The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

dbomb123 · 2014-01-24 Reply Admin

English - The best kind of Simplified Chinese

cellocgw · 2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Jaybles:
I don't think the mail delivery system is a WTF. It seems like it was some text like "This is a warning blah blah blah" that was truncated at an unfortunate point in the string.

Obligatory I bet you're a pile of fun at parties.

cellocgw · 2014-01-24 Reply Admin

ZPedro:
Not a WTF. These columns and arcades are nice and all, but they make it hard to get visibility of the whole station. So these "hierogpyphs" simply give the direction to the train platforms; the gist of the message is to turn left for access to the platforms, and they are using ideographs so that people of any culture, and even illiterate ones, can understand them.

:-)

I'm amazed that, this deep into the thread, nobody's bothered to de-UTF8ify that and produce the ASCII message.

chubertdev · 2014-01-24 Reply Admin

WTF like an Egyptian?

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Regarding the Chinese thing from this site: That's what happens when you don't specify the character encoding. IE tries to guess what the encoding should be, based on the relative frequencies of characters, but it can get thrown if that statistical breakdown varies too much from the average. On a site like this with a lot of technical verbiage, it's not too surprising that it would detect it as some other language.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Mike:

Or they do it in a non-WTFy way. They hash & salt the original password with case intact. On logins they check your pw and a couple of safe variations on behalf of you.

Safe 'variations'? On my banking password? There are NO safe variations. If I setup a godawful long password, I don't want my bank accepting 'variations' of any sort.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

fjf:
faoileag:
You see, IE 8 identifies as MSIE 8.0, IE 9 as MSIE 9.0, IE 10 as MSIE 10.0.
But don't jump to conclusions! MSIE 11 identifies itself via "rev:11.0" not by MSIE 11.0, because Microsoft wants to discourige web developers from browser sniffing.
This might be the first time I applaud Microsoft for a technical decision.

Though I wonder, might this be related to the fact that their browser ceased being the dominant one in most parts of the world ...?

If you go only on select stats and based only some servers with certain traffic. otherwise IE is still dominant.

operagost:
faoileag:
Stoned Developers:
The "or higher" is a reference to the mental state of team that coded it, not the version number.

But don't jump to conclusions! MSIE 11 identifies itself via "rev:11.0" not by MSIE 11.0, because Microsoft wants to discourige web developers from browser sniffing.

You know what would discourage developers from browser sniffing? Fixing the standard compliance bugs in your browser. MICROSOFT FAIL

First TRWTF in comments, asserting no other browser has standard compliance problems and only IE has. And this poster is stuck in the past and his knowledge is severely outdated to the point of being outright wrong. (Microsoft already fixed them quite long ago...)

There is fail, but not of Microsoft, but of this poster. POSTER FAIL.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

C-Derb:
Anonymoose:
But don't jump to conclusions! MSIE 11 identifies itself via "rev:11.0" not by MSIE 11.0, because Microsoft wants to discourige web developers from browser sniffing.

Which is a bonus WTF because Microsoft's own .NET Framework depends on browser sniffing to work. No shortage of sites using Microsoft ASP.NET fail when Microsoft IE 11 is used on them.
Let's not forget the genius of IE "Compatibility Mode". Nothing quite as brillant as defaulting a new version to request things using the old, outdated, non-compliant version.

Pro tip for Microsoft: Stop insisting that your interpretation of standards is correct and fix your browser.

And here is another TRWTF in comments. Somebody is showcasing extreme ignorance, because what they describe is in no shape or form true and was never true except first beta of IE7 or 8. So there is nothing to fix, but posters ignorance.

I suggest you upgrade your knowledge, because you get F as failure.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

No, as another poster pointed out, this is what happens when there's a large block of Chinese characters on a webpage (after all, the page in question is the COMMENTS section, not an article). I'm surprised that more technical people wouldn't investigate this themselves.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Matt:
Regarding the Chinese thing from this site: That's what happens when you don't specify the character encoding. IE tries to guess what the encoding should be, based on the relative frequencies of characters, but it can get thrown if that statistical breakdown varies too much from the average. On a site like this with a lot of technical verbiage, it's not too surprising that it would detect it as some other language.

