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[–] 15 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

Is there actually a downside to just, typing a random string of numbers manually over a number generator?

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  • [–] 43 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

    Yes, typing randomly isn't actually as random as it could be, so a generator will do a better job.

    However mashing the keyboard is absolutely better than literally just "4" lol

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago

    Generators aren't intrinsically random either, the project that's closest to random is the lava light room at cloud flare. But a wall of lamalamps aren't random enough, so they add in a few parameters from the moon.

    But ultimately, it's not truly random.

    Most generators are magnitudes simpler than that and honestly mashing everything at random yourself does a pretty good job at it. Especially if you smash too many characters and then scrambles it before picking a sequence without thought. As the biggest issue with manual button smashing, is the same character either won't appear twice in a row ever or will always appear multiple in a row. Not to talk about special letters, which you likely wouldn't hit - although we could make larger keyboards for the lulz

    Ultimately random generators is just a simpler/faster solution, but there's ways of doing something as randomly by hand

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  • [–] [S] 10 points 2 weeks ago

    Aside from humans being terrible random number generators, not as such.

    It's better to seed a CSPRNG with a source of entropy though. E.g. there are tools that let you enter the result of many dice rolls and use it to generate a key.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)
  • [–] 21 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    I'm not random enough? But I was holding up a spork! From my Invader Zim bag!

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