The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

A Privacy Monstrosity on Top of a Coding Monstrosity

by Mark Bowytz in CodeSOD on 2013-11-27

I don't think that this will come as much of a surprise, but websites capture the details of your visit.

We here at TDWTF use Google Analytics to see who visits our site, but don't panic - it's not in some creepy, quasi-legal, three (or four) letter government agency way - really we just want to have an idea of who our readers are. Interpreting the collected browser and GeoIP data can take some time, so thank goodness installing the hook to collect site stats is a breeze. Just copy/paste some JavaScript that Google tells you to add into the page you want to monitor, and you're good to go.

94 comments - Last comment @ 2018-01-05

C++ is Bad!

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-11-22

"I tried to commit to SVN but unfortunately, this C++ is bad. Bad, bad, bad C++ this!," writes Alex.

89 comments - Last comment @ 2016-06-02

A Method Gone Too Far

by Mark Bowytz in Representative Line on 2013-11-21

The submitter of the below code, who chooses to remain Anonymous, recently started a job at a social media company as a software engineer. Seeing that they had never had anyone dedicated to their iOS product before, apparently they were quite excited.

Unfortunately for our submitter, the codebase is the stuff of nightmares - ternary operators stacked five deep on a single line, etc. There are no model objects, so they just pass around lots of dictionaries and strings thusly:

79 comments - Last comment @ 2013-11-25

Never Mix Sushi with DML

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-11-15

Ross wrote, "My local Japanese restaurant has some pretty strict rules about working with databases while you eat."

105 comments - Last comment @ 2013-12-03

Best atoi() Implementation Ever

by Mark Bowytz in CodeSOD on 2013-11-13

Most people know atoi() - it's been in C since before it was ANSI C... but here's a little Objective-C nugget from some sample code that was sent to "help" Joseph H. implement a client for a web API.


-(char) atoi:(char) a{
    if (a >= '0' && a <= '9') {
        return a - '0';
    } else if (a >= 'a' && a <= 'z') {
        return a - 'a' + 10;
    } else if (a >= 'A' && a <= 'Z') {
        return a - 'A' + 10;
    } else {
        return 0;
    }
}

73 comments - Last comment @ 2014-02-06

Can't YouTube and Google Get Along?

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-11-08

"Trying to get training on the new Google Apps console layout, I attempted to watch a video," writes Ari Sitnik, "Unfortunately, the owners of YouTube were not asked by Google to allow a higher number of views per day. If only the two companies would coordinate better!"

73 comments - Last comment @ 2014-01-03

Fourth Time's the Charm

by Mark Bowytz in CodeSOD on 2013-11-06

For those who aren't familiar, the script below is a wrapper to fsck.xfs - a script that is supposed to repair an XFS journaling filesystem upon boot-up of a Linux server.

Out of the box, it does nothing, thus leaving many admins to author their own hacked-together solutions, often in response to an immediate, urgent need. Usually, these type of quick fixes are kept under wraps from the powers that be, or rather, anyone who might be in any way the slightest bit script-literate.

63 comments - Last comment @ 2024-01-23

I Am Error

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-11-01

"Some faculty members have a reputation for being scatterbrained, but Professor Error takes the cake," writes Matt E..

56 comments - Last comment @ 2013-12-14