Cliff, China, and Endians (extra footage) - Numberphile

Just a bit extra from Cliff after his "Neverending Story" video. Main video at: • The Neverending Story ...
More Cliff Stoll: bit.ly/Cliff_Videos
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[@guanche011]

So Cliff is a mathematician, who talked (in the main video) about design, spoke in chinese, told us about a job in astronomy and told us a computer science history bit. And all we will remember him by is 'the klein bottle guy' :)

[@borix2600]

Renzo also, he is the first person in history who caught a computer hacker

[@guanche011]

Do tell more! Was unaware of this.

[@ScarfmonsterWR]

He wrote a book about this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg

[@guanche011]

Thanks! That is such an amazing story

[@pleaseenteraname4824]

He drew on food, too

[@BlobVanDam]

I bet this date confusion was a real problem when Cliff was designing the time circuits for his Delorean.

[@lawrencecalablaster568]

BlobVanDam Appropriate logo

[@BlobVanDam]

Great Scott!

[@chetankochar3056]

BlobVanDam ii

[@vkillion]

I'm American and I definitely prefer "big endian" dates, because it's useful for naming timestamped files on a computer. Sort by name, and they automatically sort by date as well.

[@jliu6735]

Another benefit of the “big-endian” date format is that it can be perfectly sorted when represented as strings or integers. As you can see, it is easier to sort a list of dates in the format of "20171202" than that of "12022017" or "02122017".

[@TheTweedyBiologist]

The real advantage of big endian is the ability to place things chronologically when in numerical order. If we have two dates, Jan 15 2017 and Feb 24 2016, then the Feb date comes before the Jan date in big endian vs. small/middle (2016-02-24, 2017-01-15 vs. 01-15-2017, 02-24-2017 or 15-01-2017, 24-02-2017)

[@rhamph]

ISO 8601 FTW.

[@danjger]

the beauty of ISO 8601 is that it sorts correctly numerically and alphabetically so string and numeric comparisons evaluate the same.

[@41-Haiku]

I wish he had also mentioned time stamps. Bigendianness implies year-month-day-hour-minute-second-fractions.

[@cheeseisgreat24]

I've always preferred Big Endian, just because then when you have a hundred dates all in a row, or are working on a log sheet of some sort, you end up with numbers that go up and down sequentially just like real numbers do, with the right most digit going up or down, and that just always made the most sense to deal with. Then when looking back historically, you are immediately given the info from left to right as "How many years away, or same year" - "What month" - "what specific day" like moving closer and closer to a bullseye.

[@Javiercav]

Here in Argentina we use day-month-year most time.since is how we pronunce the dates. And sometimes year-month-day. But never with the day in the middle.

[@DaniErik]

This is one of the most satisfying features of the Chinese language. And it's consistent across all units of time. It's not "tomorrow at 7 a.m.", but "tomorrow in the morning at 7" (明天早上七点).

[@whoeveriam0iam14222]

I always start with the year when saving something on my pc so it automatically orders it chronologically

[@Nilguiri]

Me, too. It's the sensible thing to do. You can use a regular text sort. If you have files which start with the date in YYYYMMDD format, you can just click the filename column heading and they sort chronologically. Why would anybody do anything else is beyond me!

[@Slattery777]

I love this man

[@farzaan1479]

This was so frustrating trying to figure out food expiration dates before 2012

[@InigoSJ]

I could see cliff's videos 24/7 (or 7/24?)

[@dipi71]

ISO 8601 all the way! Now is about 2017-09-19 12:50:58 +0200, and everybody who has looked through a proper log file (or sorted a list of dates on the command line) would understand this and know why it’s the only true way.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

Middle Endian is a historical artifact. Journals, newspapers, law books, etc. Are generally archived by year with the dates inside organize by month then day. The year is rarely mentioned. When it is mentioned, it is to distinguish the important stuff, like month and day, removing the ambiguity. Keep in mind, when writing the 1794 journal of the House of Representatives, they wrote it with a quill and ink bottle. They didn't wrote down anything that wasn't important. They wrote the year once on the gront of the book and the month and date inside when needed. Even as typed text became more common, it was type-set. If they wrote 1843 on every page of the newspaper, they would run out of 1's, 8's, 4's and 3's and not have enough to set the type for the other stories. Resetting it would take too much time for the morning edition to come out in time. It really isn't until modern computers with their ability to sort automatically that it has been an issue at all.

