5 ms·

Facebook bug 'kills' users in 'terrible error'

39 points by xufi 10y ago

lsmod 10y ago
"An unusual bug on Facebook briefly labelled many people as dead."
rhizome 10y ago
I have to wonder what the attempted feature was that resulted in this.
- agildehaus 10y ago
  If it's anything like my bugs, it's a single-character typo in the template.
  - ben_jones 10y ago
    I feel like Facebook must do a phased roll out of their front-end modifications such that they'd detect that before it was big enough to matter (or perhaps during language normalization which must be huge for them). My guess is they were running something on the back-end to "clean up" dead users and it went haywire.
- overload119 10y ago
  When someone on Facebook dies, you can memoralize their account. The check the determined whether or not an account is memoralized failed.
inimino 10y ago
Let's wait for the post-mortem on this one.
- avg_dev 10y ago
  (lol) do they usually give such? I'd love to know what happened here.
lalaithion 10y ago
Thirty years from now: Same headline without quotes.
- rch 10y ago
  This was the dry run. P.S. I took a screenshot of my profile while I was dead, and just set a reminder to post the 'memory' next year.
- taneq 10y ago
  "It turns out these users had been dead for several years, but due to a glitch in payroll, they had still been physically alive. We, uh, just fixed the glitch."
warsaw 10y ago
Who uses Facebook?
- waterphone 10y ago
  Apparently only dead people.
- dang 10y ago
  Comments to HN need to be civil and substantive. Please read the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  About 60% of all people who have access to the internet worldwide, or nearly 1/4 of all human beings currently alive. Do they not have google where you live?
tbveralrud 10y ago
"We hope people who love %s will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate %s life." is one of the most insincere code commits of that day. Let others write about a lost loved one, not robots.
- quickben 10y ago
  But then people may not 'share'. This way they are explicitly instructed.
- avg_dev 10y ago
  I don't know, my microwave flashes "Enjoy your meal" every time it's done heating something and I like that little touch.
  - joshmn 10y ago
    What kind of microwave is that? Mine just swears at me. Consecutively.
    - InclinedPlane 10y ago
      Microwaves are the most aggressive robots. "Hey! Hey! Your food has been ready for zero seconds! Hey!" . . . "Hey! F#$face! Your burrito has been ready for five seconds! Eat your g-d food meat bag!" . . . "Ten seconds?! REALLY?! Are you serious?! We're enemies forever now! Eat this crap for f's sake!"
      - terinjokes 10y ago
        I see you've met my dishwasher. "Hey, the wash cycle is over" Yes, but everything is still as hot as lava. "Hey, it's been 5 minutes." Still hot. And then it beeps a "Hey!" every five minutes thereafter.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    I find it strange when I microwave a sock full of dry beans to use as a hand warmer, or a piece of metal that I need to make slightly larger though. My other microwave displays a generic "EnJ0Y!" blinking a few times which is much more applicable in those situations.
jrockway 10y ago
The biggest thing I take away from this is that users have learned to tolerate minor problems in software. I always make it a personal goal to have 0 bugs, but never succeed. It is good that users cut us some slack, because it means we can spend some time pushing the featureset forward, rather than making everything 100% perfect 100% of the time. (Be more careful if you're working on life-critical software, though. Features are not necessarily the most important thing there ;)
yawaramin 10y ago
You know, I bet it was something to do with `memorializeUser` again (see https://www.columbia.edu/~ng2573/zuggybuggy_is_2scale4ios.pdf https://www.columbia.edu/~ng2573/zuggybuggy_is_2scale4ios.pd... slide 46). In fact I would go so far as to say this is the kind of thing that should be encoded in the type system so it's a compile error to try to do this.

39 points by xufi 10y ago

lsmod 10y ago

"An unusual bug on Facebook briefly labelled many people as dead."

rhizome 10y ago

I have to wonder what the attempted feature was that resulted in this.

agildehaus 10y ago
If it's anything like my bugs, it's a single-character typo in the template.
- ben_jones 10y ago
  I feel like Facebook must do a phased roll out of their front-end modifications such that they'd detect that before it was big enough to matter (or perhaps during language normalization which must be huge for them). My guess is they were running something on the back-end to "clean up" dead users and it went haywire.
overload119 10y ago
When someone on Facebook dies, you can memoralize their account. The check the determined whether or not an account is memoralized failed.

inimino 10y ago

Let's wait for the post-mortem on this one.

avg_dev 10y ago
(lol) do they usually give such? I'd love to know what happened here.

lalaithion 10y ago

Thirty years from now: Same headline without quotes.

rch 10y ago
This was the dry run. P.S. I took a screenshot of my profile while I was dead, and just set a reminder to post the 'memory' next year.
taneq 10y ago
"It turns out these users had been dead for several years, but due to a glitch in payroll, they had still been physically alive. We, uh, just fixed the glitch."

warsaw 10y ago

Who uses Facebook?

waterphone 10y ago
Apparently only dead people.
dang 10y ago
Comments to HN need to be civil and substantive. Please read the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
InclinedPlane 10y ago
About 60% of all people who have access to the internet worldwide, or nearly 1/4 of all human beings currently alive. Do they not have google where you live?

tbveralrud 10y ago

"We hope people who love %s will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate %s life." is one of the most insincere code commits of that day. Let others write about a lost loved one, not robots.

quickben 10y ago
But then people may not 'share'. This way they are explicitly instructed.
avg_dev 10y ago
I don't know, my microwave flashes "Enjoy your meal" every time it's done heating something and I like that little touch.
- joshmn 10y ago
  What kind of microwave is that? Mine just swears at me. Consecutively.
  - InclinedPlane 10y ago
    Microwaves are the most aggressive robots. "Hey! Hey! Your food has been ready for zero seconds! Hey!" . . . "Hey! F#$face! Your burrito has been ready for five seconds! Eat your g-d food meat bag!" . . . "Ten seconds?! REALLY?! Are you serious?! We're enemies forever now! Eat this crap for f's sake!"
    - terinjokes 10y ago
      I see you've met my dishwasher. "Hey, the wash cycle is over" Yes, but everything is still as hot as lava. "Hey, it's been 5 minutes." Still hot. And then it beeps a "Hey!" every five minutes thereafter.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I find it strange when I microwave a sock full of dry beans to use as a hand warmer, or a piece of metal that I need to make slightly larger though. My other microwave displays a generic "EnJ0Y!" blinking a few times which is much more applicable in those situations.

jrockway 10y ago

The biggest thing I take away from this is that users have learned to tolerate minor problems in software. I always make it a personal goal to have 0 bugs, but never succeed. It is good that users cut us some slack, because it means we can spend some time pushing the featureset forward, rather than making everything 100% perfect 100% of the time. (Be more careful if you're working on life-critical software, though. Features are not necessarily the most important thing there ;)

yawaramin 10y ago

You know, I bet it was something to do with `memorializeUser` again (see https://www.columbia.edu/~ng2573/zuggybuggy_is_2scale4ios.pdf https://www.columbia.edu/~ng2573/zuggybuggy_is_2scale4ios.pd... slide 46). In fact I would go so far as to say this is the kind of thing that should be encoded in the type system so it's a compile error to try to do this.