8 ms·

North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

166 points by IMSAI8080 2y ago

DarkmSparks 2y ago
Makes me wonder if this was the root cause of that software glitch that wrongly sent all those 1000s of postmasters to prison.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Different issue. In that case, the vendor had given some guarantees of consistency of data across network nodes that the network didn't actually support. Because there were guarantees, the law went looking for horses instead of zebras, and the "horses" in this case were that only a few people had admin rights to mess with the transactions and the audit logs. ... but in reality, no human was messing with those; system bugs were dropping or duplicating data. The government should not have trusted claims of a third-party without independent auditing they controlled (and, ultimately, I think that's the takeaway that all governments should be taking from this disaster).
  - DarkmSparks 2y ago
    dropping and duplicating data is exactly the symptom you get from not sanitising aprostrophies in your data correctly.
    - shadowgovt 2y ago
      Not at all. If I understand correctly, the failure to synchronize was a fundamental flaw in the the networking code and had nothing to do with the payloads inside the networking code.
      - DarkmSparks 2y ago
        that could still be ' handling, try to sql (`type`:'express post',`from`:'st mary's street',`value`:'50') and it will drop the value field, throw an error, and quite possibly duplicate several type and half filled froms depending on how the error handling is done. This article is basically admitting its cheaper to change the street names than unfux their buggy software, so something is up. what are the other options that meet that criteria?
        shadowgovt 2y ago
        The software glitch that was involved in 1,000 people being arrested had nothing to do with street names. By this point, the flaws are pretty well-documented. If you find anything in the reports about handling of apostrophes, feel free to cite it. The underlying communication protocol from node to node wasn't even SQL; it was an XML format called "Riposte." There was, perhaps, SQL involved in eventual account database updating, but issues had occurred in message transit even before that phase, and it's those issues that led to account reconciliation errors and (incorrect) charges of fraud on the part of the subpostmasters.
        DarkmSparks 2y ago
        source for it being well documented? xml suffers apostrophe issues to. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post-offices-horizon-system-failed-a-technical-breakdown https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post... says As early as 2001, McDonnell’s team had found “hundreds” of bugs. A full list has never been produced, seems almost guaranteed to me it had apostrophy bugs.
        shadowgovt 2y ago
        Source for it being identified as a root cause of the Horizon issues. As far as I can see, there is no evidence that it was.
        DarkmSparks 2y ago
        The evidence is they are changing the street names to stop bugs in software. The question is what software is so hard to fix its easier to change the physical street names than fix the data entry for those street names. Horizon seems the likely candidate, and the fix is equally stupid.
achrono 2y ago
Next: due to an issue with primary key mapping, all cities in the US are now required to have a unique name, so all affected cities must work together to come up with new names. Start with the Springfields.
- caf 2y ago
  No problem, we'll just rename every city to the latitude and longitude of the city hall, expressed to 3 decimal places and concatenated.
IMSAI8080 2y ago
I live on Bobby Tables Close.
- Kaibeezy 2y ago
  I live on Butts Wynd
  - junto 2y ago
    Do you live next to Seymour Butts?
- robjwells 2y ago
  Help I'm Stuck In A Street Sign Factory Avenue
robocat 2y ago
I can't find a public copy of the recent versions of BS7666. The 2006 version had zero instances of the word 'apostrophe' so not sure what they think they are referencing. BS 7666: 2006 is based upon an International Standard ISO 19112 Spatial referencing by geographic identifiers.
- chgs 2y ago
  “The AGI now has a membership portal and it may be that the page you require sits within that portal. As a member you will be able to reach the page by logging in. If you are not yet a member of the AGI and are interested in joining please visit” If a standard isn’t publicly available under a free license it should not be called a standard.
  - robjwells 2y ago
    While I agree with you, it's common that standards are not available without payment. For example, to get a copy of ISO 8601-1:2019 (as in, the date format standard!), it'll cost you $190. https://www.iso.org/standard/70907.html https://www.iso.org/standard/70907.html
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      Or, my personal gripe, ISO 7816 - your everyday smartcard standard. A full copy sets you back > 2k €. [1] https://www.vde-verlag.de/iec-normen/suchen/?publikationsnummer=7816&laenge=20&sortiert-nach=klassifikation&richtung=aufsteigend https://www.vde-verlag.de/iec-normen/suchen/?publikationsnum...
      - kwhitefoot 2y ago
        Also on Anna's Archive: https://annas-archive.org/md5/7957d8af6f296b3adaafd5c21d4aa323 https://annas-archive.org/md5/7957d8af6f296b3adaafd5c21d4aa3...
        mschuster91 2y ago
dudeinjapan 2y ago
The best part of this article is: Ruby Wang... did not mind the changes. "To be honest with you, because I'm not from this country it doesn't matter because it's the same pronunciation," she added.
- mrcartmeneses 2y ago
  And then the photo of her looks exactly like my wife when she doesn’t give a shit about my bullshit
- grajaganDev 2y ago
  This could be from The Onion.
eesmith 2y ago
So, no "O'Malley" or "O'Kelly" or "O'Brien" will ever be honored with a street name in North Yorkshire using their actual (Anglicized) name? This isn't a new issue. Around 1990 one of the computer labs at my school was run by someone with an Irish surname starting "O'", and I remember him complaining about software which couldn't handle his name. It's been 30 years, and there are still problems?!? (To say nothing of "Madeleine L'Engle" or any of many others with an apostrophe in their name.)
- robjwells 2y ago
  Even among current and recent MPs and Lords, we've had: O’Brien (5), O’Donnell, O’Halloran, O’Hara (2), O’Mara, and O’Neill. https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons?SearchText=%27&ForParliament=All https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons?SearchText=%27...
  - microtherion 2y ago
    And if the "no punctuation" mandate were to be taken seriously, it would also affect innumerable hyphenated names.
- Kaibeezy 2y ago
  Doctor M’Benga
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  To add insult to injury, many government systems in Ireland cannot handle áccented létters in names.
AlecSchueler 2y ago
I refuse to believe any standard considered fit for use in 2024 allows absolutely no special characters via escape sequences.
- switch007 2y ago
  Councils can barely afford standards fit for for use in 1994, unfortunately
  - AlecSchueler 2y ago
    Can't the government fund a single open standard? Every council is now individually paying to license this broken spec.
    - edent 2y ago
      You can make that suggestion at https://github.com/co-cddo/open-standards https://github.com/co-cddo/open-standards That's the UK Government's discussion space for adopting open standards. (I used to work there.)
