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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by bricked@feddit.org to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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"

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[-] bricked@feddit.org 155 points 1 day ago

The candles are only available in packs of 8. It's the smallest addressable unit of wax in many cake architectures

[-] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 34 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago

I usually just gather a nibble by picking up a couple crumbs... I'll see myself out.

[-] tetris11@feddit.uk 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'd have a few words with them, kick them right up their rear endian

[-] raman_klogius@ani.social 21 points 1 day ago

Maybe this is a signed cake, so one can celebrate negative birthdays of people who aren't born yet. 🤔

[-] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 hours ago

You win Lemmy, I need this one explained.

[-] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Longer explanation:

Because most computers use two's complement to make negative numbers. To produce -x, you take x, flip all the bits, and then add 1. Conveniently, this process works both ways, so if you have an int with a positive MSB, i.e. 1*******, that's a negative number, and if you invert and add 1, you get the positive number.

So if you take 11111111, and apply this process, you get 00000001, which equals 1. Thus, 11111111 = -1

Secondly, the gestation period of humans is 9 months, and there are 12 months in a year.

So if you have binary candles and all of them lit, that can suggest, which it does in my previous comment, that you're celebrating a child's -1st birthday.

[-] Aedius@lavraievie.social 3 points 7 hours ago

@CanadaPlus

Because if you add 1 to 1111111 it will overflow and give 0000000 so you have to have the baby in 1 year exactly

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Ahh, because of the 9 month gestation. 9+3=12

I thought this was about some kind of obscure subnormal float convention or something.

[-] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Given that typical gestation time is less than one year, that involves some planning and determination.

[-] palordrolap@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

Although a processor might be nominally capable of accessing a bus of a certain width, it does not mean that all address or data lines need be connected.

this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
843 points (99.2% liked)

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