#3228 - Day Counter
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@xkcd "a system failure left behind", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFQHCLPy2hI
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@renardboy @xkcd
me too
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#3228 - Day Counter
@xkcd floating point numbers are so wild in how they completely undermine the idea that computers are precision machines.
Don't get me wrong, they absolutely are but it's an interesting juxtaposition that one of the key building blocks of many classes of programs relies of what amounts to approximate math.
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@renardboy @xkcd
me too -
@Primo can recommend reading What If series. It has many missing citations
https://what-if.xkcd.com/ -
#3228 - Day Counter
Tell me, was this written for the Data General Nova II floating point board?
(As a human assigned to watch its output, mash a remote reset button, then “smoothly” take over for one of those beastly machines, the question is ever so slightly rhetorical.)
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@xkcd floating point numbers are so wild in how they completely undermine the idea that computers are precision machines.
Don't get me wrong, they absolutely are but it's an interesting juxtaposition that one of the key building blocks of many classes of programs relies of what amounts to approximate math.
@renardboy @xkcd The trouble is, as soon as you need to represent sonething that's not a rational number, you're pretty much forced to use an approximation of some sort. -
@Primo can recommend reading What If series. It has many missing citations
https://what-if.xkcd.com/ -
#3228 - Day Counter
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@renardboy @xkcd The trouble is, as soon as you need to represent sonething that's not a rational number, you're pretty much forced to use an approximation of some sort.
@me @xkcd Fun fact: there's actually even more to it than that. Plenty of rational numbers *cannot* be represented exactly in binary. Check out this online tool and try converting simple decimals like 0.1 or anything that isn't a multiple of a negative power of two: https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/decimal-to-binary.html
(I hope this doesn't come across as mansplaining, I just want to share something I find fascinating for the benefit of anyone who might also find it interesting)
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@me @xkcd Fun fact: there's actually even more to it than that. Plenty of rational numbers *cannot* be represented exactly in binary. Check out this online tool and try converting simple decimals like 0.1 or anything that isn't a multiple of a negative power of two: https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/decimal-to-binary.html
(I hope this doesn't come across as mansplaining, I just want to share something I find fascinating for the benefit of anyone who might also find it interesting)
@renardboy It can be done, just not with a floating point data structure. Many languages have a rational data type... just not all, and it could be implemented in the ones that don't. It's just more computationally expensive, and often deemed not to be worth it. -
Tell me, was this written for the Data General Nova II floating point board?
(As a human assigned to watch its output, mash a remote reset button, then “smoothly” take over for one of those beastly machines, the question is ever so slightly rhetorical.)
@BenHM3 @xkcd or the Pentium FDIV bug? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug
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#3228 - Day Counter
@xkcd Also a favourite of mine from some time I once spent sorting out clock change bugs.
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