Hey hey! We recently tripped over a ZFS data corruption bug–introduced over 18 years ago! @bcantrill@mastodon.social and I discuss with members of the Oxide team as well as Matt Ahrens, the co-inventor of ZFS.
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Adam Leventhal
@ahl@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Writing software at Oxide, mostly Rust, not too much
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Joined April 05, 2022
On this week's Oxide and Friends, @gradybooch@sigmoid.social joined @bcantrill@mastodon.social and me to talk about the past, present, and future of software engineering. From hand-made computers and the software crisis of the late '60s to LLMs (of course) we covered a lot... with--as always--many dated references! https://youtu.be/McAL6jkRUO4
Time for the annual predictions episode! @bcantrill@mastodon.social and I were joined by frequent future-ologists Simon Willison, Steve Klabnik, and @iangrunert@hachyderm.io 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!
A production rack–up for several months–suddenly had all service processors become unresponsive. Last week, @bcantrill@mastodon.social and I were joined by the Oxide team that investigated the issue–and discovered its surprising root cause! https://youtu.be/JFtCJVxuug8
On last night's Oxide and Friend, @bcantrill@mastodon.social and I were so grateful to be joined by Evan Ratliff to discuss his incredible, mesmerizing podcast "Shell Game" in which he starts a company, staffed entirely by agentic AIs. I hope you enjoy the conversation half as much as we did!
Have you heard? Oxide raised a $200M Series C (on top of our $100M Series B 6 months earlier)! On this week's Oxide and Friends, @sdtuck@hachyderm.io and @bcantrill@mastodon.social talk about the raise, and answer the wicked, wise, and simple questions from Hacker News.
A bunch of folks at Oxide uncovered a tricky deadlock associated with async Rust (yes, another!), so--of course--@bcantrill@mastodon.social and I got the crew together to discuss. If you're writing async Rust, you'll want to know how to avoid and diagnose "Futurelock"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqpLGvalyrI
Also:
- @ interviews to be the Blue Jays new manager
- a dramatized re-enactment of the critical moments diagnosing Futurelock
- async Rust doesn't make us mad, just disappointed
Last OxF of the year! @bcantrill@mastodon.social and I reflected on the year of Oxide and Friends. Big theme this year? Bugs and debugging. Or as ChatGPT put it inaccurately, "filled with painful specificity and earned insight". Sure, whatever!
And, Mastodon, you were mentioned around the 77 minute mark!
On Monday @davidcrespo@hachyderm.io and @rain@hachyderm.io joined me and @bcantrill@mastodon.social to talk about their uses of LLMs to build robust systems software.
LLMs are associated with vibecoding, they're a tool that can be harnessed for much more rigorous software engineering.. or as Rain put it
"Code that uses LLMs better be the best freakin' code on the planet. If you're doing this, all your code should be extremely tight. Slow down: don't just spit out as much code as possible." [1:17:55]
https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/engineering-rigor-in-the-llm-age
On Monday, OxF hosted @oxidecomputer@hachyderm.io founders, @sdtuck@hachyderm.io and @bcantrill@mastodon.social, Oxide investor Seth Winterroth, and the authors of Founder vs. Investor, Liz Zalman and @ganeumann@qoto.org. Delved into best and worst investor behavior. Check it out!
On Monday, @bcantrill@mastodon.social and I revisited an Oxide and Friends tradition: Books in the Box! We--and live listeners--share recommendations--worth a listen if you're looking for your next read! https://youtu.be/jBduzUVORnk
On last night's Oxide and Friends, @sdtuck@hachyderm.io and @bcantrill@mastodon.social answered the questions occasioned by the shipment of our first Oxide Computer!
What is Oxide? Why do people need it? Why did we build it the way we did? Your questions answered. My favorite? The answer to "what was the hardest part about building Oxide?"--some surprising answers!
Replying to
@harish@hachyderm.io nope! YouTube always precedes the rss feed by a day. Up on the feed as of this morning.
Loved tonight’s Oxide and Friends show with @bcantrill@mastodon.social and @sdtuck@hachyderm.io. For the folks who were there live to whom I promised OxF stickers:
Replying to
@win8linux@social.treehouse.systems @bcantrill@mastodon.social @nova@hachyderm.io yes, we want podcasts (and thanks for the links!), but more urgently we're look for something that allows us to broadcast live and bring guests up to the stage
Replying to
@cjek420@hachyderm.io @bcantrill@mastodon.social exactly. Wait. Have you shopped at Walmart?