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Bryan Cantrill

Appearances

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

0.049

I noticed that you changed up the title. You did not like my... Okay, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, explain yourself.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1031.229

I feel like the last time you were on, I was getting a bunch of grief for dropping some dated references. This is an old part, just to be clear.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1059.766

This is not Centaur.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

106.84

We're at Chrissy Field with one of these girls, and the other girl comes up.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1074.676

So this was in 2021. So I assumed you were talking about the, like the, okay, this is, you're not talking about a chip that was made in like 1999. No, no, no, no, no.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1091.404

And they were broken.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1094.926

Okay, so I've got so many questions about this Wikipedia page. So they were broken up. First of all, like nice use of the passive voice. Like they were, like what broke them up?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

11.453

I mean, why would someone... Obviously, I love my title. I love your title. Akui, there's a butt coming.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

115.652

Oh, and you're like, okay, what? And I'm reminded a little bit of Robert on the spot over here. And like Robert, my four-year-old takes the hand of one of the girls, takes the hand of the other girl, and then the three of them all go running off together.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1186.948

God, thank you for opening up all of these doors. Did you see this? There's this documentary, The Rise of the Centaur, covering the early history of the company. It's like, okay, that's must-see TV. I mean...

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1215.641

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1228.496

Yeah, interesting. And the fact that it's not there at all really does, it is, as you say, it's a separate ISA. Yeah. Is that a good segue to the AVX-512 improvements on Tornax? I mean, I felt like going into this launch, I mean, I felt that's one of the headliners was the improvements to the AVX-512.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1282.56

Yeah, really. There are some... The data path, obviously, is a big part of that, I assume. The fact that it's going from a 256-bit wide data path to a 550-bit wide data path. Or deeper than that.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

134.41

I'm like, all right, you know, go for it.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1390.189

And was that on, was that Sandy Bridge or Haswell, Robert, where it was like, I mean, AVX-512 has always been kind of had this kind of problematic property that if one thread starts using it, it kind of like browns out the rest of the part.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

141.654

Absolutely, or weddings. I mean, who's to say that this, you know, who's to say that this won't carry into adulthood? Yeah, so I'm raising a bigamist. Anyway, I am, regardless of the title and who it was designed to appease, I am very, we're very excited to be talking about Turin and the Turin launch. This is AMD's latest part. George, thank you very much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1452.866

Wow. And so you basically run this guest and it would like crater performance for the whole box for no actual approachable gain. Cause no one's actually using it.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1472.86

And it's really hard to have a feature like that, where if you use this feature, it has this, this kind of this adverse effect on the rest of the monkey's paw kind of feature.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1489.571

It's very hard to reason about the performance when you have these kind of problems. So, and the, and AMD is not needed. And I mean, you know, and it sounds like George, you've got the kind of the same question of like, you just come so accustomed to these kinds of intense compromises that come with AVX 512. It's kind of amazing that we can have it all.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1586.607

Yeah, and you would expect that to like, I mean, flip a little bit with Sierra Forest, but then you end up with this kind of this e-core business. And I mean, I think there's gonna be, I mean, there's gonna be things that are gonna be interesting over there, but touring is a very hard part to compete with. It's done a pretty good job across the board. Yeah. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1614.193

And so I think, George, I'm not sure you got to all three of the things that you had that were, so the frequency, the high number just in terms of the F cores and getting that up to five gigahertz, especially across all cores.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

165.553

You are a repeat friend of Oxide. It's good to have you back.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1650.533

I can tell you that we at Oxide also like that. Folks think about the kind of the rack level, because we're kind of left with the rack level power budget. And yeah, we definitely, it's nice to have a SKU stack that is not all sitting at 500 or 500 watts plus, right? I mean, I think of that.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1717.779

It has, and I think economically, too, it's interesting. These are expensive parts, but they can do so much, especially at that high core count level, when you're not having to sacrifice on what those cores can go do, that you can make it make economic sense, I think. Yeah. it's a big step function over where they've been.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

173.563

So you had a great blog entry that I was excited to see it at the top of Hacker News over the weekend. Were you surprised by that?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1740.458

I mean, I think that we, you know, I think like a lot of people, like the Genoa SKU stack was a little less interesting for us.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1785.734

Yeah, it is a good segue, Robert, to the kind of our thinking on Turin, because we, so George, as we're kind of thinking about our, I mean, our next gen sled is obviously a Turin-based sled. We did deliberately elect to kind of bypass Genoa and to intersect with Turin. Maybe describe our thinking a little bit there, Robert, and we've got

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

19.715

Listen, pal, we've been rejected by enough VCs. I know a breakup male when I see it.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

1990.558

But as we were thinking about Cosmo, Cosmo is our codename for our next-gen Turin-based sled, SP5-based sled. What were we thinking in terms of what groups we wanted to target and kind of like the trade-offs there in terms of flexibility?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2063.101

Yeah. Eric, you want to describe some of the kind of the thinking there is as you're, as we were looking at the, what the PDN for this thing was going to look like.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2106.134

And when you mean route, we're talking the physical layout.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2110.359

Yeah, traces on the PCB, right.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2139.949

Yeah, and I feel that, like, also, Eric, I think whatever size Oxide becomes, even if we're selling millions of them, I will help slay the person that comes to your door on the 5. Because I feel like on so many of these parts, I mean, yes, they add up and it's part of the bomb. But, man, look at the cost of these CPUs is so much greater. And getting the flexibility is so much more important.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2190.06

Oh, and I think, I mean, George, I'm sure your experience has been up there, but I do love a bunch of the reviews online of Turin cautioning people to not do exactly this. Like, by the way, your SP5 motherboard may not be able to take some of these SKUs.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

221.788

You know, maybe the SEO, it may just be also that you just got a great article on a hot topic.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2236.55

Yeah. And the, and having like, and because the problem too will be that if you push these things to the margin, I mean, you, you can get like misbehavior. It's not, it won't be as simple as like burning the house down.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2267.335

Yes, or if you recall us on the Tales from the Bring Up Lab episode where Eric was regaling us with some of our adventures on Gimlet, where our power was already pretty good, but we could not figure out why this chip would reset itself after 1.25 seconds. So we made our power even better. And Eric, my recollection of this was AMD's like, we have never seen power. This power's amazing.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2294.476

You've got amazing margin. It can't be that. And sure enough, it was not that. It was firmware, of course.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

230.413

So, okay, I'm glad you brought up the video.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2320.007

George is kind of hilarious because we were not, the SVI2 was the protocol this thing uses, that the part uses to talk to the regulator. And the SDLE, which we had used, this great part from AMD that we had used to actually model all this stuff, as it turns out, didn't have a hard dependency on getting the ACK back from the controller when we set the voltage to a specific level.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2342.9

The part, as it turns out, wants to hear that ACK, as we learned. We learned that the hard way. We learned that the hardest, most time-consuming, most expensive possible way. But we did learn in the process.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2353.707

I actually, Eric, I thought it was super interesting to learn that our power margins were really good on that because that was like a first natural line of attack was our power margins aren't like, that's why this thing is resetting because it is in a reset loop because our power's not good enough. But we actually learned in the process of doing that, like, no, no, this power's actually quite good.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

237.658

No, no, I'm glad you brought it up. Because those, you, the comments on that video were the nicest YouTube comments I've ever seen in my life.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2380.035

So, Eric, as you're kind of thinking about like, okay, so we need to, you know, there are things we need to do. And were you coming to the conclusion that, okay, I think we can make this all fit? I mean, as you're doing that kind of that trade-off?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2429.051

And importantly, we're able to use the same regulator that we're, it's not like we're having to swap regulators to accommodate this. We were able to use the same Renaissance parts for this. And then the, and then from a thermal perspective, so we then, okay, so that's kind of like, all right, we've got the insurance there.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2446.275

And then from a thermal perspective, we also needed to do the, because you said we're not water cooling this thing. So, you know, can we, and at 500 Watts, I think we definitely know we will not be talking about how quiet the fans are because you'll be lucky if you can hear us talk over the fans. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2464.541

We know the fans be cranking, but I think that the, I mean, we've done that and Doug and crew have done the model.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

250.383

I didn't even know YouTube comments could be nice.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2506.669

It is in particular, like it's real hard to max out the draw on your DIMM and the draw on your CPU at the same time without being mean spirited. I mean, you have to be really...

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2524.875

Substantially so. You're right. I should not be tempting the gods here.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2612.126

Interesting is our take. I mean, it's like definitely interesting. I mean, I think that we would love to be able to get some parts. The draw does become an issue back there for us. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

266.52

I mean, what is going on? This is, this can't be a YouTube video.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

271.325

It's not YouTube. There's something, this thing has fallen into some alternate reality and like, and the comments are all like, you know, thanks for all of your diligent work. And you know, I just, I, I love, I mean, it just, it's great. God, like we talk about lightning in a bottle.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2742.125

Well, and I think that, you know, and Ellie in the chat is saying, well, I don't think people realize how, you know, how restrictive the oxide power budget is. And I don't necessarily, it is restrictive. It's more that we are really, we are taking that rack scale approach. And so we're kind of the ones that are like always adding up the visa bill.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2761.657

And, you know, when you have, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 watts, 70 watts, 80 watts in your neck, like that adds up in a hurry. And yes, you can offset it elsewhere. But what we're trying to do is try to get you the maximum amount of useful work out of that rack scale power budget.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2788.136

And, you know, by being the ones that are doing that, we're the ones that are, you know, sometimes having to deliver some tough messages to folks about like, we like this, this is interesting, but it's drawing way, way, way too much power.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

28.647

We love meeting Oxide. We're very excited about Oxide. Okay. Yeah. Go on.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2811.969

Yeah, I mean, we love, we're huge P4 fans as folks know. And I think we've got... Actually, if folks can see it out there, we've got an exciting announcement in terms of Excite Labs and using their part as our next-gen switch, and it's P4 programmability. So we're really excited. We've been using P4 on the switch. We're going to continue to do that.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2837.627

And using P4 or programmability at the NIC, we're really interested in. But it's got to happen in a way that we can accommodate everything else we need to go do with the rack. So, George, a long answer to your question there, but it's interesting for sure.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2871.342

Yeah. Which is something that's going to be, and that is something that's going to be like, we're definitely interested in.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2882.757

Yeah, I think so. I mean, that's not going to intersect our first cut here of Cosmo. But no, we're really, really interested in it. And again, great to see that P4 programmability.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2896.242

There were some moments where it felt like we were a bit of a lonely voice, but I think other folks are beginning to realize, and I think as the hyperscalers themselves have known, that having that network programmability is really essential.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2920.708

Robert, you'll do the honors. I'm happy to give my P4 spiel.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2970.413

And having that higher level of abstraction really allows you to kind of express something programmatically that they can then use hardware resources efficiently. Our big challenge has been working with vendors to give us a substrate upon which we can build a true P4 compiler. Honestly, the biggest challenge in that part of the ecosystem has been the proprietariness of the compilers.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

2997.242

So, George, I'll tell you that one thing that will be a factor for us as we're looking at kind of a P4-based NIC is what we have been looking for is what is that kind of x86-like substrate going to be? Something that is a documented, committed ISA that we can write our P4 compiler against.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3016.53

So what we are not looking for, because we are coming out of a bad relationship in this regard, what we are not looking for is kind of a proprietary compiler. We really... uh, want to, and we have written our own P4 compiler for, we use our, we developed our own P4 compiler and have open sourced it, um, X4C, um, for purposes of just doing development, software development and testing and so on.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3038.779

But we really want to take that and have that, use that to actually, uh, to compile, uh, for these parts for both the switch for sure. Um, and then ultimately the NIC, um, would definitely be our vision for where it's going.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3071.669

George, I really appreciate your sensitivity of taking us into the kind of the grieving room and your bedside manner here is really exemplary. I was really feeling you kind of passing the tissues to us as you, as you really felt our loss. I really appreciate that.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3106.149

I mean, are we in charge of AMD now? Because we got lots of ideas.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

316.127

Yeah, so you think that this has given the internet some gratitude? You've managed to domesticate the internet.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3186.616

Yeah. And, you know, so yeah, I mean, absolutely. We would be great for them to do that. Although that said, we are, you know, they need to do it in the right way. And the right way from our perspective is really establishing a substrate that people can build an open ecosystem on top of. And this is something that, you know,

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3207.439

And I always, I find vexing is you would think if you make hardware, it's enormously in your best interest to allow many, many software stacks to bloom, um, by having a well-documented committed interface. But, um, They really don't. It's a challenge, I would say. I wouldn't say they don't, it's too reductive. I think that they fight their own instincts on it.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3234.278

And so we're very excited with Excite Labs. Again, you can see our announcement today or their announcement today, actually, but it features Oxide for sure. And we definitely see eye to eye with them on their X2. We're looking forward to to moving forward with that part. And we think that there should be, we want to see programmable networking everywhere.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3255.789

We want to see this open ecosystem everywhere. The, on the note of like the kind of the lowest levels of the platform that can be hard to get at. So George, you may recall that we have no bias in our system. So there is no AGISA, there is no AMI bias. So when we buy us, buy us, am I? Nailed it. Oh, thank you. We have lots of bias. Up and at them, up and at them. Uh, better.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3290.781

Um, do you wake up your kids that way? Adam, as, as when you're at castle, we're near wolf castle saying up and at them.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3304.646

Feels very loaded. I think my kids have definitely gotten sick of that particular Simpsons reference. Rainier Wolf Castle, no longer welcome in our abode. But we have no BIOS. And so Robert, that lowest level platform enablement has fallen to us. What are some of the differences in Turin from, or even from Genoa, but then from Milan?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

335.785

And look, it was like if there was a YouTube video that we're going to start having nice comments on, that was a good one to start on. That was a great video, went in depth. I love that you kind of had the surprise ending where you set a world record in your hotel room. Let's start with there. What was that benchmark that you were running? And you were running that on Turin, obviously.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3371.35

Yeah, those are effectively hidden cores, right?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3399.513

There used to be four. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. And that is presumably, so you are, you're just increasing the parallelism there. And I mean, is that the.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3421.825

And so but but those kind of changes, which if we were at some level of software, that's an implementation detail you don't need to see. But at the level of software we're at, like you actually need to go accommodate those differences.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3486.467

And could you describe what device training is? Like, why does a link need to be trained? What is that?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3639.133

Right, when they misbehave. So there's a lot of low-level work that we need to go do. And how do we, in terms of like, we don't yet have, I mean, Eric and Nathaniel and crew are working on Cosmo as we speak, kind of finishing up Cosmo. How do we work on that before we have our own board in hand?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3676.399

Is it too much to hope that someone has a sense of humor that named that thing volcano?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3693.758

You had, like, Onyx. Yeah, no sense of humor. I just like the idea that, like, Inferno, you're going with the... So, yeah, so we got the Volcano reference platform from AMD.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3740.365

And then Nathaniel, do you want to talk about kind of how we use those dev platforms? Because we've got a little, a great little board there.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3826.397

Yeah, we should talk about eSpy because this is definitely a difference in Turin.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3898.608

Why can't we on spy?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

39.049

Okay. Go on. So you love my title. My title was Unshrouding Turin.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

3966.854

That's right. And spy, as my kids would say, spy has no chill. Spy, you need to give it what it needs. You're set on the clock. There's no clock stretching in spy. And so spy interposition becomes a real nightmare because you need to get everything you need to get done, you need to get done in that one clock cycle. It's like, yeah, that's really hard.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4082.472

Yeah, and just on the training times, without that, without kind of, and so dim training where you're trying to find the search for the constants that are going to allow you to not have interference when you're talking to these dims, that search can take a long time. And Robert, how long does it take you when you've got the first, that first genoa that you've got-

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4132.943

Yeah, it was. I've put it out of my brain. Yeah, George, I don't know if you've seen some long boot times, but DDR5 takes a long time to train.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4208.407

Adam apparently really prefers your pronunciation, George, to mine.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4216.493

All right, I'll do my Duolingo with George on there.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

423.327

It was pretty great. It was pretty great. And I love that you're like kind of wrapping it up. You're like, no, no, actually, wait a minute. Hold on. I'm not being, this laptop just being handed to me.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4268.104

It was, yeah, we definitely, and I'm not sure, you know, maybe we're, I guess we're a bit unusual on this, but boy, we were unusual. We need the, yeah, that, So, George, we were using, just as Nathaniel mentioned, we were using one of the UARTs as the IPCC, which is the interprocessor, right? Communication channel.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4290.391

But this is our protocol for the socket, the host OS, to be able to speak to the SP, which is our replacement for the BMC.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

436.874

There's more. Yeah. Okay. So, and obviously that setting, and it's helpful to know this is a very compute intensive workload. Because one of the things that I think that we've heard from a bunch of folks is this thing is so much more compute that now you've got to really ask questions about balance of the system and memory bandwidth and so on. So I want to get into all that.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4377.329

It was very slow. And our friends at AMD, fortunately got us a, a fix to the PSP to operate at three megabod. And that was very, it was life changing for, for, I mean, I know for 30, 30 X makes a big difference for RFK. 30 X means when, when it's 30 minutes, that 30 X is like a real actionable human 30 X. Not all 30 Xs are the same.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4401.394

And when something takes 30 minutes, taking 30 X off of that is a, is a big deal.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4479.017

Yeah, the go signal still takes several minutes to transmit.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4497.884

I'm not even joking. This sounds like a dream that I would have that I would describe to Adam.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4514.25

I'm sure. I would like to believe that original designers and Oxide and Friends listeners would be like, oh God, that was still in use? That was supposed to be for a weekend. That was not supposed to be. That was a temporary fix. Totally.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4531.936

And so Nathaniel, maybe worth elaborating a little bit why the three megabod is so actionable for us beyond just the margining and the Mbis results, because this actually ends up becoming, because this is our conduit for the SP to talk to the host CPU, we use this in the recovery path. So like if you've got a system that can't talk to anything else, it's gonna load its image

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

457.165

Um, I guess one thing I would kind of ask you from the top, um, just what is your kind of top takeaway from the Turin launch? And was there anything that surprised you? Was there anything that you either didn't know what was coming or didn't know the kind of magnitude or you're still, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

46.35

But I noticed the title here is Benvenuto a Torino.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4605.641

It takes a minute as the kids say, but it actually takes like, we're actually doing two different things, Nathaniel.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4670.337

And actually, and so George, in all honesty, like part of the rationale for this is to get us out of those moments of terror when you are flashing a bias and you have gotten often no recourse if that, if that goes sideways. And so this gets us out of that because we know that the system at the, at the absolute lowest layers of the system, we can get the system to, to be able to boot. And we,

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4699.822

it gives us much more control over the reliability of the system, upgradability of the system, manageability of the system. That's how we're able to get... Oxide rack can arrive, power on, and get going and provision VMs in minutes instead of days, months, weeks, whatever.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4731.311

Well, I feel like this is like, we're like the sewer people and you, you know, like you get to, I mean, you've got this glorious palace in terms of the cores that have been built. And meanwhile, it's like the sewer people are happy about not being at three megabot. Like what's going on. No, it's, it's a big deal down here in the sewer.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4769.787

Yeah, so we are all in favor. So we have been, and actually it was funny because I actually first heard Turin the code name Turin when it was accidentally blurted out on one of those OpenSeal calls. I'm like, okay, what is Turin? And I remember asking Robert, like, that's a city in Italy, so it must be the next thing, but we hadn't heard of it yet.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4793.797

And OpenSeal was going to intersect with Turin, which of course, when we were first hearing that, it's like, oh my God, that just feels like Buck Rogers. It's like in the year 2041. But of course Torrent is not here. And that work we are very, very supportive of. We are not actually using any of that because it's a different model.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4817.708

It's kind of going to, it's still a traditional model of a bootloader that's going to effectively make the system look like it's gone backwards or send the system backwards to boot a host operating system. And we've got this staged approach where we are running a single operating system the entire time.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4839.418

So it doesn't fit our model, but we're extremely supportive of it because we believe that we want these lowest levels of the system to be completely documented. And we want there to be room for many different approaches. And so I think that we're very supportive of OpenSo in that regard.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

487.011

Yeah, I was going to ask you that.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4934.606

Yeah, and it's very nice to be able to go compare nodes, especially when things aren't working. Helpful to have multiple implementations out there. And I also think that the model for AGISA, the programming model, makes it very difficult to reason about the overall system. This is where Robert's eyes are going to start to twitch because...

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

4961.818

Robert spent a lot of time in the absence of documentation having to really understand what this code was doing.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5015.797

Well, and that's it. I mean, when you have these kind of, this is why it's so healthy to have different software ecosystems on the same hardware, because you don't want things to be working by accident. You want them to be, and it's, you want things to be well-documented and with well-committed abstractions. And failing that, it's good to have the software out there.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5034.826

So it's, no, it's been, George, it's been good. And we're, I think, excited to continue to see that.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5042.834

um the uh some of the other like lowest level i lowest level differences on turin um we you mentioned the dims for channel and we we kind of had a um a fork in the road in front of us in terms of two dims for channel two dpc versus one one dpc and there's a trade-off there to be made and robert what was the i mean

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

508.991

That is crazy. I feel like the last time we were really, it's been a minute since we've seen clocks that high from anywhere, I feel. I feel it's been like, I mean, IBM was hitting it with power.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

53.112

That was for Robert.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5306.212

When I think just in general, when we had a trade-off where we'd have to give up memory latency, we have always felt that memory latency is really important. You want to get maximum. You want to minimize memory latency, and you don't want to take a hit there.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5333.476

probably could make that you could probably make convince yourself that that is actually worthwhile but you know 5200 4400 that's a that's a that's a lot farther from 6000 it's a big yeah right it's a big big chunk to take out and in terms of mr dims because this is a domain where you know intel is still uh basically the all i mean they because we're pretty standard on mr dims right let me let me let me get on my soapbox for about 30

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5396.663

So, you know, Georgia, what I love about Oxide and Friends is when it comes to the soapbox of a dims being not being per JDEC standard. It's actually a line of a soapbox here at Oxide and Friends. There's actually this is this is the because this is a soapbox. Robert, you know, the soapbox you've been on the soapbox.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5419.951

And it's, yeah, it's frustrating, but they, but MRDMs, I think when the, when they are JDAX standard, right, because they will be.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5469.537

Yeah, well, I think that, you know, one of our kind of big revelations, and again, this is not due to us, I think the other hyperscalers done this as well, but that the...

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5479.364

you actually, the way to have maximal density is not necessarily to have maximal physical density, that you want to open up some room for airflow and you can actually get higher density by having, by using a little bit more space and being, you know, where the rack is nine feet tall. And so we, you know, using some of that, trying to use some of that space to get higher density.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5508.218

Um, the, uh, actually, can you just talk about bacterial vias for a second, Eric, just because you mentioned in the chat, I don't know, George, do you know about bacterial vias? This is, this is truly amazing stuff.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

57.753

Oh, put Robert on the spot. Go ahead, Robert. There we go. What an all pro. You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of when my now 20-year-old was four. We understood from one of his friends in the neighborhood that he and this girl were going to get married. And they were like, okay, that seems like a little bit heavy for four. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5743.252

I just love the fact that we're going to take a drill to the underside of the board. It does feel like a Adam Leventhal PCB engineer kind of approach to this of like, here, hold on, pass me the drill. I'll take this. Exactly. I need a drill and a running start, and we'll take care of it. Yeah, I'll fix your signal integrity issue with my drill. I'll fix it real good with this here drill.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5768.013

But it is a total precision, and it is 25 microns. Just amazing, Eric, that this is. And then we've got simulation tools. I mean, how do we kind of figure out where this needs to be done? And this is…

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

580.764

Yeah, so let's elaborate on this a little bit because this is, I think, a really interesting point. So we're seeing this from Intel too, right, where once you get the density up to a certain level, you've got to make some compromises. But the compromises that AMD seems to be making are much less than the compromises you're seeing. I mean, the Zen 5C cores are – they're still Zen 5 cores.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5909.618

And I just love the fact that you got to think of like, you know, who wants that? Like that thing in the SKU stack. It's like, oh, the engineer that actually like.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5922.307

Exactly. So we got to get that SKU for Eric and Tom and the other folks that are running these simulations.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5937.913

Yeah, we got to get that for you. Not a cheap part, by the way, but still. No. We had the ANSYS folks on. I remember we had the ANSYS along with Tom on talking about our use of simulation, which was another great episode. I really enjoyed talking to those folks. And you just learn about the physicality of the stuff just...

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5962.358

blows me away and like i feel i mean i don't you feel bad that we end up running like our dumb software on top of this stuff at the end of the day i just feel like we're kind of yeah seriously well i've been taking all these gigahertz for granted too and just like the level of complexity underpinning this is is bananas it's like we back for this thing to run php it's a good look yes sorry yes

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

5988.008

Totally, totally. But it's just amazing. And this part is a great part. You know, I think that we're, you know, I think, George, we were really excited to see, I mean, obviously your in-depth review was terrific. But I mean, I think, George, from your perspective, like this is a part that has really hit the mark in kind of like every dimension it feels like.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6082.682

And I think that we, we are going to be, I think, you know, another thing that we're looking at is partnering with Murata and getting for those folks that actually do want to go more than 15 KW for the rack, which was our original design target, but which felt very aggressive in 2019. But then, you know, I think it feels like Nvidia is like, that's like two GPUs now for you. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6102.455

I can get that in for you. Exactly. I can get that to you.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6109.384

we are, are, uh, we'll be for folks that can go be up above 15 KW for the rack. We'll be able to go do that. And, uh, it's, it's, it's again, it won't necessarily be quiet. Um, but we, uh, we think we're going to be able to air cool that. Um, and those, that's where you get that, you get that kind of seven X consolidation that AMD was talking about. Um, and I think that there's, yeah. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6178.584

Yeah, and I think that we're excited for the AI workloads too, and I think they're going to get a nice pop from AVX 512, certainly the 512-bit data path there, and you're going to see a lot of those. There are nice pops to be had, we think. But you're right, it was not just AI. There are, as it turns out, other... We also need the workloads to simulate the computer for the AI, as it turns out.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6230.475

Yeah, we think so too. And I think that, you know, I think unlike with our first gen where it was kind of every, we only had one SKU, the 7713P, we're going to allow for some flexibility for Oxide customers inside that SKU stack. We're excited to kind of extend that and then do some of the work around dynamic power control.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6250.034

We got a bunch of ideas on how, you know, we've got the right foundation to go with. actually manage power holistically across the rack and, and use some of the, there's all, we got a lot of stuff to go, a lot of knobs to turn. Um, and I think it's going to yield a pretty great product. I mean, the hats off to AMD for sticking the landing.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6268.647

I mean, we are definitely wedded to AMD in a lot of ways in terms of our lowest level of platform initialization and so on. So we're always relieved when they execute well.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6278.773

Um, and great decision in 2019.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6298.748

Yeah, we talked about the APU. Yeah, boy, we're hitting all the sympathy cards here. Hold on. Hand me the other sympathy card now.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6384.784

When you were asking about the APU, did the oxide people put you up to this?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6405.396

That's great. We've asked for... Yeah, that'd be great. You will deserve responsibility for an MI300A dev kit. We'd love it.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6439.229

George, I don't know what we're going to do for you if an MI300A dev kit is for sale on Newegg, but we're going to do something very, very nice for you. I don't know when it's going to be yet. It is going to be... That would be great. We get George a whole wheel of his favorite cheese?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6457.555

That's right. For sure. But I totally agree. And yeah, we definitely noticed that the... You know, we have brought up APUs so frequently with them. I feel we've kind of overstayed our welcome with respect to that. Sort of like, you know what? We're going to let you guys say the next thing about APUs. We're going to stop telling you how much we love APUs and we'll let you do the next thing.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6479.608

Or we'll let George do it for us, which is great. Much more effective. Much more effective. Well, we'll say, yeah, again, if we get an MI300A dev kit on Newegg, it's going to be, we're going to have to do, it's going to be something spectacular. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6513.93

Well, you know, and I think that you, I think, and just actually honestly with OpenSeal, I mean, I think one of the things that we really like about AMD is it's a company that doesn't like, it listens. I'd like they kind of, they know what the right direction is. It takes them a while to get there sometimes because it's,

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6527.033

It's a big vessel. And, but, you know, I mean, I remember when we were getting Naples stood up way back in the day and, you know, there was a lot that was still needed to be done. But you could see that like, okay, this is not a trajectory that's really interesting. And then with Rome, it's like, okay, this has just got a lot more interesting. And it was clear to us in 2019, Robert, that they were,

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6553.064

they were on a trajectory or they were surpassing Intel effectively. And then obviously with Milan and, and with Genoa now turn, I mean, it's like, we've seen them like continue to execute, execute, execute. And so, yeah, let's go, let's keep Adam on the APU side.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6607.535

Absolutely. Yeah. No, love it. And I totally agree.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6623.43

Yes. So we, we love the parts and, and, and we're going to be, we want you to be got some ideas for things to be even better, but touring is a great part. We're really excited about it. And George, thank you very much for, for joining us. It's been great to have. Thank you for having me. Oh, yeah, it's great to have the team. I mean, and Nathaniel and Eric here and Aaron as well.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6648.766

It's been, and obviously Robert here in the studio with me. And then Adam, of course, to correct my pronunciations and to inform me that my running start is not quite big enough on the back drilling. Um, the, um, you know, I think it's been, uh, we're really excited about our forthcoming.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6666.44

So I don't think it's, we're excited about is of course, you're going to be able to take the, taking a touring sled and putting it into a, an unused cubby in an, in a, an oxide rack that has Mulholland sleds and just have the whole thing just work. So we're really excited about that. Um, And onward, great part. And George, thanks again. Really, really appreciate it.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6686.535

And thank you all for joining us.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6691.876

Speaking of excitement, we do have one very exciting announcement.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6708.299

The Olympiad has arrived.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6738.578

It's going to be an unconference. If you were a DTrace user, you want to come hang out at Oxide. We are going to charge you for tickets. It's not going to charge you too much money, but we do have to charge you something. Otherwise, it'll be immediately consumed by teenagers. Teenagers will consume every ticket if we don't charge you anything. Um, very limited supply.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6756.486

Um, so, uh, hop in there if you're interested in joining us. Um, yeah, it's going to be out of my, I'm, I'm really excited for this. It's gonna be fun.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6773.724

And it's going to, yeah, it's going to have a different complexion and flavor this year for sure. It's going to be a lot of fun. So I'm looking forward to it. That's for sure. That's right. I know Robert, you've got to, everyone is just like, okay, what do I need to get done now before I've got until December 11th to get said to get my, but we got a lot of things to talk about. So.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6791.861

It's going to be fun. So join us, detrace.com 2024. And I will not violate any more copyrights by humming.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

6806.092

Exactly. Awesome. All right. Well, George, thanks again. Thank you, everybody. And yes, see you at detrace.com 2024.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

723.905

And the fact that you've got this kind of SKU stack now that is kind of a uniform SKU stack where you can start to really make some interesting trade-offs as you look at workload. And it just, it feels like, you know, and Robert here is our resident SKU stackologist. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

745.595

which definitely, I mean, there were times with Intel where you've got like these three different, where you had like gold, silver, and platinum, and you've got- Also bronze. Bronze, right. And it just, it did require like you to get a postdoc to figure out like which part you want. And Robert, what do you make of this Turin SKU stack?

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

764.143

I mean, it seems like it's a pretty clean SKU stack in terms of making different trade-offs as you go up and down it.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

800.575

Yeah. I mean, certainly. And I think that, that, you know, when on the Intel side, when you go from these P cores to E cores, Adam, you're going from the P is for performance and the E is for efficiency. You're like, Oh, as, uh, uh,

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

832.222

Yeah, because in particular, you don't have AVX-512 on those.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

86.224

And we were talking to another parent at the preschool, and she was saying that her daughter and Tobin were going to get married. I'm like, God, this kid's a real, gets around, real gigolo here. Well, as long as, you know, he's got his, I guess he's got, you know, when you're a four-year-old, I guess you have a playmate in every port. And we are at the beach.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

932.277

Well, and then it's like, so it's really tough too, because if you are, you know, in our position of like, we are selling a rack scale computer to someone who is making compute available to their kind of customers, right? We're asking, if you have to ask them, well, are you using AVX 512? They'll be like, I don't know. I have to go ask my users that.

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

954.7

And it makes it really hard, and you're kind of at this big fork in the road. So to be able to have a...

Oxide and Friends

Unshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)

965.225

to not have to give up i mean just as you said george to not have to compromise on isa and to get the same isa everywhere and yes you may be giving up you know you're making some trade-offs in terms of max frequency and so on but you're not like dropping off your trade-off is an area right right yeah you have to spend that area um but the

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

0.189

I'm sorry I'm being so weird.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

113.698

Right, because, I mean, they can't figure out three hours because they got another one of these to do in another half an hour. But they're just kind of rolling them through. But it was also... Anyway, it was weird. It was... And the RFDs, of course, I was feeding it were all the RFDs that were... going to be talking about today.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1230.249

As you point out, the amount of work, it's not clear that it's who we're saving work for. by doing something that's like lowest common denominator that I don't know where, I mean, and especially, I also think that like even DSL even, yes, I mean, this is a DSL, but this is a very little language, OXQL. It's not like... I mean, you're not like learning Haskell or something here.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1257.697

I mean, this is just like – I mean, I don't know. I feel that – I mean, I get the kind of the – we're obviously careful about that. But I think Benny made an important point that this was not our first conclusion. Our first conclusion was like, hey, we should do a query language. Good thing – because there is nothing else out there, we will invent our own. It was more like –

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

126.206

So I was feeding it RFD 463, getting the podcast before the podcast, which I dropped into the chat there. So if you want to hear synthetic hosts describe, with also like weird taglines. Did you notice that? I've got like, stay curious until next time. It's like, stay curious. Okay. Stay. Anyway, it was very weird. But Ben, welcome. Thank you.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1277.156

Let's try to make everything else work. And coming to the conclusion that we're just having to contort ourselves too much. And it's actually very liberating to be able to do our own DSL.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1289.54

And it's not like, I mean, this was not, I mean, not to downplay the amount of work involved, but this is also like you're using a bunch of tooling that makes it really much easier to develop a DSL than maybe it has been historically. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1456.508

It just feels like also with the, and again, I don't know how much of like, this is just like the Unix having seeped into my own DNA or is Unix kind of an outgrowing of the DNA that exists in all of us, right? I've got no way of actually differentiating those two, but it does feel like the pipe syntax to me feels pretty clear about intent.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1476.883

And it feels like we can also then do a lot of things on the back end to optimize that. Because you're being so clear about your intent and you're not having to do unholy things, we can actually make sure that we can optimize those use cases. You can use an entirely different ClickHouse feature. Just some of the things that we were brainstorming about.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1500.096

You could do a whole bunch of different things.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

154.105

So I feel we've kind of stepped on an exposed nerve ending for the internet here. I got a lot of people like this was, am I wrong? Yeah. To describe it as upsetting seems a bit too strong, but a lot of people are like, a lot of people have issues with this.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1628.263

What is the point of you're not actually getting SQL compatibility when you're not doing all these things? All these things have no relevance in this specific domain. There's a reason we have domain-specific languages. I just cannot emphasize this term enough because I think it is a great strength where we can create little languages easily.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1655.658

I think we should not be resistant to that because I think the kind of compatibility that you have by doing, let's say, SQL, as you're mentioning, it's like a false compatibility. It gives you the wrong intuition for the system. And it's like, sorry, this is not what the system is actually going to do underneath it. Yeah. you know what we're trying to do.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1679.048

And I, the other, another question that kind of came up in the chat is like, wait a minute, it's okay. So you said that like all anyone's going to do with this is like slurp it out. So like, why wouldn't you just use some other protocol that people already know? It's like, well, that's all because that's all a customer might want to do with it. We want to do a lot more than just slurp it out.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1694.054

We want to actually go and use it dynamically and, and be able to actually look at, look at the rack and ask questions of it. And so for us, we want something that is much more tightly tailored to that.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

181.204

Definitely skeptical. So we're talking about RFD 463, which is OXQL, which our synthetic podcast pronounced Oxquill over and over and over again. Ben, we've never pronounced it Oxquill, I think, right? I think it's OXQL, but now I can't unhear Oxquill, unfortunately.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1887.546

Okay, with post-mortem debugging, it's taken me quite literally decades, but I'm willing to acknowledge, okay, I am somehow an outlier with respect to society. This is some sort of software kink that I have with respect to being willing to debug a system from a static state. It's static in memory state. So, okay, fine, but weird. But histograms, really? Are we histogram radicals?

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

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I just didn't realize. Are we...

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1958.331

Yeah, for sure. And I think if we want to actually, now that I know that this is apparently a strange idea around histograms, you chase this through to Bonwick and Lockstat using histograms for looking at lock times, spend times, block times, and looking at that actual distribution of data.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1977.32

And so, I mean, honestly, it was when part of the reason we have aggregation as a first-class operation in D-Trace was because of our eye on Lockstat and replacing it. It's like, okay, this is important, this idea of getting a, what the distribution of data looks like.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

1993.071

And so, you know, I can't really thought about that, that, that, you know, maybe that was, that felt very commonsensical, but maybe I'm not giving Bono much enough credit. Maybe that was very iconoclastic to be thinking in terms of the distribution of data. I mean, he was a stats concentrator. It was a stats grad student.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2022.526

I do feel they're right. I think that you're right. That is recent. And I guess we've always just kind of run with sets of people for whom understanding the distribution of data has always been really, really important. And it just feels very natural that that would be a first-class operation.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

207.554

It does sound... It sounds like bovine Dayquil. Our development of a DSL, maybe this is in the way I'm phrasing it. Maybe I was too clickbaity with the way I phrased it. Is that a problem? Or something? What do you mean?

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2123.18

Yeah, when also if you look at the average, you don't actually understand that much about your data. And you think you do. It kind of gives you the sense of like, oh, this is what my data looks like. And it's like, well, you know, maybe.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2135.824

But you may want to get just a little more fidelity in what that actual, what the distribution looks like before you conclude that that's what your data looks like.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2233.308

And so obviously, ClickHouse was a natural fit in part because of the way they thought about the problem.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

232.506

No, you know, it's like, you know, I'm kind of throwing out a little bait for the podcast. So my tweet is, when is a new query language necessary? And clearly there's a decent portion of the internet for whom the answer to that question is actually never.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2391.264

And we have not scratched the surface of that kind of stuff that we can go do.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2400.699

And by critical wrong, but part of the appeal of a DSL here is the ability to add some functionality that would actually help us express some of that that we can get out of ClickHouse. Yeah, that's right. Through a consumer of that.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2489.062

So a question that I think may be very catalyzing for people to answer to is, is it a fair assumption that the main client of raw OXQL is Oxide-provided tooling, dashboards, alerting, et cetera? That's what that question is.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

250.757

Exactly. It's like, or it's just like, listen, if you're going to invent a new query language, like that's fine, but you need to get rid of one of these others. Like you need... And in particular, there was a quote tweet from Andy Pavlo, a distributed systems researcher at CMU. The quote tweet starts, Brian is brilliant, comma. You're like, oh, no. No, that's not good. No, that's a bad start.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2631.167

And you said the console, also I'd like to point out the CLI also has the ability to... Let's not sleep on the CLI's ability to visualize data.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

274.408

Basically, if someone is insulting me, I know they may be warming up to agree with me. It's the old, actually, I agree with Brian, quote. they're kind of like trying to establish their bona fides before they... They don't want to imply that they would agree with anything I say, but they are... Listen, Brian is often... It's Kelsey's line, right? I love Kelsey's line.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2764.605

And humility dashboard. I'm a little hurt that humility dashboard is not coming up here. Honestly, I was waiting for someone else to mention it, but apparently no one was going to, you know, it's not going to.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2779.002

Listen, I got to plug my own. Around here, you got to... You know what? I'm going to have the AI, my AI overlords, generate a podcast full of praise for Humility Dashboard. I think I need a little pick-me-up from my bots. But Humility Dashboard also is... This allows us to talk to a service processor and graph all of our environmentals, and it's been very... It's been great. I love Ratatouille.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2806.697

So much fun.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2824.338

Yes. Yeah, it is. It has been. It's been great. And it's been great. I also love writing software that the double E's use, because just, you know, they have lived such a tortured existence with respect to software. It's very nice when they can be delighted by software. I feel that the Ws live a hard life.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2846.669

And so when software can delight them, when they're not using some vendor-specific Windows goober that they need to program apart or something, you can actually give them something delightful. It's really great. They don't get nice things. It's really true. They don't get nice things. That's what I'm trying to say.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2863.092

They don't get nice things, and as a result, their standards are very low, and you can do very little work and give them something nice, and they are just

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2871.693

filled with praise it's great yeah um so yeah ratatouille's been that's been that's been fun in the end uh folks are asking if the code for that is available that is all open source all that stuff open source i think i mean it's all open source but all of oxql and the dashboard are well the dashboard is in um the oxal oxide cli that adam linked a minute ago um

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

2918.742

Can you speak a little bit to the implementation of the DSL, by the way? Assuming we've gotten people over the hump of like, that we've got the right to implement a DSL here. I'm not sure that we've got everyone on board with that. But you know what? Just bear with us. And can you get into kind of the mechanics of building that?

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

294.397

Brian is wrong some of the time, but not this time. I love that. But this is like, Brian is brilliant, comma, is like, this is the end of this. This is going straight into the ditch. But it seems misguided for a hardware company to create a custom query language that no other tool supports. If you don't want SQL, you could have used PromQL or PromQL.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3355.505

Let's face it, Adam, you and I would, left to our own devices, we would make this thing be an absolute navel-gazer. We'd be like, we are dedicating all of the resources of this rack to gazing at itself. Like Narcissus in the pool, it is enraptured by its own reflection, using all of its storage to store thermal data about itself.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3382.811

Yeah, I mean, look, let's just agree that we're glad that Ben is here to point out that they paid for it, so they should be able to use it for the things that they care about. Yeah, and I mean, this is where ClickHouse is just outrageously efficient with the way it stores things. It's mind-bending.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

344.35

Yeah, of course. This is an important observation. When Just enters an engineering discussion, yeah, you're right. You're like, okay, cocked eyebrow. Just often does do a lot of heavy lifting.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3493.411

Is this gorilla as in like Diane Fossey or gorilla as in like insurgency?

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

35.117

So to get it back. Um, So we, just to forgive the context before the context, the friend of the pod, Simon Wilson, had this blog entry that was on Hacker News describing this new feature from Google, from their Notebook LM, where they can generate podcasts from arbitrary material. And I've been entertaining myself by sending it RFDs and creating single podcast episodes on RFDs.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3504.878

We're talking about the Diane Fossey variant of gorilla, not actually the warfare variant of gorilla.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3515.464

I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of an O, not a U. It's not a, not gorilla.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3523.684

You do not pronounce those two things separately. I do not. Do you? Okay, thank God.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3615.558

Yeah, absolutely. Another question that came by was about getting how we are thinking about notifications when data does become abnormal or some definition of abnormal.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3710.939

And for the things, I mean, are we kind of thinking about, because in terms of like the amount of OXQL that's user-facing, I would assume for some of these things, we'll create new endpoints that will basically be distilled into OXQL queries, but will actually be an endpoint that will be its own endpoint.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3788.105

But I think... I'm very grateful for this approach. Speaking strictly selfishly, because when Eliza hooked all of those lower-level environmental metrics up, it just meant that it automatically... popped out at the top.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

384.538

Do people think we're creating our own instruction set architecture? I was like... I just get confused why this is engendering this kind of reaction, especially for like all of the stuff we've done. We've done like so much of our own. I mean, we've gone our own way so many times over. It's like, this is the one that is a bridge too far. It's like, listen, you guys.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

3894.048

So this is actually a really important point, I think, is that OXQL kind of gives us the foundation to figure out what you would want to distill into a perhaps even more limited abstraction. And it would be a lot harder to do that with using these other kind of query languages that felt like a much poorer fit for the underlying data model.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

411.075

We have our own switch. We developed our own switch. Yeah. Like that, although that's fine. No, that makes sense. You know, you're doing your, yeah, you're an embedded operating system, our own host operating system.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4121.431

Yes, it will. As much as you have. When I was saying earlier that ClickHouse likes to eat, that's what... It does.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4247.412

never stall for what we made. And then like every operations, a table scan, what have we made table scans really, really, really, really fast.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

429.251

It is. And it's like, but query language, no. No, now you've gone too far.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4328.97

And then in terms of, I mean, Ben, you've elaborated a bunch of directions that we want to go take this thing. I think that we want to, I mean, at the moment, I'm just like... it's great to actually have a bunch of data in this that we can go mess around with. Yes. And actually go learn the kinds of things that we want to go do. We know that ClickHouse gives us the right foundation.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4352.957

We think OXQL gives us the right foundation. And then what are the things that we want to go add either additions to OXQL we want to make, and then especially applications we want to build on top of this to allow one to make better sense of kind of rack-level and ultimately multi-rack-level data.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4430.814

I mean, in many ways, our decisions around ClickHouse and Cockroach have almost opposite constraints. Correct. And we have really made two very different decisions there for very different reasons. We would not want to... Certainly, it's hard to see one database ruling them all. These are two extremely different ways of thinking about data, looking at data, reasoning about data.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

448.66

Yeah, and also, like, we're also not, like, advocating for the elimination of any other query language. That's the other thing. I feel like we're not actually... People can use whatever query language. I mean, we're not... We're kind of encouraged. It's just a DSL that we developed for our own use, really. So, Ben, do you want to describe kind of the origin of how we got here? And I thought...

