Hacker News Reader

Comment by astrange | Hacker News Reader

The Xbox brand is very unique because they think numbers go from 0 to 360 to 1.

Microsoft just switched the unit from degrees to turns. I guess that would make more sense if they were rebranding the 360.

To be pedantic, there's no need for "very" in front of "unique", as my spouse is happy to pounce on despite my protests that English is a living language.

> Microsoft just switched the unit from degrees to turns.

From days in the year to years, but since Microsoft isn't very good with calendar, they stuck in pre-Julian epoch and have incorrect values.

Wonder if I should explicitly put an emoji here?

Dropping the "very" would lose some of the sarcasm though.

They do over the domain 360*Z_719

If it's supposed to be degrees, then since 360==0 doesn't that mean the range is [0,360) so 360 degrees is actually an out of range value for an angle?

I've always wondered this but never enough to ask it.

Z_719 is the shorthand for integers in [0, 718], with Z_n typically connotating the algebraic group or ring of integers up to n. In this case 360(Z_719) is an ideal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_(ring_theory)) over that domain.

While the ordered sequence of Z_719 is just {0, 1, 2... 718} then wrapping back around to 0, for the ideal 360(Z_719) you get {0, 360, 360*2 % 719 = 1, ...} which is the basis of my joke :)

Tough to overflow when bound to a loop, I guess

And after one there is “series”. The “X Box Series X” name is so tacky it’s kind of genius.

0 to 360 to 1 to S to X

correction: it's not 0. It's null. Null to 360 to One. I think Zero comes after One.

It’s kind of how angles work, tho.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com