      - AlecSchueler 2y ago
        Thanks, I will do! I'm a big fan of the UK government's commitments to open standards and their whole IT philosophy in general. That said local councils usually give me quite the opposite feeling. I will definitely look into your suggestion in the hope of seeing some trickle-down!
espinielli 2y ago
As if database were not able to del with apostrophes or other special characters... Yes you have to sanitize your queries, but you have to do it anyway. Client applications will of course have to be smarter
- lyu07282 2y ago
  I would argue if you sanitize your input you are already doing it wrong, you should parameterize queries and send the data entirely separately from code.
  - swasheck 2y ago
    from a certain perspective, parameterization could be seen as sanitation, no?
    - bewaretheirs 2y ago
      If it sanitizes anything, parameterization sanitizes the code, not the data, and has much lower impact on the outside world (because the rest of the world isn't pressured to rename things in the real world to fit arbitrary constraints in the computer).
- ginko 2y ago
  I think part of the problem with apostrophes is also that there's two characters for it. ' and ’
  - ahazred8ta 2y ago
    The Hawaiʻian ʻokina symbol begs to differ...
  - chrisjj 2y ago
    And now they've added the problem of some roads having two names. Such as the example in the article's first photo.
  - 2y ago
GardenLetter27 2y ago
Makes sense IMO, the apostrophes don't add much but can cause a lot of issues in manual transcription, simple queries, etc.
- magnio 2y ago
  *dont
  - logifail 2y ago
    next to go will be capital letters thenspaces
    - OJFord 2y ago
      y not i fink sum ppl do that already in sum context nyway
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  As always, the problem is always the underlying issue, even though the surface one is pretty ridiculous. If the council doesn't understand how to sanitise database input, imagine just how bad they are at the stuff that's mildly difficult or worse. Do NOT give any sensitive data to them, whatever you do!
  - GardenLetter27 2y ago
    It's not just queries though - but CSV exports, etc. - every single system that ever handles this data needs to handle them. Searching if users omit the apostrophes, etc.
  - AlecSchueler 2y ago
    I'm sure that IT working in the council understand input sanitisation and escape sequences, but they're working to a broken standard.
    - 2y ago
sambeau 2y ago
So, I take it the UK now needs to rename Land's End and John o' Groats.
- justincormack 2y ago
  Not to mention Westward Ho!.
- OJFord 2y ago
  Only if they get somewhere moved to North Yorkshire.
daveoc64 2y ago
I don't really understand why they've decided to do this in 2024. We all know that older systems had problems with encoding and escaping special characters, but wouldn't they have encountered and dealt with all the possible problems by now?
resolutebat 2y ago
Australia removed apostrophes from all official place names back in 1966, leading to names like Surfers Paradise, Princes Highway and Wisemans Ferry. Given the date, I doubt computing was a major consideration though.
- troad 2y ago
  And my father-in-law is still upset about it. It's led to some interesting outcomes - for example, I've seen people write "Princess Highway" a fair few times, presumably on account of the official spelling ("Princes") falling confusingly somewhere half-way between the more usual "Prince's" and "Princess". In day to day use, I don't think most people actually use the apostrophe-free official spellings, at least for names comprised of ordinary English words (Prince's Hwy, Surfer's Paradise), but it might be more of a free-for-all with proper names (Wiseman's Ferry or Wisemans Ferry).
  - caf 2y ago
    I have never seen anyone write "Prince's Hwy" (or "King's Hwy" for that matter), the apostrophe-free version would be far more common. The "Princess Hwy" thing is also common I think because the pronunciation most often used sounds a lot like "Princess", particularly when it's run right into "Highway" without a gap.
    - troad 2y ago
      > I have never seen anyone write "Prince's Hwy" (or "King's Hwy" for that matter), the apostrophe-free version would be far more common. I don't know what to tell you; I've seen it often. I'm talking day to day here, text messages and handwritten directions. If you're thinking of things like road signs, those will obviously follow official usage. > The "Princess Hwy" thing is also common I think because the pronunciation most often used sounds a lot like "Princess", particularly when it's run right into "Highway" without a gap. Obviously that is so, but I would suggest that the reason 'Princess Hwy' is comparatively so much more common than other similar mistakes (e.g. 'sea' for 'see' etc.) is because the official name (Princes Highway) feels so unnatural in English that it fails to act as a meaningful standard for usage.
MarcScott 2y ago
I have a street in a town near me which grammatically should be called St. Thomas' road. However, the street signs call it St. Thomas road at the north end and St. Thomas's road at the south end.
- dark-star 2y ago
  I would say that on average, the street name is correct ;-)
- iraqmtpizza 2y ago
  Thomas' is not grammatically correct in any version of English that I know. It's not plural. There is no special rule for that. Both the street signs you mentioned are at least grammatically coherent
  - oarsinsync 2y ago
    When a word ends with an s, the use of an apostrophe without another s is valid English. Thomas’ and Thomas’s are the same thing.
    - iraqmtpizza 2y ago
      lol no. arguably the word ain't is more proper English than Chris' or boss'
      - AlecSchueler 2y ago
        Lol yes though?
      - TheRealPomax 2y ago
        It is trivial to find more than sufficiently authoritative source that cover the rules that make "Chris'" and "boss'" perfectly value contracted possessives in English. [1] However, it's English: there isn't just one rule, another rule can also be valid and might be the one you're familiar with on a day to day basis. That doesn't mean any other way to say or write the same thing is wrong, it's just a pattern you never saw. Like someone going "lol snuck isn't a real word, it's sneaked!" and then you hand them a dictionary and they learn something new about their own language. [1] https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/media_wysiwyg/University%2520of%2520Oxford%2520Style%2520Guide.pdf https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/media_wysiwyg/Univer...
cykros 2y ago
This seems silly for the reason they're doing it, in that a modern database should be able to handle characters with a little sanitation. However, it does seem like it could be helpful when it comes to satnav applications to remove ambiguity. Google's going to autocorrect most of the time anyway, but this way, you're less likely to run into an issue where it takes you to Kings Landing in the wrong town because you didn't type King's Landing in the town you meant. Sure, they tell you what town you're looking at, but I can't be the only one who's quickly typed in a destination and didn't take the time to double check and ended up driving to the wrong location for something. For some reason all of the hockey rinks near me have almost identical names...
- napierzaza 2y ago
  [dead]
- TheRealPomax 2y ago
