34 Facts About Old Technology and the Digital World We Had to Con Out of Morpheus

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34 Facts About Old Technology and the Digital World We Had to Con Out of Morpheus
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After rounding up these awesome facts about the digital realm, we kind of feel bad for Neo in The Matrix. His red pill only brought him to that rusty old ship in some underground tunnels or something. The red pill we got brought us to the land of facts! Everywhere we looked, we saw nothing but the most interesting little technological tidbits, and our little brains just couldn’t keep up. Good thing we can go back whenever we like!

Who knows, maybe Morpheus just got a pretty weak batch of red pills that day?

A.I. Generated Art

Someone won an art contest with AI generated digital works, and people are mad. 10101001 CRACKED.COM Jason Allen won first Digital Arts/Digitally Manipulated Photography category with pictures generated by a commercial image synthe- sis model, all he had to do was enter text prompts.

Income and Facebook

Teens from higher-income families don't use Facebook as much as teens from lower-income families. 4% of the former say it's the platform they use most often, but that number is 22% for the latter. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Facebook’s Blue Color

Blue is Facebook's dominant color because that worked best for Zuckerberg. He's red-green colorblind (which he realized thanks to an online test) and he says that blue is the richest color for me-I can see all of blue. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

When Facebook Bought Instagram

When Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram in 2012, Instagram had 13 employees. It had a grand total of 9 investors, too. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Jack Black on TikTok

In the quarantine, Jack Black danced a truly spectacular dance on TikTok. Wearing nothing but shorts, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat, he danced on top of a skateboard half-pipe in his (or someone else's) backyard. CRACKED.COM

The First iPhone

The first iPhone STE O three ... DOBEA call Apple has been experimenting with FOR touchscreen phones since 1983. CRACKED.COM

Hot-wiring Cars With USB Cables

People are hotwiring Kia and Hyundai cars using USB cables. CRACKED.COM Spurred on by videos on TikTok (of course), teens are breaking into the cars, taking apart the ig- nition, and starting the engine with a phone charger.

ChatGPT

CRACKED CHATGPT LEARNS FROM THE WORLD WITHOUT PERMISSION, AND NOW THE WORLD'S FIGHTING BACK. A class action lawsuit was taken against OpenAI, the people behind ChatGPT, for using stuff from the entire web to teach their Al language models without asking the people who made the content (i.e. just about everyone).

The First Laptop

The first proper laptop fondensator 3 CU OSEOBNE der There were earlier devices that could technically fit on your lap, but the Osborne 1 (1981) was the first truly mobile computer. CRACKED.COM

The First CGI Lead Character

CGI LEAD CHARACTER 1995 CRACKED.COM Casper the Friendly Ghost from 1995's Casper was the first movie to feature a CGI lead character. It was a box-office hit, grossing $287.9 million against a $55 million budget and was created with the help of 150 people at George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic (ILM).

The First CGI Character

CGI CHARACTER 1985 CRACKED.COM In 1985, Young Sherlock Holmes was the first full-length movie to feature a completely computer-generated character, which was achieved through the use of computer graphics by animator John Lasseter.

Costumes with TVs Inside

The Mangalore costumes in The Fifth Element had a little TV screen inside the head. The masks were so bulky, actors couldn't see out of them, so they had to have a camera on the costume and a TV screen. The screen was linked to the effects crew, too, who gave the actors commands like Walk, walk forward, shuffle, shuffle, for God's sake, STOP! CRACKED.COM

Li Ziqi

Li Ziqi creates cinematic videos depicting her life in the Chinese countryside. In these videos she methodically prepares meals, makes clothing, builds furniture, and more, using basic tools and traditional techniques. Li's videos rarely contain any speaking. Instead they focus on visuals and the calming sounds of her surroundings. GRACKED.COM

Social Media and Depression

Using social media increases depression and loneliness. Finally, research proved what we knew: using Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram is bad for your mental health. CRACKED.COM

Drake’s Death Hoax

f DRAKE In 2015, 4Chan briefly convinced the internet that Drake died in a car crash. The infamous messageboard filled the singer's YouTube videos with comments of condolences, changed his Wikipedia page to say that he died, and even made a fake BuzzFeed article corroborating their hoax. CRACKED.COM

Online Relationships

Almost half of relationships (in America) begin online. CRACKED.COM 40 percent of people say that their relationship began online in one form or another, whether that be dating apps like Tinder, or social media like Facebook.

The iPhone Trademark

Apple has to share the iPhone trademark with a Chinese leather maker. CRACKED.COM Apple lost their legal battle against IPHONE, a Chinese brand that makes leather prod- ucts, none of which are phones.

The Social Media Blackout

so RELATABLE! Celebrities didn't post on Instagram for a whole 24 hours! To protest misinformation and hate on social media, Kim Kardashian, Leonardo DiCaprio, and more froze their Instagram accounts. The measly 24 hour freeze did nothing, and was a joke of a sacrifice. CRACKED

TikTok Reactions to Taylor Swift

CRACKED PEOPLE THOUGHT A TAYLOR SWIFT CONCERT WAS AN ALIEN INVASION. Taylor Swift's concert in Tampa, Florida caused a lot of confusion among people living nearby. They thought the stage lights were from an alien invasion, and videos of their reactions went viral on TikTok.

