Colophon 奥付
About
this signal
A small, slow publication about machines, networks, and the stories we tell about both.
What this is
Bytequbic is an occasional essay series. Four or five long pieces a year, each one taking a single idea from computing or its surrounding culture and following it further than a normal article would. There is no schedule, no newsletter, and nothing to subscribe to. Pieces appear when they are finished.
The recurring subject is the seam between technical systems and the assumptions they carry. Protocols encode a theory about who is allowed to look at what. Surveillance architectures encode a theory about what is worth remembering. Science fiction encodes a theory about where all of it is heading — and, more often than anyone admits, the theory turns out to have been the accurate part.
Who writes it
One person, working in infrastructure. The essays are written under the site name rather than a byline, not out of mystery but because the arguments should stand or fall on their own. Nothing here is sponsored, and nothing here is anyone's employer's position.
How it is built
Hand-written HTML and CSS. No framework, no build step, no JavaScript beyond a background canvas and a reading-progress bar — both optional, both degrade to nothing. Every page is a single file plus one shared stylesheet.
There is no analytics, no tag manager, no advertising, no cookies, and no third-party embeds. Nothing on these pages phones anyone. The one external request is the webfont stylesheet; if it fails, the fallback stack takes over and the layout is unchanged.
Specification
- Type
- Chakra Petch · IBM Plex Sans · Space Mono · Noto Sans JP
- Palette
- #05070a void · #19e6cd cyan · #ff9e2c amber · #ff2e88 magenta
- Backgrounds
- Procedural canvas — rain, city, net, grid. No images.
- Motion
- Honours prefers-reduced-motion; pauses off-screen
- Weight
- Under 30 KB per page, uncompressed
- Server
- Caddy, single origin, TLS by ACME
- Numbering
- Each dispatch carries a number. A = 01.
Unlisted dispatches
Three pieces are not in the archive above. They are not secret and nothing is encrypted — they simply have no link pointing at them, and you need their key to find the address. The prompt at the foot of every page takes a key.
One key can be read off the archive if you notice what the numbers are doing. One is earned rather than found — finish all four public essays and the footer will assemble it for you. The third is scattered: part of it travels in the response headers of every page on this site, and the rest is at the end of the first two unlisted pieces.
There are no dead ends and nothing is timed. If you would rather not play, you are not missing an argument — only three more essays and a joke about hiding things in plain sight.
Reuse
Quote what is useful, with a link back. Do not repost pieces in full. Corrections are welcome and are made in place, with a note at the foot of the piece when the change is substantive.