▲A friend of mine has a relatively common first name and last name, and she regularly gets mail that is clearly not meant for her. She started a Facebook group for homonyms to help her route mail, and it now have a hundred members and have helped people get important documents.
At some point, they even organized an impersonation because someone needed to retrieve an official document and couldn’t be there in person. Another member nearby offered to go and get it. “Won’t you need my ID for that? — Oh, I have one with just the right name…”
My name isn’t super known, but it happened to be the same as that of a very big fish in the financial institution I worked for.
Thankfully these people were working mostly through physical meetings and calls, so no sensitive info was leaked, but I did get calendar invites to discuss the future of entire countries as an engineering intern.
I used the name a couple times to set up our internal meetings in the fancier upper floors, so we could have whiteboard discussions over a fancy hardwoods table. No one questioned the name appearing in the entrance display as the current user.
georgeburdell5 hours ago
[-] Not identical, but I once shared most of the first name as well as my last name with a VP of research at the company I worked for, and we were in the same technical field. My (much less impressive) publication record got confused with his frequently and I always wondered if it gave me a career boost.
reply▲Nice to meet you, Jeff Lebowski.
reply▲I have a relatively rare name — I’ve actually never met anyone with my last name, never mind someone with my full name — and this happens to me regularly. Last week I got a job rejection from New Zealand post, for a while I was getting someone’s pay stub notifications from the US, etc.
I suspect it’s because I was the first to register the first.last@gmail.com address for my name. I guess it’s a bit like owning a simple noun .com domain.
I use my lastname [at] gmail (same as my HN username). Over the years, I’ve received all sorts of misdirected messages: medical, financial, support, even real estate documents. When it seems important, I do my best to contact the sender and let them know.
What I’ve learned is that “no-reply” email addresses can cause real harm in situations where it’s critical to reach an actual person.
> Over the years, I’ve received all sorts of misdirected messages […]
Looking at my text messages, surely these are a mix of serious business and the starts of scams. How unsavory to think that helping someone could be a bad thing.
My dad's first name is my last name so my last name @gmail is taken by him :)
But I have a relatively rare first name and even rarer last name due to my dad having a very rare first name, so I easily snagged first.last. Pretty sure to this day I've never even seen anyone with my dad's first name (or my last name).
Meanwhile, my coworkers name is literally Adam Smith and his usernames tend to be adamsmith2 or 3 or 4.
I once worked at a place that has two Brian Smiths who worked at desks across from each other. That was quite bizarre.
One place I worked, we had one guy with the same personal and family names of the (then) Director General of the BBC… working on a project with another guy who also shared both.
I am not the horror film director I share a name with.
I have lastname.firstname@gmail.com because first.last was already taken.
Just curious, do gmail accounts ever expire? Will I ever get the chance to snag the other one? Or does it forever belong to my nemesis and life-long enemy?
This answer is not actually correct. I have an account I deleted 18 years ago, still can’t make it again.
reply▲Unused they have a half-life. Google Voice numbers much more aggressively so.
It's somewhere in the document.
Same boat. Obscure last name humans unite!
reply▲I have firstname@alumni.largeschool.edu, and now I'm disappointed to have never received any misdirected email. I suppose no one assumes first name only addresses at large organizations.
reply▲Yea I own first.last@gmail.com for my name too and I get emails for who I think is the same person fairly often. Like job stuff, professional education emails, etc. I used to reply to them saying wrong person but have given up...the guy must not care about not getting these emails...
My first name is very uncommon and my last name is very common.
Same, albeit it seems like multiple people. Or at least someone who moves states.
It's bizarre though... who puts down an email address they don't own on a job application?!
I own tsrif.last@gmail.com and luckily I don't get any misdirected mail there.
reply▲My address is the same. Someone with my name thinks their email address is firstlast@gmail.com
Its annoying especially since we have the same bank and they are not very good at paying their credit card on time. I therefore get their bank emails. Initially
It will always have me confused as weight wait. I don't have any balance on my credit card. Was this fraud?
giancarlostoro4 hours ago
[-] I have met someone with my last name, if its not hyphenated, which mine is. My name is as unique as it gets with hyphenating. I never use my hyphenated name anywhere other than 100% legal stuff.
reply▲I'm in exactly the same situation - very rare last name, first.last@gmail.com address, wrong mail from all over including NZ.
reply▲I have a sufficiently uncommon last name to be able to figure out which branch of the family the misdirected emails are meant for. Was quite nice getting updates from the chip shop we used to get fish and chips from when we went to visit grandma, intended for someone who afaik I never met.
reply▲I have a common first initial and last name and that's my gmail and I get more email for other people than myself
reply▲> At some point, they even organized an impersonation because someone needed to retrieve an official document and couldn’t be there in person. Another member nearby offered to go and get it. “Won’t you need my ID for that? — Oh, I have one with just the right name…”
That's a felony in many places.
If it hypothetically was a crime, I wonder how often it would actually get prosecuted given someone used their real ID, showing the office failed to check anything other than a name known to have dupes, and/or given they had no intent to steal something and acted with knowledge and permission of the intended recipient, showing no malicious intent. I can imagine reasons those wouldn’t be considered a valid defense, but I guess it probably depends on what office & document & law we’re talking about.
reply▲Obtaining something of value through deception is fraud.
reply▲They didn't obtain anything, though.
reply▲Is it? An authorized agent picked up the document. Someone with matching ID picked up the document.
Where's the crime?
I have nickname@berkeley.edu as my alumni email address and I get a lot of interesting emails directed towards more important people…
reply▲It's ridiculous that the US still runs on name matching when you could just have a public Id number (unlike the SSN that everyone needs to pretend it's secret).
reply▲TheNewsIsHere1 hour ago
[-] We still have to pretend SSNs are private until both law and common practice change. I expect that to be “functionally never”. Maybe within our lifetimes. Maybe.
My SSN is out there several times over at this point, thanks to breaches at phone companies, insurance companies, CRAs, ISPs, and the rest. I stopped tracking breaches that included the kind of info you’d need to impersonate me, about six years ago. The list was long and it seemed to be a pointless exercise by then.
I also have a mixed credit file with all major CRAs because of more than one person with the same name I have, one of whom lived in the same area.
Even if I didn’t have freezes everywhere, over the phone KBAs stopped working years ago even with my SSN.
The most American approach would be for SSNs to become a de facto universal ID number that you have to give everywhere, while still continuing to function as an unchangeable password to all your most important things.
reply▲I'm Irish and have a common firstname.lastname@gmail.com
At some point the head of a national hospital thought he had that address and wasn't using his official email for everything, I got several emails that should not have been for me and some were quiet sensitive, I always emailed back the sender to let them know and eventually I emailed his secretary as it kept happening. I've also received purchase order confirmations from Australia, building contracts from Canada, HR emails from a university to which I had to confirm I had deleted the mail as letting them know led to GDPR investigation
reply▲I’m in the midst of a similar situation. My firstinitial.lastname email keeps getting very sensitive legal documents from law firms handling the case of someone who does not seem to know what their actual email address is. I called the firm and told them they needed to have an in-person meeting with their client and get a correct email address from them. That seemed to help for a few months. But now I’m getting emails again from a different law firm.
reply▲Law firms that send very sensitive legal documents over email… #sigh
I’d switch firms immediately if that’s their level of opsec awareness
stackskipton2 hours ago
[-] And I worked IT for legal firm, if we were not sending documents over email, we would get replaced by the client.
