1963: Namespace Land Rush

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Namespace Land Rush
You can also just mash the keyboard at random, but you might end up with a gibberish name no one can pronounce.
Title text: You can also just mash the keyboard at random, but you might end up with a gibberish name no one can pronounce.

Explanation

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If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

When a new web server starts, such as a forum, a social media server or an email portal, the people who sign up get to choose their username on the service, which, in most cases, blocks future users from using those usernames. Common names such as "john" are likely to be taken quickly. This is analogous to the way that land was distributed in America, with the first to claim able to choose the best land.

This comic is a list of usernames Randall suggests should be used if they are available.

The title text is a self-reference to "xkcd", the name of the comic is a purposefully unpronounceable phrase created by Randall.

(Note: for a more serious list of problematic user names to block from a service provider’s point of view, see Hostnames and usernames to reserve as well as RFC 2142.)

Table

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Add explanations of the names. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.
Entry Explanation
Straightforward (Usernames that a person would use under typical circumstances)
<Your usual username, if any> Most internet users will have settled on some unique handle that they try to use across all platforms. Even if this wasn't a new service, most people would try this first.
<Your given name> More rare is using one's nickname or first name as their username, since the amount of common names will mean many users share a name. Thus, if you can get your given name, you will have a simple username that many others wanted, and without resorting to prefixes or numbers (i.e. Xx_MyName00_xX)
<Your full name> Similar to your given name, but slightly more unique since a last name and/or middle name is added.
<Initial><Surname> A common second choice if a given or full name is already in use.
<Surname> Possibly available if your last name is more uncommon; names like "smith" or "kim" will probably be taken faster than even given names.
Recognizable (Usernames that would make it look like the email came from an official source within the organization named)
Google Registering the name "Google" would allow for communicating on the site (or even outside of it) with a name that appears to be an official Google account. For any of the examples in this section, you would select the names for the same reason. This has been done in the past with both humorous and nefarious results.
iPhone
Facebook
BitCoin
Obama Impersonating a president, supposedly to send messages as them to make them seem bad (or not).
Canada
NFL
Garfield
<Your city>
NASA
<Name of person who runs the service>
Causing Trouble (Usernames that might cause errors when mixed with the service's back-end code)
User
Username
Name
You Many services display "You" as the signed-on user, so naming oneself "You" makes users think that they are you/they are signed on when they aren't.
Guest Attempts to fool users into thinking that they have a guest account.
Account
Causing More Trouble
Admin Impersonating to be a system administrator will let someone fool people and cause a lot of trouble.
Administrator See above.
System Pretending to be a system-controlled account - might give permissions if the server checks by name.
<Name of service>
Help
Error
Impossible to Say
Hyphen-Emdash Could be read "Hyphen hyphen Em dash" or "Hyphen dash em dash"
Dash-8hyphen-8 Could be read "Dash dash eight hyphen dash eight" or "Dash hyphen eight hyphen hyphen eight". "Hyphen eight" sounds like "hyphenate".
Zero0ne2numeral2 Could be read "Zero zero one two numeral two" or "Zero zero ne two numeral two" or "Zero oh ne two numeral two".
KrisasinHemsworth This would be confusing to say out loud, as it would sound like the user was saying that their username was "Chris," spelled the same way that famous actor Chris Hemsworth spells his name. However, the actual username uses the name "Kris," spelled a completely different way than Chris Hemsworth's name, and the phrase "as in Hemsworth" being also part of the username, rather than a clarification of the spelling of "Kris" as would be assumed.
TheWord&Ampersand
ZettaWith3Teees Read aloud, this would lead the listener to expect a username of 'Zettta'. Clarifying that "with three tees" is text and not description would in turn make it difficult to explain the spelling of 'Zetta' with two 't's, and 'Teees' with three 'e's.
Misc
<Single Letters>
<Single Numbers>
<Common Words>
<SQL/JS Injection> Codes such as "Drop Table" intended to cause errors or even damage the service's back-end code. (See Comic 327)
ASDF
QWERTY
Yes
Bot
Computer
Blocked
Deleted
Jeeves
Narrator
Internet
NPC
Password
Permissive Character Sets
<Space>
@ é | " "
<NBSP>
\ . # " '
<RTL override> The right to left override is an Unicode character which forces text after it to be laid out right to left. Thus, in left-to-right locales, it flips everything after it. This can be rather amusing if permitted.
– - _ / ` ' `
<Any emoji> Current databases are not set up to store emojis as characters.
","
&NBSP;
</HTML>
&LT;/HTML&GT;
OkThisIsKindOfConfusingButIt's <LessThan\ForwardSlashHTML GreaterThanActualGreaterThan Symbol>Yes,ThatWasAllPartOfThe Name,ButSoIs...Ok,LetMeStartOver