  "This seems silly" is the nicest way to describe government standards that were already outdated in the 90's
- thfuran 2y ago
  >but this way, you're less likely to run into an issue where it takes you to Kings Landing in the wrong town because you didn't type King's Landing in the town you meant. That's pretty uncompelling. Should we also get rid of the letter s to avoid mix-ups between Kings Landing and King Landing?
  - TylerE 2y ago
    Devils advocate: the apostrophe isn’t pronounced. The s is.
    - thfuran 2y ago
      England would have to do some serious work to get rid of all the unpronounced letters in their place names.
xjay 2y ago
Replace it with a QR, but it contains a UUID which has to be used to look up the current street name. (If all you have is a phone, everything can be solved with an app.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code
- rav 2y ago
  The Danish Address Register (DAR) assigns a UUID to everything in the addressing system - street names, postal codes, building addresses... It's a nice official database to have in Denmark but I don't know of any products that actually store the UUIDs in the database.
fancyfredbot 2y ago
If you give responsibility for street signage to local councils then you'll inevitably find that one of the hundreds of councils eventually does something dumb like this. The technical solution for this specific problem is readily available but the political solution seems more interesting/complicated.
kleton 2y ago
Alternative solution: put the e back in that the apostrophe is standing in place of. St Maryes Place
- lttlrck 2y ago
  They would be little choice with St. James'. St. James means something else. So unless they go for St. Jamess it's have to be St. Jameses.
MezzoDelCammin 2y ago
I can't believe nobody has yet mentioned the obligatory relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/327/ https://xkcd.com/327/
webdoodle 2y ago
Little Johny Drop Tables gets a bad rap every time.
calibas 2y ago
You can print apostrophes on a street sign without any database issues because a street sign doesn't interface directly with a database. At least not yet... All the technical issues here have already been solved a hundred times, there's plenty of other options. It's a little worrying that we're eliminating punctuation in real life because of issues with integrating with geographical databases.
- msla 2y ago
  Apparently, this is because of a standard they're required to conform to, not database software in specific: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 > As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". On the other hand, you’re naïve if you think English hasn’t already been simplified to fit on machinery such as typewriters and cheap printing presses. This process began long before computers.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    The Linotype machine supported ﬂ, ﬀ, ﬃ, ℔, œ, and æ. See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype_keyboard_with_Star_Quadder_attachment.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype... linked to from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine. Or see https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9/mode/2up?q=linotype+keyboard&view=theater https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9... . Even cheap printing presses could handle more than you think. Here's a type case layout from 1846, again with æ, œ, ﬂ, ﬀ, and ﬃ, ﬁ and ﬄ. https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/18/mode/2up?q=%22type+case%22&view=theater https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/... . That book is for the "Parlour printing press [which] was invented by Mr. Cowper for the amusement and education of youth, by enabling them to print any little subject they had previously written, provided the printing did not exceed in size the dimensions of an ordinary duodecimo page, which measures about 5 inches by 3 inches."
charles_f 2y ago
Looks like a much easier solution than having a couple people learn how to escape a string and prepare a sql statement.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  My local (US) county has a web service to look up property deeds and titles. They "solved" this problem by just having you enter the street name with no punctuation or suffix (ave, st, etc), and if there is a collision the form pops out a drop-down selector to have you disambiguate. It's not the cleanest solution but it works. I agree that bending the humans to serve the needs of the machine feels... Sub-optimal.
  - amluto 2y ago
    To be fair, a degree of fuzziness in matching is quite valuable. Is it Eighth Ave, 8th Ave, Eighth Avenue or 8th Avenue? Or W 8th Ave, perhaps? Is that deed for Unit 7 or Apt 7 or #7 or Ste 7? Is the street address 15 8th Ave or 015 8th Ave? In cases where one zip code spans multiple cities, should anyone really be matching on the city? How about communities in a city in which no one is quite sure what goes in the city field? (Is “Pacific Palisades, CA” a valid city+state? How about Van Nuys, CA or Hollywood, CA? But don’t confuse this situation with West Hollywood, CA or Beverly Hills, CA, which are actual cities.) I wonder what address verification services expect for the “numbers in the address” when the address is 123 1/2 4th Ave #5”. Apostrophes seem like the least of anyone’s concerns.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
      My favorite confusing street I've dealt with is Boulevard in Hartford, CT[1]. Often abbreviated, so addresses like "1600 Blvd" are common. And of course there are streets where "boulevard" is the last word in the name, like usual, to add to confusion. [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1091898993 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1091898993
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jmvoodoo 2y ago
Tell me you're vulnerable to SQL injection without telling me you're vulnerable to SQL injection.
graypegg 2y ago
As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666GuidelinesSections1-4.pdf https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666Guid... # Standard data types used in BS 7666 CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters ... If I had to guess, alphanumeric is interpreted as [0-9a-z]. The sign printer probably expects this format when printing signs for the government, or worse, has a contract that says the government must provide this standard format for the sign information. So it's just a government mandated database schema... I don't think that's any better of a reasoning though lol
- devsda 2y ago
  BS in "BS 7666" stands for British Standard and not anything else. If the standard restricts street names to those certain characters, may be it really is BS.
  - colloydi 2y ago
    The '666' portion doesn't inspire confidence either. We love apostrophes so much we have them on our supermarkets. If they're not there we add them. e.g. I'm going to Sainbury's e.g. I'm going to Tesco's ...despite the fact that it's real name is plain old Tesco.
    - Digit-Al 2y ago
      I say Sainsbury's because the name is exactly that. I don't say Tesco's because the name, as you say, is Tesco. I would guess those who say Tesco's (and maybe Asda's) are just getting confused because of Sainsbury's.
      - b112 2y ago
        Sounds like this Sainsbury person is responsible for spreading an apostrophe infection to Tesco.
lakomen 2y ago
