The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

No Rush

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-06-12

This week, friend Adam R. sent in an entry and included with it a link to a short-form YouTube video. Presumably this was a mistake, because I watched that video and the next one and the next one and the next one and after two hours I still haven't got this column ready. I won't share the video link with you. You're welcome.

What Adam really wanted to say was: "The USPS offers a sincerely service called Informed Delivery that, every morning, emails you scans of the exterior of your postal mail that you're expected to receive that day, which is a genuinely useful service (#not-sponsored). In today's digest, however, the subject line had an extra None thrown in there. Some Python script gone wrong that wasn't tested before production, perhaps?" We get lots of NaN, null, and undefined submissions, but None are actually rare.

14 comments - Last comment @ 08:07

Bridge for Sale

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-06-05

"Scammer offers to buy Google" is certainly a new twist on a very old New York con. Jan B. explains "Scammers have found a new way to steal money, scrap LinkedIn profiles and then send out emails with fake offers to buy people's companies. I'm guessing suddenly they need some fees paid just before the deal is finalised. However, they may need to improve their filtering before sending out their scams, I don't even own Google!" I'm putting together a group of people to buy it, do you want to get in the deal? I'll just need you to transfer two million to this SWIFT account...

14 comments - Last comment @ 2026-06-09

Super SEO Strategies

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-05-29

It's ironic -- this site gets absolutely inundated with blogspam from people trying to improve their SEO ranking, and yet the only requirement to get your website linked is one dumb little typo in the right menu.

Faithful Michael R. is still job hunting, now even farther afield. "I shall try the gigs in United Kingsom. https://electronicmusicopenmic.com/"

25 comments - Last comment @ 2026-06-12

April is Special, and so are you

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-05-22

"April is special," writes Elwin. It is, but take heart May, every month is special at TDWTF.

12 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-25

Balmenach Bad Gateway Single Malt

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-05-15

"Winner ad placement!" snarked our Peter G.

11 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-18

Null Null Null

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-05-08

The single most common category of entries for this column is failed handling of NaN, null and undefined. Almost exclusively from javascript in web pages, sometimes in node servers, and almost never any other languages or frameworks. They're getting a bit repetitive but it's our solemn duty to call out failure where we find it. So if you send us one of these, make sure it identifies the source!

"If you want something you've never had, do something you've never done" exhorted Ben.

10 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-12

Parametric Projection

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-05-01

Roger C. gets on second base with an unforced error. "Not only is the content too large, the error message informing us of this is also too large to fit the visible space. A layered, double WTF."

9 comments - Last comment @ 2026-05-08

April Showers

by Lyle Seaman in Error'd on 2026-04-24

"RFC 1738 (and 3986) disagree" and so does Daniel D. "Reddit API has some weird app creation going on with lots of recently migrated and undocumented stuff. But having redirect URL set to localhost (or 127.0.0.1) usually works. Well, if you don't disagree with Sir Tim Berners-Lee about what URL is. Which Reddit does. hostnumber = digits "." digits "." digits "." digits". I'd file this one with all the websites that try to perform validation on email addresses, and get it wrong.

17 comments - Last comment @ 2026-06-05