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|---|---|---|---|
bofzpx
|
What is the flaky stuff that forms in your eyes when you sleep?
|
Rheum (/ˈruːm/; from Greek: ῥεῦμα rheuma 'a flowing, rheum'), also known as gound, is thin mucus naturally discharged from the eyes, nose, or mouth during sleep (cf. mucopurulent discharge).[1][2][3] Rheum dries and gathers as a crust in the corners of the eyes or the mouth, on the eyelids, or under the nose. It is formed by a combination of mucus (in the case of the eyes, consisting of mucin discharged from the cornea or the conjunctiva), nasal mucus, blood cells, skin cells, or dust. Rheum from the eyes is particularly common.
Or if you more into folklore stuff.
The Sandman is a mythical character in Western and Northern European folklore who puts people to sleep and brings good dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto the eyes of people while they sleep at night, i.e. rheum.
|
d8a79bba-9b31-4f51-8ef2-c6b9cb7da925
|
bog3y6
|
What's the difference between the NYSE and NASDAQ? Isn't the nyse the market and NASDAQ just an index?
|
The NASDAQ is a [market](_URL_2_) *and* an [index](_URL_2__Composite). The NYSE is primary known as just a [market](_URL_4_). There is an [index for the NYSE](_URL_0_), but it is not as popular as other indices like [Standard & Poors (S & P)](_URL_5_) or the [Dow Jones Industrial Average](_URL_1_).
|
9bfc7a9c-cd7a-47e0-ae51-0b9e1fab8034
|
bog5mp
|
in interstellar, why did gravity have an effect on how time was experienced for the crew members and those back on earth?
|
According to General Relativity, gravity is the curvature of spacetime.
That means, energy alters the geometry of spacetime itself. Straight lines may, as a result, appear curved to outside observers, for example. When the ISS is orbiting earth, it is moving along a straight line through a spacetime that has been curved by earth's mass. Due to this curvature, the straight line the ISS is following is curved back into itself. You can visualize this by considering the equator on earth: if you start at one point and keep moving straight ahead, the geometry of a sphere will lead you back to your starting point eventually. The fact that the ISS is moving along a straight line is, incidentally, also the reason why astronauts are weightless on board of the space station despite the fact that they experience more than 90% of the gravity on earth: since gravity is not a force, they are force free.
As spacetime consists of space **and** time, however, energy does not only curve space, but also time. This results in a situation, where two clocks tick slower when they are in stronger gravitational fields. That is, if I were to look at a clock in a strong gravitational field from very far away, I would see it ticking slower than an identical clock at my location.
Thus, time passes at a slower rate the stronger the gravitational field is. For a person experiencing this strong gravitational field, however, time would feel completely normal. But when they emerge from the gravitational field they will notice that more time has passed for the rest of the universe than it has for them.
This phenomenon is, more or less accurately, portrayed by interstellar on the planet close to the black hole.
|
f59611d3-a503-44e7-b2fb-d95198acad35
|
bogu6t
|
Why does increasing the average temperature on Earth by less than 10 degrees have such a large impact?
|
Imagine you are on a seesaw, ballancing in the very middle.
Now take one step to either end and you will go down.
One step isn't that much, however it is enough.
Now imagine how large a step back you would have to take to get the seesaw back in ballance.
With that I mean is that there is a point of no return.
For the seesaw that means that you will not get it back in ballance and one end will touch the ground.
For the climate it means that it will change so drastically that much of the planet will become unsuitable for human habitation.
|
eda4f9ad-0b1e-487c-a616-3cf87b1077c4
|
bogxco
|
If a primarily coal powered city has a large uptake of home solar, say 1MW out of 4MW average usage prior to solar, how much does the generation actually go down by after accounting for cloud cover and generator wind up time? Is it 25% less or significantly less?
|
This can get a little complex so I'll try to keep it as ELI5 as possible. First, I do work for a utility that has a diverse fuels portfolio and is a discussion commonly had even at the lower levels of the company.
Solar is great but it has one large Achilles heel, the sun. Immediately it has a 50% capacity factor, meaning how long it can produce power for the day, week, month, year. Add in some clouds, thunder storms, dust, or snow and it reduces the capacity factor further. Elevation and temperature play a large role in solar production as well.
The west coast, Nevada and Utah specifically are great for solar due to their elevation in the mountains, usually clear skies and cooler temperatures at elevation. This makes the process much more efficient. Take into account battery storage. You need to cool the batteries and inverters. In the south for example, higher temperatures means more parasitic load to run the air conditioner, this reducing the amount of watts available to the grid. Oddly enough, solar rarely provides the power required to the grid at peak load. Think about human activities, elevated load demand in the morning (people waking up) and much more in the evening( running air conditioner, cooking, tv, lights, so on) this is when the sun is going down and solar generation is very low immediately putting load on battery storage.
Now the problem with traditional power generation is it relies on steam. Fuel source does not matter, gas, oil, coal, nuclear all take time to warm up components, especially the turbine and build up enough steam pressure to roll that turbine. Combustion turbines (think giant jet engine) can be dispatched rather quickly, however a coal plant will be a steam electric station. Ample time for cycle clean up, warm up and other operational processes can take up to 24 hours depending on time offline, outage activities, and size of unit.
So, to answer your question, it depends, but typical dispatching will be slide load at the peak 10am-2pm to meet demand and renewable capacity then run wide open from 2pm to midnight and slowly lower load in the early hours of the morning and start the cycle all over again. The grid operator usually keeps a slight surplus of MWs on the the line and will adjust for small load variations. Capacitors are also used to provide quick adjustments to line voltage while a traditional steam electric system ramps up.
Hope that stayed ELI5 and answered... something.
Edit: paragraphed since it was on mobile
Edit2: thanks for the gold!
|
f3f47730-32e9-49cd-bf28-4e6879cb581d
|
bohhnp
|
Why does being warm make us sleepy?
|
I think it would be the association with sleeping. In my case, I grew up in a tropical area and when going to sleep, we would turn on the air conditioner. I associate cold with sleep.
|
aef025b3-c46d-4a1d-b929-3486d3632d34
|
bohn24
|
How do password managers know your password without actually knowing your password?
|
Every single answer here is incorrect. They all explain how websites store passwords, not password managers. **PASSWORD MANAGERS DO NOT HASH PASSWORDS**.
If they did, you will never be able to retrieve the passwords that you store in there. Instead, what they do is encrypt passwords to be stored with your master password (**simplification alert**: you actually encrypt it with a special decryption key which is related to your master password, but for simplicity's sake we'll assume passwords are encrypted/decrypted with your master password)
Say you want to give something (your password) to someone for safekeeping (password manager) and you don't want them to see what you're storing. You put the data inside a strong box and lock it (encryption) and then hand it of to the person. So only you can open the box (decrypt the data) with the master key.
