This video was made possible by Curiosity
Stream. When you sign up for any subscription at CuriosityStream.com/HAI,
you’ll also get access to Nebula—the streaming service that HAI is a part of. One day, I’m going to make a joke that is
so bad, so unconscionably corny, that one of you is going to snap. You’re going to march right down to your
nearest DMV, slam some bills down on the counter, and demand a shiny new vanity plate with “SAMSUCKS”
emblazoned on it. Unfortunately for you, the DMV guy will probably
shrug and tell you that while you make a compelling argument, “SAMSUCKS” is just one of those
things you can’t put on a license plate. And, before you get any other ideas, you also
can’t put death threats, names of reproductive organs, suggestions that you’re a cop, religious
references, swear words, calls for mass genocide, claims that you’re wildly intoxicated while
driving your car, or, after a small debacle back in 2016, ‘NULL.’ Not “null” as in nothing, but “null”
as in, y’know, the word “null.” Now, it’s not that “null” is secretly
offensive or some kind of really vague innuendo. Rather, it has something to do with how police
databases work, but, in order to explain how, we first have to look at what happened to
the one guy who made the terrible mistake of changing his license plate to “NULL.” In 2016, security researcher Joseph Tartaro
decided to get a dorky pair of matching license plates for him and his wife—“NULL” for
him, and “VOID” for the missus. Y’know, like… that legal doublet meaning
“having no binding power or validity!” Cute, right? Now, as romantic as that sounds, Romeo here
had a secondary motive in mind: he thought that these cute matching license plates could,
theoretically, confuse citation systems and enable him and his wife to live out a life
of petty crime completely undetected—I mean, what’s the last time your pathetic box of
chocolates did that? You see, “null” is a common marker used
in all sorts of different computer databases to indicate missing or inapplicable information;
Tartaro figured that this also applied to whatever database dealt with California license
plate numbers, and, unfortunately for him, he was 100% right. Or, like, 95% right, since the only part he
got wrong is what would happen to him if he was right. Instead of cruising under the police’s radar,
blowing past stop signs and running down pedestrians without so much as a slap on the wrist, Tartaro
started racking up tickets right and left—but not for violations he had committed. In fact, he hadn’t committed nearly any
violations since he’d registered the plate, and he definitely hadn’t committed violations
in every single Californian city with dozens of different vehicles over a timeline of two
years, before his plate even existed. Or maybe he had, and lied to every media outlet
that interviewed him. Who knows? The simplest explanation, however, is that
every time a lazy California cop forgot to plug in the license plate number for a ticket,
the system would file that under “NULL,” which just so happened to be Tartaro’s plate. All told, he racked up $12,049 of fines before
he finally managed to put an end to this bureaucratic nightmare, which also makes this the most
expensive romantic gesture since that jewel-encrusted toilet seat that Ben Affleck bought J. Lo
in 2002. Now, Joseph Tartaro knew he was playing with
fire when he got his plate changed, but you know who doesn’t know anything about the
consequences of exploiting structured query language vulnerabilities? Babies. Specifically, babies who were born and given
the unfortunate surname of “Null” before these databases even existed. Across the globe, there are tens of thousands
of people whose last name is “Null,” and much like Joseph Tartaro’s license plate,
they run the risk of breaking nearly every modern database that they come into contact
with. Websites that use registration forms—like
bank sites, digital stores, streaming platforms, pizza-delivery services, illegal online poker
rings, conspiracy blogs, fan-fiction blogs, smutty fan-fiction blogs, well, pretty much
any website, really—usually look at the name Null and think “Huh, this person doesn’t
have a name, this is clearly not a real member of civilized society, under no circumstances
can we allow them to join our illegal online poker ring.” As a result, the Nulls of the world often
face crashing websites, unusual errors, or simple declarations that they just don’t
exist. As far as the internet is concerned, they’re
ghosts, and the results can range from annoying to downright spooky. Christopher Null, the proprietor of NullMedia
LLC, for example, often receives mail addressed to “Mr. at Media LCC”—coincidentally,
also the name of Wendover Productions’ new money-laundering division. Now, while there aren’t any simple solutions
to these fussy databases and this word that sends them into a spiral of virulent denial
worse than my antivax neighbors, data analysts have invented some creative work-arounds over
the years. Take, for example, this place: Null Island. Well, actually, this stock footage isn’t
Null Island at all, because it’s a completely imaginary place marked by this sad little
buoy. Located at 0,0—where the equator meets the
prime meridian—Null Island was added to certain maps by GIS analysts to detect geocoding
errors caused by, you guessed it, the word “Null.” Basically, any time a computer or smartphone
can’t determine the geographic coordinates of a given location—like when you take a
photo with geo-tagging turned off—it will output the location as “null, null.” Certain thick-headed mapping programs can,
however, confuse that for 0,0, a real set of coordinates, and decide to plop you down
right on Null Island—which should tell these analysts that unless you swam out to the buoy
in the middle of the Gulf of Guinea, those four dastardly letters had struck again. Speaking of islands, those weirdos over at
Wendover Productions have released another Nebula original documentary about an island—it’s
called the Final Days of Majuro. Those weirdos at Half as Interesting are also
releasing a Nebula original next month, which means the moral of the story is that you should
probably get on Nebula. Luckily, you can do so with the best deal
in streaming. For just $20 a year, about the cost of a bag
of pizza rolls, I think—I’m not really sure—you get access to Curiosity Stream,
home to thousands of fantastic feature-length documentaries, and Nebula, home to all the
special, exclusive projects of your favorite creators, plus ad-free versions of all HAI
and Wendover videos. That’s a crazy good deal, and it’s available
only by signing up at CuriosityStream.com/HAI.
