› added 10 years ago

143

TIL of stingrays, or fake cell towers used by law enforcement that trick cell phones into giving gps and identifying info. When used to track a suspect, it also gathers information of all cellphones nearby.

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nagb TIL that Watson, the Jeopardy! playing supercomputer, was taught slang from Urban Dictionary. His creators had to wipe Watson’s memory.
5OMQ TIL that every last F14 Tomcat america has in flyable storage is being shredded to prevent spares reaching Iran who are still flying the ones sold to them by the US in the 70’s
PYrEe TIL that Queen Victoria was irritated at being, as a mere Queen, notionally inferior to her daughter Princess Victoria, who was the wife of the reigning German Emperor and hence an Empress - so the British government created for her the title of Empress of India
Obba TIL that in order to transmit radio signals to submerged submarines, one technique is to place electrodes in the ground many miles apart, using the earth’s core as a giant antenna.
5Y0B9 TIL Carleton Gajdusek, who first described the prion disease kuru, had the rare distinction of being a Nobel prizewinner and a convicted child molester. As a medical researcher he studied kuru, an incurable disease that affects the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea, and published 150 papers