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 guest Ben Shindel.

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

• Ben's blog: AI, Materials, and Fraud, Oh My!
• OxF: Theranos, Silicon Valley, and the March Madness of Tech Fraud
• 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!

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 OSDI
• Bryan's Lisa 2011 talk: Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos
• Bryan's USENIX 2016 talk: A Wardrobe for the Emperor
• USENIX 2004
  • Gnutella not Nutella
  • USENIX DTrace paper
• USENIX Summer 1994
  • Slab Allocator
  • NFSv3
• WSJ 2006 Technology Innovation Awards
• 0xF s1e18: Dijkstra's Tweetstorm
  • Meeting Dennis Ritchie
• BoF session
  • Birds of a feather flock together
• Freenix
  • 2003
  • 2004
• Rik Farrow ;login: editorial on USENIX 2016
• Bryan's blog 2004: Wither USENIX?
  • blog comments from Werner Vogels
• Systems We Love
• Adam's blog 2004: nohup -p
  • illumos source
• OxF s1e4: from /proc to proc_macro
• Things that don't work as advertised
  • Diffracting trees
  • Cold Fusion
• Adam's blog 2009: Triple-Parity RAID-Z
• Rob Pike 2000: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant
• ZFS paper
• Living Computer Museum (now-dead)
• SDF
• All the Chips that Fit by Tom Lyon
• OxF s2e22: RIP Optane
• History of Programming Languages Conference

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!

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 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!

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
• CNCF Slide: Why You Should Host Your Project at CNCF
• CNCF NATS documents
• NATS GitHub discussion
  • The uncashed $10k check
• CNCF landscape
• CNCF blog on NATS / Synadia
• Synadia response to the CNCF

Postscript:

The CNCF updated its blog with proof that the ACH transfer of $10,000 was completed [still very funny! -ahl].

Derek Collison--as reported by Runtime News--has agreed to transfer the NATS trademark to the CNCF "because we just feel that the damage to the ecosystem and the ugliness is not worth it for anyone."

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 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 Turin CPU
• Gimlet - Oxide’s current-generation sled with an AMD Milan CPU
• Turin - AMD Epyc 9005 Series
• Milan - AMD Epyc 7003 Series
• Genoa - AMD Epyc 9004 Series (Oxide chose to skip this generation)
• Sequencing - the precise control of when power rails are energized throughout a PCB
• Sled - One of the (max 32) computers in an Oxide rack; a custom form-factor optimized for power and cooling efficiency
• IBC - Intermediate Bus Converter (Our 54VDC -> 12VDC converter)
• RoT - Root of Trust
• SP - Service Processor, the small computer (running Hubris) that allows for low-level control
• Ignition - An even lower-level control network for power management (including power of the SP)
• Ruby - The AMD reference platform (Oxide has used this to prepare Cosmo software in advance of bringup)
• DC-SCM - https://www.opencompute.org/documents/ocp-dc-scm-spec-rev-1-0-pdf and OpenCompute standard form factor.
• Grapefruit - OCP DC-SCM form-factor board with our SP, RoT, and FPGA on it, used to replace the OCP DC-SCM baseboard management controller in the Ruby platform.
• Cadence - Software Oxide previously used for PCB design
• Altium - Software Oxide now uses for PCB design
• Hubris - Oxide’s embedded operating system, run on the SP and RoT
• Humility - The Hubris debugger
• PLM - Product Lifecycle Management – a class of software used for managing hardware BOMs
• BOM - Bill of Materials – the components required to build a hardware product
• RFK - Our colleague, Robert Keith (to distinguish him from our other colleague, Robert, and our former colleague, Keith)
• FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Array – Also referred to as “soft logic” – effectively programmable hardware
• ILA - Integrated Logic Analyzer
• JTAG - A debugging interface for various processors
• UART - A serial port or connection

For previous tales from the bringup lab:

• Tales from the bringup lab
• More tales from the bringup lab
• Bringup Lab Chronicles: A Measurement Two Years in the Making
• Raiding the Minibar

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!

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 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!

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 order that we hit them:

• 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!

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 other, related Oxide and Friends

• OxF: Cabling the Backplane
• OxF: The Network Behind the Network
• OxF: The Power of Protoboards

Images from the show:

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 Oxide John von Neumann bust
• Intel's new CEO plots overhaul of manufacturing and AI operations
• Lip-Bu Tan: Remaking Our Company for the Future
• Intel oneAPI
• Morris Chang: "A very discourteous fellow"

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!

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 the order that we hit them:

• Steve: A Happy Day For Rust
• 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!