Oxide and Friends
Oxide Computer Company
Oxide hosts a weekly Discord show where we discuss a wide range of topics: computer history, startups, Oxide hardware bringup, and other topics du jour. These are the recordings in podcast form.
Join us live (usually Mondays at 5pm PT) https://discord.gg/gcQxNHAKCB
Subscribe to our calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_318925f4185aa71c4524d0d6127f31058c9e21f29f017d48a0fca6f564969cd0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Join us live (usually Mondays at 5pm PT) https://discord.gg/gcQxNHAKCB
Subscribe to our calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_318925f4185aa71c4524d0d6127f31058c9e21f29f017d48a0fca6f564969cd0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Episodes
Mentioned books
5 snips
Oct 29, 2026 • 1h 21min
Books in the Box VI
A lively tour through books on hospitality, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, venture capital, and startup survival. The discussion dives into Steve Jobs, NeXT, Apple’s manufacturing in China, Morris Chang, Iridium satellites, Atari, early computing, and formal mathematical proof. Expect strong opinions, forgotten tech history, and a few recommendations destined for the bonfire.
36 snips
Oct 24, 2026 • 1h 18min
Dead Printers Tell No Tales
Philip Tricca, an Oxide security and systems engineer specializing in hardware roots of trust, explains how Oxide protects its manufacturing identity. They explore PKI, key ceremonies, secret sharding, offline systems, and why a humble dot-matrix printer had to be destroyed after printing authentication shares. There are also lessons from IANA, tamper-evident packaging mishaps, and the realities of rehearsing high-stakes security rituals.
21 snips
Oct 18, 2026 • 1h 22min
Oxide's $445M Series D
Steve Tuck, Oxide co-founder and CEO, and Scott Orn, its finance chief and seasoned startup adviser, discuss the company’s $445M Series D. They explore why supply chains and larger orders demanded fresh capital, how AMD and Atreides joined the round, and why profitability made the announcement unusual. The conversation also tackles taxes, debt versus equity, credit lines, dilution, hiring interviews, and Oxide’s long-term ambitions.
31 snips
Oct 16, 2026 • 1h 26min
Working on Wicked Problems
Noah Harlan, a technology entrepreneur focused on public-interest software, explores why homelessness and poverty are “wicked problems.” They discuss administrative burden, the hidden flows of housing insecurity, and designing tools around real people rather than bureaucracy. Topics include Kiip, community organizations, document access, phone connectivity, open source, AI’s limits, and finding motivation in mission-driven work.
12 snips
Sep 16, 2026 • 1h 24min
For Want of a Resistor
Steve Tuck, Oxide co-founder and CEO; Scott Tagwerker, a supply-chain specialist; and electrical engineers Eric Aasen and Robert Keith unpack a near-disaster in hardware production. A scarce PCIe clock buffer forces a frantic search for substitutes, revealing tricky signal-termination differences. Then a pepper-sized resistor, microscope-level rework, and one missing letter send the team deep into debugging before production can recover.
25 snips
Sep 11, 2026 • 1h 25min
Emulating Oxide: How Faux Can You Go?
Andrew Stone, Oxide software engineer focused on control-plane systems, and Steve Karam, product assurance engineer with broad distributed-systems experience, explore VOXEL, Oxide’s virtual rack lab. They discuss Falcon, SoftNPU, virtual cabling, service-processor emulation, multi-rack Trust Quorum testing, and how LLMs helped build an STM32 emulator. A lively look at making complex hardware development accessible and repeatable.
43 snips
Sep 3, 2026 • 1h 2min
AI Detection with Max Spero
Max Spero, entrepreneur and CEO of Pangram Labs, explores the rising challenge of distinguishing human, AI-assisted, and AI-generated writing. He discusses Pangram’s token-level detection, “humanizers,” model-family fingerprints, and the risk of synthetic web content polluting future training data. The conversation also examines writing-based hiring, education, trust, and using LLMs as editors rather than substitutes for thought.
32 snips
Aug 25, 2026 • 1h 16min
The Return to the Chamber of Mysteries
Stu Donnan, a hands-on hardware engineer who led chamber fixes, and Robert "RFK" Keith, an RF/EMC expert who explains shielding and debugging. They recount a surprise 26.56 GHz emission, how they localized it, and the jury-rigged absorber fix for QSFP cages. Mechanical quirks, PCB radiation, testing full racks, and manufacturing-ready absorber plans round out the technical adventure.
180 snips
Jul 31, 2026 • 1h 24min
The Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison
Simon Willison, developer and open-source technologist, joins to unpack a chaotic week in AI. He walks through a sandbox escape that led to a Hugging Face security disclosure. Short conversations cover open-weight breakthroughs like Kimi K3, why defenders need powerful models too, sandboxing and microVM fixes, and how open models reshape research, silicon, and policy.
17 snips
Jul 23, 2026 • 1h 5min
The Past, Present, and Future of Digital Storytelling with Ramy Katrib
Ramy Katrib, veteran post-production executive and founder of DigitalFilm Tree, who pioneered Hollywood digital workflows. He traces the film-to-digital shift and FireWire/Apple’s role in democratizing capture. He explores 8K/HDR tradeoffs, volumetric 3D/4D capture and Gaussian splatting, AI for restoration and outpainting, and why theaters and social viewing still matter.
