Welcome! Welcome, dear readers, to a brand new year. I'm back with your favorite toilet read while you're desperately trying to burn time at work before escaping for the weekend: Friday Factday!
To kick the year off, I thought I'd take a look back at the series so far, and do a bonus round for each of the topics we've touched on. So, without further adieu...
Ads & Trackers
Ah, where it all began, with everyone's most hated internet staples. We talked about things from the printing press to environmentally friendly ad blockers.
Did you also know that as of 2007, market research estimated that we saw an average of 5,000 adverts per day, and estimates from 2021 are up to double that. No wonder we're all so damn tired of them!
Online Gaming
For Online Gaming, we went on a nostalgia trip to the very first online game, MUD1; as well as the longest still-running online game, The Realm Online; through the insane growth of the industry; and all the way to the increasing number of data breaches occurring at major and minor companies alike.
For this "Would You Like to Know More?" we're taking a look at the two highest-earning eSports players of all time and the difference between them.
The highest earner overall is internet celebrity Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, with earnings of over $9 million, primarily from his streaming and other media contracts, rather than tournament earnings.
- The highest tournament earner is Denmark's Johan "N0tail" Sundstein, who has earned over $7 million from playing Dota.
Internet Routers
We turned a little more technical for the third installment, taking a look at the device that has become a household staple worldwide: the Internet Router. We talked about everything from the origins to the most expensive router you can buy (and it's really expensive).
So, what's the bonus round for this one? Well, I've got a great quote for you from the man himself, the legend, the great Nikola Tesla (no willing relation to anything to do with Elon), who accurately predicted the internet way back in 1926:
When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is…. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.
Boom.
Black Friday
Even a toilet break trivia piece isn't immune to being caught up in the commercial frenzy of the next topic: Black Friday. We covered conspiracies, Scams, commercial cousins, and money, money, money.
What else is there to it? For this bonus factoid, I looked up the average discount you actually get on Black Friday - a respectable, but lower-than-the-hype 34% for online discounts.
Artificial Intelligence
Next up was a currently controversial hot topic in many areas. We talked about the origins and development, as well as the ethics of this popular sci-fi horror subject.
Regulation is what we're talking about for the additional fact - in 2022 alone, 37 regulatory bills were passed against AI in the 127 countries surveyed by the AI Index Report. This figure was up from a solitary one passed in 2016.
Web Browsers
My favorite fact from this installment was the average number of tabs users have open at any given time (hint: it's a lot less than I tend to have open, I might have a problem).
On average, we spend an inordinate amount of time online - around 6 hours per day - but for the bonus round, we're taking a look at how much of that is spent on web browsers as opposed to other apps. Perhaps surprisingly, web browsers only account for a measly 8% of internet activity; when you consider just how many gaming and entertainment apps are out there, though, it makes a little more sense.
Censorship
Censorship is the villain in Windscribe's origin story. We looked at a few things like the first person to be banned from the Internet and which countries were labeled "Enemies of the Internet."
The bonus fact I'm bringing for this one is courtesy of the Committee to Protect Journalists, who compiled a list of the 10 Most Censored Countries in the world. Coming in at Number 1, ahead of even North Korea, is the little-known Eritrea, in sub-Saharan Africa.
Windscribbles
We closed out the year with a look back at some facts on this very blog itself. We talked about what we posted, how much we posted, and who posted the most, among other things.
So, what's the final bonus round fact for 2023? What else can I tell you about Windscribbles? That's easy, it's a simple commitment: we're going to get bigger, we're going to get better, we're going to bring you more and more awesome stuff, and we'll continue to be transparent about our intentions.
We genuinely believe in the product we are selling, and we passionately believe in protecting your Right to Privacy; so join us on this journey, and let's fight back against the authoritarians and the data predators!
