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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#751

Post by uecc »

leetrout wrote: post #647
endisneigh wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your examples are strange. Framework is niche. iPhones do have the pedigree. Google Fiber is barely used. Most folks do use a supported Linux distribution, they don’t roll their own.

> iPhones do have the pedigree Not in 2007-2008 which is equivalent to Oxide today.

iPhone was truly transformative.

This just seems like a twist on hyper-converged infrastructure + open source.

I mean, I love their design. I just don’t think it’s special enough to warrant mass adoption. And I certainly wouldn’t be deploying at scale in an enterprise environment with zero widespread adoption.

Small entities will just use cloud same as always. Large companies have a multitude of unique needs that won’t all be catered for by a single box. The big vendors will clean up on that front as usual.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#752

Post by gregw2 »

dfc wrote: post #730
sbarre wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem here is that the people who make the purchasing decisions (like this CTO guy) don't care about "the experience" because they're not the ones unpacking boxes and plugging in cables. They pay other people to do that and they don't really care if it's a miserable time. And if it takes days instead of hours, who cares? Rarely is someone setting up a data center under the gun (unless you're Elmo and we…

Who is Elmo?

Elon Musk, Twitter/X CEO, went to the data center and started unplugging things. You can’t make this stuff up! https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/12/the-batshit-crazy-story-...

Why “Elmo”? https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-insiders-users-calli...

Re: The Cloud Computer

#753

Post by sgloutnikov »

jpdb wrote: post #22

I really wish oxide had a Homelab/consumer centric offering! Spec wise, some low power systems like an Intel NUC, LattePanda Sigma, or Zimaboard. You could fit 3/4 of them in a single 1u with a shared power supply. They could even offer a full 1u with desktop grade chips on the same sleds. I have thought about building one myself, but it's a large investment of time that I can't seem to find lately.

Unfortunately they are not planning home lab things anytime soon, per a recent podcast episode [0].

If you want to play around with their Hubris OS: "You wanna buy an STM32H753 eval board. You can download Hubris, and then you’ve got – you’ve got an Oxide computer. You have it for 20 bucks.”

[0] https://changelog.com/friends/8

Re: The Cloud Computer

#754

Post by zemo »

steveklabnik wrote: post #738
zemo wrote: post #728

their whole "AWS is bad because THEY are engaging in rentier capitalism, we are good because we sell you the tools to let YOU engage in rentier capitalism" shtick rings empty to me

I don't know what is rentier capitalism about owning compute that your organization uses? Could you walk me through that?

the vast majority of organizations buying this product will use it to build SaaS. Now comes the part where you pretend otherwise ("but hospitals/universities need this too!"), press me for more evidence ("how do you know that's what people buy it for?"), or feign ignorance on the topic ("what's inherently rentier capitalist about SaaS?").

Re: The Cloud Computer

#755

Post by kag0 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #732
choppaface wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comp number is apparently as-of 2021 and it was explained in a post by the CTO https://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-... Certainly odd but not out of the ordinary for a small Bay Area start-up where the Founders have a ton of cash and the focus is mostly on what they personally want to do. Posts like these are b/c the Founders want to hire 1-3 people who fit exactly into alignment with them…

That number was just updated, it was less in 2021. We’re about 60 people, currently.

It would have been wild if you'd built what you did with founders + 3

Re: The Cloud Computer

#756

Post by vineyardmike »

cashsterling wrote: post #442

I've been following Oxide since they formed and I really hope they crush it. Semi-sort-of related... there was an automation company, Bedrock automation, that went defunct about a year ago. Their PLC hardware ideas were dope but I always felt like they were missing the boat a little bit by supporting stale PLC programming languages. I used to wonder if supporting Rust and Ada on these PLC's would be been a good idea…

I feel like a lot of people miss the point on PLC stuff.

“Stale PLC programming languages” might be stale and in need of a rework, but “rewrite in rust” entirely missed the value proposition. Memory safety is important, sure, but these systems aren’t usually ever allocating memory or taking actions that aren’t deterministic. PLCs usually operate in strict realtime environments. Like each operation contains a known number of clock cycles, and is timed to match physical “stuff” moving in the real world. To rewrite in rust, you’d need a flavor of rust where you can deterministically know the timing of ops and calibrate the timing of each branch of any control paths.

That said, there is a market for softer realtime PLCs and companies like Rockwell sell Windows IoT hardware- but they still contain a strict-realtime companion controller. Arduino is now selling a mountable PLC that can be programmed using their tools, but even they support traditional PLC programming languages.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#757

Post by Fnoord »

alberth wrote: post #408

The irony is that Oxide caters to the HN crowd, but the HN crowd would not be the buyer of their offerings. Old school CIO's, who make enterprise decisions without developer support, are typically the buyer of hyper-converged infrastructure (or Utility companies who struggle with CapEx vs OpEd). I wish them luck. There's a bunch really good folks over there.

> The irony is that Oxide caters to the HN crowd, but the HN crowd would not be the buyer of their offerings.

Rust, Oxide, and iron-y.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#759

Post by steveklabnik »

zemo wrote: post #754
steveklabnik wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what is rentier capitalism about owning compute that your organization uses? Could you walk me through that?

the vast majority of organizations buying this product will use it to build SaaS. Now comes the part where you pretend otherwise ("but hospitals/universities need this too!"), press me for more evidence ("how do you know that's what people buy it for?"), or feign ignorance on the topic ("what's inherently rentier capitalist about SaaS?").

Nope, I appreciate the elaboration. Neither of our first two customers are SaaS companies, but there's no point in arguing about it: I have no idea if most of our customers eventually will or not. Thanks for elaborating, I at least grok what you mean now.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#760

Post by Fnoord »

tivert wrote: post #215

That website is interesting. Maybe it's a Firefox bug, but when I load the page with NoScript on, the text is very weird, like this: > TODay WE aRE aNNOUNCING tHe It's actually much weirder than that, as some of the capitals in my quote are actually big lowercase letters, not capitals (i.e. the opposite of smallcaps).

That is an odd bug I have seen before with a browser (not sure when or when). It freaked me out back then though.

Open it in a private window and see if you can reproduce. By default, a private window uses no extensions though I prefer to have uBO enabled by default there, too.

Another peculiar detail I saw on landing page is screenshot of management interface. It must be old as it shows various VMs including FreeBSD 12.1 and Ubuntu 20.10. Ubuntu 20.10 is EOLed long ago and also wasn't a LTS release. Not something you wanted running in enterprise 3 years ago, nevermind recently.

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