
The real 10 algorithms that dominate our world  - ohjeez
https://medium.com/tech-talk/the-real-10-algorithms-that-dominate-our-world-e95fa9f16c04
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billmalarky
I was under the impression there were "true" random number generators that
used input from external random sources like ambient noise or mouse movements
etc.

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hga
Correct. Thermal and quantum effects are popular in my experience of buying a
couple of these devices in the '90s and now this decade, radioactive decay
works as well, and then there are hacks like the fine details of how you use
your mouse that I gather are very nice ... but totally fail for VMs (that
really need to be fed true randomness from a server). Intel started shipping a
random number source based on one with Ivy Bridge processors:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RdRand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RdRand)

But it's hard/expensive to get really high rates of true randomness this way
(I recently read there are needs that go as high as a GiB/second), so most of
these true sources of randomness are used to seed high quality PRNG
algorithmic generators, and that's true for Intel's system. Although of course
we're not _entirely_ trusting Intel....

~~~
billmalarky
Would it at all be possible to serve "randomness" at those levels as a
service?

~~~
hga
Which levels?

You can certainly serve true randomness sufficient to seed cryptographically
secure PRNG generators. Right now all my VMs and systems at home are served
that from a good source of true randomness.

I've seen such sources on the net, e.g.
[http://www.random.org/](http://www.random.org/)

The big issue is trust, especially when it's relatively easy and cheap to
provide true randomness locally. And as mentioned, a standard desktop can
generate its own randomness through things like mouse movements, which is very
cheap. The major use case would be VMs, and I suspect few who run them would
trust an external source, unless their cloud vendor offered it as a service. I
could see vendors being reluctant to do so for liability reasons.

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vixin
"Is not crazy to say that the internet wouldn't work as efficient ".

'Efficient' qualifies the noun (to) work. It is therefore an adverb and is
written as in '... work as efficiently'

