For a moment last month, everyone quit worrying about AI destroying the world. That was because a routine software update was busy destroying the world—or at least crashing most of its computers. So what's next for CrowdStrike? Our guess: updating its name.
Of course, this isn’t the first time the devil has been in the digital details (Y2K, ICYMI). And it won’t be the last. In fact, thanks to how computers store dates, our next digital apocalypse is currently scheduled for the year 2038. Plenty of time to prepare! Right? |
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Whether the 2038 bug gets fixed in time isn’t really the point. It’s impossible to say if the next global crash will come from a snippet of code or some sinister AI (okay, it will probably be AI). So the smartest move is learning to handle whatever problems come our way.
Luckily, you can start building your digital problem-solving skills anytime! Or at least for the next 13 years, 5 months, and 17 days. No stress. |
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🥇 Medal heads. Which country is really winning the Olympics? Two researchers say the answer goes deeper than medal count. |
🪐 The fandom menace. To understand what makes Star Wars fans unique, it helps to use the force—of data analysis. |
🎸 (Un)cover band. Guess the song and artist from as few instruments as possible in this musical take on Wordle. |
🌈 Rainbow collection. The color palette for your next project might come from an unexpected place: fire hydrants. |
🛑 Worst shape of your life. Mathematicians are one step closer to proving what the least efficient shape is for filling a 2D space. |
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There’s always a bug going around, so it’s important to keep hospitals well staffed. Government regulations require that each hospital maintain a ratio of at least 1 nurse to every 2 patients, 99% of the time.
If City A has 5,000 people and City B has 50,000, what is the ratio of nurses at hospital A to those at hospital B?
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We’ll randomly choose one correct respondent for a shout-out in next month’s email. |
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A big shout out to the mononymous Richard, who found the solution using an approach similar to ours.
Last month we introduced you to Peter, the guy in charge of pond maintenance at the Olive Orchard. We asked you to find the most economical interval with which to clean the pond. The key was balancing the high fixed cost of measuring the water for each cleaning against the exponential growth of algae.
Check out the full solution here. |
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