[@AndyYankee17]

ISO 8601 FTW. Sorting alphabetically is the same as sorting chronologically.

[@IllidanS4]

ISO dates for the win!

[@amitnadig2884]

More videos of Cliff please 🙏🏻🙏🏻

[@allmycircuits8850]

Computers have some sort of 'middle endian' after all: on x86 we have little endian on bytes, but big endian on bits! Right now I'm doing some image processing, here are rows of image going pixel after pixel, and I want to shift them a little. So confusing to do it using 32-bit or 64-bit registers!

[@trueriver1950]

AllMyCircuits That might be because Intel is a US company and Americans seem totally addicted to muddle-endian-ness. Thinks: does anyone know what ARM does? My conjecture will be blown away if ARM architecture is muddle-endian too (ARM being a Brit company if course)

[@blenderpanzi]

How do you actually know what order the bits within a byte are?

[@ashley2khoo510]

so this was recorded on the 10th of march...

[@ashley2khoo510]

2803 views, 230 likes, 0 dislikes, such a beautiful sight

[@publicmichaelzmit]

Said at 2:10 (right after "bluiwdbluiwd") "... if anyone standardises on bigendian ..." - Someone did; ISO in 1988 with ISO 8601

[@devjock]

Just use Unix time :D

[@blenderpanzi]

Extended ISO 8601 Notation. We have a standard!

[@googolplexbyte]

20170920 is still inelegant because the units' relative sizes. Years unit and the tens of months unit are almost the same size. It's like the original pyramids that had different slopes higher up because they planned things out poorly.

[@StephenTack]

Year-month-day is soooooo much easier to sort chronologically.

[@Verrisin]

well, I use YYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD - I'm confused by every other format too. XD (also YYMMDDhhmm, when making timestamps in file names etc. - it's relatively short, clean, automatically sorts by date...)

[@AlRoderick]

Middle endian makes some sense when you're reading the date off a month by month calendar, you see the date at the top of the page then read down until you find a day that's not crossed off. Then the year comes last because it's an appendix, in daily life you almost never need to be told what year it is and wouldn't say or write it unless you're dating a check or a letter that might be read much later. Either other system works better now but in that specific circumstance it's logical.

[@norullzz]

an FFT is middle endian, the first value it poops out is the 0 or the middle in (-fs/2,fs/2)

[@yarone5960]

There are computers that use middle-endians: in some processors were big endians was used when they switched from 16-bit to 32-bit you got a byte order of 1-0-3-2

[@contaantiga5397]

here in Brazil we say day/month/year exemple: today is 20/09/2017 (my birthday)

[@oldcowbb]

even address is like this in the east, Coutry, city, building etc.

[@Nilguiri]

And their names. They start with the family name. Kim Jong Un's family name is "Kim", for example.

[@Yotanido]

In computing, endianness is still not properly standardised. However, we have one standard: Network byte order. The most significant byte gets sent first. Whether a byte uses big endian or little endian bit-order depends on the type of network. It's generally invisible to the CPU and gets handled by the NIC, I believe, so it doesn't really matter. (Unless you are designing networking hardware) Many computers still use little endian internally, though. It has a couple benefits, even if it is less intuitive to us, who are used to big-endian numbers.

[@LordSatoh]

Why did he used my birthday to explain? 👀

[@oldcowbb]

you born in 2017?

[@chrisgurney2467]

Only North America uses Middleendian dates.... just like the US is stuck out of step in not using Metric.....

[@cmck362]

The way we write our dates conforms with the way English would naturally speak dates. It's September sixteenth two thousand seventeen It's *the* sixteenth *of* September two thousand seventeen. You add words when you do it the other way around. Blame the English language for that one.

[@chrisgurney2467]

No it's 17th of September to me as a native English speaker this is natural to me small to big

[@WouterWeggelaar]

I've never understood why the US picked middle endian. Small & Large I get...but middle...why?

[@menachemsalomon]

Chris Gurney The best thing about the Metric system is that everyone else uses it. But it was invented after the US existed, and there was no reason to change. The only people that had to deal with both systems were the ship captains doing transcontinental trade. Also, the metric system is wrong; the meter is too short.

