May be possible that it can be modded in, but I get a feeling
would likely break the game, and things will go out of balance, since the core game perhaps was not designed for such probabilistic behaviour.
Actually some amount of probabilistic behaviour including variation in the quality and rate of outputs of machines, even atleast variability between the different instances of the machines of the same type would have made it vastly more interesting is my view.
There is probabilistic behaviour in the game for reprocessing uranium [1], presumably they found a way to keep the RNG in lockstep across clients. I'm pretty certain it's possible to make a mod that does what you've described, but I'm also pretty certain it would make the game less fun :P
That idea is present in the Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. Basically search engines and the use of discussion forums to find information becomes a subject in schools etc. Though this is not the main point of the novel at all.
I think when it comes to news it just ends up being another skinner box for me. Reload the page/pull the lever whatever you want to call it. You almost always will find another story that's interesting. But, almost always it will just be another fluff-filled piece about some topic.
