Predicting and controlling NetHack's randomness (2009)

Re:Predicting and controlling NetHack's randomness (2009) by tptacek on Saturday October 03, 2015 @11:57AM (#10324303)

You might wonder why we use PRNGs at all; why not use a truly random source for every number? Unfortunately, a computer's pool of truly random numbers is very limited; it has to build up by measuring minute temperature changes or internal timing variations. NetHack, especially being played by fifty people on a public server, would keep that pool empty and harm the game's playability.

I'm confused. Why can't they just read from /dev/urandom for all their random numbers?

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Re:Predicting and controlling NetHack's randomness (2009) by vinceguidry on Saturday October 03, 2015 @12:30PM (#10324395)

I imagine that would make the server pretty slow in times of heavy load.

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Re:Predicting and controlling NetHack's randomness (2009) by wolf550e on Saturday October 03, 2015 @02:38PM (#10324897)

You can use 24 bytes of "true" randomness (16 for key and 8 for nonce) and then get 2^64 16-byte blocks of randomness before re-keying at better than 1Gbps per core using AESNI. How much more do you need?

EDIT: How is what I wrote wrong?

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Re:Predicting and controlling NetHack's randomness (2009) by tptacek on Saturday October 03, 2015 @04:35PM (#10325244)

It's not wrong, and I didn't downvote you, but I'm not sure we need to concede that anything more difficult than "read numbers from /dev/urandom" is required here. :)

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Re:Predicting and controlling NetHack's randomness (2009) by tptacek on Saturday October 03, 2015 @01:34PM (#10324622)

I doubt it. Things exercised far more strenuously than nethack rely on urandom.

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