Random is Not What You Expect

"Computers can’t make real random numbers,” is a myth. What is a real random number anyway?

Don’t feel bad, humans are terrible at probability and statistics. In GenAI we call randomness temperature, and use it as a proxy for creativity. This makes it even more important to understand random numbers and their role in our world.

I’ve always found random numbers fascinating, but for the last few months I’ve been obsessed. It turns out they are way more interesting than I realized.

You know Cloudflare’s lava lamp powered "Wall of Entropy,” well it turns out the original creator of LavaRand came up with an even better and easier solution, but it doesn’t look as cool. If you want a little more entropy in your life Cloudflare is part of the League of Entropy, which offers a free distributed randomness beacon similar to the one offered by the NIST.

Speaking of the National Institute of Standards (NIST), they maintain guides on generating and validating random numbers. These are mostly focused around cryptography. So naturally we will take a look at those as well.

I collect random number generators, and recently I’ve built a few new hardware random number devices. I just got the last pieces I need to finish a phase-diffusion powered quantum random number generator using fiber optics. Why do I need a quantum random number generator? I’m glad you asked…

If you call it uncertainty, chaos, unpredictable, randomness, or fate, there are some things just beyond our understanding. This is more than just math and physics, there is also a psychological and philosophical element to it. Don’t worry, I’ll keep things mostly focused on the algorithms and hardware. Getting really random is easier than you might expect, but there are still advantages for less random sources. The key is knowing the difference.

Room 1210 at CWI: Ada Pintail building