Newsweek Easter Egg Reports Zombie Invasion

danielkennedy74 writes "Newsweek.com becomes the latest in a long list of sites that will reveal an Easter egg if you enter the Konami code correctly (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, enter). This is a cheat code that appeared in many of Konami's video games, starting around 1986 — my favorite places to use it were Contra and Life Force, 30 lives FTW. The Easter egg was probably included by a developer unbeknownst to the Newsweek powers that be. It's reminiscent of an incident that happened at ESPN last year, involving unicorns."

Comments

Unfortunately....

[Anonymous Coward]

....slashdot still does nothing.

Not the only one:

[0100010001010011]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Konami_code_websites goes all the way back to July 2009

Re:Not the only one:

[jDeepbeep]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Konami_code_websites goes all the way back to July 2009

Well, yeah. That's probably why TFS said:

becomes the latest in a long list of sites that .... [snip]

Re:Not the only one:

[Low Ranked Craig]

Code is hosted here if interested: http://code.google.com/p/konami-js/

Re:Not the only one:

[Anonymous Coward]

For those interested - file containing the script;

http://www.newsweek.com/etc/designs/newsweek/lib.js

Just search for "Konami", rest is there.

Re:Not the only one:

[Cylix]

After trying the code on numerous random sites and getting nothing but failure I decided to let Fox.com be my last stop. I wasn't expecting anything with the string of failures on a slew of other high profile websites.

After entering the code the text and articles immediately changed. No longer was there a right wing conservative pro-republican bias on any article. It was all neutral tone reading with viewpoints from all sides. In fact, nearly article was damn neared educational and it left me yearning for more. There was even a detailed plan plus Fox coupled subsidiaries for containing and resolving the issues with the BP oil spill.

Unfortunately, the somewhat magical result with seemingly endless positives also had a nefarious side. I could no longer access any porn site. In fact, my friends who could no longer find reach their favorite "photography" web sites.

I immediately made a quick call to the news room and eventually reached their noc. Once they understood the nature of the problem they quickly reverted the code push and set fire to the primary data center.

In the end we agreed it was just too great a sacrifice.

Re:Not the only one:

[Kitkoan]

Can't forget the odd/funny song Konami Code, a tribute to this old code.

Re:Not the only one:

[georgeMandis]

Hey, I wrote that! Cool!

The code works on iPhones/iPads too with gestures, but it doesn't seem they implemented it on iphone.newsweek.com. Or perhaps they disabled that - they seem to have disabled it on their main as well.

Re:Not the only one:

[Bigbutt]

Doesn't seem to work on Firefox on Ubuntu. Neither of my workstations, well work :) Works with Firefox on my Windows laptop and Safari on the same box. A coworker couldn't get it working on Firefox on Windows but it worked on IE.

But that's Javascript :)

Thanks for the snippit though. A game magazine a few months back had a Zombie flow chart that I turned into a php/javascript page. For the Status Management app I wrote, I added in the konami.js bits which call that page. Cool stuff :)

[John]

Re:Not the only one:

[georgeMandis]

I won't clutter this up with something so off topic, but feel free to put it on the issue tracker at http://konami-js.googlecode.com/ Thanks!

WRONG

[atomicthumbs]

30 lives FTW

Thirty men! Thirty MEN! Putting in the code gave you an extra thirty men!

Is Newsweek among the zombies?

[ChipMonk]

After all, it isn't like their subscriber list is expanding a lot lately.

Wait, maybe this is part of a business strategy to appeal to the burgeoning zombie market!

Re:Is Newsweek among the zombies?

[sumdumass]

Or to get geeks and curios people (the rest of the interweb) to visit their site and explore around hoping that some will stay. It's pretty much like a slashvertisement except that they know everyone will be talking about it so it probably widespread then just geeks.

At the cooler in the big office building on tuesday afternoon.
Bill: What? You put a code in and get articles about zombies? No way..
Joe: Sure, you just press these buttons in this order.
Bill: Wow, that's neat. I never played those game but this is pretty awesome. I have to tell my kid about this.
Kid: I know dad, I'm the one who told sally who told jim, who told johny's neighbors dog, who told aunt jane, who told Mary who told her dad- Joe. I found out by some kids talking about it in school.

I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me tell you how this happened.

