EV

views from Elgon

[Mr. Worldwide Handsome (Mr. Enjoy Da Money) 𝄢 @Leninistwarrior]

Seeing all this patriarchy debate on my tl reminds me of this

[Spencer Baggins @bigaiguy]

A French engineer who lives quietly in Paris has spent 30 years writing software that the entire internet now runs on without knowing his name.

He wrote the code that streams every YouTube video, every Netflix show, every TikTok clip. He wrote the code that runs the virtual servers underneath AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. He calculated more digits of pi than anyone in history. He has no Twitter. He has no marketing. He just keeps shipping.

His name is Fabrice Bellard.

Here is the story, because almost nobody outside the systems programming world knows what one man has built.

Fabrice was born in 1972 in Grenoble, France. He studied at École Polytechnique, the top French engineering school. He never went to Silicon Valley. He never built a startup empire. He just wrote code.

In 2000 he started a project called FFmpeg, an open-source multimedia framework for encoding, decoding, and streaming video. He was 28. The project did one thing nobody else had done well. It handled every video and audio format that existed, in one library, on every operating system. He led it himself for years.

Today FFmpeg is the invisible engine of the internet. YouTube uses it. Netflix uses it. VLC uses it. Chrome and Firefox use parts of it. Every Android phone, every iPhone, every smart TV, every video editing tool you have ever touched runs FFmpeg somewhere underneath. If you have watched a video on a screen in the last 20 years, Fabrice's code processed it.

He was not done.

In 2003 he started QEMU, a machine emulator and virtualizer. He wrote it solo until version 0.7.1 in 2005. QEMU lets you run any operating system on any other operating system. It became the foundation of modern virtualization. KVM, the Linux kernel hypervisor, runs on top of QEMU. Every major cloud provider, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, runs virtual machines on infrastructure built around it. The Quick Emulator is the most cited piece of cloud infrastructure code on Earth.

He kept going.

In 2001 he won the International Obfuscated C Code Contest with a small C compiler that grew into TCC, the Tiny C Compiler. TCC can compile and boot a Linux kernel from source in under 15 seconds. In 2004 he calculated the most digits of pi ever computed at the time, using a personal desktop computer and an algorithm he derived himself called Bellard's formula. In 2011 he wrote a complete PC emulator in pure JavaScript that runs Linux in your browser, a project called JSLinux that engineers still cannot believe is real.

In 2019 he released QuickJS, a small but complete JavaScript engine that fits where V8 cannot. In 2021 he released NNCP, a neural network based lossless data compressor that immediately took the lead on the Large Text Compression Benchmark.

Then he turned his attention to large language models. He built TextSynth Server, a web server with a REST API for running LLMs locally. He released ts_zip and ts_sms, compression utilities that use language models to compress text and short messages at ratios traditional algorithms cannot reach. He released TSAC, a very low bitrate audio compression system. In December 2025 he released Micro QuickJS, a new JavaScript engine for microcontrollers, separate from QuickJS, designed for environments with almost no memory.

Fabrice co-founded a telecom company called Amarisoft in 2012, where he serves as CTO. Amarisoft builds 4G and 5G base station software used by carriers and labs around the world. He has been running it for over a decade while continuing to ship personal projects from his own home page at bellard dot org

He has no Twitter. He has no Instagram. He gives almost no interviews. His personal website is a flat list of projects with no styling, no fonts, no marketing copy. Just titles and links.

A quiet French engineer who never moved to Silicon Valley wrote the code that quietly runs the internet.

He is still shipping.

[Dr. Ho Yinsen @kinjeketile]

When you find a cracked French engineer, they are usually cracked pro-max.

[Leyla Hamed @leylahamed]

This World Cup is going to be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

[Gitz  @Gitz__]

Africans would have hate watched Morocco during the World Cup but South Africa volunteered for the position.

[Lesilo Rula @kay_mahapa]

The people that were at Monaco this weekend don’t even know that today is Monday. It’s just you and I in this predicament.

[Michael Taiwo @AskMichaelTaiwo]

“I think the more impressive stat is that 63% of CEO's went to Grad School!”

[2025/26 PREMIER LEAGUE WINNERS 🏆🇵🇸 @daweed_004]

Demio old shape imeteka baddie mamaye

[Certified Roadman @SteeNyamu]

Campus kuna msee alihepesha gari ya folks tuende sherehe Carnivore, Mr & Miss CUEA.
Mzae wake akaona gari imetoka na kufika home kilanmtu amelala isipokuwa kijana.
Tracking chap chap and taking extra keys akarudisha gari home.
We looked for that car juu ya miti na kwa socks.

[EV @ViewElgon]

@HardQuestion2 @lateonthebrake Can't explain this idea, if what they've said is what they got from that statement

[🇯🇲7hanos876🇯🇲 @thanos876]

What’s the saying, “A Chrysler 300C looks like a Rolls Royce until a real Rolls Royce turns up”

[Sebber 🔨⏰🇯🇲 @sebastianbaughh]

She better keep this shit up I ain’t seen him drive like this in a while

[Jake Landau (He/Him) 🇨🇦🇵🇸🇻🇪🇺🇦 @JakeLandauTO]

So the United States could just refuse to let anyone else into the country and then claim victory by default? Is that what FIFA is saying?

[🌐 @ttfalor]

you cannot achieve this by locking in man

[Egal @EGTVEgal]

Why can’t he ref games in Mexico or Canada?

[Shoba Gatimu @shobanes]

Economy so Chieth, weekend zinapita bila kuona picha imejaa pombe na nyama with the caption 'MKO?'
Recession indicator.

[UltraNosk @UltraNosk]

Mulan for Americans

[Politics For You @PoliticoForYou]

BREAKING 🚨🚨🚨

World Cup fever kicks off as America welcomes the world with a traditional display of their culture and traditions.

[goma @soigomaa]

Free my man