Recently I asked you on Twitter and Facebook if you wanted to see an unspecific episode
with just random and hopefully interesting facts. And the results where almost unanimously
yes, so here it is.
In the year 2000, computers and various machines across the globe ran into the infamous Y2K
problem or The Millennium Bug. It was an issue that resulted from the practice of abbreviating
and storing 4-digit numbers as only 2 digits. This made the year 2000 indistinguishable
from the year 1900. So when clocks around the world went from 1999 to the year 2000
they got a little confused. The reason I bring this up is that in 2038 something similar
will happen. For example if I bring up my old iPhone 3G and I try to set the date further
into the future, let's say 2039, it's grayed out, I can't. The same thing happens with
my DSLR camera, I can't go past 2037. So what's going on? Well, many systems today display
and keep track of time using something called Unix Time. It's basically a 32 bit number
that keeps track of time by simply counting every second since the 1st of January 1970.
However, because it's only a 32 bit number it will eventually reach its maximum value.
This will happen on the 19th of January, 2038 at exactly 03:14:07. The system will then
no longer be able to differentiate between 2038 and 1901. The way to solve this issue
is by upgrading to a 64 bit system instead. A 64 bit number will be able to count seconds
until the 4th of December in the year 292,277,026,596. If our current understanding of the universe
is correct, the universe will most likely have seized to exist by then. I love how instead
of actually solving the problem, we just found a way to delay it enough so we don't actually
have to solve it.
Video games these days are getting larger and larger and larger and larger. Not just
the in game world size but the actual amount of space it takes up on your hard drive. The
PC version GTA V for example, is currently at a staggering 60GB. The physical copy comes
on 7 discs. Which makes this game all the more fascinating. The game is called .kkrieger,
I'm not entirely sure how you pronounce that, but it's only 96KB. The game achieve this
incredibly small size by extensive use of something called procedural generation and
a unique method of box modeling. In very basic terms, the game is essentially created from
scratch upon launch which result in some pretty extensive loading times. But despite its tiny
size, the graphics are somehow pretty decent actually.
North Korea have their very own operating system called Red Star OS. It's a Linux-based
system and version 2.0 looked like this. A weird clone of Windows XP. For version 3.0
they decided to go for a Mac OS X clone instead. Now the question is, who is gonna use it?
Seriously, this is North Korea at night. It's really kinda sad. They also have their very
own web browser called Naenara and it's a clone of an old version of Firefox. But I
doubt any sane person in the country that actually have access to a computer would dare
to even use it. You see, it doesn't actually connect to the internet. Instead, it connects
to the country's intranet called Kwangmyong with it's own mail service, social network,
news outlets, among other things. Basically, you won't have access to the internet but
rather the bestnet.
12+1 = 11+2. Twelve plus one is an anagram of eleven plus two. And of course, both 12+1
and 11+2 equals 13. Just like the two phrases "twelve plus one" and "eleven plus two" have
13 characters each.
Fucking, Austria. No it's not me having anything against Austria, there's actually a small
village called Fucking in Austria. Even though the village is tiny with a population of only
100, it's become quite famous for it's Fucking name. In fact, the only two crimes reported
is people stealing the Fucking road signs and actually fucking in front of the Fucking
signs. One version of the sign features the phrase "Bitte – nicht so schnell!" which means please...
Which means...
Which mean "Please - not so fast!".
In 1898 the novel The Wreck of the Titan was released. The story features the biggest ship
ever built named Titan, which happens to sink after hitting an iceberg. It sounds familiar
doesn't it? But this novel was written 14 years before the Titanic would sink in 1912.
Before it was even conceptualized. And the similarities are pretty uncanny. They both
sank in April after hitting an iceberg on starboard side in the North Atlantic ocean.
There where not enough lifeboats for all the passengers. They had similar size and top
speed and both had a maximum crew and passenger capacity of 3000.
As a Russian citizen, you can declare your ethnicity as more or less anything you want,
real or not. That is what the Constitution of Russia actually states, so people
have chosen fictional things such as Jedi and Hobbit as their official ethnicity.
Personally I identify as an attack helicopter.
Have you ever looked up at a clear blue sky and then suddenly you start to see small white
dots seemingly floating around inside your eyes? It looks a little something like this
and usually only appear for a few short seconds. If you haven't, it may sound extremely bizarre
but it's something called the Blue Field Entoptic Phenomenon or simply Blue-sky Sprites. What
you're seeing is actually white blood cells inside your eyes. Blue light from the sky
is absorbed by red blood cells but not white, and thus they appear as these mysterious bright dots.
How do you describe a person with a below average intelligence without sounding disrespectful?
Today "intellectual disability" is the official term you should use if you want to be politically
correct. At least in the US. But not long ago, it was completely fine to use terms like
retarded or mental retardation. But over time, these terms became seen as offensive as they
where more often used to specifically offend and insult a person. In a similar fashion
words like idiot, imbecile, and moron where actual medical terms, used to classify your
IQ level. So if you had, say, an IQ of 65. It would be a completely correct medical term to
say that you are a moron.
In the Bay of Bengal, there's an island called the North Sentinel Island. What's fascinating
about this place are the people who live here. They are called the Sentinelese people and
are among the last tribes on the planet, left almost completely untouched by the outside
world. Several attempts has been made to contact the tribe, but the group has violently rejected
each and every one of these attempts. The Sentinelese maintain a hunter-gatherer type
society and it's very likely that they have not even learned how to produce or control
fire. They are the most isolated group of humans in the world and have existed for more than
60,000 years. A society, frozen in time, oblivious to the evolution and progress of mankind.
Completely unaware that we can fly. That we have computers, ice cream, smart phones, pigs
that look like sheep, Morgan Freeman, porn! Oh god so much porn. Japan, Yoda, Waluigi,
and the dankest collection of dank memes the universe has ever seen. They don't know that
there are billions of us. That we come in different colors, shapes, and sizes. That
there's been thousands of wars, spanning the entire planet. That there's a fucking planet.
They have no idea that that gigantic white sky demon is actually a moon and that humans
have been there. That it's possible that we are not alone in the universe and that aliens may exist.
Then again, to them, we are the aliens.