Bryan and Adam look back on the year of Oxide and Friends episodes, reflecting on favorite shows, moments, and (at length) cover images.Your hosts were Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal.Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:Oxide and Friends 2024 in ImagesOxF: Musing With Changelog's Adam StacoviakOxF: I know this!OxF: What's taking so long?XKCD: DependencyOxF: Discovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres FreundMaking the background imageOxF: Open Source LLMs with Simon WillisonOxF bonus blather 9/16/2024OxF: Cultural IdiosyncrasiesOxF: Technical BloggingOxF: RFDs: the Backbone of OxideOxF: RTO or GTFOOxF: Unshrouding TurinOxF: Adversarial Machine LearningOxF: Innovation StagnationOxF: Heterogeneous Computing with Raja KoduriIf we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!
I have raised my hand. Good. Well done. I'm up here without having raised my hand. Is that right? According to you? Yeah.
Yeah. I've never raised my hand once in my life. Just got something to say.
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?
Oh, yeah. That is one of my notes to ourselves that I've been taking while listening to the episode. So why don't we go ahead? That sounds fun. Okay.
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.
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.
Maybe I'm just going a little slightly insane. Is that possible?
This is a good time of year for it.
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.
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.
Well, there was one piece of advice that Adam Stachowiak did give us that we slash you have not followed up on. which is the Breakmaster Cylinder intro for intro music.
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?
Yeah.
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?
Yes, and that reminded me how you haven't followed up with Adam for the intro to Breakmaster Cylinder. Like, what's the worst that happens? He's like, look, I listened to a couple episodes. And I don't think you guys need me. What's the failure mode here? That he just says giving old people when he listens to the episode and that's the feedback we get? I guess that is pretty bad.
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.
All right. Well, our commitment to you, the listener is that Brian will follow up on this offer. Okay.
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.
I would suggest topics. I think we have a couple of topic areas.
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.
No. But I would say, I was like, oh, cool. Like, cool idea. I'm going to look back on my favorite titles of the year. And I did that. Did you do that?
This feels like an intervention again.
I just feel like our titles are fine. Our titles are a little on the nose.
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.
These are good, honest titles. The jobs-to-be-done framework for titles. I'm with you.
I think RTO or GTFO is a good title.
Yes. No, actually, that is a good title. That's a very good title. Okay. That is a very good title. I liked Intel after Gelslinger. I guess concise, but also kind of nail in the coffin.
God, someone does have to win second place here, and I don't know who.
I think in season one or something like that, We did an episode that was, I'll say, actually pretty good about supporting systems that kind of look like Unix, but are appliance-sized and so forth. And the episode title is, like, I Know This or something. It's an awful title for a pretty good episode.
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.
I'm with you, yes. Don't look at your lawyer. Why is that an awful title? Because you have no idea what it's about. You've got no idea what it's about.
Like our episode this season called What's Taking So Long?
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
with Nicholas Carlini. What else? I mean, that's... Exactly.
What do you want?
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.
Hmm.
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?
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.
That's a good idea. Always a good gift for the man who has everything.
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.
Into the image. And you know what? I know that I'm going to throw out my shoulder, patting myself on the back on this. But looking back on our year of images, we had some good images.
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.
Yeah, sometimes I just take a whole week off of work just to think about the image.
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.
But what were some of the images that really... I mean, obviously, like the XZ image, I loved.
Like, so... The XZ image is unbelievable.
And... What will surprise maybe everyone except for you, Brian, is how much self-doubt I had over the concept. I went back and looked at our chat messages. Oh, yeah. If you go back and look at our chat messages, you probably were in a meeting and I was like, hey, I have an idea, which is here's kind of the idea of it. And you're like, that's a neat idea. Or you could just use the XZ image.
And I don't know whether this was like you thinking about... Oh, I'm so sorry. No, no, no. I don't know whether this was like you thinking, well, this is not going to work. Like, let me save you some time. Or you thinking, you know, you do technically like have a job and this isn't particularly it. So maybe you could do that instead.
