q_id
stringlengths 5
6
| title
stringlengths 3
296
| selftext
stringlengths 0
34k
| document
stringclasses 1
value | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 4
110
| answers
dict | title_urls
list | selftext_urls
list | answers_urls
list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
20kmch | what's the point of spreading malware or viruses? | I don't really understand the purpose of basically just making somebody's computer unusable. Is there something that the creators of the virus are trying to accomplish? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20kmch/eli5_whats_the_point_of_spreading_malware_or/ | {
"a_id": [
"cg463tp",
"cg473b2",
"cg48i1n"
],
"score": [
9,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Most viruses are not programmed to destroy your computer, but are supposed to give the creator information about you or, control over your computer. Most DDos attacks consist of thousands of 'infected' computer. A bit like zombies, except these attacks are usually orchestrated from some central place.\nIn the first case they are designed to send back things like banking information.",
"Monetary or power-related interests.",
"There are a few reasons. A lot of malware is created to get information (bank info, account names/passwords, etc.) which can either be used to steal money or that information can be sold to someone who wants to steal money, get revenge, or whatever. Spam is also sent out because some people will fall into its trap and lose money.\nSometimes it's to make a point. If you have control of thousands of computers, you can use them to temporarily crash people's websites, for example.\nA lot of times, it's just to harass and cause people problems. Some people really just like to hurt people and so create viruses to cause them problems."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1q3n5p | what's the difference between a program's source code and the actual program ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q3n5p/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_programs/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd8tkai"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"In general, the source code is human-readable (some languages more readable than other) instructions that the computer will follow in order to do something interesting or useful.\n\nWhen you're done writing a program's source code you'll send it to a compiler (a special program) which will turn it into something that a computer processor can \"execute\". In that form it's not really readable by a human, but if the compiler does the job right (and they do), it does exactly what the source code says the program would do."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
53d4l2 | what makes glass transparant? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53d4l2/eli5what_makes_glass_transparant/ | {
"a_id": [
"d7s5cjr",
"d7sc9nd"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"So there are three things that can happen to light when it hits something - it can either be absorbed, reflected, or transmitted.\n\nWhich one will occur depends both upon the material being hit and the frequency of the light doing the hitting.\n\nFor absorption or reflection to occur; this goes back to the idea that electrons exist in discrete energy whole-integer energy levels, you can't have an electron at a half energy level. This means that in order to absorb light, the light has to be carrying the right amount of energy to knock the electron up by whole steps. If the light doesn't have the right amount of energy to do this, the electron won't absorb it.\n\nGlass doesn't absorb visible light because the energy level gap, called a band gap, can't be bridged by the energy that visible light has.\n\nHowever, higher frequency light *does* have enough energy to do this with certain types of glass, which is how they can block ultraviolet light. To UV light, types of glass are opaque.",
"Imagine you're walking through a room and there's a load of tennis balls (electrons) on the floor. You play the part of a photon (a particle of light with a certain amount of energy). And whenever you come across a tennis ball on the floor, you want to pick up that tennis ball and place it on the table next to you, which you do and that's your job done as a photon and you've lost all your energy by moving the electron - you, the photon are absorbed. That's what happens in opaque materials. \n\nNow imagine that instead of a table you have to put those tennis balls up on the highest shelf in the room, but you simply can't do it because they require more energy than you have as a photon to do it, so you don't bother moving any of the tennis balls, you don't lose energy and aren't absorbed, so you pass to the other side of the room with all your energy and exit through the door. That's what happens in transparent materials like glass."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
de920x | in movies and tv, people strangle other people until they go unconscious and then they're dead forever...but that's not realistic is it? | I think your brain needs to be without blood or oxygen for a few minutes in order to actually die. I could be wrong. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/de920x/eli5_in_movies_and_tv_people_strangle_other/ | {
"a_id": [
"f2tiaf7",
"f2tjwxh",
"f2tk0qo"
],
"score": [
7,
9,
2
],
"text": [
"You are correct.\n\nI do jiu jitsu regularly. I've been choked unconscious many times. I've choked people unconscious many times. You like go after a couple seconds and they wake right up and think they're in the moment that they went out.\n\nto my knowledge no long-term damage has been recorded from a short wind or blood choke.\n\nTo kill someone you have to strangle them to the point that no oxygen can make it to the brain or heart. That indeed takes several minutes",
"So, if you do a choke 'correctly' (in the martial arts sense), it won't cause long term damage and the other person will recover right away. But the key word there is 'correctly'. If you choke someone in the *wrong* way, you can break their esophagus (not good, but not fatal), rupture their carotid arteries (very very bad and eventually fatal) or simply break their neck (extremely bad, often almost immediately fatal). This doesn't happen 100% of the time, but having someone die from being strangled to the point of unconsciousness by an untrained killer isn't terribly implausible.",
"For movie effect they speed it up. But one would have to continue after unconsciousness hits. \n\nIf u follow the rules of 3, 3min without air (unless you train for diving and learn to hold up to 15 min but most ppl dont) 3 days without water 3 weeks without food."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
bm36qa | how do animals(?) that hatch from eggs grow? | Animals(?) that hatch from eggs - how do they get nutrients etc to grow while still inside the egg..? is everything they need built into the eggshell and over the time of their development they soak in(?) all the stuff inside the egg needed to grow/hatch? and once they use them all up, they hatch?
& #x200B;
^(the question marks indicate I have no idea what the correct terms are!) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bm36qa/eli5_how_do_animals_that_hatch_from_eggs_grow/ | {
"a_id": [
"emtl984"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Hello! I'm a biologist, and I used to study specifically the early development of chickens (as a model to see how brains and spines form).\n\nFirstly, yes, all the nutrients the embryo will need are packed in the egg. But the embryo is *not* the yolk. The yolk and the white are two different kinds of food, with two different purposes. \n\nAn egg yolk is surrounded by two little bags (membranes). The embryo actually lives sandwiched between these layers. In egg-laying animals, an embryonic heart develops really really early. In the first 3 days, the heart is almost the same size as the whole rest of the embryo.\n\nNext, blood vessels will form around around the yolk, still inbetween the two yolk sacs. This allows the embryo to absorb nutrients evenly from the whole yolk. It absorbs the yolk first for two reasons. First, the nutrients an early embryo needs are not the same as an older embryo, and the yolk mixture reflects this.\n\nSecond, the egg white also has a second job: it protects the embryo. Egg white is slightly jelly-like, and acts like a cushion. It's also full of little immune particles from the mother that help ward off germs, on the off chance something makes it through the shell and outer membrane. Usually this doesn't happen, and the baby chick will keep these immune particles to protect itself when it's just hatched.\n\nOnce all the white is used up, if everything has gone well, the chick will get an instinct to peck at the egg."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
4htnfp | why is it that the alarm always goes off right before the highlight of our dreams? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4htnfp/eli5_why_is_it_that_the_alarm_always_goes_off/ | {
"a_id": [
"d2s8cu4",
"d2s8yhh",
"d2s8z2s",
"d2s9qfj"
],
"score": [
14,
5,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"It doesn't. We only recall that it does because we're woken up in the middle of a disturbed state.\n\nSleep isn't a single state. Avoiding a lot of complexity here, our brains slip in and out of various periods of light sleep and deep sleep and dreaming sleep as the full night passes. \n\nSome people have intense dreams a lot more than others, and some people are much better at remembering their dreams than others. But for a lot of us, when the alarm interrupts a dream in a suspenseful moment, we have a tendency to remember it because it's so shocking and jarring. That shock causes our brain to record a memory of the dream as we return to consciousness.\n\nThe other dreams that we might have had in an earlier dreaming cycle often simply get forgotten because they were never really \"written down\" into the memory storage area - they successfully ended and our brains moved on into the next sleep cycle. So we REALLY remember the one that we woke up with by comparison.",
"This has already been answered really well over here _URL_0_\n\nThe user's account stands deleted, but the answer is very detailed.\n\nTLDR: your brain creates a false belief that you had just experienced whatever fucked up narrative you remember. It doesn't run it all through in that order when you wake up, it just convinces you that that shit just happened in that order, and just gives you the memory of that countdown, or fall from building, or whatev.\n",
"If you are able to realize that is a highlight you are already semi conscious, that realization might just make you completely conscious i.e. awake. \n\nBut you probably had many such highlights you just slept through without realizing it, so it's sort of because you woke up this time that you consider it a highlight that woke you up. Observation bias.",
"Also, you don't dream in real time. A dream that feels long might only take a few seconds in real time. It may even be that the alarm triggers the dream in the first place, and you experience the whole dream in the process of waking up! "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1spvk4/eli5_why_does_it_always_seem_that_my_alarm_or/ce02g5b"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
6bwkz4 | what does it mean when software is open source? how come others can't just look at the coding of closed source software? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bwkz4/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_software_is_open/ | {
"a_id": [
"dhq19eh",
"dhq2o67",
"dhq37xn",
"dhq57wb"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
5,
37
],
"text": [
"Closed source software doesn't release its source code. It is possible - with some exceptions and caveats - to reverse engineer a lot of software from its compiled binaries (not human readible, but 1's and 0's that only the computer can read) but generally that's not worth the effort unless you're trying to decipher google page rank or stock trading algorithms to make a lot of money. \n\nOpen source software is released with its source code, which is made available under one of several open source licenses, which dictate its use and under what conditions a) you have to disclose that you're using open source software, b) you have to also include or reference its source, or c) any number of other conditions in exchange for your \"free\" use.",
"The key word here isn't \"open\" or \"closed,\" it's \"source.\"\n\nSource code is readable, logical, full of structure and flow. But the computer doesn't run that (well, it does if the language is *scripted* or *interpreted*, but those have huge tradeoffs). The source code is *compiled* into a program that your computer can run directly.\n\n**Almost all of the content of the source code is thrown out, when compiling. It's there to direct the compiler in making a finished product, not to be *part* of the finished product**.\n\nSo you can take the finished product and try to reverse it back into source code, but there's not much left to work with.\n\nIn Open Source software, you can see that original source code, and work with it. In Closed Source software, you only get the compiled bit. They keep the code private.",
"Source code is what software is initially written in by a human programmer. The programmer selects a language (or, in some cases, multiple languages) and uses it to create the source code of the program. Depending on the language used and the skill of the programmer, the source code could be very easily readable by a programmer, or it could be nearly impossible. Most software source code lies somewhere in between.\n\nThis source code represents the logic of the program, but it can't be \"run\" directly. Another program needs to either compile or interpret it. Compilation is the process of turning source code into byte/machine code, which the hardware knows how to run. Interpretation is the process of reading through source code and converting the source code instructions into into a running program \"on the fly\". Programming languages are often, at a high level, divided into \"compiled languages\" (like C, C++, or Java) and \"interpreted (or scripting) languages\" (like JavaScript, python, ruby, perl) depending on which route is used.\n\nFor (closed-source) compiled apps, only the byte/machine code is distributed. There is no deterministic method of reversing the compilation process back to get the original source code. There are many reasons for this but two stand out:\n\n1. Optimization. The compiler is much smarter than human programmers so when it compiles the code, it makes changes to the actual logic. This produces the same result that the programmer intended, but performs the task much more efficiently so that the code runs faster, uses less memory, or both, compared to what the programmer actually wrote\n\n2. There's More Than One Way To Do It. Programming languages are much more verbose than machine code. There could be thousands (or even infinite) ways to write the same program in a given high level language, that all compile to the same machine code. There would be no way to know which one of those alternatives was intended, given the machine code, so reversal is impossible.\n\nOn the other hand, for interpreted code, the source code is generally what's distributed, because there is no intermediary phase of compiling to machine code. Most developers of such software stick to an open source model for this reason, but for others, there are alternatives, such as obfuscation (turning source code into intentionally less-readable source code prior to distribution).\n\nEditing to add: one of the big reasons why source code is verbose and machine code is not is that in source code (for most useful real-world languages, anyway), things have names: variables, constants, functions, classes... all of these things are named (hopefully) to indicate what they're for, what they do, what they mean. When the source is converted to machine code, all of this naming is automatically lost. In the machine code, all those things only have numeric addresses -- there's no context of what things mean. The same thing can be accomplished through obfuscation: change every variable name to vNNNNN and every function to fNNNNN and your code will be nearly uninterpretable (to humans) without any change to its meaning to the computer.",
"Think of software as a delicious cake. Think of source code as the recipe for the cake.\n\nFor both open source and closed source software, you get to eat the cake.\n\nFor open source, the recipe is available to you.\nFor closed source, the recipe is a secret kept by the people who sold the cake.\n\nYou can take a closed source cake and attempt to figure out a recipe from it, but you don't really get the recipe."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
328cab | what causes revolutions? how bad do things have to get before such a large number of people agree on how bad things are and come together to fix it? | We hear politicians make promises during their campaigns, yet it seems that even though hardly any of those promises are kept, people don't really hold them accountable. However, there obviously have been times when the people get fed up enough and start a revolution. How come something like this hasn't happened to hold politicians accountable for their promises? How bad does it have to get? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/328cab/eli5_what_causes_revolutions_how_bad_do_things/ | {
"a_id": [
"cq8tbx7",
"cq8vwrm",
"cq8wyx3",
"cq8wzd2",
"cq8x4vq",
"cq8xlig",
"cq8xpjt",
"cq8yhh4",
"cq90u5i",
"cq912e9",
"cq919wf",
"cq91mvb",
"cq93ehg",
"cq941ob",
"cq95tam",
"cq95yqt",
"cq96dgk",
"cq96tp1",
"cq96x08",
"cq97p18",
"cq97zq4",
"cq98oz3",
"cq9943d",
"cq9amfa",
"cq9bdsj",
"cq9g6ot",
"cq9hqoc",
"cq9lfzt",
"cq9lzlo",
"cq9n4pn"
],
"score": [
112,
3,
23,
5,
102,
2,
80,
7,
4,
4,
2,
3,
2,
2,
3,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
4,
2,
5,
2,
3,
8,
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"One big condition is common knowledge. In many cases, each individual feels that things are rotten, but worries that they are the only ones who feel that way. It's when something big happens that makes everyone realize the majority feels things are rotten that a lot can get done.",
"So a revolution is generally described as the complete or almost complete replacement of a nations institutions of order. Every single time we have seen it happen it has been the result of two things. The first being profound incompetence and weakness in the government and the second being intense, concentrated hatred of the government from some portion of the population. \n\nIt takes a lot more than shitty individual politicians to cause a revolution. A revolution is easily among the worst possible things a society or a nation can be subject to, and every single revolution we have seen has created an environment that produces an enormous number of human rights abuses, mostly directed at the most innocent. ",
"According to Lenin there are three major factors contributing to feasibility of revolution:\n\n- Tops can not govern in the old way - the inability of the ruling class to keep intact its rule ;\n- Lower classes do not want to live in the old way - a sharp aggravation of higher than normal and misery of the oppressed classes and their desire to change their lives for the better ;\n- A significant increase in the activity of the masses, drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis , and by the \" upper classes\" into independent historical action.\n\nYou also need a party: a group of charismatic individuals, who drives it. ",
"Listen to Mike Duncan's revolutions podcast. They happen for any number of reasons, and the story is rewritten every generation to better fit the current socio-political agenda.",
"You have clean water. You have a hospital service that will save your life if you have an easily treatable injury or illness (even if that does put you in horrible debt). You have guaranteed access to food. \n\nYou have freedom of speech, at least to the extent that you can hop online and openly call for revolution without a realistic fear of imprisonment. You have freedom to practice any religion you want, to the point where people argue over fucking cakes as if it's the most important thing in the world. The very idea that a gay couple wouldn't get a cake from a specific baker for their wedding, vs the religious rights of that said baker is a national debate. Tons of other places the answer would be 'tough shit' to either or both sides of the debate, but in the US, the very question crucial. That's how fucking serious freedom is to the US.\n\nThere are various welfare systems in place, and even though many people suffer from mental illness, or other circumstances that render them homeless, there is a state sponsored army of people doing their best to prevent that. \n\nExcept for the worst neighbourhoods, virtually everywhere in the US it's safe enough to walk down the street without being robbed or raped or murdered for no reason.\n\nThe US is ranked 5th on the human development index out of all countries. In median wealth, it's not stunning, sitting between 25-30th, but still pretty good on the grand spectrum of the 190 some odd countries in the world (also worth noting that none of the countries above the U.S. have a population larger than 100M, while the U.S. has > 300 M. The next closest 100M population country is Mexico with less than 1/4 the median wealth).\n\nLife in the US on a relative global scale is *awesome*. I say this as not American and I have never lived in the states.\n\nLife during and after a violent revolution is *shit*. War is fucking awful. Most revolutions end with periods of chaos, and widespread death for everyone. No more clean water, electricity, food, safety, houses. And it doesn't even mean that things get better afterwards. It could easily mean that some dictator takes power and everything stays shitty.\n\nA revolution in the US, or really any other English speaking western country, would be fucking terrible. \n\nEdit: Or anywhere for that matter. It's hard to imagine a violent revolution that wouldn't be terrible.",
"If we are looking at this from a purely historical POV revolutions tend to happen after a series of repeatedly negative or bad things. \n\nJohn Locke addresses this in his [\"Second Treatise on Government\"] (_URL_0_) --\n\n\"such Revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in publick affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient Laws, and all the slips of humane frailty will be born by the People, without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the People, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; 'tis not to be wonder'd, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which Government was at first erected. . .\"\n\n**TL:DR** Minor mistakes by government are bearable. We can put up with a lot of shit, but eventually if government continues to be crappy a revolution happens.\n\nSo, I guess government hasn't screwed up enough yet for there to be a revolution.\n\n*Source: I teach college-level history*\n\n[Edit] grammars and adding the rest of Locke's quote.",
"People know that they're probably going to die if they go up against a modern government, so things have to be so bad that they'd rather risk dying than living under the current rule.",
"There's a theory called the \"revolution of rising expectations\". It says that when the standard of living improves, expectations will rise as a result. If those expectations go unfulfilled, revolution will follow. In the words of James Chowning Davies:\n\n > Revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal. People then subjectively fear that ground gained with great effort will be quite lost; their mood becomes revolutionary.\n\nAccording to this interpretation, it's not so much a question of \"how bad things have to get\", but rather things not getting better fast enough.",
" > What causes revolutions? \n\nForeign influence.\n\n\nIf you dig deep enough, you'll find that almost every single revolution was made possible by foreign financing and/or with the covert use of foreign agents on the front lines of the angry crowds of locals.\n\n\nThe biggest and the most dramatic example (as far as the effect on the overall world history goes) is the Russian revolution of 1917. Lenin was financed by Germany to overthrow Russian tsar's regime to get Russia to withdraw its participation in WW1. So it was done for the benefit of Germany while fucking the Russian people in the process for decades after.\n\n\nThe latest example is, well, Ukraine. With \"students\" and \"office managers\" who were surprisingly proficient at making Molotov cocktails and employing group tactics of attacking armored vehicles at just the right time. It's probably safe to say the Ukrainian people are now fucked. As for who derives the benefit, well, we'll see.\n\n\nAnd a good example of what happens when there is no foreign involvement is: Occupy Wall Street. Nobody agitated the angry crowd. Nobody gave them the tools and taught them the tactics and means to engage the cops. Nobody \"steered\" the crowd from the inside to escalate the situation. And so there was no revolution as a result. Just a bunch of pissed off people who dispersed eventually. Thank God FBI, CIA, NSA did their job right and made sure no foreign agents were able to turn a protest into a war, forcing the government's hand and escalating it past the point of no (peaceful) return.\n\n",
" Revolutions are often financed by the very people being revolted against. So they can control their opposition and retain power through another name.\n\n In the French Revolution it was high finance rebelling against the crown for control of the money supply. The little people were just led to the target and thus became the bitches of debt money instead of the monarchy.",
"A full-on revolution never happens until the middle-class, middle-aged, parents of young children are willing/forced to stand up and join a revolution that will put both themselves and their families in danger, be the reason economic, social, religious, or whatever. Most people in this situation will do nearly anything to avoid risking the safety of themselves and especially their families (read: living under a harsh regime, bad government policies, etc). So joining a revolution that will almost certainly cause civil unrest, chaos, and a terrible environment to raise a child is a bad choice. It's a bad choice until it is perceived as the only choice.",
"People are always trying to have some kind of a resistance, even in America. It Just keeps getting worse until enough people come together and overthrow the government",
"**TL;DR If people have it good, losing an election is good enough accountability for them.**\n\nThis is actually something that's talked about a lot by historians and political scientists. As an ELI5 though there are a lot of different explanations for what causes a revolution:\n\n- Not enough food or things that people need.\n- Ideology. People get a new idea about how society should be run. They feel the best way to do this is by rebelling.\n- Reaction to oppression. Some people in society, either explicitly or indirectly, are oppressed by a dominant group in society. The more oppressed, the more they will want to revolt.\n- A weak, illegitimate government.\n\nThere are many more factors than this, and these are gross simplifications of complicated theories, but a revolution needs some mix of all of them to occur. \n\nWhat you're asking , however, is the context of a democracy in which politicians tend to break promises. Which is all of them, really. It is, essentially, a question of democratic stability; why does a revolution not occur even though politicians arguably lack accountability.\n\nTo explain this, let us take two hypothetical countries, Freedomville and Libertyland. Both are democracies. \n\n**Freedomville** has a long history of democracy. People running for elections accept defeat and will not take arms if they lose, and nor shall their supporters. The country is wealthy, people have equal rights, and while wealth is not perfectly even it isn't bad enough that people can complain too much. People feel as if they share, broadly, a common national identity.\n\n**Libertyland**, in contrast, has only had a democracy in place for one generation. It is poorer, and wealth is distributed unevenly. Its people are far from united; there is no clear ethnic, religious, or ideological group that dominates it.\n\nElection time has come for Freedomville. A charismatic candidate promises that they shall improve the economy, lower taxes, spend more and be your personal driver for a week if you vote for them! The citizens of Freedomville approve of this platform and vote them in. \n\nFive years later, the economy has tanked, taxes rise, spending has been slashed, and nobody has had a free ride at all. People are angry. They vote them out. The politician has lost their power, and thus the citizens are content that they have been held accountable. People are annoyed that they didn't get what they want, but hopefully the next guy will.\n\nLibertylands election cycle rolls around, and one hopeful candidate sees the success of Freedomville's presidential platform. So, they successfully offer the same promises and win the election. But, five years later, the economy has tanked, taxes rise, and spending has been slashed. People question his legitimacy. \n\n\"He's one of 'them', trying to oppress us!\" people from all sections of society cry! People are now starving because of the failed economy. Vital services have not just got worse, but collapsed altogether. People start to take take up arms. One group wins out, declares it a revolution, and a new government is sworn in.\n\nExamples of both have, and do, occur all the time. Simply put, there are many, many factors that make a democracy stable. It is not so much a question of \"how bad does it have to get\", but \"can the country actually function as a democracy at all\". Most people are satisfied that a president losing an election IS justice in and of itself because people believe the democratic system does its job. When revolution is not occurring in a democracy, it is functioning as a system of accountability. \n\nEdit: Formatting",
