Comment by nullhole
1 day 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...
Bytes 2-3
An arbitrary but carefully chosen number (42) that further identifies the file as a TIFF file
And 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_f...
Great find! And oh no, it’s complete with the customary blissfully unaware user replying to say he’s wrong!
Hindsight 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&old...)
Yes 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.
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And interestingly, the person he replies to is taviso [0][1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=taviso
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavis_Ormandy
(Also: 42 is the answer to everything because it's the ascii code for *).
Was that a happy coincidence or intentional?
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> the ASCII code for h
Umm. The ASCII code for h is 102 ;)
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Are talk pages accepted as a source for the same article?
Talk 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-p...
42 even shows up in the late mr. Carlsen's obituary. [1]
[1]https://www.mountainviewtacoma.com/obituaries/stephen-carlse...
I remember Steve.
42 is an extremely non-special number. Does anyone know if it appeared in the CS field before Douglas Addams "invented" it?
What do you mean, non-special? 42 is the magic constant of the smallest non-trivial magic cube.
It’s also an integer. Who ch I pretty special when you consider that most numbers in nature are real.
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*was
Based on the same algorithm as https://xkcd.com/221/