Lava Lamps Are Keeping The Internet Secure

[@techquickie]

Create a Free Website with Odoo at www.odoo.com/r/XJIG

[@Dobrodoesthings]

THANKS LAVALAMP

[@I_billed_that_beard_guy]

THANKS LAVALOONS

[@I_billed_that_beard_guy]

OOPS LAVALAMPS

[@EDDY-to2hf]

what the heck that is clickbait AF

[@MTJ662]

nice try super didiy

[@anewbimproves5622]

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.

[@Mempler]

That's what the lava lamps are for. To pull out the true numbers

[@kaseyboles30]

The sales team however consults the lava lamps.

[@Diddz]

37 grand, 3.7k, 37 bucks, 370$, human guestimations have flaws that hard steer back into predictability, the number spit out has to be indiscriminately random. humans tend to avoid even numbers, numbers divisible by 2, 4, 8 etc., divide cleanly, or otherwise "feel" common when trying to produce a random number

[@stevenrburgoyne]

I literally had this conversation last month so this hits a little too hard ROFL

[@voodoonights1671]

😂this is actually true lol

[@Hellspooned2]

Tom Scott looks a bit different than usual today.

It's because of the blue shirt.

[@Hellspooned2]

Oh yeah, that does make sense.

[@rachmanfachri]

Came here for this kind of comment

[@taj1994]

_That's_ where I heard about this before. I knew I watched something on it, but couldn't remember who it was from. I was thinking Technology Connections for some reason. Lol

[@tanmayrai2003]

r/beatmetoit

[@christianbaer2897]

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.

[@ts757arse]

Indeed. The seed was a camera pointed at Picards fish. Fish are too slow and boring for this kind of work.

[@GuusKlaas]

@@ts757arse Joke's on you. The fish was assimilated all along. Just think of the dangers of assimilated marine live. Cetacean ops has been shown a bit recently, and with Xindi Aquatics also being a thing, assimilated marine life adds a whole new dimension to [coughs in Mike Meyers] "Sharks with friggin lasers on their heads"[/coughs in Mike Meyers]

[@Shinkajo]

NEEEEERD

[@christianbaer2897]

@@Shinkajo And proud of it 🤓

[@GuusKlaas]

@@christianbaer2897 Indeed!

[@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.

[@tiagobelo4965]

pretty cool, I'd also heard of TRNGs based on radio noise picked up from a few antennas (not sure if its on a non-assigned frequency or just picking up a bunch of stuff)

[@kaseyboles30]

Actually modern devices such a tpm's and cpu's have a trng generator in addition to being able to do prng (you can that in software). Diode noise is actually one of the methods used to generate trn's.

[@jrnvnjk]

Well, the CPU has an instruction for true randomness based on a on chip entropy source. The problem is, this instruction(RDRAND) takes 100 clock ticks. which is a very long time relative to other instructions. Because this instruction takes long and pseudorandomness is nice to have many times, the seed of the pseudoRNG is a true random number.

[@kaseyboles30]

@@jrnvnjk And modern trng algo's cannot be predicted any more than trn if you don't have the seed. If the seed is a trn then the algo output is as good as a trn.

[@jrnvnjk]

PRNG is nice for example if you build a procedural virtual world send the seed(created with TRNG) and the PRNG creates the same world without sending the world itself. It solves a lot of overhead. The TRNG instruction exists since 2012 in intel CPU's and since 2015 in amd CPU's so maybe some older software developers have missed it.

[@thezx5795]

lahva lamps

[@Cambone13]

That Canadian accent coming in strong

[@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

[@QueMusiQ]

How old and high ARE you? I’m 48 and friggin weird af (AuDHD) and never had not one lava lamp. 😂

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

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. 😅

[@Rov-Nihil]

Barring the possibility of quantum effects, it would effectively be deterministic. But reality is complex enough to have an insane amount of particles flowing to generate a sufficient amount of randomness (incl other physical complexity generators like third body) Throw in the quantum effects and you'll have a bathtub popping into existence in the middle of the Boötes Void lol

[@Nico1a5]

Of course reality is not random, but it happens fast and complex enough that you can't reproduce it

[@12thDim]

@@Nico1a5 As far as we can tell reality is random and deterministic behaviour mostly arises from a LOT of small chances of really small stuff.

[@Fraunzi]

42 eh, good one

[@michaelbaines8217]

I'd go for a strong Brownian motion producer, like a nice hot cup of tea.

[@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.

