5 ms·
Aren't most PRNs made deterministically? LCGs can have huge cycle times and can produce statistically sound random numbers. I had to look it up and Wikipedia h
by roaur 6y ago
Aren't most PRNs made deterministically? LCGs can have huge cycle times and can produce statistically sound random numbers.
I had to look it up and Wikipedia has this statement a bit differently. This one makes Neumann sound funny because his Mid-Square method is a terrible PRN generator.
- kd5bjo 6y ago> Aren't most PRNs made deterministically? All pseudorandom numbers are deterministic; that’s what the ‘pseudo-‘ prefix is meant to indicate. There are other kinds of random number generator that observe physical entropy sources instead. Perhaps the most iconic is CloudFlare’s wall of lava lamps[1]. [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the-nitty-gritty-technical-details/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the-nitty...
- _jal 6y agoHistory trivia: Cloudflare stole this from SGI, who patented the idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand
- kens 6y ago> Cloudflare stole this from SGI, who patented the idea. Why the accusation that Cloudflare stole this? The patent expired in 2016 and Cloudflare acknowledges SGI on their page.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jgrahamc 6y agoHardly stole it, literally acknowledged in blog post where we announced this: https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the-nitty-gritty-technical-details/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the-nitty... We're not the first ones to do this. Our LavaRand system was inspired by a similar system first proposed[1] and built by Silicon Graphics and patented[2] in 1996 (the patent has since expired). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US5732138 https://patents.google.com/patent/US5732138
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- _jal 6y agoCalm down. I'm hardly accusing anyone of any wrong-doing. It is a turn-of-phrase that I'm sure most english-speakers have encountered.
- geoelectric 6y agoIt has a very different connotation when you say "I'm stealing..." than it does when you say "you're stealing..." It's only jargon in first-person. Compare saying "wow, I'm really stupid" when you make a mistake vs. saying "wow, you're really stupid" when they do. Self-deprecation applied to others is just deprecation.
- ogogmad 6y agoPRNGs are often seeded with a "true" random value, from which they generate a sequence of pseudorandom values. In that case, you actually end up with a hybrid of random and deterministic. An example of this is `/dev/urandom`.