This Video Has X Number of Views

I changed the title to the latest video by Tom Scott, because the real title changes every time you load it. The number went up by at least 100,000 views between the time I first encountered it and when I posted it here. That’s one of those cool tricks that he takes only a few seconds to explain, but it’s a neat introduction to what he’s actually telling us about, which is how computer code makes software communicate with other, totally unrelated software. This capability can be used for fun, for good, or for evil. But this kind of code is ephemeral, and prone to rot. Entropy infuses even the digital world.

[via Metafilter]