What is Reddit's opinion of RANDOM.ORG?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Yup, just tried that.

• 1. Save the webpage random.org as WebPage, complete (*.htm; *.html)
• 2. In the subfolder that is created find the file iframe.js and open it
• 3. Edit line 61 to this: document.getElementById("true-random-integer-generator-result").innerHTML = "110";
• 4. Open the saved htm file (RANDOM.ORG - True Random Number Service.htm)
• 5. Write http://www.random.org/ in the address bar

The Generate button will always give you 110 as the result.

DONE!

Edit: You'd need to also save the favicon and random.org logo localy and edit them in the source.

Edit2:

rager_face's method below is easier ;)

Perhaps you have wondered how predictable machines like computers can generate randomness. In reality, most random numbers used in computer programs are pseudo-random, which means they are a generated in a predictable fashion using a mathematical formula. This is fine for many purposes, but it may not be random in the way you expect if you're used to dice rolls and lottery drawings.

RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs. People use RANDOM.ORG for holding drawings, lotteries and sweepstakes, to drive games and gambling sites, for scientific applications and for art and music. The service has existed since 1998 and was built and is being operated by Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland.

As of today, RANDOM.ORG has generated 1,093 billion random bits for the Internet community.

This is really a stupid playing strategy. The second best bet on the lottery is picking true random numbers because you're as likely to win but if you do, there won't be as many winners compared to any 'special' combination.

Best bet, of course, is not to play.

As a comparison, this approach generates "billions of random numbers every second" whereas the radio noise approach used by random.org only generates about 3000 bits per second.

I... have no idea. I am woefully underprepared for this. I was thinking about just doing a random.org list randomizer and having people roll a die to figure out which three they get?

Good question. I figured since my inbox shows all the comments in order of when they were posted, I will basically "number" them from 1 to whatever number ends, then I will go to http://www.random.org/ and have it select the number. Yeah I know that's not truly random, but I'm not gonna cut up ~~hundreds~~ thousands of pieces of paper for a number drawing. Well I was going to at first but this thread kind of exploded so Im not doing that.

If you really want to make it impossible to guess the RNG, Random.org provides high quality random numbers generated from atmospheric noise.

For example here's a totally random 16KB of data

Just download that and replace the call for getNextRandomNumber() to pop off 4 bytes from the front of that list (or however many bytes you need). The randomizer probably makes only a few thousand calls to getNextRandomNumber() when generating the randomized ROM so a finite list of truly random numbers is fine.

It is literally impossible for anyone to guess the sequence if they don't have access to that list. That's the difference between a random number and a pseudorandom number.

• True Neutral Nord
• Not Dragonborn
• Imperial
• Dawnguard, Daedric, Companions
• Archery, Heavy Armor, Speech, Conjuration, Restoration, Pickpocket
• Talos
• Hunter

Used this for rolls.

The reason you feel this way is because large streaks tend to get noticed faster.

On this website you will generate a sequence of 200 0s and 1s in a random order: http://www.random.org/integers/?num=200&min=0&max=1&col=1&base=10&format=html&rnd=new

If you scroll through your results, you will notice large streaks of 0's or 1's. This is basicly how league works. For example in the sequence I had generated I had : 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

If anyone's interested in a third comparison, I got 10,000 d20 numbers off of random.org. Here they are with their percentage of deviation (calculated the same way as the article):

1: 501 (0.2%) 2: 499 (0.2%) 3: 477 (4.6%) 4: 499 (0.2%) 5: 505 (1.0%) 6: 497 (0.6%) 7: 544 (8.8%) 8: 556 (11.2%) 9: 501 (0.2%) 10: 465 (7%) 11: 456 (8.8%) 12: 474 (5.2%) 13: 510 (2.0%) 14: 465 (7%) 15: 512 (2.4%) 16: 502 (0.4%) 17: 490 (2.0%) 18: 497 (0.6%) 19: 496 (0.8%) 20: 554 (10.8%)

So, if you're really concerned about randomness and don't care about the feel of the dice, you have an online resource. Me, I'm happy enough to just be sitting around with a good group of people and telling a story.

Depends on what he means by "random" - not to mention there are services (e.g. http://www.random.org) that generate their RNG numbers from sources of physical randomness (in their case, atmospheric radio noise; random.org is actually slightly more random than nearly all actual dice).

I also have an argument for how a dice and a PRNG (pseudorandom number generator, one that generates number entirely through software) are logically equivalent, but I don't have the time to write it up properly right now.

Take it a step further....go here: (http://www.random.org/passwords/) and create a password. Now go here: (http://www.futureme.org/) and tell it to e-mail you the password 3 months down the line. Create the settings you want within k9, then logout. Most likely you aren't going to remember this password so you won't be able to change your settings. Basically, even if you want to look at porn..you just wont be able to. Word of caution, though..make sure your settings are properly set, you wouldn't want to block reddit or youtube on accident.

If you really want to understand how bad the odds are, go here: Random.org.

It's a random number generator. Enter the in the odds of the powerball 1-292,000,000. Now, pick a number between those two in your head and start hitting "generate."

You can do it over and over again for hours and will never come within even 10,000. Soon you start to understand how fucking vast it is.

A proper way to decide between three options:

Flip twice.
H/H -> A
H/T -> B
T/H -> C
T/T -> repeat the flips

You have 1/4 chance to get each option, and 1/4 chance to have to repeat. But if you have to repeat, the probabilities remain unchanged, so:

P(x) = 1/4 + 1/4*P(x) =>
3/4P(x) = 1/4 =>
P(x) = 1/3

where x is A, B or C.

With your suggested method, P(A) = P(B) = 1/4, while P(C) = 1/2.

Anyway, instead of flipping coins, I suggest using random.org.

edit: The above mathematics, were of course assuming a fair coin. That is a coin with 1/2 chance of landing on tails and 1/2 chance of landing on heads.