I spent 3 months on secure document transfer portal system, got scrapped after 4 months because clients wanted their forms as Word/PDF and they wanted them without hopping through any hoops.
I believe you - convenience gets picked over security all the time
reply▲giancarlostoro4 hours ago
[-] If you reread again it sounds as if the secretary was hanging out the wrong email.
reply▲Yes I know this was about wrong delivery address (person with same name, wrong account); the point is that email is not completely secure - certainly not for very sensitive (legal) content
reply▲What are you talking about? If you send emails from eg GMail to Gmail, it's fairly secure.
reply▲Gmail can be fetched via IMAP and leave Gmail's infra entirely. And I don't think Google guarantees that their implementation stays fully on their own owned infra. It's a reasonable assumption but I'd never trust that for a security guarantee.
Email is not an end-to-end secure data protocol without the use of client side encryption/decryption like PGP/GPG, but even then, sender/receiver and time are all in the envelop metadata.
Yeah, that exactly my point - no idea why I’m being downvoted on this
reply▲giancarlostoro4 hours ago
[-] Probably because Law Firms arent necessarily computer security firms. Lots of people have terrible op sec. Additionally if you the recipient are on gmail it stops mattering, now Google knows your legal woes.
reply▲Exactly, I’d never use Gmail for anything sensitive. Even for just personal emails I use my own mailserver.
(And again, for truly sensitive stuff I don’t use email at all)
reply▲Why’s that even relevant if the recipient is the wrong address? Email isn’t particularly secure anywhere, and gmail has forwarding and IMAP and aliases and other services that send emails outside of gmail. But sending sensitive documents to the wrong recipient, which was the topic that started this sub-thread, is a case where it does not matter how secure your servers are.
reply▲Even if the law firm uses a Gmail account - which most of course don’t - Google still has access to your sensitive legal email content.
(And that’s apart from the meta data leaking)
reply▲if you attach documents by linking to a Google Drive document, sure.
if you attach documents 'inside' the mail (i.e. MIME encoded multipart) that is most definitely not secure.
1) you do not know how that mail gets delivered, not necessarily via servers that support encryption
2) you do not know how that mail, or the attachment, gets stored on the local machine
3) you do now know if the mail, or attachment, is sent to someone else
4) you cannot revoke the access to the document once the Need To Known stops
In our ISMS, sending Highly Sensitive data (ex: customer data) by attaching directly to a mail, is strictly not allowed by the IT charter. We explain it during an on-boarding meeting to all new staff members. And it's a fireable offense.
MaxBarraclough14 minutes ago
[-] > I'm Irish and have a common firstname.lastname@gmail.com
At the risk of nitpicking, @gmail.com email addresses use a dots don't matter policy [0] so really you have a common firstnamelastname@gmail.com and are free to add dots wherever you like.
[0] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150
Recently learned, to my surprise, that other major providers have not followed Google’s lead on this, so there are plenty of places dont.scam..me@ is a valid email (social engineering or typosquatting).
reply▲Same here. My Google Account is something along the lines of jose86@gmail.com (a common hispanic first name + birth year; I'm German).
It's unusable. I have received full blown mortgage applications from couples in Mexico (including paystubs, tax forms, credit ratings, phone bills, passports). Mostly, these days, it's transaction notifications for a guy in Nigeria and phone bills for people in South America.
I have a canonical gmail address for what I thought was not such a common name pair. I get so much sensitive stuff. I used to email the sender but I have given up. One of them runs a business and the businesses that interact with his business just keep emailing me. Or stop for a couple of years, change personnel and start right back up.
reply▲There are several people with my name at the company I work for. I frequently get email meant for someone else.
Worst was at another company where a person with the same name has just left, so they gave me that email address. Turned out he was subscribed to several Confluence pages for which I now received updates. But I didn't get his Confluence account, so I couldn't unsubscribe from those updates.
Couldn't you reset the password since you have access to the email address?
reply▲Might have been using company SSO.
reply▲SSO indeed. I forgot if it was ever solved before I left.
reply▲My spouse suffers from this as well. It's bananas to me how many people use that email address clearly thinking it's theirs.
reply▲I have myname.wifename@gmail.com (we use it for bills, children activities, and other family stuff where you can't register more than one email address).
Neither of our names can be confused with a last name and yet I had multiple people writing to it incorrectly, including: as the email attached to a Diners credit card (I called Diners and they asked me what's the right one and "if I don't know the right one how do I know that it's wrong"), as the email for a school 400 km from home (another family must have had the same idea), once for some lawyer stuff (I then learnt that about 100 people in Italy do have my wife's name as a very uncommon last name), and lately as the recovery email for another Google account.
What a weird world. :)
Edit: side note, your username is also the name of my favorite fusball table maker.
YES! I have no idea if we're related, but imagine the surprise when you "first get internet at home", and my father and I decided to search our surname on Altavista, and we found foosball tables and tournaments!
reply▲Damn it I was hoping you were going to reply "that's my family!" :D
reply▲citizenkeen4 hours ago
[-] Your use case is why I bought my own domain name. My wife and I create shared aliases we can both send from. It’s made spousal ensuing with schools so much easier, etc.
reply▲I used to get email for an org that had a similar domain as me (they had an extra letter in the middle). Thankfully, not a very big org, I would just bounce addresses that got a lot of misdirected email and I think they shut down and that really solved the problem.
Still annoying, but not as bad as gmail. I just got an email, in Italian, about someone adding a passkey to their ebay account. No way to tell ebay it's not their address / it's not my account.
That is that we do as well, but she still has her own email account that I presume she'll keep as long as Gmail exists.
reply▲I have a similar username on a "social media" site as the founder's username. I would get hateful personal messages, requests for favors, begging for money, etc., constantly. At first I would respond to correct people, but after years and years I stopped. I just disable notifications for that site and never read my mailbox, personal messages, etc. This has been going on for about 19 years now.
reply▲That is so incredibly smart. I have a very common gmail address (initial + last name) and literally hundreds of people use this mail address and I would love to resolve the countless issues I can witness from getting the mails alone, but I essentially have no chance at all.
reply▲I did a similar thing during lockdown Covid era. Got online and rounded up everyone with the same name as me as we all decided not to tarnish the name, to build respect on the name, and each of us to excel in our fields. It was powerful. One’s a musician/DJ in buenos aries, the other a mechanical engineer for SpaceX, me - a software leader, another is a luthier making traditional folk instruments, and one is a writer across the pond in the EU.
A few years later Tina Fey did those commercials where she pulled in other Tina Feys and we all messaged the group like “Hey! They did it too!”. I’m sure many others did it. The world is so connected now that you should reach out and learn about your “alter-egos”.
Anyways, this reminded me of that and it’s nice to see other people have similar experiences being weird with, I guess themselves.
