Comic Archive

Setting: developer office.
Max: Well, this is annoying. The ‘.office’ domain is now baked into web browser HSTS preload lists. I get an error when trying to load pages from our strictly internal plain HTTP servers that use this domain.
Heidi: It is becoming harder and harder to find sensible domains for internal DNS that do not clash with official TLDs…

Max: An obvious fix would be to make all these servers use HTTPS, but given that this network is fully isolated, making and maintaining SSL certificates is just totally unnecessary extra effort.
Steve: We can thank Macroshaft: they own this TLD, even though they barely use it. Purely out of protest, I am inclined to change our internal domain to “orifice.”

Zhang: I doubt that will last for long. The whole TLD business is so silly these days, that I fully expect ‘orifice’ to soon become a TLD, and that some company will manage to get it added to HSTS preload lists as well.
Steve: I fear you may be right. Time to dust off my OpenSSL skills, then…

Zhang: This is a fresh bug, I am sure of it. It was not there before. Let me dig in the build logs to see who I can thwack with the blame-bat…
Max: Uh-oh. I deny everything in advance. Me know nothing…

Zhang: What the heck? GitFab changed their UI, now all dates and times are in this stupid relative format? Four different builds, all “3 hours ago,” useless! I cannot even get a tooltip with the exact time!
Max: Isn't it great how mankind has spent ages on making machines that can handle time down to nanosecond accuracy, only to make them this sloppy again?

Zhang: I can smell your sarcasm… I also hate these relative dates, especially in a context like this.
Heidi: Fear not, I have excavated the settings, and found the almost hidden option for date display.
Zhang: You are my hero, Heidi. Unfortunately now I can see you are to blame for the bug.
Heidi: A good deed never goes unpunished.

Max: I am getting the weirdest errors from these code snippets that I directly copied from the code review UI. The interpreter claims these functions do not exist, while they are defined just a few lines up.
Heidi: That makes no sense, let me check.

We see a close-up of a monitor with some Python code and hexadecimal characters.
Heidi: Wait a minute… When I use the arrow keys, the cursor does not always move. There must be invisible characters.
Max: Let's look in a hex dump… Damn, you're right! There are zero width no-break spaces. What the heck?
Heidi: Maybe the tool fails to clean up Unicode BOM characters.

Zhang: Invisible characters exist that break things? Oh man, this is a goldmine for QA testing! Time to visit Wikipedia…
Max: Oh no, we're doomed! Damn the makers of this broken UI.
Zhang: Muahahaha…

Setting: the office during evening hours, dimly lit
SFX: Bzzkrrr…
OIB-A271: This old worn out motor is getting annoying. Luckily Heidi will return shortly after dinner with a replacement part. I may as well explore the office while nobody is here anyway… Nighttime is the right time!

OIB-A271: So, this is Alana's office. Strictly off-limits for me during the day, obviously. They really don't want her to find out the truth behind what I really am. Aha, I hear something, Heidi must be here.

OIB-A271: So, Heidi, how was dinner? I hope it was not too hard to track down a component for this ancient hardware. Maybe it is time for an upgrade…
Alana: What the heck? What's this robot doing here?
OIB-A271: Uh-oh…