2025. you go to a website. you see all the elements on the page pop-in, loading one by one. it's like the 90s again. your internet connection might be hundreds of megabits per second. the web designer is using a 4k video file as a looping background, and that somehow loads quickly compared to all the actual useful elements on the page. three seconds, five seconds, ten seconds. each checkbox and table has to initialize its own software stack of UI abstraction libraries and surveillance middleware
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@jk Every checkbox will spin up a whole new server in the background, because it's 'serverless', and kill it again when it's unchecked, no wonder it's slow.
@jk that’s me in the other corner, with the Clojure language and the Electric Clojure compiler slicing my display and calculation logic along a complex contour out of sight that makes my application as fast as it ought to be.
@jk it somehow reminds me the section about the things having emotion processing chips for some reason from the hitchhikers guide to galaxy:
“All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.”
As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sigh-like quality to it. “Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!” it said.
@http_error_418 @jk @grepe When they were in the mood to do so.
[Exaggeratedly oversatisfied sigh from being able to open and close for someone today.]
reluctantly presses the "share" and "enjoy" buttons
@jk@mastodon.social the only thing we got rid of is the sound of the modem 
@jk The next generation of websites will be hallucinated by AI trained on this generation of websites created by graduates who could write a binary search algorithm on a whiteboard
@JonathanPerry @jk if there is a 'next time', the next time I have a job interview that has a whiteboarding exercise, I'm taking my copy of Sedgwick's "Algorithms" or "Hacker's Delight" out of my shoulder bag, dropping it on the table, telling them to look it up themselves, and stop wasting my fucking time.
Assuming future job interviews aren't just a Zoom call trying to convince an LLM you too are a robot.
I do not regret leaving sysadminnery to go back to nuclear safety analysis. It's just a better class of clients, coworkers, managers, and problems.
@arclight @JonathanPerry @jk at least some job interviews nowadays are simply optimised to waste as much time as possible without any need for some kind of input from the hiring manager... and that's not even side effect, but the actual purpose of the process. have you ever done a one-sided video interview? you record yourself talking about specific topics and upload the video somewhere!
@grepe @arclight @JonathanPerry @jk Jesus, how dystopian
And there's a good chance there is no job, they're just harvesting what you provide for more AI / scamming
@arclight @JonathanPerry @jk That one made me laugh and cry at the same time. Interviewers often don’t even know de job content of the functions they’re hiring for.
@JonathanPerry @jk The generation after that, assuming there’s still an internet and we’re not reduced to hitting each other with sticks, will be hallucinated by AIs trained on the hallucinations of previous AIs. The human internet will be reduced to webrings and addresses shared on illicit forums on the “dork web.”
draw a parallel with Einstein’s quote of “World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones” – Web 3.0 is the crypto scams and AI slop – Web 4.0 will be Gemini Protocol and Berners-Lee HTML and Gopher
@jk
Waiting for the dial-up connection scammers to come back.
@jk
sometimes the surveillance middleware has names like "post hog" so you can't help but laugh, just a touch
@saddestrobots @jk ah, the queerphobic one!
@IngaLovinde @jk
shit, really? what'd they do?
@saddestrobots @jk basically I interviewed for a job with them, received a rejection, had to pressure them into giving me the promised feedback, and eventually they sent me the internal feedback which mentioned, among many other things, this as one of rejection reasons:
> Finally, we have the company policy of not discussing politics. She had some pretty strong politically motivated messages on her wall, which will likely cause discomfort and ample discussions (lost productivity) with some employees.
(I had a progress pride flag on my wall.)
@IngaLovinde @saddestrobots @jk yikes, don’t work for post hog.
@will @saddestrobots @jk it's not like I have an option of working there 
@IngaLovinde @jk
oh, shit. that's low.
thanks for sharing that. and i'm sorry they fucked you over.
@jk@mastodon.social Ads load first. Content loads last.
@jk followed by a modal overlay for cookie “approval” approximately 500ms after you have started navigating the content…
@jk In one way it's worse than the 90s: the elements that have arrived all too often get moved around when others come in. And on the rare occasions the useful item loads early, it jumps just as you go to click on it
@jk And a split second before you tap/click on what you want, another element pops in right where you're tapping, so you have to go back and reload the page again.
@jk I'm not a web designer. I asked why do you have to use all those really heavy JS libraries when the page has like maybe an entry field and submit button.
Apparently this questions means I don't understand anything about web design or front-end development.
Which may be true, but I can still ask.
@aamurusko79 @jk because many won't have a sufficient meaty business model without all the gimmicks, if they want to attract vc money or give sexy applause-rich talks at ted-like conferences. So IMO I agree and it's barely ever needed or beneficial for the user.
@aamurusko79 @jk If the page loads too quickly, it could cause a very sci-fi time loop that can only be escaped with a very specific JS microservice that hasn't been maintained since 2032.
@jk and then like half the page struggles to even function because it's either eating up too much ram or can't access a really specific server
@jk When you are about done typing something into the search box, the page finishes loading, deletes what you were typing and pops up something asking you to subscribe to their newsletter.
@sqhistorian @dlharmon @jk Or when a youtube video loads and then as i'm clicking play, a playlist or something pops up on the side and I end up clicking mute or next or something instead.
@jk This reads like choose-your-own-adventure. The next toot in the thread would be similar to…
You can
(1) Quit the web browser to prevent nonresponsive processes from potentially interfering with other applications and go to the kitchen to make a sandwich. 
(2) Leave the web browser window open and, while waiting for the interminable web page to load, go to the kitchen to make a sandwich.
@jk I don't recall who told me about this but OMW they're fast! 
@jk plus ça change plus la meme chose
@bserrett@mastodon.social @jk@mastodon.social web developers just missed the 90s aesthetic, I'm sure the rest of the entire planet can understand 
@jk the antidote to all this is the McMaster-Carr website.
It's an absolute treat.
@jk Don't forget the search box that actively fights with the subscription and deal popups, begins searching while you're typing, including for your typoes, and there's about a 50% chance it will mess up where the insertion point is while you're typing, searching for a surreal rearrangement of what you were trying to look for
@jk I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you don't understand anything about appealing ux design. Welcome to the club, there are literally dozens of us 
@jk And with the death of Net Neutrality in the US, expect this to become even worse.
@jk Given any set of resources it is human nature to consume absolutely all of it, or at least grow consumption until the system breaks.
@jk very true
@jk you attempt to click a link or box or something. It jumps position as another element loads in.
@jk when you click on a checkbox then for 2 days every ad you see will be for checkboxes
@jk that's why by default I only load HTML and CSS and everything else is allowed on a case by case basis.
I have no cookie pop ups (or any pop ups for that matter) and non-image media is only loaded after allowing it.
But yes the internet as-is is unusable. I just have the privilege of not using the internet as-is.