"According to recent data, food prices: _URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nCountries which import lots of their food (Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc.) are particularly vulnerable. An increase in the cost of bread can drop millions below the poverty line. And when you can't provide enough food for those you love, you become desperate. Millions of desperate people do not make for a stable society. \n\nUnfortunately, most governments are run exclusively by the rich who may not recognize these vulnerabilities. This leads to a 'let them eat cake' attitude that makes revolution much more likely. But the revolution is only a symptom of two larger problems, dependency on imported food and unresponsive governments. ",
"This is a major field of political science, Ted gur's \"why men rebel\" is a classic text. There are many more. A debate in the scholarship exists between \"greed and grievance\" as drivers. Then there's the Marxist theory of revolution, which is another can of worms, Hawbsbawm is pretty good for this. He has a big lit review called \"revolutionaries\". Good luck! It's a massive question.",
"I actually took a class that discussed this at length while in undergrad. I believe my professor was published on the topic.\n\nHis theory was that in today's age it came down to a question of assets. People are only wiling to act in certain circumstances. The general population is often hesitant to ask for change out of fear that even if they succeed at first the likelihood of the revolution having long term success was still small.\n\nHe had an interesting proposition based on this idea. He argued that once a population had a per capita income of over a certain level - he postulated around $6200 a year, they had the ability to start moving assets out of the country in order to protect them from seizure.\n\nHis argument assumed that the government had two basic choices in the face of revolution. Either give some of the allowances the population is asking for, or don't. If they choose the latter, he postulated that if per capita income was above the $6200 USD level, the chances of having a revolution were greatly increased because the population could move its assets out of the country. Thereby crippling the economic stability of the nation and making it so that the government is less likely to be able to maintain control.",
"I'm an American and an obvious layperson when it comes to hardship for an entire country of people. However, from observing the Arab Spring it seems when people's very basic necessities begin to become unattainable, that revolutions become imminent. I'm talking about access to food, communication, shelter, etc.",
"It's never just one thing or even a couple but a bunch of things that influence groups over a long enough time. Some key factors that readily stand out have been mentioned. Things like starvation/ constant invasion usually dont promote popularity for the ruling body. These are sources that played major roles in the french revolution as well as the splitting of the Roman Empire (among many other factors). Quite possibly the next most \"common\" is a revolution based on nationalism, more specifically, nationalism against empirical rule. Since the age of colonial empirial expansion, natives have been displaced and new pioneers and explorers settled in distant lands. Given enough time, the successive generations feel more and more disconnected. Mix in, harsh treatment, seemingly unfair laws, and a big enough crowd...revolution (US revolution/ many colonial revolutions).\n Still a plethera of factors that can/do play roles. Economics, corrupt politicians, disease, religion. These factors work well on their own but do wonders when used in combination with other factors. Ie...you take a man who blames group A for group B's problems, people back the new leader of B. He fixes problems, becomes leader, starts war. \nSo much more to add. Also, I studied chemistry in college. History is a hobby so I suggest talking to a historian!",
"Revolutions happen when there is a large amount of dissent. \nSome examples: \n\nThe Russian Revolution- Citizens under the czar's rule are unhappy with the monarchy and want to embrace equality. As a result, the monarchy is overthrown by the Bolsheviks and Communism is set by Lenin\n\nThe Iranian Revolution- Citizens under the Shah are unhappy because the Shah is too close to western ideas and is secularizing Iran.\n\nThe French Revolution- A king that spends does lavish spending and embezzlement with the country's money and the bourgeois want to overthrow the King to establish a republic.\n\nThe American Revolution- Britain's high taxation on goods cause anger within the 13 colonies.\n\nWhy did I list all those revolutions? To emphasize that most revolutions happen because the government set then are often unstable or unjust.",
"It will take at least 4 more viral illegal police shootings before any thing gets done about that. \n\n",
"Interesting question.\nWhen it comes to political parties, there's always somebody else that can come along to promise to change the bad into the good.\nIf one party is failing, the worst outcome is that party may be abolished or shunned, and people will move to another.\nWithin a representative democracy like the US, any number of parties can form for whatever reason you want.\nAnd when we look back through our presidential history, candidates keep roughly half to 2/3rds of their campaign promises, and only flatly break 15-30%.\nSo the majority, usually around 70% of promises are either kept, or stalled by opposition or a lack of interest (meaning even voters didn't care enough to want it followed through).\n\n\nBut for revolution to occur, it's not enough to simply be displeased with the political party you voted for, because the average citizen can either move to a different one, or ignore politics in general and move on with their lives.\nRevolution requires something far more visceral and immediate to threaten a person into action.\nIt requires some sort of interruption with a person's day-to-day life.\n\nIn the past, most revolutions could be traced all the way back to bread. Loafs of simply bread usually dictated whether a populas would revolt or not. \nThe reason is that only when people were not able to afford their daily bread did they see a reason to change current trends.\nRegardless of how bad things are, as long as the person gets their daily necessities, they will begrudgingly continue with their lives and their jobs. Even through depression and loneliness.\n\nDeprive them of shelter, food, or sleep though, and a person will seek to change their environment.\n\nThe bread nowadays can represent any one of those things.\nIn the American revolution, it may loosely be about taxation without representation, but it was the heavy taxes that the Monarchy attempted to enforce, that would have strangled poor families that couldn't afford it that really set it off.\n\nSome people don't realize it, but for nearly decades the colonies had no representation, and they were happy to simply not pay for many things that were deemed to expensive due to the heavy taxes imposed.\nIt wasn't until the British Parliament attempted to enforce payment through what were called the \"Coercive Acts\", which were punitive and heavy. Doing so interrupted people's quality of life to the point they had enough, and revolted.\n\nBasically, it takes immediate threat to a person's quality of life to propel them to action. Otherwise they'll be content to live under the most extreme of conditions.\n\nIn the US, we are all pretty much well fed and well entertained. Even if that comes in the form of reality TV and fast food. We have our basic human necessities, so don't expect revolution here anytime soon.",
"If you're desperate for a revolution just set up a democratically elected government in Central America and wait for the CIA. ",
"Alot of revolts have occoured over the course of hidtory and I mean ALOT the famous ones are famous simply because they were successful. Hell napoleon put down 4 or 5 Italian revolts in as many years if I recall correctly.",
"A big part of it is what's called cascade preference - - basically, the idea that oppressive regimes spend a lot of time and resources in convincing people that *you're the only one who is unhappy*. Even in the most awful regimes, the government is seriously outnumbered by their own people, but because the people have become convinced that they are part of a small number of people that aren't happy, and I'd they complain, they'll get shouted down by others (and/or arrested/executed). \n\nThis works pretty well right up until the moment that someone breaks the collective bubble, like the child declaring that the emperor has no clothes. Sometimes it's a tiny thing that breaks the illusion (the Arab Spring started because a food vendor had finally had enough of being hassled by the cops for kickbacks and operating fees). Once the authority is challenged and regular people don't step up to help the authorities (or even join in the opposition), everything changes. People realize that they are all unhappy with the government, and that they outnumber them a good 20 to 1 and are willing to take a stand (at which point, lots of government officials will stand down, which makes th cascade even more pronounced). ",
"It sounds like you want to know what causes isolated instances of civil unrest or waves of protest to progress into full blown civil war, wherein the established order or power structure changes. I'll use a couple examples from history, but to synthesize, revolutions occur when moderation fails to yield positive outcomes. The channels that moderates use to advance change, like reforms to the legal system, and political house-cleaning, they have to function or it turns moderates into radicals. Politicians have always mislead the public about their intentions. That doesn't rile enough feathers to abandon a system and replace it with another. Especially true if you live in a place with political plurality. If one party or regime screws you over, they can be replaced. But two things happen that cause discontent to evolve into the kinds of civil strife we tend to associate w/ revolutions. The first is that those channels of civil discourse get repressed, through censorship and violence. This forces the discontent underground, where it can spread very quickly without notice. The second thing that happens is formally moderate people become victims of repression, as the state (or power structure) freaks out and tries to control whatever it can at any cost. Think back to Egypt during the fall of Mubarak. Thugs get sent out into the streets, innocent protesters get beat up, bystanders get hit by rocks and tear gas... This is enough to make people abandon faith in the status quo sorting things out. It makes a revolutionary outcome look not just possible, but necessary. \n\nSo on to my examples from history. In 1905, Russia went through a dry run for the 1917 revolution. While there were elements of Marxism motivating the protests in 1905, a large swath of the populace was sympathetic for other reasons, like lack of food, and negative impacts of the industrial revolution, and aristocratic government w/o representation. Then an Orthodox priest named Father Gappo led a march on an imperial palace to deliver a petition. Peaceful Russians in their Sunday best sang and walked through the streets until they got close to the palace. Imperial guards opened fire on the crowd, killing dozens. This event had the effect of radicalizing scores of moderates. Marxist groups saw their ranks swell afterwards, and even though the 1905 revo did not achieve much, the steam continued to build. WWI worsened social conditions, and the government completely lost control in 1917. \n\nNext, Weimar Germany after WWI. The democratic (moderate) socialist government took power after the fighting stopped. They pushed thru reforms typical of democratic socialist regimes, but fell out of favor quickly after the global economy tanked in 1929. The 1930s were really bad for Germans; between hyper-inflation, war reparations, predatory speculation of commodities, and high tariffs, few were unaffected. The middle class burghers tended to blame the liberal elements in the political system, and promptly got behind the numerous nationalist, fascist, and radical socialist parties active in Germany. And active they were.. Berlin had about 35 daily publications in the 1930s. Eventually, the most appealing party to emerge from this shift was the NSDAP, later known as the Nazi Party. The rise of Nazi fascism is as much a revolution as the rise of Leninist/Stalinist Marxism in Russian. Society was completely re-imagined. \n\nTo conclude, it is essential that civil society has open discourse, and refrains from political repression. The press has a responsibility in that duty. The absence of moderation is dangerous to the social order. It creates a lot of inertia, and it usually knocks over anything capable of slowing it down before *being hijacked by autocrats and power-mongers. ",
"ITT people are failing to realize that a full blown revolution wouldn't be \"civilians get angry and the military stop them\", but more \"civilians get angry and most of the military join them because things are as fucked up for them as they are for everybody\". \n\nPeople are throwing around phrases like \"what about North Korea, they have nothing over there!\", and while that's true, the army over there is, mostly, better off than the common folk (even if it's just by a little, that's enough to differentiate \"us vs them\"). \n\nArmed revolutions are a step above civil wars. ",
"I think the Declaration of Independence explains it perfectly \n\n > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--",
"Revolution in the United States is absolutely possible, should happen and hopefully will in the near future. Will this be a violent revolution? Absolutely not. That's not necessary and probably wouldn't work here anyways.\n\nHere's one example of intellects in this country that are working on making it happen: _URL_0_\n\nFor those that are saying we don't have it that bad, that we have access to water, medical treatment, food, etc. Maybe that's the case with you, but look around. Your small pocket of comfort is not what all Americans experience. Whole towns in CA are without water, about 20% of our children grow up in poverty, not knowing where or if they'll have their next meal. Our medical system, while better than it was a decade ago, is still extremely flawed and caters to those with $. Our young veterans are committing suicide at staggering rates, countless are homeless and our elected officials are more concerned with donors and being re-elected. Our incarceration rate is embarrassing, as is the poverty rate and we are continuously slipping in education when compared to other developed nations. \n\nI love the US, I think it's a great country and I thank Zeus that I was born here...but I know we can do much better and that we owe it to ourselves and our children to strive to fix these problems and not just say it could be worse, it's not that bad, or that there's nothing we can do.",
"The US Declaration of Independence has a pretty specific list of grievances that can cause a revolution.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Traditionally revolutions were caused by starvation, extreme poverty, and plague. Take the French Revolution. The French government went bankrupt from helping to fund the American Revolution, added in with a lot of people starving in the streets of Paris and illness basically provided the fuel for the French Revolution. When Napoleon came into power, he ordered that there be a bakery on every street corner in France (as well as standardizing the bread recipe) to ensure that the populous did not starve and riot (this was also a constant concern from the Roman Emperors too). \n\nThink of the Russian Revolution: There was no parliament, the Czar ruled the country, they had lost the war against the Japanese, and then lost a huge number of men during the First World War before the Revolution took place. There was widespread starvation, protests were forbidden, and people were trapped in a never ending cycle of poverty and starvation. The idea of elections, of people having a vote, of having their voices heard (even when politicians lie through their teeth) still give people a sense of power in a system that wasn't really built for the bureaucracy we have today. If during the economic crash of 2006 there had been wide spread starvation and something like Ebola raging through the countryside, then yeah, revolution probably would have taken place."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch3s2.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/food-shortages-in-syria-send-prices-soaring-compounding-hunger-problem/2012/12/06/a47af3d4-3f22-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html",
"http://m.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.garalperovitz.com/"
],
[
"http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html"
],
[]
] |
|
5zmwcn | why can't they make smartphones that are able to shoot horizontally while holding it vertically? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zmwcn/eli5_why_cant_they_make_smartphones_that_are_able/ | {
"a_id": [
"dezcwqd",
"dezd94g"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"it's technically possible, but more expensive depending how they do it and not worth it because some (horrible) people actually do want to film vertical",
"The sensor chip is physically a rectangle so it's not just a matter that you can fix in software. Well ok you could, at the cost of throwing away half of your pixels. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
4dh2hf | why is there a massive interest in virtual reality lately, isn't vr around for decades already? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dh2hf/eli5_why_is_there_a_massive_interest_in_virtual/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1qtjhm",
"d1qtjwd",
"d1qto8f",
"d1qtt19",
"d1quz5n",
"d1qv64m",
"d1qyr9e",
"d1r6apq",
"d1rc3zf"
],
"score": [
6,
53,
4,
5,
35,
3,
3,
41,
2
],
"text": [
"Sort of? In clunky forms that nobody ever found immersive or anything other than a gimmick. The recent change is that it's actually *good*.",
"It's been around, but it's been lacking in the \"reality\" in a very significant way. For example, VRML from the late 90s was interesting in that it was easy to create a 3d world and navigate it, it wasn't going to be a compelling experience for entertainment, and wasn't going to be immersive as a user experience. There is _some_ sense that we've reached a critical mass of hardware and software capabilities to make the vision of VR something that can be compelling to everyday folk.",
"Been around but never in a small compact size that anyone can use. That also seems to be of high quality.",
"These things get rediscovered from time to time and sometimes they finally stick and other times they fizzle out. Take 3D motion pictures for example, it has had at least three periods of popularity, but each time it went away.\n\nAnother example is the portable touch-screen computer. It went through decades of being \"the future\", but it took the right marriage of electronics, software, and marketing plus a merge with cell phones for something like the iPhone and now it is everywhere.\n\nVR might make it this time since we have better display technology, better graphics processors, and everything is just cheaper. It might also just be a fad that isn't ready to be appealing for people for a long time. We likely won't know for a while yet as we are only just now seeing actual products ship.",
"Does VirtualBoy count? Because it shouldn't.",
"the expense was also a huge part. A good VR headset and hardware from the late 80s early 90s was hundreds of thousands of dollars and required dedicated hardware and software.",
"New technology goes through a pretty predictable pattern, like this:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nGenerally they go through a quick peak of hype, but aren't mature enough initially to live up to expectations. We've recently gotten into the \"slope of enlightenment\" phase for VR. It still needs to mature some before is widely adopted.\n\nNote that adoption rates follow a trend too: _URL_0_",
"We are now at a convergence point for all of the technology required for good VR.\n\n Screens good enough that they can produce a convincing image even when just a few inches from our eyes.\n\nGyroscope tech accurate enough to keep us from getting sick. \n\nHead tracking, motion controllers, computers powerful enough to render realistic looking environments at high frame rates. Everything is just now coming together to form an enjoyable VR experience at a price point the mass market can afford. ",
"Proof of concept has been around forever, but a practical, affordable consumer product has not. All the pieces finally fell into place to make it something that exists outside of niche, expensive projects and something that can be priced at the same level as a new smart phone.\n\nSince it's affordable and there are dev tools available, startups and others an actually make games/movies/apps for it.\n\nIt's like the difference between the first computers many decades ago, and the desktop computer revolution in the 90s. Regular people can get in on it, basically."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/technology%20adoption%20rate%20century.png",
"http://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/images/ase-app-atm-fig1.jpg"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
1dlgdb | dante's inferno | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dlgdb/eli5_dantes_inferno/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9rfhmd",
"c9rgmt6"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Inferno is the first part of the epic (the literature meaning) poem *Divine Comedy*. In the story the author, Dante, describes his trip to Hell while guided by the Roman poet Virgil, who takes him through the 9 circles of Hell which were as follows: \n\n1. Limbo\n2. Lust\n3. Gluttony\n4. Greed\n5. Anger\n6. Heresy\n7. Violence\n8. Fraud\n9. Treachery",
"As Jim777PS3 said below, it's the first part of the *Divine Comedy*. \n\nIn *Inferno*, Dante is taken through Hell by Virgil, and he sees what happens to people who commit various 'sins' during their lives, ranging from pretty mild (like not really being a serious Christian) to more serious (violence, betrayal etc). The punishments given to people in the most part reflect what their sins were. \n\nThe *Divine Comedy* is an attempt by Dante to explain how the whole earthly world and afterlife is set up according to his understanding of Christianity. It's considered a hugely important work for lots of reasons; just as a poem, in terms of language and ideas it is amazing; it brings together a whole lot of strands of intellectual and artistic thought at that time; it actually *does* explain the Christian theology of Dante's time. Plus more reasons I don't really know about."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
x4u6g | music recognition software like shazam. | This sounds extremely stupid, but I was wondering how exactly music recognition software recognizes music. I have been able to tag music from the radio, in the mall, and even off of TV with people talking over it. I know it's not "magic" but I want to know how it's able to do that. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/x4u6g/eli5_music_recognition_software_like_shazam/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5j6nct"
],
"score": [
34
],
"text": [
"Remember how, when you were a kid, you'd try to hastily sketch someone's face? When you were young, the face probably looked pretty silly - the features wouldn't be proportionate, the eyes would probably be uneven - you'd barely be able to tell it was a face, right? Then, as you grew older, your ability to draw faces got better. With the same amount of time and using the same amount of lines, you could draw a better face than before, this time taking into account the unique features that separate people's faces and carrying them over to the paper.\n\nThink of music recognition like that. Services like Shazam need to get that song recognized, but they can't just send a clip of the whole song and compare it; that would take incredible processing power and quite a while for the database to locate the correct song. Rather, music recognition focuses on a song's *acoustic fingerprint*, which is a property unique to every piece of music. Instead of trying to draw the whole 'face', the acoustic fingerprint picks up tell-tale features like the song's spectral flatness (how the audio deviates from pure noise), tempo (speed), zero crossings (where the sound waves go from positive to negative/vice versa), bandwidth (the difference between upper/lower frequencies), and so forth. Think of these as the easily recognizable facial features; two songs may sound very similar, but their acoustic properties will be very different. \n\nNow, once you've stripped away everything but those few recognizable details, you can easily search through a database. Each detail works to narrow down the search; for example, there are millions of songs, but only thousands of them have a tempo similar to, say, Led Zeppelin's Black Dog. And only a few dozen of them have similar zero crossovers. \n\nAs for how the audio recognition is able to pick out music even through background noise; background noise is generally highly random and can't be analyzed as anything more than that, noise. Music, on the other hand, is rhythmic and easier to isolate. It's still possible to confuse audio recognition enough by making noise over the song it's trying to recognize, which is why services like Shazam generally listen for ten seconds or so to get multiple samples in case one of them has background noise.\n\nEDIT: Also, the above reasons are why music recognition services can't pick up the sound from live performances; even if the song sounds exactly the same to the human ear, the acoustic characteristics will be vastly different, making it impossible to identify."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
32vnk2 | in the us, are egyptians, algerians, tunisians, moroccans, white south africans considered african americans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32vnk2/eli5_in_the_us_are_egyptians_algerians_tunisians/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqf2juy",
"cqf2ocd",
"cqf2pnx",
"cqf2yn8"
],
"score": [
4,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Technically, yes. Being ignorant or unaware, we tend not to consider them \"African American.\" Generally, we use \"African American\" as the politically correct way to say \"black.\"",
"No they would not be. Most would consider them to be arab, while african american is used as a more politically correct way to say black",
"Here in the US, our society can be ignorant. We refer to most black people as African Americans even though most were born in the US. If you came from any of those countries you would technically be an African American, but if you are white you will probably be referred to as an American (if you mean said person gets citizenship), foreigner/tourist, or South African/Tunisian/Egyptian/etc. If you are a tan skin color, then you will probably be referred to as Arab, Muslim, or your country's origin (so again, South African/Tunisian/Egyptian/etc.). I do not mean to be racist in any way with this comment if someone interprets it in that way.",
"No, we don't think of them in those terms even if it is technically accurate. When we say \"African-American\" here we are referring to people descended from sub-Saharan races, what you think of when you hear \"black people.\"\n\nI guess we tend to lump North Africans together as Arabs, but I suspect that's not an accurate term for the eastern North African races. I don't know any Moroccans, so it's not a question I've ever really faced.\n\nReally \"African American\" was created specifically as an acceptable term to refer to blacks in aftermath of the main surge of the civil rights movement. It was born of the struggle for the descendants of slaves to finally get their government to quit shitting on them.\n\nI'm a white person trying to address issues of race in which I still have a lot to learn. If anyone else thinks I need a schooling in these matters, I'm happy to take criticism."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
43c1qv | what is all this i'm reading about 'negative interest rates' in banks around the world? does this mean that if you leave your money deposited in the bank, they will start to take your money away from you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43c1qv/eli5_what_is_all_this_im_reading_about_negative/ | {
"a_id": [
"czh4qll"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"its happened. Its central bank rates, its unlikely that any consumer account would go negative, they would have to eat the spread as a cost of doing business.\n\nBut banks dont have any options to stick their cash under the mattress like people do. So they are enticed to lend that money at low rates which spurs commercial activity."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
244wsf | how do tv channels know the number of people that watched a show? and if i record a show and watch it later, do i still count as a viewer (can they also track that?)? | Always wanted to know this. For instance, if theres a series I cant watch live but i record it and watch later, do they know it has more viewers?
