The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Tangled Up In Blue

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-11-15

...Screens of Death. Photos of failures in kiosk-mode always strike me as akin to the wizard being exposed behind his curtain. Yeah, that shiny thing is after all just some Windows PC on a stick. Here are a few that aren't particularly recent, but they're real.

Jared S. augurs ill: "Seen in downtown Mountain View, CA: In Silicon Valley AI has taken over. There is no past, there is no future, and strangely, even the present is totally buggered. However, you're free to restore the present if you wish."

5 comments - Last comment @ 2024-11-18

Relatively Speaking

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-11-08

Amateur physicist B.J. is going on vacation, but he likes to plan things right down to the zeptosecond. "Assume the flight accelerates at a constant speed for the first half of the flight, and decelerates at the same rate for the second half. 1) What speed does the plane need to reach to have that level of time dilation? 2) What is the distance between the airports?"

13 comments - Last comment @ 2024-11-10

Alternative Maths

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-11-01

"Check out Visual Studio optimizing their rating system to only include the ratings used," shared Fiorenzo R. Imagine the performance gain!

21 comments - Last comment @ 2024-11-03

What Goes Around

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-10-25

No obvious pattern fell out of last week's submissions for Error'd, but I did especially like Caleb Su's example.

Michael R. , apparently still job hunting, reports "I have signed up to outlier.ai to make some $$$ on the side. No instructions necessary."

8 comments - Last comment @ 2024-11-01

Friday On My Mind

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-10-18

The most common type of submission Error'd receives are simple, stupid, data problems on Amazon. The text doesn't match the image, the pricing is goofy, or some other mixup that are just bound to happen with a database of zillions of products uploaded by a plethora of barely-literate mountain village drop-shippers.

So I don't usually feature them, preferring to find something with at least a chance of being a creative new bug.

19 comments - Last comment @ 2024-10-31

You Don't Need A Weatherman

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-10-11

...to know which way the wind blows. This week, it's been an ill one. Two of our readers sent us references to the BBC's reports on unusual weather in Bristol - one from the web, and one mobile. Maybe that will help you deduce the source of this error.

Frist, Graham F. shared a screenshot of the beeb's mobile app, bellowing "I know Milton is hitting the US hard right now but that's nothing compared to the 14,000 mph winds here!"

23 comments - Last comment @ 2024-10-13

Stop Poking Me!

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-10-04

I am amused to see that Warcraft III is still out there being played. I think it was my son's first PC game and maybe the second to last one I ever played regularly.

And it's Maia E. who's doing it. She reports "Warcraft III was patched into oblivion over the years, and it looks like the patches introduced some bugs into campaign quests. At least they didn't rename Thrall into (undefined)!"

20 comments - Last comment @ 2024-10-07

Operation Erred Successfully

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-09-27

"Clouds obscure the result," reports Mike T.'s eight-ball. "It's a shame when the cloud and the browser disagree," he observed.

30 comments - Last comment @ 2024-10-01