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1jypvt | why do the graphics improve so much from super mario bros to smb 2/doki doki panic to smb 3? | They were all on the NES/Famicom and I have no idea why they went from barely looking like a person to actually looking like... Mario. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jypvt/eli5why_do_the_graphics_improve_so_much_from/ | {
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"The NES actually has a surprisingly unique development model. Basically, the cartridges provide their own computing power. The NES by itself is a pretty crappy system, even for its time; it only has 2KB of internal RAM (yes, that's about one 512th of one 4096th of the average amount of RAM on most computers today), the GPU can only display eight different sprites (AKA \"pictures\") on the same TV scanline (any horizontal line) at a time, etc. But because cartridges plug directly into the system, they can sort of \"upgrade\" it by providing their own RAM and things called mappers. Of course, they can't do everything like upgrade the CPU speed; they can only enhance some aspects of games, which is why eventually everybody migrated to the SNES. \n\nBasically, the 6502 CPU in the NES can only address 64KB of memory at any time, and some of that has to go to internal graphics memory and RAM, meaning that on the first ever cartridge made for the NES, they only had very little space to store all of the game code and graphics. Later on though, cartridges got better and these things called \"mappers\" were invented, which basically automatically swap out certain parts of addressable memory with memory on the cart, leading to a theoretically infinite amount of memory, because new memory could be swapped in. There are different methods of swapping that each have their own advantages, and that's why there are different mappers used in different carts today. The most popular mappers, MMC, have gone through five revisions: MMC1, MMC2, MMC3, etc, and each one got successively faster at swapping memory and making the NES faster.\n\nSo early on, games had to deal with limited memory, but as carts got better and had better mappers, better games could be made. This led the NES to have a very long lifespan, because cartridges were always improving. Unfortunately the same concept doesn't apply to most modern consoles because games are only a disc (or, sometimes, only a download) and nothing more."
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3fg9vh | why do cigars smell good, but cigarettes smell horrible? | Title. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fg9vh/eli5_why_do_cigars_smell_good_but_cigarettes/ | {
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"Cigars and pipe tobacco use real, raw tobacco (of course, dried and all the usual stuff you hear about them doing in colonial times). Cigarettes are ground, processed, and treated with chemicals to make them burn longer and have a taste. Plus, cigars are wrapped in tobacco leaves while cigarettes are just wrapped in paper.",
"Many people (although not me personally) find the smell of cigars to be even more offensive than cigarettes. It is also a much more pungent and powerful smell. \n\nAs to previous replies, I used to smoke American Spirits which are (supposedly) pure tobacco and nothing else. Still smelled like any other cigarette."
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b8rju1 | why do freud's theories keep on being validated even if there is no scientific evidence about their reality? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8rju1/eli5_why_do_freuds_theories_keep_on_being/ | {
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"You can't prove Freud's theories right or wrong because they don't make falsifiable claims. As such, they are not science and should not be regarded as such.\n\nHowever, social sciences are rife with these sorts of dogmas. Remember, at one point people believed disease was carried by 'bad vapors'. Social sciences are much newer, so they still have the detritus of their pre-scientific past to deal with. There are still people active in academia who built their career on Freud (and other early psychologists like Jung) and aren't really part of the conversation unless they insist that their life's work is valid.\n\nIn terms of \"brilliant and beautiful\", it might help to recognize that you can take almost any arbitrary pile of features and discover correlations between them."
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1pr2ou | why is it easier to open twisty caps by holding cloth between your fingers and the cap? | I mean, I feel the difference, but I don't understand the physics behind it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pr2ou/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_open_twisty_caps_by/ | {
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"Friction. I wish I had pictures of a zoomed in surface...,it makes it easier to explain the traction. But basically...the more bum bumps /ridges, the more traction. Hands are oily and this oil coats some of the bumps lowering the grip of hands to cap. Covering it with a cloth keeps the oily hands off allowing better grip and friction ."
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3qady9 | why doesn't the cost in octane rating change with gas price changes? | My car requires 91+ octane rated gas. Within the past 2 years I have noticed that the price difference between fuel grades jumped from 10c to 15c. Just this week it started to become 20c difference! Even though gas has gone way down to $2.04 (unleaded) premium is $2.44 where I live. I read that octane is made out of the same crude oil, are they just trying to screw the customers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qady9/eli5_why_doesnt_the_cost_in_octane_rating_change/ | {
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"This is most likely due to the oil you buy takes time to refine, and the oil retailer bought the expensive oil a long time ago and stored it and slowly selling the remaining stock and wont want to make a loss. thus the price of crude oil is elastic while the price of retail oil is rather inelastic. ",
"It might relate to where you live. There are some pretty dumb legal requirements in California, for instance.\n\nAlso, the amount that companies charge is not legally required to make sense.\n\nBeyond that, perhaps there are reasons!"
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2oa1tr | what is actually happening when i'm warming my car in the winter? | Does warming the car make any difference in terms of functioning? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oa1tr/eli5_what_is_actually_happening_when_im_warming/ | {
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"You're trading comfort for efficiency and reduced wear. At idle the engine takes considerably longer to warm up to normal operating temperatures; extending the time it's running at ideal temps. Some newer diesel engines are actually so efficient that idling when it's cold out will never get them up to normal operating temps. This increases wear slightly and of course wastes gas. Unless it gets absurdly cold - in which case you should install and use a block heater - you should let your car idle for no more than a minute before driving. Until the engine reaches normal temps (roughly 10-15 minutes regardless of what the gauge says since most are buffered these days) simply keep the revs lower than about 3,000 rpm and don't give it excessive throttle.",
"The fluids in your car are more viscous when cold and make your engine work harder until warmed up."
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fqblvr | what changes happen to make "adult foods" (e.g. asparagus) taste good later in life, but not when you're a kid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fqblvr/eli5_what_changes_happen_to_make_adult_foods_eg/ | {
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"Kids have increased sensitivity to bitter foods. Veggies taste bitter to kids. Adults have reduced sensitivity to bitter foods. The veggies will taste better to them.",
"Tastebuds die as you grow older. It’s not that they “taste better” so much as adults no longer have and many “that tastes awful” buds.",
"The answer is a complex combination of physiology and psychology. As a couple users have pointed out taste buds diminish in time (although this doesn't begin until midlife for most adults.) Additionally, evidence indicates that children may be able to detect bitter compounds better than adults. However, neither of these is accurate alone, as taste *preference* is largely psychological^[1](_URL_1_).\n\nPeople *learn* to like the items they did not like as a child. The only thing changing is your own mind. Exposure to a flavor and the context in which it was experienced provide a major influence as to the like or dislike of that flavor. As you continue to be exposed, you develop an appreciation (or confirm your dislike as the case may be.) For example, perhaps you're hit by an illness following the eating of a specific food; you may be significantly less likely to enjoy or try that food again as a result (a common side-effect of food toxicity.)\n\nInitial food preferences can be thought of as being the physical side of this all, and are based on our sensitivity to various tastes and chemicals. Humans tend to prioritize high energy foods so things high in fats tends to taste better universally^[2](_URL_2_) . When it comes to vegetables though, it's the bitter chemicals that stand out the most (edit: and is one reason why kids may not like them - because bitter is a taste instinctively linked to poison/toxic substances^[3](_URL_3_) .) The likely explanation for this is evolutionary pressure^[4](_URL_0_) which shaped our tastes to accommodate the region in which we lived. For instance, populations in malaria-infested areas are more likely to have genes which make them less sensitive to bitter tastes, in particular cyanide. There's speculation that cyanide - when consumed in low levels - may fight malarial parasites.\n\nLike you were actually five explanation: Nothing *really* changes. We just learn to enjoy them over time.",
"For me I didn't like alot of things as a kid. Never really gave them a chance. But when I get real high and hungry I'll try anything. Some things that I realized are dank that I never ate as a kid: cheese(other than American), broccoli, asparagus, sushi, cabbage (any variety really), yogurt, avocado, sour cream, and I'm sure there's more.\n\nSome things I still can't do: Hawaiian pizza, squash, pumpkin pie, plain raw tomato, cottage cheese",
"Part of it is child rearing practices. In cultures where bitter foods are what’s on the menu no matter what, you don’t get kids who are picky about it like most American children. In child development it takes 10-20 “tries” for a kid to learn a new flavor. Many first world parents will see a baby make a squinchy face after trying creamed spinach (for example) for the first time, decide she doesn’t “like it”, and won’t offer it again. This is one reason why some children become extremely resistant or even traumatized about certain foods. A lot of the child psychology reality television on Youtube is about “picky eaters” and it always comes down to parents just not offering enough variety for children to learn new flavors. \n\nSome kids, especially on the spectrum, may have physiological sensitivities however and aren’t just normal-picky. This is hard to diagnose, however.",
"I learned how to actually cook vegis. \n\nMy mom steams EVERYTHING.\n\nRoast your vegis, pan sear them and for the love of God buy them fresh. \n\nI can't stomach canned spinach, but I love fresh spinach."
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"https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-psychology/foods-we-like",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9216570",
"https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-09/mcsc-bti091206.php"
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2vln2j | why do sugarcane plants produce so much sugar? do they need sugar or is it a by-product? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vln2j/eli5_why_do_sugarcane_plants_produce_so_much/ | {
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"Plants need sugar for energy. Sugar is no different than other plants in that. Some just produce a lot, or at least easily extractable like maple syrup or beets or fruits (slightly different sugar) "
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b0d6vm | why are some boats pointy on both ends, while other boats are pointy in the front and flat in the back? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b0d6vm/eli5why_are_some_boats_pointy_on_both_ends_while/ | {
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"Vessels move through the water more efficiently when they are streamlined (both ends pointy) because the flat stern (back end) creates a void as the boat moves which pulls it backwards a little. If you want to mount a motor on the back of your boat you're gonna need to make the stern straight so you can mount it in a way that is structurally sound.\n\nEDIT: There are many exceptions to this. First, they make trolling motors that you can strap onto the side of a canoe. This works because a trolling motor isn't very powerful and the shear forces this creates aren't enough to rip it apart. Second, many large ocean vessels have propellers that exit the ship from underneath. These ships don't need a flat stern and you'll notice that they tend to have more of a stub than a point in the back. This is a compromise between size and efficiency.",
"A tapered stern allows the water to gently come back together to fill the hole the boat made as it passed. [The front and rear of the hull stay wet at the waterline](_URL_0_) \n\n Square sterns are more efficient on faster craft, where the water cannot flow back together fast enough. The faster shape is squared off, [so the water can detach from the back of the boat and not drag on it.](_URL_1_)",
"The ideal high speed ship is infinitely long and infinitely skinny, this gives the least amount of drag but is impossible to build.\n\nThe practical high speed ship is fairly long and fairly skinny at the water line, but this also makes it relatively unstable.\n\nA ship that is fairly wide relative to its length will be very stable; and make it a lot easier to put your stuff close to the water line which lets you carry more cargo with less of a risk of flipping over.\n\nShips that have a flat stern often aren't concerned about absolute speed, there is often something else they had to worry about more than just going fast. It could be overall length like on a speed boat. It could be a need to load cargo in from some side and a big rear loading ramp was convenient. It could be that they're a big ass ferry only ever doing 6 knots so what do they care about high speed drag.\n\nPoints on both ends help the boat go faster with the same horsepower, but not all boats care about speed."
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5qo2s8 | do gas giants such as jupiter and saturn have plate tectonics? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qo2s8/eli5_do_gas_giants_such_as_jupiter_and_saturn/ | {
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"As far as we know, no.\n\nThey don't really have a true \"surface\" and the behavior of the upper layers are dominated by gas dynamics.\n\nOnce you get deeper into the mantle of these planets the gas is dense enough for fluid dynamics to take over and they behave more like liquids.\n\nWay down below the thousands of kilometers of gaseous sludge these bodies probably do have a solid core, but we don't know anything about how it behaves."
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3cvzum | since a person's skin is constantly being renewed and growing back, why don't moles simply fall off after so long? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cvzum/eli5_since_a_persons_skin_is_constantly_being/ | {
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"::Borrowed text:: \nYour skin contains several different types of cells. The skin cells you're thinking of that regenerate and slough off every so often are called keratinocytes. The cells that make up moles/birthmarks are a different cell type called melanocytes. Melanocytes do not get replaced by keratinocytes. \n \nAs far as cancerous moles go, the skin regeneration is the problem! UV light causes damage to cells by forming abnormal linkages in the DNA. Often this damage can be corrected, but the more UV exposure, the more damage that occurs. If it cannot be corrected, then it is possible that certain regions in the DNA are not read correctly during replication. Some mutations can cause this new cell to become immortal, and it will keep on replicating. This abnormal growth is cancer.",
"The top layer of skin has a foundation of skin stem cells. Some of these cells die and are pushed up to become the top layer while the rest stick around and continue to reproduce. Moles are **in** the same state (not all moles are the same), but I **think** most of them also have a base layer of cells that a number of them stick around so they can continue to reproduce. These cells are decedents of the original mole cells so they have the same mutation(s) and therefore the same traits.",
"When I was younger i had no moles on my face but after a very bad sun burn and a layer of my skin peeled, it revealed a mole on my nose bridge. Apparently the mole has always been there but we couldn't see it because it was covered by a few layers of skin. And this mole on my nose bridge faded alot the past 18 years. Now it's just a light brown mole. ",
"I used to have dark freckles in the palms of my hands (one near the center of each palm). My friends and I referred to them as my stigmata. Twenty years later, they're gone. I don't know when they went away, but I'm obviously now cursed. But I guess (with divine/satanic intervention) freckles can disappear. ",
"Some are genetic and actually present in the womb. They regenerate like any other skin. But there are many different types.",
"why only moles? Why don't you question freckles as well?",
"I think the best way to think about the skin is in [layers](_URL_0_). As you can see, our \"skin\" is made up of the Epidermis and dermis with underlying subcutaneous tissues. The epidermis and dermis are separated by a layer of cells known as the \"basal cells\" which makeup what is known as the \"basement membrane\" at the dermal-epidermal junction. Basal cells are the cells which are responsible for regenerating our epidermis but themselves are never shed (basically specialized stem cells). As illustrated in the linked image, melanocytes (cells responsible for making our skin pigment including hyperpigmented areas we call \"moles\") are located in-between basal cells. Given that this layer of skin never sheds, moles aren't shed.\n\nAs a side note being that burn injuries are an area of interest, [we rank burns in \"degrees\" based on which of these layers are disrupted/injured by a burn.](_URL_1_) 1st degree burns involve just the epidermis, then superficial second degree burns extend down to the dermis with partial disruption of the basement membrane. Deep second degree burns dip down to involve the full dermis and third degree burns or \"full thickness burns\" involve both the epidermis and the dermis and extend down to the subcutaneous tissue..there are 4th and 5th degree burns which imply involvement of subcutaneous tissues (muscle, fat, ligaments) all the way to bone. The extent of loss of the basement membrane and depth of burn corellate with severity of scaring as well as dictating the requirement for skin grafts to help with healing.\n\nSource: Pediatric doc heading for ICU subspeciality with focus on burn management"
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59ddak | why are so many endangered animals used in chinese "medicine"? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59ddak/eli5_why_are_so_many_endangered_animals_used_in/ | {
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"The rapid industrialization of Asian economies means that there are a lot more people in the Asian middle class who want to be able to show off their means. As a result, demand for \"traditional\" remedies (they aren't actually that old, but that's a story for another time) has skyrocketed.\n\nThose remedies were from rare or difficult to catch, but not endangered, animals because it increased their mysticism. Nobody's going to buy your essence of rat to cure a hangover, but they might buy essence of pangolin because they don't know what a pangolin is and it sounds like magic. Rhino horn has a similar background in this regard: found only in a faraway land, rare, etc. The increased demand has, therefore, caused the endangerment of these animals.\n\nIt's not that they deliberately chose endangered species. The species became endangered as a result of changing economic realities.",
"Because they're usually large and powerful animals that they believed you'd gain the powers of etc."
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aagwx8 | why do kids and adults with kids seem to get vomiting type stomach bugs so often? | I haven't thrown up in over 10 years. But a family I know just came down with a puke fest - 3 kids and 1 adult had a stomach bug at the same time. I saw on FB people talking like their families were experiencing the same thing, all with kids. Why do kids spread this thing around so commonly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aagwx8/eli5_why_do_kids_and_adults_with_kids_seem_to_get/ | {
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"The sorts of bacteria which cause that type of gastrointestinal illness are easily controlled by handwashing and good hygiene. Children are bad at that kind of thing so they speak those bacteria quickly, and then spread them to their parents who become ill themselves.\n\nEdit: *handwashing, not hanging. Equally effective.",
"Children do not keep good hygiene (Most of the time) because they are still learning how to do so. This means that they will be exposed to more of the pathogens that cause stomach bugs. In turn they will catch said bugs more often, and they will spread them to those around them (including parents) more often. ",
"It’s incredibly contagious and kids are sent to school sick all the time. Responsible parents keep sick kids home, but even washing hands constantly won’t protect you completely. Vomiting can make particles airborne and it takes very little of the virus to spread. \n\n\nSo kids get it quickly at school, and spread it at home. It goes around about 2-3 times a year at my school. \n\nAs you get older though you can get some immunity (I think anyway) to some viruses. Some people also lack enzymes to get sick from specific strains and just spread it without any symptoms. \n\n\nKids are also the worst at communicating and controlling their symptoms. I’ve seen some just say their tongue felt weird and vomit on everything, others have screamed “SOMETHING IS HAPPENING.” and puke. My favorite though are the ones who know they’re sick but hide it so they don’t have to miss anything. Like the kid who barfed mid Christmas performance.\n\nAdults typically go to the bathroom, stay home, or find a trash can. Then wash their hands and try to contain it.\n\nKids just walk towards you covered in vomit crying getting things everywhere and spreading germs everywhere.",
"No one has mentioned yet that kids’ immune systems are not fully developed either. So they have less defenses in addition to crawling around on floors, licking everything and picking up old cigarette butts and dog poo.\n\n",
"Gastroenteritis (the “stomach flu”) is most commonly caused when a person ingests the infected fecal matter of another person. It’s very easily preventable through proper hand-washing techniques. As kids are pretty lax in that department and tend to touch random things and then their own faces/mouths without any thought, they spread it easily. \n\nIn theory, if you wash your hands properly before every contact you make with your own mouth and nose - and if the things you put in those places are clean - you could go your whole life without ever dealing with gastroenteritis.\n\nI’m an emetophobe. I avoid children like the plague. "
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25x07z | why does it hurt our eyes to look at the extremes of our vision? | I've always wondered why looking way up, down or to the sides causes pain in our eyes. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25x07z/eli5_why_does_it_hurt_our_eyes_to_look_at_the/ | {
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"It's because the eye is a ball connected by a thread of nerves to the brain.\nI'm fairly sure that it's because stretching the nerve thread that causes the pain ",
"Your eyes can't rotate themselves, obviously - it must be done by muscles.\n\nIf you try to rotate/move any muscle past the point it's built to rotate to, it'll hurt - for an example, hold your arm out in front of you, then swing it 180* so that it's pointing directly behind you.\n\nYou can't do it without moving your shoulder, or dislocating your arm, and it'll hurt when you go past the point at which your muscles are used to dealing with.\n\nSame idea. Muscle moves the eye, but can only move so far."
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9tp52w | how does a casino make money on poker if the dealer doesn’t play a hand? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9tp52w/eli5_how_does_a_casino_make_money_on_poker_if_the/ | {
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"They take a \"rake\" of every hand. So if everyone combined puts in $100 in chips there might only be $98 in the pot. The other $2 is taken by the casino."
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1uyemw | how do we exactly know we and everything around us is in three dimensions? isn't the universe just one dimensional line curved so much we can't really tell if we live in 3d or this one dimensional line? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uyemw/eli5how_do_we_exactly_know_we_and_everything/ | {
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"We don't really *know* this, but it certainly looks like it for practical purposes. [Minutephysics explains one test here.](_URL_0_)",
"Because the min. number of coordinates you need to give to state where you are spatially is 3. By definition that's a three dimensional world. "
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1kju3f | why are unpaid interns bad but unpaid volunteers good? | I'm curious: Why do Americans object to unpaid interns but at the same time praise unpaid volunteers?
[Habitat for Humanity](_URL_1_), for example, builds houses for the poor almost exclusively with unpaid volunteers. They don't get criticized. Even labor unions don't seem to object that Habitat is taking away paid construction jobs.
But other nonprofits like [the one Sheryl Sandberg started](_URL_2_) get strongly criticized, sometimes with what seem to be [overly-inflammatory headlines](_URL_0_) based more on populist hating of the rich than clear arguments about why unpaid interns are wrong whereas volunteers are right.
I've seen [some articles try to address this question](_URL_3_), but they seem to almost always end up just ragging on the person in charge for being too rich rather than making a clear case about how internships and volunteerism are different and why one should be compensated while the other shouldn't.
I would love to know if there really is any difference, or whether the distinction is ignored just because the economy is bad so everyone is cranky and needs more money. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kju3f/eli5_why_are_unpaid_interns_bad_but_unpaid/ | {
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"Volunteering is considered to be done as an act of charity. As in, you aren't supposed to be doing it for money, but because it is a good act.\n\nInterning isn't like that. You aren't working 8 hour days fixing 20 year old code that makes no sense out of the goodness of your heart.",
"The big distinction is that Interns are there for work experience. Volunteers are giving their time as a gift to a cause, while interns need experience to get a paying job in their field. This means that Interns may be doing free work for a company that they could otherwise have a job with because the company doesn't want to hire people without work experience.\n\nThis does not mean that interning is bad though! Often times interning is a fantastic opportunity for people to learn hands on about a complicated field of work without needed prior knowledge or experience, e.g. interning at NASA as a high schooler.",
"Volunteering is an act of charity. It does not take up all of your time and you can stop doing it without any penalty.\n\nAnd internship is an actual job, often doing work worth well above minimum wage pay rates, and very often working more than a full-time job. You do not only not get overtime but you do not get paid at all. All of this is in the hopes that the training, references and networking is enough compensation. It is not. It is companies trying to bypass the labor laws to pad their pocketbooks. \n\nI am fine with having internships being low pay, even minimum wage, due to the compensational benefits and the fact that they are in training, but no pay is slavery. ",
"If someone is making money off your work, then you should too. \nWith volunteer work, pretty much everyone involved is giving away their contribution (be it the time, skills, money, or products they've created/bought); with intern work, hardly anyone except the interns are working for free and the company often (perhaps indirectly) makes money off their work. \n\nYes, I know, you're gaining experience all and that, sounds nice in theory, but in practice it's too often taken advantage of. And guess what, regular paid-workers are gaining experience as well, in addition to being paid. \nSo, if the company if making money off your work, you should get paid for it."
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"http://www.habitat.org/",
"http://leanin.org/",
"http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/08/sheryl-sandberg-should-know-better-ask-interns-work-free/68355/"
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c3vr8f | when we focus on a moving object we can smoothly move our eyes however if nothing is there we cant smoothly move them from left to right? | Not sure how to word it but let's say you're focusing on a bird in the sky moving our eyes move smoothly to follow it
however if you try and move your eyes from left to right with nothing there it cant be done smoothly you more or less focus on different random spots to move them from A to B | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c3vr8f/eli5_when_we_focus_on_a_moving_object_we_can/ | {
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"someone might explain it better. but our eyes are lenses . constantly adjusting based on how far the distance is.\n\nwhen you focus on a moving object which is a predictable trajectory (e.g. bird) our eye locks focus and we can easily follow it.\n\nwhen there is NOTHING . the distances vary as we move our eyes. (we cannot focus on nothingness which does not exist between your eyes and a far off distance) . so while you start moving your head. you might initially see something near like your next door building. then a pole maybe. then a far off building. then a far off monument . some people . heavily varying distances. and our eyes keep adjusting focus for them. working overtime. so it wont be smooth.\n\nimagine a hypothetical bird which could instantly also move perpendicular to its flight of path. that too instantly (like a teleport kind of thing, nightcrawler from x men) . our eyes would similarly go crazy then.\n\none interesting thing you will see , especially in yesteryear's special effects filled movies that actors are supposed to look at NOTHING (where a hologram or some cgi thing will be added later). and they are focus on all the wrong spots etc. and they look super weird since their eyes are not given a proper focus point.",
"Horizontal saccades (eye movements) feel like they are smooth, but they aren't.\nThey are always somewhat jerky, but your brain corrects the visual input so that you interpret it as smooth movement.\nWhen you have a moving object this allows the brain's \"correction software\" to do a more convincing job of making you think it was a smooth movement."