(sorry for bad english) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/244wsf/eli5_how_do_tv_channels_know_the_number_of_people/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch3mcfp",
"ch3mlpl"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"There's a company called Nielsen that tracks the TV watching behavior of a bunch of households. Based on what those households are watching, the extrapolate that behavior to the rest of the country.",
"The Nielsen Company collects traditional television ratings data by choosing a cross section of sample households and giving these viewers a set-top Nielsen box. The Nielsen box keeps a digital record of what these so-called \"Nielsen families\" are watching. \nWhat many consumers don't know is that in addition to retrieving scheduling information, they also share data about what you're watching and when. You might remember the notorious Janet Jackson \"nip slip\" during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime performance. After the incident, TiVo released a statement calling it \"the most TiVo'ed moment,\" as TiVo users paused and replayed that clip more times than any other moment in the history of TiVo up to that point [source: Reuters]. While that in itself is interesting, the underlying point is even more revealing: TiVo and other DVRs collect your viewing information, and DVR companies are even using that data to release their own ratings numbers for recorded programs.\n\nTIVO/DVR tell when you watched the show & networks track how many watch for up to a week. So if you watch the recording within a week it gets counted. What I don't know is if it monitors to see if you fast-forward through the commercials."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
8i0svb | how can amazon echo pick up the "wake word" if it doesn't listen to you all the time | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8i0svb/eli5_how_can_amazon_echo_pick_up_the_wake_word_if/ | {
"a_id": [
"dyo0rf7"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"When they say it's not listening, they mean it's not uploading everything you say to the internet. It can check locally for the Wake word and then send what follows up to the Internet."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6045of | isn't the freshwater we have to work with just going in a cycle? how are we losing fresh water? | You are told not to take long showers because you're wasting water, but the water goes through the sewers and is cleaned and returned to the water supply, right? Same thing with toilet water, dishwasher, sink, washer, etc? So, where are we actually losing water when we use it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6045of/eli5_isnt_the_freshwater_we_have_to_work_with/ | {
"a_id": [
"df3b7x1",
"df3bviu",
"df3cnf0",
"df3eomq",
"df3i90q",
"df3ir9a"
],
"score": [
33,
24,
3,
7,
13,
4
],
"text": [
"When the water ends up in the oceans, it slows down the cycling a lot. Water in aquifers (the stores under the ground that we access when we use wells) and water on Earth's surface are the cheapest to use. We have been either polluting these (surface) or using them too fast for new water to filter in. We have also allowed a lot of water to go to the ocean(storm water runoff from developed areas) , rather than slowly go into the aquifers through the ground. So the result is we are using aquifer water faster than they are getting refilled. When that water is depleted, all water will become more expensive. We will still have it, but it will either be salty, polluted, or far from where it needs to be, and all of the fixes for this cost money.\nSorry if this isn't too coherent, I haven't finished my first cup of coffee for the day.",
" > the water goes through the sewers and is cleaned and returned to the water supply, right?\n\nProbably not. I'm my city there is no treatment at all, just a pipe 200m (656ft) long that goes into the ocean. Other cities have various levels of treatment before dumping into the ocean or river. I think it's rare for a city to have enough treatment to make the water drinkable again.",
"If you live somewhere you depend on rainwater filling a tank for water then as long as your tank is big enough and it rains often enough and you don't overuse water you are fine.\nBut throw one thing out, too small a tank, too little rain, too much water used... you got a problem. No problem, just build a real big tank and be careful about useage and it'll rain eventually...\nThen you have some people move in, water useage goes up 600% instantly, you can't afford another tank and it's still not raining.\n\nTake that to the city and everyone on mains supply water is just sharing a big tank. City gets too big, wastes water or it just doesn't rain for ages and the whole city has a supply problem.\n\nThe cycle of water was providing excess water to use in places it was collected, that isn't the case everywhere now. The weather can't provide enough rain in some places.\n\nMore people and industry using more water all the time. There is still more fresh water than needed for all the people, but not necessarily where the people are.",
"In a typical case, water that is \"cleaned\" by municipal treatment facilities is clean enough to be released back in rivers or the sea. It's not clean enough to be used directly. For example, read [this] (_URL_0_) about how Las Vegas gets its fresh water from Lake Mead, but treated water is not put straight back in to the lake. Instead, it is released in to something called the [Las Vegas Wash], a river / wetland complex where natural processes work on the water over time, and impurities are broken down or filtered out. \n\nWhich is fine if you have created a lake to supply you, but the situation in California is different. Much more fresh water is used than the natural sources can supply. So e.g. the Colorado River has basically stopped flowing by the time it reaches the Arizona/California border, and Lake Mead is largely to blame. The \"water table\" under parts of California is being drained more quickly than it's being replenished, making it harder to find fresh water.",
"We aren't necessarily \"losing\" freshwater. We are simply using the limited supply we have at a greater rate than nature replenishes it. ",
"We have a major problem with this in Florida. As we draw more and more freshwater from the aquifer, the amount of rain and time needed to \"refill\" the aquifer is insufficient. As freshwater levels fall in the aquifer, seawater filters in to fill the space. This process was especially bad in and around the Tampa area, where they finally had to build a desalination plant on Tampa bay in order to meet the needs of the population. As Florida continues to grow, we will continue to see the gradual encroachment of seawater into the aquifer, eventually leaving it completely unuseable."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://lasvegassun.com/news/2014/aug/24/how-our-water-goes-toilet-tap/"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
4nul23 | how is the uk so prominent and how has it been such a big factor in history despite its small size? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nul23/eli5how_is_the_uk_so_prominent_and_how_has_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"d4720em",
"d472f1e",
"d472ixb",
"d472npm",
"d472s8y"
],
"score": [
8,
7,
3,
37,
3
],
"text": [
"Kicked off industrial revolution, thus was able to industrialize before anyone else, and claim the advantages that came with it.",
"Being an island the UK developed a large powerful navy in order to protect itself, this then had several consequences:-\n\nFirstly by being relatively safe from attack less money was required for an army or other defences compared to mainland Europe. Being protected from invasion people were more inclined to take on long term projects, like land drainage, industrial development and scientific studies and with less money being needed to fund the army surplus investment was available for this.\n\nSecondly a large navy in peacetime meant that the UK dominated maritime trade at a time when moving goods across land was very expensive due to the dire state of roads. This of course generated extra wealth and income, this in turn meant that the UK was constantly looking for new markets especially concerning countries outside of Europe.\n\nAs a result of improved agriculture population boomed, however with improved agricultural technology less people were needed to work the land. This led to city and industrial growth and at the same time people travelling abroad to the new colonies to seek their fortune.\n\nThis is a very brief look hope it helps.",
"tbh the naval power is the main thing and we the uk taking over country's. ie india, alot of caribbean, parts of africa. i mean we own a 1/3 of the world landmass at one point. not bad for a country that is smaller then several states in america. then the industrial revolution aswell",
"A combination of several factors that led into one another\n\n1) Naval power: As an island nation (after losing it's French lands after the 100 years war), the \"UK\" (which I will include the English Kingdoms before the UK formally formed) figured out that they can't be invaded by any army if no army could ever actually land on it's shores. So, starting sometime shortly after the 100 years war, the UK government invested heavily in an effective navy. This allowed English Privateers (basically pirates officially backed by a country against their military foes in ) could prey on Spanish gold shipments from the New World, hold off invasion attempts like the Spanish Armada, and most importantly, defend it's colonial interests (more on that in a minute). When UK did participate in European land wars, their homeland wasn't devastated by battles or the looting of hungry armies, they were shielded from many of the horrible economic destruction wars wrought.\n\n2) Colonial interests: At it's height, Britain's colonial Empire was [MASSIVE](_URL_1_) (although do be aware it didn't hold onto all these colonies at the same times). In the Caribbean they had sugar producing island, tobacco producing plantations in the 13 colonies, and eventually came to have a monopoly on many of the Indian Ocean spice trades. All these new lands also gave the UK a much bigger tax base and customer base for it's various manufactured goods. The British East India Trading company was absurdly powerful, and had the legal right to even wage wars in the name of higher trade profits. Once again, with the UK's unrivaled naval powers, the rest of Europe really couldn't do much to oppose the UK's empire (France tried in the seven years war, and lost big time). All this colonies, trading, and massive/expensive naval warfare dictated the development of...\n\n3) Finical institutions: So many aspects of finance we just take as a given today, such as stocks, bonds, and central banks were either invented in England or stolen from the Dutch and refined. This gave the UK massive tools to grow economy that many other European nations only could dream of. This all made the UK the perfect place for...\n\n4) The industrial revolution. While the steam engine is actually is [thousands of years old](_URL_0_), it was finally put to good use in the UK. First just to drain out mines, but soon to power machines that no amount of muscle could move. Factories popped up, massively increasing how much consumer goods a given amount of human effort could produce.",
"What it mostly comes down to is they are an island: they have a moat.\n\nThis means they were protected from any land based war/invasion for the last 1000 years.\n\nWhenever any other European country found itself weakened due to internal struggles, or because they screwed up an invasion themselves or because they just were in the way, they had foreign troops at home and were occupied or even absorbed.\n\nNo such thing for the English. Invading them required a huge upfront investment of not just an army big enough to do an occupation, but also a navy big enough to bring them over.\n\nThe English didn't have to worry about Mongols and Turks and Moors. The didn't have to worry about foreign intervention when they split off from the catholic church (something that devastated the rest of Europe for centuries). When they had their War of the Roses, when they had their long string of rebellions when the nobility drove the free yeomen off their land to start capitalism, there was no neighbour that could take advantage of the situation.\n\nThe English could also afford to change side in alliances whenever they saw fit because of that. Its not like the one they screwed over could punish them easily. The English-French animosity that lasted for centuries never resulted in French troops English ground. The long lasting French-German animosity had both sides winning an losing over centuries.\n\nThis protectedness by a moat also allowed the English to have periods without having to spend much on armies for protection. It also allowed them later to have much more army abroad for colonization and not worry about home protection.\n\nThis also shaped the nature of their internal politics. Protection from foreign invasion was a far greater responsibility for the continental rulers. Continental populations saw strong much more Kings as a necessary protection, while on the island the strong kings and their armies where much more freely used and seen as a tool of oppression.\n\nThere hasn't been a real thorough cleansing of the English/British upper class since the Norman conquest. Pretty much the same families that came into power back then still hold most of the land and wealth and most of the positions of power. Just that they are much more inbred and degenerate today now, and feel much more at home fucking kids together with their Arab sheik friends in the same London hotels than with Birmingham rowed house dwellers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6d/The_British_Empire_Anachronous.png"
],
[]
] |
||
xb2bw | how can north korea compete in the olympics? | Title pretty much says it all. How were they allowed out of North Korea? I imagine that they would be followed by guards the whole time and not allowed to socialize with the other athletes. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xb2bw/how_can_north_korea_compete_in_the_olympics/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5kset8",
"c5kt2nu",
"c5ktqna",
"c5kvtg8",
"c5kxnw5",
"c5kykt1",
"c5kz8xx",
"c5l07bc",
"c5l10vn",
"c5l2039",
"c5l2y9d"
],
"score": [
10,
63,
22,
4,
20,
9,
7,
7,
5,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Well their families probably have guns to their heads currently. All hail dear leader",
"North Korea wants to appear normal to the rest of the world. They also want to appear better than the rest of the world.\n\nWhat better way than to compete in the Olympics. The government wants these athletes to compete. They probably send along an entourage of guards to keep them company.\n\nAccording to Vice (not the best source I know), they make it obvious to the individual leaving the country that the government could arrest the individuals family at any time, so they have an incentive to behave while outside.\n",
"Do they show the Olympics on television in North Korea?",
"Their athletes are loyal party members. ",
"Certain North Koreans are allowed to leave the country with permitted visas, believe it or not.\n\nIn fact, many North Koreans were living and working in Libya for the North Korean government during the revolution there, and because of what they witnessed, they were banned from travel back to NK.\n\nBelieve it or not, many North Koreans don't actually want to leave. There are a good number of them that believe and agree with the message of the government, and it's these kinds of people that typically get sent overseas for anything from the Olympics to FIFA to work contracts.",
"Sorry OP but I'm going to piggyback this thread because I have a similar question. Do north korean athletes get punished if they do poorly? \n\nI was watching a women's soccer game earlier and the north koreans lost 5-0 and I just kept thinking about what happened to the [men's Iraqi soccer team years ago](_URL_0_).\n\nI figure that since north korea really wants to show the rest of the world how amazing they are they probably will want the absolute best from their athletes.",
"I imagine everyone in here is going to get a PM saying \"you have been banned from posting in /r/pyongyang\".",
"Some athletes hail from [Japan](_URL_0_). I remember there was a prominent North Korean soccer player who would travel from Japan to play internationally with the North Korean team.",
"North Korea, for all it's stunning flaws, is very normal in a lot of ways we don't often think about. People come and go all the time. There are a lot of North Koreans who travel for business. Many of their kids have toys. They watch TV. They live.\n\nEven if they can't fool any one into thinking they are normal, they can at least seem less bat shit insane by showing up at the olympics.",
"Followup question: since they are worse than South Africa, which got kicked out, why aren't they banned for diplomatic reasons?",
"Compete? They've already won everything!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Iraqi-soccer-no-kick-under-Odai-Players-2650096.php"
],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongryon"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
ro9gy | how can cereals like fruit loops and captain crunch claim to be "part of a balanced breakfast" without getting sued? | It seems to be incredibly misleading if you look at the actual ingredients.
Related: How is a "balanced breakfast" defined? (And, who defined it?) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ro9gy/eli5_how_can_cereals_like_fruit_loops_and_captain/ | {
"a_id": [
"c47cald",
"c47cnoz",
"c47f46u"
],
"score": [
5,
11,
5
],
"text": [
"There is no strict definition of a balanced breakfast, which is part of how they get away with it. They also advertise it as \"*part* of a balanced breakfast.\" That way, they can say, \"Well, the cereal provides the calories, while the rest of your balanced breakfast provides all the vitamins/minerals.\"",
"There is no standard definition of \"balanced breakfast\". For some food terms, such as \"fat free\", the FDA has established guidelines on how and when the term can be used. But nobody has established what \"balanced breakfast\" means.\n\nFurthermore, \"part of a balanced breakfast\" is a delightful bit of weasel wording that allows them to get away with nearly anything. You'll probably notice that when the full balanced breakfast is shown, there's usually orange juice, toast, milk, and sometimes fruit. \n\nAs a side note, here's a link from the FDA on what you can and cannot claim in your food labeling. It's interesting reading, but definitely not ELI5:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Also, why isn't Captain Crunch sued for the bodily harm they cause. When I eat it I feel like someone is taking shards of glass and slicing the roof of my mouth to pieces."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.fda.gov/Food/LabelingNutrition/LabelClaims/ucm111447.htm"
],
[]
] |
|
44ecgn | would modern medicine (such as antibiotics) have similar effects on the human body as you go further back in time? | I'm essentially asking if you could treat something like bronchitis with today's medicine or would the medicine have to be tweaked in any way? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44ecgn/eli5_would_modern_medicine_such_as_antibiotics/ | {
"a_id": [
"czpm4jl"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Modern antibiotics would likely be even more effective in a world without antibiotic resistant bacteria. Some medicines and dosages would obviously require tweaking to account for the generally very poor health (by modern standards) of historical people."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5zecg4 | why can we put plates in the microwave but not things like silverware? | I know there are microwaveable plates and such but I want to understand why and how something is not okay to out in the microwave.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zecg4/eli5_why_can_we_put_plates_in_the_microwave_but/ | {
"a_id": [
"dexenj8",
"dexeon8"
],
"score": [
2,
5
],
"text": [
"You actually can put metal in a microwave, as long as its smooth. The walls of the microwave are, after all, made of metal. Metal reflects microwaves. The problem arises when you get thin edges, such as forks or foil. The microwaves can generate a strong electric field along these edges, and because metals have lots of free charge carriers (electrons; this is what makes them good conductors) you can get a heavy charge build up on these edges. This can then arc to nearby edges. \n\nCeramics don't have free charge carriers, they are strong insulators. So electric fields can't build up charge. Couple that with their smooth edges, and you can put a plate in a microwave just fine. \n\nEDIT: please note I am NOT advocating putting ANY metal in a microwave - better to be safe than sorry.",
"Microwaves are essentially high-powered radio waves, so think about how your radio works -- you have a long, pointy metal part that sticks up from your radio that \"soaks up\" radio waves from the air, and turn it into electrical flow that, in your radio, gets turned into sound.\n\nThose long, straight forks and spoons you put into the microwave will do the same: soak up the radio waves and turn it into an electrical charge. Unfortunately, they're relatively large, compared to the interior of the microwave, and the microwave is beaming 500 - 1000 watts of energy into the enclosure. All those watts start building up on the silverware, but unlike the food, the silverware isn't getting hot -- it's building up an electrical charge.\n\nThat charge is going to arc to ground when it builds up a whole lot of energy; that spark will jump off the pointy end of your utensil to something and cause a bunch of damage at the points it touches. \n\nYou'll note that microwaves are, well, made of metal, and some microwaves even have a metal rack or thermometer that can go inside; those are there because they are designed for microwaves; your fork is an unexpected thing that hasn't been designed around, so it's going to throw things off."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
3y7lrg | einsteins definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y7lrg/eli5einsteins_definition_of_insanity_as_doing_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"cyb6x3t",
"cyb6y9j",
"cyb7znh",
"cybbpzk"
],
"score": [
8,
5,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"He is just saying that if you want things to change, yet you don't change your own actions, you are being foolish. Repeating the same actions will probably lead to the same outcomes. Change must come from trying something different.",
"What's not to get? What's being said is: a person can be considered insane when they repeat actions over and over and expect something different to happen even though nothing has changed in the process. It's only funny or witty because he's a scientist. As a Chemistry major I've run some of the same experiments multiple times, doing the same distillation on 4 separate days to get the same yield or mixing the same reagents and hoping to make gold when all you make is some shitty alkene. He's making fun of science, he's implying that scientists are insane because they meticulously track and repeat experiments looking for something different to happen and create an out of the norm result. ",
"Einstein is the sort of person people like to attribute quotes to. That particular quote actually comes from a 1981 text of Narcotics Anonymous. I imagine it was intended to get people to join Narcotics Anonymous, since they presumably hadn't yet.\n\n[Insanity](_URL_0_) is actually a legal term meaning mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior. I am not a psychologist, but I don't know any mental illness that results in you doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Doing the same thing over and over again sounds like OCD, but I don't think it makes you expect different results.",
"I have a friend who has been a jailer since 2009. In 6 years he's been passed up for promotion 4 separate times. How he goes about it is the definition of insanity; He goes to work on time, works his full shift, only calls off when necessary, then goes home when his shift is over. \n \nBut that's it, that's all he does. He doesn't pick the brains of the people holding the position he wants. He doesn't do physical improvement. He doesn't even volunteer for extra shifts, or agree to take the shit shifts to make his boss's job easier. All he does is his job, then applies for the promotion when it's available. \n \nYou get passed up once, maybe someone was more qualified. Twice, and maybe you should start finding out why and work on that. Four times or more? If nothing has changed since the first time, being hopeful that the outcome will be different is just an insane way to think. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=979"
],
[]
] |
||
eeg3o5 | what is the use of inductors in a circuit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eeg3o5/eli5_what_is_the_use_of_inductors_in_a_circuit/ | {
"a_id": [
"fbtkqj2",
"fbtll6q"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"An inductor is like a resistor that only works with alternating current. When a changing current pass through a coil it produces a magnetic fields, and when that current is changing, the magnetic field induces voltage in the opposite direction. \n\nInductors are often used in conjunction with capacitors to create an LC circuit. Inductors make the changing voltage in a circuit lag behind the current, while capacitors make the current lag behind the voltage. The amount of lag changes with the frequency of the AC. At the right frequency these lags cancel each other out, resistance drops and a resonance is created. This is how radio tuners select just one signal while rejecting interference for all the others.",
"As previous poster mentions, it can be used in several configurations in conjunction with resistors and capacitors to form filters and with variable inductors or capacitors - tuned filters. These are essential to \"select\" certain frequency ranges from a signal and is the core of FM/AM radio etc. \n\nIn modern electronics, inductors are generally used as \"chokes\" - the ferrite bead you sometimes see on a charging cable (or more usually built into the power connector nowadays) is and example. Chokes are used to block high frequency noise from one device to another or from one circuit to another. \n\nIn high power circuits, these chokes allow devices to turn on and off safely without generating large spikes that might otherwise trip/damage other devices connected to it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
ljejs | how does rfid encryption work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ljejs/how_does_rfid_encryption_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2t8uy8",
"c2t8vw2",
"c2t8uy8",
"c2t8vw2"
],
"score": [
3,
4,
3,
4
],
"text": [
"You're going to have to provide more details in your question here. Do you mean encryption on cards that prevents anyone with an RFID reader from reading the card?",
"Encryption in RFID comes in two flavours, one involves securing the data held on the tag, and the second is securing the trasmission of that data.\n\nSecuring tag data is essentially the same as the encryption methods used to secure digital data in other areas of computing. \nPlain text held on the tag is turned into a cipher using a specific algorithm and it is deciphered back into plain text using the same algorithm by the software supporting the reader. Adding encryption to the tag adds overheads in both the time it takes to process the information and memory required to store the information.\n\nSecuring the transmission is a little more of an obtuse definition of encryption. Radio is not the most secure transmission medium around. An RFID tag can essentially be interrogated by any reader broadcasting on its frequency. To get around this you can employ methods which force the tag to respond only if a specific code is transmitted to them. Adding this sort of functionality to a tag increases the processing requirements of them, thus increasing their cost. Securing the transmission also increases the time it takes to read tag data. \n\n\nGenerally most RFID implementations do not employ encryption. RFID tags need to be cheaply mass produced and readable in the thousands. The additional cost in time and money to add encryption is often not worth it. It is often not required either. Most RFID tags only contain a string of alphanumeric characters only relevant to the supporting software, so intercepting and reading their information is pointless. \n",
"You're going to have to provide more details in your question here. Do you mean encryption on cards that prevents anyone with an RFID reader from reading the card?",
"Encryption in RFID comes in two flavours, one involves securing the data held on the tag, and the second is securing the trasmission of that data.\n\nSecuring tag data is essentially the same as the encryption methods used to secure digital data in other areas of computing. \nPlain text held on the tag is turned into a cipher using a specific algorithm and it is deciphered back into plain text using the same algorithm by the software supporting the reader. Adding encryption to the tag adds overheads in both the time it takes to process the information and memory required to store the information.\n\nSecuring the transmission is a little more of an obtuse definition of encryption. Radio is not the most secure transmission medium around. An RFID tag can essentially be interrogated by any reader broadcasting on its frequency. To get around this you can employ methods which force the tag to respond only if a specific code is transmitted to them. Adding this sort of functionality to a tag increases the processing requirements of them, thus increasing their cost. Securing the transmission also increases the time it takes to read tag data. \n\n\nGenerally most RFID implementations do not employ encryption. RFID tags need to be cheaply mass produced and readable in the thousands. The additional cost in time and money to add encryption is often not worth it. It is often not required either. Most RFID tags only contain a string of alphanumeric characters only relevant to the supporting software, so intercepting and reading their information is pointless. \n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
17vmi6 | - american government (congress, the house of representatives, etc) | I'm from the UK and interested in politics over here. I am totally confused with the USA's government and would like it if someone explained it, please.
