4 ms·
Don't have much to add except to mention again that the magic number for TIF is 42, and it's 42 because of the meaning of 42: https://web.archive.org/web/20210
by nullhole 11mo ago
Don't have much to add except to mention again that the magic number for TIF is 42, and it's 42 because of the meaning of 42:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210108174645/https://www.adobe.io/content/dam/udp/en/open/standards/tiff/TIFF6.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210108174645/https://www.adobe...
Bytes 2-3
An arbitrary but carefully chosen number (42) that further identifies the file as a TIFF file
- adzm 11mo agoAnd here is the author himself confirming that in the Wikipedia talk page for TIFF! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TIFF/Archive_1#h-Source_for_the_42_thing?-2007-03-26T00:44:00.000Z https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TIFF/Archive_1#h-Source_f...
- Tempat1 11mo agoGreat find! And oh no, it’s complete with the customary blissfully unaware user replying to say he’s wrong!
- rzzzt 11mo agoAre talk pages accepted as a source for the same article?
- speedgoose 11mo agoTalk pages aren’t valid sources in general. In this case the author is dead and an established expert having published in the field, so I guess it’s fine, but I wouldn’t bet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources_(online_and_paper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-p...
- darkwater 11mo agoHindsight is 20/20 and I loved TFA and I don't want to ruin it but... that comment was there from 2007 and the Wikipedia user bio was pretty clear since the beginning (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Scarlsen&oldid=160291977 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Scarlsen&old...)
- svat 11mo agoYes but it's not easy to find random Wikipedia user pages, or even find the specific talk page comment in the archives without knowing what to look for. Go ahead, find a friend, give them no clues, and see if they find it.
- darkwater 11mo agoYes but the author was specifically investing over this, had a clue on a similar name and even edited the same page himself.
- svat 11mo agoI don't know what “investing over” means, but all I can say is (repeating myself): try it with a friend, without giving them the benefit of hindsight. (Very few visitors to a Wikipedia page read its talk page, very few of them will further look at the archives of the talk page, let alone read every single comment and its corresponding commenter's name, and in this case as soon as the author knew the spelling to look for, the rest was straightforward for them.)
- hellojohnbuck 11mo agowell said svat. without laboring the point, "once you know - you know". until then it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack - and some people do not want to be found.
- darkwater 11mo agoI mean that the author was literally writing a book about this and literally conducting an investigation about who was the real author of the TIFF spec. He interviewed other people about it, he had a name that had a typo in it, he even found a white-on-white line in a PDF with the real name. He was clearly putting effort into the research. We are humans, everybody can miss things, I mentioned "hindsight is 20/20" but still, it was in the Wikipedia discussion page for the TIFF article all the time. It's a matter of fact and some random HNer found it in minutes/hours. I repeat myself, it was probably better that he didn't found that out and went to write a hand-written letter to the alleged author's home address, it created a much deeper human bond, which is especially meaningful since Stephen Carlsen passed away not much later.
- bambax 11mo ago(Also: 42 is the answer to everything because it's the ascii code for *).
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoWas that a happy coincidence or intentional?
- clan 11mo agoPerfectly pure happiness: "The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story." from the man himself[1] ...but let us not ruin a good story with the truth. Remember why earth was built. The "real" answer might then be flowing in the ether. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#The_Answer_to_the_Ultimate_Question_of_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything_is_42 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27...
- bambax 11mo agoI think it was intentional but I don't have a source. Edit: from the other comment, it appears it was in fact random...
- abdusco 11mo ago> the ASCII code for h Umm. The ASCII code for h is 102 ;)
- jakub_g 11mo agoAnd interestingly, the person he replies to is taviso [0][1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=taviso https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=taviso [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavis_Ormandy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavis_Ormandy
- Rygian 11mo agoBased on the same algorithm as https://xkcd.com/221/ https://xkcd.com/221/
- 71bw 11mo ago42 even shows up in the late mr. Carlsen's obituary. [1] [1]https://www.mountainviewtacoma.com/obituaries/stephen-carlsen/obituary https://www.mountainviewtacoma.com/obituaries/stephen-carlse...
- CalChris 11mo agoI remember Steve.
- antonis-gr 11mo ago42 is an extremely non-special number. Does anyone know if it appeared in the CS field before Douglas Addams "invented" it?