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20w02u | Red, Green and Blue make all the colors for TVs/monitors... Why not Red, Yellow and Blue? | Monitors emit light, so they use *additive* colour mixing. Paints absorb light, so they use *subtractive* colour mixing. The primary colours of each process are directly opposed.
You have red, green and blue in additive colour mixing because those are the peak wavelengths of the three kinds of cone cell in the typical human eye. You can mimic the mixture of cone cells activated by any visible wavelength by mixing different amounts of light at each of those peak wavelengths.
Then you have the subtractive primaries that each remove one of the additive primaries from white light. Cyan subtracts red, magenta subtracts green and yellow subtracts blue. | 6090e334-945a-4793-a82c-31833c59148d |
178b9a | how flavors work. | The 5 flavor sections of the tongue is a myth. | b3ac278b-308d-4b75-ba78-4233cca3a9ad |
4a53mg | Why is it hard to emulate old game systems with low-specs on computers with much more powerful specs? | So emulation requires a LOT of power. Imagine that your PS2 is French. The games are French. Your PC only speaks English. So to try and read those French games, it needs to translate the French to English. The emulator program is the French to English dictionary. BUT, unless your PC is powerful enough, it can't translate fast enough to make the game work. It needs to flip through the pages to find each word in order to do the translations. | c4c20187-0a16-4d24-9bde-75c255d207d7 |
71xoxg | How does your body get more resistant to a sickness the more times you have it? | So, we fight infections with our immune system, and the immune system mainly fights bacteria, viruses, or multicellular parasites. There are two main branches of our immune system, those being the "passive" and "adaptive" immune systems.
The passive immune system consists of physical barriers such as your skin, as well as chemical barriers such as a low pH (acidic) or high salt concentrations such as bile produced in the liver. Other components of the innate immune system are proteins and immune cells.
The proteins, think of them as little organic machines, are called the "complement" system. These proteins circulate in the blood and the surrounding body tissue. These proteins have a few functions.
1. They "opsonise" the pathogen, which is basically making them sticky so your defense cells can attach and engulf the pathogens.
2. Once activated, they attract more immune cells and trigger an inflammatory response. Ever notice that a cut or scrape gets a little swollen and red?
3. They form a Membrane Attack Complex (MAC) that basically punches holes in the bacterial membrane.
The cells of the innate immune system serve various roles.
1.Neutrophils and Macrophages are phagocytic cells that basically eat the bacteria, digest it, and in the case of macrophages, present chewed up bits of the bacteria to the adaptive immune system.
2.Basophils and Mast Cells contain many small granules (little packages) that once they encounter a pathogen (bacteria) get released into the tissue. These granules have many effects, such as attracting more immune cells, increasing the blood flow to the area, and making the blood vessels "leaky" allowing blood components into the tissue, again causing swelling.
3.Eosinophils are white blood cells that work best against larger, multicellular parasite, and have a similar function to the Basophils and Mast Cells.
Your innate immune response is always active and never really changes its actions.
Now for the question at hand, how do we get better at fighting certain infections?
You're adaptive immune system has two major cells called B and T lymphocytes.
B cells produce antibodies and T cells usually activate or stimulate other immune cells.
B lymphocytes gather in lymph nodes. The lymphatic system being almost like a circulatory system for water. So, when your innate immune system encounters a pathogen, the macrophages and "dendritic" cells gobble up, digest, and then express parts of the bacteria/pathogen/whatever on their cell surface. As they are doing this, they move from the site of infection to the nearest lymph node.
There they encounter The B cells. These B cells can undergo a rapid mutation of their components allowing them to produce thousands of variations in their antibodies. When a B cell produces one of these new antibodies, it shows up on the B cell surface, and if it can attach to the pathogen components being presented by the macrophage/dendritic cell that B cell begins to multiply. The new B cells that are produced carry the genetic information to produce an antibody that sticks to that specific pathogenic component. Then they migrate out of the lymph nodes, towards the infection, and then do some Pokémon style evolution into their final form, that being a "Plasma Cell". These guys basically camp out, producing and releasing these antibodies. These antibodies stick to the pathogen, making it easier for phagocytic cells to attach to and destroy them.
Now, every type of bacteria has a different structure, such as sugars or fats or proteins expressed on their surface, so the B cell antibodies that stick to one won't necessarily stick to another. In fact the antibodies being produced against a certain organism may not really attach that well. Hence the more exposure you get to a pathogen, the more time you have to develop an effective antibody against that particular organism.
tl;dr
B cells produce antibodies specific to one type of organism. The more exposure they have to that organism, the more effective antibody they can produce. Antibodies are used by other immune system cells as little hand holds so they can grab them and eat them easier. | 2245857d-c217-4846-bfea-d8a866173738 |
7q0noz | why does it hurt so much when we get hit in the nuts? | Because they're important. They have a lot of nerves to tell you "don't break these".
Any animal that didn't have this response was at risk to having them damaged, and an animal with damaged testicles is less able to pass on thier genes. | 21890a35-a09c-4a1a-ab6f-b833a4314e07 |
2eu9cj | Why is the Wow! signal significant? | Basically:
* It's way, way bigger than background, which indicates that it's not a random fluctuation. It's actually so powerful that it would require a source about 1000 times more powerful than any transmitter on earth. Of course, stars and galaxies that put out radio signals are very, very powerful.
* It's narrowband, which means that it is in a small range of frequencies, which is similar to how radio works. But it's also similar to how a lot of natural things work.
* Its frequency is very close to that emitted by hydrogen changing energy state. Some people looking for extraterrestrials think that this is important because, since hydrogen is so abundant and important in astronomy, civilizations that have radio telescopes would probably monitor that frequency, so they may think to transmit on it too.
* It was continuous over the time that it was observed, which means it wasn't a pulse like a pulsar would emit, or changing in power like a supernova might emit.
* It has never been seen again, which adds mystery, though seems odd for a purposeful transmission. | 29c4e2a6-daa2-45d2-8584-7fc7a4888b2b |
5t2rrs | Why aren't land speed records set by huge vehicles? | > So I'm wondering why land speed records aren't set by huge rockets tipped sideways on wheels.
Their are different categories for the different records, all with their own sets of rules and regulations. There is a governing body, so you can't just "build whatever you want".
> And in regards of Piston powered cars what is preventing me from making a 600v engine the size of a house and driving it really fast?
Mainly the weight of it. | e1feefb1-3318-4485-abe5-affa5b15a5f5 |
5kisxv | What does it mean to say "my music album is done, except I just need to mix it"? | This means the recording phase is done. Generally, the instruments/vocals that make up a song and album are recorded individually. Mixing is putting these together to make a song, though mastering and other things come after mixing. So an album is a long way from done when recording is complete. | 1e9aceab-13ea-4196-bb20-658cad83927f |
20jrm7 | What do they mean by 'corridors' when talking of the MH370 going missing? | I believe the ping delay allows them to have a basic understanding of how far the aircraft is away from the satellite, they know exactly where the satellite was. Not horribly dissimilar to how GPS works, only with one instead of three or four satellites.
The other information they have (fuel, speed, last known, radar, already searched locations...) I believe let's then rule out the middle portion leaving you with two corridors. | fd0aa9af-eb80-4d7c-97c4-8118b350faf1 |
41pwh6 | Why does it seem normal and natural for older siblings to pick on their younger siblings when the parents aren't around? (Ages 1-8) | As the eldest sibling it is our duty to assert our dominance of course. We are unofficially charged with keeping the baby siblings in line when our adults aren't around. | 08add8fc-aa4c-4720-9288-f33d3a25ddc5 |
5n8374 | why can Tiger/Lion hyrbids exist and yet no hybrid of a Crocodile/Alligator exist? | Tiger is Panthera tigris, Lion is Panthera leo, and both members of the same genus, Panthera. Being from the same genus means that it's relatively likely they can interbreed (there are lots of technicalities, as the specifics is a lot more complicated)..
