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Comment by Scene_Cast2 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if it's easier or harder to do something like this in a modern corporate environment.

Wikipedia has a list of software easter eggs, let's see if we'll discover more of them as time goes on.

I used to like easter eggs in software but as the security landscape has changed, easter eggs now show a lack of oversight. If a programmer can slip in an easter egg, what else can they slip in?

Larry Osterman says it even better: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/wh...

I think the best solution is to add an "easter eggs" section to the manual. Few people read the manual, so they're still hidden enough.

If they are documented, as a user I would still think, "What else could they have been improving/fixing if they weren't working on easter eggs?" I wonder if in an alternate world, Excel minus the flight simulator easter egg could have been $1 cheaper or had 5 more bugs fixed.

> I wonder if in an alternate world, Excel minus the flight simulator easter egg could have been $1 cheaper or had 5 more bugs fixed.

if anything, i think that Excel would have much more bugs, and would have much tougher time taking off :)

As a dev, I can relate to working overtime for a small eater egg, or even if I were a manager I could understand those (security implications notwithstanding) if it would boost morale or team cohesion better than an akward social event.

That's an amazingly entitled viewpoint, in my opinion. There's also a rabbit hole there of saying that about any feature that one doesn't make use of.

I understand the concept that maybe certain classes of software (say, medical or military software) shouldn't have eggs, or perhaps that certified eggless versions of software should be available in situations involving contracted software. But would you say the same thing about game software? Hobbyist software? Easter eggs aren't always bad.

If you don't have the source code, you can't "trust what's on your computer," as Osterman puts it. Easter eggs have no impact on that axiom one way or the other.

So, coming from Microsoft, it's easy to dismiss the entire article based on its initial premises.

Evil can come from above.

Scratch that.

Evil usually comes from above.

So we shouldn't address evil from "below"?

No, but addressing "evil from below" by tightening the top-down control of "evil from above" doesn't minimize evil. Quite the opposite.

>easter eggs now show a lack of oversight

no. Easter eggs show lack of "zero tolerance" corporate posturing. Which isnt to say that such posturing isnt important part of the security theater.

The cartoons, easter eggs, etc. is a "human touch", a sign that the product is done by people who love (or at least feeling something toward) their job, not by drones. Modern corporate environment is based on droning and has naturally extinguished that human culture.

Did he really unironically post a link to adequacy.org?

[edit]

For those less familiar, feel free to browse adequacy.org, or just read this gem:

http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147....

I can tell you firsthand that there are a number of software Easter eggs in the modern oscilloscopes made by a prominent competitor to Tek

Amusingly enough, one triggered by the string "TREK". ;)

I'm a fan of "CAKE" myself

What schematics?

That was an eons ago different era.

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