Sami

Co-founder of @hokodotech.

Physicist, engineer, programmer, and interested in a million other subjects. Follows are not endorsement, obviously.

[Sami @catul]

@HarryStebbings If the audio composition has timestamps, you can ask Claude Code/Codex to use ffmpeg to do the same cuts in the video file.

If not, ask it to extract the audio with ffmpeg and generate a transcript with timestamps with e.g. whisper, then step 1.

You can keep the $500 :)

[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.

[Jaana Dogan ヤナ ドガン @rakyll]

This gives insights why a typical staged rollout didn't catch the bug. CrowdStrike made a compromise to roll out config changes faster. In my experience, config changes are no different from code changes. And they are usually more error-prone than code. https://t.co/70zILrKxu8

[Dr. Buzz Aldrin @TheRealBuzz]

July 20th, 1969 is a date that stands high in my life – it was the day that we, together as one people, achieved the greatest scientific and technological feat in human history. The specific role that Neil, Mike and I performed in the event was but one part of an immeasurably larger effort – not just for our nation, but for all mankind. As I look back on what we accomplished 55 years ago, I am still inspired by what we all saw and did – the best of America and the best of humanity. Thank you for the privilege and the honor of serving you, and for being part of this exciting and wonderous journey with me. #Apollo11

[Sami @catul]

@LevyAntoine Si c'est la même proposition que celle du programme de 2022, et si on en croit le simlateur encore en ligne (https://t.co/mMFHeWCZiU), alors c'est CSG incluse. Et ça donne effectivement 70% impôt sur le revenu + 20% CSG au-dessus de €33k/mois

[Sami @catul]

@RachelTobac 1590#

[Hokodo @hokodotech]

📢📢📢 We’ve just raised $12.5 million in #SeriesA to continue modernising #B2Bpayments across Europe.

This round is led by @Mosaic_VC with participation from @NotionCapital &(re)investment from @anthemis

Find out more 👉 https://t.co/BPcq6qfMP8

[Sami @catul]

@HelenBranswell @WHO Official numbers from France as of 20 Feb 6pm CET: 451 tested, 12 cases confirmed. 265 in contact of these 12 have been monitored, 79 still under monitoring. https://t.co/ENgAlMgtLL

[Sami @catul]

@sehurlburt I've been very happy with my Awair 2nd edition https://t.co/rzpw8vGjIK to monitor air quality indoors. Enough to buy another one for my parents in LA. I'd recommend it. Lets you be more proactive, feeds your (mine at least) inner nerd with data, and also monitor CO2 and humidity.

[Sami @catul]

Funny and on point, as usual.

[Corey Quinn @QuinnyPig]

Okay. For every retweet this gets (TO A POINT!) I'll add a thought / tip / observation about speaking at conferences.

[Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic]

Here’s a good rule on code correctness. All code you haven’t tested is wrong. All code you have tested is also wrong, but appears to work by coincidence. And code you’ve proven correct does the wrong thing, correctly.

[Inactive; Bluesky is @hillelwayne(dot)com @hillelogram]

I've now interviewed 12 engineers about the differences between traditional and software engineering. I learned a lot! I'm putting the interviews on pause while my Real Job gets in the way, so here's a sneak peek of some things I learned. How is software different from trad?

[Louis Carbonnier @LCarbonnier]

Great day for @hokodotech - thanks to the backing of the European Union, we're going to roll out our solutions to continental Europe much faster!
Also shows how UK-based startups can benefit from access to a large single market...

[Sami @catul]

@JeremyLaine Wooo. Great job, mate!

[Inactive; Bluesky is @hillelwayne(dot)com @hillelogram]

One of my most controversial software opinions is that your sleep quality and stress level matter far, far more than the languages you use or the practices you follow. Nothing else comes close: not type systems, not TDD, not formal methods, not ANYTHING.

Allow me to explain why.

[Sami @catul]

@NathanBenaich @soundboy Excellent stuff!
Btw numbers seem off on slide 95. Is it 32% for the "not sure" without mentioning adversaries?

[Hokodo @hokodotech]

Meet today’s s panel: Hannah Dawson from @frutli, @timfouracre from @CountingupHQ , @TheShirazian from @QuickBooksUK and the moderator of the event @Foxe_News - Hosted by @LCarbonnier & @trent_mclaren - #BlurringLines

[Galdred @StudioDraconis]

You cannot find the key to the door? No problem, just breach the wall.

#tactical #rpg #turnbased #pixelart #screenshotsaturday #zodiaclegion

[Sami @catul]

@whitequark BEAUTIFUL, love it! I think people who say comments are useless have never worked in a team that writes good ones. A place I worked had entire books as module documentation before the code even started (easily 100+ pages on stuff like USB, Unicode, etc.), and it was GLORIOUS.

[Sami @catul]

Those are adorable.

[Nathan W Pyle @nathanwpyle]

recently I started drawing a series called ✨Strange Planet✨

here is a thread of these comics

https://t.co/WcqCOljAIJ