Astro Hacker News - What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?

cgio |next [-]

The times when people spent an extra brain cycle to avoid billions of second passes.

bombcar |next |previous [-]

Does it also check existing users so you don't match one?

jasonvorhe |next |previous [-]

A couple of screenshots would've been useful for the post-millennial generations that never got to see the "beauty" (cough) of XP.

moritzwarhier |root |parent |next [-]

Here's a blog post from 2003 with beautiful pictures.

https://jakeludington.com/2003/12/17/create_your_own_windows...

PalmPilotProMax |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I don't see how that's relevant? Article is about the RNG implementation, it doesn't matter what the profile pictures are.

Maken |root |parent |next |previous [-]

XP is Microsoft's prettiest OS by far.

mrweasel |root |parent [-]

That's a matter of taste, but for many it was the Windows they used first and/or spend the most time on and there's a lot of love for that reason alone. I never used XP all that much, but I always changed the theme to the Windows 2000 look. I really didn't like the default, it looked unprofessional and clunky in my eyes. Upon release XP was also pretty universally mocked as a Fisher Price-like UI.

To me Windows 95/NT 4 is still the gold standard in Windows UI. It's certainly not the prettiest, that would be Windows 2000, but it was easy to use, easy to navigate and efficient with space.

TazeTSchnitzel |root |parent [-]

The "Windows Classic" look on XP is exceptionally ugly, because those 3D-rendered icons just do not belong on a Windows 2000-style grey background. (I have recently had to test both these OSes in VMs…)

CalRobert |root |parent |previous [-]

I thought it looked great :-/

bhaney |next |previous [-]

100 seems like a very unnecessarily low limit, even for the time

daveoc64 |root |parent [-]

It's well above the number of images that were in the applicable folder by default, so seems pretty appropriate to me.

moritzwarhier |previous [-]

Some say the Admin account defaulted to a chessboard.

I think it's true, but not sure if I'm just falling victim to false memories... help?

xx_ns |root |parent |next [-]

It makes sense. The chess piece is the first profile picture in the list.

bhaney |root |parent |next |previous [-]

There's no way my memory of this is reliable anymore, but I also remember my administrator account being chess pieces (and my user account being an orange fish).

bombcar |root |parent |next |previous [-]

It might be that the randomization code was bypassed in some cases - like creating an account in safe boot mode or similar.

abhinavk |root |parent |previous [-]

I remember it like that too. Or is it Mandela effect?

NitpickLawyer |root |parent [-]

The Magnus effect? :)