[Cryptography] The ultimate random source

[Jerry Leichter]

On Feb 16, 2014, at 7:55 AM, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> On Feb 15, 2014, at 11:46 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>> I actually started with rather more elaborate steampunk devices that had dice with different colored faces. These would be machine read somehow.
> See http://hackaday.com/2009/05/26/dice-o-matic/
...however, as with the paper on the not-quite-randomness of coin tosses that John Denker forwarded yesterday, dice aren't quite random either:  
http://www.insidescience.org/blog/2012/09/12/dice-rolls-are-not-completely-random

Interestingly, the same factors come into play:  Initial position is important; air resistance is not; bouncing helps but not as much as you'd expect.
                                                        -- Jerry