I don't think it has anything to do with browser, but Google Translate webpage widget. (Also I think you misidentified browser)

bryan986 · 2014-01-24 Reply Admin

"Apparently, according to chase.com, 11 is less than 8," Jeremy writes.

I think you just found the cause of the financial crisis.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Klimax:

operagost:
You know what would discourage developers from browser sniffing? Fixing the standard compliance bugs in your browser. MICROSOFT FAIL
First TRWTF in comments, asserting no other browser has standard compliance problems and only IE has. And this poster is stuck in the past and his knowledge is severely outdated to the point of being outright wrong. (Microsoft already fixed them quite long ago...)
There is fail, but not of Microsoft, but of this poster. POSTER FAIL.

True, but the standards allow some latitude in interpretation that can result in minor layout differences between browsers. And when the marketroids see that, they want you to fix it so it looks exactly the same on every browser.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Well how else are you going to passive-aggressively antagonize Safari users?

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Regarding hieroglyphs:

Restaurant receipts in Quebec have a bar code at the bottom, followed by the name/address of the restaurant and then a row of random characters (most of which are taken from a "symbols" Unicode page). See http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/81attendees/current/jpgeHqPMf1SRj.jpg I've never found any information on what is in the dingbats, though.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

"Apparently, according to chase.com, 11 is less than 8," Microsoft intentionally broke browser detection in 11. This would be fine and dandy if IE worked enough like every other browser to treat it like every other browser.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

But according to Windows' default search for many years, Internet Explorer 11 is before Internet Explorer 8.

IE1 IE10 IE11 IE2 IE3 ...

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

curtmack:
if ($.browser.msie && $.browser.version.charAt(0) < "8")
I have seen that pattern far too many times when checking browser version.

It really boggles my mind why anyone would think using .charAt() to extract a number is a good idea. I wonder if just one person did it once and everyone copied it, or if multiple people "invented" it independently.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

ZPedro:
Not a WTF. These columns and arcades are nice and all, but they make it hard to get visibility of the whole station. So these "hierogpyphs" simply give the direction to the train platforms; the gist of the message is to turn left for access to the platforms, and they are using ideographs so that people of any culture, and even illiterate ones, can understand them.

I think I've figured it out.

It's a program in a Brainfuck-like language!

We've discovered the lost Brainfuck of ancient Egypt.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Kabi:
faoileag:

Stoned Developers:
The "or higher" is a reference to the mental state of team that coded it, not the version number.
Actually, this is probably a good example why browser sniffing is regarded as bad practice.
I don't know if that was intentionally ambiguous, but the thought of a bunch of web developer sitting in a circle and sniffing browser to get high made me crack up.

Feature the above!

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

foo AKA fooo:
Wrexham:
JdFalcon04:
Of course, TRWTF is chase.com's dev team as a whole. Not only do they clearly not test their site when browser updates happen, but they also store passwords in plain text!
Don't believe me? Go ahead and log into your account, but use the wrong case on your password. You might notice that it lets you in anyway. Yeah.
Well, that could be because they upper-case your password before encrypting or hashing it.

In which case, not such a big a WTF ;-)
FTFY

Or what do you call reducing the complexity by 2^num_letters?

Sigh. When I wrote "not a WTF at all ;-)", the winky face was supposed to indicate that I wasn't serious. Yes, it really is still a WTF. Sorry I didn't make that clear enough for you.

tin · 2014-01-24 Reply Admin

Hawk:
Ahhh yes User Agent Strings The real WTF is that we still use these things.

Using them for handing out different pages is a WTF, but the user agent strings in themselves aren't - they are still useful for statistics and diagnostics.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

JdFalcon04:
Of course, TRWTF is chase.com's dev team as a whole. Not only do they clearly not test their site when browser updates happen, but they also store passwords in plain text!
Don't believe me? Go ahead and log into your account, but use the wrong case on your password. You might notice that it lets you in anyway. Yeah.

Or they convert the password to lower case, or apply some similar transformation, before hashing it.

