Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[Nominal Animal]

The word kernal.

There is no such word in English; it is kernel.

As a non-native English speaker, it somehow is one of those words that pokes me in the eye when I see it.  I am well aware that because the latter vowel is silent in spoken language, native speakers do not care, nor see any issue here.  But to me, someone who mostly reads and writes English, it is always jarring to see it.  I'd compare it to writing "speech" as "speeche", "which" as "witch", and so on.

[PlainName]

As a native English speaker (and writer!), the non-binary pronouns thing triggers big grammar alarms whenever my eyes float over them. Maybe non-natives find those easier.

[Nominal Animal]

As a native English speaker (and writer!), the non-binary pronouns thing triggers big grammar alarms whenever my eyes float over them. Maybe non-natives find those easier.

As a Finnish native speaker, I must say I do find them easy – even comfortable –, but that's just because Finnish has no gendered words except for a few nouns like "chairman", ("actress" - no, they're all called "actors" nowadays), or say "fireman".  Sorry!

That said, I think I know how that feels.  The opposite case occurs often in programming, when one deals with "parent" and "child" processes.  People from certain cultures insist calling these (in English) "father" and "son", which sounds really odd to me. (But it isn't a peeve for me, because it doesn't stop my linguistic processor like encountering 'kernal', or 'witch' instead of 'which', do.)

[james_s]

I'm a native English speaker and "kernal" would annoy me, it's a misspelled word. It isn't one that I have seen misspelled like that often though. The English mistakes that bother me the most are people who can't figure out the difference between there/their/they're. I see that all the time.

[CatalinaWOW]

I'm a native English speaker and "kernal" would annoy me, it's a misspelled word. It isn't one that I have seen misspelled like that often though. The English mistakes that bother me the most are people who can't figure out the difference between there/their/they're. I see that all the time.

I find it often in my own writing.  When I haven't checked what auto correct did to me.

[radar_macgyver]

I'm a native English speaker and "kernal" would annoy me, it's a misspelled word. It isn't one that I have seen misspelled like that often though.

The good folks at Commodore fell for this one, and decided to invent a backronym to keep the misspelling. 

[SilverSolder]

I'm a native English speaker and "kernal" would annoy me, it's a misspelled word. It isn't one that I have seen misspelled like that often though. The English mistakes that bother me the most are people who can't figure out the difference between there/their/they're. I see that all the time.

As a non-native English speaker, I notice a lot of "natives" also struggle with then/than.   Seems weird to mix those up, people that do it must be spelling phonetically?

[PlainName]

One that seems to catch out Americans is affect/effect. The BBC suggests that might be down to pronunciation - in British English they are pronounced differently whereas in American English they sound the same. No idea if that's actually the case.

edit: source:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/course/eiam/unit-1/session-34

[eti]

A VERY annoying thing:

You load a website/app on your smartphone, and JUST when you reach to tap a certain icon or link... THE PAGE JUMPS! SO YOU TAP SOMETHING ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH! 

[IDEngineer]

in British English they are pronounced differently whereas in American English they sound the same

They are distinct in American English too, if the speaker speaks clearly. Sadly, many do not.

[vk6zgo]

One that seems to catch out Americans is affect/effect. The BBC suggests that might be down to pronunciation - in British English they are pronounced differently whereas in American English they sound the same. No idea if that's actually the case.

edit: source:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/course/eiam/unit-1/session-34

In Australian English, there is a microscopic difference in pronunciation, but it isn't that hard to work out from context, anyway.

"British English" tends to be a rather idealised version of how Brits speak, whereas real Brits vary radically in their pronunciation of the same words.

Remember, "Brits" includes Scots, people from Northern Ireland, & Wales as well as English people.

Even amongst the latter, there those who call horses "horse-is", others who pronounce "a" as in "cat", more like "ar", so our feline friend would be a "cart", & I haven't even mentioned Yorkshiremen, Cornish folk, & a slew of others.

[Circlotron]

While we're on variations in pronunciation, here in Australia we pronounce buoy as boy and buoyancy as boyancy. Americans say booey, but how do they say buoyancy?

[SilverSolder]

One that seems to catch out Americans is affect/effect. The BBC suggests that might be down to pronunciation - in British English they are pronounced differently whereas in American English they sound the same. No idea if that's actually the case.

edit: source:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/course/eiam/unit-1/session-34

In Australian English, there is a microscopic difference in pronunciation, but it isn't that hard to work out from context, anyway.

