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9j4rio | why are the symptoms of period pain/ dysmenorrhea so varied? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9j4rio/eli5_why_are_the_symptoms_of_period_pain/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Every body reacts differently to the level of hormones. Prior to starting birth control my periods were ‘normal’ regular cramping not a terribly heavy. I had friends who would double over in pain and miss school. \n\nFibroids and ovarian cysts also make period pains worse. "
]
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[]
] |
||
dlig1p | do sociopathic people still have a psychological need to interact with other human beings to not go insane? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dlig1p/eli5_do_sociopathic_people_still_have_a/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Every patient have different profiles of their behaviours. Isolation cells in general have very little to no positive effects on sociopathic people (though please bear in mind that sociopath is an informal term to use) because humans are social animals and restricting one's ability to communicate likely only manifests someone's condition.\n\nAnti-social behaviours don't make people go insane unless environmental factors which cause them to develop other disorders like psychosis which further alter their mental state.",
"Most human beings can function without other human beings for long periods of time. Their happiness is likely to be negatively affected, but to my knowledge solitude isn't otherwise harmful.\n\nHarmful effects are separate from merely being isolated. Solitary confinement in prison is very stressful. And when stuck in space/underwater/extreme weather for a long time there is a large risk of cabin fever. These aren't really caused by the absence of people (though human contact might make the situation less stressful). Afaik, this is more related to lack of outside stimulus, monotony, claustrophobia and getting stuck in a destructive mental routine. Whether this is worse or better for sociopaths, I don't know.\n\nEdit: added claustrophobia."
]
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[],
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3cqa92 | why is there a need for a 7nm chip manufacturing process? | Due to the achievements of IBM in making a 7nm process chip, I have a question:
Why do we get better performance out of a smaller chip and what do the 7nm referr to?
I mean it is nice to get a smaller sized chip, but why can't we just make a bigger CPU with more transistors and more performance? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cqa92/eli5why_is_there_a_need_for_a_7nm_chip/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Smaller chips have a lot of advantages. First of all, they are cheaper to make. More fit on a wafer and generally you get higher yields. Second is power consumption. Smaller chips waste less power (due to things like parasitic capacitance), so they produce less heat and can be used with less elaborate cooling. Finally we have so many handheld devices today, we need the actual chip to be physically small to fit in the devices.\n\n7nm basically refers to the minimum feature size. Basically it is the smallest thing that can be made on that process.",
"more material - > more resistance - > more losses - > more heat\n\n\nThat leaves you with 2 very big problems: heat and power. And making things smaller would solve both of your problems. Your chips will be more effective use less energy and therefore cause less heat. Or you could make them bigger pump in more power and figure out some awesome way to cool things down again, which in turn takes even more energy to do. In addition to that those cooling solutions tend to be noisy big and have many moving parts that are hard to make. And at some point it will be almost impossible to cool down a chip. \n\n\nAnd this isn't a small problem, just search for power density and you'll find that a cpu gets closer and closer to the power density of a nuclear reactor. And you wouldn't want try to cool those down with tiny fans. Those little chips might not look like much but the only difference between them and a electric heater is size (and of course one of them can be used for calculations and stuff). \n\nEdit: And it is probably worth mentioning that those chips stop doing calculations and stuff when they start melting themselves"
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1hrvn5 | why some people freckle whilst others tan. | That's it really. I know what causes freckles, but what causes some people to freckle instead of getting an even tan like most people? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hrvn5/eli5_why_some_people_freckle_whilst_others_tan/ | {
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" Melanin is what makes skin darker. Freckles produce more melanin when exposed to sunlight. So, if you have freckles, they get darker when exposed to sunlight. It's not that the sun is creating freckles, it just makes the freckles darker. You may not have noticed them before because they were too light, but once exposed to sun they get darker and more apparent. ",
"People with freckles have blotches of melanin; darker skinned people and those who tan evenly have even patches of melanin. \n\nI wish I could smear my freckles out and have an evenly beige body. That would be fantastic."
]
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[],
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4zxga0 | why is the inside of my microwave always several degrees warmer than the ambient room temperature? | It's always noticeably warmer inside my microwave - the difference can be felt when I reach in to put something on the turntable. I found something somewhere that said this happens in in over-the-range microwaves, but I don't recall seeing an explanation as to why. I'll be grateful to anyone who can explain this one to me! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zxga0/eli5_why_is_the_inside_of_my_microwave_always/ | {
"a_id": [
"d6zik7l"
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"text": [
"You most likely have a vent fan that goes to outside. It is usually only sealed with two flaps that only open outward. Those let a bit of outside air leak back in. Attic/wall heat from where the vent tube travels may also contribute."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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|
3iklm4 | if moving at the speed of light causes you to experience no time, why does light still take time to get places? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iklm4/eli5_if_moving_at_the_speed_of_light_causes_you/ | {
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"I think the reason for your confusion is a misconception of special relativity. \n\nYou often hear people say something along the lines of *if you travel at speeds close to the speed of light, time gets really slow for your.* \n\nUnfortunately, that is very wrong. What special relativity actually says is:\n\n*If an object is moving at high speeds* **relative to you** *you will see its time going slower than yours. Your time, on the other hand always passes at the same rate, since you are always at rest in your own frame of reference.*\n\nTo illustrate this: you are moving at 99.99% of the speed of light right now relative to cosmic muons. Does time slow down for you because of that? \n\n***\n\nOther posters have mentioned, that light allegedly \"experiences no time, since it is going at c\". That is false as well, so I just wanna address this issue quickly:\n\nIt makes zero sense to state that a photon does or does not experience time. In order to make a meaningful statement about the experience of an observer, we have to be able to assume this observer's rest frame. Otherwise, relativistic effects will distort our conclusions.\n\nHere is the thing though: photons do not have a rest frame. They move at c relative to all frames of reference. \nThus, we can never make a meaningful statement about \"the experience of photons\".\n\nTo illustrate, why this is a fundamental problem, that cannot be solved by taking the limit as v approaches c, let's consider the following:\n\n\nTime always passes at the same rate for you, no matter how fast you are moving relative to an inertial frame of reference, since you are always at rest in your own frame of reference. Clocks that are moving *relative to you* are going slower. Thus, no matter how fast you are moving relative to an inertial frame of reference, for *you* time passes normally. \nThe same would be true for photons, if the limit of v - > c were an appropriate approximation, since they still rest in their own frames of reference as their rest mass approaches 0. \nSo, according to this, photons would have to experience time normally, wouldn't they? \nBut they move at c relative to **all** frames of reference, so there cannot be a frame in which they do not move at v - > c. Which means their clocks have to slow down to a rate where time stops passing.\n\nThose two statements are mutually exclusive, which means it is impossible to make a valid statement about the rate at which time passes for mass-less particles. \n"
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5yx6we | why do some people cry when they eat spicy stuff? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yx6we/eli5_why_do_some_people_cry_when_they_eat_spicy/ | {
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"text": [
"They don't cry, they tear up. \n\nYou body thinks that spicy stuff is somehow bad. Maybe it's poisonous, maybe something else, but definitely not something you would need or want. \n\nAnd your body is trying to get rid of it. Easiest way is sweating, tearing up, runny nose or even diarrhea. "
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65865f | why do humans get nervous in non life-or-death situations? | I completely understand why we'd be nervous when facing a predator, or while hunting, exploring, etc - this fits into our backstory very well. But why do everyday situations cause this emotional/hormonal reaction if they aren't going to actually physically impact us in any way? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65865f/eli5_why_do_humans_get_nervous_in_non_lifeordeath/ | {
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"text": [
"The situation is still stressful, so the body will react as if it is in true danger. The body itself doesn't know that you're about to take a test or ask a girl out. It just knows there is something that is causing you stress, so whatever we, as higher thinking mammals, view as stressful, the body will react to."
]
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8kr95f | why sometimes a browsee doesn't recognize the file size of a download | Why are some downloads marked as 'unknown file size', while others are known beforehand? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8kr95f/eli5_why_sometimes_a_browsee_doesnt_recognize_the/ | {
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"The download starts with some headers which tell your browser about the file - things like what type of file it is and whether it has been compressed. The headers can include the file size, but they don't have to. The server may not even know the file size when it sends the headers, because it may be generating the file on demand rather than just reading it from disk.",
"When you're downloading a file, the website just gives you multiple blocks of data one after another. At some point it will close the connection which tells your browser that the file is complete. Your browser generally has no idea how large a file will be until it is finished downloading. The website can tell the browser the expected file size at the start of the download, but it isn't required to do so and the information might also be wrong. That's why a download sometimes goes above 100% completion. ",
"Server needs to tell broswer file size first.\n\nIf he does not, browser does not know so it can just wait till server finished sending file."
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61x63y | how do protons, neutrons, and electrons form intelligent life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61x63y/eli5_how_do_protons_neutrons_and_electrons_form/ | {
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"You can't understand the process in a single step, you need\n\n* Physics to explain how subatomic particles form atoms\n* Chemistry to explain how atoms form molecules\n* Biology to explain how molecules form living things\n* Neuroscience to explain how nervous systems work\n* Cognitive science to explain how intelligence works\n\nAnd the above is still a massive oversimplification.",
"Philosophy has pondered this question for millennia, and there are no easy answers. Here's a few thought experiments to get you started:\n\nYou have a person in a room, who receives Chinese characters on a piece of paper and must return a piece of paper with a response, also in Chinese. The person doesn't speak Chinese, but the room contains books with detailed instructions on how to manipulate the characters, such that the output makes sense. Does the room 'understand' Chinese? ([Searle's Chinese room](_URL_0_)). \n\nSay you have a being called a [philosophical zombie](_URL_1_). It does everything a human can do and appears to have consciousness. But it has no internal experience, no qualia, and no sentience. What's the difference between this and an actual person? How do you know everyone except yourself isn't a p-zombie?"
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie"
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fqdvzk | price gouging during declared emergencies. how can hospital still charge $45 for an aspirin. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fqdvzk/eli5_price_gouging_during_declared_emergencies/ | {
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"Those are the normal prices and price gouging laws only apply to raised prices in emergencies, not having high prices all the time.\n\nIt's one of the huge problems of US healthcare and something that is coming to light quickly during this pandemic."
]
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||
3nddw9 | why does it take so much less time to get fast food from a drive through than to get it from inside? | I've noticed this at places such as Steak N' Shake and other "higher" quality fast food places. Do they just take longer to make it feel better quality? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nddw9/eli5_why_does_it_take_so_much_less_time_to_get/ | {
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"They track the time that cars spend at the drive thru window and have to get it under a specific time. Because of this, they tend to prioritize and rush drive thru orders compared to walk ins.",
"For one drive thru lines are timed, the workers have x number of seconds from the time the car pulls up to the menu to the time they pull away with food. I've known people to work at several of the fast food chains and this is confirmed to be an essential metric. To the point that staff from management down can be completely reorganized if the goal is consistently not reached. \n\n\nAs for why that is.. I have no good explanation. My best guess is someone who goes inside the restaurant has already shown they're in less of a hurry by parking their car and walking inside. Even if they're ordering to go they made a conscious decision to be in less of a rush.\n\n\nAlso when you order inside its typically one person ordering for one person. In the drive thru you can be ordering for you and your friend, or your entire family, or half the office and you still expect your food to come up in a normal amount of time. ",
"I worked at a Culvers in high school. We had a speaker in the kitchen so that we could hear the drive through customer as the order came through. We were throwing it down while you ordered it. This was especially true at slower times where we didn't have 1,000 things going on. Drive Through also had one employee dedicated to getting you your food asap. It wasn't prepped by one, ran by another etc. That person was generally one of the faster/better/experienced workers, cause no one wants drive through mistakes. ",
"From my own experience when I worked fast food, it's because generally, there is a whole assembly line devoted to the drive through - An order taker, a cashier who takes your money while the order taker takes more orders and makes more drinks, a grill person making meat for everyone, a sammich maker making the sammiches, a fry person making the fries for everyone, a person putting the food in a bag - and all of these people have headsets on and can hear what's coming in, making the food and estimating how much more product to cook / fry / etc. Everyone is close together and the person bagging up the food generally doesn't have to goo to far to reach for the fries, pick up the sammiches, turn to the window.\n\nWhereas the front counter may have one person taking orders, one person making the sammiches, but not being able to start making the food until it pops up on the screen, and if they are Lucky, one person putting all the food on trays for you. If they aren't lucky, the cashier then has to stop taking orders to fill the trays too - which takes even longer for everyone else. \n\nHowever in the drive through, it can be very compulsively organized bags 1 2 3 4 based on exactly how the order comes in and the cars the bags belong to. EVERY order is to go so the bags can be lined up with straws and napkins and utensils and ready to drop the food into. But up front it's whatever food comes up first and is it to go? for here? and what else goes on the tray? A burger for tray one is done, but the chili for tray two is done, and the salad for tray three is done, there's a burger for tray two, did the special fries come up for tray one? constantly checking the tray versus the order... \n\nit's just - a lot different and half the crew getting the food to you inside, versus what's devoted to keeping the cars churning in drive thru. \n\nAnd yes, the drive thru is compulsively timed, in pieces and as a whole. How long were they at the menu? How long did it take to pay? How long did they wait at the window for their food? Total time from pull up to drive off? \n\nWhile it sucks that there isn't more staff there to help the inside customers - it's a good thing they are trying to get cars through fast. Gas consumption, exhaust production - move these metal monsters in and out folks! ",
"I think it's mostly perception. While drive thru is timed, you can't see all the other orders going out ahead of you when you are in a vehicle. As well, you are more comfortable in your vehicle so the time passes more quickly than you are standing there trying to figure out what to do with your hands. Lastly, you probably don't realize how long you waited to pay after ordering and how much lead time they have versus when you order and pay at the same time inside. ",
"I've timed myself at the counter against friends in the drive through and the times have always been pretty equivalent with a slight edge to the counter for speed.\n\nThis is just at my local mcdonalds and I think it's because too many people are now sitting at the drive through, but I'm not sure if the drive through is much more than average. ",
"I worked at KFC in a smaller town. The faster, more experienced employees were put on drive through.",
"Have you ever gone into Chick-fil-A and done this because going inside is about 10000x faster",
"My wife went in to get coffee, I was in parking lot and counted 27 cars go thru the drive thru before she came out! (Mcdonalds)",
"A few reasons: (Source - Was a manager at a McDonnalds for awhile)\n\n- Most fast food joints make the majority of their profit in the drive through. At my restaurant, almost 70% of the store's revenue came through the drive through. Prioritizing the drive through makes sense when most of your clientele purchases that way.\n\n\n- People are way less patient when they're in a car. They are already on the go and expect their food faster. People in the restaurant are usually a little more chill. They take time to go get some ketchup, fill their drink, etc. "
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1iyowr | when choosing from a menu, why am i "in the mood" for a certain type of food. | One night it's pasta, the next fish, then steak, and so on... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1iyowr/eli5_when_choosing_from_a_menu_why_am_i_in_the/ | {
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"Because your body requires many different kinds of nutrients to run smoothly, and no single food has all of them. So usually when you're craving something, your body is \"low\" on something and wants to replenish.",
"Nutrient cravings combined with enjoyment/emotional attachment to various foods.",
"How can I always be in the mood for ice cream?"
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j2mwb | why do we need constants in formulas? is it because our units or number system are flawed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2mwb/why_do_we_need_constants_in_formulas_is_it/ | {
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"it has nothing to do with flawed numbering systems. constants are derived from the universe around us. whether in science or in math, they are either measured or calculated to make the formulas true.\n\nfor example, regardless what numbering system we use, the circumference of a circle, divided by its diameter will always be pi",
"In some cases yes, for instance take E=mc^2 (let's skip the more useful version) if you set the speed of light to one with all other speeds being fractions under one, you end up with energy==mass, which is to say that both are manifestations of the same overall phenomenon. \n\nSince most unit systems are derived off arbitrary things like water, because it is so common you end up needing a lot of conversion factors. Also different unit systems require conversion factors of their own, such as getting Kelvin to Fahrenheit.\n\nTherefore we have unit systems such as [Natural Units](_URL_0_) which is different from metric or imperial and allows a lot of complicate math to be shrunk into small equations.\n\nThen when you have numerically based formula (based off observation and statistics) the constants are just there to make sure the equation fits a certain curve. These formula aren't natural in any significant way and are derived from just measuring something at a bunch of different settings and making an equation up that generally fits the experimental data.",
"Hmm. Let's see if I can explain this. Our numbering system was originally used to count whole items, such as 5 rocks. Over time the same concept has been applied to less straight-forward concepts such as length and electric charge. Now we can't just say we have 1 length because how long is that? For this reason we've come up with units such as the foot, the meter, the second. These make it convenient to say something is 1 foot long. But how did we get these units? In most cases we actually measured some value and stated that to be one of something. Now we get to constants in formulas, these manly allow you to convert between these standard units so you can use what is convenient at the time. So we need constants so we can change what we're talking about. For example if we're converting cents to dollars we multiply by 1/100 so we can talk about dollars even if we only have how many cents we have. So it isn't because the system is necessarily flawed, it's because at different times we need to use different units because it might be all we have. The only way we wouldn't need a constant is if the units we're designed to be equal when converting, but we couldn't do this for all units at once."
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6zwjnb | how can the brain sort itself out during an full convulsive seizure? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zwjnb/eli5_how_can_the_brain_sort_itself_out_during_an/ | {
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"I think you are drawing too close a parallel between a human brain and a computer. An electrical signal in the brain is not like a task in a computer program where each step needs to be sequentially executed in order to continue. Misinformation from one or two \"bad\" signals will not cause a seizure the way that an error in a program will cause some downstream hangup or glitch. There is not a bottleneck of information processing where individual firings need to be sequentially addressed or sorted out. A nerve firing is the output of its own information processing. A neuron takes excitatory or inhibitory input from many synapses and when it reaches an excitation threshold, it produces its output. It is immediately ready to receive more input and produce more output. The brain has many mechanisms that are designed to prevent runaway signaling, and these will be activated when runaway signaling happens. Currently, there is no definitive explanation for exactly how seizures end, but it's known that neurons are still able to fire after a seizure."
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1u7mx7 | how come when i'm really high up (like on a building or something), there is a little voice in my head telling me to jump? is there any sort of evolutionary benefit to having the voice? or is it just our brains trying to kill us. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u7mx7/eli5how_come_when_im_really_high_up_like_on_a/ | {
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"text": [
"Great question. Took more than a quick search to find this thread so no fault for asking, but [here](_URL_0_)'s a link that should explain it. Thoughts like this are apparently called 'intrusive thoughts.'\n\n:)",
"As it turns out everyone has this reaction, the \"I could stab this baby right now\" kinda thing is part of human evolution designed to show us that we are in control of the situation by doing the most spontaneous and unpredictable thing possible."
]
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3xvhp4 | why do most recipes and appliances ask specifically for cold water when the water will just be heated up? | I.e. Use cold water in a coffee machine...... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xvhp4/eli5_why_do_most_recipes_and_appliances_ask/ | {
"a_id": [
"cy8bmu8"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Hot water can be sitting in water heaters for a while & pick up all sorts of metals & minerals. This may alter the chemistry of what's going on or it might just increase the rate at which mineral buildup occurs inside the appliance. Using cold water avoids the problems."
]
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|
1xiq8h | in the game of thrones universe, some winters are longer than others. how? | I'm interested in both finding out why some winters are longer as explained by the book (fantasy/magic behind it) **as well as** being curious if something like drastic differences between season lengths is possible scientifically. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xiq8h/eli5_in_the_game_of_thrones_universe_some_winters/ | {
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"text": [
"Scientifically, there is a possibility for it, like if a planet has a weird axial tilt, or multiple stars in the solar system etc. But Martin has claimed that there is a supernatural reason for the long seasons, but hasn't discussed this in detail outside of what you find in the books. ",
"The reason for the random season length has not been stated in the books, but George R R Martin has explicitly stated that the reason is magical and not astronomical\n\nEarths seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth, and this is steadied by the gravitational pull of the moon. It is believed that without the moon then the axial tilt would be more erratic - changing the lengths of the seasosn - however this would be over dozens or hundreds of years",
"I theorize the length of the season has to do with the health of the kingdom. Similar to the Arthur legend, \"The king and the land are one.\" When the people and state of the kingdom are well you have a long summer, as summer is fair and good and full of plenty. When evil tides stir and darkness rules, a long harsh winter follows close on it's heels.\n \nThis isn't stated as far as I can recall in the books, just how I justify it in my own head."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1h5f2b | why do most job postings refuse to put base pay in their listing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1h5f2b/eli5_why_do_most_job_postings_refuse_to_put_base/ | {
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"Because they want to negotiate with you and pay you only what you'll ask for.",
"They're trying to attract qualified canidates, not simply people who want money. Money is also negotiable and it is expect that as a professional you already have an idea of what your pay will be. ",
"Couple main reasons:\n\n1. The company starts with a known pay range that they're willing to pay for someone who gets that position. They don't want to tip their hand and potentially overpay by including it in the posting.\n\n2. Keep competing companies in the dark. The hiring company doesn't want competitors to know what they're paying in case competitors can try to lure people away for more money or different benefits."
]
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[],
[],
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] |
||
1qut48 | out of all the words in the world, why did we end up with limited surnames? | There's close to infinite words in the world, but why are our surnames so limited? Where did these names come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qut48/out_of_all_the_words_in_the_world_why_did_we_end/ | {
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"*Western* surnames are limited because we have what's called 'Patrilineal' naming. You take your fathers surname, exactly as he has it. New surnames only pop up through people deliberately changing their name or mistakes *but* they can die out when the male line ends (or things like children taking their single mothers maiden name)\n\nOther countries have 'Patronymic' naming, where the surname *references* the father in some way but doesn't copy it exactly.\n\nFor example in Iceland it's common practice for your surname to be your father's first name + your gender. So a family tree could be ;\n\nJon Johan - > Henning Jonsson - > Olaf Henningsson. \n\n(The female equivalent being *Henningsdotter*)\n\nOr if you take **Poland** where sometimes they'll take the fathers surname *or* occupation and add '*ski*' (or some variant) to the end which translates to '*Son Of*' / '*Daughter Of*' essentially. The same family tree could be ;\n\nJon Johan - > Henning Johanski - > Olaf Kowalski (Kowal means 'Smith' as in a Blacksmith)\n\nLots of countries have variations on the same theme. Your name isn't necessarily the same name your father had so this leads to very confusing family trees but also the potential for new surnames popping up all the time.\n\nIt used to be fairly common in western, English speaking countries too. There was a hint in that last example. Some people have the surname 'Smith', or 'Carpenter', 'Fischer', 'Archer', 'Bishop' and so on. \n\nI *think* the practice is slowly dying out though, my conclusion is because of city living and the invention of craploads of terrible job titles. Nobody wants their kid to be called *John OfChicago* or *Sarah RegionalSalesManager*.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2frrr0 | why is "bloody" a bad word for the britisher types? nsfw ? (not my work) | Why is "bloody" a bad word in the U.K.? I don't really know, but it seems to get censored like "fuck" does here in the U.S., right? What does it really mean even? Just "covered in blood"? What's so bad about that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2frrr0/eli5_why_is_bloody_a_bad_word_for_the_britisher/ | {
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"It's not that bad of a word and I've never seen it censored on British television. ",
"As an Australian, bloody can be used in the same way that \"fucking\" can be. Eg. My bloody golf club is bent.\n\nI've never seen in censored, but I remember that in school it was considered a curse word since that is how we used it.",
"Bloody = 'Fucking' lite here in the UK.\n\n",
"Nobody is completely sure.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"\"Bloody\" isn't that severe. It's more like \"damn\".",
"bloody = damn. not a very bad word and is defo not considered a swear words. ",
"it gets censored in the UK?",
"In all my 20 years of living in the UK I have never once experienced 'bloody' being censored. Hell even Ron in Harry Potter says bloody hell. ",
"\"Bloody\" isn't censored in the UK or Ireland. It's a soft swearword, much like \"damn\" or \"feck\". \n\nSource: Irishman who gets English telly and has been there a good few times."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody#Etymology"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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|
437o4k | why do pixels warp when viewed through a camera, and is it similar to this effect? | Why do pixels warp when viewed through a camera? And is it the same effect that caused [this?](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/437o4k/eli5_why_do_pixels_warp_when_viewed_through_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"czg4umn"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"I think what you're looking for is called a [Moire pattern](_URL_0_)."
