this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] xenoclast 28 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It bothers me it's not in 4 bit "bytes" even though I know it's just a convention for computers

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The four bit sections of eight bit bytes are called nibbles, you know because nibbles are small bites

[–] xenoclast 2 points 1 month ago

Ugh jeez.. right. I literally always mess that up

[–] satans_methpipe 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

A byte is eight bits.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's a matter of convention, not technical definition. A byte can be any number of bits, depending on hardware. For a while 6 bit bytes were common. RFC 791 refers to an 8 bit byte as an octet

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

RFC 791 refers to an 8 bit byte as an octet

French-speaking people do too it seems. On second hand websites in Switzerland you always see that some disks are listed for e.g. 250 Go and others for 250 GB, depending on the first language of the seller.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

4 bits is a nybble

[–] xenoclast 1 points 1 month ago

Yes. I am dumb.

[–] finitebanjo 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can do all of math in binary, it isn't just for computers. In fact, the proof for "Russian Peasant Multiplication" was written in binary.

[–] ziggurat -2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

So you can do all mathematical operations in binary, but you can't represent all numbers in binary like 0.3, which is a repeating number, and had the same issues as a number like 1/3 in decimal where you can't avoid rounding errors

It's worth noting that 1/3 is also a repeating number in binary. 0.01010101....

While 0.3 is in binary 0.0100110011001100...

[–] finitebanjo 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'm not sure what sort of point you think you're making but 0.0100110011 in binary is only 0.065% off from 0.3, but how often would you organically encounter 0.3?

Many fractions in decimal are also repeating numbers or very long trailing numbers, I especially encounter a lot when working with time which is base 60.