Slashdot Mirror
More Random Randomness
jfleck writes "According to the American Institute of Physics' Physics News Update, Kent State physicist James Gleeson has developed a technique for generating numbers approaching true randomness. His trick is to shine light through a liquid crystal, taking advantage of its turbulence and avoiding the inevitable risk of predictability in deterministic random number number algorithms."
Could this technology be used to moderate slashdot posts, in a manner even more astonishingly random than before?
I mean, it's obviously in use in story-submission already. May as well be efficient.
It's fairly easy to generate truly random numbers in small quantities, but getting a sizable quantity of cryptographically true, cryptographically secure, cryptographically random numbers has always been a bit difficult. You almost have to do it in hardware, and you almost have to use something which is both isolated from external interference (so others can't load your dice) and doesn't bleed its information externally (so you can be sure you are the only one who knows the number). The first requirement rules out most things which rely on the external environment for input (like EM radiation). Add to this a third requirement for lots of randomness, (which rules out things like thermal junctions, or number of NT bluescreens per day) and a simple problem becomes hard.
Remember, in this context the common definition of "random" meaning "I don't understand how it works" doesn't cut it. You need true "completely unpredictable by anyone" randomness for many security applications.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.