Hacker News Reader

> (In a pinch you do log 2 by taking the log and dividing by the log of 2)

In a pinch it's easier to reason that since 2^10 = 1024, 2^11 = 2048, and 1626 lies between those two numbers, log_2 1626 is a bit more than 10.

Memorizing powers of two is useful for lots of quick mental estimation!

12 words of 1626 characters is almost exactly 128 bits, which is what is typically accepted as cryptographically secure.

We added a checksum though and then grabbed 256 bits instead of 128, so the numerical alignment no longer applies sadly.