BonziBuddy

I remember being asked by way too many friends to help remove BonziBuddy spyware from their computers. Nowadays this would be a great coin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy

Since there was a thread a few months ago, I think we have to mark this one a dupe. (Reposts are ok after a year or so: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

Bonzi Buddy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27399065 - June 2021 (114 comments)

Previously:

BonziBuddy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20234911 - June 2019 (80 comments)

Bonzi-Buddy Reborn as a Terminal Program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3916957 - May 2012 (2 comments)

I remember "Catz"[1] and "Dogz" [2] fondly. They, of course, only served to behave like cats and dogs sitting on your desktop rather than BonziBuddy's supposed purpose to assist you in computing. It's interesting that we seem to have "grown" out of these sort of silly applications running on our desktop. I suppose Bonzi Buddy and Clippy traumatized a generation and our computer assistants no longer have a virtual avatar (except Cortana, in some sense, I suppose).

I feel like there's a serious lack of whimsy in software these days, but perhaps I'm not looking hard enough.

[1]https://petz.fandom.com/wiki/Catz

[2] https://petz.fandom.com/wiki/Dogz

LGR did a Tech Tales on Bonzi Buddy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L958sMz1kWs

When I saw this posted I asked my son if he'd created an account on Hacker News to troll me.

What is in the zip file when you click the download button??

BonziBuddy with modern AI would be interesting.