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PaperclipPerfector  22hr ago (text post)   735 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Does anyone have their own equivalent of a personal "antimeme", a concept you familiarize yourself with (potentially with difficulty) and then inevitably forget unless you make an intentional effort to look it up?

In no particular order:

  • I often have to look up whether I need an x86 or x64 executable when I need to download a program
  • ECGs. Fucking ECGs. I get good at understanding them when I absolutely have to (before exams), but guess what, by the time the next one rolls around, it's all out of my head.
  • Fourier transforms (how they actually work, and not the conceptual strokes)
  • And many more, all of which stubbornly refuse to come to mind, because of course they do.

I often have to look up whether I need an x86 or x64 executable

It doesn't help that sometimes they refer to x86-64 as just x86 (assumes 32-bit address space are obviously deprecated) or AMD64 (as if that tells you anything about the instruction set). I suppose this is also a product of age and the computer market you grew up in. There was a time in the US when the IBM PC running an 8086 was the personal computer, and the fact that all other 86s descend from there feels natural. There was also a time when a 64-bit CPU felt like you were living in the future, e.g. Nintendo 64.

ECGs

I leave this one to the physicians. Small related story, though. In an effort to get me to stop bothering them, I once had a circuits lab TA tell me to go off and build an ECG. I did at some point succeed at "building" the world's shittiest ECG; at least it made an appropriately squiggly-looking line (relying on the oscilloscope for 98% of the work, of course). I'm pretty sure that experience has only left me more mystified about what an ECG is supposed to do.

Fourier transforms

Two useful notes here.

  1. The vast, vast majority of applied math at this level is just linear algebra with a Scooby-Doo mask on.
  2. If you're looking for a 'picture' to hold in your head, this 3Blue1Brown is a classic. Surprisingly appropriate for a huge range of mathematical sophistication.

And many more, all of which stubbornly refuse to come to mind, because of course they do.

This happens to me all the time, which calls back to my annoyance with LLMs sometimes. I'm sure it's partially a problem of imprecise prompting.

Often I will ask: "I'm trying to recall the name for something that is like X, Y, and Z. Can you help me determine what concept I'm looking for?"

Reply: "The concept is called XYZ and it works by X, Y, and Z." Entirely a hallucination when you then go to search for XYZ.

AMD64 (as if that tells you anything about the instruction set)

Was there a second 64-bit instruction set invented by AMD?

I was being imprecise here, and I do not have all that extensive of knowledge of the landscape of instruction sets and architectures out in the wild.

That being said. If you already know what you want, AMD64 is unambiguous and interchangeable with x86-64. As a name it is less legibly part of the x86 lineage than e.g. 8086, iAPX 286, i386, etc.

I am not aware of a second 64-bit instruction set invented by AMD. It is plausible there exists some highly specialized instruction set out in the wild invented by AMD that is 64-bit, but no one would reasonably assume you were talking about that if you referenced AMD64. AMD the manufacturer does or has produce other 64-bit instruction set processors e.g. the AMD Opteron A1100, which uses the ARMv8-A instruction set.

Yeah, that last bit is a more common point of confusion than you might expect for normies: Linux software supporting both AARCH64 and x86-64 took off for single-board computer support, and a surprising number of people saw AMD64 and thought it meant the former.

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