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4505.699

similarly I don't think we want to put like instance information in Klaus so yeah I think we can agree that these are these are very different problems oh and one thing I wanted to when we were talking about just like using peg and so on and these other various rust crates um

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4524.381

I'm going to bring up Antler. That's exactly where I'm going. I'm going to Antler. So where are you? I mean, you're an Antler lover, just to be clear.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4586.84

Brian is brilliant, comma. Uh-oh, here we go.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

468.346

Maybe we would take half a step back, because we've tried to open up a bunch of the surrounding RFDs that get us to 463 or why 463 is relevant. Do you want to talk a little bit about 125 and how we got to ClickHouse? Because I think that's a big part of why not promQL, promQL.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4730.529

I think that DSLs are... When someone is developing a DSL, it is almost always coming out of exhausting the alternatives. I think.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4824.703

Totally. And, you know, I think that we... I've always found that these little languages... we've never developed them superfluously, I think. In fact, I think to the contrary, sometimes we think we got something, we want to use something general purpose.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4842.519

We try to make something general purpose work and you realize this is actually creating more drag than it's solving a problem for all the reasons you mentioned at the top. Actually, a former colleague of ours, Mike Shapiro, wrote a uh, ACMQ paper years ago on, on purpose-built languages, uh, featuring MDB, um, and are talking about ADB and, and the language in ADB. So, um, um,

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

4871.778

Okay, I'm gathering from the chat that apparently there are some DSLs out there that feel more elective. I realized that now I have turned into like, people are like, you've gone from an okay, fine, like, oh, XQL, we reluctantly acknowledge its right to exist. But now you're just like a DSL apologist? Now it's like any DSL. You're a DSL maximalist.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5052.638

Yeah, which I think actually gives us terrific power. I mean, I think that that's a very important layer of abstraction that we've injected. I also think, and I know you mentioned this at the top, but in terms of why not SQL, you also don't want to give people the impression like, oh, this is great, it's SQL, I know that.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

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It's like, no, no, no, sorry, did you miss the 16 asterisks that are after SQL? It's like, this is actually not just SQL, sorry. Okay.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5279.527

Yeah. Totally. Well, and I mean, I think that I know that we've gone our own way on lots of different things. Again, I think it's kind of, it's still surprising to me that the query language is like the bridge too far for the internet. The mob has shown up with the kind of the pitchforks and torches here. But the, I mean, we also did our own P4 compiler. We're going to talk about that. We did.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5301.623

I mean, This isn't even our own... We've done other compilers. We've done multiple operating systems.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5335.395

Oh, yeah, sure.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5339.372

Obviously the database people are like, I don't care. Yeah. Do your own switch. It's fine. It's like, no, no, you're sorry. You don't understand how like that's madness. Like that actually is. Yeah. But the query language, that's just, that's great. Right. Right. So I think, but I would say that just in general, when we make one of these decisions, it's because we have exhausted the alternatives.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5357.975

Like we have not done on any of our own Silicon people. Like just, just, you know, just clip that one.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5368.079

We certainly, there is all, there are plenty of folks at Oxide who are, who exactly, everyone's like, we haven't done our own silicon yet. Right. And there is plenty, you know, we haven't written our own database yet. Yet. We have not written our own database yet.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5383.473

Don't you think that feels more... But we also have already announced that we're supporting our own database with respect to Cockroach. That's right. Yeah, look. But we are not doing our own silicon. And that's basically it. We have that in our own instruction set architecture. I mean, I don't know. There are things we have. But we are doing these things on every one of these decisions.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5405.71

It is almost certainly the case that we actually went into, we assumed that we were going to use, you know, we assumed we were going to use talk before we came to Hubris. We assumed that we were, and I think for all of these things, we certainly were using Intel's tooling with respect to P4 before we kind of came to the conclusion we need to do our own P4 compiler. I mean, for all of these things,

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5426.816

We went in wanting to use something else and then realizing this doesn't fit exactly. And I think, Ben, as you mentioned, we have great apprehension when we go our own way. I know it doesn't feel like it, honestly, that you people have any. Are you sure you have any apprehension? It doesn't really feel like it.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5444.691

For people that have apprehension about going your own way, you sure go your own way a lot. It's like, well, yes, I know. I know. I get it. It's a bad look. But we do go our own way. We do have apprehension about it. We do really carefully deliberate on this stuff. And this was, I think, to me, this is a very clear example where going our own way is the right decision.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5463.287

Ben, I do not have your apprehensions about OXQL.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5497.731

I am. I'm also glad that someone has mentioned the AT&T Hobbit in the chat. I am less than like 50 feet away from an AT&T Hobbit manual here in the Oxford office. I think to point out just to our, our, our, there's our return to the office conversation. I like to return to the office just to be close to my AT&T Hobbit manual, but we are, um, Well, Ben, this has been great. Thank you very much.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5519.043

In terms of comparing this to your thesis defense, do you feel the questions were, how did these two compare? You're just like, hey, next time I would do something less stressful, like get a PhD.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5544.759

I'm glad you brought this up because we now would like you to leave. And now we're going to invite everyone up on stage and we're going to discuss whether the novelty of OXQL and whether you should have just used SQL.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5573.518

Oh, OK. Oh, yeah. Thanks. Thanks for bearing the lead there. I mean, I was curious. Right. Yeah. Oh, my God. I got to say, like, if you have news, big news, bad news, good news, do not bury the lead. Just this is like life lesson. Just get that news out there like early.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5592.102

You know, like what's going to call from the from the disciplinary end of the high school, the assistant principal for discipline. And clearly this person has dealt with a lot of people because the first thing she said, I'm like, oh, my God, it's a disciplinary from the high school. Like, oh, like. Do I need a lawyer, basically, is my first thought. It's just like, it's good news.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5609.971

Like, okay, it's good. That was nice of them. Oh, very nice of them. Very nice of them. And also, like, I mean, the whole thing was nice. It was very nice that they called with good news. Which is good. It's not always good news. So, you know, if it had been bad news, like, let's lead with that. Anyway, so there you go. Well, Ben, I'd like to lead you, lead with the good news.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5631.103

I think OXQL is awesome. And I'm really glad you...

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5634.781

And I'm a DSL maximalist, so there, everybody.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5667.156

Yeah. And we test ran the new AHL bot. Adam has been completely replaced with an AI. That seemed plausible. I don't know. I bought it this whole time. Yeah, exactly.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5679.703

That's right. Just somebody mentioned Antler, it'll immediately start generating. Exactly. And, uh, and, and check out the, uh, we, we dropped the link in the chat to the auto podcast. That was very creepy. They were talking about at the top. It's kind of fun to check.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

5698.029

It's creepy. For, uh, well, Ben, thanks again for Oxquill. Um, and I'm going to go take it so I can go to bed. All right. Stay curious, everybody. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Talk to you next time. Bye.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

64.707

And they've just been super...

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

7.118

With the auto-generated podcasts, it's mesmerizing. I can't stop. It's really weird. So Ben, I'm sorry. I was also sending Ben all these, obviously. Uh, you, you have now you've lost your, your gravitas voice. I don't know. I'm taking you a little less seriously right now. You get kind of back to, back to clown college.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

709.546

And just to be clear, what data are we storing here? Because I think people have kind of a natural question of what ramifications does this have for the user of the rack? The decision around ClickHouse is really an implementation decision.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

873.956

I mean, what is this going to hold, basically?

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

89.395

And they're very cheerful and they are very interested in promoting whatever document it is that you've put in front of them. They definitely believe whatever they've just read.

Oxide and Friends

Querying Metrics with OxQL

979.861

And we're not precluding anyone from slurping this data out and shoving it into some other system that they might want that has some other query language that they... No.

Oxide and Friends

RTO or GTFO

1396.843

Sorry.

Oxide and Friends

RTO or GTFO

33.432

This is your opportunity.

Oxide and Friends

RTO or GTFO

5649.556

Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

0.249

I think I've invited Robert to speak.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

10.495

Listen, the podcast starts when Craig and GRX says it starts. I also do love this is we getting a little bit of a Tomax and Zaymont thing and that they like, you would think you might have some redundancy with the twins here, but they actually apparently think with a like mind.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1006.502

Okay, so this is a really interesting point about kind of learning how to learn and help not being on the way. Like there's no one, you're in a subsystem where there is actually, like you are going to be, if you're not already, you're going to be the local domain expert. So do you have a particular methodology when you're,

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1025.572

When you're going into... I mean, one of the things that you, among your many special attributes, I mean, you're a terrific code reviewer. And I mean, how much do you go into a kind of a new subsystem just by looking at the actual code?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1069.574

Yeah, god. That's amazing.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1107.255

Are you, do you, when you're kind of in a new subsystem like that, trying to ramp up on it, are you like writing down questions that you're trying to answer?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

113.163

Like, I've clearly missed something. I'm like, have I missed a like annual celebration that we do about, and then my mind's going to super weird places. Like, have I always been like out for our Mistaki appreciation week? Is that a source of resentment that Robert, I mean, I just don't know, you know, I'm just like, and I'm like, where is RM.C? Um,

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1223.697

Yeah, that's really interesting because I mean, all three of us were TAs as undergraduates. It's very formative for all of us. And yeah, I mean, this is not a deep thought and anyone who's taught knows this, but boy, when you teach something, you have to learn it with a whole different level of mastery. It's not...

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1242.054

Um, like you even, you can even do well in the course and then you go to TA and you're like, Oh my God, how did I even like pass this thing? I barely like, I, I really, I'm learning so much more because when people ask you, sometimes when people will ask you a question and you'll give an answer, well, they'll be like, Oh yeah, that's like a convincing answer.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1258.982

And you're like, that is not a commitment. Like you are convinced by this answer because you don't actually, you're asking me the question because you don't actually know, but I actually know the limitation of my own knowledge and I have not given you a very good answer actually. And I actually need to go research that because I'm not, So that's interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1273.564

And then, Robert, I also think it's interesting that you mentioned the block comment that actually gets... Because, I mean, your block comments are... I mean, Nepu's Ultra. The ASCII art in your block comments is the stuff of legend.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1286.948

And I say this as someone who prides himself on his own ASCII art in my own block comments, but... Honestly, it's mostly just because I don't... If I don't do it, I'm going to forget it all.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

131.716

And so I did, I looked for, I went to some pretty obscure places looking for this thing. And I finally, I, I can't find it. And I'm looking at some, by the way, I do not recommend looking at some of these RM, RM.C. I mean, and Robert, I guess this is the curse of having a, a name that is a, an old Unix command, but Hey, you know, I've got BMC over here, baseboard management controller.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1310.8

Uh, well, the number of times we often talk about past Robert around here and you will be like, we'll have a question. You're like, God, I don't know. I'm like, actually past Robert knows the answer to that question. I actually know that. And then like, fortunately past me wrote this down. I have heard you say that so many times over our shared career.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

1328.111

And, um, but it's so, cause you mentioned that like when you're stuck, write a debugging, write debugging tooling. I definitely agree with that. But when you're stuck, you also write the, the,

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Robert's cursive is remarkable. It's fair to say. It gives me great... Robert, there have been times when I have asked you to go back and read your own cursive, and even you can struggle. It is beautiful, but it's just like... It's got this very... Obviously, you've seen plenty of Robert's cursive. I feel like I'm reading a letter that Alexander Hamilton wrote to me. You know what I mean?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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It's got like, it's got that kind of like 18th century vibe to it, which is like, I, this is, it's gorgeous, but I just can't make it out. So, Robert, this was all, I mean, kind of as the years go by at Joy-In, I mean, you're going into, like, kind of rappelling down into deeper and deeper caverns.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I assume. Do you want to describe what we saw on the internet and where that kind of led you?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Yes, and it has become a Hacker News story on January 1st, 2018, if memory serves. And... I think I am. I mean, certainly, Alex, I'm sure saw it first. I definitely DM'd you being like, are we? Do you think this affects us? You're like, I don't know. We're learning about this for the first time.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And this is us learning about Spectre and Meltdown and then discovering that we are vulnerable and we are running in production and a public cloud and Meltdown in particular. was really, really acute. John Masters had done terrific work having a real vivid proof of concept of Meltdown.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I'm not, it's not, it's not good over here. Uh, have you ever been in RM.C?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I... You know, it's funny. Like that is definitely like not a question we were going to go answer because it was like, it's not actionable. It's you're just like, how far is it down to the bottom? And it's like, it is enough. And you're at a height where you're going to die and nothing else actually matters. So it's like, beyond that, right.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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It was a lot. And Alex and Robert needed to go implement kernel page table isolation. And I mean, Robert, maybe that doesn't stand out for you as much as it does for me, but that is one of the singular engineering efforts I feel I've ever been kind of in the proximity of. I mean, it was really... extraordinary.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Maybe the pressure was clarifying because you're just like, well, I didn't create this problem. It's very clear what to go do. There's not a question about what is the highest priority thing to go do, which I feel is something as engineers we always grapple with. It's like the highest priority thing is to go do this neurosurgery on the VM system.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Uh, I have a little bit.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Yeah, it is really not a good looking file, but I can't find this thing. And so finally, after like a half an hour, I'm like, okay, look, I'm going to have to ask the embarrassing question. Like, where is RM.C? He's like, oh, no, I just made all that up. He's like, but he said, but there should be a Robert Moustaki Appreciation Week. I'm like, okay, all right, there we go. There we are.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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but could you talk a little bit about the problem we were solving? Like what was the problem that we needed to go solve? What actually is this? And this is to be clear, this is for meltdown, not for specter, but meltdown was a much more acute.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And this has always been in x86. I mean, other architectures have done, like Spark did things differently with address space identifiers.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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There definitely should be.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And to be clear, the way you would do that is because you can, what you are controlling, you should not have been able to control, but you are able to get this thing to do a load for you, but you can't see the results. So the trick is how do I exploit the side effects of that load, namely allocating in the cache and, And then what can I go do to exploit those?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And the things you can go support, as it turns out, you can have a conditional branch that then also gets executed speculatively. And then that can do something else in the cache that you can then go observe the side effects of. So you can kind of chain together.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Robert, we are very grateful for you joining us. And actually, it was funny because just earlier today, we had someone by the office who was asking about how have you managed at Oxide? How have you done hardware software code design? How are you able to do that? It's organizationally challenging. It's obviously technically challenging.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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People may want to know, because I think one question people have is like, well, wait a minute, why didn't someone discover this a lot earlier? And the answer is like, it's sophisticated in that you... You do have to kind of chain these things together. And I think that this had been kind of in the abstract. We knew that kind of speculative attacks could happen.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I don't think anyone thought that they were going to be this brazen. And in particular, it is really bad that it would speculatively execute on these addresses that you don't have the ability to read. The chip should never have done that.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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You really can't speculate. I mean, with Eagle Air for you in particular, and this is like fast forward now, I don't know, maybe nine months or 10 months, and we're having kind of like these constant calls with Intel where they're reviewing yet more. Because it is also true that like once the group discovered Spectrum Meltdown,

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And I mean, we knew this was going to be just like, oh, my God, it's going to be an absolute bonanza because now people know this is a target rich environment and I can now go explore every unit in the part. And Robert, I think it was eager FPU when I had missed the call with Intel because of another another conflict. And you said, well, we've got another disclosure.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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What is the one unit we have not yet heard about from them? And I'm like, we've not heard anything about the FPU. You're like, yes, it's the FPU. It's like, oh my God, literally every unit.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Yeah, I think that the, because I agree, Adam, and I think that like, I don't know, Robert, sorry to speak about you in the third person, but I feel like that is something that I feel I've kind of have seen more at like at Oxide where it's like at Joint, like you dove deep into so many different domains and then coming to Oxide, maybe it's a good opportunity to kind of fast forward to Oxide a little bit.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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But, you know, when we started the company, and able to raise money and were able to convince you to join us. And you'd been thinking about a lot of these, you'd gone deep in a lot of these disparate areas to the point that you were now really beginning to synthesize them. And maybe it was just that Oxide gave us the opportunity to do that synthesis.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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But is that, I mean, as you kind of think about your own story, is that kind of when that synthesis really begins to come into focus?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And I was like, you have to tune in to the podcast tonight when we have Robert on for holistic engineering. So Robert, you and I have had the blessing of working together for a really long time. For much of your professional career, and much of my professional career at this point too, but I guess a greater percentage of yours, just given our relative differences in age. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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It would be like 2014, maybe even 2013.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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First hire? And also I feel we definitely, I so desperate for Robert that as soon as Robert is Robert kind of like tentatively said, like, I guess I work here now. We were both like, yes, yes, you work here now. Yes, yes, you work here. There was a moment where we're just like, okay, sorry, Robert, you can't take it back. Now you work here.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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It takes a special... And Robert really, obviously, appreciate the... Because the company's nothing at that point. And again, I know vividly where I was anyway, Robert. I don't know if you remember where we were, but on Jess's little back deck there as... You'd obviously had some questions. I felt we kind of knocked down all the questions and you're like, all right, I guess I'm in. I don't know.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Yes. Yeah. And not too long thereafter. And I want to get Robert back to dog patch in a second, but, um, and I'll, I'll, I'll definitely drop this photo into the chat because I've got, I mean, is it the whiteboard?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Yeah, I mean, it was really great because we had all these different So Robert is, we've got all these kind of different elements of the system. And Robert is like trying to figure out like, okay, what are the kind of the connections between, you know, the root of trust and, you know, we've got the switch, we've got all these different elements.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And I'm like, this is going to be a fully connected graph. And sure enough, after not too long, it was. So yeah, I'll drop in that photo, Robert, but it's definitely a great one. But would you mind actually, just to go back to Adam's question, what was Dogpatch? What were the problems you were thinking about with respect to Dogpatch?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

238.565

But you came out to Sun as a, well, you originally did microelectronics, right? As an intern in 2008, maybe? When was that?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

2465.263

And so you were literally lighting the wrong LED.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

2470.644

Hey, a drive failed. Come on.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

2473.805

Exactly. Actually, like a drive failed. So I want you to remove one of the good ones. Did that help?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

2544.711

Oh my God, Diet Coke just almost came out of my nose. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Oh, God. Yeah. I needed a little bit of a warning on that one.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Robert's being very forgiving to not mention this, but this is when we first heard about Redfish.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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um for whatever reason i somehow got i i'm like i think this can really help us i'm like redfish this seems really interesting this is going to solve exactly this kind of problem that you mentioned and remember i remember you being like i don't think you understand what this is like that's not gonna you know no sorry this is taking an htp layer and smearing it on on top of the same garbage this is no this is not gonna help us at all this is and of course everybody's like no wait a minute i'm sorry

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I've lived that. Right. Okay. So then, and then the next summer you interned, that was the next summer that you interned with us at fish works in San Francisco. Right. Is that right? Yeah. Right. And that was great, obviously. And then we had, if I may, I'm sorry.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Listen, Tomax and Zaymont shared the pain. These guys share permissions. It makes more sense. It's a little less fantastical. It's a little more pedestrian, a little more quotidian, but come on. I mean, this is just like, you know, we're just trying to be realistic over here. There you go. Robert, you're here. Yeah, good evening. Excellent. How are you?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And this is, again, this is at Oxide. I dropped the dog patch deck from Joyent into the chat, Robert, but circa 2014 is when I got it. And actually, 2014 on there. And you will see a lot of the Oxide vision there in terms of illuminating both BIOS and UEFI. Much easier said than done. Well, no one took us up on it, so... No one took us up on it. And so, I mean, a bunch of things.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I mean, one, I mean, I think this is the kind of thing that nobody disagreed with us, that this is the right thing to go do. But it just seemed like, God, it seems really, really, really, really hard. AMD thought it was impossible. And it was in order for us to, I mean, this is the part of the part that is not well-documented.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Um, oh, and I mean, do you want to describe some of your trials and tribulations about like, how did we do this? How did we pull off this? Because I mean, I think this is, I mean, unfortunately, like we had AMD's cooperation at the level of AMD was not going to like get in our way. Right. I mean, AMD is like, what you're doing is so hard.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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We don't know how to help you, but we're also like, we're supportive of this effort in the abstract, which is extremely important. Um, but it's also not hugely, hugely helpful. How did we go about on that particular problem?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Hey, listen. Sorry. You'll take it. You'll take what you get. That's ahead of the class for you. That's terrific. They did actually one better in a very important way. And this is why people may have seen the OpenSil effort from AMD around OpenSil and initialization.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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We are very, very supportive of that effort, even though we're not using it at all, because it was tacking in... AMD was going in a lot of the same directions that we were going. So it actually... But... What we were doing was far earlier than OpenCell, before OpenCell was really just kind of still in its kind of earliest phases. So we really were on our own.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

2951.72

And Robert, talk about, I mean, surely the work that you did there to understand AGISA has got to rank as one of your most challenging projects in terms of understanding a foreign code base.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

3113.161

To just... It's presumably where ACPI tables are created as well, right?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

3128.143

And it also should be added Robert that it, so you're like, okay, so you've got this like early platform initialization thing. So you have to like follow all the, just the code flow through that. It's like, yeah, about the code flow, describe what makes following the code flow through here. Absolutely brutal.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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It really did launch a thousand ships. Adam, I'm really glad you mentioned this because people thought they were tuning in for holistic engineering and they're actually tuning in for the origin story of what we call Food for Money Friday. So do you, Adam, would you want to, I mean, Robert, may Adam do the honors to tell the origin story of Food for Money Friday? Because I do think it's important.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Well, and so unlike with the kind of other things, like when you went into the page tables to understand that, to understand the VM system, you're armed with the source code and you also have some tools that you can use to actually observe the running dynamic system. You don't have any of that here. You have, or very, very little.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I mean, I guess the thing that you could, I mean, you can go dork with some of these attributes, right?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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these apcb tokens and you can i guess watch how this and i guess you did do that because i know at least once you're like could you go over to this machine and see what's happening uh because i was in the office and you were not um and i'm like this machine yeah i'll say that so that was that was a very different uh yeah that that was uh dealing with the hitting one of the hitting cores

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Right, right, right. That was actually sending messages. Right, right. This is on our own software. You're not actually trying to understand their software. You're actually running our own software.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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going off the system and you know it was powering off yes yeah it was it this is like you were putting a message in a bottle there's a lot of like messages in the bottle where you're putting a message in a bottle you're sending it out to one of these other hidden cores um on the die and in this case you're putting the message in the bottle chucking it towards the island and then the island was somehow like bursting into flames and sinking into the ocean

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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you're like i i don't send that one i guess like okay like okay that's a that's a no thank you on that message let me go yeah the island launched global thermonuclear war so like whoa okay uh and it's brutal yeah and that one came down to a um

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I mean, it sounds... Depends. It's a lot of... I think we... Yeah, go ahead.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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You would love to have so much to iterate on that you're blocked on the iteration loop, which, yes, is like 20 minutes, but that's not even the problem. You have the despair loop, which is actually much longer. Oh, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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That's right. Well, and I do wonder on some of that stuff, because Robert, so frequently you tackle these problems where the stakes are high. If we don't resolve this problem, we've got a serious issue. But you've always got a very cool head when you go to debug these. Do you just have an innate sense of confidence? Are you not as scared as I am? I'm terrified. Are you not terrified?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Well, and I think that, I mean, because it's part of what is so kind of remarkable about the way you are able to approach the system is you do oscillate from these, the absolute lowest layers of implementation, like really stuff that is often like does not have a lot of, eyes on it.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I mean, like the deepest aspects of system implementation, ones that are absolutely required for system correctness and liveness. And then you're able to oscillate back up to this really much broader view. I mean, we need to drop a link to RFD 63 in here.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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but in terms of like, you know, just, so at the same time, you're kind of like in the, the kind of the deepest possible muck in the, the lowest levels of the system in terms of, of early boot, you're also like at the whiteboard in terms of conceiving of, of what the kind of the networking interfaces we want to have for customers and the way we kind of think of that problem. Um,

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I mean, could you speak to that a little bit? Because I mean, just that ability to oscillate, I just feel is extraordinary. And it's been such an asset, I think to your teammates so many times over.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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That's right. That's why butter is in this packaging that's really hard to open because Robert was smurfing butter back in 2009. And so they put a lot of legislation plates under lock and key. You got to ring the bell. Someone comes and locks it for you anyway.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

3814.187

I know we go to this metaphor a lot, Adam, but I'm sorry. These are the Federalist Papers for Oxide. These early RFDs from Robert.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Yeah. I mean, no, that's a great answer. And I think it's, I mean, it is really, I mean, I, and I have always believed, I mean, Adam, you told me, this is like our, a unifying belief I would say across the company is that details really, really matter.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And that you, that if you want to understand things at the highest level of a system and understand how these big pieces go together, you really need to understand low level details in order to be, because if you don't, that's where you get these kinds of emergent behavior. that really runs contrary to the goals you have as a system. So I think it's really, really important.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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But I mean, your ability to do it, Robert, has just been extraordinary. And the thing that I want to ask you about, because as you say, like, okay, it's early, so you're putting together the kind of, as our John Jay, you're putting together the Federalist Papers of Oxide. But we are then adding people to the company that are able to go and pick up pieces of that.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And you've always been, I think, terrific about really enabling other people to go pick up these pieces. I don't think anyone has ever felt like, oh God, I can't touch networking because I can't touch this aspect of the system. Because you're always like, no, no, please, someone, please come on in. Water's warm.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

3987.867

We'd love to help you, ramp you up and help you understand what I understand so you can go tackle this. Can you speak to that a little bit as well? Because I think that's part of what has been has enabled you to be so effective.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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we got into this in the RFD episode that you joined us for.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

4063.766

I mean, but obviously, I mean, you are our most prolific RFD author and you know, I think it's been great for people to kind of be able to join the company and are actually also, I've had, I'm sure you've had this too, Adam, where like people who have not yet joined the company, like Robert, you're famous to people who have not yet joined the company.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I don't think that's part of it's correct, but okay.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Cause you're just like, I've read this guy's work. I want to meet this person. Like this is, I feel like I know their voice.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Right. Yeah. Well, and I think, I mean, just getting into PCIe, because I mean, it's another total, someone in the chat, PCIe is a plug. Yes. Oh, yes. I mean, another, and it feels like, you know, this is true for all of these domains where it is an entire universe of complexity. And I mean, having, you know, kind of helping people navigate it

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And then I've always felt that like, you know, you're so charitable with your own knowledge. It definitely, I think I feel anyway that you inspire people like, oh yeah, I can learn this stuff too. Like I can actually, this stuff is actually learnable. This is, it feels like it's very dense and I don't understand it yet, but I just need to, I can do it.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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So it is my recollection, Robert, go ahead. What is your recollection?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I can actually learn this stuff, which is very inspiring because there's a lot to go learn. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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you want to talk a little bit about like the just as a very concrete example i'm not sure if you want to take the this recent t6 problem and or this recent lr dim problem and or both as i kind of i just say another actually no but before we do that actually yes or good no thank you actually let me back up because i actually have a different question i want to ask you then we'll get to those

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Because one of the things that I definitely appreciate about, again, the way you think about the system is, and I know other people have appreciated it as well, is your ability to seemingly see around corners. And the number of times I will hit an issue

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And then I go into an old RFD of yours where it's like, I look under my chair and like, oh my God, Robert has already written a dissertation on this exact issue that I've grappled with and that I even read at the time, but didn't really appreciate.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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How do you – I mean, because I feel it's like a real – I mean, it's a tremendous gift, for lack of a better word, to be able to kind of project a system into the future and anticipate some of the issues that we're going to hit on a system that's not yet built. Do you have any tricks for doing that? I mean, is that – how do you do it?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Yeah. It's been gone. And my recollection, and actually it's interesting that we've got like a, the difference of dollar figure. I recall it being $10. Okay. Okay. Well, maybe it was five inflation adjustment. I'll give you 10 bucks to eat the rest of it.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Um, it would make a lot of sense though, if you did like, you know, maybe that now might be the time.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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When I also think that this is where the amount of time you spent in the details just really helps inform your engineering wisdom. I mean, just to give you a really concrete example of your wisdom and how we benefited from it recently, we had a Murata Power Shelf issue. that Eric Austin and our team had done a terrific job debugging. And Eric is like, I think this is a control loop issue.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And I think we're going to need, we're going to get a firmware drop from Murata that fixes this. And I remember thinking like, wow, that is, I mean, in some ways that'd be great. But this is a problem that we definitely needed to resolve. Murata did a great job, resolved it. And fortunately, we had a mechanism that, We had not built anything on top of. We had not built any of the software.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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But the actual PowerShell itself had a mechanism to update its software. And that's something that you really believed in strongly when we were looking at PowerShell selection. I just think it's an example of what I mean of where...

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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It is like 10.30 in the morning. Which is going to be important later. I am extremely intrigued by this offer. This offer is extremely interesting to me. I feel like this is not something that had happened in the past because I just felt like this was like a bolt of lightning. Maybe you call back to my youth of like, I can earn money while doing what I'm best at, eating.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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not just evaluating the artifact you have in front of you, but what could potentially go wrong with this where we would need to be able to update the firmware on a PSU that is not necessarily the first thing that a lot of people would think about. And You kind of have to have a certain kind of quantity of scar tissue to really be able to think about it. And for many years, we didn't need it.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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For many years, it would have felt like, well, I don't know, maybe this firmware always does work. But now, of course, we do need it. But we were able to build on top of it, and it's all worked, and we were able to upgrade the firmware. It was terrific. But it was a great example of you really saw around a very important corner.

Oxide and Friends

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Just asking yourself that question for all these. Because, I mean, as a result, like we did, I mean, the fact that we did our own PowerShell controller, which is not necessarily the first thing that I think other people would think about. And, I mean, Murata, I would say Murata, some other PowerShell players,

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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uh manufacturers had different opinions about us doing that um and uh it was a real tribute part of the the reason that we have a great relationship with marauders because they were willing to accommodate the fact that we're like no we're we're chucking out your power shelf control we want to do our own um

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And that was a very, very, very good decision because it gave us control over – and not just the ability to update the firmware, although also that too now, but just the level of observability into a part of the system that doesn't generally get that kind of observability.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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So this is like, okay, I am extremely interested, but I have to leave for a meeting. I have got like a...

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

4823.359

Yeah, so I'm going to try to make RFD 82 public while we're in the podcast. So RFD 82 is not currently public, but I think it's a very good one to make public because that really captures, I think, an important aspect of your own approach and you're thinking about the way we ask different questions of different parts of the system.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

4885.286

So it's not, you know. I think I've just made it too public. Sorry.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

4897.191

Definitely made something public. So let's hope it's RFD 82. So you may or may not, it may take a second for the, this is like us, this is a terrific RFD API. So that may take a second, but hopefully people will be able to see that at some point real soon. Okay, so the... And I think, Robert, 82 is a great one in terms of your, again, your own kind of disposition. So maybe to kind of...

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

4929.352

just dive back down into some of these specific technical details of things that you've been dealing with recently. I mean, the T6 issue is a really interesting issue. I'm not sure if you're willing to get into the weeds on that one, but I do think that it's very concrete. How much do you know about this one, Adam? Have you...

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

495.107

I absolutely wanted to, I like, this, you have made an intriguing offer. One that it didn't even occur to me to counter offer.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

4964.024

Uh, in the current generation, current generation, part of me. So this is, um, in, in Gilmour.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

4974.234

So there's something... In stark contrast to the rest of the system where we are just like... Down the fairway. Down the fairway, exactly. It's like we also are a little weird with the neck. So welcome to Oxide.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5099.737

Importantly, this means we're able to do this. This is not the SP running in some context before the host CPU is up. This is the host CPU is able to do this while it itself is up.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

51.164

You know, our former colleague, Alex Wilson, said, you know, it is really great to see you kicking off Robert Moustaki Appreciation Week this way.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

517.765

That is my recollection, too, and like an idea whose time had come, this just exploded. I mean, everybody, I mean, I had to run for the meeting, and it felt like within seconds the pot was at $75.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5211.495

Right. And this is like having the recovery path be the primary path, Adam. It's like this is so you don't you don't have this kind of path that you rarely execute that when you needed to execute doesn't work. And it also because this is a real problem with like Nix have gotten really, really complicated. And it's like, oh, by the way, there's another computer over there.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5231.345

I mean, it's not really clear like who's in charge of the system anyway. And especially with like, you know, smart necks, they're being pretty overt about like, no, I've got my own CPU. I've got like, I load my own OS image. And it's like, no, no, no, we don't want any of that.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5249.797

We want to actually be, we want to have all this information flow in a way that it's attestable, that we know exactly what we're putting out there, where we're So we don't want that level of autonomy out of the system. We don't want this thing for a bunch of reasons. Security, reliability, a bunch of things. So...

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5269.797

I mean, this felt like a huge, uh, win that we can use this manufacturing mode to do this. I mean, they're really a real important aspect. I mean, it kind of reminds me of the, our, the fact that we, we don't actually do warm resets. We only boot because we don't want to have this kind of like state accruing in places.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5317.789

Yeah, actually, this is a very good point, Robert, because it's like, I do feel that when we, you know, I had always thought that like, you know, there's kind of this back and forth over the what controls a certain aspect of the system, whether it's the SP or the kind of the host CPU.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5331.818

And there's a kind of a Conway's law thing that, you know, you've got different orgs that are kind of dueling for power, which we don't have at Oxide.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5337.919

But like, even if you are like, you have like total organizational harmony, just when you have something that is effectively dual ported, that is kind of owned by two things, you have all of these like electrical issues that are really thorny about, as you say, like level translation, which is a bunch of stuff that,

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

536.113

Right, and then our colleague Julie gets wind of this, and she's like, wait a minute, is someone like... is someone offering $75 for someone to eat all of that cheesecake? Like I am, I'm definitely in, I'm going to eat it all. Yeah. It's like, great. I leave.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5441.334

And so when you say it does not train, what does training a link mean? Who's doing that training, and what does it mean when it fails to train?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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I don't want to go into, I don't want to go into the entire IOC rule book here in terms of the, you know, but with the, you know, was it a sanctioned event? You know, there's like, listen, there's a lot of, uh, And I came back to Julie looking in front. Robert, what is your recollection? I recall her having like one, one and a half inch by one and a half inch square remaining.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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It's amazing. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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So that is what it means to train. So when we're not training occasionally in manufacturing mode, we're just giving up on this. That device is just not working. I don't know why.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5768.957

state machine um and how are we are we able to query that because of our own holistic boot because we who's got access to that so that that you could actually uh anyone who has access to the system management network so it doesn't strictly speaking need to have holistic boot um

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

5907.315

Yeah, totally. So you were able to go through that to figure out why is this thing not training?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

596.668

I guess, am I in the country of crime or merely to very poor judgment?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Mom is here right now. So we need to, I'm setting the mom is here, but bit, we need to actually do something slightly differently. Um,

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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And you're just like, Julie, well, just like, come on. I was like, just put it in your mouth and force yourself to eat it. She's like, that's what I've been doing. That's what I did for the last four of these squares. Like, I literally can't look at it without wanting to throw up.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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We actually don't care about the throughput in this manufacturing mode where we're just trying to... Yeah, the difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2 is not going to

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6207.864

Dissatisfying that we don't know what's going on. We also learned in this that as it turns out, this mode, we think this makes a lot of sense to use this manufacturing mode on every boot. But it may make... It's a little more unusual from Chelsea's perspective.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6249.313

This was hugely important because these were, I mean, when we, in our testing in manufacturing, when these things were failing to come into manufacturing mode, we effectively, we like would not ship that sled. Because we didn't know what the issue was. And we didn't know. I know Nathaniel was, I'm sure, very relieved to get it back into the software domain.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Because the nightmare is you've got a manufacturing defect, effectively, where it's like, yeah, that board needs to be scrapped. And that was not the case, which is a huge relief.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6339.214

Yeah. Well, this is a very important point you're making, Robert, in terms of holistic design also means holistic debugging. And when the system is not behaving correctly, you've got to get ready to cross a bunch of different boundaries that are historically difficult boundaries to cross. And you've got to be able to really get a team together from across the stack to go brainstorm an issue. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

641.947

And this was, you know, and we had an arguable child with like we had Robert as a young adult, you know, Robert as a college student example to the intern who was shocked and aghast that we had taken his very kind gesture and turned it into something that, that was just depraved.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6451.411

Right. I mean, I think having all those kind of options at our disposal really does allow us to... I mean, as you say, Robert, it gives us the opportunity to go holistically debug. Right. Yeah, that is awesome.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6510.641

That's right. And actually, RFD88 is actually already public, which is great. So that one I don't need to make public because it's already public, but that's another one to check out, which is an RFD that talks about exactly kind of how we think about who does what in the system. And definitely a consequence of this, again, this kind of holistic thinking.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6531.418

Well, Robert, I think this has been a very exciting way to kick off Robert Moustaki Appreciation Week.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6540.801

But we really, really, really appreciate it. This is so great to kind of obviously walk through the origins of Food for Money Friday. I mean, clearly, let's not let's not let's not break the lead here.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6558.84

Future historians will be very pleased that they have finally discovered the canonical origins of this cultural phenomenon known as Food for Money Friday.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6565.863

But just getting kind of your perspective and kind of the way you've done what you've been able to do, which is with a lot of collaboration, a lot of hard work, and being willing to dive into new things all the time, and then also being able to come up and think about how does this impact the actual user of the system? I love your...

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6585.951

thinking about that kind of operator empathy as a guide in terms of a lot of what you've thought about in terms of the system. But really terrific. So thank you very much for joining and for indulging us and for taking us up, down, and all around.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

66.323

No. I don't know if you quite ate the hook the way I did, but I was just like, Oh, we, is that a, is that a thing we do? Is that like an annual thing? Because we have a, our colleague CJ has a kicks off and there is an Eric Anderson appreciation day here at Oxide for one of our employees. So like, it seems like a reasonable thing that we would do to have a Robert Moustaki appreciation week.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

6608.49

Well, good stuff. And then, Adam, next week, we've got a European-friendly time, I understand.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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It's going to be a lot of fun. So join us next time. I am looking forward to having you. And Robert, thanks again for joining us. That was a great discussion. All right. Thanks, everyone.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

664.974

Um, But no, she didn't get the money. She got the cheesecake. So it's like, Robert, I can't believe you worked with us anyway. We're so grateful that you, that despite it all. So we will absolutely need to do a podcast episode only on Food for Money Friday. But let's just say we've had other episodes. There's a teaser episode.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

689.351

We have had other food for money adventures over the years, and Robert was not for the last time with the intern involved, which has become increasingly ambiguous for me. Someone in the chat is asking, he's like, I don't know that we actually volunteered what we're doing to sound legal.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

726.223

That's right. There are many attributes of hazing that are absent here. There is nothing. Yeah, exactly.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

770.675

Yeah. And I felt very, so we had, I and Robert, I left what was then Oracle before you joined. And my recollection is that I reached out to you as I was leaving. I think I did anyway. Yeah. I certainly felt very bad that you were going to be joining a bit of a ghost ship. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Something like that, yeah. It's a good learning exercise. There we go.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

814.868

Yeah, it was nice. But fortunately, Robert, you joined me at Joann, and you and I did a ton of things together at Joann, but something that you and I worked closely on early on was the port of KVM to SmartOS, to our Lumos derivative at the time. Um, and, uh, was that, I mean, what is your memory of those years?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

841.453

I mean, is that as that, that was a, it was a bit of a terrifying project in that, uh, we really needed to succeed and it was really hard, but you, you and I worked very closely on KVM. Um, And, uh, which is great.

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

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Um, and then what kind of in that, so what am I also kind of memory of those years is all of the, the kind of our early interactions with Intel and you really owning that kind of the, the, the interaction with Intel, um, that seemed to have happened pretty early on at joint anyway, is that, is that an accurate recollection?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

89.45

I don't know. I'm like, have we, have we, so after like, I can't quite tell if he's joking or not. So I did ask him, like, are we, is that, is that a good thing? Have we done that? He's like, oh yeah, it's definitely a thing. Like we've got, it's documented in rm.c and there are, it's actually an extraordinary block comment complete with diagrams. And I'm like, okay, what, where, where's this?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

901.876

for the first, but not last time. And so the, and I mean, you'd always, I mean, I obviously always have had an interest in low level software and sharing, and I've always kind of been at that hardware software interface, but definitely found yourself there very much at, at joint. And the, the I mean, I, I, Well, do you have anything formative that you want to talk about?

Oxide and Friends

Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

927.992

Because there's definitely something formative at Joint, obviously. And I know Alex is here in the chat, but we definitely had a, there were many episodes over the, how many years were we together at Joint? Almost 10 years, nine years at Joint. But at that kind of, that low-level system software interface.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

0.009

Is that true? I can join up. I think I've always joined with putting up my hand. Have I always done this? I thought that's how you joined with, but I thought I put up my hand and then I joined. It's like, are you just like core Brian always raises his hand before. It's like that guy in section.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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And I want to get to a bunch of that, but before, do you mind, can we talk about Scuttlebutt? Is that inbounds?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Well, and I, I mean, I got to believe, I don't want to editorialize too much, but based on what I know of Twitter at the time, if I think that there are the, the, the fire hose were kind of the crown jewels of Twitter. They did not want to let people on that. You had to pay a lot of money to get onto the fire hose.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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And I don't think that that was a, I mean, I I'm sure folks will correct me if I'm wrong, but I question whether that was a technical limitation. I think that was a, a business decision. And I think as folks saying that.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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I think it was an injection of ads decision. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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And I also think they had also made, I mean, and this is another thing that I think that, you know, as kind of reflecting Paul on the terrific work that you all have done, there is an advantage to you coming after having the world having figured out one, how to architect a Twitter that actually performs, which Twitter itself spent half a decade doing.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

1135.98

And then two, the systems are just better that you can go use, right? You don't have to deal with a Ruby VM, for example. I mean, you've got other things that you can go... I mean, even Ruby has improved. I know I'm going to hear it from the Ruby folks. But all of that software has really improved a lot. So you've just got...

