[HN Gopher] Berkeley Systems "After Dark" screensavers recreated...
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Berkeley Systems "After Dark" screensavers recreated in CSS
Author : 256DEV
Score : 352 points
Date : 2021-07-30 11:06 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bryanbraun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bryanbraun.com)
| tablespoon wrote:
| When I was a kind, I liked the Pyro! fish screensaver more than
| the After Dark one.
|
| Sure, it was in B&W instead of color, but when a bigger fish
| collided with a smaller fish, he'd eat it!
|
| Edit: here's a video where someone (who was probably -20 years
| old when it came out) demos it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyLtenNh7Sc
| svnpenn wrote:
| Here is Starry Night
|
| https://github.com/ldtcooper/starry-night
| Asooka wrote:
| I browse with javascript disabled and this site works perfectly.
| Kudos for that!
| whalesalad wrote:
| My dad ran a flying toaster screensaver on our first home
| computer, a Macintosh Quadra 610. I used to love it as a kid!
| chmaynard wrote:
| The After Dark "Mandelbrot" screensaver introduced me to the
| beauty of fractals. Anyone know if the source code is available?
| k__ wrote:
| When I "played" with the PC of my step dad, I somehow made
| everything a game.
|
| Paint, PowerPoint, even screensavers. Counting elements, making
| bets with my brother which will appear more often. Pointing
| fingers at the screen in the hopes nothing will touch it.
|
| Good times.
| moftz wrote:
| I used to make little movies on our Gateway 2000 with
| PowerPoint 97 using clipart and slide animations.
| k__ wrote:
| Yes, me too!
| commandlinefan wrote:
| My uncle had a PC with the "warp" screensaver on it. My brother
| and I would sit in front of it and pretend to be Han Solo and
| Luke Skywalker.
| yuuta wrote:
| I remembered the time when I was a kid, I was siting in my mom's
| office, in front of a Windows XP box and browsing through all
| different screensavers, themes, start button styles, etc. Good
| memories.
| k12sosse wrote:
| Needs more homer mowing the lawn in a moomoo.
| kergonath wrote:
| Flying toasters FTW!
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Someone reminded me of the iconic toaster screensaver the other
| day. And I totally forgot that people used to go to a physical
| store, purchase a diskette or disc with screensavers on it and
| then install it on their computer for cool points.
|
| Just wild to think of having to go through all of that for
| something you can download in less than a few milliseconds today.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Or copy a friend's disk, piracy was rife then.
| mentos wrote:
| Reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut story about going to the post
| office to mail a letter
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299135
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody
| tell you any different.
|
| I need this on a shirt. And in a plaque on my desk at the
| office. And framed at home.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Is there a way to slow down the animation or make it more choppy,
| so it better recreates the experience of running After Dark on my
| Performa 25 years ago?
| cmiller1 wrote:
| I was just playing around with an old version of After Dark
| yesterday and the "Warp" one is the only one out of these that
| was on it. These mostly seem to be from After Dark 2.0 and later.
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Johnny Castaway [0] was my all-time favorite. Loved the Easter
| Eggs on certain days, loved that it adapted to the system clock
| to match day and night themes with real life and found the story
| entertaining (almost binge-worthy I might dare to say).
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Castaway
|
| [1] https://uxdesign.cc/the-tale-of-johnny-castaway-the-
| legendar...
|
| [2] http://nivs.dk/jc/ (open source recreation project)
|
| [3] https://genesistemple.com/johnny-castaway-no-johnny-is-an-
| is...
| jcpham2 wrote:
| I just want to add that my first introduction to PC's was a 286
| or 386 at my friend's house in elementary school. His dad had
| this screensaver and I remember watching the guy on the island.
| fredley wrote:
| Beautiful. The nostalgia hit me very hard with this.
|
| I remember in the original version you had all sorts of options,
| and could even combine screensavers.