Just yesterday I generated a 64 char length mysql password, which had \ and ` and '. I couldn't properly escape it, to pass via argv, so I had to truncate it and remove all those symbols. So I thought, how can this problem be solved? IMHO by doing a hex representation 0x00-0xFF per char. That would also increase entropy. MySQL and other databases would need to support hex input of passwords, also setting of hex passwords via SQL.
- Izkata 2y ago
  MySQL at least should support that last bit (it has hex strings, and passwords are set with strings using SQL), but not the first as far as I know.
gumby 2y ago
This reminds me of the more extreme case of Spain changing the treatment of <ll> due to limitations of PCs in the 1990s. Our tools should adapt to the needs of humans, not the other way around!
- landhar 2y ago
  Do you have pointers to this? As a Spaniard I recall that even though I was originally told the spanish alphabet treated the LL as its own letter, it always felt quite inconsistent. And I always assumed it’s removal was more about simplifying things than having to do with computers
  - gumby 2y ago
    There is a comment from "adolph" parallel to yours with footnotes. But I remember the event well (though it was 30 years ago) as the difficulty for programmers was given as the justification for the law (this was a change in collation). This particularly irked me as unicode was a few years old at this point, and while not really adopted yet, was clearly the future.
- knodi123 2y ago
  The other day (in 2024!!) , I got a message saying my password needed to include a special character, with a helpful list of special characters that were forbidden.
- fluoridation 2y ago
  Hmm... However, language is itself also a tool. There are cases where adapting language to another tool is easier than the other way around.
  - gumby 2y ago
    Sure, but the computer is a tool designed to be malleable and adapt to the human. This kind of grunt work (adapting to humans' models of collation) is exactly the kind of task that should be handed off to machines.
nickdothutton 2y ago
How many hundreds or thousands of new streets are being created in North Yorkshire each year I wonder?
- yardstick 2y ago
  Existing street signs need replacement over time too.
  - nickdothutton 2y ago
    They used to be made of cast iron, probably good for a couple of hundred years I’d image, unless smashed or stolen for scrap (sometimes this does happen). I wonder what they make them out of today that leads to needing frequent replacement.
none_to_remain 2y ago
There is a public recreation facility called Peter'?s Field in NYC. It is named primarily for Peter Stuyvesant and Peter Cooper (NYC historical notables), secondarily for Peter Piper, Peter Parker, Peter Pan, Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Peter Rabbit, and Peter from "Peter and the Wolf". Seems they use Peters Field and Peter's Field but not Peters' Field.
kwhitefoot 2y ago
It's been common though not exclusive practice to not use apostrophes in street names for a very long time in the south of England, is Yorkshire just catching up?
- kwhitefoot 2y ago
  I can provide pictures in evidence if the down voter needs it.
zokier 2y ago
The implications are bizarre here. Only software/database impacted by this change is something custom for the city, anything more widely used must handle apostrophes etc anyways because other places have them too. And also this being a change now implies that whatever custom software in question is something new, because any old software must have been dealing with these street names with apostrophes. So first question in my mind is what/why is this software that they are attempting to accommodate??? Or is this all just based on misinterpretation of the mentioned BS7666 and nobody thought to check it??
dboreham 2y ago
I'm going to guess this is going to be one of those stories that ends with "and that person is an idiot". And "there was nobody with a clue present to tell them they're obviously an idiot".
dboreham 2y ago
Before reading tfa I thought this was going to be about "Bar t'At Lane".
stevage 2y ago
There might be good reasons for not printing them on signs, but this reason seems dumb. Around here (Melbourne, Australia) I don't think they are ever used. "Princes St" etc. It's fine.
Theodores 2y ago
In the UK, if you venture from a side street to a main road, the chances are that there won't be a sign to tell you what that main road is, unless you venture down that main road to where it meets another main road. This can be a considerable distance. I am all for keeping in the apostrophes as they are mini 'flashcards' to help the youngsters learn the value of punctuation. I also think that it is out of respect for residents, if I was on 'St. Mary's Road' and I had to write 'st marys rd' then I would worry that people outside Yorkshire might think I was illiterate. One day a UK county will do an excellent job of signs, so people always know where they are without SatNav. Remember that many signs were removed just in case the Germans arrived, and we couldn't have them finding their way around, could we? North Yorkshire council could trial some best practice signage that involves having actual signs instead of making the punctuation vanish. They could get an unexpected tourism boost from doing so with mildly fewer cars on the roads.
anotherevan 2y ago
These discussions always remind me of the old adage that capitalisation is important because it means the different between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse…
notorandit 2y ago
Base64 (or any other similar encoding) could be of help. But unrecoverably modifying the data to fit within constraints on input, storage or output seems a rather poor "solution".
dash2 2y ago
Airlines around the world, and many US-specific online forms, sternly refuse to accept that my surname is Hugh-Jones. So it becomes HughJones which makes me seem like a rogue robot.
mavili 2y ago
We cannot (competently) make computers work like we want them to, so let's change our lives to adapt to computers instead.
mihaaly 2y ago
Wrapping the reality around computer ssytems that supposed to (and proclaim themselves so) solve any problem. Post office scandal about the inability to add numbers, a tiny line f uk the whole system, and we want to give your life into the hands of AI systems. What can go wrong?
eigenket 2y ago
I used to live in North Yorkshire until I moved away to start a job in mainland Europe. When I moved I tried to fill in the form on their website to indicate that I wouldn't be paying the council tax on the house I used to live in anymore. Weirdly I couldn't make the form work, it broke with weird errors about timing out. After some headscratching I decided (on a whim) to change my computer's timezone back to GMT and hilariously the form started working perfectly. Sadly I couldn't finish filling in the form, because it required a postcode for my new address, and would ONLY accept postcodes which matched the UK format (which my new address, in a different country obviously didn't match). You shouldn't be surprised about any IT insanity from North Yorkshire Council, they are impressively incompetent.
penguin_booze 2y ago
The Street of Saint Mary--that's what they should write instead.
msla 2y ago
Apparently, this is because of a standard they're required to conform to, not database software in specific: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 > As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". On the other hand, you’re naïve if you think English hasn’t already been simplified to fit on machinery such as typewriters and cheap printing presses. This process began long before computers.

