Ask HN: NIST Randomness Beacon Interruption?
Gentlepeople,
the NIST Randomness Beacon has seen an unannounced, unacknowledged outtage from pulse ID #1827762 (2026-06-11T16:57:00.000Z) to #1827763 (2026-06-22T17:03:00.000Z). I reached out to beacon@nist.gov (and via twitter/x.com) but got no reply whatsoever.
Gemini hallucinated a story about a government shut-down and that the tech community was well aware of that - without proof, of course.
Question: Does anyone have accurate information as to what caused this outtage?
1 comment
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 13.8 ms ] thread... with predictable results. I use the NIST Randomness Beacon pulse for a provably and auditably random assignment of tournament contestants. While debugging my little project, I noticed that the shuffler (yeah for Fisher-Yates!) kept producing the same output over and over again. Turns out it wasn't my ineptitude ... but the guys and gals in Maryland were to blame. Go figure.
I have since been made aware of CURBy, the randomness beacon issued by the University of Colorado in Boulder, https://random.colorado.edu/software.
I shall implement this as a back-up solution whenever NIST is not available.