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Windows93 SP2 (windows93.net)
517 points by ivank on June 11, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 121 comments


I've been staring at the half life 3 loading screen for the last 6 hours. I don't think it's going to start.


After a 18 month long wait it did load. Totally worth it.


.. Also, probably unsurprisingly, vulve is french for Vulva.


Neither of which is the company name, Valve.


I think it's supposed to be a joke.


You’ll need to have waited 3^(33+(1/3)) to see it launch.

Note: units intentionally left blank


Nanoseconds... three months. I can handle that.


Easily. Besides it's just a 0.05% rise in my tab count.


It was probably that "unsettling, disk operation" or one of the "trojan's." I think I saw the former. It came and went so fast. :)


We are two.


Just a suggestion... Open up the calculator and do 0/0.


Somebody took 'undefined behavior means that your compiler may optimize out large swathes of code in favor of execve("/usr/games/nethack"); way too seriously" :-)


IIRC for a while the Amiga calculator would crash the OS if you did that.


now I get the urge to build a physical calculator that explodes if you try to calculate 0/0 :D


Or you can be lazy and watch this mechanical adding machine divide by zero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=443B6f_4n6k


Awesome! :D


would be great if he reproduced the 3.11-3.10 subtraction bug


This site is my favorite page to put full-screen on coworkers' computers when they forget to lock their screens.


Good idea:)


I was going to protest the full Lena image without a NSFW warning, but hadn't realised the full story of its history[1]...

The site in general is a beautiful work of art, a great blend of attention to detail with comedy of computing in that era.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna - tl;dr is this iconic test picture for computer imaging was a cropped Playboy centerfold from 1972. I've just finished a PhD which included a fair bit of image processing, but I was unaware of the story behind this iconic image.


You were going to protest it? And do you think anyone would care about your protest? Do you really expect everyone else to annotate the entire internet on your behalf? Despite the fact that this is a totally random, joke website that is almost certainly not work related?

What about people in countries or workplaces where "unacceptable" is a far broader and more oppressive net than "contains nudity", or places where nudity is fine? For whom do we annotate the internet? Maybe you should just disable auto-load of images in your browser or install a nudity filter.

This is insane.


You're overreacting to a very small and not very relevant part of their comment which probably just meant "making a comment about the NSFW nature of the image". Not "i'm going to make a sign and force everyone to stop using this website".

Calling this insane is... insane


Who complains about stuff on someone else's website not being tagged NSFW? It's their website, they didn't name it workrelated.com -- I just thought "protest" sounded a little extreme and a sign of our sensitive new culture, where we each expect everyone else to tiptoe around us. Maybe I misinterpreted.


Protest here was more of 'make a comment on'...

I think its a cool site. I was thinking of showing it to high school students I teach summer courses to, but its probably not appropriate for them. That's why labels are helpful - nude images weren't ok in schools or work in the 'old culture' either. As art or entertainment (as this website in general was intended), I think there is wide license to the creator, but I think there is still some duty to a website creator to consider what else people might want to use it for.


> I think there is still some duty to a website creator to consider what else people might want to use it for.

I could not disagree more with this opinion. The creator presumably hosts this website on her own dime & invested the time and effort to create this piece of art - and you are connecting to their server, free of charge. I don't see how you could reasonably claim that they have a "duty" to do anything.

You're right that an image of a nude woman would be make this unacceptable in a school setting - however, it is your duty to vet the content that you show in class, not the other way around.

Finally, I don't see what educational purpose this would serve - as it's not like this is actually an OS, perhaps as an example of html5/js programming or nostalgia. In fact the whole thing is a JS app, so there is nothing stopping you from running it locally, where you can edit to your heart's content. Ironically the first JS file I clicked on (desktop.js) contains the shortcut definitions for the desktop.


I think you've amplified an out-of-context statement to try and start an argument, and in fact part of my point is that the main responsibility would go to the teacher. But I would say there is still some responsibility for a creator - duty can be held by multiple parties. As an analogy, if I were to break my leg cycling on someone else's private property, there may be some liability held by the land owner depending on the circumstances and jurisdiction. Hence the popularity of 'No Trespassing' signs in these jurisdictions. My background is in medical device design, and we are trained to obsess over the ways that users might cause harm through incorrectly using a product - even if this incorrect use is from ignoring the instructions. If an artist made a sculpture, they may be responsible if the sculpture crumbled onto someone.