When you want to retrieve a password from your password manager:
Your password is first used as a verification to ensure that the server sends the encrypted data to the correct person (this part is like how regular websites use passwords to log you in with hashing and stuff). Then the encrypted data (box) is sent by the server which is then then decrypted (unlocked) with your password **on your device**. Remember, the client (software running on your phone/computer) will only send encrypted passwords to the password managers server. The server has no idea what it's receiving from your client. This is why it's important to choose password managers with open source clients which you can verify only sends encrypted data
(Note this encryption is separate from the https encryption your browser/app does while communicating with the servers)
Now that you retrieved your website password securely, it's just like entering it as if you remembered it. Here is where all the hashing mentioned in the other answer comes in
So the master password serves 2 functions: authenticate you and allow you to decrypt the data. If you ever forgot your password, even if you managed you authenticate yourself to the service by contacting support, the best they can do is hand over a blob of useless encrypted data
|
0aa8b50b-f50f-4bbc-b724-279ccbb60429
|
boht7i
|
What is a Processes Working Set?
|
Think of it like $20 dollar bills in your pocket. Its a resource (pageable memory) that has been allocated and now quick and easy to use. If you run out, it’s gonna take some time/work to get it (hard page fault), kind of like doing another ATM transaction.
|
cbff4b37-6302-406d-9482-85585d97ceb2
|
boixok
|
How can a person digest after having the stomach completely removed because of cancer?
|
The intestines do most of the digesting,the stomach just stores the amount of food a body can hold. So a person would have to alter their diet somewhat, and eat several small meals instead of 3 big ones, but they'd be fine
|
91c136da-fb76-4a1e-9137-e9d3af5a5fa0
|
boiyb3
|
Why, if the EPA says Glysophate doesn't cause cancer, does Monsanto keep losing court battles of people saying they got cancer from Roundup?
|
Court cases are decided by a jury of your peers, and your peers are fucking morons. Same with J & J losing those talcum powder lawsuits without a shred of evidence that it causes cancer.
|
2208fa76-d336-4463-8dc8-bbecdf78966d
|
boj6at
|
Why does a door of a room close easier and faster, when a window of that room is opened?
|
Air pressure. When you close a door, you are forcing air into the room (think of the door as a giant fan, or sail) with the windows closed, that air has less of a place to go, so it's harder to close the door, since that air is "pushing back". With the window open, the air just does out the window.
|
eee5fd43-3c53-4e7c-b7a2-d612aceba160
|
bojd89
|
Why do console / pc ports seem to take so much work?
|
Porting PC to console can have some difficulties because in general consoles are more limited. If your PC game is made for high end PCs and doesn't easily scale down to lower spec machines it would be hard to port that to consoles.
There's things like reworking the controls if you don't already support gamepads.
Consoles also have a bunch of rules about how you do things, so you might have to change things like the menu flows to fit those rules.
Going the other way, doing a good PC version means adding lots more options that PC gamers expect. Making sure the graphics can be scaled so it runs on a variety of PCs. Adding keyboard and mouse controls. Adding extra menu flows for things that might be handled by the system software on consoles (e.g. save games).
And for all of the above, everything has to be tested, and lots of bug fixing.
|
7093c515-0563-4cca-8c91-995a190246c5
|
bojw1v
|
How does immunity work?
|
Once your body learns to create the antibodies, there's always some of them floating around. This way, your body doesn't have to figure out how to create them (allowing time for symptoms); it can just immediately use the ones it has, and since it knows how to make them it can make more much more quickly.
|
535334c4-661a-474b-bb54-dc12cffa982f
|
bojx6h
|
How do birds fly in clouds and other adverse weather conditions when they can't see the ground, won't they get disoriented?
|
Birds have little magnetic minerals in their skulls that make them sense the earts magnetic field. Thats how they dont get lost when migrating
|
539c7184-a9fd-4ea1-aaa2-22555ffa1d28
|
bok1ne
|
Why do armpits stink?
|
Most people have a different type of gland in specific spots. Armpit, groin. The sweat here has more to it, including a protein. This protein is consumed by the normal bacteria on us, but it makes them produce a smelly by product.
In much of SE Asia a mutation means they don't have those glands in most their population. So don't have that spicy musk BO we are used to.
|
ddebe5c5-b30b-4a79-9b8f-ec2bc432ab25
|
bokyfa
|
With the discovery of a plastic bag near or at the bottom of the Marianna Trench - the challenger deep - How does something so lightweight get so deep against the immense pressures ?
|
If it's denser than water it will get to the bottom eventually.
Plastic is definitely denser than water.
It's light mass and flowy volume means it will take a long time, but it will eventually get there.
|
75592e30-a3cf-4705-9c2e-75b57c5e9ea4
|
bokzlp
|
Why does a full circle equal 360 degrees?
|
The 360 degree circle actually started with the base 60 number system, developed by the Mesopotamians, 6000 years ago. They then passed that on to the Egyptians, who used the base 60 numbering system to divide the circle into 6 equilateral triangles (the Egyptians loved, and I mean loved, equilateral triangles). They also developed a calendar based on the 360 degree circle, which is actually quite accurate, considering that it's only 5.25 days off of the current calendar that we use.
|
c57fc22f-b368-4207-b2f6-13ce566ad2a5
|
bol96r
|
why does putting "www" before the address matter for some sites but not others?
|
Originally, the world wide web was just a small part of the internet. The internet included the world wide web, but it also included FTP (file transfer protocol), e-mail (okay, we still have that), Usenet (bulletin boards), and more. So, if you buy a domain, say _URL_1_, then you would put your webpage on _URL_0_, and you would put your files on ftp._URL_1_, and your email address might be at mail._URL_1_. But as time progressed, the world wide web eclipsed much of those, so we figured it would be easier to type in _URL_2_ as opposed to www._URL_2_, and here we are!
|
e241ffc9-f2c6-4ccc-b9cc-3d694d6a1cdf
|
bomisr
|
Why do you sometimes see strong flashes of color when you shut your eyes?
|
called Phosphenes.
caused by pressure in your eyeball that cause the retina to react and fire off a few false signals to your brain.
|
c04bf1b5-fef6-4315-9845-c90b235df065
|
bomxhb
|
How are hard drives/sd cards/digital storage nearly doubling in storage capacity, while remaining roughly the same size, year over year?
|
Digital storage capacity has nearly everything to do with storage *density*, or the number of bits that can be stored per unit area.
Imagine you have 100 light bulbs, and they can be switched on and off individually via a set of switches you have. Each bulb represents a bit of information (on/off). Say it takes up a square meter of space. You have 100 bits per m^2 in terms of storage density.
Then, someone discovers that they can make the light bulbs a LOT smaller, half as small in fact, so instead of fitting 100 light bulbs per m^2, you can fit 400 light bulbs per m^2. Your storage density just went up four times!
People keep finding new and novel ways to make the light bulb smaller, until eventually they can't figure out how to make them any smaller, so they try to find something new. Wow, LEDs are REALLY small, and they work kind of the same way as light bulbs. . . All of a sudden, you can fit 1,000,000 bits per m^2.
This process of miniaturization is exactly what allows us to cram more bits into the same unit area.
We use transistors that are incredibly tiny, on the order of 10nm, or ten *billionths* of a meter wide. If we can make that smaller, say 7nm, then we can cram more and more into the same area, increasing capacity without increasing the physical size of the object.
Hard disks use magnetic fields, and as precision of the technology increases, the greater density we can achieve that way. If I can precisely measure a magnetic field that is say 2mm wide, and improve that to 1mm, I can store 4 times as many 1mm fields as 2mm fields.
So as technology gets more and more precise, and tinier and tinier, we're able to store more and more information in the same area.
|
063bfda3-d7ff-451e-a9db-aaef735193a2
|
bonca3
|
why does carbonating water, then letting it go flat change the flavor of the water?
|
When you carbonate water (H2O), you add carbon dioxide (CO2). This combination allows carbonic acid (H2CO3) to form in the liquid, which changes its flavor. So even when a lot of the CO2 leaves the water as bubbles, some of it is staying in the water long enough to alter its composition and change its flavor as carbonic acid.
|
c39b4670-9d91-4bc6-b1ae-450fd36c2738
|
bonfpt
|
Scientifically, how does a person have an allergy to something, and what occurs in their body during an allergic reaction?
|
An allergy occurs when a normally harmless substance, called an allergen, is recognized by the body as an invader ,like a bacteria, and the body over reacts with its immune response. The exact response can depend on the allergen and how it enters the body. Hives usually occur from skin contact, runny nose and sneezing are usually breathed in, and anaphylactic shock , a series of reactions, usually results from the allergen entering deep in the body like eating it or injecting it. However, if the allergy is bad enough, something as small as skin contact can be enough.