"British English" tends to be a rather idealised version of how Brits speak, whereas real Brits vary radically in their pronunciation of the same words.

Remember, "Brits" includes Scots, people from Northern Ireland, & Wales as well as English people.

Even amongst the latter, there those who call horses "horse-is", others who pronounce "a" as in "cat", more like "ar", so our feline friend would be a "cart", & I haven't even mentioned Yorkshiremen, Cornish folk, & a slew of others.

My favourite English regional dialect:

[IDEngineer]

Americans say booey, but how do they say buoyancy?

The same way you do.

Nobody said Americans were consistent!

[vk6zgo]

While we're on variations in pronunciation, here in Australia we pronounce buoy as boy and buoyancy as boyancy. Americans say booey, but how do they say buoyancy?

In Western Australia, we pronounce the place names "Albany" & "Derby" as they are written.
In other words the "Al" as in "pal" & the "Der" as in "germ" or "term".

People from the "Eastern States" pronounce them as "Orlbany" & "Darby", causing WA folk to "grit their teeth!(just one of the many things about them that do!)

[Circlotron]

In Western Australia

Oh yeah, West Australia. 

[Ed.Kloonk]

Not Hervey Bay, in QLD.

[vk6zgo]

Not Hervey Bay, in QLD.

Don't you pronounce it "Harvey"?

[Ed.Kloonk]

Not Hervey Bay, in QLD.

Don't you pronounce it "Harvey"?

Yep. I wonder if the local Harvey Norman is pronounced Hervey Nurmon.

[vk6zgo]

Not Hervey Bay, in QLD.

Don't you pronounce it "Harvey"?

Yep. I wonder if the local Harvey Norman is pronounced Hervey Nurmon.

It only works one way round, as far as I can tell.

[PlainName]

Subscription blackmail.

Just doing stuff on my PC and message pops up: both Windows and Bitdefender firewalls are stopped. WTF?!?! A quick check shows Bitdefender completely disabled and I am already sorting out my last backup when I notice the reason it's stopped: my subscription has expired.

There is no warning that the subscription is going to expire (perhaps a week in advance or something), they just cut you off. And then provide a link to subscription renewal so you can be safe again, but it's auto-renew and costs twice as much as from a more sensible source. They are relying on the panic effect to have you renew without the chance to consider whether the competition might be nice to try this time. And, of course, leaving your PC wide open whilst this is going on - if you happen to be in the middle of surfing the intertubes, tough shit. Even worse if you happen not to be watching at the time and miss the message, then go off surfing.

[james_s]

IMHO Bitdefender is kind of scammy to begin with, I don't use anything like that. Windows firewall is free and doesn't expire, use an updated browser, install ad blocking and script blocking and don't visit sketchy sites. No need to pay for a 3rd party firewall.

[PlainName]

Windows firewall is free and doesn't expire

And is pants. Often comes well down below most other stuff in real tests. Probably isn't updated for W7 anyways.

Edit: another reason not to use it is because it's not a core product. Just like DNS and DHCP on routers, it is there as a tickbox exercise. OTOH, the likes of Bitdefender, Kaspersky and Comodo exist because of the product they are selling.

[Tony_G]

When I was a program manager at Microsoft it used to send me spare that devs would include an error code in some action, often getting written to the system logs, and then would never actually document what the hell the error code meant.

Every time I'd find one of these I'd log a bug against it and then do battle with the dev managers who wanted to keep working on new features rather than making stuff easier to diagnose. I worked on Visual Studio and not Windows which I suspect, given their inability to set ACLs on com objects correctly would have been a much harder task.

[james_s]

Edit: another reason not to use it is because it's not a core product. Just like DNS and DHCP on routers, it is there as a tickbox exercise. OTOH, the likes of Bitdefender, Kaspersky and Comodo exist because of the product they are selling.

They exist because people are convinced they need them and spend money on it. All sorts of snake oil products exist and people spend good money on them. I'm not saying that firewalls and antivirus and whatnot are snake oil necessarily, but to some degree I think they are. They create a false sense of security although they are far from infallible. I have never used a 3rd party firewall on my PC ever, I've seen a lot of problems caused by them though on other systems I've fixed for people. I haven't run a realtime virus scanner on any of my systems in quite a few years now either, and I find I have a lot fewer issues overall. Every now and then I do an off-line scan but I haven't had any sort of infection on my stuff since I started using VMs to check anything of questionable pedigree and I never browse without adblock and script blocking. The only firewall I care about is the one between the public internet and my internal network.