7 ms·

Zombocom is a well of deep wisdom (2021)

157 points by hdk 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago
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?
staplung 5y ago
Surprised that no one has mentioned https://theuselessweb.com https://theuselessweb.com. That's how I was first introduced to Zombocom, among many, many others.
pcwalton 5y ago
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.
tomjakubowski 5y ago
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
EGreg 5y ago
Sometimes I wonder, I posted about zombocom like a day before that (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30006335 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
maxhq 5y ago
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_Dimension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Game:_Wrong_Dimens...)
iratewizard 5y ago
Did they really try to write a "deep" think piece on a homestar runner-era joke website?
- whoomp12342 5y ago
  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
  - machinerychorus 5y ago
    > 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.
    - whoomp12342 5y ago
      are you seriously arguing that clickbait is a good thing?
      - machinerychorus 5y ago
        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).
        whoomp12342 5y ago
        how is this article NOT attention based?
Trasmatta 5y ago
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.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  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.
  - Trasmatta 5y ago
    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.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  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.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  I periodically visit http://www.31337.com/ http://www.31337.com/ just to make sure it's still content-free for a similar reason.
mantis_shrimp 5y ago
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.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  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.
  - Natsu 5y ago
    Wouldn't one use Leekspin for that? Ah tsi tsup ari dik ari dil ...
    - alexvoda 5y ago
      Nope, here are the lyrics: https://genius.com/Loituma-ievan-polkka-lyrics https://genius.com/Loituma-ievan-polkka-lyrics And since you asked for it: https://leekspin.com https://leekspin.com
      - Natsu 5y ago
        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/ https://dodecalogue.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/on-leekspin/
- deleted 5y ago
dumbfounder 5y ago
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.
endorphine 5y ago
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
dane-pgp 5y ago
> Queen Elizabeth ... has never granted an interview. I or II?
f38zf5vdt 5y ago
> 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.
- another_story 5y ago
  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.
  - Graffur 5y ago
    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)
ta988 5y ago
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.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  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.
7thaccount 5y ago
I spent a long time on it trying to solve the puzzle once.
prewett 5y ago
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.
- jey 5y ago
  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.gif?w=700&crop=1 https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/babygif.gi... 2. https://www.deviantart.com/jefftheironic/art/Hampster-Dance-windows-93-gif-762247944 https://www.deviantart.com/jefftheironic/art/Hampster-Dance-...
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  The music was definitely there back in the day
- hrydgard 5y ago
  The animation speed isn't the same for some reason but otherwise it's exactly like back in the day.
- fzzzy 5y ago
  Nah, your memory is bad.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  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.com/welcomeclip.swf https://web.archive.org/web/20030827114936/http://www.zombo.... Then play and/or extract the assets using: https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler/releases https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler/releases
- avisser 5y ago

157 points by hdk 5y ago

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?

staplung 5y ago

Surprised that no one has mentioned https://theuselessweb.com https://theuselessweb.com. That's how I was first introduced to Zombocom, among many, many others.

pcwalton 5y ago

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.

tomjakubowski 5y ago

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

EGreg 5y ago

Sometimes I wonder, I posted about zombocom like a day before that (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30006335 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

maxhq 5y ago

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_Dimension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Game:_Wrong_Dimens...)

iratewizard 5y ago

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

whoomp12342 5y ago
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
- machinerychorus 5y ago
  > 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.
  - whoomp12342 5y ago
    are you seriously arguing that clickbait is a good thing?
    - machinerychorus 5y ago
      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).
      - whoomp12342 5y ago
        how is this article NOT attention based?

Trasmatta 5y ago

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.

whatshisface 5y ago
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.
- Trasmatta 5y ago
  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.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
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.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
I periodically visit http://www.31337.com/ http://www.31337.com/ just to make sure it's still content-free for a similar reason.

mantis_shrimp 5y ago

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.

bee_rider 5y ago
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.
- Natsu 5y ago
  Wouldn't one use Leekspin for that? Ah tsi tsup ari dik ari dil ...
  - alexvoda 5y ago
    Nope, here are the lyrics: https://genius.com/Loituma-ievan-polkka-lyrics https://genius.com/Loituma-ievan-polkka-lyrics And since you asked for it: https://leekspin.com https://leekspin.com
    - Natsu 5y ago
      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/ https://dodecalogue.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/on-leekspin/
deleted 5y ago

dumbfounder 5y ago

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.

endorphine 5y ago

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

dane-pgp 5y ago

> Queen Elizabeth ... has never granted an interview. I or II?

f38zf5vdt 5y ago

> 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.

another_story 5y ago
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.
- Graffur 5y ago
  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)

ta988 5y ago

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.

mrweasel 5y ago
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.

7thaccount 5y ago

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

prewett 5y ago

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.

jey 5y ago
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.gif?w=700&crop=1 https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/babygif.gi... 2. https://www.deviantart.com/jefftheironic/art/Hampster-Dance-windows-93-gif-762247944 https://www.deviantart.com/jefftheironic/art/Hampster-Dance-...
birdyrooster 5y ago
The music was definitely there back in the day
hrydgard 5y ago
The animation speed isn't the same for some reason but otherwise it's exactly like back in the day.
fzzzy 5y ago
Nah, your memory is bad.
teh_klev 5y ago
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.com/welcomeclip.swf https://web.archive.org/web/20030827114936/http://www.zombo.... Then play and/or extract the assets using: https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler/releases https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler/releases
avisser 5y ago