Andras Gerlits
@omniledger.io
I have built the first async, consistent data-platform
https://omniledger.io/
I build distributed systems @Citi
I also write about distributed systems
https://medium.com/@andrasgerlits
https://omniledger.io/
I build distributed systems @Citi
I also write about distributed systems
https://medium.com/@andrasgerlits
If you believe the conclusions of CAP apply to all distributed systems, you believe that there's no way to not have the occasional latency spike or even node isolation event happen to your service, unless you have an incredibly well tuned network. Our next project disproves this
November 29, 2025 at 9:40 AM
If you believe the conclusions of CAP apply to all distributed systems, you believe that there's no way to not have the occasional latency spike or even node isolation event happen to your service, unless you have an incredibly well tuned network. Our next project disproves this
LLMs and Tesla's FSD are the same problem. Both can only succeed if they can consistently apply meaning and reason about it. A bush with feet is a human carrying a plant. Now do this with orders of magnitude more complexity and you see the problem.
Probabilism won't save you
Probabilism won't save you
November 27, 2025 at 6:00 AM
LLMs and Tesla's FSD are the same problem. Both can only succeed if they can consistently apply meaning and reason about it. A bush with feet is a human carrying a plant. Now do this with orders of magnitude more complexity and you see the problem.
Probabilism won't save you
Probabilism won't save you
We're planning a new kind of service, one everyone thought impossible because of CAP, that should fix most distributed systems problems in a very simple way. If you have control-plane problems or service-integration issues, send me a DM or reply here and I'll get in touch.
November 26, 2025 at 5:41 AM
We're planning a new kind of service, one everyone thought impossible because of CAP, that should fix most distributed systems problems in a very simple way. If you have control-plane problems or service-integration issues, send me a DM or reply here and I'll get in touch.
I did find it amazing at the start, (but got used to by now) is how nobody refutes our innovation at its substance. People who take the time to understand it (without exception) also accept even our wildest claims.
Few actually care about truth if it contradicts their beliefs
Few actually care about truth if it contradicts their beliefs
November 20, 2025 at 10:20 AM
I did find it amazing at the start, (but got used to by now) is how nobody refutes our innovation at its substance. People who take the time to understand it (without exception) also accept even our wildest claims.
Few actually care about truth if it contradicts their beliefs
Few actually care about truth if it contradicts their beliefs
A thread about why pessimistic systems are bad at scaling.
Let's analyse Spanner using the model explained here. Spanner relies on pessimistic locks, so we first need to ask the question of what it is in a distributed system. Simple: a pessimistic lock is an optimistically written record, sometimes on a remote node.
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
November 20, 2025 at 5:53 AM
A thread about why pessimistic systems are bad at scaling.
Let's analyse Spanner using the model explained here. Spanner relies on pessimistic locks, so we first need to ask the question of what it is in a distributed system. Simple: a pessimistic lock is an optimistically written record, sometimes on a remote node.
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
November 20, 2025 at 5:52 AM
Let's analyse Spanner using the model explained here. Spanner relies on pessimistic locks, so we first need to ask the question of what it is in a distributed system. Simple: a pessimistic lock is an optimistically written record, sometimes on a remote node.
My goal with these threads is to outline the minimal semantics of distributed consistency in a generally accessible format. I think these questions have been mostly ignored for decades, which is a shame, since they can lead to practical results.
In the last one, we'll tackle CAP
In the last one, we'll tackle CAP
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
November 19, 2025 at 5:30 AM
My goal with these threads is to outline the minimal semantics of distributed consistency in a generally accessible format. I think these questions have been mostly ignored for decades, which is a shame, since they can lead to practical results.
In the last one, we'll tackle CAP
In the last one, we'll tackle CAP
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
November 19, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
So, when is the industry going to be ready to talk about decentralisation? I mean, you can argue that CloudFlare engineers know what they're doing, but that also means that this problem is too complex to be solved centrally.
November 18, 2025 at 2:28 PM
So, when is the industry going to be ready to talk about decentralisation? I mean, you can argue that CloudFlare engineers know what they're doing, but that also means that this problem is too complex to be solved centrally.
There's a great interview with Leslie Lamport, in which he makes the point that any time-ordered system will contradict the observed (causal) order of events as seen by different processes in different places. He's clearly right about this, except for his conclusion.
November 16, 2025 at 6:00 AM
There's a great interview with Leslie Lamport, in which he makes the point that any time-ordered system will contradict the observed (causal) order of events as seen by different processes in different places. He's clearly right about this, except for his conclusion.
Time is experiencing changes. In distributed systems, we focus on composing these changes eagerly into a unified view for any potential observer. This eagerness is the bottleneck. If you just lazily calculate each observer's current view, the known problems just don't apply.
November 15, 2025 at 5:46 AM
Time is experiencing changes. In distributed systems, we focus on composing these changes eagerly into a unified view for any potential observer. This eagerness is the bottleneck. If you just lazily calculate each observer's current view, the known problems just don't apply.
The basic facts of physics tells us why distributing systems is hard. It's because different time-coordination systems move at different speeds. The only logical conclusion here is that these need to be calibrated to each other if we want to establish order between them.
November 2, 2025 at 4:34 AM
The basic facts of physics tells us why distributing systems is hard. It's because different time-coordination systems move at different speeds. The only logical conclusion here is that these need to be calibrated to each other if we want to establish order between them.
Second outage in two weeks. I guess it's time to be educated about how nobody could do better than be down for half a day again.
October 30, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Second outage in two weeks. I guess it's time to be educated about how nobody could do better than be down for half a day again.