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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And then that fire hose is so extraordinarily valuable to everyone, I feel. I mean, I think that I love what you had said in the, and I want to drop a link into the paper that you all recently published, which is terrific, by the way. I love this ACM paper that you all wrote on Blue Sky and the app protocol.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Because I want to talk about Scuttlebutt and Beaker. People think they're in here to talk about Blue Sky and Blue Sky, but we're actually talking about Scuttlebutt and Beaker. So, Scuttlebutt, could you describe what Scuttlebutt is and how you got involved in Scuttlebutt?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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And just in terms of the value to researchers to be able to get this whole thing is extraordinary.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

1275.27

Okay, but I've got to say the level of growth, I mean, and maybe Elon called you up and like, look, I want to help Blue Sky out all I can. Please tell me the things that I should do to my own social network to drive people to you as quickly as possible. I mean, that actually a lot more makes sense, honestly, if I knew that. But I'm not saying for you to confirm or deny that.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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I'm just saying it's like kind of consistent with what's happened. I mean, the level of scaling that you've seen, were you expecting that in your kind of wildest dreams? Oh, man. Yes, this is going exactly according to plan. This is what I expected.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

131.413

Because this is obviously a problem that you have been thinking about, and I think this is true for a lot of folks on the Blue Sky team. People have been coming from different angles thinking about this problem for a long period of time. How did you get into Scuttlebutt?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Right. The crops have failed again, of course.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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That's amazing. And so you all, because I mean, I originally, I mean, you launched your private beta in March, April of 2023. When was that? Somewhere in there. Yeah, it was around. Um, the, um, and which was great. We got, I got lucky enough. Fortunately, we've, um, I always felt Steve Klabnik is here.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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I always felt I may have put Steve in an uncomfortable position when I was asking him for a blue sky invite. He's like, I mean, I'm like, I guess I'm technically your boss, but like, and I know, I know this sounds like, but you know, I mean, Steve is here either to defend himself or to, to bring up his attorney on stage. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

1460.706

Right. Well, I really appreciate you sharing an invite with me. And invites were super precious. And then, Paul, somewhere along the line, the decision is made to like, really, okay, we need to like, we've got enough users on here to know what we need to go do. And we're going to more or less shut it off for a little bit. I mean, keep the site up, but we're not actually adding more invites.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Or was Steve lying to me this entire time when he said he was out of invites?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Steve is furiously DMing you.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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October 2022, what was going on? Yeah, what happened then? What happened then?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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So... Welcome to Oxide, friends. You don't have to dig too far to get to the Postgres era for anyone. So this is good. This is very on-brand.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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So what I can say, I really admire the discipline of the team because when you, I mean, what would, At some level, and I know Blue Sky is interesting because you're a public benefit corporation. There's a bit of both sides to this in terms of you're seeking to make a profit and to be a financially viable company, but you're also seeking to serve the public good.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

1690.832

I know it's a little bit different, but I think it still takes a lot of self-control around here because everybody wants product market fit. And when you have product market fit, which I think we could not, not to disparage secure scuttlebutt or beaker, but this was, this was like probably things that didn't have as much product market fit. Correct. I see what you're getting at.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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You can see we're having this conversation about Beaker, but poor Beaker. You've got this enormous product market fit and to have the discipline to say, if we don't fix this, we can't fake it till we make it, move fast and break things, all these other kind of Silicon Valley mantras that actually you're going to end up with something that's broken at the end of it.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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You actually won't have something that works.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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which I got to say is another act of real discipline, because I think that part of what makes this challenging is that you are trying to build blue sky as kind of an exemplar of what's possible on at proto. And it's in any of these things, it's tempting to just be like, ah, just like, okay, can we just get like blue sky working? And then we'll, we'll quit.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

1854.427

We'll figure at proto out later and allow people to do this kind of on their own later. I mean, it must be, I mean, obviously that's not a temptation that you all had because of the strong call to mission, but I just think it takes an admirable amount of discipline to really say like, no, we actually need to do this the right way. And we need to allow the,

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

1871.94

We want to be sure that this thing is actually, that at Proto is the actual basis that we're building this on, and that Blue Sky is but an instantiation of it. I'm really impressed about that. Was there... I mean, there must have been some level of tension of like, hey, we've got to, like, we're missing a window of opportunity. Did people feel that way?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Or did you feel that the window of opportunity, did you... know that your agent on the inside of X, Mr. Musk, is going to continue to operate per your explicit wishes?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

1998.09

I got to say, I really... Just speaking as a consumer, I really appreciate that choice because there were very few... One of the reasons that I was still sadly on the fucking bird site was because of DMs. And I actually do need DMs. And this... But DMs are a place, and my DMs have always been open on both platforms. It's been very interesting to watch the supposedly bot-free Twitter.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

20.375

Just like, I'm the guy that likes to stand while he's presenting a section. Is that wrong? I guess so. I mean, I thought everyone did. I guess. Okay.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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I was going to say, wow. Oh, my God.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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either right now i thought it was great when blue sky it's like oh i got some i got like unsolicited crypto and and oh without noise and some porn is here too it's like this is great like this guy's gonna make it this is so this is all warming mods uh this is like three quarters of them is like report a spam report a spam but it's so essential for the times when it's not that though so you know it's good yeah

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2061.176

Yeah, and I also feel it's like DMs are... I think that you all made the right call there in that DMs are a good place where it's like, yeah, I try... This does not need to be a part of that proto for this. I actually just need the Blue Sky app to have this functionality. I guess you all have done such a good job... mimicking and it's Steve did the right thing.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2083.237

So Steve was a Twitter dead ender until he wasn't. And I thought like, there was a time when Steve's like, yeah, I'm like, I'm just, I'm going down with the ship, man. Like, I just don't care how bad this place gets. And I'm like, I don't know, man. I'm kind of, and then I'm like, you know what? I am. I'm going to go down with the ship too. And then I look over and I'm like, where's Steve?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2100.312

Steve's gone. And I'm like, Steve is Steve has like deleted his Twitter. Steve is gone. Gone. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is actually, maybe I'm being liberated to get Gone Gone. So, I mean, I desperately wanted to get off of that thing as it was just like absolutely descending into the muck.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2120.033

But the thing that has happened to me a couple of times, and I don't know if this has happened to you, like, look, look, I would love to tell you that I've been off for a long time, but it's a process, man. One day at a time. Okay. Like every day is a struggle.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2132.143

Some days I got to call my sponsor and the number of times that I have, you've got, you all have done such a good job on just like the look and feel the number of times I have been like, Hey, you know what? Actually looking at these, these posts are actually surprisingly good for the hellscape that Twitter is. Oh no, wait a minute. I'm blue sky.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2151.065

Or then also what has often happened is that I will get a... You know who's not on Blue Sky? Only the good VCs are on Blue Sky right now. This will change very shortly. But the VCs that really troll the hell out of me are all like have shackled themselves to the mast of Twitter. And I just don't have the self-control to not actually go and go to the rage bait.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Um, but then I will, the, the, the, the, the inverse also happens where, um, I will accidentally leave a Twitter window up and I'll be like, oh man, blue skies. So you've done an excellent, excellent, excellent job of.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Yeah, Mastodon. The problem with Mastodon, I love Mastodon. Do you? I love aspects of Mastodon. No, no, no, I don't love Mastodon. I was trying to find, this is like where I'm sorry for not being sorry. I love the idea of loving Mastodon. That's what I love. Yeah, I think that's right. But Mastodon has got the usability of a BBS. And I love BBSs.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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Paul, I'm not sure how much... This is like modem era social networking. But the problem was... And this is part of why it's really important to... And I thought you all did actually a really good job of... Talking about why not ActivityPub and why not Mastodon. And there are some really good reasons for that.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

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And I think that Mastodon should... I mean, I think it's going to be... We're going to continue to be on Mastodon. I think it's great. I think that it serves a great purpose, but... the problem is that the, uh, like I'm a, I'm a, I am a baseball and football fan and I like social networking because I, I like sports Twitter. What was sports Twitter?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2271.652

And, uh, like you're just never going to end up with that on Mastodon. Um, it's just not going to happen and you need, and also, or, or, or Paul, the, the shake test, are you, I'm not sure if you, uh,

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2287.859

so the the real acid test for social networking is like if you're in the bay area and you feel that you just felt a quake oh yeah and um and i'm sure you know this but um the uh you should know that blue sky has passed this test with flying colors because we didn't just have a quake we had a tsunami warning recently

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2311.857

And my phone, like every other phone in the Bay Area, exploded with what I assumed was an Amber Alert. You're like, tsunami warning on a quake? I didn't feel. My first thought is like, this is like an IT error somewhere. This is like a missile alert in Hawaii. And, uh, but it's actually obviously real.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2329.751

And it was, what was really interesting was blue sky was just, just exploded with, you know, people talking about it, talking about the, the, uh, tsunami know your zone site, uh, is down. You can't get a database handle to know your tsunami zones and no one can figure out if they're going to die in a tsunami or not. The, and blue sky.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2349.022

And I, and what I also really loved is then my geo sciences feed on blue sky, uh,

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2355.743

was great i mean it was it and the and meanwhile on the other side it was just like they're all it's all garbage so i mean it was it really passed this test with flying colors um could you talk a little bit about the feeds because this is something that again i've really i i think feel i've started to make use of i haven't done enough with but i absolutely love and it's really kind of a first class thought in the way you built the thing

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2466.502

Absolutely struck gold. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2589.588

Timestamp ordering of the people you follow. It's like, oh, you're interested in the tsunami that may be coming to your place in an hour? I don't know. You should follow more geologists. Maybe in the next life, you'll follow more geologists.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2604.331

You should have done that. You should have been carefully following geologists. You're like, okay.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2627.377

You can't say I, but we know that I actually just love the idea of loving Mastodon.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2648.789

Well, in the feeds also, Adam, what you're saying about like, it's one of those ideas that you know is an important idea whose time has come because you're immediately like, why are we doing it some other way before? Like, this is, you know what I mean? It's... Not that it's not at all obvious because it obviously wasn't.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2668.099

But the fact that you – I mean, it's one of these things where you – Paul, you all made a bunch of good decisions that built on one another. And then out of this comes this, I think, artifact that's going to be, I think, more and more important as time goes on because I think that –

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2685.086

you get to bring your entire self because all of us consist of like different things and different things at different times. And the feeds allow to allow, give us agency over that, which I think is extremely important.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2728.382

Steve, can you explain what that feed is? Because I love that and you had talked about it in your post about how AdProto works.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2765.79

I love that. Yeah. And I, I think it's, it's so, and I think we're just going to see a lot more experimentation in that. And again, giving people more agency, you know, Adam perversely what it reminds me of, and sorry, Paul, just to go overly Gen X on you here, but the, the day MCA died, I wanted to just listen to all of his music from beginning to end and,

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2790.405

And Pandora is like, let me give you something that sounds like the Beastie Boys. I'm like, a man is dead, Pandora. I'm not interested in your algorithm right now. I am mourning a dead musician you need to actually give me. And that's when I'm like, I'm going to Spotify. I'm not coming back.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2823.601

Yeah. He's lived this extraordinary life that you've missed because you just couldn't take it anymore. It's like Mr. Peanut on Twitter. I finally muted Mr. Peanut because I couldn't take the ads. Jesus. So, I mean, Paul, this must have been one of these breakthroughs that you just kind of like...

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

2841.3

feeds must have felt like a lot of things were clicking I mean it's such a I mean actually let me ask this did you kind of know immediately like oh of course this makes a ton of sense or was it when you started experimenting with it you saw it

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

293.59

Yeah. Was that as a kind of a response? Because I mean, this is like Pretty early. I mean, this is before the animals were walking on their hind feet in terms of social networks. Or maybe they were already. Maybe they were born on their hind feet.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3051.097

Yeah, I agree with you that there's some UX things that you could probably do to... But I think that the bones are really, really sound on this one.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3059.464

And I also think that you've got... The thing that I also loved about it, just like being able to follow my geosciences feed and my earthquakes feed during the tsunami warning, is that you are able to... I mean, there's so many... Part of what made Twitter great

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3077.118

when it was great was you would stumble into one of these like delightful communities and of like super nerds um and you know suddenly you've got you know top scientists in the field who are i mean just absolutely nerding out and going very deep on a particular subject and it's very nice to be able to like when you find those you feel like you've tripped over something

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3096.903

And I think it's like feeds are going to make it way easier to find those. And I just think that like the, there's so much we can go do to find amazing feeds. I also want, I want feeds for podcasts too. It's like my own, now we're getting into my own like weird agendas, but like podcast search is so bad. And I, I,

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3118.789

I think I want feeds for other things in my life, not just posts, not just skeets is what I got to say. I think it's amazing.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3166.048

Yeah, but you're going to turn 39 when all the other millennials turn 39, Steve. You're not beating the allegation here. Listen, Paul, this is why we're trying to talk about BBSs and the Beastie Boys, just to get Gen X here pulling on it a little bit. I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. So feeds were obviously, I think, really important. And I think feeds are going to be even more important.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3192.694

I think we're going to see a lot of creativity. I don't know. I'd be interested to get your take on it. But I just feel like, boy, there's so much stuff that's possible there, especially when you go to look at things like LLMs. I mean, there's a lot you can go do there that hasn't been done yet that would be really exciting. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3230.765

Well, and I think that also part of what I'm really excited about is that I think that we've kind of had this era of maximum engagement. And we are seeing kind of the logical conclusion of that in Twitter. And I think I actually want a world where we're actually able to find the hidden nuggets a lot more easily.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3253.911

And we're able to find that the delightful bits that are at the edges are, to me, way more interesting and way more delightful. And I just feel that feeds are an important way of getting that stuff. It's just like the quiet feed, Steve. Let's get to the people that don't say very much, but when they say something, it's meaningful.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3300.726

I do think, by the way, that there are a lot of opportunities. I think people will pay for things that add value, and I think there is opportunity to monetize a bunch of this stuff. Adam, this is where our inner VCs are coming out. What's wrong with us? We're broken human beings. That's right.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3337.598

Totally. So you mentioned feeds, and then the other thing that you wanted to, that you were rethinking kind of at the same time was moderation. And what was your, obviously, another, I mean, just age-old issue in social networking and now a hotter issue than ever, just with our divisive era. What was your thinking on moderation?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3359.416

Because when you rolled out the beta, moderation was still pretty primitive in terms of the tools that were offered for folks.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3469.558

Like feeds, you're saying, look, there's not going to be one way to moderate. Can you talk about that approach? Because I think that's a really interesting approach. We're going to allow people to moderate in different ways and allow people to give people some transparency and some choice among different approaches to moderation. I'm probably being overly reductive there, but...

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3605.953

I have to say it's kind of remarkable. And as you said, it permeates your thinking of like thinking, and you call it the credible exit in your paper in terms of thinking beyond blue sky organizationally, I think is kind of remarkable and unusual, I think, for an organization to think we need to build in the things that

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3628.14

that will survive an arbitrary change in management and arbitrary, I mean, which is kind of, I mean, it reminds me of open source in that regard that where, you know, we are open sourcing this to assure basically that it, that it can endure, it can endure beyond its corporate vessel.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3645.254

And, you know, not that Adam and I might be speaking from personal experience a couple of times over, but the corporate, corporate vessels don't endure folks. The, except for this one, of course, for whatever one you happen to find yourself in. Right.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3658.145

exactly um so i i think that that that is uh the guy how do i boot some out of a discord larry ellison buys blue sky who would say such a terrible thing i unfortunately oh my god i'm so sorry paul this is the the demographic that we attract you know these are um um But I think that like being able to kind of think beyond yourselves in that way is, is really pretty interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3683.796

Can you speak to some of the specific tools that you books? I mean, in particular, like I love the ability to detach a quote tweet, I think is a really, I mean, that's not one that I've seen before. Could you talk about some of the stuff that you've done to just give some tools out there for folks?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

37.524

Paul, thank you very much for joining us. I am super stoked for this today.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3806.52

2019 somewhere around there and like you experienced that once and i think you'll realize like oh this is you gotta have something to slow this down um yeah so yes i adam actually once gave me the book so you've been publicly shamed which i would highly recommend not necessarily being publicly shamed but uh adam obviously thought of me immediately when he saw the book so i i think that's uh nobody on this voice call has been publicly shamed at all definitely not never before

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3837.293

Yeah, I mean... So are there other things that you all did like that? I mean, I think it's like one of the things that I think is interesting is that mute lists and block lists are public. And I'm sure this is an issue that is controversial. Oh, yeah. Not to have you weighted to every issue of controversy, but I mean, one of the things I really didn't like or I thought was lame about Twitter...

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3864.035

is when you had very powerful people that would block people that they disagreed with. And I was like, that's not kind of not what it's for. Mark Andreessen, the blocking functionality is not so you can block me. Sorry. Not to overly personalize it, but I've always been like... I've always wanted to be like, Hey, so I find Mark Andreessen, you get to block little old me.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3884.319

I also like, I kind of want to follow everyone that you're blocking. So, cause I think I would like, like them a lot. So I just want to like, have a feed of people that Mark Andreessen blocked and that requires public block list.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

3906.523

Oh, but that's not why we, Yeah, I know. So do I get kicked out? Yeah, you're out. Of course you're out. Can't you read the sign? Get out of here.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

409.166

Pretty prescient, I have to say. Because I feel like in 2012, honestly, maybe I'm just a dunce, but it felt like it was kind of the good old days for Twitter. I mean, it felt like it was fun and light. And maybe Gamergate changed that. I'm trying to kind of replay that era in my head. But definitely, this was... I mean, this is like, why wouldn't anyone like Facebook?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4110.222

And I mean, obviously you've seen that, I mean, as the popularity and it's just, it must be still a bit surreal to watch the popularity of blue sky really stumble into like, I mean, not stumble, but really become, I mean, like for whatever reason, Adam, you said ESPN has got a blue sky account now. I mean, I just felt like, wow, that is a blue sky has really arrived. Um,

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4133.716

But presumably with that has become, I mean, you get a lot of people who are trolls in the kind of the oldest sense of really deliberately wanting to get a rise out of people who are now attracted to the social network because of its very success. I mean, I assume, is that fair that you've seen more users, more problems, I assume? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4220.465

Is it possible that their training data is only older siblings? God, I know. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4229.629

The older siblings, like, I mean, cause older siblings do. And I look, I say this as an older sibling. I mean, you just like, you optimize the least amount of effort for the most amount of, of reaction. And it's like,

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4242.139

yeah i mean it's they're very very good at it um especially you know when the i when my oldest has like the countdown to when my 17 year old is going to crash out is the new term for like going it's just like it's you know uh so i think this is very deep in the human psyche is what i'm saying it's like you're trying to contend with something that is uh very very deep um

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4265.629

And so, I mean, how do you... I mean, you said that the things that you've deployed seem to be so far holding up. Have there been any surprises there in terms of... Or maybe you've just been surprised by the scope and depth of some of these efforts.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

431.003

Facebook just feels like a net good for society in 2012, says I. I mean, I just feel like I was, anyway, I was very naive. I mean, I felt like at that era... the, I mean, it was more like Twitter was finally kind of functional. I mean, there was such a long period of time where it was just not very functional. Um, and it could kind of keep up with everything and everything else.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4316.432

Well, that's great. And I mean, I think also, is this where I presumably at proto is helpful where you think like, this is not like your fight alone, that there are other folks that can like start implementing some of their own ideas. I mean, if you, in terms of like getting into the, the, like the, the technical details of how those moderation servers actually work.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4336.469

Because I think one of the interesting things, the observations you had is that the skill set to like run one's own server and the skill set to moderate don't overlap very much. Yeah. Can you speak to some of the innovation that you're kind of, I mean, are you seeing some innovation there as kind of third parties experiment with different ways to moderate?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

45.028

Oh, I... I'm not convinced that there's only one of you. Especially in those early days of Blue Sky, you were everywhere at once, I just felt. It's been remarkable. I'm not sure how many of you there are, but I appreciate your collective allowing one of you to come speak with us today. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

453.553

So I really admire the prescience of people saying like, no, there's like a, there's a, there's a centralization of authority here. That's actually problematic. Um, and, Then I got to ask you, were folks like, you know what, I'm burning my boats on Secure Scuttlebutt and I'm now like, you can't find me on any other social network? Or was...

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4575.42

Totally. So how do these labels work? Where are the labels actually stored?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4680.266

And then, so I subscribe, though, to these labeling services. So I get to choose, like, if there's a label that I really like, I can subscribe to that. Is that right?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4724.554

Well, that UX definitely doesn't clutter anything else in that it is definitely... That's great. I actually did not know this at all. And going to, like, someone in the chat had linked to the U.S. government contributions labeler. Yeah, I think so. And this seems like, I mean, this seems like a really good experiment.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4746.682

Because then, of course, I want to know, okay, what are the labelers that Adam subscribes to? Because I may want those same labelers, or maybe those are labelers just to avoid, because, you know, that guy, I don't know. I mean, he just kicked me out of the Blocked by P. Marker Club because I'm no longer blocked by P. Marker. So I don't know. I've got kind of some axes to grind over there.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4767.261

But I mean, it just feels like you're giving people kind of another tool to go experiment with this problem that you did not create called bad humans. But also like good humans that actually want to come in and help offer some clarity on some of this stuff. I don't know. I think it's really... To me, it's really inspiring.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4787.795

I know it's kind of strange to be inspired by the encroaching 8chan of the internet, but I really do think it's inspiring.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4881.975

Well, that's exactly it. I feel like it's the giving it a shot bit, and I feel that learning from so many previous experiences, and then also doing it all in the open, because this is all... I mean, you're all open source, right? In addition to having these open specifications, you've got... all or much of your software is actually out there in the open.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4956.616

That is awesome, and congratulations on that. That is really terrific. Close to without precedent, I assume? Certainly for a social app, it feels like it's without precedent.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4971.295

This is the very first time. I was just going to ask you, you've obviously got a lot of challenges still ahead, in part because of the popularity. What have been some of the surprises along the way of things that maybe have worked better than you thought, or worked much worse than you thought?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

4995.057

I don't know, maybe you were putting scenes into that category, at least in terms of nomenclature, but what are What are some of the things that you were or are there things that you've been kind of surprised by along the way?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5116.736

Well, it was even better than that. It was when ESPN came on, they were ESPN.bsky.social for like a hot second. And literally their first post was like, no, no, no, we know, we know, we know, we're changing. I mean, everyone is dogpiling them being like, come on, you got to change the domain name. You're ESPN.com. Yeah, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5176.61

That is a very elegant solution to the problem. And I mean, and people are obviously calling out like the fact that you get, because you're getting this verification basically, and you're verifying it the way we verify the internet, which is like, why wouldn't you do it that way?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5288.68

Big win, I think. Can I ask you just a very pedestrian question? Because this is the only thing that has kept me, so I'm currently bcancelbsky.social, but I definitely want to, I actually, I don't know if I want to bcancel.dtrace.org or bcancel.oxide.computer. So this is my own thing I need to go grapple with.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5316.485

You can, but the only thing that's hung me up is that I need to go immediately squat on my old name, right?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5382.648

Oh my gosh, that is great. That is terrific. And I'm sorry to disrupt your comms plan on that. Thank you very much for breaking news here on Oxide and Friends. That's just being handed to me. That's terrific. And one of the things that you all are doing so, so, so well, and I just cannot thank you for enough is

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5406.087

is the degree to which you're listening to people who use the product and you're using the product yourselves. It feels basic, but it's amazing how often this doesn't happen. That's a great example. I know you've got so many... terrific ideas for things that can be done.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5425.178

But that's just like, that's a really kind of like a basic, simple kind of pain point that is not debilitating, but boy, thank you so much for, for fixing it. I think it's just, it's part of what makes it as a user, a blue sky. It makes me so enthusiastic for the future of this platform and, One thing I do, I won't be mindful of time because I know Adam's going to have to bolt here.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5447.785

His no longer toddler is now, is that kid in high school yet? First grade? What is he in? Second grade. Second grade. God, yeah, built like a high schooler. But there's one last feature I wanted to ask you about, and that is starter packs. Um, because another thing that was, I know is basic. Uh, it was really important.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5472.138

I feel, um, could you just describe a little bit like kind of the, the, the thinking behind starter packs?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5581.872

dirty tactic anyway i think that is so damn dirty i mean i agree yeah well and like it gives an ick vibe that like anytime i get up to a nap now and i think everybody has it you know he's like oh no i'm not gonna give you my contact actually get out of there no don't even ask it's like i don't want to peek like no no peaking gross get out of here yeah

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5802.833

And for whatever it's worth, just my own personal experience with starter packs, I was trying to get... I'm an Oakland A's fan. The hashtag sell the team. And we kind of got this now beleaguered lost tribe that is still very much on Twitter, was very much on Twitter.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5820.506

And talking to the folks who are kind of like the leaders of that community being like, we've got to get one of the starter pack because the entire community wanted to leave, but you kind of needed everyone to go at once. Yes. And that is what starter packs – starter packs were a lifeboat for people who wanted to – and I saw this in various scientific communities.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5841.038

I saw it in certainly in Oakland A's Twitter where it's like, okay, this is now the opportunity. And I think actually another thing that I love about just like the dynamic was people would start a starter pack with 60 people. And those people would kind of come on and the person who started the starter pack would always say, hey, like, let me know if I forgot anybody.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5861.933

And you've got like a bunch of people raising their hand being like, oh, God, I'd love to be included in that starter pack. And they ended up being very inclusive and uplifting and a great way to move communities across. So it doesn't surprise me because in that multi-month gap where you're like, why isn't this working? Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5879.777

I, and I'm sure other people in various other communities are kind of lobbying people who are still on Twitter to be like, no, like let's get one of these together so we can get everyone over at once. Um, yeah, it's been really great. So thank you very much for that. It's a good, it's been a, it's been a great feature.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5897.97

And just again, thank you. And thank you, Paul, for taking all the time with us tonight. And we are huge fans. Love what you're doing, what you and the team have done. Love that.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5913.22

I mean, we feel like very much kindred spirits and that like this is a problem that you all have as a team have been thinking about for many, many, many years and watching all of that wisdom get expressed in what you've done. And you've created something. I know it's challenging. And the more people you get in there, there's going to be challenges that are going to arise with that.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

593.334

with blue sky yeah we were just like what are we doing to ourselves i mean honestly it explains so much too because i think and i just want to like not lose us say kind of off the jump the blue sky is so remarkably available and remarkably usable in a remarkably short period of time and

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5936.214

But boy, what you're doing is so important and special. And we're really deeply, deeply, deeply appreciative. You've given, I think, a lot of people, certainly me anyway, real hope in what we can have out of social networking. So really deeply appreciated.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5978.696

Absolutely. Well, and I'm sure again, humans are tough, so more challenges to come, but really appreciate it. And thank you again for taking the time to come here. And we'll be glad that no one has to hit up Klavnik for invites anymore. Everyone can hop on there.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

5997.29

And Adam dropped an Oxide computer starter pack if you want to follow folks who are, we got a lot of folks from Oxide, obviously, who are over there. Paul, thanks again. Thank you very much. Um, welcome back anytime, obviously. Um, and, uh, keep up the great work. We'll be, um, we'll be there and in the thick of it. So thanks again. Sounds great. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks everybody.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

6021.251

And next time we're going to be doing our, our year end wrap up. So, uh, bring your, your, your, your best and worst from, uh, from 2024. Um, so Adam looking forward to that. It's going to be fun. Should be great. All right. Thanks, everyone. See you next time.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

614.551

You know, it's not surprising, of course, that you all come with this scar tissue from these other endeavors where you had tried other things. Because, I mean, and I think that, I mean, speaking as a user, I mean, social networking is really important to me personally. And what you all have done is so extraordinary. And, like, there's been no fail whale.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

638.589

You know, I mean, it's like the closest we get is, like, Health Red, which obviously I love. But the... I'm sure you're like, listen, let's not paper over it too much.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

650.195

There have been plenty of... Just when you're adding millions of users a day and you are retaining... It's so responsive and it feels quick and lively and you're not getting... It's not at all a surprise that, of course, you're learning a lot from these previous systems and

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

671.401

So you said there were a couple of things that you knew you wanted to, that you all kind of collectively from your experience knew that you wanted to replicate and some things you wanted to improve upon. What were some of the things you wanted to replicate?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

75.517

Exactly. Paul, there's so much to talk about here. But, I mean, you all have been on just an incredible ride. I mean, it's a hard... I mean, having watched this thing from when it was invite-only for kind of a protracted period of time, and then just going, I mean, non-linear, not in the metaphorical sense, but the actual literal quantitative sense, has just been amazing.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

801.879

And I can say, I mean, I love both of these things I think are extremely important. I think that the, obviously, I mean, the portability, it should go without saying, but one of the ways that I realized how just viscerally important this is to me, and this is a super stupid thing, but just in terms of my own age and social networking, tracking my own life,

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

823.388

my first two kids I announced with a blog entry, but my third kid born in 2012, I announced for the tweet. Um, the, so that tweet, for whatever reason, like the replies on that tweet have been deleted by Twitter and, or I can't find them anyway. And it's like, damn it.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

839.983

In terms of that portability, I feel like, and of course, what idiot would announce the birth of their children on social media and expect it to be retained anywhere? Look, she doesn't have a baby book. She's a third kid. This was her baby book. There's going to be the replies on this tweet. Okay. If, if you are a third kid or you have three kids, you know what I'm talking about?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

861.226

She's, she's lucky. She's got a tweet. Okay. She knows that she knows she's lucky. She's great. But the, so, I mean, just like having that portability is, is, is really, really, really important to people. And it is a, in order for us to really engage in social networking, we absolutely have to have that portability. So, I mean, obviously I love that. Hey, I don't know what her name is.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

884.285

You're saying I do know her name. Hold on just a second. Let me actually, you will add up my nine. I've said this before, but she, the day she was born, we, the CEO of the startup I was at was fired. Yes. And fortunately she's got a very good sense of humor. So she's like, Hey dad, it was 12 years ago today. Your CEO was fired. I'm like, it's, Is this going to go on for your entire life?

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

902.046

Probably is. But it's true. That is how I remember it. It's just easier to remember the firing date and then I get to her birthday in one hop. But Paul, I also love what you've done with the fire hose because when did Twitter turn off fire hose access? I want to say that was like in, when was that? 2013, 2014, maybe earlier. I don't know.

Oxide and Friends

Scaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee

932.469

But the ability to sit on the fire hose is just, I think, amazing.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

0.469

now you can say something funny yes now we can okay thank god yes uh you know actually it was what a great episode last week by the way that was that was uh it was tons of fun with the predictions episode it was great and uh a lot of people seem to enjoy it so that was great i'll tell you the one person who did not enjoy it lives with me because it went two hours

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1018.783

Oh, that is really good. Yeah, that is awesome. Because, you know, I really like Ron a lot. Ron, not the humans named, all the humans named Ron, although I guess I like all of you too. But the Ron, the Rust object notation, I like a lot. But man, the error handling is, the error messages are really not very good, which is frustrating. And boy, this would be an opportunity to really improve them.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1062.861

Okay, so you've integrated Miette into the RON parsing in idle? That is correct. Okay, I've got to do the same thing for you guys. yeah, okay, I need to do the same thing. This is really, but this has already paid enormous dividends and we're only like 20 minutes in or whatever. Do you want to sound a little less surprised? 20 minutes, like seven minutes was us screwing around.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1087.692

I mean, this is amazing.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

115.056

And if it's March, two 12th credit, one 6th credit, and so on. That would be a nice little way of, you know, because I know we keep score so closely.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1274.609

Yeah, this is great. I've not used actually either of these. And again, we're, you know, but Adam, I'm also standing by my belief that we should not have any bag limit on Detonate credits.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

128.132

And then the other thing that I just want to mention to you because so I got a high school senior. He's got a terrific English teacher. A shout out to Ms. Foster. And she has given him a very good assignment. She's given the class a very good assignment, which is you need to seek out an adult and you need to ask that adult for three books that had an impact on them as an adult.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1303.202

No?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1304.303

Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's not helpful at all. It's very, very unhelpful. The opposite of helpful.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1321.67

I have done that. That has been my immediate go-to, sadly, as opposed to being like, you deserve a better error message. We deserve nice things. It's a long path to really adjust to that.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1486.674

Yeah, and how were you using it in the thing that you were demoing, right? What was the specific use case where you were using it?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

153.847

They can't be kids books. but books written for adults. And then you, student, will read one of these books. And I, the teacher, I, Ms. Foster, will decide which one of these you read. And Alexander picked me, my 17-year-old, which is great. I think my wife is a little hurt, but, you know, we've got other kids. You know, you can focus your efforts on them.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1534.141

It seems very useful. How do you discover that crate? This is a good question. How did it occur to you to go look for a crate that does that?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1552.667

I mean, you can, you don't have to tell us if you don't want to, but I, this is, I, this is, these are, there aren't these crates like these rainworm. Like how does rain know about this?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1597.446

I do think it's funny that ChatGPT is most likely to hallucinate, in my experience, when you yourself think that this thing should exist. You know what I mean? Or ChatGPT is like, no, there should be totally a great like that. In fact, there is. It's smorgasbord.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1615.55

And on the one hand, it's like somewhat vindicating that it's like, because there are, you know, I went to, ChatGPT had a very vivid hallucination around organizational gists So organizational, do you use gists in GitHub at all?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1632.602

And organizational gists exist, but I can't see how to create them or edit them. And ChatGPT also believes that you should be able to do the things that I believe you should be able to go do to create or edit them. And it's like, no, you can't do any of those things, actually. It was, you know what it reminds me of? The organizational gists are like inside UFO 5440.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1651.435

Have we talked about inside UFO 5440 here? No. Maybe not this year, but like several times. Right, exactly. Maybe not in the last six weeks. I don't know. Inside UFO 5440 was a Choose Your Own Adventure, which, okay, fine. Choose Your Own Adventures were, you had read Choose Your Own Adventures. Yes, yes. But I think, but Rainn, you and like Eliza, you'd not.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1675.292

Steve, did you read Choose Your Own Adventures? Oh, excuse me.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1681.217

This is great to hear. This is great to hear. Eliza, so this is good. Choose Your Own Adventures have left a generational chasm. This is a relief. I'm glad.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1712.109

Well, so there was, okay, well, great. This is great. This is something that really can bring all generations together. There was one of the early choose your own adventures was inside UFO 5440 and inside UFO 5440 in every ending you died, except for one ending where you, you, you got to utopia and, but there was no page that actually sent you, there was no path that sent you to utopia.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1739.518

And I just remember my little nine-year-old brain just absolutely smoldering on this and not being able to. And of course, in hindsight, as an adult going back and reading Inside UFO 5440, in addition to the warning of like, you know, don't read this book straight from cover to cover, blah, blah, blah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1754.585

There is a special warning that this book, this choose your own adventure may require you to think in a very unorthodox way, which was basically their way of saying that you needed to go straight. Anyway, it was way too meta. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1768.132

also as an adult i'm sure you appreciate the like maybe this will keep this kid occupied for an hour and a half uh i definitely appreciate that and it uh may have overshot the mark because like i'm pretty sure my brain like just absolutely seized up on it i i don't i mean clearly i'm talking about i mean i'm i'm a 51 year old man talking about this choose your own adventure so like i think it's

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1802.549

Like give me a break. Oh my God. Why was not inside UFO 5440? I mean, they asked for three, not four. Okay. That's why they, obviously they asked for four. That's that. I mean, clearly has influenced me a great deal. Where were we? I'm so sorry. I feel like I've done the thing where now we've ended up on the ending that you can't have any way of getting. I'm so sorry.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

183.75

Um, I think so. He, he is, I agree with you. He is a pro to the point where I think he might've concocted that story. If he had such a story, he would concoct it only for my wife's benefit. I think he and I both know that I was, I actually was his first call. I really do appreciate it. Um, and so, uh, the, the, the three books that I named, cause I know I'm like, this is a great question.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1881.328

Yeah, and it's funny, Raina, I think that you mentioned that because I kind of feel like this has been this glorious positive feedback loop of the Rust ecosystem getting larger, is that there are more kind of programs you can go to to say, how did this thing do this? I mean, certainly that's how I discovered 2ERS, now Ratatouille, was from using something that used that. I'm like, this is amazing.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1902.163

What did this thing actually use to do this? And I guess, Adam, is now a good time to say the teaser for our Ratatouille episode coming up in two weeks, right? Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

1932.383

It'd be great, but I definitely found that from doing exactly that right, of going to looking at other programs and seeing what they were using.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

204.478

What are the three books that are, that have had an impact on me professionally have changed me. Um, and, or changed me in adulthood, you have read all three. And I would, with the advice of don't overthink it, I was wondering how many of them you could rattle off of the three. I think you can do kind of three for three.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2061.092

Yeah, for sure. And is now, because I know at some point we're going to talk about bit field crates. Is now a good time to talk about that? Because that is an example where there are a bunch of different crates. I know you did one as well.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2133.82

Okay, so I'm, you know, I've not used module or bit field and this is not so, like this, bit fields are a really good example of something where it can be hard to find. I mean, there are a bunch of different crates. They're all like named bit field or have like bit field or bit fields or they've got bit field in the name somewhere and it can be, hard to sort out what's what.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2155.482

So I did not, I'd never discovered modular bit field in this, but this is actually much closer to the interface that I had kind of wanted to find in other bit field crates. This feels like a really, a much, a much more kind of natural interface.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2195.851

Yeah, this is actually a great guideline in terms of comparisons with other crates. I also think it's something that I like about the Rust ecosystem, too, is that it doesn't feel like it's a popularity contest. People are just trying to find the right tool for the job.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

22.612

Yeah, the predictions episode is always going to be long, though.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2207.62

And it's like, hey, if my crate is not the right fit for you, let me actually go stir you to the other crates that may be a better fit for you.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2271.91

Uh, in terms of being very explicit, I do think it's very helpful to be explicit about the things I care about and the things I don't care about or, and cause I think it's, it's okay that the things that, that matter to a crates author don't need, I mean, just what you're saying, Eliza, about being upfront about, you know, maybe it's, uh, maybe performance is a primary consideration.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2292.254

Maybe it's a secondary consideration, but being explicit about that is actually, um, really, really helpful.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

232.64

I feel that you, I mean, you can, I think you can go at least two for three. Again, don't overthink it.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2411.946

Yeah, totally. And I think that the Rust ecosystem tends to be pretty good about talking explicitly about what those trade-offs are. But it's certainly excellent advice to create authors to be very explicit about those trade-offs.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

245.883

Listen, it's a pop quiz. Okay, everybody. Take out your paper.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2486.673

And so you've dropped the arg parse Rosetta RS repo into the chat that is looking at the benchmarking all of the argument parsing libraries, which I think is really interesting. Truthfully, I've been, although actually now looking at the times, it's kind of interesting to look at the build time versus the overhead. Because I have used Clap for most things.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2513.839

And I've been, especially when Clap merged with StructOpt, I've found it to be really pretty terrific. But I also think it's great that there are other approaches out there. It's not the only one out there.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2607.97

Yeah, interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2609.671

Just looking at LexOps, read me now. And it wants to be small, correct, pedantic, imperative, minimalist, unhelpful. I feel like this is a description of many of us. That's right. Look in the mirror. You may be looking at Lexoft. You may be looking at Lexoft. Exactly. And it also means it's making less decisions for you.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2636.414

I got to say, the thing that drives me that is annoying about Clap, and maybe this is something that has been fixed. I should go see if they... And I should probably get an actual issue open on this. But there is, and Steve, I can't remember if we actually opened an issue on this or not with clap, that there is basically no way to have a minus H option.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

264.123

Okay. Actually our shared professional lives.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2654.692

Like a minus H, it is going to take for help no matter what. Like if you're like, no, no, I don't want that to be help. It's like too bad. Clap is like, it's nope, that's help.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2668.322

Um, and, but, but honestly clap is so useful and helpful in so many other regards. I'm like, okay, you know what? I actually really appreciate it, but it's a good example where it's making, it is not, uh, I think it's fair to say not small, um, and not minimalist. Um, and, uh, it is different from X opt.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2688.929

Um, so I think it's, you know, Eliza, just, you're saying, Oh, what you're saying about like the, it, being very upfront about, about who you are as a crate and kind of what, what the rubric is going to be for the way a crate decides to integrate additional work or not, I think is extremely helpful.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

27.154

Yeah, exactly. You know, it's like, listen, like once a year, they're just going to go a little long. I'll try that.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

271.329

That is one. And I think you, you, I'm going to give you the hint that I think you've gotten the hardest one. The other two are easier than that.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2738.958

Yeah, and I also love the why not under LexOpt too.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2753.221

What else is on everyone's list?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

288.992

That's a deep poll, and no, that's not right. That is a very deep poll. Okay, so what was the title of my blog entry when you launched the company? Oxide.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

297.683

Right, of course. Soul of the New Machine. Yeah. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

2989.561

Okay, so I was going to ask. So Loom has found an interleaving, which now has incorrect behavior. Yeah. What happens now? In terms of getting from that interleaving to understanding, were you able to relatively easily get from Loom's discovery of an interleaving to be able to wrap your brain around what had actually happened?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

305.528

All right. You're right.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

307.789

I got the hardest one first. Quantum Dot is definitely an example of overthinking it. God, that's a very deep pull, by the way. That's an obscure book.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3157.988

This is a life-changing crate for you, in part because it highlighted the challenges in your own weight and log-free data structures.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

324.021

Your brain just went white and all I could think of was this relatively obscure book published in 1998 or whatever it was. That's all that was left.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

332.717

Well, yeah, you know, I tried to prevent you from overthinking it, but I, you know, sometimes, sometimes the overthinking is going to happen on its own. Anyway, I thought that was a great assignment. So I thought it was, and I will be, he'll be reading Skunk Works by Ben Rich. Oh, nice. That's great. Yeah, it's going to be fun. So, Rain, Eliza, welcome.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3350.421

yeah, that is wild. And I mean, I see it kind of like chilling when you start seeing all of the, also when you have these issues where you realize like, God, the, the symptoms of this problem would be really far removed from the root cause. It'd be really difficult to debug presumably.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3365.949

Um, if seen in the wild, it would just kind of be, uh, you would die on some state and the inconsistency and presumably, um, and then try to reason about how the hell he could possibly end up in that state. Um, Yeah, that seems great. And I love the fact... So was Loom done by Carl as part of the work on Tokyo?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3387.55

I mean, was Loom born out of the need to be able to better understand or validate the Tokyo changes?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

351.908

Sorry, welcome to us talking about the three books that have influenced us professionally. Very excited about this. And a shout out to Chris Krakow because I, you know, he had a tweet of like, oh, you know, the crazy you should know, it's great to see a resurrection of this because I did this on the new Restation podcast. And I, that must have been lodged somewhere in my subconscious. But yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3524.009

That's great. The performance is terrific. It's also just extremely satisfying when you've got the computer just working so hard. I love it when the computers are working. We get to come back in an hour and see what the computer has found in terms of these subtle issues. It's very satisfying. That's great, Eliza.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3574.923

Yeah, interesting. and trying to just driving towards something that is simpler. Um, and then, um, uh, someone in the chat asks about postcard. Um, I wish she's postcard in, in humility. We have, uh, humility and hubris use postcard, um, as a, is that a 30 serialization format? Yeah. Yeah. And it, but one that is, uh, pretty tight, um, and pretty straightforward.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3602.546

So yeah, well, I'm a, I'm a postcard fan for sure. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3624.089

Everything in Postcard, every integer in Postcard, I believe, is varint.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3736.829

It's also based on a paper, I believe, called BitBuffers, and I think that that's kind of an underappreciated crate that I have really enjoyed using.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3749.673

Yeah, and as someone in the chat points out, has a 90-minute guided tour that is included. Go watch the guided tour of BBQ. But yeah, that looks good.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3772.603

or um no i don't think so i i i'm not sure yeah what is it sorry i'm embarrassed if this is too mainstream like i uh no i don't think so ever heard of youtube brian like that um so uh

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

378.522

Did you ever listen to the new illustration, Adam?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

388.767

That's right. Exactly. But very, very excited for this. And because I also feel like, I mean, and this is true of not just Rain and Eliza, but I feel like Rain and Eliza are two that definitely are constantly pulling out crates that I've never heard of that are extremely useful. And I'm wondering, like, why haven't I heard of them? Should we start with, how do we want to do this, Adam?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3935.246

This seems cool.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3966.021

Yeah. You've heard of it. I mean, this explained rate or explains rain's concern that it was too mainstream for this, that, uh, So where did you, Mr. I've already heard of this thing. Where did you hear about PetGraph? Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3981.007

I don't know.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3991.63

I didn't realize that.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

3994.731

Okay. Okay. Oh, here we are.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4030.934

PetGraph, interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4054.926

Yeah, interesting. And it's actually doing this by actually properly managing adjacency lists as opposed to actually having references to nodes, right? I mean, presumably.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

412.153

Because do we, online you implied that we should have a D. Tolney cap.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4137.611

That's really great. Well, then I also love the fact that you can easily output it as graph is so you can actually go. That is your love language. You know, Git Oplot is my love language, first of all, not Graph is. My bad, sorry. Please, Git Oplot can hear us. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, this is neat. This is neat.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4161.559

And just, of course, laying eyes on the references Dijkstra gives me, flashes me back to Dijkstra's tweet, actually, Adam, in your masterful work there.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4174.955

The way back, exactly, from the Twitter spaces era. Yeah. Okay, so brain, apparently too mainstream for Adam and for Steve, perhaps, but not for me. You can just take me as a complete neophyte with respect to some of these crates, but that looks great.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4254.363

Yeah. The was another detail. They create that kind of sin reminded me of his paste, Adam. And I was looking for the equivalent of the, do we say the, the, the Octothorpe character?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4283.314

I think I did say pound and I'm worried. I now say hash. And in any case, the, the, so in CPP, the C preprocessor is,

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4293.086

there is the pound pound operator does not google well very hard like i didn't even know what that thing was called all i know is that i had used it in cpp and i wanted an equivalent in rust and i could not go i mean i just like i i didn't even know what to search for i was just i felt so helpless um and i don't think you bailed me out of that one at some point i think you're just like i i

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4318.84

was describing my agony of track. I couldn't even search for the thing that I was trying to replace in terms of what is I now, I now know is called the token concatenation operator in terms of pound pound. Um, but the, so I couldn't even Google the thing I want to replace, let alone a way to replace it in rust. And I think you, I think you would put me on to paste.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4338.653

Um, but I noticed that that piece is now read only. I'm not sure if that's because it's done or if I should be using something else. Um, I do love the fact that, oh, my God, Paste has added pound-to-pound as a GitHub topic in the Paste crate. Has it been done for my benefit? Amazing. That was quick. Yeah, exactly. But another great Detone crate.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4374.015

Another crate that I wanted to get in there, Adam, is the Goblin for Elf and Gimli for Dwarf. Elf is much simpler than Dwarf. And I think LibElf is actually a pretty good library in C. You know what's not a pretty good library is LibDwarf in C. LibDwarf is not a pretty good library. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4399.811

LibElf is a good library, and LibDwarf is really not a good library at all. That's exactly right. But Goblin makes it super easy to rip apart elf binaries. And Gimli makes it as easy to go through Dwarf as Dwarf is. Gimli has done a good job of like... Gimli's basically like, look, Dwarf's problems are not my problems. Gimli does as good a job as it can do. I really like...