[@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

[@hooky17]

You should probably watch the full video before pointing out things that are already in it 🤣 but nonetheless, it is a fun fact

[@RyuuTenno]

@@hooky17 i did, but possibly zoned out in that spot, lol. probably should've jumped back to rewatch that section, lol

[@hooky17]

@@RyuuTenno haha no worries dude. Happens to all of us :)

[@MasterGeekMX]

Minecraft uses those pseudo-random number sequences to feed the terrain generation algorithm. That is the reason why world maps have a "seed", and sharing it means other players can generate the same world map.

[@Aeturnalis]

2:36 skip ad

[@skyera1n]

ReVanced has entered the chat

[@sleepykirbo6392]

@@skyera1n entered the chat to do what exactly?

[@skyera1n]

@@sleepykirbo6392 skips ads automatically including sponsorships and those "subscribe and like" bs

[@xMdb]

Use sponsor block

[@Whatwherewhy586]

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

[@plankera]

It’s a lot less energy than the servers handling the internet traffic. That’s 100 small incandescent bulbs vs. hundreds of servers with high performance processors. A small price to pay for an advanced random number generator.

[@Syntax_Break]

​@@plankera r/wooosh

[@plankera]

@@Syntax_Break Yes I get it’s a joke, but I was bored and chose to write an overly long reply debunking it anyway.

[@morsikpl]

Actually CF is very freaking inexpensive if you think what it gives to businesses... Just a few thousand bucks per month for DDoS protection and many other great enterprise features to protect and help organizing your infra? That's actually a bargain given that such enterprises spends literal millions a month on infrastructure.

[@ClellBiggs]

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

[@DefinitelyNotLegal]

Not to be that guy but this topic is kinda popular and well known everywhere, and by everywhere I mean my small internet echo chambers I'm most active in.

[@JoshWebb]

You're one of today's lucky 10,000! (XKCD reference)

[@_Cfocus]

me too

[@latrofu]

Tom Scott covered this years ago. Thanks for the refresher.

[@OrangeC7]

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

[@chuckthetekkie]

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

[@KrebsHD]

How many more Videos about this topic ... YES

[@philpots48]

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.

[@sackville_bagginsess]

(@enemyv has corrected me): I thought they stopped using the Lava wall?

[@WeightedPressurePlateOfficial]

Yeah what about it

[@theethicsofliberty4642]

If the need is merely a random source of data ... Wouldn't it be enough to just take some pictures of the sky to generate this data ???

[@addicted2caffeine]

​@@theethicsofliberty4642 not really, the sky is predictable. But the lava lamps are like using 100 sky's at the same time and it's unpredictable you might be able to predict 1second in advance but you can't predict 60s in the future for all of them

[@sackville_bagginsess]

@@WeightedPressurePlateOfficial Just strange techquickie have done a video on this old(?) tech

[@enemyv]

There's a post on the Cloudflare blog from March about them still using it, but adding additional sources of entropy alongside, like double pendulums and mobiles. I can't find anything about them no longer using it.

[@V1N_574]

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

[@bikeny]

Yeah, I came here to ask the same question.

[@linsetv]

@@bikeny Same lol

[@Coolman13355]

Which episode?

[@linsetv]

@ S16E1

[@какойтошизик]

What is NCIS?

[@Chilibo]

Well now I just want to chill in front of the lava lamp wall.

[@dedudedu5]

This was one of the most intresting videos i've seen. Good work lads!

[@la3692]

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

[@mjolnirsen]

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

[@peterpiotrowski932]

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

[@smallbutdeadly931]

My heart goes out to all those who are affected by D2 addiction. Get well soon 💕

[@erictayet]

OK, I'm buying a lava lamp to replace my keyboard! No wait....

[@jerrycapizzi2081]

One of the best Tqk videos ever!

[@SuperCartoonist]

This is how I come up with a Minecraft seed.

[@99mage99]

Brother, a 30 second ad read in a 4 minute video is absolutely diabolical lmao.

[@linsetv]

So Navy CIS didn't lie to me in that one episode?

[@KieranShort]

1:20 The number generator is the weak point.

[@guss77]

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.

[@jbragg33]

Very interesting, keep this type of videos coming !

[@etmasikewo]

This is crazy to learn! I am a happy knower of this factoid

[@mindmazejoyed]

3:02 the reason I don't trust password managers

[@Souma_Ditya]

Neuro's lava lamp

[@madson-web]

Developping for the 68K it was the first time I realized there's no such thing as random number in a computer

[@MikeWood]

I knew this, but glad for the distraction with recent US events encroaching everywhere.

[@vedanshchn]

That was super informative!

[@Phil_AKA_ThundyUK]

Rather than a lava lamp or radioactive material can I have a radioactive lava lamp?

