Examples of brain dead software design

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#3494681 22-May-2026 10:27

Firefox updated itself and managed to dump its Firefox.exe on my desktop. I'm guessing it's a temporary file that didn't get cleaned up properly, but that's what temp directories are for. An updater shouldn't even be touching the desktop!

floydbloke

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#3495487 26-May-2026 12:33

Tripadvisor

Booked a tour through their website, so had to provide some details.

Unticked the "do you want to receive promotional material" box

Within hours received an advertising email from them. Clicked the unsubscribe link which came back as successful but will take up to 14 days to take effect. Why....just why?

The Institute of Unfinished Research has concluded that 6 out of 10 people

Behodar

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#3496232 28-May-2026 14:33

MSBUILD : error MSB4166: Child node "3" exited prematurely. Shutting down. Diagnostic information may be found in files in "C:\Users\cisjr\AppData\Local\Temp\MSBuildTempbphp5ne0.dmj\" and will be named MSBuild_*.failure.txt.

Well, it certainly had the "may" part correct: that path doesn't exist.

LurkingKiwi

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#3500062 3-Jun-2026 23:31

You have $0.00 in Subcard® Reward Dollars expiring on 30.06.2026 ⏰ There’s no minimum spend anymore, so make the most of every cent before it’s gone!

Behodar

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#3500083 4-Jun-2026 08:10

Sometimes I wonder whether Microsoft is ever going to get around to making multiple displays work well. Yesterday Windows decided that my taskbar should go on the other screen. This morning it opened an app on the secondary screen even though I always keep it on the primary one. These are not isolated examples.

MadEngineer

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#3501423 9-Jun-2026 08:47

More excel shenanigans:

paste a column of email address, plain text only so I don’t get a bunch of email links and to keep the existing formatting of the table I’m pasting into. It formats the text however to look like links with the email addresses underlined. That’s fine I don’t really care as it’s not a problem… except the last entry at the bottom of the list is plain text without the underlined link formatting. So, it hit f2 to edit the cell and hit enter to auto format it, and it makes it look the same but adds the mailto: link. Right click the cell and choose remove hyperlink and it wipes all the formatting

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

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littlehead

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#3501426 9-Jun-2026 09:17

MadEngineer:

More excel shenanigans:

paste a column of email address, plain text only so I don’t get a bunch of email links and to keep the existing formatting of the table I’m pasting into. It formats the text however to look like links with the email addresses underlined. That’s fine I don’t really care as it’s not a problem… except the last entry at the bottom of the list is plain text without the underlined link formatting. So, it hit f2 to edit the cell and hit enter to auto format it, and it makes it look the same but adds the mailto: link. Right click the cell and choose remove hyperlink and it wipes all the formatting

This throws me as well whenever I put email addresses in but don't want actual hyperlinks. Found the trick is to "Clear" the hyperlinks, not "Remove". Select the cells, Hold ALT then press H + E + L, or Home ribbon, Editing section, Clear, then Clear Hyperlinks. That removes the link but keeps the formatting.

Earbanean

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#3501496 9-Jun-2026 10:43

MadEngineer:

More excel shenanigans:

paste a column of email address, plain text only so I don’t get a bunch of email links and to keep the existing formatting of the table I’m pasting into. It formats the text however to look like links with the email addresses underlined. That’s fine I don’t really care as it’s not a problem… except the last entry at the bottom of the list is plain text without the underlined link formatting. So, it hit f2 to edit the cell and hit enter to auto format it, and it makes it look the same but adds the mailto: link. Right click the cell and choose remove hyperlink and it wipes all the formatting

Have you switched off the auto-formatting that adds the hyperlink? That's what I dis. File - Options - Proofing - 'AutoCorrect Options...' - 'Autoformat As You Type'. Then untick 'Internet and network paths with hyperlinks'.

Behodar

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#3501736 10-Jun-2026 09:40

Visual Studio has offered me an update to version 18.7. When I click the Release Notes link, it takes me to the notes for 18.6. When I type "visual studio 18.7 release notes" into Google, its blithering "AI" pipes up and tells me that there's no such version. If I use its alternate name "June 2026 Feature Update" then I get the release notes for 18.6, captioned as being for 18.7.

cddt

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#3501902 11-Jun-2026 06:51

Outlook now shows this pane on every email. No idea what "Viva Insights" is or where it came from. Moreover, my account does a a M365 license applied (E5).

freitasm

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#3501905 11-Jun-2026 07:14

Viva is one of the most useless piece of software ever developed.

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#3501996 11-Jun-2026 11:34

Microsoft Azure snapshots - Sorting of list on 'Creation time'

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Behodar

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#3503143 15-Jun-2026 14:38

I installed some software that can open multiple file types such as .xml and .txt. During installation it asked whether I wanted to make it the default handler for those file types. I said no. It proceeded to delete all the existing associations.

For anyone curious, the commands to reassociate .txt with Notepad are:

ASSOC .txt=txtfile
FTYPE txtfile="%SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe" "%1"

There does not seem to be any way to do this via the UI. Simply going to Open With and browsing to notepad.exe does not work (it claims that "The programme you have selected cannot be associated with this file type").

SepticSceptic

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#3503419 15-Jun-2026 22:55

Programs that infest the right click context menu, and don't give an option to yeah nah on the context menu association

Just jam your stupid app right in there with the rest of the unwanted context launchers.

And now there is Copilot. ARGGHHH

cddt

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#3503425 16-Jun-2026 06:14

SepticSceptic:

Programs that infest the right click context menu, and don't give an option to yeah nah on the context menu association

Just the Windows context menu in general... now there are two file context menus, they don't look the same, and don't have the same content. Also, the new one seems laggier to open than the one on Windows 95.

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