|
| For people who may not remember: screensavers used to be a
| neccessity as old CRT tubes would 'burn in' an image if they held
| it static for too long - leaving a shadow of the static image
| permanently. Screensavers kicked in after a few minutes and
| displayed something dynamic so as to save your screen from burn
| in.
|
| In the 90's, having a cool custom screensaver was cool (around
| the same time that having a custom ringtone on your 3210 was
| cool), and you'd pay money for software like After Dark.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Oh, so that's why! Until now, I believed they were used to
| reduce energy consumption when the screen wasn't used. That's
| why I believed they were just some gimmicky, useless piece of
| software.
|
| A bit off topic, but I also miss the screen obliterating hammer
| we used to play with as kids. Any modern, web rendition of that
| piece of stress-reliever?
| fredley wrote:
| You mean this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYatZdABrs
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Yes, that's the one. I totally forgot that there were other
| options too.
|
| It's sad that such cultural artifacts are more ephemeral
| than a mesopotamian clay tablet. Humans four thousand years
| from now may wonder what happened that made us culturally
| unproductive, unaware that almost everything we made didn't
| even exist.
| fredley wrote:
| The same goes for mesopotamia. We know a bit from the
| clay tablets, but we don't know anything about the
| ephemoral memes of the time.
| moftz wrote:
| Occasionally we find clay tablets like the one where the
| guy is bitching about quality of copper ingots he was
| supposed to buy for his boss. It's kind of a fun look
| into normal, everyday life that almost never made it past
| the recycle bin of history.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-
| nasir
| galdosdi wrote:
| This reminds me of recently learning more about ancient
| Rome. Since most stuff except for some monuments was
| built with wood, it's all gone now.
|
| Most people lived in 3 or 4 IIRC story rowhouses. The
| richest were at the bottom nearest the latrine, and had
| their own kitchen and servants to work the kitchen. The
| middle class were in the middle, with some kitchen
| facilities they operated themselves. The poorest were at
| the top with no way to cook and relied on street carts.
|
| I was kinda shocked to read this description and how
| similar it was to a modern city. But since all that is
| wood, it's all gone. We only know even this because Rome
| was such a powerful and rich culture that there was a lot
| of writing, and a comparatively lot got saved for
| centuries. (Although the vast majority has still been
| lost, just from estimating based on works cited by
| ancient works that we don't have copies of)
|
| Writing wasn't cheap, and preserving and transmitting
| writing isn't cheap. Writing about obvious everyday stuff
| everyone knows in such an environment has a much smaller
| chance of making it through the many historical hoops it
| needed to make its way to us.
|
| Many other more prehistorical places could well have had
| significant buildup that we would recognize as modern in
| all but industrialization, but except when someone went
| to the trouble to build with stone instead of the more
| common random natural materials like wood.... all gone.
|
| Who knows what went on that we just will never know about
| because it didn't get written down enough or the culture
| that wrote it wasn't powerful enough or long lived enough
| to preserve enough of those writings?
|
| (IANA historian and might be a bit or a lot off. Biggest
| sources are "Rome: A history in seven sackings" and
| "Against the grain" Not trying to make strong claims
| here, just a general sense of wonder at how big the gap
| between what we assume about the past and what actually
| was could be. As a layman just dipping my toe into
| learning more about early history / prehistory, it's
| shocking and fascinating)
| joezydeco wrote:
| Oooh now let's talk about PointCast. Who remembers when the
| future of the Internet was _push_?
|
| https://www.wired.com/1997/03/ff-push/
| fredley wrote:
| Man I miss the enthusiasm and optimism of the 90's
| zippergz wrote:
| I keep trying to figure out if the internet really was more
| fun back then, or if I was just younger and less jaded.
| Maybe both?
| tekproxy wrote:
| Both. The internet was full of early adopter, tech
| enthusiast types. You'd certainly pickup on this. Maybe a
| bit of the magic was your youth, but the tech was new and
| magical to everyone.
