The Hypertext Web Is Still Alive
People seeing Paul Graham’s blog or Hacker News for the first time tend to ask the same question: “Isn’t this a site from the 90s?”
Yes. And that’s exactly why these sites are still loved.
Density, speed, cognitive load
A PG essay loads in under 200KB on average. No JavaScript. No ads that follow you as you scroll, no “Subscribe to our newsletter” popups, no cookie consent banners. Just the writing.
A Medium article of the same length pulls 2–3MB. That’s roughly a 10x difference.
Why we chose this style
We’re building an AI product called GESTEL, which makes this style even more necessary. AI-generated content is glossy by default. Polished. What we write should sit on the opposite end of that spectrum.
- The text is the main character
- Links are blue
- Visited links are purple
- Pretendard 16px
That’s all.
What’s coming
- Weekly product-building retros
- Korean e-commerce AI domain notes (1–2 per month)
- Founder ops (fundraising, tax, hiring)
- Occasionally in Korean
Translated from the Korean original with Claude Opus.