Slashdot Mirror
True Random Number Generator Goes Online
amigoro writes "A 'true' random number generator that relies on the unpredictable quantum process of photon emission has gone online providing academic and scientific community access to true random numbers free of charge."
..BZT, qvq nalbar frr gung gb ertvfgre lbh unir
gb fbyir n zngu ceboyrz yvxr:
qrevingvir bs (5*fva 3k +6pbf(-cv/2))
Avpr!
Urer vf n qverpg yvax gb gur trarengbe, lbh pna
qbjaybnq gur pyvrag sebz urer nf jryy:
uggc://enaqbz.veo.ue/
DEnaq Pbzznaq-yvar Hgvyvgl [i0.2, 2007-07-17]
Abgr 1: Pbzcvyrf haqre Ivfhny Fghqvb naq t++.
Abgr 2: Jvaqbjf rkrphgnoyr vapyhqrq.
Abgr 3: TAH Yvahk rkrphgnoyr vapyhqrq.
Hey! It works!
Now I have a place to get my numbers for srand()!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Don't they already have a few of these working at the White House?
A-Bomb
Why do I keep getting 42?
when I think of random numbers, I can't help but remember the 'fishbowl' that had at SGI (mtn view) where an indycam was photo'ing some lavalamps and creating random seeds based on those images.
ah, SGI....
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If you're able to connect to the server, that's a 1. If you're not able to connect, that's a 0. It's a long string of 0's for me.
Hasn't random.org done this for a while already? Perhaps they don't have academic backing, but I do believe they use numbers generated by atomic decay.
I feel more random already.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
for the day when we will have a QRBG in every computer.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
Isn't that what random.org have been doing for some time now?
True random number generators have been around in hardware form for a while based on a number of different processes, not quantum only. But this is being offered to the community at large, who may not have the means to procure or pay for a hardware solution.
I bet they just couldn't be arsed and linked a CGI script to /dev/urandom.
</cynic>
it works faster than /dev/random. I'm tired of having to perturb the mouse every time I make a damn ssh connection!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Don't tell my GM about this. He may require me to use it in place of my 'lucky dice'.
Doing crypto using a random number I obtain over the internet.. nah I don't see a problem there
This is neat but there have been other quantum random number generators online for years. This one by id Quantique springs to mind... I'm not sure what this new service provides that others don't. If you REALLY want secure random numbers you should buy a QRNG PCI card and make them yourself so you're the only one with a copy.
John Walker (AutoDesk founder) has had a true random number generator available for web access for quite a long time. Looks like his site's currently down, but check out www.fourmilab.ch when it's sorted -- in addition to the random number generator he has a number of other cool gadgets and info. available.
Oh, and this line from the FA is priceless: "...is connected to the internet through advanced computer technologies such as computer clusters and GRID network." Don't get too technical on me...
*Spooky Music*
quantum-chaos-harnessing freely-distributing all-encrypting overlords!
-WtC
HE!!
AHD!!!
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
fail
I mean, it's not the first RNG available on the Internet. There is, after all, HotBits and several other ones available. HotBits uses the simple decay of a radioactive element, while others rely on pure noise (I believe one uses a webcam trained at nothing and is just picking up noise).
I believe there are even commercially available RNGs based on the same principles available at fairly low costs.
Wasn't there also a project that tried to see if the scope of human consciousness could affect these random events?
Does anybody have a mirror?
It keeps changing on me!
Atmospheric noise
Lava lamps
Radioactive decay
Entropy
how random it truly is. That is, I wonder if it maybe favors 1's more than 0's. When dealing with the physical world, even on a quantum level, it is often hard to get a perfectly even probability split between two (or more) values.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
Call me paranoid, but I think I'd rather use a local pseudo random number generator than an external true random generator. My security concerns associated with using a local pseudo random number generator are outweighed by my privacy concerns of contacting a third party every time I want to establish a SSH connection or use my credit card online.
Great for research though, of course.
'Quantum Random Bit Generator' that relies on the unpredictable quantum process of photon emission.
um... do you mean a webcam with the lense cap on.
The link in the summary is a news report that links to the site itself. The site itself is http://random.irb.hr/, is easily accessed directly, and requires a registration.
Some article author doesn't know what he's talking about... I quote:
/dev/random, which functions as a true random number generator on all standard Linux installations.
"Ordinary random number generators found in most computers in use today are 'pseudo-random' numbers that use various algorithms to pick the numbers from large pre-compiled databases of numbers obtained by methods such as rolling the dice."
In actuality, PRNGs typically operate based on a function with a very long periodicity, not a pre-compiled list of dice rolls. And what I consider to be a typical state-of-the-art contemporary random number generator is closer to
now Aphex Twin can make truly random music
I've been waiting on this for a long time.
