When you see a cmd window or two flash into and out of existence after trying to open something:
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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My work PC does this every time I turn it on. After 2 years it still gives me that jolt of "oh shit".
Same, and I have no idea what that is
Probably some GPO deployed script your admins configured at boot to tweak some registry nonsense or other corpo-spyware related crap.
I am my own admin 🥲
Stop spying on yourself!
My elderly parents both have laptops with Windows 11 (don't @ me, they can't possibly learn a new OS at this point). Every once in a while they briefly throw up like 100 cmd windows. I have no clue what they are.
Not sure what you're calling elderly, but my FIL turned 70 this year, and I just set him up with Mint a few months ago. Dude is loving it.
- Linux would kill her. Dealing with Windows and iOS is enough pain for her.
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The amount of legitimate software that's just batch scripts is pretty amusing. I always make sure to read and understand what it's doing in that case, though
"Break Stuff" is what you were looking for tbf
matrix_screensaver.exe and the like was popular for a bit.
It could have also been a proper .SCR (screensaver) file.
Because, fun fact: screensaver files on Windows are just renamed exes.
What- why?? There is some reason? I don't understans why it's a proper executable, it's such a security risk
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It was tricky to get used to the Linux mentality of not really having a dedicated double-clickable “executable type”. But it makes sense - if you want to run code, that should be a planned action by an app that is dedicated to the task of setting up new code. (Package manager, IDE)
I mean you can just execute anything from the primary Linux interface - the commandline. It seems equivalent.
chmod +x file
./file
Well, casey beat me to it. By default anything you've grabbed from the internet or a flash drive won't have execute permissions on it, so it's intentionally more obtuse to run than Windows' simple "Are you sure you want to run this unknown publisher" dialog.
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They would put a bunch of spaces between the mp3 and the .exe so the other information columns would hide it
Back circa 2000 I was a Visual Basic developer. In my corporate apps I would always put in easter eggs that would randomly throw up message boxes saying stuff like "No matter where you go, there you are." This always pissed off the c-suite types and they would demand that the source be found and eliminated, but none of the other developers ever found it. All I did was convert the message string to a series of CHR(n) commands, and for the MsgBox command I just put like a thousand spaces in front of it in a small, rarely-used file. A search for the text of the message would return nothing, and a manual inspection of the file wouldn't reveal anything unless you happened to notice the horizontal scroll bar this produced at the bottom. One of the applications I wrote is still in use at this company (and still occasionally throwing up these easter eggs) and it was basically a front end wrapping a mainframe program dating to the 1970s, which means that thing is still running.
Something mildly similar is how spam emails made it through our filters. In the email it'd advertise dick pills but when copying the email to notepad it looked like gibberish. I made the suggestion to highlight the email text and change the font-color and size to something uniform. Turns out they would insert 3 random characters in between each letter, and those 3 characters would be font size 1 and white while the letters of the actual message were 12 and Black.
...I've actually never heard of that trick.
Ahh, good old VirusWire. Simpler times.
Hahaha. Back when you could format reinstall if thing went wrong and only lose a day.
I dont understand why windows now hides file extensions by default
One take is that 'normal' users get 'scared' by extensions and do strange things like break their file by renaming the extension away or think they can literally convert a file between types by changing the extension.
And so they hide it away.
But it's bad logic because breaking things by trying to do weird stuff is how any of us who are technically literate became that way in the first place; by fucking around and finding out.
I remember reading in a book that it was hard to actually break Windows, so I loved messing about in the settings. It was probably the 95 or 98 days where I turned on file extensions on my profile and never looked back.
I also played a part in infecting the family PC with about 500 different types of adware, but oh well.
I remember when I learnt you can customise the default icons for My Computer and the Recycling bin, so I used the image in the book or magazine as a reference and manually edited every pixel to make them golden.
I was big into those magazines on how to tweak/modify Windows to go faster. One day I was reading up on compressing a hard drive to save space. So I compressed C: to save space. Sure learned a lot those years!
Being technically literate? You surely meant to say enemy of technocracy...
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Mac (I think), iOS, and Android do.
Android doesn't
That's the "File" app which is the default file manager on all android phones (except a few brands that have their own thing but the app File is still there usually)
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Because they want to push power users away with hundreds of tiny cuts
Because for the significant majority of users it doesn't matter.
Is telling if you are opening a virus trying to disguise itself as another file type not significant for the majority of users?
Does it? I always see them.
Ah limewire. I miss the simplicity of those days.
Soulseek is still around
Limewire, ares, bearshare, kazaa, imesh...
Surprise, it's a snuff film!
deltree is the latest alt band blowing up! Download their whole discography!
I'll never forget downloading Max Payne. A single .exe. "This can't possibly work...an entire game!?"
Son of a biiiiitch. And I paid nothing!? Napster changed my life, for real.
Napster was just mp3 files. There was a roundabout way around that where they had that method of zipping up an installer and changing the extension to .mp3.
Maybe it was Kazaa.
You mean Kazaa Lite K++, right?
I loved so much that one of the top downloads on Kazaa was a ripped version of the paid version of Kazaa.
I absolutely did not use that exact excuse when I was a teenage foreign exchange student and ruined the family's computer. Nope, no siree.
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