Pi has been more calculated to more digits than ever before and I’m here to tell you what those digits are. Carmen Sandiego is on the lam again, but you can find her in Google Earth. And the high stakes world of free-to-play video games.
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31.4 trillion: the number of π digits calculated.
Congratulations to @Yuryu, who set the new world record, calculating almost 9 trillion more digits than the previous world record using Compute Engine VM clusters → https://t.co/j9Hwh4r1YL #PiDay pic.twitter.com/OzwYaXCjYL
— Google Cloud Tech (@GoogleCloudTech) March 14, 2019
Trending on Twitter, yesterday was Pi day! Just so we’re clear, March 14th is written as 03/14. The first three digits of the irrational number so key to calculating the dimensions of a circle. To mark the nerdy occasion, Google announced that one of its engineers, Emma Haruka Iwao, broke a Guinness World Record by calculating Pi to 31.4 trillion decimal places. That breaks the previous world record, which held up for more than 3 years, by 9 trillion more digits. Do you guys want to know the last few digits? OK are you sitting down? 4739940. Wow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJRMplV9SpA [Don, play the music from this video over the next segment]
Trending on Google, Where on Google Earth is Carmen Sandiego? Yes, everyone’s favourite globe-trotting fugitive is on the loose again. And it’s up to you to find her in Google Earth! Google has teamed up with Houghton Mifflin Harcout on the game, which is called The Crown Jewels Caper. And don’t worry, this is a family-friendly game. It’s mostly a promotion for the Netflix cartoon show, but the game is reportedly pretty fun. You can play the game in Chrome, or on either the Android or iOS mobile apps.
Trending on Reddit, imagine being paid $1 million just to play a video game. Apparently, it happened. Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is the world’s most-followed computer gamer, best known for his live streaming on Twitch. Electronic Arts hired him to play its new game, Apex Legends, right after its launch last month. The game is similar to Fortnite, in the sense that it’s free to play and has a battle royale style, where a massive number of players enter an arena and fight to the death, until there’s one gamer left standing. EA’s payments show how competitive the landscape to retain regular players is getting. But early indications suggest that it worked, with 10 million sign-ups for the game in the first 3 days. By the way, if anyone wants me to pay me to play video games, I’m available. A million dollars is my starting price, but I guess I’m willing to negotiate.