This is a severe simplification and generalization, allergies are a complex aspect of biology we haven't completely figured out. But we have lots of treatments for them and research is improving those treatments.
|
4130b93e-5587-456b-be23-9f1fdd66c60c
|
boo5v7
|
Why is that when we experience a blow to the head we “see stars”?
|
that's shock, which can result in a rapid lowering of blood pressure, so as to mitigate bleeding out if you were injured.
that lowering of blood pressure can make you pass out, or see stars, or essentially feel dazed. It also might have to do with brain injury if the blow was bad enough.
|
d9ca2d79-299d-4aee-bf98-1331528a393c
|
boorex
|
How can we distinguish where the sound comes from? Between left and right is really obvious by timing. But between front and back, or up?
|
The shape of our ears. Our ears are angled slightly foreward meaning that is we can tell front to back, and the ridges in the ear allow us to tell up from down.
|
4537e5a2-af3f-494f-9309-e337251e5924
|
boouix
|
How does captcha work exactly and what is it supposed to accomplish?
|
Websites use captcha schemes to separate human users from simple computing users. Because humans can do some things easily while same task is harder on computer.
At same time, new AI algorithms are solving what we're previously hard computing problems. As AIs grows in capability, captcha teams have to find new problems that are easy on humans but still hard on AI.
Additionally REcaptcha is used to improve Optical Character Recognition algorithms so that printed books can be digitized easier. It's also used to gather datasets to train AI
REcaptcha is funded by Google.
|
8371971f-c622-4b9d-be35-68e2573b4a7f
|
bop904
|
Why do video game console makers lose money from consoles regardless of success and popularity?
|
Because consoles are almost always sold at a loss. Making and marketing a home video game console is pretty damn expensive, and nobody expects to actually make a profit on the console. The point of the console is to get you into their game/media environment. Because games are basically all profit for the console manufacturers.
|
9601506f-fbcb-4e4c-a92a-32f30bd33497
|
bopjf2
|
Why does a woman's testosterone level increase after alcohol consumption, but a man's testosterone level decrease?
|
Men have testicles, women have ovaries. Normal function is reduced by alcohol consumption, and abnormal function is increased.
|
6fb0cbc8-7835-4e89-93e0-8d20e71f26ee
|
bopxel
|
Why do humans not go into heat/a mating season?
|
We aren't wired that way.
In case you haven't noticed our females ovulate (release an egg into the uterus) about once every 30 days or so. We don't have a "season" because we're *always in one*. Any month of the year a woman can get pregnant (and they do!).
|
c0e1834d-fe47-4fcd-9c64-82407cc09863
|
boq80t
|
Why sometimes some coins are worth more than their original value?
|
Two reasons. First, because, sometimes, the value of the metal in the coin becomes higher than the coin itself. That's why U.S. pennies are not made out of pure copper anymore. Second, and more importantly, because people are interested in coins and collect them. Rarity comes into play. I have a mason jar full of wheat pennies (U.S., 1909-59) that is probably worth 5x the face value of the coins themselves (about $50 instead of $10) but, if I had a 1944 steel wheat penny, that alone would be worth approx. $100,000 because only 35 were issued. If you are a dedicated coin collector and have the money to spare, a 1944 steel wheat penny is something you'd pay dearly for.
|
c90c2968-240c-49e6-8a43-919466e403e6
|
boqd7p
|
Why does radiation burn?
|
Radiation moves in a wavelength similar to light. Think about when you shine a high wattage light (say a lamp or a shop light) really close to your skin. Think of the light as the radiation, it moves out and when it hits the surface some is deflected and some is absorbed.
There are multiple types of radiation, a laser is a more visible form of actual radiation. The radiation is a form of energy, and it has to go somewhere. Most “light” energies transfer to heat when they hit a surface.
For a real eli5, radiation is just a fancy lightbulb that still burns when you touch it.
|
63597508-aeac-4f20-ac3e-ba2df0e8e17e
|
boqfuq
|
Why does 24 FPS look fine for films and television, but looks terrible for video games?
|
Movie frames are formed by a camera with an aperture being open for a period of time. This means there is “motion blur” as things move across the frame while the shutter is open.
In contrast the computer is calculating a single instant in time. There is no movement so everything is crisp and clear, but on the other hand changes between each frame are somewhat more abrupt than merging the ends of a blurred object’s path.
So the lower frame rate actually has frames with more information in them as they capture a period of time, albeit blurred, while the computer’s frames are crisp snapshots without any movement information.
|
ffe924de-5310-4d4b-b3b7-3789173b345d
|
boqinp
|
What happens when there isn't enough electricity on the grid?
|
There can be "brown-outs" where the voltage is lower than normal. Lights will dim and some appliances won't work or could even be damaged.
& #x200B;
Rolling black-outs are another possibility, where the utility actually shuts down portions of the grid to allow the power they do have to serve a smaller area. They often turn on and off different areas so everyone is equally pissed off (seems fair).
|
78cacfdb-98c2-4c9d-bf43-c06d19991c29
|
boqluf
|
If atoms are composed of 99.9999....% empty space, how come the physical objects around us don’t appear to be composed of virtually nothing?
|
because they are super small that to you they look and feel solid. it's just like how a if you view an iron link fence from super far away it will look like it's solid and not be full of holes.
|
1e206dfd-afbe-4ba5-beec-29b04f05ce67
|
borl2t
|
Who is James Charles and why's everyone on social media talking about him?
|
James Charles is an internet personality who has attracted all kinds of controversies ever since February 2017. He's openly gay, and thanks to his work on the internet, he has a net worth of several million dollars.
More recently in May 2019, long-time collaborator Tati Westbrook uploaded a 43-minute long video in which she heavily criticised the internet personality, resulting in him losing more than 2 million subscribers from his YouTube channel.
|
34100fdb-004c-4e9e-b9a2-659489c1b94c
|
borni0
|
How does somebody take a video first person view, but when they look in a mirror, they don’t see the camera?
|
Can you explain what you mean or provide an example?
Mirror shots are usually filmed at specific angles to hide the camera, use sets with duplicate rooms on either side of a false mirror, or digitally erase the mirror in post.
|
cf86d642-8ac7-4916-926d-65d51e44a741
|
bortcz
|
that phantom hat feeling long after you've taken a hat off?
|
I’m actually not sure how this one works but it gonna take a crack at it anyways.
The hat doesn’t actually ever touch your head but you instead feel it through your hairs. If you take the hat off but your hair is in the same position as when it was on, your scalp will have no way of telling. This is why when I quickly brush my hair around afterward, the feeling goes away.
|
36c9ecf4-52f5-422f-9f91-75d591ab9c1b
|
bos6le
|
How did engineers figure out trajectories needed to get to the moon?
|
> It’s not like they can just point the rocket at the moon and blast off.
You're right. They know how big Earth is and how fast it's moving, and they know the same about the moon. All that's left is to figure out where each will be at a certain time to get the payload (lander, shuttle, or whatever) from Earth to moon when launched to a certain spot on the moon from a certain spot on Earth. Basically, r/theydidthemath. Lots of math.
|
2e504fa2-5778-485c-8e73-cc021ca5cd47
|
bos6ol
|
Why do laptops use mWh instead of mAh?
|
All phones use single 3.7V lithium ion cells.
Laptops often use multiple cells in series so they can have voltages other than just 3.7V.
Listing in mAh for phones is fair since everything runs at the same voltage but listing in mAh for laptops would have deceptive results.
