glitch

A temporary or random hardware malfunction. It is possible that a bug in a program may cause the hardware to appear as if it had a glitch in it and vice versa. At times it can be extremely difficult to determine whether a problem lies within the hardware or the software. See glitch attack.

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glitch - /glich/ [German "glitschen" to slip, via Yiddish "glitshen", to slide or skid] 1. (Electronics) When the inputs of a circuit change, and the outputs change to some random value for some very brief time before they settle down to the correct value. If another circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading the random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic heisenbugs). 2. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is specifically called a "power glitch" (or power hit), of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers. See also gritch. 2. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, especially several lines at a time. WAITS terminals used to do this in order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the eye. 4. Obsolete. Same as magic cookie.