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53f0u9 | why can some people withstand more spice than others? | I mean spicy food | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53f0u9/eli5_why_can_some_people_withstand_more_spice/ | {
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"there's actually an interesting Vox video just about this question. [\"Why we learn to love spicy food\"](_URL_0_) ",
"Capsaicin, the hot stuff in hot chillies, is a drug that acts directly on the nerves that signal heat and pain. The body responds with its natural pain relief system, endorphins to suppress the hurt, the effects are pleasant.\n\nLike nearly all drugs that interact directly with nerves the body builds a tolerance to it. On first exposure it may be unbearable but repeated low level use results in tolerance, increasing use leads to increased tolerance.\n\nI used to chase that endorphin buzz all the time to the point that if someone asked me \"Is this hot?\" the best answer I could give would be \"You are asking the wrong guy!\""
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2l5b2l | what is cultural marxism? what does a cultural marxist do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l5b2l/eli5_what_is_cultural_marxism_what_does_a/ | {
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"A cultural marxists uses what is called critical theory to analyse history, traditions and culture from a marxist perspective. \nMost importantly, they believe that not only it is the upper classes oppressing the lower classes by means of set \"rigged systems\" that keeps the poor poor, but also that traditions and values play a key part in that.\n\nAsk yourself the question \"what is morally right?\" and the answer will likely be affected by the values you have taken from your environment. \nSo what's the point? The cultural marxists try to change culture as a step in changing the economic injustices.\n\nThe easiest comparison I can make is WW1, lots of poor people from different countries killed each other and you can read in many young mens diaries that they were happy and excited over it, partly because of patriotism, and they saw it as morally right.\nFrom a marxist perspective this is the result of cultural \"brainwashing\" since ancient times \nthat the puts the elite in a position were they can spend poor peoples lives to reach their goals and they are compliment.\n\nAlso please note: Nobody calls them self a cultural marxist, that it self is a critical term used by people who don't like it. This is likely part of the reason the OPs votes are going up and down frequently.",
"I have spent a lot of time around activists and college leftist-types, and had never heard this term before coming to reddit and watching it be ascribed to people: First SRS, now anti-GamerGate people.\n\nI know a lot of people who are Marxists, but I know zero people who are \"cultural Marxists\". I'm fairly certain that it is a term that was created to label a group from the outside, that no one actually considers themselves to be.\n\nBecause of this, the term can be defined multiple ways in order to categorize and set aside groups to be maligned. But, and I cannot stress this enough, I don't think there are people who identify as \"cultural Marxists\".",
"Cultural Marxism is a term used by social and economic conservatives to describe liberals and leftists. It is alleged to mean someone who wants to have a more tolerant and degenerate society, but in practice mostly used as a blanket term for \"liberal I disagree with.\" \n\nActual liberals and leftists do not call themselves cultural Marxists, the former because they aren't Marxists and the latter because even if they're one of the Marxist strains of leftist theory, \"cultural Marxist\" doesn't really mean anything.",
"There's no such thing. It's a creation of conspiracy theorists that subscribe to the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory. William S. Lind (noted in regards to the subject at hand for making the ethnic/religious background of Jewish individuals associated with the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University, also known as the Frankfurt School, an issue) in particular seems to be the driving force behind the creation of the idea of \"cultural marxism.\"\n\nIt's a far, far right wing smear campaign that emerged from the reaction against \"political correctness\" amongst far-right wing circles in the early 1990s. There is no such thing as a cultural marxist. The entire idea that there is a secret cultural marxist plot afoot to take over the world is about as credible as the super secret Jewish plot to take over the world presented in [The Protocols of the Elders of Zion](_URL_0_).",
"the idea that modern consumerist society would be Karl Marx's wet dream"
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b9qsb7 | if earth's inner layers are essentially super hot metal, and some sections are liquid, how does it keep from solidifying through loss of heat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b9qsb7/eli5_if_earths_inner_layers_are_essentially_super/ | {
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"A lot of radioactive elements sank to the center when the Earth was still fully molten, and their high concentrations in the center generate a huge amout of heat as they decay.\n\nThis is the primary source of Earth's inner heat today. The heat from formation alone isn't sufficient to keep it liquid for all these millennia.",
"Heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements in the Earth's make-up helps keeps things warm but, overall, the Earth is losing the residual heat it started with, and will eventually cool off and solidify. So the end answer is \"nothing\" is keeping it from solidifying, the process is just a very long one that is being delayed by the internal generation of heat.",
"Only the [outer core of the Earth is liquid](_URL_0_). Mostly the earth is rigid.",
"Because it's an absolutely massive amount of material (somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.603 x10\\^24 kg) and heat is constantly being generated by the decay of radioactive elements. Eventually the core will solidify, but this will take roughly 91 billion years, and the sun is going to turn into a red giant and blast the Earth into a charred ball or rock long before that happens. "
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2mwzzr | different led types (led, oled, amoled, p-oled), their status (common in mobile devices, r & d only) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mwzzr/eli5_different_led_types_led_oled_amoled_poled/ | {
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"LED's are light emitting diodes. Diodes are a device made of semiconductors that only allows electrical current through one way. A light emitting diode is a diode that while allowing current through the one way emits light at the same time. \r\r\rOrganic scientifically means anything that contains the element carbon. A few exceptions being pure carbon (diamond, graphite, soot) and the gases it makes with oxygen (carbon monoxide and dioxide) and maybe a few other i can't recall off the top of my head. Note this isn't the \"food\" definition of it, things scientifically organic could be very deadly and completely artificial. \r\r\rHistorically LEDs have been inorganic. Things like gallium arsenic for example make traditional LEDs. The semiconductor of choice depends entirely on what colour you want. \r\r\rMore recently we have been able to make LEDs out of organic semiconductors. An OLED is an organic LED. LED could potentially mean either inorganic or organic. \r\r\rPOLED is a polymer organic LED. This is a OLED, but the particular organic semiconductor being used is a polymer. A polymer is a long chain like organic molecule, they are plastics. \r\r\rAs for what R & D and what's in use, i can't tell you. All those terms are to broad, there is some of both in each. All i can tell you is there is probably more research going on with OLEDs than inorganic LEDs. \r\r\rAMOLED is a type of screen, not a type of LED. AM is active matrix, it means how the computer controls the screen. The screen itself is made of OLEDs. Hence, AMOLED. OLED screens are ones made from OLEDs. \"LED\" screens are really LCD screens with LEDs for back lights rather than a florescent bulb. "
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16wbgq | why can't kim dotcom be prosecuted for his new site? | What's the big deal about this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16wbgq/why_cant_kim_dotcom_be_prosecuted_for_his_new_site/ | {
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"He can't be persecuted because he is operating entirely within the domain of a country in which he is breaking no laws. He was able to be persecuted for the old one (illegally) because it was a .com, which falls under jurisdiction of the USA. "
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39j4tf | could a hacker theoretically breach a bank and erase all the debt the banks have on file? | Could a hacker erase all records of mortgages and credit and if so what would the bank do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39j4tf/eli5_could_a_hacker_theoretically_breach_a_bank/ | {
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"Technically, yes, but realistically, no.\n\nMost companies have back up centers located in different physical locations.\n\nThey also have back up tapes (think VHS tapes, but the size of N64 cartridges) for storing computer data. These are take out of the backup machine and stored, so they cant be accessed virtually.",
"Not unless he breached the bank HQ and then stole the information to access the databases, wherever they are, (and don't forget the backup databases).",
"It is very unlikely to impossible to erase all the debts because it is persisted all over the internet at this point. Many larger businesses are using cloud backup solutions, in some cases you can even save a virtual copy of your entire network and access it over the internet in the case of an attack that wipes out the office, This includes workstations, servers, voip solutions, and more.\n\nRedundancy is the rule with important data\n\n",
"We keep the original loan agreements in the vault. It would be a pain in the ass, but it could all get sorted out. \n\n",
"Theoretically? Maybe.\n\nPractically? No way in hell. There are simply too many backups and copies of the data in multiple locations, both virtual and physical.\n\nAt the very least, a bank (or really any business with vital digital data) has their servers, an on-site backup (HDDs or tapes) and an off-site backup. You can't hack in to them and delete all the data.",
"I think you'd probably wipe out the bank before you were able to wipe out all traces of debt at that bank. As in the bank would go out of business due to the massive data loss it was experiencing and trying to recover from while the attack continued against all their backups, hard copies etc.\n\nNot sure what happens if a bank goes under though. Does maybe a bigger bank buy all the debt and then you're screwed anyway?"
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3d675x | why can you still have gps and wifi on when you're on a plane but not standard cellular network connection | I'm assuming it has something to do with how the data is sent and received? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d675x/eli5_why_can_you_still_have_gps_and_wifi_on_when/ | {
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"Well, GPS is a receive-only technology. A constant signal is broadcast from all of the GPS satellites. The signal contains a timestamp, all of the satellites have their times precisely synchronized, and the location of the satellites are known. So based on the delay between signals from multiple satellites, your GPS device can triangulate its own position. The satellites are just up there broadcasting, with no knowledge that your phone -- or any other GPS-enabled device -- even exists.\n\nWiFi is managed by way of short-range radio signals. When you're on a plane with WiFi, the receiver that is communicating with your phone (and unlike GPS, it both sends and receives data from your phone) is right there in the plane with you. The plane will then have either a ground-radio-based or satellite-based communications link that connects their WiFi to the rest of the Internet.\n\nSo what about your cellular network connections? Well, cell towers are designed to deal with phones on the ground, so their transmitters are directional, and don't really point up towards airplanes. And if you *are* able to connect to one, you'll be moving past towers much more quickly than they're designed to handle, so you'll still risk a spotty connection as the network hands you off between cells."
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7splj1 | why do you hear yourself breath louder when you have headphones in with no music playing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7splj1/eli5_why_do_you_hear_yourself_breath_louder_when/ | {
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"You are blocking your ears from hearing things outside your body, so your ears are hearing the sounds resonating within your body easier. That's why you hear your heart beat and stomach rumble easier with your ears covered.",
"There are two types of conduction for hearing. Air conduction and bone conduction. Air conduction is the sound waves traveling through your ear canal. Bone conduction is the passage of sound to the inner ear through the bones of your skull. When you put headphones in you block out air conduction. The only thing you can hear is the sound conducting through bone. This will likely be something like your heart beat or air moving in and out of your lungs. ",
"Adding to the other answers, your ears have a sort of automatic gain control. That's why you hear faint sounds when it's quiet, but not when normal house noises are going on. When you block outside sounds with the inactive headphones your ears become more sensitive and hear the bone-conducted sounds of your body."
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bxetd9 | what are the technological/physical limitations regarding smartphone camera advancements? will we ever see them match traditional ones? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bxetd9/eli5_what_are_the_technologicalphysical/ | {
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"Small lens size limits light entry, so no, will probably never match the quality of a traditional SLR"
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4fn5fi | why the saudi government would have backed an attack on the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fn5fi/eli5_why_the_saudi_government_would_have_backed/ | {
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"In a word, Wahabbism. That's the ultra-conservative sect of Sunni Islam that preaches seriously strict interpretations of the Quran, and intolerance for anybody or anything that isn't them. It has been the religion of the top members of the Saudi royal family for some time now, and since the 1960s or so, it's been spreading throughout Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other places. \n\nGoing all the way back to the early days after 9/11, there have been persistent, troubling signs that either prominent members of the Saudi government--or even the government itself--have been actively supporting anti-US terror groups because of their Wahabbist beliefs. \n\nShortly after 9/11, when US intelligence officers were working with their Saudi counterparts, they were rather startled to find that a lot of the Saudi security guys had Osama bin Laden screen savers on their office computers.\n\nEarly on, a top Al Qaeda guy was captured, and a commercial-level bank card from a leading Saudi bank was found on him. This was unprecedented, no terrorist before or since has been caught with such a thing. The CIA peed itself like an excited puppy and said, \"wow! This is really significant, it could help us bust open their entire finance network!\"\n\nSo they stuck it in a file and ignored it for several years.\n\nWhen they pulled it out some time later, and sent in an agent to make some discreet inquiries, they found that shortly after the AQ guy was captured, members of the Saudi state security came into the bank and made every record of the card disappear.\n\nAnd after all this and more, the official position of the US is to stick its fingers in its ears and go, LA LA LA. I can't heeearrrr youuuuuu!\"\n\n",
"To placate the fucking retarded clergy that brainwashes the population to prevent it from revolting against the royalty.",
"I think it's important to note that the government per se did not back 9/11, but that some people IN the government may have. That's a pretty significant distinction.\n\nEdit to add that the Pakistani government is far more guilty of this sort of thing than Saudi Arabia.",
"The government wouldn't have. People in the government very well could have, because by-and-large outside of the actual very tip-top of the royal family the folks who make up the government don't like the united states very much. Saudi Arabia is actually one of the most conservative, if not the most conservative/extreme Islamic government in the world. The US and Saudi governments are only on good terms because we give them TONNES of money to keep down their population and dominate their region militarily and they sell us bunches of oil.",
"They don't. Some members of the Saudi government probably have funded them, but the Saudi government has not directly funded terror attacks.\n\nIf Obama punched your dad, it does not mean that the American government punched your dad. It means an individual has punched your dad. It is highly embarrassing for the government because of Obama's actions and you may want to sue him and/or the state, but it does not mean the U.S. government is acting against him!",
"The ruling Saudi royal family are followers of a very dogmatic religious sect ([Wahhabism](_URL_0_)). A chief complaint of these folks is the presence of foreign (American) bases in the holy land (Saudi Arabia contains Mecca, Islam's most holy city). Herein lies some ambivalence. They want us out, but they also wanted us in to protect them from Saddam Hussein. He's gone now, but Iran which favors a competing version of Islam remains a worry.",
"There is a view (read Machiavelli) that causing problems for the powerful is something that the less powerful should do to ensure that the powerful are distracted.\n\nIn this case, by \"encouraging\" the 9/11 attacks the Saudis would (1) disrupt the US, (2) drive the US closer to the kingdom, and (3) get rid of Saddam Hussein, someone who made everyone in the region nervous. If they were lucky, there'd be some spillover into Iran as well.\n\nAs someone said, the royal family is large, and doesn't speak with one voice. There are lots of factions, just like in the Pakistani ISI. Given the Saudi history of financing everyone in the Middle East, it's not out of the question that a group of Saudis were financing the operation. They may not even have known what they were financing; maybe they were told that the strike was to be against Israel.\n\nThe truth, whatever that is, may never be known.",
"So the US would go to war and they could sell oil?",
"Saudi's could theoretically have wanted to involve the US military in dealing with their middle Eastern enemies. This included extremist, anti-royalty forces in Afghanistan. A good chess strategy typically involves letting your opponent believe they're making a decision for themselves.",
"Uggg....instead of spending billions or trillions on stupid wars, why can't we just wage economic war on the middle east. With a trillion dollars, I would hope that we could create alternatives to oil, which might lower the importance of the middle east, say a few thousand notches.\n\nOh, but then that might affect US oil companies too. \n\nNevermind-",
"The most basic answer? To draw the US into a war with Iraq. Cause the terror attack, misinform the government and make them take down your closest economic and business (oil) rival in the process.\n\n\n",
"Are you familiar with the Amish? The solitary group of Christians that live primarily in the north east US and shun outsiders. \n\nWahhabi Islam is what you get when you cross the Westborough Baptist Church and the Amish. Wahhabism is a cancer fueled by Western money that has been metastasizing in Saudi Arabi for decades. It is a diving force behind Sunni extremism around the world.\n\n*I'm going to use the Amish as a metaphor here. I love the Amish. I'm not overly concerned with any Amish seeing this and getting upset because...well...they don't use technology. Except during rumspringa, but that's another ELI5.*\n\nImagine the Amish had a penchant for violently opposing anyone who didn't live like them. They support very strict punishments for anyone who uses technology and permit harsh and sometimes violent punishment of women who do things like show their hair in public. Now imagine these Amish extremists had lots of money and influence within governments all along the East Coast. A few generations of families in important positions all over. Family is important, after all, and few groups have larger families than the Amish. These powerful and wealthy Amish families have influence with other old world religious groups as well, such as the Mennonites and Quakers. These families protect each other and close up around one another when threatened by outside groups. \n\nWithin these groups there are more extreme groups who want to force the entire world to live a romanticized pure lifestyle such as that lived by their ancestors. Some of the powerful elders in the community wish for this too. They see the evils being made available to the youth by outsiders from the West Coast in places like San Francisco, Hollywood and Las Vegas, and they see it as their religious duty to stop these threats. Using their religion as a shield of peace and purity they speak out against what they see as Satan's minions in schools they build in poor areas around the world...but that's just the top layer. Smoke and mirrors. What the elders really want is control and power like they had long ago before they turned in their swords for plows. They use these schools to indoctrinate illiterate youth to their version of faith and they use disenfranchised young men as weapons to strike against their enemies. They use the influence to spread their hateful message far and wide infecting other places the West Coast deals with. They cannot openly strike against the West Coast because it holds too much influence around the world, so instead they use the radical extremists within their remote communities and the youth in these poor countries as pawns in a terrible and bloody conflict.\n\nFortunately for them the government's of the West Coast are so connected to the goods and services provided by their Amish families many are willing to let some offenses and crimes go unpunished in the name of continued partnership. In other instances the Governments of the West and East Coasts team up to fight against a common adversary that threatens to interfere with the economic interests of the West Coast. Heck, the Amish wouldn't even exist like they do now if it weren't for a guy from Texas who knew he could make a fortune selling Amish goods around the world. The Amish could take advantage of these relationships. And they did. \n\nSome of the groups of elders provided money and support to the most extreme elements of their faith. These groups had been fighting smaller and easier groups they opposed in places the people who live in the West Coast didn't care about. They had built a worldwide network of groups that hated the West Coast and they financed terrorist training camps in those places. In some cases these enemies fight each other in proxy conflicts in far off places using third parties. Eventually, a few dudes with ties to senior members of the governments of the East Coast were able to get a bunch of hard core Amish believers together to strike a blow to the heart of what they saw as against god and good Amish values.\n\nNone of the senior Amish government officials can be directly linked to planning the attack that followed, of course, but the money trail is there. It's classified, because otherwise elements of the governments of the West Coast would be shown to have known those ties existed. Intelligence agencies knew something was coming, but so many things were all happening at once it was difficult to sort through, and the CIA and the NSA don't start wars independently or react to threats militarily no matter what that YouTube video you watched says. That's the job of the President and Congress. It wouldn't have mattered anyway though. Political will didn't exist to do anything of any value prior to the attack. An attack on the same location by the same group happened a dozen years earlier but nothing was done except to launch some cruise missiles against some of their training camps.\n\nIn the end everyone is responsible, but no one is accountable. It's all dark politics and dark money and dark power. A shadow game played at night where the winners get rich and the losers get dead. \n\ntl;dr There's a reason we have a wall of separation between church and state in the US. Now all we need to do is create a wall of separation between money and politics. Unfortunately, Islamic countries fueled by Western money don't have any walls. "
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c5h5el | why do some blood tests need to be done from a specific arm, when blood in the body circulates so quickly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c5h5el/eli5_why_do_some_blood_tests_need_to_be_done_from/ | {
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"They don't need to be done from a specific arm. The arm is usually just the easiest and most convenient way to draw blood with a minimal amount of fuss.",
"Blood tests don't need to come from a specific arm.\n\nIf you're having multiple draws performed, they may switch arms between the draws to reduce the amount of punctures in a single arm (though it's preferable to get all the necessary blood from a single draw). And if they're testing for an infection that could involve a diagnosis of sepsis, they'll draw from both arms to compare the two and see if the infection is system-wide. And it may just be that a person has veins that are easier to find and draw from in one arm.\n\nBut there are no blood tests that need to be from a specific arm. They don't even need to be from an arm at all.",
"ICU RN here, and I have no idea what you’re talking about. Outside of blood cultures (which need to be gathered from two separate sites), there’s no reason to specify which limb a blood draw comes from unless there’s a disease process/procedure that would lead to an increased risk for infection (things like radical mastectomies after breast cancer where lymph nodes are removed)."
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6gckhq | clean energy and electric cars are great and all, but crude is refined into many many other things. how are those other industries preparing for the day that there isn't enough oil in the world to meet demand? | Edit: Could be flaired as either economics, engineering, or chemistry... I couldn't decide. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gckhq/eli5_clean_energy_and_electric_cars_are_great_and/ | {
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"There will always be enough oil to meet demand, thats the fun part about supply and demand.\n\nAs we deplete the easy oil reserves the price of oil will increase and we'll tap into the more expensive to drill reserves. As those run low, we'll tap into even more expensive reserves increasing the price more, and the cycle will continue.\n\nAt each stage, as the prices goes up it'll become more economical for companies to switch to other sources which reduces the demand for the oil and stretches the time of the reserves. Eventually the price gets crazy high so we only end up using a tiny amount of really hard to get to oil so it lasts forever\n\nWe'll never run out of oil, we'll just run out of reasonably priced oil",
"Clean energy and electric cars mean more oil is available for other purposes like making plastic. Even if we eventually run out of oil there's even more coal which could be used with some more effort. Or we could recycle existing plastics."
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2ysvh2 | did cocaine for the first time a couple of days ago. i was wondering how does cocaine get into your brain and how is it that it takes so little time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ysvh2/eli5_did_cocaine_for_the_first_time_a_couple_of/ | {
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"its water soluble. when you insuffilate it into your nose, the teeny tiny capillaries will absorb the drug directly into your blood stream. any mucous membrane in your body will do this (example: benzos that are sublingual dissolve under your tongue and are absorbed through the membrane into the little capillaries) as long as the substance is water soluble. you know it is water soluble if you can pretty much just ingest it without doing anything fancy, like infusing THC with a fatty substance in order to eat it because THC is fat soluble, not water soluble. ",
"Cocaine is water soluble meaning that it can be absorbed very easily into your body. It is also extremely easy to develop a dependency on it to the point where trying it once could get you hooked. Be wary.",
"As for the how it acts so fast, cocaine is water soluble and the mucous membranes of you sinuses will absorb it directly into your blood stream, little to no filter required. \n\nOn a related note, I once coughed a shot of Everclear into my sinuses and went from having no previous drinks to shithammered, incapacitated drunk in about 20 seconds, and it felt like my veins were on fire. 0/10 would not recommend."
