A journal for the quiet parts.

Most of the web is invisible by design. A page arrives in a fraction of a second, and behind it sits a chain of names, routes, certificates, caches, and conventions that most readers never need to think about. Pages is devoted to that chain — and to the craft of keeping it simple enough to understand.

What we publish

We write about networking and distributed systems, interface design, performance, and the maintenance of small software. The common thread is not a technology but an attitude: prefer the durable over the fashionable, measure before optimizing, and leave the next person a system they can reason about.

Essays are published irregularly. There is no editorial calendar, no sponsored content, and no tracking. When an essay is finished, it appears here and in the RSS feed.

How we work

Every essay is read by at least two editors before publication. We check claims against primary sources where we can, describe uncertainty when we cannot, and correct errors in place with a note at the bottom of the page. We are more interested in being useful than in being first.

Pages is written and edited by a small group of engineers and writers who have spent too much time reading packet captures and too little time sleeping. We keep our names off the masthead because the work, not the byline, is the point.

Colophon

This site is a set of static HTML files served by nginx. It uses system fonts, one stylesheet, and no JavaScript. There are no cookies, no analytics, no third-party requests, and no build step required to read it. The entire site is small enough to fit on a floppy disk, which we consider a feature.

If you would like to quote an essay, see the terms. For everything else, the feed is the best way to follow along.