The '50 extra packages' one is wild. The author of those packages has racked up a fuckload of downloads. What a waste of total bandwidth and disk space everywhere. I wonder if it's for clout.
It is cursed because now the photo management app needs to ask for the permission to constantly track you instead of only getting location of a limited set of past points where you specifically chose to take a photo. Besides giving malicious photo app developers an excuse for these permissions, it also contributes to permission fatigue by training to give random applications wide permissions.
I loved this the moment I saw it. After looking at an example commit[1], I love it even more. The cursed knowledge entry is committed alongside the fix needed to address it. My first instinct is that every project should have a similar facility. The log is not just cathartic, but turns each frustrating speedbump into a positive learning experience. By making it public, it becomes both a tool for both commiseration and prevention.
- Windows' NTFS Alternate Data Streams (ADS) allows hiding an unlimited number of files in already existing files
- macOS data forks, xattrs, and Spotlight (md) indexing every single removable volume by default adds tons of hidden files and junk to files on said removable volumes. Solution: mdutil -X /Volumes/path/to/vol
- Everything with opt-out telemetry: go, yarn, meilisearch, homebrew, vcpkg, dotnet, Windows, VS Code, Claude Code, macOS, Docker, Splunk, OpenShift, Firefox, Chrome, flutter, and zillions of other corporate abominations
Looks like they're missing one. I'm pretty sure the discussion goes further back[0,1] but this one has been on going for years and seems to be the main one[2]
One of their line items complains about being unable to bind 65k PostgreSQL placeholders (the linked post calls them "parameters") in a single query. This is a cursed idea to begin with, so I can't fully blame PostgreSQL.
From the linked GitHub issue comments, it looks like they adopted the sensible approach of refactoring their ORM so that it splits the big query into several smaller queries. Anecdotally, I've found 3,000 to 5,000 rows per write query to be a good ratio.
Someone else suggested first loading the data into a temp table and then joining against that, which would have further improved performance, especially if they wrote it as a COPY … FROM. But the idea was scrapped (also sensibly) for requiring too many app code changes.
Overall, this was quite an illuminating tome of cursed knowledge, all good warnings to have. Nicely done!
I'm in the process of writing up a blog post on how network shares on macOS are kind of cursed. Highlights:
* Files on SMB shares sometimes show up as "NDH6SA~M" or similar, even though that's not their filename on the actual network drive. This is because there's some character present in the filename that SMB can't work with. No errors or anything, you just have to know about it.
* SMB seems to copy accented characters in filenames as two Unicode code points, not one. Whereas native macOS filenames tend to use single Unicode code point accents.
* SMB seems to munge and un-munge certain special characters in filenames into placeholders, e.g. * <-> . But not always. Maybe this depends on the SMB version used?
* SMB (of a certain version?) stores symlinks as so-called "XSym" binary files, which automatically get converted back to native symlinks when copied from the network share. But if you try to rsync directly from the network drive instead of going through SMB, you'll end up with a bunch of binary XSym file that you can't really do anything with.
I only found out about these issues through integrity checks that showed supposedly missing files. Horrible!
It is cursed because now the photo management app needs to ask for the permission to constantly track you instead of only getting location of a limited set of past points where you specifically chose to take a photo. Besides giving malicious photo app developers an excuse for these permissions, it also contributes to permission fatigue by training to give random applications wide permissions.
> Fetch requests in Cloudflare Workers use http by default, even if you explicitly specify https, which can often cause redirect loops.
This is whack as hell but doesn't seem to be the default? This issue was caused by the "Flexible" mode, but the docs say "Automatic" is the default? (Maybe it was the default at the time?)
Reminds me a lot of phenomenal Hadoop and Kerberos: Madness beyond the gates[1], which coincidentally saved me many times from madness. Thanks Steve, I can't fathom what you had to go through to get the cursed knowledge!
Love to see this concept condensed! This kind of knowledge will only emerge only after you dive in your project and surprisingly find things do not work as thought (inevitable if the project is niche enough). Will keep a list like that for every future project.
