

Quantum Random Number Generator as free webservice - fs111
http://qrng.physik.hu-berlin.de/download

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ScottBurson
John Walker's Fourmilab has been providing quantum random bits for 14 years
already: <http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/>

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captaincrowbar
I can't really see a use for this. For non-cryptographic purposes such as
Monte Carlo simulations, it's hard to imagine an application where a good
conventional pseudo-random generator such as a Mersenne twister wouldn't be
perfectly adequate. Even for cryptographic purposes, a crypto-standard PRNG
seeded from a good entropy source (/dev/random) is usually secure enough, and
for the few seriously high-security applications where that wouldn't be
enough, nobody would trust a source that wasn't under their physical control.

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sbierwagen
There are two (plus one) market niches that exist, which another random number
service (random.org) fills fairly well.

1.) People who don't know anything at all about random number generation, and
just want a web form where they can press the button and get a random number.

You hardly need a hardware random number generator for this, or any kind of
serious randomness.

2.) Acting as a neutral, trusted third party, for contests, etc. Dooce just
did a big Microsoft-sponsored Kinect giveaway PR circus bullshit event, and
they used random.org to pick the winners.

Unlike 1, there might be actual money in this, and is one of the few, amusing,
businesses where the more money you charge, the higher the perceived utility.

3.) Providing random numbers as an advertisement for your fine line of
hardware random number generators. Here it doesn't matter how much money you
make, you just want people to buy the hardware that made them. Oddly enough,
none of the random number services (and there are quite a few) do this, for
some inexplicable reason. There's not even an argument-from-proprietary
technology, since HRNGs are supposed to generate perfectly random noise, and
there's no way an attacker could stage a replay attack.

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gxti
I'm currently building a high-quality zener diode-based RNG. There's a dearth
of good information on the internet about these things, everyone seems to
offer a schematic but their explanations don't really show any sort of
understanding of the process.

In any case, I think this design qualifies as "quantum" because zener diodes
at 5.6V and less work through quantum electron tunneling ;)

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jwr
This isn't useful for cryptography (how can I trust the random data to be
random?), but for certain computational tasks this could indeed be quite
useful (think Monte Carlo simulations).

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meastham
I've never encountered a Monte Carlo algorithm that required random numbers of
this quality. That doesn't mean they don't exist though.

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celoyd
This is really cool.

But is there anything it’s useful for as it stands? Or is it better thought of
as an experiment in distribution?

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hugh3
Assuming the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, it's
useful for making decisions.

Make your decision based on quantum-generated random numbers, and you're
guaranteed that an alternative-universe counterpart of yourself made the
opposite decision. Thus if your decision turns out to be the wrong one you can
at least console yourself that there's another version of yourself who didn't
make the same mistake.

