On 23/06/2015 7:54 AM, "Ted Faber" <faber@xxxxxxx> 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>