Oxide and Friends

The Oxide rack contains within it a distributed system that needs to trust itself. But how is this trust built? Bryan and Adam were joined by colleagues Andrew and Finch to explore how Trust Quorum was designed, built, and verified.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues, Andrew Stone, and Finch Foner.Previously, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s06e02 - Engineering Rigor in the LLM AgeOxF s03e17 - Software VerificationpaloozaOxF s06e02 - Engineering Rigor in the LLM AgeOxF s05e20 - Debugger-Driven DevelopmentSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Oxide RFD 238: Trust Quorum and Rack UnlockPRs 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 were joined by members of the Oxide team to describe the multi-year search for a mysterious source of hardware failures. All related to an ultra-reliable--and yet still not reliable enough--component.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by members of the Oxide team: Nathanael Huffman, Alan Hanson, Cliff Biffle, Eric Aasen, Robert "RFK" Keith, and Jordan Hendricks.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Oxide RFD 630: BMR491 Glitch Mitigation PlanRFK's reportPRs 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 raised a truckload of capital a few weeks ago to fund the business for the foreseeable future. Bryan and Steve describe the raise, and Adam poses the best the best (and worst) questions scraped from Hacker News.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide CEO, Steve Tuck.Previously on Oxide and Friends:OxF s01e25 - Tales from the Bringup LabOxF s04e30 - Intel after GelsingerOxF s05e24 - Oxide’s $100M Series BOxF s02e18 - Silicon Valley Bank with Eric VishriaOxF s05e28 - Systems Software in the LargeMentioned during the show:Oxide Blog: Our $200M Series COxide is hiring!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!

Evan Ratliff, journalist and podcaster, joined Bryan and Adam to talk about his extraordinary podcast, Shell Game, in which he started a company staffed exclusively by agentic AI.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Evan Ratliff.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Shell GameEvan on This American LifeMIT Review: Moltbook was peak AI theater"Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"The Startup Chronicles - HurumoAIPRs 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 were joined by Grady Booch, software engineering pioneer and living legend, to speak about the past present and future of software engineering. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest, Grady Booch.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them (some LLM assistance):SAGE as foundational real-time distributed systemSoftware crisis demand outpaced ability to build reliable systemsMargaret Hamilton (SAGE → Apollo) and the term “software engineering”UMLRational Software founded (1982); acquired by IBM (2003)OO overshot via inheritance; core idea (objects as cognitive units) enduredLLMs are unreliable narrators - they cannot do abductive reasoningArchitecture = decisions with high cost of changeCore skills persist: abstraction, coupling, cohesion, judgmentFear cycles repeat; fundamentals endureGrady's Book RecommendationsThe Sciences of the Artificial — Herbert SimonThe Mythical Man-Month — Fred BrooksRefactoring — Martin FowlerIf 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!

What do LLMs mean for the future of software engineering? Will vibe-coded AI slop be the norm? Will software engineers simply be less in-demand? Rain and David join Bryan and Adam to discuss how rigorous use of LLMs can make for much more robust systems.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Rain Paharia, and David Crespo.Previously, on Oxide and Friends:OxF s03e08 – Does a GPT future need software engineersOxF s04e04 – HeliosOxF s05e28 – Systems Software in the LargeOxF s04e20 – Pragmatic LLM Usage with Nicholas CarliniSome of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:The issue Bryan was fixingiddqd: the crate Rain builtGhosttyDavid's bugs: 1 2 3Rain's nextest bug: SIGTTOU when test spawns interactive shellOxide RFD 619: Managing types across Dropshot API versionsdrift: the crate Adam builtIf 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!

Time for the annual predictions episode! Bryan and Adam were joined by frequent future-ologists Simon Willison, Steve Klabnik, and Ian Grunert to review past predictions and peer into the future. If any of these predictions come to fruition, it's going to be an interest 1, 3, or 6 years!In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Simon Willison, Steve Klabnik, and Ian Grunert.Previously on Oxide and Friends:OxF s04e02 – Open Source LLMs with Simon WillisonOxF s02e23 – Predictions 2022OxF s03e20 – Predictions 2023!OxF s04e01 – Predictions 2024!OxF s05e01 – Predictions 2025Predictions during the show:Adam1 year: AI companies go on an acquisition binge (especially for anything that smells like data)3 year: Crisis of AI slop open source (both projects and contributions)6 year: Jensen hands over the reins at Nvidia6 year: Tesla is out of the consumer car business6 year: With the iPhone market shrinking, Apple has several new attempts at the next potential flagship productBryan1 year: "Vibe coding" is out of the lexicon -- or used strictly pejoratively it becomes a named condition (for which Adam -- in an act of nomenclature genius rivaling The Leventhal Conundrum -- suggested "Deep Blue")1 year: A frontier model company has a prominent whitepaper making the case that AI will lead to broad-based prosperity rather than job loss1 year: Harvey.ai becomes the pets.com of the AI boom -- and a harbinger of the coming bust (which becomes known as a Correction-like euphemism)1 year: A prominent S1 has revalations of economic behavior that has an effect beyond the company's IPO3 year: Frontier models treat AGI as "already done" -- and ASI as a non-goal3 year: Custom-written software thrives in lieu of SaaS6 year: DSM adds LLMs as a substance that can induce psychosis6 year: $NVDA not beyond its November 2025 peakSimon1 year: The AI for programming holdouts are going to have a nasty shock1 year: We're going to solve sandboxing1 year: Our own challenger disaster with respect to coding agent security - see the Normalization of Deviance in AI by Johann Rehberger3 year: Something that seems impossible for a coding agent to build today - like a full working web browser - won't just be built by coding agents, it will be unsurprising3 year: We will find out if the Jevons paradox saves our careers as software engineers or not6 year: The number of people employed to type code into computers will drop to almost nothing - it will be like punch card operators. Those of us who write code today will have very different jobs that still build software and take advantage of our previous coding experience.Steve1 year: Agent Orchestration will still be a hot topic. It'll be partially, but not entirely, solved. Updated with some more rigour: We won't have a "kubernetes for agents" just yet.3 year: Using AI tools when writing software professionally will be considered something closer to using autocomplete or syntax highlighting than something controversial or exceptional.6 year: AI will not have caused the total collapse of our economic and governmental systems.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