Neon Lamps Acts as RNGs for Hashing

Random number generation is a fascinating subject, because it is incredibly important for everything from proper dice rolls in gaming to cryptographic security and yet very hard to achieve. In fact, I’m not even convinced true randomness can happen, as the universe may be entirely deterministic. But we can get close enough for practical tasks through a variety of means. The means chosen by Joshua Coleman was neon lamp light emission.

A purely digital device cannot produce a random number, because any number it can come up with would be the direct result of some manipulation of knowable input numbers, which is deterministic. But if you start with an analog input, it is possible to get something that is actually random — or at least so close that nobody can prove it isn’t random.

That analog input can be almost anything that produces totally unpredictable and pattern-free variety across...

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