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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday April 14 2019, @02:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the conspiracies-everywhere dept.

Creepy Messages Will be Found in Facebook's Oculus Touch VR Controllers

Facebook has revealed that hidden messages were inadvertently printed inside VR controllers that will be shipped to customers soon:

Facebook said it accidentally hid bizarre and "inappropriate" messages inside "tens of thousands" of virtual-reality controllers, including "Big Brother is Watching" and "The Masons Were Here." Nate Mitchell, the cofounder of Oculus, the Facebook-owned VR company, said on Twitter on Friday that the company inadvertently printed some unusual messages in its Touch controllers, handheld devices for playing games and navigating VR environments.

These messages were intended only for prototypes, but a mistake meant they were included in regular production devices, he said. Some messages were included in developer kits for people building software for the product, while others made their way into consumer devices in significantly larger numbers. While there should have been no internal messages of any kind in any of the devices, a Facebook representative told Business Insider that the company would not recall them.

"Unfortunately, some 'easter egg' labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers," Mitchell wrote. "The messages on final production hardware say 'This Space For Rent' & 'The Masons Were Here.' A few dev kits shipped with 'Big Brother is Watching' and 'Hi iFixit! We See You!' but those were limited to non-consumer units," he said. iFixit is a tech repair company known for publicly deconstructing new gadgets and posting photos of their innards online.

Also at Road to VR.

Related: Facebook Announces a New Standalone VR Headset: Oculus Quest; HTC Releases Vive Wireless Adapter
(nobody made a submission about Rift S because it is boring)


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

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Oculus Co-Founder Says there is No Market for VR Gaming 51 comments

Facebook will never break through with Oculus, says one of the VR company's co-founders

Five years after its $2 billion purchase of Oculus, Facebook is still pushing forward in its efforts to bring virtual reality to a mainstream audience. But one of the company's six co-founders now doubts Oculus will ever break through.

Jack McCauley told CNBC he doesn't think there's a real market for VR gaming. With Facebook positioning its Oculus devices primarily as gaming machines, McCauley doesn't believe there's much of a market for the device. "If we were gonna sell, we would've sold," McCauley said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

[...] The $199 Oculus Go has sold a little more than 2 million units since its release in May 2018, according to estimates provided by market research firm SuperData, a Nielsen company. The Oculus Quest, which was released this May, has sold nearly 1.1 million units while the Oculus Rift has sold 547,000 units since the start of 2018, according to SuperData.

[...] Since leaving in November 2015, McCauley has enjoyed a semi-retired life. He's an innovator in residence at Berkeley's Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation and he continues to build all sorts of devices, such as a gun capable of shooting down drones, at his own research and development facility.

The cheaper, standalone headsets are selling more units. Add foveated rendering and other enhancements at the lower price points (rather than $1,599 like the Vive Pro Eye), and the experience could become much better.

Related: Oculus Rift: Dead in the Water?
HTC: Death of VR Greatly Exaggerated
As Sales Slide, Virtual Reality Fans Look to a Bright, Untethered Future
Virtual Reality Feels Like a Dream Gathering Dust
VR Gets Reality Check with Significant Decline in Investment
Creepy Messages Will be Found in Facebook's Oculus Touch VR Controllers


Original Submission

Facebook Announces a New Standalone VR Headset: Oculus Quest; HTC Releases Vive Wireless Adapter 8 comments

Oculus Quest, a fully wireless VR headset, shipping spring 2019 for $399

Facebook used its latest virtual reality conference, the fifth annual Oculus Connect, to finally confirm retail plans for its most ambitious standalone VR product yet: the Oculus Quest. Originally known by its prototype name, Oculus Santa Cruz, the Quest will ship in spring 2019 for $399.

In terms of the sales pitch, this is the Oculus holy grail: a wireless, hand-tracked, "six degrees of freedom" VR system with apparently legitimate 3D power and no required PC or phone.

