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by midasuni 1276 days ago
I type my arbitrary 12 character password for my laptop as quickly as I’d type two 6 letter common words, due to muscle memory, as I don’t have to change it every few months.
1 comments

> 12 character password

Those are rookie numbers!

In all serious, my point is roughly that typing Sp3c1al_(h4racTer_p@ssw0rd$ is like O(n) whereas typing passphrases is like O(log n). Once you hit a certain length, pass phrases start pulling ahead in ease-of-use.

We're already constantly maintaining muscle memory just by typing normal words every day. With muscle memory for special character passwords, you have to start over from scratch every time you have to change one.

In other words, imagine I flipped over a flashcard with a new passphrase on it consisting of lowercase English words, and asked you to type it. Now imagine I flip over a flashcard with a new, special character password. How many more times do you think you'd have to reference the flashcard with the special character password while typing it out and developing the muscle memory over the flashcard with the passphrase?