British Newspaper Confuses Deus Ex With Real Life
from the augmented-fact-checking-needed dept
If you dig through a Techdirt search on augmentation, you’ll return links for our ongoing Daily Dirt pieces and some interesting stuff about augmented reality. That kind of thing is all well and good, but fans of cyberpunk thrill-rides like me have something different in mind for ourselves when it comes to augments. We want the good stuff. You know, implanted HUD vision, mechanical servos in our leg joints that will make us jump like LeBron, maybe a gun-arm or two so we can savagely disperse justice on unsuspecting bad guys. Unfortunately, very little in the way of improvement in these fields has occurred.
Until now. I bring you the British tabloid, The Sun, and their amazing story about an augmented mechanical eyeball that, if associated material is to be believed, allows you to see through walls, color-codes friends and enemies, and permits telescopic zoom. Here’s the reference from The Sun.
Oops. See, part of the reason that Sarif Industries’ cybernetic implants are still in their infancy is that the company doesn’t exist. Sarif Industries is a fictitious company from a cyberpunk video game, Deus Ex, set in a future Detroit. As Kotaku notes:
Granted, the folks behind The Sun don’t really care that much about nonsense like “accuracy” or “making sure the news they report isn’t actually from a video game.” And yes, perhaps eyeball implants will indeed be common in 50 years. But they probably won’t come from Sarif Industries.
Thank science for all the fact-checking our brick and mortar newspapers do. On the other hand, seriously, how much fact-checking is required to determine that no biomedical company producing what would be a ground-breaking achievement in augmentation exists in Detroit? I recognize that the Sun has a bit of a reputation for skipping out on pesky little things like “facts” in its reporting, but rewriting video games as fact seems to take things to a different level.
Filed Under: deus ex, journalism, real life, tabloids, the sun, uk, video games
Companies: the sun
Comments on “British Newspaper Confuses Deus Ex With Real Life”
That’s nothing, I hear there’s already walking and talking robots that act as law enforcement now.
Only, some bad guy created a nasty virus known as the Sigma virus, and now a bunch of those robots want to kill all humans and make earth a world for just robots! We’re fortunate we have the robots Mega Man X and Zero on our side to always stop their evil plans however!
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Reploids, damnit. Reploids!
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That explains the stop and frisk video Techdirt posted the other day.
Facts? we don't need no stinking facts
the Sun has a bit of a reputation for skipping out on pesky little things like “facts” in its reporting
So this “newspaper” is operated by Mike Rogers, Dianne Feinstein, James Clapper, and Keith Alexander?
Sounds about right.
Re: Facts? we don't need no stinking facts
Oh. I thought it was another Rupert Murdoch production
Re: Re: Facts? we don't need no stinking facts
Yep, if you want facts you just have to note that this is one of Murdoch’s rags. No need to make up any other reasons why this might not be actual news other than SOP for that waste of trees.
Re: Re: Re: Facts? we don't need no stinking facts
@ “PaulT”
Yep, if you want facts you just have to note that this is one of Murdoch’s rags.
So you’re saying Techdirt, especially Timmy, feeds on Murdoch’s crap. Good one.
Re: Re: Re:2 Facts? we don't need no stinking facts
“So you’re saying Techdirt, especially Timmy, feeds on Murdoch’s crap”
Wow, that’s how far you have to stretch to attack the site this time? Give up.
Re: Facts? we don't need no stinking facts
Actualy, it’s run by Rupert Murdoch. The same guy who runs Fox – I’m sure you see the problem now….
They most likely did a fact check. It just started and ended at http://www.sarifindustries.com
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Next week’s headline: US firm Sarif Industries website defaced in bold hacker attack.
Perhaps
The journalists were trained in North Korea.
perhaps this is just a long running gag about how crappy the real media is these days…
This deserves the same ridicule that US Press does, when it parrots US Gov hysteria about Cyber Threats with no analysis.
It was a tabloid newspaper…
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Exactly. I hear “tabloid” and I immediately disregard anything posted inside it as lies. In fact, isn’t it possible this was intentional satire?
This piece went wrong when it described the sun as a news papers, it is not a news paper, its toilet paper. Please correct.
Deus Ex is a great game that every gamer should experience. It has a truly excellent story. The story is very well thought out. You have nano-augmentations and super intelligent AI, but other than that, it isn’t terribly over-the-top.
An interesting game-play bit is that many of your actions in-game will have repercussions later in the game. Unfortunately, you only get to choose from 3 different endings, and, for the most part, the game is pretty much linear, but you do get to influence many events.
Combat sucked, though. And the graphics are…passable from today’s standards. But the game aged well, and last I checked, it worked well in modern operating systems (I even got it to work reasonably well in Linux at one point).
The other two train wrecks that bear the same name are just sad, pathetic little things in comparison.
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DX:IW was terrible from a technical standpoint but had a pretty cool story and some interesting locations. If they made the levels bigger by removing the loading screens between areas and fixed some of the bugs (like the fact that there’s two identical Multitool objects that act exactly the same in every way except will not stack in your insanely limited inventory) it would really shine.
DX:HR was actually super good and I’m wondering if you actually bothered to play it. The boss fights were awful but since they were really quick and literally had nothing to do with the rest of the game (they were made by a completely different company) I figure it’s safe to give them a pass.
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The original is available on GoG, so it definitely works fine in anything up to Windows 8 on the MS side.
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DX:IW was decent but crippled by technical problems.
DX:HR was awesome except the boss fights (which were easy, short, and outsourced to another company), and the ending which is literally “choose one of three buttons at the end of the hallway”. But other than those gripes it was really a fantastic game, so I’m honestly left wondering if you even played it before leaving your closing remark there.
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End of next week, the DXHR director’s cut will be released on steam with graphical and gameplay improvements (yes, there are still boss fights, but they’ve been reworked).
People who own the game will pay only a severely reduced price.
And there was much rejoicing.
tldr; Can you get these at Best Buy?
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Yep.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/deus-ex-human-revolution-windows-digital-download/1000000907.p?id=1000000908&skuId=1000000907&st=deus%20ex&lp=6&cp=1
I never asked for this
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What a shame.
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I wanted orange, it gave me lemon-lime.
A bit of a reputation? That’s a fucking understatement.
Wait till they run their scoop about Shinra corporation and their secret program of extracting the life essence from hapless test subjects.
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Pshaw, that’s NOTHING. That’s all just PR spin to distract you from Shinra’s disgusting attempts to create more Ancients.
I mean, EW.
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I heard there are aliens living in slums in Johannesburg…
It’s a shame those don’t exist because from the looks of it their editors need a pair themselves.
So what?
So what if the British Sun got their facts a little confused – their page 3 girl is always topless. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
sarif
well the make everything else up so why not
Real Life is the band that had hits with “Send Me An Angel” and “Catch Me, I’m Falling”.
Deus is really an interesting game..the game is pretty much linear, but you do get to influence many events.But i like it more..
Newspaper