166 points by IMSAI8080 2y ago

Makes me wonder if this was the root cause of that software glitch that wrongly sent all those 1000s of postmasters to prison.

shadowgovt 2y ago
Different issue. In that case, the vendor had given some guarantees of consistency of data across network nodes that the network didn't actually support. Because there were guarantees, the law went looking for horses instead of zebras, and the "horses" in this case were that only a few people had admin rights to mess with the transactions and the audit logs. ... but in reality, no human was messing with those; system bugs were dropping or duplicating data. The government should not have trusted claims of a third-party without independent auditing they controlled (and, ultimately, I think that's the takeaway that all governments should be taking from this disaster).
- DarkmSparks 2y ago
  dropping and duplicating data is exactly the symptom you get from not sanitising aprostrophies in your data correctly.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Not at all. If I understand correctly, the failure to synchronize was a fundamental flaw in the the networking code and had nothing to do with the payloads inside the networking code.
    - DarkmSparks 2y ago
      that could still be ' handling, try to sql (`type`:'express post',`from`:'st mary's street',`value`:'50') and it will drop the value field, throw an error, and quite possibly duplicate several type and half filled froms depending on how the error handling is done. This article is basically admitting its cheaper to change the street names than unfux their buggy software, so something is up. what are the other options that meet that criteria?
      - shadowgovt 2y ago
        The software glitch that was involved in 1,000 people being arrested had nothing to do with street names. By this point, the flaws are pretty well-documented. If you find anything in the reports about handling of apostrophes, feel free to cite it. The underlying communication protocol from node to node wasn't even SQL; it was an XML format called "Riposte." There was, perhaps, SQL involved in eventual account database updating, but issues had occurred in message transit even before that phase, and it's those issues that led to account reconciliation errors and (incorrect) charges of fraud on the part of the subpostmasters.
        DarkmSparks 2y ago
        source for it being well documented? xml suffers apostrophe issues to. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post-offices-horizon-system-failed-a-technical-breakdown https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post... says As early as 2001, McDonnell’s team had found “hundreds” of bugs. A full list has never been produced, seems almost guaranteed to me it had apostrophy bugs.
        shadowgovt 2y ago
        Source for it being identified as a root cause of the Horizon issues. As far as I can see, there is no evidence that it was.
        DarkmSparks 2y ago
        The evidence is they are changing the street names to stop bugs in software. The question is what software is so hard to fix its easier to change the physical street names than fix the data entry for those street names. Horizon seems the likely candidate, and the fix is equally stupid.

achrono 2y ago

Next: due to an issue with primary key mapping, all cities in the US are now required to have a unique name, so all affected cities must work together to come up with new names. Start with the Springfields.

caf 2y ago
No problem, we'll just rename every city to the latitude and longitude of the city hall, expressed to 3 decimal places and concatenated.

IMSAI8080 2y ago

I live on Bobby Tables Close.

Kaibeezy 2y ago
I live on Butts Wynd
- junto 2y ago
  Do you live next to Seymour Butts?
robjwells 2y ago
Help I'm Stuck In A Street Sign Factory Avenue

robocat 2y ago

I can't find a public copy of the recent versions of BS7666. The 2006 version had zero instances of the word 'apostrophe' so not sure what they think they are referencing. BS 7666: 2006 is based upon an International Standard ISO 19112 Spatial referencing by geographic identifiers.

chgs 2y ago
“The AGI now has a membership portal and it may be that the page you require sits within that portal. As a member you will be able to reach the page by logging in. If you are not yet a member of the AGI and are interested in joining please visit” If a standard isn’t publicly available under a free license it should not be called a standard.
- robjwells 2y ago
  While I agree with you, it's common that standards are not available without payment. For example, to get a copy of ISO 8601-1:2019 (as in, the date format standard!), it'll cost you $190. https://www.iso.org/standard/70907.html https://www.iso.org/standard/70907.html
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    Or, my personal gripe, ISO 7816 - your everyday smartcard standard. A full copy sets you back > 2k €. [1] https://www.vde-verlag.de/iec-normen/suchen/?publikationsnummer=7816&laenge=20&sortiert-nach=klassifikation&richtung=aufsteigend https://www.vde-verlag.de/iec-normen/suchen/?publikationsnum...
    - kwhitefoot 2y ago
      Also on Anna's Archive: https://annas-archive.org/md5/7957d8af6f296b3adaafd5c21d4aa323 https://annas-archive.org/md5/7957d8af6f296b3adaafd5c21d4aa3...
      - mschuster91 2y ago

dudeinjapan 2y ago

The best part of this article is: Ruby Wang... did not mind the changes. "To be honest with you, because I'm not from this country it doesn't matter because it's the same pronunciation," she added.

mrcartmeneses 2y ago
And then the photo of her looks exactly like my wife when she doesn’t give a shit about my bullshit
grajaganDev 2y ago
This could be from The Onion.

eesmith 2y ago

So, no "O'Malley" or "O'Kelly" or "O'Brien" will ever be honored with a street name in North Yorkshire using their actual (Anglicized) name? This isn't a new issue. Around 1990 one of the computer labs at my school was run by someone with an Irish surname starting "O'", and I remember him complaining about software which couldn't handle his name. It's been 30 years, and there are still problems?!? (To say nothing of "Madeleine L'Engle" or any of many others with an apostrophe in their name.)

robjwells 2y ago
Even among current and recent MPs and Lords, we've had: O’Brien (5), O’Donnell, O’Halloran, O’Hara (2), O’Mara, and O’Neill. https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons?SearchText=%27&ForParliament=All https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons?SearchText=%27...
- microtherion 2y ago
  And if the "no punctuation" mandate were to be taken seriously, it would also affect innumerable hyphenated names.
Kaibeezy 2y ago
Doctor M’Benga
ahazred8ta 2y ago
To add insult to injury, many government systems in Ireland cannot handle áccented létters in names.

