Reddit, Extern, and Java

Today I Learned:
1) A physicist named Travis Hoppe recently wrote a program to suggest content for posts to the TIL subreddit. 8% of its suggestions made the top story of TIL. He was banned from the redit after revealing what he had done (after something like a year of posting).

Thanks to Jeanne Morin-Leisk, who happens to know the guy.

2) Your C fact for the day -- a variable declared with the 'extern' keyword doesn't actually get declared at all. 'Extern' simply notifies the compiler that the variable has been declared *elsewhere* and can be accessed without the program having to make it again. This is important because if you're using an extern variable, you have to *actually* declare it somewhere. Or the compiler gets mad. Or worse.

3) Java (the programming langauge) was originally developed to be used in an interactive television. It turned out that virtual machines were a bit too advanced for the cable companies of the time, so Sun Microsystems moved it onto desktop computers and servers instead.