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Error'd: Named And I do like it when submissions include the ...

2026-10-30T12:28:17Z

Error'd: Named And

I do like it when submissions include the creator of the wtf, unless the specific kind of err is really spectacular and then it might be noteworthy regardless. This week we received a few who did tell us something about the responsible party. That being said, on with the party!"
An anonymous contributor shared with us this "Important order info from Ubbad HBG-ICS I",
saying
"I checked on Amazon but can't find order #{randnum(3)}-{randnum(6)}. This
is worrisome though, because my credit card does end in
**{randnum(4)}." Wild, so does mine!
"With the right translation this could say anything" observed
B.J. H. sagely.
"I guess they haven't translated to English yet. I especially
like this: [%EXTERNAL_TRANSLATION:New gender_aware email footer body 5 privacy policy
BLUE%] Can't they decide on capitalization and whether to use
spaces or underscores?"
"this could go in two directions" worried undercapitalized (but aren't we all)
klinsten.
"well... it is a
mail with my paycheck. but the label 'promotions' got me
worried. do i get a promotion (nice!!) or did they
apply a discount to my paycheck (less nice!!) i'm afraid
to click it..."
Reader
Valts S. wondered
"I'm not sure where I'm supposed to track my order,
but it feels like it's been censored." Or merely forgotten?
Regular contributor
Michael R. took a flier with this, hedging that it's
"Probably more a joke than a RWTF." But it's a little funny, so this editor will allow it.
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https://thedailywtf.com/articles/named-and

#ubbad #blue #english

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CodeSOD: Oh, K? Pierre found this cry for help: for (j = 0; j ...

2026-10-29T12:34:35Z

CodeSOD: Oh, K?

Pierre found this cry for help:
for (j = 0; j < DISTRICT_CARDINALITY; j++) {
/*
* A poor way to work around some sort of memory
* violation. k gets clobbered, so I buffer l with it.
* Help?
*/
for (k = 0, l = 0; k < customers; k++, l++) {
/* c_id */
FPRINTF(output, "%d", l + 1);
METAPRINTF((output, "%c", delimiter));
Honestly, I'm always a little worried in C-like languages when the loop variable isn't scoped to the loop and declared in place. Always concerning, so when there's concerns with clobbering, I'm not surprised.
This iterates across a set of "districts", and then iterates across a list of customers. Standard output functions are replaced with macros, and honestly, I don't know that I want to know what happens in METAPRINTF.
But fine, this iterates across a bunch of stuff and generates output. It's the comment that we're really curious about. "Some sort of memory violation", so we duplicate our loop variable. What on earth could be happening here?
Well, Pierre found the "memory violation", which is probably what you expected:
k = strlen(someOutputString) - 8;
k is used elsewhere in the loop as a variable. That's not a memory violation, that's just how variables work.
This leaves us with one possible conclusion: the developer who wrote the comment couldn't find this bug. And given the weird use of macros here, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it's not the developer's fault; I strongly suspect the loop is so long, so complicated, and so obfuscated that very few developers could find that.
My earlier complaint about scoping the variable to the loop wouldn't fix this, which I guess is on me. They still should really scope the variable to the loop.
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https://thedailywtf.com/articles/oh-k

#codesod #metaprintf #honestly #always

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Representative Line: Readable Formats We all love format strings ...

2026-10-22T17:34:33Z

Representative Line: Readable Formats

We all love format strings for generating human readable text. Certainly, they're a better choice than string concatenation. Even if I have a blind spot that keeps me from remembering the printf format tokens, I still prefer to use format strings.
Jasmine has a co-worker that does use format strings, but they also miss using string concatenation. So they've found a way to combine them, and avoid the perils of making readable code that describes the format of their text.
myField.DataFormatString = "{0:#,##0." + new string('0', 2) + ";(#,##0." + new string('0', 2) + ")}";
Now, in their defense, I can see how this code started its life. At some point, they wanted to make the number of decimal places a parameter. And sure, this is an easy way to do that and retain the intent, though this whole thing could be cleaned up with just a simple decimalPlaces = new string('0', 2), which would make the concatenation less confusing to read.
Related, while I was checking the documentation on the .NET formatting strings, I learned that they have a per-mille format specifier which requires writing a unicode sigil on most keyboards.
I'm sorry, but seeing string perMilleFmt = "#0.## " + '\u2030'; in my code would be TRWTF.
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https://thedailywtf.com/articles/readable-formats

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CodeSOD: Doing the Assignment Today's code maybe isn't ...

