[ademarre]

That's amusing, but I think it also highlights the effectiveness of the strategy. WNKR is excusable and defensible. WANK would not be.

Edit: But I'll concede that when your outputs are only four characters long and end users will actively interact with them (write them down, type them again later, etc.), additional safeguards might be appropriate. Or simply omit all alphas and use only numerics.

[tsimionescu]

> Or simply omit all alphas and use only numerics.

You're still not out of the park with numerics - people with 1313 or 6660 or 4444 or something will complain a lot. The possibility of a 666 in some new biometric government IDs in my country rose a massive stink from church...

[Kaotique]

My girlfriend got a new bank account and when she received her account number it contained 666. She asked for a different number and they changed it without charge.

[ademarre]

> biometric government IDs

Yeah. An important, long-lived ID that will stick with an individual for their entire life, and that they may want to commit to memory. That seems like a good time to take a hypersensitive approach and adopt some kind of filter.

[lelandfe]

I was in the UK recently and - if you can believe it - there was a car on the block I stayed whose plates contained 666.

Also, have a feelin you meant to do 1312. What’s the issue with 4444, though?

[teddyh]

> What’s the issue with 4444, though?

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

[lelandfe]

Woah, had no idea!

> When Beijing lost its bid to stage the 2000 Olympic Games, it was speculated that the reason China did not pursue a bid for the following 2004 Games was due to the unpopularity of the number 4 in China. Instead, the city waited another four years, and would eventually host the 2008 Olympic Games, the number eight being a lucky number in Chinese culture.

Thought this was particularly interesting.

[DocTomoe]

In Germany, where you can request number plate combinations (as long as they are free and follow a few roles), 666 is a pretty common combination amongst young drivers.

> What’s the issue with 4444

4 is pronounced similar to "death" in sino-japanese languages and dialects.

[exar0815]

Also, as you have the muncipality-shortcut at the beginning, and then two user-definable letters, you freqently see "rude" combinations, and noone bats an eye. BIT-CH, MON-GO, ANA-L, DIL-DO. (And those are just the combinations that are understandable in english which I saw when driving). I'll never forget the face of the guy at the Zulassungsstelle when I was there with a friend who wanted COC-K-6969. He got it it, btw. When I tried some years later, AC-DC-666 sadly was already taken.

[tsimionescu]

People explained 4444, with 1313 I was thinking of the equivalent for superstitious westerners afraid of the number 13.

[nicoburns]

What’s the issue with 1312?

[baud147258]

it spells ACAB if you match each number with the letter in the alphabet at this index (I realized that after seeing a bunch of 1312 tags around where I live)

[thaumasiotes]

What's the issue with ACAB?

[wasmitnetzen]

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

[DocTomoe]

> Or simply omit all alphas and use only numerics.

That works pretty well until you realize that some numerical combinations are common neo-nazi codes and may lead to ... unfortunate associations. The ADL lists a few of those^1, but the list is by far not comprehensive, codes actually differ based on locality, and accidental combinatory collision in a 10-character space than it is in an alphanumerical 36-character space.

[1] https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88