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When the sky crashed in Odessa

Cory Doctorow at 1:12 pm Thu, Jan 19, 2012

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This 2009 image captures the scene on a foggy night in Odessa, Ukraine, when a digital billboard crashed and displayed a floating error warning in the night sky.

Windows Error Box Floating in the Air (5 pics) (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE:  Funny • happy mutants • photo • Ukraine • Weird

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Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

  • obeyken

    Aha!  I knew this was all just a simulation! I’m quite disappointed by the choice of OS, though.

    • CharredBarn

      It’s when we get the blue sky of death that we need to start worrying.

    • CharredBarn

      There. Knew it would happen.

  • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

    Holy crap. The error box appears so crisp, is this definitely real? If so, I’m amazed this isn’t a more common advertising method, though the atmospheric conditions must have been pretty advantageous.

    I just hope someone saw that right after watching the Matrix on acid.The site was very slow loading for me… they might get swamped by the traffic pretty quickly.

    Edit… ah, I thought it was being projected onto the clouds, not realizing it was just a screen obscured by the fog. Still awesome effect.

  • blueelm

    Oh wow, what a surreal image! 

  • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

    Wait… I’m sure this was in the book of revelation somewhere.

  • jerryeast

    Ahh, finally – - – proof that they’re still using Windows in the Ukraine!

  • C.J. Hayes

    Oh man, the government shut down the sky because it facilitates piracy.

    • http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

      You can’t take the sky from me…

  • spacemunky

    The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel Windows, displaying an error message.

  • hypersomniac

    Well, it least it wasn’t hacked with pr0n.

  • irksome

    A similar message appeared over Tunguska in 1908.

  • http://twitter.com/scottfeldstein scott d. feldstein

    My grandfather informs me that this is not possible.

  • dabeed

    alien moon

  • Robert Cruickshank

    When the sky turns blue, be really afraid.

  • Paul Renault

    “When the sky turns blue, be really afraid. ”

    Which shade of blue?  Sky blue?

    • mkultra

      *whoosh*

  • http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

    This would make a great submission over at TheDailyWTF…

  • amuderick

    I caught something similar (though not as surreal) in Times Square when a whole ‘building’ spontaneously rebooted, went through a series of graphics tests and then continued displaying ads.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/amuderick/4098504122/

    Here is a photo

  • traalfaz

    There’s no way this is not shopped.  Projecting onto clouds would not give you anything like a clean image.  Also the amount of power required would be ridiculous; many times more than the average searchlight.  And if you were pumping out that much light, there would be an easily visible beam going up to where the clouds were due to moisture in the air.

    • carlodog

      The blurb says it’s a crashed digital billboard, not a projected image. 

    • flosofl

      It wasn’t projected. The fog and clouds were so thick you couldn’t see any of the structure of the animated billboard. So it *appeared* as if its images were floating in the sky.

  • Ryan Lenethen

    I knew it was the matrix! I’ll just jump off this building now! Weeeeeee…..THUD.