The headset will include two bundled handheld controllers, and more than 50 games will be available at launch. The headset has a 1600×1440 per eye resolution (3200×1440 total resolution), compared to 1280×1440 per eye for Oculus Go or 1440×1600 per eye for HTC's Vive Pro, and has 64 GB of internal storage.

Vive's wireless adapter gives the best VR experience lots of money can buy:

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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:15PM (3 children)

    by looorg (578) on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:15PM (#829387)

    So what purpose did these messages serve on the prototypes? Fun? It's not like a label alters the functionality. I guess the iFixit one could have at least been entertaining. But the others seem to just be stupid, I guess the big brother one could be interesting considering it's Facebook we are talking about, self-deprecation humor? Was this supposed to have been an easter-egg? In that case it was quite lame and didn't really hit the mark.

    For all we know these labels are all over all the devices, we should crack them all open and see. Back in ye' olden days of computing it wasn't all that uncommon for hidden messages here and there from the developers. The Amiga 1000 comes to mind, all the developers and a dog paw print signed the inside of the covers.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:35PM (2 children)

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:35PM (#829392) Journal

      The Masons told me to say: It's just devs being devs. At least it wasn't some developmental backdoor accidentally left in this time.

      --
      В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:51PM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:51PM (#829397) Homepage

        Exactly. As much as I hate Jewbook I always appreciate good gallows humor.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:51PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:51PM (#829398) Journal

        That sounds about right. Facebook has a loose work culture that leads to goofing around and apparently a lack of quality control.

        The messages may be more than self-deprecating: they could also be an indignant take on the amount of criticism the company receives. I think we had a recent story sourced from Facebook insiders that described devotion to Zuck, Sheryl Sandberg, and other leaders as cult-like (I will look for this later).

        I'm not sure if the iFixit message is meant to be friendly or not. Regardless, they will still be taking the crap apart. Probably with more zeal now that they know about these little Easter eggs.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:16PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:16PM (#829388)

    It wasn't enough the telescreen is ubiquitous nowadays under the name "smart tv". Facebook took the whole boot-to-the-face (point intended) approach and mounted it straight on your head.

    Big brother Inc.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:32PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @03:32PM (#829391)

      Once again sufficiently advanced capitalism is indistinguishable from Stalinism.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:42PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:42PM (#829413)

        As a simple example: In capitalist America, TV watches you!

        --
        Vote for Pedro
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:07PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:07PM (#829404)

    Those messages aren't "creepy". Creepy messages would be ...
    * Your mom is doing the same thing right now.
    * Did you know there's a camera pointing straight down from these goggles?
    * One out of 1,000 controllers comes with a free DNA sample.
    * You're not afraid of clowns, are you? Not even the one right behind you?
    * No employees washed their hands. Ever.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @11:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @11:54PM (#829535)

      Neither creepy, nor inappropriate TBH.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:17PM (7 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:17PM (#829406) Journal

    I've always liked easter eggs. Even when they're stupid looking, finding the easter egg is a feat, however minor it might be. There was a story here some time ago, about an easter egg found after some number of years after publication. I can't remember what it was, but a search for "software easter egg discovered after years" offers articles on
    1. Resident Evil 4
    2. Bioshock
    3. Tesla Model 3
    4. Apple II gumball game
    5. Lego Dimensions
    6. Doom 2 secret uncovered after 24 years - I believe that's the one we had an article on.
    7. Mortal Kombat

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH8FtAiZ-MM [youtube.com] youtube video entitled "10 Video Game Easter Eggs That Took Years To Find "

    So, go ahead, and drop all the easter eggs you want in your software, games or other software.

    --
    “I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:55PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @04:55PM (#829418)

      Yeah. These seem rather 'meh' you have to basically crack the thing open to see it which most people do not do.

      This new outrage culture we have is no fun.

      This also strikes me as publicity stunt. 3d is not the homerun everyone thought it would be. It is more of a niche market that is sinking a huge amount of capital. It is not going away. But it is miles away from one in every home...

