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Claude Shannon's randomness-guessing machine

https://www.loper-os.org/bad-at-entropy/manmach.html
12•Kotlopou•5d ago

Comments

grayhatter•1h ago
> It is not hard to win this game. If you spent a whole day playing it, shame on you. But what if you did not know that you are playing a game? I dug up this toy when I saw people talking about generating 'random' numbers for cryptography by mashing keys or shouting into microphones. It is meant to educate you regarding the folly of such methods.

I wouldn't trust a human to generate enough entropy for any kind of key material. But I'd happily feed their output, and more importantly, the metadata around said output (like the ns delay between key presses) into the seed of a CSPRNG, (much more importantly, along with plenty of other sources of entropy).

The primary characteristic of a CSPRNG, is the inability to predict the next output, from the previous output. Once you get sufficient entropy to seed a CSPRNG, nothing you (correctly) mix into the state, can decrease it's security.

There is no folly in using human interactions to help seed a random number generator. Assuming you dont use the characters they type as the only seed input.

kurisufag•6m ago
mildly related: when i want a single bit of entropy in my day-to-day without fooling myself, i think of a random long-ish word and decide based on the evenness of the number of letters. probably this isn't an unbiased oracle, but it's good enough when i don't have a coin handy and care about avoiding self-delusion more than fair odds.

Launching the Handmade Software Foundation

https://handmade.network/blog/p/9106-welcome_to_2026%2521#30623
16•DeathArrow•44m ago•1 comments

Erdos 281 solved with ChatGPT 5.2 Pro

https://twitter.com/neelsomani/status/2012695714187325745
161•nl•3h ago•112 comments

Lopado­temacho­selacho­galeo­kranio­leipsano­drim­hypo­trimmato­silphio­karab

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lopado%C2%ADtemacho%C2%ADselacho%C2%ADgaleo%C2%ADkranio%C2%ADleipsa...
79•firloop•3h ago•33 comments

jQuery 4.0.0 Released

https://blog.jquery.com/2026/01/17/jquery-4-0-0/
154•OuterVale•3h ago•37 comments

Profession by Isaac Asimov

https://www.abelard.org/asimov.php
43•bkudria•5h ago•4 comments

Spirit of ThinkPad

https://thinknextdesign.com/home.html
15•__patchbit__•1h ago•3 comments

ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering

https://alexharri.com/blog/ascii-rendering
957•alexharri•20h ago•115 comments

No knives, only cook knives

https://kellykozakandjoshdonald.substack.com/p/no-knives-only-cook-knives
42•firloop•8h ago•3 comments

How scientists are using Claude to accelerate research and discovery

https://www.anthropic.com/news/accelerating-scientific-research
67•gmays•4h ago•39 comments

Kip: A programming language based on grammatical cases of Turkish

https://github.com/kip-dili/kip
168•nhatcher•11h ago•50 comments

Show HN: GibRAM an in-memory ephemeral GraphRAG runtime for retrieval

https://github.com/gibram-io/gibram
3•ktyptorio•58m ago•0 comments

The recurring dream of replacing developers

https://www.caimito.net/en/blog/2025/12/07/the-recurring-dream-of-replacing-developers.html
398•glimshe•17h ago•316 comments

Dark Mode vs. Light Mode: Which Is Better?

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-mode/
34•seanwilson•5h ago•28 comments

We put Claude Code in Rollercoaster Tycoon

https://labs.ramp.com/rct
426•iamwil•5d ago•233 comments

Podcasting Could Use a Good Asteroid

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/podcasting-could-use-a-good-asteroid/
29•zdw•2d ago•12 comments

How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/how-london-finally-cracked-mobile-phone-coverage-on-the-unde...
55•beardyw•5d ago•16 comments

If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design

https://mastodon.social/@heliographe_studio/115890819509545391
418•lateforwork•7h ago•172 comments

Ask HN: When has a "dumb" solution beaten a sophisticated one for you?

20•amadeuswoo•1w ago•23 comments

Computer Systems Security 6.566 / Spring 2024

https://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2024/
72•barishnamazov•7h ago•9 comments

Raising money fucked me up

https://blog.yakkomajuri.com/blog/raising-money-fucked-me-up
218•yakkomajuri•13h ago•76 comments

Xous Operating System

https://xous.dev/
120•eustoria•3d ago•40 comments

Why Object of Arrays beat interleaved arrays: a JavaScript performance issue

https://www.royalbhati.com/posts/js-array-vs-typedarray
23•howToTestFE•6d ago•8 comments

Claude Shannon's randomness-guessing machine

https://www.loper-os.org/bad-at-entropy/manmach.html
12•Kotlopou•5d ago•2 comments

The Olivetti Company

https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-olivetti-company
157•rbanffy•6d ago•35 comments

Show HN: ChunkHound, a local-first tool for understanding large codebases

https://github.com/chunkhound/chunkhound
73•NadavBenItzhak•10h ago•25 comments

IRISC: An ARMv7 assembly interpreter and computer architecture simulator

https://polysoftit.co.uk/irisc-web/
30•rtybanana•7h ago•2 comments

U.S. Court Order Against Anna's Archive Spells More Trouble for the Site

https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-court-order-against-annas-archive-spells-more-trouble-for-the-site/
51•t-3•3h ago•25 comments

An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260116-an-elizabethan-mansions-secrets-for-staying-warm
134•Tachyooon•14h ago•148 comments

Show HN: Speed Miners – A tiny RTS resource mini-game

https://speedminers.fun/
25•nickponline•10h ago•2 comments

Below the Surface: Archeological Finds from the Amsterdam Noord/Zuid Metro Line

https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondsten
79•stefanvdw1•6d ago•10 comments