Awesome Bugs

February 8, 2026 · View on GitHub

============ Awesome Bugs

This repository contains a collection of "awesome", funny, obscure or unfortunate bugs in our software or hardware.

Some day it may become a talk. Or perhaps a blarg post.

The Bugs

  • Open Office Won't Print on Tuesdays <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161>_

  • We Can't Send Email Farther Than 500 Miles <http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html>_ (and its FAQ <https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html>_)

  • Bedlam DL3 <https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/me-too/610643>_

  • Print This File, Your Printer Will Jam <https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200811/print_this_file_your_printer_will_jam.html>_

  • Pokemon Sword and Shield are Crashing Roku Devices <https://gamerant.com/pokemon-sword-shield-roku-device-crash/>_

  • I Can't Install Python Packages In Portugal. Disable IPv6 to Fix <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5374>_

  • GitHub Satanically Messing With Markdown - Changes 666 to DCLXVI <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44619165/github-satanically-messing-with-markdown-changes-666-to-dclxvi?rq=1>_

  • The Infinite Loop That Wasnt <https://mgba.io/2020/01/25/infinite-loop-holy-grail/>_

  • Ocarina of Time, any% -- all of it

  • MacBook Pro Runs Hot When Charged On the Right Side and Not Left <https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find-cause-of-high-kernel-task-cpu-usage/363933#363933>_

  • Python 2 Can't Compile Bytecode Past 2038 <https://bugs.python.org/issue34990>_ (The Year 2038 Problem <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem>_)

  • IRS Site Only Delivers Stimulus Status When COERCED <https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-04-27/irs-website-hack-coronavirus-stimulus-checks-all-caps>_

  • Reboot Your Boeing 787 Every 248 Days <https://ioactive.com/reverse-engineers-perspective-on-the-boeing-787-51-days-airworthiness-directive/>_ (and maybe reboot your Windows 98 <https://web.archive.org/web/20060623143454/http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q216641&>_ too).

  • Tay, The Racist AI Bot <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)>_

  • Nuclear Gandhi <https://medium.com/4thought-studios/gandhi-and-the-nuclear-option-32c8fa251280>_

  • pytest Hangs Forever Every 50th or 150th or ...th Run <http://skybert.net/python/python-pytest-hangs-forever/>_

  • How I Cut GTA Online Loading Times by 70% <https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times-by-70/>_

  • The Racist Soap Dispenser <https://twitter.com/nke_ise/status/897756900753891328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>_

  • The Zune Bug on 2008-12-31 <http://bit-player.org/2009/the-zune-bug>_

  • The Commodore 64 locked up if the cursor was red but not if it was purple, so make sure you use the right color before starting to program <https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/20438/how-did-the-c64-lockup-bug-and-its-workarounds-work>_

  • A Haskell Compiler, Albeit a Dev Version, Really Really Wants Your Code to Type Check <https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/163>_

  • Dwarf Fortress kills cats <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yWf6BHqiWM>_ (creator interview here <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAhHkJQ3KgY>_)

  • A strangely long second on 1927-12-31 in Shanghai <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/why-is-subtracting-these-two-times-in-1927-giving-a-strange-result/>_

  • Using OCR to Fix a Hilarious Bug <https://artsy.github.io/blog/2015/11/05/Using-OCR-To-Fix-A-Hilarious-Bug/>_

  • Seattle Mazda drivers can't change the radio dial <https://www.kuow.org/stories/we-didn-t-mean-to-ruin-your-mazda-s-stereo>_

  • All you need for Russell's paradox is a big enough universe <https://github.com/agda/agda/issues/5706>_

  • Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers <https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994>_ (with a CVE <https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-38392>, an Adam Neely video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y3RGeaxksY> and a follow-up by 99% Invisible <https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mini-stories-volume-15/3/>_)

  • One pixel to make a bus look like a bear? <https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08864>_

  • Pentium FDIV Bug <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug>_

  • Debugging an evil Go runtime bug with an heat gun <https://marcan.st/2017/12/debugging-an-evil-go-runtime-bug/>_

  • print(“lol”) doubled the speed of my Go function <https://medium.com/@ludirehak/printing-lol-doubled-the-speed-of-my-go-code-e32e02fc3f92>_

  • Reptar in your CPU <https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/reptar.html>_

  • Gusto's Weirdest Bug <https://engineering.gusto.com/the-weirdest-bug-ive-seen-yet/>_

  • I broke IKEA <https://cohost.org/sirocyl/post/2891449-i-broke-ikea>_

  • Why does man print "gimme gimme gimme" at 00:30? <https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030>_

  • Even Ada Lovelace's very first program has a bug! <https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/18/ada-lovelace-note-g.html>_

  • Ubuntu MATE shows an oversized cropped United Nations flag in the panel after a system update <https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/how-to-fix-strange-un-united-nations-flag-logo-emblem-icon-issue/27449>_

  • Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43683012>_

Other Kind-of-Similar Lists

  • Dan Luu's Debugging Stories <https://github.com/danluu/debugging-stories>_

  • Bug Stories by "500 Mile Email" <https://500mile.email/>_

  • umutphp's Famous Bugs <https://github.com/umutphp/famous-bugs>_

  • Wikipedia's List of Software Bugs <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs>_

  • Russell Davidson's Specification Gaming Examples in AI <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vRPiprOaC3HsCf5Tuum8bRfzYUiKLRqJmbOoC-32JorNdfyTiRRsR7Ea5eWtvsWzuxo8bjOxCG84dAg/pubhtml>_

  • Adversarial Machine Learning <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_machine_learning>_

Contributing

If you know of a bug that should be on this list, please do send a pull request!

My bias in the list is towards bugs that are more "how is that even possible" kinds of bugs than pure "face-palming" bugs, though sometimes the line between the two is blurry. But e.g., the Gemini 5 spacecraft crashed because it had the wrong value for an important constant used to fly it -- a terrible and critical bug, but not one for the list above.

The bias is also towards technical detail, so bug reports over storytelling. If there are both available for a particular bug, definitely include the bug report and diagnosis.

But any bug so interesting it's questionable for inclusion is worth considering!