News in Numbers

Here we reveal some mostly useless yet highly fascinating numerical facts...

1,482 days

Was the lifespan of Windows 10 Mobile, released to manufacturing in November 2015, and officially reaching end of support on December 10 2019. Available on Lumia phones and a few obscure devices from the likes of Wileyfox, Win 10 Mobile couldn’t compete with Android or iOS, and Microsoft stopped active development in October 2017.

64

The number of qubits in Google’s Sycamore quantum computer, with which it has claimed quantum supremacy – carrying out a mathematical process in 200 seconds that would have taken a classical computer 10,000 years.

2004

Seems to be the number of the next version of Windows 10, the build previously known as 20H1, with both the fast and slow rings of the Insider programme currently testing it.

100KG

The weight of the space junk being targeted by the ESA’s Clear Space-1 mission to remove space junk from orbit around Earth. The object, the remains of a rocket’s upper stage, is considered representative of much of the debris around our planet, and if successful the four-armed satellite could go on to capture more astro-rubbish.

G3420

An ancient, in CPU terms, Pentium processor from the Haswell days seems to be back on the manufacturing block at Intel. The 22nm chip, which was originally released in Q3 2013, is most likely aimed at the embedded processor market after Intel recently apologised for not making enough of its contemporary chips available.

January 15

Was the big day for those remaining Windows 7 users out there: the venerable OS started showing fullscreen popups to hammer home the message that it is no longer supported by Microsoft. Support officially ended the day before, on the 14th.