Abstract or Summary:
Wouldn’t it be nice if your password manager didn’t need a database? Instead of synchronizing a password vault between your devices, you could use the magic of cryptography to magically transform a master password into a unique password for each site.

There have been a numerous and ever growing implementations of this idea. Much of the marketing material for these tools talks about how using a deterministic scheme allows "sync-free" operation, is "more secure" than a password vault, and often that it’s a newer idea than encrypted password vaults.

In this post, I will argue that you can’t practically provide "sync-free" operation without making your password manager unusable, how using a deterministic scheme harms security, and how it’s actually an old idea which never caught on for good reasons.