What are the addresses of some websites that offers random numbers from physical sources? I'm looking both for free services and services that cost money.
+4
A:
I have been using http://www.random.org/, and i like it. Generates random numbers from atmospheric noise, and also is capable of generate:
- coin flips
- dice rolling
- card shuffling
among others, take a look at it.
Jhonny D. Cano -Leftware-
2009-04-23 15:19:11
A:
Many Linux systems have a /dev/random device built in. That provides random numbers from physical sources.
The random number generator gathers environmental noise from device drivers and other sources into an entropy pool
S.Lott
2009-04-23 15:20:03
That's only pseudorandom.
Kibbee
2009-04-23 15:23:17
The entropy pool is based on physical sources. Sounds really random to me.
S.Lott
2009-04-23 15:25:59
It's slow. You can only get a few random characters per second. Might not be enough for certain needs.
CookieOfFortune
2009-04-23 15:32:02
The entropy pool is based on a variety of physical factors that are not easily controlled, but it is still deterministic - if you know the set of inputs to the system (keypress intervals, timing information, etc) then you can predict the next bit from the previous bits. There are many essays on random numbers which go into detail using statistical analysis, and for most uses and most people /dev/urandom would be fine, but it is not considered a cryptographically secure source of random numbers.
Adam Davis
2009-04-23 15:33:29
+2
A:
- Genuine random numbers, generated by radioactive decay.
- HotBits are generated by timing successive pairs of radioactive decays detected by a Geiger-Müller tube interfaced to a computer.
- Once the random bytes are delivered to you, they are immediately discarded—the same data will never be sent to any other user and no records are kept of the data at this or any other site.
Adam Davis
2009-04-23 15:20:20
+1
A:
Sounds like the Quantum Random Bit Generator may be of use ? It relies on photonic emission in semiconductors and the detection thereof by photoelectric effect.
They supply command line and library/API access via various different platforms/frameworks.
Brian Agnew
2009-04-23 15:20:45
A:
Apparently they use Atmospheric noise to generate they're numbers though I'm not sure if they've published their algorithms.
Eoin Campbell
2009-04-23 15:21:46