2026-10-21T16:34:01Z

CodeSOD: Doing the Assignment

Today's code maybe isn't much of a WTF, but it does point in the general direction of, "Damn, you live like this?" Poor Nancy unfortunately does.
int x = 3;
int y = 4;
int z = 4;
x = y = z;
Each variable is declared and initialized, and then they're set equal to each other. It just raises the question though, why do it this way? Why not declare them and then x = y = z = 4, if we want that? Or maybe, for more clarity, int x = DEFAULT_VALUE; would be more legible, and we can skip the multiple assignments on one line. Why does x get set to 3 but then overwritten?
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https://thedailywtf.com/articles/doing-the-assignment

#codesod #damn #wtf #poornancy

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The Outage At my employer, we use a service called Coveralls, ...

2026-10-20T15:46:39Z

The Outage

At my employer, we use a service called Coveralls, which is a code coverage reporting tool that hooks into your CI pipeline. It takes your lcov reports and gives you some insights, and also makes it easy to cause the CI pipeline to fail if newly added code doesn't have reasonable coverage.
I have no strong feelings about the tool, but on February 24th, our CI jobs started failing. Coveralls had gone down, and our CI step that talked to them was the culprit. That happened to us, and a lot of other people. It was a widespread outage impacting anybody who used their service.
Coveralls actively published updates as the outage dragged on, and boy, did it drag on. Between them posting nearly identical updates minutes or even seconds apart and the general desperation that snuck into their outage notes after the first few days, I couldn't help but find their notes hilarious.
They've published their post-mortem, and the short version is that despite them paying their bills, Amazon decided they hadn't, and shut down their services. But it took them roughly 68 hours to figure that out.
If you scroll down past the post-mortem, you can see their outage notes. This is an unauthorized, dramatic reading of those notes. We've taken some liberties in interpreting it.
I hope this is taken in a good spirit, because they were just doing their best when this happened. I don't think most companies would be able to maintain operations when their cloud provider decides to lock their accounts. But I don't care who you are: begging your users to email you if they can help you migrate off AWS is funny.
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https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-outage

#outage #coveralls #february #amazon #utilize #aws

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A Vat of Terrible Experiences Taxes are a royal pain for ...

2026-10-19T15:19:00Z

A Vat of Terrible Experiences

Taxes are a royal pain for everyone. Amazon has found a unique way to make them even worse, as Kris W. attests:
I recently bought a €9.61 kitchen knife on Amazon Spain. My card was charged €7.94 instead. After some investigation, I discovered that Amazon had applied an old VAT registration number I'd added to my personal account years ago, and had classified my purchase as a VAT-exempt intra-EU business transaction. The invoice even contained my business address from 2022, which no longer appeared anywhere in my account settings. I just wanted to remove the VAT number so I could go back to buying kitchen utensils without accidentally generating international tax paperwork.
Unfortunately, Amazon no longer provided any visible way to manage that VAT number. Their customer support chatbot insisted I provide the order number from which I wanted the VAT number removed. A human agent confidently explained that I must have entered it into a secondary address field, and instructed me to delete and recreate my shipping address. Another support representative sent me an extensive list of documents I'd need to provide, including my passport, airline boarding passes, proof of export outside the EU, or my NATO identification card. Apparently removing a VAT number from an Amazon account is a process normally reserved for international travelers, Andorran residents, and military alliances.
Eventually, I found Amazon's official help page. It explicitly stated that VAT numbers could be removed either by contacting Customer Service or by creating an Amazon Business account to use the self-service option. After another round of correspondence, Customer Service informed me that they were not allowed to remove VAT numbers and instructed me to use the Business settings that my personal account didn't have. So I followed the documentation and created a Business account using my existing email address. During registration, Amazon required me to enter the very VAT number I was trying to remove, then promptly congratulated me by email on successfully adding and activating it.
But I couldn't access the Business settings yet. Amazon couldn't verify my business and demanded official documentation, so I obtained two freshly-issued certificates from two separate Spanish government agencies to prove that I was, in fact, a self-employed software developer. I uploaded both documents and waited. Eventually, my shiny new Amazon Business account was approved. I now had a separate Business account, complete with its own purchasing features and complimentary Business Prime membership. At last, I could navigate to the promised VAT-management page!
The page displayed my VAT number, confirmed it was valid, and offered a button to add more tax information. Beside the existing number, however, there was no Edit button. No Delete button. No self-service removal option whatsoever. There was only a link saying, Contact Customer Service to change your tax ID.
Naturally, the link led to a generic help center. After creating an entire business account, submitting government paperwork, and successfully registering the same VAT number a second time, I had arrived precisely where I started: Customer Service, which had already explained that it was not allowed to remove VAT numbers.
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https://thedailywtf.com/articles/a-vat-of-terrible-experiences

#vat #business #amazon #customerservice #contactcustomer #delete

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