4 ms·
The actual title is “19 random digits is not enough to uniquely identify all human beings”. The tl;dr is that you need at least 30 digits so it’s safe to assig
by geoah 4y ago
The actual title is “19 random digits is not enough to uniquely identify all human beings”.
The tl;dr is that you need at least 30 digits so it’s safe to assign a random number to a person with a close to zero probability of already being assigned.
I’m not really sure why the author is talking about 19 digits. Must be a reference to something I guess but I really don’t know what.
Also this doesn’t mention for how long this is valid for. New people keep getting born, so at some point 30 numbers won’t be enough unless we don’t care about reuse of the ones where people might be long gone.
- _0ffh 4y agoHmmm, 64 bits happens to work out as around 19.27 decimal digits. Maybe there's a connection here, although due to the nature of digits 19.27 effectively means up to 20 digits.
- version_five 3y agoThat's a good guess. He links to a related discussion about 64-bit numbers so presumably that's what he was thinking https://lemire.me/blog/2019/12/12/are-64-bit-random-identifiers-free-from-collision/ https://lemire.me/blog/2019/12/12/are-64-bit-random-identifi...
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- svachalek 3y agoAgree on the 64 bit guess. And note that digits are exponential so going to 38 digits (128 bits) can account for 10 million times as many people as 30.
- travisjungroth 3y agoI can’t say what inspired 19 in the mind of the author, but the thing on the page is that 19 is the tipping point. It goes from 96% collision at 19 to 27% at 20. It’s the most amount of digits where you’ll probably have a collision.