I write about system design, distributed systems, and backend architecture.
Why Your Neighbor Celebrates Goals Before You Do: The Hidden World of Streaming Latency
The Moment Everything Broke November 15, 2024. 65 million people tried to watch Jake Paul fight Mike Tyson on Netflix. The platform crashed. Not from a cyberattack. Not from server failures. But from something more fundamental: the limits of streaming at unprecedented scale. Buffering. Freezing. Error messages. #NetflixCrash trended worldwide. Meanwhile, that same night in Mumbai, 50+ million cricket fans streamed the final overs of a tense match on Hotstar—most without a single buffering issue. ...