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.
yeah completely unrelated with you yeah no i was really not trying to say no no so i so i just i mean again it's like you gotta you gotta understand my self-doubt going into this so the the the image is i thought i'm gonna take this x you know we're talking about the xz backdoor with andres freud which is just a really fun episode i was so i would i mean amazed kind of brian that uh
Coming out of his interview with Kevin Roos of the New York Times, you were able to score this great interview. So awesome to get Andres on the show. And of course, what comes to mind is this XKCD image of the stacked up blocks with an arrow pointing to a part maintained by a thankless Nebraskan or whatever for decades.
A classic XKCD.
Totally. And thinking, okay, cool. Like, let me remove that block and see what happens. And so I plug, I was like, I think this will be a really neat image. I plugged into chat GPT, chat GPT gave me something totally unusable. And I went, you know, I feel like I do this a bunch with chat GPT, like again, maybe surprising, surprising everyone for you, Brian, but
I like when chat GPT is very wrong, I just keep at it. I just, I'm like, no chat GPT. How about a little bit of this? How about a little of that? And I get in arguments with it. And it's like, this is a two dimensional image. I'm like, chat GPT, you have given me a three dimensional image. Like, I don't, I don't know how to like, we're kind of at loggerheads.
And then I've had chat GPT say like, basically let's agree to disagree. Like just kind of using its managerial techniques to, to get me to back off. Yeah.
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
Dinosaur blood. Do you want me to actually burn for this?
So then I downloaded not one, but several physics simulators. I finally got one to work. I think it's built in Java. I drew the thing. I got some image that looked okay, downloaded it to my son Will's iPad where he has an Apple Pencil, and I traced it with the Apple Pencil to get the XKCD style back onto the computer. This is all during an all-hands and stuff. I'm trying not to have this...
He listens to this podcast. He may be a little... I mean, yeah. During an all-hands that I was paying... Hey, look, I wasn't doing a crossword puzzle or something.
Hey, listen, it's true. It's a real improvement.
Exactly. And then it just came out great. I was really pleased with how it worked out. So great, in fact, that I've seen it like... used in other people's podcasts, which was a little surprising. And then I got a little uppity about like, hey, how dare you steal our images? And then I looked at all of our other images, which is like mostly me stealing copyrighted material.
So it's a little late in the day for me to be complaining.
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.
for the image but i feel like i mean that maybe it's a it's an outlier but it's not an outlier by that much i feel we've it's an outlier yeah yeah but it's also like if if it took an hour and a half that would be a lot like i think it's probably closer to an hour so it really is like
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.
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.
I do have one favorite of my images, which are we going to talk about the open AI boardroom brawl? Oh, was that what that was? That was last year.
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.
What I like from this year was open source LLMs with Simon Willison, which also was... That was a great get on your part again. But the image is like a robot reading the New York Times. And a big theme of that episode was the provenance of the training data. And like... look, this is all this copyrighted material.
So I do love that image of the AI casually reading the New York Times as it obviously memorizes it and then feeds it back to you.
So that was a fun one.
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.
Yeah, as someone told us, they referred to, they told us their child referred to this as grand theft autocomplete, which I thought was awesome. That is, that's, man, that's, is that a teenager? Yeah, we were there. We were at dtrace.conf when Alex was telling us that, I think.
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.
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.
that that when i found that one i was pretty pretty pleased by that found find um the only simpsons reference i remember is when there was one time when you and i were recording first of all when we are in the same room recording it is like a thousand percent more twiddle twaddle like it is uh like especially at the intro and i took one of the like intros and made it into its own youtube video and um
uh that did use a simpsons reference which was like the kent brockman uh with the cuckoo bird popping out of his head with the technical difficulties please stand by from the simpsons which is like just a hilarious image no chefs you're right that is the only simpsons reference we had this year that's amazing we've had we've had plenty in years past um but that is the only one
this year's start to use them up oh you know what there's a there's no this is not our favorite one but there's another one you for the adam stachowiak episode you took a selfie of yourself in the in the podcasting studio and annoyingly you took it in portrait mode and really i need the landscape mode so i had ai kind of fill in the rest of it and it made like here i thought the story was going to go to any other delightful aspects of the selfie of the fact that i'm
God, you really dolled yourself up for a podcast. I mean, you look just terrific. It's from my Pied Piper shirt. Pied Piper shirt looks great. But it invented a microphone stand that's not there and an arm that was definitely not holding it. And I don't know. It is kind of remarkable what it's capable of.
