• Sailor Sega Saturn
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    25 days ago

    Unsigned integer means an integer that hasn’t been cryptographically signed by the chain of blocks right?

    The verdict quotes this exchange (page 163):

    Q: Just out of curiosity, do you know what unsigned means in that?

    A: I do. Basically it’s unsigned variable, it’s not an integer with–

    Q: With what?

    A: It’s larger. I’m not sure how – I mean, on the stand here, I’m not sure how I’d say it, but –

    Q: Take a wild guess.

    A: How I would describe it, I’m not quite sure. I know what it is.

    Q: Okay.

    A: I’m not terribly good when I’m trying to do things like this. Writing it down would be different.

    Q: Well, do you recall you mentioned that you had a book by Professor Stroustrup?

    A: I do.

    Q: You haven’t disclosed that book, but you have disclosed three other books about C++, so I want to take you to one of those. It’s {L1/199/1}, and could we go to page 47. Do you see that it explains that “unsigned” means that it cannot be negative?

    A: Yes, I do understand that. Would I have thought of saying it in such a simple way? No.

    • @froztbyte
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      25 days ago

      one of the things that I really love about this is that, while there are indeed some nuances you can get into (platforms/archs, number theory, internal representations, …), it’s one of the rare computerwords in english that you could viably reason about on first principles without knowing much and get a sortacorrect answer

      and yet

    • @zogwarg
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      725 days ago

      Unsigned integers are larger because… Because the containing variables don’t have a signature that crypto-statically constrains it to the lower set! (Yes that must be it)

      • @froztbyte
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        725 days ago

        “my computer’s so secure! it does mean I can only use 32-bit applications on this 64-bit cpu, but alas. all for security!”

        • @froztbyte
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          425 days ago

          (even typing that made me wince. I hope anyone who had to deal with 32->64 in any capacity some years ago doesn’t get hurt reading this)