Awesome Bugs

An opinionated list of truly awesome bugs

I am easily amused. Since the dawn of time, circa 4000 years ago, I've been collecting and bookmarking bugs which I find awesome. At some point, it's not entirely clear when, I was inspired by @sindresorhus's awesome, and the glut of awesome lists, to collect these bugs in their own awesome list (because that's what the world needs, more curated lists.) This is that.

UNFUNNY WARNING: DO NOT COMMENT ON OR MESS WITH ANY OF THESE BUGS! Seriously, this list should be considered READ-ONLY. Do not use this list to troll or harass the nice people making software. Everything here is included because I found it funny. This isn't, by any means, an encouragement for action (even in those cases where I editorialize). Seriously... read for the laughs, but leave the parties involved alone!

Table of Contwebs

• FAQ
• PEBKAC
• Patches, PRs and Code Snippets
• Code Gone Wild
• Data Insanity
• Something Else

Yeah, maybe once I find a way to organize this that makes sense...

PEBKAC

• xscreensaver: Fake crash screensaver should not be enabled by default

  xscreensaver is awesome, and jwz is a God. This collection of screensavers includes several that simulate various computer crash screens. They are the best screensavers, scientifically speaking, but that doesn't prevent people from being confused by them. It also has one of the best original author smackdowns in history.

• apt-get moo doesn't look like a cow

  Answering the age-old question: How many engineers does it take to change an ASCII cow?

  Also answering the age-old question: How many years does it take to change an ASCII cow?

  Nine. the answer to the second question is apparently nine.

• Dwarf Fortress starting during apt-get upgrade

  Only you can prevent name collisions.

Patches, PRs and Code Snippets

• Add internal state field to irq_desc

  For when you really need people to stay off your lawn.

• 0xB16B00B5? Really?

  If you're not getting it, then check the punchline.

• Re: RFC page-table walkers vs memory order

  Leading underscores are also how I increase entropy on my single-character passwords.

Code Gone Wild

• Insulting source code

  Why don't you tell us how you really feel?

• gethostbyname() etc break for /etc/hosts with both ::1 and 127.0.0.1 localhost entries

  The definite argument for granting developers the ability to permanently shut down and close bugs in their issue tracking systems.

• "quodlibet" package is useless

• SHOW TABLES removes tables from Cluster

Data Insanity

• Critical bug Skype 7.4.85.102: simple message crush client | Alternate link to article, since bug post may be gone for good

  http://: will undoubtedly grow up to marry Bobby Tables.

• Outage Postmortem - July 20, 2016

  All joking aside, this was a fascinating postmortem on a truly devious little bug. Amazing how the tiniest bits of regexp can bring a major website to its knees.

• GitLab.com melts down after wrong directory deleted, backups fail | Incident report

  rm -rf is not your friend.

• An Arrow Through The Code? Jet Set Willy's Weird Bug Explained

  As a child of the 70s and 80s, I spent a fair amount of time screwing around with computers of that era. I wrote a lot of silly little games, and played even more. The systems at the time had a lot of limitations, and there's aspects of working with them that seem insane by today's standards. In Jet Set Willy for the ZX Spectrum, there was a doozy where an in-game object (an arrow that is supposed to try and kill the player) is actually mis-fired. Instead of firing across the screen memory, it fires across the memory that holds the code to the game. So the arrow literally shoots the code, and breaks the game. It's amazing, and awesome.

Something Else

• number_format when passed a 0 as first function argument, returns null

  PHP is a delightful and well-loved language and, as shown by this bug, has both brilliant practitioners and careful developers who would never introduce API changing bugs.

• User-triggerable NULL pointer dereference due to utter plebbery

  Jibbers McGee is the hero the internet needs.

• A glitch on Netflix caused some BBC nature show to get Aziz Ansari subtitles

  And that goose was never seen again...

• Physical security let down by deliberate backdoor

  Gotta love the response from the maker of the lock. Because, as we all know, only PhDs in computer science can write trivial scripts.

• Re: Bug#843021: RFP: yarn -- a fast, reliable, and secure package manager for Node.js

  What I love about this is the hubris of the upstream developer in their glib response to the bug. Upstream does apparently zero research to see if there was a namespace collision, picked a simple name for what could be a major project, and then blinkardly refuses to adopt a more general name when its pointed out that a) the name is for something older and already established and b) one of the biggest and most widely used Linux distros on the planet has a problem with the name (and has a simple solution). Gotta love millennial developers who think they are so GODDAMNED smarter than the rest of us.... But I'm not bitter. Also, Javascript developers, AMMIRITE?

• Using OCR To Fix a Hilarious Bug

• The case of the 500-mile email

• Players Try Bringing Missingno Into Pokémon Sun and Moon, Get A Glitch Instead

  Missingo was a Pokemon caused by a glitch in an older Pokemon game. New Pokemon game comes out and lets you pull in your pocket monsters from past games. People try to pull in old glitched perckit mernster, get suprise of new glitches breaking the new game in new and exciting ways.

• Bug #16925 for File-Remote: check of OS is invalid

  Snarky comebacks in bug reports are like fine cheese, best when aged, left in a corner, and forgotten for five years.

• Windows 98 BSOD live at Comdex, with Bill Gates! | video

  In 1998 at Comdex, Bill Gates was on stage during a demo of Windows 98 showcasing Window's most iconic feature.