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Engineering practice
Software Engineering: From Bit-Exact to LLM Probability
What an engineer trained to make every output deterministic learns when software starts answering in distributions.
Independent engineering notes · Des Plaines
The infrastructure is invisible.
The consequences aren't.
Long-form stories about codecs, protocols, hardware, AI, and the people who made modern technology feel ordinary.
Read the writing →Selected writing
Start here
02
Invisible Infrastructure · 04
Audio Codecs: Fifty Years of Cutting Sound Into Numbers
How a Bell Labs idea, one obsessive listening test, and a royalty-free upstart quietly ended a fifty-year codec war.
03
Invisible Infrastructure · 03
Your DNA Is Slower Than Dial-Up, and That's What Keeps You Being You
Bandwidth is not just an internet problem. It shapes language, memory, biology, and the distance a whale can sing.
04
Invisible Infrastructure · 02
WebRTC: The Protocol That Made the Browser a Phone
How a $68 million acquisition, a codec war, and a decade of standards work made real-time video native to the web.
05
Invisible Infrastructure · 01
FFmpeg: The Code That Runs Every Video on Earth
The wild story of the people who built the invisible plumbing of the multimedia world.
39 bits / second
A working belief
Technology becomes interesting when you follow a constraint all the way down—and find a person at the bottom.
From the notebook