bcantrill

bcantrill, 6 months ago to random

What punch cards teach us about AI risk https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2023/11/26/what-punch-cards-teach-us-about-ai-risk/

bcantrill, 1 month ago to random

Recently, the software world was rocked by the discovery of a backdoor in XZ Utils. The backdoor represents many stories, but behind all of them is the story of a single Postgres developer, vexed by a relatable problem: "why is it taking so long to login?!"

On the next Oxide and Friends, @ahl and I are thrilled to be joined by that developer, @AndresFreundTec, the discoverer of the XZ backdoor. Join us on April 8th at 5p Pacific to hear this extraordinary story!

https://discord.gg/SAsE6G6W?event=1224880997762338856

bcantrill, 8 months ago to random

Two decades ago today, DTrace integrated into the operating system. Much has changed in the last 20 years -- but one thing has remained true: we ourselves still use it on a daily basis. With your forgiveness, a short thread... 1/

bcantrill, 7 months ago to random

Video for my latest love letter to HashiCorp is now up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um5bC20NTQ0

bcantrill, 7 months ago to random

I have recovered the original video from my "Corporate Open Source Anti-patterns: Doing it wrong" talk from FISL in 2012! I will be giving an update of this talk (with many new anti-patterns!) at P99 CONF on October 19th -- it's online and free!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anXKAcrJ5Wc

bcantrill, 7 months ago to random

From the originator of a "malicious" open source strategy comes the tragedy of open source foundations!

https://www.thestack.technology/hashicorp-ceo-predicts-oss-free-silicon-valley-unless-the-open-source-model-evolves/

bcantrill, 10 months ago to random

I have long said that you know it's time to ship when you are working the system hard enough to find long-standing bugs: you know that you've hit bedrock, in a sense.

And that is the inference I choose to draw from this 7-year-old DTrace bug that I hit this weekend that absolutely had me questioning my own sanity:

https://www.illumos.org/issues/15789

bcantrill, 5 months ago to random

Many years ago, I made two decisions about my public speaking: that all my talks would be recorded and publicly available -- and that I wouldn't give the same talk twice. The result has been a wide variety of talks; to help folks navigate them all, I collected them -- and have kept the list updated ever since.

I mention this, because inspired by the kind words of @nnungest, @herrbischoff, and @troglobit, I just updated the list for 2023:

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2018/02/03/talks/

Enjoy -- and thank you!

bcantrill, 4 months ago to random

This IEEE Spectrum piece is absolutely unhinged -- and by the same absurd logic, we would have banned BBSs in the 1980s because kids (🙋‍♂️) were using them to find copies of The Anarchist Cookbook.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-source-ai-2666932122

bcantrill, 4 months ago to random

The Book of Genesis, as written by GenZ 🤣🤣🤣

bcantrill, 9 months ago to random

In the believe-who-people-are-when-they-tell-you department, HashiCorp CEO Dave McJannet repeatedly refers to his strategy with respect to open source as "malicious": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59rEiAyYEVk&t=1002s

bcantrill, 5 months ago to random

My 11-year-old daughter thought it was hilarious that someone had bothered to make a reaction video to my talk, and she insisted on watching it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iBkpPtN-Ek

She (correctly!) observed that the rebuttal was missing my argument ("he's not doing a very good job listening!"). But more interesting was that she really took issue with his obsession with IQ ("he doesn't understand that people are smart in different ways"). Finally, she turned it off: "He's boring."

The kids are alright.

bcantrill, 1 year ago to random

Today on @oxidecomputer and Friends, @ahl and I are going to be joined by @kissane and @timbray to talk about Erin's terrific piece, "Blue skies over Mastodon": https://erinkissane.com/blue-skies-over-mastodon

Join us, 5p Pacific: https://discord.gg/EZYTqdKj?event=1100098397949677620

Recorded and syndicated, as always:

https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/

bcantrill, 3 months ago to random

Moore's scofflaws: The tyranny of per-core licensing
https://oxide.computer/blog/moores-scofflaws

bcantrill, 7 months ago to random

As it turns out, Oxide and Friends was called out by another podcast, Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs, for some of our unvarnished thoughts on C++! We're fans of ADSP, so tomorrow @ahl and I will be joined by Conor Hoekstra, co-host of ADSP. We'll settle the beef between our podcasts -- and we'll hit on some bigger themes on tribalism in tech, the underlying fears that feed it, and what we can all do to moderate it.

