The web is DOOM’d: Average page now as big as id’s DOS classic • The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/22/web_page_now_big_as_doom/

Today’s bloated web pages can be bigger than installable applications in 1990′s!

50 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Browser suffers from JavaScript-creep disease
    http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4441879/Browser-suffers-from-JavaScript-creep-disease?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160425&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160425&elqTrackId=706b921cc45449d8b3e527e4909e9fe0&elq=a6c0b851ea9b40bf83ec6db4866847bb&elqaid=31982&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27899

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    As time has gone on, my browsing experience on Firefox has gotten slower and slower, even though my broadband connection has gotten faster and faster. Rightly or wrongly, the browser has developed something of a bloatware reputation, due both to evolution of the foundation software package and its plethora of extensions (whose availability is ironically at the core of why it’s my preferred browser in the first place).

    In attempting to deal with the issue, I first trimmed down the number of extensions I had enabled to the bare-bones minimum, with little to no noticeable effect, then gritted my teeth and vowed to stick it out. But the situation recently reached the realm of the ridiculous; sites like Amazon, Ebay, the Weather Channel, and Wired would slow my system to a crawl, as would more than one or two simultaneous tabs’ worth of comics published at Arcamax, GoComics, and elsewhere (I … umm … scan 26 online comics every morning …).

    So I decided to research the situation further, beginning with a specific investigation of slowdowns involving Amazon’s website. The culprit, as it turned out, was JavaScript, which Wikipedia claims is “one of the three essential technologies of World Wide Web content production,” along with HTML and CSS. Installing a blacklist extension called YesScript and blocking scripts sourced from the images-amazon.com domain provided at least some relief (at the tradeoff of some reduced functionality). But this measure only assisted with one particular website; plenty of other domains I regularly visited were also experiencing slowdowns

    A sledgehammer, versus a scalpel, was what I decided I needed. I found my tool in the well-known NoScript extension, recommended by (among others) Edward Snowden. NoScript’s primary intention is to bolster user security; as such, it allows some trusted sources’ JavaScript, Java, Flash, and other applets to run by default.

    Newspapers, as I recently noted, are increasingly desperate for revenue from anywhere. No surprise, therefore, that the Denver Post serves up 113 scripts by default

    Part of the problem, in Web developers’ slim defense, seems to be with Firefox’s SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine; I don’t notice the same CPU loading when I load a script-burdened page in Google’s Chrome (V8), for example, or Apple’s own Safari (JavaScriptCore, aka Nitro). But the bulk of the problem involves yet another manifestation of the “Tragedy of the Commons” phenomenon that I’ve used before to describe, for example, wireless communications network overloads. Quoting Wikipedia, it’s:

    A situation where individuals acting independently and rationally according to each other’s self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource.

    Typically, that resource is presumed to be plentiful, low-to-no cost, and nearly-to-completely unregulated. In this particular case, it’s the CPU (along with, to some extent, the GPU). Each JavaScript instance presumes it has exclusive access to as much of the processor’s horsepower as it needs, ignoring the reality of the concurrent presence of other contenting scripts. And each Web developer presumes that its site has exclusive access to the browser, ignoring the reality of the concurrent presence of other contending pages loaded in other browser tabs and windows (not to mention the concurrent presence of other contending applications besides the browser).

    Is it any wonder that ad blockers and their ilk have become so popular of late? Unfortunately, NoScript and other brute-force JavaScript-disable schemes aren’t palatable for the masses; while my experience indicates that they’re highly effective, they too-severely “break” websites in the process.

    YesScript
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yesscript/

    YesScript lets you make a blacklist of sites that aren’t allowed to run JavaScript. Use YesScript on sites that annoy you or hog your system resources. One click to the icon in the status bar turns scripts on or off for the current site.

    Unlike NoScript, YesScript does absolutely nothing to improve your security.

    NoScript
    https://noscript.net/

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    DOOM? In Your BIOS? More Likely Than You Think!
    https://hackaday.com/2022/06/12/doom-in-your-bios-more-likely-than-you-think/

    We’ve seen hackers run DOOM on a variety of appliances, from desk phones to pregnancy tests. Now, the final frontier has been conquered – we got DOOM to run on an x86 machine. Of course, making sure we utilize your PC hardware to its fullest, we have to forego an OS. Here are two ways you can run the classic shooter without the burden of gigabytes of bloated code in the background.

    [nic3-14159] implemented this first version as a payload for coreboot, which is an open-source BIOS/UEFI replacement for x86 machines. Some might say it’s imperfect — it has no sound support, only works with PS/2 keyboards, and exiting the game makes your computer freeze. However, it’s playable, and it fits into your BIOS flash chip.

    https://github.com/nic3-14159/coreDOOM

    But what if your computer hasn’t yet been blessed with a free BIOS replacement? You might like this UEFI module DOOM port instead, originally made by [Warfish] and then built upon by [Cacodemon345].

    https://github.com/Cacodemon345/uefidoom

    Reply
  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Oh Deere: Farm hardware jailbroken to run Doom
    Corn-y demo heralded as right-to-repair win
    https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/john_deere_doom/

    Reply
  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Why Doom is Awesome: Binary Space Partitioning
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYMZsMMlubg

    Edit: I’m aware now that Doom didn’t use affine texture mapping. I’m also aware that many of the games following Doom used portal based rendering, while still having files with a .BSP format.

