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  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Azure CTO Pastes Doom Into Paint One Frame At a Time (theregister.com)

(Thursday August 06, 2026 @05:00PM (BeauHD) from the gloriously-silly dept.)


Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich used Claude to build a gloriously impractical setup that runs Doom in the background and [1]pastes each rendered frame into Microsoft Paint through the Windows clipboard . The project is referred to as "DoomPaint" or "MS Paint Doom" [2]on GitHub . The Register reports:

> To be clear, Microsoft Paint isn't doing anything other than serving as a place to paste from the game. [...] [3]ViZDoom runs the Doom .wad file and renders it headlessly. Each frame is passed through the Windows clipboard and pasted onto Paint's canvas. A low-level keyboard hook captures and swallows game inputs while Paint is in the foreground, and sound effects come from the game engine.

>

> A glance at the code shows Russinovich was more than happy to use Claude to whip it up. In a [4]LinkedIn post , he said: "I've been using Fable 5 on serious research projects and find it a noticeable improvement over Opus 4.8." Using Microsoft Paint as a display for Doom is not, however, a serious research project, as Russinovich acknowledged. "I've also been having fun with it on frivolous ones," he added, so here we are.

"Paint renders the game but does not compute it," said Russinovich. "Paint computes nothing. Paint has never computed anything. That's the joke."



[1] https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/08/06/azure-cto-pastes-doom-into-paint-one-frame-at-a-time/5283559

[2] https://github.com/markrussinovich/DoomPaint

[3] https://github.com/Farama-Foundation/ViZDoom

[4] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/markrussinovich_ive-been-using-fable-5-on-serious-research-activity-7484334984892178432-9_Z8



As we are in yet another 5+ hour GitHub outage... (Score:3)

by justMichael ( 606509 )

Maybe he should be spending more time keeping their services up and running, instead of dicking around with MS Paint and Fable.

The CTO? (Score:2)

by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 )

"Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich" Guess that is what happens when he does not have a real job!

With All Due respect... (Score:2)

by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 )

I've got huge respect for Mark Russinovich. He knows or knew more about Windows than any Microsofty ever did.

Then he went to work for Microsoft. Makes sense.

Then he worked his way up and became Azure CTO. Azure? Ick! WTF, Mark?

It's good to see he's back to wasting his time on what he enjoys. Even if it is weird.

Satya should be proud though. This is a clear demonstration of what AI is good for.

Is this why they just implemented token budgets? (Score:2)

by flibbidyfloo ( 451053 )

I'm sure it's a coincidence and not because Mark told some other C-Suite execs that he did this. lol

Sigh (Score:2)

by Wolfrider ( 856 )

Having solved all other problems...

/ srsly, why do people waste their time on stupid crap like this

not such a flex. (Score:2)

by usedtobestine ( 7476084 )

Ólafur Waage did it better.

Fable can't be that great... (Score:3)

by Shaitan ( 22585 )

"Paint renders the game but does not compute it," said Russinovich. "Paint computes nothing. Paint has never computed anything. That's the joke."

You'd think the AI would have helpfully told him his 'joke' lacked anything with the potential to be funny. When someone recreates an Apple II using legos and a raspberry pi or makes it run in a browser; it's pointless nerding that says they have too much time on their hands. This isn't even nerding or pointless, it actually ads a stop for no purpose whatsoever. Straight up retarded.

Re: (Score:2)

by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 )

"AI would have helpfully told him his 'joke' lacked" How is that going to happen? They would need Intelligence to deal with humor.

flowchart, n. & v.:
[From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart
"a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."]
1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction
problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation
using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic
doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for
wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A
thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's
Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce
flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate
(a problem) with esoteric cartoons.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"