AlecSchueler 2y ago

I refuse to believe any standard considered fit for use in 2024 allows absolutely no special characters via escape sequences.

switch007 2y ago
Councils can barely afford standards fit for for use in 1994, unfortunately
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  Can't the government fund a single open standard? Every council is now individually paying to license this broken spec.
  - edent 2y ago
    You can make that suggestion at https://github.com/co-cddo/open-standards https://github.com/co-cddo/open-standards That's the UK Government's discussion space for adopting open standards. (I used to work there.)
    - AlecSchueler 2y ago
      Thanks, I will do! I'm a big fan of the UK government's commitments to open standards and their whole IT philosophy in general. That said local councils usually give me quite the opposite feeling. I will definitely look into your suggestion in the hope of seeing some trickle-down!

espinielli 2y ago

As if database were not able to del with apostrophes or other special characters... Yes you have to sanitize your queries, but you have to do it anyway. Client applications will of course have to be smarter

lyu07282 2y ago
I would argue if you sanitize your input you are already doing it wrong, you should parameterize queries and send the data entirely separately from code.
- swasheck 2y ago
  from a certain perspective, parameterization could be seen as sanitation, no?
  - bewaretheirs 2y ago
    If it sanitizes anything, parameterization sanitizes the code, not the data, and has much lower impact on the outside world (because the rest of the world isn't pressured to rename things in the real world to fit arbitrary constraints in the computer).
ginko 2y ago
I think part of the problem with apostrophes is also that there's two characters for it. ' and ’
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  The Hawaiʻian ʻokina symbol begs to differ...
- chrisjj 2y ago
  And now they've added the problem of some roads having two names. Such as the example in the article's first photo.
- 2y ago

GardenLetter27 2y ago

Makes sense IMO, the apostrophes don't add much but can cause a lot of issues in manual transcription, simple queries, etc.

magnio 2y ago
*dont
- logifail 2y ago
  next to go will be capital letters thenspaces
  - OJFord 2y ago
    y not i fink sum ppl do that already in sum context nyway
oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
As always, the problem is always the underlying issue, even though the surface one is pretty ridiculous. If the council doesn't understand how to sanitise database input, imagine just how bad they are at the stuff that's mildly difficult or worse. Do NOT give any sensitive data to them, whatever you do!
- GardenLetter27 2y ago
  It's not just queries though - but CSV exports, etc. - every single system that ever handles this data needs to handle them. Searching if users omit the apostrophes, etc.
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  I'm sure that IT working in the council understand input sanitisation and escape sequences, but they're working to a broken standard.
  - 2y ago

sambeau 2y ago

So, I take it the UK now needs to rename Land's End and John o' Groats.

justincormack 2y ago
Not to mention Westward Ho!.
OJFord 2y ago
Only if they get somewhere moved to North Yorkshire.

daveoc64 2y ago

I don't really understand why they've decided to do this in 2024. We all know that older systems had problems with encoding and escaping special characters, but wouldn't they have encountered and dealt with all the possible problems by now?

resolutebat 2y ago

Australia removed apostrophes from all official place names back in 1966, leading to names like Surfers Paradise, Princes Highway and Wisemans Ferry. Given the date, I doubt computing was a major consideration though.

troad 2y ago
And my father-in-law is still upset about it. It's led to some interesting outcomes - for example, I've seen people write "Princess Highway" a fair few times, presumably on account of the official spelling ("Princes") falling confusingly somewhere half-way between the more usual "Prince's" and "Princess". In day to day use, I don't think most people actually use the apostrophe-free official spellings, at least for names comprised of ordinary English words (Prince's Hwy, Surfer's Paradise), but it might be more of a free-for-all with proper names (Wiseman's Ferry or Wisemans Ferry).
- caf 2y ago
  I have never seen anyone write "Prince's Hwy" (or "King's Hwy" for that matter), the apostrophe-free version would be far more common. The "Princess Hwy" thing is also common I think because the pronunciation most often used sounds a lot like "Princess", particularly when it's run right into "Highway" without a gap.
  - troad 2y ago
    > I have never seen anyone write "Prince's Hwy" (or "King's Hwy" for that matter), the apostrophe-free version would be far more common. I don't know what to tell you; I've seen it often. I'm talking day to day here, text messages and handwritten directions. If you're thinking of things like road signs, those will obviously follow official usage. > The "Princess Hwy" thing is also common I think because the pronunciation most often used sounds a lot like "Princess", particularly when it's run right into "Highway" without a gap. Obviously that is so, but I would suggest that the reason 'Princess Hwy' is comparatively so much more common than other similar mistakes (e.g. 'sea' for 'see' etc.) is because the official name (Princes Highway) feels so unnatural in English that it fails to act as a meaningful standard for usage.

MarcScott 2y ago

I have a street in a town near me which grammatically should be called St. Thomas' road. However, the street signs call it St. Thomas road at the north end and St. Thomas's road at the south end.

dark-star 2y ago
I would say that on average, the street name is correct ;-)
iraqmtpizza 2y ago
Thomas' is not grammatically correct in any version of English that I know. It's not plural. There is no special rule for that. Both the street signs you mentioned are at least grammatically coherent
- oarsinsync 2y ago
  When a word ends with an s, the use of an apostrophe without another s is valid English. Thomas’ and Thomas’s are the same thing.
  - iraqmtpizza 2y ago
    lol no. arguably the word ain't is more proper English than Chris' or boss'
    - AlecSchueler 2y ago
      Lol yes though?
    - TheRealPomax 2y ago
      It is trivial to find more than sufficiently authoritative source that cover the rules that make "Chris'" and "boss'" perfectly value contracted possessives in English. [1] However, it's English: there isn't just one rule, another rule can also be valid and might be the one you're familiar with on a day to day basis. That doesn't mean any other way to say or write the same thing is wrong, it's just a pattern you never saw. Like someone going "lol snuck isn't a real word, it's sneaked!" and then you hand them a dictionary and they learn something new about their own language. [1] https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/media_wysiwyg/University%2520of%2520Oxford%2520Style%2520Guide.pdf https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/media_wysiwyg/Univer...

