That's interesting as it is also visible with a crontab -l so that new scripts can avoid using the same second. However, if you have a farm of machines with the same hardcoded value, they will all still stampede at the same time just not at the top of the minute. By allowing a random value, their start times are slightly offset with in the minute. Is the precise 60s consistent interval really that critical or just that each machine checks once per minute-ish?