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Comment by skaushik92 | Hacker News Reader

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skaushik92·

Neat story!

Kind of reminds me of the employee whose last name is Null.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4456438/how-to-pass-null...

Though this is kind of the opposite where a manual process misidentifies the value instead of an automated process.

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Terrible story! Where’s the middle? Where’s the end? The authors describes some kafkaesque problem they encounter, with no obvious solution, and then they just abruptly end the story, signing off with a lighthearted joke.

What happened?… I’m irritated that I got tricked into reading this.

Sometimes life doesn't have three acts! Sometimes life is just a Kafkaesque decent into madness and all you can do is try to cope with a coy joke.

The author definitely did something about the problem, and the problem was definitely resolved in some manner (whether the resolution was good or bad for him). This story definitely has a middle and an end, the author simply chose to get us interested in his story, and then drop it on the ground.

It may not have had an end when he wrote it.

It would have had some current state, and if it was unresolved he would have had at least some idea about what he was going to do next.

No matter what though, it’s a terrible story. It sucks you in with an engaging problem, and then leads you exactly nowhere.

This explanation makes sense:

the police use NV for "Not Visible"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37580270 (thanks mabbo)

The article already states this. The person you were replying to is asking about a different - but similar - case where an employee's last name is "Null".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com