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4429.564

give me quite a bit but that was another and those are like relatively easier to find because you're looking for a dwarf court of door a dwarf crate or an elf crate you kind of know what you're searching for you'll find that but they're both very good

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

45.653

So I did see a headline on Thursday that I'm like, oh my God, this prediction is wrong already. Intel CEO search heats up as leadership shakeup drives turnaround hopes. And so I'm literally like, this story is going to be like a rumor about a candidate that they're going to be announcing in like, this is going to be done by the weekend. But then I go to the saw, I'm thinking like, oh, great.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4516.106

And that is HP mock, right? HTTP mock, exactly. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4569.727

Yeah. Wow. That's really cool.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4598.795

I'm just looking in the chat. There is RHDL, a Rust-based HDL for FPGA development. That's very spicy. I have to go look at that one.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4614.443

That one is totally new. At least to me. But I think we've already established lots of things that are apparently very mainstream are new to me. Yeah. Rayne, Eliza, would you give some other shout-outs, other crates that... Yeah, go ahead.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4847.54

Camino does a good job in the great readme of explaining why it exists and when you should use it and when you shouldn't use it. Just to your and Eliza's earlier point, I think they do an excellent job about the problem that it's solving.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

4870.786

Yeah, Kamino rocks.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5046.337

Yeah, and in particular, this is going to be especially a good fit if you've got many, many, many readers. Right. I agree. And performance is important. And it's something that you want to update. It's a structure you want to update, but you're willing to have some control over when those updates are seen by the readers. Right.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5072.904

You don't need them to be always – the eventual – because the thing I also like – I mean, I'll ask Greg if I'm wrong, but just from reading the description – it sounds like you've got some control over... Eventually consistent is not just like, well, it may be a day or two. You've got some control over when that actually happens.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5114.178

Yeah, no, I like it. I like it. I actually, I also, although nowhere near as sophisticated as this, I also do love index maps and multimaps are two very, very simple crates that are very useful. Index maps being where you can actually iterate over things in the order in which they were put in the hash map, which I think is very helpful.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

513.893

Okay, that's interesting. Because you've got a lot of crates that generate a huge amount of code. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5136.691

And then multimap allows you to have multiple values for a particular key, which is also very helpful without, And again, very simple crates, but very, very useful.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5151.871

Well, Liza, especially you've got to run at 630. Did you get all your crates out there? Do you have any last crates you need to get in there?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

528.548

And you want the code that it emits, you want to be readable.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5356.313

That's the buff list crate, right? Yes.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5369.319

That's very cool. Rain, are there any other crates that you've got on your list here?

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5471.88

Well, just looking at, I mean, there's a really complete tutorial on it. I mean, it's very like, this is a very kind of full, complete crate here.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5506.457

Yeah, that's a great one. That's a great one. And maybe a good one to end on there. Um, I love there. The chapter on, on also debugging is, uh, for Winnow is very cool. Um, I mean, obviously I'm a, I'm a sucker for, for anyone talking about the debugging of their crate or their parser. Um, Well, Rain, thank you very much. Eliza, thank you in absentia. And thanks for running the chat.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5536.905

Adam, this is great. We ended up with a lot of greats here.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5548.85

uh annual tradition but this is a good one to come back to i i think you're right i think this is this is one we go we got to come back to uh and next time i will have heard of pet graph so i i get to be with the with the with the cool kids which is very nice um and we can do we'll do some out loud readings from inside ufo 5440 perhaps um Well, Ray, thanks again.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

555.725

you know, maybe I should be using this. Okay. This is, this is already paying dividends actually. Cause I, I, I've got in my crates that generate code. I have just, I've kind of manually made the code that I generate rust format. Oh yeah. Pretty please.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

5571.434

Steve, thank you as well, of course. And yeah, so Adam, in two weeks, it's going to be Ratatouille. And I'm not sure if we're going to do an episode next week or not. It's a holiday here in the US, so we'll figure that out. But stay tuned. All right. Thanks, everyone.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

581.046

It's doing all of that.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

582.107

And, and, You know, that's interesting because it has made the – I mean, of course. I kind of believe that code that generates other code, there's like a balance that must be achieved in the universe. And if the code that you're going to emit is going to look clean, the code that emits that code has to be filthy. But maybe that's too –

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

605.137

Well, this is one of the... My code that emits Rust format clean code is filthy. And this, I think, would allow me to clean it up quite a bit.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

67.613

Like, well, fine. I knew the risks. The story is that Citi analyst Christopher Dainley says Intel might name a permanent CEO in the next few months. I mean, that's talk about like a prediction. I'm like, wow. How do you get to be an analyst? That sounds hard. Yeah. Conversely, they might not. That's the alternative. Yeah. Sorry.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

676.574

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that is Cliff's doing, not mine, but I can go look at that as a model. What I'm thinking of in particular is the PM bus crate, which is just... There's some grime that could be cleaned up in there, for sure. Yeah, this looks great. God, you know, there's always...

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

694.13

You know, they always, as I think we've said before, you know, they always say that there's a chat that includes everyone except for you. I always feel like there's always a detail in that crate you haven't heard of. And I... That's what I'm saying.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

93.465

I mean, it's taking away from the superlative work of Citi analyst Christopher Dainley, who I'm sure does very thoughtful research. But it is not a great insight that they might name a permanent CEO the next couple of months. Yeah. But Adam, I decided that I'm going to take zero. I will take no credit if they name this in January. But if it's February, I will take one 12th credit.

Oxide and Friends

Crates We Love

979.249

Yeah, this looks really cool. This looks so good. Yeah, I've not seen this. Have you seen this before, Adam? I've never seen this before.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

0.189

Okay, now you can hear me. Oh, yeah. Boy, can we hear you. We'd like to hear a lot less of you. No. It was not plugged all the way in. I know you're dying to know the answer.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1001.889

But if no one else shows up, like it doesn't make sense to give the talk just to you. You can come in the next, I'm going to give this talk again a third time. You know, I'll kind of like go to lunch with my mom or whatever. I'll come back and I'll give the talk to you. And he just says, I don't really feel like doing that. I'm like, okay. And then no one else shows up. And so he sits down.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1020.949

I'm like, all right, I guess I'm going to give the talk to you and then my mom. And so I start giving this talk and this guy like starts spacing out during my talk. And like, you can't do this. Like there's only one person here. Like the social contract is now different. Like if you're in a big room, you can like space out. That's fine. There's only like one person. It's just me and you, man.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1041.809

Like you can't like look at the ceiling or whatever. So I kept like trying to make eye contact with him. He's kind of, this is like before phones and laptops or whatever. So he's like literally, you know, like doing the crossword. Doing the crossword, absolutely. Counting like the flowers on the wallpaper or whatever. And fortunately, there was one other person there. It was my mom.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1059.821

And she was just like, just totally locked on. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to give my talk to my mom. And I felt like just mortified. I'm like, my mom is... This is the... like technologically the smallest audience I can possibly have. And, uh, but you actually was, it was after that, I was just like, I felt bad. And my mom was like, that was, I, I learned so much in that talk.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1083.158

I'm like, mom, I just, I'm so sorry. You had to like see that. Oh, cause then we get the end of the talk and I'm like, well, I mean like obviously stop me if you have any questions. Cause you're the only person here. And we get to the end of the talk and he just like walks up and leaves. I'm like, okay, goodbye. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Whatever. Anyway, sorry.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1102.894

So that was starting from a real low there. But then, yeah, it was AADbug and then OzCon. But in those early days, the conferences had a vitality to them because it was the only... I mean, it's not that they don't have vitality now, but it was a special kind of unique vitality, I feel, because you had just no... No other way of consuming a bunch of this information. Am I being nostalgic here?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1133.652

Steven, without acknowledging how old Redmug is, what are your thoughts?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

114.048

that is, yeah. And, and we understand if you need to drop dead at any moment. So you, you will not need to apologize. If you feel free to drop dead, feel free to, but you know, I, Hey, look, if you're well enough to skate, you're well enough to podcast as my mother is fond of saying. So I'm, I'm glad to see that.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1261.155

Steve, let me get this week because I, as a speaker, like I, like I will not give a talk if it's not recorded. And I will not give a talk if it's not recorded. And, and like the recording has to be made publicly available. That's not true. And, but so I kind of like, yeah, Oh, yeah, definitely. Where we couldn't record your talk?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1285.112

Well, okay, so because of me.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1296.161

Okay, Theo, you know, I have like a few regrets in life that I didn't record that talk as one of them. I, so this is the, it was the, my talk at surge 2010. So this is, yeah, it was kind of moving on a little bit, but this is, uh, Theo becomes frustrated with velocity, right? Theo, I think I'm telling the story correctly. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

13.762

Yeah. Theo, how are you? Doing well.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

130.224

Yeah. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1321.849

And you're like, I, and cause velocity had just, I mean, I think that had just not served, was not serving the practitioner all that well. I mean, if the, what was, is that, what was your, what was the exact source of the disgruntlement?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

135.04

Theo, you also may not drop dead. I'm sorry. Well, I am really stoked to have you all here to talk about a conference, a subject that is near and dear to our hearts, which is conferences in tech. And I was kind of reflecting back on Because, Stephen, I met both you and Theo at conferences. Stephen, I think you and I may have met at Sun Network in 2002. Is that possible? Something like that?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1375.907

Theo, have I voiced to you my desire to have a Surge 2010 reunion?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1386.771

I would love to do a Surge reunion, just because that... I mean, do we agree that Archer pays for it? I mean, I think so, right? Yeah, and it's like the guy that hit the jackpot. He pays for it, whether he knows for it or not. No, he doesn't know for it. So I don't know. Did you go to the search conferences, Adam? This is like 2010, 2011, 2012, 13.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1410.977

Oh man. They were really, really good. They were really good because it was like also feel like it was kind of a jackpot in terms of timing too. You know what I mean?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1446.189

They did, and it was also at an era when it was kind of like before... When folks were hitting these scale issues that weren't just at the hyperscalers. Hyperscalers were not hyperscale at that point. They were all a lot smaller. I don't know. It just felt like those years felt special. And also, it was in Baltimore, which is great. I just... very fond memories of, of surge.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1472.494

And now you, cause I think that was also, that's an early conference that was, that was making videos available from talks.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1491.898

Yeah. Right.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1499.306

And you think that YouTube starts in 2006, 2007, which is just not that long ago. And then you hit this kind of era of conferences where, I don't know, a bit of a different kind of a golden era. If you had this kind of pre-recorded golden era that we can all live as in our memory, you had these talks that are all recorded. But also, like, really broadly attended.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1524.09

Because, Stephen, people don't have your disposition today of, like, well, I'm just not even going to go to the talk. I'm only going to watch it online. People are definitely watching it in person. But the fact that the recordings are made available, really. And, I mean, what I started to realize after, like, a year or two of this is, like, wait a minute.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1539.298

There are way more people consuming this when it's recorded than are in the room. Right.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1625.131

Yeah, and I think that's a very good point because I think when talks became recorded, it did change kind of the tenor of a talk. It was kind of necessarily more of a performance and less of a dialogue. It was not a boff. To go back to kind of the birds of a feather sessions, it was much more of a...

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1645.758

I mean, not necessarily scripted, but definitely not necessarily having that iteration of an idea was not happening as much for sure when you kind of hit that recorded era. And I decided somewhere along in there, like 2013 or 2014, I decided that I'm never giving the same talk twice. And I'm just not going to do that.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

168.586

Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm doxing you as old. Listen, don't you listen to our podcast? This is like the Gen X Senior Hour. We talk about attending readings from Ad Rock of Beastie Boys.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1753.301

Is this reInvent?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1756.863

No, I didn't realize that.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1774.514

Am I the only one? I think that's a little bit of edge to it. I kind of like it. I mean, it keeps the audience on edge. Oh, 100%. I do think that some of those were... It is great when you've got a room of people that are really engaged in what you're saying. It's energy that really does bring something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1802.913

Theo, one of my favorite talks of yours is your closing plenary from Surge 2011, I think.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1817.034

This is where it was the Elfin, the Larry Wall Elfin. Do you recall this?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1840.132

It was wild. A little bit of this is like, you were complaining to me. So the conference is like, we're kind of in the pre-conference, like the days before the conference. You're like, I've got to give this plenary in like three days and I've got no idea what I'm talking about.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1851.52

And then like unrelated to the closing plenary, you were relaying to me your like the extreme frustration of your past week, which I found hilarious. I'm like, Theo, that is your closing plenary. Like you just need to go and like describe your week. And I still feel, I got to say, I still absolutely love that talk. Because in part, because you can just like feel your visceral pain.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1872.035

The thing I also love is Adam, Theo goes down a blind alley because someone has his exact problem and suggests a fix. And then someone replies to him saying, thanks, that fix worked for me. The fix was wrong. And it totally, and there's like, it feels like there is a special place in hell for someone who says a fix that does not work works for them.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1897.979

You can waste an arbitrary amount of time, but it was, uh, it was right. And I think that was kind of like, that was definitely that era of like, you've got a big room and it was great. I mean, it was, it was, it was, it was a lot of energy, live performance. It was, uh, it was really terrific. Thank you. But then I feel like you guys did Surge for, I think, five years and then folded the 10 up.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1924.107

I think it was... Something like that?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

1930.55

I think. But you stopped doing Surge, presumably because the dynamics were shifting and obviously conferences are super expensive. And what would... Maybe this gets to part of what Stephen was saying in terms of the dynamics really changing about conferences.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

195.844

You want the company to be younger than it is?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

20.308

And Killian, you're here.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2016.607

I'll get you Schlossnagel. You could start a conference in opposition to Velocity. I was the Velocity China chair for fuck's sake, but whatever. Yeah, these people eat their own. And then O'Reilly, I mean, that was an O'Reilly conference. O'Reilly had many, many years of conferences. And then after COVID, O'Reilly totally folded that up and decided to go completely online.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2041.614

But there was this kind of three-legged stool of you had the attendees. It was kind of in their interest to go. You had the speakers. It was kind of in their interest to go because they are able to get their ideas out there. Things are recorded and so on. And then you also have the sponsors who are there.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

205.77

Okay. All right. Yeah. Red Monk has got an aging complex or something. Are you getting Botox injections for Red Monk? I noticed there's no crow's feet. I mean, Red Monk looks like, as far as I know, it's the Brian Johnson of companies, of consulting organizations, we often say. So you've got the...

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2060.191

And I know that Theo Steve still remembers fondly Surge 2010 when he realized that he is with all of these practitioners. He's like, I am the only sales guy here. He's like, I am fishing in a stocked pond. I'm on a game preserve and I've just got like... no limit, no bag limit. He was like, this is great. I was like, please do not tell anybody else about Surge. He loved that conference.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2092.212

But of course, that is not sustainable. You can't actually have a game preserve. You actually need to have this kind of other element, this commercial element of people who are there to sell the products.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2125.728

It is great. Have you ever been to Budapest, Adam?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2131.092

Oh, it's amazing. It's better than... Okay, easy. Easy, easy, easy. Let's just settle down here.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2143.223

Ghent is the third largest city in Europe in like 1550, behind Paris and London.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2151.045

And then it was like... I feel like I gotta come in here and defend Ghent. Come in, you'll appreciate this. This is a medievalist. Ghent was then the changing wool trade, and wool being... It was no longer a port for wool, which was all moved... I feel like this is like...

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2171.69

yeah that's right uh and so it basically is kind of like economically kind of collapses and as a result like it's not economically interesting and so it doesn't get bombed during world war ii so it's like it's totally it's a completely preserved yeah frozen in time amazing city budapest also an amazing city don't make me choose that's what i'm gonna say theo whatever theo says i i don't think they're both great cities but yes craft conf is great

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2200.904

But it's just far away is the problem with GraphConf. And then, I mean, Stephen, you've obviously been, you know, had a front row seat for all of this kind of changing in terms of conferences. And you started, when you guys started, was MonkeyGraw before Monctoberfest or was Monctoberfest before? What's the origin of Monctoberfest versus MonkeyGraw?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

224.908

Okay, well, so in the unspecified past, Theo, I don't know if you've got the same hangout, but I mean, you and I met, and I think Theo, when do you think we met?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2268.443

What's the difference? What's the difference? We were on either side of that one. So the... Obviously, Red Monk is your... Have Monctoberfest be your first conference. Monctoberfest, I think, is still something special. Steve, do you want to describe why Monctoberfest and why that's endured?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

23.907

We understand we are going to be assembling like Red Monk Voltron here. We're going to be putting together various limbs. Steven is here in some diminished capacity. Is he on stage yet? Have we dragged him on stage yet?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2505.092

Yeah. I speak Gen Z. So it's low-key chill for real, for real. No cap.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2516.06

No, it's fine. My kids right now, unfortunately, my kids don't listen to this. They would be just absolutely just, oh God, to be real. Mortify the drop dead. Yeah, the hallway track is the, and maybe this is a dated term, but this is like kind of the meeting outside of the talks when you're talking to people in the hallway.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

252.678

I think we met at OSCON 2005. Okay, that's feasible.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

260.545

Yeah, we did a Detroit session at OSCON 2005.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

269.692

Pour one out for OSCON. Okay, so let's start actually a little bit with OSCON. OSCON was the O'Reilly Open Source Conference. And, Theo, you had been to OSCONs earlier than that, I think. That was my first OSCON in 2005, but I think you had been maybe a couple years prior.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2698.766

Okay, so let's talk about size a little bit because, you know, you, Stephen, I mean, it'd be interesting to know your perspective on this, but one of the things that is a challenge with Monctoberfest is you want it to be small. So therefore it's like, it's hard to go. It's like hard to score a ticket.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2714.778

It's not something that like, you are not able to accommodate everyone who wants to attend Monctoberfest.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2839.826

Totally. Well, and a few, I think in terms of like a venue, cause Steve, did you go to the, any of the search conferences? I'm not sure if you, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2852.605

because that venue in Baltimore was definitely amazing and unique. I feel like Theo, I mean, when you scaled up and you changed the venue, something changed in the conference. I mean, it was still great, but it was different.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2882.361

The, the, where you held it in Baltimore was like, it was like four hotels that were mashed together. And so you would be on and you wouldn't, didn't really know which hotel you were in. And I just remember you would be on floor three in one hotel and then you'd be on the fourth floor in the next hotel without actually going up or down any stairs.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2902.417

Or it was just like, it was kind of delightfully confusing that they always like, and there were rooms that were like kind of like abandoned ballrooms. I mean,

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

293.775

Okay. Okay, so, yeah, tell me about your first conferences.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2942.512

I think it's, but it's kind of interesting because I think this gets to like what, what conferences need to do to like, if a conference is going to be an in-person conference, there's gotta be something about it. That is that like there's about the venue or about the experience. I mean, obviously at McToberfest, Steven, you've got, you've got the local beers and the local flavor.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

2960.498

I mean, there's, and it's, I mean, it's obviously always going to be, I would assume in Portland, Maine, a very difficult city to get to from the West coast, but always worth a trip.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3004.262

But that's what we do around here. Look, this is the, you know, this is... We just kind of show up at places. I've done it many times.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3019.146

Yes. Yeah, totally. Yeah, Foo Camp. That's where actually I met Bob Lee, the late Bob Lee. I met at Foo Camp.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3030.53

Friends of O'Reilly. Friends of O'Reilly.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3057.682

It is invite only. And I knew when I was invited, I'm like, I think I'm going to be invited once. So I should just enjoy it because I don't think I'll be invited back. And that was right. So I was right about that.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3152.898

Yeah, the food camp I went to was in 2011, where I saw Quinn Norton presenting on Bitcoin. And I often think of how many... If I had only had to see... This is where Adam... We had this meeting with the proto-Twitter, and I'm like, I'm never going to do that. Those guys are jokers. And Adam's like, those guys are jokers, and I should reserve AHL on Twitter. And it's...

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3176.319

Which I noticed, by the way, the American Hockey League, now you and the American Hockey League have this kind of ongoing bit where you've got AHL at Blue Sky and now they've got the AHL at Blue Sky.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3190.409

It's really heartwarming, honestly. It's like a buddy movie, you two.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3228.323

Okay. So, so we've got these kinds of conferences that are for, that really are focused on this kind of like social aspect. And I don't think those are going to go away. Um, I think that they've also, I mean, I think one of the unfortunate bits, I mean, I think both the strength and the minus is that you've got this exclusivity with it.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3246.451

I mean, I do think like these, you kind of think of these food camps that are, you know, these are kind of extraordinary folks, but it's not like the, it's not open. It's invite all things on open all comers. Um, Just to shift gears a little bit, because I do think that the way we present information and giving talks, I do think is important. What does the future of that look like?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3269.173

And obviously, I've got my thumb on the scale a little bit because of what we're doing with detrace.conf this week. It should be said, Stephen and Theo, both attendees of the 2008 detrace.conf. I'm not sure. That was so much fun.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3308.178

Oh, that was so great. And that was a very technical, fun conference with a very niche conference. Nobody is asking us to scale up. This is not something that we have. We were like, boy, this conference would be great, but can we do it at the Santa Clara Convention Center? No one's making that request.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3335.333

And Stephen, as I'm sure you recall, this is a conversation I recall so vividly because I remember exactly where we were at the end of the conference meeting. when you're telling me this has been a great conference, but, uh, next year is going to be like, you just like next year is going to be worse. I was like, like this conference is not even, like today's not even over yet.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3360.135

Like I can't even have today. And we're already talking about next year. It's like, no, I don't remember that.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3367.559

Oh, no, no. It was, no, no. It was extremely helpful. You're like, no, like, look, I, you know, this conference, it's like, this was great. I'll hide it to you. Like, this was really great. This is amazing. You brought it. But like next year, like some people can make it, some people can't make it. And then everyone's just going to invite comparison to this year.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3380.785

And it's just going to be like, people are going to kind of like reminisce about this year. Like next year, just not going to be quite. And then like the next year, like won't be good as getting it. It'll just kind of fizzle out. And I'm like, can we talk about this tomorrow, maybe?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3416.015

this is 2008, this is before 2011. Yeah, sure, shut up at your first Monctoberfest and be like, hey, Steve, before you go to sleep for 14 hours, I've got some feedback for you.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3427.443

No, but I actually really appreciate it. Because this is what, like when, this kind of like, you're like an apparition from the future. And as, because we had this idea like, oh, this will be an annual event. And I'm like, no, no, we need to not make it an annual event. And they're like, no, forget it. We're just never going to do it again. That's it. That's the way to play.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3451.184

We're not going to do it again. And then it was when we hit 2010, 2011, 2012. And then by 2012, we're like, well, maybe we can't do it again because no one can remember 2008. And I'm like, this is why they only do the Olympics every four years. We can do the Olympiad cadence. Um, and this is, this is 2024. It's a, it's a Detroit Olympiad year.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3473.291

Um, but we did make the decision to go completely online. Um, because, um, for Detroit.com was great for, you know, in kind of that 2008 era, uh,

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3485.26

um but now it's like why would people travel when they can get i mean and this is this is going to be interesting to see like i i'm so this is on wednesday by the way not that this is a not that this entire episode is just like a cheap promo for our our conference but you know it is free to attend but actually because one thing that that's important is that it's uh it is actually freely available for everybody like i'm not going to charge anything and anyone can go and you

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3511.314

Because I like the socialization you get with the exclusivity, but everything else about the exclusivity I don't like. And I want as many people to be able to participate as want to participate. Now, in Detroit.com's case, I'm not exactly worried about being overwhelmed with attendees. But what do you make of the online conferences, Stephen and Thea?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

359.464

Yeah, Kelly, you're making a very important point. For those of you contemplating grad school, this is Theo's experience is highly unusual and atypical. This is not what grad school normally is.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

371.997

Much higher budget. And so was this, what conference, this was ApacheCon? What was the conference?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3722.265

So that works from like the, I definitely agree with you from like the speaker perspective or even the attendee perspective, the economics though become harder at that small scale. Right. I mean, Steven, I mean, I, you guys, I mean, it's, it must be tough to pull off. I would assume.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3736.538

I mean, it's obviously a huge amount of work, which is another thing actually it's worth talking about in terms of like the actual burnout folks get from organizing conferences.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3782.321

Yeah, I was going to say, you tend to, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3790.35

Monctober Fest, I think.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3794.534

But the previous year. I think Monctober Fest 2023. I don't know. Did I go to – and this is where I think – no, because I did do Monctober. I may have done it in person last year that I can't remember. Well, increasingly because the online conferences and the in-person conferences are actually blending together.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3816.812

I do think that folks are getting some tricks about online conferences to give them more of that. I think P99Conf, I think that those folks do a terrific job of getting a great energetic hallway track by mixing up live and pre-recorded events.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3835.462

Um, so I, I think that the, um, that's part of the reason that they're actually, um, blurring together, uh, in a, in a delightful way, but yeah, I don't go to very many in-person conferences and I only go, I generally only go if I'm a speaker because just, I mean, it's just harder otherwise.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3851.097

And, you know, I went to a, one of these kind of traditional, I mean, not to call them out because I think if they do a great job, but I went to go to Chicago in 2023, um, And it was, to attend for three days, it was $3,000. It's like, man, that's a lot. I mean, that's not a hotel, and that's not travel. That is just the cost of attending the conference.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3876.088

It was like $2,800 or something like that for three days. And, like, that does not economically work, really. I don't think. I mean, I'm like, and then I think that they, and I'm sure they're going to change it up because, like, when I was at that conference, I'm like, this conference is many fewer people are attending.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3895.602

They were not recovering at all from their pre-COVID numbers because the cost is so high. And as a result, like you're losing that critical mass and they're still at that kind of, Stephen, you said that like conferences need to either be online, very intimate, experience oriented, or very large. And it was absolutely falling in that gap.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3914.274

And it's like that, that's the valley of death for a conference.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

3980.02

And so I, I kind of want to, I mean, so I think the thing that we're experimenting with, I would say with the just.com for 2024 is can we, can you get an online conference that has a bit of an unconference feel to it where it is a little more loosely structured, can we get to some of that kind of community building and get some more people kind of giving talks?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4003.688

Because I do think it's helpful for people to give talks. But of course, you're giving a talk to... It's like you're giving a presentation at a Google Meet. It's not the same kind of experience. But I think it's actually important as an industry that we are getting younger technologists an opportunity to present their work. And I'm a little worried that we... If conferences...

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4026.86

don't afford that opportunity. Uh, that's a bit of a problem. I think it's really important that we, we afford that to folks. Um, but I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe I should be, maybe the youths are just like, no, we're all like YouTube influencers. We don't make like, you know, don't know. I, I, I make, I have like 6 million views on this, like unboxing of a toy that I, it's fine. Uh, uh,

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4053.141

But I do think that that's important. So I think this is going to be a different kind of experiment. I think we're also going to try a bit of the unconferency bit. And we're trying to find, I mean, Adam, do you want to describe what we're doing? I think we're kind of trying to use Discord and Google Meet and YouTube streaming and try to hit a sweet spot in here.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4130.245

It's going to be a stage dive, potentially onto concrete. You never know around here.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4159.424

And then we are also doing a, an in-person social here in the evening. So we're, we are really trying to have it both ways and knowing that this is like not something that people will travel for. So we'll be, um, I don't know, you know, this could be, maybe it'll be the worst of all worlds, but, um,

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4185.575

I use. Okay. Yes. That I thought you were, you were saying at the very least, it's going to be cheap because it definitely is cheap.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4194.842

It's economic. Well, no, because I do think this is an issue that like that, that the, this is, it has become so expensive and yeah, and this is also like remote work.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4205.048

I mean, and, and I mean, Stephen, you must've also had this thought about like, you know, we, if we are transitioning to a more of a, a truly remote world, what does that mean to kind of come into the world when it's all remote and how people, you know, as young technologists, how they actually like connect with people on, on obviously the world is also more connected than ever.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

423.874

Okay, interesting. Part of my hunch is that just looking at kind of the history, OSCON being one of the early industry conferences, that this kind of came out of one academic computer sciences conferences. Academic computer science has... the very strange tradition of having conferences as their kind of publishing vehicle rather than journals, which is what every other scientific discipline does.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4301.078

Yeah, I mean, what a great world that you're describing where all of this corporate real estate that is not going to be used properly can now be – we can take all of that money and we can actually invest it properly in having people that are remote but then spending that money on bringing them together.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4351.385

Well, I think there are going to be some new models. I think Raphael in the chat is saying, sometimes if things are too produced, it feels too intimidating. Raphael, maybe I'm putting words in your mouth. Maybe this is not what you're saying. What I think you're saying is, I love how underproduced DTrace.com is because it tells me that anyone is welcome to present.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4372.283

We have such a poor audio on your podcast.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4378.086

That's right. You can't possibly have imposter syndrome around here because we clearly have got no idea what we're doing. But if you can do that, then you can maybe do more of them. I mean, I still think. like this very podcast has been great for us. I don't know why more folks don't do these things or if they do, I can't find them.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4466.312

So I would like to say that the shirt, and Adam, you were calling out that the shirt is an absolute banger. Kudos to Ben Leonard, our designer. So I don't know if you saw, Theo, our shirt for Teachers.conf 2024 is taking some of this inspiration from 08 and kind of reimagining it with an actual oxide compute sled. Um, people are asking like, wait a minute, can I just get the shirt?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

447.984

And that combined with these open source and open source projects that needed to have a way or were looking for a way to get people that were otherwise collaborating to physically meet up because they were not co-located. Is that a fair kind of read for the origin of the kind of those early days of conferences?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4493.662

Do I have to go to the conference? It's like an online conference. We're not taking attendance. So yes, like you get like, I mean, do you need me to spell it out for you?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4502.307

I mean, you can just, uh, yeah, yes, you can get the shirt and then like, you can also go to the free online conference, but you can, and then you can just like, you know, work on the conference and get, and you can get an amazing shirt. So yes, anyone get the shirt will be, uh, they will be packed by hand by my children. Um,

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4521.162

They are my own children, so this is not – before anyone busts out the labor law on me, which my kids do all the time, it's like my own kids, all legal.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4534.646

I know which one did it. I know which one did it. If you get a note – okay, yeah, this is a good point, Adam. I'm glad you're bringing this up. No one is being held against their will, despite the note that my 17-year-old may try to slide in there.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4562.512

As it turns out, like labor law is pretty much all repealed for your own kids. I mean, God bless it. Otherwise, like our kids would all be like little attorneys. They'd have like, what do you know? I don't know. Why am I having to go through your lawyer to ask you to unload the dishwasher? This is not an ocean of, Oh, come on. This dishwasher is all right. Maybe this one is, but.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4577.353

It's going to be... The conference is free. The t-shirt is not free, but it's pretty cheap, I think.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4591.317

I don't know that they will be... Adam, I think these things are going to sell out. Not to be too exclusive about it, but I do think... I don't remember paying for anything, but maybe I did.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

46.337

Oh, there you are. In the audience, if your lights are on and you are about to be towed, Stephen O'Grady, your lights are on.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4608.97

Is it in the email?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4612.854

Well, yeah, we may have. And we have resisted. I have to say, this is like the first time we've made an Oxide shirt publicly available. We're excited. And it's a great shirt. I think it's going to be fun. It'll be an interesting experiment. I hope other things experiment like this. I would like to go to other experiments like this.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4635.956

So if other folks, in terms of when will the shirts be shipped out, when will the shirts be shipped out?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4648.405

I know. I think we are still waiting for them to arrive. I mean, they're en route.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4660.75

Well played. Yes. We're very mindful of this burnout problem. And therefore, first, my children will be doing the work. So just that's presupposed.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4675.659

Exactly. So, wow. This is the, it's like, wow, this is the most, thank God this unproduced conference. I don't, not only do I not have imposter syndrome, I'm getting these guys won't get burned out because they don't seem to be doing any work. I found my email.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4695.693

People wanted that yellow shirt. That is a collector's item, Adam, and yours is in good shape. Mine's a little threadbare.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4714.921

The shirt has gotten much smaller over the years. That's the only thing that makes sense. Um, but it was, uh, it's a lot of fun and this is going to be, so we're, we're trying to like get it all. Um, we'll see, we're obviously going to drop something on the, we're not going to, you can't get it all. You can't, um, you have to give up something.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4731.16

I think that's the, and you have to kind of know what you're trying to go do. Um, and I think for this, it's like, we want to talk about detrace, which is gonna be fun. Um, so, um, but, um, if you, if folks do get the opportunity, I mean, I assume, uh, Steven, that you've not talked about conference burnout, um,

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4749.205

Um, that's surely you must be, uh, I mean, I know it's a lot of work to put on Oktoberfest every year and I'm sure every year you're like, why am I doing this again?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4850.561

Kelly had a very important point. Yes.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4860.899

Well, so all the more reason to be grateful for... And I think you also have to be like, you can never take these conferences for granted because no conference is going to go on forever. And we should all be grateful for them when we have them. And I certainly was extremely grateful for those years of surge, Theo, and

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4880.203

I'm very, very grateful for Monctoberfest, as I've told you repeatedly, Steve, and I think I've given the talks that are most personally important to me at Monctoberfest, in part because they're talks that you explicitly asked me to give, which I would also really encourage conference organizers to do.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4898.055

If there's a talk you want to see, go find the person you want to give it and ask them to give it, because they may not even... Certainly for the talks you've asked me to give, it has not occurred to me to give a talk on them. And they've ended up being really, really important.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

4989.824

Yeah. And we, we definitely, in terms of like, I mean, this is not a problem, but when you are oversubscribed, I mean, Adam, like we were with systems we love, where I had, I talk about like a one-time bounty of like the old, like we have unspent marketing dollars, just absolute music to my ears. So we're like, can you spend $40,000 on a conference? I'm like a hundred percent. Absolutely.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

500.221

And there's something actually really special about conferences of that vintage because you kind of felt like you had a super nerdy interest that you were in a Usenet group with people talking about maybe RARC. And then to meet those people in real life felt very kind of validating at a time when to be in software was kind of counterculture. I mean, it feels so...

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5013.727

You've come to the right person.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5022.554

That was, that was so much fun. That was so much fun, and it was like one and done. I kind of had an idea of maybe we'd do it, but it did end up being one and done. That one, I think, actually, the thing that I am proudest of there was how we selected talks, actually. We were blind. I thought it was really important to be blind and to have people just submit their proposals.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5052.486

And then we had a huge number of people who wanted to talk, which is great. And then whittled it down to the point where we still had three times the number of applicants or twice maybe the number of applicants as we had spots. And then we unblinded and looked at other things, including we wanted to get some first-time speakers up on stage. And that was a lot of fun. That was a good day.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5078.701

It was great.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5082.644

That was Systems We Love, and that was in 2016, I think. But we kind of had the idea of taking it on the road. We did Systems We Love in Minneapolis, which was fun. But then the unspent marketing dollars problem, that kind of went away, as it turns out. It turns out if you spend the marketing dollars, you no longer have the unspent marketing dollars.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5100.359

And then, of course, everyone adjusts their budgets next year to make sure that doesn't happen. So that's kind of what happened there. I will say, actually, a problem with... So was briefly a problem with Systems We Love. The talks, we had lost the videos for a bit.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5117.362

Um, and the, because when you have, they were on Vimeo and they were on kind of a corporate account and then a bunch of us had left and they, you know, changed to a free plan and then Vimeo started deleting stuff. But we, uh, there were some terrific folks inside of joint. Thank you very much. You know, you are who rescued those videos. Um, but then we did not do that for detrace.com for 2016.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5139.49

YouTube.com 2016 videos are lost, unfortunately. So I would say it's really important when you please upload those videos to YouTube and make sure that they've got... And please, if you haven't, donate to the Internet Archive, which I have more than once. It has saved my bacon. when somebody has deleted... Can I just say, actually, may I make a quick PSA, Adam?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5168.582

Because this has happened to me a couple of times. If you record a talk at a conference... you are engaged in a social contract with the person who you recorded. And you, this is Mike.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5189.883

That's my lawyer. I want you to, well, I have had this happen a couple of times where people have deleted the only recordings of talks that I gave. Because I don't give the same talk twice, and it has been the Internet Archive that has absolutely bailed me out and has allowed me to restore those talks. And in some cases, those talks were really personally important.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5213.795

Um, and I, you, you just, you have a responsibility to a speaker when you, you, you've got like a part of them that they've given you as part of that talk. And, uh, you just, just, you can't destroy someone's art and you can't just, anyway, that's what I have to say about that. Okay. I feel better. I got that out.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5234.017

Just, Also, Vimeo. If anyone works for Vimeo and can help us restore to the... But I think these things are lost, unfortunately.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

524.833

I mean, God, it feels just so ancient. Sorry, Stephen, we're going to date Red Monk here as being founded in the 1880s at this rate. I mean, it feels like such a distant time when this is kind of like before software became overrun with tech pros and ate the economy. Before software ate the world, it felt like I don't know. What was your first conference?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5254.596

Do you have it?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5257.96

Okay. I think that the, in terms of, of extremes in terms of like, so Theo, you gave a talk to, was it 4,000 people, 2,000 people, Apache con big, a lot of people drinking Mai Tai. Um, And I feel I've given talks in rooms of like a thousand plus, but Adam, I think you take the crown, at least among the two of us, certainly. It's not really fair.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5299.913

It was a very big room. It's the biggest possible room at Moscone, and it was packed to the rafters. I mean, there were 10,000 people in the room. More, I think. And you chose that moment to have... The longest hair that I've... I mean, it was singular. Yeah. It was amazing. Yeah, it was a choice.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5325.698

And then you gave an amazing demo, an amazing demo showing a code flow from Java into the operating system library and into the operating system kernel in like one unit. It was just amazing. It's great. Underappreciated by those tens of thousands, perhaps, but I appreciated it. Everyone else fixated on this wild man hair that you had. But I mean, you had such mad scientist vibes. It was great.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5351.587

I mean, it really was. It was great.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5356.469

That's right. So that's, you know, I think that I'm hoping that you're going to have a new hairstyle. You're going to reveal here. I'm looking forward to it.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5364.991

Well, um, really appreciate it, Theo and, and Stephen Kelly. And thank you so much for, uh, helping us talk about, about the conferences. And I think that, you know, Stephen, I like your way of phrasing it. The conferences either need to kind of be small and tight and intimate or online or huge.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5380.965

Um, I think that those are the, um, conferences are changing, but, um, the need for them has not gone away. Uh, and they still, um, we're looking forward to our online conference. You can kind of join us, get a, get a banger of a shirt, um, and watch our, watch our trust fall here, stage dive. Um, but, uh, looking, uh, looking forward to it and Adam can't wait to see the new hairstyle.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

5407.069

All right. Thanks everybody.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

569.274

A conference that I think we've actually already talked about on Oxide, friends, because this is the conference in which we sought to eat horse. I heard that. Yes. This is the California. Were you in Ghent? Yeah. You were in Ghent.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

595.566

that is exactly what happened. The, we, we called it run, Brian run after run Lola run popular at the time. I, a film, um, the, uh, no, we were Adam at the, uh, California had just made past a, a populist proposition, making it illegal to consume horse meat.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

614.56

Um, and Adam never wanted to have his diet dictated by the people was, uh, it was enraged and said that while in Europe, we needed to go find horse meat.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

637.954

Can we, can we get some, some horse meat from you? I mean, you can just maybe a little under the table. We will, we'll make it interesting for you. Okay.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

647.838

What if Alexander Hamilton wished to order some horse meat? Would that be, would that be possible?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

686.246

We've been told there was a German tradition that on your birthday, you buy food for everybody else.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

694.049

I was like, do I actually have to not tell people it's my birthday? I had people who were German who were like, if it's your birthday and you don't want to bring a plate of sausages for your coworkers, you should definitely not tell anybody because it is definitely expected.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

779.195

Yeah, I was going to say, have you counted how many conferences you've been to in your life? No. No, I don't want to do that.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

823.71

What was your first conference?

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

873.038

Oh, there you go. Okay. Wow. Um, I think, I think mine was, I think like yours, Steven was a prior to a debug Adam, which is obviously very memorable for many reasons. Um, the, um, it was an internal, uh, the sun had a sun tech symposium, um, the STS where one of these large, but it was an internal conference, large internal conference.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

88.277

Steven, I like the fact that your colleague is somewhat surprised at how unwell you sound. It's like, wow, I think he's actually ill. This is the post about the flu test. This all might actually add up. You actually might be sick. Yeah, that's right. I'm here.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

899.4

This is the conference where they had had apparently a complaint in previous years that there were too many things for people to pick from. And this is before anything was videoed, which I think is kind of important. Remember when we're remembering that super early conference era, like talks are not recorded.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

915.704

You go to the talk, you watch the talk and like, it's whatever you can remember from the talk basically. Yeah. Which is such a sea change in the way we consume information. But they had gotten the feedback that there was just too many talks to pick from.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

933.249

So they came up with what they thought was a brilliant solution where every presenter at STS, this is in 2000, every presenter that was selected to give a talk would give their talk three times in a row, back to back to back. And it is the only time in my life I've done this. This was in Denver. I grew up in Denver.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

956.234

And my mom said, oh, well, if you're coming to Denver, I want to come watch you talk. Very supportive mother. And so I give the first talk and they're like 15 people there. And like, I'm presenting something that's pretty esoteric. And I'm like, I don't think I'm going to be able to fill three rooms on, this is the real-time support in the Solaris operating system. And I'd make 15, 20 people.

Oxide and Friends

Conferences in Tech

980.957

And then in that next middle session, one person shows up. And my mom also shows up for that middle session. And I explained to the guy, I'm like, look, this conference has got this very weird idea that everyone presents back to back to back. You know, my mom is here. Why don't you, let's wait to see if someone else shows up.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

0.089

I have raised my hand. Good. Well done. I'm up here without having raised my hand. Is that right? According to you? Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

105.383

Maybe I'm just going a little slightly insane. Is that possible?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

110.788

That's okay. You know what? Fine. Done. Sorry. He had recommended this changelog dance party to us. Yes. And my daughter and I were doing a menial holiday task, namely stuffing holiday cards. And I thought, this is a perfect opportunity for this changelog work music. And so I put on changelog dance party for my daughter.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

1111.552

The other image that, come on, that we've got to have, a couple others that we've got to, your, because we joked about C-SPAN for debugging in the cultural idiosyncrasies episode. So for the image that you really, you envisioned what C-SPAN for debugging might look like. Yeah. And this was, I just felt masterful.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

1146.34

I felt like looking at that, I'm like, no. It knocked me out cold. It landed so much that I was just lying in the fetal position weeping. I mean, do you want me to take a part?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

1194.519

Anyway. Oh, it's much better than squinting because you've managed to catch yourself in the absolute dumbfounded look. I mean, the look is just like, what the hell is going on? It's a great look. I just and I love that you got like the C-SPAN tagline for those just tuning in. We have mysterious data corruption and install program. And just like and then everyone else is kind of left.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

1217.11

It's like it is like the lone senator on the floor at 1230 in the morning. I was I mean, this is this was this was good.

Oxide and Friends

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No, we've got to get all the way through it. And I'm, I am, I was obviously, I, I have been obviously insufficiently communicative about how these masterpieces, because I really do think that, that they are, I mean, some of them are kind of like the logical thing of a screenshot, you know, like that makes sense, but, but some of them are really just next level.

Oxide and Friends

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And then of course the one that I really deeply personally appreciate that is in an outrageously deep pull is, Is you actually finding the New Yorker cartoon for the caption contest over which I've got a chip on my shoulder? Because this is where I feel it was exposed to me that the New York caption cartoon was rigged. Because, yes, they didn't select my caption.

Oxide and Friends

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But because there's just no other explanation. It has to be rigged. Um, and you actually, I, you know, you dug up the actual cartoon and I gotta say it, it brought it all back for me. I actually wanted, cause we also located one of the winners and I actually want to get him on. He lives in Oakland. I want to get him on the broadcast.

Oxide and Friends

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I just say, in fact, it's a common comment on my report cards. Elementary school. I came up a lot in the parent teacher conference. I'm stoked for this. Me too. I've used our last episode of the year. Yeah. Have you been binging our back catalog? A little bit. I've been binging the back catalog. I've been listening. Do we want to break with tradition and give the subject right at the top?

Oxide and Friends

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I think he'd be the first one to tell because this is my hypothesis with this guy that like and like look fine like you won I didn't like we don't need to talk about whether yours is funnier than mine like that's actually we don't need to have that discussion doesn't matter because I am convinced hand on heart that is not his best work I think he's better too because I think he has got better ones that he submitted that didn't win I love this idea too of like we find him

Oxide and Friends

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You know, we kind of missed our opportunity to do it today because isn't today Festivus? Isn't it the airing of grievances?

Oxide and Friends

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I believe it is the 23rd of December is Festivus. And this would be an airing of the grievances for the... So maybe next year we're going to have the... But I thought this was amazing that you actually found this. Okay.

Oxide and Friends

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And her facial expression is hard to capture, but she said, it's giving old people. Have you heard giving as a – No, no. So it's like it's – It's translated. This is like it is giving me the vibes of – And she's like, yeah, this is giving old people. So I'm like, okay.

Oxide and Friends

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Well, because you also urgently need this password. This is extremely important. This is for the image on the podcast, which, okay. So actually part of the reason this ends up being like somewhat high stress is that we are not, I mean, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but we're kind of blocked getting the episode out until we have an image.

Oxide and Friends

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the right image or your mother's password for her New Yorker subscription. So why do you need this to get like, you're extremely upset with me for not remembering my password. And I'm trying to remember why you're still animated.

Oxide and Friends

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What does it say? So did you, when you saw that image, So hearing my description of it, were you like, and then seeing the image, did you give me more or less credit when you saw that? Oh, more credit.

