this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
564 points (98.6% liked)

Funny

10043 readers
1778 users here now

General rules:

Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
564
2000s internet (europe.pub)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by DearMoogle@lemmy.today to c/funny@sh.itjust.works
 

Happy 19th anniversary to freecupholder.exe

top 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 71 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

2025: The free cupholder you can download is an .STL of a cupholder you can print out in a 3D printer.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Except the OP image says .exe so that's not all that came in the package...

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The STL is in a self extracting zip file that runs as an exe, no need to be suspicious

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

Trust me bro.

[–] icenando@lemmy.world 56 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Killatia is a lucky person. Running an .exe from an unknown source

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 41 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It was a more innocent time. I was introduced to cupholder.exe from my mom, who got it from a coworker’s chain email, as all things spread in those days. I think it might have specifically been called a coke can holder in the email because we were in the south, lol.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

2006? No way. 1996, sure, but by 2006 this was already a bonehead move.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 weeks ago

Gonna be honest, I somehow missed all the dates on this post because I zeroed in on freecupholder.exe, lmao. Late 90s was when I saw it first, but it’s totally believable to me that people were doing this in 2006.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Pretty sure emailing executables was nuked by 2006.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Not nuked, and that's not a screenshot of email.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Think I still have Coke.exe, same thing, unless a virus scanner finally nuked it.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 29 points 2 weeks ago

I remember downloading and running random EXEs on my school's NT4 machines.

There was a few joke programs, the one I remember right now, would make the start button jump around on the screen.

This was also around the time we all got on MSN Messenger, but us cool kids used an alternative client, Trillian, or later, Miranda IM.

A clear favorite of the time was the demo versions of Unreal Tournament 99 and Return To Castle Wolfenstein, both was easily installed, ran decent on the computer and had LAN multiplayer, there were a few impromptu LAN parties after school...

Later in my education I attended a trade school where I took networking classes.

Someone had snuck in a copy of Age Of Empires 2 on all machines in the lab, so we spent the days setting up a network, and after school was over, we gamed on it.

Brilliant fun!

[–] simple@lemm.ee 25 points 2 weeks ago

Yes and there would be a 50% chance it would permanently wreck your PC

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 24 points 2 weeks ago

In the days of AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM as all us cool kids called it, I recall a similarish little trick.

You'd tell your friend you were going to hack their computer and then send them a photo. The trick is that the photo was actually a link to "A:\virus.jpeg" which would cause their floppy drive to start up and look for a disk to look for a file. Since floppy drives were loud it would cause their computer to "chunk-a-lunk-lunk" which would obviously then scare your friend.

You could also do it with the "D" drive, but it was less reliable since I think it had to have an actual disk in there already (which was common), but it was also usually quieter.

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Dude opens a random .exe file a rando with a doctor Strangelove image posted online. Either balls or ignorance.

[–] Fabian@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago

Don't they often go hand in hand?

[–] kobra@lemm.ee 10 points 2 weeks ago

It was such a magical moment in time

[–] vane@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

Personal robot assistant powered by cloud distributed software.

[–] b_tr3e@feddit.org 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
#! /usr/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin
eject -r
[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Kind of surprised they didn’t have a batch file command for this. I’m guessing people had to build a whole MFC application just to call the eject API.

[–] scaramobo@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It was actually quite simple from what i remember. There was a plain winapi call to control multimedia devices, the mmc api. You could send a control string to the device, such as eject, play or seek. So in maybe 4 lines of C code, this could be written.

Disclaimer: All info from the top of my head based on knowledge from 20 years ago, so take it as it is.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That sounds about right for 4 lines of code to make the call itself. But I remember using VC++ and since everything was a GUI you’d create a project which gave you a bunch of template generated code with all the MFC and WinAPI libs and frameworks…

[–] scaramobo@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 2 weeks ago

You had the option. You could create a fullblown mfc application (in a couple of variants such as single document, multiple document and dialog based), but also a barebones plain winapi one. And a for a DLL too. I miss those simpler times of winapi coding, i found it fun. I moved away from windows as an OS around the time .Net 2.0 was released. Now when I look at modern windows development, I recognise absolutely NOTHING lol. Does winapi even exist still under all those layers?

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

I got that over IRC in the late 90s. It’s over 25 years old.

[–] annoyed_onion@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago
[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Why does Dr Strangelove have vertical glare lines down his face? It’s like someone took a picture of the DVD cover to use this as an avatar.

[–] neons@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

pretty sure that's the smoke of the cigarette

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 weeks ago

Oh I’m blind. My bad.