Zombocom is a well of deep wisdom (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Zombocom is a well of deep wisdom (2021)

expmag.com

157 pointshdk48 comments

The piece was fine. I'm just not a fan of the characterization that this is an old thing that gen x people don't appreciate it because it doesn't sell ads?

This is the most gen x thing I've seen all day, and don't worry the new generation is just as sick of this ad-infested internet as everyone else, we just didn't know there was another way.

It's... Naive, imagining that this kind of content doesn't exist anymore. It exists, peruse reddit for 5 mins and you will find a similar site. But now we have so many apps that bring real value to our lives, I think what people really miss is the feeling of the internet being a toy, rather than a mature system that has both value and consequences.

And anyway, Zombocom was the kind of dumb humor that we (millenial teenagers, at the time) loved. Next they'll try to tell us that Badger Badger Mushroom embodied the fact that GenX was over lyrics, or something.

Wouldn't one use Leekspin for that?

Ah tsi tsup ari dik ari dil ...

Nope, here are the lyrics: https://genius.com/Loituma-ievan-polkka-lyrics

And since you asked for it: https://leekspin.com

That's the Levan polka you linked to, though. Leekspin comes from a meaningless part of the song so there are only approximate phonics recorded by various people, e.g. -

https://dodecalogue.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/on-leekspin/

I literally just went to Zombocom last night (you can do anything there, after all). I can't help but stay for the full audio loop every time. It makes me so happy that the site is still up and functional after all this time. To me it's like a small link back to the past when the internet felt more fun.

I periodically visit http://www.31337.com/ just to make sure it's still content-free for a similar reason.

I’m just sad that humanskullwarehouse.com appears to be defunct.

Zombocom has stayed active for longer than many actual, revenue-having businesses. Zombocom is more reliable than the average Google product. I will gladly accept Zombocom platform lock-in, because it is a name I can trust.

I was convinced the death of flash would mean the death of Zombocom, but the fact that somebody took the time to migrate it to HTML5 makes me so, so happy.

I should never have doubted it. After all, the unattainable is unknown at ZomboCom.

When is the library of congress going to wake up and realize that some sites needed preserving digitally with the resources of the US government? Why does Internet Archive have to be the main driver of things like this?

We KNOW (I mean, wow do we know) that the US government has copies of practically everything since... decades ago. Probably multiple copies in separate intelligence agencies and the like.

Or at least fund something like Internet Archive with the best semipermanence that the government is offering. Certainly it is worth one boondoggle F-35 jet per year.

Then again I'm mystifyied why various agencies aren't funding Haiku/Beos, OpenBSD, and linux to the tune of a billion dollars a year just for secure computing reasons alone.

Man, what is Zombocom worth in domain rights and NFT? ANYTHING.

I like to open about 7-8 zombocom tabs about 1-3 seconds apart. Give it a try. You can do much more of anything.

Zombo.com stopped Firefox development for a day back in, oh, 2011 or so. Somebody noticed that new tests were failing and the tree ended up being closed for new commits while the problem was investigated. Turns out that a month or so prior someone added a test that loaded zombo.com, and the site had gone down. This may not have been a coincidence, as all the racks of test machines had been running that test nonstop and effectively DDoSing zombo.com for a month.

Anyway, that's why the test servers are now firewalled.

Off-topic, but seeing Zombocom again reminded me of a video and I can't find it anywhere. It was a popular funny video about 15 years ago.

Basically there is a brand new startup and they are waiting for their CEO to arrive. Bicycle messenger turns up and gets mistaken for the CEO. Startup doesn't even know what they actually do (Beanie Babies?). CEO finally turns up, fires everyone.

Anyone remember this video? Know where I can find it?

Surprised that no one has mentioned https://theuselessweb.com.

That's how I was first introduced to Zombocom, among many, many others.

There is also perdu.com (lost in French)

Don't worry, we are going to help you. You are here.

It has been here for decades.

The where a Danish site that I absolutely love, it was a bit of a meme in it's own right. For 10 year or so, it was just a centered text say: "Det skal nu nok ikke regne med" (Danish for: Don't count on it).

