WhatsApp devs Troll Apple with a hidden ‘F#*( you’ in Source code


Recommended Posts

WhatsApp devs Troll Apple with a hidden ‘F#*( you’ in source code

 

Link to Picture - http://i68.tinypic.com/2v97t3l.jpg

 

WhatsApp has a gang of badass developers – but it seems not all of them are particularly crazy about Apple.
Messing around with the WhatsApp APK, Redditor xMarioZ came across an eloquent snippet of code that reads, “###### APPLE.”

The saucy piece of code appears on numerous occasions throughout the APK installation file for Android and was most likely left by WhatsApp’s dev team for their colleagues over at Apple.

While it’s unclear whether the message is merely playful banter or something more serious, Redditors speculate it might have something to do with Apple’s ridiculously strict App Store regulations.

All speculations aside, I absolutely don’t mind the coders’ inventive humour (or possibly rage) – it certainly got a laugh from me. Let’s just hope there’s no bad blood between the two companies.

It’s actually odd that WhatsApp’s quality assurance team didn’t flag the cheeky message; but whether they missed it or simply let it fly, I’m sort of glad it’s there – for fun’s sake.

 

 

Source, pics, links:
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2016/09/09/whatsapp-devs-troll-apple-source-code/#gref

2 minutes ago, Torolol said:

wasting memory for extra bytes of strings (or is it strings of bytes?) that aren't really needed?

Yeah that is pretty much obvious :p

 

My question would be, what does "public final void" and log.d actually do?

  • Like 1
7 minutes ago, Draconian Guppy said:

Yeah that is pretty much obvious :p

 

My question would be, what does "public final void" and log.d actually do?

This is approximated code, but the log is for debugging output. Apple would have never seen this despite the implication in the OP because...its Java LOL.

2 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

This is approximated code, but the log is for debugging output. Apple would have never seen this despite the implication in the OP because...its Java LOL.

Ah thanks! That's what I needed, someone to explain like I'm 5 :p So basically if apple can't see it, it's just out of spite?

  • Like 1
Just now, Draconian Guppy said:

Ah thanks! That's what I needed, someone to explain like I'm 5 :p So basically if apple can't see it, it's just out of spite?

I would say so, yes.

 

Pretty tacky of them, I did stuff like this when I was in school, but not professionally.

  • Like 1

That troubles me - not because of any Apple-love, but the fact it spells out that nobody is reviewing and signing off on code, and that a developer is working in a culture where undocumented code like this is allowed.

51 minutes ago, Nik Louch said:

That troubles me - not because of any Apple-love, but the fact it spells out that nobody is reviewing and signing off on code, and that a developer is working in a culture where undocumented code like this is allowed.

Anybody here made code worth a few billion dollars like the WhatsApp devs?

 

I'd say their code review processes are freakin optimal!

 

Whatever works. Think about it. If loading up on the words SJW people don't like helps to motivate devs in the dark hours of the night then go for it.

 

Obviously WhasApp knows what they're doing. Maybe Dilbert Type Organizations with all their silly restrictions sucks the life out of devs so much that in the end, all you have is reams of nice clean sanitized crap code that isn't worth billions.

 

  • Like 2
3 minutes ago, DevTech said:

Anybody here made code worth a few billion dollars like the WhatsApp devs?

 

I'd say their code review processes are freakin optimal!

 

Whatever works. Think about it. If loading up on the words SJW people don't like helps to motivate devs in the dark hours of the night then go for it.

 

Obviously WhasApp knows what they're doing. Maybe Dilbert Type Organizations with all their silly restrictions sucks the life out of devs so much that in the end, all you have is reams of nice clean sanitized crap code that isn't worth billions.

 

Uh, I would hope you would realize that code quality has nothing to do with revenue. What else is hidden in there that was missed? That's a potential security risk too. 

 

I am disappointed that you blindly defend this behavior. 

2 hours ago, DevTech said:

Anybody here made code worth a few billion dollars like the WhatsApp devs?

 

I'd say their code review processes are freakin optimal!

 

Whatever works. Think about it. If loading up on the words SJW people don't like helps to motivate devs in the dark hours of the night then go for it.

 

Obviously WhasApp knows what they're doing. Maybe Dilbert Type Organizations with all their silly restrictions sucks the life out of devs so much that in the end, all you have is reams of nice clean sanitized crap code that isn't worth billions.

 

Wow, that's a really blind comment.  Large organisations do everything they can to mitigate risk, and undocumented code is a risk.  Exactly why Microsoft ruled out "easter eggs" moving forward.