The American Alligator is Alligator mississippiensis, the American Crocodile is Crocodylus acutus, they are not in the same genus, and are not likely to breed. They only share the same order, [Crocodilian](_URL_4_). To put it in perspective, we share the same order Primate with lemurs. A [Chinese Alligator](_URL_0_) shares it's genus with the American alligator, maybe a cross of them is possible, but you would still call it an alligator. Similarly the [Crocodylus rhombifer](_URL_2_) and [Crocodylus acutus](_URL_3_) share the same genus, and [they do cross breed](_URL_1_) | 9019df60-9754-4ea7-9d63-0a399279d2f4 |
2s6hvg | Can I develop a visible jawbone through excercise or is it just based on genes during childbirth? | Nothing is determined "during birth" your genetics are set at conception. That being said, a "strong jaw" is usually tied to testosterone levels during the developing years. Increasing testosterone levels during adulthood may help to define the jaw line slightly, giving a more "masculine" look, but It's not going to create a square jaw. | a91051d3-8994-43d0-884d-5648952a71b5 |
41ubir | China's economy is slowing down, producing factories close. Annual growth was last quarter measured at 6,8%. If economie grows, why are factories closing down? | My understanding is that many of the factories took on debt to expand to meet growth demands. The debt accounted for continued growth at extremely high rates. Because the economy has slowed, they cannot make the debt payments that they had predicted based on the previous growth rate.
In other words if my business doubled every few years for the last 10 years, & I went to the bank requesting a loan for a million dollars with the expectation that the business is going to double again in another two years, the bank would likely give me alone. However if my growth stops I won't be able to make that million dollar payment and will have to declare bankruptcy.
That is how much most all businesses go bankrupt by the way. If they grow slowly and have no debt then they would likely be fine at the current growth rate. | 2a999395-a92d-4c34-bd94-b42c3f307195 |
8sjdj9 | Why is Disney allowed to merge with all of these other big companies, most recently 21st Century, and not suffer from monopoly laws? | Monopolization is, generally speaking, when you control all (or a substantial portion) of a _market_ or _industry_. Standard Oil was a monopoly because they controlled almost all of the oil industry; Microsoft was thought to be a monopoly because they controled 90% of the PC OS market.
Disney, even as big as they may be, controls only a tiny fraction of the entertainment industry. There are many, many other companies producing entertainment, so they are not where near the level of market share you'd need to think of them as a monopoly. | 45143c48-520a-4774-9ec8-e47db9e6e0ba |
64k0rr | Marshmellow or Marshmallow? | This isn't really an ELI5 question, but it's marshmallow.
Modern marshmallows are based on a medicine called marshmallow, named for the plant it was created from [The common marsh-mallow](_URL_0_) | 8cf95f5d-82ef-4fc2-91cb-cc82fbee9e06 |
5aak4c | Why is heat red? | The reason you're imagining heat as red in your mind is probably because you associate it with the color of fire or lava or superheated metal.
The quality of having high thermal energy doesnt really have a color though. | 65a10acf-0a80-4998-b4db-7679ba7d2f0e |
2rp64s | Who are the people commenting on news sites with extremist views and upvoting them? | Assholes who are well liked by other assholes. Part of the problem is a sampling bias called response bias. The type of people who are most likely to comment are the ones who hold the strongest opinions. Those opinions are unusually extreme, and the only people who respond to them are people who hold equally extreme views. This doesn't hold true for absolutely everyone, but it does skew what you see. | 928f40f3-2c80-4ed1-b4b8-7b2d8043fc1f |
6e0g8h | As we grow, does our internal dialogue develop before we can speak, or do they develop at the same time? | Internal dialogue only develops as you learn a language. Prior to that, your only means of communication or perception is through your senses. As babies develop, these skills develop as well, such as preferential looking for example. There are a few tests that are done to determine if a baby can determine the differences between different stimuli, if they prefer different stimuli, and if they are able to differentiate between themselves and their reflection. These things are only observable, we can only determine that babies have developed these levels of perception through their behaviour which is conveyed through looking, touching etc. So, babies cannot use inner dialogue until they learn language; however, they have other means to perceive and understand the world around them. | 82034f0b-285f-4df2-9bd3-4d61d217b029 |
282eqd | How does the spray the ref uses during the world cup work? | I thought they used shaving cream
EDIT: apparently this is wrong... they use a shaving cream-like substance, from what I can gather it's a kind of foam where all the foam bubbles pop quickly (about 90 seconds) after being sprayed, thus leaving no visible mark. | 596af634-6dbe-4da1-b69e-80fff5b93cb4 |
1selj4 | Why is it that my iPhone 5s can film at 120 Fps, while my 5D cain only film at 60? | Your iPhone is 8MP, your 5D(mkIII) is 22.1MP. Capturing < 60FPS at that resolution is not only taxing for the cameras processor but also for the storage medium, most cameras actually go down to 3-4MP when doing '120FPS' to achieve this. it is also needless to say that the files that come from the 5D's sensor are MUCH richer in information than that of the iPhone. | 6cc45e25-28b6-4fb5-9dd9-8b81f1a6d646 |
1znkr5 | How is this legal | They might have paid Paramount a licensing fee to use the characters and stuff. When they say that they aren't affiliated with Paramount, all it means is that Paramount didn't make the book.
If I really liked your username and wanted to use it in a book I'm writing, I might give you five bucks so that you don't sue me. You're still not affiliated with the project, but you've agreed not to sue me over it. | c8ad6f10-3ad6-4282-aa44-387504804f04 |
vhgbo | - why your breath smells bad in the morning | Hours of sleeping give the bacteria in your mouth plenty of time to reproduce. This is what causes your breath to smell nasty when you wake up. | bf307bda-a543-4524-850a-f9457eed32c7 |
4ri3b9 | What is Pokemon Go? | You're basically using your phone to turn the world in pokemon. Using your camera and internal sensors, you can find pokemon and capture them. Different parts of the world will have different pokemon | 19989303-4cbb-41dd-bd3d-6cf96087f05e |
19x74z | Why do we hate SimCity? | _URL_0_
They're forcing you to always be logged in to their server to play a SINGLE PLAYER game. Annnnnnd, icing on the cake, the servers have been down since launch, which means no one can play it. Its a direct blow to the face, and a big-ass I TOLD YOU SO. DRM is Digital Rights Management, a way for them to copy-protect their game. Other forms of DRM include having to put in a CD key when you first install a game, for example. Its a way so that you can't just install the game, and give it to your buddy to install too.
They're selling you a crippled game (limited city size... in a city-building game... that you reach the city size in under an hour? OH, don't worry, a future Download (that will cost $20) will unlock bigger cities for you!).... Stuff like that is really pissing people off. | 18fd6494-c29f-423f-b01f-8df3f1be9871 |
845m6n | Why is the skin on your face more sensitive than skin on other parts of your body? | There is a part of the brain known as the sensory cortex. This part of the brain deciphers sensation, so any time you are touched or touching something, the sensory cortex is what gives you this information. The thing is, the sensory cortex doesn't spend its resources equally across the body. There are some parts of the body that it pays attention to more and some parts it pays attention to less.
Take a look at a [homunculus](_URL_0_). This is a representation of how the sensory cortex divides its resources across different parts of the body. In the homonculus, the larger the part of the body, the stronger the sensation in that area. You can see that the hands and face are absolutely massive meaning the brain pays a lot of attention to those parts of the body. In reality, your hands are the most sensitive part of your body because it picks up more information. Your face is a close 2nd. | f575c402-0d7d-47d8-ac16-c9bed27bf68a |
26odwr | How is all motion relative? Is there an "absolute" motion? What about motion relative to the entire universe? | Motion is relative because in relation to different frames of reference, things can appear to be going faster, slower, etc.
So, for example, I am sitting at my computer going 0 mph. But, if you look at the big picture, I have the velocity of the Earth's rotational spin, as well as its speed of orbit.
If you are driving 70mph and someone is driving 69 mph, and you try to pass them, it is like they are going still, and you are going 1 mph. You will pass slowly. But to a nearby observer, you guys are going 70mph / 69mph which is relatively fast (in relation to the observer).
