
Windows 93 (2014) - hxw
http://www.windows93.net
======
qwertyuiop924
It's pretty amazing how much classic software can actually run, and works
pretty well. The Wolf3D clone is totally playable, and you can actually use
LSDJ (one of my all-time favorite pieces of software), and it seems to be
actually running the real LSDJ, too, which is pretty impressive, considering
that it means that the site actually has an _embedded gameboy emulator_

~~~
edem
This is all HTML. You can inspect it.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Wait, so no emulation? Huh. Less impressive, but still quite so nonetheless.

~~~
improv32
No it's emulated: [https://github.com/taisel/GameBoy-
Online](https://github.com/taisel/GameBoy-Online)

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Oh.

------
basemi
Old HN discussions here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507786)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9162566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9162566)

------
indonesia
This seems so amazing that I had to close it immediately, scared of how much
time I would lose with it.

~~~
mdrzn
Same just because I'm at work, but I'll procrastinate on it at home later.

------
csmattryder
Awesome site, make sure you play the Castle Wolfenstein game and check out
chapter 2 - "Operation Stallman".

It's the most /g/ thing I've seen all day.

------
vito
Solitude even has the victory animation:
[http://i.imgur.com/IlSm5pE.png](http://i.imgur.com/IlSm5pE.png)

Funnily enough if you leave the tab in the background, the events queue up and
when you tab back there are a bunch of cards bouncing around at once:
[http://i.imgur.com/dNObRGb.png](http://i.imgur.com/dNObRGb.png)

~~~
greendude29
You mean Solitaire...Solitude sounds so odd...

~~~
voidz
We, the Dutch call it 'patience,' as how it sounds in French.

Personally, I used to call it 'sol.exe.'

~~~
Fiahil
I noticed a few other French easter eggs, like the names of the city "stive"
is visiting during his acid trip, or that "the national train company is on
strike, but you managed to reach Lille in less than 15 hours. #WIN".

------
jgw
Clever and artful, with a little nostalgia thrown in.

1993 was the year I started my undergrad and would not see a "web browser"
until the following year. It's nice to re-capture a little of the spirit of
what computing was like back then.

Tip: Be sure to click on the virus and after what happens happens, fling the
icons around. Moments of mindless fun.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Old timer here as well. The 'Virtual Girl' brings back memories of the
'personal assistant' fad from way back when. Funny how we've gone back to that
now that the technology is more than a gimmick with Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and
GNow. Sometimes I wonder about that peroid where so many things were possible
(and tried!) but the technology and infrastructure just wasn't there to make
it feasible. For all the lamenting about the loss of privacy, the reality is
that assistants like these aren't possible without being able to dip into our
emails and browse/purchase histories. That's something Bonzi Buddy couldn't
do.

We live in an odd time where the promises of the late 90s and early 2000's are
coming to fruition. Suddenly VR is amazing and relatively affordable. Suddenly
digital personal assistants are here and they work. The promise of a less
powerful Microsoft is here and with IE a now discontinued product. Very fast
internet is here with many markets having or will soon have 1gbps (note: the
first LAN I worked on was 10mbps). The promise of early yet clunky
smartphone/PDA revolution has also been fulfilled.

I wonder if, from a networked/social/mobile computing, perspective that period
was our 'Mother of All Demos.' So much was tried and promised back then and
its only in the fast few years that its really practical.

~~~
UweSchmidt
A personal assistant may "dip into emails" but shouldn't phone home. Otherwise
the personal assistant metaphor doesn't fit, and other, less pleasant
descriptions apply.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Your emails are already at 'home' or a similar cloud solution with
questionable privacy policies. These assistants don't actually run on your
device, just their front ends are run on your device. I think you're making a
distinction that doesn't really exist with common use cases.

As far as what is reported back to the home company, well, that pre-dates
personal assistants. What gmail does with your email or dropbox with your
files and any analysis your usage is a completely separate issue than personal
assistants, aside from both of them having to do with privacy. It seems to me
these assistants are just dipping into stuff 'home' has had access to for a
decade plus. Instead of using that info to sell to marketers or whatever, its
using that info to provide value to you by powering your assistant.