8 hours ago, Nik Louch said:

That troubles me - not because of any Apple-love, but the fact it spells out that nobody is reviewing and signing off on code, and that a developer is working in a culture where undocumented code like this is allowed.

Are you an iPhone user?

8 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

This is approximated code, but the log is for debugging output. Apple would have never seen this despite the implication in the OP because...its Java LOL.

Except when they do a code review they would have, no?

3 hours ago, Mur said:

Except when they do a code review they would have, no?

Why would apple review android code? This is specific to Android. log.d is for printing out messages for logcat. It's impossible to know just from this snippet if they are using a cross platform framework but even if they were, this would not show up in iOS. 

14 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

Uh, I would hope you would realize that code quality has nothing to do with revenue. What else is hidden in there that was missed? That's a potential security risk too. 

 

I am disappointed that you blindly defend this behavior. 

 

12 hours ago, Nik Louch said:

Wow, that's a really blind comment.  Large organisations do everything they can to mitigate risk, and undocumented code is a risk.  Exactly why Microsoft ruled out "easter eggs" moving forward.

That's a bit over the top.

 

1. We can't be taking a news report trolling an Apple troller as a mondo serious technical discussion

 

2. Blind comment? Seriously that is too blind itself - You took what in your opinion is a Politically Incorrect Word as evidence of "poor code" without a single comment on the actual code itself! That is about as blind as it gets. It's entirely possible that code was reviewed and discussed and maybe they made a loop more efficient or whatever  and they simply didn't give a Fu## about Political Correctness.

 

3. Perhaps someone could chip in on a grammar error while we're at it. I think"   "FAIL to load" should be "FAILED to load" - a very shocking misuse of English Present Tense which clearly shows that organization does not employ enough 5th Grade English Teachers on Staff to keep everyone in line.

 

  • Like 2
2 hours ago, DevTech said:

 

That's a bit over the top.

 

1. We can't be taking a news report trolling an Apple troller as a mondo serious technical discussion

 

2. Blind comment? Seriously that is too blind itself - You took what in your opinion is a Politically Incorrect Word as evidence of "poor code" without a single comment on the actual code itself! That is about as blind as it gets. It's entirely possible that code was reviewed and discussed and maybe they made a loop more efficient or whatever  and they simply didn't give a Fu## about Political Correctness.

 

3. Perhaps someone could chip in on a grammar error while we're at it. I think"   "FAIL to load" should be "FAILED to load" - a very shocking misuse of English Present Tense which clearly shows that organization does not employ enough 5th Grade English Teachers on Staff to keep everyone in line.

 

Using your logic, we then shouldn't take what you said serious either. 

 

I don't know what your vested interest is in this code, but this is not a language barrier issue. This is a, hey we don't really look closely at our code reviews so who knows what's in there, issue. Political correctness has nothing to do with it. 

 

2 hours ago, DevTech said:

Blind comment? Seriously that is too blind itself - You took what in your opinion is a Politically Incorrect Word as evidence of "poor code" without a single comment on the actual code itself! That is about as blind as it gets. It's entirely possible that code was reviewed and discussed and maybe they made a loop more efficient or whatever  and they simply didn't give a Fu## about Political Correctness.

It suggests that there's no code review practise, or that the company doesn't care about redundant code.  Sorry, are you a coder or responsible for code deployment?  I genuinely hope not.  It could say "Poopy" for all I care of political correctness, it would still fail a code review anywhere with decent practises.

16 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

Why would apple review android code? This is specific to Android. log.d is for printing out messages for logcat. It's impossible to know just from this snippet if they are using a cross platform framework but even if they were, this would not show up in iOS. 

Didn't realize it was android specific. Make sense why it would generate confusion though now.

20 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

Using your logic, we then shouldn't take what you said serious either. 

 

I don't know what your vested interest is in this code, but this is not a language barrier issue. This is a, hey we don't really look closely at our code reviews so who knows what's in there, issue. Political correctness has nothing to do with it. 

 

 

20 hours ago, Nik Louch said:

It suggests that there's no code review practise, or that the company doesn't care about redundant code.  Sorry, are you a coder or responsible for code deployment?  I genuinely hope not.  It could say "Poopy" for all I care of political correctness, it would still fail a code review anywhere with decent practises.

I am making the assumption that you are assuming there was no code review because if they had reviewed it the English Language word you personally found offensive would have been removed.

 

Or did I miss something obviously really bad in the code algorithm?

