Over the years, multiple studies have found that Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine was returning not-so-random numbers when you called the Math.random() function. Today that’s been fixed, with the ...

NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder have created a public service that delivers random numbers using quantum mechanics. Called the Colorado University Randomness Beacon (CURBy), the system ...

What do you do, when you need a random number in your programming? The chances are that you reach for your environment’s function to do the job, usually something like rand() or similar. This returns ...

If your name gets picked for jury duty, it’s because a computer used a random number generator to select it. The same goes for tax audits or when you opt for a quick pick lottery ticket. But how can ...

Many languages feature a random number generator library for help with tasks like rolling a die or flipping a coin. Why, you may ask, is this necessary when humans are perfectly capable of randomly ...

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 ...

Random numbers are useful beasts, in particular for cryptographers who use them to generate their codes. But how best to make random numbers at useful speeds? The question is intimately linked to the ...

Peter Bierhorst’s machine is no pinnacle of design. Nestled in the Rocky Mountains inside a facility for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the photon-generating behemoth spans an ...