
New technique produces real randomness - fraqed
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-technique-produces-real-randomness
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jmiserez
There was a previous discussion here not long ago (11 days ago, 159 comments,
385 points):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11719543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11719543)

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thewavelength
Interesting idea but I wonder why this technique is stated new since it looks
very easy and comprehensive to me just by reading some sentences. Is this
really new or is this just a bloated message containing something that isn't
that hot?

Another side note: the article contains very much sentences (more than 2/3)
not directly explaining the new technique. The read was not that great for me,
and I guess this counts for most of the readers since it should be well known
that random numbers are a hard thing. Don't get me wrong. Explaining things is
great but the title doesn't match the most of the content.

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JshWright
> But this still falls short of being truly random. If the mouse is on the
> left of the screen one moment, it’s less likely to be all the way on the
> right in the following instant.

Except... that's not how it works... Entropy from input devices is gathered
from the timing of interrupts. It's not just looking at the actual values.

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wyager
Clickbait. The algorithm is a new technique for combining entropy sources.

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Houshalter
I really don't understand how this is useful. If you have several sources of
randomness, even if they are weak, can you not run them through a
cryptographically strong hash function and get a more random output?

The voting system sounds even weirder. How does taking groups of threes solve
malicious voters? What even are malicious voters?

~~~
DanBC
> The voting system sounds even weirder. How does taking groups of threes
> solve malicious voters? What even are malicious voters?

This is normally talked about in terms of biased coin tosses. You know Von
Neumann's de-skew technique?

[http://pit-claudel.fr/clement/blog/generating-uniformly-rand...](http://pit-
claudel.fr/clement/blog/generating-uniformly-random-data-from-skewed-input-
biased-coins-loaded-dice-skew-correction-and-the-von-neumann-extractor/)

> If independence of successive tosses is assumed, we can reconstruct a 50-50
> chance out of even a badly biased coin by tossing twice. If we get heads-
> heads or tails-tails, we reject the tosses and try again. If we get heads-
> tails (or tails-heads), we accept the result as heads (or tails).

I'm not sure why the submitted article is any different from this technique.

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sukilot
BTW, there is no such thing as a biased coin, only a biased flipping
mechanism. You can't inherently bias a flipped coin like you can bias a die.

You can create a biased 2-state generator , but not with a flipped coin.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, but these are mathematical coins not real world objects.

(I upvoted your post. I don't think it deserved the downvote(s)).

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dave2000
Detecting duplicates is not a solved problem; it's hard. You have to compare
strings and everything.

~~~
dang
We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11797275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11797275)
and marked it off-topic.

