Leon CowleHahahahahahaha. Indeed!
Kim van Wyk@leoncowle good grief - even if they don't know *why* it's significant you'd expect someone writing about computery topics to at least have a feel that the number is special and ask a colleague if it's meaningful, even if just because it comes up so often.
Adrianna Pińska@kimvanwyk @leoncowle Oh, I remember this. They "fixed" it after people complained, and somehow made it about ten^H^H^Height times worse: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/whatsapp-group-chats-bigger-maximum-size-256-people-users-a6856491.html
Juli Jane@leoncowle @confluency @kimvanwyk
Not sure why you think that this explanation is bad. So why do you take offense with it? One of the groundbreaking early computers used switches after all, image related.
To a lay audience I think the explanation is absolutely fine.
@julijane @confluency @kimvanwyk I'm going to politely (friendly!) disagree with you there. If someone asks me how an iPhone works, I'm not going to explain it in terms of vacuum tubes, irrespective of how important early vacuum tube computers were.
Also, it's a terrible explanation. It's not “one of the most important numbers in computing”. And they don't say why 8 "switches" are used. Why not 7? Or 9? 8 in their explanation *comes across* just as “oddly specific” as their original 256 claim.
@leoncowle @confluency @kimvanwyk And I have to disagree back. You are manufacturing offense with the explanation. They offer an explanation for the 8 switches, because they explain that this is then one byte.
But keep being offended if that floats your boat. Pay no attention to the fact that the article was not about bits and bytes at all and this is just an explanation added because of
even more complaints before.
I'm in nerd circles for almost 30 yrs and still get annoyed by nerd pedantry.
AndThisIsMrsPeacock 🏳🌈@julijane @leoncowle @confluency @kimvanwyk I kinda agree, the switch explanation may seem a little obscure but saying "because it's eight place values of binary" isn't really any better. Most non-tech people probably understand on/off switches just as well.
@julijane @leoncowle @confluency @kimvanwyk Although in my opinion they should have just gone for it and increased the limit to 65536 people (ducks)
A. Fleury-Gobert@andthisismrspeacock @julijane @leoncowle @confluency @kimvanwyk
they should have stopped at 32768 and allow negative number of users in a group...
they should have stopped at 32768 and allow negative number of users in a group...
AL@andthisismrspeacock @julijane @leoncowle @confluency @kimvanwyk
they could have used the pdp-8 model, 12 bit machine if I remember right, and gone 4096. which is 07777.