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This format was discussed in a HN first page post just this week: > This alphabet, 0123456789ABCDEFGHJKMNPQRSTVWXYZ, is Douglas Crockford's Base32, chosen for
by carfacts 5y ago
This format was discussed in a HN first page post just this week:
> This alphabet, 0123456789ABCDEFGHJKMNPQRSTVWXYZ, is Douglas Crockford's Base32, chosen for human readability and being able to call it out over a phone if required.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29794186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29794186
- mhoad 5y agoYeah when he lays out the arguments for it in the book you can clearly see why it makes a huge amount of sense. The usability, the performance, the value of a checksum etc…
- davidjytang 5y agoPeople in my industry in my country has specifically avoid using B and D together as they sound too similar over the phone. Also 2 and Z can be similar in writing. However it is nice to not see 0 and O, 1,I,l in the same string.
- FabHK 5y agoF and S sound similar over the phone, at least on POTS landlines, as they don't carry the higher frequencies (> 4 kHz) that distinguish the S from the F. Note that cat names tend to have S sounds. POTS = Plain old telephony service is restricted to a narrow frequency range of 300–3,300 Hz, called the voiceband, which is much less than the human hearing range of 20–20,000 Hz [from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_old_telephone_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_old_telephone_service ]
- jandrese 5y agoAnybody who has to relay things like API or CD keys over a POTS line on a regular basis quickly learns the NATO phonetic alphabet.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- et-al 5y agoIf you're worried about clarity over the phone, you should look into the NATO phonetic alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
- cperciva 5y agoI prefer to use Aeon, Bdellium, Czar, Djinn, Eye, etc.
- oldsecondhand 5y ago> Djinn Fun fact: dzs counts as a single letter in Hungarian (e.g. in alphabetical ordering).
- slavik81 5y agoThe bomb defusal scene in Archer was an absolute classic for this. https://youtu.be/_4jxLxZrMfs https://youtu.be/_4jxLxZrMfs
- davidjytang 5y agoQuite a challenge for non-English crowd.
- layer8 5y agoYou still have to know that 0 is 0 and not O, and that 1 is 1 and not I or l.
- tapas73 5y agobut if mistake is made, and you wrote down L instead of 1, and sent me in a e-mail. I, knowing that it is crockford 32, would easily deduce what mistake was made.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- layer8 5y agoRight, I didn't realize the decoder is specified to be lenient in that way, so the confounded characters are actually equivalent in the encoding.
- Zamicol 5y agoLooking for that quote I can't find it on that page.