Ask HN: What is your favourite Unix 'joke' program or obscure utility? 2 points by cjd8 26d ago ↗ HN currently writing a joke unix utility as a homage to fortune and cowsay, so it made me wonder whether there are any more fun and/or interesting obscure unix utilities.
[–] roryirvine 26d ago ↗ figlet, of coursebanner, as the grandparent of figlet and cowsaylolcat, for colourising their outputpig (from bsd-games), for producing pig latindadadodo, jwz's Markov chain nonsense generator from the late 90s that seems eerily prescient in the light of today's LLMsdissociated-press, a simpler version of dadadodo dating back to the dawn of Emacs [–] cjd8 23d ago ↗ okay, banner is a classic, but dadadodo is pretty interesting
2 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 31.5 ms ] threadbanner, as the grandparent of figlet and cowsay
lolcat, for colourising their output
pig (from bsd-games), for producing pig latin
dadadodo, jwz's Markov chain nonsense generator from the late 90s that seems eerily prescient in the light of today's LLMs
dissociated-press, a simpler version of dadadodo dating back to the dawn of Emacs