[@mavfan1]

James is to “lahva” as Cumberbatch is to “pengwings”

[@davidgoodnow269]

Neat show, good topic.

[@Nathan15038]

As someone who used to live in San Francisco (SF) and still visit every once and awhile for family and friends yea I know about this and I've been there. Like the thing about this is they're so confident that this is secure that you could visit and see the wall or lava lamps.😂

[@ChibiSteak]

4:18 fin.

[@riccardobassini9452]

2:08 Colton? Fired

[@stormgear896]

At some point, they too will also try to reactivate a retired nuclear power plant to power their lava lamp number generator.

[@NerdyThrowbackTech]

Didn't expect this video

[@Mitsou44]

I think I saw this in NCIS. I tought it's a brilliant writing. But it seems it's real.

[@siderealofspace]

7 years since tom scott explained this.

[@Alexifeu]

I know. The countless videos of it have so many views.

[@StewChicken42]

McScruffins, you're a lava lamp. *Tissssssssssssssssss* 🔥 (😂 hahaha).

[@Nitrxgen]

🗿🗿🗿

[@MrYTGuy1]

i love this

[@bakutie]

huh thats pretty cool

[@Flipswix]

Really interesting stuff

[@Mac_auley]

Wasn't somebody working on software that used the temp sensor of the CPU as the seed? How secure would that be?

[@orlagh277]

Doesn't sound very secure to me, since temperature isn't random but dependent on the load. If a malicious program knows the algorithm, it can control the load on the CPU to change it's temperature to manipulate what seed is generated.

[@garthvater]

Yall should build a lava lamp wall to generate random minecraft seeds

[@suomi422]

I'm using radio noize catched with rtl-sdr as seed

[@vasiliigulevich9202]

How do you defend from radio attacks? A malicious actor could make the seed predictable with a powerful radio signal.

[@suomi422]

@@vasiliigulevich9202 you can burst as strong signal as you want, there is always some percentage of background noise and when you sum all this values, it will make the difference

[@TheOnlyName]

I wonder if anything would happen if someone took away all the lava lamps.

[@patrik5123]

Interesting. I thought Cloudflare stopped using them years ago, but kept them operating for nostalgia's sake.

[@omerakgoz34]

Video game cheat makers also use this same technique to predict the random behaviors of the game. For example, you can headshot people even when running, jumping and flying. Cuz the cheat program predicts where the bullets will go and adjusts the crosshair position to the shooting error value.

[@MediocreHexPeddler]

You don't even need that for most games, since most games' physics are vastly simpler, deterministic approximations of reality. It is computationally prohibitive to simulate exact mass values, force vectors, soft body physics, air resistance, drag, etc., on a human with clothing/armor and weapons jumping through the air, and it is similarly pointless, for the purpose of a video game, to simulate atmospheric effects on the motion of a bullet. You aren't simulating the air resistance, drag, drift from rotation, gravity, or wobbling of a bullet; rather, you have a specified value for initial maximum velocity, change in velocity over the lifetime of the rendered projectile or ray, and a rate of fall due to gravity, which, again, is not physically simulated, but is simply a number in the game engine. All of which is to say that reading an entity's motion vector and extrapolating where it will be along that path, and at what time and vector your own entity needs to input the fire command to intersect those two paths, is some relatively simple math. Add some more math to account for an offset to target a specific part of the entity at a specific range and physical orientation. That's all just variables in an equation. Making matters simpler is that many games use hitscan rather than physical simulation of projectile motion.

[@ts757arse]

Speedy thing goes in means speedy thing comes out.

[@omerakgoz34]

@@MediocreHexPeddler it's a online competitive game not a regular offline shooter game. That's why you have to predict bullet errors. You need to calculate and predict the exact randomness seeds.

[@scheimong]

There are lots of other good sources of randomness, for example, oh I don't know, steam rising from a boiling pot. So this is most likely a slightly practical PR stunt, or maybe an engineer just wanted an excuse to buy a couple hundred lava lamps with company budget. Probably both.

[@MmmNumNumz]

Wow that is actually pretty cool 😎

[@DrewWalton]

2017 called, it wants its news back.

[@smmmokin]

Interesting. I had no clue.

[@zeveroarerules]

Very Parks and Rec of them.

[@Pawcio2115]

Lava lamps are cool asf

[@vasiliigulevich9202]

They are, in fact, heated

[@YamiSpyro2011]

If i hadnt already heard of this i would be thinking you were smoking something

[@riderone8552]

Next level of entropy, three body problem.

[@Nuke_Skywalker]

there is a eurorack module that has a uranium stone in i, producing true random.

