> Have you ever considered that verbally spelling something out may be a sign of a problem? If you were taking someone's credit card number, would you have them go one digit at a time over the phone, then read it back to them and so on, or email it so you can copy and paste it? Or how about just have them autofill a form?
I don’t use CCs, but I (and my parents) have memorized the Kontonummer and Bankleitzahl (and, from that, you can concatenate the IBAN).
> Same here. John gave you a card? Cool, maybe it can have a QR code you can scan. Or do you enjoy reading and typing long URLs and having to double check them?
If a URL is designed well (HN’s aren’t), this is very easy. Wiktionary and Wikipedia do it well, reddit’s is also okay, e.g. https://redd.it/7wwtqy – most sites, in fact, work nicely like this.
> Cool, maybe it can have a QR code you can scan.
Most don’t.
Maybe you remember the time, just a few years ago, when everyone knew their phone number and email, and their friends’, by heart? Why force people to change that? Relying on autocomplete and autofill for everything is horrible, and creates massive network lock-in.
Why not remembee your friend's IP address by heart? Come on. No one is "forcing" people to forget their friends' numbers. They could have always entered it even now. They CHOSE to stop remembering new ones and just press the thing in their contacts.
Are you one of those people who remembers every password on every site, because you think a password manager will one day screw you?
> Why not remembee your friend's IP address by heart?
51.15.1.223 is my server, in case I need to SSH into it.
> Are you one of those people who remembers every password on every site, because you think a password manager will one day screw you?
I remember two of them, the password to my password manager, and the password to the email that I’d need to reset the password to my password manager.
It’s always nice to use automated tools such as a digital contacts app or a password manager. But you shouldn’t rely on it.
During the @googlemail.com to @gmail.com switch for German gmail addresses, I told Google not to switch. A few years later, in '16, Google auto-switched me anyway, so I selected "undo". In that moment, Google (probably due to a sync bug) wiped all my stored passwords in Chrome, all my contacts, all my emails, and my entire Calendar. On all connected Android devices as well.
It took me ages to get back to have everything working again after that, because I relied on this technology. I’ve lost contacts to some friends that I’ll never be able to get back, because I only had them in Google contacts, or in Gmail.
So I won’t ever support any suggestion that would make me rely even more on these. I’m self-hosting everything now, I’ve got backups everywhere, and, just in case, I’ve got the most important info memorized.
But this is an example of a remote company controlling your identity. Stored passwords in Chrome shouldn't rely on some server. You should be using an app (preferably open source) that has your own biometrics and passwords as seeds from which to derive keys that can get the master key, which is stored encrypted with those keys on YOUR computers (and maybe some cloud backups). I think that is how Apple's keychain does it.
That's a totally different problem to remembering info of CONTACTS.
I don’t use CCs, but I (and my parents) have memorized the Kontonummer and Bankleitzahl (and, from that, you can concatenate the IBAN).
> Same here. John gave you a card? Cool, maybe it can have a QR code you can scan. Or do you enjoy reading and typing long URLs and having to double check them?
I visit wikipedia by typing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<topic>.
If a URL is designed well (HN’s aren’t), this is very easy. Wiktionary and Wikipedia do it well, reddit’s is also okay, e.g. https://redd.it/7wwtqy – most sites, in fact, work nicely like this.
> Cool, maybe it can have a QR code you can scan.
Most don’t.
Maybe you remember the time, just a few years ago, when everyone knew their phone number and email, and their friends’, by heart? Why force people to change that? Relying on autocomplete and autofill for everything is horrible, and creates massive network lock-in.