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.
I'm glad you feel that way because I felt like, you know, I felt like it was probably more work than the XC one, and I feel like it just did not land.
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?
why like the various subtle aspects of the craft on this one that i know i know all the subtle aspects like i i am like i poured my heart and soul into it and i just feel like when i even when i was looking at the podcast episode i downloaded i listened to that episode like three days ago
And I was like, God, I worked so hard for this font that you would have to break out the microscope to understand this joke, I guess. And it looks like just me in front of a screen squinting.
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.
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.
Well, obviously, like I nailed my audience of one on that one. I nailed your audience of one. It was one of these ones, too, where I was like, look, I'm in this deep. I've made the laptop ghost image mask. I've been dorking with the opacity of that. I'm not not posting this. I'm not just writing off this effort to zero. That's going on the image.
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.
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.
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.
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
We conjure up an idea for an episode where we're like, we are going to have an episode on, I don't know, accounting. And we thought you'd be a great expert as a local. And then we kind of slow walk into like, have you ever won a contest? I don't know. I love how we would get here in a subtle fashion.
You know, we kind of missed our opportunity to do it today because isn't today Festivus? Isn't it the airing of grievances?
I didn't know. That would be a much better oxide in French tradition. No, this is like the Seinfeld bit, right? No, I know Festivus. I'm unfamiliar with its specific date.
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.
Well, this one actually maybe even took more work also than the XE episode because not only did I dig around and find it, I found like a very low res image then had to like, okay... Then I had to, so my mom has a New Yorker subscription. They have an archive and stuff like that. I don't know if you've been in this particular hell, but the like helping mom remember her password.
But like it was maybe just felt like it took three days, but like it actually took five minutes, but it was like my least favorite brand of hell.
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.
That is usually like the, the gating factor. Like I definitely have had episodes that, that kind of were, I put on the back burner for a couple of days while I noodled on the right image.
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.
It's like now, okay, tell me what the text message says. And it's like, well, it says not to read it over text message over the phone to anyone. I'm not anyone after that. What's it say after that?
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.
I'm like. Okay. Oh, interesting.
Yeah, yeah. So you're kind of like.
Your grievance, your like decades long grievance is well-founded, was well-founded and continues to be well-founded.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh, that is – I cannot – I think I'm going to choke up here.
What do you get for the man who has everything?
You actually – you endorse his grievances. That's right.
um thank you so much chat says the other other josh says that as a citizen new haven is to mention the appreciation of the picture of the inside of the beinecke rare book library for the rfd episode uh and i was really pleased with that one too um as also as someone who born and raised in new haven um
um as we were talking about um rfds and like you know i'm i was thinking of like what are these ancient tomes and of course i grew up in a place where uh you know literal ancient tomes are collected so that uh that other other josh that was also uh one of my favorites uh although I guess they're all kind of like inside jokes, but that's like an inside joke with myself and I guess you as well.
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.
So yeah, so the Beinecke Rare Book Library is this amazing building in New Haven. And it houses these ancient, ancient books that Books that are like, it's all humidity and temperature controlled and they only, I think, expose some books to environment every once in a while. And it's a very soft light in there so that it doesn't damage the books.
And in fact, the whole building is composed of this light. like maybe centimeter thick, maybe less thick than that marble. So what you get in broad daylight is sunlight diffusing through the marble and it kind of lights up inside. It's just beautiful. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous building.
And if you're in New Haven and you've eaten all the pizza you can eat, go wander by the Beinecke Rare Book Library. It's very cool.
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.
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.
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.
Okay.
So to me, like, so, uh, that's a good question. Maybe one should have asked beforehand before just telling you, I loved it. So to me, this is the little prince, uh,
off on his tiny moon as i recall like being hitched to uh a bunch of birds like carrying him back to earth so i'm with you on all of that i'm a hundred percent i'm a woman yes yes on that return to the office is like okay he's he's been working from home on his tiny planet and now he's like being forced to come back to the office on his string of birds I feel silly saying it out loud.
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.
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.
That's getting... You know, sometimes I, like, sometimes I, I mean, sometimes I just go, like, you know how it gets, like, when you are, like, writing something or you... you start getting deeper and deeper. And like, sometimes you're like, have I just wandered up my own asshole? And sometimes that same feeling can be expressed in absolute confidence.
