In my current company we're being forced to use Windows for web development... I can't use a VM because of the hardware specs.

This is now my screensaver.

Douche: So your a programmer ?

Me: Yes

Douche: Excellent, I have an idea.....

Me: No

Douche: cmon bro, week be rich, this screensaver so will make us tons of money

Me: I have a question.

Douche: corz man waddup

Me: do you use a screensaver?

Douche: no, why?

Me: *walks away angrily

Shanghai people's square... You had one job! Move the mouse the whole day...

Yes! Just installed my old screen saver from about 15 years ago. It's the matrix one, it's updated to work with El Capitan.

Work enforced a screensaver policy - a corporate screensaver that even us local admin devs can't change.
I swiftly made a .reg script and distributed it.
We all laugh whenever someone's "Ribbons" screensaver starts up.
I love using my powers for evil.

Brilliant idea time:

Inspired by @TrojanMorse and his fractal trees

A fractal tree wallpaper that grows throughout the day.

So at 12 a script starts a new fractal and only uses depth 1 (a twig). Then every other hour it branches once more so at 2 am the fractal would have depth 2 and at noon it would have depth 7. That way you get a tree growing throughout the day for your screensaver. Now to make this a thing

So apparently our windows domain admin now disabled screensavers.

I was always happy to return to my desk while looking at the pixel city screensaver I had and now it's just black.

I am mildly angered 😑

When you write your own screensaver with processing like a 1337 haxx0r

My screensaver:

this.dev.get(☕).drink();

So just now I had to focus on a VM running in virt-manager.. common stuff, yeah. It uses a click of le mouse button to focus in, and Ctrl-Alt-L to release focus. Once focused, the VM is all there is. So focus, unfocus, important!

Except Mate also uses Ctrl-L to lock the screen. Now I actually don't know the password to my laptop. Autologin in lightdm and my management host can access both my account and the root account (while my other laptop uses fingerprint authentication to log in, but this one doesn't have it). Conveniently my laptop can also access the management host, provided a key from my password manager.. it makes more sense when you have a lot of laptops, servers and other such nuggets around. The workstations enter a centralized environment and have access to everything else on the network from there.

Point is, I don't know my password and currently this laptop is the only nugget that can actually get this password out of the password store.. but it was locked. You motherfucker for a lock screen! I ain't gonna restart lightdm, make it autologin again and lose all my work! No no no, we can do better. So I took my phone which can also access the management host, logged in as root on my laptop and just killed mate-screensaver instead. I knew that it was just an overlay after all, providing little "real" security. And I got back in!

Now this shows an important security problem. Lock screens obviously have it.. crash the lock screen somehow, you're in. Because behind that (quite literally) is your account, still logged in. Display managers have it too to some extent, since they run as root and can do autologin because root can switch user to anyone else on the system without authentication. You're not elevating privileges by logging in, you're actually dropping them. Just something to think about.. where are we just adding cosmetic layers and where are we actually solving security problems? But hey, at least it helped this time. Just kill the overlay and bingo bango, we're in!

You know you're old when...

ok I give up trying to make a screensaver for Linux

I don't even have anything to rant about

just everything I tried didn't work and nothing makes sense

I'm gonna find somewhere to bury my woes

this is so stupid, too. because I can just query the system if it's idle, run my app, and then ask my app to exit if there's any user input. but instead I'm trying to integrate it with the existing screensaver software. which evidently never runs my application for God knows what reason. and I'm tired of reading 100 pages hunting for the answer. where's my arch wiki page for how to make a screensaver =[

What do you get when you cross a computer and a lifeguard?
A screensaver!

A small program I wrote in Turbo C which attempted to mimic the Starfield screensaver. This was the first moderately complex program that I wrote which drew something on the screen through code.

I have a pair of older TVs that contain data readouts. However, because the screens don't always update they are susceptible to screen burns. I'm looking for a screensaver or something that could move around on the screen but not completely make the data disappear. The current running thing we have are the Windows Bubbles screensaver. This allows us to still see the data but it freezes the screens. (No data update)

I need something that will save the screen but still allow the browsers to do their screen updates as usual.

I saw this from netflix's screensaver-esq display.

That's a great title!... thinking of orchestrating one's internal processes with the subtext of potential inner demons...

but ofc it has nothing to do with the tech term daemon...

I'm pretty sure that I need a break but I have more I need to do.

This poster is shite quality but I've transcribed the gold found on it:

The Technical Support Specialist:

- SEND US AN URGENT EMAIL IN UPPERCASE. We'll flag it as a rush job. Really.

- Loves it when a user calls screaming "the internet is broken".

- Gonna snap the next time a user asks why they don't have permission to install a George Michael screensaver.

- Last vacation: catching the first rays of sun from the back booth in Tim Hortons. Sweeeeeet!

- Most dreaded words: "I don't know what happened, I only opened the attachment".

- Has memorized over 100 access codes, but can't remember what day it is.

- Is amazed a user can have five chatrooms and three celebrity sites opened at once - but reading an I.T. support e-mail sent with high importance - now that's a complicated request.

- When you call with a tech support problem and say you'll be back in 5 - I'll say "Great!" And try not to snicker.

- System crashed last Thursday. Haven't seen my wife and kids since.

working on a second PC, (formatting it) and it's not connected to the internet, it's clock is an hour in advance for w/e reason, have been using it's screensaver-clock all day

7pm, time to go home, .. fuck only 6pm, noooooooooo

This will sound silly as I was a 6 yo back then. My father had got a computer for doing some office work. He used to do a lot of the stuff using MS Word. I loved seeing the Pipes screensaver marvelling at the infinite combinations of pipes. But, what got me the most excited was Clippy, the infamous Office Assistant. I started using computer just to play around with clippy. Right click, do a trick and stuff. Oh the memories...

I feel like writing a screensaver is some kind of rite of passage

one of the screensavers is literally the masonry pyramid spinning in 3d, with a money sign behind it

I've joined a cult and this is the hazing ritual

I need to acquire food or chamomile to kick this caffeine. I've managed to get my app to run and acknowledge there's a screensaver window it may or may not be able to access (doing this in rust and all and not c, and not actually knowing c which is what all the guides / examples are for / of if you find them lol)

xscreensaver still thinks my thing is "not installed" whatever that damned means, but maybe a problem for another day

it at least runs the binary and I'm having the binary create a log file at an absolute directory to debug it

my life