As an educational purpose - my idea would be mainly to show it as a fun start to a discussion around product design evolution, computing history, and emulators. The kids I teach were born about a decade after this era of computing, and it would be interesting to see what they perceive to be similar and different. Most of these students have done very little or no coding themselves so the implementation isn't relevant for this use.


My purpose was not to start an argument and I certainly respect your right to an opinion, I just strongly disagree.

I don't think an artist has a duty to anyone but themselves, especially on the internet. Should medical devices be designed so that they don't harm people? Definitely. But the factor there is that you're actively selling/distributing it to the public - or at the very least, you are making certain guarantees about the function of the device.

This website/artwork makes no such guarantees and as such I don't see how you can reasonably expect that it should tailored to any specific audience. Again, in the time that you and I have spent commenting on this - you could have either PM'd a mod to add a NSFW tag to the title, or modified the site itself to suit your needs - that's what's awesome about the internet.


> I think there is still some duty to a website creator to consider what else people might want to use it for.

Am I the only person baffled by this? Does the world now revolve around every passer-by?

Why is the creator's duty to do anything other than satisfy his own artistic urge? Why does what someone else wants to do with his art matter? He kindly provides access, he isn't forcing anyone to view it. Where do you draw the line on what concessions he should make for someone else? What sort of absurd concessions might someone demand?

What you want sounds like a cascade of chilling effects, self-censorship, and second-guessing.

Also it's odd that you think a bare ass is not appropriate for for high school. How long do you imagine the psychological scarring from that might afflict them? At what age do you think it is appropriate to set foot in an art museum?

Bizarre.


[flagged]


If you want this account not to be banned, you need to never post like this again. It blatantly violates the guidelines, which ask you to comment civilly and not to call names.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Thank you for the reminder. The emphasis on civility is one of the reasons I like this site so much and I am ashamed I let myself lose control like that.


"well explained" why it's the website owners job and not the teachers job to police content?

he explained what he wants, not why it ought to work that way.

Your post doesn't contain an argument, just a bunch of ranting; make an effort.


The part that impressed me the most is you can drag and drop files from your own desktop onto this. It even opens those files in it's own editors when you double click the icon.


Woah shameless plug, my game is "Windows93 SP2" compatible it seems - right click on desktop - Create shortcut. Command: iframe https://data.mo.ee/index2.html?inapp=steam&node-webkit=1 --width=1280 --height=720

Title: RPG MO

(Don't leave a space before iframe in the command)


This is a work of art. The ProgressQuest game loading screen is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. Like all well-told jokes, it's in the timing.


ProgressQuest[1] was an actual "game" many years ago. It was kind of the progenitor of the current incremental/idle games. Looks like its basically the whole thing compiled to this ui.

[1] http://progressquest.com/


It's been a good joke for a while, let it run in the bg of your workstation for years and see how high a level you can get! http://progressquest.com/


This concept has also been adopted on IRC as IdleRPG.

I guess it's an in-joke about people leaving IRC-clients running in persistent shell-sessions and never checking in.

That said, it can be a lot of fun :)


Back button goes back to previous app. If this can get the back button to work correctly why can't Google AMP?


You call that correctly? It's a nightmare


Awesome that this even work well on mobile browsers!

Is this open source? So we could see how it was made?


Sort of :) Explore the "c drive" to learn about the libs. I couldn't find an uncompressed version of the main code, but in the Chrome devtools most scripts are uncompresed.


Amazing that this was built in HTML/JS/CSS.


Terrifying one might say


Well. It's still certainly easier than writing it from scratch, or through C/C++ and Windows GDI APIs.


One thing I can't figure out is how they implemented shaders in the FX program with the whole thing being rendered on the DOM instead of a canvas.


It's CSS SVG filters. Hilarious :-D


Open credits.txt on the desktop.


Finally, an operating system for my Android phone that will let me do useful stuff, like playing Wolfenstallman 3D!!


"Safari is the new Internet Explorer"

Accidental "works best in browser X" 90s reference right there.

I find Safari superior to every other browser on any platform in every possible metric except for dev tools, which took a nose dive when they ditched the open source WebKit one for this calamity.


The joke isn't "works best in IE" the joke is "Safari is the default browser that ships with the OS, few people get a better browser, and even though it's a piece of shit you have to continue supporting it."

