How Did I Get Here?

How Did I Get Here?

A cool-as-shit dynamic traceroute powered by custom software, married with an informative article about how the BGP routing protocol works and guid...

 To reach this website, your computer sent some packets across the Internet. If we’re curious what that path was, we can run a tool to generate a traceroute — a rough list of every server your packets touched to reach their destination. To build this website (source code on GitHub), I wrote my own traceroute program called ktr (also open source) that can stream results in real time while concurrently looking up interesting information about each hop. How does ktr work? Let’s start with a simplified explanation of Internet routing. Starting with the source device, each computer that handles a packet has to choose the best device to forward it to — I will explain how these routing decisions are made in a bit. Assuming everything works correctly, the packet will eventually reach a router that knows how to send it directly to its destination.

Stacker News

How Did I Get Here? \ stacker news

To reach this website, your computer sent some packets across the Internet. If we’re curious what that path was, we can run a tool to generate a ...

Byte - a visual archive

Byte - a visual archive

 # Bite? Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, there was *BYTE*. A monthly mainline of the entire personal computing universe, delivered on dead trees for a generation of hackers. Running from September 1975 to July 1998, its 277 issues chronicled the Cambrian explosion of the microcomputer, from bare-metal kits to the dawn of the commercial internet. Forget repackaged corporate press releases—*BYTE* was for the builders. Inside, you'd find Steve Ciarcia teaching you to build a speech synthesizer from scratch, the inner details of a RISC pipeline, deep dives into the guts of Smalltalk, and Jerry Pournelle’s legendary columns from Chaos Manor. This wasn't just about what a computer could do, but *how* it did it. The source code of a revolution that continues to this day. # What? This zoomable map shows every page of every issue of BYTE starting from the front cover of the first issue (top left) to the last page of the final edition (bottom right). The search bar runs RE2 regex over the full text of all 100k pages. The archive itself is not new, scans of BYTE have long existed on the Internet Archive and elsewhere on the net – but I hope seeing everything in single, searchable place offers a unique perspective. # Why? > _"[...] pop culture holds a disdain for history. Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you’re participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future—it’s living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from]—and the Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made._ > `—Alan Kay, on Computing, Dr. Dobb’s Interview with Alan Kay` The relationship between Computing and its history is that of a willful amnesiac. We discard the past as fast as possible, convinced it cannot possibly contain anything of value. This is a mistake. The classic homilies are accurate: Failing to remember the past we are condemned to repeat it – as often as tragedy as farce.

Stacker News

Byte - a visual archive \ stacker news

Bite? Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, ...

Byte - a visual archive

Byte - a visual archive

 # Bite? Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, there was *BYTE*. A monthly mainline of the entire personal computing universe, delivered on dead trees for a generation of hackers. Running from September 1975 to July 1998, its 277 issues chronicled the Cambrian explosion of the microcomputer, from bare-metal kits to the dawn of the commercial internet. Forget repackaged corporate press releases—*BYTE* was for the builders. Inside, you'd find Steve Ciarcia teaching you to build a speech synthesizer from scratch, the inner details of a RISC pipeline, deep dives into the guts of Smalltalk, and Jerry Pournelle’s legendary columns from Chaos Manor. This wasn't just about what a computer could do, but *how* it did it. The source code of a revolution that continues to this day. # What? This zoomable map shows every page of every issue of BYTE starting from the front cover of the first issue (top left) to the last page of the final edition (bottom right). The search bar runs RE2 regex over the full text of all 100k pages. The archive itself is not new, scans of BYTE have long existed on the Internet Archive and elsewhere on the net – but I hope seeing everything in single, searchable place offers a unique perspective. # Why? > "[...] pop culture holds a disdain for history. Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you’re participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future—it’s living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from]—and the Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. > `—Alan Kay, on Computing, Dr. Dobb’s Interview with Alan Kay` The relationship between Computing and its history is that of a willful amnesiac. We discard the past as fast as possible, convinced it cannot possibly contain anything of value. This is a mistake. The classic homilies are accurate: Failing to remember the past we are condemned to repeat it – as often as tragedy as farce.

Stacker News

Byte - a visual archive \ stacker news

Bite? Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, ...

