When the sky crashed in Odessa

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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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.