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

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

something like this was among the first programs i wrote when i was a kid; back then - in turbo pascal - for pranking my (~10 year old) cousin. the program created a fake dos that printed warning messages about finding a virus, attempting to delete said virus and failing, then - as a last measure - fake-formatting C and exiting. i then set the "dir" defaults to show only files with a name that didn't exist, so when he typed "dir", an empty harddisk was shown.

the trick was to name the exe non-breaking-space - alt+255 - which was a valid filename and then adding it to the end of the autoexec.bat.

ps: my cousin started to cry.

Reminds me of the 'BSOD' module from Xscreensaver.

I remember the days when `format` with no arguments would happily format drive C: out from under you. I worked in a computer lab at my college where it happened more than once before we put `format.bat` files on all the PCs.

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!" :-)

gives me SSL_ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR_ALERT on Firefox

I was site visitor 0001101 (hit return).

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

The quantum fireball was a nice touch.

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

I think a lot about my poor teachers and this Calvin quote comes to mind.

https://imgur.com/a/eX4UKLk

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.

32768MB of ram?

Yeah, that’s wrong.

please, I really need a screen saver with this :)

Ah. Again[0].

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

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.

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