This is such a bizarre combination of the old and the new that at least a few of our geekiest readers are sure to get a kick out of it. The USB Hourglass is essentially an egg timer equipped with an optical beam for keeping an eye on sand levels and a rotating mechanism for flipping the thing when all the sand has landed at the bottom. But that ain't all! The observed light levels are sent to a host PC (via USB, which also supplies power) where any of your favorite open source tools can use it to generate random numbers. The rest of this -- "entropy," "random" versus "pseudorandom" number generators, etc. -- is simply a little beyond us this morning, although we're sure that this will produce a lively and intelligent discussion in the comments (where many a lively and intelligent discussion has taken place over the years). Just make sure you peep the video after the break first -- it's a blast.

Continue reading USB Hourglass flips itself, generating random numbers in the process
USB Hourglass flips itself, generating random numbers in the process originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.


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