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/...
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.
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.
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).
> 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).
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.
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!"
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.
> 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!
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/...
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...
Well, the Ubuntu logo has suddenly clicked. How did I not see it before?!
> "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
Hmm, I also only see a skull
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.
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.)
Yep. Same thing with Adobe.
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...
Raymond Chen is my favorite MS blog writer
This article includes the photo of the (clothed) hologram (it's the third image).
https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/038-design...
The original: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uaQyaBRaM9w
Yikes. It looks like an ancestor of Apple’s Liquid Glass.
...in what way?
I must say that "But it makes me wonder about the mental state of our beta testers [...]"
cought me off guard while drinking coffee
is the screen still usable?
Red Moon Desert is now my wallpaper for the rest of the week.
Looking at it from a distance indeed may raise some brows.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/everything-reminds-me-of-her-...
Someone has to accept that they're looking at the flattest pair of cheeks ever to interpret that as an ass.
They should have told them to gtfo and use Slackware then.
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...
> 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).
The baby sued
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/oct/02/nirvana-neverm...
Hmm. I gotta say I do see these though. Especially Claude...
I refuse to believe that at this point the AI companies are not doing that deliberately.
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.
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!"
[2003]
That's how far back Windows needs to go to try to elicit some non-negative attention
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.
I don't think OP meant any non-negative reaction towards Raymond but MSFT.
This is why large companies should employ a few pedophiles to run things like this by them first. Long term, much savings.
Or they could outsource it via some kind of API: EaaS (Epstein As A Service)
How do I view the collectors edition Windows XP without Googling “naked baby” ?
Did this comment already put me on a list?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49371471
> 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!
What is an “obscene body part”?
If this body part is obscene, shouldn’t the author do the moral thing and remove his own?
Appendix
The same government should sue all new mothers: how dare they deliver babies into this world completely naked!!!
They better not visit Germany, where nudity -- even in some public spaces -- is considered normal! How dare they!!!
'Some public spaces' is underselling the prevalence of FKK a bit.
satanic
So what was the government that complained?
A certain remote tropic island's!
Pakistan.
Why should the govt remain nameless?
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.
Users scare me.