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- 22 Jan, 2026
The 'Dead' Programming Language That Runs The World
Ask a developer what they code in, and they'll say Python, JavaScript, or Rust. Ask a bank what they run on, and the answer is likely COBOL. Created in 1959, COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) is ancient. It's verbose, clunky, and has no cool frameworks. Yet, it handles:95% of ATM swipes. 80% of in-person credit card transactions. $3 trillion in daily commerce.Why Won't It Die? Risk. Rewriting millions of lines of mission-critical banking code is a nightmare scenario. One bug could erase billions of dollars or corrupt checking accounts nationwide. It's safer to pay $200,000 salaries to the few remaining gray-bearded COBOL wizards than to risk a rewrite. So, while the world hypes AI and Web3, the silent, uncool grandfather of languages is still keeping the lights on.
- 20 Jan, 2026
The Hidden Message in Da Vinci's Last Supper You Missed
Leonardo da Vinci wasn't just a painter; he was an inventor, a scientist, and a musician. For centuries, art historians have analyzed every brushstroke of The Last Supper, looking for hidden meanings. We've heard about the geometric positioning, the spilling of the salt, and the controversial figure of John. But what if the secret wasn't in the faces, but on the table? The Musical Bread Rolls An Italian musician and computer technician, Giovanni Maria Pala, recently proposed a startling theory. He noticed that if you draw the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the hands of the apostles and the loaves of bread on the table correspond to musical notes. When played from right to left—following Da Vinci's own writing style—these positions form a 40-second musical composition. It sounds like a solemn, requiem-like hymn. Coincidence or Genius? Skeptics call it pareidolia—seeing patterns where none exist. But consider this:The harmony is perfect musically. Random dots rarely create perfect harmony. Da Vinci was an accomplished lyre player. He frequently hid puzzles in his journals.If true, The Last Supper isn't just a visual masterpiece; it's a sheet of music that has been silent for over 500 years. Next time you look at a loaf of bread, you might wonder if it's actually a D-minor.