Actually HotBits is not a generator that uses radioactive
decay as a seed, it uses the decay to actually generate bits
(actually it uses pairs of timing intervals between consecutive decay
events to generate either 0 or 1 bits depending on whether the first
or second interval was longer). The process is slow, about 30 random
bytes generated per second, and requests for HotBits (up to 2k bytes
at a time) are served from an inventory of about 2 million bits that
is continually topped up in the background. Of course, your primary
request is processed by a Perl CGI program that fetches your bits
for you.
| [reply] |