The AWS outage has nominally happened because of DNS, but the root cause is that we centralise data-collection and management. If data was delivered to observers from multiple sources (with a shared timeline), central outages cannot happen. Not all reactors are Chernobyl
October 26, 2025 at 7:05 AM
The AWS outage has nominally happened because of DNS, but the root cause is that we centralise data-collection and management. If data was delivered to observers from multiple sources (with a shared timeline), central outages cannot happen. Not all reactors are Chernobyl
The consensus in IT that cloud providers failing centrally is still the best of all possible worlds is not only self-serving but also false. It leads to clients not asking questions so everything staying the same. I think the reason developers excuse this is because 1/x
October 24, 2025 at 4:15 PM
The consensus in IT that cloud providers failing centrally is still the best of all possible worlds is not only self-serving but also false. It leads to clients not asking questions so everything staying the same. I think the reason developers excuse this is because 1/x
People offload to cloud-providers, not because that is the technically superior thing to do, but for the same reason they hire McKinsey, to shift blame from themselves.
October 21, 2025 at 6:47 AM
People offload to cloud-providers, not because that is the technically superior thing to do, but for the same reason they hire McKinsey, to shift blame from themselves.
I love how absolute science is. It's the only area where you can be unapologetically certain about being right even if everyone else is telling you that you're wrong.
October 21, 2025 at 4:36 AM
I love how absolute science is. It's the only area where you can be unapologetically certain about being right even if everyone else is telling you that you're wrong.
Wrt today's failure: There were two things that surprised me very much after I started working in software innovation. The first was how receptive academia was to new ideas. I'm very proud of the fact that so many took the time to understand how we solved the fundamental 1/x
October 20, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Wrt today's failure: There were two things that surprised me very much after I started working in software innovation. The first was how receptive academia was to new ideas. I'm very proud of the fact that so many took the time to understand how we solved the fundamental 1/x
Some AI exec: I've seen a future version of our product and it's so powerful, it scares me.... (stares off in the dark with a tear in their eye). I wake at night, trembling for the future of humanity...
Reporter: Can we see it?
E: No, it's too powerful!
Reporter: Can we see it?
E: No, it's too powerful!
October 14, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Some AI exec: I've seen a future version of our product and it's so powerful, it scares me.... (stares off in the dark with a tear in their eye). I wake at night, trembling for the future of humanity...
Reporter: Can we see it?
E: No, it's too powerful!
Reporter: Can we see it?
E: No, it's too powerful!
Call me a Luddite, but I don't think it's great that the tech-sector is beholden to a small, entrenched group of VCs. It's ironic that "incumbents only do innovation theater" used to be their rallying cry.
October 14, 2025 at 5:48 AM
Call me a Luddite, but I don't think it's great that the tech-sector is beholden to a small, entrenched group of VCs. It's ironic that "incumbents only do innovation theater" used to be their rallying cry.
'm convinced that the love for CAP, Kubernetes and microservices come from the same place. CAP was taken to mean that you can't ever have a perfect platform, so might as well cook your own.
Simplicity is the last thing they want. They would much rather feel clever.
Simplicity is the last thing they want. They would much rather feel clever.
October 13, 2025 at 7:10 AM
'm convinced that the love for CAP, Kubernetes and microservices come from the same place. CAP was taken to mean that you can't ever have a perfect platform, so might as well cook your own.
Simplicity is the last thing they want. They would much rather feel clever.
Simplicity is the last thing they want. They would much rather feel clever.
A fundamental principle of spacetime is that the further away you are from a source of information, the longer it will take for it to travel to you. This increased time means your local time can progress faster, so the remote clock will have "bigger chunks of data".
October 11, 2025 at 3:43 AM
A fundamental principle of spacetime is that the further away you are from a source of information, the longer it will take for it to travel to you. This increased time means your local time can progress faster, so the remote clock will have "bigger chunks of data".
Krasznahorkai's work _is_ the malaise carried by Hungarian intellectualism. In his interviews, he makes his loathing for Hungarian nationalism very clear, but I don't know a single serious thinker here (in Budapest) who doesn't share his alienation.
When Imre Kertesz won the Nobel in literature in '02, almost nobody knew his work. As for Krasznahorkai, it's a different picture. Almost everyone I know read something from him at some point and certainly know his work with Bela Tarr.
Literature is only half-dead.
Literature is only half-dead.
October 10, 2025 at 4:05 AM
Krasznahorkai's work _is_ the malaise carried by Hungarian intellectualism. In his interviews, he makes his loathing for Hungarian nationalism very clear, but I don't know a single serious thinker here (in Budapest) who doesn't share his alienation.
When Imre Kertesz won the Nobel in literature in '02, almost nobody knew his work. As for Krasznahorkai, it's a different picture. Almost everyone I know read something from him at some point and certainly know his work with Bela Tarr.
Literature is only half-dead.
Literature is only half-dead.
October 9, 2025 at 3:07 PM
When Imre Kertesz won the Nobel in literature in '02, almost nobody knew his work. As for Krasznahorkai, it's a different picture. Almost everyone I know read something from him at some point and certainly know his work with Bela Tarr.
Literature is only half-dead.
Literature is only half-dead.
I don't see many posts of people "buying" innovation, yet people talk about "selling" it all the time. Why? I don't think people give nearly as much thought about buying as sellers, who are drawing out careful plans on selling them.
October 9, 2025 at 7:08 AM
I don't see many posts of people "buying" innovation, yet people talk about "selling" it all the time. Why? I don't think people give nearly as much thought about buying as sellers, who are drawing out careful plans on selling them.