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by winwang 831 days ago
Cloud RNG number streaming is interesting but costly, no? I did have the idea to serve truly random numbers via a quantum computer (trivial by just preparing the simplest state and measuring). Anything else can't be said to be truly random.
1 comments

You don't need a quantum computer to sample noise from quantum processes.

It's a prohibitively expensive way to go, and depending on how you built the quantum computer, it may be more susceptible to interference and non-quantum noise than using good circuits and custom systems.

Oh sure, it was more of a joke app idea, or in another sense, for those who want philosophically "perfect" randomness. After all, assuming a single bit sample, anything but a hadamard state has nonoptimal entropy. Of course, it makes almost no sense to sample a bit at a time since we want pragmatism. But having a virtual coin flip essentially "create" a new, nonexistent bit of information in the universe -- that's funny (well, assuming certain interpretations of QM).