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• Post #2565669

  The Book of Genesis, as written by GenZ 🤣🤣🤣

• Post #2171016

  Recently, the software world was rocked by the discovery of a backdoor in XZ Utils. The backdoor represents many stories, but behind all of them is the story of a single Postgres developer, vexed by a relatable problem: "why is it taking so long to login?!" On the next Oxide and Friends, @ahl and I are thrilled to be joined by that developer, @AndresFreundTec, the discoverer of the XZ backdoor. Join us on April 8th at 5p Pacific to hear this extraordinary story! https://disco...

• Post #1960478

  LLMs are changing every aspect of higher education, but perhaps none more so than computer science, where LLMs inflame the age-old tension between the thrill of building and the importance of first-principles understanding. Today, @ahl@mastodon.social and I will be joined by Brown University CS professors Shriram Krishnamurthi and Kathi Fisler to talk about their experience teaching an agentic AI course -- and what it might bode for the future of CS education. Join us, 5p Pacific today! https:/...

• Post #1231532

  The CrowdStrike BSOD fiasco is extraordinary in its scale and scope; on Monday's Oxide and Friends, @ahl and I will be joined by security researcher and @LutaSecurity CEO @k8em0 to help us sort through the many layers of this mess. Join us, 5p Pacific! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1263954070763212810

• Post #1174124

  The peril of laziness lost https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/the-peril-of-laziness-lost/

• Post #869415

  Oxide and Friends is back, at a special time! @ahl and I will be joined by Oxide engineers Andrew Stone and Finch Foner to talk about how we build a quorum of trust in the distributed system that is the Oxide rack. Join us today at 2p Pacific/5p Eastern! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1488196531852152873

• Post #615233

  Great @oxidecomputer and Friends discussion today on Mastodon and the Fediverse with @ahl and @nova, including appearances from @antranigv and @penguin among others! The recording will be up on YouTube soon, but can be found on the birdsite in the meantime: https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/1592200528016314369 And -- an Oxide and Friends first! -- you can also find it on @nova's Twitch stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1652616971 Thanks again to @nova for joining us -- the fut...

• Post #615232

  The video for my talk at #monktoberfest is now up, and I would like to make an unusual request: please watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzdVSMRu16g As @monkchips pointed out after the talk, it's not just a talk about how we think about youth, but me reflecting on my own transition into adulthood (and parenthood!) -- and the responsibilities we have to younger technologists. I am grateful to @sogrady -- as I have been so many times before -- for the venue uniquely suited to th...

• Post #615231

  Throughout my career, I have believed that it is essential to dig into mysterious pathological systems behavior even if it seems somewhat tangential, for it can often reveal problems deep in the system that can have much more damaging presentation. For a vivid example of pathological behavior, a deep underlying problem, and (especially) the methodology to connect one to the other, read this extraordinary analysis from @oxidecomputer engineer Dave Pacheco: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicr...

• Post #615230

  @igb became an instant folk hero when he called out the world's wealthiest man, taking him to task for his grievous misperceptions on how software systems actually work: https://twitter.com/iamraisini/status/1605538033612177408 While brief, this exchange hit on some deep issues in software engineering; @ahl and I are thrilled to announce that @igb will be joining us for our @oxidecomputer and Friends on Monday. Join us as we break it down with Ian Brown: https://discord.com/invite/3jS...

• Post #601783

  Those with even passing familiarity with @oxidecomputer have run across our Request for Discussion system, which constitutes the backbone of our writing-intensive culture. Tomorrow, @ahl and I will be joined by our colleagues to discuss this system, its history, and its evolution. Join us at a Europe-friendly time slot: 9a Pacific/5p BST/6p CET. https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1275240687620587601

• Post #580282

  On Monday, @ahl and I will be joined by members of the Oxide team to talk about a doozy: an 18-year-old ZFS data corruption bug that we recently nailed. We'll be at a special Europe-friendly time: 9a Pacific/noon Eastern/5p GMT -- join us for the wild tale! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1442398752215400459

• Post #580281

  We hit a new (and disturbing!) failure mode recently when a production rack that had been up for several months saw every (!) compute sled's service processor become simultaneously unresponsive. On today's episode, @ahl and I willl be joined by the members of the Oxide team that debugged the vexing issue -- and @cliffle will reveal how he reached its surprising root cause. Join us at 5p Pacific for a wild tale of death by uptime! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=144514575951...

• Post #580280

  The video for my #monktoberfest 2025 talk on trust as infrastructure is now up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF7J7qtZ8TA Slides are here: https://speakerdeck.com/bcantrill/trust-as-infrastructure

• Post #580277

  I am currently at a Dagstuhl seminar (my first!), "Trustworthy System Architectures for the Age of Custom Silicon." Slides for my talk yesterday (not recorded, unfortunately): https://speakerdeck.com/bcantrill/software-co-design-motivations-and-reflections-with-respect-to-security

• Post #580276

  Our $S200M Series C https://oxide.computer/blog/our-200m-series-c

• Post #580275

  People say that @oxidecomputer is a podcasting company that built a computer for content generation, but we also use funding milestones for content generation: join @ahl, @sdtuck and me today at 5p Pacific as we talk about our $200M Series C! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1475587842070810624

• Post #529736

  It's our last episode of the year -- so @ahl and I will be engaging in our @changelog@changelog.social-inspired annual tradition of reviewing the year of episodes. Join us at 5p Pacific -- and bring your own favorite moments! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1445156662125006970

• Post #529734

  The first Monday of the new year means... predictions! Thrilled to announce that @simon will again be joining @ahl and me for 1- 3- and 6-year predictions. Bring your own predictions and join us today at a special time: 4p Pacific! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1456066106002509947

• Post #529732

  LLMs are -- to put it euphemistically -- seeing increased use among software engineers. This has sparked much consternation about what this means for our engineering rigor, but we have found that prudent use of LLMs can, in fact, allow us to be much more rigorous in our engineering. Today, @ahl and I will be joined by Oxide engineers who have been at the forefront of using LLMs as tools to increase the rigor in their own work. Join us, 5p Pacific today! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=14603...

• Post #529730

  No Oxide and Friends today, BUT... Next week @ahl and I will be joined by software engineering pioneer Grady Booch to talk about the past, present, and (especially!) future of software engineering. Join us, 5p Pacific next Monday, for what promises to be a lively and wide-ranging discussion! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1465501943605497989

• Post #529728

  Okay, listen up Oxide fam: on Monday, @ahl and I will be joined by Evan Ratliff and Maty Bohacek from the extraordinary Shell Game podcast -- which gives you the rest of the weekend to binge listen to it: https://www.shellgame.co/ (Both seasons are terrific, but if you only have one to listen to between now, and then, check out Season 2.) Join us for what promises to be a fun discussion: Monday, 5p Pacific! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1469771648860426344

• Post #503019

  We hear of "nine nines" of uptime as a goal for a system, but today @ahl and I are going to be joined by the @oxidecomputer team to talk about a subsystem that had that uptime -- and how it wasn't nearly enough. Join us at 5p Pacific for a wild, multi-year debugging tale! https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1478128159021989950