How is someone writing an article about Android source code node nerdy enough to know what a Tricoder is? I don’t buy it
Star Wars and Star Trek mean very little to people outside "Western" countries. If you go to China, most people won't understand a thing about Star Wars, including computer nerds/science fiction fans. And they live their life just fine. Don't assume certain things that happened during a certain period are universal to everybody.
Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
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Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#152Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#153[flagged]
Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
About a decade ago I started watching Star Wars movies for the first time, when there were "only" 6 movies to finish. But by then there were already 12+ Star Trek movies plus TV series. I decided that I'd "choose" Star Wars, and that was enough for me. I am sure Star Trek is a fascinating universe, and I see it mentioned all the time, but I don't think I care about it enough to ever go into that world.
Yeah, pretty much the same for me. Plus, Star Wars universe just felt way more interesting and fascinating to me than Star Trek as a kid. Star Wars felt like knights and wizards and jet fighter pilots and heroic adventures in space, Star Trek felt like “adults doing boring adult things… but in space”. Not trying to dismiss ST, clearly it has a lot of appeal to tons of people, but it had zero appeal to me as a child.…
Star Wars is space fantasy. Star Trek is science fiction.
I’m not saying one is better than the other, but they appeal to different personalities.
I personally struggle to get in to fantasy, whether that is Star Wars, DnD, or fantasy video games. I’d much prefer to have a court room debate about ethics in the future.
The Star Wars vs Star Trek debate has always confused me as you are comparing two totally different genres.
Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#155I miss the era of easter eggs in tech products. Kinda went away with the corporatization of everything.
I remember at some point, a contractor for a big company added an undocumented easter egg to the code they delivered, it was fairly innocuous, something like playing music when a special key combination is entered, and yet, it was treated like a security breach, as if it was a backdoor. I don't know if people got fired for it, but it is very possible.
This is a public API, so at least, it is documented, but even then I am sure that some very unfun security auditor will only see this as an increased attack surface.
Security may be necessary, but damn, it sucks! (not just for easter eggs)
Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#156I miss the era of easter eggs in tech products. Kinda went away with the corporatization of everything.
And also a focus on security. Security people don't want to find anything unexpected in the code they run, and easter eggs are by nature unexpected, sometimes even well hidden. I remember at some point, a contractor for a big company added an undocumented easter egg to the code they delivered, it was fairly innocuous, something like playing music when a special key combination is entered, and yet, it was treated like…
This project stretched on and on with brutally painstaking iteration, long hours, fires happening with other clients, etc, etc, long story short, I sort of lost my mind and left an Easter egg comment in the code in a state of minor madness.
Years after I had left the job, I got a message from a former coworker that said "Do you know anything about MOOL?"
I said I didn't know anything about something called MOOL, and he said, the client had found a long diatribe about a bovine god named MOOL in an obscure template file deep in the codebase, and I said, "ah, yeah, that was probably me."
The head of IT for the former client had found the code and gotten in touch with my coworker and said, "I assume this isn't a security breach, but I also don't know what the hell it is." He thankfully had a sense of humor about it, and it ended up being a nice opportunity to catch up. Pretty much the best possible outcome.
Now adays I would never do that, after experiencing real security breaches and dealing with that nightmare. But it was fun knowing A. My ancient horrible code was still in production and B. The comment I had left, which I'd forgotten about, and probably assumed no one would ever read, had been found like a flag in the moon or at least a time capsule.
Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#157My favorite funny function in the Android source is android.os.Handler.runWithScissors() [1] - but (unfortunately) it is not part of the public API. [1] https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...
I was looking for this in TFA. Sad it wasn't included, as it's one of my favorites.
Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#158Reminds me of BeOS (and now Haiku), which have "is_computer_on()" and "is_computer_on_fire()" both with great descriptions. https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/bebook/TheKernelKit_Sys...
I know it is trying to be funny. But those states are quite normal in modern computer with advanced power management. OS should handle wakeups from deep sleep, or state where temperature of motherboard is 200 celsius.
Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#159[flagged]
Re: Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API
#160The ` ` tag was an official part of early HTML standard, until teenagers showed up online and sanity prevailed. I suspect this could have been there to maintain compatibility with older webpages.
It actually seems like there’s another Easter egg if you google “blink tag”: https://www.google.com/search?q=blink+tag (Doesn’t seem to trigger on iOS, but works in Chrome and Firefox on desktop)