Ancestors

Written by Chris Abbey on 2024-09-03 at 03:39

ok, this is going to sound like either absolute garbage advice or hit you like a bolt of lightning with an "ah ha!" moment... but bare with me, because I feel like an idiot for taking literally YEARS to figure this out.

Keyboards have "debounce" logic. It can be implemented in a number of ways, from actual hardware in the switches, to firmware in the device to software in the driver or even operating system.

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Toot

Written by Chris Abbey on 2024-09-03 at 03:42

Now say you have a string that you type on a regular basis. Maybe it's your name, maybe it's your catchphrase signature in personal emails, maybe it's your password. Odds are pretty good you're going to get pretty quick at typing it.

Now let's say that string has a repeated character in it. Maybe the double Es in feedback, or the double Os in good. Normally, these days at least, you type that quickly and let's say debounce is a bit too aggressive... you get god fedback, but autocorrect FTW.

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Descendants

Written by Chris Abbey on 2024-09-03 at 03:46

And if auto-corrupt doesn't catch it, you probably do... because you can SEE what you're typing, and you probably get a nice visual feedback at least to underline the fedback.

But what if you're typing somewhere that doesn't have autocorrect, or even typo highlighting, or even visual confirmation of what you typed. Say like maybe a password entry dialog? Now what?

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Written by Chris Abbey on 2024-09-03 at 03:49

Well, if you're like me for the last 3 years you've been typing a system login password as corect horse batery staple.

Turns out the debounce on this keyboard I have on my home computer is JUST a little too aggressive. And I can't adjust it, because it's in hardware. Thankfully, I run Ubuntu on this machine. And thankfully Ubuntu has an eyeball icon in the GUI password entry screen where I can click to unmask the password to see what I've typed.

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Written by Chris Abbey on 2024-09-03 at 03:54

I wish my macOS machines had that, at the OS level. I get it when I'm using some software, like @1password

Thankfully, I don't think I type passwords on the mac very often that have that issue, it also has a much better debounce as I've just discovered by typing this password in a shell a few times, 100% correct. Here on my linux box by comparison... 40% correct at full speed.... and all of those failures featured a debounced double key failures.

Time for a new password I guess.

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Written by Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦 on 2024-09-03 at 03:54

@cabbey 🤯oh, that would be so anoying to troubleshot

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Written by Chris Abbey on 2024-09-03 at 03:59

@kboyd srsly. I've raged at this situation for years. I was playing a game that involved a lot of repeated characters when the light bulb went off. Quick test confirmed it. 10 chars in a row at various speeds in a text doc.... soon as I got going fast key presses didn't make it in. Ten As fast: aaaaaaaa. Five SKs fast: sksksksksk.

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