The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Teamwork

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-05-16

Whatever would we do without teamwork.

David doesn't know. "Microsoft Teams seems to have lost count (it wasn't a very big copy/paste)"

7 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-16

Cuts Like a Knife

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-05-09

Mike V. shares a personal experience with the broadest version of Poe's Law: "Slashdot articles generally have a humorous quote at the bottom of their articles, but I can't tell if this displayed usage information for the fortune command, which provides humorous quotes, is a joke or a bug." To which I respond with the sharpest version of Hanlon's Razor: never ascribe to intent that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

16 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-17

Charge Me

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-05-02

The lights are on here and the roof is intact and I'm grateful. Is anybody home? You decide.

Pharm fan Ian S. clucked "Perhaps they'll put those as dates on my headstone." If you're very lucky.

14 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-11

Que Sera, Sera

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-04-25

It's just the same refrain, over and over.

"Time Travel! Again?" exclaimed David B. "I knew that Alaska is a good airline. Now I get to return at the start of a century. And not this century. The one before air flight began." To be fair, David, there never is just one first time for time travel. It's always again, isn't it?

24 comments - Last comment @ 2025-04-28

Hot Dog

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-04-18

Faithful Peter G. took a trip. "So I wanted to top up my bus ticket online. After asking for credit card details, PINs, passwords, a blood sample, and the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow, they also sent a notification to my phone which I had to authorise with a fingerprint, and then verify that all the details were correct (because you can never be too careful when paying for a bus ticket). So yes, it's me, but the details definitely are not correct." Which part is wrong, the currency? Any idea what the exchange rate is between NZD and the euro right now?

11 comments - Last comment @ 2025-04-21

Sentinel Headline

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-04-11

When faced with an information system lacking sufficient richness to permit its users to express all of the necessary data states, human beings will innovate. In other words, they will find creative ways to bend the system to their will, usually (but not always) inconsequentially.

In the early days of information systems, even before electronic computers, we found users choosing to insert various out-of-bounds values into data fields to represent states such as "I don't know the true value for this item" or "It is impossible accurately state the true value of this item because of faulty constraint being applied to the input mechanism" or other such notions.

13 comments - Last comment @ 2025-04-14

Mais Que Nada

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-04-04

I never did explain the elusive off-by-one I hinted at, did I? A little meta, perhaps. It is our practice at Error'd to supply five nuggets of joy each week. But in episode previous-plus-one, you actually got six! (Or maybe, depending on how you count them, that's yet another off-by-one. I slay me.) If that doesn't tickle you enough, just wait until you hear what Dave L. brought us. Meanwhile...

"YATZP" scoffed self-styled Foo AKA F. Yet Another Time Zone P*, I guess. Not wrong. According to Herr Aka F., "German TV teletext (yes, we still have it!) botched the DST start (upper right corner). The editors realized it and posted a message stating as much, sent from the 'future' (i.e. correct) time zone."

15 comments - Last comment @ 2025-04-07

Here Comes the Sun

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2025-03-28

We got an unusual rash of submissions at Error'd this week. Here are five reasonably good ones chosen not exactly at random. For those few (everyone) who didn't catch the off-by-one from last week's batch, there's the clue.

"Gotta CAPTCHA 'Em All," puns Alex G. "So do I select them all?" he wondered. I think the correct answer is null.

6 comments - Last comment @ 2025-03-28