Say you only have an unfair coin. One which has a p chance of landing on tails and 1-p - on heads. (0 < p < 1)
The following process will allow you to simulate a fair coin:

Flip twice.
H/H -> repeat
H/T -> H
T/H -> T
T/T -> repeat

Now P(H) = (1-p) * ((1-p) * P(H) + p) + p * (p * P(H)) = (1-p)^2 * P(H) + (1-p)p + p^2 * P(H) = P(H) - 2pP(H) + 2p^2 P(H) + (1-p)p =>
2pP(H) - 2p^2 P(H) = (1-p)p =>
2pP(H)(1-p) = (1-p)p =>
2P(H) = 1 =>
P(H) = 1/2.

Since the process only terminates on either H or T, we can deduce that P(T) = 1-P(H) = 1/2. Thus we have proven that this process simulates a fair coin flip with an unfair coin.

> Came here for a solution and found a solution. Good luck, here in America you need a better one. They are trying to make encryption illegal. So you need encryption that is...invisible?

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
ggwp

Also you still have plausible deniability, encrypted* data looks like random data if encrypted with a random key. It's not illegal to share random data.
^* ^for ^instance ^with ^AES/Rijndael

Relevant xkcd

Hey Roger, that is a perfectly reasonable concern. Most of the stuff I give away in the stream is donated from the awesome regular viewers that I have simply to give something back to the stream so there is definitely no shady business going on. While there is nothing I can do to prevent people from making multiple accounts and logging in to watch the stream, I use http://www.random.org/lists/ to do all the giveaway selections. The whole process is streamed. Starting with copying and pasting the names over to the list, all the way to randomizing, and finding out if that person is indeed a follower.

If that doesn't seem enough to calm your mind you should hop in the stream tomorrow and ask people about all the other giveaways I've done and if they go their stuff. Hope this helps :)

just tried to see what random.org is returning:

curl "http://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbyte?nbytes=32&amp;format=f"

results in

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>301 Moved Permanently</title> </head><body> <h1>Moved Permanently</h1> <p>The document has moved <a href="https://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbyte?nbytes=32&amp;amp;format=f"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p> <hr> <address>Apache/2.2.22 (Debian) Server at www.random.org Port 80</address> </body></html>

ouch. random.org now only serves the response over http*s* and tries to redirect the client to the new address. But Blockchain.info used a very naive http-implementation which ignores such responses and just hopes the returned content is the random entropy.

If someone is eager to experiment: just feed the first 32bytes into the RNG and see what key it generates... it should be the one for 1Bn9ReEocMG1WEW1qYjuDrdFzEFFDCq43F

The weighted lottery has only been around since 1990, and even then the weights were different from the current ones (the team with the worst record used to have a smaller chance of winning).

As an experiment I used a random number generator to generate 24 numbers between 1 and 4, counting the 1s as the worst team winning the draft lottery. Here are the results (1st run, no re-runs): 4, 1, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, 4, 4, 1, 4, 1, 3, 4, 4, 1, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2. That's only four wins for the worst team, or 16.7%.

For the actual draft lottery, the worst team has won three times. It's not that far off my completely random result (which actually gives the worst team a higher chance of winning than the real draft lottery has historically). Is it more reasonable to assume the draft lottery is fixed, or that 24 drafts just isn't a big enough sample size for the results to even out to 25%?

Those numbers were either a) calculated to give you some seudo-random in your calculations, or b) derived from some process like geiger counters to make them truly random.

If you need something TRULY random, nowadays you can go to random.org, and get you some. Pick some lottery tickets while you are at it.

http://www.random.org/integers/?num=200&amp;min=0&amp;max=1&amp;col=1&amp;base=10&amp;format=html&amp;rnd=new

Take a look at the streaks of 1's and 0's in this list. Randomly generated, mind you, I'm not even looking at the same thing you're looking at, but I'm confident that there are streaks. It's the nature of what 50% chance actually means.

PS That isn't to say that there aren't factors like tilt or good days either, but there's no escaping streaks even if you play perfectly consistently.

But the odds are in your favour http://www.random.org/

If it lands on 100 you die. 12 clicks, though I understand you need to reduce it after selection. But the odds are so small, just have a click.

It's true that if you have the seed (which is used to determine the starting value of the sequence) and the mathematical formula used to generate the "random" numbers, you can know what numbers will occur next.

There exist true random number generators. They sample something truly random (like atmospheric noise) and generate numbers based on it. However, this means that the computer itself is not the source of the random numbers.

Definitely one of the more interesting posts on reddit :) However it sounds like you may be looking for genetic programming ( the technique) rather than a raw genetic algorithm. That way you'd be evolving an actual algorithm. I still don't know what the fitness function is though. Based ok what you said it would have to be tied to something in the random noise. Maybe something that produces the most 'ordered' pattern from the random noise, like a mathematical pattern? Using Fourier analysis to identify salient signals that differentiate themselves from normal random noise profile?

Edit: True random noise API http://www.random.org/clients/http/ Uses atmospheric noise as basis.

Edit 2: HotBits - random noise generator based on radioactive decay https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/

Edit 3: you can port HotBits RandomX java server access module to Python, add in pyevolve package and give it a whirl (https://github.com/perone/Pyevolve). Now you can get someone to freelance it! Would be interested in seeing what happens, though fitness function would still need to be figured out.

I actually might play around with this :)

When the author mentioned that we don't have a true random number generator, I thought of www.random.org which uses atmospheric noise to get a random number. I carry around a 12 sided die for my random numbers I need.

His xkcd reference was entertaining...I'm ashamed to say I had not seen that before.

HERE IS HOW IT WORKS Choose a day, doesn't matter the year I'm only looking for a month and date, example: August 4th winner is chosen by how close he or she gets to the dates I have chosen. Here is a date randomizing website or choose yourself. http://www.random.org/calendar-dates/

Good luck everybody!<3

I use the nightmare module and the first random number generator I got in a Google search .

I listed the classes 1-31 for base classes including all monsters and the second tier trainees. I rolled the numbers for all unpromoted guys I wrote them. Put them under the character data. I then had manually removed their weapon levels and put in their new weapon levels based on their classes. If they were a monster class I made them able to use monster weapons. I also did this promoted classes but they're listed 1-34. I then went though the chapter unit data changing all to class it rolled them into and gave them according weaponry from previous data.

This actually quite bit of work. I wish someone could dissect the existed tools and applied to Sacred Stones but I know nothing about coding. Also these games have a lot differences.