Because there is no singular point of the universe in which we could call it 'point zero' (all movement revolves around or is connected with this point) and the observable universe is always moving, we must use reference frames to talk about velocity because without reference, saying 20mph is as useless as telling you the party is located at the big blue house - You need more context. | 313266c3-3c48-4353-a349-bd091508f0ce |
5tja6l | Why is it when you way oversleep, you get a headache? | You might be dehydrated. The longer you sleep, the longer you're going without water. Also, you might be over sleeping because you're sick. | c68d36c7-37e1-4562-a388-00507274f2f5 |
2cf7yt | Why can't we generate fake voices as well as we can generate realistic looking CGI? | The benefit of CGI is that you can use it to create scenes that you couldn't easily produce with traditional methods, but it still takes artists a lot of work to do it. Hypothetically, I guess it is possible to engineer a realistic-sounding voice, but there's no point in doing so when having a voice actor is just as good, if not better, likely cheaper, and definitely easier. | 1383d9da-aea0-4dcf-ae04-fc2036b3030c |
51kx4i | When people are sad, why do they want to listen to sad music? | It's like when someone tries to cheer you up when you're sad versus someone telling you how they've been there and know how you feel so you don't feel alone in your troubles, either one can produce positive feelings. It's basically a cathartic treatment, a release to get rid of the sadness you have or take your mind off of it. Where that fine line between releasing the sadness and possibly perpetuating it ends depends on the song, the person, repetition and many other factors.
Basically funny clowns don't always work, sometimes it takes a sad clown to make a sad person happy.
Source: I think about music and emotions a lot. | c19b21f2-2965-4fd9-a011-b636a6939df6 |
3czgk6 | Why does rocking back and forth and/or being in a tight enclosed space make an anxious person calmer? | Its close to floating in a mothers womb, it recalls the most basic memories when you had absolutely no concerns at all, and didn't have to do anything, even eat or drink, because it was all done for you. The tight space is the constriction of the womb, the rocking simulates the floating in embryonic fluid. | 45b49227-d137-4b78-b489-a12f9d5ddfb9 |
4cjkmf | Why Prime Minister of Malaysia is so invulnerable ? | 1. The National Party (Barisan National) has been the ruling party for over 50 years. The major component parties UMNO, MCA, and MIC each cater towards the major ethnic groups in the country, and are still pretty united.
2. The Opposition parties on the other hand are not as tight-knit, particularly because one of the most influential party (PAS) wanted to implement Syariah Law while the others are adamant not to.
3. The current PM is very well connected. His father was Malaysia's second PM, and his uncle was Malaysia's third PM. He's been in politics since 1976 and has been minister for various departments including Culture, Youth and Sports, Defence, Education, and is currently the Minister of Finance in addition to being Prime Minister.
4. The three branches of the government are the Legislative (writes laws), Executive (signs/vetoes laws), and Judicial (decide if laws are constitutional). While all three branches were supposed to be independent of each other, Mahathir as the 4th PM passed a Constitutional amendment that says that the High Courts are only allowed to perform judiciary review (basically to determine if the other governmental branches are overstepping their bounds) only with permission from the Parliament.
5. Last general election, despite the ruling party losing the popular vote, still managed to retain a majority of the seats in the Parliament.
6. The Attorney-General is the highest ranking public prosecutor in the country. The previous AG
> tenure ended in 2015 when the Chief Secretary to the Government announced he had stepped down due to health reasons. The announcement was abrupt, and Patail himself was apparently unaware of the decision to have him removed from his post. Prior to this, he was head of a multi-agency taskforce investigating claims of misappropriation of funds allegedly involving prime minister Najib Razak.
while the current AG was hastily appointed by the prime minister. His history includes
> led a Court of Appeal panel that decided in a unanimous ruling to acquit former police commandos Sirul Azhar Umar and Azilah Hadri of the high-profile 2006 murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu. Both have since been convicted of murder. - See more at: _URL_1_
as well as
> is known to have been an active Umno member and had previously held the Kelantan Umno treasurer post before taking office. - See more at: _URL_1_
and is recently [appointed to the board of directors for the Malaysian hajj pilgrims fund board](_URL_0_). He declared the PM to be clear of any wrongdoing pretty much unilaterally and has refused to provide any details and explanation so far.
So: what can be done about the PM?
Vote him out of power? Good luck passing it through the Parliament, since the ruling party has a majority and the opposition lacks unity and strong leaders.
Public protests? Did that too, Bersih 4.0. Nothing came out of it except forming a new coalition of opposition parties.
The Judiciary is hamstrung and powerless. The AG is in the PM's pockets. Currently Mahathir is taking the battle to the civil court and suing Najib for corruption.
Appeal to the King (Yang di Pertuan Agong)? The royalty have very little real power. At most they can issue strongly worded statements. | 97e6e20a-5a63-4570-a971-33324124e3ae |
1irf2l | Do advertisers use annoying sounds in commercials -- like people crunching, for example -- on purpose? Wouldn't this make people hate the product, like it does with me? | Advertisers are not trying to annoy you, but they are trying to get you to experience their product. If they are selling a crunchy cereal, for example, you can't taste it directly when you see it on the television or hear about it on the radio. But by playing a crunching sound effect, advertisers can show your brain that their product is crunchy. And hearing that crunch, like when you would eat it, for most people will create a whole bunch of related thoughts and feelings in their brains. Your brain recalls the other things that happen when you make that crunching noise while you are eating it. And seeing pictures of the food and hearing the crunch together can be enough to make people actually salivate, preparing their bodies to immediately consume that product.
And this is what advertisers want. They want you to remember what eating something crunchy is like, and they want you to get hungry while seeing their product or hearing them talk about it.
Some commercials get annoying because advertisers have also figured out that sounds and colors that are louder and more vivid than they are in real life can evoke stronger reactions from people. In general, our brains react more to stronger stimulation. But when a stimulus is too loud or too bright, it passes a certain threshold where we no longer associate it with eating. Then it just sounds out of place, fake, and annoying. | abb7450c-b9d6-4bd1-936e-dca444e99fbe |
28eq0j | Is microwaving food bad for you in any way? | The most damage you could do is nuke it so hard that it burns your hands or mouth.
You can't get cancer from it, and you're extremely unlikely to burn yourself by standing in front of it. | f5d13599-af7e-4c03-be5a-f65742047f4a |
3k9xt2 | Why is it that you never think anything is weird when you are dreaming, it's only when you wake up you realise how strange things actually were? | To be brief, during a dream it's basically your brain taking a rest. So like a computer it shuts off all non-essential functions, and one of them is called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain controls things such as memory and judgement. Thus, without this part of the brain "on" you lose the ability to a) remember the real world and b) judge that the dream you're in is weird.
On top of that, a dream is only weird because it doesn't usually follow the same laws of science that you're used to in reality. So after waking up it might be weird, but during the dream without the ability to recall the "true" laws of science, you don't think it's weird. | 7bb23054-3cb6-4f84-a3e6-c79b0132d02f |
2quuid | What did de Blasio do, that is making NYC cops turn on him? | Part of it has to do with what he told a reporter during a one on one interview. DeBlasio told this reporter that he has been teaching his son Dante, who is bi-racial to be careful around police officers. This led people to think that he is perpetuating the image of the white, racist police officer via the media. | ac9ee14a-39ea-4ac4-8e4b-8305fb85261e |
5xtl6t | Being a millennial who has been raised around screens of all types; how -realistically- have I been affected? | By screens? As in LCD displays?
As a millennial you are probably safe.
Us old people who were raised around CRT TVs and displays have more to worry about.
LCD displays are pretty safe as far as radition and other harmful effects are concerned. | c7ae3cba-7ede-4af4-9c00-5b433879f14f |
2xqqfo | how does Pi never repeat when there are only ten different numbers (0,1,2,3 etc.)? | It's not that you can't find repeating sequences, it's that any such sequence is guaranteed to end, and not match the digits that came before. So there is no sequence of digits in there that just repeats forever. | 1b30423a-1469-4308-8985-822c9025c3d8 |
6963bs | Why is pink a girlish colour? When and how did this association start? | Pink was a boys colour back in the 18th/19th century, and blue for girls. It's entirely a fashion thing, led by advertising and the media. | 41fa4953-dd00-45d7-b95f-6aa57bb06931 |
1q8518 | Why does alcohol withdrawal give you such vivid, and sometimes very scary, dreams? | Alcohol suppresses REM stage sleep (the period when you dream), which your brain adjusts for as you become dependent. Once the alcohol is removed from the equation, your brain still tries to compensate for REM sleep being suppressed, leading to increased REM activity and vivid dreams. | c4b9f9a6-9666-40e9-bce5-099eaccd6e5e |
6ggmie | Why are JPEG files still used today when internet speeds have increased which would allow for less compression to be needed? | It is desirable to have compression no matter how much speed you have, since this allows more photos to be sent in less time and stored in less space forever.