cykros 2y ago

This seems silly for the reason they're doing it, in that a modern database should be able to handle characters with a little sanitation. However, it does seem like it could be helpful when it comes to satnav applications to remove ambiguity. Google's going to autocorrect most of the time anyway, but this way, you're less likely to run into an issue where it takes you to Kings Landing in the wrong town because you didn't type King's Landing in the town you meant. Sure, they tell you what town you're looking at, but I can't be the only one who's quickly typed in a destination and didn't take the time to double check and ended up driving to the wrong location for something. For some reason all of the hockey rinks near me have almost identical names...

napierzaza 2y ago
[dead]
TheRealPomax 2y ago
"This seems silly" is the nicest way to describe government standards that were already outdated in the 90's
thfuran 2y ago
>but this way, you're less likely to run into an issue where it takes you to Kings Landing in the wrong town because you didn't type King's Landing in the town you meant. That's pretty uncompelling. Should we also get rid of the letter s to avoid mix-ups between Kings Landing and King Landing?
- TylerE 2y ago
  Devils advocate: the apostrophe isn’t pronounced. The s is.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    England would have to do some serious work to get rid of all the unpronounced letters in their place names.

xjay 2y ago

Replace it with a QR, but it contains a UUID which has to be used to look up the current street name. (If all you have is a phone, everything can be solved with an app.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

rav 2y ago
The Danish Address Register (DAR) assigns a UUID to everything in the addressing system - street names, postal codes, building addresses... It's a nice official database to have in Denmark but I don't know of any products that actually store the UUIDs in the database.

fancyfredbot 2y ago

If you give responsibility for street signage to local councils then you'll inevitably find that one of the hundreds of councils eventually does something dumb like this. The technical solution for this specific problem is readily available but the political solution seems more interesting/complicated.

kleton 2y ago

Alternative solution: put the e back in that the apostrophe is standing in place of. St Maryes Place

lttlrck 2y ago
They would be little choice with St. James'. St. James means something else. So unless they go for St. Jamess it's have to be St. Jameses.

MezzoDelCammin 2y ago

I can't believe nobody has yet mentioned the obligatory relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/327/ https://xkcd.com/327/

webdoodle 2y ago

Little Johny Drop Tables gets a bad rap every time.

calibas 2y ago

You can print apostrophes on a street sign without any database issues because a street sign doesn't interface directly with a database. At least not yet... All the technical issues here have already been solved a hundred times, there's plenty of other options. It's a little worrying that we're eliminating punctuation in real life because of issues with integrating with geographical databases.

msla 2y ago
Apparently, this is because of a standard they're required to conform to, not database software in specific: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 > As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". On the other hand, you’re naïve if you think English hasn’t already been simplified to fit on machinery such as typewriters and cheap printing presses. This process began long before computers.
- eesmith 2y ago
  The Linotype machine supported ﬂ, ﬀ, ﬃ, ℔, œ, and æ. See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype_keyboard_with_Star_Quadder_attachment.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype... linked to from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine. Or see https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9/mode/2up?q=linotype+keyboard&view=theater https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9... . Even cheap printing presses could handle more than you think. Here's a type case layout from 1846, again with æ, œ, ﬂ, ﬀ, and ﬃ, ﬁ and ﬄ. https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/18/mode/2up?q=%22type+case%22&view=theater https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/... . That book is for the "Parlour printing press [which] was invented by Mr. Cowper for the amusement and education of youth, by enabling them to print any little subject they had previously written, provided the printing did not exceed in size the dimensions of an ordinary duodecimo page, which measures about 5 inches by 3 inches."

charles_f 2y ago

Looks like a much easier solution than having a couple people learn how to escape a string and prepare a sql statement.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
shadowgovt 2y ago
My local (US) county has a web service to look up property deeds and titles. They "solved" this problem by just having you enter the street name with no punctuation or suffix (ave, st, etc), and if there is a collision the form pops out a drop-down selector to have you disambiguate. It's not the cleanest solution but it works. I agree that bending the humans to serve the needs of the machine feels... Sub-optimal.
- amluto 2y ago
  To be fair, a degree of fuzziness in matching is quite valuable. Is it Eighth Ave, 8th Ave, Eighth Avenue or 8th Avenue? Or W 8th Ave, perhaps? Is that deed for Unit 7 or Apt 7 or #7 or Ste 7? Is the street address 15 8th Ave or 015 8th Ave? In cases where one zip code spans multiple cities, should anyone really be matching on the city? How about communities in a city in which no one is quite sure what goes in the city field? (Is “Pacific Palisades, CA” a valid city+state? How about Van Nuys, CA or Hollywood, CA? But don’t confuse this situation with West Hollywood, CA or Beverly Hills, CA, which are actual cities.) I wonder what address verification services expect for the “numbers in the address” when the address is 123 1/2 4th Ave #5”. Apostrophes seem like the least of anyone’s concerns.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
    My favorite confusing street I've dealt with is Boulevard in Hartford, CT[1]. Often abbreviated, so addresses like "1600 Blvd" are common. And of course there are streets where "boulevard" is the last word in the name, like usual, to add to confusion. [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1091898993 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1091898993

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jmvoodoo 2y ago

Tell me you're vulnerable to SQL injection without telling me you're vulnerable to SQL injection.

graypegg 2y ago

As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666GuidelinesSections1-4.pdf https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666Guid... # Standard data types used in BS 7666 CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters ... If I had to guess, alphanumeric is interpreted as [0-9a-z]. The sign printer probably expects this format when printing signs for the government, or worse, has a contract that says the government must provide this standard format for the sign information. So it's just a government mandated database schema... I don't think that's any better of a reasoning though lol

devsda 2y ago
BS in "BS 7666" stands for British Standard and not anything else. If the standard restricts street names to those certain characters, may be it really is BS.
- colloydi 2y ago
  The '666' portion doesn't inspire confidence either. We love apostrophes so much we have them on our supermarkets. If they're not there we add them. e.g. I'm going to Sainbury's e.g. I'm going to Tesco's ...despite the fact that it's real name is plain old Tesco.
  - Digit-Al 2y ago
    I say Sainsbury's because the name is exactly that. I don't say Tesco's because the name, as you say, is Tesco. I would guess those who say Tesco's (and maybe Asda's) are just getting confused because of Sainsbury's.
    - b112 2y ago
      Sounds like this Sainsbury person is responsible for spreading an apostrophe infection to Tesco.

lakomen 2y ago

Just yesterday I generated a 64 char length mysql password, which had \ and ` and '. I couldn't properly escape it, to pass via argv, so I had to truncate it and remove all those symbols. So I thought, how can this problem be solved? IMHO by doing a hex representation 0x00-0xFF per char. That would also increase entropy. MySQL and other databases would need to support hex input of passwords, also setting of hex passwords via SQL.

