[new blog post] Chess Invariants muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/05/ches...

[new blog post] Book review: The Thinking Machine muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/05/book...

[new blog post] The Two Abstractions of System Design: Hide or Reduce muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-...

[new blog post] BugBash'26 Day 2 muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/05/bugb...

[new blog post] BugBash'26 Afternoon of Day 1 muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/04/bugb...

My notes from this year's Antithesis BugBash conference, about software verification and distributed systems: emptysqua.re/blog/notes-f...

[new blog post] BugBash'26 Morning of Day 1 muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/04/bugb...

[new blog post] BugBash26 Keynote: We won, what now? muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/04/bugb...

I got to meet my hero @muratdemirbas.bsky.social at BugBash.

[new blog post] OSTEP Chapter 14: Interlude -- Memory API muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/04/oste...

[new blog post] PolitePaxos: A New Consensus Variant Where the Proposer Just Asks Nicely muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/04/poli...

the long task gap is real. single-file refactors feel magical, then you ask it to trace a bug across four services and it starts hallucinating import paths that don't exist

[new blog post] Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Software Tasks muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/meas...

[new blog post] OSTEP Chapter 13: The Abstraction of Address Spaces muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/oste...

[new blog post] SysMoBench: Evaluating AI on Formally Modeling Complex Real-World Systems muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/sysm...

[new blog post] TLA+ Mental Models muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/tla-... #tlaplus

[new blog post] Break Paxos muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/brea...

[new blog post] Claude Code experiment: Visualizing Hybrid Logical Clocks muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/clau...

Using Claude Code, I built another distributed systems visualization. This one is an interactive Paxos tutorial game. You try (and fail) to break safety by killing and delaying nodes. Paxos holds its ground. What’s your high score? Play it here: muratdem.github.io/BeatPaxos/ Share and enjoy.

I built a small interactive visualizer for Hybrid Logical Clocks (HLC). I used Claude Code to put this together quickly and make the behavior visible step by step. Try it here: muratdem.github.io/hlc-visualiz... Feedback welcome. Share if useful.

[new blog post] Measuring Agents in Production muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/meas...

[new blog post] Modeling Token Buckets in PlusCal and TLA+ muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/mode...

[new blog post] The Serial Safety Net: Efficient Concurrency Control on Modern Hardware muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-... This paper proposes a way to get serializability without completely destroying your system's performance. It flips the script on how we think about isolation levels.

Do you care if an LLM sees you naked? What does privacy mean now? emptysqua.re/blog/what-do...

[new blog post] TLA+ as a Design Accelerator: Lessons from the Industry muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/tla-...

TLA+ Tilapias #tlaplus

Monster Scale Summit (free and virtual) starts tomorrow. Pop in to learn from an incredible lineup (@skamille.themanagerswrath.com, @antirez.bsky.social, @martin.kleppmann.com, @muratdemirbas.bsky.social, @dominiktornow.bsky.social, @teivah.dev Pat Helland, Joran Greef....) www.scylladb.com/summit

[new blog post] Building a database on S3 muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/buil...

New tech blogger interview -- this time we’re featuring @muratdemirbas.bsky.social, who’s about to publish his 800th (!) blog post writethatblog.substack.com/p/murat-demi...

[new blog post] 800th blog post: Write that Blog! muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/800t...

[new blog post] Writing Away From the Screen muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/writ...

[new blog post] End of Productivity Theater muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/end-...

[new blog post] OSTEP Chapter 9: Proportional Share Scheduling, and the Linux CFS muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/oste...

For our latest tech blogger interview, we’re featuring @gwenshap.bsky.social. writethatblog.substack.com/p/gwen-shapi...

We’re hosting an absolutely amazing lineup of speakers and talks this year. Take a look and pls join us if anything looks interesting. It's free + virtual. www.scylladb.com/2026/02/17/m...

[new blog post] Butlers or Architects? muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/butl...

I really enjoyed the observations you make here! In particular, I appreciated the need for a "distinctive voice" in one's writing. I remember my advisor insisting that I read everything I could by Carl Waldspurger because of how clearly he explained an idea.

[new blog post] Do You Think I Am a Goldfish? muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/do-y...

[new blog post] OSTEP Chapter 8. Scheduling: The Multi-Level Feedback Queue muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/oste...

[new blog post] Towards a Standard for JSON Document Databases muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/towa...

[new blog post] OSTEP Chapters 6,7 muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/oste...

[new blog post] The F word If the goal isn't actively set to help and streamline the process (if the intention isn't "how do we solve this?"), the energy of the system inevitably shifts toward finding problems. Friction becomes the product. muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/fric...

[new blog post] OSTEP Chapters 4,5: Virtualization and the process abstraction muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/01/oste...

[new blog post] CockroachDB Serverless: Sub-second Scaling from Zero with Multi-region Cluster Virtualization muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/01/cock...

I gave a Zen talk about AI, although it's mostly math and only a little bit of Zen. What is an LLM? How does it work? Is it conscious? emptysqua.re/blog/ai-omg/

[new blog post] Welcome to Town Al-Gasr muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/01/welc...

[new blog post] Agentic AI and The Mythical Agent-Month muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/01/agen...

[new blog post] Rethinking the University in the Age of AI muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/01/reth...

[new blog post] Cloudspecs: Cloud Hardware Evolution Through the Looking Glass muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/01/clou...