    Reply
  5. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Doom Ray Traced – Doom Mod Madness
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6a3wZSGaps

    It’s Doom with ray tracing innit.

    Reply
  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    And yes. It can run Doom, but not Crysis

    Someone wrote a Javascript app that accurately emulates Windows 95 on almost any platform
    And yes. It can run Doom, but not Crysis
    https://www.techspot.com/news/96392-someone-wrote-javascript-app-accurately-emulates-windows-95.html

    Throwback Thursday: Are you yearning for the days when operating systems were simpler and less bloated? If you have fond memories of the early days of Microsoft Windows and want a quick nostalgia fix, instead of pulling that 1995 laptop out of the attic, just download Windows 95.exe.

    The app works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, with dedicated versions for 32-bit, 64-bit, and Arm architectures. The program is very lightweight, ranging from 234MB to 313MB, depending on the platform.

    Reply
  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How to get Doom running in Windows’ notepad.exe
    21-year-old hacker: “It fires those neurons that are like, ‘Oh, we can do that.’”
    https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/how-to-get-doom-running-in-windows-notepad-exe/

    Reply
  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linux process monitoring with… DOOM. Seriously.
    Shoot a monster. Kill a process. This is the UNIX-y way.
    https://lunduke.substack.com/p/linux-process-monitoring-with-doom

    Reply
  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The purpose of doomgeneric is to make porting Doom easier. Of course Doom is already portable but with doomgeneric it is possible with just a few functions.

    https://github.com/ozkl/doomgeneric

    Reply
  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    From a simple animated display to a true computer on which you can play Id Software’s 1993 classic, James Brown’s LEGO brick has come a long way.

    James Brown’s Tiny LEGO Brick Computer Is Now Truly Self-Contained, with a Playable Doom Port
    https://www.hackster.io/news/james-brown-s-tiny-lego-brick-computer-is-now-truly-self-contained-with-a-playable-doom-port-b015077f8337

    From a simple animated display to a true computer on which you can play Id Software’s 1993 classic, Brown’s LEGO brick has come a long way.

    With some components cleverly packed into an extra brick that snaps onto the bottom, Brown found enough room for the RP2040, 0.42″ OLED panel, a tiny battery pack, and an accelerometer — which combines with turning the two upper studs into touch-sensitive buttons, based on work on a resin ring with a similar input system, to provide a control system, no external hardware required.

    Reply
  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Engineers teach their 1-milliwatt neural chip to play Doom, say this is serious work yo, everyone nods
    By Rich Stanton published 1 day ago
    “It unloads the clip, but then it figures out that’s not a good strategy.”
    https://www.pcgamer.com/engineers-teach-their-1-milliwatt-neural-chip-to-play-doom-say-this-is-serious-work-yo-everyone-nods/

    Reply
  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    If you’ve ever opened up Notepad and asked that perennial (if overdone) question about whether it can run a certain classic video game, here’s your answer.

    How to get Doom running in Windows’ notepad.exe
    21-year-old hacker: “It fires those neurons that are like, ‘Oh, we can do that.’”
    https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/how-to-get-doom-running-in-windows-notepad-exe/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=ars

    Hackers of a certain age are intimately familiar with the “Will it run Doom” meme and the wide array of ports it has engendered (including a game of Doom that runs inside an instance of Doom itself). Still, this week’s viral video and eventual itch.io release of a Doom port running in Windows’ standard notepad.exe text editor left us with a number of questions.

    Chief among them: “How?” and “Why?”

    Building off a C# port of the open-sourced Doom source code (and later shifted to Chocolate Doom for public release), Chiet’s program first converts every successive frame from the game into ASCII text. That’s done using a simple algorithm that figures out the “brightness” of each pixel (by averaging out the RGB color channel data), then converting that to a similarly dark ASCII character using a pre-set lookup table (ranging from “$” and “@” for the darkest pixels to “\” and “.” for the lightest).

    Because “the Notepad font is twice as tall as it is wide,” DoomPad initially throws out every other row of generated text to keep the resulting ASCII in the correct proportions. From there, Windows makes it relatively easy to insert that 360×240 array of text into Notepad at whatever font size your window and monitor can handle, Chiet said.

    “I’m stealing a reference to the internal textbox and just sticking my memory into it via an operating system ‘message’ and forcing it to re-draw,” he said. As for reading player input, that’s “just something you can steal from anywhere in Windows; you don’t need your specific program ‘open.’”

    As it turns out, the Windows Notepad isn’t really well-suited to act as a stable, consistent view window for a fast-paced game like Doom. Chiet’s 60 fps demo has a lot of noticeable flickering, especially near the bottom of the text box.

