Because that's still weird and confusing to people and still serves no purpose.

creatonez 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Sorta reminds me of the i3lock screen locker. It shows an incredibly confusing circle UI where every keystroke randomizes the position of the sector on a circle, with no explanatory text on the screen (^1). To new users, it's not clear at all that you are entering your user password or even that it's a screen locker at all, because it just looks like a cryptic puzzle.

Of course, once you do understand that it's just a password prompt, it's great. Completely confuses the hell out of any shoulder surfers, who will for sure think it's a confusing puzzle, and eventually they will get rate limited.

^1: Example of it in use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvT44BSp3Uc

	▲	opan 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Now that you mention i3lock, if sudo showed a symbol changing with each keystroke, it could show it's working (not frozen, accepting input) without revealing the length, similarly to i3lock. I've seen ascii loading spinners from package managers by changing between slashes and hypens and such. Something of that sort would probably do the trick.

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nananana9 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Purpose:

> That way you can be certain whether or not you entered a character

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gzread 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

And the shoulder surger can still count the number of times it changes so you might as well just be normal.

They can also count the number of keystrokes they heard.

	▲	Tepix 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The echoed stars should disappear when you press enter, that way you are not revealing this information when you share a screen capture.
	▲	ErroneousBosh 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		ATM keypads are very carefully designed so that all the buttons sound exactly the same, so you can't lift a PIN by recording the sound. I've seen this demonstrated, using "Cherry" type keyswitches, with about a 75% success rate. I also knew an old guy who could tell what an ASR33 or Creed teleprinter was printing just by the sound, with "good enough" accuracy, and copy RTTY by ear with "good enough" accuracy. He didn't really talk about his time in the Royal Signals in the 50s and 60s very much.
	▲	oneeyedpigeon 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Surely looking at your screen seconds/minutes/hours later is the greater risk vector?

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blackhaz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's surprising to see an OS, dominant as a sever platform, now optimizing catering to people who are unsure whether they've pressed a button on their keyboard. What's next, replacing asterisks with a progress bar?

	▲	johnisgood 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You are down-voted, but if we consider this to be the reason, it is indeed sad. You can no longer filter out power users of computers based on their choice of OS alone. :D
	▲	rabf 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Password recovery where you enter your mothers maiden name and favourite food.