I'm more worried about how the hell I got in this windowless and doorless room.
Quantum Teleportation.
Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#32Choose 4. It will be random every time.
Or 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, and 9.
Dilbert reference:
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#33Take off your one undergarment. Use your finger as a pen and your fecal matter as ink. Draw an x-y coordinate plane on the ground. Now throw your undergarment in the air and note which direction the elastic (or top) part is facing. Once again re-ink your pen and note this angle (from 0 to 360 degrees). Do this as many times as you feel will satisfy randomness. Take the sum of the angles and divide by the number of times you did the experiment (theoretically once should be enough).
To expand on the range do this another set of times, except this time take the sum (no average) and use this as the exponent.
Congratulations, you have successfully generated a random number using only your finger, fecal matter, and a little bit of math.
Now sit in this room of solitude until you die or are released from Guantanamo Bay.
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#34I'd just take my shoe off, throw it up in the air while spinning it, and use the wall it ends up pointing to.
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#35Consider the spin of any electron in the room. Do not measure it.
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#36Realize that you are in the Sims and some sick bastard user is trying to kill you. Look deeply within yourself and realize that what assigns your next task is partially the rand function.
Use it to generate a number. Try to say it in English and fail because you only speak Simanese.
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#37And now a method, which doesn't involve removing your underwear.
If your room is large enough choose a random path from one wall to another. Take small steps by placing one foot directly in front of the other. Count the number of steps mod a small number.
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#381. de-thread the undergarment
2. lay out the threads
3. define distances between them to either be "big" or "small". proportion them better so that all the "big" distances are roughly the same size as each other, and do so for the smaller distances as well so there's no confusion as to which is big, and which is small.
4. assign a "1" to the "big" distances, and a "0" to the "small" distances, similar to how a barcode works.
5. you now have a binary number which contains as many bits as there are spaces between the individual threads (quite large!).
you can generate 2^n-1 random numbers in this fashion, where n is the number of threads in the undergarment.
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#39Remove undergarment. Pick at its fabric until a loose thread emerges. Pull the thread out as far as you can.
Then, wrap the thread around your roundest finger or other body part as many times as it will go. It should be possible to tell what quadrant was reached by the end of the thread. E.g., if it ended up closest to the top of your chosen body part, that's 00, the right side is 01, the bottom is 10, and the left side is 11.
That's two bits of reasonably-good entropy per thread. Repeat until your underwear is gone or you have the desired number of digits.
Another idea: spit on the wall and count the number of heartbeats it takes for the spit to run down to the floor.
Re: Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
#40Walk around the room, counting up from 0, until you cannot walk anymore. Convert that number to binary, and take the middle X bits, where X is the required level of entropy.