I'm not entirely convinced that a password generator is a better or more
secure approach. Some considerations to keep in mind:
* There is a limitation to what characters you can use for the "salt", at
least the way that script does it.
* It doesn't account for different password length limitations and special
character requirements that some services have. Now, these requirements and
limitations are stupid, but it's something we have to deal with if we wish to
use these services.
* It's not random. I don't know of a way to do this, but if someone figured
out a lot of your passwords and gained access to your script, it might
theoretically be possible to find patterns and crack your "salt" that way. Of
course, the possibility of such an attack is pretty remote, and this method
might be perfectly safe from such an attack, but this approach is not very
popular, so it hasn't had much of a chance to be properly audited for such a
vulnerability. I'm not saying it's insecure, but we have no reason to believe
that it's more secure.
* This is the most important part, and the main reason I stopped using this
method: if any of your passwords is compromised and has to be changed, like
back when various servers were affected by the "heartbleed" bug, you have to
update all of your passwords to fit your new "salt". With a regular password
manager, this would only be necessary if the password database itself were
compromised. What's more, with this method, you don't have a list of all the
passwords you need to change, so you need to continue to remember your old
"salt" just in case you missed something.