Sorry if this came late and was sloppy written. I have never good at writing

http://www.random.org/coins/?num=4&amp;cur=60-usd.0001c

true story, first time it was heads tails tails tails, second time tails tails tails tails.

Also, we should note that really we had a 1/8th probability of a post like this, because wouldn't the OP post a similar post ("I finally have proof that the loot fairy loves me") if they got all 4 of the plastic wrap drops?

I see multiple people have managed to crack the code. I also see that many people failed to find the first step of the code. However the hunt is over — one quick-witted person will be rewarded. Following people managed to find the real answer which was: Reality

*KermitTheMan *NapoleanD *WildMagnemite *Bryson91 *Limeo *Oct2006 *stimpyrules *D4rkVizard *garbage_juicer *Pitfallover *Anofles *crimson589 *T1LT *TaintedCatalyst *Lundberg94 *Tru5ty *OP_IS_A_ANUS_POUNDER *stimpyrules *ABorgna *Ravencrush

The above people were filtered from the replies and private messages. With this randomizer, NapoleanD was randomized to receive the prize. To those left confused about the code, here is the correct path to take.

The over-long wall of text is fake, the actual puzzle is found within a dot in the puzzle description. It's a mediafire link with couple extra letters and fire symbol. You will find a file with no extension. It's a png file, the letters you took out from the url. You will find it the final picture of this puzzle. There is couple answer possibilities, but the real answer is hidden in gray color within the character picture on the left side.

So new strategy since I'm always wrong it feels like. I've decided to just flip 10 coins using This website and decided to use Toonies, because Toonies are awesome! If more heads come up then I will pick the home team to win, if tails away team. Todays coin flip outcome was 5 Polar Bears (tails) and 5 heads. So will flip a real toonie now for the deciding factor, and it came up tails. So Nashville will win.

Record so far with coin flip is 2-2

No, this wouldn't work on any USB drive for three reasons. 1) Mycelium's Entropy has entropy-generating hardware inside the USB stick to generate true random numbers. Software can only generate pseudo-random numbers. 2) This USB prints out multi-sig wallets when you push the button (on the lefthand corner of the USB in the thumbnail). 3) You can flash firmware on this device by holding down the button and connecting to a computer, but when connecting to a printer, it's important that the printer only sees a .jpg.

To fight this, I suggest Blizzard gather everyone into the same page about what RNG really is, and manage everyone's expectations.

Blizzard should be clear that RNG doesn't guarantee standardized distribution. Random is Random.

Blizzard should also explain that there is already a failsafe just in case legendaries are Not dropping for a long time, and this is where they will override RNG in favor of pleasing the player.

Blizzard should explain that "losing streaks" are still possible, as well as "winning streaks", which in some instances, you'll get a "distributed streak". Truly random, truly unpredictable, just like a physical dice roll.

http://www.random.org/randomness/

So a lot of developers start using additional factors when calculating the random number including user interactions (mouse movements, keyboard inputs). Some even go all out and use things like weather data and visual noise from TVs.

I would love a game! Dungeon Defenders?

If there are a lot of people, you could pick randomly like Evil Toaster does for the Plounge AMA--he uses random.org. ... I'm not sure how, but maybe assign each person a number, then have the generator pick one of those numbers, & voila there's your winner!

Hey fucko, learn to make your own decisions. If you can't do that, then go to http://www.random.org/ and put in a maximum number of 34, then use the list below.

1. Warrior - Arms
2. Warrior - Fury
3. Warrior - Protection
4. Paladin - Holy
5. Paladin - Protection
6. Paladin - Retribution
7. Hunter - Beast Mastery
8. Hunter - Marksmanship
9. Hunter - Survival
10. Rogue - Assassination
11. Rogue - Combat
12. Rogue - Subtlety
13. Priest - Discipline
14. Priest - Holy
15. Priest - Shadow
16. Death Knight - Blood
17. Death Knight - Frost
18. Death Knight - Unholy
19. Shaman - Elemental
20. Shaman - Enhancement
21. Shaman - Restoration
22. Mage - Arcane
23. Mage - Fire
24. Mage - Frost
25. Warlock - Affliction
26. Warlock - Demonology
27. Warlock - Destruction
28. Monk - Brewmaster
29. Monk - Mistweaver
30. Monk - Windwalker
31. Druid - Balance
32. Druid - Feral
33. Druid - Guardian
34. Druid - Restoration

Your examples in premise three are very weak. They're not random at all, but are merely things that look disordered at first glance, but have identifiable patterns to anyone who isn't lazy.

The qwerty keyboard is arranged in a certain way, and I would gander that should someone do 100 wrist slams using it, letters in certain portions of the keyboard would show up more frequently (unless one made a concerted effort to reach all corners of the keyboard, which is also not randomness). Your single provided example confirms this intuition, as all the letters you pressed are on the center and lower-left portions of the qwerty keyboard. Letters that do show up in your example are likely to appear more than once. These are two patterns that I discerned quite easily from your "random" keyboard strike.

Same with your paint example. Paint brushes leave predictable patterns/textures, as do paint drops formed from a distance like Jackson Pollock. You can't possibly think that this is completely devoid of discernible patterns (to see what that might look like, check this out, which was generated by computer to be as close to random as possible by random.org). Just because something might seem disordered at first glance doesn't make it random.

I like random QM.. the one issue I find, you can't blacklist anyone

I play the game often enough to where I am sick of playing certain people (tyrande, jaina, uther, E.T.C., etc..) just because I play them in HL. so I would love to be able to blacklist em'

What I end up doing is just counting the Heroes I'd like and using Random.org

I would love it if blizzard allowed you to random for quests (check the small specialist Hex when choosing random to get Random specialist) or even just to have random quests! (play 3 games as random)

1. Never use toonter. They don't save their passwords effectively. It already happened one time before this, too.

2. Never use the same password for everything. Use a website like Random.org to generate random ones.

Very thorough explanation. Just want to add something else: per /u/seirya's comment: > So ... seed /dev/random with /dev/urandom and pipe that to /dev/null?

There are two kinds of "random" data: true random and pseudo-random.

