5 ms·
I once swapped out a counter-based distributed routing system where the counters were not synchronizing quickly enough between nodes, with an RNG-based one. It
by gfody 9y ago
I once swapped out a counter-based distributed routing system where the counters were not synchronizing quickly enough between nodes, with an RNG-based one. It worked well for months until one fateful weekend when the client called in a panic, the distribution was going 100% one way causing a terrible catastrophe for them. It turned out the system was working properly but the RNG had a very long, extremely unlikely yet technically possible run of low numbers. To try and recover they had changed the weights from 20% to 80% and finally 99% to no avail, the RNG was dead set on fucking shit up that day and the day ended in disaster.
moral of the story: behind every RNG Cthulhu waits, sleeping.
- munificent 9y agohttp://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/Random-Number-God.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/Random-Number-God.html
- AceJohnny2 9y agoMore recently, in the Hearthstone online card game community: "RNJesus"
- slazaro 9y agoMore generally, this term is used in basically every game that has a big RNG component (lots of rogue-likes, for instance).
- zeveb 9y agoThis is a good example of where JadeNB's comment about it being dangerous to roll RNGs where it matters[0] applies. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16081264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16081264
- gfody 9y agoThat comment makes a good point but this was no home-rolled RNG. unif(0,1) simply came back less than 0.4 a few hundred times in a row, or the Random Number God demanded sacrifice and was propitiated (the client fired us and the RNG has behaved ever since).
- tzahola 9y agoYou should have used a low-discrepancy sequence with a random seed.
- FabHK 9y agoEarly versions of the Mersenne Twister were apparently susceptible to bad seeding with many zeros that it took a while to "random" itself out of.