Oxide and Friends

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Yeah, yeah. So you're kind of like.

Oxide and Friends

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Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh, that is – I cannot – I think I'm going to choke up here.

Oxide and Friends

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You actually – you endorse his grievances. That's right.

Oxide and Friends

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It is an inside joke with yourself because you told me like, I'm extremely proud of this one. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. What is that? But you said it with such like... authority that I was afraid to ask. I'm like, this is obviously something I should know. This is clearly something that is, and I, yeah. It feels on brand to not read the tweet.

Oxide and Friends

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Uh, yeah. Do you want to talk about the pizza just for a second? Because I think we, you know, the thing I actually did listen to a couple of episodes and things that I thought we never brought up, we brought up multiple times. So such as new Haven pizza, new Haven. Well, I mean, yeah, the new Haven pizza, the, um, The, the muds and Nixon line.

Oxide and Friends

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Is that the, we did, we brought that up in the baseball episode. I feel we brought that up a couple of times. Like NBA's death has come up multiple times. It's just like, there are things that I felt like we are, that are extremely obscure. They're like, okay, I actually brought that up. Sorry again. Right. Yeah, Jesus, God, again with the, yeah, I get it. Like MCA died, fine.

Oxide and Friends

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Like the world moved on, pal. Okay, so can I ask you another question about another image? Please. Because there's another image that you were like, no, this is the image. And I'm like, I get it, but I think I don't get it. And I don't, you've got such momentum here. So RTO or GTFO, you've got an image from the little prince. I know you do. And I, can you, I, I, I also love it.

Oxide and Friends

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Oh, that's great. I, I think it's great that you think it's great. I, that is the, I, I just, the fact that you, cause you, you like, look some on some of these images, like, God, I don't know. Should it be like, is this a good idea? Is this a good idea? And I, and I'm like, I think you got like, I think your ideas are, are outstanding.

Oxide and Friends

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And although I feel like I gave you insufficient validation on the, on, on, um, um, And so I think it's great that you had just, like, no, like, absolute certainty this is the image. Like, no, it is the Little Prince, home planet, birds returning.

Oxide and Friends

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I have not. I'm intimidated, actually, to do that. You've got to get over it. I've just got to get over it?

Oxide and Friends

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No, I was, I just want to say, cause I'm actually a little, I do not want to chip away at any of that confidence. Cause I think the confidence is great. And I love it. It's like this. I love the absolute certainty of this. So it's good. I mean, it's like, I wasn't, I mean, the answer is like, there's not something, there's not another layer I was missing on this one, which is good.

Oxide and Friends

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That's not, that sounds like a criticism and it's not, I think it's great.

Oxide and Friends

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The other one that I also just like where you're just like just nails on the craft was Unshrouding Turin. the chip. Yeah. And you know what? That felt easy. Like that felt, you did that so fast. And I thought it was just like, I mean, I just like what this guy is getting. This guy's just, he's at the top of his game. He's at the top of his game. I'm watching a future hall of famer here.

Oxide and Friends

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Just going to work. Just making it. That is old school Photoshop. Like that's like that. No, but he just like the, just like having the certainty about like, no, we're going to put the shroud of Turin on tour on the, on the tour in the park. I just thought it was, it was, it was great.

Oxide and Friends

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I got flack. I feel like I got ensnared in the Blue Sky episode to, like, slagging on Mastodon, where I clearly said that I love the idea of loving Mastodon. Yes. And I'd gotten... I, like... Mastodon is very... There's some folks that are upset on Mastodon.

Oxide and Friends

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I don't know. I just feel that, I don't know, I feel the break, you know, because I listened to so much Breakmaster Cylinder and Reply All, and I, in so, did you listen to some of the beats that Breakmaster Cylinder made for the people that called in to ChangeLog?

Oxide and Friends

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Also your image for adversarial machine learning, which was also, I thought. You know, I showed that to you.

Oxide and Friends

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Yeah, you may want to go get the receipts. I may... I feel that... Well, I'm going to retcon myself into thinking that I was very strongly supportive from the start anyway because I thought that's a very good image. Thank you.

Oxide and Friends

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A lot of very good images, I felt.

Oxide and Friends

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Um, and so I, you know, and I'm taking like very like rough cuts, obviously. Um, but that, how many hot takes do you think? So we had, uh, 32 episodes in the year. How many of those do you think are hot? What, what, what, what? And again, I'm, you know, I'm going to put the line at six and a half.

Oxide and Friends

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Six and a half, six and a half. Yeah. That's, that's an over underline. Okay. So I, so it'd be interesting to know, I'm sure people in the chat are going to be like, you guys like everything. It's like over 40 over all day every day. So it is over. So I've got it at nine and being a little bit, maybe a little bit too generous. I mean, certainly that innovation stagnation one is a hot take.

Oxide and Friends

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Oh, for sure. But I've got like open source LLMs with Simon Wilson, an episode that I- That's a hot take. That's like got a guest on it and everything. When was the last time you were listening to that one?

Oxide and Friends

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been a minute okay uh you don't recall us having basically a witch trial for kevin ruse for like the first five minutes of that thing doing out loud ratings actually not a witch trial because that that implies that he is somehow the victim in this uh we just absolutely demolishing him for and you talking about reading this line aloud to your mother and i mean this is It has got some hot take.

Oxide and Friends

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Yeah, I feel that. That's got some hot take in it for sure. I don't know. Maybe it's not a hot take. Certainly the All You Have to Fear is Fud itself. That's a good example of a title that got a little too clever for itself. I'm with you. Do you remember what that one was about without any prompting? I remember it being about Fud.

Oxide and Friends

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That is the Matt Asay thing where he falsely accused the folks of burgling there. A more descriptive title would actually help there.

Oxide and Friends

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Might have helped the listener count as well. That one is... Yeah, that one... Okay, we'll get to listener counts in a second. And I counted like innovation tokens with charity majors. I counted that as a hot take because... That big time hot take, even with... Okay, you're good with that one. The CrowdStrike, the BESOD fiasco with Katie Masouras, I counted that as a hot take.

Oxide and Friends

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With her CockroachDB, it feels like a hot take. Yeah. Yeah. reflecting on founder mode is definitely a hot take, even though it's two weeks out. It is a cold hot take, but it's absolutely a hot take. RTO or GTFO, anytime you're doing an out loud reading, you got to say it's a hot take. So that's like RTO or GTFO is definitely a hot take, right?

Oxide and Friends

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Amber was on that show. Yes. A lot of them have guests, but are still hot takes. Um, the, uh, I loved what I love about the RTL or GTFO, uh, episode is when I'm reading from the mail that, that Jassy has sent internally. And you're like, wow, like that's the worst email that you've, I've ever heard. I'm like, no, no, I've actually, I've got two more paragraphs. It's like, you, you.

Oxide and Friends

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You can't possibly, like, no, I just reject that. And then Intel Optical Singer, I think you also have to say is a hot take. So that's what I have as a hot take. But I mean, so you're nine-ish. So I would say it's like, it's over-ish on the 699. Yeah, that's right.

Oxide and Friends

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Maybe don't ask him. Yeah, I'm a little bit worried about that. I'm just intimidated by it. I feel like also I think we're beneath him. I just feel like you don't, don't you have like much more serious podcasts to go to? I just feel like the money more. I know. I just feel like I'm intimidated, but I'm just intimidated.

Oxide and Friends

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So about a third of our podcasts are. And then on, what's your take on guests? On how often do we have a guest?

Oxide and Friends

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As a guest. So I may need to go count more carefully. I've got us at 15, counting that one. Yeah, okay. That could be right. Okay, yeah, that could be right. I believe it. But you know, it's kind of ridiculous because on the one hand, I am too intimidated to approach Breakmaster Cylinder. On the other hand, I think we've gotten some really great guests. I've got like...

Oxide and Friends

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no such intimidation when approaching some of these guests we've had to be clear you've gotten great guests like you have done a terrific job this year of grabbing some great folks well they it's all right so we let's talk about some of the great guests we've had we've we've had uh a bunch of them i think uh we got at the top we got we got to talk about andres frund and uh

Oxide and Friends

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his enormous generosity in terms of coming to Oxide and Friends because of its low production values. This is what I loved about Andres. He took some of the pressure off that you guys are such jokers.

Oxide and Friends

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When in Rome, man, I know how to do this. Exactly. Like, yeah, it's like, we're all about audio problems on this podcast. I thought it was, um, that was great though.

Oxide and Friends

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Yes. And actually, did we, you know, wait a minute. That was where we got spun up on Kevin. That's right. That's right. We got spun up on the, on, sorry, on the Simon Wilson one, we were spun up on the I triple E spectrum article. We, that was a hot take, but we were spun up on the I triple E spectrum.

Oxide and Friends

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No, that was definitely... That is legitimately, that is just disappointment in Kevin Roos. Because I feel like he could do better. We feel he could do better.

Oxide and Friends

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Maybe you're a journalist and you could try. I don't know. Just, just saying, just spitballing here. It's like, you would die on the operating table. If I gave, if I gave you this open heart surgery, which I can't, it's like, okay, what? Yeah. Okay. That's not making sense. So Andres was a great, I, we talked about Simon Wilson earlier. It was great. Nicholas Carlini, we talked about Nicholas on.

Oxide and Friends

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Roger Cadori, that's a great episode. Roger's amazing. And I thought that was a... loved that and actually that one was a really influential one in particular our colleague Ryan Goodfellow had mentioned to me that that episode really formed and listening to Raja formed his own thinking around P4 and the X2 that's awesome that's great to hear It was really great to hear.

Oxide and Friends

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Yeah, it was really interesting. I mean, and all credit to Raja. I think he's a really interesting guy. And I mean, he's had such an interesting career and is so, I think, I feel so down to earth. I was really grateful for Raja for joining us. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

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That, you know, that's right. And that is a Rachel Stevens request. And actually that's a good point. Cause that, that's kind of an episode that we did a little bit by request. Um, and then Raj had this great blog post. So, um, Katie Masouras on the Blue Screen of Death fiasco was amazing. Bridget listened to that one. Oh, nice. Did your family listen to any episodes?

Oxide and Friends

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Really?

Oxide and Friends

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It wasn't just the image. It wasn't just like, Mom, you don't actually have to play the podcast. You just need to look at the image.

Oxide and Friends

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I feel comfortable making that commitment. I need to do it. You're right. And you know what? It is my pledge to you. Okay, so how do we want to do this? Because we don't have Breakmaster Cylinder, so we can't do what Changelog did where they had Breakmaster Cylinder create these amazing beats for people.

Oxide and Friends

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So they listened to that. It was very kind of current.

Oxide and Friends

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Um, but we also talked about loud people who wore Yankees hats to enter his house. Correct. Right. Right. Just the hats need to stay outside. The hats need to stay outside. I mean, I feel like that is entirely, I, I just feel like, you know, you got to give the right, you know, the right spin on this. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

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I mean, on the Munson-Nixon line.

Oxide and Friends

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He listened to the... That's just great. And this is the longest game in history. This is at the Paw Sox. That's right. And the RIP, the Paw Sox. Yes. No longer there in Pawtucket. Now the Woo Sox. They're now the Woo Sox. Yeah. Okay. And do they have the kind of the franchise continuity? I mean, is it like... Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

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Okay.

Oxide and Friends

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Well, no. The reason I say that is because you and I saw a Paw Sox game together. Yeah. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

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uh at mccall field it was mccoy stadium yeah mccoy stadium and i remember walking being like i hope that the longest game in baseball history is featured prominently somewhere in this in this thing i think that is my hope you hope you can find a little corner somewhere where they talk about turns out that is basically the theme like if it were a theme restaurant that would be the theme

Oxide and Friends

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It is exactly right. And in particular, what they have done is they have the box score that wraps around the entire like concourse.

Oxide and Friends

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It was so impressive. And so I just hope that they've done that. I hope. in Woonsocket. I hope they have honored the destroyed history of Bill George. So the baseball episode, do we know what he thinks? What do you think of the baseball episode? Yeah, good. I don't know. I didn't ask for details.

Oxide and Friends

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Okay, there you go.

Oxide and Friends

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Okay. Well, we – I mean, look, we know that that one – and I put that one in the category of potpourri. I love that we had an episode called potpourri years ago. We did. I love potpourri. I love potpourri because I learned the word potpourri from Jeopardy. Watching Jeopardy. Makes sense. Like, what is that?

Oxide and Friends

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And so I learned about potpourri, the Jeopardy category, before potpourri, the actual thing that it's named after. I would love to know the history of that because that is such a weird pull when you are thinking of like, you know, we need something that is like... miscellaneous items. Miscellany? How do you pronounce that? I'm afraid. Miscellany? How do you pronounce that? I don't know.

Oxide and Friends

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Miscellany? I should have tricked you into miscellany into saying that. So anyway, and you go to Potpourri. I mean, was Jeopardy the first one to use potpourri, the, the, the, the, the mix wooded scent. What do you, how do you, how do you describe potpourri? Yeah. I think that's, I think that's good. I think the, like an LLM proud. Exactly.

Oxide and Friends

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Are we not going to talk about kind of the elephant in the room? I thought we were going to... Okay, so I feel, because when we were listening to Changelog, they were talking about how much they agonize over the titles of the episodes. They were talking about that. And I was like... We don't have that problem. That's not what we agonized over.

Oxide and Friends

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I wonder if Jeopardy, anyway, Jeopardy, real pioneer there. All right, so on the, and I consider that to be potpourri. So I've got potpourri as our, I can sort of predictions potpourri, maybe I shouldn't do that, but certainly the baseball episode. And then also our, the book club episode on how life works with, and actually on the spirit of talking about our guests, Greg Coste.

Oxide and Friends

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I love that episode. Yeah, really good one. And I know that the numbers are, you know, the numbers reflect the fact that this is maybe outside our demographic a little bit. We've gone a little bit, and I think we know not to do this too frequently, but we do like to do, you know, mix it up a little bit different. Yeah, for sure. Mix it up a little bit.

Oxide and Friends

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And I would also say, you know, the other thing I did is I went through the, and maybe this is just, how much do the YouTube numbers track the, I looked at both the You know, with the transistor, which is how we kind of distribute the podcast, I mean, it's RSS, so it's very hard to reason about how much the stuff is actually downloaded because it's, you know, the value of an open internet.

Oxide and Friends

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With YouTube, you get a little more insight. How much do the YouTube members kind of track that, do you think?

Oxide and Friends

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One thing I did is I went through and looked at the upvotes to view count ratio. Because whether a thing is viewed by many people kind of depends on who picks it up. If it's a hot topic, that is obviously going to be picked up by a bunch of folks. And so I looked at that and it was kind of interesting that in terms of the top episodes, our open source LLMs, Simon Wilson,

Oxide and Friends

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And until after Gelsinger actually was the number two in terms of like ratio of upvotes to, to views. Um, but then after that was, uh, it was a book club episode with great cost. So I think that like, you know, I know that, that, and then in the fifth place was, uh, the baseball startup. So people that listen to those episodes, like those episodes or more likely to, to hit the old upvote, um,

Oxide and Friends

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on it. But I actually think that if you are, I think that I really enjoyed both those episodes. Very grateful to both Paul and Brian, obviously, from the Bowers and then to Greg Cost for joining us here in the studio. I thought that was...

Oxide and Friends

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uh in terms of other guests uh we mentioned charity majors that was terrific really enjoyed uh having her on and i kind of forgotten how much that we were getting that is actually one we listened to recently and really kind of uh of uh getting to the um the uh oxql bit um yeah and um So foreshadowing on Alexa.

Oxide and Friends

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I thought it was a great conversation. I really enjoyed that. And it was really, I felt the same way. And in fact, I also feel that I kind of deliberately went to some of the episodes that didn't get as much of attention and wanted to just go re-listen to them.

Oxide and Friends

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And I'm like, we did not find a stinker in, I mean, like, it's really good not to, sorry to, I mean, total tribute to our guests and everyone else, but it's really quite.

Oxide and Friends

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320.852

This feels like an intervention again.

Oxide and Friends

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329.355

Yes, very descriptive. I think our titles are fine, actually. Listen, our titles just do a job. They go to work. They pack a lunch pail.

Oxide and Friends

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Can we talk about jokes that we think are funny that I'm not sure anyone else finds funny? Yes, please.

Oxide and Friends

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I know I have mentioned this way too many times, but your metapentese is never going to not kill with you.

Oxide and Friends

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3350.977

Oh, I can only imagine.

Oxide and Friends

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3353.974

Oh, yes. And then you're like, no, no, but actually let me give you additional context. With this additional context, it'll make it funnier. I mean, explaining always helps jokes, in my experience. Explaining always helps jokes, exactly. But I think that is... We make not infrequent reference to it. I think it's very funny.

Oxide and Friends

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3408.908

We'll say that World War II was a stressful event.

Oxide and Friends

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3424.395

What is this?

Oxide and Friends

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3437.36

You find one historian that would disagree with that assertion, sir. You need not be so indignant. It was a stressful event. I know, but we just make reference to people like, what are you talking about? But it's true. We do make, we probably make too frequent reference to the stress induced by World War II. The alleged stress of World War II.

Oxide and Friends

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345.322

I think RTO or GTFO is a good title.

Oxide and Friends

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On the, I just want to make sure, on just guests, also, it was very recent, but Paul Frazee last week. Yeah, Paul was great. Oh, that was great. That was really, really good. So our guests this year, and obviously we talked about Adam Skowiak, and that was a terrific conversation, albeit with the dance music that's giving old people.

Oxide and Friends

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3489.082

Oh, yeah, right. That was really fun.

Oxide and Friends

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3524.033

High five huddle feels like very lateral motion. that feels like you're not really, I'm not sure you've gotten into, I'm not sure you broke it into suitability for work on that one. I feel that it's a little too, a little too close. Yeah. It's you're just, you gotta go further away.

Oxide and Friends

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If, if that, if we're trying to get to work suitability, like you're, you, you really need to get a little more of a running start than that one. Yeah. Um,

Oxide and Friends

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3577.563

High-five huddle. I got you. I got you. Yeah. Okay, so internally, we talked a little bit about the numbers. I mean, the episode that did, just in terms of an absolute sense, I think the XZ backdoor episode, I think, did the best numbers across the board. Oh, yeah. I mean, unsurprisingly, right? Unsurprisingly, right. I mean, you kind of expect that. And we talked a bit about the hidden gems.

Oxide and Friends

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360.494

God, someone does have to win second place here, and I don't know who.

Oxide and Friends

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3602.24

Let's talk a little bit about the Oxide episodes. And what fraction of the episodes do you think really hit on were Oxide specific?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3619.373

Yes. I mean, so actually from folks from Oxide. Yes. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3628.427

yeah it's like six maybe even probably i'm sure i've missed some um and then i had oxides because there are other we've got other like on the on the cultural idiosyncrasy episode i'm not sure that we had anyone else from oxide talking but we were talking a lot about oxide we we did why do we we did because we mentioned jujitsu jj and so therefore steve he was conjured yes

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3653.826

Kind of like a Beetlejuice phenomenon.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3679.457

We do demos. Demos are great. How could any company possibly operate without demo day?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3690.242

You're trying to remember? You're trying to think, how could any company operate without demo day? That was the company we worked for.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3703.668

I'm outraged by this. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. That was an Oxide episode. That was an Oxide episode. And I think we, you know, and those Oxide episodes did well, actually.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3716.659

People really, I mean, we, I wouldn't say we're hesitant, but we also, you know, I would say on the Oxide stuff, I feel we, it's helpful when people ask us some of the things that they'd like to hear more about because we're so enmeshed in all of it. I loved the, I mean, I loved all of the Oxide episodes, but like the RFD episode, I thought was particularly interesting.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3738.312

I thought that was very timely. It was great. All the folks on there with Augustus and David Crespo and Ben Leonard. That was great. On European time?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3775.269

And then how, you know, I've not spent a huge amount of time in the, just because a question that I had to choose how I got here is like, how many listeners do we actually have from Europe? Uh, we definitely do have listeners here, but most of our, our listeners, according to the transistors analytics, which I, how much do you trust those? Do we, do we trust those?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3791.492

I'm not sure we, I trust those decently. Yeah. Okay. I mean, if you kind of show up as a download there, that is probably a legitimate download coming from that spot.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3820.433

So it's interesting to look at the... I mean, obviously, US and Australia and the UK, but then getting into some European countries, I got kind of mesmerized by the 0.03% countries. I mean, I think it's great. You've got folks in Malawi. There's clearly...

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3842.289

one person has listened to us in Malawi or Namibia or it's actually like multiple people have listened to us in Namibia because four different regions in Namibia have listened have pulled the podcast or it's one person who has listened to us in four different spots in Namibia and you know someone either way pretty great It's pretty great.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3863.198

You know, as someone who's been in the Namibia, I saw the Phantom Menace in Namibia. I told you this. No, that's weird. It is weird because it had, and I, of course, had already seen it and had my heart ripped out and crushed by its terrible mediocrity. You saw it for a second time. You're like, I saw it for a second time. That's even more confusing.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3889.588

I saw it for a second time in Vindhuk with my sister who had not seen it. And I mean, you've met my sister. You can kind of imagine this that I'm like, it's a terrible movie. It's like, no, it can't be as bad as you're describing. I'm like, it is definitely as bad as I'm describing.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3906.974

Like we are not, I don't think it's a good idea, but you, you got like, there's not a huge number of movie theaters in the country, but it was, so yeah, we watch it with Afrikaans subtitles in Windhoek. And yeah, we got out of there. She's like, that was a really bad movie and we should not have seen it. I'm like, yeah, I just watched it for a second time. I'm sorry. I recommended it. Sorry.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

392.647

It is an awful title. Okay, but why is that an awful title? I agree that's an awful title. Why is that an awful title? I see where you're going. Because people have no idea what the episode is about.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3925.686

I recommended it. So I, yeah, I guess I came out in their analytics as a, as a view in Namibia. But if you, if you've been listening to us in Namibia, that's awesome. Um, or, uh, anywhere I think around the globe, I think it's really terrific. Um, that we're, we've got a clearly very small number of listeners, uh, Tajikistan. I mean, that's like, wow. Uh, that's a, I mean, that's kind of amazing.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3947.294

Uh, the, If you're a Tajik listening to us, really, really impressed. And we got actually someone saying, I'm listening in from Vietnam, which is great. There's actually... I did click on Vietnam. I'm like, there must be a lot of different listeners from Vietnam because we got like six or seven different regions represented in Vietnam. So I think that is really... I think that is really cool.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

3969.196

Yeah, I'm with you. That I... Hopefully, that's been, I think, actually one of the great things about doing this is being able to connect with people around the globe. Do we need to do more episodes in different time zones? That's my kind of question for you.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4013.913

Next thing you know, you're talking about downloading a physics simulator. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4034.942

I think I told you this when we had this event here at Oxide. People were coming up to me talking about how much they love the podcast. Then in the next breath, asking, where's Adam? And I'm like, well, I mean, I don't know what Adam's around. Like I'm here though. I mean, do we, they're like really not. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, I mean, I guess.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4056.544

Could I, you know, by the way, I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess so.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4072.037

Yeah. Yes, I think there'll be another little Oxide and Friends swag would be great. We should do a little more. Okay, so in terms of some of the specific Oxide episodes, getting into like... I mean, I have to say I loved all of the ones that we're getting. I mean, of course, we do love the stuff. It's super interesting. But then I think those episodes end up being amazing.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4096.191

Like, I mean, the Crucible episode, you said... You mentioned that one of the ways you sweet-talked Alan into listening to it is like, don't worry, no one will listen to it.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

413.971

Like our episode this season called What's Taking So Long?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4157.603

It was great. And I thought, and I love that. I loved when we had Sean on talking about what's taking so long in terms of Rust compile times. Getting Dave and Eliza and crew on the saga of sagas, I thought was great. getting Ben Acker on here on OXQL. That one hit an exposed nerve on the internet before it happened.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4181.742

For whatever reason, the fact that we've got our own query language really rubbed some folks. People had pointed follow-up questions, I think.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

419.933

like our episode this season what's taking so long that I actually think is still better than I know this because it's also a Jurassic Park reference which it feels like yes it feels like it's so okay that's exactly that's about and it's like it's a reference it's a cultural reference you've got no idea I actually think I like the descriptive titles I gotta tell you I think the descriptive titles are you know pragmatic LM usage

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4200.328

Andy Pavlo.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4219.308

Yeah. Also, I mean, Ben is one of the nicest people on the planet. Exactly. Anyway, that was a great... I thought that ended up being a great discussion.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4230.934

not at all surprised and i think we we i think we i want to say we won some people over in that they begrudgingly acknowledged that we have the right to do our own query language at the end of the episode it's like no thanks you know we did our own like board designs we did our own switch does that bother you it's like no no that's okay that's okay that that's fine i guess um

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4252.506

But, um, I thought that episode was great. The episode in Helios was one that ended up, uh, getting a lot of attention. Uh, people are always, you know, they love to go into RFD 26. That one keeps coming back on, on hacker news.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4265.091

Um, so that one comes up a bunch, uh, or some other, uh, and then we had, uh, Dave Pacheco on back to back on, uh, the saga of sagas and then on cockroach DB and kind of what our, what our approach was there. Um, I thought those were great. And I think, I guess one question I would have for folks is, you know, is, is our balance right there?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4286.602

Should we get, you know, would people be up for a little more? Do you want more of that? They want less of it. I don't think we would do less of it, but we might do a little more of it.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4302.502

Yeah, it is Happy Festivus.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4369.045

I am all for a witch having cast a spell on the CPU. I just need a little more detail about what the spell is. Like, tell me about the spell. Tell me about the spell. And then I'll be, yeah, that one was a little wild. And that one probably does merit. You know what? I feel...

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4382.99

I've got a little bit, I've left a little bit on the table on that one because that one boils down to, I'm going to say it generously, a difference of opinion about what the microprocessor's responsibilities are with respect to speculative execution of a kernel translation. And there's a difference of opinion there.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

44.772

Let's experiment with that. So this came out of our episode with Adam of Changelog fame. And Adam had pointed out that... In the changelog, they actually do a year-end wrap-up episode. So I was asking them, how do you point people to episodes? How do you find the episodes to point people? And he says, we always recommend that people go to these year-end wrap-up episodes.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4404.472

I don't think that – and admittedly, one of the opinions is from the company that makes the microprocessor and another opinion is from the poor suckers that are trying to implement on top of the microprocessor. So needless to say, their opinion wins. I have wanted to get that clarified in a – I want to get a sentence in the programmer's manual that describes this a little bit, and I have not.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4426.491

I kind of owe them that sentence. There you go. I feel like, but yeah. Okay. That's that. So that's, are there other episodes that you feel that, um, as long as you're getting, I'll get you going.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

443.695

with Nicholas Carlini. What else? I mean, that's... Exactly.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4437.101

Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4460.787

Cause I've got stretch goals.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

447.261

You want us to come up with something like... We don't want something... Actually, speaking of LLMs, the... Bridget asked ChatGBT what she should get for Christmas for gift ideas for me.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4558.254

I did not see this one coming. I think so. I, the, the get that I do want to try, I want to try to get Chris Miller, the author. Yeah. Yeah. That one still feels like a stretch. I feel like I'm like, I want to try to climb Kilimanjaro. And you're like, I think we should climb Olympus Mons.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4577.569

And I'm like, Olympus Mons? Isn't Olympus Mons? I need to check, but isn't that on Mars? Yes. That is my aspiration. First to go to Mars. Then to climb the tallest mountain in the universe. doesn't climbing Olympus Mons necessitate us being on Mars? Like, well, that's an implementation. I'm just saying we should, look, you got a dream. You got a dream.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

460.778

And I think we learned that LLMs are not going to replace humans in at least one domain anytime soon. Its GIF suggestions were very bad. They were all based on, of course, like, well, you know, Ryan Cantrell is well known for his work in open source. Maybe he would appreciate a framed ZFS internals. It's like, what are we talking about there?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4600.122

You're missing the forest for the trees, you idiot. Just imagine what it's going to feel like to plant that flag on top of Olympus Mons. You know, they're not running tourist outfits up there. I'll tell you that. There's not a line to get to the top of Olympus Mons. Okay. It's like, I told you, I said, maybe don't laugh, but I guess you didn't hear that. I'm not laughing.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4624.013

It's a very brave proposal. It is a very brave proposal. I mean, I mean, like why not get break master cylinder to do a beat for Morris? Check. I mean, like, let's just let, you know, let's do it all, you know? Oh, Yeah, why not?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4653.78

I'm sure. I gotta stop. No, I mean, I'm just envisioning the conversation that I'm gonna have with Pierre about... Pierre, not a listener to Oxide and Friends.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4670.045

Uh... Yeah. All right. So the Morris Chang, why not? Um, that would be, um, I mean, it would be amazing. You know, there is, and you said that there's a book that is he, that he's published like an autobiography, like two part autobiography, uh,

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4722.276

Maybe Olympus Mons. What's the highest mountain on Neptune? I think that may be more of it. Olympus Mons is actually feeling a lot more attainable now. I mean, we do have plans to go to Mars. Exactly. We humanity. We humanity. And the... And I mean, it was just going to be in, um, I mean, am I going to do this in like Taiwanese?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4758.881

I understand that, but for you, he's not, he's deliberately not translated his autobiography clearly. So, um, You know what? I got a lot of studying to do. I got some Duolingo. I'm ready to roll. I'm ready to roll. I think you got to have a stretch. It's a stretch goal. It's a stretch goal. Nobody's ever attained something they didn't imagine first. So, you know.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4784.153

are you trying to like move the overton window around our stretch goal so like i want to like i'm still thirsty for kate conger and ryan mack to get on here for uh to talk about uh character limit but now that feels like exactly that just feels so pedestrian that i'm not i i mean i just feels like i'm getting gossip columnists on here of course i would that that's gonna do great let's do wonders for getting them on here i think i've just like shot my opportunity to

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4820.411

It's been sitting in my inbox. All right. Maybe they can get us to Morris Chang anyway. Look, it's a dream, right? They're there to dream. It is a dream. It is a dream. I do think that Chris Miller, that one feels attainable.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4849.242

Yes, and not running one of the world's most valuable companies. Other reasons why Chris Miller might be a little more available.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4861.606

You talked about it.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4864.687

Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4867.818

okay so what are some other episodes that we obviously mentioned Kate Conger and Ryan Mack I would love to have them on at some point but the are there other that's got to be your that is my Kilimanjaro on Everest yes Rain in the chat is mentioning the long awaited async cancellation episode I do think we need to do that yes I have a self destructive hobby along those lines actually I have two

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

490.865

And so she was guffawing from the other room as it was coming up with many bad ideas. I'll tell you, actually, the one good idea it had is maybe a gift through a charitable organization in his name. Like, that is a good idea. Everything else is not a good idea.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4923.316

Well, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

4960.327

Yeah, it is a cry for help. And what happens there?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5003.204

All right. We got a joker in the chat asking if that meeting gets canceled often.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5012.926

Exactly. How do they recover from that cancellation? Exactly. Um, I do think it would be worth having an episode on that. I'm not sure. Yeah, it might be. We have to schedule that one a year from now on the next airing of grievances. That one could get a little rocky. And did you have... What were some other particular moments or episodes that you...

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5043.438

What is the episode that you refer other people to, if anything, if any? XC.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5063.248

How about you? Um, I, so a bunch of them, I do tend to, I know this is last year, but, um, I definitely refer people that are interested in working at Oxide to the Gary Gay Oros episode where we kind of talk about our hiring process. I think that's very important.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5076.98

I do tend to refer people to the, um, you know, folks that are interested in Oxide as, you know, a potential investor or potential customers, definitely tailoring. I mean, I, I, I'm definitely a little bit worried. We will have someone who's interested in Oxide again as either an investor or a customer, and they will make the mistake.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

509.221

It is always a good gift. But I think that the pragmatic LLM usage with Nicholas Carlini is an example of a good title. So I think we've got... And we put all of that title energy into the image.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5098.236

They have not heard of the podcast, but then they make the mistake of saying, you know, actually, I really love podcasts. And then I send them a follow-up email that has got like 31 links in it. And then we don't hear from them for a long time. This has happened a couple of times where I'm just like, I have not actually read the reaction properly, and I have given them too much listening here.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5119.38

So... My apologies to those folks. I've done that too. But I've, there's so, cause when folks have, you know, I love to point people to, you've got so many episodes now that get into specific topics on the, on what we built. either the company or the technology, that I refer people to a lot of different episodes frequently. Too many episodes too often, I think we can say with relative confidence.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5143.865

And there's always, there have been actually, there have been some times I've gotten actually feedback that maybe that was a lot of episodes, that that was maybe a little too many. So, okay, I'll try to moderate that. But I've turned some folks into regular listeners, so that's been fun too.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5176.383

Is there anything that you've got wrong that you would like to correct? Actually, how frequently do we edit these before we... Edit them? What do you mean? We do very little editing. I think people know this.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5232.605

But we basically do a light edit. As you described, I do an extremely light edit, which is to say nothing, but you do a relatively light edit.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5248.696

But I would like to say that I have made some mistakes that I am mortified about that we've never doctored. So those mistakes will now live forever. Anything really killing you? I, on the Intel episode, I did get a couple of, like, for whatever reason, and I was just, I don't know, had a steam something. I called Sapphire Rapids Sapphire Lake. And I know that few... Yeah, I know. I felt...

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5275.914

What kind of technologist are you? Pretty much. And then I conflated Ice Lake and Cascade Lake at one point. And I know this sounds ridiculous because these kind of codenames are a little bit ridiculous, but I felt it was pretty bad.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5291.985

Have the people on Mastodon been being mean to you about this? They have been being extremely mean to me. Actually, that is funny because some of the YouTube comments... are generally not that negative, actually. I mean, there's some complaints about the audio, but then it's like... I think the... No, dead silence. Am I wrong? I think I'll go through most of the YouTube comments.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

534.166

You were on your game. And I think that, so this is what I meant by the elephant in the room. I think that the people do not see the hidden, the craft behind, the angst, the agony, the mastery of what you do with the images.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5341.405

A little off topic. That's delightful. Yeah. That's great. I did not realize that. That is really pretty funny. Yeah, it's a good one. And then I think another episode that we've talked about in terms of a component that we have built on, I want to get the Ratatouille folks. Oh, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5380.168

That's right. I almost feel like we need a, I almost want to get kind of a regular-ish feature where we're getting some, like, featuring some crates that people should know about. That would be a good episode on its own, right? Crates you should know would be a good episode. Have we done that in the past? No, I don't think we have. Have we not?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5400.048

You never know. Have we never mentioned how we felt when MCA died? Oh, no, wait a minute. Do that.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5411.883

And then we are definitely going to get the... Someone suggests crates in the box. I just have to, like, yes. Crates in the box. Perfect. I love our books in the box episodes. I think those are great. I love hearing what people are reading. And I, uh, I've already read the mouse driver Chronicles, uh, which I thought was great. I've started that.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5433.233

I have, I have not finished that, but it is truly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for the.com. I mean, the way he described, he described it very, very accurately. And, uh, they truly have no idea what they're doing and just like watching them walk into race, but they're also very, like very energetic and, and reasonably self-effacing. And it's, um,

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5452.884

It is of its time, but definitely enjoyed reading it. So we should get some, we should be talking about, and someone in the chat asks to please have you talk about Saturday Token Stream.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5481.605

Yes. And then I want to get, stay tuned for some great episodes. I think next year we're going to, I want to definitely get, we're going to talk about the X2 from Excite and what we're doing with P4 there. And we just got a bunch of interesting hardware and software coming next year. So a lot of fun stuff to talk about. Morris Chee. And Morse Chang and Olympus Mons. We're going to go.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5509.855

Get out your backpacking gear, folks, and whatever you need to survive on Mars and also what you need to get to Mars because we're going to go. We're going to Mars and we're going to climb Olympus Mons. But it's been great. It's been a great year. And it's been so much fun. And I'm looking forward to a terrific year in 2025.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5533.09

So please, if folks do have ideas on things, folks that like us to have on the podcast, I mean, Morris Chang is inbounds. So, hey, let's get, you know, I don't know who's not inbounds at this point. So, you know, I can. Well, let's. Why stop there? Let's conjure the dead. You know, let's get John von Neumann on the podcast. What's his take on things?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

554.764

I think only in the case that you write a multi-part blog entry about what you've done, complete with links to source code, do people have any idea... So I would like you to rank your images for the year. What is it? I mean, it feels like your top image. I mean, and again, we don't need to stack rank them, although that would also be kind of interesting.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5558.689

I mean, I've been whispering his name non goddamn stop hoping that someone would just be get him on the podcast. Let's get JP Morgan on here. No, not someone from J.P. Morgan. I'm talking about J. Pierpont Morgan himself. I want to listen to him regale us about putting down the 1907 rich man's panic with his cane. So it's going to be a fun year. And thank you. Thank you, everybody.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5584.787

Thank you for bearing with us and enjoying even the baseball one. We think the baseball one's great. And the bio one, too. Um, and, uh, and feel free to ask me where's Adam when you see me, it's fine.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

5611.458

So we are going to be, uh, we're going to be reviewing some three years. We're going to be making new predictions. It's going to be a ton of fun. Yeah. That's pretty great. Alrighty. Thank you, everyone. Have a great end of your year and bring those predictions next year. So we're obviously off next week, but we'll see you in the new year. Thanks, everybody.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

582.763

Like, so... The XZ image is unbelievable.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

627.341

Or maybe it's like a third thing, which is like, if that sounds burdensome to you, I don't feel like you have to do that.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

682.889

A classic XKCD.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

737.689

and yeah we really need to uh no side conversations please if we could we're really pleased if we could get back to the we really need the time boxes conversation and when chad gpt is like do you know how much electricity i just burned like on this argument that you're intent on having with me i'm like listen yeah like by the way we're not going to get any of that back i mean some of that is renewable i guess but like i mean how much how much more

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

74.146

And we thought, that's a very good idea. So here we are. Here we are. I would say that, that not every idea he gave was a good idea in that pod. Well, I shouldn't say that. That's too critical. He recommended the changelog dance party. Do you call this? I do remember this. Yes. And the, are you getting echo from me? No? Are you getting echo from me? Yeah, I am getting echo. Just a second.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

762.743

Dinosaur blood. Do you want me to actually burn for this?

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

801.195

Hey, listen, it's true. It's a real improvement.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

829.027

But that's number one. We've gotten ready to complain. But that was an amazing image. And one might say that what an obscene amount of work.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

853.559

That's amazing you did all that in an hour. I mean, I think it is outstanding. I mean, it is really, but I think you were just on your game. You know what? We are using AI much less frequently to generate images. The AI generated images are not good. And we generally use AI to generate an image when we want to make like a meta comment about the limitations of AI.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

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I don't know if people realize this, that all of our AI, or maybe they do, maybe we're explaining the joke, that all of our AI generated images are basically a meta comment on the futility of using AI to generate an image.

Oxide and Friends

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It was last year. That one is great. We got to have like some acceptance. The AI boardroom brawl. I love because it's all like eight fingered people. Yes. Yes. It was really, really quite good.

Oxide and Friends

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And meanwhile, us violating the copyrights of not just the New York Times, but many people in actually generating this image. We're actually, although maybe it's all reasonable use, but all fair use. But yes, we are.

Oxide and Friends

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Yeah, we got to get that kid on the podcast. Good stuff. Yeah, yeah. So what were some of the other – and we had – how many Simpsons references did we have this year? I think actually kind of like remarkably few almost. In the images, I think none. Is that true? No way. No way. No, no, that can't be none. I just would be very surprised if we had this self-control.

Oxide and Friends

OxF 2024 Wrap-Up

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We had a, well, okay, so let's talk about just a couple of them. We had the Tomax and Zaymont for the books in the box. Tomax and Zaymont in the library. That was amazing. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Because at some point, and my memory is that Alex Wilson, our colleague at Joyent, was working on a container naming service for what was then Triton. And was really looking for a vessel in which to write it down. And I think that there's been a lot of pressure building in general where we actually need to have a way for people to write things down.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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And it had been enough time since the scarring of Peace Arc. I think actually one of the things I kind of present about Peace Arc is that it took me years to really appreciate the value. And Adam, maybe you're still getting there because you're like, did you just say Peace Arc was valuable? Because that's not my memory at all.

Oxide and Friends

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But it took me years to appreciate the value and be able to separate it out from the things that were really – that could be, frankly, pretty upsetting as an engineer. But once I kind of had not had this for an extended period of time, it's like, yeah, we really need to get – I miss writing. I miss writing ideas down. Robert, is that your – do I have the –

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yeah, and that's what I was trying to remember is like whether – to what degree it was like Alex is like I need a place to write this. But yeah, Alex was definitely – however it was, Alex was the first RFD.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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That's right. And I think that, you know, and this has happened to me a lot in my career where I you know, I'm trying to come up with something that I think is like, wow, this is like totally unique. And like, Oh, you know, this is very Socratic or a kind of classic, what have you. And then, I mean, at some point, as we were thinking about this, Robert, like kind of the light was going on.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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So what you want is something that's like, I want it to be pretty loose. I want to encourage people to write things down more than getting them exactly right. Um, and yeah, as we're kind of thinking about this, we're like, wait a minute, these are RFCs. This is what, this is what the, this is how the internet was built. This is right in front of us.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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I'm loving this. I have managed to offend all of our German listeners. We apologize, Germany. Exactly. A message to our German community from Oxide and Friends. You know, apology videos have kind of gotten... I'm trying to bring apology videos back. I just feel like, guys, I can't believe we have to have this episode. I never thought I'd be saying this, but...

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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This is what RFCs and, and, you know, in joints, it joins our fee repo. I, I reference RFC three and the, the IETF has this request for comments and RFC three just absolutely nailed the, what we were after. And it was kind of like, I've managed to reinvent something that's right in front of me for my entire career, more or less. And I felt a little bit silly for not having seen it.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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But then another like, okay, so this is like, we need to take this and extend it. And I just love this note from RFC3 that the content of a note may be any thought, suggestion, et cetera, related to the software or other aspect of the network. Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than polished. I love that line.

Oxide and Friends

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Philosophical positions without examples or other specific suggestions or implementation techniques without introductory or background explication and explicit questions without any attempted answers are all acceptable. The minimum length for a note is one sentence. and these standards or lack of them are stated explicitly for two reasons.

Oxide and Friends

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First, there's a tendency to view a written statement as ipso facto authoritative, and we hope to promote the exchange and discussion of considerably less than authoritative ideas. Second, there is a natural hesitancy to publish something unpolished, and we hope to ease this inhibition. Those paragraphs are from RFC3. That is Steve Crocker, April 1969.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Adam, doesn't that feel like that is just absolutely true today?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Totally. And as a result, there is going to be a wide variety of quality here. I mean, there has to be, right? There's going to be, and there are going to be RF and there are RFCs that are extraordinary. And there are many RFCs that are forgettable and that's okay.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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We're not trying to make something that is kind of, and we're in, in particular, what I loved about that is like, this is not something that's kind of up for approval. This is you writing down your own ideas and,

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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And then, Robert, as we were kind of thinking about RFCs versus – my recollection is, like, we just wanted to have a different nomenclature because we felt we'd be just confusing ourselves all the time if we were talking about RFCs. And we were kind of looking for a different nomenclature. Is that right?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yeah, I don't think it was too much beyond that. I think it was just kind of like, you know, I think we would have called it like, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yeah, which is, we use the term request for discussion in lieu of request for comments to avoid conflation with the IETF construct. and the more formal writing that has come to represent. Because RFCs are now kind of drifted from that RFC3 ethos and zeitgeist and are now quite a bit more formal. So we wanted to draw inspiration from RFCs, but be something slightly different. And RFDs were born.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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And Robert, I feel it was like, I mean, I don't know if you and I spoke about this. I'm sure we did. But I remember thinking very shortly after Alex's RFD won and we start getting a bunch of RFDs, I'm like, oh, man.

