Oxide and Friends

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Let That Sink In! (Whither Twitter?) Oct 27, 2022

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Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 27th, 2022

Let That Sink In! (Whither Twitter?)

We've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 27th, 2022.

In this special, breaking news edition of Oxide and Friends, Bryan Cantrill was joined by Joshua M. Clulow, Charity Majors, mick, Rishi Desai, linear cannon, ignaloidas, Craig Traynor, Cargo Occultist, and Aaron David Goldman.

Open Source Inside Baseball (with Stephen O'Grady) Oct 24, 2022

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Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 24th, 2022

Open Source Inside Baseball

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was dear friend-of-Oxide, Stephen O'Grady.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

For non-American and/or non-baseball fans "inside baseball" is an idiom meaning "an expert's take or opinion"
Also, Stephen, Bryan, and Adam love actual baseball so there was quite a bit of that as well...
For the baseball fans, the Bryce Harper at bat we were so excited about
The main event: Stephen's The Dead End

Holistic Boot Oct 10, 2022

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Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 10th, 2022

Holistic Boot

Engineering Incentives... and Misincentives Oct 03, 2022

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Inspired by the incentives at Google that apparently promote launching--but not sustaining--new products, Bryan, Adam and the Oxide Friends discuss the efficacy of various incentives... and the incentives that can lead to unintended and negative outcomes.

Losing the Signal with Sean Silcoff Sep 26, 2022

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Bryan and Adam interview Sean Silcoff, co-author of "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry"... Soon to be a major motion picture!

Losing the Signal with Sean Silcoff (The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry)

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our esteemed guest was one of the authors of Losing the Signal, Sean Silcoff.

Not many links, mostly anecdotes from Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, the book Sean co-wrote with Jacquie McNish

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

@05:01 The aha moment for BBM
@09:42 Ruffled feathers from partner interactions
- Bell South thought they had an exlusive deal and they didn't
- Years later, people didn't seem to hold it against them
@12:40 Brian's anecdote about a meeting with Balsillie and Lazaridis
@15:30 Lost opportunities to course-correct
- The touch screen button
@20:00 The Blackberry Storm
- Potentially rushed to market when it was not up to standards
- RIM's own testing lab found serious problems but shipped it anyway
- RIM was a great innovator and a terrible follower, some have said that of Apple, though
@25:40 Lazaridis as the product guy
- This I get (keypad), this I don't get (touchscreen)
- Story on the way up is as important as on the way down
@30:20 Parallels with DEC
- Amazing rise
- Failure to pass control
- co-CEO model at RIM - worked really well until it didn't
@34:19 NTP Patent case
- Case brief
- Jury selection was weighed incredibly far towards lay folks with very little technical understanding
- Technical demonstration goes sideways
@45:10 Trusting the other co-CEO and the option backdating scandal
- Lazaridis didn't really understand the options stuff and felt Balsillie had put the company at risk
- Kept their fights private, but people could tell "mom and dad weren't getting along"
- Is it right or wrong if everyone was doing it?
- They left an extensive digital paper trail making it easy to make a case
- Thanks to Tom for the clarification - options backdating was okay, failing to report it was not
@52:50 Larry Conlee
- Fire and brimstone, had a pocket veto, spoke with the voice of the CEOs
- Co COOs!
- Carriers were afraid of becoming dumb pipes, so were anti-app store
- Blackberry didn't care about doing an app store, then AT&T bent to Apple and allowed them to have an app store
- RIM did not believe that Silicon Valley would be let in the front door at the carriers
- RIM would talk about Apple as "the toy company" while being actively devoured

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Threads, async/await, Promises, Futures Sep 12, 2022

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A problem has been eating at Adam: we use async/await in many languages and yet we're not so good at explaining the moving parts. Bryan and the Oxide Friends therapeutically explore the space.

Potpourri: Product, Platform, Paravirtualization Sep 05, 2022

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The Oxide Supply Chain Aug 29, 2022

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Kate Hicks from Oxide operations joins to talk about the supply chain meltdown, war stories from the past, and the innovative ways she and her team have charted a steady course through these turbulent waters

Bringup Lab Chronicles: A Measurement Two Years in the Making Aug 22, 2022

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The Oxide electrical engineers share their experience bringing up a 100Gb link--it's got everything from a purpose-built probing station to a 100Ω resistor that proved to be the difference between life and death (of the company)

Surviving Conventional Wisdom Aug 15, 2022

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Bryan, Adam, and Steve consider nuggets of conventional wisdom that turn out to be turds.

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