Kaos
Creative
screensaver
SHOW HN2025
How HN took it
7 positive, 11 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 2 critical, out of 20 comments about the project. Thread score +0.20.
Design: 3 for, 2 againstIdea: 1 for, 0 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Nostalgic and beautiful, evokes the original screensaver
From 3 comments
Great job! I don't think it's just nostalgia... but whatever it is I love a lot of the retro / past days of computing UI, UX and graphics. IT feels better than the current state…
duxup on HNGreat job! Also has 10% CPU usage, like the original back in the days. ;-) My favorite screensaver was "Diatoms" from 1994 (?) on a SGI Irix machine. Still fire it up sometimes,…
Aldipower on HNYep!
evan_ on HN
Interesting connection to Hopalong fractals and Qix
From 2 comments
Your description plus the name makes me suspect the original program was rendering a variety of "hopalong fractals": https://jolinton.co.uk/Mathematics/Hopalong_Fractals/Text.pdf…
egypturnash on HNThis is strongly reminiscent of the main animation in the arcade video game Qix.
at_a_remove on HN
Objections
Looks like hardly visible lines, nostalgia driven
From 1 comment
I can't tell if I am missing something or if the beauty of this screen saver is largely of function of nostalgia rather than it's attributes. It just looks like hardly visible…
Workaccount2 on HN
Scrollbars appeared in fullscreen, later fixed with overflow hidden
From 3 comments
This is really nice but for some reason i have horizontal and vertical scrollbars, which clouds the experience especially in fullscreen. (Tested on brave/windows)…
entropie on HNJust add css style `overflow: hidden;` to your `body`.
evan_ on HNYep!
evan_ on HN
Requests
Fill screen with black for OLED use
From 1 comment
Looks great! Could you fill the screen with black? It'd be a great OLED screensaver (I don't get why this isn't something people want more tbh, they look amazing with things like…
forgotacc240419 on HN
Add adjustable sliders
From 2 comments
>> simplicity: https://cs16.samke.me Nice UI, can you add more elements?
lovegrenoble on HNHah. Thanks, that's not a UI ;) But I did kind of yak-shave as I did it to make the saver its own loadable class with adjustable inputs. so I'll probably add a few sliders…
noduerme on HN
Questions
Is the source code available
From 2 comments
Is the code for this available? The minified Javascript is a touch difficult to make heads or tails of: https://thestrikeagency.com/kaos/assets/index-7Wh69ljd.js Edit: Thanks…
metadat on HNI haven't, like, made a repository for it or anything, but here you go: https://thestrikeagency.com/kaos/src/ There's a bunch of extra experiments and junk in there that didn't…
noduerme on HN
How the original algorithm worked
From 1 comment
Yes! The original does run in emulation. And to be honest, this attempt at cookery doesn't do justice to the beauty of the original. I'm still not sure what the secret sauce was.…
noduerme on HN
Alternatives named
XScreensaver
From 1 comment
> I miss having a wide selection of screensavers on my Mac. i've used https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ for over a decade on macos (currently on 15.3).
self on HN
Mystify
From 1 comment
Reminds of similar lines/polygon screensaver on Windows - "Mystify" aka "Mystify Your Mind", which still exists!
ChrisArchitect on HN
Electric Sheep
From 1 comment
/me reinstalls electric sheep
dylanz on HN
Iconic
From 1 comment
The Mac screensaver ecosystem's going through some interesting shifts in recent years. The permissions and stated capabilities of 3rd party software are much more delineated now,…
rezmason on HN