The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Black Hole Sun

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-02-22

"It's been unseasonably warm lately. Which is strange since the Sun has burned out," writes Runar Ovesen Hjerpbakk.

52 comments - Last comment @ 2013-03-03

Best of Email: Automated Insecurity, Outdated Vacancy, and a Burnt Tongue

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2013-02-20

Automated (In)Security (from Carl Witthoft)

Here's a recent notice from our corporate security department. I'd face-palm except that it might set off the motion-detectors.

139 comments - Last comment @ 2022-05-09

Base64 encoding is actually Finnish?

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-02-15

"Hold up GMail, you mean that Base64 encoding is actually Finnish? Consider my mind blown." wrote Steven Mocking.

68 comments - Last comment @ 2024-04-28

Fork and Log

by Mark Bowytz in CodeSOD on 2013-02-13

A few years back, Adam C. was brought in to help with some performance problems that appeared while load testing a VXML Platform. The project was already well behind and they couldn't figure out why the system kept falling over under a very slight load. To make matters worse, Adam had absolutely no prior knowledge of the system or its software other than Wikipedia’s definition of what VXML is.

A veteran to these sorts of situations, Adam grabbed a coffee, a donut, and then started picking through the application logs to get a feel for what the system is doing and where something might be going wrong.

72 comments - Last comment @ 2013-02-18

More Zeroes...More Problems

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-02-08

Andy Miller wrote, "There should be enough free space, but I suppose, depending on how you look at it, that 427.90000000000003 is bigger than just 710.0."

52 comments - Last comment @ 2013-02-19

19th Century MSDN Subscription

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-02-01

"MSDN subscriptions were great in the 19th century. Once the 1900's rolled around, I never bothered to renew it," wrote Josh Einstein.

56 comments - Last comment @ 2013-02-06