Talk:3228: Day Counter

Someone has to be first 2401:D005:D402:7A00:780:9D40:A38A:98A0 13:14, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

No, but someone has to be the 0.99999999999999956th... 81.179.199.253 21:58, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

In response to the comment added by @GSLikesCats307, "When the comic was first published the number was −0.00000000000000017 days": Perhaps Randall was just trying to make things a bit more realistic. I've shown a realistic example that could generate −0.00000000000000044. My experiments didn't find any simple example that could generate −0.00000000000000017. (Which is not to say there isn't one.) —Scs (talk) 15:15, 3 April 2026 (UTC), edited 15:39, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

The day counter is now showing −0.00000000000000044 on my Windows 11 system using Chrome. Maybe the result differs based on computer/browser combination? 72.218.191.213 16:16, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

The April Fools dark mode thing was kept! Lets go! King Pando (talk) 16:25, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

This comic was published during NASA's Artemis II moon mission. Could Cueball seeming to be floating above his chair be a reference to null gravity? PDesbeginner (talk) 17:12, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

My guess is that irrational numbers have "infinite digits" in any base, but my math education is not good enough even to know how to start to prove it, an informal confirmation would be appreciated. 5.91.22.162 22:14, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

As a decimal in a certain base is just a fraction (with a denominator of a power of the base), numbers with finite decimal expansions must be rational (assuming the base is rational) Logalex8369 (talk) 23:31, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Let's all work in base π so we can have irrational discussions that make sense. What's e in base π?98.22.184.160 12:49, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

I want to meditate on all the transcendental numbers. 81.179.199.253 19:32, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Plot twist: This is accurate, just too precise and able to predict the future. Someone is about to cause one. 47.141.37.161 05:24, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Doesn't have to be predicting the future to be accurate. Maybe it means that the last error occurred 38 picoseconds ago. Gorcq (talk) 14:26, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Surprised that there hasn't been an Artemis II comic yet. --Funstuff4fun (talk) 06:12, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, new to posting; sorry if I am misunderstanding. The text describes −0.00000000000000044 as a very small negative number. Is this saying that it is close to zero? If so, would that be better expressed as large, rather than small? Flickerwit (talk) 15:54, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

The value is very small. The representation of the number is large (or fairly large, by some certain limited measure). But you wouldn't call 0.9 "smaller", or 'closer to zero'/"0", than "0.8888888888..." under most usages. Even though that might be correct in a string-handling context. 81.179.199.253 19:32, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

"Greater" and "lesser" work like that (with -1 being greater than -2), but "larger" and "smaller" are more ambiguous, and often refer to the absolute value. 192.112.253.21 02:58, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

One generally would not describe −0.00000000000000044 as "large" (rather than "larger", in direct comparison), except maybe in the implicit context of numbers that routinely are orders of magnitude less (in absolute terms) or are consistently more negative (e.g. zero is an upper limit and one or other of -0.5, -5 or -5,000,000 could be more typical value).

In the context of natural numbers, it is "small" in the grand scheme of things (or 'extremely middling', on a non-absolute basis, given how close to zero it is), especially given the implied floating precision which might suggest that 44,000,000,000,000,000 (or something not too disimilar to it — same significand, as above, but the most positive version of the base-exponent, not the nost negative) is another possible stored value that can be represented. 82.132.239.70 12:58, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Considering how close to April Fools this comic is, it could be a remnant of such a prank that they haven't bothered to clean up yet. 2001:1C02:1A9D:9700:A420:F4F:966C:167E 16:32, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

If anyone's wondering, it appears that they made it roughly 5,879 millennia, six centuries, and one decade without an integer overflow error. DL Draco Rex (talk) 19:34, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

...I rather think it means that it will be that long until they aren't having one. ;) 81.179.199.253 21:08, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it's significant that Cueball appears to be floating. Randall sometimes draws people in chairs that way. See, for example, 2949, 3015, and 3052. —Scs (talk) 23:25, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Some of the examples are also seen in What If? and What If? 2. (Yup) Cream Starlight (talk) 04:42, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

I agree with DL Draco Rex: they started a 32 bit signed integer counter on -5877585-09-23 of the proleptic Gregorian calendar, so that the counter goes

days since our last integer overflow.

counter	date
0	-5877585-09-23
1	-5877585-09-24
2	-5877585-09-25
...	...
2146743572	-001-12-30
2146743573	-001-12-31
2146743574	0000-01-01
2146743575	0000-01-02
...	...
2147483646	2026-04-01
2147483647	2026-04-02
-2147483648	2026-04-03

Qprz (talk) 12:59, 6 April 2026 (UTC)