Hacker News

by Ryan Harman

'C:\> FORMAT C:' – relax, it's just a screen saver (fakedos.com)

50 points by TheIncredibleCh 5 hours ago

jrmg 2 hours ago

This is cool - but…

It’s an app, not a system-integrated[1] screensaver?

> Installation

> Drag FakeDOS.app into /Applications.

> Double-click to launch. It installs itself as a menu-bar icon.

> Click the menu-bar icon to configure or start manually.

> After the configured idle time (default: 5 min), FakeDOS takes over fullscreen.

> Type EXIT to return to your real desktop.

> Cmd + , opens six pages of pure control: idle time, warp speed, the ghost writer, sound and more. The PC speaker can be silenced. Your co-workers cannot.

[1]: ScreenSaver.framework: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/screensaver

kmoser 27 minutes ago

If they had made it as a website, anybody could use it.

bowsamic an hour ago

I'm surprised that the LLM that was used to vibecode this didn't point it out

Tsarbomb 2 hours ago

Maybe I'm blind, but is this closed source?

creatonez an hour ago

Yup. OP wants you to download a sketchy closed source screensaver from an obnoxiously vibecoded website that looks identical to the scourge of phishing pages currently going after random open source projects in a fully automated way.

TheIncredibleCh 40 minutes ago

Things aren't always what they seem. Sometimes it's just for fun.

hollowonepl an hour ago

Finally some comment that actually makes sense here! :)

RedShift1 22 minutes ago

What exactly is this? Site doesn't work for me (ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR). Gathering from the other comments, some screensaver that shows a DOS prompt?

Gormo 2 hours ago

Reminds me of the 'BSOD' module from Xscreensaver.

owenmarshall an hour ago

Still my screensaver of choice after two decades. Even after it's tricked me into a forced reboot two or three times...

ButlerianJihad 18 minutes ago

https://man.archlinux.org/man/extra/xscreensaver/decayscreen...

Decay Screen for X11. Written by David Wald, Vivek Khera, Jamie Zawinski, and Vince Levey; 1993.

rlv-dan an hour ago

Way back I hacked together a VB6 application (don't remember what it did) but after a while it popped up a new window that faked a DOS prompt formatting the c drive. Then I send it to my best bud on April 1st with a message "Hey, check out this new program I made!" :-)

numpad0 3 hours ago

gives me SSL_ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR_ALERT on Firefox

thehamkercat 3 hours ago

same on Chrome, maybe it's real DOS

RedShift1 an hour ago

Doesn't work for me either.

tosti 2 hours ago

DOS has been DoS'd

1970-01-01 3 hours ago

The quantum fireball was a nice touch.

Bengalilol 3 hours ago

I was site visitor 0001101 (hit return).

I will get back until counter reaches 01000110 01010010 01001101 01000001 01010100 00100000 01000011 00111010

undefined 5 hours ago

[deleted]

rickdeckard 3 minutes ago

This would be more trustworthy (and portable) as a website (Would have maybe also needed less tokens to produce)

Instead it's a somewhat sketchy app that by design happens to know exactly when my PC is not in use...

breakwaterlabs an hour ago

Things not on my bingo card: Watching Hacker News denizens download, install, and run vibecoded Mac apps from sketchy vibecoded websites with TLS issues.

Boxxed 33 minutes ago

There is also something about this being Mac-only that feels really dumb or really fitting, I can't quite put my finger on it.

kmoser 31 minutes ago

The delicious irony is that it's written for a platform that never ran MS-DOS.

nathanaldensr an hour ago

It's time to vibedesign a new bingo card!

vunderba 22 minutes ago

Anyone else append something like this to AUTOEXEC.BAT as a kid at school? We were a right bunch of bastards.

  @echo off
  echo FORMAT /Q C:
  echo ALL FILES REMOVED 
  SET DIRCMD=0
I think a lot about my poor teachers and this Calvin quote comes to mind.

https://imgur.com/a/eX4UKLk

qubex 3 hours ago

You couldn’t run a format command when within the disk you were trying to format. You’d need to (for example) cd A: and then format c:.

Deltree, on the other hand…

foobarian 3 hours ago

There was a secret option at one point 'FORMAT C: /AUTOTEST'

stuaxo 2 hours ago

The favourite of naughty kids in computer shops with Windows 95

qubex 2 hours ago

Yup.

jasomill an hour ago

I'll stick with 86Box and DOSBox and try not to run FORMAT C: without backups.

hdgvhicv 3 hours ago

32768MB of ram?

Yeah, that’s wrong.

TheIncredibleCh 3 hours ago

Thanks for the hint, and very old bug from the beginning, forgotten in space and time....

Fixed!

trollbridge 3 hours ago

FP4 vs FP8 strikes again…

snvzz 2 hours ago

Ah. Again[0].

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROQSw6jqJO8

undefined 2 hours ago

[deleted]

fortran77 an hour ago

It amusing how Mac users yearn for the PC experience. They know they're missing out on something great, but they can't or won't leave their cult.

wtch98 an hour ago

Except dos isn't the PC experience. It was back in the 90s when you'd edit your config.sys and autoexec.bat to shift your himem settings so you could run a given game with your soundblaster

That world doesn't exist any more, whether you're on a mac, linux, or any other OS.