
Oxide and FriendsMechanical Engineering at Oxide [chapter images]
Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide mechanical engineering team to talk the mechanical challenges of building a rack-scale computer, and--in…
Oxide and FriendsAre LLMs Insufficently Lazy?
Brogrammer Garry Tan has been boasting about "writing" tens of thousands of lines of code each day as the paragon of productivity. Is this really the right way…
Oxide and FriendsBuilding a Quorum of Trust in the Oxide Rack
The Oxide rack contains within it a distributed system that needs to trust itself. But how is this trust built? Bryan and Adam were joined by colleagues Andrew…
Oxide and FriendsWhen Nine Nines Isn't Enough
Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide team to describe the multi-year search for a mysterious source of hardware failures. All related to an…
Oxide and FriendsOxide's $200M Series C
Oxide raised a truckload of capital a few weeks ago to fund the business for the foreseeable future. Bryan and Steve describe the raise, and Adam poses the…
Oxide and FriendsShell Game with Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff, journalist and podcaster, joined Bryan and Adam to talk about his extraordinary podcast, Shell Game, in which he started a company staffed…
Oxide and FriendsSoftware Engineering Past, Present, and Future with Grady Booch
Bryan and Adam were joined by Grady Booch, software engineering pioneer and living legend, to speak about the past present and future of software engineering…
Oxide and FriendsEngineering Rigor in the LLM Age
What do LLMs mean for the future of software engineering? Will vibe-coded AI slop be the norm? Will software engineers simply be less in-demand? Rain and David…
Oxide and FriendsPredictions 2026!!
Time for the annual predictions episode! Bryan and Adam were joined by frequent future-ologists Simon Willison, Steve Klabnik, and Ian Grunert to review past…
Oxide and FriendsOxF 2025 Wrap-Up
Bryan and Adam reflect on Oxide and Friends in 2025--favorite moments, episodes, and images. Happy new year and see you in 2026! Your hosts are Bryan Cantrill…
Oxide and FriendsDeath by Uptime
We hit a new (and disturbing!) failure mode recently when a production rack that had been up for several months saw every (!) compute sled's service processor…
Oxide and FriendsGrown-up ZFS Data Corruption Bug
Hey hey! We recently tripped over a ZFS data corruption bug–introduced over 18 years ago! Bryan and Adam discuss with members of the Oxide team as well as Matt…
Oxide and FriendsFounder vs. Investor with Liz Zalman and Jerry Neumann
Oxide founders, Bryan and Steve, as well as Oxide investor, Seth Winterroth, were joined by Liz Zalman and Jerry Neumann, authors of the book Founder vs…
Oxide and FriendsFuturelock
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 and FriendsBooks in the Box V
Revisiting an annual tradition--Books in the Box! Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends share book recommendations (and--sometimes--anti-recommendations). Take a…
Oxide and FriendsAI in Higher Education with Michael Littman
LLMs have had a dramatic impact on education. There are obvious reasons for concern, but what about the less obvious opportunities afforded by LLMs? Bryan and…
Oxide and FriendsSystems Software in the Large
Dave Pacheco is leading Oxide's multi-year effort around full-system update. He recently gave a talk about his experience leading that project, the…
Oxide and FriendsScaling Manufacturing
Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide manufacturing team to talk about all that goes into ramping up production, from people and processes to…
Oxide and FriendsTechnological Revolutions with Jerry Neumann
Jerry Neumann joined Bryan and Adam to discuss his blog post from 2015, examining the work of Carlota Perez on technological revolutions. These waves have…
Oxide and FriendsThe Promises of Tech with Scott Hanselman
Scott Hanselman gave a terrific talk about the promises of tech: connection, convenience and creativity. Did it deliver? Scott joins Bryan and Adam to…
Oxide and FriendsOxide's $100M Series B
Oxide raised its $100M Series B round of venture capital. Oxide's founders, Bryan and Steve, answer questions selected by Adam from social media about the…
Oxide and FriendsAdventures in Data Corruption
Two years ago, the Oxide team encountered data corruption during a fairly simple network data transfer. The ensuing debugging sessions uncovered a truly…
Oxide and FriendsWhen Async Attacks!