|
| Every article I read back then was written by a real
| person about something they cared about. Now it feels
| like every search result is just 100 pages of AI
| generated, generic content used to drive clicks to the
| site. And what content is actually written by a real
| person, it's in service to their brand and it's tuned for
| engagement and sharing on social media.
|
| A lot of software back then was open and didn't hide too
| many of the details. Today, all the technical bits are
| hidden away and user experiences are carefully controlled
| and tuned for engagement. Think IRC vs Slack or FB
| messenger. On irc, you can whois, dcc, technical bits
| everywhere in the UI.
|
| In the 90s, there was a question whether or not you
| should include ads and banners on your site. Later, it
| seemed like the ads went away but actually they took
| over. So much of the internet experience now is about
| monetization. Even malware is about making money. You
| gotta jump into the new tech to get that feeling of
| wonder and possibly.
| queuebert wrote:
| Exactly. When it was young, the internet was about
| communication. Now it is about money and all the
| tackiness that comes with it.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Yes! And learning, and experimentation, and *sharing*, as
| compared now to *hoarding*.
| ctoth wrote:
| > This new medium doesn't wait for clicks. It doesn't need
| computers. It means personalized experiences not bound by a
| page - think of a how-to origami video channel or a 3-D
| furry-muckers VR space. It means information that cascades,
| not just through a PC, but across all forms of communication
| devices - headlines sent to a pager, or a traffic map popping
| up on a cellular phone. And it means content that will not
| hesitate to find you - whether you've clicked on something
| recently or not.
|
| Sounds pretty much completely accurate.
| joezydeco wrote:
| I think writers for Wired in the 90s were paid by the
| buzzword.
| toast0 wrote:
| In the most generous framing, Wired was (is?) a monthly
| magazine focused on how tech and the people in it are
| changing the world, oriented to a general audience.
|
| Every article needs to be about something that's world
| changing (positive or negative) and they need enough
| articles to put in between all the ads they sold. If
| there isn't enough world changing stuff in a given month,
| or the writers got started on the wrong things, they've
| got to hype up what they've got.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Haha, PointCast was one of the earliest "next big thing" apps
| I installed on my Mac in the Dot-com era. I never really
| found it useful apart from the always available
| implementation of SameGame.
| twiddling wrote:
| PointCast was what I what load up with new content for long
| flights. Catch up my news.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Man, but didn't it _feel_ like the future? All this
| information in real time being shown on-screen! What 's the
| weather? What is Ciena's stock price right now?
|
| _Never mind those ads that keep showing up_ , that's just
| a minor inconvenience, right?
|
| And yeah, I need to keep my modem on all the time and tie
| up my voice line but maybe someday we'll get that T1
| installed in the office.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Windows users might remember Active Desktop in the context of
| "push". Oh, those were the days.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > screensavers used to be a neccessity as old CRT tubes would
| 'burn in' an image if they held it static for too long
|
| Why didn't we just show a black image?
| fredley wrote:
| You could, but it was (and is?) cooler to have flying
| toasters.
| zinekeller wrote:
| That's not the whole reason, though (at least for the
| original intent). Turning off CRT monitors means both a
| cycle added (which is not good for the electromagnets and
| capacitors) and diminished brightness due to cycling (this
| is due to the "warming up" needed to ensure that the screen
| is as bright as it can be, which takes up to around 30
| minutes).
| bluGill wrote:
| Turning off and showing a black image are not the same
| thing. Some old CRTs had a low power most where the power
| was on - thus the parts stayed warm - but no image was
| displayed.
|
| Though too be fair, I think the low power mode wasn't
| signaled by a black image but instead turning off the
| sync signals or something like that. (I hope you get the
| idea that I don't know how it worked here)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Show a black image, not turn off.
| phicoh wrote:
| Could be a UI thing. When the screen is black you expect the
| monitor to be off and press the on-off switch.
|
| Same thing with switching monitors off after work.