Thanks :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17vmi6/eli5_american_government_congress_the_house_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8991kn"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"The UK has a parliamentary system; the US has a presidential system. The differences are pretty minor. The biggest one is that in the UK, the head of the government is a legislator, while in the US he isn't.\n\nIn the US, all our federal laws are made by the Congress, which is roughly equivalent to Parliament. The Congress is made up of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives is roughly equivalent to the House of Commons; the members come from defined places (\"constituencies\" in the UK, \"districts\" in the US) and are elected by the people who live in those places.\n\nThe Senate, however, is *not* roughly equivalent to the House of Lords. The Senate was originally meant — back in the 1790s — to be in many ways the opposite of the House of Representatives. Members of the House are elected by the people; members of the Senate were appointed by the state governments. Members of the House are elected to short terms of office; members of the Senate were appointed to long terms of office. And so on.\n\nBut over the years, various changes have been made to make the Senate more \"democratic.\" For instance, today the members of the Senate are elected by the people directly, and are no longer appointed. That kind of thing.\n\nBut the *mandate* of the Senate is still the same: It's to balance the will-of-the-people aspect of the House of Representatives by being more deliberative and circumspect. If the Senate and House were people, the House would be the enthusiastic, idealistic teenager, and the Senate would be the mature, wise and slightly cynical adult.\n\nOur head of government is a separately elected person called the president; his role in government is *sort of similar* to the PM, but first and foremost he is not a legislator. He makes no laws, doesn't participate in the legislature, and so on. His job is *exclusively* to do what the Congress tells him to do. The Congress sets policy, and the president (through his truly vast organization of employees) carries out that policy.\n\nThere's also the judiciary, but the differences between how that works in the US and UK aren't important enough to go into. There are courts and judges. No surprises there.\n\nThe *real* difference between the government of the United States and the government of the UK, however, is that the government of the United States is tiered.\n\nYou know about home rule, right? It's the idea that, for example, Scotland is politically part of the UK and is subject both to the Crown and also to Parliament … but at the same time, Scotland now (since 1999) has its own parliament, and some degree of limited self-rule.\n\nIn the US, home rule is the *norm,* not the exception. The US is a federation of fifty sovereign and semi-autonomous states. Those states voluntarily joined together to form one political entity called (unimaginatively) the United States, establishing a layer of government *on top of* the sovereign governments of the states. For example, I live in California. I am subject to the laws of California. I pay my taxes to California, I participate in elections to choose the government of California, and so on. For all intents and purposes, the \"country\" of which I'm a citizen is California. But California is part of the United States, so there's this other thing on top that also affects me, albeit quite seldom and indirectly.\n\nSo in a sense, the government of the United States is to me as the EU is to you. It's there, it affects you, but it's not the most important legal system in your life. That's not an exact analogy; Washington is more important to an American than Brussels is to an Englishman, say. But it's pretty close to how things really are."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
33tqss | how are nuclear power plants resistant to various nature attacks? (tornados, lighting) | I live relatively near a power plant and am not really worried about it getting tornadoed, but I am interested in learning how they are protected from nature. Any information is appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33tqss/eli5_how_are_nuclear_power_plants_resistant_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqoadgh",
"cqoafb0",
"cqoifqk",
"cqp7kn6"
],
"score": [
7,
7,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Nuclear power plants are structurally very secure. There are various layers of steel and concrete to shield radiation and protect against natural disasters. Lightning is not even a threat unless it somehow manages to overload the electronics running the plant. Tornadoes do not have the force to rip through several metres of concrete. Barring large natural disasters i.e. Earthquakes, man-made activities i.e. Missile strikes and acts of god nuclear plants are structurally very secure.",
"Nuclear plants are, especially in the reactor, heavily protected by concrete (up to several feet). This minimizes the damage from impact or winds. They are grounded in some way to prevent damage from lightning. As a general rule reactors are very safe. The Fukushima disaster was an extreme case of an old reactor hit by an intensely powerful event. ",
"Tornadoes and Lightning do immense damage to residential-grade construction - thin walls, minimal cost, lowest bidder, etc. Neither tend to do noteworthy damage to thick, steel reinforced concrete structures. A 1/2\" copper rod can safely conduct the majority of lightning strikes *without* damage. We know how to mitigate all but the most extreme natural events, it's just not cost effective most of the time, so most structures are not built that way.",
"Lightning isn't an issue. Worst case, lightning causes you to lose your switchyard/offsite power. The reactor automatically scrams and the emergency generators start up for decay heat removal and inventory control. This happened at the LaSalle nuclear plant a few years ago. Lightning arced and caused the switchyard to disconnect the plant from the grid. \n\nTornados won't affect the reactor directly due to the containment system being designed from several feet of concrete as a missile shield. However tornados can damage offsite power and portions of safety equipment required for plant shutdown. In general, every plant will be able to cope with this type of event for at least 24 hours until offsite equipment can be delivered for safe shutdown. Most onsite equipment is protected by shield or missile barriers to prevent tornado and missile based damage. One of the analysis performed a few years ago was \"smart tornado\" which is a tornado that causes any vulnerable or common mode failure equipment to all fail simultaneously unless it's in a missile proof bunker, and every plant had to demonstrate they can cope until offsite equipment is available. \n\nI'm a nuclear engineer and I've worked on some of these designs/analysis. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
dsm5z1 | does a polyglot learn languages differently than an average person? | Also, is it possible to anyone to become a polyglot? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dsm5z1/eli5_does_a_polyglot_learn_languages_differently/ | {
"a_id": [
"f6qhclq"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"At around age 12, on average, our brains stop “acquiring” language and begin “learning” language. These are seated in different parts of the brain. There’s an interesting case where an anglophone man who learned Spanish later in life was in a terrible car accident and had brain damage. He stopped being able to speak his native English but could still speak Spanish. So there comes a point where you can no longer become a ‘native’ speaker of a language and are instead translating in your brain. Many languages are related though. I speak French and English myself but I can easily understand spanish and some Italian as they are both very similar to French - Latin-based. The more languages you know, the easier it is to understand and learn another because it’s likely related to a language you already know."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
4dditv | howcome a bag of chips bought at a highschool lunch are much more empty compared to when buying the same brand of chips at a store? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dditv/eli5_howcome_a_bag_of_chips_bought_at_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1pxu6g",
"d1pxwco",
"d1pyfn0"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"they are sold by weight not by volume. there's empty space for padding. so are the weights the same?",
"Chips are sold by weight, not volume. So you need to compare the weights of the bags not how full they are. ",
"A) The larger the bag the less air they need to add by percentage of volume to protect the chips. \nB) size of bag is irrelevant since you're buying weight, as has been noted \nC) It's probably a perception thing since you might be hungrier on the lunch line. \nD) Stop eating Doritos at school. Drink more water."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
s6m9r | the pangea theory. | Explain it like I'm five. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/s6m9r/the_pangea_theory/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4bivmq"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Think of the surface of the Earth as thin plates of dirt and rock, sitting on a giant ball of magma. These plates are constantly sliding around (very slowly, at about the same rate as our fingernails grow), but sometimes they can shift suddenly and create an earthquake. By tracking the current movement of plates, and by comparing [similar fossils](_URL_0_) and similar kinds of rock in certain places, we can see that at one time, all of the plates were together in such a way that there was one big continent on the Earth, called Pangea."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Snider-Pellegrini_Wegener_fossil_map.gif"
]
] |
|
bpwsk2 | what is superflat? what does it mean both as an art style and as an idea? | I have a hard time understanding Superflat art and what it is supposed to mean. I see examples of it when I google it (ie Murakami) but most attempts to explain it leave me more confused. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bpwsk2/eli5_what_is_superflat_what_does_it_mean_both_as/ | {
"a_id": [
"enyf20f"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"It's basically a word Murakami uses to describe his own work, and people use to describe similar art. It's loosely defined but the general idea is he takes some japanese pop commercial art (anime/manga/toy figurines/model building) and mixes it with a shocking or out of place element (often something grotesquely sexual or violent) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nIt's a little weird now, because so much time has passed and his most famous works are decades old. A lot of the grotesque imagery he was working with got absorbed over time into actual japanese mainstream so it's less obvious he was doing anything but drawing 4chan posts. \n\n\nLike in 1996 taking an manga drawing of a small hello kitty style child and making them into a grotesque monster made of breasts and vaginas was a more out there take on the sexualization of manga and of children in media and stuff because it was so over the top compared to other things. But like, now \"X rated hyper violent cute animal manga\" is it's own section in the book store so a lot of context is lost compared to when he started."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
11mk66 | why do some devices and game consoles use those shitty enormous power adapters? | Plenty of devices do not use those ridiculous things. Why do any of them require them instead of a normal power cord? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11mk66/eli5_why_do_some_devices_and_game_consoles_use/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6nr0b4",
"c6ntxd1"
],
"score": [
16,
6
],
"text": [
"Things like games consoles don't run using power straight for the mains. It's voltage is too high and in order to prevent the device from being fried, it needs to be stepped down by a transformer. The same goes for PC's but you don't see the big bricks because they are inside the case. With consoles, space is at a premium so many designers use an external transformer on the actual cord. The added bonus is that it also deals with the heat problem: Power suppliers throw out quite a lot of the stuff and running too hot is not a good thing for electrical devices. By having it externally you can make a more attractive/compact form factor and not have to worry about overheating so much.",
"**tl;dr**: Miniaturization costs money. Consoles are cheap.\n\nSmallness costs money, in the form of better engineering and more expensive components with better electrical and magnetic properties. In the old days power converters were pretty straightforward - you would use a transformer to step down the wall's AC voltage (and isolate the device), and a four-diode rectifier and giant filter capacitor to make D.C. out of the low voltage A.C. The rectifier just allows the A.C. current to pass into your D.C. circuit in one direction, so you get pulsing D.C, and the capacitor stores a tiny amount of energy to keep you going during the times when the wall socket voltage is zero. (every 1/120th of a second in the U.S., every 1/100th of a second everywhere else). But supplies like that develop \"ripple\" - they don't give a perfectly steady output voltage. So people developed fed-back dissipative regulators, which you can still buy today -- the \"7805\" chip, for example, accepts ripply 7 volts DC and gives you clean 5 volts DC.\n\nMaking that kind of power supply more, well, powerful means making it bigger. Old stereos have huge ones, with gigantic, heavy transformers, big hulking filter capacitors, and rectifier diodes the size of vitamin C tablets.\n\nAlong about the 1980s people developed something called a \"switching power supply\" that can generate more regulated power with less waste. Switching power supplies switch a transistor \"ON\" and \"OFF\" very quickly to dispense small amounts of charge into a capacitor, either directly from the mains or from a transformer. The transistor switches at very high rates -- tens of kiloHertz to megaHertz. Discrete-component switching power supplies are about the size of a box of animal crackers, and (famously) got used in the Apple ][. That technology is now very cheap and well-understood, and is what gets used for game consoles. In the \"animal cracker box\" size, this type of supply can produce up to 20-30 Watts of regulated power.\n\nHigher power densities require better parts: better induction coils, better capacitors, more carful circuit design. Laptop computers use modern high-density switching power supplies that can handle more like 100 Watts. Apple is famous for making very efficient switching supplies that have very high power densities -- a MacBook Pro supply is rated at 85 Watts and can actually supply over 100 Watts without much effort, and the 10W iPad/iPhone chargers are miracles of miniaturization. But all that costs money.\n\nGame consoles have to be cheap, so they use the cheapest supplies that they can -- either direct rectifiers or low-power-density switching supplies based on that 1980s/1990s technology. That means the included power supplies are big. \n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
79jwbc | how do we know what's happening in complex biochemical reactions? | I'm not sure how to phrase this... I'm studying pharmacology which obviously involves a lot of biochem. It blows my mind how many enzymes and chemicals and reactions there are. How did we discover all the individual enzymes and reactions that take place in the Citric Acid Cycle, for instance? How are we observing cellular metabolism? It seems so complicated and amazing. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/79jwbc/eli5_how_do_we_know_whats_happening_in_complex/ | {
"a_id": [
"dp2n2sw",
"dp2o8dq"
],
"score": [
2,
6
],
"text": [
"There's two parts to your answer.\n\nOne is that we isolate the chemical, or even random chemicals, and add them to reagents to determine what they do. You add X to Y and it produces a specific amount of Z you can say it's an enzyme with a specific power of activation. This is how the citric acid cycle was *originally* worked out.\n\nThe 2nd is computer modeling - we understand the subatomic and quantum physics much better than we understand most biological molecules. So we can run massive computer simulations of various types (monte carlo, ect) only knowing the initial composition of the protein and a general guess as to what it does. This is getting more accurate by the day but it's not perfect - you then verify the models in the lab.",
"This is a bit of a complex question, and I wish you'd asked it in askscience... but nonetheless...\n\nWe need to go very historical on this, or otherwise this explanation will be circular.\n\nI'm not going to use the citric acid cycle as an example, because as you pointed out, it is very complex.\n\nInstead, I'm going to talk about the Cytochrome p450 enzymes, which as a pharmocologist, you are going to learn a lot about.\n\nScientists knew that compounds in the body got broken down. They knew this because, for instance, if someone got a fright, they had lots of adrenaline in their blood, but rapidly that adrenaline disappeared from the blood. They also thought that adrenaline might get broken down into something called noradrenaline, because they could put adrenaline onto a mush made of fresh liver, and get noradrenaline. Because other scientists had said that this reaction shouldn't happen very fast without help, the scientists suspected that there must be an enzyme that did this. By carefully measuring the amount of adrenaline added, and the amount of noradrenaline formed, they found that for every molecule of adrenaline added to the liver, they got one molecular of noradrenaline formed. This really strongly suggested that the adrenaline was being converted to noradrenaline (rather than adrenaline causing the release of noradrenaline).\n\nBy using centrifuges, and various other simple chemical techniques, they were able to make relatively pure samples of this enzyme. Once that happened, then real progress could be made.\n\nFor instance, we already knew that enzymes can be \"saturated\". That means that if an enzyme is doing a chemical reaction, by converting compound A into compound B.. if you add more of compound A the transformation into compound B goes faster. However, if you add too much of compound A, the transformation into compound B cannot go any faster. You can think about this like if you were making a sandwich: If I gave you two pieces of bread, which you converted into a sandwich, you could do that. If I gave you two pieces of bread every half hour, you could make a sandwich every half hour. Now if I gave you the bread faster, say every five minutes, you could make a sandwich every five minutes. However, if I gave you two pieces of bread every second, you could not make a sandwich every second. You are now \"saturated\" with bread. No matter how much more bread I give you, you cannot go faster.\n\nSo the scientists investigated how this enzyme in the liver which converts adrenaline to noradrenaline behaved, and they found just that. That once they gave it lots of adrenaline, it could not make noradrenaline any faster. But they found that if they added another compound (which I can't remember right now), the enzyme was able to break that compound down. How could you explain that? If you were busy making sandwiches as fast as you could, and I all of a sudden asked you to make oatmeal, you couldn't. The only explanation was that there were actually TWO kinds of enzymes. One that broke down adrenaline, and one that broke down the other compound. The scientific word for this is \"competition\". The adrenaline and the other compound were not \"competing\" for the same enzyme. Scientists continued to do experiments like this. If chemical A was saturating the enzyme, and chemical X could still be broken down, then the enzyme that broke down chemical A and chemical X were different. However, if the enzyme was saturated with chemical A, and now chemical Y could not be broken down, then chemical A and chemical Y were broken down by the same enzyme. By doing a lot of these experiments, scientists were able to discover that the original \"enzyme\" that was isolated was actually hundreds of different enzymes. They were all of the same family, as certain chemicals were able to block all of them, but they were all different, because they liked different compounds. This family is now called the cytochrome P450 family.\n\nSimilar experiments were done to reveal all the enzymes in the citric acid cycle. Basically, they knew that certain compounds were being converted to other compounds. They found that certain chemicals could stop this, and when they did that, they found that instead of getting the conversion of compound A into compound Z, they got compound A turning into compound F... hence they thought that compound A turned into compound F, which then turned into compound Z. They did this kind of experiment with better and better chemicals, until the whole cycle was revealed.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
8aw6ws | why does the "wind" generated by electric fans feel like it comes in waves? | The blades are spinning at a constant speed but the airflow seems to come in bursts. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8aw6ws/eli5why_does_the_wind_generated_by_electric_fans/ | {
"a_id": [
"dx22e7o",
"dx405pb"
],
"score": [
14,
2
],
"text": [
"Because it do.\n\nThe blades are spinning at a constant speed, but the wind is really only pushed forward from the part of the fan where the blade is. The blades are constantly coming in and out of an area due to the rotation and since the wind is perpendicular to the blades spinning, so does the wind. ",
"What you're feeling is pressure pulsations in the fan wake.\n\nWhen a blade of a fan travels through the air, a vortex is constantly shed off the blade tip. The vortex is caused by differing air pressures of the airflow on either surface of the blade. As the two airflows come together, they start to mix. The mixing forms a vortex. The center of the vortex is of lower pressure than the surrounding (ambient) air.\n\nNow, because the fan blade is spinning around, that vortex forms the shape of a helix behind the fan. The helix travels for a rather long distance behind the fan before it breaks up and dissipates.\n\nNow imagine you're standing in the wake of the fan. You'd feel this helical vortex hitting you as a wind buffet. After all, wind is air flowing from high pressure to low pressure. So as this low-pressure vortex passes by you, you'd feel the wind. Because the helical vortex spins around with the fan blade, you feel a periodic wind pulsation.\n\nBut a fan wake doesn't feel perfectly periodic, right? There's two reasons for that. One is that there are any blades on a fan, and each blade sheds a vortex. The network of shed vortices interact with each other more the farther downstream you go, which messes things up a bit. The second reason is that the vortices spin around with turbulence, meaning that the flow is not all that smooth. This also messes things up a bit. As a result, the fan's wake is a bit chaotic, but there's still a lot of periodicity and order to it.\n\nThis phenomenon is linked to anything that spins with blades. For example, have you ever noticed how a helicopter can make a thwump-thwump-thwump sound (or however you want to call it)? That's the shed vortex of each rotor blade hitting a following rotor blade and making a noise. Ever notice how loud a jet engine can be? A lot of that is the noise of the jet, but another factor are the vortices shed from the fan blades up front hitting what are called the \"fan exit guide vanes\" behind them, which also creates noise. In both the helicopter rotor and the jet engine, the noise frequency is related to the spinning speed of those helical vortices.\n\nYou wrote a great question, PARANOIAH. The answer is a building block to understand one of the big problems facing rotorcraft and jet aircraft today -- how do we make helicopters and other aircraft quieter? Keep exploring, dude!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
39p5r7 | what's the diference between eating 500 calories of vegetables and 500 calores of butter? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39p5r7/eli5_whats_the_diference_between_eating_500/ | {
"a_id": [
"cs56s43",
"cs56tor"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Volume, there's a lot more vegetables for 500 calories than there's butter. Also there's not a lot of nutrients like vitamins in butter that are in vegetables. ",
"500 calories would be 28 cups of radishes, or 5 tablespoons of butter. You'd feel full after just three or four cups of raddishes, but probably not after 5 tablespoons of butter, so you want fats for calories and vegetables so you can be satisfied and stop eating."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
b2guz7 | how does frequency(hz) affect loudness(db)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b2guz7/eli5_how_does_frequencyhz_affect_loudnessdb/ | {
"a_id": [
"eisjlhr",
"eisjqq4",
"eistqdj",
"eisxj42",
"eit07n6"
],
"score": [
24,
116,
4,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"They're unrelated in terms of objective measurement, however you will perceive different frequencies at different volumes due to the old Fletcher Munson curve. ",
"It doesn't, but humans don't have a flat hearing curve so we hear some frequencies louder than others.\n\nSometimes you see the audio level expressed in dBA which means the A curve was used, giving a closer approximation to actual hearing that raw dB. There's actually many different loudness curves.",
"Most of the other answers are sort of correct, but there is a lot of detail to be missed.\n\n\"Loudness\" is a subjective, *psychoacoustic* measure, i.e. one that results from how your brain perceives sound, not from physical properties of sound. It does not directly relate to any physically measurable quantity, and it is not measured in decibels (dB). \n\nThe quantity that is measured in decibels is called the *sound pressure level*. Any sound is just pressure differences in air, and the SPL simply measures how much the pressure differs from the ambient air pressure. For example, speakers work by having a vibrating membrane that causes those pressure differences. If you turn up the speaker's volume, the membrane will vibrate to a larger extent, causing a sound with higher pressure level. The sound pressure level also correlates with the energy needed to produce the sound, measured as the *sound intensity level*.\n\nThe *loudness* of a sound is measured in *sone*, which is a somewhat obscure unit. The idea is that if one noise has a loudness of 1 sone, then another noise that sounds twice as loud *to you* (or to some other test person) will have a loudness of 2 sone.\n\nThe sone is not a very useful unit in practice because the loudness of a noise can only be determined by having test persons actually listen to the noise, as well as other noises with known loudnesses, and comparing them. It is impossible to build an even remotely accurate physical \"loudness meter\", as the loudness of a sound depends on:\n\n- the sound pressure level\n- the frequency or frequencies of the noise\n- harmony: sounds that don't harmonise well will sound louder than ones that do\n- time: if you hear a noise for a long time, your brain may \"drown out\" the perception of that noise, or it may be enhanced\n- the environment the noise is playing in (in snowy areas noises generally sound quieter)\n- other noises playing at the same time\n\nThere are some alternative more complex measures that approximate the actual subjective loudness, for example the \"loudness level\" measured in *phon*, which only takes into consideration the sound pressure level and the frequency. If you have those two values, you can look up the loudness level in a [diagram](_URL_0_). For example, a sound at 250 Hz and with a pressure level of 30 dB will have a loudness level of 20 phon.\n\nThe problem with determining the loudness level is that it can only be done within the limits of this diagram, and that the diagram is empirically determined (i.e. by experiments with people, not mathematically). So for most practical purposes, an even simpler approach is used called \"weighting\", where you have mathematically exactly defined [curves](_URL_1_). You would look up the frequency in the curve you want (A weighting is pretty much the only weighting used in practice), and add it on to the sound pressure level you measured. So in our example above, the weighting would result in a difference of about -8 dB, so the 30 dB(SPL) sound at 250 Hz would be about 22 db(A).\n\nSo to conclude, the frequency absolutely does affect the loudness of a sound. It does not affect the sound pressure level measured in dB, unless you use a weighting method that modifies the dB value based on the frequency.",
