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Comment by uthinter | Hacker News Reader

If anyone from Oxide is here, could you guys restart the "On the metal" podcast . It was the only CS related podcast I ever liked.

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"On the metal" was indeed lots of fun; I understand that it's been "succeeded" by Oxide's Twitter spaces, https://github.com/oxidecomputer/twitter-spaces

Thanks. I'll check it out. On the last podcast they had Ken Shirriff and it was what got me hooked.

We're (obviously!) huge fans of On the Metal[0] too (and the episode you cite with Ken was indeed extraordinary[1]!) -- but we have come to like our Oxide and Friends[2] Twitter Space even more. The reasons why are manifold, and really merit their own long-form piece, but as a few examples of episodes that show why we find it so compelling, see "Tales from the Bringup Lab"[3], "Theranos, Silicon Valley, and the March Madness of Tech Fraud"[4], "Another LPC55 Vulnerability"[5], "The Sidecar Switch"[6], "The Pragmatism of Hubris"[7], "Debugging Methodologies"[8], or "The Books in the Box"[9].

There's tons more where that came from; if you are a fan of On the Metal, I don't think you'll be disappointed -- and it has the added advantage that you join a future conversation!

[0] On The Metal: https://podbay.fm/p/on-the-metal

[1] Ken Shirriff: https://podbay.fm/p/on-the-metal/e/1611669600

[2] Friends of Oxide: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends

[3] Tales from the Bringup Lab: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1638838800

[4] Theranos, Silicon Valley, and the March Madness of Tech Fraud: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1632182400

[5] Another LPC55 Vulnerability: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1649116800

[6] The Pragmatism of Hubris: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1639443600

[7] The Sidecar Switch: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1638234000

[8] Debugging Methodologies: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1652745600

[9] The Books in the Box: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1632787200

Oxide and Friends is good despite Twitter Spaces, but On the Metal was great. I hope to see it return.

Could you include a link to the new podcastified Twitter space in the footer of https://oxide.computer/ ?

And maybe do an addendum 5 minute announcement episode on the “on the metal” podcast?

Love your excellent work, thank you all

Yes, that's in the works: we have a website redesign coming up, and this was included in it. So stay tuned!

And the 5 minute announcement on the On the Metal feed is a great idea; thanks for the idea -- and for the kind words.

Finally, I hasten to add: we have a really exciting Space coming up on Monday[0], where we'll be joined by Jon Masters to talk about the importance of integrating hardware and software teams; join us!

[0] https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/1545441245853495296

That's such a shame. I've tried listening to those recordings and it's hard to follow without the context of the "Twitter Space" which I'm not even sure what is because I don't use Twitter. The audio quality is also quite grating to listen to.

Would love recommendations for in depth, tech related podcasts that stand on their on, like On The Metal.

IMO the recordings stand just fine on their own. Even when I'm in the Twitter space live, I'm certainly not looking at tweets or anything else that's happening on the screen, unless I want to talk.

Twitter spaces are awful however and are also not easily recorded and can't be used easily on any device. (You need to go to some kind of youtube link from one of the participants to listen to a recording.) Also their twitter talks are more unfocused rants by the participants with little focus. So it's hard to listen to. I'm sure it's more fun for the participants, but not so much for the listeners. You also lose the comfort of consistency of participants.

Some of them have even been delving into some of the participants personal politics as well which is just something I'm not interested in hearing.

The Oxide Twitter spaces are recorded and distributed as a podcast [1]. If you're not a fan of the content it won't help but it's at least more convenient to consume than through Twitter.

[1] https://feeds.transistor.fm/oxide-and-friends

We've turned it into a podcast as well, so you should be able to enjoy it wherever you consume podcasts.[0]

While there may be some unfocused rants in there (sorry, I guess?), there's also a lot of extraordinary technical content -- certainly, if anyone else has described their board bringup experiences in as explicit technical detail as we have in [1] and [2], I would love to be pointed to it!

[0] https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends

[1] Tales from the Bringup Lab: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1638838800

[2] More Tales from the Bringup Lab: https://podbay.fm/p/oxide-and-friends/e/1650326400

Thanks for the link for a podcast version. That's helpful. I did listen to those two talks earlier and those were probably the most interesting. I did dislike that there seemed to be a constant process of interrupting each other in the middle of someone telling a story so the story became quite fragmented as it took some time to come back to the topic (or the topic was forgotten entirely and never elaborated on after the interruption).

Another thing that ended up being frustrating is repeated references to some image and I had to pause and go digging through people's personal twitter accounts to try and find the image that was being talked about. There seemed to be an assumption that the listener follows all employees personal twitter accounts.

There's also audio quality issues in general as it's not nearly as good a quality of media equipment as was used for the original on the metal podcast. (Maybe it's similarly cheap equipment, but it was better quality before regardless.)

I love those little interruptions. Like when a guest is speaking on a topic and they bring up a name or company of the past. And that segues into another bit of SV lore.

The audio quality seemed a bit rough on the few I checked out, but I'll try again.

If you haven't already: Maybe an "episode" directing listeners to the new stuff?

[I wouldn't have known if I hadn't stumbled onto these replies. :( ]

Other have posted the twitter link, but here is the youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFn4S3OexFT9YhxJ8GWdUYQ

Signals and Threads is equally as good as a CS podcast.

They've been posting their Twitter Spaces chats. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/twitter-spaces Not as focused as the podcast, but still very high quality content.

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