--- JurassicPizza
..running a transistor "backwards" and capturing the noise via a sample-and-hold->A/D device is also entirely unpredictable, and has been used in computers long, long, long ago. Also, it can be done in very, very few components integrated in a circuit - can this monstrous quantum device be that? Soon they will call it a testament to science, I'm sure...
int getRandomNumber(){ return 4; //chosen by fair dice roll //guarantees to be random
}
I patent it. All random numbers are mine, unless you pay me a random fee. And who is to say that all software which are 1s and 0s, are not really ripping me off by stealing my random numbers! How about mp3s - also just a bunch of numbers - there mine too! However you look at it - PAY ME! Thank you for your support.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Look at the signup page. You not only need to prove that you are a human but also that you have elementary knowledge of calculus.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
I bet this is actually the CIA providing faux-random numbers in order to gain access to sensitive data encrypted using these numbers as seeds.
Boy, this tinfoil hat sure is itchy.
I keep getting 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0...
How's it better than random.org or hotbits ?
>|<*:=
...madman with a bank of colored buttons?
"what's the monkey wrench for, sir?"
"That's to turn him off, Ensign."
can generate "truly" random numbers.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
True random number generator goes offline.
function.mysql-connect: Too many connections in H:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\www\random.irb.hr\db_connect. php on line 3
Wow!
I must admit that I'm skeptical of this. The article states with a puzzling tone of certainty that this is a "non-deterministic" process. I highly doubt they can make that claim. I believe all aspects of physics is deterministic, even if we have no clue just yet as to how quantum events can be calculated precisely. It might appear random to us, since we're not even close to developing technology that can determine the outcome of a photon emission, but they're still driven by good ol' "cause and effect", in my humble opinion.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
Ha!
...but unpredictable does NOT equal random.
One step closer to the Infinite Improbability Drive!
I want to use this thing to roll my d20's.
Whopdee doo. You can do the same thing by tuning your FM radio to an unused spot.
The hiss you get is the amplified QUANTUM NOISE of the first RF amplifier stage.
If you need more bandwidth, tune your TV card to an unused channel. That'll give you about six megabits per second of really good noise.
I keep getting 12345
Apathy:
Use 123, what does it matter anyway.
For scientific research, there's a very good reason to use pseudo-random numbers: reproducibility.
If you're analyzing a stochastic model, you want to be able to generate lots of runs with different random sequences and gather statistics from the ensemble. But if you see interesting behavior in a particular run and want to take a closer look, you want to be able to go back and run it again, exactly as it happened the first time. In this case, you don't want real randomness, you want pseudo-randomness with good statistical properties. I'm currently checking through my code to make sure you can do just that when using this tool.
"Random" is a word used when an event has too many unknowns to reasonably no the outcome.
To use a very simple random event: Flipping a coin.
If you know all the variables, you will know what the outcome will be.
How heavy is the coin? what side is up at the moment of the flip? whats the air density? how hard was it flipped? etc. . .
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
int getRandomNumber() //Rolled a dice, guarenteed to be random /Think xkcd made this one
{
return 4;
}
http://xkcd.com/c221.html
Great, now you're going to get yourself sued by the MPAA for randomly guessing their new encryption key!
lavarand
A similar LGPL implementation: LavaRnd
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Yes
1337, t/-/i$ ®a/\/|>0|\/| n(_)mZ g3N suxorz...
Am I the only one that thinks that a man in the middle attack could be successful here? I mean sure, assuming this is truly random, does it really matter if the protocol used to get the number is susceptible to a man in the middle attack. After all, something is only as secure as it's weakest link.
I considered setting up a site to do this a long time ago but then I figured nobody would ever trust me to generate their random numbers so why bother?
.. I have a source for truly original program variable names!
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I come here for the love
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing
random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. (John Von Neumann)
I suspect this approach is weak (relatively speaking) as any time you use something like a camera to capture entropy, you are inherently causing collisions due to the limited and discrete precision of the medium. To clarify with a concrete example, it is possible (although unlikely) for multiple states of the lamp to result in the same colors at the same pixels in the captured digital image due to inadequate dynamic range.
Why bother.
call me crazy, but couldn't you just call on a function that calculates pi to the next digit(s) whenever a random number is required? Pretty simple and random.
If you need to repeat the random series, why don't you just store the numbers in a file? It may make sense even if you use a pseudo-generator, so you save processor time that would be used to recalculate the series again and again.
I guess the randomness is somehow linked to the stability of Windows...
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
If you need to repeat the random series, why don't you just store the numbers in a file?