Why is the YAML part cursed? They serialize to same string, no? Both [1] and [2] serialize to identical strings. This seems like the ancient YAML 1.1 parser curse strikes again.
Install an SP3 or TR4 socketed CPU in a dusty, dirty room without ESD precautions and crank the torque on the top plate and heat sink like truck lug nuts until creaking and cracking noises of the PCB delaminating are noticeable. Also be sure to sneeze on the socket's chip contacts and clean it violently with an oily and dusty microfiber cloth to bend every pin.
c. 2004 and random crap on eBay: DL380 G3 standard NICs plus Cisco switches with auto speed negotiation on both sides have built-in chaos monkey duplex flapping.
Google's/Nest mesh Wi-Fi gear really, really enjoys being close together so much that it offers slower speeds than simply 1 device. Not even half speed, like dial-up before 56K on random devices randomly.
Love this. I seem to find a new one every day maintaining an Android app with millions of users. We like to call them "what will we tell the kids" moments. It's a great idea to write them down, I'll probably start doing it!
> Zitadel is cursed because its custom scripting feature is executed with a JS engine that doesn't support regex named capture groups.
I think sufficiently old version of JavaScript will not have it. It does not work on my computer either. (You should (if you had not already) report this to whoever maintains that program, in order to fix this, if you require that feature.)
> Git can be configured to automatically convert LF to CRLF on checkout and CRLF breaks bash scripts.
Can you tell git that the bash script is a binary file and therefore should not automatically convert the contents of the file?
> Fetch requests in Cloudflare Workers use http by default, even if you explicitly specify https, which can often cause redirect loops.
Is that a bug in Cloudflare? That way of working does not make sense; it should use the protocol you specify. (I also think that HTTP servers should not generally automatically redirect to HTTPS, but that is a different problem. Still, since it does that it means that this bug is more easily found.) (Also, X.509 should be used for authentication, which avoids the problem of accidentally authenticating with an insecure service (or with the wrong service), since that would make it impossible to do.)
> There is a user in the JavaScript community who goes around adding "backwards compatibility" to projects. They do this by adding 50 extra package dependencies to your project, which are maintained by them.
It is a bad idea to add too many dependencies to your project, regardless of that specific case.
> The bcrypt implementation only uses the first 72 bytes of a string. Any characters after that are ignored.
There is a good reason to have a maximum password length (to avoid excessive processing due to a too long password), although the maximum length should still be sufficiently long (maybe 127 bytes is good?), and it should be documented and would be better if it should be known when you try to set the password.
> Some web features like the clipboard API only work in "secure contexts" (ie. https or localhost)
I think that "secure contexts" is a bad idea. I also think that these features should be controlled by user settings instead, to be able to disable and otherwise configure them.
30 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 62.8 ms ] threadThat's no curse, it's a protection hex!
Perhaps it is mm/dd/yyyy (really?!?) that is cursed....
Uh... good?
1 - https://github.com/savely-krasovsky/immich/commit/aeb5368602...
Is this true? I couldn’t find another source discussing it. That would be insane behavior for a package manager.
- macOS data forks, xattrs, and Spotlight (md) indexing every single removable volume by default adds tons of hidden files and junk to files on said removable volumes. Solution: mdutil -X /Volumes/path/to/vol
- Everything with opt-out telemetry: go, yarn, meilisearch, homebrew, vcpkg, dotnet, Windows, VS Code, Claude Code, macOS, Docker, Splunk, OpenShift, Firefox, Chrome, flutter, and zillions of other corporate abominations
[1] https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/6623
[2] https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/12292
From the linked GitHub issue comments, it looks like they adopted the sensible approach of refactoring their ORM so that it splits the big query into several smaller queries. Anecdotally, I've found 3,000 to 5,000 rows per write query to be a good ratio.
Someone else suggested first loading the data into a temp table and then joining against that, which would have further improved performance, especially if they wrote it as a COPY … FROM. But the idea was scrapped (also sensibly) for requiring too many app code changes.
Overall, this was quite an illuminating tome of cursed knowledge, all good warnings to have. Nicely done!
