Rapper 50 Cent says he's never done drugs!

To say that rapper 50 Cent had a difficult childhood would be an understatement. Born as Curtis Jackson III, he grew up in an impoverished urban neighborhood in Queens, New York.

He was raised without a father and his mother died when he was 8, after which he went to live with his grandparents and 8 aunts and uncles. At the age of 12, he began dealing narcotics as a way to raise money.

However it never crossed his mind, even to this day, to take those drugs. He saw what they did to his mother’s siblings and would rather save than money than blow it on drugs. At a correctional boot camp, he adopted the name 50 cent as a metaphor for "change." He is now a successful rapper, entrepreneur, investor, record producer, and actor.

 

Google has developed a driverless car

This new technology sounds as if it is right out of a science fiction movie, and that’s because it’s not far off. Over the past several years Google engineers and scientists have been working tirelessly at Stanford Laboratories to develop a technology that will change the way we live in the upcoming decades: the Google Car.


This car is completely driverless. It combines information from Goggle Street View with artificial intelligence software that communicates with a sensor on top of the car, which in turn speaks to the wheels and steering wheel to drive the car without any human interference. So far the car has clocked over 175,000 miles and had zero accidents.

In fact, the technology has caught on so fast that the state of Nevada has passed the first laws allowing for automated cars! To see a Google Car in action check out the video below!

Bionic eye gives sight to the blind

A company called Second Sight has received FDA approval to begin U.S. trials of a retinal implant system that gives blind people a limited degree of vision.

The second incarnation of Second Sight's retinal prosthesis consists of five main parts:

• A digital camera that's built into a pair of glasses. It captures images in real time and sends images to a microchip.
• A video-processing microchip that's built into a handheld unit. It processes images into electricalpulses representing patterns of light and dark and sends the pulses to a radio transmitter in the glasses.
• A radio transmitter that wirelessly transmits pulses to a receiver implanted above the ear or under the eye
• A radio receiver that sends pulses to the retinal implant by a hair-thin implanted wire
• A retinal implant with an array of 60 electrodes on a chip measuring 1 mm by 1 mm

Electronic microchips implanted into the eyes of a group of British patients suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable genetic condition that causes blindness, have partially restored the vision of the formerly sightless so that they're able to view the world as a "grainy black-and-white image." The implant'sfirst British recipient said the bionic eye gives him "some imagery rather than just a black world."Another patient reported suddenly dreaming in "very vivid color for the first time in 25 years" 

If you want to know how this works clearly, watch the following video.

Google glasses confirms augmented reality glasses project, releases video demo

Google X (Google's futuristic technology development lab) has pulled back the curtain on Project Glass, its program to develop truly useful augmented reality "Google glasses." Project Glass aims to design and refine augmented reality technology to help a user explore and share their world armed with a wealth of relevant information - not at their fingertips, but rather at the end of their nose. 


Instead of interrupting your activities to use a smartphone to search for information - get directions, remain in touch, find out if an item is on sale, translate a tourist's note evaluating a restaurant, and the like - Google's Project Glass intends to provide glasses with real-time heads-up displays and intelligent personal assistant software to enable a seamless user experience.


Source: Google X

There's a town in Italy that doesn't get sunlight for 84 days a year. They've solved this problem with a giant mirror

Call it the reverse Montgomery Burns scheme. The little town of Viganella is located amidst the Italian side of the Alps. During the winter time, the shift in the sun's pattern makes it so that it never clears the 1600 feet tall mountain that's close to the town. This means that for 84 days, they do not get any sunlight. The townspeople end up suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, a type of mild depression. 

To solve this, the government installed a massive mirror on the side of the mountain. It measure 26x16 feet and is computer controlled to follow the trajectory of the Sun. The result is that starting in 2006, the town was able to celebrate the first winter sun in 600 years!

In the Titanic, the band actually did stay and play music as the ship went down. They all died

 

You might've thought that the band playing music while the ship was going down was fake. A creative liberty director James Cameron took to enhance the drama in the scenes when people are in chaos trying to leave the ship. 

In reality the band, stayed on and played calm, airy music to keep the passenger calm while they were boarding the life boats. They were not obligated to do so, as they were not technically part of the ship's crew. None of them survived the sinking of the ship. Although it's debated which song they last played on the boat, mutliple accounts confirm their brave and selfless sacrifice. 

 

A man survived being trapped under snow for 2 months by hibernating!

(not the real pic)

A Swedish 44-year old man had a traffic accident near a little town just south of the Arctic Circle. As a result, he was trapped in his snow-covered car for 2 months!

He was found by chance thanks to a passerby who ran into his car. He was taken to a hospital. The doctors explained that the man was lucky that the car experienced what they called a "natural igloo" effect, which protected him a bit from the temperatures that reached -30F in the area.

In addition, the man survived by eating snow (which is how he got water) and burning off his body fat. The doctors say he went into a state similar to hibernation which helped him survive.

The man has declined interviews but has said he wants everyone to know he is doing all right.