Oxide and Friends

Oxide and Friends

Oxide Computer Company

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.

1 hour 40 minutes

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee
Paul Frazee joins Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to talk about the inner workings of Bluesky and the AT Protocol. Paul and the Bluesky team have been working on decentralized systems for years and years--very cool to see both the next evolutionary step in those ideas and their successful application in Bluesky!
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included our 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:
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!
19 December 2024, 3:00 pm
1 hour 30 minutes

Conferences in Tech
Bryan and Adam were joined by Theo Schlossnagle, KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, and Steve O'Grady to talk about conferences in tech. A lot has changed in the past couple of decades about the impetus for conferences and what makes it worthwhile to attend.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Theo Schlossnagle, KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, and Steve O'Grady.
The lightly edited live chat from the show:
- ellie.idb: 2005, huh? y’all met when i was 2
- goodjanet: yea i was younger than 10 lol
- jgrillo_: I was just thinking I feel very young because I was a junior in high school but not anymore lol
- aka_pugs: my first conference - 1975
- ellie.idb: oxide appeals to the youth
- jbk1234: 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 conferences
- jgrillo_: "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 phone
- ellie.idb: i don’t recall which one it was, but i do remember playing with it when i was 5 hahahaha
- taitomagatsu: 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 choosers
- goodjanet: I've never been to a tech conference
- devdsp2175: The Germans know how to run a conference. The chaos communications congress is wild.
- ellie.idb: same!! never actually attended one as an adult hahaha
- taitomagatsu: Have you attended one remotely?
- goodjanet: nope, closest is just watching recorded talks after the fact
- taitomagatsu: 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 day
- network2501: looking forward to in person dtrace conference with a dedicated zball room
- ahl0003: more of a trade show, but I went to the MacWorld conference in the late '90s
- ahl0003: I still have some BeOS install CDs from then
- goodjanet: im so thankful for recorded talks
- ahl0003: 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 everything
- tocococa: 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 too
- blacksmithforlife: Since I can never get a conference approved from work, I live off recorded conference videos on YouTube
- network2501: best mom
- devdsp2175: 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 tracks
- devdsp2175: 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 year
- ellie.idb: damn. i’m adding this to my watch list too!!! i’ll try and see if i can get funding for next year hahaha
- tocococa: yeah, 100%, but my brain was melted after every day
- nahumshalman: 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 watch
- goodjanet: 18 years ago isnt that long ago?
- network2501: 18 years ago is almost 3 generations of lives/eras ago
- ellie.idb: what HPC conferences are going on? i need to hear about the deets going on with CXL
- jgrillo_: 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 be
- ellie.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=5i1OK4y9x0w
- taitomagatsu: 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 one
- blacksmithforlife: 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 services
- taitomagatsu: https://xkcd.com/979/
- ahl0003: https://craft-conf.com/2025
- srockets: 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 era
- devdsp2175: 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 weather
- bcantrill: https://youtu.be/stMEuZJJDck?list=PLvsKqlNNP3R8JKE97pwewsDmZdcO5MEWV
- drkellyannfitz: Here are the talks from this year: https://redmonk.com/?series=monktoberfest-2024
- blacksmithforlife: What does "hallway track" mean?
- zeanic: Cr...
14 December 2024, 3:00 pm
1 hour 50 minutes

Intel after Gelsinger
Holy Sh**! Pat Gelsinger announced his "retirement" leaving a rudderless Intel without a captain. How did Intel get here? Some of the cultural problems may be deep in the DNA. Bryan and Adam have some ideas for what happens next, and who might be the next CEO.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Ian Grunert.
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we 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!
5 December 2024, 3:00 pm
1 hour 40 minutes

Technical Blogging
Bryan and Adam were joined by authors of the forthcoming book "Writing for Developers", Piotr Sarna and Cynthia Dunlop, to talk about blogging--for Bryan and Adam, it's been 20 years since they started blogging at Sun. The Oxide Friends were also joined by Tim Bray and Will Snow who kicked off blogging at Sun.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Tim Bray (BlueSky), Will Snow, Cynthia Dunlop and Piotr Sarna.
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
- Writing for Developers
  - 50% off (!) with code OXIDE50
- ongoing by Tim Bray
- Tim Bray on blogs.sun.com
- Scobleizer
- Bryan: Blogging through the decades
- Bryan: Remembering Charles Beeler
- Adam: APFS in Detail: Conclusions
- Beastie Boys Book: Live & Direct
- Adam: AWS Outposts by the Numbers: A Far-Too-Deep Dive Into Pricing
- Adam: I Love Go; I Hate Go
- Adam: I am not a resource
- Adam: First Rust Program Pain (So you can avoid it...)
- Bryan: Falling in love with Rust
- Adam: On Blogging (Briefly)
- Bryan: The Power of a Pronoun
- Adam: DTrace "Scobleized"
Appendix: Cool Technical Blogs

