[gwern]

> The title makes no sense if you interpret it that way

The lesson of weird machines is that weird machines can lurk anywhere; that's why they're 'weird'. Something to do with CPP or bit endianness, perhaps, or exploiting undefined behavior is what I thought clicking on it.

[wemdyjreichert]

Ditto for the endianness. Or one of those embedded boards with really weird 24-bit stuff or something similar.

[carlmr]

When you get into DSP 24bit isn't too weird. But then you also expect that going in.