ck's archive: 10,000,000,000,000,000 miles (in binary)

I rolled over 65536 miles in my WRX tonight:

65536 is an interesting number to computer and video game people because it's 2^16, or one of the numerical limitations of a 16-bit platform, such as Windows 3.1, the Super NES, or any number of historical Unix releases. That goes some ways to explain why I keep running into it. Sometimes it's the limit on open file descriptors, sometimes it comes up as the number of ports available for TCP use, or sometimes it's limiting the amount of money or experience I can collect in a classic video game. It's one of the more tenacious numbers out there.

And when written out in binary, it looks like ten quadrillion.