|
| Though same screensavers would run for a while and then
| switch the monitor to power saving mode, effectively turning
| it off.
| Symbiote wrote:
| CRTs were in use for decades.
|
| In the early 1990s, there was no power saving. You could
| turn off the monitor with the front power switch, or use
| the screensaver.
|
| A few years later, power saving options began to be
| introduced. The computer could signal to the monitor that
| it should go into a low(er) power state. Turning on again
| took at least 5 seconds for a visible picture, sometimes
| 15-20. That might not be appropriate if the computer had to
| be used in response to something like a phone call, or
| visitor at reception.
| dylan604 wrote:
| CRTS couldn't really show "black". It was more of a dull
| gray. That's what made the plasma display so amazing with
| it's true black. LEDs and now OLED are the same except they
| do not ahve the mass of a dying star.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| That's not how CRT physics works.
|
| The screen is charged. That charge causes burn in. The best
| way to not burn in, short of turning the screen off, is to
| charge the screen as little as possible. The least charge
| you can give it is a black signal, which means least burn
| in.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >The least charge you can give it is a black signal
|
| The point is that you could not give it no signal without
| it being off. LEDs can do this. The closest to black from
| a CRT I saw was from Sony's Professional Studio reference
| monitors that were $32K for a 32" screen. When Sony
| brought out their OLED reference monitors, they did a
| side-by-side comparisson of their best CRT, an LCD and
| the new OLED. All 3 were receiving the same signal, and
| when the demo started black, the CRT was clearly "on" but
| the OLED looked "off" with the LCD in between. Just about
| the time I'm thinking to myself that the CRT brightness
| was turned up, they switched to reference bars and all
| were calibrated correctly.
|
| Arguing that CRTs could display true black is arguing
| against history.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I think you've got the wrong end of the discussion,
| there.
|
| If you can't or don't want to turn you CRT off... then
| what's the next best thing for avoiding burn-in?
|
| Send it a black signal, or send it a bright signal?
|
| It's the black signal, because it charges the screen
| less. Charging the screen is what causes burn in. If you
| charge it less you get less burn in.
|
| > Arguing that CRTs could display true black
|
| Nobody argued this. Where did you think you read this? I
| said 'show a black image'. Send it a black signal. It's
| the minimum signal you can send it without turning it
| off.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Or just send it a random signal, such as static or even
| better, an aesthetic screensaver. Showing black on a CRT
| didn't save any power, and the computer stayed on anyways
| (since it often took 3-5 minutes to boot up in those
| days). Black could mean something is wrong or signal is
| disconnected.
| cesaref wrote:
| On the subject of options, I seem to remember being able to
| alter how toasted the toast was!
| fredley wrote:
| You're totally right! I think you could have flying fish too!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Screensavers are a thing again on modern TV because OLEDs have
| a pretty serious burn-in problem apparently. Not much
| creativity there, probably because it should not be annoying,
| so it's stuff like art galleries or subtle fireworks effects
| that also 'train' the pixels.
|
| Best screensaver I used to have was the BSOD one from
| xscreensaver, so many people fell for it.
|
| Second best is the nyan cat screensaver.
|
| Currently have an Apple image gallery of space themed pictures.
| willis936 wrote:
| The electron guns in CRTs also take about 30 minutes to warm
| up. Before then the black level is pretty high and the image
| is washed out. So there is benefit to running a screensaver
| on a CRT but OLEDs do best when just put to sleep quickly.
| vidanay wrote:
| Uhhh, no. I've never seen a CRT take more than 10-15
| seconds to "warm up", and I've been looking at CRTs since
| the early 70's.
| willis936 wrote:
| When was the last time you looked at one? Was it todsy? I
| own half a dozen PVMs and two PC monitors and have been
| looking at CRTs consistently since the 90s.
| rideontime wrote:
| > Best screensaver I used to have was the BSOD one from
| xscreensaver, so many people fell for it.
