When will Photoshop stop being complete garbage?

[exactspace]

I'm forced to use this with some clients, because they expect Adobe deliverables. There's sometimes where I can manage creating the same filetypes with different applications, or by own means. But Photoshop has changed very little over the last 25 years. Adobe thinks they should keep it essentially the same to stay attractive to legacy users. But now it's a complicated mess of half-working features on top of new hidden ones. It's like they never followed through with completely migrating it to a new design, and just said "Whatever, it's good enough."

So the latest quirk I have to deal with is this:

What is even a picture of? Some left over glitchy nonsense in memory? How exactly is Photoshop retreiving this? What avoids it from displaying private information? Looking at the thumbnail, you can see it's supposed to be an entirely different photo. I think the programmers forgot to release memory after it was retained, since they probably have not converted to automatic reference counting, like modern languages use. 

Oh and this was after trying to just delete a small sliver of pixels off this layer, but I cannot, because it is a smart object, and I must see the image as a file by itself.. what??

[TheDigitalDog]

First, try disabling GPU in the Preferences (Performance tab). Any better?
You can try this too: in Preferences>Technology Previews, check the box 'Deactivate Native Canvas' and uncheck 'Enable Native Canvas Rulers' options, then restart Photoshop. Does this work?

If turning OFF GPU works, it's a GPU bug and you need to contact the manufacturer or find out if there's an updated driver for it. On the Mac, that's part of the OS update(s) so if this is the latest OS version, you may need to roll back a release.
Also see: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/acr-gpu-faq.html

[exactspace]

Thanks for the tips. I remember disabling GPU for something else, and yes it is still disabled.  I also have those other options checked for another past issue. I'll have to check to see if I need to roll back a release. For now I can most of the time zoom in and out, then hide and unhide the layer.