]
} | [] | [
"https://gfycat.com/EvergreenEnlightenedAltiplanochinchillamouse"
] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern"
]
] |
|
2imabz | why do we have a "second stomach" for desert? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2imabz/eli5_why_do_we_have_a_second_stomach_for_desert/ | {
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"text": [
"That is an entirely learned behavior, usually from always eating sweet desserts after dinner. ",
"the desert is hot and the heat causes you to gain a second stomach in an attempt to preserve itself (think camels). The organs then allows the esophagus to split in two through a process called eosinophilic esophagitis. Its quite a remarkable process that happens when the temperature spikes at 120. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1gr53x | can anyone explain this math question to me? | "Ishaan had to read articles 27 through 53 for homework tonight.
If Ishaan read all of the articles he was assigned, how many articles did he read?"
I can't wrap my head around this problem, my knee-jerk reaction was of course to subtract 27 from 53 which gives me 26 but the answer is 27. I just can't understand why, shouldn't this be the right way to think about this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gr53x/eli5_can_anyone_explain_this_math_question_to_me/ | {
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"text": [
"Because he read the 27th article too. Say out loud every article he read. For every article you say, make a check mark on a piece of paper. You will have 27 check marks at the end.\nHe read 27, 28, 29, 30.... All the way to 53.",
"The problem is how language works. WHen you say A through B you mean A, all the ones up until B, **and also B**. Doing subtraction only tells you how many are between A and B, which will always be one less that the 27 through 53 phrasing.\n\nThe problem is that phrasing isn't really clear. Normally if someone wanted to be clear they would say 27 through 53 **inclusive** which means \"I want to count the ones on the end as well. But you're interpreting it as 27 up until but not including 53.",
"well, he read #s\n27\n\n28\n\n29\n\n30\n\n31\n\n32\n\n33\n\n34\n\n35\n\n36\n\n37\n\n38\n\n39\n\n40\n\n41\n\n42\n\n43\n\n44\n\n45\n\n46\n\n47\n\n48\n\n49\n\n50\n\n51\n\n52\n\n53\n\nwhen just subtracting 27 from 53 you're fiding the difference in the number, but you're not taking in to account the starting point, #27, which was read as well.",
"Don't feel too 5 about it, this is a common source of off-by-one errors even among professional math types (source: IAm1). \n\nJust think of a simpler case: if you read articles 5 through 6, how many have you read? Cos it ain't 6 minus 5...",
"It is like saying he read articles 1 to 2, if you make:\n2-1 = 1\n\nif you take the difference between the article you are treating them has numbers, when they are objects tagged with numbers.",
"In math, this is generally known as the \"fence post problem\". Here's a good, clear article on it: _URL_0_",
"Another way to look at this. He had to read 53 articles and he skipped the first 26 articles so he read 53-26 = 27 articles."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://betterexplained.com/articles/learning-how-to-count-avoiding-the-fencepost-problem/"
],
[]
] |
|
1z5dlb | how is it that we have a nearly universally accepted calendar? | Or do different countries use different calendars? As far as I know, we all use the Gregorian calendar outside of the exceptions of certain Orthodoxies and the Islamic and Fiscal calendars. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z5dlb/eli5how_is_it_that_we_have_a_nearly_universally/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfqo3pt"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Because the west won. The west (meaning Europe and North America) ruled the world since the 1800s and imposed their calendar on everyone else. The calendar had been pretty standard for about 500 years at that point in the west already , and now everyone else who was using different calendars were forced to change to the western system. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
7zbsnh | if warm light is better for the eyes at night, why are most new led streetlights a bright white color as opposed the orange sodium lights? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7zbsnh/eli5_if_warm_light_is_better_for_the_eyes_at/ | {
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"text": [
"I’d assume because maybe it’s brighter than warm lights, and that’s a safety concern to consider. Plus the bright lights help put out the light that can help keep you awake, maybe it serves a double purpose to prevent falling asleep at the wheel?\n\nMore than likely it’s just for the brightness now that i think about it.",
"The new LED lights that have appeared in the past few months are bright, and they’re white, but the color temperature is a warmer, more neutral white, rather than a harsh, almost blue-white that I think you are describing. The light that Is first mentioned yields far better color rendition, meaning that colors appear to the human eye to be far closer to how they would look in daylight than in the harsh orange glare of a sodium light. \n\nEven if the lights you are asking about are that almost blue-white that is described above, the color rendition would be **far** better than sodium lights. "
]
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[],
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||
3mhwul | the fair repair bill in ny and why it is necessary to keep phone repair legal | It is known as S3998 in the State Senate and A6068 in the State Assembly.
[This](_URL_0_) and [this](_URL_1_)
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mhwul/eli5_the_fair_repair_bill_in_ny_and_why_it_is/ | {
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"text": [
"Why do they need a bill to make it legal. It's my damn phone and I can do whatever I want with it. What is Google or Apple gonna do if I repair it or modify it?",
"I'm a repair tech, I'll try to explain this as best as I can. So basically the bill would require big companies to provide all the information about their products to the public. To me personally, this is important because it would force these companies to release their mainboard schematics (ELI5: what all those little components do on the mainboard and how to purchase replacements). This means if something on the mainboard shorts out, I can find it, use the schematic to figure out what that part does, order a replacement part, and replace it via microsoldering. The other point of the bill is to keep big companies from having a monopoly on repairing their own devices. Think about it this way - If you broke your phone screen, wouldn't it suck if the only way to fix it would be to go through Apple, having to pay $300? \n"
]
} | [] | [
"http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?term=2015&bn=S03998",
"http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A06068&term=2015&Summary=Y&Actions=Y&Text=Y&Votes=Y"
] | [
[],
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] |
|
5e73nd | why do bands bring have their own speakers and amplifiers if everything is just run through the arena's pa system? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e73nd/eli5_why_do_bands_bring_have_their_own_speakers/ | {
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"text": [
"Like their guitar amps and stuff? A guitar amp does a whole lot more to influence the actual sound and tone than the PA. A guitarist's amp is pretty integral to his whole sound, so he'll want it to be consistent, and he'll want control over it. Then the venue will put a mic on his amp to connect it to the PA.",
"Recorded an album before and performed at a few clubs. It works like this,\n\nYour Amps, you pre-Amps, your Guitar, your EQ's that is **your** sound, speaker included. When in a studio or performing, your shit goes up, and then they place a mic in front of the speaker or inside the drum and so on to capture your sound.\n\nIf you take away that Marshall Tube on the 1/2 stack out of the equation, you will be hearing something totally different at this point and as slash pointed out, the musician wants 100% control of his sound while performing.\n",
"there's also a monitor on stage so the band can hear themselves; a PA system won't do that particularly well since sound bounces and gets overlaid with crowd noises and such. I've played in a few venues that were so loud I couldn't hear the guy right beside me, so relying on the PA system meant the guy three people down is half a beat behind. All that stuff on stage is necessary for the band to sound like they do and to be able to hear themselves.",
"The speakers on stage are band's personal amplifiers. These have a unique sound that are a band's tone. Depending on the venue these will be far too small to adequately fill the room.\n\nThe crew and audio engineer place microphones on these amplifiers to capture the band's unique sound and make it loud enough for everyone to hear.\n\nIn smaller venues the sound of the guitar and bass guitar are typically only coming from the amplifiers on stage.",
"I'm a stage hand and although the venues I work at have PA systems, they don't use them for concerts. We will set the house PA up for graduations, and business conferences but when the big bands roll through they bring their own audio gear. Usually there is one 54' semi trailer for audio, though I've done bands with up to three. The riggers will lift chains up to attach to the beams at the top of the stage and chain hoists will suspend [the large arrays](_URL_6_) of speakers. We set up [stacks of subs](_URL_0_) on the floor or sides of the stage. \n\nOn the front of the stage we often set up smaller main speakers for the part of the audience that is too close to be in the direct line of the arrays. Most often they are just a smaller version of the large line array speakers that are hanging. Also on the front of the stage, but facing away from the audience we set up [monitors](_URL_4_) so the band members can hear the necessary bits of the song to stay in time. Sometimes listening to the monitors sounds quite different from what the audience is hearing since it's often only two or three instruments and not the whole ensemble. \n\nBehind the band are [the amps](_URL_1_) each with a mic positioned in front. Many bands will use a particular amp for one song to get a special sound out of it, and the rest of the show that amp is just a decoration. So it's not uncommon for a band to have an unusual assortment of amps on stage from vintage to the latest in technology. Sometimes bands [have been caught](_URL_5_) with entirely fake amps that are only decoration. Here's a shocker, I've seen a whole lot of bands do this so it's not really a scandal when a band is called out. What is a scandal is when a stagehand posts a photo of behind stage to social media. It's grounds for termination.\n\nControlling everything is typically two stations for processing the audio. On the side of the stage is your [monitor mix](_URL_7_) station. The roadie here makes sure the band members have clear sound directed back to them with no feedback so they can play in time with each other. Also this is where you will see the large paddles in the air which are [antennas](_URL_3_) for the wireless mics. Then out in the middle of the arena is the Front of House [audio station](_URL_8_), usually right next to the [lighting console](_URL_2_). \n\nJust about everything is digital now, so the signal coming from the mics are digitized into the sound console at the monitor mix station and is sent to the front of house using special Cat6 cable called Ethercon for its heavy duty shielding upgrade. It's so much nicer running a single lightweight cable out to front of house compared to the older methods of heavy audio snakes. It still takes a whole lot of power to drive the speakers though, so there are plenty of heavy cables to run.\n\nWorking as a stage hand is a ton of fun, but it's a whole lot of heavy labor. There are a lot of hidden hazards, so many crew members have scars from past injuries. You don't always get to see the concert either, so that can suck. I normally run a camera during the show so I usually have the best spot in the house. The signal from the camera goes to a switcher where a 'technical director' chooses the best shot and puts it on the screen so the people in nose bleed seats can see who's playing up on that stage up there. My favorite position is in between the crowd barrier and the stage so I can walk back and forth across the front and get extreme close ups of the performers. They will usually play for the camera so they are looking right at you and it's like a one on one rock star experience. This is so much better than front row tickets and I make bank running camera. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"http://www.proaudio-central.com/thumbs/1020x768r/2016-02/outline-dbs-18-2-subs-in-use-at-the-experience.jpg",
"http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/magblogs/guitarist/Images/gear%20tips%20and%20advice/micing_amps_three-650-80.jpg",
"https://66.media.tumblr.com/95530409a8c748ed9d1a535e7cee09f8/tumblr_mr4ju9KhPT1s5rnofo1_1280.jpg",
"http://shureblog.co.uk/content/uploads/2015/04/antenna-closer-better.jpg",
"http://us.123rf.com/450wm/mimagephotography/mimagephotography1504/mimagephotography150400153/38776502-on-stage-before-music-festival-black-speaker-monitors.jpg",
"http://www.metalsucks.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Black-Veil-Brides-fake-cabs.jpg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_array#/media/File:JBL_VerTec_line_arrays_(4889_x_9_%26_4880a_subs_x_4\\).jpg",
"https://eemixer.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/img_0293a.jpg",
"http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/front-of-house-at-the-megadeth-and-slayer-concert-at-the-festival-on-picture-id97404593"
]
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|
f973x4 | what is upregulation of dopamine receptors? | I read this from this article - _URL_0_
'In rats, treadmill running increases the release of dopamine and upregulates the number of dopamine receptors in the reward areas of the brains'
What does 'upregulates the number of dopamine receptors' mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f973x4/eli5_what_is_upregulation_of_dopamine_receptors/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It means the number of dopamine receptors on each cell is increased in those areas. If there are more receptors, then more of the dopamine \"signal\" can enter the cells.\nImagine a line of people having tennis balls thrown at them. Each person has to catch as many tennis balls as possible and place them in a bucket - the number in the buckets at the end is the total \"signal\". There will be a point where increasing the number of balls being thrown won't increase the number of balls in the bucket - there are just too many to catch. If instead you increase the number of people catching, then the number in the bucket will go up. The people catching are the receptors and the balls are the dopamine molecules."
]
} | [] | [
"https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-to-increase-dopamine"
] | [
[]
] |
|
4b3plz | are lawsuits against big companies that end with the plaintaint receiving the money back for what he paid his lawyer a waste of time? | Like he pays the lawyer $300 000 for the duration of the trial, and he getd paid by that big company $300 000 which is nothing for them.
Is it a waste of time for everyone in the court, except the lawyers who win ofc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b3plz/eli5_are_lawsuits_against_big_companies_that_end/ | {
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"text": [
"2 things, when a plaintiff wins a case, the defendant might have to pay the plaintiffs legal fees as part of a decision, in addition to other damages. \n\nand secondly, yes, it is a waste of time and resources. its almost always in everyones best interest to settle cases outside of court. both tge defendant and plaintiff pay fewer legal fees, the plaintiff is guaranteed a pay check, the plaintiff saves themself the risk of losing and paying way more, and even the lawyers like it because they get a quick paycheck. ",
"No, what makes you say that? The loser has to pay a large sum, and more importantly, they will be ordered to stop what they were doing wrong. The most important civil cases are not about big payouts, but about getting a party to stop some form of harmful conduct. In a trespass case, it's more important to you that you get a squatter of your house than that they pay you damages. If the government is violating your rights, you want them to adhere to the Constitution and not just buy you off.\n\nMany major figures and businesses carry insurance that helps to pay their legal fees, so they get to keep a much greater part of damages they are awarded. Punitive damages are often scaled to the size of the loser, so that they may be much higher than the actual damages. In some cases the loser has to pay the legal fees of the victor, and this is also a common aspect of settlements.",
"* lawyers for individuals who sue big companies often work on a contingency basis...they get a fix percentage of the settlement, which means sometimes they get nothing\n* legal fees are often awarded tot he plaintiff, especially if it appears the defended was trying to make it unaffordable for them to sue\n* at the end of the day, the law doesn't care how much you pay your lawyer...they award damages, and the rest is between you two"
]
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[],
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|
1z1hl6 | why is green required to do cgi? | Why is the colour green need to be used on everything that is to be altered with CGI? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z1hl6/eli5_why_is_green_required_to_do_cgi/ | {
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"It doesn't have to be green. Green is just commonly used because it provides a high contrast with the colors normally found on people.\n\n[Sometimes, people end up wearing green...](_URL_0_).",
" > Why is green required to do CGI?\n\nIt isn't. The technique being used is called [chroma key](_URL_0_), and all it needs is a solid color that isn't found anywhere else in the scene. For most of the technique's history, the color of choice was *blue*, not green. If you watch an older movie, you can often see fringes of blue around actors (especially if there's frizzy hair or fuzzy clothing) during special-effects-heavy scenes because of incomplete chroma keying.\n\nBut with the advent of digital recording, green has become more popular. This is because digital cameras are designed to mimic human eyesight in terms of being more sensitive to green. This means that you can use chroma key on a green background with less illumination.\n\nThere's also the side effect that green doesn't conflict with blue eyes, or blue jeans."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKRSyjMOORU"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key"
]
] |
|
2hl76a | why it seems to be nearly impossible for plastic surgery to make someone look genuinely 20+ years younger. | Why do old celebrity women look like dolls every time they get surgery to try and look 30 years younger? The "young" features look too exaggerated to not be fake most of the time, is what I've noticed. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hl76a/eli5_why_it_seems_to_be_nearly_impossible_for/ | {
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"text": [
"Real young is a lot more complicated and subtle than making a doll face. They can't exactly figure it out, but it's noticeable in the result. \n\nKinda like real/artificial vanilla extract. There's trace amounts of many chemicals in real vanilla extract that chemists can't really tell all of the chemicals, but in the result you can taste the difference. ",
"I have no expertise in this area.\n\nThat said, I feel that plastic surgery 'fixes' (tightens, sculpts, shaves) areas below the skin and the skin itself by pulling on it or cutting it away. While this may eliminate wrinkles and sagging, it doesn't correct the natural aging of the epidermis. IMHO, this is why people like Bruce Jenner (way too lazy to link) look scary.\n\nAgain, I'm a binge-watcher, not a doctor, damnnit! "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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1lwr9n | what is going on with my body while i stand near a working microwave and why do i feel weird? | Microwaving some leftovers (fetuccine neopolitan if you must ask) and noticed this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lwr9n/eli5_what_is_going_on_with_my_body_while_i_stand/ | {
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"text": [
"Maybe you are sexually attracted to your microwave? I feel the same way around lamp posts. Ooh I'm getting hot just thinking about it!",
"Haven't experienced anything like that. \nMicrowaves don't really do significant damage to your body, nor should you 'feel' it.",
"Nothing is happening to your body near a microwave that isn't happening anywhere else, assuming you are using a normal microwave that isn't falling to pieces. At most, a microwave oven leaks about 5 milliwatts of radiation measured 5cm from the oven. In contrast a cell phone emits about 1.6 watts. You do the math."
]
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7ny3m8 | how tv comapnies broadcast channels via cables & antenna? | So I know they can either broadcast the channels via Antenna, Cables or Internet..
What I wonder is what is the process and devices the TV companies use to receive and send the channels to the end user, so their controller at one's home can broadcast it to the tv? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ny3m8/eli5_how_tv_comapnies_broadcast_channels_via/ | {
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"TV is broadcast over the air using a very large antenna and high power amplifiers. Amplifying the signal and hooking it up to a metal antenna causes the antenna to resonate, and that sends out an electromagnetic wave. At your end, a resonance is caused in your antenna by that EM wave, and it is then amplified and sent to your tuner to separate out the signals to send on to the display and audio. (Radio works the same way, but there's no video signal.) \n \nCable companies multiplex (combine) many signals onto a high-frequency carrier signal, and that signal goes out to all of their cables (and fiber optics). It goes through miles of cables and repeaters until it gets to your house. There it is amplified and your cable box de-multiplexes (splits out) the channel you want to watch, ignoring the carrier and all of the other channels. Then like broadcast TV, the video and audio signals must be separated out by a tuner (either in your cable box or in your TV). \n \nOver the internet, the video and audio signals must be digitized into a specific format and put into packets (large groups of bits) that say where they are going, where they are from, what packet number it is, etc. That stream of packets is sent out and routed through many routers, signal repeaters, etc. until they finally get to your home computer or TV. The packets then need to be re-assembled into a stream of bits that contains both the video and audio data. Those are separated out and sent to different circuits. "
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3wmbo2 | why do "forever storms" seem to exist in some planets like jupiter (and now stars)? how do they stay "forever" and not die? | Link to the [discovery of a star with a "forever storm"](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wmbo2/eli5_why_do_forever_storms_seem_to_exist_in_some/ | {
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"text": [
"They're not forever. Jupiter's storm is losing it's energy and will die out eventually. I think it's been overdue for almost a decade, but I'll let someone else find the literature on it.",
"Forever storms survive by eating smaller storms. There was a good video a few months ago, can't find it now though."
]
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"http://gizmodo.com/this-stormy-star-is-unlike-anything-weve-seen-before-1747704300"
] | [
[],
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|
3aohhs | why bill gates and paul allen have such different wealths even though they both founded microsoft? | I'm sure they had other business ventures etc but can't find anything simple online to sum it up.
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3aohhs/eli5_why_bill_gates_and_paul_allen_have_such/ | {
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"The orginal founding percentages of MS were 64% for gates and 36% for Allen. Balmer got a $50,000 salary plus a 10% profit share. The profit share to Balmer was getting to be to much as MS started to grow, so they restructured.\n\nIn exchange for cancling his profit sharing agreement, Balmer got 8% of the company. Another 8% was split among other employees. The remaining 84% was split between Gates and Allan. Assuming they kept the same ownership split they began with Allen now owns 34% of 84%. So he now owns about 24.5% of the total company.\n\nFrom there it gets more murky. As MS took on other investors, they would have had to give up portions of the company. Some of that would come from each of the founders. \n\nBut since the IPO, both Gates and Allen have been able to sell shares on the open market. As many as they want. So from the time of the IPO (1994, I think), the net worth of the individuals would depend on when they sold the MS stock. "
]
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1mubvv | why are the united states, liberia and burma the only three countries in the world not to implement the metric system as their standards weights and measures? | I read somewhere a few weeks back that it costs countries, who import from the US, millions upon millions of dollars each year to re-lable/convert the weights and measures of products into the Metric System for local distribution. It would make sense for the gradual transition to the Metric System to happen. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mubvv/eli5_why_are_the_united_states_liberia_and_burma/ | {
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"Inertia, tradition, and the expense of converting everything in one of largest and most populous nations on Earth to a new system. ",
" > it costs countries, who import from the US, millions upon millions of dollars each year to re-lable/convert the weights and measures of products into the Metric System for local distribution.\n\nAnother country having problems labeling products is not an incentive to change the thinking of 300,000,000 people.\n\nThe scientific community already does its measurements in metric. There's no incentive for Jane Smith to change the way she's thought of weights, distance, and temperature for 40 years. It works for us, so there's no driving force for a change.\n\n",
"Gerald Ford tried to implement it, Ronald Reagan shut it down to save money.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The cost of staying the same has to be greater than the cost of changing. Currently the cost of change is greater.",
"As far as origin goes: Liberia was founded by American slaves who re-colonized Africa and they used the US as their political and cultural model. English is their official language, the architecture's inspired by the antebellum South, their flag is an homage to the US's, etc. \n\nOn conversion: Too many logistics that come with it for them to bother at this point. Burma may since they're odd man out, but the US has enough influence to ignore Metric and force everyone else to deal.",
"What if i told you the metric system is used in the us...",
"Whenever I think about how great it would be if the USA converted 100% to metric, I immediately remember the construction trades and the fucking nightmares that would arise when everybody needs two sets of tools for the next hundred+ years and people have to hang signs on their houses that tell you they're either a metric house or a standard house. Take simple framing as an example. 16 inches on center. What's the metric equivalent? (No really , what is it?) And if you're improving existing construction, how do you know what's behind the drywall? I tell ya I lose sleep over it. "
]
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3i0je3 | what are the difference between browser add-ons, like what firefox uses, and extensions, such as what chrome uses? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i0je3/eli5_what_are_the_difference_between_browser/ | {
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"Nothing - there's some minor differences in how each browser handles extensions, what they're allowed to do etc. but this isn't indicated by the different wording - they just picked different names. Could have used 'plugin' for example.",
"Here add-ons and extensions mean the same thing. The point of the news are that Firefox will change the way their add-ons currently work to a way more similar to the way the Chrome extensions work. Firefox wants to move to a multi-process environment, giving each tab a new process (like you can see in your task manager). This means that they need to change the way their add-ons work as well.\n\nYou can read more here: _URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/mozilla-sets-plan-to-dump-firefox-add-ons-move-to-chrome-like-extensions/"
]
] |
||
2sov2b | how do credit card companies provide refunds for scams? | I was subject to misleading advertising the other day, where I had to pay an additional 500% after the original payment, which was written in small print on the site. Of course, the company was adamant that I couldn't get a refund.
