Sunday, October 20, 2013

Things I learned lately 20 October


  • In iOS7, if you go Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Frequent Locations, you can see a list of all the places you've visited on a map including how many times you've gone there. Yes, you can erase this data if you want to.
  • With Alzheimer's patients, the sense of smell is affected in a very particular way: The left nostril is significantly more impaired than the right. In a test, one nostril is capped and the distance at which the patient could detect about a tablespoon of peanut butter is measured. Specifically in Alzheimer's patients, the left nostril has 10 cm less range than the right, in terms of odour detection.
  • Facebook tracks your web activity while you're logged into their service. So if you don't want FB tracking your web activity, log into FB on a tablet or phone instead. Of course, Microsoft and/or Google are tracking you anyway, so I'm not sure what difference it would make.
  • Brand new C-27J cargo aircraft bought by the US Air Force are going directly to the boneyard due to budget cuts. It's possible that other agencies might want them, but it's possible as many as 21 of these new transport planes might be retired immediately on delivery.
  • Consumer Reports reviewed the all-electric Tesla Model S and gave it a score of 99/100, the highest score given to any car. Ever.
  • At least 78,000 people have applied to go on the one-way trip to Mars, Mars One, organized by  Bas Lansdorp.
  • Many barns are painted red because red is a cheap paint colour to buy. White is cheap too, so many other barns are white.
  • You'll shed almost 9 pounds of dead skin per year.
  • You could build 66 Burj Khalifa towers with all the Lego bricks ever made (or 74 Empire State Buildings).
  • North Carolina may ban the sale of Tesla electric cars because Tesla refuses to sell their cars via dealerships, which contravenes NC's 'unfair competition' rules that are designed to protect car dealerships.
  • Advertisers will spend $10 billion on TV this year in the US in a secret process where the networks artificially skyrocket the value of time slots by forcing advertisers to buy the year's slots in one week.
  • Rich families hired disabled tour guides so they could skip the lines at Disney World. [Update: Disney isn't letting disabled people skip lines anymore because of this]

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