Hacker News Reader

You're forgetting what "easter eggs" are IRL - chocolate eggs hidden in a back yard that people have to look for.

The analogy applies to computing in 2 ways: they're hidden, and it's something desirable. Niether of those ways apply to what Mozilla did. Therefore it wasn't an easter egg and you trying to pretend otherwise is just confusing.

View on HN

The intent was for it to be hidden! That's why it didn't activate! And for the person that would activate it, it was desirable.

They made a mistake in deployment that turned it into a scary mysterious blob. That's bad, but doesn't change the underlying nature of the code.

We can agree that the exact same code in C, not showing up in any lists or menus, not triggering without a magic about:config phrase, would be a clear easter egg, right?

(Also easter eggs don't inherently have to be fun, sometimes they're just someone's initials.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com