A popular website may send out the same photo millions of times. It adds up for them.
The amount of compression in a JPEG is adjustable, so it doesn't have to be "excessively" compressed. | a6756b5d-c99e-4be9-80b2-e4f9b97e251c |
6jnl3a | Where do metal sparks come from? | They are closer to the equivalent of sawdust for wood. They glow due to the heat from the friction of sawing the metal. | 9235ce8d-04fd-4968-8691-ffe0806ab6e5 |
4gtk4o | Are D-Waves actually quantum computers? | In one sense, yes. In the most common sense, no.
The most famous proposed quantum algorithms, like Shor's algorithm (which would break most of today's encryption), run on a universal quantum computer.
D-Wave is not a universal quantum computer, and instead performs an operation known as quantum annealing. In order for the D-Wave to solve a problem, the problem must be formulated in such a way that it can be solved using quantum annealing. Not all problems can be formulated like that. But for problems that can, it has benefits over regular simulated annealing, like speed. | 2924a5fd-d210-4fca-9e51-95f1ade8a00d |
16pjh9 | Why is there an anti-african movement in Isreal right now? | Much like the situation involving Mexicans coming into the US, Israel is having a tense situation with people coming into the country undocumented from Africa. The Africans are coming in part because they can get jobs and be paid much more than they would in other places. Israel has taken some measures like building a border fence. They also have a policy where illegal immigrants can be kept in a holding facility while arrangements are made to send these people back to their countries of origin. There are a whole bunch of issues associated with this, like determining which immigrants qualify as refugees.
Some, but not all, Israelis are particularly unhappy with the behavior of the African immigrants because their behavior is viewed as being responsible for a variety of costs, including native Israelis losing their jobs. When losing one's job is combined with the fact that these immigrants are of a different race than most Israelis, that causes racial tension. | 61028663-cdb3-44db-8040-465eb399b2c2 |
4yqaze | Why is the skin of many penises darker than the skin of the surrounding area? | Same reason vaginal areas are darker than surrounding skin. Not only is there increased blood flow in the region, but also greater levels of melanin, which causes dark skin tone. The more melanin, the better one's skin can hold out against the sun and damage.
Considering that human males have their first penis on the exterior of the body and would naturally walk without clothing, it's important that that sensitive area be able to avoid damage by the sun. It wouldn't be fun to have a sunburned cock | ed3c2d69-79de-425c-bd6c-bc76b74afacb |
1hu7t1 | Why Americans and Brits have different accents. | Accents are a product of who you hang out with, kind of like your hobbies. If 7 out of 10 of your friends like baseball, there is a very high chance that you will also like baseball, or at least know some baseball terms.
Same with accents. Even though Americans and Britons speak the same overall language, we have our own local varieties in how we speak. And those small variations get larger over time since we keep hanging out with ourselves.
As time goes on, our accents will get more and more distinct (ignoring the effect of globalization/traveling to different countries frequently). | 9ab48b26-3520-4267-8cb9-4e1f4f1dc12f |
2ipk6j | Why is ok to say "your people" but not "you people? | They are similar, but with vastly different meanings and connotations.
"your people" means "the people (ie nation) to which you belong". It is often used politely and respectfully.
"you people" on the other hand is almost always always followed by a generalization or stereotype. You're no longer talking about the group that the listener is a part of, you're talking about the listener as a part of everyone else in the group in a negative light. | 46279ab3-7b1f-4759-affe-1d5eded79478 |
5l6xzw | How did time become universal? | Well there are different [calendars](_URL_0_) that some countries use. Most countries do agree on the Gregorian calendar though and use the others in addition to it.
There is an organization called the [International Organization for Standardization](_URL_2_) though that helped set the [standard time intervals and week lengths etc for countries.](_URL_1_) They also set the standard for many other things such as: dvd/cd's, light sensitivity for cameras, language codes, country codes, types of connectors and [many more things](_URL_3_) from machinery to networking equipment and computer coding. | bcc5f6cf-5e71-4ebe-bb7a-1c43e3dfbd02 |
1qkwmn | what is actually taking place in your ear when you are experiencing tinnitus? (Ringing in your ears) | There are a variety of causes. One of the easiest to understand comes from damage from things like loud sounds. Your ear has a bunch of tiny hair cells in it. These hair cells each vibrate to particular frequencies or pitches. When one of these (or an associated receptor) is damaged it can't create a pitch sensation properly anymore. One thing that can happen is that your brain is confused into thinking the hair cell is "on" when it's not -- you hear an illusory pitch. Since particular hair cells correspond to a focused pitch this illusory sound is similarly focused.
You can also have more internal/neural issues where the signal gets screwed with (with the same "always-on" result). Many conditions and medications can do his. And finally some people actually have extra noises being generated in their ears (for example by muscle spasms). | 20c2b793-2265-4318-a488-b10785064ace |
3p2xie | Why can't Koko the gorilla just teach other gorillas sign language? | Koko did teach a friend sign language. Koko's gorilla friend Michael,
_URL_0_ | 74bccd2d-65a7-4425-a353-8cce23b8ed02 |
15rsr2 | Why people say break a leg before a performance? | Please take some time googling before you submit here. Thanks. | 6fae107b-3b5c-40da-99e6-ce1f6ff62ce5 |
8l42g0 | How is it physically possible for one-way mirrors to be seethrough from one side but a mirror from the other side? | They are only partially reflective. If you look at a standard window, you can see through but you can also see a bit of reflection in them, especially if trying to peer into a dark room from a sunny outdoor location. One-way mirrors are closer to reflective windows than true mirrors, and they require the observation room to be dark and the observed room to be well-lit. This makes it so very little light shines out from the observation room into the better lit observed room while also keeping reflections from inside the room minimal. Meanwhile, the observed room has much more light both reflected back into the room itself and shining into the observation room. If you were to turn up the lighting in the observation room and/or dim the lights in the observed room so they are at about the same brightness, it would become more like a standard window. And if you completely reversed the lighting, the mirror effect would flip. | 83d40de0-4a71-46ab-a9c5-67c1fa5a1dc7 |
u0ya6 | How music synthesizers work? And the difference between an "analog" synthesizer and a "digital" synthesizer? | There are different ways of making a synth. (Have you checked out the Google home page today, BTW?) You can either try to build the sound up from scratch, or use samples of real instruments. I'll address the first method.
A musical pitch is comprised of a fundamental frequency and some number of harmonics, or overtones. The harmonics are some whole number multiple of the fundamental frequency. By combining a fundamental with selected harmonics, you can get sounds with different timbres.
In nature, the fundamental and harmonics tend to be like sine waves. But you can provide different wave shapes (sawtooth, square, etc.). Each of those actually is like a sine wave with a predefined set of harmonics, but it is easier to generate a rich sound with lots of different harmonics if you use them.
Besides doing those things to effect the timbre, you can vary things like the attack and decay - how quickly the sound reaches maximum volume after the key is pressed, and how quickly it fades out. Similarly, you can make the overall volume (amplitude) of the sound non-constant while the note is playing - making "the envelope" rise and fall either slowly or rapidly vs. time, and with different "shapes" to how you are doing so.
In the original analog synths, most of these effects were accomplished using Voltage Controlled Oscillators (VCOs). One VCO could generate the fundamental, others the harmonics, others to control the attack and decay, and others to control the modulation of the envelope. Each of these could usually generate sine, square, sawtooth, and triangle waves, and their oscillation frequency was controlled by their voltage input. By combining them in various ways, cool sounds were created. In addition, filters could be applied at various stages to add more control to the harmonics that could go through to the next stage.
