What’s the weirdest software bug you’ve encountered?

[Ian]

Quite probably one in one of my very own programs. I am fascinated by Sun and Moon and made some Visual Basic programs that track the sun and moon across the sky, either as little icons that move on top (Z dimension) of your other open windows, or as a picture, or as digits. A parameter file lets you put in things like the moon's phase, your height (for shadows), earth's tilt (can have fun with this one), and up to 96 latitude / longitude pairs for examination. Anyway I was on me hols once and opened up my little sun bars (it's my own desktop toy, you see). Although there was no error, they were all f***ed up with the calculations clearly wrong and the sun / moon not where they should be for the lat and lon I entered. I puzzled over this for ages. In the end the "bug" was very simple!! I had used my (Dutch) wife's laptop, which used a comma as a decimal point rather than a full stop!

 

[AllThingsTech]

@Ian we’ve similarly had challenges with full stops and commas in numbers as we did a project to offer our product in different languages

 

[Hitcore]

@Ian , lol.
Tell your wife I said "de groeten"!

 

[Retro]

Just why are these tiny typo style bugs so hard to track down?!

@Ian if you've not seen my entry yet featuring the most vexing bug I've ever encountered, check it out here:

What’s the weirdest software bug you’ve encountered?

I can tell you mine: I was on a call to a friend on Discord. It was clear that my audio delivery to him was being delayed. Note that it was a video call so it was clear that he was receiving my (audio) messages late, So, here goes: Friend says “sorry about that”. I ask what he’s apologising...

nerdzone.uk

 

[AllThingsTech]

@Retro were IDEs advanced with the ability to go straight to a method definition?

 

[Retro]

Not back then. Perhaps professional software development apps of the time did, but I never saw any of these. Again, without the internet, access to information was orders of magnitude more limited. If I was able to go back to that time, it would probably feel like the Stone Age.

 

[AllThingsTech]

Or Iron Age? Ice Age?

 

[Ian]

@Ian , lol.
Tell your wife I said "de groeten"!

Will do

 

[AllThingsTech]

@danky

 

[live627]

Here’s a new glitch that I just encountered in Firefox: I went to test a webpage that I’m working on and it just rendered the background. I viewed the source to see that all the markup is there. I then refreshed the page and everything rendered.

Is Neo trying to tell me something?

 

[data66]

Here’s a new glitch that I just encountered in Firefox: I went to test a webpage that I’m working on and it just rendered the background. I viewed the source to see that all the markup is there. I then refreshed the page and everything rendered.

Is Neo trying to tell me something?

This has caused me issues as well. I also have a weird issue where my mouse will not click on any firefox (you name it) in web pages. This makes testing of our soon to launch communiity builder a bit tough. Can't tell if something is a software bug, browser bug, or just the goddess of tech playing pranks.

 

[AllThingsTech]

@data66 I believe you meant “any webpages in Firefox”

 

[danky]

I’d consider this a software bug lol

In 2020 I preordered a ps5. I was so excited cause I’ve wanted to own a console at launch my whole life and it just never happened. I was always scared of launch day issues so I kept away. 2020 was rough so why not, but the ps5, what’s the worst that could happen lol

It arrived, I got it on and connected. Did some updates and put In the call of duty that came out that year. Two days into playing it the console starts crashing. I’m panicking and start troubleshooting it. There was a very specific bug with HDMI and sound connections. You had to change away from 5.1 surround and turn off CEC on the TV and pray. It took around 6 months to resolve it lol

 

[AllThingsTech]

@danky thanks for sharing! Out of curiosity was this a bug related to the soundbar ? I wonder how 5.1 surround is even relevant to CEC?


The most recent bugs I noticed were on websites of companies I was interviewing for as a software engineer LOL! You’d be unsurprised to learn that they were impressed bby my attention to detail One was a potential security issue, with code displayed as an error on their blog! In fact there was an inside joke where I was like “Don’t worry, the only thing I know about your product isn’t just existing bugs ” when they asked me what i know about the company

 

[danky]

I attempted it without a soundbar and it still happened! I’m not sure what the issue was. It took a while to find a workaround and it was a series of “do this and this while doing a handstand” for a while lol

That’s insane! Sometimes that does work out! I worked for a company years ago that had hardware devices they sold at companies and colleges. Someone got ahold of one and reverse engineered it to hack it then posted about it online lol they applied to work at my company a few weeks later and was quickly denied lol

Finding bugs to impress jobs: yes
Hacking a product and applying for a job; not always a good option lol

 

[AllThingsTech]

My father always used to tell me that hackers are often hired as they have proven their skills the bad way. I’m just like - really? That’s a red flag regarding trustworthiness right there LOL!

Often teenagers think they’re smartarses but it ms just some silly fault, as modt software has in one form or another

Just to clarify, I didn’t hack their product. I just spotted a vulnerability via normal means, just navigating like a standard user would

 

[AllThingsTech]

I mean, why not just go on a bug bounty programme instead, and maybe hack with permission of companies (ie ethical hacking) as opposed to attempting to gain unauthorised access?