asterisks

I think that the most brilliant idea in the article is that of not using asterisks to indicate required fields.

If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

So in other words it's impossible to have two inline asterisks without a space after the first one.

How many asterisks does this claim of a privacy win need before it should no longer be considered valid?

Indent your lines with two spaces and they'll end up in a <pre> with your asterisks intact.

Doesn't look like it's ready yet, note the (asterisks) instead of the due date.

One way to mitigate risk could be to only send the first/last half of the password and replace the rest with asterisks.

It's my gut feeling that asterisks are so commonly used to indicate required fields that most users have come to understand their meaning.

It supports just italics with asterisks, blank lines for paragraphs, code blocks by indenting with two spaces (while markdown uses 4), and auto-linking URLs.

Something in between two asterisks on HN gets shown in italics.

Side note: is there no way to escape asterisks on HN?

I think this will glob unless you escape the asterisks.

It looks like I've been breaking the "use asterisks for emphasis" rule for years without realizing it.

So Java "reference" is C++ pointer without asterisks and ->.

> So Java "reference" is C++ pointer without asterisks and ->.

And the last kicker, the change password box had asterisks in it on page load and a quick "view source" revealed my friend's "not joking" password all from a link that didn't look too important.

Asterisks wouldn't allow you to specify a lower bound.