(hippos) in Friendslist.. can do everything?

Bizarre thing in Friendslist, post-update..

First item is:

(hippos) can see online status, map, and mod

followed by:

(waiting) (which cant do a thing

And then a truncated friendslist, none of which are
shown logged in...

According to the source code this is an easter egg!

Essentially.. the system keeps a "cache" of resident's names. When the cache is asked for the name of a resident, and the name hasn't arrived yet from the server, 99% of the time it gives the name as "waiting)". The remaining 1% of the time, it gives the name as "hippos)".

No, I'm not joking:

LLCacheName:

// Constants
const char* CN_WAITING = "(waiting)";
const char* CN_HIPPOS = "(hippos)";
const F32 HIPPO_PROBABILITY = 0.01f;

...

BOOL LLCacheName::getName(const LLUUID& id, char* first, char* last) 
{
...
   if (entry)
   {
      .... 
   }
   else
   {
        strcpy(first,(frand(1.0f) < HIPPO_PROBABILITY)
               ? CN_HIPPOS 
               : CN_WAITING); 
        strcpy(last, "");
        ...
   }
}

I have a hippo in my profile that can only see me when I am online. Do you have someone on your friend list normally that has all those rights? Its probably them.

I have (hippo) and (waiting) and only two friends.... man, other than that my friend's list is wiped

Thats very interesting. I see the (hippos) all the time when I'm scanning the top scripts list from estate tools. I just assumed that meant the system didn't know who it belonged to. lol

I got same too.
I wonder about the (hippos)
I didn't know my friend list was also part of a Zoo too.
LOL
Thanks for answering wondered about this.

Here's my list of problems:

* Three friends on friends list out of about 75 prior to update
* No profile images
* No profile descriptions
* No profile images

There are lots of "hippos" all over SL. They are kind of like the mascot of SL.

i think patches are just to keep us off balance ..cause when we finally get used to dealing with the old problems we get repatched with even older ones lol (Sarcasm)

Indeed, but when hippos eat my profile picture, profile text, my friends list, and a few other things, it gets me worried.

[EDIT]

Now only my friends list is shortened... everything else is ok!

Here's a workaround to the hippos/waiting problem:

1. Double-click on the hippos/waiting as the case may be. This should bring up the profile. Or possibly clicking the profile button.
   
2. Close the window that appears, and close the Friends window (important).
   

I'm assuming that bringing up the user's profile updates the name in the cache, but you need to close and reopen the Friends window to refresh it. Doing this also lets your Friend's window fetch one more friend, who may or may not appear as hippos/waiting. You can keep repeating the process until all your friends have been named.

(hippos) has become a virus!!! AAAHHH!!! QUICK! Raise the norton FIREWALL while we're (waiting) for it to strike!

also try holding down ctrl+alt+shift and press H repeatedly another easter egg.

Darwin Appleby started the hippo thing lol