The candles are only available in packs of 8. It's the smallest addressable unit of wax in many cake architectures

That's the sign bit. The cake is in two's complement

Octal 31 = 3 x 8^1^ + 1 x 8^0^ = 24 + 1 = Decimal 25

• The Yuki language in California has an octal system because the speakers count using the spaces between their fingers rather than the fingers themselves.[2]
• The Pamean languages in Mexico also have an octal system, because some of their speakers "count the knuckles of the closed fist for each hand (excluding the thumb), so that two hands equals eight."[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octal

Ha🤣, that's great (once I was already thinking in binary/non-Dec numerals)

1 is asswell :3

00100001

Am I being dumb? How ist that the same forward and backwards?

thinking of getting older than 255?

You probably know, but someone is going to point out an ipv4 address is four bytes.

You will be surprised to hear that this is how we read decimal numbers too

Even in decimal, the most-significant digit is to the left. Binary in text form is no exception to this.

Unless we are talking little-endian, which would start with the least-significant bit.

Now that you mention it it is pretty fucky, but in every textbook thats tried to teach me counting in binary its gone from right to left.

Binary is always right to left? I've never seen it written left to right at least.

Binary exists in both big-endianLSb or little-endianMSb. In other words, both directions can be valid.

As explained below: Endianness is specifically the order of bytes. I was under the impression that it also implied a specific order of bits but anyways, the correct terms for this discussion is Least/Most Significant bit order.

The people saying right to left is normal are either Australian or mirror universe folks.

At least I thought that until I looked up ascii conversations and then just random converters .... How have I forgotten this? The pic is right...

There are 3 leading "zeros"

Cakes have multiple sides, you can have your bits in your chosen order if you turn up to the party in person

Look, an OpenRISC user.

Little-endian for the win!

That's because humanity dates back to the teletype era, before bytes. It was decided that saving candles was more important than having the extra century of lifespan.

Now, by convention, the leftmost candle being unlit indicates it's a standard human and not a member of another species-alphabet, possibly requiring multiple cakes.

(On a serious note, aging is not necessarily thought to be as simple as just the Hayflick limit)

I never saw if the next year they celebrated a 2^1^st birthday.