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CeruleanRuin ,
@CeruleanRuin@lemmy.world avatar

Coming down from the trees was a pretty big blunder. Nothing but losses ever since.

bady OP ,
@bady@lemmy.ml avatar

But… but we wouldn’t be having this conversation if our ancestors hadn’t done that! 🤷‍♀️

lemmy ,

Yeah that’s part of the mistake

kilroy_was_here ,

And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

KingJalopy ,

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

cedeho ,

King Mansu Musa was incredibly rich and when he went on hajj to mecca he spent much of his gold in Egypt causing a massive inflation. On his way back to Mali this has caused him needing to spend much more this time on his route through Egypt which is why he needed loans from merchants.

Dunno if this could be considered a big loss?

bady OP ,
@bady@lemmy.ml avatar

Whether many of the answers here count as a blunder or not, I’d like to say that I got way more replies than I expected and came to know about a lot of stuff I would have never heard otherwise. Thanks for sharing.

Cobrachickenwing ,

Scotland trying to colonize the Darien gap It bankrupted Scotland and forced the union of England and Scotland to be the UK.

mintiefresh ,

Buying Twitter for 44B and renaming it to X.

Hyperi0n ,

Recent or ancient, not future.

mild_deviation ,

They lost almost half their ad revenue. I’d call that recent. Of course, it hasn’t actually killed the platform…

RGB3x3 ,

Would be even more of a blunder if people just absolutely refuse to stop calling it Twitter.

Etterra ,

When the Spanish were raping the New World in the 1500s for gold, they dumped enormous quantities of platinum into the ocean because it was the wrong kind of shiny metal. Nobody in Europe had any clue how valuable the stuff was, only that it was often used to counterfeit gold. But since it wasn’t gold, or even silver, everyone thought it was worthless. This was exasperated by the fact that nobody could melt the stuff until the 1800s. But mostly it was just not yellow enough for the idiots at the time.

Hyperi0n ,

You don’t hold onto a useless material for 400 years hoping it has some value in the future.

PitzNR ,

Ever heard of the cables drawer? Bet you feel real stupid now

Hyperi0n ,

No. I pair and clean my out monthly.

collegefurtrader ,

HODL

Cleverdawny ,

The Battle of Manzikert led directly to the end of the Roman Empire, all because of mismanagement.

panggul_mas ,

Battle of Manzikert

If I saved one person the 4 calories worth of finger movements required to open a new tab and Google this themselves then I’ll go to sleep happy.

SaakoPaahtaa ,

Thank you, my bulk is saved

some_guy ,

Bah! I’m in the habit of spending those calories (history nerd) and did so before reading your comment. Still, your comment is appreciated. Also, thanks to @Cleverdawny for clueing my into something I hadn’t known.

lazylion_ca , (edited )

Cambium stock recently dropped to $10 after the CEO stepped down during their call. A large part of their problems are likely due to the pandemic shortages catching up.

But a high failure rate on their new line of switches, and high prices while starlink eats their lunch isn’t helping.

Edit: Used to be over $50.

expatriado ,

you may want mention the before stock price, that $10 needs something to compare with

Cabeza2000 ,

It was around $15.

Hyperi0n ,

It was around 50.

Cabeza2000 ,

It was $50 in 2021.

The CEO stepped down 4 days ago when the stock was at $15, as a consequence it lost one third of its value and is now at $10.

AphoticDev ,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

The Jan. 6th insurrectionists who thought Trump was going to pardon them all because they were heroes.

Piecemakers3Dprints ,
@Piecemakers3Dprints@lemmy.world avatar

Or that they were doing the middle class any favors by fucking up the nation’s credit score (as it were) with their smooth-brain fuckery. 🤦🏼‍♂️

shogun5000 ,

Are you saying that the January 6th people are responsible for the nation’s shit credit score? Please explain that connection.

Piecemakers3Dprints ,
@Piecemakers3Dprints@lemmy.world avatar

It’s not hidden news, friend.

Imgonnatrythis ,

Do you guys remember that time u/Spez took the reddit API away from third party apps?

Piecemakers3Dprints ,
@Piecemakers3Dprints@lemmy.world avatar

Oh wow, that really takes me back. 🤌🏼

grahamja ,

I wish it had the same effect as version 4 of digg. He is probably still over there, editing posts he doesn’t like.

protput ,

Unfortunately most reddit users didn’t even notice. Or just don’t care.

StarkillerX42 ,

I hope the Redditors that didn’t care about the whole thing never find their way here. I can’t imagine being that apathetic about something you use daily.

jacktherippah , (edited )

Eh. I wouldn’t hold that against them. Reddit or Lemmy is just social media. Just one small aspect in people’s lives. Pretty hard to care about something like Reddit taking away API access when you’ve got much more important things like a job, a social life and a family to care for. Even harder when you only use the official apps.

