[from mainstream slang ear candy
] A display of some
sort that's presented to lusers to keep them
distracted while the program performs necessary background tasks.
Give 'em some eye candy while the back-end
slurps that BLOB into
core.
Reported as mainstream usage among players of graphics-heavy
computer games. We're also told this term is mainstream slang for soft
pornography, but that sense does not appear to be live among
hackers.