Luckily, I had paid with a credit card, and within 4 hours of contacting the credit card company they had successfully managed to get a refund directly from the site itself. How do they achieve this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sov2b/eli5_how_do_credit_card_companies_provide_refunds/ | {
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"I guess it's a combination of insurance and the weight of all of their lawyers and legal teams. They can come down on the company with enough aggro that it's cheaper to just do the refund, rather than pay to fight a legal battle.",
"OP, what was the site and/or purchase you made? I'm legitimately curious as to what business could (or would) do that.",
"It wouldn't be a case of them arguing with the company to give you a refund, they would just click a button on their system to reverse that transaction, against the scamming company's wishes if it wants to.\n\nOf course, the company is quite unlikely to challenge your credit card company over doing that, it would cost a lot more in legal fees."
]
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4cb55d | what are cuticles for, and why do people "push them back"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cb55d/eli5_what_are_cuticles_for_and_why_do_people_push/ | {
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"text": [
"They protect the skin adjacent to the nail from debris and microbes. People push them back because they believe it looks better, but it does carry an increased risk of infection."
]
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[]
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||
3gsnk4 | why didn't the us seize cuba during the cuban missile crisis? | Considering what they did with Vietnam I don't doubt their ability to mobilize large numbers of troops, and if they simply blockaded the island during their assault it would seem like Russia wouldn't have found until the US wanted them to, or at least for a while. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gsnk4/eli5_why_didnt_the_us_seize_cuba_during_the_cuban/ | {
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"That would've almost certainly caused an all out war between the US and the USSR, which would be very very bad due to the whole nuclear threat. Cuba was an ally of the USSR and the invasion would have been an act of war. By making the blockade, there was still a risk but that risk was lowered, as we can see since ultimately the USSR withdrew.",
"I think people underestimate just how close we came to a World War III there. Both sides had itchy trigger fingers. There was really only one way for the world to get out of it alive and that's what they did. "
]
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q9pjm | credit card interest calculations | I can never find good explanations for how it works. Basically, I'm just going to use an example as it seems easiest to explain my question.
I have a balance of $250 on my credit card on February 26. On February 27, I pay this off. Now my credit card is back to 0 balance. I then put a $500 charge on it on February 28.
Does this $500 start collecting interest right away if I don't pay it off before March 1st? Should you wait until the start of a month to make a big purchase if you don't expect to pay it off right away (30 days before interest)? Or is the interest held off for 30 days from the date of purchase of each specific item? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q9pjm/eli5_credit_card_interest_calculations/ | {
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"It depends on your billing cycle.\n\nThere are a couple things to keep in mind: each bill you receive will contain charges you made between two dates, usually a month apart. This is your billing cycle. If a charge is between those two dates, payment is due on it. If it's a day later, it'll be in your next billing cycle and payment isn't due yet.\n\nYour payment due date is usually a couple weeks later than the end of your billing cycle. This is sometimes called your \"grace period\" and gives you time to submit payment, and the CC company time to process and verify it. Even though you may have made charges between the end of your billing cycle and your payment due date, those new charges won't be due until your next bill.\n\nInterest should not accrue on credit card purchases until after the first payment is due. Therefore, it really shouldn't matter when in your billing cycle you make the purchase if you plan to pay it off in full when you receive the bill. If you pay less than the full outstanding balance (ie the 'minimum payment') on your account, you will accrue interest on the unpaid amount only. Whether this accrues from the date the purchase was made may depend on the terms of your specific credit card.\n\nUsing your example, if the end of your billing cycle was the 27th or earlier, the $500 would not appear on your bill, would not be due for about another month and would not accrue interest until that time.\n",
"Credit cards have a grace period...in the US, it must be at least 21 days, but is often 25 or 30 days.\n\nThis is the amount of time between the close of your billing cycle and when your payment is due. So let's say your billing cycle ends on the 15^th of every month. If you bought something on the March 16^th, the billing cycle would end April 15^th, and you would have until May 6^th or so to pay before interest is accrued.\n\n**But be careful!** If you wait until May 7^th, instead of just paying 1 day's interest, you will retroactively pay interest *every* day back to March 16^th ...nearly two months worth!\n\nSo waiting until the day after your billing cycle will buy you some time to pay off as much as the purchase as you can, but you will still pay interest from the whole period for the parts you didn't pay off.\n\nEDIT: added emphasis"
]
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1s76br | if the temperature is 37 degrees fahrenheit but the weather channel states "feels like 26 degrees" will water freeze? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s76br/eli5_if_the_temperature_is_37_degrees_fahrenheit/ | {
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"uh i'm celcius but water freezes at 32 F i think? No it wont. The wind blowing makes it feel colder, it actually isnt any colder tho. \n\nTry this: lick a small part or your arm and then blow on it. the faster you blow on it, the colder it feels. same sorta thing outside",
"The \"feels like\" is directly related to the wind (aka Wind Chill), when they state this \"feels like\" temperature. The wind blowing on the moist skin-bag that is you, will cool you off faster (in hot or cold temps). You just notice it in a more painful way when the temps are cold.\n\nThe wind-chill has no effect on water (and in fact, wind can cause things like lakes to take longer to freeze if they're churning up the water and making waves, even at freezing temps). As an example, the lake I live on had nearly a week of below freezing temps, but lots of wind. It stayed open - as soon as the wind died down, it froze over. That all has to do with the motion of the water, preventing the freeze-over."
]
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5vawkm | why is it easier to follow a line when cutting something? | Let's use a piece of wood as an example. Cutting as straight as possible will be jagged and uneven. But if you draw a line with a ruler, and cut along the line it's perfect. Another thing that I was wondering about that's basically the same idea is why is it so hard to draw a perfect circle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vawkm/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_follow_a_line_when/ | {
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"I assume it's to do with the fact that you're almost actually inside the material instead of on top of it, meaning there's sort of a guideline, not sure of the physics of it though, even then I can't cut a straight line to save my live but that's just me",
"A drawn line is just a visual reference. It makes it easy to check if your line is still straight without using complex visualisation. It's easier to draw a line once and simply compare rather than continually imagine a line whilst trying to cut something.\n\nDrawing perfect circles is difficult because the human body doesn't really have many joints naturally arranged to allow our hands to move in a perfect circle. If our wrist was a ball and socket, maybe it'd be easier - but it's not. Further, our muscles aren't arranged to move optimally for circles - they're arranged for things like picking stuff up and using tools and stabbing deer. If you had to design an instrument to draw a circle, it wouldn't look a lot like the human body.",
"For cutting in a straight line, I'd say the reason why a line helps is because you've made the line with something that actually is straight. The line is a guide or reference for your eye to follow. If there is no reference, however, your eye probably starts to pick out grain patterns to help as references to try and keep the line straight. As you know, this doesn't work. Also, I'd suggest that because of the way your arm covers up what has been cut, it is difficult to use the rest of your cutting as reference. Even then, what appears “straight” can quite often not be straight due to geometric illusions and so on.\n\nBasically, without a ruled line, we begin trying to fill in the gaps to provide enough information to judge a straight line, none of which actually help because this information just isn't there or available in a useful way. Also, the tools you use will affect the straightness.\n\nAs for drawing a circle, this is completely different. A perfect circle is very well defined: Every point on the perimeter must be exactly the same distance from the centre of the circle (otherwise you have an ellipse or other unsightly round shape). Unfortunately for us, the physiological workings of hand movement make it impossible to actually construct a circle without the assistance of tools. (There is a legendary case of some artist actually producing a circle, free hand, but that's with a fairly thick brush. I'd challenge anyone to do so with a pen or pencil with a circle at least as big as your fist. No, I didn't think so.)\n\nJust place your finger on a table and pay close attention to what happens in your forearm and shoulder as you trace a circle. The number of muscles involved, all playing pass-the-parcel with your hand's movement is incredible. The fact that we can produce rough ellipses without help is testament enough to our dexterity but it doesn't go much further. Tremors, shakes and delays (in muscle firing, nervous impulses, etc.) will all add lumps to the circle and these generally can't be removed. That's just the way squishy biological systems work…\n"
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3tuapp | why is leather still such a popular luxury item for things like upholstery? | Hasn't science created better fabrics by now? Is it really luxurious considering it isn't rare with hundreds of thousands of cows being slaughtered daily?
I was watching some show where the guy was showing a $20 million Leer jet and he kept going on about the leather. You have this amazing piece of technology that has only been available for 50 years and you're excited about the pieces of dead cow skin that has been used for thousands of years.
I eat meat and using up the leftover skin makes economical sense, but I don't get why it's the premier fabric of luxury. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tuapp/eli5_why_is_leather_still_such_a_popular_luxury/ | {
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"Leather is extremely durable, and a lot of people find the look, feel, and smell of it pleasant. It's been in continual use for thousands of years because it's just a great material. And the synthetic materials you mentioned are all petroleum derivatives.",
"Just to add to the other answers, leather becomes softer with age. So unlike having a cloth couch, a leather couch will become more enjoyable to sit on as time goes by.",
"Its expensive not because its rare but because its simply more difficult to process when compared to fabric. Science hasn't created anything yet that trumps the feel and durability of it. ",
"The chemical makeup and structure of leather is an incredibly complicated organic thing, and it has all kinds of good qualities as a result: porosity, waterproofing, softness, heat transfer, stain resistance etc etc. It got that way through millions of years of evolution. If you could make a plastic which had all those qualities (cheaply) you'd be a billionaire. Currently we take advantage of those millions of years of evolution by growing animals and then using their skins because it's way cheaper than trying to synthesize it.",
"A bit tangential, but I can't fucking stand leather. Very cold to sit on in the winter, very sticky and gross in the summer. Don't see the appeal. When I bought my car, pretty much my only condition was that the seats weren't leather... ",
"You can't beat leather when it's used for boots/shoes. They last forever if you take care of them. ",
"Leather looks good, feels good, smells good. It's the absolute best \"fabric\" for pet owners. Good quality leather can last for decades. No, it's not rare, but nothing beats quality leather for durability and timeless appeal.",
"A lot of work and expertise goes in to tanning and working with leather, which is a major factor in its price and \"luxuriousness\" of it. There's really nothing man-made that beats it for weather resistance, warmth, durability, and looks."
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2fd2cm | how it can be economical for there to be two starbucks within 0.1 miles of each other | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fd2cm/eli5_how_it_can_be_economical_for_there_to_be_two/ | {
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"The corporation believes the market (area) can handle that many stores, so they allow another to be built.",
"Capacity. A starbucks can only service so many people. Many will walk past if the line is too long. With two nearby each other the demand is split somehow between the two and more people are serviced.",
"It is sometimes cheaper to rent a second location than to expand the first, especially when the business has a cookie-cutter model.",
"One store in the location. 100 people want coffee, so they wait in line. The store can only serve 50, so 50 of them leave. They only get half the money people want to give them. They decide to open a second store a few stores over. Now, 100 people want coffee, each store gets 50 people. All the money is now Starbucks.",
"Perhaps one of them was a competitor who went out of business. Good Guy Starbucks fills it with one of their own stores to prevent another coffee shop from opening and going out of business there.",
" 2 Starbucks > 1 Starbucks + 1 competitor.",
"1. stores have a finite capacity. At some length of line people will go somewhere else. If you're starbucks you want that somewhere else to still be you. It's often easier to create a new store than the increase the capacity of an existing store.\n\n2. You fend of competition. If you're another coffee company the traffic to starbucks validates the market and you can then decide that you can create a superior product. Even if it's not superior it's going to capture some of the dollars that starbucks would otherwise be getting. A second store can be a defensive (or even offensive) competitive strategy.",
"Well in NYC people want to pickup coffee on their way to/from work, they don't want to go out of their way a few blocks and then backtrack for a cup of coffee. "
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20g6xm | why doesn't trader joes have sales? | They're the only grocery store I've ever seen that does not have sales. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20g6xm/eli5_why_doesnt_trader_joes_have_sales/ | {
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"They don't need them, people don't go there because it's cheap.",
"You do sales for two primary reasons: get people into the store, or get rid of excess inventory.\n\nTrader Joe's has a nearly cult-like following...they don't need sales to get people in the store (they barely advertise anyway so having a sale wouldn't help much). \n\nThey also have only about 1/10th the number of unique items for a typical grocery store and have a much lower stock of perishable inventory. This combination means they're much less likely to be overstocked on anything, so they don't need sales to get rid of excess. ",
"They always have sales on produce at my local trader joes"
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4t38gj | what is the difference between a mood and an emotion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t38gj/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_mood_and_an/ | {
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"Well we know what emotions are right? Happy, sad, angry, playful, etc. \n\n\nA mood is basically a state of being predisposed towards a certain emotion. In a \"bad mood\" would mean temporarily predisposed towards feeling emotions generally considered bad, such as angry or sad. \n\n\nWhat causes the predisposition is a combination of factors that have affected the individual's state of mind. These can be a wide variety of things such as how much sleep they got, are they hungry, what has recently happened to them, what things has their mind been focused on, what other stressors are affecting them and how much/little stress relief have they had, and so on.",
"Mood is a theme; emotion is a scene.\n\nMoods tend to have a longer arc in which context is more important, whereas emotions can be spontaneous and not necessarily having a precedent."
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3v3kxj | why a man's height is a measure of his attractiveness to women? | Dating apps have lead me to believe height is the most important thing when women decide whether a man is attractive or not, even over facial features, weight, profession etc. Why is that? As a straight male, I don't think a woman's height normally crosses my mind unless she is a giant or a midget. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v3kxj/eli5_why_a_mans_height_is_a_measure_of_his/ | {
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"That's online dating for you -- the things that are visible and quantifiable are disproportionately important on there. It's the tyranny of \"what can be measured\", and height is a lot easier to measure and filter based on than \"sense of humor\" or \"kindness to animals\". \n\nBut look at the not-tall male hotties out there. Tom Cruise, RDJ, and Josh Hutcherson are all 5'7\". Daniel Radcliffe is 5'5\". Height isn't everything.",
"It’s beauty standards imposed by society. The real question is, how did this come about? It’s probably biological, if in evolution a taller man offered benefits to the survival of a woman and their children. \n\nFun fact: if you want to sell sperm, you have to meet height requirements because nobody’s buyin’ from shorties! Not a market for it."
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smiu5 | how does hyper-threading work and how is it better? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/smiu5/how_does_hyperthreading_work_and_how_is_it_better/ | {
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"A processor can have multiple physical cores. Each core can process 1 instruction at a time. The core receives the instruction, schedules it, and then executes it. \n\nHyperthreading allows the scheduling to be a bit more efficient. The core can now receive two instructions at once. It will still execute only one at a time, but the other instruction is 'ready' faster.\n\nThe analogy given is an assembly line worker who is working filling up the bag of chips. But now you give the worker two assembly lines. \n\nSo to the operating system, my i7 2600K processor looks like it has 8 cores. But actually, it has 8 logical cores because there are 4 physical cores and each core can take two instructions at once. The OS may send instructions to Core3 and Core4, but they can both end up at PhysicalCore2. ",
"Hyper-threading is basically some number of threads (usually two, although researchers have played with other numbers) sharing a single physical processor. I can't come up with any good ELI5 analogies so this will get a little dense, but I'll try to keep it high level. \n\nThe important bits of the processor can be thought of as an input, a bunch of little calculators, and an output. The stuff that comes in through the input doesn't always have to be done in order, as long as it comes out in the right order, so sometimes we can give the calculators extra work by finding something that we already have all the data for, and then at the output we reorder it to make every come out right. This is called out-of-order execution. But sometimes, we just can't find anything to give the calculators, like if lots of stuff is trying to access memory. So we add a second input pipe and a second output pipe that otherwise basically share all the calculators in the middle, and hopefully if one pipe/thread is busy waiting to feed the calculators, the second pipe/thread can make progress.\n\nSo how it's better is that it keeps your processor busy and lets your programs make more progress, without requiring all of the circuitry for a second set of calculators. The downside is that we usually try to pull some instructions off of both threads, so they can block each other. Each of the calculators in the middle do something special -- some add integers, some multiply integers, some work on floating point numbers, etc. -- and so if the two threads want to use the same calculator, one has to wait on the other to be done with it.",
"If you'd like an exemplary explanation, you can never go wrong with the good folks at [Arstechnica](_URL_0_)\n\nThis article is 9 years old, but is a great read. ",
"Let's say I run a kitchen with two chefs, this is much like having a dual core processor.\n\nEach chef can do one thing at a time, but I have two of them so things get done faster.\n\nWhat hyper threading does is allows the chefs to multitask. For example, chef one can scramble the eggs AND boil water at the same time. This is because when he's boiling water, he's not using all his body parts. His hands are free and he can use them to scramble eggs. Same thing for chef two, he can take orders while he's making toast.\n\nA CPU has a lot of different parts to it that can do different things. If a CPU gets a list of instructions that it has to execute, it's possible for the processor to hand off those instructions to different parts of the processor. That's why the chef can scramble eggs and boil water.\n\nThe thing is, the chef can't scramble eggs and make toast at the same time. That's because his hands are tied up scrambling the eggs. That's why a dual core processor with hyper threading isnt the same as a quad core processor. \n\nThis makes sense in my head, so sorry for not being too clear about it :P\n",
"I didn't really like the other explanations, so here's my ELI5 shot at it.\n\nComputers have multiple cores, but let's focus on just one at a time. We don't have to worry about the others. Also ignore the word \"threading\" here; forget what you know about threads, this isn't about threads.\n\nOK: Let's picture a \"core\" on a computer as an assembly line. If I'm Google Chrome and I have to do a task like displaying a webpage, I bring my raw materials to the head of the assembly line and dump them in, and out come my results. This all happens very quickly in small increments. So I may have 1,000,000,000 little tasks every second that I bring up to the front of the assembly line, and each one gets executed very quickly.\n\nNow, there are other processes running on my core (like maybe OpenOffice or Starcraft) that also need to get things done. We have to take turns, because there's only one assembly line in this core.\n\nSo normally, we would take turns by saying something like, \"you get the assembly line for the next 0.0001 seconds, then I get it, then he does, then back to you, ....\"\n\nBut this is **inefficient**. The reason is that, sometimes, I don't have all the raw materials with me. I have to run out to get them. They might be stored on RAM, for instance. So it's my turn to use the assembly line, but I have to stop in the middle of my turn and run out to get the stuff I need. But since it's my turn, nobody else gets to use the assembly line while I'm gone. It's really quick, but it's still some wasted time. Another example of when this might happen is if I start filling the assembly line with one type of material (program instructions), then find out I don't actually need them. There's no need to send that material through the line, since I won't use the answers, but it ties up the machine cause I'm not ready yet with the correct stuff.\n\n\"Hyperthreading\" lets one other guy take advantage of these little gaps by jumping in whenever there's empty space and running their own stuff on the assembly line. To support that, you need to have storage spots there so both of us can store our raw materials. While I'm running the assembly line, you're running out to fetch materials; then as soon as I need to go get my stuff together, you jump in and start executing.",
"[Here is a solid explanation](_URL_0_)",
"Hyperthreading is basically a second set of registers. If there is a cache miss and the CPU has to go out to main memory, it switches execution to the other register set and continues working.\n\nBasically it is hardware support for a second thread. (Normally, swapping threads would force you to copy the register state out and back for every context swap.)\n\nFun fact, I took a superscalar architecture class with Shen, who later went on to run micro architecture at Intel for a bit."
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4g9iqs | can you jump off something in mid-air and gain height? or will you just push the thing you're on down faster? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g9iqs/eli5_can_you_jump_off_something_in_midair_and/ | {
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"newtons third law says both you push it down faster and it pushes you up, but probably not enough to go up just to fall more slowly. ",
"In free fall if you push against something, both bodies will move away from each other with equal momemtum.\n\n Momentum = mass x velocity.\n\nSo, if the other body is the same mass as you, you will move with the same speed away from each other. If the other body is way more massive, you'd move away faster. Note though this is from *your point of view*. Let's say you can manage to push enough to move 5m/s 'up'. From the ground's point of view you would subtract 5 m/s from your downward speed. Since you are probably moving downwards way faster than you can possibly push upwards, your overall speed would still be towards the ground.\n\n",
"Both.\n\nIf you're on free fall, you're probably falling anything between 200 and 400km/h. Your jump would, for about 1s or so, lower that speed down to something between 390km/h and 190km/h. Then you would accelerate back to something between 400km/h and 200km/h within a second or so.\n\nAverage man can probably achieve upward speed of about 10km/h relative to the surface they jump from. This is a bit handwavey. Humans terminal velocity is anything upwards of 200km/h. Lowest speed you can achieve is when you're wearing baggy clothing and spread out as much as possible, which seems to limit your speed to about 200km/h before air resistance stops further acceleration. Jumping up would reduce your downward speed by that 10km/h, but after jumping, you would then quickly go back to terminal velocity"
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6twpse | why do we misspell words when we write/type but not when we speak? | How is it that we can totally misspell words that we're familiar with when we're writing/typing, but the same isn't true when we speak them?
Or maybe it *is* happening when I speak and I've just never noticed before?
