(unless there are any serious objections) I'll leave it to @MikePT and @Kyle_ to get in touch with @cociu to claim their fine fine superfine FREE FOR LIFE 1 TB prize for being the latest lucky OGs blessed by the sacred hash!
@uptime said:
Can use this message as the source for the next hash - will leave unedited for posterity as well.
though I suppose now someone could run that last source through sha256sum and see what the magic number is.
So will have to add some random salt.
Needless to say I do hereby also remove myself from being eligible to win this prize, in order to avoid appearance of possible shenanigans, just for the principle of the thing or whatever.
But will try to come up with a more verifiably fair lottery method before we get to 600 (which I'm guessing will be about a week from now, if not sooner)
thanks for trusting me with this
And thanks @cociu for providing such an awesome prize! You da real MVP!
uptime said: Mathematically I'm not sure if that makes exactly even odds for all players - but it is about as random (that is, difficult to predetermine) as one could hope for.
Cryptographic hashing algorithms are specifically designed to have (on average) equal distribution of output values, so the hash part should be fine.
uptime said: As suspected, mathematically not perfect (especially since using same hash for 400 and 500 gave results ending in 73 each time)
That would be because 400 and 500 both end in 00, and so the last two digits of the result will always be the same, since nothing gets subtracted from the original value for those digits (which also ends in 73). Try hashing a concatenation of the original message + the user count instead, and then doing the remainder thing. That'll ensure that the input hash is different (according to equal distribution) for each user count.
This is why I initially sunk this thread, any fun, celebration and joy was sucked out of it by people wanting bulletproof methods of picking the winners, so much so BSDGuy joined to argue.
Its a bit of fun, have a smoke and a pancake and enjoy.
@Solaire - thanks! indeed that makes good sense, in line with what was agreed on before for as a nice way to bump odds a bit for the earliest OG OGs - thus encouraging people to sign up sooner rather than later
sorry I forgot about that!
so let's definitely do something along those lines going forward - but as for this time around, maybe we would redo it if and only if for some reason @MikePT doesn't want the FREE FOR LIFE 1 TB dealie - otherwise at this point in the game I'd feel like I was jerking him around a bit. (Might also note that @MikePT signed up a couple weeks ago, on November 23d.)
(and the odds would be shifted by 20% ... or 25% I guess? whatever that means, lol)
I'll take some time to think this out more carefully going foreward!
I suspect I may have missed a few wrinkles in my rush not to overthink the whole thing too much (primary goal was to remove the incentive to have people play a waiting game trying to sign up for a magic member id number, if that were able to be somehow predetermined)
@AnthonySmith - no worries about that, for me learning about useful maths is always fun (and I just try to keep it that way - no more, no less.) Though can see how having people casting aspersions as to the intent and integrity of the game would surely suck eggs - just maybe a bit less so for me, by virtue of the fact that idgaf
joepie91 said: Try hashing a concatenation of the original message + the user count instead, and then doing the remainder thing. That'll ensure that the input hash is different (according to equal distribution) for each user count.
@joepie91 - thanks very much for that succinct explanation and perfectly workable suggestion.
Whatever it may have lacked in:
paranoia
italics
bulletpoints
and walls of text
... it more than made up for in epistemological coherence!
just going to do the next simplest thing and run the snippet suggested by @Solaire
$ python3
Python 3.6.8 (default, Oct 7 2019, 12:59:55)
[GCC 8.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import random
>>> random.seed(0xb79de269356b34034f20c362ce13d5f22727b643ffaae4f24bca9a6f605576e1)
>>> random.randint(1, 400)
316
hello hello hello OG @yng68bld - you have been Randomly Selected to receive a Wonderful Prize courtesy of @cociu and various pseudo-random machinations! Please make a post here to confirm you are indeed still active on this forum - and then send a PM to @cociu to claim your FREE FOR LIFE 1 TB KVM STORAGE
Seems we need some PhD in math to solve this random number question. The "Real random numbers" are produced using physical phenomena so we might need Physicist and engineer
also I guess we could just have 10 people each do a coin flip to generate a 10 bit number, sufficient for our purposes here
(something something blockchain lol)
anyhoo - I'm inclined to call this close enough for jazz, for now - but I'll try to wrap it up in a nice, bulletproof package by the time we get to 600 members for the next draw.
meanwhile, I sent PMs to @Kyle_ and @yng68bld asking them to post in this thread. I'll send a PM to @cociu as well shortly, just to let him know where we are at with all this.
