Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[IDEngineer]

There's also the rotten "helpful" behavior of double clicking on a word and it automatically includes the trailing space. Sure, that might be helpful in 1% of cases, but I have yet to experience one. Every single time I have to manually deselect the space, or remove it after pasting.

There are many, many threads hating on this "feature" in forums all over the Internet. Microsoft Office tools are especially egregious about it, and AFAIK there is no option to disable it.

[james_s]

@james_s:
If you are on a pc, you can hold shift and use the cursor keys to exactly select what you want. I really got used to that, because many microsoft products, especially outlook, do not allow you to select all of a word except the last letter. As soon as you went to the second to last letter, the whole word got selected.

Yes, there are workarounds but it is infuriating none the less. I just want to select exactly the part I want, I never, ever want it to automatically select the entire word. If they're going to have that auto select functionality, it should be hold down a key or double click or something to select the whole word, don't make it the default. It is not helpful at all, it is the opposite.

[Circlotron]

When using voice to text on an iPhone at least, and it misinterprets a word and puts some profanity there instead. That could make a lot of trouble for you if you don’t see and correct it. There really should be a word blacklist that you can enable somehow.

[Red Squirrel]

I hate autocorrect too. My android comes up with corrections once and insists that I MUST use it, because hitting space bar makes it do the correction.  No, I know what I wrote, I want to actually just hit space.  But it won't let me. So I hit dot so I can get out of that and go delete the dot after.  Nope, it will still try to do the correction.  There used to be a way to turn that off so it only does suggestions and not actually change it unless you want to, but it seems something changed.

[RJSV]

Yeah, me too: Hate autocorrect!
   It's like having a (clumsy) DOG-SERVANT; Doing all these stupid things around you, and drooling all the while...fixing your tie, buttoning your shirt, or unbuttoning, whichever way you DONT want.

  My Android cellphone did autocorrect, where I had typed the words 'self-deduced' intelligence.
UH, HEY!?? That sucker changed my line to
   "Self-Deluded talents"... Lead me to suspect:
? They put a guy in their screen, in the morning, so they can MESS with the action...
...Call it harmless pranking, by those running the system...maybe true

[Ranayna]

There's also the rotten "helpful" behavior of double clicking on a word and it automatically includes the trailing space. Sure, that might be helpful in 1% of cases, but I have yet to experience one. Every single time I have to manually deselect the space, or remove it after pasting.

There are many, many threads hating on this "feature" in forums all over the Internet. Microsoft Office tools are especially egregious about it, and AFAIK there is no option to disable it.

Again, shift can come to the rescue Doubleclick a word to select it and it's trailing space. Hold shift and press the left arrow once.

Yes, there are workarounds but it is infuriating none the less. I just want to select exactly the part I want, I never, ever want it to automatically select the entire word. If they're going to have that auto select functionality, it should be hold down a key or double click or something to select the whole word, don't make it the default. It is not helpful at all, it is the opposite.

I have to admit that using shift and the arrow keys to precisely select has been ingrained now
I have just played around a bit with outlook, and either the behaviour changed, or i misremember.

When i use the mouse to select a single word, it actually does what it is supposed to do in outlook 2016. It precisely selects, and does not even select the trailing space. But as soon as i do the same on multiple words, outlook tries to be helpful.
When i start the selection in the middle of a word and i cross a space, both words get selected once i hit the second or third letter of the second word.
But i just discovered something that i was not aware of: If you move the cursor back, this expanded selection is undone, and as long as you do not release the left button, you can now precisely select over multiple words. This works in Outlook and Word 2016.

[TimFox]

Years ago, before Dilbert, there was another newspaper comic strip about young office workers (probably using DOS on their office computers).  Since management did not allow them to play computer games at work, they made do with feeding their personal names into auto-correct to see what came out.

[Sal Ammoniac]

When using voice to text on an iPhone at least, and it misinterprets a word and puts some profanity there instead. That could make a lot of trouble for you if you don’t see and correct it. There really should be a word blacklist that you can enable somehow.

My son was visiting one of his company's sites, which was right next to Moffitt Field Naval Air Station in Mountain View, and texted me on his phone that he saw two Backhawks (helicopters). The phone's speech recognition software converted that to "two black cocks".

[SilverSolder]

There's also the rotten "helpful" behavior of double clicking on a word and it automatically includes the trailing space. Sure, that might be helpful in 1% of cases, but I have yet to experience one. Every single time I have to manually deselect the space, or remove it after pasting.

There are many, many threads hating on this "feature" in forums all over the Internet. Microsoft Office tools are especially egregious about it, and AFAIK there is no option to disable it.

Then there's the feature in Windows Explorer, where selecting a file name excludes the file extension...   and there is no way that I know of to alter that behaviour.    Whenever I copy a file name from Explorer, I need the whole thing without extension, but Microsoft is catering for the 1% of use cases where you don't need/want the extension....

[IDEngineer]

I run into the same problem, but to be fair in this case they are probably thinking that you want to rename the file. Pressing F2 on the file has the same effect: Highlight the filename without extension, presumably so you can just start typing your replacement. In this one case, I'm not sure there's an obvious better choice. It would be nice to make it configurable!

[Ranayna]

I'm sorry if it appears i'm butting in again
When you double-click on the file name after hitting F2, it selects the full file name, including the extension. At least it does for me in Windows 20H2, but i know MS changed that behaviour sometime after Windows Vista i think.

But related (and on topic ): I hate it that hiding the file extensions is *still* the default setting. It's just confusing and potentially dangerous.

[Circlotron]

But related (and on topic ): I hate it that hiding the file extensions is *still* the default setting. It's just confusing and potentially dangerous.