I once worked at a company whose lawyer shared the same first and last name. Rarely I would get an email and then a "please don't read that, delete immediately" afterwards.
reply▲The other end of the spectrum has its own problems too. My first and last names are both quite rare — deliberately so, thanks to my parents. That means when someone, say a potential employer, googles my name, it’s reasonable for them to assume every result they see is about me.
For a while, I actually liked that. It felt like having a unique identity online. Until one day I discovered someone else had created a YouTube channel under the exact same name. Presumably they happen to share this unusual combination legitimately — but the content on that channel wasn’t exactly what I’d want showing up when someone searches for me.
I tried to “correct the record” by setting up my own channel, just to add some better signals. But since YouTube isn’t my thing, my videos barely register, and Google still insists on showing the other person’s channel first.
reply▲I wonder if I'm accidentally doing that to someone.
My complete name is rare, but I share it with a journalist who's quite a bit older than me.
This is why actors and musicians use stage names.
reply▲My firstname / lastname isn’t common but if you google it you get a disbarred attorney with the same name. I’ve been asked on interviews about being disbarred; I know then that someone at the company is a sloppy “researcher”.
reply▲Dennis Ritchie (co-inventor of the C programming language) had a page on his personal web site called “My other lives” with a list of other Dennis Ritchies.
“Outside of my main professional career, I have accumulated other WWW-recorded accomplishments and have other interests. Generally I pursue these interests using separate mail addresses, SS#, and DNA.”
It's preserved here:
https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/other...
This made me feel the world is huge and I know nothing about the lived lives of others.
reply▲Interesting look into what Zuck and other mega celebrities experience day to day. I'm sure Zuck and others of a certain stature have many protection layers, but surely some things slip through and it's interesting to consider those just a tier lower that can't afford all of the security, etc.
Reminds me of the Bill Murray quote: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it."
It's something to remember when considering the reactions and attitudes of extremely high profile people. If you've ever felt bad because of a shitty comment posted by someone you don't know, you have just a fraction of what some people have to endure. Even when you know the comments are unreasonable and 'haters gonna hate' there's still some damage done.
High profile figures may appear distant, callous, or even fully radicalised by that onslaught. While you shouldn't have to blindly accept poor behaviour from people just because of their fame, I think you should still try to have compassion for their situation. If you think in terms of a bad person compared to bad behaviour we risk normalising a response to that behaviour that creates a feedback loop that exacerbates the problem.
Part of me wonders if there is nothing to be done. Perhaps the worst of people will still create enough poor feedback for someone famous enough. Will the majority being more compassionate mitigate the problem, I'd like to think so.
I wonder if the emergence of "virtual celebrities" like VTubers has anything to do with that. Seems like the best of both worlds: You get the loyal fanbase and positive energy of a celebrity, but can also simply "log out" of that identity if it would negatively impact your "real" life.
reply▲Depends. If you are a really recognisable persona and you just log out one day, then expect a bunch of psycho-fan creeps looking for you in the real world.
reply▲Yeah, they'll probably always be a small number of creeps who try to doxx you, unfortunately. But I think it's still the difference between "a small number" and "everyone who has seen you on screen at some point".
An identity that is obviously constructed (like VTubers) at least signals to the audience that the real person behind the character would like to stay anonymous. I think the majority of fans would respect that wish.
Whereas celebrities who make their real-life identity into a brand - even if that brand is an obvious fiction as well - signal the opposite to their audience.
If you've ever run into Bill Murray in public, he very clearly enjoys being famous. However, I can imagine he would like the ability to turn celebrity status and recognizability on and off at will.
reply▲makeitdouble9 hours ago
[-] Yes. Outside of the sheer security, people telling rich people they're fake will just warrant a cute condescending laugh and they go on with their life, while the guy here is basically denied his identity.
reply▲With the Internet, you can now be famous, without being rich.
Many of the truly rich people are quite anonymous. The billionaires you read about are really just the tip of the iceberg.
Plus fame minus rich is probably not great. You can get a lot of unwanted attention that you can't avoid by moving or hiring guards.
reply▲Related phenomenon: So-called "Lolcows". Over here in Germany, we have the infamous case of "Drachenlord", a Youtuber that had a lot of negative interactions with his "fanbase" to the point that one could argue he was dependent on being harassed.
reply▲Also interesting how the definition of "famous" has changed due to that: We now have thousands of "micro-celebrities" who undoubtedly have a fan/celebrity relationship with their specific audience, yet are completely unknown to a wider audience. So even fame is now a relative term.
reply▲citizenkeen4 hours ago
[-] The Warhol Corollary: In the future, everybody will be famous to fifteen people.
reply▲Rich is relative. Famous YouTubers/streamers/etc making even a few hundred thousand a year would be considered rich by much of the world.
reply▲Yup, but the number of "influencers," even making six digits, is small.
A couple months ago, I was at a stoplight, and this kid in an old beater was in the left-turn lane, to my left.
He had a steadycam rig in the passenger seat, and was nattering on about something.
Small relative to the number of total influencers maybe, but I'm not sure it's a small number in absolute terms. There are an estimated 12 million full time influencers in the US, and approximately 1% of them have 100k+ followers. That means 120k people likely are making 6 figures at a minimum. Influencers with smaller audiences can still make significant income depending on engagement, sponsorship, demographic, hours worked, and platforms they are operating on.
reply▲Six figures ain't what it used to be.
I suspect a majority of folks on this forum make over six figures.
Not sure how many of us can afford bodyguards, though. Bodyguards make a lot. I know a couple.
We would need to define "famous", because just because someone has a steady cam doesn't mean they're famous :P I would think the amount of "famous" "influencers" making that much is a much higher percentage.
Outside of that Twitch leak some years ago, is there any reliable data on how much content creators make?
Fair 'nuff. Certainly not something I feel like dedicating any time to researching.
I suspect that the number of folks that need bodyguards, but can't hire them, is nonzero.
The website security model breaks down when people constantly try to enter your password.
The currently model assumes good behavior by most people most of the time in order for basic web services to function. Seems like an obvious vulnerability to malicious activity.
I’ve heard stories of celebrities having things like hotel room and rental car reservations canceled because people thought they were playing a prank.
reply▲withinboredom4 hours ago
[-] This is why people like my wife exist. They solely are the “human in the loop” on reservations making sure a human on the other side knows it’s legit. It’s a fascinating field.
reply▲This is why we should replace names with uuids.
reply▲That would make parties a bit awkward, but it would avoid collisions.
reply▲Hi,my name is 1bd0a30d-b415-4747-9650-f1f6e530cd2a, can I get you something to drink?
reply▲What a coincidence! That's my name too!!
reply▲As The Clash booms through the speakers
reply▲Lock the taskbar, lock the taskbar!
reply▲Hmm, yes, I don’t know what I want, but I’m sure we’ll hash it out together
reply▲reply▲JMBG? One of the ex-YU countries?
reply▲Yes, Croatia moved to OIB, which is randomly generated unlike the MBG which was derived and contains personal information, like date of birth, region and gender.
reply▲Countries don’t really want unique IDs per person, even though it would extremely simplify all administrative work, because:
- How can spies have false identities, if you can account for every individual?
