Delete Facts

In 2014, after Instagram cracked down on spam, rapper Mase lost so many followers he decided to delete his account entirely after dropping to just 100,000 followers from 1.6 million in 20 minutes. businessinsider.com/insta…

A recent development in Hoarding Disorder is the hoarding of data. This is where someone stores huge amounts of electronic data and emails that they're extremely reluctant to delete. nhs.uk/conditions/hoardin…

As part of his release, John Hinckley Jr. (who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan) is not allowed to drink alcohol, listen to violent music, look at pornography, or delete his browser history. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh…

July 21, 2014, Research was published that showed how scientists from Temple University were able to permanently delete the HIV virus from human DNA—snipping out the gene, and allowing the cell’s repair machinery to take over, soldering the genome back together—resulting in virus-free cells. engadget.com/2014/07/22/r…

Today I learned of Killswitch, an urban legend of a game supposedly with only 5000 copies that would self-delete after completion kotaku.com.au/2016/07/the…

The 1994 film "Clerks" had an extended, but a much darker ending, in which Dante Hicks was murdered by a robber who then proceeded to take the money from the cash register. Miramax reacted negatively and ordered writer-director Kevin Smith to delete that ending completely. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cle…

Control+Alt+Delete was used to log into Windows. According to Bill Gates, there was an option to make a single button for such a command, but the IBM keyboard designer didn’t want to give Microsoft a single button. So Microsoft decided to use “Ctrl+Alt+Del” as a way to log into Windows. geekwire.com/2013/gates-h…

North-Korea has its own operating system called "Red Star OS" based on Linux. The administrator user is disabled, media files copied from the OS are watermarked with the hard drive's serial number and the "virus scanner" automatically deletes censored files. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red…

In Swedish elections, handwritten votes are scanned by computer and the results published on the internet. Someone attempted to delete the collected data with SQL injection, and someone else wrote down JavaScript to attempt a cross-site scripting attack on people viewing the results. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wri…

Jóhann Jóhannsson had spent a year writing the score for Darren Aronofsky's "Mother" and at some point realized that the film was better with no music at all. He convinced Darren to delete everything. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot…

IBM Had To Delete 'Urban Dictionary' Data from The Watson Super Computer System Because The Machine Started Cursing. theatlantic.com/technolog…

A Wikipedia admin once deleted the main page. This resulted in a Wikipedia guidance essay, "Don't delete the main page." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wik…

There was a computer worm that would gain access to Windows XP systems, download a patch from Microsoft to close the vulnerability that it used to infect the system, attempt to delete the infamous Blaster worm (if present) from the system, then delete itself. en.wikipedia.org/w/index.…

There is a video game, called "Lose/Lose" that deletes a random file on your computer every time you kill an enemy. joystiq.com/2009/09/30/lo…

"Her Majesty," the 23-second snippet that ends the Beatles' "Abbey Road," was originally part of the record's big Side 2 medley. McCartney decided it should be tossed, and the engineer, who had been previously told not to delete anything, simply stuck at the end of the album beatlesbible.com/songs/he…

In the game Myth II: Soulblighter, due to a bug in the installer, if the game wasn't installed into the default directory and instead into a different one, when attempting to uninstall it the uninstaller would delete the computer's entire hard drive. minimaxir.com/2013/06/wor…

In 2013, Bill Gates admitted that the Ctrl+Alt+Delete command was a mistake, and should have been a single button theverge.com/2013/9/26/47…

An advertising campaign for the 1997 videogame "Virus: The Game" came in the form of an executable file that, once launched, delete every single file and folder in your computer. It turns out to be a joke, as in the end a message is typed on screen: "Thank god this is only a game..." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vir…

There was a so called "helpful worm" that would gain access to Windows XP systems, download security patches from Microsoft to close the vulnerability that it used to infect the system, attempt to delete the infamous Blaster worm (if present) from the system, then delete itself. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wel…

A strategy that terrorists use to avoid having their emails tracked is for one terrorist to compose an email, save it as a draft, and have another terrorist log into the same account to read and delete the draft. pbs.org/wgbh

Black Holes Could Delete The Universe – The Information Paradox youtube.com/watch?v=yWO-c…

Pitchfork Media deletes and changes reviews when it ends up on the wrong side of musical history en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit…

You can open the task manager in Windows 7 by rightclicking on the taskbar instead of using Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

"Ctrl-Backspace" deletes one word at a time lifehacker.com/208198/key…

Facebook & Myspace has already sold my information to a searchable database online. I also learned how to delete my entries. (cross post from reddit.com) whatifoundontheinternetst…

How to "really" delete your facebook. Not just deactivate it (the only option that you can find, without digging). groovypost.com/howto/secu…

Twitter has a 136 page handbook created for politicians. It includes advice on using twitter such as "How to delete a tweet" and "Expect the unexpected". npr.org/sections/itsallpo…

There is a Space Invaders clone that deletes random files from your hard drive when you lose. stfj.net/art/2009/loselos…

- Your brain deletes and replaces 40 minutes of visual information every day en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chr…

IBM's Watson Memorized the Entire 'Urban Dictionary,' Then His Overlords Had to Delete It. - "In tests it even used the word "bullshit" in an answer to a researcher's query." theatlantic.com/technolog…

Pressing the buttons Control-Alt-Delete is referred to giving the "Three Fingered Salute" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con…

If you hold Ctrl and hit backspace it deletes the entire last word typed.

In Germany you can legally request that your ex has to delete naked pictures of you. jezebel.com/german-court-…

Around 13 percent of what people in China post on the Internet winds up being censored. China employs as many as 50,000 "Internet Police" to monitor and delete content being posted online. npr.org/2012/08/08/158448…

Ctl + shift + delete is the short cut to delete browsing history in Chrome and Firefox

CTRL + Backspace deletes an entire word

Three states (Delaware, Illinois and Missouri), lethal injections are performed using a machine which requires two staff members, and essentially hides and then deletes from memory, which one administered the lethal injection or the placebo. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let…

There is an encrypted book loaded in a Floppy Disk that was programmed to delete itself after a single use. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agr…

Pressing SHIFT+Delete permanently deletes a file skipping the recycling bin

In September 2012, Sophos' anti-virus suite identified various update-mechanisms, including its own, as malware. If it was configured to automatically delete detected files, Sophos Antivirus could render itself unable to update. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant…

- That Nick Cave switched back to using a typewriter as he "could walk in on a bad day and hit 'delete' and that was the end of it". Cave believes that he lost valuable work due to a "bad day". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic…

MS Access doesn't delete ANYTHING and the file size gets bigger when you "delete" data bigresource.com/Tracker/T…

Control + backspace deletes whole words.

Today I learned of a game called 'Lose/Lose' that procedurally generates Enemies which, when killed delete files from your PC. knowyourmeme.com/memes/su…

The initial iteration of one of EVE Online's expansions would, on rare occasion, delete the user's boot.ini file, rendering the entire operating system unable to boot. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exp…

It is Impossible to Delete A Wikipedia Accont smashingmagazine.com/2010…

Pressing Ctrl + delete will delete the whole of the word after the cursor

Pressing ctrl+backspace deletes the previous word, and ctrl+shift+backspace deletes the entire paragraph.