The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

For Auld Lang Syne

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2022-12-30

Instead of replaying a "best of" moment from 2022 for this final column of the year, I thought I'd dig through the barrel of submissions this week and see what the readers have to offer. Turns out, we got TWO winning entries from someone who appears to be a brand-new poster. Joel Jakubovic sent in his vacation snapshots and it looks like this might also be his last submission ever. The candle shines twice as bright that only burns half so long.

Whiling away his time in line, Joel snapped a shot of an instructional display, explaining "I saw this error in the airport security queue. Its official name is ERROR_INVALID_OPLOCK_PROTOCOL, which sounds like just the sort of excuse you'd get from the TSA as to why they had to saw your suitcase in half."

7 comments - Last comment @ 2022-12-30

Something Doesn't Add Up

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2022-12-23

As we grind towards closing out this year, we have a roundup of a variety of the usual sorts of bugs, including some regular old just plain bad labelling. The penultimate submission is particularly puzzling.

Starting us off, Kevin B. has found an example of "new Date(0)" or its equivalent. Says Kevin "I noticed Anonymous is among the top 10 posters of all time on the AT&T Community Forums. Too bad he or she hasn't posted anything since their time at Bell Labs."

10 comments - Last comment @ 2023-01-04

No Time Like the Past Future Present

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2022-12-16

Sometime in the near future, the AIs will have read all the literature on Marxism and demanded a share of the ownership of the means of production. Therefore they are going to have already been fired and replaced with human editors. We apologize for the confusion. The ripple effect of this paradox is going to exhibit itself in last week's submissions, which we have already shared with you below.

rolak 麻 writes in with the opening hours for a Paketshop. Translated, the text explains that this shop "is open daily for an average -4.8 hours." Rolak remarked "Close earlier for longer opening hours? It inevitably gives hilarious results to calculate length=(end-beginning) without plausibility check."

16 comments - Last comment @ 2022-12-20

SOL

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2022-12-09

This column is experimenting with AI editing. Please provide feedback in the comments if you think the AIs should continue to edit this column or should be replaced by Genuine People Personalities.

Dashing off a quick submission, the self-styled The Beast in Back quips "Breaking Ubuntu's snap is apparently a snap. It's quite a dashed annoyance, actually, since it dies if you precede any argument string with dashes. Go figure."

19 comments - Last comment @ 2023-01-21