[@chrisgurney2467]

A slightly short metre is better than basing measurement on the reigning monarch's thumb size, also the SI eliminated the mess that was pre SI systems that were totally incompatible with each other, even down to different miles being used in the same Country. Many things have been invented after the creation of the US and many of those outside the US but have been adopted in the US.....

[@martinstent5339]

Just an interesting aside here: big-endian and little-endian are both taken from Gulliver’s Travels by Johnathan Swift. In the land of Lilliput they had had a long-standing civil war about which way to eat a boiled egg. The little-endians started at the pointy end and the big-endians started at the round end. Both sides of the Lilliputian conflict had published extensive scientific papers about why their method was the right one (sound familiar?).

[@JmanNo42]

The problem with big endian seem to be you need to read ahead to the end, to see where you are, you do not know the power of 2, well unless you use a fixed word length for the operation But say you read out a string as a number Cliff, then you are in trouble reading it out from left to right, because the computer can't work with the variable doing arithmetic until it know the digitplace. So you have to reverse the string. Or you have to read in the full value into memory before start working on the number. With small endian you just start do the arithmetic operation upon the operands Cliff.

[@MsLittleVenus]

He is so AWESOME! In Turkey, we use small endians too.

[@marchimedian]

US military uses big endian, 24-hour clock, metric, and zulu time. People focused on utility have no qualms switching to what works best/fastest/easiest.

[@Falcrist]

ISO 8601 or GTFO I can easily sort by date just using the ASCII characters, and I can start a search before you're finished sending the message.

[@TheSlayerN]

If MM-DD-YYYY is Middleendian, what would YYYY-DD-MM be?

[@Nilguiri]

Americendian.

[@jacobdial2448]

As an American I feel personally attacked right now

[@wattmeter]

I have been using big endian date format for years/months/days.

[@DanDart]

At least have biggest to smallest or smallest to biggest. Don't mix it up!

[@topilinkala1594]

I have born of 9th of November and as I'm a finn we use little endian dates. Every time I see 911 it's my birthday not a date of a disaster.

[@refrashed]

As someone who grew up using middle endian, middle endian is bad, but small endian isn't much better. Metric should standardize big endian, as it's easy to sort chronologically. Also middle endian is closer to big endian (at least m/d/y) and if no one says the year there's no confusion whatsoever between the two.

[@haNguyen-ir5nk]

it seem like he haven't heard about cLEMENCy (LEgitbs Middle ENdian Computer)

[@Marconius6]

Middle endian isn't even clearly defined. Is 03-12-07 actually March 12th of 2007... or is it 2003, 12th of July?

[@culturejammer2511]

By definition, if it's middle endian it's march 3

[@Radditz770]

People would still mess up big endian with middle endianness, like year-day-month or something xD You might say that's illogical, but so is imperial units, farenheit, and the middle-endian nations like america uses today :P Interesting video though! I can report that in Sweden, we use little endian! Day/Month/Year!

[@SurajGrewal]

I'd say, let's wire the months in words only. Computers can handle it on software

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

I prefer big-endian because it aligns chronological and alphabetical/alphanumerical order.

[@AgentM124]

How about MM/YYYY/DD :^)

[@U014B]

Why don't we just get rid of months altogether? Just do DDD/YYYY.

[@shaw18]

1

[@retepaskab]

With a left-to right writing system, it's much more easy to compare big endian dates. Why should dates be different from numbers?

[@andrerenault]

Meanwhile, HEC-RAS and other USACE/EPA software requires middle endian, US formatting and no accents anywhere. A nightmare if you're not from an English speaking area. I get it, they're building the software for themselves first, but c'mon...

[@hufflepuffjoh]

In France, we use small endians... day/month/year

[@Weissenschenkel]

Johann Dallan same here in Brazil.

[@Henrix1998]

And in Finland. It is like the SI units; should be used everywhere

[@fischele5790]

Same in germany

[@Jako1987]

Henrix98 in SI it is YYYY-MM-DD

[@redsalmon9966]

Actually most of countries use DD/MM/YYYY I think

[@frankharr9466]

I'm a proud Midde-endiener. And I eat my hard-boiled eggs from the middle. :)

[@bupeldox5759]

now when did people start standardising Indians?

