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Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

explorer.oxide.computer

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Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#171

Post by xoa »

bflesch wrote: post #153
bcantrill wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for rooting for us! One important point of clarification: I am the CTO -- the CEO of Oxide is my co-founder, Steve Tuck. Long before we know what we wanted to do (or had a name for the company!), Steve and I knew we wanted to do something together; it's worth getting to know Steve (and our collaboration) in his own words![0][1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVkIKm9pkPY [1] https://www.youtube.com/watc…

Your product and company look really cool, I hope you succeed. In the youtube video you've shared there's an interesting section about your values and how trust is needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVkIKm9pkPY&t=4899 I wonder how Oxide plans to gain trust with European customers who are forced to witness toxic behavior by US elites on a regular basis? In the past, the DELL/CISCO hardware and their backdoors wer…

At the time I write this parent comment is grey and I don't think it deserves to be. Some people may be down voting around the blanket statement about "US elites" despite a lot of elites clearly not being ok with the horrendous actions taken this last year, but regardless of that the concerns around dependencies and abuse of power right now are very real and quite justified particularly internationally. There are hard business considerations here as well, the executive unfortunately really does have a lot of power under existing law, particularly with a supine GOP in Congress, to unilaterally disrupt trade and export relationships with other countries, allied or not. It is part of the new business climate.

>How is it possible for a US startup with honest leadership to shine through all this bullshit?

Absolutely zero inside knowledge of course, but I think Oxide's approach has intermingled pros and cons. The only real con I can see, but it is a real one, is that one basic argument against unreliability at higher levels is standardization/commoditization. If some big player sells you a standard rack and setup, then gets blocked from further support or otherwise dies, you can just swap in whatever else. Vertical integration and customization offers real benefits but also more dependency, even if things are open unless the niche becomes big enough that other players get interested.

On the other hand, the Oxide approach is also positive thanks to that seem openness and integration. They can offer safe software and firmware up and down the stack in a way others cannot. They can offer assurance not just about one piece but around much or all of the stack. I think there's quite a few layers of insecure mystery meat in the standardized stuff most of us run when you start digging down into it. And of course there is no cloud dependency at all, a European organization can buy their kit have full on-premise control no matter what. While the answer for new "3rd party in another jurisdiction can be pressured to screw with you even if you aren't" worries will probably most often be "go to a cloud provider exclusively under your own jurisdiction instead" Oxide seems like they could have a window there as well. If they're honest and give their own customers the power that more and more of the industry has been trying to take away, while also keeping down the IT cost load as a cloud would, that seems like an argument for some?

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#172

Post by subarctic »

aabhay wrote: post #170

I simply don’t see the value here. At the cost of these systems its inevitable that you hire at least one person full time to manage your rack infra, and that person would likely prefer the customizability of commodity hardware. Source: I run a startup that recently did our datacenter buildout. At no point were we at all interested in a single integrated vendor.

Wouldn't that person want to have everything work well together so he has less headaches?

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#173

Post by subarctic »

bcantrill wrote: post #87
dorongrinstein wrote: post #16

I met Bryan Cantrill the CEO of Oxide many years ago. He's awesome. I am rooting for Oxide to become as big as Dell.

Thank you for rooting for us! One important point of clarification: I am the CTO -- the CEO of Oxide is my co-founder, Steve Tuck. Long before we know what we wanted to do (or had a name for the company!), Steve and I knew we wanted to do something together; it's worth getting to know Steve (and our collaboration) in his own words![0][1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVkIKm9pkPY [1] https://www.youtube.com/watc…

Steve seems like a cool guy, wish he was in more content!

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#174

Post by dijit »

esseph wrote: post #140
dijit wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey man, You’re not getting across a reasonable point here. Maybe take a step back and think about what you really want to say. Clearly something is landing wrong, but exactly what is not being well communicated.

It is very interesting to me to read these responses from some of you because I honestly don't see him saying anything at all unreasonable or out of line in any way. But then again, I'm not a PR person, HR, or sales.

