Shanit Vannala

Currently writing · series

Measuring New York

A data-driven look at NYC livability across eight dimensions.

229× the gap between NYC's best- and worst-connected neighborhoods, measured in jobs you can reach by a 45-minute subway trip.

5 of 10 chapters published·Next: Public space

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Choropleth of NYC community districts colored by median jobs reachable in 45 minutes by subway. Manhattan glows in the dense end of the ramp; Staten Island and the outer edges fade light.

From Ch.1 — Mobility & Access

projects

Things I've built to understand how systems behave

2026-04-13·15 min read

Building a Privacy-First Baby Monitor on an Old Intel Mac

A $25 IP camera, an old Mac mini that was about to be e-waste, a 3-stage MobileNetV3 cascade, and a dashboard that never leaves my LAN. Here's what I built, how it's put together, and the tradeoffs I can back up with numbers.

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opinion

Thoughts on systems, data, and decision-making

2026-04-13What Building a Baby Monitor Taught Me About ML and Coding AgentsPart 2 of a series on BILBO, a home-built baby monitor. Six opinions about privacy architecture and shipping ML under real constraints, the bugs that cost me a morning each, and the new failure modes coding agents introduce that nobody is talking about yet.
2025-11-30Failure Probability Modeling: A Practical Framework for Distributed ReliabilityA practical guide (with examples) to using statistical modeling to understand, predict, and prevent mysterious failures in modern distributed systems.
2025-11-23Eight Short Stories About Engineers Who Quietly Save the Day With StatisticsMost software engineers spend years sharpening their coding skills but go surprisingly far without understanding the statistical forces shaping their systems. Here are eight stories of engineers solving real problems with stats.

first time here? start with

Measuring New York (series)Long-form data series on NYC livability across eight dimensions. Start with Ch. 1.
Building a privacy-first baby monitor on an old Intel MacA $25 IP camera, an old Mac, a 3-stage ML cascade, and a dashboard that never leaves my LAN.
Eight short stories about engineers using statisticsReal production problems where the right statistical move quietly saved the day.

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