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Ken on early Unix rand generator (tuhs.org)
3 points by fisheuler on May 8, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments


Only tangentially related but I like how openbsd basically said f that noise and made rand(3) actually random.

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=141807224826859


Also, all those standards and docs would not say which sequence you were supposed to get, or if it would be the same values for different libcs, different OSes, 32-vs-64 bit cpus, little -vs- big endian and so forth, so if you sent a source to a program that depended on the output being a certain sequence, the next person with not-exactly-the-same-machine would probably not get that exact sequence anyhow.




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