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NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The LM password hash (predecessor to NTLM) was calculated in two blocks of 7 characters from that truncated 14 characters. Which meant the rainbow table for that is much smaller than necessary and if your password is not 14 characters, then technically part of the hash is much easier to brute force, because the other missing characters are just padded with null.