Crowdsourced by the Oxide Friends:
- Nova - in the writer's words, "a JavaScript apologist's exploration of how JavaScript could be good"
- The Pragmatic Engineer
- TigerBeetle
- Faster 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 Ride
- Hillel 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 boats
Bonus technical articles from chat and beyond:
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!
21 November 2024, 3:00 pm
1 hour 34 minutes

Books in the Box IV
The 4th installment of the Oxide and Friends book recommendation series. After a brief(ish) diversion into Crimson Twins, Tomax and Xamot, Bryan and Adam are joined by several Oxide Friends to discuss their favorite recent reads.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Nick Gideo, Josh, Ian Grunert, Tom Lyon, Zander, and Oliver Herman.
- Tomax and Xamot
Recommendations:
Bonus recommendations from chat
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!
1 November 2024, 2:00 pm
1 hour 53 minutes

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)
George Cozma of Chips and Cheese joined Bryan, Adam, and the Oxide Friends to talk about AMD's new 5th generation EPYC processor, codename: Turin. What's new in Turin and how is Oxide's Turin-based platform coming along?
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest George Cozma, as well as Oxide colleagues Robert Mustacchi, Eric Aasen, Nathanael Huffman, 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 Launched
- End of the Road: An Anandtech Farewell
- Centaur Technology
- AVX-512
- Zen5's AVX512 Teardown + More...
- Thermal Power Design (TDP)
- OxF: Rack Scale Networking (use of p4)
- P4
- AGESA
- OxF: The Network Behind the Network (Oxide server recovery)
- openSIL
- phoronix: openSIL
- PCB backdrilling
- OxF: AMD's MI300 (APUs)
- dtrace.conf(24) -- The DTrace unconference, December 11th, 2024
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!
16 October 2024, 2:00 pm
1 hour 35 minutes

Querying Metrics with OxQL
Bryan and Adam were joined by Oxide colleague, Ben Naecker, to talk about OxQL--the Oxide Query Language we've developed for interacting with our metrics system. Yes, another query language, and, yes, we're DSL maximalists, but listen in before you accuse us of simple NIH!
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Oxide colleague, Ben Naecker.
Some of the 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!
2 October 2024, 2:00 pm
1 hour 39 minutes

RTO or GTFO
With Amazon's return to office (RTO) mandate in the news, Bryan and Adam revisit the topic (it's been 2.5 years since last time!). Are in-office epiphanies real or is RTO fueled by nostalgia, fear... and finance? Stay tuned / we apologize for the exposition on in-office games.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included friend of the pod, Matt Amdur, and Chris.
Some 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!
26 September 2024, 2:00 pm
1 hour 22 minutes

Reflecting on Founder Mode
With some time passed, Bryan and Adam offer a non-hot take on Paul Graham's "Founder Mode" post. While there is plenty to quibble over, there's also the kernel of an important idea: how to balance experience, novel thinking, and limited time? Also stay tuned as they share a years old "ego con".
Your hosts were Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal.
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
- Paul Graham Founder Mode
- Bryan Reflecting on Founder Mode
- Tim O'Reilly How I Failed
- Camille Fournier Founder Create Managers
- Bryan Chesky interview we mention
- OxF: on Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing
- Seagull Management
- How to Castrate a Bull NOT AN ENDORSEMENT; DO NOT READ
- The ego con: Non-Stop Hitz
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!
20 September 2024, 2:00 pm
1 hour 42 minutes

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide
RFDs--Requests for Discussion--are how we at Oxide discuss... just about everything! Technical design, hardware component selection, changes in process, culture, interview systems, (even) chat--we have RFDs for all of these, over 500 in a bit under 5 years. Bryan and Adam were joined by Oxide colleagues instrumental to RFDs, from their most prolific author to those making them more 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, Germany
- Oxide RFD site
- RFD 1: Requests for Discussion
- A Tool for Discussion (Oxide blog post from Ben)
- Sun PSARC cases
- The Queen's Duck
- The Hairy Arm
- Joyent RFDs
- RFC-3
- AsciiDoc
- Joyent RFD 77
- OxF: Hiring Processes with Gergely Orosz
- Oxide 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 RFDs
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!
30 August 2024, 2:27 pm
1 hour 34 minutes

Whither CockroachDB?
Lots of engineering decisions get made on vibes. Popularity, anecdotes—they can lead to expedient decisions rather than rigorous ones. At Oxide, our choice to go with CockroachDB was hardly hasty! Dave Pacheco joins Bryan and Adam to talk about why we choose CRDB… and how Cockroach Lab’s recent switch to a proprietary license impacts that.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Dave Pacheco.
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!
21 August 2024, 2:00 pm
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