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   Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Monday, 18-May-2026 19:31:23 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

   IT'S CRASHING ON BOOT BECAUSE THE BOOLEANS ARE TOO SMALL

   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Monday, 18-May-2026 19:31:22 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     oh sweet jesus, they handle displaying the splashscreen by busy-looping the CPU for 4 seconds.

     I KNOW PROGRAMMERS WHO CARE ABOUT MULTITASKING AND THEY'RE ALL COWARDS

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Monday, 18-May-2026 19:31:45 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     why is it that I always end up having to reverse engineer compression code?

     There's something like FIVE implementations of this decompression routine:
     x86 assembly
     C++ (broken)
     C#
     Rust
     Python

     naturally I need a working C++ one, but that means having to figure out what's wrong with the existing code

     For bonus points: there's actually TWO compression routines, each slightly different. and potentially broken

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Monday, 18-May-2026 19:31:56 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     it's also EIGHT THOUSAND LINES of assembly because why not manually unroll your loops?

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Monday, 18-May-2026 19:32:19 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     I also have C++ code that supposedly can compress.

     is it broken? who can say

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) (greenskyoverme@ohai.social)'s status on Monday, 18-May-2026 19:35:09 JST GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

     in reply to

     @foone This is like watching a train crash

   • Embed this notice
     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Monday, 18-May-2026 19:35:10 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     oh it was also trying to load MIDI files backwards because it thought not being on a 386 meant that we had to be big-endian

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:04:24 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     the worst part is that I have no guarantee that this C++ decompression code has ever worked.

     the original programmers write an x86 assembly version and a cross-platform version, but this program only ever came out on x86.

     So did they ever test this code? Did they ever even RUN it?

     dunno!

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:04:43 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     fortunately one of the other projects working on this source already figured out the bug in the C++ implementation, so I can just steal their solution!

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:05:12 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     - cb += (1 << cbit) + ((luCur >> (cbit + 1)) & ((1 << cbit) - 1));
     + cb += (1 << cbit) + ((luCur >> (ibit + cbit + 1)) & ((1 << cbit) - 1));

     ahh, of course. such an obvious mistake

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:05:24 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     this code uses a datatype with the questionable name of "tribool", but when I looked into it to make fun of it I discovered something terrible:

     It's an enum with 4 possible values. It's a goddamn quadbool

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     ⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe (fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:16:09 JST ⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe

     in reply to

     • Robert Wright

     @madman_bob @foone had a music teacher told me a story: for his final exam he had to compose a piece of classical music. his teacher advised that if they got stuck to take an existing work and reverse it, start there.
     When it came to the exam, he thought, i know: i'll take one of my teacher's published works and reverse that.
     When he did that, however, he ended up with a very famous piece of music…

   • Embed this notice
     Robert Wright (madman_bob@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:16:12 JST Robert Wright

     in reply to

     @foone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPwNwNdE7pE

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Chip Unicorn (chip_unicorn@im-in.space)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:18:45 JST Chip Unicorn

     in reply to

     @foone

     The four values of bool are:

     • True
     • False
     • Neither True Nor False
     • Neither True, False, nor Neither True Nor False
     • Neither True; False; Neither True Nor False; nor Neither True, False, nor Neither True Nor False

     Scientists believe that there may need to be a secret, additional option if the current list isn't enough.

   • Embed this notice
     ⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe (fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:32:03 JST ⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe

     in reply to

     @foone true, yes, no, false

   • Embed this notice
     Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 14:55:41 JST Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     the four canonical bool values are, of course:

     tNo,
     tYes,
     tMaybe,
     tLim

   • Embed this notice
     Dan Ports (dan@discuss.systems)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 15:51:13 JST Dan Ports

     in reply to

     @foone please, everyone knows that IEEE 1164 says that booleans should have exactly nine possible values

   • Embed this notice
     Kauz (kauzerei@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Tuesday, 19-May-2026 19:34:12 JST Kauz

     in reply to

     @foone wait, don't 4 possible values make it kinda 2-bit logically? Double-precision bool?
     Doubool if you will

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     phooky (phooky@hexa.club)'s status on Wednesday, 20-May-2026 12:27:51 JST phooky

     in reply to

     • Rue Mohr

     @RueNahcMohr @foone it's often useful to add a "limit" or "last" element to an enum to make bounds checking easier; (x < tLim) will quickly tell you if you have a valid value

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     Rue Mohr (ruenahcmohr@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 20-May-2026 12:27:52 JST Rue Mohr

     in reply to

     @foone I presume tLim is when the question is broken?

     Aka, "When you bought a Claude plan, did you use your parents credit card?"

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.