Transcript

NAMESPACE LAND RUSH CHEAT SHEET

WHEN A NEW SERVICE APPEARS THAT LETS YOU REGISTER A NAME, HERE ARE SOME YOU MAY WANT TO TRY AND GET FIRST:

Straightforward Recognizable
<Your usual username, if any> Google iPhone
<Your given name> Facebook BitCoin
<Your full name> Obama Canada
<Initial><Surname> NFL Garfield
<Surname> (Bold & Slightly
Unconventional)
<Your city> NASA
  <Name of person who
runs the service>
Causing
Trouble
Causing
More Trouble
Impossible to Say
User Admin Hyphen-Emdash
Username Administrator Dash-8hyphen-8
Name System Zero0ne2numeral2
You <Name of service> KrisasinHemsworth
Guest Help TheWord&Ampersand
Account Error ZettaWith3Teees
Misc   Permissive Character Sets
<Single Letters> <Space>   @ é | " "
<Single Numbers> <NBSP>   \ . # " '
<Common Words> <RTL override> – - _ / ` ' `
<SQL/JS Injection> <Any emoji> "," &NBSP;
ASDF QWERTY </HTML> &LT;/HTML&GT;
Yes Bot OkThisIsKindOfConfusingButIt's
Computer Blocked <LessThan\ForwardSlashHTML
Deleted Jeeves GreaterThanActualGreaterThan
Narrator Internet Symbol>Yes,ThatWasAllPartOfThe
NPC Password Name,ButSoIs...Ok,LetMeStartOver


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Discussion

  • Ahh, he left off root under Causing More Trouble. Nutster (talk) 05:41, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm very disappointed he left out dotnotreplay@... --05:43, 5 March 2018 (UTC)~
  • Is "gibberish name no one can pronounce" a reference to xkcd? 108.162.215.64 05:56, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • No test included. Frankly speaking I have seen people using testtest,testtesttesttest, and so on, up to the maxiumn allowed character limit. Jackomatt (talk) 06:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Took me some time to type the transcript. Randall made it quite hard. Klyxm (talk) 06:38, 5 March 2018
  • I came here just to see if the transcript had "..." or "…" in the last one -- 162.158.154.133 17:01, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
  • The thing at the bottom-right, he wrote "forward slash" but used a backslash. 162.158.126.76 08:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • It's just to mess with you. Klyxm (talk) 08:49, 5 March 2018
  • Null! Where's null? PenguinF (talk) 09:14, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I think this whole comic is a reference to the video Worst Wifi Password Ever [1] --162.158.238.76 11:13, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
This is analogous to the way that land was distributed in America

There is so much wrong with that sentence. --162.158.154.25 12:26, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

