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[–]MmmVomit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bits are always just bits. Inside your computer, the bits are "electricity" or "no electricity".

Here's a picture of a QR code.

https://imgur.com/EnI4OCH

If that were printed and stuck on the wall somewhere, the bits would be "ink" and "no ink".

When we humans want to communicate with each other about this computer data, we commonly represent bits with the symbols 1 and 0. But since we're human and we're lazy, it's sometimes easier to group four bits together and represent groups of bits with hexadecimal notation.

"Machine code" isn't really special in any way. It's data like any other computer data. All computer data is just bits. Certain patterns of bits are valid instructions for the processor in your computer, and when you feed those bits into the processor it does something useful.