• true random: usually data collected from the environment, such as mouse movement or time gap between keystrokes. True random is not reproducible, and are usually used for security purpose, such as generating a certificate or a password.
• pseudo-random: "random" data generated programmatically - usually a mathematical sequence. They may look totally random, but they are not and there's usually a pattern. To make the data look more random, pseudo-random algorithms usually start with a seed value. It could be the timestamp when the algorithm started, etc. The same seed will give you the same sequence of "random" numbers. Which means if someone knows the seed that you use, they would be able to reproduce your "random" sequence, thus unfit for things like generating a certificate. However, it is perfectly fit to do things like bitly, generating a random string, ~~or generating reddit thread ID (this thread is "1vikzd")~~ (apparently reddit IDs are sequential and is represented in a different base) - where people don't care if you can guess the next number.

Do not confuse randomness with uniqueness.

• true random can potentially give you something like: 3 3 4 4 5 5 1 3 3... The sequence might not look random, but there's no way to predict that comes next.
• pseudo random, on the other hand, usually give you things like 1, 321423, 5454... They usually look wildly random, but there's a very fine relationship between one number and the next.

You can read more about it here: http://www.random.org/randomness/

Back to the joke: use true random as seed for pseudo-random, that way the data (generated by pseudo-random) is somewhat uniform, thus the NSA won't know that it's random trash.

Quick and dirty way to do this is collect names for a raffle and put it through: http://www.random.org/lists/ then award prizes in order from the output list.

Maybe have contests to get your name on the list or on the list more than once?

Most RNGs used by programs are technically not random, unless you're using a service like http://www.random.org/ to generate them.

It probably doesn't make a visible difference to the user, but to a programmer, a very big difference indeed.

Computers in general do not choose truly random numbers, although it may seem random to the end user for most purposes. The hardware exists to do it, but not all programs necessarily take advantage of it, and not all computers are necessarily equipped with said hardware. They often use an algorithm that chooses a number based on a unique seed(often the value of the system clock). However, one can obtain a truly random number by using this site, which uses the proven uncertainty of photon movement as the seed. http://www.random.org/

looking around for random numbers is a bad idea as well since numbers in real life are not evenly distributed, you are much more likely to see 10s and 11s than 51s and 52s, see Benford's law. If you want truly random numbers you have to use a random number generator such as random.org. Knowing that people tend to pick birthdays and other small numbers (generally following a distribution according to Benford's law) if you want to avoid picking the same numbers as someone else you should try to actively avoid picking low numbers or numbers you see in everyday life.

Of course mathematically the best way to win is to not play at all.

Rather than using http://www.random.org/, open a dice log at http://dicelog.com/ and give the log URL out. You can state what you're rolling for in the comments; this effectively prevents rerolls since everyone can see if you do reroll. I also state what the rolled outcome will mean in the comments for maximum explanatory power.

Hey! Does this mean you're going away? Or are you already away? Never-the-less, I'm in.

For random number generation, there's nothing better than random.org.

Or you can just use this: 4

I guarantee it was chosen completely randomly.

To make it more fun I let randomg.org pick the number for me.

Got 104 which is "The disappearance of Haruhi Suzumya". A really great movie with much better animation than the series, great characters and a great story. I really liked it (9/10 for me).

I'm going to use a random number generator and bleach wiki to pick some guys.

First picking a category. Picking a number between 1 & 7 twice. Got 5 & 3, a hollow vs. a soul

Next picking the characters: there are 16 hollows listed and 24 souls. I got 6 for the hollows and 10 for the souls, which leaves me with:

Fishbone D vs. Unamed Kuchiki

No.

1) Machines can create truly random sequences. random.org runs a set of machines that generates truly random sequences.

2) Any machine with access to a true random number generator can generate random processes.

I would say that the most likely scenario is a statistical anomaly.

Basically your family is analogous to flipping a coin 14 times and getting 13 tails and one head (or vice versa). Not what you'd expect -- but not shockingly unusual either. This is a small sample size. It took me about a dozen tries on random.org to get a situation that matches your family. (Someone better at statistics than me can probably calculate the precise odds of getting 13boys/1girl).

If your family had 100 kids or 1000 kids instead of 14, you'd likely see a ratio much closer to half boys, half girls. See the Law of Large Numbers for more.

A biological anomaly is ~possible~ but I would say the statistical anomaly is much more likely. As the other poster says, biological meiotic errors that would preclude one gender of baby or the other are quite rare.

Here, Crossfit for dummies:

Click wildly until you reach a page for a lift

Press generate

Press generate again

First link is the lift, second is the sets, third is the reps. Repeat 2-20 times. Do whatever comes up in a circuit for time.

Crossfit!

But that is theoretically predictable so not truly random.
The closest we come to true randomness at this moment is what RANDOM.ORG is doing: by using athmospheric noise

This comic is relevant. There are some music players that try to have an improved shuffle though. For example, GoneMAD Music Player has an option to shuffle your songs but not repeat any until they've all been played.

> The possible outcomes are not {1, 2, 3, ..., 20} the outcome is either the number you expected or not. Or, 50/50% chance of landing on any particular number. You don't even need to specify that number, all that's needed is the condition that it's either a pass or fail.

Okay then.

I'm defining success as the number 20, failure as anything else. Apparently I have a 50% chance of this.

Using random.org (your results will almost certainly vary):

> 9 19 14 1 17
> 13 3 17 20 19
> 1 2 6 10 11
> 2 10 3 7 9
> 13 13 16 5 6
> 10 16 2 5 14
> 2 7 1 12 5
> 8 7 11 20 8
> 13 20 17 3 3
> 14 7 4 2 9
> 8 19 16 10 2
> 10 1 16 11 19
> 20 12 18 8 16
> 20 11 7 6 15
> 9 16 5 16 5
> 16 13 3 18 7
> 2 18 1 20 14
> 10 18 16 8 1
> 14 11 19 12 1
> 11 2 14 20 17

So let's see here... I count 6 success out of 100 rolls. I'll agree that the exact sequence I gave above is just as likely as 100 20s (each roll is independent), but in absolutely no way is the chance of an individual roll being a success 50%.

Please explain to me why I only got 6 successes rather than around 50.