Newspapers and magazines are not development oriented. Here's what I face, and I suspect you will find similar stories at every newspaper and some magazines.

Understaffed - I am the sole developer supporting a dozen sites written in four different languages. (I do have 3 graphic designers who know html, but couldn't even tell you what source control is)

Project duration - Any project that takes more than a week is considered a blasphemy. You're expected to work on a "news cycle" schedule. If you can't roll it out quickly or chunk into into tiny pieces, you probably aren't going to do it.

Project thrashing - Its not uncommon to work on a project for two or three days, get pulled off of it in favor of another project, and then get pulled off of that for yet another project. You can guess at the trail of unfinished projects that die from being ignored due to the whims of an editor or publisher.

Hostile IT departments - setup around servicing journalists, IT departments are extremely hostile towards development needs. I'm not allowed to install browsers or virtual machines for testing, not allowed to have a development server, source control is a security risk, I don't have local admin on my desktop,
and I need to summon an IT guy every time I need to test a deployment package. This leads to a lot of development on production systems because you literally have no other choice. Yes, this has been run up to executive level management.

Not caring - No one really cares what you do until it breaks or until it wins them a press award.

Not understanding - Graphic designers are frequently given root access to linux boxes and superuser access to sql server. They believe anyone can write a windows service, manage a database, or write quality html. This includes graphic designers because "They can do it for print, how is the web different"

No resources - In conjunction with not caring and not having money, you aren't given resources. I use gimp for image manipulation, purchased my own copies of Visual Studio and Zend, and have the bare minimum to do my job.

External politics - Being owned by a larger corporate entity, we often fall victim to running foul of sweetheart deals at the corporate level and random kingdom building. We're not even allowed to submit a proper sitemap to Google, the roll out version has been broken for three years, so I rolled our own which works wonderfully, but it was shutdown because it was "out of step with the larger company-wide sitemap rollout scheduled for Q3 2012."

So, you've got this great combination of no resources, business-wide apathy, developing on production, no communication, politics, and no QA/testing process...it really is as simple as uploading the script. Chances are no one would care that it was there, and I promise you that no one one notice until a reader discovered it and it hit the internet at large.

If you're wondering why I stay, I work with some very good people and I don't ever work overtime. Its pretty decent for anyone that can put up with the nonsense.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[NatasRevol]

I was the IT manager at a smaller group of newspapers. Everything you said was true of our place, except 2 things.

1. Hostile IT depts. There was only two devs (only one technically competent) and two IT people. We knew each other. We worked well together. Us IT guys set up a test server on an old machine, and gave the dev full access to it. We all met & worked together to get things working & optimized.

2. Graphic designers. Ours didn't know what html was. They knew InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator & Flash. They didn't know what GoLive was. Since our site was already ugly, we just dusted off a template, changed a few colors & called it good. It looked the same as the old, ugly site so no one upstairs complained.

I worked with some petty, manipulative people and worked a lot of overtime (IT manager, newspaper, you do the math). I quit my job. And now sleep soundly.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[PopeRatzo]

We knew each other.

Take it from me, these workplace romances seldom work out.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Seeing stuff like this causes me to wonder exactly how US corporations manage to function at all. Dumb luck is the only good answer I have.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its cute that you think that works.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[dragonsomnolent]

Wait, am I having a flashback, or did you say that your IT guys won't give you (a developer who, I assume, are familiar enough with running and administering your box to not bork it) admin rights to your box, but they'll give graphic designers (who, I imagine are good at their jobs, but are essentially artists) ROOT access to the linux boxes and sql servers, which apparently are production? Dude WTF? You should seriously talk to someone about getting sane IT polocies in there.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seeing stuff like this causes me to wonder exactly how US corporations manage to function at all. Dumb luck is the only good answer I have."

Dumb Luck, and a tendency for evil to self-propogate.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[AhabTheArab]

Bailouts.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Suzuran]

It's reality that most of us are sad.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[__aasqbs9791]

Those are all the reasons I hated working for big companies. Some of the people I worked with at small companies could never understand how hard the bureaucracy was to deal with day in and day out. Although I did work for a small company once that started thinking it could benefit from the red tape of a large company. I gained a whole new definition for Hell while working there. Really sad, since for a while it was the best environment ever. That's probably even what made the changes hurt so much. So now I work for myself. I have a complete asshole for a boss though. He wants me to do all the work while he plays all day.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[sg_oneill]

IMO, that sounds like a fail on your part.

