Bryan Cantrill

The contagion of fear bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/13/t...

It's that time of year: the leaves are falling, the Halloween decorations are up -- and it's time for our annual Books in the Box episode. Join @ahl.bsky.social and me, 5p Pacific today! discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?e...

While some folks are out there using 4 as their private key, the @oxidecomputer.bsky.social key ceremony is quite a bit more elaborate and--many would argue--more secure. On Monday Oxide's Philip Tricca joined me and @bcantrill.bsky.social to describe how we create and store this critical secret.

How do we prevent a bad actor from spoofing Oxide? Today, @ahl.bsky.social and I are going to explore the unseen anchorage for our root of trust -- and pay respects to the dot matrix printers that gave their short lives in the process. Join us, 5p Pacific today! discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?e...

Had almost—but not quite—enough Oxide and Friends? Perfect. The latest episode is now up on the pod. share.transistor.fm/s/867a87b6

Really needed this to land six months from now so I could propose an entire #monktoberfest talk dragging it

More Oxide and Friends for your weekend. The usual hacker news commentary with @bcantrill.bsky.social and @sdtuck.bsky.social, and--for the first time--bonus tax, debt, and credit talk with Scott Orn.

In what is certainly not our coldest of opens, please join me and @bcantrill.bsky.social. Bathroom break in progress...

Last week's Oxide and Friends is up; thanks to @noahharlan.bsky.social for joining (and apologies for the delay getting it out!)

Catch Oxide Co-Founder and CTO @bcantrill.bsky.social on TBPN today ~12:20 pacific discussing our Series D raise & what's next buff.ly/a7Kx2lj

Have you ever let AI write (or rewrite) any part of your tech blog posts? If so, please answer these quick questions, totally anonymously. It should take less than 3 minutes. forms.gle/3zYuANeuCdcm...

Okay, yes -- we did it for the pod. @sdtuck.bsky.social will join @ahl.bsky.social and me today at 5p Pacific to talk our Series D! discord.gg/PeXZW5uPT?ev...

We raised a few bucks. We'll try not to spend it all on DRAM. Thank you to our investors for this round and thank you to my amazing colleagues for building a great company worth investing in! oxide.computer/blog/our-445...

Our $445M Series D -- and a wild milestone oxide.computer/blog/our-445...

Stoked to be presenting to #rustnyc in two weeks to talk about Rust in the LLM age. Signups open -- with thanks to @datadoghq.com for hosting! www.meetup.com/rust-nyc/eve...

"Use it on real problems." Amen!

Over 50 years after its publication, Rittel and Webber's paper that coined the term "wicked problems" still reads very modern -- and a reminder that even in a world where LLMs are invaluable on the hard problems, we will still be left with the wicked ones urbanpolicy.net/wp-content/u...

Today, @ahl.bsky.social and I will be joined by @noahharlan.bsky.social to talk about his work on wicked problems. These thorny problems represent some of our greatest societal ills, but progress CAN be made on them; join us, 5p Pacific today! discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?e...

Video is now up! www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kbP...

do not try to talk to this guy about factories

Slides for my #monktoberfest talk today, "Execution in the Kingdom of Agents: Reflections on Abstraction and Complexity"; video to come! speakerdeck.com/bcantrill/ex...

Nice shout out to @circlejtp.me to kick off @monktoberfest.com

No Oxide and Friends today, but we'll be back next week! Meanwhile, if you happen to have missed it, our recent For Want of a Resistor episode has turned into an instant classic oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/for...

Unsurprisingly, @simonwillison.net has delivered a must-watch banger of a talk -- I cannot recommend it highly enough. Come for Simon, stay for the Pope!

Fool's Expertise bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/27/f...

"Arrogance in computer science is measured in nanodijkstras." -- Alan Kay youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY?...

As part of our annual @oxide.computer meetup, I added three new logos to our wall honoring our forebears; how many can you name?

Homage shirt #4 memorializes a company that burned fast and bright -- and whose operational miscues gained eternal life as an eponymous effect

Homage shirt #3 is at once a tribute to a company, an engineer, a law -- and a mug

Come for the employee reflection on the company, stay for this talk relating the CEO's post-mortem on it www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMG...

ngl homage shirt #2 goes just as hard

I found that my response to this merited something longer on what Sun got wrong bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/20/w...

What Sun got wrong bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/20/w...

New @oxide.computer swag just arrived, and... hot damn

Absolutely crazy OxF yesterday with the @oxide.computer team and @bcantrill.bsky.social. The supply chain is a mess and a critical part for us went from a few bucks to, a few hundred, to unobtainable. What followed was some amazing luck, followed by bad luck, followed by good luck, and on and on...

I think I'm really regretting asking Google how it hallucinated me as Sideshow Bob

Another week at @oxide.computer has given us (yet) another example of the kinds of problems that very much require human engineering. Today, the team joins @ahl.bsky.social and me to regale us with the wild tale. Join us live, 5p Pacific, tonight! discord.gg/9dH7D5Gt?eve...

This kind of rhetorical slithering -- accusing those who take a quantitative claim seriously of "playing word games" -- is exactly what has so many of us exhausted. If it wasn't meant to be taken seriously than it is JUST stoking fear -- the irresponsibility of which was the point of the piece.

I am surely not alone in having family over the weekend hitting me up asking "should I be worried about extinction?" As a response, I have found that my anti-Doomer talk from @monktoberfest.com 2023 (three very long years ago!) remains current and accessible: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfJ...

American Megatrends welcomes you to Montréal!

Fact check: true (Saturn Hypersystems would eventually become @oxide.computer)

Slides from my keynote this morning at #RustConf on the history of Rust at @oxide.computer; video to come! speakerdeck.com/bcantrill/ru...

One recently-added section to our RFD 576 says that in public writing it's worth avoiding even the appearance of AI slop -- both at the content and at the text level