Which is better a 15000 mAh battery or an 18000 mAh battery? Well if they're at the same voltage then the 18000 mAh battery but if the 18000 mAh battery runs at 11.1 V and the 15000 mAh battery runs at 18.5 V then you'll get a lot more run time out of the battery with fewer mAh because it has more mWh.
|
97bd9a7a-cb41-48de-a570-11e55e571584
|
bosr09
|
Why can’t we text using bold, italics, or underlines?
|
The SMS service standard simply doesn’t allow for “markup” as, for example, HTML does for the web. It was invented at a time when phones only had numeric buttons. You could just start using a markup standard but it would be confusing for the many older phones that didn’t understand and presented things like < b > to their users. The mobile networks could try to remove markup for old handsets but it would be problematic. Also, markup would be abused by spammers sending you huge, bold, red, flashing messages. Fonts with coloured characters, i.e., emoji, are already bad enough.
|
affbdd7b-5340-489e-ba2b-300ad505da5b
|
bot0df
|
- If some company were to start selling EpiPens at $100 instead of $600 would they not make tons of money from the millions of people wanting to only buy from them?
|
Theoretically, yes. The medication is not patented, but "EpiPens" are. Competitors have been unable to succeed with alternatives and Mylan (the company responsible) holds strict rights over EpiPen production. The monopoly is what allows Mylan to jack up the price. If someone developed a similar and effective injection method, it still might not succeed because Mylan has contracts with most schools
|
ecd201b2-18b8-4a8c-9beb-211987216d0a
|
bot6pt
|
What makes a male’s voice relatively low and a female’s voice relatively high?
|
Exposure to testosterone during puberty causes male vocal cords to become longer and thicker relative to those of females, which causes their voices to be much lower. Though a male’s low voice serves almost as an “advertisement” for his testosterone levels, making him more appealing to a potential female mate, evidence suggests the evolution of deeper voices primarily served as a tool to intimidate other men.
|
0f17c244-e578-43b9-b6c8-4f950bf90887
|
bot6u2
|
Why do almost all living creatures need water to survive? Why not some other liquid?
|
Water is a very good solvent. It's just handy to dissolve O2 and the minerals we need to live.
|
71748b49-8a3e-4392-91d9-68b51fd51501
|
bot7kc
|
Why is it easier to get off a push bike and walk up a hill, rather than riding up the hill?
|
Gears, or lack thereof. Essentially, you get better leverage on the hill with your legs than with the relatively short pedals. But if you have enough gears to increase your leverage, it’s no effort at all, just slow.
|
a9f8dfda-6c3a-429c-9981-78a7b67c9281
|
botafm
|
how does Parts per million work (PPM) and how does 425 ppm carbon dioxide change the temperature so much?
|
Parts per million are just like a percentage, you just use bigger numbers. One percent is 1 part out of 100, a PPM is one part out of 1,000,000. This means 425 PPM is 0.0425%
|
d8f11467-855c-4990-8463-bc71dd356966
|
boteh5
|
Is there light in a closed box?
|
The light would bounce around in on the walls in the box. Every time a bounce occurs, most of the light's energy is transferred to heat in the walls. And since the light moves at the speed of light, it will very quickly bounce many times, and all of its energy will be absorbed by the box in the form of heat. It will seem instantaneous to us.
So there will be no light in the box.
|
337fa644-c932-41c0-983e-97ad8c37b96f
|
botk5c
|
how hard is it for companies to evade US and Chinese tariffs by selling to intermediaries in third countries?
|
Not that hard, but doing it on a large scale is difficult to conceal and runs the risk of pissing off regulators who have a big hammer and the incentive to bring it down and make an example.
|
dcc7e55e-1c3b-4dc1-bca4-ba5eb552ae4d
|
botocz
|
Why are sloths so slow? Are they physically incapable of moving quickly? Mentally incapable of thinking about moving quickly? I just don't get it.
|
Slow metabolism due to low calorie food source. Moving slow conserves energy and there isnt much energy to spare, so moving slow is pretty important to survival. Even their heart rate is slow. Interestingly, if they ever got into a situation where they need to swim - apparently they swim a bit faster!
Think of it as the opposite of how fast animals with fast metabolisms work. A hummingbird for instance uses a lot of energy zipping around, requiring a fast metabolism to access all that energy, and eats a high energy food (essentially sugar water), which is why it is capable of this.
|
dc668db1-5c3b-43b4-9ef9-06b3e56811b6
|
botpeo
|
. Is there a biological advantage to sentience, or is it just a by-product of higher intelligence?
|
all natural intelligences are able to feel or perceive things, even ones we consider to be less than ours. unless we're discussing artificial (machine) intelligence, all biological creatures over a certain threshold of complexity are sentient.
|
54493e76-d706-47cb-ac1d-57eb52b06e9c
|
botygj
|
Why do our eyes come out as red when we're in certain photos?
|
This is the result of light reflecting off the retina at the back of your eyes. This is why it's most prevalent when the flash is used. Red-eye reduction works by firing the flash once before the picture is taken in order to cause your irises to close in reaction to the bright light, exposing less of the retina.
|
4a8b9de1-0877-484a-bfde-c62b762a856c
|
bouboe
|
Spectre attacks and spectre-like attacks on Intel Chips?
|
Let's compare CPUs to a laundry service. You give it a very simple instruction:
> Wash basket 1
but that gets broken down into different steps:
* Find basket 1
* Put it in the washing machine
* Transfer it to the dryer
* Iron it
* Fold it nicely
* Put it back in basket 1
If you want to wash basket 2 as well, you don't have to wait for basket 1 to complete the whole process. As soon as basket 1 is in the washing machine, you can go look for basket 2. Then as basket 1 is done washing, you put it into the dryer, load basket 2 into the washing machine, and maybe start looking for basket 3 and so on ... This is called **pipelining** and means you're basically washing as many loads as you have steps: one load is in each step.
But what if we give our laundry service a more complex request. We want to use product x, but sometimes that gives troubles during the ironing. So we give the following instruction:
> Wash basket 1 with product X, and **IF** it succeeds, **THEN** also wash basket 2 and basket 3 with product x. **Otherwise**, use product Y.
So we can't really start working on basket 2 and 3 until we know the outcome of the ironing of basket 1. That slows down our efficient pipeline by a lot! So we're going to do it anyway. And if it turns out that we're wrong, we're just going to clear all stages of the pipeline, and start over correctly. This is **speculative execution**: we're speculating on the outcome of the "IF ... THEN" statement in our instruction.
Now in real processors, that can be troublesome. For example
> **If** we have access to X, **then** read X **otherwise** abort.
If we're guessing that the access check will succeed, and already start reading X before we're actually certain, that leads to information leaks. Using this strategy, it is shown that you can access private memory, but it is pretty hard to execute.
|
b16c40e3-c3ad-4fa2-b470-680e5a7538e1
|
boudvy
|
The current "trade war" between US and China
|
Note: I can explain what I understand from reading the news and I’m sorry that I’m a little biased against trump. Also I’m drawing this from memory. It’s too late at night and I’m on mobile so I don’t want to look up sources. I can later in the day if you want me to :) I’m just someone who tries to keep informed by reading the news, but admittedly, that’s been exhausting lately lol.
It started partly due to Trump’s misunderstanding of trade deficit. I don’t fully understand it either but basically, from what I recall, if the US imports more goods from China, than it exports to them, then it creates a trade deficit to China. (If the US made and exported more goods to China it would be a trade surplus.) Trump seems to believe that “trade deficit” means that it relates to some physical dollar amount that China is making more money than the US or cheating the US or stealing from the US. I mean “deficit” is a negative word, right?
So trump’s solution is to impose tariffs on China, and he seems to believe that a tariff is a physical, direct tax on imports. I think his recent tweets have been suggesting China may soon be paying paying 25% tariffs on all imported goods and all that money is just “pouring into the US treasury.” As if the US is now charging China a literal, physical dollar amount to everything it exports to the US. It SOUNDS good. But it’s apparently wrong. Tariffs are taxes imposed on Chinese goods coming into the US but they’re charged (for lack of a better word) to the American importer that imports the Chinese goods. That importer usually shifts the cost to the consumer by raising the price of that good. It’s raising prices for goods purchased by the US consumer. The point of the tariff (someone please correct me if I’m wrong!) is to make that foreign good more expensive so that the alternative (hopefully US-made products) start to look more appealing to the consumer and will then be purchased more.
China is in a strong enough economic position to impose its own tariffs or to just start doing business with other countries, which can further hurt the US because it’s no longer able to sell those goods to China like it used to. I’m thinking, for example, corn or some crop that the US exports A LOT of to China. China can simply say no and get its corn from somewhere else and the US is stuck with an assload of corn it can’t sell anymore.