A digital synth doesn't need a VCO or hardware filter to do those things. By doing rapid math, the same kinds of effects could be numerically generated in software, plus more. Then the final output "number" is run through a Digital to Analog converter (DAC) and sent to an amplifier and then to the synth output. | 519ebaf7-6ded-48c5-8ae2-aa8480eeaa0c |
5wwfh4 | why do so many people film cellphone videos in portrait mode? | Because that's how you hold a phone when doing most other things. It doesn't occur to them or they don't care. It's easier to hold a phone one handed especially with how huge phones are these days. | 95e3878a-f7a5-46b1-9418-5d8c1d50014f |
2zyf5a | Why does diarrhea come so quickly when food takes hours for the stomach to digest and days to pass through the intestines? | So your bowels are like a long train track and your food is like a set of cars on the track. Transit time between Point A, your mouth, and Point B, the chute, is a bit flexible but normally operates on a regularly scheduled basis.
When you eat, you put cars on the track and send them to Point B. As these cars go to Point B, they lose passengers (nutrients) at various points in the thin tunnel portion (small intestine). The journey isnt complete and the journey has already altered the shape of the car pretty significantly giving a rusty color. Once in the larger portion of the tunnel, the cars are checked for stray passengers and are hosed down a bit so that transition out of Point B isn't so bad. Sometimes, the train cars park juuust outside the gates of Point B so they can exit at the best time for the operator (toilet).
Now, all of this goes fucking nuts when you load a bad set of train cars at Point A. The track sensors located everywhere along the track, detect this alien set of cars and sends a distress call to the Supervisor (your brain). The Supervisor wants to handle the situation without having to phone the Manager (your consciousness) about the craziness on the tracks and also wants to make sure you never know it was on the tracks. It has to make a choice now: send it back to Point A violently and somewhat painfully risking tearing the tracks, or send it to Point B as fast as fuck? Depending on where it's located on the track, it'll choose the best route.
Let's use the destination Point B. The Supervisor hits the panic button and puts all the train cars that are on the track (in your body) on overdrive. The tunnels are flooded with water and lubricant to speed all the cars up and get them the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Cars collide with each other, and previously well formed cars are just flooded with water and lubricant that they are just a soggy, shadowy reminder of their former glory state.
The Media (pain) hears about the car collisions immediately begins filming live the high speed, flooded train cars out of control. They want to knos how an alien set of train cars were put on the tracks and they want someone to pay for such carelessness. The Manager is just watching the horror unfold on Live TV but cannot do anything to stop it, because the Supervisor was deaf and he had not installed a means of communicating with him after hours in the office.
I hope this answers your question.
TL;DR when you get diarrhea, everything gets pushed out, one way or another. There are no passing lanes.
Source: medical student
Edit: Wow, thanks for the gold!! | 54c583a9-3414-436e-b752-78f702ad0606 |
3z85pm | Why are mobile websites much faster and more responsive than the dedicated App they beg you to install? | Follow-up question: does it have something to do with revenue? Are there more ads on the horrible apps? Good question, OP! | 0d1ddf01-dd1a-4afc-b243-38fe3d4f6598 |
2kc00p | Why does smoking a cigarrete make me have to poop? | Nicotine is a stimulant and has that effect on your digestive system - it speeds up transit time. It's similar with coffee. Interesting related fact: coffee and strong alcohol speed up your stomach emptying, which in turn makes you feel less uncomfortably full, hence why you have these at the end of a massive meal | f133aa7f-726d-4feb-87d7-4b8b452b019c |
55aqdf | What did the Marbury vs Madison exactly deal with and why is that case so significant? | The *extremely* ELI4 version is that *Marbury v. Madison* established "judicial review" in America: The idea that a court's job isn't just to decide individual cases based on the law, but also decide if laws themselves are in line with the constitution, and strike them down if they aren't. This is a big deal, as judicial review is now 95% of what the Supreme Court does. | 91c79842-e9bd-4c9c-804a-975acf412a32 |
4mciru | WHY do females ejaculate during intercourse? | Actually, I think this is a really good question.
[The Truth About Female Ejaculation](_URL_1_)
> Since 2000, an increasing number of researchers have suggested the liquid may come from the Skene's glands, which are located on the anterior wall of the vagina around the lower end of the urethra. But the truth is we simply don’t know where ejaculate comes from and it’s something that doctors and researchers will continue to study and learn more about over the coming years.
> As far as the amount of ejaculate, a woman can release as little as a teaspoonful or a capful, yet some claim to “squirt” a great deal more than that. Some studies suggest that all women ejaculate when they reach orgasm, but instead of the fluid being released from the vagina, it is pushed back up into the bladder when the muscles are tightened post-climax. Hence, some women might experience retrograde ejaculate, while others ejaculate outside the body.
[Here's where female ejaculation comes from, and what it's made of](_URL_0_)
Hope this helps. | b0b6e619-3edf-47d1-b4cd-edbdd7d08792 |
2qwh84 | What exactly makes cannibalism so unhealthy? | I have a layman's understanding of cannibalism, but...
Meat is full of stuff that can get you sick. Luckily for us, when we eat a different species, the pathogens that are dangerous to that animal aren't dangerous to us (this is excepted by parasites and bacteria, which are bad for most animals). It's the same principle that makes it so that we can catch the flu from other people, but not from our pets.
This is why diseases that cross species and diseases that are dangerous to humans but not animals are such a big deal (swine flu, avian flu, the Black Death, Mad Cow Disease, every disease transmitted via mosquito, etc). | 3ee90f96-7c5e-456e-afa9-e51035a874c4 |
8k1ihf | How is wasting water bad for the environment? | Water which has been purified for our use required energy to prepare. Making more will require the use of more energy which these days is typically generated by burning fossil fuels. So while the water itself is recyclable and renewable the energy used to do so is not. | 26ff59ea-0241-4d85-b5a0-36cb8b4db408 |
2lwp2w | What happened in history to associate the Jewish culture with controlling the media? | There literally are many jewish men in powerful positions within the movie and TV business. Here's a short list:
*Gerald Levin - Time Warner, HBO CEO
*Michael Eisner - Disney CEO, Succeeded by Bob Iger (who is also Jewish).
*David Geffen - DreamWorks, Geffen Records
*All the Warner Bros.
*The Weinsteins (founders of Miramax)
*Spielberg
*Louis Mayer - Founder of MGM
*President of ABC, Leonard Goldenson
*Founder of CBS William Paley
A very powerful group indeed! | a6f83bc6-6d05-4723-aab7-063482eb9252 |
1o1747 | Why do researchers who do tests on mice have to comply with strict ethical regulations, and yet it is legal for me to use mousetraps and very painful poisons to remove them from my house? | Research is just highly regulated in that any research animal must be treated with the utmost respect and dignity because its life provides us with valuable information that helps either their species or ours.
Pest animals are slightly different in that they have the potential to carry disease, so they must be removed from the home or else you/your family is at risk.
Poisons aren't the most humane things, but the snap traps are actually very humane and cause instant death through severing the spinal cord. They actually use snap traps in field research. | 31877017-01fc-49c7-a7b5-b403c3c7e967 |
1v3lv5 | How is /r/gonewild legal? | Reddit doesn't own or even hold on to any images, it simply links to places on the Internet that do.
To expand: Even though there are issues with assisting in the distribution of things like child pornography, as long as Reddit takes steps to ensure that shouldn't happen and doesn't willingly allow it to happen, then they're all good. | bd905c7e-4ba5-4c98-8119-4b52529015e6 |
wuxnq | this proof that 1 + 1 = 2 | The theorem states that if sets a and b each have 1 element, then being disjoint is equivalent to their union having two elements. The comment at the end refers to how the union of sets is used in their definition of arithmetic.
Going through the proof line by line probably wouldn't be informative as it just refers back to other propositions that they've developed, and if you haven't read the entire book before this proposition, you don't know what facts they've already developed. At this level, everything seems obvious anyway.
