My Favourite Number

3 May 2007 | Sections: Computing

I love the Internet. I love how countless code monkey hours are wasted trying to stop the inevitable. I love how people actually think it’s possible to remove information from the Word Wide Web.

So back to my favourite number. Well, it’s not prime, and it’s not perfect, so it’s not really my favourite number, and in fact the prime factors aren’t really that interesting: 26 · 5 · 19 · 12043 · 216493 · 836256503069278983442067. It did make it onto Wikipedia, however, and it did crash Digg for a full ten minutes. The reason? It’s a lot more interesting when represented in hexadecimal:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Just thought I’d let you know.

Comments

3 comments.

  1. Photo of Joe Scanlon  Joe Scanlon (United Kingdom) (comment submitted via Facebook)
    3:02am 5 May 2007
    brilliant!
  2. Will (United States or AOL)
    11:02pm 5 May 2007
    That’s so amazing! Sometimes when I’m bored I like to play a game: I tell my friends that I am thinking of a number between 1 and 13256278887989457651018865901401704641. No one ever guessed it until now, and now lot’s of people are getting it right. Ain’t that something?

    (LEGAL NOTICE: I am invested with the legal authority to extract financial and civil penalties from people playing this game or guessing this number without paying me my proper dues as inventore and promotor. I shall be suing the AACS forthwith.)
  3. Photo of Chris Buckley  Chris Buckley (United Kingdom) (details submitted via OpenID)
    10:41pm 6 May 2007
    Thanks Jon — yes, the link in the post now doesn’t work… Check the deletion log for why. I can’t believe they actually purged the edit! Something about a cabal, anyone?

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