Byte - a visual archive

Byte - a visual archive

 Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, there was *BYTE*. A monthly mainline of the entire personal computing universe, delivered on dead trees for a generation of hackers. Running from September 1975 to July 1998, its 277 issues chronicled the Cambrian explosion of the microcomputer, from bare-metal kits to the dawn of the commercial internet. Forget repackaged corporate press releases—*BYTE* was for the builders. Inside, you'd find Steve Ciarcia teaching you to build a speech synthesizer from scratch, the inner details of a RISC pipeline, deep dives into the guts of Smalltalk, and Jerry Pournelle’s legendary columns from Chaos Manor. This wasn't just about what a computer could do, but *how* it did it. The source code of a revolution that continues to this day.

Stacker News

Byte - a visual archive \ stacker news

Bite? Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, ...

# What #creative #ideas have you been rambling on? This post is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for anyone to discuss a #WIP #projects, or an #idea worth to #build. Regardless of your #project being personal, professional, physical, digital, or even simply an #idea to brainstorm together. If you have any creative projects or ideas that you have been working on or want to eventually work on... This is a place for discussing those, gather initial feedback and feel more energetic on bringing it to the next level. ₿e #Creative, have #Fun, share it at

Stacker News

What creative ideas have you been rambling on? \ stacker news

This post is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for stackers to discuss creative projects they have been working on, or ideas they are aim...

#Design #innovate #innovation #creativity #createopportunities #Creator #create

Andrew Kelley - Practical Data Oriented Design (DOD) Andrew Kelley, creator of Zig, picks up where Mike Acton left off to teach us practical ways to apply data-oriented design source:

Vimeo

Andrew Kelley - Practical DOD

Andrew Kelley, creator of Zig, picks up where Mike Acton left off to teach us practical ways to apply data-oriented design References: - CppCon 2...

References: - CppCon 2014: Mike Acton "Data-Oriented Design and C++": - Handmade Seattle: https://handmade-seattle.com/ - Richard Fabian, 'Data-Oriented Design':

Data-Oriented Design

Data-Oriented Design

- IT Hare, 'Infographics: Operation Costs in CPU Clock Cycles':

IT Hare on Soft.ware

Infographics: Operation Costs in CPU Clock Cycles - IT Hare on Soft.ware

Quote:"Back in 80s, it was possible to calculate the speed of the program just by looking at assembly."Another Quote:"keep in mind that these days ...

- The Brain Dump, 'Handles are the better pointers':

Handles are the better pointers

28-Nov-2018: I’ve added a small update at the end on how to prevent‘handle collisions’ with a per-slot generation counter

Stacker News

Andrew Kelley - Practical Data Oriented Design (DOD) \ stacker news

Andrew Kelley, creator of Zig, picks up where Mike Acton left off to teach us practical ways to apply data-oriented design source: https://vimeo.co...

Andrew Kelley - Practical Data Oriented Design (DOD)

Vimeo

Andrew Kelley - Practical DOD

Andrew Kelley, creator of Zig, picks up where Mike Acton left off to teach us practical ways to apply data-oriented design References: - CppCon 2...

Andrew Kelley, creator of Zig, picks up where Mike Acton left off to teach us practical ways to apply data-oriented design References: - CppCon 2014: Mike Acton "Data-Oriented Design and C++": - Handmade Seattle: https://handmade-seattle.com/ - Richard Fabian, 'Data-Oriented Design':

Data-Oriented Design

Data-Oriented Design

- IT Hare, 'Infographics: Operation Costs in CPU Clock Cycles':

IT Hare on Soft.ware

Infographics: Operation Costs in CPU Clock Cycles - IT Hare on Soft.ware

Quote:"Back in 80s, it was possible to calculate the speed of the program just by looking at assembly."Another Quote:"keep in mind that these days ...

- The Brain Dump, 'Handles are the better pointers':

Handles are the better pointers

28-Nov-2018: I’ve added a small update at the end on how to prevent‘handle collisions’ with a per-slot generation counter

Stacker News

Andrew Kelley - Practical Data Oriented Design (DOD) \ stacker news

Andrew Kelley, creator of Zig, picks up where Mike Acton left off to teach us practical ways to apply data-oriented design source: https://vimeo.co...

