this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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Programmer Humor

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[–] [email protected] 271 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Size of an uncompressed image of the Washington Crossing the Delaware painting = 1 Yankee

12 Yankees in a Doodle

60 Doodles in an Ounce (entirely unrelated to the volume or weight usage of ounce)

[–] [email protected] 80 points 9 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 months ago (3 children)

That's too straightforward. It should be 113 Doodles in a Dandy. And 73 Dandies in a Macaroni.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Make sure to make the specific term "Computer Ounce", or co. oz.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Better yet, just use "cooz" as the "common unit"

Then it's proportioned following fluid ounce measurements from there. e.g. "coc" (computer cup) is 16 coozes.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Sampled at what resolution, though? It's a physical painting and the true, atomic-scale resolution would make this whole system useless.

May I suggest the entire constitution in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) instead? Bonus points if any future amendments change the whole system.

Edit: I suppose you actually want to start small. Maybe just the declaration sans-signatures, then. So, 6610*7 = 46,270 bits.

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[–] [email protected] 164 points 9 months ago (2 children)

How about feet of IBM punch cards?

A 1 foot tall stack holds 1,647,360 bits of data if all 80 columns are used. If only 72 columns are used for data then it's 1,482,624 bits of data and the remaining columns can be used to number each card so they can be put back in order after the stack is dropped.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I like this because the amount of bits in a stack can vary depending on whose foot you use to measure, or the thickness of the card stock.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

IBM standard cards are one 48th of a barleycorn thick. I believe IBM measured from the 1932 Iowa Reference Barleycorn, now kept in the vault inside Mt Rushmore.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago

THIS is what I’m talking about!

[–] [email protected] 87 points 9 months ago (1 children)

bit, Nibble, Byte, Word, doubleword, longword, quadword, double-quadword, verylongword, halfword

They check all Imperial criteria:

  • confusing names
  • some used only in some systems
  • size depends on where you are
  • some may overlap
  • doesn't manage to cover all the possible needs, but do you really need more than 64 bits?
  • would probably cause you to crash a rocket
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[–] [email protected] 80 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

1 tweet = 140 bytes

1 (printed) page = 60 lines of 60 characters = 3600 bytes

1 moa (minute of audio in 128000 bps mp3) = 960000 bytes

1 mov (minute of video) = typically around 30MB but varies by resolution and encoding, like ounces vs troy ounces vs apothecary ounces.

1 loc (library of congress, used for measuring hard drive capacity) = around 10TB depending on jurisdiction.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

I would suggest:

  • 1KB = storage capacity of 1 kg of 1.44 floppy disks.
  • 1MB = storage capacity of 0.0106 mile of CD drives.
  • 1GB = storage capacity of 1 good computer in the 2000s.
  • 1TB = storage capacity of 1 truck of GB (see above)

PS: just to be clear, I meant CD drives, not CD discs.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

1 kg

(͡•_ ͡• )

Don't you mean one pound, abbreviated lb?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago

Naw, it's actually one Kinda Gallon; a Kinda Gallon of course referring to the average of the masses of a gallon of water, a gallon of beer, and a gallon of whiskey.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

KiB, MiB, GiB etc are more clear. It makes a big difference especially 1TB vs 1TiB.

The American way would probably be still using the units you listed but still meaning 1024, just to be confusing.

Either that or maybe something that uses physical measurement of a hard-drive (or CD?) using length. Like that new game is 24.0854 inches of data (maybe it could be 1.467 miles of CD?).

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago (19 children)

The American way would probably be still using the units you listed but still meaning 1024, just to be confusing.

American here. This is actually the proper way. KB is 1024 bytes. MB is 1024 KB. The terms were invented and used like that for decades.

Moving to 'proper metric' where KB is 1000 bytes was a scam invented by storage manufacturers to pretend to have bigger hard drives.

And then inventing the KiB prefixes was a soft-bellied capitulation by Europeans to those storage manufacturers.

Real hackers still use Kilo/Mega/Giga/Tera prefixes while still thinking in powers of 2. If we accept XiB, we admit that the scummy storage vendors have won.

Note: I'll also accept that I'm an idiot American and therefore my opinion is stupid and invalid, but I stand by it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

Absolutely, I started computers in 1981, for me 1K is 1024 bytes and will always be. 1000 bytes is a scam

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Calling 1048576 bytes an "American megabyte" might be technically wrong, but it's still slightly less goofy-looking than the more conventional "MiB" notation. I wish you good luck in making it the new standard.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (3 children)

The difference really needs to be enforced.