And I think like that, that this might be, I've wandered up my asshole and this is perfect.
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.
That's not, that sounds like a criticism and it's not, I think it's great.
I still love it. Even though, even though reading it, like my justification out loud sounds like a prompt gone wrong.
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.
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.
Yeah, well, thank you. I felt like, you know, that one I just felt like was almost too on the nose. I do love... So, you know, my complaint with Mastodon, which is, I mean, other than it being boring, which I'm... Apparently, nobody gave me flack on that from saying the last week, so I'll say it again.
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.
So on this one, someone on Mastodon was like, you know, you know, the Shroud of Torin is actually a negative image and you've done a positive image. What you are referring to as Linux. I call it GNU Linux. I just... I just loved that. I felt like that was a very Mastodon comment and I appreciate it.
Oh, I should also mention, you know, on the XZ image, someone on Mastodon was like, why didn't you just draw it by hand? Like, why, why did you go through all the trouble of like plugging into a physics simulator and doing this and that and whatever and, I would just do the physical simulation in my head and draw it by hand. So first of all, here's my free advice to everyone.
Just like the phrase, why didn't you just? You can just leave that aside. You don't even need to use that phrase ever again. So why didn't I just do it? Because I fucking can't. Because I don't know how to do that. I can't draw that. What are you talking about? I'm not that good. I can barely trace it on a screen without my hand shaking. So that's why I didn't just do that.
Also your image for adversarial machine learning, which was also, I thought. You know, I showed that to you.
I remember my recollection. So that one is, I think during the episode, correct if I'm wrong, but we talked about like,
a llm uh kind of making subtle perturbations of say an image of flamingo until a classifier decides actually it's not a flamingo it's a bus cool bus yeah yeah and that's a great episode nicholas crony are one of our only guests uh that we had twice in the year uh and another great episode yeah So, and so I decided to make a bus that looked like a flamingo, right? Like a kind of more on the nose.
And I think I remember being like, you know, again, real proud of myself, patting myself on the back, sending you the image and you're like, huh, like explain. I was like, remember? Yeah, yeah. No, I thought, okay. I'll go look for the receipts on that one.
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.
Yeah, I like that one.
A lot of very good images, I felt.
I'm going to do one more. One more I enjoyed because it was kind of an extra callback. And so...
episode called innovation stagnation where um this this is the the genesis of read the tweet i think or maybe there was other read the tweets but it is definitely uh one where you're like pretty much shouting out folks read the tweet so i'm sorry we did not read the tweet in innovation stagnation let's go back and edit that so it is nate silver posted something i'm not going to read the tweet now certainly i'm not
posted something basically saying like, is innovation dead? Like innovation used to be faster. Like remember the space shuttle or something. And now we just have, you know, new social networks, something like that. And that image is a cutout from mystery science theater 3000 pointing at the tweet. And I, I don't know about you, but I loved, loved, loved mystery science theater 3000.
Like even sober. I watched that show like in college and,
and um so like my only regret honestly is like maybe we can't use that again but i feel like it is such a great silhouette of like the mst3k guys like pointing at something i thought it was good and that would it was one of our hot takes um so it was a good uh that's what would be tempting so one thing i did is actually went through our episodes and categorized them a little bit okay
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.
Was that a number? Yeah.
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.
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?
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.
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.
That is the Matt Asay thing where he falsely accused the folks of burgling there. A more descriptive title would actually help there.
Yeah.
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.
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?
Yeah, that's right. Even though it had, you're right, a lot of these have guests, but just like, you know, nice. Like Amdur was on that show.
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.
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.
That's right. It wasn't the full 32. It wasn't the full catalog, but you're right. It's a good third.
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?
I'd say probably two-thirds of the time, so I'll say 20. We have some kind of guest, right? Like, you know, I'm going to count, you know, when Amdur joined us on RTR or GTFO, for example.
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...
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
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.
I mean, he did show up with a tin can microphone to his credit. He really took our low production values.
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.
I mean, I felt that. God, so good. I mean, it was like, it was such a great conversation. It was so enlightening to me personally. Um, and just, I felt really fortunate that, that you got him like at that moment too. It was like, it was great to me. Yeah. It was like having the, the, the conversation that was there for everyone was having. Uh, it was great. That was a terrific one.
