Oxide and Friends

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 Computers...

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 Intel OxF s03e04 - Oxide and t...

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 ,...

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 we...

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, Ve...

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 Leve...

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...

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...

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 o...

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 Softwa...

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 , a...

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...

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...

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, Le...

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 Cantr...

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...

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...

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 Le...

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 b...

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 J...

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 , bo...

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 SmartOS Meltdown and Spectre Robert's "Big Theory Statement" for MAC Robert's "Big Theory Statement" for cpuid AGESA OxF: Put the OS back in OSDI Oxide RFD 63: Network Architecture Oxide RFD 82: Motivations a...

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: prettyplease winnow Blessed.rs crate list Adam's...

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 .