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1. Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:11:13 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

   I love how "word" is a specific computer science term that means some data the bit-width of the processor.

   except on windows where it means 16-bits, currently 1/4th of the bit-width of the processor. and we've got "double word" for 32bits (not 128) and even the deadly QUADWORD for 64bits (not 256)

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:14:27 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     The year is 12763+1490i, most computation is done with quantum entangled supernovae, but when we still do digital computation it's several-AU-thick computronium shells around red dwarves. The architecture we use is a remnant of an earlier VFLIW one, so the bit-width of the main CPU is around 4 megabytes.

     "word" is a meaningless number at this point. except in some legacy code where it's still 16-bits. We walk on stars and compute with pocket dimensions AND STILL THE LEGACY OF WIN16 HAUNTS US

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:16:18 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Mike Grusin

     @flyingcircuits you mean an octet?

   • Mike Grusin (flyingcircuits@mastodon.world)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:16:19 JST Mike Grusin

     in reply to

     @foone But a byte is still 8 bits, right? RIGHT? 😥

   • lily 🏳️‍⚧️ (tauon@possum.city)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:19:31 JST lily 🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     @foone@digipres.club windows sdk moment
     when backwards compatibility becomes annoying

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:21:17 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     I mean I can't really joke too hard about that. Give me immortality and technological nigh-omnipotence and I'd still be hacking a game from 1993 right now. I'd just be doing it while hurting a lot less

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:29:38 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     my life goals are to ascend to something both more and less than both matter (in the long term) and biology (in the short term), but yeah I'll keep hacking old DOS games. I'll just do it as a being of pure intellect that lives outside of time

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:33:48 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Tachibana Kanade

     @h0m54r hah!

   • Tachibana Kanade (h0m54r@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:33:49 JST Tachibana Kanade

     in reply to

     @foone I remember poking around my file system back when I was a kid with a Windows 3.11 machine and seeing strings saying “32-bit word machine”, and getting confused because my computer didn’t come with Word, only Works 3.0.

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 07:34:18 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     anyway this whole thread is a subtweet of my debugger because I set a hardware breakpoint on a 32bit word in memory only to have my debugger never fail because this code was writing 16-bit words and a 32-bit word memory breakpoint doesn't fire if you do a 16-bit write

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 09:08:42 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • 🇺🇦 haxadecimal

     @brouhaha I'd argue that all-the-worlds-a-386, not an 8088, but I see what you mean

   • 🇺🇦 haxadecimal (brouhaha@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 09:08:43 JST 🇺🇦 haxadecimal

     in reply to

     @foone
     There used to be arguments, regarding software portability, over the assertion that all the world's a VAX.
     Microsoft has long since resolved the issue. All the world's an 8088. Maybe an 8086 with a 64-bit extended ISA, but still just an overgrown 8088.