A while after that, and without being able to confirm the connection between updating and the following issue, the folders I have aliased in the Dock would not pop open when clicked on them, and the Finder would not open a new window when clicked on its icon, even though there was no other Finder window open.
It affected the Trash too, and trying to open a subfolder via context menu in any of those aliases did not work either (the contents showed up in the context menu, but the subfolders would not open up when clicked on).
Logging out or restarting would not solve the problem. Deleting com.apple.finder.plist in Library/Preferences inside my Home folder and logging out did. The file is simply where the Finder prefences are stored and it is safe to delete it, since it will regenerate itself when logging in again.
[Editor's note: You could probably also force-quit the Finder to have the changes take effect without logging out.]

