A wall of lava lamps helps encrypt the internet

Virtually any sensor measuring real world data will be imprecise in the last 1-4 bits. Take 256 raw samples from virtually any real world sensor, run the raw data through SHA-256, voila, you have 256 random bits that's secure against the overwhelming majority of hackers. Take 256,000 samples, run the raw data through SHA-256, now you have 256 random bits that's secure against the NSA.

Cameras are great for this, but first you have to ensure that you're getting the raw data and not an image processed with HDR or jpeg compression or whatever special sauce Google/Apple do these days, and you also have to test to ensure that the image isn't overexposed. If it's an 8 bit sensor and all pixels are pegged at 255 you don't have useful randomness. Although the opposite isn't true: it's impossible to peg all pixels at 0. You'll always get values of 1-10 or so with the same pixels fluctuating +/- 1 or so, even in a perfect darkroom with perfect insulation from cosmic rays and background radiation.

The average smartphone is packed full of gadgets that could be used to generate random data after running it through whitening. Accelerometers, magnetic compass, capacitance of each pixel of the touch sensor, all the radio antennas pulling atmospheric noise, (CDMA, GSM, GPS, bluetooth ...) microphone, camera...

The lava lamps themselves might make the process more efficient, because now some of the higher order bits are random as well. But honestly, from a realistic security standpoint... they're just as well off taking pictures of a blank, uniformly lit white wall. As long as they do whitening properly.

edit: It's still super cool though. Just not... in terms of temperature. It's probably really hot.

If the former - my question would be - surely you, as a security expert, would agree that a hardware random generator is more secure than a software based one (PseudoRandomNumberGenerator or DeterministicRandomBitGenerator)?

If the latter - why does the way in which they use a hardware generator matter as long as it provides some utility and advantage over a software-based one which has a deterministic set of numbers?

But do they provide any greater advantage or greater utility to your "science projects" other than being cheaper to run? What do higher rates and higher reliability have to do with being able to create a non-deterministic and thus truly random bit? In other words, how on earth would a hacker even conceivably be able to hack the lava lamp setup?