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Title: Randomize Authors: Andy Weir Category:supplementals Number of Highlights: 17 Date: 2025-09-25 Last Highlighted: **
Highlights
âQuantum physics doesnât make any sense,â she said. âPlease donât try to think about it too much. It can be very distressing.â
Tags:quantum_mechanics
âThat does sound solid, but remember a system is only as secure as the humans who operate it.â
Tags:security,technology
Her parents knew theyâd never find her a man as smart as she was. So they focused on âsmart enough not to be left behind.â Prashant was brilliant in his own ways. It was a wonderful match.
At times he was a complicated man, but at other times he could be very simple. Finding those simple moments and bringing him joy was one of Sumiâs greatest pleasures.
Thereâs no such thing as an actual random-number generator. Computers create pseudorandom numbers.â âWhatâs the difference?â âPseudorandom numbers are made with a complicated math formula. You plug one number inâcalled the seed, or the starting point, for the mathematical formulaâand you get a sequence of seemingly random numbers out. The formula has exponentiation and remainders and all sorts of other stuff to make it non-reverse-engineerable.â
Tags:scifi,technology
âYouâre more intelligent than I could ever hope to be. I feel no shame in admitting it. But thereâs no substitute for experience.
Tags:experience,intelligence
âQuantum computing is a totally different animal than normal computing,â he began. âIt takes advantage of weird quantum physics properties like superposition and entanglement to solve math problems. Itâs usually way slower than normal computers at math, but for some problems, itâs exponentially faster.â
Tags:quantum_mechanics,scifi
But in a city of extreme displays, silent quality appealed to Rutledge more than a neon sign saying IâM IMPORTANT.
âOnce theyâre entangled, they are guaranteed to be the same when randomized.â
Our long-term storage unit is in our vault. Youâve never been in our vault. But I bet thereâs some skin cells of yours on it from when you handled it before.â
âWe fight quantum with quantum.â
âAll that matters is that the system has a minor performance optimization that creates the security hole weâre going to take advantage of.â
âTwo parties canât communicate via quantum measurements. But they can both observe their respective results and act accordingly.â
He wasnât about revenge or money. He was about respect.
She pressed on. âOur new company will make quantum random-number generators. Our product will just be a box that makes a stream of truly random numbers via quantum properties and outputs them at a steady rate. No configuration. No operating system. Just a serial port.â
She packed three immaculately ironed and folded white shirts, along with two pairs of black slacks. She added two blue ties and threw in a red one just for fun. He looked so handsome with a red tie on, but he always wore blue.
Andy Weir is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian, which was adapted into an Academy Awardânominated film directed by Ridley Scott. A devoted hobbyist of such subjects as relativistic physics and orbital mechanics, heâs also the author of Artemis. He lives in California.