Because with pseudo-random seeds, I do. I store the 1000 seeds and run it 10,000 iterations on each run. If I were to store each random number, I'd have to store 10,000,000 numbers in my file rather than 1000. I'll always store them, but the question is whether it takes 1000 records or 10,000,000. For academic purposes, the results aren't statistically different, so why store more numbers?
Learn to love Alaska
You don't save them for the same reason that you don't necessarily save the state of the simulation after every state change. You're generating a lot of these things, conceivably billions and billions or more. Even if you do save that kind of data for the short term--be it the pseudorandom sequence or state changes or both--you may want to eventually delete it while still having the option of re-creating it at a later date. With a reproducible pseudo-random generator, you can do this by saving only the parameter settings and the seed value.
Nothing is random. give me 1000 years and a 100000000000000000000 gigamip system and I can predict the number given at anytime. Everything is related. -terlmann
I just curl slashdot if I need random.
Disclaimer: Disregard the above post.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 :P
I just checksum my Windows registry.
It's random enough for my purposes.
mod parent up
kthx
[B.v.L]
http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/175
or perhaps he is the generator.
http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/420
There's a secure SMS/MMS app which allows the user to select an image for the RNG.
CryptoGraf Messaging which supports N95, E65, N70, E61i...and many more phone models with Symbian.
Among the features:
- RSA Crypto Key size 1024 or 2048 bits for Encryption
- AES Crypto Key size 256 bits for Encryption
- SHA256 with RSA Digital Signature
- X.509 Standard Secure Public Key Digital Certificate (Crypto Contacts)
- P2P Secure Public Key (Crypto Contacts) Exchange
- Exchange Crypto Contacts by bluetooth, sms or mms
- Forward Crypto Contacts
- Backup or Restore Crypto Contact
- Export or Import X.509 Digital Certificates
They also seem to have started a blog
Who needs this? We've had a convenient book of random numbers available from the RAND Corporation since 1955.
http://web.archive.org/web/20011027002011/http://d ilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert20 01182781025.gif
[Tour of Accounting]
Accounting Troll: "Over here we have our random number generator"
Number Generator Troll: "Nine Nine Nine Nine Nine Nine"
Dilbert: "Are you sure that's random?"
Accounting Troll: "That's the problem with randomness: you can never be sure"
Not really. Ever since Einstein's theory of stimulated emission, physicists have known that some events are really and truly random, and that it is not possible, even in theory, to predict when they will occur. A good example is radioactive decay. Some atoms, at exactly the same energy levels, will decay in multiple different ways, at a time that can not be predicted.
Quantum scattering (i.e., what happens when really really small particles bounce off of each other) is also not a deterministic process: Identical particles, in exactly the same energy state, will often scatter differently. Looking at particles coming out of a Bose-Einstein condensate is a good example: they are all in exactly the ground state, but come out in random ways.
Yeah, it's weird, and Einstein never got used to it, but his big paradox about it, the EPR paradox, has been shown to physically come down against determinism and hidden variables. So, like it or not, randomness is an inherent part of nature. Deal with it.
----- Why sig when you can sign? PGP key id 7675D05E
As Kittel and Kroemer put it, "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event...", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."
So in other words there really is *no* hope that web 2.0 will actually produce anything truly outstanding?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Because one can't predict process at this juncture, does not make process unpredictable forever.
/I'll have a piece of pi with that
My number's bigger than your number...
No sig today...
makes a poor wrapper. Madly random would be better, so long as it's sober.
Don't try time this is at light home, but.
Why isn't there a quantum random number generator built into our CPUs?
You assume that we understand everything.
Then there are these guys: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ who have hardware random number devices placed all over, and purport to see non-randomness during major events.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that experiments have been set up that have put particles into identical states, and then watched them evolve differently in time.
When I say identical states, I mean identical states. In quantum mechanics, there is an underlying symmetry for exchange of particles. (Integer spin has no change in the wave function at all on particle exchange ==> Bose-Einstein statistics. Half-Integer spin has an inversion in the wave function on particle exchange ==> Fermi-Dirac statistics.) This is not marginal stuff -- it explains why lasers work (integer spin) and atoms have electrons with different energy levels (half integer spin). If we take an atom like Helium (even spin), and do experiments with it, we get the results from Bose-Einstein statistics, which means that the particles must be identical, since otherwise, we couldn't see those results.
I think you are underestimating physics. In physics, we don't talk about something if we can't define what it means. The gold standard in physics is a tested prediction. Almost as good is the testable prediction. The minimum level for something to be called physics (rather than theology) is the thought experiment, which might someday be turned into a real experimental prediction. An affirmative statement in physics requires experimental proof, and disagreeing with an affirmative statement takes at least a prediction why. Gut feelings don't count, and I've got a feeling (this is slashdot, not physics, so I can say that) that a gut feeling is all you have.
