Cloudflare uses lava lamps as a random number generator (opens in new tab)

I'm now looking forward to a future article from security researchers:

"Prediction of a random stream from a lava lamp model constructed from entropic data inferred from encrypted packets"

So they created a giant side-channel by putting their entropy-source next to a public window?

I would use plasma spheres (e.g. [0], but there are lots of them out there). A single plasma sphere generates a visual display that changes much faster and is much less predictable moment-to-moment than a lava lamp -- so you wouldn't need nearly so many of them -- and uses much less power into the bargain.

[0] https://www.scientificsonline.com/product/nebula-plasma-ball

Is this a perfect rng at the current state of technology? If not, why and are there currently perfect ones. What would an rng require to be perfect?

Nothing new here, move along.

This was first done by SGI ages ago...

joe