It's not a journalists job to know about developing software. That's what they hired you for.

When somebody hands you a project, it's your job as the programmer to say, "This project will take X months to complete; require these tools and resources, which cost $Y; and will delay the other project(s) I am working on. Do you still want me to start this project?" And if they say, "Well we need it in half that time for $0," it's your job to explain why that isn't reasonable.

Your in for a rude shock when you get your first real job kid. You can state, scream, shout, draw diagrammes, write reports all you want explaining how shit has to be, but management will still go "Yeah whatever nerd, get it finished by tomorrow and no you cant have that memory upgrade, and no you cant have a dev server, code repository or any other word we cant understand here in accounting. Anyway, my son said you dont need it, and he's the top in his senior high computing class.".

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[xtracto]

It's funny because it is true.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[daid303]

(only one technically competent)

I guess you just replied to the other one ;-)

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[peragrin]

The same thing that keeps the US government going,

The bureaucracy is so thick things generally take a long time to fail, long enough that even the bureaucracy notices.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Dachannien]

1. Hostile IT depts. There was only two devs (only one technically competent) and two IT people. We knew each other. We worked well together. Us IT guys

As it turns out, IT guys and normal people have two very different thresholds for hostility.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's any consolation, it's the same at my job and we're not a news shop. And it was the same at my last job, too. :( What hurts is the apathy, pass-the-buck syndrome, and overall poor work environment.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[asukasoryu]

But having that sex-on-the-Xerox-machine flipbook is so worth it.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[DigitalSorceress]

I was the web developer for a good sized metro daily back in 1999. Back then, we were owned by PRIVATELY_OWNED_MID-SIZE_NEWSPAPER_CONGLOMERATE, but we were pretty much allowed to do what we wanted (the web was young and our paper was pretty far ahead of our sister and parent organizations web-wise).

Then along came MAJOR_PUBLICLY_TRADED_PUBLISHING_CONGLOMERATE - bought our parent company. I saw the beginnings of what you're talking about and I jumped ship; found another job and gave my notice.

From what I heard from those who stayed behind, the red tape got more and more, the centralization came down from on high and threw out the baby with the bath water. Within a year, most of the web personnel had gone elsewhere, and the web site was just a cookie-cutter version of the corporate standard.

It's sad as the web department was full of some of the best and brightest people it's ever been my pleasure to work with.

What I mean to say is that I know where you're coming from.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Let ME tell you how this happened. Newsweek hired a very expensive agency to help with their assets creation and design with their site. And that company had one jerk off developer who thought it would be funny to put this into every project he worked on.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the truth - neither reasonable discourse nor tantrums get you anything from management that isn't personally knowledgeable about the subject (and even then there is probably management above them that isn't).

I did discover a way to handle this: I worked my butt off. But not for my company, for our clients (we wrote custom software for banks). I always detailed everything for the clients, provided all the real information about the costs (time, money, resources, etc.) and always worked to get them the best quality software that they needed, not what they asked for or just defaulted to the best that could be done with the given resources.

Eventually, my clients came to rely on me and believe me over the sales/management staff of my company. The clients came to notice that when they followed my suggestions they got what they wanted and that when they believed the hype from themselves or our management, things didn't work so well. Once that happened, I had leverage with my own management because I had leverage with the client.

It sounds horrible, but my real partners were always my clients (especially their end-users) and not the other staff in my company. It takes time, and doesn't always work, but more often than not clients will recognize your efforts and start relying on you and not management/sales. They want their software right the first time more than on a particular budget and timeline (because right the first time is always cheaper than the really cheap, quick and ultimately wrong timeline).

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[jlarocco]

Butthurt much?

Thanks for the advice. But I already have a "real job," and considering mine sounds significantly better than yours, maybe you should be taking advice instead of giving it out.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Archangel Michael]

"Your in for a rude shock when you get your first real job kid. You can state, scream, shout, draw diagrammes, write reports all you want explaining how shit has to be, but management will still go "Yeah whatever nerd, get it finished by tomorrow and no you cant have that memory upgrade, and no you cant have a dev server, code repository or any other word we cant understand here in accounting. Anyway, my son said you dont need it, and he's the top in his senior high computing class."."

