I dont know,the method Scawen created is insanely simple and easy to do, i cannot imagine how people manage to mess it up, and not once, but multiple times
Im surprised you guys were able to create an LFS account
Since we are into numbers today, I do notice that before yesterday's change, it was highly likely to get one of those four ambiguous characters in your code.
Probability of all non-ambiguous:
(58/62)^20 = 0.263
So that means around 3 out of 4 times, there was a l/I/O/0 in the code. I should have thought of this earlier.
Hello, I did everything, it looks normal and great, thank you for your support, as well as all the effort you put not only into the simulator, but also into this here, the test is done and works, for which I thank you.
translated into Bulgarian
Здравейте ,направих всичко ,изглежда нормално и страхотно ,благодаря ви за подкрепата ,както и цялото старание което прилагате не само за Симулатора ,но и за това тук ,теста е направен и работи за което благодаря .
преведено на Български
Perhaps it would be more "understandable" if LFS were no longer activated after installing 0.7F13. The main menu suggests that everything is OK because of the active license. This is still the case for single players, but not in multiplayer. I find the message in multiplayer that the unlock code must be 20 characters long very confusing (at least if you're not active on the forum). However, I suspect that this procedure deducts an available unlock... but who cares - the unlocks will be increased weekly as before?
I get what you are saying, that LFS doesn't seem to indicate that you need to do anything, other than the gigantic red text and "Security update: You need to set an unlock code".
Apart from that, there is very little to catch the eye. I might make the "S3 license: User name" button flash.
See attachment.
But no, clicking 'unlock' if already unlocked does not consume an available unlock.
I am wondering, why the red message is totally invisible to so many people. It is in the form of a fake "event" but the large red text might catch the eye? Or not?
But let's face it, a lot of people aren't going to read, no matter what, unless forced.
You could put a big sign in front of them and they would just walk around it. They aren't going to think something might apply to them, until the point they can longer proceed.
Then, as we notice, a lot of them come to the forum and still simply refuse to read anything at all, even making near duplicate thread titles to explain their problem. Apparently it's easier to write than read.
Through discussions, we have definitely made some useful changes in the past few days to avoid difficulties entering the code, but we probably can't go much further. I think it's time to get the full version out there and this episode will become a thing of the past.
But maybe, as I said, I could make that "S3 licensed: User name" button flash in two situations:
1) Unlock code is wrong (zero, just now, or requested a new code at any time)
2) License level is wrong (upgraded on site but not yet unlocked again in game)
It seems like this is just one of many events, which can be counter-intuitive for newcomers. If I’m not mistaken, there’s a "^3Happy new year!" message around Christmas in the list of hosts. Would it make sense to use that space for important alerts like "^1SECURITY UPDATE" etcetera?
That should help. Perhaps even using red or yellow for the more stubborn "overlookers"
Unfortunately with this change you won't get a list of hosts.
When we go official there will be a message at the top saying a "A new update is available" with a link to a test patch thread. Hopefully that will help a bit.
I'll have a go with the flashing button too, it could be useful.
I didn't notice the message on the left either (maybe because I wasn't interested in "events"). I unblocked it because I knew from the forum that that was the right thing to do.
The original answer was longer and gave both 58 and 59 as its a matter of interpretation. 20 characters, 15, 10, even 5 is ridiculously long for the purpose which is a temporarily handshake, not even a password. But keep focusing on the things which do not matter at all in a discussion, this "community" will get "somewhere" 🫠
This is what no update does to TF2 LFS Community. Nit pickers, word pickers, cherry pickers, all things you can imagine being ultra important in life. And I'm gonna lead them all forward! So that so theory of everything will be solved just here, on these laughfull forums!
Yah, Grok4 just got released (to every1), giving just one answer;
Step-by-Step Reasoning:Identify the full character set before exclusions:Lowercase letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z (26 characters).
Uppercase letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z (26 characters).
Numeric digits (base-10 system, interpreted as 0-9): 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (10 characters).
Total without exclusions: 26 + 26 + 10 = 62 characters.
Apply the exclusions:Exclude small-L: Remove 'l' from lowercase → lowercase now has 25 characters.
Exclude capital-i: Remove 'I' from uppercase → uppercase temporarily has 25 characters.
Exclude letter O: Remove 'O' from uppercase (as "letter O" refers to the uppercase form, consistent with the phrasing where cases are specified separately for others) → uppercase now has 24 characters.
Exclude digit 0: Remove '0' from digits → digits now have 9 characters (1-9).
Total allowed characters: 25 (lowercase) + 24 (uppercase) + 9 (digits) = 58 characters.
Calculate the number of combinations:The query asks for the number of 20-character combinations using this set.
Assuming repetition is allowed (standard for such character-based combinations, like passwords or strings, unless specified otherwise) and order matters.
For each of the 20 positions, there are 58 possible choices.
Therefore, the total number is 582058^{20}58^{20}
.
Compute the value:58[sup]20[/sup]=18559226468222606056912232424511897658^{20} = 18559226468222606056912232424511897658^{20} = 185592264682226060569122324245118976
.
Final Solution:185592264682226060569122324245118976
some people need the whole reasoning for whatever stupid argument, so there you go.
My point still stands, why make it overly complicated for the whole planet while its not needed. Even my bank handshakes with eight digits. No alphabet nonsense.
I don't know why you felt the need to mention my answer as "focusing on the things which do not matter": you provided a number of combinations (generated by AI, but that doesn't matter in the end), which was wrong, I just pointed that out...
Your follow-up with the updated version does give the right answer, okay (but we didn't really need the whole reasoning, 58^20 was ok from the beginning, the "result" the AI gave was just wrong), now back to the "things that matter": 20 characters is way too long, I guess? This is a code you're supposed to copy-paste anyway, how can it be a problem? Should Scawen make a system that generates 10 characters or less, so people who copy the code by hand have an easier time? Is it a sensible thing to do when inputting the unlock code is something you're supposed to do once and forget about it? People who need to regularly get a new code probably should either get the email on their PC to copy-paste, or share their phone's clipboard via wifi or any other means.
I do not understand, why need to have shorter passwords. Unless someone has phishing tool to snitch from people's clipboard, which requires user to write on hand. I get it.
But you can't win in all scenarios. In fact, I would suggest to have even longer passwords. Password system is getting through to the end cycle, but the initial point of idea still exists in same manner as for burglars: make it hard to breach.
But... if there was no one to hack or no one to become as a burglar, there would not be any password requirements. It's purpose is to secure your account, similar to burglar alarms to protect your property and so on.
Banks don't won't too long passwords, cuz the scale of their system operation on a daily basis is soo large, every character added == longer hash checking == multiply by billions transactions a day == transactions take long to process. I don't think LFS will gotta buy more servers just for hash match checks with it's scale.
But I get it, shorter unlock codes increase the chance that monkey put in front of keyboard will finally guess free S3 unlock code, cuz as we know, getting free S3 throught any means possible is a must.
