from Hacker News

Unfunny April Fool's Joke from the Magic Lantern Developers

by skazka16 on 4/14/15, 5:44 AM with 50 comments

  • by swang on 4/14/15, 6:46 AM

    Well this is depressing. I was always meaning to install ML, now I'm not sure I can trust the developer for doing something so stupid and not feeling and contrition for it.

    Is al3x also g3gg0?

      so a warning to everyone being pranked yesterday:
  you are not prepared for serious shooting with magic
  lantern, if this was a real problem to you.

  why?

  if you use ML for business make sure a failure, no matter if serious issues or not so serious (like yesterday) wont get you in trouble!

  - take ML-free backup-cards with you
  - make yourself confident with rescue procedures and how to temporary disable ML
  - ML, especially "latest" versions can introduce troublesome behavior

  yes, its cool that ML is being used in a lot of serious stuff. we really love that.
  but we expect users to be prepared for the moment when ML is going nuts for some reason.

  this day will come.
    http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=14850.msg14...

    There is also a picture in that thread (scroll up).

  • by jhardy54 on 4/14/15, 6:19 AM

    At first I thought this was blown out of proportion, but the developer's comments are infuriating. When an issue was filed, the response was "can you post a video?" rather than "sorry, it's a joke – roll back for a fix". Even the official explanation is just the developer complaining about users being frustrated: https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern/issue/2235/5dmk2-...

  • by fabulist on 4/14/15, 6:23 AM

    Definitely not a classy move; perhaps it would've been better to do it immediately on boot-up, with an error message like FOOLS_FAULT, and after a few seconds pop up a dialog that makes the "error" go away.

    "Your camera is now bricked" isn't exactly the message I'd like to send to my users.

  • by kuon on 4/14/15, 8:36 AM

    While, as a developer, I love adding some easter eggs, I think this kind of joke is not funny and tarnishes the open source community reputation.

    An easter egg should make the user smiles and make him/her feels good and that the developer cares about the software. That one is just mean.

    While I can understand the developer making an error in not thinking it through and making the joke, the handling of the case on the forum should have been "I make a stupid joke, sorry, I'll make a fix right away, just rollback for now".

    To the people saying it's free software and the user is entitled to nothing, I'll just ask: "Is it the world you want?" a world where there is no trust and only the fear of being sued for money?

  • by mcafeeryan92 on 4/14/15, 6:23 AM

    Am I terrible for actually getting quite a chuckle reading this?

  • by maaaats on 4/14/15, 6:49 AM

    In some way, it's a lesson to not uncritically install whatever on your own devices.

    I install custom firmware on my Wi-Fi routers, my smartphone etc., never really thought about how it would affect me if it were to get bricked in the process.

  • by chavesn on 4/14/15, 8:26 AM

    No, no one should be surprised that a nightly build had problems.

    Yes, users should know what they are getting into.

    No, the developer has no obligation to be held to a higher standard of reliability.

    Yes, the developer can really do whatever they want.

    With all that said, can we at least agree that this shows extremely poor judgment from an engineering and product sense? Not only is this a terrible way to achieve user trust, but it also doesn't make any users feel good. As a user, why would I want to use a product that wants to make a fool out of me and throw wrenches in a core feature for chuckles?

  • by yitchelle on 4/14/15, 7:20 AM

    I remember a similar April's fools joke at one of my old workplace. This was the late 80s. Well, one morning, when I booted up my computer, it echoed out a message like "your computer has a virus" or something similar. The message was also showing up on a number of other computers. It caused panic and confusion in my workplace. It was a small company and computer knowledge was lacking. We shut all the computer off and called in some computer specialist to checkout the problem. It turned out that someone has modified autoexec.bat to echo the string out as an April's fools joke. Well, the manager was not happy and it caused the company a bit of money to recover. I think the person who did it was given a dismissal warning.

  • by InclinedPlane on 4/14/15, 8:44 AM

    A good natured "prank" is something you play on your friends, something they will laugh about instantly after it happened. When you make other people's misery the butt of your joke you're not being funny you're just being an asshole. It's little different from what a bully does.

  • by carlob on 4/14/15, 9:02 AM

    Am I the only one that finds it weird that the tm_mday field in the tm struct is the only one that starts from 1?

    I understand it doesn't make much sense to have tm_mday start from 0, but then again even 3 as April seems weird, maybe they should all start at 1.

    http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908775/xsh/time.h.ht...

  • by mTKUzaG3Kf on 4/14/15, 9:07 AM

    Posting from a new account, as this is apparently so controversial it will probably get me shadowbanned.

    Seriously, just how humorless and gullible do you have to be to not understand that this was an April Fools' joke?

    First, BSoDs are specific to Windows OSes. OK, fair enough, non-tech people might not know this. But...

    "Take a photo of a calendar, focusing on today's date."

    If after reading this line you still don't understand that this is a joke, I feel sorry for you.

    The "rand() % 1000 == 13" probably causes the "BSoD" every time for the OP because the RNG is not properly seeded, which is the real problem here.

    I don't condone this joke or the developers' response, but I'm not going to blame them for anything either. The negativity in this thread, however...

  • by veidr on 4/14/15, 6:27 AM

    Indeed, that's not funny.

    But I was born in 1974, and I have never actually seen or heard a funny April Fool's joke in my entire life.

  • by rukuu001 on 4/14/15, 7:30 AM

    Holy %$! that's bad.

    If you're paid to take photos, roll up to a gig with all the gear you tested yesterday, and get this...good god.

  • by edandersen on 4/14/15, 9:49 AM

    Picture of the April Fool's prank: http://m.imgur.com/BeHi1H9

  • by gareth44 on 4/14/15, 8:37 AM

    not in the slightest bit funny - al3x is a total idiot, and g3gg0's stupid defensive answer makes it even worse.

  • by minimaxir on 4/14/15, 6:27 AM

    Why would anyone even write a bsod() function? That's tempting fate.

  • by Mithaldu on 4/14/15, 9:19 AM

    I dislike the implication that any April Fools joke can be funny.

  • by tempestn on 4/14/15, 7:47 AM

    Totally not cool! Everyone knows April Fool's pranks have to end at noon...

  • by SchizoDuckie on 4/14/15, 7:50 AM

    That's a fucked up move..

  • by adultSwim on 4/14/15, 2:28 PM

    Demand a refund!

    Get over it. Seems pretty funny to me.

  • by nickysielicki on 4/14/15, 7:36 AM

    This is hilarious to me and I won't apologize for saying that.

  • by chrxss on 4/14/15, 8:17 AM

    LOL, looks like they made a fool out of you.

    1st rule: be prepared fro April 1st 2nd rule: you cannot expect anything from free software on the internet, it is free after all

  • by happywolf on 4/14/15, 8:13 AM

    The first line on ML: "Magic Lantern is a free firmware addon for Canon EOS DSLR cameras that adds a host of features to assist photographers and videographers."

    Read it again: it is free. If you really need QoS, pay someone to develop and code review the firmware. I am not being a troll, some people just have so much self-entitlement on something that is free.