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46wzp8 | what's the point of a gated community if they just open the gates at night? | At least in my area, there are many residential complexes/communities that are gated, but late at night they open the gates. Doesn't opening the gates like that defeat the whole point of having a gate in the first place? If it doesn't, then why not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46wzp8/eli5_whats_the_point_of_a_gated_community_if_they/ | {
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"I don't think they *normally* open the gates at night. I have a friend who lives in one of these and in his gated community they have on site security who patrol around, and the front gates are opened by a wireless key every resident has.\n\nFor things like Pizza there is a special code or something.\n\nInterestingly I believe I remember reading somewhere that crime rates are often higher in gated communities as all the valuables are gated into one convenient area... ",
"It still narrows the ways to get in and out (which could be more easily monitored by camera for instance), and particularly if there is a single entrance it prevents traffic from using the streets just to drive through. Fewer people driving by scoping out, the thought goes, the fewer chances for crimes of opportunity, burglary, etc",
"They normally open the gates during rush hour. Something like from 5pm to 7pm. This is to keep the gate area from getting congested by the large amount of people trying to get through the gates in that time frame. Imagine hundreds of cars each having to stop at the gate for 30 seconds to let the gate open. It would take people forever to get home."
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3tweyv | how do satellites communicate with thousands of individual devices at once? | If I'm carrying two GPS devices, each one is engaged in its own communications with a satellite (afaik). If all of the communications are wireless, I'm guessing they're broadcasted in every direction, so how are all of these communications routed (how does device A distinguish its communications from device B?) and are the satellites really processing all thousand requests at once? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tweyv/eli5_how_do_satellites_communicate_with_thousands/ | {
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"Satellites are just big radio stations in the sky, its a one-way communication just like when you listen to the radio in your car, and everyone else on the radio does too. Your GPS is just a listening device, pretty much everything any consumer would ever use regarding satellites is just a listening device, you don't broadcast it back, you just hear the song playing on the radio",
" > How do satellites communicate with thousands of individual devices at once?\n\nSatellites don't communicate with any devices at all. GPS is a completely passive technology. Each satellite broadcasts its ID and a timestamp, like a sort of high-tech lighthouse. If you know where each satellite is (your GPS receiver has that data built in), and how far away each satellite is (your GPS receiver uses the delay between the timestamps sent out from each satellite to calculate the distance), then you can calculate your exact position.",
"GPS isn't a good example for this, because, as stated by others, GPS is a broadcast service that isn't dependent on devices being able to communicate with the satellites.\n\nHowever, there isn't anything stopping a communication device (including satellites) from engaging in two-way communication with multiple devices.\n\nIt can be handled a couple of ways. Basically, the communication device can use multiple frequencies, \"talking\" to a different device on each frequency, or the communication device can switch back and forth between talking to all the different devices very, very quickly.\n\nRadio is radio; your WiFi router at home can connect to more than one computer/smartphone/etc at a time.",
"GPS\n-\n\nWith GPS, as mentioned, it's a \"broadcast\" setup: there's no individual communication with devices, the satellite just broadcasts and your GPS device listens.\n\nOther radio communications\n-\n\nWhere there truly *are* multiple devices using the same communications system, we use a combination of several things\n\n1. Multiple channels/frequencies. In your home router you can choose which WiFi \"channel\" you use. Your router may have 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, or \"MIMO\" (multiple in, multiple out) antennae. This means we are splitting our communication band into smaller bands. If we split our WiFi into 12 channels, we can have 12 different devices with no interference (in theory)\n\n2. Mutiplexing. There are a few techniques for this, which I won't go into, but the basics idea is to split your transmission between devices: eg if I have 10 devices, I might spend 1/10th of a second transmitting to/receiving from each device, each second. Over a whole minute, each device gets 6 seconds total. This is called **Time Division Mutiplexing** and there are lots of different approaches. There are other techniques for multiplexing, such as Frequency Multiplexing, which are used more rarely.\n\nSatellites do the exact same things, usually at the same time: they will use several frequencies and multiplex on those frequencies. This is one of the reasons satellite communication is slower than most other communication: because lots of people are sharing one satellite."
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2p27bv | why can large files like video games be stored and used on a single disc while presumably much smaller things like seasons of shows take multiple discs | just thinking, after buying all of A:TLA | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p27bv/eli5why_can_large_files_like_video_games_be/ | {
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"Because shows aren't small. A good quality video can easily push over a gig per hour of play, plus the menus and extras and commentary and all the other useless shit, those discs fill up fast. ",
"I don't think the other answers capture the main difference at all.\n\nIn a recording of a TV show or movie, what the disc is storing is every single frame of video, at 30 fps. That adds up fast.\n\nIn a video game, every frame you see is dynamically rendered in 3-D. The data to generate each character, each building, etc. may be large - but it doesn't take any extra disk space to redraw those characters in each new position, from every angle - that's all rendered on the fly.\n",
"You could actually fit more than 3 episodes of Seinfeld on a DVD if you wanted - they can easily take a full 4 hours of video.\n\nIt's just that the companies selling the DVDs would rather place them on more discs so that customers don't feel like they're getting ripped off spending $60 on content that had already aired on TV for free.\n\nYou also need to consider that DVD compression is going to be *far* less efficient than the compression you're used to seeing if you download shows from pirate sites. Pirates are using modern video codecs that expect to have powerful CPUs to play them back. The video compression in the DVD standard is based on the capabilities of 1995-era embedded processors. 20 years of improvements in CPU power & algorithms makes a big difference."
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56itpu | how does akinator and other genie games really operate? i get it's based on narrowing it down but it has guessed obscure characters in less than ten questions. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56itpu/eli5_how_does_akinator_and_other_genie_games/ | {
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"It has a large database of characters and answers that are true for them (contributed by users of the website) and by asking questions that roughly split the possible characters into equal groups (50/50 split), means that it only takes ten questions to narrow down 1024 into one character and twenty questions to narrow down from 1048576 characters to one character."
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l1ag3 | iambic pentameter | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l1ag3/eli5_iambic_pentameter/ | {
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"When we speak, there's usually a natural rhythm to how we say the words. Some syllables get more emphasis and some get less.\n\nAn *iamb* is just a non-emphasized syllable followed by an emphasized syllable.\n\nFor example, say the sentence \"I ate the food\" out loud. If you speak like most English speakers, you put the emphasis on the words \"ate\" and \"food\" -- those words are a little louder than \"I\" and \"the\" in that sentence. So that sentence is actually two iambs in a row!\n\nIambic pentameter is a pattern (or a *meter*) used when writing poetry. Each line of a poem written in iambic pentameter is made of five (that's where the \"penta-\" comes in) iambs in a row. Like, \"I **ate** the **food** out**side** my **school** to**day**.\" (MSchmahl's example)\n\nThe other kind of 2-syllable patterns are a *trochee* (an emphasized syllable followed by a non-emphasized syllable), a *spondee* (two emphasized syllables in a row), and a *pyrrhus* (two non-emphasized syllables in a row).\n\nThere are other meters, but iambic pentameter just happens to be fairly easy to write and sounds pleasant to us so it's common.\n\nNext time you read or listen to a poem, try figuring out whether it's in iambic pentameter!\n\n[Edit: corrected example]",
"I never understood this concept at all before this ELI -- thanks everyone! Upvotes for all, on the house!",
"When we speak, there's usually a natural rhythm to how we say the words. Some syllables get more emphasis and some get less.\n\nAn *iamb* is just a non-emphasized syllable followed by an emphasized syllable.\n\nFor example, say the sentence \"I ate the food\" out loud. If you speak like most English speakers, you put the emphasis on the words \"ate\" and \"food\" -- those words are a little louder than \"I\" and \"the\" in that sentence. So that sentence is actually two iambs in a row!\n\nIambic pentameter is a pattern (or a *meter*) used when writing poetry. Each line of a poem written in iambic pentameter is made of five (that's where the \"penta-\" comes in) iambs in a row. Like, \"I **ate** the **food** out**side** my **school** to**day**.\" (MSchmahl's example)\n\nThe other kind of 2-syllable patterns are a *trochee* (an emphasized syllable followed by a non-emphasized syllable), a *spondee* (two emphasized syllables in a row), and a *pyrrhus* (two non-emphasized syllables in a row).\n\nThere are other meters, but iambic pentameter just happens to be fairly easy to write and sounds pleasant to us so it's common.\n\nNext time you read or listen to a poem, try figuring out whether it's in iambic pentameter!\n\n[Edit: corrected example]",
"I never understood this concept at all before this ELI -- thanks everyone! Upvotes for all, on the house!"
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eqb21y | why does everyone here hate emojis so much, when they seem to be proliferating on all other platforms? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eqb21y/eli5_why_does_everyone_here_hate_emojis_so_much/ | {
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"Reddit has an entirely unique culture compared to most other popular platforms, which gains it popularity with some and hatred with others, the ELI5 answer is that emojis are seen as a lesser form of meme on reddit. \n\nReddit culture is fairly conservative with memes, preferring lennys and simple \":)\" to emojis."
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fdgedc | what is the precise biological mechanism that leads to teething | I have a very painful wisdom teething right now and I want to know why my body thinks it’s a good idea to grow teeth even though there is no space left for new ones. Also, why does it grow in short bursts over several months instead of all at once ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fdgedc/eli5_what_is_the_precise_biological_mechanism/ | {
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"Evolution. The human jaw used to be more than large enough to hold all those teeth, but as our jaw size shrank, things got crowded. I've had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled, as well as four other molars and four bicuspids. Only 20 teeth in my mouth, but they fill all of the available space."
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6irsw7 | what is the difference between a "culture" and a "subculture" | I've asked my sociology professor twice and am still confused. He says it isn't arbitrary but he also says that it depends on which sociologist you ask for whether something is or isn't a subculture.
Would someone please explain what the difference is and how one culture can have many cultures but not all cultures within that culture are "subcultures"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6irsw7/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_culture_and/ | {
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"Just guessing here, but isn't a culture bound to geological locations and subculture not?\nExample: western culture, Japanese culture, are bound to the western world and Japan.\nRock n roll subculture can be found in every part of the world, but doesn't form a whole location wise",
"A subculture resides within a dominant culture. \n\nThe simplest example is probably the African-American subculture existing within the larger North American culture.\n\nSo you can see both are characterized by larger patterns: both eat at McDonald's, shop at Walmart, and watch the NFL on Sundays.\n\nBut then there are things that distinguish the African-American subculture, like the droopy jeans and hilarious content on twitter. "
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jd5kg | why big banks are considered evil. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jd5kg/eli5_why_big_banks_are_considered_evil/ | {
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" Imagine your parents are saving up money to buy a house. The house is very expensive and your parents don't have all the money that is needed at the moment to pay for the house. The bank says, oh thats ok, you just pay us a little bit every month until you make the full payment and you can move in right now. You don't even have to pay us anything for the first three months. Your parents say \"Wow! Thats great\" and trust the bank to do this. This debt that your parents pay to the bank every month is called a mortgage. The standard length for a mortgage in the US is about 30 years.\n\nHowever, the bank purposely didn't tell your parents that the money they must pay each month will get bigger and bigger. Also the bank will charge your parents something called interest. Interest is more money that your parents have to pay the bank for borrowing their money. So even though the house may have only been worth 200,000 dollars, the bank can add on fees for borrowing that may mean your parents have to end up paying 300,000 dollars to the bank. Your parents think that they would pay the same amount of interest every month, but the interest goes up every month too. The bank intentionally does not tell your parents about this and they have to work very hard and pay a lot more money because the bank was being mean and they trusted the bank too much.\n\nIf your parents' piggy bank runs dry, and they can no longer pay the bank. The bank will kick you out of your house and you will no longer have a place to live. All because the agent for the bank was acting very friendly, but tricked them into signing a piece of paper that would make them lose thousands. \n\nThis is one of the main reasons why many people in the united states hate banks and think they are mean and want to steal their hard-earned money.\n\n",
" Imagine your parents are saving up money to buy a house. The house is very expensive and your parents don't have all the money that is needed at the moment to pay for the house. The bank says, oh thats ok, you just pay us a little bit every month until you make the full payment and you can move in right now. You don't even have to pay us anything for the first three months. Your parents say \"Wow! Thats great\" and trust the bank to do this. This debt that your parents pay to the bank every month is called a mortgage. The standard length for a mortgage in the US is about 30 years.\n\nHowever, the bank purposely didn't tell your parents that the money they must pay each month will get bigger and bigger. Also the bank will charge your parents something called interest. Interest is more money that your parents have to pay the bank for borrowing their money. So even though the house may have only been worth 200,000 dollars, the bank can add on fees for borrowing that may mean your parents have to end up paying 300,000 dollars to the bank. Your parents think that they would pay the same amount of interest every month, but the interest goes up every month too. The bank intentionally does not tell your parents about this and they have to work very hard and pay a lot more money because the bank was being mean and they trusted the bank too much.\n\nIf your parents' piggy bank runs dry, and they can no longer pay the bank. The bank will kick you out of your house and you will no longer have a place to live. All because the agent for the bank was acting very friendly, but tricked them into signing a piece of paper that would make them lose thousands. \n\nThis is one of the main reasons why many people in the united states hate banks and think they are mean and want to steal their hard-earned money.\n\n"
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yes4w | tort reform | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yes4w/eli5_tort_reform/ | {
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"\"Tort\" is when a person who has a responsibility to you screws it up really badly. For example, let's say your doctor accidentally cuts off your leg. That's a tort.\n\nNow, when there's a tort, you compute \"actual damages.\" For example, let's say that after he cuts off your leg, another doctor shoves him aside and sews your leg back on. The surgery to repair it costs $527,000. The actual damages, in that case, would be $527,000.\n\nWhen that happens, you can normally sue doctor legchopper for $527,000 - that's the amount you'll need to pay the bill, which is his fault. You're suing for \"actual damages.\"\n\n\"Tort reform\" is when congressmen put a limit on damage payments. For example, let's say that the congressmen decide that a doctor is never responsible for more than $100,000, no matter how badly he screwed up. So yeah, he made you lose $527,000, but you can only sue him for $100,000. When they don't have to pay the full amount of the actual damages, that's tort reform.\n\nThe two sides of the argument are:\n\n* You just received a bill for $527,000. Why shouldn't you be able to hand the whole thing over to the idiot who caused the problem?\n\n* Doctors have to buy a ton of insurance because of this sort of risk. That insurance is very expensive, and it adds to the cost of medical care, which is high already. If they didn't have to pay, medical care would be cheaper.\n\nNow, the biased part of the post: if we make medical care cheaper by forcing you to pay for your own $527,000 surgery, we aren't really making it cheaper. We're making it cheaper for most people, by putting the cost on the poor souls who get their legs accidentally cut off.\n"
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ao6gup | when disconnecting a circuit (i.e. a car battery), why is it better to pull the negative side before the positive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ao6gup/eli5_when_disconnecting_a_circuit_ie_a_car/ | {
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"In a car its more because you want to disconnect the chassis first. Less chance of a short if all the metal in the car isn't part of the circuit.",
"Basically, if you take power off first and it touches any part of the engine / body it will complete the circuit (all parts are earthed) and it’ll spark like a mo’fucker. Take the earth off first and you remove that problem.",
"Batteries have little gremlins called electrons that always flow from the negative side to the positive side. \n\nWhen these gremlins travel to the places they’re supposed to, they’re well behaved. If they travel to places they shouldn’t be, they wreak havoc. \n\nNow, if you take off the positive side first and accidentally touch it to any metallic part of the car, the little gremlins will flow from the negative side to the positive side and into a place they shouldn’t be, therefore causing damage because of their penchant for bad behavior. \n\nBy disconnecting the negative side, you make sure the little gremlins can’t travel out of the battery. Therefore touching the positive side to another part of the car will not harm it because there aren’t any gremlins there to cause harm. ",
"The black wire (negative) is connected to every metal part of the car, so if you're taking off the red wire (positive) first, and your wrench slips and touches any metal part of the car, it will complete a circuit and throw up sparks. It can even start a fire. If you're taking off the black wire first, and you slip, nothing happens, because that side is already connected to the car. After you take the black wire off the battery, then the battery isn't connected to the car any more, so then you can take off the red wire without any sparks.\n\nFor many decades now, engineers have designed circuits so the negative side is connected to the chassis, or case, or frame, or whatever (usually called the \"ground\"), just so there won't be any confusion. There are still a few really old cars (they switched around 1956) and farm tractors with positive ground, but you're not likely to ever work on one without knowing that."
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10n8gx | in space, it always seems that we are shown traveling on a 2d plane. what happens if you leave earth and go straight "up" or "down"? | All pictures of our solar system have this neat, perfect linear illustration of the plants lined up. So we take off from Earth to travel "sideways" or linear to get to the moon, to send our probes and such to planets, but what if you left from the North or South Pole and traveled straight from there? What is out there? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10n8gx/in_space_it_always_seems_that_we_are_shown/ | {
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"Our planets are all mostly on the same plane, which is nicely convenient for illustration purposes. If you go any other direction, it's pretty darn empty. And it will take a while to run into the [Oort cloud](_URL_0_). Beyond that is way more empty before another solar system.",
"Everything. Everything is out there.\n\nFirst, let's explain about the solar system. There is a very good reason that the planets are (mostly) lined up so well. The planets and asteroids around our sun started out as a huge dust cloud that was swirling around the sun. Over a very, very, VERY long time, the dust clumped up and accumulated into the bodies we have in the solar system today. Since the dust cloud was all swirling around one way, the planets are, too.\n\nNow, we get to what happens if we travel up or down from the \"disc\" of the solar system. What's there is the rest of the universe. See, like the planets, our solar system is moving along in our galaxy, which is just a huge cluster of stars. The galaxies themselves are also moving around within the universe. So, what you'll find if you move straight up or down from the plane of our solar system really depends on when you go and how quickly you'll move. \n\nFor the most part, you'll find a whole lot of nothing. That's just because the universe is so incredibly, indescribably big. However, you'll also run into different galaxies, nebulae (which are basically just massive clouds of gas, but are much prettier than they sound), black holes, comets, all of the things that are out there.\n\n[here](_URL_0_) is a good picture of our galaxy, and our solar system's place in it. The solar system faces about 60 degrees up from the center of the galaxy (it's tough to explain easily, but the best picture I can find to demonstrate is [this](_URL_1_)), so you would wind up leaving the galaxy pretty quickly. From there, who knows what you'll come across. Eventually, if you go far enough, you will likely see every type of thing there is to see.\n\nI hope this answers your question."
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35zwzd | what did locke mean by 'property' in life, liberty, property? | I've read it's physical property. I've also read it's dignity - and that's why Jefferson changed it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35zwzd/eli5_what_did_locke_mean_by_property_in_life/ | {
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"It really just means property, the pursuit of happiness also means acquiring property but it's a more broad statement, also meaning the right to do what you like to be happy. ",
"Locke had this idea that you own your property by creating it. There are resources in the commons, like flowers in the meadow, trees in the forest, water in the rivers. And you can appropriate things from the commons by mixing your labor with them. So no one owns the water in the river. But if you go and fetch a bucket of water, that water belongs to you, because you labored to create it. You don't own the trees, but if you cut one down, that one belongs to you, because you mixed your labor with the tree. "
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8limtg | what are the differences between regionalized, decentralized, and centralized states? | I recently saw [this map](_URL_0_) on wikipedia and I saw no explanation or examples of how these systems of government differ. They are all supposedly decentralized, with certain responsibilities being removed from the federal state, but to what extent and how they all differ is not explained. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8limtg/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between/ | {
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"Centralised vs decentralised (I'm using British spelling) is about how much power the central government is vs how much power the parts of the country have.\n\nIn a highly centralised country, there is one government for the whole country that makes nearly all the decisions. In a decentralised country, the different parts of the country (e.g. states, provinces, cantons) have their own governments which make most of the decisions themselves, and the government of the country as a wholr is only responsible for a limited number of things such as defence and foreign relations.\n\nA related concept is federations vs unitary states. \n\nA federation is a country like the USA, where the constitution guarantees that the constituent parts of the country can run themselves, and the federal government is only responsible for things set out in the constitution.\n\nA unitary state is where the central government holds all the power.\n\nThis is where a regionalised state comes in. A country which is a unitary state is not necessarily very centralised. The central government can create autonomous governments for regions of the country. The difference between this and a federation is that the central government still has ultimate power, the regional governments only have the powers that the central government lets them have.\n\nThe UK is an example of this. It's a unitary state, meaning the UK Parliament in theory holds all the power. But Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own governments which the UK Parliament has given powers to. In theory the UK can overrule or abolish these governments (although it would be politically very difficult).",
"Think about all the services that a government can provide to their population. Now those services can be provided by the federal government or province/state. The more the province/state provide the more the country is decentralised, the more those services are provided by the federal government, the more centralised the country is.\n\nFor example, here in Canada, the federal government have little direct impact on the everyday lives of the population (to a certain extend). The federal government take care agriculture/fisheries, immigration, defence, inter-provincial infrastructure, public safety, etc. \n\nBut it's the Provincial government that take care of the health services (hospitals, clinics, ambulance, etc), education, infrastructure inside the province, social services, culture, energy, etc. \n\nCompare that to the UK. The Health care system is for the whole country, it's the same for education. It's a more centralised states.\n\nThe US is in the middle. Both the federal government and states have their hands in health care, but education is a state affair.\n"
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3mkil5 | why do smart people "look smart"? | More specifically: what is it about the facial expression and particularly the eyes of intelligent people that makes it easy to tell that they're intelligent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mkil5/eli5why_do_smart_people_look_smart/ | {
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"The eyes that follow a person's movements and respond to speech and show engagement are my first clue. I once knew a lady and didn't like her very much, but the first thing I noticed about her was her intelligent eyes. From that point on, I regarded her with caution and tried to consider what she was trying to achieve from interacting with me. This was a good call, since a few months after that encounter, she tried to stage a coup of the board of directors at my place of employment and failed. If I would have gone along with what she said, I probably would have gotten in trouble. "
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1xtg2c | monsanto's patent on broccoli | What did they actually patent? What does their patent mean to us, what does it mean to farmers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xtg2c/eli5_monsantos_patent_on_broccoli/ | {
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"They patented a specific strain of broccoli. It doesn't mean anything to us or to farmers, since it's just that strain; the broccoli you buy at the grocery store isn't affected.\n\nSome people thought that they patented *all* kinds of broccoli, but this isn't the case.",
"In effect, Monsanto's patents are similar to patenting software. The are patenting a small amount of instructions for getting a plant to grow. They do not patent the entire computer, nor do they patent the operating system. That is to say that they do not patent the entire plant, nor do they patent the bits core to a plant. In this case, what is patented is a particular strain of broccoli that is able to grow in more areas than normal broccoli. The computer equivalent of this would be like patenting a piece of software like MS Paint. There are other image editing softwares out there, but Paint might be the best one to use in a particular instance.\n\n\nAs far as what this means to a farmer, it gives them the option of paying a little extra to grow a crop that can potentially give more profit at the end of the year. On the consumer end, we might actually see a drop in broccoli prices, but likely we will not notice any real change.\n\nSide note: GMO discussion does not play into this at all. This technology was not used in the development of this broccoli strain."
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2ibn9p | why does plaque feel fuzzy on my tongue? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ibn9p/eli5why_does_plaque_feel_fuzzy_on_my_tongue/ | {
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"Do you mean bacteria on teeth plaque or trophy and medal plaques?"
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71n1dg | why do many people get easily spooked by small animals that don't actually pose a thread? | Inspired by this post: _URL_0_
I could totally imagine that kid being like a 30 year old. Why is it that a seemingly large portion of people get easily freaked out by harmless animals? I'm guilty of this too but it just feels like things like squirrels, bugs, ducks, etc. tend to startle people a lot. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71n1dg/eli5_why_do_many_people_get_easily_spooked_by/ | {
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"In the old days, small animals were common causes of disease. You could get a deadly flu from a chicken, or rabies or plague from a rat.",
"a)They are not life threatening but they can still hurt you. And no one wants to get hurt.\n\nb)People get startled because they're not expecting. Jump scare doesn't need a scary object. A gust of wind blowing a door shut can still startle you when you're not expecting. And animals aren't predictable when you're not familiar with them. Same reason why people are scare of and stay away from mental disfunctional people (sorry, I actually don't know what to call this, basically crazy people) in public because you don't know what to expect."
