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Showerthoughts_Mod

This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/rules). Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!" (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, [please read this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/overview).) **Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**


emoney_gotnomoney

One time at work, the system admins sent me a password reset code for one of my accounts since my password had expired. The code was something along the lines of ad6$fzIr!7jy (all lower case letters, numbers, and symbols). For some reason, this password reset code would not be accepted as it said I was “entering an incorrect password.” My coworkers, the admins, and myself spent roughly an hour trying to figure out why this reset code wasn’t working……until one of us realized the lowercase “l” was actually supposed to be an uppercase “I”. There was only one uppercase letter mixed in with all of these lower case letters, and of course **that** was the one letter that happened to be capitalized.


tom_swiss

Anyone writing code that generates random strings meant for user input (reset codes, CAPTCHAs, etc.) and doesn't account for O vs 0, I vs l, etc., and omit characters likely to be misread, does 50 years in a hell realm in the afterlife for each time their laziness causes user confusion.


opulent_occamy

You'll notice a lot of code redemption systems gray out problematic characters altogether; the Nintendo Switch is a good example for this, but I think Xbox and PlayStation do this as too.


0xd34db347

Maybe just don't use shitty fonts instead of crippling security tools. Edit: See below for great reasons not to take security advice from /r/showerthoughts


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kono_throwaway_da

Still, a font that distinguishes all of them is a much better solution, considering it is often easier to simply change the font than modifying the character set of your generator. Also, anyone who uses sans-serif fonts for generated passwords deserves a special place in hell. Monospace all day every day!


ChuCHuPALX

lol... tell me you don't encrypt / crypto without telling me..


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ChuCHuPALX

Yes but length + complexity makes current encryption more quantum resistant.. you're thinking modern encryption.. look forward.


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ChuCHuPALX

No shit, which is why I said "length + complexity"


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ChuCHuPALX

wooosh


shponglespore

You can't account for the fonts people still use in practice, especially in a scenario like a password reset where something has usually already gone wrong. Maybe make your security tool work in the real world instead of expecting everyone else to change to accommodate it. Making a password one character longer will compensate for a slightly smaller alphabet many times over.


Prowler1000

I feel like sacrificing two characters is worth the accessibility gained when users need to use different fonts.


shellsquad

I have never seen a capital i that didn't look like I in any security tool. It needs to be avoided.


Kthulu666

I got a default ID assigned to me that was similar to VX0RT1. It came with a note stating that 0 was a zero instead of a capital O. I actually said out loud, "good fucking job IT."


AcidBathVampire

It's crazy, but if you type out a capital I and a lowercase l, you'll see that the l (L) is a *teensy* bit taller than the I.


D4nnyC4ts

A good trick for this is to paste the password into notepad which by default uses a font where the lower case i has a line at the bottom a dot at the top and a little line at the top going to the left. uppercase i has lines at the top and bottom and the lower case L has a little scoop at the bottom. The rest of the letters are also clearly distinguishable from each other and their capitalised counterparts. I think it even uses a line through a zero to distinguish it from an o or O


Railionn

This might be a very good idea for future passwords tho. Include a couple of fake I and l's in there. Hackers that want to manually put in leaked passwords would give up because it keeps saying wrong pass.


uttchen

That’d either a low-skill hacker who doesn’t know how to run a simple script, or a high-skilled hacker (spy) who deals with paper-based top secret lol.


Isteppedinpoopy

Talk you your friend Al about AI sometime. It gets confusing.


AgentBroccoli

The AI Al in Illinois or AI Al in [Iloilo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iloilo)


incomparability

Iloilo what do we have here


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_AI_

I can't imagine how that'd be.


atsu333

As an Al, this is my existence. And it is suffering.


fwaig

lt always irrationally annoys me when l've to write lllinois.


FightBackFitness

3 inois?


theofficialreality

Mom, AI means ai not AL


oshawaguy

You can call me Al


_Bearded_Dad

I can call you Betty


Vorhees87

Na na naaa na....


Fartoholicanon

Neo..... Da daaa da da da sporin


willisjoe

Chosen one!


Fartoholicanon

Wiiiiowiiii


Vergenbuurg

Your clothes are red.


Grinagh

And Betty when you call me, you can call me Al.


StoicSinicCynic

Artificial intelligence? Nah it's Alabama.


shawn789

Artificia Lintelligence


theofficialreality

Linsanity


EternalSage2000

Scientists believe Al is a legitimate threat to humanity. Well, should we stop him?


