What Changes Were Made in the Recent Waxy.org Refresh?
Andy Baio spent several months in 2026 quietly updating Waxy.org and a set of long-dormant side projects. The refresh covered three things: small fixes to the blog itself, a full redesign and cleanup of Supercut.org, and the retirement of Playfic after 14 years. Each change is described in a separate post on Waxy.org, dated July 30, July 31, and August 3, 2026.
The blog: small incremental fixes
The Waxy.org refresh itself was the least visible of the three. Baio describes it as "a bunch of small incremental changes over the last few weeks," mostly fixing long-standing issues and polishing rough edges rather than adding anything major. He notes that readers who follow the site entirely through RSS may not have noticed the changes at all — and that even people who visit the site directly might miss them.
The practical takeaway: if you only consume Waxy.org via feed, the site's appearance and behavior may differ from what you remember, but the content stream is unchanged.
Supercut.org: redesign, cleanup, and a revived archive
Supercut.org launched in 2011 as part of Seven on Seven with Michael Bell-Smith, then was redesigned later that year as a browsable archive of supercuts. Its history since then explains most of the 2026 work:
- Videos gradually disappeared — deleted, set to private, removed for copyright infringement, or made inaccessible by Vimeo.
- The site went offline entirely at the end of 2015 after Baio's server was hacked.
- It stayed offline for five years after a server migration, then returned in 2020 once Baio audited the old PHP for security holes.
The 2026 refresh addressed the accumulated problems:
| Change | Detail |
|---|---|
| Design | Retired the basic Bootstrap theme, made the site responsive, kept the overall layout |
| Dead videos | Removed all unavailable videos; replaced deleted ones with alternatives where possible |
| Submission backlog | Cleared the long queue of pending submissions |
| New additions | Added many new supercuts, including entries from Max Tohline's A Supercut of Supercuts: Aesthetics, Histories, Databases |
| Collection size | Live collection now exceeds 580 videos |
If you have a supercut to suggest, the site's "Add" link is still the submission path.
Playfic: shut down after 14 years
Playfic was a community for writing and sharing interactive fiction games, launched in 2012 by Baio and his then-teenaged nephew, Cooper. The August 3, 2026 post announces its retirement after 14 years.
Baio gives two reasons for closing it: maintenance and obsolescence. The full post runs about 800 words and has a comment thread, so the detailed reasoning sits behind the "Continue reading" link rather than in the summary.
What this means if you used these projects
- Supercut.org is live, responsive, and larger than before — but some videos you remember may be gone, replaced only where an alternative existed.
- Playfic is no longer operating, so any interactive fiction you wrote or played there is affected by the shutdown.
- Waxy.org itself continues as before, with cosmetic and maintenance fixes rather than structural change.
The three posts are the primary sources for each change, and each one links to further detail beyond the excerpt shown on the homepage.