Al-Zawahiri Skipped Dinner Invite

no wonder, it was a clumsy invitation:

How to create a strong password

1) Take any out-of-the-ordinary book off your shelf.

2) Flip it open somewhere, and pick the first unusual word you see.

[I just did this, and got the word "Burleigh"]

3) Flip it open again. Pick another word.

[I got "Attica"]

4) Either adjoin the two words, or make a Frankenstein word out of them.

[I get "BurAttica"]

5) This is already strong enough to never be guessed under reasonable assumptions. If you want, or are forced to, add a couple of numbers or special characters:

["BurAttica4U" ie, 'BurAttica for you' ]

There. I'm sure it's never been anyone's password, and only the most heavyweight password guesser would ever try it. And it can easily be remembered.

And go ahead and write it down—just be careful to hide where you do it, and not to depend upon looking it up. What you're trying to avoid is robots guessing it.

Forgettable

From a Microsoft page on how to create good passwords:

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Create a strong, memorable password in 4 steps

One way to create a strong and memorable password is to come up with a "passphrase." Here's a way to create a passphrase-based password in four easy steps:

1. Think of a sentence that you can remember, such as "My son Aiden is three years older than my daughter Anna." This will be your passphrase.

2. Take the first letter of each word of the sentence to create a new word. Using the example above, you'd get: "msaityotmda".

3. Then mix it up by using a combination of upper and lowercase letters and numbers. Example: "MsAi3yotmdA"

4. Finally, substitute some special characters that look like letters, to make this password even stronger. These tricks finish the example password to read "M$8ni3y0tmd@".

* * *

There's no f**king way I could ever remember a password like that. It's 11 characters, with multiple special characters and an stupid and eminently forgettable sentence that underlies it, even if a person has a son and daughter with those names and ages.

So, what's a good way to create strong passwords?

I'm not telling.