this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Greentext

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This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

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[–] [email protected] 102 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I remembered back in the day, there was a virus where a small cat appeared on the screen and chase your mouse cursor. If it caught your mouse cursor, the computer would crash. It did no other damage. It was great fun.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 days ago (2 children)

On Linux we have a harmless version of that: Oneko.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

It doesn't work on Wayland. We need to go back.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Might just have to install this on the work computer today!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I did this once and it was quite funny. But because I work with text and the cat blocks the characters behind it, it got also annoying.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah, same with text here. I tried the option to sit on top of the window in focus too, which is nicer. But as much as I love my non-maximized windows, my setup at work is a bunch of 1080p monitors. So even with terminal windows it works nicely to just fill the left or right half of the screen.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

That sounds like a puzzle in Mega Man Battle Network

[–] [email protected] 147 points 3 days ago (1 children)

When you're white hat, but you feel a little silly sometimes

[–] [email protected] 41 points 3 days ago

Chaotic good.

[–] Grass 56 points 3 days ago (2 children)

oh man. back in school we made a lot of dumb shit like this. friend got a box of 128mb usb sticks with erroneous branding and we put autorun 'viruses' that just spammed popups, opened the cd drive, played weird sounds, etc.

same day as we left them in various places in the school there was an announcement not to use "fake usb sticks" found in the building because they have viruses

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Were you vacationing in Iran in 2008-09 by any chance?

[–] DannyBoy 19 points 2 days ago

Funny little viruses like playing sounds, opening CD drives, and dismantling the industrial infrastructure of a nations nuclear program.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don’t understand this reference I’m stux

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Back when Iran has been actively developing a nuclear program (they claimed it was for power plants), the US has infiltrated the uranium enrichment facility by secretly delivering a malicious USB stick that was then put into a computer and caused centrifuges to break by overriding the speed settings.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh I’ve heard of stuxnet it was just a joke hence the “I’m stux” part. But this is good for those who aren’t as aware thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I wrote one in VB class that would play the system beep sound in a loop. The computers were so shitty that that would overheat them in a few seconds as they screamed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You tortured the computers to death

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

I put them out of their misery. They were tortured for yeas before I showed up.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 days ago (1 children)

looks in Task Manager

"What the hell is 'suspicious.exe?'"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Or what the shit is syssrv32.exe?

[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 days ago

Congratulations you have successfully identified the ransomware in this training exercise.

This experience brought to you by PwnMe

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 days ago

Welcome to the botnet!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

These days this should not be an issue for emulation, but unfortunately it is since the solution takes a small amount of education, and because there are no legal, official places to buy roms other than the rare packaged emulator re-release that some companies make.

I'd guess most people here already know how to verify a checksum, but the average computer user does not. It's a skill that should be taught in schools.

But roms don't have an official distribution channel, so to know that one is good, you have to rely on community projects like Redump and No-Intro. Compare your hashes to theirs, and you should be good. A tl;dr: just do a search of "myrient", as that's the most recommended place to get correct roms these days.

There are practical purposes beyond avoiding malware too. The RetroAchievements project makes it possible for people to earn achievements in emulators, but for it to work properly you need to use exactly the right versions of a rom that each game supports. RA relies heavily on RetroArch, and RetroArch uses it's own method for hash verification, so here's a guide for getting started with that.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago

Anon just started mining crypto.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days ago
MakeThemShitBrixx.exe
[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

It's a good warning (you hope). You clearly grabbed shady software. If you're lucky it's not malicious, this time.