[@ezioassassin2028]

ok, but what if you use a use a seed generator to generate a seed, use the generated seed in a number generator, and then for next generation you feed that generated number back as the seed to the seed generator to generate a new seed for the number generator? edit: now that I think about it more, that might be prone to error because one seed might generate a number that may be a previously used seed that when fed back into the seed generator will create a cyclical predictable pattern

[@Griff_78]

With that shirt on and having a beard, I'm very disappointed that James didn't go full mirror universe Spock with his outfit. 🖖😐

[@rRecoveryProd]

oh, I thought the video would be about having a lava lamp at home helped somehow.

[@sdmitch16]

I bet if a voltage detector were programmed to output 10 decimal points of precision it would do so and most of the numbers would be random. CPUs and motherboards already have built in voltage detectors.

[@3zdayz]

Seems like a lot of extra work to somehow process the image in the image itself in the pattern of the pixels is going to be the random State anyway

[@colt5189]

Beam me up, James.

[@darkedgex]

As interesting as that is, it seems like a missed opportunity to at least mention RDRAND, which is/was an Intel (not sure if AMD ever bothered to implement this one) instruction that uses on-processor entropy to generate "truly" random numbers (IIRC it was based on a temp sensor).

[@Trifler500]

I don't know why it's so hard to get a lava lamp with red "lava" and a gold-color exterior.

[@Nobody-vr5nl]

Wait until ai simulates and finds the patern of lava lamps.

[@Drew_001]

This is actually pretty cool, a bit conspicuous, but cool nonetheless

[@kayanims]

This is a mathematical issue, a security as well as a social issue

[@JayfkProductions876]

My head hurts after listening that stuff about randomness

[@SteveMichaels]

I learned something new .. cool vid

[@kuromiLayfe]

If you also add in the position of each photon of each shade of color from each lava lamp in each image taken and the increasing resolution of each new generation of the camera’s used.. the seed string ends up beeing over a googleplex in lenght 😂. probably even longer than the full length of Pi. a 80 MP camera image might already give a seed with a billion characters in lenght.

[@HometownUnicorn]

They don't actually use regular old lava lamps that you can get on Amazon. They use the original mathmos ones which are the best ones and not the knockoff ones.

[@AngelusFlat]

Security theater. Every PC TPM, every phone SIM and every chip & pin credit card has a true random number generator on board, there's no need for lava lamps other than for marketing.

[@AdamsWorlds]

They could have just use a box of multicoloured shapes and shook the box every now and then.

[@ysolda9614]

The Incredibles makes more sense now

[@aidanaeternum]

They haven't used the lamps in a while

[@TheSliderW]

That's overkill and mostly a flex for shareholders and newspapers. They don't need to go that far if they're gonna feed it to a chain of algorithms anyway. I bet the developers added fallbacks that they rely on 100% of the time anyway in the background because of the stupidity of the lava lamp situation.

[@Mihnea729]

Cool !

[@FluxDev0]

Hi, guys i am quite a young person but i recently decide to get in development seriously so i was hoping the lmg guys could maybe recommend or even make a custom guide to linux

[@MikeDavies621]

You can make a True Random Number Generator (TRNG) out of a Zener diode and an Analog to Digital Converter, so why on earth would you do anything else ? Very many embedded microcontrollers have this type of TRNG built in and they are obviousy a lot more convenient than lava lamps...

[@cyxceven545]

Personally, I use the Antarctic Muon & Neutrino Detector Array. Cosmic RNG.

[@Hoerli]

Still have 2 Lava Lamps :D

[@TheOnlyName]

loll I heard about this - I was misled to thinking to thinking it was something with the lava lamps themselves, but it turns out it's just a picture of them xD I'm just curious if they actually move at all, not sure how lava lamps work, I'd think they really just move if someone shakes them but idk maybe they move a bit

[@Seansmit23]

No shoutout to Tom Scott who did this video also? tut tut

[@sosman64]

tom scott didnt invent lava lamps

[@cjgent]

@@sosman64 we know

[@grdprojekt]

Nothing is original. Linus never shouted out to whoever made pc build guide videos before him.

[@hooky17]

Erm… why should they? Does the first person to make a video on a topic have to be credited forever more?

[@elefth]

Yeah smh my head, can't believe that this channel also made a video on different cables didn't credit everyone else who made a video on cables 😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢

[@dotintegral]

Damn, now I want to get a lava lamp so bad!

[@privatename7634]

Tell me I can shut the power off and guess the encryption with an all black screen without telling me I can shut the power off and guess the encryption