Oxide and Friends

We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording.
How do you test configurations you haven't built yet? Steve, Andrew, and Rain join Bryan and Adam to talk about the transformative power of the Oxide emulation environment, VOXEL, and how it has accelerated development in many domains.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Steve Karam, Andrew Stone, and Rain Paharia.
Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
OxF s03e06 - Rack-scale Networking (P4 and DDM with Ry Goodfellow)
OxF s01e26 - The Pragmatism of Hubris (with Cliff Biffle)
OxF s03e09 - Get You a State Machine for Great Good (Wicket with Andrew Stone)
OxF s01e25 - Tales from the Bringup Lab
OxF s01e18 - Dijkstra's Tweetstorm
OxF s03e31 - Hiring Processes with Gergely Orosz
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
voxel -- Virtual OXide Emulation Lab: emulated rack deployments on one Helios host (omicron on Falcon/propolis VMs, SoftNPU switches, FRR routers); optional real SP/RoT firmware via sp-emu. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/voxel
Falcon -- tool for standing up virtual network/rack topologies of propolis VMs on illumos for testing. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/falcon
Tofino -- Intel/Barefoot programmable switch ASIC (Tofino 2) in Sidecar; P4-programmable. Discontinued by Intel.
SoftNPU -- software P4 target emulating the switch dataplane, so the stack runs without Tofino hardware. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/softnpu
P4 -- DSL for describing packet-processing pipelines; how the Tofino/SoftNPU dataplane is programmed. https://p4.org
Gimlet -- Oxide's compute sled.
Sidecar -- Oxide's rack switch board, carrying the Tofino 2.
raclette -- reduced-size lab rack (a few sleds + switch) used for dev/test rather than a full 32-sled rack. (my read; unverified)
Hubris -- Rust microkernel/RTOS for the SP and RoT: statically-defined tasks, memory protection, synchronous IPC. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/hubris
Humility -- debugger for Hubris systems; dumps tasks, stacks, ringbufs over SWD. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/humility
a4x2 -- pre-voxel testbed topology: 4 emulated Gimlets, 2 SoftNPU switches, omicron on one Helios host.
trust quorum -- rack secret split into shares across sleds; a quorum must be present to reconstitute the storage-encryption key, so a stolen sled is useless alone. https://docs.oxide.computer/guides/system/initial-rack-setup
illumos -- open-source Solaris-derived OS; the host OS (Helios) is an illumos distro. https://illumos.org
zones -- illumos OS-level virtualization; each control-plane service runs in its own zone.
Scrimlet -- Gimlet attached to a Sidecar ("switch Gimlet"); hosts the switch zone, dpd, MGS.
DDM -- Delay-Driven Multipath, the underlay routing protocol, implemented in Maghemite (ddmd, ddmadm). https://github.com/oxidecomputer/maghemite
Dendrite -- dataplane controller; dpd programs Tofino or SoftNPU and exposes an API to the control plane. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/dendrite
swadm -- CLI against dpd for port config, links, addresses, routes.
A0 -- sled power state where the host is fully powered (vs. A2, standby with the host off); driven by the SP sequencer task.
iCE40 -- Lattice FPGA on Gimlet/Sidecar for power sequencing and board glue logic. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/quartz
PRs needed!
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

More and more, people are relying on AI to do their writing for them. Is this the new normal, or the intellectual equivalent of claiming take-out is your own home cooking? Max Spero, founder and CEO of Pangram, joined Bryan and Adam to discuss how they distinguish AI and human authorship.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Max Spero.
Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
OxF: Hiring Processes with Gergely Orosz
OxF: Shell Game with Evan Ratliff
OxF: Predictions 2026!!
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
Pangram
Brandon Sovran: "I Tried to Trick Pangram. I Lost."
Stanley Druckenmiller: "Let the Bond Market Speak"
Pangram 4 Technical Report
Goodfire: understand and debug your AI model
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Oxide returns to the chamber... of EMC compliance to earn FCC approval to sell our next generation rack. Did it go smoothly? If it had, would there be a podcast episode? Oxide teammates Robert, Dan, and Stu join Bryan and Adam to discuss the trials and triumph!
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Robert "RFK" Keith, Dan Chirpich, and Stu Donnan.
Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
OxF s03e04 - Oxide and the Chamber of Mysteries
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
IEEE EMC+SIPI 2026: International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Signal & Power Integrity
PRs needed!
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Simon Willison joined Bryan and Adam to discuss a wild couple of weeks in AI. First, we have a high-profile, AI-induced, AI-diagnosed security incident. Next we have the rise of frontier-class open-weights models. Who's for or against open weights? Do they make for a more or less secure future? Exciting times!
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Simon Willison.
Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
OxF: Shell Game with Evan Ratliff
OxF: Discovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres Freund
OxF: Predictions 2025
OxF: Predictions 2026!!
OxF: Bookclub: How Life Works by Philip Ball
OxF: OpenAI's Boardroom Brawl
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
Gerald the turkey terrorizes Oakland's rose garden
ABC7: Gerald the turkey and the Morcom Rose Garden
APD cautions residents after aggressive wild turkey attacks elderly Alamedan
Hawking radiation
DHH's racist complaints
Grok's "MechaHitler" antisemitic spree
Simon on Grok aka "MechaHitler"
Hugging Face security incident, July 2026
OpenAI on the Hugging Face model evaluation security incident
Greg Brockman's political donations and the Leading the Future super PAC
OpenAI co-founder and wife donate $5.5M to save the home of bald eagles Jackie and Shadow
Firecracker microVM
Meltdown (security vulnerability)
Kernel page-table isolation
Jensen Huang on X
Electronic design automation
Golden Gate Claude
Tethics
Halloween documents
Zizians
Biohazard (book)
CRISPR
Oliver Sacks: criticism and falsifications
How Alice Hamilton waged a one-woman campaign to get the lead out of everything
American Poison by Daniel Stone
Lead–crime hypothesis
Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas encyclical
Rerum novarum
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Ramy Katrib has been at the forefront of digital storytelling for over 25 years, with his post-production company, DigitalFilm Tree, earning a reputation as one of Hollywood's most technically adventurous post-production houses. He joined Bryan and Adam to explore the past, present, and future of digital storytelling.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Ramy Katrib.
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!