Why “passwords” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
In general, as LLMs get smarter, “less is more” becomes increasingly true. You’re polluting their context with dozens or hundreds of instructions, all of which the LLM tries to…
by JohnBooty · Oct 4, 2026
It's not about cloud environments. Basically every ToS ever forbids you from disclosing your password to someone else or another entity. Even when you use a cloud-synced passwor…
by jasongi · Oct 4, 2026
I had a PR in flight that got closed because of this. I had an issue with passwords in the network applet for the VPN and had used Claude to help me identify and then come up wi…
by lkramer · Oct 3, 2026
Except that a) when humans generate passwords, they are not perfectly random; they are memorable , which means they often use dictionary words, which are vulnerable to dictionar…
by danaris · Oct 3, 2026
To minimize annoyance I’ve set my password manager to generate 16 character random passwords by default. This seems to be the sweet spot for the USA; I don’t recall recently enc…
by tatersolid · Oct 3, 2026
Allowing extremely long passwords makes everything more secure because it teaches users to use better passwords. https://xkcd.com/936/
by Atheros · Oct 3, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "passwords" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "passwords" over time.
A password, sometimes called a passcode, is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of password-protected services that a typical individual accesses can make memorization of unique passwords for each service impractical. Using the terminology of the NIST Digital Identity Guidelines, the secret is held by a party called the claimant while the party verifying the identity of the claimant is called the verifier. When the claimant successfully demonstrates knowledge of the password to the verifier through an established authentication protocol, the verifier can infer the claimant's identity. Read more on Wikipedia