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Comment by Zenzizenzizenzi | Hacker News Reader

And this is the story of how I learned that HN usernames are max 15 letters.

My username, on the other hand, is what happens when UNIX systems have 8 character limits. (IRIX, 1994; my father was "percival" so I got cperciva as my university systems account, and I've used it ever since.)

I feel your pain. Mid 90s Unix systems seemed to really start butting heads with this limitation. Before then, there were so few users of the system that it didn't really matter (there was only one Bob), but the explosion of the Internet in the mid 90s meant that lots and lots of people suddenly needed usernames and that limit started to be a real problem.

My sister's university (1990's) gave out email addresses to students, using the first initial, first three letters of the last name, and a number to designate how many times that combination had been used. Her name is Amanda Nal___. Her email address was <anal1@___.edu>.

And it doesn't accept

    Z(enzi)z\1z\1c

, either ("Usernames can only contain letters, digits, dashes and underscores, and should be between 2 and 15 characters long. Please choose another.")

I hope I remember this word if I ever have to teach how LZW compression works. It's better than 'banana'.

the nondescribable genius of the universe and its conflexing never ceases to amaze and also tickle my jakowski

Very sad.

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