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Capital i and lowercase L look the same in pretty much any sans-serif computer font (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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I l

l I

Guess which one is which?

I don't really care about 1, because it's usually different, and I can't be arsed to change the font.

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[–] 20 points 10 months ago (3 children)

As a job title: sysadmin

Loathe.

Every now and then there crops up the situation where there is no copy/paste from host to host. And when that involves a fucking product key or some shit... Mother fuckers just base 58 that shit.

What would you rather read and type?

Product key: "I dont fucking know lots of lllllIIIIIIlllIII etc"

Or...

Product key: "CqiDNKttsj1NUubpbVJ2VJL9eMEpRvRFMV3hNPRxtUX7SMox5UQjeEZX3DqqHNAfkSE"

I rest my case.

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  • [–] -1 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Mother fuckers just base 58 that shit.

    I'm assuming that this is the point you're making, but just to clarify:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base32

    The most widely used[citation needed] base32 alphabet is defined in RFC 4648 §6 and the earlier RFC 3548 (2003). The scheme was originally designed in 2000 by John Myers for SASL/GSSAPI.[2] It uses an alphabet of A–Z, followed by 2–7. The digits 0, 1 and 8 are skipped due to their similarity with the letters O, I and B (thus "2" has a decimal value of 26).

    This is generally considered to be a preferable encoding for things like this.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    Yeah... No

    I didn’t mean RFC Base32.

    I meant human-safe alphabets.

    Base58 or Crockford Base32 that intentionally remove I, L, O, and 1 (which is distinct from "base 32").

    RFC Base32 still hits the exact problem I’m ranting about.

    To be clear the (vanilla) base32 version of the aforementioned string:

    "I dont fucking know lots of lllllIIIIIIlllIII etc"

    Outputs:

    "JEQGI33OOQQGM5LDNNUW4ZZANNXG65ZANRXXI4ZAN5TCA3DMNRWGYSKJJFEUSSLMNRWESSKJEBSXIYY="

    You can use cyberchef to check for yourself.

    This does not solve the problem.

    I meant what I'd said: base 58.

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