Random number generation with lava lamps

Tom Scott explains how Cloudflare uses a wall of lava lamps to generate random numbers. A video camera is pointed at the wall, and the movement in the lamps plus noise from the video provides randomness, which is used to secure websites.

Even though computers can do many things on their own, they still need help from the physical world for true unpredictability. The robot overlords aren’t here yet. [via kottke]

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A million dollars vs. a billion visualized with a road trip

A million dollars. A billion dollars. The latter is 1,000 times more than the former. Just add a few zeros, right? Tom Scott used a road trip to visualize the actual difference in scale.

Scott starts by setting the baseline of a million dollars with a short, one-minute walk. Stack one million dollar bills after the other and it’s about the length of a football field. Stack one billion, and he has to drive for an hour.

Oh scale, you are a tricky thing.

It reminds me of the scaled solar system a few years ago. Earth was sized as a marble, and distance and the size of everything else was scaled accordingly.

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