Hacker News

'C:\> FORMAT C:' – relax, it's just a screen saver

51 points by - 34 comments

[3 hidden]5 mins 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

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

[3 hidden]5 mins 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?

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

[3 hidden]5 mins 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.

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

Finally some comment that actually makes sense here! :)

[3 hidden]5 mins 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!" :-)

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

Reminds me of the 'BSOD' module from Xscreensaver.

[3 hidden]5 mins 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.

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

gives me SSL_ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR_ALERT on Firefox

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

same on Chrome, maybe it's real DOS

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

Doesn't work for me either.

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

DOS has been DoS'd

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

The quantum fireball was a nice touch.

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

I was site visitor 0001101 (hit return).

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

[3 hidden]5 mins 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

[3 hidden]5 mins 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.

[3 hidden]5 mins 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.

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

It's time to vibedesign a new bingo card!

[3 hidden]5 mins 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…

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

The favourite of naughty kids in computer shops with Windows 95

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

Yup.

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

32768MB of ram?

Yeah, that’s wrong.

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

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

Fixed!

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

FP4 vs FP8 strikes again…

[3 hidden]5 mins ago

Ah. Again[0].

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

[3 hidden]5 mins 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.

[3 hidden]5 mins 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.