 

My point was simply that if the code sucked then, the review process sucked, but if the "decoration" sucked, then who cares because that is just neurons wasted on a useless consideration that could instead be focused on the code.

 

 

25 minutes ago, DevTech said:

 

I am making the assumption that you are assuming there was no code review because if they had reviewed it the English Language word you personally found offensive would have been removed.

 

Or did I miss something obviously really bad in the code algorithm?

 

My point was simply that if the code sucked then, the review process sucked, but if the "decoration" sucked, then who cares because that is just neurons wasted on a useless consideration that could instead be focused on the code.

 

 

I'm done discussing this because a: it was found to be a hoax and b: you clearly aren't a professional developer otherwise you would understand what @Nik Louch and I are saying. And you calling *that* an algorithm....nah, not worth discussing further. 

33 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

I'm done discussing this because a: it was found to be a hoax and b: you clearly aren't a professional developer otherwise you would understand what @Nik Louch and I are saying. And you calling *that* an algorithm....nah, not worth discussing further. 

LOL - You both completely side-stepped my point. I hate these argumentative discussions

 

And Ad hominem is not up to your usual standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

 

I am a obsessively professional programmer that just avoids the sterile Dilbert landscapes of deified dullness and wouldn't think twice about commenting code in a way that always generates news when the old grannies of the internet find choice words in 20 year old code by Microsoft or whoever.

 

Software bugs have killed human beings. Worrying about style over function is a characteristic of an unprofessional programmer or pseudo-programmer. I don't think you are either of those based on what I have read but your comment, if it isn't "unprofessional," it's of questionable taste.

 

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • Plans. Christ at least editorialise this tripe for what it is or put your own journalistic take on it.
    • If you have a TV in your living room, chances are you can probably just use the Steam Link app and play your huge PC in big picture mode, effectively giving you the Steam Machine experience to see if you'd actually like it. The good news is the Steam Machine can have it's drives upgraded. It has a USB-C 10Gbs port as well, so the 512GB drive could be quickly moved to an external enclosure and repurposed.
    • This machine could very well be a second gaming PC for their living room as a console experience. So we would have to assume their main PC exists as well; With that said, I have 10gb home network with a 2.5gigabit internet connection here so we tend to have more than enough speed to download games. However, we can't make use of the 10gb LAN using Steam's built in transfer tool because it always compresses transfers and that slows the transfer down to well below a standard gigabit port speeds, sometimes as slow as 200-300Mb/s transfers. While that's probably still faster than most internet connections anyway, if they'd fix the LAN transfer issue it'd be upto x5 faster even on a gigabit LAN, than simply dropping a 2.5gbe port on there with hopes of a few people having fast internet connections. There are solutions, work arounds, like using LANCache if you run a NAS... or simply copying the files over manually using a network share.
    • Samsung announces ultra-fast UFS 5.0 storage to supercharge mobile AI by Paul Hill Local AI models tend to run a lot more slowly than cloud services like Claude and Gemini; however, Samsung has just announced that it has developed its UFS 5.0 solution, which increases data transfer to speeds of 10.8GB/s, enabling faster storage and processing in mobile memory that has the potential to provide more optimal local AI experiences. Commenting on this development, Jangseok Choi, head of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics, said: If you’ve tried local AI, you’ll know it can be quite slow, especially if using the larger parameter models. By developing this new solution, Samsung says that storage is evolving from just storing data to a core piece of infrastructure that supports AI computation, too. The Korean company said that UFS 5.0 integrates the latest embedded memory interface standard from JEDEC and achieves up to 10.8 gigabytes per second (GB/s) transfer speeds. Regarding write speeds, Samsung UFS 5.0 can reach 9.5 GB/s. Both the read and write speeds are twice as fast as those of the previous UFS 4.1 standard. Aside from being ideal for local AI, Samsung’s UFS 5.0 is more power efficient by 40% compared to UFS 4.1. Samsung achieved this by implementing innovations such as clock gating and multi-voltage technologies. UFS 5.0 is also ultra-compact at just 7.5mm x 13mm x 0.9mm; that is 16.7% smaller than UFS 4.1. The company said it will be bringing it to multiple devices in the future, including mobile, wearable, and extended reality.
    • A bit like the steamdeck, this probably isn't for you.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      Almohandis earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Rookie
      dorf went up a rank
      Rookie
    • First Post
      mike_rumble earned a badge
      First Post
    • Dedicated
      tuben earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Week One Done
      mnsgroup earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      496
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      209
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      99
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      86
    5. 5
      neufuse
      69
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!