On 23/06/2015 7:54 AM, "Ted Faber" <faber(_at_)isi(_dot_)edu> wrote:
On 06/22/2015 14:45, John Levine wrote:
In particular, I see no reason to highlight the US Debt vs. that of
other countries or regions other than as a political statement.
The US debt has many digits, and is published regularly by an agency
with a tradition of not fudging the data. It's a perfectly reasonable
source of randomness. It's a large number because the US is a large
rich country.
Look, I think this issue is silly. I'm just going to leave this link
here for peoples' enjoyment, though.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/30/156371620/rigging-libor-banking-scandal-hits-home-literally
I don't have any problem (practical, philosophical, or otherwise) with
the references to or use of the US national debt.
<silly>
Geohashing uses the opening value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average[1]
for entropy. However the current spec uses Google as a source, so that's
clearly untenable ;)
Note that it also provides an achivement for anyone rich enough to
manipulate the Dow Jones in their favour[2]
[1] http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Algorithm
[2] http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Bill_Gates_achievement
</silly>