Explainer ·
The Cookies That Arrive Before the Page Does
A cookie needs no script and no banner. It can ride on the first response a site ever sends you, with an expiry date decades away that the browser quietly shortens.
How the web actually works underneath the page
Most explanations of the web stop at the surface. These are notes on the layer below: how a page is assembled and delivered, what it can observe about you while it does, and where the cost is hidden.
Latest articles
Explainer ·
The Protocol You Only Get on the Second Visit
A browser cannot use HTTP/3 until something tells it the site supports it. Most sites say so in a response header, which arrives after the first connection is already made.
Explainer ·
The Response That Arrives Before the Response
A server can tell the browser what to fetch before it has built the page. That head start lasts exactly as long as the server is slow, and on fast sites it is close to zero.
Explainer ·
The Update That Weighs 98 Bytes
Every deploy makes your visitors re-download a bundle they already have 99% of. A standard published in September 2025 fixes that, and almost nobody has switched it on.
Explainer ·
The Snapshot Waiting Behind the Back Button
Two things used to guarantee the back button reloads a page from scratch. Chrome rewired one in 2025 and is deleting the other in 2026, mid-rollout right now.