Encryption systems rely on “random” numbers, but conventional computers can’t generate them perfectly. New research shows that quantum physics can.

Generating random numbers might seem like a trivial task, that is until the numbers need to be truly random for cryptography or security reasons. When that’s the case, it turns out that these numbers ...

Sometimes you need random numbers — and properly random ones, at that. Hackaday Alum [Sean Boyce] whipped up a rig that serves up just that, tasty random bytes delivered fresh over MQTT. [Sean] tells ...

There will be an app for that: making random numbers on a mobile phone. (Courtesy: Marketa Michalkova) Do you feel nervous when you make a credit-card transaction using your mobile phone? Your worries ...

Random numbers are commonly used for data encryption, selecting random samples for research, and of course, for lotteries and gambling. Mads Haahr, moderator and operator of random.org, a random ...

Randomness is incredibly useful. People often draw straws, throw dice or flip coins to make fair choices. Random numbers can enable auditors to make completely unbiased selections. Randomness is also ...

“This is a marvelous step” toward more efficient random number generation, says Rajarshi Roy, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park who was not involved in the work. Random number ...

Quantum random number generators (QRNGs) produce genuine randomness based on the inherent unpredictability of quantum mechanics. They have important applications in quantum information processing and ...

To simulate chance occurrences, a computer can’t literally toss a coin or roll a die. Instead, it relies on special numerical recipes for generating strings of shuffled digits that pass for random ...

A team of international scientists has developed a laser that can generate 254 trillion random digits per second, more than a hundred times faster than computer-based random number generators (RNG).