Bryan Cantrill of Joyent presents Manta, an internet-facing object store that lets you run compute directly on the data. The talk is peppered with ZFS history and Cantrill's trademark commentary on the industry.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends Cantrill talks generally for their mix of industry history, technical depth and entertaining delivery, and this one is a favorite for storage and data integrity threads.
“I highly recommend any talk you can find of Bryan Cantrill. A wonderful mix of industry history and great delivery.”HN comment, 2017
“I recommend checking out this video [1] from Bryan Cantrill.”
Manta talk with ZFS history and typical Cantrill rant
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If you have corruption in RAID 1 how do you know which copy is good? On a slight tangent ZFS will checksum data and store that checksum in the block pointer (i.e. not with the data itself) so it can tell which of the copies is correct. The same extends to RAID 5 and RAID 6, although with RAID 6 you can intelligently work out which block might be bad. However that is assuming the block devices are returning consistent data and you are the one talking to the block devices. If the disks were sat behind a hardware RAID controller and the controller was the one you'd be hard pressed to identify the source of the data corruption. The checksumming in ZFS comes to the rescue here again. I recommend checking out this video [1] from Bryan Cantrill. It's about Joyent's object store Manta but features a fair bit of ZFS history. Also it features the usual rant level that one can come to expect from a Bryan Cantrill talk which I quite enjoy. There are plenty of other videos available on ZFS. [1] this video
Strongly recommendskbensonDec 2017
“I highly recommend any talk you can find of Bryan Cantrill. A wonderful mix of industry history and great delivery.”
Mix of industry history and great delivery
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Bryan Cantrill says it best, I think[1]: "If you had to explain the Nazis to someone who had never heard of WWII but was an oracle customer, there's a very good chance you would actually explain the Nazis as an Oracle allegory." There are more choice quotes in someone else's HN comment about Bryan Cantrill on Oracle.[2] I highly recommend any talk you can find of Bryan Cantrill. A wonderful mix of industry history and great delivery. 1: this video 2: link
RecommendsbcantrillNov 2014
“you may want to check out my FutureStack presentation from last year.[1]”
Introduction to Manta from its creator
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If anyone's interested in a presentation introduction to Manta (presumably similar to the one you saw), you may want to check out my FutureStack presentation from last year.[1] And if you have 90 minutes to kill and are in the mood for the true origin story of Manta, see my video from NYC DevOps in January.[2] [1] link [2] this video
RecommendsFlenserAug 2015
“You might enjoy this talk by Bryan Cantrill”
Cantrill's colorful Oracle allegory rant
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You might enjoy this talk by Bryan Cantrill, where he describes the Oracle acquisition of Sun: link > "what you think of Oracle is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle" > "this company is about one man and his alter ego and what he wants to inflict upon humanity" Edit: And how could I forget this: this video > "and then, the Nazis invaded" > "for a while I tried to not go to Nazi allegory when talking about Oracle but I actually think that it does a dis-service to not go to Nazi allegory because if I don't use Nazi allegory when referring to Oracle there's some critical understanding that I have left on the table"
Recommendsgbrown_Aug 2016
“Bryan Cantrill expresses this[1] in a manner I certainly agree with.”
Cantrill on reliable software not being unstable for long periods
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Bryan Cantrill expresses this[1] in a manner I certainly agree with. Software that is designed/ intended to be reliable should not go through large periods of instability only to be written off as "prepubescence". [1] this video
Cites itmasklinnDec 2017
“if you have to explain the Nazis to someone who had never heard of World War 2 but was an Oracle customer”
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And remember, > Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle. — Brian Cantrill ( link ) And > I actually think that it does a dis-service to not go to Nazi allegory because if I don't use Nazi allegory when referring to Oracle there's some critical understanding that I have left on the table […] in fact as I have said before I emphatically believe that if you have to explain the Nazis to someone who had never heard of World War 2 but was an Oracle customer there's a very good chance that you would explain the Nazis in Oracle allegory. — also Brian Cantrill ( this video )
Cites itahnickJun 2020
“IIRC Bryan Cantrill said something similar about data when Joyent was developing their object storage system Manta”
Cantrill on data being hard to move
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Personally I think I'm more drawn to the dotmesh approach ( link ), but the one problem data has is as it gets massive it becomes really hard to move it around and I guess that's where trying to layer git like workflows on top of it become intractable. It's like data has it's own gravity and often times it is just easier to bring other things to the data, rather than the other way around. IIRC Bryan Cantrill said something similar about data when Joyent was developing their object storage system Manta ( this video ergo, perhaps the Splitgraph approach will meet with better success.
JokedkbrkJun 2025
“Yes, Larry Ellison has an entire country”
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I actually think that it does a disservice to not go to Nazi allegory, because if I don't use Nazi allegory when referring to Oracle there is some critical understanding that I have left on the table; there is an element of the story that you can't possibly understand. In fact, as I have said before and I emphatically believe, if you had to explain the Nazis to somebody who had never heard of WWII but was an Oracle customer, there's a very good chance that you actually explain the Nazis in Oracle allegory. So, it's like: "Really, wow, a whole country?"; "Yes, Larry Ellison has an entire country"; "Oh my god, the humanity! The License Audits!"; "Yeah, you should talk to Poland about it, it was bad. Bad, it was a blitzkrieg license audit." this video
JokeDonHopkinsMay 2026Full comment
The reason why Java is such a terrible choice now is not technical, it's the Lawnmower Nazi argument: link masklinn on Dec 9, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Larry Ellison allegedly tried to have a professor ... And remember, > Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle. — Brian Cantrill ( link ) And > I actually think that it does a dis-service to not go to Nazi allegory because if I don't use Nazi allegory when referring to Oracle there's some critical understanding that I have left on the table […] in fact as I have said before I emphatically believe that if you have to explain the Nazis to someone who had never heard of World War 2 but was an Oracle customer there's a very good chance that you would explain the Nazis in Oracle allegory. — also Brian Cantrill ( this video )
JokesoraminazukiJun 2026
“Yes, we should talk to Poland about it, it was bad.”
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He also said later: > For a while, I tried not going into Nazi allegory when talking about Oracle, but I actually think it does a disservice to not go into Nazi allegory because if I don't use Nazi allegory when referring to Oracle, there are some critical understanding that I have left on the table. There's an element of the story you can't possibly understand. If you had to explain the Nazis to someone who had never heard of World War 2, but was an Oracle customer, there's a very good chance that you would actually explain the Nazis in Oracle allegory. So, it's like: "Really, wow, a whole country?" "Yes, Larry Ellison has an entire country." "Oh my god, the humanity! The license audits!" "Yes, we should talk to Poland about it, it was bad." this video
