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A comment on Hyrum's Law. Parent comment

Re:Hyrum's Law by camel-cdr on Friday October 21, 2022 @04:09AM (#33285698)
Sounds a great, I'll keep that in mind when I need a source of randomness next. No need to work with the ugly <random> interface, when the API I already use, gives me randomness. I sure hope they never change this lovely feature.
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Re:Hyrum's Law by amelius on Friday October 21, 2022 @04:30AM (#33285861)
This is not a good idea because Chaos monkey will use a non uniform distribution that is time variant.
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Re:Hyrum's Law by charcircuit on Friday October 21, 2022 @04:35AM (#33285890)
He never specified he needed uniform randomness.
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Re:Hyrum's Law by amelius on Friday October 21, 2022 @06:32AM (#33286529)
Generally when using a random number generator, you will want to know the distribution and behavior through time.

Without knowing anything, the RNG could generate all 0s one day, and all 1s the next day, which most people would consider a very bad and worthless RNG.

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Re:Hyrum's Law by charcircuit on Friday October 21, 2022 @10:37AM (#33288418)
That is why rng whitening algorithms exist.
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Re:Hyrum's Law by amelius on Friday October 21, 2022 @11:28AM (#33289046)
They will not work if the distribution is time-variant.
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Re:Hyrum's Law by lupire on Friday October 21, 2022 @10:01AM (#33288080)
Good libraries are random on non-guaranteed parameters (like sort order) so they client tests detect that non-guaranteed immediately and clients don't depend on non-guarantees.
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