  • I think is what he means by rtl override: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/09/right-to-left-override-aids-email-attacks/ and I agree surprised he didn’t include the null character; maybe because it’s so hard to get it to actually reach the service? 172.68.54.136 15:24, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Emojis don't work in databases? They should be treated no differently from any other UNICODE characters. They would be hard to type if you're using an OS/browser that doesn't have a convenient Emoji-picker, but I would think that they should work as long as the server isn't filtering them out. But I've never deployed a service like this so there may be something important I'm missing here. Shamino (talk) 17:53, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
The "emoji not work" refers specifically to emojis requiring four characters when encoded in UTF-8, as many programs including databases like MySQL used to only support three-byte UTF-8 characters. There are emoji which fits into three bytes and non-emoji characters requiring four bytes, but for most people, support for four-byte UTF-8 is equivalent to support of (new) emoji. -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:56, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
(Obviously, when you want to test database, you should be creative and instead of "any" emoji try something like "fairy girl with dark skin tone" 🧚🏿‍♀️ - that's five UTF characters, 18 bytes total, and is supposed to render as single character) -- Hkmaly (talk) 01:08, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Whether it renders as a single character is only relevant if you're trying to render it. The database only cares about a name as a sequence of characters, it shouldn't care how many glyphs they correspond to. (And almost related: I vaguely recall the guys behind emoj.li saying that the most common complaint they got was that the most obvious single-character usernames were already taken) -- 162.158.154.133 17:01, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
Most databases support sorting 😊. Also, attempts to store four-byte character into three-byte UTF column really damaged it - although, obviously, storing it to binary column would not, it's just that username is rarely binary column. -- Hkmaly (talk) 23:41, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Someone once told me that on old email databases, you could send a message to "*@example.com" and it would send the message to everyone with an account on that domain. No idea if its true or not, but it seems like the username "*" could cause problems. 162.158.75.16 19:56, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

So OkThisIsKindOfConfusingButIt's <LessThan\ForwardSlashHTML GreaterThanActualGreaterThan Symbol>Yes,ThatWasAllPartOfThe Name,ButSoIs...Ok,LetMeStartOver actually is "<<\/HTML>> or is it just supposed to be </HTML>? 141.101.105.180 13:46, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Do you really think there's a definitely correct answer to that question? 162.158.155.38 14:25, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I am not confident enough about this to make the edit myself, but wouldn't the names listed in Causing Trouble (Usernames that might cause errors when mixed with the service's back-end code) (user, guest, etc) be used not so much to trying to fool other people, but because those names are often used as placeholders when the site is in development, and may therefore still have odd/altered permissions, allowing potential malicious access assuming the devs were lazy? Snowblinded (talk) 18:04, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Also true. And false. And Schrödinger'sCat.172.69.70.41 21:15, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
I still try Alt-codes

I can remember ¥ [alt-157] off the top of my head from high school (circa i286), and I'm trying to figure out how to keyboard 乜 [U+4E5C], it doesn't quite map to [alt-20060]. As for Causing More Trouble anybody try Hastur? I wonder if there will ever be a Unicode Symbol for "The Yellow Sign."Cutech (talk) 08:54, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I saw a username that uses hashtag and asterisk symbols before on a website I usually frequent, are they even allowed?Boeing-787lover 09:02, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Re
the transscript

Klyxm, I know it was probably a hard effort to make it look this pretty, but I believe that we should not try to recreate the physical layout. Not only is it not relevant to the joke, but this makes the transcript hard to use for people using screen readers (try reading the source code -- the categories are intertwined and linewise reading doesn't make sense any more).

I have stripped the formatting and replaced it with a list (in reading order). I'd welcome a discussion about this, but if you must, there is the "revert this edit" button right there. 172.68.50.112 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Please don't forget to sign your comments. You are right and there were many discussions about this here before. My new incomplete reason is this: "Layout not standard (eg. indentation) and a short description at the beginning about what is shown should be given." It needs a little bit more rework. In principle the transcript is the written text of the words you use when telling someone else what's in the comic. --Dgbrt (talk) 13:18, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Added zero-width spaces in the last line of the transcript due to page zooming issues. 172.69.22.140 06:52, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Keep it simple, compare it to other recent transcripts, and read this What is the format of the transcript section ? --Dgbrt (talk) 18:39, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

"Username" could also be a reference similar to entering "your name" when instructed to "Enter your name." 162.158.74.173 03:42, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't suggest using the unpronounceable names. People who play Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes are good with those. 172.68.133.36 20:41, 14 July 2020 (UTC)


A user called "Neography" appeared on Neography (neography.miraheze.org) 172.69.23.38 06:09, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi lol Moderator (talk) 22:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)