"Humans need to hear the vowel and consonant sounds when little humans cry out of hunger or pain. To cry, those little humans shoot air violently across their vocal cords and out their mouths. We evolved over time so that our ears pick up the frequencies of those sounds all the better to hear and help the little humans.\n\nIf you want a human to pay equal attention to sounds outside of that frequency range, you have to shoot more air at them more violently than the little human did.",
"Lower frequencies lose less energy to attenuation in the atmosphere, so they may travel farther. lower frequencies also absorbed more easily, rather than reflected, so they might lose more energy in an enclosed space, such as a hallway. When an airplane is at high altitude, it sounds low frequency, but when it's at low altitude it has more of a whine to it, right? This is why. \nGood answer here:[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://petavoxel.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/equal-loudness-curves.gif?w=418",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Acoustic_weighting_curves_%281%29.svg"
],
[],
[
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/87751/do-low-frequency-sounds-really-carry-longer-distances"
]
] |
||
6x1mmf | how were ancient astronomers able to accurately predict cosmological events using a geocentric model of solar system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6x1mmf/eli5_how_were_ancient_astronomers_able_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"dmcflc2",
"dmchlwb",
"dmclsg7"
],
"score": [
10,
16,
3
],
"text": [
"There was an idea of \"epicycles\", where each planet did not orbit directly around earth, but rather orbited in a circle around some central point which was itself orbiting around earth - or perhaps just a point *near* earth, which was assumed to be stationary. See [this helpful Wikipedia image](_URL_0_). As observations got more accurate, the epicycle system had to become an ever-more-complex system of circles within circles to account for the observations. The first heliocentric theories actually also used epicycles, since it was at first assumed that orbits had to be circles. But eventually Kepler showed how the data could be easily explained using elliptical orbits, greatly simplifying the theory.",
"You don't have to know how something works to recognize patterns in it.\n\nJupiter takes 12 years to travel the constellations of the Zodiac. Venus takes 584 days to go from being the morning star to the evening star and back to the morning star again. If you see an eclipse, you will see a nearly identical eclipse 54 years and 34 days later.\n\nThose numbers check out whether you think the earth goes around the sun, the sun goes around the earth, or the earth is on the back of a giant tortoise and the sun carried by a golden chariot chased by a dragon.",
"You can describe the motion \"as seen from Earth\". That makes the motion very complex, and you need many contributions that have to be added to give the total motion, but it is possible.\n\nThe only thing that was predicted very accurately were eclipses, they only involve the Moon (which actually orbits Earth) and the Sun (where the relative motion between Earth and Sun is quite simple)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Ptolemaic_elements.svg"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
6u8itl | why is it illegal to film a single person but journalists are allowed to do so and publish it, even using hidden cameras? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u8itl/eli5_why_is_it_illegal_to_film_a_single_person/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlqqxnl"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Illegality depends on locality. Here in Idaho, we are a single pay consent when it comes to recording. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
74bgix | how do we biologically "lose" energy as we age? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74bgix/eli5_how_do_we_biologically_lose_energy_as_we_age/ | {
"a_id": [
"dnx5rd9",
"dnxd6s4",
"dnxtdjs"
],
"score": [
10,
2,
4
],
"text": [
"You don't lose energy in the physical sense of energy. However as you get older your metabolism slows down, your muscles become weaker, your blood can become less capable of carrying oxygen, your joints become less lubricated, your bones become weaker, the list goes on and on. All of these factors combined help contribute to the loss of vitality seen in older individuals. ",
"Cells are like tiny little earths in your body, they are lovely little peaceful worlds, but need to be taken care of with strict policing. Because of this fact, oxygen is jealous and wants to infiltrate the cell to find a home of it's own, but oxygen is a muslim and doesn't integrate well. All these god damn oxygens ever want to do is come in for a free ride, but they never help out, they are always just destructive to the cell community. \n\nThe human cell voted trump and decided it had had enough and it was time to act for the security of the cell. \n\nThe human cells are alerted that oxygen is approaching and sends out troops to the cell border in a defensive front line. The cell government builds a wall to keep out the oxygen. A horribly violent battle at the cell border ensues with a high number of casualties on both sides. \n\nMany cell troops lay dead, and many oxygen terrorists are also deceased. The wall has been knocked down and some oxygen managed to infiltrate the cell. The cell government sends builders to remake the wall for the next push, but the cell has already lost some of it's best men. It is unclear how many more front line assaults the cell can handle before it is oxidized. \n\nSurely, at this rate, there will not be enough troops or builders to stop the cell from destruction within say 100 years.",
"You don't lose energy, but your body becomes less efficient at everything. Your body is ultimately a biological super machine, but after decades of living you accumulate toxic substances in your organs, wear out joints and bones and the tiny 'mistakes' that your body makes when it repairs and renews it's cells accumulate. Exactly like an old cards vs new car."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
4qnojw | is the longer average lifespan of humans due solely to medical/technological advancements, or are we just built sturdier than we used to be? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qnojw/eli5_is_the_longer_average_lifespan_of_humans_due/ | {
"a_id": [
"d4ufb76",
"d4ufc69",
"d4ugn84",
"d4ujmk9",
"d4un7ut",
"d4v5h2b"
],
"score": [
41,
10,
29,
4,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"It really has to do with lower infant mortality, thanks to better medicine. In the Medieval era, those making it to puberty would have lifespans comparable to ours, it's just so many babies died to drag down the average.",
"I read a Harvard study (I think it was math based albeit) that said that death is advantageous to a species as it allows for more rapid genetic drift and adaptation to an environment. I think that our lifespan is a careful balance between giving our species rapid adaptation and allowing us time on an individual level to raise offspring really fucking well. I think that the recent rise in lifespan is due to insuring that more people reach the balance point age of 60-80 where genes potentially help waste our bodies away. I don't think that the actual viable lifespan is changing. It's just that more people are reaching it due to medical advancements. \n\nEdit: I think u/Trolling_From_Work hit it right on the head with changes in infant mortality. We are not extending our lifespan. More people are living to it because of medical advances.",
"Sanitation is a huge factor in lifespan. We have clean water, we don't spread cholera like we used to, etc etc. Infections don't occur as easily. Don't underestimate how much more sanitary societies are these days and how it affects our lifespan. ",
"It's scary to think that before antibiotics and antisepis (awareness that cleanliness prevents infection), you could die from a mosquito bite or hang nail. ",
"It's technology. We're not built sturdier. In fact there is evidence to suggest humans are more fragile than we used to be. For example bones of modern humans are more brittle than that of prehistoric humans.",
"To state that any one thing or event is responsible for longer lifespans is foolish. Everything is integrated. There is no way to isolate any one issue since sanitation is both a technological advancement, a mind set, a medical issue, and a form of pest control. Pest control is a medical issue and a need of civilized development and a concern of world wide trade. All the issues affect infant mortality and birth rates. Education and learning to read enabled people to understand the lifespan issues, develop the technology and take steps that would enable them to live longer."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2blddr | a nuclear apocalypse | Not just the general theory, but also an example of a realistic scenario in this current day and age? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2blddr/eli5_a_nuclear_apocalypse/ | {
"a_id": [
"cj6fm8q",
"cj6fpgc",
"cj6gpni",
"cj6wojn"
],
"score": [
4,
2,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Likely scenarios would be: \n\n1. The conflict over the Kashmir between Pakistan and India going nuclear\n\n2. Tensions in Europe (currently Ukraine, but also for whatever other reason) causing a nuclear exchange between Russia and Western Europe and/or the US\n\n3. A crisis in Asia over Taiwan or Japan or North Korea causing a nuclear exchange between China/North Korea, Russia and the West.\n\n4. Tensions in the Middle East causing Israel to use its nuclear weapons, likely against Iran\n\n#1 and #4 will probably not cause a total nuclear apocalypse in the form of nuclear winter / the complete collapse of civilization worldwide, but it may harm the ecology enough (global dimming and widespread fallout causing famine and agricultural collapse) to make life on Earth extremely unpleasant for the next decade or so.",
"Not current, but the Cuban Missile Crisis is a good example. Lets say it unfolded differently. Kruschev doesn't back down. Kennedy sends in bombers to take out the missiles (I've heard that planes were over Cuba with weapons armed when the recall order came so we were pretty damn close to this). So the US has now killed Russian soldiers. Russia retaliates, we retaliate back, things escalate and one of us launches their nuclear missiles, the other one launches back. The dust, ash and fallout kill most life on Earth. A good movie about this is \"13 Days\".\n\nI also read a study a while back that looked at a possible limited nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. The environmental impact of that would apparently have global repercussions.",
"It is a nuclear war among allies of nations. the threat of nuclear war still exists today, with a number of countries possessing the capability of deploying such destructive devices. In addition to threats from the explosion and radiation, there are also indirect effects such as contaminated food and water supplies, poor air quality, destruction of power grids affecting communication and transportation, and nuclear winter.\n \nIt’s been theorized that detonating nuclear weapons will cause large amounts of smoke, soot and debris to enter Earth’s stratosphere, reducing sunlight for months or even years. Such a nuclear winter would result in severe cold temperatures and interference in food production. In 2007, scientists Brian Toon and Alan Robock concluded that if India and Pakistan were to launch 50 nuclear weapons at each other, the entire planet could experience 10 years of smoke clouds and a three-year temperature drop.\n\n",
"On a semi-related note, Russia had their Dead Hand system made during the cold war. Pretty scary stuff. Basically it meant that even if we completely and suddenly obliterated all of their command, the light and radiation would trigger a launch of all of their nukes at us. Completely autonomously. It may still be operational and in place.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)"
]
] |
|
2xirx5 | why does extreme muslim " isis" only attack islamic state (one after another) but never directly attack israel. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xirx5/eli5_why_does_extreme_muslim_isis_only_attack/ | {
"a_id": [
"cp0gbo2",
"cp0gdy2",
"cp0ghxd"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"One because geography they don't control any territories directly boarding Israel other countries aren't just going to let them bring their forces through.",
"Unlike the other countries, Israel has a functional military.",
"Because they don't have that kind of power yet. They are a loosely organized band of hyped up hadjis, no way they could stand a chance against the disciplined, organized, well funded, and battle tested Israeli military. They understand that they would get slaughtered. Same reason they don't commit an open attack against the US. There are grossly outgunned."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
282alr | laser guided missile systems | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/282alr/eli5laser_guided_missile_systems/ | {
"a_id": [
"ci6o6h7",
"ci6r699",
"ci6twyw"
],
"score": [
23,
11,
4
],
"text": [
"The missile head has a sensor, looking for a laser. The fighter or ground spotter points a laser at the target, the laser hits the target, then the light (may not be visible) scatters in all directions. The seeker head of the missile sees the light and aims at it, moving the body to follow.",
"The best analog I can give you is this: [Cat and Laser Pointer](_URL_0_)\n\nThe cat's eyes are the sensor in the missile. The feet/muscles/claws are the rocket motors/control surfaces.",
"Oh, \"missile following the laser\" is so quaint and old-school.\n\nMore modern systems aim parallel beams at the butt of the missile, and when the human (or computer) manually aiming at the target all during the missile's flight moves his targetting reticle as the target moves, the missile sees that the lasers are moving, and adjusts its ailerons in order to stay in the beam all during its flight.\n\nThis way, the target never knows that it's being targeted, until it goes kablooie.\n\nSOURCE: did my military service in an anti-air missile battery."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2vO7IbjuSE"
],
[]
] |
||
j9kqd | when/why major/minor 7th chords work in a progression. i use them a lot, but i've no idea why they sound good. | I play guitar, and up until a year ago I exclusively played metal (I still play Protest the Hero/Between the Buried and Me), but lately I've moved into the jazz/blues area. From this I've begun to use somewhat more "exotic" chords (well, more exotic than I was used to before), the 7th chords especially. I know a little bit of theory so feel free to ELI12 if it comes to it.
Cheers! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j9kqd/eli5_whenwhy_majorminor_7th_chords_work_in_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2aaw1x",
"c2aaw1x"
],
"score": [
5,
5
],
"text": [
"I'll give this a try (if I understand your question).\n\nIn western music, an octave is divided into 12 semi-tones. People worked out that you could pick 7 or so of those tones to create a scale (or 5 say for a pentatonic \"blues\" scale), and that those notes sounded good when sequenced into a melody.\n\nThe example we'll use is C Major. A major scale is the old Do-Re-Mi scale, and you could say it has a fairly bright happy sound to it (as opposed to a minor scale).\n\nC Major is convenient because the notes are white keys on the piano: C D E F G A B. No sharps or flats.\n\nThey also noticed that playing certain notes simultaneously (a chord) sounded harmonious, some don't work so well.\n\nThe gap between notes (the number of semitones) is called an interval.\n\nProbably the cleanest (most harmonious) interval is a perfect 5th. For example C and G. This is incidentally a \"power chord\" in rock music.\n\nOther intervals are a little more dissonant, but still sound good. Such as a Major 3rd (4 semitones) or a minor 3rd (3 semitones).\n\nThe basic chords (triads) in a given scale are created by starting at one note, skip one, next note, skip one, next note. For example C Major is C-E-G.\n\nIn the key of C you can play all the triads in the scale on a piano by playing the white keys in this pattern (note-skip-note-skip-note).\n\nSo you start with C Major: C-E-G. \n\nNext is D minor: D-F-A.\n\nThen E minor: E-G-B\n\nThen F Major: F-A-C\n\netc...\n\nAs it turns out, a Major chord has 2 intervals: A Major 3rd with a minor 3rd on top.\n\nA Minor chord is the reverse: A minor third with a Major 3rd on top.\n\nNow, if you want to stack an additional note on your triad, you skip a note then play the next note.\n\nSo you might have C-E-G-B. Which is called a C Major 7th. It's a slightly dissonant chord (or colorful perhaps) because you've got two notes, B and C, that are only a semitone apart. The intervals are Major 3rd, minor 3rd, Major 3rd.\n\nOne chord that is especially popular and fairly harmonious is a 7th chord at the 5th note of the scale. In the key of C Major this would be G7. The notes are G-B-D-F. The intervals are Major 3rd, minor 3rd, minor 3rd. That top F note is a full-tone (two semitones) away from the G tonic. So it's smoother sounding than the above example of C Maj 7.\n\nOf course, you don't need to only stick to the notes of a scale, you can use accidentals or whatever you want so long as it sounds good.\n\nTL;DR; You can add an additional note to a basic triad for color. 7ths, Maj 7ths, 6ths, etc. The difference in sound relates to the intervals between the various notes.",
"I'll give this a try (if I understand your question).\n\nIn western music, an octave is divided into 12 semi-tones. People worked out that you could pick 7 or so of those tones to create a scale (or 5 say for a pentatonic \"blues\" scale), and that those notes sounded good when sequenced into a melody.\n\nThe example we'll use is C Major. A major scale is the old Do-Re-Mi scale, and you could say it has a fairly bright happy sound to it (as opposed to a minor scale).\n\nC Major is convenient because the notes are white keys on the piano: C D E F G A B. No sharps or flats.\n\nThey also noticed that playing certain notes simultaneously (a chord) sounded harmonious, some don't work so well.\n\nThe gap between notes (the number of semitones) is called an interval.\n\nProbably the cleanest (most harmonious) interval is a perfect 5th. For example C and G. This is incidentally a \"power chord\" in rock music.\n\nOther intervals are a little more dissonant, but still sound good. Such as a Major 3rd (4 semitones) or a minor 3rd (3 semitones).\n\nThe basic chords (triads) in a given scale are created by starting at one note, skip one, next note, skip one, next note. For example C Major is C-E-G.\n\nIn the key of C you can play all the triads in the scale on a piano by playing the white keys in this pattern (note-skip-note-skip-note).\n\nSo you start with C Major: C-E-G. \n\nNext is D minor: D-F-A.\n\nThen E minor: E-G-B\n\nThen F Major: F-A-C\n\netc...\n\nAs it turns out, a Major chord has 2 intervals: A Major 3rd with a minor 3rd on top.\n\nA Minor chord is the reverse: A minor third with a Major 3rd on top.\n\nNow, if you want to stack an additional note on your triad, you skip a note then play the next note.\n\nSo you might have C-E-G-B. Which is called a C Major 7th. It's a slightly dissonant chord (or colorful perhaps) because you've got two notes, B and C, that are only a semitone apart. The intervals are Major 3rd, minor 3rd, Major 3rd.\n\nOne chord that is especially popular and fairly harmonious is a 7th chord at the 5th note of the scale. In the key of C Major this would be G7. The notes are G-B-D-F. The intervals are Major 3rd, minor 3rd, minor 3rd. That top F note is a full-tone (two semitones) away from the G tonic. So it's smoother sounding than the above example of C Maj 7.\n\nOf course, you don't need to only stick to the notes of a scale, you can use accidentals or whatever you want so long as it sounds good.\n\nTL;DR; You can add an additional note to a basic triad for color. 7ths, Maj 7ths, 6ths, etc. The difference in sound relates to the intervals between the various notes."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
7saqko | how do condoms not work other than when they break? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7saqko/eli5how_do_condoms_not_work_other_than_when_they/ | {
"a_id": [
"dt3azxn",
"dt3biil",
"dt3ck1j"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
11
],
"text": [
"When you use them wrong, like putting two on (which causes a break), or if you tried to reuse it, or use it with the wrong type of lube.",
"besides breaking (tearing) they can still dislodge or just plain fall off.\n\n > A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.\n\n > The issue is serious because about one in every five times a condom is used in India it either falls off or tears, an extremely high failure rate.\n\n_URL_0_",
"- Using the wrong size. By using a condom that is too big for you, you run the chance of it slipping and sperm leaking out.\n\n- By using them incorrectly like putting on two over each other or reusing them. \n\n- By not pulling out quickly enough afterwards. Though it can be tempting, if you are using a condom, you really should pull out, take off the condom and throw it away fairly quickly after orgasm. If the penis gets entirely soft inside of the condom, there is also the possibility of it slipping.\n\n- By not leaving some room at the tip while you put them on. You should always leave a little receptable where the sperm can go. Without that, there is also a much bigger chance of it leaking out. (especially if combined with staying in too long or the wrong size)\n\n- Using the wrong lubes. Not every lube is compatible with condom usage! Condoms are made of latex and oils or petroleum jelly can break that down.\n\n- Condoms expire. In an expired condom, there is no guarantee the latex is still in proper form. Don't risk it, and just toss out those expired old condoms. Similarly, though they tell you to always keep a condom in your wallet just in case, that is also not the best idea. The heat (especially if you carry it against your body) and the constant bending and tearing can also create invisible micro tears."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6161691.stm"
],
[]
] |
||
8puj2f | in a cup of coffee, why does the top of the liquid leave a stain ring, whereas the rest of the liquid does not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8puj2f/eli5_in_a_cup_of_coffee_why_does_the_top_of_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"e0e4mhu",
"e0e56t1",
"e0e5zuk",
"e0eg09k",
"e0eh27q",
"e0el0f5",
"e0f1q51",
"e0f611m",
"e0fi4ae",
"e0fnxns"
],
"score": [
12584,
1081,
39,
23,
8,
24,
9,
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"The air is where it the coffee dries up and the solids inside the water from the coffee can leave the water and stick to the edge. ",
"When you pour yourself a mug of hot coffee, you typically let it sit for 5-10 minutes until it cools down to a potable temperature. During that time, when the coffee is at its hottest, there is rapid evaporation at the surface of the liquid and coffee solids will accrete at the boundary between the evaporating liquid and the dry inner mug surface.\n\nThen, when the coffee is drinkably cool, it is both at a lower temperature (= less evaporation) and you're drinking it faster (= less accretion at any liquid depth than when you had a full cup).",
"That's called 'coffee ring effect'.\n\n > The coffee-ring pattern originates from the capillary flow induced by the differential evaporation rates across the drop: liquid evaporating from the edge is replenished by liquid from the interior.[1] The resulting edgeward flow can carry nearly all the dispersed material to the edge. As a function of time, this process exhibit a \"rush-hour\" effect, that is, a rapid acceleration of the edgeward flow at the final stage of the drying process.\n\n_URL_0_",
"That is where evaporation acts to remove water while leaving behind suspended material. Oxidation can the help it set.",
"If you put milk in your coffee, the fat from the milk rises to the top and sticks to the cup. It's like the ring in the bathtub. Grease, baby.",
"Evaporation happens from the surface I.e. top of a liquid. Since coffee is hot when poured, evaporation of water from the coffee is faster. This causes the coffee level to go down ever so slightly, while the cup tries to pull the liquid surface upwards around the edges where it comes in contact, causing the coffee to dry up faster along the edges leaving a trail of dried coffee aka stain. As we drink the coffee it cools and the evaporation slows down, plus we are drinking the coffee faster than the edges get time to dry to a stain at this point. If you leave a half drunk coffee alone long enough and then sip it you will see the stain at the new level as well. \n\nP.S: some cup materials are better at pulling the coffee up and making it stick while the water evaporates and coffee dries than others and can affect the staining. ",
"Say the coffee is 180°F when brewed. It will drop in temperature to 120°F much more rapidly than from 120°F to 80°F and a good percentage of this energy loss occurs through evaporation. So as it drops to a drinkable temperature, many insoluble solids are left caked to the vessel. ",
"the stain ring contains the most oils, which float at the top, along with other impurities or insolubles.\n\nif you cook sauces or need to reduce stocks and broths you will observe the same phenomenon.",
"Coffee contains natural oils. The oils sit on top of the water and that RING is the concentration of oils and fine coffee particulate. ",
"[Here’s a good answer](_URL_0_)\n\nThe answer has to do with how the fluid moves around in the drop while it’s drying. Coffee has round particles that don’t disturb the drop’s surface. As they float around, the pile up at the edges of the drop. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_ring_effect"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.npr.org/2011/08/17/139681851/scientists-crack-the-physics-of-coffee-rings"
]
] |
||
yxgr5 | plutonium (nuclear?) power, specifically in the curiosity rover | I was reading [this article](_URL_0_) and it mentioned that Curiosity's laser uses "...more than a million watts of power in a five-billionth-of-a-second burst..." and gets its power from a plutonium reactor. How does this work?
I've been searching for an answer in earlier ELI5 posts, and nuclear power seems to be harnessing the energy to heat water and spin a turbine. Is this how Curiosity's reactor works? How can such a small system produce so much power? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yxgr5/eli5_plutonium_nuclear_power_specifically_in_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5zoiex"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
" > I've been searching for an answer in earlier ELI5 posts, and nuclear power seems to be harnessing the energy to heat water and spin a turbine. Is this how Curiosity's reactor works?\n\nThe reactor on Curiosity converts a heat differential directly into electricity. As the radioisotope decays, it generates heat, which makes the inner chamber warmer than the outside chamber. This temperature differential is used to generate electricity directly, without the use of water and turbines. The phenomenon is called the [Seebeck effect](_URL_0_), although it is way beyond an ELI5 level.\n\n > How can such a small system produce so much power?\n\nIt doesn't produce that much power - only about 110 W. The generator is used to slowly charge the battery, so when it's time to use a power-intensive instrument, there is an excess of charge available.\n\nKeep in mind that when it says \"more than a million watts of power in five-billionth-of-a-second burst,\" that is a _really really short burst_. Power is a term used to describe energy over some time, and you can obtain a very high _power_ by shortening the duration to a very small number, even if you keep energy constant.\n\nTo put it in perspective, a million watts of power over five nanoseconds only has 0.005 Joules of energy. It takes the 110 W power supply 45 milliseconds to provide the equivalent amount of energy."