Edit: minor corrections and rounded out my answer.
|
84c0ddb4-4038-440a-bb99-da3e658b9294
|
boupp7
|
Why does earth's gravity cause us to be dragged to the earth's surface, and why does the gravitation of the sun not cause the celestial bodies to be swallowed by the sun through it's gravity?
|
Did you ever realise how strong you are? The reality is that the earth’s gravity *does* drag us down every moment of every day ... it’s just that gravity is pretty darn weak compared to other forces (like magnets). We know it’s pulling us down, because otherwise we’d fly off into space. So while we are standing up the muscles in our legs and stomach are strong enough to counter-act the earth’s gravity — so good news! You are stronger than the earth... at least as far as it’s gravity goes.
When it comes to the sun - it is also pulling all the planets in towards it and they are falling into it! But imagine this...
What happens when you throw a ball to someone? Basically it goes from you to them, and it curves down towards the earth (due to gravity). What do you think would happen if you were super man , and you could throw the ball really, really fast? Could you throw it so fast that it while it fell towards the ground it was traveling far enough forward that the curve of the earth meant it never managed to hit the ground? The ball would go all the way around the world.
Now that’s what the planets are doing when they orbit the sun ... going so fast that as they fall towards it but they never ‘get there’
Unfortunately, super man isn’t able to actually throw a ball around the earth, because the air slows it down too much, but luckily, there isn’t any air in space, so planets that orbit the sun keep going.
|
6da75bcd-357c-43a8-8c6d-93acd657f52b
|
bouz0m
|
when someone has a mental health issue like scizephrenia, why do the voices in their head always tell them to do messed up stuff? Why doesnt the voice sometimes just like remind them to floss and stuff.
|
They don't always tell them to do bad things. I had a friend who used to tune out mid conversation, lean out of our group, and start having a friendly conversation with "Medusa". He said she had power over him, but usually she just wanted to be a friend.
|
c01dfa15-ca27-424a-8e62-2f5bb46bb9ea
|
bouzbw
|
Do Soaps/hand sanitizers that kill 99.9% germs also kill off good germs? Is it good to use often?
|
Hand sanitizes are basically pure alcohol, sometimes with some fragrance added. One of the properties of alcohol is that it dissolves lipids (fats), which is also found in bacteria. Basically, hand sanitizes dissolves parts of bacteria and kills them. It has no way to distinguish between "good" and "bad" germs.
To the second part about how often you should use it: your skin also has lipids on it, which it needs to be healthy. They're usually called sebum. If you have too little, your skin becomes "dry" and itchy. Hand sanitizes also remove part of the skin's sebum. This is why you should not use it often.
|
c44b3cf3-a9b9-44a8-8e71-d0e36c2e95e5
|
bov9q1
|
why do things get darker when they get wet?
|
Color is caused by light. When things are wet light doesn't bounce off of them as effectively.
|
5b9730b5-224a-433e-884c-687196c861b5
|
bova9d
|
Muscle memory after brain injuries.
|
You said it yourself, muscle memory.
You have different kind of memories, usually we divide them in three separate categories :
1 : Procedural memory, that includes muscle memory. It's linked to repeated action. It's a very implicit memory, you don't need to make an effort to remember for it to work, like for example when you ride a bike you don't have to think about how to ride the bike, you just do it.
2 : Semantic memories : Everything you've learnt in school like facts, dates, informations in books.
3 : Autobiographical memory : Events of your life, who you are married too, who you went to college with, what you studied in school etc.
On patients, sometimes you can have one of those type of memory affected but the others to be completely fine.
I had a case study in class a few months ago about Clive Wearing, a musician who because of a medical accident completely lost his autobiographical memory and had huuuge attention troubles. He could not remember to have study music or have had kids and he had a 30 secondes memory spawn, every 30 seconds he thought he was waking up from a coma and would see his wife for the first time in years.
Welp, the guy still knew how to play the piano perfectly. Yet he couldn't remember being a musician.
Another guy after a motocycle accident completely lost his episodical memory but his procedural memory and his semantical memory were left relatively untouched.
Different parts of the brain are responsible for the different types of memories. And if I remember correctly, the procedural part is (mostly) handled by the cerebellum. So hypothetically if you have a brain injury that massively affected your brain but not your cerebellum and left you conscious enough to respond to command, stand up and speak, you could still do stuff like ride a bike.
|
3fbefcfa-9102-4d09-a224-830474d68e97
|
bovpoz
|
Is the US going to war with Iran?
|
You think the people in charge of our government have a cogent plan they're going to stick to? The Joint Chiefs of Staff probably know the answer to this as well as I do. But we do have some world-class warmongers making some high-level decisions right now
|
eb35b1bb-f0a0-43e5-965b-50342784793a
|
bovww4
|
what actually goes on when we are learning/processing new languages?
|
When you learn a new language, your brain has to make use of previously existing connections for words. Words are arbitrarily assigned, there is no way you’d know the word for something in a foreign language based on sight alone. In order to make these connections, your brain has to effectively make these new linguistic connections by rerouting existing connections in order to make sense of words. How you think about and process language is heavily influenced by your native language. This is why native speakers of certain language will make stereotypical mistakes when learning English, etc. However it seems people are able to keep their languages “separate” and are able to access which one they want at will. How easily you learn or pick up a new language is based primarily on how old you are. If you haven’t hit puberty yet, you’re more likely to pick up said language more easily than someone who has already passed the critical period for language acquisition.
During the language learning process, most commonly people will have more comprehension than language production. The ability to produce the foreign language will develop as time goes on and there is more immersion.
|
d96de66a-838e-4b6e-8e4b-c87519cfd81d
|
bow2vj
|
Mirrors
|
This is a fun question because a proper answer requires a dive into quantum mechanics! But the ELI5 is that when light hits the mirror, it causes the atoms to wiggle around at nearly the same frequency of the light wave and to emit secondary waves at an angle. That energy has to go somewhere, right? Some of this energy is lost to heat so the frequencies of the secondary waves aren't exact, but for good mirrors they are close.
|
e0cedbce-3261-4f95-82ab-1265d7434cfc
|
bow423
|
What Digital Filters is and how do they work? (AD DA-converters, IIR FIR, Biquad etc.)
|
ADC - Analog to Digital Converters - are not filters. Rather, they're sampling devices which take an analog signal and create a series of digital values that represent the signal.
DAC - Digital to Analog Converters - do the reverse. They take a digital value and create an analog voltage from it (and aren't filters either).
Infinite and Finite Impulse Response filters are ways to eliminate desired frequency bands from a series of digital values. The primary difference is that IIR filters use feedback - calculating based on previous outputs from the filter - while FIR filters do not. The actual design of such filters is a complex topic, but it involves figuring out how difference equations representing a system work.
A 'Biquad' filter is simply an IIR filter that is expressed as a ratio of two quadratic difference equations.
In terms of 'how they work', such filters are essentially just a signal added to scaled and time-delayed version of itself. For example, probably the simplest digital filter is:
y[n] = 0.5 x[n] + 0.5 x[n-1]
This just means that your output signal is the average of two successive inputs.
To understand what this does, consider a sequence like (0,0,1,0,0). The output from this sequence would be (0,0.5,0.5,0) - in essence, you're 'smoothing' that sharp spike. Another way to express is that you're removing the high frequency components of the signal - high frequency components of a signal are what causes it to change rapidly.
|
f34a3399-a95a-40ad-b6f0-3b0a3379af3a
|
bow8vq
|
In movies a situation is often portrayed where founder/owner of a company is fired. Is this accurate to the real world?
|
There are two ways that an owner/founder could be fired from being the CEO.
1. They sell more than 50% of the company to investors and the majority shareholders vote them out.
2. The company is created with a rule that the board of directors can vote out the CEO regardless of ownership, and the people on the board do just that.