- The only scalable way to get voters is not to make people switch to the opposite party, but to flood a country with people who will vote for you.
Both points sound really weak I‘m afraid. From the perspective of a ruler of a country, both are much larger attack vectors for adversaries than opportunities for myself.
reply▲> Countries don’t really want unique IDs per person
Given the number is countries that already have those and those that attempt it every few years... I'd say it's not correct.
For spies, you just issue multiple identities - the origin country shouldn't have any issues with that part. It already happened for witness protection level stuff.
For voting... yeah, that's a citation needed. Politicians mostly worry about foreigners coming to vote.
That's BS, you can have spies with or without unique IDs, and there's better ways to get votes than creating fake people.
Also, a lot of countries do have IDs...
Biometrics have made it very hard for spies to have many different identities.
reply▲marginalia_nu9 hours ago
[-] I propose we use UUIDv4 to interfere with any attempts to build demographic databases.
reply▲I strongly suggest UUIDv7, with our birthdate encoded as time.
Ordering the world population by birthday becomes so easy. Plus no endless discussion on wether or not we should use UUID as primary key.
People wouldn’t be fond of their name divulging exactly how old they are.
reply▲augusto-moura3 hours ago
[-] It's not a matter of being fond of, we're trying to be efficient here
reply▲withinboredom4 hours ago
[-] I mean, it’s not hard to guess how old people are…
reply▲Yeah but think of the automated age discrimination during resume/CV screenings.
reply▲It’s hard for that guess to be accurate, though. Some people look ten years older or younger than they really are.
reply▲At the very least names should be unique strings, preferably pronouncable
reply▲In
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin, the anarchists have names assigned at birth by a computer, guaranteed to be unique. They are gender-neutral (I think their artificial language doesn't have the possibility for gendered names) and monomial.
(I highly recommend reading the book, it's one of my favourite novels.)
They are not guaranteed to be unique as I recall, at one point the main character gets in a fight with a guy who demanded he change his name since he was tired of getting confused.
Ursula Le Guin didn't sugarcoat anarchism, at least, though I still think the depiction of the main planet system is a lot more depressingly plausible.
prashantsengar9 hours ago
[-] Correct horse battery staple
reply▲“That’s amazing! I’ve got the same combination on my luggage!”
reply▲You need to have a restricted set of allowed syllables to prevent attackers from having names with similar pronounciation to common ones.
In unique name world I would totally for a scammer telling me "Hello, my name is Marck Zuckaberg, give me all your data".
"Ohhh, if it isn't 99adbad3-f3c8-4c52-99d8-be692c62b9db again! Man, what a blast last Friday at e128001f-9737-4245-b08b-73bc50db0204's party, right?"
reply▲That's impractical. Someone made a base8192 Hangul UUID conversion, only ten characters long.
reply▲reply▲Telling Siri to pronounce the output there is absolutely wild, I may not speak Korean but can tell it’s outputting unpronounceable nonsense.
reply▲GCUMstlyHarmls9 hours ago
[-] Well obviously in your personal circles you'd still use nicknames.
99ad and e128 in this case.
First guy is "bad", second guy is "bo8b" (Bob).
reply▲I just go by Ad Bad. Yeah I know about the other guy. E7 123 and the other college friends call me Ad Bad 3 and him Ad 88
reply▲nrhrjrjrjtntbt8 hours ago
[-] But you'd call em 99ad for short in casual conversation
reply▲I feel like the names we have now already work well for casual conversations
reply▲augusto-moura3 hours ago
[-] Which version? Probably UUID v7, right? So names can be easily indexed in a btree database
reply▲As someone who already has trouble with names, I endorse this. Now everyone will feel my pain
reply▲Right after we upload minds into machines.
reply▲An IPv6 would also. Then this chap could have his website hosted on it.
reply▲A quick tattoo on the arm and your set for life.
reply▲AmbroseBierce9 hours ago
[-] Sorry but I am voting for the opposite solution, meaning:
with Session( engine ) as session:
youngest_ids_subq = (
select( func.max( People.id ).label( "max_id" ) )
.group_by( People.name )
.subquery()
)
purge_stmt = (
delete( People )
.where( People.id.not_in( select( youngest_ids_subq.c.max_id ) ) )
)
session.execute( purge_stmt )
session.commit()
unique_idx = Index( "uq_people_name", People.name, unique=True )
unique_idx.create(bind=engine)
Everyone should get their own emoji that looks just like them.
reply▲sebastiennight6 hours ago
[-] My parents had me done one for my first ID card! They called it "a photo".
reply▲Don't give the Unicode consortium ideas!
reply▲that is silly. Obviously it should be the hash of someone’s genetic code plus the hash of the mind state vector at last checkpoint (to account for twins and clones)
reply▲generic920347 hours ago
[-] Even monozygotic twins do not have absolutely identical DNA. And even with clones I bet there are many errors in cell replication, besides the epigenetic differences.
reply▲As someone moved several times in my life I could support (potentially several) personal uuid with global post routing service. Having declaring new postal address to all essential and random places one by one where I was mandated to give out to receive something I couldn't miss (authorities, banks, essential service providers, all else) is a common nuisance in an otherwise difficult period of life. Having a trustful[*] service (preferably post services itself, trusted parcel services) that translates a postal uuid to a current address each time a postal mail is supposed to be sent, current living address is righfully needed, would be a great advance (some countries have a postal address change service locally, some partially, that does similar).
[*] trustful, yes, that is a hard nut to crack! Who can be trusted with physical address and for what purpose, but in some sense it may be better for its controlled nature rather than the wild west of postal address world that we live in.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt9 hours ago
[-] Even better: social security numbers
reply▲lol, if it's downvoted that's how you know americans did it,
because people from other countries have no idea why SS number is important or what it is
reply▲Why, we got something similar in other countries. Here in NL it is called BSN; Burger Service Number (burger means civilian).
I believe the civilian should be able to create identities based on their private key (which only the government knows) and these should have different details. Like for example, a nickname, a realname, a telephone number, and address, or multiple of these. But then, also the civilian should be able to revoke the licenses. Or, rather: they should be valid for a short amount of time.
> burger means civilian
I just realised this is probably the German etymological branch of "burgoise".
Sorry to ruin your fun but in German it's actually just Bürger (capitalized because all nouns are). Though the true etymology might be entirely different.
reply▲Bourgeoisie or Burgher in English, Bourgeois in French or in German Bürger, all from old Frankish burg, for town. English has both words, but they now have different meanings, and the term Burgher is mostly obsolete.
The divide (or perception of a divide) between city dwellers and the country is not something the US invented, these divisions predate the colonisation of America.
> burger means civilian
Nice try, so you tell me that the burger hospital I passed by is not in fact a place where they patch up burgers until they’re back on their feet?
A lot of countries have a unique ID for their citizens which is used for routine identification. On websites, at the bank, etc. nothing special about SSNs in this regard, except that they were leaked more times than you can count.
