Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When your last name is Null, nothing works

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 310 posts

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#131

Post by dan_quixote »

zenethian wrote: post #22

The number of times that a website rejects my first name because it has a hyphen in it, even in 2025, is astounding. I get told all manner of things by support staff, like "just leave it out" as if it's just not an important part of my name or anything.

My wife is Korean. The anglicized version of Korean given names always has a space in it. This makes for a few kinds of broken naming schemes - like removing the space or the second half of the given name becomes the middle name, or the second half of the given name just truncated entirely.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#132

Post by [deleted] »

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #122
sepositus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A database had associated the word “null” with his personal information and citations were sent to Tartaro, who lives in Los Angeles. I'm not the biggest expert on databases, although I've worked with them a bit, but how does this occur in the first place? Usually, associations are done with primary/foreign keys. What database would allow null in that case?

I actually wonder if many individual cops use "null" (the ordinary word) as a shorthand for "plate not applicable," "not identified", "missing" etc - semantically the same thing as NULL in programming, but then in this case it wouldn't be a database NULL error. In theory the same thing could happen if someone had a DEALER vanity plate. (Though that choice might be rejected for obliquely referencing drugs.)

[deleted]

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#133

Post by elorm »

Ha I'm surprised no one mentioned one of the most common name maltreatment complaints. The Gaelic patronymic prefix Mc/Mac.

When treating Mc/Mac names, the first letter after the prefix is always capitalised.. e.g McDonald's, McCarthy, McCain, McCoy, McConnell etc but you're more likely to see mcdonalds, mccoy, mcconnell.

Orthographic case preservation reports were like the biggest complaints that no one was interested in fixing during a short stint in the airline industry.

That and hyphenated names.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#134

Post by muzani »

zenethian wrote: post #22

The number of times that a website rejects my first name because it has a hyphen in it, even in 2025, is astounding. I get told all manner of things by support staff, like "just leave it out" as if it's just not an important part of my name or anything.

Some people here have an apostrophe. Names like Ainul can be 'Ainul. And I guess the Bobby Tables equivalent is Ai'null. It's due to arabic sources, where A and A' are different letters like o and ö. I used to do some consulting for the home ministry, and these legal names are all over our databases.

I imagine apostrophes would be a complete nightmare for most countries to sanitize or validate.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#135

Post by muzani »

walthamstow wrote: post #106
fph wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the definition of an "international language" that makes Esperanto the most widely spoken one? Isn't Arabic an international language, for instance?

For that matter, isn't English? It's an official language in many countries, such as South Africa, India, and Ireland, each of which has other official languages.

Especially in Asia, where it's not exactly a primary language for anyone. It's funny that you'll be in a room with Chinese, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Indonesians, Ukranians, and everyone will speak English. I once saw a documentary which went deep into Borneo, via rivers, to a tribe that didn't wear shirts, and they spoke fluent English too.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#137

Post by beeflet »

y33t wrote: post #117
aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #70

This is hilarious: Even those without the last name Null are finding themselves caught in the void. Joseph Tartaro got a license plate with the word “NULL” on it nearly 10 years ago. The 36-year-old security auditor thought it would be funny to drive around with the symbol for an empty value. Maybe a police officer who tried to give him a ticket would end up writing null into the system and not be able to process it,…

IIRC the court told him the only way that he'd be able to stop getting other people's tickets in the mail would be to get a new plate. Otherwise he'd have to keep coming back to court to get them thrown out.

I wonder how many times you could come to court with bogus cases until they patch the software

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#138

Post by impish9208 »

dwaltrip wrote: post #59
drpossum wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this mandatory? Who made the mandate?

It’s a bit. It’s quite popular to link an xkcd whenever it’s relevant, along with one of a few different catch phrases. “Mandatory” being one of those. For this phrase in particular, the joke is that there is usually an xkcd for most situations, and that it is our “duty” as nerds to link to the appropriate one. It’s an inside joke for nerds. I hope this explains the custom to you.

> It’s an inside joke for nerds.

I love inside jokes. I hope to be a part of one someday.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#139

Post by [deleted] »

tjalfi wrote: post #129
fph wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the definition of an "international language" that makes Esperanto the most widely spoken one? Isn't Arabic an international language, for instance?

Esperanto is probably the most widely spoken international auxiliary language[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_auxiliary_langua...

[deleted]

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#140

Post by bustling-noose »

humans should come with a big UUID that is generated at a central database to keep out duplicate and then just a name without any last name for social connections. this would also solve discrimination on many levels. would be a nightmare for privacy and tracking but we are all being tracked anyway.
Post reply on HN