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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. 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

Oxide and Friends

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 Neumann
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

Oxide RFD 609: Futurelock • 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!

Futurelock

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 IV
Other 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 Herman

Open CircuitsSystems PerformanceWhy We're Getting PoorerTermination Shock
From Tom Lyon

From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog • See also 
Systems We Love: Life of an Airline FlightThe War of Don Emmanuel's Nether PartsThe NVIDIA Way
From Dan McDonald

Inventing the RenaissanceCharles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation
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!

Books in the Box V

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 Shindel
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

Michael's home pageLeslie KaelblingComputing Up: Rich Sutton • 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!

AI in Higher Education with Michael Littman

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 Carmel
Some 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 Fire • Roger Faulkner: "I'm not here to make it perfect; I'm here to make it better"
Mid-recording earthquake
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!

Systems Software in the Large

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 1
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

Topic • [@M:SS](link into recording) 
Leventhal's Conundrum • 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!

Scaling Manufacturing

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 Age • PRs needed!

Previous episodes mentioned:

OxF s05e24 - Oxide’s $100M Series BOxF s05e04 - AI Disruption: DeepSeek and Cerebras
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!

Technological Revolutions with Jerry Neumann

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 Intel
Some 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!

The Promises of Tech with Scott Hanselman

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 Cosmo
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

blog: Oxide's $100M Series BHacker News thread • 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!

Oxide's $100M Series B

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 Odyssey
Some 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!

Adventures in Data Corruption

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 GTFO
Some 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 
1:15:33
The D scripts that we referred to:

nexus-statemap.d • used to generate the initial statemap
nexus-profile.d • to understand what was consuming CPU
tokio-statemap-tagged.d • to generate the Tokio task statemap

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!

When Async Attacks!

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-enders
 • Acquired on NVIDIA: 
part I • , 
part II • , 
part III • , 
JensenRIVA 128OxF: Steve Jobs & the Next Big Thing
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!

Is NVIDIA like Sun from the Dot Com Bubble?

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