Neither am I, and in fact I am considered one of the "harsher" voices in nearly every company I've been a part of.

but

>"you are a social cancer"

when someone is earnestly explaining the tradeoffs they're making is not constructive dialogue.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#175

Post by dcre »

aabhay wrote: post #170

I simply don’t see the value here. At the cost of these systems its inevitable that you hire at least one person full time to manage your rack infra, and that person would likely prefer the customizability of commodity hardware. Source: I run a startup that recently did our datacenter buildout. At no point were we at all interested in a single integrated vendor.

All we can say is empirically this is not true. Plenty of people whose full time job is managing rack infra are sick and tired of the customizability of commodity hardware, of the many custom bugs in commodity software, and of the customizability of the price of VMware.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#176

Post by esseph »

kaashif wrote: post #160
esseph wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this makes me want to throw up. Do not mix up opportunity and capability.

You do realize that the person you're replying to is not making a value judgement and probably agrees with you. If you have two groups of people, one with a low but nonzero signal that they can do something, the other with no signals, is it still a good idea to use that signal? You'll get fewer bad employees, but you also discard many capable people who haven't had the opportunity to even try for your signal. It stil…

> You do realize that the person you're replying to is not making a value judgement and probably agrees with you.

No, in fact I see no indicators at all that it is the case.

> If you have two groups of people, one with a low but nonzero signal that they can do something, the other with no signals, is it still a good idea to use that signal?

It may or may not be. It depends on the quality of the signal itself, its reliability, repeatability, and if that signal blinds you from other indicators or maybe even leads you astray.

Having a signal doesn't mean it's particularly useful. Example: like triggering an alert on a VMs cpu utilization. It's certainly a signal but rarely is it good for anything or actionable.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#177

Post by turtlebits »

dijit wrote: post #27
thraway3837 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a gentle reminder that a company may portray itself as cool to customers, but is not cool to their own current or future employees. Their interview process was shady. There was a post here about 1-2 years ago that was a link to their interview process and how open and transparent they were. The post itself was from an employee and a fellow commenter who was gaslighting folks was also an employee. Several folks c…

Devils advocate (really not affiliated with oxide, but I have worked for a “desirable” employer before). How would you handle a few thousand applicants for a single role? I think no matter what you do it will feel inhumane, we can argue that a few hours of work for a take home test is inhumane too, being ghosted after doing one definitely wouldn’t pass my personal bar of acceptability, but if its the first stage and…

Communication is key. Think about a restaurant high in demand. There is implied communication that the initial experience might not be great in A) lines out the door, B) reservations are days/months out.

Once you're in the door, service should be good/great.

All companies have to do is just be more transparent. Ie, we have a backlog of 1000 applicants. Or just give a time expectation for the resume to be reviewed.

Ghosting people who've "gotten in the door" and spent a considerable of time interviewing is extremely disrespectful.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#178

Post by benjaminleonard »

drudolph914 wrote: post #84
benjaminleonard wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the CAD exports were in the many millions of polygons, so there's substantial work in preparing the assets for the explorer. Kenan (the 3d artist I worked with) did fantastic work cleaning and optimising them. I'm somewhat jealous of hardware startups with products without quite so many parts! It's part of the reason I'd waited so long before making this, I knew it was going to be a lot of work. There's parts th…

I appreciate ya commenting, and let me tell ya directly that the work is great! I'm an old-head and curmudgeon - my thoughts here are about the world at large. your work here is great, please keep it up!

Thanks!

I have complex feelings about it all too. My hope is we'll re-consider what's considered hard. As a designer who started his career after the advent of digital typesetting, some of the things I barely think about were once considered difficult.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#179

Post by ykurtov »

aabhay wrote: post #170

I simply don’t see the value here. At the cost of these systems its inevitable that you hire at least one person full time to manage your rack infra, and that person would likely prefer the customizability of commodity hardware. Source: I run a startup that recently did our datacenter buildout. At no point were we at all interested in a single integrated vendor.

You don't need oxide, you can't afford it, and you're not a target customer.
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