13 minutes of useless information..

Hmmm, okay computer. It's a simple word, but if you think of it, this word has been radically redefined since being coined in the 1600s. At first, it actually referred to people—people who did calculations, were observed, or surveyed things. Then, it was used to refer to really large mechanical machines—machines that are much bigger than the rooms most of you are in. And now, computers are, well, everywhere. Their electronic devices—laptops are computers, tablets are computers, phones, watches, even your refrigerator.

It's also startling, which is also another curious word. It is unique because it's the only nine-letter word that can have a letter taken away one at a time and still have nine different words made out of it: from startling to starting to staring, string, sting, sing, sin.

I was in an exam the other day and I was supposed to upload my solutions online because, well, it’s 2020. I mean, 2021! So yeah, I'm just about done converting all of the PNGs to PDF, and the laptop stops working just in time. As I was contemplating the pros and cons of throwing my laptop through the window, whilst reminding myself that after Uncle Sam took his cut of my money, I’m just way too broke to buy another one right now.

So, I tried to actually solve the issue. How do I fix this? I thought it was a low battery, so maybe connect it to the charger? Just use my phone instead? I don't know, make a paper plane out of my answer sheet and shoot it in the direction of my professor's office? Or, you know, just turn it off and then turn it back on again.

I chose the last option because, well, it’s the most known hack in all of technology, and sure enough, it worked. This trick has a lot of applications apparently. In addition to saving your degree, turning things off and on has potentially saved even plane crashes. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and apparently state-of-the-art long-haul aircraft actually needs its computers to be turned off manually every 51 days—known more formally as power cycling.

This supposedly simple thing is done to prevent stale data from overpopulating the plane's systems. Without power cycling, the plane's digital instruments may reflect misleading information, including faulty airspeed, altitude, and other critical info. For some aircraft, the screens can actually time out if the power is left connected for too long. Talk about the blue screen of death when you’re 35,000 feet in the air!

Now, while loss of certain data during a flight isn’t necessarily the end of the world, the risk of a technical failure often needs to be qualified with which phase of the flight it takes place in. During the critical stages of a flight, such as takeoff or landing, such a failure could have catastrophic consequences. Turning the plane off and turning it on again, as it turns out, is quite common practice.

Some of you might have experienced this power cycling before, remember when you were waiting for the plane to taxi and suddenly all the lights and air conditioning went off for a second? That might as well be the maintenance staff or the crew turning it off and turning it back on again.

51 days, that’s around seven weeks, and a week has seven days. But wait, why does a week have seven days? And why are the weekends one after another instead of one other arrangement? Well, as it turns out, as with most of the original calendar inspiration, the seven days of the week were inspired by the seven planets thought to be part of the solar system at the time.

As for the weekends, well, in 19th century Britain, Sundays were reserved for religious practice only—which is, of course, how many still use it for today. However, people apparently relaxed a bit too much on Sunday, and not showing up for work on Monday became a real problem.

It was then that factory owners decided that Saturday would be a half day as well, in a desperate bid to ensure productivity and give workers just a little extra time. Another idea is that in the 1930s, some factories had to maximize productivity to avoid an economic crisis. Turns out, they did too good of a job, and they started producing surplus, which was a problem because that could actually lead to...