Wait, this only generates losing numbers?
Yes. Winning numbers needed liability insurance I couldn't afford. Losing numbers are free.
Is this actually accurate, or is "hash your grocery list into lottery numbers" just a bit?
Both. The hashing (SHA-256, unbiased), the prices, and the historical draws are all real. The bit is that any of it matters — your hashed numbers are exactly as random, and exactly as losing, as ones you'd pick yourself.
How does this work?
Math.
No, really, how does it work?
Define "work."
Seriously?
Deterministically derived from your text via SHA-256 — same text, same lottery, same numbers, every time.
A ticket twice a week doesn't sound like much. Why does the app make such a big deal of "saving" it?
Mega Millions: $5 a ticket, twice a week, $520 a year. Put that in an index fund instead (not investment advice, nothing's guaranteed) and in 20 years you're looking at roughly $19,000–$24,000; in 30, more like $41,000–$59,000. Not a private jet — a real emergency fund, or most of a down payment. The lottery version of that same $520/year is, on average, negative. You're paying for the feeling of a chance, not the chance itself.
So is this app just financial literacy content wearing a costume?
Kind of, yeah. "Invest instead of gambling" is a sentence everyone's heard and ignored a billion times. Maybe six fake lottery balls and a losing streak counter land differently. If not, at least the balls were fun.
Isn't the lottery basically a tax on people who are bad at math?
No — and that's meaner than it sounds. Most players know the odds. They play anyway because a cheap shot at total financial transformation feels more available than "grind for thirty years toward a modest retirement," especially if you're already stretched thin. That's a rational response to bad options, not innumeracy. Blame the system that advertises hardest where people can least afford to lose — not the person buying the ticket.
What are my actual odds of winning the jackpot?
Depends on the lottery. Mega Millions: about 1 in 290,472,336 (Powerball: 1 in 292,201,338, for what that's worth). You're roughly 19,000x more likely to be struck by lightning at some point in your life than to hit one Mega Millions jackpot. The app's odds jokes aren't exaggerating — the real numbers already are.
Do people actually buy multiple tickets for the same drawing, or is "buying dozens" an exaggeration?
Not an exaggeration — closer to the median. A 2022 PlayPennsylvania survey found roughly two-thirds of players buy more than one ticket per drawing, and about a quarter buy five or more for a big jackpot. The magical thinking was never "buying a ticket" — it's believing five, or fifty, meaningfully improves your odds instead of just your losses. That's what your ticket history models: every ticket you generate keeps getting checked against every future drawing, so your numbers and your costs pile up together.
Does "Check My Numbers" actually check against real winning numbers?
Yes — for Powerball, Mega Millions, and EuroMillions, "Fetch Latest Draw" pulls real official results and checks your entire ticket history against them, including real prize amounts. "History Check" does the same against the last 10–104 real draws at once. Every other lottery lacks a reliable free API, so those stay manual-entry. No made-up data, ever.
Is my data being sent anywhere?
No. Everything — hashing, savings tally, badges, ticket history — lives in your browser's local storage. The only network calls fetch real lottery results, quotes, verses, recipes, and so on. Nothing about you or your input goes to a server, because there isn't one.
Okay, but what would you actually do with a billion dollars?
See the About page for the long version. Short: not a mansion — a few new enemies, acquired specifically to crush, and one (1) funeral for a stranger where I get to whisper something ominous.
Isn't it a little hypocritical to spend this whole app telling me to keep my $2, then ask for a tip at the bottom?
A little — and yes, that's exactly what someone asking for money would say. The difference is disclosure: the lottery sells 1-in-292-million odds while implying a coin flip. This app tells you the real odds, the real prices, then just asks. No manufactured hope, no jackpot fantasy. Just a link you can say no to.
Wait — isn't this whole app just your lottery ticket?
Yes, obviously. The odds this specific combination of hash functions and lottery balls "hits" — gets shared, gets a coffee-link click — aren't meaningfully better than the odds this app spends its whole existence mocking. I built a satire of magical thinking about money, then engaged in some myself. I see the bit. I'm doing it anyway. At least mine doesn't cost $2 to enter.
How much coffee have you actually had while building this?
The "buy me a coffee" link isn't funding a habit — it's subsidizing one that already exists, independently of you, and isn't stopping. I don't know the number. I know I don't want it cross-referenced against a resting heart rate.