Instrumentation for the quantum random number generator in the NIST Boulder laboratories. Credit: NIST Randomness is incredibly useful. People often draw straws, throw dice or flip coins to make fair choices. Random numbers can enable auditors to make completely unbiased selections. Randomness is also key in security; if a password or code is an unguessable string of numbers, it's harder to crack. Many of our cryptographic systems today use random number generators to produce secure keys. But ho...