There are ways to mitigate rollover errors. If programmers see a 256 problem coming, they can put a hard limit in place to stop a value going over 255. This happens all the time, and it’s fun spotting people getting confused by the seemingly arbitrary threshold. When messaging app WhatsApp increased the limit on how many users can be in the same group chat from 100 to 256, it was reported in the Independent that “it’s not clear why WhatsApp settled on the oddly specific number.”
