Whether it’s a game of D&D or encrypting top-secret information, a wide array of methods are available for generating the needed random numbers with high enough entropy for their use case. For a ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Very little in this life is truly random. A coin flip is influenced ...

“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 ...

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 ...

Using a single, chip-scale laser, scientists have managed to generate streams of completely random numbers at about 100 times the speed of the fastest random-numbers generator systems that are ...

Lotteries, accidents and rolls of dice — the world around us is full of unpredictable events. Yet generating a truly random series of numbers for encryption has remained a surprisingly difficult task.