Basically: let a = {x}, b = {y}. By a previous proposition, a U b has two elements if and only if x != y if and only if {x} and {y} are disjoint if and only if a and b are disjoint. The last bit ties this up into the form of the proposition. Each of those if and only ifs are from a previous proposition. | ced0b453-31e9-4eb2-9f74-3acb100f0016 |
7pmetd | What is cloud engineering? | A very, very high level explanation -Computers, networks, security, and storage can combine all together to make up what is known as a cloud. In a cloud each of those components can grow or shrink based on how much they are needed. Cloud engineering keeps all of those things up and running so companies can run applications like Reddit does. A cloud engineer needs to understand how all of those things work together but may not necessarily control each component. For example, a cloud engineer may not actually control the storage, that may be the responsibility of a storage engineer, but they need to understand when an issue is resulting from a problem with a computer, the network, the storage, etc. There is typically a cloud engineering team supporting this work, not just one person. | cd5b18cf-2e64-496a-8bdf-b6abeb055a1b |
3b8zha | Why is the heart associated with the part of the brain responsible for emotions? | I think emotions were traditionally associated with bodily organs such as the heart, from long before modern science determined that emotions arise in the brain. The heart was supposed to be the seat of love.
Another example would be the expression 'to have guts', implying that courage arose from the stomach.
And of course there is the phrase 'to have balls', often applied to women who have none... | 46ba29f1-429f-4fed-98cc-e09dc6f8639a |
4bt19d | Why is the subject of blackholes so fundamental when learning about the nature of the universe? | There are two prevailing theories that rule in physics: general relativity and quantum theory. General relativeity deals with really big or massive things like stars and galaxies, while quantum theory deals with really small things like subatomic particles. General relativity describes gravity, while quantum physics describes the other forces. The problem is they aren't compatible theories, and yet they both, as far as all our collected evidence suggest, are correct. This is a problem. Physicists want *one* theory that explains everything, not two that are both true but incompatible and incomplete. Black holes are super massive and super tiny; this is where relativity and quantum theory meet. Figuring out black holes will help us figure out how to marry quantum theory and gravity... at least that's the idea. | e84843b2-c003-45e4-ada3-d0728aa3800e |
258wmf | Data Compression. How can information be reduced in size and still be the same? | Let's do this in a really simple, visual kind of way. Here's two ways of expressing the same thing:
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
17 W's.
Now, they both show the same thing. But the second takes up only 6 characters (including the space), while the first takes up 17 characters
The same basic idea is how data compression works. If you've got a piece of information that repeats itself a lot, you can compress it like that. | d617b097-3b6c-43a3-b213-103bf39d7fcd |
4z7t4g | Why is Hypothesis part of the Scientific Method? | It is possible to gather data with no hypothesis, and then create a hypothesis (based on looking at the data) and then test it (using numerical analysis of the data against the hypothesis).
However, most a hypothesis is needed to tell you *what data to gather.* For example, if I have a hypothesis that protein in the diet affects the fertility of crows, then I need to gather a population of crows, divide them into at least two groups, and ensure that the groups get diets with differing amounts of protein. With no hypothesis, I would never have considered doing that. | 403f0dc7-dd62-43e6-bf7b-938013230aea |
o8fp5 | Why Internet Explorer is bad. | Copy and pasting from the multiple [times](_URL_2_) this has [been](_URL_1_) [asked](_URL_3_) [before](_URL_0_):
Competition in browsers is good.
IE duked it out with the Netscape until they "won" the browser war by giving it away free and bundling it with the world's most popular PC operating system. Netscape went belly up and Microsoft decided to rest on its laurels with IE 6.
Since IE 6 was around for so long, applications that utilized its often unique features were coded, and workarounds for bugs that existed in the rendering engine were developed. Malware developers used these bugs to infect your computer just by visiting a bad webpage.
Mozilla, and later Firefox became viable and then superior alternatives to IE6. The loss of market share caused Microsoft to restart IE development bringing us versions 7, 8, and 9.
Since millions of dollars of IE6-only internal web applications were developed, stingy businesses don't want to recode for standards-compliant browsers when things "work just fine." This large population of users forced to use IE6 made every web developer's job much harder. | 5b27e243-44ea-4f9d-80c5-8232acef5c05 |
43seor | Why do some websites tell you that they use cookies and have a 'got it' button, if almost every website uses cookies? | The EU made it mandatory for websites in that region to inform users that they're putting a small file on the users computer, that can be used to track that users browsing habit on that and other sites.
Privacy laws are a big thing in Europe, so it was a long thing common. It basically means that you now consent to them doing that, whereas before unless you were tech-savvy, you have no idea.
If you're not in Europe, and/or browsing a European site, you might still see it, as it's easier to just make it a global site change, than to filter it depending on where the users are coming from.
tl;dr: EU made it mandatory to tell people they're being tracked by cookies, as most people have absolutely no idea what a cookie even is, much less what they do, and people ought to consent to that kind of thing. | 3d42f140-74a4-46d2-9f55-441b3de161d9 |
2m1vco | How do surfers survive wipe outs on enormous waves? | They relax until the wave lets them go then they head for the surface. By relaxing they don't get an elevated heart rate and can manage to hold their breath just fine. Remember, huge waves break into deep water so you're not going to get pile driven into a reef like at Pipeline and Teahupo'o
Pretty much the longest you'll get held down for is 30 seconds (double wave hold downs and such) so you do have to be in pretty good shape physically | 8bb79549-8a3d-4edb-aeaf-e11af6925486 |
o0rcm | Israel and Palestine, specifically why Israel's "Settlements" aren't called "Colonies" | > Why are the Palestinians treated as a lesser people in the UN?
The short answer is because they are essentially a stateless people. It could in some ways be compared to Romani (Gypsies) who, as they have no country to be a part of the United *Nations* are also under represented.
The real question is why did Israel end up a state and not Palestine. The most concise answer to this question is that the UN granted Israel statehood, and it became a state on borders that were influenced by the Partition Plan. The territories that didn't become Israel, instead of becoming Palestine, became parts of the neighboring Arab states. In this way the Palestinians did not get a state when the region became decolonized, and essentially it is something that is still trying to be rectified.
> Why does the US not try to help the Palestian people?
This may sound cynical but no country in the world is truly altruistic and the U.S. is no exception. The U.S. sees strategic value in its relationship with Israel and isn't willing to jeopardize that. Right now the government of Israel is rightist so the U.S. can't take a hard line against human rights violations without alienating what they consider to be a key ally in the region. The U.S. has supported all sorts of unsavory states over the years in order to maintain influence, in this sense Israel is really not unique.
The other reason that the U.S. doesn't take a hard stance against Israel is the presence of a large number of people that live in the U.S., both Jewish and Christian, care a whole lot about Israel and are really offended when people criticize it. This, plus the fact that they are very vocal about their opinions.
> why Israel's "settlements" aren't called "colonies"
Basically Israel doesn't want to incorporate all of the territory it administers into its actual country for a variety of reasons. The word colony implies that it is a part of the mother country in a more complete and permanent sense. One could make a case for calling the entirety of the occupied territories a colony, but it doesn't really make sense to call just the settler communities colonies. They aren't regions of the occupied territories that are under substantially more Israeli control so much as they are areas where some Israelis have decided to live. | 9df3f8a3-a45a-484b-885b-1374be63ce5b |
3fhunl | How does something like a coral colony or a Portuguese Man o' War (the animal), which are made out of many smaller organisms, know what shape to take? | Man o'War grow as a stem, like a backbone, that is segmented into buds that grow into a cluster of all three types of the specialized zooids. The stem keeps growing with age, with the oldest and largest zooids at the back, and the stem growing forward with the youngest zooids and new buds at the front. Because of the clustering, it has a repeating pattern of zooids along the length.
They're only kind of separate organisms. They're genetically identical and come from one egg, grow off the same stem, and always stay attached. Only one type of zooid reproduces, and the others just sting and eat. It's just that each zooid has a body plan homologous to what some animals use for their entire body. Personally I would say they are a single modular animal.
source: [diagram on page 10](_URL_0_), and [glossary on page 1](_URL_1_) | 93a78ba8-ddc6-495f-8aee-6849d65c413c |
5z9ell | what would happen if all consumer debt in the US was suddenly erased? | It depends entirely with *how* it was wiped. If all the companies that lent the money just had to deal with the loss of writing off all the debt, there would be a massive financial collapse including all the major banks. People would no longer be able to get credit cards, car loans, or mortgages as every lending institution would no longer exist.