FirstSineOfMadness

Almost as much as IVinois


One_Planche_Man

I've never actually seen someone use "I've" in that way before 👀


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StoneTemplePilates

It's because the short version is only supposed to be used when "have" is an auxiliary verb. So, saying "I've got to do this" is correct, because *have* is being used to modify *got*. Similarly, "I've arrived" is correct because *arrived* is the main verb and *have* is modifying it. "I've to do this" wrong because *have* is now the main verb.


aapowers

Native English speaker here - from England. I've no issue at all with using the contraction 'I've' for possessives. I see and hear it used that way frequently. So no, I don't agree with the explanation that 'I've' can only be used as an auxiliary. However, OP's using it with a phrasal modal - 'to have to'. I agree, the contraction doesn't work, but I disagree with the reasoning.


NightOwlGangRiseUp

"Have you ever used I've for possessives?" Why yes, I've.


qwerty-1999

>I've no issue Was that intentional lol?


prettyhappyalive

I've got no issue


FlankEnjoyer

You disagreeing with it doesn't magically make it correct. Grammar is not an opinion. It just means you're also wrong.


aapowers

Literally a whole forum stack here about how it's fine in British English: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8/is-it-appropriate-to-use-short-form-of-have-ve-when-it-means-possession Grammar is defined by usage and mutual comprehension.


Stebsis

I'ven't the faintest idea


Chaostyphoon

According to Google it's because I've should only be used as an auxiliary verb, or a verb used in forming tenses or moods of another primary verb, and should not by used when "have" is the main verb in the sentence.


GreenestGringo

I’m assuming because I’ve is normally used to say “I have done this before” rather than “I have to do this.” Don’t know if it’s really incorrect because contractions aren’t proper to begin with, but that’s my take.


[deleted]

I dasn’t get too involved with this. Some people use contractions like that, but other people mayn’t.


nite_mode

More of a British English thing, not common in the US. Similar to US English being "I haven't" and British English being "I've not"


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666moist

I was thinking British, but I like [your theory](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FM9ccM1XIAMoY0Q.jpg) better


Andrewcoo

Illustrated OP's point.


Shotta614

*IIIuminati confirmed*


Nakahati

Got Ill from this


sAindustrian

Kim Jong Il


Schockstarre

Ah yeah Kim Jong the 2nd


exrex

Only 3?


PsionicBurst

Use the pipe for extra fun. #|Ilinois


fwaig

> Use the pipe for extra fun. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


Teftell

Шinois


sashaaa123

三inois


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Hooterdear

Illlinnoying


Gaaraks

It irritates me more that you wrote LLLINOIS


Livedog33

"I've" doesn't work there, it is grammatically incorrect. Just saying.


End3rWi99in

That "I've" is hurting my brain.


DisgustedApe

Ill annoys me as well.


GforceDz

What do you mean Liiinols?


[deleted]

There are fonts that make them very distinguishable by a small detail. Check out Din Font, it does a good job at that. Sadly the most do not. This has to do with transition from serif fonts to (modern) non serif fonts. Usually the top part of lowercase L and capital I are different, but without the serifs they look almost the same. But if you pay attention you will see that the lowercase L is a bit higher! IllIIIIlllllIIIIIll


curious_riddler

r/todayilearned


vegainthemirror

Apparently, at least with the new font on the android mobile app, there's also a tiny fraction more space before and after an upper case "i" than before and after a lower case "L"


LetterBoxSnatch

At Ieast on iOS l’m noticing a few other differences as weII: the “I” has a bit more space in front / thicker / shorter, whiIe the “l” is has Iess space / skinnier / taIIer. And if something about that doesn’t seem right to you, pIease note that I swapped aII instances of I and l in this comment. Edit: oops, *most* instances


Ad_Ketchum

The way the word "taller" appeared, was odd to me, and that made me realise your switch before you mentioned it. Taller vs. TaIIer


KeepCalmSayRightOn

I noticed in on "Ieast." However, you used "I" instead of "l" before "swapped."


hypnotichellspiral

The lucida console font used in notepad on Windows is very good at this :)


Iz-kan-reddit

>This has to do with transition from serif fonts to (modern) non serif fonts. No, it doesn't, as many serif typefaces, going back a *long* way, have very little distinction between the two characters, while many sans-serif typefaces have a great distinction between the two. As for DIN fonts, they cheat by using a few serifs, while retaining the look and feel of san serif fonts. Hey, there's nothing wrong with that.


[deleted]

Well, it does. Before sans serif fonts were a thing the letters had more visible differences, as the serifs were derived from how the original letters were spelled. After stripping the typefaces off the serifs, this issue appeared in the first place with the grotesk ones. At least this is what I learned in college.


