But a longer password would require more combinations for similarity than a short password.

Ah. Thanks for clarifying.

Still, permutations longer hashes don't require substantially more space. Password storage is a completely trivial fraction of total storage -- Compare to a single photo, or a video!

And further still, they don't need to _store_ all the hash variations

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/53481/does-face...

Wow, it slipped my mind entirely that you could do the permutations when you create the new password but before verifying, rather than after creating a password. That's a great idea, and embarrassingly obvious in retrospect.

Yes, that's the point being made.