I searched several subs and couldn't find the topic, hopefully this hasn't been answered to death already. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6twpse/eli5_why_do_we_misspell_words_when_we_writetype/ | {
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"Well, the idea of misspelling words when you speak is kind of nonsensical on its face, isn't it. But that doesn't rule out other kinds of linguistic errors.\n\n > Or maybe it is happening when I speak and I've just never noticed before?\n\nBasically, I think you're misunderestimating the number of mistakes people make in their speech.",
"It actually happens that you 'misspeak' words. Try saying a tongue twister quickly:\n\nPeter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.\n\nFor the explanation - there are quite a few causes for misspelling. Someone might not know how exactly is the word written. Or they might have read it recently misspelled somewhere and it sticks to their short term memory. ",
"It's not precisely the same thing but I think the closest that you can equate misspelling to verbally would be when a person always says a word with the wrong pronunciation. An example would be people saying \"sherbert\" when the spelling is \"sherbet.\""
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3hu553 | why does it take 5 seconds for credit card/debit card companies to take money out of my account but 5 days for them to refund it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hu553/eli5_why_does_it_take_5_seconds_for_credit/ | {
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"Different systems... First you have to realize there is a difference between authorizations and postings. \n\nA charge is only \"real\" against your account when it's posted. It's posted when the merchant does their batch close (typically) except for debit. When you do a credit transaction there is an authorization against your account but you don't \"owe\" the money until it posts. \n\nRefunds to debit if done at a POS terminal should be automatic (just like charges).\n\nRefunds to credit take time because they go through the same path as charges. If it took 3 days for your charge to post you can be assured it will take 3 days for the refund to post.\n\nNow why don't they just authorize refunds? I suspect because when you auth a charge no money has changed hands yet. The bank [or credit company] still has the money they were lending you. It only goes to the merchant when they do a batch close and post the transaction. So if they did an auth refund there would be two copies of the same money. You'd have your refund and the merchant wouldn't have had to cough up the money yet.\n\nNow why do they take so long to do batch closes? Probably because each close costs money (+ transaction fees and percentages). So they do them every few days to save money.",
"There's a theory that it's in their favour for them to hold the money in their accounts thanks to the interest they would gain for 4 days of your money versus an instant reversal of the payment.\n\nIt makes for a good conspiracy but I'm not sure if it's true or simply a nice side effect for them.",
"It always takes days. See, when you buy something, it takes a few days for the merchant to get their money. You don't notice or care about it because the money is gone out of your account and you have your stuff. \n\nIn the event of a refund, though, you are suddenly painfully aware of how long it takes money to move through the credit card processing system. ",
"Oh, it's worse than that. If you pay with a debit card, it can go up to 30 days to get the money put back on the card, depending on the processor and the bank. The only way I was ever able to get it to come back faster was to delete the transaction out of the system so it wouldn't \"settle\" at the end of the day...Even that will leave a hold on your account for 4-7 days.\n\nThe short version is, banks aren't liable for fraudulent charges, so those process quickly. They are liable for fraudulent credits, so those process slowly. Also, there is an economy of scale: there are 10's of thousands of charges for each refund. And finally, remember that there is a payment card processor between the bank and the P.O.S terminal you swiped your card through, and they have their own overhead.\n\nAnd finally, just because they're dicks. There are very few top level payment processors, you the consumer know absolutely nothing about them (except in the case of Paypal who everyone LOATHES), and they don't give a fuck about your customer satisfaction.",
"Because the credit card system could be thought of as a hack on top of ACH transfers (which take several days).\n\nBasically, when ever you run your card, the cc machine dials out and contacts your bank to see if you have funds available. When your bank confirms they do, they put a hold on those funds, expecting the business to eventually collect on them.\n\nWhen the business does a settlement at the end of the night, that is what actually starts the process of transfering the funds out of your account. 2-3 days later, they actually receive the funds.\n\nIf the business doesn't do a settlement, the bank eventually realize \"hey, it's not very likely that the business will be collecting on this authorization, lets put it back in the customers account\".\n\nOtherwise, if they do a refund, it is basically a 'push' ACH transaction which if you have ever done one, take a few days for the funds to show up.",
"The debit and credit process take the same amount of time. The difference we see is because when we pay for an item the card company fronts the money to the merchant while they wait to get the money from your bank. So you buy something for $10, Visa pays the $10 for you and just waits to get the $10 from your bank. \n\nWhen there is a refund nothing is done to make the process look faster. During a refund all of the parties wait for the money to actually complete the ACH transfer process before the balance shows anywhere in your balance.\n\nSource: I work for a payment processing company\n\nEdit:typos",
"It's about approvals and controls. \n\nThe number of people approving a total of $100 charges to your card is 1, so it can take you 5 minutes to verify that you really need what you are buying, and then you follow a regular process. If you get it wrong you lose, or misspend $100. \n\nFor a refund, a credit card company has to have a process to control hundreds of millions, so needs many approvals and controls to ensure many millions don't get erroneously paid out. Add to that that refunds are exceptions, not regular processes, so they require even more controls than a regular \"you pay us we pay them\". ",
"The simple answer is that banks are too cheap to move their infrastructure into the 21st century. ",
"Because then they can charge you five days' worth of interest, and also get five days' worth of interest on the money from where they invested it.\n\nWith banks, it's heads we win, tails you lose. It's like, why do they process a withdrawal before a deposit? Because of the $35 overdraft fee.\n\nSo you go one cent into the red by mistake, realize oh crap, transfer $20 to cover it - come back the next day and they're like you went into the red, that's $35 in fees, thanks for your $20 payment towards that fee, where's our $15.\n",
"Okay. I used to work for a credit card processor. Here's how it works. \n\nPurchase:\n\n1. The customer buys something. The merchant's bank checks with the customer's bank to make sure the customer has funds in their account, and the customer's bank puts a hold on the account in the amount- this hold is called the authorization. **This is what makes it appear as if the charge hits your card right away**\n2. The merchant's bank has to settle the transaction. This costs money, so it's usually done in batches by the payment processor. They settle at least once a day. \n3. The settlement takes up to 72 hours to process. Once the funds are sent from the customer's bank to the merchant's bank, the settlement appears on the customer's account, the funds are withdrawn, and the authorization is cancelled.\n4. The merchant's bank updates the merchant's account to show that the funds have been received. This can take up to 24 hours. \n4. It's been 1-5 days, and everyone has their money now. The transaction is complete. \n\nFor a refund, the process is the same, but done in reverse:\n\n1. The customer requests a refund. The merchant's bank requests a refund transaction from the bank. The bank checks with the merchant's bank to make sure they have the funds, and puts a hold on the amount. \n2. The customer's bank has to settle the transaction. This costs money, so it's usually done in batches by the payment processor. They settle at least once a day. \n3. The settlement takes up to 72 hours to process. Once the funds are sent from the merchant's bank to the customer's bank, the settlement appears on the merchant's bank's account, the funds are withdrawn, and the authorization is cancelled.\n4. The customer's bank updates the customer's account to show that the funds have been received. This can take up to 24 hours. \n4. It's been 1-5 days, and everyone has their money now. The refund is complete. \n\nThis is the way the credit system is designed. Charges are \"instant\" because of authorizations. The authorization is a courtesy to show you how much you owe in pending transactions and help prevent you from overdrawing the account. It always takes time for the receiver of the payment to get the money - the Merchant gives you the stuff when they get the authorization, but don't get the money for several days. When you get a refund, the flow is reversed. \n\nIt's not a conspiracy to squeeze extra interest out of your payment, it basically just has to be this way so the credit system works inside the existing regulations and systems in place for bank-to-bank account transfers. \n\nDoes that make sense? ",
"It prevents you from scamming them. The time lapse allows for the dust to settle. The quicker taking of the money is a much less likely thing fraud wise and often they can get money out of the accounts they put it in.",
"How about the fact that it's 2015 and no bank transactions will be processed on Saturday or Sunday. How is it acceptable that banking institutions (the ones that handle and move our most important asset) don't have to operate for two days every week?",
"Kind of related. I used to sometimes take a while to pay my council tax, a week or two late at most and I'd have letters with PAYMENT OVERDUE in massive red text. Currently I've been waiting on a refund from them for 3 months and I can't do anything. ",
"I am a merchant, I get the payment the next day, on refunds they take the money the next day. Also, you are not having your money taken in 5 seconds, you are getting an authorization for the amount in 5 seconds, and a hold placed on that amount, it doesn't actually come out until the transaction is batch processed.\n\nYou have made a purchase, a promise to make the payment and the bank must \"hold\" that amount until it's cleared in one way or another to prevent you from going to 100 stores and going over your limits.\n\nYOU are initiating the transaction, so you are \"charged\" instantly. \n\nIt depends on the bank on when the customer gets the money back, it is usually (from experience of customers calling me) 2 days, but sometimes up to 7 and in some cases it's been virtually the same time frame as mine. If you are waiting longer than that your bank is withholding your money (your local bank) purposefully.\n\nBottom line on the disparate time frames: The banks are using the money for interest (my opinion).\n\nThere is a lot of guesses and misinformation in this thread.\n\n**Myth:** Merchants batch over days.\n\n***Reality:*** Merchant either do transaction by transaction (if volume is high and transaction fees are low) or batch at the end of the day. NO merchant waits more than 24 hours as authorizations \"expire\".\n\n**Myth:** Merchants are keeping the money\n\n***Reality:*** Merchants have no say in the matter, it's entirely the processor and bank.\n\n**Myth:** Different systems\n\n***Reality:*** While there are of curse different system, the system is not built this way, authorizations are made to the issuing bank instantly. Once authorized, the batch process is what moves the money electronically, it is instant and has nothing to do with the disparate systems, to belong to the system you need to be available to the system. You can not use a bank card or credit card that cannot be charged in the system. If you are a merchant and you are waiting more than 24 hours for a deposit of payment, you are in a high risk business and have agreed to that particular length of time. \n\n**Myth:** What banks are liable for and that being part of the delays\n\n***Reality:*** Banks (from your local credit union to the big CITI/VISA) are not liable for anything. The merchant is liable for every penny. All fraud (every single penny) is taken from the merchant. There is NO risk at all for Citibank, or any ban or card issuer.\n\n**Myth:** They are jerks, greedy or some other insult\n\n***Reality:*** Business rules are set by the government, no one is being a \"jerk\" they (Banks and credit issuers) are simply following the shitty rules for consumers and merchants alike.",
"When a card is run through a point of sale system or POS it is not actually taking the funds from your account. It is verifying that the funds are available or that the card company will clear the transaction. When an item is memo posted to your account it is a temporary hold from the people that charged the card. This hold can remain on the account for days depending on the information submitted by the people who ran the card.\n\nWhen a transaction posts to your account the transaction information has been uploaded by the people who ran the transaction. This is why we cannot file a fraud claim until the transaction actually posts. When a credit hits your account by way of debit card or an electronic transaction called an ACH it is hard posted immediately. Those funds are sent with the information. When a company refunds something on your card the same \"memo posting\" information applies. The transaction does not hard post your account until their information file is uploaded. \n\nThe reason this process takes multiple days is because of all the systems these transactions actually run through before it is complete. When you swipe your card their system does a quick check. I would compare this to looking in the fridge to check how much milk you have. You look really quick and make a quick yes or no decision. This is why if their system isn't communicating correctly or if your cards verification system is down it declines. It doesn't mean that you don't have the funds necessarily, there are a lot of different reasons. Then after you leave with your purchase they hold your information until they send their transactions to their card processor. Then the card processor sends the information through the major credit card company, like Visa and MasterCard. Then the card company send the information to the bank. \n\nTL;DR The information has to pass through a lot of systems and credits do not memo post to accounts like debits do.",
"Its because of FRB Regulation E. It governs ACH and debit card transactions. They put money back in an account after 5 days because the regulation says they must. If they could wait 30 days they would. ",
"Just a guess, but the answer is probably 'interest'. Remember, as long as they have your money, it's in a bank. When it's a bank, they make interest on it. Source: I have worked for six years in a large HR company, which basically paid salaries for millions of workers in the country I live in. The majority of their income was interest on the money employers paid them, which they kept for a day or two.",
"On this front, there has been a lot of pressure recently from consumer groups and the government to speed up the ACH (automated clearing house) system. This is the system that debits your bank account if you use your debit card. Essentially, these groups argue that there is no legitimate reason why these transactions should, in our modern age, take up to 3-5 days to post to your account. Same goes for credit, though not through ACH. Essentially they're saying if we're all using computers, there's absolutely no need to have a charge exist in limbo for several days. ",
"Interest. They make interest on that money so they take it as fast as possible and keep it as long as possible",
"You will hear lots of nonsense in this thread but the simple reason is this - the banks make it as easy as possible for them to get money but as difficult as possible for anyone else to get it.\n\nThere is no technological reason why everything can't be instantaneous.",
"When you buy something, the money doesn't come out right away. It sits there on hold, pending for a few days generally. But you can't access it so it looks like the money instantly came out of your account.\n\nRefunds are doing the same but in reverse. A lot of times you can actually see the incoming refund pending at banks, but it can't be accessed until the hold is removed. ",
"There are a few things at play:\n\n1. When you buy something with a debit card, the merchant's computer will ask your bank \"is there enough money in the account to cover this?\" The bank's computer will respond, \"why, yes! Let me set this portion of money aside for your transaction.\" This is an authorization. They've removed the money from your account, and set it aside for later. \n\n2. Within a day or so, your bank will collect all the money that it has set aside from all the transactions for the period (usually the work day) and process (i.e. pay) at that time. The money is still in your bank's hands, you just don't have access to it, because the bank reserved that money for your merchant.\n\n3. The same works in reverse. If you pay from your bank to your credit card, your bank sets aside the money for the payment, and then actually makes the transfer later. It does this so it can \"batch\" (make a bunch of transfers at one time.)\n\nThis is ancient technology, as batches aren't really necessary any more. There are a few reasons that they still do this:\n\n1. It's embraced inefficiency. It's always been this way. There was a major overhaul about ten years ago concerning checks (which is why you can photodeposit now), and that was such a PITA. \n\n2. It can assist in detecting fraud, criminal activity and mistakes, as the money isn't technically transferred in real time. (This is more for transactions in the USA.)\n\n3. Banks can make money on the \"float\". During the temporary period where the money is in the bank's possession, but not credited against your credit card, the bank can still earn interest for the day or two delay. Multiply this times thousands of transactions per hour, and you have some significant reasons not to speed things up. Paypal actually has this built into the second business model.\n\n4. Banks have one of the most powerful lobbies in the USA, and politicians will do what they can to ensure that nothing harms the trade. Banks literally make the economic world go around. If the status quo keeps things operating smoothly, and keep things profitable, and don't fund terror, the politicians will keep them that way. ",
"Man thank Jesus for interac. Money is gone instantly. Refunds appear instantly. \n\nCanada was waaay ahead of the game with interac, and apparently still is. ",
"They are investing and making money off your money for 5 days. then they return your money.",
"In my experience this is just another way banks make money. \n\nThey do this on a grand scale so while 1-3 days equals only a fraction of a percent in interest, its on a scale that you can't imagine. \n\nFor those 1-3 days they don't need to pay you any interest on money that is pending yours, while technically theirs. \n\nIts the same reason why if I write a check it's take out of my account almost instantly the date it was deposited, but isn't cleared in the depositors account for several.",
"The real reason is that credit card companies are making money when they have your money. If they can have your money for an extra three days, they can invest it and keep making money on that. Even if they only make an extra $1, times that by the number of refunds, it adds up quickly.",
"It's called the float.\n\nBack in the days when people used checks more regularly to buy stuff, and when it took a few days to process the check and see if it clears or bounces, some people took to the art of floating checks, also known as kiting checks. They'd write a check, knowing that they didn't have the bank balance to cover it at the moment, but counted on the processing delay to give them time to get some money deposited.\n\nIndividuals float checks. Banks float your deposits.\n\nThey do it because it makes money. If they can hold on to your money for a few days, for \"processing\", they can lend that money, and make profit on it.\n\nAnd they make billions doing this on millions of people's deposits.\n\nThey can do this because they're financial institutions with economic and political power, and you're not.\n",
"Hopefully this thread can stay at the top for a while. As somebody who managed social media for a retail company, it's ridiculous how often this kind of topic comes up, with people accusing businesses of trying to keep their money, as if it matters to the merchant whether your refund processes immediately or a few days from now.",
"I'm dealing with the tax office. Took out 1300 for property tax in error. They admitted it. 4 months later they are still processing my refund.",
"Money devalues over time, but having money means you can earn interest. If I can hold on to your $100 for 5 days, I might earn a few pennies with it which will hedge against inflation, which means by the time you get your $100 it's worth has gone down by a few pennies. It's most likely not even a few pennies, probably much less than that.\n\nYou might think this isn't going to earn much money, but if you imagine a company guided by this thought process, you can see how across the board, they are better off financially. \n\nEveryone can talk about how it's different systems and it doesn't work the same and we just don't understand - yeah - that's bull. This could easily be a same day refund as many companies I have dealt with have done same day refunds, it's not some magic technology that's on the cutting edge of what humanity has created thus far. \n\nThere are all kinds of companies though that will do this kind of stuff. Target, for example, won't post a refund to your credit card for three days. Why? Well if they aren't going to make money off of you for that initial purchase, they'll need to make money in the slightest way to help pay for the operational cost of doing that refund. \n\nThis reason alone is why setting up your deductions so you get the smallest tax refund possible but the biggest paychecks possible is the best route to take. You're allowing government to hold on to that money and in turn make more money off of it, but by the time you get it back, it's worth slightly less than it would have been had you gotten it in your paychecks.",
"It's called \"The Float.\" The banks are gaining interest on your money while It's in their possession. And they will try to hold onto it for as long as possible.",
"My favorite is \"the refund should show up within 2 billing cycles\" That's like 60 days. Fuck you!",
"So what I'm seeing here is that we should create a company that offers instant refunds and then waits for the real funds from the bank to get to them? ",
"In many EU countries this also used to be the case, the reasoning behind it was because in pre electronic days the banks had 5 days to complete their bookkeeping and paperwork. Now in the EU, you get your money the same day you are refunded or get a transfer. The reason that in your country (I assume USA) this is not the case, is your federal government politicians or one of the larger states (e.g. California, Texas, New York which would cause a domino effect) have not changed those out dated rules.",
"In summary; the system was designed for money to flow one way so it is very good at going that way. It was not designed so much for money to go the other way, so it takes longer as many of the processes are not automated.",
"At Target, my young brother-in-law asked my wife to buy something. She said no, we're not spending money on that. He said, \"Why cant we just use quimby's card?\"\n\nHe was 12... and didn't know that credit cards are things you have to pay back.",
"The same reason the government is horrendously slow and inefficient at every single thing it does EXCEPT....collecting money from you.",
"Because the large banks are a too big to fail oligopoly and they couldn't give less of a shit about their customers anymore.",
"It's called playing the float.They slow out flow or payments because they make money on the interest of the money. It's in their benefit to keep your money longer.",
"I'm working at a company which develops software for EMV (chip n pin, also contactless, but that's a bit in the future) terminals.\n\nHere at least, this is what happens when you pay/get a refund on the unit:\n\n1. If offline, the transaction is verified locally, most visa/mastercard cards support this, it's then stored on the terminal in the SnF-list (Store and forward)\n\n2. If online, the transaction is sent to an organization (idk the name in english) which collects all of the transactions. This is propagated to your bank, which locks the funds until the process is complete.\n\n3. When the merchant chooses (usually after finishing for the day) the merchant closes the batch, and sends a batch close to the same organization. This is a total sum of all the money, as well as the amount of transactions (split over acquirers such as visa/mastercard, amex etc) The acquirer responds with it's own summary, and if matching, it's OK'd. If it's not matching, the merchant gets a warning about the missmatch.\n\n4. At 02:00-03:00 each night, the batch close is processed at the organization, which handles 1..n bank's money, and sends it out to the banks for processing.\n\n5. The money is then transferred the next day.\n\nWhen you are getting refunds due to payment processing errors, you usually complain to the merchant, which noticed the missmatch in the clsoe batch receipt, then calls the terminal manufacturer/processing organization, (it's the processing organization which can help, but the terminal manufacturer often act as a middle man/support). One the news reaches the processing organization, they verify that there's a missmatch, then sends a counter processing order to the bank.\n\nWhat you are comparing is the initial freeze of the funds (as your transaction is authorized/leaves the offline storage ) with a 3 party process which involves busy merchants/organizations, 3 parties which go through the batch closes to find missmatch info and compare it to the transaction list in order to get a grip on what has occured.\n\nIf the return is due to a non-processing error, ie the merchant is refunding you directly, the funds travel to your bank account exactly the same way as it goes from yours to the merchant, and therefore arrives in (usually) 1-2 days after the merchant actually get its hands out of its ass and issues the refund.",
"Da \"float\". They are making money off of your money on the difference in time.\n\nThis is, for example, why Dell became large on mostly accounting tricks like this: they try to take orders with CC which pays them immediately but they pay their vendors 60-90 days (back when they started doing this, the standard was 30 days). Of course now the \"jig is up\" on most B2B AP/AR tricks like this because everyone is now doing B2B with 60-90 day terms to their buyers. Only the consumer at the end of the supply chain still has to pay \"net zero\" (instantly) with their CCs.",
"All Issuing Banks can legally hold the money from refunds for up to 30 days. This allows them time to verify the money for the refund is securely in their control and ensure your account is in good standing. It also gives them time to detect fraud against the bank or credit system.\n\nTypically refunds take 3 to 5 business days, but if you are a high risk account, they will gladly keep your money on lockdown.\n\nFYI, it's quite common for banks to lie to their customer and try to pass the buck to the merchant or processor. The merchant issuing the refund can always call their processor to see the exact time and date that the refund was sent to the issuing bank.\n\nAlso, authorizations are protected by the same rules.",
"Friend bought pizza from a place and it was like $47.50. The guy actually charged him for $475.00 and apologized for it. It took 4 days before the money was put back into his bank account and the worst part about it was they made him also pay for the pizza.\n\nNow, I know you're saying almost $50 is a lot for pizza and they shouldn't have to take a loss because of this but how many people have $525 in their account to where they can not have it for a few days? \n\nIt really put him in a bind on paying a couple of his bills and that was the last time he bought pizza for his family.",
"Another great question is why does ACH charges take forever to show up on your statement. Also, it's always \"conveniently\" in order from greatest charges to least so that way if you overdraft for some reason you do it in the worst possible way (you get a bunch of small negative charges) on your account.",
"Lol top answer make the most sense but reality is in those 5 days the bank has made 10 times the money from your money and everyone else s money they pool together in quick turn around investments. this is why banks should not be allowed to be financial services imo.\n",
"Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahaahahahahaahahahhahahahahahahahahaha...........\n\nThe reason is simple.\n\nInterest....\n\nThey make interest on your money, so hold onto it longer",
"The ultimate reason is that the banks can use your money for a few days and make a profit. If it was profitable to give you your money back fast, they would do so; they have the technology. The authorization, etc. is all bullshit. You actually think they check stuff?",
"Because it's true that possession is nine tenths of the law, and as long as the money is in their possession, they'll confirm 10 ways until Sunday that it's someone else's before releasing it. You, however, only approve the move once, typically at the point of sale.",
"I'm English which has similar instant debit / 5 days to credit time periods to the US system. I now live in Australia and my company are credit card merchants. A card payment received by the merchant on any day, including Sundays or holidays, is credited to the merchant on the very same day and the merchant can draw against with no 'hold', or clearing period. \nSo it can be done differently. ",
"you mean you wonder why it takes banks a week or more to transmit roughly 40 bytes of data when we can download gigabytes of data in minutes? because fuck you, that's why. also, they can't fuck you out of weebly wobbly money you may have in your account/may have overspent if they do it immediately.",
"You will read a lot of bullshit about different processes, but the reason is that some people are bad people and bad people do bad things.",
"While the top comment paints a pretty picture of systematic differences, this has been refuted by European redditors who state that they receive refunds same day. So simple reality proves that this is not the case.\n\nThe real reason is banks are out to fuck you out of your money each and every way they can, and by keeping your money from you, they can make more.",
"They need to be really, really sure when they give you money and only a little bit sure when they take your money.",
"Google manages to refund authorized amounts quickly.. I don't know how.\n\n1) Buy app on Google Play\n2) Auth placed\n3) Refund\n4) Auth removed\n\nI haven't seen any other merchant do that.",
"You can choose to listen to all of this rhetoric for procedure, or you can realize you're little bank account is not priority. The more money you let them control the better the service. ",
"This \"delay\" is called \"float\". Interest is earned on \"floated\" money which is loaned out during your refund delay. The company/bank will wait until the last possible date, hour and second before the law requires you get paid.\n\nSo.. just like when people wrote paper checks.. everyone along the way was using your money for free. \n\nYeah, more than you wanted to know. ",
"Probably the same reason that if you're a day late making a payment they'll slam you with fines and penalties, but if they owe you money they'll drag their feet for weeks getting it to you",
"It's called usury rates and it's one of the main reasons muslims hate the bankers and corporations so much."
