The method used to generate the digits, a pair of 555 timers sending pulses through linear-feedback shift registers, would at best be considered pseudo-random.

Feel free to share your theories on the best random number generator designs below, or send your best builds straight to the tipsline. Randomly, of course!

But the random number generator they built was, they reasoned, still useful. So Haahr made it public at random.org, where it has been churning out random numbers ever since. It gets a lot of visitors.

A perfectly provable random number generator is the bedrock of good cryptography. This scientist wants to make one.

That means that even if some enemy understands everything about how the random number generator works, they still can’t predict the outcome.