On 6/21/16, 1:43 PM, "Fleshgrinder" <p...@fleshgrinder.com> wrote:

>Yes, let's ask the users! But we don't do that, we just discuss it here.
>Howe could we create such a poll that reaches many people? Maybe Reddit?

Perhaps you misunderstand what I intended by leaving the choice to users.
If we add a new RNG and keep the existing ones then each user can make an
independent choice.


>That being said, I repeat myself now, nikic also proposed to deprecate
>rand() and having pcg_rand() as a modern replacement for mt_rand()

I admire O'Neill's work and her paper and I find the generators and
related theory very interesting. I'm not sure they are sufficiently well
scrutinized and tested. Afaik, the status of this work is: there's an
unpublished paper, a web site, some implementations and a conversation on
reddit. Among other things, O'Neill makes claims about suitability for
crypto. If PHP choses PCG as is its new RNG, that constitutes a strong
endorsement and wonder who among us can confirm the work.

I think there's also an argument against using an RNG that makes specific
unpredictability claims since this confuses the distinction between it and
random_bytes(). People may think that once seeded it's a fast alternative.

Tom



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