256 is "oddly specific number"...
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.. says technology reporter.
##WhatsApp increases group chat size limit to 256 people
###It's not clear why WhatsApp settled on such an oddly specific number
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To be fair, there's no reason to store a number like that on a single byte today. I'm pretty sure they could have just as easily chosen 200 or 300.
(fuck Whatsapp anyways)
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256 requires 12-bits which is > 1 byte assuming signed integers.
Everyone knows you should use 255!
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256 requires 12-bits which is > 1 byte assuming signed integers.
We all know that it's actually stored in 64-bit float anyway
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256 requires 12-bits which is > 1 byte assuming signed integers.
Everyone knows you should use 255!
They can use the number 0 for the 256th person since a group chat can't have 0 people.
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Don't you think it's an many to many relation limit? 256^2 is 64k
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(fuck Whatsapp anyways)
I've never used it and don't even know what it is, if that makes you feel any better.
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We all know that it's actually stored in 64-bit float anyway
In fact, young man, it's XML all the way down.
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Discourse changes topic size limit to 256 posts
"256 should be enough for anyone," says Jeff Atwood
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Wow, are they really using a single byte in some C struct to keep this information? Sounds like WTF on WhatsApp's part more than the clueless journalists'.
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Could be that somebody discovered an unused byte due to padding, or decided to re-appropriate the upper 8 bits of some 32 bit variable that would never get larger than 2^24 anyway...
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If they were doing it right, the headline would read:
WhatsApp increases group chat size limit to 9223372036854775807 people
It's not clear why WhatsApp settled on such an oddly specific number
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They can use the number 0 for the 256th person since a group chat can't have 0 people.
Don't be ridiculous. They'll use 0 for the first person, obviously.
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It's not clear why WhatsApp settled on such an oddly specific number
Accalia's first rule of thumb for algorithms
There are either:
- Zero allowable Entries
- One allowable Entry
- Infinite allowable entries
Accalia's Second rule of thumb for algorithms
When choosing an arbitrary limit for your algorithm use (in order of preference)
- One less than a power of two (2n-1)
- A power of two (2n)
- One less than a power of ten (10n-1)
- A power of ten (10n)
(Accalias rules of thumb are not guaranteed to be original, nor is any claim of ownership over the concepts or ideas contained within intended nor implied. Accalia LLC Cannot be held liable for any damages caused by these rules of thumb, either real or imagined. Accalia LLC is not liable for any acts of gods, godesses, or congress which may or may not be related in some way to these rules or to the application thereof. Where permitted by Law Accalia LLC releases these rules into the public domain. Where the law dows not permit such dedication Accalia LLC releases these rules under the
Do what the fuck you want
license.
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The number meets your second rule of thumb, so I take it it has your approval?
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I'm sure the authors would explain it if asked, probably something along the lines of:
"Well actually, groups used to be limited to 16 people. But we were able to expand that now that we live in an age of 8-bit computers."
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Do foxes have thumbs? Because I'm sensing some nonsense.
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Do foxes have thumbs?
i have nine. all "borrowed" from people who incautiously tried to grab my tail.
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So what are your seven other rules of thumb?
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So what are your seven other rules of thumb?
the number of thumbs i own is not linked to the number of rules of thumb i have. after all it's rules of thumb not rules of thumbs
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So what are your seven other rules of thumb?
It sounds like one of them is "Don't grab my tail or I keep your thumb."
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ITYM her 17th? (view her raw)
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view her raw
Cross my palm with an appropriately valued coin, and i'll let you see what my raw really looks like
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Accalias rules of thumb
Aren't Foxes like Cats, in that they don't have thumbs?
EDIT: damn, should have read the whole thread before posting...
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When choosing an arbitrary limit for your algorithm use (in order of preference)
- One less than a power of two (2n-1)
- A power of two (2n)
- One less than a power of ten (10n-1)
- A power of ten (10n)
No room for an arbitrary confusing prime number? That's always a good way to make life troublesome for a future maintenance programmer…
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I offer 65537
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I prefer something that seems both less and more arbitrary. 43.
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I would prefer 42
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I would prefer 42
Is there a "Who do you think we are?" badge for including a link to Wikipedia for a reference that all of us know?
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Singular:
Cross my palm with an appropriately valued coin
Multiple:
Cross my palm with appropriately valued coin
You wouldn't want to sell yourself short, would you?
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You wouldn't want to sell yourself short, would you?
i never specified the valueof the coin.
and i mean, how many people have a trillion dollar coin?
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A man asks a woman if she would be willing to sleep with him if he pays her an exorbitant sum. She replies affirmatively. He then names a paltry amount and asks if she would still be willing to sleep with him for the revised fee. The woman is greatly offended and replies as follows:
She: What kind of woman do you think I am?
He: We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.
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Like, should they have limited it to 250 people, so it's not so odd.
Similar to programs that are doing something that have to handicap their process slices by adding a progress bar to give comfort to the user.
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Never give up Winston Church Hill
-Unknown
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No room for an arbitrary confusing prime number? That's always a good way to make life troublesome for a future maintenance programmer…
Why do that? If we're going to be obscure about it, why not a completely idiotic number, like maybe 237. If the person seeing the number doesn't go or then what's the point?
I prefer something that seems both less and more arbitrary. 43.
Exactly.
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I would prefer 42
I don't think that's a prime number in any integer base.
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We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.
yes we have. the cost is a trillion dollars, in the long system. that's a one followed by 18 (eighteen) zeros... in singles.
that is a stack of singles 1.0922e14 metres tall.
that is my cost, and not one farthing less.
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In the long system, it's actually 1018, not 1012.
Also, do you make change?
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In the long system, it's actually 1018, not 1012.
..... oh. so it is. me math good.
correcting
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Also, do you make change?
no. exact change only, and that's not USD (CAD, EUR or GBP also acceptable) so no good anyway
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I actually once did that; we had some code that received arrays of values over the network and then rendered them as a scrolling heatmap. The test code originally generated very large arrays full of random data so we could stress-test. I noticed that we were getting weird patterns in the resulting output that were very distracting (especially because the point of the display was for humans to pull patterns out of it...), and worked out that it was because we were generating 65536 random numbers per line and ending up in some kind of period of the RNG. So I changed the size of the array the test app sent over to the largest prime number less than 65536 (65521) to make periodic interactions unlikely.