4 ms·

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

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.

sbierwagen 16y ago
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.

4 ms·

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

by captaincrowbar 16y ago

sbierwagen 16y ago
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.