[Leftium]

1. [Ternary computers]: Base-3 is the most efficient of all integer bases; numbers are stored most economically with trits.

2. Something like a [Lisp machine] that is optimized for functional-style programming with immutable data.

[Ternary computers]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ternary_computer

[Lisp machine]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Lisp_machine

[bruce343434]

Heap trees would be less efficient with trits. What do you mean "most efficient of all integer bases"?

[Leftium]

Ternary minimizes both the length and number of different symbols used to express a range of numbers[1].

Heap trees were probably optimized for binary, since that's what we use. Perhaps there would be a ternary version of heap trees? Or a totally different ternary data structure that serves the same purpose?

[1]: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/446664/what-is-the-...

[Leftium]

Slightly off topic, but I'm curious why some users start a comment with "* * *", then edit it later? Is this just a HN thing?

(Parent comment happened to start as one of these "* * *" comments.)

[bruce343434]

Do you mean my comment? I did not write nor remove "* * *".

[Leftium]

Oh, interesting! According to HN Replies, that was the content of your comment (https://imgur.com/t5316Rx) (When I checked on HN, it was not "* * *")

I've seen these ephemeral "* * *" comments before, and even another comment asking about them.

[bruce343434]

That is interesting, perhaps a synchronisation error? As if the actual comment wasn't available yet but the email already got sent.

[Leftium]

I don't think it's just an HN Replies email thing. I've seen "* * *" in actual HN comment threads, too.

And I've seen it in 100% of your replies to me, when I've never seen it for other replies. So I wonder if it's related to how you use HN