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a01sgj | i watched a video about a girl who survives being hit by a car because she can't feel pain, therefore, not bracing for impact. if it's more ideal to relax, why do humans automatically tense up/brace for impact? what is the most optimal way to survive a crash? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a01sgj/eli5_i_watched_a_video_about_a_girl_who_survives/ | {
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"This is also why the drunk person usually survives a DUI collision relatively unharmed while the other party has injuries. ",
"I was hit from the side by a van that ran through a red light, thank god i didnt see it coming and brace. Bracing readies your muscles for either fight or flight, which is useful for if there is a threat. However tense muscles are obviously less flexible and therefore are injured far easier",
"its rather simple to imagine, take a water ballon (an analog for a human)....drop on the floor from 3 feet, squish, watery inside can flex and ripple taking impact. \n\nnow freeze that water ballon (analog for a human who has tensed up).... drop on floor from 3 feet, crack, soild inside takes 100% impact force instead of dissipating it",
"“Why do humans automatically tense up”\n\nLarge fast moving metal vehicles did not exist during hominid evolution. Human (and animal) behavioral responses to cars probably evolved as reactions to predator attacks."
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2q7te4 | what is an aneurysm | I head Vegeta off, Dragon Ball Z abridged, say to Nappa he had an aneurysm out of sheer stupidity. Since then I've always wondered what it ment | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q7te4/eli5_what_is_an_aneurysm/ | {
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"dictionary [dik-shuh-ner-ee] \n\nnoun, plural dictionaries.\n\n1. a book, containing a selection of the words of a language, giving information about their meanings, pronunciations, etymologies, inflected forms, derived forms, etc., ",
"An aneurysm (in the medical field) refers to a balloon-like bulge in the wall of an artery. Aneurysms can occur in any artery of the body, but they are most commonly found in the brain because they cause symptoms when they press on your brain matter. Aneurysms can be very dangerous because if they rupture, they cause a hemorrhage. This is especially dangerous in the brain because it causes a cerebral hemorrhage, more commonly known as a hemorrhagic stroke. "
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25bbfn | why can some people smoke and never get addicted, while other are addicted for life? | If nicotine is the factor which makes cigarettes addictive, and all the big brand cigarettes have it... Why is it some people can smoke today but then quit without having to deal with cravings at all by the next week?
I understand mind over matter etc. but what is the bigger factor mind or matter? and whats going on biologically? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25bbfn/eli5_why_can_some_people_smoke_and_never_get/ | {
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"Not everyone is equally susceptible to addiction to cigarettes. I can chain smoke for a few weeks and then just stop for a few weeks without it being an issue. I'm not sure why that is true for me but its possible it may be because I was around second hand smoke a lot as a child.",
"I'll weigh in on this.\n\nI've been suffering from axillary hiperhydrosis (overactive armpit sweating) for around 15 years now since I was a young teen. I can only smoke maybe two cigarettes, at night, after I've had some alcohol before bed. This is attributed to the fact that if I just smoke a cigarette for no reason it will aggravate my condition and it's just incredibly uncomfortable; I'll sweat until the \"nicotine high\" fades away maybe 20 minutes later. So because of this, it makes it no more enticing for me to smoke a cigarette during any other common point of the day. Thus, I don't really get \"hooked\" on constant smoking as a normal \"everyday smoker\" would. \n\nEquating in the alcohol factor, this is because it supresses my sweat glands and my overall body activity, so smoking a cigarette can actually be a bit pleasing at the end of the day after a few beers. Thus, just like susceptibility, it's different for every human being. It's a plethora of biological factors.\n\nEDIT: words",
"It's weird, I have a friend that smokes socially when drinking and will have one if someone offers, but they don't go out their way to buy them daily as far as I can tell. Never understood that. ",
"I smoked cigarettes for about 5 years, probably a little more than half a pack of Newports a day. I started because I noticed that those that smoked had more breaks, all of my buddies smoked, and I had a lot of time to kill (hurry up and wait nature of the army.). I quit smoking the day I finished my contract.\nI have tried to pick it up again here and there, but I just take a puff and throw the rest away. Tastes disgusting, and smells bad to me now. Except black and minds, those smell good. "
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29r7n6 | why are electric cars and hybrids, which have more powerful motors, quieter than power drills and blenders? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29r7n6/eli5_why_are_electric_cars_and_hybrids_which_have/ | {
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"They have space for more sound dampening. Your car is quieter than a lawn mower for similar reasons.",
"The power tools and such might be using brushed motors which are notoriously louder than the brushless design I would imagine a serious car would use. "
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axadua | how are our phones so resistant to bugs, viruses, and crashing, when compared to a computer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/axadua/eli5_how_are_our_phones_so_resistant_to_bugs/ | {
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"Both Iphone and Android are based from Unix/Linux based systems. In short, these operating systems have much stricter rules on what is allowed to run, or who is allowed to run something. The user isn't even allowed to access most features themselves. In order to get a virus on a phone the way you could with a Windows PC, you would have to basically intentionally run the code on your own and possibly root/jailbreak your phone.",
"Phone OSes came about in a different era of architecture and design (and security awareness) than most OSes. Phone hardware is far more tightly controlled that that of a PC, which can support thousands of different options of each component. Even Android, which is relatively \"open\" as a specification, still has a specification that's far tighter than any PC specification. Even the software distribution is much tighter, as app developers have to submit their apps for testing and certification before they can be published. Yes, Android has \"alternative\" app stores, but those are largely overrun with buggy, virus laden software. There is no such control point for software on a PC.",
"Bugs because the hardware combinations are more limited ~~then~~ than PCs\n\nViruses? They're still vulnerable, less so because the O/S is very locked down always. The user *almost* never has \"root\" control of anything, unlike a windows system where if you have the password you can force through risky things to install if you have no idea what you're doing.\n\n\\*Also phone app stores are the only official way to install onto your phone, those apps are screened by Apple and Google. Sideloaded apps are far more rare and you have to work at getting that done knowingly\n\nAndroid and iPhone are both based off of Unix Like systems→Linux (droid)/BSD(apple) - There's no normal admin account that just gets to do whatever, everything is compartmentalized and locked down making only very rare exploits the likely vulnerabilities.\n\nCrashing? Same as bugs, limited combinations mean a manufacturer can ensure no weird hardware will cause problems and the OS doesn't have to be change much, minor driver differences at best.\n\nMost phones use the same family of chipsets for radios/wifi; screens. Samsung makes tons of shit for apple phones, they need each other. Until recently everyone uses qualcomm\n\nSidenotes:\n\n1. YES I know this isn't quite eli5\n2. For all those grammar enthusiasts, yes I know the difference between then and than, I'm glad someone found a way to backhandedly comment my \"seeming\" intelligence yet complete feeble-mindedness due to a minor lazy grammatical error. Marvelous!",
"Extremely controlled environment. \n\nThe Google/Apple/Amazon store only allows apps that are guaranteed* to work on the hardware their customers have. Those that have incompatible hardware cannot download the apps through the store. \n\nWith great effort, you still can install the program manually and your phone will start crashing and bugging out. \n\nComputers can have any mix of parts that may or may not work as intended by the developers, and be running drivers that may or may not be updated. \n\nSince there's no universal store to buy all your apps from (and probably shouldn't be) developers have to just take a guess at what their user will be installing software on, and hope that they actually read what was and wasn't compatible. \n\nNobody does, and the list isn't complete, so you run into bugs. ",
"Does your phone run Windows?",
"Phones are slightly more stable because when you buy a phone, you get a package that got finetuned to run fine in this exact state. Usually the manufacturer of the phone also customized the operating system and other software running on it. Results may vary depending on how much care the manufacturer put into this process.\n\nThen there's also other control mechanisms to prevent you, the owner of the phone, from changing fundamental configurations. This also helps a bit in preventing you or other people to make your phone do things not intended by the manufacturer - you could call this safer if you want. However, the operating systems of phones are not generally safer than those of computers.\n\nA computer is much more customizable, many more combinations of software and hardware have to work together, and if it's your own computer you usually have all rights, including the rights to do something that damages the way your system should work.",
"because they limit the user in what they can do. on an windows pc you can download and run any .exe you find. in android you have to specifically enable third party apps via hidden menu's before you can do that. on iphone thats basically impossible. this makes it way harder to deliver malicious apps because they have to go through an distributor instead of directly to victims. the operating systems are also limited in what they can do, a lot of niche things the majority of people won't use but are super powerfull. ",
"In addition to what others said, I'll add that most PC viruses spread via email attachments or by clicking bad links. Both are those are mitigated heavily on phones because an evil EXE file, for example, simply won't do anything on a phone - it literally cannot open.",
"I used to be a mobile developer, doing mostly Android but also some iOS development.\n\nApps on a phone are a lot more sandboxed than what you would get on your PC. An android app, for instance, does not have direct access to the storage spaces of any other app on your phone; as far as that app is concerned, using only its own power, you have nothing else on your phone except this app. No matter how hard it tries, it can't escape the little bubble that it's in.\n\nIn order to allow the apps to talk to other parts of the phone, they use \"private methods\" or internal APIs, commands supplied by the OS to let apps access stuff. So, for instance, if your app wanted to access the camera on your Android phone, it would need to go through an API called Camera/Camera2. This is part of the Android OS, and written by Google. There are libraries that wrap this functionality up and make life easier for developers, but in the end all calls must go through that API. \n\nWhat this does is mean that the Android OS can essentially control everything the app does. This is why apps have to ask \"permission\" to access things like the camera; there is only 1 way in/out to the camera (that Camera2 API call), and it can be closed/opened using the little permission toggle. All other permissions work the same way.\n\nThis is very different than Windows, where access to hardware is open to any application that can talk to the hardware drivers, and where any storage on the machine is accessible, as long as it isn't write protected or encrypted by the OS or some other means. \n\nWindows is the wild west, while your phones are highly controlled themeparks. ",
"These days the malware and viruses are right out in the open like [Uber's \"God Mode\"](_URL_1_) spying on you and [Facebook undermining a Presidential election](_URL_0_).",
"They aren't, the systems are just more scrutinized\nCellphone ecosystems are simply easier control in each phase.\n\nTake a peak:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: typo ",
"Here's is a better ELI5:\n\nYou have two houses.\n\nPC house is large, and has lots of big doors and windows. Many are unlocked, because the family living there wants to be able to go where they please, when they please, and do what they want. This freedom also means burglars can also get into the house easier if the family is not protected. Good families buy alarms systems and security guards (virus protection, firewalls etc).\n\nAndroid is a smaller house, and it's not owned by the family but just rented to them, and it was built with a lot more locked doors and windows the family can't open at all. Neither can burglars. The family gave up some freedom to go where they want and do what they want for more security. Now the family can rip out those locks (root/jailbreak) and get more freedom, but are again at higher risk.\n\nApple house is pretty much a prison. ",
"While others have done a good job explaining why this is true, I'm going to point out that it's not as true as you think it is.\n\n**First of all, phones have plenty of bugs.** Apps have plenty of bugs. Phones crash occasionally. Users just don't notice as much!\n\nMobile OSes started with power usage as a major concern and extremely limited multi-tasking. As such, their app development SDK insisted that 3rd party apps allow the OS to kill them at any time (to save battery) and provided a design pattern to allow \"tombstoning\". The app gets a brief notification that it's about to be killed and can write a little bit of state, then it's shut down. Well-designed apps write this tombstone data ahead of time in case they're killed without warning. When you \"switch back\" to the app, it may actually be started from scratch. It just pretends that it just picks up where it left off.\n\nWhen an app crashes or freezes on a desktop OS, the OS tries to give it a chance to resume working. This make it very noticeable when an app freezes, you get a spinning wheel, then the app UI disappears (and Windows gives you a crash notice). On a mobile OS, the app just crashes, restarts, and picks up where it left off. Sometimes, mobile apps get stuck in a crash-resume-crash loop, but are generally designed to count the number of start attempts and delete the \"resume\" data and start fresh.\n\nWhen a mobile OS crashes, it can do the same thing. Just reboot while the user isn't looking and pick up where it left off because the user isn't watching the individual app windows disappear.\n\n**Secondly, the virus game has changed since the days of Big Internet Worms.** There didn't used to be profit in malware, and so the goal was notoriety. Now, there's a shit ton of profit to be made in stolen user data, cryptocurrency mining, etc. The goal of modern day malware is to be unobtrusive and stay unnoticed, while the goal of famous Windows viruses was to do as much damage as possible. There is plenty of malware on phones, and the most insidious of all are apps that use 100% approved APIs and get the users to grant them permission to their hardware.",
"You mean when compared to a PC running Windows and not Linux or MacOS?\n\n",
"I'd come at this from the other perspective: who says they are?",
"Honestly, they aren't really. The main difference is that an operating system like Windows will let you install just about any piece of software you find on the Internet, while your phone restricts you mostly to a curated app-store that tries to weed out malicious programs. You can sideload apps onto phones, especially Android phones, and in those cases they are just as likely to be infected as any computer.\n\nWe also replace our phones every year or two, but most people keep the same computer for 5+ years, which gives them a lot more time for hardware/software degradation.\n\nA properly maintained PC should have almost identical reliability to a properly maintained phone or tablet device.",
"Simple: Simplicity of OS and hardware compared to a PC.\n\nSimpler: Walled Garden in the case of Apple products: the very thing many people complain about.\n\n**For Apple**, this also includes controlling BOTH hardware design and software design plus implementing critical technologies other platforms still don't really have like:\n\n* Apple designs both hardware and software so it has a level of control over how the device operates that Intel, Microsoft and Wintel vendors could only dream about. Similarly Android can never have the same control over behavior that Apple has because it also splits HW from SW. This is inherently more secure.\n\n* Apple can customize SW to match desired or designed HW features **it has designed**, and it conversely customize HW to match desired or designed SW features, Examples are the security/encryption processors and the motion processors that cooperate with the A-series CPU/GPU chips. Again, split-HW/SW architectures can only dream of this kind of control. So the security/encryption processor stores all thumb-prints, facial recognition and passwords inside of it - you can't hack it out short of opening the device, unsoldering the chip, using a lot of expensive equipment to destructively reverse engineer the chip and there's still a good chance doing that would destroy the data forever. iOS and macOS are designed to exploit this security processor now.\n\n* Use of a Unix-based OS - all networking was originally invented on Unix and similar minicomputer OSs, NOT on PCs - it makes a difference. Unix is generally more security and Windows historically shot itself in the foot by being \"backwards compatible\" which created most of the security problems. Android is a new OS so it's largely untested and Google isn't exactly the most trustworthy companies anyway when it comes to privacy and security.\n\n* Use of a particular variety of Unix called Mach which has a microkernel - the philosophy of which is minimize what is given privilege and put as much as you can into lower privilege user memory spaces. This includes stuff like file systems and hardware drivers. There are SOME kernel drivers but those are minimized and developers are strongly discouraged by Apple from writing kernel drivers. Usually you don't really have to unless you aren't a good programmer.\n\n* Sandboxing all apps so no app has direct memory access to any other apps memory or to kernel (OS) memory without going through special controlled interfaces. Every app lives in it own little virtual machine space where it has to ask \"Mother May I\" to do anything outside that space.\n\n* Declaration of what OS and hardware features you will use (disk, cameras, microphones, etc.) as part of the software BEFORE it's even accepted into the App Store. So you must declare what \"Mother May I\" questions you will EVER ask before start coding or submitting your app to the Apple Store\n\n* Having fairly tough guidelines on what can or can not be in the App Store. For example you can't just say \"I want to access all things all the time\" in the above credentials - that's not allowed and your App will be rejected if you try to do that.\n\n* Curating and reviewing every App to assure they meet the guidelines and rules\n\nStrictly some bad stuff that can still wiggle through but compared to Windows or Android or Linux, it's fairly minimal. This is part of why malware species are several orders of magnitude (1 order = 10x, 2 orders = 100x, etc.) higher on Wintel than Mac or iOS.",
"Who wants to write malware when you could just build an app where a user pays you for the privledge of giving you all their personal data.",
"The viruses are too big to enter the phones\nPhones move around constantly, so the remaining viruses fall off .",
" They arent.\n\nPeople tend to replace their phone every year or 2 and buy top quality phones.\n\nGet a $200 phone or keep your phone for 5 years.\n\nYou will see",
"This is an excellent question OP and I am going to try to offer a partial answer - on security in phones. For a start, any mobile device which has a CPU, RAM, an OS, and an ability to connect with other devices is at risk. \n\nThis includes, cell phones, tablets, some cameras, some in car systems, etc. Those devices are not inherently resistant to security threats but are less of a target for some kinds of attacks (e.g. large scale malware and ransomware) because the people who initiate the attacks normally want to be paid and they can't make much by infecting or encrypting data on a phone (that is changing). \n\nAs well, people on phones tend to use apps much more than Web services, and so they are less prone to downloaded malware and some other kinds of attacks. However, phones are much more prone to phishing (email, text, MMS) of all types as phone users tend to take security less seriously than they should and often respond to phishing attempts without thinking it over. \n\nThe fact that most phones ship without security apps is a part of the problem, but the constant use of social media, texting, Cloud and other services from phones is really the bigger issue. People on phones often inter-mix personal data (useful to criminals for things like more phishing attacks, fraud, black mail, etc.) with work data (valuable to intellectual property thieves, corporate spies, nation state actors, etc.). Those people know that an average person is likely to have both types of data on their phone (e.g. business emails sent to the phone, docs stored from work via the phone, into a Cloud folder). \n\nSo, phones are a target and they are under attack. Most of the time, attackers want your data. That is worth more to them than the phone (some exceptions apply). They are less of a target for **some** kinds of attacks but the threats that are on the rise include:\n\n* phishing (as mentioned);\n* Social engineering (convincing users to share sensitive or private information with another person through manipulation);\n* Surveillance of the user and their location/transactions/shared contacts, etc. via text monitoring, audio tagging, metadata collection, GPS, and a lot more. Much surveillance is done because the user agreed to terms of service without understanding them. Some is done by malicious actors though. \n* Malware (on the rise, including to take control of the phone for things like crypto mining)\n* Malicious WiFi hotspots (someone puts up a hotspot so phone users will connect, and then scans their communications looking for something they can steal/use).\n\nComputers are prone to the same stuff, except that most PCs come with built-in security features, especially under Windows 10 and Mac OS X and from Intel (another whole story) and a lot of users install and run Anti-malware software, a basic firewall, etc. to help secure the PC. PCs get hit far more often than phones and the numbers are staggering, so manufacturers tend to take security seriously (e.g. Microsoft).\n\nThe protections in place on phones are unique though as follows:\n\n1. Apple implements security in iOS (running apps in controlled and secure \"sandboxes\"), uses encryption widely to protect user data (e.g. in iMessage) and in hardware (built in encryption hardware, etc. In a nutshell, Apple iOS is a closed system and that makes it much harder for attackers to figure out the inner workings and then plan/launch attacks\n2. Android, as an OS also forces apps to run in a controlled sandbox, runs a hardened kernel (the \"core\" of the OS). and support a bunch of encryption options (some run w/o user notice). Android is implemented on a ton of different hardware though and so things like device access hardware, file segregation, absence of bloatware, provision of security apps, and lots of other things is down the the phone manufacturer (e.g. Samsung) and some do security well (OnePlus) and some don't (you can google that :)\n3. Both also provide tools to find lost/stolen phones, lock the phone, check that apps are signed and from a known source, block apps, protect OS files, etc \n\nThings start to break down if:\n\n1. Users jailbreak their phone\n2. Side load apps from unknown sites (i.e. not Apple or Google)\n3. Don't use a password, facial recog., thumb print or SOMETHING to lock the phone\n4. Share their device with others who may not be careful and diligent about security of YOUR phone and data\n\nAll of those things put your phone at greater risk. \n\nA few tips on what you can do to improve phone security:\n\n1. Set up a phone login and use a strong PIN or password or switch to biometrics...(at least 8 characters for a PIN)\n2. Turn on phone tracing in case it is lost or stolen\n3. BACK-UP important info (e.g. contacts) from the phone to a PC or into the Cloud in case you need to restore it later\n4. Password protect any Cloud accounts with a strong (like 12+ characters) password\n5. Install a password vault so you do NOT save passwords in something like Note or EverNote (bad idea and password vaults are free or cheap)\n6. Install **all** vendor patches and updates, especially if they say \"Security enhancements\". This is a big issue in Android. Many vendors (looking at you Google) don't offer support for older phones. So, people who can't afford a new phone every 2-3 years are prone to newer attacks (because...no patches)\n7. Install anti-malware apps and set them up to auto scan apps, incoming data, etc\n8. Only install apps from reputable sources and check the security/privacy settings for all apps. If you are done with an app or have suspicions about how it is behaving (often hard to know), consider deleting it\n9. Don't use social media apps on the phone. Seriously, they all suck and all (especially some in the news lately) take your data ALL the time\n10. Read up on your phone's security features and apply those you understand (if not sure, read more)\n\nAll of this applies to phones and tablets. Also, I know I didn't fully answer your question so it comes down to this \"more attacks on PCs, because they are data rich and may provide a pay day so vendors offer more security some built in and some you buy\"...but things with phones are getting worse and because phones are the gateway to much more (Cloud, remote to home, banking, etc.) they must be secured. Long post, but I hope this helps. :) ",
"Most phones lock you down to only using their app store to acquire applications. The app stores are fairly secure and keep malicious software off of it. On a desktop, you have the option to get applications from anywhere you like. This can be a security issue if you're not careful. I believe Windows has made huge strides though and have added steps in preventing you from installing malicious software.",
"If you restrict what the user can do, then the user doesn't have the opportunity to break something.\n\nConsider this. If you went to Mcdonalds, and you were the only customer and you ordered a cheeseburger, the Mcdonalds (operating system) is very efficient at giving you what you ordered. Now if you added more features, like letting the customer pick what they can have on that cheeseburger, there's a chance that mcdonalds might get it wrong. \n\nNow if you had the customer order 15+ things on the menu and they ask for customization on all 15+ things, then you have even more chance of getting something wrong. \n\nBecause the customer is asking for so many things, let's say now you give the customer the ability to pour his own soda to speed things up and the customer drains all of the flavored syrup in the machine and now you can't get soda anymore.\n\nAnd because you're a Mcdonalds, you need to not just serve that one customer, but you may need to add customization for hundreds/thousands/millions of customers, you start allowing for a whole range of customization, well chances are somethign will go wrong.\n\nOn that note, it's dinner time and I'm going to Mcdonalds.",
"Ontop of other good answers \nThere are mainly only 2 main os for computers\nSo a programmer only has to make a few version to work and infect.\nFor phones their is ios and to many versions of android with each device having their own versions",
"Microsoft doesnt really care about the quality of their software, they have been a rent seeking company for a while now, and any change has to make a direct profit in order to maximize shareholder value. When a tech company is run by accountants its easy for competition to creep up which can do a much better job using modern practices.\n\nThey could have implemented virus scanning when downloading and opening a file like Google does, or allow third party software repos, or a number of things; they just dont care because it doesnt make them any more money, its just another job to cut in order to improve dividends.",
"How I thought it worked, was because fewer people were making viruses and bugs for phones. On top of that you have to download entire apps most of the time, which are controlled. Sure you can download files straight to your phone, but you need an app to read them. Most phones come with a photo viewer type app, and a music listener app, but I wish I could just read some epubs.",
"Your computer is a big outside sandbox that has one section for you and all the kids play in. If one of the other kids wanted they could put something in your sandbox of your not skilled enough to realize. This could destroy your sand castle.\nMobile devices are sandboxes that are made of plastic and lifted off the ground, additionally you have to play without actually touching the sand. Other kids cant put things in your sandbox because they can't touch it either.\n\nAs far as exploits go the big sandboxes that are all connected and just sectioned off, the owner has complete control over and could have his sand be destroyed if he makes the wrong friends. \nThe small off the ground secure sandbox is watched by your dad, he won't let you, or your friends destroy it. ",
"Your phone is more like an appliance (or multiple) than it is a computer. It’s always on, you use the screen to enter data (like a calculator or microwave). \nThe apps you install are carefully controlled by Apple A you only download stuff they’ve approved and that goes a long way to limiting risk. \nLike appliances which have been perfected over many years, the phone components and code inside have been perfected. This also means any risks have largely been addressed. \n\nYour pc is a bigger, more complex machine that can do a lot more than your phone and has many more ways to install code, and gives the user a lot more control to mess with it. Hence there is more risk. ",
"Let me **answer you with a question**:\n\n**When was the last time you installed a program on your computer that \"requested\" permissions for its functionality?** When did the program ask to read a file, to access settings, mess with the registry, run in the background, open windows, interrupt your work or similar? Probably never, right? You might get the \"You need administrative permissions\" popup once in a while, but that's it.\n\nIf you think about that observation you will realize it: while there are other factors, the truth is mobile operating systems[1] are built with much tighter restrictions on what their applications can do, and when. If you limit how much your application can do, you have a much easier time making sure it has no ill intentions.\n\nIn practice, and in slightly greater detail, applications built for the smartphone are really \"locked down\". For example, they can't see each other's files on iOS. It seems mind-boggling, but if you think about it, why should Windows Media Player have access to my word documents? On a mobile OS, apps can barely interact with one another -- and that's a good thing. That way they can't ill-intentionally get in each other's ways either.\n\nThis is a very simplified explanation and it lightly ignores other excellent things mentioned in this thread, but I thought that bringing this other question to you might help get the overall picture.\n\n[1] The Operating System (OS) is like the \"main program\" that commands other programs and gives them important functionality. Windows, MacOS, (GNU/)Linux, iOS, Android, etc.",
"To help. Lets start with a simple explanation.\n\nEverything is software utilizing hardware. All malware (virus) is just another application. The applications purpose is typically something unwanted.\n\nCrashes can be software (typically due to bugs) or hardware (possibly due to heat or component failure).\n\nThat being said: Over the years security features have been added into operating systems. Many of these features prevent installation of software without consent. One of the big issues with Windows is the fact that they keep legacy support. So even though they have the newer features by default they leave all the old unprotected stuff available for compatibility. \n\nPhone OS's were created at a point where viruses vectors are very well known. They were built taking these possibilities into consideration. Additionally, the delivery of new software to your phones is in controlled repositories. If you just randomly started downloading apps off of random sites the amount of malware on your phone would increase.\n\nTo sum it up: Hand-held computers running \"mobile\" OS's were created at a point in time when the technology was already long-in-the-tooth.",
