PRNG not so random

“Quantum” RNG isn’t random and i’ve argued it isn’t even quantum. Plus that method was predicted to not be random way-way back like around WWII.
In a nutshell those IDQ rng cards (that Mac referred to) are measuring energy fluctuations between 2 crystals (“plates”) in a vacuum.
Problem is it’s all solid state digital and it’s been long established that there is no random from such a system for too many reasons to list without making you all fall asleep.
Boils down to crystals within said vacuum have the predicted casimir effect especially within a small computer box or rack which affects the qrng cards which are removed from universal randomness due to computer’s inherited Faraday cage like design.

Summary: it’s that Casimir effect that creates those wave like images that Mac likes.

The thing i posted earlier from that steve gibson website about using analogue devices to capture actual random things like sounds and convert them into randomness is considered superior and if implemented correctly are much more random. All it takes is a few vehicles driving past, or birds singing, leaves falling nearby, wind, etc.
Problem is those systems are outside (literally) of the servers racks/case and outside server room and therefore “hard to control”.

Whereas those little cards are fully controllable and likely found in things like slot machines.
Just a thought.

Wrong that’s half life of the isotope. Meaning that half of the atoms has decayed after that time. If you look at a single atom though you can’t tell when it will decay. Ever heard of Schrödinger’s Cat?

1 Like

more rng fun :laugh:

http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25

https://xkcd.com/221/

1 Like

There are many ways of generating real random numbers, and even more ways to generate PRNGs.

Problem is real random number generator cost a bit of money.

https://www.random.org/ uses atmospheric noise to generate random noise.

All depends on how real your need is for real random numbers, and how much it’s worth for you.

1 Like

Cool topic.
Just ask me or Legion about randomness in EU.

Hey Pham, can you tell us about randomness in EU? :slight_smile:

:tower:

Me thinks Pham did ok with PE randomness, not sure he’s so crazy about EU randomness. :laugh:

Indeed, Mac.
Randomness in EU was all about timing and shit. Max multiplier loots per area (or spawn/creature?) would trigger in order, however, to successfully exploit that it would require to hunt at specific area at specific time for several hours straight. It does not go along really well with most daytime jobs, and few ubers I’ve missed which reallly pissed me off happened exactly when I was fixing something on helpdesk call. Also, it was much better to camp stuff without having a company.
Although, doing stuff like that would improve chances to profit, the profits would be only marginal, without great items in the loot.
PS: Shoulda quit dat crap job anyway, but few things about EU in 2007 pissed me off more (e.g. weapon switching lag, loot lag, Marcos lies about re-launching ATM cards soon and other shit), so I quit EU instead.

And many were sad to see you go, you were inspiring for me at the time, until MA pissed me off and I also exited stage left for many years, I hope you found something better to pass the time :slight_smile:

1 Like

So, from position of IT specialist doing security jobs from time to time (and also having my perception having been heavily influenced by living in one of most corrupt countries in the world) I find that its especially hard to trust that legendary swedish gambling commission audit on PE sometime back in 2003 or so. You cannot just audit a piece of code in 2003 pronounce it ‘NOT GAMBLING’ and then allow people to touch it or OS or hardware it runs on.
I would rather welcome auditing it over and over again and then pronouncing it ‘DEFINITELY GAMBLING’ and then MA will obey the strict rules for gambling business, like, you know, 2%-something rake.

I’ll be damned! It does sound familiar
If we could get Legion’s comment too, that would make it absolutely perfect! :wtg:

Lets hear your theory..God knows you must have one,Fifth. :eyecrazy:
Just curious sweety, you sound so familiar on these forums..Hmmmm
I am pretty thick skinned and I’d love to hear your take on this in a intelligent manner.
(I mean that sincerely, I remember a very informative post you made 6 months ago.)

1 Like

They aren’t going to audit it since they don’t care to audit it… Copy of email from 2013, based on a request for a more recent audit:

The Swedish Gambling Authority has investigated the “Loot” system in Entropia Universe in journal number 13Li3786. The investigation was closed on the 30 of October 2013.

The Swedish gambling market is regulated by The Swedish lottery act (1994:1000). The general rule is that lotteries must not be arranged except by permit (Section 9, Lotteries Act). Permits may in principle only be granted to non-profit making associations whose activities are for the public benefit (Section 15, Lotteries Act), it is thus not sufficient for a permit to be granted that the proceeds of the lottery are applied for charitable purposes.