That's it, that was the entire site.

It seems like the site has changed since 2001 or whenever I first saw it. My memory of it was that it was a lot more subtle: just a white screen with lavendar circles that faded in and out on the screen. I also don't remember the audio having background music, but I could have misremembered that.

It def always had that light elevator music.

It used to all be flash based. One update is definitely the change to using CSS, etc.

I think it's just that our standards have changed since 1999. Back then, the fact that it wasn't covered completely head-to-toe in Dancing Baby[1] and Hampsterdance[2] gifs made it seem "subtle" and restrained.

1. https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/babygif.gi...

2. https://www.deviantart.com/jefftheironic/art/Hampster-Dance-...

The music was definitely there back in the day

The animation speed isn't the same for some reason but otherwise it's exactly like back in the day.

Nah, your memory is bad.

Visually it's close, but not 100%. The audio is 100% as per the original though.

You can grab the original SWF from the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030827114936/http://www.zombo....

Then play and/or extract the assets using:

https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler/releases

Sometimes I wonder, I posted about zombocom like a day before that (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30006335) on HN, and suddenly there is this on the front page?

Was it me? Did I give someone an idea to post this? I have seen NOTHING about zombocom for years

The voice reminds me very strongly of the one in the genius game „There is no game“ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Game:_Wrong_Dimens...)

I remember zombocom from back in the day. This was a meme before memes were cool.

Fun fact: one of the first websites I made as a kid, in 2001, hosted in Geocities, is still around but I'm embarrassed to share it.

Edit: maybe not so fun for people other than me and my friends from that time

I once maintained a web browser widget for a 3D multimedia engine. Zombocom* was the perfect smoke test for it, since it has both a large animation and pleasant looping audio, and it never ever goes down.

*: at the time it was still flash, so we used html5zombo.com

> The site’s creator, Josh Levine, did not respond to an interview request.

I'm guessing maybe he's a little sad or fatigued that his lasting public legacy is a meme website from the dot-com era.

Josh Levine, and I'm guessing it's the same guy from josh.com, either wrote or inspired most of the backend financial trading software in the 90s and 00s. Starting when he was 19 the stuff he wrote forced major market reforms, and made companies billions. He was a fairly reclusive guy, though.

That sounds really interesting! Crazy to think of the people that made such a big impact on software and also internet history (meme history I guess)

I spent a long time on it trying to solve the puzzle once.

> Queen Elizabeth ... has never granted an interview.

I or II?

Did they really try to write a "deep" think piece on a homestar runner-era joke website?

I agree, articles like this is what's wrong with the internet today. While I absolutely love zombo com, it does not merit a writeup and 2 minutes of my time to read said article

> this is what's wrong with the internet today.

This is what's RIGHT about the internet today! Anyone can create a website and put whatever they want on it. You may have a specific vision for what makes a "good" website, but you don't get to control what other people post. If you don't like it, ignore it! The internet isn't meant to be a homogenous bulletin board, it's meant to be a way for everyone to share whatever information they want to.

are you seriously arguing that clickbait is a good thing?

I'm arguing that free sharing of information is a good thing. "clickbait" is a phenomenon arising from specific incentives. I am arguing that the internet should be as free as possible, but I also think we should realign incentives so that clickbait is no longer an effective strategy (e.g. website revenue that isn't attention-based, increased public education).

how is this article NOT attention based?

Totally. This took the place of clickbait that could have made me feel insecure while generating a fraction of a penny for some private equity group.

Where's the civic mindedness today?

Maybe an article that takes 1:43 to read?

Not everything that is created on the internet is made special for you. Nobody is forcing you to read this, and clearly other people here enjoy the write up, so calling it "what's wrong with the internet today" seems... extreme

whatever, enjoy your useless clickbait google searches. Apparently I am the only one who feels this way.

Why not? Look at all the upvotes it's getting.

The upvotes are explained by the reddit tourists who destroyed their own site and have nowhere else to go.

Look at all the anti-vaxxers.

It’s an anchor point to be philosophical about the current state of affairs. It isn’t really about Zombocom.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com