#68: How does the internet actually work

💎 Word gems

The Internet from Rocks — A High Level Explanation of Computers and the Internet (Julian Hunt)

When I stop and think about it, computers and the internet still feel like magic to me. This blog gives a great (longform) eli5 about how computers actually work. I read it, I somewhat get it, and I still feel like it’s magic.

To explain how a program works, imagine we could write a program that could build a house. As input to the program we talk to our customer about what kind of house they want: do they want it big or small, wood or concrete etc. We would then create a bunch of smaller programs that each take care of one part of building the house. One program lays the foundation, another one paints. Yet when creating our programs we don’t have to make everything from scratch, we can get the program to use a shovel that some other guy made, or some saw that another company made. This is how most programs work. We take in some input from the user through text, or buttons on a screen or voice or whatever. We then write small programs that each handle one task that we need to do. These small programs normally have some way to communicate with each other. Each of these small programs will probably use some tools that another person has made. After we develop and write all the little programs we package them up into one box and release it to the world.

The Standards Innovation Paradox (Michael Mignano / Medium)

A great article that explains the tradeoff between using tech standards, and the ability to innovate. Mignano comes from the podcasting world, where there’s been a significant push away from the standard of using RSS. While there’s been some overall benefits there, I’m still very much a podcast-via-RSS purist at heart.

The Standards Innovation Paradox is the trade-off teams face when building a new product based on standards; reaching product market fit can happen much faster because finding an audience for the product is easier, but the pace of innovation ultimately flatlines due to market inertia and consensus driven standards development. If and when a team decides to break the standard for the benefit of innovation without gaining buy-in from all other stakeholders, the benefits of the standard are lost. The more stakeholders in an ecosystem, the more people who need to agree (and thus, the harder it is to change).

I was wrong about… (New York Times / various)

This is a really cool series by The New York Times. There’s eight articles where “Opinion columnists revisit their incorrect predictions and bad advice — and reflect on why they changed their minds”

More of this, please.

💩 Cool shit

Excel Formula Bot - Describe your excel problem and this site will generate an excel formula for you. Neat!

Mapping Glastonbury - Explore a 3D map of Glastonbury across different decades.

Discover Something Interesting - Get linked to a random article.

Public APIs List - What the title says. Explore a list of publicly available APIs, because more power with more open data.

Typewaiter - I’m not quite sure what this is, honestly. The cursor moves across the screen at a constant rate, so you’re forced to type at its speed to keep the words legible.

Kubota future cube - This site imagines future technologies, but where it really stands out is its navigation inside a cube. Try it!

MaxiBestOf - I only just discovered this; get a curated feed of inspiring websites. If what I share here isn’t enough for you.

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