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e3djcm | what is the downside to dams? | From my simplistic view, dams seem like the best source of renewable energy. Water flows naturally down a river, we dam it, water then spins generators and power is produced. Seems like a win-win. Obviously there is a reason we haven't damed every river, can someone explain it to me, like I'm 5? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e3djcm/eli5_what_is_the_downside_to_dams/ | {
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"They can cause huge ecological damage by flooding the habitats of other animals when reservoirs are formed. They can also cause the downriver portion to silt up because the volume of water below the dam is lower so it doesn't wash away the silt as effectively.",
"You need the right geograpy, ideally a deep narrow valley in a rather hilly area. Without a height of water you don't generate much power.\n\nTry putting a dam across river running in fairly flat land and you need a very wide barrier to span the distance between ground rising higher than the water level you want to get. In turn, it will flood a huge area behind it to a depth of only a few tens of feet. The knock-on effects will be unacceptable. Roads, railways and other communications tend to run along that sort of area precisely because the gradients are gentle. It will also be good farmland from the silt and nutrients deposited by the river and therefore expensive to buy up simply to flood.",
"Besides the ecological impact of flooding a large area and interrupting migration paths for aquatic animals, geography limits the points where you can reasonably build a dam: You need mountains, or at least large hills to enclose the area you will be flooding and create a choke point where your dam will be because the longer your dam the more failure points there are, let alone the enormous cost; and you also need some height difference to actually get a lot of power, otherwise you need a large river with very high flow and there you would limit the navigability of a major waterway to a degree making expensive locks a necessity.\n\nOr you could just produce electricity with cheap fuels with less hassle.",
"As other people have said, ecology, land buying and occasionally evicting people for the land behind the dam you flood. \n\nAnd yes there are much less destructive ways of creating electricity these days. Lots of dams were originally built to control the flow of water, not for electricity. \n\nLots of land used to have floods and droughts, which is not good for agriculture. Building a dam to store the water and release more gradually provides a steadier supply if water making land downstream more habitable. In some cases damming and river management can reduce or prevent flash flooding as well. Electricity is a relatively modern use of dams that with the other options available really shouldn't be the main reason people are building a dam.",
"Dams prevent natural water flow, which carries sediment down from the hills and mountains to the valleys and estuaries, which results in a lack of new soil replacing that eroded in the coasts. This also means that fish can't swim upriver to spawn, the lack of fast flowing water also alters the rivers course."
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9tjrkk | how does apple ‘optimize’ their computers better then their competitors? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9tjrkk/eli5_how_does_apple_optimize_their_computers/ | {
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"The fundamental difference is that Apple controls both hardware and software. So much like a game console that performs better than a vanilla PC with the same specifications because their developers can get every last bit of optimization out of the known hardware set. \n\nOn a PC, Microsoft/Linux developers etc must be able to run on a virtually unlimited set of hardware possibilities, which means a) they have to spend more time on compatibility and less on optimization, and b) they can’t optimize as much because they have to allow for the possibility of features that are or aren’t supported in any given scenario based on hardware. \n\nHope this helps! ",
"Apple knows all the hardware the software will need to run on and can develop to best match those specs, while OSes like Android and Windows need to run on countless different manufacturers' hardware and thus needs to accommodate a much wider array of variables in terms of hardware. Also, those OSes allow manufacturers to customize their distribtions, adding additional software in return for paid placement, introducing other opportunities for bugs or other performance hampering issues. "
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4sl3gw | why do nerves take so long to heal? especially after an injury? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sl3gw/eli5why_do_nerves_take_so_long_to_heal_especially/ | {
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"They just were never designed to grow. Nature does not replace your nerve cells. Those are basically yours for life.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"Most cells in our bodies’ organs and tissues, such as the liver, guts, or skin are continuously renewed. In contrast, the majority of the approximately 100 billion nerve cells in our brain and spinal cord are born — through a process known as neurogenesis — before birth and will last a lifetime. However, a few brain structures add new nerve cells during infancy and a single region adds new cells throughout the lifespan.\"\n"
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43lzxp | what is a 'whip' in us congress and what do they do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43lzxp/eli5_what_is_a_whip_in_us_congress_and_what_do/ | {
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"The whip is a very senior role who ensures that the party leadership has the votes to pass their bills. The job is mostly informal (the whip doesn't have a ceremonial role) with lots of behind the scenes negotiations over favors, election support money, and logrolling and other perks to ensure that the majority leader has the support of their party for their goals. He also serves as a strategy advisor for the party with lots of information about what's legislatively possible and what isn't. \n\nThe first seasons of House of Cards (both the UK and US versions lead character serves as the whip for their party). ",
"They mostly act as a go-between for their party. They 'whip' the votes by wheeling and dealing and in general telling people how the party wants them to vote and why they should.",
"And, just to add, the whip is like number 2 or 3 in the leadership hierarchy of each party. It depends on which party is in the majority. Majority party gets three leadership slots (speaker, majority leader, majority whip) while the minority party gets only two leadership slots (minority leader, minority whip). \n\nSo, among House Democrats, since 2003 Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyner have been no. 1 and no. 2 leaders, respectively. At first, since Democrats were in the minority, Pelosi was Minority Leader and Hoyner was Minority Whip. When Democrats gained the majority in 2007, Pelosi became Speaker, Hoyner moved up to Majority Leader (sort of replacing Pelosi as party leader, but Pelosi was still the boss as Speaker), and James Clyburn was elected Majority Whip to succeed Hoyner. When Democrats lost the majority in 2007 - and thus the speakership - everyone had to move back down one, which led to a little confusion. Pelosi returned to being Minority Leader, but Clyburn and Hoyner both wanted to claim the office of Minority Whip. Pelosi settled the dispute by creating a new third-ranking leadership position for Clyburn called \"Assistant Leader.\" Hoyner returned to his old job as Minority Whip.\n"
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d77v0i | why are car designs nearly the same in all countries? | Many countries produce cars, yet the basic deisngn is the same. Why?
On the Surface: belts, gears, clutch etc
Below: CV joint, tie rod ends, transmission...
I know certain things are common sense, eg 4 tires, belts, steering... But why is there a consensus on others?
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d77v0i/eli5_why_are_car_designs_nearly_the_same_in_all/ | {
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"Because they all function pretty much the same and certain designs are used because they’re the most optimal.",
"I think it’s more of a modern thing where cars are extremely similar in design. Back to let’s say 90’s and even further back cars could be very different. Independent rear suspension vs solid axel. Abs vs non abs. Steering box vs rack and pinion. Drum vs disc brakes. There’s a long list. \n\n\nTo apply it to modern days, you might say certain countries have steering wheel on opposite side. And in certain markets they offer much more diesel options then they do here in the USA. We can’t buy them here. Doesn’t get too different, you’re on point. I can’t explain that. But it wasn’t always that way.",
"Car companies are big multinationals. New designs are long-term expensive investments, so designs will be used across the world (with tweaks for local rules). They'll also be licensed out to local companies.\n\nThe base design for this sort of thing is called a \"world car\" and there's a nice wiki article on it [here](_URL_0_)."
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6qwta9 | which is better, a 2.4 ghz single core processor or 1.6 ghz dual core processor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qwta9/eli5_which_is_better_a_24_ghz_single_core/ | {
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"\"Better\" for what? If you want to open the case and make cufflinks out of the die, the dual core one will have an interesting repeat in the pattern.\n\nThe faster one does math faster. That will make some programs run faster.\n\nThe dual core one can sometimes do two things at once, which is good for programs specially constructed to utilize multiple cores and not good for other programs like MSWord.\n\nMemory, graphics, storage speed, and other things impact how fast a computer is, and it can almost never be simplified to the extent you desire.",
"Impossible to answer. Clock speed itself doesn't determine how \"fast\" a processor is. A 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 isn't the same as say, a 2.4Ghz i3 even if we pretended the Pentium 4 had two cores like the i3 would.\n\nDual core processors are better at multitasking and multithreaded applications. If the processors are otherwise identical, you'll always get better performance on the dual core processor as some CPU time is always being used on OS-level tasks.\n\nEdit: If you really want to know what processor has better performance, you're going to have to [rely on benchmarks](_URL_0_) and even then it won't tell you the whole story.",
"It's hard to say.\n\nThe GHz number is its \"clock speed,\" which measures the number of cycles per second the CPU can run. So a 2.4GHz CPU can run 50% more cycles per second than a 1.6 GHz CPU.\n\nBut that's not as helpful a benchmark as it seems. And that's because different processors can get more *done* per clock cycle. If your 1.6GHz CPU can do twice as many things per clock cycle as the 2.4GHz one can do, then the 1.6GHz is actually 33% faster than the 2.4!\n\nAlso, every cycle uses power and generates heat that must be dissipated. If it gets too hot, the CPU won't run as fast. So a CPU getting more work done with fewer cycles can also run closer to full speed.\n\nSo we'd need to know more than the clock speed of these two processors. We'd need to know how efficient they are.\n\nWe'd also need to know what the processors will be working with. How much memory is available to them? How slow is the hard drive/SSD? It's all well and good having an engine capable of a thousand miles an hour if the wheels can't go more than 60.\n\nFor about a decade now, clock speeds have leveled off. But efficiencies have improved dramatically. In other words, unless you're comparing some really old computers, the GHz isn't the number you should be looking at any more.",
"Imagine you have a large group of sheep and a task to count them all.\n\nIf you have one man who can count 2.4 sheep per second (not more, not less), the only option you have is to simply count all sheep normally. They might optimize one way or another, but they are doing all the work themselves at the predefined speed.\n\nNow what if you have two humans, younger ones who can count only 1.6 sheep per second each. You can simply divide the sheep into two groups and each man counts their own group, and then the results are simply added together.\n\nYou can guess that the group of two will do the work faster as they can do it in parallel. The same happens when a computer program can do parallel computations. However, it is not as simple as it sounds to write software capable of doing so, and very often tasks cannot be parallelized. In those cases the second guy would stand by idle doing nothing, and the overall performance of a single 2.4GHz guy is faster than 2x1.6GHz.",
"The cache / application and Os will play their parts too, 9 ladies can't have 1 baby in one month, but ten guys can drink 10 beers in 10 minutes ! ",
"Assuming both processors have a task that can be divided into two equally hard tasks both processors would perform equal.\n\nIf the task is not dividable perfectly the single core would be faster, as the seconds core would be waiting after it’s task is finnished.\n\nPower comsumption wise the dual core is better as driving 2.4 GHz needs a higher voltage than 1.6 GHz.\n\nA home computer or smartphone with a single core processor is bad because it does a lot of stuff in the background, so uncompressing a downloaded update can make the whole system unresponsive.",
"If you're running Windows 10 then the answer is definitely the dual-core CPU. The OS is no longer designed for a single-core environment; if you try to run it in one then you'll experience constant contention between all of Windows' background processes and whatever applications you're trying to use. You can verify this for yourself by going into your BIOS and turning off any additional cores: the OS will become so slow and stuttery as to be basically unusable.",
"So measuring a processor by its raw brute strength (its frequency) is no longer relevant as we broke Moore's law some time ago. Basically, we hit 3 Ghz, and slammed into a wall. For well over a decade, frequency increases have been about 4-500 Mhz, whereas before that it was doubling every couple of years. \n\nInstead of raw brute strength, we now size up a processor by the features it uses to make its workload easier. Work smart, not hard. Some examples include larger cache sizes (storing more information on your desk so you don't need to waste time by constantly going to a filing cabinet). Another might be branch prediction (remembering the instructions you need to take when a commonly-encountered condition is met, so that you don't need to waste time by reviewing the instructions from a manual). Still yet is adding new instructions, such as MMX, SSE and AVX (bundling multiple things into single \"steps\" so you can do more things). \n\nAnswering your question about multi core specifically, it's almost always more efficient to run code on one core than try to run it across several. Why is this? \n\nSimple. You can't get 9 women pregnant to get 1 baby in 1 month, it just doesn't work. Similarly, its like assigning a task to two people. Imagine trying to knit a sweater with two people in opposite rooms with the instructions kept in a third room. Sure, you could have them knit separate bits apart, but eventually only one of them could sew it together. "
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5vf3x3 | why is it difficult to produce fake checks with some of the security features such as gradually fading ink and watermarks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vf3x3/eli5_why_is_it_difficult_to_produce_fake_checks/ | {
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"Good security features require expensive equipment to reproduce. In order to copy gradually fading ink, the forger would have to scan the fade perfectly and reproduce it perfectly. Watermarks require the paper to be treated in a specific way, and can't be reproduced with a printer. \n\nBig companies that print checks (or big governments that print money) have access to the equipment that CAN do these things. And they print enough of them that the cost of the equipment is offset by the prevention of loss due to forgery. The average forger, however, doesn't have access to the equipment they'd need to perfectly reproduce the security features.\n\nIt's difficult to make fakes because the security features are specifically designed to be difficult to make. And they're operating on the assumption that people are less likely to try forgery if the cost of forgery is too high.",
"A common way to falsify checks is to photocopy them.\n\nWhen photocopied watermarks and fading inks stand out in an obvious way so that any bank employee can see that it's fake.\n\nIt takes an expensive printer to make high security checks so that eliminates most idiots.",
"The equipment needed is expensive, but it's really not that difficult to make a passable fake. Problem is you also need a good fake ID if you want to cash them, which is even more difficult and people that deal with cashing checks are much more likely to notice an imperfect fake ID than an imperfect check simply because checks can differ quite a bit but ID's are all exactly the same (within each state anyway).\n\nYou're also almost always on camera and in today's age of technology and databases you might get lucky and pass a few off without getting caught but as soon as you forge a bunch and start raking in the dough they pull out all the stops to figure out who you are."
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39fy8l | how do wall street firms (like the one mitt romney ran) make money acquiring businesses and shutting down the entire operation? | I don't understand how financial firms purchase businesses for the sole purpose of shutting them down for profit... How are they making money off this? Isn't this unethical?
(edit: I know Romney's firm was likely not literally on wall street but the concentration of where it's happening is on wall street and it's always financial/private equity firms) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39fy8l/eli5_how_do_wall_street_firms_like_the_one_mitt/ | {
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"Because sometimes a company is worth more cut into pieces and sold as scrap than it is as a functioning unit.\n\nOther times a company has one really profitable unit that could (in theory at least) be worth more than the original company... if it wasn't shackled to the corpse of the larger company.\n\nPrivate Equity is a very interesting and complex business.",
"Usually they keep the business running and shut down some parts like an expensive factory. Then they find a cheaper replacement. The other big thing is massively boosting the amount of debt financing because it's cheaper than equity financing.",
"Think of it like a car. Maybe you have a car that's only worth $1,000USD. You sell the engine for $500USD sell the transmission for $300USD sell the wheels for $50USD each, you've already made back your money and now anything else you sell is money in your pocket. ",
"Stock market isn't perfect. Sometimes companies are undervalued, they partner with a bank to mop up all the shares, take it private, break it into pieces and sell the parts, then pay back the loan and keep the rest. ",
"All this talk about cutting a company up because it's worth more as assets is nonsense. \n\nBain Capital acquired healthy companies; then, they paid themselves huge dividends.\n\nCompanies are allowed to consider the entire fair-market value of the company, not just their hard assets in determining how much money is available to pay dividends. Taking advantage of this, Bain Capital actually used the company’s assets as collateral to borrow more money to pay dividends to themselves, saddling the acquired companies with debt, starving them of cash.\nFew companies can survive this kind of managerial abuse.\n",
"In the early 2000's a PE firm called Wasserstein & Co bought an Oregon-based company called Bear Creek Corp which operates a mail order fruit & food company called Harry & David. They used borrowed money to buy the company, paid themselves a fee for advising themselves to buy the company, paid themselves a huge distribution out of the company including part of the pension fund which they determined was overfunded. The company was badly mismanaged and went into bankruptcy and they left the creditors and employees owed pensions holding the bag while they skipped out of town keeping the money they'd looted out of the company.\nThat my friends is how private equity works. Since the Federal Pension Guarantee Board made up most of the pension losses it was a classic case of privatize your gains and socialize your losses.\nNo one went to jail.",
"They make money because they're providing a valuable service. Whenever someone can make something more efficient, there are extra resources - extra money - and they then get a cut for there services.\n\n\nSo the salient question is: \"What do companies like Bain Capital do, and why is it valuable?\"\n\nA company is a money making machine. It takes inputs - those being electricity, raw materials, the time of their workers, etc, and generates outputs (goods and services) for more than the input cost. To do this, a company often has capital - factories, machines, and more abstract things like a well-organized logistics system.\n\nWhen a company is failing, it is no longer making more money than its inputs. meaning it is taking in a bunch of stuff, and making it less valuable. It has become a wealth-destroying machine.\n\nBain comes in then, and figures out *why* the company is no longer producing wealth. It could be that their labor contracts have them paying too far above market, and labor is a significant expense. It could be the logistics division is terribly inefficient and loses them customers. It could be their raw-material suppliers are costing too much. It could be that all of their external deals are good, and the management is just inept and the internals of the company need reorganization.\n\nOr it could be that because of a changing outside world, the goods and services the company supplies are no longer in demand at a price where it is profitable. Put another way, society's preferences have shifted from wanting this particular good or service, towards *other* goods or services made from the same material.\n\nWhen this has occurred, there is no turning the company around. The company is not doing its job poorly - it's job no longer exists. At that point, it is important to shut it down.\n\nIf a company continued to run into bankruptcy, all the workers would be out of a job anyway. And all that would be accomplished in exhausting the assets of a company. Assets, incidentally, that are often funding pensions of previous workers.\n\nStopping the company early saves money. You can structure the shut-down. And all your capital - the factories and machines - can be sold off to other companies for *them* to use. Because they have a way of using the same machines to generate wealth, rather than destroy it. Plus, going through a self-directed liquidation will often get you more value than going through bankruptsy proceedings.\n\n\n\n**TL;DR** Some companies are being mis-managed and can be turned around. Other companies are no longer viable, and are now wealth-destroying machines that will go bankrupt anyway without intervention. It is healthier for the company, and for retirees of the company, to go through a structured liquidation rather than one dictated by bankruptcy courts.\n\nBain capital both shut down companies, and turned companies around - and were very good at it. When they do either of these services, wealth is preserved. They in turn receive a slice of the wealth preserved, in the case of liquidation, or they receive money or dividends from stock in the case of turning a company around.",
"Bain capital made a lot of there money by reforming bloated companies. They buy them slash of un profitable sections, do massive cost saving (layoffs), change the corporate strategy , And restructure their finances to have higher debt(which is cheaper than stock for companies). They take questionable companies, do a bunch of risky reforms and strategic pivots and try to make it profitable. After 7 years or so (when the fund used to purchase is set to return money to thier investors) they sell the company off or issue a new stock offering. Sometimes they make money sometimes the company dies. ",
"Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that these companies run like house flippers? Maybe not Bain Capital in particular. My understanding is that these firms buy up under performing firms, clean it up (usually cutting things or *streamlining*), make it more attractive which raises its value, then sells it for profit.",
"Okay, here we go!\n\nLet's say there is a soda company for sale for $10M. A Private Equity firm (PE) will put up $1M (the money came from investors - high net worth individuals, pension funds, etc.). They will then go to the bank and ask for the other $9M as a loan. For a variety of reasons, they will get the loan at a relatively low interest rate. Plus, getting a loan means there are tax implications which lead them to saving more money. But that aside, they now have the $10M to buy the company. \n\nNow, the PE firm owns the company. They can do a variety of things. \n\n1) raise revenues. sell more soda. how to do this? go to new markets, better advertising, new product lines, etc. they can also try to change the law. Let's say, soda is banned in NYC. PE firm might try to use their influence to make a loophole for their soda by claiming it's a sports drink (like Gatorade). \n\n2) reduce costs —usually this means improve efficiencies. eliminate unpopular products, improve equipment, improve distribution/storage, get rid of some employees, etc. \n\n3) divesture - sell off, or exit business units. Example, sell their grape drink product line to Kool-Aid for $6M, sell off their warehouses to Red Bull for $7M. To the right buyer, the parts are worth more to them than they are to you because of Synergies. \n\n4)Create synergies - We have this soda company and we have all the infrastructures for beverages in place. So let’s buy another company that is similar and will use the same resources. For example, let’s buy a flavored water company. This appeals to new health-conscious market -so more customers but we can use our existing infrastructure (trucks, relationships with grocery chains, etc). Hence we can eliminate duplicate infrastructure (i.e. get rid of duplicate employees, warehouses, equipment, etc.). This saves money and creates synergies. \n\n(I think that’s everything unless I forgot stuff). \n\nNow PE firm may do one or all of those things. Depends on the situation. Then, they return to the market and put Soda Company for sale but now they feel they have added value (usually b/c profitability or revenue or return on assets or some metric that they choose has increased). So they sell it for $20M. \n\nThey pay back the bank for $10M (let’s $9M principal and say $1M interest for this case). Now they are left with $10M in profit on an original investment of $1M. They returned 10X, which is very good. \n\nThat’s basically how they make their money. \n\nAlso worth noting, most private equity companies will have many of these deals going on at any particular time. ",
"None of the answers I have seen thus far have come close to accurately depicting the strategy of companies like Bain Capital.\n\nFirst, the idea that companies have a strategy to acquire a business with the intention of essentially running it into the ground, via either selling off assets or paying themselves with leveraged debt, is absolutely ludicrous. If that was a viable strategy, the original owners of the company could make more money doing that themselves rather than selling. Plan A is always to create a successful/growing company because that will always create more value for stakeholders in comparison to the before mention strategy. \n\nThe general strategy of Bain Capital was to acquire companies(often ones that were struggling or on the verge of shutting down) where they believed they could add a significant amount of value to it by implementing their business management, processes, and strategy(similar to Warren Buffets' Berkshire Hathaway). If they can't add value to the company, they (by definition) lose money on the acquisition. Some of the common misconceptions arise from the fact that they often minimize their risk by using a leveraged buyout(a combo of buying equity and borrowing debt using the company's assets or cash-flow as collateral). Bain Capital and similar firms know that not every acquisition will be successful, but the firm still makes money as long as their profits from successful ventures is greater than losses from unsuccessful ones. The firms success is an aggregate result of all their ventures.\n\nSo it's easy for political enemies to state that Bain Capital made money while shutting down a business they owned, which is misleading but technically true. ",
"I worked for a financial services company. They are evil, but I digress. Take a look at Sears as an example. Many Sears stores owned the land they were built on. The vulture capitalist that purchased Sears sold the land, then *rented* it back to the Sears stores. The vulture capitalist made a killing on the land sales, but did not reinvest it into Sears. They pocketed the cash. So Sears now has to pay rent to the new land owners. Any profits are \"harvested\" (Mitt's term) and not put back into the company, the company is pretty much sucked dry of any equity it had. Finally the vulture capitalist cuts the company loose and these companies usually go bankrupt, like Radio Shack and KayBee Toy Stores, and eventually Sears will be sucked dry and allowed to go bankrupt; capitalism at work. \n\nIt may be unethical (I think it is), but ethics and legality do not have to go hand-in-hand. "
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3h1l35 | what happens to the roof of your mouth when you eat hot food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h1l35/eli5_what_happens_to_the_roof_of_your_mouth_when/ | {
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"The tissue lining the roof of your mouth is not skin, it's more sensitive tissue. \nWhat might be equivalent to putting a hot iron on your arm, could be compared with hot melted cheese on the soft tissue in your mouth. \nIt isn't as tough as skin...thus, causing it to blister like skin would. "
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2goh62 | when someone chokes on the liquid there drinking, what causes it? | When I was a kid my mom said it went down the wrong throat. What causes the reaction when something like that happens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2goh62/eli5_when_someone_chokes_on_the_liquid_there/ | {
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"The liquid get's into the lungs where it prevents air from reaching a large section of the lung's surface.",
"\\*they're. They are.\n\nYou have a few openings coming out of the back of your mouth and going various places. The two which matter to this question are the one to your stomach, which is the esophagus and the one to your lungs, the trachea. There is a valve called the epiglottis that is supposed to cover your trachea when you swallow to prevent anything going into it. If you cough, or breathe, or otherwise override the functioning of the epiglottis, liquids and solids can go into the esophagus, causing you to choke. Lungs are very delicate and sensitive to pollutants - they can be very easily badly damaged by a foreign object - and so the trachea is very sensitive to anything entering it that isn't supposed to. Even a tiny tiny object, or the particles in smoke, can cause it to react, and the way it reacts is by trying to get the object out as quickly as possible - the violent spasming and coughing you do when choking.\n\nEDIT: I'd love to know what the reasoning of the person who downvoted this was, since it is actually the correct answer."
