'C:\> FORMAT C:' – relax, it's just a screen saver
52 points by TheIncredibleCh 6 hours ago | 38 comments
Tsarbomb 2 hours ago
Maybe I'm blind, but is this closed source?
replycreatonez 2 hours 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.
replyTheIncredibleCh 52 minutes ago
Things aren't always what they seem.
Sometimes it's just for fun.
replyRedShift1 34 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?
replyrickdeckard 11 minutes ago
> "Gathering from the other comments, some screensaver that shows a DOS prompt?"
replyKinda worse. Some Mac application that acts as a screensaver and shows a DOS-prompt when idle...
Either way, I like the idea of getting people to install and configure fun apps which then know exactly when a PC is not in use.
Could be a useful swarm of devices...
Gormo 3 hours ago
Reminds me of the 'BSOD' module from Xscreensaver.
replyowenmarshall 2 hours ago
Still my screensaver of choice after two decades. Even after it's tricked me into a forced reboot two or three times...
replyButlerianJihad 30 minutes ago
https://man.archlinux.org/man/extra/xscreensaver/decayscreen...
replyDecay Screen for X11. Written by David Wald, Vivek Khera, Jamie Zawinski, and Vince Levey; 1993.
rlv-dan 2 hours 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!" :-)
replyBengalilol 4 hours ago
I was site visitor 0001101 (hit return).
replyI will get back until counter reaches 01000110 01010010 01001101 01000001 01010100 00100000 01000011 00111010
breakwaterlabs 2 hours 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.
replyvunderba 34 minutes ago
Anyone else append something like this to AUTOEXEC.BAT as a kid at school? We were a right bunch of bastards.
reply @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.rickdeckard 15 minutes ago
This would be more trustworthy (and portable) as a website (Would have maybe also needed less tokens to produce)
replyInstead it's a somewhat sketchy app that by design happens to know exactly when my PC is not in use...
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:.
replyDeltree, on the other hand…
jasomill 2 hours ago
I'll stick with 86Box and DOSBox and try not to run FORMAT C: without backups.
replyhdgvhicv 4 hours ago
32768MB of ram?
replyYeah, that’s wrong.
TheIncredibleCh 3 hours ago
Thanks for the hint, and very old bug from the beginning, forgotten in space and time....
replyFixed!
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