I have seen the term "zero player game" used for this. There is even a short Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-player_game.

There's an iPhone/Android app that does something similar: https://stats.fm

Here's one that goes from right to left:

  (2**(64 - i)) & (t*10)

Nicely done! My OCD says things are back to normal now.

Great read.

I think this is a good place to reference Tiny Projects [0], which to me are a manifestation of what is described here.

[0] https://tinyprojects.dev/

He live streamed himself writing a lot of that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwmke957ki4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ZpMMDvB1M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAyw7OAcXDE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb2KwcnDKrk

The author did an AMA on Reddit 9 months ago that I think is relevant here: https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...

In particular:

How they remain free: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...

On his salary: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll add that in a future version.

Author here. Thanks for submitting this project! I made this because I thought it would be funny if publisher websites had SciHub links that look like they belong on the website [0]. I didn't know about the bookmarklet when I started this. Maybe I should have used that instead. Oh well.

I'm currently waiting for Mozilla to accept this into the add on store. If that passes, I will submit it to Chrome as well.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/GP7rm43

it is great this is so subtle. I like this better than having context menu or some other hidden access link

Author here! It’s currently in review for Firefox and if that passes I’ll submit it to chrome as well.

I think a lot of this is due to Google both owning search and the ads on the websites (AdSense). There’s an incentive for them to prioritize click farms (and other sites filled with their ads). I think in general there may be a correlation between the number of ads on a site and its usefulness to me, which is inverse to its usefulness to google.

I’m curious what would happen if those products were split up into 2 separate companies.

I also can't help but wonder this. I'm certain people at google search want to provide the best quality search results and do this with integrity. But at some point in the business hierarchy you are at a level where people set objectives for both these departments ( search & ads ) and are trying to optimise for things like total revenue/profit.