How random are you?

Games

randomness game

SHOW HN2026

217points
120comments
#252of 4,366 in 2026
Top 6%of 2026 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

9 positive, 45 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 10 critical, out of 64 comments about the project. Thread score +0.01.

Performance: 2 for, 5 againstIdea: 4 for, 2 againstDocs: 0 for, 2 againstDesign: 2 for, 0 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Fun, engaging game

    From 2 comments
    • I just pretended I'm playing piano to a megamix of tracks which popped into my head and did 'well'. Only 2 people more random. Typing though, think the site said that's "easier…
      gaiagraphia on HN
    • I found it interesting when I felt my focus shift from the number-generating task to noticing (and responding to) the house’s guesses. As soon as I noticed it repeating its…
      alwa on HN
  • Creative idea with typed and voice modes

    From 2 comments
    • Very cool, I really like that you have a typed and voice version
      nico on HN
    • That's quite a creative game idea. The house called 4 out of 40 number picks of mine. I did not use the speaking mode, so I do assume my randomness was inflated by that.
      erstwhile_dev on HN

Objections

  • Voice input raises privacy concerns

    From 2 comments
    • Is anyone sufficiently paranoid that their first thought was, "Are you going to train a model on my voice?" (Yes, I saw the "type the numbers" option.)
      pavel_lishin on HN
    • nice way to steal peoples voices.
      atzmzt on HN
  • Speaking numbers may inflate randomness scores

    From 2 comments
    • Does someone know whether people saw the "predictions" in the actual test? Because saying random numbers blindly is not what I was doing. After my next number was predicted…
      kykat on HN
    • That's quite a creative game idea. The house called 4 out of 40 number picks of mine. I did not use the speaking mode, so I do assume my randomness was inflated by that.
      erstwhile_dev on HN
  • Results text is confusing

    From 1 comment
    • "You spread your picks more evenly than a random draw would. Your most-used number made up 23% of your picks, where a random draw's busiest number gets about 23%." ??? huh?
      nightpool on HN
  • Predictor got stuck repeating one guess

    From 2 comments
    • I got to 2/30 then it just guessed 7 from 30-50. Did I break it?
      vorticalbox on HN
    • Yup! Most of the way I put the system together was by having it build several n-gram Markov models of your numerical sequences on the fly. But we also have a couple of predictors…
      vunderba on HN

Requests

  • Add a hard mode closer to the original study

    From 1 comment
    • You’re right. If you notice the instructions in the game, it encourages you to go as fast as you can. I keep the numbers up there just to make sure the voice recognition is…
      vunderba on HN

Questions

  • How are predictions sealed?

    From 1 comment
  • Which speech recognition model is used?

    From 1 comment
    • Curious to know what model they use for speech recognition? Not familiar with the sota if someone can chime in.
      coolThingsFirst on HN

Alternatives named

  • Aaronson oracle

    From 1 comment
  • humanrandomness.com

    From 1 comment
    • Many years ago, as a side project to help me apply to tech companies, I made this little site [0] where the premise is trying to pick the number that you think other people won't…
      tibbar on HN
  • Brainfrog randomness game

    From 1 comment
    • Someone shared a small game based on this a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48598051 (archived now):…
      pcthrowaway on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

Add a badge to your READMEShown on HackerShow
[![Shown on HackerShow](https://hackershow.org/badge.svg)](https://hackershow.org/show/50074909)