A photo of a cake with 8 candles in a row. The first and fifth candle from the right are lit. The caption reads "Happy 17th Birthday"
Don't grow older than 255 or else it will overflow
A photo of a cake with 8 candles in a row. The first and fifth candle from the right are lit. The caption reads "Happy 17th Birthday"
78 Comments
raman_klogius@ani.social · 107 pts · 176d
Very optimistic to have an 8th candle
bricked@feddit.org · 162 pts · 176d
The candles are only available in packs of 8. It's the smallest addressable unit of wax in many cake architectures
humanamerican@lemmy.zip · 37 pts · 176d
Last birthday party I was at I just wanted a nibble of cake but they told me I had to take one or more bites.
tetris11@feddit.uk · 5 pts · 176d
I'd have a few words with them, kick them right up their rear endian
ITGuyLevi@programming.dev · 4 pts · 176d
I usually just gather a nibble by picking up a couple crumbs... I'll see myself out.
raman_klogius@ani.social · 21 pts · 176d
Maybe this is a signed cake, so one can celebrate negative birthdays of people who aren't born yet. 🤔
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 176d
Light all the candles as an announcement that you're gonna start having kids and hope she'll get pregnant in exactly three months. Not in 2, not in 4, but in 3 precisely.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 175d
You win Lemmy, I need this one explained.
Aedius@lavraievie.social · 3 pts · 175d
@CanadaPlus
Because if you add 1 to 1111111 it will overflow and give 0000000 so you have to have the baby in 1 year exactly
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 175d
Ahh, because of the 9 month gestation. 9+3=12
I thought this was about some kind of obscure subnormal float convention or something.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 174d
Longer explanation:
Because most computers use two's complement to make negative numbers. To produce -x, you take x, flip all the bits, and then add 1. Conveniently, this process works both ways, so if you have an
intwith a positive MSB, i.e.1*******, that's a negative number, and if you invert and add 1, you get the positive number.So if you take
11111111, and apply this process, you get00000001, which equals 1. Thus,11111111= -1Secondly, the gestation period of humans is 9 months, and there are 12 months in a year.
So if you have binary candles and all of them lit, that can suggest, which it does in my previous comment, that you're celebrating a child's -1st birthday.
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 176d
Given that typical gestation time is less than one year, that involves some planning and determination.
palordrolap@fedia.io · 1 pts · 176d
Although a processor might be nominally capable of accessing a bus of a certain width, it does not mean that all address or data lines need be connected.
glibg10b@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 175d
That's the sign bit. The cake is in two's complement
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world · 75 pts · 176d
Old man's last words on his 256th birthday: "Unhandled IntegerU8OverflowException, terminating application."
vrek@programming.dev · 30 pts · 176d
Why do I confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because Oct 31 is the same as Dec 25
oce@jlai.lu · 7 pts · 175d
Octal 31 = 3 x 8^1^ + 1 x 8^0^ = 24 + 1 = Decimal 25
vrek@programming.dev · 2 pts · 174d
Just curious since you seem knowledgeable, is there a connection between those societies? Or is it just chance they both choose 8?
oce@jlai.lu · 1 pts · 174d
I am not knowledgeable about this, I just checked the Wikipedia page to confirm my understanding of the joke and found these very interesting historical uses.
flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 176d
Ha🤣, that's great (once I was already thinking in binary/non-Dec numerals)
vrek@programming.dev · 4 pts · 176d
There is another joke there regarding the movie nightmare before Christmas but I'm not smart enough to figure it out.
ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip · 30 pts · 176d
33 was a special year for me because it's the same forwards and backwards both in decimal and binary
meow@discuss.tchncs.de · 10 pts · 176d
1 is asswell :3
Zier@fedia.io · 14 pts · 176d
If 1 is asswell, then 2 is assgood, and 3 is the beginning of an orgy.
HairyHarry@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 176d
00100001
Am I being dumb? How ist that the same forward and backwards?
wieson@feddit.org · 23 pts · 176d
If you drop leading zeros as you would in decimal
HairyHarry@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 176d
Damn. I AM dumb.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 20 pts · 176d
I'd actually quite like an overflowing cake thank you very much
xyx@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 176d
thinking of getting older than 255?
PartyAt15thAndSummit@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 176d
How about 4294967295?
xyx@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 176d
with 8 bit? true, with 32 bit you might have a chance to see the sun die, but.... there are just 8 candles
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 175d
64 bits and you get to watch heat death slowly set in. (Or, y'know, cosmological catastrophe depending on the full physics)
itkovian@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 176d
I will grow older than 255 because then it will overflow and I become 0 years old.
galacticbackhoe@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 176d
I only buy ipv6 cakes, so I'm good.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 4 pts · 175d
You probably know, but someone is going to point out an ipv4 address is four bytes.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 176d
Heh I've been making my wife do this since my 32nd birthday.
She still doesn't understand binary and thinks I'm a nerd when I try to explain it to her.
Maybe this year, when it's 1+8+32, things will click.
regdog@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 176d
Who counts from right to left?
Is this image mirrored?
bricked@feddit.org · 58 pts · 176d
You will be surprised to hear that this is how we read decimal numbers too
ArrowMax@feddit.org · 27 pts · 176d
Even in decimal, the most-significant digit is to the left. Binary in text form is no exception to this.
Unless we are talking little-endian, which would start with the least-significant bit.
sfbing@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 176d
Anyone who opens their egg on the small end deserves to be removed from our society.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 176d
Now that you mention it it is pretty fucky, but in every textbook thats tried to teach me counting in binary its gone from right to left.
calcopiritus@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 176d
It's not. Numbers are arranged (both binary and base 10) with the most significant digit on the left.
