Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts' • Hacker News Board

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#111

Post by ska » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

setr wrote: post #100

rectangletangle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with this strategy is it isn't idiomatic to refer to someone by their full name in many contexts. However given its simplicity, and cultural neutrality, a single full name field should be the default choice IMO.

Full name: Nickname: and then refer to them by their nickname, which can be whatever they like to be called, in whatever land they come from and no programmer has to care about human naming conventions ever again

even better: "Preferred form of address" or whatever, as nickname has a very informal connotation.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#112

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

setr wrote: post #100

rectangletangle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with this strategy is it isn't idiomatic to refer to someone by their full name in many contexts. However given its simplicity, and cultural neutrality, a single full name field should be the default choice IMO.

Full name: Nickname: and then refer to them by their nickname, which can be whatever they like to be called, in whatever land they come from and no programmer has to care about human naming conventions ever again

[deleted]

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#113

Post by Timmah » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #54

qume wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that was downvoted. I guess these people aren't aware of Nimoys extensive practical jokes with Shatner. But even so, why would anyone downvote this?

Because jokes are generally frowned upon.

That was the HN of yore. Now it's much closer to Reddit circa 2011. Reddit is now Facebook circa 2010. (I don't know what fb is these days, but it doesn't sound good).

The mods here should have capped new accounts years ago and permanently welded the lid closed.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#114

Post by ktpsns » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 10:56 PM UTC

tokai wrote: post #41

I have an ø in my name. It is especially annoying when entering payment details and I have to input my name as it appears on my credit card. It is surprisingly often that only ascii is accepted. I would guess the anglo-internet is hell if you're from Asia.

In Germany, transliterations are widespread and officially accepted. Ö=OE, Ä=AE, Ü=UE, ß=SS makes it fine to write Hübner as Huebner even in the passport and other official documents. I wonder why other countries do not allow transliterations as a legal way to deal with anglo-centric character sets?

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#115

Post by malikolivier » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 11:28 PM UTC

I had the same issue with Facebook. I could not write by birth first name (in a language other than English). It was considered "offensive" by the filters in that specific language.

I ended up including some non-printable unicode characters in my first name, and after a few tries, it worked :). At least my name is now shown properly, even though the bits are not correct.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#116

Post by x1798DE » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

I think it's interesting that the article mentions that they "haven't solved the Scunthorpe problem". I always thought of the Scunthorpe problem less as something to be solved and more as a cautionary tale about the folly of attempting to implement censorship software.

It's like the DRM problem. It's incredibly difficult if not impossible, and the goal itself is dubious.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#117

Post by peterburkimsher » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 12:08 AM UTC

The name I was born with, Burkimsher, is always misspelled when people type it.

I had a chance to choose my own Chinese name. I had friends with amusing names: Yi-ting was eating, Wei-ting was waiting, and let's not mention Shi-ting. Those are all quite normal names there! I laughed at first, but realised that I remembered their names much better than other friends.

So I chose my name to be 台平, Tai-ping. Because I'm typing. This is now my legal name on my ID card there!

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#118

Post by peterburkimsher » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 12:13 AM UTC

modells wrote: post #96

A boy named Sue Drop Database Null. Johnny Cash strums

Or Little Bobby Tables from XKCD.

https://xkcd.com/327/

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#119

Post by Alex3917 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:19 AM UTC

imh wrote: post #105

School-Cotton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even arbitrary text doesn't cut it -- not all names can be represented in Unicode.

Sounds interesting. Any examples?

Only around half of all languages even have a writing system.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#120

Post by telotortium » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:40 AM UTC

imh wrote: post #105

School-Cotton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even arbitrary text doesn't cut it -- not all names can be represented in Unicode.

Sounds interesting. Any examples?

languages with logo graphic writing systems, such as Chinese and Japanese. I think for governmental purposes there is a set of allowed characters, but people may consider the true form of their name to be written with a rare character that's not in unicode.