I should have preserved some so we could look at what it was, but I didn't think of it until after I fixed the node. And then it was too late. :-(

Funny, I thought they were diamonds, albiet black ones.

It was conspicuous because it was an unbroken line of these which was forcing the page width to ~120 characters, and making the whole thread difficult to read.



- Boldra

Now that you say it, I believe you're right. I was focused on getting rid of them, not making them.

Which means that I accidentally fell prey to a piece of trivia that I love. Which is that if you create a set of cards with impossible suits, people flipping through the cards will confidently recognize them as a similar possible suit. It is only when presented slowly that people will learn to see the impossible suits, and this process can be difficult. (This example is presented in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.) So when I remembered that it looked like something you'd see on a card, I remembered the color but then substituted in a possible suit for the shape.

Silly me.

Some passwords were published after the break-in, so in theory it's possible that someone who was curious logged in with the OP's password and then accidentally edited that node. I don't find this too likely though.