A new laser’s chaotic light beam lets the device generate multiple number sequences at once, similar to throwing multiple dice at a time.

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 new random number generator that uses a micro laser developed by researchers at NTU Singapore is a hundred times faster than computer-based systems.