The shortest path from thought to action https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/the-shortest-path-from-thought-to-action-e1c0c468b2b4  _{From early graphical desktops to touch, spatial, and gesture-based systems, human–computer interaction continues to expand beyond screens into multimodal, immersive, and embodied experiences.} When psychologist Paul Fitts published his 1954 paper on human motor control, he likely had no idea that his insights would one day guide the design of everything from smartphones to virtual worlds. Fitts conducted his experiments using simple physical apparatuses, such as levers, styluses, and lighted targets, to measure how quickly participants could move and point to targets of varying sizes and distances. These experiments were precursors to the pointing and selection tasks that would later define human–computer interaction.

Stacker News

The shortest path from thought to action \ stacker news

From early graphical desktops to touch, spatial, and gesture-based systems, human–computer interaction continues to expand beyond screens into mu...

How to be Amazing at Graphic Design without being an Artist — Feeling Creative?

Feeling Creative?

How to be Amazing at Graphic Design without being an Artist — Feeling Creative?

Not an artist? You can still be amazing at graphic design. Learn a practical, step-by-step process for creating professional designs using vector t...

 I have never much been into art. Don’t get me wrong, I like looking at it and admiring it but I have never wanted to learn to be an artist myself. However through my work at Timeclock.Kiwi I have slowly become very good at making beautiful interfaces, icons and pictures and now regularly create new things that look great whilst still not being able to draw. The reason this happened is because I would be making interfaces for the programs my team were developing so was forced to figure out methods that worked for me to get the job done. So now I want to teach you my ways.

Stacker News

How to be Amazing at Graphic Design without being an Artist — Feeling Creative? \ stacker news

I have never much been into art. Don’t get me wrong, I like looking at it and admiring it but I have never wanted to learn to be an artist myself...

New York City Merit Badges

NYC MERIT BADGE

NYC MERIT BADGE

 “New York City Merit Badges”: Living in New York is a badge of honer, so creative agency Zulu Alpha Kilo New York created these limited edition embroidered patches featuring the experiences that make someone a true New Yorker, to encourage pride in the city in voting season. The iron-on badges include rites of passage like crying openly in public, hauling a couch to your fifth-floor apartment, and using your oven for storage. Designed by New York illustrator Clara Kirkpatrick and produced locally, all proceeds are supporting GoVoteNYC.

Stacker News

New York City Merit Badges \ stacker news

“New York City Merit Badges”: Living in New York is a badge of honer, so creative agency Zulu Alpha Kilo New York created these limited edition...

How Design Helped Zohran Win

How Design Helped Zohran Win

A campaign design analysis of «Zohran for NYC» – and what you can take away from it.

 > Recommend reading

Stacker News

The bodega-influenced visual language of an outsider campaign \ stacker news

Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign Logo Looked Nothing Like a Campaign Logo Nobody would credit Zohran Mamdani’s campaign graphics for his win, but they...

related article In true democratic-socialist manner, the design studio ascribes to the [seven cooperative principles](

ICA

Cooperative identity, values & principles | ICA

p.standoutbox { background-color:#356b76; padding:20px; font-family:"Arial", "Helvetica", sans-serif; color:white; font-size:18px; line-height:180%; }

which includes autonomy and independence as well as a concern for community. Good stuff. The campaign caters to younger audiences – a huge chunk of Zohran voters are made up of a younger demographic, entry-level young profressionals and students who have been struggeling with the high cost of living in NYC in recent years.  

Stacker News

How Design Helped Zohran Win \ stacker news

Recommend reading https://stacker.news/items/1017640/r/deSign_r related article In true democratic-socialist manner, the design studio ascribes to ...

Design Patterns for Nostr UX

UX Patterns for Nostr Apps

Evidence-informed patterns for building Nostr apps people actually use

 Evidence-based UX patterns for building Nostr apps people actually use

Stacker News

Design Patterns for Nostr UX \ stacker news

Evidence-based UX patterns for building Nostr apps people actually use [5 comments]

Good from Afar, But Far from Good: AI Prototyping in Real Design Contexts

Nielsen Norman Group

Good from Afar, But Far from Good: AI Prototyping in Real Design Contexts

AI prototyping tools follow general directions but lack the judgment and nuance of an experienced designer.

