This is very similar to a project I'm working on called Sim95 [1]. It has an entire networking stack and visual basic style language. You can host your own websites, chat servers, anything you want, and everything runs over a virtual network (websocket that passes through a relay).
It has all the warts of the early internet era: you can program a virus, get people to download it, delete their documents, etc., but it also has a lot of the charm, build a website, chat with strangers, enjoy the lack of facebook (for now until someone builds it).
I've been having a little too much fun with it honestly. I've tinkered with so far:
Simbook, ColdMail (email server, website for mail), Frostbird (a spark program for checking emails), AskSim (an ask jeeves search engine that actually crawls all of the machines in the network), Simxplorer (An IE browser with a javascript engine built into it), ELIZA (the preLLM chatbot with silly responses), Vapor (a Steam like program downloader that also has Doom and Snake). I'm toying around with a Clippy idea but haven't landed on if I like it or not.
A BIND/DNS service built in so we can point multiple hosts to a single machine (the 5 tabs are burning my browser).
The ability to modify the core OS a bit. Would be fun to work on skins, change default behavior, or add capabilities into the Spark language itself. would love to add screenshot capabilities for screenshare service.
A domain registrar was my next one, but trying to find a good way to "balance" that so that one person doesn't just register everything. I was contemplating adding in-game money, and a banking system, and expose an API for e-payments, then the registrar could charge for domains. Then that just pushes the buck down the road to how do you get money? So opening a bank account gets you a toaster and $200 or something, but then whats stopping you from opening 10 accounts... so THEN I invented government and a national ID... anyway, all that seemed hard and I got distracted by "easier" ideas.
I hadn't even planned on releasing this yet, it's been a weekend project for the last few months, that I try to add one thing each time. Lately I've been working on software for it, I was going to create a better IDE. A mix of VB6 and FrontPage, but I keep getting distracted by other weekend projects.
Keeping aggressive expiration could help "cleanup". Make it always required to point to an active and online machine for some duration.
You could just become ICANN and allow anyone to host any TLD they want and keep certain TLDs reserved for yourself/own vetted projects.
I feel like "in-game currency" changes the goal of the system a bit. Though I have considered building PaySimPal service. So maybe not?
I think right now, what resonates with me in this project is just how open and buildable everything is. No forcing function to do things a certain way. Like I was about to go build a basic BIND service to serve DNS traffic over and let my Internet Explorer browser use it for host name resolution. Just, that means only people on IE would be able to view my beautiful works of art.
> Like I was about to go build a basic BIND service to serve DNS traffic over and let my Internet Explorer browser use it for host name resolution.
Do it, and I can back port that to the voyager, but the biggest thing this needs is the ability to run a server "headless" so people can start building infrastructure and leaving it running without the browser tab being open. But I love the idea that their tab closing actually turns off their server resulting in an outage.
I added a Show HN[1] if you want to discuss on their, I highlighted some of your sites, but I guess they've moved, now.
jermaustin1 · · focus · HN ↗
It has all the warts of the early internet era: you can program a virus, get people to download it, delete their documents, etc., but it also has a lot of the charm, build a website, chat with strangers, enjoy the lack of facebook (for now until someone builds it).
1: <a href="https://sim95.kippy.io/" rel="nofollow">https://sim95.kippy.io/
tegiddrone · · focus · HN ↗
uean · · focus · HN ↗
samtheprogram · · focus · HN ↗
Barbing · · focus · HN ↗
lol, well done
dabbz · · focus · HN ↗
jermaustin1 · · focus · HN ↗
Honestly, thank you, though, for actually building something with this. I never thought anyone would use it for real.
dabbz · · focus · HN ↗
Simbook, ColdMail (email server, website for mail), Frostbird (a spark program for checking emails), AskSim (an ask jeeves search engine that actually crawls all of the machines in the network), Simxplorer (An IE browser with a javascript engine built into it), ELIZA (the preLLM chatbot with silly responses), Vapor (a Steam like program downloader that also has Doom and Snake). I'm toying around with a Clippy idea but haven't landed on if I like it or not.
tl;dr I'm having way too much fun
dabbz · · focus · HN ↗
A BIND/DNS service built in so we can point multiple hosts to a single machine (the 5 tabs are burning my browser).
The ability to modify the core OS a bit. Would be fun to work on skins, change default behavior, or add capabilities into the Spark language itself. would love to add screenshot capabilities for screenshare service.
midi/audio sys calls.
jermaustin1 · · focus · HN ↗
I hadn't even planned on releasing this yet, it's been a weekend project for the last few months, that I try to add one thing each time. Lately I've been working on software for it, I was going to create a better IDE. A mix of VB6 and FrontPage, but I keep getting distracted by other weekend projects.
dabbz · · focus · HN ↗
You could just become ICANN and allow anyone to host any TLD they want and keep certain TLDs reserved for yourself/own vetted projects.
I feel like "in-game currency" changes the goal of the system a bit. Though I have considered building PaySimPal service. So maybe not?
I think right now, what resonates with me in this project is just how open and buildable everything is. No forcing function to do things a certain way. Like I was about to go build a basic BIND service to serve DNS traffic over and let my Internet Explorer browser use it for host name resolution. Just, that means only people on IE would be able to view my beautiful works of art.
jermaustin1 · · focus · HN ↗
Do it, and I can back port that to the voyager, but the biggest thing this needs is the ability to run a server "headless" so people can start building infrastructure and leaving it running without the browser tab being open. But I love the idea that their tab closing actually turns off their server resulting in an outage.
I added a Show HN[1] if you want to discuss on their, I highlighted some of your sites, but I guess they've moved, now.
1: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49921544">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49921544