
Canada's 'Random' Immigration Lottery Uses Excel, Which Isn't Actually Random - Karrot_Kream
https://gizmodo.com/canadas-random-immigration-lottery-uses-microsoft-excel-1826711895
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bryanlarsen
This non-story is a dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17270754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17270754)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17282156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17282156)

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mrunkel
Umm. Yeah. No.

For cryptography purposes, yeah, not random enough. But to pick a name out of
a list of names that is probably pretty randomly loaded into excel, I'd say
yes, this is random enough to be fair.

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bluesign
The problem is not the RNG here. Problem is the trust to the guy in front of
Excel, and this process is not verifiable.

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B1FF_PSUVM
> this process is not verifiable

Probably could be, along the lines of game-theory cake-sharing: "I cut, you
choose." Say, one official supplies N names, another supplies N random
numbers.

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maaark
Canada's not doing "I cut, you choose."

It's doing "I cut, he chooses, you don't get to eat."

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shrx
Original article: [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-anything-
woul...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-anything-would-be-
better-critics-warn-ottawas-family-reunification/)