This is a mixture of confirmation bias and people underestimating the likelihood of streaks.

http://www.random.org/coins/

Line yourself up for "50" games and set the flipping of the coin. If for any game you have a ~50% chance to win (which should occur if you are equal in ability to all others). Even with this perfectly equal out come you find long streaks of 5-7 in almost all flip attempts. If a streak is equal to or more than 3 in a row, you are looking at roughly 60-80% of games being streaks IF every game is equivalent to a coin flip in who will win or lose.

Now factor in more shit like tilting and win streaking. The psychological high of winning and the psychological low of losing will affect you for the next game. Now add in match making, rapidly climbing because of a decent snowball in a couple games can land you in a higher MMR and far more likely to lose, same with losing streaks, these streaks set you up for the opposite streak soon to follow as your MMR will attempt to balance out. Combine that with a touch of confirmation bias and you are playing LoS, League of Streaks.

look at this 10 coin streak in a 50 coin flip, I chose the first coin option because its purely cosmetic and I couldnt be stuffed searching for anything in particular

I know this may sound weird but I often use that list and other lists in conjunction with random number generators when I want something new to listen to. I find this can be a better way of digesting those lists because often when you try to work them in order it often can become cumbersome, so this way you can still listen to albums from the list when you like without it seeming like a task, for example I would open up random.org and set the parameters between 1 and 1001, generate a number and listen to that album in the list. That way I am not just gorging on 50s records but getting a healthy mix of all time periods and genres. Just my two cents, its often fun to see what the lottery comes up with and can make them more memorable and stand out.

Also, subscribe to last.fm as you seem to be listening to albums once and then discarding them. As last.fm catalogues your music and generates radio stations from them it can help to familiarise yourself with bands that you have only listened to in passing, enjoyed but never thought to put on again because of the sheer amount of music you like to consume. I personally recommend their "mix" station, as it plays a mix of the library you catalogue and recommended tracks based on what you have been listening to recently. Their "Neighbours Library" station is also pretty good as it plays the libraries of those with a similar taste in music, so often I find I like a lot of the music that these other people are listening to as our tastes overlap.

You're correct, for example, /dev/random/ on UNIX generates pseudorandom numbers from a variety of sources including memory states and network traffic. The entropy of these methods is fairly well-understood. It's imperfect, especially for devices that have few components and that always run the same apps in the same sequence. For most applications it's random enough.

The important detail from this article is that they use the webcam to detect variations in photons, which is a quantum measurement. Quantum measurements are the only way to get a truly random number, which is much more random than the way /dev/random/ creates randomness.

To date, people who care about generating truly random numbers have had to buy USB dongles and other devices that measure quantum effects (e.g., the Entropy Key). The article demonstrates that there's a way to use onboard webcams to accomplish the same, without needing to add a specialized device.

random.org has a great introduction to the subject of true randomness.

Actually, lotto numbers are generated from something like the static of the cosmos. Sending a 1gb drive back in time would alter this static changing the lotto numbers.

EDIT: Source added

http://www.random.org/

> Perhaps you have wondered how predictable machines like computers can generate randomness. In reality, most random numbers used in computer programs are pseudo-random, which means they are generated in a predictable fashion using a mathematical formula. This is fine for many purposes, but it may not be random in the way you expect if you're used to dice rolls and lottery drawings.

> RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs. People use RANDOM.ORG for holding drawings, lotteries and sweepstakes, to drive games and gambling sites, for scientific applications and for art and music. The service has existed since 1998 and was built by Dr Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland. Today, RANDOM.ORG is operated by Randomness and Integrity Services Ltd.

I'm not quite sure we can do this without post numbers...

I'm just going to use this: http://www.random.org/

You'll need to have a min of 10000000 and a max of 99999999 (edit: Fixed that, I messed up) if you want to simulate the numbers of /tg/ posts.

I got...

~~02065165~~ 43919147

So, I guess I'll reply to my own post of what I choose, given that number.

This is what I did for the most fun playthrough of Skyrim that I've had so far.

Use an rng to pick your race. Pull up the skills menu and the first one you see is 1, the skill to the right is 2 etc. Use the rng for 1-18 and roll as many times as you want to pick skills 3(hard)-10(easy). I did 5. You can only train and put perks into these skills. Every time you level rng 1-3 to see if you get health, stamina, or magicka. Boom, now you have your random character, as if you were actually "born".

Now enforce some rules for yourself to act like a real Skyrim citizen: make yourself eat and sleep once a day, only take items you earned (drops from enemies, quest rewards, but not looting random chests or urns, and NO STEALING), only go where you're asked to, hunt for your money, killing anything from rabbits and foxes to bears and sabre cats to sell their drops, pick a city (or rng from the list of cities) to be your hometown. Stay at the inn there until you get (or build) a player house. Only leave of you are asked to. Live like a real Skyrim citizen, and the quests, no matter how mundane, seem so much more grandiose and amazing. I got drawn back into the world by following these guidelines, and it made everything seem awesome again after getting bored from 400 hours poured into the game.

Tl;dr: act like a citizen.

"True" randomness can come from measuring physical phenomena - it is not the case that you just don't have all of the information, but rather even in principle it is not possible predict the outcome of some events in a deterministic way. The canonical example of this is the decay of radioactive nuclei - there is no way, even in principle, to know with unlimited certainty when a decay event will be detected; this is something that is fundamentally probabilistic in nature. If you want to generate some "true" random numbers, check out http://www.random.org/

I find that a fun way to pick a series to watch is by using the random.org number generator, putting the max as the number of shows in my 'planned to watch', and letting the gods of weather decide. Re-roll the number if its a sequel/ova to a show you haven't watched yet, so that franchises with multiple entries don't get overvalued.

This unfairly prioritizes the games in the middle of the shelf. The better solution would be to go to random.org, enter in the total number of games on the shelf and have it pick a random number.

As someone who grew up with a last name at the end of the alphabet, I have always dreamed of a day where the end of the order has an equal chance :'(

Specifically with regards to Java, notice that java.util.Random has two constructors, one that takes in what's called a seed that's then fed into the PRNG formula. And the constructor that doesn't take a seed just calls the overloaded one with the current system time (in milliseconds) as the seed.

