Lava Lamps Are Keeping The Internet Secure

Cloudflare literally uses a wall of lava lamps to help power their encryption!

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[anewbimproves]

Cloudflare's real source of randomness is asking the sales team what price the Enterprise plan is. They get a wildly different and entirely random number every single time.

[Hellspooned]

Tom Scott looks a bit different than usual today.

[christianbaer]

This is how the Borg always adapted to changing phaser frequencies. The random generator was based on an algorithm. After a couple of shots and analysis, they calculated the seed and could predict the next frequency.
Resistence was futile.

[PrajjalakChattopadhyay]

I made a true random number generator (TRNG) using noise produced by a silicon diode, as my term paper project for the statistical mechanics course. All computer-based RNGs are pseudo random number generators (PRNGs). If you know the initial conditions, you can reproduce the "random" numbers exactly in sequence.

[Voltaic_Fire]

I actually knew about this but it is always nice to get a refresher on the important things.

[Goldomnivore]

Lava lamps are pretty cool. I used to have one as a kid. I'll always be looking at it

[RyuuTenno]

fun part with the lava lamps: the company who uses them, actually wants people to go up and interact with them. So it makes things even *more* secure as a result, due to causing interference and adding more randomness into the mix. So if you wanted to break dance in front of them they'd be completely cool with it, lol

[GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket]

A computer is designed to be reliable and consistent, asking it to generate a random number is like asking a engine to both misfire and run smoothly at the same time. One of the main things we focused on in programming class was sourcing a "random" number, it's essentially impossible unless you use an external source like the lava lamp, or the uranium, decay; you know something natural.

[wertywerrtyson]

What if there is no truly randomness. Everything that happens might just be because of our world seed. Maybe that’s why the answer to everything is 42. It is our seed number. 😅

[Whatwherewhy]

Thats why CF is so expensive! It aint cheap to run lava lamps 24/7

[sackville_bagginsess]

I thought they stopped using the Lava wall?

[VN_]

So the episode of NCIS was based on a real thing? WTF!?

[ClellBiggs]

Wow, you guys actually covered something I've never heard of before.

[mjolnirsen]

Holy shit. That's dope af! And I learned wtf "natural entropy" is too! 😂😂🤣🤣🤣

[la]

NCIS did a episode saying the exact same thing I thought it was a joke😂

[OrangeC]

Seeing this video is making me want to go back to Tom Scott's video about it and watch it again

[guss]

Geigering a chunk of naturally decaying uranium is actually much better for the health and long life of humans: the natural decay produces a completely safe amount of slow moving neutrons and isn't significantly more dangerous than the background radiation. Taking a flight is more dangerous, and if you still worry - you can put the uranium and counter is a box lined with thin lead sheets, or in a room with concrete walls - both effectively stop any extra radiation. On the other hand, lava lamps consume a ton of power (on the order if 1000W per device), produce a lot of heat - that you then need to get rid of by using AC, and all that power usually comes from fossil burning power plants - that damage the atmosphere and your lungs - and even if not, that power could have been used for something more useful, like driving an EV around, instead of an ICE vehicle.

[chuckthetekkie]

I actually knew this thanks to NCIS S16 E1 back in 2018.

[philpots]

I was a programmer in the 70s and the games on the main frame used the clock function for randomness and one program would rearrange several 3, 600 byte strings of letters and use the time value to pick where in the string to get a character, then take its ASCII value as the random number. We never noticed a pattern in the game playing.

[peterpiotrowski]

Destiny 2 just had “weight-gate” where the D2 community uncovered an issue with the randomness of weapon perk drops. The algorithm used was not making truly random rolls and is being fixed now. Small gaming example of the limitation of pseudorandomness