Life Essays
39 articlesWhy simplified-to-traditional conversion misses characters: one-to-many mappings
After converting an entire site character by character, the words for hair and noodles both came out wrong and more than 200 spots needed manual fixes. This note explains why one-to-many mappings fail by design, which characters to spot-check by word when going traditional-to-simplified, Hong Kong versus Taiwan vocabulary, and how to structure a review checklist.
Still using 123456? Generating a password that is effectively uncrackable
Port 22 on a test server logged 47,000 failed logins, which made clear that password strength depends mainly on length and character set. This note estimates brute-force time under the worst case of an unsalted fast hash, explains why dictionary mutations hit first, and why the random source must be cryptographically secure.
Rejected payment forms: Chinese uppercase amounts and the usual mistakes
A cheque for 20,500 written out in Chinese uppercase characters came back with one comment: a zero is missing. This note follows the annex to the Payment Settlement Measures to cover the uppercase digit table, when to write the zero character and the whole-amount character, date rules, and how inconsistent amounts affect cheques versus settlement vouchers.