I'm glad you figured that 64 cat-cores is basically pure chaos. Well, for you, for the cores it's just their way of life: do random stuff for no apparent reason. Which is like the exact opposite of a computer.
Yes, if I can't get the system up & running for computational tasks, I figure I can always pivot the business model and sell its output as a world-class entropy source. My only problem is the lack of a moat around the model since anyone with a steady supply of cats, automated laser pointers, and a few hundred $/month in kitty kibble can reproduce my setup and make the whole thing a race to the bottom on price. I think at that point I could turn my accumulated knowledge into an excellent cat-entropy system servicing business, fine-tuning and optimizing other people's setups, advising on breed mixtures, laser speed, etc.
The business seems fraught with hairy (furry?) problems.
The laser system has promise, but you need a source of random data to drive the movement of the laser pointer (maybe strap them to other cats?). Otherwise, an attacker who can predict the movement of your pointers may be able to predict the output of your entropy stream after observing the behavior of your cat colony (certain cats may prefer to hunt at different times of the day, or prefer to lay in wait and pounce vs giving chase, etc).
Alternatively, you could observe a field (bed) of cats and record their chirality, assigning 0 to sinistral cats and 1 to dextral cats. The science[1] seems to indicate no preference for one or the other per cat, so your readings should be random. However, you may only observe one or two bit-flips per hour and during transitions it may take some time for the system to settle back down to a steady-state.
Good point. Would strapping a laser pointer to the back of one of the cats work to seed the system? After that I could divert some output into g-code movement instructions to the automated lasers.
One thing I'm unsure of is room size. I figure I could map 1/0 to each tile in a grid based on the presence of a cat, but that means with too large or small of a room I'll have varying degrees of bit density. Stakes are pretty high too, since I'm pretty sure that putting cats in the mix might allow me to exceed the theoretical maximum of 1 bit of entropy per bit.
Comments
64 cat-cores ... rapid decoherence
I'm glad you figured that 64 cat-cores is basically pure chaos. Well, for you, for the cores it's just their way of life: do random stuff for no apparent reason. Which is like the exact opposite of a computer.
Yes, if I can't get the system up & running for computational tasks, I figure I can always pivot the business model and sell its output as a world-class entropy source. My only problem is the lack of a moat around the model since anyone with a steady supply of cats, automated laser pointers, and a few hundred $/month in kitty kibble can reproduce my setup and make the whole thing a race to the bottom on price. I think at that point I could turn my accumulated knowledge into an excellent cat-entropy system servicing business, fine-tuning and optimizing other people's setups, advising on breed mixtures, laser speed, etc.
The business seems fraught with hairy (furry?) problems.
The laser system has promise, but you need a source of random data to drive the movement of the laser pointer (maybe strap them to other cats?). Otherwise, an attacker who can predict the movement of your pointers may be able to predict the output of your entropy stream after observing the behavior of your cat colony (certain cats may prefer to hunt at different times of the day, or prefer to lay in wait and pounce vs giving chase, etc).
Alternatively, you could observe a field (bed) of cats and record their chirality, assigning 0 to sinistral cats and 1 to dextral cats. The science[1] seems to indicate no preference for one or the other per cat, so your readings should be random. However, you may only observe one or two bit-flips per hour and during transitions it may take some time for the system to settle back down to a steady-state.
[1] http://blog.dimview.org/math/2017/07/28/cat-chirality.html
Good point. Would strapping a laser pointer to the back of one of the cats work to seed the system? After that I could divert some output into g-code movement instructions to the automated lasers.
One thing I'm unsure of is room size. I figure I could map 1/0 to each tile in a grid based on the presence of a cat, but that means with too large or small of a room I'll have varying degrees of bit density. Stakes are pretty high too, since I'm pretty sure that putting cats in the mix might allow me to exceed the theoretical maximum of 1 bit of entropy per bit.