5 ms·

Null Island Tourist Shirt

103 points by DaveFlater 3y ago

DaveFlater 3y ago
This is simply the greatest tourist shirt of all time.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Apparently it's not a fun license plate or last name to have, though. https://radiolab.org/podcast/null 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-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
  - fostware 3y ago
    A friend had the numberplate 'NULL'. Quite often carparks with numberplate technology would go all 'Hotel California' on him - wouldn't let them out until he called someone to remotely activate the boom to let him through. Eventually the councils and carpark operators caught on.
  - xp84 3y ago
    Such an excellent essay about those falsehoods. My biggest frustration about names though, is that even if I “do it right” more or less by allowing a full name to be a single column with loose “validation,” the next thing I’m confronted with is some stupid integration point whose API demands exactly “first name” and “last name” and we’re stuck parsing our nice single name field up into random slices. Mostly because someone wanted to get cute by uselessly greeting you with a “Hi, Bob!” or they think those circles with exactly 2 initials are a good substitute for putting names on the screen.
westmeal 3y ago
I legit giggled when I saw this, love it!
nyanpasu64 3y ago
I tried visiting Null Island but got stuck in NaN instead...
- ggm 3y ago
  The palm tree leaves have got you covered
frank_bb 3y ago
[dead]
pihentagy 3y ago
[Object object]
- throwaway1e3 3y ago
  I imagine test@test.com receives a lot of mails. There is an official domain reserved for this type of use (example.com). There's also a dedicated TLD (.test), but that is probably used even less.
markstos 3y ago
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-sues-ip-mapping-firm-for-turning-their-life-into-a-digital-hell/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/kansas-couple-su...
- martinky24 3y ago
  The implication that "unknown locations should default to Null Island", as opposed to some more robust error handling, is also questionable.
  - NoToP 3y ago
    They should default to the point at infinity.
    - dwattttt 3y ago
      I mean, they should default to an out of band error; these days, especially for something as high level as mapping, there's no good reason to need to fold "this is an error case" in with "this is a set of valid coordinates X"
      - NoToP 3y ago
        Psst, the math joke here is that "the point at infinity" is literally the mathematicians version of folding in "this is an error case" with "valid coordinates". The "error case" in question being division by zero. Turns out there is good reason to do it, because it means the co-ordinate is always defined.
        martinky24 3y ago
        If you have to explain the joke...
Symbiote 3y ago
An older design is this one: https://github.com/gnip/null-island/blob/master/null_island_2013.svg https://github.com/gnip/null-island/blob/master/null_island_...
quickthrower2 3y ago
A location that is half influenced by geometry (0 N) and half by politics (0 E)
martinky24 3y ago
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 3y ago
It should be "Est. Dec. 31, 1969 19:00-5:00".
- netsharc 3y ago
  And what's the difference between N/S and E/W when it's 0°00'00"?
- DaveFlater 3y ago
  Atlantic/Null is the same as GMT. 1970-01-01 00:00Z
  - earthboundkid 3y ago
    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.
    - tialaramex 3y ago
      Another thing that will cause 31 December 1969, regardless of timezones, is the use of -1 as a sentinel value, because taken as a literal time value that's one second before the start of the epoch, and thus it's also on 31st December 1969. But if you checked the time and it's some hours off, rather than a second or two, then yes, that's timezones.
      - netsharc 3y ago
        Well, isn't the number always interpreted as seconds (or milliseconds) at UTC? In theory if the system's timezone is set to e.g. +10:00, -1 (seconds) is 1970-01-01 09:59:59 local.
      - erik_seaberg 3y ago
        Be careful out there; back in 2006 I learned the hard way that FROM_UNIXTIME(-1) would instantly crash the MySQL build we had in prod.
CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
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 3y ago
Related. Others? Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36987839 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35651871 - April 2023 (87 comments) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592960 - April 2023 (1 comment) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34860299 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31080519 - April 2022 (37 comments) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854780 - Dec 2019 (56 comments) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552176 - Nov 2019 (1 comment) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19329101 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12090980 - July 2016 (54 comments) The Republic of NULL Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11734180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11734180 - May 2016 (15 comments) The Geographical Oddity of Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11600396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11600396 - April 2016 (14 comments) The Republic of Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10952593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10952593 - Jan 2016 (2 comments) A Brief History of Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949292 - Jan 2016 (7 comments)
- DaveFlater 3y ago
  https://wiki.c2.com/?ZeroMeansNull https://wiki.c2.com/?ZeroMeansNull (Created by me long time ago)
FredPret 3y ago
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 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
I’m reminded of Europe putting all publishers in their own country, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookland.
p1mrx 3y ago
Here it is with UNDEFINED STATES removed: https://pmarks.net/put/null-island-sans-us.svg https://pmarks.net/put/null-island-sans-us.svg It looked out of place, because (0, 0) is nowhere near the US.
- 3dGrabber 3y ago
  It’s a pun. Undefined (program) state(s). Also, there are some NAN’s hidden in the palmtrees.
thih9 3y ago
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island > 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. 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.

