[HN Gopher] Null Island Tourist Shirt
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Null Island Tourist Shirt
Author : DaveFlater
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-12-20 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| DaveFlater wrote:
| This is simply the greatest tourist shirt of all time.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Apparently it's not a fun license plate or last name to have,
| though.
|
| https://radiolab.org/podcast/null
|
| > JOSEPH TARTARO: I had a wad of envelopes. It was like 15
| envelopes. You know, with my name and my address and
| everything. I was just like, "What the hell?" Because I don't
| really get mail. But then I open the first one up and it's
| like, "I got a parking ticket."
|
| > SIMON: What it appeared was happening was that instead of his
| Null license plate being stored as blank, every blank license
| plate was being stored as null. And so every ticket written
| without a plate number, maybe cuz the car didn't have one or
| the cop forgot to fill it in was being sent to Joseph.
|
| They even cover /u/patio11's famous "Falsehoods Programmers
| Believe About Names" essay.
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
| westmeal wrote:
| I legit giggled when I saw this, love it!
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I tried visiting Null Island but got stuck in NaN instead...
| ggm wrote:
| The palm tree leaves have got you covered
| pihentagy wrote:
| [Object object]
| markstos wrote:
| The shirt may be less funny for some residents of Butler County,
| Kansas who got swatted because a mapping firm did't resolve
| unknown locations to Null Island, but rather than to the
| geographic center of the United States. Their house.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/kansas-couple-su...
| martinky24 wrote:
| The implication that "unknown locations should default to Null
| Island", as opposed to some more robust error handling, is also
| questionable.
| NoToP wrote:
| They should default to the point at infinity.
| justinsaccount wrote:
| Some of the fault for that issue is with the application
| developers and not the mapping firm.
|
| At least one of the popular data sources does NOT return a
| long,lat coordinate, it returns a long,lat coordinate plus an
| "accuracy radius". For unknown US locations this was the
| "center" of the US plus a 1000km radius.. but most people never
| used the radius value and only blindly returned the center
| coordinate as truth.
|
| You can see this in action if you go to
| https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-precision-demo and search for
| 17.1.2.3. it comes back with (37.751, -97.822) with a radius of
| 1000km.
|
| (37.751, -97.822) being the new "adjusted" center that's now in
| the middle of a reservoir.
| arp242 wrote:
| This is also the problem with some "zero value postcodes", at
| least in Netherlands[1] - I'm not sure how that works in the
| US. People just manually fill in "1111 AA", "1234 AB", etc. and
| forms blindly accept that - it is a valid postcode after all.
| People have had their utilities disconnected, have debts
| ascribed to them, are unable to register for services, etc.
|
| [1]: (In Dutch) https://www.vice.com/nl/article/wj8b4x/wonen-
| op-postcode-123...
| Symbiote wrote:
| An older design is this one: https://github.com/gnip/null-
| island/blob/master/null_island_...
| martinky24 wrote:
| Ah, good memories of systems which were primarily tested against
| 0,0 and immediately showed issues apart as soon as they were
| tested against anything else. (radians/degrees conversion issues
| are easily hidden when working near null island, for example)
| earthboundkid wrote:
| It should be "Est. Dec. 31, 1969 19:00-5:00".
| netsharc wrote:
| And what's the difference between N/S and E/W when it's
| 0deg00'00"?
| DaveFlater wrote:
| Atlantic/Null is the same as GMT. 1970-01-01 00:00Z
| earthboundkid wrote:
| The joke is that as a person who lives on the East Coast, I
| end up with files or whatever from Dec. 31, 1969, which is a
| very random date until you realize it's localizing the zero
| timestamp into my local timezone. My brother-in-law once
| asked me why he had a bunch of photos in his photo library
| marked as Dec. 31, 1969 and I had to explain it to him.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| I was going to purchase a T but it had "England" as a state, and
| while England is in a right old fucking state, it's just not
| right.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36987839 -
| Aug 2023 (2 comments)
|
| _Null Island is one of the most visited places on Earth, and it
| doesn't exist_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35651871 -
| April 2023 (87 comments)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592960 -
| April 2023 (1 comment)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34860299 -
| Feb 2023 (1 comment)
|
| _Null Island, the most real of fictional places [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31080519 - April 2022 (37
| comments)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854780 -
| Dec 2019 (56 comments)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552176 -
| Nov 2019 (1 comment)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19329101 -
| March 2019 (1 comment)
|
| _If You Can't Follow Directions, You'll End Up on Null Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12090980 - July 2016 (54
| comments)
|
| _The Republic of NULL Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11734180 - May 2016 (15
| comments)
|
| _The Geographical Oddity of Null Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11600396 - April 2016 (14
| comments)
|
| _The Republic of Null Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10952593 - Jan 2016 (2
| comments)
|
| _A Brief History of Null Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949292 - Jan 2016 (7
| comments)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| A location that is half influenced by geometry (0 N) and half by
| politics (0 E)
| FredPret wrote:
| The first time I ran into this, I was working on an application
| that tracks delivery trucks. I wondered how - and why - the hell
| the truck got to the ocean near Nigeria.
|
| It's important to output null / None instead of zero if you don't
| have any data!
| richbell wrote:
| > It's important to output null / None instead of zero if you
| don't have any data!
|
| This is one of my gripes with Go, it's hard to express none vs
| default value. With languages like Kotlin you can either do
| `null` or created a sealed class (sum-type like) that has to be
| explicitly checked for the sentinel value.
|
| (Yes, you can use pointers, but that isn't exactly ergonomic.)
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| I'm reminded of Europe putting all publishers in their own
| country, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookland.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Here it is with UNDEFINED STATES removed:
| https://pmarks.net/put/null-island-sans-us.svg
|
| It looked out of place, because (0, 0) is nowhere near the US.
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(page generated 2023-12-20 23:01 UTC)