> On websites, at the bank, etc. nothing special about SSNs in this regard, except that they were leaked more times than you can count.
That's not that special either. Plenty of countries make their numbers de jure public information.
The most special thing about the SSN is that the cards say (or said) not for identification, and then they're used for exactly that.
sebastiennight6 hours ago
[-] > on their private key (which only the government knows)
What? Why?
How is a key private if the government (which belongs to the public) can read/edit/use it?
Oh, we know what it is and we also know that it is terrible for identification.
Just hand out IDs with an actual unique id number with a check digit to _all_ citizens.
TheOtherHobbes7 hours ago
[-] A mix of six upper and lower case gets you nearly 20 billion unique IDs, which should be enough for a while.
If we colonise the galaxy we could increase that to seven letters.
A social security number is unique. I do agree it's better to use a different unique number.
reply▲spacechild18 hours ago
[-] At least in my country, the SSN is unique and everyone has one.
reply▲walletdrainer6 hours ago
[-] How is it terrible? SSNs rather reliably identify individual people, actual non-fraudulent collisions are very rare.
The fraud is a separate issue and SSNs are obviously misused, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a reasonable system to uniquely identify multiple people with the same name and DOB.
The fact it is tied to social security and is not called “national ID” shows already it is a legacy system, + the fact there is no authentication in place
reply▲walletdrainer3 hours ago
[-] Authentication is completely separate from identification, you shouldn’t be using any kind of ID number to authenticate anyone. That does not suggest that ID numbers are not good for identification.
reply▲See, someone told me few days ago that sarcasm doesn't work via text. Lol
reply▲Every time that kind of thing is suggested, people go on about “The Mark of the Beast.”
This is why we can’t have nice things.
What is more likely to happen is a global namespace of unique names. Famous and powerful people get to pick first, because they are more important. Names can be inherited and become signs of your class and wealth.
You get to be Bob192382, because you got in early and only had to add 6 numeric digits. In the year 2100, we're at 15 digits.
I guess people missed my sarcasm here.
See the username efforts of tech companies like Discord, etc.
> 15 digits
A billion (-1) is only 9 digits, even with only one "name" that would likely be sufficient, or 10 maybe digits at the absolute extreme.
How would this be enforced? Do you get punished on social media if you claim you are Bob?
reply▲Good for you, Mark! I had a nice chuckle.
On a more serious note, I really feel for the people that cannot get any kind of support and try to get some help by messaging "the owner" of the social network they are in. With big companies, you used to be able to get someone to talk to you when you had a problem. Not anymore. The best you can get is a well trained LLM
reply▲A couple of years ago when I still was on Facebook, I had a problem with my account being falsely accused of hacking. I believe it happened because I had been chatting with my friend about computer malware.
All my chats were gone, and I couldn't write to any of my friends. "Okay, I will just reach the tech support, and solve the problem" - silly me back then. I was genuinely shocked that there was no "Facebook support". Just a bunch of FAQs, general help, and that's it, no way to talk to anyone. I felt completely helpless and lost, really unpleasant feeling.
My account got back to normal after one day or so, but that was the day I decided to begin the process of leaving that platform.
Facebook will ban you for the most odd of reasons, but report actual gore etc? Well now, that doesn't actually violate our TOS/community guidelines/blah
Gmail/Google has the same problem but I suspect and correct me if I'm wrong that it's less surface area to ban you - unless that did happen to people on Google+? But Google+ also didn't have its founder famously tell people "...they 'trust me', dumb fucks"
> Good for you, Mark! I had a nice chuckle.
Me too! Mark S. Zuckerberg seems to be a relaxed guy with a good sense of humor. Very likeable presentation!
dan-robertson6 hours ago
[-] What do you think happens today if you mail a letter addressed to the CEO of a big company (or their office)?
reply▲Please try... for science... and write about it and post here referencing this discussion. Thanks! :)
reply▲I mean another theory is that those people are misguided and vexatious, and that this correlates with them not actually checking which Mark Zuckerberg they are sending their urgent complaint email to.
reply▲There's a lawyer in Philadelphia named Justin Bieber.
I'm not sure which would be worse.
I know the guy who had Twitter/X @Justin (also my name) early on and he would constantly get mentions for “@Justin Bieber” because people didn’t understand the space.
reply▲haha, you are in trouble, i am calling justin bieber!
reply▲Who is Justice Beaver?
---
Sorry, an old joke from The Office and I couldn't resits...
If I were him, I would start singing and sending my music as a side project.
reply▲I'd never heard of anyone with the same name as me, until '94 or so, when I put up a Web page, and some nice person with the same name contacted me.
Name-wise, apparently there are at least two instances of a Dutch man (surname) unable to resist the marriage-material charms of the Irish.
Decades later, my namesake and I have email addresses differing by one letter, and I still forward email intended for him.
My namesake is accomplished and respected, and at least once I inadvertently rode on his reputation. A remote colleague referred offhand to me being a volunteer firefighter, apparently having Web searched, and confusing me with my better namesake (whose contributions include being a fire chief).
It's good that he has his own website! I can relate (for non famous reasons) about the Facebook issues. I can't even sign up any more, using my real name anyway.
It can be a pain as so many local organisations use Facebook as a free way to share information. Unfortunately if you're not logged in pages can be rate limited, get spammed with modals to sign up, can't scroll very far into any feed and probably in his case a nuisance as a platform for his business.
matthewfcarlson35 minutes ago
[-] I am fascinated by the people who just send a request to mark zuckerburg for money in Venmo. I guess shoot your shot, it costs you nothing. But still
reply▲steve_taylor9 hours ago
[-] I once received a number of hateful mentions and DMs on Twitter because I share my name with a 60 Minutes Australia journalist who was the producer on a story about Conrad Murray (Michael Jackson's personal doctor). People really are that stupid.
reply▲I worked with a guy that shares the name with the Norwegian mass murderer who targeted children at a youth camp. I think had some pretty though years, but never changed his name.
reply▲I can't even imagine how you would go on with this name if you're living in europe as it guarantees instant recognition almost anywhere.
reply▲Depends how you use it. I see numerous possibilities of taking advantage of such "bad name". People know the real Breivik is in prison, so they will be genuinely curious. Besides, it's not like you have your name tattooed on your forehead.
reply▲How do Chinese people deal with name conflicts?
If I wanna check the internet for someone, I find it impossible because for a lot of names there's at least thousands of people with the same exact full name. It must give both a feeling of safety but also frustration if you may want to stand out.
liqilin15678 hours ago
[-] > How do Chinese people deal with name conflicts?
In a big company, there are often many people with the same name. some companies may add a numeric suffix to their name like abc1, abc2, abc3.
We usually don't use our real names for social media accounts
> We usually don't use our real names for social media accounts
It's interesting how cultural differences can make some life algorithms hardly work in some countries. I sometimes use a method to find people from my past by googling their full name, switching to the image results, and spending a manageable amount of time scrolling through them until I find the person. I've successfully used this method several times. The images are usually related to job activities or social media profiles. However, from your description, this approach probably won't work in China for at least two reasons: too many raw results and few or no social media results.