  ## Summary: AI prototyping tools follow general directions but lack the judgment and nuance of an experienced designer. Over the past few months, the UX design field has been flooded with AI-powered prototyping tools that generate interfaces instantly from natural-language prompts. Despite the massive marketing hype, our evaluation with real design scenarios revealed that these tools can follow instructions to achieve a general goal, but they lack the sophistication to weigh design tradeoffs and produce thoughtful, high-quality designs without extensive guidance from humans.

Stacker News

Good from Afar, But Far from Good: AI Prototyping in Real Design Contexts \ stacker news

Summary: AI prototyping tools follow general directions but lack the judgment and nuance of an experienced designer. Over the past few months, the ...

Metallic Text Effects - Gold, Silver & Chrome CSS Gradients Generator

Design.dev

Metallic Text Effect Generator - Gold, Silver & Chrome CSS Gradients | design.dev

Create stunning metallic text effects with CSS gradients. Choose from gold, silver, chrome, and more with real-time preview.

  Create stunning metallic text effects with CSS gradients and reflections. Choose from presets or customize your own metallic look.

Stacker News

Metallic Text Effects - Gold, Silver & Chrome CSS Gradients Generator \ stacker news

Create stunning metallic text effects with CSS gradients and reflections. Choose from presets or customize your own metallic look. [2 comments]

Architectural debt is not just technical debt

Architectural debt is not just technical debt

Explore the delirious rantings of Frederick Vanbrabant. A blog focused on the intersection of Enterprise Architecture, product, and business strategy.

 We always made a distinction between code debt and architecture debt: code debt being the temporary hacks you put in place to reach a deadline and never remove, and architectural debt being the structural decisions that come back to bite you six months later. While I agree that implementing software patterns like the strangler pattern or moving away from singletons is definitely software architecture. Architectural debt goes way beyond what you find in the code. **How I see technical architectural debt these days.** As an enterprise architect I still mostly complain about architectural debt and estimates that are seen as deadlines. That much certainly hasn’t changed. These days, I’m less concerned with how the software itself works. That’s just not feasible when your organization has hundreds of applications. My main concerns are more about how these applications interact with the rest of the landscape. How the data flows, where data lives, whether there are bottlenecks, who’s going to maintain it, and what role will this application have in the future. In an enterprise environment this is inevitable. There are so many applications and more than half of them are 3rd party SaaS applications. You need to keep on top of what you can control and let go of the parts you can’t.

Stacker News

Architectural debt is not just technical debt \ stacker news

We always made a distinction between code debt and architecture debt: code debt being the temporary hacks you put in place to reach a deadline and ...

InclusiveColors accessible palette creator

InclusiveColors - Accessible color palette creator

Create custom palettes of multiple color swatches: full control of hue/saturation/lightness curves, check WCAG/APCA contrast, export to Tailwind/Fi...

 This a tool for making custom branded color palettes for web and UI design that are built from the ground up to meet accessible contrast requirements for WCAG, ADA and Section 508. Key features: Instead of only working with a handful of colors, you can create a whole palette of swatches at the same time so you can see if they look good together. Precise control of every shades/tints in each swatch rather than being limited by autogenerated colors. See which color pairs contrast as you edit so you can create a palette with built-in WCAG accessibility. This way you can plan ahead which foreground colors for headings, body text, form fields and so on should contrast on which background colors. You can then create designs with your colors more quickly and with less hassle because you'll already know which color pairs have accessible contrast. Lots of export options for palettes so you can import colors into Tailwind, CSS projects, Adobe InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop, Procreate, Affinity Designer and more.

Stacker News

InclusiveColors accessible palette creator \ stacker news

This a tool for making custom branded color palettes for web and UI design that are built from the ground up to meet accessible contrast requiremen...

Software design is refinement, not abstraction

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programmers

Software design is refinement, not abstraction

James Koppel tells us that software engineers keep using the word "abstraction" and that he does not think it means what they think it means. I bel...

