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

People with names that break computers

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 288 posts

Re: People with names that break computers

#71

Post by ryandrake »

apozem wrote: post #67
HoopleHead wrote: post #62

It doesn't even have to be an "edge case", as stated in the article. My first name has a single accented vowel and breaks tons of online forms. What annoys me is not so much having to re-enter my name with the unaccented version of the vowel, it's when the form throws up an error message saying "Enter a Valid Name" [or suchlike]. I find that insulting. At least make your error text put the blame where it belongs: "So…

These kinds of limitations are fascinating because they reveal the cultural biases (and I don't mean bias in the negative sense) of their creators. A Western, American system might not be designed to accept names with accents and vowels because who has those in the States? Anecdotally, I also heard of a female games journalist who had trouble using a VR headset because she wore mascara. It threw off the eye tracking…

> These kinds of limitations are fascinating because they reveal the cultural biases (and I don't mean bias in the negative sense) of their creators. A Western, American system might not be designed to accept names with accents and vowels because who has those in the States?

My guess would be on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands? It's 2016. There are very few good reasons left to assume text == ASCII anymore.

Re: People with names that break computers

#72

Post by uremog »

subway wrote: post #64

A few years ago I ordered a custom license plate 'NULL'. What should have been a 2-3 week process lasted 8 months, with the order being canceled multiple times, and at one point a blank plate being shipped to the county clerk's office. More recently I've gotten out of a parking ticket in a certain municipality when a frustrated meter maid told me they saw my plates were valid, but the handheld device used to issue ti…

Best life hack.

Re: People with names that break computers

#73

Post by Klathmon »

apozem wrote: post #67
HoopleHead wrote: post #62

It doesn't even have to be an "edge case", as stated in the article. My first name has a single accented vowel and breaks tons of online forms. What annoys me is not so much having to re-enter my name with the unaccented version of the vowel, it's when the form throws up an error message saying "Enter a Valid Name" [or suchlike]. I find that insulting. At least make your error text put the blame where it belongs: "So…

These kinds of limitations are fascinating because they reveal the cultural biases (and I don't mean bias in the negative sense) of their creators. A Western, American system might not be designed to accept names with accents and vowels because who has those in the States? Anecdotally, I also heard of a female games journalist who had trouble using a VR headset because she wore mascara. It threw off the eye tracking…

Wasn't there a thing that happened a while back where a fitness tracker was found to not work with darker skinned individuals?

Re: People with names that break computers

#74

Post by lostlogin »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #44
teej wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, programmers do not have the tools to perfectly handle the complexity of human language. It's a hard problem.

Names are an incredibly tiny subset of human communication, and if we were having a beer at the bar, I'd take a swing at arguing that they're not part of language at all.

Unfortunately they are the part of communication that we hang the whole communication on. If we identify people by any other part of the conversation we would have the same trouble I'm sure.

Re: People with names that break computers

#75

Post by phillc73 »

sevensor wrote: post #39

I received a Dutch surname as a second middle name. I can never use it -- the "Van" alone is enough to break things. But even without "Van", having two middle names usually does not compute. I've seen people who lack middle names entirely have the opposite problem and insert the middle initial "X" just to satisfy the system.

My wife and son have no middle name. An ex-girlfriend also had no middle name. I would have thought it's pretty common.

Re: People with names that break computers

#76

Post by [deleted] »

subway wrote: post #64

A few years ago I ordered a custom license plate 'NULL'. What should have been a 2-3 week process lasted 8 months, with the order being canceled multiple times, and at one point a blank plate being shipped to the county clerk's office. More recently I've gotten out of a parking ticket in a certain municipality when a frustrated meter maid told me they saw my plates were valid, but the handheld device used to issue ti…

[deleted]

Re: People with names that break computers

#77

Post by uremog »

Klathmon wrote: post #73
apozem wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kinds of limitations are fascinating because they reveal the cultural biases (and I don't mean bias in the negative sense) of their creators. A Western, American system might not be designed to accept names with accents and vowels because who has those in the States? Anecdotally, I also heard of a female games journalist who had trouble using a VR headset because she wore mascara. It threw off the eye tracking…

Wasn't there a thing that happened a while back where a fitness tracker was found to not work with darker skinned individuals?

I recall Kinect had the same problems.

Re: People with names that break computers

#78

Post by gbvb »

silveira wrote: post #28

I have a first name composed of two names, and one of them with an acute accent. This is enough to cause some of my credit cards to be printed with a repeated name because they assume my "second first name" to be a middle name too. The acute accent results in encoding problems once in a while. But nothing compares the problems that people with names longer than 30 characters have to face. Creating a SSN card, or driv…

if you are naming kids and want to save them a lot of bureaucracy in their lives, give them short names.

- Thing One and Thing Two.. I wonder if it will fail..

Re: People with names that break computers

#79

Post by phillc73 »

I have a close friend who lives in rural Ireland. That's not in a town, but on a small farm in a general area of about 15-20 other small farms. His address is just the name of the general area and the county.

The Irish postal system is clever enough to know that the person with this name, in that general area lives in that house. In fact, he probably still isn't even really classified by his name, rather as the husband of his wife, whose family has been in the general area for generations.

This article made me think about how he deals with online forms. His response was that it's been a godsend that finally this year Ireland has introduced postcodes. Previously, and if the form still insists on a house number and street name, he just "bashes his head against the wall."

Post reply on HN