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Quantum Random Numbers For Download

Posted by timothy on from the 404*pi-404^e-404mod401 dept.

PSUdaemon writes "The University of Geneva has produced a website that allows you to download truly random numbers generated from an Optical quantum random number generator. They will also be releasing a client API that you can use directly in your codes to download random numbers."

3 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. is this really random? by glen604 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Are they actually running the "Optical quantum random number generator" every time you click submit, or are they just pulling the numbers pre-generated from a database?

  2. Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad by JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I would imagine that it's suffering from overuse right now. Top story on Slashdot and all.

    However, yes... you can trust this to be random, and no, you can't trust it to "correctly destroy all of the information between here and there".

    I don't believe that the intent of this is to do realworld crypto nor games (which is what other people are claiming the other "major" use of random numbers are). A set of purely random numbers is really only useful to people testing mathematic theories or other high math science work. For crypto, decent pseudo-random sequences (or the old "pull from an analog source" trick) is perfectly fine. This is overkill for realworld crypto (not to mention broadcast via the internet), which means that this is primarily useful - to math scientists.

    --
    Evan

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  3. Re:Truly Random Number ? by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is. Google for Bell's inequality or the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen paradoxfor a starting point. It does involve some more than skin-deep knowledge of quantum mechanics though.

    The bottom line is there's no theory of 'local hidden variables' that would make quantum mechanics a deterministic theory in the 'classical' sense.