If the government paid everyone's debt, than there would be a massive devaluation of the currency which would have dramatic economic effects to the entire world.
Either way it is not a pretty picture. | 1cebf3c3-8815-4d80-be1c-ebffeab1d795 |
91xw65 | How does your eye react to small things that you can't see and close on its own. | Your brain reacts to a threat it "sees" before it processes what it has seen. That combined with your body naturally also getting on high alert in this situation help it to respond quicker than what we can physically see.
Theres always a slight delay between what is happen and what our brain processes because the nerve impulses have a finite speed; it is very fast, but still not instantaneous. So when faced with a threat, the body first sends a single to make sure the eyes closed, which (at this moment) is more important than knowing what exactly was headed our way. | f83e0325-e520-42ed-b09e-ef24bcf21f2b |
5vxix5 | What can cause stuttering on a person who didn't stutter before? | you might be like me in that you don't know the best way to put what you are trying to say into words because of all the thoughts running through your head. that's my 2 sense | ec3f61a7-7801-4836-bd74-f672ea43a306 |
6a6az8 | In what sense slower waves carry more energy? | They don't. Perhaps you were hearing a reference to how *large* (high) waves carry more energy, and in water these tend to be farther apart than small waves. | 63c2bdbe-80e0-4193-bd6d-adbe26718966 |
kp4fl | Why are DVDs region locked? | So that DVDs can be sold at different prices in different regions. Without it, someone could buy the DVDs in a cheaper region, then sell them in a more expensive region to make money. That would force the price of DVDs in the expensive region way down, and the maker of the DVD wouldn't make as much money both by selling fewer DVDs in the expensive region, and those DVDs that they do sell will be for a lower price. | 33f8758b-0365-4293-bd29-4f1516add9c5 |
jqbil | How owning a server machine is useful. | There are several benefits, but it depends on how you want to use it. Here are a few:
* You can build your own web site - you yourself will handle and control the contents and maintenance of it locally
* You can have a host computer server and buy cheap network clients, that way you only need to maintain one system rather than several
* You can have the server automate a lot of tasks on itself and other computers (downloading, uploading/updating, etc.)
Servers are meant to "serve" | 5cac5615-8c50-4a61-bf79-28bbd4d96ae5 |
4uei7f | How come when an object starts spining (like a helicopter blade) it looks like it reverses it's direction after a certain speed? | I guess I'll explain it like you're four since apparently there are some genius five year olds.
Your eyes / the TV screen are a camera. Everything you see is a bunch of pictures in a real fast slideshow. Fudge spins so fast that the next "picture" you see is with the blades slightly behind where they were in the last picture, looking like it's going the opposite direction, instead of being slightly ahead of where they were.
EDIT: Replaced "fudge" with "fudge" to make it clean for innocent little four-year-old /u/wleoncio
EDIT 2: Replaced the swear word for "poop", usually follows the word "bull", in my first edit with "fudge" so /u/wleoncio doesn't come after me.
EDIT 3: WARNING - Prime level ELI5 discourse below, fitting for ELI6.
No, the eyes don't have a predetermined "framerate" that they can see at. 30fps maximum is bs. So is 60fps maximum. The thought goes that you cant tell the difference between 300fps and 400fps. Of course you can notice between 1fps and 10fps, that's where people imagining a maximum at 60fps or whatever comes from. A lot of the strange videos with the heliblade not moving has to do with *shutter speed*, not *frames per second*. Shutter speed is how long each frame is exposed for. Fps is... how many frames are captured per second.
EDIT 4: Big blunder on my part. Sorry for implying that the eye functions like a tv screen. We're on eli5, not askscience, so I was trying to keep it simple. I think the main thing in this post is a video of a helicopter, in which case the explanation holds water. If you're seeing it happen in real life the illusion operates on a similar level, but it's not as simple as you as a human having bad framerate / shutter speed /etc. | 42cfd30b-0c60-4cff-b9da-23d47ba667c6 |
3fmp5p | Why does dictatorship come with poverty | Because the more money the populace has, the better educated they will be. And the better educated they are, the less likely they will be to put up with a dictatorship.
Also, in more affluent societies, there is wealth distribution away from the government, which means that economic pressure can easily be applied to the government. In an impoverished nation, that's much more difficult to do from the inside. | 1c3dcdb7-7d78-4d89-8bc2-f4d954def9df |
lp1cw | The TeaParty | [This video featuring Rick Santelli](_URL_0_) is the first time I ever heard of the idea of a tea party. Whether that started it all or not is up for debate. Some say the 2008 Ron Paul campaign was the trigger. Who knows.
The movement is most made up of mostly conservatives and some libertarians who chose to focus on government spending and debt. This is a break from both the conservative and libertarian focuses of the Bush administration. Spending was not the biggest issue when Bush was in office for conservatives. The war on terror and social issues ruled the day.
For libertarians, their Bush years were focused on stopping wars and the patriot act type stuff. Both groups were against spending in theory those years, but didn't make quite as much noise about it as they did when Obama got elected.
The tea party has no official leader and is mainly composed of small local groups and some larger political action committees. They promote candidates who talk tough on spending or are opposing people they call moderates. This has had mixed results and lead to some looney candidates being nominated. Two examples would be Christine O'Donnel and Sharon Angle. Neither was ready for prime time. The successes would be Marc Rubio and Rand Paul among others.
So it's basically a loose alliance of people who are against government spending. There are far right fundamentalist christians in the tea party and there are dope smoking libertarians in the tea party. There was talk of the tea party moving the republicans in a direction that took social issues off the table until the spending problem was addressed, but that doesn't seem to be happening based on what I see at the republican debates. | a5368d72-c2d7-445a-bd03-e7bcf670a85a |
77wqop | "Light Pollution" and why it prevents us from seeing stars in cities | When there is a lot of light on the ground, some of it goes up and makes the sky look brighter by lighting up dust in the air.
And just like seeing a flash light in a dark room is easier then in a bright room, stars are easier to see in a dark sky then a bright sky. | 86a66109-322a-4cb9-8339-8203b249127c |
363x3b | Why flies come right back to f*** with me even after I swat at them? | They don't even know what you are. They don't understand the difference between you and an inanimate object. For all they know, your hand swatting them is an entirely different thing from your face or body. | 9f552689-727e-4afc-9ca6-f164fb233324 |
423wti | Why were most presidents attorneys before taking office? What is it about the legal profession that creates so many leaders? | Our societies are founded on law; which if you think about it are just promises made by the general population to behave orderly (but of course we have the police for enforcement) - so to lead a society founded on law & order you have to be well versed in the laws which dictate how society conducts itself. Also the social circles of attorneys and politicians intersect often. | d81c313b-4786-4cd2-8b09-968626ba8be5 |
18c7pm | What happens in your body to give you a "dead leg"? | Scientific term of a dead leg(Charlie horse) would be a quadricep contusion. Basically it is your muscle being crushed into your thigh bone.
There are two types of contusions:
Intramuscular which is a tearing of the muscle within the sheath that surrounds it. This means that the initial bleeding may stop early (within hours) because of increased pressure within the muscle however the fluid is unable to escape as the muscle sheath prevents it. The result is considerable loss of function and pain which can take days or weeks to recover. You are not likely to see any bruising come out with this type - especially in the early stages.
Intermuscular which is a tearing of the muscle and part of the sheath surrounding it. This means that the initial bleeding will take longer to stop especially if you do not ice it. However recovery is often faster than intramuscular as the blood and fluids can flow away from the site of injury. You are more likely to see bruising come out with this one. | 2e325329-f70e-48fa-9a5d-9a17b1738cac |
81vwop | If it's bad for you to eat late at night does that mean people who work night shifts are less healthy? | The eating late at night stuff has been debunked.