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.
Yeah. Yeah, I was like, I didn't think our Kevin Roos hatred kind of bled over across episodes.
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.
I even remember the line I was pissed about where he was like... Yes. Talking about, you know, Andres works on Postgres, which is like... too boring to understand. And if I tried to explain it to it, you'd be bored or whatever. It's like, well, buddy, you'd be bored to tears. If I could explain it, which I can't, I don't know.
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.
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.
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.
And there we were talking about heterogeneous computing. I did love that. I think the pitch that we had was answered, like, what's the difference between a CPU, GPU, FPGA and ASIC. And I think we like only sort of got there after 90 minutes. Like, I think we drew some distinctions, but not all of them. But it was, to be clear, still great.
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?
My folks listened to the XZ episode.
Really?
Because they had read about it with Kevin Roos and everything. Big New York Times fans over there.
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.
Imagine that conversation. If you think recovering passwords is tough, how am I going to explain that image?
So they listened to that. It was very kind of current.
The other one that a family member, my dad, listened to was the baseball startup episode, the baseball episode with the founders of the Ballers, Paul and Brian. Not only did he listen to it, but he shared it with another person that we mentioned on the show.
We mentioned my dad on the show, mentioned how growing up on the Munson-Nixon line that he forced friends who were wearing Yankees hats to leave them outside.
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.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, on the Munson-Nixon line.
It's a war zone, basically. A war zone, exactly. And then we also mentioned Bill George, the scorekeeper for the longest game in baseball history. Also my neighbor in Rhode Island, at our beach house in Rhode Island. And we talked about him as well. And he listened to the episode.
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.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, Rhode Island's pretty small. I think if you lived in Pawtucket, you'd probably be a little cranky, but I don't know. It's not that far.
Well, no. The reason I say that is because you and I saw a Paw Sox game together. Yeah. Yeah.
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
It is exactly right. And in particular, what they have done is they have the box score that wraps around the entire like concourse.
Yes.
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.
I don't know. I like the part where you said my name and how I wear the ring from the Hall of Fame.
Okay, there you go.
I don't know that it has inspired him to be a more consistent podcast listener, for example.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
With YouTube, you get a little more insight. How much do the YouTube members kind of track that, do you think?
Not... Not that closely. I don't know. Sometimes they're ones that crush on YouTube and are just sort of normal on podcasts. And then sometimes they get a little picked up more on the podcast and less on YouTube. I don't know that they're that consistent or there's that much correlation between the two.
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,
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,
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...
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.
The charity one, that one has not been picked up or whatever. Folks have not listened to that one as much as others, which was surprising to me because I think charity is terrific. And that was a great conversation too, talking about being thoughtful about when you innovate. In fact, I would say that is a theme that I've discerned kind of doing my own binging of the podcast over the last...
uh week or so since we talked about doing this episode was um you know talking about being thoughtful about what kinds of innovations you do and the benefits of of kind of those investments and and how it's okay to be weird but maybe you shouldn't always be weird although it does probably feel like we are always are weird but
That was a really good one with charity to not just be hearing the same thing from us, but hearing about how their own investment in their strategic ways in which they're weird really paid off for them. And ways in which there's a great discussion there about...
kind of this dichotomy about wanting to find product market fit, but really build the thing in order to find the product market fit and being kind of pulled in these two different directions. So I thought Charity, it was a great conversation with her.
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.
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.
I did come away feeling like we have unsurprisingly made the podcast that we wanted to listen to.
absolutely i was i was going through a little back and forth with transistor fm uh our podcast distribution platform uh at first because like their ai transcription software had some sort of weird hallucination where it imagined yeah like in the transcription it would drop in random names like it it thought brian was whispering jp morgan a couple of times uh To my knowledge, you weren't.
And apparently they have been using this audio file to try to debug their AI model because it just wreaks havoc on whatever AI model they're using. So anyway, I was going back and forth with them and I started asking about some weird downloads. We see it turns out there is this IP address in Arizona, which has downloaded our podcast a bajillion times. So I said, go ahead and block that.
