Jay Hoffmann
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jayhoffmann.bsky.social
Jay Hoffmann
@jayhoffmann.bsky.social
260 followers 110 following 56 posts
Creator of https://thehistoryoftheweb.com Web developer. Love the open web.
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Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
igalia.com
🎙️ New Episode of Igalia Chats - Web Backstories: Shadow DOM

@meyerweb.com and @bkardell.com chat with @jayhoffmann.bsky.social and @adactio.com about Shadow DOM's backstory and long origins

www.igalia.com/chats/shadow...
An igalia chats title card that says Web Backstories... Shadow DOM, featuring Jeremy Keith and Jay Hoffmann . In the left corner is a circle with photos of both. Soundwaves are visualized in the background emanating from it.
December 2, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
fraying.bsky.social
Fuck apps - build websites.
josephcox.bsky.social Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · Oct 3
New from 404 Media: Google removed an ICE-spotting app too. Called Red Dot, an immigration support group on the ground in Chicago told me it was using it. Google now removed, just like Apple did with ICEBlock after DOJ pressure. Google calls ICE vulnerable group
www.404media.co/google-calls...
Google Calls ICE Agents a Vulnerable Group, Removes ICE-Spotting App ‘Red Dot’
The move comes as Apple removed ICEBlock after direct pressure from U.S. Department of Justice officials and signals a broader crackdown on ICE-spotting apps.
www.404media.co
October 3, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
jeffbridgforth.com
Today in Web development history. The responsive design of The Boston Globe launched in 2012. It was the first major site to use RWD and was a showcase of the techniques @ethanmarcotte.com had written and spoke about. FED by Filament Group + Ethan.

www.filamentgroup.com/lab/introduc...
Introducing the new responsive-designed BostonGlobe.com | Filament Group, Inc., Boston, MA
Read this page on the Filament Group website
www.filamentgroup.com
September 12, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
marisakabas.bsky.social
i do not think ezra klein genuinely grieves for charlie kirk. i think ezra klein thinks it’s professionally advantageous to perform grief.
September 11, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
zeldman.bsky.social
The History of the Web: Year of A List Apart

thehistoryoftheweb.com/year-list-ap...
Year of A List Apart - The History of the Web
I’d really recommend reading a thread on Eric Meyer’s blog from early 2007. In it, he poses a pretty simple […]
thehistoryoftheweb.com
September 8, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
zeldman.bsky.social
Is blogging a lonely activity? Does it have to be?

thehistoryoftheweb.com/do-blogs-nee...
Do blogs need to be so lonely? - The History of the Web
If the web is participatory, and I really think it is, then how come blogging can feel so lonely?
thehistoryoftheweb.com
September 8, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
fraying.bsky.social
I will probably spend the rest of my life thinking about how, in the first decade of the web, we all spontaneously decided to use it to be our true unmasked honest selves and it was fucking amazing, and then the rest of the world got online and decided to use it as an angry toilet.
May 25, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
amandamull.bsky.social
The idea that personal ideology is a continuum from right to left and that people who cannot reliably be expected to vote for one party or another must be in the center is the kind of thing you can only believe if you don’t know anyone who didn’t go to grad school
May 11, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
jensimmons.bsky.social
To me, this is when the web began. Not the memo of an idea, asking for permission to work on it. Ideas are everywhere. An idea is not A Real Product. The day something ships is the day it’s in the hands of customers. Which, for the web, was April 30, 1993: yes webmasters, now you can make websites!
adactio.com Jeremy Keith @adactio.com · Apr 30
Happy anniversary to “the patent that never was”:

https://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399/

Thanks, CERN!

🔗 https://adactio.com/notes/21882
A copy of the document that put the World Wide Web into the public domain, being held by me at CERN while Robert Calliau talks in the background.
April 30, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
kissane.myatproto.social
we're doing the thing unbreaking.org
Unbreaking — How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.
Unbreaking — How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.
unbreaking.org
April 23, 2025 at 6:30 PM
jayhoffmann.bsky.social
April 4, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
mattnegrin.bsky.social
Excited to see how the unforced economic crash is worsened by the (spins wheel) peruvian iguana foot virus in (rolls dice) three months as a result of medical misinformation spread by (pulls lever) robert f kennedy jr’s elle magazine girlfriend at (guides ouija board) gayle king’s bastille day party
April 3, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
alex.hosakka.studio
Another great piece by @jayhoffmann.bsky.social : thehistoryoftheweb.com/our-online-h...

"Slowly, slowly, the web was taken over by platforms..."

Thanks to AI coding tools and open source software, I'm back at building my own infrastructure to run my homepage, podcast feed, newsletter, courses.
Our Online Homes Need Infastructure - The History of the Web
A home online is about as essential as it gets. But we need to make that easier. Where are we heading to build this new web together?
thehistoryoftheweb.com
March 26, 2025 at 1:54 AM
jayhoffmann.bsky.social
This is the only correct way to cross the street.
jasondashbailey.com Jason Bailey @jasondashbailey.com · Mar 22
My favorite NYers are the ones that still go ahead and cross the street in front of an oncoming ambulance— but they speed up their ambling walk to a slight jog, so everyone sees they’re AWARE and CONSIDERATE
March 22, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
jasondashbailey.com
My favorite NYers are the ones that still go ahead and cross the street in front of an oncoming ambulance— but they speed up their ambling walk to a slight jog, so everyone sees they’re AWARE and CONSIDERATE
March 22, 2025 at 1:49 PM
jayhoffmann.bsky.social
If you haven't had a chance to pick up Ethan's book yet, this lovely new design seems like a perfect excuse.
ethanmarcotte.com Ethan Marcotte @ethanmarcotte.com · Mar 17
🦊

I am downright delighted to announce that my latest book, YOU DESERVE A TECH UNION, has a brand new look. I really love it, and I hope you do too.