]
} | [] | [
"http://rt.com/news/space-curiosity-laser-mars-137/"
] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltier_effect#Seebeck_effect"
]
] |
|
1zhwnt | why do i feel so much joy when the bass drops? | I don't know if joy is the right word... but I just get so much satisfaction felt when the bass drops, especially when it's done right. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zhwnt/eli5why_do_i_feel_so_much_joy_when_the_bass_drops/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfu079p"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Usually before the bass drops, theres a buildup. You just know it's coming and when it comes, it floods the songs with bass. Its almost like an orgasm. A lot of good songs have this build up model, like how \"i believe i can fly\" builds up to that church chorus."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
40taii | why do we get 'weak knees' at the edge of a cliff or facing horror? isn't adrenaline meant to enhance strength/perception? | And sometimes other parts of the body feel useless in different intimidating circumstances. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40taii/eli5_why_do_we_get_weak_knees_at_the_edge_of_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cyx00zh",
"cyx2zkr"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"As far as weak kness goes, it is actually caused by adrenaline, as blood is pumped to the parts that need it the most from the legs, heart, brain muscles which causes the weak kness/jelly feel.",
"Okay so it's partly what /u/McPubes said, that our body takes blood away from our extremities and pumps it to our vital areas, the heart, the brain, and our vital organs. This means that our legs have less blood in them, and are less oxygenated and thus weaker.\n\nHowever, there is a much larger mental component to it. The fear response that we feel at the edge of a cliff is designed to put us into \"fight or flight\" mode. Although the physical response of \"fight\" and \"flight\" as part of fear are pretty much the same (both give you more rapid heartbeat, increased adrenaline, quicker response times, etc.), the mental responses can be very different. This was how it explained to me by a psych professor I had. Essentially, when you get scared, your body doesn't know why. It just says \"oh shit, we're scared now, battlestations everybody!\". But your body doesn't run away or fight without your mind telling it to. \n\nMeanwhile, your mind analyzes the situation, and depending on what's going on, decides to use its now increased strength, speed, reflexes, and heartrate for running, fighting, or both. It comes down to two questions: \"Is this something I'm scared of DOING or something I'm scared of NOT doing (or fighting/being around)\" and \"Is it going to stop the problem faster/better if I run or if I fight?\" Now these aren't conscious questions you're asking yourself, this is a decision made by your brain based on (generally pretty obvious) contextual clues. As my professor said, \"Your mind, even in its dumbest, most split-second moment, knows that it's not going to do any good to get pissed off at a cliff edge and to try and fight the cliff edge. It knows that it just doesn't want to be NEAR a cliff edge. So your brain can then interpret the less-oxygenated, weaker knees as a sign that you probably shouldn't use them right now, hence the feeling of weaker knees. It's the same response, just a different reaction.\n\nNow, depending on how your brain instinctively interprets a situation, that can determine what exactly your response is in a given situation, which is why some people run and some people fight in the same situation. Sometimes your brain learns not to be scared in certain situations too, like with mountain climbers who don't fear heights."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2qri98 | why don't they track the cell phones of the passengers of the missing airasia plane? | Wouldn't it be likely that at least one of the passengers has a GPS phone? Why can't their phones be tracked? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qri98/eli5_why_dont_they_track_the_cell_phones_of_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"cn8tgu9",
"cn8tsk4",
"cn8uqvb"
],
"score": [
9,
9,
3
],
"text": [
"The phones are submerged therefore inoperable.",
"GPS isn't a two-way signal. You can tell where you are, relative to some satellites, but those satellites aren't receiving any signals from your device.\n\nIf your phone is underwater, it's usually going to stop working.\n\nAs far as the plane, various people have asked about the search several dozen times already. The short answer is that finding a plane in the ocean is harder than you think.",
"cell phones don't have a signal when you're 500 miles from land. they won't be able to send datat out."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
cmlkud | how does our body know to swallow liquids and foods down the esophagus (and not the windpipe) 99% of the time? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cmlkud/eli5_how_does_our_body_know_to_swallow_liquids/ | {
"a_id": [
"ew348br",
"ew349c7",
"ew34mj8"
],
"score": [
2,
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Easy: We aren't adapted to swallow into our lungs. I mean, how often do you really think you need to *swallow air*? It is simple for the body to simply divert anything swallowed via the typical muscle contractions of the esophagus down into the stomach.",
"When ever you swollow a peice of muscle/tissue called the epiglottis will close over the trachea (windpipe), preventing it from going down.",
"We have a flap in our throat called the epiglottis. It automatically closes off the path to the lungs when you swallow. That is why you can’t swallow and breath at the same time"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
rbpa9 | why does my cat smash his face into the wall when he sleeps? | If he's in the window, its smashed against the side. If he's on my lap, its smashed against my arm. In bed, smashed against my leg. It is comforting? For warmth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rbpa9/eli5_why_does_my_cat_smash_his_face_into_the_wall/ | {
"a_id": [
"c44ij7u",
"c44mzdb"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"The better question is, why don't you?",
"My guess is that it's for protection: if he's attacked by a predator while sleeping, his face and belly are protected (since the predator can't reach them), and only the less-vulnerable backside is exposed.\n\nOr, he knows it's adorable and is trying to help you gain karma."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
3djz4h | why aren't people getting sick from using their phones in the bathroom? | With all of the people using their smartphones while on the toilet, at the gym, etc and then later while eating, why aren't more people getting hepatitis / other illnesses? It seems that touching a phone with dirty hands, pocketing it, then using it later would be almost as bad as not washing your hands | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3djz4h/eli5_why_arent_people_getting_sick_from_using/ | {
"a_id": [
"ct5vjmb",
"ct5vp5j",
"ct5x5rc",
"ct5ys8w",
"ct644r0",
"ct666xp"
],
"score": [
27,
5,
17,
6,
3,
4
],
"text": [
"The real issue is that washing your hands in the bathroom isn't as crucial to avoid illnesses as you'd think. It's just that washing your hands IN GENERAL is, and reminding people to do so after using the bathroom is easier since you're already in a place with a sink.",
"Many of the diseases you're thinking of have very limited lifespans when they are outside of ideal environments. Since they are pathogens, ipso facto their ideal environment is inside us. Outside, they have a pretty rough time of it. Now, this is only generally; there are of course Bad Things that are infectious for quite some time.\n",
"1. Your hands are still clean when you're using your phone. I don't know of anyone who will sit down on a toilet, wipe their ass, and *then* grab their phone and take a shit. By the time you wipe, your phone is probably already put away again.\n\n2. (Most) phones are made out of metal and glass, and a few are made of plastic. Metal and glass (and most plastics) are non-porous - they don't absorb stuff, and bacteria won't survive on them very long, if at all.\n\n3. Our immune systems are actually pretty good. Chances are, you wouldn't get *seriously* sick even if you never washed your hands after using the washroom. That being said, there's a lot of other really nasty stuff that gets on your hands that you *do* need to wash off, like salmonella, e-coli, or other really dangerous bacteria. You should wash your hands regularly to protect yourself from this, and teaching a kid to wash their hands whenever they use the washroom is very convenient.",
"There is literally shit on almost everything you touch. There are germs fucking *everywhere*. Phones are not making the problem any worse than it always has been.",
"I honestly rarely wash my hands in general. Yeah if I touch raw meat or some nasty (visually dirty) surface or I can see that they are dirty. I usually get a minor cold every once a year and that's its. No serious illness.\n\nIf your concerned about germs on your phone, you shouldn't even keep your tooth brush near your bathroom.\n\nIt's just like the people who cover the toilets with that paper that is provided. It does nothing!!! ",
"If your own poop has hepatitis in it, then **you already have hepatitis**.\n\nYou probably should not lick strangers' phones. Especially not if the stranger has hepatitis, and the phone is covered in poop."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2zby57 | why can't politicians be contractually obligated to fulfill their basic campaign promises? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zby57/eli5_why_cant_politicians_be_contractually/ | {
"a_id": [
"cphi08b",
"cphi3nr",
"cphi7f1",
"cphicxv",
"cphignr",
"cphilx8",
"cphk781",
"cphktjx",
"cphkv99",
"cphmtxb",
"cphmu1x",
"cphpfcr",
"cphxyzk"
],
"score": [
17,
3,
275,
21,
3,
2,
3,
2,
2,
2,
12,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Well the simple and to the point answer is that lying is not illegal, and the type of campaign promises politicians make are not under oath, so there is no consequence to them not following though (or doing the exact opposite).",
"We can always vote them out unless we prefer the lies they tell us.",
"Other than the obvious \"it's impossible\" or \"they cannot be punished for lying\", the simple matter of the fact is, a single politician is merely a voice in the crowd. Sure they have a louder voice than us regular citizens, but it's still a crowd nonetheless.\n\nOne can claim to do A while running for office, and when they finally get into office and try to perform A, other people in the congress can be like, no, that's now what we promised our people. Then A is scrapped and the politician is left in the dust. \n\nFor something to happen, the majority must agree. That means if the person running for office wants to fulfill his campaign promises, he must make campaign promises that the majority of the congress will agree upon. But the reason why people are voting up new congress members is for change. If you're presenting ideas that are agreeable by congress, nobody will vote for you. If you're presenting ideas that are not agreeable by congress, people will vote for you (if that's what the people want).\n\nTL;DR: Politician wants to legalize weed, people vote him up, politician promotes weed legalization to congress, gets rejected, campaign promises unfulfilled.",
"Leaving aside the obvious \"the people who would put rules into place to stop this are the people who benefit from not having a rule in place\" aspect, there actually is a good reason. Life is complicated, and looking after a country moreso. The circumstances someone makes those promises in are rarely the circumstances in which they have to act on them.\n\nA simple example; you pledge to reduce taxes. And you mean it! You've run the numbers, and you've figured out how to do it. The people get behind you, you get voted in, and, you start figuring it out. Then a bomb is dropped, literally. Now, you need money to rebuild, but you worked that into your finances, that's fine... But now you're under pressure to go to war. In fact, you know it's the right thing to do, you'd be putting your nation at danger by not responding. But war is expensive. So are you going to push ahead on your tax reduction, knowing that you'll be sending an ill-equipped under-funded military out to fight? Or do you put aside your tax-reduction plan and get them what they need? Lives... Or money?\n\nAnd this is assuming that everyone else is playing nice. Here's another one; you're clearly going to win, so while they're still in charge they put in place a bunch of popular but expensive policies to get people on their side. If you win anyway, your tax-reduction plan is no longer feasible. You may not legally be able to undo their policies, and even if you can, that makes you the asshole who eliminated the \"food for orphans and veterans\" bill to push through your pet agenda.\n\nSo making it punishable not to follow through on your plans wouldn't work, because it would put politicians in the position of choosing to do what's best at the time but getting in trouble for it, or avoiding punishment by honouring old promises that aren't in anyone's best interests anymore.\nDoes this get abused to allow people to make promises they have no intent of following through on, or even know how to do? Hell, yes, but we can't solve it by forcing them to. My suggestion? Force politicians to put up implementation plans on how they plan to make things happen. Show us where the money is coming from. Give projections of the impact of the plan. Have them cite sources for their claims. Make those things mandatory, with punishment for not following them.",
"Because you'd have to convince politicians to make it illegal.\n\n'Hey, you guys, want to make your life harder?'",
"I think the contract is that if you promise things & don't deliver, the voters will elect someone else in your stead. \n\nIf you wanted to hold politicians criminally responsible for changing their minds based on better information or underestimating entrenched structural obstacles, I don't see how the result would be better. \n\nI honestly want politicians explaining why they've changed their positions more often, but voters tend to punish politicians for being anything but suredly obstinate. ",
"In the grand scheme of things you don't want inflexible politicians. pre-2008 [ish] it might have been a good idea to be a budget-reductionist but then the banking \"crisis\" happens and you need to inflate the currency to keep things moving.\n\nIn reality, people are fairly stupid and will believe anything their favourite politician tells them. That's why \"no new taxes!\" and \"the other guy eats babies\" works.",
"Because as a UK politician said once:\n\n\"Election promises are not subject to legitimate expectation.\"\n\nMeaning that everything they say should be expected as a lie.",
"What if circumstances change and what was originally promised is no longer the best alternative?\n\nWe need to have politicians who analyze issues and respond accordingly, not robots who press predetermined buttons.\n\nTrue, many campaign promises get broken for less that stellar reasons, but that's the trade-off for giving them the flexibility they need.\n",
"\"Contractual obligations\" are legal questions enforced by the court system.\n\nWhether a politician has fulfilled their campaign promises is a *political* question. The court system cannot rule on political questions and must leave them to the political process (i.e. the next election).",
"Because they aren't a King who has total control. Obama has tried to close GITMO, but the Republicans have stopped him several times. That's what happens in politics.\n\nNot to mention that this is a stupid idea as things change between a campaign and when a politician is in power. Obama campaigned on getting troops out of Iraq (which he largely did). Now ISIS is a thing and he might need to send troops back. Do you want his hands tied by something he said in 2007?",
"It's a combination of things:\n\n1. Not all campaign promises can be achieved, some are realistic and some are not, others just don't come to fruition for unexpected reasons.\n\n2. Those who make the promises are not always representative of the entire political party they stand for and as such any promises they make are not necessarily going to be carried out by the current government.\n\n3. In most democracies what's stopping the current government from passing legislation isn't their unwillingness to do so, but instead the opposition who refuse to pass it into law. We see this particularly in US politics.\n\n4. Extenuating and unforeseen circumstances such as war, climatic events, civil unrest or other uncontrollable things can often prevent the government from focusing its attention on fulfilling campaign promises. Sometimes resources just must be distributed in emergency situations.\n\n5. And lastly, it is just wildly impractical. Every politician and government would be scrutinized if they failed to achieve even the most insignificant of their campaign promises. Who would be the judge of such failures and how do we remedy such a situation? These are all questions that need to be answered before holding governments completely accountable based on their manifesto's.",
".....why do you think we have a SECOND AMENDMENT??"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1jzv8a | what happens to the bodies of asylum seekers who die en route to australia? | I'm sure there's some sort of process to follow with this sort of thing. Do we fly them back? And to who? Considering it's possible for whole families to die on the same boat, and identification of the bodies would prove to be difficult seeing as their aren't any official documents.
Not generalising to Australia. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jzv8a/eli5_what_happens_to_the_bodies_of_asylum_seekers/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbk7qg5"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I'm sure that the government would likely either burn or bury the bodies at the point. Here's a better explanation of how it works in the US, and I feel it would be no different for asylum seekers as there would be nowhere else to send the body (_URL_0_). If documentation did exist, next of kin from the country of origin may be tasked with flying the body back or paying for burial in the asylum country."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://voices.yahoo.com/what-happens-unclaimed-bodies-465672.html"
]
] |
|
37u3xy | how different coloured light affects plants and why? | For instance a standard coleus or tomato plant. So why would a light affect a plant in which way, is light just different wave lengths? Then why would a plant be more inclined to reflect a 520nanometer wavelength (green) than a 650nanometer wave length (red)? So what would be the most catalyzing (for growth) colour? Violet? Why?
Bonus question: Is this the same for plants that aren't green? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37u3xy/eli5_how_different_coloured_light_affects_plants/ | {
"a_id": [
"crpts6j"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"The different colors are produced (more or less) by different wavelengths. It's a little bit more complicated than that since vision is complicated, but that's close enough.\n\nThe green color of plants comes from chlorophyll, the chemical that allows plants to capture sunlight to produce energy. It just so happens that it's good at absorbing blue and red light, but not as good at absorbing green (which gets reflected or goes through). Strictly speaking, there are several types of chlorophyll, but most plants limit themselves to two, which are green and yellow.\n\n > So what would be the most catalyzing (for growth) colour?\n\nI would speculate and say blue, since that's the color chlorophyll most strongly absorbs. But there could be other factors at play - I'm not a botanist.\n\n > Bonus question: Is this the same for plants that aren't green?\n\nMost plants that aren't green still have chlorophyll of the same kind, they just have other pigments that change their color. So yes, it should be the same. There are a few exceptions: some algae and cyanobacteria use different forms of chlorophyll that are different colors and absorb different wavelengths of light, usually because they live in environments where blue light doesn't penetrate well."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5ibctp | why are shock waves more dangerous in water than air? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ibctp/eli5_why_are_shock_waves_more_dangerous_in_water/ | {
"a_id": [
"db6sk4d",
"db6sm8n",
"db6t2b3"
],
"score": [
6,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Water is not compressible but air is. So, in air, a lot of the energy of a shock wave will be wasted just compressing the air. But, in water, the energy of the shock wave gets directly transferred into your body because none of it was wasted compressing the water.\n\nImagine you were swinging a paddle at someone across the room. If there was just air in between you then the force would dissipate before it made it to your victim. However, if you used that paddle it hit an incompressible object like a long metal rod, the force would be transferred much more efficiently to the other side.",
"Water doesn't compress, so doesn't absorb the energy like air does. \n\nThe way to think of is like being hit around the head by a sponge, and then bit hit around the head, at the same speed, by a brick. One will do **way** more damage. ",
"This has to do with how momentum is transferred in a collision: If you have one steel ball hitting another of the same size, it will transfer all its momentum, and with it all its energy, to the other ball - as in Newton's cradle. But if it hits a much heavier steel ball, it will be deflected, and with it most of its energy.\n\nShock waves behave in a very similar manner: A shock wave in air hitting a human will be reflected almost entirely, whereas a shock wave in water is able to pass right through a human, simply because water is very similar in density and elasticity to tissue. \n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
d97hjg | how are impossible burgers healthy with all the chemicals to make it look and taste like meat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d97hjg/eli5_how_are_impossible_burgers_healthy_with_all/ | {
"a_id": [
"f1f4fx1"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"everything is a chemical of some kind, including meat and vitamins. The chemical used in food products were tested and confirmed to be safe or beneficial."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5i4qwq | purpose of warming car up during winter? i keep reading crap online today that says its a myth and doesn't apply to today's cars & my ignorance doesn't know what to believe. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5i4qwq/eli5_purpose_of_warming_car_up_during_winter_i/ | {
"a_id": [
"db5bpcg",
"db5bt2y",
"db5bupr",
"db5n0h1"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
9,
2
],
"text": [
"The heating element inside the car uses the engines coolant for its heat source. If the engine hasn't been running for a while, the coolant will not be hot, and you will have no heat inside the vehicle until the coolant warms up from the engine.",
"with modern cars, warming up an engine is not necessary. Electronics control fuel/air mixture allowing for correct combustion, so idling is just wasting gas. \n\nNOW, you don't want to red line it around town, be more gentle with it until your temp needle comes up to at least a quarter of the way. BUT the fastest way to do that is to put a load on the engine (driving it). ",
"The purpose of warming the car up has a couple features:\n\n* in really cold weather, the oil and transmission fluid can be thick and sluggish, and isn't fully lubricating the parts of the engine very well until they get a little warm. \n\n* create heat so you're comfortable in the car.\n\nThe second version is the primary reason. By 'get a little warm,' the fluids are pretty good even below freezing, and there's little difference between an idling engine and driving down the street at city speeds. Were you to head straight out on the highway at 70mph, there's the potential for more wear than usual, but generally things in the engine and transmission are designed to allow a little bit of time between the engine first starting and everything getting lubricated to normal operating levels.",
"It's not a myth. Your engine has more friction when cold and can shut right off if it's not warm enough to keep combustion happening. This has happened to me hundreds of times. Then again where I live the temperature can be -30 C."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3fhiqk | how do we know the "observer effect" in quantum physics is real? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fhiqk/eli5_how_do_we_know_the_observer_effect_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctonmq5",
"ctoo463"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Exactly how to understand the observer effect depends on your interpretation of quantum mechanics. To the degree we \"know\" it's real it follows from the simple double slit experiment. Measure/observe which slit the particle is in and the interference pattern disappears. ",
"A measurement is *always* an interaction with the system we want to measure. And an interaction *always* changes the system. Thus, it follows logically, than an observation will *always* change the system."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
vw8nd | please see the "huge bubbles" video in link below. you can see when a soap bubble pops at one end, the "popping" travels all the way to the other end till the bubble is completely popped. what determines the speed of popping? | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vw8nd/eli5_please_see_the_huge_bubbles_video_in_link/ | {
"a_id": [
"c586cnm",
"c58axa5"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The speed at which the bubble pops is determined by the elasticity of the bubble material. There are forces holding the bubble together that are in equilibrium, acting on all sides of the bubble. When the bubble is popped, it no longer has that equilibrium, and rapidly approaches a chaotic state.",
"Thank you for showing that video it was amazing. Sorry I can't add to the answer."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-zYdOPG2k&feature=fvwrel"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
5h2mxz | can you explain turkey's constitutional changes in terms of the presidency and what it means for the us (and likewise, what does the us want)? | Struggling with completely understanding this topic, thought I'd try and tie up lose ends with the help of Reddit. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h2mxz/eli5_can_you_explain_turkeys_constitutional/ | {
"a_id": [
"daxj5do"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Turkey's political structure currently has a president (head of executive branch) and prime minister (head of legislative branch). \n\nCurrently the constitution states that a president elect must cut ties with his/her political party before taking on the role, constitutionally making presidency a nonpartisan role. \n\nThe proposed changes will eliminate this requirement allowing the president to stay loyal to his party. Currently parliament is elected though a general election, the prime minister is then elected privately by the ruling party in parliament. The president is elected in a separate election.\n\nIn a completely free and fair system this is not principally a problem. If on the other hand there is widespread corruption this will allow a single figurehead to rule both the legislative and executive branches of government, and thus appoint yes-men to the judicial branch, effectively ruling the entire government unilaterally. \n\nFor the US this doesn't mean anything special. It doesn't allow the Turkey to gain any extra power and if Trump continues with his America First approach than there is no concern with Turkey at all. They do not hold any leverage over the US and we have no special interest in them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2jpvhu | how are the "leaf stains" on concrete formed? | During fall, there are usually dark brown stains from leaves on the sidewalks. Sometimes they're perfectly in the shape of a leaf but later they get smudged. How are they formed and what are they made of? Why do so many form? I can't seem to find anything online besides advice on how to remove them. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jpvhu/eli5_how_are_the_leaf_stains_on_concrete_formed/ | {
"a_id": [
"cle1bv7"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"it's like acid etching but in reverse, concrete is acidic and decaying plant matter has an alkaloid base which results in staining upon exposure. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
88ju2o | why aren't orbits thrown off when two planets get near each other? | The planets in our solar system have had constant orbits for billions of years. When Earth, for example, is closest to Mars, why doesn't this slightly change the orbits of both planets? Wouldn't Earth's gravitational force on Mars (and vice versa) be different when they are nearest to each other versus farthest from each other? How does this not affect their orbits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88ju2o/eli5_why_arent_orbits_thrown_off_when_two_planets/ | {
