A Single Point of Failure, on Purpose: The 600 Dollar Transcoder

Sat, 02 May 2026 10:00:00 +0530

vast.ai had shown me exactly what GPU transcoding should cost — cents per video — and then, in the same fortnight, shown me exactly why I couldn’t yet lean the Happy Thoughts platform on it: instances vanished mid-encode, and “your video is ready” turned into a coin flip. I had a hard number for what the work was worth and a hard no on the way I’d been buying it. What I did next is the least fashionable decision in this entire series, and one of the ones I’m most sure about.

Zeroing the Egress Bill: Wasabi, Cloudflare, and the Transcoder It Cost Us

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0530

Putting a cost-to-serve number next to daily active users told me exactly what the Happy Thoughts platform was spending on bandwidth. It did not make the spending stop. Once the 1,500 dollar day had my full attention, I did the obvious thing — went hunting for a cheaper way to put video in front of people — and the answer that eventually won was not a cheaper CDN. It was to stop paying for egress at all.

Wasabi on Kuldeep Pisda

A Single Point of Failure, on Purpose: The 600 Dollar Transcoder

Zeroing the Egress Bill: Wasabi, Cloudflare, and the Transcoder It Cost Us