Join us, 5p Pacific:

https://discord.gg/wZsYtXSn?event=1163198618459701329

bcantrill, 9 months ago to random

A little over a decade ago, I gave a talk on corporate open source anti-patterns -- saying that I would return in a decade and describe any new mistakes. A decade later, new mistakes have emphatically been made! On tomorrow's Oxide and Friends, @ahl and I are going to be joined by @kelseyhightower as we talk about some of the anti-patterns of the last decade -- and try to give guidance to the next generation. Join us live -- or catch the recording! https://discord.gg/95HuasSA?event=1145461064901861458

bcantrill, 1 month ago to random

Recently, we saw an embarrassingly ham-handed (and false!) allegation against OpenTofu. While the specifics were new, the tactic is nearly as old as computing: this is FUD -- the "fear, uncertainty and doubt" made famous by IBM when used against the upstart Amdahl. Today on Oxide and Friends, @ahl and I are going to talk about this latest FUD -- as well as FUD's storied history in our industry. Bring your own examples, and join us today, 5p Pacific!

https://discord.gg/cEEnJhT2?event=1232017174307012658

bcantrill, 8 months ago to random

This is such a good rant on string theory from @acollierastro; can someone please do molecular nanotechnology next? https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E?si=puoTrlM8ZxOJI17S

bcantrill, 8 months ago to random

Where is "single-threaded WAL replay"? The Mariana Trench?

bcantrill, 2 months ago to random

The most galling part of Don Lemon's interview with Musk was when Elon implied that Boeing's safety issues are somehow due to diversity initiatives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhsfjBpKiTw#t=47m28s

This is not just brazenly racist, it is factually wrong: the people to blame for Boeing,'s decline are the McDonnell executives that destroyed its engineer-driven culture, starting with Harry Stonecipher.

bcantrill, 2 months ago to random

In the conversation @ahl and I had with @simon in January, he mentioned work on adversarial attacks on LLMs that proved surprisingly universal. On today's Oxide and Friends, we will be joined by Nicholas Carlini, one of the authors of "Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Models" to talk not only about this specific work, but about adversarial machine learning in general -- and how it guides thinking on LLMs. Join us, 5p Pacific!

https://discord.gg/dkzxxNQs?event=1221829306112675952

bcantrill, 2 months ago to random

As it apparently needs to be said: An organization that both eschews traditional hierarchy and mandates stack ranking is a guaranteed hot mess

bcantrill, 1 month ago to random

Oxide has been called "a startup on hard mode", but today on Oxide on Friends, we are going to talk to co-founders of the Oakland Ballers, a startup that is not only on hard mode, but is doing a speed run. Join @ahl, @sdtuck and me, 5p Pacific:

https://discord.gg/tgmyE2NS?event=1227111016681443389

Those who happen to like both baseball and startups will naturally love this (@timbray, @sogrady: looking at you!), but I think this story is ALSO incredible if you haven't ever enjoyed baseball -- or even sports. Join us!

bcantrill, 1 month ago to random

The next Oxide and Friends is on May 13th, when @ahl and I will joined by molecular biologist Greg Cost to discuss @philipcball's extraordinary book, How Life Works. Read the book and bring your comments and questions -- or join just to listen to the discussion! On Discord on May 13th at 5p Pacific:

https://discord.gg/besjcERf?event=1233892673023246387

And recorded and syndicated as always:

https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/

bcantrill, 3 days ago to random

A decade ago, Joyent accidentally rebooted an entire datacenter, an experience that I described in my 2017 GOTO Chicago talk, "Debugging Under Fire":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30jNsCVLpAE

On the next Oxide and Friends, @ahl we will be joined by folks who were at Joyent a decade ago, both to recall the fateful outage and to reflect on its ramifications, both at Joyent and beyond. Join us, Monday, 5p Pacific:

https://discord.gg/dqUCRwsx?event=1243638578484088842