You need "sufficient" n no matter what your character pool is, and knowing the character pool of a password doesn't let you reliably predict if n is sufficient.

I wasn't making that claim.

Then I have absolutely no idea what you were trying to claim in the second sentence of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304761

But we don't seem to be resolving anything so I'll just hope you have a good week.

You indirectly state that I claim "knowing the character pool of a password lets you reliably predict if n is sufficient."

Please point to the part of my statement which reflects this idea.

"a function of the size of your character pool, because if your password is short enough for n-1 to contain a significant percentage of possible combinations then it's probably already short enough to brute force anyway"

This seems to say that a small character pool, aka "n-1 containing a significant percentage of possible combinations", implies that your password is "probably already short enough to brute force".

So small character pool means that "probably" the password is short/weak.

I'm saying that a small character pool does not imply that a password is "probably" short/weak.

And to be very clear: Using the size of the character pool to say it's "probably" weak is a form of "reliably predict[ing] if n is sufficient".

What am I misreading?

> What am I misreading?

> So small character pool means that "probably" the password is short/weak.

I really don't know how you came to that conclusion. I never claimed any dependence between the character pool length and password length. They're obviously completely separate properties.

You said that if a password of length n-1 "contains a significant percentage of combinations" compared to a password with length n then "it's probably already short enough to brute force".

Right?

That percentage comes entirely from the character pool.

So character pool -> percentage -> probably short enough to brute force.

What am I reading wrong? The only assumption I made is "compared to a password with length n", because what else would you be comparing length "n-1" to. Otherwise it's a direct quote.