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by dalke 3732 days ago
In addition, the described algorithm "is on-line - that is, it requires no preprocessing and can generate each element of the sample in constant expected time." (Quoting from the original paper.) It needs only an upper bound on the number items, while your suggestion requires knowing the number beforehand.

You also need an MLCG over the range 0..2^64-1 to match the given algorithm. I believe that requires some extra code to handle potential overflow in a MLCG, so adds a few more lines to your estimate.