Oddity Central

Grandfather Very Sorry for Picking Up Wrong Grandson from School
Vineyard Keeps Vines Pest-Free with the Help of This Adorable 900-Duck Army
Super-Secure Smartphone Costs $16,500, Weighs Half a Pound

Grandfather Very Sorry for Picking Up Wrong Grandson from School

Posted: 02 Jun 2016 10:21 AM PDT

A grandfather from Orangeburg County, Columbia, recently made the news after going to school to pick up his young grandson and coming home with a totally different child. It sounds like the plot of a 90’s comedy, but this happened in real life.

On May 19th, 65-year-old Joseph Fuller went to Edisto Primary School in order to pick up his six-year-old grandchild early. According to a police report, when he arrived at the school, Fuller saw a group of students leaving the school gym, one of which he thought was his grandson. He got out of his car, approached the boy, gave him a hug and told him he was there to pick him up early. When he asked him if he was ready to go, the kid said “yes”. A teacher’s assistant later told deputies that when he asked the boy “Was this your grandfather?” he also answered “yes”. So the two of them then went to the front office so the boy could be signed out, and since the grandpa was on the list of approved people to pick up kids, everything went smoothly. If you think this is weird, hold on tight, because it’s about to get weirder.

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Posted: 02 Jun 2016 07:56 AM PDT

Vergenoegd Wine Estate, a small vineyard in South Africa, keeps the use of chemicals to a minimum with the help of a 900-strong army of ducks that make sure all the vines are always free of pests and snails.

One of the last things you would expect to see on a vineyard is a large group of ducks running around, quacking and looking or things to feast on. And yet that’s the sight you’re very likely to behold at Vergenoegd Wine Estate, in Stellenbosch, South Africa. A feathery army of 900 Indian Runner Ducks is unleashed through the grape vines two times a day – once at 9.45am and again at 3.30pm – and allowed to feast on any pests and snails they can find. Over the years, the ducks have become a tourist attraction of sorts and even have their own daily parade where visitors can watch them run to work. As you can see in the video below, it’s a pretty impressive sight.

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Posted: 02 Jun 2016 07:02 AM PDT

How much is privacy worth to you? If the answer is “a lot” and you have tens of thousands of dollars to burn, you might want to check out the new Solarin Android smartphone, a $16,500 handheld that its makers claim is “the best in the world”. For that price, it better be!

Solarin has been in development for the last two and a half years and was finally launched this week, during a high-profile event in London. Its makers say it has the best display, the best smartphone camera, the loudest and richest speakers, more 4G LTE bands than any other phone and Wi-Fi speeds up to ten times faster than today’s networks. Sounds like a Trump product, doesn’t it? But’s it’s not, we checked. Solarin is the first product of Sirin Labs, an Israeli startup targeting the premium sector.

Those claims are certainly very impressive – although reports state that the reality is a little bit different – but what’s supposed to really set Solarin apart from all other commercially available handhelds is the unmatched security it offers. "Solarin comes with Zimperium state-of-the-art mobile threat protection that thwarts the broadest array of advanced device, network, and application mobile cyberattacks, without impairing usability or functionality of a top-of-the-range smartphone," a Sirin Labs press release claims. "In addition, Solarin incorporates the most advanced privacy technology, currently unavailable outside the agency world. Sirin Labs partnered with KoolSpan to integrate chip-to-chip 256-bit AES encryption, the same technology that militaries around the world use to protect their communications, offering the strongest possible mobile privacy protection worldwide."

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