>I find Safari superior to every other browser on any platform in every possible metric except for dev tools

I could remove nearly 15% of my CSS if I stopped supporting Safari at work and I wouldn't need a hundred different quirky workarounds to make the sites look even remotely how they're supposed to look. It fights me every inch of the way and then has some of the worst dev tools for debugging where any issues are.

I'd rather support IE8 for eternity if it means I never have to write another `@media screen and (min-color-index:0) and(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) {}` in my CSS again.


I've been writing CSS for years, everyday, don't remember the last problem I've had with Safari or any other modern browser, as a matter of fact.

I do get an ocasional glitch with Firefox, but it's very rare.

Perhaps if you described the problems you experienced instead of the hacks you are using to identify Safari this could be a more fruitful conversation.

Safari is a freaking amazing browser, lots of people use it by choice.

>I'd rather support IE8 for eternity…

I don't think you know what you're saying.


I create websites for the healthcare industry. I know exactly what I'm saying. There are some clients that I still need to write IE7 fallbacks for - and a single client that I still write IE6 fallbacks for. Lucky for me our contract has dropped IE7-9 support by default unless it is specifically requested by the client.

Apologies, but offhand I can only think of flexbox issues (specifically related to wrap/min-width, which has been fixed in version 11) and with interactive form validation (which was only just fixed in version 10 or 10.1). I run into various issues when testing on iPhones and the largest section of edits caught in any internal QC are always iPhone/Safari related. With relative certainty nowadays - if it works in Firefox, it works in Chrome and Edge. But then I always need to write some workaround or another for Safari.

The biggest issue is that even when these bugs are fixed - I still need to support them for an extended period of time because for whatever godforsaken reason, Safari updates are tied together with operating system updates. Want the newest Safari? Buy a new iPhone. It's the Windows XP/IE8 problem. Where IE8 had to be supported only because many users were still using XP and couldn't upgrade to IE9 even if they wanted to.


Safari is not an evergreen browser and that's a fair criticism.

However, you can run the latest browser and OS (and most people do) on a 5 year old device, which is about as much as the battery will last anyway. The situation is much worse on Android.


>I create websites for the healthcare industry.

OH BOY do I know your pain.

Ah well, it's not like those XP machines that the NHS loves so much were an attack vector in a recent, prolific cyber attack, no no.


Those using IE6 also thought it was the best for a long time. Only because developers adhered to it's quirks, though, so stuff worked there (and not in "better browsers"). In the same way people accommodate Safari today, otherwise you would have felt left out a long time ago.


>Those using IE6 also thought it was the best for a long time.

And it was. Is was also closed source and had its own ideas of what standards mean (even though its “version” of the box model actually makes more sense and it's generally preferred by most developers today. Oh yeah, and Ajax.)

Webkit, on the other hand, is open source and a huge proponent of standards compliance.


> I find Safari superior to every other browser on any platform

I can't really disagree with you, but Safari is exclusive to macOS...


So? Webpage rendering is a well defined enough problem that I think a cross browser, cross platform comparison is valid.


Took a cursory look for now; few things I love:

- Half Life 3

- Defrag <3.

- Running Windows93 inside Windows93 inside Windows93 inside Windows93...

A work of art, indeed. Kudos!


bug report: i broke it by making a folder on the desktop, opening the folder, and putting the folder in itself.

now it's crashed and won't reload.

is there a work around for my workflow?


Amiga (Kickstart 1.2 or 1.3 I think) had a similar bug, except the folder just disappeared forever.


working as intended, moved to wontfix


I couldn't crash it but I was able to open 4 virtual machines of itself before the 5th finally did nothing but open a gray window.


It works for me.


> /c/files/documents/private/SUPER TOP PRIVATE/THIS IS PRIVATE STOP/WHAT ARE YOU DOING/WHAT STOP PLEASE/I DID NOT GIVE YOU PERMISSION/PRIVATE GET THE HELL OUT/YOUR HURTING ME STOP/HOW HAVE I WRONGED YOU/I WILL PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE/PLEASE STOP ITS PRIVATE/I HATE YOU/

fair enough.


At first, I thought this is a VNC connecting to a Win93 in a virtual machine.

Then I realized everything is written with web technology.


> At first, I thought this is a VNC connecting to a Win93 in a virtual machine.

That would be very impressive, considering that Windows 93 never existed.


What do you mean, that's it exactly right there on the site :)


That's clearly a labor of love. Nice job!


This is awesome!

It's also quite buggy (chrome/linux) which adds to the whole Windows 9x feeling. Not sure if intentional but well done anyhow!