@poisson said:
Actually a lucky draw when we hit the milestones will also be fun! Reminds me of that event FAT32 did. I won an idling machine
He probably still has the entire setup ready to roll.
I have a suggestion on whether lucky draw should include the users joined earlier to increase their chance.
For example, when reaching 300 users, draw from 1-300 instead of 201-300. That means the earlier you join, the higher the chance of winning. Need approval from @cociu and @AnthonySmith
Round 0: Draw from 1-100 (Additional for early adopters)
Round 1: Draw from 1-300
Round 2: Draw from 1-400
Round 3: Draw from 1-500
Round 4: Draw from 1-600
Round 5: Draw from 1-700
Round 6: Draw from 1-800
Round 7: Draw from 1-900
Round 8: Draw from 1-1000
If it sounds good I can build a simple script and give the hashes of the seeds for the random algorithm.
@FAT32said:
Not sure if I should do this but these are the SHA256 hash of the random generator seed for fairness purpose, the actual seed will be announced when we hit the target.
@FAT32 - this looks good - I'd like to bolster the trust factor (mostly as a psychological exercise) by inviting people to post their favorite "random" numbers here. We can then take some arbitrary number (lets say 7? or whatever) of those posted numbers and concatenate those with the seeds you have already given hashes of - if you don't mind doing a little extra work to run your code again?
Does this seem like perhaps a reasonable way to further obfuscate our elaborate scheme?
This is nice. I just barely joined the forum to get some low end boxes for VPN and now a nice prize to add to my stack. Really nice Xmas gift for my daughter to learn more about the world of linux VPS and the awesome shell commands.
Comments
(unless there are any serious objections) I'll leave it to @MikePT and @Kyle_ to get in touch with @cociu to claim their fine fine superfine FREE FOR LIFE 1 TB prize for being the latest lucky OGs blessed by the sacred hash!
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
though I suppose now someone could run that last source through sha256sum and see what the magic number is.
So will have to add some random salt.
Needless to say I do hereby also remove myself from being eligible to win this prize, in order to avoid appearance of possible shenanigans, just for the principle of the thing or whatever.
But will try to come up with a more verifiably fair lottery method before we get to 600 (which I'm guessing will be about a week from now, if not sooner)
thanks for trusting me with this
And thanks @cociu for providing such an awesome prize! You da real MVP!
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
@uptime
Cryptographic hashing algorithms are specifically designed to have (on average) equal distribution of output values, so the hash part should be fine.
That would be because 400 and 500 both end in 00, and so the last two digits of the result will always be the same, since nothing gets subtracted from the original value for those digits (which also ends in 73). Try hashing a concatenation of the original message + the user count instead, and then doing the remainder thing. That'll ensure that the input hash is different (according to equal distribution) for each user count.
This is why I initially sunk this thread, any fun, celebration and joy was sucked out of it by people wanting bulletproof methods of picking the winners, so much so BSDGuy joined to argue.
Its a bit of fun, have a smoke and a pancake and enjoy.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
@Solaire - thanks! indeed that makes good sense, in line with what was agreed on before for as a nice way to bump odds a bit for the earliest OG OGs - thus encouraging people to sign up sooner rather than later
sorry I forgot about that!
so let's definitely do something along those lines going forward - but as for this time around, maybe we would redo it if and only if for some reason @MikePT doesn't want the FREE FOR LIFE 1 TB dealie - otherwise at this point in the game I'd feel like I was jerking him around a bit. (Might also note that @MikePT signed up a couple weeks ago, on November 23d.)
(and the odds would be shifted by 20% ... or 25% I guess? whatever that means, lol)
I'll take some time to think this out more carefully going foreward!
