NULL license plate not such a bright idea • Hacker News Board

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#81

Post by Retric » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #60

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/1105/

In the Starcraft 2 community it is called barcoding. Basically, I 1 | l are all accepted characters for a name and I think some do look actually identical on most fonts used in the game. So yeah, one person doing that you call "barcode", 2 persons doing that, you already have deniability. Be more than 10, and that's a crowd.

You can reuse names in SCII, so it’s more a convention than anything else. The important bit is to have many accounts with similar names.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#82

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #24

sparrish wrote: post #4

This is funny. I wonder what would happen if you could put a 'NOT ' in front of your plate number... would everyone but you get a ticket?

Nah, because it's not unsanitized SQL at fault, but people writing a literal NULL in the license plate field when there isn't one.

Actually, I think it's doubtful the folks at the private processing facility are actually writing 'NULL', but my guess is the DB field is just not set (i.e. left as NULL), and then when the info is read out somewhere it's just printed as the string literal value.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#83

Post by BryantD » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #75

Iv wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Starcraft 2 community it is called barcoding. Basically, I 1 | l are all accepted characters for a name and I think some do look actually identical on most fonts used in the game. So yeah, one person doing that you call "barcode", 2 persons doing that, you already have deniability. Be more than 10, and that's a crowd.

Back when I used to play Ingress, that was really common. The Enlightened in Dallas had a ton of barcode names.

The new client makes it much easier to distinguish the characters, but there are still plenty of barcodes in the game.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#84

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

ldoughty wrote: post #36

I have a family member who's license plate started with "&". The DMV accepts it, plates were ordered online fine, but police systems can't handle it apparently, to my family members ultimate discomfort. I commonly joke it probably gets the individual out of automated tickers for speeding and red lights, but when an officer pulls them over we sometimes need to explain that the "&" is dropped in the system (or so we've…

I sometimes see California tags with a heart character in them. Does anyone know if those considered part of the number, or are they just ignored as decoration?

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#85

Post by vinay427 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #37

There’s a lot of interesting options. How about NaN NaN?

This isn't an issue with the program lacking a valid input. The 'NULL' was hardcoded as a default value by a private processing company. (See the third paragraph in the article.)

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#86

Post by kev009 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

The case for stronger type systems for layman programmers in an easily understood parable.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#87

Post by knd775 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #60

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/1105/

In the Starcraft 2 community it is called barcoding. Basically, I 1 | l are all accepted characters for a name and I think some do look actually identical on most fonts used in the game. So yeah, one person doing that you call "barcode", 2 persons doing that, you already have deniability. Be more than 10, and that's a crowd.

There was a time where call of duty ghosts was exploitable, and people could wipe/delete the accounts of anyone whose username/gamertag they knew. Streamers and pro players had to use barcode usernames to avoid getting their accounts deleted.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#88

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #54

baybal2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder, what will "DROP *;" license plate do?

Most states do not allow special characters in the plate text.

Depends on how you define "special." I've seen hearts on California tags, and I think some glyphs on Virginia tags, but I might not be remembering that correctly.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#89

Post by ars » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #11

I love when people double down out of principle, when the only person getting hurt is themselves. He refuses to change it because he did nothing wrong...sure, but you are also the only one being hurt by it. Is this really the hill to die on?

But it does actually work! He can never get any tickets. If he does he'll just claim it was a false one.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#90

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

Tangentially related somewhat-common bug: YAML files will interpret the literal 'no' as boolean false if it's not quoted, instead of as a string.

Many developers have wondered why, when they stuck country-specific configurations in a YAML file, that things suddenly stopped working when they expanded support for Norway.