My ram is in GiB but advertised in GB ???

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Did anyone say Magabyte yet?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago

1/6th of a MAGAbyte is an insurrection

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 9 months ago

Most people would use "word", "half-word", "quarter-word" etc, but the Anglophiles insist on "tuppit", "ternary piece", "span" and "chunk" (that's 5 bits, or 12 old bits).

[–] [email protected] 43 points 9 months ago

A milebyte is 5280 bytes

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (4 children)

my harddrive is 250 toby keiths and my processer is 500 lee greenwoods

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (1 children)

why go for RAMs when the constitution says ARMs...

and no more bits or bytes too, double bytes small or quadbytes regular size all the way.

  • kilo bytes is a grand

  • mega bytes is a venti

  • giga bytes is a grand venti

  • terabytes is a doble venti

really large amounts of ARM is a ton

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mp3s, standard def movies, HD movies, and 4k movies.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

I’ve seen so many products advertised by how many “songs” or “movies” it can hold. Never mind you can encode the same movie to be massive or small. So I think we’ve found the right answer!

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (3 children)

From smallest to biggest:

Bits (basic unit)

Bytes (8:1 reduction)

Words (4:1 reduction)

KiB (32:1 reduction)

MiB (1024:1)

GiB (1024:1)

TiB (1024:1)

PiB (1024:1)

A normal amount of porn (237:1)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

All definitely not metric as metric uses steps of 1000 (and there's also 10 and 100 and 1/10th and 1/100th but that doesn't extend to 10000 and 1/10000th).

The KiB, MiB, etc, the 2^10 scale is called binary prefixes (as opposed to decimal prefixes KB, MB, etc) and standardised by the IEC.

And while the B in KiB is always going to mean eight bits it's not a given that a byte is actually eight bits, network people still use "octet" to disambiguate because back in the days there were plenty of architectures around with other byte sizes. "byte" simply means "smallest number of bits an operation like addition will be done in" in the context of architectures. Then you have word for two bytes, d(ouble)word for four, q(uad)word for eight, o(cto)word for 16, and presumably h(ex)word for 32 it's already hard to find owords in the wild. Yes it's off by one of course it's off by one what do you expect it's about computers. There's also nibble for half a byte.

EDIT: Actually that's incorrect word is also architecture-dependent, the word/dword/qword sequence applies to architectures (like x86) which went from being 16-bit machines to now being 64 bit while keeping backwards compatibility. E.g. RISC-V uses 32-bit words, 16 bits there are a half-word.

The bit, at least, is not under contention everyone agrees what it is. Though you can occasionally see people staring in wild disbelief and confusion at statements such as "this information can be stored in ~1.58 bits". That number is ~ log~2~ 3, that is, the information that fits in one trit. Such as "true, false, maybe".

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

12 bits to an eagle

27 eagles to a liberty (changes whenever an amendment is added)

1776 liberties to a freedom

Computers are still programmed in bytes, but filesize is always in freedoms.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I know you asked about memory, but the computer I just assembled had a 750watt power supply. As an American I think we should refer to it as a "one horsepower power supply" instead.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (2 children)

We should measure size of files/storage as a function of how many standardized png's of an american flag would fit in the same amount of space.

[–] Buttons 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

We should measure size of files/storage as a function of how many ~~standardized~~ png’s of an american flag would fit in the same amount of space.

Fixed it, I will not be oppressed by your standards

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If it's for American context then you mean 1 baby

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (4 children)

char, short, int, long, long long

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

M$ already fucked that up for everybody calling GiB GB.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

May I suggest OB for Ounce Byte, or 28.35 Byte, one 16th of a PB PoundByte which is 453,6 Bytes.
These measures are both practical as freedom units because it's base is close to 28, which is clearly more suitable than 32 as a freedom unit base number, and the Pound Byte can be easily halved 4 times to make an Ounce Byte. Which makes it about as convenient as other freedom units.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

Probably something based on 1/6 th of a byte that originates form old IBM systems that used 6 bits per byte that was then later never changed into 8 bit systems so you now have to convert between 6 bit and 8 bit systems and then fractions, gotta get those good fractions. So they'd say something like my SSD is 170⅔ GB for a 128GB drive

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I use jiffies to refer to clock speed.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

My CPU is running at 2.6 Triple thou cycles per imperial second (TTiS)

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (4 children)

1 floppy = 1.44 MO
1 CD = 700 MO
1 DVD = 4,7 GO
1 HD DVD = 15 GO
1 Blu-Ray = 25 GO

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