The author may well have been aware of this. However, since the author didn't retrieve those database IDs or URLs in the first place, they would have had to make further requests to retrieve them, which they wanted to avoid doing.
"I was looking at either backfilling millions of records or migrating our entire database, and neither sounded fun."
I was expecting this post to explain why it's an underscore specifically, as opposed to a dollar sign, an asterisk, a caret, a tilde or some other special character.
I can only assume it's a holdover of languages like C where the standard library has some reserved names that start with an underscore.
A terminal doesn't need SSH integration, but it's convenient if it does, to allow you to easily start and manage connections. Is there something inherently unsafe about such an integration?
First thing I would do is look for a security.txt file or search to see if they operate some kind of bug bounty. Failing that, I would browse their website or search for contact details (or even just a contact form). WHOIS can be useful for this. Ideally you'd want some kind of security contact, or a technical contact, but other times you have to make do with the general contact email/form.
In this specific case, they have a general email address at the bottom of their privacy policy, so that's what I'd use.
I'd send them an email along the lines of "I found a security issue with your website; how would you like me to report it to you?". Then they'll hopefully put me in touch with the right person.
In terms of what I'd expect… If they operate a bug bounty (which they don't in this case) then I'd expect what's on offer. If not, it would depend. I often don't expect anything. There have been businesses I've disclosed security vulnerabilities to that are shady enough that I've refused the reward they offered. Sometimes I don't want anything to do with them.
Suppose there are two students. Each has a 50% chance of drawing the short straw (by picking either 0 or 1). Therefore, there is a 25% chance that neither will draw the short straw, 25% chance that both will draw the short straw, and 50% chance that only one will draw the short straw.
It's the extensible nature of XML that gives it an advantage. You can add custom elements and attributes whilst conforming to the base schema.
Granted, XML isn't the only format where this is possible. You can sort of achieve it with JSON, though XML's namespace system helps deal with name collisions. Adding bank-specific messages wouldn't be possible (or would be difficult) with fixed-column formats, for example, unless they had been specifically designed to be extended.
In a democratic society, if citizens are particularly concerned about the aesthetics of public property, they can make their views known to the relevant authorities and elected representatives, and it could even become an election issue. I think that's far better than citizens fighting with paint.
We're talking about public property here. Many authorities have a 'no tolerance' approach to graffiti. Even if it looks nice, it will be removed. There is a belief that removing graffiti quickly discourages it. If graffiti artists find that their work won't last long, they may be discouraged from doing it in the first place. Aesthetics doesn't really come into it.
For one thing, it can be costly to remove graffiti. And when it's on publicly owned property, who pays for that removal? The public, of course.
If, for example, a train is the target of graffiti, it will often need to be taken out of service. This, then, results in a degraded service to the travelling public.
Furthermore, graffiti artists often put themselves in dangerous situations. Numerous people have been seriously injured or killed when doing graffiti. That not only sucks for them, but also has various knock-on effects.
Some graffiti art can look really nice, whereas others have little artistic value. Regardless, the negative impacts of graffiti should not be overlooked.
Classic Mac OS used colon (:) as the path separator, so slashes were perfectly acceptable in file and directory names.
Even in modern versions of macOS, the GUI still allows you to create files and folders with slashes in their names; the slashes get recorded as colons in the filesystem.
"I was looking at either backfilling millions of records or migrating our entire database, and neither sounded fun."