"Because mobile OS (iOS and Android) were built in the 2000's with security in mind from the start. Unlike Windows and MacOS, where almost all users have permission to permanently modify the OS, mobile phones use the principal of least privilege [_URL_0_](_URL_1_), or, at least, a close approximation of it.\n\nIn addition to restricting what users can do, mobile OS's restrict what applications can do. They can't modify other applications, they can't (easily) change the underlying OS. They're allowed to change their own data, and, with permission, change your photos, call history, music library, etc.",
"In a normal computer, all your applications, by default, have access to all your files (and also the microphone and camera). Separating them is extremely rare, because, well, mainly because that's how it's always been.\n\nUnder Windows and OSX, you also typically obtain your software by downloading it from the software vendors web site.\n\nOn a phone, every app gets its own sandbox to play in (yes, that's actually the technical term). Also, the system will not let them access certain things like the camera without you giving permission. That means that even if you download malware, it can't really do much: It can't access data stored by other apps, access your camera etc. (Unless it manages to break out of the sandbox, which is not easy and requires an unpatched security issue in the sandbox.)\n\nYou also can't (easily) download random software off the Internet - and putting malware into the Play/Apple store means that Google/Apple *might* find it before you can infect many users (though the reviews are no guarantee!) This makes the initial infection much harder, since the attacker can't just tell you an ad telling you to download the newest flash player.\n\nAdditionally, the sandbox concept, combined with the fact that each phone has its own specific operating system and all phones of that type are exactly identical, means that it's very easy to know what the state outside of the sandboxes is supposed to look like. Thus, the phone can be built to make it very hard to change anything outside, making it harder for the malware to break out of its sandbox (and stay alive there even when the phone reboots). An operating system for a PC has to run on many different configurations of hardware, the user will install low-level drivers, and everything messes with everything, which makes it really hard to tell which changes were supposed to happen, and which ones were done by something malicious.\n\n\nNothing technical (aside from the driver issue that could be worked around) stops you from building an operating system for computers that works like the one on phones, except that it will be unknown, nobody will use it because it has no apps, and nobody will write apps for it because nobody uses it... there are attempts to make this work with existing software, but there isn't enough demand for secure solutions to make them work well, and the ones that build them typically target the ultra-paranoid, which results in very secure solutions that are impossible to use for the average person, eat lots of resources, don't allow you to do many things, etc.",
"They're no more resistant to bugs or viruses than compared to a computer, there's just less of an interest currently in exploiting them because it's harder and the payoffs are harder to make happen automatically.\n\nThey crash less because the people who built the hardware part of the phones also build the software that talks to the hardware (this is called a driver). This way the OS doesn't do anything the hardware can't handle and vice-versa. Your apps still crash more frequently than you'd probably believe, but they're way better at recovering from it.\n\nEventually I'm sure there will be a worm that spreads from phone to phone and scans for photos with a lot of skin in them. After that there will be one that tries to use your online banking apps in the background. Really it's just way harder to do that than install a bitcoin miner.",
"As someone who works in tech support for a cell provider my opinion is it's not that they are resistant, they are just way better at hiding it. Usually by the time any crashes or viruses become noticeable to the user the damage to the OS is already done and you have to wipe/reinstall the OS ",
"Viruses target industry. Why would you build a virus for Joe schmo using his phone to call the kids and use Google maps to get to the restaurant in the neighboring city.\n\nNo, viruses are built to target sensitive data such as military contractor designs and strategies, a law firms data, a companies patented information, etc. That stuff is stored in computers, not phones. Joe schmo using his windows computer to email the kids and check his fantasy football team is collateral damage because computer viruses are built and released. Joe schmos phone isn't collateral damage because there's not nearly as much to be gained from a virus in a cell phone, so there's less viruses out there for there to be collateral damage.",
"Phones don't need viruses, the users ignorantly installs apps that do anything the creator wants. Steal photos, turn on the camera, steal contacts, screenshots, keylogger, etc.\n\nEvery app you install has access to every part of your phone. There is really no need for most viruses. Even so, most every phone out there is compromised in some way.",
"Because the only place you can really download apps is from the App Store on an iPhone. Androids have more sources easily accessible which is why they’re more susceptible to viruses.\n\nThere’s nothing special about a Mac that makes it less likely to get a virus. It’s a combination of people having interest to develop a virus, and people actually downloading them.",
"It all comes down to the fact that Phones and desktops run different Operating Systems. I agree that a controlled environment for apps is a factor like others have pointed out. But it mostly depends on how well the vendors have tested their OS. The virus part heavily depends on how lucrative it is for hackers.\n\nAnd it can also be the other way round. For example I've got a Android phone with LineageOS and an Arch Linux Desktop. I need Anti-Virus Software for my phone, but not for my PC. And my phone crashes much more often than my desktop.",
"If you're on Android, they absolutely aren't.\n\nThe only thing safer about a phone than a PC is that the average user is less likely to mess something up with random app installations thanks to the existence of a curated app store. ",
"For simplicity's sake. Different operating systems need diiferent code to infect. Just like H1N1 doesn't infect slugs. Or if you speak a different language you can't manipulate someone.",
"Computers are designed to let you download any program that alters it in any way you want. Phones aren't. The apps you downloaded are meant to have very limited uses, and the ones you download from the store are specifically vetted.",
"Imagine a computer and an iPhone are like houses. \n\nYou only want to let your friends in, right? You don’t want bullies getting in so you? \n\nWell, if you have a house with 20 doors, you’d have to run around very fast to stop all the bad guys getting in! By the time you close one door, you have people coming though another! This gives the bad guys a better chance of getting into our house! \n\nBut.. if you only have 1 door, you can sit there all day, making sure only friends are allowed in! \n\nYour iPhone is the house with 1 door\nYour PC is a house with 20 doors\n\nThe PC = a house, is often a useful metaphor for teaching kids about computers.\n\nJust a good way to introduce the PC as an entity with access points, how there are good and bad connections, how certain people have access to certain rooms, and how mom (admin) is in charge and makes the decisions and can go in any room, regardless of whether it’s hers. Etc \n\nI find metaphors work well with kids, find something they know about already and draw parallels. "
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4y27lj | what exactly are laminar and turbulent flows and how are they utilized by swimmers? | I know that a laminar flow follows a smooth path where none of the molecules disrupt each other's path and that turbulent is where the path isn't smooth and so little whirlpool type-things occur in the fluid but i don't really understand how they work and how they are used by swimmers. I didn't think the swimmer could decide if the pool is going to be turbulent or not. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y27lj/eli5_what_exactly_are_laminar_and_turbulent_flows/ | {
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"The swimmer doesn't control the pool, of course, they only control their body. The water in the pool isn't flowing, if you take the people out it becomes quite still.\n\nRather, the swimmer is moving through the water, and water is flowing around their body. Good technique tries to keep that flow laminar, watch particularly the underwater kicks after a flip turn. In previous Olympics they allowed swimmers to wear suits made of a special fabric that repelled water, further reducing their flow resistance, but that's no longer permitted.\n\nSince their body can only produce a certain amount of energy, the goal of good technique is to convert as much of that energy as possible into motion. That means wasting as little of it as possible producing turbulence.\n\nOther swimmers produce some turbulence, and waves reflect off the walls. That's why swimmers prefer the middle lanes of the pool, the reflection effect is the least. Putting the fastest times there allows the fastest swimmers to face more uniform, calm water."
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55aeh7 | what does crossing the co2 levels crossing 440ppm mean for the rest of us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55aeh7/eli5_what_does_crossing_the_co2_levels_crossing/ | {
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"While warming isn't an instant concern, ocean acidification is very much a concern. Many of the simpler organisms (that form the basis of food webs) in the ocean form shells by precipitating calcium from the water. Changes in pH alter their ability to do this.\n\nSource: Ph. D in environmental chemistry and employed as an ocean chemistry researcher.",
"The runaway greenhouse gas effect is real and quite unpredictable. Many scientists believe that the more CO2 that exists in the atmosphere, the more difficult to sink (or eliminate) it will be--hence the \"runaway\" aspect. The last major extinction event was the Permian Triassic extinction. There was increase in average global temperature of approximately 10 degrees C and an increase in CO2 to 2000 ppm over 1,000 to 10,000 years. Compare that with what we have today: 1 degree C temp increase and an increase in CO2 from 280 ppm to 400 ppm over 150 years and you will have a sense of where we are in terms of a possible extinction. Remember that this pace is accelerating so those increases are weighted on recent years suggesting an even more concerning situation. Now there are many things that are different from the time of the Permian-Triassic in terms of kinds of life in the ocean and on land. \n\nThe only other point that I will make is that CO2 is a major issue but only one gas that is responsible for global warming. Modern technology might be able to sink it but we are a ways off of that with energy being the primary constraint--building lots of solar panels or nuclear power reactors would take a lot of power--coal, oil and nature gas. \n\nI studied this stuff about ten years ago and there has been a lot of new information so I encourage you to do your own research. There are many theories about what caused the Permian Triassic extinction and no one knows for sure. ",
"why dont we just plant as many plants as possible? deforestation hurts a lot. Wont that help solve this?",
"150 million bangladeshis will lose their homes and land: almost the entire nation will be permanently flooded. If you feel like you are affected by immigration or refugees now, try to imagine where these desperate people will end up being resettled. \n\n400ppm makes the flooding of Bangladesh certain. The only uncertainty is timeframe. We have no current idea how to reverse sea-rise; it is probably spectacularly difficult. Bangladesh is only the most obvious problem. 1 billion people will eventually lose their current owned land to sea-rise, most of the largest cities on Earth are on the coast.",
"I always thought scientists thought less than 350 ppm was ideal a that over 400 ppm begins the \"we may not be able to reverse this\" area. \n\nBy the way, if you want to see what the level was the year of your birth, you can find it here (through 1997, anyway). It really shows you how quickly it's been increasing. That sheet was part of an awareness campaign where people got their birth year ppm tattooed as a reminder. \n\n_URL_0_ ",
"it means the rich will get richer while polluting more, and you will be stuck with the clean up bill to fix their F ups.\n\nA prime example of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.",
"I think we should fund research groups to see who could grow genetically modified trees. The goal would be to see who could grow the best tree to absorb the most carbon out of the air. \n",
"Nothing. Your kids and grandkids can sort it out. They were talking deforestation and climate change and the ozone thirty years ago and did nothing. I advocated solar energy and was laughed at. Fuck em all now. I don't care. ",
"Realistic question. I live in a more rural state, where we have just experienced our third \"100+\" year flood since 1993. Which has not happened in the time people have kept records in this state. \n\nTornados have gotten far more frequent and more powerful in my state, including a relatively recent F5 which really screwed things up. Far more frequent than ever recorded in this state. \n\nAdditionally it is getting warmer every year that I have been alive, and as long as we have kept records in this state. \n\nWe are not currently experiencing negative population growth, but we don't grow much .5 percent most recently. \n\nIf this is -not- related to climate change, what is driving it? ",
"I have a CO2 sensor I use for work and I keep it calibrated. In the center of the city of Los Angeles it is 390ppm. This is the largest car market in the world, with the worst traffic in America. \n\nSomeone care to explain this?",
"Stop having fucking kids for atleast 15 years. Let everything catch up.\n\nIt will creat jobs. Bring down inflation. Let water and food supplies catch up.\n\nSome much of this is caused by too many fucking humans ",
"We're going to have to kill off half the human population on Earth to survive. Preferably the half that don't believe in climate change.",
"350 ppm used to be the line in the sand.\n\n\"In her speech \"The World's Tipping Point\"[1], Bianca Jagger states “the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 ppm.\" and quotes the report \"The Economics of 350: The Benefits and Costs of Climate Stabilization\" by Stephen J. DeCanio, Eban Goodstein, Richard B. Howarth, Richard B. Norgaard and Catherine S. Norman, stressing \" the need for immediate, direct intervention\".\"\n\nThen it was 400 ppm.\n\n\"No, there’s no huge tipping point where 399 ppm would have been A-OK but now 400 is climate apocalypse. It’s not like that. Four hundred is just another number we really didn’t want to reach. Four hundred was a place that some optimistic folks thought, if we all really pulled together, we could get our carbon emissions to level off. The models where everyone immediately quit dumping any carbon into the atmosphere would have meant a net global temperature increase of “only” a couple degrees Celsius.\"\n\nNow it's something higher than that.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Eli5, what does your title mean?",
"ONE comment i want to make which i didnt read in this thread regards population control. Does anyone think making it against the law or making it prohibited to have more than two children is a bad thing... Sure us Americans like to think we can do whatever the hell we want and that should most certainly not be a law, but in this case... I don't think the world can accept an ever growing rate. Even at this population, much of the world has issues with resources. I do read that the average # of children per family in western worlds is under 2.5 and places like africa and non industrialized areas is much higher. My point still stands though",
"A lot of nice-ety answers in here. Sometimes the truth is bleaker than we'd like to admit. \nPart of being an adult is accepting our dilemmas and trying to attack it head on, applying directly to the forehead, head on, applying directly to the forehead, head on, applying directly to the forehead.",
"Is there any way that I can detect the co2 ppm at home? ",
"Ironic isn't it. There's been an end of the world predicted on many occasions by psychics or religious folks and they all get talked about.\n\nNow one comes along that scientists finally agree with, it's just about preventable *maybe*, and nobody gives enough of a shit to stop it.\n\n_URL_0_",
"I have ice in my glass. The ice melts but the water remains at the same level. Why isn't this going to be the same for the ice caps?",
"nothing because we are paying lip service and don't give a fuck. \n\npeople like to jump the gun and criticized industry and government for current state, however they are the actual cause of CO2 levels raising. a polluters with lower selling price vs a responsible manufacturer with higher selling price; time and time again we will always buy from polluter and criticized polluter for polluting and responsible manufacturer for outrageous price. we are not buying green products thus there isn't green products; what a surprise right? seriously how retarded can they be? \n\nthat's a fact of life no amount of down vote will change. ",
"From what I've read on everything but Facebook, it's quite a big deal, but it's not a major issue.\n\nIt's absolutely ridiculous the clickbait articles I'm reading on Facebook \"Say Goodbye to Planet Earth - It's Time To Panic!\" with a photo of a meteor for some reason as well.\n\nApparently 440ppm is an average for CO2? That might not be true, but people need to relax a little. The WORST case scenario would take effect in about 300 years.",
"Means absolutely fuckin nothing will change for us proles is what it means. World will continue going to shit, and no, you don't have a say in it.\n\nChoke on the garbage you consume and die, as the men in glass towers demand. Elon musk is building their escape mechanism so they don't have to live with the filth.",
"Electricity should have been the base of study as opposed to combustion. We would have never had this problem to begin with.",
"440 ppm better not happen for another 20 to 40 years because that will be entering the runaway effect. There is a NOAA CO2 monitor station on Mauna Loa and it went over 400 ppm just last year, now approaching 403 ppm. The amount of CO2 and methane being trapped at the surface is increasing rapidly now. Over the next few years, if the density increases even faster, then expect to start seeing dramatic effects around the globe. In some areas, it will seem like an improvement, vegetation growing further north with more temperate climate areas, like the north Canada forests. But the drought band around the equator is going to widen, the oceans get more acid, more conducive environments for toxic acids, fungus, amoebas. Trying to slow down chaotic global warming and chaotic climate change is like trying to brake an oil tanker going at full speed or diverting an asteroid headed for Earth. It has to be done early, no way to recover from too late.",
"That just reducing CO2 emissions is no longer sufficient.\n\nWe need to start finding ways to scrub the CO2. And fast.",
"It means we are quickly running out of time to enact the changes to carbon emissions needed to prevent more than 2 degrees C of warming since the start of the industrial revolution. This threshold is widely accepted the \"safe\" amount of warming where any benefits of a warmer planet are quickly overwhelmed by the problems. These include but are not limited to more drought, more wildfires and longer wildfire seasons, more extreme rainfall events due to increased atmospheric moisture availability, coral reef bleaching or loss, rising sea levels and coastal flooding, etc etc etc. The list of disruptions gets really long past that warming point and the poorest and the lowest lying nations are impacted disproportionately more than the rich but everyone will have real noticeable climate impacts. - On Camera Meteorologist, The Weather Channel\n\nAddition: This value is important at this time of year because it is typically the minimum point for atmospheric carbon, as the growing season ends in the northern hemisphere and the trees stop using as much carbon. The southern hemisphere is entering spring, but has significantly less land than the north and so the balance is for September to be the minimum. As we continue to emit carbon, there is no clear reason that we will ever be lower than this amount again without new technology and mitigation.\n\nEdit: Gold! Thanks Reddit person! Maybe we can set up a climate and weather AMA with a panel of experts if people have more questions about this (hopefully after Hurricane Matthew is gone)\n\nEdit 2: Obviously lots of interest here but I'm off to bed for now. Thank you so much for all the questions and the kindness so many of you showed. Remind me to get that AMA going in a couple weeks and we (me with some other poor saps from different parts of the weather and climate fields that I convince to join in) will try to tackle more of your questions, otherwise I'm around here, twitter, Facebook, tv, etc if the questions can't wait until then!",
"In the worst case scenario, we roughly have 300 years to deal with the problem.\n\nThere's a logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temperature. \n\nThe papers below predict that every doubling in CO2 will cause anywhere from a 0.3 C increase to 2.3 C increase. There's no consensus on how bad the problem is, only that CO2 causes warming. \n\n_URL_1_ \n\nUsing CO2 growth rates from the past 50 years, we can estimate a 1.4 ppm / year increase in CO2. That gives us 300 years in the worst case, which is more than enough time to convert to better energy sources than coal, or improvise solutions to reduce the atmospheric concentration.\n\n\n\n\n\nEdit: Updated with links. Please follow etiquette and don't down-vote for disagreeing.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n\n\nHere's a few papers with no consensus on how many degrees each doubling of CO2 will produce in temperature change.\n\nThe short-term influence of various concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide on the temperature profile in the boundary layer\n(Pure and Applied Geophysics, Volume 113, Issue 1, pp. 331-353, 1975)\n- Wilford G. Zdunkowski, Jan Paegle, Falko K. Fye\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +0.5 °C\n\nQuestions Concerning the Possible Influence of Anthropogenic CO2 on Atmospheric Temperature\n(Journal of Applied Meteorology, Volume 18, Issue 6, pp. 822-825, June 1979)\n- Reginald E. Newell, Thomas G. Dopplick\n\n* Reply to Robert G. Watts' \"Discussion of 'Questions Concerning the Possible Influence of Anthropogenic CO2 on Atmospheric Temperature'\"\n(Journal of Applied Meteorology, Volume 20, Issue 1, pp. 114–117, January 1981)\n- Reginald E. Newell, Thomas G. Dopplick\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +0.3 °C\n\nCO2-induced global warming: a skeptic's view of potential climate change\n(Climate Research, Volume 10, Number 1, pp. 69–82, April 1998)\n- Sherwood B. Idso\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +0.4 °C\n\nRevised 21st century temperature projections\n(Climate Research, Volume 23, Number 1, pp. 1–9, December 2002)\n- Patrick J. Michaels, Paul C. Knappenberger, Oliver W. Frauenfeld, Robert E. Davis\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +1.9 °C\nObservational estimate of climate sensitivity from changes in the rate of ocean heat uptake and comparison to CMIP5 models\n(Climate Dynamics, April 2013)\n- Troy Masters\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +1.98 °C\n\nA fractal climate response function can simulate global average temperature trends of the modern era and the past millennium\n(Climate Dynamics, Volume 40, Issue 11-12,pp. 2651-2670, June 2013)\n- J. H. van Hateren\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +1.7-2.3 °C\n\nAn objective Bayesian, improved approach for applying optimal fingerprint techniques to estimate climate sensitivity\n(Journal of Climate, Volume 26, Issue 19, pp. 7414-7429, October 2013)\n- Nicholas Lewis\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +1.6 °C\n\nThe Potency of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as a Greenhouse Gas\n(Development in Earth Science, Volume 2, pp. 20-30, 2014)\n- Antero Ollila\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +0.6 °C\n\nThe role of ENSO in global ocean temperature changes during 1955–2011 simulated with a 1D climate model\n(Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 50, Issue 2, pp. 229-237, February 2014)\n- Roy W. Spencer, William D. Braswell\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +1.3 °C\n\nOtto, Alexander, et al. \"Energy budget constraints on climate response.\" Nature Geoscience 6.6 (2013): 415-416.\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +1.9 °\n\nA minimal model for estimating climate sensitivity\n(Ecological Modelling, Volume 276, pp. 80-84, March 2014)\n- Craig Loehle\n\nClimate Sensitivity: +1.99 °\n\n\n",
"I'm not sure if you meant to type 440, or if you meant 400 since that has been in the news lately. Recent reports are that average global CO2 concentrations have been over 400 ppm for the last month. This is just a mile marker on the way to more climate change.\n\nI haven't heard of anyone talking about 440 ppm CO2, but it may have come up because of recent climate change agreements with the goal of limiting global warming to less than 2.5°C over pre-industrial levels. According to the IPCC [executive summary](_URL_0_) this would require keeping CO2 concentrations between 400 and 440 ppm and global CO2 emissions would have to start decreasing before the year 2020.",
"So, it's not has horrible as many make it out to be. \n\nFirst, this is the limit at which reducing CO2 no longer is enough to prevent the climate from changing from what it is now. \n\nThere is concern that the warming climate could lead to a run away effect that could kill us all. In reality it's nearly impossible for man, with our current technology, to actually cause such an effect. [We'd need to get to 30,000ppm](_URL_0_) CO2 before that will happen. \n\nWhat will happen however, is the climate will change from *what it is now* to something *different* The problem with this is that our current society has developed to deal with the climate as it is now. For example, Florida has developed the infrastructure to deal with flooding and hurricanes. New York has the same to deal with snow and nor'easters. Imagine if they traded weather problems? How well could each community deal with that? Now imagine we rejiggered the entire planet? Bad times. \n\nAnd as far as scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere goes. It's easy. We already know how to do it... we're very good at putting it in after all. The reverse isn't much harder. The hard part is, figuring out how to power it all. It will take about as much energy to scrub it as was created to put it there in the first place so... yea... lots of power. So if we figure out fusion and get lots of cheap, free energy? We're good to go.\n\nSo, not likely to be the end of the world. But a total pain in the ass. We have to hope tomorrows technology will save us from today's technology. ",
"One thing to remember: we're in an ice age right now. A warm cycle of an ice age, but an ice age nonetheless. When this ice age eventually ends there will be no or virtually no ice at the poles. Whether or not you believe in man-driven climate change is ultimately largely meaningless: the planet will warm and we will exit this ice age. We may cause it to happen a hell of a lot sooner than it would have naturally, but end it will.\n\n[There have been 5 major ice ages in Earth's history](_URL_0_) (in blue)\n\nAs you can see, for the vast majority of Earth's history the planet was not in an ice age.\n\nI bring this up because, as far as the planet is concerned and life overall, it will be fine regardless if we speed up the end of this ice age. Some species will die out. Likely many. Maybe even most. Eventually others will evolve and diversify to take over the empty niches. Life will go on.\n\nThe question is, will we continue on as well?\n\nMankind really started evolving technologically during a cold period of the current ice age and then flourished exponentially under the current warm spell. Whether or not humans continue warming the planet or not eventually the ice age will end entirely and the planet will return to its default state.\n\nChanges to expect as the planet warms:\n\nHigher sea levels. This will, of course, have catastrophic effects on coastal cities and countries. They will have to be abandoned whole-sale. Gradually, probably over a couple of generations, but abandoned nonetheless.\n\nChanged weather patterns. This is actually the most insidious problem. I'm not talking about extreme weather events though they will increase in frequency, I'm talking about permanent changes to local and global climates. The gulf stream, the jet stream, all current ocean currants and air patterns will change. This will reshape all ecosystems world-wide in unpredictable manners. \n\nPlaces accustom to generous rainfall may dry up and vice-versa. This will change the shape and face of agriculture and food production on a global level. In the short term it may mean mass starvation as rich, fertile farmlands dry up and blow away. New rainfall in new places will help those areas become the new bread baskets but they will not initially have the infrastructure nor land conditions conductive to feeding billions of people. It will take a LOT of work to convert these areas into productive food-generating farmland.\n\nOn the plus side, a *hell* of a lot of land will become usable. All of those cold northern/northern ends of countries: northern Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, Siberia, Russia... They will become usable for more than just remote outposts for oil companies and small native villages. In fact, these are the most likely places for the new breadbaskets for the world. Not to mention the entire continent of Antarctica becoming human-inhabitable.\n\nPlans to settle and convert these extreme latitude, currently uninhabitable regions is where we will have to eventually focus as a species whether or not we get the human-induced climate change under control.\n\nAnd even with the best of plans there will be significant loss. \n\nEcologically, entire ecosystems will have to adapt or die. Probably mostly the later, because organisms already adept at surviving in the coming conditions will largely exist in lower latitudes and simply begin migrating and expanding into these new, now-hospitable environments. This will cause strong selective pressures to be exerted on both the native and invading species and we're likely to see diversification in the long run.\n\nEconomically, this will break nations. All of the island-states will be gone. The economic centers of the continental nations are mostly located on the coasts and will be destroyed. The cost of relocating and rebuilding cities inland will be crippling. Water, already a critical issue in many areas of the planet, will become critical globally. Many regions now depend on winter snow melt to feed into the water-supply networks. When this ice age ends there won't be any winter snow, or at the very least, significantly less. On the plus side, rainfall will probably increase overall but it is impossible to say where. \n\nThere will be scarcity-driven wars, as well as wars to control the resources being made accessible as the northern and southern poles thaw.\n\nThis is the best-case scenario for humanity. The worst case is all this still happens and we ourselves ultimately fail to adapt and a wide-spread mass-extinction event is triggered. In a few million years maybe some new critter evolves to build a stone axe and starts the process all over again. Though probably never again as successfully as us because we humans have used up all the easy-to-reach resources required to get much past the bronze age.\n\nSo, should we work as hard as we can to stave off this inevitable future? Hell yes we should. Cut carbon emissions, develop sequestering tech, invest in alternative energy. The further along we get up the human tech tree before this cataclysm really gets rolling the better for us as a species. And if our leaders were smart we'd start laying the infrastructure for these changes today (ala moving cities and populations inland, building infrastructure, advancing food production technologies, researching teraforming principles). But we won't. We'll wait until its an actual emergency.\n\nEdit: spelling corrections mostly. Also, try commenting if you disagree.\n\nEdit2: wow, thanks for golds!\n"
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2lwcot | why can't all connections to websites be secure https connections? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lwcot/eli5_why_cant_all_connections_to_websites_be/ | {
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"Because for most web server connections, there's just no need. As a web server administrator, I won't enable https on pages unless there's authentication information or personally identifiable information involved.\n\nHTTPS has additional overhead per connection that's just not really worth it for most of the pages on my servers. That additional overhead isn't an issue for the end-user, because you won't miss that little bit of CPU time. But when it's on a web server, enabling SSL connections for everything means that you need a slightly bigger footprint per connection, which means fewer connections per server, which means more servers, which means more money.\n\nUnless the data, or the userbase demands it, it's not always the best solution for every page."
