I'm old. This started being a joke, to my knowledge, in the mid-1980s. I'm sure it predates that timeframe. Still a great joke though.
this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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Cyanide and Happiness
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Hello fellow Cyanide and Happiness fans!
Cyanide & Happiness (C&H) is a webcomic created by Rob DenBleyker, Kris Wilson, Dave McElfatrick and Matt Melvin. The comic has been running since 2005 and is published on the website explosm.net along with animated shorts in the same style. Matt Melvin left C&H in 2014, and several other people have contributed to the comic and to the animated shorts
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@[email protected] started this community and wrote:
About this community and how I post the comics⦠Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips. Of course these days you can read your favorite comics online instead of a newspaper, but I love the nostalgia of reading the daily comics. Anyway, one of my favorite current comics is Cyanide and Happiness and I will be posting the daily release from their website (https://explosm.net/) and a an extra or two randoms.
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Every number system is base 10.
Binary is base 1+1.
Ternary is base 2+1.
Octal is base 7+1.
Decimal is base 9+1.
Duodecimal is base B+1.
Hexadecimal is base F+1.
Based.
I like this alot.
pH, cause you basic.
Both work because the scale is 1-10. Binary just has fewer intermediate steps. Nobody is a binary 7.
The joke is binary 10 is 2. Vs base 10 of 10
Thanks for the explanation! I've only been doing digital logic since 1976 so I'm still a bit confused by it.
No worries. I have a networking background so I'll never forget binary.
0 = 000
1 = 001
2 = 010
3 = 011
4 = 100
So 100 / 25 = 100 (4 in binary)
Here's another neat one: 1010 / 101 = 10
I like that one or 1012=ERROR
I think they're saying that on a binary 1 to 10 scale, the range is only (decimal) 2, so a 10/10 for binary is a 2/2 in decimal (where you can only be a 1/2 or 2/2), which is still the highest value.
Considering the artist I think the joke was 2/10 vs 10/10.
This isn't XKCD. Still to each their own.
I forwarded this to some network engineer friends and they got a kick out of it.
Oh, definitely. The intended joke is out of 10 in decimal.
That's clear. I thought this joke didn't quite work because of the same reason, too.
Base 10 baby.
10/100
So i kinda went on a thought rabbit hole here
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I like jokes like this, in part because they only work in written form. Because if they were using base 10 they'd say "You're a ten", but base 2 would be "You're a one zero" (or one oh)
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Wait, do people actually say "ten" when expressing two in binary? Do they actually say "one, ten, eleven, one hundred, one hundred and one, one hundred and tenβ¦"?
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Have I been expressing binary incorrectly?
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Am I overthinking this?
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Honestly though, my favorite written pun is "Religions are more interested in profits than prophets"
Anyway, puns are fun. How do you say binary numbers?
You're not overthinking it at all and have hit upon an important point. The problem with "ten" is that it's too easily confused with 1010_2 or 0x0A_16. One-zero base 2 is unambiguous. Also one, ten, eleven etc would get very unwieldy very quickly, and as it already gets unwieldy very quickly even when just quoting digits, that's why we have hex and octal.
People don't usually change the name of the number when working in different basis so you would in fact just say "ten". If the actual representation was important you would say "one, zero, one, zero". I don't think people would say one thousand and ten as the word thousand is more about the actual number than the string "1000".
You can use other round quantity when working on other basis, like a dozen or a gross in base twelve.
Yeah but ten is the name for the concept of this many: iiiiiiiiii. Not for the symbols 1 and 0 in that order.
So if I said "that's ten", I would be looking at "1010"
If I were to send a "0010" over an interface as a test for example, I would say: "now I'm sending two. Are you recieving two?"
Probably overthinking it (i hope). I usually say each binary digit individually, e.g. "one zero" for 10. Just makes more sense to me at least.
You couldn't even write "base 4" when using base 3+1
I'll admit, this took a few seconds and a reread to process correctly. Well played
How do people have a meme for every situation?
One must have 10 memes (in base 10).
There are 10 types of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.
There are 10 types of people in the world: those that understand n-ary, those that confuse it with (n-1)-ary, those that confuse it with (n-2)-ary, ..., those that confuse it with ternary, those that confuse it with binary, and those that don't understand it at all.
there are two kinds of people, those who can extrapolate from incomplete data
What's the other kind?
And those who don't know this joke is in ternary.
You are a 1 (in binary).
I feel I must explain the joke
1 is yes
0 is no
TRUE
Split the difference, it's octal.
More like in base 1010 or base 10
Yeah, always bothered me that we don't refer to them by their highest digit. That would make them unambiguous.
Then you would need an unique symbol for every possible number
But are there many scenarios where you don't already need that anyways, just for writing out the digits of a number in the given base?
I mean, I can imagine a scenario where you might talk about base 420 on a theoretical level, without explicitly counting up until 418, 419, 420 (as e.g. Ο , Ο’, 10). But honestly, you could even still refer to that as "Base 419" and it would still be fairly obvious what you mean, since you are using multiple digits rather than just one. I guess, you could also write it as "Base 419~9~" (so with a subscript 9 to represent what we normally call "Base 10"), if you want to be precise about it.
It's not like "base 0" was getting used anyways
Yeah I doubt non-programmers would catch that.
More like in base 10 or base 10
Exactly! And don't forget about hexadecimal aka base 10