"a_id": [
"dwl6xuz",
"dwl743p",
"dwlgi4l",
"dwlhn5o"
],
"score": [
3,
11,
3,
2
],
"text": [
" > The planets in our solar system have had constant orbits for billions of years. When Earth, for example, is closest to Mars, why doesn't this slightly change the orbits of both planets?\n\nIt does, and it has been stable for billions of years. \n\n > Wouldn't Earth's gravitational force on Mars (and vice versa) be different when they are nearest to each other versus farthest from each other?\n\nSlightly, yes, but they really don't get that close.",
"It absolutely does. The change is just small that over the course of human existence which is only a few hundred thousand years, let alone the few hundred years that we've been able to reliably measure, the difference is too small to matter. The orbits of the planets are stable over long periods of time, but dynamic over cosmic time-scales. We can only predict them with any confidence out to a few tens of millions of years. ",
"They do and these changes are what helped us locate some of the outer planets. Uranus was discovered by accident, but then someone cross checked the orbit that was observed versus one calculated, it was off. These discrepancies pointed astronomers to start hunting for Neptune. ",
"All celestial bodies have what is called a \"Sphere of influence\" meaning that their gravity dominates the behavior of everything in that sphere.\n\nAll planets fall within the Sun's sphere of influence and none of them pass close enough to each other to enter the sphere of influence of one another so their impacts on each other are relatively small.\n\nOver millions of years and thousands of orbits their paths will change but that is a very long time scale and since they're so far apart they won't result in drastic changes but just slight nudges this way or that\n\nAt their closest approach, Mars is accelerating towards Earth due to gravity at just 1.33 x 10^-7 m/s^2, its accelerating towards the Sun at 2.543x10^-3 m/s^2, that's over 10,000x greater"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
52yyp2 | how did submarine engines work underwater before the advent of nuclear power? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52yyp2/eli5_how_did_submarine_engines_work_underwater/ | {
"a_id": [
"d7oi2du",
"d7oipgd"
],
"score": [
3,
5
],
"text": [
"IIRC before nuclear power, submarines used a combination of batteries and diesel engines. They would use the engines for surface travel or just under the surface by using a snorkel and then switch to battery power for deeper dives.",
"To expand on the point /u/Bladegrey made, American WW2 submarines were diesel-electric. Meaning that the diesel engines drove generators which could be switched to charge the batteries and drive an electric motor to power the screws, or only drive the motor. (The latter gave a little more speed.)\n\nGerman U-boats used direct diesel power on the surface and batteries when submerged.\n\nThe limited power of batteries and the slow speed they gave underwater meant that in practice, the submarine only dived for a) short submerged attacks b) evading, and later in the war or in dangerous waters c) hiding underwater during the day and recharging the batteries at night. Most attack runs happened on the surface.\n\nLate-war British/American radar technology and air superiority in the Atlantic led to German submarines being fitted with the (Dutch-developed) snorkel, through which air could be provided for diesel engines to run underwater.\n\n[Here's a comprehensive original American training video on how a WW2 submarine works.](_URL_0_)\n\n[Here are interviews with American WW2 submariners if you're interested in some stories.](_URL_1_) (Starts kinda in the middle of an interview.)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBrx3LoB4k0",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5S10wAPxa4"
]
] |
||
cdd1la | why do some websites redirect from their .com domain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cdd1la/eli5_why_do_some_websites_redirect_from_their_com/ | {
"a_id": [
"ett6cz6"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It depends, if you own a large company, you don't want to have the same website running on two different servers, that's just redundant. Hence, if you own the rights to something like the .net and .com addresses to prevent squatting, the .net would just forward people to their .com address. This can also be the reverse, if you're a large non-profit, you might direct to your .org main site."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
8ato8r | what is the significance of protein structure/folding? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ato8r/eli5_what_is_the_significance_of_protein/ | {
"a_id": [
"dx1f4ar",
"dx1fie4"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Imagine you have a easy to store, easy to make metal chain that folds up and transforms into a wrench. This wrench fits a specific bolt perfectly.\n\nThere are a bunch of chains that all individually make different size wrenches to do work, and we make all of these chains out of the same very few parts. It's all in what the order of the links are. This makes them fold up into the perfect wrench for whatever job we are doing.",
"Proteins are made up of something we call amino acids (aa for short). Think of these as lego pieces. These lego pieces are particular in that some are afraid of water but love fatty stuff like a cell membrane, others need to be surrounded by water etc. These lego pieces come together to form a protein and depending on how they come together they do certain things (different molecular bonds are formed and such). Just like how you can build a castle or a car from pieces, you can build proteins like insulin or a membrane receptor. And just like you put certain pieces in certain places in the castle, certain aa are needed in certain places of the membrane receptor (hydrophobic aa). So in summary: The structure of the protein determines it's function. Specific aa are needed to build the structure.\n\nNow if you want to go deeper, if you destroy the structure of the protein, by heating it up, or adding acid/base to it, you naturally would make it useless. Hence why we want our bodies at a certain temperature and at a certain pH (acidity). "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1cszb7 | what are the known and theorized dimensions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cszb7/eli5_what_are_the_known_and_theorized_dimensions/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9kv0mb"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"In mathematics, the \"dimension\" of a space is, roughly, the number of things that you need to specify in order to pick out a point in that space. An example of a one dimensional space would be the number line. In order to fully specify a spot on the number line, all you need to do is name a number. An example of a two dimensional space would be the plane. In order to pick out a point on a plane, you need to specify two numbers: an x coordinate and a y coordinate. In three dimensional space, you need three numbers to pick out a unique point. \n\nFrom a mathematical perspective, nothing stops us from generalizing this upward into very high dimensional space. In a 100 dimensional space, you need exactly 100 numbers to pick out a single point. This isn't just an esoteric mathematical concept: lots of math is made simpler by applying our knowledge of 1, 2, and 3 dimensional spaces into higher dimensional spaces. What is the physical interpretation of 100 dimensional space? It doesn't matter. There isn't one. However, it can be very useful (or alternatively, very misleading) to bring our intuitive ideas about two dimensional space into higher dimensional space. It can help us solve lots of different kinds of problems to think about things like a \"99 dimensional plane in a 100 dimensional space\".\n\nPresumably though when you talk about \"dimensions\" you mean dimensions in the physical sense and not in the mathematical sense. You're thinking of height, width, and depth. And you're trying to imagine, like the fellow in the video this is posted *imagines* (and I can't stress enough, that video, as entertaining as it is, ought to be titled \"imagination time with an internet crank\") what it might mean to extend our *physical* notions of three dimensional space to higher dimensions.\n\nLucky for us there is a very natural way to think about the stuff called \"spacetime\" using the mathematical notion of dimension. Rather than simply thinking about three dimensional physical spaces, we think about a four dimensional space called \"spacetime\" where the fourth dimension is time. This makes a lot of sense and makes thinking about how the universe works much easier. Think about the earth rotating around the sun. Every year it comes back to the same place that it was one year ago (pretend that the sun is the unmoving center of the universe). Thus, its (x,y,z) in space coordinates don't tell us its position in *spacetime*—they simply specify a point where the earth is located once every year. In order to specify the earth's position in space time, we need to also say *which* time we are talking about the earth being at a certain spot. So we use four coordinates, (x,y,z,t), and thus, spacetime is a 4 dimensional space."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3jka80 | why are drones becoming a big thing just now? hasn't the technology been around for quite some time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jka80/eli5_why_are_drones_becoming_a_big_thing_just_now/ | {
"a_id": [
"cupyhor",
"cupyilm",
"cupzcwy"
],
"score": [
9,
2,
7
],
"text": [
"Cost effectiveness and battery capacity are the reasons — specifically cost effectiveness of manufacturing batteries with decent energy densities and output profiles.\n\nIt's *possible* today to build a lithium ion battery that will last for decades without significantly degrading in performance and a high energy density; it would cost millions due to the quality control and testing and hand-tweaking and exotic processes in manufacturing.\n\nA similar situation existed a decade ago with respect to lithium ion batteries just for laptops, which don't draw much current (unless they are designed more like desktops). Before that for iPods. Before that for Nickel Metal Hydride technology. Before that for alkalines. Before that for lead-acid batteries.\n\nThe challenges are similar to the ones faced by people who want to build large structures out of graphene: small structural or chemical flaws on the scale of individual atoms have a very large impact on the theoretical performance of the structure. ",
"It's cheaper now than ever before. Also, people are inspired to purchase them because they view cool videos that were shot using a drone on social media.",
"The tech is actually just now good enough on the affordable level. It needs to have gyro sensors and accelerometers and a flight controller to take your input and make the copter work. Multicopters are all \"fly by wire\", you are not directly controlling motor speed, a microcontroller is reading those sensors and your input and doing calculations for what the motors should do. Those packages 10 years ago were for helicopters and were rather expensive and difficult to use, but now cost $15 for a good one.\n\nAlso brushless motors are now commonplace and weren't then. You need something that can spin up and down fast for a larger multicopter and now that they are ~$20 including the speed controller package you can afford 4 or more of them. In the recent past, they were super expensive so if you wanted a copter you bought one, mounted it to a frame and that frame had blades and the swashplate with servos to move it. Nowadays that's actually the more expensive to repair and less reliable method. Thank the internet for bringing down prices on parts, mostly. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
pmt1g | why did people develop lighter skinned (i.e asians and europeans) while people retained their darker skin (i.e africans and indians?) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pmt1g/elif_why_did_people_develop_lighter_skinned_ie/ | {
"a_id": [
"c3qlx77",
"c3qn3au"
],
"score": [
7,
7
],
"text": [
"As our species moved north (from South Africa) through Europe a high concentration of melanin and thus darker skin became unnecessary for protection against the sun. Moreover, increased availability of vitamin D caused a change in the darkness of skins proportional to the degree north that the species 'traveled'.\n\n------\n\n_URL_0_\n\nLook at \"Evolution_Of_Skin_Colour\"",
"Our bodies can only make vitamin D with the help of ultraviolet light, or \"UV,\" from sunlight. Nearer to the equator, sunlight shines pretty directly through the atmosphere. Dark skin has with more melanin (dark color) and acts as a suncreen. Lots of melanin protects the body from sun damage and lets just enough UV through to make enough vitamin D to be healthy.\n\nHumans evolved near the equator, where dark skin makes sense. \n\nBut further from the equator, where sunlight has to travel through the atmosphere at an angle, more UV light gets absorbed and less UV light reaches the ground. Towards the poles, dark skin blocks out too much UV for the body make healthy amounts of vitamin D. Light skin, with less melanin, is more sensitive to UV light and helped people who moved to these areas stay healthier. But lighter skin is less protected from sun damage, and people with light skin can get skin cancer if they move to areas with more direct sunlight.\n\nSo, skin color is a balance between protection from skin damage and ability to make enough vitamin D to be healthy. Human groups have migrated over great distances over huge periods of time, and groups' skin colors got lighter or darker again as they adapted to the amount of UV wherever they lived. \n\nFor a little more depth, there's a great TED Talk on the topic: [Nina Jablonsky breaks the illusion of skin color](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color"
],
[
"http://www.ted.com/talks/nina_jablonski_breaks_the_illusion_of_skin_color.html"
]
] |
||
16a2hs | what is sudden adult death syndrome (sads)? | Over the past number of years I have heard of this, and have heard of two people in my locality between the ages of 16 and 20 passing away from what was put down to SADS... I've tried reading up on it, but I just can't make sense of what it means. Could someone explain it in simple terms to me, and what can be done to treat it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16a2hs/eli5_what_is_sudden_adult_death_syndrome_sads/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7u62uf"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"It refers to a death caused by a cardiac arrest (heart attack) where evidence of damage to the heart tissue is absent. That is to say, the heart will superficially look perfectly healthy in autopsy. \n\nIt's largely asymptomatic before a heart attack, hence 'sudden' but there can be early warning signs such as dizzy spells and palpitations. The treatment is simply regular electro-cardiograms to monitor people known to be at high risk, such as those with a family history and avoidance of physical or emotional exertion for those at risk. The primary causes are abnormal electrical activity in the heart and coronary disease. These can be brought on through surgery, such as the fitting of a pacemaker or through medication side effects, but in the case of young people they are usually congenital (present from birth.) \nMost people with the condition will have absolutely no inkling until they or a close family member wind up in the emergency room. The best advice is to consult your doctor if you get unexplained dizzy spells or unexplained palpitations. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5kyey5 | believers in jfk assassination conspiracy, could you please explain to me why there had to have been a second shooter when many experts say that only one would suffice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kyey5/eli5_believers_in_jfk_assassination_conspiracy/ | {
"a_id": [
"dbrjh5t"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"To put this simply because im at work and on my phone. I think 2 shots came from oswald ( the 3rd shell was kept in the chamber which was taughy in the military) \nFirst shot missed. Second shot his kennedys neck. Final shot came from a secret servive men standing and reacting to the 2 shots from oswald _URL_0_ the last shot was a accident.\n\nI saw this in a documentary and it seems very logical.\n\nJust my imo though. Sorry for the shitty formatting."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRwBnKLZy-ZOYI6JBvL2pqqvSfhG2HHNIwS5qU8XlReQ4KWYzbaDA"
]
] |
||
cet2y2 | why do diesel trucks often keep their engines running while refueling despite it being illegal for gas cars to do so? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cet2y2/eli5_why_do_diesel_trucks_often_keep_their/ | {
"a_id": [
"eu4otuq",
"eu4pmef"
],
"score": [
22,
2
],
"text": [
" Gas vapors will ignite if you provide a source of ignition, diesel won't. Diesel fuel is basically a very light oil that only combusts when a vapor of it is mixed with air then compressed until it explodes. Diesel is so stable it's not as dangerous to work with as gasoline.",
"Well, depending on your jurisdiction, I’m not sure it is legal to be refuelling a ‘running’ vehicle.\n\nHowever, Diesel is far less volatile than petrol (gas). It takes certain conditions to get diesel to ignite/burn, usually not found outside of a Diesel engine. You could take a puddle of diesel fuel and throw a match on it, nothing much would happen.\n\nDo that to gas, and up she goes. In fact, a significant spark can achieve the same thing, so little energy is required to ignite petrol/gas because it vaporises - and therefore, mixes with oxygen - so easily.\n\nPerhaps that it why you see people doing this, although running diesel vehicles are certainly hot enough, and producing other electrical activity, sufficient to ignite stray petrol/gas vapour nearby."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1z1pyy | the positives and negatives of a global economy. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z1pyy/eli5_the_positives_and_negatives_of_a_global/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfppxld",
"cfpqvqu"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Positives: You can buy and sell things from a much bigger market, getting better prices for inputs and outputs or consumables.\n\nBad: You have to compete with everyone else in the world who's doing the same as you, so if your job or skills or product can be duplicated in a different country at a lower cost, enjoy being homeless.",
"Pro: distribution of resources.\nFaster spread of technology.\nLarger pool of money.\nEveryone doesn't have to be a farmer!\nCheaper products.\nCons: shifts in the economy affect everyone.\nLess gov control of the market (bad for autocratic governments)\nAnd most importantly: Industrialized countries quickly dominate everyone. An example is Europe, which used the industrial revolution to dominate the world for a time."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
3t2urx | the use and subsequent decline of the long s ("ʃ") | I recall this being used pre-WWI, but at a certain point it obviously fell out of favor in writing.
I'm really curious what became of the long s. What was it used for, and when did people decide that it really wasn't that worth using? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t2urx/eli5_the_use_and_subsequent_decline_of_the_long_s/ | {
"a_id": [
"cx2mmd6",
"cx2zxxx"
],
"score": [
16,
2
],
"text": [
"The [long s](_URL_2_), or *ʃ*, was a way of writing the soft s sound. It came from the ancient [Roman writing style](_URL_1_). Always pronounced essentially as we would today, it grew out of fashion as it became more and more similar to the letter *f*. Although different regions lost it at different times starting as early as the [1780s](_URL_3_), America and English in general gave up on it in the early [1800s](_URL_0_). Some say when the *The Times* switched its typeface to make it easier to read it was the final straw. Eventually practically just won out.",
"The first comment is correct; in addition you should know that it has always been common, in handwriting and in printing, to write letters differently depending on their surroundings. For example, the \"tilde\" symbol as we know it (õ, ã, etc.) arose as a shortcut for an N that was next to a vowel; many other letters were *also* written above their neighbor when the combination was common, although these have dropped out of use). Ç (the cedille) has a mark underneath it that was a (gradually disappearing) z under the c for the common combination \"cz\", whereas the Germans compressed \"sz\" into ß. Æ and Œ, ligatures of two common vowel combinations in Latin and Greek, are still with us today. You can find some more examples in this document: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo ʃ and s were (like i and j, or u and v) two different ways of writing S that started as the sole S-form in two different forms of handwriting, and then were recombined in hybrid use, based on ease of writing and ease of reading in context with the other letters written at that time. I don't know all of the reasons why the ʃ/s system was more stable than the i/j and u/v system, but at least part of it is that in the non-cursive system ʃ had loops coming down above the next letter and going back under the previous letter, which wastes space at the beginning or end of a word. In cursive, meanwhile, ʃ was clearly faster to write (much like modern cursive f, while for s you end on a backstroke and many people lift the pen to write the next letter) and also more resembles S than the cursive s does. \n\nIt just took time for the similarity of ʃ and f (especially in printing, which dropped the descender, and then added a half-bar to avoid the similarity of undescended-ʃ to l) to be annoying enough, and the loss of compactness to be unimportant enough, for someone to *make* a typeface that used only s and never ʃ. That was I think the 1720s and the conquest of printing was complete within 100 years; and people who no longer saw ʃ in print stopped writing it during the following century.\n\nBy the way, ʃ is still in use in math (for integration) and linguistics (for the sound we write as \"sh\")"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37982/use-of-f-instead-of-s-in-historic-printed-english-documents",
"http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=2729",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s",
"http://www.absurdintellectual.com/2011/01/02/a-history-and-usage-of-the-s-long-s/"
],
[
"http://collation.folger.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/EarlyLetterforms.pdf"
]
] |
|
2cz5qg | what would happen if my innocence is proved after i've been in prison for a long time ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cz5qg/eli5_what_would_happen_if_my_innocence_is_proved/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjkgpg0",
"cjknwme"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Some folks sue and win large sums of money. Some folks get an apology. Some folks get a bill for room and board. It can depend on your jurisdiction, the good/bad faith conduct of the people who established your guilt, and the potency of your legal representation.",
"As far as money it varies by state. Some states have special funds set aside to pay out for such incidents, some don't, some people have to sue, for others it just need to fill in the right forms.\n\nFound an article about Louisiana in particular.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nApart from some cash from the state there are other considerations. None of which I can answer with confidence.\n\n* How does this show up on official records and background checks for employment?\n* What about crimes commited in jail? How are they treated?\n* How hard is it to get a job? How does a person explain a 5 year blank spot on their resume?\n* If you were in a technical field how do you refresh your skills to get a job? \n* If you plan on going to college the dorm system might be a bad fit now that you are much older the your dorm mates.\n* Is a person who was in prison for 5 years even insurable as far as medical insurance goes?\n* How much counseling does the wronged need? Prison is harsh and PTSD needs to be treated.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://theadvocate.com/news/police/6841062-123/louisiana-paying-wrongfully-convicted-but"
]
] |
||
eo9sqj | why some drugs destroy teeth? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eo9sqj/eli5_why_some_drugs_destroy_teeth/ | {
"a_id": [
"feaeatn",
"feaei7t",
"feah4bu",
"feali30"
],
"score": [
4,
5,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Some are acidic and destroy the enamel, some make you grind your teeth, some make you forget to even take care of your dental hygiene, and some do all 3!",
"Not an expert, but with meth for example it constricts your salivary glands for long periods. This drys your mouth out, makibg your enamel more susceptible to cavities. This combined with a craving for sweets means usually drinking things like soda to curb the dry mouth.",
"Some drugs suppress saliva production, which will negatively impact your teeth. Others are stimulants that made you grind your teeth with nervous energy.\n\nBut it is also largely a lifestyle thing. If your money is going to drugs instead of food, housing, and dentistry, you whole body, teeth included, will suffer.",
"What they said plus people that go days on end on a bender don't practice good hygiene. When you're tweaked out for a days or weeks at a time you're not likely to be brushing/ showering etc. You're whole body takes damage/ gets dirty, but unlike your teeth, your body can repair much of it. Damage to your teeth is permanent. Damage to your skin/hair/nails isn't."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
17t5mu | if smoking marijuana increases the heart rate, making the heart beat faster, isn't someone who smokes on a daily basis setting themselves up for an irregular heart beat? | I am in no way against marijuana. I smoke almost every day! But I was stoned yesterday and this thought popped into my head. Technically speaking you do have an irregular heart beat if you smoke on and off all day every day because it increases the heart rate, then when you come down your heart rate goes back to its regular rate of beating, correct? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17t5mu/if_smoking_marijuana_increases_the_heart_rate/ | {
"a_id": [
"c88l7ri",
"c88lbeo",
"c88lc9m",
"c88nv8w"
],
"score": [
6,
15,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Exercise also makes your heart beat faster.",
"An irregular heart beat is called arrhythmia. This happens when your heart does not beat at a steady rhythm. Heart rate is the number of beats per minute. You can have an irregular heartbeat at normal, high, or low heart rates. Therefore, no, using any substance that raises your heart rate is not necessarily going to cause arrhythmia.",
"Also:\n > Don't be Walter. Conversations and explanations are much better when you do not come with a strong opinion already established and simply ask, \"am I wrong?\"",
"That's why weed smokers must listen to Pink Floyd or reggae. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
cyj9fl | why do so many sites contain anti-bot captchas? what purpose do the bots serve and why are they being regulated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cyj9fl/eli5_why_do_so_many_sites_contain_antibot/ | {
"a_id": [
"eysb29m",
"eysbd3p",
"eysdf6d"
],
"score": [
7,
4,
2
],
"text": [
"Bots can serve many purposes. One example is guessing peoples' passwords - if you get your password wrong two or three times then you may be asked to do a captcha. Another example is flooding a site with activity in hopes of giving the server too much to handle and breaking part of its software. Another purpose of bots is making fake accounts for various reasons. Websites really don't like any of these things, so they install captchas to keep the bots at bay.",
"Captchas are also being used to train AIs. Everytime you log in you are looking at pictures and showing AI what a sign is or what a bus is. It is outsourcing literally thousands of hours of AI definitions.",
"To stop spam. Bots collecting info or creating accounts. They’re trying to verify it’s a human."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1qjrlx | i'm studying a course in engineering and.... | was told that if you where to travel from point A to point B, a distance of 1000 miles for example, if you where to make the same journey, but from point B to point A, it would only be 998 miles due to the curvature of the planet. How is this possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qjrlx/eli5im_studying_a_course_in_engineering_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cddgxn7",
"cddh968",
