Asteroids JavaScript Bookmarklet to blow up any web site

It'd definitely put a new bent on up or down voting comments. I'm using it to blow away the comments.

collaborative ad filtering

Exactly what you wanted: http://realitymachine.net/asteroids.html

And the HN article, if you want to drum up some more players: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1738543

I hacked together a very (very) basic multiplayer with a paper-thin node.js server in coffeescript.

Yes, really: http://github.com/cushman/asteroids.js

It might deserve a newspost of its own, but I'd like to have a working server running so people can actually, you know, use it. Unfortunately, I haven't thought to get node running on my VPS before now, and it's almost 02:00 here...

Surround important elements with DOM shielding...

Same here! Except instead of blowing up the page, you shoot at links to follow them. Also, fog that is revealed as you move around, minimap, etc. Maybe this can spark some more ideas?

http://tanksurfing.appspot.com/

ideas are cheap :)

Don't feel bad - this idea is pretty old. A program called "Desktop Toys" from the Win95 era comes to mind, and there are probably more examples.

I wish I could give this comment more points. It's a blast!

Protip for the paranoid: the author could nab your session cookie at the same time, too! :)

Now to see something like this work with a net-enabled 3D television.

Tables for layout will do that.

The TDs didn't last long.

Not a bad idea. Trying to think through them. I might mess with this today. Too bad you couldn't get the entire page to tilt/rotate, or you could use the motion sensor too.

Spot....and kill them

It's not that it's non-deterministic, it's just that, since your javascript interpreter doesn't execute each instance and its event handlers in parallel, each instance will receive slightly different inputs. This is because the number of times each instance's main loop fires before its keyup/down handler gets called will vary.

If you load up, say, 6 instances, hold the up button for a while to get them up to full speed, then turn for 4 or 5 seconds and let go, they'll be a bit divergent, but not too badly. They should all be going roughly the same direction, and wrapping around at roughly the same time.

If you load up 6 instances again, hold the up button for a while, and then turn back and forth very rapidly for a short period of time, they'll be much more divergent.

What you're talking about has been around forever, and is called a "bookmarklet"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookmarklet

Here is an example that will search hacker news (via google). This is based on the wikipedia example:

javascript:function se(d) {return d.selection ? d.selection.createRange().text : d.getSelection()} s = se(document); for (i=0; i<frames.length && !s; i++) s = se(frames[i].document); if (!s || s=='') s = prompt('Enter%20search%20terms%20for%20HackerNews',''); var goo = 'http:'; var g = '//'; var le = 'www.google.com/'; open(goo + g + le + (s ? '#q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com ' + encodeURIComponent(s) : '')).focus();

Interesting. It worked great on google reader. On Gmail I can sometimes get to the point where I can thrust & fire, but as soon as I destroy anything the gmail client seems to reset itself.

Interesting, it does work on the "basic HTML" version of Gmail. For me it seems like the "keyboard shortcut" functionality gets in the way of controller the "ship"

It would be awesome to add some js to a website you own to spawn a computer controlled defender if someone uses this script on your site.