|
| Same here - including myself, when I came back from a
| bathroom break to find it had landed on the MacOS error
| screen.
| donatj wrote:
| In high school in the very early 2000s my friends and I
| thought it was hilarious to add bluescreen slides to our
| PowerPoint presentations. Most of the computers ran Windows
| 98 and it was a common sight, we'd get gasps in class.
|
| It was dumb harmless fun.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| My favorite trick was to take a screenshot of the desktop,
| hide all the icons and the task bar, then set the
| screenshot as the wallpaper. It gets even the most advanced
| users every time.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I knew someone that failed to prepare for their
| presentation, and did this as an excuse the presentation
| computer was not working and had to reschedule
| willis936 wrote:
| It's my last day at my current job. Thank you for inspiring
| me to set up a 1 minute BSOD screensaver for the next
| person who uses my current workstation.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It's my last day at my current job. Thank you for
| inspiring me to set up a 1 minute BSOD screensaver for
| the next person who uses my current workstation.
|
| What company won't wipe and reimage it before
| redeployment?
|
| Hell, I usually wipe my own work PCs before surrendering
| them after an upgrade, to make sure it's done properly.
| willis936 wrote:
| It's a relatively small lab in a university and part of
| my job is keeping the computers running.
|
| I could wipe, but I want to make as little work for my
| replacement as possible. Well, maybe a few minutes of
| extra work to get rid of a screensaver.
| moftz wrote:
| If it's a desktop workstation with lots of expensive
| development tools installed or a delicate toolchain
| (especially one in a lab), why spend the time and effort
| wiping the thing just to reinstall all of the same stuff
| over again? It might even be a shared computer. I
| remember my help desk summer job, I worked at a hot desk
| that was staffed 24/7 so the same computers were used by
| first, second, and third shift. There were a lot of
| things that had to be logged into (mainframes, customer
| email accounts, etc) and not all of the desktops covered
| the same customers so it would have been a nightmare to
| handle all of the images and configurations. Whenever a
| configuration had to change, they would make a new backup
| to cover that specific desktop in case it died.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I was always fond of this one.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/sysinternals/downloads/blue...
| kergonath wrote:
| I used to change my screensaver every week or so. These days,
| I'm really happy with a slightly customised Flurry on macOS,
| or an clone on Linux.
| fubar2018aug wrote:
| Working on a next-gen operating system for a large tech
| company in the Pacific NorthWest in the previous century, I
| was able to reliably bluescreen the OS when stressing the
| network using an internal network protocol driver.
|
| Later that day, I read in one of the trade rags about a
| columnist talking about the efficacy of a bluescreen
| screensaver.
|
| 1+1 = 2
|
| Less than an hour later, most of it spent transcribing the
| bluescreen text output, I had a BSOD screensaver. Released it
| to the company intranet and waited for the ensuing hilarity.
|
| Wasn't long before the guys in the build lab took advantage
| of the screensaver.
|
| They installed the BSOD screensaver and disconnected the
| mouse and keyboard.
|
| The main dev on the project comes in, sees the bluescreen and
| proceeds to restart the computer! Oops.
|
| A few years later, on another multi-year large software
| project at this PNW tech company, the morning that the
| software was supposed to be signed off and released to
| manufacturing, the build lab, different group of people,
| installed the BSOD screensaver and disconnected the mouse and
| keyboard on the dogfood server for the project.
|
| When the project manager arrived, he went to check on the
| status of the server, only to find the BSOD. This time a
| server restart was averted.
|
| So, it's all fun and games until a server is hard rebooted.
| elondaits wrote:
| The Apple TV 4k screensavers (city flyovers filmed in slow
| motion with a drone) are beautiful and I always end up
| staring at the screen for a while.
|
| https://youtu.be/lbj9kihTwcc
| [deleted]
| danudey wrote:
| I grabbed a screensaver app for my Sony TV that uses the
| AppleTV 4K HDR screensavers, and... yeah, it's really,
| really nice.
