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Science Memes @mander.xyz

fossilesque @mander.xyz

4mo ago

10001

59 comments

For anyone who doesn't want to do the conversion, that's 17 days.
- Or -15 days
  
  Ominous
  
  Mmm yes. 5 bit two's complement.
  I shouldn't make fun of it we've definitly made some ISA that weird.
  
  what's the general rule for translating negatives from binary? did you just do like 17 - 2 • (-1) or something?
- It also has a max of 31 days possible. Which has... implications.
  
  Among many other duties I manage the safety and claims database for an outsourced industrial cleaning company and let me tell you, some of the plants my company works struggle to make it a week without an accident, meanwhile some will go years without an accident. We also have one plant which had its last accident during the Bush Administration. Its absolutely wild how much safety can vary from one industrial facility to another
  
  🤔 .... What implications? ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ
- Unless it's a signed integer, then it's -1 and they're expecting something...
  
  A 5 bit long signed integer? What kind of weird system you using ? :p
  
  Only if you're using a sign bit rather than two's compliment (a sign bit allows for two representations of 0)
- Or 11 in hexadecimal
  
  B is 11 in hex though?
- I did and I regret it

It's even worse considering that they only have five boards. They expect at least one accident every month
- I work in the LTL freight industry, if we go 30 days without an accident or an injury we get a free BBQ day with unlimited food for everyone. We're talking burgers, hotdogs, chilli, chowder, chips, drinks, etc. Sometimes they even do catering. Our last one they did Hawaiian Food for 2 days (they got too much) which definitely made everyone happy.
  I've been there for almost 10 years, we average about 2 per year.
  Edit to clarify: 2 BBQs per year. We're really good as getting hurt.
  
  I wonder if that's still cheaper, because it makes people value safety of others but also because it raises the burden to report smaller accidents and workmans comp fraud because of peer pressure.
  
  What does LTL stand for ?

It’s a great way to save on number boards
- Not so much on board space
  
  You can save if your lab is unsafe enough!

It bothers me it's not in 4 bit "bytes" even though I know it's just a convention for computers
- The four bit sections of eight bit bytes are called nibbles, you know because nibbles are small bites
  
  Ugh jeez.. right. I literally always mess that up
- 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.
  
  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...
- A byte is eight bits.
  
  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
  
  4 bits is a nybble
  
  Yes. I am dumb.

I love the leak in the other room. Get ready to reset the counter folks!
- And the fumes being vented inside that room.

It's telling that their counter only goes up to a month

The author of this comic has a number of excellent coffee table compilations: https://www.tomgauld.com/comic-books-v2 (unaffiliated -- I just like them :))
- i like their style, very pleasant and original

-1 days? (or 17, without the overflow)
- Twos complement (invert the bits then add one), so its -15 days.
  Otherwise 00000 and 10000 would paradoxically both equal 0 and make bitwise equality checks very difficult.
  
  Good point!

They've never gone more than a month without an accident? Find a new work place immediately!
- With a large enough workplace in the wrong industries it's really easy to have something that could count against it.
  I work in the LTL freight industry, we get quite a few.

I totally got that without the text bubble.

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