a basement in New Jersey
A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads. […] Until now, there was no evidence that such a capability actually existed, but its myth permeated due to how sophisticated other ad tracking methods have become. More: MindSift has been deleting details about its technology from the internet in recent days, but two of the three founders of the company go into detail about their technology on a small podcast. […] Most episodes of the podcast have under 50 views on YouTube.
Without realizing it, most salesclerks do their job using something called the Greedy Algorithm, in which the changemaker starts with the largest possible coin and works down. Thus, for 41 cents the clerk hands back a quarter, a dime, a nickel and a penny. The Shallit system assumes that the clerk abandons Greedy in favor of a mental calculation that considers all possible combinations of coins and selects the optimal one–here, two 18-cent coins and a nickel. ■ Counting all possible change amounts from 0 to 99 cents, Shallit found that the average transaction, if handled in optimal fashion by the 7-Eleven clerk, involves 4.7 coins. It just so happens that if the Mint ditched the dime and added an 18-cent coin, the average number of coins would fall to 3.9. ■ What This Country Needs is an 18¢ piece
Another wild story is about Napoleon. He was dead and they did an autopsy. At the time, the doctor who did the autopsy thought, “I know, I’ve got a good idea. I’m going to cut off this man’s penis.” And he did. And he handed it to a priest who smuggled it off Saint Helena island. It was passed between booksellers—booksellers are strange people—and put on display. Eventually it was bought by a urologist, and it now lives in a basement in New Jersey.