      • (Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday April 14 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)

        by looorg (578) on Sunday April 14 2019, @05:13PM (#829420)

        It's a trap! You have to crack open the device to see which message you got, if any. By opening the device you are voiding your warranty so they can now make a subpar product that breaks more often and not having to replace it! Or is that to much of a conspiracy?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @05:32PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @05:32PM (#829425)

          By opening the device you are voiding your warranty

          That nonsense has been illegal since the '70s.

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @08:06PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @08:06PM (#829469)

      As a SW engineer, I say that implementing an Easter egg is cool and finding one is even cooler.

      As a grown up I say that any organization that lacks sufficient QA to prevent Easter eggs getting out of the door is an organization that can't be trusted. Sure, this particular set of eggs doesn't do any real harm, but remember that this is Facebook. They are sitting on a megaton of personal data. For them to not have Easter eggs under control, says a lot about what else they might not have under control.

      I "grew up" the day I put an Easter egg in a SW tool used for E-CAD and released the new version. One of the steps for triggering the egg was to check the environment for a particular variable and its value. As it happens, there was a bug in that check that caused the tool to crash at start in some cases on some platforms. We supported 5 different UNIX & Linux versions back then. Everything was working fine on the platform I used for development - with the egg inadvertently half enabled during pre-release testing: the environment variable was set to one of the special values. The pre-release test cases also worked on all other platforms with no partial egg activation in place - but only by coincidence, as I would later learn. So I released... And then came the user complaints....

      • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday April 14 2019, @10:03PM

        by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday April 14 2019, @10:03PM (#829500) Homepage

        These aren't easter eggs though (as in, they weren't intended to exist in the final version nor intended to be found as a pleasant surprise). It's more like if lorem ipsum accidentally shipped into a final build of a game/prod website in a deactivated portion of the game/website.

        Obviously having sufficient QA would have caught this, but I don't think it's worth the investment (Pareto principle: catching 80% of the most common/important bugs costs 20% of the budget, catching the remaining 20% of corner case/insignificant bugs costs 80% of the budget).

        --
        Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @12:42AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @12:42AM (#829548)

        I "grew up" the day I put an Easter egg in a SW tool used for E-CAD and released the new version. [snip] As it happens, there was a bug in that check that caused the tool to crash at start in some cases on some platforms.

        So allowing a reckless, unskilled programmer with no concept of QA program everything other than Easter eggs is OK? Just not an Easter egg? You being bad at what you were being paid to do shouldn't shit on the entire concept of Easter eggs.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Sunday April 14 2019, @09:52PM

      by Magic Oddball (3847) on Sunday April 14 2019, @09:52PM (#829491) Journal

      I agree -- and I've always found easter eggs to be a good reminder that real, live human beings created the software/hardware, not emotionless automatons. My favorite easter egg was originally a prank that one of the developers of a late-80s tile-based RPG played on the game's producer/director while they were play/bugtesting: dude waited until his target left the room for some reason, then snuck over to the guy's computer and caused it to flip all of the tiles (but not the frame around them) upside-down [mobygames.com]. The producer reportedly went scrambling trying to figure out what kind of bizarre bug could possibly cause that, but upon realizing it was just a prank, found it funny enough to leave it hidden in the game as an easter egg.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday April 14 2019, @06:11PM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) on Sunday April 14 2019, @06:11PM (#829433) Journal

    Just one picture of Zuckerberg would be CREEPY enough for me.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:09AM

      by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:09AM (#830959) Homepage Journal

      A browser plugin to hide it would be a Godsend. Likewise for the Orange One.

      --
      Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @09:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @09:05PM (#829484)

    Facefuck is creepy, not some random Easter egg messages.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @11:31PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 14 2019, @11:31PM (#829527)

    They are mocking people with their "The Masons Were Here" messages. It is all over the place, in television, movies, company logos, everything.

    The khazar rats are laughing in our face "we took your money and now we control your technology. whatcha gonna do?"

    Shame on anyone helping the khazar rats in any way. The right/correct thing to do is BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @12:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @12:46AM (#829549)

      (((You))) should probably avoid watching the Simpson's Stone Cutters episode. We don't want (((you))) to get triggered.

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