Indeed. Hiding the file name extension can make virus.jpg.exe look like virus.jpg

[PlainName]

Didn't Windows go through a (short) period where renaming virus.com to virus.txt would still let it run when clicked?

[PlainName]

Bird shit.

Specifically, the pigeons and squirrels that search out where on our property I've parked my car so they can shit on it again. One time there was rather more in the mornings than usual, so I crept out at night and discovered five small birds in a row nesting on a branch over it. Moved the car and they never came back. Gits.

But the real annoyance is whatever beast leaves the big brown turds that have the consistency and stickiness of cured epoxy resin. Even when fresh, if you can call this stuff fresh, car shampoo and a brush doesn't even scratch it. Only fix I've found so far is soaking with the expensive MucOff chain cleaner I use on the bike chain, and then a good working in with a stiff wheel brush.

[CatalinaWOW]

But related (and on topic ): I hate it that hiding the file extensions is *still* the default setting. It's just confusing and potentially dangerous.

Indeed. Hiding the file name extension can make virus.jpg.exe look like virus.jpg

Those who would recognize dangerous extensions should also notice what looked like an extension when they are hidden.

[Labrat101]

Bird shit.

Specifically, the pigeons and squirrels that search out where on our property I've parked my car so they can shit on it again. One time there was rather more in the mornings than usual, so I crept out at night and discovered five small birds in a row nesting on a branch over it. Moved the car and they never came back. Gits.

But the real annoyance is whatever beast leaves the big brown turds that have the consistency and stickiness of cured epoxy resin. Even when fresh, if you can call this stuff fresh, car shampoo and a brush doesn't even scratch it. Only fix I've found so far is soaking with the expensive MucOff chain cleaner I use on the bike chain, and then a good working in with a stiff wheel brush.

The brown stuff is properly not Bird droppings . You may have flying foxes  Known as fruit Bats .
they spit & poop .
the ammonia in there excretions is really good for paint work 

[PlainName]

Could be bats, yes. Could soon be ex-bats if they're not jolly careful.

[Labrat101]

Could be bats, yes. Could soon be ex-bats if they're not jolly careful.

They are a protected species in most countries

[PlainName]

I will try and remember to tell the cat that when I point them out to her.

[Labrat101]

I will try and remember to tell the cat that when I point them out to her.

Wait All day for that .CAT.   

[RJSV]

COMCAST REMOTE CONTROL -.    Functional Change !

NOW I don't know if this is the weirdest, or the most dumb-ass 'imporvment' (yes, I deliberately misspelled) I've ever seen, in consumer electronics:

   Comcast remotes, when running anything, on your TV, now has changed the 'VCR' modes where you can stop and do a freeze frame step by step, let's say watching some Olympic high-jumper.
   Now, the thing is going back slightly, when you press the 'Stop/Single frame' button twice. Used to be, until recently, the Video would advance, a little bit, every time you did a fast double press on the STOP button.
   So the effect is, you just get a quick fraction of second of your video, and that repeats, almost always going back, instead of clear steady progress thru the stuff you are examining, such as a high dive or tight gymnastic move.
  We Engineer types are also paying attention to CONSUMER ELECTRONICS, it's often our JOB, yo.

AND, please, try this on your home TV / integral Video player, or am I going batty(?)!
   Also, some of the time, the stopped frames do advance, but too erratic to make sensible use of
SLO-MO for casual focus on action / motions.
ARRRRRGH.

[james_s]

I quite like autocorrect when it corrects misspelled words, in that respect it does a pretty good job, at least on my iphone. What drives me nuts though is when it changes a correctly spelled word to another word, it is almost always wrong! There is no way to change that behavior either, you can turn it off completely but you can't just turn off the word replacement part.

[PlainName]

you can't just turn off the word replacement part

Ouch!

I have autocorrect enabled nearly everywhere (phone, PC, interactions with the missus) but the worst that happens is a popup to pick from (on the PC) or one or three 'correct' alternatives on the virtual keyboard to press. If it changed words without getting an explicit OK from me I'd turn the damn thing off and live with sending garbled rubbish.

[TerraHertz]

Linux users, please cover your eyes.

The increasing prevalence of .jpeg as a file suffix on web images, instead of .jpg as the DOS-GOD intended it.
Computer-heads still using FAT file systems because they can be trusted, will understand what 'more than 3' letter suffixes do to the file tables.

I could also complain about file names containing characters . , ' and so on, but most will ask so what.
Or even file names longer than 8 characters, considering what trash the 'extended length file name structure' is in FAT systems. Oh well, NTFS...

Then there's the retarded practice creeping in, where people have seen computer-heads use underscore to visually separate words without whitespace. Not understanding the significance of whitespace, the innocents have started using space-underscore-space as a separator. Monkey see monkey do. Sigh...


About LED torches that insist on cycling through flash modes to reach OFF.  Arrgh yes. I *HATE* that. I especially hate that while on urbex outings. When you want to turn a torch off then, you usually really, really want to turn it off quickly. Not via 'hey, I'm hiding over here!' mode.  You get in the habit of covering the LEDs with your hand first, then cycling through the stupid modes. But it's a pain.

I've only encountered one situation where flashing mode was useful. Bushfire fighting, supporting helicopter water bombing operations, going on towards dusk. Makes it easier for the pilot to dump the water on the flames where you are pointing a few meters away, not on you. Water bombing must be incredibly frustrating when there are no ground rakers to put out the smaller spot fires. By the time the heli goes to refill the bucket and return, small spot fires are as big again as the flareup they put out a few minutes ago.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Bird shit.

It's especially important not to park near trees where starlings roost, otherwise your car may end up like this one: