X (formerly Twitter) ·
the homepage ships 28 TEST FILES to every visitor. not test results - actual test harnesses. membership_form_controller.test (89 KB), media_grid_controller.test (31 KB), story_composer_controller.test (19 KB) ... 300 KB of test code. All returning HTTP 200. All actively
it also downloads 78 Stimulus controller, including... AI image generation voice extraction video generation radar charts draft review lab evaluation and the literal Rails "Hello World" scaffold (`hello_controller.js`, 157 bytes). 154 KB transferred. None of these are used on
the logo situation is my favorite 🖤 the same bear gets downloaded... 8 times per page load: 3 png copies, 2 WebP variants, 2 AVIF variants, and a 512x512 favicon. one of the AVIF files is 0 bytes. an empty file. a failed image conversion that got deployed and served to
but the real bandwidth killer are article images served from CloudFront as raw, uncompressed PNGs: - Image 1: 2.07mb png - Image 2: 1.99mb png ... the browser sends > Accept: image/avif, image/webp explicitly asking for modern formats the server ignores it and sends 4mb of
more highlights from the audit - 520 KB Trix rich text editor (120kb transferred) loaded on a read-only homepage (a spillover from a backend?) - 47 images with empty `alt=""`... on a "civic engagement" site - the entire page content rendered TWICE in the DOM (mobile + desktop) -
The source code literally contains this comment: ``` // Load SDK from our proxy (bypasses ad blockers) ``` A 501(c)(4) nonprofit "civic engagement organization" actively circumventing its readers' privacy tools to track them harder. while shipping test files, a 0-byte broken
for context: the Hacker News homepage, run by Y Combinator, Garry's own org, makes 7 requests and transfers 12kb Garry's page makes 169 requests and transfers 6.42mb 562x heavier even discounting images, 73% of the bandwidth is waste. one could say it's a HAR truth. 8/9🧵
AI & llms are an incredible tool, i use them every day... even burned over 3 billion tokens last year (2.5 in cursor alone) but AI amplifies whatever process you feed it - including no process at all. Garry's site is what happens when you replace code review with a shipping