The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

TheDailyWtf.com Server Migration Complete

by Alex Papadimoulis in Announcements on 2019-01-14

If you're reading this message, then it means that I managed to successfully migrate TheDailyWTf.com and the related settings from our old server (74.50.110.120) to the new server (162.252.83.113).

Shameless plug: I did all of this by setting up a configuration role in our internally-hosted Otter instance for both old and new servers (to make sure configuration was identical), deploying the last successful build to the new server using our internally-hosted BuildMaster instance, and then manually installing the certificate and configuring the database.

24 comments - Last comment @ 2019-01-29

Tokyo TDWTF Meetup: Bonenkai

by Alex Papadimoulis in Announcements on 2018-12-07

Tokyo readers, it's been quite a while since our last Tokyo/TDWTF nomihoudai. It's always a fun time, and we've got a good group of regulars now. Here's a pic of a group of us from a past meetup:

2 comments - Last comment @ 2019-01-11

Classic WTF: zzGeneralFunctions

by Alex Papadimoulis in CodeSOD on 2018-11-22

It's Thanksgiving in the US today, so we're running a classic WTF. What are you thankful for? How about not needing to support this application. Original --Remy

A codefile whose name is prefixed with “zz” can be one of two things. It's either a file that someone wanted to get rid of but was afraid to delete, or it's an intentional naming scheme to keep the file at the bottom as part of some crude code-organization technique. There used to be a third option - the file's a part of an application commissioned by a certain American rock trio known for their beards and cheap sunglasses - but the band dropped that requirement a long time ago.

However, when Mark Arnott stumbled across "zzGeneralFunctions.asp" as part of a maintenance project he was assigned, it was pretty clear why the file existed. Its first line contained the following comment:

11 comments - Last comment @ 2018-11-26

Come Work at Inedo, the Most Non-WTF Company You Know

by Alex Papadimoulis in Announcements on 2018-07-24

The "Enterprise DevOps" tools market has really been taking off lately, and so has Inedo! We build market-leading tools for package management, deployment automation, and configuration automation space that aids some of the world's best companies in delivering their applications to users faster than ever.

We're looking for some great people to help us continue to grow:

Solution Architect/Consultant – work closely with our users to help them adopt DevOps best practices in their organization using our tools
Software Development Manager – lead our software development team and help develop our innovative products
Software Developer – Build and maintain our products, extensions, and internal systems while identifying bugs and issues with our customers
Content creator/writer – communicate the business value aspects of what we do to customers by working closely with our technical teams
US events manager – lead our events team and particulate in Inedo and software communities
Marketing associate – travel to various events to meet users and introduce new people to Inedo

14 comments - Last comment @ 2018-07-30

Classic WTF: The Source Control Shingle

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2018-07-17

Our summer break continues. I once worked on a team which made "shingles"- software modules that were layered on top of a packaged product. There were a lot of WTFs in those shingles, but nothing that can compare to this once. Original--Remy

The year was 1999 and the dot-com boom was going full-throttle. Companies everywhere were focused on building revolutionary applications using nothing but top-shelf hardware and state-of-the-art software tools. Developers everywhere were trying to figure out if they should play more foosball, more air hockey, or sit back down on their Aeron and write more code. Everywhere, that is, except Boise, Idaho. Or at least, Dave's small corner of it.

At Dave's company, developers worked at a solid pace, using reliable tools, for a stable industry. They were sub-sub-contractors on a giant project commissioned by the U.S. Navy to condense naval vessel documentation. Generally speaking, the complete documentation required for a modern warship-from the GPS calibration instructions to the giant 130-millimeter cannon repair guide-is measured in tons. By condensing the documentation into the electronic equivalent, they could not only save tremendous physical space, but they could make it much easier to navigate.

15 comments - Last comment @ 2018-07-25

Classic WTF: The Virtudyne Saga

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2018-07-16

As we usually do around this time of year, it's summer break season for TDWTF. This week, we're going to rerun some old classics, starting with this legend from 2006, compiled into a single article. --Remy

The Virtudyne saga (published 2006-Oct-10 through 2006-Oct-13) is my all time favorite. It tells the story of the rise and fall of Virtudyne, one of the largest privately-financed ($200M) disasters in our industry. Like most articles published here, all names have been changed to protect the guilty, and I've worked very closely with Rob Graves (the submitter) to ensure that this presentation is as close to how it happened as possible.

Part I - The Founding

By most people's standard, The Founder was very wealthy. A successful entrepreneur since age seventeen, he built several multi-million dollar companies and amassed a fortune larger than that of most A-list Hollywood celebrities. He prided himself on having one of the largest private collections of Egyptian artifacts in the world and prominently displayed many of them in his Great Room. And it truly was a great room: having been to The Founder's mansion several times, Rob recalls that his two-story, four-bedroom home could easily fit inside the Great Room.

26 comments - Last comment @ 2019-02-18

Six Months of Free Monitoring at Panopta for TDWTF Readers

by Alex Papadimoulis in Sponsor Post on 2018-06-06

You may not have noticed, but in the footer of the site, there is a little banner that says:

Monitored by Panopta

4 comments - Last comment @ 2018-06-07

Classic WTF: Quantum Computering

by Alex Papadimoulis in CodeSOD on 2018-05-28

When does anything but [0-9A-F] equal "2222"? Well, it's a holiday in the US today, so take a look at this classic WTF where that's exactly what happens… -Remy

A little while back, I posted a function that generated random hexadecimal-like strings for a GUID-like string to identify events. At first, I thought it (and the rest of the system that Taka's company purchased) was just bad code. But now that I look at it further, I'm stunned at its unbelievable complexity. I can honestly say that I've never seen code that is actually prepared to run a quantum computer, where binary just isn't as simple as 1's and 0's ...

12 comments - Last comment @ 2018-06-20