Saw this recently in the chess program Stockfish. Worth a look? Better randomness than MT:
"This patch replaces RKISS by a simpler and faster PRNG, xorshift64* proposed by S. Vigna (2014). It is extremely simple, has a large enough period for Stockfish's needs (2^64), requires no warming-up (allowing such code to be removed), and offers slightly better randomness than MT19937." Paper: http://xorshift.di.unimi.it/ Reference source code (public domain): http://xorshift.di.unimi.it/xorshift64star.c On Jan 14, 2015, at 9:43 AM, Ian Shaw wrote: > How about simplifying life and offering only Mersenne Twister, manual and, > possibly, file dice? > > GnuBg and other bots are now mature programmes, and think we need to go to > the same lengths to convince people that the dice are fair. Sure, there will > always be some doubters, but such people won't be convinced by anything. No > established player has qualms. > > Multiple dice algorithms just feels like feature bloat to me, to no benefit. > For example, rollouts always use MT, and, when posted on the forums I read, > there has never been a query raised. > > Getting rid of the other algorithms would simplify the code, the UI and the > rollout export data, not to mention the https issues you've been debating. > > -- Ian > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] [mailto:bug- >> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael >> Petch >> Sent: 14 January 2015 10:11 >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: [Bug-gnubg] The future of Windows builds / Https etc. >> >> Howdy All, >> >> First off Random.org admins have given GNUBG a bit of a reprieve. They are >> allowing us to use http for the time being to retrieve numbers as we have >> been doing. Thanks to Thomas Moulton on this mailing list for getting the >> Random.org admins in contact with me. >> >> For the time being we are okay. >> >> There are issues building a number of libraries on the old tool chain and >> development environment that I use for Windows production builds. I am >> using an outdated environment from the latter 2000s. I was using >> MSYS/MinGW. >> >> I managed to set up an experimental build environment with the forked >> version of MSYS - MSYS2 along with a MinGW tool chain. >> >> The build of GNUbg wasn't perfect and the source code and configure >> processing will have to be tweaked for a number of issues. I encountered >> some issues with Python that have to be overcome as well as errors when >> compiling with 3D boards. I was able to produce a 2D version that worked >> reasonably well. >> >> The good news was that I was able to build libcurl with a gnutls backend with >> minimal fuss. I was able to create test code that could queries random.org >> with https without any problems. This combination doesn't generate >> licensing issues. >> >> It will be 2-3 weeks before I can get everything ironed out. I am busy with >> other things so I can't devote a lot of time to get this environment set up >> properly and changes to the code made right away. >> >> Thanks, >> -- >> Michael Petch >> GNU Backgammon Maintainer / Developer >> OpenPGP FingerPrint=D81C 6A0D 987E 7DA5 3219 6715 466A 2ACE 5CAE 3304 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Bug-gnubg mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnubg > > _______________________________________________ > Bug-gnubg mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnubg _______________________________________________ Bug-gnubg mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnubg
