What is the single number that could crash personal and business computers?

It is often thought that the technology He is invincible, but the reality is different. A massive cyber outage wreaked havoc around the world on Friday, bringing the operations of several airlines, banks and media outlets under control.

The failure is believed to have been caused by a software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which ultimately affected Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Beyond that, what many may not know is that there is a the number specific which is also capable of crashing devices. When this number is exceeded, computers experience errors that impact rocket launches and even YouTube view counts.

The number you should be careful not to exceed is the 2,147,483,647 . This is the maximum positive value that 32-bit computer systems operate with, used in many computers.

According to the instructions BBC One of the people concerned by this issue was the rocket Ariane 5 designed to send payloads into low orbits.

On June 5, 1996, the European Space Agency (ESA) conducted the first unmanned flight of the spacecraft. At the time, it was its most ambitious project. However, just seconds after its ascent into the sky, the rocket ended up turning into a ball of fire and smoke. Its remains were scattered on the coast of French Guiana.

What happened to Ariane 5 was not a mechanical error, but rather its own software that was in charge of its control and guidance system.

As later analyses of the rocket showed, the same code as that of the previous generation of rockets, Ariane 4, had been used, even though Ariane 5 was much more powerful and faster. The program was stunned by the excess of information and by numbers it could not measure, later causing the destruction of the rocket.

This problem is called “a whole overflow” that is, when the numbers are too large for storage, which can lead to system corruption.

Another curious case, but one that did not have such destructive consequences, is the song Gangnam Style by Psy, widely heard around the world just over a decade ago. The video for the single not only became the first video to surpass one billion views on YouTube, but also managed to break the visit counter on the platform in December 2014 two years after his release.

Specifically, The video app counter had been programmed to cap at 2,147,483,647 that is, the maximum value of 32-bit computer systems. After going viral for so many months, Gangnam Style was able to overcome this obstacle.

“We never thought a video would be viewed in an integer greater than 32 bits (which equals 2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met Psy,” YouTube said in a statement. When the event occurred, every time users hovered over the counter, negative numbers appeared on the page.