I run the same(ish) as you. How are you killing it? It's been stable for me so far.


There are many javascript errors for me in Firefox.


lol'd that it won't run in Mobile Safari (calls it new Internet Explorer) but will run in Microsoft Edge.


You can actually win the game in the solitaire clone; the minesweeper clone not so much.


Game -> Options -> Troll mode

Uncheck that box and you'll have a chance :D


Best ratio of Comedy:Operating System that I could have ever imagined.


Inspired. Microsoft should learn from this and include the "Reinstall" button in the start menu of windows 11.



Making Arena93 full-screen (within Windows93) hard-crashed my Mac! (MacOS 10.12.4, using Chrome 58)


Crashed (or rather made it unresponsive pegging the cpu) my firefox but not sure how it could possibly crash your OS.


WebGL is one of the ripest sources of web vulnerabilities right now. Probably crashed the video card driver.


I saw that RSS icon and my first instinct was to check and see if Java needed an update.


Take a look at A:\system32.dll

I wonder how many hours I could waste looking for more Easter eggs ;]


> yo, please don't delete me

Nice :)


Do delete it.


There is one thing missing for a complete experience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy


This site has a uncanny attention to detail: The C-drive inside "Virtual PC" differs from the C-drive in the "host OS"!

Given that kind of zealotry, it irks me that you can launch an infinite amount of nested "Virtual PCs". Obviously it makes for some fun screenshots and is technically impressive in itself, but Windows early on never allowed you to run Virtual PC inside Virtual PC. So this is clearly wrong!

In short, not considering OCD, where do I file the bug-report? :)


So apparently Symantec Endpoint Protection thinks that the Virtual PC app is some kind of "Fake App Attack", and thus cuts off network communication for 600 seconds.

Curious.


Where is the project hosted?

I'd like to throw some event handlers on "Puke Data" to allow changes to the dsp graph.


Take a look at GAFA3D (near Defrag icon). There is an interesting level called "Operation Stallman" ;-)


That's Wolfenstein 3D with some tasteless changes of game art. I think there are no changes in level layouts.


I only get a black window after the startup screen.


Just need an IRC gateway for trollbox


Just curious, is anyone else hearing popping sounds when they click on various things? Unsure if its intentional, and if so, trying to emulate an old hard disk seeking or speakers popping from interference.

Otherwise, kudos to the devs for creating this amazing work of art!


Windows 95 made a click-sound by default when activating things iirc.

It was one of the things I very quickly disabled upon new installations :)


Ah! Very interesting! TIL. Thanks!


Pity the Run dialog doesn't work, I wanted to try "c:\nul\nul" [0]

[0] http://windowsitpro.com/security/device-names-crash-win9598


This is the OS of the future!


I am impressed they went to the extents of making Wolfenstein 3D levels.


I suspect it just uses the original levels as is. I replayed E1M1, and literally every single thing - items, secrets, even wall decorations - was where it was in the original map (don't ask me why I still remember these things...). The only differences are in replaced graphics. Also, the secret room elevator does take you to the secret map, which, at the first glance, also looked like the right thing.


This allowed me to make a folder named CON. Literally unplayable.


Virtual PC inception http://imgur.com/XRWSiHe


You can actually right-click on the files in the "file explorer" and download them to your desktop IRL.


I can't get my HL3 to work, anyone has a fix? I took three days of from work, and now this.


I came here to use my fav browser, IE 3. You could add bookmarks and it supported CSS I believe.

:(


I loved the "Troll mode" in Mine Sweeper :-D

Serious hard work went into this site.


Half-Life 3 confirmed!


I have been waiting for a while, and am not entirely sure I believe you.


If only Windows 9X had these kind of slick animations...


ByteBeat plays a familiar tune, it's pretty catchy.


bananamp playlist please, I googled it without success.


In castle gafa, what does the amazon computer do?


Solitude does not accept drag and drop on android


I really miss Defrag. It is zen to watch.


Would webasm port make this actually real?


But it is real.


Can I type Google into Google somewhere?


Brilliant! Kudos to the authors


Is there a code repo for this?


>~/desktop ls

MANIFESTO.lnk42

3d.lnk42

Arena 93.lnk42

...snip...

>~/desktop dir

dir is not defined

interesting


This was (intentionally?) painful on my Nexus 5. Interesting nonetheless. I suppose it wouldn't be windows93 without some degree of discomfort.




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