Questions about changes to Restful Authentication.

I have a couple of projects with Restful Authentication

The first snippet is from the Git repo today and is supposed to be the newer code.

    # Store the given user id in the session.     def current_user=(new_user)       session[:user_id] = new_user ? new_user.id : nil       @current_user = new_user || false     end

  # Store the given user id in the session.   def current_user=(new_user)     session[:user_id] = (new_user.nil? || new_user.is_a?(Symbol)) ? nil : new_user.id     @current_user = new_user || :false   end

Why did "@current_user = new_user || :false" become false? and how did :false work at all. Why did we stop caring that new_user is a Symbol? and how could that happen anyway.

Both are somewhat hypothetical questions, but I am curious.

Thanks in advance.