----- Why sig when you can sign? PGP key id 7675D05E
Who needs photons? A simple resistor will do. Johnson noise is real random and easy to put on a circuit board. Is there some advantage of the optics that I'm not seeing?
OB: Random Number.
When it comes to pastry theft, I take the cake.
What would Vroomfondel do?
There are various 'entropy pool' based servers out there such as mine at http://random.hd.org/ and also see for example http://www.random.org/
The existing public servers gather noise from various sources such as audio or radio or radioactive decay.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Random numbers and reproducibility don't add up, IMO. If your simulation is good enough, having different random number sequences won't make a significative difference. As such, I can only find pseudoRNGs useful while testing for bugs, and marginally at that: a major flaw like getting out of whack because of a given series of numbers means something very wrong has happened while developing the simulation, and it's that process you should be checking, because checking the number sequence is just look at the symptoms.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Getting a random number from a central server that is connected to the internet doesn't seem like a terribly secure thing to do. What if someone breaks into it and there is a log of all the random numbers been provided?
Create your own RNG at home...
1) Detune radio, turn up volume.
2) Attach to audio-in of PC.
3) Sample incoming audio to obtain true random numbers.
Office Worker 1: Here's the output from our random number generator machine.
Machine: 8, 8, 8, 8, 8,
Office Worker 2: Umm.. are you sure it's really working and random?
Office Worker 1: That's the problem with random machines, you can never be sure!
(from a dilbert cartoon)
I don't know why you're worrying about the odds, when the number of monkeys is infinite. Besides that, you're forgetting that monkeys are intelligent creatures, rather than random typing generators. Presumably, if someone actually cared that monkeys generated shakespeare, they'd reward the ones who did well (even unintentionally), and that would encourage them to find the solution. Mathematically, it would seem wiser to consider the number of neurons in generations between the monkeys', and shakespeare's evolutionary path, along with the difference in brain size. It's not such a big step between a monkey writing hamlet, and shakespeare writing hamlet.
:(){
Why bother storing 1000 seeds? Just use 1 through 1000 as the seeds and don't store anything.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
or MPAA may find out our piracy source and ban this number!
a random number generator (i.e. the random variable describing the output of the generator) does not have to be distributed with a uniform distribution in order to be random. It just implies that it is not deterministic. that is the entropy of the random variable is greater then 0. further randomness is really only well defined in relation to a view (information set). what appears random to you may not be random to me. (technically the entropy of a random variable may be non-zero on it's own however conditioned on some other information it may be 0).
take a (probabilistic) turing machine which has an extra input tape with a sequence of uniformly and independently distributed bits on it (i.e. it's "random tape"). if the machine outputs this tape and you don't see the tape then the turing machine outputs a random sequence from your point of view. that is the random variable describing the next bit of output condition on all previously observered output has (min-)entropy 1. however if your are privy to the random tape of the machine then you can suddenly predict the output of the machine with probability 1. i.e. the entropy of the output is 0 and so the output of the machine is no longer random in any sense.
another definition of randomness put forward by kolmogorov is that a random random string is one that can not be compressed. this relates closely to the algorithmic definition of randomness which states that a string is random iff it is shorter then any program which has the string as output.
Geeks rejoice - now you can prove that was a natural 20!
Because then your own psychology comes into play.
If you ask people to pick a number between 1 and 10, the vast majority of them won't pick 1 or 10. People just don't like the edges. I think that they avoid 5, too, because it's right smack in the middle. For a number between 1 and 10 to be random, most people subconsciously want to make it not stand out and will pick something like 3, 6, or 8, thus not making it even random enough for gaming.
Also, in the same vein of not standing out, if you ask people to pick multiple numbers between 1 and 10, most won't allow there to be any patterns in them in the attempt to make them more random, thus actually making them less random. For example, if you ask people to pick five numbers, most won't pick something like 4, 4, 4, 4, and 4, even though it's a legitimate combination that's just as likely as something like 7, 3, 1, 1, 9.
Another example. When I was in high school, I used to play $5 in the lottery once a week, figuring that it sure would be convenient if I never had to bother going to college and get a job and so on. I usually just selected the quick pick and let the machine pick my numbers. Once, though, I manually picked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 for the first ticket, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 for the second, and so on. My dad basically said, "You're an idiot. Those numbers will never come up, and you just wasted five dollars!" He never quite got it that, aside from the lottery being a colossal waste of money to begin with, it didn't matter what numbers I picked; any given set was just as likely to come up as any other given set. Not having six consecutive numbers is merely imposing human psychology on the random numbers, which could have very well been consecutive numbers.