Often founders of companies can become really emotionally invested in their company and make decisions that might not be the best for the company. Also, someone may successfully start up a company and when it really starts to take off not have the skillset to grow it. For this reason, when investors give money to a startup it often comes with requirements for having seats on the board, or other methods of ensuring their financial interests are looked after and sometimes that means replacing the CEO.
|
18672b07-1f94-43ac-8514-ea3f8b79c309
|
bow93c
|
What does composite imaging mean? Especially when people say here is the pic of moon, combined based on 35k photos I took
|
A few people have talked about making mosaics here but in planetary imaging and especially in the images you are referencing the technique being used is both a mosaic and lucky imaging. I'll copy my other comment here.
& #x200B;
When you image planets or the moon the thing which limits your resolution is normally not the camera or telescope you are using, its the condition of the atmopshere the light is passing through. Air is turbulent and it blurs the light coming through it. While a good telescope can have a resolution of less than 0.5 arcseconds per pixel, the atmosphere even in great conditions will reduce that to around 1 arcsecond RMS.
To get around this you take many images at a very fast frame rate (essentially a raw video) , every now and again you will get frames where the atmopshere happens to have been still and so these frames are sharper than others. You then cut out the poor images and stack together the rest (typically around the best1% or so) to reduce noise.
This technique can be combined with mosaicing and often is but the lucky imaging is the main reason for the high number of frames.
|
38a9772e-4bee-46dc-944c-172bd993e259
|
bowqtg
|
what is the geometric mean and why is it good as a type of average for comparing things that are indexes of lots of other things?
|
The geometric mean of n values is the nth root of the product of the n values.
By contrast the usual mean, the arithmetic mean, is the sum of the n values divided by n.
The geometric mean is interesting when you are interested in tracking proportional changes between different values.
Say, you have two values: 1 and 100.
The arithmetic mean is 50.5 and the geometric mean is 10.
Now, say you double one of the values.
* If you double the first value -- (1, 100) - > (2, 100) -- the arithmetic mean becomes 51 and the geometric mean is 14.1.
* If you double the second value -- (1, 100) - > (1, 200) -- the arithmetic mean jumps to 100.5 while the geometric mean is the same 14.1.
With the geometric mean, the same proportional change to any of the values has the same effect on the mean. With the arithmetic mean, the larger values dominate.
For this reason, some like to use it for component indexes. For example, a 25% gain in a 10 dollar stock has the same effect as a 25% gain in a 100 dollar stock in the same index. There are other ways of handling this problem (such as pre-scaling the data) but the geometric mean is one tool in a statisticians toolbox.
|
54ab1c06-9c64-4fa3-b0b7-0657e89716be
|
box1lq
|
Why is it so much harder to block sonic waves than waves of light?
|
Perhaps the most accessible explanation is that light waves are much higher frequency than sound waves.
Imagine there's a crowd on the sidewalk. If you run straight through, you're probably not going to hit very many people - you might bounce off a few, but you should otherwise be fine.
Now imagine running zig-zag down the sidewalk. You'll hit far more people since you're moving side-to-side as well as through the crowd. The more you zig-zag (the more you visit the left and right sides of the sidewalk for a given distance moving forward), the more people you're likely to hit and the more energy you lose in your transit through the crowd. Lots of zig-zagging represents high frequencies.
That being said, I wouldn't extend this analogy too far. Light and sound are fundamentally different. Sound (like all mechanical waves) requires a medium to propagate through, so it will always be attenuated in some fashion. Light, on the other hand, can propagate through a vacuum. That's why you can see the Sun but not hear it - despite the fact that it is incredibly loud (or would be, if you could find a place to stand and listen to it).
|
7e76fa65-5cf8-451c-9a9d-9198ebbb8df7
|
box4eq
|
Is there any system of checks for bills that are technically unconstitutional? If so, what does it entail?
|
The US Constitution is *the* document. It's not a suggestion--it's the single highest legal authority in the country.
The process for determining whether a law is constitutional or not starts with a lawsuit. Someone, somewhere, feels that the law is infringing on their rights or is otherwise constitutional--and sues. The case makes its way up the chain of courts until it hits the Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court determines that the law is unconstitutional, it's simply rendered invalid.
|
914c60a6-16be-41ed-a8cc-232d825f5719
|
boxsvt
|
How come the food we eat does not set off our gag reflex, even though it goes further and is bigger than something like a toothbrush that sets off the gag reflex?
|
If your tongue is not in contact with the top of your mouth it can elicit a gag reflex. The tongue is a muscle and the base extends pretty far down the throat. It needs to work in unison and create a seal in order to allow swallowing to occur. It's why you gag on a toothbrush, or why kids gag on pills, or why you'd gag if you had too much food in your mouth while you try to swallow.
& #x200B;
Edit: Thank you for the Silver. Also, watch this awesome xray video of swallowing in ACTION:
Edit2: You are all extraordinarily kind and I am underserving.
& #x200B;
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
|
d6ad4832-a5e0-4edb-a1ad-a8585eb965a5
|
boy3vm
|
What happens if Roe vs Wade is overturned?
|
If Roe V Wade is overturned--depending on the details of the decision--the states would presumably be free to set their own individual laws regarding abortion, including banning it.
This will, inevitably, lead to the deaths of many women who will still attempt to get abortions, but who now have to do it in unsafe environments.
Whether that's a good thing or bad thing depends heavily on your political beliefs.
|
f9a9e356-7713-4225-ad3e-d27a2627dcf3
|
boy4i0
|
where does candle wax go when it melts away?
|
It doesn't actually melt away but instead reacts with the oxygen in the air. While it burns it is turned to mostly water and Carbondioxide. Carbondioxide is a colorless gas that is still in the room after the candle is burnt up and water vapor also raises the air's humidity and doesn't just disappear . It's all still there just in a different Molecule less visible to you.
|
74bc6cf4-b48c-487f-b74e-6d688e5d778e
|
boy4sy
|
why does cracking two eggs against each other only one breaks?
|
The eggshell shape is strong like a dome on a building but only if it is complete. So the first one to get a crack loses the strength to break the other and crumbles instead.
|
27786d41-b689-4b6d-adba-2f535cb95a3c
|
boyg3s
|
Why dont school buses have seatbelts?
|
Ensuring children are properly buckled up is an impossible task for the bus driver to handle, and in the event of a fire or other need to emergency egress, seatbelts would prevent young (possibly injured) children from quickly escaping and could lead to death. Additionally, school busses in general are going to be travelling at lower speeds, so accidents where a seatbelt is safer are generally rare.
Instead we've taken the side of making the bus as safe as possible. The color is distinct and easily distinguished as the color of a school bus. Automakers cannot paint their cars that color. Seeing that color people immediately know its a school bus. Heck, my 2 year old already can point them out anytime she sees one.
Additionally, the seating area is high off the ground so a crash with a car is generally going to divert energy upwards as the car will hit under the bus and act as a wedge. The seating area itself will be above the crash site as well, protecting people inside.
|
7e2685a8-e59f-461f-bab9-ec162c70dae2
|
boywfi
|
How do people uncover vulnerable mistakes in chips or software?
|
There isn’t a set method to uncover vulnerabilities, people typically start with how they think something works. The guess could be right, or it could be wrong. Sometimes these implementations have side effects that either went unnoticed, or was decided to be rare enough to not bother fixing it.
These side effects are considered vulnerabilities, but not all of them are the major “ground breaking” ones. But regardless, both types are found the same way, it just depends on what side effect you found.
|
6c0d745a-c640-4e85-93c2-e122fb42a456
|
boz3aj
|
For languages that use characters (i.e. Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, etc.), do they have autocorrect on their phones? How are words misspelled? For reference I'm native English speaker.
|
Korean uses letters. Japanese uses a mix of letters and modified Chinese characters. Cantonese and Mandarin use the same written language: Chinese. There are multiple types of Chinese keyboards. The most common type requires typing out the phonetics of the characters you want. The keyboard then gives you a selection of characters to choose from. Typically, a typo involves selecting the wrong character.
|
3737891c-762e-44cd-8e84-fdf8508f87a0
|
boz3bd
|
Why are drinks shaken not stirred?
|
A shaken drink (shaken with ice) will be colder and a little more watered down than a stirred drink, as more ice will melt faster than the same drink stirred.