What happens when the Oxide API is slow? A podcast episode! More specifically, one about how the team employed all manner of debugging techniques to track it…
Oxide and FriendsDiving In with Robert Bogart
On the heels of Bryan's blog post about the similarities between aspiring college athletes finding a team and entrepreneurs raising a round of capital, Bryan…
Oxide and FriendsDebugger-Driven Development
Building systems software can be quite opaque, leading to the need for great debugging tools. At Oxide, we've found that debuggers can be even more valuable…
Oxide and FriendsAI Discourse with Steve Klabnik
Last week, our colleague (and frequent Oxide and Friends guest) Steve Klabnik made some new friends on the Internet with a blog entry on AI discourse. Bryan…
Oxide and FriendsAI, Materials, and Fraud with Ben Shindel
Late in 2024, an economics paper captured the attention of the world. AI, it claimed, had a tremendous impact on materials research, disproportionally…
Oxide and FriendsRIP USENIX ATC
Bryan and Adam discuss the recent announcement of the discontinuation of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC), reminiscing about their own visits to…
Oxide and FriendsSolutions Software Engineering with Matthew Sanabria
Matthew Sanabria joins Bryan and Adam to talk about his role at Oxide--Solutions Software Engineer--and how it fits in with engineering, sales, support and…
Oxide and FriendsShootout at the CNCF Corral
Last week the kerfuffle between Synadia and CNCF, tussling over the ownership and futures of NATS, bled into the public. The outcome may cast a long shadow for…
Oxide and FriendsBringing up Cosmo
Oxide is bringing up its next generation server. To discuss the (amazingly smooth) bringup process, Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the oxide team…
Oxide and FriendsCharacter Limit with Kate Conger and Ryan Mac
Bryan and Adam have been gushing for months over Character Limit, the fantastic book by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac about Elon Musk's haphazard and disastrous…
Oxide and FriendsHell is other networks
An Oxide customer encountered a peculiar issue at the intersection of their Oxide network and their broader network. Bryan and Adam were joined by several…
Oxide and FriendsRaiding the Minibar
Much of the work at Oxide goes into hardware and software used to build and test the eventual product. Bryan and Adam were joined by Ian, Doug, and Nathanael…
Oxide and FriendsLip-Bu Tan's Intel
Intel has a new CEO! And it's Lip-Bu Tan. We had assumed it would not be Lip-Bu--he was such a clear front-runner that the more time passed the less likely it…
Oxide and FriendsA Happy Day For Rust
Recently, a change to a utility in the Rust toolchain changed behavior in a way that impacted users. Rather than being a story of frustration and aspersions…
Oxide and FriendsA Crate is Born
Bryan and Adam were joined by Oxide colleagues Andrew, Rain, and John to talk about creating a general purpose crate for diffing structures. More generally…
Oxide and FriendsTransparency in Hardware/Software Interfaces
The value of transparency in engineering can have huge benefits--nothing can compare to the momentum of an enthusiastic community! Bryan and Adam discuss the…
Oxide and FriendsA Half-Century of Silicon Valley with Randy Shoup
Randy Shoup joined Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to look at the history of Silicon Valley through the lens of Randy's 50 years--as the child of graphics…
Oxide and FriendsTextual UIs with Orhun Parmaksız
Ratatui is a Rust framework for building rich--and incredible--UIs in the terminal. Bryan and Adam were joined by Orhun Parmaksız, who leads the project, to…
Oxide and FriendsAI Disruption: DeepSeek and Cerebras
DeepSeek was a disruptive surprise at the start of 2025--an open weights model trained at a fraction of the cost of previous models. Bryan and Adam were joined…
Oxide and FriendsHolistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleague, Robert Mustacchi. Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit…
Oxide and FriendsCrates We Love
Love Rust? Us too. One of its great strengths is its ecosystem of crates. Rain, Eliza, and Steve from the Oxide team join Bryan and Adam to talk about the…
Oxide and FriendsPredictions 2025
The annual predictions tradition returns for 2025! Bryan and Adam were joined by Simon Willison, Mike Cafarella, Steve Tuck, and Steve Klabnik to review past…