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3yk1zb | is there any evidence to suggest that current animals have evolved to overcome specific environmental challenges due to human intervention? i.e. roads, buildings, pollution? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yk1zb/eli5_is_there_any_evidence_to_suggest_that/ | {
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"Yes, definitely. A very early and popular example are/were moths in Manchester in England. Basically, the moths tended to be the color of tree bark for camouflage, but in the 19th century soot from factories in Manchester caused the trees to be darker in color. Moths with darker bodies and wings skyrocketed in population while that of the tree bark colored moths declined. \n\nHumans have impacted just about every environment on Earth and subjected the organisms within it to at least *some* kind of evolutionary pressure.",
"I read about a bird that has developed a shorter wingspan than its cousins to better dodge moving vehicles._URL_0_"
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2uag0c | why can’t the usa government build a good website? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uag0c/eli5why_cant_the_usa_government_build_a_good/ | {
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"They don't need to.\n\nCompanies build good websites because they want to draw in new customers and keep the existing ones.\n\nThe government knows you don't have a choice.\n\nThey also have a different set of priorities. They're concerned foremost with having the information & services you need, accessibility requirements (eg - it has to work well with screen-reader software for the blind) & security. Making things pretty & easy are secondary concerns & often the first thing to get cut when they're looking at a budget."
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1t9yt5 | how does communism function in modern societies (e.g. russia and china) and how does it differ from communist regimes 80 years ago? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t9yt5/eli5_how_does_communism_function_in_modern/ | {
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"Russia is not communist any longer (the USSR fell in the late 80's). China isn't the Maoist communist nation it once was BUT, since officially, the Chinese government still controls everything (for the betterment of the Chinese people, of course) the industry that has risen up is largely unregulated and dangerous for the Chinese people. The Communist Party of China can't justify both acting as it has in the past, AND willfully setting a regulation structure to support healthy capitalism... SO... there are really 2 China(s)... The unfettered free-market capitalism that has a great number of advantages for the economy and people of China (even though it can be dangerous and abusive to lower-class/uneducated people) AND... the state-run, inefficient, overlord who's sort of ignoring the growing economy to some degree...\n\nBack in the day, Communist regimes were over-lording governments, adhered to Marxism and valued the state higher than the individual... Of course, this created an atmosphere for \"abuse\" of the individual citizen\n\nEDIT: for clarity",
"The former societies called communist by Westerners did not see themselves as communist, but at a stage closer to communism than the Western societies they'd call capitalist societies. Usually they would use the term socialism to describe their current regime.\n\nSocialism, because the major industries, banks and other financial institutions, natural ressources and most of the agricultural sector had been socialized, or run by the state. This way, factories, mines, insurance companies etc were no \"goods\" that could be traded like you can buy a share of IBM or Facebook. Also, no-one could have bought complete control over a company, like some companies in Western societies are controlled by a single family, like BMW is in the hands of the Quandt family owning about half of the shares.\n\nRussia and China are market-orientated, or capitalist societies, although the state-run part is still larger than in countries that never went socialist."
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88gq81 | why are ar-15’s so controversial while many other semi-automatic rifles and handguns with lower round capacities have almost identical lethality capabilities if multiple magazines are utilized that only take a second or so to swap out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88gq81/eli5_why_are_ar15s_so_controversial_while_many/ | {
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"Because that model is being repeated over and over like a mantra by the media currently since it has been used most frequently in mass shootings. The public generally does not investigate events such as these deeper than the information disseminated by the news coverage or facebook posts. When one model becomes prevalent it is the poster child (if you will) for the entire market. Legislation, if ever passed, would pertain to the class of weapon and not be weapon specific most likely. ",
"It's not so much that the other guns are considered ok, but AR-15's are just well known, so they're kind of the poster boy.\n\nLike, if you asked someone what a semi-automatic was, the first thing that pops into their head is an AR-15. It's an extremely popular gun, both in sales and pop culture. \n\nIt's also been used in a lot of the recent mass shootings (7 out of 10, according to [source](_URL_0_) ).\n\nIt's basically become a symbol. The same way when you say \"soda\", odds are the first thing most people think of is Coca Cola. Some regions in the US literally refer to sodas/pop as \"coke\" regardless of what kind of soda it actually is. Tissue = Kleenex, Teflon, Oreo's, Nike's, Dorito's, those are all examples where a specific brand became synonymous with the actual product. (and hell, stuff like AK47's/Kalishnikov's as well)"
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3g3u92 | technology. | Okay, we started with a planet, where all that existed was dirt, rocks, water, air, and plants. And aminals, I guess.
How did we come from only these sources, to suddenly having iPhones and wi-fi? Where do circuits come from?! Machines? I mean, machines are built from other machines, so what was the first machine that started it all and where did it come from?! Yes, these are serious questions. Sorry, it's midnight and these are the thoughts troubling my head. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g3u92/eli5_technology/ | {
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"Language.\n\nHumans have a capacity for language that allows us to pass on complex abstract ideas from one generation to the next. Many other animals can communicate via language, but not to the same degree.\n\nEarly technology included making stone tools (like knives) and boats to cross rivers and lakes. It took thousands of years to develop these ideas, but once mastered, each generation could teach the next generation.\n\nThe next major development was agriculture - being able to plant seeds in the ground to feed yourself rather than relying on foraging for wild plants to eat. Again, it took thousands of years to figure out, but then each generation could teach the next.\n\nLater technology included the ability to mold things out of bronze and iron, then things like the wheel and the arch, and written language.\n\nWritten language was huge - it meant that you didn't need people to teach you everything, someone could write it down and you could read it. That preserved knowledge better and increased the rate of technological development dramatically.\n\nSimple machines like the water wheel led to more complicated machines like the windmill and later a clock.\n\nNobody could have invented a circuit and wi-fi from scratch. As hard as it may be to understand, each of these was invented as a small refinement to an earlier technology that someone invented ten or twenty years earlier.\n\nThe rate of technological progress has increased exponentially because each generation gets to learn nearly all of the ideas of the previous generation, and invent new things from there.\n",
"A wall is made of bricks. Each brick adds up and makes the wall.\nTechnology is the piling on of new ideas and methods for making something based on previous methods or relying on other methods.\n\nWe can make an iphone because we learned thousands of years ago to make glass for the screen, to refine gold for the conductors. _URL_0_\n\nWe can make an iphone because hundreds of years ago we learned about mathematics, calculus and programming cloth making machines _URL_1_\n\nWe can make an iphone because just a few decades ago we learned how to make transistors, and integrated circuits. _URL_2_\n\nEach brick both builds on, and is based on the knowledge that came before it.",
"It probably started with some very early human that figured out that if he tied a rock to a stick, he could smash things that needed smashing. Someone else improved on it by using a sharp rock and now he could stab things that needed stabbing.\n\n > How did we come from only these sources, to suddenly having iPhones and wi-fi?\n\nSuddenly? There was nothing sudden about it, technology have evolved over thousands of years. And you are asking for an explanation of the entire history of technology? I think it would be easier for you to google around a bit for more specific things you want to know about. Maybe things like how the first radio was made, first computer, first transistor or whatever you are looking for.\n\nFor example, if you take the history of the computer (which would lead up to your iPhone and wifi) you could go all the way back to [mechanical Jacquard looms](_URL_2_) (that weave fabric) invented in the early 1800s. Now what does a loom have to do with a computer you might ask. Well you see Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a loom that could weave fabric with [patterns](_URL_1_) and you could \"program\" it make different patterns by using [cards with holes in to control loom.](_URL_0_) So it was the first machine that you could program to do different tasks, now of course that alone does not a computer make. But it was one of the thousands of inventions that contributed to the computers we have today."
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52afkk | why do you hear so many new sounds when you listen to a song with headphones? | When I listen out of a speaker or just out of my phone I hear what I believe is the entire song but, when I listen through headphones, I hear so many more of the minute details. Are speakers unable to produce certain sounds that headphones can? Even if the speaker is extremely loud and he headphones are insanely quiet I still feel as if I hear more of the "details". It seems to be true even if there isn't "outside noise" from other people, environment, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52afkk/eli5_why_do_you_hear_so_many_new_sounds_when_you/ | {
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"For full-sized speakers, like computer speakers or a fully-fledged audio system; and headphones/earphones/In-ear monitors, it's either the quality (how well it can reproduce sound), or the response (what frequencies it can reproduce). \n\nWhen you say you can hear \"many new sounds\", you are probably referring to the mid to high frequency sounds that are overpowered by the pop-your-eyeballs-out-of-their-sockets, tsunami-generating bass (low-frequency) that audio equipment manufacturers oh so love to advertise. Some people love lots of bass, and what constitutes a \"good\" speaker is ultimately up to personal preference. But an \"accurate\" speaker will replay the sound exactly as it was recorded, without modifying how certain parts of it sound.\n\nAs for your phone speakers, tiny speakers like those are tuned to play certain frequencies louder than others. Specifically, they put emphasis on the range of human voices (300-4000 Hz), because those are the most important components to hear. This is why sounds with high frequencies, like cymbals, sound like you're listening to them underwater."
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2il1dm | the names you americans have for students in certain years and what they mean (like sophomore, freshman, etc.). | Or are those the only two? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2il1dm/eli5_the_names_you_americans_have_for_students_in/ | {
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"Freshman: First year student in high school (secondary school) or college (university)\n\nSophmore: Second year\n\nJunior: Third year\n\nSenior: Fourth Year (final year)",
"A lot of military schools have special names too.\n\nFreshman = Rats- lowest form of life in the barracks, Knobs- shaved heads, Fish- Texas A & M not sure why. West Point (United States Military Academy) if I remember calls sophomores Cows, since they used to spend their first 18 months at school with no break, so when they left it was a rush like the cows coming home.\n\nSome schools then like the University of Virginia still use, first year, second year, etc..."
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en3m0d | how do we know how fast and in what direction the stars/galaxies are moving relative to us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/en3m0d/eli5_how_do_we_know_how_fast_and_in_what/ | {
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"When you have objects moving at relativistic velocities (that is, at significant fractions of the speed of light), you get color-shift of the light coming off that object. \n\nIf it's moving away from you, the light is shifted red. If it's coming closer, it's shifted blue. This is an example of an effect known as Doppler shift. \n\nIf we assume the object we're tracking is a star, we can use various techniques such as atmospheric spectroscopy, where we measure the light frequency to see what the star is made of, to determine what its \"real\" color is- what you'd see if you had 0 relative velocity to it. \n\nWe then compare the \"real\" color to the color we actually see to determine the degree of Doppler shift, which tells us the speed.\n\nSome degree of oversimplification here... you usually can't \"see\" Doppler shift in starlight, you have to detect it with machine analysis. But as far as I know, mostly correct otherwise."
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4ud8lr | what are some of the direct effects of the coral reef collapse? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ud8lr/eli5_what_are_some_of_the_direct_effects_of_the/ | {
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"For the towns where the coral reefs are located, their tourism industry will take a nosedive.",
"The biggest thing is probably the fact that there will no longer be coral reefs. I don't say this as a comforting thought, the loss of coral reefs would be an almost unfathomable loss of biodiversity.\n\nThere's also that reefs protect coastlines from erosion and are important to a few species who don't live in them exclusively, but by far the biggest impact would be the death of an irreplaceable type of ecosystem. As others have mentioned, the people that will feel it the most are places that rely on them for tourism.\n\nCoral reef destruction is often brought up with climate change because they are extremely sensitive environments (to temperature, sea level, storms and PH), and have already suffered great losses just from the changes experienced so far. So that's probably why you hear a lot about them, not because of their ecological importance. They are basically a sign of what could be coming to other environments in the future that are slightly more resistant.",
"A large percentage of the world's protein is extracted from the ocean. Places like the barrier reef in Australia are important for providing spawning grounds and nurseries as well as breeding habitat for many species. Fisheries will suffer from this kind of habitat loss. The physical reduction of the reef structure will also mean greater storm surge damage to the east coast of Australia. Dead zones, or areas that lack of oxygen in the water column, due to excess nutrient presence from land run off leave large fish die offs in their wake. The excess nutrients from fertilizer and dust from land or mining operations allow phytoplankton to temporarily bloom in excess and consume any available oxygen, leaving none for fish or other wildlife. The greatest risk to humans is the reduction of available food sources that rely on these endangered areas in one form or another. ",
"Coral reefs provide some protection of shorelines against the ocean. Without the reefs many beaches will be in danger of being eroded by strong waves which were previously had been dissipated by coral.\n\nAnother problem is acidification will become more drastic. It is the main problem causing the collapse of coral reefs, but as they disappear, the ocean loses much its buffer ability and will thereafter become more acidic at a much greater rate. Aside from the known effects of ocean acidification on marine life, this also causes the atmosphere to retain a higher proportion of carbon dioxide (in a positive feedback loop). This is slightly off the \"direct effects\" topic, but is still one of the less discussed effects of the loss of coral, yet a significant one. ",
"It's important to note ocean life is very different from life on land. In the ocean, life cycles and migrations can exist over massive scales, over hundreds or even thousands of kilometres, with a great deal of empty space in between. It's alot harder to find food or mates to have babies with in most of the ocean.\n\nAn exception to this rule are coral reefs. They are a lot like rainforests, and a larger variety of different animals live there in greater numbers. Think of them like a lagoon of safety with plentiful food in a giant desert.\n\nThe Great Barrier Reef collapsing like this is a big deal. It's sort of like watching the Amazon rainforest dying and all of the animals normally found there just disappearing, except because it's in the ocean it's harder to know where they have gone, all because of the various human activities that contribute to global warming and acidification (as well as other locally caused degradation - pollution, runoff, fishing etc). It's completely irreplaceable. Its taken thousands of years (the reef is about 40,000 years old) for the reef to grow, and animals from all over the ocean have moved in there permanently or have learned to use it to reproduce or stop off during migrations. So the collapse not only completely removes one of the largest and most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, but also has implications for those around it, for potentially entire oceans.\n\nAs someone else pointed out, a lot of commercially important fish will be directly affected. Migrating whales, sharks and turtles will have less food during their huge migrations. Coastal animals like seabirds and sea mammals will also have their habitat affected. The implications of this are huge. The Anthropocene Extinction is happening before our very eyes - this is a geologically significant event and it doesn't just apply to the GBR. The same is happening to reefs throughout the Coral Triangle, and to places throughout the rest of the ocean.\n\nTL;DR: this is huge. We can't predict all of the consequences of it, but losing the Great Barrier Reef has implications for the rest of the ocean and commercial fishing. Many species are likely to go extinct or severely decline as a result. This is a geologically significant event, a notable contributor to the current mass extinction crisis."
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3y9oq0 | what makes a director so important in film and why do they get paid so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y9oq0/eli5_what_makes_a_director_so_important_in_film/ | {
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"they direct the movie. They are the leading person who says how things are structured, how the actors move and behave, the lighting and the camera position..pretty much all of the most important aspects of a movie, along with all of the things that separate a good movie from a great one. ",
"Wikipedia gives a good summary:\n\n\"Generally, a film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects, and visualizes the script while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking. Under European Union law, the director is viewed as the author of the film.\"\n\nI'd analogize a director to the head coach/manager of a professional sports team.",
"Ill just say that there are a lot of elements/positions that go into the making of a movie and the director is the one to get all the elements to agree with each other. "
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3zz3wb | what do diplomats do? | i've recently became interested in diplomatic jobs so what do diplomats do on a daily basis | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zz3wb/eli5what_do_diplomats_do/ | {
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"They represent the government of the country they are from.\n\nThey attend meetings, work out agreements, and attend cultural events. Basically, if a foreign government needs to talk to the government of the other country, they can do it through the ambassador. Ambassadors can also conduct business on behalf of their governments, sign agreements, and enter into official negotiations in the place of the government."
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3ifxhl | what is the problem with 4chan users? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ifxhl/eli5_what_is_the_problem_with_4chan_users/ | {
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"Replace \"4chan users\" with \"humans\" and you'll see that one group is not too different from the other",
"Because its all anonymous.\n\nThere are millions of users of 4chan. Obviously a certain percentage of users anywhere will be bad eggs, but on 4chan they can cause more damage because of complete anonymity.",
"Scroll down to the bottom of any askreddit thread. Find the comments that are hidden by low vote.\n\nThose are the kinds of things that come from 4chan.",
"4chan's anonymity, coupled with its wide user base, creates an excellent example of the GIFT - the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Peoples' social inhibitions are reduced since there are no consequences for what they say. Because of this, they end up behaving in ways that they never would in real life.",
"It is really easy when your main demographic is younger men and you have the anonymity of a mob."
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39nurz | why it's ok that every time i write a check i give someone my bank account number | It's written right on the check! Why is it OK to give that out to just anyone? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39nurz/eli5_why_its_ok_that_every_time_i_write_a_check_i/ | {
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"It's definitely a risk. A celebrity in computer science used to reward people who found his errors, but had to stop using real checks because posted images (for the incredible bragging rights) were probably leading to bank fraud.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe US banking and payments system is incredibly backward. Don't keep a life-altering amount of money in a single checking account."
