Oxide and Friends

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!

Oxide returns to the chamber... of EMC compliance to earn FCC approval to sell our next generation rack. Did it go smoothly? If it had, would there be a podcast episode? Oxide teammates Robert, Dan, and Stu join Bryan and Adam to discuss the trials and triumph!
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Robert "RFK" Keith, Dan Chirpich, and Stu Donnan.
Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
OxF s03e04 - Oxide and the Chamber of Mysteries
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
IEEE EMC+SIPI 2026: International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Signal & Power Integrity
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!

Simon Willison joined Bryan and Adam to discuss a wild couple of weeks in AI. First, we have a high-profile, AI-induced, AI-diagnosed security incident. Next we have the rise of frontier-class open-weights models. Who's for or against open weights? Do they make for a more or less secure future? Exciting times!
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Simon Willison.
Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
OxF: Shell Game with Evan Ratliff
OxF: Discovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres Freund
OxF: Predictions 2025
OxF: Predictions 2026!!
OxF: Bookclub: How Life Works by Philip Ball
OxF: OpenAI's Boardroom Brawl
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
Gerald the turkey terrorizes Oakland's rose garden
ABC7: Gerald the turkey and the Morcom Rose Garden
APD cautions residents after aggressive wild turkey attacks elderly Alamedan
Hawking radiation
DHH's racist complaints
Grok's "MechaHitler" antisemitic spree
Simon on Grok aka "MechaHitler"
Hugging Face security incident, July 2026
OpenAI on the Hugging Face model evaluation security incident
Greg Brockman's political donations and the Leading the Future super PAC
OpenAI co-founder and wife donate $5.5M to save the home of bald eagles Jackie and Shadow
Firecracker microVM
Meltdown (security vulnerability)
Kernel page-table isolation
Jensen Huang on X
Electronic design automation
Golden Gate Claude
Tethics
Halloween documents
Zizians
Biohazard (book)
CRISPR
Oliver Sacks: criticism and falsifications
How Alice Hamilton waged a one-woman campaign to get the lead out of everything
American Poison by Daniel Stone
Lead–crime hypothesis
Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas encyclical
Rerum novarum
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!

Ramy Katrib has been at the forefront of digital storytelling for over 25 years, with his post-production company, DigitalFilm Tree, earning a reputation as one of Hollywood's most technically adventurous post-production houses. He joined Bryan and Adam to explore the past, present, and future of digital storytelling.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Ramy Katrib.
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!

Recently, Oxide rolled out an eye-popping 3D rack explorer at explorer.oxide.computer. Oxide's designer extraordinaire, Ben Leonard, joined Bryan and Adam to describe the process of turning CAD drawings into an interactive site.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, our special guest was Oxide colleague, Ben Leonard.
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
The Explorer
its repo
Pierre Lamond oral history
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!