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 ...

Do you feel nervous when you make a credit-card transaction using your mobile phone? Your worries could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to a low-cost device that could bring powerful cryptography ...

(Nanowerk Spotlight) The generation of random numbers – the generation of a sequence of numbers or symbols that cannot be reasonably predicted better than by a random chance – usually is done through ...

Fast randomness A diagram of the quantum random number generator on the photonic integrated chip. (Courtesy: Bing Bai and Yao Zheng) Smartphones could soon come equipped with a quantum-powered source ...

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 ...

A truly random number is something that is surprisingly difficult to generate. A typical approach is to generate the required element of chance from a natural and unpredictable source, such as ...

Take a look at Champernowne’s Constant. It’s a ridiculously easy sequence to make, and yet it fooled programs designed to root out underlying order in seemingly random numbers. David Gawen ...