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[–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

Wow, I remember seeing the computerphile video about the suspicion that these seeds were maliciously chosen. Now we know where they come from after an LLM got cracking at it for 30min. Strange new world.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    Claude — when you have a problem that can be solved by infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters and you have an infinite budget until you crash the world's entire financial system.

    edit
    Replaced - with — because Claude wouldn't want it any other way

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  • 3 comments in c/technology@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 14 points 2 weeks ago* (2 children)

    Correction: Claude found a plausible way these curve points were generated. And "plausible" is carrying a metric fuckton of weight here.

    It found PRNG settings that could theoretically generate the same values, but the fact that it requires thousands of iterations makes me think this is more of a coincidence than anything. Especially given that the NSA employee remembered something completely different.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

    They write this is the model questioning whether it could be coincidence... Chances for that look veeeeeeeeeeery low... Looks like a "1:number of atoms in the universe" situation...

    Hmm wait. Let me be careful about the plausibility: is it suspicious that such an obvious thing wasn’t discovered in 25 years? It’s verified by direct computation on my side: 160-bit match from a 32-bit seed + small index: no chance coincidences (10 × 160 bits). It’s real.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    If I'm interpreting it correctly, that's the probability that this particular PRNG with those particular seeds produces those particular outputs. That's a strawman argument; a PRNG with uniform output should eventually produce any value.

    It's perfectly believable that a known broken PRNG from 40+ years ago could be backsolved. The part I doubt is the sensationalized part, that the LLM found the exact method with which it was calculated. It's just a plausible choice for a random oracle. It's a local minimum the LLM settled into.

    That's the thing with random oracles, there's likely so many plausible combinations of candidate algorithms and inputs/seed values that the actual truth is almost certainly lost to history.

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