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o3phd | how an anarcho-capitalist society would work on the level of an industrialised nation. | I've read about the small-scale societies, running with anarcho-capitalist principles but I haven't been able to find information on real life/theoretical anarcho-capitalist societies at the level of a western nation. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o3phd/eli5_how_an_anarchocapitalist_society_would_work/ | {
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"Personally I don't see how it would, but I'm interested in a real answer.",
"**Private Security and Dispute Resolution in a Free Society**\n-----\n\n---\n\n**Preface & Concepts:**\n\n* **Burden:** It is unfair to place the burden on Voluntarists to solve all of the world's problems. Only liars, thieves, con artists, and politicians (I repeat myself) make that nonsense claim, make the situation worse, give the run around, and request more resources.\n* **Perfection:** Voluntarism advocacy does not claim pure perfection, however no government solutions can make claim to perfection either. Holding Voluntarism to a mythical standard of perfection is unfair given frequent and catastrophic government failures and waste.\n* **Not Central Planning:** Voluntarism is not central planning. Voluntarism does not require that one become a road engineer, security expert, economist, and solver of all of life's deepest questions. Generally Voluntarists prefer to leave that up to specialists and entrepreneurs in each field to come up with creative and unexpected solutions, and in exchange for the value they give, receive value in return.\n* **Alternatives:** Alternatives proposed by Voluntarists are just alternatives; many of them are expected to be replaced as better technologies and ideas come along, and replaced again, and again, and again. If I told you 5 methods for building roads today, given freedom to innovate, 100 years from now most of those solutions will be obsolete.\n\n--------\n\nAlternative Security and Dispute Resolution\n-----\n\n* **Personal security:** By taking personal responsibility and security into their own hands, certain low-cost measures can be taken including better locks and doors, adequate lighting, alarm systems, self-defense weapons, avoiding danger, tracking and disabling devices, and a wide variety of other means yet to be imagined.\n* **Credit and Reviews:** Credit and review agencies, websites, and systems are commonly used today in online transactions that take place hundreds of miles away, or even across national borders where there are no practical means of enforcement. Other means, including product reviews, credit agencies, blacklists, reputation and escrow agencies, and public records are a means of avoiding risky relationships, resolving disputes, avoiding risk, and establishing trust and reputation with potential business partners. A few examples include Google-Maps reviews, Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and even the aging Better business Bureau.\n* **Arbitration:** a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, where the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons (the \"arbitrators\", \"arbiters\" or \"arbitral tribunal\"), by whose decision (the \"award\") they agree to be bound. It is a settlement technique in which a third party reviews the case and imposes a decision that is legally binding for both sides.\n* **Collective efforts:** such as a neighborhood watch or pooling resources for a neighborhood security guard, and social structures that encourage [defending strangers from violence](_URL_1_) are also practical non-governmental means.\n* **A Private Defense Agency (PDA)**: is a conceptualized agency that provides personal protection and military defense services voluntarily through the free market. A PDA is not a private contractor of the state and is not subsidized in any way through taxation or immunities, nor does it rely on conscription and other involuntary methods. Instead, such agencies would be financed primarily through insurance companies, which are penalized for losses and damages, and have an incentive through competition to minimize waste and maximize quality of service.\n* **A Dispute Resolution Organization, or DRO**: is a conceptualized organization providing services such as mediation and arbitration through the private sector.\n* **Polycentric law (or private law):** is a legal structure in which providers of legal systems compete or overlap in a given jurisdiction, as opposed to monopolistic statutory law according to which there is a sole provider of law for each jurisdiction.\n* **Avoiding danger and risk:** and using prudence in risky situations is another means of security that nearly everyone employs today. As I said \"When in downtown Detroit, it is wise to caring one or more knives, remain aware, don't bring valuables, and don't hesitate to tell people to fuck off. Lastly, if you don't like those rules, don't #$%ing go downtown.\"\n\n**Lastly...**\nNo common criminal or band of criminals who lack the pretense of legitimacy and capacity to horizontally enforce their will would be able to commit the acts of treason (against humanity), violence, war, theft (~40% annually), suppression of freedoms, and acts of violence against humanity on a scope anywhere near comparable to that of the monopolized State. War is expensive, small organizations cannot sustain it.\n\n-------\n\nHistory & Examples\n----\n\n* **[Admiralty law](_URL_3_) (also referred to as maritime law)**: is a distinct body of law which governs maritime questions and offenses. It is a body of both domestic law governing maritime activities, and private international law governing the relationships between private entities which operate vessels on the oceans. It deals with matters including marine commerce, marine navigation, shipping, sailors, and the transportation of passengers and goods by sea. Admiralty law also covers many commercial activities, although land based or occurring wholly on land, that are maritime in character.\n\n* **[Lex mercatoria](_URL_2_) (from the Latin for \"merchant law\")**: is the body of commercial law used by merchants throughout Europe during the medieval period. It evolved similar to English common law as a system of custom and best practice, which was enforced through a system of merchant courts along the main trade routes. It functioned as the international law of commerce. It emphasised contractual freedom, alienability of property, while shunning legal technicalities and deciding cases ex aequo et bono. A distinct feature was the reliance by merchants on a legal system developed and administered by them. States or local authorities seldom interfered, and did not interfere a lot in internal domestic trade. Under lex mercatoria, trade flourished and states took in large amounts of taxation.\n\n* **[Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government](_URL_0_) (Free Market Perspective)**: \"The history of Viking Age Iceland has lessons to teach. One is the importance of a decentralized enforcement power. Iceland's decentralized legal system managed to keep its leaders on a short leash for much of its history. Chieftains only had power if they could convince people to follow them, without the use of coercion. This minimized the principal-agent problem. Who wants to voluntarily follow an incompetent or evil leader? And even if an evil leader did sucker a few free farmers into following him, in the long run he would lose credibility.\"\n\n-------\n*...credit to the notorious voluntaryist redditor JamesCarlin*",
"I don't think this one can be ELI5'd in detail, but here's a TL;DR: It would work almost the same way our modern society works now _except_ that everything the government does would instead be done by private businesses and individuals. Nobody would consider any initiation of the use of force legitimate.\n\nedit: initiate - > initiation",
"The first thing about free society is that nobody knows for sure how they would work in a modern setting, because it has not been tried on a large scale.\n\nA free society would probably function in much the same way as our own. We all face very limited interactions with our governments on a regular basis. Most people aren't violent. Most people respect property rights. To say that people are only this way because of fear of the state is to take a very dim view of humanity. \n\nA mostly deregulated environment already exists with minimal government interference. You are using it. The internet might be taken as analogous to a free society, with both its good and bad. Commerce flourishes, and while there are problems and issues of trust they can for the most part be resolved by private organisations, especially for profit companies. Paypal, user reviews and credibility built up over time all counteract these problems. \n\nExamining all of government's 'functions' and how they might be better provided by the voluntary association of individuals is quite an extensive process. If you would like more detail perhaps you could be more specific and state what aspect of larger societies you are trying to come to an understanding about. Anarcho-capitalist literature can be found at _URL_0_ Murray Rothbard is one of the most articulate proponents of free society.",
"It could look exactly like society today, but I very much doubt it. Markets award efficiency, low cost, and above all else, CHOICE! \n\nWhat is good for one person would not be good for all. Would you like a society that has a high \"tax\" rate, but provides healthcare, police, fire protection, a giant safety net, unemployment insurance, etc? Then sign a contract that has that in an all inclusive package.\n\nWould you like the very basics in a \"government?\" Just police, fire, no healthcare, but cheaper? Then sign a contract for that package.\n\nDo you want to hand pick all the services yourself that today's government offers? You can handpick your fire service, security service, healthcare service, etc individually to get a customized experience based on what you value.\n\nAs far as things that are currently public, such as roads, well, there wouldn't be such a thing as public property really, so roads would be owned by private persons and they would be run like a business. If you build a road, the safer, smoother, and faster you make it, the more people will pay to use it, as far as freeways go. Roads in town will more than likely be free to use and handled by businesses, as they want people to come to their businesses. Neighborhood roads would probably be handled by a neighborhood association of some sort that splits the cost of maintaining the roads among the people that want them, or would be hanndled like they are today, with whoever develops the land for a neighborhood paying for the initial construction and then maintenance handled by them or ownership transferred to the people of the neighborhood.\n\nI'm just talking out of my ass here though. The thing about the market is that it offers solutions unimagined by us today. Who says that roads are the most efficient way to travel, for instance?",
"A stateless society would work like today except everything would be provided like computers are now, by creative people that succeed only if their products or service does good and makes their customers happy. No longer would anyone tolerate stealing, oppression, or exploitation, even if the people doing it claim it's ok because they're the \"government\". All people would have the power and freedom to organize and cooperate to solve problems and build things.",
"If you ask Stefan Molyneux, [it doesn't matter](_URL_0_) how it would work; all that matters is that the initiation of the use of force is immoral, and wrong.\n\nThis is a general FAQ about a truly free society, and doesn't go into depth. It's still quite advanced for a 5 year old, but a 7-8 year old would probably understand it.",
" > at the level of a western nation\n\nDoes this refer to size, technology, capacity, access to resources, etc? What does 'level' mean?",
"A stateless society would work like today except everything would be provided like computers are now, by creative people that succeed only if their products or service does good and makes their customers happy. No longer would anyone tolerate stealing, oppression, or exploitation, even if the people doing it claim it's ok because they're the \"government\". All people would have the power and freedom to organize and cooperate to solve problems and build things.",
"You already learned this in kindergarten. The initiation of force is immoral. Period. Everything else is up to entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists."
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2w6tx1 | what is wrong with big data? | Title | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w6tx1/eli5what_is_wrong_with_big_data/ | {
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"The ability to track and connect people that don't want to be tracked and connected. Lots of people do things that they don't want tied to other aspects of their lives that are in no way illegal but can cause them harm because of things like discrimination. For example, while being gay has become more socially acceptable than it was in the past take a gay person working for a Conservative Christian Church. The person goes out of their way to separate their work and personal lives but has a Facebook account where they post only personal life information. They never check Facebook at work on any work device. Facebook gets the IP address the persons personal phone uses to connect to it while the person is at work (via the publicly available wifi, not their work desktop, or even the private wifi) and then uses that data to suggest to the Pastor, who also connects from that IP address to Facebook, that they two of them should be friends. Probably a correct assumption but since the person is trying to keep their work and personal life separate a bad thing. The Pastor immediately sees the persons personal life and their job is at risk because Big Data tied together two pieces of information.\n\nThere was also [this case](_URL_0_) where Target used Big Data to determine a teenage girl still in high school was pregnant and sent baby related mailers to her home address, basically telling her father she was pregnant before she did.",
"There is nothing wrong with it.\n\nIt does make some people feel very uncomfortable knowing that a company knows so many things about them.",
"Big Data isn't \"wrong\" per se. People or companies can use it in ways that can violate privacy, which can be unethical or illegal.\n\nSource: I work for Big Data and I have to take yearly courses on privacy issues, confidentiality, and appropriate use. I am also restricted from \"sensitive\" data I don't work on.\n\nFor example, let's say I work on a product that contains DMV records, which we sell to law enforcement (authorized) customers (I don't work on sensitive data, but we do have products like that). I can't sell or give access to that product to anyone but the qualified customers. I can't use that information to look up anyone's address, license number, etc. *for anything other than a legitimate business reason*, or I could get fired."
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3rzljw | why are doctors, lawyers, etc allowed to share stories online anyonomously? aren't all of these stories confidential? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rzljw/eli5_why_are_doctors_lawyers_etc_allowed_to_share/ | {
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"Well we're not really. But let me tell you about this time my client got caught with an LSD tab under his foreskin...",
"Professionals share stories online anonymously to be able to share, educate and discuss knowledge of cases without breaking confidentiality agreements. By omitting any personal information about their client, there isn't any way to connect the story with the person, thus keeping the confidentiality intact. \n",
"If something is revealed to you in confidence then in practice, you are not suppose to reveal any identifying information about the person.\n\nSo it is one thing for me to mention I am a youth counselor and I have seen all kinds of suicide attempts with multiple hangings off of shower heads in the bathroom, but it would be another for me to tell everyone about the time /u/Mufasa_sucasa attempted to cut their wrist in November, 2015, but barely did any real damage because they are an attention seeking pussy.\n"
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8m1gul | when showering the temperature has to be above 37°c (98°f) because below bodytemperature feels cold, but when it is 28°c (82°f) outside it feels warm, how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8m1gul/eli5_when_showering_the_temperature_has_to_be/ | {
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"Temperature is absolute but heat capacity and conductivity are not.\n\nAir is diffuse and can't wick away heat very well.\n\nWater is dense and can draw heat off very rapidly.\n\n85 degree air can't draw body heat away as fast as you can produce it, 85 degree water can.",
"Ought to be due to thermal capacity of water, which is way bigger than air's.\nWater \"takes away\" more heat than air does, so it \"feels colder\"",
"The ambient temperature doesn't directly affect your sense of temperature. It's more closely related to the amount of heat in your body. \nWater more readily transfers heat energy compared to air, so temperature differences between your body's surface and water in contact with it lead to more heat leaving or entering your body when compared to your body and air at the same temperature. \nBecause heat travels faster, your body's temperature changes faster, and you FEEL colder/hotter from the same temperature difference. \nIn the end, air and water feel different because of differences in thermodynamic properties!"
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8yx3ns | why does work appear to go by faster when making an effort to never look at the clock? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8yx3ns/eli5_why_does_work_appear_to_go_by_faster_when/ | {
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"Because your mind treats it as one chunk of time, rather than several (albeit smaller) chunks.",
"It has to do with where your focus is and the fact that your brain doesn't count time like a clock does. It works in memories. \n\nIf you focus on the clock, you're making memories of time. So when you think back you remember each time you checked the clock and some feeling associated with that knowledge (usually dispair). This makes things seem like they are going slowly because of your frequent checks on the time. \n\nBut when you think back to the task you were doing, you have no real reference for how long each action was taking you. So you don't get the same sense of time passing when you think back (unless you were timing yourself intentionally). So the time *seems* to whizz by but it's just a trick of memory and perception. "
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4hk2z7 | how do mod chips in game consoles work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hk2z7/eli5_how_do_mod_chips_in_game_consoles_work/ | {
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"When you turn on a game console, a program runs that looks for a valid license \"key\" on the disc. This key is provided by the company that made the console to the people who made the game. In order for the game to play, the console validates this key. Thanks to private-public key encryption, this key is kept secret by each game in a completely different way.\n\nA mod chip interrupts the circuit for this program, and instead gives the license key checking program/circuit a valid key. This tricks the console into allowing the disc to be played.\n\nThe black and white is from running a game made for a different TV standard. PAL (europe) and NTSC (USA and several other countries) both have different methods of outputting to a TV, and have different license keys that need to be checked by the console. \n\nSince you would need a different mod chip to play PAL games on an NTSC PSX, it would make sense that those games would appear black and white, your TV didn't know how to read the color signals coming from the console.",
"There's a lock on the door of the arcade.\n\n*(Every console has encryption built into the hardware)*\n\nOnly some people have the key to go in and turn the lights on.\n\n*(Only licensed game developers have the signing key that allows games to run)*\n\nYou can get around this by building another door that doesn't have a lock.\n\n*(Mod chips are all different, but they all provide some method of bypassing this encryption hardware)*"
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zg6jr | how can i use the pronunciation things on wikipedia? | They look like absolute gibberish (why does the pronunciation for "Jobs" begin with a "d"-ish thing?), but they seem really helpful! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zg6jr/how_can_i_use_the_pronunciation_things_on/ | {
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"They're using the [International Phonetic Alphabet](_URL_0_). \n\n/dʒ/ (IPA is usually put between //s to show it's a phonetic transcription) is the IPA symbol combination for the English sound \"j\" like \"jam.\" The \"j\" sound is actually a combination of the \"d\" sound, and the \"zh\" sound (like the S in \"treasure\").",
"The reason we use those symbols is because we need a way to explain how something is pronounced no matter what language it's spoken in.\n\nThere are hundreds of languages in the world, and hundreds of possible sounds that are used in languages. That doesn't mean they're completely different - there are lots of sounds that are used in almost all languages, but there are other sounds like the English \"th\" sound that are more rare, only a few languages use them.\n\nAlso, pronunciations change over time, even when spelling stays the same. Notice how nursery rhymes have the word \"again\" rhyming with \"rain\"? That's because many years ago, \"again\" was pronounced differently, and it did rhyme with \"rain\". So it's important to have a way to talk about sounds in a way that doesn't change over time.\n\nPeople who study language are linguists. In order to talk about all of the possible sounds, they came up with a set of symbols called the International Phonetic Alphabet. Every symbol in this alphabet corresponds to an exact sound. It never changes over time and it never changes depending on what word it's in - each of these sounds is exact.\n\nThere are hundreds of symbols in IPA, but it's not as hard as it sounds to learn. Many of the symbols were chosen to look like English letters, and there aren't that many symbols you need to learn in order to read the pronunciation of any English word. There are lots of symbols you'll never encounter unless you study African languages, South Asian languages, etc.\n\nOne last thing - how do linguists define an IPA symbol, given that pronunciation changes over time? They do it by describing precisely how the sound is made in the human body. They describe where the tongue is, what shape the lips are in, and what is done with airflow. If someday in the distant future people stumbled across a reference book on IPA, they'd be able to figure out hor to pronounce any word, even if they had no voice recordings from this century.\n",
"It is the International Phonetic Alphabet, as explained by others here. \nSome articles do have a comparison for each symbol if you hover over them. _URL_0_",
"Is it just me, or does wikipedia need to implement a speech engine to pronounce the words whenever there is an IPA definition? I'd rather hear it than looking at the alphabet soup and spending 5 minutes piecing it together from the tables.",
"I'm surprised no one has said this yet! Just roll your mouse over each character and the tooltip will tell you how to pronounce it.\n\nEDIT: Whoops, beaten by electroncaptcha after all.",
"I believe you're referring to International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). [Here is a very useful page from Paul Meier that has flash versions of him vocalising the sounds you see from the IPA](_URL_0_)"
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2iihgs | what is it about toothpaste that makes everything taste so bad after using it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iihgs/eli5_what_is_it_about_toothpaste_that_makes/ | {
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"One of the ingredients, temporary disables the part of your tastebuds that detect sweetness."
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5n6gxe | how 3d movies went from using blue/red cellophane glasses to just "sunglasses"? | Growing up in the 90's, I remember seeing 3D movies at museums and public attractions with that square, one blue, one red cellophane glasses with all the colors being bit funky. Now we use glasses without any coloration. How did this change happen? Did we discover new way to make 3D films? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5n6gxe/eli5_how_3d_movies_went_from_using_bluered/ | {
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"Polarized light is the secret. To your eye, polarized light looks like normal light.\n\nNormal light has waves, right? Normally, these waves kinda bounce every which way. But with a filter, you can ensure the waves only go one way, for example vertical. So what the 3D projector does is show two images, one composed of vertically poliarized light, one of horizontally polarized light, on top of each other.\n\nOne glasses lens filters the one polarization, and the other filters the other polarization. So each eye now sees a different image. [Here's a handy lil diagram](_URL_0_). For the other lens, the opposite would be true, the horizontal light would get past the filter but the vertical would not.",
"The key idea of any 3d is to project 2 images on to the screen, and have each eye register only one of them.\n\nWith red/blue, you would show one image in only blue color, and another image in only red color, using different shades of red. If you looked at the entirely-red-shades image through lens that was color red, you would see just, well, red. But if you saw it through blue lens, you would see all the different shades. Likewise for blue. Thus, you get(with wonky colors) 2 different images, one for each eye, which then could be used to do 3d.\n\nModern tech however uses polarization, that is, the direction light is sorta \"waving\" at. Light is a wave, and it has direction, orthogonal to the direction it's going, where it's \"waving\" at. Typically white light does this waving thing in all sorts of directions, and it's a mess, but there are filters which can block all but certain orientation of this waving. Having one image transmitted only using light that's of certain orientation, and then have lenses of your glasses selectively block these orientations allows again you to transmit only one of the two images to both eyes.\n\nI don't know how expensive this new polarization technique is, but I can tell you that you can do pretty good job with this red/blue lens thing with very cheap materials, video device you use to show your red/blue 3d film has absolutely no special requirements, and it's pretty cheap to make appropriate glasses, so that probably explains why people historically did use this red/blue 3d thing despite color problems.",
"There are a few comments already dealing with passive 3D technology (light polarization), but a lot of at-home 3D uses an active shutter process to create the 3D effect.\n\nInstead of trying to show you 2 images *at the same time*. 3D TVs will quickly alternate between 2 different images (one for each eye) at a higher rate than the original video. The TV then sends out a signal to a pair of battery powered glasses that alternate blocking the light to each eye. The goal is that each eye will only see the image on the TV that it is meant to see. This happens so fast that your brain doesn't register the flickering."
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5co6fm | is sound physical or chemical? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5co6fm/eli5_is_sound_physical_or_chemical/ | {
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"Sound is energy converted into vibration through air. Technically the physical stimulation of air hitting your eardrum. Therefore, it's a physical thing. All chemicals are physical, but not all physical things are chemical. \nBut here's my question(s):\n1. Why would *sound* of all things be chemical?\n2. In what world are chemicals not physical?\n\nTL;DR - Sounds are energy.",
"While it's traveling through the air between the source and your ear, it's physical. Once the bones in your ear translate it to nervous impulses for your brain to read, it's chemical.\n\nExample: Someone drops a fork in the kitchen, so energy is released as sound. Waves are pushed through the air in all directions and the ones that hit your ear wobble your eardrum. That moves the bones in your ear which is read by your aural nerve. \n\nThe message in your aural nerve is passed from cell to cell as a series of chemical reactions all the way to the part of your brain that interprets sound. That part of your brain communicates with other parts of your brain for memory and pattern matching (using chemicals) to identify the sound of a fork hitting tiles. "
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95o8lc | are humans supposed to eat meat? | This might be a dumb question but is eating meat 'natural' for humans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95o8lc/eli5_are_humans_supposed_to_eat_meat/ | {
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"Yes, we are omnivores, we can and do eat meat.\n\nWe very very recently have developed a sufficient logistical food transportation system to allow us to not eat meat. But we needed to eat meat to survive * up until globalization.\n\n* Not be severely malnutrition-ed ",
"Humans are omnivores, and we have both molars for crushing plant matter as well as canines and incisors for tearing and cutting flesh. \n\nIn short, yes.",
"Our digestive tract, teeth, and capabilities for breaking down nutrition all suggest an omnivore diet, meat as part of the diet. Our closest living non-human relatives are also omnivores. Teeth are a major sign in that they have a variety unusual to strict herbivores or carnivores. \nSo, we evolved eating meat and plants, not either/or. ",
"Yes, humans are omnivores and meat is part of our natural diet. Our canine teeth are there to tear animal flesh, for example. All great apes eat meat to some extent: It's much harder to get all the vitamins and proteins we need through plants, either you're lucky and live in an area with the right mix of plants or you supplement your diet with meat.\n\nBut, we evolved eating a lot less meat than we do today (at least in non-poor societies.) So there are health impacts from eating too much meat. And, with the right mix of fruits and vegetables, we can be perfectly healthy without eating any meat. Though you need to be Very careful with small children to make sure they get all the nutrients they need because any deficiencies can hinder their development and have major impacts through the rest of their life.",
"Yes. Our ancestors ate meat since before humans were a distinct species. It is actually thought to be what allowed our ancestors to evolve to have such large brains. Our teeth, intestinal tract structure, and gut bacteria are all the kinds that omnivores have. \n\nIt should also be noted all the other apes are semi-omnivorous occasionally hunting and eating meat (often monkeys) as well as eating insects. We however are fully omnivorous. ",
"I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, but I will argue that complete proteins are a myth. A boring story short, the origins are from a misquote of a sociologist who was trying to address world hunger.\n\nYou can indeed get all essential proteins and dietary requirements from plants.\n\nThe hard part is getting your diet right. That's the trick. It's trivially easy for a vegan to be nutritionally deficient, and vegans who breast feed have a track record of killing their babies.\n\nThere are few foods that are calorie dense as meat and fat. Vegans end up eating a shit ton of food to satiate hunger, and vegetarians cheat by throwing cheese on top of every god damn thing. These diets don't satiate you for long.\n\nStick to a well balanced diet.",
"Australopithecus, our ape ancestors, had primitive butchering tools. Homo, the branch that eventually produced us, developed more sophisticated butchering tools. We are descended from millions of years of meat eaters. From a strict evolutionary/biological viewpoint, it is \"natural\" for homo sapiens to kill animals and dine on their corpses. \nI take no position on that as a moral/ethical/philosophical question. There's too much \"why\" and not enough \"is\" in the premises.",
"* human beings obviously *can* eat meat\n* historically, many human beings *did* eat meat\n* there's plenty of evidence that we evolved specifically to have this ability\n* but there's also plenty of evidence that we don't need to use this ability to have healthy, happy lives\n* there's at least some evidence that low- or no-meat diets are associated with longevity and other measures of health\n* there's some evidence that vegan diets risk under nutrition in some areas (without supplementation)\n* there's plenty of evidence that our evolutionary preferences about food can get us in trouble (e.g. sugar and refined carbohydrates, arguably salt and some fats, and overeating generally)\n* philosophically, there's no good reason in general to conclude from that our ancestors did something, we should do it too"
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5rf0v2 | what's the benefit of displaying a menu price without tax included? plenty of countries include the tax in the final price but the u.s adds it separately. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rf0v2/eli5_whats_the_benefit_of_displaying_a_menu_price/ | {
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"Gets people to spend more. \n\nSame reason why most prices are not rounded. \n\n$4.99\n\n14,995\n\n\nStrangely enough studies have shown that menu prices in restaurants that just show a whole dollar figure make the diner feel like the restaurant is more luxurious. I.e. 12- vs $11.95. ",
"If your competition doesn't show the price tax-included, it makes their products seem less expensive (even if they're the exact same price or a little higher).\n\nIn addition, it allows advertising to be done for prices across boundaries where the tax rates might be different (such as across state borders - or sometimes even within a given state).\n\nIt also means any changes to the taxes in an area doesn't mean you suddenly have to reprice everything manually.\n\nIt also lets you easily see exactly how much tax is being paid by looking at your receipt, instead of just assuming that the company is paying the sales taxes properly.",
"Tax can vary by region, and occasionally day. \n\nFor countries like that, it's easier to put the initial price. ",
"Just taking McDonlads as an example. There are over 14,000 restaurants in the nation. Printing menu signs for each and every one is going to cost a significant amount of time and money. Standardizing the signs across the board allows them to save a lot of money and give a consistent experience. Taxes and laws are different everywhere in the USA, even just across the street. It is to the benefit if the companies to not have to include sales tax so they do not have to individualize each menu. Taxes also change, remember NYs soda tax? Should every restaurant be forced to alter their menu while the law is tested in courts? \n\nIt would be nice to know the exact dollar amount you are going to pay but if you live in the USA no matter where it is your responsibility to know the local taxes. As an alternative, consider shopping more local as many local places at least around me just do flat fees for food and such, they just worked out the price and tax to equal an even number or close to it. ",
"Not including tax allows you to conceal the real price from consumers and thus trick them into paying a little bit more than they think they are going to pay. "
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23grnz | plato's form of the good | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23grnz/eli5_platos_form_of_the_good/ | {
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"You can get a better answer by asking for a more specific explanation. Here is a summary in a few sentences. \n\nPlato observed that some things are better than other things of the same kind. There are good tables and bad tables. He guessed that the difference between a good version of something and a bad version is that the good version is more similar to the perfect form. The describes the perfect form, the form of the good as something like a perfect definition for the idea/object/action. The best table you could have is one that is identical to the perfect form of the table. \n\nInterestingly modern psychology has discovered that no such thing exists. We do not store ideas in our brains that way. Using the example of a table again: There is no such thing as a perfect definition that includes everything we think of as table but not other things that aren't tables. "
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1dgzks | how did we get the images of our universe? | How is it we have pictures of the universe? Did we send satellites to take them? I wouldn't think our technology is that advanced...yet. *knock on wood* I mean we have a lot of those outer space pictures so how did we figure out that's how space looks like? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dgzks/eli5_how_did_we_get_the_images_of_our_universe/ | {
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"Do you mean 'our galaxy'? ",
"For universe? We just point cameras in every direction and snap a picture.\n\nFor our galaxy however it's a bit trickier. Because we are roughly on the outside, we can estimate size of our galaxy, density of stars and whatnot. Then we compare it to pictures of other galaxies. When you see a picture of the milky way with its spirals outstretched, it's usually picture of different galaxy with similar characteristics. \n\nRight now (and in a distant future), it would be impossible to send satellites to take a photo of our galaxy. The furthest we've send a satellite are voyager probes and these are barely leaving our solar system after 30 years."
