Deep Dives
Follow the query all the way down.
Interactive essays about the systems problems shared by multimodal data. Each starts with a concrete request, reads the structure inside the stored object, and accounts for the bytes and compute required to produce a useful answer.
The territory
Logical intent has physical consequences.
01
Interpret the request
Which logical units, coordinate frames, time windows, and output shapes did the machine ask for?
02
Read the structure
Which indexes, chunks, samples, and native types make those units addressable?
03
Plan the work
Which byte ranges, dependencies, decodes, transforms, and joins are actually required?
04
Materialize the answer
Which physical layout and memory path delivers the requested batch without wasted work?
Featured specimen
One file. Every layer.
Video
Machines do not press play.
A frame query is not a playback request. Inspect a real MP4, choose an access pattern, and trace it from timestamps through container indexes, codec dependencies, object-store byte ranges, decode, transforms, and model-ready tensors.
The specimen changes. The systems questions persist: what the data means, where it lives, what work the query requires, and which representation should reach the machine.