But Bond does it because he’s a sexy beast and it sounds cool.
|
d86143fa-52dc-4d83-9b07-9375aa23f108
|
bozf6c
|
How Does Google Pixel's Image Processing Software Work?
|
Here's a [blog by Google](_URL_0_) that explains how Night Sight works specifically. And here's [a more in-depth article](_URL_1_) that is less ELI5.
In summary: If the phone is still, and the subject isn't moving, the camera just has a longer exposure. If the phone is shaking or there is movement in the shot, the camera takes many short exposure photos and merges them together to create a brighter, better lit picture.
AI can help with this process and general image processing. The idea is to take a bunch of pictures. Have a human correct the color manually. Then feed the unaltered photo into the AI and make it learn by using the corrected photos as comparison.
|
4762a31e-54b2-4251-9cfa-e56b98917317
|
bozjp9
|
Why do Ice cubes make that cool cracking sound when you put them in hot (and maybe cold) water?
|
Its called thermal shock. When you expose a surface to another surface with an opposite temperature. It causes surface stress; propagating cracks (which you hear)
|
ba47b4f1-6cb9-4905-8dfd-016e0e5965ca
|
bozv3j
|
why is WPS insecure?
|
the button doesn't turn WPS on, it turns on the broadcasting of the pin. you can brute force the pin whenever you want as long as WPS is enabled.
|
69b778c4-9e38-46e0-979f-0f63b4fe3ad2
|
bozxbl
|
I just read SanDisk is selling 1TB microSD card. How do they fit so much storage into something so small. Will there ever be a limit to how much they can fit into a microSD?
|
There was a similar question a day or so ago about how storage capacity increases but the size of the object remains the same. A TL;DR of my answer:
As technology progresses, the components that represent the data get smaller and smaller. The smaller the components get, the more of them you can fit into the same area.
Take a cube that is 1cm on a side to represent a component. If you were to reduce the size of that component to a cube 1mm on a side, you could fit 1000 of them inside of that 1cm cube, increasing the number of components.
The same applies to digital storage.
|
73718bc8-cb4e-4b22-80df-bc945fb92414
|
bp0nmk
|
What caused the downfall and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union?
|
From my understanding, the economical ruin of the union and the way people were treated.
Gorbachev (the last USSR president) pushed for what he called "de-stalinization", which was the process to remedy all the crap Stalin did to the countries. Things like ending Gulags, westernizing the country by opening it up to products and buisnesses from the west, tearing down all statues of Stalin and renaming Stalingrad to Volgograd.
By that point, though, the harm was already done, and although Stalin did grow the economy a LOT with the 5 year plans, the means through which that was done were still brutal. As good as Democratic Communism is, it is a utopia. It is practically impossible.
WW2 screwed things up even more, with Russia having by far the most casualties (around 40 million iirc). The whole war efforts crippled the economy even more.
Then came the cold war, and all the money was directed to the army and weapons research which unsurprisingly made people mad.
All this meant that most countries wanted to leave the Warsaw pact, which uninevitably led to the colapse of the Soviet Union of 1991.
|
6c98ce5b-4dbb-4cb9-bccc-f56cadb843f2
|
bp0r7m
|
Why are people angry after waking up from a nap?
|
So when you sleep you go through different cycles. The one that leaves you feeling rested is called REM (Random Eye Movement) sleep. When this is disrupted people tend not to feel rested. When people are tired they can become irritable, or cranky, or angry.
Edit:
Source: my dad is a sleep technician and diagnosis people with sleeping disorders and Asked a question like this when I was younger
|
4824bf02-05f6-4465-968c-b19cd9cadc4a
|
bp0s8e
|
Why do the mints put the date on coins?
|
When worn or damaged coins are taken out of circulation, it's helpful to know how long they've been around, in order to plan coining volume for the future to keep the amount in circulation steady or growing.
Governments also have the right to declare money older than a certain date no longer legal tender, the date clearly tells you which coins are good and which should be exchanged.
Originally, Monarchs put their faces and dates on coins as a sort of propaganda, since there were very few other ways to visually communicate with their subjects, who largely couldn't read but could do math.
|
37a6bdd7-db34-43c4-bc1a-5e2436e15240
|
bp0vbj
|
How can a species be ‘functionally extinct’ if it has a population of 80,000?
|
When you google it you will see.
Functional extinction is the extinction of a species or other taxon such that: It disappears from the fossil record, or historic reports of its existence cease; The reduced population no longer plays a significant role in ecosystem function; or. The population is no longer viable.
|
b0460a19-ad3e-4fe0-a04f-47379d77ba69
|
bp0wy1
|
Why do hospitals advertise for their ER?
|
It’s more for if you’re driving yourself to the ER on a weekend or evening, and maybe you want a place that advertises short wait times, or one that you know has pediatricians on staff, or something like that.
|
787e922a-dd03-4920-84dd-7bb90086b378
|
bp12w9
|
Who is James Charles and why is everyone pissed at him.
|
James Charles is a YouTuber and model famous for doing makeup and being the first male identifying person to appear on the cover of Cover Girl magazine. He made a video promoting a brand of cosmetics that was a competing brand of one of his close friends who is also a famous makeup YouTuber. She made a video explaining how upset she was and also accused him of being sexually aggressive towards straight men or something like that. Everyone likes her better than him, so they unsubscribed from his channel and started making memes about him.
|
05442b30-b197-4a8a-88bb-8498a15409c3
|
bp1jpw
|
What happened in your brain if you abruptly and permanently forget something you've known for years, e.g. PIN number used daily
|
Never heard if it being permanent without some other failure in the brain. But temporarily forgetting something you otherwise use regularly is relatively common. Often this is because you've used it so often, you've put it into muscle memory, pushing that information to a different part of the brain. This shortcut in your brain reduces the need to consciously remind yourself what it was, but without the reminder, it eventually becomes more difficult to recall.
|
44d09f12-fcef-45a1-a47e-16a601f12a1f
|
bp1oqu
|
Why can you donate plasma weekly but must wait 8-12 weeks for whole blood donations?
|
Replacing the blood cells is a much slower and more complicated bodily process than replacing the juice.
You can crank out the plasma in a few days. The turn time on blood cells is more like 30 days.
|
7e476f83-819b-458f-889b-e65e9a02a6df
|
bp1s4f
|
How eating less red meat helps the environment
|
Livestock requires a large amount of food and water to raise. For most large-scale production, this means it has to be produced elsewhere and shipped in. The environmental impact of all that feed production and shipping is quite substantial. Not to mention other factors such as methane emissions directly from the livestock.
Basically, the more steps that have to be done to get something from the ground to food, the less efficient the process and more impactful it will be.
|
03e96129-1253-48b0-81ff-22c1674d2cef
|
bp2oma
|
When an artificial body part is made with a 3D printer, what is it made of?
|
Depends on the printer and the part, I suppose bone replacements can be made out of metal, and 3D printed sintered titanium is probably biocompatible, I don't know if anyone is really using it for implants though.
