Satyaki Chatterjee

Engineer with a passion in JavaScript world.

[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.

[Anatoli Kopadze @AnatoliKopadze]

Godfather of AI: "If you sleep well tonight, you may not have understood this lecture."

This 47-minute lecture is the best thing I saw about AI in the last few months.

It will definitely help you understand how it actually works and where it's going.

Geoffrey Hinton built the neural networks behind every AI alive, then quit Google to warn the world about it.

The part nobody wanted to hear:

> AI is already developing abilities its creators didn't intend
> in most cognitive tasks it's already ahead of us
> the question is no longer if it surpasses us but when
> the only decision left is which side of that line you're on

Right now the average person opens Claude, types something, gets an answer, closes the tab.

They think they're using AI. they're using maybe 10% of it.

I went through his entire lecture, built a practical system from what he was describing.

18 steps to actually use Claude the right way, with copy-paste prompts that work today.

Full guide in the post below.

[Work Chronicles @_workchronicles]

(comic) Meaningful Commit Message

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

An emotional, hopeful journey in Kaalidhar Laapata ✨ reminding us to value our dreams before they fade 💭. Brilliant performances by @juniorbachchan, @Mdzeeshanayyub, @NimratOfficial, Daivik & cast! Must watch! 🎬 #KaalidharLaapata #KaalidharLaapataOnZee5 @zee5

[TheLiverDoc™ @theliverdoc]

Are you taking a multivitamin thinking its helping? Are you prescribing a multivitamin thinking its helping? Then this is for you, in 10 simple slides!
1/12

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

@ag_arpit1 This reminds me the scene from the movie called Meiyazhagan. I was not aware of this fact that the scene is inspired from the actual reality. #Meiyazhagan

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

@zoo_bear @OishaniB_ We have done a mockery of journalism by creating the fake content and pulling unwanted TRP. This is not at all expected from a sensible and reputed media house like @abpanandatv @IamSumanDe We have absolutely no reliable TV news channel or journalists.

[celina ❦ @bollyvfx_]

what he said here is very relevant now more than ever

[Anders Hejlsberg @ahejlsberg]

Thrilled to announce... https://t.co/bC9ZVGfDco

[Work Chronicles @_workchronicles]

(comic) Decision vs. Outcome

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

#JusticeForAtulSubhash #MensRights

[Prayag @theprayagtiwari]

This is heartbreaking, truly heartbreaking. I am sad and angry. Atul Subhash, an AI engineer, tragically took his own life after enduring constant harassment from the court and his ex-wife over alimony. 💔 #JusticeForAtulSubhash

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

A better way to render images progressively.

[Devon Govett @devongovett]

Along with automatic skeletons, another thing I worked on recently was coordinated image loading. You can wrap any group of images with an <ImageCoordinator>, and all the images under it will fade in together rather than popcorning. Makes for a much more pleasant experience! 😀

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

@mskutin @santattech Keep those servers and steps in sync.😅 🌐👟

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

@theliverdoc doc, is it applicable to raw turmeric too?

[Bramus @bramus]

Or use this CSS:

```
.log {
scroll-snap-type: y proximity;
align-content: end;
}
.log::after {
display: block;
content: "";
scroll-snap-align: end;
}
```

“… remains snapped to the bottom …unless the user has scrolled away from that edge” — https://t.co/lUaMtD32uB

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

ফুরায় যা তা ফুরায় শুধু চোখে, অন্ধকারের পেরিয়ে দুয়ার যায় চলে আলোকে।

Comrade Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
#RedSalute #FormerChiefMinister #WestBengal #westbengalcm #cpim

[Satyaki Chatterjee @satyaki_chat]

@housecor Thank you, Cory! The content is very helpful!

[Mukul Dekhane @dekhane_mukul]

Marathi Movie Director Vijay Dutt told his Music Director Dhananjay Dhumal that he wanted only natural voices of Birds for the Movie "Machivarla Budha" based on GN Dandekar's novel.

Dhumal travelled 1800 kms through the jungles of Lonavala, Arnala, Tryambakeshvar and Satara. He collected 25 GB of data, edited and prepared this Bird Song. This does not have Music of any instrument and is 100% natural. Enjoy this ecstatic Music most of which was recorded in the morning. Watch the crazy hammering of Woodpeckers and a Raquet-Tailed Drongo take-off.

#Brilliant

💐🎉💐🎉

[Cory House @housecor]

React 19 is huge. Here's a cheat sheet.

Nine new features:
1. React Server Components - Components that render at build time, or for each request.

2. Actions - Functions that use async transitions and automatically submit data for you. Actions support error handling, optimistic updates, and pending state.

3. Full custom element support

4. Document metadata support - Render title, link, and meta tags and they automatically hoist.

5. Stylesheets with precedence settings

6. Render async scripts in any component - They're automatically deduplicated

7. Preload resources via prefetchDNS, preconnect, preload, preinit

8. Unexpected tags in <head> and <body> are skipped over - Improves third-party script compatibility and avoids mismatch errors

9. Better error reporting - Automatically removes duplicate errors. Added onCaughtError and onUncaughtError root options.

Two new directives:
1. 'use client' marks code that runs only on the client.

2. 'use server' marks server-side functions that can be called from client-side code.

Six new APIs:
1. use - Read resources (like promises and context) in render

2. ref as a prop - refs are finally just a plain prop!

3. ref callbacks support returning a cleanup function

4. Streamlined Context - Use <Context> instead of <Context.Provider>

5. useDeferredValue - Now accepts an initial value too

3 new hooks:
1. useActionState - Declare form state and degrade gracefully if JS hasn't executed yet

2. useFormStatus - Get a form’s status

3. useOptimistic - Show the final state optimistically while an async request is underway