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saithoundlast Saturday at 3:45 PM3 repliesview on HN

Ah yes, Xorshift, the RANDU [1] of the 21st century [2].

There is no real use case for better non-CS generators, as explained by adrian_b back in 2021 [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RANDU [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10020 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28886698


Replies

moregristlast Saturday at 4:17 PM

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make, exactly, but a use case for better non-CS generators has always been stochastic simulation, especially simulation/sampling approaches that are bound by the number and quality of uniform variates per second.

As someone who has spent considerable time working in these areas, I still appreciate advances.

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kevin_thibedeautoday at 4:33 AM

> no real use case

Yes there is. Not every system has the need or the resources to maintain a secure random sequence. You may also want a reproducible pseudo-random sequence in generative code that logs the seeds. Because of the misguided attitude that nobody needs these features, everyone who does need them has to roll their own now.

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malletslast Saturday at 9:20 PM

I don't know about all that, but I use Marsaglias for generating noise samples in MCUs like Pico. It's the fastest option there is for such devices.

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