Show Notes
Time for the annual predictions episode! Bryan and Adam were joined by frequent future-ologists Simon Willison, Steve Klabnik, and Ian Grunert to review past predictions and peer into the future. If any of these predictions come to fruition, it's going to be an interest 1, 3, or 6 years! In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Simon Willison, Steve Klabnik, and Ian Grunert. Previously on Oxide and Friends: OxF s04e02 – Open Source LLMs with Simon Willison OxF s02e23 – Predictions 2022 OxF s03e20 – Predictions 2023! OxF s04e01 – Predictions 2024! OxF s05e01 – Predictions 2025 Predictions during the show: Adam1 year: AI companies go on an acquisition binge (especially for anything that smells like data) 3 year: Crisis of AI slop open source (both projects and contributions) 6 year: Jensen hands over the reins at Nvidia 6 year: Tesla is out of the consumer car business 6 year: With the iPhone market shrinking, Apple has several new attempts at the next potential flagship product
Bryan1 year: "Vibe coding" is out of the lexicon -- or used strictly pejoratively it becomes a named condition (for which Adam -- in an act of nomenclature genius rivaling The Leventhal Conundrum -- suggested "Deep Blue") 1 year: A frontier model company has a prominent whitepaper making the case that AI will lead to broad-based prosperity rather than job loss 1 year: Harvey.ai becomes the pets.com of the AI boom -- and a harbinger of the coming bust (which becomes known as a Correction-like euphemism) 1 year: A prominent S1 has revalations of economic behavior that has an effect beyond the company's IPO 3 year: Frontier models treat AGI as "already done" -- and ASI as a non-goal 3 year: Custom-written software thrives in lieu of SaaS 6 year: DSM adds LLMs as a substance that can induce psychosis 6 year: $NVDA not beyond its November 2025 peak
Simon1 year: The AI for programming holdouts are going to have a nasty shock 1 year: We're going to solve sandboxing 1 year: Our own challenger disaster with respect to coding agent security - see the Normalization of Deviance in AI by Johann Rehberger 3 year: Something that seems impossible for a coding agent to build today - like a full working web browser - won't just be built by coding agents, it will be unsurprising 3 year: We will find out if the Jevons paradox saves our careers as software engineers or not 6 year: The number of people employed to type code into computers will drop to almost nothing - it will be like punch card operators. Those of us who write code today will have very different jobs that still build software and take advantage of our previous coding experience.
Steve1 year: Agent Orchestration will still be a hot topic. It'll be partially, but not entirely, solved. Updated with some more rigour: We won't have a "kubernetes for agents" just yet. 3 year: Using AI tools when writing software professionally will be considered something closer to using autocomplete or syntax highlighting than something controversial or exceptional. 6 year: AI will not have caused the total collapse of our economic and governmental systems.
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 from Oxide and Friends
After raising $200M in February... we raised another $445M in July! Your favorite computer company is capitalized to the gills--enough to weather the supply chain upheaval even! Come for co-founders Steve and Bryan describing the raise; stay for tax, debt, and credit talk with Scott Orn. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guests were Steve Tuck and Scott Orn. Previously, on Oxide and Friends: OxF s06e05 - Oxide's $200M Series C OxF s05e24 - Oxide's $100M Series B Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: Oxide blog: Our $445M Series D Hacker News: Our $445M Series D Hacker News: Oxide Computer raises $445M (SEC Form D) 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!
Wicked problems defy simple solutions. Even as we describe the problem, we may be presupposing particular solutions and narrowing scope. Our greatest, most persistent societal problems fit this model. Wicked problems may not be solvable, but progress can be made. Noah Harlan joins us to describe his technical entrepreneurship battling wicked problems. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Noah Harlan. Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: Rittel and Webber, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning (1973) Wikipedia: Cynefin framework HOPICS Kiip Noah Harlan: "Why We Started Kiip" Findhelp: "Transforming CBO Case Management with Kiip" AlleyCorp findhelp.org MTS: "AI Doomsday Predictions Lack Real-World Reality" with Bryan Cantrill Eric Ries, Incorruptible 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!
When the supply chain crunch catches up with you, sometimes a tiny resistor the size of a fleck of pepper is the difference between a world-class computer and... e-waste. Members of the Oxide operations and electrical engineering teams join Bryan and Adam to discuss how close we came to stopping production, for want of a resistor. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Robert "RFK" Keith, Eric Aasen, Scott Tagwerker, and Steve Tuck. Previously, on Oxide and Friends: OxF s06e12 - Rooting for the Home Team with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel OxF s06e06 - When Nine Nines Isn't Enough OxF s02e12 - More Tales from the Bringup Lab Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: Bryan's blog: The Contagion of Fear 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!
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!