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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Insufficient randomness from random.org?

Odd. Seems like the only way it wouldn't be random is if the code transforming the output into die rolls was wrong, or if the inherent unfairness of dice with pips carved out of them is truly desired (which, it seems, could still be modeled from a truly random source).

A cool machine though. I was expecting the captures to take place somewhere other than the lifting chain though, but it makes sense for the setup.

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I think the insufficient "randomness" is explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14805265

You're probably right, it's probably more of a psychological issue than an issue of randomness. Perhaps his users simply trust dice more than they do "atmospheric noise with a certification of randomness across sliding windows", even though minor imperfections in dice (and dug-out pips are more than minor imperfections) will cause them to be much less fair.

That said, it would be really interesting to see the referenced thesis-like papers. Or use high quality Vegas dice for awhile and compare the outcome of those to the purely random data.

That's discussing a different dice project - what's the connection to this one?

The psychological effect of people not "believing" true randomness is the same.

I think there might even be a chance that there is bias in the die-recognition system, so random.org would be in fact more random.

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