This is like giving you three outputs from md5sum and asking you to guess for which one the input ended in a "q". There's no way to tell unless you break the RNG.

Yeah, it's a pointless exercise. I hope the author is just trolling given that he is knowledgeable in the field.

> Here are three 64-character hex strings. Two are random. One is HMAC-SHA256(secret_key, "anthropic"). You don't have the key. Which one is the HMAC?

I think the point is probably to help convince people that the watermarking doesn’t perceptibly impact quality, which is a concern some people have (whether well founded or not).

"doesn’t perceptibly impact quality" no not perceptibly but it does.

> no not perceptibly but it does.

Similar to how a single particle of dust landing on your shoulder makes you weigh more.

Yes it does - but anyone arguing that is completely missing the point.