There are two possibilities for The Swedish Gambling Authority to act in cases of suspicion of crime, one is to submit to the suspect with a penalty (Vite) the second one is to notify the police. To submit the suspect with penalty it is required to that the offense has been committed within Swedish jurisdiction, this means a server is located in Sweden or the person or company that offers the lottery lives in Sweden.
It also requires an exact moment when the crime has been committed. It is, therefore, necessary to secure documentation of a Swedish player who lives in Sweden when he or her wins “Loots” in order to prove that the location of the criminal act is within the Swedish jurisdiction and that the legal person responsible for lottery is Swedish. The Swedish Gambling Authority would likely need to dedicate an employee on full-time to play in Entropia Universe before the possibility of gaining loots in Entropia Universe. It has to been proved that the actual legal person which is responsible for lottery is Swedish, in this case, MindArk and that it is not arranged by a foreign subsidiary to MindArk. This would require a thorough investigation concerning MindArks corporate structures.

Anyone may make a police report at suspicion of a criminal offense. It is likely to assume that the circumstance needs to be proven up to the level which is mentioned above in order for the Swedish court to decide on a punishment on a suspected crime. The Swedish Gambling Authority has come to the conclusion that current circumstances isn´t sufficient evidence to make a police report, if you wish to make a police report, please notice attached contact details below

Circumstances of the case Entropia Universe has been put forward for head of department in the case of how the matter should be handled. Head of operational department which is responsible for the prioritization and allocation of resources, has decided that The Swedish Gambling Authority currently does not have the opportunity to further investigate the matter with reference to the extensive resource case would take.

Polismyndigheten i Västra Götaland
Box 429
401 26 Göteborg
Sweden

Kind Regards
Josefin Jansson

LOTTERIINSPEKTIONEN

1 Like

No no no, I don’t!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxRX6LXDpWs

Don’t look at me, I’m just another noob. Pham and Legion however, those guys know stuff! :bowdown:

1 Like

As convenient as it would be if this were true, five minutes worth of checking time stamps on Entropia Life has brought me to the conclusion that it isn’t that simple.

I had excellent success at measuring wave timing on Cyrene and using my results to help me harvest [Bone]s more enjoyably. IIRC the wave behavior at that location and time was 43 minutes to complete one cycle, with variation of up to 11 minutes in either direction at each cycle, and the entire thing reset every day at 00:00. Behavior was atypical on Sundays, which I attribute possibly to lower total activity on the planet. The other possible things that my results hinted at were (1) that the value and type of a kill’s loots are determined separately, (2) that [Bone]s are just one member of a class of possible loots of a preset rarity and possibly also “general type of loot” class, (3) that species of loot within a class changes randomly (pseudorandom no doubt, but indistinguishable from true random from a player’s view) from one wave to the next, (4) that each class has its own cycle length, (5) that the cycles act just like they are the emergent product of code designed primarily to produce some other set of loot behaviour characteristics, not actually designed into the code. Like I said, my results HINTED at these things, they didn’t prove them. What I can say with certainty is that gathering [Bone]s for the “noob” fap mission (which I do NOT recommend for noobs) went a lot better and was a lot more fun when I planned my visits to the TT/RT around that 43 minute timer. Oh, and another characteristic of those waves: the [Bone]s-class loots didn’t drop in any noticeable quantity unless I had already been hunting that spawn for 10 minutes when the wave hit.

Not authoritative info by far, but fun to play with.

1 Like

Lavarand

https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the-nitty-gritty-technical-details/

I wish I knew how the element of “time” worked.
I Just heard about the lavalamps today. It was on the radio.

NSA Backdoor you say?

For IT vendors to supply certain government agencies with hardware/software almost all information must be turned over for review (source codes, schemetics, Bill of Materials, etc etc). Also, if companies want to keep their coveted government contracts it’s play ball or else. Why Opensource hardware and firmware is very important. Running opensource OS doesn’t do much if BIOS and storage firmware are closed source. Just some food for thought :slight_smile:

“Our team of Positive Technologies researchers has delved deep into the internal architecture of Intel Management Engine (ME) 11, revealing a mechanism that can disable Intel ME after hardware is initialized and the main processor starts. In this article, we describe how we discovered this undocumented mode and how it is connected with the U.S. government’s High Assurance Platform (HAP) program.”

http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html