Also some programs that require greater security will sometimes ask you to wiggle your mouse or type random keys in order to get a truly random number. Or they'll use a web service that in turn uses some other source for its randomness, such as atmospheric radio noise in the case of http://www.random.org/.

Yes, there is a thing a true randomness. You can't dismiss Heisenberg out of hand with a "speaking in a classical sense". Reality doesn't conform to your assumed parameters. Reality is what it is, and in reality, randomness is real. Randomness are events that are unpredictable, and the universe is teeming with those sorts of things. Radioactive decay is the "classical" example.

Of course us programmers have trouble writing random number generators. The computer is a machine. That's why we have resources like this.

Also....WTF does random have to do with evolution anyway? Evolution is about changes. Changes happen because of mutations (small or large). Mutations come from changes in DNA. Changes in DNA come from recombinations during sexual reproduction and/or biochemical events that modify base-pairs. Well, ok, yes, I guess some mutations could be caused by "random" events - cosmic rays, quantum indeterminacy during physical reactions.

Meh.

The best antidote against paralyzing fear is writing everyone you really want to dive, then make a random roll for it (use a multi-sided dice, or a site like random.org). Go with whatever destiny told you to improve.

Don't see why not? My only concern with freebies is the sharing of personal information. I guess if someone is willing to shoot you their name/info in DM, that's their own problem or something.

Anything run by myself will be 100% safe. I've literally worked for the Government of Canada and sworn allegiance to the Queen over protecting information of Canadians, and while that doesn't exactly apply here, I still value it. I've dealt with countless people over twitter and have passed on many many names/e-mails to event organizers.

Using http://www.random.org is a good way to pick winners fyi, there's a random number generator on the front page.

From a pure computer science standpoint, as others have pointed out, there is no such things as actual randomness. However, from a computer engineering standpoint, there very much is.

The idea is simple: you hook up some physical random process to a computer and monitor it. Linux collects available sources of randomness (or more accurately entropy), and stores it in a special file handle known as /dev/random. For most users, mouse movements and keyboard presses will generate "good enough" randomness, but you can take this further easily.

Radioactive decay is a pretty good source of entropy, as is electromagnetic noise. Also, an easy way to have true randomness at home would be to put a webcam in a dark box, crank up the brightness, and monitor the resulting noisy signal.

random.org is a publicly accessible source of atmospheric noise.

"Pseudorandomness" just means a sequence of numbers that appear to be random, but are generated deterministically. Virtually all numbers generated by a computer is done using a pseudo-random generator since there isn't a real dice inside a computer that it can just keep throwing. As a result if you can guess the algorithm the computer is using you can predict this "random" string of numbers with 100% prediction rate.

http://www.random.org is one of the few sites that try to give real randomness aka non-pseudorandomness by using atmospheric data.

So yeah what he was suggesting is valid, but has another name.

Give people 12-24 hours to reply.

Assign everyone a number.

http://www.random.org/

Will pick a random number and give it to that person! :)

Or have people tell jokes and pick the best as the winner.

Or have people guess a number between 1 and whatever and whoever picks your number wins.

All kinds of ways! Make it fun! :)

> In fact, most random number generators are considered pseudo random number generators. Most are actually just huge pattern sequences that are seeded via another factor to fake "randomness".

Pseudo-random =/= bad for generating random numbers, especially for something minor like a tabletop game. There are cryptographically secure PRNGs and while it's possible these can be compromised, it's not the kind of thing where a person would notice the difference between the numbers they generate and truly random strings.

> The true electronic random number generators often rely upon nuclear decay to get the figures. Your average and not-so-average computer has a pseudo random number generator, or they use software to implement the pattern sequences.

If you really want one, there are TRNGs online.

> Most probability is calculated in an ideal fashion, as the theoretical number of samples approaches infinity. Until you reach infinity samples, those random numbers can do whatever they want.

Probability wouldn't be very useful if it only worked once you reached an infinite number of samples. While there will be exceptions, if you roll a balanced die a large number of times the distribution should be very close to the theoretical one.

If I have more than 3 people coming over then I like to play a smoking game I made up. I made a list of 20 tricks/ ways to smoke/ things to do when smoking all you need is paper/pen and a 20 sided dice (or This website if you don't have a 20 sided dice)

My list goes like this, and you can change it if you don't like it. Also you don't have to do the trick successfully, you just have to try.

• Blow an O

• Carb Hit (if possible)

• Reverse Rotation

• Spin hit (you spin around while hitting it)

• Make it milky

• Hotbox your shirt

• Pack the next bowl

• Upside down hit

• Ghost Inhale

• Nose hit

• Chinese Fire Drill

• Double Hit

• Make a rule that lasts until the bowl dies

• Change seats with the person on your right

• Choose next song

• 5 Pushups while you exhale

• Hold in smoke until its clear

• Shotgun your hit to someone else

• Skipped!

• French Inhale

http://www.random.org/integers/?num=2&amp;min=0&amp;max=1&amp;col=5&amp;base=10&amp;format=html&amp;rnd=new

11 - виновен
00 - не виновен
10 - отправить на доследование
01 - отложить заседание

В среднем будет сильно справедливей чем сейчас.

А если серьезно, то только полная замена. И запретить родственникам бывших судей занимать должности судей так же. Это не выполнимо, но это было бы единственным выходом.

It sounds like your son has a much harder time with decisions than I do, but something that works for me is this: I have a "deciderator". It used to be a regular old penny, but now if I can't make a decision I pull out my deciderator, ask it a simple yes or no question, and Honest Abe is always "Yes". Because I use it exclusively for this purpose, in my twisted mind it has gained talismanic powers of knowing what I should do. When I have multiple choices, I usually use a random number generator: either a die, the last last digit of the seconds at the moment I look at a clock, or a proper random number generator. It may help your son somewhat, but it is certainly no substitute to checking with a child psychologist. I believe you can probably have a sit down with a doctor prior to bringing your son in - and she can tell you how best to bring him in so it doesn't freak him out.

I might recommend Googling for straightforward questions like these before asking. But, in short, pseudorandom number generators are just that - pseduorandom. They're deterministic, whereas true random number generators are non-deterministic.

For most applications, PRNGs are sufficient and most likely preferably, since they're non-blocking.

