Facebook Accidentally Shipped 'Tens of Thousands' of VR Controllers With Hidden Messages Like 'Big Brother is Watching' and 'The Masons Were Here' (businessinsider.com) 86
Facebook accidentally shipped "tens of thousands" of virtual reality (VR) controllers with bizarre hidden messages, including "Big Brother is Watching" and "The Masons Were Here," reports BusinessInsider. From the report: Nate Mitchell, the cofounder of Facebook-owned VR organisation Oculus, wrote on Twitter on Friday that the company inadvertently printed some unusual messages inside its Touch controllers, handheld devices for playing games and navigating inside VR. These messages were intended only for prototypes, he said -- but a mistake meant they were included in regular production devices. "Unfortunately, some 'easter egg' labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers," the tech executive wrote.
IT WAS AN ACCIDENT! (Score:5, Funny)
Meanwhile the members of The Resistance who were responsible for this have been rounded up and 're-educated' in Facebooks' private re-education (blacksite) facility, no doubt. Or perhaps straight into unmarked graves.
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If there was ever a cautionary tale of a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future, it'd be one where Trump gets another 4 years to continue destroying the United States and torturing human beings.
According to a theory of physics there is a universe out there where Trump is doing exactly that. It is a good thing we don't live in that universe. I imagine in that universe Trump wouldn't be getting another 4 years, but currently in our universe Trump has 2020 in the bag.
Re: BB IS watching ! (Score:1)
No, not some non-users. Fonts, frameworks, analytics, share and like buttons, you aren't escaping Scroogle and Facebook. No, your hosts file - admirable though it is - is not blocking all their domains.
IT WAS VIRAL MARKETING! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Run out and buy one quick - they'll be more collectable than Beanie Babies. And the marketing drones who thought this up will get nice bonuses.
Indeed.... FaceBook is the master of social manipulation.
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Mr. Schumann, please report to room 101 for a brief chat.
Help im trapped in this factory (Score:5, Funny)
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It doesn't count unless you admit your intentions to the proles...
Nothing accidental in anything FB does (Score:1)
It was something they did for somebody.
treat all systems as if they are production (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you always treat data in test and devel systems as if it was a production or a demo system.
It is not good when you are demoing to a customer and they login with a test account and are greeted with the message, "Welcome back, Big Asshole."
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I'm of the opinion this is a gimmick. 'oh we've made a terrible mistake resulting in a few thousand units being out there that will happen to become limited edition collector's editions'.
The messages are so incredibly tame that the over the top apology alongside 'yes these will be for sale, gee sorry' is just awkward.
Re:treat all systems as if they are production (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not good when you are demoing to a customer and they login with a test account and are greeted with the message, "Welcome back, Big Asshole."
Ah yes, like the time a previous developer decided to have the database connection error display "Fuck! Can't connect to database!". Of course the database didn't fail until well after he left. Fun times when the client called about that one...
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Ah yes, like the time a previous developer decided to have the database connection error display "Fuck! Can't connect to database!". Of course the database didn't fail until well after he left. Fun times when the client called about that one...
Here's one I noticed from H&R Block: https://idp.hrblock.com/ [hrblock.com]
It returns just "<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>" (plus a load of javascript that I assume is tracking).
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This is why you always treat data in test and devel systems as if it was a production or a demo system.
While not untrue, the issue here is that Facebook is a government data collection organization masquerading as a publicly traded company. These messages are indicative of internal corporate culture because people are people - the shady government snoops are just benevolent, they have to make people buy their bullshit well enough to get it implemented. That means they have to make it fun/quirky/acceptable - THAT is what this shows.
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There is one exception to this rule: If you're a pentester team. You should NOT run a test that potentially cripples a database beyond repair on a critical production system.
Not that we ever did that. Oh, by the way, the outage yesterday was due to sunspot activity...
Lesson to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
Easter eggs may be funny, but they should never be against the public image of your company. "Big Brother is watching"
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Really says a lot about how privacy concerns are viewed within facebook. They think it's all a big joke.
Re: Lesson to learn (Score:1)
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How is this against the public image of the company? It is the public image of the company. They don't even try to hide it anymore, well, how could they?
If you can't hide anymore that you're abusing your users, why not just flaunt it? Worked for other drug dealers, too.
Truth in advertising (Score:2)
"Big Brother is Watching"
Coming from FB, I think this is 100% accurate.
