4 ms·
Regarding Base 32, I love the justification used for removing U. I, L, and O all have potential confusion with digits, but U was removed because of "Accidental
by eridius 10y ago
Regarding Base 32, I love the justification used for removing U. I, L, and O all have potential confusion with digits, but U was removed because of "Accidental obscenity".
- pitaj 10y agoThat's actually pretty brilliant
- mikeash 10y agoI once had a moment of panic after coming up with and shipping a custom scheme along these lines, when I realized there was a decent probability of generating accidental profanity. Afterwards I came up with a filter, and we spent a fun day filling it with every nasty word we could think of.
- OJFord 10y agoI'm surprised it wasn't just "and all vowels" with the same reasoning, or at least 'a' (because I can more readily think of examples than for, say, 'e'). I suppose, though, there's an attraction in using b32 rather than b29... (Though I notice mid-word apostrophes are double-tap-selectable at least on macOS, so perhaps swapping 'a' for ''' would be advantageous, if more complicated to explain.)
- eridius 10y agoThe two "worst" swearwords that pop into mind both have "u" in them. Meanwhile, the swears with "a" in them seem to be the tamest of the lot.
- OJFord 10y ago"Tameness" varies extraordinarily by region - an infamous example being 'twat' which throughout the UK ranges from friendly to vulgar. Regardless of variance, I don't think I'd regard either the above or the name of a fat character in Austin Powers as "tamest of the lot".
- eridius 10y agoI find it interesting that you're willing to say "twat" but not "bastard". I admit that I didn't think of either of those words, though I think they're still much tamer than the ones with "u" in them. Really what I was thinking of was "crap" and "damn".