What's bullshit about it? This is how TRNGs in security enclaves work. They collect entropy from the environment, and use that to continuously reseed a PRNG, which generates bits.
If you're talking "true" in the philosophical sense, that doesn't exist -- the whole concept of randomness relies on an oracle.
I don't think hardware random number generators are bullshit, but it's easy to overstate their importance. Outside of cryptography, there aren't a whole lot of cases that truly require that much care in how random numbers are generated. For the kind of examples the article opens with (web page A/B testing, clinical trials, etc.) you'll never have sample sizes large enough to justify worrying about the difference between a half-decent PRNG and a "true" random number generator.
Starts interesting, then veers into the usual "true random number" bullshit. Use radioactive decay as source of your random numbers!
> usual "true random number" bullshit
What's bullshit about it? This is how TRNGs in security enclaves work. They collect entropy from the environment, and use that to continuously reseed a PRNG, which generates bits.
If you're talking "true" in the philosophical sense, that doesn't exist -- the whole concept of randomness relies on an oracle.
I don't think hardware random number generators are bullshit, but it's easy to overstate their importance. Outside of cryptography, there aren't a whole lot of cases that truly require that much care in how random numbers are generated. For the kind of examples the article opens with (web page A/B testing, clinical trials, etc.) you'll never have sample sizes large enough to justify worrying about the difference between a half-decent PRNG and a "true" random number generator.
How do we know it's truly random?