alt Hacker News'C:\> FORMAT C:' – relax, it's just a screen saver
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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?
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!" :-)
The quantum fireball was a nice touch.
I was site visitor 0001101 (hit return).
I will get back until counter reaches 01000110 01010010 01001101 01000001 01010100 00100000 01000011 00111010
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Things not on my bingo card: Watching Hacker News denizens download, install, and run vibecoded Mac apps from sketchy vibecoded websites with TLS issues.
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
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...
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…
I'll stick with 86Box and DOSBox and try not to run FORMAT C: without backups.
Ah. Again[0].
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.
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