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Jay Hoffmann

@jayhoffmann.bsky.social
290 followers 118 following 57 posts

Creator of thehistoryoftheweb.com Web developer. Love the open web.

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Reposted by Jay Hoffmann
Vincent Driessen @nvie.com · 18/02/2026
I wrote a few words last night. nvie.com/posts/15-yea...
nvie.com
15+ years later, Microsoft morged my diagram
How Microsoft continvoucly morged my Git branching diagram.
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Igalia @igalia.com · 02/12/2025
🎙️ 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.
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Derek Powazek @fraying.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Fuck apps - build websites.
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Jeff Bridgforth @jeffbridgforth.com · 12/09/2025
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...
filamentgroup.com
Introducing the new responsive-designed BostonGlobe.com | Filament Group, Inc., Boston, MA
Read this page on the Filament Group website
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
i do not think ezra klein genuinely grieves for charlie kirk. i think ezra klein thinks it’s professionally advantageous to perform grief.
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zeldman @zeldman.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
The History of the Web: Year of A List Apart thehistoryoftheweb.com/year-list-ap...
thehistoryoftheweb.com
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 […]
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zeldman @zeldman.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Is blogging a lonely activity? Does it have to be? thehistoryoftheweb.com/do-blogs-nee...
thehistoryoftheweb.com
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?
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Derek Powazek @fraying.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
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.
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Amanda Mull @amandamull.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
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
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Jen Simmons @jensimmons.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
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!
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Erin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 23/04/2025
we're doing the thing unbreaking.org
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.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
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Matt Negrin still host of Hardball on MSNBC @mattnegrin.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
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
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Alex K @alex.hosakka.studio · 26/03/2025
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.
thehistoryoftheweb.com
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?
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
This is the only correct way to cross the street.
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Jason Bailey @jasondashbailey.com · 22/03/2025
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
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
If you haven't had a chance to pick up Ethan's book yet, this lovely new design seems like a perfect excuse.
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Ethan Marcotte @ethanmarcotte.com · 17/03/2025
🦊 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
ethanmarcotte.com
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.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
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...
thehistoryoftheweb.com
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 ...
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 04/03/2025
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.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
+ 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.
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daniel sieradski @self.agency · 02/03/2025
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.
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Alt18F @alt18f.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
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
18f.org
We're not done yet | 18F
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Sarah Giffrow @sarahgiffrow.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
If anyone would like to send multiple in-depth reports about your week to our pals in the federal government, here you go
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hailey @hailey.at · 18/02/2025
what the fuck is git switch -c
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Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Correct. If the birthdate field contains corrupt or mismatched data, it defaults to 1875-05-20, which serves as a flag. May 20, 1875, is the day the international standards and metrics treaty was signed. Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
media.tenor.com
the joker is standing in front of a pool table holding a bat .
ALT: the joker is standing in front of a pool table holding a bat .
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Harry Litman @harrylitman.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Strong rumor with credible sourcing: DOJ has put all of public integrity line attorneys in a room and told them they have an hour for someone to choose who will sign motion to dismiss and if nobody does, they will all be fired. The nastiest strong-arming in DOJ history by a long shot.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
This @cssday.bsky.social lineup has me really wishing I could make it out to Amsterdam this summer. cssday.nl/speakers.html
cssday.nl
CSS Day 2025, 5th & 6th of June, Amsterdam
CSS Day is the conference for CSS designers, developers, spec writers, and browser vendors.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
This future AI is generating is risking not just the slop it spits out, but what's already been created. thehistoryoftheweb.com/what-happens...
thehistoryoftheweb.com
What happens to what we’ve already created? - The History of the Web
When we think about AI, we can't only think of what it has generated. We need to think about what it does to what the world has already created.
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Rachel Gilmore @rachelgilmore.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
A swastika t-shirt is the only item on the Yeezy website. Powered by Shopify. It's not the first time Shopify has powered stores selling items with Swastikas. I've reached out to them about this before, and they kept powering the stores. The only thing they changed, eventually, was their rules.
Image shows the Yeezy website with a swastika t-shirt for sale as the only item on the page. It also shows the website source code, which has the "shopify" mentions highlighted. There are 127 matches.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
Anyone having a word with Shopify about this one?
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Cassidy @cassidoo.co · 06/02/2025
"whoever " + ("coined the term " * 4)
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
There appear to be at least three separately operating heel factions breaking things within the government in wholly different ways right now. There's the Miller-headed immigration one, the DOGE/Elon one, and a Project 2025 OMB one. This dynamic hasn't showed up in mainstream reporting at all.
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John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
If I’m not seeing Congressional pages place a coat around the shoulders of a visibly exhausted and trembling Ron Wyden after a three hour stall speech over a nominee and led off like James Brown then you *fucked up*.
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Brad Simpson @bradleyrsimpson.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
The major media is utterly failing to simply state that Trump is a vicious racist, who blames everything on presumed racial or ethnic minorities. How hard can it be to just say “In shockingly racist remarks Trump refuses to accept responsibility and blames deadly plane crash on minorities”
Trump is a dumb, vicious racist
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Rob Whiting 📓 @whitingx.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
On The History of the Web, @jayhoffmann.bsky.social considers ‘Would the #Internet exist today if the #PrintingPress didn’t come before it?’ thehistoryoftheweb.com/would-the-in...
thehistoryoftheweb.com
Would the internet exist today if the printing press didn't come before it? - The History of the Web
The breakthroughs of the web are often compared to the printing press. But could the former exist without the latter?
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Please, anybody, run against this guy in the primary so I can vote for you.
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Annie Sexton @anniesexton.com · 26/01/2025
It’s done. 153 pages. I drew a whole graphic novel. Wow.
The last page of my comic.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
This such a good point. So much of what people want to do with AI is just automate a series of pretty basic things they want to do. We don’t need a huge LLM to do that, a simple abstraction layer would do the trick. I bet we could do that for less than a trillion dollars and all the rainforests.
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
It’s sitting right there. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/democ...
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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Pin this, save it, we’ll need it. “When a prison camp opens in your town…when a DREAMer is disappeared from your classroom…when the President destroys what’s left of the Constitution…They will all say they didn’t know this was coming. And I want the American people to know that they did.” AOC 🔥🎯
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Jay Hoffmann @jayhoffmann.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
This time around how about instead of donating ungodly amounts of money to longshot candidates who dunk on the other guys in KY, we find the people rolling up their sleeves and doing the work, and give our time and attention to them instead?
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Dave Rupert @davatron5000.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and hangs out with a bunch of other ducks, and writes for a german newspaper saying vote for the alt-right duck party, and does a nazi salute like a duck... my dude, that's a duck and you should throw away your duckmobile.
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Matt Browner Hamlin @mattbh.com · 21/01/2025
I’m just going to say that AOC is the acting leader of the Democratic Party until someone proves otherwise. At least insofar as she is responding to the moment with leadership.
Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity.

People can officially stop listening to you as any sort of reputable source of information now. You work for them. Thank you for making that crystal clear to all.
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Molly White @molly.wiki · 19/01/2025
The TikTok ban, the Musk Twitter takeover, the Facebook moderation policy changes, the Republicans’ rapidly intensifying crackdowns on speech... let these be the proof you needed to move anything you care about online to a space you control. Digital sovereignty is more important than ever.
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