What actually happens is people who usually eat late (before bed) tend to gain weight because consume more calories - but this isn't a factor of eating late, but simply a factor of eating _more_. | 6ebfc0e1-ad27-4391-a1b4-614068c7b085 |
70bicq | Sometimes when I close one eye at a time, I notice that each eye sees slightly different colors. Why does this happen and how does the brain resolve putting those two different images together? | Aside from differences in the light that is entering each eye, it could have something to do with having a slightly different number of the types of cone cells in the retina of each eye. The cones come in 3 different types and they each pick up a different wavelength of light. If you have more of one type than another in one eye compared to the other eye, that could account for a slight difference in the tone or saturation of color that you are seeing. I have this too - one eye sees color as warmer than the other. | e0e467be-bd17-4042-a0c3-99585999c054 |
32qqcp | How does selective breeding work? | We can selectively breed any species that mates. We have made glow in the dark jelly fish and non-venomous snakes using genetic technology, but a lot of people forget that selective breeding began with the dawn of our civilization. We've selectively bred Chickens, Cows, Pigs, Corn, Bananas--everything we eat was selected to be tastier or easier to grow and maintain for humanity. Regarding traits, we cannot create traits from DNA that doesn't exist, but we can see every single trait within a species using our current genetic methods. With that, we can choose which animals mate.
If you want an example, we can look at dogs. It probably began where two relatively less aggressive dogs (we'll give them rating 8/10) were mated. Maybe the couple gave birth to a dog who is 7/10 aggressive who mated with a 9/10. Over time, we choose mates who would maybe get us down to a 5/10 aggressive dog. This is why it's said that it takes a very long time to domesticate an animal, or sometimes it's impossible due to how central aggressiveness may be to the animal's reproductive success. | 7718c710-4af6-45ce-a7ec-388d361ccdbe |
jb7qm | The whole mortgage crisis thingy | Here's a piece of it. Tammy buys a house. In order to get the money to buy a house, she goes to ABC Bank and takes out a $100,000 loan. Now remember ABC Bank has a lot of customers just like Tammy. ABC Bank is *hoping* that Tammy and everyone else pays them back.
This is where AIG steps in. "Hey, ABC Bank, you have 10 Tammys each owing you $100,000. That's a million dollars. I'll tell you what, you give me $100,000 and I'll pay off the rest of Tammy's or anyone else's loan if they can't pay it back." AIG is offering insurance to ABC Bank. They are actually doing this with a LOT of banks, not just ABC Bank.
Why would AIG do this? ABC Bank paid AIG $100,000. AIG got that money for nothing but assuming a risk. So far, it's free money for AIG. As long as Tammy and 9 other people like her pay back ABC Bank, then AIG makes money. If Tammy or anyone else stop paying their loan back to ABC Bank, then ABC can go to AIG and say, "Hey Tammy's not paying us. We gave you $100,000 for this insurance. You now owe us the balance on Tammy's property."
Historically this would have been a safe bet for AIG to make. But since Tammy and all of her neighbors lost their jobs at the same time, or because Tammy and her neighbors built more house than they can afford (depending on your point of view), AIG was on the hook for a SHITLOAD of mortgages. In fact, it turned out to be more money than AIG had laying around.
The banks felt good about their insurance policy with AIG and kept loaning money to people. The criteria for loans lessened because the banks' risks lessened because they had this fancy insurance.
When it all came crashing down, AIG couldn't pay up, which affected LOTS of banks. Again, this is only a piece of it, but it's the piece I know more than any other because of my line of work. | 0bc6ce80-5b69-4da9-bef4-1215e52f3cc3 |
13yor9 | With 1:175M odds, and the jackpot being $500M, why wouldn't you buy one of each possible lottery ticket? | You may end up splitting the take, and then you pay taxes. The odds are long, but if someone else winds the pot, then you're splitting $500 million with another person, and getting only $250 million. The government takes 50% of that in taxes (roughly), so suddenly you've paid $175 million to make $125 million. Oh, and if you want all that money now, instead of pieced out over a few decades, you take 50% of *that*, so you're getting $125m *even if nobody else wins*.
You can make more with that $175M if you invest it right, over the next 20 years, than you'd make from winning $500M paid out over 20 years with only a 4% annual increase. | fe3d1b4f-7f42-43e7-9afb-9d3465cf6a5a |
4xqboj | What even is spacetime? | Imagine a picture is two dimensions.
Three dimensions is more like the world we live in.
If you add time, that becomes the fourth dimension.
All 4 dimensions of the 3 dimension environment plus the time factor is described as space time.
_URL_0_ | eca2dd43-7d12-42f0-b1c6-307c7b59e8f2 |
5zy8ty | Period accurate t.v. shows and movie props. | It depends on the item. Cars and most props can be rented from collectors, that's one way for a collector to subsidize their hobby. Clothes are just made by costumers, old ones would be too fragile.
Where can you get it, also depends on the item, from Mecum auctions to eBay, collectors are out there someplace. | 64b7e2ea-2483-4860-9752-2bd7818a46e3 |
528k9u | Can someone explain to me how compression braking works? | I assume you mean a jake brake.
First, start with an engine. Suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
* draw air and fuel into the engine
* squeeze (compress) it
* light it on fire which drives the piston down forcefully
* push the remains out the exhaust
Now imagine an engine with the fuel removed.
* draw intake air, without fuel, in.
* compress it
* de-compress it (instead of blowing it up)
* push it out the exhaust.
So without fuel, you get some air, the piston goes up, then it gets pushed back down. This is essentially an air spring. The harder you squeeze the air, the harder it pushes back. However, just like a spring, you can't use this as a brake because all the energy you add to the air by compressing it comes right back when it pushes the piston back down.
A jake brake is a device that opens the exhaust valve prematurely, releasing the compressed air before the piston starts going back down again. Now you've converted the engine into an air compressor, which requires energy to operate (unlike the spring, whose net energy consumption is 0). The energy comes from the kinetic energy of the truck, and therefore the truck slows down.
Jake brakes work better on diesel engines because they don't have a throttle. Gas engines have a throttle which is closed and won't allow air to enter the engine. Newer electronic throttles and engine computers could allow a jake brake, but it would be a bit pointless. | 1fcfd320-5ec7-40fe-bada-6f449bbefe36 |
69rqgc | How can half the mass of some foods be sugar? | Yes, it's a different form in part.
In jams and such, much of the sugar is in the non-fruit part itself or soaked into the flesh of the fruit. Taste strawberries from a jam vs normal or dried strawberries.
The reason is twofold. The sugar helps to preserve the fruit and keep it from spoiling and to improve it.
Along with the table sugar, sucrose, in the jam, there are the naturally occurring fruit sugars like glucose and fructose among other, more complicated saccharides. | 6fdc1d78-407c-4b8f-8f9c-edf8f336f823 |
3i21so | Why do hotels call it "continental" breakfast? | It is based on traditional breakfasts held on Continental Europe (mainly France). It was inherited from our British origins. | 9db5a016-e2ef-4b36-be1c-e6952300bc81 |
48lxjr | Why are 1080p 60fps videos easier to load than gifs? | Gifs have notoriously bad compression, which means you're using way more bandwidth for the same image quality if you're considering 1080p60fps on youtube, for example, which has excellent compression. | d4303ea5-3157-401e-916d-09ee7a7d297d |
4kfgui | How do prosthetic limbs work above the elbow or knee? | So in most cases, above the knee (AK) amputees actually don't have powered or robotic or hydraulic knees. They are very very expensive, heavy, and mostly experimental. Normal people don't get them. Most use a "free knee", which means they must land on it fully extended so they can weight bear on it. Then when they step onto the opposite leg they use hip flexion to swing it forward. It then kicks out and extends so they can land on it straight. People can get so good at it that only a PT can recognize the gait. This also allows the leg to bend naturally when the person sits (they control their descent with the good leg). There are many many ankle options out there, from the "runner" foot or blade to the pointed foot for dancers to a regular, nonflexible ankle and foot. With a prosthetic, the fewer moving parts the easier it is to predict and control. All this being said, prosthetics is a rapidly moving field due to all the soldiers coming back and needing innovative solutions. | 99437ab1-47bf-4958-ae3c-7436ea34aaf1 |
5jcr6x | Why does ice cream taste sweeter after melting? | Your tongue is better able to taste sweetness when the taste buds are not cold. So letting the ice cream melt somewhat prevents it suppressing your tongue's response. | 758f9e1e-9680-43bd-b4d5-b504f3ff7e0c |
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