system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: When you have a computer program randomize/pick something at random, what are you actually telling the computer to do?
gpt
The random function in C basically follows this algorithm:

>To get the next random number, multiply the last random number by something, add a number to it, and then take the last few digits.

If the first number every time is the same, the rest of the sequence will be the same. To overcome this, we seed this function i.e. provide it a random starting point usually by setting the initial number to the system time (in integer format).