Crates.io squatting

tools and infrastructure
115

Some numbers to show the economics of these names:

  1. They have no inherent value, you can't trade them for food etc.

  2. Counting alphanumeric and underscore words up to length 8, there are 27 ^ 8 = 282_429_536_481 crate names.

  3. From the oxford dictionary site:

    The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.

    So there are (171_476 + 47_156) ^ 3 = 10_450_598_979_731_968 three-word crate names.

Just saying that however many names you squat, a physicist will still round it to 0 :stuck_out_tongue:.

4 Likes