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5txsy3 | why are emergency/survival matches still a thing when you can have two or three cheap bic lighters do a way better job for a way longer time while taking up less space and weight? is their any real benefit to having emergency matches over emergency lighters??? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5txsy3/eli5_why_are_emergencysurvival_matches_still_a/ | {
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"Well it depends allot on what type of emergency matches you have, but one issue I've had when camping is in a flood my lighter got water in it and was dead, but my survival matches were fine once dry. \n\nMatches have fewer points of failure aswell, you just need the match and heat, often just an abrasive surface. Lighters have parts that can rust or fail witg age, can break out leak becoming useless and are not typically water proof, which most emergency kits need.",
"It's more about redundancy than anything else. Even specialty matches are hard to light in damp winter/rainy conditions. Even if they light, the beginnings of the fire suck moisture from snow or rain up from the ground and extinguishes the fire within seconds. In good weather either will do but if it has rained prior to you trying to start a fire your matches might be ruined but if your lighter is out of fluid maybe the matches are OK. I always have a knife and magnesium rod for striking and creating sparks, which can light tinder just in case as a third source as well.\n\nSource: years of hiking camping and being stuck out camping in the snow wth no fire and no hot dinner :-(\n\nHope that answers your question.",
"You're right that in many cases a lighter is more useful than matches. a few specific notes:\n\nGenerally the piezoelectric lighters are more reliable than the \"flint\" ones.\n\nIt's sometimes possible to pack a lighter so that it accidentally releases all the gas. A second lighter can work as a backup, but so can matches.\n\nMost lighters don't work when it's very cold. It's easy enough to warm the lighter, but matches work even when cold. Neither one is easy to work with when wearing gloves, but I find matches easier.\n\nSometimes it's easier to light a stove or fire with a match than a lighter, where your thumb is right next to the flame. It's sometimes possible to light a stick to transfer the flame safely, but again it's another slight complication.\n\nWith TSA rules lighters can only be brought on a plane in a DOT approved case. Safety matches can be carry-on (although the greatly superior strike anywhere matches are prohibited).\n\nIn general I think it's best to have two different ways to make fire, since they will have different strengths and weaknesses. \n\nPersonally I prefer a lighter as the primary and a fire steel as the second since it works wet, cold, or stepped on, and will last for years (as long as you don't store it wet).",
"Lighters are not waterproof. Matches can be. Lighters require you hold a finger on a button but matches do not. Inserting a match into a pile to make a fire works but inserting a lighter in to do this does not work."
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3o6h3f | when we launch space missions, what's stopping other nations from believing that's a targeted bomb or nuke and how is it different from an actual attack? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o6h3f/eli5_when_we_launch_space_missions_whats_stopping/ | {
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"First of all, its not like a space agency fires up this massive and amazingly complex rocket with complete secrecey, and goes \"surprise! Its STS-134. You know, delivering supplies to the ISS. Yeah, usually we plan these things but we had a spare shuttle stack lying around and a few astronauts were looking for something to do this weekend, so we thought we'd go up and take Hadfield a Pizza.\"\n\nThe mission parameters are publicized in the news a long time ahead. Not only that but its professional courtesy in the space biz to keep everyone else in the biz up to speed with what you're launching. For exactly that reason. Noone wants to set off some ICMB detection system.\n\nMilitary launches on the other hand, I'd say no - the air force isn't going to communicate to the Chinese that they're launching SuperKeySat-11 to photograph the chairman's bedroom. But the launchpads are fairly open, and the people who make and launch the military/spy stuff at least put out a vague non specific press release about a \"New communication satellite. For the Air Force.\" - and everyone reads between the lines on what it is.",
"Massive differences in the way they are launched. Space launches direct the craft upwards until the gravity turn which applies the force necessary to attain orbit. ICBM's, however, would never waste the fuel in doing such a maneuver as it would severely reduce the payload of the rocket. Even if a nation were to try and fool everybody with a space-launch-looking ICBM, there is still the problem of the fact that it's really easy to differentiate a sub-orbital flight from an orbital flight. Orbital launches are defined by exerting massive forces at the desired altitude to get into orbit. Not applying that force would be highly irregular.\n\nEven if a nation managed to fool another nation with a space-looking launch, it would be one, small, payload. It doesn't give you first strike capability, thus making the attack no more useful then a 'conventional' missile bombardment. "
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1w5p64 | why is death by firing squad so bad? | I hear people say it's a really bad way to die, but why? It seems quick and there's no torture. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w5p64/eli5why_is_death_by_firing_squad_so_bad/ | {
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"Where to begin? With the dying itself or with the long, slow build-up, including the fact that you have to wait while they perform the \"reaaaaady! Take aaaaaaim..\"\n\nI would imagine it's nerve-wracking and painful, and there are probably quicker ways to go, but still not something that I'd want to go through.",
"[This](_URL_0_) says it can take about three, I imagine fairly painful, minutes to die. I can't vouch for the particular timing, but given how variable the damage from a gunshot wound can be, it seems reasonable that at least some share of firing squad deaths would be slow and torturous. \n\nThat said, I am not sure if the same applies to the secret police-style shot to the back of the head. ",
"I would think any experts would be unavailable for comment. Coming up with a best way to die is like debating what kind of dog crap tastes best.\nI think the anticipation would be the worst. A shot to the heart would cause shock (feel no pain) and unconsciousness within seconds. Death would happen within minutes. If no bullet knocked your heart out, bleeding out could take awhile.\nChemical injection executions usually report burning sensations."
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5y0vk2 | how are people with dementia able to have "good days" when they remember people or events that they wouldn't normally recall? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y0vk2/eli5_how_are_people_with_dementia_able_to_have/ | {
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"In the case of vascular dementia a lot depends upon bloodflow to the brain. The video below actually explains it like you're five.\n\n_URL_0_",
"\n\n\nYour brain is always getting information from the environment around you: what you hear people say, the color of the walls, what you see people do, the feeling of your clothes against your skin, what cards you have in your hand when playing a card game, and so on. Not all of that information is important. When you're playing a card game with friends, knowing what cards you have and hearing when your friend says it's your turn is useful, but the fact that the wall is white isn't useful information. Luckily, there is a part of your brain that decides what information is important, and filters out the extra info so you can concentrate. \n\nIn patients with dementia, that part of the brain has been damaged- it's not completely useless, but it's much weaker than it would be in a healthy person. Basically, these patients are overwhelmed with information, but they have trouble figuring out what information is important and what that information means. They may see white walls and think it means they are in their mother's house, or they may see the cards and realize they need to lay down an ace to win. \n\nThere's no way to know for sure when they will pick up on the right information, but scientists do have some ideas of what causes them to be more aware. How aware (lucid) a person is can vary based on tiredness, mood, changes in physical health, what drugs/hormones are in their body, the environment around them, how other people are acting, etc.\n\nFor example, let's say Ruby is in the middle stages of dementia and normally isn't aware of where she is. Her in-home caregiver decides to take her on a car ride one morning and accidentally begins to back up too close to the edge of a drop off, and Ruby suddenly shouts, \"If you don't pull forward we're gonna die!\" This is likely because 1) it is morning and Ruby is not yet tired, meaning the part of her brain that is damaged is not yet worn out from a busy day of trying to make sense of things, and 2) this situation is especially dangerous, meaning that other parts of Ruby's brain would recognize that this is a threat and send out hormones that improves how well the damaged part of her brain works. \n\nIn the same vein, being very tired or in a dull environment could cause a person to be less aware. \n\nMany experts believe that a lucid day (good day) happens when the \"perfect storm\" of these factors occur. ",
"My mom had dementia and most days she could remember the past clearly but her short term memory was gone. So when I'd pick her up, she'd repeatedly ask \"Where are we going?\"...but she could tell you clear as day something that happened in her thirties. Since her short-term memory was the only parts affected, I'm guessing it had to do with what parts of the brain got damaged permanently. Medication only slowed the progression but didn't stop it."
]
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL6Qsh0P6vDZKyjAyUYidyPk2lLBZCD1ul&v=GdkU5vCIpaU"
],
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||
b3z1mf | with all the processes that cell phones carry out, how are they completely silent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3z1mf/eli5_with_all_the_processes_that_cell_phones/ | {
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"Noise in electronics is almost exclusively from moving parts. In a computer, this has historically been fans, disc drives and hard drives. Phones typically lack all three of these sources, using passive cooling for components and solid state storage solutions.\n\nThere's still electronic elements that produce sound, but in phones, that's typically below ambient sound levels.",
"Because they don't have any moving parts such as hard drives in computers or ventilation systems which are usually responsible for the sound in a normal desktop computer or laptop."
]
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[],
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||
aql13l | why do some books have deckle (jaged) edges and others are smooth? | *jagged*
I recently took out two books from the library, roughly the same length, same genre and same publishing house. One is deckle and one is not.
I know it's a 'throwback' to printmaking, but I don't see any benefit to it. Is it just a style preference?
I'm also curious how they decide which books are and aren't. Is the choice of the author? The marketing team? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aql13l/eli5_why_do_some_books_have_deckle_jaged_edges/ | {
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"\nToday, it's a style choice.\n\nIn ancient times, books were printed in folios by folding the big sheets that came out of the press. These folios were stitched into a binding and sold that way. The edges were folded, so you couldn't read the book, but this kept them clean in shipping. \n\nWhen you got you new, expensive, book home you took out your pen knife (which you had on your desk to trim the feather you were dipping in ink to write with) and carefully slit the folios open so you could read the book. This produced the uneven edge effect.\n\nToday, there are hydraulic paper cutters that can cut thousands of sheets at a cut, but the old look is still more prestigious. So, there are special cutter machines that maintain that result.",
"Style preference these days. Older paper was handmade using a deckle. The deckle/handmade paper left a rough edge where the pulp settled. ",
"It’s a style of book that mimics elaborate and conspicuously luxurious book styles of previous centuries. Paper used to be all hand-made and very expensive as a result, as were books. As others have mentioned, books were printed on giant sheets of paper (picture the size of a newspaper page). They’d print multiple book pages on that one sheet and then fold the sheet and it would become part of the book and the owner would have to open the book by slitting open the creases between the pages. \n\nBut here are some elements no one has mentioned: books used to be sold without a binding (before the early 19th century). That is, they’d have a cheap cardboard binding that was meant to be discarded when a wealthy person purchased the book and then took it to their bookbinder to have it bound in a style to match the rest of their library. \n\nAt the time of binding, the binder would cut off the book edges to make it fit into the binding and be elegantly finished. In doing so, part of the margins would be lost. No big deal—printers would deliberately use large margins to allow for this. But once you’ve rebound the book several times, the margins would get small—it could even happen that some of the letters at the edges of lines might be lost, which ruins the reading experience. \n\nSo deckle edges meant that this book was in its original state, the margins hadn’t been cut. This is more desirable to someone buying a book because it means the book is in better condition. It’s newer rather than more used. People who collect books like deckle edges because it means the book is more pristine. There are even people referred to in the rare book world as “deckle fetishists”—collectors who insist upon books in their library having deckle edges. \n\nAlso, in the early 19th century, new paper-making techniques resulted in much cheaper paper that was also of lower quality (and didn’t have deckle edges), and books started to be sold already bound in perhaps a cheap binding. Deckle edges implied high quality handmade paper and old, fine techniques of bookbinding. \n\nAll of these distinctions have been lost, nobody knows the history of bookmaking—except printers and publishers. They continued the association of deckle edges with luxury and fine book printing and binding. And that continues up until today, even though the deckle edges may be made only to resemble the deckle edges of the past and they don’t imply hand made paper or first binding of uncut pages."
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1ns2cq | what would "plasma water" be like? | Referencing the [recent super-earth discovery](_URL_0_), I would love to understand the properties, behavior, look and feel of plasma water. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ns2cq/what_would_plasma_water_be_like/ | {
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"Plasma is a phase of matter.\n\nBasically, it's a highly charged gas. \n\nSo I imagine that \"plasma water\" is water vapour that somehow has a very high electrical charge.",
"Plasma is a 4th state of matter with the property, that it is so hot and low pressure that electrons are no longer bound to the protons. These free high-energy protons could start many chemical reactions around them or turn more atoms into plasma. This destroys many properties of the water. It becomes water vapor if it cools down enough or if the pressure increases enough.\n\nPlasma is the most common form of matter, just not on such a cold place as earth. [how to destroy a microwave and burn down the kitchen](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/super-earth-water-atmosphere_n_4029411.html"
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCNNqgKqnaQ"
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|
9ffky1 | devs/software engineers, etc. what are you exactly looking for when searching for bugs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ffky1/eli5_devssoftware_engineers_etc_what_are_you/ | {
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"Usually, we have the code organized in such a way that it becomes as easy as possible for us to find the individual parts of the code that handles the issue we're looking for.\n\nIn the case of crashes and other similar issues the program will usually send a crash report that we can use to identify the issue.",
"Generally, you only look for bugs in the code *after* you've witnessed something break in the program while it's running.\n\nFrom there, you try to isolate the place where the code does the stuff that could make the program break. Sometimes you can do this by following the code, sometimes you need to break out tools like debuggers or just have the program print out tons of information to a logfile.\n\nA lot of programs these days are written alongside a lot of tests. If you're lucky, you can use these to find the source of the bug by seeing if any of the components don't do what you expect for certain inputs.\n\nIf you're not lucky, it's damned near impossible to track them down because the conditions for causing the bug are *super* sensitive & it won't happen once you start trying to debug the thing. When this happens, you either need blind luck or somebody who has seen the same sort of thing before to figure out where it is.",
"While programs' code can be a mess, it usually follows a minimum of structure with different logical parts being in different files, function names being somewhat related to their task, etc. \n\nYou're usually looking at it from the effects of the bug. If a number comes out wrong, you can look through the code the prints that number to see if it's a display issue where you're printing the wrong variable. If that looks fine you can then go back to the part that calculates the number and see if there's anything wrong there (simply reading the lines, maybe manually checking along with pen and paper with made up numbers to see if it checks out). Maybe you missed typed + when you meant -, or you swapped the numbers in a division, something like that. If there's nothing there you can look into the source that feeds the numbers to that calculation, see if those are coming right. \n\nFor a simple example for these last two, you could have a website that has a fancy background on the middle third of the screen. In order to display it, you have to adapt its width and location to the size of everyone's screens so that it's well proportioned and centered. When you're done writing all that, you test it and find out it's in the wrong place, with the wrong size.\n\nIt could be that you messed up the part of the code that does the math to figure out where the boundaries of the middle third are, or it could be that the numbers you thought you were getting when asking for the screen sizes came in centimeters and you were expressing the result of your calculations as pixels. \n\nThis being said, more often than not it's a one-character typo somewhere.\n\nEdit: I should mention there are things called debuggers that allow you to run your code one line at a time or stop in certain predetermined places to make all this much easier.",
"If you are unlucky, the bug was spotted by a customer and they emailed support with a screenshot of the error page and put the subject as crash. You then have to decipher what they were doing under what conditions. \n\nIf you are lucky you already have the conditions and path to reliably reproduce the bug. You can then just watch it happen and follow what areas the program goes through. \n\nDoing this usually tells you exactly what area or even what line of code crashes and why. You can then come up with a nice way to fix it. Then you can go around and test lots of other ways to get to the same are and see of it still crashes and the bug is fixed correctly.",
"A software bug is a discrepancy between what you think the code should do and what it actually does. For example, consider this simple function: \n\n\nint addTwo( int input ){ \n return( input + input ); \n} \n\n\nThis function takes in a number (int) as input, adds two to that number, and then returns the result. We might test this function: \n\n\nint result = addTwo( 2 ); // Add two to two, store the answer in 'result'. \nprint( result ); // Prints out the result, which should be, and is, \"4\". \n\n\nSo this function works, right? WRONG. Look again. It's not adding two. it doubles the input! This is what the function should be: \n\n\nint addTwo( int input ){ \n return( input + 2 ); \n} \n\n\nThis is a simplified example, of course. But as you write more complex code with many function and files and systems and so on, there's plenty of space to make a mistake that testing won't catch... until something isn't working right. And at that point, you have to locate the discrepancy.",
"To try to give a higher level explanation:\n\nThe design document for your program should list all the things the program is “supposed” to do. For example, “When user presses button, product is added to cart.”\n\nIf you’re a good developer, you write lots of tests to simulate each thing the program is supposed to do. So you might have a test that simulates the button being clicked, and checks if a product was added to the cart. If some of these tests fail, you have a bug. The program didn’t do what it was supposed to.\n\nIf you’re a bad developer (and most people are somewhere in between), you don’t discover the bugs until a user actually does the thing and it doesn’t work.\n\nYou then look for the parts of the program related to the thing that didn’t work, to figure out why. Clicking the button didn’t add the product? Let’s look at the button code. Instead of testing the whole process (button adding product), we can break it down into steps (button knows it was pressed, button sends signal, product page receives signal, product page retrieves shopping cart, etc) and test each individual step to find where the bug is."
]
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219ion | why do bulletproof vests have an expiration date? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/219ion/eli5_why_do_bulletproof_vests_have_an_expiration/ | {
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"Temperature, humidity, and use all affect the ability of the kevlar to do it's job, so manufacturers only warranty them out to a certain period of time.\n\nIf you kept your kevlar in a cool, dry, and dark place for 100 years, it would still work just fine -- problem is, if it's not on your body, it's not much use.",
"Kevlar ( and virtually all materials ) degrade over time. You can read about the degradation of Kevlar in [dupot's technical guide about kevlar](_URL_0_)"
]
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[],
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"http://www2.dupont.com/Kevlar/en_US/assets/downloads/KEVLAR_Technical_Guide.pdf"
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||
48zvuo | how did people back in the day not realize that cigarettes were very unhealthy? | I feel like it's obvious the negative effects it has on your body and how you feel if you smoke. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48zvuo/eli5_how_did_people_back_in_the_day_not_realize/ | {
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"People as a whole are very good at self-denial. Along with tobacco companies trying to push the message that they're healthy as hard as possible, people just bought into it. (those companies did their best to push it into popular culture as much as possible). \n\nI mean, look at alcohol. People know its bad for them, the evidence for it is insane. yet, people still drink. Or soda for example, i'm sure you drink soda from time to time, don't you know it's bad for you? If so, why do you still drink it? and boom, theres the answer to your question ",
"There was a time when brands were endorsed by the medical profession. \n\"More doctors smoke camels...\"\n\n_URL_0_",
"Basically nobody really bothered to run any tests to show there was a connection with certain health problems and smoking. Cigarette companies denied that smoking was harmful for a very long time. It was only really discovered that it caused lung cancer when there was a spike in the amount of people who had lung cancer around the 1940-50s. Even then cigarette companies continued to deny it. A lot of studies eventually showed clear evidence that it was actually harmful around the 60s. ",
"They did- the nickname \"coffin nails\" was used for decades before the Surgeon General's report.",
"Consider that today we are having a debate about \"big is beautiful\". \"Love your body\" is the new mantra, yet the average american is at least 30 lbs. overweight. 1 in 4 medicare dollars is spent treating type-2 diabetes. Are we really so learned today?",
"Oh, don't make the mistake of thinking people didn't know. They did, they just kidded themselves and ignored the obvious. Besides, there were other things to worry about. \n\nIn 1604 King James of Scotland said...\n\n\n\n > Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbeare this filthie noveltie, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossely mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the markes and notes of vanitie upon you: by the custome thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all forraine civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.\n\n",
"Probably the same way people today think Vaping is not dangerous for them. In 20 years, there will be a post like\n\nELI5: How did people back in the day not realize that vaping was very unhealthy? I mean, its literally water vapor in your lungs",
"If smoking killed people in six months, there wouldn't have been any question about it. Instead it can take decades for lung cancer to show up, and a 50-year-old with cancer isn't seen as a gross miscarriage of the natural order of the universe. It's about the age when you expect to have a few friends start dying off and it's not as sensational as a 25-year-old with cancer.",
"Why would it be obvious. People who smoked had pleasurable, positive feelings from smoking, so they associated it with good health. ",
"1) smoking does not kill right away, even if it smells awful. You can pretend it's not killing you if you want the nicotine effect.\n\n2) People drink. Why? IMO that one's a mystery. And even alcoholism-level drinking doesn't kill you right away. Alcohol tastes awful, but people still drink enough to harm themselves. It's the buzz, and the convenience/escapism of being drunk I guess?\n\n3) Tobacco smoking preceded most of health science, so it was an established \"thing\" and people may not have thought they had any reason to question it.\n\n4) Scientists eventually did study whether smoking caused health problems. It started to become obvious to these scientists that it did cause health problems. Tobacco companies put massive time, money and effort ensuring word would get out slowly if at all, and tried to keep findings from gaining any credibility in the public eye.\n\n5) Tobacco companies actively advertised their product as healthy, and convinced many people that it was supposed to be healthy. Saying \"it's not healthy, it's dangerous\" can start to make you look like a crazy person if everyone else wholeheartedly trusts that it's a good thing, and only you are questioning it.\n\ntl;dr: substances gonna get abused, + propaganda and lies."
]
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