Izkata 2y ago
MySQL at least should support that last bit (it has hex strings, and passwords are set with strings using SQL), but not the first as far as I know.

gumby 2y ago

This reminds me of the more extreme case of Spain changing the treatment of <ll> due to limitations of PCs in the 1990s. Our tools should adapt to the needs of humans, not the other way around!

landhar 2y ago
Do you have pointers to this? As a Spaniard I recall that even though I was originally told the spanish alphabet treated the LL as its own letter, it always felt quite inconsistent. And I always assumed it’s removal was more about simplifying things than having to do with computers
- gumby 2y ago
  There is a comment from "adolph" parallel to yours with footnotes. But I remember the event well (though it was 30 years ago) as the difficulty for programmers was given as the justification for the law (this was a change in collation). This particularly irked me as unicode was a few years old at this point, and while not really adopted yet, was clearly the future.
knodi123 2y ago
The other day (in 2024!!) , I got a message saying my password needed to include a special character, with a helpful list of special characters that were forbidden.
fluoridation 2y ago
Hmm... However, language is itself also a tool. There are cases where adapting language to another tool is easier than the other way around.
- gumby 2y ago
  Sure, but the computer is a tool designed to be malleable and adapt to the human. This kind of grunt work (adapting to humans' models of collation) is exactly the kind of task that should be handed off to machines.

nickdothutton 2y ago

How many hundreds or thousands of new streets are being created in North Yorkshire each year I wonder?

yardstick 2y ago
Existing street signs need replacement over time too.
- nickdothutton 2y ago
  They used to be made of cast iron, probably good for a couple of hundred years I’d image, unless smashed or stolen for scrap (sometimes this does happen). I wonder what they make them out of today that leads to needing frequent replacement.

none_to_remain 2y ago

There is a public recreation facility called Peter'?s Field in NYC. It is named primarily for Peter Stuyvesant and Peter Cooper (NYC historical notables), secondarily for Peter Piper, Peter Parker, Peter Pan, Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Peter Rabbit, and Peter from "Peter and the Wolf". Seems they use Peters Field and Peter's Field but not Peters' Field.

kwhitefoot 2y ago

It's been common though not exclusive practice to not use apostrophes in street names for a very long time in the south of England, is Yorkshire just catching up?

kwhitefoot 2y ago
I can provide pictures in evidence if the down voter needs it.

zokier 2y ago

The implications are bizarre here. Only software/database impacted by this change is something custom for the city, anything more widely used must handle apostrophes etc anyways because other places have them too. And also this being a change now implies that whatever custom software in question is something new, because any old software must have been dealing with these street names with apostrophes. So first question in my mind is what/why is this software that they are attempting to accommodate??? Or is this all just based on misinterpretation of the mentioned BS7666 and nobody thought to check it??

dboreham 2y ago

I'm going to guess this is going to be one of those stories that ends with "and that person is an idiot". And "there was nobody with a clue present to tell them they're obviously an idiot".

dboreham 2y ago

Before reading tfa I thought this was going to be about "Bar t'At Lane".

stevage 2y ago

There might be good reasons for not printing them on signs, but this reason seems dumb. Around here (Melbourne, Australia) I don't think they are ever used. "Princes St" etc. It's fine.

Theodores 2y ago

In the UK, if you venture from a side street to a main road, the chances are that there won't be a sign to tell you what that main road is, unless you venture down that main road to where it meets another main road. This can be a considerable distance. I am all for keeping in the apostrophes as they are mini 'flashcards' to help the youngsters learn the value of punctuation. I also think that it is out of respect for residents, if I was on 'St. Mary's Road' and I had to write 'st marys rd' then I would worry that people outside Yorkshire might think I was illiterate. One day a UK county will do an excellent job of signs, so people always know where they are without SatNav. Remember that many signs were removed just in case the Germans arrived, and we couldn't have them finding their way around, could we? North Yorkshire council could trial some best practice signage that involves having actual signs instead of making the punctuation vanish. They could get an unexpected tourism boost from doing so with mildly fewer cars on the roads.

anotherevan 2y ago

These discussions always remind me of the old adage that capitalisation is important because it means the different between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse…

notorandit 2y ago

Base64 (or any other similar encoding) could be of help. But unrecoverably modifying the data to fit within constraints on input, storage or output seems a rather poor "solution".

dash2 2y ago

Airlines around the world, and many US-specific online forms, sternly refuse to accept that my surname is Hugh-Jones. So it becomes HughJones which makes me seem like a rogue robot.

mavili 2y ago

We cannot (competently) make computers work like we want them to, so let's change our lives to adapt to computers instead.

mihaaly 2y ago

Wrapping the reality around computer ssytems that supposed to (and proclaim themselves so) solve any problem. Post office scandal about the inability to add numbers, a tiny line f uk the whole system, and we want to give your life into the hands of AI systems. What can go wrong?

eigenket 2y ago

I used to live in North Yorkshire until I moved away to start a job in mainland Europe. When I moved I tried to fill in the form on their website to indicate that I wouldn't be paying the council tax on the house I used to live in anymore. Weirdly I couldn't make the form work, it broke with weird errors about timing out. After some headscratching I decided (on a whim) to change my computer's timezone back to GMT and hilariously the form started working perfectly. Sadly I couldn't finish filling in the form, because it required a postcode for my new address, and would ONLY accept postcodes which matched the UK format (which my new address, in a different country obviously didn't match). You shouldn't be surprised about any IT insanity from North Yorkshire Council, they are impressively incompetent.

penguin_booze 2y ago

The Street of Saint Mary--that's what they should write instead.

msla 2y ago

Apparently, this is because of a standard they're required to conform to, not database software in specific: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 > As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". On the other hand, you’re naïve if you think English hasn’t already been simplified to fit on machinery such as typewriters and cheap printing presses. This process began long before computers.