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by jszymborski 603 days ago
There are two coins or die being flipped here. I am guessing they likely use the von Neumann trick for getting random data from biased sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_coin#Fair_results_from_a_...

1 comments

That algorithm requires using the same coin for both tosses.
Correct.

But that only requires you to run the machine with the same coins/dice in the shakers for two consecutive cycles. And to repeatedly do so into you have generated the desired length of 0/1 bit stream.

Bear in mind the machine is fully configurable/programmable. You always choose what goes into the shakers, how many cycles are run, for how long they shake, how vigorously they shake, and what are done with with the 1's and 0's that result.

Implementing Von Neuman's algorithm on the Satoshi9000 is trivial.

Sure. But you can't run it at 1 bit per cycle, only at 2 bits per 2 cycles.
good catch!