~~~
UweSchmidt
The email problem may be solved separately by a yet unknown solution - maybe
encryption will be part of the next Iteration.

"Personal assistants" that listen in on conversation, waiting for a keyword -
that's a completely different dimension than "just" reading email.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
You can disable the 'always listening' option in most (all?) of these products
and just have a press to talk option. I leave mine on for convenience. There's
no law saying you need to if you want to use these technologies.

~~~
UweSchmidt
\- defaults matter and shape behaviour/expectations \- disabling these options
is often difficult \- other people's phones listen to me as well \- ...

------
Frogolocalypse
It has probably been shown plenty of times before, but here is a linux
command-line javascript one too.

[http://bellard.org/jslinux/](http://bellard.org/jslinux/)

~~~
jodrellblank
The real question is, how long until the typical web page includes a
JavaScript Linux vm running Docker to display (ads or content)?

~~~
crististm
There is really no limit on what can be used to hog a CPU.

~~~
erelde
CPUs are space heaters. Launch some benchmarking software or heavy
compilation, put your feet on your tower.

~~~
sevensor
I kept a college apartment warm through the winter of 2000 with my overclocked
Athlon. Barely had to touch the thermostat.

------
delegate
The trick in the "simulator" is to drink coffee, smoke cigarette, smoke weed
then take lots of acid and procrastinate until the operating system is
finished. Then launch it to finish game. I got 194 #Hero

You can also go to Paris at some point.

------
discrisknbisque
This is bringing back strong memories of messing around with QBASIC and
Clickteam's The Games Factory.

My first game was called "Money 4 Nothing" and you moved a mouse-cursor locked
guy around collecting floating cash piles and avoiding guards who usually just
shot you on a loop.

------
kowdermeister
In the trash, there's a zip that contains a link to this album:

[https://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/album/poire-c-
poire-v](https://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/album/poire-c-poire-v) :)

~~~
fimdomeio
so good

------
FreeFull
I think it's funny to find an old bytebeat formula I made in this.

~~~
akx
Ahaha, it has mine too!
[http://i.imgur.com/z9Be34t.png](http://i.imgur.com/z9Be34t.png)

------
asimuvPR
The snake game music when you click to defrag... Felt young and old at the
same time.

~~~
takeda
It's actually the snake game, use your cursor keys.

~~~
asimuvPR
Yeah, spent more time than I'd like to admit playing it...

------
Cyph0n
The PlayStation boot sound kind of surprised me...

------
nostromo
This is by hacker/musician Jankenpopp, which is why it links to their music.

[http://jankenpopp.com/](http://jankenpopp.com/)

Music:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7fKoamz0nY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7fKoamz0nY)
(for example)

[http://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/](http://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/) (full free
albums)

------
RankingMember
Pretty brilliant site. Unfortunately it locked up Chrome tight after I ran the
3d program and tried to close it along with running Wolfenstein.

------
cestith
If you open the recycle bin there's a zip file that actually downloads through
your real browser to your real computer. I didn't bother opening it. It has a
filename not everyone will immediately know how to delete. That's really not a
funny thing to put out there.

~~~
gknoy

        rm -i *.zip
    

Apparently, in iTerm2, you can actually copy and paste the name, and do

    
    
        ls *.zip
        rm -i cv.zip

~~~
cestith
IF you can actually delete it as cv.zip then that's scary because that's not
its filename.

~~~
Symbiote
HN has stripped the pear emoji from the filename.

------
snake_plissken
I forgot about that hamster dance website! Talk about something that was ahead
of it's time...

I love you, Internet.

------
dbancajas
so what's the stack on this? curious how this is done. Is this like the
[http://copy.sh/v86/](http://copy.sh/v86/) ?

------
lawless123
something kinda vaporwave about this

~~~
FilterSweep
I believe that was the aesthetic the author brilliantly went for. The
background and tab colors immediately struck out to me. An alternative, yet
nostalgic nod to Windows 3.1

------
maxwellito
My eyes and mind were not ready for that! This is brilliant!