No worries, it was just an accident (Score:2)
I mean, they simply tested "Big Brother is Watching" and "The Masons were here". Don't ask why they were testing some shit like that, just know that it was a test.
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Or it's a distraction from something else. It's like in the old joke:
Spin doctor: "We go to Iraq and kill a million Iraqis and two dentists."
Press: "Why the two dentists?"
Spin doctor (to politician): "See? Told you nobody would ask about the Iraqis".
who needs to worry about Russia/China? (Score:3)
Not as much BS as WindBourne. Who u work for again (Score:2)
Starting next year, the new tesla trucks will actually drop our CO2 by 2-5% EACH YEAR. [slashdot.org]
Yes, 5000 new Tesla trucks EACH YEAR will reduce CO2 FURTHER than 500,000 new model 3s EACH YEAR. [slashdot.org]
Complete BS nonsense WindBourne.
Coal plants
BOTH America and Europe are at .25 TW running ~90-95% load. Note that this means that Europe and America can NOT increase their emissions from coal without building new plants. [slashdot.org]
Complete bullshit WindBourne. They don't run at that load and they can easily increase.
This is no different than those that blame America for China's gov choosing to build new coals plants and continue using more than 85%coal for electricity. [slashdot.org]
Complete lie backed up by nothing.
Why did china's coal production, consumption, and CO2 increase over 5% in 2017, [slashdot.org]
Easy, you lied WindBourne, it didn't.
I have said that China is building 700 coal plants. 350 of them are in china and 300 outside. [slashdot.org]
Where did the other 50 go? Plus it's BS anyway.
The only way to stop the CO2 is to have ALL NATIONS STOP ADDING COAL and back off rather quickly. [slashdot.org]
Clearly BS as American coal went down but the CO2 went up anyway.
Did you even bother to read how it was calculated? [slashdot.org]
If you had, you would know that they simply took the total energy used and divided by households and capita. [slashdot.org]
No surprise that this is a lie also. The linked article told us how they calculated it. WindBourne lied about reading it and then lied abo
That's Hilarious! (Score:2)
Title is missleading (Score:5, Informative)
If you currently have touch controllers, the insides of them do not have these sayings.
The exception is the dev kits for these have shipped and they have the sayings, "Big Brother is Watching" and "Hi iFixit! We See You!"
The consumer touch controllers that are about to ship say, "This Space For Rent" & "The Masons Were Here."
Facebook does not plan to recall any of these. You have to unscrew your controller and open it up to see these messages.
And let's not forget the email passwords (Score:3)
What a freakshow it must be over there. Their corporate culture permits this kind of crap to make it to production:
https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]
Who is still working at Facebook? The backroom guys who keep those servers running must be mortified to be associated with these bozos.
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Is it any different anywhere else? We're working our asses off in the server rooms, development groups and security groups and then we get to see what marketing and C-Levels do.
Since I saw this, I don't think Crack is the worst. Obviously it gets worse if you leave out the baking soda.
Re: And let's not forget the email passwords (Score:2)
Of the Faceboot employees I've personally encountered, 20% were incompetent Bay Area Progressive assholes, and 80% were incompetent H1B scabs. I met the Bay Area Progressive assholes quite a few years ago. By now they may also have been replaced by H1B scabs.
So, I guess ... (Score:2)
These messages were intended only for prototypes, he said -- but a mistake meant they were included in regular production devices. "Unfortunately, some 'easter egg' labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers," the tech executive wrote.
"Accidentally".... (Score:2)
Sure. That's just what THEY want you to think...
Nobody cares (Score:2)
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There are some actually pretty fun games on it, now the hardware is up to the task.
There are lots of rubbish games too, of course, but that's true of games in general.
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On purpose, you liars. (Score:1)
You just wanted the free publicity from the inevitable Alex Jones and Drudge Report freak-outs
Ok... (Score:1)
Accidentlly......... I mispelled Fceaobok
Here's a reaction video I did of the VR controller (Score:1)
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Facebook (Score:1)
Fagmasons (Score:1)
They literally have to suck each others dicks as part of the initiation. Masons are closet fags and shitheels.
My family back home is Mason and they are fake churchy pieces of shit.
Mason = garbage.
Run.
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Dude... I don't know how to say it but could it be that you were the target of an elaborate prank?
I mean, let's be honest, if I was asked what the initiation ceremony of some secret society was, and if I was into that kind of sausage suckling ... well ...
Hoooooo boy (Score:2)
The conspiracy nuts will go bonkers about this!