Nick Doulos
credits.txt

Credits and privacy

What nick.os is built on, where its facts come from, and what it does with your data.

Privacy

  • No analytics, no trackers, no cookies, no ads.
  • The site is hosted on Netlify, whose servers see your IP address when they deliver a page, as any web host does.
  • Fonts are served from this site, not from Google.
  • Your browser keeps a few preferences in local storage on your device only: your Control Panel choices (theme, sound, CRT and amber screen effects, cursors), the reader's text size and font, whether you have taken the tour, your Field Log discoveries, your best Lunar Lander and docking scores, your chess97 level and board view, and the callsign and initials you last entered. A few flags last only for the current visit (session storage): whether the boot screen has played, whether this visit was counted, and today's cached chess puzzle. Clear your site data to remove them.
  • Some windows talk to other services straight from your browser, and only while they are open or loading: api.github.com for public GitHub numbers, and lichess.org for the daily puzzle. Two pages outside the desktop do the same: the Pyehicle article loads its diagram library from cdn.jsdelivr.net, and the WalletQR page shows the Google Play badge from play.google.com. Those services see your IP address, as any website you visit does.
  • Mission log: when you transmit, the site stores the callsign, message and time you send, and shows them publicly. Your IP address is not stored. For rate limiting it keeps a salted hash of it that changes every day and expires within the hour. Nick can remove any entry. To ask for yours to be removed, email contact@nickdoulos.com.
  • Arcade high scores (lander.exe, docking.exe, chess97.exe): when you enter initials, the site stores those one to three characters, your score, a short detail line such as the number of landings, and the time, and shows them publicly. To check a score is possible it also receives the run details (for chess, the moves of the game) but keeps only the score and the detail line. Your IP address is not stored; rate limiting uses the same daily salted hash as the mission log. Nick can remove any entry.
  • Boot self test: the processor cores, memory, graphics card and screen size shown when nick.os starts are read by your own browser and only used on the page. They are never sent anywhere.
  • Welcome back: the windows you had open, where they were and when you were last here are kept in local storage on your device only, so the desktop can put them back. "Forget my desktop" in the start menu clears them and stops it.
  • Visitor counter: once per browser session the page adds one to a shared total. Only the number is stored. To avoid counting the same machine twice it keeps a salted hash of your IP address for 30 minutes, with a salt that is replaced every day; your IP address itself is never stored.

Data and sources

  • GitHub numbers come from the GitHub API, fetched once a day when the site is built. Private repositories only ever appear as totals, never by name.
  • Version histories and download charts in the Projects window: release dates from the PyPI JSON API and GitHub releases and tags, and monthly downloads from pypistats.org, fetched when the site is built.
  • Orbital data for orbit.exe: CelesTrak. The elements are downloaded once per build, never from your browser, following CelesTrak's usage guidance.
  • Chess puzzle of the day: the Lichess API. Lichess puzzles are released into the public domain (CC0); each one links back to lichess.org.
  • Mars time on the wallpaper: the Mars24 algorithm by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Allison and McEwen, 2000). The Sun's position is computed for the Pathfinder landing site; Phobos and Deimos move on their real orbital periods but their positions are approximate.
  • Maps: Natural Earth, public domain.
  • Space history: the Apollo 11 timeline and quotes are from NASA's public mission transcripts and the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Mars Pathfinder facts are from NASA and JPL accounts. NASA material is not subject to copyright in the United States; no NASA logos are used.
  • Eratosthenes: the ancient accounts of Cleomedes, Strabo and Pliny the Elder, and D. W. Roller's Eratosthenes' Geography (2010). Sun positions use the Astronomical Almanac's low-precision formulas.
  • MissingNo.: Bulbapedia's articles on the glitch and on the old man in Viridian City. The memory table on that page is illustrative; no game code or graphics are used.
  • Voyager 1: position, distance and light time from the NASA JPL Horizons system, fetched once per build, never from your browser. The 2023 to 2024 repair story is from NASA and JPL mission updates.
  • Hipparchus: star positions from the Hipparcos catalogue (ESA, 1997), with constellation figures and boundaries, as packaged in the data files of d3-celestial by Olaf Frohn (BSD 3-Clause, copyright 2015 Olaf Frohn; full licence); proper motions from PyEphem by Brandon Rhodes (MIT). Precession uses the IAU 2006 model (Capitaine et al. 2003). History from Ptolemy's Almagest, Hipparchus's commentary on Aratus, and Gysembergh, Williams and Zingg (Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2022).
  • Marathon: roads and place names © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), taken from the Overture Maps Foundation transportation and divisions data (release 2026-09-23). Terrain from Terrain Tiles on AWS (Mapzen), built from SRTM, EU-DEM (produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union) and other public elevation models. History from Herodotus, Plutarch and Lucian, and the 1896 Olympic report. The extracted road data the exhibit downloads is available under the Open Database License.
  • Rosetta Stone: the British Museum's record for the stone (EA 24), R. Parkinson's Cracking Codes (1999), Champollion's Lettre à M. Dacier (1822) and Young's 1819 Britannica article. The hieroglyphs on the page are original drawings.

Software

  • Astro, the site generator. MIT licence.
  • three.js, 3D wallpaper and exhibits. MIT licence.
  • chess.js, move rules for deepblue97.exe, puzzle.exe and chess97.exe, and checking chess97 scores. BSD 2-Clause licence.
  • satellite.js, SGP4 orbit propagation in orbit.exe. MIT licence.
  • topojson-client, map decoding. ISC licence.
  • world-atlas, country and land outlines. ISC licence.
  • @netlify/blobs, storage for the mission log, the visitor counter and the arcade high scores. MIT licence.
  • Mermaid, diagrams in the Pyehicle article. MIT licence.

Fonts

Trademarks

Names of games, shows, companies and services are mentioned only to say what an exhibit is about. They belong to their owners, and nick.os is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Pac-Man is a trademark of Bandai Namco Entertainment. One Piece is by Eiichiro Oda, published by Shueisha. Pokémon is a trademark of Nintendo, Creatures Inc. and Game Freak. Deep Blue and IBM are trademarks of IBM. Quake and id Software are trademarks of id Software LLC, a ZeniMax Media company. Lunar Lander is a trademark of Atari. GitHub, Lichess, LinkedIn, NASA and JPL are the names of their respective organisations. All drawings, icons, 3D models and game graphics on this site are original.

This site

Designed and built by Nick Doulos. The source is on GitHub.