Computers operate with base 2 calculations making 256 as “normal” a number to computers and those who work closely with them as 100 is to most humans.
256 is not arbitrary. The author thought it was arbitrary. The commenter said “Yikes” in response to the author not knowing the thing in the field that they report in was actually completely planned and not remotely arbitrary.
If they had increased the chat size to 317, being neither a rounded number in the base 10 or base 2 system and having no significant meaning in general communication it could safely be classified as “arbitrary” meaning the original headline would be appropriate and the commenter likely wouldn’t have said “Yikes.”
Pretty sure the “Yikes” was because the number was obviously not arbitrary and the tech reporter didn’t know that.
If it were truly an arbitrary number it likely wouldn’t warrant a “yikes.”
I get the impression this is the non tech crowd commenting here.
…what? Lol
Say the chat size increased to 317. Why would the tech writer say “yikes”? Just because it’s not divisible by 5 or 10?
The tech writer didn’t say yikes. The first person to post it did, then someone else reposted while keeping the original poster’s reaction.
Ah yeah I see that now. Still a bizarre reaction from the randim tumblr user, but that’s just typical tumblr stuff.
I had the same reaction, because someone who doesn’t understand the significance of the number 256 isn’t qualified to be a tech journalist.
I think the person youre responding to completely missed the entire point of the post tbh
2^8 = 256
Computers operate with base 2 calculations making 256 as “normal” a number to computers and those who work closely with them as 100 is to most humans.
256 is not arbitrary. The author thought it was arbitrary. The commenter said “Yikes” in response to the author not knowing the thing in the field that they report in was actually completely planned and not remotely arbitrary.
If they had increased the chat size to 317, being neither a rounded number in the base 10 or base 2 system and having no significant meaning in general communication it could safely be classified as “arbitrary” meaning the original headline would be appropriate and the commenter likely wouldn’t have said “Yikes.”
The tech writer did not say “Yikes.”
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