|
| Not all of them are city flyovers; there are also long,
| slow pans of areas like the Great Wall. Generally, it's
| just gorgeous.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Part of the reason these are so captivating is that they
| are slowed down instead of real time. This gives them an
| other-worldly quality where you can see extreme detail but
| in a different motion than you would normally see it.
| sneak wrote:
| The other reason is that you have to have biggest-
| company-in-the-world-sized connections (and pocketbook)
| to get permission to run a 120fps 8k drone over an active
| LAX.
|
| Such a subtle huge flex.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Many of the cityscape ones I don't believe are slowed
| down, at least the ones I have seen. If you watch the
| movement of traffic it appears to be moving at normal
| speeds. Even the orbital ones appear to be real-time.
|
| The otherworldliness of the video seems to come more from
| the smoothness of the motion and the uncommon
| perspective. Because many of the scenes are captured with
| drones instead of helicopters or airplanes they have a
| literal bird's perspective in terms of velocity and
| altitude.
| cwizou wrote:
| It's been an ongoing debate I've had with some Aerial
| users, but I agree with you. Most if not all are real
| time or barely slowed down (latest beta I've put a slider
| to speed a video up/down partly to try and settle this).
|
| They definitely are massively stabilised though and Apple
| used to update videos from time to time, tweaking
| stabilization, colors or sometimes length and pushing new
| versions. They haven't done that in a long while though.
|
| Some seem shot from fairly high altitude and may use
| planes instead, and at least for some videos, I've heard
| they used 3rd parties to shoot them.
| cwizou wrote:
| That's a horribly outdated version linked in that video
| sadly, and that one no longer runs on recent macOS (because
| it's not notarized).
|
| Just in case anyone wants to try it, please grab latest
| build here instead :
| https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases
|
| Or if you want an installer with auto updates, get it here
| : https://aerialscreensaver.github.io
|
| Latest betas include Apple Music/Spotify integration, Speed
| control, and brings back the ability to put your videos
| anywhere (including an external drive!) on Monterey.
| jdmichal wrote:
| Wow! Is there anything similar that you know of for
| Android TV? I would love to have something like this over
| the stock photo slideshow.
| cwizou wrote:
| I only make the mac version, but I've seen this "port"
| for Android TV.
|
| No guarantees from me that it's any good : https://play.g
| oogle.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codingbuff...
|
| It's open source too, according to the description, it
| streams and doesn't cache videos and apparently it
| handles 4K HDR. If data usage is a concern to you, be
| aware that some videos are close to 1 GB.
| danudey wrote:
| I use this one on my TV, and it's great, highly
| recommend.
|
| If bandwidth is a concern, you can also point it towards
| a local JSON file with whatever URLs you want, so you can
| mirror the screensavers locally and then stream them from
| there.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| The new nintendo switch has an oled screen. Is that likely to
| be vulnerable to burn in due to game ui staying constant?
| jfrunyon wrote:
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/worried-about-
| nintendo-s...
|
| > We've designed the OLED screen to aim for longevity as
| much as possible, but OLED displays can experience image
| retention if subjected to static visuals over a long period
| of time. However, users can take preventative measures to
| preserve the screen [by] utilizing features included in the
| Nintendo Switch systems by default, such as auto-brightness
| function to prevent the screen from getting too bright, and
| the auto-sleep function to go into 'auto sleep' mode after
| short periods of time.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Not just CRTs - I had an LCD around 2006 that I left on a
| browser window for hours and I had the browser's window & menu
| bar slightly burned in for a good few months after that.
| [deleted]
| donatj wrote:
| I had this happen a couple times to my iMac. The worst time I
| went on a week long vacation and my screen never went to
| sleep.
|
| I used to use this program that flashed the screen white and
| black rapidly and it would clear it up in about an hour.
|
| Haven't seen any trouble in a few years, is this a solved
| problem now?
