British Newspaper Confuses Deus Ex With Real Life

Failures

from the augmented-fact-checking-needed dept

Fri, Oct 18th 2013 5:37am — Timothy Geigner

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.

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Filed Under: deus ex, journalism, real life, tabloids, the sun, uk, video games
Companies: the sun

36 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 5:50am

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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SolkeshNaranek (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 5:51am

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.
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Nathan F (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 5:51am

They most likely did a fact check. It just started and ended at www.sarifindustries.com
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RyanNerd (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:09am

Perhaps
The journalists were trained in North Korea.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:10am

perhaps this is just a long running gag about how crappy the real media is these days...
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:13am

Re: Facts? we don't need no stinking facts
Oh. I thought it was another Rupert Murdoch production
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NoahVail (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:18am

This deserves the same ridicule that US Press does, when it parrots US Gov hysteria about Cyber Threats with no analysis.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:20am

It was a tabloid newspaper...
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:23am

This piece went wrong when it described the sun as a news papers, it is not a news paper, its toilet paper. Please correct.
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PaulT (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:31am

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.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:33am

Re:
Next week's headline: US firm Sarif Industries website defaced in bold hacker attack.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:38am

Re:
Reploids, damnit. Reploids!
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out_of_the_blue, 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:47am

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.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 6:58am

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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Old Fool (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:08am

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....
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:08am

tldr; Can you get these at Best Buy?
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PaulT (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:10am

Re: Re: Re: Re: 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.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:13am

I never asked for this
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:15am

Re:
What a shame.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:19am

Re:
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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Jake, 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:21am

A bit of a reputation? That's a fucking understatement.
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PaulT (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:26am

Re:
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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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:29am

Re:
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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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 7:49am

Re:
Yep.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/deus-ex-human-revolution-windows-digital-download/1000000907.p?id=10 00000908&skuId=1000000907&st=deus%20ex&lp=6&cp=1
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Nick (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 8:31am

Re:
Exactly. I hear "tabloid" and I immediately disregard anything posted inside it as lies. In fact, isn't it possible this was intentional satire?
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dennis deems, 18 Oct 2013 @ 9:18am

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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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 11:39am

It's a shame those don't exist because from the looks of it their editors need a pair themselves.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 11:41am

Re:
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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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 12:37pm

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!
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 1:10pm

Re: Re:
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.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 1:12pm

Re:
I heard there are aliens living in slums in Johannesburg...
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romo, 18 Oct 2013 @ 2:31pm

sarif
well the make everything else up so why not
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2013 @ 4:19pm

Re:
That explains the stop and frisk video Techdirt posted the other day.
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Anonymous, 19 Oct 2013 @ 4:27pm

Real Life is the band that had hits with "Send Me An Angel" and "Catch Me, I'm Falling".
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That One Guy (profile), 22 Oct 2013 @ 1:38am

Re:
I wanted orange, it gave me lemon-lime.
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Rajib Mridha, 12 Nov 2013 @ 12:44am

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
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