D418 - The census control failed because obSCEne's canary leaked into our symbol database

measured - 2026-08-31

D392 left 900-surface/control failing even under named, with the honest note that "the symbol it uses is one this build can name" - and punted it as a question for the probe. It was not the probe. symbols/generated.json literally contained obs_census_control_absent, and its own derivation record said where it came from:

"obs_census_control_absent": { "found": "static", "by": "module-strings",
                               "from": "titles/obscene/eboot.bin", "on": "2026-08-25" }

The string harvester (orbistoun-names::strings::candidates) scans a corpus module for identifier-shaped runs and offers them as candidate names. obSCEne is a corpus module too, and its own eboot carries the string obs_census_control_absent - the name of the deliberately-absent census control. Harvesting it put a non-symbol in the database, so this build could name the control's NID, so named did not refuse it, so it resolved to a stub and reported present. Not a hash collision (a 64-bit one against 30k names is ~10^-15); a name leak.

Two-part fix. The entry is removed from symbols/generated.json, and the harvester now rejects any candidate beginning obs_ - obSCEne's private prefix, which no platform library exports - so it cannot re-enter on the next regeneration. The tell is the namespace, and it is exact.

Under named the control now passes (obs_census_control_absent absent), and D392's two siblings move with it: 015-sync/machine-kind passes, and 005-generation/detect becomes honest (the previous generation's driver resolves, the current one's does not - correct for a ps4-mode module run) rather than claiming both. The 33 partials under named are libraries orbistoun genuinely lacks, now reported absent instead of falsely whole - which is the census working.

named stays non-default (all's stub-everything is the safe mode for running a guest, and every compat/ measurement was taken under it); this fix is what makes named tell the truth when a conformance run asks for it. Recorded measured: confirmed by the control flipping on re-run.