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Zebras All the Way Down - Bryan Cantrill, Uptime 2017

Code & Supply · talk · Watch on YouTube

Databases & storageTesting, debugging & developer toolsCloud, DevOps & reliability

What it is

Bryan Cantrill's Uptime 2017 talk on the engineering challenges of the stateful data path, including storage, firmware and hardware bugs. It uses the 'zebras vs. horses' diagnostic heuristic to explain why rare failures keep appearing.

Why Hacker News recommends it

A perennial HN favorite whenever firmware, disks, ECC or opaque hardware come up, valued as both entertaining and sobering.

  • 6 people recommended it
  • 6 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2018, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “Lots of great tangents that add to the subjects. I love talks like this.”

    Talk with great tangents that enrich its subjects.

    gt2, 2018-10 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?”

  2. “One of my favorite conference talks is semi related to problems like this.”

    Favorite conference talk relating to hardware problems.

    ar0b, 2018-10 · Recommendation · in “iPhones are allergic to helium”

  3. “On this topic (and related in many ways) is Bryan Cantrill's talk Zebras All the way Down.”

    Explains why remaining software bugs are rare zebras, not horses.

    kbenson, 2019-07 · Recommendation · in “Replacing a silently failing disk in a ZFS pool”

  4. “Bryan Cantrill's talk on the realted topic of hardware/firmware bugs is pretty good [3].”

    Talk on hardware and firmware bugs.

    ignoramous, 2020-02 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?”

  5. “I'll link Bryan Cantrill's talk on the subject, he's more entertaining than I am.”

    Entertaining explanation of why black-box firmware is aggravating.

    Bayart, 2021-01 · Recommendation · in “Installing Debian on Modern Hardware”

  6. “For an entertaining/terrifying perspective on firmware, obligatory Bryan Cantrill talk "Zebras All the Way Down”

    Entertaining and terrifying perspective on firmware.

    thomasjudge, 2025-04 · Recommendation · in “Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: bryan cantrill, firmware, storage, data path, debugging

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