daily knowledge
this is an educational page. you will learn stuff. mainly written by @oakley.bsky.social but sometimes posts are written by my friends.
for kat <3
- may 14th, 2025: After losing much of their market share to Microsoft in the late 90s, the web browser developer Netscape Communications was bought by the internet provider AOL. AOL would proceed to become the largest company in the world through a merger with Time Warner... (1/3)
- before being promptly decimated the following decade. And in 2012, the then newly independent AOL sold a collection of patents, roughly 800 of them, to Microsoft for just over $1 billion. (2/3)
- Thus, Microsoft came to own some of Netscape's historic patents over a decade after they had last competed with the company. (3/3)
- may 13th, 2025: Included in Windows 95 was a track simply titled "clouds.mid." As the composer, Brian Orr, explained, it was written for use in an easter egg that showed the names of every member of the Windows 95 product team.
- may 11th, 2025: Over ten years ago, one Minecraft player named their account "MojangSucksDick." However, once Mojang made it possible to change a Minecraft account's name, an employee at the company changed the account to "NoWeDont."
- may 10th, 2025:
- may 9th, 2025: The first Muppet show, Sam and Friends, premiered 70 years ago on this day.
- may 8th, 2025: The ceramic material on the inside of a spark plug is infamous for its ability to wreak havoc on tempered glass. Thus, the shattered remains of one may sometimes be referred to as "ninja rocks."
- may 7th, 2025: Following the passing of Adam West in 2017, the producers of Family Guy retired the character Mayor Adam West. Their initial idea to create a character succeeding him was to have Sam Elliott become the Mayor of Quahog, but the actor was initially hesitant. (1/2)
- Upon realizing that having Sam Elliott play himself would be a retread of Mayor Adam West's character, the producers asked the actor to play a cousin of Adam West named Wild West, which Elliott agreed to. (2/2)
- may 5th, 2025: Goodbye, Skype! 👋
- may 4th, 2025: As the router opened its Routing Information Protocol and started routing the IPv4 packet, it asked the packet: "Are you TCP because your protocol is 6, or is your protocol 6 because you are TCP?" (1/3)
- The packet simply replied, "Nah, I'd live." For unbeknownst to the router, the packet was not unicast and has an anycast destination address. In that moment, the packet thought it would truly be routed. But it didn't know 2 key things. (2/3)
- One: Always bet on the router. Two: The router knew that the packet's TIME-TO-LIVE had reached ZERO. (3/3)
- may 3rd, 2025: Many in academia refer to starfish as sea stars, due their characteristic lack of any features that make a fish a fish. Despite this, each time a Wikipedia editor has requested the "Starfish" page be changed to a "Sea star" page, the proposal has been rejected.
- may 2nd, 2025:
- april 30th, 2025: HAPPY 80TH ANNIVERSARY TO THE DAY HITLER KILLED HIMSELF!!!!!
- april 29th, 2025: The exact text of a recipe is subject to copyright law in the United States. The wording used, any photographs included, and the precise way the recipe is expressed can all be copyrighted. However, ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted. (1/2)
- Thus, restating the ingredients needed, methods used, and instructions for a recipe in one's own words, would likely not constitute copyright infringement. (2/2)
- disclaimer: this thread is not legal advice
- april 28th, 2025: While MSNBC is primarily known today as a cable network, it began as a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC in 1996 to take advantage of the convergence between the internet and television. (1/3)
- The longterm goal was to, through promotion on NBC and MSNBC's channel, direct viewers to the interactive MSNBC.com, which both companies had a stake in. (2/3)
- Despite high hopes early on, Microsoft sold their stake in the cable channel in 2005 and their stake in the website in 2013, leaving both fully in the hands of NBC. (3/3)
- april 27th, 2025: Chef Boyardee was founded by the Italian American chef Ettore Boiardi. As he began canning the pasta sauce he served at his restaurant for sale at local grocery stores, he anglicized his name due to the difficulty Americans had pronouncing it. (1/2)
- As he began selling his products under the name "Chef Boy-Ar-Dee," he stated "Everyone is proud of his own family name but sacrifices were necessary for progress." (2/2)
- april 26th, 2025: and to cap off Lesbian Visibility Week, HAPPY LESBIAN VISIBILITY DAY!!!!!
- april 24th, 2025: The second YouTube video was uploaded on the same day as Me at the zoo and is titled "My Snowboarding Skillz." It was the first in a long line of fail videos shared thanks to the platform.
- april 23rd, 2025: Happy 20th anniversary to the first YouTube video, Me at the zoo!
- april 22nd, 2025:
- april 21st, 2025: HAPPY LESBIAN VISIBILITY WEEK!!!!
- april 19th, 2025: In the instruction booklet for the 1994 game Donkey Kong Country, the character Cranky Kong appears throughout to provide his thoughts on the game's quality.
- april 18th, 2025:
- april 17th, 2025: Although it is known that the moon is made of cheese, tests to determine what type of cheese it is have been inconclusive. Some samples of it have been somewhere in between Wensleydale and Stilton, while other samples of it have been closest to Camembert.
- april 16th, 2025: The 2001 movie Spy Kids was one of 25 films selected for preservation in the U.S. Library of Congress's National Film Registry in the year 2024.
- april 14th, 2025: Raisin Bran is not trademarked. Though a company named Skinner Manufacturing had introduced the cereal in the U.S., Kellogg's and Post began producing their own versions with the same name. (1/3)
- Citing their ownership of the Raisin Bran trademark, Skinner sent a cease and desist to both Kellogg's and Post demanding they stop using their brand name. However, a court ruled that simply describing two traits of a product was not enough to create a name that warranted trademark protection. (2/3)
- The court likened the name to similar products such as "raisin pie" and "raisin bread," and with their ruling, Raisin Bran became a name that anybody could use for their product. (3/3)
- april 13th, 2025:
- april 11th, 2025: (1/3)
-
View full threadLaura Shigihara wrote and sang the song, and once the video was animated, PopCap's marketing team decided it would be perfect to promote the game. It was posted April 1st as the game's first trailer and spread quickly as people wondered whether the game was real or an elaborate joke. (3/3)
- bonus:
- In a 2019 interview, George Fan stated that the inspiration for Zombies on Your Lawn came from the game Portal. The team at PopCap had fallen in love with its ending song, Still Alive, and decided to have their game end with the sunflower singing and the zombies having a huge dance party. (2/3)
- april 10th, 2025: In 2015, news broke that a Plants Vs. Zombies movie was in development at DreamWorks. Though it never came out, Rich Werner, an artist for the original game, revealed that a script was written and pitched. The following concept art for it was done by DreamWorks artist Peter Zaslav.
- april 9th, 2025: According to the in-game Suburban Almanac, the buckethead zombie wears a bucket in his head in order to "assert his uniqueness in an uncaring world."
- april 8th, 2025: While Plants Vs. Zombies was being developed at PopCap, one of the names considered for the game was "Lawn of the Dead," a parody of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead. (1/2)
- George Fan, the game's creator, sent a video to Romero dressed as a zombie programmer working on the game, and asking for permission to use the name. Fan and the team at PopCap were denied. (2/2)
- april 7th, 2025:
- april 6th, 2025: HAPPY INTERNATIONAL ASEXUALITY DAY!!!!
- [Not loaded yet]
- making the chain ineligible to receive the trademark for it. Thus the chain chose to do business as Hungry Jack's, named after their first Australian franchisee, Jack Cowin. (2/2)
