Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's how joke forums work, really.
/r/programmerhumor will ban you if you post a joke in the comments. All jokes must be top level posts.
Do not threaten Happy Fun Ball.
A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
151–160 of 177 posts
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#152This has been a problem for a long time. Almost ten years ago, I maintained a joke Twitter inspired by the Atherton police blotter: @mvpoliceblotter. It was just silly nonsense, until one of the tweets about someone walking into and breaking a store window while watching YouTube on their Google Glass got retweeted by an ABC 7 reporter. SJ Mercury wrote a story (later retracted). It got a ton of attention, even though…
There's a popular myth that Windows 10 was named so because there's tons of proprietary code checking for '95' and '98' by looking for just the '9', and that would have caused applications to break. There was no evidence of this except the Reddit comment by a user pretending to work at MS - their post history very quickly showed that was a lie. But that was taken at face value and it become part of news cycles and ev…
I saw dozens of bugs in apps that didn't handle iOS 10 correctly. They looked at one digit to determine what the device's capabilities were and saw a "1" so they did whack stuff.
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#153I've learned long ago: always read the original source material. Its amazing how, not just a game of telephone develops, but groupthink when people are taking their cues from others instead of their own experiences. A lot of people will even read the original source and then force it to mean what some smarter dude or "everyone" already knows. Meaning is so rapidly lost when its second-hand.
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#154The lesson is mainly that few news sources these days do anything like fact checking, with bothering to care at all if what they are reporting may be true or not. If you can accidentally plant a false, story imagine doing so intentionally. Or just imagine all the things you see shared on social media that didn't start from a made-up story exactly, but still get important things wrong just through the game of telephon…
Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday is a book about exactly this. People 100% do plant fake news stories all the time to suit their purposes.
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#155The crucial detail that is a little buried in the piece is that the original 'explanation' was posted in /r/ProgrammerHumor so it said right on the tin it was a joke. But the (seemingly clearly intended as a joke) details temporarily nerd-sniped a lot of people's senses of humor right out of their brains. The HN discussion discussion from back then is still fun reading with a number of commenters very invested in the…
The subreddit has 'Humor' in the name, not 'Joke'.
So to me it is not obvious it is a joke because programmers can also laugh at very silly real world bugs.
But the main story here is that news outlets don't bother to fact check. And that's another reason you should avoid news.
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#156It's not just news articles. We've come to a point where such jokes manipulate entire generations and create social movements ...
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most works of fiction is labeled as such. I don't see anything against them in this comment.
Can't wait for the return of Tipper Gore and labelling anything that offends. /s
I don't call for labeling. I'm just saying that most of fiction can be easily identified and nobody in the comments has issues with that. Previous comment implied that someone wants to cancel all works of fiction.
So much ad absurdum in this thread...
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#158The crucial detail that is a little buried in the piece is that the original 'explanation' was posted in /r/ProgrammerHumor so it said right on the tin it was a joke. But the (seemingly clearly intended as a joke) details temporarily nerd-sniped a lot of people's senses of humor right out of their brains. The HN discussion discussion from back then is still fun reading with a number of commenters very invested in the…
Just looked into this and yeah, the original post to which the comment was responding was a programmer humor post. However, it looked as if the comment in question may have been an actual, legit attempt to explain the phenomenon. I don't think it's obvious or assumed that the comments responding to programmer humor posts are always intended to be jokes as well. I'm also just asking myself what's more likely here. Thi…
I think a little overconfident trolling is a vital experience to have this day and age.
Once you see dozens or more people jump on a made-up bandwagon you're a little bit better prepared and alert for the cumulative stupidity we collectively produce.
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should it be socially acceptable to generate misinformation? It's in the end harmful for everyone. (I don't mean obvious parody and fiction, clearly labeled as such).
My comment is about news outlet's obligation to verify information they publish. I never said anything about posting satire by individuals.
Someone asked if thread author feels responsible. You responded with "that's bizarre stance to take", therefore implying, that it's weird to frown upon individuals posting "satire".
I fully agree news outlets should verify what they publish. Still what this guy did was kinda crappy and I fail to see any humor in that. (before someone starts implying something I didn't say - I don't call to "cancel him", "ban him" or whatever you do this days)
Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another similar one was the "Nuclear Gandhi" thing[1]. Just believable enough for programmers to think it must be true. My theory on Windows 10 would be wanting version number parity with Mac OS. Don't make a news story out of this though. Evidence: - Microsoft did the same thing with the Xbox 360 instead of calling it Xbox 2. "360" cleverly aligned it with both competing consoles of the same generation, the PlayStat…
> Microsoft implied that they might stay on Windows 10 indefinitely[2]. Sure, "implied" in the sense that the article quotes a spokesman saying "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows".
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