This is probably only of interest to me, but I’m posting it as a reminder to myself. A Swiss company called ID Quantique is offering a chip-sized source of true randomness based on an optical quantum process. They’ve partnered with the University of Geneva to create a random number generator Web site anyone can use.
Why do I care about true randomness? A while back, after reading the His Dark Materials trilogy, I decided that it would be neat to build a working alethiometer. It would consist of some simple electronics moving a needle around in a standard pocketwatch case. The needle would move around “randomly”, using a series of true random numbers to determine which symbols to point to.
True randomness from a quantum source would be key, because anything less would mean that the character sequence would be influenced by deterministic effects. Hm. That doesn’t sound quite right, so ask me to explain if you’re curious.