Top all-time · #213
Oxide Computer Company
Company blog · oxide.computer/blogsystemshardware
Oxide Computer Company is the company blog at oxide.computer, writing about systems and hardware. Since 2019, 224 different Hacker News readers have linked it 351 times, most often “Oxide Cloud Computer. No Cables. No Assembly. Just Cloud”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 12 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Oxide Computer's blog, On the Metal and Oxide and Friends podcasts, and RFD design process posts, covering rack-scale on-premises cloud hardware, engineering process and compensation philosophy.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The cloud you own. Hardware, with the software baked in, for running infrastructure at scale.
Most-linked posts?
- Oxide Cloud Computer. No Cables. No Assembly. Just Cloud45 people · 49 mentions · first linked 2019-12-02
- Servers as they should be – shipping early 202215 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2020-01-30
- Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)11 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2021-05-26
- /careers10 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2021-05-27
- /podcast/10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-03-28
- /podcasts8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-05-26
- Oxide: The Cloud Computer8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2023-10-26
- /product/specifications7 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2023-10-26
- Hubris – A small operating system for deeply-embedded computer systems6 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-11-30
- /podcasts/oxide-and-friends6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-12-12
What Hacker News says?
Like https://oxide.computer/ ?
Comment linking /
on “Migrating from AWS to Hetzner”Submitted Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022 as a story · 876 points
HN discussionOxide Computer Company https://oxide.computer/ “True rack-scale design, bringing cloud hyperscale innovations around density, efficiency, cost, reliability, manageability, and security to everyone running on-premises compute infrastructure.” Corey Quinn interviewed the founders on his podcast "Screaming in the Cloud", where they explain the need for innovation in that space. https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/scr…
Comment linking /podcast/
on “Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?”Submitted Our $100M Series B as a story · 751 points
HN discussionHave you heard about Oxide Computer Company? https://oxide.computer/team/
Comment linking /team/
on “They're deleting my channel, but they don't know why? [video]”Submitted Our $445M Series D as a story · 705 points
HN discussionFully agree. And if you want to take it to the next level (and have a large budget), Oxide [0] seems to have neatly packaged this into a single coherent product. They don't quite have K8s fully running, last I checked, but there are of course other container orchestration systems. > Go to the machine once the spare disk as already been resilvered Hi, fellow ZFS enthusiast :-) [0]: https://oxide.computer
Comment linking /
on “Why we use our own hardware”Submitted Hubris – A small operating system for deeply-embedded computer systems as a story · 560 points
HN discussionFYI: The CTO of the Oxide Computer Company is Bryan Cantrill. (He is responding in this discussion as "bcantrill" -- I assume[!].) You can read about him on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill He also has many interesting and thoughtful recorded talks on YouTube. I highly recommend them. I am posting this info because it seems their "team" page ( https://oxide.computer/team/ ) is no longer working. I…
Comment linking /careers
on “Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022”Submitted Oxide Computer Company: Initial boot sequence as a story · 509 points
HN discussionI read through your "Compensation as a Reflection of Values" article [1] and just wanted to say that I love it. It reflects and relates so much to my own values towards work, as a life philosophy, that I felt refreshed knowing others not only think this way but also have the power to implement such a culture. Thanks for trying that, I hope it becomes something more common to workers in general. [1] https://oxide.com…
Comment linking /blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-values
on “Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022”Submitted Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going? as a story · 264 points
HN discussionhttps://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-...
Comment linking /blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-values
on “Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022”Submitted How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half as a story · 195 points
HN discussionIf you haven’t been listening to their “On The Metal” podcast you are really missing out! https://oxide.computer/podcasts It’s all fun stories from people doing amazing things with computer hardware and low level software. Like Ring-Sub-Zero and DRAM driver level software.
Comment linking /podcasts
on “Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022”Submitted Another Vulnerability in the LPC55S69 ROM as a story · 160 points
HN discussionFirst, congrats! But second, I'd love to understand the compute vs storage tradeoff chosen here. Looking at the (pretty!) picture [1], I was shocked to see "Wow, it's mostly storage?". Is that from going all flash? Heading to https://oxide.computer/product for more details, lists: - 2048 cores - 30 TB of memory - 1024 TB of flash (1 PiB) Given how much of the rack is storage, I'm not sure which Milan was chosen (and…
Comment linking /_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Frenders%2Foxide-rack-front.png&w=2048&q=75
on “Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022”Submitted Virtual Oxide Labs: Emulating a Full Oxide Rack as a story · 149 points
HN discussionThe On the Metal[1] podcast had some absolutely magical interviews for this sort of thing in their first season. I honestly loved them all and there are great stories in each of them, but purely for the folklore aspects I’d highlight the Jeff Rothschild and Tom Lyon episodes. [1] https://oxide.computer/podcast/
Comment linking /podcast/
on “I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something”Submitted Oxide Cloud Computer. No Cables. No Assembly. Just Cloud as a story · 149 points
HN discussionYou may have heard G. Michael Hopf's famous quote: Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times . I think we may be advancing to another step in that cycle with software development. Strong, principled software companies created good times in the late 2000s and 2010s, now good times have created software company leaders who are less principle…
Comment linking /principles
on “Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions in Edge”Submitted Compensation as a Reflection of Values as a story · 145 points
HN discussionhttps://oxide.computer They pay $180K full remote for Rust. (I may try to go there myself, so if you want to avoid me, keep that in mind...)
Comment linking /
on “I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now”Submitted Moore's Scofflaws as a story · 139 points
HN discussionThe (startup) Oxide podcast has good history/stories about on-prem servers, from veterans of pioneering companies. They are fans of open-source firmware and Rust, and are working to make OCP-based servers usable for on-prem. In one podcast, they observed that cloud is initially cheaper, but can quickly become expensive with growth. There is a time window where you can still switch from cloud to on-prem, but if that…
Comment linking /podcast/
on “Ask HN: Is your company sticking to on-premise servers? Why?”Submitted Exploiting Undocumented Hardware Blocks in the LPC55S69 as a story · 109 points
HN discussionWell, good news: we have one of those too![0] [0] https://oxide.computer/blog/hubris-and-humility
Comment linking /blog/hubris-and-humility
on “Our $100M Series B”Submitted Discovering the xz backdoor with Andres Freund [audio] as a story · 106 points
HN discussionI'm not someone who works on this part of the product, but we talk a little about this stuff here: * https://oxide.computer/blog/how-oxide-cuts-data-center-power... * https://docs.oxide.computer/guides/introduction I feel like we had a good Oxide and Friends on this too... https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/bringing-up... has some info about our power setup. Anyway, I barely know anything about this to…
Comment linking /blog/how-oxide-cuts-data-center-power-consumption-in-half
on “Our $100M Series B”Submitted Oxide raises $200M Series C as a story · 85 points
HN discussion