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

I heard about TDWTF from CONTROL.

On my shoe phone.

(and the first image looks like a message for the Predator alien to me)

captcha: tation - the first image, as in, the one from the rain tation

2014-01-24 Reply Admin

IE 11 is less than IE 8, but only slightly. Especially true if there is a string comparison involved.

TRWTF is using IE in the first place. The debugging toolset is abysmal and the fonts are blurry.

Zemm · 2014-01-25 Reply Admin

Jay911:
I heard about TDWTF from CONTROL.
On my shoe phone.

Missed it by that much.

2014-01-25 Reply Admin

Let's just remember that if Chase is using JavaScript to check User-Agent strings that when you do [1, 5, 10].sort() you get back [1, 10, 5] so [8, 11].sort() would be [11, 8]

2014-01-25 Reply Admin

Wrexham:
foo AKA fooo:
Wrexham:
JdFalcon04:
Of course, TRWTF is chase.com's dev team as a whole. Not only do they clearly not test their site when browser updates happen, but they also store passwords in plain text!
Don't believe me? Go ahead and log into your account, but use the wrong case on your password. You might notice that it lets you in anyway. Yeah.
Well, that could be because they upper-case your password before encrypting or hashing it.

In which case, not such a big a WTF ;-)
FTFY

Or what do you call reducing the complexity by 2^num_letters?
Sigh. When I wrote "not a WTF at all ;-)", the winky face was supposed to indicate that I wasn't serious. Yes, it really is still a WTF. Sorry I didn't make that clear enough for you.

You must not be so subtle on this site. You see, some still think it's a good idea.

2014-01-25 Reply Admin

cellocgw:
ZPedro:
Not a WTF. These columns and arcades are nice and all, but they make it hard to get visibility of the whole station. So these "hierogpyphs" simply give the direction to the train platforms; the gist of the message is to turn left for access to the platforms, and they are using ideographs so that people of any culture, and even illiterate ones, can understand them.

:-)

I'm amazed that, this deep into the thread, nobody's bothered to de-UTF8ify that and produce the ASCII message.

Unlikely as ASCII maps 1:1 to UTF8. Though French does have a few accented (= non-ASCII) characters, I don't think you can write complete sentences with them.

2014-01-25 Reply Admin

JdFalcon04:
Of course, TRWTF is chase.com's dev team as a whole. Not only do they clearly not test their site when browser updates happen, but they also store passwords in plain text!
Don't believe me? Go ahead and log into your account, but use the wrong case on your password. You might notice that it lets you in anyway. Yeah.

Two words: Symmetric Cryptography.

2014-01-25 Reply Admin

Jaybles:
I don't think the mail delivery system is a WTF. It seems like it was some text like "This is a warning blah blah blah" that was truncated at an unfortunate point in the string.

Right! TRWTF is Alex Papadumbass publishing this as a WTF, when it is quite obvious that it was a screenshot of the Gmail Preview. If it had been a screenshot from the mail body, however, it would have qualified.

2014-01-25 Reply Admin

Someone:
Jaybles:
I don't think the mail delivery system is a WTF. It seems like it was some text like "This is a warning blah blah blah" that was truncated at an unfortunate point in the string.
Right! TRWTF is Alex Papadumbass publishing this as a WTF, when it is quite obvious that it was a screenshot of the Gmail Preview. If it had been a screenshot from the mail body, however, it would have qualified.

So Japan and China are using Gmail to communicate declarations to each other?

da Doctah · 2014-01-26 Reply Admin

Norman Diamond:
Someone:
Jaybles:
I don't think the mail delivery system is a WTF. It seems like it was some text like "This is a warning blah blah blah" that was truncated at an unfortunate point in the string.
Right! TRWTF is Alex Papadumbass publishing this as a WTF, when it is quite obvious that it was a screenshot of the Gmail Preview. If it had been a screenshot from the mail body, however, it would have qualified.
So Japan and China are using Gmail to communicate declarations to each other?

ObBugsBunny: "Of course you know, this means warning!"