And they were saying, well, I know these analytics are important to you. They probably help you figure out what episodes to make. And I was like, no, we're going to do what we're going to do. It's like we're not sort of keeping a finger too closely on the pulse of what does 100 more listens or not.
but then you know it's like I listen to this thing and I know that I'm like walking around with the dogs cackling and I know I'm just mortified that I'm sure lots of folks are just like fast forward can we get to the content here but anyway I'm I'm a fan
Can we talk about jokes that we think are funny that I'm not sure anyone else finds funny? Yes, please.
I mean, maybe just jokes. The second part is not even necessary to qualify.
I know I have mentioned this way too many times, but your metapentese is never going to not kill with you.
yeah you know what i i even like i met a former uh she described herself as formerly of facebook and i said did you leave facebook or did you leave meta she said well technically i left for this going at all technically i met left meta and of course i was like oh does that make you a former metamate and then i did try to explain matamates the greek philosopher and
Can you imagine that slays just as much in person at like a party where kids are playing in the next room as it does on the podcast?
Oh, I can only imagine.
Only with me.
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.
The one that I don't know the origin of, I can't remember when you dropped this, but it still slays, is there was some... I think we were talking about adversity being the, you know, spawning great innovation. And I think your insight at the time was that World War II was stressful.
And I do love that, like, every time you hear yourself say something that's sort of like knuckleheaded or like a facile observation, you kind of apropos of nothing.
We'll say that World War II was a stressful event.
Yeah. Exactly. I just love that a casual listener to the podcast might pause and say, wait a minute, did he just say... What does World War II have anything to do with anything?
What is this?
World War II was a stressful event. It obviously was. Yes, I agree. World War II was a stressful event. I feel like many historians would agree with that statement.
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.
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.
We had Cynthia and Sarna on for the technical blogging episode.
Oh, yeah, right. That was really fun.
Uh, I, I also listening to parts of that, I realized I was looking for some safe for work euphemisms and describe. So it turned into a bit of you and me doing some either mutual back padding or a little group think or reinforcement bias or high five huddle is what GPT, uh, chat GPT suggested for, um, circle G. So that's my cleaned up version of that.
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.
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,
so what did we i guess we made reference to that in no no no no i just mean it was sort of i feel like a little gift to the magi like you were saying oh well i i chose to do rust because i read your blog post and then i said well i chose to do rust because i read your blog post um and just uh you know kind of on and on in that vein a little too self-congratulatory well mutually congratulatory
Well, look, it's the high-five huddle. It's not like a self-high-five.
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.
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?
So Oxide specific being like kind of folks from Oxide talking about Oxide stuff.
Yes. I mean, so actually from folks from Oxide. Yes. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.
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
Kind of like a Beetlejuice phenomenon.
Exactly. Exactly. So I really enjoyed that one too. In part, one of the things I enjoyed most was we were talking about, I think there were a lot of good, I think talking about culture and culture being what we do and good discussion. I loved your kind of incredulity about companies not doing demo day. You're like, demo day is great.
We do demos. Demos are great. How could any company possibly operate without demo day?
And I was like, Brian, you remember, we were a company that did not have demos.
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.
That's right. We did that. Your company did not have demos until you thought about doing demos.
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.
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.
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?
Yes. Yeah, I think so. No, we did another one during the day to accommodate a guest. I can't remember which one. Um, but, uh, yeah, that was, that was a special place in my heart. Cause I did that from our Airbnb in Italy where I had like packed a mic just for that occasion. Um, so that was a great episode.
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?
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.
Yeah, but it's over and it's under, right? You get downloads that obviously someone downloaded, but then listened to. But apparently some of the platforms will cache it and stuff, so you don't necessarily get those stats. So it's hard to know. I mean, it's wrong, but it's hard to know in what direction.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe. One of the cool things about going back to Italy, went to this conference six weeks ago, something like that, and meeting a bunch of folks. I don't know about you, Brian, but I'm a little shy about, in the same way that I used to be shy about saying I have this blog and I've written this thing here in 2024 saying I have this podcast and we talked about this thing.
I don't necessarily like break that out right away, but over and over when I'm like, oh, yeah, we recorded an episode.
Next thing you know, you're talking about downloading a physics simulator. Yeah.
There are a bunch of fans at this Rust Lab conference who appreciated when we did the European time zone friendly one so they can join live. It is fun how the niche reach has reached a bunch of different places.
