What An Odd Choice

Tell me you don't understand computer science without telling me you don't understand computer science. Some tech journalist really looked at 256 and thought "wow, what a random, quirky number!" Meanwhile every programmer within a 50-mile radius just felt their eye twitch.

For those blissfully unaware: 256 is 2^8, which means it's literally THE most natural limit in computing. It's the number of values you can represent with a single byte (0-255, or 1-256 if you're counting from 1 like a normal human). WhatsApp's engineers didn't sit in a room throwing darts at numbers—they picked the most obvious, efficient, byte-aligned limit possible.

The real tragedy? Someone got paid to write that article while having zero clue about binary numbers. Meanwhile, we're all debugging segfaults for free.