103 points by DaveFlater 3y ago

DaveFlater 3y ago

This is simply the greatest tourist shirt of all time.

ceejayoz 3y ago
Apparently it's not a fun license plate or last name to have, though. https://radiolab.org/podcast/null 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-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
- fostware 3y ago
  A friend had the numberplate 'NULL'. Quite often carparks with numberplate technology would go all 'Hotel California' on him - wouldn't let them out until he called someone to remotely activate the boom to let him through. Eventually the councils and carpark operators caught on.
- xp84 3y ago
  Such an excellent essay about those falsehoods. My biggest frustration about names though, is that even if I “do it right” more or less by allowing a full name to be a single column with loose “validation,” the next thing I’m confronted with is some stupid integration point whose API demands exactly “first name” and “last name” and we’re stuck parsing our nice single name field up into random slices. Mostly because someone wanted to get cute by uselessly greeting you with a “Hi, Bob!” or they think those circles with exactly 2 initials are a good substitute for putting names on the screen.

westmeal 3y ago

I legit giggled when I saw this, love it!

nyanpasu64 3y ago

I tried visiting Null Island but got stuck in NaN instead...

ggm 3y ago
The palm tree leaves have got you covered

frank_bb 3y ago

[dead]

pihentagy 3y ago

[Object object]

throwaway1e3 3y ago
I imagine test@test.com receives a lot of mails. There is an official domain reserved for this type of use (example.com). There's also a dedicated TLD (.test), but that is probably used even less.

markstos 3y ago

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-sues-ip-mapping-firm-for-turning-their-life-into-a-digital-hell/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/kansas-couple-su...

martinky24 3y ago
The implication that "unknown locations should default to Null Island", as opposed to some more robust error handling, is also questionable.
- NoToP 3y ago
  They should default to the point at infinity.
  - dwattttt 3y ago
    I mean, they should default to an out of band error; these days, especially for something as high level as mapping, there's no good reason to need to fold "this is an error case" in with "this is a set of valid coordinates X"
    - NoToP 3y ago
      Psst, the math joke here is that "the point at infinity" is literally the mathematicians version of folding in "this is an error case" with "valid coordinates". The "error case" in question being division by zero. Turns out there is good reason to do it, because it means the co-ordinate is always defined.
      - martinky24 3y ago
        If you have to explain the joke...

Symbiote 3y ago

An older design is this one: https://github.com/gnip/null-island/blob/master/null_island_2013.svg https://github.com/gnip/null-island/blob/master/null_island_...

quickthrower2 3y ago

A location that is half influenced by geometry (0 N) and half by politics (0 E)

martinky24 3y ago

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 3y ago

It should be "Est. Dec. 31, 1969 19:00-5:00".

netsharc 3y ago
And what's the difference between N/S and E/W when it's 0°00'00"?
DaveFlater 3y ago
Atlantic/Null is the same as GMT. 1970-01-01 00:00Z
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  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.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    Another thing that will cause 31 December 1969, regardless of timezones, is the use of -1 as a sentinel value, because taken as a literal time value that's one second before the start of the epoch, and thus it's also on 31st December 1969. But if you checked the time and it's some hours off, rather than a second or two, then yes, that's timezones.
    - netsharc 3y ago
      Well, isn't the number always interpreted as seconds (or milliseconds) at UTC? In theory if the system's timezone is set to e.g. +10:00, -1 (seconds) is 1970-01-01 09:59:59 local.
    - erik_seaberg 3y ago
      Be careful out there; back in 2006 I learned the hard way that FROM_UNIXTIME(-1) would instantly crash the MySQL build we had in prod.

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago

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 3y ago

Related. Others? Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36987839 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35651871 - April 2023 (87 comments) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592960 - April 2023 (1 comment) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34860299 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31080519 - April 2022 (37 comments) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854780 - Dec 2019 (56 comments) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552176 - Nov 2019 (1 comment) Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19329101 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12090980 - July 2016 (54 comments) The Republic of NULL Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11734180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11734180 - May 2016 (15 comments) The Geographical Oddity of Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11600396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11600396 - April 2016 (14 comments) The Republic of Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10952593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10952593 - Jan 2016 (2 comments) A Brief History of Null Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949292 - Jan 2016 (7 comments)

DaveFlater 3y ago
https://wiki.c2.com/?ZeroMeansNull https://wiki.c2.com/?ZeroMeansNull (Created by me long time ago)

FredPret 3y ago

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 3y ago
> 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 3y ago

I’m reminded of Europe putting all publishers in their own country, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookland.

p1mrx 3y ago

Here it is with UNDEFINED STATES removed: https://pmarks.net/put/null-island-sans-us.svg https://pmarks.net/put/null-island-sans-us.svg It looked out of place, because (0, 0) is nowhere near the US.

3dGrabber 3y ago
It’s a pun. Undefined (program) state(s). Also, there are some NAN’s hidden in the palmtrees.

thih9 3y ago

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island > 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. 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.