And that is why we have Millions of Barrels of Oil filling the Gulf of Mexico. Because some idiot wouldn't say "NO FUCKING WAY", and calling their senator or congress critter to warn .... oh wait.. there's the problem right there ...

You're right, just for the wrong reasons ... so, never mind.

Re:I'm a programmer for a major metro daily...

[Heather D]

True this. Ironically, if we had a government that was actually responsive to us we would most likely have brought it down by now.

Re:noooooo

[Rijnzael]

The zombies at the IT department's brains. And then the servers became self aware, and destroyed the news article in an attempt to increase the effectiveness of the zombie apocalypse. Really not a good day for humanity so far.

Re:noooooo

[iknowcss]

You could always, you know, go to newsweek.com and try it.

Hint: it works

crap summary

[corbettw]

The story is ostensibly about Newsweek.com putting an Easter egg on their website. Then why is there no link to said website in the fine summary?

I used to hate kdawson only for his idiotic political posts during the final days of the Bush administration. Now I hate him for posting godawful story after godawful story. Leave this one to samzenpus to put on Idle, it at least belongs there.

Re:crap summary

[sackvillian]

I used to hate kdawson only for his idiotic political posts during the final days of the Bush administration.

I know, right? There's nothing worse than people injecting politics into an otherwise technical discussion. Too bad it's all too common. . .

-- The fear of libertarianism is the terror that the mediocre feel at the possibility of being judged on their merits.

Huh.

Re:crap summary

[daveime]

Then why is there no link to said website in the fine summary?

Probably for the same reason there is no link to it in your post either ?

Just typing something ending in .com or .net doesn't magically make it a hyperlink ... the URL tag is your (and kdawson's) friend.

As you are obviously having trouble finding your address bar and typing 12 characters in it, here it is for your convenience ... http://newsweek.com/ ... now you do know where your left mouse button is ???

Re:crap summary

[bartwol]

FWIW...see this more recent post, Knuth got it wrong, in which, in addition to the assertion in the title, kdawson reports an "off-by-ten error in btrees." Try to figure out what Knuth was "wrong" about, and where the "off-by-ten error" is.

He wasn't, and there isn't. Kdawson simply made that stuff up (unless we redefine the terms "wrong" and "off-by-ten error" so that they mean...uhhh...what they don't mean).

I'm not trolling...just annoyed by B.S. and the people who use it.

Go Go Gadget Contextual Advertising!

[Xaroth]

I would have to say that my favorite part of this conversion is the unaltered ad that shows a recent cover of Newsweek featuring Michelle Obama and the caption "FEED YOUR CHILDREN WELL".

Re:Go Go Gadget Contextual Advertising!

[fyreous]

HAHA, wow, did not even catch that the first time!

Enter?

[Yvan256]

I don't remember any "Enter" button on the NES gamepad.

Re:Enter?

[Phybersyk0]

Jeez man. There's no "START" key on your keyboard. "Enter" is the best approximation you could have. Why do people have to be spoon-fed?

Re:Enter?

[AhabTheArab]

You leave him alone, he's old skool and everybody should know it. He is one of the few around here who have any idea how an original NES gamepad is laid out. Now get off his lawn!

Re:Enter?

[igaborf]

Jeez man. There's no "START" key on your keyboard. "Enter" is the best approximation you could have. Why do people have to be spoon-fed?

I'm not going to spoon-feed you the answer to that question.

Re:Enter?

[drinkypoo]

He is one of the few around here who have any idea how an original NES gamepad is laid out.

The NES gamepad isn't laid out, it's thrown. Now, if you swing it around by the cord and hit someone in the head, they will be laid out.

Seriously, when I was pissed off at a game I used to swing the controller by about two feet of cord and bounce it off the floor as fast/hard as I could. I never managed to break one. Sure it was vinyl over plywood and not concrete or something, but that's damned impressive. Try that with your Wiimote :p

Re:Enter?

[damien_kane]

Try that with your Wiimote :p

Works exactly the same
Do you not remember the many stories when the Wii came out of people attempting to connect their wiimote to their plasma and LCD TVs with extreme prejudice?
The wiimotes were unharmed. The TVs less-so.

Re:Enter?