2014-01-27 Reply Admin

Real WTF is people thinking web should cater to them choosing to use something as absurd as IE 11.

2014-01-27 Reply Admin

Stoned Developers:
The "or higher" is a reference to the mental state of team that coded it, not the version number.

Hey! I wrote some of my best code under the influence!

2014-01-27 Reply Admin

Jon:
The real WTF is asking where I heard about the 250 year-old landmark building that's been a theatre for 85 years and not having 'basic knowledge of my home city' in the list.

When in doubt, answer the "How did you hear about us" question as if it just applies to their website. Either you saw or heard it advertised somewhere, heard about it from someone, or simply expected them to have one and used the internet to find it. In any case, there should be some appropriate option to select. TRWTF is the "YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" and "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ" options.

QJo:
gman:
The version is higher is not entirely chase.com's fault, but more microsofts idea that giving IE11 a completely new agent user string which even IIS without .net 4.5 can't do anything but mess up.
I'm insufficiently caffeinated, so I'm having trouble parsing that sentence. Can someone help out?

sure

Unrelated text so that Akismet doesn't think this comment is spam

Kuba · 2014-01-27 Reply Admin

JdFalcon04:
Of course, TRWTF is chase.com's dev team as a whole. Not only do they clearly not test their site when browser updates happen, but they also store passwords in plain text!
Don't believe me? Go ahead and log into your account, but use the wrong case on your password. You might notice that it lets you in anyway. Yeah.

They may. Or they may simply convert everything to lower- or uppercase before calculating the salted hash like they should. Right? :)

2014-01-28 Reply Admin

YAWN

2014-01-29 Reply Admin

Anon:
gman:
The version is higher is not entirely chase.com's fault, but more microsofts idea that giving IE11 a completely new agent user string which even IIS without .net 4.5 can't do anything but mess up.
TRWTF is using a User-Agent String to identify a browser.

TRWTF is identifying a browser, rather than the feature you actually want to use.

2014-01-29 Reply Admin

Neil:
Anon:
gman:
The version is higher is not entirely chase.com's fault, but more microsofts idea that giving IE11 a completely new agent user string which even IIS without .net 4.5 can't do anything but mess up.
TRWTF is using a User-Agent String to identify a browser.
TRWTF is identifying a browser, rather than the feature you actually want to use.

Virtually every browser is capable of handling keyboard events, but knowing that it can handle them doesn't tell me jack shit about how it actually handles them.

2014-01-30 Reply Admin

JdFalcon04:
Of course, TRWTF is chase.com's dev team as a whole. Not only do they clearly not test their site when browser updates happen, but they also store passwords in plain text!
Don't believe me? Go ahead and log into your account, but use the wrong case on your password. You might notice that it lets you in anyway. Yeah.

This doesn't actually prove that the passwords are stored in the plain text 'yknow. They might be lower-cased before hashing. Not sure why would one do that, but it's a possible explanation.

clively · 2014-02-03 Reply Admin

cellocgw:
ZPedro:
Not a WTF. These columns and arcades are nice and all, but they make it hard to get visibility of the whole station. So these "hierogpyphs" simply give the direction to the train platforms; the gist of the message is to turn left for access to the platforms, and they are using ideographs so that people of any culture, and even illiterate ones, can understand them.

:-)

I'm amazed that, this deep into the thread, nobody's bothered to de-UTF8ify that and produce the ASCII message.

Relax. It's just a WinXP bluescreen that can't be properly represented on a text only board. The RealWTF is France.

2014-02-03 Reply Admin

clively:
cellocgw:
ZPedro:
Not a WTF. These columns and arcades are nice and all, but they make it hard to get visibility of the whole station. So these "hierogpyphs" simply give the direction to the train platforms; the gist of the message is to turn left for access to the platforms, and they are using ideographs so that people of any culture, and even illiterate ones, can understand them.

:-)

I'm amazed that, this deep into the thread, nobody's bothered to de-UTF8ify that and produce the ASCII message.

Relax. It's just a WinXP bluescreen that can't be properly represented on a text only board. The RealWTF is France.

It's lucky, then, that this is not a text-only board.

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