If I'm not mistaken, several years ago, someone proved that the digits of pi are random. That if you expand it out to a bazillion decimal places, you'll eventually run across patterns like 0123456789 and such. As humans, with brains that are designed to seek out patterns, it strikes us as interesting, perhaps even as some sort of sign that the numbers aren't random. Nothing is further from the truth, though; the lack of such patterns would be a sure sign that the numbers aren't random.
Something isn't random just because a pattern hasn't yet been recognized.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Sooner or later, patterns will emerge.
The pink noise from your FM receiver's discriminator or PLL when not tuned to a station is a great generator of medium-quality random numbers. In fact, a lot of military radios use this as a source of temporary keys. A reverse-biased zener diode is a great generator of white noise, too. And there is also the tunnel diode, the poor man's source of quantum effects.
When I was in college, my roommate was doing neuro-bio research and needed a bunch of random numbers. One day, I saw him sitting around and rolling dice for over two hours. Naturally, I thought he was sort of nuts, but he informed me that the professor whose project this was had told him to do it that way because it's the only way to get true random numbers. I offered him access to a variety of random number sources and even offered to generate the range he want with a simple program, but he refused nevertheless. So yeah, there are definitely still people rolling dice to generate random numbers, as crazy as that might seem for us Comp-Sci types. *shrug*
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
If we have an infinite amount of monkeys, doesn't that mean we have an infinite amount of monkey shit? Therefore, all monkey produced Shakespeare would be buried in monkey shit.
If they made something based on integration like that it would be cool, though then only nerds would be able to access most regestration only sites...
Think of it this way: if you flip 10 coins, and get a 6:4 ration, that's normal.
If you flip 1000 coins, and get 600 heads to 400 tails, a 6:4 ratio, that's exceedingly abnormal. You'd expect something like 525:475. (5.25:4.75)
If you flip 100,000 coins, and get 52500 heads to 47500 tails, that's also abnormal. You'd expect a something like 50125 to 49875. (5.0125:4.9875).
You may notice that as the number of coins flips increases, the observed ratios get closer to 5:5 (which is the same as 1:1).
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Don't you know random number generators are weapons of mass destruction?
Hmm... crazy president.
A true random number generator would produce numbers between negative infinity and infinity. This just randomly produces 0's and 1's.
Computers by them selves are deterministic. To get random behaviour out of them you can't just have an algorithm because it will loop. You need external input. Maybe you can use CPU temp or fan RPM and consider that external input.
I've seen things before where people point web cams at lava lamps take the resulting image in whatever format and do an md5 or some other hash on it. I would bet that this new method isn't any stronger than the webcam/lavalamp implementation and a whole lot more expensive.
Fourmilab's been doing this for years with HotBits. I remember writing an atomic-powered band name generator that used it.
photons give us random numbers "free of charge."
In MATLAB:
>> mean(mean(qrand(1000,100)))
ans =
0.4996
Support SETI@home
Here are some funny web comics that might put this whole debate into perspective:
http://xkcd.com/c221.html
Dilbert (from 2001)
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
because checking the number sequence is just look at the symptoms.
And it would be completely stupid to look at the symptoms. That's why doctors like to diagnose people over the phone. You call up, and before you even speak they shout out a diagnosis. Oh wait, you mean actually knowing what the symptoms are is useful? Well, then why are you complaining that seed storage helps you look at the symptoms? Studying the failure mode helps, and knowing what the inputs were, exactly, helps determination of the failure and reproducibility of any such failure.
Learn to love Alaska
Any security gains using SSL encryption could provide can be just as easily obtained by simply encrypting the random stream yourself with a key generated from a local random source before using the data.
Depending on how large a list of random numbers you need, just download 512 mb and use a 32 bit pseudo-random integer as the bit offset in the file for your random series. That'll produce 4 billion "true" random bits with the ability to reproduce the same list.
Long ago, MIT proved that 17 is the most random number in mathematics. It's the only random number you'll ever need.
Because I got this:
"Quantum Random Bit Generator Service: Sign up failed
Congratulations! You have successfully registered for QRBG Service.
Now, you can log in and check your quota and usage statistics, or just start using the Service."
I guess I have to stuff a cat in a box to see if my account actually works now.
It's a captcha, and so I got a different one. But...
The equation I got had an "evaluated at x=4*pi" tacked onto the end. Substituting 4*pi before the partial derivitive results in zero, which can be easily done in one's head.
Do they all have an "evaluated at" tacked on the end?