Oxide and Friends

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Germany, I'm so sorry for what Brian did. I think I'm making it worse.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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we waited too long to do this i felt like this was so should have done this earlier i um i mean on the one hand it's like it's great like okay this is clearly like i this is a big step in the right direction but it's such a big step in the right direction that uh felt like we should have done this earlier um yeah and i think we had one or two you know like one-off documents

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yeah. And where did those go? I mean, I just don't remember where were those because I mean, they must've existed. I just don't know where they went.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yeah. So this was in, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing that like this is in the first RVs in 2015. And so we did, how did we do engineering for five years? I just don't know.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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fair. So, um, and then, so Robert, what were our experiences with RFDs at joint? Cause I felt like there were some things that worked really well, namely the idea, the, uh, was great and was important. Um, then there were other things that I don't know, what were your, what was your take on things that worked well and things that did not work well in that kind of that first embodiment of us?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Really long time coming. I feel like this is like the episode we were in all along. I feel that... You know, I was listening, but actually I'm really glad that we are doing it now and not a couple of years ago because we have made so many... very recent changes that are really, really important.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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It is painful, but it is much better than it was at Joyent. At Joyent, we did not. I mean, the grand irony of RFDs at Joyent is the discussion piece was not. It was really hard to discuss them because we would do this with GitHub issues, Adam, and it did not work well. Um, because it was very hard to like comment on particular pieces. You know what I mean?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Comment on like, Hey, the word choice or whatever. And like, if you walk up to an RFD that is, you know, old, how do you go and be like, you know, this paragraph is no longer correct. Or you just like you filing issues on all these things. And it's like, the discussion was not great. So that I would, I think was a big, uh, needs improvement. Um,

Oxide and Friends

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But I think the idea, like we could see that a bunch of, another thing that was actually really important, Robert, is that it was in a repo. I felt like this is a very important, because folks may look at RFDs and be like, well, wait a minute, why not just like Google Docs or whatever? And I think I'm sure, what were you doing at Delphix and then Transposit, Adam?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yes. Yeah, and I think that what the world wants, and what we're kind of leading up to, is you want kind of a Google Doc front end that has an ASCII doc backend going to a canonical repository. That's what you want. That doesn't exactly exist.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

181.82

And I also feel that one of the things that we have done, and we'll talk about this a bunch over this episode, but we have open sourced the software that we use to do this. And I think that if anybody's listening to this wondering like, God, I really like a lot of aspects of the system, but I don't know. I don't, I don't want to just like take theirs. It's like, you can definitely take it.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Well, part of the reason I'm chuckling is because we did Markdown at Oxide, and we supported Markdown and ASCII doc. And Adam, I think it was you who took me aside at some point. It's been like, hey, you say that RFDs are in Markdown or ASCII doc. Yeah, exactly. It's like, you should know that only yours are in Markdown. Everyone else is on ASCII doc.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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So when you say Markdown or ASCII, I'm like, I actually... Adam, I don't think I'm inventing this conversation. I really appreciated it. I had a giant piece of lettuce on my teeth and only you had... All of my oldest and dearest friends were willing to take me aside and tell me what an ass I was making of myself. I'm like, you mean, no. And I kind of didn't believe you.

Oxide and Friends

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I'm like, surely other, no, nope. Nope. It's just me. And that was a quick, I definitely like, I am reworking them right now. They are all going to be at ASCII doc. I'm so sorry. Yes.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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It is my own weakness that I would like to be able to, I don't know, see what this thing looks like before I, I, I just, it feels like this is like how you always want to test your code before you integrate it.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Um, we are, if they, and certainly if I may at risk of orienting people, what we are talking about. Oh, okay. Oh, now with this again. Okay. You know, it's like, we're only a couple minutes in, I was going to wait for another 10 minutes, but yeah, sure. Go ahead. Fine. Fine. Blow the big reveal. All right. Oh, what are we talking about? Mr. We have to tell people what we're talking about. Go ahead.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yes, Markdown is really frustrating in a lot of ways. And especially if you want to do anything sophisticated or complex. you need things like, you know, footnotes and you want to cross reference and all these things. It's really not good.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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I had kind of assumed, I didn't realize that us, that ASCII doc, I thought ASCII doc, well, obviously cause I was the, like the last to get the memo on like, you're the only one doing it in Marktown. So as far as I was concerned, everyone was doing an ASCII doc the world over.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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So I didn't, don't think I realized that ASCII doc and press was saying also that he'd not heard of ASCII doc till coming to oxide. So I guess that's a little more, it's, I mean, the irony of ASCII doc is that the documentation for ASCII doc is not great. Um, I do find that, and Robert, I can't imagine that ChatGPT is very helpful on AsciiDoc. I want to be able to render this.

Oxide and Friends

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I feel like some of the stuff in AsciiDoc is a little... It's been nice to be able to use ChatGPT for AsciiDoc. That's all I'd like to say. No, I'm just being on brand to get LLMs in every episode. You know, there we go. Ring that bell. Exactly. Um, the, but so I didn't realize that Alex had kind of discovered ASCII doc. Um, we, uh, and Robert, do you use ASCII doctor PDF to render locally?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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How, how do you render locally?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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And so it should be said also, and Robert, now is as good a time as any. So we have, I created RFD 510 yesterday. So we have perhaps more than 510 now. So I might have created one in the meantime. But we've got over 500 RFDs at Oxide. Adam, you had on an earlier episode had guessed that we must have millions of words. Did you do this, by the way? Have you already done this?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yeah. So we do have, there's 1.4 million words. Um, and I did look at the, I went through everybody who has kind of contributed an RFD and, uh, just looked at the author's field. Um, so didn't, didn't do anything more kind of sophisticated than that. And to see, in other words, like giving everyone full credit for any RFD that they're on the authors for.

Oxide and Friends

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And of the 1.4 million words across all RFDs, uh, Robert, you have contributed, uh, three over 364,000 words. Is that amazing?

Oxide and Friends

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Also terrifying. It is. And, and Robert has been, so part of the reason, Robert, obviously you, you are, you are our most prolific RFD writer.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Um, and you know, not, not that we want to, you know, just insert our discussion about the parallel of engineering metrics and that it is the cultural idiosyncrasies episode, but the, um, you know, we're not trying to measure RFDs by the pound here, but I did think it was, it was interesting and it was revealing.

Oxide and Friends

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Meet the tweet. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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The other thing that Adam was really interesting to me was the, uh, that, that was just eyeopening. It wasn't hugely surprising, I guess. Um, The person at Oxide who has contributed with the most number of collaborators on different RFDs, who's collaborated with the most number of people on RFDs. Do you know what this might be? I'm going to guess myself. You are absolutely right.

Oxide and Friends

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It is like you by far. And this is one of these things like I didn't, you know, I'm not surprised, but I'm also like, I was actually surprised about how much it stood out. And it makes, and actually, it's because you have also like really encouraged a bunch of people to write RFDs or started RFDs that have, I mean, it's just like, I thought it was interesting.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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I mean, it showed one of your kind of great strengths in terms of cross pollinating in the organization.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Yeah, exactly. But I thought that was ranging. So, I mean, both of you have, in different aspects, have interacted with the system a lot. And so, you know, Robert, you have written more ASCII doc than any of us. So we've written a lot of ASCII doc. I would say that the entire collection of Shakespeare is about 800,000 words. So, Robert, you're getting there. What...

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Will Shakespeare, keep an eye on your rearview mirror. Robert's coming for you.

Oxide and Friends

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like all my time all my work time to just reading the new contents of rfds absolutely and because we are you know very writing intensive culture we are adding people people are we've added some very prolific writers and yes it is it is absolutely um and in the ends like that shouldn't be the goal right you don't want to actually like have to read every line of every rfd

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Okay, so this gets us to, because I want to get to the very important bits here that we have extended, because this is where we get to Ben's work and Augusta's work, Crespo's work. So this was, you know, we start Oxide. We know, most of us know that ASCII doc is the right answer. One of us feels that they are still doing it in Markdown. So we solved that problem.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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I think it was in the first year, Adam, when we had the intervention, the Markdown intervention.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Right. Okay. And I think ASCII doc has been good for us, I would say, broadly speaking. Totally. Other than being, I guess, more unique to us than I realized. So one of the things that we started doing early on, I mean, very early on, actually, the earliest days, because we have, it's just like we're on, the name of the podcast now, Oxide Friends, comes from actually our initial friends of Oxide.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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So when we started the company, we had a bunch of folks who had, and Adam, you were one of the initial friends of Oxide, right? Where before you worked here, you were a friend of Oxide. We had just people that we'd worked with, that we'd known, that we wanted to, be transparent about what we're building to get their perspective on.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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So we added them to that GitHub repo so they could see actually all of the RFDs. So the GitHub repo is a private repo that has all of these ASCII docs, all of these documents in it. And

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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The important change that we made from Joyent is the way we did discussions, which is it's a little wonky, but it's better than it was at Joyent by a mile, which is we use the fact that GitHub, that PRs are actually... Better than issues for discussions. I mean, the GitHub PRs have got issues with them for sure, or they've got challenges using it.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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But we use PRs to discuss an RFD, which at least allows people to give kind of line-by-line feedback. It's nowhere near as good as Google Doc comments, for example, but it could be worse. Yeah, it doesn't get in the way, I don't think. I don't think it gets in the way.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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I think it is, you know, I think that there's some challenges, but I think it's broadly, again, it was like way better than certainly at joint. We didn't have discussion that we should have had because it was mechanically so difficult. So kind of solve that problem.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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How does it feel for us to be doing this at a time that includes you? I'm so sorry. This is good. Can you hear me? Adam from Italy. Yes. Yes. I mean, don't take this the wrong way, Adam, but I think you, I think you sound better than you do in Alameda. I mean, I think so too. I have a upgraded microphone for, for this.

Oxide and Friends

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Yeah, I kind of, I do like it. I wish, obviously, I wish those comments were themselves under kind of Git management, but which would be kind of, that'd be asking GitHub to go to be one step too useful. But the, I do like the fact that they're there and they also don't get in the way of reading the doc, which I think is also important because...

Oxide and Friends

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you know, somebody like, you know, not all those, you know, there are comments like, okay, yeah, I got considered this or whatever, and I'm going to close it. I'm resolving it, but I want you to be able to still see that there's a comment here. Maybe someone else can come along later and have the same comment or what have you, but yeah, great.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Very early on. I mean, it predates Oxide, really. And we'll kind of get into the history there. But it really is the backbone, as you and I were kind of iterating on titles. I think you were kind of wanting me to go bigger on titles. And you're right. I mean, it's like, this is really important. And you said this in our episode on cultural idiosyncrasies as well, that this is idiosyncratic. And

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Um, so we, and we do that with branches and then we, we put some automation around that where, you know, you could, the RFDs have got different states and they can be in kind of, um, ideation was an early, that was a state that we added at Empire Call. We wanted something that was kind of, uh, earlier than kind of discussion state, which is like, I truly do.

Oxide and Friends

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I've got just like no idea what I, this is a dream I had.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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Right, and that's right. I mean, RFDs are the way we kind of are. Maybe you can argue beginning to abuse it a little bit, but the system was flexible enough that it could be extended that way, and adding ideation was pretty easy. So that worked out pretty well. So then it was great to be able to take the repository and add their GitHub ID as a collaborator on the repository.

Oxide and Friends

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And then that became kind of part of what one though, like it was just great to be able to do that, to get people's perspectives on things. But then secondly, we would use that as part of the hiring process. So part of the hiring process was after we did someone's materials and like, okay, we're interested in this person. We would add them to the RFDs so they could see all of the RFDs.

Oxide and Friends

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And this was a really important step. It was really important for us to be able to show people all of our documentation about how we were building this thing to give them a much more concrete idea of what we were doing technically. What I would tell people is when you get into these RFDs and you're going to, you know, some of them are extraordinary. Some of them are not even correct any longer.

Oxide and Friends

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Some of them are, you know, there's this huge, you know, huge spectrum of quality and so on. But as you read these RFDs, you will begin to feel that you want to work for Oxide more or less, but not the same. That's what I would tell people. And I think it was really, really important.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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And we had, obviously, because we're, by the time we're kind of advancing people's after the materials, we talked about this with our, on our episode on hiring with Gary, but this is all happening after we have decided like to, to kind of pull someone into conversations and we want them to kind of understand what we're building at Oxide.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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We had, we did have people in there and I had one person in particular was like, I thought I really wanted to work for Oxide. But, and I had pointed them to, you know, some pretty gnarly RFDs and it's like, I'd read some of these RFDs and like, I am, I'm kind of more interested in the idea of working for Oxide than I am working for Oxide, which I thought was very helpful. Right.

Oxide and Friends

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Absolutely. Absolutely. And Robert, you should take this as praise, but it was absolutely one of your RFDs that actually was the clarifying RFD. Because I think people don't realize the amount of... You're like, oh, my God. There is so much detail here. It's like, yes. Yes, there's a lot of detail. It's very, very detailed to actually go on. So that was great.

Oxide and Friends

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It doesn't feel like it should be idiosyncratic because we did not invent literacy and we did not invent the importance of writing down one's ideas or reading the ideas of others. But I think a bunch of the things that we've done borrowing from ideas elsewhere, have added up to something that is idiosyncratic, but I think it shouldn't be, which is the reason that I kind of bridle with that.

Oxide and Friends

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The problem that we had, or that I had, was there wasn't a good way to... Well, we had a couple of big problems. One, there was no way to search RFDs, which started off not great and was becoming really, really, really problematic. And then there was no way to share individual RFDs. And other than like rendering them as PDFs and sending them, which I did plenty, but it's like, that's not great.

Oxide and Friends

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And this may be a good time to get you and kind of David in here and Augustus in terms of like, this is kind of the RFD system that you kind of come upon is us kind of dealing with sticks and stones and GitHub. And what is the origin of the RFD site? Because I'm trying to remember, how far did that date back, first of all? That dates back, I think, a while.

Oxide and Friends

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Ben, great question. I got to say, the sun is pouring into this room at Oxide. I don't think I quite realized how much absolutely nuclear bomb direct sun exposure this thing gets in the morning. So I'm kind of like hiding a little bit in the shade, but it is glorious. I got to tell you, I got my morning cup of coffee. I'm really excited for this.

Oxide and Friends

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Totally. When I think, so a couple of things like the, so we added, I mean, the inability to search RFTs was extremely painful. It was also, it's made even more painful because the, the great thing about using PRs for discussion is that you get GitHub's features and

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

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The downside of that is it means that like the actual repo itself, that is to say like the main branch, only contains RFDs that have been published. They don't have the ones that are in discussion. So you have to like search every branch. And so I had this thing, RFDGREP, that you were referring to, Ben, that was taking minutes.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3073.277

But it was like, it was minutes, but it was actually like delivering penicillin. So it was really, you know, it was like, oh my God, thank God we got some way. We were using LuceneGREP.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3081.173

um and lm graph is what we were using using what we've seen and it was very helpful but it was also like its performance would vary a lot it would take minutes it was really really painful and in particular like it was so needed and because i remember like getting steve tuck set up with rfd grab because he needed it desperately like gotta have a better way to do this so

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

309.926

But it is idiosyncratic. But regardless of whether it's idiosyncratic or not, it is essential to oxide. And it has been It is really, really, really important. It is really hard to overstate the importance of RFDs, and they're becoming way more important, actually.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3104.446

I can't remember when you did the full text search on the RFD site, but that demo Friday was like a religious experience where, I mean, it was like that affected everyone at Oxide to be able to like, oh my God, I can just go there and search all the RFDs, like clean water, thank God.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3142.908

So describe that because that was, I totally agree. So now we've got the RFD site and we've got the RFD site, which also like looks great, which is very helpful. You are doing, so tell me how you're rendering the ASCII doc, because that was a big piece of this. You got to go render the ASCII doc.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3193.732

Yeah, sorry. I think I was definitely a recent version of that where I was definitely using block quotes and attributed quotes. Brian, that's basic.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3279.167

I feel like the emperor's new clothes, though, because we do use ASCII doc everywhere, I just assumed ASCII doc is ubiquitous everywhere. And it's like, I've never heard of it. Exactly.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3313.613

Look, I... Okay, I just assumed. Because, Ben, as you point out, I'm realizing that part of the reason I thought ASCII doc... was ubiquitous is because it is ubiquitous and oxide, but you're, it is ubiquitous and oxide because you made it ubiquitous.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3332.099

I think it's great. I think it's great. I think like it's, it's actually, I think it's terrific. I think it is so much better than Markdown. Um, and, um, so I, yeah, I think it's great. And like blogs and so on are all an ASCII doc.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

344.622

Yes. And the other thing that has been just extraordinarily important is the ability to make single RFDs public. And that has been... life-changing for us because it now allows us to begin to... And we've done this over time, but we are getting more and more RFDs out there and allows it for us to be that kind of public vector as well.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3534.013

Well, and just the fact that we also use this for the documentation is so great. And then we've been able to make the documentation site is anyone that's available to the public. If you want to, I mean, we're, can see all of the Oxide documentation, which is great. And then we're able to kind of cross-link that with the console. There's a bunch of things we can do there.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3554.292

So the other, I mean, and then also it looks gorgeous. Can you talk about the GitHub integration a little bit? Because that's been a huge, that's been hugely valuable to get those discussions. That was another demo Friday that I just think just like left people, you know, weeping with joy. The C comments and the RP site.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3698.723

A huge improvement. And this is a good segue to the kind of the RFD database that kind of fronts this thing, I think, because I assume that's hitting the database that is fronting it and not actually GitHub directly, but I actually don't know the answer to that. Augustus, it would be a good opportunity to get your work in here.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

374.497

And so that has been absolutely essential and that's all built on the terrific work of Ben and Augustus and Dave Crespo who are all with us today. So their work has been... Like, it kind of started off as like, oh, like, this is nice. Like, oh, this is great. Like, this is great.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3858.125

The reason I had assumed that those were coming out of a fronted database is because it was so snappy. So that's why it's so snappy. Because you're exactly... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3884.133

It is fake. I get totally faked out by it, though. I'm not looking at the spinner. I'm generally looking at the rendered content. So that's definitely worked. It also should be said that it just. The rendered content looks gorgeous. And obviously, Ben, you've made sure that everything at Oxide looks gorgeous or faces your ire. And it just looks great.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3911.38

It also looks great on the phone, which I think is really important. because I think folks are reading more and more RFDs on a mobile device, right? Augustus, the other reason that having that front-end database has been really, really important is for the visibility for RFDs. Can you describe maybe some of the problems we had with adding increasing number of folks to this Friends of Oxide group?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

392.537

And then, you know, they, again, we'll get into the whole history of this, but that added things were just like, oh, wow, okay, this is really great. Like, this is profoundly great. And now we're just like, okay, this is... this is now like low bearing. This is, this is, uh, we now cannot envision the system without this. This is extremely important.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

3938.274

Because this GitHub group was getting larger and larger and larger. And I think it all had to be like outside collaborators with our organization, I think, if I recall correctly.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4011.636

And this is extraordinarily important. I think the full text search was game changing. The rendering was game changing. And I feel that the fine-grained permissions are totally game-changing for RFDs.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4025.084

Because we really needed to be... The reason I think it's so game-changing is because it allowed us to much more easily... Well, one, we could make our individual RFDs public, which was a real problem. When did we first have the ability to do that?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4103.418

And this has been, I think, huge. Because I feel, especially where we are in the past year, having brought this product to market, and now there are more and more aspects of this that we want to share with everybody. We want to share with all of our customers and we want to share with everyone to see.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4120.285

And I feel like there are, you know, it's just kind of amazing that we've, that, you know, we've only been able to do this in the last year. And I, cause I feel like I do this all the time. We did this, obviously, I mean, the last,

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4131.983

episode as was talking about an rfd that was made public right so the in terms of wither cockroach db and 508 but i feel like it was uh really really important to have that fine grain control and to be able to have like groups as well so you can say like okay this because i think we've got a group for our contract manufacturer for example where they want we want them to be able to see everything about a certain number of rfds that are not public um it's extremely helpful

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4195.413

Yeah, that is great. So that was before we met up in October. And then I know that I was out in New York in November talking to someone who had seen the RFD site. And they're like, how can I get a hold of that?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4211.158

Because I think a lot of, I mean, I feel like every time we have an RFD, a public RFD that is on Hacker News or is getting discussed, someone is always like, hey, can someone explain to me how this system works and how can I use it? Because there's a lot of interest in it. Do you want to talk about a little bit of the open sourcing of the RFD site and of the RFD API? Sure.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4277.634

You don't have any RFDE that implies that you're building a computer. Other than that, you can use it as much as you want. You just can't, you know?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4311.482

I think eventually it might be nice to have something a little bit more... Yeah, I mean... Dave, you... Okay, the CSS is specific to us, but someone could take this and get it working for themselves, correct? I mean, it feels like they could. Oh, for sure.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

432.326

I will tell you that there's a reason that it's written. I mean, so Jess and I are listed as the co-authors because Steve was not yet working in the garage. So this is going to be in August of, I think, of 2019. Maybe we retroactively made it after September 9th.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4338.513

Yeah. That's right.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4343.565

Yeah, exactly. That's Oxide TM to you. Java technology, please, TM. So in terms of being able to take it, we've got all the elements that someone could do to go. And what would be some of the ways in which someone could use this stuff? I mean, how would one get started if you wanted to kind of see what it would be like to use this?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4388.843

I mean, Adam, you're a proud papa. You and Dave on Progenitor and Trap. You just love it.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4412.624

Okay, so Augustus, when I'm using the RFD COI, that is a progenitor-generated COI. Absolutely.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4433.608

Okay, so feel shame on that. But I use that CLI a lot. I mean, I make great use of the RPCLI. So that's auto-generated. That's amazing.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

45.675

I just want to make clear that I'm not accusing you of using an AI-generated photo of Italy. I'm just saying the photo that you posted is a little on the nose for what a generative AI might imagine that Italy would look like. It's just a little too on brand.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4644.727

Yeah, and I feel like that automation has made it, because the branching bit has been great for discussion, but I think the point you're going to get to is it can feel a bit clumsy at times for the authors of RFDs. And I feel like the automation there has really helped a bunch.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

466.681

I think we're waiting for a corporation.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4661.115

And I think that given all that, I mean, I could see why someone might want to do it a different way, but there's a lot of strength to the model that we've got. We're just kind of getting GitHub. It's using GitHub for its strength without being, while still having a canonical repo that has everything in it.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

478.203

First things we did. Absolutely. The first thing we, the first thing we did and it actually felt like, because it felt like something we could do as well. So do you know what I mean? Where, because we didn't have money in the bank, we were totally raising around and there's like, you're kind of limited about how much of this company you can build with zero additional people and no money. And yeah,

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4842.369

Yes, and I think it gets to... So folks in the chat are asking about Notion. I've not actually used Notion. Preston, it sounds like you have. I would say that my... Concern about Notion. I would say I've got an Evernote concern with Notion or any other.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4861.267

And this is part of the challenge here is that using any kind of paid service here is really problematic because this is so important to us that it's really hard for us to accept restrictions on how things are used. And And in particular, a hard constraint on the problem is we have to have a Git repository that has the RFDs in it. That has to be where they live canonically.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4890.169

They cannot live canonically anywhere else. And so that's extremely important. I think it's really important, the ASCII doc element of it, now that I understand that only oxide is used in the ASCII doc, that becomes really important. I bet you're mentioning the chat, the versioning, that is extremely important.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4912.168

And I just think that this is one of these things where we really need to control every aspect of our fate. We would love to, I think, integrate with other, you know, we're not, I think, you know, if we could find kind of better ways to do pieces of this, but we really need to control our own fate. And I think that like, that is, that is not unusual for us.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4929.593

I think engineering organizations need to control their own fate in terms of the actual artifacts they're creating. And this is a really important artifact that we're creating. This is, and as usual,

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4942.541

saying adam it's like one of our most enduring artifacts are rfd so i mean it's i i mean it's right up there with the source code honestly i mean it's don't make me pick those are they're both very very important a while ago i stumbled onto a phrase of uh owning your strategic weirdness and i i would have said like rfds are a thing that we we could have outsourced

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

4980.544

Well, so I knew that was going to be a problem. It was a problem in joint too. I knew we were going to want a way of communicating with the public. I just had much worse ideas of how it would be done.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5012.56

Yeah, I don't think so either. In fact, quite the contrary. I think with all these things, I now cannot imagine doing... It's been a lot of work. I mean, not to discount that, but it's also like we haven't... We're not licensing any proprietary software here. We're not paying for service. In fact, quite the contrary.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5027.612

The work that Augustus was doing was necessary for us to prune our GitHub collaborators because that was costing us money. This actually saved us a bunch of money. by, so the degree we were using a service, we were using too much of it.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5040.983

And we were, I mean, in fact, actually, Adam, I think you kind of need to look no further than GitHub where we were, I mean, just for all the things that Augustus was mentioning about the groups and having to add collaborators, but then the collaborate, just like it was really, We were already kind of breaking GitHub. And we've left GitHub as kind of the canonical repository for comments.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

506.718

you know, what are the kinds of things you can go do? And like, like you can do a podcast. We did, we were recording on the metal during that time. Right. And, um, But we were established. You look at like RFD2, I think, is principles and values, right? So that we were, RFD3 is our hiring process.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5062.943

But I think the direction we'd want is to use less of that. I think you could easily envision... I mean, God, if... I know that Prespo was defending Ben's time by saying, under no condition will we allow you to add comments on the RFD site. But if you were to add that, you could easily... you could see comments going into a Git repo and then us not using GitHub for comments on that. Totally.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5086.563

It'd be amazing. And then I think that, like, I also think that the strength of us doing this, by the way, is that we've been able to open source it. So, this is now, like, we have generated something that, and I feel that, like, you know, as we've kind of gone through our careers, like, we've added more and more wisdom into the system. And,

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5109.585

it now reflects a bunch of wisdom that we can all carry forward. Even folks that are outside of Oxide can actually leverage those. One thing I did want to talk about because it did come up in discussion online where people were curious about how we use RFDs to resolve conflict. And that's not exactly their question. I'm rephrasing it a little bit. But how do you deal with conflict in an RFD?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5138.052

How do you deal with where... And the comment was kind of like, hey, we experimented with it, but it just became too much of a lightning rod. And I would say that RFDs do not solve your organizational problems. They don't necessarily solve... They don't resolve those things. And, you know, we have had RFDs that become lightning rods. And it's not good.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5161

I mean, it's not, I mean, I think it's better than, I would say these are lightning rods that are lightning rods anyway. I think as we alluded to on the cultural idiosyncrasies episode, of course, it's like the chat system, which we've already like run under the bus several times here. It's like chat is what will rip oxide apart. Yeah. Absolutely.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5178.535

And this is a good example where, and I think, Adam, you mentioned this at the time we were talking about it, where all of these systems have got drawbacks. It's easy for everyone to have an opinion on it. The opinions get kind of tribal, and it's not great. And in terms of like, it's not great in that there's not an unequivocal answer. And, you know, the RFD on chat got a little hot. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5206.127

Maybe even a lot hot. Maybe I've been right.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5224.319

It is not worth checking out the hot comments on chat. And I think that on the one hand, you're not going to resolve that. On the other hand, it is actually helpful to have all the – I think it's like if you're going to have organizational conflict, Let it be in writing. You know, it is very helpful to have everything because you can actually like it.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5244.394

I think it forces people to be complete about their arguments. I mean, it's obviously like think of the lawyers.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

525.073

So we were getting, like, it's not an accident that these are kind of the first things we're laying down. And RFD1 is the RFD process itself. So, yeah, I mean, it was extremely early. And that's interesting. The first commit message isn't until October, right?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5255.728

Think of the lawyers. Will somebody please think of the lawyers?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5310.823

Yeah. And so I do have, and I actually made it public this morning or yesterday on RFD 113. which I did write, which is kind of how we actually make determinations. And it's giving this kind of loose guidance that you're describing. You can't be overly prescriptive about how decisions are made, kind of obviously.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5332.87

But, you know, really talking about, and kind of differentiating decisions from determinations, talking about some specific examples where, you know, how we made determinations in the past. Because it's, on the one hand, there are, I would say there are plenty of RFDs where it's like, no, no, I want to throw this out here. I really want to get someone's discussion.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5352.834

In other cases, like, we've got, and especially if you've got an issue where we have to move quickly often like, okay, there's been a lot of process that's outside of RFDs, and now actually the RFD is going to pull all this together and kind of describe what we've already done a little bit.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5368.156

But it's actually extremely helpful to go do that, where we can actually go through the different things that we've kind of considered, which is very important. So I think that sometimes the RFD process ends up being a little bit behind the process, but I think oftentimes it is. It's an earnest request for discussion. There's a question about whether an RFD becomes immutable.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

539.997

maybe I had this kind of image of, but you know what, that as you say that I am feeling cold in that garage, that unheated garage, that thing got like frosty in October, November, December. Like we really did need to move into a place with heating.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5392.131

We do have the published state, which is very valuable. I need to get more of my own things into publish. That RFD 113 is not the published state. Actually, it's funny. So just to say it's an interesting like object lesson. RFD 113 is not in the published state. It's in the discussion state, even though it's obviously 113 and we are now at last updated in December of 2020.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5411.724

It's like, okay, why is it still in the discussion state? This should clearly be like published. And so I'm like, I'm going to go mark this as the published state. But there's a comment in there, actually, our colleague, Keith Wazowski, left a very thoughtful comment on there that I had read, you know, in 2020.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5429.556

But I actually want to go, there's some things in there, I actually want to modify this RFD a little bit before I publish it based on that single comment. And it's not contentious. He doesn't disagree with anything here, but he's got a perspective that I want to capture in here a little bit before I move it into the published state. So that's why that one is still in the discussion.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5449.849

But yeah, I mean, in terms of when, and I think Ilyan is also saying that RFDs can languish in discussion, which I think is okay. I think it's like, I think it's, certainly I'm guilty of this too, but I think when we're moving into the published state, we're saying like, okay, this is basically like, We've kind of accepted this. It doesn't mean that it's immutable.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5470.064

And I think importantly, we can go back and change RFDs that have been published. We don't want to become captive to our own process in this regard. And I think by and large, we haven't been captive to the RFD. I don't think it's been incarcerating at them.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5528.055

Yeah, and then I think it's also helped them have the abandoned state. Abandoned, it is. And chat RFD may be in the abandoned state. Just to indicate to someone, especially new to the company, like, oh, okay, I don't need to spend a lot of time looking at this one.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5542.806

This was an idea that, and I feel that was something, I mean, Robert, I feel that was something that was kind of a needs improvement from the Joyent era as well, where we ended up with some RFDs that were not what we did And then we need to kind of make clear, no, no, this is not, we didn't go this way.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5559.627

We had a thoughtful discussion on it or what have you, but you shouldn't view this as kind of canonical because we've abandoned it. I think the other thing I would say is that when we are getting better at is linking RFDs to one another. So you've already seen this, and especially like when we were referring to Dave's RFDs last week and 110 and 53 and kind of the RFDs that they refer to.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5588.745

I think that ASCII doc makes it pretty easy to link to those things and kind of footnotes and so on. But I think that being able to navigate that web becomes really important.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5621.002

Yeah. And it was kind of like, you are here in this RFD, and this is how it relates to the other RFDs. And that was really, really important. And then, I mean, in our next-gen sled, Robert, you want to talk about how you, because the RFD there, we've got an RFD that really is the entire architecture of that kind of next-gen sled. Do you want to talk about how we're using RFDs for Cosmo?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

566.42

Okay, you are apparently emphasizing barely in that. I am emphasizing heated. I think it is heated, if barely. No, it's fine. It's actually going to be warm, so it's going to be a roaster in the office today.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5793.72

No, I just, you're reminding me of, I think, is it 101 much new about optics?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

584.15

So in terms of the history here, and Robert, I'm hoping you can help me out because I'm realizing that my recollection of this, I'm going to be interested to compare notes on the recollection of this. But for the history of this, you actually have to go back before Oxide, certainly, before Joyent, actually, and have to go back to Our Days at Sun.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5883.462

we do something different at least you have some of the context of what were the different things that went into it oh it is extraordinarily helpful and it was it was uh 112 as much do about optics robert um i would we'll need to look to see if there's any and if there's no nda material in there i want to make maybe you want to make that one public just because that have you read 112 adam

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5902.776

Because you're like, I don't know, optics, how complicated can it be? It's like, oh, okay. No, I haven't. Oh my God. I mean, this is one of these and I feel like there are many RFDs that are in this category where this thing will take you to absolute crush depth on optics and how complicated it is. And

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5920.249

I, I mean, Robert, you've done this many, many, many times where it is so helpful to have the entirety of the depth of our thinking in an RFD. Because as you say, it's like, you know, you may look at that and God, there've been so many RFDs that I read once. I'm like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. I don't know. Makes sense.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5937.505

And then later, due to change in circumstances, I'm now reading this very closely. Maybe it's because I'm implementing it. Or maybe it's because we're about to have a call with a partner where this partner is misbehaving. Or maybe we're having a call with an investor or having a call with a user. We're having a conversation where we're like, I need to ramp up on everything we know about optics.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5959.677

I need to know in the next 45 minutes. It's like, good news. Um, and you can go actually get to the entire depth of our thinking.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5969.483

And I think that this is where the, the written artifacts are so important for scaling an organization because it allows, I mean, Robert, with so much of your thinking written down, people can go read your thinking before they, they need to like ask you a followup question. Right. Um, and that is just extraordinarily important. Um,

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

5993.45

So it's been, I mean, you're talking about, Adam, how this has become more valuable over time. It has become more valuable because we are able to use them more. We have more people using them, to Ben's point about making this accessible. We've got more people creating RFDs. We've got more people reading RFDs in terms of the public and customers and so on.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

6014.418

And then we've got these kind of fine-grained permissions so we can get the right RFD to the right person, which has been... incredibly important for us. It is the backbone of Oxide. Absolutely. This is, it's been great. Not just the discussion, but boy, this work, all of you have done such terrific work on this stuff. And it's been really, really essential.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

6060.035

Wild. I'd expect an out loud rating. Adam, thank you for all the collaboration you've done with all of your colleagues on RFTs. Much less work than Robert's words. really great stuff. And again, if you're looking at this thinking like, boy, I would love to adopt that system, please adopt it. We really try to make it so it is adoptable.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

6079.116

So, you know, take it lock, stock and barrel, take the parts that work and report back. We'd love to hear about it because I think this is something that a lot of engineering organizations really, really need. On that, thanks, everybody. Thanks, Europe.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

608.98

Adam, this is kind of where the earliest stuff of this gets laid down. When Sun, I think not unusually, had this architectural review process. And in particular, there was a platform software architectural review committee, PSARC. And PSARC would... would approve architectural changes to the operating system.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

6096.816

I feel like we'll need to do a European-timed episode at a time when you're not in Europe, just so we can prove that we're like, oh, yeah, they're remote-friendly because the CEO no longer wants to work. He doesn't want to move his family. That's why they're remote-friendly. We'll need to do some European-timed episodes. We're going to do this once a quarter or something like that.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

6118.46

There you go. Once a quarter, Europe.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

6126.541

All right. Thanks, everybody.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

634.614

And it was a, and I'm sure we've mentioned, we probably talked about PSARC in the D-Trace episode, but PSARC was this body that fancied itself a pretty august body, but you would develop materials for a PSARC case.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

654.345

And I mean, Adam, I'm sure you had the same experience where the development of materials for your PSAR case, I thought was very valuable where you'd be writing your own materials or, you know, you would have a case and would iterate on it with like Mike and me before you submit it or whomever, right? Roger, whatever. That process, I felt to be very valuable.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

694.402

Yes. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Okay. So what I'm saying is it was like the, the, the part of the process that was valuable was the part of the process where you wrote everything down. That was valuable. Right. Right. And I found many issues in my own thing, in my own stuff by, I mean, small issues, but like, okay, oh, right.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

717.12

As I'm writing this down, I'm like, I realized I hadn't quite thought about this and I'm going to get ahead of some kind of just ill-conceived discussion about this. So I'm going to clarify this. Right. And that was all valuable. And then everything from that was not valuable. And in fact, was awful. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

738.773

Because you had spent – if you work on this earnestly, you're like, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. And other than like – It's not impossible that someone would have a suggestion that would be valuable, but that's not the way the PSAR generally phrased it. PSAR was not phrased as suggestions. It was phrased as approval or rejection.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

779.565

You know, parole board is a really good way of phrasing it. Like, I don't know, like, are you a recidivist? Is this going to, I just feels like, I know you've had a couple of character witnesses in here, but I don't know.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

803.393

The politics of it was onerous. And I mean, I know we turned the cockroach episode into a Postgres episode, so I don't want to turn the RFD episode into a dark episode. But that said, you're like, why would you be saying this unless that is exactly your intent? But I do think it's worth mentioning that. And I would say that if you are in...

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

823.934

an engineering cultural milieu that has this kind of August review boards, a trick that worked exceedingly well was to deliberately have an issue. And this, by the way, has a deep history in software engineering. This is the queen's duck. But deliberately have an issue that is a small issue that everyone can wrap their brains around that you yourself are equivocating on.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

83.609

You just got some things that are not adding up. I do, I gotta say, I love the European window dimensions. I love the tall, narrow windows. That's nice. It's a very European thing. You know, I think it's like, that's how the AI knew to generate in Europe.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

850.544

Like, God, I just don't know what to call this thing. What should be the name for this?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

870.1

That's right. And I mentioned this is the Queen's Duck, which goes back to a game called Battle Chess. I don't know if you ever played this game, Adam. This is in like 80s, early 90s. And the VP at the company was making Battle Chess was a famous kind of micromanager. So they would deliberately introduce things that they know that he would be, they would basically occupy him.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

897.346

And so he would all, and one of the things is they had the queen in Battletrust holding a duck. And he'd be like, you know, he's like kind of looking over it very thoughtfully. And then like, you know, the queen, queen should not be holding a duck. Like, oh God, yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. So they, this is a trick that works extremely well. We did this and it worked all too well.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

918.989

But all that is wasted energy. Like you should not need to, like all of that is, is the organizational politicking and it sucks and it's not uplifting even when it works extremely well. Okay, when it works extremely well, it's a little uplifting, but not very uplifting, and it's a waste of energy. But the thing that was valuable was writing all that stuff down.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

939.964

So, okay, we went to Fishworks, where we wrote nothing down, I think. Do you remember our first bug database?

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

960.217

Oh, that's right. Excuse me. I will thank you not to refer to SCCS as RCS. I will thank you to not refer to our defunct source code management system as a different defunct source code management system.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

976.563

Do you know where that bug database is from? That's the Detroit bug database. That's right. Don't you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wasn't going to air that dirty laundry. That text file has a deep pedigree, friend. But we, other than writing one line of text for every bug that we fixed, there was basically nothing.

Oxide and Friends

RFDs: The Backbone of Oxide

996.568

And we certainly weren't dealing with piece art, and we were kind of a renegade outfit to begin with, and talk about an outfit that should not have been purled. And then I went to Joann, and we kind of fast-forward a couple of years, and And I was really missing writing things down. And it was happening kind of sporadically. And Robert, obviously, this is where I would love to call on your memory.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

0.049

Okay. So this is not a hot take. This is a little bit of a take in that we are talking about something that was very hot two weeks ago. That's right. We, we've been on a two week hiatus and you are our last episode was the RFD episode coming in from Italy, which is great. Or so the image that you generated said. I got confirmation on that one.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1036.066

It's like, this is great. So we don't need to stop. We're not stopping for gas at all. No, no, no, no, no.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1043.988

You're doing that thing. You do again. You're only going to say the half the story. Yeah. So I thought that was, uh, was really interesting. I, the one I, but I got to say, and this is where, uh,

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1052.99

the thing that was very influential for me, and this is like, I do think the positive of the founder mode piece is his, the second failure of that's not how it's, that's how it's done, where he brings in a bunch of HR professionals that, and the thing that was interesting, and you might find this actually really hard to believe given the kind of the way the piece is written.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

107.263

So I have to write a hacker news comment, write a hacker news comment. Like now I'm done. Don't think about it. Still thinking about it. Still thinking about it. Got to write a blog entry. And I've learned that it's just like, I can't fight that at that point. Like I got to go. It's, it's just gonna be faster for me to write the goddamn thing and be done with it. And, um, I, I,

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1075.104

When I read that, I, I didn't think that was the failure. And I was kind of at a moment where I was beginning to question some of my more idiosyncratic methods, which you might already be like, first of all, just don't believe that. That doesn't sound credible at all. But I really was. I was just like, God, maybe... Because I'm doing things that are really differently than other people.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1096.883

You're like, maybe we should be bringing in HR professionals like Tim says? I definitely was wondering on things like performance review, where it's like, I don't know, maybe. And... the, and then he kind of like hit. And so he says, I, you know, I complained, but I eventually gave in. Yeah. I literally, what you, I mean, hand on heart, I am speaking my own truth, whether you believe it or not.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1119.455

Maybe I don't even believe it. I'm saying, but when I read that in 2013 or whatever, I'm like, maybe I should give in. And then the next sentence is like, no, no, you idiot. It was a disaster. And I thought it was like, and I think the danger, I think I liked about this is it is very specific. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1136.263

with respect to some specific policies that were on regular reviews and so on that were very, very specific, and any kind of regrets not having preserved the culture longer, that does not mean you discard all expertise, I think. And I think that's where you get into the false dichotomy that gets dangerous. Yeah, totally.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1189.28

Totally. Where you have something that worked well and now is not working at all. And not understanding why this thing worked so well. And it's like, well, maybe that was incidental success. Maybe that thing wasn't working. Or, I think probably more likely, it was implicitly dependent on a bunch of factors that you didn't necessarily see. Totally. That you didn't, yeah. I think it's...

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1213.416

It's tough and it's complicated. But so that was, that was the bit in that piece that was very influential for me and gave me some of the guts actually to be like, okay, I'm actually going to, it's okay to actually go my own way on this stuff. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1225.8

But I think you need to be really, I do think you need to be deliberate because I think that the, again, the danger of Graham's piece is that like, oh no, you just go founder mode, which to me, doesn't that, what do you think of when you think, oh, here founder mode?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1245.772

It does sound like an episode of Silicon Valley is out of HBO Silicon Valley. I don't think you like Beast Mode and Marshawn Lynch. Am I the only one that has a strong Beast Mode? And I think that Paul Graham would dismiss that as a sports ball, so I don't think he would know who Marshawn Lynch is or what Beast Mode is. But that...

