3 ms·
Ask HN: Do you need a true random number API?
I am currently playing around with some learning project ideas and this is one of them.
Is there a need for a cryptographically secure true random number API?
- MichaelCrawford 12y agoMy understanding is that you cannot use mathematics to generate random numbers. Somewhere in there you need a quantum process. However that is not hard, just point your camera phone out the window at the clouds. The problem I see with this is, suppose I hash a picture of the sky down to just one bit. Can I count on my hash evenly dividing between one and zero, without any bias?
- philippnagel 12y agoExactly. That's why I was thinking of building a service that allows every developer, scientist, person in need of true random numbers, to fulfill their need.
- gus_massa 12y agoMost people can get random enough numbers from dev/random or dev/urandom for free. The people that need more secure random number will not thrust you to generate their random numbers. Are you storing the numbers? Are they truly random or pseudorandom? Are you sending a copy to the NSA? Do you have one use case of someone that will pay to get random numbers?
- ShaneCurran 12y agoIs that not what https://www.random.org/ https://www.random.org/ does?
- dalke 12y agoAgreed. Or https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ , which I believe is a year older than random.org (based on archive.org's logs).