On: Exploiting pseudo-RNGs in slot machines (2017)

[deehouie]

I believe there's a huge literature on methods to generate pseudo-random numbers. Experts on HN please jump in. One approach, which I thought is quite ingenious, is to observe cosmic radiation and extract randomness from this data.

[stefco_ → deehouie]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, that wouldn't be pseudo-random; cosmic-ray arrival times are random * (in the sense that we don't have a formula for finding their arrival times).

* Unless you can figure out where cosmic rays come from and model their propagation mechanism accurately, in which case you'll solve some long-standing astrophysics questions.

[DanBC → deehouie]

I think that's not pseudo random, it's really random. There can be problems with how you sample the noise and feed it into whatever you're using.

Also, if you need random numbers there are usually better ways to get them.

http://www.robertnz.net/true_rng.html

http://www.robertnz.net/hwrng.htm