Once I was a member of a Linux user group, and we had regular meetings and also social gatherings, and during the latter, there were also mini-job-fairs; we cou

Once I was a member of a Linux user group, and we had regular meetings and also social gatherings, and during the latter, there were also mini-job-fairs; we could bring a résumé and chat with hiring managers. So I was seated next to a gentleman who worked for a giant mobile telco, and I asked him about what he did, and he gave me a little spiel and quoted a figure of something like 5 exabits per second of data being processed for security and fraud prevention. And I reacted with amazement, and I said something like "that sounds exciting!" And he says yeah, it's exciting, and then the conversation continued, and 15-20 minutes later, across the very large table, in another circle of conversation, somebody goes "you know, when I quote a large figure like 5 exabits per second, I'm always pleased to hear a reaction like 'that sounds exciting!' which is better than indifference or 'what's an exabit?'" and I chuckled at how the conversation had cross-pollinated, and my small comment was used as a good example. I should've asked what kind of hardware equipment processes 5 exabits/second.