I must admit that I am much more unsophisticated than this, and yet I "invested" in Oxide (by running my own projects off Oxide servers), and it is gratifying to see them continue to grow. My (naive) assessment: (a) agreed with Cantrill's opinions on software, (b) liked his willingness to put himself out there, and (c) felt the eng blogs showed a high level of (socio-)technical ability.

I think for the internet to break out of walled gardens, high-quality independent datacenters need to exist -- nobody wants to manage their own datacenters, and nobody wants to rely on Google/Amazon/Microsoft's platforms or (even worse) business products. I hope this continues.