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1264.793

you kind of have this idea of like founder mode is just not going to accept any sort of negotiation or that's right. Absolutist. Absolutist. Founder mode demands results and demands them now. And I mean, that is, So that's kind of what prompted me to be like, all right, can we undo some of the false dichotomy here? Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1286.458

And which I feel Tim's piece does, but I wanted to, I mean, part of what motivated me to write that, write the oxide piece is,

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

129.895

Wrote the blog entry. Was kind of debating, is this on a personal blog or did I put this on the Oxide blog? But I'm like, you know, I need to get Steve's fingerprints on this and get it on the Oxide. Because obviously I want to. It actually was helpful getting the Oxide blog. It actually helped me. There's some things I probably. Dialed down a little bit. Dialed down a little bit.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1295.864

is I wanted to also I wanted did you click on my link for dramaturgical dyad of course thank you I want to see which specific thank you Simpsons reference like what what what frame of thank you thank you I felt underappreciated on dramaturgical dyad where did you expect to get that appreciation I think right here right now so I think I got it I think I got it actually yeah because you were traveling you were out so it's like why yeah no I just got it actually I don't think anyone um

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1330.065

No, I appreciate that. I felt like it was an audience of like five. And I don't know who the other four people are. Actually, no, it's you and Dave. That's right. Dave. I mean, if I can think of who would get it, I'm not sure they're going to read the article. You know, they're not going to read the article. Do you know who would get that? It's actually my kids.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1347.222

Not Tobin, but my 17-year-old and my 12-year-old are scholars of the early. Yeah. And you're like, hey, kids, new blog post from dad. I knew blog posts from dad. I, you know, I didn't do that. I, but you know, I haven't done everything wrong. This is one of those moments when they, uh, when I did read it, they would get it. They did read it. Yeah. Well, this is where I've done other things wrong.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1365.877

They're not going to read the blog entry, but I do think that the, that Steve jobs and like Steve jobs and John Scully, uh, is the dramaturgical diet of Silicon Valley.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1375.823

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, this is like the Tom and Jerry. This is, and I feel like that is really reductive. Totally.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1394.057

Absolutely. And I mean, again, the question that I am dying to ask the dead Steve jobs is what was the influence of next? Yeah. on your return to Apple. Absolutely. Because I feel like Steve Jobs, the next big thing was such an, I mean, such an outstanding spotlight on this long period of history, 11 years. And, you know, I know we've talked about it before. I think it's an amazing book.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1417.812

I love the fact that that book is written when he's left for dead.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1421.755

because it just like, there's no reason to like praise this guy. Right. And I don't, I don't think it's like overly condemning, but it's just like, yeah, I'm definitely not like letting him review it or what. I don't, I don't care what he thinks about it. Like part of like, this guy is down and out and I'm like, I'm, I'm here to, to tell the, the story of,

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1438.871

a fall right it is not a fallen resurrection story it is a false story and and i think that like the the problem with i mean i was shocked that the isaacson because i you know we talked about this on our yeah i think our first podcast right or one of the early ones went back to the isaacson's biography and it's like next is like six pages really and like man i think it's so much more important than that yeah because this guy did not succeed at next

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1465.735

And how much did that, and like Scully wasn't totally wrong on a lot of things. Yeah. And Jobs definitely wasn't right in that, in that kind of, that 1985 dramaturgical dyad. Just wedging it in there one more time. Good. For all it's worth. So I felt that we kind of need to break that one apart. And I do feel that, I mean, again, I've said it before, but boy, mandatory reading on jobs.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

148.467

Yeah, dialed down a little bit. Not, you know, not hugely, but I think dialed down. I mean, so you're abroad when you read the piece. Yes. And what is your take on, on the piece other than like, thank God we're not recording tomorrow.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1493.098

You just can't stop with the Isaacson bio. You really have to dig deeper on that guy.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1542.96

Totally. And actually, this is where I got to say, Paul Graham and Steve Jobs, I mean, I'm glad we're talking about them in kind of a single episode because they are, to me, they are both, they're complicated for me. Cause Paul Graham is actually complicated for me. Paul Graham is not, I mean, Elon Musk is not complicated. Sam Altman is not complicated for me.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1560.107

Paul Graham is complicated for me because he's not always, he's definitely not always wrong. He's got some, he's got some really important insights. And actually I like one of his, the important insights that again was very personally influential for me and for us at Oxide is, uh, do things that don't scale.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1577.639

do things that don't scale is a very good way to say like, this is working for us now. You and I are having a disagreement about whether this can work for us in the indefinite future. We don't actually have to have that argument right now.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1649.62

What I think, and this is where it is really important to figure out, like, what are... what are the kind of the hard rules of the road? Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1656.658

And, and I feel like, you know, we have spelled that out very explicitly at Oxide in part because of our experience having not where that's not clearly spelled out and where, where founder mode moves into things that are like pretty shady, you know, where, cause you get things like, look, I understand what you're saying about complying with the law, but we'll, and we'll do that.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1677.732

Like when we, it's like, I don't think Paul Graham said do things that are sometimes illegal. I think there was something that's legal.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1683.856

um but i have seen that you know i've you get some really kind of gross stuff so like where is that line too right you want to have like queer lines there but still allow for a company that is young to do something that it wouldn't do in the indefinite future yeah absolutely and to be clear like when i was talking about recognizing revenue i'm not talking about like cooking the books but there's a difference between like cooking the books and uh like how you're backdating revenue in a

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1714.393

People were just concerned about what the future would look like. What the future would look like, right. And also what kind of precedent or setting and so on. It doesn't actually matter. Totally. Let's make them happy. And how can we make these customers happy?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1730.106

So another thing you had mentioned is kind of this funky dichotomy is that you, as a startup, you're being encouraged to do things that are iconoclastic.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1741.496

And then immediately defer to... LinkedIn wisdom. Wisdom from the resume.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1801.312

Right. Forgotten the drive. They don't want to do it again. Kind of bored by it. Also, I didn't do that. I was at that company when it was done. And yes, I was the EVP of sales. But actually, I didn't actually grow revenue myself. I was merely in the building when that happened.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1819.929

And by the way, we've talked about this in the past, but definitely one of the things that we lived, and I think a lot of startups live, is... where you take on this expertise from your go-to-market function in particular, and you take on an EVP of sales coming from an established company, and then they need their whole organization to come with them in order to be successful.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1842.678

And all of that just adds to the burn. And then you, as a founder, realize too late, like, wait a minute, I've made a huge, huge, huge mistake here.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1874.119

Yeah. And I got to say, when people talk about in particular, the things that they've done so that, you know, I, it's on my resume. I was at this company for those years and, And I can kind of make arbitrary claims that aren't really fact-checked. Yeah. And there is, I think, a gross inclination.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1891.146

And I think this is where – the reason this is a problem is because this leads to the mistakes that Graham is identifying as people that are – not flim-flam men. What does he call them? Those that are misleading liars, effectively. He has a name for it somewhere. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1910.152

um they're founders being gaslit but he has there's a specific return of phrase he has about people that are are misleading um and the and the problem is that people exaggerate what they've done um and they you don't in fact we had someone i mean recently who is like, Oh, like, let me advise you because I built this company.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1939.162

I, I built this company to from a hundred million dollars in revenue to a billion dollars in revenue, making up numbers. And it's like, Oh, wow, that's wild. And then you look at like when they were there and it's like, and actually notice that they, they, they had claimed that they had built it from earlier than that. So kind of its first kind of $250 million revenue.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1957.406

It's like, by the time you joined the company, it was a public company.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1960.296

And the revenues were much higher than – are you lying to yourself right now? And I think this happens a lot where people have kind of told themselves their own history, and it's kind of impossible to fact check. And so you take on this expertise as a founder, and then you discover that it's not happening for you, and you wonder –

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

1983.707

And this is where, you know, when Graham talks to talking to founders who had felt gaslit, I think this is where that's coming from, where they brought in that expertise. They're not seeing the results. And then they're being told, no, no, you're not seeing the results because you don't understand the problem.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2035.583

That's right. And this is where, okay, I found the turn of phrase in Graham's piece. In practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground. So that's the professional fakers. This is turn of phrase there. And again,

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2052.569

The thing that I think Graham does a disservice to is he blames the fakers. Yeah. Fine. He does not blame the founders. He does not blame the investors that force that upon their founders. Totally.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2096.558

Right. Now, I'm trying to get all of the many, many examples I'm thinking of. Yeah, fine. Let's go with what you're saying. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2146.371

Because the success taught them nothing. Yeah, I think that's right. Because they were there. They were there when the success happened. Why would it not be due to their hard work? It's like, well, it's more complicated than that. Yeah. And then you end up with, I mean, that's what Graham calls the most skillful liars in the world. And again, I think you're right.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2169.299

That is like a little bit, on the one hand, that is too condemning of them because it's not necessarily dishonesty. On the other hand, it's maybe a little bit too generous because a lot of these people are lying to themselves. They just don't realize it.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2221.789

Just faith and experience is not enough. Faith and experience is not enough. And I do think... I mean, I've said this many times before. I'll say it many times again. Team formation is the most expensive, most important thing you, one does at a company and you need to spend a lot of time on it. I think too many people are like, well, the recruiter handed me these four names.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2239.602

So that's, those are the names. Yeah. It's like, what's your rubric for, you know, you are hiring someone in a domain in which you currently have no one. What's your rubric? And one of the things that I've always found, and again, this is the specificity that Graham's piece is totally missing, of how do you add? There are people who are superlative people who can help you out as a founder.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

226.432

Yeah, and I think the one thing I will say in Graham's defense is he anticipates this a little bit. Okay. He indicates that, he's like, in one of the footnotes in particular, I have another less optimistic prediction.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2261.676

You don't need to go to founder mode for everything. You actually do need people who can add a lot to you. How do you find those people? What chances do you take? Because I think you're right that it's surprising how conservative startups get. Yeah. Because they don't know the role. Actually, I don't know what go-to-market is. I don't know what marketing is. I've never worked in support.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2283.654

I don't know these things. So I actually don't know how to evaluate someone. And it's like, that's where you've got to... I think it's incumbent on you as a founder. Yeah, you've got to ramp up. You've got to figure out a way to go... solve that problem.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

23.492

And then the internet kind of melted down that next weekend over this Paul Graham piece. Yeah. Founder mode. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2307.174

And this is something, again, I'm not sure people see it, and it sounds like it's true of the Plaid founders as well, but this is what the Carlson brothers did well. I want to actually, I'm curious to understand, and at one point Patrick reached out to me, he was like, what should I be looking for in a VP of engineering? I'm not trying to hire you.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2323.848

I'm trying to come over and have free food, which of course, as you know, pretty much. It's okay. It's time for you to leave, actually. I think that people don't do this nearly often enough is to ask for perspective from other people. Who should I talk to? Who's the best person in this role that you know? I'm not trying to hire them. I just want to know what I should be looking for.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2351.998

And I think, and we still do that. I mean, I think it's, it is, you know, we've always done that and still do as we extend into kind of new roles. And it is really, really, really important. I'm not sure we, we, I don't think we've talked about it. I don't think we talk about it broadly as an industry and we should like you like look to other people, senior people to get their perspective.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2371.926

This again, the bit that Graham is just like totally missing.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2387.438

That's a very good point. Because I do think one of the challenges is, of the idiosyncratic, iconoclastic things you're doing, how much of that is really important versus not? I'll give you a very concrete example. We had an early investor in the company who in an early conversation, an early board meeting, I might've brought up the podcast. Mentioned the podcast. Okay. And this is on the metal.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2412.073

Okay. The board member made clear in no uncertain terms that I was never to speak of the podcast again. That is, and I was just like embarrassed for bringing it up. Like, okay, I'm not going to bring up the podcast. And I'm like, what do we do? Like, do we, should we not do the podcast?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2426.397

Like, I'm kind of like, it feels like the podcast feels like it's pretty cheap and it feels like it's pretty valuable. Yeah. Do I, and I was, I didn't really know it. And then another board member came up to me, took me aside and be like, Hey, I love the podcast podcast. Podcast is great.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

243.872

As soon as the concept of founder mode becomes established, little did you know that this would happen within literal minutes of this thing getting out there, people will start misusing it. Founders who are unable to delegate even things that they should will use founder mode as an excuse. I thought that was a good moment of reflection for Paul Graham.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2443.446

I like, I don't bring it, don't bring it up around him, but just, and the, like, I think that like you will get conflicting point is like, you will get conflicting advice. I don't think he was necessarily wrong. Like I understood the perspective that he had and like, we do not talk about the podcast at a, at a board level, but, But the podcast is the right thing for us to go do.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2462.334

And I think there's a lot of things like that where, in other words, like that in terms of like, I'm getting conflicting advice. Someone's telling me like, absolutely, do not do it. You're out of your mind. And someone's like, that's a great idea. And you have to pick and choose. And you have to know, you have to kind of... know your own self and have your own sense of judgment.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2483.852

But you need to seek out that wisdom, though. Ask the question. I'd rather know the perspective. For sure. And I think that too often we just kind of ignore the perspectives.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2505.485

So I think we talk, I can't remember if we talked about this on the hiring podcast or not, but you know, one thing that we do is when we're hiring a new role, we go to the person that we know just in our kind of extended world is like, this is the person who I can't hire.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2519.485

But I really look up to in this role and I want them to look at the materials that we're going to, that I want them to look at the portfolio. And we, a bunch of times we've gotten, I mean, just extremely good suggestions about things to add to the portfolio of work. It's been really, really valuable. Yeah, totally. Because that's informed the rubric. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2539.788

Um, also more than once, one of those people have been like, actually, I might be working for you jerks. I don't know you turkeys. Right. Um, so that, that can happen too. Um, but I think that that is definitely important to seek that out. And again, this is what kind of Graham doesn't get to the other thing that, okay.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2555.336

Like, as long as we're, can I talk about some other things that just drove me nuts? I mean, or do you want to know the idea of like the idea that he has created some new element in the lab, um, The idea that he has discovered some heretofore unknown super alloy that it will be incumbent upon future generations to study in detail. Books on founder mode, we don't know what it is.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2582.447

Books have never been written on founder mode. It's like, what are you talking about? No one's written history. No one knows what leadership is. I mean, Paul Graham, surely you read more than this, right?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2602.313

Exactly. In the future, we will understand founder mode. But now it is a complete mystery. It's a complete mystery to you, pal. The rest of us are out here running companies. I've got some thoughts on this one. It's not dark energy, right? It's really not. It is really not. So I think that was also a little bit ridiculous. But I actually also feel that there wasn't... So I felt that was annoying.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2628.374

But I felt there was little in this that was completely wrong. Yeah. Other than the false dichotomy that it leaves you with. I don't know. I mean, I feel like the false dichotomy is fairly central. Yeah, I'm already realizing I am over my skis and I'm defending this piece way too much.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

264.11

We're in the mirror neuron empathy preschool over here with Silicon Valley. You got to be like, good job, Paul Graham. Good job. Can everyone give Paul a round of applause for his act of empathy? Okay, no. Sam, stop it. No. Elon. Elon. Get back here. I do think it's interesting that Elon... Did you see the list of people that reviewed this, please? Including Elon Musk.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2665.139

and I think actually for that, I do think that, so he references Brian Chesky's talk. Yeah. That was given at Y Combinator, so that one we didn't see. But Chesky interviewed a couple of other places talking about his experience at Airbnb, and I felt it was much more interesting. Did you listen to that?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2738.805

Oh, he said he wasn't a micromanager. No, he was just in the details.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2745.792

That's right. It's not micromanaging you. You can move that finger, I think. Okay, not a bad example. I can't move that finger. I mean, as long as you don't go the wrong way.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2781.659

When I think one of the things he says in that, that I actually like, cause I'm like, what would I do to Paul Graham's piece to make it less divisive, less of a false dichotomy? One of the things that he says, there's like people want clarity. Yeah. And often that is what they, I mean, that to me is what splits the difference is like, you've got terrific people that you've hired.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2798.888

You want to empower. They do need clarity. Yeah. And I think that part of what he describes Airbnb operating at cross purposes, because he had stepped back from offering that clarity. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think it is really important. Because I think that also if you've got an organization in which you foster trust, that clarity is super helpful, I think, to people. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2822.717

Where it's like, oh, okay, this sale to this customer is really important for our quarter. Or this feature is being weighted. Oh, I get it. Okay, that's why this is important. And that clarity can allow everybody to go to their own autonomy, find the right way to solve the problem.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2844.845

I'm not telling people how to solve a problem necessarily, but giving them the clarity about what's important, I think is... Because if you call this piece clarity mode, it would just feel like, that feels good. I don't know. Clarity mode sounds good.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

285.618

reviewed the article before he, before he posted it. Yes. No, I did not see that. Yes. Thanks to Brian Chesky. Fine. Patrick Collison. Fine. Ron Conway. Fine. Jessica Livingston. Makes sense. Elon Musk.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2871.245

That's right. And you kind of have to like show them what, that's exactly right. And I do think that like autonomy is, I mean, maybe this is where you get to like my own individual style or our style at Oxide. Autonomy is great. It's just in terms of like if people have that clarity, because I think like how many times

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2889.275

At Oxide, have we seen something unanticipated that is delightful that happens, that you absolutely want to happen? It's like, I don't think anyone would have known to ask for this. But because... I mean, what I love... Maybe I'm just... easily entertained. But when Augustus did this integration between Salesforce and the ability to provision a silo on the colo rack for a prospective customer,

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2920.498

So you made it really easy for Travis to go from a prospective customer to like spinning up their own silo. So our sales folks can like get off the call with the customer and create their own demo environment. Right. And then using Dropshot and using all the things that we had built to go do this. I just like, that was great. Totally.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2939.984

And I just felt like that is where people were like, no, no, I can see that this needs to be done. And I'm just like, I'm empowered to go do it, so I'm just going to go do it.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

2989.79

Right, and I do think it's really important that leadership founders offer that clarity on priorities and then are going to have to deal with some tough questions. I'm like, okay, these two can't both be the top priority because, I'm sorry, I'm asking, we actually are going to have to... and find a way to stack these. One of these has to be more important than the other.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

299.069

All right. Good. And I like, what are you on Musk's comments? Yeah. I mean, probably just copy editing. Is it just, it's a kind of another type of like, is there any, is there anything substantive that you have any substantive complaints? It's just like, that's a very close read. Um, I think we're thinking of our comments for one another. On any document. Both guilty of it. That's right.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3011.155

Sorry, which I think is, but if you don't, and this is, I think where, when you have these startups, like I need to go into founder mode because I feel like the right thing isn't happening. it's just easy to turn into a wrecking ball. And you turn into, actually, we have some colleagues from a company that were describing the management style.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3035.265

And I'm like, wow, that is one of the worst cases of seagull management I've ever heard. And she was like, seagull management? I'm like, I don't think I made that up. Have you heard the term seagull management? I think I have, but I'm not sure that I'd be able to define it. This is like a seagull, like a seagull. It swoops in, shits all over everything, and takes off. It steals your french fry.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3060.108

It steals your french fry. You've met my sister. Her hair looks like nesting material to birds. It's weird to the point where we just need to acknowledge it. She needs to wear a hat. Some sort of protective headdress because there's something about... I don't know what it is. Obviously, she's my younger sister, so I kind of thought she was exaggerating. But over the years, I've come to accept no...

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3083.514

This is happening to you more than it's happening to other people. Birds are swooping onto your hair and attempting to attack your skull in a way that doesn't... No, this is not routine. You're right. Does she listen to the podcast? I want to find out and I don't want to ask her. She's so busy. I just don't want to ask her. So I figured this is really the best way to find out.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3103.959

It was really just to denigrate her on here and see if she listens to it or not. But no, it's no denigration at all. Quite the contrary. She has got... She's got a condition that needs to be... I honor her condition, her challenges in life. Other people don't have this challenge. And we were at Fisherman's Wharf. I guess she's kind of like, this happens to me more frequently than other people.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3123.734

I'm kind of dismissive. And we go to Fisherman's Wharf. This is years ago. And... the seagull that descended upon her was the size of a Cessna. That was like, that was like a plane crash. I think it was gigantic. And like, tried to like, just like she, he thought that she was the French fry. Just like tried. It was, it was really quite dramatic. I don't know if the seagull was a show or not.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3142.286

Definitely made her point like very, very dramatically. Yeah. So anyway, I was showing this idea of seagull management, and I think it was life-changing. It's like, I need to send this Wikipedia article to many of my former colleagues, because this is exactly... And it was an environment where senior leadership, very technical...

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3163.187

and would descend in on... People would be working on a problem for two or three weeks and would descend in and disrupt everything and take off. Great. Exactly. And that is the worst. I really think that is... It's really, I'd rather be in like command and control than that. You know what I mean?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3185.148

It's where this kind of like false sense of autonomy where you let me, you let us together as a team develop a solution for this. And now you've descended in and like ripped it up. And now it's like, boy, that's that corrosive.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

320.7

That's fair. I was very surprised that Elon Musk, and I would love to know, is Elon Musk like, I don't know, don't you feel it needs more Nazi in here? Just feels like... Just 10%. I'm just like, it's just a joke. I mean, those jokes are funny. Who knows? I don't know. I think that was good that he anticipated that. But I guess we should describe the piece in terms of what...

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3205.976

She listened to the podcast. I guess we're going to fight. Oh, 100%. Maybe 99.8% now. We'll see. Even the baseball one.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3241.689

This is a good segue to Camille's piece. Camille Fournier wrote a piece that was pretty interesting in reaction to this. Founders create managers. And I'll drop a link into that in the chat. Which I think is kind of what you're saying. Is that founders created the chaos that created the situation. Founders are creating the situation effectively. And

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3264.079

which I think in terms of like, they are, you want to be a details person. Right. And you don't know the right way to let go of those details. Yeah. And, and this is where, you know, so you, cause I was in part of what kind of prompted the, the longer blog entry too, is I was noodling on like, how do you do this? How does one do this? How do we do this? And when you said this, what do you mean?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3288.728

I mean, I, How do you keep kind of a true north to an organization as it gets larger? How do you avoid the pathologies that Camille describes? How do you avoid the seagull management? How do you keep, while at the same time, Providing clarity, and I think it is very important to stay detail-oriented. I think that is extremely important, and I think that leadership, stay detail-oriented.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3315.55

I think it's a real problem when, and you and I have both seen this, where leadership gets divorced from the details, and all of a sudden, you've got a great blog entry from years ago, I am not a resource anymore.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3329.54

And to me, that is indicative of this problem where it's like, these have now become opaque blocks that I can kind of move around and I've lost track of like why things are hard, why they take long. And it's now schedule over everything. I've now over-promised to a customer because I've lost track of the details that make this difficult. And now when my team doesn't deliver, I blame the team.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3350.274

It's just like, you're in this loop that I think is a loop that is really, really corrosive. Yeah. And so how do you avoid this? How do you not get into that pathology? How do you stay detail-oriented without being a micromanager? How do you have autonomy while still having clarity?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3401.413

And what Jeske points out, I think rightfully, is that in the absence of other things, especially where influence is being used, and especially in an organization where people do value autonomy, things can get political. And they talk about shadow hierarchy and things like that, where And so the thing that I, as I was kind of like reflecting on this, I'm like, you know, how do we do this?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3424.157

And I do think like, man, the written word is real. I mean, dovetails for our episode from last time on our piece, but the written word is really, really important in terms of broadcast. I mean, I, I mean, God, I am so thankful and I should like, there's a bell I should ring every time this happens where,

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3441.043

maybe a prospective investor or a customer, someone asks something about an issue that I'm not up to speed on. And, oh, thank God there's an RFD on it. And I spend 20 minutes reading the RFD. It's like, damn, okay, this is great. I didn't have to waste anyone's time. You don't have to create a fire drill where you say, hey, everybody, I know exactly what our thinking is on this.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3463.236

I know exactly what we've thought about. It's like, boy, am I really, really, really grateful for it. And I think that Amazon famously does this too. I've never worked at AWS or Amazon, but famously has a writing intensive culture where you're kind of sitting down and reading for the first half of the meeting. Yeah. I kind of love that.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

349.524

What is the dichotomy that Graham sees? Because ultimately, this is reductive, and it generates this galactic dichotomy between founder mode and manager mode, and there is nothing in the middle.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3510.729

This is back when they were being innovative, by the way. I don't want to... Sorry to... Yeah. As one of our colleagues who was formerly of AWS, I'm like, pretty sure the last innovative thing they did was Lambda. That was in like 2015. But I think that certainly when the Bezos-led company, they would write the press release before working.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3528.216

And I think that's an interesting way to get ground truth and clarity. It's a press release, but in terms of getting that true north and getting that on paper. Yeah, okay.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3556.881

It is too late. How do you, how do you possibly, this is like, don't look up, but how do you tell me? People don't even know who Dave hits is founder of NetApp.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3572.807

I think we should feel fully comfortable. Oh, All right. I think we should feel fully comfortable. All right. I think we should feel fully comfortable. I think this is a, this is a, this is a great story. You know who I, my sister does not listen to the podcast. I don't think she might. Your wife, you say a hundred percent. I think it's unlikely she goes to the podcast. Dave hits zero percent.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3592.024

Let's not listen to the podcast. Okay. Says I. Let's go. Okay. So Dave Hitz writes this book, How to Castrate a Bull. That's right. We were at Fishworks at the time. We were at Fishworks. We were at a NetApp competitor.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3612.504

And what we had heard from customers is like, I love the product. I hate the price. And I'm kind of not in love with the company. The company is very self-important. But I do love the product. And someone in the chat says, I have a signed copy of Dave Hitz's book. And you, you are not the only one with a signed copy. You are not alone.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3653.552

And you're sure this is just on the point of principle of not wanting to line his pockets by... I mean, it's like... I mean, we've said that an undercurrent of this episode is Success Teaches You Nothing. The subtitle of this book is How Success Taught Me Nothing by Dave Hitt.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3692.718

So we have two copies. I did not realize that. It's like, wow, this person is very hot. No, you're saying you're true, but misleading things. Did they involve the fact that you'd be, that you needed a review copy?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3720.438

Maybe reading it out loud, reading passages out loud.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3750.516

That's kind of my recollection, too, is that I feel that this is a consequence of us reading the big con. Yeah. Sure, I read it. The Big Con, terrific book. The Sting is based on the Big Con. A book written in the 30s about the Argo of the grift. All right. Oh, such a good book. And the Big Con, one of the things it repeats over again is you can only con a greedy man.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3776.232

And I think I do recall us thinking like there is a kind of an ego con here that if you praise someone who is already praising themselves, you're not going to get fact checked.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3789.461

You can only ego con a vain person.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3794.525

Dave Lightman. Dave Lightman. I, we will leave it to others to figure out the, the Dave Lightman. I mean, I feel like that's a good homework assignment. If you don't recognize the name, Dave Lightman, not in the notes, not in the notes. That's right.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3820.706

I will find the link. Can you find the link now? I can talk about something else while you find the link. Because I just feel that we need to... First of all, it should be said that you wrote the fan blog. So one of the things we figured out... I don't know if we knew he was going to pay attention to it or not. It became clear that he was hanging on every word. Every word.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3843.525

Like he was commenting on the fan blog. So at that point, it's like, oh my god. We got them. Oh, God bless you. God bless you, Blogspot. Sign of the times that it's on Blogspot.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3876.679

So you've written the first summary about this book is awesome and I cannot wait to read it. I'm really, really excited to read it. That's right.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3911.006

And when does our persona's mother enter as a kind of a... Pretty early.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3962.33

When he, at some point has like a comment on your blog being like, God, I don't want to like, I don't want to give it away, but don't take that. Cause you made it very clear that like, you've taken that advice very literally and have, have maybe said some things to your mother that you, maybe you should, maybe you might, might live to regret. That's right. So, okay.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

3977.318

So at this point, so the, then you've got the yes, that Dave hits where he reaches out to you. That's right. Um, and the, uh, from, so he's commenting, we are just having, you should, we were having the time of our lives. I mean, just euphoria.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

398.78

Oh, I'd say, hey, let's all go into management mode here. Adam wants us to go into management mode, so everybody give a status update because apparently that's what we need to do. We're in management mode now. I know. It feels very dismissive. Yeah. And it feels dismissive of expertise, which I think... And again, it creates this kind of false dichotomy around expertise.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4007.155

The mouse is just nibbling away at it, just chopping. The mouse is just pounding on the door, demanding more cheese. Yeah. It's like, oh God, yes, absolutely. So you've got the net app, you've got trade dress, I believe would be the term. May even be the term from the letter they sent you. They'd print out that letter. So they send you basically a cease and desist. That's right.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4037.085

And then you have, which I just think is like, we're like, God, just another gift from these people. So you have your nonstop lawyers blog entry. Yeah. which I mean, it was just, it was, it was delightful.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4068.627

Future generations will. Did John Jay write this entry? That's right. Was it Alexander Hamilton? Was it Madison? Was it Madison? We can't know. We can't know. For this entry of nonstophits.blogspot.com, I can't believe this site is still up.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4098.894

Okay. Wait a minute. You get the note from the lawyers and then you change the blog entry to be all in that app trade dress. Do you remember this? You change it to be like all like the Dave hits eyes. That's right. It was just like his eyes everywhere. Yeah. Um, Yeah, so you got him to sign the book.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4135.023

I just like, I could not stop. It is funny. And anyone should be suspicious of a fan blog. I'm sorry. You should just be like, I would like to believe that we would not fall for this. Yeah. And, but here it's like, people are like, all those people pacing for the podcast. No, you all this or all this. Steve hits. That was Dave hits. Uh, it was great. Yeah. Well, it's a miracle that's up.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4156.849

All right. So we, um, yeah, you, what did you learn? So nonstop hits is again, I do think this is the success teaches you nothing. But you're saying that we, that's not... You wrote the future histories, right?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4179.595

100% true. I mean, we poured over it. Like a book club. Like Talmudic scholars, we poured over that. Every diphthong, every syllable, we, I mean, we were... No one has read that book. I mean, it's like in the end, Dave hits... when you encounter this podcast and you're upset, should you be upset? No one read that book more closely than we did. No, we were the biggest fans. We are the biggest fans.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

419.983

Like, expertise is tautologically not founder mode.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4202.302

In some regards, we are the biggest fans.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4212.651

We're Xers. What do you want? Agreed. That's all we have. That's all we have. That's all we have. Leave us with our ironic detachment. Okay. But he, so he advocated the future.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4246.192

I did not know this. I had forgotten that you were depoed in that case. Yeah, I was depoed in that case. I mean, they were depoing me for stupid reasons. Why were they depoing you?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4293.801

Mr. Leventhal, is the name Dave Lightman familiar to you? It is familiar to me. It is familiar. It is a pop culture reference, as I understand it. Uh, that is great. So you were a little bit worried. Well, you know, did you have a game plan? What were we going to do? Like this goes to nonstop hit stop blogspot.com. Like, uh, like fake a heart attack.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

43.726

We're obviously in a safe space. I was glad. No way. I was glad. I was glad. I thought like I was glad because I'm just like, I need to get on with my life. This thing has like this piece hit just hits a lot of nerves. Yeah. And it gets a lot of people talking about it, tons of comments on Hacker News.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4316.584

Like, because you know, when you go into a deposition, you're talking to her, I'd like to declare the fifth. It's like, that's not, you can't do that. This is not a criminal proceedings. You can't declare the fifth.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4330.933

No. Oh my God. You should have. No. Oh, you should have. They would have, they would have died laughing. Of course. Oh my God. They would have died laughing. They would have, I love working with the lawyers in that case. They would have loved it. Oh, they would have eaten it up. Anyway. I, I just, I was unclear if we had committed any, like, I don't even know what we did wrong. Actually.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4350.257

Let's not go there. There we go. Anyway.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4360.752

Fake heart attack. You're just like, hey, the ambulance is on the way. It's like, I'm fine.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4367.2

I have a lot to tell you. I have a lot to tell you. Right. I have a fake block. You're like, what is going on? These guys, you know, maybe I saw frontiers. Okay. But so he talks about future histories. There you go. Bring it all back. Bring it all back. And is this like this idea of like writing down what we have, what we're going to do? Yeah. It's like, what do you want the press release?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4398.501

That is extremely valuable, I think. Yeah, totally. Who knows if they did it, but it's a neat idea. It's a neat idea. And I do think, I mean, I think the written, I do think the written word is really, really, really important. And I think that the Because when you write, you have to get to a ground truth. It does scale.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4415.836

And people who've come to Oxford are like, oh, this is great because I can understand why they made a past decision. It's been... So I think that that is a very kind of concrete thing that people could do.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4463.733

Yeah. I think it's important. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, the other thing I'd say is that like, I mean, God, are you, are you just trying to like, do you have a bet with some other oxygen planes? Like I bet I can get him to write an RFD on performance review.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4475.622

No, no, no, no, no. Mayday. Mayday. That's right. Wait a minute. Are you having chest pains right now? What's wrong? My lawyer. Come closer. Um, That's interesting. Yes, in terms of offering that clarity. I think I love it when people are like, I love this company because you've written everything down. And we're like, no. There's a lot that's not written down.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4513.487

You can't write, you can't, some things you need to leave unsaid. It's just too much of a lightning rod, but no, I think you're right in terms of like, there are things like that. And actually, you know, I honestly, I think there are some things, and this is where I've really benefited.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4527.132

I mean, this is where you kind of benefit from just a sense of collaboration anyway, because I mean, how many RFDs have you written because someone has said you should write an RFD on that? Like most of them. So in other words, you're thinking of something that like, okay, I'm just like ideating and I don't think this needs to be written down.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4544.222

You're not necessarily thinking about it like that concretely. But someone else is like, I would actually like to see that written down and you should write an RFD on it. I feel like certainly for me, like most of my RFDs have come from, because people are like, I would like to see an RFD on that. And I was like, oh, yeah, okay. It didn't really occur to me that that's sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4560.397

We can do that. Yeah. That's a great idea. But it doesn't necessarily occur to you to write down something that you are already kind of feeling very strongly. That's right. But maybe those are the things you should be writing down.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4586.73

Yeah, but I do think that if you don't, the less you write down, you're kind of immunocompromised as an organization.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4600.982

That's right. Or whatever. Or people coming in being misleading about it. I mean, certainly, you know, We've seen this in past lives where people are, I mean, God forbid, you have someone who's telling different people different things. Yeah, right. Where if you've got it written down, like you can only tell one story, right? You can only tell one story. And that is, it's really, really important.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4619.131

And I think that like, and sometimes they're not even telling different people different things deliberately. They are, or they don't, or people are hearing different things and they don't realize that people are hearing different things. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4630.484

I mean, so I think that getting, I mean, the question that founders, I don't think anyone should put in front of themselves is like, how do we offer better clarity? Yeah. And then how do we promote trust? I mean, you mentioned it earlier. I do think it's like, man, that is, trust is everything. Trust is everything, for sure. And you've got to figure out like, how do I promote it? How do I build it?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4655.524

How do I... When it's fractured, how do I repair it? And I think that part of the problem with founder mode at its worst is you have the opportunity to like... do real, real damage to trust. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4695.174

It's not a me thing. Some people say caloric budget. Do they not? No. This is like blood over the ear. I assume everyone said blood over the ear, and then I Googled it, and I'm like, no one's using blood over the ear.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4707.07

That's just me. How many things are like that? A caloric budget is like that. I think so. People can correct it from that one, I guess. Deafening silence, but there's no real corrections forthcoming from the chat over here. Yeah, you're right. Damn it. Another intervention. Another podcast, another intervention. There you go. Um, so yeah, sorry.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

473.664

And the CTO wanted to... To be fair, there's another pejorative that's in the Silicon Valley VC lexicon of the first adult.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4763.211

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, and I think if you called it clarity plus trust mode, it's like, I don't know, that feels like work. Yeah, totally. I think I'd rather go into founder mode. Founder mode sounds a lot more fun. Sounds a little more like Prince Adam becoming He-Man. No, that's right.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4784.579

It also, I got to tell you, I hear clarity mode and trust mode. I just feel slow and I want to move fast and I want to, I want to move fast and I want to break things. Makes sense. Like, and trust and clarity mode. Take my money. But I think it is worth listening to the Brian Chesky.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4803.276

Because I think that it was helpful to get that kind of from the source.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4807.538

And then, like, get as much as possible from the source, I would say, is part of, like, even if it's Dave Hitz. As it turns out, Dave Hitz, nugget of wisdom. Right there, right? As Dennis Ritchie said in his anti-forward to the Unix Haters Handbook, It is an undigested nugget of nutrition in what is otherwise a fecal pie. I just felt that was like one of the greatest. Oh, it's absolutely a keeper.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4836.855

Dennis Ritchie, rest in peace. this ended up being a good discussion I feel yeah turns out who knew thank you Paul Graham thank you Paul Graham we got to we got to not the pod probably along with that yeah exactly Paul Graham and Dave Hitz listen to this together it's one of their like weekly things that they like to do Their little guilty little pleasures. One of their guilty little pleasures.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4859.565

Exactly. Well, I think this is it. I know this was a cold take, but I think this was fun. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4877.696

And I think it's like, and there is something there because I think that the problem is real. And the question is like, how do you, how do you build, how do you build trust? How do you offer clarity to a team? Like that's the challenge. And it's like the way to do that is not to go into seagull mode. Yeah. Can't find a mode. This has been great. It's great to be off our little hiatus.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

4900.344

Maybe this is a good little cooling off period we have. Maybe we should do this more often. We'll come back to tweets that are two weeks old. Good. I'll do more international travel. Sounds good to me. Exactly. It feels like we're more likely to read the tweet in this case, too. All right. It was fun, and we will see everyone next time.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

500.869

Like someone's got to, someone's got to lick the frosting and someone's got to do something with the rest of this thing. I don't really want it. And so is this like, okay, I think this role is being foisted upon you. I don't think you're totally bought into this role.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

554.162

Yeah. Yeah. The, the, where they kind of surprisingly like seeking wisdom out of others, I think is actually an, it's unfortunate that it is so unusual a trade, especially in a company that's enjoyed some early success. Yeah. Because they are being kind of implicitly, and this is the dichotomy that's created.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

573.594

What we should be encouraging people to do is seek out that wisdom and then make your own decision. Instead, it's like, find an adult. It's like, all right, I guess that makes me the child. I mean, it's the same dichotomy, but from the other perspective of the founder as a child and the professional management. And so how did the plan thing work out? Did they want to...

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

599.872

Did you know?

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

634.746

That's a great... That's actually an honest story to tell yourself. Because it's so tempting to be like, God, I talked to those guys early. Like they really, we really wanted to make a connection. I walked away from it. It's a multi-billion dollar company. I would be like a billionaire.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

650.92

It's like, well, no, maybe you would be like bored, miserable and would have left after six months or I would have fucked everything up or like actually plans on a multi-billion dollar company because it's run by a guy who like, like the CTO doesn't know how to balance a checkbook. He only knows what that means in the abstract. Right. So, but interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

66.432

Normally, when you get that much comments, one of the things I like about Hacker News is when you get a lot of comments on things. When the comments exceed the upvotes, a story gets more or less automatically killed. It gets automatically removed from the front page, which I actually think is a great... A great, very simple algorithm. Yeah, indicator of hot-taken-ness or whatever. Hot-taken-ness.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

667.392

So they were, they were actually really actively seeking that wisdom. I think it's a very unusual.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

677.898

And I was really impressed. We should be encouraging that a lot more. Cause I think that like the, the big problem, I mean, I had a couple of big problems with the piece, but the non-specificity is like first among them of this is like, too reductive. And it's very important to remember that Paul Graham has started a successful company. It is called Y Combinator.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

698.407

Like, via web, I'm sorry, we're just not going down to via web as a model for what companies should aspire to do. And I think that the... understand that most of his perspective comes from starting Y Combinator. And so he is getting this kind of hearsay from founders and then deliberately trying to be reductive about it. And as a result, you're losing a lot of nuance and detail.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

722.81

And I think that for folks that are interested, I think, and my first kind of tweet on this, my first attempt to think about this only briefly is, was linking to Tim O'Reilly's piece, How I Failed. And I mean, I think this is a piece that I actually had read and then couldn't find again. Huh.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

743.166

And I actually DMed Tim about it because I'm like, you know, you wrote a piece years ago and it had a real influence on me and I can't find it. And it turns out it was a LinkedIn post. That's why I couldn't find it. And then he gave me some terms to search on and I think then O'Reilly actually kind of finally put it up. But I think this piece is terrific.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

764.465

First of all, and I think Adam, you and I believe this perhaps to a shared fault, where I do worry that I focus too much on how companies fail. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Where it can inhibit your own action. Like you need to be, there's a degree to which you have to be blind to the odds. Yeah. Certainly in a startup. Totally.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

787.082

And you, it's like this walk in this fine line between, I need to know how things fail. But if I look, if I learn too much, it might inhibit what I actually need to go do to make this thing successful. But we definitely, you and I both like to understand like, how did things come unglued? And I feel like I learn a lot more from failure than from success. Totally.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

808.533

Success is just, I would say success teaches us all nothing, but success certainly teaches me nothing. That's maybe a much more, that's a more, a more concise statement.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

846.495

Totally. And also, you don't want, as someone was saying in the chat, a lot of success is luck. And you, it's hard for people to say like, I was really goddamn lucky. Totally. I was in, God, I was in the right place at the right time with the right idea, the right team, like all that just like happened to come together. And which is almost always the case.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

867.588

Like there's always this kind of element that is out of your control. I feel. Yeah. And, but I think that part of the reason that the O'Reilly piece is good is it's like not a reflection of, on unequivocal success. It's a, and obviously titled how I failed, but it's getting into some of the specific things that Tim felt that he did wrong.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

88.624

An indicator of we've got a lot of discussion going, but people aren't actually reading the underlying article. I always thought that was super elegant. But in this case, it was getting a lot of comments, a lot of upvotes. And so this thing is just going and going. I mean, I read it. I'm like... Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Still thinking about it.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

888.127

And I know that like, I think this is another thing that's really important that even I think Tim is remarkably candid here. I think he's, he's a terrific writer. He's also like telling a narrative that is kind of his narrative and someone, I mean, someone else at O'Reilly, uh, could very easily be like, that is not like consistent with my understanding.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

909.675

It's so easy for different people to have different understandings and for a founder to even not, you know, they'll see some things and not see other things. Um, Because I think it's always important to consider that you're getting kind of one narrative and that there are other narratives.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

946.003

Michael Lewis, let's reflect back. So what book was that? What was the... Well, let's go tell him. The hagiography you wrote, hagiography or hagiography? I started knowing that one. I think it's hagiography. I think that's right. All right. The hagiography that you accidentally wrote on Sam Bankman Freed, which I guess readers are telling you that's the book you wrote in that case. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

964.971

But yeah, that's interesting. I think that's right, that you don't necessarily know

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

987.757

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's very easy. So I think you've got to kind of keep that in mind when you're looking at Tim's piece. But all that said, I really like this. I thought there was a lot of specificity in here that was...

