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  1. #21
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by crimsondevil View Post
    That site claims they are, anyways. They are supposedly generated from atmospheric radio noise. There are others that use radioactive decay events and the like - I read about one somewhere (can't find it now) where someone made a machine that rolled actual dice (in a hopper or something) for hours a day and stored the results for retrieval as needed over the interwebs.




    That would be my thought too, but the random.org site says a plot of their results looks like:
    In my experience with plots of a hundred or so 2-D random number pairs, there are almost always interesting patterns formed, whereas you might think they would be evenly spread over the area.
    Sage Grouse

    ---------------------------------------
    'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013

  2. #22
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Ashburn, VA
    You can read NIST's SP 800-90B for recommendation on Entropy sources for RNG's: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Sp...SP.800-90B.pdf

    Then, assuming you have a random enough source, you can start to deterministically produce further pseudorandom bits from there - see NIST SP 800-90A: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Sp...800-90Ar1.pdf

    https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/random-bit-generation
    A text without a context is a pretext.

  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by snowdenscold View Post
    You can read NIST's SP 800-90B for recommendation on Entropy sources for RNG's: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Sp...SP.800-90B.pdf

    Then, assuming you have a random enough source, you can start to deterministically produce further pseudorandom bits from there - see NIST SP 800-90A: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Sp...800-90Ar1.pdf

    https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/random-bit-generation
    My last post on this subject is that the word "Truly" is belied by "pseudo"random, in this document. For all intents and purposes, you can create a random number generator to suit your purposes, if you know your purpose in advance. But "Truly"? It certainly is more than good enough for most gaming purposes.

    Thank you very much for the references. They are interesting.

    I'll let go of the bone now.

    Larry
    DevilHorse

  4. #24
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Ashburn, VA
    Quote Originally Posted by DevilHorse View Post
    My last post on this subject is that the word "Truly" is belied by "pseudo"random, in this document. For all intents and purposes, you can create a random number generator to suit your purposes, if you know your purpose in advance. But "Truly"? It certainly is more than good enough for most gaming purposes.

    Thank you very much for the references. They are interesting.

    I'll let go of the bone now.

    Larry
    DevilHorse
    Well, FWIW, the NIST documentation doesn't use the word "truly". They do clarify about pseudorandomness at the beginning though:
    There are two fundamentally different strategies for generating random bits. One strategy is to
    produce bits non-deterministically, where every bit of output is based on a physical process that is
    unpredictable; this class of random bit generators (RBGs) is commonly known as non-deterministic
    random bit generators (NRBGs)1. The other strategy is to compute bits deterministically using an
    algorithm; this class of RBGs is known as Deterministic Random Bit Generators (DRBGs)2.


    A DRBG is based on a DRBG mechanism as specified in this Recommendation and includes a
    source of randomness. A DRBG mechanism uses an algorithm (i.e., a DRBG algorithm) that
    produces a sequence of bits from an initial value that is determined by a seed that is determined
    from the output of the randomness source. Once the seed is provided and the initial value is
    determined, the DRBG is said to be instantiated and may be used to produce output. Because of
    the deterministic nature of the process, a DRBG is said to produce pseudorandom bits, rather than
    random bits. The seed used to instantiate the DRBG must contain sufficient entropy to provide an
    assurance of randomness. If the seed is kept secret, and the algorithm is well designed, the bits
    output by the DRBG will be unpredictable, up to the instantiated security strength of the DRBG.

    The security provided by an RBG that uses a DRBG mechanism is a system implementation
    issue; both the DRBG mechanism and its randomness source must be considered when
    determining whether the RBG is appropriate for use by consuming applications.

    1 NRBGs have also been called True Random Number (or Bit) Generators or Hardware Random Number Generators.
    2 DRBGS have also been called Pseudorandom Number (or Bit) Generators.
    Also note that there's a difference between regular PRNG's and cryptographically-secure PRNG's (CS-PRNG), which have stronger properties than just passing statistical randomness tests - notably trying to prevent any sort of predictive value by an attacker.
    A text without a context is a pretext.

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