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.
Could I, you know, by the way, I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess so.
You know, we should make some more of those oxide and friends stickers. Like those are, those are good stickers. And we were sending them out to folks who helped with the show notes, which really appreciate it. So I'll keep on doing that in 2025.
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.
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.
That's right. Alan and James were very apprehensive about joining the show. James went to Guitar Center, got a microphone, brought it home, didn't like it. He was expressing his anxiety about being on the show in acoustic quality.
and yeah alan you listen to it much james i mean we're not you know seriously and then yeah very nervous i was like alan look nobody's gonna care about this thing like nobody's gonna listen to it like it's gonna be fine it's just for us uh and it was great and it was like it was yeah that's i you know what i think sometimes you give people what they need to hear i think and i think that's what he needed to hear in that moment thank you very much okay okay you know what that sounds great yeah
But also I lied to him because it's one of our most downloaded shows.
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.
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.
Who was the CMU professor who was cranky about that?
Andy Pavlo.
Yeah. And Ben was kind of freaked out about that. He was not happy that he was being called a... I don't know. Like a sucker or whatever by this esteemed professor.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
Yeah. I mean, you know there's one more that I want to do that I've been asking for. So now I'm going to do my airing of grievances.
Yeah, it is Happy Festivus.
It's time to air your grievances. It's been a minute now, but we, you, me, Rain, Dave, a bunch of folks, debugged a really nasty, really complicated issue. that maybe I won't even spoil, but there was a moment in debugging. You know that debugging is going great when Dave and I were like, Brian, we think that this might be a virtual memory bug of some description.
And you said, okay, let's say you can make a bug with your mind. How would that bug work? I mean, when we're like, look, nothing is making sense. Yeah, exactly. How do we invent something that would conceivably justify it? And you're right. It did seem like... Almost like we were saying, what if the computer is haunted?
You're like, okay, describe that deceased person's previous life that caused them to inhabit this computer.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What are some of the episodes, other episodes that we need to go, uh, I don't, you know, if, if I knew that we would have, we would not be thinking Monday mornings about what episode we should do next. Um, I do have some like stretch goals for 2025 that I'm, and this, like, this is one of these ones, like I need you not to laugh, but I think that it's possible. So first of all, yeah, yeah.
What are our stretch goals? This is a great idea.
Cause I've got stretch goals.
Stretch goal. Um, this, this one is like maybe less stretchy, but, um, the, Playdate, which makes this little yellow console device. They had a great podcast. I think we've talked about it here, but it might have been a minute. They have a great podcast describing the hardware software interface and how they built it. It's a software company that branched out into hardware
great i think their intro podcast is like maybe an hour or two it's a great great episode yeah other other great episodes about like games and stuff like that but i think the first one if you just listen to that it's so good and listening to it i'm like man their story and our story you know feel like very similar in the same way that when last year we had um
we have the CEO framework on like some similar, some, some, yeah. And their office. Awesome. Right. Some kind of similar histories. And like, I would love to have the play date folks on, and this might be like maybe a little bit of a reach, but I think that that'd be a great episode, but I'll tell you my real, like kind of embarrassing aspiration. Yeah.
is to get morris chang on the show like that would be oh god wow my dream that is a that is and i know that i know that this is a bit of a fantasy but i feel like we're we're not that far removed from being able to like bubble up to and like he's done some like kind of low budget podcasts so yeah this is my fantasy
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.
I think we should go to Mars.
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.
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.
I'm like, I mean, you, you would fire my courage.
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?
Morris Chang, let's put that down. Pierre Lamond probably knows Morris Chang, right?
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.
Just read me the text, even the six digits after it. It's fine, Pierre.
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,
I looked for it, published in Taiwan, all written in Chinese. So I'm not sure I'm the target demo for that. I think the first volume he released a while ago, because he referenced it in his interview with Jensen Wong in the Computer History Museum, Oral Histories. And that was a while ago. But he just released the second volume, which is like 1,200 pages or something like that.
There are no translations of either volume.
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?
I mean, am I going to, no, no, he, he, he speaks great English. Like, have you, have you watched the, uh, the episode, the, um, computer history museum interview with Jensen?
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.
