A photo of a cake with 8 candles in a row. The first and fifth candle from the right are lit. The caption reads "Happy 17th Birthday"
Very optimistic to have an 8th candle
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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The candles are only available in packs of 8. It's the smallest addressable unit of wax in many cake architectures
Last birthday party I was at I just wanted a nibble of cake but they told me I had to take one or more bites.
I'd have a few words with them, kick them right up their rear endian
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Maybe this is a signed cake, so one can celebrate negative birthdays of people who aren't born yet. 🤔
Light all the candles as an announcement that you're gonna start having kids and hope she'll get pregnant in exactly three months. Not in 2, not in 4, but in 3 precisely.
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That's the sign bit. The cake is in two's complement
Old man's last words on his 256th birthday: "Unhandled IntegerU8OverflowException, terminating application."
Related: I once got onto my feed a post of a tale of someone who had a child on his 19th birthday, so for his 20th birthday, and the child's 1st, they had two balloons celebrating their 2^0^th birthdays.
I never saw if the next year they celebrated a 2^1^st birthday.
33 was a special year for me because it's the same forwards and backwards both in decimal and binary
1 is asswell :3
If 1 is asswell, then 2 is assgood, and 3 is the beginning of an orgy.
00100001
Am I being dumb? How ist that the same forward and backwards?
If you drop leading zeros as you would in decimal
Damn. I AM dumb.
Why do I confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because Oct 31 is the same as Dec 25
Octal 31 = 3 x 8^1^ + 1 x 8^0^ = 24 + 1 = Decimal 25
- The Yuki language in California has an octal system because the speakers count using the spaces between their fingers rather than the fingers themselves.[2]
- The Pamean languages in Mexico also have an octal system, because some of their speakers "count the knuckles of the closed fist for each hand (excluding the thumb), so that two hands equals eight."[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octal
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I only buy ipv6 cakes, so I'm good.
You probably know, but someone is going to point out an ipv4 address is four bytes.
I'd actually quite like an overflowing cake thank you very much
I will grow older than 255 because then it will overflow and I become 0 years old.
I use that style of birthday candle, but I only place as many bits as needed.
The year before adding a bit then has all candles lit, the next has only one lit
Though the new bits don't come very often. My last was 31 to 32, my next will be 63 to 64, I don't like my chances to see one after that
Heh I've been making my wife do this since my 32nd birthday.
She still doesn't understand binary and thinks I'm a nerd when I try to explain it to her.
Maybe this year, when it's 1+8+32, things will click.
I did this once, but just had holes instead of unlit candles. I only had like 3 or 4 of them, and nobody's got time to go buy candles when everyone's about to sing happy birthday.
We're low on candles, great idea!
Who counts from right to left?
Is this image mirrored?
You will be surprised to hear that this is how we read decimal numbers too
Even in decimal, the most-significant digit is to the left. Binary in text form is no exception to this.
Unless we are talking little-endian, which would start with the least-significant bit.
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Now that you mention it it is pretty fucky, but in every textbook thats tried to teach me counting in binary its gone from right to left.
It's not. Numbers are arranged (both binary and base 10) with the most significant digit on the left.
Whether you read the number from left to right or right to left is irrelevant and you can choose whichever one you want.
But it is completely consistent with base 10 (normal numbers).
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Binary exists in both ~~big-endian~~LSb or ~~little-endian~~MSb. In other words, both directions can be valid.
As explained below: Endianness is specifically the order of bytes. I was under the impression that it also implied a specific order of bits but anyways, the correct terms for this discussion is Least/Most Significant bit order.
This is a single byte, so it's represented the same in big-endian vs little-endian. Endianness defines the order of bytes, not individual bits
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Binary is always right to left? I've never seen it written left to right at least.
Cakes have multiple sides, you can have your bits in your chosen order if you turn up to the party in person
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I read 136 🤣
Look, an OpenRISC user.
I hit the big 101000 recently. Time sure does fly by.
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