Ask HN: What Is the Worst Software?
Somehow this question has not yet been asked here AFAIK. My phrasing is deliberately open-ended. Spotify, for sure. "Oh, you removed your SD card? I better silently start re-downloading your entire library to internal storage, nevermind the fact that there is not nearly enough free space there, I'll just crash when it fills up." "Oh, you rebooted your phone, and the SD card isn't initialized yet? Let me go ahead and do all of the above." "Oh, you want Car Mode when you're in a car? Sure thing, but only as long as the Bluetooth device in your car is one we've hardcoded." "Oh, you've never listened to one of our stupid podcasts? Must be because we haven't rammed it down your throat hard enough. Here, let's have them at the top of your home screen, and better yet, let's have some with sexually inappropriate imagery and titles. We know you don't want to see them, and we don't care." I've experienced lots of incompetent software, and lots of malicious software in my time, but Spotify takes the cake for being both at the same time. Any of the M$ office apps. They only recently disabled macros from running, and it took them decades to do that, meaning a gaping security hole was unpatched from time immemorial. I imagine this was some secret 'bugdoor' that was intentionally enabled by the NSA and then NSA went all blue team and decided to nuke it (after all the U$ infra got compromised by macros). Electron if the local comments are to be believed. Also, mouse drivers that ask you for a cloud account in order to work. Soon Intel will ask for a subscription to use the cores on your CPU, so they will be strong in this ranking, I suspect. I'll take a shot since I'm the one asking. Epic Electronic Health Records:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2021/04/08/billio... Lots of the very worst software was on odd mainframe OSes, like Univac's really alien operating system. It's dead, we'll never have the frustration of coaxing answers out of it. A German survey: https://dreckstool.de/hitlist I can personally vouch for MID Innovator. That would be PICNIC. Ransomware.