Oct 20, 2026 / Systems, Security, Video
Serving Private Files Securely
How to protect private files and HLS video across signed URLs, signed cookies and CDN caches, and what happens when access is revoked.
Read postSoftware, systems, and the p99
It is not enough for code to work.
“The best way I’ve found to have a positive impact on code is to write it.”
Engineering notes
2026
Oct 14, 2026 / Systems, AI, Attention
The Next Project Is the Trap
Coding agents make new projects easy to start. Here's why fresh ideas pull you away from unfinished work, and how to protect your attention and finish.
Read postOct 9, 2026 / Systems, Latency, Reliability
Queueing Theory in One Picture
Spare capacity is what lets a bottleneck absorb variation without making every request wait.
Read postOct 6, 2026 / Systems, Reliability, Overload
Retries as a Load Multiplier
A retry gives one request another chance. Across a fleet, it can keep a failing dependency from recovering.
Read postOct 1, 2026 / Systems, AI, Reliability
Skill Is a Dependency
The silent failure in AI-assisted engineering is you
Read postSep 23, 2026 / Systems, Delivery, Reliability
Ship Fast. Recover Faster.
Fast delivery depends on small changes, canary rollouts, production telemetry, and a tested rollback path.
Read postSep 7, 2026 / Systems, AI, Reliability
Synthetic Resilience
A coding agent can turn a dependency failure into silent, incorrect behavior by inventing a fallback your system was never designed to use.
Read postAug 25, 2026 / Systems
Conformance Is Not Interoperability
Devices do not always behave according to their advertised capabilities. Reliable integrations verify behavior at runtime.
Read postAug 23, 2026 / Meta
Why p99log
What this is, what the name means, and why the tail matters more than the average.
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