Technical writing on distributed systems, architecture decisions, and engineering practice.https://jeff.cognicluster.com/en-ushttps://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep7-optimizations-2/https://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep7-optimizations-2/Handling thundering herds, passive mode for alt-tabbed clients, and edge caching strategies. The final 20% of performance gains.Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsperformancecachingreliabilityhttps://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep6-optimizations-1/https://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep6-optimizations-1/Why we chose Protobuf over FlatBuffers, heartbeat coalescing, and Zstandard compression. The wire format decisions that saved 40% bandwidth.Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsperformanceprotobufcompressionhttps://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep5-tile-spawning/https://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep5-tile-spawning/How the world dynamically expands and contracts based on player distribution. The garbage collection model for tile processors and preemptive neighbor spawning.Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsorchestrationscalingkuberneteshttps://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep4-ingress/https://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep4-ingress/Command validation, intent collection, and the 500ms tick budget. How client actions flow into tile processors and get validated before execution.Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsvalidationsecuritygameplayhttps://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep3-fan-out/https://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep3-fan-out/Case study of tile processor sharding, backpressure, and delivery guarantees. How Redis sharded pub/sub enables viewport-relevant event delivery.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsredispub-subfan-outhttps://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep2-swim-gossip/https://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep2-swim-gossip/Node failure detection and cluster membership at 10,000 players. How SWIM gossip protocol enables scalable failure detection without centralized coordination.Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsswimgossipfailure-detectionhttps://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep1-intro/https://jeff.cognicluster.com/writing/black-skies-ep1-intro/Problem framing: why naive fan-out breaks at scale. An overview of the Black Skies distributed architecture and the constraints that shaped our design decisions.Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTdistributed-systemsarchitectureblack-skies