UPDATE: a follow-up question. If in a big company two or more figures happen to have the same full name and need to be exposed publicly (on a site or promotional materials), are there any tricks for this?
liqilin15676 hours ago
[-] Wow this is so rare, I can't recall any case like this.
But there are celebrities with exactly the same name, the media add a "big" or "little" prefix to their names according to age
From what I can tell, official documents rely on ID numbers, and for the social side, people can just come up with informal more unique names. But I'm not an expert.
reply▲A lot of names which are spelt differently in Chinese are translated to the same Latin spelling. So there’s a lot less conflict than it seems.
reply▲petesergeant5 hours ago
[-] Indonesia is next fucking level.
Javanese names used to commonly be mononyms, was only required that people have a surname in 2022.
In Bali, children are essentially numbered. First kid is called Wayan, Putu, Gede, or Ni Luh. Second kid is Made, Kadek, or Nengah. Third kid is Nyoman or Komang. Fourth kid is Ketut. Fifth kid? They go back to Wayan. Most of these names aren't gendered, either.
India is an interesting subject with so many Kumars and Prasads. They probably don't try to stand out with their name brand.
reply▲My ex-wife had the same name as a woman in another state who had beaten up a cop and done jail time. So every time my wife's driver's license came up for renewal, the DMV decided she was that criminal, and refused to issue the license. This happened so often, she eventually was on a first-name basis with the DMV director, who had to intervene every time. I'm guessing this problem due to the DMV in our little state using an ancient computer system, perhaps written in COBOL in the 1960s. I can just see the code now, where it compares the name, but not state of residence or any other identifiers.
reply▲Are criminals not allowed to drive?
reply▲We might be missing information, such as that the person who beat up a cop also had their license suspended.
reply▲GeoAtreides7 hours ago
[-] they sure aren't in made up stories
reply▲i had the exact same first/last name / birth year as a kid in my school (town of about 3,000) and were both “juniors” so our dads both have the same name. that makes four of us.
unfortunately that guys got some problems .. duis… domestic batteries.. drug possession ..
i have been walked out of a couple jobs for “not disclosing my record” and having to sort that out.
then the one time i did get into trouble. my expungement was denied because i had “so many priors”…… and then i had to go back and explain that NO, thats not me. it was approved.
then process servers, warrants, derogatory credit entries cause the guy doesnt like paying his bills.
i eventually got a sealed name change and that was the end of that.
dirtybirdnj3 hours ago
[-] No, those are the people who refuse to upgrade the old COBOL systems. They are allowed to drive.
reply▲Did she share the same DOB?
reply▲Polizeiposaune3 hours ago
[-] Another recent name collision story:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/british-newspaper-spoke-...(Note the slightly different spelling; the former mayor is "de Blasio", while the wine importer is "DeBlasio")
quote:
The man at the heart of a high-stakes mix-up that rippled through global political journalism in the final days of the New York mayoral campaign was neither “falsely claiming” to be former Mayor Bill de Blasio — as the Times of London suggested — nor, as The New York Times wrote, a “de Blasio impersonator.”
He is, instead, a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio, who merely responded to an email from a journalist seeking his views on Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s policies.
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio said in an interview conducted Wednesday evening through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida.
“I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor. “So I just gave him my opinion.”
failingforward2 hours ago
[-] “said in an interview conducted Wednesday evening through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida.”
We are truly living in the future.
A couple of decades ago I got sent some potentially sensitive (not sure how sensitive, I read as little as possible) employment related messages intended for someone with a name very like mine (same forename and middle name, surname differed by two typos, they also had the relevant <surname>.net domain).
I replied politely saying that I wasn't who they thought I was, and that I'd deleted the messages, and the buggers threatened to sue me if I continued to receive any more messages that they sent! This was an American firm, so there was no language barrier involved, though apparently an intelligence gap.
I didn't contact the other person until that threat, but at that point I looked him up and passed on that part of the comms trail with a “just to let you know what sort of idiots and litigious fools you are dealing with…” note.
Last I heard, the other Mike Warot was a guard at the British Museum. I'm sure there are more.
My brother in law, William Morris, got me more than one notice when his caller ID showed up at the marketing firm I used to work at. ;-)
A few years ago, I was trying to find fun things to show my friend Ward, and you wouldn't believe how many Ward Christensens there are mentioned in newspapers.com.
This must be some analog of the birthday paradox.
After we got acquired I suddenly found myself getting invitations to many many meetings I had no place in. It took me a number of years to figure out it was down to myself and the companies lead architect sharing the same given name. At the time we were the only two Jesse's in a pretty big company. The problem seems to have gone away since we hired more.
reply▲_-_-__-_-_-43 minutes ago
[-] I share my name with a corporate lawyer living a few hours away. Maybe one day I'll cash-in on that domain name.
reply▲Could anyone shed some light on the password reset email “hack”? I don’t really understand the attack sequence if the attacker doesn’t have access to your inbox. Even if you clicked them they don’t get access. My conclusion is trolling / annoyance.
The same thing happens to my Instagram account, which is an old 3-letter username that is desirable. I get hundreds of reset emails per month, all generated by the real service with legit outbound links.
willsmith724 hours ago
[-] how much are these services wasting sending out these emails? surely some rate limiting would be sensible
reply▲Compared to the torrent of actual spam this is just a drop in the bucket.
reply▲I wonder if Facebook Mark ever receives emails from people needing bankruptcy help. It goes both ways.
reply▲Mark Zuckerberg may soon sue Mark Zuckerberg about name issues.
I most assuredly would not want to be Mark Zuckerberg. That name is not inspiring to most people. (Also, by the way, because Zuckerberg is perfectly fine german: Zucker = Sugar, Berg = Mountain, so a mountain of sugar. That's not good for your health either, in particular your teeth.)
The Facebook founder's father was a dentist, which is pretty funny given the name.
reply▲lifthrasiir10 hours ago
[-] reply▲reply▲lifthrasiir10 hours ago
[-] Yeah, but in this case MikeRoweSoft.com redirects to microsoft.com after the settlement. Uzi Nissan was able to keep his domain to this day, even after his death in 2020.
reply▲Man, litigating versus a 12 year old boy has got to be the easiest job in the business - "Will you settle for an Xbox and a bundle of games?"
reply▲Huh, having checked the wikipedia link (the kid was 17 not 12), that's exactly what happened!
reply▲12th grade, not 12 years old.
reply▲onionisafruit3 hours ago
[-] The Xbox offer still stands
Edit: I replied before I read the wikipedia link and learned he literally settled for an xbox.
This article gives a window into both how oppressive social media can be for high-profile folks and how confused a LOT of people are basically all the time.
It also helps me remember that there’s a lot of people out there who are pretty angry and feel unheard.
The world’s a tough place for a lot of people.
Even with people that are not famous it can be difficult. My wife knows three people with the same name. So when I ask with whom are you going out she needs to add the city to make me understand.
reply▲Part of why in many times, ‘of x’ was a common ‘surname’. Also, profession - basically ‘Bob the Smith’, ‘John the Baker’, etc.
