5 ms·
Everything sent to /dev/null can eventually be retrieved from /dev/random, given sufficient time.
by frost_knight 5y ago
Everything sent to /dev/null can eventually be retrieved from /dev/random, given sufficient time.
- taftster 5y agoOnly if you believe that /dev/random is truly random.
- usmannk 5y agoEven a truly random die is not guaranteed to ever roll a 6.
- amscanne 5y ago“ever” implies the limit of time. Since lim_{t->Inf} p(at least one 6 is rolled) = 1, I think you could say it’s guaranteed.
- ithkuil 5y agoif it has once, it will again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_recurrence_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_recurrence_theor...
- contravariant 5y agoThough it does eventually roll a 6 almost always. Which is math speak for 100% of the time.
- IncRnd 5y agoYet, it probably will.
- snickerer 5y agoI KNOW WHERE the data you read from /dev/random COMES FROM. But I can't tell you because I would be a dead man if I would.
- ithkuil 5y agoit's written on the menu of the restaurant at the end of the universe
- bdamm 5y agoHowever, since you're effectively brute forcing a match on an unknown key, the universe may go cold and dark before your content arises, for any content larger than 128 bits or so.
- contravariant 5y agoAnd at some point it gets more efficient to just wait until the universe randomly starts to repeats itself to recreate the content you wanted.
- wruza 5y agoBut you’ll restart with it in not-yet-lost-it state and will lose it eventually. There is nothing useful in /dev/random, really, apart from the entropy for crypto. Trillions of trillions of … of trillions unique virtual atoms of no particular value.