Here’s a look at what’s changed and—maybe more importantly—what’s stayed the same:

ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/refres...

#YDATUbook #books #unions #1u
Refresh. — ethanmarcotte.com
In 2023, I wrote a book. Several months later, my publisher closed its doors. And now? We’re back, and better than ever.
ethanmarcotte.com
March 17, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
ethanmarcotte.com
🦊

I am downright delighted to announce that my latest book, YOU DESERVE A TECH UNION, has a brand new look. I really love it, and I hope you do too.

Here’s a look at what’s changed and—maybe more importantly—what’s stayed the same:

ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/refres...

#YDATUbook #books #unions #1u
Refresh. — ethanmarcotte.com
In 2023, I wrote a book. Several months later, my publisher closed its doors. And now? We’re back, and better than ever.
ethanmarcotte.com
March 17, 2025 at 3:07 PM
jayhoffmann.bsky.social
I have a couple of angles I want to come at this from, but here's my first post on the history of online shopping and what we now call ecommerce.

thehistoryoftheweb.com/expanding-ac...
Expanding Access: The History of Ecommerce Part 1 - The History of the Web
The earliest work with selling things online was all about reaching a shopping public ready to log on and start. But along the way, they found a whole new audience for shopping, which changed the way ...
thehistoryoftheweb.com
March 5, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
edzitron.com
Ezra Klein may be the single most credulous dope in the world. Deep Research is total crap, and a "former AI expert to the Biden white house" spouting fan fiction about AGI is useless, wasteful and only seeks to help valuations of AI companies. Despicable.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/o...
For the last couple of months, I have had this strange experience: Person after person — from artificial intelligence labs, from government — has been coming to me saying: It’s really about to happen. We’re about to get to artificial general intelligence. What they mean is that they have believed, for a long time, that we are on a path to creating transformational artificial intelligence capable of doing basically anything a human being could do behind a computer — but better. They thought it would take somewhere from five to 15 years to develop. But now they believe it’s coming in two to three years, during Donald Trump’s second term. They believe it because of the products they’re releasing right now and what they’re seeing inside the places they work. And I think they’re right. If you’ve been telling yourself this isn’t coming, I really think you need to question that. It’s not web3. It’s not vaporware. A lot of what we’re talking about is already here, right now. I think we are on the cusp of an era in human history that is unlike any of the eras we have experienced before. And we’re not prepared in part because it’s not clear what it would mean to prepare. We don’t know what this will look like, what it will feel like. We don’t know how labor markets will respond. We don’t know which country is going to get there first. We don’t know what it will mean for war. We don’t know what it will mean for peace. I recently used Deep Research, which is a new OpenAI product. It’s on their pricier tier. Most people, I think, have not used it. But it can build out something that’s more like a scientific analytical brief in a matter of minutes. I work with producers on the show. I hire incredibly talented people to do very demanding research work. And I asked Deep Research to do this report on the tensions between the Madisonian Constitutional system and the highly polarized nationalized parties we now have. And what it produced in a matter of minutes was at least the median of what any of the teams I’ve worked with on this could produce within days. I’ve talked to a number of people at firms that do high amounts of coding, and they tell me that by the end of this year or next year they expect most code will not be written by human beings. I don’t really see how this cannot have labor market impact. I think that’s right. I’m not a labor market economist, but I think that the systems are extraordinarily capable. In some ways, I’m very fond of the quote: The future is already here — it’s just unevenly distributed. Unless you are engaging with this technology, you probably don’t appreciate how good it is today. And it’s important to recognize that today is the worst it’s ever going to be. It’s only going to get better.
March 4, 2025 at 5:17 PM
jayhoffmann.bsky.social
+ you don’t even need the “large” in LLM to do a pretty solid job here. SLMs have proven pretty effective.

It’s building a sand castle with a bulldozer, except the bulldozer is plowing down rainforests.
hailey.at hailey @hailey.at · Mar 2
gonna upset someone here probably with this one

yes, ai code tools are actually getting pretty good, useful, and can write some decent code
no, ai code tools are literally no where near replacing a real person. at all. just stop.
March 2, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
self.agency
your reminder that i'm currently tracking changes to the homepages of 1,373 federal domains since february 4 and if you need any historical data about changes made to a particular domain since that date, i'm happy to provide it.
March 2, 2025 at 3:23 AM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
alt18f.bsky.social
18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated shortly after midnight. Read our letter to the American people:
18f.org
We're not done yet | 18F
18f.org
March 1, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
sarahgiffrow.bsky.social
If anyone would like to send multiple in-depth reports about your week to our pals in the federal government, here you go
February 23, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
hailey.at
what the fuck is git switch -c
samuel.fm Samuel @samuel.fm · Feb 18
your outie uses git checkout -b rather than git switch -c
Ms Casey from Severence
February 18, 2025 at 8:15 PM