Name021 ,

Nobody cared. Only reddit addicts and power tripping jannies, who all seem to have migrated here.

idle ,
@idle@158436977.xyz avatar

Chernobyl comes to mind as the biggest fuck up ever. Whenever I think I fucked up I try to remember, it can never be as bad as Chernobyl.

Ejh3k ,

Ended up taking down the soviet union. The whole meltdown is fascinating. I read a book about it. I think it was called midnight at chernobyl, so something like it.

some_guy ,

What I know of it is mostly from the HBO mini-series that aired a few years ago. Did it really have that much impact on the fall of the USSR? My understanding was that the gradual attrition of competing with the West was the ultimate cause. I’m interested to learn more. Gonna go read some wikipedia on it.

raubarno ,

It was one of the reasons, as it required huge spending on extinguishing the reactor, draft up to a million personnel, dosimetry equipment, helicopters, thousands of trucks, then cleaning the zone around the reactor, building the sarcophagus on rush, evacuating people from the exclusion zone, digging up upper layer of dirt in a radius of several kilometers, patient treatment, and keeping everything in secret.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration that the costs of the liquidation compare to costs of a small war. Besides, the Soviets were involved in a harsh Afghanistan war.

portside ,

Yeah it struck fear, we could never fully utilize nuclear energy because people are scared.

MystikIncarnate ,

I was going to say something like the Hindenburg, but I think you have me beat.

traveler01 ,

Pretty much anything the government in my country does results in a huge loss of state funds lol

apostasie ,

Oh, a fellow German

traveler01 ,

Not German, but I’m sorry you feel that way about your government.

apostasie ,

Was supposed to be a little joke. I bet a lot of people feel this way about their country, unfortunately.

traveler01 ,

Astonishing how such pricks keep getting to government. Our democracy is a joke.

zitronen ,
@zitronen@feddit.de avatar

See what happens,when this attitude makes it go away!

andthenthreemore ,
@andthenthreemore@startrek.website avatar

Ah fellow Brit.

AlmightySnoo ,
@AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

Elon acquiring Twitter for $44B in the first place, not taking into account the subsequent blunders. He not only overpaid too much for a social media company without even understanding it, he also wrecked Tesla’s stock price as investors saw he was clearly spending too much time on Twitter and he had to panic sell Tesla shares to fund his Twitter adventure. He easily wiped out hundreds of billions from Tesla’s market cap during that time.

tko ,
@tko@tkohhh.social avatar

I would say he overpaid by exactly the right amount.

traveler01 ,

It’s too early to take any considerations on that purchase.

untracked4167 ,

It’s been almost a year.

Ryumast3r ,

The value of “X” has been repeatedly downgraded. It’s estimated at around $15b by fidelity. They’ve demolished their own brand by renaming themselves and how you interact.

This is before you get into the whole “twitter has been loaded with debt from the purchase of twitter and so is even more unprofitable than it was before” part of the debacle.

traveler01 ,

Twitter was never worth 44B in the first place. Probably X has more users now than before.

some_guy ,

It’s easy to check a fact before putting your foot in your mouth.

Twitter.com’s unique visitors declined 3.3 percent YOY in March 2023.

One of my favorite aspects of Lemmy is that bootlickers are very easy to spot and don’t have loads of other bootlickers to support them.

traveler01 ,

Not according to Elon Musk

Who has the more credible information, the literal owner of the company or some random website?

kamenoko ,

Elon Musk is no George Washington.

Ryumast3r ,

The owner of the website certainly has no reason to inflate their numbers…

traveler01 ,

Unlike previous administration, he doesn’t have investors to please.

traveler01 ,

Also I’d appreciate you didn’t take the discussion to insults.

Be respectful.

bermuda ,

I’m willing to nominate Charles II, King of Spain as a formerly alive blunder. The result of decades of Hapsburg inbreeding, he had a number of health and intellectual issues from birth and he was notably infertile. If you live in a monarchy where succession is passed down through children, it’s REALLY BAD to be infertile and be King. His death directly caused the War of the Spanish Succession, a 13-and-a-half year war that eventually involved pretty much all of western Europe and likely led to the deaths of over 1 million people.

Literally could have avoided this if the Habsburgs decided to have sex with other people.

Ejh3k ,

You should be blaming his parents, he didn’t ask for all those problems to be born with.

bermuda ,

Literally what I’m doing

Didros ,

Okay, I listen to a fair amount of history podcasts, so let’s see what I can pull out of my head for fun:

There was Rainbow Man, who famously went to sports games across America, holding up a sign that read “John 3:16” in an attempt to convert people to Christianity. He later died in a hotel shoot out where he took a maid hostage in his hotel room full of guns.

