David Cantrell 🏏<p><a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/TIL" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>TIL</span></a> (and wish I hadn't) that in <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/x86" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>x86</span></a>-land there are at least 11 different documented <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/NOP" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NOP</span></a> instructions, all different lengths, so you can use them as padding to align loops, that NOP in 64 bit mode behaves differently to NOP in 32 bit mode, and that there's an instruction for a floating point NOP. <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/Linux" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Linux</span></a> has a subroutine <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/optimize_nops" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>optimize_nops</span></a>. Can we please go back to abacuses and cuneiform.</p>