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Comment by CrimsonCape | Hacker News Reader

>ShipGoo001

Either this is some official iso naming convention, or their department is like my office, where people invent their own arbitrary number formats to say #iamreallysmart. Do you really expect there to be 999 maximum random mystery ship goos? Lol

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they mentioned in the article that its only to be named that until it gets a proper (probably latin) name. And that they had found "about 20" previously unidentified strands of DNA in it. So I imagine they registered it as ShipGoo001 through ShipGoo020 in their own computer system

I think you're taking it too seriously. I think the name is clearly in tongue-in-cheek territory.

It could be serious to the mariner's wallet if these mystery critters ate up the serviceability of critical boat parts. ;@)

We've been at this science thing for nearly 500 years now, and we're only up to ship goo #1. What are the chances we're going to need 4 digits?

Well, for one, we've only recently started to look at the bottom of ships

And the off-by-one missed opportunity to start at 000. ;)

You're underestimating Cleveland if you think this is their first goo rodeo.

It's basically no extra investment to add an extra zero or two, and it might avoid a hassle later down the line.

Clearly should have been called MissingNo.

Since it is a different lifeform, maybe it has 8 arms and is octal based and numbered in a different scheme, branching out like:

ShipGoo001.003.006.177.004.001.343

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