Things I learned lately - 28 Mar

• Ford is baking an intelligent speed limiter into some of (but eventually all of) their newest cars. The technology reads speed limit signs and (if you choose) limits your speed to the legal limit. 
• If a Google employee passes away, their spouse gets 50% of their salary for 10 years. If they have any children, the children get $1000 a month until they are 19, or 23 if they are a full-time student.
• PowerPoint karaoke is a thing. You're given a slide show of random images and phrases and have to make sense of it in your speech to the crowd. Done at a bar with alcohol.
• Tesla named the industrial robots that construct the Model S after X-Men characters: Wolverine, Xavier, Beast, Iceman, and Cyclops.
• In 1987, 25% of beds sold were waterbeds.
• Spandex is an anagram for expands.
• 17% of Americans with tattoos are trying to get them removed.
• There's only 300 homeless people in the state of Utah, but not for long. Their Housing First strategy gets everyone into housing, with medical and mental health care at a cost much lower than the cost of shelters, jail stays, ambulance costs and hospital stays for people stuck on the streets. 
• The most expensive one bedroom apartment goes for a paltry $300,000 per month. That's 1200 square feet and access to a rooftop garden.
• The reason most people don't like the sound of their own voice (when recorded and played back) is because you only hear the sound component that comes into your ears through air conduction. When you hear your own voice live, as you're speaking, you're also hearing the sound conducted through your bones and skull to your inner ear and that typically sounds deeper and richer. 
• There are more smokers in China than there are people in the US.
• It wasn't until 1992 that the Vatican finally admitted that Galileo was right - the earth revolved around the sun.
• The character name Saul Goodman is a play on the words "It's all good, man."