Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone

121

lluu about 3 hours ago 49 commentsRead Article on devblogs.microsoft.com

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Discussion (49 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

stefs•37 minutes ago

years ago my father got a decomissioned, wiped clean notebook from work and asked me to set it up for him. i didn't want to shell out a hundred bucks for windows, so i suggested trying linux (ubuntu) and he agreed. "intrepid ibex" was installed without issues. a few weeks later i asked him if everything was ok and how he liked it, and he had no complaints, except one: he didn't like the edgy skull on the desktop wallpaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#/media/...

bluedino•12 minutes ago

One of the earlier releases (when they would send you free CD's) got flack for people in their underwear

https://www.zdnet.com/article/canonical-turns-20-shaping-the...

Jenk•9 minutes ago

Well, the Ubuntu logo has suddenly clicked. How did I not see it before?!

st_goliath•27 minutes ago

> "intrepid ibex" ... edgy skull on the desktop wallpaper

Ah, that would be 8.10 with the coffee stain wallpaper :-P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ubuntu_screenshot.png

teekert•18 minutes ago

Hmm, I also only see a skull

sneak•25 minutes ago

https://massgrave.dev/

Windows has been free since at least VXKC4. Microsoft wouldn’t exist as anything but an Excel vendor today if it were any other way; it’s intentional.

(Ubuntu was the right choice.)

notpushkin•12 minutes ago

Yep. Same thing with Adobe.

SV_BubbleTime•31 minutes ago

The most shocking thing for me on this was that Ivex was such a shit version of Linux and gave me such trouble I put Linux off for 10 more years after that crap. It was not at all ready for normal people. Night and day different to Linux today.

luciana1u•7 minutes ago

the ubuntu logo is a skull and the windows logo is four little windows and somehow both are accurate descriptions of the people who use them

srvmshr•16 minutes ago

Raymond Chen's articles are the true wealth of contemporary tech-lore. My favorite is the one where a user reported error on Flight Simulator map [0] and it escalated all the way up to Bill Gates & the then chief of FS division.

[0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170418-00/?p=95...

mrosenbjerg•about 2 hours ago

Raymond Chen is my favorite MS blog writer

yreg•about 1 hour ago

This article includes the photo of the (clothed) hologram (it's the third image).

https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/038-design...

dchest•about 1 hour ago

The original: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uaQyaBRaM9w

heywoods•43 minutes ago

Yikes. It looks like an ancestor of Apple’s Liquid Glass.

klausa•37 minutes ago

...in what way?

ttyyzz•42 minutes ago

I must say that "But it makes me wonder about the mental state of our beta testers [...]"

cought me off guard while drinking coffee

wolfi1•34 minutes ago

is the screen still usable?

jck86•about 1 hour ago

Red Moon Desert is now my wallpaper for the rest of the week.

Looking at it from a distance indeed may raise some brows.

teekert•17 minutes ago

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/everything-reminds-me-of-her-...

fluoridation•about 1 hour ago

Someone has to accept that they're looking at the flattest pair of cheeks ever to interpret that as an ass.

pelagicAustral•33 minutes ago

They should have told them to gtfo and use Slackware then.

teekert•about 2 hours ago

Another example: [0]

Have to say this never would have occurred to me. There are also examples of US people being offended by scenes considered harmless in other cultures, ie the Totoro bathtub scene [1], search for "family bathing scene".

I guess if this hologram offended people, there must be some nice stories about Nirvana's Nevermind (1991).

[0] https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-butt...

[1] https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/my-neighbour-totoro-10-things-di...

walrus01•33 minutes ago

> Sound familiar? It should, because it's also an apt description of... well, you know. A butthole.

Good news! Cornholio.ai isn't registered by anyone as a domain name, so someone with sufficient motivation and a love for Beavis and Butthead could totally instruct an LLM to make a satirical AI-butthole-logo themed website.

Bonus points if it has affiliate links to Amazon or other online stores selling TP (for the bunghole, of course).

croes•37 minutes ago

The baby sued

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/oct/02/nirvana-neverm...

skeaker•about 2 hours ago

Hmm. I gotta say I do see these though. Especially Claude...

rsynnott•44 minutes ago

I refuse to believe that at this point the AI companies are not doing that deliberately.

lopis•36 minutes ago

You can just as well say the logos look like flowers, suns, plasma balls, retinas. If you choose to only see anuses on all of them, that's really on you.

docdeek•about 2 hours ago

[2003]

pizzaiolo•about 1 hour ago

That's how far back Windows needs to go to try to elicit some non-negative attention

Tallain•about 1 hour ago

I mean, Raymond Chen has been writing The Old New Thing consistently for over 20 years. Nearly every single entry is interesting, informative, and illuminating, aimed at every facet of software engineering, old and new, over the decades. He may be part of the final bastion of quality and care for detail at MS, dwindling and faint as it is.

Windows doesn't need or deserve defending. It's atrocious. But this is a silly comment.

navigate8310•about 1 hour ago

I don't think OP meant any non-negative reaction towards Raymond but MSFT.

globular-toast•17 minutes ago

I was watching YouTube the other day and it was talking about Nirvana's Nevermind album, showed the album cover but with a square censoring part of it. In these cases it really is the censor themselves who is debauched. Reminds me of the classic story where Samuel Johnson left out some rude words from his dictionary. He was congratulated for having left them out, to which he is said to have quipped "I congratulate you on being able to look them up!"

latexr•4 minutes ago

It might sound silly to censor an album cover, but on the other hand why risk Google locking your whole account due to some automated check from which you have no recourse?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-cs...

artisinal•37 minutes ago

How do I view the collectors edition Windows XP without Googling “naked baby” ?

Did this comment already put me on a list?

eru•30 minutes ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49371471

wartywhoa23•44 minutes ago

> Until we got a complaint from a government (who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) that was upset with Windows 95 because it depicted naked children.

How dare you violate the government's exclusive right to naked children!

khazhoux•22 minutes ago

This is why large companies should employ a few pedophiles to run things like this by them first. Long term, much savings.

walrus01•21 minutes ago

Or they could outsource it via some kind of API: EaaS (Epstein As A Service)

sneak•28 minutes ago

What is an “obscene body part”?

If this body part is obscene, shouldn’t the author do the moral thing and remove his own?

trencedamp•19 minutes ago

Appendix

kleiba2•about 1 hour ago

The same government should sue all new mothers: how dare they deliver babies into this world completely naked!!!

reddalo•42 minutes ago

They better not visit Germany, where nudity -- even in some public spaces -- is considered normal! How dare they!!!

eru•26 minutes ago

'Some public spaces' is underselling the prevalence of FKK a bit.

sachahjkl•20 minutes ago

satanic

jb1991•about 2 hours ago

So what was the government that complained?

wartywhoa23•about 1 hour ago

A certain remote tropic island's!

earth-tattoo•26 minutes ago

Pakistan.

lukasbm•about 1 hour ago

Why should the govt remain nameless?

ketzu•about 1 hour ago

For the same reason they acted on the complaint and changed the hologram. It would be bad for business.

I also think it would be very impolite to make fun of your clients on the internet for a stupid request while naming them explicitly while doing so.

OuterVale•about 2 hours ago

Users scare me.