You are a wasting a lot of random bits this way, don't you? | Hacker News

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		eru on Sept 9, 2019 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Popcount CPU instruction You are a wasting a lot of random bits this way, don't you?

adtac on Sept 9, 2019 | [–]

Not if you already have 2^n bits at hand. In fact, if you have 2^n bits of entropy, popcount is probably more efficient than generating n more bits randomly.

JoachimSchipper on Sept 9, 2019 | [–]

Sure, but generating random bits is fast with e.g. AES-NI, RdRand or a software implementation of e.g. ChaCha.

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