Rainbow smoke in 17 million colours

This image might be eye-catching, but it’s only a poor copy. Last month, coders took part in an online challenge to write software that would create images in which every pixel is a different colour. They could use as many as 16,777,216 colours – the maximum possible if 256 shades each of red, green and blue are blended in varying amounts. This was  one of the winning images by Hungarian programmer  József Fejes, although the computer’s specification can’t be reproduced accurately in print. Fejes’ program plots pixels according to how similar they are in hue and brightness. “I took an oath to support the Constitution, and I felt the Constitution was violated on  a massive scale” Edward Snowden, the whistleblower on NSA snooping, speaks via live video link at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, on Monday