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TIL the “20Q” (20 questions) handheld game, a toy released in 2003 and famous for its scary level of accuracy, actually used a basic implementation of an AI neural network. It used training data gathered from users of a web-browser based implementation of the game which launched in 1994.

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p8Ym8 Imagine you spent your entire childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood stuck inside a small closet. One day, after much of your life, has passed you by, you realize that you can just open up the door, change into some more appropriate clothes, and hit the town! Free at last, what would you do first? Maybe sing a bit? Go on a few dates? By the way, you have two to four weeks to live. Yikes. This is not unlike the situation most cicadas face, as they spend almost their entire lives underground. For example, many of the cicadas emerging in 2016 have been underground for 17 years! To put that in perspective, the last Star Wars movie these insects saw was literally a menace. Imagine waking up in a world without Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray! Come to think of it, things are really looking up since 1999. A cicada’s ear-piercing call is intended to attract a gal pal. Considering that these little creatures’ time above ground is so fleeting, they need to lock down a date as soon as possible. This could be why most cicadas are louder than the average fraternity pledge. Adult males are the ones making such a racket, and some species can register sounds louder 100 decibels when calling for a potential mate. In this week’s Today I Learned, National Geographic Emerging Explorer and filmmaker Sandesh Kadur explains how cicadas sing such a loud song.
oBxPr TIL Pluto is still legally considered a planet when it passes over New Mexico
Y7aDx TIL Chiquita is the successor to the United Fruit Company. The company has been fined for sponsoring paramilitary groups atleast as late as 2004.
4XKeo TIL that there are fake towns and roads (known as "paper towns") that mapmakers put in their maps, so that if someone makes a map which has one of these paper towns, they could know it's a copy
dwW8 TIL After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Sam Simon, co-creator & executive producer of The Simpsons, has arranged to leave his entire fortune to various charities.