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submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 159 points 4 days ago

This isn't a "tech article", it's an article about tech. This is a normie article from a normie news outlet for normie readers.

Also from the article:

A previous version of this article said it was "not clear why WhatsApp settled on the oddly specific number." A number of readers have since noted that 256 is one of the most important numbers in computing, since it refers to the number of variations that can be represented by eight switches that have two positions - eight bits, or a byte. This has now been changed. Thanks for the tweets. DB

[-] [email protected] 89 points 4 days ago

That weird ass explanation with switches and "one of the most important numbers" still sounds absolutely clueless.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I liked the switches analogy! Generally about binary though; I agree it doesn’t connect back to the number of users application.

And yeah most important number…sounds like they were quoting an LLM.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

“Quoting” is generous.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Still, it works well for "normies"...

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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025

1470 points (99.1% liked)

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