Re:You Don't Need UUID
by konschubert on Monday September 11, 2023 @02:46PM
(#37471801)
Just use the first N characters of the UUID if you want a shorter version of the UUID.
And if you want to be really human friendly, use one of those silly name generators.
> it's this lengthy (2^32)
UUIDs are 128 bits, so it's 2^128 rather than 2^32
Re:You Don't Need UUID
by Nullabillity on Monday September 11, 2023 @03:08PM
(#37472173)
There is no fundamental tech advance that caa make the birthday paradox irrelevant or obsolete, and there never will be.
all of cryptocurrency relies on sha256 the fact that the space is huge, and just ignores collisions. seems to work fine.
Re:You Don't Need UUID
by Nullabillity on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @06:03AM
(#37478868)
SHA-256 has, well, 256 bits of entropy. What I took issue with was the claim that UUID's 128 bits (well, almost, anyway) are overkill with modern advances in randomness.
There have been so many incidents in crypto that exploited broken assumptions about hash collisions.
Factually, X != hash(X). Sometimes you can make the simplifying assumption that X == hash(X), but only in well-defined contexts, subject to proper risk analysis; never in general, or as a presumption of a system that needs to be correct.
The good thing about UUID is that it's omnipresent. From what I've heard, it's this lengthy (2^32) because it was hard to guarantee uniqueness when it was conceived in the telecom industry. The length is overkill, and per se, that's fine, but the fact that it dampers communication is awful.
That all said, since posting this, I've come to terms with accepting that it's part of life ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
P.S. Using a second human-friendly ID to end-users is an alternative adopted by some projects. However, most projects don't bother, and also, most good IDs you might want to share with people would make UUID unnecessary anyways (in practice).