| yreg wrote:
| I have a 2017 5K iMac and don't use screensaver. Just a few
| weeks ago I noticed that the Dock and menu bar is very
| slightly burned in.
| cwizou wrote:
| Yep, there are two different 5K panels on iMacs, off the
| top of my head LG and Samsung, and the LG one does have
| slight transient burn in.
|
| It's not "true" burn-in (like CRTs or OLED) as it goes
| away after a bit but it's fairly easy to trigger with the
| current trend of very white/light grey designs in macOS,
| the easiest way to notice it is move from a whitish area
| to a mid grey one (Daring Fireball is a great example of
| that problematic grey).
|
| I also have been unlucky on that draw on my 2015 iMac. I
| barely noticed it at first but newer macOS versions have
| made it very noticeable sadly. One more reason to run
| Aerial ;)
| yreg wrote:
| Bingo, Daring Fireball on fullscreen shows my burn-in in
| the full glory.
| kergonath wrote:
| Can't recall any burn-in with recent LED displays. AFAIK it
| is an issue with OLED ones still.
| Arrath wrote:
| Sure is. My Galaxy S7 has the keyboard and some of the
| WhatsApp top bar interface (from texting my wife so much)
| burned in.
| kergonath wrote:
| Weren't these OLED, though?
| basseq wrote:
| I can hear the 8-bit flapping sounds in my head, even though I
| haven't heard them in at least 2 decades.
| _notathrowaway wrote:
| Lovely work!
| rectangleboy wrote:
| Flying toasters!
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| My favorites were the "Totally Twisted" screen savers from
| Berkeley Systems - particularly the "Voyer" screen saver where
| you saw the silhouettes of all the people in their apartments
| doing crazy things at night.
|
| https://shorturl.at/fDGTW
| teddyh wrote:
| The link does not work.
| myself248 wrote:
| I liked the daredevil, trying to jump schoolbuses and stuff
| with his motorbike. Once in a blue moon, he'd be driving a
| schoolbus trying to jump other stuff.
|
| What's funny is that these screensavers were _expensive_, and
| thus people pirated them. I remember the most active warez BBS
| in area had a whole file section dedicated to screensavers.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Always loved the Flying Toasters... the XScreensaver version of
| it stinks in comparison.
|
| I seem to remember there being a city skyline screensaver as
| well, was there an After Dark 2?
| kergonath wrote:
| Was it the Starry Night screensaver in After Dark? I remember
| staring in awe at my parents' Mac Plus showing this thing, when
| I was a kid.
| notpeter wrote:
| Yes. Starry Night was the best.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRQYFTPV2W4
| feiss wrote:
| Everytime I passed this appliances store which had this small
| computer exhibited, I had to stop and stare thought the window
| for minutes to watch the flying toasters thingie. I was
| mesmerized. My 486 was nice, but that was sooo cool.. so high res
| and smooth..
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2014) please
| user3939382 wrote:
| These guys also make a version of flying toasters for macOS (it's
| what I use as my screen saver):
| https://en.infinisys.co.jp/product/afterdarkclassicset/upgra...
| atommclain wrote:
| Last year I went down a long rabbit hole of trying to get the
| original After Dark screen saver to run on macOS. I got pretty
| close; following a guide and using a Wine wrapper I was able to
| create a stand alone application that when launched runs After
| Dark full screen. Wiggling the mouse would exit full screen and
| close the app. The only part I am missing is getting macOS to
| launch an app instead of a traditional screen saver.
|
| A link to the original guide and the modified steps I used:
| https://gist.github.com/atommclain/863e5cd47ab714c1e4e966606...
