The cache that doubled as a coordinator

The cache that doubled as a coordinator

The rendering engine is what visitors see. The data layer feeds it, and keeping it stable under load was the less glamorous half of the build. This is the second post in the ON Labs series. The first covered the WebGL engine: shaders, draw calls, the GPU-level stuff. This one is about what happens...

Engineering
2mo ago
Two months in Three.js, we started over

Two months in Three.js, we started over

Two months into a Three.js prototype, the transition we wanted still wasn't there. We could see it in our heads and not on the screen. That was the moment we started over from scratch. Labs uses real-time shaders, physics-style interactions and transitions that happen at the GPU level. That...

Engineering
2mo ago

June 2026

William Badcock, A Touch-stone for Gold and Silver Wares (1677)

Hallmark

The word hallmark comes from an actual hall, Goldsmiths’ Hall in London, where since 1300 silver has been tested against the sterling standard and struck with the hall’s mark, so you could trust it without knowing the maker.

May 2026

Alan Kay: His Sketches, Piano, and Computer

Notes

A note can be a written record, a struck key, or the act of noticing, and each sharpens how we understand the world. A piano is an instrument, but also a technology built on the notes it makes possible.

April 2026

Photographs of a red cloth bound travel handbook from 1894. The book is open to show pages with maps and illustrations.

Change

A red cloth spine caught my eye in a Tokyo bookshop last week. A handbook for travellers in Japan, fourth edition, 1894. I was 132 years late, yet most of what it describes still stands.

Mar 2026

Screenshots from the development process of the new ON release notes page

Taking the temperature

You walk into a room and you can feel it. Whether there is energy or not. We describe someone as warm. We talk about things cooling down. Temperature is something we sense before we have words for it.

Feb 2026

Pixelised image of a horse running

Rethinking video, prototyping faster, and encoding brand logic

In Japanese, the character for hand is 手. Joined with the character for craft, it becomes 手仕事 (teshigoto), or handwork.

Jan 2026

Illustration showing the laying of undersea Atlantic telegraph cables

Transmission

The first dispatch of a new year, and I’m thinking about transmission: the message, the vessel that carries it, and what happens when they finally meet their destination.

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On the last Sunday of every month, we share insights on creative thinking, emerging tools, technology.