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20140n | why does my upper lip get dry and red every time i get sick? | I don't think it has to do only with the friction when I blow my nose, does it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20140n/eli5_why_does_my_upper_lip_get_dry_and_red_every/ | {
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"It does have quite a lot to do with that actually. The extra mucus creates a wet surface, rubbing it with tissue in such a manner as to wipe off the mucus is okay if that's a relatively rare thing. When it's a very frequent thing, the skin becomes irritated from all the friction caused by too much wiping.\n\nAnother problem, especially if you have a very stuffy nose, is breathing out of your mouth almost exclusively. This will also dry out your lips. So you have lips getting both extremes- dried out then wet then dry again. Delicate lip skin doesn't like all that. \n\nJust make sure you drink a lot of fluids, use some sort of lip stuff to help keep it most, and if your nose is running that bad, just shove a bit of tissue to plug it. "
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4fyna5 | why aren't there lice and bedbug epidemics everywhere? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fyna5/eli5_why_arent_there_lice_and_bedbug_epidemics/ | {
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"It's pretty rare for a bedbug to be active during the day. They're sneaky, so they don't like to come out if there's a chance they'll be seen. They also like targets that are motionless, since even if they're not seen they can still be crushed by accident if the target is active. Finally, each individual bug only feeds about once a week; it remains dormant for the rest of the time. \n\nYou do find them in movie theaters, since they're dark rooms with easy hiding spots and stationary humans to feed on. Bedbugs in movie theaters are actually a growing problem. But restaurants and other brightly-lit areas aren't the most hospitable spots for bugs, because the risk of being seen is high and their targets are decently active. Even if a few bugs did take root in a restaurant, most people probably wouldn't notice, because it takes so long for a colony to really reach epidemic levels, and once it did it would be noticed and exterminated.",
" There used to be. The biggest difference now is that we have effective insecticides and cleanliness. So people tend to kill these insects as soon as they are detected, before they have a chance to multiply to really large numbers.",
"There is a huge bedbug problem in Denver right now. It's not wide spread across the country so it can't be called an epidemic but it is enough of a problem here that it affects your apartment hunting process. I look up the bedbug report at every place I look at. More than half the time there will be a report of former bedbug problems and I run away as fast as I can. Once they are detected somewhere, it is very hard to completely eradicate them. A few always recede in the a wall or other small place and they just wait until it's safe again. "
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3xwy3x | why has the weather been so hot in north america? | It's going to be 68 degrees Fahrenheit on Christmas Eve. Why is it so hot? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xwy3x/eli5_why_has_the_weather_been_so_hot_in_north/ | {
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"I take it you're not from Southern California? It is FREEZING here. Sometimes it gets down to 55 degrees Freedom at night!\n\nSeriously though: On average global temps for 2015 appear to be the highest they've ever been, but really it's local influences that determine how unusual of a winter you may be having wherever you are located. El Nino on the North American West Coast, for example, has led to an unusually cold and wet winter here (relative for the region, at least).",
"So basically we have two semi rare (more irregular than rare) phenomenons happening at the same time. I'll try and keep it reaaaaaal simple. This year is a strong El Nino year which is caused when the Pacific has warmer than average water which results in warmer air. El Nino is a warm phase of the [El Nino Southern Oscillation] (_URL_0_) which cases warmer weather in the NE, MW, and NW while being colder and wetter in the SW and Mexico. On top of this we have a very strong [Arctic oscillation](_URL_1_) this year as well. Think of the Arctic oscillation as all the cold air spinning around the North pole keeping all the ice cold. When the oscillation is weaker some of this cold air seeps down into Canada and down to the USA making it colder; however, when it is stronger that air stays up there keeping the cold far north. \n\nThe combination of these two has made it a very mild winter so far for most of the US ",
"Come to Salt Lake, the past two weeks have been a winter wonderland. 16\" in my back yard and another foot expected over the course of the week."
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atfeoy | what is a simple linear regression model? | How can it be applied in the field of Economics? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atfeoy/eli5_what_is_a_simple_linear_regression_model/ | {
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"So to start out, a linear regression is when you take a series of data points and try to find the line of best fit (a straight line that is as close to every point as it can be). A linear regression can then be used to tell you if the data points have a tendency to go upwards (a positive slope) or if they trend downwards (a negative slope).\n\n\nSo let's abstract this, let's say I am at a shooting range and every day that I go I make 10 shots (scored either 0, 1, 2, or 3 each depending on where on the target I hit, a maximum of 30 points per day). Lets say the first day I shoot 12, the next day I shoot 13, the next day I shoot 11, then I shoot 15, then 14, then 13, then 17 and so on... It's very apparent as it sits that my shots are slowly getting better and that I am slowly shooting more accurately, and if we were to take the linear regression of this then we would see a line of best fit with a positive slope (meaning it's tending upwards)... However what if the data wasn't so clear?\n\nWhat if my scores were: 15, 13, 16, 11, 18, 15, 19, 13, 16\n\nWell it's still a positive slope but it's not as obvious that it was positive.\n\n\nNow let's take it into economics, my first thought of using a linear regression model in economics is in reference to stock.... In this if we were to look at a company that has very volatile stock (the price will quickly pick up and peak before dropping really fast and so on) you might not be able to easily tell (by looking at it) if it's on the incline or decline, so something you could do is take as many individual data points that you could from that stock and run a linear regression (given a certain timeframe, like you don't want it for all time necessarily, especially if the stock had survived a crash in the stock market like the 2008 crash).... The linear regression would tell you if the stock price is rising or falling, on a rising price you might be more inclined to buy the stock as then you could sell it for a higher price... On a decline you might be more inclined to sell the stock so you don't lose your value.\n\n\n\nThis is slightly simplified of how a linear regression works and how it is used in certain aspects of economics. ",
"First of all, stock markets use rolling 30 day averages to (kind of) do what you describe as a time-limited line of best fit.\n\nSecond of all, a simple linear regression is based certain assumptions about the data it summarizes- most notably that the data is in fact linear, and I'm pretty sure that is not a good assumption for the movement of stocks. There are analyses to determine a \"line of best fit\" when it's a curve rather than a line eg. loess regression though there are assumptions with that too.\n\nEconomics has a long history of mathematical and statistical analyses, so you are not wholly off track looking in that direction. However a simple linear regression is likely to often, if not always, be inappropriate for your data set, and way too simple to capture the complexity of the underlying data anyway.\n\nI admit I'm stronger in stats than economics, but as I understand it \"past results are no guarantee of future performance\" so even if you had a perfect regression, *tomorrow* might not follow the pattern..."
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6imw85 | why handmade products are more valuable than automatically made products? | Given that robots and machines are a hell of a lot more accurate, you'd have a near perfect item/product versus something that was hand made. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6imw85/eli5_why_handmade_products_are_more_valuable_than/ | {
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"Define \"valuable\"?\n\nIn terms of, slight reduction in quality for great reduction in price? Economies of scale. I can offer a widget for FAR less if I'm producing millions of them using robots and machines I already own versus hand-producing hundreds.",
"Machanical labour is cheaper than human labour. Also, poeple tend to appreciate things made by humans more because it has a sertain human touch.",
"There is supply and demand, with hand-made stuff taking longer per unit, they are more rare. They also tend to have a level of uniqueness since they aren't churned out with the exact same process. And some people simply value things knowing someone put a lot of time and effort into it.\n\nStill, it does depend on the product. If you need precision and a machine can do it better and cheaper than a person, the vast majority of customers will probably go with the machine-made product."
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1rhs2h | gluten | I heard this word for the first time a few years ago and now it's everywhere. Gluten-free this and gluten-free that. I hear people at restaurants asking if a dish is gluten-free. And gluten allergies?! Is this a real thing or made up? If it's real, why did I never hear about it until recently and how can so many people now be afflicted with something that seemingly arose out of the blue? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rhs2h/eli5gluten/ | {
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"It's a wheat protein. For most of us it is fine to eat. People with celiac disease are incapable of digesting it properly and thus it causes great gastric discomfort. It's become somewhat of a fad recently because a lot of people just decided if gluten is bad for some people it may be bad for them, and so they try not to eat it, despite being able to digest it.\n\nIt's only recently that we understood that gluten was causing these symptoms in people. Like autism the problem existed before we just didn't have a name for it.\n\n\nEdit: read the post under mine, he knows more than I do.",
"Gluten is a wonderful, magical protein that happens to be found in wheat (and a few other things). It is the protein that allows dough made from flour made from wheat to be all rubbery and elastic, which makes things like bread a whole lot easier.\n\nUnfortunately, some people are intolerant to gluten. This isn't an allergy, per se--allergies refer to a specific set of reactions (IIRC there are people who actually are allergic, but they are much more rare). However, these gluten intolerant individuals do have a valid medical reason why they should not eat gluten.\n\nThere are also lots of people who are always looking for the latest health trend, though. These are generally well-meaning people who are misguided. They typically have a friend of a friend who is gluten intolerant who had some great health benefits from cutting gluten out of their diet, so they figure they ought to take the \"healthy\" step and cut it out from their diet, too! This has all the logic of you getting transfusions when your friend has lost a lot of blood--getting a transfusion is a good move for them and has valid medical reasons, but it just doesn't make sense for you.\n\nYou haven't heard much about gluten intolerance because there simply hasn't been a lot of awareness until fairly recently. Suddenly people are going to their doctors with symptoms they had previously just dismissed and are getting checked out, and some of them really are intolerant. However, a good number are just hypochondriacs and still more simply misunderstand gluten. It's not some evil additive or a biological poison--it's just a part of wheat, and we've been eating it for millennia with no problem. ",
"My little brother has celiac disease. He's 14 now but I can remember him throwing his guys out several times over the years , even after he was diagnosed and my parents changed his diet. The thing is if something with gluten even touches his food he will throw up (so no dipping my chips in his dip). Some of the gluten food is healthier , but there is junk just like anything else , my older brother and I tried his food for him often before he would try it when younger and comment on how good it was no matter how bad it tasted just to make him feel normal and some what like this disease wasn't a curse. My mom has learned to cook several gluten free dishes which are good and several restauranrs like chick Fil a , moes , and Los Portales offer great gluten free menus. My mom often tells stories about how when he was age 2-3 he would throw up everything he are and quickly became malnourished with the big bell and small arms and legs and deep bags under his eyes. Took several blood test to actually figure out what it was. Lastly the fad in Hollywood has been a huge help to people with the disease , even if people think it is stupid "
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1bypbw | why do alcoholics stop drinking entirely instead of drinking less? | It's something I've never quite understood. I'm sorry if this seems offensive in any way, I'm just curious. Also not sure if this is true of all alcoholics, but I know it's the approach of AA, which is what you mostly hear about. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bypbw/eli5_why_do_alcoholics_stop_drinking_entirely/ | {
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"For some people, the best way to quit is not to think \"oh I am going to drink less\", as less is quite subjective and there is still a lot of temptation there, but instead to change your mind set entirely to \"I don't drink alcohol\". That way there is never a grey area of what to do, and it's easier to ignore because you can remind yourself that you just *don't do it*. Not that you shouldn't, but you *don't*.\n\nSome people really can cut back on their own, but for others the complete change of mindset works best.",
"Warning: typing in huge generalities.\n\nA lot of alcoholics can't \"drink less\" because it is an addiction. If they *start* there is a very reasonable fear (or behavioral pattern) that they can't/won't be able to stop again. It's easier to just eradicate the influence, lifestyle, and temptation completely. ",
"The more drunk you get, the easier it is to convince yourself that you can totally handle another drink (or anything else). And I think withdrawl is hardest to handle when it first starts.",
"In [the words of Leo McGarry](_URL_0_), \"The problem is I don't WANT a drink. I want TEN drinks.\"",
"People who are addicted are unable to stop at one, that's why they have a problem.",
"If I drank at all I'd probably be drunk every day by the end of the week.\n\n12 years sober.",
"Believe me, it's zero drinks or all of the drinks. \n\nIt's not necessarily alcoholics, though. I don't know many of those. I know a lot of people who abuse alcohol, though. You're ingesting something which ruins decision-making skills, plus feels really fun. The second one seems like a great idea, the third one feels like an AMAZING idea, and after that who even cares, keep going this is THE BESSSTTTT",
"\"Oh, I'll just have *one* cookie\" said Radiantsun before he devoured the entire box of Oreos.",
"Just to add to what everyone else said: this is a biochemical reaction inside the bodies of alcoholics. It's not a question of willpower. \n\nI quit a year ago. At my absolute lowest, if I had a drink, I couldn't stop until I drank every drop I could find. If that meant drinking the entire fifth of vodka and eight or nine beers on top of it, that's what would happen. It stops being a choice and becomes a physical need, like breathing.\n\nIn fact, people who have been alcoholic long enough actually can't quit without medical supervision, as the withdrawal can literally kill you (same as if you quit breathing).\n\nIt's not really known why some people become alcoholic and others don't, but once you cross that line, there's really no way to go back. You can be sober for twenty years, and one drink will have you downing a six pack every night within a few weeks. \n\nTL;DR it's a biochemical reaction INSIDE the body, not a \"decision\".",
"Like the others have already said. \n\nI'm on week 3 of being booze-free (high five!). I try to quit once every few months or so. Here's what usually happens: \n\nI find an excuse to drink. It can be a celebratory drink (I had a good day today, I won at poker, the weather is nice, etc.), or it can be a dispirited drink (girl troubles, bad day at work, nothing to do, etc.).\n\nWhenever I have that one drink, I just cannot stop. The beer tastes so friggin' good. After number two, I feel friggin' good. I feel sharper. I start brainstorming seemingly brilliant ideas. I'm wittier. I'm more courageous. I'm better. \n\nBeer number 3 is more or less the same, but now I am drinking faster. Beers one and two went down in about 15-20 minutes each. Beer number 3 is now gone after ten minutes. \n\nAnd that's when it's time to get loaded. \n\nAs I am drinking beers four through six, I am still feeling pretty good. I realize that I am inebriated, but I don't care. The music I'm listening to becomes epic. The girls in my proverbial blackbook are so much more attractive. I am feeling confident, but now in more of a condescending way than I was feeling back on beers one through three. I conjure up thoughts about how much better I am than other people, or how awesome it would be to sleep with so-and-so, often a friend's wife or girlfriend. I make a plan to go out and have a good time. While I am thinking these thoughts, though, my ass is usually planted on the couch. \n\nOnce I crack beer number seven, things start to deteriorate. I'm drinking more slowly now. I become very lazy. I slur my thoughts and my words. I continue to have thoughts of superiority, but there's no way in hell I'm getting off my couch. All of my great ideas from earlier are put on the back burner, only to be forgotten the next morning.\n\nAfter beer seven, I realize than I am not functional. There's no way I am going to go out. So I throw on a movie or something and continue to sip away at beer number eight. \n\nAfter beer eight is down the hatch, I run into a dilemma. I feel tired and want to go to bed, but if I do that, I'll have to get up again right away to take a piss. If I stay up, I'll have to have more beer. But if I have more beer, I'll have to piss again anyways. \n\nThis is when one of two things happen. I invariably decide to stay up a while longer. But I continue to drink. If I have beer, I drink it albeit much more slowly. If I don't have beer in the house, I break out the whiskey or other hard alcohol. Whether it's more beer or a change in alcohol, I continue to drink until I am ready to pass out. I'm rarely able to finish the movie I started. \n\nI ultimately get 8 or 9 beer's worth of alcohol inside my body before I decide it's time for bed. Surprisingly, I never just pass out on my couch. I am always about to wash up and go to bed. \n\nThe next morning comes, and I feel like crap. I do what I need to do (usually work) and head home. I would love to go to bed, but it's way too early. I feel groggy and possibly have a headache, and I don't want to spend the rest of my evening in this state. What's the best solution? Crack a beer. After that ice cold beer hits my tongue, relief and excitement permeates my body. It's time for another round on binge drinking. The cycle continues.\n\nIt's an endless cycle. Believe me, I would *love* to be a bona-fide \"social drinker\". But it's not going to happen.\n\nTL;DR: I can't drink just one. Once I start I can't stop. I reach various mental, emotional, and physical states before I pass out. I hurt the next day, and the only way to alleviate the pain is to drink again. ",
"Imagine you're trying to stop yourself from having sex. What would be easier?\n\n1) Staying away from pussy completely?\n\n2) Putting just the tip in every now and then and resisting the urge to thrust?",
"For people in AA it is a common understanding that the excessive drinking is not the disease but a symptom of the disease. I see people all the time replace their excessive drinking with excessive (fill in the blank). So I don't have a problem with alcohol I have a problem with moderation. So I don't want the reminder, I just abstain from drinking and other addictive behaviors.\n\nThat being said, there are plenty of people I know that drank a lot and often and it became a problem in their life so they either stopped drinking during the week or will stop after their 3rd beer or something like that. But I can assure you they still have a feeling of just getting shit faced which why a lot of recovering alcoholics rather just not have that reminder altogether and abstain completely."