    “Notepad does not have an offscreen ‘buffer’ to render on, so everything it draws, you’re seeing it draw in real time,” Chiet explained. “So it’s stuck rendering [about] 86,000 characters per update, and I’m also not timing it to the screen’s vsync.”

    Reply
  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    No nyt kunnollista! Doomia voi pelata jopa Teksti-TV:llä
    https://muropaketti.com/pelit/peliuutiset/no-nyt-kunnollista-doomia-voi-pelata-jopa-teksti-tvlla/

    Klassikkopeli Doom on saatu jälleen pyörimään yhdellä alustalla, jolla ei kuvittelisi voivan pelata yhtään mitään.

    Legendaarisen Doomin virittäminen mitä kummallisimmille alustoille on yksi pelimaailman klassikoita, ja helposti luulisi että kaikki on jo nähty. PC Gamer kuitenkin uutisoi, että nyt klassikkoräiskintä on saatu pyörimään jopa Teksti-TV:llä.

    Uusi modi konvertoi Doomin teletext-signaaliksi, jonka myötä sitä on mahdollista pelata sopivalla telkkarilla ja suoraan kaukosäätimellä.

    Reply
  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Thanks to fans, the weirdest official Doom game is now playable on Windows
    A surprisingly fun turn-based game made by id Software for a pre-iPhone world.
    https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/06/dumbphone-exclusive-doom-rpg-has-been-reverse-engineered-by-fans/

    Reply
  15. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Doom-Teletext Crams Id Software’s Classic Shooter Into the 1970′s Finest TV Data Format
    This unusual Doom port is a real demake, putting the game’s video output on a single constantly-updated Teletext page.
    https://www.hackster.io/news/doom-teletext-crams-id-software-s-classic-shooter-into-the-1970-s-finest-tv-data-format-c1420fbea471

    Reply
  16. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The question on everyone’s lips when a new piece of hardware comes out is this: Will it run DOOM? Many pieces of modern hardware have been coaxed into playing id Software’s 1993 classic, but there have always been some older machines that just didn’t have the power to do it. One of them has now been conquered though, and it’s a doozy….

    WILL AN 8088 RUN DOOM? NOW, YES IT WILL!
    https://hackaday.com/2023/09/02/will-an-8088-run-doom-now-yes-it-will/?fbclid=IwAR3yFDIm2J9DVPOAzIvAbNSvYqTGBkR_WFj-oYILlzDOk0X62hVIO7gXeQ8

    The question on everyone’s lips when a new piece of hardware comes out is this: Will it run DOOM? Many pieces of modern hardware have been coaxed into playing id Software’s 1993 classic, but there have always been some older machines that just didn’t have the power to do it. One of them has now been conquered though, and it’s a doozy. [Frenkel]’s Doom8088, as its name suggests, is a port of the game for the original PC and AT.

    Reply
  17. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Nyt voit pelata selaimessa 30 vuotta vanhoja superklassikkopelejä ilmaiseksi – Kyllä, myös Doomia
    Pelit ovat saatavilla selaimessa ohjaintuen kanssa.
    https://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/uutiset/nyt-voit-pelata-selaimessa-30-vuotta-vanhoja-superklassikkopeleja-ilmaiseksi-kylla-myos-doomia/65ef59cc-7887-46f5-88ab-d1ea9c4f27a7

    Dos_deck alusta

    Reply
  18. Tomi Engdahl says:

    https://github.com/directmusic/DoomVST
    A port of Doom (doomgeneric) to run in a VST3/AU on Win/macOS

    Reply
  19. Tomi Engdahl says:

    This robot lawnmower can run Doom, so you can mow down demons at your next lawn party
    News
    By Alex Blake published about 7 hours ago
    Kicking ass while you cut the grass
    https://www.techradar.com/computing/this-robot-lawnmower-can-inexplicably-run-doom-making-it-perfect-for-your-next-lawn-party?fbclid=IwAR2nBrYbszDECpT6tz6R4tVf5IpF9rt3U5wQefTFYaReahpeWTR2mYDzHgo

    If you find mowing your lawn to be a chore, one company has found a way to liven things up: by grafting classic 1993 game Doom onto a lawnmower. It brings a whole new meaning to the idea of mowing down your enemies.

    The feature is coming to the Automower NERA series of mowers made by Husqvarna – which feature large screens that will display the game – and is set to launch on April 9, 2024. To be eligible, you just need to register on Husqvarna’s website and enter your mower’s serial number.

    It’s one thing to load a game onto a lawnmower, but another thing entirely to play it. Husqvarna says you’ll be able to do that using the NERA mower’s display and controls.

    Reply
  20. Tomi Engdahl says:

    OMG
    Playing doom using windows task manager https://youtu.be/hSoCmAoIMOU?si=-NUUcImcNrf_8eRb
    32 sockets, 896 cores, 1792 logical processors???
    very cool indeed

    Reply

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