Show HN: Base24 binary-to-text encoding for humans

I'm fond us using a base100, made of up 2 letter syllables. It results in a vaguely pronounceable string.

For syllables, I use: syllables: %w[ ba be bi bo bu ca ce ci co cu da de di do du fa fe fi fo fu ga ge gi go gu ha he hi ho hu ja je ji jo ju ka ke ki ko ku la le li lo lu ma me mi mo mu na ne ni no nu pa pe pi po pu ra re ri ro ru sa se si so su ta te ti to tu va ve vi vo vu wa we wi wo wu xa xe xi xo xu ya ye yi yo yu za ze zi zo zu ],

I can dump an implementation somewhere if people are really curious

Microsoft product keys were base-24 with the following alphabet:

> B C D F G H J K M P Q R T V W X Y 2 3 4 6 7 8 9

they were 115 bits encoded in 24 characters

see also human-oriented base32 encoding:

https://philzimmermann.com/docs/human-oriented-base-32-encod...

which includes this nice trick:

> We have permuted the alphabet to make the more commonly occuring characters also be those that we think are easier to read, write, speak, and remember.

edit: to add, an interesting human-readable and memorable base52 alphabet that I've never found a use for is to use playing cards

Though clearly there are some advantages with removing ambiguous chars... I feel like it's more of a UI / UX thing-to-polish than a problem. Lack of polish creates the problem, the ambiguous chars themselves are not inherently an issue.

If it's ambiguous, you could accept either and transform it to the correct value (implicitly, or as entered, or whenever makes sense. your users don't ever have to know). Or if you can't do that / the differences matter, do something like 1password does with chars and letters: show them differently https://www.dropbox.com/s/a29g2uiggqujzjl/screen%20shot%2020...

I’d love to see your implementation.

This is very similar to Dominic O’Brien’s techniques for remembering numbers where he assigns each number in base 10 a letter, then you go through and make characters and actions for each number 0 - 99.

So 0 - O, 1 - A, 2 -B... (with S for 6, and N for 9).

Then 00 -> Double O holding a pistol

OA - Your friend Oliver Anderson doing whatever Oliver Anderson does

Etc.

Then 0100 becomes your friend Oliver Anderson holding a pistol in your imagination and that’s easier to remember and you can make stories with your characters to remember phone numbers etc.

Once I started this comment I realized it may be just a tad bit more involved, but I wonder if you could combine the two and have characters for every number from 0000 - 9999.