Whether you read the number from left to right or right to left is irrelevant and you can choose whichever one you want.
But it is completely consistent with base 10 (normal numbers).
illpillow@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 176d
Same here. University told me the lowest bit is on the right, the highest on the left. Never questioned it.
RustySharp@programming.dev · 12 pts · 176d
In kindergarten I was taught when reading the number 123, the lowest digit is on the right, and the highest on the left. Never questioned it either.
Osprey@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 176d
adb@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 176d
Binary exists in both
big-endianLSb orlittle-endianMSb. In other words, both directions can be valid.As explained below: Endianness is specifically the order of bytes. I was under the impression that it also implied a specific order of bits but anyways, the correct terms for this discussion is Least/Most Significant bit order.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 176d
Ya, but we pretty much always write it with most significant on the left. The endianness is more to do with the order transmitted when serialized. Or are there cases where people actually write it backwards?
adb@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 175d
The way I see it, if you want to be pedantic about it (it being a joke photo, so potentially unintentionally reversed by the camera, of a cake which is in 3d space and can be seen in both directions) you might as well do it properly and acknowledge that different orders exist for bits.
Indeed writing conventions are also a good point, however this is not writing. People actually working at bit level are probably more likely to see bits on a scope (so in both LSb or MSb order) than as 1 and 0s written on a piece of paper or a screen.
glibg10b@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 175d
This is a single byte, so it's represented the same in big-endian vs little-endian. Endianness defines the order of bytes, not individual bits
adb@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 175d
Indeed, endianness is the order of bytes, my bad. I guess I meant LSb vs MSb
SethranKada@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 176d
Binary is always right to left? I've never seen it written left to right at least.
humanamerican@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 176d
There are 3 leading "zeros"
MaggiWuerze@feddit.org · 1 pts · 175d
Which would be ommited if they were on the end, so this reads 136
BlackVenom@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 176d
The people saying right to left is normal are either Australian or mirror universe folks.
At least I thought that until I looked up ascii conversations and then just random converters .... How have I forgotten this? The pic is right...
psud@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 174d
Cakes have multiple sides, you can have your bits in your chosen order if you turn up to the party in person
regdog@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 176d
Happy 136th birthday
ITGuyLevi@programming.dev · 3 pts · 176d
Little-endian for the win!
wewbull@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 175d
I was just thinking about what you'd see from the other side of the table.
MaggiWuerze@feddit.org · 2 pts · 175d
Even in little endian you don't have trailing zeroes
ITGuyLevi@programming.dev · 1 pts · 175d
I'm not seeing any trailing zeros if that is in little endian, you start little end first and it isn't limited to a silly 8-bits, it can be used to represent numbers far larger than 255 if continued (though then it wouldn't be representative of a byte and half the joke would be lost).
MaggiWuerze@feddit.org · 2 pts · 175d
If you read from the right (as is implied by calling the result 17), there are 3 trailing zeroes:
These would usually be omitted when writing like this. The fact they are not makes this 136
ITGuyLevi@programming.dev · 2 pts · 175d
I think you missed the point, that I was making, albeit poorly (little endian still requires leading zeros when not transmitting in a byte format, otherwise you don't know if the first on signal is for 1, 256, 1024, etc.) it's all good though
MaggiWuerze@feddit.org · 1 pts · 175d
How would 3 leading zeros in a byte help coming to the conclusion that this is supposed to be 17?
I'm generally curious, sice theoretical informatics is already a good few years behind me :D
ITGuyLevi@programming.dev · 2 pts · 175d
In a normal byte format it wouldn't help, the byte standard breaks off bits into 8 bit chunks and calls them bytes (I'm not trying to explain basics, just putting it there for background), little-endian excels at using the least number of bits to express larger numbers in a stream. If you wanted to send any number from 0-255 you only need 1 byte, for 256-512 you need two bytes (or 16 bits), in little-endian it can be represented in just 9 bits, or up to 1024 in 10 bits, etc.
Doesn't matter for much to many people, but when the number gets big enough you can save a lot of bandwidth.
ratatouille@feddit.org · 7 pts · 176d
I read 136 🤣
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 175d
Look, an OpenRISC user.
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 175d
I did this once, but just had holes instead of unlit candles. I only had like 3 or 4 of them, and nobody's got time to go buy candles when everyone's about to sing happy birthday.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 176d
Because of the Hayflick limit, 7 candles should be enough... but only for now, hopefully.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 175d
That's because humanity dates back to the teletype era, before bytes. It was decided that saving candles was more important than having the extra century of lifespan.
Now, by convention, the leftmost candle being unlit indicates it's a standard human and not a member of another species-alphabet, possibly requiring multiple cakes.
(On a serious note, aging is not necessarily thought to be as simple as just the Hayflick limit)
dr_robotBones@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 175d
We're low on candles, great idea!
psud@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 174d
I use that style of birthday candle, but I only place as many bits as needed.
The year before adding a bit then has all candles lit, the next has only one lit
Though the new bits don't come very often. My last was 31 to 32, my next will be 63 to 64, I don't like my chances to see one after that
banazir@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 176d
Oh, I like this. Nice.
AlexCory21@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 175d
I hit the big 101000 recently. Time sure does fly by.
MadhuGururajan@programming.dev · 2 pts · 167d
Instructions unclear.. Am vampire now.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 173d
Related: I once got onto my feed a post of a tale of someone who had a child on his 19th birthday, so for his 20th birthday, and the child's 1st, they had two balloons celebrating their 2^0^th birthdays.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 173d
I never saw if the next year they celebrated a 2^1^st birthday.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 176d
The BTUs alone will cook you til your juices evaporate
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 175d
No liches allowed