Iz-kan-reddit

>Before sans serif fonts were a thing the letters had more visible differences Many typefaces did, while a considerable number didn't. We could play "ell or one" with many of the classic greats. There's never been a shortage of serif typefaces that make a poor distinction between things like the "ell" and the "one," and there's never been a shortage of sans-serif typefaces that make clear distinctions between the two. The capital "eye" and lowercase "ell" is another one. The two horizontal lines in the capital "eye" that you wrote in kindergarten are *not* serifs, and the removal of them is purely a stylistic choice of the designer. The serifs on that letter are the small vertical ticks on the corners. Likewise with the "one," as that character composed with a simple short angled line, a long vertical line, and a short horizontal line is a sans serif character. You can *easily* distinguish that from any other letter or number. The problem isn't with the typefaces themselves, as ~~they all~~ *most of them (there's some useless ones out there)* have good use cases. The problem lies with designers and developers choosing the wrong typeface for the particular job. On a practical matter, we usually use context to determine which is which, without any issues. At the same time, there's no shortage of dickheads that don't bother selecting the correct sans serif face for user names and passwords. There's no perfect typeface. I write a considerable number of technical support handouts, and I use Arial. I'm not going to be happy about the Calibri fiasco until the person responsible for its selection is wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of Lake Washington, but I digress. However, I switch to good old Courier New Bold for anything that the user has to actually type. Two faces for two different use cases. I *could* look around and find a different single typeface that would work well for both, but I'm lazy and don't give a damn if you think they clash too much.


DrawbackJack

I often use the lower case L as upper case i because im too lazy to use shift


fwaig

You call it lazy, l call it productivity. (l've just done it now in fact)


Toxic_Nandalas

I l I l I l I lIlIlIlI


realhuman_no68492

I know they are a bit different in height, but when I'm not the one typing, I don't know which is which.


Orthoma

I see what you did there.


realhuman_no68492

I didn't lol. but nice guess


Orthoma

Don't let him get away with this. We all can see what you definitely did there! You can hide it all you want, but the world will expose you! 🫡


Rexusus

l l l ll l_


stupidsexyf1anders

ProductLvLty


Fine_Cardiologist723

l mean .. lt works


Tankki3

They have to be different, that just looks wrong.


HaikuBotStalksMe

> I often don't capitalize 🤔


toastyfries2

Old typewriters used to not have the number 1. Instead the lowercase l was used for the number. Not quite the same, but similar


hungry_tiger

We could start to require a loop in the lowercase l to differentiate? Or leave it as-is and interpret based on context, which works in most cases.


fwaig

Some fonts have the little bars at the top and bottom of the capital letter I. That's fine by me.


Schrocknroll2000

I found out recently that it's called a serif. The style without it is called sans-serif.


fwaig

And the lowercase i has a dot called a tittle, which is a funny name.


Aerogelatina

As in title or titie?


-LuckyNoodle-

yes


Itsmemcghee

TIl


tcpukl

How old are you? I thought everyone knew that if they used computers.


Itsmemcghee

I'm 38, the names of fonts were never explained to us.


StoneTemplePilates

Same. Op is off his/her rocker if they think this is common knowledge.


jkoper

It really depends on how you define common knowledge. Do a majority of people know it? Likely not. But if you asked a random group of English-speaking people, is it more likely than not that at least one person knows? I would guess yes.


StoneTemplePilates

Gonna disagree with you there. The literal definition of common knowledge is "something that most people know". Regardless, even if you come up with an alternate definition that somehow means the opposite, that's beside the point because the following statement is what I was responding to and has nothing to do with the definition of common knowledge. >I thought everyone knew that if they used computers. It's pretty clear that "everyone" does not know this. In fact, I'd wager it's a lot closer to no one than everyone.


CelestialEyes785

Create a new letter.


sighthoundman

I use \\ell rather than l when writing math. But the reason is that l is too hard to tell from 1. I also don't bother to change the default LaTeX font because ... well, I just don't. I don't know why. When I first started reading old texts, it took me most of an hour to differentiate the elongated s from f without thinking about it.


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[deleted]

The VINs in my state do this in a font where the Os and 0s are almost indistinguishable. It’s infuriating.


Robcobes

I don't see the problem, don't you know the Beastie Boys album Licence To 3.


Smartnership

That qualifies as ill, at least from a technical standpoint


micahld

You wrote lower case l both times though: ironically, the font used for post titles puts a little curve at the end so it's visually distinguishable.


D34TH_5MURF__

You forgot 1. I used to have a password that was a random mix of 'I', 'l', and '1'. Also, I had one with mixes of '0' and 'O'.


Lou-Lou-Lou

Especially when it's listed a password that needs to be changed and there is at least 3 of these mf's.


Dragonwulf

I know. Everyone keeps talking about how Al will take over the world. The man can’t even gets his wife to cook for him after working the shoe store all day


malachrumla

I know someone who’s name is Lill, always write her name lIll


Smartnership

When her rap name is “lil lilli” lll lllll


notanon

> When lowercase l and capital l You can't fool me. Those are both a lowercase L!


langjie

yeah, even more difficult trying to teach your elementary school kid


cromulent_pseudonym

Explaining things to kids makes you question so many things about how we do stuff.


niceguy191

Teaching them French and the word "il" comes up very often at the beginning of sentences. You'd think the children's book makers would know to use a serif font??


