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Comment by lqet | Hacker News Reader

Anecdote: back in the early 2000s, I regularly installed Windows XP on the machines of school friends and family members and got pretty fast at it. After a few months, I realized that I had memorized the original Windows XP "default" CD key (the one starting with FCKGW...) by accident. I haven't done an installation of XP in 15 years, yet you could wake me up in the middle of the night and I could tell you this damn key.

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There was a thread a few days ago where someone mentioned their password was the key to "a very popular software" and someone in the replies guessed it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19298120

Hah, I had no idea that others have this problem too. There must be something to this sequence that makes it very easy to memorize.

Spaced repetition makes any sequence easy to remember. Which is essentially what being the local “could you install xp”-guy was for this specific key.

Not only that, strings are easier to memorize when broken into discrete chunks, which is why it isn't too hard to accidentally memorize a credit card number, and one of the reasons phone numbers are formatted as they are (the other being classifying based on location).

Maybe the person who selected it was not fond of the president?

The FCKGW key was written down on one of the documents recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound:

https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/61/61C5FB27A...

I just had a similar thing happening a year or two ago. My mom sent me some old backup CDs that she found while cleaning out her basement. I was very happy to find my first attempt at making a game with graphics on one of the discs. The game was written in Visual Basic so I downloaded a copy of the IDE and luckily the installer ran under Wine. When I got to the license screen, some forgotten but apparently not decayed part of my brain clicked into gear and to my surprise I just typed the 12 digit code from memory on the first try, 20 years after I last installed it.

Here's the (not so amazing) result. Consider it a "Show HN"? https://vimeo.com/220071855

Reminds me of Game & Watch.

Exactly, I had one - still have it actually, it's working too :)

FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-2B7Q8-8TG6W. I am not sure if its correct.

edit: yes it is. Checked the link in other thread.

The last two quintuples are switched, otherwise it is correct. The "RKT-8TG6W" is my favorite part, because it makes for a nice rhyme (at least in German, where "W" is a single syllable"):

  RKT
  8T
  G6W

American checking in on the pronunciation:

"Arr kay tay, acht tay, gay zex vey"?

I read your "arr" as in English "are".

I am not a native German speaker, but the dialect I learned and my German relatives speak says "r" more like the English word "air".

You're way off. Only monophthongs.

/ɛʁ kaː tʰeː axt tʰeː geː zɛks veː/

This was me, but with the OG Starcraft: Brood War CD Key. I think I still remember the key, but I'm not sure and I don't have the CD to verify.

Scott? Is that you?

I still know my Starcraft CD key to this day as well.

Bonus: The same key also works for Half-Life. They used the same algorithm.

I loved quake iii and similar properties that only checked the last digit, 3 or c

You can use classic starcraft / brood war keys as vouchers on battle.net if you want to verify and make sure you'll always have a digital copy available :)

The game has been free to play for years now, so you might need an old disc image to get at the checksum algorithm :).

Brood War didn't come with a CD-key, only the original StarCraft disc did =)

Yeah it was one of the disks, I always installed them in tandem.

One of the original starcraft games accepts 11111-...-11113 (I don't remember how many places, but all 1's and then a 3 or 4).

Guess how I figured that one out.

Story of my life too, including the 15 years part! Every once in few years, when I feel like my memory skills are fading, I recite the damn key, pat myself in the back and go back to sleep.

There are a lot of numbers from my past that are still committed to my memory too, even though I haven't used them in years. Old telephone numbers, bank account numbers, long-distance calling card numbers (back when a long-distance phone call was a thing you actually paid for). It's weird.

I immediately recognized that key :)

My friend had similar 'super power's but.. with Diablo 2 CD key ;)

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