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

171–180 of 310 posts

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#171

Post by kmoser »

layman51 wrote: post #119
gxonatano wrote: post #61

My name, Ĝonatano, contains a ĝ, which is an uncommon letter outside of my language, Esperanto. But when I go to set my username to "ĝonatano," I'm often told that usernames "may only contain letters or underscores," as if ĝ weren't a letter. (You can see that I've approximated it in my HN username, but I don't need to do that on web services that correctly understand that letters exist outside of ASCII and Latin-1.)

When I do a Ctrl+F search for “Gonatano” one of the search results is the actual name as typed with the circumflex. I think that is kind of a handy feature of the browser I’m using but at the same time it is sort of weird since it technically is not the same name without the circumflex, right? Also not all database systems would think the non-circumflex version is equivalent to the circumflex version. Does anyone hav…

> but at the same time it is sort of weird since it technically is not the same name without the circumflex, right?

Assuming you have a "standard" keyboard, it's not weird at all for your browser to match the diacritic when you type the non-diacritic character since presumably the diacritic would be difficult to type. Firefox's search feature even has a [_] Match Diacritics checkbox which you can enable or disable.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#172

Post by Marsymars »

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.

I legally changed my name to drop the hyphen. I kept an accented character, but don't use it for legal documents or plane tickets.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#173

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

samplatt wrote: post #110
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?

There are so SO many databases out in the wild that were built by people with little regard for building them correctly - or they simply not programmers/DBA's in the first place, but their boss told them to just make it happen.

This is genuinely terrifying to think about. All the ones that are really important are correct, right...? Like medical systems and financial systems and legal and..

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#174

Post by Terr_ »

munchler wrote: post #47
lores wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time "$var" is interpolated without check into an INSERT, and any maintainer finds it easier to just check for null as a string rather than ask a DB admin or committee to update the DB after a lot of red tape and risk assessment. So... very often.

I don't buy that. The string "Null" is different from the keyword null in programming, so `if $var = null` would be false when $var is the string "Null". Note that when interpolated into SQL, the contents of $var must be surrounded by single quotes, so you end up with `insert into Table (Name) values ('Null')`, which correctly inserts the string "Null" into the table. If you were to leave off the quotes, you'd get a…

> I don't buy that.

I think you underestimate how many systems are stringly-typed, not just in terms of problematic programming languages, but data traveling between different APIs or through literal dead-tree paperwork.

They don't have to all fail at null handling, just one or two can gum up the works.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#175

Post by kmoser »

rabiescow wrote: post #161
maxchristman wrote: post #112

I have two middle names, and it amazes me how many digital systems cannot handle this in 2025. I have yet to find a bank that supports spaces in your middle name, and multiple airlines have decided to just concatenate my middle names together.

How you dont consider such scenarios setting up your database is mind boggling to me. I do this for a living, albeit, marketing databases, but how you don't realize that people from all over the world live here too and you have to account for everyone is just astonishing to me...

I think it's a combination of several factors: first, most banking and airline systems were developed back in the 1960s, and it was simply more convenient to shoehorn everybody into the first-middle-last format, especially when the majority of their customers did fit that model.

Second, this was before the government (and businesses) were so picky about everything matching perfectly, and you could get away with mismatches more frequently because you had more human eyes looking at things. Those humans would easily realize that when the customer they've known for years as "Jane Smith" shows up with a birth certificate reading "Jayne Smith," it's the same person.

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#176

Post by dang »

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,…

See the license plate section of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121116!

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#177

Post by dang »

tromp wrote: post #45

Related: Null Island [1] > Null Island is the location at zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude (0°N 0°E), i.e., where the prime meridian and the equator intersect. Since there is no landmass located at these coordinates, it is not an actual island. The name is often used in mapping software as a placeholder to help find and correct database entries that have erroneously been assigned the coordinates 0,0.…

See the "islands" section of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121116!

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#178

Post by blast »

femto wrote: post #87
Vilian wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandatory https://xkcd.com/327/

It gets to the point where you don't have to click the link. You just think "Oh, #327 again." Maybe xkcd needs its own url scheme, something like: xkcd://327 Edit: Written 8 years ago: https://github.com/biappi/XKCDUrlScheme

https://www.tau.ac.il/education/muse/maslool/boidem/97toldwr...

Re: When your last name is Null, nothing works

#179

Post by adonese »

jihadjihad wrote: post #39
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, as someone with two middle names. Both scenarios are very common.

I’ve wondered about this myself, though I only have one middle name. Do you typically enter both middle names into the “Middle Name” form field?

I have two middle names, in fact in my country legally we go with 4 names [first name, father's name, grandfather's name, and last name]. It is always a guess game when converting to only 2 names systems. In many cases I'd just go with my first name field including all of the first 3 names just to match the passport (especially for airflights booking).
Post reply on HN