I suspect I may have missed a few wrinkles in my rush not to overthink the whole thing too much (primary goal was to remove the incentive to have people play a waiting game trying to sign up for a magic member id number, if that were able to be somehow predetermined)
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
@AnthonySmith - no worries about that, for me learning about useful maths is always fun (and I just try to keep it that way - no more, no less.) Though can see how having people casting aspersions as to the intent and integrity of the game would surely suck eggs - just maybe a bit less so for me, by virtue of the fact that idgaf
@joepie91 - thanks very much for that succinct explanation and perfectly workable suggestion.
Whatever it may have lacked in:
... it more than made up for in epistemological coherence!
Much appreciated.
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
Hey guys,
No 1TB VPS needed.
Can be drawn to someone else!!! :P
i'd like to start the bid at $7.
Redraw! :-P
Get the best deal on your next VPS or Shared/Reseller hosting from RacknerdTracker.com - The original aff garden.
@cociu came this morning to check it seems, we need to pick a number
Could be good to go with my with 1tb 3yr sister plan
ok, thanks @MikePT !
just going to do the next simplest thing and run the snippet suggested by @Solaire
which yields https://talk.lowendspirit.com/profile/316/winner400 - @yng68bld
hello hello hello OG @yng68bld - you have been Randomly Selected to receive a Wonderful Prize courtesy of @cociu and various pseudo-random machinations! Please make a post here to confirm you are indeed still active on this forum - and then send a PM to @cociu to claim your FREE FOR LIFE 1 TB KVM STORAGE
Thanks!
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
you may need to actually PM the people for them to notice
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
right-o, will do
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
Seems we need some PhD in math to solve this random number question. The "Real random numbers" are produced using physical phenomena so we might need Physicist and engineer
Action and Reaction in history
@elliotc lol true ... see https://web.archive.org/web/19971210213501/http://lavarand.sgi.com/cgi-bin/how.cgi for a "state of the art" example from the previous century
EDIT - whaaa lavalamp tech still going strong at cloudflare? (who knew!) https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/encryption-lava-lamps
photo by Tom Scott
also I guess we could just have 10 people each do a coin flip to generate a 10 bit number, sufficient for our purposes here
(something something blockchain lol)
anyhoo - I'm inclined to call this close enough for jazz, for now - but I'll try to wrap it up in a nice, bulletproof package by the time we get to 600 members for the next draw.
meanwhile, I sent PMs to @Kyle_ and @yng68bld asking them to post in this thread. I'll send a PM to @cociu as well shortly, just to let him know where we are at with all this.
Fun stuff. Thanks errybuggy!
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
So... may I ask what's wrong with my previous method?
"Humanity is f*cked up" - Jay
@FAT32 - I forgot what it was? lol
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
Basically you write a few sentences as seeds, then only show the hashes of the seeds. When the time comes, you can reveal the seed which is fair.
https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/4289/#Comment_4289
"Humanity is f*cked up" - Jay
Why not just keep things simple?
root@notty
aha - in all the confusion since then, I totally forgot! (perhaps mind was scrambled by black friday eggs ...)
Thanks - this looks good, will take a closer look now
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
@FAT32 - this looks good - I'd like to bolster the trust factor (mostly as a psychological exercise) by inviting people to post their favorite "random" numbers here. We can then take some arbitrary number (lets say 7? or whatever) of those posted numbers and concatenate those with the seeds you have already given hashes of - if you don't mind doing a little extra work to run your code again?
Does this seem like perhaps a reasonable way to further obfuscate our elaborate scheme?
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
Let's start with the number 4 - as posted by @notty
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
I just got a PM said i won. Is that for real or just a chance to enter some drawing?
its for real man, we all hoped you were gone
@cociu provide the prize man when you come
@yng68bld you should PM @cociu i think if you want to get it earlier, he's not always here
This is nice. I just barely joined the forum to get some low end boxes for VPN and now a nice prize to add to my stack. Really nice Xmas gift for my daughter to learn more about the world of linux VPS and the awesome shell commands.
congrats - glad to hear this one will be put to good use!
please go easy on @cociu - it may take a while to get setup, but good things do eventually come to those who wait
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))