The Bootstrap Listener That Ruined My Tail Latency
A harmless-looking nonblocking accept() loop turned a low-microsecond libfabric path into millisecond-scale tail stalls.
Field notes
Systems software, measured.
Data layouts, benchmarks, SIMD, market infrastructure, and what the machine was actually doing while everyone was looking at the API.
Writing
Latest posts
What a Noisy Benchmark Machine Almost Cost Me
A negative compiler result looked conclusive until quieter machines exposed what benchmark noise had hidden.
AI Is Random, Not Wrong
Why nondeterministic AI output is not itself evidence of error, and how seeded randomness already powers trusted systems from hash tables to Ethernet.
Two Poops and a Lollipop
Learning to market serious open-source systems software by telling the human stories between the benchmark wins.
The COW Goes MOO
How Goblin Core keeps copy-on-write memory growth during BGSAVE from becoming an out-of-memory failure.
Why We Should Learn to Love the Robot
Why AI-assisted software is still authored by the person making the architectural decisions and checking what must be true.