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Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles

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Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles

#61

Post by riffraff »

wincy wrote: post #51
Razengan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager that they might be as meticulous in Japan too.

I’m glad I read an article on HN about pointing and calling[0] in the Japanese rail system as a way of preventing accidents. I take a blood pressure medication and had once or twice taken it a second time in the day, which wiped me out and made it VERY difficult to work (for the record, I don’t take it for blood pressure and it’s a very low dose, so I wasn’t at risk of my heart stopping, just very sleepy). Now I do a…

For your specific issue, might I suggest getting one of those pill boxes with one slot per day? It makes it fool proof to get daily pills right, by offloading your memory to an external device.

Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles

#62

Post by xxs »

Bayart wrote: post #37
city41 wrote: post #19

You can carry a maximum of 255 rupees in the original Legend of Zelda, and back in the day magazines commented on the "oddly specific" number.

That reminds me back when WoW was still 32 bits and people discovered the gold cap was 2 147 483 647 copper coins.

Something even cooler, Lineage 2 (inception times similar to wow, say 2004) had a Karma system for killing other players. Pretty much it was possible to kill anyone, without their consent outside towns. Karma required cleaning -- killing normal mobs (instead players), having karma and having unrepented sins (killed 5+ players who didn't fight back), dying - including being killed by other players resulted in gear drop. Overall it was possible to hunt such players.

There was one player who managed to kill so many new players that his 32bit karma turned negative via integer overflow and he was free from all the filthy red status.

Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles

#63

Post by xxs »

reificator wrote: post #59
Bayart wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me back when WoW was still 32 bits and people discovered the gold cap was 2 147 483 647 copper coins.

So your gold value was signed? Does WoW allow for debt by tracking negative values, or was it just an oversight?

Signed numbers are preferred. Imaging you try to buy something checking if the remaining balance would be greater than zero is pretty much guaranteed, resulting in 4+ billion instead.

Signed number (just 64bit) is the correct number type for such operations.

Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles

#64

Post by kposehn »

Freak_NL wrote: post #50
kposehn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the longest regular Swiss trains seem to top out at 44 cars. This is because of passing siding lengths being much smaller than other countries such as the US. There are longer trains that are scheduled on routes with longer sidings however such as a the main north/south routes. Most European trains rarely exceed 22 cars for the same reasons as they have to be able to be passed by express trains in stations.

Yeah, a bit of light browsing yields a 25 to 30 unit average for European freight trains¹. https://www.allianz-pro-schiene.de/themen/aktuell/740-meter-...

Ah, it’s up from last I checked. Thanks!

Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles

#66

Post by reificator »

xxs wrote: post #63
reificator wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your gold value was signed? Does WoW allow for debt by tracking negative values, or was it just an oversight?

Signed numbers are preferred. Imaging you try to buy something checking if the remaining balance would be greater than zero is pretty much guaranteed, resulting in 4+ billion instead. Signed number (just 64bit) is the correct number type for such operations.

Pushing it off to the negatives does not solve the issue of overflow.

Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles

#68

Post by majewsky »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #15

I'm waiting for the freak accident when a 200-axle train enters a given segment, and then later a 56-axle train accidentally ignores a red light, and plop the segment is now marked as all-clear again.

You cannot "accidentally" ignore a red light. Driving over one will trigger an emergency stop unless you specifically disable this mechanism.

Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles

#69

Post by Gibbon1 »

saalweachter wrote: post #60
reificator wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your gold value was signed? Does WoW allow for debt by tracking negative values, or was it just an oversight?

Some people just really, really dislike unsigned ints.

I've run into programmers that think something terrible is going to happen if you use an unsigned int for anything.
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