A lot of places (India, Brazil) still use one of your parents on official documents to disambiguate (Bob Smith, son of John (or Jill) Smith from Smithville).
This website looks a lot like the one of Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad.
reply▲I think that's the usual way the american attorneys advertise. I kinda like that style. In Poland, attorneys aren't allowed to advertise that expressively, which I think is a stupid regulation.
reply▲Poland's universal health care also removes the incentive for the type of lawyer who most commonly uses "Saul" style advertising -- personal injury attorneys.
It is a big business because people need to recover their costs or be render homeless is someone hits them with their car or whatever.
As a fun cherry on top, part of the opioid crisis stems from people abusing prescription drugs to return to work sooner than they would in the EU.
A friend of mine worked for a company with “cloud” in its name, but company had nothing to do with computer clouds.
He said they got at least two calls a day from angry people complaining that their “cloud” wasn’t working (he’s pretty sure most of them meant iCloud).
Similar situation here. My name is far from unique, but it's not common either. My best known impersonator is a prolific sci-fi author.
Whenever I'm introduced to someone and they perk up at my name, it's almost guaranteed that they're fans of that author. Then I have to disappoint them... Still, it's a good conversation starter.
I'm more interested in what your opinion on their works is? Are you a fan of yourselfsake?
reply▲One time in around 2008 when I was in undergrad, I got facebook requested by a guy named David Liu (same name as me) who was going to a school many thousands of miles away, and I noticed that he had facebooked about 20-30 other David Liu's.
About 3-4 years later, I was in grad school, I meet this guy in person (he happened to be going to the same grad school), I recognize his name and face, and let him know that he facebooked me back then, and he got a chuckle out of it.
Reminds me of this prank where you call two people with the same name and you conference them together and have them figure it out.
reply▲In Spain we have 2 last names:
- first last name from last name first of the father.
- second last name from the last name first of the mother.
And with this method we have collisions.
In Portugal the last name come from the mothers.
When I was in university a decade ago, a classmate of mine shared the same name as some high-ranking university staff. The classmate's university email account received some unsolicited confidential messages that were intended for the staff, not him.
reply▲Fire-Dragon-DoL10 hours ago
[-] He should be glad to be a lawyer, otherwise he might have spent so much money dealing with the name lol
reply▲I think I would rather change my name than deal with all that, tbh.
reply▲I wonder if he’s ever had anything positive happen because of it. That list looks like a PITA :)
reply▲I share the same name with a local TV star in my country. Even that is a PITA. Can’t imagine being named Mark Zuckerberg or Michael Jackson or anything like that.
At some point there were teenager girls calling me (no idea how they got the phone number). I started acting like they called the right person and there would be happy screams on the other hand. I guess the high point was that. I decided that might not be a good idea though. Would definitely continue if my “fans” were middle aged men.
Michael Jackson is a fairly common name though, I went to school with one. Also with a George Washington, he had a harder time...
reply▲reply▲reply▲I seem to recall when he was on TV he leaned into the joke ("not that Michael Jackson"). Of course that was long before the days random people could send abuse on Twitter.
reply▲It used to be that whenever I told people about his work, they'd ask if that was the beer guy.
reply▲XenophileJKO10 hours ago
[-] The "rich" Mark Zuckerburg should give him some compensation for the hassle.
That would be right thing to do.
He should at the very least ensure that there was some kind of liaison person at Meta for these not quite as rich (and certainly less obnoxious) Mark Zuckerbergs to reach in case of trouble with his service. This lawyer Mark should just have his account flagged with a huge 'Vetted, this guy is called that; leave it.' notice for any Meta algorithm or employee looking into it.
reply▲No. The individuals genuinely at fault here are
1) those who inflict harm on others, considering that being wealthy or disliked does not justify actions such as death threats
2) those who target the wrong person simply due to a shared name.
Any discussion of compensation should be directed at them.
makeitdouble9 hours ago
[-] > 2) those who target the wrong person simply due to a shared name.
In this case that includes the other Zuck's company. He should at least do something about that.
burnt-resistor9 hours ago
[-] Answer the question: What would an asshole do? They would buy up their neighbors' houses to make an unapproved mega compound, buy up ancestral Hawaiian land to block communal land access, and do unlicensed shit without permits making their remaining neighbors miserable. So what is right by virtue is unlikely to happen because almost all billionaires are legitimized criminal aristocrats subject to a different set of rules than average or poor people who are killed in the street for selling loose cigarettes like Eric Garner.
reply▲Cigarettes kill. Selling loosies to kids kills.
reply▲Simon_O_Rourke7 hours ago
[-] I would send business that guys way if I could, he seems like good people, unlike the more famous Zuckerberg.
reply▲My namesake was(died a few years back) the wealthiest person in the city I live in. He was worth peanuts compared to my brother's namesake who made billions through some sort of Lisp derivative shenanigans(or something along those lines, it's unclear).
reply▲Reminds me of CV lcamtuf published on his website shortly after leaving Google. A single page that mainly said: "my name is Zalewski, yes, that Zalewski".
reply▲I live in a relatively small country, but my first and last name are very common over here.
There have been at least seven others with the same name in my city (population 1M) who had bought computer equipment in the same shop.
In the country, there are at least three other software engineers, of which one had published his undergrad thesis on the same topic as I had at about the same time.
willsmith725 hours ago
[-] As a Will Smith with no acting abilities I can relate. I have heard it got my resume to the top of the stack out of curiosity though
reply▲stacktraceyo6 hours ago
[-] For a long time I would get hardcore stopped and hassled at the airport cause my name matched a terrorist. Although I was born in the USA. Made no sense to me why our system would flag someone just by name
reply▲In the south of Italy where families were very close to each others, children abundant, and passing the name of grandparents to first and second borns was expected people ended up with tons of namesakes. I have 6 people in my direct family who all share same name and last name.
reply▲I’m Jet Li, not the real master. People laughed and couldn’t believe it, but both of us live in Singapore.
reply▲I have the same name as a former MLB player. We both use Yahoo Mail. I was there first and use my name without the middle initial as my email address. He uses his middle initial. I've received many emails for him where people have overlooked the use of his middle initial. Sometimes it takes me a second to realize the mistake and I'm wondering WTF is this email on about.
reply▲Lol, this reminds me of a funny story. I had a lawyer whose name was Jim Halpert. Turns out he was the very Jim who was inspired his namesake on the office. Asked him about it once. His reply? "Hey, it's been great for getting clients." =)
He was also very much like Jim on the show. Fun times.
I've heard of this guy, but not met him. My CEO told me that I remind them of Jim Halpert and I was like "Really? The guy from the Office? I always pictured myself as more of a Creed"[1], which made them bust out laughing and declare "That's such a Jim thing to say" and wander off after explaining that it's based on a real person.
It made me wonder how many of those characters are based on real people, since they themselves reminded me of another character I'll omit for privacy's sake...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeZ6a1A0-ow
Did he look at the camera after replying?
reply▲makeitdouble10 hours ago
[-] On the "fake name" thing:
I felt guilty reading it, as in many past companies "Mark Zuckerberg" (and Bill Gates, and Tim Apple, Elon Musk etc) was indeed often used as a placeholder for test accounts and test data, and it never crossed my mind that we were basically training ourself to also treat a "Mark Zuckerberg" on our service as an account that escaped the sandbox or some other attack on the service.
