[Cryptography] cheap sources of entropy

[Stephan Neuhaus]

On 30.01.2014 05:11, dan at geer.org wrote:
> Recalibrating first principles for a moment, please.  My understanding
> is that a mix of N bit streams will be truly unpredictable if any 1 of
> the N bit streams is truly unpredictable.
>
> If that is incorrect, what am I missing?  (RTFM is entirely acceptable
> and even gracious if accompanied by a pointer to TFM to R.)

I happen to agree with you. TFM to R for those who don't (and in fact 
probably anyone on this thread) would be, in my opinion:
http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/06_random.pdf followed by 
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/nist_rng.pdf .

These are publications that avoid opinion in favour of technical 
analysis.  From my point of view, they're still the last (or at any rate 
the technically most defensible) word on the subject, even though I am 
of course willing to learn the error of my ways, if they are accompanied 
by, as you say, a pointer to another TFM to R.

Fun,

Stephan