You can read more on Wikipedia, random.org, or this random blog post I found via Google.

Solution: http://www.random.org/

Roll 1-9 for race, 1-4 for class, 1-4 for weapon, and 1-3 for armor.

As for character appearance, there's a randomize button in the interface, solving THAT problem.

That should be enough to get you started :)

You've got the right idea about working on things that are difficult for you.

There are a lot of different ways to use the Arban's book. One way I choose what to work on out of the book sometimes is by using a random number generator in relation to the number of pages in the book. For example, I would go to http://www.random.org/ and input the numbers 23 to 202 (I have the older edition, this excludes the very basic exercises and the solos and characteristic studies), then go to whatever page the website generated and spend some time working on that page. I found this method prevented me from getting stuck on one or two exercises and allowed me to vary my practice more.

Truth. And in general, there are hardware random generators that do basically the same thing: give you random numbers from the environment, not from software. (You can get also random numbers from random.org if you need any!)

Most random number generators are actually pseudorandom number generators which are not truly random as the final number is derived from a "seed" number that's run through an algorithm. They're typically random enough for most uses, though.

If you want a more truly random number you can check out the one at Random.org which uses atmospheric noise to generate the randomness.

My experience as a small streamer doing giveaways--don't. Lurkers, viewbots, and giveaway hunters lurk us small broadcasters for these kinds of things. From my experience, they'll flood your channel until you start your giveaway. Then they'll spam the chat and once they have what they want, watch your viewer count plummet. As a broadcaster myself, I don't think I've reached that status of doing giveaways yet.

What I wanted to do for my giveaway was for chat to pick a random number. On a different browser tab, have random.org. There is a box to the right where you can adjust values (ie: 1-100 is the default). Click generate and whomever is close or guess the number correctly wins the prize.

I will use random.org to pick a number, and then I will use Google's site-specific search to search the comments for that number. I'll keep doing this until I hit a number that someone guessed, and then I will check their history for a positive comment in another thread. If I find that they've been positive at all, I'll announce their name and contact them immediately. Technically, it's not 100% random because I have final discretion as to whether or not the person is positive, but the picking process is otherwise random, yes.

And pick a number if you want in!

In light of there apparently being a bug which caused beagle to lose 100% of his gear from that mission instead of the intended 50%. So I decided to look up everything that was lost and calculate an alternate universe in which the bug was fixed.

results between 1 and 100 using http://www.random.org/, no rerolls

Carapace Armor (96) keep

Pulse Carbine ~~(67)~~ keep

Scope ~~(34)~~ keep

Aegis Armor (7) lost

Pulse Rifle ~~(20)~~ lost

Aegis Armor (51) keep

Scatter Blaster ~~(54)~~ keep

Laser Pistol ~~(64)~~ keep

Chitin Plating ~~(10)~~ keep

Shredder Ammo ~~(27)~~ keep

Carapace Armor (64) keep

Pulse rifle ~~(34)~~ keep

Chem Grenade ~~(35)~~ keep

Aegis Armor (36) lost

Pulse Autoblaster ~~(81)~~ lost

Scope ~~(56)~~ lost

alloy Plating ~~(96)~~ lost

Aegis Armor (20) lost

Scatter Blaster ~~(23)~~ lost

Heater ~~(41)~~ lost

Chitin Plating ~~(58)~~ lost

Scope ~~(36)~~ lost

Carapace Armor (72) keep

Pulse Sniper Rifle ~~(63)~~ keep

Scope ~~(40)~~ keep

I'm not saying beagle needs to cheat anything back in, but I don't think too many people would put it past him if he did. Maybe a poll is in order, but again, it is up to beagle.

Edit: updated after amineri corrected me on how the 50% roll works.

Go to Random.org. Use the box on the right to generate a random number from 1 to x, where x is the number of items on this list. Vow to do whatever the result is, then click "generate."

So new strategy since I'm always wrong it feels like. I've decided to just flip 10 coins using This website and decided to use Toonies, because Toonies are awesome! If more heads come up then I will pick the home team to win, if tails away team. Todays coin flip outcome was 6 Polar Bears (tails) and 4 heads. So Tampa will win.

Record so far with coin flip is 5-2

Here's what I did:

• Go through every character. From Mario all the way to Mii (jk, stop right before you get to mii)

• Test out the mechanics and moves of every fighter. Look up tech for that character

• After you've gone through the roster, ask yourself this: Which characters do you feel like you were best with? Which character did you enjoy playing the most? Which character suits your playstyle best?

• Pick your top favorite characters (5 is a good number)

• Practice with all of these characters, and try to figure out which you like best.

• Pick your favorite character, and you now have a main, as well as backup characters.

• If all else fails...

Give me a number between 0 and 147, you've got 30 min. The correct number gets an invite.

Edit. I did't think I had to mention this, but you can't make new accounts on the fly and guess multible times. Account needs to be a day or older.

Edit 2. 30 minutes has passed. So far, no one has guessed the correct number, excluding the two who guessed every number from 0 to 147. The correct correct number was 101, I'll be using http://www.random.org/ to get a new number. Brb.

Edit 3. Number was 10, no winers, yet.

Edit 4. 66, no winners, yet.

Edit 5. Winner has been drawn, u/vtamethodman, grats! Number was 28.

I had no clue what to do with your name, so I put it in Google Translate instead. 'baigsen' didn't turn up with results, but with 'paraj' I found that it's Hungarian for spinach! There we go, that's something.

I haven't watched an anime with spinach in it, so I searched for it on MAL instead. Dang, no results. But, I figured I could also try it on usernames. Succes!, there's a user named Spinach. There are 46 entries on his list, so went to here and asked for a number between 1 and 46. I got 26, which is a movie from the Kara no Kyoukai series.

Of course you'd have to start with the first movie, so here you go. I hope you enjoy it. I haven't watched it myself, but it's said to be very good (with the later movies getting even better). I plan to watch it myself too in the future.

http://www.random.org/ uses a method that is as close as random as you can get. It uses atmospheric noise to generate numbers and afaik does not use any algorithm like you mentioned most programs use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information

The problem with truly random information is that it has to be generated in some way by the universe that contains that information. So no information, no matter how random, is meaningless. http://www.random.org/ for example uses atmospheric noise to generate the seeds for random number generation, but if you extrapolate backwards then you end up with information about the air molecules in the atmosphere of Earth. Sure the information is devastatingly boring, but it's information about the atmosphere nonetheless.

