[a1369209993]

> is it still an OK practice to use it as a general hashing function for a uuid/data checksum?

No. If you don't care about collision resistance, use MD5. It's faster, it's smaller, and it makes it obvious to everyone than your software isn't supposed to rely on collision resistance.

[mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE]

No. MD5 is a cryptographic hash function. For the purposes stated one uses a non-cryptographic hash function, such as seahash. The difference is the latter is much faster but does not provide protection against an intentional collision.

[a1369209993]

1: MD5 still provides preimage resistance (both first and second), which is sometimes useful.

2, and my real objection:

  $ md5sum /dev/null
  d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e  /dev/null
  $ seahashsum /dev/null
  <stdin>:2:0: seahashsum: command not found

That said, my main point was don't use SHA-1, because if you actually need a half-broken hash function for something, MD5 has all the same properties (good and bad) for cheaper.