With the help of a microcontroller, a few strings of GE Color Effect Christmas lights can be easily turned into a fully programmable LED strip, or if you are so inclined, a huge RGB LED display.

Lotteries, accidents and rolls of dice — the world around us is full of unpredictable events. Yet generating a truly random series of numbers for encryption has remained a surprisingly difficult task.

An international team of physicists has created the first system that can produce verifiably random numbers. The technique relies on the inherent uncertainties in quantum mechanics and future versions ...