this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Not always a good idea
https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/
that sounds so illegal. but i am not an american, so what do i know.
California will do a lot more than deny a renewal over unpaid fines. First they'll double the fine the first day that you are late, and then they'll add more fees every day until it is paid. Eventually, I think it's after six months or a year, they'll suspend your driver's license, and after that they'll issue a bench warrant for your arrest. So it's entirely possible for your whole life to be ruined over a traffic ticket in California, culminating with you being thrown into prison.
ok, but while that is wild in itself, i assume that is under the assumption of them actually being your tickets. here we talk about situation where they demand the hero pays someone else's tickets just because of the fault of their system.
That aligns perfectly from what I've seen from the California DMV. They do not give a fuck. They will do whatever their stupid little antiquated computer program tells them to do.
Did you read the article? All those fines were from other people, erroneously applied to him when the police officer didn't fill in the information on the citation.
“There’s no way to know if he used the plate on dozens of vehicles in dozens of states, some at the same time.”
So then he's innocent, case closed.
The standard is to assume innocence, not assume guilt
"There's no way to prove him guilty so he should have to pay!"
I doubt the guy had several different car makes on hand to commit some sort of nationwide parking violation spree with the same plate but different cars in places where it's impossible to even drive between the two places in the time between both timestamps.
Huh? They're not his fines. The software is just shit so it puts all fines with no license plate as matching his.
How the heck does a system interpret a string value null as a literal null? That seems insane to me that there really is software out there written like this. "null" != null... Or so I thought, maybe there are languages out there that this can happen in easily? Or someone is storing the string value of null in a non nullable database column?
May I introduce you to our lord and savior JavaScript?
Javas Christ.
But even in JavaScript a string representation of null is not equal to a null literal. 'null' or "null" are not the same as null
This is peak nottheonion material
Paywalled
https://archive.is/Foe1r
God that's such a good idea. Would it work the same if I did #N/A?
Only if your DMV does everything in Excel, so.... maybe?