Rob Ricciricci
Aug 18, 2025, 10:48 PMYou can emulate any device with /dev/random if you know what bytes to look for
Replies
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 10:48 PM
All other devices are just weak versions of /dev/random
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 10:51 PM
All computation is just specialization of /dev/random by limiting its values
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 10:56 PM
/dev/zero is implemented by reading from /dev/random and only outputting the zeros
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 10:58 PM
/dev/random is a universal turing machine given enough time and the right state transfer function
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 11:16 PM
/dev/random contains the private keys to every bitcoin wallet
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 11:17 PM
/dev/random contains the sounds of the voices of every person who ever lived, and every person who will ever live
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 11:26 PM
/dev/random is the only backup plan you need, just read it until you find your old files
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 11:54 PM
There are two wolves inside of you, but an infinity of wolves in /dev/random
- Rob RicciricciAug 19, 2025, 12:00 AM
Try this one weird trick to reduce entropy and forestall the heat death of the universe:
cat /dev/random > /dev/null
Simon Rolfmorecloudthethings@hachyderm.ioAug 18, 2025, 10:58 PM@ricci the Linux audio stack is implemented by reading from /dev/random and outputting whatever it finds.
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 10:59 PM
@cloudthethings pulseaudio is implemented by reading from /dev/random then crashing
DeweyDeweyOxberger@techhub.socialAug 18, 2025, 11:21 PM@ricci wait, don't we need 10,000 /dev/random's to make all this work?
rjarrjay@tacobelllabs.netAug 18, 2025, 11:28 PM@ricci /dev/random is more power efficient than *any* possible AI generation
- rjarrjay@tacobelllabs.netAug 18, 2025, 11:55 PM
@ricci Extended Wolfiverse.
Aug 18, 2025, 11:57 PM@ricci The new preferred nomenclature for the technology you refer to as /dev/random as "AI". Thanks in advance for your compliance.
pmonpmonsonAug 19, 2025, 12:09 AM@ricci have you become a shill for big RNG?
- Rob RicciricciAug 19, 2025, 12:21 AM
@pmonson no /dev/random is a scam made up by big entropy to sell more everything
- pmonpmonsonAug 19, 2025, 12:42 AM
@ricci you can slowly cage them with poor implementations of markov chains or fourior transforms. Quickly before /dev/random erases our simple knowledge tools
ᵲηsηʀᶏresera@social.tchncs.deAug 19, 2025, 1:41 AM@ricci
did that, now my /dev/random is empty :(halp, pls. How to unemtpy /dev/random ?¿??
- Rob RicciricciAug 19, 2025, 1:55 AM
cp /dev/zero /dev/random
Geoffrey Adamsbiogeo@mefi.socialAug 19, 2025, 2:43 AM@ricci Maxwell's Demon says it's full and can't eat another bite
- Rob RicciricciAug 19, 2025, 2:44 AM
@biogeo Schrödinger's cat will be happy to take what's left over. Or not. Maybe.
Aug 19, 2025, 12:06 AMI was gonna be a jerk and and say you could generate N*M files where N is seeds and M was the period of the PRNG in question+1, and then apply a diagonalization operation to the output to guarantee that you had at least one file that couldn’t be generated by the PRNG but in your defense you did say /dev/random and not /dev/urandom and I’m assuming a modern cryptographic implementation so I respectfully concede.
(Also the periods on Mersenne Twister based PRNG’s are stupid.)
Aug 18, 2025, 11:21 PM@ricci someone should let Trump know that /dev/random contains the entirety of the Epstein files, as well as the nuclear codes and all his passwords.
- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 11:22 PM
@josh0 the Epstein files have already been released, they are in /dev/random
Steve Purcellsanityinc@hachyderm.ioAug 19, 2025, 8:59 AM- Steve Purcellsanityinc@hachyderm.ioAug 19, 2025, 9:01 AM
- Aug 19, 2025, 1:36 PM
@sanityinc @ricci well that certainly makes password security check algorithms easy to write!
Ashton Wiersdorfwiersdorf@fosstodon.orgAug 18, 2025, 11:14 PM@ricci Noted. I’ll tell your students to just turn in random bytes and put the onus on you to filter the right ones as you grade.
- Aug 18, 2025, 11:19 PM
@wiersdorf @ricci should actually be pretty easy to grade. Just need to confirm that a sufficient number of random bytes were delivered to statistically contain the correct data. You can do it all with `wc -c`!
Pete BleackleyPeteBleackley@wandering.shopAug 19, 2025, 6:11 AM@ricci OpenAI's business model
m0xEEm0xEE@nosh0b10.m0xee.netAug 18, 2025, 11:12 PM@ricci@discuss.systems
Your filesystem isn't really fault tolerant if it can't be mounted from /dev/random- Rob RicciricciAug 18, 2025, 11:15 PM
@m0xEE my filesystem patiently reads /dev/random, biding its time, waiting for it to generate the file it is looking for
- pmonpmonsonAug 18, 2025, 11:37 PM
@ricci this may true of everything but /dev/urandom, oddly
Greg Bellferrix@mastodon.onlineAug 18, 2025, 11:54 PM@ricci all of computer science is directed apophenia, finding patterns that could at some point have come from /dev/random