{
  "id": 15565695,
  "title": "Engineer was so sick of office pranks, he 'wiped' his antagonist's disk",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/19/engineer-was-so-sick-of-office-pranks-he-wiped-his-antagonists-disk",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-19T05:30:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Register Science",
    "slug": "the-register-science",
    "url": "https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/10/19/engineer-was-so-sick-of-office-pranks-he-wiped-his-antagonists-disk/5302162"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A disgruntled engineer, known only as \"Joe\" in an Australian tech company, lashed out at his office prankster tormentor with a cleverly disguised prank of his own. Joe had endured a barrage of practical jokes in the messaging lab where he worked, from boxes of confetti to hand cream on phone earpieces, all orchestrated by a colleague named \"TF\". However, TF's act reached a new low when he began startling Joe by roaring in his ear. Determined to even the scales, Joe spent his final week in the role crafting a harmless prank. He wrote a harmless-looking program that mimicked MS-DOS formatting a disk, complete with flashing disk activity light. Joe cunningly added this to autoexec.bat so it would run each time the computer booted, but programmed it to terminate after a month. Months later, Joe was relieved to learn that TF had a panicked phone call, saying Joe was a \"bloody genius\" as TF's computer mysteriously formatted itself. By then, Joe had moved on from the company.",
  "summary": "Revenge is a dish best served by autoexec.bat",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "The Register",
        "title": "Engineer was so sick of office pranks, he 'wiped' his antagonist's disk",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/19/engineer-was-so-sick-of-office-pranks-he-wiped-his-antagonists-disk-15567730",
        "published": "2026-10-19T05:30:00.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}