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2zhuv4 | how do large companies such as facebook make back the billions they spend to acquire "unicorn" start-ups and popular applications? | The short reply that people have always given me is "ad revenue" but is this really possible? What advertising companies are spending billions to pop up within applications and how is that beneficial to them? Do that many people click on them and buy whatever it is they're offering? I understand that I am ignorant on this topic so please refrain from the low-ball replies. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zhuv4/eli5_how_do_large_companies_such_as_facebook_make/ | {
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"User data.\n\nAcquisitions are mostly about getting a customer base, then using them for advertising. Very few are about technology unless it is extremely difficult duplicate or is under patent, in which they buy the company for patent.\n\nIt's not just ad revenue. In this day and age, knowing someone's facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat, reddit, etc gives a huge amount of information for analytics for advertising. It is no longer that you're 18-35 and male. Now it's your exact age, your birthday, your mentions, likes, psychological profile, picture upload choices, goetagged telemetrics, etc. Companies are bought for supplying even more data about your likes and interests. All so you will see a Buick commercial instead of a Toyota commercial. So you're sent an ad for free break fast at Dennys near your birthday. Or a Jaguar XJ23 ad since you have 20 pictures of Jaguars on your instagram.\n\nThat's why you get companies, because you tell the world what you are, and they advertise it to you so you can buy it.\n\nBelieve it or not, this isn't a bad idea. Would you rather get ads for things you're interested in or ads you aren't interested in?",
"Globally (as of 2013) internet advertising brought in about $120 billion. Getting a tiny slice of $120 billion is a great year, facebook got $6.4 billion of it.\n\nSo they make back the billions through expectating of ad revenue, ad revenue that keeps growing every year.",
"The key with advertizing is that the vast majority of it is wasted. I'm a 33 year old male watching a tampon add on television, wasted add. I don't watch football but still see Monday Night Football adds, wasted adds.\n\nWasted adds are wasted money. A better idea is to target the adds to people who they (the advertizes) have a shot at selling to. Everyone sees the same number of adds, but all the adds are relevant to the individuals who see them. No more tampon adds for men. \n\nFacebook and Google's secret sauce is all the information that they have about us. Think about it, Facebook knows my gender so it knows not to show tampon adds. Facebook knows my likes, so it knows I don't like football. Google knows my search history, knows where I live, I have an Android phone so it knows where I work and where I drive. \n\nFacebook also knows who I'm friends with. And since it got Whats app it knows who I'm actually talking to regularly. People tend to like things that their friends like, so it uses this information to better target adds. \n\nBasically, everything Facebook or Google does can be boiled down to \"they are trying to get more information to better target advertisements\".\n\nIn terms of \"can they really make that billion back on adds alone?\" I answer with this link \n_URL_0_\n\nThat's Facebook's most recent financial statements, take a look at the revenue section. Their only source of revenue is advertizements. They made 3.8 billion in 3 months, 3 months!",
"It's not all money but also shares of the buying company.\n\nLet's say that facebook buys a company then a lot of the \"aquired for Y billion dollars\" comes from facebook shares, that were never given out and thus didn't cost facebook anything. But facebook has a certain value and thus those shares have value.",
"Its bizzare but for a huge company like facebook (and apple, microsoft, google and so on) money in the bank is not a good thing, especially is there is alot of it. Of these money they need to pay taxes, and some of the money goes away. What you want is company value. They cant tax that and its hard to steal. \n\nSo when facebook buys a \"unicorn\" for 1billion $ they have not lost 1B$ in \"cash\" the value of facebook has increased with 1B$, this makes the stocks go up making facebook more money (and the entire process is started over again... go figure...). There is altso the tax side of it. Lets say that facebook pays 20% tax on gross income. On that 1B$ in \"cash\" they would have had to out 200M$ to tax. But by buying this \"unicorn\" they get to keep the full 1B$ and 0$in tax. \n\nOfcourse this cant be used on everything, buying something today for 1B$ that will be worth 5$ in a year is not good buisness and will hurt alot more than paying taxes."
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r6n5d | why some liquid medicines state a dosage such as 10mg/5ml rather than just 2mg/ml? | Am I just being overly pedantic? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r6n5d/eli5_why_some_liquid_medicines_state_a_dosage/ | {
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"If the typical dosage is 10 mg (or multiples of that) then you have to do a lot less calculation to arrive at the correct amount. And if you have simpler or no calculation there is less risk of getting the dosage wrong.",
"As a pharmacy technician, I wondered the same thing at first. But I learned that the mL given in the strength will often be a typical dose. For example, if you're given a liquid with strength 10mg/5mL, the 5mL would be what the patient would take each day. This also saves a step or two in calculating how many days worth you are dispensing, which is important for insurance purposes.\n\nShort answer, it saves the pharmacist or tech a few steps in dispensing the medication, which helps prevent mistakes. "
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2576fh | why does it take such a long time to "trace" phone calls, but it takes me less than 2 seconds to traceroute an ip address? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2576fh/eli5_why_does_it_take_such_a_long_time_to_trace/ | {
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"Tracing a call is probably super quick these days. A screenwriter won't care, though, and will milk it for drama."
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4rzsb2 | why do so many people in cities smoke? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rzsb2/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_in_cities_smoke/ | {
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"Because of the concentration, you see them. People in rural and suburbs smoke/dip, but because people are more spread out, you don't notice it as much.",
"also some confirmation bias, more people go outside to smoke in the city, so you will see more people outside smoking. "
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72e6vi | why do babies throw everything? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72e6vi/eli5why_do_babies_throw_everything/ | {
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"If you are talking about infants it's because they have virtually zero motor control. They are learning to process and comprehend outside stimuli. That's why all of their movements are spastic looking. ",
"Not all babies do.. but often it starts out as an accident.. they hold something and start shaking their arm irradically and end up letting go of the thing. \n\nAfter a few times they start getting better muscle control and then.. they notice something cool. If they throw something their parent picks it up and gives it back to them.. so throwing things sort of becomes a game to them.",
"If you mean the \"dropping\" phase, they are figuring gravity out. Oh, look, this falls. Let's see if it falls again. It does. Repeat. IT DOES!! How cool is this!! Let's try the fork now. It also falls!!! Woah, I totally need to do this again in three minutes, to see if it still works. ",
"you ever get a new tool and wanna use it on everything? well this baby just learned how to throw and now wants to throw everything. \"what can i throw? how far can i throw it? will mommy/daddy bring it back every time i throw it? woah food spreads out when i throw it...look it went everywhere isn't that cool? does this food?\"\n\nit's all a process of discovery...babies are just now learning things we have known all our lives."
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2p2lq0 | why does "premium" 'cat food often contain fruit and veggies is cats are obligate carnivores? | It seems that having things like apples and peas in there is just an another type of "filler," like corn. I would think that cats would be unable to properly process such foods.
edit: should be "if," not "is", in the title. This is what happens when I get up before I wake up. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p2lq0/eli5_why_does_premium_cat_food_often_contain/ | {
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"Wild cats' prey are herbivores.\n\nCats often eat their smaller prey animals whole; so, when a cat eats a mouse, it in turn eats what the mouse has eaten - a small amount of grains, for instance.\n\n > So, for a cat, the consumption of fermented gut content from a mouse or rabbit aids in the management of the cat's own intestinal flora. The intestinal flora in turn maintains the integrity of the mucosal surface. It is likely the VFAs contribute little as an energy source to the cat, but the bacterial load is likely very beneficial.\n\n-[The Stomach Contents of Prey](_URL_0_)"
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6bw1yl | how come hotel key cards get erased by being near cell phones, but credit cards don't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bw1yl/eli5how_come_hotel_key_cards_get_erased_by_being/ | {
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"I actually asked something similar a while back and was given a fair answer. What it boils down to is the strength of the equipment used to magnetize the cards. A stronger device magnetizing the card means you'd need a stronger magnet to wipe it.",
"What /u/wizer900 said. The strips are much weaker. To expand, they're weaker because they will change the codes often. My dorm in college was a remodeled hotel bought by the school so we dealt with these often. Any card could be rewritten to any door if you just used the machine. Doors and cards get their information changed frequently for security reasons. ",
"Can't they make a better way? Not like everyone has a phone in the pocket, jeez. ",
"Magnetic strips are classified by their *coercivity* (their ability to withstand an external magnetic field demagnetizing the strip). \n\nThere are two types of these strips in the card industry, often called HiCo and LoCo cards. High-coercivity cards are typically around 10-15 times stronger resisting the magnetic force than a low-coercivity card.\n\nBecause they take less energy to produce and to encode data onto, they're a cheaper card overall, and for a high-turnover application like temporary access control (be it your Metrocard or a hotel keycard), cost savings is important.",
"Hotel key cards are designed to be reused (and hence reprogrammed) every time a guest checks out and returns their card. Credit cards are designed to never be reprogrammed.\n\nHence, a much stronger magnetic encoding is used on a credit card.",
"So are hotel key cards coded to a given room's lock? If I were to check out of a hotel, and come back to the same hotel room a month later with the original key card could I still enter the room?",
"FYI the tap-ability of your credit/debit cards can be ruined by your cellphone too. I've had it happen multiple times.",
" Alright I just wrote a paper on the enhancement of magnetic fields using NORF (narrow oscillating radio frequency) so I can give you some insight. \n\n Your phone produces a magnetic field due to the flow of electricity through the device, now, it has been found that specific radio frequencies can actually enhance the magnetic field of your phone. Many devices produce electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves. These are things like phones, computers, soda machines, pretty much every electronic device.\n\n Since the hotel key card is programmed with a magnet, the magnetic field of your phone, which is now amplified by the radio waves given off by all the electronic devices in the hotel, can easily erase any data written on the key card.\n\n If you keep having this problem I recommend googling a Faraday cage sleeve for the keycard, they aren't that expensive, maybe 5-15 usd.",
"I talked to a hotel employee about the frequency of failure of Thor room key cards. They said it happens ALL the time and double it had anything to do with phones. ",
"Front desk employee at a hotel here.\nWhen i encode the card i have to set a end date too.\nSometime i don t bother looking the duration of the stay and i put 4-5 day on all card.\nAs we change days at lunch break (1pm) some cards will work at 11am and not at 2pm.\nWhen a client come and ask why it doens t work anymore i always say it is their phone so their fault (this avoid many negatives remarks and they feel stupid beeing rude for it) , but 80% of the time it is a staff mistake."
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3kslgs | why is the quality of editing on internet news reports so poor? | It seems like I have to re-read each news article I see online and decipher the meaning or correct in my head the poor spelling. I can forgive English-US English translations, but a news report should be spell checked and read before being published. I've noticed that these sorts of problems are creeping into the books I read on my Kindle as well. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kslgs/eli5why_is_the_quality_of_editing_on_internet/ | {
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"It's hard to know without an example, but I can tell you that a lot of times, the web sites for local TV news stations will have horrible spelling mistakes, because they're just putting the copy for the newscasters on the web, and those aren't often checked for spelling errors since, as long as the anchor or reporter says the word correctly, nobody knows that it was misspelled.\n\nFor such places, the online presence is an afterthought. My experience is that getting the news from the online site of print outlets, like newspapers, makes for a much better reading experience.",
"3 big things at play:\n\n1) on the internet being first is often more important than being perfect. \n\n2) because you can edit live and because of #1, some sites will throw up the content, and then edit/update it after. You see this particularly for sports, where espn will have super short articles right after a team wins and then as you refresh the article will be longer and more complete. This means you can be a bit sloppy to be first then clean things up for the archival version (not possible once print is out the door).\n\n3) the public tends to be less damning against a news source's long term reputation for typos on the web than in print, so there is less incentive to spend time and money being as meticulous, given the incentives for speed in #1 and #2."
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31l28y | surely someone must know: how do blind people use those bird chirping noises to cross the street? how do they know it's not for the kitty-corner side of the street? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31l28y/eli5_surely_someone_must_know_how_do_blind_people/ | {
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"Bob is walking north when he approaches an intersection that he knows has an auditory signal. He wants to continue north. He presses the button and listens for the next auditory signal. There is one particular sound that's used for north-south intersections and a different sound that's used for east-west intersections. When Bob hears the north-south signals, he continues his north-bound walk."
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||
7b3wte | if i had $1billion, what "bank" would/could i deposit it all in. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7b3wte/eli5_if_i_had_1billion_what_bank_wouldcould_i/ | {
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"It would be stupid to put it all in one bank because, for one, banks can fail, and two, it could be put to much better use. Ideally one would invest most of it in various forms of assets like stocks and bonds, real estate, etc. "
]
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[]
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||
101irv | can someone explain "old man strength" and "retard strong"? is there any science behind these concepts? | To clarify, old man strength is when you are 60+ but can still lift a lot, chop wood, move furniture, etc. It seems counterintuitive knowing that muscle mass shrinks as you age. Retard strong, while politically incorrect, is about how mentally disabled people seem to be much stronger than what they appear to be. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/101irv/can_someone_explain_old_man_strength_and_retard/ | {
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"As to the idea of \"retard strength\", they are not stronger but because of their mental disability they do not inhibit themselves like we do. For example if i go to pat you on the back my brain knows to limit how hard my hand moves, but someone with a mental disability this might not happen and they slap you despite not meaning to do so. "
]
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|
6ap8vw | why are sinks that require you to hold the knob thing with one hand to pour water even made? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ap8vw/eli5_why_are_sinks_that_require_you_to_hold_the/ | {
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"Water conservation, typically. I believe it's to prevent people from walking away & leaving the faucet on.",
"It's pretty simple. Water preservation. People won't want to stand there for hours to let the water over flow, but with the \"always on\" faucet, they can plug the drain and run. "
]
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[],
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||
4gadev | if people want to make video games as realistic as possible, why are the distances in video games over exaggerated? | For example on Sunset Overdrive or Assassin's Creed, why is 200m as long as half way across the city? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gadev/eli5_if_people_want_to_make_video_games_as/ | {
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"Because no one wants to spend two hours just to get to an objective. It's basically just to get rid of tedium. ",
"The problem is movement, not the actual movement of the character, but the fact that if you make a character move at a \"realistic\" speed it is perceived as insanely slow, making the gamers go crazy at the slow movement.\nAlso in games cities most often aren't that big. Count the buildings and you will notice that there isn't much more than a few blocks in that \"city\". I haven't played AC so i cant say about that game, but generically that's how it is",
"Have you tried running through a city IRL? It's slow, boring and time consuming. This is why video games don't do this, because if it took hours to do everything, no one would bother. You can achieve realism without having to strictly stick to scale. ",
" > If people want to make video games as realistic as possible\n\nThey don't. They typically want to make them as fun as possible.",
"There are also games like Arma 3 that do attempt to make distance a real factor, but even they limit it by keeping you on an island in Greece. They have a few small cities on their map, and you actually have to drive 15 minutes sometimes to get to a different area you are trying to get to. If you actually followed a speed limit, it would take you much longer. At the end of the day like others said, people want to play games for fun, not usually for simulation. ",
"You should play [Desert Bus](_URL_0_), and then you will know!"
]
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"http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/desert-bus-the-very-worst-video-game-ever-created"
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1pmajg | do any other animals eat for needs besides survival? like pleasure, or health concerns? | I know my fellow humans and I enjoy a good slice of cheesecake for no other reason except it makes me feel preeeeeetty preeeetty pretty good. Do any other animals eat things just for joy? Or even do any animals eat things for health concerns?
Pls hurry so i can go back to being fat. thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pmajg/do_any_other_animals_eat_for_needs_besides/ | {
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"My dog definitely eats for pleasure. "
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5vb3a6 | do people with exotropia (one or both eyes facing outwards) have a wider field of vision? | I know it sounds *ridiculous* but for some reason it has always bugged me. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vb3a6/eli5_do_people_with_exotropia_one_or_both_eyes/ | {
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"They technically see a wider field, but they can't easily interpret what they're seeing because the images don't line up anymore. It'd be like walking around cross-eyed all the time. \n\nIf a baby is born with exotropia, the developing brain can actually start to ignore the lazy eye, eventually leading to blindness in that eye. ",
"I have exotropia in my left eye.\nFirstly, I've had wonky eyes forever, one way or another, and as such my brain has decided to mostly ignore what my left eye sees.\nTo expand on that, I can still 'see' out of my left eye (I can switch between looking out of my dominant right eye, or my practically useless left eye), but the image is out of focus, regardless of glasses/contact lenses.\nAs previously stated, my left eye acts more like an extension of the peripheral vision for my dominant right eye.\nInterestingly, I've had several surgeries to straighten the eye, however, it has drifted back to the left over time. I'm told this is because the area of the brain that develops in children to focus images cannot develop as well (or at all) in adults.\nAs a result, I can't perceive distance, or see in 3D.\nAny questions, feel free to ask. "
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5s5qjl | is it possible to reverse nerve damage caused by neuropathy | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5s5qjl/eli5is_it_possible_to_reverse_nerve_damage_caused/ | {
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"Which kind of neuropathy does this relative have? Neuropathy is a description of a condition (deteriorating nerves), not an ailment in its own right.\n\nAmong peripheral neuropathies, there are some caused by vitamin deficiencies, some caused by genetic flaws, and some caused by other conditions.\n\nIf the neuropathy is caused by a vitamin deficiency, a change in diet can reverse the neuropathy to a degree.\n\nIf the neuropathy is genetic, the trick is to live as healthy a life as possible, keeping blood circulation and general cardiovascular health up, but this will only slow the onset of the neuropathy, not reverse it.\n\nThat said, there have been some recent scientific breakthroughs in nerve regrowth that are showing promise in clinical studies; in 15-20 years, there may be treatments to regrow the damaged nerves for some types of peripheral neuropathy.\n\nWikipedia actually has a decent article that goes into more depth.",
"It depends on the cause of the neuropathy and the extent of the damage. Typically the effects of neuropathy can be reduced by treating the underlying cause. Nerve damage is generally seen as permanent, however stem cell therapy seems promising. For your relative, if the neuropathy is secondary to diabetes then properly managing their blood sugar should slow down the advancement of the neurologic degeneration. **[Wikipedia Link](_URL_0_)**"
]
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d498m3 | how can we see magenta if it doesn’t technically exist on the visible spectrum of light? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d498m3/eli5_how_can_we_see_magenta_if_it_doesnt/ | {
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"text": [
"Because it's our name for a color that consists of a *blend* of two existing colors.\n\nHow can we eat a strawberry rhubarb pie, if there is no strawberry rhubarb plant? :-)",
"Our eyes have colour receptors that correspond to red, green and blue. But they actually each detect a range of light wavelengths, with the response peaking at red, green and blue. When we detect light inbetween those colours, both sets of receptors get activated. E.g. we see yellow light because it activates both the red and green receptors about equally.\n\nThis means we have no way to tell the difference between actual yellow light, and a mix of red and green light. Another consequence of this is that if we see a mix of red and blue light, we perceive it as a different colour (magenta), even though there is no single wavelength of light which looks the same."
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9aoqsy | how does strict nat and upnp affect online connectivity while gaming? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9aoqsy/eli5_how_does_strict_nat_and_upnp_affect_online/ | {
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"NAT or Network Address Translation is basically a way for your router to handle translating private/local IP addresses (192.168.x.x/172.16.x.x/10.x.x.x) to public addresses. Without it, each device on a local network would either need a public IP address, or would not be able to communicate with devices outside its own subnet without some other comparable wizardry going on.\n\nUPNP or Universal Plug N Play is a way for a device (almost always consumer) to automatically configure itself and other devices on the network (sometimes routers) for purposes of application-specific communication.\n\nThere really isn't a \"strict\" NAT or UPNP. Modern online gaming really doesn't require any special configuration, as you're typically establishing an outbound connection between yourself and a server (which bypasses any inbound firewall restrictions), as well as any other players and the server handles the client to client communications. NAT still exists but it's seamless from the user's perspective and UPNP isn't extensively used anymore.\n\nBack in the day, you might directly communicate with other players in online games and thus port forwarding would have been required on your router (Both due to NAT and inbound firewall rules, which are basically \"Deny anything I've not explicitly told it to accept\") to forward traffic on the appropriate port to your computer, assuming this wasn't handled by UPNP if the application and router both supported it."
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33uely | why do eyes adapt to dark spaces but not dark glasses or tint? | When we go inside our eye adapts to less light than outside and we see objects equally bright, but when we wear sunglasses or ride in a car with tint our vision is darker than usually. Why is that the case?
P.S. Sorry if it's a dumb question. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33uely/eli5why_do_eyes_adapt_to_dark_spaces_but_not_dark/ | {
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"Not a dumb question at all. Our eyes are sensitive enough to see at night with just starlight up to a completely sunny day. However, it takes time for our eyes to adapt to the lighting conditions and even when adapted, we only can see a limited range above and below that adapted value.\n\nOur eyes are very similar to how a digital camera works. A digital camera measures the amount of light in the scene and sets a light level. Anything above that light level will appear completely white. Everything below will be black.\n\nHave you ever tried taking a picture of someone inside a house next to a window looking outside? The large difference in outdoor vs indoor light intensity makes the camera set the light level too high, making everything inside look too dark. \n\nThis is what is happening when you wear sunglasses (that do not cover a large portion of your vision) or ride in a tinted car. Your eyes and brain are setting a high light level based on the bright stray light that gets through so that everything else looks dim.\n\nIn addition, it takes our eyes about 5-10 minutes to adapt to light and dark conditions (dark takes longer). When you initially put on sunglasses, everything appears dark. However, as you wear them for a few minutes, things will seem to brighten up. If you remove the sunglasses while still outside, everything will appear too bright because your eyes were adapted to the darkened vision."
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4a68gl | can penicillin be made from cheese you buy? if so, how would you make it? | Never know if the end of civilization is coming, might have to make some! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a68gl/eli5_can_penicillin_be_made_from_cheese_you_buy/ | {
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"You don't \"make\" penicillin exactly (well nowadays it's probably synthesized but that wasn't the case of its discovery). It's a common mold, meaning there's all sorts of mold and fungi spores floating around in the air. Yeah if you leave some bread/cheese out it might start growing penicillin mold on it, but it'll probably be growing a lot of other molds/fungi too that could be very toxic. Unless you have the bio/chem know how to identify and extract only the mold you want, I wouldn't recommend it."
