The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Believe It Or Not

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-04-19

This week we have a special visit from a mythical beast: the snarklemma. But first, a non-error Error'd.

Obsessive Optimizer Ian K. "Walmart's nationwide network of warehouse stores means they can save time and money by shipping locally. FedEx has them covered: Their nationwide shipping fleet determined the shortest path from Houston to its largest suburb goes via Georgia." Not the shortest path, nor the fastest, but surely the cheapest one that meets the delivery date requirement. It's probably not an error, and I believe it, but I still can't believe it!

11 comments - Last comment @ 00:47

Paycheque

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-04-12

There are an infinite variety of ways to be wrong, but only very small number of ways to be right.

Patient Peter W. discovers that MS Word is of two minds about English usage. "Microsoft Word just can't seem to agree with itself on how to spell paycheck/pay check." Faithful readers know it's even worse than that.

26 comments - Last comment @ 2024-04-16

Past Imperfect

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-04-05

A twitchy anonymous reporter pointed out that our form validation code is flaky. He's not wrong. But at least it can report time without needing emoticons! :-3

That same anon sent us the following, explaining "Folks at Twitch are very brave. So brave, they wrote their own time math."

16 comments - Last comment @ 2024-04-08

Good Enough Friday

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-03-29

We've got some of the rarer classic Error'd types today: events from the dawn of time, weird definitions of space, and this absolutely astonishing choice of cancel/confirm button text.

Perplexed Stewart found this and it's got me completely befuddled as well! "Puzzled over this classic type of Error'd for ages. I really have no clue whether I should press Yes or No."

8 comments - Last comment @ 2024-03-31

You Can Say That Again!

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-03-22

In a first for me, this week we got FIVE unique submissions of the exact same bug on LinkedIn. In the spirit of the theme, I dug up a couple of unused submissions of older problems at LinkedIn as well. I guess there are more than the usual number of tech people looking for jobs.

John S., Chris K., Peter C., Brett Nash and Piotr K. all sent in samples of this doublebug. It's a flubstitution AND bad math, together!

5 comments - Last comment @ 2024-03-25

Can't Be Beat

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-03-15

Date problems continue again this week as usual, both sublime (Goodreads!) and mundane (a little light time travel). If you want to be frist poster today, you're going to really need that time machine.

Early Bird Dave crowed "Think you're hot for posting the first comment? I posted the zeroth reply to this comment!" You got the worm, Dave.

9 comments - Last comment @ 2024-03-18

Time for more leap'd years

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-03-08

Inability to properly program dates continued to afflict various websites last week, even though the leap day itself had passed. Maybe we need a new programming language in which it's impossible to forget about timezones, leap years, or Thursday.

Timeless Thomas subtweeted "I'm sure there's a great date-related WTF story behind this tweet" Gosh, I can't imagine what error this could be referring to.

20 comments - Last comment @ 2024-03-16

Once In A Lifetime

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2024-03-01

Not exactly once, I sincerely hope. That would be tragic.

"Apparently, today's leap day is causing a denial of service error being able to log into our Cemetery Management software due to some bad date calculations," writes Steve D. To be fair, he points out, it doesn't happen often.

28 comments - Last comment @ 2024-03-05