~~~
jasonkostempski
What about your ears? That startup sound caused some pretty intense flashbacks
for me.

------
zerognowl
Worth checking out The Old School Emulation Center on Archive.org

> The Old School Emulation Center (TOSEC) is a retrocomputing initiative
> dedicated to the cataloging and preservation of software, firmware and
> resources for microcomputers, minicomputers and video game consoles

[https://archive.org/details/tosec](https://archive.org/details/tosec)

------
gchokov
WIndows 93 does not work on Safari mobile :/

~~~
OliverJones
I had to push the turbo button on my pc.

------
alexroan
I'm sure I'm not the only one who created a load of recursive virtual PC's
inside one another. PCeption.

------
BHSPitMonkey
This is art.

------
entelarust
Needs sheep.exe

------
__jal
I love the "VirtualPC" application. Recursive metahumor for the win!

------
kar1181
Love that there's an Atari ST and ZX emulator running inside of this.

------
cbaleanu
I actually had Virtual Girl running for a few days in my teenage years :)

------
jschwartzi
The corgi doesn't work as expected. Can I return this for a refund?

------
Crystalin
You can cheat on the "Solitude game" (that I finished few times already) by
double-clicking on hidden cards to add them to the top if they are the
matching cards.

------
zhte415
The Window Manager and opening/closing/dragging/resizing effects were really
impressive for 1993. Way more than Mac at the time, or even Linux 3-4 years
later.

~~~
jlebrech
it's a shame it's fiction

~~~
zhte415
Seems to have no OLE support, so pretty authentic in my book, as that only
came later. Surprised the ancient computer isn't dying under the strain of so
many visits.

~~~
itomato
It's not a computer. It's not a Windows release. It's not even old.

It's a recent site that mimics (satrizes) some of the behaviors of Windows 95.

~~~
zhte415
> It's not a computer. It's not a Windows release. It's not even old.

Win93 seems pretty olds to me.

> It's a recent site that mimics (satrizes) some of the behaviors of Windows
> 95.

How can this mimic or satitise Windows 95? I understand a less complex system
can simulate a more complex system, but only slower, or maybe, but _2 years_
between releases with superior Wm functionality degraded???

It doesn't even have Winsock, and that was done in 1992!

~~~
khedoros1
Your comments are less funny than you think they are.

------
partycoder
[http://windowsreallygoodedition.com/](http://windowsreallygoodedition.com/)

------
hitekker
I must be crazy but when I opened this up on my phone, I thought " with a few
more tweaks, this could be my go l-to mobile UI"

------
jschwartzi
Does everyone else have their Microsoft lottery winner certificate? I'm
itching to cash mine in for that € 250k.

------
cokernel
It's tricky to win at SOLITUDE when the first deuce played to a foundation
just disappears.

------
tomw1808
Hell yeah! That must have taken a whoooole lot of fun programming time to
develop that.

Someone have a guesstimate?

~~~
Kenji
Depends a lot on the developer. If it's a youngster figuring out things, we
are talking about thousands of hours. A senior developer might "only" take
hundreds.

------
loeber
I love the individual soundtracks for all the applications. They're so well-
done.

------
messel
Pre IE, no simulation levels

------
chiar1games
I love classic software such as windows 95. I love this!

------
krige
That bounce on window open is really annoying

------
AdmiralAsshat
Why does it play the PS1 startup noise?

~~~
khedoros1
Because nostalgia, parody, and creative license.

------
anacleto
Old but gold.

------
l0c0b0x
This is pretty amazing.. well done!

------
zelon88
The sad part is the author did a better than Microsoft did and half of the
programming was in turing incomplete languages.

------
Hydraulix989
I love the Vaporwave vibes

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microcolonel
Kinda disappointed that Puke Data isn't interactive. ;- )

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entelarust
needs sheep.exe

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tadp
Is this magic?

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KiDD
I love this!

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smegel
c:\libs has all the javascript you need ;)

------
Frogolocalypse
I love these things.