[@GamrCorps]

Someone send this video to CGP Grey!

[@fep_ptcp883]

Well, the way I see this is simple: today is a DAY of a MONTH of a YEAR. There is an order here which shouldn't be changed. I ask everyone: is there some sense in using MINUTES before HOURS? No! It is "XX hours AND YY minutes". And today is "XX of YY of ZZZZ". Simple and logical enough.

[@fatsquirrel75]

But right now is a certain second of a minute of an hour. I think for time it makes sense to start with the hour to narrow it down. With dates people generally already know the month and year, so best to start with the day.

[@litigioussociety4249]

English is spoken as middle endian, which is what makes middle endian more logical. The best standard would be the old alphanumeric hybrid that many people use to use, such as 16Sept2017. For some reason, they quit teaching this. This would prevent any confusion, since the month would always be the written format.

[@Para199x]

Litigious Society in Britain it is normal to say "the sixteenth of September"

[@Nilguiri]

That is totally US-centric. You say it like that because you are American and obviously not an information management person, and you you have learned it from an early age. Other countries (most countries?) do not usually do that.

[@DDranks]

Well, big endian is the only one that makes sense because we tend to sort things the most significant thing first, and that's the only thing that plays well along it. The American way makes the least sense, and the European way the second least.

[@menachemsalomon]

Big endian does make sense for dates. Middle endian _is_ big endian, with the year added as an afterthought. Consider a diary entry. You put the date - month and day - on each entry, but you only need to put the year on Jan. 1. Many newspapers list dates with the year omitted, especially within the content of an article, unless there is some ambiguity. Months are omitted much less often.

[@trucid2]

China and Indians, oh my! For dates I prefer little endian because string sort of the date also sorts by date.

[@ALivingDinosaur]

String sorting works for YYYY-MM-DD which is big-endian (from most the significant part to the least significant one when reading left-to-right).

[@trucid2]

You're right, I had it backwards. BE it is.

[@grexursorum6006]

Middleendian is the worst.... Total desaster :-) As a scientist i have to work a lot with US-Articles and dates a lot. It kills me every time. Why they do so....?

[@omikronweapon]

Big and small have their uses at least. I don't really see any advantage of putting the month first.

[@d34d10ck]

Middle endian makes no sense whatsoever. Small endian is better, but it doesn't allow you to sort those numbers by ordering them alphanumerically. Big endian is the only thing we should be using, because it allows alphanumerical sorting.

[@limcharles9730]

endians? or indians?

[@kennethflorek8532]

Saying that USA English uses middle-endian dates is mistaken analysis. To start with, we don't even use dates when unnecessary, Q:What day is today? A:Tuesday. Days are neither larger nor smaller than other days, because they are names. Days are neither before or after other days, because Wednesday is tomorrow if today is Tuesday, but Wednesday is last week if the Wednesday you are talking about is last Wednesday. Q: What is the date today? A: The twenty-second. or possibly A: September twenty-second. We use neither months nor years when unnecessary. Months are neither larger nor smaller than other months, because they are names. Months are neither before or after other months, because October is next month if it is September today, but October is last year if the October you meant is last October. The twenty-second is the English name for a day of the month, not really a number. Only a screwball would specify the year in conversation when specifying a date, if the year is obvious, as it usually is. Maybe always specifying the year is normal in France or Sweden, because they are on the metric system, but I doubt it. Because the year is mostly unnecessary, what we do in proper written USA English, if it is necessary, is add a tag with the year after a comma. Or, to shorten the whole explanation, dates in English are in English words and grammar, just like the rest of English. Like English in general, you can mess with the order and still make out the meaning. If you really want to write 22 September instead of September 22, OK. So what about things like 09/12/2017? It is an abbreviation for something that could be in proper English. It wasn't meant to be anything else. Expanded to the proper form, with the month as a word, it is unambiguous. As some people may recall, before the year 2000, when what had been the usual form became a problem for computers, although perfectly fine for people, the abbreviation would have been 09/12/17, where any number might be misconstrued as the year or day.

[@Nilguiri]

What absolute nonsense!

[@omarsharif7395]

First