"cddi8p5"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Either you're misunderstanding the example given, or whoever gave you the example is confused. \n\nThe only thing I can think of that might make sense is if the professor were trying to explain how different geometries can have different properties, so that the distance between A and B in a straight line (i.e. through the Earth) is shorter than the over-land distance (which takes the form of an arc of a [great circle](_URL_0_)).",
"The best way I can understand the question is that it's actually talking about the *rotation* of the planet. If you fly a plane from A to B traveling with the Earth's rotation, you'll travel a longer distance than when traveling the other way, since in that case your end point rushes up to meet you.",
"In some cases, it is possible to shorten the distance between two points using the curvature of the earth. For example, if point A and point B are on the same latitude line, but very far to the North, it would seem to make sense to fly directly East or West to get there using the shortest distance. However, an arced path is typically shorter, since the closer to the North Pole you get, the less distance you have to travel to change you longitude."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_circle"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
77sp78 | why people with bad eyesight see better when they close their eyes a little? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77sp78/eli5_why_people_with_bad_eyesight_see_better_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"doocuxx",
"dooczao",
"dooebo3"
],
"score": [
2,
8,
2
],
"text": [
"Although I don't have an answer to your original question, the word you are looking for is \"squint\".",
"When you squint you change the shape of the eye. The change is closer to the shape of a normal eye, which improves the person's vision. Unfortunately, the strain on the eye muscles will cause headaches and such.\n\nThis is why teachers can tell when to recommend that kids get their eyes checked.",
"Changing the eye shape is part of it, but squinting can also reduce the effective size of your pupil (the black part, which is the hole the light actually goes through). Having a smaller hole, called an \"aperture\" in optics and photography, leads to sharper images. There's a decent illustration in this figure from wikipedia, which might help:\n_URL_0_\n\nThe idea with the smaller aperture is that it blocks out some of the rays which would be coming in at different angles and not focusing to quite the right spot. Without those rays, the image looks cleaner overall. (This also means that you can see more sharply when it's bright out and your pupil is small than when it's dark and your pupil gets big.)\n\nYou can see this effect in action by simply looking through a tiny pin hole. Even if you make a little hole with your thumb and finger and look through it, you may be able to see the focus of a distant object change a little as you shrink the hole down. (Although you'll also be looking through the blurry image of your fingers themselves.) In fact, a \"pinhole camera\" with a small enough hole forms perfectly focused images of objects at any distance even without a lens, meaning they have an infinite \"depth of field\"."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Depth_of_field_illustration.svg"
]
] |
||
8dfxfa | how is is possible for a business to remain open for year(s) while operating at a loss? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8dfxfa/eli5_how_is_is_possible_for_a_business_to_remain/ | {
"a_id": [
"dxms1uy",
"dxms8it"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Investors. Investors pump money into the business in hopes of eventually seeing a return/profit.\n\nLook at Amazon.",
"Well, first and formost, just because you are operating at a loss doesn't mean that you are running a bad business. You could be making investment in your business that has you losing money, but that is fueling future growth. Amazon has been like this - they keep reinvesting their profits into new, high growth markets. Amazon is a very profitable business, but they choose to focus in being even _more_ profitable rather than just enjoying where they are at.\n\nSecondly, depending on how you account for things, you can operate at a loss on paper yet still be generating profit. This is why most businesses are evaluated on different statements and metrics - no one measure tells the whole story. \n\nFinally, even if your business is operating at a true loss, if you have someone willing to keep investing in it, then you can run until their investment runs out."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
32pamq | american curfew laws, what are they? | So I've just seen a post on /r/offbeat about a kid not being given a ticket for being out after curfew. Like, is being out after dark a crime which you can be fined for? I always thought it was a rule given to kids by their parents, not law enforced | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32pamq/eli5_american_curfew_laws_what_are_they/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqdau6p",
"cqdawys",
"cqdebvd"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"It depends in where you live, there is a legal curfew for minors in a lot of places, but unless you're super young I don't think cops would bother if you aren't being suspicious",
"Depends on where you live and the circumstances.\n\nSome places have no laws about when you can be out. Some places have laws saying that people under 18 can't be out after X O'clock. Some places have laws saying that you can't be out on foot after X O'clock.",
"Yeah, it is. It happened to me once. From what I can tell, how seriously they take this law depends on the area. For instance I used to live ain a very safe suburb, so I'd go walking at night as a kid, and nobody cared. But when I moved to a dense area with more crime and went out, I got the curfew violation.\n\nA second form of curfew law is daytime curfew. This is when you get caught being out durign the day, when you should be in school. This is considered a much more serious violation than a nighttime curfew, for obvious reasons.\n\nAs for why during the night? A lot of reasons. High crime in an area would result in it, either to attempt to stop kids from committing crimes, or to protect them from those who do commit crimes."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
9ufwi2 | how is blizzard able to delete dislikes on their trailer? | The video URL doesn't seem to be changing, are they shadily paying YouTube to delete dislikes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ufwi2/eli5_how_is_blizzard_able_to_delete_dislikes_on/ | {
"a_id": [
"e93xbz9",
"e93z29v"
],
"score": [
7,
5
],
"text": [
"It might be that YT has processes in place to delete accounts that may or may not be bots to prevent review Bombs or other issues. Any social media platform has these mechanisms in place, although there are likely folks that get unfairly targeted if they base account/comment deletions on the age of the account, for instance. \n\nBots are increasingly becoming an issue, so these mechanisms are certainly important. ",
"Basically, youtube can detect where users are coming from by a \"referral\" session sent by all modern internet browsers (like Chrome, or FireFox). With knowing information like this, as well as other factors, they can determine if the dislike is genuinely upset at the video's content, or just an upset gamer coming from a reddit post. Basically, now they have all this data, they can remove \"brigade\" dislikes as they're not helpful to the youtube platform."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
3eodt9 | how has the u.s. government continued to get away with breaking/changing 500+ treaties with american indian groups? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eodt9/eli5_how_has_the_us_government_continued_to_get/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctgvait"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The Native Americans had no means to enforce their treaties. The US was overwhelmingly more powerful and could essentially do as it wished."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6kxqm0 | can you get knocked out while sleeping? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kxqm0/eli5_can_you_get_knocked_out_while_sleeping/ | {
"a_id": [
"djpoekk"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Yes. Being asleep is a different brain state than unconsciousness. If you suffered sufficient injury to the brain you could be knocked out despite being asleep. It might take a while for anyone to notice you weren't waking up, but once you received medical attention, the doctors would know you weren't just sleeping. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
a275yx | why does getting snuggly and cozy during a storm feel so pleasurable? is there a biological reason for this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a275yx/eli5_why_does_getting_snuggly_and_cozy_during_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"eavqa6b",
"eavtq2u"
],
"score": [
13,
5
],
"text": [
"You're body is warm, relaxed, well fed, well protected and stress free now. So your body is releasing happy hormones like endorphins to make you feel good. \n\n.....and a nice poem , which is unrelated : \n\nFate whispers to the Warrior\n\n\" a storm is coming \" \n\nAnd the Warrior whispers back \n\n\" I am the storm \" ",
"During the condition of violent weather you perceive the danger and the discomfort inherent in the exposure to those conditions. When you perceive yourself to be isolated from harm manifested by environmental conditions you experience the psychological state of safety. Free of fear from physical and psychological harm you attain a state of equanimity and the physical comfort you derive from the conditions you have created in your immediate environment during the storm interval are readily perceived. The emotional component of your perception is subjective but this reaction to \"safe from storm conditions\" is shared by many in your species group.\n\nIt may be the case that endorphins are released in the brain during perceived \"safety\" but without direct testing this is only speculation. It is difficult to define individual perceptions of \"safety\" and the addition of subjective states like \"snugly\" and \"cozy\" introduce variables that entertain tactile sensation and point pressure perceptions which are difficult to quantify for any specific individual.\n\nIn a reductive sense the fact that you perceive you are temporarily safe from a perceived threat amongst conditions that you perceive to be pleasurable might be the generative mechanism of your perception of pleasure. Without a detailed understanding of what generates pleasure in the Human brain, particularly your brain, we will never understand completely why you feel the way you do but we can come close to expressing a model of your potential reactions and perhaps this may help you understand why you feel and react the way you do."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1xg1rv | how do people releasing recipe/cookbooks avoid copyright infringement | A recipe for grilled salmon is gonna be pretty much the same any cook book you look at. Sure some may have more salt, some less. I can see how Gordon Ramsay can release a cookbook and not have a problem, but for the "no-name" people's books in the bookstore, how do they get away with it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xg1rv/eli5how_do_people_releasing_recipecookbooks_avoid/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfb03k8"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"The only things copyright protects is the text instructions, pictures, etc. The actual ratios of ingredients cannot be copyrighted.\n\n[edit] _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html"
]
] |
|
2m8xet | why does putting bread into hard brown sugar soften it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m8xet/eli5why_does_putting_bread_into_hard_brown_sugar/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm208fk"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"It adds moisture without making the sugar wet keeping the molasses from crystalizing "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
q7i9i | what is so great about the dr dre beats headphones? | Why is everyone spending $150+ on these? Are they really that great? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q7i9i/eli5_what_is_so_great_about_the_dr_dre_beats/ | {
"a_id": [
"c3vclwn",
"c3vcoq0",
"c3vcprj",
"c3vde9n",
"c3vdgkl"
],
"score": [
3,
11,
3,
2,
5
],
"text": [
"People find them stylish.",
" > Why is everyone spending $150+ on these?\n\nBecause marketing.\n\n > Are they really that great?\n\nNo.",
"Mostly nothing; in terms of sound they're pretty average headphones. It works on the idea that people *think* they are better because they are more expensive. If I remember correctly they're made by the same company that sells expensive hdmi cables (Monster). It's really not possible to make hdmi cables that give better image quality than the cheap ones, much to the dismay of people who bought into the marketing.",
"They're made by the same company that makes Monster Cables if that says anything...which means, they're simply overpriced. Wearing them is telling the world, you're a sucker.\n",
"I remember hearing a story when I first started working with customer service. two customers are shopping for a frying pan, there is a 20 dollar pan that has all the features you are looking for, and a 30 dollar pan that has a big sticker saying its a 50 dollar value, and you're saving 20 bucks.\n\nsome customers will buy the cheaper pan, you're making eggs and bacon, who cares how much you \"saved\". other customers will buy the 30 dollar pan, and be psyched about how much better it is because they saved 20. Same goes for people who shop at kohls, hsn.\n\nNow imagine there is a 40 dollar pan, and every famous person in the world is seen cooking with it. you dont see any specific advertisements, but everyones using it, and this pan is avaliable at the best cooking store in your neighborhood.\n\nThis is marketing, and monster/beats do it well."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
6aehpf | does fat acts as insulation for your body? | Recently I lost some weight and I noticed that I became more sensitive to cold. Does fat tissue helps to keep warm or is false? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6aehpf/eli5_does_fat_acts_as_insulation_for_your_body/ | {
"a_id": [
"dhdv1yx"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Yes. Fat is insulation that helps keep you warm. Many animals in colder environments use layers of fat to maintain warmth. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
4mi8uc | what is this special relationship britain has in the eu? | What is this special relationship Britain has in the EU? i keep hearing it with the EU exit very close for the British, but i keep hearing England has this different relationship, What is it, why is it so, what gives the British the right to have it? and can we maintain it after brexit. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mi8uc/eli5_what_is_this_special_relationship_britain/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3voj5a",
"d3vottb"
],
"score": [
2,
9
],
"text": [
"I apologise if this goes against the guidelines, but I had this discussion with a friend of mine and he informed me that the UK (mainly London) is the banking hub of the EU. Since the UK doesn't have a tremendous amount of exports anymore we made up for it with our banking processes, and London has become the main banking hub of most EU countries. I beleive this is one of the reasons for the special relationship but I would need to double check my sources.",
"The UK has various opt outs of EU initiatives, while still being a member. For example the UK is not bound to adopt the Euro currency, where as the other EU countries which don't use the Euro yet are supposed to start using it eventually (except Denmark, they also have an opt out, and Sweden exploits a loophole to avoid it).\n\nThe UK is also not the \"Schengen zone\" which allows borderless travel throughout most of Europe. Although the UK is not unique in that regard because a few other EU countries are not in it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2chqce | what happens to a rod fixed on one end and spinning at the speed of light? | If a rod was fixed on one end, spinning in circles, and close to the fixed end was moving at the speed of light, wouldn't the outer end of the rod be moving faster than light to make up for the longer distance it was traveling in the same amount of time? Would time slow down the closer to the end of the rod? Or would it be impossible for the rod to physically keep up and it'd break? Throw in the factors of this happening in a vacuum, that the energy is somehow already there to get the rod spinning that fast in the first place, and all the other stuff that probably needs to be there to even make this happen. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2chqce/eli5_what_happens_to_a_rod_fixed_on_one_end_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjflc21",
"cjflcnm",
"cjfle5m",
"cjflemq",
"cjflhof",
"cjfljdo"
],
"score": [
4,
15,
7,
2,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Well, first of all nothing with mass can move at the speed of light. As you get faster and faster, the required energy gets exponentially closer to infinity. In any case, any actual rod would disintegrate long before you got anywhere close to c.",
"Impossible apparently!\n\n_URL_0_",
"There are several possibilities, because it would take infinite energy to move any part of the rod at the speed of light.\n\nSo - if the rod was rigid, it would break somewhere between the fixed end and the part that needs to go at light speed to keep up. Somewhere along that distance one group of atoms need to pull the adjacent group with infinite force... That's going to break whatever bond there was between them.\n\nIf the rod was flexible... It would bend, and probably wind into a coil given how fast the inner part is spinning.\n\nLastly, if the rod was infinitely strong, you just wouldn't have enough energy to spin the inner part at any speed that requires going faster than light along the rod.",
"When you spin the rod, it bends before the end of it starts moving. If you take a long indestructible rod it will likely bend into a spiral before the end starts moving, that's why some thought experiments mention that the rod is *unbendable*. But then you can't spin it at all. ",
"I am 99% sure that relativity wouldn't even come into this. As you spin a rod faster and faster (assuming the acceleration is gentle enough that the rod doesn't bend), the stress in the rod generated by centrifugal force will eventually overcome the yield stress of the material and the rod will break at the base where the force is strongest.\n\nFor the pedants, I'm talking about [reactive centrifugal force](_URL_0_)- the real force that balances the centripetal force.",
"All good answers. Thank you. I guess I was probably stretching science/physics into something a bit more philosophical since it can't actually occur. I suppose if it somehow supernaturally did, then the answer would be just that: the outer end of the rod would be moving faster than the speed of light. But that's the same as saying, \"What would happen if the center of the sun turned to ice?\" Well...that's impossible. But if it were to occur, then the answer would be that the center of the sun would be ice and you would be a wizard."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPsG8td7C5k&t=1m36s"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_centrifugal_force"
],
[]
] |
|
3ofpd7 | how did the gameboy color and the gameboy advance 'know' the colors they had to use for original gameboy games that were black and white? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ofpd7/eli5_how_did_the_gameboy_color_and_the_gameboy/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvwscup",
"cvwsfui"
],
"score": [
23,
7
],
"text": [
"The gameboy color contained a small database of known games with ideal color palette for it (chosen between 12 palettes that the gameboy color could offer for uncolored games.)\n\nIf a game was not in its database, then it didn't choose. The default was the green-themed palette.\n\nGames are identified with a small, unique number, which uniqueness was ensured by Nintendo attributing them for the right to make cartridges of the game.\n",
"It didn't. The original gameboy only knew 4 colors (2-bit grayscale), and the GBC just swapped those colors with a 4 color palette. However, it differentiated between specific objects, and the background, so in the end most games used 8~10 different colors when colorfied. You could swap these palettes during boot by pressing a direction on the d-pad and A/B/nothing.\n\nBut some games just looked awesome! That is because the GBC came shipped with some specific palettes for specific games. That's why some games like Link's Awakening or Pokemon looked so awesome in color."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1x7lrz | how when lifting weights, i lift until i don't have the strength, then 60 seconds later it's back. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x7lrz/eli5_how_when_lifting_weights_i_lift_until_i_dont/ | {
"a_id": [
"cf8t2hf",
"cf8vf6o"
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text": [
"Its called Momentary Muscle Failure. As your lifting weights, your cells use up its energy and oxygen. When you take the 60s break, your blood gets oxygen back to your muscle cells",
"Your muscles are an extension of what you do with your lungs... Run on a treadmill at 10 or 12 speel or higher for however long you can. At a certain point, your lungs cant draw in enough oxygen to fuel your body, for many reasons:\nMaybe youre fat, out of shape, siclke cell anemia, etc, etc.\n\nThe hemogoloin in your blood cant get the oxygen from your blood to your body and back out again fast enough... Like juggling.\n\nLets say youre juggling 3 bowling pins, add another, and another, and another. Eventually you will get to the point where you just simply dont have enough hands. If you magically grew a hand or (capacity) then you could juggle more pins. Now if i slowly take a pin away, it gets easier and easier for you.\n\nSo, when you stop lifting, youre catching your breath, allowing your body to take in oxygen and expell Co2 out of your system until you can do it again. There are other properties to this, but this is a general picture of it.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
27gj8m | why do jeans have rivots? | Was there a structural, manufacturing or historical reason?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27gj8m/eli5_why_do_jeans_have_rivots/ | {
"a_id": [
"ci0l05q"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"They are sturdier than stitching alone. Plus they are usually in places where several layers overlap so it helps hold it all together I assume.\n\nEdit: spelling"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
6zvsq3 | if someone is sentenced in the court of law to not go near a computer(as a part of their punishment), how are they expected to make a living? | Most jobs now-a-days require a computer. If a person is barred from using a computer, what happens to them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zvsq3/eli5_if_someone_is_sentenced_in_the_court_of_law/ | {
"a_id": [
"dmydsdi",
"dmyf7ig",
"dmyfeyr",
"dmyi8ng",
"dmylatc",
"dmz4rdz"
],
"score": [
6,
7,
15,
2,
8,
2
],
"text": [
"This has happened to hackers convicted before, some find other things to do or end up hiring programmers who can get near computers to implement their designs. Some become security consultants. ",
"Carpentry. Cooking. Child care. Road paving. Picture framing. Pottery. Farm equipment driving. Teaching tennis. ...",
"You are expected to do a job that does not involve computers. Physical labor, cooking, stocking a store, janitor, farming, etc. ",
"As a side note - I wonder if those same people that are sentenced to not use a computer are able to use a smart phone? I mean, if you get right down to it a computer could be defined as a lot of different things that people use everyday without realizing (cash registers, ATM, are a couple I can think of quickly).",
"Having no access at all to a computer is a rare case. Most cases, felons are not permitted to have any *unsupervised* access to computers or internet. This is checked on and enforced by a parole officer, and is only enforceable for the period of parole or probation as defined by the court judgement. \n\nThey are allowed to use a computer at work, as long as the employer can monitor and provide logs to law enforcement as needed. Same for public library access. Access has to be login restricted and browsing history and usage has to be logged and reported.\n\nA personal home computer or smartphone is a no go. An exception might be made for a computer at home, so long as the parole officer or other law enforcement is satisfied that it cannot connect to the internet and it can and will be taken at any time for a forensic inspection. ",
"How about DON'T DO THE BLOODY CRIME IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
8812u1 | if the human body consists of 70-80% water, and if said water were to be drained out, what would my actual weight be? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8812u1/eli5_if_the_human_body_consists_of_7080_water_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"dwh01z1"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I feel like this is just a question of simple math with the unknown variable being OP's original weight. What is the concept to be explained here?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1lb0n1 | why isn't there a law that stops copycat bills from being written/voted on again just months after it was voted against? | I understand that sometimes we need to vote on something again because it was written poorly the first time, but thinking of things like SOPA. Can't they say, we will not look a bill that pushes this agenda again for at least one calender year? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lb0n1/why_isnt_there_a_law_that_stops_copycat_bills/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbxfgyl",
"cbxfjyn",
"cbxguld"
],
"score": [
4,
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Doubtful. It probably violate the first amendment by limiting the right of the people to petition the government with a redress of grievances.",
"A couple of reasons:\n\nFirstly, how do you define the agenda? Can only one healthcare bill be voted on per year? Only one bill discussing Medicare? Only one bill discussing cuts to Medicare? There are lots of bills on similar subjects- they don't all have the same agenda.\n\nSecondly, remember that the point of resubmitting bills is to compromise. Someone can make changes that were argued before and resubmit. That's a good thing- bills shouldn't be accepted on their first try. Compromise and discussion is a good thing.\n\nFinally, remember that the people that wanted SOPA are still in office. Why wouldn't they try to pass a bill they still support? There's no reason for congress to agree to only discuss each subject once a year- a year later, everyone will still be there and the discussion will be had again.",
"The simple reason is that no law has been passed, so such an idea can't be enforced. As for why such a law would be unlikely to help:\n\n- Situations change. Imagine there is a bill to declare war on Japan. It's rejected. The next day, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. Now declaring war would make sense, but now it would impossible to do so.\n\n- It's hard to distinguish between \"written poorly\" and changed ideas. I honestly can't think of a good way to differentiate between modified slightly and corrected for writing issues.\n\n- Attitudes change over time. Things like gay marriage have gotten much more favorable reputations over a short period of time. Is it right to delay marriage rights to people just because there was one too many opponents a few months ago, possibly with different legislators?\n\n- The law wouldn't really solve anything. If a large proportion of the legislature thinks, \"We just voted on this. There's no point in doing this again,\" then the bill won't get brought up or they can invoke cloture. Cloture is a procedure where if 2/3 of senators present agree to it, debate ends automatically. This procedure already exists and it is more useful since bills can be looked at on a case-by-case basis. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4rptki | how pokemon go works. | I couldn't find any info online. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rptki/eli5_how_pokemon_go_works/ | {
"a_id": [
"d532zdh"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"The basics of it are fairly simple. It uses your phone's GPS to know your location, and it makes polimon appear when you \"look around\" using the phone camera. \n\nThe locations to find pokemon are culled from a list of public interest locations the same as any GPS program does. So it knows where public parks and things of that nature are located. \n\nAfter all that, it's just a standard game layed on top. \n\nIt's made by the same people who made Ingress several years ago and it's basiclly very similer in the way it incorporates AR elements. Hopefully it'll be more widely played than ingress and will be more relevant longer term. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.