The Skull-Breaker Challenge

ATTEMPTS AT ONLINE FAME MAKING SOMEBODY FALL ONTO THEIR HEAD The skull-breaker challenge on TikTok has been causing serious head injuries to kids all over the world. It involves two people tricking someone into jumping up, and then they pull their feet out from under the jumper, making them fall. CRACKED

Human Gene Editing

Real-Life Dystopian Tropes HUMAN GENE EDITING The CRISPR-Cas9 gene editor went to work inside human patients in a landmark trial, snipping apart DNA and inserting, deleting or modifying genes. Another experiment aboard the ISS showed that CRISPR can generate and repair DNA breaks in yeast cells in microgravity. Great news? CRACKED

Inconspicuous CGI

In Avengers: Endgame, the Quantum Realm suits are 100% CG. They never bothered making physical versions of them. CRACKED.COM

Reading Robots

Real-Life Dystopian Tropes READING ROBOTS Through high-speed image capture and CD9876 detection of characters, a program called ANPR can identify a license plate at high speed and decode the text associated with it, without human intervention. AB1234 CRACKED

Scientists Turn to Gamers

There are some puzzles computers can't solve. Progress: 8899 of 10000 veral lising up in this protein - ut off IN aus of place. Pull Level 4-2 ASheet Our of Place the mis igned - Back in to form Ohan hydrogen bood Don's forget you and use Sha and WITH Touris - Plate Wiggle Clear Reserve Lado People Actions History The Teed So scientists are turning to gamers. Scientists are trying to understand DNA, and the variables are too much even for supercomputers to parse. Enter crowdsourced gamer projects such as Foldit and Phylo, where participants fit protein strands together like

Saved By A Webcam

A man became stranded on the ice in Germany. Не was saved by a webcam. A tourist in St. Peter-Ording set out on foot across the frozen North Sea to take some photographs of the sunset. But he became disoriented, and the sun was going down. Не flashed his camera as a signal, and luckily a woman viewing the town's coastal webcam spotted him and alerted police. CRACKED COM http://metro.co.uk/2010/02/03/man-lost-on-ice-saved-by-webcam-74816/

Catching a Mugger on Facebook

A New York man mugged an old lady on the subway. GUT STORETS ПФД 27 And Gawker fans found his Facebook page. The man's face wasn't visible on the security video, but his frat sweatshirt-complete with nickname-was. Не wore that same shirt in his (public) Facebook photos. The man was arrested, and Facebook commenters had a field day. CRACKED.COM http://gawker.com/5993500/internet-catches-idiot- subway-mugger-who-wore-his-frat-sweats-to-the-crime

The Zooniverse and Earthquakes

Rescue workers responding to the 2015 Nepal earthquake weren't sure where to start. 7.8 Nepal Butwal Narayangadh Mathmand7.3 E Dhulikhe Birgunj izabad Gorakhpur Rajbira So the Zooniverse helped them out. The Zooniverse is a crowdsourcing project that divides up huge tasks such as spotting asteroids so they can be tackled by visitors to their website. So when Rescue Global needed to know where to focus their aid, the Zooniverse analyzed satellite images, and within a couple of days they knew where the most relief would be needed. CRACKED.COM https://blog zooniverse org/2015/05/13/disaster-response-in-nepal-and-the-zooniverse/

Reddit Diagnosed Cancer

In 2012, a Reddit user posted a rage comic about his friend. When suddenly, I find an Just male me, going through unused pregnancy test my ex-gf the medicine cabinet. must have left. *a little For shits and giggle, I use it. later.. prepared - I'm pregnant And users correctly diagnosed his cancer. The comic depicted the time his male friend peed on a pregnancy test and got a positive result. The crowd on Reddit pointed out that cancer might give that result-and they were right. Doctors found (and successfully treated) a testicular tumor. CRACKED.COM http://newsfeed. time com/2012/11/08/mans-positive-pregnancy-test-leads-to-cancer-diagnosis/

4chan Stopped A Mass Shooting

A Dutch man planned to commit a mass shooting. 4chan /b/-Random The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact. But 4chan stopped him. The man posted specific details on 4chan /b/ about his plans to shoot students and teachers at his school, boasting that the cops would never catch him in time. Readers reported him to his local police, who shut down all the schools in his town and caught the hell out of him. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/22/ CRACKED.COM possible-mass-murder-thwarted-by-4chan-readers.html

The Thief Who Stole A Phone

When a New York woman left her phone in a cab, a teenager decided to keep it. adidas severy search camera web SW The internet leaned on the teen until she returned it. When the girl refused to return the phone, even for a reward, the woman's friend took the story to the web. It went viral. Readers tracked down the thief's MySpace page, and even drove by her house to shout at her. She finally returned the phone, and she was arrested. CRACKED.COM http://www.evanwashere.com/stolensidekick/

reCAPTCHA Boxes

When you type in a reCAPTCHA box, you're proving you're a human. morning overtooks - Type the two words: . Re CAPTCHA C2 stop spam, ? read books. Scanned type This aged portion of society were distingusated from OCR reads as niis aged pntkm at society were distinguished frow. You're also translating old text. OCR software does a pretty good job of reading the printed page, but the poor quality of old manuscripts is too much of a challenge. So Google decided to incorporate words the computers couldn't read into САРТСНА images. Users managed to digitize 20 years of daily

Fans Bought An Afghan Veteran A House

Taylor Morris was wounded in Afghanistan. Fans on a website bought him a house. Morris lost all four limbs in an explosion, and figured his dream of owning a cabin was gone. John Resig, co-owner of TheCHIVE.com, asked readers to help him raise $30,000 for a down payment. The readers came up with $250,000. CRACKED.COM story-goes-viral/article_9d7d7421-0825-5/56-b177-5b8749588783.html

YouTube Scrapes

Spotted an incredible video on YouTube? OUR PRIC HICH QUALITY MID END It might be P. MONEY. a scrape. AND HOW Scrapes are pieces of existing videos th

Facebook Diagnosis

Little Leo Kogan was diagnosed with strep throat. f But a Facebook user spotted something else. His mom posted photos of his rash on Facebook, venting

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