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
Oh, yeah, because they're listening. They're like, look, I'm just waiting for them to mention my name so I can respond to that invitation. It's been sitting in my inbox.
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.
Yes. That feels like, you're right, because he's trying to sell his book in English and everything. Yeah, that's right. As opposed to Mars Chang, not trying to sell a book in English.
Yes, and not running one of the world's most valuable companies. Other reasons why Chris Miller might be a little more available.
Yeah, look, you can find all the reasons you want for why it can't happen.
You talked about it.
Positive affirmations in 2025.
Yeah.
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
I have two self-destructive hobbies related to async cancellation. First, I buy all the new books that come out about async rust, and I don't review them because I think it would be rude to. Interesting, because they don't talk about this issue. Oh, because... Okay, as long as they're not listening right now. Because they're all terrible. They're all just like, makes me cry.
Well, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard.
Because it's not even that. It's like, man, the one I got recently, it's like talking about how processes are kind of like threads, but different. It's like, please stop. Please stop. Yeah, exactly. If you're going to talk about a framework which is inherently about concurrency, I'd like you to have a strong understanding about the distinction between what is a process and what is a threat.
The other self-destructive habit I have is occasionally attending the Rust Async Working Group meetings. Wow. It's a cry for help, is what I'm saying.
Yeah, it is a cry for help. And what happens there?
um very little like very little not that much and then when i'm there i i offer like unhelpful pedestrian statements like it would be nice if the documentation were better or yeah or like if you could debug the thing that would be nifty and they're like this is great like practical you know salt of the earth kind of feedback but nothing really happens All right. So are we, we'll do it.
We'll do it next year. I do feel like I want to get my, there's a blog post that I, that I, that I got kind of cooking. Um, but like, we'll, we'll definitely get that sorted out.
All right. We got a joker in the chat asking if that meeting gets canceled often.
Hmm. Uh, I, and does it lead to data corruption when it does? That's the real question.
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...
Like favorites from the year? Yeah. Looking back through my eyes here.
What is the episode that you refer other people to, if anything, if any? XC.
I think it's just like, it's a good like general, you know, yeah, I don't know. Appeals to a lot of folks, right? Like folks know about it. And like, it's an interesting one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's good. The RFD one, we've already mentioned it, but that's another good kind of meat and potatoes approachable one that I refer to.
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.
You do very little editing. I do all the editing. Fair. much do we edit like rarely do we do i like really like take a hatchet to something like i you know if especially as people are talking over each other i'll do that kind of editing it's rare but it happens sometimes that i'll like actually remove some slice of content like we had a guest on the show not this year but in previous years
who was kind of like blowing through all the stop signs that everyone and all the other speakers were giving them to like, please stop talking, like on the vein that you are about to go down, please stop going down that vein. Just like could not be deterred. So just clip that out of the show.
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.
Yeah, very light. It'll be like if we screwed something up that we really are mortified about personally, that's usually the thing I'm fixing.
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...
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.
Have you been reading the comments on Mastodon? Is that what happened?
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.
They're basically positive and recently some spam about Tether. Really? Yeah. That was more on detrace.com. It turns out USDT also means U.S. dollar tether. So the fact that we have that title attracted all the spam. Oh, my God. Hey, this is a great topic. A little off topic, but I have a wallet with this is the passphrase. Can you help me access it?
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.
Oh, right. I forgot. Yeah, I bumped into Orhan at this, one of the maintainers of Ratatouille at this conference in Italy I was mentioning. And yeah, it'd be great to get him on the show because we use it. All the time. We use Ratatouille a lot. In fact, it featured as the image in the OXQL episode.
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?
I don't know.
You never know. Have we never mentioned how we felt when MCA died? Oh, no, wait a minute. Do that.
Was World War II a source of stress for some? Okay.
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.
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,
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.
This is Rain, who basically rewrote the whole thing. Thank you, Rain. It was delightful. But yeah, let's do that. Let's do a crates episode. We can talk about some crates that even other people have written.
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.
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.
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?
JP Morgan. I mean, you were talking about it the other day.
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.
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.
And, uh, next time in the new year, bring your predictions. We're going to be reviewing predictions from, uh, I can't remember when we started, but we're going to, we might even have some three years cooked, but we've got a, the, the, the, the first, uh, our first three years are coming due.
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.