Oxide and Friends

Reflecting on Founder Mode

999.13

really important yeah um and some of that is just like let me do like failure number one of people only hear half the story which i think it was kind of interesting right where he's trying to give tough messages with empathy and people like well i'm gonna like i'll take the empathy and i'll kind of like discard the tough message but that's like his perspective like maybe someone else like the specifics on that one also tickled me where i think it was that he was um

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1.99

How are you?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1082.164

That's what I've heard. I've heard deep research is really, yeah, I'm excited about it. It seems real. And are you, is that available? I think you have to pay for it now, or is that only available in private?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

109.251

I would never do again, which is we, I limited everyone to one web three prediction because everyone was just like tripping over themselves to put to demise of it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1134.485

Am I at a Pelican convention? I've got number one and number two represented here. Yeah. Yeah, I think Austin, you can sit down here.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1174.041

The travel use case, stop it. You're talking about spending a lot of money making a consequential decision on something that's already, by the way, pretty easy to do. I can't actually book travel online. It does take me about four minutes to go do. I just feel that putting agents in charge of it, it's like, what do you mean? I'm flying Ryanair around the globe?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1196.811

You're just going to have a lot of...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

125.914

No, no, no. Here's why I think that was a bad idea. Because the fact that you have to put that limitation... And obviously, this is the policing mind versus the criminal mind. Clearly, I was putting that limitation in for myself. I clearly was the one who, like, I was the criminal. But the fact that you need that limitation says that, like, actually, there's a desire.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1261.399

At least one of these agents will be held hostage in a meeting. Adam, to go to your prediction years ago of the unionization of tech, there'll be a hostage standoff where the bot will be held against its will if it had any.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1291.74

it's not gonna exactly try it now with someone who doesn't actually fire mirror neurons for people that are pretty upset that there's also it's like you've already like you started off the meeting by saying this meeting is not important enough for me to attend so i've said this this shell script it's like yeah that is please bow to the master cog i have sent in my stead

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1317.317

Stime, that is a great one-year prediction. Adam, do you have one?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1354.244

Okay, I see what you're doing there, and it's very transparent. You are worried that you've predicted your hopes one too many times, your heart's been broken, and you're like, you know what? I'm going to lock up 2025 because one of two things is going to happen.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1368.475

Either Chris Dixon's book will be a bestseller, and at least my prediction will be right, or it will continue to be a wreck, and my prediction will be wrong, but that has a small price to pay. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1396.196

No, Adam, I have to ask you, does the term Web3 come back?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1407.442

Oh, my God. It's cutting. Oh, my God. You know, never meet your heroes, kids. Oh, wow. Okay. That is dark.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1427.679

Did you say you have a dystopian one and a non-dystopian one?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1430.882

100% dystopian.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1432.884

Mike, how about you? Do you have a one-year?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

147.104

Like, this is so overwhelming that people want to talk about it. And as a result, I think, Adam, our other predictions that you were not that good. The predictions that year were terrible because I really wanted to make three Web3 predictions. I just want to make nonstop Web3 predictions. But Simon, that year, Adam had a great prediction, which is that Web3 falls out of the lexicon.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1486.434

Okay, now per Simon's, also his criticism of agentic AI, that it can mean anything. This to me would be agents declaring victory over something that's got nothing to do with agentic AI, but it's going to happen anyway.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1652.684

Yeah, I was going to ask, Mike, in terms of how this compares to past time compute. Sorry, go ahead.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1661.775

Right. Well, I mean, this is this test time compute, right? This whole idea of these models, when they begin to kind of yap as one YouTuber kind of, I love this, this is the, by Cloud had a great explainer on this, where these things, we begin to kind of like think through their process a little bit, and that allows them to get better results.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1683.791

But it sounds like the multi-agent, the mixture of agents is not, is disjoint from test time compute, Mike.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

169.86

And Simon, for years, we've done this. every year since 2000. We'd been missing some years in the middle, but we did this for a long, long time together. And we didn't record the sessions. And one of the challenges that we had is when a prediction was right... And Adam, I remember vividly this happening to you, but I think it's happened to a bunch of folks where a prediction was correct.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1694.872

Interesting. Okay.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1740.982

That is so great and so disturbing.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1753.906

Absolutely. And it actually does remind me, you know, we worked at a Samsung bot joint and our VP of marketing at the time really wanted to be a great Samsung patriot. So he threw out his iPhone and he got the latest Samsung phone. And to prove his patriotism, he was going to use Bixby, which it was there. As they say, you haven't heard of for a reason.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1774.372

And Bixby and Steve, I'm like making this up because this sounds so crazy. Bixby would go would start to spout off in Korean. Yeah, it would come alive apropos of nothing and start saying things in Korean during our executive staff meeting. Yeah, it was it was not confidence inspiring.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1802.335

That actually happened, right? Yeah, that's amazing. Actually, along these lines, I actually do have a one-year prediction. So I think that we are seeing a big shift. We are seeing a bunch of these scaling limits on pre-training. And I think this is going to be the year of AI efficiency. And it's funny, because I was actually thinking this...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1822.972

before the DeepSeq result dropped, and the DeepSeq result is astonishing. So if folks have not seen this, this is a Chinese hedge fund that trained a model that, by all accounts, Simon, looks pretty good.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1860.837

And the thing that I found to be so amazing is that they did this with H800s that were, they did this because they did not have H100s or H200s. So they had to do this on basically older hardware And they did it on a shoestring budget because they were forced to because of export regulations. And I think it's got a lot. I mean, Simon, I assume that was as surprising to you.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1888.598

That was a very surprising result, I think, to a lot of people.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1907.753

So I think this is going to become a trend this year because I think I've been really troubled, for lack of a better word, by the kind of 10x growth in cluster training sizes because it just doesn't make sense. Technological revolutions have an advantage that accrues to the user always.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

191.933

And then someone would look back and be like, well, no, everyone knew that at the time. And you're like, screw you. I was arguing with the entire table that night. And we can go back in time and listen to Adam's prediction in 2022, one-year prediction that Web3 drops out of the Wexcon. And it was like, everyone's like, oh my God. And Adam's like, oh, I'm predicting this with my heart, not my head.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

1927.658

The idea that we're going to have to spend 10 times as much money to get something that is only twice as good, that just doesn't make sense. I think that there's going to be a lot of folks who are going to really begin to look at their training build-out. And now I think that that build out could be kind of rephrased as inference time compute, test time compute, or mixture of agents, Mike.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2049.832

And that's the kind of economic advantage. So this is where it's like a lot easier for me to be like, no, this actually is going to change everything because now that economic advantage is accruing to the user. It's the user that's able to do this really ridiculously powerful thing with not much money in terms of compute, which is really, really interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2072.207

So on that note, another – okay, just another one year that I've got, and this is not investment advice. I think Blackwell is going to struggle. I think that the – and we'll see. Steve and I are actually just about to head down to CES, and we'll see how prominently Blackwell features down there. And I know that they've sold out their supply for the next year.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2094.113

But they've got these thermal issues that are kicking around. They had this thermal issue that they said was a design issue that they fixed with a mask, which doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not an ASIC designer, but that would be very surprising. I think they're going to have yield issues. I think they're going to have reliability issues. I think they're going to have price point issues.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2110.518

I think it's really expensive. And I think you couple all of that with the changing market conditions. And I think Blackwell is going to be something we haven't seen from Nvidia in a while, which is a part that does not do well. Now, this is not investment advice because I think there's every reason to believe that the H100 and the H200 will continue to thrive. I mean, there is no way I would.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

212.524

I know I'm going to be wrong. And it was spot on. So, um, and it's a lot more fun when it's like that. Uh, we're not actually, the accuracy is not actually that interesting. It's much more interesting when, um, we can, uh, and then when they are accurate, it's, it's, it's pretty interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2131.705

I'm not taking a short position on NVIDIA like ever because like AWS, they have executed so well.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2143.931

It has to be a lot better. And the price point is so high. And I think the availability is going to be tough. And I think the yield issues are going to be tough. So we'll see. But I think we'll know a lot more in a year on Blackwell.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2190.074

I think that's it. That's the moat, as perceived. Steve, do you have any one of your predictions? Maybe on the topic of the CUDA moat, I think in 2025, AMD buys a software company.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2269.689

I think it might be. We know that the market's pretty flooded and it feels like there's a lot of those companies going to be looking for what they're different. It would not surprise me if a company is looking for a lightboat.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

228.497

Um, so in that spirit, Adam, I do think, and I do want to revisit just briefly because I know we, we, we got a, this is going to be a very lively year. I do want to revisit some past predictions. Um, and, In particular, and I think you listened to this one as well, and this is a six-year prediction from Ian in 2023 that Apple goes into and out of the VR business, which I love.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2290.319

That's a bold prediction. That is a great one. Yeah, exactly. Calm AI. Yeah. George Hutz. Geo Hutz. Yeah. But someone like that, a small player who has got a reputation for software expertise. And it would be north of a billion dollars. Yeah. And north of a billion. Wow.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2309.374

So that's a great prediction. Yeah. Much better than Adam's prediction, which we can all agree is just an absolutely terrible prediction. Klavnik, do you have a one-year?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2340.353

Yeah, it feels that way based on the weekend traffic. It definitely feels that way.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2383.021

Interesting. Yeah. The good prediction. Um, when I've got a, um, just come back to myself for one other one year prediction. Um, and this is, this is a prediction that could be wrong by tonight. Um, But I think that Intel's CEO search is going to be an absolute wall-to-wall, unmitigated disaster.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2404.331

I think you've got warring constituencies in terms of you've got employees, you've got shareholders, you've got the board, and you've got the future candidate themselves, all of whom have got slightly different agendas. And I think that the next year is going to be an absolute wreck in this regard with a bunch of missteps. I think that they will name at least one CEO who had not yet agreed to it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2428.485

And then it has to be walked back because they were like, Intel got ahead of it and thought that they could announce it and rush it. And then it's a total black eye. And I think at the end of the year, Intel has their co-CEOs in place. So I think Intel does not have a new CEO.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2452.37

Yeah, no, I think that we know what I've been doing is I've actually been because I've seen this kind of incompetence before in terms of John Fisher and the management of the A's. So I just like it was like, what are the A's done with new stadium deals? And I can I can just like superimpose that on the CEO search.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2466.994

Again, this could be wrong by tonight, and maybe you've got a lip boot tan that agrees to do it, but I think the longer this thing is out there without a CEO, the more of a basket case it is, and then you're going to have this problem. Did you read in the Garden of Beasts, Mike, in particular, Adam, did you read the... Really interesting book.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2489.453

It captures the – so in 1933, Roosevelt becomes president, and they need an ambassador to Germany. And anybody who knew anything about Germany knew that this thing was on – was just heading at top speed into the wall of a Nazi takeover of Germany. And so they had to find someone who would be flattered by being the ambassador to Germany. They had to go into this kind of fourth tier of picks.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2520.461

And the book is about his daughter then kind of falls in love with a Nazi and kind of her diary. But I always thought it was kind of interesting where they had this problem of like, no, no one wanted to be the ambassador to Germany in 1933 because anyone that you would want is smart enough to know this thing is a disaster. And I think it's...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2539.184

I guess I between Intel and Germany in 1933. I'm not sure.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2545.789

I'm sorry. Intel, um, still are an investor. So I guess, you know, I, um, but, um, I, I think that, that this is going to be a real problem from different Intel is that the, the person that you would want to run this is going to be cagey enough to know that like, no, this thing is an absolute wreck. Um, and, uh, and they end with the, the, the co-CEO is still in place. So, but, but, but,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

257.921

Something that we love is parlays to make it, just in case you think a prediction is going to be accurate, add a parlay to it. Gotcha.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2573.228

Not acquired, not sold off. This is such a standoff between these constituencies because I actually think that the, and I think that the board and shareholders in particular are not, the board does not represent shareholders right now. And I think that is going to be the real battle that happens over the next year. And obviously that'll be a legal battle and that's going to be,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2596.205

It's going to be gory. And I think that lots of people are just going to opt out. Because you need an activist shareholder. And they're going to be like, why? Why would I be an activist shareholder at Intel when I can go do... There's so many other ways to make money.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2608.595

And I just think that it will end up being this kind of... The status quo will... The thing that everyone knows they don't want, which is these co-CEOs, ends up being the least objectionable thing. And I don't think they're going to want to make it permanent. I think that's what they're going to be in a year. Again, could be wrong by tonight. So who knows?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2640.456

I don't think that they – I think that they – I've got a three-year prediction about that, but I don't think that – Yeah, exactly. So we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get to the three. I've actually got a, I've got a price on the, for the foundry business. I've got a prediction about how much it's going to sell for. So Steve, sorry.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

267.384

And so Ian predicted that this is, you know, this is in January of 2023 when there were kind of rumored stuff, but no one really knew. And Apple was indeed. I mean, he is that was amazing. But that prediction is that prediction might be true on three years, not six, which is crazy.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2678.147

Your long end run. Long end run. All right. All right. On to three years. Simon, what are your three-year predictions?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

27.128

Mike Hefferdahl from last year is also going to join us. We've got all of our distinguished guests from past years and our distinguished guest this year, Simon Wilson.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2736.77

Simon, you know what it reminds me of is, was it in the 70s or the 80s where they had a proof of the four-color theorem, a computer-assisted proof of the four-color theorem, which was very kind of groundbreaking at the time. And now, I mean, computing and math just became… The same thing, right? It became the same thing, right. It just feels like that is a great prediction.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2758.799

And that feels very, very plausible where you've got – so this is just to repeat it back to you. This is someone whose research has been made possible from – that using an LLM, they were able either to do much more research or much deeper research, and they were able to discover something that they would not have discovered otherwise just by the –

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2858.878

That is a great prediction. I love it. I love it. And you've talked about this in the past in terms of just the sheer amount of public records that are out there that an individual just can't go through.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2869.622

There's just too much to be able to actually get this kind of assistance to be able to quickly take you to things that are to act as a stringer for you and find the leads and allow them to do the traditional journalism. Yeah, I love it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2911.903

Love it. Absolutely love it. All right, did you have another... That feels like a very utopian three-year. Dare I ask if there's a dystopian three-year?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

2990.354

Yes. I mean, of course, what you're advocating is the sensible thing where someone realizes that, like, actually, this regulation, it is in my interest for this regulation to be done in the right way and to get off the back foot and on the front foot and actually construct something that is reasonable that we can all adhere to. But that common sense feels like it's fleeting.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3012.692

It's rare, I would say. Right. I think that's a great prediction. When people say, I'm not training on your data, not only does no one believe it, but I've got no way of really knowing if you've trained on my data or not. Maybe the New York Times can figure it out because they can prompt you to regurgitate a story, but it's very hard for me to prove that you've trained on my data.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3053.212

That's right.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3053.812

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3146.946

All right. Well, we've always discovered that there are many more venture capitalists that think they're interested in hard tech than are actually interested in hard tech. Everyone actually wants to go whaling until they actually learn that it's a three-year voyage to a far-flung ocean. You're likely going to sink. But who knows? I welcome our new whalers.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

315.298

I think it did maybe a little less than fine, but I think you're right. No, I, Steve, you had a good prediction. That's like, this is like, look, this is not going to be, not going to be the Newton. Um, but they, you, Steve, I love the way you phrase it. It's like, they'll make another one.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3165.77

I think it definitely would be good for the industry, good for us all to have more people manufacturing. Obviously, we very much believe in the physicality of what we're doing. So I like it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3195.865

Yeah, I think what we have learned is that for even the things that you think are pretty basic, they're actually very, very sophisticated in terms of

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3204.885

uh there's there's a lot that and the uh there's a there's a lot of of art and craft that goes into a lot and yeah but i think it's interesting i mean i think it's the the and mike we we honor your inability to take yes for an answer on that like definitely keep refining that yeah yeah prediction until it sounds outlandish

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3227.065

Adam, what's your... What doom and gloom... What awful thing is going to come back now? What terrible prediction do you have for us now?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3246.903

I would like the record to reflect. I mean, there is a difference here. It's a complex melange of political factions. It's a complex melange, exactly. 1933, but this is still Weimar Germany in 1930. Okay, like- That's the spirit.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3317.436

And I like that you left it open to natural disasters. This could be a major slip on the Qishan fault in Taiwan.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3346.92

without realizing it that I'm in Taiwan. So this will be, and this is a, this is three years. So this is, how long does the crisis go on? What do we, does there?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3369.281

Look, pal, I'm not telling you how to get out of it. I'm telling you you're going into it. That's my job. My job's done here. Your job's figured.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3397.253

Oh, that's excellent.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3408.075

Very exciting. I look forward to this catastrophe, I guess. This major slip in Taiwan. Every crisis is an opportunity. Klavnik, do you have a three-year?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3436.88

Oh, interesting, yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3468.59

I got to tell you, between the chip crisis and the requirement that everyone bidding on a federal contract has a memory safety story, Oxide's... I am long Oxide. Oxide's looking really good in this scenario. No, that's great though, Steve. I think that feels very plausible. Steve, do you have a...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

347.917

On that note, Adam, we've got to revisit because now our three-year predictions from 2022 are now up. And we've got a three-year that became kind of famous around here where Laura predicted that that RISC-V would be present and meaningful in the data center. And I would say that one is not wrong. You can actually spin up a RISC-V instance on Scaleway right now. I didn't know that.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3515.885

You know, I have always said that predictions tell us more about the present than they do about the future. And the present that we are in is that you and I are about to get on Spirit Airways to go to CES because there was no other way to get a flight down there. That's right. And so we are in that brief period of time

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3533.45

where we have purchased our ticket on Spirit, but have not yet traveled on Spirit. So as far as we're concerned, the future is all Spirit and Fox, as far as the eye can see.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3576.311

He's in Fox club. He's in the Fox club. You hit the premier status. You're the Fox deal. You're a silver Fox. That's it. This is, you know, I, I, this, I, I was in the, the, the super eight MVP club. I was card carrying member of the super eight MVP club. And it was always, always a source of pride. So yeah, I like it. Yeah, long fox. That's definitely a good one.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3606.411

In terms of my own three years, I've got a couple. One is that the Cybertruck is no longer being manufactured in three years. I think that this thing has got too much headwind and I think will no longer be manufactured. The issues are too deep.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3645.353

Well, so actually, no, to be clear, it's the Cybertruck is no longer being manufactured. I think it's going to be a commercial flop. I don't think that a regulatory body is necessarily going to do anything, but it would not surprise me if a state regulatory body does something that causes a lot of, I think it wouldn't surprise me at all if California tries to put some regulation in place.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3663.103

The thing has never been crash tested. I mean, I think the reality is the Cybertruck is operating already without any regulatory regime. So the idea of total absence of regulatory regime is what it was already manufactured in. So that's not going to be a change. I don't think it's going to be insurable. I don't think... I think that you are...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3682.488

Um, in the, within three years, um, it will be, um, and again, there's a lot of decisions that they have made that are going to be. So where's the cyber cab in that scenario? I, yeah, I think that it'll be, um, uh, it'll be interesting. I think that there are a bunch of mistakes that that will not be repeated. Um, so the cyber truck was, um, That is my three-year prediction.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3707.667

I promised an Intel Foundry services prediction. So I think in three years, after much tumult, IFS has been spun out of Intel. No commentary whether the co-CEOs are still in charge or not. I can't see that far into the future. Crystal ball is murky on that one. But I think IFS will be spun out. I think that ultimately its future has to be separate. But it does not bear the Intel name.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3732.028

And it has been purchased for the purchase price of $1 by a deep-pocketed maverick. And I would normally say that this would be a deal brokered by the U.S. government, but I'm really not sure because I do think it's in the next three years, and I'm not sure what the disposition on that is going to be. But I think it's going to be...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3751.25

Um, you're going to have someone who is perhaps has perhaps has domain expertise, perhaps doesn't, this could be a, maybe it's a, is it a Bezos type or is it a Mark Cuban type? Or is it someone, is it a, is it a, um, TJ Rogers type? It could be, it could be a lot of different kinds of, of folks, but, um, that have basically taken it off of Intel's hands, um, and, uh, change the name.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

376.724

Near miss or whatever, but it sounds like... That one is holding on. That one is not wrong, I would say. And you had made a six-year prediction in that same year that you'd be able to spin up AWS instances, RISC-V AWS instances in six. So that's got three to run. Feels like that's got some plausibility to it. Plausibility.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3776.522

Um, and whether that's a success or not, I think it's very hard to predict, but. So that is my IFS prediction.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3785.1

And then my final three-year prediction, and perhaps I am predicting my heart on this one, Adam. I do think, and I saw someone in the chat saying that we're going to see something, some new product that's totally revolutionary based on AI or LLMs, but where that's not the interface. It's not a chatbot. It's something else. I definitely agree with that. And I think that we could see a

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3811.51

I'm going to tack into my heart on this one, Adam. I think that the state of podcast search right now is absolutely woeful. There are people predicting that are not me that the podcast has a new relevance, that the you know, with the role that the Rogan podcast did or didn't play and the kind of the crumbling of some traditional media that podcasts have a new relevance. I want to believe that.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3840.17

So I'm not sure if I do believe it or not, or I'm not sure if that's how valid the prediction is, but I definitely want to believe that. And podcast search is absolutely positively atrocious. And I think LLMs could actually do something really interesting here where there is no YouTube because it's RSS. There is no YouTube equivalent for podcasts and things like podcasts.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3859.825

How do you listen to a podcast? Do you use Spotify? I use Apple Podcasts.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3886.175

This is why I think Simon, I think this is why someone will do it because I think that you, and then, but be able to do that much more broadly, because I think that the cost of a podcast is basically zero.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3896.759

And I am convinced that there's a lot of great stuff out there that I haven't found that I, that I can't find because I'm sitting there on like listen notes or whatever, just being vectored to popular things. And it's like, I don't want popular things. I want interesting things. I want great conversations. And I think LLMs can find that.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3919.689

I would. And I know, and you're right to be like, have a cocked eyebrow on that one. First of all, you're the, I like your prosecutorial tone here, Adam. I think that you're, I, because you, you, you've got me. I mean, that, that, that is like the, the, the, the key question is, you know, would I pay for it? And I would pay for it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3938.3

I think that I would pay, I would pay for it because I spend, I think that, you know,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3943.263

Part of the reason that podcasts are, I think that they're relevant is because it just, you know, we've talked about here before, Adam, the ability to listen while you do something else, while you're walking the dog, while you're washing the dishes, while you're walking or what have you, while you're commuting perhaps. And I think that that is something that's a good fit for kind of where we are.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

3962.63

And I think people want that. I think I would pay for it if it's good. I mean, I'm not going to, it needs to like deliver real value, but if it delivers value, I absolutely would pay for it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

397.819

Um, I had, I accurately predicted the demise of web three, like everybody else that year. And then my other predictions were absolutely terrible and embarrassing. Um, the, uh, open EDA, we are no closer to open EDA.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4005.586

That's yeah. And so I think that that would be, and, and, you know, Nick in the chat is saying that Apple podcasts have got searchable transcripts. I'd be curious to check that out. Because I, you know, I, because there are these terms that are like pretty easy to search on. And, but I want to do more than just like searching on terms.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4023.915

I want like, I want someone to, you know, Mike, this is what you called in your prediction last year about the, you know, the presidential daily brief and, And I want like the presidential daily brief of podcasts. And I want it to be like tied into other aspects of my life.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4039.163

You know, I want it to, like, this is the kind of thing where you want something to be like, oh, you know, Adam, like you were recommending the acquired episode on Intel from a couple of years ago, right? Like I want someone who's going to pull that content for me when I am like, oh, that's interesting. You know, other people who thought that, that Intel was like 1933 Germany include, you know,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4087.97

Yeah, something that's helping to curate that. Exactly. It's a weird vibes-based search, Simon. I love your, I mean, that's exactly, I want to search on the vibes and not, and so I think that there's going to be, I think that there's a gap there. And Simon, just for, as you say, it's like, boy, that doesn't seem very hard. And I don't think it is very hard.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4106.237

That's why I think something will fill it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4115.423

You know, that's funny something you said, because a year ago, I predicted that within three years, we would be using LLMs for search, and search before LLMs would feel antiquated. And man, I was like two blocks ahead of the band on that one, Adam. I feel like now you're like, that was a prediction. Wasn't that just a statement of fact?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4134.496

It was like, no, no, it was just barely not a statement of fact a year ago. But...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

414.348

I can't, you know, and this has happened to me a couple of times over the years where I get like something like, I just, I get some bits set and I believe that better things are possible. And I just, you know, it clouds my, I blame Web3, Web3 cloud for my judgment.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4172.195

I don't know how they screwed that up so badly. And Simon, you call this the gullibility problem, which I think is a very apt description. And I saw this on this past weekend where... the AI-assisted search believes that adjunct professors in a college average $133,000 in salary in Ohio.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4194.74

And you had people who were just like, I'm actually genuinely concerned that people think like, when I was an adjunct in Ohio, I was living at the poverty line. That is not, and you kind of trace back how it got there, and it got there because of mistaken information that it then treated as authoritative.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

42.566

Oh, this is so much fun. So I don't know if you listened to any of our... I did.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4237.074

So you're saying that the home repairs LLM search plus I feel lucky could result in devastating consequences.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4252.185

That's great. But I like your prediction that you'd be surprised if this doesn't happen within three years.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4272.981

And whoever succeeds, they'll say that they took an agent approach. It was agents that allowed them to do it, at least in their pitch deck. All right, are we on to six years now? Are we at kind of six years? Are we ready for... Simon, you ready to take us deep into the future here in your... Yeah, yeah, go on then.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4376.243

And this is so getting out from the idea of like, okay, this is just like regurgitating art that it's trained on and we're kind of absconding with the copyrighted work of artists and actually beginning to think like, this is actually a tool for artists. We're not actually misappropriating anyone's work, but allowing them to achieve their artistic vision with many fewer people.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

441.181

Yeah, exactly. I was actually trying to make sure that I was not included in the CEO search by making clear what I intended to do as CEO. So mission accomplished on that one. Okay, then the other one, Adam, that at least I want to talk about, because I had a prediction a year ago that AI doomerism has dropped out of the lexicon, a la your Web3 prediction. We don't talk about PDoom and XRisk.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4444.767

Yeah. Interesting. And that's exciting. I love it. And so we, we will have art that we could never have before because it was, it was just too expensive to create.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4474.281

I love it. In fact, that's so utopian that this now has me bracing for impact on a potential dystopian.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4539.409

So is the prediction, and I'm also trying to square this with the Oscar winner, does the Oscar winner happen right before we set them on fire and go out about them?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4591.467

And so in this dystopia, in this parallel universe, so do you believe that we are able to attain the vision that these folks have in terms of AGI and ASI?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4627.715

Interesting. I do think that the AGI, this is going to be, and even this year, there's going to be a lot of talk about AGI because of this very strange contract term that OpenAI has with Microsoft.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4652.624

Supposedly, yeah, that's what the information report is about. They've got different definitions of AGI, and apparently one of them is, if we can generate $100 billion, we've achieved AGI. You're just like, so much what? It's like, what?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

468.274

And Adam, I'm giving myself full marks on this one.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4681.774

But also, like, AGI is $100 billion worth of profit. It's like, you are all, like, this is like the capitalist rapture or whatever. Like, Jesus Christ. I mean, it's so, but I wonder, I wonder if they're going to try to make claims, especially this coming year, of like, no, no, no, we've achieved AGI. No, we've already achieved AGI. Actually, you know what? GPT 3.5 actually is AGI.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4722.881

Yeah, that is dystopian. Well, I would take the other side of the likelihood of that, but that is definitely dystopian.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4751.273

So mission accomplished. Adam, I love this where they try to rule monger by being like, hey, if you looked around you, like people are pretty dumb, actually. I mean, you're kind of a knucklehead. You forget stuff all the time. You get a lot of stuff wrong. Yeah, we don't call it hallucinations. We just call it you forget for whatever. Yeah, we've achieved that. I mean, is that intelligence?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4774.182

Yeah, we definitely have achieved that. That's AGI. Mission accomplished. And now, by the way, Microsoft, per our agreement, we open AI. You are not entitled to any of our breakthroughs. Actually, no one had a one- or three-year-related open AI prediction before. I'm not sure if there is an opening eye, but opening eyes. Yeah, go for it, Tommy.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4825.934

I don't either. And especially I think if they end up, because I think it's also conceivable that they end up at a time when pre-training is hitting real scaling limits, that they continue to double and triple and quadruple down and end up with just a, because they are operating at a massive, massive, massive loss right now.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4846.133

And I kind of think that if they, it'd be kind of interesting if, you know, I wonder if OpenAI will start to tell you like, hey, by the way, yeah, I know you paid us 20 bucks a month. By the way, your compute cost us $85 last month.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4877.415

Is that because, okay, so honest question, is that because that $200 a month, and that's the O1 Pro, Simon?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4901.571

This is what it's like movie pass for compute. We're like the only people that actually movie pass being this.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4920.246

And I'm glad that you agree that it should be. I like your implicit judgment of others that it needs explanation. But MoviePass was this idea that sounds great, that like, oh, no, we'll charge you 30 bucks a month. You can go see as many movies as you want. But as it turns out, the people that are most interested in that want to go see a movie every night at a movie theater.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4938.873

And they were literally losing money on every transaction. It was just like no way to make it work.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

4982.27

I can't believe that Adam has to like blow the whistle on movie pass, but you're able to walk right past Cosmo.com and Adam's got no problem with it. Cosmo.com like a, the, I mean, but this is a famously a.com. This was a real artifact of the.com bubble.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

499.303

Yeah, that is still present. And my prediction, just to be clear, was purely around AI-based humorism. And I did want to make sure that my prediction was wrong by turning it into a parlay that the humorists would claim credit for the fact that humorism is no longer in the zeitgeist. And I think that that is, I have not seen that as much.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5000.374

And Mike, as I recall, it was like when people were having a Snickers bar delivered and little did we know we would be, it was our teenagers would be door dashing a Snickers bar some 20 years later, but yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5016.443

That's right.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5028.777

That's right. It was just ahead of its time as it turns out.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5069.019

All right, Simon, I'm going to put a parlay on your three-year prediction. I think someone wins the Pulitzer for using an LLM to tell the true story of what happened at OpenAI and the boardroom fight. I mean, there's clearly a story that has not been told there. There's clearly rampant mismanagement. That boardroom fight, I feel like we kind of got the surface of that.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5090.636

There's a lot going on underneath, clearly. And I look forward to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who's able to use an LLM to tell the whole story. Nice. Mike, do you have a six-year?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5128.115

And Mike, how well informed is that prediction?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

518.276

I've not seen Leon Shapira claiming that it was his humorism that has allowed AI to be safer. So I don't think that part has come true. but I would like to grant myself full marks on AI doomerism dropping out of the lexicon. I feel that that is. And Simon, when we had you on almost exactly a year ago... Yeah, it was the episode after this one a year ago.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5258.947

Amazing. Amazing. And that would be, I mean, it's part of the reason I asked, because I mean, I obviously want this to be, I very much want this prediction to be true. And I think that this is, now, I mean, just like Simon's prediction about revolutionizing art. I mean, I feel that there is just, and to our How Life Works episode with Greg Cost, Adam, earlier in the year.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5280.883

And, you know, there is so much that we still don't understand. And boy, the ability to Allow the computer's ability to sift through data or generate data, test data, allowing that to allow for new gene sequences or gene therapies, Mike, would be amazing. So I love it. That's great. For whatever reason, I feel like there's not a dystopian one on the other side of this one, but maybe there is.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5329.514

I love that we're going kind of like wall to wall on like, you know, this revolutionary gene therapy, you know, saves the lives of millions. And then also, by the way, some more PlayStation 6. Oh, my God.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5356.807

And Adam, I think you're, do you have a six year?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5393.1

So we've got something that is completely new that is, and maybe it's some of these new, I mean, we've got a bunch of folks, a bunch of companies that are looking at new silicon or new abstractions, but one of these gets traction in the next six years.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

542.081

A year ago, and we had this scary IEEE Spectrum article about the boogeyman of open-source AI, which we would now call open-weight AI, I think. And that already feels like that has not aged well, that piece. I mean, we were... As you said, your eyebrows were flying off your head when you read it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5432.341

So something positive came from the great chips crisis of 2027, which is actually a relief.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5457.593

I like it. Klabnik, do you have a six-year?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5500.958

I would like to say that VR is very upset that it doesn't even merit a hype bubble. It's like, yo, I was a hype bubble. Facebook renamed themselves for me. It's like, no, sorry, VR. You don't even merit Steve's shortlist straight from Web3. Okay.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5526.966

that uh we will i you know i feel we also had a three-year prediction in uh 2022 that that we will have moved on to it there will be a new hype boom and maybe it was for a six year and i i when i was listening to the time anyway i'm like oh my god we we uh we didn't realize that it was going to be ai that was going to be that that next boom um all right uh steve do you have a

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5571.525

Okay, so I've got a couple questions for you. One thing I was thinking about in terms of an Intel that's split up, who is left with the Intel name? Does anyone want the Intel name or has the brand been so tarnished at this point that they all give themselves chat GPT suggested names to avoid calling themselves Intel? Yeah, that's a good question.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5599.847

No. It's like, I'll take Oracle over AMD. Oracle buying the design side now. Yes. So not the foundry side. That's right. Oracle buying the design side. Over AMD. What do you think happens to Hibana? Because I actually did wonder, you know, we had talked about this a couple episodes ago, whether I wondered if Meta or Microsoft or someone else would actually try to buy Hibana.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

561.37

And I don't think that one looks back on that piece and thinks like, well, boy, maybe that actually did raise some good points. It's like, no.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5623.233

I actually think that like... I don't think so. I don't think so either. I think that you kind of like go deep into it and you're like, I think I'd rather actually buy it. I'd rather put the money into GPUs.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5632.457

Yeah, I think it's like, I think there's going to be like this kind of process of like, God, if the number of GPUs we're talking about, we could just buy Hibana and then someone will do some deal and decide to be like, actually go back, go buy the GPUs. Actually, the GPUs don't have a culture problem, actually.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5665.592

I was going to ask, does Fox do a self-driving taxi?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5679.736

That feels like that might be a three-year or even a one-year. I agree.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5686.058

Yeah, for sure.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5695.544

It is, but I also think that Waymo has really, and I really try to encourage those folks to talk more publicly about some of the engineering discipline they've had because they've done a lot of things the right way in contrast to a bunch of these other folks that have come in and burned out on self-driving taxis. There's real, real engineering there.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5742.096

Yeah. And what I've heard from folks who have done that is like everyone that's in there is like, this is obviously the future. It just feels like.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5771.156

When I got to tell you again, I got, I got the privilege of watching a presentation from one of their engineering leaders on the kind of their approach to things. And sometimes, you know, you kind of look behind the curtain and you're like, Oh my God, it's all being delivered out of someone's home directory. But in this case, it was really, really impressive about what they've done.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5786.303

And I think that they've really taken a kind of a very deliberate approach that deliberately. So I, you know, I absolutely agree with you, Steve. So you think, yeah, I think, and so Ian, that was your, yeah, Ian, you said that was your six-year prediction. Now that we've got you on stage, what's your one and three in addition to any six-year prediction that Steve didn't hoover up?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

58.196

The goal is not to be accurate.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5846.667

Okay, so let's take those one at a time. So on the open AI, so is that a one-year or a three-year on the open AI prediction?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

588.69

It was actually a good foreshadowing because I think that is actually one of the biggest stories of last year. It was what only happened, you know, whatever it was, two weeks ago, less than two weeks ago, because you're right, Simon, that was amazing what DeepSake has done. So out of many of the past predictions that we need to revisit before we get going on looking forward, are you...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5908.516

someone in the chat asking who should ask chat GPT, how much it should cost, which I just love the idea of like asking, like then the different, like Oh three and Oh one there, the Oh one pro and have that thing like really grind on it, generating all, you know, thousands of hidden intermediate tokens to ask how much it should cost.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5926.585

See if it's, see if it thinks it should cost itself less or more, even actually that query costs more. Does it feel it should cost less or more? Um, the, um, Okay, so that is your one. I agree with that. I think they're going to have to do something in that regard.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5942.105

And I'll be very interested to see, I'm curious about what my usage, because I think I'm not a power user, so I would be curious about where my own usage kind of pens out there. And then, what is the TP-Link prediction, Ian?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5965.722

Interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

5967.865

TP-Link getting the Huawei treatment, in other words.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6022.952

So that, and you feel that that that's within a year. And then what, what was your, do you have any other six years other than the Waymo? And, and so you've got Waymo exceeding Uber rides. Is that right?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6065.253

Yeah. Interesting. Um, Simon, I can probably give my own six years. I got, I got a question for you because we did, uh, in 2022, uh, we had Steven O'Grady on, um, and he had some pretty, uh, he had some like pretty dark open source predictions for, for six years. Um, and then I think, uh, he's probably on track to not be totally wrong about it anyway.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6084.647

I mean, I don't think open source is like, I think we've kind of tracked, we have tracked negatively on open source for sure. As we've seen more and more relicensing and so on. Um, What is your view on kind of where open weights are tracking? Because it feels like that's just been positive in the last year. We've got more and more. I mean, I think Llama 3 has been extraordinary.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6107.163

We've got a bunch of these things that are open weights. What's your view on what the trajectory is there for six years for open models?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6295.205

Look, we all know folks who are vegans who also eat bacon. It's like, what is... Okay. You're a vegan unless it's really delicious, I guess. Okay.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6313.237

Well, this is our end, you know, saying talk started and, you know, this is our kind of like the Abraham Simpson kind of the Mr. Smithers isms. The I definitely love the idea of the old timey model. that is all, all public domain work. And it may also be interesting. I mean, maybe those will get better and better as more and more stuff enters the public domain.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

632.548

That's right. Um, and, uh, let's get Mike, uh, Mike, I think he's here. So maybe you can raise his hand. We'll get him up on stage. Um,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6335.872

Cause we are on the cusp of a lot of stuff now entering the public domain. Um, as we are what at 1929, I think, or are we, um, and so we've obviously got like, uh, um, Hey, you know, 1933, Germany, it wasn't just only a couple of years away. Yeah. Um, you'll be entering the public domain. All right. So the, uh, in terms of my own, uh, my own six year predictions.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6361.645

Um, so I, I, I'm really glad again, we've recorded these Adam because I, I had a prediction that I was really like, I felt was a really great prediction. Whereas I basically made the same prediction last year. So I'm going to restate this prediction. I'm going to, I'm going to tweak it just a tad. Um,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6376.357

I think that I've been wondering about, you know, where are the, I think LLMs are going to completely revolutionize some domains. And I've been trying to think about like some of the, and certainly software engineering has been, is being revolutionized, has been revolutionized. I think that another one, and Simon, I agree with you and with Mike about letting people do more.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6401.034

I've always believed that like, that's the real revolution here is not actually having people, putting people out of work. It's about allowing people to do more of their job that they couldn't do previously. And I watch my own kids with respect to LLMs.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6417.16

And, you know, right now, at least at like, you know, I've got a kid in, I've got a kid in college and in high school and in middle school and at the high school and the middle school, you know, their, their AI policy is basically like abstinence, right? Um, you basically can't use it at all. And I think that that's nonsensical and they, the kids think it's nonsensical.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

642.276

the, um, so, uh, yeah, um, and, uh, Oh, it's actually, so Mike's LBJ avatar, uh, did remind me, Adam, one thing I did want to go back from relisting to our predictions episode is, uh, my prediction of recall, my prediction of omnocracy, the, uh, we record every meeting and it turns into, we, we automate away middle management. Um, um,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6437.748

And whenever they are kind of doing intellectual endeavor outside of school, they are using, uh, they're, they're using LLMs in a great way to like, you know, we are using it to, you know, learn more about a sports figure or learn more about doing the things that kids do, right. Troll next door, troll next door. Exactly. Um,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6459.663

And I continue to believe, so my prediction last year was a six-year prediction that K-8 education was going to be revolutionized. I actually think it is 9 through 12 education that's going to be more revolutionized by LLMs.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6472.647

And I think when we begin to tack into this and we stop viewing it as just cheating, and how can we do, I think it's going to be a lot more in-class assessment, which I think is going to be a good thing. Um, but I think, you know, it's like, you know, you remember Quizlet from back in the day and like chat GPT has absolutely replaced Quizlet.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6491.454

My, my, my, my senior in high school needs to study for an exam. He sits down with chat GPT and has chat GPT help him study. Um, and he goes and sets the exam. I mean, he's not, he's not, you know, he's not, he's using it to actually like, you know, God forbid learn. Um, and I, and I think that there is a, I think we can do a lot more. Um, I think especially in secondary education. So, um,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6542.202

Well, so here's what I think. I think that one, ChatGPT is a great editor. And maybe it's a little too great because ChatGPT tends to praise my work to me when I... Because my wife had decided that she's no longer interested in reading drafts of my blog entries, which understandably, they're a little arcane. So I just have like, you know what? Actually, I'll just have ChatGPT read it.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6565.859

And it's interesting. ChatGPT... Again, I'm probably a sucker for it's like, this is a very interesting blog entry. I think you are writing on a very important topic. So I'm like, you know, I'm glad someone around here gets the importance of what I'm doing. But it gives me good feedback and it asks like, do you want me to give you like deeper feedback? What kind of feedback do you want?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6585.991

And I'm able to guide it to give me, and so I actually, it does what my mother used to do with my papers when I was in high school. I think that's really valuable. I think you got to get out from like, you're going to, it's going to write it for you.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6597.757

I would personally, if I were in high school, I would have, I think an interesting experiment to do would be like, no, what you're going to, I want you to write on this topic. I want you to write a great essay on it. These chat GPT use chat GPT, like do whatever you need to. If you just have chat GPT spit out an answer, it's going to be like copying the Wikipedia article.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

66.602

There's no thrill in accuracy. No, that's it. And I also feel, I mean, especially Adam, having gone through the, the just listening to, because we've now done this, we did it in, in 22 and 23 and 24.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6618.266

It's probably not going to be, you know, and actually ask people to do more with their writing. And then I would have them read it aloud. And because I think that you, I mean, it's really interesting to have people read their own work aloud. If you suspect a kid, by the way, is use chat GPT to write something, have them read it aloud and it will become very obvious.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6640.012

whether it's their own work or not.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6657.405

that's what we're doing in the high school as well. And I think that's good too. I mean, that's like the, I think that that's, but I also feel that you're also missing a really important part of writing is revising.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6686.866

Well, I think it'd be interesting to have a class with like a, a LLM maximalist high school English class where it's like, Hey class, you're going to use LLMs to write. And I'm going to use LLMs to grade by the way. And we're all, that's not going to be an excuse for us not using our brains. We're going to really use these things as tools. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

670.56

And you said, like, ask how it worked out for Richard Nixon, which I think you had a quip. And I don't know, and Mike, I'm not sure if you know this, why Nixon recorded conversations in the Oval Office. When Nixon first came in, this was a story that was told to Doris Kearns Gunwood, that when he ascended to the presidency, he really wanted to make sure he had great memoirs.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6731.715

That is really interesting, Simon. That didn't even occur to me. I tend to do a heavy review of my own before I give it to GPT, but then I would notice that that's kind of strange that it didn't notice this kind of grievous error. I got to say, actually, I don't want to speak about him in the third person because he's in the room, but man, Steve Tuck does a very close read on things.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6752.668

very like you were able to channel, I think your own mother, when you do a read on things where I, I, I've handed you things that I have like reviewed a lot on my own and you find things that I, that, that I, and the many other people have missed, including early age. Yeah, it did. Exactly. Um, But that's really interesting, Simon, that I can't capture.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6773.57

Because I have found that it doesn't necessarily find errors. The thing that it finds are kind of structural. The things it'll say is, I think you need a transition sentence here. And it will be like, I have been thinking to myself, I need a transition sentence here. And then it will make a suggestion that is terrible that I discard. Of course.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6810.868

Yes, absolutely. And the other thing I have done is, I mean, the Notebook LM podcast manufacturing, I think, is so mesmerizingly good.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6822.471

I mean, I know it's using tricks on me of like, you know, it's the ums, the ahs, and the laughing at their own jokes. But man, I just fall right for it. I just think it's just, that is insanely good. And I think it's kind of interesting.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6860.418

That is amazing. Meanwhile, someone at Notebook LM is like, I told you we cannot have all-you-can-eat compute. We've got to start charging for this thing. The guy spent $1,200 in compute having the banana slugs offer their perspective on the pelicans. But that is great, Simon. I will say I've got one other six-year prediction. I think that post-secondary degrees...

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6884.551

in computer science and, and related disciplines, information science, and so on, uh, go into absolute freefall. And in six years they are below. So I don't know if folks are unaware, but the, the, the degrees in computer science have skyrocketed in the last, even in the last seven, eight years. And we're talking like factors of three higher. Um, and, um,

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6910.519

Adam, you've been on the pointy end of this with a kid who's interested in computer science and having everything be oversubscribed everywhere. I think a whole bunch of factors are going to come together And I think CS degrees are going to be way off the mark.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6929.299

I think that there have been some folks, I mean, Adam, not your son, but there have been plenty of people who've done computer science because mom and dad have told me this is what I need to go do to get work. This is not something that's in my heart. And I've always felt that that's kind of cruel to the folks for whom it is in their heart. they're at a disadvantage.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

693.585

So he dispatched an aide to go to Austin to visit LBJ on his ranch in And get his perspective, having just left the Oval Office. And LBJ said, you know, I was beginning to work on his memoirs. And he said, you know, I'm very grateful that I've recorded all these conversations. And tell Nixon that if he wants to write great memoirs, he should record every conversation.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6951.061

And, um, and I think that that is, so I think there will be some good things that come out of it, um, because it's not going to be a lock on the post undergraduate education or employment. Um, and I, I just, I think that it's going to fall, I think in six years, it's going to be below $70,000 a year. That only puts it actually back to 2015 levels.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6972.165

I think it could actually fall a lot further than that. The reason that's a six-year prediction is because there's a four-year lag. I think people are going to realize that... This is if there's a job that's going to be where LOM-based automation is going to really affect the kind of the demand for full-time folks in this, it's going to be computer science.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

6994.618

And I think also to put an optimistic spin on it, Simon, you said this earlier. But people are going to realize, wait a minute, I don't need to get a degree in computer science. I actually want to be a journalist. I can actually take some computer science courses and then use this stuff to generate these things to get the rest of the way there to use this as a tool to do my other work.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7.715

Grandfathered in. Steve is grandfathered in. Adding to the confusion, we have also... Brian number two. Brian number two, also known as Steve Talk, here in the litter box. And then keep an eye out for Lyndon Bates Johnson.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7040.205

Yeah, and I would say that I think Linux audio is still a hill on a distant horizon. I don't have the guts to make that a six-year prediction, but I did use ChatGPT to resolve a Linux printing issue the other day, and that felt like the future is here. The future is now. I can actually use... ChatGPT gave me some very good things to go do, and ultimately it worked.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7062.88

I got this goddamn thing printing, but it was pretty frustrating.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7069.705

Yes. Yeah, it's great. I will never again read an FFmpeg. I have read an FFmpeg manual for the last time in my life. I will only generate FFmpeg invocations with ChatGPT. There's no way. I'm not going to sully myself with it anymore. All right, well, that's a good roundup.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7117.176

The dreaded neutral zone. What is it that makes an LLM go neutral? Well, that's good. I think that's good. I guess the M in LLM stands for milk toast, apparently. Mike, you probably use this term regularly, but I think Adam and I both heard it for the first time last year from you. It's a very norm core answer. Yeah. Sorry, say that again, Brian?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7154.563

You described ChatGPT or LLMs as being very good to give you a norm core answer to any problem. So I think we've got the very norm core interpretation of our predictions. All right, any last predictions from anybody? Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7188.695

Okay. Wow. That's exciting. That's exciting. We got a XServe, the return of XServe from Ian, who again, your six-year prediction in 23 is pretty good. So we can take that one seriously. So, all right. The return of XServe. Rackscale compute from our friends at Apple, perhaps. Don't worry. With the coming chips crisis, we're sitting pretty here at Oxide.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7251.148

Well, I think it's just a little too logical, I think, for Apple. I agree on the logic, but... We shall see, but a good three-year prediction. Folks in the chat definitely want to get your predictions. Adam, should the folks put out PRs against the show notes for their predictions? That would be awesome. Please give us some PRs, get your predictions in there, and looking forward to a great 2025.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7279.413

Simon, thank you so much, especially for joining us, and really love the conversation we had with you A year ago, and it's been great to keep up on your stuff. Again, you continue to really, I think, serve the practitioner and I think the broader industry by really capturing what is possible with what is improbable. So I'll be thinking of you anytime anyone mentions agents over the next year.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

7307.261

I'm just going to be like, anytime there are conflicting definitions of agents, I will be thinking of you.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

745.441

You know, we've got more in common with Nixon than we thought. So that was last year. Obviously, Mike, we love your predictions from last year. Still waiting. I'm still I'm in sunglasses as we speak in a hoodie to make sure that no one can pull AI related details from my irises. Yeah.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

766.878

It hasn't happened yet, but it's not yet, but actually Mike, you very cagely said if it happens anytime after this, I'm also going to get credit. This is why you should. Um, I think we're ready to get going. Simon, let's kick off with you. I kind of like what we did last year. Everyone did their one years, and then we got to their three years, and then we got to our six years.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

787.562

Simon, let's kick off with you and your one years. I love that you thought, you know what? Maybe I'll go with a gloomy one year and an optimistic one year. I'm very, very curious what your predictions are for the coming year.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

79.852

So, and I mean, I, we've said this over and over again, but God, just like re listening to those, I'm really reminded yet again, predictions tell you more about the present than they do about the future.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

832.659

That is really, really interesting. Okay, could you elaborate on that? Because I was biting my tongue to not make the same prediction, so I definitely agree with you. What's your perspective on why?

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

870.34

All I know is that I want to invest at whatever ridiculous valuation you're raising at.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

892.336

God, and they love the travel use case.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

91.581

And, and the, like, I mean, God, those years had such like 2022 was the year of web three and the God, it was so hyped and overhyped that it created this huge overhang over that year where I would, Simon, we did something that actually I regret doing.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

938.089

We can't, yeah. You know, and Simon, we, based on your, I mean, it was so mind-blowing to talk to you a year ago, and you turned us on to Nicholas Carlini's work on the adversarial machine learning, and I just really listened to that discussion. Adam, that was such a good discussion.

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

957.715

I love Nicholas's perspective, and obviously we had him on again with pragmatic LLM usage, but I was just, as I was re-listening to that over the kind of winter break, I'm like, it

Oxide and Friends

Predictions 2025

967.438

Anyone believing in agentic AI really should listen to this thing closely because part of the reason that when you have these agents going forth in the world taking action on your behalf, these adversarial things become real, become real threats.