Incorrect; I mail them a new password.

Thank you for the correction. Perhaps I bailed out of the last discussion too soon to see the truth, rather than the assumptions and associated whinging.

Can you mail me a password for the account reconbot - it was my old hc account, I'd love to get it back.

I can't seem to reply to wizard_2's post (I guess it's a designed limit) so here's the post which spawned the encrypted password discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595231

Thanks for the info link.

The inability to reply is the time delay feature pg put in, where the deeper a thread goes the longer it goes before people can respond. Still toying with it as far as I know.

I'm a pretty avid reader of this site and I haven't seen the discussion here yet. (Can't read everything I guess.) But I don't like that fact one bit. What's pg's email? What's the best way to contact him?

As mentioned in other replies, you should probably always assume that you alone have the responsibility for your password security.