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1lih49 | patent trolls | For some reason this isn't clicking with me, who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in a situation like this? is there even a good and bad guy? The picture that keeps coming to mind is that guy who has that really general patent on console controllers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lih49/eli5_patent_trolls/ | {
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"From what I understand they're small companies (who usually make little to no products) who file bazillions of patents on the off chance a big company makes a product which infringes upon any number of those patents, after which point they sue for ridiculous amounts of money. \nMostly the \"bad guy\" is the patent troll, taking up the innovating company's time and resources via litigation instead of allowing them to continue to innovate. ",
"First off there never is a bad guy or a good guy only people. And in this case people abusing a legal system, and people getting screwed over by the former.\n\nSo a patent is a contract between a person/company and society. You keep inventing cool stuff and we promise not to copy you unfairly without paying you.\n\nThis is essential in the pharmaceutical industry where a new drug will take years and millions even possibly BILLIONS of dollars to make.\n\nSo a company Pfizer invents a new drug, now for a period of time (seven years / ten years?) only they can make sell that drug. During that time they have to make back the money that they spent on inventing the drug. After that time anyone can make that drug without paying Pfizer, so the price of drugs suddenly goes down.\n\nSo patent laws are good to make sure that companies have incentive to make new cool stuff. And patent wearing off is also important so eventually everyone can afford these new cool stuff that was invented. If patent laws were too strong and never wore off, then Pfizer could make one drug and sell it for a very high price and make loads of money and not bother to ever make any other drugs.\n\nNow a patent troll is someone who buys a company that owns a patent that may be too broad or badly worded. E.g. if someone in the early fifties patented the idea of two computers communicating with each other (it doesn't matter the type of computer or what language they computers are using two computers talking to each other), at the time it seemed reasonable it was a new and innovative idea and the inventor needs credit for it, but some ends up with this patent and that company goes out of business and a patent troll buys that company.\n\nNow the patent troll can sue basically anyone who invents pretty much any piece of software. They won't sue someone who is playing in their basement because they won't get money out of them, and they won't sue Sony or Microsoft because they won't win the court case. But they will sue start up companies and small businesses, the real innovators of the industry.\n\nThis is especially bad in the software industry because:\n\nA) It is changing so fast that something innovative today is standard practice next year.\n\nB) Patent lawyers know the law and don't know much about computers and software and programming languages.\n\nC) Often a general process gets a patent like \"computers talking to each other\" or \"a device that controls a computer\" instead of the specific software and hardware that has actually been invented.\n\nD) More than 50% of patents are software patents.\n\nPatent law is essential for some industries, but it only stagnates and prevents innovation in the computer industry. And that it is why it should be reformed or abolished.",
"One other thing that I didn't see mentioned yet, those that are operating as \"patent trolls\" are smart in at least one way. They know that going to court over one of these cases is very expensive, especially for the company being sued that would need to bring in not only lawyers, but other experts to show how their product shouldn't be covered under the patent. But it would also be quite expensive for the patent holder. So usually they are approaching companies and demanding a licensing fee. The reason why patent trolls/ trolling works is that many or most companies will do the math and decide it is cheaper to pay them off than fight in court and/or face delays in releasing their products.",
"A bad guy will patent a bunch of different things that could be important in the future. Then a good guy company will have to buy the patent from the bad guy before they can make, sell, or even research the product that was patented. Sometimes the bad guy is greedy and wants more money, hurting everyone in the long run because society isn't getting advancements. ",
"The term comes from the old stories about trolls who lived under bridges and charged a fee to cross the bridge. By buying patents without really inventing anything, they are the trolls who charge a fee for the use of technology",
"Let's say there are two companies here - A and B. Company A has a great idea for a product and gets a patent for it. They don't have to bring the product to the market. They don't have to develop, produce, or market the product, they just have the patent. Company A can do this many times over for different products and/or ideas without ever having to make anything.\n\nAlong comes Company B. They have a great idea that they plan to produce and sell on the open market. Company B has invested in the development, production, marketing and distribution of the product. Let's say this product is wildly successful.\n\nCompany A hears about this wildly successful product and find they have the patent on it. By having the patent, they can legally go after Company B for a percentage of past and future sales. Remember, Company A didnt have to invest all that money into the product like Company B did, but they own the patent and can go after any company that infringes on their ideas.\n\nThere are a few companies like Company A that do not produce anything, only have great ideas that are patented. And because of those patents, they can \"troll\" the market to find things that infringe to make money via the legal system when they sue companies that produce similar ideas to theirs.\n\nEDIT: Formatting",
"Or, in my case, I came up with something that was my graduate thesis 30 years ago. I patented it, a few years ago and shortly afterwards I got an e-mail from some idiot that said that he invented it 15 years ago and was going to sue me for patent infringement. Since I happened to have a copy of my graduate thesis, I was never worried. Patent trolls are strictly in it to get some type of money settlement without having to put much work or investment into it. ",
"The polite term for a patent troll is \"an NPE\" (Non-Practicing Entity).\n\nThe name makes their (highly profitable) business model clear. \n\nThey are firms which acquire thousands of patents (often from companies going into bankruptcy) for the express purpose of using them to sue people who actually build things. Sometimes they claim to be a \"brokerage\" that will look for companies that they can sell or license these patents to in order to help the original inventor make money. In practice, this is pretty much never the case. Most of these firms have made no effort to market and sell these patents to interested parties.\n\nThe original motivation for patents is: I have a guitar company, you have a guitar company. I think of a cool way to make a guitar and patent it so that **I** can make and sell something that **you** can't for a certain number of years. After that period expires, my cool guitar invention goes into the public domain.\n\nWhat NPEs do is they have no intention of ever making cool guitars for you. They just wait until **someone else** gets funding, builds a guitar production line, and starts selling these cool guitars. Then they sue them and try to get a piece of the profits without actually providing anything of value to the consumers.\n\nIn this sense, they are a \"tax\" or \"drag\" on companies that actually make things, while putting none of their own capital at risk in the difficult business of actually making useful products.\n\nTheir counter-argument is that they help \"the little guy\" who had a great idea but can't get the funding to put it into a business himself by buying his patent from him. As I said before, in practice this is rarely the case.\n\nPeople dislike NPEs because over the past 15 years, their lawsuits have become an enormous part of \"the cost of doing business\" for small to medium sized companies. There are many cases of medium sized companies that must spend more on defending these lawsuits than on product development.\n\n"
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19zfgx | why do people get flakes in their hair? | Ive tired all types of methods but still everyday I brush my hair and flakey flakey :( any input Is more than welcome | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19zfgx/why_do_people_get_flakes_in_their_hair/ | {
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"text": [
"Its bits of dead skin from your scalp. I used to have dandruff too it went away after I STOPPED using head and shoulders. "
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|
3f7u6v | why do emergency vehicles have to turn off their sirens while passing cemeteries? | I work at a mortuary with a cemetery out back. Some nights I work as the gatekeeper. Ive noticed that, night or day, most emergency vehicles will turn off their sirens while passing by the cemetery.
It could be that they are doing this because of the mortuary, because they are on the same plot of land, however I find that harder to believe. I've asked some of my coworkers and even the ones that have worked there for decades only noticed it when I brought it to their attention.
Does anyone know why this is?
P.S.- I've noticed it's mostly fire trucks, paramedics from the fire station, etc. Ambulances from hospitals will do it, too, and so will police cars, but they are less careful about it it seems. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f7u6v/eli5_why_do_emergency_vehicles_have_to_turn_off/ | {
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"text": [
"It's because at night, and during the early morning, we try to only use the sirens and horns when we actually need them.\n\nWe are public servants, so it would be quite shitty to wake our citizens up if they don't want to be."
]
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5vtwu4 | why is freshly popped toast crunchy but toast that has been sitting out for awhile chewy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vtwu4/eli5_why_is_freshly_popped_toast_crunchy_but/ | {
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"text": [
"Toast that is freshly made has had most of the water cooked out of it. That makes it crunchy. Toast that has sat around for a while has absorbed water from the air and become more chewy. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1qataz | why do people wear helmets in autocross? | When doing driving exercises, like autocross, why do tracks or clubs require people to wear helmets? Obviously, the helmet would be to protect your head, but with cars being loaded with airbags (steering wheel, side curtain, etc) and also being held in by a 3 point or 5 point seatbelt, what would the helmet provide that isn't already accounted for? Also, I'd imagine an airbag hitting you in the face with a full face helmet on might do more bad than good. Plus a full face helmet would obstruct your view. This is something I've been genuinely curious about for a long time | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qataz/eli5_why_do_people_wear_helmets_in_autocross/ | {
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"Have you ever seen a rollover crash? How the top of the car, even with a roll cage, crumples in. If someone weren't wearing a helmet the top could cut your head open. ALSO you can bang your head on the side door and get knocked out.",
"Because banging your head against the side of the door or window at 50 mph does a grand job at hurting your brain. Even the helmet isn't always going to help, just look at what happened to Dale Earnhardt. ",
"I ride motorbikes (in the UK so compulsory helmets) and would argue the same reasons for 4 wheeled motorsports as I would for 2 wheeled. A good, properly fitting and quality helmet will protect your head massively more than nothing at all. \n\nThe seatbelts are very good at what they do but they don't hold your head still and you can still have your head move at some pretty extreme speeds when crashing which could result in a head injury or, more likely, a neck injury where a neckbrace would also help (look at modern Dakar bike riders for the freedom of movement your head still has with these). In a high quality helmet you'll have a multiple layers under the hard exterior, the 2 softer inner layers probably do a majority of the work in cars, being the foamy material actually in contact with your head and the inner layer of polystyrene which is softer and has some ability to compact to cushion your head. Also, as I understand it, an airbag deploying has been described to me as someone hitting you in the face with a big exercise ball with absolutely no warning, a properly fitting helmet would take the brunt of this.\n\nMy current helmet has a 120 degree field of vision so in a car I can still see both mirrors just moving my eyes and the vertical space doesn't hinder my vision out the windscreen at all (actually tested when I got the helmet and wore it home in the car :D)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
34qm6t | how come the internet archive project (_url_0_) has so much space to store the entire web history? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34qm6t/eli5_how_come_the_internet_archive_project/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqxa88s",
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"score": [
6,
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"text": [
"For a start, it does not store the entire history of the web. It stores a lot of snapshots of a lot of sites, but nowhere near all sites, nor even everything that is on a site they have stored.",
"Storage space is incredibly cheap and website are usually very small in size. The biggest-sized items on the web are high-resolution images, video, and applets (Flash, Java, Shockwave, Silverlight, etc.)\n\nFor websites that don't have any of those things, it's almost all text files and small images. The reddit front page, for example, is less than 1 megabyte of data (and I just checked in the console to be sure). In fact, most of the elements loaded were on the order of a only few kilobytes.\n\nA 1 Terabyte hard drive can be picked up for $50. One terabyte is enough to hold a million or more 1 MB web pages (exactly how much more is muddied by the [inconsistencies in various usage of binary prefixes](_URL_0_), but I digress)\n\nThere's a lot of data on the internet, but most of it isn't in the web pages you visit. The vast majority is in sites like YouTube and Netflix."
]
} | [
"archive.org"
] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://xkcd.com/394/"
]
] |
||
5s2tvf | what would change if all 50 us states became independent countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5s2tvf/eli5_what_would_change_if_all_50_us_states_became/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddc0erb"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"I read a great thread years ago (I think 2011-2012) where someone asked what would happen if all 50 states declared war on another. It was very cool. Talked about coalitions that would form naturally. For example, New England states which produce food would ally with New York (which had industry and a port). States that have population, military resources, and natural resources would draw in surrounding states and mini-nations would form. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6v4b6s | what is the significance of maggots in the decay of corpses? | Hello ELI5 community. I haven't seen any posts similar enough to my question, but if you know of any that have already been answered, I'd be grateful for the redirect. So here's my question: can the body naturally decompose without the help of organisms such as maggots? It's well known how bodies can be preserved when frozen or in extremely cold temperatures-they're typically kept in freezers/cold morgues right? And it's also known that cold temperatures can prevent maggot eggs from hatching. So I was wondering if the low temperatures actually had an effect on the physical body which prevents them from decomposing, or if the real reason it's slowed is because it prevents the hatching of maggots and thus there's nothing to eat the dead flesh. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6v4b6s/eli5_what_is_the_significance_of_maggots_in_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlxmgki",
"dly31wb"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Decay is caused by microorganism, freezing the body freezes them. So yes, freezing the microorganism is the only reason the decomposition stops.",
"Maggots help speed the process along but bacteria alone can decompose a corpse. In warmer temperatures bacteria thrive as well as maggots. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
89yx4p | why/how could one get a heart attack after being angry? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89yx4p/eli5_whyhow_could_one_get_a_heart_attack_after/ | {
"a_id": [
"dwunnua"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"I've heard that it works like this (but someone please correct me if I've been misinformed): The heart is a muscle and when you get angry one of the body's reactions is to increase heart rate, blood flow, etc. If the heart is asked to do more than it's capable of doing (i.e., you're out of shape, older, etc) the heart simply isn't able to keep up with the signals to beat (kinda like the drums on slave galleys) and just sort of falls over. \n\nLike I said, that's how it was once explained to me, but I can't independently verify it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3gbnoj | why the black lives matter protesters shut down bernie sanders twice? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gbnoj/eli5_why_the_black_lives_matter_protesters_shut/ | {
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"text": [
"I'll probably be downvoted for this, but so be it.\n\nThe BLM movement is not about social justice or any other glorious left-wing ideal. It's a black nationalist movement. As black nationalists, they hate Sanders for the same reason that white nationalists would hate a Jewish candidate. Why aren't they attacking, say, Trump? Because Trump will ignore them whereas Sanders will foolishly try to win their favor.",
"Because it's undirected anger. \n\nThere's mounds of evidence for institutional discrimination against African-Americans, and the prominent shooting deaths of unarmed black kids has been a focal point for a lot of pent up anger. If this was the 60's there'd be a few well known leaders of the black community to help direct this anger to something productive (like supporting candidates or legislation, trying to get changes made in the way police train shoot/no shoot drills, etc). But there are no major leaders of the black community at the moment. \n\nSo, this is what you get, a lot of anger with no one to focus it somewhere productive. Which leads to the misdirection of that anger to someone who is probably interested in helping.",
"I think it's just the most opportune, and the short, tl;dr answer is \"right cause, wrong platform\". \n\nBernie Sanders is much, much more grassroots than the other candidates, and therefore, there's much more opportunity to jump into the foray. I couldn't imagine the protesters getting anywhere near, say, Hilary or Trump.\n\nKind of sucks, because in this race, Sanders would probably be their biggest ally.",
"From what I have read, it at least appears the recent interruption in Seattle wasn't directly tied to BLM, but to two women who started BLM Seattle and are actually part of a more extreme organization called Outside Agitators 206 who are more focused on rallying against the police. Either way, it is just misguided anger and doesn't really make sense.",
"He's certainly more progressive than his opponents, but [he's been relatively quiet on the issue of police brutality against Black Americans:](_URL_0_)\n\n > Most Black voters want the answer to one question: What is Sanders’ plan to address the police brutality crisis in the Black community?\n\nSo far, he's acknowledged that there is a police brutality problem, but has not really given us any thoughts on how he plans to actually respond to that problem.\n\nBLM want him to offer his thoughts on how to tackle the issues faced by the Black community in the present day, as a continuation and expansion upon his track record of activism."
]
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[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://rhrealitycheck.org/ablc/2015/07/22/youre-white-marched-dr-king/"
]
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||
6uz2wx | what is the process of paying taxes for someone who is self-employed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6uz2wx/eli5_what_is_the_process_of_paying_taxes_for/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlwgdz6",
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"text": [
"They make quarterly tax payments. You would typically fill out the 1040es, then paywhatever that says is due.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nYou are not actually turning in the form, so if you wanted to, you could just guess how much you need to pay (especially if you have done it for a few years.)\n\n",
"I'm a self-employed music teacher. I pay quarterly taxes based on my estimated income for the year and then make up the difference at the end of the year. I *always* end up owing more at the end of the year - not entirely sure why, my income estimate is rarely off by that much. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040es.pdf"
],
[]
] |
||
am277k | how the part of the human brain that controls concentration and problem solving works on concert with the part that looks for instance gratification and procrastination. | I had read an article a long time ago about how there is a part of our brain that seeks instance gratification is a type of self-defence mechanism. Now, I may not be remembering it correctly and the article may have been a theory, but I wanted to learn more about where these opposite ideas come from in the brain and why we have these (and other?) contrasting connections going on.
& #x200B;
Thank you, in advance! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/am277k/eli5_how_the_part_of_the_human_brain_that/ | {
"a_id": [
"efj5n14",
"eflvctr"
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"score": [
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2
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"text": [
"I think you might want to find the article, since the language you're using isn't very precise. There's no part of your brain that controls \"concentration and problem solving,\" and there's no part of your brain that \"looks for instant gratification and procrastination.\" These are high level, abstract concepts, and there's not a specific part of your brain responsible for any of that stuff. If you find the article, or have any more specific questions, I can address them, but I think there are problems with the premise of your question.",
"ELI5: Problem solving and concentration is associated with activity in your prefrontal cortex, which is a \"new\" part of your brain (biologically speaking). This sort of activity is concious, deliberate and requires a great deal of energy. Instant gratification and procrastination is less clear cut, but is related to reward and avoiding punishment, which is associated with structures in the \"older\" parts of your brain. This activity is more subconcious, automatic and requires less energy. These systems are interconnected and influence each other. When you crave a chocolate, the old system is trying to produce a behavior (eat chocolate), but then your new system try to stop the impulse (which requires effort and deliberate thought). Your ability to do this can be low or hampered by your state for instance (sleepy, hungry etc.), which cause impulsive behaviors. That is how you get instant gratification and procrastination. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
98pdez | what stops minors from buying lottery tickets from machines | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98pdez/eli5_what_stops_minors_from_buying_lottery/ | {
"a_id": [
"e4hrwpj",
"e4hs156"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Nothing stops you from buying them. You just won't be able to redeem them yourself, if you win. ",
"The ticket would honestly be invalidated; most of the lotto machines are on camera feeds, and the ticket sales are timestamped. For the smaller prizes they won't care, but for the bigger prizes they'll check the camera feed to ensure that the person who bought the ticket is part of the party who is redeeming it. When they notice the discrepancy, they'll think that the ticket was either stolen or that the person who bought it was a minor.\n\nEither way; no money for you, at least not from the major prizes."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
8u02pz | why is the roman empire considered so important that we teach it to this day? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8u02pz/eli5_why_is_the_roman_empire_considered_so/ | {
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"text": [
"It was one of the first actually the first of its kind. It was run politically sound with a few exceptions. It turned into a republic also which is even better. We base some of outlets government off of it as well.",
"All historical nations are \"important,\" and should be taught, but the powerful ones in particular are of note. The Roman Republic and Empire were quite powerful, and many European nations have their roots in the Empire, so they form a part of most Western history curricula.\n\nElsewhere in the world, you may find curricula which focus more on other great empires. The Han Dynasty of China existed at the same time as the Roman Republic *and* Empire and was very successful.",
"TL;DR: the Roman Empire was massive, lasted for ages, and covered much of Western Europe, so it’s no surprise it is so important to Europeans and their offshoot nations. (And I assume to many others, in North Africa, the Middle East, etc., but I can’t speak for them.)\n\nAt its height, the Roman Empire was one of the largest empires in world history. It lasted, in some form, for almost 1500 years. Within its borders it often provided a level of peace, stability and organisation that was unprecedented, and perhaps unmatched in Western Europe for another thousand years (that’s a very debatable point).\n\nIt undertook amazing feats of civil engineering, many of which are still visible and impressive today, or are even still in use (especially in the east).\n\nThe Roman Empire also produced a great deal of literature, from comedies to philosophy to engineering. Many of these were core texts until the modern era, and some are still very relevant today.\n\nIt was the birthplace of Christianity, and the empire officially adopting Christianity was a turning point for the religion. The home of the Catholic Church is, of course, still Rome, and its language Latin.\n\nAfter the fall of the empire in the West, rulers and intellectuals looked to the Roman Empire as a model to aspire to. From their fragmented, troubled kingdoms the Roman Empire was a lost giant. In many ways, this admiration has continued up to the present day, with Rome viewed, for better or worse, as *the* greatest empire.\n\n*Edit:* The Roman Empire, and its rise and fall, has also been turned into many powerful stories and lessons. Its rise, its peak and fall can be used as political and moral lessons (which may or may not reflect the actual history).",
"*All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?*",
"Rome is the foundation upon which civilization is built: \n\n* Many of the languages in Europe are derivatives of Latin. \n\n* The legal systems of Europe are based on Roman Law (even in Germany and England attorneys **still** use Latin terms for many legal concepts). \n\n* Catholicism is still headquartered in Rome, and spread Roman culture and institutions globally for centuries. \n\n* Most imperial units are based on Roman units of measurement. \n\n* Our calendar comes from Rome, and several months of the year in the modern calendar are directly derived Latin (September, October, November, and December are literally 7th month, 8th month, 9th month, and 10th month in Latin, the names were retained after January and February were added to the calendar). \n\n* ~~April Fools is a memorial to a Roman calendar change (shifting the new year From April 1st to January 1st).~~\n\n* Concrete and glass weren't invented in Rome, but Rome popularized them and developed many techniques we still use today (like glass blowing). ",
"The Roman Empire/Republic started in 509 BC. Rome fell in 476, but the eastern Roman empire continued on for nearly another millennium, lasting until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.\n\nBut by then, the Holy Roman Empire had been going since 800, claiming the prestige of Rome, and it lasted until 1806. Much its ruling class, largely the Habsburgs, became prominent in the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, which allied with Germany in WWI to form the Central Powers, reconstituting much for the former Holy Roman Empire, ending 1918.\n\nAnd you know how the Nazis were known as the Third Reich? Reich #1 was the Holy Roman Empire, so as late as the 1940s, nations were still trying to set themselves up as the continuation of an empire that started over almost 2500 years before.\n\nSo as you can see, the Roman Empire is kind of a big deal.\n\n",
"There are other massive, important empires that lasted a long time in history, but Rome is notable because it was very important in Europe and Christianity, both of which have had a large influence the rest of the world.\n\nLatin, the Roman language, was the only language the Bible was written and taught in for many years, and many languages in Europe are directly derived from it or, like English, have received many words from it despite belonging to a different language group. It was the Lingua Franca of Europe for all of history right up until the last couple hundred years or so. \n\nEvery who reads the Bible will get a face full of Roman-era terminology, geography, and social issues they have to grasp, so as long as Christianity is a thing, so will studying and visualizing Rome. What's more, one of the major reasons Christianity even became as major a religion as it did was because the Roman empire converted to it under Constantine. \n\nOur Democracy was based in part on the Roman (and Greek) model. The architecture of our big political buildings, with all the marble and columns and stuff, is based on Roman (and Greek) architecture. The reason not many people tried Democracy until the US and French revolutions is because they all knew how it had failed in Rome. \n\nThe Byzantine empire was essentially just the Roman empire with another name, and it was the center of culture, religion, and technology in Europe for nearly a thousand years, as well as the trigger for the Crusades. Even when it fell, Constantinople's destruction is what triggered the age of exploration and the Columbian exchange.\n\nThe Roman empire operated at a level of technology and coordination that wouldn't be matched in western Europe for a thousand years after the fall of Rome. If you travel Europe today you'll *still* see Roman roads, walls, and aqueducts. Some are even still in use. Revived interest in the classical era was what brought about the Renaissance."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
sx2a5 | why are countires threatening each other with nuclear weapons? if anyone used one wouldn't they just be hurting themselves? | I keep reading about all the counties that have nuclear weapons and it's such a big deal but why would anyone use one in the first place? Isn't it just a stalemate for everyone since using one would just screw everyone over?
I know there's a lot of history here and a lot of politics but I don't really know or fully understand any of it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sx2a5/eli5_why_are_countires_threatening_each_other/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4hpncr",
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"score": [
8,
5
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"text": [
"Who's threatening to use them? Having nuclear weapons is essentially just a deterrent for other countries using nuclear weapons. Trying to get nuclear weapons is basically just ensuring no ther country uses it on you.",
"You are on the playground, and you and each of your classmates have a handful of rocks. No one throws because they don't want to suffer the repercussions of being thrown back at. Except little johnny decides to be be good and decides to drop his rocks. You and all of your class mates turn and throw your rocks at him.\n\nThe problem is that if technology can be built and used for evil it will be. The idea is to keep that [stalemate](_URL_1_) you mentioned so no one throws first.\n\nAlso, [some men just want to watch the world burn](_URL_0_)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efHCdKb5UWc",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction"
]
] |
|
fcc4ru | why don’t we see only perfect black when our eyes are closed?🙈 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fcc4ru/eli5_why_dont_we_see_only_perfect_black_when_our/ | {
"a_id": [
"fj9pi25"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"The visual processing apparatus in your brain won’t ever get zero signal unless you’re dead. There’s always some “noise” in the machine, which your pattern-matching devices will fall over themselves to “interpret” into a meaningful picture. \n\nYou may note the visuals you do see inside your closed eyes are often rhythmic series of waves or ripples, which may be cycles of non-zero stimulation washing across the layers of neurones. \n\nAlso, your eyelids are not fully opaque, so there’s also light leakage inside the eyeball which, again, your pattern-matching drive will try to turn into something intelligible."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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