4 ms·

A stream of human generated randomness

25 points by jaybosamiya 11y ago

cellover 11y ago
Very nicely done! This reminds me of the tiny project I built where you basically click one bit at a time to collectively generate an abstruse binary stream: http://www.zeroone.io http://www.zeroone.io
toxmeister 11y ago
Hi, author here... you can find more information about the context of this project here: https://medium.com/@thi.ng/evolutionary-failures-part-1-54522c69be37 https://medium.com/@thi.ng/evolutionary-failures-part-1-5452...
- nivertech 11y ago
  Hi, could you please add a websocket endpoint, so other apps will be able to subscribe to the "source of randomness"?
ranko 11y ago
Interesting approach. From their Github page (https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/READ...): We'd like to do a little experiment and see if a large (or even not so large) group of people can collectively generate better quality random numbers than an algorithm. Intuitively one would think and hope so [...] It's not clear that individuals can reliably generate true random numbers when asked to do so (see answers at http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/3591/how-well-can-a-human-generated-random-number-be-predicted http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/3591/how-well-can-...), but this is asking whether a group of people can do better than that, and is capturing mouse and keyboard keyboard input. It'll be interesting to see how using a group compares to using a single individual's input.
- uvesten 11y ago
  I would guess that the group aggregate input would be very much farther from random than the individual input. Let's see.
Piskvorrr 11y ago
Interesting. However, when "recording," the `00` column is always significantly larger than all the others. Doesn't look normal... (Chrome 47, Win7 x64)
- ranko 11y ago
  They mention this on their Github page (https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/READ...): Since this histogram is byte based and submitted values have a variable bit length, the "00" bin (grouping bytes between 0x00 - 0x0f) will likely be the most dominant
  - Piskvorrr 11y ago
    Aha, thanks - I missed that.
kluck 11y ago
Human behaviour is hardly random. Also requires JS.
hiergiltdiestfu 11y ago
Still down? Been getting 502 since last week. *sadface

25 points by jaybosamiya 11y ago

Very nicely done! This reminds me of the tiny project I built where you basically click one bit at a time to collectively generate an abstruse binary stream: http://www.zeroone.io http://www.zeroone.io

toxmeister 11y ago

Hi, author here... you can find more information about the context of this project here: https://medium.com/@thi.ng/evolutionary-failures-part-1-54522c69be37 https://medium.com/@thi.ng/evolutionary-failures-part-1-5452...

nivertech 11y ago
Hi, could you please add a websocket endpoint, so other apps will be able to subscribe to the "source of randomness"?

ranko 11y ago

Interesting approach. From their Github page (https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/READ...): We'd like to do a little experiment and see if a large (or even not so large) group of people can collectively generate better quality random numbers than an algorithm. Intuitively one would think and hope so [...] It's not clear that individuals can reliably generate true random numbers when asked to do so (see answers at http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/3591/how-well-can-a-human-generated-random-number-be-predicted http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/3591/how-well-can-...), but this is asking whether a group of people can do better than that, and is capturing mouse and keyboard keyboard input. It'll be interesting to see how using a group compares to using a single individual's input.

uvesten 11y ago
I would guess that the group aggregate input would be very much farther from random than the individual input. Let's see.

Piskvorrr 11y ago

Interesting. However, when "recording," the `00` column is always significantly larger than all the others. Doesn't look normal... (Chrome 47, Win7 x64)

ranko 11y ago
They mention this on their Github page (https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/READ...): Since this histogram is byte based and submitted values have a variable bit length, the "00" bin (grouping bytes between 0x00 - 0x0f) will likely be the most dominant
- Piskvorrr 11y ago
  Aha, thanks - I missed that.

kluck 11y ago

Human behaviour is hardly random. Also requires JS.

hiergiltdiestfu 11y ago

Still down? Been getting 502 since last week. *sadface