alt Hacker NewsNetworking and the Internet, from First Principles
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I know the guidelines make this a faux pas but I’m just here to say that was a great read. Very informative, well structured and compelling story of how we have networks and how they work.
To those saying it’s the work of an LLM: if it is I don’t care. It’s good.
Writing out my nod of appreciation to counterbalance some of the negativity. I do enjoy the effort and thought you into this essay. I didn’t read the whole thing, just a few sections from the beginning, and I think you do a great job explaining how these concepts evolved from simple beginnings.
You’ve condensed down a lot of concepts I learned through research and trial-and-error over my career as a SWE.
Thank you for sharing Faza. Please continue putting in the effort and sharing these essays!
The very first substantial order for the Digital PDP-1 was for use in ITT’s torn-tape messaging operation! https://www.eejournal.com/article/gordon-bell-1934-2024-gran...
Very well written and presented, thank you! Reminds me of Bartosz Ciechanowski's works: https://ciechanow.ski
If I may ask, what stack do you use for the inline interactive elements and would you choose anything different after having done it this way?
There's 2 [dead] fairly anodyne comments here. Are they bots? And if so, how can people tell?
I don't understand. Even if this post is long and has some repetitive parts, isn't it still written by a human? There are way too many comments acting like everything is bad just because one animation widget was made with AI.
I actually like this post. It looks good, the explanations are clear, and the AI-generated animation widget actually helps me understand things. What's the problem exactly? Is using AI for visualization considered a bad practice?
I started something similar in 2021 while on paternity leave with my first kid.
I got about half way through, then I had 2 more kids. Then AI happened, and I started questioning the whether there was too much slop out there to bother writing a book.
I’ll still probably finish it when the new baby is a little older.
Wow. The reactions here. So negative!
I skimmed various sections. I found the animations pleasant, the text readable, and the content clearly not slop.
The historical context of the telegraph was interesting, and the treatment of bandwidth vs. latency was thoughtful.
I think it’s too long; I don’t think many people who don’t already know most of this material will read it, but I enjoyed the parts I read. Nice work!
i hope this was vibe coded, because I'd hate to think that tiny dark-gray text on a black background was a conscious choice
Weird comments on this. I found the writing to be excellent. The animations are a bit small and associated text even smaller on mobile but this doesn't read as AI slop to me at all. Anything that makes technology more accessible and understandable is a win in my book so kudos for doing it.
It’s become somewhat of a HN “flex” to call something out as AI slop, and it almost always comes across as preachy and just plain wrong
super
I hate everything that uses ".. from first principles" with a passion. Almost as much as "technically true".
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- added to my list of stier blogs
- for a blog to qualify as stier, it must animations and visualizations to explain the idea in a way that even a 5 yr old can understand
- a tier is information heavy like authentic guides from betterstack
- everything else goes below b tier
- one day i ll share my list of 10000 blogs on hackernews, it ll blow the people s mind as i have been doing this for a while now
I found this article very well written, as a comparison
https://explained-from-first-principles.com/internet/