A gem of a post from The Numbers Guy includes this nuggest on GMail storage. Always a topic of interest.
This numbers whimsy informs Google’s countup clock on the Gmail sign-in page showing the amount of storage available to users. Now topping 6.2 gigabytes, the storage quota’s upward tick is driven by a target of 42 gigabytes — an homage to Douglas Adams’s answer to life, the universe and everything — in the year 2038, a reference to the feared Year 2038 bug. Mr. Murray calls that numerical target, explained further here, “an inside joke in the nerd community.” By Jan. 2, 3456 — 1/2/3456 — the capacity will be the biggest number JavaScript can handle, which exceeds by a wide margin the number of atoms in the known universe.
Of course, if you can't wait until 2038, you can always buy more.
Comments