Hopefully there aren't too many people with the name "First Last" running around.
reply▲makeitdouble9 hours ago
[-] It was tricky to use too literal names, as they're basically the placeholders in the input forms for instance, or the translations keys.
To defend a bit the choice for somewhat realistic names, there is a gestalt decomposition where you're looking through "First name" first names for hundreds of lines. Same for Lorum ipsums, designers' reaction are completely different when the page looks somewhat realistic and isn't just a blatant test.
whatsupdog10 hours ago
[-] Lol, it's Tim Cook, Mr. President.
reply▲Tim Apple is an awesome mnemonic
reply▲makeitdouble9 hours ago
[-] It was kinda funny from across the pond, the first time around. Putin horse riding topless was also a funny meme.
Looking back at that period is depressing af.
"Welcome to iammarkzuckerg.com"
Okay, the site needs a little revision =p
Yes I also spotted that and wondered if it was intentional or not
reply▲Time for other Zuck to sort out his SSL.
Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for markzuckerberg.com.
The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.facebook.com, *.facebook.net, *.fbcdn.net, *.fbsbx.com, *.m.facebook.com, *.messenger.com, *.xx.fbcdn.net, *.xy.fbcdn.net, *.xz.fbcdn.net, facebook.com, messenger.com
Thanks for the list.
Blocked.
reply▲The best bit:
>Like I said, I don't wish Mark E. Zuckerberg any ill will at all. I hope the best for him, but let me tell you this: I will rule the search for "Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy". And if he does fall upon difficult financial times, and happens to be in Indiana, I will gladly handle his case in honor of our eponymy.
According to the Algorithm Lords of my particular filter bubble, he does indeed rule the search results for "Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy".
Sucks to have all the downsides of being famous, but none of the benefits.
reply▲The most recent episode of the BBC Satire Radio show "The Naked Week" reached out to hundreds of name-alikes to get them to comment on a recent UK news story.
They ended up interviewing Taylor Swift, an MMA instructor from Cheltenham, UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002lppb
I have a fairly common name, along with an uncle of the same name. I found a few others as well, and was thinking of visiting the business of one of us. Sadly, that Nacho passed away, so the plan is not going to happen, but at least we got a chuckle out of sending out the NYT obituary to various friends.
reply▲Something tells me Mark E. Zuckerberg might need the services of Mark S. Zuckerberg soon.
reply▲The most recent hilarious example of this was a British newspaper that contacted “Bill DeBlasio” by email for comment on the NYC mayor election (Bill de Blasio is a former mayor of NYC), without ever verifying (or apparently, even asking) that they had found the person they intended.
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/british-newspaper...
The man at the heart of a high-stakes mix-up that rippled through global political journalism in the final days of the New York mayoral campaign was neither “falsely claiming” to be former Mayor Bill de Blasio — as the Times of London suggested — nor, as The New York Times wrote, a “de Blasio impersonator.”
He is, instead, a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio, who merely responded to an email from a journalist seeking his views on Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s policies.
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio said in an interview conducted Wednesday evening through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida.
“I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor. “So I just gave him my opinion.”
kristopolous10 hours ago
[-] ctrl+u this ... there's some nice parts commented out
reply▲That lost bit of sample HTML below the body is cute too:
<a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank">Link Text</a>
It gives the site an artisanal feel.
If our Mark here ever thinks his live is too easy, he should consider moving to England, specifically Scunthorpe.
reply▲Easy living. Go try to register company, open a bank and then send few payments if your name is "Vladimir Putin".
reply▲throwaway2909 hours ago
[-] any sanctioned individual. Some of their names are super common. Sorry Ivan Ivanov, you are on the list, no bank account for you. based by a true story.
(meanwhile the sanctioned Ivan is chilling on his yacht with 3 passports and 5 golden visas)
spacechild17 hours ago
[-] Wouldn't they at the very least compare the birth dates?
reply▲Computer says no.
Btw enjoy your instant ban due to AML policy, register another account to contact support again so we can ban you for breaking single account policy.
twintechlabs2 hours ago
[-] I don't understand why this post is here. It is clearly clickbait. Is there nothing more important to read about?
reply▲I would change my name. Family tradition isn't worth the hassle. The older people in my family would eventually get over it. This harassment will not stop.
reply▲The Facebook founder can change his name, he already changed his company's name. Mark Metaberg would surely be a more unique name.
reply▲"Why should I change? He's the one who sucks."
reply▲That was funny in the movie. In real life, he won't change. You're the one who has to deal with constant avoidable frustration.
reply▲i went to his professional website
https://zucklaw.com/ and ironically the accessibility features there are largely inaccessible
Sometimes your life would be easier if you just changed your name.
reply▲It's unjust.
reply▲Sure, but if tomorrow some dude with the same name as me decides to go on a killing spree, or sexually assault a toddler, I'd change my name. Just or unjust.
I'd have to change my email domain too though, so that would suck, but at least I could put up a website there explaining my new name and that I am not the now world famous terrorist who shot up a kindergarden/fondled the pope/ate a baby.
pinkmuffinere10 hours ago
[-] Having the same name as a famous person seems like a decent marketing benefit. And funnily enough, that’s achievable with some paperwork in many areas of the world! I wonder how/if this interacts with trademark (or other?) law. Can I change my name to Sundar Pichai? If so, then why haven’t a bunch of techbro founders done that already?
reply▲This is pure awesomeness. It made my day.
reply▲I’m have a very common first name and moderately common second name. The people who I have discovered that share my name have been nothing but a pain in the arse.
There was the Guantanamo inmate who managed to get me flagged for extra checks on every flight I took from around 2005-11.
Then there was the guy who leased some mining equipment and failed to pay, which somehow ended up on a background check for me for a job.
My name is so common that people laugh and say, "come on, what's your real name?" There are two of us in our little town. When the other one robbed a convenience store I started getting calls from friends who thought it was me. I also look like many people, to the point that I once told someone, "no, I'm really not your cousin."
reply▲poor bastard he cops all the flack
reply▲Another successful Zuck? What a blessed name.
reply▲hunterpayne10 hours ago
[-] He could easily use his middle name or go by Marcus. Just saying...sounds terrible having to deal with all the insanity.
reply▲I wouldn't want to humiliate myself by letting The Zuck prevent me from using my own name
reply▲Why should I change my name? He's the one that sucks.
reply▲it is pretty funny
reply▲Mostly
"I routinely receive death threats and harassment on the Messenger app directed to the "other" Mark Zuckerberg"
you'd hope they would notice their mistake before its too late
reply▲Just a reminder that there are ongoing issues where Facebook prevents Native Americans from signing up or being allowed to use their legitimate names because their legal names are judged “inauthentic.”
This has been documented for well over a decade. Facebook has publicly promised changes, but the problem persists and support responses appear weak. Almost like they don’t care at all…
https://www.vice.com/en/article/facebook-is-still-making-it-...