Even if you measure quantum events, such as assigning a binary digit to whether or not a photon goes one way or the other through a beam splitter, you still end up with information about those photons, it may be random but it still conveys information about something that exists in the universe.

Per this metric AAPL will go down:

http://www.random.org/coins/?num=11&amp;cur=20-novelty.voting-2004 *

• Bush = go up (bush is before kerry in alphabet and thus stock goes up) (3 of 11 flips) Kerry = go down (8 of 11 flips)

Let's play a game! Click on the random longitude/latitude generator and explain how you would survive? Do you think you would make it to safety? (zoom to 500m)

I'll start.

Latitude: 50.37366, Longitude: 136.09684, Distortion: 2.46

Immediately I am grateful that I am not in a desert type climate, ice or amazonic. But, I worry because their are no roads/fields or signs of life near. Knowing this I would plan for mobile survival. I always carry a very small survival kit with a pocket knife/canteen/string/flint and compass. If it were me I would head south and set up small shelters on the way until I found some sort of signs of life. This could take hours/days/months. Water would be priority 1 as always. Luckily I have a canteen. I would spend the first 3-4 days walking south and foraging any food I could on the way and anything easy. If no solid food source would be found after that I would really need to sit and think about it. I would carefully tread south carefully until I saw any signs of people. If I would make it 2-3 weeks I would most likely set up a shelter in an area near food/water and re gain energy then head out again.

Now lets look at how going south would have worked out.

I was located in south east Russia, near the China border and the Sea of Okhotsk. I don't think I would have been in terrible shape. About 150 km south, 10km east is a small airport. I would have realized once I went south, if I saw a plane, take off or land that an airport was near. I definitely would have walked to the airport. If not it looks as if some roads/towns are 200km away. I'll assume in non road terrain I could manage 20 km a day. I really think I could survive this with my medium amount of survival knowledge.

Now it's your turn, go!

Have you posted to /r/learnpython? that would be a good place too. But for a project like that you'll need to to use different libraries. Like one to connect to the bank and whatnot. At this point google will be your best friend. You need to google around to look for useful modules then google tutorials for that module. Also google API for your bank. It would probably be easier to find something else for practice working with APis. For example http://www.random.org/clients/http/ is easy to get started with.

Assumptions as to my marital status always seemed to rise in the winter, thus the glove-ring.

For the binary, the fine folks at random.org do all the heavy lifting. They can actually put it straight into a bitmap for you, but being random, it's very easy to lose track of where you are on the chart.

I took the binary and printed of a sheet, just crossed out each byte as it was completed. 1=orange 0=white.

For those who dont have dice somewhere close:

http://www.random.org/dice/

I rolled 6 and 4, so i shoot random people in the back with a shotgun after i befriend them :( Okay..

OP, your post is extremely vague. What's the purpose of these images? Are you testing the randomness of a PRNG, just trying to make some cool artsy stuff, or what? Making a random image (pseudorandom anyway) is pretty simple - you can generate some right here! Try to be more specific about what you want if that's not it.

Warning: do not use this for widespread systems that need to have proper security. This is a simple scheme with much better security than other easy ways to do this, but it's not suitable for enterprise-level secrets.

What your dad (or you) can do is generate 16 random hexadecimal bytes here. This is your key. It must remain secure and unedited. You only do this once.

Then go here for every artwork that needs an ID, enter a succinct but not secured description of the data (say, "20140516,15,23" or "140301-1") and enter the EXACT key. Put the key in 'hex' input mode, then click encrypt. You now have your identifier that you can put on the back of the artwork or so. If you enter the precise ID and key and click decrypt, you should get your data back.

Crypto geeks may soon vilify me, because what I just explained can be breached in a million ways, but this is simply because I've kept it so appallingly simple. If making it more difficult is okay, there are much better ways.

Edit: clarification.

Edit 2: do not use aesencryption.net. Please use this website instead. I've had problems reproducing the output of the former site. The latter website I have verified locally using OpenSSL, so we can trust the output way more than the original website.

(warning: non-shitty science ahead)

>the generators do not use equations, and are impossible to predict.

Demonstrably false. If you get enough inputs, you can predict all future answers that a PRNG gives you. If you know 624 consecutive outputs of a Mersenne twister, for instance, it's possible to predict all its output.

In fact, every possible "generated" number inside of a computer must come from a function of some sort. The only way to get a true random number is to measure something outside of the processor, for instance random radio noise.

Random.org samples atmospheric radio static directly to generate random numbers.

Certainly you could point a webcam at TV static and generate a hash from the image as a very good random source. The TV static plus the image noise from the webcam's sensor will be completely unpredictable, then the hash will make sure the bit distributions are even. Any kind of image that constantly changes would work too, such as a pointing a web cam at a lava lamp.

Now I will go out and ask someone with programming language skills to program simple java or anything file, that would roll the dice for us.
So yeah, please you skilled person you.

edit: found something and no one has to do anything! shame it goes just to 6 - random. org dice roller
edit: I didn't gave up! 10 side dice roll

RANDOM NUMBERS!!!

Use this link to generate a random number between 100 and 500 and tip the shibe before you that amount!

+/u/dogetipbot 207 doge

AmRadio67 will be leaving after the Bonus contest winner is named, so I will be using Random.org's List Randomizer to determine the winner of the main contest. The usernames of every person that enters will be randomized three times. The username in the number 1 spot after the third randomization will be declared the winner. Good luck everyone!

Edit: Mosefinadiablo and Fantasytimmy are previous winners of AmRadio67's contests so they are both ineligible to win the main contest this time.

Why not, set out 3 categories, out of 1000 for example; 1-300 for Origin, 301-600 for WarZ and 601-1000 for Planetside 2?

Then you use this to pick the numbers: http://www.random.org/ and then if the person got it spot on then good, but if not pick the person with the closest number?

And gimme 2 WarZ passes for giving you the idea :D