For me, MacOS file names are cursed:
1. Filenames in MacOS are case-INsensitive, meaning file.txt and FILE.txt are equivalent
2. Filenames in MacOS, when saved in NFC, may be converted to NFD
* Files on SMB shares sometimes show up as "NDH6SA~M" or similar, even though that's not their filename on the actual network drive. This is because there's some character present in the filename that SMB can't work with. No errors or anything, you just have to know about it.
* SMB seems to copy accented characters in filenames as two Unicode code points, not one. Whereas native macOS filenames tend to use single Unicode code point accents.
* SMB seems to munge and un-munge certain special characters in filenames into placeholders, e.g. * <-> . But not always. Maybe this depends on the SMB version used?
* SMB (of a certain version?) stores symlinks as so-called "XSym" binary files, which automatically get converted back to native symlinks when copied from the network share. But if you try to rsync directly from the network drive instead of going through SMB, you'll end up with a bunch of binary XSym file that you can't really do anything with.
I only found out about these issues through integrity checks that showed supposedly missing files. Horrible!
It's much more cursed than that: filenames may or may not be case-sensitive depending on the filesystem.
Those classes can call stored procedures or functions.
Those classes can be called BY stored procedures or functions.
You can call stored procedures and functions from server-side Java code.
So you can have a java app call a stored proc call a java class call a stored proc ...
Yes. Yes, this is why they call it Legacy.
its valid privacy and security on how mobile OS handle permission
This is whack as hell but doesn't seem to be the default? This issue was caused by the "Flexible" mode, but the docs say "Automatic" is the default? (Maybe it was the default at the time?)
> Automatic SSL/TLS (default)
https://developers.cloudflare.com/ssl/origin-configuration/s...
1 - https://steveloughran.gitbooks.io/kerberos_and_hadoop/conten...
[1] https://play.yaml.io/main/parser?input=ICAgICAgdGVzdDogPi0KI...
[2]https://play.yaml.io/main/parser?input=ICAgICAgdGVzdDogPi0KI...
Also a crypto library that limits passwords to 72 bytes? That’s wild
c. 2004 and random crap on eBay: DL380 G3 standard NICs plus Cisco switches with auto speed negotiation on both sides have built-in chaos monkey duplex flapping.
Google's/Nest mesh Wi-Fi gear really, really enjoys being close together so much that it offers slower speeds than simply 1 device. Not even half speed, like dial-up before 56K on random devices randomly.
Is there any good reason for this one in particular?
It wasn’t until I loaded the content into a hex editor that I learned about U+00A0, the non-breaking space. Looks like a space, but isn’t.
I think sufficiently old version of JavaScript will not have it. It does not work on my computer either. (You should (if you had not already) report this to whoever maintains that program, in order to fix this, if you require that feature.)
> Git can be configured to automatically convert LF to CRLF on checkout and CRLF breaks bash scripts.
Can you tell git that the bash script is a binary file and therefore should not automatically convert the contents of the file?
> Fetch requests in Cloudflare Workers use http by default, even if you explicitly specify https, which can often cause redirect loops.
Is that a bug in Cloudflare? That way of working does not make sense; it should use the protocol you specify. (I also think that HTTP servers should not generally automatically redirect to HTTPS, but that is a different problem. Still, since it does that it means that this bug is more easily found.) (Also, X.509 should be used for authentication, which avoids the problem of accidentally authenticating with an insecure service (or with the wrong service), since that would make it impossible to do.)
> There is a user in the JavaScript community who goes around adding "backwards compatibility" to projects. They do this by adding 50 extra package dependencies to your project, which are maintained by them.
It is a bad idea to add too many dependencies to your project, regardless of that specific case.
> The bcrypt implementation only uses the first 72 bytes of a string. Any characters after that are ignored.
There is a good reason to have a maximum password length (to avoid excessive processing due to a too long password), although the maximum length should still be sufficiently long (maybe 127 bytes is good?), and it should be documented and would be better if it should be known when you try to set the password.
> Some web features like the clipboard API only work in "secure contexts" (ie. https or localhost)
I think that "secure contexts" is a bad idea. I also think that these features should be controlled by user settings instead, to be able to disable and otherwise configure them.