[damien_kane]

Entering the code required the game to be paused. Start wasn't part of the code, it was used to resume the game.

No, entering the code required you be at the title screen.
Start wasn't part of the code, so in that respect you are correct, but the button used to trigger game-start, not to resume game.
Hence, to play Contra in 2p with the code was up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-b-a-select-start.

Re:It works

[rilister]

oops. Took me a while to realize that is one of those rare occasions where a site make it worth disabling NoScript...

Grammar Nazi time

[aitikin]

So I have to do it, even though I'd be surprised if anyone still reported the news when a zombie horde was coming, watch your grammar Steven Stone:

While initially considered to be a bad sinus infection, the disease quickly spread after Patient Zero ate the brains of an attending neurosurgeon.

Fixed it for ya.

Re:Facebook Code

[JWSmythe]

    Can you stop doing that? Every time you try, it sends a copy of all your mail to all of your friends, and their friends, and their friends. I'm getting tired of reading your personal stuff. Your best friends girlfriend? Man, bros before hos. Didn't you read the guy's handbook. I get it, she's hot, but we have rules. You start breaking the rules, and it all becomes chaos. That was a really hot picture she sent you though. I didn't know anyone could get into that position. Is she a contortionist or something?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[TestedDoughnut]

It was working, but it's dead now. Oh well.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[billsayswow]

Nope, I just went to the Newsweek website and can't get it to work. Apparently the head of their web team must read Slashdot, and put a stop to it already.

it doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

i just checked it, it doesn't work

That's nothing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake me up when a printed newspaper or magazine does it.

doesn't seem to work for me

[darkeye]

on the newsweek site. has this been disabled? :(

Palm Pre "Developer" Mode

[TheNinjaroach]

I bought a Palm Pre off of my friend over the weekend and I've already started to hack at the thing a bit. The first step is to enable "Developer Mode" on the device, which is enabled by running a search for the following text:

upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart

Delightful!

I thought this was even funnier.

[pushf popf]

Searching for "zombie on newsweek yields this:

Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It
Internal Server Error (500)

The requested URL /content/newsweek/search.html resulted in an error in /apps/newsweek/components/content/search/search.jsp.
Exception:

java.lang.NullPointerException
        at com.newsweek.cq.search.SearchList.size(SearchList.java:186)
        at com.newsweek.cq.search.SearchList.isPaginating(SearchList.java:190)
        at org.apache.jsp.apps.newsweek.components.content.search.search_jsp._jspService(search_jsp.java:369)
        at org.apache.sling.scripting.jsp.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:70)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)
        at org.apache.sling.scripting.jsp.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:394)
        at org.apache.sling.scripting.jsp.JspServletWrapperAdapter.service(JspServletWrapperAdapter.java:59)
        at org.apache.sling.scripting.jsp.JspScriptEngineFactory.callJ

Shortcut

[Haxzaw]

place /# at the end of the URL. So, www.newsweek.com/#

Schematic / Razorfish

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when you hire a shit company like Schematic to to write your front end. All they care about is giving you crap code that you later spend 8+ months trying to clean up and re-write and taking your money.

Re:noooooo

[Myopic]

It didn't work for me in either FF or IE on XP. Dunno if it's just my machine or not.

Poser

[funkycupcake]

It appears that danielkennedy74 wasn't a true gamer back in the days of Contra. If in fact he truly was, he would've notated the correct command as: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, (another b, a) enter. Shame shame. Ok, we'll let it slide.

Re:Facebook Code

[damien_kane]

I didn't know anyone could get into that position. Is she a contortionist or something?

No, it was a failed experiment.
She can't get out of that pose, now, and is unable to move anything other than her left eye, you insensitive clod.

Re:Facebook Code

[JWSmythe]

Oh, if you knew my life experiences. I could write a whole series of rather sorted books, that could be made into movies that the MPAA would refuse to rate, and would even probably be too explicit for Skinemax. Real life friends who have known parts of my life story have suggested that I start writing the books.

    But, if crossed legs are the most you know, I won't ruin your image of the world. :)

Re:Facebook Code

[dwarfsoft]

Oh, if you knew my life experiences. I could write a whole series of rather sorted books...

Oh my! Are you seriously going to start writing Phonebooks? Or *gasp* Dictionaries? The horror! Did you perchance mean Sordid?