He filed in 2018-02-01, after publishing in 2017. What do you think breaks in the patent system with such an approach? https://terathon.com/blog/decade-slug.html
A sibling comment notes that he indeed filed a provisional patent in 2017 before going public. That’s the part that the article muddled. 2019 was when the patent was granted, not filed.
> provisional application can be filed up to 12 months following an inventor's public disclosure of the invention.
https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply/provisional-appli...