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Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by joncrocks on Friday January 30, 2026 @05:00AM (#46822529)
It's worth noting that sometimes (incorrect) keyboard maps can get in the way.

If it's a key that you may not often type and one that is often transposed between regions, the fact that the entered char is not shown can lead to frustration.

e.g. " and @ are in different positions in UK vs. US keyboards. So user thinks they are typing @, but " goes into the box.

Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by eptcyka on Friday January 30, 2026 @05:23AM (#46822692)
No, that is why passwords are alphanumerical, keep your #€{*\$<€$<¥]+]!,’ to yourself.
Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by VorpalWay on Friday January 30, 2026 @07:25AM (#46823649)
On other layouts that isn't enough. For example French keyboards are AZERTY, not QWERTY. and here in Sweden we have å, ä and ö next to the (tall) enter key, instead of the symbols US and UK have.

(Side note: those are not a and o with diacretics, they are entirely separate letters in the alphabets of the Nordic countries, with entirely different sounds.)

Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by macshome on Friday January 30, 2026 @08:30AM (#46824158)
The product I make deals with passwords. We’ve had several bugs over the years that came down to Unicode usernames and passwords containing unexpected characters. Solving them was simple, we just had to be sure to get the encoding and character sets right, but as an American it was eye opening to find so many people with the Euro symbol in password strings.
Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by eptcyka on Friday January 30, 2026 @08:38AM (#46824232)
Well aware, just don’t use them in passwords.
Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by RajT88 on Friday January 30, 2026 @11:57AM (#46826812)
Related, a friend of mine uses a long list of heavy metal band names as one of his unit tests for strings. Says it catches a lot of weird encoding bugs.
Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by beAbU on Friday January 30, 2026 @08:45AM (#46824292)
Not all password policies allow you to ignore special characters.
Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by mnahkies on Friday January 30, 2026 @08:45AM (#46824302)
One of the more annoying things I've found moving country is the unavailability of keyboards / laptops with the layout I grew up with. I find it especially annoying as the country I'm from uses a US layout which I naively assumed would be easily available everywhere (and it is available but not without a long delivery and a premium price)

Side note: helping my French housemate with his uni assignments was an experience, none of the symbols were where I expected them to be

Re:The WiFi only works when it's raining by embedding-shape on Friday January 30, 2026 @12:11PM (#46826979)
Meh, takes you like some days to get used to another layout being visible on the keys, while your OS (and brain) actually using another layout.

I've used US keyboard layout since I started programming (my first mentor essentially forced me to switch to it, he was right about it being easier), but throughout the years been using Swedish, Norwegian, British, Spanish and French physical keyboards, never cleanly mapped to the actual layout I've used on the OS, and never been an issue.

The last part though, is a real one, trying to pair program with Spanish programmers always have at least one moment of holding Shift and sliding the finger across all numbers to see where that specific symbol actually is.