"fortune" is a Unix/BSD/Linux command that prints a random quote to your screen (as in "fortune cookie"). Some Unix-like operating systems have fortune set up to run once automatically every time you log in to your account.

Someone with a great sense of humor set one of the random quotes to mimic a very serious operating system error message.

This poor guy finished upgrading his operating system, logged in, and got that error message as his fortune.

In an effort to make HN more like reddit jokes are being upvoted to the top position.

He has fortune setup to display a 'fortune' when he logs in. Apparently one of the fortunes is a fake kernel panic message. So he logged in and saw this message thinking it was a real kernel panic before he realized it was just the output of fortune.

Seems like there is a program called "fortune" that prints a random "fortune" on boot.

And some joker took it upon themselves to add a somewhat distressing boot message into the default list.

(man fortune: http://linux.die.net/man/6/fortune)

$ man fortune