Generating a string of random numbers is easy. The hard part is proving that they’re random. As Dilbert creator Scott Adams once pointed out, “that’s the problem with randomness: you can never be sure ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. There’s are plenty of things you shouldn’t leave up to random ...

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 ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Researchers have built the fastest random-number generator ever made, using a simple laser. It exploits fluctuations in the intensity of light to generate randomness—a coveted resource in applications ...

In February 2013, Eric Loomis was found driving a car that had been used in a shooting. He was arrested, and pleaded guilty to eluding an officer. In determining his sentence, a judge looked not just ...

Security company RSA was paid $10 million to use the flawed Dual_EC_DRBG pseudorandom number generating algorithm as the default algorithm in its BSafe crypto library, according to sources speaking to ...

Because computers don't understand words or phrases in the same way people can, they speak a language of their own, using only two symbols: 0 and 1. This computing parlance is known as binary code, ...