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Given a standalone application, you might just be able to stick
| the executable in a .saver in the right place with the right
| Info.plist entries.
|
| Perhaps you need to adapt your work to actually render on an
| NSView first ...
| dwt204 wrote:
| Thank you for the trip down memory lane.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Somewhat related, I would love a recreation of the W95 3D maze
| screensaver.
| jleyank wrote:
| I miss the worms which ate the screen. Very Pink Floyd.
| Solstinox wrote:
| The Star Trek TOS and TNG After Dark Screensavers took things to
| another level. Tribbles filling your screen. Worf phasering away
| your desktop.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| I had this as well. It also included sound effects so you
| stumble to bed late late at night after a long session of
| _Pathways into Darkness_, or maybe after meeting Achanar for
| the first time in _Myst_ and just as you're drifting into sleep
| you're jolted awake by the sound of a communicator establishing
| a connection, a red alert claxon, or more gently roused by
| tribbles cooing. You have to stumble back to the computer to
| turn off the power to your beige Yamaha powered computer
| speakers.
| plantain wrote:
| It's missing the music! I still remember the Flying Toasters
| music 20 years later...
| Udo_Schmitz wrote:
| And it's flap! Flap! Flap! Now help is on the way.
| anotherhue wrote:
| And the toast popping :)
|
| https://youtu.be/3j-SODCxknc
| rasz wrote:
| On one hand super cool due to tricks employed, on the other CSS
| animations tend to be very power hungry
|
| https://www.bryanbraun.com/after-dark-css/all/rainstorm.html
|
| takes <40% of idle low range gaming GPU = nothing, but 30% of one
| gaming 4GHz CPU thread, what is going on there? Chrome GPU
| process jumps between 20 an 40% while sliding 6 bitmaps around,
| something you could even do on a Virge in 1996.
|
| Some time ago I noticed an older 3GHz i5 laptop, otherwise
| perfectly usable, would start to struggle decoding h264 webcam
| stream because webmaster decided to use CSS animation for a
| scrolling title bar superimposed over video feed.
| nine_k wrote:
| That's why it's a good idea to develop for and test on outdated
| and underpowered hardware, or at least an emulator of it.
|
| Many of your customers won't have top-notch systems.
| JeanMarcS wrote:
| Warp.
|
| Obviously, warp.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The first thing I tried to do is drag the title bar of that
| "window".
| drvdevd wrote:
| Did I miss the night city saver that's pictured in the logo??
| It's my favorite and does not appear to me there...
| noduerme wrote:
| When I was a kid in the 90s learning to program, writing screen
| savers was one of the best ways to demo your "skills". Also just
| something creative to do when you didn't really have a project in
| mind. I still think they're an underappreciated art form, and
| it's kind of disappointing that OSX only ships with a couple
| really basic ones. Apple should bundle in all the AfterDark
| modules (there were several releases).
|
| There was also an amazing set of screensavers which I don't
| remember the name of, but one of the set was called 'kaos', and a
| lot of them were based on fractals. If anyone recalls the name of
| that software...
|
| [edit] I found it! DarkSide of the Mac by Tom Dowdy. Brilliant.
| http://poubelle.com/DarkSideDocs.html
| mistrial9 wrote:
| RIP Tom Dowdy
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Tom was a good guy.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| It is rare that something I read getting ready for work actually
| brightens my day, but this made me actually smile. Thanks for
| this and thank HN for being the kind of place that a post like
| this can hit the top of the page.
| zandorg wrote:
| Don't forget JWZ of Netscape fame.
|
| https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
| marcodiego wrote:
| Will it be ported to wayland?
| [deleted]
| globular-toast wrote:
| NSFW.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| It's only NSFW if you click the link from this site. It's a
| referrer Easter egg.
| fragmede wrote:
| Which is funny, because I'm aware of jwz and the history,
| but only clicked on the link because of the referrer joke.
| Maybe I should open a club down the street from DNA called
| DnB.
| masswerk wrote:
| BTW, since 1997: https://www.masswerk.at/flyer/
|
| (Flying toaster images came apparently from there.)
| Imnimo wrote:
| Honestly if you can't adjust the doneness of the toast with a
| little slider, is it really Flying Toasters?
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