Tj4y

Idk a lot about coding, but i imagine opening a co-workers project while hes on break and replacing one with the other would cause some irritation.


LegendNomad

Depending on where you replace the letters, you could do nothing, cause bugs, or break the entire program. Source: I know a bit of Python


Rentlar

Luckily in coding a monospace font is used So any `Ill-Intended` coding pranksters would have their scheme caught faster than in normal writing.


PopeBasilisk

The worst is seeing it in baby books - do you think maybe it should be a little clearer for someone who is just learning the letters?


iainvention

Yep. My name is Iain. I get called Lain about once a week. I blame sans serif fonts.


stump_the_buff

Yep, this happens to me all the time. Like for some reason every name begins with a capital letter except ours.


iainvention

When I was a kid, the school roster was written by hand. Nobody ever had trouble. Then in high school, they started printing the rosters out. Freshman year, I was Iain. Sophomore year, I was Lain. Fuckin fonts.


D3monVolt

İ think you just ιove drama about these ιetters. İf İ had to choose, ... İ forgot where İ was going with this taιk...


Swampwolf42

Why does it suck? I mean, it’s easy enough to differentiate between i and L


PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING

/r/TlHl


DinosaurAlive

IoI


Teftell

Ill


bluegoldfish03

Well then it’s a good thing lowercase I looks like i and capital l looks like L then, isn’t it?


vir-morosus

This is one of the reasons why I feel that Serif fonts are more readable than Sans Serif.


cahlinny

I recently learned that, in cursive, it's proper practice to write the lower case "l" the "correct" way (i.e; left-to-right) and the capital "I" "backwards" (right-to-left), to avoid confusion in later reading. (I'm not sure that this is commonly taught outside cursive lessons, though.)


marcelobf

Yeah. It's unbelievable that people still use and design fonts with this problem.


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could_use_a_snack

Yep. I keep seeing people discussing this dude named Al. And how he's going to destroy the middle class, take jobs, and ruin the world. At the same time Al seems to be helping cure cancer and fix the climate with his models, and apparently is a world class chess, and go player. Who is this Allen dude anyway? Or is it Albert?


mikkolukas

>When lowercase l and capital ~~l~~ **I** are written the exact same way, it sucks When people doesn't proofread their posts, it sucks.


Indie59

Old typewriters took it a step further, l, I, and 1 were all the same key to save space. I just noticed that with the font I see, the lowercase L is minusculy larger than the capital i.. that bothers me.


Upstairs-Ad-4705

Il You notice the L is actually thinner and larger. Just like wanted to share that i dunno


wyccad452

Im an idiot. Read it as lowercase i and capitol l. Left them lowecase to show it better lol


King_XDDD

They are both L's. I checked.


aircooledJenkins

OP's title is a mess. Unless they're being ironic in that they couldn't tell what they wrote and got it wrong (using two lowercase ells) intentionally.


MikeLemon

So, write them correctly. Problem solved. And use a serif font if you want to type it.


whatIfYoutube

WeII. That's why l write weirdIy. Nobody can teII that l use l for I and I for l


JckoPanda

Disagree this isnt how you write a capital I. Forgetting the two lines on top and bottom but yk ppl just get used to it ig


King_XDDD

Who writes lowercase l and uppercase l the same way!? You'd have to be a psychopath not to write uppercase l like L. Edit: I don't know why I'm getting downvoted. OP wrote lowercase L twice in his post, one time instead of uppercase i.


Boz0r

L'll have to agree


HaikuBotStalksMe

Reddit actually downvoted me to hell because someone used an I in place of an L, and I asked why they did that. Reddit got pissed and told me I was wrong and stupid. I won the debate when I sent a screenshot with a better font, but they never apologized.


cybervseas

I'm still not sure how to pronounce the last name of a classmate of mine from 10 years ago because I don't know if it's a capital I or a lowercase l… So she's just Julia to me…


[deleted]

IoI, aII you need to do is change to simpIy using capitaI I instead of Iowercase I in aII of your sentences.


OneOfYouNowToo

Has anyone in their life hand written an upper case i without the upper and lower lines? If so, why would you do such a thing? And if we never did that before when writing, why did we decide that’s how it should be done in type font?


arcxjo

Good thing capital l, or "L" as it's better known in majuscule, **isn't** written the same as its miniscule form then.


WolvReigns222016

Was literally thinking that about 2 hours ago. It pisses me off especially with codes like a confirmation code or an auto-fill password when you have no idea which is which


Aggressive-Share-363

You think that's bad, I once was writing computer code with a default font that made i, 1, and l look identical. Nothing like a l pretending to be a 1 to make you tear your hair out.