; DROP TABLE "COMPANIES";-- LTD | Hacker News Reader

; DROP TABLE "COMPANIES";-- LTD

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

182 pointsOJFord30 comments

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Here is the explanation from the company founder:

https://pizzey.me/posts/no-i-didnt-try-to-break-companies-ho...

(Disclaimer: Link copied from desas but needed to be top level comment.)

I was disappointed the founder's name is not actually Robert Tables.

https://xkcd.com/327/

You mean "Bobby Tables"?

For those not native in English, bob is a nickname for Robert, and bobby too.

There's a job for deed poll.

Drop Table “Companies”;-- LTD - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21534156 - Nov 2019 (7 comments)

Drop Table “Companies”;– LTD - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583540 - Aug 2019 (2 comments)

Drop Table Companies Ltd - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17003588 - May 2018 (27 comments)

Drop Table Companies Ltd - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13280494 - Dec 2016 (23 comments)

Apologies - I checked hn.algolia and didn't find it, but only by URL, which must be slightly different here or have changed.

The most recent submission was nearly two years ago. I'm sure there are plenty of people that either haven't seen it before, or were happy to be reminded.

dang was just linking to the previous discussions because they can also be interesting.

No need to apologize! JshWright is correct - reposts are fine after a year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

I post those archive links just to add additional interesting information. No reproach is implied!

Also in a similar vein

That company whose name used to contain HTML script tags Ltd - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24919710

“Name available upon request from Companies House.”

As I recall, when this was registered, didn't they censor or force a name change? Not because their systems couldn't handle it, but because many third parties scrape the data and they feared it would break other people's systems. Have they decided to allow it now?

Are you thinking of 'THAT COMPANY WHOSE NAME USED TO CONTAIN HTML SCRIPT TAGS LTD':

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

By any chance? I don't know the back story, just seems like a better fit.

(I particularly like 'previous names - available on request'!)

Isn't this missing a leading " to terminate the string it's interpolated into?

Yeah intentionally so. https://pizzey.me/posts/no-i-didnt-try-to-break-companies-ho...

Here's one that does have the speechmark

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

ROBERT'); DROP TABLE STUDENTS; LIMITED

Funny thing: clicking the "past" button on this submission doesn't work—seems like Cloudflare doesn't like the query and blocks the request.

And it marks your IP some points toward "evil hacker" and now you know why Tor has been ruined for 10 years. Collary: CloudBleed.

What's wrong with my comment? Quite literally: Cloudflare has been adopted by 50% or whatever of the web and they run a rudimentary WAF type product that is IP block happy. This is a recipe to get every VPN and Tor node in the world blocked.

What confuses me is that in 2010 all devs were finally on the "don't block stuff based on regex" train, and now all a sudden nothing matters just Cloudflare is God with some handwavy explanation of how they "did a risk analysis".

Hackaday discussed this a few years back:

https://hackaday.com/2016/12/29/if-bobby-tables-had-his-own-...

Lol, dissolved 4 years after it was incorporated

Self-dropping

Slow query!

Just name your company 'null'.

They got the idea from the Swedish electorate

"Did Little Bobby Tables migrate to Sweden?"

https://alicebobandmallory.com/articles/2010/09/23/did-littl...