There was the time the President of America secretly went on a trip to Panama on one of two ships. While trying to show off to the president doing drills, the other ship accidentally shot a torpedo at the presidents ship. He pulled a pistol and attempted to shoot the torpedo with it.

The settlement at Roanoke, which was one of the earliest attempts by Europeans to settle in America and by the time ships got back with supplies (I believe years after they said they would be back) the settlement was empty. Still unsolved to this day.

America has dropped at least two nuclear warheads on itself accidentally, which have all failed to detonate.

Benedict Arnold was one of the best military minds ever born in America. He paid for his own troops for years, and when he asked for repayment or even his own salary, the Republicans claimed he actually owed the government money. They gave him tje reputation of only caring about money and refused to ever pay him until he finally took money from Britan to make ends meet.

George Bush senior crashed into German electrical lines and flew the plane back to base causing an international incident. He never received punishment for this and continued to fly for the military. He also did a bunch of drug smuggling and no one cared.

Look into pretty much any time people wanted to explore an area for the first time and there was most likely a massive loss of life and money. Australia and America seem to have the funniest stories of people’s attempts to name every river and mountain they see.

That’s what I got off the top of my head. :)

Malgas ,

The settlement at Roanoke […] Still unsolved to this day.

The word “CROATOAN” was carved on one of the buildings in the colony. The colonists had had friendly interactions with the native people living on Croatoan Island, which was nearby. There were later reports of native people with fair skin and beards on Croatoan Island.

So mysterious! Where could the colonists possibly have gone?

Didros ,

They were not the only white people to have ever been there though. The colonists could have been slaughtered and those were French decendents or something though. There is no way to prove what happened.

jimrob4 ,

Historian here. Prove? No. Draw a highly likely conclusion that should accompany every telling as the most likely explanation? Yes.

Didros ,

Thank you for the professional input RimJob4.

bermuda ,

Didn’t even get it right lol

some_guy ,

A Freudian Slip or a joke? Either is funny to me.

Didros ,

It’s pretty common when people want to have an edgy name in a game with name filtering. You just swap the first letters in two words. Like datfick4, bamrutt4, that kinda thing.

jimrob4 ,

No problem Dildo.

bermuda ,

America has dropped at least two nuclear warheads on itself accidentally, which have all failed to detonate.

These are known as “Broken Arrow” incidents, and at least 32 have been officially recognized by the government. Some of them were accidental releases of the bombs, others were plane (or other vehicle) crashes that contained bombs. There’s likely more that haven’t been recognized by the government. almost all of them happened between 1950 and 1980. Now that the cold war has died down, we haven’t been moving around our nuclear warheads as often and so haven’t had a new one. At least, not an official new one.

Didros ,

Good info thanks for adding on!

CanadaPlus ,

It’s pretty hard to have an accidental detonation at this point, though. Prompt criticality is tricky to achieve and easy to deliberately not achieve. Word is the newest bombs require a specific electronic sequence of fuse activations that’s stored encrypted, and would require being a superpower to reproduce, so it’s actually impossible to set them off as designed even if one was stolen.

scubbo ,

None of these resulted in losses. In fact the nuclear bomb example is notable precisely because there were no losses. They’re amusing failures or errors, but nothing was lost.

Didros ,

A nuke costs something like $80,000,000 to produce. It takes time and effort from multiple groups of people. What is an example of losses if this doesn’t count?

some_guy ,

There was Rainbow Man, who famously went to sports games across America, holding up a sign that read “John 3:16” in an attempt to convert people to Christianity. He later died in a hotel shoot out where he took a maid hostage in his hotel room full of guns.

^ Emphasis mine. I was curious about this and did a search. Turns out he’s still alive.

Didros ,

Interesting! Thanks for the update!

Mpolmanteer ,

Knight Capital - They were biggest equities trader in 2012. They manually deployed code and didn’t get configuration right and it reactivated “Powder Peg”. They lost $460 M in 45 minutes and went bankrupt.

bady OP ,
@bady@lemmy.ml avatar

Thanks for sharing. This is exactly the kind of blunder I had in my mind when asking the question, a seemingly silly mistake like forgetting to do something causing way too much trouble!

Mpolmanteer ,

It’s actually a good case for why you needed devops and an automated build/release

PhantomPhanatic ,
@PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world avatar

The program was called “Power Peg” for those googling for it. It was a test program not intended to be used on the live market.

The Power Peg program was designed to buy a stock at its ask price, and then immediately sell it again at the bid price, losing the value of the spread.

The Worst Computer Bugs in History: Losing $460m in 45 minutes

luthis ,

I get the impression that power peg is a risky google.

scubbo ,

Talk about a Nanosecond Buyout!

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