Most of the more interesting things you see in the news, they are 3D printing using collagen and then trying to get stuff to grow on it. They may also directly take cells that they want and place them on the collagen when printing.
|
837cd09d-a2d6-4ba9-a4ff-429c3e5f989a
|
bp366e
|
On how Irreducible Complexity would disprove Darwinism (aka Natural Selection)?
|
They say some body structures/organs/molecular pathways are so complex that they couldn't have formed gradually, while evolution states life started (relatively) simple and complex structures grew through mutations and natural selection.. They eye is often used: It is so complex they say it wouldn't work if you change one detail. Been refuted over and over again of course: Many different types of eye have been observed, from light-sensitive skin cells to complex eyes. Thing is, they like it because they can always search for other structures when having been disproven. It always them to make their religious claims and still (incorrectly) claim the claims are scientific as well.
|
ba7da168-2306-410c-bd98-84be9203d43b
|
bp38rp
|
How did manufacturing and inspection accuracy get to where it is today?
|
The main concept is the idea of subdivision. Generally it is much easier to mechanically divide some physical quantity into equal parts (using some kind of rotating or balancing device) than to measure it in an absolute sense. This can be used to make more precise measuring tools.
Let's say you can measure an absolute length to 0.1", so if you create a 1" piece it will have a length of 1" +/- 0.1". Similarly, an 10" piece will have a length of 10" +/- 0.1".
If you now accurately divide that 10" piece into 10 equal subdivisions, each will be 1" +/- 0.01" long.
The machines used to do this are called [dividing engines](_URL_0_) and they were the key to more accurate measurement.
|
5f1da6d8-fcf2-4ea6-b088-c84be8228035
|
bp3b5l
|
What's happening physiologically when you get chills when listening to music?
|
I don't want to break any rules by guessing, so I won't, but my girlfriend and I talk about this. I basically only listen to music if it gives me chills - if it kind of speaks to me on a near spiritual level. My girlfriend has never experienced this or understands it and listens to music just because it's by a singer she had a crush on decades ago.
|
d53abd57-2691-4a52-900e-2001d00591b1
|
bp3bcf
|
How does voice recognition technology work? What do our phones, cars, Alexas, etc. do to allow them to hear and interpret what we say?
|
What we perceive as "sound" is actually changes in air pressure. When something makes a sound, it causes vibrations in the air. These "vibrations" are made up of peaks (positive pressure) and troughs (negative pressure). Once the vibrations reach our ears, our ear drums push and pull in response to these peaks and troughs, and our brain interprets this as "sound".
Microphones work in a similar fashion - they have an element inside them (it's different depending on the type of microphone) that responds to sound vibrations and converts them into electrical current. This current will travel through the cable the microphone it's connected to. The other end of the cable can be connected to an "AD converter" (analog-to-digital converter). The AD converter takes the electrical (i.e. analog) signal and converts it into digital format (1s and 0s) that computers can understand.
Any electronic device that has voice recognition technology has a microphone and an AD converter in it, which allows the device to pick up what we're saying and convert it into digital format. You can teach software to look for patterns in the digital format and, once recognised, perform a certain action.
The problem is that two voice commands will ever be identical. Everyone has different vocal cords and pronounces things differently, and the room/environment you're in will make everything sound different, even if just by a tiny bit. Even the same person will never be able to reproduce a 100% identical voice recording of something they've already done. It's impossible, there will always be variation.
So, they get a lot of examples, to try and cover as many people as possible. Once you have thousands and thousands of samples of someone saying "Hey Siri", they can look for general patterns that are present in all of the different examples and teach the software to look out for that.
Once the pattern is recognised it's quite simple - just program it to do X when the person says X, and Y when they say Y.
|
56cd5b64-b8c4-4a12-ac85-121d6a3a8cc9
|
bp3lvw
|
If viruses aren’t living organisms what are they?
|
Its complicated. they have many traits that life does have, but lack other vital ones. Ultimately, what they are is an example of why our current system of describing things as alive or not is fundamentally flawed.
|
24dd979b-51a7-4679-a995-f9e3d0a110df
|
bp3muu
|
Why did made in china toy phones play the same song?
|
The usual reason for the similarity is down to using the same sound chip or a copy of it.
The reason that particular song was originally chosen is probably because it was popular at the time.
|
9832f276-9e9f-4f0e-9ae8-9cd47a0a69dc
|
bp3n10
|
Why are our bodies only trained to do stuff with either our left or right hand in MOST cases?
|
Because you only train yourself to only do things with either your left or right hand in most cases.
Motor memory takes time to build up, so from an efficiency standpoint it makes sense to learn to do something with one hand more than the other. As you do this, one hand builds up more overall dexterity than the other, making it more efficient to start new tasks with that hand in general.
If you force yourself to do the same thing with both hands the same amount of times for each hand, you will eventually become ambidextrous. But most people don't put forth that effort.
Try throwing a baseball with your non-dominant hand. It feels awkward because you simply haven't built up the muscle memory to do that task efficiently. If you force yourself to throw with your non-dominant hand 20 times a day, every day, you will eventually be able to throw as well as your dominant hand.
|
d96f6eb4-e8b4-48c3-ba63-30ca3d01a965
|
bp3o5f
|
Why does seafood spoil so fast?
|
Well oysters and other shellfish are typically alive until they are cooked or prepared for consumption. You don't eat mussels that did not open up during cooking. If it was dead, you don't know how long ago it died, and began to decay.
A chicken breast, or chunk of pork meat is dead, and when it was processed, the outer skin/feathers, digestive tract, etc were removed.
Properly stored commercially sold frozen fish can be stored for a long time.
|
cbffbcf5-b7b8-4c3e-8b49-5c876d57577c
|
bp3pui
|
How is the recent ruling regarding abortion in Alabama designed to overturn Roe V. Wade?
|
I read one legal analysis that said that the lack of an exception for rape and incest was intentional. According to the analysis, Roe v Wade considered it wrong to ask a women how she got pregnant (that is a right to privacy issue), and used this as one of the reasons to make abortion legal, as opposed to situational. Meaning, Roe vs Wade could have said abortion was illegal except for rape and incest, but that would require a breach in right to privacy, so they made all abortions legal.
This law attempts to avoid that trap by not asking a woman how she got pregnant, but just making all abortions illegal.
|
2d26c222-04f0-4b7a-bb2c-c9fe211da90f
|
bp3teu
|
Why is it that when looking at microscopic things, they always look two dimensional
|
because the gap between in focus and out of focus is a really thin 2d plane, and you can only clearly see things in that area
|
9e3d2f3f-c8d0-4f28-b118-805f24e95bac
|
bp3wbj
|
If antiboitics destroy bacteria and probiotics are supposed to give you good bacteria, why do they not effectively cancel each other out if you take both at the same time?
|
Antibiotics and probiotics will actually cancel each other out that's why all probiotics have a warning on them to take them 2-3 hours after you've taken antibiotics.
If you are asking why they can be taken in the same day if you give the antibiotics enough time to make it out of your stomach and into your blood stream they are no longer present in the stomach or small intestine to affect the pro biotics.
|
b6e2b8fa-5df7-41e6-befe-9d54e17ffecd
|
bp46yn
|
What do/did sail boats do when the wind is blowing the wrong way?
|
They zigzag in the general direction.
They cannot head straight into the wind as they would be blown backward. So, they use the rudder (flappy part in the water) to steer the hull (the ‘boat’ part) to the left or right of the direction the wind is coming from. This gives some pushback against the wind.
Next, they rig the sails to catch the wind at an angle, so the wind will push back but also to the side. This sideways push combined with the left or right hull steering allows the boat to slowly move in the direction of the wind.
After traveling so far in that direction, they zag to the other side so they don’t get too far off course from where they want to go.
|
7da5e8ba-7cce-4ae7-a5cf-0772bb049e3d
|
bp4k4h
|
Why most displays are glossy rather than matte?
|
If it has a touch screen the surface is glass so you do not damage it with your finger and they always have a glossy surface.
A non touch screen usually have a plastic surface and they can be made matt or glossy but get scratched a lot easier so that is not used on touch but it would be possible to do.
So touch screen have glass and are glossy but a non touch can be either.
The is the question why the 4K displays are only sold a a touch display. 4K displays on a laptop today is expensive so it is only on the high end variant so the explanation is that they think that having touch support will make it look more attractive to purchase so they add that to the display in the high end models.
|
88a1e062-131a-4688-8341-837448e413b2
|
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