 James Koppel tells us that software engineers keep using the word “abstraction” and that he does not think it means what they think it means. I believe that he is correct, and that the confusion over the term abstraction comes from thinking that programming is about abstraction. Programming is refinement, not abstraction. You take your idea of what the software should be doing and you progressively refine that idea until what you get it so rote, so formulaic, so prescribed, that you can create a plan that a computer will follow reliably and accurately. Back in the day, that process used to be done literally in the order written as a sequence of distinct activities.

Stacker News

Software design is refinement, not abstraction \ stacker news

James Koppel tells us that software engineers keep using the word “abstraction” and that he does not think it means what they think it means. I...

Design Contest Results and Lessons Learned

Design Contest Results and Lessons Learned

The PHP Foundation — Supporting, Advancing, and Developing the PHP Language

  Over the last few weeks we ran a focused community contest to refresh the PHP 8.5 release page. Thank you to everyone who submitted, reviewed, voted, and discussed. > **Note about future redesigns** > This contest was an experiment for a single release page. We might not use the same approach for a broader homepage redesign. If we did run a contest again, we would separate tracks (on-brand update vs blue-sky concept), use a dedicated voting tool or randomized ordering, keep log-damped voting, and set a 50/50 jury/community split with clearer criteria and a small shortlist honorarium.

Stacker News

Design Contest Results and Lessons Learned \ stacker news

Over the last few weeks we ran a focused community contest to refresh the PHP 8.5 release page. Thank you to everyone who submitted, reviewed, vote...

Game design is simple, actually

Game design is simple, actually – Raph Koster

 # So, let’s just walk through the whole thing, end to end. Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design. Some of you may not like this deconstructive view on how games are designed. That’s okay. Personally, I find it best to poke and prod at a problem, like “how do I get better at making games?” and treat it as a game. And that’s what I have done my whole career. The above is just my strategy guide. Someone else will have different strategies, I guarantee it. But I also guarantee that if you get better at the above twelve things, you will get better at making games. This is a pragmatic list. And it will be helpful for making narrative games, puzzle games, boardgames, action games, RPGs, whatever. I breezed through it, but there are very specific tools you can pick up underneath each of these twelve things. It really is that simple, but also that hard, because that’s a frickin’ long list if you want to actually dive into each of the twelve. What that also means is that people designing games fail a lot at it. You might say, “can’t they just do the part they know how to do, and therefore predictably make good games?” No, because players learn along with the designers. If you just make the same game, the one you know how to make, the players get bored because it’s nothing but problems they have seen before and already have their answers to. Sometimes, they get so bored that an entire genre dies. And if you instead make it super-complicated by adding more problems, it might dissolve into noise for most people. Then nobody plays it. And then the genre dies too! Game designers will routinely fail at making something fun. When the game of making games is played right, it is always right outside the edge of what the designers know how to do. That’s where the fun lives, not just for the designer, but also for their audience. That’s it, the whole cheat sheet. That’s it.

Stacker News

Game design is simple, actually \ stacker news

So, let’s just walk through the whole thing, end to end. Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design. Some of you may not like t...

Celebrating global creativity, innovation, and design excellence https://www.designmasterprize.com/the-2025-dmp-winners-revealed/  # DESIGN THAT INSPIRES: THE 2025 DESIGN MASTERPRIZE WINNERS REVEALED The 2025 Design MasterPrize (DMP) proudly announces this year’s winners, recognizing outstanding achievements in Product Design and Graphic & Communication Design. Now in its second year, the DMP continues to celebrate creativity that moves industries forward and connects design with human experience. Selected by an international jury of designers, creative directors, and industry leaders, the 2025 winners represent the very best examples of innovation, functionality, and artistic vision. This year’s awards received submissions from across the globe, reflecting the remarkable diversity and creativity that define today’s design landscape.

Stacker News

Celebrating global creativity, innovation, and design excellence \ stacker news

DESIGN THAT INSPIRES: THE 2025 DESIGN MASTERPRIZE WINNERS REVEALED The 2025 Design MasterPrize (DMP) proudly announces this year’s winners, recog...