back to article Facebook buys Dummly from outernet prodigy Dick D'Miner

Your correspondent reports from 2023, via some kind of freak time continuum loop vortex in Google's soon-to-be-killed-dangerously-revolutionary Reader tool which has brought you tomorrow's news before it's even happened yet. Like, wow! That dying and completely irrelevant web advertising dinosaur Facebook, whose balding, …

COMMENTS

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  1. Chris Griffin
    Thumb Down

    This april fools' article possessed all the comedic subtlety of an episode of TOWIE.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I like the way it's relevant to today.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      even borrowed phrases from TOWIE, "Like, wow" whatever that means ...

  2. Alain Moran
    FAIL

    Poor

    Could do better.

  3. thenim
    WTF?

    WTF

    WTF2? Have the monkeys been at the typewriters again???

  4. Mikel
    IT Angle

    OK fine

    How about you all give me 13 thumbs up on April Fools day, just because I need that to get this farking stupid silver badge, now that we're all here for no reason?

    1. Chris Miller

      Re: OK fine

      No need for that, Mikel. Just post some comments along the lines of 'M$/Android/Apple fanbois are lame' on irrelevant articles and you'll soon garner enough upvotes. Works for Eadon!

    2. Jamie Jones Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: OK fine

      I've modded you up - it's ok for you, you'll be silver soon. I still have another 400 odd upvotes to get before i turn silver...

      Maybe my posts are "biting the hands that feed IT"

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: OK fine

      In my experience, 2000 up votes no longer makes a silver badge. Maybe they've changed it to 2000 more up votes than down votes, or maybe there's a manual job somewhere that somebody hasn't bothered to run for a while, or maybe the whole shiny shiny badge system is generally being rethought?

      1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: OK fine

        well, get your friends and family to upvote me, and we'll put it to the test!

  5. Cirdan
    Thumb Up

    I rather liked it.

    I knew what to expect from the title and sub, and I read it all the way through.

    Kind of an IT echo of the stuff I used to read in Fantasy & Science Fiction mag way back in the dead tree days. Maybe not Isaac Asimov, but fun!

    Thanks, Future Kelly!

    P.S. There's a rogue surgeon at the edge of The Wastland (no net coverage) who'll do the implant removal... just don't think about it on the way there. Just tell him I sent you. I know he was practising as late as 2044, so you'll have time when you do decide. Bu my implant site still throbs in cold weather.

    1. BoldMan

      Re: I rather liked it.

      Somehow I read that as rogue sturgeon... hmmm something fishy going on...

  6. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Pint

    Amazing channelling of the late Philip K. Dick!

    And what happened to the kid that got showered in money by Yahoo?

    Does he really exist or is he just an ad campaign?

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Boffin

      But do 'Androids really dream of Electric Sheep?'

      Probably not when the only 'sheep' references here relate to Apple users but we really deserve to know

    2. LinkOfHyrule
      Paris Hilton

      Re: And what happened to the kid that got showered in money by Yahoo?

      I think he's spending Easter round Stephen's. I hope he likes Twinings 'cus it's the only thing to drink round there!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Amazing channelling of the late Philip K. Dick!

      Yahoo doesn't have any money.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I didn't understand this article.

    What is a "facebook"?

    Posted from 2015.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: I didn't understand this article.

      You may know it as mugshots.com

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      Re: I didn't understand this article.

      >"What is a "facebook"?"

      It's the newer, better version of MySpace. Hurry on over, before you miss out on all the groovy action.

      Posted from 2005 (when Paris and Facebook were hot).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I didn't understand this article.

        "newer, better version of MySpace"

        So it's nothing like Bebo then?

        Or maybe: It's nothing. Like Bebo then.

  8. Captain DaFt

    Meh...

    The future ain't what it used to be. I mean, 2023? And Google cars® ain't flying yet? No Google fusion® power pods for home, industry and transport?

    And it's *still* not the year of Linux on the desktop? (Remember those?)

  9. MrT

    Mystery solved...

    ...ElReg now filing reports by Dirac beep. James Blish would be proud...

    Eagerly awaiting the reports filed in Common Time.

  10. Mage Silver badge

    I'm sure my Ansible is working

    But does anyone else have one? I'm not getting any traffic.

  11. bag o' spanners
    Go

    I think I prefer the stealth hoody, and the graun gogs. It's tough trying to be funny when you're phoning it in from under a table in Ye Olde Pickled Frogge.

  12. bag o' spanners
    Devil

    however...

    I'm pretty certain that tales of St Steve's resurrection and second coming would have had the susceptible fanbois welling up and racing for their Twitter accounts..

    Especially if there was some puff for the iCryo Skyhook Rescuscitator Mk1 prototype to hang it on.

  13. Martin Budden Silver badge
    FAIL

    Is this it? Really???

    April Fool articles are supposed to attempt credibility in a subtly-far-fetched way while having a sly dig at an easy target. This drivel is not even parody.

    I expected better. I expected at least some attempt at fooling people.

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      This isn't it

      The other one is about a company called SCO that claims to own every operating system whose name ends with "-ix", obscurely including Windows (Posix, or is that a kind ofi crewdriver?) No, not SCO. SCO was the real one.

      This is an oblique parody of Summly, the software that reads for comprehension so you don't have to - allegedly; I'm expecting to see it fall flat on its face as it over-compresses valid news stories and converts them into accidental libels. We shall see, now that it's in the spotlight.

      There also is prior art for Dummly - the parody - for instance, Charlie Brooker wrote a newspaper article in 2006 proposing a "Life GPS". It seems inconsequential to me, but I have read science fiction, so this sort of concept isn't astonishing.

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/sep/08/comment.charliebrooker

      I also read a short story once where as far as I remember, everyone in the world, or at least everybody rich, spent their lives in a sort of robot suit that managed their physical comfort and social interaction. One day a young man felt that this wasn't satisfactory and he found a way to switch the thing off so that he could tell his girlfriend that he loved her without the message being robotically moderated. Then he switched it on again because unmoderated physical existence was a ghastly experience. Everybody thought this was wonderfully romantic, and from then on, most of these life suits came with an off switch, but no one ever actually used it, except for the original discoverers.

      If you think that's bad, the same set of Charlie Brooker's articles has some discussions about looking for a wife himself, which I hope the charming Konnie Huq, whom he married subsequently in 2010, will never see. Ms. Huq, if you're reading this: be warned. You know what he's like and you took him on anyway, and we're not talking about a Blackbeard or a Rochester (I hope), but still... don't look.

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