Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal talk with material scientist Ben Shindel about the widely publicized paper claiming AI dramatically boosted materials research productivity. They dissect the paper's absurd claims, discuss the obvious signs of fabrication, the implausibility of the research setup, and the likely motivations and fallout from the fraud. Ben shares his unique perspective as a scientist in the field.
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 ATC OxF s1e13: Put the OS back in OS...
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 application OxF: the "squeezefish" episode The Fallthrough podcast Busytown If we got so...
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 sweaters CN...
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 Turi...
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...
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 ord...
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 o...
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 Friends The O...
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 t...
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...
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 ...
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: Ratatui Orhun's blog Orhun...
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 w...
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 and Principles for the Design of Operator Facilities Oxide RFD 88: Chassis Management Responsibility ...
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 codegen template miette eliza_error serde_path_to_error ratatui Ratatui episode on January 27th! mo...
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 Images OxF: Musing With Changelog's Adam Stacoviak OxF: I know this! OxF: What's taking so long? XKCD: Dependency OxF: Discovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres Freund Making the background image OxF: Open Source LLMs with Sim...
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...
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 th...
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 Gelsinger Andy Jassy/Pat Gelsinger re:Invent 2018 premise...
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 h...
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: Into the Raging Sea - Slade The Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner The Big Score - Malon...
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...
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 Language GenAI podcast on the OxQL RF...
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 cul...
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...
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...
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: TechCrunc...
