alt Hacker NewsIf I understand it the Lava lamps are 90% PR/fun. They have a lot of other sources for entropy that scales better.
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pverheggen • yesterday at 8:38 PM
Yes, they also have wave machines, pendulums, and mobiles :)
https://blog.cloudflare.com/harnessing-office-chaos/
https://blog.cloudflare.com/chaos-in-cloudflare-lisbon-offic...
euroderf • yesterday at 6:57 PM
Ant farm ? Hamster wheels ? Anything critter-driven should provide some entropy.
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The original from SGI back in the mid 90's, before CPUs had RDRAND instructions etc... was a an actually practical solution.
At the time I was at the Internet company that originally got online-gaming banned in the US, we were looking at CCDs and Cesium emitters that required a license etc...
While I am not sure, it seems cloudflare basically implemented one after SGI's[0] patent expired.
The patent and the licensing cost and adding SGI was a major blocker for us doing it, the startup closed before we found a real solution. But the best PRNGs like Blum Blum Shub were way too slow at the time. But things did improve quickly at that time.
[0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US5732138A/en